King Geordi the Great Read online

  “Wait, wait a second,” said Toff, a look of pain and… something else suddenly crossing his face. “You don’t have to apologize. I shouldn’t have gotten so mad at you.”

  “No, it’s okay, man. You were right to be pissed off. You’re one of my closest friends, and I shouldn’t have kept that part of my life from you. But not telling you about being gay didn’t have anything to do with me not trusting you. It was about me. I’m still trying to figure all this stuff out, you know, trying to understand these feelings I’m having. And sometimes I feel some pretty weird stuff.” Like suddenly getting hot for Jake Butcher, but I didn’t want to say that to Toff. “My parents keep sticking their noses in all this, especially my dad, and that just complicates things for me and makes it so much harder. But I don’t want to make excuses. Not telling you was wrong, and I’m really sorry.”

  Now Toff looked as if he was about to cry or something. He blinked and shook his head.

  “Just don’t give up on me, okay,” I rambled on, afraid Toff had already decided to write off our friendship. Why else would he look so teary-eyed? “You’re a big part of my life, and I don’t want to lose that. Ever. I love you, man. I really do.”

  Toff’s eyes got wide, and he froze. Then he shot up from his chair so fast I thought something in the house had caught fire. I stood up too. Next moment he rushed around the table, and I was surprised to have his arms around me. I was even more surprised when Toff said, “Jesus, Geordi,” and squeezed his now tear-sparkled eyes shut and kissed me dead on the mouth.

  Huh? What?

  THE TERM “seismic shift” alludes to the severe and widespread destruction of the landscape brought about by a big earthquake. The phrase is often used to describe a sudden, profound, and far-reaching alteration of a particular state of affairs.

  Toff’s kiss was a seismic shift.

  Stunned is not strong enough to describe what that kiss did to me. I just stood there at first because my mind simply couldn’t process entirely what was happening. Gay. Toff is gay. After a few moments, the kiss going on and on with no end in sight, my senses started to register certain things. Toff’s lips felt warm and very soft. His skin smelled lemony, probably from the soap he used in his shower. His hair looked shiny and damp, a stunted, spiky brown forest sprouting over his scalp. And his mouth tasted of cool, snappy mint. Another feeling, vague and elusive, lurked below my senses.

  I also felt the passion behind the kiss, the strong emotion that powered it. I didn’t know what to make of that. It caused me more and more discomfort, however, as the kiss seemed to take on a life of its own. Toff was squeezing me hard in his arms. I wanted to push him away. I wanted him off me so I could catch my breath and figure out exactly what was happening here. But if I pushed him away, if that hurt his feelings…. No, I couldn’t hurt him again. I just couldn’t do that to him. I stood there and let the kiss go on.

  Finally Toff broke away and pushed himself back, holding me by the shoulders as he peered deeply into my eyes. He was smiling. His face, streaked with tears, looked as innocent and sweet as it did when we were seven.

  And I felt as dazed as if I’d been bashed in the head with a brick.

  “Geordi, I’m sorry too,” Toff said in a rushed and breathless voice. “I shouldn’t have gotten mad at you yesterday. I was hurt because I’ve had feelings for you for a whole year now, and I didn’t know, I didn’t have a clue, that you could feel the same way about me. So I didn’t say anything and just hoped the feelings would go away. But they didn’t, and they kept getting stronger until it hurt to be around you. And then yesterday, when I found out you were gay too, it made me angry to think of all the time that was lost when we could have maybe been closer. I wasn’t actually mad at you. I was angry with myself for not telling you way before yesterday how I felt about you. And now, to hear that you’re in love with me too….”

  Wait. What—?

  Before I could say or do anything, he pulled me in and kissed me again.

  Did I hear that right? Did Toff just say he was in love with me?

  Fresh tears streaming down his face, Toff laughed and mumbled in between kisses, “You’ve just made me so happy, Geordi. Nobody’s ever made me this happy.”

  Yup, he was in love with me.

  Dag.

