T.J. Klune - Bear, Otter, and the Kid 2 - Who We Are (31 page)

“No,” I tell his mother. “I’m the lucky one.”
I
T
’
S
nothing sordid, you know. The explanation behind Alice and Jerry’s

reluctance. I know you’re probably thinking that there’s some big tragedy in the past that forever shaped this family, and that some dark secret is about to be revealed. While it was tragic, and while it did shape people, it’s not dark or morbid or life-altering, at least for us. It’s just sad. And even though I don’t rightly agree with their actions toward Otter and his coming out, I can still see their point.

Sometimes things have simple explanations, even though the consequences are complex.
Jerry had an older brother, a man named Alan. In 1982, right before Otter was born, Jerry was twenty-three, and his older brother was twentyseven. Alan started coughing one day and couldn’t stop. Soon there was blood. Soon Alan was in the hospital. Soon Alan, an out-and-proud gay man, was diagnosed with what would be referred to later that year as AIDS. The world became a scary place then, as some of Alan’s friends became sick, as people turned their noses up, as Reagan acted like nothing was wrong, even after almost four hundred people had died by 1983. Alan was one of them. He died due to complications from pneumonia on January 19, 1982. Otter was born three days later.

Jerry had idolized his older brother. He had worshipped the ground he walked on. He’d held his hand when he took his last breath, even though he was told not to touch him, that doctors didn’t know how contagious he would be. But he’d seen the fear in Alan’s eyes, the despair, and he didn’t care what happened to him. He didn’t think about his new wife, his unborn son. He held his brother’s hand, and his brother had smiled around the tube down his throat, and right before his eyes closed, he winked at his brother, a look that Jerry had known his brother to give all his life.

He buried his brother on a winter day so beautiful it felt like a slap in the face. It shouldn’t have been so bright out. The sky shouldn’t have been so blue. The day should not have looked like it was celebrating when it should be mourning.

He’d been one of the pall bearers, carrying the casket on his shoulder, the weight there only a reminder of what he’d lost, of what he’d no longer have. Even when the coffin was lifted off him and lowered into the ground, he could still feel it on his shoulder, his back, digging into his skin as the sun shone down, as a gently fragrant breeze blew across his face.

Fast forward to four years ago. Otter came out. Jerry and Alice were smart people, caring people. They were also people with long memories, with scars that had never fully healed. They were scared. They worried. They knew how the world worked, that much had happened since Alan’s death, that such a diagnosis didn’t mean death. But it was still Alan. It was still Jerry’s brother. It wasn’t a nameless face or a statistic. Jerry hurt for his son, hurt for his brother. He didn’t know how to act, didn’t know what to do. So he did nothing. It seemed safer. He didn’t know that sometimes nothing is worse than something.

“I don’t know if I buy it,” Otter told me later that night, after we’d come home from their house. We lay in bed in the dark, Otter wrapped around my back. “Over twenty years later, and they freak out about that?”

“People remember what hurts them the most,” I replied quietly. “It’s hard to forget when it feels like it still chafes.”

He kissed my ear. “Do you remember? What hurts you the most?” His voice was low, but I heard the question behind the question.
I was careful with my reply, knowing exactly what he meant. “I remember that you came back.”

This seemed to satisfy him. “I don’t know if I can forgive and forget so quickly,” he said. “I’m not like you, Bear. After all that I did, you still found some way to forgive me. I don’t know if I can do the same with my parents. It hurts too much.”

I turned in his arms and cupped his face. “I forgave you because I love you,” I told him, that gold-green sparkling in the dark. “I forgave you because I needed to in order to forgive myself. You’ll do the same. You’ll see.”

“And how do you know that?” he whispered hoarsely. “How can you know?”

I smiled at him and gave him the words he’d once gifted to me. “I have faith,” I said simply.
He kissed me, long and deep, but not before I saw the shine in his eyes.

W
HAT
is it about brothers that make us act so much differently than we normally would? Why is there a bond there that doesn’t exist anywhere else? I can’t answer that, even though Tyson is my brother, even though Creed is my brother, even though Otter has grown to be more than my brother. My brothers shaped me to be who I am, whether or not I knew what was happening, and in return, I’d like to think I had a part in shaping them.

