by TJ Klune
“We’ll figure it out,” Xander told him, squeezing his arm. “And I promise not to ditch you all the time, okay?”
“Nah. It’s just the indica talking, man. I don’t know if you know this, but I kind of get sappy when I’m stoned.”
Xander snorted. “I know, Josy.”
“And besides, we’ll—”
“Got your tickets? I need to scan—Xander?”
They looked toward the large dyke standing near the door. Her head was shaved, and she had beautiful tattoos along her neck and the sides of her skull. It looked like a burst of wildflowers was blooming on her skin.
“Dee,” Xander said, sounding surprised. He let go of Josy and took a step toward her. They did a randomly complicated handshake that Josy could barely follow. “What are you doing here?”
“I’m the event coordinator for Q-Bert.”
Josy squinted at her. “The video game character from the eighties?”
“Sorry,” Xander said quickly. “This is my friend Josy. Josy, this is Dee. I do her ink.”
“I like the sides of your head,” Josy told her seriously.
“Thanks.” She sounded amused. “I like your mustache.”
He grinned at her. “We should be friends. Let me give you my phone number—”
“He’s a little stoned right now.” Xander sounded apologetic. “Tries to give his phone number to everyone when he’s high. We have to keep an eye on him so he doesn’t get kidnapped and held in a basement.”
“Probably a good idea,” Dee said. “Q-Bert is who you’re here to see. Tickets?”
“That’s a weird name for a poet,” Josy muttered, pulling the tickets out of the back pocket of his skinny jeans.
Dee snorted as she took the tickets and scanned them. “Poet. That’s funny.”
“What’s funny about it?” Xander asked.
She looked back up at them. “I don’t think the Q-Man has ever been called a poet before.”
Josy was confused. “Is that like an artistic thing? I don’t know the rules of a poetry slam. I’ve never won tickets to something like this before. Last time I won, I got a week’s worth of free tacos from Umberto’s. They told me not to come back after the second day because of how many tacos I’d ordered. Did you know that Umberto’s doesn’t appreciate someone pulling up in the drive-thru and ordering one hundred tacos? I didn’t know that.”
“No,” Dee said. “That’s not something I would have known.”
“Right? I mean, what’s the difference between ten people in a row ordering ten tacos and me just doing it all at once? I had to go back in line over and over, and by the time I was done, the tacos I got at the beginning were cold!” Josy frowned. “Now I’m hungry. Xander, you wanna go get some tacos? I think we should go get tacos.” He looked up at the bright lights of the library. “What were we doing here again?”
Xander sighed. “Poetry slam.”
Dee blinked. “Poetry slam? Do you… do you not know who Q-Bert is?”
“Uh, no,” Xander said slowly.
She smiled at them. Josy had never seen a dyke smile evilly before, but he figured there was a first time for everything. It was actually pretty great. She looked like a movie villain, Tattoo Head, and she’d probably try and take over the world’s supply of honey. It would be up to Johnny Destruction to stop her. “Oh, my sweet, sweet baby queers,” she said, and Josy wished she had a mustache like his so she could twirl it. “This isn’t a poetry slam, and Q-Bert is most definitely not a poet.” She pointed to a sign on a stand near the door.
Josy was very stoned, so it took him a moment to read it.
Q-BERT EVENTS PRESENTS
A Q-BERT PRODUCTION
A READING BY THE ONE AND ONLY Q-BERT
“GETTING POETRY SLAMMED IN MY BUTTHOLE BY SASQUATCH”
A LOVE STORY
“The fuck,” Xander said faintly.
“The Q-Man doesn’t write poetry,” Dee said gleefully. “He writes monster porn. And he’s doing a live reading. Better get to your seats, boys. You’re in for a wild ride.”
Chapter 3
“WHAT THE hell is this?” Xander hissed as he dragged Josy inside.
Josy couldn’t be sure he was sober enough to answer that question with any certainty. “I have no idea! I thought it was going to be poems and snapping and berets!” He paused, considering. “Though it makes sense why the guys on the radio were laughing at me when I told them I liked poems that rhymed because it made me happy all the time. I thought they just liked my poem.”
