Like a Real Man (Standalone)
Title: Like a Real Man (Standalone)
Author: Gess aka live_by_lyrics
Pairing: Alex Gaskarth/Jack Barakat
P.O.V.: first person (Alex)
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: References to gender norms and homophobia.
Summary: A father helps his son move out.
Disclaimer: This story and its author are in no way affiliated or representative of the band All Time Low or their family.
Author’s Notes: This is something I’ve wanted to write ever since I heard YM@6’s When Were Younger.
When I was younger, I used to care
About everything that my father said.
When I was younger, you even told me
To show evil, the utmost respect.
-When We Were Younger, You Me At Six
I’m sitting on the floor of my childhood bedroom when you enter. You knock lightly even though you’re already leaning against the door frame. It’s not like you should even have to knock in your own house anyways. The one you worked so hard and honestly to buy.
I look up at you from my pile of cardboard boxes. You taught me to always look at someone in the eyes when speaking to them. I tell you it’s time. You nod and rub at your chin. You didn’t bother shaving this morning, so I can see a five o’clock shadow fast approaching at half past three. Jack is coming at four.
I hand you one of the lighter boxes that hold bedding and clothes. You take it easily, because for an old man you’re not at all frail. I know that. Real men aren’t weak.
“Come on Alex, one more time son!” you cajoled after I had tossed my baseball bat to the side.
“No!” I cried, kicking at the dirt. We’d been at it for over two hours and I had probably only hit the ball four times. I had terrible hand-eye coordination until I started playing guitar. It didn’t help that I hated baseball. I was tired, thirsty, frustrated and only six years old.
“Alexander,” you chastised, waving your mitt at me. “Pick up the bat. The only way you’ll ever make the team is if you practise.”
“I don’t want to be on the team,” I huffed, but this was a worn out argument.
“How do you know, if you haven’t even tried?”you pushed.
“I want to do music lessons like Annie! How come she gets to play an instrument and I have to play sports?”
Your eyes bulged so far out of your face I thought maybe they’d pop. “Your sister gets to do piano because she’s a girl. You’re a boy Alex, and boys play sports.”
I picked up my bat as your face went red with frustration. At the time I still feared you enough to know when to stop questioning you. I held the metal stick in between my legs and jostled it lightly. I’d only come to terms with what made boys and girls different last year and sometimes I still didn’t get it.
“Stop fooling around son,” you insisted after watching me for a moment. Your voice was low now, threatening me with no television or dessert. I had let you think those things were important to me because I couldn’t bear the thought of not getting a bedtime story from mum again.
“Okay Daddy,” I relented, biting down on my lower lip to hold back the howls of a tantrum. Only babies and girls cry.
“Now lift the bat, over your shoulder, hands further up the side....yes, that’s it.”
I take another box, full of old toys that I plan to give to Goodwill. I got rid of my baseball bat when I was ten. It had a big dent in it from where I smashed it against the side of the house.
You trump down the stairs, subconsciously avoiding the step that creaks. I step on it deliberately, knowing this will be the last time I hear the familiar wooden whine. I follow you through the hall, my eyes tracing framed family photos. There’s Papa in his soldier’s uniform and Nana in her nurse’s outfit. There are you and mum dressed to the nines on your wedding day. There’s Annie in a frilly pink dress with ribbons in her hair. Then there’s me. I’m sitting on your lap, wearing a backwards baseball cap and a Mickey Mouse t-shirt.
I loved that shirt. Almost as much as I loved the stuffed doll that I got that same day when you took us to Disney World. I slept with my Mickey every night, even after Annie tried giving him a haircut and chopped off a part of his left ear. But after a while I had to start hiding him. The other boys would never let up if they found out I had a doll.
“Alex, this is Rian. Rian, meet my son Alex.”
“Hi,” I waved shyly, wavering by your legs. I was ten at that point, but small for my age and only reached your bottom rib. This wasn’t the first time you brought home your friend Andrew from work. But this was the first time Drew had kept his promise and brought his son with him.
“Hi Alex,” Rian had chirped playfully. He puffed out his chest and offered me his hand. He wanted to look all big and important. But he was only two years older than me, so I took his hand and shook it hard like you told me to do.
“Hi,” I replied, feeling my face flush for no good reason. Rian’s hand was really warm and it made me hot.
“Why don’t you two go upstairs and play some video games until dinner is ready yeah?” you prompted, pushing me forward. “Me and Drew are going to watch the game.”
Rian didn’t wait for further instruction and ran up the stairs. I followed him gingerly, waving my hand in the direction of my room when we reached the landing. He busted in without a thought, and his eyes lit up when he caught sight of my television and Nintendo ’64.
