Hello Summer, Nice To Meet You

The night before my advanced accounting exam, I pace back and forth in the study lounge. I am unprepared. As I read about double entry book-keeping, I think about how much more I would prefer some double entry ass-fucking. Tears well up in my eyes and I feel like I am going to throw up. I have hit the bottom. My former roommate who I used to hook up with before we ended things on bad terms walks by outside and sees me through the window. He knocks on the glass and waves. It is 5:00 am and this is a new, unfamiliar low.

At 7:00 am, the anxiety gives way to feelings of calm resignation. I pack my things up and walk upstairs to my room where I plan to crawl under the sheets and suffocate myself on a tube sock. Failure in advanced accounting is inevitable. And then we die. And then we are reborn as impala on the African plains. It is the circle of life.

At 8:00 am, the exam begins and I don't know how to answer the first question. Instead, I daydream about the season finale of Desperate Housewives. I can't believe Paul Young is back. Angie was so smart to put the bomb IN THE DETONATOR.

At 10:00 am, I text my bf, "Yay over."

For the next four days I complain very publicly about how badly I did and how I'm going to get my first B and that my life is over. But grades came out yesterday and I got on A. Yay.

When I come home from school, I want to tell my mother the good news. It feels strange that I want to do this because she has always criticized everything I've ever done and for years I've tried to convince myself that I don't need her approval. I realize I do this because deep down I still want to make her proud and redeem myself for my consummate failure: being a gay son.

Before I can get a word out she looks at me and says, "You look too fat." This would have been fine if she hadn't said "too." Because "too" implies that I am fat in both absolute and relative terms. I lie to her about having eaten lunch already. Today I've had one cup of diet coke and two cough drops. She knows nothing about the A.

I am going to the beach tomorrow with my bf. I don't know what he's said to his parents about the trip but I am lying and telling my parents that I am going with four guys. Four guys in one hotel room with one king size bed doesn't arouse as much suspicion as two guys in the same situation. He will probably make me watch the Lost finale. Maybe after that we can sell beer to teenagers and have gay sex in the sand. We are a couple of renegade summer tourists.

I am probably too fat for the beach. I have a crippling fear of little children mistaking me for a beached whale and trying to haul me off to sea. I am probably going to sit, fully-clothed, under an umbrella and read Laura Bush's autobiography.