• •
—We could try.
He says this just when I knew he would. Onscreen a girl is watching two guys touching. “Wife Turns Husband Bi.”
It’s more than a month since any girl has been around to do anything with. I’m just thinking. Prison, guys do it in prison in the same situation.
• •
Alec has a nice body, I guess, I don’t even know what I’m saying or what I mean by that. Compared to that other guy, I guess, over there. Either of them. Boys, hello.
• •
—You don’t have to.
His mouth was already on me, my hand trying to grab something of his. It seemed only fair.
—I’ll just do you.
OK, but wondering if I owed him.
• •
When we were done, gradually it felt too cold, but pulling up a blanket over us felt too married and sweetheart and gay. Alec sat up suddenly and said the name of a two-player game, soldier partners blowing up zombies.
—Yeah. Let’s.
Kicked our pants on. Relieved it could be normal.
• •
Look at it this way, I am theorizing to myself taking a run. It’s an experiment. Experimenting. And then like a science fair, the experiment will be over. Sweaty when the second mile’s over, knowing I could do the maybe half-mile to his house and that he, like not any other no way ever girl, would take me up to his room quick and hot without a shower. But that’s like a boyfriend move, I think. That’s not an experiment bored one single night, that’s something else. And I am running, I find myself realizing, down the last block, to his house.
• •
The first Monday after the first time, I watch Alec watching what’s-her-name bend over to get something out of her bag on the floor. It’s a deep wide relief. Still into girls, me too, everything’s cool.
• •
I move my hand up his leg and he makes a noise, then frowns and opens his eyes.
—What was that?
—What?
He’s looking at me. —That noise you made.
—You’re crazy.
—You made a noise—
—That was you, Alec.
But in a second I’m making it again.
• •
I had five orgasms in a day and it was easy and not the first or last time. First straight out of a morning dream about a girl with whispering lips on all fours. Second in the shower, remembering to put the conditioner in first so it’s working on my hair while I do it. After school with Alec twice, I guess the phrase would be via mouth. Once more lounging around after homework with two girls on the screen helping out. And then I’m spacing out halfway hearing some interview guy saying he goes crazy if it doesn’t happen once a week and, once a week? I would have gone six, seven if they’d allowed it in Applied Econ.
• •
One time, maybe it’s the beer he had, Alec and I are laughing so hard we have to stop. Heaving with it. Feeling better than coming, well almost, to get it out like this. Alec is sputtering on the floor trying to choke it out, slapping me lightly and laughing, laughing.
C-C-C-C- he tries. Cocksucker.
• •
—Hang tonight?
I tell him yeah. —What are we going to do?
Three benches over, Alec just glances at me quick, and it’s enough to know. I knew anyway. He puts his phone in his pocket. What I mean is, I want it, and I want him not to say anything about it, and I’m getting them both.
• •
He swallows it all and then, his eyes wide and laughy, slides off me leaving me pulsing and gleaming and laughing at him on his bedroom rug with his arms joking raised up like an athlete. Like a champ.
• •
—We could try.
It’s late. Computer’s gone to some geometric design Alec set up, waving slow across the screen in the blue light. I’m trembling, wired and tired. He has half a bed sheet over him but I have refused it, just naked with boxers very handy if someone, they never would, walks in. He puts it a different way before I can say no.
—I would let you try.
• •
—Condom.
It’s dark when he says this. The word sounds serious. It’s a real word, it makes the whole thing real even in the dark.
—What?
—Dude, don’t what. I know where you’ve been, Cole.
His voice has a muffle to it so for just one spooky second I think he’s crying. But his face, I realize then, is just buried in the pillow as he waits for me to put it on. He says it again.
—Condom.
—Ssh, yes.
• •
He feels good. It feels good with him but also, half-curled up against him when it’s over, kids in the neighborhood shrieking around on bikes ringing little bells on the street out his window, he feels good. And, he says he feels good and I don’t like that. I don’t want to tell him, out of all the people I shouldn’t have to tell, that he should count on me like the rusty car across the street half-covered by a tarp in the neighbor’s driveway, for zero, for nothing, nothing at all. I don’t say this, can’t, me freaking out slowly next to him and my hands, his hands, moving and wanting it again.
• •
We do it again. We keep doing it.
• •
So it’s like with a girl, I guess. I’m running again, thinking it through. And like with a girl you don’t say, I don’t think I like you anywhere in the neighborhood of where you like me, but the sex is delicious and you’re also, yes you’re cool. But he’s a guy. And dude, Cole, a friend.
• •
—We could try.
It’s the thing Alec keeps on saying. We are, I want to say back. I am. Trying, I’m trying it. But he means something else. I’m trying it like, you find a coin on the table and you spin it for no reason but to see it happen. He’s trying it like medical school, because maybe he’ll grow up to be a doctor.
• •
—That,
Alec says it breathless.
—was the best.
