My Best Man Read Free Page B

evil.” Ayvil.
    “She sure is.” She shore iyuz.
    The biggest shadow creature, the one who looks as if she’s got a spark arrester on her head, says, “Erica ain’t dumb. She’ll catch on.” Ercka aint doom. Shill kich own.
    A voice escapes one of the butts at the end of the bed. “That guy ever wake up over there?”
    The tremendous buttocks turns, I assume so that whatever is connected to them can look at me. Oh, God, get me out of here. I close my eyes, pretend I’m asleep. I’ve seen the bumper stickers stuck to tailgates of those dusty pickup tracks the moment I crossed over the state line: SECEDE! and us out OF TEXAS! I just don’t take the citizens of the Lone Star State to be the kind of folksy neighbors who will shower goodwill upon a Yankee homosexual who is probably hospitalized because he got knocked up by someone who wasn’t his own cousin. At best, they make jokes, the way they do about blacks and Mexicans. Nigras and Mescuns. And at worst, they’ll throw stones, read me scripture, and make me watch PTL with Jim and Tammy Faye.
    I keep my eyes closed for at least another hour. All My Children ends; One Life to Live begins. A nurse comes in to check me, and even though I’m starving, I pretend to be asleep. Finally, the puffy lake people become bored with the schizophrenic Nicki/Vicki story line on One Life, so they decide to wallow back to the estuary.
    I ring for the nurse. She appears. Nurse Carbonada. She’s a hundred years old and smells like broiled meat. “How are you feeling?” she wheezes.
    “Fine.”
     
    “Your girlfriend was in here this morning. Wants you to know she’ll be back this afternoon.”
    My girlfriend? That guy who brought me here? Gee, Nurse
    Carbonada is awfully hip. “Hungry?” she asks. “I guess. A little.”
    “You’re restricted. I’ll bring in what I can.”
    Before I can ask her what happened last night, she’s gone. There’ snothing lonelier than being in this hospital by myself and not knowing what circumstances brought me here. Strangely enough, I have the immediate longing for family. But who can I call? My father? Moot point. Although maybe he’s already here, watching all this from above. I can’t help but wonder if he loves me now, if he understands me in a way he couldn’t before. Is he some divine spirit who’s stopped passing judgment? He was good to me when I was a kid. Never physically affectionate, but always interactive. Showed me how to toss the tennis ball while serving. Bought me the best golf clubs and demonstrated the right wrist action when chipping onto the green. Taught me everything he’d learned of horses as a boy and bought me a wonderful gelding and schooled me into a knowledgeable equestrian, counseling me on form and helping me train my horse and enter horse shows.
    I’ll never forget the night everything changed. We were seated around the dining room table, eating dinner, my mother rambling on about “those jakey Carters” and how the White House had become a “hillbilly retreat for poorly dressed beer drinkers” when I said I had something to say. And my mother joked, “If you’re going to announce that you’re dating Amy Carter, I forbid you to speak.” Which was absurd because Amy Carter was ten years old at the time, but I saw my opportunity for the perfect segue.
    “No,” I said, “I’d rather date her brother Chip.” It wasn’t true. Chip was kind of goofy looking and his jeans fit too low on his ass for him to be gay, but it got the point across.
    My mother knew the moment I said it that I was serious, and she quickly retracted. “With a little makeup, that Amy could be a lovely girl.”
    But it was too late. And with only a little further discussion, in which Winston was quite silent, my father as well, I explained that I was gay and I didn’t see any sense in lying about it and politely declined to see the therapist my mother recommended who’d done wonders convincing the Westholt’s daughter