THEN
Winter break came, and we spent almost all of our time together. The seven of us—Seth, Sabrina, Mitchell, Jeannie and I, along with Caleb and Sasha whenever they were able—hung out together in Seth’s garage. Because we were out of school, my parents let up a little on my curfew, and I was able to stay out until the late-night hour of 11 p.m., partly because they thought I was with Sabrina, which I was. Only they didn’t know we weren’t at her house. It also didn’t hurt that I told them I was working on a legitimate school project, a photo essay on an up-and-coming Austin rock band.
All of a sudden it seemed Seth, Mitchell, and Sabrina were no longer just messing around; they were becoming a real band. Seth would croon into the microphone while staring and gesturing at me, pretending that I, their audience of one, was his crowd of adoring fans. Seth’s style ranged from an I’m-coming-to-get-you growl to an ethereal and vulnerable alto. If there weren’t other people around, I could get off just on watching him perform. As it was, I often offered to get food or run errands to give myself a break from the constant sexual tension.
Everyone contributed to their new musical sound, but Seth was the star.
Seth had to set up more lawn chairs to fit all of us, and we took turns buying food and drinks. The band found their lead guitarist by putting an ad on Craigslist: an older guy named Dean who worked on cars for a living and knew Mitchell and Caleb through their misadventures at Sunoco.
Dean was like air to Seth’s fire and they fed off each other's talent and energy like Jimmy Page and Robert Plant. They both liked experimental, free-floating space rock and would sometimes jam out on sound to the point that Mitchell would start vaping and Sabrina would come in with the drums to get them back on track, which usually spawned an argument. She was an excellent equalizer for Seth. She was disciplined, structured, and orderly where Seth was mercurial and chaotic. She kept him in line and firmly rooted to the rest of the band. And in their creative disputes, Sabrina held her ground. I was sometimes tempted to take sides, but I refrained, deciding not to get involved in fights between siblings, especially because they both outclassed me in the arena of musical theory.
But the band needed a name, and nothing we’d come up with so far had stuck. We were all sitting around the garage one evening in the settling dusk, band practice having finished for the night—Seth’s neighbors kept him on a strict schedule of no noise after dark. The older kids, with the exception of Dean who was a recovering alcoholic, were leisurely getting drunk while Sabrina and I sipped on our juice boxes. Seth thought it would be funny to buy us Capri Suns. The joke was on him, though, because Capri Suns were my favorite, and my mom never bought them.
“All right,” Seth said. “Everybody just spitball now. No judgment. No hating. Anything goes.” He was using his phone to dictate their ideas.
Sasha piped up with The Splints, a variation of The Shins, which Caleb countered with The Shin Splints and then The Broken Ankles to tease her a bit. She stuck her tongue at him in response, and I caught the flash of a metal stud—that piercing was new. Mitchell took it even farther with Internal Bleeding, which Seth really liked. From that spun all sorts of medical conditions, both real and imagined. Everyone agreed that any form of cancer was too depressing, even though some of the names sounded cool. Sabrina really liked Death by Laughter, which was one of the ten strangest ways to die, according to Google. Who knew you could die laughing? Seth thought that had to be one of the best ways to go, right after his preferred cause of death and what he hoped to accomplish one day far into the future: suffering a heart attack during sex. Then he looked at me and said, “I’m counting on you, Hiroku.”
I took off my shoe and threw it at him. He sniffed it like a total weirdo so that I had to wrestle him to get it back. He’d go to any length to embarrass me—even better if he could do it while putting his hands on me.
“How about Melancholy Dreams?” I said, trying to get us back on track. Their music had a saddish sound but was also quite lovely. Seth liked that, but Mitchell thought it sounded too gloomy.
“We’re not writing songs to slit your wrists to,” Mitchell insisted, but if Seth had his way, they probably would.
“Capital Offense,” Dean contributed, which I rather liked, but Seth thought it sounded too prisony and if not that, then too rapey.
