[ 6 ]
The scent of smoke, sweat, and barbeque precedes the party by about three blocks. I admit, my shift at work was not that long tonight, but here I am slumping down a dark street to Kirkland’s fat pad of sin. And I’m still in my work uniform, which consists of khakis, brown belt, loafers and a white chest-hugging polo with nametag. I couldn’t look dorkier if I tried. Even my hair’s parted because, well, I can’t stand to make a bad impression, even at my day job of the past however-many-years.
I find Trent on the porch with Steve.
“Hey, fuckface,” says Trent, raising the bottle he’s drinking as if in a toast. “You’re finally here, I see. Why so late?”
“Had to close because Pete didn’t show up, otherwise I would’ve been here an hour ago.” I squint through the window where likely everyone under the age of twenty-five in this godforsaken town has gathered. And maybe a few much younger, too. “Why does it smell like horse poop?”
“We drank up all the soda and the punch that Emma brought over,” Trent goes on while Steve just stares at me with red, drunken eyes, “but there’s Miller in the mini-fridge.”
I nod at the pair of them. “Appreciated. I’ll be back.”
I need to be drunk if I want to get through this. Like, super drunk. Like, fall on my face, fuck-off, lips-against-the-floorboards drunk.
Inside, the house looks like the electric bill wasn’t paid. A dark entryway (with a couple making out by the stairs) spills into a den area where about seven people are all over the couch, illuminated by the glow of a TV. I can’t and don’t want to be able to see what they’re doing to each other, judging from the wet sounds I hear. Further in the house, the larger living room is flooded with dancing fools, and the farthest wall overlooks a backyard through tall floor-to-ceiling windows.
“Where the fuck’s the kitchen?” I mutter to myself, pushing through the crowd of half-standing, half-gyrating bodies toward an archway that I pray leads me into the kitchen. Instead, it leads me to the dining room where two girls are seated at the table, chatting.
When one of them catches my eye, my stomach drops. “Hi,” I say to Sandy, my date from the other night.
“Hello, Benny.” She regards me coolly, her lips squeezed into a permanent smirk. Her friend, a girl with a sideways ponytail, simply watches me as though I were the menacing dog who happened on a pair of kittens.
“Having a—a—a good time?” I finally get out, inching my way through the room.
“Marginally,” answers Sandy. The friend remains silent as a crypt.
“Great.” I force myself to smile at them both. My transparent, cheesy politeness goes unreturned. “I didn’t have a chance to change after work, otherwise I’d—”
“You look fine.” The friend interrupts, lifting her brows at me. Sandy gives her a quick, disapproving nudge with her elbow. The friend, after a glance at Sandy, clears her throat and draws silent.
I nod at them. “Gonna grab myself a beer. I’ll see you two later.”
Knowing full well that at least one of them has no desire to see me later, I say it anyway, then move into the kitchen.
Pressed into the counter by the sink are three guys in jeans. One of them’s shirtless, sporting a distractingly nice set of abs, and the other two wear t-shirts. The tall one to the left has a cowboy hat on and a beer in his hairy fist. He’s first to look at me, but doesn’t greet me in any way except for a suspicious squint. The other two are occupied in conversation … or maybe it’s more of an argument about something to do with barbells.
“Excuse me,” I say as I draw near the tall one who’s leaning on the fridge. He shifts his weight to the counter next to him as I pull open the door. Nothing but cheese and a gallon of milk and a bin of potatoes meets my eyes. I frown.
“Mini-fridge’s upstairs,” says the tall one, “if you’re looking for the good stuff.”
“At this point I’m looking for any stuff.” I meet his eyes, shutting the fridge. I extend a hand. “I’m Benny.”
“I know. We went to school together, just never talked is all. You got—?” Then, he cuts himself off, distracted by a girl passing through the kitchen. She gives him a onceover, smiles, then disappears into the doorway connecting back into the den with the TV. “You got … Sorry, forgot my dang question. That lady was fine.”
Straight guys and their dicks. “No prob.”
“Dude, there’s so many fine chicks here,” one of the other guys—the shirtless one—says. “Never even seen half of them before. Tony, if we don’t get laid tonight—”
“Good point,” the tall one I was talking to, Tony, says, then excuses himself wordlessly from the kitchen in pursuit of the girl.