These are the men (and one Kid) that I will need for the rest of my life. They might anger me, they might hurt me, they might make me want to pull my hair out, but I will never forget what I’ve learned from them, because regardless of what else happens, regardless of who we are or what we’ll become, they are my brothers, and they are mine.
S
O WE
were told what we were, and although it didn’t immediately fix the tension between Otter and his parents, it was at least a start. You can’t just wipe away years of rigidity with a single conversation, no matter how sincere it might have been. I think, in fact, it might have made things slightly worse for Otter, at least for a short time, that the explanation for his parents’ reticence was one of family, of brothers. But regardless of the reasoning, I could still feel bitter
for
him, that they would let a ghost from their past cloud their relationship with their son. Even if we both could understand what it meant to be haunted, years cannot be corrected in a matter of days.

I think Alice and Jerry knew that too. They stepped back and gave Otter time to think, time to figure things out on his own. They knew as well as I did that he would come to the right conclusion, if only given time. I wasn’t kidding when I told him that I had faith in him. I do. I know he’ll see it for what it is, and a day in the not so distant future will come, and Otter will wake up one morning and be past everything that has been gnawing at him. It’s not in Otter’s nature to hold grudges. He’s not like the rest of us.

I don’t know what I did to deserve him, that’s for damn sure.

It’s this I’m trying to keep in mind when he comes to me a few days later with a request so mind-boggling that I can’t seem to wrap my mind around it.

He wants me to
what
?

It’s Thursday night. I’m sitting at the kitchen table, trying to work through my psychology homework, not understanding the reading, wondering if maybe I could get Eddie to help me, but then getting the image in my head of Eddie asking me how the book makes me
feel
, and I shudder and shove that idea right out. It’s probably better to fail on my own than ask my brother’s gonzo therapist to help me. I consider briefly asking Isaiah to go over it with me, but I don’t think Otter would like that very much. He’s made it very clear he’d be okay if Isaiah was no longer subject to the laws of gravity and fell off the face of the earth, careening into space as his flesh froze against his bones (you think I’m exaggerating when I say that—I’m actually toning it down quite a bit; Otter
really
doesn’t like Isaiah). It’s my fault, really; I’d made the mistake of telling him that Isaiah had kissed me, however brief it might have been. I assured him that I had done nothing to bring it on (“Are you
kidding
?” he scowled. “You bring those things on by
breathing
”) and that I didn’t respond (at least my lips hadn’t; my dick… well, that’s another matter entirely. And don’t give me that look. I’m a guy in my early twenties who just discovered sex with men is fun; I can get a hard-on just by thinking about it. It’s not like Isaiah did anything special, so hush).

Otter looked like he hadn’t believed me for a split second before demanding I switch classes, no, that I switch
schools
, no, that I stay in the house forever and never leave. It’s perfectly plausible, he told me. He’d go out and work and make sure I had food and water and that I would never get bored. I asked him if he thought I was his dog. He asked if Isaiah was hotter than he was. I told him he wasn’t, and that Otter was much, much bigger. This had given him a look of immediate satisfaction, and I let him ramble for a minute or two about how he could squash Isaiah with his rather large muscles, and couldn’t I tell that he’d been working out more? Couldn’t I see how much bigger his arms were? How much larger his chest was? I told him I couldn’t see it, really, through the clothes he was wearing. This immediately caused him to take off his shirt and pants, and I had no problems seeing how much bigger he was then and told him so.

An hour later, we lay next to each other, spent and gasping, his spunk trickling out of my ass and down my thigh in a way that sounds pornographically disgusting but is actually pretty fucking hot. I kissed his chest, and he wiped my hair off my sweaty brow and leaned down to kiss me. He pulled away only slightly, his lips pressed against mine, and told me in no uncertain terms that if Isaiah tried anything with me again, he should probably look over his shoulder for the rest of his life because he wouldn’t be safe wherever he went. His threat was so quiet, so serious, that I couldn’t help but shudder in his arms. Isaiah would stand no chance against Otter.