My head is like a spider on a beach ball, trying to wrap around it that I basically used the same trick Ava taught me, the one I always used on girls. He is trembling.
—The best.
• •
Then Kristen almost sniffs it out of me one sudden day.
—You haven’t had a girlfriend in how long? And you’re calm and not sleazy.
—Thanks.
—No, I mean it’s weird. You haven’t even dirty-joked at me.
—If I was seen joking with you your boyfriend would beard me to death.
—Jealous.
—Ha!
—I know, you have a secret lover.
—Shut up.
—What’s her name?
—Shut up.
—His name? Ha ha.
—Shut up. My secret lover is you, but you sleep right through it. You know how you wake up on your stomach?
—OK, you’re back to normal, dickhead.
• •
We go out sometimes, too. Not go out. But not in his room, driving somewhere and suddenly he smells different. Alec put on cologne—this can not, better not be for me.
• •
I could ask the drama teacher I guess, or they say Mr. Marzada although it doesn’t seem like it. A gay teen help phone line twenty-four hours ask any question, someone is listening, someone is here for you, tacked up outside the nurse’s office. Though I don’t know what it is, I mean, that I’d be asking.
• •
Walking back to his place, our hands keep brushing and we both keep jumping back from it. I mean even if we wanted to, it is not quite the world here of 100 percent nobody will beat the shit out of you, two guys holding hands.
Or, at least, I am jumping away.
• •
—We could,
I know he’s going to say it.
—go out.
—We do go out, Alec.
/> —Yeah.
—We were at Drew’s party yesterday night.
—Yeah.
—I’m not gay, by the way.
—Fuck you, I’m not either.
—OK.
—But maybe bi.
—I’m not.
—OK but Cole.
—Fuck you.
—Yeah exactly, like what we have? Look it up. Sex is the word for it.
—Yeah I know.
—So I’m saying bi, OK? I said it for me.
But the word, I want to say, for me is mostly horny.
• •
And then I met Grisaille.
• •
Out in front of school, she shrugged up her arms, and I saw all the hair she had in her armpits. She tugged her sweater on while I looked at her lips, and I started wondering who I could ask to find out who she was because I knew there was no way she’d been here all along. But Grisaille just turned her head and imitated me, a big dumb staring monkey look, and then smiled and beckoned me over.
• •
—Anna says you’re Cole.
—Yeah. Hi.
—Hi. Now you ask my name.
—OK.
—OK, what?
—OK, what’s your name?
And then before she told me she gave me a champion smile, like it was too easy, making me ask in my shuffling shoes.
• •
She looked so fucking fantastic agreeing to go out with me. She didn’t look like a girl who would ruin the whole thing at all. Beautiful, breasty, like so warm to roll around in was my first impression. And, the next seventy thousand impressions.
We don’t have girls like this, is what I wanted to say to her. And thank God I didn’t.
• •
—Yeah, there’s stuff to do in this town. My friend, next weekend, is having a thing.
—I’m only here for the semester, Cole, so we’re going to have to make this quick. Friday night?
—Tomorrow?
—Open the thing. There. I’m putting my number in your phone. Figure it out.
It was in a shirt pocket. She had to scratch my chest a little through the flannel to get my phone out. I felt her nail there still, like an itch. But my mouth was just saying stupid Tomorrow? again.
• •
Her skirt ended short and she had black, not stockings, ripped socks. Skin, is what she had. She kept rubbing her own legs while we sat there on that bench talking, with me thinking, who dropped you here into my lap like this?
• •
Alec and I are looking her up and talking about it.
—Scroll down. Look, she’s on a beach with a bunch of guys who look older.
I squint, blink at the hairy chests. —They don’t look older, they’re just Arabic.
—That’s funny, because the photo says it was a beach party in Costa de Lisboa which … screen says … is in Portugal.
—Yeah, her dad is Portuguese. But he’s in Berlin now.
—And how do you pronounce again—
—Grizz-eye. But some people pronounce it like it rhymes with awhile.
—Is that what she told you?
—Yeah.
—Did it sound that amazing when she said it? It sounds like it would sound amazing. Rhymes with awhile.
—I saw her first.
—She saw you, is what you told me. It’s like a movie, some foreign girl comes to town. I honestly don’t even think it occurred to me that girls could have hair there in their armpits. I mean, possible, but not happening. Even in the bushiest porn—
—Alec, shut up and where were we?
—Grizz-eye. Portugal.
—OK, Portugal.
—Why has she lived all these places? And why now our lame place?
—Divorce. Her mom’s from here, or used to be.
—And married, wow, look who she married. Follow the link. Her dad looks like the guy in those brandy commercials.
—Rum.
—OK, but he’s handsome.
—I will pretend you didn’t say that. He’s a dick anyway, she says. All he cares about is expensive paintings and stuff.
—Art dealer. Aggressive Art Dealer Taking Barcelona by Storm. You think he’s really smuggling heroin?