  BAD THINGS happen to everybody; that’s just the way life goes. Jessica’s dad walked away from his family when she was twelve. That sucked, definitely, but you know what? The whole Sanchez family was in better shape after that departure, including Mr. Sanchez.

  The man was an alcoholic. I remember the first time I saw him, when I was nine, not long after Jess and I had become friends. We were in her living room on a cloudy Friday afternoon in October, lying on the floor and playing a game of Uno. We were loud and having fun, going “In your face!” or “Eat this!” every time we played a Draw Two, Reverse, Skip, or Draw Four card.

  Then Mr. Sanchez walked through the front door, and Jess went completely still. He drifted past us like a robot, leaving an acrid smell in his wake that I’d later come to call whiskey fumes. Jess gathered up the cards, as in game over. “We have to be quiet now.”

  Spunky. Mom said that was her impression of Jessica when I introduced them to each other. Nobody intimidated Jess. I didn’t even think Belle could have done that if she’d still been part of the neighborhood when Jess moved in. But Jess’s dad did it just by walking through the room. Now that was scary.

  None of my other friends were afraid of their parents. It made me afraid for Jess. “What’s wrong?” I asked.

  “If we stay in the house, we have to be quiet,” Jess replied. Her whole face had shut down, as blank as a television screen that had been turned off. Mr. Sanchez’s drunkenness sucked all the life out of her. “My dad doesn’t like to hear noise when….”

  “When what?” I asked, but Jess never answered. She didn’t have to. By the time I left her house that day, I’d learned that Mr. Sanchez couldn’t stand any noise when he was drunk. Noise made him pugnacious, made him go off like a cannon. But whether the noise was Jess and her brother talking loudly or the neighbor’s dog barking incessantly or a car horn blowing in the street, Mr. Sanchez always yelled and cussed at Mrs. Sanchez.

  After three years of that, Mrs. Sanchez finally got fed up and told her husband to leave. Mr. Sanchez didn’t put up any resistance. Mrs. Sanchez told him all the cussing and yelling wasn’t good for their children, and Mr. Sanchez loved his children more than anything. So despite having a belligerent drunk for a father, Jess at least knew her dad gave a damn about her.

  Toff wasn’t so lucky.

  Toff’s mother died in a traffic accident; he was only two years old at the time. She was in the passenger seat when Mr. Toffler drove their car into the path of a freight train. It was night, the crossing gates and lights malfunctioned, and Mr. Toffler didn’t know the train was approaching. The impact crushed the passenger side and shoved the car half a mile down the track before the engineer could stop the train. Toff learned all this from newspaper accounts of the accident. His father never talked to him about it.

  Toff said he doesn’t remember his mom at all. His father never told him anything about her, even when he begged, even when he cried and cussed and demanded to know. Toff thought his dad did cocaine for years after his mother died. He remembered seeing his dad sniff white powder off the back of his hand. At the time Toff thought the powder was medicine because the only times his father seemed to brighten up and come alive was after he’d had a snort. A few years ago, Toff’s dad sent him off to live with a cousin—now deceased—in Portland for six months. Toff was sure his dad was in rehab during that time. After he returned home, Toff never saw his dad snorting white powder again. He also never saw his dad energized again.

  Mr. Toffler seemed distracted, his mind working perpetually away at a problem that could never be solved. He kept food in the house, paid the light, gas, and water bills on time, provided clothes for Toff. If Toff asked for something speci
fic—art supplies, new shoes, a solar system model for a school project, money for the movies—Mr. Toffler gave it to him. But he never gave Toff what Toff wanted most.

  Attention.

  For everything outside of his material needs, Toff had to find a surrogate. His dad just didn’t work that way.

  My dad taught Toff how to ride a bike, picked him up when he fell, bandaged his wounds, and patted him on the back.

  My mom helped Toff with his homework and school projects, comforted him when he was sad or afraid, and told him what a smart boy he was.

  Mrs. Sanchez answered Toff’s questions about life, love, and sex, showed him how to make his favorite sandwich (the BLT), and taught him how to tie a four-in-hand knot for our middle-school graduation ceremony.

