12.
Where Tyson Writes Bad Poetry
and Gawks at Frat Boys
THE DOORBELL rings in the Green Monstrosity, and I open my eyes. I’m alone in the bed. I don’t know where Kori went, but it looks like she’s been gone a long time. I am starting to drift to sleep when the doorbell rings again.
I groan and sit up, sliding my feet over to the edge of the bed. For a moment, they don’t quite reach the floor and it’s like I’m nine years old again, and I think I’m in the shitty apartment and I’ll look over and Bear will be sleeping on the bed next to mine and nothing will have changed. I’m upset with him, probably more than I’ve ever been in my life, but I don’t want things to go back the way they were. Not for me. But especially not for him.
But I’m not at our old apartment. I must be still half-asleep. I’m in my room at the Green Monstrosity. I’m where I was when I fell asleep.
The doorbell rings again.
“Bear?” I call out as I walk down the stairs.
There’s no answer.
“Otter?”
Nothing.
Someone knocks on the door. My hands are sweating, because I immediately go to the worse thought ever, that it’s going to be Dominic, he’s going to be in uniform, and he’s going to say, “I’m sorry, Kid. I’m sorry, but there’s been an accident.”
I throw the door open.
“Hi, Tyson,” Julie McKenna says. “Hi, honey. You’ve gotten so big!” Her smile falters slightly. “Do you remember me?”
And I’m nine years old again. I’m in that shitty apartment again. I’m waiting for Bear and Otter to come home. They’re hanging out without me, and although I understand the need for it, the why of it, I still can’t help but feel a bit left out. I may not understand completely, but I know my brother loves Otter and Otter loves my brother, and they need time away to make sure this works, because it has to work. I may be just a little guy, but I know this is Bear’s last chance to find what he needs, to find the last bits of his ragged sanity and hold them together so tightly they never drift apart. And if it’s Bear’s last chance, it means it’s mine too.
But here she is, Julie McKenna, and I am nine years old and I know she is going to take it all away from me, take back everything that we’ve built up over the past few months. And as I stand there, staring up at her, her smile starting to slip from her face, I remember the last time I’d seen her, when she’d driven me to Anna’s house, saying she had some things to do, some things that little boys such as myself could not be a part of.
I was five then, and as I sat in the backseat of the car whose paint was chipped and whose body was rusted, I thought to myself, Bear, oh Bear. Please come find me.
I’m nine now, and she asks me if she can come in, and I can’t think and I can’t move, and there’s an earthquake underneath my feet, and my mind shrieks BATHTUB.
I was five when she knocked on Anna’s door, my hand in hers, her fingernails scraping roughly against my skin. Anna answers the door, so much younger then, so pretty, and her eyes widen slightly when she sees us. She recovers quickly and smiles down at me, and such love swells in my heart because I know her. I know Anna.
I’m nine and my mother takes a step toward me and holds out her hands, and I know in my heart that she’s not trying to hug me, she’s trying to grab me and take me away. I’ll never see my friends again. I’ll never see my family again. I’ll never see Otter and Dominic (though this last causes a weird pulling sensation in my head, because I don’t know who Dominic is yet, but I still think his name). But it is my brother I think of the most. It is Bear. Bear is my life. He is my everything now. I am nine years old and I don’t know anything different. Without him, there would be no me. I know this down to my very bones.
I was five when my mother told Anna something had come up, that she needed Anna to watch me for a couple of hours. There was a strange lilt to her voice, as if she was distracted, talking from far away. I know Anna heard it, too, because a worried look crossed her face, but she pushed it aside and told my mother of course she would. Of course she could help.
“If it’s not me,” Julie said when I was five, “then Bear will pick him up.”
“I just came to see you,” Julie says when I am nine. “I came to see you because I missed you and I thought maybe we could talk. I thought maybe we could make it like it used to be, even for a little while. Wouldn’t you like that? Don’t you think we could do that?”
I back away and she must take it as an invitation, because she walks through the door and closes it behind her. “Where is your brother?” she asks, and I think, That’s why you’re here. That’s why you came back. Bear.
