“Do you like girls, Clifford?” he said. When he said it, my ma brought out the steaks, and I hoped maybe he’d forget what he asked. So I cut into the steak and I told my ma that it was some delicious steak. “Hey!” my dad said. “I asked you a question.”
“About what?”
“Don’t play dumb with me, Cliff. About girls. You like ’em?”
“Sometimes.”
“Name me one you like.”
“I don’t really—”
“He likes Jenny Wansie,” my ma said. “You’re crazy to worry, Carlo. Your son’s the biggest heterosexual on the block.”
I know she didn’t mean that I was the biggest in size, but it made me sad for a second, because it was true in that way, too. There was this gay guy, Vito, that lived down the street and pretended he wasn’t gay, and he was bigger than me, but if you take into consideration age and proportionate size, I was the biggest heterosexual on the block. I wanted to not eat the steak because of all the calories I had before, but my ma got upset when I didn’t eat her food and it pissed off my dad. So I ate. I probably ate 4,500 calories that day, which is sick.
“Jenny Wansie. Eh? Eh,” my dad said. My dad always says “Eh” when he’s embarrassing someone. “Look at him blushing. Alright. Sorry. I didn’t think you were gay, Clifford, but I was worried because Lee Anders’s son I didn’t think was gay either, and Lee Anders walked in on him just the other day. Commiserating with a little Asian kid.”
Lee Anders was one of the copilots my dad flew around the world with.
“An Asian kid?” my ma said.
“Gloria, we’re Democrats. It doesn’t matter the kid was Asian.”
“Then why’d you say it?”
“For detail. To add texture to the story.”
“He wasn’t really Asian?”
“No. He was Asian alright. Till Lee Anders got through with him, and then the kid was just ugly.”
“Lee hurt the boy?”
“Boy! He was sixteen years old, for chrissakes. Now, Clifford, I want you to know this: it’s okay for people to be gay because we’re all Democrats here, but just not for you. It’s like saying nigger and being Italian. It’s just not right for you.”
“How do I know I’m a Democrat?”
“Here’s the test: do you think our new mayor Richard M. Daley is a funny guy who makes a lot of clever plays on words when he talks, or do you think he’s more like an illiterate, nonsense-speaking midget with a really red face?”
“What do you think?” I said.
“I’m asking you, Clifford.”
“Your dad’s asking you.”
“I don’t know,” I said.
“There! You’re a Democrat. You got an open mind on you. You don’t know, so you withhold judgment.” He stood up, leaving his fork in his steak, and walked to the other side of the table to hug me and kiss me wet on the cheeks. Then he went back to his steak and said, “Hello, son! How’s your summer been?”
I like my dad. He’s crazy. “It’s been alright.”
“Just alright? Have you been seeing a lot of this hot little Wansie I’m hearing so much about?”
My ma was laughing because she likes my dad for being crazy, too. “Clifford doesn’t like to talk about little Jenny.”
Again with the size. I was the biggest heterosexual and the girl I loved was little. They didn’t know. They couldn’t. I knew they couldn’t, so I didn’t let it get to me.
“If he doesn’t like to talk about her, it must be serious. Have you gotten to first yet, Cliff?”
“Carlo.”
“What? I’m just asking about first. First is just French kissing. Have you been French kissing in the U.S.A., Cliff? Eh? Eh. Eh? Ah, you’re too young to remember that song. Pass the mashed, Gloria,” he said.
She pushed the bowl of potatoes over to him and everyone was quiet for a minute. I was about to ask my dad to pass me the potatoes when he was through with them, but he started talking, which was good, because one thing I didn’t need to do to myself was those potatoes.
“Am I square or what? This day and age,” my dad said, shaking his head. “First doesn’t mean French kissing anymore, does it? That’s just being in the batter’s circle, isn’t it? What used to be third is now first base. The times they are a-changing. It’s fine, though. That’s what Democrats stand for.”
“Don’t be sad, Carlo. You’re no square. First is still Frenching, right?” my ma said to me.
Like I knew. You could tell they were so sure I kissed all the girls I wanted to.
“No,” I told them. “First ain’t Frenching.”
“Really, Cliff? What is it, then?” my ma said.
My dad lifted up his eyebrows and did the thing with the finger in the fist. My ma smacked him and then they kissed. My dad was a football player in high school and my ma was a dancer. My dad was cool, though. He had an old hotrod. I’ve seen pictures. It was a black ’67 Chevelle with a blower. He was a badass, my dad. My ma was really pretty, too. She was his Jenny Wansie except that she actually liked him, which made it much better, and then I was born and they were happy about it.
“So?” my dad said. “What’s first then?”
“Two guys and a girl,” I said.
“Get out,” my ma said.
“Are you serious, Cliff? That’s kinda disturbing to your father,” my dad said. “Frankly, I’m shocked. And with so many Republicans in our Congress…”
“He’s making it up,” my mother said.
“I’m serious,” I said.
“Well, so what’s home plate?” my dad said.
I don’t know how to explain this, but he had this thing in his voice like I was ruining his life, which I didn’t want to do.
I said, “Home plate is when you fall in love with the girl of your dreams and she loves you too and everything’s alright.”
My dad slapped the table. He lightened right up. My mother grabbed hold of my cheeks because she thinks I like it, which is my fault because I never told her any different. She said, “You’re gonna get to home plate one day, Cliff. If not with that little Wansie girl, then with someone smarter and prettier.”
“You’re a nice boy, Clifford,” my father said. “You’re gonna be a kind and decent man.”
“And you’re so creative.”
“Creative? This kid’s a friggin genius! You know I told Lee Anders about some of the stuff you’re learning in those math classes and he didn’t believe me? Flat out called me a liar. Said it was bad luck to lie about your own son. Then again, his son’s off taking it where the sun don’t—”
“Easy, Carlo.”
“What? Why does he gotta — Cliff, why do you gotta cry every time someone has something nice to say about you at the dinner table?”
The best thing about huffing was how much you could do. Since it only got you high a couple minutes at a time, the worst that could happen if you did too much — except for death — was you’d get freaked out for a couple of minutes, which wasn’t long at all, and so unless your last huff made you have a bad time, you always tried to out-huff that huff this huff. At least that’s how I huffed. Franco, too. But I always huffed more than him. Master Glow, Dusted That, Shine Cannon, Ronson — the brand didn’t matter. My lungs were deeper cause I wasn’t a smoker, plus I wasn’t afraid. I’d freaked out a few times, and I’m not saying I liked it, but it wasn’t boring either. I never regretted it. Once I thought I was a light getting dimmer in a window. Another time I thought I’d looked up too hard and my eyes were stuck staring inside of my skull. The day after we ripped off all that grilled cheese from Theo’s and my dad suspected me of being a fag, which was the fifty-fourth day in a row I hung out with Franco, I was sure Gino Kim was using ESP against me, like to make me remember things we’d done that I’d forgotten. I remembered this one time we bought a bag of tarragon, thinking it was weed — real drugs were impossible to get at our school — and we smoked it in a pipe Gino made by rolling tin foil. The smoke hurt our throats but tasted kind of good. I thought it did, at least. Gino didn’t like it. But he liked to eat fish patty sandwiches from McDonald’s, so his taste in food smells wasn’t reliable — I remembered that too. And I remembered this other time we threw rocks at the slide of a jungle gym for hours. I can’t even explain why that was fun, but it was.