Me Being Me Is Exactly as Insane as You Being You (3 page)

1.
 ELEVEN FEET

About three bites into his doughnut Darren can tell something very weird is up with his dad, who has been so weird so often since his parents split up that his dad must be acting extremely weird right now for Darren to even notice. The obvious thing for his dad to do would be to sit down at the table with Darren, but instead he's just standing there in the middle of the kitchen, kind of frozen. Plus he hasn't said a word since his pointless comment about the weather.

He's got this expression on his face, Darren's dad does, that is maybe him realizing how weird it is for him to be in this particular kitchen at this particular moment, only there's some little glint in his eyes that might mean his dad thinks it's good weird and not bad weird. Who the hell knows anymore. His dad's silence suddenly seems like the silence of a monk who has taken an oath of silence, like his dad isn't even close to talking. Plus he keeps raising his fist to his mouth and softly tapping it against his lips. But he's not avoiding Darren; in fact, right now he's looking straight at him and actually smiling, too.

2.
 ONE YARD

When Darren is about three-quarters of the way through the doughnut, which he has to admit is crazily delicious, his dad comes over and sits down across from Darren at the table.

He suddenly speaks. “Darren.”

But then doesn't say anything else.

So Darren, still chewing, finally speaks his first word of the day. “Yeah?” He tries to keep his mouth mostly closed when he says it.

“There's something I need to tell you,” his dad says, “something I've been wanting to tell you for many months, for nearly a year, in fact.” Darren tries to listen and tries to keep chewing, but the doughnut and OJ now feel like paste in his mouth. “Darren,” his dad says, “this may not be easy for you to hear. But it is something I absolutely must tell you.”

Darren forces himself to swallow the newly disgusting chocolatey-orangey lump of paste and for a moment almost convinces himself that because he recently has had a lot of practice at hearing things that aren't easy to hear that maybe this one won't be so hard, whatever it is. Still, he wishes there had been some way for him to have known to get out of bed and go downstairs at 5:24, so he could have taken the phone out of his mom's hand and told his dad, without too obviously taking sides with his mom or anything, that this morning would be a bad time for him to come over and tell Darren something that won't be easy for him to hear.

“I am gay, Darren,” his dad says. “Gay.” He says the word again.

Darren slowly reaches out for the last bite and a half of doughnut and notices how the whole world seems to briefly shift its coloring, like everything blue turns to red and then to green and then back to blue again. Or it might be instead that the world instantly turns all the way upside down and then back around just as fast, and is now right-side up again. Though Darren can't be sure any of this actually happens, since whatever happens happens unbelievably fast. Meaning everything seems exactly the same as it seemed before, only it somehow seems different, too.

Darren puts the doughnut down and notices his thumbprint in the chocolate. He looks up from his breakfast and sees his dad, whose eyes are sort of glassy, trying to smile at him. His dad starts to say what sounds like “I still love you, Darren” or something along those lines, but Darren gets up quickly from his chair in order to cut him off, quicker even than he planned to get up, though maybe he didn't plan it at all. His dad stops talking, while Darren walks around the table toward him.

3.
 ZERO INCHES

Darren bends over and gives his dad a hug. He might be hearing in his head the words “I am hugging my gay dad” as he hugs him. His dad puts his arms around Darren, at first so feebly that Darren is reminded of what it felt like, eight years ago, to hug him immediately after his dad had his wisdom teeth removed. But then his dad hugs him more firmly, quite firmly, in fact. There's considerable strength and muscle mass in his dad's shoulders and upper arms. His dad has probably been lifting weights lately, something, Darren supposes, a gay dad might do on a pretty regular basis.

4.
 ONE TWO-HUNDRETHS OF A MILE AND GROWING

Once Darren retracts himself from their hug, he heads upstairs to his room, this being the extent of his present plan for absorbing his dad's announcement. At the top of the stairs Darren stops and notices some chocolate on the tip of his thumb, which he therefore inserts into his mouth, but only for a moment or two, as Darren was never a thumb-sucker, not even as a much younger child.

