Two figures passed behind me; I could see them clearly in the mirror. The twins from confirmation class. They were with a tall oaken-skinned man. He had Alana’s cheeks and nose, so I assumed he was her father and that she must also be around. Here I was standing in a baggy whale of a suit that swallowed me whole, accentuating every outward thing that was still childlike in my appearance. I wanted to become small. Not small in the way that I was, but a tiny thing so I could spy on Alana when she happened by.
Maurice spotted me and chuckled, pointing. Tomás grunted but otherwise ignored me, even when I waved. Maurice turned from me and glanced through the suits. When Alana walked up behind her cousins, my hand was still in the air. I shouted a Hey! that sounded to me like the flat bark of a seal. She responded with a pursed-lipped smile before turning to help Maurice choose a suit. The tailor returned to tug at the ends of my pants. My hand hung in the air, a frozen wave. I realized I had been holding it above my head as if I were now some kind of black Statue of Liberty. My father arrived with two more suits. Son, he said, the one you got on looks good, but you’ll look like my little superstar in one of these. Maurice and Tomás pointed and snorted once more. I thought I saw Alana smirk, but whatever passed across her lips was too brief for me to place. I pretended not to see Alana and her cousins walking about below me as I glanced at them out of the corners of my eyes. Soon they disappeared into a dark-hued maze of haberdashery. I took solace, standing there in the mirror, in the fact that my voice hadn’t cracked, but on my way home I realized that what actually did transpire was no better or worse than my voice momentarily dancing off into a higher register. In fact, that could be explained away as the uncontrollable whims of my malfunctioning hormones. What excuse could I ever make for such a bizarre display?
The Friday before confirmation Sunday I spent much of the day wondering about the strange mechanism of the mind that made seconds slow in anticipation of major events. It’s still a mysterious thing to me, especially since it no longer happens much now that I’m older. Nowadays a minute is a minute and a day is a day and the ones leading up to something exciting feel no longer than any other minute or day. Perhaps I had experienced so few days and minutes as a young man that my sense of wonder could stretch time until it felt misshapen. Perhaps when I’m old, all of life will feel like little more than an instant, and maybe that’s why God’s day is a thousand years. What’s a minute to the man who has all the time?
At home, I did no homework but instead slept, watched music videos, and masturbated to make time move faster. In class I slept, and it was perhaps to Ms. Baker’s delight, because it gave her another opportunity to call my parents, which she took advantage of Friday night.
My mind was so cloudy and loopy, floating through a haze somewhere far from earth, that I neglected to properly monitor the early evening phone calls. What kind of person has nothing better to do on a Friday night than call parents, anyway? I picked up and didn’t recognize Ms. Baker’s voice until after I had screamed through the house, alerting my mother that she had a phone call.
I paced about while she was on the phone. I heard my mother giggling as if she were talking to one of her girlfriends. If my sister were here, we could huddle and develop a strategy. At the very least she would make me smile through my anxiety. I felt sweat pooling at the seat of my pants. My testicles shriveled. I wondered about the evolutionary function of testicle shriveling. Ms. Baker had said every action of our bodies evolved to ensure survival in a brutal and dangerous world. Perhaps a man can flee predators faster once his testicles have shriveled up into his body. I don’t know. Funny time to recall Ms. Baker’s lessons. Though I never listened and I failed the tests, some of what she said had gotten through. But the Jesus I was about to confirm my dedication to never mentioned evolutionary functions.
I took a deep breath and closed my eyes, and then I retired to bed. It was early, but I figured my parents wouldn’t bother me in my sleep.
Baby, my mother said as the door creaked open. Baby, wake up. Ms. Baker just called. I saw you open your eyes. Don’t shut those things again. I know you’re awake.
I turned a little bit and wiped my eyes.
Sleeping in class? All you do is sleep here.
Ms. Baker’s class is boring.
Don’t you want to be a doctor?
I nodded despite the fact that I hadn’t wanted to be a doctor since the fourth grade when I realized that it would require more math than my fragile intellect could stand.
Well, how’s that going to happen with you sleeping in science class? I wouldn’t want you to be my doctor. I need greater effort and focus from you. This disappoints me, because I know how smart you are. I see it every day. I know you got more brains than the average person in that big head of yours. I’m going to talk to your fath—
Wait, Mom, I cried out. This is a small thing. You don’t need to—
Let me finish, Bobby. He’s good at setting goals and coming up with plans. That’s why we live here now and not back on the Southside. That’s how we got your sister off to college. We never set too many goals with you. Not as often as we could. Maybe he’ll be mad and he’ll fret and stuff. Maybe he’ll yell, but you got me in your corner, Bobby. Your father too, but I’m in your corner in that mother way. In the end, talking to Daddy’ll be for the best. Ms. Baker told me about the insect collection project. I haven’t seen you pick up so much as an ant. Instead of sleeping, go hunt some of the roaches around here.
We don’t have roaches, Mom.
I’m so used to living with those damn things back in the old apartment. Your sister had no problem with this project. This is the one time being over in that neighborhood would have helped you with your lessons. Go back to the Southside and get some roaches.
My mother started to walk from my room. At the doorway she turned and said words that hit me like a switchblade to my gut: Don’t continue to disappoint me, Bobby.
When my father got home that night, he grunted toward me and disappeared into his bedroom to change from his work clothes and to chat with my mother. If she discussed Ms. Baker’s call that night, I never heard anything about it. He said nothing much at the dinner table, staring off into his soup. After dinner he retired to the couch and fell asleep as if he too were trying to pass the time with slumber.
Late night Friday and Saturday blend together for me. I spent those hours in the basement watching Desert Passion, The Bikini Car Wash Company, and Private Obsession on cable. None of us could have possibly imagined the wonders of cable back when we lived on the Southside, and now I couldn’t conceive of becoming a man without it. I remember each particular movie that played that weekend (though not which night each was on), as they were my favorites and I would check the cable guide weekly in an effort to never miss a late-night viewing when I could help it. These three movies were such dazzling cinema. The dizzying flashes of flesh. Somehow these pictures assured me that the future, Alana or no Alana, would be fine. Who would need Alana with the coming cavalcade of bodies like the ones on-screen?
Above in the kitchen, whenever I heard my mother or father rustling around, I lowered the volume, particularly if there was moaning and panting on-screen. But this weekend it felt as if the clouds had parted. No one came into the kitchen or shouted from the stairs ordering me to come up to bed or otherwise interrupted my cinematic education. Watching some nude woman or the other, I began to think of it all as strange. My favorite three naked movies, as I called them, airing with no interruptions in the days before Jesus would declare me a man? At first I regarded it as a gift, a last chance at guilt-free sinfulness before I was required to take responsibility for my own sins. A kind of bachelor party. I began counting tits, and at about the seventeenth pair, I realized my gift theory was full of holes. Jesus and his obsession with chastity wouldn’t even allow himself the carnal pleasures I allowed myself on that couch.