The Screwed-Up Life of Charlie the Second

by Drew Ferguson

  See, when it comes to me, it’s not like First’s ever been able to keep his mouth shut. He’s never said it—he hasn’t had to—but he’s never been exactly thrilled with the way I’ve turned out. In a way, I actually understand it a little. It’s the name thing—Charles James Stewart the Second, not Charles James Stewart, Junior. It’s like he sees me as the new version of himself—First 2.0—and each and every one of my failures and setbacks are a reflection on him. Seriously, how screwed up is it to give your son your own goddamn name? It’s like pinning your dreams to a ghost.

  I think that’s why things went radio silence between us after he found my visual aids, or as I like to think of them, my collection of photos of future ex-boyfriends: an Abercrombie & Fitch catalog, one of the Binkmeyer girls’ teenybopper mags filled with pictures of shirtless guys with names like Jeremy and Zach, and a photo spread from one of First’s old copies of Hustler featuring two blond guys at a barbecue with some chick they didn’t seem interested in.

  Last year, when this all happened, my grades in trigonometry had been pretty crappy, and when after-school tutoring didn’t help matters, First decided I had to be on drugs. It was the only thing that made sense.

  So one Friday night after I got a D on a trig pop quiz (I’d messed up, again, on sines and cosines), First went on a hunt for the source of my reefer madness.

  When I got home from practice, the parental units weren’t around. I walked to the fridge to grab a can of Coke or something, and out of the corner of my eye, I saw my whack-off material splayed out across a countertop. Out in the open like that, the magazines felt dirty. Obscene. The crime scene photos of a murder victim shoved at the suspect in custody. My heart stopped. For a second, I actually hoped—believed—that destroying the evidence would erase the crime. And then I heard First and Mom upstairs. I sneaked up the stairs and stood just outside their bedroom.

  “I don’t understand it,” First said. He sounded tired, like his voice had given up on expressing emotion.

  “There’s nothing to understand,” Mom said. “It is what it is.”

  “And what, I’m supposed to just accept it?” First’s voice jumped into sharpness. “Am I supposed to pretend that this isn’t going to make his life harder?”

  “You don’t have to pretend anything. You just have to be there for him. I’m not saying it’s going to be easy. I’ve always wanted a daughter-in-law…grandchildren. This…it breaks my heart.”

  “You’ll talk to him?”

  “We both should.”

  “I can’t. Not yet.”

  I felt like I was going to throw up, so I sat on the second stair from the top of the landing. Part of me wanted to run into the room and say I was the same person I’d always been, that nothing had to change, that we could all go back to acting like they didn’t know the truth. But another part of me was pissed. Me being into guys, it wasn’t about them. It was mine—a private part of me—and their stupid asses had to go rooting around for it. It was their own fucking fault if they discovered shit they couldn’t handle.

  I was so pissed and scared and hurt, that I was crying into my hands and didn’t know it.

  “Charlie?” Mom said. She and First had left their bedroom, and she was leaning down to me, her arm shepherding my shoulder. “Don’t worry. We’ll figure this out. We’ll figure everything out in time.”

  I looked to First for confirmation. His eyes were empty as sinkholes. That hurt. It really fucking hurt. Even today, I don’t know if there’s anything worse than a guy looking at his father and seeing nothing behind his eyes—no glimmer, no spark, just muted disappointment.

  The three of us went downstairs to the kitchen, where First started cleaning the mess of masturbatory aids from the counter. The Hustler, he dumped in the trash, the rest he left in a stack to the corner. I know now that she was trying to be patient and understanding and all, but Mom was giving me the third degree.

  She wanted to know if this was a phase—no—if I was confused or experimenting—no—had someone, a friend, a relative, a teacher touched me—hell no, don’t be sick—if I was having sex—it’s none of your business—which apparently it was as long as I am living under her house—I’m not having sex with anyone but myself, is that what you want to hear? Just leave it alone, okay?—did I have a special friend—like a retread?—no, was I seeing anyone special to me—no (with a huge disgusted sigh)—was Bink gay—no Mom, he’s not gay, he’s just Jewish—did I want to see anyone for help—I’m gay, not crazy, but if you ask me any more questions I’ll be both.

  The whole time she was drilling me—and yeah, I was kind of shitty to her—I kept looking at First. I was waiting for him to jump in and say something. I actually wanted him to yell at me. I really did. I wanted him to say what a disappointment I was and how this was yet another one of my illustrious screwups. He didn’t, and that’s what killed me. No lecture, no study guide, no after-school tutoring, no new game plan, no extra practice, no him breathing down my neck and refusing to let up for even a goddamn second—nothing was going to help. By saying nothing, it felt as if he was telling me that he was done with me. That’s why I had to leave. I couldn’t be around him when he made me feel dead at sixteen.

  I spent the next few days, until Mom said that First had come around a little, with the Binkmeyers. Things were freaky, partly because Bink’s parents are so much older than everyone else’s and partly ’cuz it was three days of Binkmeyer family powwows about my dick and how I hoped to use it. Mrs. B is big on “dialogues,” which are her solution for anything that can’t be fixed by a “strongly worded” letter-to-the-editor, protest march, or boycott. She’s this flower child gone to seed who’s always lecturing Bink and me about how she’d been to Woodstock and marched for civil rights in Selma or Alabama or some place, I forget. Anyhow, Mrs. B droned on and on about all the homos in history who lived wonderful, normal lives. (Oscar Wilde—no, they were awful to him. Prison, then dying broke in France. Well, Charlie, he’s not a good example. But what a tomb! If you’re ever in Paris, you really should see it.) And Mr. B, being a high school biology teacher—excuse me, “man of science”—kept saying that in the animal kingdom there are muff-diving sheep and circle-jerking chimpanzees.

