My Kind of Town
>> Queen's Medical Center Osbournes, move over
Walking into her brother Lance's room, Lily Ah Sun thought: Forget about the Osbournes. You want a truly wacked out family, try mine.
Her father Sheets stood frozen in the middle of the room like a May pole as her mother Grace and Lance's lover Greg danced a kind of crazy polka around him, blubbering deliriously through laughter and tears.
And then Greg spun away, doing a lovely impersonation of a ballerina, back to Lance's bedside and kissed him lightly, tenderly on the lips, burbling "Oh, welcome back, darling, welcome back!"
Grace took Sheets by the hand and did the levitation two-step with him to Lance's bedside, practically singing through her tears, "Lance is back, Daddy! He came back to us!"
Sheets could only look from his wife to a guy who'd just kissed his son.
"Daddy, this is Greg, Lance's friend. I think that's why he came back -- he heard Greg's voice. In fact, those were his first words." After being in a coma for over 24 hours. "'Is that you, Greg?'"
Part of Lily's brain was thinking, thank God there isn't a video camera anywhere in sight. Part was thinking, poor Dad, what a way to find out your son is gay.
Sheets, meanwhile, was silently repeating the mantra of the dazed: What the hell? What the hell? What the hell?
Lance was still fuzzy, coming back to consciousness slowly. Leaning over him, Grace put an arm around Greg and Sheets, hugged them to her. "Look, dear, Greg and your father are here!"
Greg, overcome with joy -- Lance was back and they were all together here, one big happy family, and he was part if it! -- leaned over and completed the circle a trois, giving Sheets a big kiss on the cheek and a bigger hug. Sheets knew absolutely what the hell was happening. He pushed away from Greg, and punched him in the nose with a right jab -- using the left not to block a punch but to wipe away the kiss.
The punch staggered Greg, who still had one arm around Grace, and they both wobbled.
Lily started moving the moment her father cocked his fist, and as he wiped away the kiss she swept past him and clutched her mother's free hand, steadied her, then helped Greg into a chair. Greg rubbed his nose, it was sore but not bleeding. Sheets was not the puncher he used to be.
Turning, Lily grabbed her father's arm and dragged him outside. Something bothered her even more than the punch. "You didn't say a word to Lance," she said accusingly.
What was he supposed to say? Congratulations on being gay?
Don Chapman is editor of MidWeek.
His serialized novel runs daily in the Star-Bulletin
with weekly summaries on Sunday.
He can be emailed at dchapman@midweek.com