A Tiroir is a Drawer

Chem had been a mystery, reading it on Friday evening. I had a lot of things to worry over.

She read my mind. "You look worried."

"True dat."

"Huh?"

"Yes. Worried. True, that. Tru-dat."

"Funny expression. Might borrow it. 'True Dat'. Huh."

I simplified the list. I had to leave out WHY I didn't know things. I couldn't exactly say I was a doppelganger and had replaced her real Kevin with a brand new one made from New, Improved ingredients - like a 68 year old brain, or at least a 68-year-long memory.

Some part of me looked at her and thought, 'she is impossibly young and I'm taking advantage' but then another part of my brain said, 'DUDE! It's AMY. You've loved her forever!' and the feeling just evaporated as quickly as it had appeared.

We got back to my house and went inside. I wondered if she was going to stay permanently.

"What's your plan?"

"My plan? I'm playing this by ear, Kev. You've got me, so set me to work, that's the tradition."

"Oh. It would go easier with more hands in the garage."

"Let's go then. But, first, let's call some friends in to help our body count. We can do the barn raising, but let's get a start today."

"Okay?"

Tromping in, Dad met us in the kitchen with bloodshot eyes (from crying?) and said, "I'm sooo proud of you, son." He did the same thing, arm on shoulder but his other arm made an underhanded bicep curl. "Tiroir abundance be with you, Son."

"And also with you, Dad. I love you."

"Love you too, Son. And I'm so glad to welcome Amy to our house, whatever your schedule may be. He leaned back on the kitchen counter, thinking. "I got it fast, when your Mom explained, Kev, the WHY of the bedroom switch. Makes total sense. And, you've done a great job so far."

I hadn't even meant that!

I was happy to let him presume I'd planned this whole thing out. "Thanks. Some friends might come over this afternoon to help out."

"Really? I got some more paint, but..."

"No problem, we've got some of that handled."

He looked at Amy. "We've known you a long time, Amy. Couple of years, at least."

She smiled back at him.

"So, I'm going to apologize ahead of time. I've always been kind of formal with you, and as you're going to be around more, you're gonna see me do some damn stupid shit, walking around in my underwear, leaving the toilet seat up, whatever. Gotta apologize ahead of time. I'm not perfect."

Amy crossed over and gave my Dad a hug. It was nice to see. She looked at me and asked, "Can I call him, Dad, too? Or, do you want it to be something else? His first name?"

I said, "Dad is fine. You can have two dads, two moms, whatever."

Amy grinned and shuddered a giant laugh-squirm, "OhmyGOD this is wild! Yeah.... Sir, can I call you 'Dad' from now on?"

My dad blinked-hard and said, "Dad is just fine. Amy - Sarah, uh, 'Mom' to you now - repeated in confidence the pledges you and Kevin made. I will not repeat them without your explicit permission. I echo Kevin's pledge of hearth and home."

My mom came downstairs, dressed in sweats, not her usual garb. "Good, you're back. Gotta get lunch ready. Grilled ham and cheese?"

I said, "Easy on the butter?"

"Noted. Salads will have to wait, I've gotta make a grocery run."

Amy and I headed upstairs, calling back over her shoulder, "I'm going to be on the phone a while."

While Amy was on the phone, I took out the booklet from my pocket and started skim-reading (fast!) the 'Tiroir-Mitzvah!' book.

The book was Highly Useful!

I skipped some of the complicated rituals, and went back to the 'courtship' expectations, the 'negotiation phase'. Right after that were the merging-phase expectations, and that was an eye-opener, too, though there was wide variation, everything from arranged marriage at a distance to new shared apartment as a high-schooler.

Almost all of the variations involved moving in together immediately after the formal ceremony.

That settled the question of when she might leave.

Amy's phone calls, I overheard, were fast moving and fast-talking. She had an agenda and had a set of friends that she put on specific tasks, narrated quickly and obviously counted on for perfect execution. I didn't know she had that many female friends.

I finished the book enough to know what I was doing and got dressed in crappy clothes again, enough to work in the garage.

Downstairs with a notebook, I got a measuring tape and took stock of what I had and didn't have - drywall, setting-type joint compound, screws, cordless drill... would they even have cordless drills yet? Probably not, those took advanced lithium batteries, at least 30 years to go for those. My list grew rapidly.

