by Julia Kent
On YouTube.
A yearlong suspension from Harvard Law later, here I was again, holding a chicken that wasn’t mine and—
Not proposing to it.
I shuddered, but not for the reasons most people would. Shaking off the sensation of warm caring that inhabited me as soon as I cradled that damn, filthy chicken in my arms was harder than you’d think.
Monster. I was some sort of monster who was weirdly cosseting a homeless guy’s pet chicken.
A homeless guy who had just shot his wad and now smoked a cigarette next to the urban composter in the alley.
“You wanna give Popsicle a little lick there?” Tortilla asked me with a wink. When he closed his eyes, a star of David appeared on his eyelid, a crude tattoo that had faded to the color of corroded copper.
I set the chicken down, animal musk lingering on my clothes. A flashback flirted at the edges of my conscious mind. I willed it away.
“We need to borrow your chicken,” Darla said to Tortilla.
“You want a turn with my cock?”
“That joke ain’t funny no more,” Darla said with a sigh.
“I never joke about my cock,” Tortilla said somberly.
I had to give him that. No guy wants his wang to be considered the butt of a joke.
Up a butt, on the other hand...
Darla reached into her Santa pants pockets (how the hell did she end up wearing Santa pants? I’d forgotten to ask) and pulled out a few grimy dollars. She thrust them at him.
“Tortilla, I gave you a sleeping bag the other day. Here’s a few bucks. Please go tell the cops I wasn’t sucking you off.”
“How about you suck me off and I’ll tell the cops whatever you want?”
Joe and I were in front of Darla instantly, a wall of protection. Joe’s fingers threaded through the guy’s filthy shirt, fist woven into his scraggly beard like it was knitting the hair.
“Don’t you ever, ever fucking talk to her like that. You hear me?” He was lifting Tortilla up a good six inches, and the man stared at Joe with a bewildered, rheumy look.
“I was kidding!” he choked out.
“No shit you were.”
My arm was behind me, holding on to Darla, ready to keep her safe. Without planning or prior agreement, Joe and I had slipped easily into these roles. Joe the aggressor. Trevor the protector.
Easy.
It had come so easily.
The stakes were pretty damn high, too.
Joe let the guy go. On high alert now, my senses were sharper. Keener. Blood pumped through me like an adrenaline bath, and I carefully studied Tortilla’s face. His skin was marked with nasty acne underneath that bushy overgrowth. Grease and a layer of caked-on dirt littered every portion of him not covered by clothing, and the clothes were even worse, like an archive of every stain, smear, and encounter he’d had with anything that could rub off.
He was, to my surprise, actually about our age. The beard had no grey in it.
This guy was a homeless street dude in his mid-twenties.
“I’m sorry, Darla,” Tortilla groaned. “I really am. You’ve always been good to me. Remember when you gave me those cayenne toothpaste samples? That was nice. And those neck pillows you blow up were great when I got that big hemorrhoid and needed something soft to sit on while I took a shit after eating all those gummy bears you gave me.”
Darla’s eyebrows folded inward as I watched her watching him.
“But that sleeping bag sucked because in the rain, the candy cane melted and the piping got all sticky, but the bag was warm. It was nice to wake up a little warm, for once. Reminded me what it was like when I had a bed.”
“Oh,” she said softly.
Joe bent down and picked up Popsicle’s leash.
“I was just joking about the blow job,” he said, eyeing Joe with genuine fear, palms out in a gesture of submission to the alpha dog. “I’ll go to the cops and tell them whatever you want. I was high as a kite when you were helping dig Popsicle out of that dumpster, so I don’t remember much, but I sure as hell know you didn’t blow me. A man would remember that.” His eyes shifted from me to Joe, gauging whether he’d said the wrong thing.
Joe’s shoulders flared up and out in a hyper-masculine anger, but he said nothing.
“You ever joke about her sexually and I’ll—” Joe left the threat undefined.
“I swear! I swear!”
“He’s harmless, Joe,” Darla said in a weary voice. “Really.”
