20.
Where Tyson Beholds
the Awesome Wonder That Is Paul Auster
EVER HAD to sleep next to someone while making a conscious effort not to touch them accidentally at any point during the night? Especially when said bedmate apparently considers normal sleepwear to be some raggedy workout shorts and nothing else?
No?
Well, it blows. Like a lot. And by “sleep,” I really mean stare at the ceiling and wonder just how my life has gotten to this point, trying to go back day by day through my entire life to find out which of my actions are deserving of the karmic ass-kicking I’m currently receiving. Let’s see. Beach hippies. Drug use. Not living up to my full potential. Almost accidentally burning down the house one year to destroy the turkey so we could have a vegetarian Thanksgiving. Being completely and totally awesome. Geez. Take your pick. It literally could be any one of those things and many, many more. It’s hard to live a morally good life when you have a propensity for shenanigans.
It doesn’t help that the big oaf snoring loudly next to me (I knew it!) apparently has the propensity to splay out across the entire bed like he’s the only one in it. I watched as he got closer and closer and closer (never mind the fact that I was watching him while he slept—I tried not to think about how creepy that made me), and all the while, the space I had available to me became smaller and smaller. Eventually, I ended up in a tiny corner at the top of the bed, my butt against the headboard, wrapping myself around the pillow and glaring at Dominic, who I was by then convinced was doing this on purpose and had joined the ranks of villainy to conspire against me.
I last until about five thirty, when I jerk myself out of yet another doze where I’d fallen into a surreal dream where Dominic had awoken to find me draped across the top of him. That itself was okay (well, as okay as something like that can be), but then I opened my mouth to give some sort of explanation, and a bucket of fried chicken legs fell out of my mouth onto Dom’s face. I tried to apologize, but then Dom started eating the chicken and that really grossed me out and I tried to run away only to fall into a pit filled with hippies in a drum circle, all smoking doobies and trying to put hemp necklaces around me. I don’t even want to try and begin to analyze that. I don’t want to know what that says about my fragile psyche. Something chickeny, to be sure.
I turn to slide out of the bed carefully, doing my best not to wake him so he doesn’t see me scowling at him, muttering under my breath as I try and cast hexes in his general direction, even though I haven’t yet become a high priest capable of such things. Apparently I’m incapable of multitasking after only having ten minutes of sleep because instead of standing on my feet like a normal person, my knee catches the slightly open drawer of the dirty perverted nightstand, knocking it open and onto the floor, followed quickly by the bowl of condoms and at least four different kinds of lube. I couldn’t have made more noise had I blasted a trumpet in his ear while surrounded by a flock of blue-footed boobies during mating season.
I bend down to pick up everything I’ve knocked off the table and have managed to grab a couple of items off the floor when Dominic says sleepily, “What are you doing?”
“Just cleaning. Go back to sleep.”
“What you got there?”
I stand back up and he’s peering over at me, his eyes half-closed, and I realize I’m holding a condom, a bottle of Boy-Ease, and a red dildo the size of my forearm. What the fuck is wrong with this nightstand! Goddamn sex dungeon of the drag queen Helena Handbasket!
“This is all a dream,” I manage to say. “You’re still asleep and when you wake up, you won’t remember any of this.”
He mumbles something else at me before he lays his head back down on the pillow. I honestly can’t believe that worked. I literally just convinced him that he was dreaming while I held a floppy rubber dong in my hands. Maybe it won’t be that bad. Maybe I can get control of this again. I can! I’ve got this! I’m Tyson Fucking Thompson, genius extraordinaire, and I’ve motherfucking got this!
“At least wait until I get more sleep before you try to use that on me,” he says. It’s followed by a low snore.
I don’t have this! I don’t! I’m Tyson Fucking Thompson, indecisive twinkie, and I don’t have this in the slightest!
I throw the dildo to the floor and flee the room.
THE HOUSE is quiet around me as I leave the sex dungeon. The sky is beginning to lighten through the windows, and I give strong consideration to getting back in the SUV and driving back to Seafare so Bear can protect me from the big bad world. Then I remember I am twenty years old and pretty much a man now. Well, sort of a man.
I’m thinking about wandering into the kitchen to find some coffee when I see Sandy out through the sliding door, sitting crossed-legged on the patio, back arched up straight. I open the door and step out into the warm air.
Sandy lets out a breath and glances back at me. He smiles sweetly when he sees me. “Good morning, baby doll. You’re up early.”
“Couldn’t sleep,” I say, closing the door behind me. “Been up most of the night.”
“Oh?” he says with an arch to his eyebrow.
