GO DO STUFF THAT ISN’T PORN
The Knights of Vice and Dez and Addy all sit in the living room at my house. None of us talk. We just stare at the floor, but we don’t want to leave each other. I haven’t let go of Dez’s hand since we left the hospital three hours ago.
I don’t understand how I can go from experiencing no deaths to one and a half of them in a matter of months. As soon as I started thinking, as soon as I started asking questions, it happened. Pain came. Now, even if I wanted to make myself stop asking questions, I don’t think I could. I have no idea how I avoided it before. Chaos seems so present now. I feel like I’d have to be a moron not to notice.
The doorbell rings. I hear my dad say thanks, and then he appears with four pizza boxes in hand.
“I’m not sure if you guys are hungry.” He puts the boxes on the coffee table. “I was, and I figured pizza never hurt anyone’s feelings.”
He grabs a few pieces, and the Knights of Vice attempt some pitiful thank-yous as he walks out of the room.
As I watch him leave, I feel an overwhelming urge to answer his questions. The ones he asked a day before. It’s as though now that Mr. Cratcher isn’t going to be around, I need someone else smarter than me to know what’s going on. I need someone else willing to ask questions that piss me off, like “What are you?”
I stand, letting go of Dez’s hand. She immediately uses her newfound freedom to grab a slice of pizza.
I follow my dad out of the living room and into his office.
“I’ve looked at porn since I was twelve, but I wasn’t addicted to it until The Woman left.”
Dad turns around, giving me every bit of attention he has.
“That’s what I’ve been doing in my room,” I say.
God, this is so hard. I feel like the words can’t fit through my mouth, like square pegs trying to escape through circular holes. Just like when I first started talking with Addy. Luckily, he already knows why I was suspended, so I don’t have to spill that on him, too.
“Hours and hours. I didn’t know I was addicted until Mr. Cratcher told me. Until I met Dez. This will be a shock, but I’ve never had sex. I wanted to, bad. Everything that’s happened is because I wanted to have sex more than anything, but I wasn’t ever close enough to anyone to get it. I didn’t want to be close to anyone. The Woman made me not care about other people. I figured if you could love someone as hard as you loved her and have it not matter, then why care? Why not just use people before they used you?”
He stands silent. Still. As if the act of listening fastens him to the floor.
“As for what really happened at school. I know you know, but I just … can’t talk about it yet. Not because I want to avoid it or pretend like it didn’t happen or because I think it’s not a bad thing, because it is. I see that it is now. I like, feel the wrong of it like it’s breath on my neck or a punch to the gut. I—I’m so broken, Dad. Like. So broken, and now that I know it, I’m afraid of people realizing I’m too broken to be around. That’s why I haven’t told anyone what I did to make the Anti-Adam Order do what they did. And all of this—suddenly having friends, like real friends, Addy, Dez, Mr. Cratcher, Mark, the list goes into space. All of it just hits me over and over, and it’s the most painful and healing thing that’s ever happened to me. I still don’t know what any of it means. I’m still addicted to porn, but I don’t want to be.”
He stares at me. I can’t read his eyes. Are they cold? Are they angry? Indifferent? He puts the pizza down on his desk, and then, for the first time in my life that I can remember, my dad hugs me. I’ve never given a thought to my dad hugging me, and I think if I’d thought about it before now, I would have cringed. But now that he has, I will expect him to do so for the rest of my life.
Being honest is one of the hardest things I’ve ever done. It doesn’t come easy like lying or telling half-truths, but it does come with freedom. What was it that Trey said? Not the whole banging a girl with big boobs fiasco, the other thing? Something like: “If we’re just honest together, it creates those hallelujah moments.”
Suddenly, I have an answer to one question. It isn’t a life changing answer, but it’s an answer I didn’t have before.
What do you do when death’s heavy on you?
Go to Nashville, find that album, and then finish a forty-year-old project.
Together.
—
We all sit at Pritchett’s. The fries are silently picked at. Milkshakes slurped with sadness. Even Addy is silent. I nod at Dez and she taps against her milkshake glass.
“Hear ye, hear ye,” she says.
“What?” Elliot snaps.
She ignores him. “Everything sucks. We all hate ourselves. And now that Mr. Cratcher’s about to kick the can, we’re in dire need of something awesome to take our minds off the intense magnitude of suckitude.”
“Very honest introduction,” Addy adds.
Dez raises her hands. “Hey, it’s not false information.”
“Keep going,” I say.
“Where was I?” she asks.
“In dire need of something awesome.”
“Right. Therefore, we’re in dire need of something awesome. A few incredible facts about Mr. Cratcher have come to light via the interwebs that suggest this possible something awesome.”
Dez explains everything she found out about Mr. Cratcher and my picture. She proposes the trip to Nashville and finishing the album and how being together could help us beat our addictions. How it would make Mr. Cratcher happy to see his album finished before he died. When she finishes, Trey and Elliot just look at each other.