“I know he is,” Joe said, eyes still on Tortilla. “But I’m making myself clear.”
Darla’s mouth went shut, her face a battleground for conflicting emotions.
Joe reached into his jacket pocket, peeling off a thick stack of twenties, fives, tens and ones.
“Here, Tortilla. You and Popsicle go get a hotel room or a nice, warm bed for the next few nights,” Joe said as he handed the guy an amount of money that could either get him a hotel room for a few nights or buy him enough drugs and booze to knock him out for an equal period of time.
“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me!” Tortilla exclaimed, eyes suddenly big and bright. It occurred to me that they were the same color as my own.
Jesus. He really was like me. I looked again at his hair and noticed he didn’t have dark brown hair like I’d first thought. It was just so oily it looked dark. Based on his beard, skin tone and eye color, he was probably a blonde.
Like me.
“How much is that?” Tortilla asked Joe. He seemed hesitant to count it out, a certain shyness emerging.
“Two hundred bucks.”
“I can get a bed for a week down at—well, anyhow.” He looked sadly down at Popsicle. “Problem is, I can’t take her with me. No shelter will let me have her. No hotel will, either.”
Popsicle began pecking lightly on Joe’s foot.
Tears in Tortilla’s eyes made it clear he was torn. Living on the streets of Cambridge couldn’t be easy. That was an understatement. I had no ideas to offer. This was one area of life where I couldn’t contribute one iota of effective advice, because I’d never, ever been exposed to anything quite like this.
Joe just looked down, as if he was out of ideas, too. Offering up all that money to the guy had probably been his problem-solving gesture. In our world, if you throw enough money at an obstacle, it goes away.
Our world didn’t involve street people whose only emotional support in their entire world was a chicken on a leash.
“Joe,” Darla said quietly. “You’ve got chickens at your parents’ house. Any chance your mom will babysit Popsicle for a week?”
Chapter Seven
Darla
“I can’t leave Popsicle,” Tortilla said in a mournful voice. “I’m all she’s got. She would be lost without me.” He gave Popsicle a pitying look. The damn chicken just stared with one eye like it didn’t give a shit in the world.
Which was pretty much true, because I’m sure that chicken was about as emotionally attached to Tortilla as I am to a used condom.
Joe and Trevor exchanged a look, then Joe closed his eyes and shook his head with disgust. When he peered at me, and not Tortilla, I realized who the disgust was aimed at.
“You want me to call my mom and ask her to take on a chicken?”
“You can’t take my Popsicle away!” Tortilla shrieked, snatching the leash from Joe’s fingers.
“Not away,” Darla explained in a soothing voice. “Joe’s mom has a mini farm. Just outside the city. Popsicle could go on a little farm camp week for chickens.”
“Farm camp,” Joe groaned.
“Like a spa,” Darla added. “Give Popsicle a little freshening up.”
Popsicle was in Tortilla’s arms and looked like she was about as interested in a spa as Joe was in reading One Direction fanfiction.
“No. It’s a kind offer,” Tortilla said, squeezing the chicken so tight it started squawking. “But no.” he shoved the wad of money into one of his Santa pants pockets and took
off, his wire basket cart squeaking as he rolled it away from us, muttering to himself.
And with that, we were alone.
“Oh, man,” Trevor said with a long sigh, as if he’d been holding his breath. “That was depressing.”
“Yeah,” Joe said. “Can you imagine?”
“Right. Living on the streets.”
“No. I mean, having a chicken for your best friend. You have to be super fucked in the head to think that.”
I snickered as Trevor tensed. Couldn’t help myself.
“Fuck you, Joe,” Trevor said as we walked out of the alley and toward Mass Ave, where we would pick up the subway to our apartment.
“I wanna go home,” I blurted out as we headed toward the familiar Red Line signs for the subway entrance. All the restaurants were closed, the streets littered only with cops and homeless folks. Christmas lights were wound through the branches of scraggly, bare trees, the LED glow a bit haunting and cool at the same time.
And then—
DING! DONG! DING! DONG!
Merry Christmas.
