The Bedtime Tales of Be287m

The Ugly One, Epilogue

The shirt didn’t fit, of course. I sighed and tugged at the sleeve. Angie looked over my shoulder.

“I’ve been soaking your other shirt. Let me see if I can get the stain out,” she said. I smiled at her in thanks before she headed into the motel bathroom. I took off the ill-fitting recent purchase and threw it towards our suitcases.

“Daddy’s scars are showing! Daddy’s scars are showing!”

I grinned and turned to face my teasing four-year-old. I put on my best gruff giant face.

“That’s right!” I called out. “I’m The Ugly One and I’m going to eat you all up!”

Tammy shrieked and giggled as I scooped her up, covering her in kisses. When she stopped struggling a little bit, I pulled back.

“And do you know why I’m going to eat you all up?” I asked.

“Because I’m The Pretty One!” she shrieked. We laughed together.

“Oh puleeze,” Ashley called from the other side of the room.

“I don’t need to tell you you’re pretty,” I teased. “That’s what all those teenage boys who keep calling are for.” Ashley blushed and then turned as her mom came back into the room.

“I got it out,” Angie told me, holding my still damp shirt. “Though we need to hurry if we’re going to make the ceremony on time.” It was a bit of a scramble, but we made it out the door with a few minutes to spare. Summer and Lynn met us outside the school auditorium.

“Where’s the boyfriend?” I asked Lynn once welcome hugs had been exchanged all around.

“He had to go in for an emergency,” she replied. “That’s the down side of dating another doctor. It seems that one of us is always on call.” She was still smiling, happy at the thoughts of this guy, I could tell. I turned to Summer.

“Long time no see! Months at least! How are you?”

“Doing great!” Summer replied. We had a new colt born last week and it looks like she’ll be a beauty.”

“A new colt!” Ashley interrupted. “Tell me about her!”

Summer and Ashley slipped into an animated conversation about the foal. I just smiled, enjoying the fact that Ashley hadn’t yet outgrown her horse interest, like so many of her contemporaries. Of course, the occasional visits to Summer’s ranch may have had something to do with it. Fortunately, Summer and Ashley weren’t too wrapped up in their conversation to resist getting herded into our seats.

The graduates were all seated on one side of the auditorium. I couldn’t find Billy in the blur of caps and gowns. I nudged Lynn who pointed him out. He looked big in the gown, bigger than I knew he was. He was also all grins.

“So what did he decide about college? Is he going to go?” I whispered to Lynn as we waited for the ceremony to begin. She shook her head.

“He still has trouble with school. He’s been offered a job in a retail game store and he’s trying to sell some of his game designs. He’s been emailing ideas to a game company in Seattle for most of the past year. They’re actually emailing him back, but it’s still too early to know if they’ll pay for any of his work.”

“So if they buy them, what then? Would they hire him?”

“Maybe. I think that’s what he’s hoping for. In the meantime, he’s happy to be here. There’s a girl. She doesn’t graduate for another year,” she said. I paused, silently impressed. Just then the band struck up a tune and the ceremony was underway.

Afterwards we went to a small party at Lynn’s house. At least, it started as a small party. As the night progressed, more and more of Billy’s friends dropped by, until it seemed like a small army was there. I couldn’t help remembering a trip to Dave and Buster’s, long ago. The size of this group would have bankrupted me in an instant.

About ten o’clock, Billy dragged his girlfriend over to meet me. She was overweight and wore thick glasses, but had a sweet smile and a cuddly demeanor.

“John, I’d like you to meet Mary,” Billy said, still holding her hand. “She’s my girlfriend and my game design partner.”

“Oh? Partner?”

“Yeah. She’s the programmer. I’m no good at writing software. She’s incredible.”

Mary blushed and glowed nearly simultaneously.

“It’s not that hard,” she said. “Except when Billy comes up with some new clever twist and I have to figure out how to implement it. He’s *very* creative.”

I looked at Billy who wasn’t blushing, just nodding his head slightly. I thought of a Dizzy Dean quote: “It ain’t bragging if you can do it.”

Billy was going to do just fine.

We talked a little about his pet game of the moment, a multiplayer adventure set in late medieval England. He had some innovative ideas for player-to-player interactions that were different than anything I’d seen in other games. They also sounded like a lot of fun. Mary just smiled, her eyes glowing as she watched Billy. I regretted not having kept in better touch the past few months. Billy hadn’t mentioned Mary at all when we’d talked on the phone at Christmas, nor in his emails since.

Eventually some of the other teens came over and stole Billy away, with him promising to talk more with me before my family went home to Denver. I watched the teens laugh and joke around from a distance. Then Lynn drifted over to me.

“John,” Lynn began, “I was wondering if you could do me a favor while you’re here.”

“Sure! What is it?”

“I have an acquaintance,” she said, “who is severely overweight. He came to me for some informal advice on the medical complications, but he’s got some severe self-esteem problems too. I was hoping you could talk to him, maybe start exchanging email with him.”

“Be his friend like I was with Billy,” I stated. She nodded.

“At least tell him your story.”

“I don’t know, Lynn. I had to do a lot of work to get through my self-esteem issues. Both before meeting you and after you moved away. I’m not sure telling him my story would be enough.”

“At least give him some hope that things can get better. After all, look where you ended up.” Lynn tilted her head toward Angie and the rest of the room.

I looked over at Angie with that. She was chatting with Summer, while keeping an eye on Tammy, whom was being read to in a corner by Lynn’s boyfriend, back from his emergency. Ashley was hanging on the edge of the circle of older teens until Billy pulled her into the conversation. Everywhere I looked it was smiles and laughter.

Lynn was right about where I ended up. It was absolutely beautiful.

--Fin--

Author’s Note:

The most frequent comment I’ve received in email while writing this story has been “I identify with John.” It seems there are a lot of us “Ugly Ones” around. Unfortunately, there don’t seem to be as many Tamara/Lynn’s to help us out.

Tamara/Lynn is based on two real women. The first I knew only briefly. Like the fictional Tamara/Lynn, she worked her way through school while supporting a handicapped family member by being a courtesan in the Nevada brothels. She was beautiful, calm, very giving to her clients, and enjoyed her work. The second woman is a former prostitute who is now a counselor on sexuality issues. She regularly works with men who have problems with self-esteem around women and one of her techniques is the weekly “practice date,” like the Thursday evenings at Tamara/Lynn’s. This woman became a good friend before she relocated to Texas.

Jesse and Frank are based on real bullies that tormented me in seventh grade. My ultimate solution to avoiding the bullies was exactly the one that Billy used: finding friends so that the bullies had to either pick on all of us or none of us. It worked, though we never threw a party to celebrate.

All other characters are purely fictional except John.

John’s emotional journey is based on my own. That said, I’ve taken considerable artistic license in everything from his physical features to the orgy in the brothel. The biggest change is that I compressed eight years of my life into ten months of his. Even though the details are fiction, both the emotional struggles and the happy ending are true.

be287m

--Fin--

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