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“Roger that. Christ, I sound like my husband. Don’t tell him I’m saying that now. You’ll do it, too, soon. You’ll say tracking when you mean to say you understand.”
“Tracking,” I joke.
He makes a small sound. “He says his name is Justin.”
I find the waiting calls and click to signal to the system that I’m connecting to him.
“Hi, Justin, thank you for calling in. You’re on the air.”
A click. A breath. Then a silence that runs a little too long. I know that silence. I have sat inside it myself in three different countries. It belongs to somebody who has been staring at a telephone number for an hour and has only now understood that he will have to use his own voice.
“You’re on Talk Back,” I say. “Take your time. There is no meter running.”
“Yeah. Hi.” A young man, early twenties, with something raw sitting on the vowels. A big man making himself small. I couldn’t tell you how I know that. But I feel like I’ve heard this voice before somewhere. I’m just not sure where. “So there’s a person. I’m not going to say who.”
“You don’t have to.”
“Okay. Good. So there’s this person, and every single time I get near them, near actually saying the thing, I open my mouth and I turn into…it’s bad. I teased this person relentlessly since high school because I didn’t know how to say openly that I wanted us to…you know.”
“I don’t. But okay. There’s a lot to unpack here, and I’m going to take my time on a few things. Firstly, what is it you’re trying to say? Not how it’s coming out? What is it you would say if you could write it in a card?”
“And not try to be cute and make it into a joke?”
“Why do you want to make it into a joke?”
I accidentally hit the closet door with my knuckles and have to hold it so it doesn’t sound like I’ve just detonated something in the background.
“Because it makes me…uncomfortable? A little?” Justin says, which is good enough.
“Okay, that’s a good start.” My left leg is cramping. I move it and topple a pair of combat boots. “Why uncomfortable?” I ask, trying to massage the tendon behind my knee.
“We don’t fit. We shouldn’t fit at all. And so I can’t just put it on the line. And I hate myself.”
I stop rubbing and snap to attention at his voice. I’ve heard that voice before. Now I’m not hearing Justin. I’m hearing Robby and a dozen veterans edging closer and closer to ledges they couldn’t acknowledge were there. I swallow and take a deep breath. “Okay, buddy. Listen to me. Listen. You are allowed to be imperfect.”
“No, I’m not.”
“No, no, no. Listen to me. When my grandfather died, he was the kindest, gentlest man in the world. Almost completely deaf. And I thought I would remember him forever by being that. But do you know what I actually remember? All of the little ways that he was imperfect and, frankly, a little annoying.”
He laughs, but reluctantly. “It’s different. He didn’t have to impress you.”
“Who told you that you had to be perfect to earn love?”
He’s silent for so long I think the connection’s dropped. “Sorry,” he says.
“Okay. That picked a scab, didn’t it?”
“Just something I never really thought about.”
“So take away that shame? You have the platform. If you don’t want to say the name, can you say the initial? And just tell me what you would want to say. You have permission to be awkward and brave.”
“M. That’s the initial. And, umm. I know it’s too late to ask for your forgiveness, but, I want you to know that you’re amazing. I wish I could have told you that in person. Just once.”
I let the silence play for a beat. “How does that feel, buddy?”
“Weird.”
“I can’t guarantee that M. will forgive you.” I can’t help it. He’s been pretty careful about his pronouns here. He hasn’t said that M. is a special girl.
