This is why whenever I see a blind man about my age walking around tapping the right and left sides of a sidewalk with one of those long, thin sticks, I have a panic attack. First time that happened, I thought my heart had stopped. That blind-man tapping noise triggers all sorts of uncomfortable feelings that I’ve never been able to articulate proficiently. Regardless of all that, I thought I would just put this unfortunate story in here now. It’s probably already in one of your secret files, so it may have been the pink elephant in our metaphorical room or whatever the fuck you want to call this here report.
I checked with my lawyers, who assure me there is absolutely no way anyone—not even the government—could press charges against me now. It was self-defense anyway, and any man on a jury would be on my side. Even gays would be horrified to wake up that way, so this isn’t about being anti-homo, which I am not anyway. The man who sexually assaulted me was crazy, not gay. Needless to say, this was not a fun conversation to have with civilian lawyers. But make no mistake about it, I was the victim that morning, and if you prematurely tell anyone about this sensitive information, for obvious reasons, I will gut you like a pig and wipe your entire fucking family off the face of the earth. Nothing personal, but it’s easier to trust people like you when you’re scared shitless.
12.
A few days or so after my postoperation seizure, Gay Timmy gave me a call on my cell phone. He left this long message chewing my ass out for missing my personal training session. I was supposed to ease back into my workouts, and Timmy had taken the time to construct the perfect plan, which required that I missed absolutely zero sessions. He had also given me one of his most sought-after time slots, a gesture not lost on me. Everyone wanted the 4:30 p.m., but he reserved it for my sorry ass, because we’re tight.
But with everything that happened, I had forgotten all about my session and missed it. No excuses—that slipup was on me, and I had to man up about it, which I absolutely did. Lucky for me, I’d had a bona fide seizure and the hospital bills to prove it, or that would have been it for yours truly working out with Timmy. He has a million and one people waiting to take your place and get rock-hard, Navy SEAL fit.
When I heard the message on my phone, I knew I had to call back quickly. I was pretty sure Timmy would forgive me for having the seizure, but I wasn’t so sure about the fact that I had not canceled my appointment. I got his voice mail, which was good, because I could explain everything without his chewing out my ass again.
Like I also told you before, Timmy and Johnny were always having me over for dinner parties. I didn’t much care for gay dinner parties, but I appreciated being included. To pay them back, I would pick up the bill whenever we had dinner out on musical theater nights. And I would also take them to the Union League every now and then, even though gays raise eyebrows among my conservative Republican friends there. But fuck those bigoted people. I’d go to war with Timmy and Johnny any day of the year. Even on gay pride day when they wear rainbows all over their bodies, which is not good camouflage, to say the least.
But I still got the sense that my favorite gay couple was a little insulted about my never having them to my place for dinner. I didn’t mind having gays in my home one bit, only I could not cook gay food. But Hank always cooked gay food, and so I had a eureka moment while I was leaving the message for Timmy. After I told him all about my seizure in the art museum and meeting a rare Puerto Rican who didn’t know what the fuck West Side Story was, I explained that my son, Hank, cooked like a gay man, and therefore I was absolutely sure they would enjoy having dinner with me at Hank’s house. Then I invited them over for that Saturday night.
I also invited Sue, for all of the reasons I already stated, and because she was friends with Timmy already. If my son proved to be an inadequate host of gays, Sue could help me pick up the slack, being that—like me—she was well versed in gay friendship.
When Timmy called me back, he was concerned about my health. Like I already told you, the gays are very considerate, which is why they make fantastic buddies. Once Timmy heard that my meds had been adjusted and that I would be able to start doing a light workout within a week or so—and therefore I hadn’t reneged on my commitment to fitness—he was appeased enough to talk about dinner.
I told him not to expect much because my son was heterosexual and therefore handicapped when it came to throwing dinner parties, but I sure would like to pay my favorite gay couple back for all the times they had me over, and I knew that my living with Hank was probably our absolute best shot.
Timmy laughed like he always does when I talk about homo-hetero relations. I realize that I don’t know all the proper homo terms, which is why he’s always laughing at me, but he also knows me for who I am and we have been through a lot, so terminology doesn’t really matter so much, despite what your average liberal will tell you.
At the club I also sometimes play pickup basketball with the brothers, and they all call me honky or cracker or old man whitey or even sometimes G.I. Joe, because they like me and I even got better jobs for some of them. I used my old contacts in the city to help the blacks make some more coin, which is the best sort of reparations there is—the ability to make your own money with your own brain and your own efforts, fair and square. It has been my experience that a black will be much more appreciative than a white when it comes to help getting jobs, and that’s why I stopped helping most whites, who, truth be told, far too often act like assholes.
I should probably mention that these are all high-class brothers who can afford to pay the fitness club fees. But they call each other racist names on the court—even the biggest no-no word there is, the one that not even I will say anymore—just like the black soldiers did when I was in Vietnam.
If he were ever in the gym when these guys got to shooting off their mouths, my son would immediately lecture them on which words they were and weren’t supposed to use, which would get his ass beat quick and ensure that the blacks would never pick him up on a side when it came to playing basketball. He’d be standing against the wall just holding his little white pecker from then on.
But the brothers always let me play hoops, and they laugh when I call them dark meat. They even kick one of their own off the court when I walk in, just so I can run a little ball. I never last too long, so don’t go feeling too bad for the dude who has to sit down.