That launched us into names centered around crime and punishment. Sabrina suggested Petty Theft, which inspired me to contribute Petty Crime. Everyone liked that, especially Seth who went back and forth as to whether it should be Petty Crime or Petty Crimes or Misdemeanor, which Caleb ruined by saying it reminded him of a gothic stripper’s stage name. This brought on a conversation about what exactly was a gothic stripper, and Caleb said, “You know, like a vampire stripper? She gets naked and then sucks your blood.”
“That sounds hot,” Sabrina said while staring at Jeannie, who had been mostly silent during our brainstorm. I’d noticed Sabrina’s attention often drifted toward Jeannie. Like when she’d complete a really rocking drum solo, Sabrina would look toward Jeannie to see if she was paying attention. As far as I could tell, Mitchell hadn’t picked up on it. Jeannie was straight, I thought, so I was more concerned about Sabrina getting her feelings hurt than an inner-band tryst.
After that, we went through the names of thought experiments, thanks to Sasha’s Intro to Philosophy class at Austin Community College: Schrodinger’s Cat and Pavlov’s Dog, The Prisoner’s Dilemma and the Experience Machine, which brought about a much larger debate about the Matrix and whether you would choose to plug into a virtual reality designed to maximize your pleasure rather than experience the ups and downs of real life to which Seth said, “absolutely” and then added, “but only if Hiroku could come with me.” I rolled my eyes but was secretly flattered. Sasha argued that it wouldn’t be me in the machine with him, but a simulation of me, to which Seth said, “good enough,” which cooled my warm feelings just a bit.
We threw out a few more suggestions, but our creativity was waning, and we were sliding into kitsch. In a truly democratic fashion, Seth narrowed the choices down to three, and then we took a vote—all eight of us, not just those who were in the band. The winner, almost unanimously, was Petty Crime, singular, which Seth said implied the plural and covered a host of misdemeanors including theft, prostitution, trespassing, and vandalism. “We can do a lot with that,” Seth said astutely, “both thematically and with marketing.”
I was sincerely impressed with Seth’s long-term thinking. He was turning into a real Future Business Leader of America. I also glowed a little on the inside to think I’d contributed creatively to the naming of the band. We glanced around at one another, recognizing that this venture of ours had just gotten real. For the first time ever, I truly believed the newly minted Petty Crime had a shot at making it.
As Seth was fond of saying, we were making musical history.
Winter break came to an end, and we all reluctantly went back to our lives—school and jobs and schedules and for me, a maddeningly early curfew. All of us except Seth. Mitchell still picked me up in the mornings before school, but Seth was no longer with us.
When I mentioned that I missed him at school, Seth told me he’d been caught up in composing music for the band. He was in one of his manic episodes, where his mind spun faster than he could communicate. A lot of times he’d use his phone to record his thoughts and ramblings to be unraveled and made sense of at a later date. The only way I could connect with him during that time was by working alongside him on lyrics to his music. I also flexed my graphic design chops by creating a few logos for Petty Crime, which prompted Seth to put me in charge of merch. I thought he was joking, but he then gave me a list of demands as to who should be the T-shirt vendor and told me to research local businesses online.
Other times Seth would play the melody on his guitar, and I’d tell him what it reminded me of—riding in a car at night with the windows down or that feeling you get at a party when everyone is having fun, but it’s like you’re looking in through the window at yourself, like Ebenezer Scrooge watching his younger version have fun with his old friends without him. No idea was too abstract or ridiculous, which was so encouraging for me as an artist. I’d had my father my whole life telling me to be practical, have more common sense, and not waste my time with drawing or video games or comic books. With Seth, there were no limits to our self-expression.
Still, I worried for Seth’s future and what might happen if all of this went belly-up. Perhaps that was my father in me, but I couldn’t help but wish Seth had a backup plan.
And then there was the whole other matter of the drugs.
On the way to school one morning, I asked Mitchell about Seth’s mounting school absences. He kind of shrugged and said, “You know Seth.”
