See You Next Tuesday by J. D. Strunk
13-year-old Noah has been watching incel videos, and his uncle isn't sure about the best way to talk to him about it.
My sister had called me the previous week, her voice heavy with despair. Apparently, my nephew, Noah, had called a girl in his eighth grade class a "C U Next Tuesday" - my sister wouldn't even say the actual word. She had subsequently found videos of Alex Spate in Noah's online search history. I had no idea who Alex Spate was, but a Google search returned a noxious - and obnoxious - British thirtysomething presently on trial in multiple countries for sexual assault, rape, and human trafficking. These pursuits had made him inexplicably - predictably? - a hero of the global far right.
The thought of my 13-year-old nephew sitting rapt through such videos was nauseating.
"But what do you want me to do?" I texted my sister, following my "research."
"Show him real men. Good men."
She italicized the latter, as if "Good Men" was a movie we could book a screening for at the local cinema.
I had never before been asked to be an arbiter of moral clarity. I wondered if I was right for the role.
"I'll be in touch," I texted.
For the next few days, I racked my brains, attempting to come up with an activity that would show Noah good men being decent in an increasingly indecent age. Problem was, my life was pretty boring. I played bar trivia every Monday, and with good people, but somehow this didn't seem to reach the level my sister was aiming for. So Monday was out.
But Tuesday... Tuesday had potential.
The following Tuesday afternoon, my sister's silver minivan pulled into the parking lot of my apartment building. At 38, I still rented, unwilling to leave the absurdly cheap rent I'd locked in by moving to the city over a decade ago, before throngs of post-pandemic Zennials drove up prices. From the stoop, I watched as Noah got out of the van, trailing his backpack behind him like a ball and chain. My sister waved from the car, but did not get out.
Seeing Noah approach the steps softened my heart toward his plight - that plight being adolescence. As if middle school wasn't hard enough, Noah was small for his age. So was I, at thirteen. And fourteen. And fifteen. In fact, I grew several inches after high school. Twenty years of adulthood had ameliorated those old feelings of inadequacy, but not fully erased them.
"What's up, bud?" I asked Noah as he joined me on the stoop.
"Mmm," said Noah.
"Cool," I said.
I held the door open for Noah, and he followed me up the stairs to my apartment. Once inside, he set his bookbag on the floor, and collapsed onto a recliner. He was clearly annoyed, yet not quite comfortable enough with me to come out and say as much. We had been closer when he was little, back at the age when a child still looks toward adults with a bit of reverence. But since entering middle school, it had been all eyerolls and sighs.
Suddenly aware how messy my place was, I began straightening the sundry items on my coffee table, even though I knew Noah couldn't care less.
"Where's Shelly?" Noah asked.
"We split," I said. "Over a month ago. Figured your mom would've told you."
"No."
"Oh. Well, we did."
"Sorry," said Noah. "She was cool."
"She still is." I cleared my throat. "Don't get too comfortable. We aren't staying."
"Where are we going?" asked Noah cautiously.
"Gonna take a walk," I said.
Noah said nothing, and I could tell by this silence that he was nervous. My neighborhood, while charming, has a reputation for sordidness - one that has no doubt been amplified in the minds of suburbanites by the local news. In truth, I was okay seeing Noah squirm a bit, knowing he would never be in actual danger.
We left the apartment and began walking down Sixteenth Street, toward downtown. I made a point of avoiding Colfax Avenue, with its penchant for open drug use and occasional nudity. For the first five minutes, we walked in silence. It was December, but snowless. Mid-fifties. Every year the snow was coming to the city later. Concerning, no doubt, but also kind of nice.
"I know Mom told you about it," said Noah at length, and as the sun dipped behind the mountains, leaving the city wrapped in an ethereal glow. "I'm not dumb. This is punishment."
"Hanging with your uncle is punishment?"
No answer.
"I've never once thought you were dumb," I added.
"Whatever," scoffed Noah.
"Yes, she told me. Why would you say that to a friend?"
"Friend? It wasn't a friend, it was Molly Moncini. She called me a shrimp in front of half the grade. They're all like that."
"Who is?"
"The girls. They're all bitches."