—No, because we’re not all in a low-budget thriller.
—OK, he’s actually handsome, you gotta admit.
I’m stuck on the beach party Alec found. There are a lot of guys in it, around her.
—You’re admitting it.
—Shut up Alec. Don’t be gay.
—Fuck you.
—Sorry.
—Seriously.
—Sorry.
—OK. Do you want to come over?
• •
Grisaille brings it up right right right away.
—You know you have a rep, right?
—Rep?
—It’s short for reputation, Cole.
—I know what it means but what do you mean?
—They say, you fuck anything that moves.
I flushed a little looking at the phone. Out the window it was windy. Everything was moving. If only.
—It’s not true.
—I think it is. A girl at lunch was counting on her fingers and she ran out of fingers.
—Well, how many fingers does she have?
Grisaille’s laugh is like when you’re a kid, and adults are having a party you hear downstairs, stylish and wine. Her voice is not done laughing when she tells me,
—I had a rep too, sometimes.
—Sometimes?
—Of course, they didn’t call it a rep.
—What did they call it?
She pauses and I’m listening to her breathe. In the static I grasp that what I’m wondering is what she will call it, having a rep. Maybe I’ve already blown it with her, like cops call it onscreen: prior bad acts. Her voice is quiet, or maybe it’s just the way I’m listening to it.
—We could call it anything.
• •
You’ll do, is what she said when we were done kissing that time. You’ll do fine.
• •
—Cole, do you have a favorite German poet?
—
—I said, do you—
—Sorry, I thought you were kidding. Let me answer for everyone you will ever meet in this town, no, we don’t have favorite German poets. We have favorite diners and beers.
—School last year, we all had to pick one. I got Rilke and I’m finishing my translation unit.
—But you go here now.
—I just want to do it. He wrote these elegies that are all about love and sex.
—Are you, sometimes you don’t even seem like a real person compared to everyone.
Grisaille’s mouth, unspeakably sexy, as she laughs. —What do you mean, Cole?
Sexy, is the word I think, but it’s too gawky a word, not old-fashioned enough. The word I find is
—Glamorous.
—That’s a good word, Cole. Maybe you can help me with the last translation.
But sexy was the right word all along.
• •
Awake in the morning zippy and hard, like my cock can’t wait to see her the most.
Exactly like that, come to think of it.
• •
—That was a good kiss. Give me more of that.
She was the first girl to ask for more so greedily. Or ever. I opened my mouth wider.
—More.
This was the first date.
—Can you take me somewhere?
• •
—You have a reputation.
—Yeah, you keep saying.
—You have not been a gentleman with many girls.
The word gentleman stands in the air like a time traveler. —We don’t call it that, gentleman.
—Yes but I think you know what I mean. And it’s true?
—I guess it’s true. I don’t think of it like that.
—So how do you think of it, Cole?
—Um, that I’m practicing?
—For what?
—For you.
She could not help laughing very loud. But an hour later she had her bra off. Someday you’ll learn your lesson, maybe eight girls have said to me. But most of them got naked.
• •
A single mother like Grisaille’s, the greatest blessing you can give a boyfriend. Works all day, extra hours for the piles of bills on the counter, and out a lot at night. Drinks sometimes, when she gets home from a date tipsy, doesn’t notice what liquor’s missing or swigged from.
Of course, on the other hand, a mom like this basically hates men, and sees right through you, and lives in hysteria of the girl getting pregnant. So it goes both ways.
• •
—It clasps in front.
—In—? Oh.
—It was funny what you were doing back there, though. I know what it’s like to be a back door in a bad neighborhood, the way you scuffled at it. You could just say, take off your bra.
—Take off everything.
—Whoa cowboy. You’re not a hypnotist.
• •
She’s right there suddenly. Alec and I have met up at the failing coffee place by the almost-done condos. He is holding two bags of pretzels, he wants to go to his house and talk about the details. Grisaille. I say her name, first to him and then to her. She strolls over and puts her hand on my arm. —I had fun last night.
—Yeah.
—Did you get my—
—I haven’t had my phone all day.
I say this with my phone in my pocket, but Grisaille only smiles.
—Are you doing something later?
—Later? This is Alec, by the way.
—Hi.
—Hi, Grisaille.
—Later?
—Later? No.
—Good, call me.
She’s at the door with two big iced teas, must be her mom in the car. I turn back and Alec is looking at me with the pretzels still, drooping now though. He knows it already.
• •
Second real date, she asked if it was cold out. She ran back up to her room with me to get a sweater, but as soon as we got there she unbuckled me and put me in her mouth. The feeling of it, hardening against her tongue, twice as big as she slipped me out of her lips to look at me, holy fuck. Then she sucked me in earnest and I came quick. Ssh, she said, although we were alone in the house. Then she zipped me up and we went out the door kissing with my taste in her mouth.
All the Dirty Parts Page 3