“I can be the creepy old chaperone,” Addy says. “I have vacation days I need to use before the year’s up. I mean, if you guys want me to. I’m not really in on the whole addict camaraderie, but I do like you as people.”
Trey looks at her. “I want you to go. Maybe a few days will be good together. You’ll realize how that little one-year age difference between us doesn’t matter.”
Addy laughs. “So apparently Trey’s going.”
Dez smiles. “I didn’t think he’d be hard. Elliot?”
Elliot looks at all of us but points at me. “You’re already into this?”
I nod. “Yeah. Dez and I talked about it a little bit already.”
He sighs. “Shit, I can’t say no if everyone’s going.”
“So, you’ll go?”
He nods. “I mean, if our parents are all chill with it. Yeah.”
“Well then, fellow Knights of Vice members, honorary and actual,” Dez says. “You’re charged with talking to your parents about it tonight. Use any means necessary to get it to work.”
Trey nods. “Cool. You know, now that I think about it, this could be really awesome.”
“It will be,” Dez says.
“Yeah,” I say, feeling like we’re about to embark on one of those adventures everyone dreams about.
I think about my friends. About this moment. About the future. I’m so overwhelmed with a hallelujah in the middle of a storm that I stand on the booth and raise my milkshake. Most of Pritchett’s looks at me, but I ignore them.
“We head east for freedom, fellowship, Mr. Cratcher, and old-man music!”
Dez stands on the booth, glass raised, and then Addy, which of course makes Trey stand, as well.
“I’m not standing on the booth,” Elliot says.
I start chanting, “Stand on the booth. Stand on the booth.”
“I’m not doing it, so stop.”
The rest of us start chanting.
“Guys, if you don’t shut the hell up, I’m leaving.”
Slowly, everyone in Pritchett’s joins in the chant. Addy, Trey, Dez, and I share a laugh but keep going, getting louder and louder.
Finally, he curses a million times but stands. The booth strains under him. He wobbles, trying to get his footing, and he starts to fall over. Pritchett’s goes silent. Trey reaches to catch him and grabs his wrist. Elliot rights himself and flips us all off.
“He stood on the booth!” I yell.
Pritchett’s applauds.
I raise my milkshake. The others do as well.
“For Mr. Cratcher!”
The Knights of Vice respond. “For Mr. Cratcher!”
—
“Dad, it’s not like we’re going to millions of nightclubs. I don’t even know what a nightclub is. You said a while back that if I was honest with you, you’d think about letting me go on this trip.”
My dad sits in his office chair, shaking his head. We’ve been arguing back and forth about the Nashville trip for thirty minutes now. “I am thinking about it, Adam, and of course you know what a nightclub is. You have one in your room.”
“No, I don’t.”
“You have all the benefits of a nightclub in your room.”
I cock my head.
“Porn, Adam. You have porn. Forget it. It was a bad analogy. All I’m saying is, I just don’t think it’s the best idea. You are sixteen—”
“Addy and Trey aren’t. Elliot is seventeen.”
“My point is you’ve only had your license for a few months. What if it snows? Do you know what to do in the snow? What if you get in a wreck? You don’t even know how to change a spare tire.”
“If it snows, Addy or Trey will drive. If we wreck, Dez will get us there with all her money. If we need to change a tire, Dez has roadside assistance with AAA.”
“What if someone gets hurt?”
“No one will get hurt.”
“Someone will probably get hurt.”
“Addy, then.”
“You can’t just answer everything with Addy.”
“Why not?” she asks, walking through the door and dumping her black backpack on the couch. “I’m totally up for being the answer to everything. It’ll be hard for you two to believe, but I don’t get the chance to be it often.”
My dad sighs. “You’re telling me you’re up for being the sole chaperone of a bunch of … whatever they are?”
Addy leans against the wall, pulling the drawstrings on her Coalweather Construction hoodie so that the hood forms a tight circle around her face. “Trey is an adult. So he’s in charge of his own self, but the rest? Yeah, I think they’ll be all right. If we run into trouble, we can just come back. If any kids can be trusted with a road trip, I think it’s these ones. Regardless of their addiction status. Besides, I really wanna see the Blue Bird Café where Amelia Hunt got her start.”
“What about Christmas?” Dad asks. “Are you going to miss Christmas?”
“Addy,” I answer. “Kidding. No. We’ll be back before Christmas.”
My dad opens his mouth like he’s going to ask another question, but after a few seconds of silence, I point at him.
“Aha! See? You’re out of parental concerns. I’ve won.”
“You’ve done nothing of the sort. I’ll think about it, Adam.”
“Dad! You literally have no more questions.”
He turns around and starts scrolling through his agent inbox. “I’ll think about it. That’s all I’ll give you for now. Now go do stuff that isn’t porn.”