Late for Work

A Gay Flash of Fiction

At nineteen Bart killed off his mother because he was late for work.  Bold, rash, and overly dramatic solutions had become a compulsion since graduating high school, a fine-tuning of habitual patterns started years before.  Bart was close to perfection, or at least tried to be in an over-compensation for his incredibly low self-esteem that was rooted deep in his prepubescent psyche.  That psyche and it’s authority over Bart’s decisions kept him in a child-like state for years, decades even, helping rationalize his manipulation of the truth when necessary.  It was the only form of protection he knew.  He was a consummate actor when it came to creating stories and playing roles that would clear him of wrongdoing.

The fear of doing wrong was lessening; in the past year he had flunked his second semester of freshman year, ran away with his soul mate on a one-way ticket to Greece, and been financially rescued by an assortment of elderly British men who kept him and his boyfriend, separately, for the summer until his mother was forced to send money for a return ticket to the States.  The year before, his senior of high school, his parents discovered he was gay; that appeared to be the start of his downfall and the end of the illusion he had created over the previous four years of learning how to appear to do everything right. Since then enough wrong had destroyed the façade of perfection.  But Bart still needed to prove he wasn’t a bad person, wasn’t a failure, wasn’t all those things the voice in his head reminded him he had once been.  He didn’t realize at the time it would take several more decades to start exorcising that voice calling him worthless.  For now, he fought any threat of judgment and condemnation by doing what he had been doing for a very long time.  He lied.

Bart skip-walked down Howe Street towards the café off Walnut Street buttoning his tux shirt and feeling his pant pockets to make sure his bow tie was where he had left it the day before.  Excuses were running through his head.  He was an hour late for work after having woken from a nightmarish hangover-sleep, the previous night a blur of anger, a thrown TV, and…..did he really put his head through the living room window? He touched his scalp and immediately got his answer.  Feeling the lump, he realized he had some sort of excuse:  an accident, the hospital, he was really sorry, but he had a few drinks and some pain medication and subsequently overslept.  The scenario flashed through his mind while his inner critic made a list of all the possible gaps in the story.  Couldn’t be a car accident because they’ll want to know whose car.  A bike?  He doesn’t have one.  Could he just tell the truth that after going to see Fatal Attraction, his boyfriend confessed to hooking up with someone on the bus earlier in the day and that Bart’s reaction was drunken anger and self-mutilation?  Neither part of that story would make him look good.  No one cheated on him.  He wasn’t someone who was cheated on.  And he certainly couldn’t admit that his number one coping mechanism was hurting himself.  He had fresh scars on his wrists from a year ago, stitched up razor wounds, cigarette burn scars on his hands, and now a head wound that probably should have gotten stitches.  He wanted people to feel badly for him not think badly of him or find him pathetic, think him weak, or worst of all, unstable.  

Despite having have a year and a half of set backs, Bart had always managed to rally the inner voices, commandeer them into some sort of rank and file order, and dictate what was going to happen next.  When his father stood in their kitchen, now a stranger to what was once his, and asked Bart how he could do this to him, how he could devastate his sister like this and choose do be gay, Bart’s mother agreed to send him to a psychiatrist.  Bart, who had spent over two years being out to his friends, out in high school, spent a whole ten minutes with the professional before the psychiatrist met with his parents privately and told them there was absolutely nothing wrong with their son, that he was completely well-adjusted, and they should let him be.  Easier said than done, for while Bart was still the same son, something in his parents broke, and subsequently, something in Bart broke.  Acting with confidence, pretending to be okay was one thing when you are still living under your parent’s rule, but out in the world where he was forced to make daily decisions, Bart was still a child.

As he approached the café, he made the decision.  His eyes and post-drama depression gave him all he needed to set the stage; all he needed was to let the words come out.  Before the manager could say anything, Bart burst into tears and unraveled a story about an accident, a car accident, his mother and her friend, hospital, intensive care, friend was alive but his mother wasn’t well.  Who would question such a story? He took in their comfort, let them alleviate his shift burden, took his tables, and offered him a drink.  They told him to take the day off and to let them know if he needed any more time.  Bart couldn’t remember a time when he felt so comforted, so supported emotionally even though the emotions he was portraying and pretending to feel weren’t real.  Or were they?  In some small way, they were real.  His mother was in critical condition and could die in one way or another.  If not in body, then surely in spirit. 

She had started her withdraw from Bart’s life and instead of being the once-upon-a-time protector in childhood, she was the distracted, the absent, the 'how could you make your mother feel that way" self-absorbed person who told Bart's friend, Sue, she wished Sue had become pregnant.  If Sue had become pregnant, just like Bart's mother had her freshman year at Penn State, life would dictate who Bart would be, not the other way around.  If Bart could have sex with girls, then he could live a normal life, be a father, be not-gay.  When Bart had returned home from freshman orientation over a year ago to Sue having a happy-hour knitting lesson from his mother and heard the story of how Sue told him mother that they'd had sex multiple times and that his mother's reaction and wish for her son was that he be a father at 18, he realized just how far his mother had gone.  As he left the restaurant, slightly buzzing from not just the sympathy drinks but from the head wound he had suffered the night before, he again pictured his mother rocking in that chair, wishing an unwanted pregnancy on him.  That's not my mother, he thought.  My mother wouldn't do that, wouldn't want that for me.  My mother is dead.  And indeed, when he called the restaurant later that night and offered the rest of the story to them, she was.  Dead.  At nineteen Bart killed off his mother because he was late for work.