by David Bone
“Whoa,” I said as she grabbed my dick with the most devious smile I had ever seen. Alright, the only devious smile I had ever seen. I immediately looked up to the pier and saw various people looking over the edge, taking in the view of the beach. And possibly us. I couldn’t tell, but some had to be.
She moved herself into position.
“We can’t do it in front of everyone!” I said.
“No one knows what we’re doing. We’re hugging.”
“You’ve got your bottoms in your hand.”
“Who gives a fuck what people think?” It was Melody’s theme song and I was starting to learn the words. She pressed herself down on me and I didn’t give a fuck what people thought.
Quickly after it started, it ended. We put our bottoms on underwater, swam to shore, and flopped down on the sand.
“That was awesome,” I said.
Melody kissed me again. We laid back and stared at the sun through our closed eyelids. My mind was still spinning over what just went down. I opened an eye and leaned on my elbow.
“Can I ask you a question?” I said.
“Uh oh.”
“How many guys have you slept with?”
Melody looked disappointed.
“Or, you know, swam with?” I clarified.
“Why does it matter?”
“Well, ‘cause if it’s a lot, then I probably suck compared to some of those dudes. And I’d rather you didn’t know I sucked.”
“You can’t go off that,” she said, nodding to the ocean. “Everyone knows fucking in the water sucks, but it’s better than not fucking in the water.”
I pretended to know.
“So you don’t think I suck?”
“If that were true, I wouldn’t be here.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, I like you. Why are you trying to find a problem with that?”
It was assuring, but also a bummer to know that I could be poisoning the well for no reason.
“Thanks. I’ll hit the suck brakes. Forget I said anything.”
“What’s that?”
“Forget I said anything.”
“What’s that?”
“Ha, I get it.”
I wasn’t sure I was getting anything. Having sex wasn’t like turning a page or starting a new chapter. It was like setting the whole book on fire. I was becoming close with two people who were strangers to me just a month ago: Melody and myself. And I didn’t really know where either was going.
After that, I showed up early to roll call. Jack was there reading his clipboard and looked up at me.
“Fucking with the fishes, huh?” Jack said.
“What do you mean?” My cheeks went red.
“Think no one noticed? Ha!”
“Shit, how’d you know?”
“I saw you guys from the pier. Hey, I don’t care. You’ve got some balls to slay a chick in the water in front of everyone. Ocean sex sucks though, am I right? And how can it be so dry feeling when it’s in the goddamn water?”
“Yeah, it sucked.” No it didn’t. But him, and probably others, witnessing my devirginization did suck.
“Let me ask you something, Dono,” Jack said in a rare tone reserved for casual, non-Castle–related issues.
“Yeah.”
“I know you’re having fun, but you wearin’ a rubber out there?”
“No, I did,” I said. I didn’t want to disappoint him.
“Bullshit,” he said. “You know how I know?”
“Not really.”
“It’s impossible to fuck in the ocean with a rubber. I should know.”
“Sorry.”
“Listen, I’m not gonna lie to you. Wearing a rubber doesn’t feel as good as barebackin’ it. But you know what feels better than unprotected sex?”
I was listening to Jack but he expected an answer. There was no answer.
“Do ya?” he said.
“No.”
“I’ll tell you. Freedom. Freedom feels better than anything. When you use a condom, you maintain your freedom. Don’t use a condom? Knock a chick up before you should? Trouble, no matter what happens. You ready for that? No freedom? Now your life sucks and no amount of hot sex can make it better. Only worse! Wearing a condom is like raising a flag. Yours. Stock up on flags, Dono.” Jack slapped my back a little less harder than usual and walked away.
I really locked that into my head. Janice might have given birth to me and provided my partial survival ever since then, but somehow I could easily trust Jack more. I didn’t even know I had this freedom in the first place. But now in the moment, my mind began to race. Did I already sacrifice my freedom? Before I even knew what I was doing? It really didn’t even occur to me in the ocean. I didn’t plan it and she didn’t care, so neither did I. I promised myself I would heed Jack’s advice, but I needed to find out if I had already blown it.
