Earth to Me

“Really? I was right? Oh – I do not mean that in a rude way, I mean – this is good! I am glad you are being honest with me. I am happy that you are happy, mijo! I cannot say that I ever thought this day would come, but – oh lord, that makes me sound like I did not have faith in you. I always knew you were sort of…I mean, I know you are shy, and I was not always sure that you liked girls, but…oh, I am not making any sense, am I? I am happy for you, Oshie, and I support you a hundred percent.”

That was the reaction I got from my dad when I told him about me and Murray a few weeks into summer. It was over dinner, and it worked out exactly the way I expected.

As fate would have it, Murray came over to my house a few days after we moved out of UChicago, and after hanging out all day with Tegan, he slept over at my house. And even though I could see his jitters, he got down on one knee and asked the big question – “Oshie Diego Avila Olayos…will you do me the honor…of being my boyfriend?”

I had to stop laughing long enough to say, “Of course, dude!”

I didn’t even hesitate. The answer was solid in my head, and once it was out in the open, everything seemed to skyrocket.

Murray got a job back at the museum he worked at that previous summer, and I was still stuck at Subhero, but I didn’t mind it so much. He was able to visit every few days, and when we didn’t see each other, we always spent the night either texting or talking over Facenook. We were, as my dad would call it, “going steady,” and over the summer it just got better.

Me, Tegan, and Murray were still set to share a three-bedroom apartment next to UChicago the next year, and while that was happening on our end, things were happening down in Florida for Chuck and Riley. Chuck was moving down to Orlando and transferring to UCF, and just like all of us predicted, Riley wanted to tag along. He got a job at a venue downtown as a bartender, but he also said that things were up in the air for him. God, he even joked about moving up to Chicago just for the fun of it.

But we all knew that he couldn’t leave Chuck behind, so that was out the window almost as soon as he said it. They were happy to get out of Gainesville, at least, and even if it meant being right in the middle of the festering cluster of tourists in Orlando, hey, it beat gator country.

Shira keeps up with her weekly visits to Tegan, and they just keep getting cuter and cuter. Our alien buddy keeps talking about her eventual reign as queen, gushing about how awesome she’s bound to be, and I see it. I had no clue what Daltians were like as a whole, but she somehow seemed to epitomize them. And I don’t know how Tegan would react if Shira proposed to her and they became co-queens or something, although it would be cool to see. Maybe someday. In, like…a million years, when humans evolve enough to breathe whatever toxic gases were in Daltia’s atmosphere.

Johnny Cool and the Dudes went on to have a rockin’ second season premier at the beginning of July, and of course that meant that Put’emup, Put’emup had to have a viewing party over at their apartment. There was a lot less drinking that time around, mostly because everyone wanted to be sober. I asked the band if I could bring Murray, and of course they immediately said yes.

And it was a little weird at first, holding hands with him when I hadn’t even told anybody other than Tegan, my dad, Tegan’s mom, and Murray himself that I liked dudes, although they didn’t shake a stick at it. Andy walked past me and him at the counter, our fingers intertwined, and his mouth absolutely dropped into a huge smile. With a huge wink, he left us alone and I was busy laughing it off.

Andy himself is getting a little more personal, too. While he hasn’t officially come out and said what his orientation is – and believe me, I know how he felt about not even knowing how to label it – he’s been dropping hints everywhere. He and Anthony are still going strong, even if they’re keeping it out of the public eye. The rest of the band doesn’t have an issues with it, as far as I know.

Within the first week of our summer, the band actually announced a short co-headlining tour with Olli Lolli, their label mates. They’d just hit up a few minor cities in the US and Canada for about two weeks, and it took place at the end of my summer. Naturally, they asked me and Tegan to tag along as their faithful merch team, and of course we agreed to it.

I brought my laptop and made sure to keep Murray posted on the “wacky adventures” I had as half a merch team, though nothing really different happened when compared to last year. There were still cool fans who tipped us and rude guys who tried to hit on Tegan even when she said no; we got to see a cool free concert every night. I was never really into the super happy pop-rock stuff that Olli Lolli did, but they were genuinely nice guys.

Oh, and there’s also something I should probably tell you about, even though I’ve really been trying to keep a small head about it. A month into summer, Anthony called me up and asked me if I’d be up to design a few new t-shirts for them, since their merch had been cycling for a few years and they wanted to get some fresh material.

