We Gather Together

Two days after Preppy and I moved into our house last year, hooligans broke in, trashed the place, and made off with a good portion of our electronics. Welcome home.

We were still a little shaken from the experience the following week, so I decided we needed an event on which to focus that would give us happy home memories as quickly as possible. So I announced we would be hosting an Old Fashioned Thanksgiving at the house.
My childhood Thanksgivings were well-intentioned events that never came together exactly as planned. There was the time two of my cousins locked themselves in the laundry room and fought like peacocks in a pillowcase until my Aunt Barbara went in and had a come to Jesus with ‘em.

And there was the year I came home from boarding school and got so stoned with my sister and cousin that we ate an entire pan of dressing, leaving the table a little bare the next day.

The prize for “Most Awkward Thanksgiving” went to the year we travelled to the somber home of my cousin Paula, a stern and utterly humorless woman who ironically owned a party supply store. In keeping with her profession, Paula operated under the belief that if you followed the instructions on any party theme kit, a good time would be had by all- so she broke out the deluxe paper pilgrim wall decorations and accordion-fold tabletop turkeys, handed out prepackaged favors to the kids, and instructed us to play quietly. It was raining that year, so we sat in the garage fiddling with noisemakers we weren’t allowed to put to use, while her older daughters witnessed to us on Jesus’s behalf, as they did at every family gathering.

Their house was an endless source of confusion and fascination for me. Paula’s family was undeniably devout- they would pray over their food until it was stone cold- but I’d never seen anyone made so seemingly miserable by their own religious beliefs. I often tried to picture Paula at work, proselytizing to anyone foolish enough to come in seeking paper streamers.

I really hope she sold balloons better than she sold Evangelicalism.
My Old Fashioned Thanksgiving would not fall victim to any of that nonsense. My guest list and menu would be carefully planned, and nobody would be allowed to get high or attempt to convert guests to their chosen religion. We would all be healed by the power of turkey and pumpkin pie, and our house would become a home at last.
At the time, my cousin Nelson still lived with us. Nelson is known for his meat- it’s what God put him on this Earth to do. If it had four legs and once roamed the earth, Nelson can braise it to perfection for all to enjoy. So the deal was cut: I would prepare breads and sides, and he’d handle the bird. Two days before Thanksgiving, Nelson came home with the largest turkey I’d ever seen. He dumped it in the kitchen sink in a cold water bath, where it remained until the night before Thanksgiving.

I kept waiting for step two, but it never happened.
“Nelson,” I said at last. “Thanksgiving’s tomorrow. Shouldn’t you, I don’t know, prep the bird in some way?”
“I got it,” he said, opening a beer. “I’m gonna get up at five and put it in the oven. It’s gonna be great.”
On Thanksgiving morning, I awoke at nine to that elephantine bird still sitting in my sink, and Nelson passed out in his room near an monumental tower of beer cans. All hope was not lost for my Old Fashioned Thanksgiving, however. I just rolled up my sleeves and schlepped the waterlogged 22-pound Butterball into a roasting pan.
It was still very, very frozen. I grew concerned. Guests would be arriving at noon. So I threw the bird into a trash bag and tossed it into the front seat of the car. The two of us drove to Kroger, where I purchased a pre-cooked turkey.
Now, what to do with the giant frozen bird sitting in my front seat wearing a seatbelt (it kept falling over)? I drove around to the back of Kroger, located a dumpster, and swung the bag with all my might, letting it fly.
But I’d forgotten to tie the bag closed.
The turkey, freed from its Hefty bag constraints, struck the side of the dumpster with a satisfying smack, landing in the parking lot. I ran over and grabbed it by the legs, swung again, and was successful in my second attempt. I went home, made the switch, and popped the bird in the oven. When all was said and done, everyone was very complimentary, even Nelson, who woke up in a panic around noon and was impressed with my work. Though he couldn’t figure out why the bird seemed to have lost about eight pounds during roasting. I explained that they pump turkeys full of water to increase the weight, and it all evaporates in the oven or leaks out during cooking.

That’s where gravy comes from. Everybody knows that.
I’ll be on the road in North Carolina for the holiday this year, breaking bread with new friends in a strange place, just like the pilgrims, without the buckle shoes or cholera. But when I am home for my next Old Fashioned Thanksgiving, I’m going straight to the pre-cooked bird, which involves a lot less work and panic, and seems to make everyone perfectly happy. I'm not very domestic, I’ll grant you. But I am creative in a pinch. And I suppose that’s something for which I am very thankful.

