A Surprise Visit
My sister went to college in Florida, and during one of her first trips back home, she had a terrible flight. There was turbulence the whole time, but the landing was in the middle of your average Southeastern US Afternoon Thunderstorm. The flight tried one approach, circled back, and had a hard landing on the second attempt with the plane thudding into tarmac with a hard smack to the tires.
There’s a pilot in one of my favorite quick-read series (Stone Barrington from the Stuart Woods novels) and in one of his landings, it was raining and he hit the tarmac hard. He told his passenger that in rain, you want the tires to break through the water tension on the runway for a better landing. I have never bothered to look this up as true or not, because I don’t actually care, but when my sister would talk about that landing, I always thought, “I guess Stone Barrington wasn’t foolin, huh.”
The flight is only important to Father’s Day in the sense that it prevented her from flying. If she had somewhere to go, she would simply drive. A trip under ten hours meant she would do it in a day. The older she got, the less frequently she would make that drive from her Florida home to the area where she grew up in South Carolina, so my dad saw her less and less, especially once she had a career and a daughter.
I never flew down to SC. I was barely paying my rent on time in NYC without a real job, so a flight to SC to listen to the crickets and re-learn how to navigate Southern White Racism at the gas station seemed a huge waste of money. A phone call on Father’s Day is quite enough effort, thank you.
My dad re-married after my mom died and his new wife wanted to do something special for him on Father’s Day. My sister and I were pretty on board with helping her help our dad in any way we could. My mom was the second wife my dad has lost (my sister’s mom died when she was a toddler) and his mom died shortly after mine. He was teetering between “okay” and “outright depression” in those days, so when she suggested we both fly back to the homestead to surprise him, it felt like a good idea. My sister went to the doctor for some pills to calm her down, and I got my dad’s wife to agree to pay half my fare.
Father’s Day morning, they set out with her driving. From the route, he assumed they were going for breakfast and maybe bowling. When she kept driving through that town and on toward the city, he started asking questions, but she insisted it would be a good surprise. At the turn-off for the airport, he got excited because (for some reason!) he thought they were going on a helicopter ride. My sister and I had already met at baggage claim and were waiting for the old folks to pull up out front.
When they got there, he saw us immediately and opened the door with tears in his eyes. I’ve only seen my dad cry a handful of times (always at a funeral), so a happy cry didn’t even look like it belonged on his face. He hugged us and I could feel a slight shaking that I assumed was a chuckle because surely my father could not be sobbing. My assumption proved correct when he started to laugh out loud.
I asked him, “Why are you laughing?”
He said, “I don’t even know! I’m just so surprised because you” — looking at my sister — “don’t fly, and you” — turning to me — “don’t even call! Man. I got both my chaps on Father’s Day.” It is the happiest I have ever seen him. In spite of (or because of, really) my mom being missing from the dynamic, we had the best visit of my adult life.
The last time we had all three been in the same place was at my mom’s funeral two years earlier.
The next time we were all together was at my sister’s funeral the next year.
A Surprise Baby
I met a girl on OK Cupid who was open-minded enough to date bisexual men. On our second date (first date-date, since our first meet was a quick coffee), we saw a jazz ensemble playing in the Village and went to a wine bar after. The conversation moved so swiftly to serious relationship topics, I started to picture how our life together could look.
Fast forward a few years, and we were living together in Harlem. To me, this is a step toward permanent domesticity, so I was preparing to readjust my memoirs to accommodate my turbulent queer life with a boring heterosexual ending. When she turned 35, we started talking more seriously about kids, not necessarily with each other, but in the general sense of how do you feel about them and do you want them.
This was before the pandemic when I was still certain I would have children. Today, I am certain that I absolutely do not want to be responsible for anyone but me when the next pandemic (or worse) hits, but back then, I had names picked out for my children and decorations planned for their baby rooms. I think she had pretty much decided I would be a great candidate to father children (smart, musical, great hair, and tall), so regardless of how she felt about me, she was ready for kids and if she got pregnant, it would be a bonus and not a hurdle.
