by Adam Nemett
Or maybe it’s because he said “No. Stop.” David has triggered something. Something bad.
She hops off him. Puts on her sunglasses. And she’s pulling at David’s side, rolling him over onto his stomach—it’s so fast—his face now pressed into the cold wall of the van. She thrusts her hand down the back of his loosened pants and in one motion pulls them down to his knees. David tries to crane his head back to her and he can almost see her face, her eyes obscured by those bug glasses, but instead she grabs his Mohawk and pulls tight, pressing his face into the wall, and he really doesn’t know what she’s about to do to him but he can take a guess and then it happens.
David knows in his mind that he is stronger than she is. But somehow he can’t get his body to remember. And so he lies there, prone, pressed into the mattress as Haley shoves what feels like three fingers inside his asshole. David doesn’t know what to do because this is the first time anything like this has ever happened to him. He cries out into the mattress—the pain odd and all-consuming, one of nature’s processes in reverse—but she keeps shoving her hand in there, jamming him in place against the van wall. And maybe you’d think that something kinky and exciting takes hold. That pain becomes pleasure. That he relaxes into it. That it starts to feel good. But it does not feel good for him. It doesn’t ever feel even a little good. It feels like ripping and degradation. Like the only thing he can do to aid his body is to leave it completely.
She pulls out, pulls back. But something is still inside David and won’t go away.
He flips over quickly. Scrambling to pull up his boxers, he scrambles away from Haley, her body now slumped in on itself like a wilted daisy. She’s still staring at him with those bug eyes. David hops to standing, accidentally banging his head on the ceiling of the van. Everyone else is so involved in each other’s junk that they’ve completely missed what just happened. Which, for David, is a blessing and a curse.
He sees Ultraviolet, who’s now pumping back and forth into SuperVisor, her ankles over his shoulders and her hips bucking back against him. Ultraviolet smiles at David, and somehow it feels like he was the one who just violated David along with Haley, instead of just Haley, kneeling there with strange and sweaty smiles on both their colluding faces. Haley pulls down her glasses so David can see her wet eyes. She’s not crying, he realizes. That’s rage. He stares back at her with the same fury.
David needs to go somewhere, but there is nowhere to go.
So he collects his clothes and jumps into the front seat.
“I’ll drive,” he barks at Dr. Ugs.
Ugs tries to say that he’s fine, that he’s the sober one, but when Business-Man grabs his lab coat and rips him from the seat, Ugs swings the van to the roadside and gives up the wheel.
Okay, David will drive.
Oncoming headlights leave wicked trails. David blinks and sees Japanese calligraphy. The sign for hope. Blink. The sign for machine. Blink. The sign for meat. Blink. David drives fast. Sixty, seventy miles per hour on dark back roads, speeding into turns and running stop signs. He knows he was recently in pain, and knows he’s supposed to be mad about something. But who cares? The new Party Zero is amazing.
“How long does this stuff stay in your system?” David asks Lee.
“Who knows?” Lee responds. “We didn’t exactly have proper clinical trials. Mathias is making me help with his shit for Fu’s radio, this earworm idea, a piece of music that gets stuck in your head. I swear, the complexity of the brain compared with the body is insane. We don’t know the mechanism faction of lithium, but we give it to tons of people. It’s trial and error. The brain is a complete fucking asshole. At least the body’s honest about what it wants.”
“Well, this new stuff is genius. It’ll make us a fortune. If we shorten Party Zeronal to PZ, the street name can be Pez, and we’ll sell it in Pez dispensers made to look like the nine of us and—”
“You’re good with words,” Lee interjects. “What’s the opposite of ‘fear’?” Lighting a cigarette, he stares into the Bic’s flame, drawing it ever closer to his face.
“I don’t know,” David says. “‘Bravery’?”
“I think it’s ‘faith.’”
“Okay.”
“Like, we fear our shadows, but if we only had faith to let them come out. One trip on DMT and you have faith the End is nigh, but that same faith cures the fear of death, right?”
“What’s the difference between losing one’s fear of death,” David asks, “and a drug whose side effects include suicidal thoughts?”
Lee ignores the question and tilts the rearview. “Fucking whore,” he says. “She knows exactly what she’s doing. Told her not to fuck him and she’s all over him right from the start.”
