History Lessons

It’s Preppy’s ten year high school reunion, and we’re in Vicksburg, Mississippi. Preppy was class president his senior year, so he was responsible for planning the festivities. That was a little learning moment for me, by the way: I had no idea the responsibilities of class officers continued after graduation. Now he’s a dignified former president making an official visit, like when Jimmy Carter moderates peace talks. And that makes me, in a way, the former first lady of Porter’s Chapel Academy. I should totally be wearing a sensible suit and heels. Maybe a scarf.
At dinner, we’re seated between Jen, Preppy’s best friend from high school, and a girl named Betty, who was expelled her senior year. Betty was the wild child- she could always get liquor or cigarettes, and ditched her prom date to take the limo driver instead. It seems everyone at the table has a Betty story.
“Betty,” says Preppy. “What was the name of that guy you ran off and moved in with junior year? He had a trailer with a big screen TV?”
“Oh, shit, what was his name?” says Betty, sipping her White Russian and peering into the haze of her memory. “My mama wanted to have him arrested. Jim? Tim? Somethin’.”
“I remember that!” shouts Jen. “We went to visit you and you just threw a porn tape on while we were sitting there talking. I’d never seen some of those acts before. Scared the hell outta me!”
“I just wanted y’all to see the big TV,” says Betty. “Everybody knows the only reason you get a big TV is to watch porn life-sized.”
“I didn’t know that,” I say. “Preppy, did you know that?”
The conversation continues in this vein for a while: the teenage adventures of Preppy, Betty, and Jen, most of which involve small crimes or choices that would have shamed their families. So they sound a lot like my high school stories. Good times. Eventually, I start looking around for the cocktail waitress, and I notice Jen’s husband. He was amiable and animated earlier in the evening, but for at least the last half hour, he’s been sitting two chairs down, observing the conversation silently. There’s an expression on his face I recognize, and it does not bode well for Jen when they leave.
Several months ago I met a few friends of Preppy’s from his life in another city. As the alcohol flowed, so did the stories. And there were quite a few that somehow had never come up in our conversations. I tried to maintain a placid expression as my stomach tightened. My laugh became more forced and my glances at my fiancée grew increasingly severe. We did not have a pleasant drive home.
So when Jen’s husband stands and makes it very clear it’s time to leave, I know exactly what’s going on in his head: “Why haven’t I heard any of this before?”
The next day, Jen reports to Preppy that she did have a rather strenuous drive back to the hotel, which left her confused even after they’d patched things up. These events were a decade ago, when they were babies. What’s the big deal?
Maybe it’s just me, but I think there’s a protective instinct which kicks in when we hear tales of wild nights and bad choices from our significant other’s history. We wish we’d been there, to steer them away from a guy who treated them like shit or something they drank, smoked, or snorted. And there’s a small part of us that wishes they’d been there to do the same for us. It’s the part of you that really means it when you say “Where have you been all my life?”, and knowing you can’t change that can be frustrating.
You probably have to be a total control freak to really appreciate this.
Preppy advised Jen to tell her hubby the same thing he told me: Every choice they made before led them to become the people we now love. Not all of them were good, but they were all necessary. And the past we had apart pales in comparison to the future we have together.

Role Play

Preppy and I are in The Gap with my cousin Nelson, helping him pick out clothing that actually fits. Nelson, like many of the other straight guys I know, tends to wear shirts and pants three sizes larger than he needs. Somehow wearing your proper waist measurement has been associated with being Metrosexual, which I just don’t get at all. Nelson used to be a cross-country runner. Despite his habit of eating an entire large pizza for dinner several times a week, Nelson weighs about twenty pounds soaking wet.

He has the metabolism of a hummingbird. We hate him for this.

