Candy Everybody Wants

But it wasn’t true. It was over. He was different from everyone else–and not in a good way as he had always presumed–in a funny way. A queer way. Things didn’t work out for Jayson at the end of the episode–they worked out for Trey. No one cared how Jayson’s storyline resolved.

Jayson came to a soul-shattering conclusion.

Oh God, he thought. I’m not the star…I’m the wacky neighbor!

‘I think I hear Gavin coming upstairs…let’s go!’ Tara said breathlessly, interrupting Jayson’s stream of self-loathing consciousness.

‘Nah,’ Jayson replied. ‘I don’t feel so well. I think I’ll hide out up here.’ He listened to Tara skip away down the hall.

Jayson’s funk continued to deepen in the weeks after Trey’s betrayal.

‘Why are you being such an ass around here?’ Toni finally asked Jayson after the fourteenth consecutive dinner in which Jayson didn’t utter a word.

Jayson didn’t answer.

‘Answer your mother,’ Franck commanded.

Jayson looked down at the Beef-A-Roni mixed with La Choy Chop Suey that Toni had ‘invented’ for dinner. She’d called it ‘Orientaly.’

Jayson remained silent.

‘Is it the whole boner thing?’ Toni asked. ‘’Cause Tara told me all about it.’

Jayson looked up from his plate and glared at Tara. Tara shrugged him off.

‘These things happen,’ Toni continued. ‘It’s completely natural.’

‘She’s right,’ Franck affirmed. ‘What you should really do, Jay-Jay, is focus your embarrassment into some sort of creative outlet.’

‘Sure,’ Jayson muttered. ‘I’ll start doing pastels of my scrotum. We can have a joint show.’

‘What he’s really pissed off about is that Trey showed everyone at school that video of him playing around in dresses,’ Tara interjected.

‘For the last fucking time, Tara, I wasn’t playing around. I was acting,’ Jayson said through gritted teeth.

‘So what’s wrong with that?’ Toni asked. ‘Didn’t people like it? I thought it was a good show.’ However frustrating Toni could be, the one thing that Jayson could count on from his mother was her ability to never look at a situation the way a sane person would.

‘Now they’re all calling me “Gayson,”’ Jayson explained.

‘And “homo,”’ Tara said.

‘Not “faggot”?’ Toni asked.

‘We used to say “queer,”’ Franck added.

‘Gay Gay Gay Gay Gay Gay Gay,’ Willie started. One of the symptoms of Prader-Willi syndrome was repetitive verbalization. Willie always chose the most inconvenient times to manifest that.

‘That doesn’t seem like something Trey would do,’ Toni said.

‘After Jayson got a boner in the shower next to him, Trey started getting teased too,’ Tara explained to the table. ‘So he threw Jayson under the bus.’

‘I’d appreciate it if everyone would stop bringing my penis up at the dinner table,’ Jayson pleaded.

‘Why not? It seems to come up everywhere else,’ Tara joked, chortling through a mouthful of Orientaly.

Jayson stood up to clear the table. He didn’t need to relive the worst moments of his life any longer.

‘So what are you going to do about this?’ Franck asked.

‘Nothing,’ Jayson replied, scraping the globs of congealed food onto one plate.

‘God, you really are a little fag, aren’t you? You don’t have any plan on how to get even?’ Franck said. From what little Jayson knew about her history, he had learned that the four-foot-eight, handicapped lesbian had solved most of life’s dilemmas with her right fist. ‘I guess I’m going to have to be the man around here,’ she sighed.

‘Well, you do have the mustache,’ Jayson muttered.

‘You’re not going to punch my brother, are you?’ Tara asked, suddenly a little frightened.

‘I don’t punch kids,’ Franck clarified, defensively. ‘What do you people think I am?’

‘A violent, crazy dyke,’ Jayson answered, rinsing off the last of the plates.

‘No–a violent, crazy dyke with a plan’, Franck corrected.

‘What are you talking about?’ Jayson asked.

‘You’ll see soon enough,’ Franck answered. She caught Gavin’s dilated eye and winked.

Jayson ignored her, pouting his way through the next three hours until bedtime. He slept fitfully, waking up sometime after midnight, desperately thirsty from his two helpings of sodium-laden Orientaly. He made his way downstairs, and on his way across the darkened living room to the kitchen a voice startled him. He yelped.

‘It’s just me, Butter Bean,’ Toni said, her voice coming from the darkness where the sofa would be.

‘What are you doing in the dark?’ Jayson asked. He squinted and just made out the tip of her smoldering Newport.

‘Just thinkin’,’ came her reply. ‘Come over here and sit next to me.’

Jayson felt his way across the dark room, taking small steps in order not to trip over the coffee table. When he finally felt the cold arm of the vinyl faux-leather couch, he sank down next to the warmth of his mother. She put her soft arm around him. Jayson could tell she was only wearing her bra.

‘What are you thinking about?’ Jayson asked. In the total darkness, he realized he could imagine his mother being anyone he wanted her to be. Mrs. Cunningham. Mama Walton. Alice the waitress. The possibilities were endless.

‘I was thinking that this is the first time I’ve seen you unhappy.’ Jayson heard the slow inhale as Toni took a final drag on her cigarette before snuffing it out somewhere in the darkness on the other side of him. ‘I mean really unhappy.’ She paused before exhaling. ‘And I’ve realized that I’m not happy when you’re not happy.’

Jayson sighed.

‘You haven’t been writing nothing,’ Toni continued. ‘Or acting, or filming…fuck, you aren’t even singing television theme songs around the house anymore.’ It was Toni’s turn to sigh. ‘It’s hard to believe that you’re this upset just because some kids didn’t like your movie.’

‘It was a pilot episode,’ Jayson corrected. ‘And they didn’t just “not like it,” they think I’m perverted.’

‘I got news for you, Butter Bean,’ Toni replied. ‘You are perverted. I’m perverted. Willie’s perverted. Franck, Gavin, even Tara is perverted. All “perverted” means is that you aren’t like other people.’