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The busiest travel day of any airport in America is the Sunday after Thanksgiving, but second place goes to December 23rd. Christmas Eve Eve. Today I am one of the poor suckers waiting for a plane that’s already been delayed twice at Gate 32-B. Tyler Durden is also one of those poor suckers, standing directly next to me and sulking among the crowds of agitated flyers dreading a cancellation.
Tyler is hoping for a cancellation, so he can turn to me and convince me to go back home, which I will refuse, because I already went to the trouble of getting my— our — bag checked. I wasted too much energy making sure Tyler didn’t tamper with it, didn’t plant any electric razors or other vibrating objects inside to get it pulled off the line by a thrower. I double checked it before we left the Paper Street house, and again before handing it over at the counter, much to Tyler’s copious annoyance. So if the flight gets canceled, we’re catching the next one.
Tyler is annoyed at me and sulking because of this: my mother calls me about once a month. I tend to keep these calls short because we don’t have much to talk about considering I am unmarried with no children. So my mother called me a month ago, and when I answered the phone Tyler was in the living room doing his stupid karate exercises, which I’m pretty sure don’t count as karate or exercise, but that’s neither here nor there. I said into the phone, “Hi, mom,” and Tyler paused and turned to me and pointed a finger.
Tyler said, “Don’t talk to her about me,” and I rolled my eyes.
My mother asked me how I was doing. She had heard the very limited and basic story of the whole condo-explosion fiasco, and was very concerned about how my living situation was continuing to evolve. I told her everything was fine. She asked me questions about insurance and I answered them evasively.
Then my mother asked me, “Are you coming for Christmas this year?” She told me my sister was hosting. She reminded me I had not come for Christmas or Thanksgiving for the past two years, and that I also frequently forgot to call on her birthday and Mother’s Day.
This was enough to guilt me into saying, Sure, I’ll come for Christmas.
Tyler had raised his eyebrows, curious. He had stepped closer to try to eavesdrop, so I had turned away from him.
My mother had upended a bucket of details about Christmas onto me, and I wasn’t processing any of them. I was just nodding my head as if she could see me.
Then she paused and took a breath, before she asked, “Are you bringing anyone?” She asked me this question every time I agreed to come home.
I glanced back at Tyler, who was now leaning in the doorway to the living room, frowning. “You better not be talking about me,” he said.
I locked eyes with him as I told my mother, Yes, I will be bringing someone.
This agitated Tyler significantly, so he turned and stormed down to the basement. My mother, shocked by my response, had already begun asking me a slew of follow-up questions, which I expertly dodged and told her I would see her on December 23rd. She told me my brother-in-law would pick us up from the airport, and I said, Okay, and hung up the phone.
Tyler had spent every minute leading up to today trying to deter me from making this trip, or at the very least trying to get himself out of it. I bought the plane tickets and kept them tucked in my desk at work, instinctively knowing if I brought them to the house, even if I hid them, Tyler would find and get rid of them. He tried to tell me he didn’t have a valid government ID, therefore he could not board a plane, to which I called bullshit because I met him on a plane. Then he tried to tell me his ID had expired, and then he had lost it, so I offered to go to the DMV with him and wait in line all day to get him a new one. He seemed to sense this was less of a suggestion and more of a threat, and an activity I would not be all that put off by doing, and his driver's license was miraculously recovered, valid and unexpired.
So we are now standing in the incredibly crowded Gate 32-B, together, on our way to my sister’s house for Christmas. Tyler’s hopes for a canceled flight are dashed when they begin pulling the plane up to the gate, and the people around us scramble in response. We stay still, standing shoulder to shoulder on account of the sheer volume of people crowded into the small space. Everyone gets religion on December 23rd. Like they lost it all year and just now bothered to go looking for it.
My religion is hovering next to me, chewing on a toothpick, his third favorite remedy for his obsessive oral fixation. Tyler’s agitation is heightened not only by my imposing of domesticity onto him, but also for the fact that he hasn’t had a cigarette since we walked inside, and he still has to make it through the rest of the flight. Cigarettes are his number one, favorite remedy for his oral fixation. His second favorite is… well, I shouldn’t say.
I communicated very little information about Tyler to my mother, other than his name and, at her insistence, whether he had any dietary restrictions (he does not). The fact that the first person I have ever brought to a family function is a man has not yet been commented on, and I hope it stays that way. I don’t need my sister or my brother-in-law or my mother making it into a thing. I hope they have the decency not to ask me to define the relationship for them.
Whatever is going on between me and Tyler doesn’t really have a definition. There’s no neat word that encompasses it. Tyler and I live together, we technically have our own rooms, though I can’t remember the last time we split up to go to bed. When I sleep, it’s with Tyler pressed against me, his breath tickling my skin, his body keeping me warm. We don’t talk about these things. We don’t talk about the fights, or the frankly obscene amount of sex we have, or how one often leads to the other. We don’t go on dates, we’re just always together, until one of us has to go to work, but eventually the shift ends and we’re back in each other's pockets.
I looked up the definition of boyfriend in an ancient, waterlogged dictionary I found in the house, my face burning the entire time. It read: a regular male companion with whom one has a romantic or sexual relationship.
Regular? Sure, I’ve seen Tyler everyday since I met him. Male? Yes, not difficult to define, not disputable. Companion? I looked up the definition for that, too: a person or animal with whom one spends a lot of time. Seems accurate, though whether Tyler falls into the ‘person’ or ‘animal’ category is up for debate at times. The sexual relationship isn’t difficult to recognize, Tyler and I are constantly on top of and inside each other. It’s the question of romance that gives me trouble.
Sometimes, in the morning, when he doesn’t know I’m awake yet, Tyler peppers chaste little kisses on my back, and I keep my breathing steady so he thinks I sleep through it. When I’m holding the wash rag to the cuts on Tyler’s face, when I’m cleaning them with hydrogen peroxide, the room is filled with such a stillness, I can hear every breath we take. When Tyler or I leave for work, it doesn’t matter who is walking out the door, he likes me to give him a kiss. He acts like it’s funny, like one of us is roleplaying the housewife, but there is a bittersweet shimmer of domesticity in the way I straighten his bowtie, in the way he lays a hand on my waist.
Adhering strictly to the definition, yes, technically Tyler Durden is my boyfriend. Though I can’t imagine he’d like me to call him that. And I’m not sure if boyfriends are supposed to enjoy beating the shit out of each other. I’m not sure if I’m supposed to want to get on my knees and pray to my boyfriend.
