My Upsetting Morning

Can I indulge in a meandering post about something that’s bothering me? I been fasting, my blood sugar is kind of low, I’m brittle, but I think even in perfect times this was upsetting.

I went a long way toward raising my second cousin, who lives with us today. He looked so much like me and was with me so much as a child early in this century that some people starting speculating that he actually was my son and that I'd gone retro and vanished for a while in 1999 and came back and voila, my older cousin was raising my child as her own, but nah, not true, not true. But anyway, we had a rare clash this morning because he says I am pushing him too hard to think about what he would like to do with his life. He isn't lazy and he can be motivated (usually for the wrong reasons) but I pointed out he has no real job and never has had one, lives for free with us except the times he sleeps back home or (not a rare event) crashes overnight somewhere with friends or....yeah.

He reminds me of his mom in that way, the perfect party girl, she was, though she was much more of a go-getter with clear goals in mind. She could change gears fast and be responsible and serious and Tyler can't do that. If he doesn't want to face something he sidesteps it.

He flirted briefly last year with joining the Coast Guard, which shocked me but I thought it might actually be a good idea if he wanted that, and his semi-ex-pat sister, who is also "pestering" him to figure out a plan, took him to Mexico with her, but he came back early saying he hates traveling. He shows zero signs of wanting to get back into college, where he had one lackluster semester before not re-enrolling, he worked a paid temp job with a political campaign around election time, handing out flyers for minimum wage, though he has not worked since then, and sometimes when he needs spending money he's helped his dad out with his business, but never steadily.

To be brutally frank, men buy this boy a lot of presents, many he goes on to give away, he has a kind nature, and he doesn’t want for much. I’m NOT saying he’s a prostitute, not at all, but still, he gets given a lot of nice stuff by men who admire him.

Boy does he remind me of his mom.

He has a rich grandfather but as I tell his mother, who truly thinks she's going to one day inherit big-time, his grandfather has a younger wife he loves and who loves him and she's probably going to outlive him and I don't see her doling money out while she's alive, so my cousin will probably be middle-aged and his mother old before that money comes up for grabs, even assuming some charity doesn't get it all. Heck, his grandfather will probably leave the University of Alabama football program more money than he does his grandkids.

(My dad used to torment my cousin's grandfather with this joke: "What does a maggot have in common with a Crimson Tide football fan, Larkin? They can both live a long time off a dead bear." But that worked better in the ‘90s, before Alabama got good again.)

So anyway, this discussion today with my cousin got more heated than I meant for it to, and I said something like, "T-Man, the only real interest I've seen you take since high school is lots of random hook-ups off an app, and that's only useful if you plan on a career as a rentboy. And rentboys don't last."

Okay, not a nice thing to say but not entirely distanced from the reality of his life, either.

Well then something unexpected happened and upset me. Instead of getting mad he sank down in a chair and poured out the darkness of his soul and said what makes me think he has a future?

I said, "You're nineteen, of course you have a future." (But the way he said it was scary, not pouty.)

He said, “I don't think anyone in this world has much of a future the way it's going, and I don't think I personally have even that much."

Okay, I admit the way he lives scares me, it scared me enough to go with him and get a blood test alongside him one time, and it scares me enough to stay on him about being as careful as he can, which makes him laugh and tell me I'm the naive one, the gay community knows better than any other about the dangers out there. Still I asked today if he was all right, since the way he said it....wasn't good, and he said yeah but he doesn't expect to live to be old.

I told him thinking like that goes hand in hand with being young, that at his age I was completely convinced I wouldn't survive my twenties, and besides, “you Millennials” are the biggest bunch of doom and gloom complainers I ever met, and he said yeah, but what I don't get, what his sister doesn't get, what no one gets is he is actually happy right now, he loves the life he is living and is enjoying each day because he thinks he's going to die very young, so what’s anything matter?

I know, I know, kids say that a lot but this was....different, it was almost like he was laying out his self-fulfilling career plan, telling me he is sorry for the sadness to come for those who love him, that he's accepted some bad fate shortly awaits him and so he doesn't want to set goals or work toward a career, and that scared me and upset me. I wish I could talk, hug, or slap some sense into him, because I love him too much to let him think he has so little future that he can justify letting life slide through his fingers like sand.

Oh, and then his phone went off and he said, “I gotta go.” He took a shower and came back dressed casually but he always looks good and he kissed me bye and went off God knows where, maybe just to hang out with his friends, I don't know but I hope that's all, and the entire morning might as well never have happened and I wonder if anything is going to get through to him that he is on a bad course if he is self-dooming and drifting?

Scoff. Kids. Even if they’re not yours they bring stress to your life.