Brad and I had our engagement party on Saturday. First off,
even though I HATE wearing them, I look fucking AMAZING in a suit! Our party
was originally supposed to be at a home but the guest list quickly ballooned
out of control, so we ended up having it at this private beach club in my
hometown. Mrs. Tyler took care of all the specifics because planning anything
causes me to break out in hives. It’s bad!
This month has been INSANE for me! I shot a music video for
the most famous person I have ever met, came out to my agent and my manager
(because they would’ve gotten all butt hurt if I hadn’t invited them to my
wedding and they found out about it from somebody else) and for 10 seconds I
thought the airline had lost one of my pets on the flight to LA. My nerves
being as frayed as they were, I made the decision to not invite my parents to
the party. I needed to be all smiles and good humor and my parents were a
distraction that I just couldn’t deal with.
During the party, Brad and I were ROCKSTARS! He and I have
some of the best friends EVER! There were a million toasts, speeches, funny
stories about us, first impressions, etc; it was all very sweet. At first I
wasn’t sure why we were even having an engagement party, but as the night went
on I figured it out.
At some point Mr. Tyler asked me for permission to give a
toast. He was basically paying for this whole event, so I have no idea why he
even had to ask, but I consented anyway. He spoke about teaching me how to
surf, how to tie a tie, giving me my first beer and teaching me about the
ladies, how to drive a car, and finally how proud he was to watch me grow up
and become a man. Hearing how proud he was of me, gave me this sense of pride
in myself that I haven’t felt in a long while. It goes without saying; there
were tears.
It wasn’t until later when somebody commented on the sweet
speech “my dad” gave, that it hit me, I felt like an unwanted bastard and the
most loved boy on the planet all at the same time. I got up and ran away as
fast as I could because I was feeling one of those full body sobs coming fast
and that was so not happening with 80 people around me. Eventually Bradley
caught up with me and I basically just started talking.
Mr. Tyler taught me how to tie a tie when I was 8. A couple
weeks earlier he’d taken Tyler and I to go buy suits for our 5th
grade graduation (my mom was too poor to afford a suit for me and my father
wasn’t speaking to me because he’d recently found out about my years of abuse
at the hands of his wife and was still figuring out how he was going to deal
with it.) and this was the first time I had a tie that wasn’t a clip on. Both
Tyler and I were determined that we were going to tie our own ties. So Mr.
Tyler sat there patiently and went over it repeatedly until we were both able
to make semi-presentable knots. It was a big moment for me, I felt so
independent!
By mid-summer my father still wasn’t speaking to me and I
was getting very depressed. It was late July and Mr. Tyler told Tyler and I
that he was taking us to Hawaii to learn how to surf. Mr. Tyler bought me my
first wetsuit, my first surfboard, and my first congratulatory sundae after I
caught my first wave. Later those sundaes would become our own little tradition
after I started winning surf competitions up and down the coast. It would be
two years before my dad would decide to let me back into his life again.
As I shared these memories with Brad I realized that every
time my dad decided to ignore me because he wasn’t mature enough to deal with
his son, Mr. Tyler would always be there. All of a sudden I was seeing all of
this through his eyes. Hearing the love in his voice as he spoke of my
accomplishments and our shared moments; I felt like the guy in that stupid
“footprints in the sand” poem, every Christian has hanging on a wall somewhere.
The dude asks Jesus why there was only one set of footprints when things got
really hard only to realize it was because during those moments he was being
carried.
Brad wiped away my tears and sat with me until I was ready
to face the crowd again. If people noticed our absence, they didn’t let on. The
rest of the night was nice and uneventful. Tyler and Johnny got up and told a
bunch of embarrassing stories, Brad’s friends did the same. We drank until we
were all pleasantly buzzed, piled a crap ton of gifts into our cars (who the
hell knew that you got presents at an engagement party AND at the wedding!?) and
then the night was over. It’s strange how after 26 years on this planet I am
still learning things about myself that I should’ve know all along.