You’re supposed to bring your boyfriend home to meet your family, if things are serious. Things feel pretty serious, considering we live together, and I’m fairly sure we’re exclusive because one night I had a bit too much to drink at Lou’s and I caught him in the middle of a suggestive conversation with someone else and I threatened to kill myself in front of him if he slept with anyone other than me, and he hasn’t since then. I’m pretty sure.
So bringing your serious and exclusive boyfriend home for Christmas is the conventional thing to do, but Tyler hates conventionality. Tyler is outraged by my imposition of domesticity, my presentation of him to my family against his will. He dug his heels in, he probably expected me to give in much easier, but here we are lining up to board at Gate 32-B and he’s still putting up a fight, and I’m still not folding.
“Maybe,” Tyler says, as we get close to the gate agent, “someone will bring a bomb on the plane, and everyone will die.”
I tell him to be quiet, my voice low and stern. The gate agent is giving us a wide-eyed stare. I’m sorry, I say to him, handing over my boarding pass. There’s something wrong with him, I add.
Tyler leans on my shoulder and says, “Yeah, there is. I know how to make bombs.”
He’s joking! I exclaim, agitated beyond relief. Even if he isn’t my boyfriend, we act like a couple when we argue. Like we’ve been married for thirty years and we ran out of sexual tension to act as a buffer twenty-five years ago. I apologize again to the gate agent, snatching Tyler’s boarding pass and handing it over to be checked. I assure him we were both thoroughly inspected when we went through security, and that Tyler simply has a very ill-placed sense of humor. By some miracle, we are allowed to board the plane.
Can you behave? I snap once we’re through the door.
“Yes, dad,” Tyler says, and I stick my foot out like a schoolboy and watch him trip over it. He catches himself and glares. I pretend not to know him.
By the time the plane takes off, I know Tyler is really suffering from the nicotine withdrawals because I am, too, and I only smoke half as much as he does. He sits in silence, defeated, knowing I have won. His only hope now would be for a crash, a mid-air collision, for someone to have actually, successfully snuck a bomb onto the plane. Maybe dying as collateral damage in a hijacking would be easier than introducing Tyler to my mother, but it’s not likely to happen.
It’s windy, and turbulence is so bad the flight attendants are asked to remain seated. Tyler is trying to hide the fact that he’s bouncing his leg, but we’re sitting close enough that I can feel it. Despite my irritation with him, I’m still possessed by the urge to reach out and stroke his arm, to attempt to soothe. I ignore it, electing to doze instead.
I’m awoken by the announcement of our imminent landing. I’ve shifted, sunken down in my seat and veered to the right. My head is propped against Tyler’s shoulder. I can still feel his leg bouncing. I sit up, wiping my face. My mouth feels like it’s been stuffed full of cotton. I apologize for falling asleep on him.
“No skin off my back,” he says. He’s inspecting the safety card. He tucks it back into the pocket on the chair in front of him, then he looks at me and says, “So what are the rules for mom’s house?”
I frown. Why do you care? I ask. You’re not gonna do anything I tell you to.
Setting up rules for Tyler is like setting up rules for God. You can do it, but he’ll just laugh. And smite you for daring to try and control him.
“Humor me,” Tyler says.
I sigh. I think. I tell him, No smoking inside. My sister has kids, be nice to them. At the very least don’t scare them. Don’t go into detail about how we have to kill the power when it rains and how our front door doesn’t lock. Don’t talk about how to build explosives. Don’t talk about our fights. And if you start talking about consumerist culture and my brother-in-law starts parroting corporate propaganda at you, I’m not getting involved.
“Spineless,” Tyler accuses me.
I brush this off. I tell him my brother-in-law is too much of an idiot for Tyler to feel any sense of satisfaction from arguing with him. He’s too stupid to know when he’s wrong. And, I add, completely changing the subject, no sex.
Tyler raises his eyebrows at me, like this is a very perplexing and out-of-left-field addition. “Not even a handjob?”
I sense that this is a joke, but I explain the layout of my sister's house to him, anyway. At the top of the stairs there are three bedrooms— one belongs to my niece, one belongs to my nephew, and the third is a guest room where my mother will be sleeping. There’s a hallway leading away from the rooms and the staircase, to a room my sister likes to call the computer room. In the computer room is a pull out couch, which is where I always get placed. The computer room has no door, and the couch is situated in direct view of the hallway. If that weren’t enough, the hallway that leads to it is open on the top half, allowing you to peer down into the living room. Any noise louder than a whisper will be heard basically through the entire house. So no sex.
As I describe this, Tyler has plucked a long forgotten napkin out of the pocket on the seat in front of him and produced a pen from God only knows where. He draws the layout as I explain it, and when I’m finished he ponders the map before he looks to me and asks, “So, where’s the buried treasure?”
I tell him it’s up his ass, which at least gets a chuckle out of him. He tucks the napkin back into the chair pocket, for a stranger to find on the next flight or in two years. Then he looks at me and says, “You look like someone’s uncle.” He pauses. “Someone’s unmarried, gay uncle.”
I am someone’s unmarried, gay uncle, I remind him. Two someone’s, actually.
Tyler asks me how old my niece and nephew are. I tell him I don’t know. They’re small. I haven’t met them too many times. I went to my nephew’s baptism because I was in town that week inspecting a sedan that had practically exploded spontaneously, killing the parents in the front seats and leaving the kids in the back horribly disfigured and on the brink of death. I went straight from the warehouse where they were keeping the car to the church.
Tyler gets a weird look on his face. “ We don’t have to go to church, do we?”
God, no, I tell him. My mom hates that shit. My sister only does it because her idiot husband insists.
Tyler grins. “You’re not a big fan of this guy, huh?”
I roll my eyes. I tell Tyler that very soon he will understand why I don’t like him. My brother-in-law reminds me of my boss, but if he was my subordinate instead of my superior. And if he was twice as much of an idiot.
When we deplane, Tyler is contemplative, as much as he can be after this long without a cigarette. He’s got another toothpick in his mouth. I lead us to the carousel because I’ve been in this airport a thousand times, the same way I’ve been in every major airport in America a thousand times. The layout of each one is burned into my brain. We stand and wait for our one shared bag of luggage in a crowd of hundreds of people. Tyler pays little attention to me, wandering away and weaving through people until I don’t see where he gets off to. I don’t really care. He finds his way back to me as the bags from our flight are finally being dropped onto the carousel.
