They Call Me Baba Booey by Gary Dell'Abate Read Free Book Online Page B

although he had dark hair, he had fairer skin. He was also so much more chill. The arguing we did in the house wasn’t his scene at all. But he had a wicked sense of humor that tickled my mom and helped him get away with stuff. One year he got her a T-shirt that read, NOT A WELL WOMAN . If Anthony or I had given her that shirt she would have blown her top. But because Steven did it, she thought it was hysterical.
    Until Anthony moved out, Steven and I shared a room. We had our
Brady Bunch
moments, like when we’d split the roomin half with tape. Only he’d always get the side with the door and I’d have to give him a special pass if I wanted to get out and use the bathroom.
    Anthony’s drama was out in the open and in your face, but Steven’s was bubbling inside. He didn’t have screaming matches with my parents. He studied hard, made the honor roll, and was a member of the National Honor Society. He had orange crates full of records—there were hundreds in there—and he’d listen to them for hours by himself on the record player in our living room.
    One day, seemingly out of nowhere, he proved my mom’s intuition right. When he was a junior in high school he came home and announced that he had gotten a girl pregnant. This almost killed my folks. Their firstborn was a hippie who moved out of the house at seventeen. And now their second born knocked up a girl. To this day I can’t say for certain what happened after that announcement. I’m pretty sure the girl must have had an abortion. Every family has secrets, and in mine they were always kept from me because I was the youngest. But there is no way my family could keep quiet if there were a grandchild out there in the world who had been put up for adoption.
    One night in Steven’s senior year he snuck out of the house and went into the city with his friends. He never came home. When my parents woke up the next morning and he wasn’t there they called the police. They were frantic, pacing the rug, praying Steven would walk through the door.
    When the cop arrived he didn’t seem too concerned. This was Long Island—teenagers blew off curfew for a night in the city every weekend. But he still opened his pad and took notes on what Steven was wearing, what his frame of mind was, and the last time my parents saw him. Then, as the cop started to tell them that he’d probably show up any minute, Stevenwalked right through the door. He was wearing the clothes he had on the day before and looked like he hadn’t slept.
    My mom ran to him, hugged him, and then shouted, “Where the hell have you been?”
    Steven was vague. “I don’t know,” he said. “Some Colombian’s house.”
    “I can’t believe you were at Columbia House!” my mom screamed.
    “No, Mom,” Steven said, faking exasperation. “Columbia House is a record club. I stayed at a Colombian’s house.”
    We didn’t know it at the time, but there was a reason he was being deliberately vague about where he had been. Steven was gay.
    Who knows? Maybe that’s why he was always so quiet and a little more aloof than the rest of us. Maybe that’s why he liked to disappear while the rest of us swirled in the tornado. We all centered our lives around managing my mom and learned how to do that in a way that allowed us to function normally. Steven was not only learning to cope with her breakdowns, he was also trying to figure out who he was—and not in the way that most teenagers discover themselves, like Anthony’s rebellion.
    Being gay wasn’t a phase Steven could grow out of or a lifestyle choice he could reject. It was as much a part of him as the heart in his chest. And at that time, as a senior in high school, I don’t think he had come to grips with it yet himself. How could he? He wasn’t that far removed from getting a girl pregnant. And it was the 1970s; people weren’t out and comfortable the way they are today.
    While he was living at home, Steven didn’t tell us anything. After he