Gary

A short story by Tommy Paley

Gary was always afraid.

His mom joked that he was born with a look of fear in his eyes, but he never knew why that was funny.

Gary feared so much in life including, but not limited to, prescription eyeglasses filled with the wrong prescription, narcolepsy, wolves and feral dogs that, upon first appearance, seem quite wolf-like and, even when finding out they aren’t wolves, you couldn’t be quite sure what with your constantly blurry vision and recent bouts with narcolepsy.

Growing up, Gary was afraid of all things dark: nighttime, the infinite pit of despair and disillusionment or, as his parents cutely called it, “the basement”, and shadows. As cliched as it sounds, he was constantly afraid of his own shadow as it was particularly shady, suggestively menacing and aggressively two-dimensional. The other kids in the schoolyard would often take regularly scheduled breaks from eating, playing soccer and drawing nude stick figures with hilariously large thighs to tease him about being “literally afraid of his own shadow because don’t you know that’s only an expression” before they joyfully skipped home. The teasing he could handle, the being educated by his peers about idioms was tolerable, but the joyful skipping just seemed a bit over-the-top insensitive despite being quite well-coordinated.

He feared fear itself when he had time in his busy schedule full of much more tactile and hairy objects to fear. It was full time work being the human equivalent of a very afraid animal, like a mouse or an ant or angry gorilla or some sort of mouse/ant/gorilla hybrid that he drew in art class and of which he would have been fairly impressed if he wasn’t so scared. Gary spent ample parts of his adolescence being whisked away to see specialists and generalists and some grey area practitioners whom Gary couldn’t figure out where they were on the specialist-generalist continuum but was too afraid to ask. These slightly-too-enthusiastic doctors with impeccable skin all suggested similar things that were supposed to “set him free” and “spread his wings” and “help him walk before he could run because using wings was meant figuratively so please get down from the top of the filing cabinet”, but they never worked.

There were so many unanswered questions from “who stole my cheese?” to “why does everyone I work with have disproportionately large mouse-like ears?” to “why do I squeak loudly when afraid?” He worried that he’d be afraid forever and, while he sat by the window in his room, he often wondered “where?”, before remembering that the more apt question was “why.” Then he wondered it.

At the end of yet another long, stressful, torturous day, Gary would retreat to his small apartment on the 1st floor (afraid of elevators and, to a lesser degree, stairs) and wonder why he was like this? “Whose idea of a cruel joke was this existence” he wanted to yell, but the loud noise followed by the silence that invariably came next unless he was yelling in the cavernous parking garage, again, gave him a serious case of the willies. Yet, he knew the answer to all of these questions that he often wrote in stereotypically large red letters using lipstick that he kept on hand in case of “mysteries that only red lipstick can solve” and weekend nights where only applying layer after layer of lipstick in front of the bathroom mirror could pass the time.

But Gary knew.

Deep down inside, and even more superficially, he knew.

He knew the root cause of all of this; this life of his.

His ancestors.

Where he came from.

The family tree and, to a lesser degree, the old Oak tree in his grandparent’s backyard that always gave him splinters most likely as part of grand scheme by the universe generally and the trees specifically.

Gary was a Jones through and through, a fact made crystal clear by his parents to the point where it felt like brainwashing. They were huge proponents of brainwashing having both come from long lines of brainwashers. Some of the best around. His parents seriously never shut up about Gary being a Jones. But, as much as they reminded him of his lineage, they absolutely refused to shed any light on what it all meant as his father refused to pay the “quacks down at the electric company and of his hard-earned money to turn the lights back on until they adequately explained all of the quacking.”

The blame lay solely on his ancestors and, to a lesser degree, his ancestors’ teachers, mentors and hairdressers, who had to shoulder some of the blame. He often wondered if his ancestors were scary or tall or Swedish. Standing waiting for the bus in the morning, he silently cursed his lineage which was completely indistinguishable from his silently cursing the weather only with slightly less finger-pointing.

Being afraid of one’s ancestors seemed like a waste of time, because it was, but that didn’t stop Gary.

But, he hadn’t always been afraid of his ancestors.

No, there was a brief, relatively-care-free period of time between when he was first questioned about this fear and when he finally found time to go to the library to look up what the word ‘ancestor’ actually meant, where he felt blissfully ignorant. In retrospect, it had been a great April. But the more he knew, the more he both wanted to find out more as well as run away screaming which was also, not coincidentally, why he’d had a hard time finding a woman to settle down with, a private French tutor, or, in his most scandalous fantasies, both.

Like so much else in life, he both feared and was intrigued to know more about his ancestors, how they lived and maybe even grow to love them, but he worried that if he knew more about them, he might end up hating them like he did so many of his living relatives. Those relatives were so damn cocky about being living.

Each year, during holiday time, his mom and dad would plead with him to bake some cookies and come over and to see his relatives who had travelled far and wide which was supposed to impress him for some reason. His mom and dad were always suggesting that he bake cookies and, aside from having a large, stand-alone freezer full of partially-frostbitten cookies, he wasn’t at all sure why they cared. And they were always encouraging him to pick up the phone and call a cousin or pick up the computer and email a niece or go down to his work to bother a certain overly-hairy uncle at work pretending to be “from the zoo”.

But, try as he might, he just didn’t like them; his family. He just didn’t like the cut of their jib, why they insisted on bringing a jib with them to family gatherings in the first place except to taunt him and the loud, threatening arguments that invariably ensued mostly to do with jibs and jib-related topics of which there were shockingly many as his relatives were quite the creative bunch. He would often leave these family events angry and confused and, particularly one time, dangerously dehydrated.

Gary didn’t like his relatives, was afraid of his ancestors and had a strange desire to mow all of his neighbors’ grass during full moons.

He lived in constant fear as if it was his middle name which it wasn’t.

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