“Do you know what I hate about Christmas?” he asks.
I don’t look at him, scanning for our bag. I hazard a guess: It’s not a religious celebration anymore, it’s a marketing manager's wet dream.
“It’s a combo move,” Tyler tells me. “It’s an imposition of organized religion onto the mass public and an unsubtle proclamation that the only way to show the people in your life you care about them is by buying things for them. You love your wife, you buy her a nice piece of jewelry. You love your kids, you buy ‘em an easy bake oven. You show love through material items. Your identity as a consumer is now married to your religious practice. Your religion is your consumption.”
Yeah, I agree, my response clipped. It’s not that I disagree with him, it’s just that I would rather have this conversation with him while we’re not standing in a crowded airport while I’m watching for our bag. I’d happily listen to Tyler go on any other time, but sometimes he picks terrible moments to get fired up.
“And I’m sure whichever idiot in the writers room who came up with ‘the joy of giving’ got his dick sucked by everyone else in the meeting,” Tyler goes on. “Convince everyone that spending millions has nothing to do with spending millions, but it’s really about making the people you love happy, and that makes you happy. The only way to be happy and make others happy is to buy things. How convenient.”
I agree with him again as our bag is dropped onto the carousel. It’s headed in the opposite direction as us, so I step away from him to chase it. I don’t want to be standing in the crowd anymore. Tyler follows me, huffing like he’s annoyed.
“You seem like a gift certificate giver,” he says over my shoulder. “Just relevant enough to the recipient to make them feel like you care, convenient enough for you to not really give a shit.”
I tell him that’s pretty accurate. I mailed my sister an envelope a month ago with two-hundred dollars cash, half for my nephew, half for my niece, for my sister to spend on gifts, wrap them and write on the note that they were from me. I figure when they get old enough I can just start handing them the cash directly. I don’t know what they like, I don’t plan to ever be in town long enough to find out. Impersonal gifts are extremely convenient. I am willing to admit that and agree with Tyler’s spiel. He can beat me up for being a hypocrite later.
“You were raised Catholic,” Tyler says, poking a finger against the back of my shoulder. He holds it there, dragging it across my back, to my other shoulder blade. “You become less religious. You still celebrate. How do you celebrate? By spending money. You’re no longer Christian, you’re capitalist.”
He leans in behind me, resting his chin on my shoulder. “What’s your religion now, Ikea-boy?”
I bristle. I don’t want to tell him the god I worship is practically spooning me in the airport, so I break out of his grasp and grab our bag. I unzip one of the side pockets, fish out a lighter, and tell Tyler to go outside and have a cigarette. He clearly needs one. He snatches it and disappears in an instant, leaving me alone with our bag in a sea of people. I zip the side pocket back up, trying to move away from the crowds, when I hear someone call my name.
I look up and spot my brother-in-law near the exit doors. He looks the same he did the last time I saw him, however long ago that was. He’s my age, balding, making me very grateful every day for my own hair. His face is round, he’s wearing a blue button up tucked into slacks. He’s holding a white piece of paper with my name written on it, accompanied by the prefix UNCLE in a child’s handwriting. Underneath it, in much smaller letters because it was added as a last minute addition, it says AND TYLER.
He points to the sign as I approach him. He tells me my nephew made it for us. I nod. I tell him it’s very nice. He tells me he doesn’t need to hear it from me, he knows it’s shoddy, but I should let my nephew know what I think of his handiwork. Before I can agree, he pulls me into an awkward hug.
When he pulls away, he looks around. “Where’s, uh,” he says, “where’s your buddy?”
Sure, Tyler can be my buddy. He went out for a smoke, I tell him. Three hour flight, he was dying for one. Starting to get on my nerves.
“Oh, yeah,” my brother-in-law says. “My mom is the same way. Honestly I can’t stand the smell, you know?”
I used to know. I used to hate secondhand smoke. When Marla would blow it in my face it would take everything in me not to outwardly gag. I don’t know what it is about Tyler that makes it suddenly attractive. The first cigarette I ever had was shared with him, passed back and forth while we sat on the curb outside of Lou’s, basking in the post-coital glow of our fight.
My brother-in-law doesn’t know I get into fist fights. He doesn’t know Tyler and I slam each other into the concrete outside Lou’s for the adrenaline rush, for the ache we’ll feel in the morning, for the fact that it’s somehow deeply arousing to both of us in the exact same way. Tyler and I perform sex acts on one another that would make my brother-in-law’s brain explode. Tyler bends me into positions I didn’t know my body could move in, I fuck him after he pounds my face in and he pulls me closer to lick blood, sweat and tears off my cheek. Every orgasm Tyler causes me is better, more beautiful, more intense than if every orgasm my brother-in-law had ever had was compounded, multiplied in a formula not unlike the one I use for work, and slammed into him at ninety-miles-per-hour. My brother-in-law doesn’t even know that I smoke.
Tyler reappears, suddenly and without comment. He still has half a cigarette lit, held between his lips. He’s definitely not supposed to have that in here, but I don’t get paid to care. Tyler takes a drag, then lowers the cigarette, staring at the sign my brother-in-law is holding. He looks at it like he’s really pondering its contents, then without saying anything he chuckles, taps the sign lightly with his knuckles, shakes his head, and steps past us.
My brother-in-law watches him go, heading for the exit, and then turns to look at me, his eyebrows raised. “What a nutcase,” he says.
That’s Tyler, I tell him. I would tell him not to worry about the comment, Tyler really is a nutcase, but watching the color drain from his face is just too entertaining.
Tyler is waiting for us outside, still working on his cigarette. My brother-in-law leads the way to his car, and as we’re crossing through the parking garage Tyler takes one last drag and raises it the way he always does when he’s going to shamelessly discard it on the ground. I stop him before he can toss it, taking it from his fingers and stealing a drag. There’s still a good quarter of it left. Tyler doesn’t comment, but he seems to find this very amusing. By the time we’ve made it to the car I’ve finished it, and I toss it away in a far less flamboyant gesture.
Our bag goes in the trunk and Tyler elects to sit in the backseat, leaving me sitting shotgun. I find I enjoy car rides less by the day. My brother-in-law doesn’t drive a car made by my company, so I couldn’t say what makes this particular make and model a death trap, but there’s some poor bastard with my job title at every car company.
