Small Town Bed & Breakfast

There it was, in all of it’s red brick glory. The park untouched, not even any general maintenance like lawn mowing or changed light bulbs. He couldn’t believe that the building was for sale and that nobody cared to keep it up over the years. Rusty cages around the library windows, a cement staircase in the back vandalized with hardly legible letters and obscure images of a bubble looking man in a striped shirt and a snaky woman in a red dress with a slight resemblance to Olive Oyl.

He remembered Olive Oyl, and Popeye too. A most beloved cast of characters him and his buddies would read under the slide after school, or on the basketball court ledge at recess as the older kids played a hard and sweaty game without really keeping score.

He couldn’t believe how rotten the building had become. After so many years, his entire elementary school career spent here, and now the neighborhood- his old neighbors- were allowing it to wither away into a hot pile of nothing. 

He looked at the For Sale sign flapping in the wind on the front lawn beside the tree he planted with his fifth grade class that grew maybe an inch taller than the size he remembered. He was saddened by the thought that this tree planting tradition was lost the year after he moved to big kid school and his old principal, Mrs. Gabby- who was truly gabby- was fired for bullying. Or did she retire because she was a century old? He couldn’t remember the story but the story he made up of her being a bully seemed to fit his memory and it was the story he told his therapist so he was sticking to it. 

It had been at least a decade since he visited the place, mostly because when he ran away from his small town life and became a big city junky he forgot that he cared. Getting teary as he pulled into the ‘Bus Only’ lane was not something he thought would happen to him.

He sat in the car for near an hour, unsure of what touching the school’s soil would evoke in him. The last time he visited he was ten. What could he feel when he was ten? Warmth, acceptance, excitement. He remembered feeling nothing, in a way, because nothing mattered and there wasn’t yet a filter set for the right way to feel or how everyone expected him to feel. If he cried there was no judgement, if he laughed others laughed with him. If he was angry someone much older than him, in a soft voice now only recognizable when talking to dogs, would calm him down and arrange an apology. If he scraped his knee he could feel hurt and be looked after immediately and be the talk of the playground for the whole day afterwards.

He thought of his mother and how she smiled every time the school came up in conversation, clearly having memories of her own. 

He pondered the For Sale sign and was offended that nobody had told him about it sooner. The school he grew up in that was down the street from the house he grew up in (that had also gone for sale without his being asked, forcing him to move from this small town life he cherished) was on the market, the least they could have done was send him an email about it. 

I had 30 grand saved. Enough for a deposit.

He thought to himself, led by his emotions. 

I could have bought it just to buy it. Made sure it didn't get torn down or sold to some white bitch who’d turn it into a salon or an unwanted bed & breakfast.

The thought of a yuppy bed & breakfast showing up in that building aggravated him. It’s my school, not a place for some low life tourists to crash for a weekend and not appreciate the legacy it held all because some blondey advertised city style mimosas and unneeded facials.

His first crush. Since Kindergarten they wrote plays together and performed them in the small basement theater that doubled as the gymnasium. In Jr. High they lost touch and in secondary they didn’t speak- maybe a head nod once and a while was shared- but after college he would see her again at a mutual friends wedding. The wedding of another girl that he was sure he was going to marry but he didn’t because she moved away and he became a homosexual and now he was at her wedding to some other guy.

He will never forget that moment, either. His first crush at his last crush’s wedding as the maid of honor and she looked as soft and cool as ever and her speech at the reception was a brilliant opus that made the entire room of wedding guests laugh, cry, and hope. She was still a writer, better than he remembered.  And what was he but a sappy, bitter dreamer.

He peered into the window of his third grade classroom. Mrs. Parker. She was mean; relentless, but she was his favorite teacher and his first introduction to becoming a math teacher. He didn’t become a math teacher, finally, but Mrs. Parker made him experience dreaming and having drive for the first time. He almost pursued it further after Mrs. George in the ninth grade but now it sits as only a memory of the only time in his life he was actually passionate about a career path. Grade three is a serious turning point in one’s life and he turned it down.