I was five years old when she leaned down in front of me and put her hands on my shoulders. I was five years old when she looked me in the eye and said, “You be good, okay?” And wasn’t there something in her eyes right then? Something so close to joy and freedom that it bordered on insanity? There was, but I was only five years old and I didn’t yet have the capacity to understand the sharp edges of the world. I didn’t yet understand that when you put your hand out, you could get bitten.
I am nine years old when I find my voice, and I shout for Mrs. Paquinn. I hear the worry in her voice as she calls back, and I run for her. I run for her even as my mother says my name behind me. Mrs. Paquinn has pushed herself up from the couch and opens her arms for me and I jump into them, because I’m just a little guy still, and things are changing. Once again, things are changing.
I was five years old while I stood on the porch of Anna’s house and watched my mother drive away. Her last words to me were I’ll see you later.
I am nine years old when she comes back for her own selfish reasons that I won’t know for years to come.
“Tyson,” she said when I was five.
“Tyson,” she says when I am nine.
I open my eyes and I am nineteen years old, lying in my bed, awoken from a dream, the dream I’m having more and more.
And for the first time in a long time, I continue to think about my mother long after the dream fades.
“YOU LOOK tired,” Corey tells me a few days later. We’re lying on the beach, a stretch of warm weather ahead of us, the sky a clear blue above. It’s the first sunny day we’ve had since I’ve come back home, and Corey’s not allowing me to wallow in my superimportant and totally reasonable angst alone in my room. He dragged me out, telling me that if he didn’t, soon I’d be pale, listening to Mary Chapin Carpenter, and writing sad poetry about how nobody understands my existence because nobody can understand the breaking of my heart like I was some overly emotional lovesick teenager.
Of course, I feigned outrage, telling him that I would never write angst-filled poetry, and even if I did, I was a teenager, so I could totally be forgiven. This, of course, was me lying through my teeth, as I’d already written the following on the back of an old protest flyer with a gnawed-on Bic pen, my soul poured into and piercing every single word:
Consternation, Thy Name Is Me
A Poem of Epic Proportions That Signifies My Current Life
(And Destroys Any Hopes For A Happy Future)
By Tyson Thompson
Oh, like the flowers in a field
my heart has unfurled for you.
Please take me as I am,
Something, something do-do-do
(I was having rhyming issues on that last part. Shut up.)
I’ll be there for you with all that I have.
For every moment of every single day.
It would be very helpful, though (for both our sakes)
if you could be like me, a super awesome gay.
(That last part was written to make me feel better. It worked. I am super awesome.)
It’d make life so much easier,
if only you could look at me see
that I am already gay for you (and everyone else).
So why can’t you be gay for me?
(Yes, I went there. Sorry. It’s not like my life is a book with chiseled headless torsos gracing the cover. I’m not chiseled, and I am pretty sure my torso is shaped funny. Which, as a side note, why are there always muscled men with abs and no heads? Don’t they own clothing? Can’t they stand far away enough from the camera to get their faces in the shot too? Don’t they ever get tired of doing crunches and sometimes just want to sit in a recliner in front of a TV and eat cookie dough straight out of the tube? It’s not like you look at it and go, “Wow. I am so glad that guy has an eight-pack and is standing in an awkward pose. Also, I am happy to know what his chin looks like but not the rest of his face. That’s going to let me enjoy the story more.”)
But alas! It is too much to ask.
You have spent your seed inside a female!
And now your loins have produced an heir!
That, per my estimate, is an extraordinary fail.
(Nothing against Ben, of course. Except for the fact that he exists.)
I curse and rue the day I met you!
My trust and love have been shattered!
Maybe we’re better off apart.
Woe! How I wish I could have mattered!
(Yikes, that.)
So here I sit, in my room,
my flower heart yet unfurled.
It has taken all of this for me to know
that I am all alone in the world.
If you thought that my poetry skills would have gotten better with age, well, then… I am glad you’re correct. My epic is epic.
But.
But!
I wasn’t playing any Mary Chapin Carpenter. I’m not that much of a lonely loser.
(I was playing Alanis Morissette’s Jagged Little Pill, natch.)
