Excerpt Three: Briefly Told Lives

Briefly Told Lives

Introduction

An Interview with the Author

Excerpts:

"On a Railroad Bridge, Throwing Stones," Part One

"On a Railroad Bridge, Throwing Stones," Part Two

"The Mother," Part One

"The Mother," Part Two

Briefly Told Lives "The Mother," Part One

By C. Bard Cole
From Briefly Told Lives

My inclination is to rush through this. I'd thought Stewart was appallingly stupid when we'd met the year before; he was dating my friend Daniel who liked him because he always had pot. Stewart told me that Jan Brady had died of a drug overdose, meaning Buffy from "Family Affair;" and that no one knew how they had built the Eiffel Tower, meaning the pyramids, though he staunchly resisted these alternatives. "No, Jan Brady." "No, the Eiffel Tower." But when I ran into him about a year later, I was going to school in the city and I didn't have many friends and he liked me, and he didn't seem so stupid to me anymore. His family was rich and socially well placed, they were in the Social Register when I looked it up at the NYU library, and he knew a whole lot of stuff I didn't, important stuff like what restaurants rich people ate at and where they shopped, what kind of clothes they liked, which items sent secret signals only the rich recognized and how complex these codes were.

It's too sickening to even recount. I thought I loved him but he brought out the latent snob in me. He didn't much like that, but I didn't much like being critiqued for my "middle-class" traits – certain sweaters, and such, that he disapproved of, or my haircut, or accent.

The first story I wrote for my writing workshop the next year was about this relationship, and I can't even look at it now, even less think of recounting it again. Stewart was my first boyfriend, we went out for seven months and broke up, the end. It doesn't really go away that easily, since some of my friends now were friends of his roommate Mickey, since lots and lots of things, since my life traces back to that year in a lot of important ways.

I told Mason I was gay and that I was in love. He said he'd figured I was gay, said Ellen asked him if he thought Stewart was my boyfriend, I talked about him every time I saw them. I said, pissed off, "You always figured I was gay?"

Mason smirked: "Yeah, I mean, from when you were about nine or ten, I guess. It's not like you're Mister Inscrutable. Do you want me to act freaked out instead?"

"No," I said sullenly, sinking down in his living room futon.

"Oh my god," he yelped, running in a circle. "My brother's a homosexual."

"Knock it off."

"He's gonna start cruising the playgrounds, he's going to be arrested…"

"Mason, shut up."

"You know," he said, imitating our mother's infamous tone of empathetic concern, "I just want you to be happy. I just worry about the AIDS."

"Mason," I said, drawing my knee up to my chest, "that's not funny."

"I'm sorry. I'm just being stupid." He sat down next to me, put his arm around my shoulder. "It's cool, it's great, I'm glad you're happy. I'm glad you can tell me something like that. I don't care if you're straight or gay or purple or orange, it doesn't make any difference to me."

I leaned against his arm a little. "Do you think," I asked, "that Mom'll really react like that? I mean, should I tell her? I'd like to."

"God," he said, dropping his arm. "Do yourself a favor, don't tell Mom right now. I mean, whatever. Just I doubt now's a good time."

He meant something, obviously. I thought he would just say what but he waited for me to prompt him with raised eyebrows and an expectant look.

"Well…" Mason hedged. "I was on this fucking honesty trip myself a few weeks ago. And I told her something, I should've known better but I did."

I looked him right in the eye; and he flinched, tousling my hair. "What the hell are you using on this anyhow?" he said, wiping his hand on his jeans. "It's like fucking Vaseline, I was wondering how you got it so straight."

"Mason," I said, tentatively touching my own hair. It wasn't so greasy. "What did you tell her?"

"Stupid me." He smiled. "I told her about El's abortion."

It was a stunningly stupid thing to reveal, even I knew that. "Why?" My mouth hung open.

"A bug could fly in," he said. I didn't know what he was talking about. "Close your mouth, asshole, I know it was dumb."

"What did she say?"

"Nothing," he said. "She was letting me have it about school, in her – you know – motherly tone; she didn't understand this, she didn't understand that, yak, yak, yak. And I said, you know, something happened last year which really fucked – I didn't say fucked – fucked me up and I was still dealing with it and school was too much for me at the moment. And she asked what. 'Oh Mason, it's not drugs is it? Is it something about your brother?' So I just told her. I told her. And she said… 'Oh.'"

"What else?"

"Nothing. Just, 'Oh.' I said I wasn't looking for her approval or disapproval, it was done, it was real, and I was feeling like shit about it. Not in a Catholic way, bad, but just because it sucked, I hated it, I wish none of it had ever happened. And she answered me in monosyllables for the rest of the conversation."

I lit up a smoke and Mason passed me half a dented beer can, cut open, with cigarette butts inside. "That was it?" I asked.

"Well, I went out for a while and when I came home she'd left a message on my machine, how I'd really surprised her at first but she realizes people make mistakes and she loves me and she really likes Ellen and she hopes everything will work out, that if I want to talk more to please call her."

"Well, that's cool," I said feebly.

"Fuck that," Mason said. "I called right back and told her I didn't need her fucking half-assed response, that if she couldn't be there when I needed her it's not my job to turn around and give her a rim job for being an uptight, awful mother. That she can say nothing to me when it matters, and then want to be soothed and complimented for being so understanding! Fuck that, I don't need that!"

"You didn't say that stuff," I said, giggling.

"Hell, I didn't," Mason said, his eyes wide. "I said, why do you think the two of us are up here, three hundred miles away from you? Even your fucking precious baby rents an apartment when he comes home so he won't have to stay with you."

"Mason!" I stood up suddenly. "You prick, don't fucking say that. Don't talk about me to Mom like that, that's none of your fucking business to throw at her. That's really fucked up, man. You fucking call her and tell her you came up with that on your own. That's fucked up, Mason, you're an asshole."

"So why did you," he asked snippily, "get your own apartment down there?"

"Fuck you, Mason, you're a prick. I'm going."

He snorted, lighthearted. "Whatever," he said. "Thanks for telling me you're gay," he said, with a snide game-show-host finger gesture.

I paused at the door for a second. "Fuck you, Mason. You made her cry, didn't you?" He nodded, no trace of guilt. "You are such a dick."

"She's not going to cry," he said with put-on cheerfulness, "when you tell her you're a fag. She'll just say, 'Oh,' and ten minutes later wish you luck and hope you don't get AIDS."

Read Part Two of "The Mother."