But look at the playground, the soccer field grown over with weeds.  This is the first place he was ever bullied and it makes him smirk, now, after years of crying himself to sleep and then spending even more years in therapy unpacking it all. He was too small, too fragile, probably a fag, or so his brother would call him. His brother: the only person to bully him until almost twenty years later (after that it was only the gay community that bullied him- but only his therapist would know about that).

The soccer field was outlined by a dusty track that was, as everywhere else in the yard seemed to be, littered with tall weeds and fallen twigs and tree leaves. That was the field that gained him any sort of popularity. Although it was still considered a girl’s sport (not as girly as gymnastics, another of the sports he always excelled at, and only gay in real life, not when it was in the Olympics on T.V.) he proved himself boyhood royalty when he could outrun any of the older boys.

He ran a lap for old times sake which left him severely out of breath and aware of every ache and pain in his joints. He stumbled back to where the basketball court stood, where just beside it was a couple of painted 4-Square games and a hopscotch pad. Now even these games seemed to require too much energy. Hopscotch, a reminder that he has some scotch in his rental that he was saving for the night’s festivities but he needs it now because he is in his feelings and he is about to cry. The cement below him was cracked in too many places, matching to sad perfection the overgrown soccer field and rusting library windows. 

He returned from the car, brown liquid in hand and took large swigs directly from the bottle. Standing in one spot, living off the high of nostalgia and, slowly, drunkenness. Hopscotch under his feet, scotch swishing around his mind, he giggled. Double dutch, now. Double dutch as he gets drunk and cries at an old school that nobody else cares about.

Maybe it was my play writing and double dutch that made me a fag.

But he knew it was his attraction to his one black friend, Phil, and his secret curiosity of every other boy’s penis. Did every boy’s penis look the same? He just wanted to see every boy’s penis, and then every man’s penis and then he realized that he only ever thought about penises and never about the parts females hid under their dresses, but what was it like to wear a dress and why didn’t boys wear them? His tears stopped themselves, now. He was getting off topic. He laughed out loud because his first crush couldn’t have been Sara the writer, it must have been his best friend Phil, and his brother calling him a fag wasn’t bullying it was just stating facts that he didn’t know were true yet.

He stumbled back to his car, trying to leave but unable to pull away just yet. He was more intoxicated than he anticipated but the truer reason he didn’t want to leave was that he discovered his attachment to the school was deeper than he imagined it would be. This was supposed to be a fun trip down memory lane but he ended up crying the whole time and getting drunk because of a hopscotch game that was fading away. Fading away like an ex-girlfriend (boyfriend) or like his life, a life of underachievement and settling for all things mediocre.

 He doesn’t even like hopscotch, or scotch for that matter.

Finally he put the car in reverse and turned to leave but was stopped at the end of the driveway by a post seen in his peripherals. The post served no purpose but it was painted yellow and it had a dozen red, blue, and green hand prints slapped all over it. With each hand print a scribbled name. Phil, Sara, his friend Levi and his neighbors Chad and Lindsey. Tyler, Miranda, Kaleigh. Another Sara that owned a pony. And then he saw his name in bright red under a half-assed hand print. David. He hasn’t gone by that name in over a decade and it made him cringe to see it. 

He pulled out of the driveway, tears pouring heavily, now. Unable to drive away he turned a street and pulled, once again, into what was the bus loading driveway, taking in every inch of the building’s rotting exterior. 

I have to go inside.

He left the car in idle and walked to the back door, pulled on it as if it would open but, obviously, it was locked. He walked assertively to the front door and tried it, surprised that it was locked too. It should have been easier to break into an abandoned school that nobody cared about. 

A selfie on the front step, moments after he cried his eyes out that he couldn’t go inside and explore. After flipping through the photos he took he slammed himself back in the car, parked it properly in the front parking lot and opened his web browser, not caring about using what little data he had left. The real estate agency’s website was tacky, but he found the school’s listing and began to weep uncontrollably. He cared too much.

I care too much. Who cares? I don’t go here anymore. I haven’t gone to this school in years and I don’t hardly remember half of my time here.

But the truth was that he remembered everything and he was the last of the students to go there before that fancy new school was built in the city and this one was shut down. An entire childhood, rusty and disintegrating.

