Tell Me It's Real (At First Sight #1)

by T.J. Klune

If you have ever been told that you’re not skinny enough, smart enough, straight enough, beautiful enough, strong enough, masculine enough, or any other “enough” that made you feel less than you actually are, then, man, do I have something to tell you: this one is for you because you are perfect just the way you are.

My soul is slowly being sucked dry in a cubicle that is smaller than a prison cell. Trust me, I measured it.

As a man, he’s perfect in my eyes. But when he’s in full-on drag as Helena Handbasket? Holy fireworks, Batman. There’s no one in this entire fucking town that can hold a candle to her when she’s performing (notice the pronoun switch: when he’s Sandy, he’s a “he”; when she’s in full drag, she’s a “she.” Queens can get vicious if you don’t respect the pronouns).

It was about that time that I pulled out my phone and googled how much time you got in prison for premeditated murder in the state of Arizona, all the while watching Eric out of the corner of my eye getting so close that I’m sure his normal-sized nipples were rubbing up against Mr. Yes Please. Google told me it was twenty-five years to life, and I weighed my options. I knew if I ended up in prison I’d just need to find the biggest, baddest guy in there and immediately become his bitch so that I wouldn’t get shanked or shivved by some guy named Boisterous Frankie. But at least the twink would have felt my wrath.

“Eric’s ass is so loose it sounds like wind blowing over a cave entrance when he walks.”

I wanted to stand up and tell everyone that Eric apparently had crabs last month, but even I’m not that mean. Out loud, anyway. In my head, I’m the meanest bitch who ever walked the face of the earth.

Is there anything more embarrassing or awkward than having “Happy Birthday” sung to you? Think about it. You’re the center of attention for fifteen to twenty seconds while people sing horribly off-key at your face (with some wit most likely adding in his or her own words to make the song even longer: “Happy birthday to you, cha, cha, cha”). What are you supposed to do during that time? Do you sit there with an idiotic grin on your face while people sing about the day you came out of your mother’s vagina? Do you look down at your hands? Do you sing along with them, only to realize it’s sort of dumb to sing “Happy birthday to me”? And don’t even get me started about the way people clap when it’s over and smile at each other, like they’re thinking what wonderful people they are for singing to you like that, like those fifteen to twenty seconds absolved them of all their sins.

“We know you’re shy, Paul, and maybe you’ll always be like that. But one day, someone is going to come along and sweep you off your feet and it will be like magic. You’ll open up like a blushing, virgin flower filled with rainbows and sprinkles” “Rainbows and sprinkles,” my father agreed. “The most sprinkliest virgin flower ever.”

Time supposedly flies when you are having fun, but time also jumps around weirdly when you’re trapped in the limbo that is an office job. Some days, I’d look at the clock and be surprised about how quickly the time had passed. Other days, time slowed down so much that it moved backward and I could feel myself breaking piece by piece until I was nothing but a pile of corporate American sadness.

“Well, you know what they say. When life hands you lemons—” “You’ll slice them to make lemonade, only to find you have miniscule little cuts on your hands and it causes it to sting really bad,” I finished for him. “Oh, and lemon juice squirts in your eye and blinds you for like twenty minutes.”

“Reality would be if Eeyore was on Paxil. No one could be depressed as much as he is for that long without needing antidepressants. Winnie the Pooh and Piglet probably staged an intervention at their house at one point.” “They didn’t live together,” Sandy said. “Of course they did. They were life partners.” “Pooh was porking Piglet?” “Brings new meaning to the sentence ‘I ate ham for breakfast.’” “I bet there’s like an Easter egg on one of the DVDs,” Sandy said, taking a drink of his tea. “A deleted scene that shows Eeyore jerking off to a photo of Pooh fucking Piglet while hanging himself with his tail in the closet.”

It was about that time I realized I might have been obsessing a bit much, and since I didn’t want to end up boiling a rabbit in his house and screaming, “Why won’t you love me?” as my mascara ran down my face, I decided to just push it all away and forget Vince completely.

