The Best Four Years of Adam Becker - 8. Freshman Year - Chapter 8

My mom didn’t seem to understand why I didn’t want to go Nevada for Thanksgiving.

“You haven’t seen us,” she said, not angry so much as wounded--a far worse prospect, “in three months.”

“I’ll be home two weeks after Thanksgiving,” I told her. “It’s stupid just to fly back for a couple days when I’ll be back for a whole month.”

Thanksgiving was by far my least favorite holiday, because we spent it at our ranch in Pahrump. A week in Pahrump was a punishment by itself, but having to spend a week of vacation watching my parents flit in and out of the inane pageantry of politics was tedious. I’d reached the age where no one got any mileage out of me scooping out mystery gruel at a soup kitchen Thanksgiving morning, which was one of the best things about becoming a teenager, but my parents spent most of the time professionally entertaining. Which, tragically, meant we’d often to have to clear off the pool deck for the afternoon because the state party treasurer was coming, or someone equally useless.

It wasn’t that I was completely down on my family, or down on Nevada, but it wasn’t the kind of vacation I’d wanted. Michaela, Tripp, Jordan--everyone chattered on about how nice it’d be to see their friends, see their family, have their mom’s stuffing or mashed potatoes, but we never had that sort of thing on Thanksgiving. It was a work day--too important an American holiday to let pass uncalculated.

This year, I got a lucky break, because D.C. politics intervened: my dad was in the throes of lame duck, trying to wring the last bits of life out of the Bush legislative agenda before he was out of the majority on January 3rd. My mother would be in meetings, the last minute drive to push her most conservative policy goals from the lobbying side.

Which meant we didn’t even know, for sure, when we’d be able to leave for Nevada--which meant I faced the prospect of having to crisscross the country as we waited abated to find out whether or not some stupid bill was delayed a day.

Throw in the fact that Philip was excused from the holiday--he was going up to Boston with his girlfriend, Lindsay, and her family; he was avoiding Pahrump just like I was--and it seemed like I’d finally gotten the perfect get-out-of-Pahrump-free card.

“I hate both of you,” Justine group-texted, when she heard the news, that both of us were skipping out on Pahrump Thanksgiving. Leaving her to awkwardly lie by the pool for a week, alone, having to clear out to accommodate the visit of the dogcatcher of Elko, Nevada, and his wife to our humble ranch.

“You’re just jealous,” Philip replied, followed by a smiley-face thirty seconds after, to verify that it was meant in good-faith.

“Obviously, but I still hate you two.”

Instead, I was going to the Callenders’ for Thanksgiving, driving with Tripp to Pass Christian. Somehow, a road trip with the two of us, however short and accompanied by his mother, seemed lightyears more entertaining than Pahrump.

So late Tuesday night, after we finished our classes, Miss Julia drove in to pick us up. Kevin Malley had texted me to invite us to The Boot that night--Michaela was driving him and the Baker in Maxie, back to Dallas Wednesday morning, because he didn't want to buy a plane ticket back to California--but, even though Tripp tried to stall, Miss Julia operated on a very strict timetable.

As scheduled, she showed up, just before dinnertime, in a black Escalade, dressed to the nines. My mom showed up for errands in workout clothes if she wasn’t working, but Miss Julia came fully assembled, adorned with pearls and a slick helmet of blonde hair.

The hour car ride back to Pass Christian was almost completely silent, except for the sound of groaning talk radio and the whir of the car on the street, because Miss Julia was taking the interstate at about ninety-five miles per hour. Tripp was in the front, staring ahead; I was in the back, also staring ahead, heading through the vanquished ruins of East New Orleans.

“You forget how bad it still is here,” Miss Julia said, finally, “even a year later. The Pass got hit hard, but we’re building it back. Tulane’s looking good, though.”

“Uptown’s a different world,” Tripp said, dismissively, the expert.

And then, we all fluttered back into more prolonged silence.

We were getting off the Twin Spans in Slidell when Tripp texted me: “This is the most awkward car ride ever. Sorry.”

I smiled a bit at that, texted back: “Why aren’t you talking?”

Tripp stared at his phone for a few seconds, contemplating the efficacy of leaning around to talk to us, with his mother hanging on our every word. Instead, he just cleared his throat. “Hey, Mom. Can we put on some music or something?”

“Anything you want, sweetie,” Miss Julia replied.

Tripp grabbed the dial, spun it to a rap station.

“Mm,” Miss Julia remarked, disapprovingly, but didn’t say anything else. Tripp looked at her and, caving to the unspoken filial guilt, turned it again to some inoffensive soft rock, something a decade old by Mariah Carey.