It didn’t take long before he made the connection that he was attached to the school because he had a lot in common with it, and that made him get teary eyed and sad, once again. Like the school, his life had started to disintegrate and like the school nobody cared to care for it. His life was going to shit and nobody around him had memories they wanted to rummage through about him. As he thought of other sad comparisons between himself and the rotting school, he grabbed the waistband of his pants, pulled it away from his body and looked at his scraggly red pubes.

Goddamn it, even my own bush is unkempt and overgrown.

He was more like the school than he thought and as he continued to feel bad for himself and shed a tear or two (twelve), he let out a big sigh of half acceptance and half self-pity. But it was time to get to work and that forced him to pull himself together and courageously rise from his car, once again, and march to the trunk where he pulled a lawn mower, two cans of paint, a paintbrush, and a hose. 

I will not let this building sink. Don’t worry, l’ecole, I am here to keep you alive.

He smiled proudly at his memory of the first french word he had ever learned. Mrs. Stuart, second grade, right after the morning prayer and the off key singing of the national anthem.

Two hours later he finished trimming the soccer field and the lawn in front of the entrance stairs, leaving only a patch along the side of the building that he wasn’t ready to cut yet because he was now growing attached to the memory of being so upset at the state of the place, he almost didn’t want to forget how terrible and neglected the place looked when he first arrived. So he left the side of the building untouched, but watered the drying plants in all the planters and cut the weeds peeking through the cement of the front walkway.

Then he grabbed the paint and his trusty paintbrush and started retouching all the areas where the paint was chipping. He finished the patchy window frames and doors, walked to the end of the driveway and stood in front of the post that had his name and hand painted finger prints on it and contemplated painting it over. Staring at his own childhood name on the chipping wood post, more tears (it seemed his body couldn’t get enough of feeling wetness along its cheeks). He left it as it was. He wasn’t ready to paint over himself yet so he returned the paint to his car trunk. 

He opened the back side door and reached to pull out a large wooden sign that he built and designed himself. He carried its heavy mass to the end of the driveway and propped it open, next to the post with his childhood hand prints and signature. He clapped his hands together in completion and pride just as two cars pulled into the driveway behind him. The second car had his window rolled and a sharp voice was heard hollering as its car horn honked.

“How’s it going gay brother?”

The two new cars parked and his older brothers stood from them and walked towards him, his bully brother smiling and his other brother nonchalant and staunch. One gave him an arrogant punch in the arm upon greeting, the other a friendly hello and a head nod like they were civil strangers.

The three of them stood in front of the sign, admired the freshly mowed lawn that nobody expected a gay person to do, and let out a simultaneous sigh. It was a nice sigh that made him aware that he wasn’t the only person with memories of this place.

“Can’t believe you mowed the lawn yourself.”

“I did that painting, too, and watered the garden. You have the keys?” His brother pulled a set of keys from his pocket and handed them to him, barely looking at him.

“You build the sign too?”

“Yeah.”

“Dad could have helped you, you know.”

“Dad’s got arthritis.”

“And dyslexia.” He and his bully brother laughed together. They had bonded more over the years and it was now the eldest that was the odd one out; the brother neither of them related to.

“Still can’t believe you bought the place. You sure about the sign? You sure about the name of it? Tag line seems a bit like nobody will want to come.”

“Well, I can tell you one thing for sure,” he said with pleasure, “it is much better than that sign.” He pointed at the For Sale sign, walked over to it and removed it from its post. He let out another big exhale, looked at his brothers, and smiled as he read the sign aloud.

A SMALL TOWN BED & BREAKFAST

A legacy you’ll never understand

It was the best thirty grand he had ever spent. Nobody could buy his school and make it a stupid Bed & Breakfast. Nobody could mow over his memories or paint over his name on the post. Nobody.

“Hey bro, you missed a patch on the side of the building.”

“Yeah.” Another deep sigh and a grin.

He wasn’t married to a writer. He wasn’t a pro gymnast or a track star. He wasn’t a math teacher like he’d once dreamed. He wasn’t anything, now, but an owner of a small town bed and breakfast that carried a legacy nobody would ever understand. 

And then his bully brother looked at him crying and his oldest brother looked at him, too.

“Hey, Brother, did you bring the scotch?”