“Not like that,” I mutter.
“Too bad.”
“He’s straight.” Right?
“Is that so?”
“Yeah.” Right?
“Fascinating.”
I stand beside him. “How so?”
Sandy shrugs. “You would know better than I would.”
I don’t even know what that means. Desperately needing a change of subject, I ask, “What are you doing out here?”
He turns his face forward again, straightening out his back, wiggling his shoulders and taking a deep breath and letting it out slowly. “Meditating,” he says.
“Oh, man. I didn’t mean to interrupt.” I feel really bad. If there’s one thing I’ve learned about breathing, is that it’s annoying to be interrupted. “I’ll go back inside.”
“You’re fine, baby doll. I’ll admit to not being very good at this yet.”
“How come?”
He frowns. “You’re supposed to clear your mind, but I find that absolutely impossible. I always seem to be thinking about something.”
“Yeah, I know what you mean. Though, it’s not really possible to clear your mind. Your brain is always firing.”
“Is that right?”
“Yeah. It’s better to think of something mundane and focus on that. If you do that, it’s easier to follow your breaths.”
That smile comes back. “Sounds like you know what you’re talking about.”
I shrug. “I might know a thing or two.”
“Few things on your mind?”
“That might be an understatement. I have… issues.”
Sandy laughs, not unkindly. “Don’t we all?”
“Mine are diagnosed issues.”
He waves me off. “And what difference does that make?”
“I… huh. I don’t know. Sometimes, it’s hard for me to breathe.”
He nods. “One breath at a time, right?”
“I guess. Why do you want to meditate?”
“I’m stressed.”
“Aren’t we all?” I tease him.
“Cheeky little twinkie,” he says with a grin. “Being Helena is taxing, to say the least.”
“She slips through sometimes, huh?”
He grimaces. “You could say that. I don’t have the hold on her I used to. I’m not as young as I once was. It can be tiring.”
“What are you, twenty-six?”
“I might have to keep you around. You’re very good for my ego. I’m thirty-one.”
“Wow! I didn’t think you were that old.”
“Now I don’t want to keep you around at all,” he says with a scowl, Helena flashing behind his eyes. “As a matter of fact, I might auction you off tonight to the highest bidder, who’ll probably be a forty-year-old businessman from Des Moines staying at a Motel 6.”
I wince. “Sorry. My mouth tends to go before my brain does. It’s my brother’s fault. I learned it from him.”
His eyes soften, but I can see the drag queen still flitting around. “You remind me of Paul, a bit. He’s the same way.”
I shudder. “Then I feel sorry for you, having to be subjected to this all the time.”
“I’ve learned to deal,” Sandy says dramatically. “Now, you think you can help me?”
I think I can. Maybe. It can’t hurt to try, I guess. I sit down next to Sandy and cross my legs like his. “A guy named Eddie taught me this,” I tell him. “He’s supposed to be a psychiatrist, but I’m pretty sure he’s just some crazy guy who got mistaken for a therapist one day and ran with it.”
“That awesome?” Sandy asks.
“The best,” I agree. Because he really is. “I don’t know if I’d have made it without him.”
Sandy bumps my shoulder with his. “I think you’d have done just fine, baby doll.”
As the sun continues to rise, I try to teach Sandy the art of breathing. He takes to it better than I ever have. And for some reason, it helps me too.
I’VE BEEN warned, of course. About Paul. From Sandy and Corey (who comes down the stairs this morning as Kori). I’ve been told he can be a bit… much… to handle. I really thought they were exaggerating. After all, I was raised by the King of the Rambling Dramatic Overthinkers, so how bad could Paul Auster possibly be? I didn’t think it was possible for anyone to be able to go toe-to-toe with Bear in that regard.
Dear Lord in Heaven, I was wrong. I was so very, very wrong.
I’m in the kitchen with Sandy and Kori, helping prepare a vegetarian spring quiche (made in my honor, of course, though Kori still feels the need to find eggs in the fridge and shriek in an annoying imitation of me about how cruel it is finding the aborted fetuses of one of our animal companions, and how it’s a travesty against all mankind. I don’t think he’s funny at all).
Then he arrives.
Have you ever been witness to an approaching tornado? You can see it forming up in the sky, the clouds starting to spin together in a funnel approaching the earth, and it looks like a great, gaping mouth, ready to swallow everything you know and leave a path of destruction a mile wide in its wake.
Now, imagine that is a person.
The front door doesn’t open as much as it explodes, banging in its frame against the wall. In walks a pudgy guy, eyes wide, dark hair flying all around his face. He’d be cute if he didn’t look like he was ready to hit someone in the kneecaps with a crowbar.