The two at the sink watch him go off, then drop back into their conversation as if I’m not even here. What I wouldn’t give to draw as much of their attention as the pretty girls do. What I wouldn’t give to not be so pathetically dependent on Trent’s approving glances and smiles and laughter … to have any hot guy of my choice at this party, the shirted and the shirtless ones. I give another doleful onceover of the young dude’s abs, feeling a pang of desire stir my heart. He doesn’t notice my ogling, which is both fortunate and unfortunate. No hot dude ever seems to notice me, not in the way I want to be noticed.
Pity party for one. I abandon the kitchen, pass through the den of eerily quiet souls and ascend the stairs to the second floor. Leaning over the banister is another pair of guys staring down at the selection of girls dancing in the living room. One of them comments about a pretty one in a pink dress, to which the other makes an obscene show of humping the banister, I guess to portray to his buddy what exactly he plans to do with her, despite it looking like he’s ramming some dude in the ass. Or maybe it’s just my oversexed mind.
The game room on the second floor has a pool table that is being used for anything but a proper game. Bottles and cans line its perimeter, and a pair of guys that can’t be older than sixteen or so are seated atop it, talking to one another and stealing glances at the other young girls across the room who are laughing about something.
Boys with girls. Girls with boys. This is all my life is full of in this fucking town. When I was in high school suffering the same fate, school dance after school dance after school dance, I was convinced that my life would change when I graduated. I dreamed a hundred dreams of what my college experience would be like, about the freedom I’d exercise, about the boys I’d meet and the love I’d find. Instead, I took Trent with me, and he was the dangerous light bulb toward which my stupid moth self was inevitably lured. I spent those almost-two college years being boy-blind, then dropped out with him and returned home with nothing to show but a list of half a hundred things I swore I’d do when I left … and didn’t.
Ah, there it is. “Pardon me, ladies.” I make for the mini-fridge near them. They draw quiet and seem to just watch me as I feel around for a bottle, then pull it out and snap off the top. “Thanks.” I give them a smile, then take a swig. Reconsidering, I grab another bottle for later, then dismiss myself from the game room to let the boys resume their dumb fascination with the two pretty girls they’re obviously too chicken shit to approach. Just fuck each other already, I have more than half a mind to shout.
The same two guys are at the banister still, staring down at the crowd of dancers. So many people from town are here, I wonder if Charlie is among them. With Steve poised on the porch like some ugly watchdog, I doubt he’d let Charlie through the doors. The thought angers me, even if I’m not super attracted to Charlie or excited about his presence. For some reason, the fact that Charlie even exists in a town like this gives me a bizarre, unknowing strength. It makes me feel like I’m not alone, even if Charlie and I are so … unalike. We at least have that one thing in common, even if Charlie himself isn’t aware. Thinking of him makes me feel the gentle touch of a hand on my inner thigh and, frustratingly, I feel my cock stir. Not now, dummy.
I take another swig from the bottle. Fuck it all. I’m so alone.
The music has grown louder somehow, and when I poke a finger through the blinds in the front entryway, I notice Trent’s missing and only Steve sits out there now, staring out at the nothingness in the street. His brown-booted foot is propped up on the porch railing and a cigarette dangles from his left hand. I sneer at him through the window, then release the blinds and walk away, wondering where Trent’s gone.
Just as always, I’m puppy-dogging the focal point of my existence, my rope and tether, my black hole of a crush that is ruefully named Trent. Where the fuck did he go? He’s not in the den with the creepy TV-watchers and whatever-else-have-you’s. Unless he slipped into a bedroom, he’s not upstairs. I doubt he’s in the kitchen because there’s no beverages left there.
I move through the living room, deciding to give the backyard a combing-over. The guys, who don’t look old enough to be drinking, are generally at one end of the living room, chatting, joking, some of them dancing stupidly, but most of their eyes are shooting arrows of desire at the spread of girls across the room, hoping any of their arrows stick. Regular cupids, all of those dumb fucks. The girls are just as stupid, doing the same thing. They sip their drinks, shake their bodies to the music, laughing at one another’s jokes while they shoot quick glances at the guys. Is this a fucking school dance? It’s just the forever, inevitable mating ritual dance bullshit of heterokind. Much like the inevitable mating ritual dance bullshit of homokind, except I’m likely the only fucking gay guy here. None of those guys shoot longing glances my way.
