"...and the temperature in DC is a steamy 98 B-grees, winds blowing at 5 per hour, the barometer falling. I'm Tony Vaughan and this is B97 news and information..."
Patrick Donegal shot out of bed like cold water had just been dumped on him.
When he regained his composure, he turned the radio alarm off. If he didn't have it set to go off at full blast, he'd sleep right through it.
He was not a morning person. Especially when he knew that all he had to look forward to was taking two long bus rides to his job at Jumpin' Java.
All summer it had been the same damn routine. Get on the Metrobus from Fairland to Silver Spring, then take another Metrobus from there to downtown Bethesda. Walk two blocks and pray that Marybeth got there before he did because she had the key to open up and he didn't.
Then, on to his fun day, waiting tables, on his feet sometimes up to 10 hours, bringing coffee and deserts to his happy customers, mostly college students working for the summer who couldn't tip worth shit. Then, at around 6 or so, get back on the bus, wait the half hour in between busses and go back home. By the time he got there, he was too exhausted to do anything.
Well, hopefully, the audition tapes he sent to every major radio station, and almost all the small ones would land him a job. In the meantime, he was "Coffee-Boy."
Well, even Coffee-Boys had to look decent, and Pat liked to sleep as late as possible in the morning. So, he had a routine worked out.
Take a shower the night before and hope his air conditioner was working so he didn't smell funky. In the morning, scramble around, work magic with his wavy chestnut hair and hair gel, hoping that if he tried hard enough, it would actually go in the direction he wanted to go.
Working miracles, as his housemate Van so nicely put it.
After that, it was last minute shaving, some musky smelling cologne he didn't know the name of, and out the door, usually running for the bus.
Clothes were easy because he had to wear the teal shirt and black pants of Jumpin' Java. Not that teal was his best color, but he really wasn't looking to score there.
Not that the girls cared. They'd flirt with him, say he had real pretty eyes, and a cute butt. Then they'd ask the magic question.
"Do you have a girlfriend?"
Pat usually said yes, only to put them off. He hadn't had one in a long time, not since he realized that wasn't the direction he was interested in, but he knew that good tips depended upon him being as personable as possible. Having a girlfriend made him temporarily unattainable but available for fantasies. Not being interested in girls would probably put him on the C list, lousy tables and lousy tips.
Besides, the boss would probably fire him.
If he'd been smart, he'd have applied in Dupont Circle, the gay mecca of DC, but he knew the money he'd be making wouldn't be enough to cover taking the Metro train into the District of Columbia and the bus to Bethesda was much cheaper.
It didn't really matter. Any day now, it could be Pat on the radio, announcing the news and weather, because that was where you usually started, and he could take this coffee peddling job and shove it.
Sure. He'd been telling himself that since he graduated from college and came back to Maryland after spending four years in Upstate New York. He'd even done the internship thing, working at some tiny station in a Rochester suburb, he'd used the production equipment to make the audition tape.
Lying to himself was getting monotonous.
This morning was the same as all the others and he slammed the door as he ran out, swearing as the Metrobus sped away. He'd have to catch the next bus and his boss would really be pissed.
A half hour later and another bus came. By this point, Pat was already late so he just got on, knowing that at this time, there was a good chance there would be no seats, and finding out he was right. It would be a nice half hour ride standing the whole time.
Sheesh.
It was wall to wall people, so at first he didn't notice the pretty boy standing behind him.
Until the bus stopped short and he lost his footing, bumping right into the boy and stepping on his feet.
"I'm so sorry, excuse me," Pat blurted.
The boy ignored him.
Under normal circumstances, he would have just said,"screw it," but he got a good look at the boy. He looked Asian, his hair was dyed a honey blond, he had several posts in each ear, and Pat was in love.
Dangerous.
He used to fall in love quite frequently when he was in college, only to fall out of it when he actually got to know the person and he figured it would be the same with this boy.
If he ever got to know him.
The boy wouldn't even talk to him.
Then a different boy got on the bus, actually netting a seat. Pat would've felt resentful, he usually did, but the new boy did something that caught Pat's attention instantly.
His fingers were moving, signing, and he was looking in Pat's direction.
No, the direction of his new obsession.