“Jesus Christ,” Xander groaned. “I can’t believe I agreed to this. Maybe we should go—”
“We can’t. I already told you that I have to go to every single event I win tickets to. For luck! Don’t you want me to be Johnny Destruction with explosions who stops lesbians from stealing all the honey?”
Xander’s face was in his hands. Behind him, an ethnically aware poster showed a group of multicultural children jumping on a trampoline while holding books. Josy didn’t understand how they could read while jumping. He could barely read while sitting. “I don’t know what any of that means,” Xander said, though it was muffled.
Josy didn’t either. “Why don’t we just see how it goes?” He tilted his head. “Also, what’s monster porn? I mean, I get what monsters are. And what porn is. But monster porn? Is that like the tentacles that Desmondo and Martindale shoved into Catarina—”
Xander dropped his hands. “You really had no idea?”
“Nope. You know how I get when I’m high. Apparently I hear monster porn and it somehow turns into a poetry slam. I don’t know.”
“You were high when you called the radio station.”
“Man, I’m pretty much high a lot of the time.”
“And we really have to stay?”
“Yes,” Josy said. He didn’t think he’d ever been more serious about anything in his life. “If we break the chain now, for all I know, I’ll wake up tomorrow with no eyebrows and—okay, really. You can’t read and jump on a trampoline at the same time, you ethnic rainbows of joy!”
“Would you stop yelling at the poster?” Xander growled at him. “I’m trying to find out how you’ve managed to survive this long.”
“A combination of timing, luck, good beard oil, and that mustache comb you got for me two Christmases ago.”
Xander looked toward the ceiling. “I love you.”
“Thanks, man,” Josy said happily. “I love you too.”
“But I don’t like you very much right now.”
“Oh. That’s a bummer to hear so soon after the whole love thing.”
Xander shook his head. “This is important to you?”
Josy shrugged. “I mean, yeah. Right? Totally.”
Xander took a deep breath. “Okay. We’ll stay. But I swear to god, if this gets weird, we’re leaving—”
“Wow,” Josy said, pointing toward the crowd gathering in the library. “That guy is dressed like a unicorn. Do you think his tail is a butt plug? I want to go ask him if his tail is a butt plug.”
“We’re leaving,” Xander snapped, trying to pull Josy toward the door.
“What? Why?”
“It got weird!”
“Oh, please,” Josy said, jerking his arm out of Xander’s hand. “We saw weirder things when we went to the Folsom Street Fair. Remember that guy sitting on the exercise bike outside of the Korean restaurant?”
“He was working out!”
“The seat was a dildo, and he was wearing nipple clamps attached to a car battery!”
“Dammit,” Xander muttered. “I hate it when you remember things that negate any point I could make.”
“Awesome,” Josy said. “And notice how I’m not pointing out the lady that appears to be a mermaid. Or maybe she’s some kind of salmon trying to swim upstream. I’m not sure.”
Xander was getting twitchy again, so Josy pulled him farther into the library.
A small stage had been set up on one side of the room
with rows of chairs in front of it, each with a number on the back. Josy looked at the tickets and saw they were damn near the front, which made him giddy. He couldn’t exactly be sure what was happening (and he was really jonesing for some tater tots), but he led Xander to their seats.
He took the chair on the end of the row, and Xander sat next to him. On the other side of Xander was an older woman whose face was painted like a tiger.
Xander looked particularly aggrieved when she bared her teeth at him and growled, but he didn’t say anything, for which Josy was eternally grateful.
“Hi,” he said. “I’m Josiah. This is my friend Xander.”
She stopped growling, her face splitting into a smile. “It’s nice to meet you. I’m Tigress. I don’t know the Josiah and Xander characters. Which Q-Bert book are they from?”
“Those are our real names,” Xander muttered.
The woman looked surprised. “Oh. Well, I like your costumes.”
“This is what we normally wear,” Josy said.
“Oh,” Tigress said. “Wow. You guys sure are… unique.”
