“That’s right, clean every last bit of that shit up!” Tyler screeches as I scrub his carpets; it’s not like they were clean before I lost my lunch on them. I had another long night of drinking, which inevitably has led to a rough morning, and this time Tyler is not being at all sympathetic to my hangover. This has got to be the third time I’ve thrown up somewhere other than the toilet in his apartment since moving in, and it’s not like I have been here that long either.

“All right, all right,” I groan, “I’m sorry, man.”

I notice that Tyler is wearing a suit, and he’s working on straightening his tie. Where is he going? “You’re sorry? Are you kidding me? I’m getting sick of this, Jonathan. I’m trying to help you out, man, but you keep on and on with this crap.”

“I know, I’m sorry,” I say again while I finish scrubbing up the stain –evidence of my wild night at the apartment by myself. It’s like I can’t help it. Every time I get a little extra money, I spend it on alcohol. Half the time Tyler is here, and he swipes my alcohol away, but he and Marty had gone out and I had decided to stay home… so Tyler hadn’t been here to stop me. He shouldn’t have to stop me, though. Seriously. I’m a grown man; I should be able to control myself. He shouldn’t have to feel like he has to babysit me.

He takes a deep breath while I throw away the paper towels and put up the carpet cleaner. “You’re going to sign up for a new AA group. That’s it. You’re doing; I’m making that decision for you. If you want to keep bumming around my apartment, your ass is joining AA. You shouldn’t have ever left the old group. You still have a problem, and I’m not going to let you drink yourself to death in my home.”

“All right, all right,” I say, “you’re right. I’ll look for a new group.” He is right. I have a problem, and I am going to wind up killing myself before too long. He already had to bail me out of jail once, and I know he didn’t have the money for that –not that he would let me pay him back. He just told me to forget about it, although that has become some serious ammunition he uses towards me. While throwing away the mess, I notice there are some flowers sitting out on the kitchen counter. “So what’s the deal, Tyler, you got a date or something?” I ask, hoping to change the subject away from my drinking problem.

Suddenly Tyler looks ridiculously uncomfortable. “No,” he says, “not exactly.”

“What then?” I ask.

“Um…” he hesitates for a minute, “It’s my sister’s birthday. I always go to the cemetery on her birthday.”

Damn. “Oh,” I say like a moron. I don’t really know how to respond to that. He had told me fairly recently about his sister; the two of them had been in foster care together after their dad had died and their mother had gotten hooked on drugs. Gabe had known his sister, apparently. On the end table next to the couch where I’ve been staying is a picture of Tyler, his sister, and Gabe; that picture is the only reason Tyler even mentioned her. I feel bad that I didn’t know he had a sister or that she had died; I also feel bad that I had no idea Tyler had been a foster kid. I have been really stuck in my own little world; I guess, in a way, I really needed this sort of reality check. I’m more part of Tyler’s world than our friend Marty’s now.

Tyler seems more in a hurry now to leave, but I don’t want him to feel like an outsider anymore –which is apparently the way Marty and I had always made him feel. “Would you mind if I went with you?” I say before he can run out the door.

“Why?” he questions as though I have some sort of secretive motivation behind asking.

“I never met her, but she’s your sister, so maybe I feel like I should show some respect,” I say, and this sad looking grin appears on his face.

“Um, yeah, sure,” he says and then quietly adds, “my mom might be there…”

‘Your mom?” I question; he had made it sound like she was out of the picture.

“Yeah, well, she shows up sometimes on her birthday. It’s really the only time we ever talk. It’s kind of an unspoken tradition,” Tyler says. “We both know each other’s going to be there every year, and whoever gets there first just kind of waits around –pretending like we weren’t waiting on the other to show up.”

I’m not sure if I’m up for this weird family reunion, but I’m not going to back out on him now. I suppose that explains why he chose to get dressed up to go to a cemetery just to drop off flowers. “Yeah, let me get changed,” I say and go digging through the boxes of clothes I had picked up from Brandi’s mansion –my former mansion that she got in the divorce.

“I have a request,” Tyler says, now sitting on the couch while I attempt to find a tie that matches the suit I found amongst the cluster of random items I’ve yet to unpack.

“What’s that?” I ask.

“Can we take your car? Mine went caput on me last night, and I was going to have to walk,” he says.

“Sure… you sure you want to take the pink Volkswagen? Your mom might thing we’re a couple if we pull up in that,” I say with a slight wink; I’m not sure how many more gay jokes I can take, but between the car and Tyler always calling me his house-wife they seem to come pretty easy.

He laughs. “I don’t mind screwing with her, to be honest.”

I finish getting dressed and the two of us head down and load up into the stupid ass bitch car –the only thing I really managed to get during the divorce. Fuck Brandi and her stupid pink high school car; she’s driving around in my damn Ferrari. We head to the cemetery, and we walk up this hill to a grave that seems separated from the others. “It’s a good spot,” I tell him as he lies the flowers down by the grave. He just stands there, staring. His sister had been killed coming home from her waitressing job; she had tried to fight off the guys who were trying to take her money, and she had obviously lost.

I ask him about her to get him talking to break the uncomfortable silence, and he has plenty to say about their time in foster care, the two of them renting an apartment together, and their general lives. It was always just the two of them. We’re there for only about fifteen minutes before this beat up Honda truck pulls up; it’s red with the exception of the blue driver’s side door. This older woman climbs out and slowly makes her way over to us, and I can tell instantly that it’s Tyler’s mom. He looks just like her, but I decide not to say that; I’m pretty sure the two of them have a really awkward relationship.

They hug each other when she reaches us, but it’s quick and uncomfortable. “Mom, this is my friend Jonathan,” he says and the woman smiles at me; her teeth are nasty, and it’s clear she is a former user. I’m not sure exactly what sort of drugs she used to be on, but I guess it doesn’t really matter. She has permanent scars on her arms from injections, but it’s obvious she’s clean now.

The two of them stand there talking about her for a while and then we just part ways. Tyler and I load up into the Volkswagen, leaving his mom behind at the cemetery. He’s really quiet, but I don’t say anything to break the uncomfortable silence. As we pull up to the apartment he says, “Thanks for coming with me, by the way,” and then jumps out of the car before the conversation can go anywhere. He hurries ahead of me, but I give him some space. When I return the apartment, he’s in his room; I assume it’s a rough day for him and that he wants to be left alone. I decide to leave him be, and I do what I can to pick up around the apartment and keep myself busy.

I pull out Tyler’s laptop and look up some information about a local AA group. I figure I should try to make myself one less problem Tyler has to deal with. I think about his mom –maybe that’s why he’s so willing to deal with me? Maybe that’s why my drinking pisses him off so much more than it does Marty. He probably has dealt with my kind of shit his whole life –a user. I shake my head, feeling pretty shameful –realizing I’m probably making him just relive all the shit he went through with his mom as a kid. I decide that I’m done. I need help.