Monday, November 20th, 2016
The alarm clock finally shuts up after ten minutes, but my parents’ threats to pop my door open keep on coming. Last time they did this I lost my privacy for two months until my dad finally replaced the lock.
I don’t think I ever told you about that; it was after we broke up.
“Griffin!”
“Ten more minutes!” I shout.
“You said that an hour ago,” Mom says.
“Six times,” Dad adds. “Get dressed.”
“I’ll be out in ten minutes,” I say. “I promise.”
The last time I wore a black suit was for your cousin Allen’s wedding in Long Island. It was a couple months after we’d finally started dating and our first formal party, too, if we don’t count your sister’s baptism. To my relief, Wade—back when we were still close with him—was wrong when he said all gay weddings are like pop star concerts. (I don’t think my anxiety could’ve handled dancing with you for the first time under strobe lights.) When I saw the elegant and sturdy silver frames and white roses in the manor’s sunroom I began looking ahead to the day I’d get to wear a black suit as I stood across from you with my hands in yours, ready to say, “You’re damn right I do.” I didn’t know it then, but that was the last time I’d wear a black suit, ever. Putting one on to do anything but marry you seems wrong, so I’m definitely not dressing up in one now.
I’m going to the funeral as is—okay, not completely as is because showing up in these thermal pants might offend your grandmother. But I’m not taking off the blue hoodie you gave me the afternoon we first had sex. I’ve been wearing it for the past two days, more: exactly fifty hours, though time has been bleeding in places. I wish I never washed the damn hoodie now that you’re gone. It no longer has the grass stains from all the time you and I spent in your grandmother’s backyard. It’s like you’ve been erased.
I stare at the clock, waiting for the next even minute—9:26—and get out of bed. I step directly onto last night’s dinner, forgetting I had abandoned the plate down on the floor while I stared up at the ceiling thinking about all the questions I’m too scared to ask you. But hey, if there’s one bright side to you dying it’s you no longer being around to tell me things I don’t like hearing.
I’m sorry. That was a dickhead thing to say, and I need a condom for my mouth.
As much as I would like to go sit in the bathtub and let the shower rain down on me—where you’d no doubt lament all that wasted water because you’re the world’s hero—I’ve got to get out of this room. I check the clock on my open laptop, and I leave once it switches from 9:33 to 9:34.
The hallway is lined with photographs in the cheap frames we received from my aunt last Christmas, the kind of present my mother thinks isn’t thoughtful but is too nice to not put up. She still drinks out of the Yoda mug you bought her two years ago, no occasion at all, just because. You’re always going to be a presence for my parents, even if now they can’t see your history on our walls. I’m hoarding all the photographs and their cheap frames in my room: the one of us sitting in your childhood living room on Columbus Avenue, putting together a puzzle of the Empire State Building; us at sixteen/fifteen, you wrapping your arms around my waist after some joke from Wade about boys not being able to hug other boys; you smiling at me from across another park bench as I toasted to my parents’ tenth anniversary; and my favorites—side-by-side in the same frame—the first of us a blank-faced photo taken by Wade, doing our damn best to keep our smiles in but failing, and the second of us holding each other and smiling after we came out to our parents at Denise’s birthday party. You were always a fan of the sun glare above your head. “Like a cool, bad-ass angel of destruction,” you said. “The angel that gets a blazing sword while you get a harp.”
In the living room my parents are already in their jackets, my father holding his baked goods in his lap as they stare at the muted news on TV. Mom sees me first and pops up, which I know is bad on her back, especially on rainy days like today, but she approaches me cautiously, unsure which Griffin she’s about to get.
“I’m ready,” I lie. I’m hungry, I’m drained, I’m over it all, and I’m not ready. But there’s a clock on this thing. The service is today. The burial is tomorrow. I don’t know what comes after that.
Mom reaches out to me, like I’m some toddler that’s supposed to take his first steps into her arms. I feel a flash of anger. I’m a seventeen-year-old grieving his favorite person. I grab my jacket and turn for the door. “I’ll be outside.”
When we’re all settled in the car, my father puts on the radio to fill the silence. I stare out the window as we stop at a red light, counting pairs: two women in jackets, sharing a blue umbrella; two old guys pushing shopping carts out of a market; four beaten down trees in a community garden; two trashcans piled high with garbage.
The counting brings me some relief, but it’s not enough. I drop my right hand to the empty space beside me, imagining your hand on mine.
That feels better.