We went the rest of the way accompanied by Mariah, until we pulled off the freeway into Pass Christian.

Which didn’t really exist anymore, in the urban sense. I didn’t have a clear Before shot, but there sure were a lot of vacant lots--driveways leading sometimes to just a concrete foundation, sometimes just midway through a grassy field. Not just the mangled remains of East New Orleans--Pass Christian was a city that had been disappeared from existence, and I could see Tripp staring at the window, mouth agape like he’d forgotten how bad things still were.

The Callender house was tucked at the end of the cul-de-sac, one of three left standing on their street, but this tony neighborhood seemed to be springing up faster than the rest of town; the other lots were half-built frames, fourteen months after the storm.

We pulled into the circle drive out front, the house towering over us. I’d grown up in a big house, but this place was downright impressive--brick, with six big white columns and green shutters, so traditional that women in bell-shaped crinolines could be busting out through the front door at any minute.

“We got lucky,” Miss Julia told us, because she must’ve known what we were thinking, pulling up to a town like this, down a street like this, and seeing their house as a well-groomed oasis in the middle of the nothing. “We lost part of the roof, but the water didn’t make it past the attic. We weathered it better than most people in the Pass. Got to move back in a few months ago.”

“After suffering through Birmingham and a FEMA trailer,” Tripp added, dismissively.

“We were lucky,” Miss Julia continued, her voice rising in annoyance, “because we had someplace to go.”

Junior, Tripp’s dad, was in the circle drive when we pulled up, standing in a speedboat named Julia 2 hitched to the back of another black Escalade. He was wearing a black Braves hat, jeans, and a gray threadbare Ole Miss sweatshirt that looked like it had gone through a food processor.

“His new boat,” Tripp explained. “They never found the last one.”

Miss Julia rolled down her window, leaned her head out the window.

"You had to take the boat out now, Jay?" she called, exasperatedly, as the rest of us got out of the car. "We have company."

Company meant me, but after living with Tripp for three months, I felt so involved in the idiosyncrasies of the Callender family and their day-to-day goings-on in Pass Christian that it was strange to think they considered me company.

Cuthbert Hollis Callender, Jr., did not look especially concerned about having company, at least compared to his wife. He threw an armful of life jackets onto the driveway. “You got back fast,” he called back, finally. “No speeding tickets this time?”

"Speed limit," she said, huffily. “Whole way. Where’s Davis? He needs to help us with Adam’s bags.”

Junior looked absently over to the house, as he began rolling up a browning length of rope around his forearm. “He was in a mood after we got the boat out of the water,” he replied. “He’s playing Xbox, I think.”

Miss Julia had her arms folded by this point, was scowling back and forth between her husband and the front door, before deciding that she’d rather pick a fight with her younger son. She stalked up the stairs to the porch, threw open the front door, yelled once for Tripp’s brother, and then disappeared inside.

Through her legs, an English bulldog popped out of the house, flung himself over the stairs,and sprinted to Tripp as fast as he could move on his stubby little legs.

“Sherman!” Tripp howled, kneeling down, taking the dog in his arms. He kissed the dog on top of the head--Junior flashed me disdainful, raised eyebrows--and shook him from side to side. “Missed you buddy.”

Junior was climbing down the side of the boat, leaving greasy handprints. “Missed Sherman more than you dad,” he noted.

Tripp looked up at Junior, grin on his face. “I missed you too, Dad.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Junior teased, scrubbing the handprints off the boat with his old sweatshirt. “I would’ve left the boat in, but it’s been so cold lately. And we’re supposed to get a storm Friday, so I didn’t want to cut it too close. Your mom already told me I’m not getting a Julia 3.” He shook his silver head, gave us an inviting smile. “I only got the second one because she wanted to see her name painted on something.”

Miss Julia came back outside with Tripp’s sixteen-year-old brother, Davis, who had been described as a “little shit” multiple times by Tripp. He looked uncannily like his older brother, except without the pastel polos and embroidered shorts--flannel shirt, skinny jeans, folded arms and a look of murderous teenage apathy, at the thought of helping his mom do anything. I felt old, comparatively, to a sixteen year old, as if my three months of collegiate wisdom had set me straight when it came to parental dealings. Davis did not say hi to us; he brushed past us, silently came to the back of the Escalade, grabbed one of Tripp’s duffel bags, and walked slovenly back to the house.

"Don't be an asshole, Davis," Miss Julia yelled. The front door slammed shut behind him. She looked to us, apology on her face. “You know, he’s usually more friendly. He was playing one of those computer things with his friends over the microphone.”