On second thought, it’s probably good Corey forced me out of my room. I might have ended up with my head in an oven the way I was going. Being a teenager sucks balls. I have too many feelings, and the weirdest things give me an erection. Like a strong breeze. Or fresh tofu. I know, I know. That’s weird and gross and dumb. How do you think I feel? My emotions are whack, and I get inappropriate boners. And I use words like boners. Why can’t I be in my forties with the beginnings of receding hair and an inevitable middle-age spare tire already? Life would be so much easier.
“I’m fine,” I say to Corey, as if the poem with all my feels doesn’t exist. “I haven’t been sleeping too well, but I’ll get over it.”
“Uh-huh,” he says in that way that tells me he’s not buying a single word coming out of my mouth. “Talked to Bear yet?”
Fuck Bear. Stupid fucking Bear. “Nope.”
“How about Otter?”
Fuck him too! “Nope.”
“I don’t suppose you’ve tried to call Dominic.”
Fuck him the most! “Of course not!” I scoff. “As if! Not hardly! I would never! The sheer audacity of such a question! How—”
“You just don’t know what to say, right?”
“He has a kid!” I shout. People laying out next to us look at me weird. I look back at them just as weird. “A child,” I say in a lower voice. “He came, he saw, he conquered that woman’s nether regions, and now he has something to show for it!”
“I still don’t know exactly what you’re pissed off about,” Corey says, spreading sunblock on his brown shoulders. “The having a kid part? The you not knowing part? The people not telling you part? The fact that you want to have relations with him part? The fact that he’s straight part? Help me, Tyson. Tell me what it is.”
“Pretty much all of it,” I admit.
“Ugh. Your teenage emotions are drowning me.”
“You’re only a couple years older than me,” I remind him.
“And with age comes sophistication and maturity,” he says with a sniff. “Of which I have both in spades. I don’t understand your tiny little world anymore. I’ve grown up.”
“What about the Starbucks guy?”
“I’m positive I have no idea of what you speak.”
“For a month straight before we came back here,” I remind him, “you made me go to Starbucks every day so that you could stare at Lorenzo the barista. You squealed at him when he remembered that you didn’t want whipped cream on your Frappuccino.”
“Lorenzo,” Corey says with a sigh. “My summer fling that never was. And it never was because I had to come back here with you, watch as family revelations are revealed, and then deal with your emo fallout. Thank you. Thank you so much for this.”
“Can we talk about me some more?”
“As long as I can watch those boys play volleyball while we do it.”
I follow his gaze and see miles of male college flesh a bit down the beach, knocking a ball over the net with drunken laughter. Yeah. They have abs. Goddammit.
“I need to work out more,” I mutter.
“You don’t work out at all,” Corey says.
“I’m vegetarian. It makes me naturally lithe.”
“Do people still use the word ‘lithe’ in conversation?”
“I just did.”
“You’re not people. You’re Tyson. That’s worlds apart. I’d take the one on the end.”
Of course he would. The guy is bigger than all the rest, and his chest hair looks like an out-of-control afro.
“My God,” I mutter. “How on earth did we ever date? I’m the shortest guy you know and I had a single chest hair once that turned out to be a string from my shirt.”
“You were what I needed,” he says. “At the time. Who knew it’d get so much better after?”
“I suppose.” It really had, though it took me time to see it. But he won’t hear that from me right now. It’s too easy.
He hands me the sunblock. “Do me.” He turns his back to me so he can get lathered and still watch the volleyball players getting all sweaty and smacking each other in the ass. One reaches out and tweaks his friend’s nipple, and they all laugh uproariously. Sometimes there’s nothing gayer than a straight guy.
“This feels like we’re about to star in a porno,” I say as I rub the lotion onto his back.
“Weirder things have happened. Though, I don’t know if you want to lose your virginity in a gang bang.”
“I’m not a virgin.”
“Tyson, you’ve never fucked anyone. You’ve never been fucked. You’re a virgin.”
“What about that one thing we did on the floor in your apartment?”
He laughs quietly. “That was good. But that wasn’t sex.”
“What? Then what was it?”
“That was you rubbing on top of me and then coming in your jeans.”
