Missed Connections
Michael Salvatore
C
hristmas Eve. Those two words should have filled Theo with joy; they should have decked his halls and filled his head with visions of muscular, leotard-clad sugar plum fairies from an all-male touring company of
The Nutcracker
like they had since he was a little boy, but this year all they did was make him feel glum. No matter how hard he tried, he just couldn't muster up any Christmas spirit; it simply wasn't the holiday he had wished for.
Up until a few months ago he had been planning on doing something radical this year, something he had never done before, something he never thought he'd be brave enough to do: He had decided not to spend Christmas with his family. Instead, he was going to spend it at home with Neil and a small circle of friends. This year was going to be the year of the all-gay Christmas. But Neil had other plans.
Neil was Theo's partner, and it was a partnership Theo was convinced would last until death do they parted. But Theo, like so many homos who just want to be happy, ignored his unhappy reality and the oh-so-many clues that Neil dropped along the way during their tenure together, to convince himself that their relationship would last forever. As it turned out, their relationship, like an all-male touring company of
The Nutcracker,
lacked staying power.
First, he disregarded the fact that
partner
âthe word Neil chose to describe how he was connected to Theoâis simply an empty, unemotional word that means more stable than a boyfriend, but not as permanent as a husband. It's the perfect word for those who want to live in limbo.
Second, even though they had cohabitated for several years in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts and could, therefore, enter into a legally binding marriage contract, Neil considered a samesex marriage certificate contraband from Breederland and refused to partake in their age-old institution until, as he would often quoteâThe president of the United States of Gaymerica affords homosexuals the same right to marry as any other Homo sapiens. It was rhetoric that worked, and Theo believed his partner was political. The truth, however, was that Neil's rhetoric didn't stem from a political belief, but a biological one; he just didn't believe one homo should be legally bound to experience old age with only one other homo, whether that homo be sexual or sapien.
Finally, the third, and probably most damaging clue was that Neil had a lifetime subscription to Grindr. He was always logged on, at home, at work, in bed. Why should a man who is in an allegedly monogamous relationship need to have an app that gives him the ability to rendezvous randomly with the near and the non-ogamous? It's a question Theo only asked once while they were lying together in bed watching an
I Love Lucy
rerun. While two-thumb typing to some potentially two-timing guy who was currently a little over two hundred feet away, Neil replied, “I just like to know there are other gays nearby; it makes me feel connected to our community.”
While Ricky demanded Lucy 'splain how she had spent roughly half their community assets on a wild shopping spree, Theo sat less than two inches from his partner and didn't make any demands of his own. He didn't ask any more questions; he didn't demand that Neil 'splain why he didn't just join a political activist group to remain connected to the gay community or ask if he communed more frequently with the assholes on Grindr than with his. He didn't want to know the truth, so he did what he always did when he thought the truth could make him unhappy; he remained quiet. And as a result he remained in limbo.
Until of course Neil came home one day and called off their partnership, forcing him out of limbo and into reality. A few days later Theo called off their Christmas party. He hated to do it; he and his friends had been so thrilled knowing they were going to have a very homo and very local holiday and not have to hop on a plane to visit family to be part of
their
celebration, how nice it was going to be to have a gay gala they could call their own. But as disappointing as it was, it was an easy decision to make. Being the only single man sitting around his family's table would be depressing enough, but being the only single man at a gathering of paired-up gays would make Theo want to play the role of George Bailey in the remake of
It's a Wonderful Life
. Though in this version he would insist there be no happy ending, no restitution; no bell would ring, and prissy Clarence would have to get his wings by saving some other loser from committing suicide. Theo would be swan diving off the bridge to his death.