The Outsider

It’s Friday night in Columbus, Georgia. I’m on the top floor of the opera house, waiting for water to boil. Apparently I’m doing something wrong. All the water keeps evaporating out of the pot before it starts to boil, which defies my understanding of how this works. It’s moments like this I wish I’d finished high school, so I’d have a better grasp of science stuff. Or Home Ec. Whatever class teaches you about how water boils.
I give up after a second failed attempt, toss the water, and make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. My roommates (which I have three of now, we’ll get to that in a minute) have gone out dinner. But I had bad luck the last time I ate at a restaurant, nearly choking to death, so I’m a little gun shy. Plus, I’ve got myself on a pretty tight allowance. I have to send money home to help with bills, just like the dishwasher at the restaurant where I used to work. Only I’m sending it to Atlanta, not Honduras, and I don’t have four children.
Now, about those roommates. My first week here I lived alone in a room with four twin beds. I pushed them all together, envisioning the wrestling arena-sized SUPER BED I’d always wanted. Unfortunately, it made more of a mattress runway, where I could roll endlessly left or right, but my feet still hung off the end. I then tried a two-by-two configuration. I then realized I had entirely too much time on my hands, and moved the beds back. Two days later, the occupants arrived- the technical crew for the touring play.
The crew has worked together before. It’s a straight couple named Wes and Gina, plus a guy called Calvin who I’m pretty sure plays for our team, but it’s hard to tell because he likes video games and fantasy movies. With that set, the fanboy tendencies override any obvious clues about sexual orientation. The same is true of Wiccans, in my experience.

Don’t judge, I’m just telling you what I’ve observed.
On their first night, my roommates set up a Wii, then stayed up ‘til three watching a Harry Potter movie. I was the grump curled up on the twin bed in the corner, covering his head with a pillow and praying for sleep. It’s not that I don’t want to stay up and play Wii or watch fantasy flicks, it’s just that… Okay, that’s actually exactly it. Fine, I’m a wet blanket. I’m the mean ol’ fag who brought his own bedding (never know who’s slept on strange sheets, not taking chances on crabs), and lies around reading books and staring at a picture of his boyfriend. I’m fun too, dammit, but I came here to work.
I’m still fun, right?
The more I think about it, somewhere in the last six months I kinda stopped going out. For a while, on the rare occasions Preppy and I showed up at a bar people would act like we’d just returned from overseas. But the last time I went to Burkhart’s, I didn’t know any of the bartenders OR the drag queens. All my old bar buddies were gone, too. Time passes quickly in social fiefdoms, and if you’re not consistent, you fall out of the crowd so fast it’ll give ya whiplash.
But just because I’m not a barfly anymore doesn’t mean I can’t be fun. I can stay up and play. I decide to prove this, so I finish my peanut butter sandwich and head over to Club Questions, the one gay bar in Columbus. It’s only open on Fridays and Saturdays, which is usually a good sign. It creates a phenomenon I call “Two-Day Gays,” the people who have to wait all week for the gay bar to open, then really cut loose when it does. It’s the type of bar most of my friends started out in, before they moved to Atlanta and became full-time gay, which requires a lot more outfits.
Club Questions very recently changed its name to the less-fun Club Odyssey, a fact most people in the bar have chosen to ignore, calling it Questions or The Q. I sit at the bar, waiting for someone to chat me up, but also apprehensive about that possibility because I’ve never hung out in a gay bar alone when I wasn’t looking for love. I don’t know how one strikes up a conversation with a stranger in a gay bar without it seeming like flirting. Everyone’s arrived in groups and talking to each other, though some people cast curious glances my way as I smoke the better part of a pack of Marlboros and down four beers. There’s people dancing. I picture myself dancing alone, which I used to do all the time, but now seems a little sad.
Shit. Maybe I’m not much fun anymore.
After about ninety minutes, I come to accept that I am a visitor in a social fiefdom, and nobody’s gonna break rank to say howdy. I make my way to the door.
I know I have a clique back home- the group I feel safest with who’s always up for a good time. But I like to believe we try to meet new people, make them feel welcome. Is this what the next seven months is gonna be like? Finding one closed circle after another? Because if it is, I’m gonna need a lot more books.
I enter the apartment, and my roommates are watching TV. I head for my bed, and then stop. What the heck, sometimes ya gotta make the first move.
“What y’all watchin?” I ask.
“A really unfunny home video show,” says Gina. “Wanna watch?”
“Yeah,” I say, settling on the floor next to them. “That sounds like fun.”