3
People Darren Has an Urge to Text but Can't. So He Just Texts Himself,
What the Fuck?
Which He First Did, a Little Bit as a Joke, around Two Years Ago

1.
 His old friend Bugs, who moved away the summer before high school started and now lives in the Pacific Time Zone, where it's not even six in the morning yet, meaning he's not awake unless his parents (who are still married and both straight, as far as Darren knows) are having an argument in the kitchen over whether or not today would be a good day for Bugs's dad to come on over and tell Bugs he's gay

2.
 Nate, also asleep

3.
 His mom, on a plane

1
Additional and Perhaps Actually Main Reason His Parents Got Divorced

1.
 Duh

16
Freestanding Messages on Darren's Phone That Together Add Up to the Closest Thing Darren Has to a Diary

1.
 Me:
What the fuck.
Sent: February 4

2.
 Me:
What the fuck.
Received: February 4

3.
 Me:
What the fuck?
Sent: March 26

4.
 Me:
What the fuck?
Received: March 26

5.
 Me:
What the fuck.
Sent: May 14

6.
 Me:
What the fuck.
Received: May 14

7.
 Me:
WTF.
Sent: July 4

8.
 Me:
WTF.
Received: July 4

9.
 Me:
What. The. Fuck.
Sent: October 11

10.
 Me:
What. The. Fuck.
Received: October 11

11.
 Me:
What the fuck fuck fuck.
Sent: December 20

12.
 Me:
What the fuck fuck fuck.
Received: December 20

13.
 Me:
What the fuck.
Sent: December 20

14.
 Me:
What the fuck.
Received: December 20

15.
 Me:
What the fuck?
Sent: April 24

16.
 Me:
What the fuck?
Received: April 24

3
Strategies for Avoiding His Father That Darren Briefly Contemplates Before Returning Downstairs with His Backpack

1.
 Climbing out his window and leaping to the ground, which he thinks about long enough to decide that even if he tossed his pillow and blanket out first, they wouldn't break his fall enough

2.
 Building a time machine out of his iPhone, a half-built solar-powered radio he got for his eleventh birthday, and maybe, who knows, some dirty underwear, so he can travel to the 1890s, which Nate once told him was probably the least-messed-up decade in the past 150 years

3.
 Hiding in his closet, which he considers the longest and most seriously, until he remembers that whole “coming out of the closet” thing, which, in significantly different circumstances, he might find funny, but right now not even a little bit

10
Subjects Darren and His Dad Do Not Discuss during Their Drive to School

1.
 Global warming

2.
 The chances of a musician making a decent living in the age of digital file sharing

3.
 The pros and cons of social media

4.
 The prospects for a peaceful settlement of the Arab-Israeli conflict

5.
 His dad's sexual orientation

6.
 Women's reproductive rights

7.
 What exactly will happen when the planet's oil reserves have been used up

8.
 The likelihood of complex life existing somewhere else in the universe

9.
 The fact that Darren and his dad are supposed to drive together for more than four hours tomorrow in order to visit Nate, which means, obviously, that his dad made his announcement this morning to give Darren some time to begin digesting the fact that Dad = Gay, all so that by the time tomorrow rolls around and they get back into his dad's sporty homobile, they'll be able to really talk about it at great length and without interruptions, oh joy

10.
 The possibility of a benevolent God existing in a world where people suffer needlessly

13
Conclusions Darren Reaches After His Dad Finally Comes to a Stop at 8:04 a.m. by the Edge of the Student Parking Lot, Where Darren Sees Fellow Tenth Grader Moe Whitehead Get Out of His 2002 Pontiac Grand Am

1.
 I am younger than pretty much everyone in tenth grade.

2.
 So I can't drive yet.

3.
 I used to think it was cool to be just about the youngest kid in my grade, because it meant I got to hang out with older kids all day.