And she did get pregnant.
Father’s Day wasn’t long after she told me, and I took myself out for a private celebration. I got brunch, got a manicure, went bowling, and went to Target. I took a trip through the greeting cards aisle to read Father’s Day cards and picture myself, looking more like my dad, opening a card from my own kid.
Since the pregnancy was technically classified as geriatric (a wild term to throw at a 35-year-old woman) and she had a family history of various health concerns, she decided to go for amniocentesis to have some tests run. I wasn’t really worried about the tests and everything leading up to the appointment was kind of exciting as opposed to nerve-wracking.
A few days before the scheduled procedure, she told me the baby might not be mine and she was going to have a test run for paternity too. Today, she lives in Scarsdale, married to the baby’s father.
A Surprise Boyfriend
Six months after moving to NYC, I was working a couple of retail jobs (Bed Bath & Beyond on E. 61st and Bath & Body Works on E. 23rd) and it was holiday season. I picked up as many extra shifts as I could during the holiday season, and it helped that both of my stores employed a lot of moms who wanted to be off with their kids. I signed up for two shifts at BBB on Christmas Eve, one in the morning from 8 to Noon and another that night from 6 to 10. I worked retail from my sophomore year of college (Assistant Manger of Gap) up through the holiday immediately preceding the COVID shutdown (part-time holiday help at Urban Outfitters & American Eagle for the discount), but being a few years removed makes me shake my head at that life. Four hour shifts are barely worth the time it takes to get there on the subway, let alone throwing a gap in the middle and having to make the trip twice.
For my afternoon shift, there would be a holiday party going on in the breakroom, and by holiday party, I mean some stale cookies and watered down punch in a windowless room decorated with customer returns that were too damaged to put on the sales floor but okay to use for a minimum wage celebration. Stale cookies are better than no cookies, so I did partake a bit during my 15-minute break and I stashed a few in my pockets when I left for the night.
On my trip back to Brooklyn, I thought about what my family would be doing during my first Christmas in NYC. They would certainly be somewhere warm while I was looking at a little freezing drizzle starting to fall as the train crossed the Williamsburg Bridge. I had three roommates in those early days, but they all were gone for the holidays. One girl was from London and had been gone all week. One of the guys was from Ohio and had left the day before, and the other guy was spending Christmas with his family in New Jersey. I was looking forward to having the apartment to myself, but when I got to my door, I didn’t have my keys. After some frantic patting of my pockets, I could see a clear image of my keys on top of the television where I had set them down while looking for an umbrella in the closet. I didn’t have any keys and there was no one to let me in.
I called my landlord to see if he had an extra set of keys, and he did. Whew!
But he was in Georgia for Christmas. Boo!
I called a locksmith to see if they were open on Christmas, and they were. Whew!
But since it was Christmas, he was going to charge me $400 to get into my apartment. Boo!
New Jersey is just a train ride away though, so I could get my roommate’s keys. Whew!
But he didn’t answer my text, didn’t pick up when I called, and didn’t call me back after I left a voicemail. Boo!
So I walked through the freezing rain, got a turkey sandwich from the bodega, and went to sit in the Halsey Station of the J train station to keep warm. As I was eating my sandwich, my phone buzzed with a text notification. My roommate was not in New Jersey — he was still in the city! He and his family always went to midnight mass at St. Patrick’s Cathedral and he would give me his keys outside in 45 minutes. Whew!
During the trip, the train stopped in the tunnel for some reason (passengers never know — we’re just at the mercy of an inaudible telecom system in a tin can a hundred feet underground), and I was checking my watch constantly as I inched closer to the 45 minute time limit, hit it, and then went past it. By the time I finally got to Midtown, I was 20 minutes late, the streets were pretty deserted, and there was no one standing outside of the church. I had just missed him. Boo!