And his new obsession was signing back.
For the rest of the bus trip, both boys signed back and forth, no other sounds made except for something that sounded like a mixture between speech and a grunt.
No wonder the boy ignored him. He was deaf.
When the bus reached Silver Spring, he saw that the two boys were headed towards the Metro. Both had books with them, they were probably taking some kind of summer course at Gallaudet, a college for the deaf in DC.
Pat wanted to catch his attention, but he knew it would be useless because neither boy was looking in his direction.
So, he did something drastic and stupid.
He ran ahead of them, to the Metro train station entrance, and when they got there, tapped the boy on the shoulder.
The boy stared at him, looking really pissed, but of course, not saying a word.
But he wasn't walking away either, which was promising.
Pat took the pen from his Dayplanner, and desperately wrote a note to the boy.
"What's your name?"
He handed the boy his pen.
The boy wrote, "T.J. Next time ask me in sign," and handed both back to Pat, starting to walk towards the escalator.
Pat ran up to him, tapping the shoulder again, mouthing the question when the boy turned back around, "Do you have e-mail?"
The boy snatched the pen and the Dayplanner from Pat's hands, scribbling something, then thrust it back in his hands, running to the escalator and disappearing as it went up.
Pat looked at the note.
"Sign to me first. Then we'll talk."
Sign to me first. Sign to me first. Those simple four words were in Pat's head for the rest of the day. They were written, not spoken, but they might as well have shouted from the heavens, they echoed in Pat's head.
Especially since he didn't know the first or last thing about sign language.
Which was why, at seven in the evening, instead of being on his way home, he was at the Riverside Mall, at one of the biggest bookstore chains in the country, searching for a book on how to sign.
There were so many different types of books, it made Pat's head spin.
Books on cochlear implants, implanted in the ear to make deaf people able to hear. Books on why those were good, and some on why those were very bad.
Finally, one title caught his eye.
ASL: Sign Language for the Thinking Impaired.
Cute.
Pat grabbed the book and went up to the cashier to pay for it, asking her, "What is ASL?"
She smiled. "American Sign Language. That's a good book for beginners."
American Sign Language. Duh! Could it have been more obvious?
He didn't look at the book on the busses home, feeling a little intimidated by the whole idea. He was really unsure if he could learn it well enough to at least have a small conversation.
By the time the bus dropped him off, it was almost ten. When he walked in the door of his apartment, he was suddenly hit with the tantalizing aroma of tomato sauce and oregano. Pat realized that he hadn't eaten anything since lunch. Van's mother must have made him a care package again.
"Hey Van," he called out towards the closed bedroom door, "You got anymore?"
The bedroom door opened a little and a dark curly head popped out. "So you're finally home. I was beginning to think you were never going to have a social life."
Pat smiled. He'd met Van a few months ago when he answered the ad in the local newspaper, looking for a housemate. He'd been lucky. Van had no problems with Pat's sexual orientation and in fact, wanted Pat to have a boyfriend, thinking that would make him happy, and that would make Van happy.
He hated to disappoint him.
"I don't have time for a social life," Pat sighed.
Van opened the bedroom door fully and padded towards the kitchen, wearing nothing but pale blue boxers. Since Van had no sexual interest in him or any guy, Pat could appreciate Van's well developed abs and pecs, from an aesthetic sense. Gina, Van's girlfriend was lucky. Not only did she have a looker, he was pleasantly oblivious of that fact and worshiped the ground she walked on.
Not bad for a guy's guy.
Van opened the fridge and pulled out a casserole dish. "Baked Ziti. What, did you think my mother would forget you? What were you thinking?"
What was he thinking? In a short time, he'd been adopted by Van's family, even Giovanni Sr., though the patriarch thought that Pat just hadn't met the right girl yet.
He handed the dish to Pat, then walked towards the bedroom. "See you tomorrow, I've got to get up early tomorrow. Gina wants to go hiking, can you believe that? In this heat?"
Pat laughed as Van walked into his bedroom and shut the door. Not even going out a year and already he was henpecked. But Van was a teacher so he got off for the summer, so Pat didn't feel too sorry for him.
He popped the casserole in the microwave, took the book out of the bag, and began to read....
