Travels with Penny: True Tales of a Gay Guy and His Mother (11 page)

The cruise ended much too early for us. It felt as if no sooner did we settle back with our wine than the boat sidled up to the dock and stopped.

By the time we returned to our hotel, the other two had eaten and were now sitting in the girl’s hotel room with a glass of wine in their hands, getting a head start on the nightly buzz. They didn’t ask about the trip, nor if we enjoyed ourselves, and we didn’t volunteer information.

That night, the other two and I hiked over to the red light district without Mom. I realize that one should see it for the bragging rights of saying, “I went to the red light district,” but it could just as easily be seen in a well-made documentary. The streets of the red light district aren’t walled off, gated, guarded or monitored by attack dogs to prevent naïve tourists and innocent children from wandering into the den of carnal lust (as so many pious religious fanatics in America want you to believe). Rather than a maze of sordid, seedy alleyways winding through the landscape of the seven deadly sins, the red light district is a well-kept, clean and inviting cluster of five city blocks that sport wide streets filled with pedestrians. The buildings look similar to many other buildings on many other city blocks, only instead of large display windows featuring plastic mannequins clothed in overpriced clothes made in third world countries by slave labor, there are large display windows featuring real women clothed in sexually provocative lingerie. I like to think of it as Victoria’s-Secret-meets-Disneyland. Minus the silly mouse ears. In America, the red light district would never survive. It would be deemed a surefire sign of the coming apocalypse and the streets would be picketed by prominent heads of church, hell-bent on denying that any God-fearing, church-going American ever had a lustful thought. Ironically, if this same district were assigned a TV crew, on-screen host and an hour of prime time, American networks would call it reality drama and show it along with a slew of ads about erectile dysfunction. Overnight we’d have a fleet of planes filled with curious tourists flying out of cornfields all over the Midwest, bound for this “new and undiscovered” slice of sin. America. Go figure.

To ensure the attention of the pedestrian traffic is on the women and not the historic buildings or hash bars, the large picture windows are outlined with a string of tubing that houses red neon lights. Behind that glass, framed by red lights, are small 10x10 rooms that contain a couple of chairs, a small table and a bed. Hanging out in these doll-like rooms are gorgeous women who sit behind the thick panes of glass and knit. Or read. Or smile and wave to the tourists with coy smiles that look suspiciously like Miss America contestants. It’s all very
Mayberry RFD
-ish. It’s as if you could walk right into the pseudo-living room with a cup of coffee and a box of cookies and chat about who’s going to win
American Idol
this season. The only hint of the room’s true purpose was when, as if by a psychic signal, the woman would stand up, pull on a cord and thick, red velvet curtains would close, cutting off the public’s view. There was no siren, flashing lights or other Hollywood-esque fanfare. Rather anti-climatic, really.

In retrospect, I wonder what all the fuss was about. The women looked happy to have the chance to catch up on their reading or to complete those socks they were knitting; the streets around the zone were safe, well lit and filled with polite people; the area coffee shops seemed to be doing a bang-up job of perpetuating capitalism, and everyone seemed content with life.

Those crazy Europeans.

* * *

“I don’t want you to be upset,” I said to Mom, examining her face for any signs of disappointment. That’s the thing about mothers—regardless of your age, gender or sexual orientation, they have the power to take you from feeling ecstatic to piece-of-crap-traitor in six seconds.

“I’m not upset,” she said, totally expressionless.

“It’s just that I really want to take a bike ride and Amsterdam is so bike friendly—” Mom didn’t let me finish.

“Go. Go. I’ll stay here, rest and read a book. I’m easy. I ain’t cheap, but I’m easy.”

“I feel so guilty, though. I told Dad I would take care of you—”

She rolled her eyes. “Tough toenails, Tony. Who’s taking care of him?”

I thought about this for a minute. “Considering he’s home alone and you’re in Amsterdam hanging out in hash bars … ”

She shooed me towards the door while I continued looking for signs of the Mom Lie—that look a mom gets when she tells her children what she thinks the children want to hear. Most of the time, mothers get away with great Mom Lies, as they’ve been programming their offspring since birth and know every button to push. Sometimes it backfires, though, like in the case of an actor friend of mine, a guy who came from a family so dysfunctional, he could not only identify which things his mother said were a lie, but could describe the facial tick that gave her away. I told him once that his upbringing must have been hell. He disagreed.