My brother-in-law probes us about the flight and work and other meaningless things, and I provide clipped answers and Tyler says nothing. I discourage further questions by asking how my niece and nephew are doing, which gets him talking for most of the drive back. He tells me secondhand reports from my sister, because he doesn’t really handle the school stuff or the after school stuff or the getting ready for school stuff or anything that goes on during summer break, in fact he has very little to do with his children besides the initial ejaculation.
My sister lives in a bland, cookie cutter house in a suburban neighborhood on the outskirts of the outskirts of town. All the houses have the same floor plans, just mirrored. Copies of copies of copies. All the lawns are the same size, all the cars parked in the driveway are clean and respectable. Every house has welcome mats and decorative, seasonal flags hanging on the porch. My sister's house is no exception to this American dream of suburbia, two-point-five children and a nine-to-five with barely acceptable benefits and a retirement fund that probably isn’t going to work out.
I always forget which house is theirs until we’re pulling into the driveway. The concrete is covered in chalk drawings, there are stones in the grass cutting a quicker path to the front porch. I grab our bag out of the trunk. It’s not terribly cold outside, all that’s required is a light jacket. Tyler hovers next to me as I shut the trunk, he hangs back as I step up the porch while my brother-in-law unlocks the door.
There’s a dog. I always forget about the dog. A yellow lab, which is very typical. It’s out on the porch as soon as the door is cracked open, it’s tongue out, eager to get to know us. I step out of the way, pushing it off of me, knocking myself into the wall in the process. It abandons me quickly, sensing that it will not get my attention. He turns to Tyler, jumping up, trying to get in his face. Tyler only seems mildly put off by this, a smile on his face as he grabs the dog behind the ears. He’s petting it. “Hey, buddy,” he says. The dog's tail is wagging hard enough to form a bruise on my leg. It is Tyler’s buddy. Tyler is my buddy. The companion definition is back in question.
I follow my brother-in-law inside. My sister practically materializes in the entryway, a smile on her face, her arms open to pull me into a hug. I return it stiffly. My sister is like if you put me in a blender with the concept of Having It All and lobotomized the remains to make it content with the state of its life. She and I have very similar jobs, office cubicles and faceless coworkers, but the difference is my sister decorates her space with framed photos of her family and plans the office holiday parties. She irons all her clothes and wears kitten heels and finds the time to cook and clean and have an input on the PTA board. She’s always so smiley. I’d like to think she’s secretly addicted to coke.
I imagine putting a framed photo of Tyler on my desk at work and almost laugh out loud. I must make a face because my sister says, “What’s funny?”
Nothing, I try to say, but she’s already looking past me and snapping at my brother-in-law to get the dog. Something about how he’s not supposed to jump on people, how they’re supposed to be consistent in how they train him. Somehow I get the feeling if the dog isn’t trained by now, it’s a lost cause.
My brother-in-law takes the dog by the collar and pulls it back inside. Tyler follows, stepping over the threshold and shutting the door. So, now we’re here. Tyler Durden is in my sister’s house, while she’s here, while my brother-in-law is here, while my niece and nephew and mother and the dog are here. I brace myself for impact, watching my sister’s eyes fall to Tyler. Tyler in his red leather jacket, his hair done, his face clean shaven in all the spots he doesn’t allow to grow out. I feel suffocated by suspense, waiting for the other shoe to drop, for Tyler to reveal his insanity to my family’s horrified eyes while I struggle not to swoon.
“You must be Tyler,” my sister says. She hugs him. He hugs her back. This is like watching a car crash in slow motion. My sister pulls away and says, “It’s so nice to meet you.”
“Likewise,” Tyler says with a smile. The charismatic performance he puts on when we’re making sales at Nordstrom and he starts flirting with the girls at the counter, he’s doing it in my sister’s entryway now.
Tyler is smiling with his teeth and not with his eyes, the way he does when he’s pretending to be a productive member of society. The way he did when I asked him how he ever got through a job interview and he had me hold a mock one, and I couldn’t get through more than two questions before I told him to stop, I couldn’t stand listening to his customer service voice. Conformity looks so wrong on Tyler, absurdity and anarchy look so good on him.
I understand suddenly what’s happening without Tyler needing to explain it to me. I realize, with a sharp, sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach that Tyler has done what Tyler always does. He’s outsmarted me. I dragged him into a situation he didn’t want to be in, and he’s not going to give me the satisfaction of behaving like himself. He’s going to assimilate.
Take the number of my family members concentrated in one location, (A), multiplied by the probable rate of failure, (B), then multiply the result by the average caliber of behavior Tyler Durden exhibits, (C). A times B times C equals X.
X was what I wanted. X was going to be Tyler and I being just a bit too off putting for my family’s comfort. Not enough for them to pull me aside, but just enough to make them squirm. To make them think twice before inviting us for Easter. X was going to be the domestic, in-house version of my work clothes wrinkled and stained ever-so-slightly, the blood coated teeth baring smiles I flash in the dark during presentations, the suggestion that Tyler and I hurt each other and like it.
Tyler fucked with my formula. Tyler removed C from the equation, which turned X into a horrifying amalgamation that reflects to my family an image of two well adjusted men in their thirties who are in a perfectly civil, normal, vanilla relationship.
I feel as if I’ve been doused in cold water. My sister says, “Let me take you upstairs, you can put your bag down.”
Tyler follows her, and I’m dragged along when he grabs onto the handle of the bag and pulls me with him.
Just as I expected, my sister turns down the hall at the top of the stairs and leads us to the computer room, where the couch has already been converted into a bed. The only other furniture is a desk housing a very nice desktop computer and a worn out futon.
“This is you,” she says, gesturing to the pull-out. I set our bag down on the futon. Tyler asks where the bathroom is, even though he probably remembers my detailed description from earlier. My sister points him down the hall and he disappears. I watch him go, numb, on the verge of seething. When I turn to look back at my sister, she’s giving me a funny smile, her face screwed up like she ate something sour and she’s excited about it.
“Oh,” she says, stepping closer to me and scooping me into another, very unexpected hug. I struggle to return it for a moment, startled by its imposition. I wrap my arms around her weakly, and she rocks us back and forth, side to side, some strange little happy dance. She pulls away and puts her hands on my shoulders. She’s shorter than me even though she’s older.
“Everyone is so happy for you,” she says.
Oh, I say, hating this conversation. I ask, Why’s that?
She laughs, a breathy giggle, baring her teeth. “You’ve never brought anyone home!” she exclaims. “This is so exciting. Mom was so excited. I wish you’d told her more over the phone, I didn’t know what to get him.”
