“But not live to talk about it.”
“What the fuck does living to talk about it change?”
“Just tell me this, was it scary?”
“Do I look like a fag to you?”
“I—”
“All right.” He sighed and leaned in a little closer. “If you want to know the truth, it was fucking awesome. You finally get to stop holding on, you know.”
“Holding on.” Yes, Max did recall a feeling of letting go at the Yangs’. His terror was climaxing into immense lightness before he was brought back down to life.
“Exactly. You don’t realize how much effort it is to hold on to this garbage.” He gestured to encompass their surroundings, and took a long drink of chocolate milk. “Even if you just sat here all day like a big piece of shit, without moving at all, you’d still get super tired. Ever think of that? You’d eventually fall asleep just from sitting here and doing nothing because it takes a fuck ton of centripetal force of physics or whatever the fuck just to keep your body alive. It’s like, no matter what you do, you’re using up your life to stay alive. To hold on. But fuck it.”
What Danny said made sense. “Yeah. Fuck it.” Death was probably the easiest thing on earth. Easier than just sitting here and doing nothing. You couldn’t possibly screw it up. You were just cleared. Ready to go. Freed. Nevertheless, believing this didn’t stop death from rumbling beneath all surfaces. Didn’t stop it from itching all of the time.
Around then, Rocket got lupus. Max and Rasheed took her to the vet when she started losing hair in patches. They gave her antibiotics and vitamin E pills, a topical ointment for her lesions, fatty acid supplements, and oral corticosteroids. They nailed her doggie door shut and let her out only after lathering waterproof SPF on her face and ears and bald spots.
Nadine and Max talked a lot about sad things without necessarily seeking answers. They knew there was no ultimate solution to being afraid of dying, for example, or the boundless source of what’s-the-point questionings, or her regret at not giving more to her father before he’d killed himself. Her venting and confessions and self-deprecations were ways of rephrasing that Life Is Hard, not with the expectation of finding an actual solution but as a conversation piece to play with, to connect through, to see what else it inspired. Max and Nadine rephrased Life Is Hard to each other to feel understood, since feeling understood is the predecessor to feeling truly loved.
By the time he was seventeen, Max’s skin had cleared up, his body had thickened, black hair whirled from his chest, and he shaved his face clean every day before school. He’d become a handsome man that women at the grocery store took notice of. He didn’t respond to this new attention. He only wanted Nadine. She was the sole person in his life whose strength and poise and humor he admired, and who was also fundamentally kind.
After one of their dinners, she asked him if he’d ever had sex. This was the first topic he bald-facedly lied to her about. He told her he was sleeping with a girl from his English class, unconsciously describing the fictional girl as an older version of the little woman at the Yangs’ from years before.
Nadine filled up her wineglass. “What’s her name?”
“L—indy.”
“Sorry?”
“Lindy.”
“Lindy? Okay. What kinds of things do you and Lindy do together?”
“What do you mean, like what positions?”
“Yeah, sure.”
“Oh, we do pretty much everything.”
“Yeah? Are you any good at it?”
“At what? Sex?”
“Yeah.” She gave a knowing smile that reminded him of their age difference. She knew he was full of shit.
“She seems to think so.”
“Oh, yeah? Where do you guys do it?”
“All over. Her car, her house, my house, in fields.”
She outwardly laughed at him now. “Really? Fields? And she’s been over to your house? I’ve never seen her.”
He smiled now too. “No, well, she comes in either really early in the morning or late at night. “
“That’s smart, keeping it discreet like that. It’s really nobody’s business but yours. And so you go to her house too?”
“Sure, I’m there all the time. Usually after school. I go over there and, you know, we talk some, and then we get all—sweaty.”
“You get all sweaty.” She looked down and pretended she was trying to conceal her laughter.
“Yeah, definitely, we get all sweaty, and then I leave before her dad comes home, and everything’s great. Okay, well what about you, when was the last time you got any?”
“I’m not nearly as active as you.”