“Who, Zoe?”
Lee shrugs. He’s carried a torch for Zoe since the night of the bonfire, David’s sure of it. He looks right and suddenly sees Lee anew. Bald and shivering like a little boy, like Owen cowering in the shower that day back in Forbes. Lee’s heart is breaking and David isn’t sure why, but he’s in no mood to play therapist this time. David’s got his own shit to deal with. Eyes on the road, he reaches out his hand to try to pat Lee’s bald skull, implying everything is going to be just fine.
“Uh-huh… I see,” David says, groping. And he never feels it coming, but suddenly the smack of a knuckle catches David in the right eye. It isn’t a solid punch, just a dismissive swipe.
“No,” Lee says, “you’re fucking blind.”
Before he can retaliate, David feels lips on the nape of his neck. He knows this is pleasure, and that he’s supposed to be turned on. And he is. And who cares? A tongue laps his mouth and he licks it back, sucking this foreign maw like it’s his last chance to quench a thirst. There are hands on David’s chest, maybe two of them, on his legs, maybe four of them, unbuckling him and pulling his cock from its hiding place, stroking it back to life. David looks down and sees It Girl’s head in his lap. She pulls his cock from her mouth with a loud pop and asks, “Are you bleeding?”
Meanwhile, in the back, Ultraviolet is an absolute machine. He dominates the women, twisting their legs like bendy straws, plowing into them with some untapped power David assumed but didn’t fully realize. David watches the girls’ faces contort, their eyes rolling back.
They look scared and saved all at once.
He’s cum three or four times now, but rather than pull out he finishes inside them, holding their heads close to his as he empties himself, making fierce eye contact the whole time, and then he brings them back down to earth, seals each intense physical climax with an emotional bond—a kiss on the nose, his palms cupping a breast, softly thumbing a nipple—something to make each girl feel special and chosen by him, but then when he’s done with a given girl, when he’s cum and he decides she’s cum enough, too, and is curled up in a panting heap, he nudges her aside and kneels there glistening, waiting for the next one. It’s hot to watch at first. But as the minutes or hours drag on, he’s kind of a dick about it.
David grows weary of the whole thing. David grows weary in general, exhausted, spent. The action in the van becomes fogged, smudged. There are no couples back there. Only a writhing mass of humans. Blink. David wants to keep going but he can’t keep his eyes open. Blink. The others are slowing down, too. They love each other and collapse and blink themselves to sleep.
ii.
And just like that. It’s light outside but that’s not what wakes them. Lee is bounding at Mathias, slamming him against the back of the driver’s seat (thudd!). Mathias ricochets into the metal wall (claink!), sending vibrations across the cabin (gagoosh!). And they’re all groggy from sleep and think this is just a funny dream, but then it’s not funny anymore. Shit gets serious. They’re grunting and angry. Mathias grabs his side and there’s blood on his hand.
“See? There you go, sweetheart! Come at me.” Mathias taunts him and then somersaults out of the corner and he’s on Lee in a flash. Fists swing at naked ribs. Mathias wails away on L
ee’s stomach and chest. Lee punches back, and a right cross staggers Mathias up toward the front seat and David doesn’t even see him go for the glove compartment. When Mathias swings back around, he’s holding his grandfather’s antique axe, the one with the purple metallic handle.
“Tell them,” says Lee.
They stand off. Then Peacemaker crawls over to break it up. He tells them that’s enough, it’s too late for this, or too early, who knows, but let’s not ruin a perfectly wonderful, sexified evening.
“Eff that,” says Mathias, grabbing SuperVisor’s scrubs V-neck. They all wonder what he possibly has left to prove. Still holding the axe, he jumps into the front seat, wearing only the shirt, and takes the wheel. And now people are looking at Business-Man.
Like he’s supposed to do something.
They’re close to home and the crew in the back shakes off the sleep and gets dressed. Lee sulks behind the driver’s seat but then inexplicably joins Mathias up front. David thinks he even overhears him say, “I’m sorry,” and Mathias eventually reaches out a hand in acceptance.