Wow. It’s always good to know the hottest moment in your life can be reduced to rubbing and squirting. I wish I had no morals or scruples so I could have had sex with like at least thirty-six people by now in my lifetime. That’s what college is supposed to be for! Drinking and fucking and doing large piles of cocaine and waking up in someone’s bed with a condom still on your dick, unable to remember what exactly happened the night before. Well, sort of. Maybe not the cocaine part. Or the thirty-six people part. Or the drinking part. That all sounds exhausting. And also, I’d feel bad for not remembering who I just fornicated with. That seems like a jerk move. I suppose I’d have to ask him his name, and he’d probably want to go get bagels or coffee, and then I would feel bad again and agree. He would take me out and never stop talking about football or cricket or whatever it is red-blooded American boys play these days, and eventually, it’d be fifty years later and I’d look across the table at him as he slurps his soup in that way that I hate and he’d ask me if I’d pass the pepper and I’d scream at him that I want the last fifty years of my life back! And he would look at me with dull eyes and then start reminiscing about the one year the Atlanta Seahawks (or whatever the football/cricket team is called) won the Super Bowl or Stanley Cup or whatever and I would realize then that this was it. This was my life.
“I’m not going to do cocaine because of the Seahawks,” I tell Corey. “I don’t want to be a slut in a bad marriage.”
“I’m not even going to pretend to understand what that means,” he replies. “You know, it’s scary sometimes how much you’re like your brother.”
“I am not,” I say with a scowl.
“It’s part of your charm.”
“Bear is not charming.”
“He’s adorable.”
“Gross. Stop talking about my brother that way.”
He shrugs. “It’s the truth. I bet it’s hot when he and Otter fu—”
“You foul beast,” I hiss at him. “That’s disgusting!” As far as I’m concerned, Bear and Otter are eunuchs and live together in a loving but completely platonic relationship.
“I feel like I should be paying to watch this,” he says as one of the volleyball dudes grabs another dude’s junk and laughs. “Straight guys make no sense.”
I flop down on my back. “So, I’m a desperate virgin spending his summer at his old home with nothing to look forward to, and I’ll be alone for the rest of my life because no one will ever love me and I’ll probably develop some hideous growth on my face from all this sun.”
“Probably,” Corey says, lying down beside me on his stomach. He turns his head toward me. “I’ll love you, but it’ll be from a distance because I’m not good with facial growths. Also, I really hope you realize how pathetic you sound and that you’re just attempting to be ironic. Teen angst isn’t what it used to be.”
I do. And it sucks. I haven’t spoken to Bear in days. Or Otter. Or anyone else other than Corey, angry and sure they all had conspired against me somehow to keep me out of the loop from knowing that my former best friend has a kid. What right did they have to do that? What right did they have to keep this from me?
Well, it whispers, not that you did a whole lot over the past four years to keep track of Dominic. As a matter of fact, one might say you went out of your way to avoid mentioning or even thinking about him. Right? Didn’t you just cut him out like he was nothing? Exactly what he said you did. And don’t forget how weak and fragile you are, which is why no one told you a thing about him. Poor Tyson! He doesn’t know how to breathe and everything falls down around him, and just like the Kid he is, he ends up in the bathtub because that’s all he knows how to do.
For fuck’s sake. “Life is hard.” Well, harder than it should be. And I’m probably making it harder. Blargh.
“Oh boy,” Corey says. “You want some advice?”
“No. I can figure this out on my own.”
“Okay,” he says. He closes his eyes.
I last about three seconds, but I think he knows it’s coming.
“Give me your damn advice,” I grumble.
He opens his eyes again. “You’re emotionally stunted.”
“That’s not advice. That’s insulting and you being a jerk.”
“It’s not insulting. It’s merely stating fact. And I am not a jerk. I am the light of your life.”
“A very dim light that’s threatening to burn out.”
“Brighter than everything else you know,” he assures me.
“How am I emotionally stunted?” I’m trying to sound offended, but we all know it’s true. With the shit I’ve been through in my life, I have to be stunted somewhere, I’m sure. At least it’s emotionally and not physically. I don’t know how much harder life would be if I were a dwarf. Or a midget. Or whatever is politically correct these days. Little person? Height-challenged? Elf?
