Juno Men - Back to 40

 

 

So, it's the fall of 2012, and I'm a senior in college and I get a call from my aunt that I don't know very well but has always been really nice to me. And she says, “Hey, I don't know what you're doing for Thanksgiving, but if you don't have plans, why don't you come out and hang out with me and my family?” I think Thanksgiving with a family sounds better Thanksgiving alone in my dorm. I'm excited about spending Thanksgiving with people, but I'm especially excited about connecting with family that I don't know super well. And so, I go out to Minneapolis, Minnesota for Thanksgiving that year, and it ends up being one of the best Thanksgivings I ever have. We go drinking, we see a basketball game, we watch movies, we go shopping, and we have an incredible Thanksgiving dinner. 

 

But the night that becomes emblematic of how good that week was was one evening, everyone else had gone to sleep, and my cousin, who I don't know super well, looks at me, his name is Alvin, and he says, “Hey, there's a casino about an hour away. [audience laughter] Do you want to go?” And I say, “Hell, yeah.” [audience laughter] So, we drive out to a casino at 01:00 in the morning an hour outside of Minneapolis, Minnesota, and we are ballers. [audience laughter] We go in with $20. And after half an hour, I'm sitting at a blackjack table, Alvin standing behind me, and I look at the fortune that we've amassed, and we have an incredible $30. [audience laughter] 

 

I look at Alvin and I say, “Should we go for $40?” And he says, “Hell, yeah.” [audience laughter] So, we keep playing. And $30 becomes $32, becomes $34. And if you're wondering, yes, it's $2 blackjack. [audience laughter] And that becomes $36, and that becomes $34, and that becomes $30, and that becomes $20, and that becomes $0. And then, the dealer looks at us and says, “Thank you for playing. But if you don't have any more money, you're going to have to leave.” So, we leave. 

 

On the walk out to the parking lot, I shove my hands in my pocket, and just before we get in the car, I find a chip, and it turns out we had been at $40 the entire time. But I don't really care that we don't make a lot of money, because for me, the mission had been accomplished. I connected with family, and that evening became a seminal moment in my relationship with my cousin, Alvin. And after that, we became indispensably connected to each other. 

 

We spent the next eight Christmases together, our families. He came to me after his graduation, and we did a week-long road trip in the Pacific Northwest. He was in the room with me and my family when we made the really difficult decision to put my dad on hospice care, and he was the first person that hugged me when I got off the stage after giving his eulogy. When I came out to him as transgender, it was really nerve wracking. The first thing he said was, “Is that all? [audience laughter] I thought you were going to tell me you were chronically ill. What can I do to support you?” 

 

I'm really excited about my connection with Alvin, because he is one of the coolest guys I've ever met. He is sociable, he is popular, he is an athlete in high school. He is professionally successful. He is very attractive and very good at dating, which I was not at the time. And on top of all of that, he's very kind and loving, and he cares about his family. I'm just honored to be part of his family. 

 

A couple of years later, our moms get into a fight and they have a falling out. I think families are messy. That's just what happens. But me and Alvin, we can figure this out. Me and Alvin are going to work together and we're going to figure out how to reconcile our mothers. And so, I send him some text messages and he doesn't respond. And then, I call him a couple of times and he doesn't respond. And then, after a couple of months, I realized that he's not talking to me. Families are messy. It makes me really sad and angry, and I spend a lot of months trying to figure out how to solve this situation, how to rein it back in, how do I reconnect with my cousin? 

 

I get sad, and I get angry, and I get frustrated, and I get anxious, and I get depressed and I do a lot of crying. And then, it dawns on me that what I'm feeling is not anger or sadness or anxiety. What I'm feeling is heartbreak, because I've just lost one of the great familial loves of my life. Alvin still hasn't talked to me in a really long time, and it makes me sad to think that this is all that's left of us. I don't know if he wants to reconnect with me and I don't know if he feels the same heartbreak that I do, but I do know that about a month ago, my aunt in Boston, Alvin's mom, where Alvin lives, called me and said, “I'm not sure what you're doing for Thanksgiving. But if you don't have plans, would you like to come out and spend it with us?” 

 

I don't know if Alvin and I are going to reconnect and I don't know if he's going to want to talk to me, but I do know I still have a chip [audience laughter] from a casino about an hour outside of Minneapolis, Minnesota. [audience laughter] When I see him, I'm going to give it to him and tell him that I hope that we can get back to $40 one day.