Blues of Summer -- A Parody
II)
As these things go, Cliff has to leave the next day for a two-week family vacation. Is anyone surprised? I swear sometimes my life feels like some hackneyed narrative. This leaves me with a lot of downtime. Fortunately, Mark, my brother, is working at a local video store, and I send him off with quite the grocery list. At the very end, following a dozen or so Lynchs, Tarkovskys, Bunuels, Fellinis, Cassavetes, and Kurosawas I request Wilde. He skims over the note before leaving on Monday, and I notice that curious little quizzical left-eyebrow raise he does so well. Mission success. He starts to head out the door, then turns to me.
"I don't know if you've heard," he says with total casualness, "but Megan is throwing a party tonight at her parents' place. She's invited a lot of kids, pretty cool crowd too. She mentioned to me that you're welcome to come along."
He leaves me standing there, totally perplexed. I know Megan, everyone does, but I can't imagine she'd know me. Mark and she are both seniors - actually, I guess they're both freshman now, having graduated - although they run with totally different crowds. I know they became friends after (on a lark) he did tech for our school production of Romeo and Juliet. She, naturally, was Juliet. Not just for looks, although she is quite pretty - and yes, us gay boys can tell these things - but mostly for her extremely developed dramatic flair. Not that I would know, but I hear that in class she will talk for ten minutes straight. Talk about ego. But still, what else do I have to do tonight?
I spend the day (lacking movies temporarily) on my computer. There are only so many times you can read the same internet comics, and news sites just aren't floating my boat. Even my IM buddy list seems eerily vacant. I almost leave to go do something, I don't know, constructive, when a little icon catches my eyes. Chat. It's been years, I swear. But there's something about a sticky summer, an empty house, and nostalgia - not to neglect, and this I admit, hormones. Probably haven't chatted since I was fourteen or so. Seems like a long time, huh?
Never having been one to beat around the bush (any pun, grossly unintended), I head straight for the Gay & Lesbian room (these bad puns are falling like raindrops, ain't they?). The room is nearly full, but I don't recognize any of the names. I guess all my old online friends found something better to do. I just watch the text scroll down the page. People sure do talk about stupid stuff in chat rooms. I mean, do I really care how some guy in Wyoming and his cat are doing? After a litany of smileys and acronyms, I'm ready to call it a day. Then a name catches my eye.
The name Club180...I can't place it, but I know I know it. Although a club kid would be hardly news in this room, I know somehow that it's not one of the old roomie handles. No, this is someone I've met since, someone closer to me than across fiber-optic cable. Fuck. I just can't remember. I wait, hunched over almost, sweat trickling off my forehead. Club180's gotta talk sometime.
"Club180: Wish4WingsThatWork, Derrick? Derrick, is that you???"
My heart stops. My lungs stop. They know my name. They know who I am. In the moment of actual discovery, I forget everything about being "barely" closeted - this is pure terror on my face. Quicker than any eye can register, my hand darts out, grabs the mouse, and logs off. Minutes pass. I guess I would breathe a sigh of relief, but I have to pee too badly.
Hours later, or should I say, restless, uncomfortable hours later, Mark pokes his head into my room, asking if I'm coming or not. I had forgotten. The party still waits.
"Can you give me a few minutes to get ready?" I ask.
Mark looks at me strangely. Perhaps it has something to do with the way I flinched when he opened the door into the lit corridor. I have been sitting in the dark a while, I suppose.
"Not as though you haven't had all afternoon to get ready," he says, with a dramatic flair. "But sure, the party is just starting now, and if you ever want to get invited back, showing up late is a definite plus in your favor. That way Megan will know you're important."
He leaves, then pokes his head back in.
"Oh, I got you your movies. The foreign ones, Killing of a Chinese Bookie, and Eraserhead were easy to get, but Wilde was checked out. I grabbed something else you might like. They're by the TV. And if you're not ready in ten I'm leaving your sophomore butt here to wallow in freakish unpopularity."
I throw him a dirty look. "It's Junior, by the way. I advanced grades at the same time you graduated."
After a lightning quick shower and a change into my only set of half-way respectable clothes, we're off. It's night outside (and this is summer, remember) and I am very baffled at first. I can't believe I spent that much time up in my room; maybe all those hours locked up didn't drag by quite as I thought they did. My stomach grumbles. It apparently has known for quite some time what I'm just now realizing.
"Will there be any food there?" I ask. "I feel like I could eat some sort of large, savannah dwelling beast." The image of a full sized warthog, turning slowly on a spit, brings tears of joy to my eyes, and drips of drool to the corners of my mouth.
"What Have you been doing with yourself all afternoon, little boy, locked away in your room with the computer? Weren't having too much fun, and forgot dinner?"
I elect not to remind him we are only a little more than two years apart. Instead, I grin and say, "Actually, its just that I worked up such an appetite in there, the first dinner wasn't enough."
"Well, then," says Mark, laughing. "I suppose we'll have to cram you with some more carbs. There'll be a lot of hotties at this party, and you never know - it would be a shame if you had to run off to the bathroom suddenly and then couldn't even perform."
We stop off at a Subway. I normally despise any corporate food; but hey, when you're hungry, you're hungry. At least I can avoid fried.
I've already put away about half the sucker before we're out of the parking lot. Preprocessed it may be, but damn, tasty. Moral high grounds are such a bitch to hold. Mark is driving slowly, even though Megan's house is a good way on the other side of town. I guess I got ready a little quicker than he had anticipated. Not that I'm complaining about the speed, mind you. It's one of those really clear summer nights, where you do just as well with AC as with the windows down. This is a nice change of pace from my usual summer night activities - my wealth of video games and Simpsons tapes are miles behind us.
I finally manage to pause enough between bites (at this point the twelve inches is down to three or so), to ask Mark a question that's been on my mind for a while.
"So," I say, nonchalant as a cucumber. "Just how was it I got invited to this party anyway?"
"Whatever do you mean?" Asks Mark.
"Well, it is true that there are no bad feelings between Megan and I at all," I reply. "But that's mostly because there are just no feelings there whatsover. I only know her because it's the place of underclassmen to idolize upper classmen; she probably wouldn't know me from a bug that crawled out of her toilet. Even if she saw the two of us together in the halls sometime, she'd probably just assume you were beating me up for my milk money, or something. We didn't exactly fall close to the tree, you know."
Mark doesn't answer immediately. I glance at him from my sub, and to my great surprise, I see he's turned beet red. He's never been one to conceal feelings well. If he's not hiding something then I'm Stevie-freaking-Wonder.
"I might have mentioned you a while ago," he says at last. "Maybe she was just curious as to what my brother was like."
He's not lying; to take a phrase already clobbered to cliche, he's about as subtle as the Sphinx. But this is a half-truth, at best. Megan is the sort of person who takes great care to prune her invitation lists. Not that her parties are great formal occasions, mind you, but she has a cast of friends larger than the extras in Barry Lyndon. My arriving on said list is no twist of casual fate - something propagated it. Mark is fragile now, and though I might have success prying, he might as likely clam up. I finally decide to wait. Like all proper party mysteries - even those lacking tuxedos and a grand feast - this will no doubt be solved before the evening is over. I turn it over in my mind a few more times, however; in this way, thoughts of my chat room encounter never quite break through the periphery of my thoughts.
Thanks for all the comments you folks sent! I'd be happy to get more. My address is still XfragmentofanangelX@hotmail.com. And for those who complained about the lengths of my post, well, I'm sorry, but like Polonius I have always believed in the power of brevity. That, and I simply can't write very quickly. Looking forward to hearing from you all; section 3 should be posted within the next few days.