9.
Where Tyson Plans Attends a Protest
A WEEK later, I still have no idea. And trust me when I say I’ve thought about it harder than anything else. I know the simplest ideas are usually the best, but I can’t bring myself to pick up the phone, the nightmare scenarios of how those calls would actually play out running through my head.
Hello?
Dom? It’s Tyson. Let’s be friends again!
*click*
Or:
Hello?
Hiya, Dominic! It’s me, Tyson! Long time no talk? How you been, best friend (and guy I used to be in love with then cut out of my life when you married someone else BEHIND MY FUCKING BACK)?
I’m sorry, I don’t remember any Tyson.
*click*
Or:
Hello?
Hi, Dom. It’s Tyson. I’m so sorry for being really shitty to you.
Hi, Tyson! Glad you called! Stacey and I were just on our way to church to renew our vows because we’re so madly in love! Would you like to join us? You could be my best man! Don’t worry about your heart. I’ve already stomped all over it. But you’ve had four years to get over it, which, as a normal human being, you clearly should have, because that’s how things work in the real world.
It’s been so long since I’ve heard his voice that I can’t bring myself to do it. I’m pretty sure if I called him, all I’d be able to do is squeak and grunt and he’d think a gorilla was having sex with a mouse on the other end.
The alternative is to see him face-to-face, and since that is completely out of the question, I’m stuck where I started.
“It can’t possibly be that hard,” Kori tells me as we drive toward town in Otter’s Jeep. She has a scarf around her head, large sunglasses covering her face. She looks awesomely glamorous. That is until she speaks. “You’re being such a fucking douche about this whole thing.”
“Why don’t you tell me how you really feel,” I grumble. “Seriously. Hold nothing back.”
“Someone has to,” she retorts. “You obviously have no common sense. Otherwise, this whole thing would have been resolved long ago. Men are so idiotic sometimes. I swear, you’d rather sit in a pile of angst than actually have a single conversation that could go a long way to resolving years of shit that you yourself were the cause of.”
“I was the cause?” I say, outraged, even though I have no real right to be. “I didn’t marry a woman!”
“Which affected you how?”
“It was… he should have… it was for….” Goddammit.
“Exactly. Should he have told you before the wedding invites went out? Probably. But you never gave him a chance to explain because you had this foolish romantic notion in your head about how this would all play out. He’d wait for you, and when you got done doing whatever the fuck you were going to do, he’d be there with open arms and you guys would be together forever.”
“Well, that certainly reduced my entire life to a few sentences of what-the-fuck.”
The scarf flutters around her face. “He’s straight, darling. You’re gay. He’s your best friend. Or at least he was. You were like brothers. He did love you, but not in the way that you would have wanted.”
“But Bear didn’t come out until—”
“I love Bear,” she interrupts, “to death. Don’t get me wrong. But it doesn’t surprise me he had no idea about how he was gay until it was blaring right in front of him. He’s not always the quickest on the uptake. Wait. Is he gay? Bi? What?”
I roll my eyes. “I don’t think anyone really knows. It doesn’t matter anyway. He’s got Otter and that’s all he’ll need. It’s sickening. Really.”
Kori grins at me. “Bullshit. You love it.”
“Yeah.” Because I do.
“But you’re not just gay for someone,” Kori says. “That’s not really how the real world works. Life isn’t some romance novel, no matter how hard we might wish it so.”
I sigh. “It’d sure make things easier, though.”
“Well, sure, and we’d all be well-endowed, have six-pack abs, high-paying jobs, and perfect teeth. We’d all go on quirky adventures, and in the end, everything would turn out right because that’s the way it should be.”
“I’m well-endowed,” I say.
Kori snorts. “Above average, I’d say.”
“I think I had an ab. Once.”
“Most likely a bout of gas, darling.”
“I’ll have a high-paying job.”
“Mired under piles of mounting credit-card debt.”
“Perfect teeth?”
“You’ve got that one crooked one that is so very endearing, but doesn’t know if it’s coming or going.”
“We’re going on a quirky adventure right now,” I conclude.
Kori sighs. “Dragging me to a protest over a new restaurant is not what I would consider quirky.”