But some of the women in his life have told him the same thing I’ve been saying for years: He looks like he was either recently hospitalized, or doesn’t know how to dress himself. I say it, nothing happens. A chick says it, and we’re on our way to the mall. Go figure.
“Go try this on,” says Preppy, holding up a knit shirt.
“I’m not wearing purple,” says Nelson.
“It’s not purple,” I say. “It’s… Merlot.”
“That just made it gayer,” he says.
We manage to wrangle him into a dressing room with a few selections, then stand outside the door so he can’t escape. A woman with a very bewildered expression emerges nearby, wearing a little white summer dress with a flouncy skirt.
“Aw, that’s pretty,” I say.
“Is it?” she says, her desperation leaking from every pore. “I don’t know anything about this style. Is this cute? My hips are too big for this. I feel like a dust mop.”
“No, darlin’, it’s great!” says Preppy, and he’s off assisting her.
Then another woman is at my side, brandishing a pair of madras shorts.
“Excuse me,” she says. “What shirt would go with these other than white? My husband always gets stains on white shirts.”
“I’m sorry, I don’t work here.”
“I know,” she says. “I just wanted your opinion.”
Welcome to Queer Eye for the Straight Gap.
I’m always hyper-aware of scenarios like this. I can’t begin to count the number of baby showers, bridal parties, or lingerie shopping excursions I’ve been asked to attend over the years. At least once a month Preppy calls to say he’ll be home late because one of his girlfriends needs help picking out a dress or cute pair of shoes. For my friend Katie’s wedding a few years back, I did the makeup for the entire bridal party.
I am not a trained professional, and frankly there’s nothing about my wardrobe that indicates I have an excess of taste to share with the world. When someone hands me a bouquet of flowers and says, “Do something with these,” my only instinct is to throw them away. Somehow, somewhere, a list was compiled of traits everyone assumes you have if you’re a guy who likes to kiss other guys. It’s this damn chicken/egg scenario I don’t have a clear grasp on: Did I have a natural instinct about what shade of lipstick looks best with which skin tone, or is this something I cultivated because everyone kept asking my opinion on the subject.
Is this the by-product of integrating into the culture?

By increasing our visibility and relevance, we’ve been assigned tasks which all of us are expected to perform? Not once, ever in his life, has Nelson been asked for his opinion on what color to paint a room or where to hang a picture, although he’d have just as informed an opinion as I do. But he is consistently asked to help move furniture or change the oil in someone’s car, tasks I can perform just as easily, but I’m never asked. Which is just as well, because I hate doing shit like that.
I suppose the nature versus nurture debate is irrelevant, because either way here we are, playing fashion consultants to the dressing room. When Preppy walks away from the girl in the flouncy dress, she’s got a big smile on her face and a healthy boost of confidence, as does Nelson when he walks out with his bag of new clothes.
And that may be why I don’t resist the role the world at large expects me to play sometimes: When I’m approached and asked to pick out a shirt for someone’s husband, they’re identifying me as someone with authority to share. It’s an opportunity to forge a small connection and be the person who made their day a little brighter.

And that’s not a bad role to play.

The Tipping Point

I found this YouTube video, taken from a security camera, of an office drone working in a cubicle maze. Some guy comes along and accidentally knocks a bunch of papers off his desk. The drone notices, and he makes the guy pick up the papers. And then, for reasons unknown, the drone takes his computer keyboard and smashes it on the guy’s head. Thus emboldened, the drone throws his computer monitor across the room. And then he really cuts loose. He leaps from desk to desk, wreaking mayhem on various pieces of office equipment for three minutes, until someone finally tasers his ass, and down he goes. And the whole time I was watching it, I kept picturing the drone, sitting at his desk thinking, “If Glen knocks those profit and loss statements off my desk one more time, I’m gonna go fucking psycho.”
Then Glen knocked the papers off, one last time. The tipping point. I’ll bet it was a really freeing moment for the drone.
I watched it again and again, following the individual reactions of the drone’s co-workers during the flipout. Some made a run for the door, but a large number stayed. With their camera phones. They didn’t intervene; they just… documented. The drone’s breakdown became more explicable- He worked with assholes. It’s the little things that really define your day, you know? Then you hit the tipping point.
“I’ve figured out what causes a nervous breakdown,” I tell my sister Shannon on the phone.
“That’s a hell of an opening statement,” she says. “Go on.”
“Everywhere I turn, people tell me I’m not doing enough. No matter how hard I work, something gets left out or overlooked, and then people say I’m letting them down. Preppy says I don’t clean the house enough, my boss keeps finding things I didn’t do, I gotta raise money for Cotillion… last night I decided to stay in to get some sleep, and two people called me from the bar all pissed off. Even drinking is an obligation now. And I really want a miniature cow! And the batteries in the TV remote are dead, but every single time I go to CVS I forget to buy new ones. For three months!”
“And that’s what causes a nervous breakdown?”
“I think a breakdown is just your brain saying fuck it all,” I say. “Forget work, cleaning, batteries, just go to the nut hut, sit in a padded room and play Connect Four.”
“They wouldn’t let you play Connect Four in a psych ward. Choking hazard.”
“Oh, great, Shannon. Way to ruin my breakdown.”
“I don’t like all this conversation. Are you planning on having a breakdown?”
“It’d be too much work for Preppy. And I could never schedule a psychotic break.”
“Good for you,” says Shannon. “You figured out two things. Breakdowns are caused by constant nagging, and prevented by schedule conflicts. Now, if you really think you’re about to go on some sort of Tatum O’Neal downward spiral, say so. Otherwise, I gotta wake up my kid or he’ll nap all day.”
“Go. I’m fine.”
So she does. I’m not fine.

