Brandon Smiling: From the Billy Chase Chronicles (2) - 44. Entry 44

Sunday

Well, the wedding reception last night was ok, I guess.

It did manage to take my mind off of Billy for a while which was good. It was held in an outdoor banquet area outside of a resort hotel called La Valencia…I hope I spelled that right. Everything in San Diego tends to have a Spanish name and I don’t know a thing about Spanish.

The food was really good. I guess Aunt Josephina, Uncle Walter, and Beau’s parents went all out with the wedding because the fifty or so guests got steak and lobster for dinner. That couldn’t have been cheap!

After dinner was dancing and, of course, we all had to watch Ashley and Beau do their wedding dance before everyone else got to get up and dance. I’m not much of a dancer so I just tried to sit and watch everybody else dance. But, my cousin Anne wasn’t going to have any of that. Looking around I noticed I was the only boy in the whole crowd! Everyone else were either married couples, single women, and a few girls from little ones to those Anne’s age. Anne is sixteen so she’s just a year older than me. She’s Aunt Josephina and Uncle Walter’s younger daughter if we’re all taking notes.

Anne’s a very nice girl. I admit to not knowing her very well since she lives so far away from me. She’s mostly just a picture I know from my Mom’s old scrapbook. She’s quite pretty! She looks a little bit like my Mom did when she was a girl. Dark hair, blue eyes, tanned complexion, and thin. She takes after her mother, mostly. I found myself, actually, avoiding my aunt because she reminds me so much of my Mom. I didn’t need those kinds of sad reminders on top of my heartache for Billy.

Anyway, Anne was friends with virtually every girl at the reception. So, she traded me around like a toy and I ended up dancing with all of her female friends and family, including the little ones. By the end of the night, we were all doing a ring kind of dance holding hands. That inspired the adults and everyone joined in on the ring dance! My Dad was grinning ear to ear seeing me have fun with my cousins and friends.

I smiled. I laughed. I ‘had fun’ like I was supposed to and, at times, I actually did have a good time. But, mostly I was wearing a mask of happiness. Inside, my heart was hurting with each beat and I had this overwhelming pressure like I was about to cry if I didn’t control myself.

If only I’d had the courage on Friday to tell Billy how I truly feel about him! If only I hadn’t fucked up so royally! If only…if only. That’s become my mantra, I guess.

Today, Aunt Josephina and Uncle Walter took me, my Dad, Ashley, Beau, and Anne to the San Diego Zoo. Just a family day for us without the other relatives and friends around. It was another welcome distraction from my depression.

I’d never quite been to a place like the San Diego Zoo. It was surprisingly big and hilly! We made a day of it and walked our way around the whole place. That was quite a workout! It probably would have been a lot easier just to ride the little tour-bus thing they have that takes you around the whole place with an announcer explaining the animals.

I was surprised how close you could get to some of them. I mean they aren’t within touching distance (except for the giraffes), but they were close enough to where there were signs saying to be careful that the animals don’t actually pee on you! Their lion ‘experience’ was amazing! They were basically right there in your face! I can’t believe how huge those big cats are!

I was amazed by how much everything looked like a jungle! Most of the trees and plants were of a ‘jungle variety’ through most of the zoo. Other parts took on the looks of the habitats they were trying to imitate. There is a part called Africa Rocks that’s built up with granite boulders all over the place and little desert plants here and there. The baboons were the stars of the show in this exhibit. We must have stayed a whole twenty minutes just watching their antics. There were a lot of them and the enclosure was pretty expansive.

All of this worked to pick my spirits up a little, but I guess my ‘happy mask’ slipped at times. Anne kept wondering if I was having fun or not because I was being quiet about everything. Of course, even if I’d wanted to talk I would have had a hard time. Anne is a bit of a chatterbox. She had something to say about just about anything and everything we were seeing. She also seems to have no filter about her private life. She was telling me about a boy she likes at her school and she’s been wondering how to get his attention. She kept asking me what gets a guy’s attention.

I honestly couldn’t answer her except for the typical ‘looks’ and ‘personality’ bit. I don’t know what a guy might look for in a girl, really. Marie was easy. She was beautiful, smart, funny, and fearless and she took the initiative to grab me off so I really didn’t have much choice but to pay attention to her!