"Your mother is a girl."
Eyeroll.
I was losing the exchange, and the narrative. I had no idea how to impress upon this aggrieved child that Alex Spate and his ilk were garbage. The one thing I knew wouldn't help was just coming right out and saying it. Such admonishment was as likely to endear the bastard to Noah as anything, because such was the logic of the teenage male. (And many adult males.) But the worst thing I could do was return Noah to his mother even more ensconced in the lure of incel putrescence, and so I had to keep trying.
"Whatever this girl said, she is one person," I offered. "Boy or girl, man or woman, people are individuals. You can't write off half the world because one girl was mean to you."
Noah offered no reply, and we walked in silence for fifteen minutes, until we arrived downtown, where Noah perked up a bit, his eyes bouncing between the buildings and the tent encampments.
"How do they survive the winter?" Noah asked, nodding toward a row of tents lining Park Avenue.
"I don't know," I answered honestly.
At last, after thirty minutes of walking, we came to a stop beneath a large neon cross bisected by the words JESUS SAVES, with the first "S" in Jesus pulling double duty.
"We're here," I said.
Noah stared at the sign skeptically. "What is it?" he asked.
"Denver Mission. They feed the homeless."
"Unhoused," corrected Noah.
"Right."
I had been expecting some pushback, now that my motives were revealed, but Noah seemed no less disgusted than any other time on our walk. In fact, he seemed curious. Pleasantly surprised, I held the door open for him, and he passed through.
There were already about thirty people gathered in the cafeteria, even though dinner was well over an hour away. We passed by the tables and headed into the kitchen, where some of the faces of the staff were familiar, though many were new. I had volunteered often enough over the years that they knew me, but I was not as regular as I should have been, this past year.
But Big Jim was there, as I knew he would be, and this was the most important thing. Big Jim was a mountain of a man - 6'3", heavily tattooed, with a long gray beard and bulbous belly. He was loud, swore like a sailor, and reeked of body odor. Everyone loved him. I could not think of a better antidote to toxic masculinity. He had been head cook at the mission for almost 20 years. It was the same mission where he himself had gotten sober, decades before.
Upon seeing me, Jim pulled me into a bear hug. "Was wondering when I'd see your mug again," he said.
Upon being released, I introduced Noah.
"Excellent," said Jim. "The next generation. I love it." He looked back to me, his eyes suddenly glistening under unruly eyebrows. "We lost Mikey," he said softly.
Mikey was a regular at the dinner. Had been for a decade - ever since I'd been in the city.
"What? How?" I asked. "He couldn't have been fifty."
"His disease got him," said Jim.
"He'd been clean for fifteen years," I said.
"Only takes once." Big Jim took a deep breath, then patted me on the back. "Let's get you two started on the carrots."
We followed Jim through rows of stainless steel appliances to a countertop littered with piles of raw vegetables waiting to be diced for stew. Jim patted a counter that held a mound of carrots over a foot tall.
"That's the most carrots I've ever seen," said Noah.
Big Jim beamed. "We appreciate you both," he said, before being called over to another station, and leaving Noah and I to our task.
"Do you want to wash or dice?" I asked.
"I'll wash," said Noah.
For such a little snot, Noah proved to be a good worker. He was fast, but thorough, piling up freshly cleaned carrots faster than I could cut them up.
And then, as we worked, a strange thing happened: Noah began to talk. And like most teenagers, the longer he talked, the younger he seemed. Moreover, once the stews were prepared, he stood proudly in the serving line, ladling soup to a grateful audience. He even made a bit of small talk as he served. By the time we left, he seemed to have forgotten his uncle was too embarrassing to associate with. Part of me assumed that it was something about the Mission itself that had loosened Noah's tongue, and that he would revert to his mopey self once we left. But I was wrong. The dike had burst, and now the kid wouldn't shut up.
During the trek home, and following a twenty-minute digression on FortNite, Noah paused, then cleared his throat.
"Why would Mikey have done drugs after being sober so long?" Noah asked.
Of all the questions he might have asked, it was the one I least expected.
"Sometimes you slide onto a bad path without even noticing," I said. "By the time you've realized, you're stuck in the mire."