“Why do you think I’m such a great sign language interpreter? Passive-aggressive people may be dysfunctional, but it’s a hell of a breeding ground for forensic detectives and mimes.”

I deduced Mom was telling me the truth. Either she really didn’t mind me dumping her so I could aimlessly scour the streets of a foreign city looking for a bike rental, or she has a face that would win the World Poker Tour.

“Okay,” I said finally, figuring that if she really did have that great of a poker face, she would have worked for a Las Vegas casino rather than the phone company for twenty years. “But don’t leave the hotel.”

“What am I? Twelve?”

“No, but I don’t want to be the one to tell Dad that you were raped and murdered in Amsterdam because I let you out of the hotel without an escort.”

She sighed and rolled her eyes. She opened her mouth to protest again, but I pulled the Son Card. The Son Card is a close relative of the Mom Lie, in that it is aimed to comfort the other person. But while the Mom Lie is just that, a lie, the Son Card is more of an adolescent visual whine that enables a son to manipulate a mom into doing a whole variety of things from lending money for some ridiculous frivolity to not telling dad that the dent in the car was done by the son (not that I have any personal experience of this). I knew using the Son Card was iffy at best, as Mom is impervious to both manipulation and blatant displays of sympathy solicitation, but occasionally it works. Once I brought her chocolate from Chicago’s Marshall Fields, and as I handed the gift to her, she asked, “Oh, great. What did you do now?”

That night, I’d either hit her at a weak moment, she was feeling particularly nostalgic or she was tired.

“I’m fine,” she agreed. “I’ll stay here and read and relax.” She shrugged. “I’m easy. I ain’t cheap, but I’m easy. Go pedal your ass around Amsterdam.”

So we left Mom to her own devices in the hotel room, grabbed our water bottles and headed out to find a bicycle rental place. This was about four in the afternoon. We had no map, but we did have a vague sense of the bike shop being about a mile in a north-easterly direction. We were right, too, as the bike shop was less than a mile from the hotel. And it was in a north-easterly direction. And the bike shop rented with a one hour minimum. Too bad it took us over an hour to find it. I was so caught up in the ambiance of Amsterdam that I had forgotten a key component to maneuvering the city: It’s not laid out in a grid. So there I was, wandering around Amsterdam with no ability to speak Dutch, German, French or Spanish, no map, and trying to find my way around blocks in a city that had no blocks.

We returned to the hotel about seven that evening, exhausted from walking two or three miles only to bike several more. We dragged ourselves up the stairs, our leg muscles screaming, shirts damp with sweat, stomachs growling and annoyed at ourselves for leaving without so much as the hotel’s phone number, or the word for “map” in Dutch. We stumbled back to the hotel where we found Mom stretched out on the couch in her nightgown. Candles illuminated the room, giving it a soft, peaceful ambiance and filling the air with a hint of lavender and vanilla. She was reading a book with a glass of wine in her hand and a bag of chocolates in her lap.

“Have fun?” she asked, turning down the television.

I related the tale to her with excruciating detail. In truth, I went on a bit too long about riding the wrong way on a one-way street and nearly being plowed down by cars, but I didn’t want her to feel bad about being dumped for the evening.

“I went for a walk,” she told me when I finished my tale.

“Mom, damn it, I asked you not to!”

“I knew you’d be upset, that’s why I waited for you to get out of sight before I left the hotel.”

“You snuck out?”

“It’s my vacation, too.”

“What if—”

“What if nothing.” Mom waved me off. “Will you stop worrying and relax? Jesus Christ Almighty.”

“Okay. As of now, I’m worry-free. I’m hungry. Where do you want to go for dinner?” I asked. A shower and some food would was long overdue.

“Already taken care of,” Mom said. “Here, hold my wine.” I did and she trotted over to the corner and retrieved a huge paper sack. She carried it to the small coffee table and began hoisting food out of the bag. Soon we had a spread of cheese, fruit, bread and potato chips.

“I went past this adorable store and decided to pick us up something to eat.”

“Apparently,” I said, digging in.

