by Amy Lane
For once, Chase didn’t think about making a glib answer. He couldn’t. He was just so surprised by the memory, by the sadness—he didn’t even have a lie prepared.
“I was just remembering Kevin,” he said, smiling a little at his friend before everything just spilled out, unstoppable, babbling like he couldn’t ever remember babbling before. “We were kids, right, and Kevin, God, you were so fuckin’ cute. Not coming on to you cute—you were just this adorable little kid, right? And you were talking about biting your tongue when you cracked your gum and it just… it never occurred to me, that it was a secret. You told me a secret, and we were friends and I should have maybe, I dunno… trusted you guys. I should have trusted you guys, and you were just so young. I was just so glad you let me hang out with you, and I didn’t even know until just this minute that you might have wanted me in the club too.”
“Aw, man!” Kevin wore his emotions on his sleeve, which wasn’t very macho of him, but it had always been very Kevin. Now he was crying too. “Of course we wanted you in the club. You were so cool—you never said anything.”
Chase’s laughter was suddenly cracked and jagged. “That’s because everything inside was just so fuckin’ awful!” he said, his shoulders shaking with a sort of hysterical laughter. He didn’t get a chance to laugh, though, because suddenly Donnie had wrapped his arms around his shoulders, and Kevin was there in the hug too, and Donnie reached out and grabbed Dex by the shirt front and dragged him in, and suddenly Chase was surrounded by the press of bodies, a press of touch, and it wasn’t Tommy, and it didn’t have anything to do with sex, and the words in his chest couldn’t stop spilling out.
“I’m sorry,” he sobbed again and again, “I’m sorry. Man, I should have trusted you… I’m sorry.”
He must have been really lost in the tears, because he didn’t even feel when one of the guys—Kevin—moved out of the way and the orderly was there. He startled at the smooth, cool pain of the needle in his arm, and then groaned.
“Aw, fuck. A sedative?” he sniffled. “Is this trip really necessary?”
“A group hug in the weight room?” The orderly was a squat black man with a sweet face and a sharp tongue. “Man, that is the meaning of the word necessary. Now c’mon, Dr. Phil, let’s take a nice wheelchair to your room and you can sleep it off, okay?”
Dex and Donnie helped him into the chair, and he felt his head loll back a little. “Bye, guys!” he said, feeling loopy. “I’ll see you when I’m feeling less emotionally available!”
Donnie was suddenly right there next to him, squatting by the chair. “You just keep on being like this,” he said softly. “Because that’s how I know you’re gonna be okay.”
Chase nodded, then remembered something and felt miserable. “God, please let Tommy visit, okay? Even if I’m passed out. I may not be awake for it, but I wanna know he’s there.”
Donnie patted Chase’s arm solidly. “Yeah, man, I’ll see what I can do.”
HE BARELY remembered Tommy’s visit that night. Mostly he remembered that Tommy crawled in bed next to him, tucked his cheek in against the back of Chase’s neck, and stroked his stomach as Chase struggled to wake up for a moment, any moment, just to spend some time with him.
When Chase woke up in the morning, headachy and queasy from the sedative, Tommy was gone and Chase was pissed.
“This is bullshit!” he raged at the Doc, pacing from one end of the dark paneled room to the other. “I’m supposed to be getting better, and it’s like I’m crying at pictures of little girls and kittens!”
“Or charming friends who taught you how to crack your gum,” Doc said gently, and Chase remembered to open his fist at the last moment when he stopped at the wall and pounded it with the flat of his hand.
“But why? I’m supposed to be getting better!” Doc made a suspicious sound, and Chase glared at him and then continued to rage. “I’m crying all the fucking time—I don’t even know it’s fucking coming and then, there it is, just fucking waterworks! It’s like… I don’t know, I’m a girl on her period or… some sort of emo guy who’s—”
“Suicidally depressed?” Doc inserted dryly when Chase was floundering for words.
“I fucking stopped!” Chase roared, and he turned around to glower and found Doc regarding him with such terrible serenity that he couldn’t manage to maintain his momentum. He turned around and sighed and flopped into the couch, which creaked because he was tall and still had the mass of a bodybuilding jock.
