Taking Chances Read online

  There were slight differences here and there, but you could have taken a picture of Foster ten years ago and transposed this image over it and not come up with many changes at all. The Vine had a new marquee, which looked a lot like the old one with more lights. I saw that they had put a stoplight in where Railroad Avenue intersected First Street but besides that, the same. I suddenly felt like a teenager again, the town closing in on me as my own private shame began to shrink away from the light. This was why I hated coming back. Not because my mother bugged me or because I didn’t want to see my family. Foster, the town itself, made me feel so damn bad about being gay, it was all I could do to stop myself from screaming out loud for people to get the fuck out of my face.

  Sophia would have brought up that no one was even close to being in my face. And she would have been right. That was what made it worse. I knew that no one here knew a thing about me or cared about the person I actually was. But there was such a paranoia that they might that from the moment I touched down, I began counting the seconds until I left again. I had just gotten here and I already wanted to leave. I think that was a new record for me.

  I passed Foster High, and I could see the football field from the road. I had spent most of my high school life on that field, training, running, playing, wishing I wasn’t on it. My junior year, the coaches from Foster and Granada decided that we should play a preseason game, which was really just a lame excuse for a grudge match. It was the only time we met on the field, since we both played in different leagues to prevent the rivalry from becoming even worse than it already was. I remember being torn between apprehension because their team seemed so much better than ours, and anticipation because I’d be seeing him somewhere else than behind his house. He was a running back, and I remember the moment I saw him in those football pants and pads, I nearly popped a bone right there on the line. Even though he never directly looked at me, I could tell it was him. I could see his eyes burning in his helmet as he surveyed us lining up against him. He didn’t look scared, he didn’t look nervous; if anything, he looked like he had been expecting more of us.

  We lost that game 42-17, and my brother said I spent more time watching Granada make plays than actually stopping them. That was true in more ways than he could ever know. The boy moved like a panther out there. He was easily the fastest guy on either team, and he knew it. Even though he was as intense as any three players I had ever seen, I could see such joy in his face when he sat on the sidelines and watched his defense play. Even though we lost, I knew I had fallen in love a little bit more with him.

  I remember the name on the back of his jersey was Parker, which seemed to fit him perfectly in my head. I heard he had gotten a scholarship, and the next year I read in the paper he had been accepted to Florida to play for them. One day he was there and the next he was simply gone, and my life had never been the same since then.

  When I moved to the Bay Area, I had met a lot of guys looking to date. I wasn’t shy to use the Internet to find other guys who seemed to be like-minded, and more than a few were more than willing to meet a former Texas football player who was fresh off the bus, as they say. They were all great guys. Well, not great, but at the very least decent guys.

  Each one, in his own personal way, tried to get me to adjust to gay life. And each one, in his own little fucked-up way, made me hate it even more. They weren’t masculine enough or weren’t monogamous enough or wanted to party too much or just weren’t him. At first, I simply thought there were just no decent guys out there. And then Sophia said the smartest thing that ever fell out of her mouth.

  “With so many guys hooking up around here and you always single, maybe the problem isn’t them, but you.”

  I really hated it when she was right.

  I slowed as I passed his house, my car taking me by there before my brain even knew where I was going. The house looked the same but smaller, almost as if time itself had worn it down evenly and left a smaller yet identical house in the same place. The backyard still looked overgrown, but the fence was new. I wondered who lived there now, and if they would ever know how much a red door can affect someone’s life.

  There were two cars already parked in front of my parent’s house, which meant again, I was the last to arrive. Walking into the house last during holidays was like walking late into class. You knew you were disturbing something you were supposed to be a part of, and everyone was looking at you wondering why the hell you were so late.

  Have I mentioned I hated Christmas?

  I grabbed my bags and made my way up the walk. By the time I got to the door, my oldest brother had swung it open and was glaring at me. I paused, understanding I was not going to pass until he had his say, and from the way he swayed slightly and the smell about him, he was going to have about half a six-pack worth of stuff to say.

  “You’re a real asshole, you know that?” he declared, closing the door behind him.

  In my defense, I did know that.

  “You upset Mom when all she’s doing is checking up on you. You’re late again, showing up with your matching luggage and your fancy clothes. Don’t think I don’t know about you, what you really think.”

  “John?” I interrupted him. “There is a point to this, right?”

  “You think you’re better than us,” he spit out as if I’d never spoken. “You always thought you were better than us—don’t think we didn’t notice. Little Mr. I’m Too Good For All This thinking he’s too good for all this.”

  I might have misjudged by about five or six beers.

  “And let me guess, you show up with your fancy presents and high-fangled gadgets, making the rest of our gifts look like crap!” He jabbed me in the chest with a finger. John had let himself go like my older brother. What was once muscle and lean was now larger and slightly flabby. Both were handsome in their own way, but it was obvious their best days were behind them, and that was sad to me.

  “I bought you guys a HoneyPad,” I said, hoping to derail this fight before it got some steam under it.

  “You did?” he exclaimed as his face lit up. “You did that for me?” And he hugged me.