"Mom's really tech savvy," Tripp deadpanned, from down on the ground with Sherman.

"All my children today," she said, shaking her head. “Come on. I’ll show y’all to your room.”

 

Miss Julia conducted the tour, while Tripp followed only loosely with Sherman, wrestling with him on the floor despite his mother’s protests. The house was endless--seven bedrooms--and somehow, it still seemed incredible crowded and overwhelming, packed with heavy wood furniture that towered over us, and busy Persian rugs, and heavy patterned wallpaper, a house decorated within an inch of its life. On just about every spare inch of wall or surface was a framed picture of Tripp or Davis, at varying stages of childhood.

“Mom has a shrine,” Tripp told me, from the ground with Sherman, as I picked up a frame of a tiny Tripp dressed as Elvis and a poodle-skirted Miss Julia standing behind him, hands on his shoulders, in front of a backdrop that said “Gulf Coast Academy Mother-Son Sock Hop, 1994.”

“Aw, little Tripp,” I said, setting back down the frame. “Dressed as Elvis.”

“Please don’t,” Tripp replied, planting his legs to gain leverage as he tug-of-warred with Sherman over a piece of mangled rope. “She’ll show you everything.”

 

My room was at the top of the stairs, next door to Tripp’s. I felt like I was staying at a hotel--it had that glamorous Southern bed-and-breakfast style to it, with a king-sized four-poster bed that nearly scraped the ceiling and the floral wallpaper. Above the bed was a massive oil painting of an old obese man with mutton chops, who seemed to be silently passing sinister judgment on all of us.

“I forgot how creepy that one is,” Tripp said. “That’s why keep it in here. So only guests have to see him, and they’re always too nice to say it’s creepy”

“It’s not too creepy,” I lied.

Tripp snickered. “Case in point. That’s bullshit, Becker. It’s my mom’s great-great grandfather. Creepy as hell.”

“Civil War general?” I asked.

Tripp wrinkled his nose, grinned, looked back up at it. “No, he would’ve been one of those guys who paid Erik’s great-great grandfather to take his draft number.”

“Harsh,” I said, because it was. Tripp shrugged; his ribbing didn’t bother me, but I was glad Erik wasn’t here to say that. We knew curiously little about Lake Laurel, Arkansas, but I knew enough about Erik to know he didn’t like talking about his relative sparse upbringing.

“Oh, who cares,” Tripp said, leaning back against the foot of the bed. “My dad’s family’s broke as a joke. We stayed with my aunt in Birmingham, and it was torture. This awful three bedroom crack house for eight of us. And they had a three-minute timer on the shower, so you couldn’t even find time to beat off. Three months we were there.”

“Yeah, that sucks,” I said. “It’d be weird if my hometown got destroyed.”

“If your hometown got destroyed, we’re in a nuclear holocaust,” Tripp replied. Sherman barked, Tripp looked down at him. “Shh.” Then, back to me, “He’s not usually this feisty. He’s the laziest dog ever.”

“He missed you,” I suggested.

“Clearly,” Tripp said. He grinned. “I’m glad you’re here, man. This is fun.”

“So far, so good,” I told him. I realized this would be my first night not sleeping in the same room as Tripp since August. Which seemed like a whole lifetime ago, much longer than three months. “I hope it’s not too much trouble for your mom.”

“Oh, please, she loves having people over,” he said. “It’s like a hotel sometimes. I’m surprised we had a vacancy.”

“Well, it’s still very nice,” I said, diplomatically. “Your parents are hilarious.”

Tripp rolled his eyes, but he smiled at that--he secretly enjoyed his parents; I could tell. “They’re nuts,” he said. “Did I tell you about Davis’s car?”

I shook my head.

Tripp rolled his eyes again. “You know how my dad owns GM dealerships, right?” I nodded. “Well, my dad has this crazy thing where he only drives black GM cars. Don’t get me started. And so my mom and dad were in this big fight over what kind of car to get Davis over the summer, because my dad wanted to get him this new black Solstice convertible, and my mom wanted him to just take my old piece-of-shit Cavalier.”

Tripp was not the most linear storyteller.

“So,” he continued, “they got into this big blow-out.” He paused. “Not a big blow-out, but you know, an argument over it. And my mom storms off and buys him this bright orange Mazda 3, just to spite my dad.”

Junior Callender, who I hadn’t realized had been walking past in the hallway, jovially called in, “Don’t trust women, boys. Chop your balls off first chance they get.”

“Dad!” Tripp gasped, mortified, slamming the door. He looked at me and, through a grin: “My parents are the worst.”

