Important Things That Don't Matter

by David Amsden

  So there we were, a few weeks later, me and Mom, driving up from Maryland to spend Christmas with Dad’s family, twelve hours of watching 95 North get less and less polluted with traffic. It was a better car ride than the one a month before with Dad, I’ll tell you, because that’s when he had his VW bus, when he had gone on and on about Shirley, that lady who lived with us when I was a kid, and about her inheritance, about the cocaine.

  It was hysterical, how it all came up. I was like—

  “So, how much longer till we’re there?”

  —and Dad somehow manages to take this as a secret cue for him to start in on Shirley.

  “Hey,” he said, “you remember Shirley? Lived with us when me and your mother were married?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Well, sort of.”

  “She was a crazy girl…,” he said. It was funny, the way Dad was talking, all whimsical. It was obvious he wanted me to ask about her. When I think about it, Dad used me as a kind of confessional a lot back then.

  “What do you mean?” I was thirteen, so of course I had to ask.

  So Dad goes on and on, telling me about some party, about Shirley dancing half naked up on some table. She was an ex-Playmate, he says. Did you know that? You should have seen her breasts, so beautiful. I was old enough to grasp that Dad shouldn’t be telling these sorts of details, shouldn’t be telling me any of it, actually, but it’s not like this upset me, if you can get that. I just kind of nodded, thinking if Dad wants to tell me all this that’s fine. What can I really do?

  But there was one problem. I wanted to ask him about the cocaine, get some of the specifics, because all I really knew was what Mom told me that one time, and she was more screaming it for her own good than mine. Really I just wanted to know whether or not he’d stopped taking it yet. But the thing was, Dad never said straight out that he was doing it too. The guy was actually convinced I’d believe he was just there, around the cocaine, watching Shirley up on the table, all innocent. See, that’s the problem with people like Dad. They try to confess something to you, something that might actually matter, but they just end up telling another lie.

  Anyway, Mom’s graphic design business was doing well now, like she was sort of on her way to rich, so I guess what happened up in Maine makes sense, just knowing Mom.

  Me, Mom, and T.J. are sitting around baking Christmas cookies, and when she sees the careful attention T.J. pays to the designs on the cookies—the smoothing of the icing, the precise placement of the sprinkles and those little silver balls you never knew if you were supposed to eat or not—she asks him have you ever considered going into design. T.J. says he has actually, never very seriously, but yeah, he has.

  “I bet you’d be good at it,” Mom said.

  And, to make a long story short, a few weeks later T.J.’s quit his job as a waiter. He’s packed up his red Chevy Beretta and moved to Maryland, to work for Mom, in her office in the basement. He was living with us, with me and Mom, sleeping on the couch.

  I liked this for a lot of reasons. Of course because T.J. was so cool and adult, but the main one being that he wore a lot of suits, which was funny because he was just working downstairs. But T.J. was very into looking professional, it was a serious matter with him. Not that I cared. His wearing suits is how me and Claudia got that plastic bag where we kept the rug, so the rain wouldn’t get to it. I also liked him living with us because I could ask him certain questions, things that before just stayed in my head and drove me sort of mad, like right now when I was saying to him—

  “And she said she knew what it was, that it was okay, and that was pretty much it. But I never asked what it was.”

  T.J. starts laughing. We were in my bathroom, like we were every night, in boxers and T-shirts, bushing our teeth, washing our faces. T.J. would often criticize my hygiene, say I didn’t floss enough, say I wasn’t clean. Like wearing the suits, that was one of his quirks: the whole concept of clean was very important to him, he’d talk about it the way people talk about the President, or the love lives of movie stars, another topic T.J. was really into.

  But most of the time we just talked about Claudia. It was funny. T.J. was actually the one who started these little chats. He always seemed to especially like hearing the details of me and Claudia, even though I was only fourteen now and he’d probably done everything I was talking about ten times over.

  “What?” I said. “What’s so funny?”

