Circumstances 32

I fit right in at Gary’s house.  Almost immediately, I felt like I belonged.  His parents seemed like the nicest adults I’d ever met.  It made me realize, even though I knew it already, that my parent, my mother, wasn’t the way all parents were.

I discovered what it was like living in a household full of love.

On Tuesday, after dinner, I walked into Gary’s bedroom.  He was doing homework, sitting on his bed.  I grabbed his computer desk chair, wheeled it over by the bed, then sat down and stared at him.

He glanced up, acknowledged me, and returned to his assignment.  I just kept watching him, mentally cataloguing his assets.  There were a lot of them.  Like, for example, the little wrinkles in his forehead when he read something he found difficult to understand.  They were absolutely symmetrical, three little squiggles of skin the same length, the same width, the same distance apart, exactly centered on his forehead between his eyebrows.

He looked up and said, “Stop staring at me.  Jeeze.”

I grinned and said, “I need to ask you something.”

He sighed, theatrically, and put his book down.  I kept grinning, and eventually he did, too.  Damn I liked being with him.

“So, ask,” he said.

“All right.  I have an English assignment.  I have to write about what I think I should change about myself.  And I’ve been thinking about it and have an idea.  I want your opinion.”

“OK.  Go ahead.”

“Well...”  It was difficult to talk about this, but I needed to.  If I couldn’t talk to Gary about it, how could I write it for Mrs. Gallagher to read?  I tried again.  “Well, I’ve been thinking a lot about what’s happened lately.  And I think I’ve noticed something.  Probably something you already know, but I didn’t.  And maybe it sounds silly to write about it, because it’s so obvious, but I didn’t really realize it till I started to remember a bunch of things.”

He frowned at me.  “Do you really need to be this mysterious?  This is me you’re talking to me!  Just say it.”

“OK, OK.  It’s, well, I’ve been thinking and I realize now, in the past couple weeks, there’ve been times when I acted like I always have.  I’ve just sort of receded into the woodwork when I’ve been confronted with things, tried to back away from the problem, hoping it would go away.  Also, there were a few times when I actually stood up for myself.  And those times worked out really well for me.  The times I didn’t, they didn’t.   So I’m thinking, if I had to change something about myself, maybe it’s that I should stand up for myself more.”

I don’t know what I was expecting, bells and whistles going off, maybe, or him jumping up, grabbing me in a huge hug and then us dancing around the room, but I didn’t get that.  All I got was, “Yeah, you’re right.  You should stand up for yourself more.  But can you make an entire essay out of it?”

I was disappointed by his unemotional reaction, but didn’t let him see it.  “Yeah.  I made some notes.  Some times when I didn’t stand up for myself recently were when Mr. Johnson had me in his office and was yelling at me.  I just sat there and took it and didn’t make enough effort to convince him it wasn’t my fault; I just whined a little.  And then in the boys’ room, he thought I was humping the hand dryer, and I got in trouble for that, but I wasn’t, not really.  Not purposely, anyway.  I was mostly just drying my pants.  I argued, but didn’t really stand up for myself and convince him I was telling the truth, didn’t make him believe me.  Then there were those boys pantsing me—Tony and them.  I should have fought them, or argued better, or done something so it didn’t happen.  Instead, I let them do it.  I could have done more to prevent it, but I just sort of gave up and let them do whatever they wanted to me.”

“No you didn’t.”  I had Gary’s attention now.  “You said something at the end of it.  You stood up for yourself and it got you a punch in the stomach.”

I shook my head.  “No, not really.  That wasn’t standing up for myself, that was different.  It was me being mad and trying to recover some pride.  It wasn’t me already having pride in who I was and not giving in to them so easily.  It was an empty gesture, and came way too late.”

I stopped, because the next thing was harder, but I wanted to say it.  “Mostly, though, where I haven’t stood up for myself is with my mother.  She’s always on me about something.  I get yelled at a lot, and criticized all the time.  I just accept it.  You showed me how wrong I was with that.  She was doing what she does, in the school office, and you stopped her.  That’s what I should have done, and I’ve needed to do it all my life.  You showed me how.”

He thought about that, then nodded and asked, “So when have  you stood up for yourself lately?”

“Well, the first time was with my mother that day, outside the school.  I stood up to her—and for me—by refusing to get in the car unless she agreed with my rules.  It worked.  I felt really proud of myself for that.

“And the next time was at that awful assembly.  Mr. Johnson was trying to embarrass me in front of the school to get back at my mother.  But I beat him at his own game.  It felt really good.  Of course, then you helped again.” I grinned at him and he grinned back.

“The next time was after school that day, on the bus.  That kid I told you about tried to get me to say I was gay, and then decided he’d tell everyone I had said it, even though I hadn’t.  So I made him back down.  I surprised myself ‘cause he was older, but I was able to do that, just by using my head and not giving in.

“And were was other times, too.  That store cashier tried to steal from me.  I ended up getting my money back, and that was because I didn’t let her walk all over me.  And the school bus driver.  I spoke back to her.”  I paused, then said, “And I got my mother to give me lunch money, too, when she didn’t want to.  So I’ve seen what happens when I stand up for myself and when I don’t.  And as I say, it’s probably obvious to everyone else, but I’ve only just recently figured out why I haven’t stood up for myself before.  It’s because I don’t like confrontation and do everything I can to avoid it.  And I always think if I stand up for myself, I’ll end up worse than I was.  But I’m learning things usually turn out better for me if I defend myself, and my fears of looking silly or being put down because of that up are just that—fears, not reality.  So I’m going to try to change the way I behave, and I’m going to write a paper about it, too.”

There must have been something in my voice, because this time Gary did get off the bed, and did hug me, and told me I was a lot more capable that I realized I was, which made me feel good even if I didn’t entirely believe it.  But that was all that happened.  We didn’t do any dancing around or whooping and hollering, there were no bells and whistles.  Oh, I might have kissed him because I was feeling pretty good and after all he was hugging me, and he might have—

But that isn’t the point of this so I won’t pursue it.