It took me a half-hour to list it out, ranked A-B-C priority. I wrote down a lot of stuff I didn't think through carefully, and then at the top wrote 'haphazard possibly incorrect list' and hoped that would help.

Coming upstairs again, I found Amy in my about-to-be-old room on the phone. She took my paper and started narrating it to "Carla", a girl I supposedly knew but maybe or maybe not wasn't in my original universe.

I was going to have a problem with this reality, there would be tons of people with in-jokes I wouldn't get.

Going downstairs again and getting going in the garage, it wasn't ten minutes until the Morris's arrived (Amy's Mom and Dad). As they were walking up, Rich's car showed up, and... wow.

Jane was with him.

I greeted Mr. and Mrs. Morris, who wanted to be 'Mom' and 'Dad' also, and then aimed them inside, which is where they were headed.

Rich came up and gave me a huge hug, and did the "Tiroir abundance be with you," thing, genuinely, sincerely like he really meant it. When it got to Jane, I could see she was crying.

In front of Rich and his parents (Dawn and Ken McGee), I asked Jane, "We have a lot to talk about."

She didn't say anything, just bit on her lip.

"Follow me. Everyone in the house. Rich, can you make sure anyone that arrives gets shown inside? I gotta think. Jane? With me?"

We walked forward and headed inside, then upstairs. Amy was still on the phone, saw us, and started speaking faster.

She hung up and I closed the door and locked it behind us.

"Jane, you know Amy."

Jane's voice was irritated and she sounded cold, too. "Stop that. Of course we know each other, Kev."

"Amy. Tell Jane our precepts, our... conditions."

Jane looked at Amy, ready to be hurt. "Won't you stop rubbing it in? You chose her first. You're playing with me, I hate it, and I hate you."

Amy spoke slowly, "Jane. Kevin's conditions, I'll go into them, but top line, for you, is this. I am First Circle, yes. But I'm not Prime. That's you. I accepted that."

Jane's scream hurt my ears.

It wasn't a scream of anguish, or joy, just profound emotion, I think.

She followed it with the most palpably confused facial expression I think I've ever seen, and that transformed into tears and actual crying, with no words.

We sat down on the bed.

Jane tried to come up with some explanation for her emotion, and then turned to me. "You had HER tell me. YOU didn't tell me. I want to hear it from YOU. You are FUCKING CLUELESS."

I looked at her. I knew enough from the book to ask in the traditional way. "Jane. I would like to negotiate with you, for Tiroir."

This settled her down, some. She stood, paced around the room, dried her eyes on my hanging towel, and went to the bathroom.

Amy obviously thought about getting on the phone again for a minute, but decided against it and started taking notes, making a list of people's names. The fact that Amy's brain didn't stop was exactly On Point for her.

Jane came back and looked a lot more settled. Shutting the door and locking it behind her, she took a deep breath and composed herself. "Sir may proceed."

All this was scripted in the book I'd just read. She had to say certain things, so did I. I was going to fuck this up, for sure, but I was a quick study and I hoped I'd get most of it right.

The explanations were free form, thank goodness.

"I wanted you to hear it directly from Amy, so you knew how deeply it's understood that you will be primary in the first-circle. I had to start that way so you knew. Oh - and I told her about my premonitions, same as I told you."

"And?"

"Huh?"

"The 'sir may proceed' means you can start. What are your terms of trade?"

Remembering (and I was good at this part since I'd been running it through in my head), I recited, "Fertility without reservation, starting immediately. Frugal housekeeping. Childcare shared evenly. Equal treatment of progeny. Healthy living."

I hesitated.

She filled it in, smiling, "And... I'm waiting for the services."

"Sexual services on request. I'd say, no purposeful humiliation." I took a chance on repeating what Amy had said and I'd just read about, "No limits on secondaries. And, basically, I want you as a team leader, a... household manager." Jane was really organized, it made sense, and I could tell she wanted more responsibility, not less.

She turned to Amy and asked, "Your pledges are?"

"I pledged sexual service, fertility, labor of my hands, an equal love for all progeny, a career goal of pediatric medicine, and acceptance of secondaries should they appear."

Jane considered. "This is not a marriage negotiation, Kevin. You're treating it like one. Both of you are. I'd say, rookie mistake, but I'm in the same boat as you are, and very few of my friends did a multiple until college, so I'm in the dark. Their pledges were 'love and cherish' shit. One guy, Debbie's first, thank god that didn't work, asked her to bring him beer during football games. In. The. Pledge. Loser, major loser."

