Excerpt: May Day

Late October Dreaming: The Teal Ribbon Tale
Vendor’s Alley, Second Floor Hallway, 4:15 P.M.

I hate people who jump to conclusions.

I have definitely had plenty of experience with them. Most people who meet me promptly start laughing, with varying degrees of intelligence, and teasing me. “Ha-ha, you were named after a dog!”

Usually, I just sigh and correct them. “First of all, Milo was the cat. Otis was the dog. And second of all, I was named for Milo Bloom, reporter for the Bloom Picayune.” Fewer people understand that reference. The ones who do proceed to call me either Binkley, Opus, or Bill. (One kid called me Ronald-Anne. That one was kind of okay. At least it was original.)

Today, I was getting a lot of people jumping to conclusions, but it had nothing to do with my name tag and everything to do with my ribbon.

I headed over to one of the tables set up on the long hallway—I’d spotted a couple of t-shirts that looked really cool—when I noticed a girl staring at me. One of them walked up to me.

“Uh—your ribbon—”

I bit back a sigh. “Yes? What about it?”

“Well, it’s—it’s a teal ribbon.” The girl looked up at me.

I resisted the urge to say sarcastically, “Oh, really? I thought it was pink!” Instead I said, “Yes, I’m aware of that.”

“Well, it’s—I mean, you know, it stands for, well…” The girl flushed and seemed awkward and afraid to continue.

I filled in the blank for her. “Gynecological cancers?”

“Uh…?”

“Ovarian cancer,” I reiterated.

The girl looked relieved and nodded. “Yeah! And, I mean, men don’t…have…ovarians.”

“Ovaries,” I corrected as the girl’s friend joined us. “And it doesn’t just stand for that, you know. The teal ribbon can also stand for agoraphobia. That’s what I wear it for.”

The girl seemed satisfied, but her friend seemed a little confused. “Isn’t that a fear of going outside?”

“Going outside, public places, open spaces…you get the idea,” I confirmed.

“Then…how are you at a convention, if you can’t go outside?” the friend pressed.

I stared at her for a long moment. Finally I pointed to the orange and maroon ribbon she was wearing. “Do you go to Virginia Tech?”

She shook her head. “My cousin graduated last year.”

“If your ribbon isn’t about something you have, what makes you think mine is?” I demanded.

Both girls turned scarlet in the face and walked away in a hurry.

Sadly, that wasn’t the first time I’d had that conversation today.

It irritated me that people could wear almost any other ribbon and be asked who they knew who had the disease, or who had been affected by whatever it was, but wearing the teal ribbon automatically seemed to mean that you had the disease. I’d tried several ways to get people to realize they were being idiots. One girl asked me why I wore it when I didn’t have ovaries, and I told her that I was born a woman. One guy asked me how I got outside when I was agoraphobic, and I paused, looked around, made my eyes get really big, and faked a panic attack. (Security was amused. The guy was not.)

Obviously, I really wasn’t wearing the ribbon for a disease I had.

“Hey, are you wearing a—”

“Yes,” I interrupted without turning around.

“Doesn’t that stand for—”

“Agoraphobia, not ovarian cancer.”

“But how do you—”

“It’s not for me, numb nuts.”

The vendor was laughing as I finally got to the t-shirt table. “Nice going.”

“I’m really getting sick of people asking me why I’m wearing it,” I grumbled.

The vendor laughed and pulled back his coat to reveal a T-shirt with the teal ribbon screen-printed on the front. “My brother. He hasn’t left the house since he was thirteen…he’s forty now. You?”

I smiled. “My girlfriend. Three years.”

The vendor grinned and gave me a discount on my shirts.

I thought about my girlfriend as I walked off down the alley. Melinda Robinson and I had met in high school and dated for a year. Then one day she was driving with her grandfather and got into a bad car accident. Their car flipped several times and landed upside-down in a ditch. Her grandfather, who wasn’t wearing a seat belt, was flung clear and died on impact; Mel, who was, ended up pinned under the car with a broken arm for four hours before someone found her and got her out. Her arm healed. Her mind did not. Mel started freaking out whenever we drove by open fields or ditches. I thought it was just post-traumatic stress syndrome or something at first, but then she wouldn’t leave her house or sheltered areas unless I was there to hold her hand. Getting her to school was a hassle and a half. Three weeks before graduation, walking out of the school building after class, Mel had a panic attack so severe she couldn’t breathe. I took her to the hospital; the psychiatrist diagnosed agoraphobia.

She didn’t even make it to our high school graduation. She wandered around her apartment building, but she wouldn’t walk out the front door. Then she stopped even leaving the hallway. Finally came the day I couldn’t get her out of her apartment. Her dad worked all the time and her mom died when she was little, so usually it was just the two of us in the apartment. I tried to talk her into at least walking the halls with me, but she couldn’t make herself do it. She was too afraid.

I’ve been there for her these past three years. I was there when her dad got killed in a work-related accident and Mel couldn’t go to the funeral, so I went and took a video camera and taped the service for her. I was there when her grandmother said some horrible things to her, to the point where I wasn’t even sure she would ever come out of the bedroom again, let alone come out of the apartment. I was even there for her when she thought she was going to lose the apartment because she didn’t have a job.

Things are better now. She works from the apartment—she types up questions for some website where you text questions in and the site texts your answers back—and makes a pretty decent living from it. I work for a construction company in the city. Mel pays the rent, I pay for groceries, and we split utilities. It works just fine for us.

Even though she won’t ever leave the apartment again, I’ve dreamed about marrying her someday. If I can figure out how to make it work—how to have a wedding in our living room—then someday, we will. Lord willin’ and the creek don’t rise, as my great-granddaddy used to say.

I felt a tap on my shoulder startle me out of my reverie. “Excuse me, but I noticed your ribbon.”

I turned with a sigh to face an older man with a pale blue ribbon pinned to his lapel. “Yes, sir?”

“Wife? Mother? Girlfriend?” he asked, surprising me.

“My girlfriend. It’s been three years since she went outside,” I added, quickly trying to forestall any other misconceptions. “She’s agoraphobic.”

The man smiled sadly. “At least she has someone willing to go outside for her. So many people with that disease aren’t so lucky.”

“Lucky?” I repeated. I’d never thought of Mel as particularly lucky.

“She’s lucky to have you, son. You’re worth your weight in gold. Most men wouldn’t be caught dead wearing that ribbon in public.” The man smiled and held out his hand. “Jim Tritten.”

“Milo Adione. Nice to meet you.” I shook it.

“Likewise.” Jim put a hand into his pocket, pulled out a small white business card, and pressed it into my hand. “Just in case you ever need me. I’ll be there in a flash.”

“Thank you, sir, but I’m not local,” I answered, trying to hand it back to him. “We live in Norfolk.”

“Not a problem. I live in Virginia Beach.” Jim winked and stepped back. “See you around, Milo.”

“Goodbye, sir,” I stammered. He walked away.

I glanced down at the business card and started as I realized that the card read, in gold letters, Rev. James Tritten, Heritage United Methodist Church. He was a minister.

A smile split my face as I tucked the card into my wallet. All of a sudden, I started to feel like maybe he was right. Maybe Mel and I are lucky.