Oh, Tyler doesn’t expect anything, I tell her. It’s more the fact that Tyler doesn’t want anything. I tell her, I didn’t even get him anything.
Her face falls. “What? Why not?”
Tyler is very particular, I say. He didn’t get me anything, either. We’re not really into exchanging gifts.
“Huh,” she says. “Well, how long have you two been dating?”
We’re not, I say, like a reflex. The words are out of my mouth before I can think about them.
My sister blinks. “You’re not dating?”
No, I say, doubling down. This is the quickest remedy I can think of, the fastest way to fuck up Tyler’s plans. I look her dead in the eye with a straight face and tell her Tyler and I are just roommates.
“Oh,” she says. “The way you said it on the phone… I mean, mom said…” She pauses. “Why’d you bring him home if you’re not dating?”
Tyler’s voice startles me from the doorway. “I didn’t have anything else going on,” he says, and me and my sister both turn to look at him. “He was very gracious to extend an invite.”
He says that like he wasn’t dragging his feet the entire time. I narrow my eyes at him over my sister’s shoulder. He pretends not to notice.
My sister looks back at me, and I drop my face back to a neutral expression. I try to smile, but it feels more like I’m just baring my teeth at her. She says, “Well, my mistake, then.” There is something in her tone that suggests she doesn’t believe me for a second. “I guess one of you will have to take the futon.”
All three of us stare at this sorry looking piece of furniture for a moment, until I say, Yeah, I’ll take the futon.
“Perfect!” my sister exclaims, turning away from me. “Get settled and come back down, mom is making dinner.” She pauses in the doorway and gives me a look. “Don’t worry, I’m cooking tomorrow night and Christmas Day. But mom is so excited to see you.” She lays a hand on Tyler’s shoulder and adds, “We’re happy to have you join.”
She disappears down the hallway. As she descends the stairs, Tyler turns to look at me, a smug smile on his face. “We’re roommates?”
You’re acting like a fucking psychopath, I tell him.
“No,” Tyler says. “I normally act like a fucking psychopath. This is me pretending to be normal for your nice, neat, shitty little family.”
I tell him to fuck off, my voice low.
“I thought you were the one who wanted to roleplay a domestic partnership for the holidays,” Tyler snaps. “But apparently not, roomie.”
I get the feeling he’s not going to let that go. It’s not like I lied. Tyler and I aren’t dating, our relationship is more of an amorphous codependent amalgamation that frequently blinds me with jealousy, rage and lust. I don’t have the patience to explain that to my family, but I also can’t allow Tyler to sell them the idea that he and I are just a couple. We’re not that, we’re everything but that and everything beyond it. We transcend the bounds of language and labels. I could not explain accurately, succinctly or faithfully, the relationship Tyler and I have if you gave me the rest of my life to do it.
My mother calls my name from downstairs. I step past Tyler, knocking my shoulder into his on purpose. The minimal, rough contact makes me realize very suddenly that I am going through withdrawals. Like a plane ride without nicotine, I have gone too long without skin on skin with Tyler Durden. I’m aching for his mouth on mine, for his fist against my cheek. I ignore it, but as I descend the stairs I’m foolish enough to wonder if he feels the same way.
My mother is emerging from the kitchen when I enter the living room, and she immediately delights when she spots me. She pulls me into a hug and holds me there, rocking us back and forth the same way my sister had upstairs. I hope I don’t do that when I hug people. That would be embarrassing.
My mother pulls away and cups my face and says, “You’re never home!” She lets go of me and looks over my shoulder. “Where’s your friend?”
My sister is setting the table. She tells our mother that Tyler is my roommate. Our mother nods like that makes perfect sense, and like she, too, does not buy this for a single second.
Tyler follows me into the living room and my mother introduces herself to him enthusiastically. I watch this exchange over my shoulder. Tyler smiles and speaks like he enjoys small talk, like he really is happy to meet her. I am overwhelmed by the impulse to drive my fist into his face, to drag him into the backyard and have it out with him.
Tyler turns his head mid-conversation and interrupts himself with a laugh, a sudden noise that sounds like it escaped. He’s looking at the Christmas tree. My mother and I follow his gaze and she laughs, too. The tree is decorated very tastefully, with warm yellow lights and color coordinated ornaments, but at the bottom are several Barbie dolls that have been stripped naked and settled among the branches, peeking through the green bristles. I can’t keep a straight face looking at it, either.
My sister comes into the living room with a conglomerate of forks and knives fisted in one hand. She spots the tree and her cheeks flush. She explains that her daughter has figured out how to undress her dolls, but hasn’t figured out how to put the clothes back on them, yet. She wants to help decorate. She’s been doing this all month. My sister thought she’d cleaned up before we got here.
“No, no, don’t take ‘em down,” Tyler laughs. He’s got that goofy smile on his face, his real smile, his eyes shining as he leans down to examine the decor closer. “That’s fucking hilarious.”
My sister pulls me over to help her set the table. My mother goes out onto the porch to smoke a cigarette, telling us that while she’s out there she’ll tell the kids that dinner is ready.
My sister tells me, while setting forks and knives out in a particular order, that she sends the kids outside when she’s in the kitchen because they’re both old enough now to play without constant supervision. But, she tells me, she has to bring them in before dark, because their neighborhood is young, and for the last several years the only thing behind their house was an empty field, but now there are more houses being put in, constant construction being done. She tells me that at night, there are teenagers who go around throwing bits of concrete and stone and other construction debris over her fence and into the yard, and she’s worried about the kids getting hit. I tell her that’s a perfectly reasonable concern and make no further comment.
My niece and nephew come in with my mother. My nephew is very excited to see me. Every child has a family member who is never around and who they are, for some reason, obsessed with. I’m his. I don’t know why. Maybe if I had to choose between my brother-and-law and myself as a positive male role model, I’d also choose myself. Not much of an upgrade, but anything’s better than him.
I’m watching Tyler out of the corner of my eye. As my nephew explains to me at great length the game they had invented to play outside, Tyler asks my niece if she’s the one responsible for decorating the tree.
This display of playful domesticity sounds so wrong coming out of his mouth it almost makes me throw up. I can feel myself scowling.
My mother is a terrible cook. This has been a true fact my entire life, and one of the things my father used to insult before he left. Because he would so often bring it up to make her feel bad, my sister and I have never commented on it. My brother-in-law doesn’t comment on it. I keep my foot firmly planted on top of Tyler’s for the entire meal to make sure he doesn’t comment on it.