I thought about trying to backtrack. "Did you want...?"

"Kev, you're busy being a brain here. I love it. It's Exactly You. I never thought there'd be real negotiation, not one with terms that weren't obvious. I had the base set in mind, and of course you're doing the thick version. You're... asking for more conditions? Some people, it's dumb, but you're level setting. That's really damn smart, I get that now. Dunno what else to ask for."

Amy said, "I didn't either, I didn't sleep much until I had it figured. But, I've also read a bunch of the bodice-rippers and they have excellent bad guys. Happy to say, Kevin's a good guy. Not much need there."

"So what'd you ask?"

"Standard honor pledge. Plus, I asked that he only gets to name half our progeny. I don't doubt he'd choose good names, but ... I just want freedom to name some of the kids after my older relatives. The _Honor_ part, well, you know, financial justice stuff. I also said, his 'graceful mercy'. That was a cornball line I got from one of the bodice rippers."

I chuckled, "I thought that was some traditional saying."

Amy chuffed, "Not hardly! Popular, though. That's Ruanne DeToque Viamareno. Steamy. Diverting. Not deep."

I answered that, directing my comment at Jane. "Honestly, I do pledge that... Offer that, as a pledge, I mean. Subject to this negotiation."

Jane said, "How are we going to do this thing? You already have family and friends over. Looks like you're starting the barn raising already."

She looked hesitant.

Amy picked up on it fast, "Yeah. Two parties, twice as much stuff. Better to wait, do yours next weekend? That your idea?"

Jane was on top of that. "Gives me a chance to figure stuff out. Where I want to live. How to get through college. I'm apparently not going to Ohio anymore. My mom's alma mater."

"Toronto."

"Yeah. When?" She looked at me.

I replied, filling in a blank, "By the fall, I think."

"I'll apply there, then. Amy, you'd better, too. U Toronto. I looked it up yesterday at the library, after you mentioned it Thursday night. Really good school."

We sat there, looking at each other.

Jane sniffled and blew her nose, and dabbed at her eyes. "I'm going to have to keep this fucking thing quiet. When? We go out on Saturday, you spring it on me then?"

I looked at Amy then back and grinned, "How about 3 pm, you come over and we move some boxes?"

Amy laughed and I explained.

Jane said, "Unique, Kevin! Unique. A girl doesn't want hand-me-down experiences." She chuckled, knowing I was joking but she enjoyed smacking me down. "That said, you are driving. You direct, we engage, as the phrase goes."

Amy told her, "I'm not sure what engagement is anymore."

Jane's eye roll captured it, "Tell me about it! No Fucking idea!"

I said, "Let's go down and get to work? Amy, you invited some people?"

Amy replied, "Oh, Fuck yeah! They're bringing shit, too." Considering what she'd just said by kind of looking up, Amy shook her head.

Suddenly turning to look at Jane and half smiling, half mean, she mock-snarled and spat out her words, "You're fucking infecting me with your fucking bad fucking language, you goddamn shit-mouthed vocabu-whore."

They both laughed. Jane nodded appreciatively, "Gotta remember that. Vocabu-Whore. I should have T-shirts printed."

Sometimes I didn't know when it was okay to insult people. I avoided it, part of being Asperger's. ADHD didn't help, either. Since autism is a brain function thing, I wondered if it had transferred to my new physical brain, or if I just inherited the memories of how my thinking used to work.

Time would tell, I had to guess.

On the plus side was that the girls seemed to like each other, which I kind-of knew already.

Downstairs, Mom quickly got me into a receiving line of sorts, shaking hands with people and getting the greeting. I recognized some, maybe even most of them, friends of mine and their parents. The kitchen was filling up with small bags.

The custom for this kind of thing (per the book) was to bring a very small gift that the family might not have, even if it was a previously used item. No wrapping paper was allowed, as a rule, paper sacks only, though the sack could cost more than the gift if you were one of Those People, per Amy.

A lot of the sacks were groceries - canned goods, jars of stuff, flour, whatever. The idea was that even if the relationship didn't last, the intention was there.

I could see the reasoning. This was one step between just being boyfriend-girlfriend, and being engaged. It was sort of formal, sort of not, and some people did it many times with many partners. After a while, people would stop coming to the announcement parties, I heard (passively) listening in on 'Brad Davis did four of these last year, I'm surprised anyone will have him anymore.'