Ten seconds of silence. "What's 'mire' mean?"
"Like, a swamp."
"Oh." Noah paused. Another silence, though shorter this time. "Mom did tell me about Shelly, by the way."
"I figured."
"Do you miss her?" asked Noah.
"Yeah."
"Are you angry at her?"
"For leaving?
"Yeah," said Noah.
I shook my head. "You can't go through life angry, Noah. You'll miss everything good. You'll miss everyone good. Bad things will happen. How you deal with it will determine how good your life is."
I could see more questions in his eyes, but to his credit, he didn't ask them.
We had just turned onto Sixteenth, and were almost back to my place, when one of those stupid electric scooters flew past Noah, spinning him around and depositing him on his ass. He broke his fall with his hands, and as he stood up, he was grabbing at the fingers of his left hand.
"Fucking hate those things," I said, steadying him. "Should be illegal." I motioned toward his hand. "Let's see it."
There was a tremor in Noah's lip as he removed the pressure on his fingers. Immediately, a thin line of bright red blood began to drip onto the concrete.
"Can you make a fist?" I asked.
Noah flexed his fingers, coating his palm with blood in the process.
"I don't think anything's broken," I said. "We'll fix you up before you go home."
Noah continued to test his fingers, opening and closing them. As he did, his lip continued to tremble.
"For fuck's sake Noah, cry."
His eyes grew wide, then, perhaps surprised at all my "fucks" - I try not to curse around him - but then came the tears. Despite his age, he still cried like a child, with great, gasping sobs. Sometimes I wish I could still cry that way. I remember how good it used to feel, afterwards.
I was happy to discover that I was right: After all the blood was rinsed away, all that remained of Noah's wound was a single puncture to his index finger. It would heal quickly.
"Stupid fucking scooters," said Noah, testing my limits as I applied a Band-Aid to his finger.
I only smiled.
As we made our way from the bathroom into my living room, my pocket buzzed. I removed my phone, looked at the screen. "Your mom is outside."
"Oh, cool," said Noah. "Uh, don't tell her I cried?"
"Your mom has seen you cry, bud. But I won't."
And of course I didn't.
I followed Noah to the door.
"See you next Tuesday?" I said, half joking.
Noah stopped in the doorway, turned around. "Seriously?" he asked.
On the spot, I committed. "Sure. But you don't have to."
Noah looked at me for a full five seconds before replying.
"See you next Tuesday," he said.
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The thought of my 13-year-old nephew sitting rapt through such videos was nauseating.
"But what do you want me to do?" I texted my sister, following my "research."
"Show him real men. Good men."
She italicized the latter, as if "Good Men" was a movie we could book a screening for at the local cinema.
I had never before been asked to be an arbiter of moral clarity. I wondered if I was right for the role.
"I'll be in touch," I texted.
For the next few days, I racked my brains, attempting to come up with an activity that would show Noah good men being decent in an increasingly indecent age. Problem was, my life was pretty boring. I played bar trivia every Monday, and with good people, but somehow this didn't seem to reach the level my sister was aiming for. So Monday was out.
But Tuesday... Tuesday had potential.
The following Tuesday afternoon, my sister's silver minivan pulled into the parking lot of my apartment building. At 38, I still rented, unwilling to leave the absurdly cheap rent I'd locked in by moving to the city over a decade ago, before throngs of post-pandemic Zennials drove up prices. From the stoop, I watched as Noah got out of the van, trailing his backpack behind him like a ball and chain. My sister waved from the car, but did not get out.
Seeing Noah approach the steps softened my heart toward his plight - that plight being adolescence. As if middle school wasn't hard enough, Noah was small for his age. So was I, at thirteen. And fourteen. And fifteen. In fact, I grew several inches after high school. Twenty years of adulthood had ameliorated those old feelings of inadequacy, but not fully erased them.
"What's up, bud?" I asked Noah as he joined me on the stoop.
"Mmm," said Noah.
"Cool," I said.
I held the door open for Noah, and he followed me up the stairs to my apartment. Once inside, he set his bookbag on the floor, and collapsed onto a recliner. He was clearly annoyed, yet not quite comfortable enough with me to come out and say as much. We had been closer when he was little, back at the age when a child still looks toward adults with a bit of reverence. But since entering middle school, it had been all eyerolls and sighs.