  I didn’t have the heart to say I did that for both of them, but it stopped a fight, so I didn’t argue.

  “Come on already!” He gestured toward the door as if I was the one who had stopped him. “They’re all waiting for ya!”

  He took my bags and busted in, yelling, “Guess who finally decided to show up?”

  There was a cheer from people, but it sounded fake to me as I closed the door behind me. I tried to ignore the feeling it was a cell door.

  I had been miserable being gay in Foster and moved out as soon as I could. I went to school in Berkeley, which was the farthest school in distance and philosophy from Texas as I could find. I ended up meeting a group of guys who were making a website that needed content, and eight years later I was the tech editor for what was considered THE word on consumer electronics. It was a good job and it was a good life, but it wasn’t a happy one, and I couldn’t figure out why. It drove me crazy to have a hole in the center of my life that I couldn’t fill with anything I put in there.

  Wow, did that sound bad.

  I tried money, but all it did was make my place look crowded. I tried sex, but all it made me was guilty. I tried exercise, but all that did was make the sex easier to get. Finally, I settled on being quietly miserable waiting for the next part of my life to begin. But at almost thirty, I was wondering how much more was left. My brothers were only a few years older, and they had lives and families and mortgages and they seemed perfectly fine. I wanted to be perfectly fine, but it wasn’t in the cards. So I sat in my parent’s living room and prepared to be miserable until the weekend ended, when I could go home and be miserable there.

  About an hour into catching up, William, my middle brother, came over and sat next to me. “So did you really get John a HoneyPad?” he asked in a low voice, as if we were in a spy novel.

  I nodded as I forced myse
lf to take another drink of my father’s toxic eggnog. “I got you one too,” I said, knowing that was what he was fishing for.

  “Yes!” he said, pumping his arm. “Hey, look, I know you know this stuff. I got the kids this video game thing, but I don’t know how it works. Does it need batteries?”

  I counted to an unimaginably high number in my head as I tried not to snap at him. “You are going to have to be a little more specific than a ‘video game thing’ for me to answer, Will.”

  He drew back as if I had swung at him. “What’s wrong with you?”

  I finished the drink and sighed. “Jetlag. Where is it?”

  “It’s in the trunk of my car. I just need to know if it needs anything else, ’cause you know if they can’t hook it up on Christmas they are going to burn the house down….”

  I was already standing up. “I’ll check it out. Pop the trunk on your car.”

  He jumped up and slapped my back hard enough to knock a molar out if I had one loose. “You’re the best, bro.”

  My mom gave me a glance as one of the wives told her about one of the grandkids’ experience at school. Even though it was half a second, she said plenty. “I’ll be right back,” I said, assuring her I wasn’t making a run for it and skipping town.

  I wasn’t surprised to find one of the cheapest game systems on the market sitting in the trunk. My brother was a good man but with four kids, there would need to be three of him to cover the costs of those monsters. This was a perfectly acceptable system five years ago and no doubt, since he knew nothing about it, he thought he was getting a deal on it. I knew for a fact, the company had already released the next generation of this console, which meant my brother had spent his hard-earned money on an electronic Edsel.

  I hauled it and the few games they had bought out of the trunk and took it all over to my car. Just on the outskirts of town there was an outlet mall with a Better Buy, which meant I could still save Christmas for my nephews.

  I found it funny that all the modern-day stores had been built outside of town. It always felt as if Foster itself was a historical monument to an age gone by and no one, not even Wally World, could blemish it with a sign. The slow bustle of the town was replaced by hordes of angry cars as they all tried to edge into the store parking lot, intent on last- minute Christmas shopping. This was where all the small town charm and atmosphere evaporated and the real face of its people was revealed. I heard a symphony of blaring horns and angry shouts and for a second, it reminded me of California.

  I parked on the edge of the lot and grabbed the system and its bags. I saw a Toys for Tots display in the front window; a young, fresh-faced Marine stood there making me feel old and perverted in one fell swoop as I approached him. He saw what I had in my hand and looked away—no way anyone was going to donate a video game system for needy kids. I was very satisfied with his look of shock when I put it gently in the box.

  “Thank you, sir!” he said with a reverence I thought absurd, considering what he did for a living.

  “Merry Christmas,” I said, trying to remember if I was ever that young.

  Dating in San Francisco as a young man fresh from living his entire life in Foster had been like being a star attraction in a restaurant. You were the main focus of a bunch of hungry people. I wish I could say I stood by my guns and looked for love, but going nineteen years with only my good right hand to pleasure myself had made me a desperate man.

  I dove into sex like some people dove into a hobby.

  I tried it all, top, bottom, sideways. I had one guy talk me into a three-way, which seemed like two people too many at times. Some guy gave me poppers, which made me think I was going to pass out and have my kidney harvested. I was a fresh face with just the right lack of common sense to believe people and what they said. But no matter who I met or what we did, it was never enough. I always found fault with them in some way, secretly wondering what it would have been like with him. My boy behind the red door. Even after I swore off the whole dating scene, he was the center of my sex life. I had masturbated imagining him in every way possible. I felt sometimes like he was a porn star rather than a real person.