“I did!” he complained to Doc’s raised eyebrows. “Doesn’t that mean I’m not suicidal anymore?”
“Hardly,” Doc said quietly. “It just means you stopped.”
“But shouldn’t I be over this part?” Chase asked, tearing up a little and feeling just totally pathetic.
“Did you cry before you slit your wrist?” Doc asked, and Chase looked at him in disgust.
“Twice,” he said when Doc didn’t look like he was giving an inch. “Once when I left Tommy, and once when… my last porn shoot. Tommy was there.”
“Tommy told me about that. Trust me. We’ll get there. So, no other time?” Doc asked, prodding.
“No.” Chase sighed. “Christ. Isn’t that plenty?”
“Not even close.”
“So, what’s that mean?”
“Well, I’m pretty sure it means you need to think of this as paying your dues. Tears are a natural part of depression, Chase. So is acting out sexually. So is destroying your possessions—”
“I didn’t want them destroyed—I just didn’t want her to destroy them.”
The Doc stopped then. “Why would your girlfriend destroy them?”
“Because if I was going to live, I was going to have to come out, break up with her, tell her our lives were a lie. Wouldn’t you want to break something after that?”
Doc stopped knitting for a minute. “You planned all of that from the bathroom when you were bleeding out?”
Chase blushed. “I’m not normally that much of a planner.”
“The hell you’re not!” The old man’s hands had actually stilled in their usual rhythmic movement. “You bought the razorblades ahead of time, are you aware of that? You told me that yourself! You told me you were saving for a house! You’re barely twenty-one—even if you weren’t suicidal, that’s still pretty damned impressive. Donnie told me about how you had the entire exit planned. Chase, to say you’re not much of a planner is like saying Frank Lloyd Wright wasn’t much of a designer: it’s like criminal understatement.”
Chase looked away. “Okay,” he muttered, “so I like things pretty.”
“And why is that, exactly?”
Red door, red water, little boy, cross-legged, watching the door bow in—
“Chase, dammit, I’m going to start adding five minutes to your counseling requirement every time you do that!”
“But I don’t have words for this!” Chase complained, running his fingers through his hair. It was getting long enough to do that now. “It’s just a picture in my head! I can’t help it if I’m lookin’ at it!”
Doc blew out a breath and looked at the clock. “Chase, we’re running out of time today, but tomorrow? I want to take you into a state of hypnosis—”
“Awesome. Are you going to pull a rabbit out of a hat too?”
“It’s not magic, dammit—it’s just getting you really relaxed so you don’t—God, I can’t even think of the word for this thing you do when you don’t answer a straight question.”
“Is there a word?” Chase asked, suddenly curious.
“Yes, yes there is a word. I’m just so irritated with you right now that I can’t think of it.”
Chase looked at him, smiling a little in spite of himself. “But you’re still knitting.”
Doc’s intense scowl cracked a little, turned itself inside out, and dimpled inward at the sides.
“Crazier people than you have tried to stop me,” he said mildly, and Chase grinned. Then the old man had to go and ruin it
all. “So tomorrow, you come in, we relax you, because that’s going to be a neat trick, and in the meantime, I’m going to throw you a softball.”
Chase grinned slightly. “Pitch.”
“What’s your father like?”
He’s six foot something of nicotine-stained dick, except I like dicks, and I hate him so bad I want to think of a word to call him that doesn’t have anything to do with sex, like turd, or cockroach vomit or pig shit or—
“Really? Tell me how you really feel.”
Chase had a sudden sense of dislocation. “Oh God, did I say all that out loud?”
“Say all what?”
“Turd or cockroach vomit or—oh, Jesus, you tricked me!”
Doc looked inordinately pleased with himself. “Not intentionally, no—but now that I know that works, I’m going to try it more often! Now why do you feel this way about your father?”
Red door, bulging in the center, water like scarlet pudding, easing under the gap in the door, a male voice shouting, “C’mon, ya little fucker, open the door!”