It bothered me that Mitchell hadn’t said anything to him or pressured him to keep coming to school. Sabrina would have reamed me out relentlessly if I even considered dropping out of high school, especially when they were so close to graduation.
“Aren’t you worried about him?” I asked.
“I’ve known Seth for a long time,” Mitchell said casually. “He’s like a cat. He always lands on his feet.”
With a bit more probing, Mitchell revealed how the two of them met. When Seth was nine, his mother took a trip to California and left Seth behind. Her friends, where they were living at the time, tried to contact her but couldn’t, so they turned Seth over to the Department of Family and Protective Services. His grandmother used to be the one to pick up his mother’s slack in the parenting department, but her health was in decline, so Seth was put into foster care. Mitchell and Caleb’s parents were Seth’s second set of foster parents where he lived for about nine months until his mother returned and was able to convince the courts she was fit to be a guardian again.
I disagreed with the state’s assessment.
“After that his mom got this boyfriend who was bad news. He hit Seth and his mom for a while…” Mitchell drifted off for a moment before continuing. “My parents wanted Seth to come live with us, but Seth was worried for his mom. Then his grandmother died, and they moved into her house without the asshole boyfriend. Seth kept coming around though,” Mitchell said. “Like a stray. Seth’s never had much stability in his life.”
I was quiet after that, imagining Seth’s shiftless childhood with only one parent who was unreliable at best. And the abuse. Seth had never told me about any of it, but then again, maybe he did in his own way. I was thankful Seth ended up with Mitchell and Caleb’s family. Their relationship made more sense to me now. Seth was more careful with Mitchell’s feelings than he was with most people, and even when they argued, they still had each other’s back, like family.
“Listen, though, don’t say anything to Seth about what I told you.” Mitchell glanced over at me with a worried look. “Seth likes to, as he says, control the narrative.”
I nodded, although I hoped one day Seth would trust me enough to share those painful experiences with me.
Even with what Mitchell had told me, I felt compelled to at least bring up the fact that Seth was failing out of school, since I knew Mitchell wasn’t going to say anything, and I doubted Seth’s mother would either.
I usually saved these difficult conversations for after sex. That was Seth’s most agreeable time, when he was blissed out and open to suggestion. The last thing I wanted to do was crush his dreams of being a professional musician, especially when it seemed he was making his passion concrete.
Seth was reclined with his back against my stomach, using my legs as armrests as he rolled a joint on a shoebox lid. I almost always had a contact high when I was around him. I’d smoked a little weed over winter break, but it was too risky now that school was back on, and I’d have to go home and face Mai for family dinner. She’d sniff me out in a second, especially because my eyes got super red and swollen when I smoked.
“I’ve missed you on our car rides to school,” I said as an opener. “Mitchell’s been on a real Neil Young kick.”
Seth shook his head. “I’ll talk to him about it. You don’t have to pretend to like Neil Young for Mitchell’s sake.”
Seth was missing my point entirely. I wondered if it was on purpose.
I trailed a fingertip along his neck and down his shoulder where he wore his tattooed heart on his sleeve. I tried again.
“So… are you coming back? To school, I mean?”
“Welcome to the machine,” Seth said, licking along the edge of the rolling paper and then sealing the seam with his tongue in an incredibly arousing gesture.
Pink Floyd was Seth’s go-to when it came to discussing school or careers or the future in general. He was so counter-culture that he bought all of his clothes at thrift stores and most of his food at local restaurants and markets to avoid “feeding our corporate overlords.” His only weakness was the bulk deals at Sam’s Club, which he justified as being the only way to afford feeding all of us. Then he’d burn the boxes out back and make us pray to the gods of consumerism. I didn’t point out that Seth’s livelihood depended on the oil industry in the form of monthly checks, which he’d begin receiving when he turned eighteen in August. Seth was so full of contradictions, it was difficult to know where to begin.
“Are you withdrawing then?” I asked.
He glanced over his shoulder at me. “Would you think less of me if I did?”