“I could have said emotionally fucked up.”
“Gee. Thanks for your tact. It’s appreciated more than I could say.” I’m going to throw sand in his face and cackle as he screams in his blindness. That will show him.
“You’re welcome. Are you going to listen or not?”
“You could be nicer.”
“See? Emotionally stunted.”
“I have a mental deficiency,” I remind him. “Proven by therapy and all. I could so very easily snap if you continue to antagonize me.”
He snorts. “That’s got nothing to do with it. It’s simple, really.”
“How do you figure?”
“You have questions.”
“Right.” I hate that he knows me so well. And I hate that I do have questions. Questions mean there are things I don’t know. I don’t like not knowing things.
“Other people have answers.”
“I suppose.”
“Logically, one of these things can lead to the other.”
“Logically, sure.”
“You’re being difficult,” he says with a sigh.
“Intentionally so,” I admit. “But it’s not as easy as you’re making it sound.”
“It’s not as hard as you’re making it out to be.”
I groan. “Goddammit. I said that exact same thing to my brother once. A long time ago. Jesus, as if I needed any more evidence that I’m Bear Part Two. How depressing.” There is no hope for me.
“That’s not so bad, you know. Being your brother.”
“That’s what you think.”
“He’s got a good head on his shoulders.”
“I wouldn’t quite put it that way. Unless you only meant literally.”
“He’s in a stable and loving relationship.”
“Otter has the patience of a saint. And Bear’s probably a witch and trapped him with a tongue of newt and eye of porpoise.”
“He’s ready to start a family.”
“Oh God, don’t remind me. I’m pretty sure it’s a sign of the apocalypse when Bear Thompson considers breeding. Can you imagine the children? It’s going to be all Village of the Damned.” You think I’m joking, but I really don’t know how I feel about it. Not on a personal level, of course, but more on a global scale. It’s not that hard to imagine Bear becoming the leader of a cult made up of his offspring. At the very worst, it would mean the end of the world. At the very best, they would never stop talking. It’s better for me to think globally rather than personally. I’m too much of a selfish asshole to be truly happy about it yet.
“How do you think he and Otter are going to pick a woman?” Corey asks, eyeing the college boys again with a weird look in his eyes. I swear he’s about to display his plumage and dance like a peacock ready to mate. I’m not jealous about that. At all. Not even a little bit.
“Probably through some long, overly convoluted process that will have no bearing on the final result.” And knowing my brother, it might be a long time before that ever happens, so I have time to get it straight in my head. Because it’s all about me, apparently. I really need to get my priorities straight.
“I’m pretty sure there are agencies out there that have women ready to be inseminated. You sign up and then review each woman before deciding on one to get pregnant. It’s all very clinical.”
I make a face. “So it’s like a baby-making farm? That’s inhumane!” In my head, I see a row of women hooked up to some kind of machine inserted into their wombs attached to a delivery device ready to receive my brother’s deposits.
Corey sounds amused when he says, “You know, for how smart you are, you can be pretty dumb sometimes.”
I ignore him because I’ve already gotten going. “This is how it starts, you know. Baby-making farms. Pretty soon, babies will be genetically bred to specifications, and we’ll all lose our humanity in the process. The machines will rise and the world will be thrown into chaos until a ragtag band of mercenaries rise up and fight back.” I pause, considering. “I may have seen too many sci-fi movies with Otter.”
“Undoubtedly.”
But now that I’m thinking about it, I can’t stop. “And why do the women in this baby-making farm do it? They get paid, I’m sure, but why would they want to get pregnant over and over again? It’s got to be, like, an addiction, right? Like to drugs. Or like that one guy on that TV show, where he was addicted to licking his cat’s fur.”
Corey rolls his eyes. “Obviously, it has nothing to do with the joy of giving others a family.”
“No one’s that altruistic,” I say with a scowl. “There is something more sinister behind this. I think Bear and Otter should hold off until I can get to the bottom of it.”
“And they do it because they’re addicted like the cat-fur licker?”
“Exactly.”
“So just so I can make sure I have this right, if Bear and Otter try to have kids, it will lead to the baby-making farm machines rising up and take over the world?”