Doc sighed, and Chase looked at him uncertainly. “He’s not a nice man,” Chase said, feeling odd. “He’s… he calls people names, and he yells, and he hits you if you’re not quick enough with his cigarettes and he—” He yelled at my mother until she killed herself, and then yelled at me until I wanted to join her. “Oh fuck, Doc?” Chase grabbed more fucking Kleenex from the fucking box. “I don’t want to do this anymore? Can I stop doing this? I hate this. I’m sick of crying, I’m sick of the shit in my head, I’m sick of trying to talk to the world when all this shit… it’s just sitting there, just big as a fucking movie screen, and I don’t want to talk about it because you can’t make it pretty, and you can’t fix it, you just can’t, so why do I have to talk about it….” He was sobbing again, and Doc actually put his knitting down and got up.
“Please don’t drug me again,” he pleaded, gasping for breath. “Please. Please just make it stop.”
“No drugs,” Doc promised, and Chase felt an arm over his shoulder, just like Donnie’s arm, sexless and comforting and human. “No drugs, just a hug. Is that okay? Can you do a hug?”
Chase nodded miserably, his cheeks on the knees of his jeans, and wondered when this part of the healing process got better.
KANE came by to visit that day and dragged Chase outside for a walk whether he wanted one or not.
“It’s shitty outside!” Kane said with the same enthusiasm someone else might have used for, “It’s gorgeous outside!” “Let’s go see what sort of shit is hiding under the leaf mold in the little walk around the pond, okay?”
Chase looked at him, not really objecting, just wondering why that was a good thing.
Kane blushed. “Didn’t you ever study bugs as a kid, man? We used to talk about the ones with exoskeletons, the arachnids, all that shit. I loved that shit! I was so totally into the whole science thing, yanno?”
Chase stood up, still smiling in bemusement, and grabbed the tennis shoes from the corner, along with the jacket to go over his hooded sweatshirt. He followed Kane outside of the little in-patient dormitory to the foggy, gray facility yard, waiting until they were far away from any listeners before asking, “Why did you stop?”
Kane looked at him in surprise, and then shrugged. “I was sort of a wimpy little kid, right? And sort of goofy—I couldn’t keep my attention focused on anything. So, I got like, picked on, all the fuckin’ time. And I hit middle school and thought, ‘Enough of that shit!’ I started working out like a mad dog, and suddenly girls were just fuckin’ hitting on me, right? And I did them if they asked, and I loved it. I mean, girls, right? They’re like—” Kane held his hands out to indicate breasts, and Chase nodded.
“I do recall,” he said dryly.
“Yeah, but you didn’t really appreciate,” Kane said, and Chase had to concede that no, he didn’t really appreciate.
“But you did?”
“I did….” Kane’s voice sort of trailed off. “And I spent most of my high school fucking around. Man, you name a place you could get laid and there I was, banging away, right?”
“So you ended up at Johnnies because….”
Kane looked at him with admiration. “Listen to you, sounding all headshrinky and shit. You should be one of those psych guys—you’re hella good at it.”
“And….” Chase actually enjoyed this—he was genuinely curious, but at the same time, he knew what Kane felt, how reluctant he was to talk about personal things. For the first time, Chase knew why people looked at him like they were going to either strangle him or hug him when they tried to ask him this shit. For the first time, he sort of got Doc and Tommy.
“And those girls I was banging? They were using me. So I was pretty good at sex, right, and I didn’t have no education, but I wanted one. I was like ‘Porn, motherfuckers!’ and then….” Kane shrugged. “Then I just wanted it to be all about sex. I wasn’t going to meet my dream girl on a porn set, and I was sort of sick of that whole ‘Oh, Kane, you’re hot I want to do you!’ thing. I figured I’d do boys for money, and then I’d do girls for—” Kane stopped himself and blushed. “Corny, isn’t it?”
“For love?” Chase shook his head. “No. I think being careful who you do for love is really fucking important, Kane. I think you’re miles ahead on the subject.”