“There’ll be hippies,” I say, as if hippies make everything better. In truth, they were the only ones who responded to my post on the underground vegetarian message boards I’m a part of. The group (one of many, I assure you) is called Don’t Eat Animals, Dammit! or DEAD! for short. I know. It’s the most ridiculous name in the history of activism. But they’re the only ones this far west.
“If you think hippies are supposed to be a bargaining chip,” she tells me, “then you seriously need to work on your negotiating tactics. I chipped a nail making your hilarious protest signs.”
“Hilarious? They’re not supposed to be hilarious! They’re supposed to be serious!”
She laughs. “Okay, sure. Keep telling yourself that. I’m sure carrying a sign that says ‘Do You Want A Side Of Lies With Your Burger?’ is meant to be taken with a straight face.”
“That’s not funny! It’s a clever play on words that brings to light the injustice of beef farming that plagues this country! You’re being force fed untruths on a daily basis. The beef industry wants you to believe that—”
“Tyson.”
“What!”
“Have you ever asked yourself why God made cows so delicious if we weren’t supposed to eat them?”
“God? God? God had nothing to do with cows! Bovines are naturally evolved, just like everything else on this planet.” I shake my head. “God. Santa’s not real, either, in case you were wondering.”
“Naturally evolved, huh? So the way they are now is the way they were meant to be?”
“Exactly.”
She nods and her scarf flutters in the sea breeze. “Well, then, they naturally evolved to taste great with ketchup, so I guess that’s one thing.”
“It’s only because you’ve been conditioned to think so. You were just raised to believe that was okay.”
“Oh, careful, Ty,” she teases me. “That’s what the conservatives say about the gays. Pretty soon, you’ll be sending me off to a conversion camp where I’ll have to pray to beat the meat.”
“You’re impossible!”
“Which you only say when you can’t think of any kind of comeback.”
“When are you leaving?”
“Not for another month,” she says. “You’re stuck with me for now. And I’m going to eat sausage in front of you. So very, very slowly.” She licks her glossy lips, a sweet, little swipe of her tongue.
“I’m driving.”
“I noticed.”
“I don’t know why anyone would want to go back to Tucson voluntarily. I’m pretty sure Arizona is the closest thing to fascism that America still has.”
“It’s home,” she says. “Or as much of a home as it can be. I do miss it sometimes. But I miss the people there more. I had a lot of help when I was a poor, confused little bigender. One friend in particular.”
“But you’re okay now.” I don’t mean it as a question. I reach out and take her hand, curling her fingers in mine.
“Of course,” she says, giving me a beautiful smile. “But he talked some sense into rebellious seventeen-year-old me that I needed to hear at the time. I got everything back on track and am the stunning vision you see before you today because of it.”
I know Kori and Corey had a rough go of it for a while, but I didn’t know how big of a part her friend played in it. She’ll tell me when she’s ready. “And he’s a drag queen? Your friend?”
“Yes, she is. One of the best, even. And that’s saying a lot….”
“I should have been a drag queen,” I sigh. “But then pride happened sophomore year and well… you remember that disaster.” Let’s just say I do not make an attractive woman. There are many gorgeous queens in the world. I ended up looking like duckbilled platypus in a dress and heels.
“It was certainly… interesting.”
“‘Catastrophe’ is a better description, I think.”
Kori squeezes my hand. “The world is definitely lacking without a Minerva Fox. You’ll get to meet her one day, though. And when you see her perform, you’ll be in the presence of a true queen. You guys would really get along, I think. Hell, her friend Paul reminds me of Bear. Same type of open-mouth-what-the-hell-did-you-just-say kind of thing, so you’ll at least be able to commiserate together.”
The idea of another person in the world like Bear is surely a sign of the coming apocalypse, so I try not to dwell on it too much. “What’s her drag name?” I ask, trying to match the pronouns like Kori does. It’s important to her. And therefore to me. Kori keeps things close to the vest, and if this is the first time I’m hearing about an old friend, I need to make sure I don’t screw anything up.
“You’ll love it,” she says as she looks back out to the sea. “It’s Helena Handbasket.”
That’s so much better than Minerva Fox. “Epic,” I say.
“Indeed,” she says. “Oh, and Ty?”
“Yeah?”
“You know how you’re forcing me to protest even though I don’t believe in this?”
“I’m saving your soul. But sure.”