I was supposed to report to Wolfman duty in the Haunted Forest but I had to find Melody. I caught up with her in the Witch’s Cauldron room.
“Hey, what are you doing here?” she asked.
“Hey. I’ve gotta talk to you.”
“Oh, jeez,” she said.
“No, not like that,” I said.
“Like what?”
“Like should I have had something on when we were in the ocean?”
“Sunblock?” she asked.
“No! Like a . . . condom.”
“Oh, it’s cool. Don’t worry about that,” she said.
“So you’re not pregnant?”
“Jesus, Donovan, how old are you?”
That’s right, I was eighteen to her. What would an eighteen year old say?
“Shit, just tryin’ to be nice. I’m really tired and work’s been grinding my ass.” I had reverted to Renaldo’s old-means-complaining advice.
“Yeah. Well, thanks. I guess we should get working,” she said.
“Yeah, see you after.”
She didn’t say anything. Maybe she didn’t want to see me after, so I extended the time range.
“I mean later,” I said. I was out of my league. Total amateur vibe. I really needed to provide some evidence that I didn’t give a fuck before leaving. I turned around, and while walking toward the next room, cut a huge cheek ripper of a fart. Brrrraaaappppp! Melody burst into more laughter than I’d ever heard. I kept walking as she kept laughing. Success.
After work, Renaldo asked me if I’d get him a Lotto ticket at the liquor store since he was banned from it.
“Can’t win if you don’t play,” he said when I asked him why he wanted one. “I’d buy so much shit.”
“What about buying it with metal power?”
“Huh?”
“You were talking about selling your soul to shred and the band and shit.”
“What? Fuck, man. I must have been high as hell. I’m no organ donor to the Devil, man. Fuck that shit. Dude, Lotto.”
“What would you do if you won?” I asked.
“Oh, bro. Everything. I’d get a giant mansion where porn star chicks would live with me. Anything they want for anything I want. I’d buy the Arena Dome up north and make it a metal-only venue, where all the tickets are free. And I’d sell beer for high fives. I’d scour the Amazon with a team of scientists looking for the world’s most killer weed. Then I’d drop the seeds from a plane flying all over America so forests of it grow everywhere. I’d have a charity where fucked-up metal kids, like retards or dying dudes, could have their number one metal wish happen. I’d buy the world’s biggest record store as my own record collection. I’d buy a mountain and carve my face into it. Fuck, man. Everything. How ’bout you?”
“Castle Dunes.”
“Dude, the Castle? I mean, it’s cool. But dude, porn stars don’t want to live in that.”
“I’d live there with Melody,” I said. She was already pretty much living there anyways.
“Dude, the Castle and Melody? Pick something that lasts, man. Dream big.”
I thought I
was dreaming big.
When the Tion show came, I was off. Renaldo had a big pre-game plan for us to get wasted. I wanted to make it like a date with Melody and told him I’d have to meet him there and then hang. He got all pissed.
“Dude, what’s the difference if we just cruise together? I sell that chick weed all the time man, we’re cool.”
“I want it to be like something more official than what we’ve been doing.”
“Dude, metal shows aren’t about going with chicks. They’re about going with bros to rage with and listening to pro-bros sing about chicks.”
“Dude, what?”
“But then if you meet a chick at the show, that’s cool.”
Renaldo was being serious but I laughed.
“Man, whatever,” I said. “We’re going to hang. I just need a little pre-hang.”
“Fine, dude, then I’ll see you in the pit! I’ll be the motherfucker tearing it up!”
It turned out that it didn’t matter. I ended up going solo because I couldn’t get hold of Melody. I didn’t know if I was being paranoid, but she seemed pretty elusive for a person I recently had sex with in public.
