#YES PEOPLE BORN BEFORE 1985 TURN 40 WELL DONE ON THAT ONE

[laulo821]

this morning i witnessed a post on here that made me clench my fist so hard... is that what y'all always feel like when you see a poor take???

[lolainblue]

Thunderbirds -- Chapter 40

T/W: Impllied abuse

   @msroxyblog @nikkitasevoli @maliciousalishious@meghan12151977@mustlove6277 @fyeahproudglambert @little-poptart @lady-grinning-soul-k @snewsome756

  As I held Roger and waited for him to calm down, a thousand memories flooded through my head in bits and pieces, like flashes from a movie.

  In the first one, it's 1985, I'm ten and back at Sugarbush Elementary. I'm hiding in the girls bathroom, the one by the art room in the basement; the one with no windows and the fluorescent light that is about to burn out that keeps buzzing and flickering. I've been crying and I'm hiding in the last stall, my feet drawn up on the toilet seat so no one can see by my shoes that I'm there. I've listened while Abby Norris has said more mean things about me in two minutes than I have ever even thought about anyone else altogether in my entire life, listened while she called me horrible things and her friends laughed and I wished I could become invisible, or die, or at least move back to Greenwood where I didn't have a lot of friends but at least no one called me names or pushed me down on the pea gravel by the swings and tore a hole in my favorite pair of jeans, the Zena ones that didn't come from the Sears catalog or have stupid rainbows or teddy bears on the pockets.  I wait until after the bell has rung before I finally get up enough courage to come out, and as soon as I am back in the hallway, there he is, one of the popular boys, the one who eats lunch at Abby's table and is always staring out the window, probably the cutest boy in the entire school. I'm ten but I already learned long ago that the prettier they are the meaner they are. I freeze as he takes in my swollen eyes and blotchy red face and I wait for him to say something ugly, or sneer and run away and tell everyone the new girl was crying in the downstairs bathroom but he just smiles and tosses his sandy bangs back out of his eyes. Hey you're that new girl from Greenwood, right? Your name is Jane isn't it? he is saying, blue eyes crinkling up as he grins at me, and I don't understand why he is being nice, everyone here has been so awful, but he reaches into the pocket of his neatly pressed khakis and pulls out a pack of Juicy Fruit gum and offers me a piece. I take it like a feral deer accepting corn from someone's hand, and as I unwrap it – I can still smell it, that distinctive tutti-frutti scent that still makes me smile eighteen years later – he is talking to me like we have been best friends from birth I'm Roger Harrington, I'm in Miss Kovacs's class too, No one new ever moves here, this town is so boring, bet you didn't want to come here and I have no idea how much my life has just changed but it's the most important thing that has ever happened to me and I want to live in that moment just for a bit but too soon the memory has slipped away, and I am back to rocking Roger in his bedroom in our oh-so modern NYC apartment but I might as well be back in that green institutional bathroom as helpless his tears have made me feel.

   “What happened, Roger?” I asked him once he stopped crying enough that I thought he could form words again. “Before your mom, I mean. We both know that's not where this started.”

   “It started with Daphne,” Roger admitted. “She wanted us to move in together, wanted a ring. I told her I wasn't ready, that I didn't even know what the hell I was doing with the rest of my life. She started in on wanting kids again, I told her I didn't. I reminded her that I had been clear about that from the beginning. She said she didn't think I was serious, didn't everyone say they didn't want kids when they were younger. But she knew, Jane, I told her how I grew up, that I didn't want that...”

   It's still 1985 in the background movie in my memory but it's a few weeks later, and Roger is coming over to my house after school for the first time. My mother greets us in her apron, offering fruit punch and bologna sandwiches cut into little triangles, and I am waiting for Roger to comment on in it all. My mother was 44 when I was born and she is an anachronism, proud to be June Cleaver in a world of career minded Maggie Seavers and Claire Huxtables. People ask if she is my grandmother sometimes and I know it bothers her, but it makes me furious because I adore her, she is the best mom I can possibly imagine, but Roger, of course, makes no such gaffe, he is charming as always. He sits politely with me at the kitchen table while we are supposed to be doing homework, making small talk with my mother while she offers him cookies Harrington? Are you related to Alderman John Harrington? she asks him and of course he tells her he is, yes, John Harrington's son, the Alderman, the Deacon over at the Sacred Day church, those Harringtons, and I see how his voice clips a bit and his eyes change even though he keeps right on smiling. I don't know anything about Aldermen, or that church, we're Presbyterians, but Roger and my mom exchange a look and I realize an entire conversation has been had that I probably wouldn't understand if they explained it to me. They get on famously, Roger Harrington and Marybeth Sewell, and Roger comes home with me after school from that day forward almost every day until we finally walk through the door in our caps and gowns, to a fancier punch and finger sandwiches that all of my family and none of Roger's shows up for.

   “It doesn't have to be like that, you know,” I said, taking his hands in mine. “It's okay to want whatever you want but it doesn't have to be like it was in your family. You would never be like that, Roger.”