 

We were meeting Tripp’s best friends from high school, to day drink the next afternoon.

Pass Christian was nonexistent. Tripp drove us through the empty streets, debris littered still on every side. You’d read about New Orleans in the press over the past year--I’d followed everything pretty closely, obviously--but Mississippi had flown under the radar. It was hard to imagine something hit harder than New Orleans, but this was it. New Orleans had flooded, trees were downed, but Pass Christian simply ceased to exist.

We met Tripp's friends, Marshall, Ted, and Nathan, at the Dollar General, which was in a tragic gravel parking lot off the main highway about ten minutes from Tripp's house towards Biloxi. They all had some kind of knock-off slurpy, and were standing next to the ice machines like delinquents.

I had expected some backwater guys, even knowing that Tripp went to a prep school. They weren't. Nathan and Marshall both looked normal, albeit matching, in a white polo and red swim trunks, and and Ted was in a fedora, plaid blazer, and tight jeans.

Ted was very foppish, very… dynamic, for lack of a better word. He was openly gay, actually, as I’d only recently found out--shared as a shrugged piece of news that suggested Tripp didn’t find it very big of a deal. Which was, of course, reassuring. Ted had come out the day after high school graduation, though Tripp asserted that it was a poorly kept secret for most of their high school career. No one had thought much of it.

“I know Mississippi gets a bad rap,” Tripp had told me, folding a polo under his chin. “But we’re not neanderthals.”

Or at least among the moneyed set of Pass Christian, Mississippi, who were a bit more cosmopolitan than their trailer-dwelling brethren. They did have the Confederate flag still soldered to their own.

Tellingly, none of them had stayed in Mississippi: Nathan went to Vandy, Marshall to Penn, Ted to Pratt in New York.

Tripp rolled down his window, leaned his head out to look at Marshall and Nathan, both matching.

“Aw, cute you two,” he said. “Matchy-matchy.”

"Fuck off, Cuthbert," said Nathan, grinning.

"Ass clown," Tripp called back, giving the finger. "This is the welcome home I get?"

Marshall, Nathan, and Ted piled into the backseat of the truck, and off we went. We were going to Gulfport, to Marshall’s dad’s boat, which was moored in the marina and apparently could fit enough people to throw a party.

“We can’t actually move the boat,” Marshall told me. “My dad doesn’t trust me to have the keys. But I know the combination to unlock the cover.”

“Everyone knows the combination to unlock the cover,” Ted added. “It also disarms their burglar alarm and unlocks Marshall’s debit card.”

“Thanks for that,” Marshall replied, surly, folding his arms.

“Becker’s not going to steal your identity,” Tripp assured. “He’s a good guy.”

“It’ll be a blast though,” Marshall said. “I used to throw parties on here all the time when we were in high school.”

“Yeah,” Nathan said, rolling his eyes. “‘Parties.’ Like that one time we found beer in the fridge?”

“There were girls,” Marshall protested.

“Yeah, me, maybe,” Ted corrected.

Marshall scoffed at being called out; the rest of the car, except for me and Marshall, exploded into a fit of giggles, and not for the first time that afternoon.

It was surreal, almost, spending time around people who knew Tripp as well as I did--who knew him better than I did, really, who knew him his whole life. I was the one on the outskirts of this, if just barely. Their friendship seemed so effortless: they seemed so effortless, like they could easily slide into our lives if they came to Tulane. I couldn’t imagine Grant Prendergast at all fitting in with Adam, the way he did with Peter. I couldn’t even imagine having this much fun with Grant Prendergast.

Tripp pulled the truck into the marina, which was mostly empty by late November. He drove down to the last pier, right up to the slip. There was already an SUV waiting for us there--"the girls," who had only been referred to as a monolithic block. They were in bikini tops and jean shorts, even though it was a little too cold for that. Their trunk was open, mooning us with stacked thirty racks of Natty Light.

The boat was more of a small yacht, about twenty five feet long. The “LunaSea 2.”

“New boat,” Marshall told us. “The first LunaSea last one landed in the Pass Christian Library, occult section.”

“Not really the occult section,” Ted clarified. “More like the parking lot.”

“Marshall likes to embellish,” Nathan added.

“Lie,” Tripp corrected.

“You all suck,” Marshall answered. “Go party on the Julia 2.”

“My dad took her out of the water yesterday,” Tripp said. “I think he did it on purpose, because he knew we’d try to use it.”

Marshall wasn’t listening; he was already hustling jauntily up the pier, clearly relishing his role as party host and vacation savior. He took the lock holding the corner of the deck cover to the side of the boat, and slowly spun the combination until it clicked open. He did the same on the other side, and rolled back the deck cover to thunderous applause from the girls.