“Oh, come on! I see guys coming over, and what about that guy Graham you were seeing? That was like two weeks ago.”
“Forget about Graham, that’s boring. Tell me what kinds of things she does to you. I’m curious.”
“Who?”
“Lindy.”
And he did. Through Lindy, he spelled out the fantasies he’d been having about Nadine for years. His descriptions felt risqué, but she only laughed.
Rasheed was home for about an hour in the evenings. It’d been years since Max made a point of choosing to be there to share his company. Max was usually across the street during this hour, and Rasheed had yet to even knock on Nadine’s door, let alone try to establish a respectful rapport. The Yangs hardly ever saw Rasheed either. He spent the little free time he had alone or at Coach Tim’s.
Rasheed said to Max once, “It is strange that your only friend is an old single black lady.”
With a cool rage Max didn’t know existed in himself, he said, “She’s not old, and I don’t see what her being single or black has to do with anything.”
Max felt he’d surpassed his father, knew more than him now. They were tense and self-conscious the rare times they were around each other, talking with a choppy and unfamiliar cadence. They seemed to be in each other’s way, the hall and living room too small for both of them. In the kitchen, one always blocked the cupboard the other needed to get to. Max ate standing, hurriedly, and tried to get in and out of there as quickly as possible to avoid having to share the space with Rasheed. Speaking more than a few words would have given away what they kept from each other. At this point, the main thing they kept from each other was whether they noticed or cared about the degradation of their relationship. Max didn’t know how they had remained stuck in this awkward formality for so long, and he couldn’t remember what kinds of things they’d talked about before. All he knew was that his father’s presence mined his energy, made him feel weak and tired.
Just as when Kelly was around, they maintained this amazing capacity to ignore the elephant in the room, to never address the strong, though annoyingly unspecific, feelings rocking their home from its very foundation. Rasheed probably thought Max would grow out of his need to distance himself, that things would go back to the way they were in time, that it would pass on its own, like bad weather.
Rasheed was getting two to three flus a month. Max brought food and water to his room, but nothing more. No stories, no good lies. The longer this standoff persisted, and Rasheed’s bouts of depression sagged him, the colder Max became. But in a not-so-distant fold of Max’s consciousness, he understood the truth. His father’s increased depression was because he’d lost his son. Max wouldn’t dignify this with much thought. Why should the onus be on him to give Rasheed back his position as the center of Max’s universe? Even if Max wanted to, he couldn’t give him that. Rasheed was not the center. So Max carried on silently, his father’s despair hanging off him, pretending to be unfazed by the strain it caused. He told himself that allowing Rasheed to see how much he hated his depression would be precisely what encouraged it.
When Max felt guilty about ignoring Rasheed’s sadness, he evoked the memory of his father’s disrespect of Nadine and his continual rejection of her. This helped him get angry enough to shut him out again.
Max t
old Nadine about the adventures of Kip and his Man-Dog of a brother. “Every once in a while, when my dad couldn’t come up with new episodes, Kip and his Man-Dog got into situations that were identical to scenes from The Adventures of Tintin, or Indiana Jones, Jurassic Park, and once, even Dances with Wolves.” Nadine smiled. “The weird part is that not only did I not let on that I noticed he was copying those other stories, but I was actually able to forget that I’d heard them before. I could listen to them as if for the first time, as though everything he said was completely original.”
“Now that’s filial devotion,” she said. “Don’t make that face—I think it’s sweet.”
“No, it’s messed up. It’s like I brainwashed myself into thinking that everything he did or said was perfect.”
“You just loved hearing him tell stories.”
He shook his head. “I don’t know. Don’t most kids eventually call their parents out on their bullshit? It’s like I wouldn’t ever let myself be disappointed. That’s got to be unhealthy.”
“Well, you’re expressing disappointment now, aren’t you? Are you really going to sit here being disappointed that you weren’t disappointed sooner?”
“Feels late.”