  “You really don’t know what happened?”

  “No. What was it?”

  He’s laughing again, then brushing his teeth, real hard, then spitting in the sink.

  “Okay,” he said. “Do you know what the word hymen means?”

  “No.”

  “What about cherry?” T.J. asked. “Do you know what I mean when I say cherry?”

  Now I was spitting in the sink.

  “Do you?”

  “Sure,” I said, wiping my mouth. “I mean, sort of.”

  But T.J. saw I had no idea, so he sort of laughed again and then explained, about virginity, and how what happened with me and Claudia that afternoon wasn’t how it normally happened, but that she was right, everything was okay. I was so intrigued. Around this time there were a lot of these moments, with people like T.J., or even just kids my age, where I’d be talking to someone and it would just hit me, in this sour fragmented way, that there were a lot of things I should have known about already, but didn’t, just because I lived only with Mom.

  “I can’t believe you guys were outside,” he was now saying.

  “I know,” I said.

  “In the snow,” he said.

  “Yeah. I know.”

  “Gives you something to think about in the bathroom,” T.J. now said.

  It was funny, how he suddenly looked very excited saying this. I just looked at him, at his face in the mirror. Like for a second there he was speaking to someone else, and I was waiting for him to get back to me.

  I guess he was seeing this expression on my face, because he was suddenly all joking, but sort of smirking too, like—

  “Oh, you know you do it! Come on!”

  Look, I understood what he was talking about. It’s not like I was five or something. And this conversation had occurred before. But the thing was, if you need to know, I actually never had done it before, touched myself, even though I was fourteen. I don’t mean to brag, but I was in the rare position of having a girl doing it to me at the exact time I would have started doing it myself.

  But I didn’t really get that then, and the topic made me sort of jittery. I didn’t really feel like deconstructing it right then. That’s why I just smiled all awkward at T.J. in the mirror and said—

  “I swear I don’t.”

  “Oh come on!”

  “I don’t.”

  “Give me a break,” T.J. said. He almost sounded a little pissed off now. “Everybody does it.”

  I never could figure out why T.J. was so entranced with the subject, why he was always bringing it up, wanted me to admit it so badly. In the few months he’d lived with us, this came up many times. Like every week, actually. It was one of the few things I didn’t like about him at all. Another was how he would always tell me about this one friend Seth from Florida, and, more specifically, how this Seth could barely fit into this yellow Speedo, because he was so big, but wore it anyway, every time at the beach.

  T.J. would get this look in his eyes talking about this stuff. He had it right now. It was different from usual. His pupils got sharper, kind of flecked with silver. It was like he hadn’t eaten in a while. This time it was especially disconcerting, because now he very lightly said to me—

  “Look, I’ll show you how to do it some time.”

  He could see me in the mirror, that I had nothing to say. That if I could, I’d take back everything.

  “What?” I finally said, just to fill some kind of space.

  “Kidding!” he said after a minute. He patted my head, which I wasn’t loving right now. I wat
ched it happen in the mirror. That way it didn’t quite seem like me he was touching. “Kidding!” he said again. “Jesus, you never had any brothers. That’s right,” he said. “Don’t worry. For crying out loud, don’t worry! I’m only kidding!”

  THREE

  I’m telling Claudia yes, right there.

  I was telling her that right there was where it felt right. She had never done this before, not quite like this. I was in my boxer shorts, on my bed. It was still my old bunk beds then. I was lying on my back, up on my elbows. Claudia had slid her hands all the way up my thighs, up under the boxers, was moving them now, sort of squeezing at that place where your legs become your hips. You know, on the insides, where there’s that tendon. I liked the position I was in, in this almost embarrassing way. Because my legs were spread a little bit, and I was on my back. It was all vulnerable, like I was the girl or something. But don’t get me wrong: I just liked how I was offering myself up to Claudia. You know, saying do whatever.

  “So like this?” she was saying.

  “Yeah,” I said.