“I figured you’d probably be a while and would be too tired to go out.” She settled back into the couch. “Then, on the way back, I passed a wine store and picked up this delicious bottle of wine. Then I found a candy store.” She threw a small bag onto the table. “I picked up a piece for all of you. I ate mine already.”

“Did you have supper?”

“Oh, yeah!” She gestured to the trash. “I bought myself some stuff from the deli. I took a bubble bath, lit some candles and kicked back with this wine, chocolate and a good book.” She shrugged. “Now I feel clean, fresh and relaxed.”

“So while we were wandering the city, going the wrong way on one-way streets and getting lost, you were eating bon-bons and drinking wine.”

“Glad we all had a good time,” she said, popping more chocolate into her mouth. “See? Everything always works out.”

“Yeah,” I said.

“Go take a shower. You look dirty and sweaty.”

As I headed back to my room, she said, “I’m glad I stayed behind; my foot was starting to hurt. Besides, I would have missed the chocolate.”

I looked at her closely. I had to admit—I hadn’t a clue as to whether this was a Mom Lie or not. I guess age really does pay off in the long run. Old people have had more time to perfect the poker face.

MANY YEARS
AGO
, I heard a story about scientists experimenting with frogs. The story goes like this:

A group of scientists studying frog behavior placed a frog in a petri dish. As long as it was not directly threatened, the frog sat quietly on its little glass lily pad. Then the petri was placed over a flame. Still, the frog sat, contemplating its little froggy life. Although the heat intensified, the frog remained unmoving in its familiar surroundings. The scientists watched as the frog slowly cooked, until finally, one of the scientists thumped the dish—one hopes out of an altruistic desire to save the creature and not out of his/her hatred of broiled frog legs for dinner. Only then did the frog leap from the dish. The scientists hypothesized that only when sudden, unexpected forces intrude upon our otherwise peaceful lives do creatures move to save themselves.

I can’t verify this story, but since hearing it, my life has made a hell of a lot more sense. It helps me understand how people put up with bad jobs; it sheds light on those pathetic marriages where both people are miserable, yet still stay together. It explains why a friend of mine invited me to dinner and in the middle of the Chocolate Decadent Surprise, she blurted out, “I knew it! I just knew he was sleeping around!” and “I
knew
something was going on! Why am I so gullible? Why didn’t I break up with him when you told me to?”

What could I say? I told you so? Or spew some pithy line like “Love is blind”?

Anyone who has ever looked back on their past, slapped themselves on the forehead and screamed, “Why am I such an idiot?” never fear. You’re not an idiot. Regardless of that gnawing can’t-get-this-out-of-my-mind suspicion churning in your gut; regardless of the fact that friends descend upon us for a “relationship intervention” (complete with photos of the lying bastard and sworn testimony from the floozies he’s been screwing), people generally won’t face the truth if the truth is emotionally painful. Most people endure relationship torture with a stoicism that’s the envy of U.S. Marines.

So if you’re one of those people who’s ever looked facts in the face and said, “Ha! I smite thee down, facts! I will believe what I choose to believe, despite all logic to the contrary, for I am comfortable in my petri dish! Sure, it’s a bit more humid than yesterday, but that’s just global warming!” Don’t kick yourself over your naïvety. It’s human nature (actually frog nature, but who’s fact-checking?) to adapt to anything “different.” Just like when we fall in love so hard that we ignore the sociopathic, insane things our lovers do. (Remember: Even Hitler had a wife.)

My hobby is watching people. Over the years I’ve learned that humans want the things we love to stay with us. We fight like angry pitbulls to make sure the things we love never go away. But at some point, we’re all going to get our dish thumped; hopefully it’s before we sizzle like a frog over a Bunsen burner.

So on August 1, 2007, when I held my cell phone to my ear and heard my sister mumble the words, “Are you alone?” I felt my own little petri dish tremble and the heat increase. I somehow knew in my gut that Dad was dead, but I didn’t want to believe it. So I didn’t.

For a few minutes, denial worked great, until she thumped the dish so hard, I felt my gut fly across the room.

“Yes,” I said.

“Dad’s dead,” she told me. Her voice sounded strained, as if she were on an emotional precipice ready to fall into the abyss.

I don’t know exactly how long I lingered in my 8x8 cubicle in the call center, but in all likelihood it was only a few minutes. As I sat there, the truth of what she had just said sunk into me. Dad’s dead. My petri dish had been thumped.

