August 30, 2013
JoeyChoate here with part two of my fabulous life. For the 32 viewers who bothered to watch the first installment, welcome back, I bet you missed me. To the rest of you, where the eff have you been? Also, yes, I am wearing eyeliner, thanks for noticing.
Ok, so today I wanted to talk about crushes. I’m 15 and I sweat like a pig, so I’ve never had a boyfriend, but I have had some serious crushes. You know the kind where the mention of his name makes your heart skip a beat and you can still smell his cologne hours after he’s gone. You doze off in class just to dream about him.
Yeah, that is so grade school. Actually, that very thing happened to me in first grade, which is how I first discovered I was gay. Before that, I just thought I really liked glitter. The boy turned out to be straight, of course, and thus began my parade of objects of love and lust.
Here’s the four words that always get me into trouble: This one is different.
I swear I mean it this time though. My current crush is different. I can’t tell you too much about him because, hello, this is the internet, and I have to respect other people’s privacy. Et cetera, et cetera, blah blah blah. So I’m not going to tell you his name or his age, or his physical description. But I will tell you the fun bits. The little things about him that drive me crazy, and make going to school worthwhile.
Number one: when he’s lost in thought, he tears food wrappers into thin even strips like a little bird making a nest. It sounds weird, but it draws my attention to his long slender fingers. Number two: he tucks his hair behind his ears whenever he thinks no one is watching, but it falls into his face again whenever he leans forward to talk to someone. Number three: his friends are all assholes to me. OK, that one doesn’t sound like a good thing, but I don’t mind that much because most people in the school, they’re kind of dicks about things, and they might be alright really, but they make a lot of fat jokes, or
whatever. His friends make all the usual uninspired jokes and this is what I mean: he never laughs. Not once.
So I’m going to write down more things later and maybe I’ll share them with you next time.
Joey spoke the last line in his script quickly. Filming this one had taken longer than he’d expected and he could hear his mom unlocking the front door. Not that he was necessarily going to hide the videos from her, but the longer it took her to find them the better. She’d be supportive, but she’d want to talk about things and what’s worse, she’d probably get his dad to watch them too, so that they could talk about them in the private conversations he swore they had about him all the time. They were frustratingly amicable for a divorced couple.
He had just had time to exit out all the open windows on his computer screen when a knock on his bedroom door signaled that quiet time was over. “Come in,” he yelled, whipping his chair around in a suspiciously chipper manner. Oh well, she probably just figured he’d been looking at online porn or something.
“I just wanted to let you know I’m home, and Lou’s cooking dinner tonight.” His mom ducked her head out quickly before Joey had time to respond. If Lou was cooking dinner tonight that could only mean one thing.
Lou Culpepper was attempting to fire up the grill in Vi’s backyard, and wondering whether the inclement rain was going to hurt his chances or not. She had asked him to make dinner before now, and he had risen to the occasion with a couple rare steaks and some grilled peppers and onions. He hoped to navigate an encore of that one-time success here tonight, but the sky looked increasingly threatening.
Why did I agree to this? he thought, as he heard the grumble of thunder gathering above him. Vi
loved food, and he loved Vi, but somehow he had been unable to convince her that his own relationship with food was a passing fancy at best, and generally a polite disinterest as to how it was prepared. When he’d first told her he didn’t feel at home in the kitchen, she’d gone out and bought a manly grill for him. A shiny thing that rested patiently awaiting the day he became man enough to use it. Lou turned the propane on and stepped back a little nervously. Everything seemed to be in order, he’d thawed out some burger and shaped them into patties, he sprayed the grill down with some oil can he’d found in Vi’s well-stocked pantry. He had some barbecue sauce ready to add some flavor, and a variety of tortuous looking utensils on standby.
“Mom sent me out to help you.”
Lou turned to see Joey lumbering across the lawn. What was he wearing today? A red wizard’s cloak? Vi’s son had a knack for being terrifying and completely disarming all at the same time. His smile was still innocent and boyish, but he had grown almost overnight into a six foot behemoth and his limbs still hadn’t told his neural synapses yet, so he moved with all the grace of a blind grizzly bear.
“Hey Joe. Did she really?”
Joey blushed a little. “No, I volunteered. I thought maybe you could use a hand.”