“You have your own TV?” he fawned, looking at me in awe.
“My dad bought me it for Christmas,” I shrugged, accustomed to others’ envy but not Rian’s big brown eyes. You always got me things. Even the things I didn’t want.
“Let’s play!” he enthused, grabbing my shoulder and tossing a controller in my sweaty hands. We settled on the floor, cross-legged and knees touching. I couldn’t concentrate and lost almost every game.
The games Rian lost would cause him to pucker his pink lips in a pout. The ones he won caused him to lift his bulky arms in the air, shaking dark curly hair this way and that. His hair looked soft and so after my fifth loss in a row I tugged on it, hard.
“Ouch!” he muttered, scowling for a moment before remembering his manners. “Stop it Alex. Don’t be a sore loser.”
“M’not,” I mumbled. His hair was soft, softer than mum’s.
“Good,” he cheered, clapping a warm hand on my shoulder. “Maybe I’ll go easy on you next game.”
“No,” I bristled and it wasn’t just because of his hand. “Don’t,” I whispered, “My dad says to never go easy unless it’s a girl.”
Rian nodded; his face was sympathetic. I found out later that Drew wasn’t any easier on him than you were with me. Rian’s bulk meant that his was a good hitter but terrible when it came to running the bases. “Alright,” he gave in, “Next loser gets a wedgie then.”
I’ll never forget your face when you walked in on us. Rian had his warm hands in my pants and I couldn’t help my squirming and giggling. Your eyes began to pop out again until Rian yanked my underwear hard and I yelped in pain. You didn’t yell, or go to stop him. Your face went blank, pale and taunt.
When Rian finished, he noticed you were there. You brushed off his stammering apology and told him to wash up. When it was just the two of us you continued to stare, until your pallid face made me more uncomfortable than the burn between my butt cheeks. I eventually found my tongue and explained the wager.
You nodded, and let out an exhalation you must’ve been holding in for a long time. “Practise more,” you instructed, your tone eerily calm, “And next time you won’t lose.”
Mum opens the front door as we pass through and you settle the box down at the edge of the drive way. She stands out on the porch, not saying a word. But I can tell how she feels about all this by the way she’s wringing her hands. Her nails are bitten down to a blunt tip that even her biweekly manicure won’t hide. A part of me wants to hold them, her rough wash-worn hands, and tell her it’s going to be fine.
After all, that’s what she used to do for me. No matter how badly I had lost the game. No matter how badly I had failed that science test. No matter how much racket I made with ‘that damned guitar;’ she was always there. She never did say much. You yelled enough for two people after all. She’d just sneak into my room after I’d shut off the lights and run her fingers through my too long hair.
But eventually you convinced her that she was making it worse. After Annie moved out for college, mum started babying me. You said she was encouraging me to be a sissy boy. Maybe I should have been making my own bed in the morning, and my lunch to boot. But was it really wrong that I wanted someone to comfort me sometimes? I didn’t mind picking up groceries or folding laundry once in a while if meant I could just talk to somebody who wasn’t criticizing my every move.
There were teachers and other kids who did more than enough of that. Can you really blame me for taking a year off school? I’m sick of being assessed. A, B, C, D but at least never an F. Band geek, emo, loser, faggot but at least never whore. I graduated high school and even tried out a year of intro to psychology in college. But I’m sick of filling out bubbles with number two pencils. This town isn’t giving me the answers I need.
It’ll be easier this way. I’ll stop being such a ‘nuisance’ and ‘embarrassment.’ I’ve packed up my too tight jeans and punk ass t-shirts. I took down my dirty posters, cleaned up all my tattered notebooks, and stored away my girly hair products. You won’t have to open a window when I spray my hairspray and fruity cologne. You won’t have to look away as I enter a room.
The second set of boxes is heavier. I have to bend at the knees to lift, and I can feel that my shirt is riding up. You can probably see my rainbow-coloured tattoo but you don’t bother saying anything. You just walk around me and help me lift. I grunt with the exertion, and your face reddens. You’d rather pass out than admit it’s heavy. You’d rather die than admit to yourself what’s happening.
“It’s so nice of you to join us for dinner Jack. We’ve heard a lot about you.”
“It’s nice to be here Mrs. Gaskarth,” he replied, being perfectly polite. I could feel his leg jittery under the table though, and placed my hand on his knee to calm him down.
“You in psych with my boy then?” you asked, eyeing the blonde streak in his black spiky hair.
“I’m actually only getting a minor in it,” Jack admitted, a flush on his cheeks.