The cover now crumbled in a ball to the side, he unlocked the door to the cabin, which also seemed to be a combination padlock.

"Really Fort Knox here," Tripp told me.

"If I ever have to flee the country," I agreed, "I know what boat I'm stealing."

Behind me, Ted laughed disproportionately, which made me smile, even though I felt it was an awkward smile. He was a cute guy. Thin and short, but with a nice-looking face and reddish-brown hair, neatly parted when he took off his fedora. He was cute, or maybe I thought he was cute because I knew was gay and he laughed at my jokes.

We boarded the LunaSea 2.

"Who needs to change?" Marshall asked, pointing us towards the cabin. "Two staterooms and a head."

"Bedrooms and a shitter, you pretentious dick," Nathan told him.

The girls commandeered one room, Tripp took the bathroom, and Marshall and Nathan just took off their polos and threw them into a ball on the floor before heading back above deck.

“You can go first,” I told Ted, motioning to the spare bedroom.

“We can share,” he said, opening the door. “I don’t mind if you don’t mind.”

Of course I didn’t mind. I felt my dick suddenly springing to life, utterly unwelcome. He closed the door and locked it behind us. And all I could think about was bending him over the side of the bed and pounding what I imagined to be a tight asshole that I could do some real damage to, a sequel to what I’d done with Brandon from Loyola three weeks sooner.

But life not being pornographic, he went to the other corner of the small stateroom, and turned to face the wall.

“You come on boats a lot?” he asked, pulling off his blazer from the bottom of the sleeve.

I could see his reflection in the mirror--the whole wall on my side of the stateroom was mirrored. I felt myself growing increasingly more excited to see how much he’d take off, how much I’d get to see.

Which made me sketchy; he was a friend of Tripp’s, making small talk, introducing no innuendo whatsoever, other than taking off his clothing in the far corner.

“Not too often," I said. "Not like these."

“Oh, the LunaSea,” Ted said. “It’s a pretty dumb name, but Marshall’s mom’s name is Luna, so it makes a little more sense. They’re not that retarded. I mean, Marshall’s dad is kind of a redneck, but even so.” He was unbuttoning his shirt now, quickly. “Where are you from?”

“Washington, D.C.,” I said.

“Oh, that’s right,” he said. “Tripp told me. Senator’s son.”

I hated that that was my introductory description all the time, especially knowing that it had come directly from Tripp himself.

“Yeah,” I said. “It’s okay. D.C. is kind of a fake city, but it’s getting better.”

“I’ve never been,” he said. “But hopefully I’ll go soon. I’m in New York. Pratt, studying interior design--I know, gayest thing ever.”

It was the gayest thing ever, but Ted somehow wore it well. He wasn’t flamboyant or feminine--excitable would be a better word. Energetic. He didn’t come off as straight--certainly not--but he wasn’t much of a stereotype either. He just had a burning quality, somehow.

“Sounds interesting though,” I told him.

“Yeah, maybe I can do one of Tripp’s houses one day,” he said. “That’d be fun. If he makes it up to New York, which I doubt.”

I doubted that too; Tripp, for all his big talk of California someday, was completely rooted in the Gulf Coast--I couldn’t imagine him outside of Houston or New Orleans or even Pass Christian, long term.

“Do you like it up there?” I asked.

His shirt was completely unbuttoned by this point; I could still see him in the mirror, but I wasn’t going to turn around--not just because I didn’t want to draw attention to the fact that I was watching him, but because I was at about half-mast in my jeans, and I didn’t want him to notice. Were we flirting, somehow? This conversation seemed so innocuous, the glances so fleeting.

"Love it," he said, throwing the shirt down on the bed. "After Mississippi, being around a bunch of gay guys and hippies is sweet."

"The weather, though."

He had a nice body. Under a shirt and blazer he looked thin, but, as he turned to drop his shirt back in his duffle bag, I could his arms and shoulders had some definition and his stomach was a rather surprising six pack, framed by his poking ribs.

"The weather sucks," he said. "But I got to buy coats."

He unbuttoned his jeans, pulled them down to his ankles and slipped them off--he had red bikini briefs underneath, tight, leaving virtually nothing to the imagination. He leaned back over to his duffel bag to rummage, and he filled out the front rather nicely, too.

I realized I was staring a little too intently, so I took off my polo, threw it on my side of the bed.

