Not So Different

55. Still Trying To Find A Map

'Dad, can I talk to you about something?'

'Sure! Any time for my boy! Oh, wait, I'm getting some sort of message in code. Looks technical. This is exciting!'

Sonny looked over his father's shoulder at the screen of the laptop computer.

'Dad, you're leaning on the keyboard.'

'Oh, right. Good call.' Jake straightened up.

'If you need to concentrate on getting a grip on this new job, I'll leave you to it.' (Sonny's father had recently accepted a 'media leadership position' at an Internet start-up company. Figuring out why he'd done so was not nearly as hard as figuring out why they'd offered it to him.)

'No, I'm getting the hang of this Interwebnet superhighwaysurfing already. I'm really going to wow 'em at work tomorrow! What's on your mind, Sonny?'

'It's about … Tom.'

As Sonny continued, his father shifted his seat to face him directly.

'You see, we've been dating now for about six months and—'

His father squirmed and started involuntarily gurning. 'Uh, Sonny, if this is about …'

'It's not about sex, if that's what you're thinking. Don't worry, true love waits.'

'True love?' Jake was wide-eyed with puzzlement. 'Is—but hold on, what does it wait for?'

'It was a joke, Dad. Don't worry, if I get pregnant you'll be the first one I tell.'

'That was another joke?' His father grinned nervously and opened his eyes even wider. 'Right?'

Sonny continued without change of expression. 'I'll stop making jokes now, Dad. The thing about this six-month anniversary is that I wouldn't even have realised it was coming up if not for Quinn. She's been getting anniversary presents, like flowers and chocolates, and I noticed because I answered the door to one of the delivery boys.'

'Wait—what anniversaries does Quinn have? Is she—I mean, has she—'

'Apparently she's found some way of milking boys for presents to mark the anniversaries of previous occasions when they've given her presents. Growing up in this family, Quinn has a keen sense of the market and of market value.' Including the market value of her no let's not think about that and let's not get Dad thinking about it either right-about-face back to the subject at hand. 'There's no more significance than that, but talking about anniversaries set Quinn off talking about my anniversary with Tom. Like I said, I wouldn't have paid any attention to it or even noticed it, but Quinn was going on about how the fuss a guy makes over anniversaries shows how much he cares.'

'It does? I mean, yes, it does! For our last anniversary I got your mother—ah—well, anyway, this one time I got her—I mean, I arranged for—I mean—oh God, Sonny, do you know what date our wedding anniversary is?'

Sonny avoided reacting to his father's emotions. 'Maybe making a fuss about anniversaries isn't so important', he continued in a factual manner. 'Come to think of it, does Mom make a lot of fuss for you on your anniversary?' When the only response he got was more embarrassed stammering, Sonny continued, 'Dad, what I was thinking about, what I wanted to ask you about, was something that Quinn didn't see. She expects boys to do things for her, on anniversaries of whatever, and at other times. That's just part of the way she relates to them. And it seems as if the boys she dates accept that, and I guess it might be the same with some other girls, like the ones in Quinn's Fashion Club.'

'Quinn's club? Is she the head of a club? Wow!'

Sonny sighed. 'She's been the Vice-President of the Fashion Club for the last two years, Dad, and there are only four members in the club altogether, counting Quinn herself.'

'Still, Vice-President? For two years? That's pretty good, isn't it?'

Sonny squared his mental shoulders and relentlessly drove his metaphorical plough forward through the loam of his father's outpourings. 'When Quinn thinks about my dating Tom, she thinks about it like her dating boys. But I'm a boy too. Quinn thinks her dates should make a fuss over her for anniversaries, so she thinks Tom should make a fuss over me for anniversaries. But I'm not a girl. Should I still expect Tom to make a fuss over me for anniversaries? Why shouldn't I be the one who's supposed to make a fuss over him for anniversaries? I don't know what to think, and that's why I'm asking you.'

For a minute there was silence. Then Sonny's father cleared his throat and spoke.

'Do you know what Tom thinks? Does he act like he expects you to make a fuss over him? There's no rule about this stuff that works for everybody. Don't think about men and women or about gays and straights—think about you and Tom.'

