Et tu, Brute?

I love gay guys. Usually, if I see an attractive man, I instinctively know that he must be gay, because I am like Grace and there is no escaping that passion. But unlike Grace, I don’t have a Will. I want a Will, but there aren’t any available. A story for another day.

The thing is, I love to watch gay men on dates. There’s just something unjustly cute about it. If I see a straight couple, I think, “Great! Another frikin’ one! What about me?” I get jealous. I whine. People want to hit me.

But a gay couple is adorable, like puppies in a window.

While visiting my hometown, I stop for a bite at a local restaurant with my best friend and her mother. I order a water, which chills and refreshes my soul. I order pasta and randomly acquire an allergy to mushrooms. I am poking a burnt piece of French bread when I see it:

A table. A table with a sexy twenty-something in glasses and a white button-down shirt.

His perfectly-preened hair makes me feel guilty for the whole fifteen seconds I spent on mine this morning with a $5 brush and an old hair tie.

‘He’s the one,’ I think. ‘I am going to marry this sexy man with emo glasses!’ I affectionately name him Charles and decide that we will have three children named Vladimir, Patricia Josephine T., and Queen Elizabeth. We are going to live next to a river and eat out every night because we both hate to cook. Our life together will be romantic and beautiful.

I watch in horror as an athletic man in slacks enters my field of vision and gives Charles a sensual hug.

No! No! No! …And then, two blinks and I’ve accepted it. ‘Ah,’ I chuckle inwardly, ‘Should have seen that coming. Duh.’

I continue to watch, taking occassional sips of water. Their body language flirts with each other as they make shy conversation. I am enjoying the show; it’s just so darn cute.

They both turn at the same time.

‘Oh my God! Oh my God!’ I think as I hastily look away. I peek at them from the corner of my eye. Neither has looked away. In fact, if I had not been the first culprit, their stares would be quite rude. As I mull this over, I start to get annoyed with their rudenss, and in my annoyance I viciously stir my glass of water with my straw. I am anxious, annoyed, and now my hand is getting sloshed with water.

Woofsh-clang. An icecube shoots out and lands on my spoon.

…

I stare at it.

“I saw that!” our waitress proclaims. “That was pretty cool!”

I give a nervous laugh and reply, “No, you didn’t see anything! Really!”

She laughs at my meager humor and delivers either our meals or the bill. It doesn’t really matter; I’m frazzled enough to eat either.

 

Dr. Doug

I am sitting in my pediatrics office for the last time. Yes, I know, I have been 18 for a while now and yet I’ve been back to my childhood doctor’s office twice already. But this visit is final, if not primarily because I am off to college in a month, then because the new doctor reminds me of Doug on King of Queens. Not just “reminds” me – he must be. He is built like Doug. He walks like Doug. He even wears cologne that smells just as I would imagine Doug smelling. In short, he IS Doug…with a doctorate. This frightens and confuses me.

My mother has been researching what my ailment might be, considering that two EEG’s, a complete cardio work-up, and multiple blood tests have revealed nothing. So she walks up to Dr. Doug with a bunch of computer print-outs and declares that I must have some kind of vestibular disorder, aka. ear trouble. I sit around as she blathers. Doug kind of spaces out. Then he does the usual things new doctors do when they hear about my problem….he checks my eyes and ears and turns back to my mother.

“What are her symptoms?” he asks her.

Hi, I’m over here. But, alright, he’s a kid doctor; I’ll cope.

“She’s dizzy and lightheaded,” my mother tells him. “She’s had some fainting spells, and she was diagnosed with labyrinthitis last month. But she finished her medication for that and it didn’t go away. It just seems to be getting worse over the years.”

“Hm…is it a room spinning kind of dizzy?”

“I…don’t know.”

“No,” I declare from my corner of the room. “I just feel really lightheaded and weak. My vision goes black and my arms get really warm.”

Doug looks at me for the first time.

“Movie fade-out kind of black?”

“Yeah.”

“Hm.” Mumble mumble. Scribble scribble.

“So…?”

“Okay.”

Dude, “okay” what?

His questions continue. I recite the same list of symptoms and explanations that I have rattled off more than a dozen times in the past six years. Mumble mumble. Scribble scribble. Doug is starting to annoy me: he offers no conjectures, no possibilities. He just mumbles and scribbles, and then he stops both and sends for a nurse to check my blood pressure three times, while I’m lying down, sitting up, and standing. She makes me lean against the wall for fear I can’t tell if I’m going to fall over.

My mother asks for a referral so that her insurance will cover the physical therapy. He stares blandly. Physical therapy, mom? He never agreed with your conclusion. But, then, Dougie doesn’t really have any ideas of his own. We all start to leave, and then:

“Oh, and by the way – she was diagnosed with Sensory Integration Disorder when she was younger, and they mentioned something about ‘vestibular’ something-or-other. Does that add anything to this?”

No. SID isn’t medically accepted. It isn’t “provable.” You know that.

It’s obvious that he barely knows what she’s talking about.

“I don’t…think so…” he says cheerfully.

As we stand at the window to pay, the doctor walks over to answer the receptionist’s question about a referral. He looks at the computer screen and furrows his brow. Oh my God, he looks just like Doug! He is so awesome.