  I wandered the store looking for the gifts my brothers wished they could have bought their kids, all the while avoiding the crowd the best I could. This was the other problem I had with Christmas: the sheer consumer rage it seemed to bring out in people in places like this. Like finding the right gift here would somehow make up for 364 days of them being complete assholes to everyone they knew. So when they saw that one thing that might save their eternal soul, they went at it with a religious zeal that left me cold.

  I put the new video system in my cart and began to wander toward the games in a leisurely pace. I was in no hurry to return to the house, and there were few places I felt more sure of myself than in an electronics store.

  By the time I’d met Sophia, I had built an image in my head of a person who could in no real way exist. I had taken this image of a random boy who lived down the street and elevated him to an almost mythical status in my mind, and there was no way anyone in the world could compete with it. Sophia and Whatshisname had set me up with more than a few of their friends, and each date had ended worse than the last. I’m not sure what they found attractive in me, but I had a list of things that repulsed me about them. I had gone from a fresh-faced newbie to a stuck-up bitch in less than a year, and no one wanted to charge at that particular windmill to see if they’d somehow pass the magical checklist I carried in my head. It was Sophia getting me completely trashed one night who dragged the truth out of me. One long, slobbering, mournful night where I howled at the injustice of a world that would show me such perfection and then dare to snatch it away from me in one deft movement.

  I think it was then she figured out how fucked-up I was, and it secretly thrilled her. Straight girls don’t befriend gay guys because they want another “girl” to hang with or because they like being dragged to a bar full of attractive guys who won’t look twice at them. They are friends with us for the drama. We are the very epitome of a WB teenage drama. We have angst, we’re attractive, in shape, and dress nicely, and there is always a fight just on the horizon. The only thing we lack is a montage opening sequence set to upbeat ’80s synth music as we all turn and smile into the camera. I know she meant well, but there were times I think Sophia liked me miserable, because a Matt in a stable and healthy relationship would not be able to distract her from Whatshisname and his ever-deflating heterosexuality.

  “Matt?” a voice called out.

  I turned toward the voice, wondering if it was one of the half dozen acquaintances I still knew in town. Guys who had been on the team with my brothers and me and considered me like the mascot of the team. Even though we were all pushing thirty soon, I knew I’d always be referred to as Little Matty and get an affectionate hand messing up my hair. I readied my politest smile, the one I kept packed away for holidays in Foster. Or worse, it was one of my mother’s friends, who I had to be triple-nice to because if there was anything worse than me taking a strange man and bedding him on First Street while the people at Nancy’s Diner watched, it would be giving off an attitude to one of her friends I met in a store. The story would be all over town in no time about Jocelyn’s youngest and how he grew up such a snob and I saw him at the Better Buy and he was just so ugly to me. That’s the problem with those Wallace boys. Walking around too good for this place; they get that from their mother. Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

  By the way, if I did have sex in front of Nancy’s, the worst I would hear about it would be a complaint from Gayle that she couldn’t see all the good parts, and a performance note from Old Man Scarsdale who’d fucked whores overseas in WWII and could tell you stories that would make your dick fall off.

  I turned and realized I was in the middle of having a stroke.

  I knew it was a stroke because I couldn’t talk and I was seeing him walking toward me. It was impossible in every way possible, of course, for a
few salient reasons.

  1. Linear time does not allow for people to not to be affected by its passage, and since it had been ten years since he had looked like that, impossible.

  2. In my entire life, I have never been so lucky as to have an event that was as astronomical as seeing him again so randomly occur. And turning around and seeing him would be akin to winning three lotteries back to back, so it was impossible.

  3. I looked like shit and was in no way ready to see him. Not impossible, but it was a pretty strong point for me.

  And then the bubble of time seemed to pop, and I saw him take two steps forward and age subtly right in front of my eyes. I could see his eyes and smile stay static as his face seemed to fill out, making him even more handsome. A fact that, if you had asked me ten seconds ago, I would have sworn was also impossible.

  I stood with my mouth half open, not sure what to say or do. Part of me wanted to run, part of me wanted to kiss him, another part of me wanted to do something else but then heard the suggestion of kissing him and changed its vote to that. He still walked with the same confidence that boarded on arrogance but was undeniably sexy. It was a slight bowlegged movement that was as distracting as it was enticing. I willed my eyes not to drift downward as he came up and thrust his hand out at me.

  “Matt, Matt Wallace, right?” he asked, unsure since I in no way had acknowledged his words. I just stood there and mutely nodded, wondering where all the blood that was draining from my face might be going. “It’s me,” he said, as if someone could have forgotten him even for a second. “Tyler? Tyler Parker?”

  And he stopped being the boy behind the red door and became Tyler.

  Tyler

  IF THERE is anything worse than being gay in a small town, it’s being popular and no one knowing you’re gay.

  I had spent my entire high school life being Tyler Parker, star running back from Granada High, which meant I had virtually no time to be who I really was. Of course, I am in my midthirties now, and I still have no idea who I really am besides gay.