Kane sighed, looked away, looked sad. “Now that I’ve been doing boys so much, I’m starting to wonder why I couldn’t…” He trailed off, so pensive that Chase was actually concerned. Suddenly he brightened. “Look! A praying mantis! This late in October—you don’t usually see them! It’s sort of warm here, ’cause the generators for the hospital are right there.” Kane pointed to two beige-painted outbuildings that hummed. “Hey, guy, how you doin’?” Kane got close to it, like a little kid, as excited and reverent as Chase had ever seen a boy about a bug. For a moment, he’d been going to ask Kane what Kane intended to say to the girl of his dreams while he was explaining how he’d earned his college tuition, but at the last moment he decided not to. Chase had to answer all of those fucking invasive questions; Kane did not. Kane had been a good friend these past months, and Chase figured he’d earned a pass.
Kane left, and Chase got to eat sort of a glum, average dinner of institutional pizza and then go back to his room. He told himself he was going to watch television, but the truth was, he was going to brood until Tommy got there.
“What’s wrong?” First words out of his mouth. Chase was actually so relieved to see him that he grinned at the bluntness.
“Careful with me,” he said, trying and failing to keep his voice light. “I’m sort of a fragile fucking flower today. You raise your voice too loud, I might break.”
He was sitting on his bed, dangling one foot to the ground and clutching his other knee to his chest, and suddenly Tommy was there, where Chase had needed him all day, with an arm wrapped around his shoulders and a kiss to Chase’s temple. Chase drank in his touch like water, pure, clear water, and almost shivered at the analogy.
“You’re a fragile flower all right, but neither of us is fucking.”
Chase looked at him sadly. “You could always shoot a scene,” he said helpfully, and Tommy’s look grew dark.
“I think we both know that’s not going to happen again.”
“I sort of miss it. It was something to look forward to.”
Tommy shrugged. It was undeniable. There was a rush before a scene, an anticipation, just like a relationship with a new person in real life. What was this adventure going to be? And, well, you knew you were going to come, right? How awesome was that?
“Look forward to being with me instead,” Tommy told him, and Chase had to smile.
“I do,” he said sincerely. “I just… I hate being this… this breakable thing. I hate all this crying. I’d say it’s driving me crazy, but I’m obviously already there!”
“You know,” Tommy said, his voice so gentle Chase wondered what sort of fresh pain he’d put in the
blender today, “when you broke up with me, I cried for three days.”
Oh yeah. That helped. “I’m sorry,” Chase mumbled into his knees, knowing his chest was growing tight with tears and with the loosening of them too.
“I didn’t tell you that to make you sorry, although you should be, because you were an asshole. The second time you left me, and I had to follow you home to make sure you didn’t drive into a tree, ya big fuckhead, I went home and broke a kitchen chair.”
“Oh shit, which one?”
“Does it fuckin’ matter?”
Chase blushed. “No.”
“The old creaky one that we let Buster sit in. Buster still hasn’t forgiven me, but that’s another story.”
And the point of this one would be?
“Don’t say that, whatever it is going on in your head. See, the thing is, I cried, I broke shit, I raged. I called Dex over and we went to the gym and had a sparring match and he kicked my ass because I’d been out of the hospital for like, a week, and all the time, I was doing that, what were you doing?”
Cleaning your excrement out of your carpet and buying razorblades.
“Yeah,” Tommy said, without making Chase answer again. “You were cleaning my own shit out of my house and buying fucking razorblades. Dex remembered that, you know. He thought it was weird, and then after Donnie called me and I called him, he almost crapped his pants—”
“That’s not funny!”
“Neither of us was fucking laughing, ya fuckin’ fuckhead. But are you hearing me now?”
“Sort of,” Chase mumbled.
“Speak up, Chase, I can’t fucking hear you. What were you doing while I was bawling my heart out and breaking shit?”
Chase sighed, so safe in Tommy’s arms it felt like he could say this and be okay. “Keeping it all locked in my head,” he said quietly, and Tommy’s arm tightened around his shoulders.