   He shook his head, jaws tight, and I could see another tear escape and roll down his cheek. It made me so angry even all these years later, the things he went through, the things we were powerless to stop because of who his father was, the things I tried to so hard to protect him from. He always seemed so strong then, like he was made of Teflon, like none of it ever stuck. I never even understood that he needed me at all, I thought it could have been any friend who would have taken him in. I was so naive. It took me years and a lot of life experience to really understand how much damage was done, and the more I sat here and looked at him the more the memories kept flooding in.

   It's 1990 and we're in high school finally, underclassmen but we don't care, we're happy to have left middle school behind. The spring dance is coming up but Roger won't be going, he isn't allowed to go to school dances, he isn't allowed to dance at all or listen to popular music even though we dance in my family's den to New Kids On The Block and he has a secret collection of mixtapes in a box underneath my bed. I know I won't get asked. I'm skinny and awkward and I've gone back to being invisible, which isn't great but at least Abby Norris doesn't bother me much anymore. We are our own private club anyway, we plan the parties we will have when we are grown andoff to film school and living in LA, with all the fabulous connections we will make, and that's what we're doing now, gigging over imaginary menus and star-studded guests lists as we help my mother make meatloaf in the warm kitchen on Calavera Street. My father comes home from work early, he will retire in a few years from the accounting position at the supply company he loves so much, but for now, he is still working, shuffling through the door at the end of his day with a Where's my Janey? and I am still enough of a daddy's girl to throw myself into his arms and take his hat from him. He starts telling jokes, those terrible ubiquitous dad jokes, while he looks over our shoulders, Roger peeling potatoes while I chop them What do you get when you cross a snowman and a vampire? Frostbite! and when he chortles out the punchline he claps Roger on the back. Roger is already taller than my dad but still thin from the growth spurt, and though I expect him to collapse a bit under the force of the blow I am not prepared when he bleats like a frightened lamb, dropping the potato peeler and falling forward onto the counter, covering his head. Everything stops and I swear I can hear the big Westminster clock on the dining room wall ticking away the seconds before my father moves carefully, oh so carefully to Roger, placing his hand reassuringly on his shoulder as they make weighty eye contact. Roger's hand is shaking as he moves my father's aside and turns around, shoulders hunched forward, gripping the counter as he gives my father permission to do something he cannot do himself. They are both facing me, and I can see Roger's eyes, wet and gray, staring straight into my own, unwavering, and behind him my father's eyes as he lifts Roger's neat plaid shirt, eyes that go round as his face pales. He never says a word, just takes his jacket and hat off the hook by the door and walks out, not returning again until eleven o'clock that night, after my mother has made us Rice Krispie treats and let us watch TV while she did all the washing up and made up the trundle bed before sending us upstairs for the night. It's not the first time that this has happened, but it is the worst. I don't know what is said when he comes back, we can hear my parents speaking in hushed tones in the kitchen while Roger and I lie awake in my room, staring at the glow in the dark plastic stars on my ceiling. I know that my father has made many phone calls about Roger by this point in our lives, but it never changes anything. After this night, however, Roger is with us more than ever, and even though he only stays over a few nights a week at first my mother converts Mitch's old room into one for Roger, and he decorates it with all the things he isn't allowed to like at home.

   “It's okay, Jane. She wasn't the one for me, she was never going to be. But the things she said... I know she was angry. But she said I was exhausting. That all I did was take from the people around me.”

   “That's not true at all!” I protested. Roger was one the kindest and most generous people I had ever known. If Daphne had said that to him it had to have been done purposely just to upset him. “You know she was just saying that, right?”

   Roger shook his head. “I am too dependent on other people for my happiness, Jane. She's right.”

   “Fuck that heinous cow, she was not right. We're not meant to be islands, Roger. It's okay to need people.”

   “I'm too dependent on you. In eighteen years I don't think I've made a move without you, certainly not any important one. It doesn't matter what is going on, in the back of my mind it's always “Wait and see what Jane thinks” or “You should ask Jane first” before I can do anything. And I am not sure anymore if that's the best thing for us but the biggest part of me doesn't care. I don't want to do anything if it's not with you.”

   “I understand, Roger. I have these thoughts too sometimes, but I'm with you. I don't care. You're my person.”

   “How are we ever going to find someone else then? If I'm devoted to you and you're devoted to me, where does that leave room in our lives for anyone else?”

   “The right person will fit in, Roger. You're like a sibling I'm close to. No one would demand I ditch you if you were my brother. Shannon doesn't expect me to ditch you. Someone will come along for you that understands our bond too.”

   Roger got a look on his face like I had tried to feed him broccoli sauteed in earwax. “Fuck you and Shannon. That is not the relationship you think it is Jane.”

   “What the hell, Roger? Again? Could you maybe give it a chance?”

   Roger let out a loud growl before picking up one of his pillows and hurling it to the floor. “That's not what the fuck I mean! Shannon isn't the problem, Janey. You are!”

   “What are you talking about?” I demanded.

