by Nick Burd
“Faggot,” she said. And then she turned and took her bike up toward her house.
Chapter 10
Work the next day went by in a slow smear across my brain. It felt like I was stocking milk in the dairy for eight hours, but when I checked my watch, it had only been forty-five minutes. Thankfully, Pablo, Jessica, and Fessica weren’t working that day. Part of me wished Fessica was there so I could apologize.
I hardly spoke to anyone all day and other than a few customers, no one spoke to me. I was left with my thoughts of everyone that had playing a role in my summer so far—Alex, Lucy, Pablo, the Montana twins, Dingo. Even Vicki lurked on the edges of my mind, a smiling face in a photograph that stood for things too painful to think about. I ran through scenarios in which I impressed them all. I was a famous author being interviewed on a late-night talk show, and everyone was watching me from their homes. Lucy was pointing and saying, “That’s my friend! That’s my boy!” Pablo was scowling and jealous, but unable to switch the channel.
The imaginary host asked me what my book was about.
“It’s about the summer after my senior year of high school. Everything in it is true. No names have been changed to protect the innocent, because everyone in it is guilty. Especially me.”
I was eating a piece of pizza in the break room when my phone vibrated in my pocket. I took it out and there was Alex’s name on the screen. I felt a burst of pleasure in my chest.
“Hello?”
“Is Dade there?” There was noise in the background, like rushing traffic.
“This is Alex,” I said. “Crap. I mean, this is Dade.”
“Um . . . I’m Alex. You’re Dade.”
“Right,” I said. Shut my eyes and sunk in my chair. I wanted to disappear. “You’re Alex and I’m Dade. I think I got it.”
Alex laughed. “Good. So now that we’ve got that straightened out, how are you, man? What have you been up to?”
“I’m good,” I said. I tried to think what I’d been up to lately other than sitting around thinking of him. “Summer’s good. How are you?”
“I’m good. I’m calling because Dingo’s having a little get-together out at his place tonight. His band will be playing. There’ll be, like, eighty kegs. You in?”
“I’m totally in,” I said. I sat up straight. I was ready to go right then. “What time?”
“Come at ten?”
“Well, I’m at work now and don’t get off until ten.”
“No biggie,” he said. “Come after. Things should really be hoppin’ by the time you get there.”
I thought of Lucy. “Can I bring someone?”
“Um, sure,” he said a bit hesitantly.
“It’s my friend Lucy,” I said. “She’s cool.”
“Oh, word. Is that a lady friend? Someone you’ve got your eye on?”
It took me a moment to get the gist of what he meant, but when I finally did, I let out a laugh. “Oh, no, no. She’s just a friend.”
“Cool,” he said.
He reminded me how to get to Dingo’s place. I said good-bye and waited for him to do the same, but there was a click and he was gone. I immediately called Lucy.
“You have to go with me,” I told her. “I can already feel myself turning into a mess. What do I say? How do I act? I can’t do it on my own.”
She let out a dramatic sigh. “I’d love to be your wingman, but Aunt Dana is a bit peeved about me being out so late so many nights in a row. She’s forcing me to stay in for some quality time and watch the Grace Kelly DVD collection she ordered online. I told her that I loathe quality time, but that didn’t make things any better.”
For a moment I wondered how I would ever survive the evening alone, but then I realized I didn’t have a choice. She wished me luck before we hung up.
“You’re the best,” she said. “Don’t forget that.”
When I got to Dingo’s there were about twenty other cars parked in the yard and along the dirt road that ran in front of the little house, and every light in the place was on. Music blasted from inside and diffused into the evening. I parked in the yard in a space between two cars, one of which was Alex’s. The sight of it made my heart flutter.
There were a couple of guys around my age on the porch smoking a cigarette and passing a bottle of rum back and forth. They both had shaved heads. One of them kept running his hand over his and laughing.
“Hey,” I said. I noticed the caution in my voice and immediately hated it. “Is Alex here?”
“He’s around here somewhere,” said the other one. He looked me up and down with a coy smile. “Last time I saw him he was in the bathroom getting his head shaved.”