During a crescendo of conversation, while no one is paying attention to us, Tyler leans closer and whispers, “If I pissed in this, it would make it better.” I grind my heel harder into the top of his foot.
“So, Tyler,” my brother-in-law says, “what do you do?”
“What do you want me to do?” Tyler asks.
“Sorry?” my brother-in-law asks. There’s a beat of silence. He adds, “I meant for work. What do you do for work?”
“Ah,” Tyler says. “I make and sell soap.”
“Soap?” my mother asks.
“Soap,” Tyler echoes. “The yardstick of civilization.”
“I get the best soap at Nordstrom,” my sister says, and I feel myself inhale in anticipation at the same time Tyler does.
Tyler and I are last on the pecking order to use the bathroom. He showers while I shave my face and brush my teeth, then I shower while he shaves and brushes his teeth. We’re doing an excellent job at coming across as roommates. I’m sure nobody suspects a thing.
My mother pops into the computer room to say goodnight, and then Tyler and I are left alone. Silence pervades the entire house, the open cut of the hallway communicating every rustle of a blanket. We can hear the humming of the refrigerator from here.
True to my word, I take the futon. Tyler takes the pullout. He even has the decency to sleep in boxers. I’m going to be sick.
I lay awake for God knows how long, silently fuming over this performance I’ve roped us into. Visiting home always felt like coming to orbit a sad, distorted reflection of my own dull life. My sister’s house used to be a skewed, inflated echo of my condo, where the people were somehow happy with all the things that disinterested me. That used to make me feel bad, jealous, hollow, like I was doing something wrong. Now, after Tyler has kidnapped me out of my lifeless life, enlightened me, introduced true fervent ecstasy into my daily routine, this place feels like a perversion. I feel as though I have crash landed among people who put value in everything that doesn’t matter and I want nothing to do with explaining how my life is better than this. Watching Tyler assimilate, even knowing he’s faking it to get under my skin, it makes my blood boil.
I abandon the futon and climb into the bed with Tyler. I can’t sleep if I’m not touching him, which is a terribly domestic thing to admit even in my stream of consciousness. He doesn’t move as I press against his back, but when I’ve settled he whispers, “I don’t think roommates are supposed to share a bed.”
I tell him to shut the fuck up. The air conditioner kicks on. I cannot stand this. Tyler doesn’t belong in a suburban neighborhood. White sidewalks, clipped identical front lawns, smooth drywall coated in off-white paint, blinds and curtains on the windows, temperature controlled rooms. I resent him for pantomiming the exact same act of assimilation I mindlessly performed for years.
When we get home, I mutter against Tyler’s neck, I am going to beat the shit out of you. You won’t be able to fucking walk.
Tyler hums. “Don’t talk dirty if you’re not going to follow through.”
All I can think about is punching him in the face, thick streams of blood when I break his nose. The sound of my knuckles hitting his bare skin, bruises blooming, the noises he makes when it’s just the two of us fighting, no one else. Gasps and moans. The god I worship is rewarding others for worshiping false idols. I want to brutalize him.
I’m too angry and aroused to sleep. This has no effect on Tyler, who is dozing against me.
I imagine leaning forward and sinking my teeth into his shoulder, ripping the muscle open, the way he’d scream and writhe for me. Peeling back layers of flesh until my teeth are making bone-to-bone contact, suckling blood like a fucking parasite. I brush my lips against his skin, sneering.
“Go to sleep, psycho-boy,” Tyler instructs me, and I truly despise him in that moment. Blood lust. I want to kill him with my bare hands. I’ll do it when we get home. Wouldn’t want to make a mess in my sister’s house. I imagine her getting agitated over the blood stains from a violent homicide the way I used to get annoyed when I’d spill something on the floor in the kitchen. Picking and choosing what to make a fuss about like any of it matters.
When I wake up, Tyler isn’t in bed. I lay under the blanket for a moment, alone and miserable, and then I get up and get dressed. It reminds me of my old routine before going to work.
When I get downstairs, I am greeted by the sight of Tyler sitting at the kitchen table with my niece and nephew. There’s a box of crayons half dumped out, and the three of them have their own sheet of paper. I’m momentarily blinded by rage, before my nephew notices me and jumps up so he can show me what he’s working on.
He holds it up for me to inspect and points out each little detail, and I nod along trying to listen through the burning in my skull. When he’s finished, he says, “You should draw something, too.”
I start to tell him no, that’s fine, I’m good, but Tyler chimes in and says, “Come sit down, Ikea-boy.”
My niece laughs. “Ikea-boy!” she echoes, like she’s in disbelief of what she just heard. Then she dissolves into giggles while Tyler looks down at her like this is genuinely amusing to him. I am goaded into sitting down next to my nephew at the table. He issues me my own sheet of paper and tells me to take my pick from the crayon pile.
I grab a black one, and Tyler says, “Try to make something other than an action item list.”
I barely resist the impulse to tell him to shut the fuck up. Something tells me my sister wouldn’t appreciate the language. My nephew says, “What’s an action item list?”
Don’t worry about it, I say.
My attempt at drawing a penguin in the corner of the page is frankly embarrassing, so I give up and start drawing bees. I don’t know what possesses me. I draw them all around the edges of the page, then I draw one big one in the middle. I draw a crown on it. Queen bee. I put it behind bars like it’s in jail. I grab a yellow crayon to color them all in. I do all this with a frown on my face.
I stop to ponder my work for a moment, and suddenly the paper is snatched out from under me. I look up to see Tyler inspecting it. He says, “Does this one have a matching haiku?”
My niece reaches up and puts her hand over the paper and says, “Bees.”
“Yeah, bees,” Tyler says, handing it back to me.
Well, let’s see yours, I say, so Tyler holds his up. It’s a drawing of the Parker Morris Building downtown back home, the windows are on fire in such a way that it looks like it’s smiling. It’s actually not half bad. I tell him it could use some bees.
“No,” my niece chimes in. “It needs the sun.” She holds her hand out to me, like a demand, and it takes me a moment to realize she’s requesting the yellow crayon. I hand it to her, and she takes Tyler’s drawing away from him and draws a sun in the corner of it.
He watches her do this, then says, “It was supposed to be night time.”
She pauses for a moment, then simply says, “No,” and continues her addition.
