Alien Invasion and Other Inconveniences Read Free Page B

tumbling out all the time. He’s got a GAY PRIDE button on his shirt. It’s strange. How can it matter now? Somehow it does to Jerome, though, and I like that it does. Michael doesn’t. He doesn’t like anything about Jerome.
    Jerome’s painting ability isn’t even close to his talking ability. He’s messy and slow. He spends probably an hour on the subject of his coming out of the closet and how it took him so long to come out because he was repressed by his father, a homophobic Florida redneck.
    “Finally, last month I proclaimed myself gay and what happens? Alien invasion. Can you believe it?”
    “Sometimes yes and sometimes no,” I say.
    He nods enthusiastically. He points at me with his little-used paintbrush. “Yeah, you one of them deep thinkers, ain’t you?”
    Michael makes a totally uncalled-for snort. Then he adds, “Jesus,” in case we somehow missed the totally unsubtle meaning of that snort.
    The room we’re painting is big. We’re painting it green. The Sans love green. It’s like some alien obsession. The whole world will be green if they have their way, and I guess they will.
    Michael is keeping his back to Jerome as much as possible, and finally Jerome says, “Brother don’t like gays.”
    “I don’t like people who never shut up,” Michael says.
    “Just might be I got something you want to hear, sweets.”
    “Don’t call me that.” He stops painting. His back isn’t to Jerome now.
    “Oh, Lord. We’ve been invaded. We’ve lost everything. We’re slaves, for God’s sake, and the brother is worried about being called sweets. Unbelievable.”
    “Didn’t say I was worried. Just said don’t call me that.”
    Jerome is taller than Michael, and something about the way he stands makes me think that he knows things about fighting. Then it’s more than just a thought.
I feel like I’m not entirely myself. I’m in a bar and some guy calls me a queer and I whisper to the guy that he’s queer too but doesn’t know it. The guy’s like a bear. Huge. I think I’m about to get killed. The guy takes a swing and I step back. Then I realize it’s not me. It’s Jerome. We knee the guy in the groin, and then when he doubles over, we knee him twice to the chin and down the guy goes. We step back and roundhouse-kick the guy in the head
. That’s it. I’m back to myself. I’m confused. It takes me a few seconds to work it out. I saw a memory, Jerome’s memory.
    Besides the fact that I now
know
Jerome could kick Michael’s ass, any fighting draws the aliens’ attention. They tend to punish us quickly and severely for behavior they don’t like.
    I say, “What do you want to tell us, Jerome?”
    Jerome turns to look at me. It could go either way. He’s mad; Michael’s mad. He shakes his head. “Looks like you’re the only one’s got any sense here. I seen someone looks like our man Michael. Older gentleman but got the same looks.”
    “Not like me,” Michael says.
    “What’s your last name?”
    Michael starts painting. He acts like he doesn’t hear him.
    “White,” I say.
    Michael glares at me.
    “Whitey,” Jerome says. “They called the guy Whitey. Little rough around the edges.”
    “I don’t have nothin’ to do with that man,” Michael says, and he sets his brush on a paint can and turns to Jerome, body tight as a bowstring.
    The fight looks inevitable now. An alien overseer, passing by, gives us a hard stare. I turn to Jerome, but he isn’t in fighting posture anymore. In fact, he looks kind of — I don’t know — sad. He shakes his head. “Sorry, man. Really. I got me a daddy just like that. Wouldn’t have brought it up if I’d known.”
    It’s like something breaks in Michael then. He backs up against the wall and slides down to the floor, where he sits with his legs sprawled out. He turns away from us. Jerome and I sit down, too. It’s like we’re all suddenly exhausted.
    “My mom was a diabetic,” Michael says.
    We all know what this means.