She grins evilly at me. “Just remember not to be nervous when you’re getting interviewed by the reporter today. I’m pretty sure you won’t screw up all your words on live TV and get put onto YouTube for all the world to see and make fun of you. Too much, anyway.”
Oh, goddammit.
IT STARTS out well. Or, at least as well as a last-minute, slap-dash protest of a chain restaurant initiated by a nineteen-year-old ecoterrorist, assisted by his bigender best friend, who seems to be doing her best to channel Marilyn Monroe today, and a group of five hippies who I think live in some kind of compound thing on one of the beaches, can get. And since they live in a compound, I’m pretty sure they probably belong to some kind of cult and dance naked every full moon and then go back to their drum circle and have orgies so Mother Gaia renews them with vigor or some such thing. I’m not judging, especially when it comes to these kinds of protests. The greater the numbers, the louder the voices, and rah-rah-rah. To each their own. I just don’t want to be in a hippie orgy.
But the cult aside, at least they show up in force. Five of them, with their own signs—LOVE YOUR ANIMAL BROTHERS AND SISTERS and HOW CAN YOU EAT SOMETHING THAT HAS EYES? and WHEN THE ANIMALS ARE ALL GONE, WILL WE EAT EACH OTHER? It’s a start.
The restaurant, BJ’s, has some very shady meat-procuring practices and prides itself on quadruple-decker hamburgers it calls the “HeartSlammer.” It’s as grotesque as it sounds. The fact that one of the restaurants in Connecticut was found to be using horse meat only made things worse.
All I want to do is bring attention to the good people of Seafare what kind of businesses are opening in our city. I just want to make sure everyone knows the kind of food they are putting into their bodies. All I want to do is exercise my right to assemble peacefully. A local news reporter shows up (though I invited at least four more—I guess they were all busy with the fast-paced news world that is the coast of Oregon). I planned on giving an interview. We would protest for a while. Then we would leave. That’s all. Sounds fine and dandy, right? Sounds easy as pie.
And it is!
At first.
But it devolves, very, very quickly.
Later, I’ll see myself on the ten o’clock news and think, Never trust beach hippies ever again for the rest of your life. For anything. Beach hippies ruin everything. Goddamn beach hippies! But this will be thought in a daze, as it will end in such a way that all else will be driven from my mind.
Yeah. This is about to get ugly. Sorry.
“This is Katie Rhine, reporting from the new restaurant BJ’s that recently opened in Seafare. Standing with me is a young man who is part of the group protesting the opening of the restaurant, claiming the chain has slid by USDA practices in the food that they prepare. His name is Tyson Thompson, a nineteen-year-old attendee of Dartmouth College, who is originally from Seafare. Tyson, thank you for being with me today.”
“Thank you for having me,” I say with a smile, realizing I’ve lowered my voice until it sounds like I smoke at least nine packs of cigarettes a day. I don’t know why I’m doing it, but I can’t stop it. “It’s a pleasure to be here.” For fuck’s sake, stop talking like the Marlboro Man with emphysema!
In the background, the hippies and Kori are walking in a circle. The hippies are chanting “HEY, HEY, HEY, BJ’S! HOW MANY ANIMAL FRIENDS HAVE YOU KILLED TODAY?” I don’t think a single one of them was alive when Vietnam occurred, and I told them not to use it. Obviously, they ignored me. Kori is blowing big pink bubbles with her gum and looking coolly amused. She waves at me with an overexaggerated waggle of her fingers, and all I can think about is how I shouldn’t be nervous about this. I’ve been interviewed before. I’ve spoken in front of people before. I can do this. I’m not worried.
“Tyson, can you please tell us why you’re out here today?”
I smile again at Katie Rhine, so wide my cheeks hurt, and I’m pretty sure it’s going to translate onto the screen as me looking like some kind of serial murderer and Katie is my next victim. Add in the fact that Ms. Rhine does not seem to know what moderation is in the use of her perfume (it smells like I’m getting punched in the face by a floral shop), and that I have for some reason started sweating in my armpits and the back of my legs (it could be that it’s warm outside, or it could be the fact that I just realized I am on local TV and literally dozens of people could be watching me right now), and all I can think about is that random deodorant commercial where the woman grabs her boss’s ass by accident, thinking it’s her boyfriend. When the boss turns around, a look of horror dawns on the woman’s face and the announcer asks if you’ve ever had stress sweat, and it tickles me in a way that I can’t quite explain and so I’m trying to hold the laughter back, trying to keep from snorting, because if I do, then I’m going to have to snort Katie Rhine’s Eau de Parfum de Floral Rape, and it’s going to mix with my stress sweat, and I’ll never get the smell off me and at least twenty seconds have gone by on live TV and I still haven’t answered her question, and holy horror of all horrors, I am thinking just like my brother—
“Tyson?” she asks me, an edge coming in to her perky TV voice. You better start fucking talking right now, you vegetarian nightmare goes unsaid. She’s very good at the subtle context, this Ms. Rhine is.