  “What feels so much better about it?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “It just feels different. Like real warm. Like you’re touching all of me. I don’t know.”

  These conversations were standard issue when we were together like this. Like those times at Montgomery Mall, where we’d sneak into the Gap dressing room. This was before there were those pointless attendants all wired to some headphone system, the ones who show you to your room and then practically ask can they watch you change. This was when you could just go in, and, if you were me and Claudia, spend an hour back there and no one would really notice. We’d be in the dressing room, down to our underwear, just pointing to parts of each other, certain areas, saying we liked them. She liked my arms. I liked the dimples in her hips, her thighs, her calves—I guess I was pretty much obsessed with everything when it came to Claudia, if you want to know the truth.

  At first these moments had been kind of tense, because Claudia was Catholic, and dealing with two types of guilt: the standard-issue, hermetical guilt from the religion, and then the kind that comes from being young, transplanted to America, and therefore not really caring about worship or God in any real way anymore. But once she stopped wondering if touching me was about to get her showered in brimstone, we’d have these very open conversations. Like is this okay? Does this feel right? Do you like this better?

  “Do you want me to do anything else?” Claudia was now asking.

  “No,” I said. “Just this. Just like that.”

  So she keeps on moving her hands right there, all the way up. I don’t know how to describe how I felt. It was a new feeling, real mature—that one where you want the girl under your skin so bad you sort of consider cutting yourself. You know what I mean. Just so you’ll feel more open.

  So I lift up my shirt. It was a Smashing Pumpkins shirt, the one you had to wear after Kurt Cobain put that gun in his mouth like a jackass. I was doing this just so I could show Claudia what she was doing to me, and I started tugging on the elastic lining of my boxers, saying please take these off. Claudia was always the more rational one, which explains her saying—

  “But your mom is right in there.”

  “It’s fine,” I said. “Oh it’s fine.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “She’s watching Jeopardy!,” I explained. “She’s like obsessed. Don’t worry. She won’t get up till it’s over.”

  “What about T.J.?” she asked.

  “I think he’s in there with her. Don’t worry. He knows not to come in.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Wait,” Claudia now said. “Do you tell T.J. about us?”

  “No.”

  “Are you sure?” Claudia asked.

  “Why would T.J. wanna come in right now?” is all I said.

  So Claudia slides my boxers down to my knees. I felt more awkward than I thought I would, sort of propped up on my elbows, still in this T-shirt, my boxers now at my knees, my jeans at my ankles. You know, everything ready to be pulled up in case of an emergency. And, see, the lights were on, so I was very visible. It was like she was examining me.

  “I kinda like looking at you,” Claudia was saying. “Does it still feel good?”

  “You don’t even know.”

  “For real?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Just like that. I mean, it feels different. It really feels different.”

  My eyes had pretty much been closed the whole time, but now, with this feeling burning even more, right in the middle of me, I opened them up and looked right at Claudia. I look right at her face, can see her moving, her shoulders moving, just barely. I feel my mouth opening now. Claudia’s smiling. I see her eyes, I look right into them. Yeah, I’m really feeling it now, the first time ever. I close my eyes. Yeah. Just keep doing like that, right there. Yes. My stomach muscles cramp up, same with the tendons in my neck. Jesus. Yes. Yes. My mouth tingles, my lips and cheeks go sort of numb. Even my toes feel funny, dipped in ice—

  Jesus. I’m very seriously now considering peeling my entire skin off and wrapping it around Claudia. Yes. Yes. Nothing in the world can be broken. I see that now. Yes. Throw glass plates against the wall and they’ll just bounce off, glide down to the floor. Yes. Yes. Oh, God. Everything’s so lucid, like it all belongs to me. Yes. Like even the colors are mine—

  And right now I’d have yelled, but I knew there was no point to it. Oh God yes! I’m not scared of anything. I just knew that no sound would have come out—

  “Oh…God,” I suddenly hear Claudia saying. “Oh…wow.”

