The Lerman Effect

“Whiskey, make it a double.” A small sheaf of bills hit the counter to accentuate the statement. Moments later a glass slid to the speaker, a few of the bills disappeared.

“You should go easy.” The bartender said while filling the order despite his words. Moments later he walked away to serve new patrons while his melancholy customer nursed his drink. Minutes later the empty glass was replaced.

I hated the taste of Whiskey, but Nathan had always said if you wanted to get drunk quickly, pinch your nose and down it. Didn’t get loaded with calories like beer while getting loaded he’d said. I did want to get drunk quickly, although calories weren’t anywhere near the top of my priority list. Drinking doesn’t solve any problems, I know this, but when you pass out things do go away for a little while. It was hard to make thoughts of Nathan go away.

It had been just a few weeks since I walked in to find Nathan having sex with some guy I’d never seen before, not that knowing the person would make it any better. Drinking was the only solace I could find. Not only had Nathan cheated, but as I had walked in to our apartment, our home of three years, to see his legs in the air, a position he only had allowed me once. I drank several double shots in a row before heading back out to the street unsteadily. I had allowed this to become my life, with him gone. I had walked out, only to return when I was sure he was at work to claim my clothes and other small items.

Moving back in with my parents had been just as bad. Never one to keep her opinions to herself my mother had clucked about gays not being real relationships, that they were destined to fail.

“The only thing those gays care about is what’s hanging between each others legs,” she’d commented as she shuffled about her kitchen making comfort food. I ignored her, unable to even fight with her. I was thinking…maybe she was right. I took all my vacation time from work, and dropped my cell phone in the toilet to stop hearing it ring. All Nathan. He didn’t know I’d seen and couldn’t comprehend why I was suddenly gone, but he couldn’t be that dense.

I spent my afternoons at the bar. The mornings I went to the park. I didn’t really have the energy, but it was better than listening to my mother. Being back at home I realized why my father rarely spoke. I also understood why he drank. I stopped driving to the park and later to the bar after putting a whiskey ripple in my door, courtesy of scraping a stop sign. Now I walked.

As I wandered home, hazy with the unaccustomed liquor and my spirits down in my shoes, I wasn’t watching where I was going. I bounced off a couple of people and leaned on a garbage can to steady myself. I slowly raised my head and glanced out into the street, barely noting traffic as it cruised by. Headlights began flicking on in the dusk and then I saw it: a ford bronco, a big one. As it closed on me, I stepped out on the street towards it, and as I did my heart jumped into my throat and in a moment of clarity I wondered what the fuck I was doing. I jerked back and felt the impact on my body, pain flared in contrast to the numb feelings the liquor induced and then the darkness closed in.

I was hazy on the facts. I seemed to know things rather than having been an active participant. For example I must have been hospitalized and recovered somewhat, though I have no real memory of either. I must have gone to court as I seem to have community service, but again I have absolutely no memory of this. Moreover, I did not seem to care that these events weren’t in my memory.

I now found myself in front of the local community center, near the ragged edges of downtown. There were still some nice yards, but most of the houses were in disrepair. Just a block away lay the town park, fields with dirt patches showing through the scrub grass. Netless basketball hoops were set up on the far side, cracked and uneven asphalt laid out for the courts. Grey skies loomed overhead, clouds speeding by as if filmed and then ran at high speed.

My community service was to work in the Center, though again I seemed to know this as opposed to having been told. I was to report to someone as my check in person and my overseer for the community service I was to perform. I stepped into the lobby, letting the squeaky door close behind me. The sounds inside were like a mausoleum, and I registered the thought there should be noise, kids. I wasn’t surprised, I didn’t seem to be able to summon any real emotion, like the mild surprise I recognized I should be feeling.

Striding into the empty facility with only the squeak of my shoes to accompany me I noted a counter on my left, basically a room with the walls knocked out halfway with a wooden slab installed. There was whistling behind the counter, through a doorway behind the counter I should say. It was eerie, like a bad dream of some sort. I kept waiting for a camera man to jump out and say I’d been punk’d, or was on Candid Camera.

“Hello?” I called out to the door from whence the whistling came. The whistling stopped and the clacking of shoes on linoleum could be heard. A black woman appeared framed in the doorway, an average looking woman in clothes that were fit for playing with children.

“It’s just a fact, honey, don’t worry your head about it. I have some work lined up for you, go down to the gym and find Colby, he’ll show you. The staircase on your left, just down the hall, cheeseball,” she waved me off. I turned, in a daze and walked down the hall about four feet until I came to a door on my left, propped open, and stared down at the steps leading to the bowels of the building.

“That’s right, down there, cheeseball.” I glanced at her and she waved me on again. I glanced back down the stairs and moved forward, my footsteps echoing hollowly in the stairwell. I reached the landing, turned one hundred eighty degrees and started down again. At the bottom was a dented metal door with a metal handle. It stood halfway open, the push bar to open the door from the other side clearly visible. I could hear, suddenly, the bouncing of a ball.