Suddenly aware how messy my place was, I began straightening the sundry items on my coffee table, even though I knew Noah couldn't care less.
"Where's Shelly?" Noah asked.
"We split," I said. "Over a month ago. Figured your mom would've told you."
"No."
"Oh. Well, we did."
"Sorry," said Noah. "She was cool."
"She still is." I cleared my throat. "Don't get too comfortable. We aren't staying."
"Where are we going?" asked Noah cautiously.
"Gonna take a walk," I said.
Noah said nothing, and I could tell by this silence that he was nervous. My neighborhood, while charming, has a reputation for sordidness - one that has no doubt been amplified in the minds of suburbanites by the local news. In truth, I was okay seeing Noah squirm a bit, knowing he would never be in actual danger.
We left the apartment and began walking down Sixteenth Street, toward downtown. I made a point of avoiding Colfax Avenue, with its penchant for open drug use and occasional nudity. For the first five minutes, we walked in silence. It was December, but snowless. Mid-fifties. Every year the snow was coming to the city later. Concerning, no doubt, but also kind of nice.
"I know Mom told you about it," said Noah at length, and as the sun dipped behind the mountains, leaving the city wrapped in an ethereal glow. "I'm not dumb. This is punishment."
"Hanging with your uncle is punishment?"
No answer.
"I've never once thought you were dumb," I added.
"Whatever," scoffed Noah.
"Yes, she told me. Why would you say that to a friend?"
"Friend? It wasn't a friend, it was Molly Moncini. She called me a shrimp in front of half the grade. They're all like that."
"Who is?"
"The girls. They're all bitches."
"Your mother is a girl."
Eyeroll.
I was losing the exchange, and the narrative. I had no idea how to impress upon this aggrieved child that Alex Spate and his ilk were garbage. The one thing I knew wouldn't help was just coming right out and saying it. Such admonishment was as likely to endear the bastard to Noah as anything, because such was the logic of the teenage male. (And many adult males.) But the worst thing I could do was return Noah to his mother even more ensconced in the lure of incel putrescence, and so I had to keep trying.
"Whatever this girl said, she is one person," I offered. "Boy or girl, man or woman, people are individuals. You can't write off half the world because one girl was mean to you."
Noah offered no reply, and we walked in silence for fifteen minutes, until we arrived downtown, where Noah perked up a bit, his eyes bouncing between the buildings and the tent encampments.
"How do they survive the winter?" Noah asked, nodding toward a row of tents lining Park Avenue.
"I don't know," I answered honestly.
At last, after thirty minutes of walking, we came to a stop beneath a large neon cross bisected by the words JESUS SAVES, with the first "S" in Jesus pulling double duty.
"We're here," I said.
Noah stared at the sign skeptically. "What is it?" he asked.
"Denver Mission. They feed the homeless."
"Unhoused," corrected Noah.
"Right."
I had been expecting some pushback, now that my motives were revealed, but Noah seemed no less disgusted than any other time on our walk. In fact, he seemed curious. Pleasantly surprised, I held the door open for him, and he passed through.
There were already about thirty people gathered in the cafeteria, even though dinner was well over an hour away. We passed by the tables and headed into the kitchen, where some of the faces of the staff were familiar, though many were new. I had volunteered often enough over the years that they knew me, but I was not as regular as I should have been, this past year.
But Big Jim was there, as I knew he would be, and this was the most important thing. Big Jim was a mountain of a man - 6'3", heavily tattooed, with a long gray beard and bulbous belly. He was loud, swore like a sailor, and reeked of body odor. Everyone loved him. I could not think of a better antidote to toxic masculinity. He had been head cook at the mission for almost 20 years. It was the same mission where he himself had gotten sober, decades before.
Upon seeing me, Jim pulled me into a bear hug. "Was wondering when I'd see your mug again," he said.
Upon being released, I introduced Noah.
"Excellent," said Jim. "The next generation. I love it." He looked back to me, his eyes suddenly glistening under unruly eyebrows. "We lost Mikey," he said softly.