  I was taking in that one deep breath now, that horrible breath that comes all of a sudden, where you realize you don’t really own anything. That nothing is yours. Then I opened my eyes and there was Claudia. She was so still, and still smiling. There was something confusing about looking at her. I can’t explain it. A little time passed, and she said—

  “Your forehead is so sweaty.”

  “I can feel it,” I said. “I know.”

  “I’m going to go wash my hands now,” she said.

  “Yeah,” I said. “Okay. That’s fine.”

  FOUR

  You wouldn’t think it, because of the way he looked, all gentle and soft, and because he knew how to make origami flowers and fold napkins into swans, but T.J. was into wrestling. I discovered this pretty quick once he moved in. Whenever we were hanging out around the house, we’d get into these wrestling matches. They were fun for a while. He was tall, well over six feet, and I was still short for my age, something like five-six, so he could pick me up, throw me onto the couch, things like that. Or a lot of the time he’d just get me by the wrists, both of them, bend them back until I could feel it even in my elbows. That’s what he was doing right now, about three hours after Claudia had left. Mom had just gone up to bed, and we were right there on the living room floor, in front of the turned-off television. He was pulling them, my wrists, like—

  “Say mercy! Come on now, say it!”

  “Never!”

  “How about now?” He was twisting them even farther back.

  “Never!” I said again. “Nope!”

  “You don’t have a chance!”

  “Oow!”

  “I told you.”

  “Fine,” I said. “Mercy.”

  And he let go, but it’s not like the match was over. But this time, as we got tangled back in each other, T.J. tried a new move. Up to this point his winning repertoire consisted pretty much of mercy, or that thing where you weave your arms up under someone’s armpits, put your hands behind their neck, so they can’t really move anymore. But what he was doing right now was different, and I didn’t really get the point.

  I mean, I didn’t understand exactly what the point was of grabbing my ass like that.

  So I squirmed away, quick.

  “Oh, is someone scared?” T.J. said.

  This was one o
f his favorite things to say when we wrestled, but right now it was registering different. I didn’t want him to know this though, so I just said no, no one’s scared, not me, and kept trying to pin him down. And here it comes again: his hand, up the back of my thigh. And look, it wasn’t like I was eight years old. I could tell what was up, how T.J. was doing it in this way meant to seem like an accident. Like it was really my shoulder he was going for, but, oops, my ass ended up in his hand.

  I knew something unorthodox was certainly taking place here. But then, at the same time, there was that one very true point that T.J. made continually: that I never had a brother, that he was just kidding, that if I had a brother I’d get it. I’d see how it was all just some sort of joke.

  “Who’s scared?” T.J. was still saying.

  I wasn’t doing such a brilliant job at pinning him down. He had me on my back now, my legs bent, my knees up at my mouth, like I was a gymnast or something. I was completely immobile, and wasn’t having any fun anymore.

  “Who’s scared?” he said again.

  “I’m not scared,” I said. “I just can’t move.”

  “Oh come on. You gotta at least try.”

  “I am trying.”

  “That’s the best you can do? Come on now.”

  “Look I can’t move.”

  “How about now?” he asked, but he was only coming down on me harder. And there was his damn hand again. I tried to squirm away again, but I couldn’t move, not at all.

  “I think somebody’s scared,” T.J. said, right in my ear. I felt the carpet against my cheek. I felt T.J.’s stubble against the other. It felt like coral.

  “I don’t think so,” I said.

  And really, it didn’t bother me all that much. I wasn’t some kid. Even right now, as his hand goes right up into my crotch for a second, and squeezes, and I hear him laughing a bit, and it’s in this way like he can’t even wait until he’s alone. That’s the kind of laugh it was, the kind you’re not supposed to share with anyone. But I told you, I could just shut off my senses if I wanted to and that’s what I did, went cold, dead, waiting eagerly until he grabbed my wrists again. Because then I could say mercy, and everything would be over.