That was a trap. They were becoming easier to spot, though not always as easy to avoid.
“No, but I do worry about what you’ll do if Petty Crime doesn’t pan out.”
“Why wouldn’t it?” His eyebrows dipped with suspicion. Seth always thought people were out to get him. Knowing more about his childhood helped me to understand his paranoia a little better, but I wished he wouldn’t assume the same from me.
There were a million reasons why their music career might not take off—bad luck, the band breaking up, lack of work ethic to make music and get gigs, mismanagement, and the most obvious to me, Seth’s escalating drug use.
“Being in a band is a risk. It might be nice to have something to fall back on.” I winced because I sounded so much like my father.
“A high school diploma doesn’t get you too far this day and age.” Seth said it like an old timer and pretended to hock a loogie. He was trying to turn our discussion into a joke, another one of his defense mechanisms.
“No, but it looks a little better on job applications than not having one. You could get your GED if you don’t want to go back to Hilliard.”
Seth lit his joint, rolled over onto his stomach, and propped himself up on his elbows. He took a long hit and blew out a plume of smoke aimed at my crotch. The breeze tickled a little, stirring the beast.
“Is this what it’s like having a dad?” Seth asked, looking up at me from under his luscious eyelashes and pouting suggestively with his spit-shiny pink lips. Seduction, another of Seth’s modes of distraction. I told myself to resist.
“I know your music is important to you, but you’re also very smart. And when you get into something, you give it one hundred percent. You could do anything you wanted if you tried.”
“Oh my God, Hiroku,” Seth crowed dramatically. “Now you sound like Mr. Graf.”
Mr. Graf was a guidance counselor at our school. Everyone with the last name of A-H had him, so he belonged to both Seth and me. Seth took another hit, then handed the joint to me, just to have me refuse it. It was his personal pleasure to try and get me to do things I shouldn’t. He leaned across my lap, brushing up against my junk in the process, in order to ash his joint in a bowl on the bedside table. Not an accident.
“So that’s it?” I felt like a failure. I didn’t necessarily expect Seth to do a 180 and come back to school, but I did hope to find that he had a long-term vision in place, which included some form of education. He was interested in carpentry, so maybe trade school? Or graphic design? Perhaps because excelling in academics had been drilled into me my entire life, I couldn’t imagine a future without it.
“Hiroku, I’m an artist. That’s what I’ll always be, whether it’s music or theater or something else. I’m never going to do time at a nine-to-five job or punch a clock. I don’t give a shit about getting a diploma or a GED from the great state of Texas. Our school system is a joke with all their revisionist history and standardized conformity. Shoving that bullshit down our throats like we’re livestock. Hilliard and the rest of them can suck my big fat dropout dick.” He took another hit, blowing the smoke out of his nose like a dragon. He peered up at me with distrust. “And here I thought we were making such progress.”
That rubbed me the wrong way. I felt it immediately, a prickly heat spreading over my skin, causing me to tense up as though physically throwing up a wall. I crossed my arms over my chest. “What does that mean?”
He breathed out a bullish sigh. “When I met you, you were such a try-hard. You were so…” He motioned loosely with his joint. “…repressed. You had so much personality and talent you were squandering by trying to fit into whatever box your parents had constructed for you. You were like veal, Hiroku, never being able to see the sunshine or feel the grass under your malformed little hooves.”
Veal, huh? I immediately regretted even bringing up the subject of Seth’s future. Let him figure it out for himself. This was what I got for trying to help him. I pushed myself off his mattress and made a grab for my underwear, which had been discarded on the floor along with the rest of our clothing.
“Don’t do that.” Seth grabbed my arm with his free hand. His strong fingers cut into the muscle of my bicep.
“Do what?” I asked, shaking him off me.
He set down his joint and pointed at me. “The moment I challenge you, you go into ice mode and freeze me out. You started this conversation, and now we’re going to finish it.” He grabbed my underwear out of my hand and threw it across the room. “Naked.”