Then the show ended: Ted wrapped a towel around his waist, scooted out of his briefs, and pulled on a pair of tight, short trunks underneath, barely a couple inches down his thigh. They were sexy, but of course I was a little annoyed at being denied the chance to see what promised to be a very inviting ass.

No, I was sick--I was being creepy, wasn’t it. Was it okay to look, if he was gay and I was gay?

No chance to figure out more: “I’ll see you up top,” he said.

 

Three beers in, I was feeling pretty good. The marina was all but deserted--we had music blasting, and no one over the age of 21; we were exposed, but somehow no one seemed all that concerned.

“She just,” Tripp was telling Nathan, “I don’t know. She’s this hot Psi Lambda, but she just seems to--I don’t know. She doesn’t like him the way he likes her, I can tell.”

Erik and Erica again. I hadn’t realized Tripp had kept intervening on the table--it’d been a few weeks, since Halloween, that we’d actually seen Erica, aside from coming out of Erik’s room in the early hours of the morning.

“Definitely say something,” Nathan said. “He’ll appreciate it.”

Tripp was chewing on one of his cuticles. “See, that’s what I thought, but Becker said he wouldn’t.”

“He wouldn’t,” I chimed in, though I did not appreciate being sacrificed as a devil’s advocate. “Look, I know Erik, and he’s not the kind of guy that likes to hear he’s wrong.”

“He’s the hot one?” Ted asked, suddenly coming alive in this conversation that had otherwise seemed to be boring him as much as it bored me. “In the speedo?”

Tripp looked a little embarrassed. To me, he said: “Ted stalked his Facebook. I wasn’t, like, passing around Erik’s polo pictures.”

“Yeah, I’ll cop to that one,” Ted said. “But it’s a two way street. I sent you a picture of that blonde girl from my English class. No reason we can’t share the wealth.”

“Oh, yeah, I liked her,” Marshall said. “She’s no Michaela Birdrock though.”

“Her picture I did pass around,” Tripp told me.

“God, the things I’d do,” Marshall said. “Why didn’t you bring her to Thanksgiving?”

“Not that we’re not enjoying Becker,” Nathan said. “Sorry, Becker.”

“No offense taken,” I told them. I reached for the cardboard case of beer--empty. “We’re not out, are we?”

“One more, I think,” Tripp said. “Go check the fridge downstairs.”

“I’ll show you where it is,” Ted said, standing up, showing off that tiny pair of shorts he was wearing. He looked utterly gay, utterly attractive, and here he was, leading me down below decks.

I followed him into the cabin, watching that great ass move in front of me, until we got to the kitchen. Which wasn’t hard to find enough that I needed a tour guide.

I opened the fridge, pulled out the last case, and hoisted it onto my shoulder.

“How are you liking Mississippi?” he asked, as we walked back out. “Not as inbred as you imagined?”

“Not nearly as inbred,” I echoed. And I was drunk enough to add, “I like everything I see so far.”

Shit, that was uncomfortable. I felt uncomfortable, like I was going to get swatted down by this openly gay friend of Tripp’s. Or, at the very least, he was going to figure out something.

“It’s not a bad place,” he said, diplomatically. “Being gay isn’t great down here.”

I couldn’t think of a decent response for that--gayness was not a road I wanted to stumble down, for a variety of different reasons. “I’d imagine not,” I told him. “You seemed to have done okay.”

“Tripp, Marshall, and Nathan,” he said. “They’re just fantastic, you know?”

“I know,” I said. “I’ve been living with Tripp since August.”

“Yeah,” he said. “Coming out sucks but when you know your friends will be okay with it, it’s just a band-aid you have to rip off.”

I wasn’t sure if this was expository, or if this was actually some way of coaxing me into toeing out of the closet. Which wasn’t going to happen any time soon.

“Yeah, I guess,” I said, instead, trying not to sound as defensive as I feared I did. “I wouldn’t know.”

 

The next day was Thanksgiving, and, that morning, the Callender house was in controlled chaos.

It was one of the stranger places I’d ever been. In the day and a half I’d been there, I’d met more people than ever before in my life: the Callender house was almost like a public utility, a clubhouse for the rebuilding community. Family friends, neighbors, popping in for dinner, lunch, a glass of wine, tossing around bawdy Southern-accented humor with Miss Julia or Junior or both.

Thanksgiving morning was no different, except everyone came at once. Nathan and Marshall stopped by for breakfast; Davis had three friends over for breakfast too, though they had decamped to the dining room to avoid the rest of us. And Miss Julia, who dabbled in a part-time catering business with two of her well-appointed friends from the neighborhood--a business they were trying to get back off the ground after Katrina--were cooking cyclones, ripping through the kitchen, leaving a trail of flour streaked across the black granite like fresh snow. At the stove, getting irritated as they kept ramming into him, was Junior, who had vowed to make us his “world-famous breakfast.”

