He said all this, by the way, forgetting that yours truly is back for his second summer in a row. Because Kieth forgets everything.
I accidentally bite my tongue and take the hot frustration as a cue to continue reviewing my list.
Thing number two: Kieth isn’t always sensitive about my feelings. He’s got that actor thing where his eyebrows are permanently lifted, judging every last everything that passes by. It can be intoxicatingly fun to hang with Kieth—nobody is funnier, nobody is faster. But as my mom always says, “There’s a fine line between charming and manipulative.”
Oh, my mom: a nurse, a real bleeding heart. Like, she had a COEXIST bumper sticker on her car before it was trendy, et cetera. The only nicer person is my dad, who my friends have anointed “the strangely buff vegetarian.” My parents are so nice that when I brought Kieth home for dinner a couple weeks ago my dad tried three different neutral topics—the weather, the wonky mass transportation system in Pittsburgh, and “What about your folks, Kieth? What do they do?”—before giving up, since Kieth likes to be in total control of conversation topics. (Kieth wanted to talk about religion, since he’s proud to have recently left the Catholic church. My mom got up three times during dinner—to get the salt, to get the pepper, and then to get a different kind of salt.)
Thing number three: Kieth won’t say the word “love.”
But I will. My grandparents were all hippies. Love is my family’s currency. We spend love like it’s money, like we’re the richest people in the world.
Thing number four: He never asks about my job! Maybe he thinks my job isn’t interesting, but I think it is. Now look, I am paid to sell T-shirts and squeeze bottles—and I’ve personally outsold every other booth in the park, thank you, for five weeks running—but I’ve decided my bosses are really funding my future as a social scientist. A people researcher. A Pittsburgh primatologist.
See, for an amateur studier of strangers, Wish-a-World offers four distinct categories of patrons: (1) older couples who are over each other; (2) high school couples who are all over each other; (3) large groups wearing matching neon-colored shirts, making their way through the park with an air of accomplishment that Columbus probably reserved for discovering America; and (4) punks.
A classic number four is approaching my booth now, which gets me tense. Kieth is almost back on, and I love the way he, like, bops around in his spacesuit costume for the “Future and Beyond” medley. I don’t want to miss it. I never miss it, even though I have to kind of crane my neck to even halfway see the platform stage.
“Hey there, Matthew,” this kid says. Total punk. He’s reading my name tag, saying “Matthew” to make his friends laugh. (Please make a note that any employee you come across who’s got a name tag on—at a grocery store, at an amusement park—hates it when you actually formally address them by their name. Free tip.) “How much are the firecrackers?”
I pretend to scratch my shoulder. “We don’t sell firecrackers. Want a T-shirt?” As if this guy could afford a twenty-dollar T-shirt.
One quick check of the amphitheater stage—at Kieth, doing this incredible jump-split move I could no more describe than actually pull off myself—and every one of my bookmark bulletin points is rendered obsolete.
I mean, the way his little face lights up when he does that move … My boyfriend is cute, and that means something about me, right? That I can attract such a certifiably cute boyfriend—even with my unpredictable skin and strangely large feet, even if I put off summer reading until the last week of summer—must mean something good about me.
“Really, Matthew?” the number four at my counter says. “’cause I could’ve sworn I saw some firecrackers back there.”
I am in what you might call a Kieth haze, so when this punk kid’s punk friend lurches forward and shouts “Boom!” in my face, I shriek. (Shrieking is one of my specialties, right after: developing rashes for no medical reason.)
The firecracker gang saunters away, high-fiving each other as they disappear into a thicket of ropes left over from the entrance of an ancient, dangerous pirate ride.
“Punks,” I say, like I’m ninety. I wish I had a cane to wave at them.
At least there’s still time to catch my favorite/least favorite part of the show. At the end of Kieth’s spacesuit solo, he jumps down into the crowd, pulls a stranger with him up on stage, and asks them their name. And he makes this big-ass deal out of it. Nine times out of ten, the stranger is semi-mortified and yet also semitickled, standing exposed on a stage in the sun, being forced to boogie around with Kieth.
Sometimes, I don’t know, I think he picks out the most awkward-looking person, just to make himself look better.
Even so, you gotta admit. Today he looks especially amazing.
* * *
You want one good reason? One thing about Kieth that keeps me coming back for more, in spite of the fact that he never asks about my job and seems physically incapable of saying the word love?
Because he laughs at my categorically terrible jokes is why.
Oh, another thing: because there was a night back in June when it was weirdly chilly out, and he gave me his jean jacket to wear in the parking lot, and the collar smelled like his Aveda hair pomade stuff, so I took it home and haven’t given it back yet. (Up until that night, I had always hated jean jackets on guys.)
And also: because the third time we kissed in my car, I forgot I had my retainer in and he didn’t pull away and say, “Eww.” He pulled away and said, “That’s hilarious.” And when I said, “No, that’s so friggin me,” he cut me off and said, “I still think you’re a really good kisser.”
Kieth himself had just gotten out of a relationship, at the beginning of the summer, and planned on staying “purposefully single” for his entire time at the park. But on day one he reportedly walked by me in my booth, on his way into rehearsal, and said to this girl in his cast, “However, if that boy is gay, I’m in trouble.”
Nobody had ever considered me “trouble” before. Who am I kidding? Nobody had ever considered me “that boy,” either.
But the number one reason why I dated Kieth this summer is: He doesn’t let me talk down about myself. Ever.
Even with my supposed friends at school, I am their easiest target—the donkey in a game where nobody has blindfolds and everyone has tails, except for me. But when I’m with Kieth, and I slip into my old “Ugh, I look so weird in this photo” act, or my “Yeah, my sense of direction is the worst” shenanigans, he always stops me and asks, “Why don’t you give yourself credit for all the things you’re amazing at, Matty?”
He’s never quite told me what all those things are, but it’s nice to know he’s keeping his own list. You know?
“Let’s give a bi-i-ig round of applause to our ‘Music: Through the Ages!’ singers and dancers!”
Oh, man. The show is over and the crowds are exiting. That means lunch. That means this cast party nonsense.
I slide A Tale of Two Cities into my cubby behind the booth, and I stare at Kieth’s stage door across the squiggly-with-humidity courtyard, and I say a little prayer. But the thing is, I suck at praying.
My parents raised me to be Buddhist.
* * *
So, it’s the best of parties, it’s the worst of parties.
It has my favorite flavor of diet pop and a respectable assortment of cookies, true. But it also has all-new people who I’m expected to chat with.
Aha, you might say. You’re a T-shirt salesman. You make small talk all day. Not so, I’d counter. I attempt to make sales, a purpose that I can hide behind. Here, I feel as if I have to sell myself. (I still don’t know the product well enough to really sell it.)