Since this was coming from a woman who was wearing tiger face paint, Josy took that as a great compliment. “Thank you. I think so too. I like your face.”
“Oh my,” Tigress said. “Aren’t you just a sweetheart. What’s your favorite Q-Bert book? Mine is Blasted in the Behind by the Failed Patriarchy Who Learned Feminism Was a Good Thing.”
Xander choked.
“Whoa,” Josy said in awe. “I didn’t know there were books like that. We’d never heard of Q-Bert until I won the tickets and the nice villain dyke outside told us who he was.”
“You’re virgins?” Tigress squealed. “Oh my god, we have to tell them when they ask!”
Xander’s eyes narrowed. “Tell them what, exactly?”
“Oh, you’ll see,” Tigress said, clapping and sitting back in the chair. “Virgins are beloved here.”
“But I’ve had sex,” Josy said, confused. “It was all right, but it means more when—”
“Not that kind of virgin,” Xander said.
“Oh.”
“I’m never forgiving you for this.”
“Nah,” Josy said easily. “You will. You tell me that all the time, and yet here we are.”
Before Xander could respond, the crowd started to roar as the lights began to flicker. Tigress jumped to her feet, tilting her head back and howling, which was something Josy didn’t think tigers could actually do. He would need to watch more NatGeo documentaries to make sure.
He turned toward the front in time to see Dee take the stage. She stood at the podium, adjusting the microphone a bit. “We all know why you’re here. You’re here, in this place of literature and knowledge, to bear witness to the man. The myth. The legend. He who writes stories that fuel the imagination. He who spins tales of your darkest fantasies. He who has a finger on the diseased pulse of Americana. Ladies and gentle-Qs, I give you the one, the only… Q-Bert.”
“Yay!” Josy said loudly…
…which was apparently the wrong thing to do because everyone else was silent.
“Ah,” Dee said, smiling evilly once again. “At least we know where the virgins are.”
“Oh my god,” Xander moaned.
“I think I did it wrong,” Josy whispered loudly to him. “Do you think I did that wrong?”
“Oh my god,” Xander said again.
The people around them begin drumming their hands on their knees and stomping their feet as Dee left the stage. No one spoke. No one cheered. Josy wondered if this was what being in a cult was like. He reminded himself not to drink the Kool-Aid if there was any, but then he started to think about Kool-Aid, and he really wanted some, which led to thoughts of tater tots again, the kind covered in cheese and chili and maybe some cake and—
A man walked onto the stage, and all thoughts of the best foods to eat while stoned left his mind.
Now, it must be said that Josiah didn’t necessarily experience attraction right away. Oh sure, he could appreciate when someone looked interesting, but he didn’t feel that pull of want and lust that many others did. He never really had.
And that, of course, didn’t change when he saw Q-Bert for the first time. Why would it? There was nothing wrong with him, and definitely not anything that needed to be fixed.
But there was something, wasn’t there? Because Q-Bert was not at all what Josy was expecting.
He was… different. He looked around Josy’s age and was skinny, with short, messy blond hair that stuck out in all directions like he’d been running his fingers through it. He wore thick blue glasses and a black tie over a plaid shirt. He looked nervous, his mouth twitching slightly upward. His eyes crinkled at the corners into these little lines that Josy was fascinated by. He started to smile, and his teeth were a little crooked, and Josy found them endearing for reasons he couldn’t quite explain. Q-Bert waved, his hand jerking awkwardly side to side as the people in front of him continued to pound their feet. His fingers were thin and long, and Josy had to stop himself from waving back frantically.
He decided right then and there that he needed to be friends with Q-Bert, no matter what it took. Anyone who wrote monster porn and was the leader of a cult where people dressed as salmon and tigers and unicorns definitely could make Josy’s life more interesting.
The problem with that was Josy didn’t have many friends, and he wasn’t necessarily sure how to make them. Oh, he had Xander and Serge and Gustavo and Casey. And, to a certain extent, he had Lottie—Casey’s aunt—and the We Three Queens. When Josy found someone he wanted to know, it tended to be forever.