But while I was trying to figure out what to do next, he text me to say that the service had run long and they were coming out in five minutes. One final whew!
He gave me the keys and I went to 53rd/5th to catch the train. While I was on the platform waiting on the V (yes, this memory is that old), a guy walked past my line of sight wearing Timbs, baggy jeans, a black puffer jacket, and very fresh cornrows. We locked eyes for a second and then I looked away. I won’t describe what I was wearing, but anyone who knew me in the late 00s/early 10s, conjure and image and keep it to yourself. I was very young and very new to NYC, so I was not yet educated in the art of cruising, so instead of trying to meet his eye again, I did my best not to glance at his direction. I had an old Archos at the time and pulled up episodes of the Cosby Show to watch on it.
When the V pulled up, I sat down and the guy sat down across from me. For the entire trip down to Delancey/Essex, I could feel him looking at me and I was trying to figure out a) how to force myself to look up and 2) what I would do if our eyes met again. I still couldn’t work up the nerve, but when he stood up to get off at Delancey, which is where I needed to catch my transfer to the J train, I told myself that if he was taking the same train, that I would actually say something. Fate intervened, and when I went up the stairs to the J train platform, he went up another set of stairs to the street and left.
This story takes place when I was just out of college and I had been a band nerd since I was 10. I needed to make sure this was known before I explain what I would typically do when I was waiting on the train: marching band reenactments. I would think of some show I had done and try to remember all the paces, turns, and directions while I fingered the music on my imaginary saxophone. This is what I was doing when the guy walked by me on the platform again.
He had come back! (Later I would find out that he knew he had 20 minutes until the next train and went upstairs to McDonald’s.) I could hear the train coming, so I didn’t have time to talk to him on the platform, but I decided I would strike up a conversation when he sat across from me again. I got onto the train first, and when he followed, he sat alllllllllll the way down at the opposite end of the train. I guess my outfit and general awkwardness were not enough to turn him off, but a public marching band performance (silent though!) was a bridge too far.
I settled in on the train, but I still felt like he was looking at me, and when I glanced toward him, we locked eyes again. This time, there was something in his eyes that looked threatening as opposed to interested. I glanced away, glanced back, and he was still staring deep into me. Not long before that Christmas, two guys had been murdered in my neighborhood by homophobes. The two guys were being too physical in public and were punished for it, but they weren’t even gay. They were brothers. I was fresh into the city from a hometown of 400 people in rural South Carolina, so that story with my naivete and this guy staring at me pushed me into a slight paranoia where I assumed this guy just figured out that I fancied him and just decided to murder me when I got off the train. My only option was to simply stay on the train until a few stops after he got off the train, even if it meant missing my stop and doubling back.
My senses came back and I thought the likelihood of this guy wanting to murder a perfect stranger was pretty low, and when I looked back toward him, I laughed a bit. My dad put me in martial arts when I was in second grade, because I was always getting beat up on the playground. I had been in many fights and was confident I could take care of myself, even from a gay basher. When our eyes met while I was smiling at my silliness, he looked away and blushed.
The Spirit of Faggotry fully took over in that moment and I knew that he too was interested. I reached into my pocket and pulled out my Razr, and when he looked back at me, I pointed at it and mouthed can I have your number?
He nodded for me to come sit next to him, and I did. We acknowledged how awkward these train rides had been and then realized we were both getting off at the same stop. He invited me back to his house and after a couple of drinks, I spent my first Christmas in the city on top of a man I’d just met on a subway train. I woke up in his bed the next day and noticed how nice the surroundings were. I was living in a 4 bedroom/1 bath in a 5th floor walkup, while he had a split level apartment, a closet full of dry-cleaning, and very high threadcount sheets. He made us breakfast and then I went home to get ready for my Christmas evening shift at BBB.
You would think this was a Christmas story, but alas: he broke up with me the day before Father’s Day.
The next day was Folsom East and I found a daddy who made me feel much better.
Leave a Reply