I usually rode the bus home. It was better than being crammed in the back seat against the bodies of overly large juniors and seniors. As Alan would always have his girlfriend of the week riding shotgun so he would clown car everyone into the back. One time he made a threat to make me ride in the trunk and I’m fairly sure he meant it. It was safer and calmer to take the bus. There were about sixty or so other students acting like a mobile mosh pit at the Lollapalooza but it was tranquil in comparison to my brother’s driving.

The ride would allow me to sit back and sometimes sleep during the twenty-five-minute ride home. There were days I would read, and other times I would work on my own little comic book. All I could draw were stick figures and something that kind of resembles a cat. I preferred to working on the storyline, creating the scene in my head, and writing out how the drawing would look in the hands of someone who had talent. Unfortunately, my mind would envision a scene from SHS with Cherry once again stopping a Godzilla-like dragon from demolishing Osaka by singing him back to sleep for—hopefully four hundred more years. I’d only have to make a change or two and I could pass it off as my own. Perhaps I could have it drawn in 3-D?

Our home was a split-level with five bedrooms, three bathrooms, one garage, and absolutely no space to put anything. We weren’t hoarders but we collected too many things: Dad amassed cases and cases of books. Mom had an infatuation with artwork made from polished rock and heather gems. My younger sister, Kat, had so many Barbies that someone at Mattel had to have been able to afford a yacht by now. Al’s room, which was on the lower sub-floor was stacked with weights and a huge sound system for a guitar. He only knew three chords. My room was like a miniature version of the comic shop I always went to with posters all over my walls and other collectibles lining the top of my dresser. If someone outside of our family ever came into my room, I would have to explain the meaning of a gigantic poster of the character for HSS that WAS once on my wall.

“Allan!” I shrieked as I threw my hands out, trying to remember the way it once hung on the wall. It was now on the floor, with the glass shattered all over the wood floor with pieces lying on the rug. He could try to say it was an accident but the fact that he was in my room earlier on the day, probably while I was on the bus, and that everyone else was gone except for him then it had to have been him. I stormed my way to his room and tried to open it but, it was locked, and Allan wasn’t at home yet. I fumed, I ranted, and I felt like crying. Yes, it was a piece of paper. It was a limited-edition piece of paper encased in a custom frame I begged for almost two years.

I wanted to take revenge, to be the yandere of the house, and to do something to get back at him but I had learned that never worked out. If we were liken to the Brady Bunch, then I was the Jan of the family. It was indeed time to reveal to Mom what had happened in the SUV.

The front door opened. Allan stepped in and tossed his backpack across the the room like we had a corn hole target in the living room.

“You were in my room!”
“Yeah, I was.”
“You broke my poster!” I walked into the front room and stood across the hall from Alan, samurai duel style.
“Are you accusing me of breaking a glorified watercolor drawing that looks like a kindergartener drew it?”
“Yeah!”
“It fell,” Allen said with a shrug. “That annoying gravity thing. We ought to repeal that law.”
Ever had that feeling at running at full tilt, launching yourself into the air and performing a “Hurricane” or “Cyclone Spin Kick” on someone, anyone, or your own brother? Comparing us would be like Andre the Giant vs Kevin Hart. I could out-think my way through an argument but, there was no way I could take Alan in a fight. I tried once and lost my two front upper teeth…fortunately they were just my baby teeth.
Alan stood in front of me with a slight smirk followed by the expression that screamed “come at me, bro”.
“Why?”
“Because you have all this girly stuff. Do you have a stack of panties in the drawer?”
“No, but you have some under your bed. Let me guess, Michelle’s been over?”
“I think her name was…Cala.”
“I highly doubt that.’
“Think what you want.”
“What do they see in you?”
“What they can never see in you.”
I wanted to think that there was someone out there for me. They just didn’t go to my school or maybe they lived off the coast of Tasmania, on the outskirts of Reykjavik, or could be leaning on the wall next to a convenience store in the heart of Akihabara. I did say “they” because as much as I would never admit to Alan—or anyone else for that matter—that I really didn’t care about what sex someone was or however we were supposed to view it. I mean, some planets out there had multi-genders, but we didn’t care about that as much as we wondered if Picard and crew were going to get out of the love triangle mess Riker would get himself into.
Cala was close to the “manic techno holodeck girl” one could come across at the time and I almost revealed my switch-hitter status on life, until that fateful day. Maybe she wouldn’t have ratted me out. Maybe she’d understand my inability to talk about things like that when the other guys talked about their proposed Hollywood dates at the semi-privacy of our backwoods table, but I couldn’t risk it. Alan didn’t have to be a jerk about it but, he was, of course.
“Cala would be able to see straight through that incredibly small brain you have.”
“She wasn’t looking at my brain,” Alan replied with a chuckle.
“Then at your big mouth, that never seems to want to shut up.”
“No, we were in my car, and she was staring so wide at my…Hey, Mom!”
The door opened and Mom walked in with Kat in tow.
“Alan, Gehn, I have groceries in the car. Get them, please.”
“Sure mom. “Glad to help,” Alan replied with an Eddie Haskel-channeling smile.

We walked outside the house, to the SUV in the driveway.
“Hey, Gehn, the guys keep asking me a question.”
Alan opened the rear door.
“About how a neanderthal man like yourself can stand up straight?”
He picked up a heavy bag and shoved it into my chest.
“There’s a rumor going around that you’re gay.”
He then picked up two other bags and, somehow, was able to close the door without dropping or crushing anything.
“Wow, I wonder who thought that one up,” I replied. “I also just have to know what your told them.”
“I agreed with them.”
“Of course you did,” I replied.
“So, the poster on your wall is a fairy picture?”
“I’m failing to understand why you want to propagate such disdain for others who think differently than you.”
“You’re not denying it.”
“The poster WAS of a super-powered heroine who comes to the aid of people under attack.”
“I mean about the gay part.”
“And you’re not denying a fact you don’t give a flip out any girl you’ve dated,”
“I think about them all the time.”
“Until five minutes after you drop them off at their homes.”
“They love it,” he replied as we walked into the house.
“No, they don’t,” I stated as Alan closed the door. He looked at me with the “shut-it” stare.
“They don’t what?” Mom asked.
“Girls don’t like being used by Alan in the back of your car.”
“Used?” Mom asked and her eyes sparked. “Oh my God! Is that what that mass of spots on the back seat are?”
“What spots, Mommie?” Kat asked.
“Gehn’s gay,” Alan yelled
“Gehn’s happy?”
Mom looked at the two of us and then at Kat.
“The two of you better go to your rooms right now before I…” Kill us? Call the police? “Tell your father when he gets home.”
“You are so dead, twink!” Alan yelled. “You’re going to wish to God that you had some fairy magic to bail your ass out of this!”
“Alan!” Mom yelled.
“Bail your ass!” Kat repeated.