“Yes?” I reply, and my voice is so deep now it sounds like I’m grunting at her. I have so much stress sweat, I’m pretty sure it looks like I just climbed out of a swimming pool.
“What is going on today that you’re protesting BJ’s? What do you hope will happen?”
The beach hippies began to chant something different: “DON’T GIVE US NO JIVE! WE KNOW YOU’RE SKINNING THEM ALIVE!”
“Exactly that,” I say, trying to regain control. “BJ’s and their corporate owners are notorious for their horrifying slaughter practices, so much so that they’ve been fined repeatedly and have been almost forced to shut down on several occasions. They also created a despicable and unsafe work environment for the employees.” Good, that was good.
Katie nods as if that was the most interesting thing she’s ever heard anyone say ever anywhere. “And what exactly happens in these meat and sweatshops?”
Sweat. Stress sweat. Oh my God, that commercial is so fucking funny. I bark out a weird hiccup thing of laughter and sweat drips into my eye, forcing me to blink it away, and I look like I am barking and winking at the camera, and this is going so well, and I am not like Bear. I am not like Bear.
“I’m sorry,” I say, trying to not wink into the camera anymore. “I wasn’t laughing at you or those poor slaughterhouse workers. I was laughing at the deodorant commercial.”
I am exactly like Bear.
“The deodorant commercial?” she asks me, and I see her producer waving at her, mouthing, Abort! Abort!
“It’s… ah. Funny. Stress sweat. That’s why I am sweaty.” I smile at her in an attempt to control the situation. “Don’t grab your boss’s butt, you know?”
“Excuse me?” she asks, and dear God, did she bathe in that perfume?
The chant changes behind us: “DOG AND CAT! MINK AND RABBIT! THEIR FUR IS THEIRS AND NOT FOR JACKETS!”
What does that have to do with hamburgers? I will never use hippies ever again. DEAD! is dead to me!
“They don’t cook dogs and cats,” I say hastily to Katie Rhine. “If that’s what you’re thinking. Or mink. Or rabbits. Well, actually, I think one of the higher-end BJ’s serves rabbit. But I could be mistaken. In that case, it would be true.”
The protest behind us changes again. I don’t think the beach hippies understand the point of chants. “CHINESE FUR TRADE IS FULL OF GREED! WE WON’T TOLERATE YOUR BLOODY DEEDS!”
“The Chinese are involved with this?” Katie asks, her eyes going wide as if she can already picture being handed the Pulitzer. “The Chinese slaughter dogs and rabbits and serve them at BJ’s?”
“No!” I grab the microphone in her hand and pull it to my face. She squawks as I look directly into the camera and grunt, “The Chinese do not kill dogs and rabbits and serve them at BJ’s. That is not what happens.”
In the moments when all hell is breaking loose, when it seems like the world is crashing down and things are blowing up in your face, the absolute worst thing you can do is think to yourself, Well, this can’t possibly get any worse, because God or Whoever is watching over us will hear your thought and say, “Aha! You shouldn’t have thought that, you stupid mortal! I am about to fuck up your day a whole lot more!”
So, naturally, hearing the chanting behind me, swimming in my own sticky stress sweat, holding the microphone so close to my mouth it probably looks like I’m going to eat it, Katie Rhine pressing up against me with her perfume that smells like she is blossoming from the inside out, I think to myself, Well, this can’t possibly get any worse.