I don’t want to get my cardio on. I can’t think of anything more awful than that aside from having a vasectomy while awake with no anesthesia.

“I don’t need no fuckin’ man tellin’ me what to do!” I forgot that my window was down until the woman in the car next to me shouted back, “Me either! Don’t need no fuckin’ man!” I would have been beyond embarrassed, but I was feeling way too fucking good, so I shared a kindred moment with the woman, both of us grinning at each other like fools. I cranked up the stereo and we sang as loud as we possibly could until we missed that the light had turned green and the guy in the truck behind us began to honk and scream out his window, “Move your gay asses!”

“I think hitting me with his car was kind of his revenge. Or maybe foreplay. He might be into some kinky shit, I dunno.” “Like he needs to hit things with his car to get off?” Doc Hal asked, glancing at me. “That brings a whole new meaning to the word ‘autoerotic’.”

What the hell? Do you have ADD? No. Do u have SUBTRACTION? Haha, get it?? Yes, Vince. I get it

“Why do you have a black eye?” my father asked me suspiciously, reaching over to turn my face so he could see it better. I’d totally forgotten about it. “Dear,” my mother whispered loudly. “Isn’t it obvious? Vince is the Dominant and Paul is his submissive. Look how Vince is holding onto him like he owns him. It was probably just from a rough scene in Vince’s playroom. Vince may have made him pretend to be a pony, like on that one HBO show that we watched. You remember? Where that one man put that bit in the other man’s mouth and made him wear a saddle? We promised ourselves we’d always support Paul with whatever he chose to be. It just so happens he’s kinky. We’ll support him no matter what.” My father nodded as if this made complete sense. “You a pony, son?” he asked me. I tried to keep from screaming. “No, Dad. I’m not a pony.” “I don’t like horses that much,” Vince said, obviously not understanding at all. “They scare me a bit. I don’t like the noises they make.”

Sandy stepped forward and forged my signature. “That’s a federal crime,” I told him. “Punishable by three to five years in a minimum-security prison. You’ll get passed around like condiments at a barbeque.” “My hole is already quivering,” he said. Jenny grimaced. “I can’t talk about my vagina, but you can talk about your asshole quivering?” We both glanced at her. “Uh, yeah,” Sandy said. “We’re gay.” He shot me a look that said, What is up with this chick?

“Baby doll, I do believe you’re going to get plowed like a field around planting time,” she observed succinctly. “Gonna get seeded, that’s for damn sure.”

He’s going to want to get naked and when he does, he’ll be all like, ‘Oh, hey, look at me. I just came from the gym and my abs are so rock hard and perfect and I have thighs of steel.’ And then I’ll get naked and be all like, ‘Oh hey, look at me. I just came from Denny’s and I look like I swallowed a baby.’”

He was hard lines, chiseled flesh, bronzed skin. I was a marshmallow melting in a cup of cocoa. The shakes started in my shins, of all places. Each step I took, I could feel my legs trembling until it worked its way up my thighs and past my groin, where it settled in my stomach like so much poison. I felt weak. Sweaty. Gross.

“I’m not going to cut myself,” I said. “Paul could never be a cutter,” Mom said. “He’s too much of a baby when it comes to pain. He’d go the Sylvia Plath route and stick his head in a gas oven like a real lady.” “Bull,” Dad said. “He’d take sleeping pills and then choke on his own vomit.” “You’re both wrong,” Sandy said. “He’d get drunk on gin and fall asleep smoking Virginia Slim 120s and accidentally set the bed on fire.” “For some reason, I don’t think the best way to start an intervention is by discussing the best way for the person you are intervening on to kill themselves,” I told them. “That person might take it the wrong way.”

“You know there’s a homicidal hobo with hook hands jerking it to our conversation over there in the bushes.” “I don’t think I’d touch my junk if I had hook hands,” he said. “How would you jerk off if you only had hook hands?” I wondered aloud. “Easy. I’d get a plain bagel, cover it with lube, then fuck it. I’d latch it into my hook hands and just go to fucking town on it.”