   “You planned it all out. You were the one that gave us direction, you were the one with the goals that knew how to get there. I just wanted out. So I held on to you as tight as I could and off we went. And we did it, Jane. You've been published, I've made my career. So now what? We didn't plan past this. We're just 28. We can't be done.”

   “We aren't done, Rog.”

   “Then what? Because all you've done since you got that book contract is the same thing you've done in your love life. You just ricochet around like a pinball, bouncing off whatever you bump into, whatever guy you bump into. You're with Shannon because you bumped into him again. You keep typing on the laptop but you don't know what you're writing anymore. You don't have a plan. I don't have a plan. I don't even know what I want. I never expected to get this far.”

   “It's not like that. I've been going full speed since I was a kid. I'm just catching my breath.”

   “And what happens to me when your next plan doesn't include me?”

   “I would never not include you.”

   “It's funny. I never worried about us when you were with Angus. I knew he would never be there for you like I was. But with Shannon, I don't know Jane. You're all over the place with him but you get so obsessed. He's the only guy that's ever made me scared you'd leave me.”

   “Roger I could never leave you.”

   “Of course you could. You could throw me aside the same as anyone. My family did. You're not even related to me.”

   “Fuck them, every last fucking one of them. They are horrible excuses for human beings and I am so sorry you had to be born into that family but FUCK THEM. You're a Sewell, Roger. Ask my mom. Ask my dad. Hell, ask Mitch. I will never ever ever let you go. There is nothing I wouldn't do for you. If it means I never find another boyfriend then so be it. I choose you.”

   We didn't say anything else. I had more questions, I wanted to know what he had done the previous night, but instead I held Roger until he cried himself out and finally fell asleep out of exhaustion. I got Shannon to come help me tuck him into bed and then afterward I poured us both a drink and sat up until three in the morning alternating between explaining to Shannon what was going on, what Roger's childhood had been like, and checking on Roger. Shannon seemed to understand, but I knew he'd had a rough childhood as well, with troubled relationships with the various father figures in his life, so I figured if anyone was going to get it was going to be Shannon.

   If he minded that his visit had been filled with dealing with Roger and his issues Shannon never said so. I apologized about not getting to go out but he just shushed me and took me to bed, holding me tightly as our bodies moved together, letting me grip him like an anchor in a rough sea. Maybe I didn't have a plan, maybe I had bounced into Shannon and lost what little focus I had left. That didn't mean I couldn't get a new one. Being without a plan for a while didn't sound like the worst thing in the world. I had always been wound a little too tightly anyway. Maybe it was time to take a step back, relax, go with the flow. As long as I could hold onto Shannon and Roger I thought everything would be fine.

   When I got up late the next morning Roger was already up,  hunched over a mug of coffee at the kitchen island. I poured myself a mug and sat down next to him, feeling as exhausted and hungover as if I had partied all night. We didn't talk, just periodically leaned into each other for a nuzzle, and when he got up for a refill he topped me off too. Shannon eventually joined us, pouring a mug and sitting down on the other side of me, sensing the mood enough to leave the silence unbroken. Eventually we began discussing food, and we were halfway through our late breakfast when the doorbell rang.

   Jared was supposed to be picking up Shannon on his way through the city to their next stop. He wasn't supposed to be showing up until that afternoon, however. We had planned to have Shannon packed and ready to go, to minimize any contact between Jared and Roger if necessary but when the person on the other side of the door turned out to be Jared hours ahead of schedule that plan went out the window. Hoping for the best I gave him a big hug and invited him in.

   “Nice place,” Jared said as he peeked around, avoiding looking directly at Roger. Roger scooped up his plate and mug and put them in the sink before heading back to his bedroom without a word.

   “Sorry man, I'm not ready to go. Wasn't expecting you til later,” Shannon apologized as he wolfed down the rest of his eggs. “Give me just a minute and I'll gather things up.”

   “No hurry,” Jared said, turning over a small pewter sculpture that sat on the long shelf by the door and glancing in the direction Roger had disappeared to. “Finished up early and thought I'd come by and see how everyone was.”

   Shannon nodded and walked back toward the bedroom and I led Jared over to the newly vacated kitchen island, offering him some tea. As I put the kettle on I kept catching him looking down the hallway, biting at his cuticles and generally paying no attention to the small talk I was trying to make. I sat his mug and the tea bags down in front of him with a sigh. “You came here early on purpose, didn't you,” I accused. Jared shrugged. “It's really not the best time,” I explained.

   “Look, I know he's pissed at me. I kind of made an ass of myself the last time I saw him. I just want to apologize, that's all.”

   “No offense, Jared, but he has bigger problems right now.”

   “Do you think he'll talk to me? Would you ask him? I swear I just want to make sure we're good.”

   I sighed again. I wanted to protect Roger, but honestly, I didn't know what was going on between the two of them, and if Shannon had a rough enough childhood to understand where Roger was coming from, well I figured Jared shared that childhood too. Maybe they could do each other some good. “I'll ask,” I agreed, but then Roger came back out of his room, fully dressed, and he grabbed Jared by the hand and led him back with him. With one more sigh, I poured the hot water down the sink and went to help Shannon pack.