I slipped between them and went into the house. There were about a dozen shirtless guys in the living room, all with shaved heads. The Jericho Bastards record was on, all razor-sharp guitars and nonsense lyrics. People were pumping their fists in the air and yelling along with the music. I kept stealing glances at the shirtless bodies around me. The tufts of hair under arms. Adam’s apples and belly buttons. The vertebrae snaking up the center of muscular backs. It was then that I noticed my hard-on.
“Hey!” I saw Louis’s head bobbing in the sea of bodies. He ducked under someone’s arm and made his way over to me. He had to yell over the music to be heard. “So glad you could make it, man. Alex said you’d be coming. There’s tons of beer in the refrigerator. Band goes on in a couple of hours. Playing a ton of new songs. It’s gonna be sick, man.”
“I can’t wait,” I said. “Hey, do you know where I can find—”
He cut me off. “And remember how I thought Death Grip was a stupid band name?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, dude, I totally got them to change it.”
“To what?”
“We are now officially called Dingo and the Side Effects. Pretty cool, right? I’m Dizziness, Thomas is Vomiting, and if we get this dude that Dingo knows to play keyboards, he’s going to be Diarrhea. Genius, right? Super edgy.”
I told him it was and that I couldn’t wait to hear the band and that I was going to find Alex. I made my way through the crowded living room to the bathroom.
It was an expectedly tiny room with an unflattering fluorescent light and bright white surfaces everywhere. Dingo was standing in the bathtub wearing nothing but a red Speedo. He had an unlit cigarette dangling from his mouth and his hip jutted out a bit in a pose that was decidedly effeminate. Thomas was sitting on the toilet, and Jay from Taco Taco was shaving his head for him. Everyone else’s head was already shaved. The bathroom floor was covered with hair. Blond hair, black hair, brown hair, blue hair. There were even a few of Jay’s dreadlocks in there. Alex was perched on the rim of the sink with his shirt off. The sight of him hairless caught me off guard, but after a moment I was swept back into how handsome he was, something that was unaffected by whether or not he had hair. He noticed me in the doorway and turned up one side of his mouth in a grin. His smile sparked something in his eyes that made me feel like I was the only person in the room, maybe the only one in the whole wide world.
“Dude,” he said. He squeezed my shoulder and pulled me toward him. “Good to see you, man. Thanks for coming.”
“Thanks for inviting me. Glad I could make it.”
“Dade!” Dingo yelled, pointing at me. He was obviously on something. His eyes were narrow, almost closed, and his smile was flat and dumb. “I remembered your name!”
“Hey, Jay,” Alex said, slapping me on the back. “It’s our good friend Dade.”
Jay gave me a nod and went back to focusing on the task at hand. Thomas seemed too nervous and uncomfortable to pay any attention to me. Jay ran the clippers along his head, sending tufts of red hair lightly to the floor.
“What are you guys doing?” I asked.
“We’re having a party, man,” Dingo said.
“You want to get your head shaved?” Jay asked, not taking his eyes off Thomas’s head.
I had no desire to get my head
shaved, but I was afraid of what Alex would think if I didn’t do it. I thought of my parents. My mother would kill me.
“I’m not sure,” I said. “I’ve never had a shaved head before.”
“It’s hot outside, man,” Alex said. “You should do it. Dingo did it and then everyone started doing it.”
“Yeah, I wish there was a bridge nearby so we could all jump off it,” Thomas mumbled.
Dingo said, “Thomas is a big pussy. And there is a bridge nearby, buddy. I’ll drive you there, Mr. Bad Attitude. You can go first, and then guess who will follow? No one.”
Everybody started laughing except Thomas. He looked like he was going to cry. I felt bad for him, but I didn’t know what to say. I looked over at Dingo. He seemed amused by how upset Thomas looked. I decided that Dingo was a dick.
“Yeah, you behind the wheel of a car,” Jay said. “That’d be rich.”
“I drive in a Speedo all the time!” Dingo yelled. “It’s what I do! It’s my thing!”
Everyone laughed again except Thomas. Jay finished shaving his head and gave him a good slap on the scalp.