“That’s a broad generalization, but you have the gist of it.”
“Gee, lucky me. And when they do have the kids, they will be some kind of white-haired, blue-eyed spawn of Satan.”
“With a lust for blood and flesh that will never cease.”
“And this has nothing to do with your personal feelings at all.” Whether he is asking or telling me, I don’t know.
“What? How dare you!” Of all the nerve! “Of all the nerve! Of course not. I just want them to think things through before they start the end of the world. I really don’t think that’s too much to ask.”
He looks at me and his eyes narrow. “You did it again.”
“Did what?” I ask innocently as I bat my lashes.
“Oh no. Don’t you try and look at me like that. You know exactly what you did.”
“I’m so tired,” I say as I yawn. I stretch to prove to him just how tired I am. “I may just take a nap right here on the beach. Watch over me so my virginity isn’t spoiled while I sleep. My precious flower is important to me.”
“Tyson James Thompson!”
Goddammit. “Blah, blah, blah.”
“You got me to change my own subject!”
“I didn’t make you do anything.”
“We were talking about Dominic.”
“I don’t know what you’re speaking of.” I yawn again. Gosh, I sure am tired!
“You’re slightly manipulative. Has anyone ever told you that?”
“Look! The college boys are giving in to their urges and touching each other’s buttholes!” They’re not really, but with the way they’re groping each other, I’m sure one has accidentally slipped a finger in. It’s not as hard to go into a butt as one might think. Well, at least I don’t think so. I’m not exactly an expert on the matter. How depressing.
I can tell he almost wants to look, but somehow he manages to keep his eyes on me. I make a mental note that this is the first time Corey was able to resist my powers and I must take him out before he can become any more powerful.
“Fascinating,” he says. “Back to questions.”
“Strike you down, motherfucker,” I mutter.
“If you strike me down, I shall become more powerful than—”
“Don’t you dare!” He told me once that he didn’t really understand the love and adoration of Star Wars. I very seriously considered at that moment trying to get him evicted from this planet. He tries to quote it every now and then to piss me off. People who don’t appreciate Star Wars are adding nothing to humanity and should seriously consider repositioning their priorities.
“Jar Jar Binks said that, right?”
“I will fuck you up, you blasphemous cretin.” And I will too. In the face.
“Tyson.”
“What?”
“You have questions. About Dominic. He has answers. Talk to him. It’s that simple.”
“It’s not.” It really is, but I can’t let Corey win that easily. The greatest moments in life are the ones you work hardest to achieve. You can quote me on that.
He sighs. “Emotionally stunted.”
“How does that make me emotionally stunted?”
“Some guy broke your heart. Boo hoo. Poor you.”
“Shut up, Corey.” Now I’m getting pissed.
“Poor Tyson! He loved and it wasn’t returned, and so he ran away and stayed away.”
I wish I smoked, so I would have a lighter, as I would give very real consideration to lighting his ridiculously tiny swim shorts on fire. I tell him as much. He responds that he wishes I smoked as well, because then I would probably have tiny little burn scars down my arm where I’d burned myself because I have so much angst and that I have the emotional maturity of a twelve-year-old. I laugh and contemplate out loud how much it would hurt if I decided to punch him in the mouth. He laughs along with me, pointing out that if I were to decide to punch him, he probably wouldn’t feel it because my arms are desperately lacking any sort of muscle definition. I demur, reminding him that I’d lifted weights (failing to bring up that I was super bored by the whole concept and lasted only five minutes, in which I spent the majority of that time wondering why people spent an inordinate amount of time in the gym when they could be off doing much more productive things like curing cancer). He did not fail to bring up how I’d only gone the one time, reminding me that I’d complained loudly the whole time, all the while lifting the pink five-pound barbell weight above my head like I was some kind of soccer mom attempting to get that stubborn sagging in her front to disappear so her husband would stop looking at the secretary with the bodacious breasts from his office. This, of course, leads to a discussion that one, the barbell weighed more than five pounds and that it was most certainly not pink (it weighed seven pounds and was purple) and that two, no one in their right mind should ever consider using the word “bodacious” in any kind of conversation, as it brings a complete lack of civility to the proceedings and therefore shows that any point the user of the word might have attempted to have is totally without merit and will not be considered.