This is enough to get me to crack. I laugh. Then I cover my mouth when Tyler looks at me, trying to wipe the smile off my face. My anger evaporates, and when Tyler smiles at me it immediately condensates again and hangs off of me, making me feel damp. I rub my face and lower my hand. My niece is looking at me like I’m a crazy person. I fold my hands on the table.
My nephew snaps out of his concentration and slides his paper to me. It’s a crudely drawn T-rex wearing a tie, holding a briefcase. I say, Why does he have a job?
“Because he likes to type on computers,” my nephew says.
Tyler cradles his head in his hand. “Poor bastard.”
My sister materializes next to the table, as if summoned by Tyler’s language. She’s already dressed for the day, hair and make-up done, and she has the audacity to look well rested. I resist the urge to roll my eyes. She looks down at me, like she’s surprised to see me in her house, and says, “You’re awake!”
Yes, I say, unsure of what’s perplexing about this observation.
She puts a hand on my shoulder and looks at Tyler and says, “He used to sleep until three in the afternoon if you let him. That’s why he only took afternoon classes in college, so he could sleep in. I don’t know how he gets up for work every day!”
Tyler looks at me and says, “Maybe that’s why you’ve got insomnia. Got all your sleep out of your system too fast.”
“Oh, that’s right,” my sister says, like she just remembered I’m terminally ill and this is upsetting to her. “You know, I have a coworker who goes to a support group for her chronic pain. I bet you could find one for insomnia. They have them for all types of stuff.”
Tyler smiles smugly down at his stupid drawing. I don’t want to even bother responding to my sister’s comment. Luckily, my nephew saves me by showing off his own stupid drawing. My sister examines it and compliments it and hands it back, then peers over the table at my niece and says, “What are you working on, hon?”
My niece pauses her fervent employment of the orange crayon and holds her own paper up. My sister stares at it. “Is that… another fire drawing?” she asks, and my niece nods. “Do we maybe wanna try drawing something else, for a change?”
“What’s a bastard?” my nephew asks.
I reach a boiling point after dinner, after watching my sister go through the ritual with my niece and nephew of making cookies and setting them out on the mantel with a glass of milk. My sister takes them both upstairs to put them to bed, and my brother-in-law drinks the glass of milk, much to my complete disgust. My mom assigns me the task of washing the dishes used for making the cookies, which I do in silence while Tyler stands to the side, leaning against the counter with a towel so he can dry them, which my mother did not tell him to do therefore I can tell she’s endeared by his initiative. Every utensil I pick up, I want to use it as a weapon. Then my sister comes back downstairs and takes one of the cookies off the plate in the mantel, eats it, and then grabs another and brings it over to us in the kitchen.
She says, “One of you take a bite out of this, make it look halfway finished.” And then to my horror Tyler does. I drop the dish I’m holding in the sink with a very loud clunk, and my sister jumps. “What’s wrong?” she asks me.
Nothing, I’ve just got a migraine, I say, in the flattest, most unconvincing tone ever. I think I’m just gonna turn in early, I add, pointing up vaguely toward the computer room, my hand still covered in soap suds. I leave the kitchen without rinsing them off.
I shower and brush my teeth and I don’t think I’ve felt this angry since Tyler and Marla reinvented marathon sex. I can feel it under my skin and in the back of my throat and in the pit of my stomach. I feel like a six year old on the playground watching the other first graders steal my toy and play with it wrong. You’re going to break it!
I lay down on the pull-out with my face buried into a pillow, trying to drown out the noise of my family downstairs. Tyler doesn’t take long to join me. If I’m not there to watch, he doesn’t have anyone to perform for, and he’s not going to act normal for their eyes only. I hear him undressing, and then he climbs over me to get into bed.
He ruffles my hair and says, “How’s the migraine, champ?”
I tell him I’m going to kill him with my bare hands, I want to rip his fingernails off with pliers, I might be angry enough to castrate him. I say all of this into the pillow, because I know if I lift my head I’m going to start yelling. Despite everything, I bend to the instinct of behaving in my sister’s house.
Tyler says, “You would never. You like it when I cum on your face too much.”
I lift my head and hiss for him to shut the fuck up. The conversation downstairs is continuing, no awkward pauses. I tell him to go to bed and lower my face back into the pillow. He doesn’t say anything else to me.
I fall asleep, except I don’t really because my insomnia is kicking my ass. What really happens is I turn my head to the side so I’m not suffocating in the pillow, and I find the tightrope walk between being awake and being asleep. This lasts for who knows how long, until my foot jerks without my permission and snaps me out of it. The lights in the living room are off, the house is silent. Everyone has gone to bed. Santa should be here any minute.
I roll over. Tyler is gone. I sit up, confused. He’s not in the room. I glance down the hallway. The bathroom light isn’t on. I stand, and then I catch a glimpse out the window. Very faint, very tiny, on the other side of the fence, in the construction zone. The faint twinkle of a cigarette.
I huff and slip my shoes on and then I’m downstairs, out the back door, beyond the fence and stomping through the rough dirt of the construction. Tyler is standing with his back to me, smoking a cigarette, wearing his stupid robe. I don’t even notice the temperature outside, if I should be cold or not. I’m too angry. I come up behind him and shove him.
He stumbles, just slightly, then turns around and says, “Weak opener. Wanna try again?”
I punch him in the face. He reels back and shakes his head and laughs. He throws his cigarette on the ground and says, “Okay, good one.”
He lunges at me, and then we’re fighting in the dirt in the dark in the cold on Christmas Eve in suburbia. I feel every fiber in my being rioting against his idolatry, his assimilation, his blasphemy. He did all that work to convert me, to enlighten me, and then he turns around and does this. Condemns me to a private worship, insists we play pretend when we leave the house. He gets in a good hit to the side of my face, his knuckle knocking right against my cheekbone, and I stagger backwards, in search of reprieve. He doesn’t follow after me, just watches to see what I’ll do next. I tell him he’s a coward.
“I’m a coward?” he asks, a smile blooming on his face. “Explain that logic to me!”
You preach all this bullshit to me, I snap, stepping toward him again. And now you’re acting like it doesn’t matter!
“You’re acting like it doesn’t matter!” Tyler says, shoving my back. “If it means something to you, fucking act on it! Commit to it! I don’t give a fuck how you devote yourself to me in private if you’re gonna turn around and tell your mom we’re roommates! We’re not fucking roommates, don’t make yourself palatable for them. Don’t try to make me palatable for them!”
You’re making yourself palatable! I shout, and I throw another punch and it lands and then we’re scuffling again, until Tyler throws me to the side and I trip and land on the ground.