It’s pouring outside. A trio of early-bird initiates greet the vanguard, covering them in evolution capes as they trudge silently toward the front door of The Egg. They look like first-time skiers, bodies destroyed by the impossible physicality of the night. Mathias and Lee are first inside, Mathias slamming the door like a child. Britt rolls her eyes. Owen shrugs. They all feel the post-drug exhaustion, like after a night on Ecstasy, desperately wanting to melt into a hoodie.
“Who wants French toast?” asks Fu. As he and Britt and Nyla and Owen head in to crack eggs, Haley tugs David’s sleeve and whispers, “Stay here.”
Memories flood in. David doesn’t know how to feel, whether to trust her. But he follows her to the van anyway, preparing for another torrent of assaults upon his backside.
“Get in,” she says, sliding open the door. “It’s pouring. MaxMobiles make good umbrellas.”
“Please… just don’t do anything else to me,” he pleads. She nods shamefully.
They get in and face each other in the front-seat captain’s chairs. David isn’t going to speak first, and he makes that perfectly clear.
“We slept so hard,” she says, trying to break the ice. “Where did all the time go?”
“Nice weather we’re having,” he retorts, making fun of her stupid small talk. He isn’t planning on forgiving her, but when she pulls his head and kisses him, he can’t stop her. He pinches her earlobe. She undresses, pulling off her white tights. In the dawn light, this is the first time David sees her clearly.
She’s bald. It’s all gone.
Her vagina has been stripped and waxed bare, and though he wasn’t exactly hoping for that same mound of curls, he’s always envisioned her with something, some soft patch to run his fingers through if this moment ever came again. He wonders if Mathias made her wax it all off. She reads David’s mind: she brings his hand between her thighs and says, “It’s okay. It’s okay.”
He climbs between her legs, her feet on the dashboard. They make love like tired giants, hearts beating hard. But the slowness forces them to savor everything. The feel of her slickness. The rub of his belly. Hands on her scalp. Teeth on his ear. “It’s okay,” she whispers. “It’s okay…”
And he whispers it back. “Yes. It’s okay.” Neither apologizing. Both forgiving.
David wants to swim in that absolution. He opens the van windows and lets the rain pour in, and soon it’s rising round their legs, drenching their waists, lapping between their chests, overtaking the dashboard, the windshield, their necks, chins, up to the brim, one last gasp, until they submerge completely, drowning like the Titanic’s elderly aristocrats, wrestling like horny teenagers, playing like kids in a pool, entangled like twins in a womb, ready to begin again.
— Ø —
“Happy birthday, David,” Haley says.
“Wow,” David says. “Is it April 4?” He’d honestly lost track.
“I’ve honestly lost track,” she says. “I think it’s a few days after, but happy birthday anyway.”
They stare at the van ceiling, heads down between the front seats. Her scalp smells terrible, either from the events of the past evening or her shampoo or just their general lack of showering amid all the power outages. She pops up, flips the radio past an emergency NOAA weather bulletin, and lands on the Doobie Brothers.
“What are you going to tell him?” asks David. “Like, where will you sleep after this?”
“It doesn’t matter where I sleep anymore. Because this”—she places a hand over his heart—“this right here is where I live now.” He dresses her, like in that other lifetime back in Pikesville. Pulls the tights up her legs. Holds her boots as she presses her heels into them with a satisfying thump.
David feels suddenly restless. “We’re going to have certain responsibilities, you and me.”
“People depend on us,” she says, mostly to herself. “And I depend on them.”
David understands. “The more good people I meet, the more I fall in love with them.”
Haley begins to cry and says, “Then why do I feel like we’re becoming more and more bad?”
David doesn’t know how to answer her, because he wants to ask the same question.
“What if we go to Canada together? They’re better equipped for environmental breakdown.”
“You need to have more faith, David.”
“In what?” David scoffs. “That he can save us?”
“That we can save us all,” she says. “Don’t you still believe that?”
David doesn’t know what he believes. He believes he loves her, and that any day, hour, second away from her is one less they’ll have together on Earth.
In the driveway, Haley and David fall asleep again, lulled by the wafting smell of syrup.
iii.
Blink.