I squeeze shut my eyes, frustrated, and finish off the bottle, abandoning it atop an end table by the couch before pushing out the back door. A barbeque pit still smokes where, likely a few hours ago, some actually edible food was being grilled. I still haven’t seen Kirkland, and with his bushy head of hair and pointy beard, he’s impossible to miss. There aren’t many people out here, but with it being so dark, I can’t quite make out who’s sitting in lawn chairs by the inflated baby pool.
Then, Trent emerges from the dark like a ghost. “Where ya been?”
“Got lost in the house looking for booze.” I lift my second bottle I haven’t cracked open yet to indicate. “Where the fuck’s Kirk?”
“When’s our lease up, bud?” he asks quietly, drawing himself up to my side. “Do you know?”
I frown. “What do you mean?”
“The lease. My mom wanted to know.” He chugs from his can. It crinkles loudly in his squeezing fist, dripping with condensation onto his shirt.
“Why do you—Why does she … need to know that?” I feel my heart racing and not in the good way.
“Never mind.” He belches, not meeting my eyes and, instead, peering through the window back into the house. “Fuckin’ full of nobodies. Who the hell did Kirkland invite, the fuckin’ high school? Where’s the assholes our age? Hope the walk wasn’t that bad, bud. Girls here aren’t even that hot.”
I’m still lost figuring out his question. Is he thinking of moving out? “Are we alright?”
He frowns, annoyed. “Of course we’re alright. What the fuck.” He chugs again.
I know Trent. He’s never evasive about anything. He’s blunt with me, always is. His hesitation and his weirdness unsettles me like nothing else in this stinking town can. I’m flooded with a million guilty thoughts all at once. Does he know? Did he figure it out? Did Charlie fucking say something? Did he find something on my computer? For that matter, what the fuck is on my computer?
But I can’t say any of this. I can’t even express it in some vague, indirect way. I’m stuck with my worries while Trent guzzles his beers, checks out his ladies, and goes about his life with no regard or awareness whatsoever to the war being waged in my mind. The same war I’ve been fighting since we were dumb horny teens and jerked off while staring at differently stimulating … things.
We were fourteen when I first stayed overnight at his house. He wanted to show me something and it wasn’t until 2 AM when he had the porn open on his computer that I realized what. I’ll never forget those fake perky tits and the grunts she made as the frat boys fucked her one by one. I never really got to see the frat boys very well, as this was straight porn—I think—but it didn’t matter when I had Trent pulling out his wiener right next to me, going to town. Some wicked part of my mind wanted to feign “not knowing what to do” around him. My heart raced, almost to the point of nausea, almost to the point of throwing up his mom’s brownies she made us earlier. I wanted him to touch me so bad. He got hard to the porn. I got hard to him, watching him breathe heavy, watching him gnaw on his own lip, watching his face wrinkle up as he grew closer and closer and closer to the edge.
When he came, a string of his cum landed on my face. I shut my eyes and gasped, feeling it run across my tongue and lips.
He laughed and laughed and laughed.
And then I came, too.
“You see Sandy inside?” he asks, slapping my belly and jerking me out of the memory. “She was upstairs, last I saw.”
“She’s in the dining room,” I say flatly. “She saw me. Can’t say she liked it.”
He throws an arm over my shoulder suddenly, as if sensing my withdrawal, and pulls me into him. “Patch things up, dude. She’s forgiving. You two could really hit it off. You could finally have a girl in your life.”
“What if I don’t want a girl in my life?”
The thought came so suddenly that I voiced it without thinking twice. A rush of dread reddens my face. Trent’s lips are near my nose, his alcohol breath wafting over me as he breathes.
“What else you gonna have in your life?” he asks innocently, missing the point I might have been making.