“What will feel late is if you let this tension drag out any longer.”
Nadine urged him to open his arms to Rasheed more, give him the affection he obviously thirsted for, even if he didn’t know how to ask for it. She told Max to spend less time at her place and to be with Rasheed when he came home, that this disappointed phase would definitely pass. Max resolved not to talk to her about his father anymore. When she told him she felt like she’d come between them, he swore his problems with Rasheed had nothing to do with her.
“Whatever it is, don’t waste your time being mad,” she told him. “You’re not teaching him any lessons this way, and you won’t always have the chance to be with him whenever you feel like it.”
THIRTEEN
Max and Nadine were peeling cucumbers at the sink, her bare shoulder grazing him from time to time. He stared out her kitchen window at the vein-blue sky, the rust of sunset slowly getting scrubbed away.
He’d thought about his stupid fantasy of Nadine and him as a couple. Seventeen-year-old boys and thirty-year-old women who got together were trashy people, the kind of people who yelled at the camera on early-evening local news stations, drank themselves dumb, smashed plates, and kicked dogs. They didn’t know about Zora Neale Hurston and Oscar Peterson; they didn’t talk about the Absurd or their fear of death or make fusions of French cream sauces with duchess potatoes and African fufu. They were not kind and soft with each other while also being sophisticated, confiding and articulating their deepest thoughts. High school kids and thirty-year-old women who got together were loud and lewd and stained.
She put a cucumbered hand on his cheek to turn his face toward her. He dropped his peeler in the sink. With the other hand she took his and placed it on her hip. She stepped into him, their waists connected. His heart drummed louder.
She said, “Max?” and then pulled his neck down to kiss him. A deep kiss that lasted a long time before their mouths opened and their tongues crossed over. She drew back to check what all this had done to him, and laughed a little out of her nose. She said, “Is this a really bad idea?”
“No,” said Max. He brought his mouth down to hers again, but she pinched his jaw in her hand to stop him. She studied his face for a second before lowering him down, and slowly licked his closed mouth from left to right. She said, “We can enjoy each other like this. No big deal, right?”
He couldn’t believe it. “Right. No big deal.”
She took her shirt off, her breasts swelling out her bra, and told him to touch her, and to put his mouth on her nipples over the bra. To graze his teeth over them. Then to rub her up and down with his hand over her shorts. She ordered him to unzip and pull everything down to her ankles. She asked if he wanted her and how long had he wanted her. Speechless, as he stood back up from the floor, smelling the sweetness between her legs, he nodded yes.
She guided his hands to her ass and squeezed with him. Shook it a little. Laughed. Removing her hands, she told him to do it again, without her help. Her gorgeous ass in his hands. She jumped up on the edge of the sink, let her shorts and underwear drop off her ankles, and parted her legs to both sides of him. She said, “Take it out. I want to see it.”
The heat from her vagina made his penis grow long, downward at first and then filling upward. His quick trembling breaths made it sound as if he were lifting something heavy. The moment his erection rose enough to scrape its head against her tight, shiny curls, it started losing all power, drooping. Please, no. It slunk inward until all that remained was the tip and an obscene rumple of foreskin. He’d dreamed of this moment for years, and now he shrank in terror.
“You okay?” she said. She reached between her legs and cupped his balls as if she were holding a baby chick. With her other hand, she tweezed the head between her fingertips and stretched it out of its hole. She brushed it up and down her pubic hair a couple times, trying to reawaken him.
He wanted to scream that this was not his penis. He had never seen this penis before in his life. His did not behave this way. He wanted to flick and squeeze and yank this dick until it became his again. But he didn’t dare touch it. Masturbating the emasculated rubbery thing in front of her was more than he could handle.
“It feels so good,” he said, his genitals cold and numb.
She looked over her shoulder and said, “The neighbors might see.” She hopped down, and put on her shorts and found her shirt.
He pulled up his pants. “I’m so sorry,” he said.