We paused, Joe and Trevor reaching for me, the three of us in a giant hug, the church bells ringing on and on until they had done their job. It was Christmas.
Baby Jesus was born.
And, I hoped, glowing in his rightful place in front of the Methodist church back home in Peters, Ohio.
Mama and my stepdaddy were tucked quietly in bed right about now. Uncle Mike was stuck in Chicago on a run, but he’d come home to Peters tomorrow and go over to Mama and Calvin’s with his woman, and with Jane and Davey and their little boys. Aunt Marlene would go on over, too, and everyone would open presents, eat all the Christmas dinner favorites, groan and undo their belts, and then we’d have a long game of penny poker going late into the night.
We?
No. There was no “we”.
I wasn’t there.
A pang of sorrow hit me like I’d been belted over the head with a slab of cast iron, the air knocked out of me like it was being beaten from my lungs with fists from ghosts.
“Darla?” Trevor asked me, worried. “What’s wrong?”
“I ain’t got a home,” I cried. “My mama’s back home and it’s Christmas and you two don’t play penny poker and who is gonna make the green bean casserole just right like Mama? The one with the crispy onions from a can and the mushroom soup and what if the Baby Jesus don’t glow like it’s supposed to?” I wailed.
“You can come to my parents’ in the morning,” Trevor soothed. “With me. And Alex and Josie invited us all over at two tomorrow, and—”
“Not the same,” I sniffled, as Joe wrapped his arms around the two of us.
“No,” Trevor admitted. “It’s not your home. It’s not your traditions. We pulled you away from all that.”
“We can go with you. Right now. Get in my car and start driving and we can be in Ohio before dinner,” Joe said. I looked at him in shock. He was serious. Completely serious.
My heart tugged like someone was unraveling it. “No. That’s okay. I appreciate the gesture. I do. Really. I love you for it.”
“I love you, too,” Joe said. The words warmed me. We all said it to each other—well, the guys said it to me—more and more, but it was still rare enough to give me the sweet tingles whenever it came out of their mouths. This was a promise we needed to build, like a strong structure with the best foundation, and each I love you added more and more.
“And I mean it,” he said as he smoothed the hair off my face. “We can go. Now. You can see Cathy whenever you want. If you don’t want to go tonight, we can go tomorrow. Or December 27. Or July 11. Your happiness means everything to me.”
“To us,” Trevor added.
“You two,” I rasped, overcome with Christmas spirit. Maybe I didn’t need that green bean casserole, or the candy cane Oreo-crust pie mama made with two containers of Cool-Whip. Maybe the ornaments Mama carefully wrapped in tissue every year and pulled out for the holiday to hang on the plastic tree were just physical manifestations of love and tradition, of home and comfort.
I could find that elsewhere.
Right here, in Joe and Trevors’ arms.
But I wanted my mama. Bad. When you hit a low, and fuckall if my night wasn’t one of the worst ever, you crave the familiar. You seek out what you know. You wiggle your way into the line-up where you have a place, a marked spot, where your presence is expected, even if not fully accepted.
When we’re uprooted and upended and life shakes us violently like a toddler with a snow globe, we need to find balance. Fast.
Or we’ll puke.
So life is like an inner ear.
It’s all gunked up and full of wax and if you don’t maintain it, you’ll get dizzy and—
My metaphors are getting stupider.
I think what I’m trying to say is that love ain’t something that you only find in old traditions.
It’s something you practice every day.
Happy birthday, Baby Jesus. Welcome to this clustercluck of a world.
* * *
I’m not the kind of person who turns to sex out of a sense of sadness. I’ve never done that. For me, sex is something you do when you’re horny, either by yourself or with someone (preferably, two someones, for me). The idea of finding connection and comfort in sexual intimacy is a new one, and as Joe gave me a slow, soulful kiss it dawned on me that maybe everything I always thought about sex was wrong.
Or, if it’s not all wrong, maybe there’s just more to it than I ever expected.