4.
 Even though sometimes it kind of sucked. Like in PE.

5.
 Plus maybe if my parents hadn't decide that it would be okay for me to start kindergarten early, even though my birthday's in November, I'd have more friends and a whole different and maybe better life.

6.
 And for some reason, I still don't really understand why they decided to do that in the first place.

7.
 But so what, the point is I can't drive yet, even though pretty much everyone in my grade can by now.

8.
 Which sort of blows, because everyone acts like driving is the coolest thing ever.

9.
 But then again it doesn't completely blow, because I have a feeling I'm going be a lousy driver and maybe even one of those kids who gets into a nasty accident a month after getting his license.

10.
 And so why do I keep forgetting to ask Dad to drop me off on the other side of the building near the main office so I don't have to see idiots like Moe Whitehead driving themselves to school?

11.
 Moe's a dick, too.

12.
 But at least he distracted me from Dad.

13.
 For a little while anyway.

5
Hyperbolic Phrases or Idioms That Would Reasonably Describe the Speed at Which Darren Exits His Dad's Car

1.
 Faster than a speeding bullet

2.
 Like he was shot out of a cannon

3.
 As if his pants were on fire

4.
 Like he was dying to get to school

5.
 As if there was nothing he wanted more in the whole wide world than to get out of that car

People at School Darren Feels Like He Can Talk to about What His Dad Just Told Him

3
Girls Who Might Be Capable of Drastically Improving Darren's Life, Girls Darren Thinks about as He Heads to His First Class, Trying Really Hard Not to Freak Out Completely about You Know What

1.
 EMILY PRINCE

Member of Darren's lab group in first-period chemistry. Bright blue eyes and shiny blond hair. Little. Little feet, little hands, little tush, little boobs. Giggles every time Brian Spanelli lights things on fire they're not supposed to light on fire. Whenever Emily puts on her oversize safety goggles, and only then, Darren feels an urge to lift her up in his arms, carry her to the school gymnasium, lay her down softly on a red tumbling mat, smooth out her shiny hair with his thick hand, and tell her that he could love her forever, probably.

2.
 MAGGIE BLOCK

The best trumpet player by far in jazz ensemble, not just the best girl trumpet player (which wouldn't be hard, because she's the only girl trumpet player), but just the best overall, even better than Kurt Phillips, who thinks he's better than he really is. She has a much better sense of rhythm than Kurt and her tone is at least as good. Plus sometimes from behind his bass Darren can see her getting really into it, at which point her face turns dark red and the pimples she tends to have right at the edge of her cheekbones sort of change color too. She really isn't very good-looking, mainly because in addition to the pimples her almost black hair is so frizzy it makes him wonder if she's intentionally trying to be unattractive, but even so, her body is pretty great, especially her chest, which is huge but not too huge. Plus she actually talks to Darren, and even swears when she does it, but not the way most girls swear, like the time she told Asher Lipshitz to stop being a big dick already.

3.
 ZOEY LOVELL

They actually went to elementary school together and were even in the same first/second grade split class. In fact, Darren's pretty sure he was at her seventh birthday party. But then Zoey went off to private school for like eight years or something, so when she showed up at North High last year it took him a couple of weeks to even recognize her, because she was just a little girl back then but definitely isn't now, even though she's still pretty small.

He hasn't had a single class with her yet (she's in eleventh grade, which doesn't help), but they've sort of randomly wound up eating near each other in the cafeteria, and every once in a while he times his trip to the garbage can to coincide with hers. They've had maybe four conversations, or exchanges, just really brief things, like, he'll make a comment about the unopened yogurt drink she's throwing out. And she'll always say something that doesn't really mean anything, something like “whatever” or—well, she usually just says “whatever.” But one time, before saying “whatever,” she sort of looked at Darren, right at him, for a moment or two, her pale face either curious or confused, and it was then that he realized she may be the saddest person at North High, sadder than him, even. And so he would hug her if she ever asked.