“I’m the sorry one. Look at me. I’m nearly old enough to be your mother. Have I lost my mind?”
“No.”
She put a palm to her forehead. “I’m feeling a little pathetic here.”
“Yeah, me too.”
“Thanks.”
“No, I mean because of me, not because of you. Really.”
She pursed her lips. He felt he was supposed to leave now.
“Don’t feel pathetic,” he said. “Please don’t say you feel pathetic.”
She looked out the window for a long time. “When I love a friend, I want to get as close to him or her as I can. A minute ago, touching you felt like an innocent way to do that. It seemed light and easy, and now it feels so irresponsible and heavy.” She shook her head. “I cannot believe I did that.” She wouldn’t look at him. “Max, if you stand there much longer, I’m going to get truly embarrassed.”
She walked him to the door, apologized again, and opened it for him. He couldn’t cross that threshold and go outside. If he did, the dream he had gotten so close to would be forever gone. There were a few seconds left before he would miss the opportunity to turn this around. He had never been proactive. Luck had formed his life thus far and would keep forming it if he didn’t do something to change that fact.
“No,” he said, staring out her front door, facing his house. He shut the door and looked at her. He pushed her shoulders against the wall and kissed her.
“Max. Please. I feel bad enough as it is.”
He pulled away. “I want to feel closer too. You were right, it doesn’t have to be some big deal. I was just nervous.” This time she let him kiss her, and as soon as he felt her kiss back, fire flowed through him. He was eager to prove his arousal and pressed himself against her crotch. She pushed him back a little at first, but he broke through her resistance. When he felt her fully concede to his body, he huffed like a bull with excitement. So much blood barreled up into his ears, it sounded like he was on an airplane. They frantically ripped their pants back off in the doorway, and he showed her his glorious erection.
She led him to her bedroom by his penis like a leash. Her ass and hips swayed back and forth as if to say, Okay, all right, follow me; follow me.
“Lie down,” said Nadine when they got to the bed. “Take everything o
ff. And your socks.”
She unclipped her bra and he watched them fall. She crawled onto the bed slowly, her breasts swinging a little from side to side. After taking him into her mouth for a second, she came up and straddled him, hovering over his penis. She had him suck on his fingers and put them inside her. She rocked back and forth on them, telling him what to do. Her wet walls ballooned in and out, and the very top had ripples like the roof of a mouth. Again, stunned by a surge of performance anxiety—Oh my God, Oh my God, Am I doing this right? Does this feel good? Does she like this? Did she just groan? Shut up, just feel it, be in the moment, just relax and go with it, stop thinking about it—he felt himself losing strength. Oh my God. The more he begged it to stay up, trying to flex it back into action, the limper it got. Feeling he didn’t have much time before he’d lose it completely, he said, “I want to be inside you now.”
She looked at him questioningly, and all he could think was, Please hurry.
She asked, “Are you a virgin, Max?”
“Yes.”
“Are you sure you want to do this?”
“Yes. Yes.”
The moment she lined it up with her vagina, his mouth slackened, the pressure to perform increased, and his dick curled into a shrimp. She managed to push it in anyway, and he could feel it getting even smaller in there. She tried to move on him but he slipped out. He actually wanted to cry. She glided her clitoris back and forth on it for a frustrated moment and then got off and lay next to him. He’d lost his chance for good now. The weight of the failure made him hold his breath.
She sat up, and Max presumed she was looking for her clothes, but she said, “You know, penetration isn’t even the best part. Let’s try this.” She got on all fours and turned around. She said, “Smack my ass.” He did it and laughed nervously. She said, “Again, but harder.” He started getting into it. “Yeah, again. Good. Again. Now lick me, use your hands to open and lick me.”
She wasn’t giving up on him. He smothered his face in her, closing his eyes and breathing her in. She coached him on where to lap and flick his tongue and what to do with his hands, her wetness and his saliva all over his mouth and chin. She started sucking on him too.
Lifted by the Great Nothing: A Novel Page 14