I pick myself up as he snaps, “I’m making myself palatable and you’re participating. You’re doing nothing to prove me wrong, you’re going further than I am! I walked in there ready to play your domestic partner and you downgraded me to your fucking roommate!”
Are you seriously fucking mad about that?! I shout.
Tyler surges toward me and then his hand is wrapped around the back of my neck. He says, “You misunderstand. You’re mine. I keep you in my bed, I walk you like a fucking dog, I knock you down on your knees, hands clasped, to fucking pray to me. You’re not just my boyfriend, you’re my disciple, you’re my pet freak, you’re locked in a leash sewn to my hand. I’m not your fucking roommate, I’m your owner and your god.”
Then fucking act like it! I growl, shoving him backwards.
“Don’t pull that shit with me!” he shouts. “I’m not doing your dirty work for you! You want them to know what I am to you, show them yourself. I’m not gonna puppeteer you out of your assimilation, do it yourself! You want me to act like your god, show me your devotion!”
I lunge for him and tackle him into the dirt, rolling him over on his back and straddling him and hitting him in the face. Once, twice, and then I can’t control the impulse any longer, I fist my hand in his hair and push his head pack, exposing his neck to me, and then I lean down and bite. He gasps and moans and leans into me, and then he laughs, a delirious giggle, and says, “What are you, a fucking vampire?”
I sit up and pop him in the nose so hard it starts to bleed, and then I kiss him. My tongue in his mouth, lapping up the blood as it trickles down over his lips, our teeth clacking together. Tyler pants into me and says, “Don’t you want them to know you like the taste of my blood?”
No, Tyler, I say, my voice shockingly calm. I don’t want them to know, I just want them to think they know. I’m not trying to convert them. I don’t need anybody else praying to you.
“You’re not gonna missionize?” Tyler asks, smiling. “You’re not gonna spread the good news?”
Shut the fuck up, Tyler, I mutter. I wrap my hands around his throat and push him down against the dirt. He moans, a choked out sound, his face flushing as I apply pressure. He doesn’t have to let me do this. I can’t kill God. He could shove me off of him, easily, both his hands are free. But he doesn’t. He just reaches up and lays one across my thigh, the other on my hip, gripping at the fabric of my boxers.
Finally, when there are tears prickling in the corners of his eyes, I let up, and he gasps and coughs and rasps, “Fuck.”
I lean in to kiss him, this one much gentler. My anger has evaporated again, I don’t know where it’s gone. Maybe I taste it on the blood that’s still left on Tyler’s lips, I’m not sure. Maybe choking god out puts things in perspective. With one hand still laid on his throat, I mutter against his lips, If we go back inside, we have to quit the idolatry.
Tyler smiles. “Give me a taste of your devotion. Before you water it down again.” He moves his hand from my thigh to my hip and pulls me against him, and I kiss him again on the lips and then on his neck, over my bite that nearly drew blood.
I say, Tyler, my voice quiet, my lips brushing against his skin. I kiss it again and say, Oh, Tyler, please deliver me.
“Yeah?” Tyler asks, a slight tremble to his voice. One of his hands drifts away from my hip and I feel the tips of his fingers brushing against my skin, pushing the hem of my shirt up. He’s shaking, just barely. The fights and the blood get him hard but this gets him harder.
I kiss his neck and I say, Oh, Tyler, please deliver me from the religion of consumption. I pepper kisses along the line of his jaw, languid and slow, and I say, Tyler, deliver me from the joy of giving. I suck on his earlobe and Tyler moans and I say, Deliver me from easy bake ovens and gift certificates. I lick the shell of his ear and I say, Oh, Tyler, please rescue me from the idolatry of suburbia.
I press two of my fingers against Tyler’s lips, and he opens his mouth and lets me slide them in. He runs his tongue along them, shuts his eyes and sucks on them and I press them all the way into the back of his throat until he gags.
In the dirt of the construction zone, this half finished temple to perfection and suburbia, I press my fingers into Tyler and watch the way the pleasure washes over his face, melt over the sound of his name on my lips as I move my fingers in and out of him. This is the real altar, my display of devotion to my god, his eyes fluttering shut when I brush against that bundle of nerves.
When he’s ready, I fuck him on his back, one of his legs pushed up. I plant a chaste little kiss on the side of his knee and then moan when I press into him, tight and warm and all encompassing, his hands grabbing at my sides and pulling me closer, deeper, he wants it harder, faster. It’s such a funny sound when your god says, “Please,” and, “Fuck,” and, “God, yes, right there—”
We’re both panting and moaning and my entire body feels hot, arousal pooling and knotting in my stomach and cracking like electricity at the base of my spine. Tyler’s head is dropped back against the dirt and he’s whining and whimpering, gasping my name. His cock is flushed and hard, leaking precum and he reaches to touch himself, to wrap his fingers around it, and I don’t stop him. I tell him how I would devote myself like this to him every night. I'll quit my job, reorder my life around him and his leash on my neck and let him yank and drag me where he wants me to go. This declaration comes out breathless and whiny, my hips stuttering as I fuck him through my orgasm, sharp short little moans echoed by him as he comes undone underneath me, cum spilling over his bare abdomen.
I pull out and lean in to kiss him, and then I sink down his body and lap up my communion like a dog. He puts his hand in my hair and brushes it back and cradles my face and says, “I still think you should’ve come alone.”
I couldn’t have come alone, because I’m not a whole person by myself anymore. I don’t think I ever was. Take the contents of my body, mind, and soul, (A), added to the contents of Tyler’s body, mind, and soul, (B) to equal X, which is a life far richer than the pantomime my family is performing inside my sister’s cookie cutter house. I crawl back on top of Tyler and kiss him until I start to feel lightheaded, then I sit back on my knees and pull my boxers back up and agree to participate with him in the blasphemy again.
We go back inside and settle back into the pull-out, folded into each other, legs tangled under the blanket. In the morning, my niece and nephew will wake us in their pajamas, excitedly insisting we join them downstairs. My sister and mother and brother-in-law will see us, our dried blood and our bruises, and ask us what happened. I will give them a half baked, implausible excuse that they will not press further, and the love bites and hickeys on Tyler’s neck will imply everything they need to know. I will refer to him as my boyfriend while making him coffee in the kitchen and I might even kiss him on the cheek when I hand him his mug. But that’s for the morning. For tonight, I doze off with Tyler’s hand tucked under my t-shirt, his palm warm on the small of my back.