“Right.”
“And we both know you’re surprisingly not bad in the kitchen, right?”
“Uh, thanks. But right.”
He ignores this and moves on. “So here’s what you’re going to do….”
TY’S idea was brilliant. It was the stuff of cheesy romantic over-the-top Hollywood movies. I swear to God the Kid is going to conquer the world when he grows up. Okay, scratch that; he’ll probably take over in the next five years. Like I said, though, the idea was amazing, but the execution… well, the execution isn’t going so well.
Goddammit.
Okay, so before I let you see me make the biggest fool of myself, let me fill you in on the setup.
Ty suggested that we go for broke on this one. It was his philosophy that if you’re going to do something like tell your boyfriend that you love him for the first time that you should go big or go home. I told him about how Otter had said it to me for the first time, and it wasn’t anything elaborate. He had me tell the story of a few days ago when I had practically begged Otter to say it. When I finished, the Kid said it sounded big to him, and then he snickered to himself. I told the Kid he doesn’t make any sense. Ty told me to shut up and listen to him because I didn’t know what I was talking about. I told him to act his age. He told me to act mine. I decided to shut up and listen to him. Now I think he was just being dirty.
Ty’s idea was still to have me make dinner for Otter, but he said that while making dinner in and of itself is nice, it’s not good enough. Ty said that we needed to do this on the beach, in front of the ocean, and under the stars. He wanted to get a table and set it up in the sand and cover it with a white tablecloth and have us dress up in our nicest clothes (he kind of looked at me in disdain when he said this part and then proceeded to ask if I even owned any nice clothes) and have candles and music, and
while he was talking, I tried to picture all of this in my head and couldn’t imagine myself doing anything like that, and what the hell were we thinking, and I was just going to pick up the phone and tell Otter right now. I told the Kid as much and had gotten as far as to pick up my phone and was about to press in Otter’s number when Ty grabbed the phone out of my hand and threatened to tell Otter that I liked to be spanked during sex.
This proceeded to lead us on a long tangent where I had to have him explain to me how he knows about stuff like people getting spanked during sex. He said he might have heard it mentioned while watching MSNBC. I told him he was grounded from watching the news channels for a week. That’s where this whole sidebar should have ended, but then I was forced to explain S & M and bondage to my little brother, who was persistent on the topic, and who then kept staring at me with mounting horror when I finally did explain, and I realized I had maybe gone too far, and we had to spend the next five minutes with me swearing to God that I had never nor would I ever attempt to do anything like that. He might now be the only nine-year-old who has heard the terms “cock ring” and “fisting.” My parenting skills are unparalleled.
When finally he would look me in the eyes again, I knew the only way I could earn his trust back (no matter what he says, I know the Kid thinks I like getting whipped now) was to go through with his plan. I wondered out loud how we should get Otter to dress up in nice clothes and come to the beach without giving him some kind of idea as to what was going on. The Kid said he would call Otter and tell him when and where to be. I tried to weasel out of it halfheartedly again by saying what if someone saw us and wouldn’t that kind of defeat the purpose of keeping this on the down-low? The Kid countered with the fact that we both knew of a small stretch of beach that nobody ever went to. What about the Kid? Where would he go while I was doing all of this? It seems that was the perfect time for him to ask me if he could go on that damn camping trip with Alex and his family on Wednesday, after school got out. I saw how neatly the Kid had played this game, and I would have been pissed off if it hadn’t been so smooth.
Wednesday. Has a day ever sounded so ominous? Wed-nes-day. I told the Kid I thought Wednesday was Latin for Satan, and that we probably shouldn’t do it then because it might be bad luck. The Kid then proceeded to tell me what the word Wednesday actually means and where it came from (apparently it’s Middle English for Wednes dei, the day of the English God Woden—how the hell he knows these things, I’ll never know). He then said to stop being such a girl. This struck him as funny, and he laughed as he asked me if I was the girl in my relationship with Otter. I scowled and threw a pillow at his head.
So the Kid called Otter and told him where to be and what to wear. I tried to listen in on the conversation, but Ty shot me annoyed glares and eventually locked himself in the bathroom and turned on the sink and the shower and kept repeatedly flushing the toilet to drown out his whispering. I banged on the door and yelled that Al Gore would kick his ass for wasting all that water. He came out five minutes later and told me that first, Al Gore stopped being relevant four years ago, and that second, he hadn’t given anything away to Otter. But he did tell me that there was a new stipulation and that we both couldn’t wear shoes. I arched an eyebrow at this, and he said that it wasn’t meant to be more romantic this way but more practical. He said that Otter had tried to find out what he was up to, but the Kid made him promise not to ask any further questions to either him or me. Otter promised.
