gary_jr tender_square our dad’s hung out together because they worked together. gary was a big man who drank too much and smoked too much and ate too much. my dad only drank too much, so they at least had one thing in common outside of their employment. though often brash, gary would dress up as santa each year for the vet’s cab christmas party, hand out gifts to all the kids of the drivers. his only son, gary jr., was a year younger than me. he’d work bingos for the taxi charity with brea and i, selling cards to snappy middle-aged ladies who demanded we pull from the middle of the piles we wore in our smocks. after our sections had been covered, the three of us loitered at the entrance of the non-smoking room, joking and flirting while we waited for the round to end. gary jr. was shy but quick to smile whenever we spoke. so often i caught his blue eyes staring at me, after which he’d look away, pretending he hadn’t. it was the kind of look that made me want to kiss him. we swam in the violent waves of lake erie together once. gary sr. and his wife mary rented a red shaker cottage outside the entrance of point pelee and invited my family up for the day. gary jr. was shy about his body then, wearing an oversized promo t-shirt from a stockcar race that clung to him as second skin. i never wanted to get my hair wet, jumping whenever water threatened to soak it. later, when i stripped out of my wet bathing suit in their bathroom, sand poured piles on the floor, and i knelt down and curved my hand to sweep it all into a corner. i should’ve never told nadine i thought about gary jr. i didn’t know they were neighbor’s until i was climbing the steps of her front porch after school and saw him seated on his five feet away. “how do you know each other?” she asked. i lived nowhere near her neighborhood. we both awkwardly stammered something about our fathers, surprised to be seeing one another outside of our regular context. nadine and i made our way inside, up to her bedroom, and she pressed me for further details. “y’know, i think if gary ever asked me out, i would say yes,” i confided. she’d known gary since they were kids. i half-expected she would tell him this. yet when he asked me out the following day—did he call the house phone asking for me?—i turned him down. in my head, i could imagine it working out. in reality, it didn’t seem like such a good idea. i couldn’t get past that he was a namesake for his dad. i knew i couldn’t stomach smoke-filled dinners across the table from gary sr. with his teasing and his innuendos about what his son and i were getting up to. the thought of my dad hearing his loudmouth friend insinuate that i was slutty, when all i wanted was the closeness of someone who was just as confused as i was, made me cringe. 211205 ... nr this is my dad's name, minus the jr. i don't think i could ever date anyone with that name. 211205 what's it to you? who go blather from