Malcolm in the Middle: one-shots

Where Are They Now? Reese

"Head janitor." That may not sound like much to most people, but to me, those two words pleased me because I finally got to be in charge of something, and at my old high school where I had to repeat my senior year (I chose to do so, though I wasn't exactly a model student, because I didn't want to think about what came next), no less. I was also part of a union, which meant that I received all kinds of benefits that I wouldn't have gotten otherwise, so this was essentially my dream job. I actually enjoyed cleaning up the messes, the grosser, the better (though they were never as gross as the one I purposely made to prolong my initial 30 days on the job that ended up spilling on my whole family), and even better than that was yelling at students to get out of the way or pushing the wide mop down the hallway to show the same.

About two years into the job, I started thinking about going to culinary school because I had always enjoyed cooking and others seemed to enjoy it, and I saved up enough money from my job to pay for tuition. I was doing extremely well at first, resisting my ever-present urge to do things like put chili powder in a classmate's cake or "help" a classmate by putting in far more salt than was needed, but then the "blowtorch incident," which I do not care to explain in detail, happened and I got kicked out.

This meant that most of my job prospects in the world of food were down the drain, but I still had an idea for a way to make food and earn money: in 2010, I started a custom cake business called CAAAAAAKES, yes, in all caps with that many As. Business was slow at first because I didn't really have a good handle on advertising or running a business in general, but things got better once I tried to get the word out.

Fortunately, I was able to keep my job as a janitor because no one at the high school ever found out about the blowtorch incident or that I was the one who put the peepholes in the bathroom a few years before and not the previous janitor (that lie was what got me the job!), and to this day, I still can't believe no one ever figured it out, so I count this as a job well done.

I lived with Craig, the assistant manager at Lucky Aide, until 2011, when he got married and kicked me out. It was fun living with him because he was like a big brother, but he had a few annoying habits like singing songs from A Chorus Line in the shower and staying around and butting in whenever I had a date. After that, I found my own apartment and lived in there by myself, which was fine because I could blast wrestling on the TV as loudly as possible and cook what I wanted without having to worry about someone else not liking it or hogging the leftovers, kind of like when I was kicked out after the cat incident (which I also do not care to explain) in high school, but this time around, I was financially independent and didn't have to steal Dad's credit card to get by.

CAAAAAAKES remained a thriving business for several years, to the point where pretty much all I did after I finished a day of being a janitor was bake cakes, and I was glad to earn that extra money, because you can't get a brick pizza oven or a 92-inch flat screen TV on a janitor's salary.

I stayed in contact with Malcolm after we moved out, because though I spent years torturing him every way I could and he did some pretty nasty things to me in return, I still called him as often as I could because I missed him, though I never thought I would and he thought the same. He was my closest brother in age, and though naturally, we were sworn enemies because our personalities differed and brothers are supposed to fight, he stuck up for me all the time and I tried to stick up for him. As for Dewey, who had been the baby of the family until Jamie was born, I was a little intimidated because he had taken over my position as the primary troublemaker of the family now that me and Malcolm were gone, but I still kept in contact with him anyway.

CAAAAAAKES became so successful that I opened a bakery after quitting my job as a janitor, and though my parents were suspicious because they thought the cakes would contain drugs or unusual spices, Dad took ten cupcakes on the first day and ten more the next.

As for my love life, I came out as gay in 2013. For many years, I made gay jokes because that was the popular thing to do and I said things like "no one calls me gay and gets away with it," but in all truth, I was too afraid to say that I had feelings for boys and the ladies' man persona I had in high school was just a sad attempt to copy my male peers. All the times I bullied my younger brothers and people who were different didn't just happen because I was a jerk and a rebel anyway, it was because I was insecure and I needed to let it out on someone who I thought would be vulnerable.

I took advantage of a bunch of girls that I wasn't even attracted to in the first place and spent some of my money on magazines with photos of barely-dressed women that didn't stir up any kind of feelings other than the fear of Mom finding them, because I didn't want anyone to find out the truth and I had been in denial for a long time. I had never seen any gay men like me on TV either, where most of them were stereotypes, and though I liked cooking and baking, which are often thought of as "feminine" (though most of the big chefs you see on TV are male), I didn't feel like I was truly gay because I never fit any of the stereotypes, since I preferred extreme sports and the Vans Warped Tour to Broadway musicals and pop divas.

My parents fully supported my coming out without problems, because of course, they'd care more if I did something to hurt them. My brothers also took it very well (I knew Malcolm would because when our annoying neighbour manipulated me and him into thinking the other was gay, he accepted me as if the lie was true), and now that we were no longer together, we were able to realize how much we actually supported and missed each other. It also helped that in 2013, people were more open to differences than they were when I was a teenager, but honestly, I think that my parents would have still accepted me anyway because they wouldn't tolerate discrimination towards other groups.

In 2015, I married my husband, Brian, who I met through a mutual friend. Brian's story was very similar to mine in several ways, because he played the field with girls in high school just so he could try to prove to himself that he wasn't gay, and he spent much of his teen years pulling pranks and getting into trouble, even going to juvie after stealing all the Doritos from a vending machine by picking the lock.

Dad paid twenty dollars on NoPainOrdain.com to lead the ceremony while Malcolm and Francis were co-best men, Mom helped me plan the whole thing, Jamie was the ring bearer, my little sister Chelsea, who was born after I moved out, was the flower girl, and Dewey was the organist. Though Grandma gave a toast saying she hated having a "homosexual" in her family (you should have seen Mom's reaction!) and Dad did an embarrassing dance during the reception, it was nice to see my family come together in support of me rather than tearing me down.

If I thought that my family was dysfunctional (though I contributed to it quite a bit), Brian's family was a million times worse, because they all fought loudly during the whole wedding and his parents even smooshed the wedding cake on each other's faces, something that my parents would never do to each other, not even on bad days.

CAAAAAKES went out of business in 2014 because I kept impulsively spending the money I had earned on things I wanted rather than things that were necessary to keep it going, and I was evicted from my apartment for this reason. I was able to find a job at a pizza restaurant after, where they didn't care that I was kicked out of culinary school, and I decided to not be so careless with my money after that. I ended up working at a 50s-style diner when the pizza restaurant closed in 2017, which wasn't ideal, but at least it involved food preparation. However, I was fired from there after an incident where I took some roller skates that the servers used to get around and purposely rode them across a newly waxed floor after hours, breaking my nose and several other parts of me in the process, and it was then that I finally realized that I was a married man in my 30s and I didn't need to do things like this anymore.

Currently, me and Brian are co-owners of a restaurant called Blellow (we couldn't really think of a good name, so I came up with the name of a color I had "invented" when playing with Malcolm's chemistry set years ago) where he handles the business aspects and I'm the head chef, and though it took a very long time for us to even find an affordable space and the pandemic made things harder (even with the online ordering option), we're still open now and we are the twenty-third-best restaurant in the area according to Yelp.