Sherman was passed out under the table, spread-eagled, resigned and finally moved on since Tripp’s homecoming.

Eleven people and a dog, not including the poor cleaning woman--this middle-aged black woman in a gray uniform, who seemed to be taking the Callenders’ high jinks with the same weatherbeaten acceptance as Sherman--struggling to keep a lid on the chaos.

“Oh, God,” I whispered to Tripp, big smile on my face, as the cleaning lady hustled into the bathroom with a mop and bucket. “You have a mammy.”

“We do not,” Tripp glared, scratching his head. “Suzanne’s just our cleaning lady. Comes a few days a week. Have you seen what Davis does to this place?”

That was a little bit unfair, considering Nathan was, at the moment, sheepishly mopping up the orange juice he spilled all over the kitchen table.

“Is it always like this around here?” I asked.

“Like what?” Tripp replied, which gave me the answer.

There was a clatter from the dining room.

“Davis Robert!” Miss Julia screeched, her head shooting up in the direction of the dining room. Her hair was messy, her face was streaked with flour, but she still had on pearls and matching earrings.

"It's fine!" he yelled back from the dining room.

She opened her mouth to say more, but her tirade was cut short by one of her friends turning on a Kitchenaid mixer. Miss Julia recovered her mood almost instantly, and started giggling at a whispered private joke with the other friend.

The Callender house was, by far, the exact opposite of the Becker house--it was the opposite of the Prendergast house or the Bernard house, too. I’d never seen anything quite like it, something so exploding with life and personality.

“Do we have any more pancakes?” Tripp shouted over the din.

Junior turned around, gave him a silent thumbs up, and went back to the stove.

“So this is my life,” Tripp told me, grinning proudly. “I told you I wasn’t joking. There’s always people here.”

“My parents never let me have anyone over,” I told him. “Our house is like a library. Very quiet. Lots of books.”

Tripp looked at me, pityingly, as if he couldn’t imagine that kind of somberness at home. I didn’t appreciate that.

“Well, everyone’s out all the time,” I defended. “My parents work a lot, Philip was on every sport, Justine was in choir.”

“You held down the fort?” he asked.

Which was a diplomatic way of saying that, I supposed. “I tried my best.”

Junior’s arm appeared between us, dropping a big plate of pancakes on the table. “All right,” he announced, wrapping his arm around Tripp’s throat--Tripp did a mock gag--then leaning in to give him a kiss on top of the head. “I put blueberries in this batch.”

“Awesome,” Marshall said, grabbing half the stack off the plate.

“Chocolate chip on the stove,” Junior added.

Marshall sheepishly put a couple pancakes back.

“This is really good,” Nathan said, taking a mouthful of cheese grits. “I don’t think I’ve eaten breakfast like this since last time I was here.”

Tripp gave him the same pitying look he gave me; he showed just as little appreciation as I had.

“They’re starving you at Vandy,” Junior called over, from the stove.

Miss Julia came over, collapsed into the chair next to Nathan. “Pancake me, Jay,” she called to her husband, who also gave her a thumbs up from the stove. “Birds are in,” she told us, her voice tinged with exhaustion. “All six of them.”

“Only one’s for us,” Tripp mumbled, his mouth full of pancakes.

“Chew your food before you speak,” she scolded. “It’ll give you time to think about what you say.” She said it like she’d said it a million times; Tripp rolled his eyes like she’d said it a million times, but he didn’t say anything more as he chomped on his pancakes.

Sweetly, to us, Miss Julia clarified: “Five are for our customers. But I always make sure we get the best

“We always get the worst bird,” Tripp amended, having swallowed.

“Don’t be a shit to your mother,” Junior said, bringing over the last of the pancakes. He looked around for a second; there were no more chairs, so he slapped this goofy grin on his face, and sat on Miss Julia’s lap.

“Jay!” she gasped, hitting him on the shoulder. She looked at me, smiled and shook her head. “See what I put up with?”

 

We were a little tipsy after Thanksgiving dinner--Miss Julia offered us wine, and obviously Tripp and I were not the kind of guys to turn down any of it. I’d never had wine before--it certainly looked expensive, and given the dramatic setup in the dining room, which included about twenty-five people in total when the nonstop parade of relatives and family friends were factored in, it must’ve been. Tripp and I both choked it down best we could; by the third glass, we were feeling great.

