The Year I Stopped Being Invisible - 13. Chapter 13

I had gone to bed early on Saturday night, the events of the day -- and, indeed, the past week -- having overwhelmed me enough that I was asleep almost as soon as my head hit the pillow. That being the case, I was unfortunately awake at the crack of dawn on Sunday, even though it wasn't a school day.

It was, of course, never too early for Rex, and as I padded groggily into the kitchen, Foxy scampering alongside, I saw that he had already finished the Sunday paper and was busily at work on the biggest crossword puzzle of the week.

"Morning, Rex," I muttered as I went to pour my morning coffee.

"Morning, Whod," he replied, casually enough.

As I turned away from the coffeepot to face him, however, I saw that he had removed his glasses, set down his crossword puzzle, and was looking at me intently. I came over to the table, sat down my cup, and took my chair opposite his, knowing something was up.

"So," he said at last, "when did you start smoking cigarettes?"

Oh, God, I thought, shit is gonna hit the fan now.

I studied his azure-colored eyes, which peered from beneath a shiny bald head over a prominent, hawk-like nose, past battle-scarred cheeks, and directly into my soul. I knew there was no way of lying to him that wouldn't get me in deeper trouble than I already was, so I just looked at him and asked, "How did you know?"

Rex ran a large hand over his shiny pate, shaking his head and smirking as he looked back at me.

"Your mother has a nose, you know," he said. "Also, you left a shirt in the laundry with bits of tobacco in the pocket. It doesn't take a genius."

I shrugged, my eyes downcast to the table. Neither Rex nor Tynah had ever hit me, but I had been conditioned for many years never to make eye contact when I was being scolded for fear of arousing my ex-mother's wrath. Rex got up from the table and went to a cabinet over the coffeepot. I risked a sidelong glance just in time to catch a flying pack of cigarettes.

Surprised, I looked up to see Rex standing by the open cabinet holding his carton of cigarettes in his hand. He replaced the carton in the cabinet and came back over to the table. As he sat, he slid his lighter toward me and centered his ashtray between us.

"Go ahead," he said. "Smoke up. We'll both get cancer together."

I was a little unsure as to what I should do at that moment. Was it really okay to light a cigarette, or was it some kind of trap that would get me grounded for a month?

Rex replaced his glasses on the bridge of his nose and returned to his crossword puzzle, so I lit up, drank my coffee and read the Sports section, feeling like I was sharing a grown-up moment with my new Dad.

That was when Tynah entered the kitchen, dressed in her usual sleepwear of a flowing flower-print caftan. As she entered the room, she stopped for a moment, looked at Rex and me smoking cigarettes and drinking coffee, then continued to pour her own cup. She glanced over her shoulder at us, took her coffee, and went back down the hall toward the bedroom to perform her morning routine.

I wrinkled my brow, looking at Rex, who was peering back at me over his glasses with an amused glint in his eyes.

"Am I in trouble?" I asked.

"Beats the shit out of me," he replied. "Wait and see."

I nodded, finished my cigarette, and stubbed it out in the ashtray. Downing the rest of my coffee, I went to go rinse the cup in the sink. When I had dried the cup and replaced it in the cupboard, I started to go back to my room to get dressed. As I left the kitchen, I heard Rex's voice behind me, causing me to turn around.

"I saw your underwear, too," he said. "There's some Preparation H in my medicine cabinet. It's nothing to be ashamed of, happens all the time. Just maybe ease up on the bike riding, huh?"

I felt a hot flush burning my cheeks, but decided it was best to simply nod and leave the room.

Oh...my...God..., I was thinking as I hurried down the hall to my bedroom. Before I managed to get inside and bury my face in the pillow in embarrassment, I felt Tynah's arm grab my elbow from the side hallway. I stopped, expecting my already traumatic morning to get exponentially worse.

"I see you're smoking now," she said, her voice serious and stern. "I don't approve, but I'm not going to stop you. I only have two rules. Rule One is that you never smoke in bed, or when you're lying on the couch. If you have a cigarette lit, you are to be sitting upright and awake. Rule Two is that you never smoke in your room, where I can't keep an eye on you to see if you're breaking Rule One. You're not going to burn the house down because you fall asleep with a cigarette in your hand. Are we clear?"

I answered, "Yes, ma'am!"

"Good." She smiled and patted my arm, then turned in a swirl of caftan and retreated down the hall, calling behind her in a sing-songy voice, "Have a nice dayyyy!"

I chuckled and entered my room. Tynah was weird, but a good kind of weird. For all of her eccentricities, I felt like I had definitely traded up in the Mom department.

* * * * *

After getting dressed and moping about Taine, Kathy, Mark and Jeff for a while, I decided to run through Titanic a few times and catch up on my homework from my other classes. I figured if I was up this early, I might as well be productive.

As I struggled through some Algebra problems, still not quite grasping exactly what the point of all those x's and y's were, I half-watched the morning sports preview show on TV, which was discussing that day's game between my favorite team, the Los Angeles Raiders, and Rex's favorite team, the Philadelphia Eagles.

The Raiders had ended their twenty years in Oakland on a triumphant note the previous January, beating the Eagles 27-10 in Super Bowl XV. This would be the first rematch between the two teams since that game, and Rex and I had a bet on the outcome which involved deciding which one of us would be the lucky guy to mow our expansive front and back yards for the next month.

Rex didn't bet on games often, but when he did, he went for the throat.

