Gay Daddies

A Present for Daddy-5

With Dave, I feel years younger, a shadow of my former high school self. My head feels light, my muscles relax, and I have to keep reminding myself I’m shopping for Jenna and not myself. I’m older, I have a daughter, I’m a single father…but Dave picks up our friendship right where we left it so long ago, like a favorite coat that’s been hanging in the closet all this time just waiting to be worn again. It fits snugly, it feels right. An hour spent hanging out with him at the toy store, and all the time we spent apart disappears.

I buy the bike I want for Jenna, then Dave and I go a little crazy in the pink aisle, grabbing Barbies and doll clothes and fake make-up. In the boys’ aisle, we play-fight with a pair of noisy toy guns, chasing each other through the store and ducking behind displays as the guns make realistic firing sounds. At the video games counter, we reminisce over the latest Legend of Zelda game—”They still make this?” Dave asks, incredulous, as he wrestles a controller from a little kid and takes over the store’s display Wii game. We’re twenty-five going on thirteen, and I can’t stop laughing at his sophomoric antics. I almost expect to get thrown out at any moment.

But we’re adults now—if not in action, then in appearance, at least, and none of the sales associates are older than we are, so they don’t step up and ask us to stop. I don’t even notice what time it is until the music playing over the store’s stereo system turns off and the manager pulls down the front gate a little to entice shoppers to hurry up. I grab the bike and its basket full of toys and wheel it down the aisle. “Damn, we still need to check out.”

“Just when I’m getting good at this, too,” Dave mutters, but the truth is, he sucks as hard at the video game as he did when he was a teen. I always could kick his ass playing Super Mario Brothers, even when he made me play Luigi.

“You coming?” I ask, glancing back at him over my shoulder.

He tosses aside the Wii controller. “All right, already. Hold up.”

I wait with the rest of the customers in line while Dave ducks under the lowered gate and steps out into the mall. He stands with his hands shoved deep into his pockets, watching me. I give him a smile which he returns. God, he hasn’t changed a bit. With him, I don’t feel like I’ve grown any, either.

We met in ninth grade when his family moved to the area. His dad was military, stationed at Fort Lee, and because his last name was close to mine alphabetically, our lockers were side by side. We shared a few classes, including first period Earth Science, which was taught in the Chemistry lab. The lab tables in the classroom sat two students each, and I had already picked out a spot near the back that I liked when Dave came over and dropped his book bag onto the seat beside mine. “This taken?” he’d asked.

“You can have it,” I said. I remember his careless hair, blond and curly, and his blue eyes so impossibly large behind a pair of thick glasses. He had on an olive green army jacket, a pair of faded jeans, and a Rolling Stones T-shirt with the band’s logo on it—a pair of red, red lips from which protruded a long, almost obscene tongue. When our teacher saw that shirt and made him zip up the army jacket, I thought he was cool as s**t.

By the end of that first period, we were friends. We liked the same music, took the same electives, played the same sport—soccer, which wasn’t as popular as football in our school, even though we had a fairly good coach. We both tried out for the JV team and made it, then played Varsity a few years later. We didn’t live too far from each other, rode the same school bus, hung out in the hallways between classes, shared the same lunch periods…hell, by the time Christmas rolled around freshman year, we were inseparable.

When it’s my turn at the register, I pay for Jenna’s presents and check my finances. I have enough cash for a drink or two, nothing more, but I don’t want to be out too late, anyway. Pocketing my receipt, I pull out my cell phone and dial my mother’s number as I wheel the bike out of the store. Dave takes the handlebars from me and playfully sits on the tiny seat as the phone rings in my ear. “Who are you calling?”

I tell him, “My mom. She’s watching Jenna and I just want to let her know I’m going to be a little late. If we’re still on for drinks?”

“Hell, yeah,” Dave drawls.

The phone picks up and my mother’s voice sounds tinny through the line. “Bobby, is that you?”

I start, “Mom—”

“Hi, Mom!” Dave cries, leaning closer to yell into my phone.

“Who’s that, dear?” my mother asks. “Tell him I said hey.”

Quickly I explain the situation. “We won’t be late…”

“Nonsense!” my mother says. “I always did like that boy. He’s welcome to come around here for dinner one night, you hear?”

“I will,” I promise.

“Ask him now,” my mother insists. “We usually eat at six.”

“I’ll tell him,” I say. When my mother starts to object, I add, “The mall’s closing, Mom. I’ll ask him and tell you what he says when I get home, okay?”

On Jenna’s bike, Dave wants to know, “Ask me what?”

Without ceremony, I hand him the phone. “You talk to her. Get off that bike. If you break it…”

“It isn’t broken.” He stands and lets me wheel the bike out from under him as he puts my phone to his ear. “Mrs. Jansen, hey. Guess who I ran into today?”

I head toward the mall exit, and can tell from the sound of Dave’s voice that he’s following me. “Sure, I’d love to come,” he’s saying. “Don’t worry, Mrs. J. I’ll have him home at a decent hour. You know me.”

Apparently she does, because whatever she says next sets him laughing. “Tell her we have to go,” I say over my shoulder. If he doesn’t hang up now, he’ll never get her off the phone. “Dave—”

“Gotta go,” he says. “Bobby’s getting jealous.”

“I’m not—” I turn and find him holding out the phone to me, a faint grin on his face. As I pocket the phone, I ask, “What?”

“She invited me to dinner sometime,” he says. “Does she still cook as good as she used to?”

“Better.” I don’t know if it’s true or not, but Julia was never a whiz in the kitchen, and neither am I. Living on my own after she left gave me more of an appreciation for my mother’s home cooked meals. Hell, any meal that didn’t come from a fast food chain is ambrosia to me. “You want to get a drink or not?”

He helps me manhandle the bike into the back seat of my car. It barely fits—the next time Jenna gets a new bike, I’ll need a truck to haul it home. Jingling my keys in one hand, I stand with the driver’s side door open and watch him unlock his pickup. “Where do you want to go?”

This isn’t Richmond. Off the top of my head, I can’t think of any place around here that stays open past nine o’clock. But Dave says, “There’s a spot just over the bridge into Petersburg. Leo’s, I think it’s called. It’s a dive but they have cheap beer. You want to follow me or should I drive?”

I think I know where he’s talking about, but it’s dark and I haven’t been over the bridge since my youth. Locking my car, I trot around the front of his truck and open the passenger side door. I climb up into the seat and pull on the seat belt, then shiver in the cold as he climbs up beside me. “Heat’ll be on in a minute,” he says, turning on the engine. Cool air blasts from the vents.

I feel like I’m eighteen again, out for a late night with Dave and Julia. We were always out after dark, hanging around and goofing off, finding places to go after the mall closed so we wouldn’t have to go home. Julia’s gone, but I’m surprised how nice it is to reconnect with Dave again.

Revving his engine, he pulls out of the parking spot and into the night.