Mikey was a regular at the dinner. Had been for a decade - ever since I'd been in the city.
"What? How?" I asked. "He couldn't have been fifty."
"His disease got him," said Jim.
"He'd been clean for fifteen years," I said.
"Only takes once." Big Jim took a deep breath, then patted me on the back. "Let's get you two started on the carrots."
We followed Jim through rows of stainless steel appliances to a countertop littered with piles of raw vegetables waiting to be diced for stew. Jim patted a counter that held a mound of carrots over a foot tall.
"That's the most carrots I've ever seen," said Noah.
Big Jim beamed. "We appreciate you both," he said, before being called over to another station, and leaving Noah and I to our task.
"Do you want to wash or dice?" I asked.
"I'll wash," said Noah.
For such a little snot, Noah proved to be a good worker. He was fast, but thorough, piling up freshly cleaned carrots faster than I could cut them up.
And then, as we worked, a strange thing happened: Noah began to talk. And like most teenagers, the longer he talked, the younger he seemed. Moreover, once the stews were prepared, he stood proudly in the serving line, ladling soup to a grateful audience. He even made a bit of small talk as he served. By the time we left, he seemed to have forgotten his uncle was too embarrassing to associate with. Part of me assumed that it was something about the Mission itself that had loosened Noah's tongue, and that he would revert to his mopey self once we left. But I was wrong. The dike had burst, and now the kid wouldn't shut up.
During the trek home, and following a twenty-minute digression on FortNite, Noah paused, then cleared his throat.
"Why would Mikey have done drugs after being sober so long?" Noah asked.
Of all the questions he might have asked, it was the one I least expected.
"Sometimes you slide onto a bad path without even noticing," I said. "By the time you've realized, you're stuck in the mire."
Ten seconds of silence. "What's 'mire' mean?"
"Like, a swamp."
"Oh." Noah paused. Another silence, though shorter this time. "Mom did tell me about Shelly, by the way."
"I figured."
"Do you miss her?" asked Noah.
"Yeah."
"Are you angry at her?"
"For leaving?
"Yeah," said Noah.
I shook my head. "You can't go through life angry, Noah. You'll miss everything good. You'll miss everyone good. Bad things will happen. How you deal with it will determine how good your life is."
I could see more questions in his eyes, but to his credit, he didn't ask them.
We had just turned onto Sixteenth, and were almost back to my place, when one of those stupid electric scooters flew past Noah, spinning him around and depositing him on his ass. He broke his fall with his hands, and as he stood up, he was grabbing at the fingers of his left hand.
"Fucking hate those things," I said, steadying him. "Should be illegal." I motioned toward his hand. "Let's see it."
There was a tremor in Noah's lip as he removed the pressure on his fingers. Immediately, a thin line of bright red blood began to drip onto the concrete.
"Can you make a fist?" I asked.
Noah flexed his fingers, coating his palm with blood in the process.
"I don't think anything's broken," I said. "We'll fix you up before you go home."
Noah continued to test his fingers, opening and closing them. As he did, his lip continued to tremble.
"For fuck's sake Noah, cry."
His eyes grew wide, then, perhaps surprised at all my "fucks" - I try not to curse around him - but then came the tears. Despite his age, he still cried like a child, with great, gasping sobs. Sometimes I wish I could still cry that way. I remember how good it used to feel, afterwards.
I was happy to discover that I was right: After all the blood was rinsed away, all that remained of Noah's wound was a single puncture to his index finger. It would heal quickly.
"Stupid fucking scooters," said Noah, testing my limits as I applied a Band-Aid to his finger.
I only smiled.
As we made our way from the bathroom into my living room, my pocket buzzed. I removed my phone, looked at the screen. "Your mom is outside."
"Oh, cool," said Noah. "Uh, don't tell her I cried?"
"Your mom has seen you cry, bud. But I won't."
And of course I didn't.
I followed Noah to the door.
"See you next Tuesday?" I said, half joking.
Noah stopped in the doorway, turned around. "Seriously?" he asked.
On the spot, I committed. "Sure. But you don't have to."
Noah looked at me for a full five seconds before replying.
"See you next Tuesday," he said.
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