After I finished my homework, I went out into the living room to join Rex in front of the television. Tynah had already left for church, and I found that the guest ashtray had been placed on an end table next to the couch. Rex always got the La-Z-Boy for big games. As the pregame show focused on some lame human-interest story about one of the players' kids or dogs or something, Rex and I lit cigarettes and he turned down the volume on the TV.

"So what the fuck is going on, Whod?" Rex asked.

"What do you mean?"

"I mean, Taine spends the night over here and leaves early, barricades himself in his house and won't answer the door. Then you spend the night over there and sneak back in here in the middle of the night. Now I haven't seen hide nor hair of him since. Then you go to this party on Friday and all your clothes reek of cigarettes and pot."

He paused to take in my shocked expression, then grinned.

"I commanded troops in Vietnam," he said. "I know what pot smells like. I knew my men were smoking it, so I had them bring me some so I could see what all the hoopla was about."

I looked at him expectantly, but he merely shrugged.

"Didn't do anything for me," he said. "Gave me a headache. But this one you better not let Mommy find out about. And if I see your grades start to fall, we're going to have a talk."

I nodded with a serious expression.

"I didn't like it much either," I said, truthfully.

"Good," he said, and pointed the remote control back at the TV. Before he turned up the volume, he said, "I'm not going to tell you how to run your life, but Sly Maxwell tells me that Taine has been moping around almost as much as you have. Not that it's really easy to tell with that one."

"You think I should go talk to him," I asked, hoping for an outside reason to do what I had been aching to do since Thursday night.

Rex shrugged and raised the volume on the TV.

"You can't do it today," he said. "Sly took him to the racetrack to watch him do laps. He says it's the only way the kid will do his homework."

"Oh," I said, trying not to let the disappointment show in my voice.

Rex said nothing, only sipped his beer as the game started and we were carried away by our teams.

* * * * *

When the game was over, it had been determined that I would be mowing the lawn for a few weeks, so I went out to get started. I never minded mowing the lawn, although it took forever, because it gave me time to think, the low roar of the motor allowing me to concentrate on my thoughts without distraction.

What I was thinking about, of course, was the past week. I had met a perfect angel, someone I knew deep inside was my one and only soulmate, and he had rejected me twice. I had gone on a real "big kids party," only to do a lot of things I didn't really want to do, and which left me feeling empty inside. I had experienced all kinds of sex with Kathy and Jeff, only to receive two more rejections, more emptiness, and a bloody asshole. It really hadn't been a great week.

Sure, I could have looked on the bright side, but that was against my nature. Instead, I looked at everything in the worst possible light, and it was from these dark tunnels that I found my determination. I had learned some things about myself, even at my young age, and one of them was that when I felt the most boxed in and hopeless, my tears and self-pity dried up and I got in touch with my inner strength.

By the time I had finished mowing the lawn and bagged the grass clippings, I had made some decisions. One was that I was going to stop moping around like a wuss and do my best to enjoy Polk and tournament season on my own.

Two was that I didn't need to let people like Mark, Kathy and Jeff pressure me into doing things I didn't want to do. I would make more of an effort to hang around people like Carter, Kirsten and Linda. People who liked me for who I was, and weren't just going to use me and cast me aside.

Three was that I was probably full of shit about the first two, but I would do my best to pretend to myself that I wasn't and would give it the old college try.

I went into the side door of the garage and stripped to my briefs, tossing my clothes in the washer, and then went back outside to rinse the remaining grass dust and clippings from my skin with a garden hose. There was a private area between the side garage door and our tall hedges where I could rinse off without being seen by anyone outside. As I finished rinsing off and went back in the garage to towel myself dry, Rex came outside with two beers and handed me one.

"Here," he said. "Drink this. It'll put hair on your balls."

I figured I needed some of that, and I was pretty thirsty besides, so I eagerly downed the beer as Rex went outside to inspect my mowing handiwork. While he was outside, I dropped my wet briefs and threw them in the washer, finished toweling off, and put on fresh clothes, which I had left folded atop the dryer before starting my chore. I had just gotten dressed when Rex came back in the garage, nodding his head.

"Mighty fine work there, Whod," he said. Then he came over and put a hand on my shoulder. "You know, Rick, if you're waiting for that kid to come over and talk to you, you're going to have a long wait. You're going to have to be a man about this and go talk to him."

With that, Rex went back inside the house. I finished my beer and thought about what he said. Be the man. I wonder if he knew he was suggesting that to someone who was in love with one boy and had just been buttfucked bloody by another. Sure, Rex was cool about smoking, beer, and even pot, but he was a veteran of three wars, tough as nails, and a real he-man. I wondered what he would do if he found out.

Then I started thinking again about the decisions I had made. Not moping around would be easy, because -- at least for the moment -- I was full of newfound determination. I would be ready for school in the morning and the tournament on Friday, and I was pretty sure I would try out for the Fall show, which would be that old school-play standby, Thornton Wilder's Our Town.

I was going to make it a good year from now on, and I would definitely try to spend more time with Carter and Linda and Kirsten. Well, not Kirsten.

I could see where my recent experiences and Kirsten's lip gloss would lead, and I didn't want any part of that. Okay, maybe a little, but what I really wanted for the moment was to make things right with Taine. And Rex was right: he wasn't going to come to me. I was going to have to be a man and go after him.

Come Hell or high water, Rex always said, a man sees what he wants and goes after it. He probably didn't mean for me to go after an angelic, shy straight boy whose hair was like silk, whose eyes were like multicolored diamonds, whose skin was like the finest white satin, and whose smile crossing his kissably perfect lips melted me into nothing and everything all at once.

But that's exactly what I was planning to do.