But, from what I could gather about my cousin, Anne is far less assertive than Marie. She wants to be ‘cool’ about attracting this guy’s attention and let him make the first move. Good luck with that cuz! Some guys are about as attentive as a concrete block! You almost literally have to bash them over the head with a two-by-four to get their attention.

Hopefully, this guy isn’t that dense and will come on to Anne. She’s worth the trouble, dude! I’ve only known her a day and she’s already my favorite cousin!

I wish I was worth the trouble. Because, I sure cause Billy a lot of trouble! If only I hadn’t been so chicken about things! He said he seriously loved me! He opened the door and I slammed it right in his adorable face! I’m such an idiot, I swear!

Could there be a chance that I could make it up to him? After suffering like this from running out on him like I did, could I finally choose to take the risk and tell Billy I feel the very same way about him that he does about me?

Oh, I wish I did have a computer or smartphone so I could contact Chandler! He’d know what to do! He’d show me how to unfuck this fucked up situation! It’s not fair to him, though, that I keep bugging him about my problems! What I did with Billy completely flies in the face of all the advice Chandler’s been giving me lately. That’s going to be insulting to him, I’m sure! He’ll see that all his heartfelt advice will have fallen on completely deaf ears!

I’m sure he’ll not want to talk to me again after I tell him. I wouldn’t blame him one bit! Chandler’s been my guiding light through this whole ‘being gay’ thing. Now, I’ve gone and screwed up my friendship with him too!

I really am worthless about being in relationships of any kind! No wonder I’m alone so much! Who’d want to be my friend when I’m such a complete idiot?

The world should just tell me to fuck the hell off!

This is Brandon, The Complete Idiot

Monday

So today was ‘SeaWorld Day’. I hadn’t known about it until my Dad surprised me with the tickets he’d bought. Apparently, we’re going again with my Aunt, Uncle, Cousins, and Cousin-in-law.

I acted appropriately happy about it. I’d never been to a SeaWorld before so it wasn’t hard to fake being, at least, somewhat interested in going. We all drove out there and I was surprised to see rollercoasters and this tall tower thingie with a rotating room attached to it that went up and down the tower. You could see all this from a distance with what Anne called Mission Bay as the backdrop.

SeaWorld was ok. We couldn’t watch a whale show because they weren’t doing those anymore, but we did get to see a dolphin show and see the penguins and things. Really, though, without the killer whale shows, SeaWorld was, kind of, lame, I’m afraid. Not much else to do, really.

But, it kept my mind off of Billy again for a few hours.

I seriously thought about trying to call him to see if things were alright between us. I didn’t mean to leave him hanging when I panicked and ran away from him like I did! But, like I’ve said before, I suck for that big time.

Unfortunately, I thought better of calling Billy because I didn’t want to have to explain long distance charges being tacked on to my Dad’s hotel bill. I’m sure he would think me completely irresponsible if I were to pull that on him just to call a friend back home. It would start him asking uncomfortable questions too, so I figure it’s not worth the risk doing a long distance call from the hotel phone. I can’t use the mobile phone either because my Dad has sworn me to only use that in emergencies and he’d see it on the mobile phone bill if I’ve been calling Billy. So I can’t use that.

So, I’m, kind of, stuck trying to communicate anything with Billy right now. If I get the courage, I’ll have to do it when I get back. I hope I have the courage! I’m such a coward.

I’ve got nothing better to do at the moment other than writing this stuff down and trying to get some catch-up homework done that the teachers at school left me so I won’t get behind while on this trip.

We’re supposed to go out to dinner later. I hope that can distract me from my self-loathing for a while.

I wish Billy could have told me how he felt about me either way before this trip or after. Maybe, that would have been better. I’m not sure, though. I probably would have panicked anyway and then not had this extra time to think things through. I would have been confronted with Billy at school today rather than a week from today. Seeing him so soon after what he told me would have made things weird at this point. At least, right now, I’m getting a chance to think about what I really want and to make some important decisions about who I want to be and who I want to be with.

Maybe, during this trip, with this time and distance I have, I can put things into perspective and really make a choice to be with Billy or not.

I wish this choice hadn’t been so difficult for me. It should have been easy! After what Billy said, I should have just fallen right into his arms and lived happily ever after. But, things never seem to be that simple with me. There’s always this ‘stuff’ that gets between me and what I want.

This trip, I’m going to deal with this ‘stuff’ once and for all. That’s a promise!

This is Brandon dealing with ‘stuff’.