“Don’t you feel freer now, Tommy?” Dingo asked. “Don’t you feel like all your problems have just melted away? Touch it. Rub your hand over your head. Do it. Give yourself some love.”
Thomas unenthusiastically rubbed his hand over his head. Dingo brought one foot out of the tub and kicked around at the hair on the floor.
“Look at all our problems,” he said. “All mixed up. Just one big mess on the floor. Start fresh. Start with nothing, man. Then work your way back. That’s my motto.” Dingo looked over at me. “Your turn, kid.”
“And take off your shirt, boy,” Jay said. “You look like a freak with it on.”
Dingo was looking at me so intently, with such crazy eyes, that I didn’t know what to say. At first I thought I would do it out of fear, but then I saw Alex’s head and Jay’s head and suddenly it didn’t seem scary anymore. I wanted to do it, to jump off that cliff. In fact, I took off my shirt with such enthusiasm that everyone began to cheer. I took Thomas’s place on the toilet. The music in the living room abruptly stopped and everyone out there groaned, but then the new Tomato Hoof record started and people started screaming along to the first verse. I made a mental note to download it the minute I got home.
After Jay was done, I got up and looked in the mirror. I looked like someone else. I remember thinking that the suburban boy with the mom-approved haircut was gone, although in retrospect it’s clear that he’d been gone for quite some time. I felt like an active part of everything that was happening around me. I was suddenly part of their genus, and everything was beautifully and terrifyingly new.
“Let’s get out of this cell,” Alex said to me. “We’ll catch up.”
They were getting ready to spark up a joint. Jay asked us to stay and smoke some of it, but instead Alex and I went into the kitchen. A few guys were playing cards at the table. The counter was still covered with empty bottles, and a garbage bin in the corner was overflowing with trash. Alex grabbed four beers from the refrigerator. We went out back and sat on the steps. There was an intense light over the door that attracted all sorts of bugs. Out in the yard, a headless flamingo stood perfectly erect, its hollow plastic neck pointing straight up at the sky.
“How you been?” Alex asked.
“Good,” I said. “Just working. Getting ready for school.”
“College,” he said.
“College,” I repeated.
“Are you going to get one of those shirts that Belushi wore? The one that just says ‘College’ across the front?”
I laughed. “I highly doubt it.”
“You should,” he said. “That’d be funny.”
All my nervousness had flown away. I found myself marinating in the now and enjoying the moment. Even Alex seemed different than he had the Taco Taco night, more relaxed and less surly. Maybe Dingo was right. Maybe all my problems had left with my hair. Maybe our hairlessness and shirtlessness were equalizers. We were aliens from the same planet.
“What are you going to study in school?” he asked.
“Probably English,” I said. I kept staring at his mouth. It was impossible to look at it and not think about how amazing it would be to kiss him. “I want to be a writer.”
“Really?” He was staring at me intently, his interest obviously piqued. “What kind of writer?”
“I write poetry. Some short story type things too. I’m still kinda . . . um . . . finding my voice, as they say.”
“I’ve tried writing poetry before. It always turns out super terrible, so I just stick to reading it. I like a lot of the Latin American stuff. This dude named Lorca is cool. Last summer I dated this guy who got me into poetry.”
Oh my fucking God! He is gay!
It was suddenly impossible to swallow the beer in my mouth. My throat was spasming. I wanted to laugh both out of pure joy at this revelation and at how ridiculous I must have appeared.
“Are you okay, man?” Alex asked. He gave me a few concerned pats on the back. “You dying on me?”
I waved him away and forced myself to swallow the beer. It was painful, and after it was gone, there was a soreness in my throat like something was lodged there. I coughed a few times and took in some gulps of air.
“What was that all about?”
“I don’t know.” I coughed some more. “Wrong pipe.”
“I hate that,” he said.
“So do I,” I said. I cleared my throat once more. “So, um, last summer. How was that?” I was completely shocked that we were having this conversation. It was so casual, just like the other night when the two guys at Cherry’s started dancing together.
“It was good. I spent most of my time hanging out with David. That’s the guy who got me into poetry and stuff. He was a good guy.”