For the rest of the day, I wonder if the little things just add up, the demands and e-mails and voicemails under the general heading of “Not good enough”, until one cannot help but throw a fax machine for a little release. I wonder what you’re supposed to do keep that from happening.
That night, Preppy and I go out for drinks, and he tries to make me laugh, but I’m too close to my tipping point to let go and have fun. So on the drive home, he removes his shoes. Followed by all of his clothing.
“What are you doing?!”
“I’ve been trying to make you smile all night, but nothing’s worked. So when we get home, I’m going to jump out of the car and run around naked until you get the front door open. And if that doesn’t make you laugh, there’s no hope for you.”
He’s as good as his word, and I try to unlock the door, but I can’t stop laughing long enough to get the key. As I cackle, I feel myself tipping back in the right direction. Like I said, it’s the little things that define your day, and this day is no longer defined by everyone barking demands at me. It’s defined by the image of my fiancée’s ass in the moonlight, and me wondering if the neighbors are up.

Nesting

My fiancée Preppy and his best galpal went to a house party in Smyrna, where Preppy learned that he may never become a Guitar Hero. It was his first time visiting the house where the party was held, and apparently he took exhaustive mental notes. When he got home, he had grout on the brain.
“You know, between the tiles in the bathroom,” he said. “Their house is just as old as ours, but their bathroom had beautiful grout. So I asked about it, and she said they’d re-grouted the whole thing right after they moved in. I was really jealous of their grout.”
He’s telling me this while sitting on the edge of the tub in the master bath, examining the floor, which was just fine yesterday but now is dingy, embarrassing, and simply won’t do.
“All you need is a little saw and a chisel and you’re in business,” he says, surveying the expanse of tile in front of him. “Why aren’t we doing more stuff like this? We’ve had the bedroom paint picked out for two months. We could crack stuff like this out in a weekend.”
“Because we rarely have weekends. We’re busy people. I’m proud when we manage to fold the laundry.”
“We’ve been in the house for six months. We need to nest more. Help me nest, Topher.”
“If I agree to help nest, will you let me have Clarabelle?”
“No.”
Clarabelle is my fantasy pet. She is a miniature cow. I caught less than a minute of a segment they did on Animal Planet about exotic pets, and since then I’ve been desperate for a miniature cow. I keep a picture of one on my Blackberry, so I can show others unfamiliar with, as far as I’m concerned, the greatest animal ever.

It’s a cow the size of a German Shepherd.

They’re very loving and come when you call them, and they produce up to two gallons of milk a day. We’d never have to buy milk again! I’d build one of those cobblestone walls, like you see in the rolling hills of Ireland. She’d live there. Sometimes I’d walk her in Piedmont Park, beaming with pride as everyone ignored Dalmatians and bulldogs, fawning over Clarabelle. Even that guy with the pig would be jealous. I could charge for photos.
“She’s no trouble,” I’d say. “She’s a contented cow.”
At Christmas, I’d send pictures out of Preppy, Clarabelle, and me, all in Santa hats. Cute. I know, I used to say the same thing about dogs until I had to live with two of them while we were closing on the house. But this is totally different from that. A dog is just a dog, but a miniature cow is… well, there are no words. Plus, they live outside.
“I love that you claim not to have time to fold laundry, but somehow you’re going to build a wall and work daily milking into the schedule.”
“I could do it before work,” I said. “It’s just a few gallons.”
“Topher, you grew up in Mississippi. You know what cow pastures smell like.”
“That’s if you have lots of great big cows. But Clarabelle is just one tee-tiny perfect cow. And she can learn tricks.”
“Really? Can you teach her to keep you warm at night? Because you’re gonna need someone for that if I come home and find a goddamn cow in the yard.”
“Okay fine. But if I don’t have time to take care of Clarabelle, I don’t think I have time for grouting, either.”
Later, Preppy was online, Googling various home improvements. Just to tempt me, he went to a site that sells truckloads of rock.
“Ooh,” he said. “Those are pretty rocks.”
“Stop teasing me.”
“What if we buy your rocks, and build that Irish rock wall you want so badly? No cow, just the wall. And in exchange, you help me with a few projects around the house?”
I could live with that. I agreed to assist in painting a few rooms, and to do my part in chiseling away at the bathroom tile. He would help me lift rocks on Sundays, building my wall. It served as further proof that we could both budge a little and compromise, which was satisfying. Especially to the part of me that could still hear a faint cowbell in the back of my mind.