And that's why Theo found himself spending the start of Christmas Eve where he didn't want to be, in an airport waiting for a connecting flight to bring him to his parents' home in Phoenix, Arizona, to spend Christmas in the sand. Like Jesus. But unlike Jesus he wasn't in a forgiving mood, and he resented having to leave his own home, take a cab to Logan Airport, catch one flight to St. Louis, and wait for another to bring him to his final destination. He resented having to spend all the extra money to fly west, money that he didn't want to spend now that he was no longer splitting rent on his luxury-priced, but definitely unluxurious one-bedroom apartment in Boston's gay South End. He resented the fact that his parents hadn't even asked why he and Neil had broken upâthey either assumed since he was gay it was an inevitability that their coupling would ultimately dissolve or it was because they had never really come to terms with the inevitability of their son's sexual persuasion. And most of all he resented Neil more than ever for turning back the clock and turning him back into what he never thought he'd be againâa single gay man forced to spend the holiday with his family because he didn't have a family of his own.
Of course some friends had pitivited him to celebrate Christmas with their families on the East Coast so he wouldn't have to travel as far, but he knew he couldn't accept; he couldn't be that mean-spirited and tell his mother that he would be spending the holiday with someone else's mother. Even though he made the choice out of guilt and not love, the guilt would still be too overwhelming. No, after thinking it over he realized he had no alternative, so he reluctantly agreed to do what he and Neil had agreed several months ago that they wouldn't do and booked a flight. Now, standing in a line at Lambert-St. Louis International Airport waiting to pass through the security gate, he regretted his decision. He was as miserable and unmerry as the wise man who unwisely agreed to bring Mary's newborn the gift of myrrh. It smelled almost as bad as resentment.
Twenty minutes later he was still waiting in line, still unmerry, still trying to push the smell of myrrh and resentment from his nostrils. With his carry-on bag snugly stuffed between his stocking feet, Theo cradled his loafers in the crook of his arm and flipped through the pages of a magazine in search of a celebrity who had been dumped, had stumbled into rehab, or had been photographed in the grocery store without make-up and looking like an ordinary person, anything to make himself feel better about his plight. His ploy backfired, and he was soon about to feel worse. He forgot that he had tried to get rid of his parents' Christmas card by stuffing it into the pages of the magazine.
No matter how many times Theo looked at the card he felt the same way: it wasn't right. Yes, it had a full-figured Santa Claus on the cover dressed in his de rigueur red pantsuit with fluffy white trim and wearing pseudo-masochistic black riding boots, yes he was standing in front of a two-story house decorated with two-hundred sparkling lights in two-dozen different and defiantly clashing colors, and yes, he was holding onto the rein that held onto a harness that was wrapped around the neck of one of his nine aviatrix reindeer. But even with all those iconographic graphical elements, Theo still felt the card looked as false and as fake as a Christmas tree that used the Star of David as its topper. It was all because of the damned cactus.
The red-clad Santa in the card wasn't captured frolicking in the middle of some winter wonderland; he was depicted in the middle of some sort of Death Valleyâesque desert with his pudgy arm draped around a plump cactus. When did Martha Stewart decide that cacti should replace poinsettias as traditional holiday foliage? Theo did not recall the woman's ever saying that. Silently, he reread the riddle on the front of the card: “How are Santa Claus and a cactus the same?” Then, mechanically he opened the card and silently reread the ridiculous punch line once moreâ“Because they're both surrounded by little pricks.”
The answer to the riddle was enhanced by the image of Santa Claus, dressed in the same gay apparel as on the front of the card, but now donning an undeniably un-gay expression. Santa was seething. He resembled a Caucasian Grinch before the epiphany, and he stood towering above a throng of naughty-looking elves, one of whom actually wore a red thong, revealed a bit too much elf-ass, and held onto the cactus like he was an expert North Pole-dancer. 'Tis the season to be inappropriate. But what made the card even more distasteful was his father's personal inscription.
