2004
The pink granny curlers in my hair were a ticking time bomb.
I chose the seat directly in the sun to burn the acne from my skin. With a fresh coating of fifty SPF sunscreen, my mom sat in the shade across from me. I was more concerned with the fact that my brother, eight years younger than me, had a deep, bronzed tan that he sported handsomely in contrast to his Thomas the Train t-shirt. Whereas my brother and dad could pass for larger, stretched-out versions of Latinos, my mother and I had a white, mole-prone, freckled organ that rendered useless against the climate but had other obvious advantages.
The four of us raised our glasses and said, “Buen provecho” Bon appétit (or ‘enjoy your meal,’ which to me sounds like something you say before eating ‘freedom fries’).
“These tomatoes are delicious,” my mom said as she sprinkled some Hawaiian black volcanic sea salt on them. She said this in Flemish, our family’s primary language that we mixed with English (for business and pop culture) and the occasional Spanish word (for food and respect at the table).
Himalayan pink salt was for curries, coarse sea salt was for coal-grilled steaks, fine sea salt was for pan-fried steaks, and regular table salt was for children’s science experiments. But the black salt was to be used sparingly and reverentially like one might sip a twenty-one-year-old scotch or perform A2M amid passion-filled romance. And whereas my father, who still smelled of pine, was usually happy to discuss these culinary intricacies, all he answered was:
“Mhm.”
The “Mhm” together with puckered lips and a slight head nod meant “I completely agree” or in a party setting, “Hell yeah, let’s do it.” However, this “Mhm” was unaccompanied by any form of lip-puckering, which meant one thing: leave me be. He needed to get back to chopping a tree into firewood, which he hauled up a slippery, pine-needle-covered hill from down in the forest below our home. The absolute worst thing I could say at that moment was, “What’s the matter?” And so I said:
“What’s the matter?”
It was as though the hormonic demons of pre-adolescence had taken over my tongue to bring hell’s fury into our lovely, peaceful, multiple-salt-bearing home.
“Do I need to say it?” asked my dad, putting his glass of wine down.
“Does it need to happen at the table?” My mother said.
I don’t know what was needed. I was in eleven-years-old in a time where 50 Cent’s Get Rich or Die Trying album was the only thing cooler than a skateboard. An era where everyone played Tony Hawk, wore D.C. shoes and sported skater caps. In other words, wings were in.
Wings were when a boy’s medium-long hair curled from underneath their caps. I thought, if little wings were cool, then big wings must be super duper cool. So, I put pink granny curlers in my hair at nighttime and came to school with the grandest wings of all. But it didn’t stop there. I needed a hat to fit in, but my version of a hat was a beret.
My father might have accepted the black beret if it weren’t for my hairstyle that didn’t belong to any culture or subculture that ever has or will exist. He glanced at me from the corner of his eye; that was enough to make him quiver before saying:
“This is why I’m always the bad guy. Why can’t you tell him yourself that he needs to stop being so self-obsessed?”
“Can I play with my trains?” My brother asked, which I assume was a four-year-old’s way of saying, “Can I get the fuck out of here?”
In her softest voice, my mother said, “Of course, Yanoku,” (The -Ku was a cute Flemish diminutive).
“First, you made your hair green, then you started putting spikes in your hair like some of those loser punks that listened to the Sex Pistols.”
“What are Sex Pistols?” Yano asked as he climbed out of his chair, likely using the words “Sex” and “Pistols” for the first time in his life.
“Horrible, talentless music. The shit people who thought they were tough listened to. But us sailors would snap those janets like twigs if they came near us with their earrings and chains and pathetic knives they could barely use.” Janet is a Flemish word for fag, but it doesn’t have the same harshness and ignorant rudeness—at least to people who haven’t lived in Belgium since the seventies.
“Just go and play, Yano,” my mother whispered, juxtaposing my father’s loud, passionate voice some might mistake with yelling.
“Then you got earrings, and ever since you got acne, the money started disappearing into your skincare products, and—”
2009
“… and then you started with the curlers. Fucking curlers. But nope, didn’t stop there. A few years later, you looked like some orange fucking alien with that self-tanning shit you smeared on your face,” my father said in his army-green Jeep Grand Cherokee as we drove home from Rugby practice. I had finally become aware of my superficial and clownishly pathetic endeavours, but since I was sixteen, I wasn’t going to let my father know he was right all these years.
“Orange fucking alien? The kids at school called me a giant Umpa Lumpa.”
“I don’t know what that is, but I’m happy you’re done with that shit. I was mentally preparing for a gay son.
“You thought I was gay?”
“Only a little. I’ve seen the commercials of that disgusting body spray shit you and all your friends wear. It’s clear to me you’re into attracting cheap females with fake breasts and empty heads instead of men. If you want to attract a real woman, be confident in your musk, son.”
“Would you care if I were gay?” I asked as we pulled into the driveway.