The next moment is caught on camera. One of the hippies, so caught up in the rush of protesting (justifiably so; he’s a beach hippie, and I think they don’t see much excitement), so high on life (and also probably on a mixture of weed and shrooms smoked out of the hollowed core of an apple), so enchanted by the chants (which have now switched to “YEAR OF THE DOG, MY EYE! HOW MANY MORE ANIMALS HAVE TO DIE?”), that he picks up a large stone from the parking lot, a pretty thing with a quartzite strip. I have time to think, This is about to get worse, as he pulls his arm back as far as it could go. This is about to get a whole lot worse, and then he heaves that pretty rock through the front window of the home of the HeartSlammer. The shattering of glass is so impressive that it seems to be the loudest sound to have ever been created in the history of the world. It’s followed almost immediately by the loudest silence to have ever been created in the history of the world.
“Righteous,” one of the hippies whispers. I think her name is Morning Star. Or Sun Leaf. Or Beach Vagrant. I don’t know. All I know right now is that she turns to the rock-thrower and jumps into his arms, wrapping her legs around his hips. She starts kissing him all over his face, and I swear to God, her tongue goes up his nose for a moment. “That was so righteous,” she breathes between the long licks of her tongue bath. “I can’t wait to get back to the tent, Cornflower. I want you to stick it in me so bad. I want babies.”
Oh, Jesus. Fucking hippies.
Cornflower (whose name undoubtedly is really John and is probably a former CPA) grins at her, a dopey stoned smile that shows yellow teeth. “I’m going to put six babies in you,” he promises her as she licks his eyeball. “We’ll get high and I’ll give you a whole clan of babies.”
For a moment, I think about Bear and Otter’s predicament, and I wonder if Cornflower and Beach Vagrant would be willing to part with one of their stoned hippie babies so two loving homosexuals could have him or her. I don’t ask because I’m afraid they’d say yes right away and nine months from now, there’d be a knock at the Green Monstrosity and a child left on the doorstep in a basket made of hemp and smelling of patchouli.
Goddammit. I really need to find more supporters whose idea of a good time isn’t playing a guitar around a low fire, singing John Lennon or Britney Spears (trust me: you ain’t heard anything until you’ve heard a stoned hippie singing “I’m A Slave 4 U” with reworked lyrics that describe how it feels to drop acid and save Mother Earth from places like Walmart and McDonald’s—it’s life-changing. Kind of).
“Shit,” I mutter right into the microphone so those at home watching the live TV can be incensed by yet another thing on this magical day. Katie just stares at the window, her jaw dropped, her cameraman continuing to film everything. “This is so going to end up on YouTube.”
The door to the restaurant opens behind us, and I turn, expecting someone from BJ’s to come running out, screaming they’ve already called the police, that we were so dead, and who the fuck did we think we were? I’ve already opened my mouth to offer some kind of apology, to say anything to not get the cops called (already imagining the look on Bear’s face when he gets a call that I’ve been arrested again) when who should walk out but a cop.
The sun is in my eyes, but I can still see the Seafare Police Department uniform tightly wrapped around a massive hulking body. My stomach begins to tingle slightly as I raise my gaze up that body, the thighs like huge slabs of granite, the utility belt wrapped around a tight waist. My mouth goes dry as my eyes drift over the chest (Hello there, Officer, I think. Please arrest me. I’ve been very, very bad), to the arms (They have to be fake! No one has arms that big!). I shield my eyes from the sun so I can get a good look at this overgrown and overfed guy who is going to ruin my afternoon (and obviously provide at least a good six months of spank-bank deposits—don’t look at me that way. Trust me when I say I’m not a Kid anymore). He’s big, bigger than a man should have any right to be. He might be the biggest man in all the world, for all I know.
That chin, square and chiseled. Those rough cheeks, covered in a day’s worth of black scruff. Mouth in a thin line, the barest hint of teeth underneath. Black hair, clipped short. Mirror shades. He removes the sunglasses and those eyes… good Christ, those blue eyes. Those knowing eyes. They say more than any one person could with an infinite amount of words. Too bad I can’t understand any of it.
Oh, fuck, I think, a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach. I am in so much trouble. I barely notice when the hippies take off running.
For the first time in almost four years, I hear that voice, so filled with gravel. That voice that has never healed, broken for as long as I’ve known him. That voice that at one point meant everything to me. He says only a single word, but in that word is a lifetime of memories and the earthquake that hits is almost enough to tilt the ground beneath my feet.
“Tyson,” he says.
“Dominic,” I breathe.