Underneath the half-naked dancing elf, his father had written, “Looks like your mother entertaining the Rotary Club last Saturday night!” Oh comfort, oh joy. Ever since Theo's parents had retired and moved to an adult community complex in Phoenix, Arizona, from a suburb in northern New Jersey, his father had become one of those elders who has forgotten all about decorum, all about tradition, all about basic holiday principles; he'd turned into a senior citizen with seasonal dementia. Everyone knows that Santa Claus resides above the Arctic Circle, not south of the border. Everyone knows that he should only have his arm around Mrs. Claus or a frost-colored snowman and not a cactus. And everyone knows that elves should never, ever appear half-naked or as sexually active little people. Or be compared to someone's mother. Only the faithful should come, not a parent.
Disgusted, Theo folded the card and stuffed it back into the fold of the magazine, right in between a photo of two other sexually active little people, the Olson twins, then shoved the glossy rag into his bag. Even though the card was out of sight, he still felt out of sorts. Maybe it was because he had no sense of humor; Neil had accused him of that before. Or maybe it was because he was a prude and didn't want to entertain the concept that his parents could have an entertaining sex life. Or maybe it was simply because he was jealous of his parents' relationship, with or without the entertaining sex life.
Whoa Nellie! Could he really be jealous of his parents' happiness and close connection especially during this season of unending joy simply because Neil had made sure that his joy came to an end? Theo thought for a moment, he pondered, and then decided âwhy not'? They had what he was supposed to have, dammit, what he had thought he had until Neil dumped him, a string of memorable holidays that strung together would create a collection of holiday memories. But instead he had gotten a Labor Day that was work, a Halloween that wasn't happy, a Thanksgiving that was far from thankful, all disappointments because of Neil's disappointing decision. Now here he was on the threshold of what should be the most joyous two weeks of the yearâChristmas Eve, Christmas Day, and then the granddaddy of all celebrations, New Year's Eveâfeeling miserable, lonely, and definitely not filled with holiday cheer. How pathetic that the last enjoyable holiday he had spent was Ramadan. If he couldn't take his jealous, angry wrath out on Neil, his parents, like Mary, would be the perfect surrogates.
Startled, Theo almost dropped his loafers. Not because of his oafish, blasphemous thought, but because it appeared that by blasphemously invoking the name of the Blessed Mother, a blessed event was about to occur. Theo was next in line, and anxiety had shifted to excitement because the security guards were changing shifts. Gone was the burly Burl Ives clone and taking his place was a handsome, rugged-looking, forty-something man who looked like he could star as the widowed father wishing for a romantic miracle in a Lifetime TV Christmas Special. Solid as a fruitcake with probably the same IQ. Traveling was starting to get better.
The last time Theo flew was almost a year ago, before the bigwigs who created the national guidelines for airport security got together and decided that, thanks to unveiled threats from unscrupulous and probably unsanitary groups in, near, or connected to the Middle East, precautions needed to be upgraded to ensure the safety of American citizens who traveled by airplane. Passengers now had to allow themselves to be photographed by mutant digital cameras that took pictures that were a cross between X-rays and pornography; every item underneath the top layer of clothing, every piece of flesh, firm or flabby, every strand of hair, curly or straight, every orifice, clenched or relaxed, would be photographed and then viewed, inspected, and possibly ogled by an unidentified airport security worker sitting in a dark room that Theo imagined smelled like cigarette smoke and bleach. And if that wasn't disconcerting enough there was the pat down.
Those who refused to be photographed, lest the pictures of their love handles and other physical imperfections be catalogued for all eternity in a file labeled “Unphotogenic And / Or Simply Ugly American Travelers,” could choose to be manhandled by a stranger. This hands-on procedure was about one degree less invasive than a full cavity search, the only upshot being that there was no lingering photographic evidence to agonize the innocent. Sometimes, however, passengers didn't have a choice; sometimes they were picked at random to undergo this alternative security measure or, if like today, the super-duper, very expensive ultra X-ray machine was on the fritz. Today every traveler was going to receive a complimentary and extreme pat down. The skies were no longer friendly, but the welcoming party had just gotten a whole lot more sociable. And thanks to the shift change a whole lot more attractive as well.