The idea also allowed everyone to understand and say out loud (in an alternate language, sorta) that two people were having sex and that was okay. As a formality, it gave the conservatives in the group a chance to talk about honor and responsibility.

From my observations (people I knew to be pretty open and casual), free-minded people loved being able to encourage younger people to have lots of sex, which they were doing anyway.

The explanation for why, in this world, there were more women than men, I didn't know yet. I had research to do.

Lots of people started showing up.

Some of my friends had dressed in casual clothes, to work on my garage. I didn't know all their names so I just mostly was formal and mostly silent, picking up and focusing on anyone's name I heard.

Daniel, a guy I had barely known from band in the Before, had a Tiroir with Kelly, a very thin blonde in cross country who knew me super-well and joked freely about my 'swinging pipe' since 'that time', where (per the story) in the locker room it was discovered that my dick was larger than average.

Amy sat through this conversation like it was no big deal. She was unflappable anyway, but even this kind of thing felt a little unusual.

Kelly and Amy talked off to the side, most of which I missed but seemed to be just stuff about classes and arranging how to get to and from school, etc. They seemed to know each other well.

In the garage, despite people coming in and going out, I had a large and accumulating pile of building materials and - of all things - power tools!

I was asked what tasks needed to happen, so I told them - fill the stud-walls with insulation, staple it to the stud, get it all configured, then set up the drywall, cut it to fit, nail or screw it in, etc.

Trouble was, I couldn't show them or explain well, and be at the party both.

Dave's dad, Mr. Willis, had done construction before, so he knew what was what, and he got things squared away. I was overjoyed at that, I kept getting pulled into conversations and hugged by various people walking in and out.

Dave's moms (plural), Diana and Fiona, were 'Mrs. Willis and 'Mazz Willis, which seemed very 2020's of them. In this reality gay marriage had obviously already been resolved as an issue, which was damn good to see.

Some ladies (dressed in more everyday clothes) took some primer-paint upstairs and as more people streamed in and more hands were shaken, we had too many cooks and not enough kitchen.

Mr. Brewbek handled the mess and kept them going, but given the number of people, they were almost done drywalling the walls in a half hour, and then they moved on to the ceiling.

After that, they started on the mudding and taping, which another friend's mom had done a lot of, so she stepped in and taught everyone how to get it done.

Most of the people at the party were female.

Just as someone retrieved some ladders from the next door neighbors, I had to leave. I think I was inside for an hour. The stream of people that came by the house didn't end, and I was so obviously arm-candy for Amy that there was no way out of it.

I didn't like crowds and loud noises, but for some reason the talk was subdued, and I heard shushing so someone was paying attention. How is it, I thought, that these people knew so much about me?

Amy, that had to be the reason.

I'd known Amy was smart, but she had things moving along. We talked, told some stories about D&D campaigns we were on (okay, Amy did), and mentioned to just about everyone that we'd been to church that morning, and it was beautiful to sit together as a couple, etc.

Girls have very different ideas about the world, I'd known this, but watching it in action, in this slightly-different-twisted culture so close to my own, it amazed me.

When I came back out to the garage, the garage was almost done! Drywall taped and painted (primer and paint in one, the can said), and someone had even cleaned the small upper garage window enough to see the tree outside.

I didn't think I'd ever seen anything out that window. Cobwebs were a 'security barrier', I think.

The last step had the door closed and adding insulation panels to it, some blue construction styrofoam held in place with superglue. I had known it was possible to insulate them, and added that idea as an afterthought, but it really worked.

Someone opened the door and 'only two!' panels fell off. We laughed and were happy; down, windex-cleaned and tried again, boom, done.

Amy and I had to go back inside, there were steady visitors coming to the house.

Mom said, half complaining and half excusing her housekeeping, 'usually these things wait a week, but Amy likes spontaneous and wow is that a stand mixer, thank you'.

I wanted to see what was going on, but we weren't allowed to go upstairs.

Mizz Brubek stuck by us ensured that was the case, and I heard grunting from the front of the house so I just knew that some kind of furniture was being moved.

The ladies, and some of the guys my age even, told lots of stories. We had a continuously-changing set of 20 or more people in our living room and I'd never seen that, but we were kept in the center of a circle that had people walking in and out for handshakes and hugs.

And, of course, LOTS of 'Tiroir Abundance' boob-grabs, even with the older ladies.