“We have a very odd friendship,” he tells me.
“We’re very odd people,” I remind him.
“I love you, Tyson.”
Aw. Warm fuzzies. “I know. I love you too.” I’m not mad anymore.
“You know I’m right.”
Warm fuzzies gone. Stupid bitch. I’m so pissed off. “I know nothing of the sort.”
“Tyson.”
“I know!”
“You don’t have to spend the rest of your life wondering.”
“I wouldn’t.”
“You would.”
I really would. “I don’t even know how to start.” How does one repair years of idiocy when one still wants to act like an idiot? This is not a question I’ve had to ask myself before. I don’t normally play the role of the idiot. That’s not conceit, just fact.
Well, maybe a bit of conceit.
“Knocking on his door would probably be a good way to go.”
I laugh nervously. “I can’t call him first?”
“Where’s the fun in that?” he asks with an evil gleam in his eye. “And you’d chicken out.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I know you.”
Well, that’s a super bummer. “Shit.”
“Pretty much.”
“This is probably the worst idea you’ve ever had.”
“Probably.”
“This is probably going to set me back at least three years, and if you think I’m emotionally stunted now, then just you wait.”
“Probably.”
“This is probably going to be my tipping point, and I’ll lose it completely and end up in a psychiatric ward, rocking in the corner of my room, and the only times I’ll be let out are when I have to go to electroshock therapy that will do nothing but further send me down the cavernous black hole that is my decimated psyche.”
“Probably.”
“Won’t you just feel so guilty at the sight of me?”
“Probably.”
“You’re still going to make me do it, aren’t you?”
“Definitely.”
A ball bounces in front of us, kicking up bits of sand. “Hey,” one of the college boys with thirty-seven abdominal muscles calls. “Toss it back?”
Corey stands and does just that. It’s a good throw, and Corey looks good doing it.
“You want in?” the non-gay college boy asks with a completely flirtatious smile as he sizes Corey up.
“In more ways than one,” Corey calls back. The college boys laugh and wave him over. Oh, college boys. You’re so progressive.
“You okay to stay here?” he asks me.
I roll my eyes. “I think I’ll survive while you go join the pseudo-hetero parade. Also? I’m insulted that instead of asking me if I wanted to join, you assumed I wanted to stay here.”
“Do you want to join?”
“Ew. They’re all sweating. Of course not. How dare you ask me.”
“Do you think one of them will give me a piggyback ride if I ask?”
“I’m pretty sure they’d do a lot more if you ask. Straight guys are so gay.”
“Think about what I said, okay? About Dominic.”
“Bite me,” I grumble at him. I don’t plan on doing anything of the sort. As soon as Corey goes on the prowl, I’m going to take the car keys and leave him here and cross into Canada to begin my long-standing dream of becoming the French-Canadian Zamboni driver named Pierre. Nothing will stop me. Nothing will keep me from realizing my dream. Nothing at all.
And then he says something so stupid, something so ridiculous, something so fucking life-altering, that I can’t even begin to process what it means, and my dreams of becoming a Zamboni driver disappear as if they were never there at all. “And besides,” he says, “I’m pretty sure he’s at least bisexual. You were too busy resolutely ignoring him to see, but his eyes never left you the day we got arrested. He watched you like you were the only thing that existed in the world. For him, I’m pretty sure you were. For at least those moments. Who knows what could happen?”
I gape at him as my synapses misfire. I’m pretty sure I can smell the burning coming from inside my head.
“Close your mouth, dear,” he says. “It’s unattractive.”
“You… there’s… motor skills failing….”
“Don’t read too much into it,” he warns. “It could be nothing.”
“You… bastard….”
He sighs. “I knew I should have kept that to myself.”
All I can do is nod in agreement.
Corey leaves to go play gayball, and I am left to ponder that just when I think everything is going well, that I have my life in order and things are looking up, all of a sudden I find myself in a position where I am so completely and utterly fucked.
It’s inevitable, it whispers, sounding just like Dominic.