I pulled the door open the rest of the way and entered the gym. Long buried smells returned to me, things that always intimidated me. Gyms, the scent of many males sweating and shoving for supremacy in sport. To this day seeing a pack of teenage boys together intimidates me, makes me sweat with anticipation of the jeers and catcalls, the never fitting in of my youth. The gym was deserted, save for a lone kid, one of the aforementioned teens in basketball shorts and a tee shirt.

He bounced the ball, one that was worn to the point that the black dividers were faded to near nothingness; it looked like a pale, oversized orange. He threw the ball and it bounced harshly off the rim, off the backboard and back to the floor, bouncing to a far corner of the gym.

I shifted, the first emotion shooting through me since my arrival, the nervous feeling of being the awkward teenager who doesn’t understand the rules of being cool. I was never initiated into that tribe, the mysterious rites of being an equal in their eyes. I never passed the tests, never knew the secret handshake…never stuck another kids head in a toilet.

“I’m sorry, I shouldn’t say that.” He waved a hand at me and flashed a warm smile, “Nance calls everyone a cheeseball. I’m Colby.” He walked towards me, confident and unafraid. He had Nathan’s green eyes. I flinched.

The words echoed eerily in the large space. The harsh glare from the hanging lights showed floating dust motes as his question bounced off the walls and died. I closed my eyes slowly as anxiety swept through me in a palpable wave, sickening me momentarily before I recovered my equilibrium.

“I’m…” I trailed off as I stared into those so familiar eyes, and then down at my shoes, dark in stark relief to the light wood of the gym floor, scuffed and battered as it was.

Colby struck off across the gym towards the ball. He walked with a confidence, a self assurance that seemed oddly out of place. I felt a sense of being sick to my stomach again, and pain in my head that faded almost as quickly as it had come. Colby had turned to look at me, and then completed the journey to retrieve the ball. He bounced it as he half jogged back towards me. He pulled up short and threw the ball again, bouncing off the backboard hard and into the hoop. The ball bounced away, forgotten once more as Colby approached me.

“Not feeling too good, huh? Cars have that effect on people, especially if the car hits you.” Colby threw and arm around my shoulders and guided me to a bench on the sidelines. “You look like shit, cheeseball.”

“My name is …” My mind went horribly blank for a moment. The overhead light seemed to blind, as if it had swung out on an invisible breeze and the question of my name seemed to ring in my ears, as if it were being demanded from outside my body. My entire back, legs and head felt cold as if on concrete for a few moments and the question seemed louder, the light moving from one eye to the other, asking my name. “My name is Alec. Alec Bailey.”

I looked at his face, now open and cheerful, not threatening in the least. “I’ve never been comfortable in this,” I gestured at the gym, “kind of environment.”

I sat in silence, the pain in my side fading away. I could hear voices now, dimly, maybe from upstairs. Perhaps children were arriving. What time was it? Was that a siren? Horns blaring? Parents dropping off maybe.

“What do I have to do?” I was humbled, having to take instruction from a kid. Colby seemed nice enough, not threatening to me, but I still felt small in his presence.

“Have to give you some faith, teach you about the Lerman Effect.” He smiled broadly. “I’m gonna marry him. Colby Lerman, you remember that name. No, wait, maybe he should take my name. How does that work anyways?”

“Then…faith? Are you a religious nut? One of those ex-gay people?” I felt my anger rise, and clung to it as it was one of the few emotions that seemed to come to me, regardless of the fact I was making no sense.

“Oh hell no. Faith isn’t exclusive to god or God or Allah or Yaweh or Buddha…even good old Zeus lost his handle on that one. You need to find faith in something. You, your dog. Try and avoid putting too much faith in the weatherman, but something or someone.”

“Faith is an illusion, things will always let you down; people will always let you down.” I turned my face away from him and stretched out on the bench with my back to the wall, mirroring Colby’s stance. Pressure increased on my upper arm, like a solid band, clamping down in a vice like grip before easing. Voices continued to echo, distantly. Must be people upstairs now. I dimly wondered again about the time.

“Nope, faith pulls you through bad times, bro. When everything else goes to shit, you got that one thing. It just has to be solid in your mind, in your heart and in your head.”

“Hit me with a novena if I try," he laughed, "but no, and I’d like to see you try and walk.” He smiled at me as I glanced at him. A spike of pain went through my head again and I leaned forward, felt my gorge rising and slowly, oh so slowly backing off. My breathing became ragged for a moment and then I sat back, feeling very sick.

“Hard to have faith, it all just went up in my face. My life is in ruins,” I felt a tear trickle down my cheek, the first one I had shed since I saw Nathan in flagrante dilecto.

I burst out laughing, the first one I can remember having in weeks. This kid, this teenager thought he had the life experience to compare himself to me? My laughter died quickly as my side flared with fresh, sharp pain and I held my hand to my ribs, trying to breathe slowly to minimize the pain.