I smile at this memory while flipping through the psych text. I hear Otter getting off the phone after having spent fifteen minutes talking to whoever. The Kid sits across from me, working through his fractions homework. I consider briefly asking the Kid to explain Kohlberg’s theory of moral development to me, but stop myself, realizing I don’t really want to know if he knows what that means.

Otter comes back in the room. I glance up at him and pause. He has that look on his face, that look of determination like he’s going to ask something he knows I won’t like (“You just have to
try
the escargot, Bear! It’s not going to bite you. They’re just
snails,
for Christ’s sake!” is one example; “Of
course
it’s a good idea to try page seventy-six in the gay
Kama Sutra
, Bear! No one ever got hurt trying to put their legs behind their ears! Stop being such a baby and let me fuck you tantrically!” is another). I close the psych text and fold my hands in front of me on the table and wait expectantly.

He knows that I know something is up. “Now, you think about what I’m going to ask you before you say anything,” he says ominously.

The Kid looks up and grins. “Conversations that start like that are my favorite. I can’t
wait
to hear what you’re going to ask.”
“What did you do?” I say as my eyes narrow.

“Nothing,” he says, then he adds, “yet.”
“Uh-huh.”
“That was my friend Jordan on the phone.”

“Like way back in the day Jordan?” I vaguely remember him and some of the other friends Otter used to hang out with before he ran off to San Diego.

He nods. “He’s been trying to get me to go out since I got back but, you know. Other things were more important.” He sighs, a big heavy sound, and now I know he’s trying to fuck with me. “Like how much I love you.” He tries to put smolder in his eyes, but it’s more like sparks dying on wet pavement.

“That look almost worked on me,” I tell him. “Almost.”

“That’s your face you make when you want something?” the Kid asks incredulously. “Otter, that made you look like you were surprised and constipated at the same time. You totally need to work on that. Bear’s a huge pushover when you get it right.”

I glare at him. “I am not!”

“Oh, you’re so right, Papa Bear,” he says seriously. Then he grins a dazzling smile, and his eyes go wide. “Can I have some soy ice cream since I’m almost done with my homework? Fractions are awfully hard, but I think I’m doing okay. I just need a little pick-me-up.”

I stand up and pat his hand. “Sure, Kid. You’ve been doing awesome so far, so you deserve a little something.” I go to the freezer and pull out his ice cream, dishing some in a bowl and getting a spoon and putting it in front of him before sitting back down.

“See?” the Kid says to Otter.
My brow furls. “Wait a minute—”

“Wow,” Otter says. “That was incredible to watch. So I’ve got to make my eyes look bigger and smile harder?”

 

“Kid, did you just play me
again
—”

 

“Your eyes and mouth are
way
too wide now, Otter. You look like you’re caught in the headlights, and you’re happy you’re about to get hit.” How dare they ignore me! “
I
can get what I want with looks too—” “Kid, I’m also trying to have sexy in my eyes too, you know? To make Bear melt a little so he’s putty in my hands.”

 

“I’m not
putty
—”

The Kid rolls his eyes. “What would I know about sexy? I’m
nine
. Now, love and romance, I know. I was the one that got you two together, after all.”

“You were
not
—”

 

“Did I ever tell you thank you for that, Kid? I can’t remember if I did or not.”

 

“He didn’t do
anything
—”

“That’s okay, Otter. I know you meant to but just got busy. Bear’s obviously a lot to deal with, so I wasn’t upset.
“I’m just going to start saying random things now—”

“Good, because I was worried you thought I didn’t appreciate everything you did,” Otter says.
“I’m leaving you both for a trucker named Duke—”

“You shouldn’t have to worry,” the Kid says. “You’ve done a lot for us. I know that. It’s the least I could do to make sure you guys realized you belonged together.”

“And Duke and I are going to run an ostrich farm outside Oklahoma

City—”
“
I
realized it right away,” Otter says. “It was your brother that took
some convincing.”

“And Duke and I will adopt a pair of Pekingese, and I’ll name them Robert Redford and Beyoncé—”

“I’m glad you stuck with it,” the Kid says, shoveling more ice cream in his mouth. “I know Bear isn’t the easiest person to convince. You gotta take the whole ‘wear him down’ method. Usually, he’ll cave.”