“How did you meet?
“On the Internet. He was older, in his thirties, but still really, really hot. And he was really, really smart. He was a high school English teacher. I was eighteen, freshly graduated, and he was smart and fatherly. Gave me great advice. But he was also fun. And he looked like Keanu Reeves. But yeah, he got me into poetry. He saved me in a lot of ways.”
“How’s that?”
“I mean, I think everyone gets really close to that void, ya know? That loneliness that’s so easy to fall into. It makes you do all sorts of stuff. It can turn you into someone who deep down inside, you don’t want to be. He taught me that I was worth something, which I needed.”
I wanted to tell him that I knew exactly what he was talking about, that I was in that void and he could save me. I wanted so badly to lean into him and let him put his mouth on mine, to press my chest against his. I wanted him to put distance between me and Pablo.
“Do you still talk to him?” I asked.
“Nah,” Alex said. “He left Cedarville for some job in Florida. He was randomly in the state for some conference a few months back, and he sent an e-mail to an address that I never use anymore. I saw it a week after he left, when there was nothing I could do about it. I e-mailed him back and told him I was sorry. I explained that I’d missed the message, and that if he was ever in Iowa again that he should call me. He never replied. Maybe it’s for the best. Things change.”
He pulled out a cigarette and asked me if I wanted one. I said sure. He put both cigarettes between his lips, shielding the lighter’s flame with his hand as he lit them. The glow lit up his perfectly stubbled face.
“You’re gay, right?” he asked, handing me one of the cigarettes.
I smiled nervously. “Yeah. I am. Is it really that obvious?”
“Kinda,” Alex said. He was suppressing a smile. “But who says that’s bad? It’s good. Plus, you’re still guyish. You’re not totally faggy.”
“I don’t like that word.”
“Faggy?”
“Yeah. Faggy. Fag. Faggot.”
“Sorry,” he said. “I use it with these guys all the time.
I usually just assume that people are okay with it. I forget sometimes.”
“Don’t change on account of me. Say whatever you want.” I thought back to the night we met, when he told me I didn’t have to say I agreed with him if I really didn’t. I hoped this last comment didn’t sound as spineless to his ears as it did to mine.
Alex laughed and shook his head. “You’re a wild one, Dade. And by wild I mean not wild.”
I nodded slowly, unsure what that meant.
“So Fessica seems to like you,” he said in an obvious attempt to switch the subject.
“Why do you say that?”
“I stopped by Food World the other day and asked her where you were. She got that look in her eye when I mentioned your name.”
He’d been looking for me? I forced myself to remain cool about this, to not pump my fist in the air. I wondered where I’d been. Probably swimming in my pool or driving around town or sprawled out on my bed and thinking about him. There was something beautiful about the idea of us reaching invisibly across town for each other.
“Yeah, I think she has a little crush on me,” I said. “She came over to my house the other day unannounced. I was kind of a jerk to her. I feel bad.”
“She’s a sweet girl. Beyond awkward, but sweet. At least she’s not her sister. Jesus Christ, that girl’s a mess.”
“How did you meet her?”
“I sell to her and her friends. I know her and the McGraw brothers and some kid they call the Sexican who’s dating one of Jessica’s friends.”
“Pablo?” I asked.
“Yeah. That’s him.”
The thought of Pablo and Alex being in the same room together made my stomach twist.
“What a douche, that kid.” He finished off his beer and opened another with the opener on his keychain. “Always telling me my bags are light. Don’t tell me my bags are light, man. I’m the fairest dealer in this town.”
He stood up. Something had changed in him. I could see it in his face. He looked blank and entranced, not there anymore. I was beginning to get the sense that his mind was like a jukebox and his emotions were plastic sleeves that displayed states of being instead of albums. I could almost hear the plastic slapping sound as his emotional catalog browsed itself, found nothing, and began to backtrack. He walked into the center of the yard and stared up at the sky. There in the moonlight he looked like something beamed down to earth from another galaxy, all lean muscle and wondering eyes with a shaved head that seemed to suggest he’d just been born a few moments ago.