My brain people say: Astrid baby, it’s because you’re not g*y.
They say: You’re not strong enough to be g*y.
They say: Mom would never forgive you if you’re g*y.
I try to stop thinking about it, which is easier on weekdays when I’m distracted by school stuff like Zeno of Elea, lit mag, and the dirty looks I still get from Tim Huber’s friends. But now all I can think about is Dee and how this all started. How she told me how gorgeous I was. How flattered I felt. How exhilarating it was to be wanted. This is why I doubt. It’s the loophole. It’s the question no one ever wants to ask.
Am I doing this out of desperation? Is it some weird phase I’m going through? And why, if any of the answers are yes, does it feel so right?
There is a 747 high, leaving a crisp white line through the cloudless autumn sky. I ask the passengers: Am I really g*y?
But they don’t answer me. They are reading their in-flight magazines and sipping ginger ale. I send them love—as much as I can gather. I ask them: What do I do now?
PASSENGER #54627563
ELAINE HUBBINGTON, SEAT 3A FIRST CLASS
FLIGHT #4022
CLEVELAND TO PHILADELPHIA
MEMBER OF WINGS ELITE CLUB #HU3456
I know about two hours into the flight home that I have to leave John. Call it a moment of clarity. Call it a message from God. I stare out the window at the sky and feel this smack of reality right in my heart.
He hasn’t done anything to deserve it. He’s loyal and sweet. He still buys me thoughtful presents on my birthday and on our anniversary. I just don’t love him. It’s not fair that he’s wasting his life on me, a person who will never return his feelings. And it’s early. Married only five years—no kids yet.
Yet.
Our last discussion was groggy. I’d set the alarm for four and was pulling on my socks when he rolled over and lightly stroked my back.
“When you get home, let’s talk about a family again.”
“Mmm hmm,” I said.
“We have the space.”
Is that the most important factor for deciding to have kids these days? Space?
His comment echoed the whole flight to Chicago. We have the space.
What I should have said was, “Why don’t we go shopping for antiques? That would fill some space.”
What I should have said was, “How about a home gym? Or a flat-screen TV with surround sound?”
When did I go from human being to baby machine to fill your space? That’s what I wanted to say to him. But instead, I just held off calling until after dinner. Each sticky-sweet thing he said made me want to puke. “I miss you” vomit. “I’ll keep the bed warm for you” gag. “I love you” heave. I wanted to say, “I think I loved you, too, once, but I don’t anymore. Find yourself another uterus to fill your goddamn space.”
Instead, I said, “I miss you. Keep the bed warm. I love you, too.”
Lies.
The blue sky at thirty thousand feet asks me uncomfortable questions. It asks: Why did you marry him? Did you ever love him? Will you?
It asks me: What do you do now?
The blue sky at thirty thousand feet gives me answers. It says: You never loved John. You hit thirty and panicked. You’re too selfish to admit you made a mistake.
The sky says: Stop being so selfish. Everybody deserves a chance at real love. Only once you let him go will you find yours. Do what feels right.
7
ASTRID TO HOME PLANET: PLEASE RESCUE ME.
“IT’S SATURDAY… let’s go somewhere fancy!” Mom says after galumphing downstairs from her office at ten after five.
Dad, Ellis and I are in the den. I’m reading the beginning of Plato’s Republic for humanities class. Ellis is watching a documentary about triathlons. Dad is in his Saturday stoner clothes. He has white paint on his dark brown hiking shorts. His T-shirt gives the illusion of having been sweaty and dried out again. His hair is Hollywood windswept. He’s got a graying goatee, and if you look close enough, you can see Cheetos dust in it. The only thing he did while he was “cleaning out the garage attic” was take a few hits from the pipe he hides up there and exhale out the exhaust fan toward Bob’s house. Technically, my father is The Dude from the movie The Big Lebowski, only he’s totally in the closet. (Jones closet tally: 2)
Mom looks at him for an answer.
Dad says, “Nothing fancy for me. I’m beat.”
“What do you have to be beat about?” she asks. “You didn’t even work today.”
Dad says, “Weekends off. The perks of working for the man.”
“Sorry,” I say. “I have to read this, and I have to get up early for work.”
I don’t even know why we answer. Dad and I both know she wasn’t really asking us. She looks to Ellis and puts on an annoying high-pitched voice. “A Mommy and Me night?”
As always, mere mention of this tradition makes me want to throw up in my mouth. Ellis chews on her lower lip for a second. I think she may roll her eyes to herself as if she knows how annoying this is to the rest of us. Then she claps her hands together and says, “Let’s get really dressed up, too!”
“Fancy!” Mom chirps, and the two of them go upstairs in a fit of adolescent bliss.
An hour later they’re gone, and Dad disappears to the garage again on some vague errand, which means he’s going to toke up. I wish he didn’t act this way. He’s like some kid, and I’d much rather he knew that I know and I don’t care.
I’m the only one who’d be halfway cool about it. Ellis would probably cry and turn him into the D.A.R.E. cops. Mom would freak out. My mother has never held back on how she feels about stoners. Hippies. Do-nothings. Druggies. “All those brain cells!” she’d say. “What a waste!”
Frankly, the more I read about the philosophers of ancient Greece, the more I think her life is a waste. What’s she learning? What’s she questioning? She knows everything, which means she doesn’t know anything.
I mean, yes, at the beginning of humanities class, I thought most philosophers were a bunch of entitled Greek guys sitting around thinking up crazy shit (like Zeno) while the women and the slaves did all the work. But then this week we started to learn about Socrates.
Socrates lived in the fifth century BC in Greece. He didn’t write anything, which means most of what we know about him comes from what other people said (a little like living in Unity Valley). His favorite thing to do was to prove to people that what they thought was truth might not be true. This did two things for Socrates: (1) It earned him the label “one of the founders of Western philosophy,” and (2) it eventually annoyed enough people that they put him to death by making him drink hemlock.