“No, I mean, if you or Yano said you were gay, I would need several drinks that night, but to adjust the way I think about your futures. But in the end, it wouldn’t matter. As long as you had someone who loved and respected you.
My dad parked the car, and before getting out, he looked me in the eye and said, “I’d rather you bring home an intelligent, sentient man than one of those pyjama-wearing, thin-lipped lethargic lugs of white women you see at the mall in Vernon. I mean, if I had a choice between one of those and a man that respected himself, I’d choose the man.”
I puckered my lips in agreement.
***
Two years later, my father was sitting in the front row of an amateur fashion runway show wearing faded Wrangler jeans, a plain grey t-shirt, leather sandals and socks. I had already walked on stage in a suit and bowtie that I undid with a quick, lascivious pull right before turning around so that the photographers could snap dozens of dizzying photos I later put on Facebook, hoping it would bring me one step closer to becoming a world-renowned author and actor.
Sure, I read everything from Blake Snyder’s Save the Cat to Aristotle’s Poetics, but reading, attending workshops, bodywork, meditation, and travel meant nothing to the one everlasting truth that every artist needs to be truly fulfilled: A social media following.
In part, that’s what was going through my head when the announcer, with his flamboyant lisp and tendency to overuse words’ sexy’ and ‘delicious,’ announced my name.
This time, I came on stage in kinky netted sleeves attached to a punk-like leather t-shirt with an anarchy symbol and jeans that looked as though they belonged to a man who got his legs chewed off by a tiger. The women’s voices could barely be heard over the gayest pandemonium I have yet to encounter. (By the way, I much prefer the flamboyant rhythmic flare of a gay pandemonium to a large group of straight men who say “Fuck yeah” in their lowest, ‘gruntiest’ voice.)
But where there is cheering, there are raised arms. A mixture of B.O. and cheap and not-so-cheap deodorants wafted through the air. It was safe to say my father was in hell, but all he did when the evening ended, was congratulate me.
What he experienced was tame compared to what he would read in my book Living with the In-Laws several years later. A catwalk was a cakewalk after reading that his 4.0 achieving son was deceived into posing nude in a garage somewhere in a New Jersey ghetto and a year later lay naked on a mahogany dining table with a group of upper-class gays eating sushi off his pubes.
“Are you sure this needs to be in the book?” He asked, already annoyed by the fact I was stretching on the hardwood floor as he drank a beer.
It was Christmas, 2019, and by this point, I gave zero fucks about skincare products, brand-name clothes, and I was no longer getting naked for money. Largely because I now lived in Europe where nudity wasn’t as lucrative unless paid for by tourists and ex-pats. I had also just been unexpectedly dumped by a woman who forced me to quit stripping.
“It’s funny,” I responded as I pushed my chest closer to my legs to stretch my hammies.
“It’s sad. It makes me sick.”
“I used to cry about it, but women seem to like the stories. Being used by men, it’s relatable. And when it happens to a privileged white boy, it’s also funny… which is strange because it’s definitely not funny when it happens to privileged white women,” I said, switching to the other leg.
“Why the fuck did you have to do this superficial, stupid shit for money?” My dad asked, finishing his beer.
“Are you sure you’re not angry because I’m not abiding by traditional gender constructs? Maybe it makes you feel like you failed at turning me into a man?” I asked.
“Gender constructs my ass,” he said. I was looking at the floor now, but I knew he was likely shaking his head. “Use that silly language on some of your university buddies. If a woman did the shit you do, I’d think she is equally fucking stupid. All this gender blah blah. Dumb, attention-seeking man or dumb or dumb attention-seeking woman. Doesn’t make a difference to me. Gender constructs. Fucking hell, what has this world come to.”
Maybe he had a point.
“Anyway, do what you want, but I think there’s more than enough in there to show—what was it?”
“My character arc.”
“Yeah, that. That’s in there. You’re a beautiful, honest man, and you don’t need to scream at the world to look at you.”
“I’ll think about it,” I said and got up to go to the bathroom, which is usually an excellent place for self-reflection. However, we were housesitting for my uncle in his four-story duplex in the suburbs of Antwerp. I had known the home since childhood, and so the rickety staircase angled at nearly eighty degrees with steps barely wide enough for toddler’s feet didn’t bother me. Portraits of family members adorned the walls and cupboards together with artwork from around the world, the majority being from Burundi and South Africa. The books had changed from the last time I was there, but the bookshelf’s soul remained the same, always keeping a well-rounded collection in Flemish, French, English, German, and occasionally Farsi. The T.V. was small, and whereas the couches were comfortable enough to study or speak with guests, they didn’t allow the type of posture that invites you in to binge-watch Russian Doll in a day.