David’s parents met in ninth grade trig class. Gil had asked Eileen if he could cheat off her. Eileen said no, but he tried anyway and she let him. That became the catchphrase of their relationship: He cheated off me. They both wore it like a badge of dishonor.
While their friends got pregnant, Gil and Eileen missed the early boat to Parentland. Gil wanted to be a famous portrait photographer—the next Avedon or Arbus—but his desire for fortune outweighed his craving for fame. Dreams dissolved into reality, art into business. He sired Fuffman Foto, specializing in weddings and other lovely affairs. He helped Eileen open her private acupuncture practice, and she built her reputation as she-shaman of Pikesville, Maryland.
When they finally decided to have a kid, they read every bit of research on cognitive development, environmental determinism, nature vs. nurture. Eileen dove deep into brain science, studying Western diagrams of basal ganglia, cross-referencing Eastern Ayurvedic texts. Prenatal yoga happened each morning, accompanied by a comprehensive vitamin regimen; each night she lulled her gelatinous embryo to sleep with Mozart sonatas from Baby Einstein CDs. A team of doctors, osteopaths, midwives, and musicians ushered their child into the world via Jacuzzi birth, and when he popped out, a Navajo chief—yes, seriously—chanted a prayer of thanksgiving, his eternal voice wavering over primordial infant squeals.
His nursery was a multisensory play experience, an explosion of color and hanging mobiles. It’s a wonder he didn’t turn out epileptic. With activity gyms and phonics galore, they worked on David’s hearing and vision, his fine motor skills, his emotional quotient. Sign language flash cards let him communicate early. David was weeks ahead on the charts, routing all infant rivals. He walked at nine months, was out of diapers before turning two. By age three he could read, kind of.
And he desperately wanted to read about superheroes.
But David’s parents insisted real books were far superior to comics, those orgies of violence, those cheap vehicles for beasts, biceps, and huge bazooms. And they never bought into the educational potential of screens, but they knew entertainment was a healthy balance. So the comprom
ise was as long as a real book dwelled nearby, he could watch the iPad on low volume.
David found a loophole.
He jumped around in cartoon series like Teen Titans, X-Men: Evolution, and The Spectacular Spider-Man, and then, when his parents decided the screen time was getting excessive, Dad diverted David’s attention from thirty-minute shows down to eight-minute episodes of The All-New Super Friends Hour, a Hanna-Barbera classic from the 1970s available online, depicting the most powerful forces of good ever assembled: Superman, Batman and Robin, Wonder Woman, Aquaman, plus the largely ineffectual Wonder Twins and their space monkey, Gleek.
In one early episode called “The Brain Machine,” an evil genius—Doctor Cranum—builds a device that advances man’s mental evolution a million years into the future.
“The rest of the world must have these magnificent powers of mine!” Cranum cackles. Even Wonder Woman gets zapped and becomes his yellow-eyed convert. But Batman captures Cranum and hands him over to the authorities, and at the end Wonder Woman makes the moral clear:
“No man has a right to enforce his will on others, no matter how good his intentions may be!”
Cue the triumphant horn section.
David dug Wonder Woman. Something about the mysterious look on her face after she got saved and whispered breathlessly, “Wow. Thanks, Batman.” Yet she was the only superhero girl—a strong, important, wonderful girl—and when the guys rescued her from Doctor Cranum, David saw the powerful profit of restoring a great girl to safety.
That’s how heroism works, he thought. You take back what the villain steals, and someone beautiful thanks you for it.
David told his parents this newest prophecy, wondering aloud if it might be possible for him to someday save Claire from her leukemia.
They managed his expectations, but in Super Friends they realized there was morality to be learned. The accolades given to the good. The dangers of being bad. But as they grew more tolerant of superheroes, a new restlessness birthed inside David.
His fifth birthday was coming up, and David knew he was supposed to be getting older, more mature. But two months prior to his party, during a tense game of hide-and-seek, he’d accidentally found his big present. Squirming beneath the slate sanctuary of Dad’s basement pool table, David spotted a shopping bag. Peeking from inside was a sliver of the telltale S insignia. It was a reversible Superman cape, blue on one side, red on the other, which Mom had sewn herself. He dug his tiny fists into the fabric. He’d found a mystery, meant only for him. He put it on.