You, Trent. You, you, you. You are all I want. You are all I need. You and your breath and your slender punk body and your cocky charm. You and your competitiveness. You and your annoying habits I can’t stand. You and the way you’ve made me feel around you for over a decade. You are everything to me.
But there will come a time when he meets a girl, and that girl actually sticks. She won’t be a prom queen nominee from the high school around whose parents he has to tiptoe. It won’t be any of the easy girls at the bar, none of whom he actually picks up, despite throwing each and every one of them at me, Sandy included. But he will meet a girl and she will be everything he dreamed of. And I will have to be invited to the wedding. I’ll be the best man, standing at his side, watching him be taken away by another girl I’ll be forced to like. Hell, maybe I’ll even actually like her. Wouldn’t that be worse? I’ll have no reason under the stars to protest their marriage, no reason to talk him out of it. She’ll be perfect and sweet and friendly and beautiful. She’ll even be pro-gay or some shit.
And I’ll still hate her. I’ll hate her for taking him from me. I’ll hate her and I’ll hate him. And for all the rest of my days, I’ll live under the shadow of some fantasy I should’ve thrown away the year I grew my first pube.
“Probably just more beer,” I answer him finally, wondering how true my answer, in fact, really is. I stare at my half-empty bottle, lost in thoughts of a future without him. I’d never even considered one, but I’m no longer a kid. I’m an adult. I’m an adult who’s running out of time.
What am I doing?
Trent slaps his neck suddenly, curses. “I’m heading back inside. Getting bit the fuck up out here. You comin’?”
Aren’t I always? I nod.
We move into the living room again. The boys on one side, the girls on the other, and a sea of reluctance between them. Kicking back my new bottle, I laugh on the inside at the dumbness of the scenario in front of me. All these horned up, lonely, desperate folk of my horned up, desperate town … and they can’t even approach each other at a party. What is this, high school? People are already coupled off in bedrooms and dens and backyards and wherever else, yet the pump of dance music paralyzes these fools.
“Feel like headin’ home yet?” asks Trent. “This party’s lame.”
And full of high schoolers, judging from the fear they have of the opposite sex. Even the twenty-somethings in the crowd won’t look at me. None of those hot boys will give me the time of day or night. None of them see me. None of them know. I study the crowd long and hard, feeling brave.
“Actually, I feel like dancing.”
Trent looks at me, thinking I’m crazy, when I slap my bottle of beer into his chest and push myself out onto the floor. Two girls look at me, startled by my suddenly popping into existence. They become my inspiration. I start working my shoulders to the music. One of the girls smiles. The song pumps harder, and then my hips start to rock, my arms working into the sexy-bad performance I’m putting on. Now I have four girls looking at me, a small grouping of them, all of their eyes at perfect attention to my seduction act. I grin, emboldened by their excitement, and move my hips harder. I lift my arms in the air.
The girls begin to circle me like a flock of birds, and now their bodies are moving too. The music wraps us up in some sort of trance. What do you know? I’m part of the heterokind mating ritual, my arms twisting, my hips working an invisible hula-hoop, feet stamping the floor. I can’t take the smile off my face, all the pretty birds circling me and shaking their feathers and laughing. I’m suddenly the most charming blue jay that’s flown into their lady-tree. At long last, after an eternity of waiting here at this party for something to happen, I pull them out of the darkness.
When I turn around, I see the eyes of all eighteen or nineteen boys across the room. All of their eyes, all of them, are on me.
They envy me. They want to be me. They want all these women to be all over them.
I am their focal point, in this one moment. I am their everything. I am their cream and their butter and their prize in the cereal box.
All the boys are watching me now.
But the reality is, no one’s winning. These girls are grinding their hips for me—for a guy who will never choose or prefer any of them. The boys across the room, they’re now the ones pining for something they can’t have, at least not right now. They’re drooling in envy. They’re wondering who I am. They’re curious and infatuated and dreaming, just like me.
And Trent on the sidelines, watching all this happen. Trent and his punk boy lips and his lip ring. Trent and his messy dark hair, giving him that air of mystery and sexuality and depth. Trent and the utterly bewildered expression on his face … and my beer bottle that still hangs in his slackening grip.
All of us, playing the lonely game. All of us, losers.