“Sandy!” he bellows, even though Sandy is literally standing five feet away in his direct line of sight.
“Yes, Paul?” Sandy says with an innocent smile, and I may not have known him very long, but I already can tell that smile is so full of shit. He knows exactly what this is about.
“You!” the man who is apparently Paul snarls. “I’ve got a bone to pick with you!”
“Why, I don’t have the slightest idea what you’re talking about, baby doll,” Sandy says. “Now, please try entering my house again in a reasonable way suited for Saturday brunch and keep your voice at a level acceptable for a man of your means and stature.”
“I had to stop by my parents’ house this morning,” he says through gritted teeth. “To pick up Johnny Depp for Nana and take him to the vet for his procedure next week.”
Johnny Depp? The vet? I am so confused.
“Did you? And why did you take him on a Saturday if it’s not until next week?”
Paul rolls his eyes. “He’s some kind of mystic hippie who says he needs the extra days to commune with Johnny Depp’s animal spirit. But joke’s on him. Johnny Depp is dead inside.”
“That right?”
“So imagine my surprise,” Paul says, “when we get into the Prius, and Johnny Depp screams at me about how I’ve kidnapped him and am taking him to the woods to rape him. So I call Nana to ask her what the hell is wrong with her stupid parrot, and she tells me that you were over to visit and had a, and I quote, ‘long and frank conversation with Johnny Depp about how much you hate him, and really, Paul, couldn’t you be nicer to him? He so deserves it.’”
“You should be nicer to him,” Sandy says, taking muffins out of the oven. “All I hear is animosity from you.”
“He was screaming about kidnapping and rape!” Paul shouts. “When we were stopped at an intersection with the windows rolled down! There was a Greyhound bus stopped next to us with old people on their way to bingo or hospice, and they heard every single word he said. And once he got going, Wheels started howling like he was being kidnapped and raped, too, and I just know everyone on that bus thought I was some kind of weird animal-fucker getting ready to pile-drive a dog and parrot because I’m some sick and twisted fuck who gets his jollies by running an animal compound called the Heavy Petting Zoo where other sick and twisted fucks just like me pay a nominal monthly membership fee to come in and participate in the carnal act of bestiality!”
“Heavy Petting Zoo,” Sandy snorts. “That’d be a great name for a Christian gospel rap group.”
“Christian gospel rap?” Paul echoes. “How would that even work?” And then, as if the world isn’t strange enough, he starts to rap. “You know what it is, you know what’d be nice? You and me, boo, and the body of Christ.”
“I’m pretty sure that’s going to be offensive to at least half of your prospective market,” Sandy says. “Especially since you just rapped about a three-way with Jesus.”
Paul suddenly grins, and it’s adorable. “Guess what the song would be called?”
“What?”
“‘The Holy Trinity.’”
Sandy gasps and throws a dishcloth at him. “You’re going to hell, Paul Auster! No one would buy your music!”
“I don’t care! I don’t want to be in a Christian gospel rap group called Heavy Petting Zoo! Stop trying to change the subject!”
“You’re the one rapping about lying with Jesus.”
Paul rolls his eyes. “Oh please. Why else do they always make him with these great abs and always looking so fine?”
“Probably to get more people in church,” Sandy says. “Sex sells.”
“Johnny Depp is a parrot?” I ask Kori, trying to stay afloat in the sea of Paul.
“I think so,” Kori says.
“What an odd name for a parrot,” Dom says, licking sugar off the tip of his finger, making me want to raise my hands above my head and curse Sexy Jesus.
Paul ignores us completely, as if he’s wrapped in his own little world. Which he probably is. “You’re trying to make that parrot turn against me even more!” he says to Sandy. “That animal is already homophobic! You don’t need to make it any worse!”
“He’s not homophobic,” Sandy says. “He does just fine with Vince and me. It’s not my fault you were kidnapping him to rape him.”
“I’m not going to rape the goddamn bird!” Paul shouts.
And then, just because the day needs to be stranger, a male supermodel walks in through the front door holding a small black two-legged dog with a cart attached to its butt, its tongue lolling out of its mouth as it grins at everyone in the room.
“Is this real life?” I ask Kori and Dom. “Seriously. Is any of this real? Or am I just on an acid trip right now?”
“This is some really vivid acid if that’s what it is,” Dom says. “I’ve arrested tweakers before. I never thought I’d be one.” He holds his hand in front of his face. “I’m not seeing contrails. I must not be tripping balls yet.”
