I can’t tell him it’s just a charley horse. That’s about as quack advice as, Guess what, Dawg, there’s much much worse on the horizon–mom and dad going tits up, an injury, take your pick–and that’s gonna be the real weight that’ll take the air out from under your stride someday. This ain’t nothing but a charley horse
Like that’s gonna make it smooth over, sure.
Nor will this one: Hey Dawg, your dad’s going through it now, too. I’m really done with this one this time (sorta) and guess what, it’s going to be okay. It’s just a charley horse (sorta).
It’s true, too, that he’s gonna get more ass than a toilet seat before he settles down, but none of this is cogent right now. His world is about to end.
Some very chilly texts from her mom to his mom, my ex, had streamed in earlier in the week. I read them. Chilly’s probably an understatement. Paraphrased, they said, We are busy all weekend so she (girlfriend) won’t be able to see him (boyfriend or my kid). Curt, so rude basically.
Then a “We need to talk” text bulldozed in on his phone on Saturday. It was an all-hands-on-deck situation as soon as he tells me. I motor over to his mom’s house and tell her to be on stand by. “Our boy’s about to get broken. He’s at the barber shop now.”
He comes back to the house. He’s talked with his mom. She told him stuff or stuffs that helps bring out his tears. The gates open. He wails. Not since I heard my grandfather do that at my mother’s passing have I ever heard a man, old or young, wail. It cuts me down to bare metal. I try not to, but it’s fruitless. I whimper while he wails. I put my head on his shoulder. I rub his back. His body shakes under my arm like he’s having a goddamn seizure. My son is rubble. His whole fucking junior year of high school is going tits up now, I think. The most important one. The one colleges really give a shit about. Great. Fucking great.
He bangs the table with the meaty part of his hand. “Hit anything you want. Dad’s gotta paint the walls anyways.”
Then he stops and wipes his snot off.
“You wanna go get some ice cream,” I ask.
What I really want to do is take his ass to a rub and tug, but his mom and I both pinky promised that we would only do that sorta thing at 21 if he ain’t done it already.
“No,” he says.
He’s got tryouts coming up. He’s disciplined. Even now, with his first heartbreak on the near horizon, he is iron disciplined.
“Okay, let’s talk about this then,” I say.
We strategize. I give him what I consider are a couple of pointers. Jesus, this girl is so damn cute and smart and has puffed my boy’s chest out in ways nothing or no one else could, not even a starting position on Varsity. Not two days earlier they exchanged one-month cards and went trick or treating as two overaged cookie monsters. She even reportedly told her mom that she wanted to come back sooner from her visit with her dad so that she could be with my boy for New Year’s.
So. What. The. Fuck. Over.
We strategize and strategize until she calls him. “Not yet,” I tell him, “make her wait a little bit.”
He puts his phone on the charger. “I should probably have a full charge just in case,” he says sarcastically. The tears are gone. He’s on the couch with me and we’re watching basketball. “I guess I can just focus more on basketball, Dad.”
What did he just say?
I have to get up from the couch and go to my room. It’s me having the seizure now. At this king sitting in the other room. A mighty king who is convinced he’s about to get his heart ripped out for the first time by his first queen, telling me there’s a bright side.
A king who reminded me that it’s just a charley horse.
Things Men Carry 