Sonny reflected rapidly. What were his expectations of this thing with Tom? He didn't know; he'd never been involved with somebody this way before. But Tom had—'Thanks, Dad, that's very helpful. I'll leave you to your work now.'

'Very helpful? It was? I mean, it was my pleasure, Sonny, you're always welcome.'


'Huh?' Sonny realised Jane had been talking to him. Tuning people out was a useful life skill. Tuning Jane out was … was …

'Out with it, Morgendorffer. What's wrong?'

And he had come over to her place to talk with her. But … but … 'Well, it's, uh, Tom.'

Jane grinned. 'My ex, your current. This is slightly uncomfortable but how can I resist? Go on.'

'Well, I like hanging out with him, but it seems like all we do is hang out. We never do any of those conventional dating things, like going out to fancy restaurants or … or … I guess I don't know so much about what people do on conventional dates. But do you know what I mean? We never go in for any of that flowers-and-candy kind of stuff.'

'I know what you mean.' Jane nodded. 'That's Tom for you. When he was dating me we never went in for that flowers-and-candy stuff, either.'

'Really? Because …'

'That is if you don't count that time he took me for a horse-and-carriage ride.'

'Oh …'

'And he did take me to an Italian restaurant once', Jane went on, 'with musicians, and he got them to play my favourite song.'

'So apart from the carriage ride, which I'm guessing was moonlit, and the fancy restaurant, which I'm guessing was candlelit, what conventionally romantic things have the Romans ever done for us, right?'

'Don't make a big deal out of it. It's not like I actually enjoyed those things', Jane said, and then, as Sonny looked at her, 'Well, not much.'

'So tell me something else. While the two of you were dating, did you ever arrange anything like that for Tom?'

'Me? For Tom?'

'Do you mean that he was the guy and you were the chick?'

'No, I mean that he's the fabulously wealthy son of the upper classes and I'm a Lane. He could afford that kind of stuff, easily. I can't.' Jane cocked her head. 'Are you perhaps thinking that he's treating you differently from the way he treated me because you're a boy and I'm a girl? because I can tell you that doesn't sound like the Tom I know, if that's any help to you.'

'I don't know. That's the problem. I've never dated anybody else, I've never even thought about dating anybody, and I haven't spent the last five years of my life like Quinn sitting around with my current clique doing forensic examinations of every date any of the group has been on. I started out thinking about whether it was wrong that Tom wasn't making the kind of fuss about me that boys make about Quinn, and then I started wondering whether I should be the one giving instead of receiving.'

'Nah, Tom hates that corny crap.'

'So why did he take you on those fancy dates?'

Up to this point Jane had kept working on the artistic piece she was creating, but now Sonny noticed that she'd paused. 'They were exceptions. Most of the time we just hung out, you know, watching television and making fun of it, that kind of thing. Why did he suddenly make a big fuss of a date with all the trimmings? I never thought about it before.' She started working again. 'Here's a thought for you. Why don't you discuss this with Tom? It's a crazy idea, but it just might work.'

'Then he'll think that I care about this.'

Jane gave Sonny the hairy eyeball. 'You do care about this.'

'But I already hate myself for caring about it. I don't want him to hate me for caring about it, too.'

'Let me put it like this. You have two choices. You can have an open, frank, candid discussion with Tom, laying all your cards on the table. Or you can play mind games with him like a typical girl.'

Sonny shifted uneasily. 'Why should a boy have to act differently from a girl?'

'It's not the "girl", compadre, it's the "typical". Is that what you want to be?'

Sonny flinched. 'Now turn the knife counterclockwise.'

'Hey, what are friends for?'


'Hey, Sonny!' Tom smiled with pleasure. 'Good to see you! What brings you round these parts? Come on in!'

'Oh, I was just taking a walk in the neighbourhood, thought I'd see whether you wanted to join me.'

Tom drew his head back to look at Sonny from a greater distance, but all he said was, 'I'll just get my jacket. It'll only take a minute.'