The Ditch wasn’t a club. It was a ditch. A hollowed out piece of land on the edge of town that was an abandoned site originally planned for a supermarket. The cops had no reason to go that far on patrol, so it was perfect for people to do whatever in. The band set up against one of the dirt walls and made a stage of plywood scattered on the dirt floor. It looked like a suburban archeological dig or a mass grave. Or just a local metal show, I guess. There were already about a hundred people there crowded around three kegs.
I spotted Melody’s hair quickly and walked up behind her. She was being really talkative with one of the dudes in the band. I wasn’t sure how to interrupt. I wasn’t drunk enough to act as cool as I needed to, so I retreated toward the kegs. I made it a few paces when she called me out.
“Hey, weirdo!”
I turned around and Melody was smiling and opening her arms. She gave me a big, wasted hug. It was pretty early in the evening to be that sauced, but I was stoked she was in the party zone.
“I’m so glad you’re here!” she said.
“Yeah, where’ve you been?” I asked. I should have gone with a more casual “What’ve you been up to?” but my concern leaped out.
“Just cruisin’,” she said.
“You wanna get some brews?” I said, nodding to the keg line. I had to cop some of her vibe, or I’d blow it and have to fart my way out of it again.
“Shit, line’s too long. I need to be drunker faster,” I said.
“Hold on.” She walked past the line of almost twenty people and went right to the front. She flirted with some guy who let her pour two beers. As she was walking back, unhazed by the crowd, I decided I would allow that flirt for the good of the beer.
Renaldo walked by us pushing a guitar cabinet.
“What up, dudes? How many times have you guys fucked tonight?”
“Dude,” I said.
“A million,” Melody answered.
It made me relieved and impressed that she could still handle being crudely creeped out and not miss a beat. I could tell Renaldo felt like I was ditching him. He was always talking about scoring chicks but spending time with them was illogical. Before meeting Melody, that would have made more sense to me.
On the outskirts of the crowd, I spotted a burly metalhead with his hands on his knees, puking intensely.
“Check it out, Code Green,” I told Melody.
“Nice,” Melody said.
“What’s a Code Green?” Renaldo asked.
“Oh, it’s a Castle thing,” I said.
“Yeah?”
“Yeah, it’s just this thing we do,” I said, trying to move on.
“Whatever, dude. I’m gonna go Code Rock. If you’re not too Code Choad, you should double down on coldies and get up front with the real motherfuckers.”
“Cool,” I said, not caring. I glanced back at Melody. The puking man was still going at it.
“Hey, TJ!” she yelled to the puker. “Can we hitch a ride back tonight?”
She definitely said “we.” I hoped that meant something good later on.
TJ threw up the devil horns sign without veering his gaze from the dirt.
“You know that guy?” I asked.
“Yeah, he’s cool.”
“He’s gonna drive us?”
“Beats walking, right?”
“Fuck, I dunno,” I said, watching him stagger back and forth and now pissing. But whatever. Right now, I was a “we.”
I ran into Rex, the guitarist of Tion from the Castle. He was walking around trying to sell demos out of a shoebox.
“When do you guys play?” I said.
“When the kegs run out, Wolfman.”
“Why’s that?”
“Cause if we play before that, only, like, ten people will be up front.”
When they went on, it sounded like a giant boom box version of the demo. Their PA was weak and the vocals were all distorted. It somehow sounded more lo-fi than their tape. Half the crowd was in front of the band while the other half stuck by the empty kegs. Four songs in, they stopped and put their instruments down. Apparently the band only had four songs. The people up front wanted more, so they played the whole set over again as an encore. And then did the entire thing again. When they looked like they were gonna keep doing it, Melody and I took off.
TJ was thankfully nowhere in sight, so we were on foot. The road back had a bunch of vegetation on the side of it and we had to be careful not to get hit by cars. I played off being concerned about the traffic so I could hold Melody’s hand. She didn’t seem to care and bent down in front of some weird plant. It was kind of like a bush but with paper globes hanging from it. She ripped one off and stood up.