We were home, back at the two-bedroom apartment that felt gloriously luxurious once Sam and Amy had moved out. We had two whole bedrooms to occupy, and the place felt empty and full, alien and like home.
There was a moment, as Trevor stripped me naked and gently guided me to the steaming shower, when I felt a sense of joyful unknowing. This was new territory for me. Not being back home on this holiday, by choice, was a mixed blessing. Independence that was so hard won turned out to be a heavy burden that was deceptively light.
You don’t realize you’re carrying it around with you, twenty-four seven, in charge of cultivating it and nurturing it and making sure it doesn’t get away from you.
All the time.
You don’t just get to have the freedom to choose your own path without finding out the consequences can suck, and suck hard. Every decision you make from a place of wanting to stand on your own two feet has multiple paths, growing like tendrils, like vines seeking light and space, a place to nudge and take over.
And if you aren’t careful, those vines can sneak up on you, squeezing you until everything you got is emptied out, leaving you a hollow shell, begging for the world to fill you up again so you don’t have to be so barren and burdened.
Trevor’s fingers slid against the outsides of my thighs, his hands practiced in pulling my panties down, his fingers cold but palms warm as they splayed across my shoulders, possessive and understanding.
It had been one hell of a day. Playfulness didn’t enter the picture. We were all grounded now, rooted in a somber sense that our relationship changed in a single day, deepening without intent.
I turned in Trevor’s arms, his hands skimming my waist, settling on my ass, as I gave him a tentative kiss borne of the craving pulse of connection. Be with me, my mouth said. Just be here. Touch me. Know me. Make me feel like I’m here. Really here.
And really be here with me, too.
Time is what we all crave. Not attention. We think we want someone to fawn all over us, to make us the center of their world, to set themselves aside for as long as it takes for our cup of need to fill to overflowing so we can be done and settle down into an equanimity of love.
That’s fiction. It doesn’t exist. What is real, though, is actually better.
Trevor stripped down and as I reached for him, the connection between my fingers and his skin was slick. Too slick. He felt like a well-oiled piece of leather, like climbing into a new car at a showro
om and slip-sliding across the backseat.
Technically, Trevor’s body was well-oiled leather, come to think of it. Man leather, covered in the deliciously tickling hair that marked his strong, golden thighs, the curve of his ass carrying a weight to it that felt to steady and stable as I stroked him. I wasn’t making a pass. I was making a statement.
I might be yours, but you’re mine right back.
The assault of hot water and steam felt so good I shuddered, my blood needing more than just the motion of pumping through my veins to express some of the overflowing emotion within. A good cry would be a good start, but a good shaking tremor, complete with teeth-chattering, had a primal effect that no cry could replace. My muscle fibers needed to vibrate out all the weirdness, the horror, the terror and the fuckery of the day. Making room for a completely different kind of body tension, the kind that absorbs love via osmosis and orgasm, was my final act as we wound down the night.
Joe was nude and climbing into the tiny shower with us, this ritual one of our own that no one outside the three of us had—or would—ever share in quite the same way. Over the years, I imagined, we would move into a different apartment. Maybe get an actual house. Who knew? Our future together was still a haze, a soup of what-ifs, but I knew one thing:
Muscle memory meant that Joe would always stand a certain way, hip cocked to the left, so he could fit into his tiny corner of the shower. I would always dip my neck just so. Trevor would, forever, hold his left arm a certain way.
And all because that was how it had to be at this one point in time, space, geography, and in love.
I cried. The sobs weren’t loud, but they shook my chest, breasts mashed up against Trevor’s shoulder blades, Joe’s hands making soothing circles on my back, one of them reaching around to cup my breast. The movement made my perspective realign by a fraction of a heartbeat, as if I measured space by increments of love.
Being enveloped by them both gave me a sanctuary of the flesh, a space with more meaning than just words. Being told you’re loved is a delightful gift that gives day in and day out, for the memory of the words being addressed to you—and only you—can never be taken away. Unlike an object, I love you is like a tattoo that lives in your heart instead of on your skin, engraved into your heart and soul, removed only by the deliberate and excruciating process of your own volition.