"Some hearing people think that because a lot of Deaf people can read lips that they don't need to learn to sign to communicate. Wrong!"
A book with attitude.
As he ate, he looked at the diagrams. Figuring he'd start with the alphabet first, he looked at the diagrams, trying to form his fingers as he read.
He was literally all thumbs, just as he knew he'd be. Graceful, he wasn't.
Pat stayed up practicing until his eyes were closing on their own,. It would take a lot of practice, he realized, this wasn't just a one shot deal. It would probably be better if he took a course at Gallaudet, but that was a private college and even a summer course would cost more than Pat had to spend.
Besides, if he invested real money in this and nothing happened, he'd feel even more stupid than he felt trying to make his fingers do things they had no idea how to do.
He must have fallen asleep because he woke up to one of his favorite songs, a dance hit by Rendevous, blaring so loud it was practically unintelligible.
Pat's eyes flew to the clock. 7:15. Shit.
He wanted to make it to work on time, his boss had not been happy, but he also wanted to look good in case T.J. was there. So he spent a little more time in front of the mirror than usual and made it out the door by 7:45.
The bus pulled up at 8:00. Wonderful, he was going to be late again.
And as he got on, his eyes scanned the overcrowded bus for T.J.
Who was nowhere to be found.
On one hand, Pat was relieved. He'd only managed to learn up to about "L," and a sloppy "L" at that.
Not that "A thru K" were any better.
Besides, he felt ridiculous carrying around that book, he should have thought of that, but there was no way on God's green earth that he was going to remember 12 fingerspelled letters.
On the other hand, it proved to Pat that he was on a wild goose chase. Millions of people got on and off that bus every day and he had no idea where T.J. lived.
There wasn't a chance in hell that Pat could find him. All he had to do is look up a T. J. somewhere in the phone book, no last name, somewhere in between Burtonsville and Silver Spring, a fifteen mile radius. Besides, T.J. could have just been visiting a friend, taking that bus once.
The best Pat could do would be to wait like an idiot at Gallaudet, and even that he wasn't sure of.
It just wasn't going to happen.
And it didn't.
Not for two whole weeks.
However, Pat decided that since he already spent the money on the book, he might as well learn something from it.
Every night, when he got home, after trading pleasantries with Van, he'd shut his bedroom door and camp out with the book, working his fingers and right hand in whatever position that was in the diagram.
So, when he spotted T.J. waiting in the Silver Spring bus kiosk, Pat was overjoyed.
He hadn't really payed much attention to anything but T.J.'s face and hair, when he'd met him the first time, but now his eyes took everything in.
Even though he wore an oversized baseball shirt and baggy jeans, Pat could see the slender frame underneath. T.J. was shorter than he was, but at 6 feet, 1 inch, a lot of people were shorter than Pat. T.J. had delicate, fine features, chiseled cheekbones, and almond-shaped eyes.
Prettier than Pat remembered.
And to his shock, T.J. suddenly waved at him.
He remembered Pat!
Pat was so excited that everything he'd practiced in the past 14 days almost flew out of his head.
Calm down, he told himself.
Pat waved back, and fingerspelled, "W-H-E-R-E D-O Y-O-U L-I-V-E?"
To his dismay, T.J. made a slight grunt of disapproval.
Then Pat saw his shoulders shaking and he realized that T.J. was laughing.
With him or at him? Pat wished he knew.
He tried again. "I-M N-O-T D-O-I-N-G I-T R-I-G-H-T?"
T.J. shook his head violently, still laughing. Then he made a gesture, pointing at Pat's Dayplanner.
Pat was taken aback, he'd tried so hard, but he handed it to T.J.
T.J. opened the Dayplanner, grabbed the pen, and wrote something on the first page. Then he handed it back to Pat.
"You don't have to spell out every letter. There are words in sign language, you know."
Pat blushed, he didn't mean to offend. "I figured as much," he wrote, but I thought I'd start off easy."
He handed it to T.J. who wrote something else, then gave it back.
Pat read, "Don't look so embarrassed, I appreciate the effort. Besides, you're cute when you blush."
Then, on a separate line were these words:
When he looked up, T.J. was gone.
And the bus was speeding away.
Page last updated 8/16/99