Staying in my uncle’s home was much what I imagine living in a museum must be like, constant stimulation of creativity and ideas. However, like many museums, there’s a piece that makes you cringe, mourn, and pray to whatever you need to get through the rest of the day. At my uncle’s house, it’s the downstairs restroom or W.C. (an acronym I didn’t know stood for water closet until I was twenty-eight). It was a closet, a closet with no form of insulation, which allowed the toilet seat to reach temperatures only found in Antarctica. But unlike Antarctica, it’s cramped and doesn’t allow an adult to wipe their ass without pressing their nose against the door in front of them.
My breakup had been finalized, my brother would have to stay in Canada for Christmas, the stock market seemed more unpredictable than usual, my parents dropped hints of divorce, my grandma was entering the early stages of dementia, my aunt was nearing the last months of her life, and the cold, Siberian toilet wasn’t doing us any favours. So it was fair to say emotions were high.
After lifting my ass from the toilet, risking flaps of skin to tear away as they stick to the frozen brim, I went to the fridge (which was surprisingly red and retro) and took out a tub of yogurt. It was thick, but I drank it like a cup of water, and just as I was about to throw it in the bin, my dad yelled, “What are you doing?”
“Oh, I thought this was the recycling.”
“It is the recycling. The recycling I take out every day.”
I knew my father—if he felt the need to point out what he did for you, he’s fucking pissed.
“And thank you for that.”
“And thank you for that,” he said mockingly. “I just bought that yogurt today.”
“Okay.”
“Okay? Is that all you have to say? Okay,” he said, ripping the yogurt can from my hand. “One, two, three! Three spoon fulls.”
“I didn’t mean to waste it,” I said, slowly reaching for the nuts behind me, hoping to find a source of protein I could later eat like a squirrel in my room without him noticing.
“Who the hell eats an entire tub of yogurt in a day? No man needs to eat a whole yogurt tub in a day.”
We had gone over the acceptable amount of yogurt issue before. But this time, there was something different in his voice. Now, I realize it was pain about his dying sister. However, he did seem awfully pressed about the yogurt.
“Who the hell are you to tell me what I can and can’t eat. I work out.”
“Yeah, all the fucking time. I can’t go anywhere in this house without you panting or stretching or lifting or jumping like some fucking maniac. And when you’re not working out, you’re writing and wallowing. When do I ever get to see you? Aside from when you’re eating the food I make you every day.”
“I’m fucking hurting. This is how I deal with my pain, and here you are fucking yelling at me for it!”
“You’re not the only one in pain, but you are the only one who is yelling.”
“I’m not yelling,” I yelled. “You know what, this is fucking ridiculous. I’ll go buy some fucking yogurt. Maybe throw on some garlic and cucumber. Would you like that? Would you like some fucking Tzatziki!”
“You know what would make me happy, you taking one day to go to Brussels with your mom and me.”
“I told you, I can, but not until three in the afternoon. I work until then.”
“Then the day is over.”
“If your bedtime is four in the afternoon like some fucking baby. You can be such a child.”
“A child? You know what. Fine,” and after catching his breath, he continued: “You don’t like me. You never liked me.” Tears were now pouring down his face and before I had the chance to tell him I loved him — “We don’t have to be friends. You might be embarrassed about me and hope you’re nothing like me, but I will always be there for you.”
But what if I become you?
***
2021
I really hope I don’t bring home the wrong parents; Nolan wouldn’t be too happy about that. I made a sign with his parents’ names: Luc Janssens and Catalina Thiers, both in black with an outline of golden glitter. It’s my first time ever meeting my boyfriend’s parents, and he’s over a hundred kilometres away. Not his fault. Nolan had to stay home because my car was too small and all their luggage wouldn’t fit.
Oh god, is it my fault that Nolan isn’t here? I mean, I bought the car. And should I speak English or Spanish, at first? I guess I’ll respond in whatever language they use.
Nolan says they’ll love me. I’m not so sure because I always thought there was one type of salt. I also really have to pee. If I’m peeing while they show up, they will think I forgot about them. They’ll call Nolan panicking, and then Nolan will call me panicking, and I’ll be panicking about peeing while everyone is panicking.
I think it’s best I don’t pee, not yet anyway. Why couldn’t they just speak Ukrainian or Russian? Actually, Ukrainian mothers, well, mothers of boys, scare the hell out of me. Fold the laundry like this, cut the potatoes like that.
Okay, okay. I see people walking through with their luggage. Zookaplet, maybe I should have worn deodorant. My sweat smells nervous, I mean nasty because I’m nervous. Nervous sweat, the worst kind. Apparently, Nolan’s parents hate perfumes even more than he does. I also made sure not to wear one of my Three Days Grace t-shirts—they’re not punk, but since their post-seventies, I played it safe.
And what about my blue hair? Will that make them think of the time Nolan—
“Lana!” A voice booms, and before I can say anything, Nolan’s father wraps his arms around me and kisses me on the cheek.
I, for one, feel lucky Nolan is like his father.
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