Sometime after Miss Julia and Junior had gone to bed--each a few glasses of wine in themselves, leaving a ziggurat of dirty dishes for Suzanne to excavate in the morning--Tripp smuggled up a bottle of vodka from the liquor cabinet, and locked us in his bedroom.

“No, it’s fine,” he said, his voice hushed, glancing around his empty bedroom as he poured me a shot into one of the dixie cups from his bathroom. “They won’t even notice any is gone.” With a nasty grin, he added, “And if they do, they’ll blame it on Davis. He’s the bad one.”

I wondered if Philip would ever have blamed things on me, but he was never caught, and I was never bad.

“You’re just the golden child, I figure,” I told him.

“Of course I am,” he replied, with a grin. “You’ve known me for, what, three months now?”

I did know Tripp. Three months was not very long in the grand scheme of life, young as we were, but it felt like I knew him forever. Someone I’d only known for three months, and here I was, drinking vodka out of tiny dixie cups with him, on Thanksgiving, in Mississippi.

We cheersed our dixie cups, knocked back the vodka, and that was it. It tasted awful and it burned, but once it was down my throat, it was gone. I thought back to that first day, at the Zeta party with that sludge we were drinking, how we could barely choke it down, and how long ago that seemed.

“I like you in Pass Christian,” I told him, lying back on the area rug, staring up at the board and batten ceiling. “I do.”

Tripp puffed out air, either a muted chuckle or a scoff--I couldn’t tell if he was being appreciative or sarcastic. “I’m the same here as I am there,” he told me. “Same old Tripp. State lines don’t matter.”

“I’m so different at home,” I told him, slowly. The alcohol in me coaxed out the next part. “Why I didn’t want to go back.”

Tripp didn’t sense the poignancy of such a statement--or the drunken maudlin of such a statement, rather.

“Oh, you’re crazy,” he said, dismissively. “Adam Becker’s the same in Louisiana or Maryland, and Tripp Callender’s the same in Louisiana or Mississippi. People don’t change just because they’re in a different building.”

Well, obviously, not in so many words people didn’t change, but I wondered what Tripp would think if he had met Peter Becker, a year ago. And maybe things would’ve clicked, maybe it would’ve been the same. At Harrington, I was well-liked; I wasn’t some social outcast. I had my friends, I had debate, I had enough. I couldn’t imagine me being different around Tripp, at any rate.

“Yeah, well,” I said. “I’m cooler in New Orleans.”

“Well, we’re all cooler,” he replied, with a smirk, refilling our dixie cups with more vodka. “My parents are pretty good about stuff, but if they knew half the shit we did at school, they’d have me living at home and going to Mississippi Gulf Coast Community College.” He took a small sip of vodka, winced a bit. “Like Davis is going to be in two years.”

“You’ll just have to go on more boat parties, then,” I said.

He sighed. “I really didn’t drink in high school,” he said, slowly, his voice quiet, like this was some big admission. “We’d go out on a boat or go to a house party or something, and I’d open a beer and just hold it.” He shook his head, mournfully. “I’d go to the bathroom every so often and pour some down the sink, so it looked like I was drinking. Isn’t that pathetic?”

Erik might’ve thought it was pathetic, but pathetic was not even going to a party where you would’ve had the opportunity to even hold a beer. But I wasn’t sure I was going to tell Tripp that, so I just shrugged as if maybe I did think he was pathetic, but then I felt like I should tell him that, and maybe it was the vodka, after all the wine with dinner, but I found myself saying, “I didn’t even get invited to parties.”

And I waited for I didn’t even know what. Tripp to change? I didn’t think he’d change. He had an idea of my life at the Harrington School, even if I wasn’t so explicit.

“Please,” he replied, with an eyeroll. “You?”

And he said nothing more on the topic, which I guess I appreciated.

Maybe he was right. Me. He didn’t know me at Harrington, but Peter Becker, Adam Becker, weren’t actually distinct people--they weren’t even two sides of me, just two moodswings, maybe one boozier than the other, one more comfortable than the other. There hadn’t been some seismic change, some life defining event; at some point, I just decided screw it at Tulane--be better. And I was. And it was that easy, really.

“We need a toast,” I said, finally, now that Tripp was pouring a third shot. “To what?”

“Your toast,” he replied. “What do you want to toast?”

And I couldn’t think of a thing. I could think of a lot of things, but I couldn’t think of one single thing, so I just said, “To Tripp and Adam.”

"To Tadam,” Tripp compacted.

"Not Adipp?"

Tripp spat out some laughter, bit his lip, smacked his dixie cup against mine. “Beckender.”

“That’s going to catch on,” I told him, taking a sip. “Just wait.”