  Toff tried mightily to make a connection with his dad. At first it was because he really wanted the man to be proud of him. But it got to a point where he would have settled for having his dad just freaking notice him. In school he worked hard and brought home straight As. Not that it meant shit to his father.

  The first grading period when we were in fourth grade is a perfect example of what I mean. Toff and I walked home from school the day report cards went out, and I could see the hope in his face. Mr. Toffler was sitting in the chair in the living room with the newspaper open on his lap, staring at the wall. His gaze shifted to the paper when Toff and I walked in, as if he’d been reading all along.

  “Hi, Dad.” Hope sent a shaky smile spreading across Toff’s face.

  “Hi, Sandor. Hello, Geordi.” Mr. Toffler’s voice was about as lively as a broken toaster. It gave me a bad feeling for Toff. I could see it as plainly as writing on a chalkboard; nothing good was coming out of this.

  “Guess what, Dad. It’s report card day.” Toff put down his backpack, ran over to his dad’s chair, and grabbed his dad’s cell phone from the table. He was about to pull up email when his dad reached out and, without a word, took the phone from him.

  Toff’s hopeful smile faded. His voice got quiet. “But… I want you to see my report card, Dad.”

  “Not now,” Mr. Toffler said.

  “I got As in everything. Everything. And Mrs. Tripplehorne says I’m one of the best students she’s got. She says it right there on the report card. You gotta see it.”

  “There’s egg salad in the fridge,” Mr. Toffler replied, apparently having an entirely different conversation. “You can make yourself a sandwich for dinner.”

  I still remember the look of hurt on Toff’s face.

  He did that for years, personally showing—or trying to, anyway—his dad every report card the teachers emailed because otherwise his dad would never open them. He might as well have shown his grades to a wall.

  When good grades didn’t get him what he wanted, Toff got mad and stopped everything: studying, turning in homework, taking tests. He even quit the basketball team, which he’d just made only a few months earlier. His grades dropped so drastically the teachers called his dad to express their concerns directly. Mr. Toffler didn’t get angry, didn’t demand to know what the hell was going on with Toff, didn’t tell him those grades better come up or else. He just hung up after each call and let his mind wander back into its faraway mode. It was my mom who got upset with Toff, told him he was letting himself down, that doing his best was more important than anything his father did or did not do. It was my mom who got him to bring his grades up again.

  But the saddest thing that happened to Toff after the death of his mother was this: Last year, in May, Toff, Jess, and I were walking home from the movie theater in Overton Square when we spotted two old men eating bread and fruit from the dumpster behind the neighborhood supermarket. Jess walked right up and asked why they were doing that. We learned that the shelter where the men took refuge occasionally had run short of funds and correspondingly cut meals for its residents down to one a day. The men took food from the dumpster to make up for the two meals they’d lost.

  Jess talked to the supermarket’s manager. The produce and bread in the dumpster wasn’t moldy or rotten or anything. The items had just reached the limit set by the store’s freshness guidelines without selling and were discarded. Jess then talked with the director of the homeless shelter and the store manager on a three-way call and worked out an agreement to send the store’s outdated bread, fruits, and vegetables to the shelter. Toff organized a car wash at one of the gas stations on Union Avenue with me, Jess, and some of the other kids from school. That car wash raised almost a thousand dollars for the homeless shelter.

  Jess’s and Toff’s efforts caught the attention of the media and the mayor. The mayor set up a ceremony at city hall to honor all the kids who worked to help the shelter. Jess and Toff were singled out for leading the charge. Toff told his dad and begged him to come. Mr. and Mrs. Sanchez were there, together, even though they were divorced by that time. My mom and dad were there. All the other kids’ parents were there. Even the school principal and several of our teachers were there.

  But not Mr. Toffler.

  Toff came home with me after the ceremony because he couldn’t stand to go to his own house. He went straight to the patio where he stood in his suit and four-in-hand tie, staring out into the backyard as he held his Certificate of Appreciation for Meritorious Service to the Citizens of Memphis loosely in his left hand. I walked out there and stood next to him. I could tell he was hurt, and I didn’t want him to be alone. I didn’t have a clue what to say to the guy and was incapable of taking away his pain, but I could at least make damn sure he knew he wasn’t alone.