I glared at him and sat down on the edge of the bed.
“Say it,” Seth commanded.
He was up on his knees now, pelvis jutting out aggressively, semi-hard and presenting almost defiantly, all sexual bravado and confidence and strength. I was no match for him, but he was right in that I had more to say.
“What about the drugs?” I asked.
His confidence flickered for just a moment, and I saw a flash of what might be interpreted as shame.
“Weed should be legal.”
I shook my head. “You know I’m not talking about weed or your meds or alcohol.”
“Well? What about them?” He wasn’t going to admit to anything.
“You seem to be getting high a lot more frequently.” At least with school, Seth knew he had to get up the next morning, so he would moderate his usage. Nowadays, I’d come over in the afternoons to find him still in bed, sleeping off last night’s debauchery or else he’d disappear into the bathroom for an extended amount of time. I knew what he was doing because a little while later he’d do the fluttery eye, permagrin thing that meant the drugs were kicking in. He always played dumb about it too, which, as a side note, pissed me the hell off.
“They help me reach a higher level,” Seth said.
“That’s bullshit.”
“How would you know?” Seth said viciously.
I narrowed my eyes at him. It came down to this, the line he drew between us—whether it was age or experience or drug use or who was more committed to their art. Seth fell back on these artificial divisions when he felt most threatened, even though it was the hurt that cut deepest.
“That’s right. Because I’m veal?” I said snidely. I’d already given up on this conversation anyway. “Look, the reason I’m bringing all of this up isn’t because I’m judging you or trying to act like your dad. It’s because I care about you, and I felt like I should say something or else I wouldn’t be being a good boyfriend. But if I’d known you were going to throw it all in my face, I never would have—”
“I’m sorry,” Seth whispered. I glanced up, not trusting my ears. His posture had shifted entirely—shoulders stooped, head hanging—and he appeared as a lost little boy, the one who got left behind by his mother when he was nine. “I’m sorry for being such a dick, Hiroku. I know you mean well. I’m not used to anyone giving a shit.”
He glanced up at me, and I saw the real Seth, the boy who was sensitive and kind and needed encouragement, love, and acceptance. Not rock star Seth or sex god Seth or whatever other persona he adapted to shield himself from the world.
“I really care about you, Seth.”
He nodded glumly. “I know you do.”
I opened my arms to him, and he crawled on his knees toward me. He draped himself over my lap, squeezing my waist with his inner thighs. Our kiss lasted forever, and my mind got lost in the almost psychic connection we shared, like threads crisscrossing into knots and being pulled tighter and tighter until there was no separation between us at all. He reached down between my legs and massaged my balls in a lazy motion, then squeezed my dick, which was always responsive to his touch. I ground against him until we were both sweaty and moaning.
We had sex again. Seth let me top him, which was a rare treat. He accepted me taking control without question and became uncharacteristically docile and compliant. All of the anger and passion I’d felt in our argument I channeled into our fucking. We were so loud and shameless, the bedframe jumped, and the walls shook. I hoped his mom wasn’t home to hear it. I rode him until we were both unraveled, all of our petty fights and mild irritations falling away as we climbed and peaked together. When we were finished, we collapsed, dizzy and panting, onto his bed. Seth hugged me tightly with one arm and grabbed the side of my head with his hand to draw me in closer. He whispered in my ear almost desperately, “I love you so much, Hiroku.”
It wasn’t the first time he’d said it, but it was the first time I truly believed it, all the way down to my marrow.
“I love you too, Seth.”
“Please, don’t ever leave me,” he begged.
“I won’t.”
“You promise?” he said with a sudden urgency.
“Yes, I promise.”
I didn’t even hesitate. Even when we argued or fought, I never thought of leaving him because I loved him, and even in his most infuriating moments, I understood him. He was a part of me as I was a part of him.
I thought it was our argument that had brought on Seth’s sudden bout of insecurity, but looking back, I realize now it was something else altogether.