Table for One

I’m sitting in the Cannon Pub in Columbus, Georgia, trying to look busy. Eating in a restaurant by myself always feels a little awkward. Should I bring a book? Make conversation with my server? Eat my food as quickly as possible and get out? My solution tonight is to sit here writing on my little spiral notepad, which is serving a dual purpose: It gives me an activity, and also makes me look like a food critic, so my service is AWESOME. The manager has already come by my table to check in.

There’s a free dessert in my future.
I’ve been in Columbus for a week now, though I haven’t seen much of the city. My play rehearsals and my little apartment are both inside the opera house. If I didn’t smoke, I seriously doubt I would’ve been outside at all. My apartment is designed to handle a constant influx of artists coming and going, and is stocked with set dressing from past stage productions. It kinda looks like a state college dorm room furnished with a bunch of stuff from your grandmother’s house.
Speaking of college dorms, I’ve been talking on Facebook a lot with my friend Ames, who’s in her freshman year of college. She hates it. The girls are bitches and the unsympathetic professors are shockingly different from her supportive high school teachers. I’ve been talking her off the ledge quite a bit. Because she hasn’t made any friends (nor should she, from the sound of things), she spends a lot of time on her own. I’ve been trying to sell her on the idea of the pleasure of her own company. It’s a tricky skill to develop, but necessary for survival in any number of awkward scenarios. I’ve had to tap into that myself these days, away from my fiancé and friends. When not in rehearsal, I’ve been sitting in my room reading and watching that YouTube clip of a cat eating spaghetti.
I told Ames that there’s much to be gained from taking yourself out to lunch, or going for a walk, and I determined I should follow my own advice. I’d already celebrated the Obama victory by myself, and had too many meals sitting on my secondhand sofa from a Noel Coward play. I’ve found myself longing for a familiar face- not just Preppy, Mandy, or George, but Roberta at Suntrust who always gives me a hug when I come by, or the cashier at Kroger who knows my cigarettes. I apparently need some human contact. So today I decided to break out of the opera house and get to know Columbus a little better.

I went to Burger King.
I’d passed this Burger King on my drive into town, and it’d drawn my interest. It was such a pretty restaurant, and it was huge. Once inside, I had to pause and compose myself. It was the nicest fucking Burger King I’ve ever seen. There were quotes from Mark Twain and Orson Welles on the walls, leather lounge chairs, and a variety of cozy dining nooks. I knocked on the brick wall, expecting it to be faux, but found actual masonry. This is the Burger King that only exists in the company’s commercials- filled with sunlight and happiness, where everyone is polite and near-orgasmic over the taste of their fries. I wanted to move out of my opera house apartment and live here. It’s so damn unfair, because this is not the experience I have at the filthy Burger King on Memorial Drive, where “Having it your way” means “Not getting shot,” and you should count your blessings if you manage to get that.
Thus emboldened by my fantastic fast food outing, I took myself out to dinner, which is how I ended up here at the Cannon Pub, impersonating a food critic for free desserts. Because Preppy is a vegetarian, meat is a rare guest in my refrigerator at home. It’s just too much effort to make two different meals for dinner. So whenever I go out, I try to have a celebration of meat. If there’s a Meat Lover’s option of any kind, that’s what I’ll get. Bring me a burger with a side of bacon.

And a slice of ham. And sausage. Mmm.
My server brings my brownie topped with ice cream, much to my delight. I dig in, enjoying every bit of my date with myself. It’s not bad at all. I might have dived into my dessert with a little too much gusto, because a pecan sticks in my throat and I choke a little. I grab my beer and try to wash it down, but this maneuver backfires and I start hacking like a cat with a hairball. I am drawing curious glances from other tables. I reach for my napkin, trying to preserve dignity and failing miserably. Oh God. This is how I will die. Alone in some nameless pub, like so many of my Scottish ancestors. Who will the restaurant call? How will they know to call Preppy? The first name in my phone book is “Adam,” my friend in New York. He’ll call Mandy, and she’ll call Preppy to report my death. After she stops laughing.
And then my server appears and gives me a firm smack on the back, dislodging the pecan and assuring he gets a generous tip. I collect my things and head for the door, enjoying one more aspect of spending time alone: When you make an ass of yourself, there’s no witnesses to remind you later.