The Doper Next Door by Andrew Tilin

Author:Andrew Tilin
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Counterpoint
Published: 2011-05-11T16:00:00+00:00

“BACK BEFORE SEVEN,” I tell Juliana on a Wednesday afternoon in late April, while the buckle on my helmet strap fastens with a distinct “click.” I reach down to wriggle my feet into my cycling shoes. “Feel free to start dinner without me.”

Juliana, who’s sitting in the living room at our upright piano and right next to Benjamin, calls out a quick “Bye!” but doesn’t look up. Neither does Benjamin, who’s struggling, despite Juliana’s guidance, to get the song “Little Playmates” right. Sophie doesn’t even notice me leaving. She lies on her back on our brown living room couch, with her long, light brown hair fanned across a cushion. She’s completely preoccupied with the presence and rare friendliness of our seventeen-year-old, often aloof cat, Lola. Lola, a Russian Blue, defines anti-aging. She has moved with us six times to three different states, and she has outlived two other pets. Even Lola doesn’t look at me. She usually only does when she sees the painted pattern on the bottom of her food bowl, which means it’s time for a refill. And you know what? In the era of Andrew and the T, I’m fine with being ignored. Nowadays I feel a palpable change in my behavior. I’m often happy doing exactly what I want to do.

I swear, the drugs give me a thicker skin. I don’t mind perceiving myself as sensitive, but I’d like to think that I’m not in need of constant acknowledgement or praise. Aging men—and women—in our society are supposed to have convictions as stout as I-beams. Right? All the glossy magazine ads for retirement planning, Mercedes-Benz sedans, and posh resort trips depict people that are graying, calm, and assured. They know what they’re after. Even my father, nervous Marshall, had to up and declare his homosexuality to his immigrant parents one day in the late 1970s (after Tracy outed him). My grandparents had wanted to fit into San Francisco’s web of upper-middle-class Jews. They belonged to a synagogue, hung my grandfather’s sales awards on their hallway wall, and were members of the Concordia-Argonaut Club, with its prodigious buffets and a dining room full of white tablecloths. I imagine that my dad told my grandparents he was gay while inside their perfectly kept, two-bedroom condominium in Marin County’s calm town of Tiburon, and I could see my grandmother, her thick and silvery, perfectly coiffed hair, weeping into her pressed handkerchief. Dad had to live with his parents’ tears, anger, and, for a while, their backs turned to him. He hated the family dynamic that his homosexuality created, and his parents’ lack of understanding. But reluctant as he was about his identity, my father did realize what mattered in his life, and he was true to himself, in a schizophrenic San Francisco era when society outside of the thriving gay community remained conservative and intolerant.

Crazy as it sounds, before taking testosterone, I’m not sure I could get behind my own needs even the way my dad ultimately stuck up for his.

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