“Why are people doing drugs in your house, Sandy?” the supermodel asks with a frown. He sets the handi-capable dog on the floor. The mutt instantly runs over to me, the wheels of his cart squeaking. He bumps his head against my shin and looks up at me and barks. His butt wags back and forth, right where his tail used to be. “Wheels,” I say in greeting, bending over to scratch his ears.
“Who is that unknown tripping twink touching my dog?” Paul asks. “And why isn’t Wheels growling or shitting on his shoes? That dog hates everyone.”
“Not everyone,” the supermodel says, coming to stand next to Paul. He kisses the irate man on the cheek. “Remember when you hit me with your car when you were trying to seduce me, and I had to stay at your house and he loved me right away because he knew I was wicked badass?”
“I wasn’t trying to seduce you!” Paul growls. “And I didn’t hit you with my car! When is anyone going to believe me about that? Wheels, you traitor! You’re supposed to bite the strange twinkie!”
“I’m not a twink,” I say as I apparently bring his dog to a high state of Nirvana by scratching behind his right ear.
“Oh, baby doll,” Sandy says to me. “We’ve had this discussion already. You most certainly are a twinkie. As a matter of fact, Hostess called while you were sleeping. They want you back.”
“You’re Tyson!” the supermodel says, a huge grin on his perfectly perfect face. He walks over to me, grabs my hand, and shakes it vigorously. “I heard about you! Sandy told us about you when we got back from Asia. You’re the supersmart guy, right?”
“Uh, I guess,” I say.
He leans in. “Did you know they don’t have fortune-cookie factories in Asia?”
He looks completely serious, so I nod. “Yeah. They’ve been determined to have been an American invention in the early part of the twentieth century.” Wow. I’m so glad I’m contributing to the madness.
“See?” he says to Paul over his shoulder. “What else have we been lied to about?”
Paul sighs. “Vince, I don’t think they meant it to be a malicious lie.”
Vince scowls, which makes him even hotter, if that were possible. “I’ll never trust the fortunes again.”
“Kori,” Paul says. “You’re looking smoking hot, as usual.”
“Thank you,” Kori says, blushing. “You like my hair?” She flicks it around her face and poses, batting her eyelashes.
“I do. It looks good on you long. You should let Sandy curl it for you tonight when we go out.”
“Maybe,” she says. I have a feeling her hair will be curled before day’s end.
Paul turns to Dom and his eyes go wide as he looks him up and down. “Holy sweat balls, Gigantor! Did you eat an entire orphanage when you got up this morning?”
Dom shrugged. “Better than raping a parrot.”
Paul narrows his eyes and turns back to Sandy. “You will pay for your crimes,” he says, going for sinister but coming up a bit short. It’s like being accosted by a puppy covered in bubbles.
“How many times have you threatened me,” Sandy asks, “in all the years I’ve known you?”
“You gigantic vagina,” Paul says. “I mean it this time!”
“I’m the vagina?” Sandy retorts. “I seem to remember the only pussy in this room is you.”
“You sure talk about vaginas a lot for gay guys,” Kori points out. “People might start to think you’re misogynistic or something.”
Paul waves him off. “Oh please. If you think that means I hate women, you really need to lighten the fuck up. It’s a joke. People who get offended that easily are probably the same people who complain on the Internet about everything under the sun.”
“Touché,” Kori says.
“Nice to meet you,” Vince says, shaking Dom’s hand. “You’re the cop, huh? I was going to be a cop once, until I realized guns make me queasy. If they let you be a cop and have, like, a sword or something, I’d totally be on board.”
“It’s almost time to eat, my pretties,” Sandy says. “If we can mosey on toward the table, mimosas will follow for those of age to have one.” He winks at me. “Don’t want you to get in trouble with your cop.”
“He’s not my cop,” I say, but no one is listening to me at all. It’s a mad, mad, mad, mad world.
“Not yet,” Paul says. “We’re waiting for one more.”
“Who?” Sandy asks. “Your parents? Nana?”
Paul grins and it’s evil. “Shouldn’t have made Johnny Depp scream about rape, Sandford.”
Sandy’s eyes narrow. “You. Didn’t.”
“I. Did.”
“Who’s coming?” Kori asks as Vince and Dom talk about what it feels like to be tased and as Wheels lies on top of my feet and begins to gnaw gently on my ankle.
“Darren,” I say, remembering the last time I’d seen that look on Sandy’s face, when we talked on Skype a couple of weeks ago. “You’re looking like a fire hydrant, Sandy.”
“Roast twinkie sounds good right now,” he mutters.