We reviewed everything that I had in my closet, and Ty was getting more and more discouraged as we went further and further into the racks of clothes. He had finally pulled out the last thing in the closet, and our room was completely trashed, and he sat on the ground, shaking his head, asking why did I not even own some kind of suit? I told him I wasn’t pretentious enough. He said I didn’t know what that word even meant. I told him what it meant. He grumbled for a few minutes, and then his eyes grew wide, and he jumped up from the crater of clothing he had created and ran down the hall, and I heard him go into Mom’s old room. This surprised me, because he never goes in there for anything. I got up and followed him, and he had opened the closet door in her old bedroom. I wondered what he reached for because our mom had taken the majority of her clothing with her, and even if she hadn’t, I wasn’t going to wear anything of hers. I opened my mouth to tell the Kid that yes, I might be about to tell a guy that I love him, but that didn’t mean I needed to do it in a bad thrift-store dress and heels. Before I could speak, he let out a crow of triumph and stopped back out of the closet, holding a tuxedo that was fashionable twenty years ago. I’d forgotten it was in there. It belonged to Ty’s dad and had been left here along with some other things when he and our mom had stopped doing whatever it was they’d been doing. My mom had said she didn’t have the heart to throw it away and thought that maybe Ty could wear it on his wedding day. I remember looking at my mom with a strange sort of respect. Of course, that was immediately killed when she continued by saying she wanted Ty to wear it on his wedding day as a reminder to never be a fucking bastard bitch whore like his father was.
Ty unzipped the bag the tux was in, and it smelled slightly stale, but Ty said that Febreeze would kill any odor. I told him I wasn’t wearing that. He told me to shut up and try it on. I did, and when I stepped in front of the mirror, the suit fitting surprisingly perfect (is there any other way for this fairy tale to go?). I was shocked to see how good my reflection looked staring back at me. We had forgone the bow tie because it was plaid (at least Ty had forgone the bow tie because it was plaid; I thought it looked very retro) and the matching cummerbund was left off, as well. What we had was a black tux with a white shirt that Ty made me tuck in. I started doing bad James Bond impressions in the mirror, and Ty said that if I did that on the beach with Otter that I was going to be alone forever. I stopped. When I looked to the Kid to see if he approved, he smiled and said I was almost presentable.
We Febreezed the hell out of it.
The next few days were spent in alternate states of panic and preparation. Otter called me a bajillion times and asked me what the Kid and I were planning and then made me swear not to tell Ty that he had broken his promise. I told Otter I didn’t know what he was talking about. He called me a liar. I called him a jerk. He asked to come over, but I told him no, I was busy. I really was busy getting ready for all of this, but I also didn’t want to see him until this whole thing was going to happen. I didn’t want to ruin the surprise, knowing really that I just didn’t want to throw up on him when he showed up at my apartment. Otter called an hour later, sounding suspicious, and demanded again to know why Ty told him to wear a tux but no shoes and go to the beach at eight o’clock the following evening. I told him once again I had no idea what he meant. He growled into the phone, and it was low and breathy and that ended up being the first time I’ve ever had phone sex. Messy, messy business, that.
Ty approved the menu (everything cold, making it easier to make and bring to the beach) and the haircut (I tried to get out of that one, but he told Sam, the same guy who had been cutting my hair since I was a baby, to cut it as short as possible but still have hair; when he was done, I was shorn and horrified, and the Kid was smirking and satisfied). He approved the table (a large black card table from the furniture store), the tablecloth (white), and the candles (long and tapered; I wanted scented ones but he said those are for when people eat meat and have to poop—I didn’t bother to explain that I do both). He approved the music (some easy-listening Muzak crap that wouldn’t impede on any conversation), the flowers (I said no flowers; he said that gay or straight, people like flowers, and we agreed on two roses), and my etiquette (apparently, according to the eighteenth-century British lord who appears to be trapped in the body of my younger brother, my table manners leave something to be desired, and however unbelievable it may sound, elbows do not belong on a table, ever). I was essentially his chauffer as we went from place to place, preparing everything that he already had laid
out in his head. The only thing that he let me be in charge of was what I would actually say to Otter (but he did say to keep it short and sweet. Oh, and to say it after we eat. And to look him in the eyes. And to not put my elbows on the table when I do it. And that maybe it should rhyme because they were learning about poetry in school).
So while I drove my little brother and planned his fantasy night of how I was going to give Otter the key to my soul (his words, not mine), I silently panicked and wrote lines of bad poetry. Normally, I am actually quite adept at writing poems and lyrics to songs I’ll never sing, but this stuff was just atrocious. For example:
I love you
You love me
Thank God for that
I’m so happy
And Ty’s personal favorite (which he helped on):
Otter! Otter! Otter!
Don’t lead cows to slaughter!
I love you, and I know
I should’ve told you soon-a