STINKING BADGES

I didn’t notice them, all the way through the funeral, and half way through the wake. The name badges stuck on dark jackets, on synthetic blouses, and the occasional plaid. These were not the “Hi, my name is…” ones, but full-bore, preprinted, conference-looking nametags.

I was still in the tunnel, as if a week of grief since mama died had destroyed my peripheral vision. It had all been so physical; from the very first moment I heard she was dead, pushing the button on the message machine with the insistently blinking light. The voice of my brother Vince, subdued, with the news: she died in her sleep.

It was a story that would be repeated, they saw her that morning, she was having a bad day, didn’t want to go to Mimi’s for dinner, went over to pick her up the next morning for a trip to the doctor’s, there she was, in the bed. Jesus, I didn’t want to hear any more, no more words for the echo and din that governed my fitful sleep and days of pain. I had been driven to words, producing 2011 of them.

When my time came, I read those words from a lectern at the front of the quaint white chapel. I stood among some modest sprays of mums and glads. It was eulogy as therapy, certainly for me and perhaps for somebody else in the crowd of mostly strangers. Strangers all but my three lovely friends, Rich, Jeff, Kea: Gay, gay, fag-hag. My people, they showed up to hold my hand inside the cloud, and cried as I read my piece, at once pretentious and heart-rending. A confession and a tribute.

I was proud of myself for staying in my seat as my brother took his turn. He was a mail order kind of preacher at night. By day, he engineered weapons of death. He talked little about mama, more about Jesus. I felt his eyes bore down upon me, upon us, his words painting pictures of hellfire on a lake. I couldn’t tell if it was anger or pity I felt.

It was in the bonus room, stuck onto the side of Vince’s sprawling tract house, where I noticed the badges. Kea and Rich had just stepped outside so that Jeff could have a cigarette. I was munching on something from a casserole, when a pair of them walked up to my cloud. He murmured something about my talk at the chapel, his head nodding ‘yes,’ rhythmic up and down. He was tall and fat, a mat of brown fur escaping his plain white shirt. It was on the downbeat that I spotted the name badge.

My eyes focused on the printed words: “Family Counsel Healing Ministry” and underneath it, hairy chest’s name: “Ben Smithson.” I turned to the woman, her mousy blond head bobbing too. She wore a humorless smile, like a garment that was ready for Goodwill. Lydia Smithson, read the badge.

“Thank you Ben, thank you, Lydia,” I said. “You made it easy for me to know your names.” We all laughed, like coughs, short and painful.

“Why are you wearing these badges?” I asked, biting into a carrot stick.

“We all wanted to be here for Vince during his time of loss,” the woman said. “And of course, for you, I didn’t know Libby had two sons.”

“Yes, I’m up in L.A….But, about the badges”

Ben leaned over, speaking in a stage whisper. “Praise Jesus, it’s a day of healing, a seminar at our church. It’s all about healing sexual pain.”

“We need to make sure our kids don’t walk down that homosexual path,” added Lydia. “It’s so beautiful and comforting.”

I borrowed her used smile and put it on. I placed the plate onto the end table and pivoted away from the couple in a single movement, through the room to the black tar driveway where my friends stood by themselves, smoke spiraling towards the brown hills.

“We gotta go,” I said. “Get me out of here. Now.”