“Are you gonna eat that thing?” I said, grossed out that it wasn’t bought from a store.
Melody peeled off the rough, papery layer and held up what was underneath to my face. A perfectly shiny, green, tomato-looking thing. She sank her teeth into it as I waited for something horrible to happen.
“What is it?” I asked, not hiding that I still thought road fruit was gross.
“Tomatillo. Salsa.” She didn’t offer me one or appear to even think it. She finished most of it and threw the rest over her shoulder. Large or small, it seemed like Melody took more chances in one day than I had in my entire life.
“What time is it?” I asked.
“It’s ten p.m., do you know where your children are?” she said in a newscaster voice like the popular PSA.
“It’s ten p.m., do you know where your weed is?” I said in my own newscaster voice.
“Right here,” Melody said, tapping her pocket. I suggested we go to the tract of homes Renaldo and I tore up a few times.
When we arrived, Melody was mesmerized by the peaceful street. All the Porta Potties were upright and you couldn’t see the smashed windows because the street lights hadn’t been activated yet.
I tried to find an undemolished house, but I accidentally led her into one that Renaldo and I had been in. Renaldo had spray painted “fuck you” all over the place. And it bummed Melody out.
“You did this?” she asked.
“Oh, no. That’s Renaldo.”
“Did you smash this place up? That’s pretty fucked up. Why would you do that?”
“It’s totally Renaldo,” I said, inching toward the door. I should have listened to him. He knew Melody wouldn’t like what we’d been doing. I just wanted to play “house.”
Melody walked around the first floor and pointed out a different piece of graffiti. “So, you didn’t write ‘Wolfman Rules’ on here?”
Oops. I didn’t know how to get out of this. She was clearly disturbed. It’s like, no shit, I did it. But what good was gonna come from the truth? I wanted to sweep it under the rug and fuck on top of it.
“Oh shit, I don’t even remember that. I was totally drunk.�
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“Usually that’s a decent excuse but something like this is different. . . . I didn’t know you were this angry.”
“I’m not, I swear, let’s just get out of here.” Maybe JJ Doobie was this angry. I couldn’t blame it on him though.
“Yeah.”
We walked back down the new street. I could see Melody looking at the other houses more closely. It was house after house of broken windows and she shook her head.
“What do you want to do?” I asked.
“Go to the Castle.”
“Whoa, yeah! Can I come?”
“Yeah, if you promise not to smash it to pieces.”
“Tsss, it’s totally Renaldo, I swear.” I had to keep throwing him under the bus and hope she would buy it. He wouldn’t care anyways.
Getting in was easy. Melody had stolen a key from Jack. The whole place was pitch black, so we grabbed flashlights from the makeup room and walked around the Castle like it was ours. We went to the roof of the Castle to smoke.
We lit a joint and looked out in the direction of the ocean. A thick fog bank had rolled in that stopped just below our lookout. The moon lit up the top of the fog and it was like being above the clouds.
“I really like you,” I said.
“Oh, now I’m downgraded to ‘like’ now that you’re not super wasted,” she said, laughing.
“No, no. I mean, like . . . you’re different. Like me.”
“How are you different?”
“You don’t think I am?”
“I want to hear it from you.”
“I don’t know. You know other guys, like Colin and shit. They aren’t into stuff the same way I am. I get really into shit.”
“The Castle?”
“And you.”
Melody smiled.
“I don’t know,” I continued. “Everyone’s always just been like, ‘you’re weird,’ and I kinda retreated into that more and more.”
“Who gives a fuck what people think?”
“Yeah, no, totally.”
I was supposed to have learned this already but whenever I started thinking about the past, it was like pressing the reset button on any lesson. I pretended what she was saying was a “no duh” but every time she said it, it hit me like a brand-new battle cry.