Three minutes later Tom finally broke the silence they'd been walking in by saying, 'So, just happened to be in the neighbourhood, yeah?'

'Well, I've been thinking. Either you call me, or else you come round to my place unannounced. So I thought, why should it always be up to you? I figured I'd change things around and take the initiative myself. Wouldn't want to get into a rut.'

'Fair enough, but I don't feel like we are in a rut. I just feel comfortable being with you. I can relax and be myself. I wouldn't be calling you and coming round all the time if I didn't want to hang out with you. Don't get me wrong, I like it now that you're taking the initiative, but maybe that's just one of those things you needed time before you were ready for. I could understand that. I'm really happy with the way things are going.'

Sonny nodded. 'You're really happy. That's good.'

'Hey, I recognise that absence of tone of voice. How about you? Are you happy? Is something wrong, Sonny?'

They were walking through the park now, and Sonny invited Tom to sit down on a bench with him before answering his question.

'You haven't noticed that I've been kind of sensitive lately?'

'Well, not until now—should I feel bad about that?'

'In a way, it's kind of a compliment.' Sonny permitted himself the luxury of allowing one of his eyebrows to move up and down for a moment. 'I spent a lot of hard years learning not to let things show and if I'd lost the knack it might feel like a waste.'

Tom nodded slowly. 'If there's something you haven't been letting show to me and now you're going to, that's kind of a compliment too.'

Sonny took a deep breath. 'I give you my solemn word that this would never even have occurred to me if Quinn had not, for some ungodly reason, stored the information and reminded me, but apparently we're coming up for the six-month anniversary of our first date.'

'So you've been feeling sensitive about something that you wouldn't even have remembered if not for Quinn?'

Sonny scuffed his foot on the ground. 'I know, I know. Nobody is more acutely conscious than I am of how ridiculous the idea is of my listening to Quinn. But I can't deny that she has plenty of experience of what happens when people date, even if it's only a certain kind of people, and I surely don't. I suppose I let myself listen to her in a moment of weakness. I just happened to answer the door when some poor sap arrived to deliver the latest in a procession of flowers and chocolates for her, and my mouth watering for the chocolates had an effect on me. I was hoping she had some debilitating illness and had just forgotten to share the good news, but they were all anniversary gifts, or pseudo-anniversary gifts. And that got her started on our anniversary, yours and mine, and what anniversaries meant in general, and although I knew it was stupid it got me thinking about whether you should be doing something special for me, and then about whether I should be doing something special for you, and then about where our whole relation-date-ship thing is going.' Sonny took another deep breath. 'Because it doesn't seem to be going on a carriage ride to a fancy restaurant with musicians playing a special song.'

'What? Oh … you mean with Jane? Listen, I only took her on those dates after our relation-date-ship thing started to fall apart. I started acting romantic to hide the fact that I no longer felt romantic. And, just in case you've been wondering, it had nothing to do with her being a girl and your being a boy.'

Sonny scratched behind his ear. 'I guess we're doing okay, then. But that's no reason why I can't invite you round to my place for a special non-anniversary celebration, is it?'

'Is that important to you after all? because it isn't to me.'

'It isn't to me, either, but that's no reason why we can't do it.'

'Then I accept with pleasure.' Tom stood up. 'Lead on, gentle sir.'

Sonny stood up as well. 'You realise that I may never be able to afford carriage rides and musicians? If we ever want those, you'll probably have to pay.'

Tom shrugged as they started walking again. 'What do you have in mind for tonight?'

'I reckoned Quinn was the trigger for all of this, so I figured we should do her a favour in exchange.'

Tom raised his eyebrows and his voice. 'A favour?'

'Protect her from getting zits by eating up one of her boxes of chocolates.'

'Eat her present?' Tom cocked his head. 'You're sure she won't mind?'

'On the contrary. Of course I'm not sure of that.'

Tom nodded in understanding of the kind of favour Sonny was talking about. 'Okay then.'


Some dialogue from 'Road Worrier' by Anne D Bernstein and 'Sappy Anniversary' by Anne D Bernstein