“Oh?”
“I’m actually majoring in music instruction. I, I want to be a teacher.”
“That’s such a noble profession,” mum gushed, and I wondered if maybe she’d taken some of your gin and poured it in her lemonade again. “I always told myself that had I gone to school, I’d want to be a kindergarten teacher. But I was pregnant with Alex’s sister Annie right after high school and-”
“Hush Judy,” you seethed, hating how chatty and excitable she gets when we have company. Maybe if she had more friends she wouldn’t be so desperate. “I was under the impression that teaching was more of...a woman’s profession.”
It was my fault. I warned him, about how pig-headed you are, but not well enough. He sat there, gaping like a fish out of water before turning to me for help.
“Dad, that’s so old-school. There are such things as male nurses and female cops you know.”
You snorted in contempt, tossing your knife onto your plate with a loud clang. “The only good female cop is the kind that can take her clothes off.”
Jack choked, on the broccoli that he was eating even though I know he hates the stuff. He started coughing, turning red in a way that reminded me of you. Freud says some males look for wives that remind them of their mother. I’m not sure if it works that way if you’re gay, because Jack is nothing like you.
“Don’t you think that’s a bit derogatory, Mr. Gaskarth?”
“Maybe it is, but I was also under the impression that men couldn’t be feminists.”
My grip on his knee couldn’t stop him from getting up out of his seat. “Believing in equality has nothing to do with being male or female, sir. It has to do with respect, so don’t expect me to sit here and be insulted.”
You huffed, in your haughty sort of way that you think looks dignified but really just makes you look like an asshole. “Now, now, no need to get all hysterical son, you need to able to take a hit to your masculinity every once and a while. Builds character.”
At that Jack only smirked devilishly, that smirk that still makes me melt a little. “Of course, I can only imagine what people must say about you and your truck after all.”
“Excuse me?”
My eyes widened, thinking back to my psychology class, the one where we were first met in. One of Freud’s ego defensive mechanisms is ‘compensation’, such as when men try to make up for their lack of sexual power with large material possessions.
“You know what they say, big truck, small-”
Your eyes were bulging. They quivered underneath your bushy brows that were scrunched up, showing off every single one of your wrinkles. “Just who the fuck do you think-?”
“He’s my boyfriend,” I blurted out, unable to stop myself even though we had both agreed we wouldn’t tell you until it became more serious. At that point it had gotten serious. Jack was standing up to you, something none of my other ‘friends’ had ever done. It was something I needed to do.
“Boy-what?!”
“Oh Alex don’t joke around like that,” mum pleaded, trying to protect me. She knew the truth. She knew ever since she walked in on Zack Merrick sucking my cock last year. “You know how your dad feels about...them.”
I appreciate what she was trying to do. She was trying to buy me some time. She was hoping I’d keep this to myself until I finished school and could support myself. But I was too frustrated at that point to think logically. My hands were clenched at my sides, thumbs curling around my fists just like you taught me.
“I’m not joking,” I said, my voice low and calm, threatening you like you always threatened me. “Jack is my boyfriend. I’m a boy and he’s a boy and we’re attracted to each other.”
“You’re going through a phase then, you’re confused, you need to-”
“Mum, stop. It’s not a phase. The way he makes me feel, it’s-”
“Shut your filthy mouth,” you demanded, getting up from your seat. You rounded the table, and for a second I thought you were finally going to hit me. Jack’s arm immediately wrapped around my waist and the action made you flinch. “And get out.”
I stared at you for a long time, tracing your receding hairline, sagging ears and the vein throbbing on the side of your neck. I think I was trying to remember you, memorize your face at that moment in case I ever had my doubts about what I did. I don’t. Eventually I breathed in heavily through my nose and spun on the spot. I grabbed Jack’s hand and headed for the door.
“Will, really, this isn’t necessary.”
“It is Judy, I knew he was too girly for his own good, but this is the last straw. I won’t have that, that pervert in my home.”
“That pervert is your son!”
“I don’t have a son.”
After a few more rounds all my boxes are planted outside. It’s almost four and Jack will be here any minute now. I’ll stay at the apartment he shares with three other guys until the semester is over and then we’re leaving. His car is nowhere as big as yours, but it’s enough to take us a new place; a bigger town where everybody is just one of those faceless people in a crowd. It won’t be like here, where the neighbours peek through their tatty curtains, watching as the neighbour boy gets kicked out of his house.
Everyone can watch if they want though. I don’t really care, since I have no intentions of ever seeing them again. I only wish that mum would go back inside. She’s such a messy crier. Her face is all splotchy and flushed. She keeps wiping her nose against the sleeve of her shirt even though we both know that’s unladylike. I move away from the boxes and turn to her.
