An August Christmas

by

Jason Jordan

“So, is your friend Ryan – is he, uh, gay?”

That’s what I asked Mike, who I had befriended back in May.  It was now August, and I had successfully weaseled my way out of a group of friends, and eased into a new one. 

Before, though, I was having problems with my friends from high school.  Three years after the graduation ceremony, we all realized we were growing apart, but we preferred to keep silent about it when we weren’t arguing or ditching each other to avoid fighting.  Instead, we each drifted off to other people, other situations. 

I was accustomed to quirky shit, thankfully, so I wasn’t at all weirded out when Mike wanted to have a Christmas party in August.  In fact, I looked forward to spending yet more time with my newfound friends: Mike, Mickey, and Danielle.  To a lesser extent, however, I anticipated hanging out with the auxiliary members of the group such as Ryan, Andrew, Simon, Kristy, and Laura.  Those were the people whose company I enjoyed, but not on a regular basis.  They weren’t around as much as the main three.

“No,” Mike said, clearing up the matter of Ryan’s sexual orientation, “he’s had girlfriends before.” 

Still, when Ryan was crossing his legs like a girl, wearing reindeer antlers, or cooking in the kitchen, I was skeptical.  Despite Ryan’s ambiguous sexuality, which didn’t influence my opinion of him, I quickly warmed up to the man.  I enjoyed his humor, but perhaps most of all I latched onto him because he was incredibly friendly and accepting of someone new to the circle of friends – the ones he had been involved with for years.  I became even more taken with Ryan when he made eggnog from scratch, which used to be a guilty pleasure of mine.

One Christmas season, in middle school, my friend Frank and I got heavily into eggnog, and since I was over at his house practically every weekend that winter, his mom stocked the fridge with cartons of it. 

“It tastes just like butterscotch!” I mused, trying to hold back a grin before taking another drink.  Of course Frank and I imbibed eggnog of a non-alcoholic variety, but that certainly didn’t discourage us because we hadn’t acquired a taste for alcohol yet.  So when Ryan served me a fresh cup of eggnog – spiked with whiskey – the first gulp took me back to Frank’s house, and a memory of him finishing the last carton of the stuff way after the holiday season had ended.

“You think this is still good?” Frank asked me in front of the refrigerator.  He drank it straight from the carton, even though it had expired a week earlier.  There was a 10-year gap between the eggnog that I drank with Frank and the batch that Ryan whipped up – I hadn’t had any in between.  As a result of the nostalgia, I elevated Ryan to pivotal status that night, rather than leaving him on one of the lower levels of friendship.  The change didn’t matter, because just like Frank, I would rarely see Ryan again.         

Jason Jordan's fiction and nonfiction has been published in The Edward Society, RAGAD, decomP, The2ndHand, and others. His debut "Powering the Devil's Circus" has been out since June '06, and you can find out more about him at his official website,which is located at poweringthedevilscircus.com.