“Yeah, I know, it sounds like there is no way. But I know what it is to be betrayed, by your folks, by your friends. Never had a boyfriend, but I can imagine it hurts pretty bad.”

“Parents. Oldest child, was supposed to be their golden boy. Dad started not to like me when I didn’t want to hunt, then I kinda sucked at sports even though I liked to play. When I kissed the neighbor boy, he about shit a brick. Kids at school turned their back on me, people I thought were my friends.”

“Well, it can happen anywhere with anything I guess. I’ve done a lot of thinking about it, but what it basically boils down to is that moment when you find something to hold onto, look up to. I think so many people get that from church because it’s all they talk about in there, telling stories, trying to make people believe it. I guess you can get it from anywhere, books, movies, a friend or whatever, it just sound silly to some people if you tell them a TV show changed your life.”

“So here’s what happened, what I call the Lerman Effect. I’m watching this movie and this guy, an actor, does this dance wearing women‘s underwear in front of Jessica Alba. I mean, I’m gay but, she’s hot.”

“You got faith from a guy in women‘s underwear?” I laughed at the notion, and then winced and leaned over as a painful cough overtook me. Once I had recovered and leaned back, Colby placed a hand on my shoulder to regain my attention. Once more the phantom voices from the next floor up were trying to calm someone or someones.

“Alec, it wasn’t as silly as it sounds. He danced with a robe and stripped to wearing panties with those stretch things that run to girls stockings. He did it with a smile, like it was no big deal. I mean, yeah, he was trying to win a date with Jessica Alba, but still you gotta have brass fucking balls to wear women‘s underwear in a movie you know everyone is gonna see and look like it doesn’t matter while you do it.

“Close enough, especially if you’re sixteen. Shit, what could be scarier? So I admire someone with balls like that, that fearless and totally in command of himself, you know? Confident. You have to be confident and happy with yourself to pull that shit off.” He nudged me and I looked at him as he grinned, “Have to have brass fucking balls too.”

I sat quietly, pain returning to my head in a dull throb. My side chimed in with a steady ache returning and my vision began to fade, but panic wasn’t setting in. The lights seemed to blaze in my eyes again, waves of light and dark. I looked over at an expectant Colby.

“Nope, he’s mine, hands off sucker. But I bet if you look around you, there is someone you can look to for strength, and they might look back at you for that too. Someone with brass balls, and someone that maybe needs you to have brass balls sometimes. For me, it’s Logan Lerman, my future husband.” He smiled proudly.

“Shit, if he was gay, he could say so. He’s fearless, I told you. But I bet he thinks it’s no big deal and doesn’t say anything cause he doesn’t need to. Besides” Colby winked at me, “I don’t want all the other guys finding out about him and clouding his way to me, you know what I’m saying?”

“Times about up, Alec Bailey. I’ll tell you what though. I know you hear what I’m saying to you, cause you’re in pain. You’re going back. So I tell you what, cause I like you, for now I’ll share with you. You believe in one fearless, brass balls actor for a little while, and then you look around and I bet you find someone you can believe in. Maybe, you might look to yourself.”

“Yeah, that’s better. You believe in me, but it’s still the Lerman Effect. Remember that, Alec. The moment when you find something to believe in, that’s what you call it.”

The gym and Colby faded from my vision as pain flooded my body. My eyes opened briefly, lights moved past me and I was in darkness again, but it was a comfort because Colby was there.

I walked with a cane, the leg still aching me on days, especially if the weather was doing weird things like today. I had talked to Nathan, challenged him and finally ended it instead of hiding from him like some creature who didn’t deserve closure or have a right to his anger. My mother was much quieter these days, especially after me telling her how hurtful she really was. I discovered a strength in my father I never knew he had, and enjoyed spending time with him has I recovered from my accident. The big vehicle had given me a glancing blow, the mirror whacking me in the head. The bumper hit my leg just above the knee, causing my limp and the need for the cane, on occasion. I also flew a few feet and landed on the garbage can I had leaned on moments before I stepped in front of a moving vehicle, breaking a couple ribs.

I walked to the door of the Community Center, the sky an ominous grey overhead; thunderheads amassed in the distance. I stepped into the lobby, the squeaky door closing behind me. I was assaulted by the sounds of laughter, screaming and playing from all sides. I nodded to the person behind the counter, a teenage girl who worked there part time. I walked down the hall toward the stairs, past a line of pictures, small eight by tens of past Community Center Presidents. The one previous to this was taken in the mid eighties before the lady had succumbed to cancer, a plain looking black woman with the plaque bearing her name underneath.

I smiled at her picture and moved on to the stairs, going slowly down as the kids streamed by me going down to the gym or up to the common rooms. Stepping into the gym I spotted him, green eyes like Nathan and a swagger that had developed over the past month.