… short for Salome
“Sorry to disappoint you,” Atsushi said. “I asked, but Sally said no girl should endure discomfort on her wedding day.”
“It doesn’t surprise me,” Jeff rode a wave of regret for having delayed so long to come out to Atsushi. But, after so many years apart, the past few visits had been growing comfortable, even sweet. “Remember,” Jeff added laughing, “Heaven knows no rage like love to hatred turned/nor hell a fury like Filipinas spurned. William Congreve said that,” Jeff clarified, “the British playwright, not me. A little bit me.”
“It isn’t funny,” Atsushi said. He was the only child of a family from Kagoshima. His mother had never let him lose hope of giving her grandchildren. Now, almost 40 years old, he had proposed marriage for the first time in his life. Sally, his intended, was a kindergarten teacher from Manila. “And it’s kind of racist.”
“It’s a terrible generalization,” Jeff admitted, “But examples lend support.”
“Give me one,” Atsushi said, “and a way I can confirm it.”
“Sorry,” Jeff said, “I have it only second hand. And my source has passed away. Nonetheless, eventually you may find yourself confirming it.”
“Maybe,” Atsushi said, “but careful what you say about anyone not here.”
“Once upon a time,” Jeff began, “while I was still in the closet, I went on a few dates with a Filipino ice skater. He had actually medaled at the Gay Games in Prague. He was a handsome guy with a beautiful body. But, two weekends into the relationship, he started reorganizing my life.”
“If you had let him reorganize,” Atsushi said, “you might be in better shape now.”
“He wanted to move into my house and seize control of my finances.”
“The house you had to sell to pay gambling debts?”
“Yes,” Jeff said, “the only house I’ve ever owned.” Jeff had fallen so low financially that he was renting a room in the Sunset and was working call centers through a temp agency. For a long while, he had resisted the advances of the teenage son of the Chinese family he was renting from. But now Jeff was yielding; so, it would not be long before he would have to find another place to live. “Maybe in better shape,” Jeff said mostly to himself, “or maybe in prison.”
“Why prison?” Atsushi said.
“The Filipino skater wouldn’t let me stop seeing him. Late nights, he would show up uninvited, bang on the door and demand to be let in.”
“Did you call the police?”
“No, I was afraid to. I was still in the closet.”
“Still in the closet? Nearly everyone knew you were gay.”
“Really?” Jeff said. “Was I that nelly?”
“No,” Atsushi said. “Never flamboyant, around me at least, but touching me and, I guess, other people a lot after a drink or two. You feel better now?”
“No! If I had come out when we were young, I might have frightened you away, but –"
“Who knows what could have happened back then?” Atsushi said. “But I don’t want to revisit the subject. Your being gay doesn’t bother me now. Maybe it never would have bothered me.”
“What I regret is the constant evasion,” Jeff said, “the erosion of authenticity in dealing with you.”
“Shit happens,” Atsushi said, “so cut the recrimination.”
“I would,” Jeff said, “if the duplicity hadn’t led to my drifting from one unsatisfactory substitute for you to another even less satisfactory.”
“I don’t know if I would have been available back then,” Atsushi said. “But as things stand between Sally and me, I can’t be available now.”
“I wasn’t thinking you could,” Jeff said.
“The other rice queen, the one on ice,” Atsushi said, “did he offer you the bronze? Or was it bamboo?”
Jeff frowned in disapproval. “I didn’t know how far the Filipino skater would take things. So, I sought personal guidance from one of the senior leaders in my Buddhist group. He told me about Ed, one of his neighbors, a construction worker who married a nurse from Mindanao. Ed boasted that his new wife was even more docile than his first, a pole dancer from Chiangmai. At least, that’s what the nurse led Ed to believe. And during the first years of marriage, she seemed to handle things pretty well, his smoking, his drinking, even his messing around with other women. Then a fall at a construction site left Ed helpless in a wheel chair. His wife remained faithful, but sometimes her anger barreled through her nurse’s oath. She would slap Ed hard across the face and ask if he still felt irresistible to other women.”
“Why are you telling me this?” Atsushi said. “Sally’s not from Mindanao. She’s from Luzon, a world away.”
“I don’t know Asia,” Jeff said. And Jeff had had no interest in anything or anyone Asian until Atsushi slipped into homeroom the first day of sophomore year and pierced Jeff’s heart.
“And I don’t know a lot about women,” Atsushi said, “but I’m sure my kindergarten teacher from Luzon has nothing in common with that nurse from Mindanao.”
“You’re probably right,” Jeff said. “But forewarned is forearmed. I came out of the closet right after I received the guidance about Mindanao, R.N., and Mr. Ed. And I called the cops the next time the skater showed.”
“Did you ever receive guidance about gambling?”
“Nothing I felt was necessary or even possible to follow.”
Atsushi shrugged his shoulders. “All of us probably could have worked harder at one thing or another,” he said then looked at his phone. There was a text from Sally questioning his whereabouts.
“And maybe still can,” Jeff said. “Should I expect an invitation?”
“Sure, I think,” Atsushi said. “It won’t be that small a party.”
“Great,” Jeff said and sucked in his belly. “I’ve held onto the one suit I think still fits.”
“You can understand Sally’s nixing you as best man,” Atsushi said, “and wanting her brother instead. But annihilation? She’s not Medea!”
- © Chuck Teixeira 2021
Chuck Teixeira grew up amid the anthracite collieries of northeastern Pennsylvania. Early on, Chuck earned four university degrees, including an M.A. from the Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins and a J.D. from Harvard Law School. For many years, Chuck worked as a tax attorney in San Francisco, California. Now he teaches English in Bogota, Colombia. Chuck identifies as gay, and his children and their mother have made peace with that. Chuck’s stories have appeared in Esquire, Permafrost, Portland Review, Two Thirds North and Jonathan. Collections of his published work are available at Amazon.com.