“I won’t miss a thing, except you,” I tell her, pulling out a velvet box from my pocket. She recognizes the casing immediately. It’s the earrings I stole from her when I got my ears pierced in the eleventh grade. The second you saw them you threatened to cut off my ears if I didn’t take them off. I didn’t want to end up like my Mickey doll, the one you convinced her to throw out when I was at school, so I did.
I never gave them back to Mum though, even though they were Nana’s and probably really expensive. “Keep them,” she whispers, her tears falling freely and glistening more than any diamond ever would. “She’d want you to have them.”
“Give them to Annie,” I push, knowing that if my sister wasn’t due to give birth next week she’d be here, berating the whole lot of us for being so utterly stupid.
“Annie has enough earrings,” she denies, “Annie has enough clothes, shoes, bracelets, but you, Alex dear...”
She knows I don’t have that much money. I’m going to have to get a full time to job to pay any sort of rent. If I keep them, I might have to pawn them away.
“...We never gave you what you really needed Alex, and for that, I’m sorry.”
I hug her and she hugs back, running a shaking hand through my hair one last time. It’s down my shoulders now, but she stopped telling me to get a haircut long ago. She knows she can’t tell me what to do anymore, and she’s resigned herself to obeying other people’s orders. Sometimes I hated her for being so complacent, thinking she must be scared or brainwashed.
But when she pulls back from the kiss on my cheek, and looks at you; I see the truth for it really it is. She loves you. I don’t know why, but she does. She doesn’t always agree with you, sometimes resents you for what you’ve done, but she is loyal to you. She supports you and will look after you for as long as she can. I used to think she was selfish, for picking you over me, but she isn’t. It’s killing her that you’re making us all do this.
I turn around and see that Jack has pulled up. I wave to him as he gets out, but gesture for him to wait on the sidewalk. I know he’s not scared of you, but I’m scared for him. I’m just as selfish as mum.
You spit onto the drive way, not because you really need to spit, but it’s always been a way to gather everyone’s attention. I always thought it was kind of crude and gross. But that’s what a lot of people say about spitting on your fingers and sticking them up some guy’s ass. I wait for you to wipe your mouth, knowing that at least you aren’t trying to hide any tears.
“This is it then,” I announce, though it’s a fairly obvious observation.
“Yes,” you nod, glaring at Jack instead of looking at me.
“I want to thank you,” I begin, staring at the side of your cheek, willing you to look my way. I’ve been thinking of what I wanted to say this whole past week since you told me to get out and I’m not leaving until it gets said. “For doing what you thought was best to raise me.
Believe it or not, you were a good dad. You were responsible and attentive. You always made sure I had pocket money and always put time aside for me. You taught me how to value the food on my plate and the ideas in my books. You told me stories about your life as a kid even though you hated your childhood. You always encouraged me to work harder and practise more. You told not to fear anyone, but to always treat others the way I wanted to be treated.
When I started getting older, you knew things weren’t going to work out the way you wanted them to. You hated my choice in music, the way I talked and the friends I made in school. You hated how much time I spent playing my guitar, the fact I always wanted to do what Annie did and the way I eventually started looking at the boys in her magazines. You hated everything about me but never said a word. I could tell though, by the way you looked at me, and that made me hate myself.
All I ever did was want to make you proud. I thought it was my fault. That I was doing something wrong, and not trying hard enough to fix myself. I tried fighting the way I felt for a really long time. I didn’t tell anyone how helpless I felt because I wanted to be strong like you. You seemed fearless to me back then, a real fighter like Papa. But eventually I realized that for someone who was supposedly so strong and brave, you are incredibly weak. You never had the balls to look me in the face and confront me about what was obviously happening.
I was growing up and finding out that I was never going to be like you. I started reaching out and found out that who I am isn’t wrong. It’s different, and it’s scary, but it’s not a marker of good and evil. I’m sorry that you can’t accept that. That you can’t deal with this like a real man. But I’m not sorry for not playing this act anymore. I hated baseball and I pretended to like it to please you. Well now I hate you for what you believe in, and I’m not going to believe it too. Go ahead and think I’m a pervert, a disgrace to the Gaskarth family name. I could be evil incarnate, but that’s fine with me. You always said to show even evil the utmost respect.”
You look up only then, staring at me hard, but with eyes safely in their sockets. Instead they’re wide-eyed and disbelieving, as if you don’t know who I am. And the thing is; you don’t. You don’t recognize your son because you don’t have one.