Ice crawled down my spine and I shivered. I tried to suck in air, but my lungs weren’t working. I tried to speak, but my mouth refused to function. When I felt I could breathe again without fear of vomiting, I cleared my throat.

“Ummma, wumma, wow, dingly-dang.”

A rush of nonsensical noise shot out of my mouth instead of the words I’d intended to say. The more I tried to speak, the more I sounded broken, like the treasured heirloom of your mother’s that you break and super glue back together, thinking nobody will notice. Which I know nothing about, by the way.

Miraculously, my sister understood my gibberish as actual English sentences.

“Heart attack. In the garage,” her monotone voice responded.

“Umm...wazzie waddle ding dang.”

“I’ll pick you up at the airport. Let me know when the plane arrives.”

I hung up and stared at the cubicle’s divider. The fabric that covered the surface of the movable walls was composed of tightly woven threads of canvas. A million thin threads converging together to make something larger than themselves, a cover for a cheaply made, weak piece of furniture whose only purpose was to divide a group of people into individual units where they sat alone in front of a computer, close enough to hear the words of the other people, but cut off from them. Individual yet collective. Like Dad’s tools hanging in the garage above his workbench, each individual tool hanging from its own set of metal hooks—laid out so he could see in a glance what he had available to work with. What the hell were we going to do with his tools? I can’t even hammer a nail straight.

I calmly went downstairs, lit a cigarette and called my boss. I needed to have the week off for my father’s funeral, as he just died, you see. Do I have some leave time accumulated? Suddenly, I was in her office with her and another staff member, watching them move about the room speaking into the phone, whose long cord wound around them like a viper as they paced before me. My boss thrust a piece of paper into my hand and told me I had an airline reservation.

Suddenly, I was one hundred and twenty miles north, standing outside of my townhouse speaking to my neighbor. I asked her to watch my cat because I had to fly to Tennessee; my dad just died, you see, so I couldn’t feed the cat for a week or so and someone needed to feed her or she’d die. Would that be too much trouble? Then I was at the airport. Instantly, I found myself in Nashville and my sister was waiting for me outside of the baggage claim in her huge-ass, gas-guzzling SUV. Mom was in the front seat, talking about the warm weather, the possibility of rain tomorrow and, oh, by the way, how was your flight?

“Winnie winnie zip zang.”

Mom launched into a monologue, lasting all the way from the Nashville airport to my sister’s house. Her voice sounded normal to me; she didn’t have the speech defect I was suffering from. In fact, she seemed in control to the point of normality. Why wasn’t she a babbling blob of tears, when I was such a mess? I hadn’t been able to go longer than a couple of hours without tearing up, and here Mom was making complete sentences and not another wet eye in the house. Dad just died, for crying out loud. You found him lying on the cement floor of the garage. You bent to shake him and saw that his lips were blue. You were the one to follow the directions of 9-1-1 and give him mouth-to-mouth, to no avail. You did all of this, and now you sit in the front seat of a car chatting about the weather? What is wrong with you?

What was wrong with me? This flicker of self-doubt fluttered around my mind a few times and then settled nicely into a previously clean corner of my mind and began eating away at my brain. Something must be wrong with me. Death is a reality, just another step on the journey of life. Why couldn’t I accept it? There must be something amiss with my emotional development when an adult male who has lived on his own for over twenty years is suddenly hobbled by a natural occurrence. Dad always said to take care of her, she was my responsibility, but she apparently wasn’t the one who’d needed help. It was him all along, and somehow I missed that. I fell for the smoke screen and mistook his “Watch out for her” at face value and did so, when I should have been watching out for him, too. I watched Mom speaking, heard the words coming out of her mouth, but was unable to respond. My arm wouldn’t work. It remained frozen at my side, unable to process the simple commands my brain shot its way. Because it finally hit me that when I, too, die, my friends would be driving to my cremation, babbling away about God-knows-what just like we were now. Is that what I wanted? Is that what my life would amount to—a group of people babbling about the weather, the possibility of rain and, oh, yeah, how was your flight? This is what it’s all about?

I heard silence and realized Mom had just asked me a question.

“Whuzzz bgt fthlmmph,” I responded.

“Oh, good,” Mom said.

Then we all sat in silence.