THEN
My curfew had always been a limiting factor in my relationship with Seth. I never viewed it as a reasonable boundary given to teenagers by parents who gave a shit. It was an obstacle to be overcome, and perhaps if I was more available, Seth wouldn’t feel the need to seek sexual gratification from others. I’d been systematically testing the fence and trying to get around my curfew ever since Seth turned his lusting gaze my way.
To be able to fit getting high into my schedule meant several things had to fall away. Seth insisted I drop jiu-jitsu almost immediately. He didn’t come out and say it, though. Instead, he rearranged his schedule so that the only time he was available to provide me with drugs was during the times I’d normally be taking the class. After missing a couple of weeks, it wasn’t so hard to give it up altogether.
But my curfew continued to be the thorn in our side. Until Seth came up with a plan so risky and absolute, that it would be impossible to give it only a half-assed effort.
It was this: Seth had been a long-time patron of Sam’s Club and had gotten to know some of the management. He arranged for us both to get us employee ID cards and paid off the night manager of the stocking crew to tell anyone who might inquire about our employment, that we were legit.
Seth ordered Sam’s Club T-shirts online, so we’d have the uniform. Then he arranged to have money from his bank account direct deposited into my own account every two weeks with the description “Sam’s Club” in the memo line.
I’d like to say that I told him it was a terrible idea and refused to do it, but even I knew that I couldn’t keep up with my current lifestyle without some drastic change. So, I sold the lie to my parents as a way to save up for college. And they believed me.
Seth picked me up at 9 p.m. most evenings to go “work” our stocking shift at Sam’s Club and brought me home every morning around 2 a.m. with enough time for me to shower and get a couple hours of sleep before I had to get ready for school the next day, or if it was the weekend, sleep it off. When I got home in the afternoons, I crashed, then woke up around dinnertime and did it all over again.
The lie was so big and so deep that I could never confess any part of it without revealing myself at my most manipulative and selfish. It was the Grand Canyon of lies, and it was just one more way in which I was dependent on Seth because I could never, ever let my parents know about this deception.
Meanwhile, something else was happening during the fall and winter of my sixteenth year, something I didn’t even notice at first. My loyalties were shifting away from Seth and toward the drugs. Seth was the vehicle, but getting high was the prize.
I didn’t notice the change until one night we were in Seth’s apartment, post-sex, which meant our next scheduled event was snorting painkillers.
But Seth was dragging his feet about it, debating on whether we should go out for dinner first or order in, even though food was the last thing on my mind, and just one more obstacle getting in the way of my goal, when at last I said to him, “I don’t care what we eat, so long as it’s after a bump.”
Seth stopped thumbing through his stack of takeout menus to look me over. I was only half-dressed and still reclined in one of his plush lounging chairs.
“What?” I asked, impatient and irritable at having to wait. When most of your daily thoughts revolved around your next fix, every minute felt like a lifetime.
“Do you only come over here to get high?” Seth asked.
I stared at him, too tired for one of his mind games. I hadn’t gotten much sleep in the past few weeks, partly because I always had the feeling I had to run faster than the lies so that they wouldn’t catch up to me.
“Of course not,” I said, trying to make light of it. “I come here for the sex too.”
Seth dropped the menus on his kitchen counter and came over to kneel before me. I wondered if that meant we were going for round two.
“That’s good,” he said and rubbed my thighs with his palms. “Because I don’t feel like getting high tonight.”
First off, I knew he was lying because he was just as fixated on the drugs as I was. Second, denying me wasn’t part of our agreement in which he had explicitly stated drugs were my reward for good behavior. I couldn’t make either of those points though because that would prove that Seth had control over me. I wasn’t going to beg. Instead, I’d raise the ante and demonstrate to him that I could walk away any time I wanted. And there was nothing he could do about it.
I still believed that was true.
“Me neither,” I told him, lying through my teeth. “We should probably cut back anyway. Maybe we should go watch a movie instead.”
Seth’s eyes lit up like a deviant about to perform a crime. “That’s a great idea,” he said with what seemed to me like exaggerated excitement. “I was just thinking how long it’s been since we’ve seen a movie.”
Seth, for the most part, hated movies, especially the Hollywood variety, which he said were groupthink propaganda that only served to indoctrinate us into being obedient thought slaves to our corporate and political masters. He also hated the over-the-top heterosexual brainwashing, which, according to him, only hindered our sexual liberation. I didn’t disagree with him, but I’d been brought up on horror and slasher movies, and because I was currently working in the video recording medium, I figured I could learn as much from bad movies as I could from the ones that were done well. I also tended to focus more on technique, rather than the story.
So Seth was lying, and so was I. We both knew what was happening here, but like most of our power struggles, neither of us was going to give an inch.
“I think you should let me pick the movie,” I told him, matching his Stepford attitude with my own, “as a reward for being such a very good boy.”
Seth smiled widely and knocked my chin lightly with his fist. “You got it, bucko.”
We dressed and grabbed something to eat on our way to the theater, even while my mind kept tripping over the fact that we were not presently high because we were both stubborn as hell and had something to prove. I’d come to build my days around those few hours of bliss and not having it felt like a black hole in my daily routine. It caused me some anxiety too, to think I might have to wait another twenty-four hours for my next fix.