  “Nothing I do matters,” he said.

  “That’s not true, Toff, and you know it.”

  “Nothing I do matters to him.” The certificate slipped from his fingers and blew across the lawn in the wind. In this very quiet voice, Toff said, “You know, Geordi, sometimes I wish my dad would just die.”

  “Don’t say that!”

  “He might as well be dead. He sure as shit isn’t living. And I’m alone whether he’s there or not.” Toff started crying, his weeping soft and almost silent. I sat down on the patio with him and held my arm around his shoulders, and he cried for a very long time.

  THAT WAS then. Now I stood in Toff’s kitchen Sunday morning and let him kiss me and hug me and kiss me some more. He stopped only when smoke began to roll up from the stove.

  “Oh shit! I’m burning the bacon.” He dashed over, grabbed an oven mitt, and shifted the pan of blackening bacon off the burner. With a grin, he looked back at me. “There goes my breakfast.” He laughed giddily, throwing up his hands. “Hell, I don’t even care!” He swept over and caught me in his arms again.

  More kissing. More hugging. It was getting hard to tell where Toff’s body ended and mine began. “I can’t believe it. I can’t believe this is real,” he said. “You love me. You love me, Geordi.”

  Yes, I loved Toff. But I wasn’t in love with him. Even I knew there was a difference.

  And I knew I could never tell Toff how I really felt—or didn’t feel—about him.

  Never.

  Chapter 5

  TOFF AND I lazily shot hoops in his driveway. It was the kind of thing we might do on a quiet Sunday morning in summer, so there was nothing unusual about that. Except… something was different.

  Toff was so happy. The grin on his face never turned off. He was all primed and pumped up.

  And how did I feel, you may wonder?

  Punked.

  Pixelated.

  Panicked!

  Don’t get me wrong. I was glad to see Toff happy, and I did everything I could to hide my anxiety from him. If anybody deserved a bit of joy, it was definitely him. So why did this particular delight of his make me want to bang my head against a lamppost?

  After making the rebound off my latest missed shot, Toff stopped and looked at me. For the first time, his grin dimmed. “Your game is off, man. What’re you thinking about?”

  I told the truth. “You.”

  The grin
got big again. I could practically feel his bursting emotions swell across the driveway at me like a flare. He wiped sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand. “It’s starting to get hot out here. Did you have breakfast?”

  “No. I skipped it so I could get over here and talk to you.”

  “Let’s walk to the deli and have some bacon biscuits. I’m buying.”

  He tossed the basketball into the yard and led the way toward the sidewalk. Bringing up the rear, I studied him. He’d put on a red tank top and blue jeans and his neon green kicks, which pretty much glowed against the white sidewalk. The summer sun had started putting blond streaks in his spiky brown hair. I could picture him riding waves off some California beach and breaking girls’ hearts.

  He looked back at me, smiling. “Come on,” he urged. When I caught up to him, he reached his hand out to me.

  The gesture confused my little brain. “What?”

  “You had your coming out yesterday. This is my coming out.” He wiggled his hand at me.

  Now I got it.

  Cooper-Young is the most gay-tolerant neighborhood in Memphis. Many of the shops and homes there proudly fly the rainbow flag. While you don’t see a whole lot of same-sex couples holding hands in the area, that show of affection does happen from time to time. There was no reason that Toff and I walking hand in hand down the street should have made either of us uncomfortable.

  I was proud of Toff, coming out on his own terms (not like me), and of course I was going to support him in this—as well as maintain the whole we’re-in-love thing. I took his hand, he smiled at me, and we strolled off side by side. Scores of people were out enjoying the beautiful day, getting in their exercise or doing their shopping before the heat reached egg-frying-on-the-sidewalk levels. Nobody gave us hateful stares, spat on the ground we walked, or made the sign of the cross in our direction.