I hesitated to say yes, only because I’d never actually been approached to do that sort of thing. Honestly, I thought internships and jobs were the kinds of things you tried to get when you were a seasoned vet at whatever your field was…but then my better sense kicked in, and I agreed to design two t-shirts and two hoodies for the band!

The first one I came up with was a sort of 2006-emo-looking skeleton dude with a speech bubble that said, “Look alive!” with Put’emup, Put’emup’s logo at the top. For the other shirt, I took cues from other cartoony merch I had seen in my days as a pop-punk patron, and I just doodled the band looking as natural as they could with thick outlines.

For the hoodies, I took a stab at typography and decided I didn’t suck that much at it. There was a red one with their logo on the front, and on the back I put a few lyrics from their song, “22 and Nothing,” so in the end it read, “I’m getting up, it’s time to go, even if there’s so much I don’t know.” The other one was black and white and it was the same deal, but on the back there were lyrics to their song, “Sketchbooks.” The back of that one read, “You’ve gotta do it for yourself.”

And I didn’t get rich from it, but it certainly didn’t hurt my bank account, and I knew it wouldn’t look too shabby on my resume.

A similar thing happened to Tegan that summer, too. Since she was known for a more technical style rather than my cartoonish scribbles, This Sky Abundant ended up asking her to design a new album cover. In the scheme of things, she was better off, and knowing the incredible skill she put into the design, she deserved it.

We were a couple of lucky kids who had a random tie to one of the most famous pop-punk bands in history, but we just decided to stop questioning it. There were so many good things that happened because of our relationship that I couldn’t keep taking it for granted.

There came a point where I just stopped trying to convince myself that I didn’t deserve it. Things happen, and sometimes they happen because of chance. We could’ve let ourselves drift apart after saving the planet that first time, but we didn’t – we kept in touch, we kept best friends, and my whole world flourished because of it. It’s still blooming all around me and I haven’t found a thing to not be thankful for.

I have strings tied to every corner of the universe now, it seems. I still get dreams where Mom is sending me hellos from space, where I drift through time with her at my side while I tell her about my day, and my dad has even had similar dreams. There have been several times in my life where I had to face facts that things wouldn’t be the same anymore. Nowadays it seemed like it was all changing for the better.

It’s easy to say that I never thought I’d be in this position, a week into my junior year at UChicago, living with my best friend and my boyfriend while studying my passion. When I was in junior high, I never imagined having friends who were famous or pals across the country, and I didn’t think I’d have something in common with a cold-blooded humanoid alien from another planet. I never thought I would have vivid dreams that were just reality thinly disguised as surreal.

And in a way, I was still dreaming. I could never shake the feeling that I was still in a coma in that hospital in Chicago where they took me and Tegan after we were struck by lightning in 2011, since everything that seemed to line up in my life was doing so in my favor. I could go to sleep at night with a smile on my face, not having to worry about throwing sparks or causing power surges.

Almost every night, I had Murray sleeping by my side, too. I know having a boyfriend isn’t a quick fix for everything, but it was just so nice knowing that someone liked me enough to want to kiss me on the face.

I don’t know if I’m growing up, really. What’s it like to grow up, anyway? Does it mean filing taxes or living on your own? Do you become an adult the first time you buy your own laundry detergent? I sure as heck didn’t know, and I still don’t. I don’t feel like an adult. I just hit my twentieth birthday and sometimes I still accidentally think I’m sixteen.

Some things never change. Other things change so gradually that you don’t even notice it happening. It’s a mixed bag and I’m still sifting through it all.

But for now, I’m happy to just sit back and consider the possibilities. I used to freak out over the fact that everything was so uncertain, but since I realized that I can’t control the future, I’ve just been doing my best to aim as well as I can, letting the world come in and fall out as it naturally would.

I’ve seen enough lightning in my life to know how to make something unpredictable work decently, that’s for sure.

I’ll get a full grip eventually, I guess. Earth works in mysterious ways, and the whole universe is even weirder; who knows what kind of luck I’ll end up having?

I’ll send a few sparks whenever I need to – anything to know that I can play my part on a planet that has somehow kept me alive for two decades.