At the theater, I chose the cheesiest and most predictable romantic comedy. It should have gone straight to television it was so bad. The oversentimentality was disgusting, the gender roles were cemented in stone, and the ending was given away in the first scene. Seth kept yawning and glancing around like he’d rather be anywhere else. At one point he said he had to go to the bathroom, and I went with him because I didn’t trust him not to try and get high without me.
Later, outside the theater, I raved about how awesome the movie was. “And it had such a happy ending. Don’t you just love happy endings?” I gushed.
Seth only glared at me, by now having realized if he hadn’t before that I was punishing him for punishing me. Likely he was suffering from the same withdrawal I was experiencing, which at that juncture wasn’t completely physical but was definitely psychological, reminding you just how much you needed it and how scared you were to go without.
We got back to his place after midnight, and Seth, having run out of ways to outfox me, suggested we have sex again.
I yawned obnoxiously and collapsed into my favorite recliner. “I’m awfully tired,” I told him and grabbed the remote. “Why don’t we just check out what’s on the old boob tube?”
Seth stalked over to me, grabbed the remote out of my hand, and tossed it on the couch.
“So, this is how it’s going to be, Hiroku?” Seth asked, sulking above me with a look of reproach. “Aren’t you even a little bit ashamed of yourself?”
I glared up at him with a hostile, acrid feeling brewing in my gut. The mood swings I experienced while using were far more pronounced. Drug addiction did not bring out the best in me. “What would I have to be ashamed of, Seth?”
“Holding out for the pills? Doesn’t that make you feel a little bit slutty?”
I stood and met him at eye-level, so he could feel the anger rolling off of me in waves. “I’m the slutty one, huh? What about you? You’re the one who made this deal with me?”
“I didn’t tell you sex for drugs, Hiroku. I said I’d take care of you.”
Seth loved to turn the argument in his favor. It was one of his many talents, right up there with making me feel like a piece of meat. “Well, I’m not feeling very taken care of right now.” My rage was building like a tsunami. Perhaps it would be motivation enough to keep me away and prove to myself that I didn’t need Seth or the drugs to function.
Seth sensed the shift in my attitude. It was like he could smell my fight-or-flight pheromones concentrating in the air. He softened his tone and reached out to clasp my shoulders in an attempt to mollify me. “I just don’t want the only reason you come around here to be because I can get you high. I want you to want to be with me.”
Then maybe you shouldn’t have coerced me into this situation in the first place, my reptilian brain wanted to say, but I held my tongue because in his eyes I saw Seth’s vulnerability. All Seth ever wanted was for me to love him unconditionally as his mother should have. And in a way, I did. But my love for him wasn’t pure and innocent as it once was. It was guarded, suspicious, and at times like these, so bitter it tasted more like poison in my mouth.
Seth truly believed we could go back to the Before, and it seemed nothing I said or did would dampen his resolve to make that happen. He hadn’t mourned the death of our relationship in the way that I had. He’d never acknowledged that the love we’d had for each other was gone, and this bastardized version of reciprocal need and quest for pleasure was what we were left with. In all the time we’d been apart, he’d never stopped loving me.
Seth thought he could be forgiven, but he didn’t understand that I never would.
At the time, I didn’t think about all of this so clearly, but I knew instinctively that his blindness was something I could struggle against, or it was something I could exploit to my advantage. And if my end game was to have him continue to get me high, the choice was rather simple.
So, instead of lashing out and blaming him for creating this ravenous, insatiable monster before him, I turned on the charm.
“You’re right,” I cooed and trailed my fingers softly along the inside of his arm. “You’ve been so good to me, and here I am acting like a spoiled little brat.”
I brought his hand up to my mouth and kissed his knuckles one at a time. Seth stared at me dumbfounded, like he couldn’t believe his argument had worked.
“It’s scary sometimes,” I confessed to him, leaning in to whisper in his ear. “How much I need it. Makes it so that it’s all I can think about.” I dipped my head and looked up at him from under my lashes. “Maybe you shouldn’t give it to me anymore.”
I took his two fingers into my mouth and sucked on them, sliding my tongue along the underside of their length. Seth watched me in a lusting stupor. He was already thinking about ten minutes from now when I was naked and in his clutches. Being dependent on the drugs meant I was dependent on him to give them to me. If I was sober, I might go back to my wily ways of having a life outside of him. He might have competition for my affections. I might even leave him, and that was the fear that motivated him the most. I’d made a study of Seth’s psychology for more than a year. I knew what made him tick.
Seth withdrew his fingers from my mouth slowly, pulling on my lower lip a little on his way out. “I’m sorry I made you wait.” He traced the contour of my neck, then tugged a little at the collar of my shirt. His desire was so transparent. “That was a dick move. I just feel like sometimes when we’re together, your mind is somewhere else.”
He was absolutely right. My body was his, but my mind and soul had been claimed by another master.
“I’m right here,” I assured him. I leaned in to kiss him, taking my sweet time and giving his mouth my full attention. I pulled off my shirt and dropped down to my knees to further convince him. That position was where he always liked me best, looking up at him with my wide innocent eyes, awaiting his next command…
Afterward Seth got me high, and I told him I loved him. I may have even meant it.
You tell me, who was the monster now?