He didn’t really even know how he’d made friends with Casey and Serge and Xander to begin with. Xander had wanted to bone him, hence the whole hands-down-the-back-of-Josy’s-pants thing, but that had stopped almost immediately when Josy told him he wasn’t into sex like that. Normally, someone he rejected would leave right away, but Xander had stayed. And then came Serge and Casey, and Josy decided he wanted to keep them all.
So he did.
It certainly didn’t hurt that Casey had taken a sabbatical to Oregon where he met Gustavo Tiberius, a man that Josy was convinced could quite possibly be the greatest human who ever existed. He had a ferret named Harry S. Truman, and when Josy and Gustavo had met, they’d managed to turn soup into murder. Even though Josy hadn’t gotten the part in the commercial, he’d gotten Gustavo, which was ultimately more important.
(Though it should be said that the people from Campbell’s Soups did not appreciate his audition, where he somehow forgot that what he and Gustavo had rehearsed wasn’t what the actual commercial was going to be about. They’d cut him off when he started to ask his little bro about being locked in the closet and said that they needed to use quicklime to keep the smell of a decomposing body from getting too bad, something he’d learned in his brief stint as a corpse on Criminal Bad Guys: Topeka, Kansas. Since he was a professional, he thanked them for their time before leaving and asked they keep him in mind for any future projects. They still hadn’t called Starla back.)
So yes, his friend group was small, but he liked it that way. And besides, it’d recently doubled because of a guy who owned a video store, a trio of women who wore pink jackets and drove Vespas, and the proprietor of Lottie’s Lattes, who liked him a lottie.
Maybe Josy didn’t know how to make friends, but he seemed to be good at it. Maybe he could be good at it with Q-Bert too.
“Hello,” Q-Bert said into the microphone, and his voice was softer than Josy expected. It sounded like how he thought clouds felt.
“I’m so mellow,” he whispered to Xander.
“I will have my revenge,” Xander whispered back.
“Thank you for coming to my reading,” Q-Bert said. He was fidgeting worse now. Josy wanted to tell him everything was all right and maybe bring him some hot chocolate. Hot chocolate always made Josy feel better. “I know that I said I’d try to do these more, but things have been a
little difficult for me lately.”
“We love you, Q-Man!” someone in the audience shouted.
And Q-Bert blushed. Josy wanted to give him all the hot chocolate in the world. Even the kind with the little marshmallows in it that always got stuck in his mustache. “Thank you,” Q-Bert squeaked. He coughed, clearing his throat. “Thank you. I’m trying, and to see all of you here makes it all worth it.” The microphone screeched, and Q-Bert looked a little stricken as Dee came up to help him.
“He’s so brave,” Tigress breathed.
“What’s wrong with him?” Josy asked her. “Is he sick?” The thought worried him greatly.
She narrowed her eyes. “Nothing is wrong with him. Just because he has social anxiety disorder doesn’t mean he’s broken. He’s very up-front about what he goes through, and being here in front of all these people is scary for him. But he’s always honest, and it helps the rest of us going through the same thing. It took a lot for me to come here by myself, but here I am.”
“And as a tigress,” Josy said, almost reverently. “That’s so cool of you. You’re doing a great job.”
Her face softened. “You really have no idea who he is, do you?”
Josy shook his head. “Nope. But I want to.”
“I like you,” Tigress told him.
He grinned at her. “I like you too.”
Dee was whispering something into Q-Bert’s ear. He nodded slowly and took a deep breath. He gripped the sides of the podium and closed his eyes. Josy knew that positive reinforcement was always something he liked, so he said quite loudly, “I think you’re doing amazing and that you’re a good person!”
Q-Bert’s eyes snapped open and looked directly at Josy.
Josy waved at him.
Q-Bert almost smiled. Dee whispered something else to him as she winked at Josy.
“What are you doing?” Xander asked.
“Making sure he knows that it’s okay to be nervous.”
“It sounds like you’re flirting with him.”
Josy’s eyes widened. “What? That’s not—I’m not trying to do that!”