“Paul was more threatening than that,” I say.
“I like you, twinkie,” Paul says. “I’m Paul Auster. Yes, yes, like the author. Because no two people in the world were ever named the same thing.”
“I wasn’t going to say anything,” I tell him. “Nice to meet you.”
“You invited him here?” Sandy says incredulously. “You… you… you arrogant, pompous fruitcake!”
“You would total understand if you’d seen the looks on the people’s faces sitting in the waiting room at the vet clinic when Johnny Depp screeched, ‘Don’t put it in me again, Paul! Please, I’ll be good this time!’”
Kori and I burst out laughing.
“That doesn’t give you any right to invite that… that man into my house! You know how I feel about him, Paul.”
“Methinks the lady doth protest too much,” Kori whispers to me. “Wonder who that sounds like.”
“Who?” I ask, bewildered.
He sighs and shakes his head.
“Everyone knows how you feel about him,” Paul is saying. “And everyone knows how he feels about you. If you would just pull your heads out of your asses and—”
“You can stop right there,” Sandy says, though he’s more Helena now, all teeth and claws. “Just because you found your dreamy Prince Charming and got your cliché happy ending does not mean everyone else gets to.”
“I think they’re talking about me,” Vince tells Dom. “I don’t know, though. I tune them out when they get loud. Which is most of the time.”
“I understand completely about volume issues,” Dom assures him.
“You better not be talking about me!” I shout at him.
“It’s not about that,” Paul insists. “And dreamy Prince Charming? Could you make me sound like any more of a princess?”
“If the glass slipper fits, sweetheart,” Sandy snaps.
“I’ll have you know that last night I was the one who gave it to Vince hard—”
“Paul!” Vince yelps.
Paul groans. “I did it again, didn’t I?”
“Oversharing!”
“He called me a princess!”
“You kind of are.”
“That’s beside the point!”
“What is the point?” I ask Paul.
“That’s… I… oh sweat balls.” He squints at Sandy. “What the devil were we talking about?”
The doorbell rings.
“Oh yeah,” Paul says. “That. Darren’s here.”
“This is not the end of this,” Sandy hisses at him.
“It never ends,” Vince tells Dom, Kori, and me.
“You poor guy,” Kori says.
“Are you kidding?” Vince asks. “It’s awesome. I don’t even have to watch TV anymore. They’re like the Hispanic telenovelas on TV here that I watch with Nana. Bright and colorful and I have no idea what’s going on but someone with an awesome mustache is about to get slapped.”
“I don’t want the Homo Jock King in my house!” Sandy says. “And that’s final!”
“Homo Jock King?” I ask.
Vince shrugs. “It’s a Tucson thing.”
“Darren!” I hear Paul say from the doorway. “How lovely of you to have made it. Sandy and I were just talking about you!”
“I bet you were,” a deep voice says.
Paul walks back into the kitchen… followed by another supermodel, this one bigger than Vince, though they look enough alike to be related.
“Jesus Christ,” I say, throwing my hands up in the air. “Is everyone here super attractive, built, and gay? This can’t be real life.”
“Why, thank you, twinkie!” Paul says, puffing out his chest. “I have been working out lately.”
“Jazzercise on old VHS tapes with Nana and five-pound weights don’t count,” Sandy says.
“It does if you sweat when it happens,” Paul says. “And I sweat like a little bitch. Wait. That sounds super unattractive.”
“It is,” Sandy says.
“I think it’s hot,” Vince says with a shrug. “You should see him with his little shorts on when he’s trying to Jazzercise.”
“Thank you, baby,” Paul says. Then his eyes narrow. “What do you mean trying?”
“Sandy,” Darren says stiffly. “I see you’re looking… alive.”
“Come to mingle with the slovenly today, have we, your majesty?” Sandy asks sweetly. “What a joyous occasion this is! It’s akin to the time that drunk guy threw up on me at the bar.”
“It’s the same for me,” Darren says. His gaze lands on me. He flashes a predatory smile that makes my knees just a tad bit weak. “Hi there. I’m Darren. Vince’s brother.”
Dominic moves until he’s standing in front of me just a little bit. Weird.
“Then why are you here?” Sandy asks.
“Because I know it pisses you off,” Darren says, sounding bored. “And I didn’t have anything better to do.”
“No little twinkie bartenders in the storeroom this morning to fuck where just anyone can stumble across you two?”
“That was last night.” He winks at me.
“You whore!” Paul says, sounding scandalized.
“I can’t believe you did that,” Vince groans.
“Brunch is served!” Sandy says with false cheer.
Jesus fucking Christ.