  Bink’s parents tried acting cool, but every night Mrs. B’d sneak into the basement where I was sleeping and shine a flashlight on me. She wanted to make sure I hadn’t gone all Sylvia Plath and stuffed my head in their gas clothes dryer. C’mon, give me some credit. I took world lit with Ms. Puckelwartz and shop with Mr. Sturng. I know it was an oven and I know I’d have to at least disconnect the gas line. Yep, Mrs. B, still alive…go back to bed.

  One night, when I was jonesing to escape, I climbed out a basement storm window so I didn’t have to hear any more history lessons (Alan Turing—a brilliant mathematician who broke the Nazi’s code…No, Charlie. Forget about him. They put him on hormones and he killed himself. Sad, really.) or about animal orgies. (Male walruses sometimes bond and have sexual intercourse with each other. It’s also been observed in bison, antelope, sage grouse, and…)

  I walked out into the backyard. Bink was sitting Indian-style in the grass and staring up at a sky that was charcoal purple and littered with stars like debris from a riot. He brushed a hand along his hairy legs, shooing mosquitoes or gnats, and patted a spot of ground beside him. I sat—a good two feet from him—my legs stretched out, leaning back on my palms.

  Bink said something, maybe “sorry,” but I wasn’t sure.

  “Me, too.”

  “What?”

  “Nothing,” I said.

  Bink fumbled in his pocket for the hard pack of Marlboro Reds and Zippo he’d lifted from his dad. I caught a whiff of kerosene and watched Bink study the end of his square before taking a long, slow drag.

  “I had to get out of there.” His head bobbed back toward the house. “They’re making me nuts.”

  “They already think I am,” I said. “Your mom’s convinced I’m going to off my
self. Last night, I caught her taking the Clorox out of the laundry room. She claimed she spilled red wine on something. Tonight, she came downstairs and took the laces out of my shoes so I won’t hang myself. She didn’t even bother making up an excuse.”

  “You wouldn’t, would you?”

  “Nah. If I did, First’d probably just dig me out of my grave to lecture me on how a noose should have thirteen knots and mine only had eight or something.”

  “You’re such a dork, Charlie.” We laughed. Bink leaned a hand against my shoulder, stood, took one last puff, and then flicked the butt into a neighbor’s yard. “I should go to bed. If my parents check on me, they might think I ran away ’cuz I got wigged that you’re a homo.”

  Bink offered me his hand and pulled me to my feet. Things were as normal as they could get between us.

  That is, they were until last night.

  When we got to Dana’s—way late—she answered the door, fighting back a horse-sized poodle. “Down, Jacques,” she said. The dog galloped off.

  Dana was hammered, and she looked ridiculous. Her hair was a mess and topped off with what looked like a basket of wax fruit. Around her waist was this Hawaiian print skirt that looked like a tablecloth for a family of cannibals. Her bikini top had two very large and very dead starfish sewn over the nipples.

  “You’re late,” Dana said, giving Bink a quick peck on the cheek and totally glaring at me.

  I stuck my tongue out at her. Real mature, I know, but I wasn’t the one dressed like a four year old who’d decided to marry the Hawaiian Punch mascot.

  “Thank God my parents won’t be home until Sunday,” Dana said, listing to her side. She burped loudly and smacked her lips. Her breath smelled like bratwurst and beer.

  “The house is sooo trashed. We’ve gone through two kegs…and…and…” She snorted and pressed her palm against her upturned piggy nose. “And for some reason, everyone thought I had a pool. I don’t, Neil. I just don’t.” She traced a fingertip across Bink’s chest and smiled. If Dana didn’t pass out, Bink was totally going to get laid. “Everyone’s out back.”

  Dana laced her fingers with Bink’s and led him, dog-on-a-leash, through the hallway—or “foy-yay” as Kim Green called it an hour later, when Kyle Weir’s index finger wormed under her red swimsuit and past her pubes. (Kyle, oh God, Kyle, not here in the foy-yay!) I followed. When we were out back, Dana half-moaned, half-squealed the straight-girl mating call (God, I’m sooo drunk!) and disappeared with Bink.

  Couples like Bink and Dana are so dumb that I want to beat them. Hard. They act like they’re the only ones in the history of the world that have ever been in love. They think everybody else wants to see them making out with each other. Like seeing them so happy together is the only reason the rest of us don’t close the garage door, climb into the car, turn on the ignition, and end our pathetic little lives.

  Anyhow, the backyard looked like the site of a plane crash—trampled blue Solo cup empties, burned-out tiki torches, shoes and sandals snared in a collapsed volleyball net, paper plates piled with half-eaten food, used rubbers, cigarette butts, and a pair of speakers pumping Pearl Jam. The yard was infested with an assortment of frat-boy larvae so plastered they didn’t bother hiding the woodies throbbing in their swim trunks; girls who wore too much makeup with fresh razor burn dotting their bikini lines like chicken skin; guys wearing coconut bras and grass skirts; fat, bottle-blonde chicks from South’s pommie squad who were too ashamed to wear anything that’d expose their dimpled thighs and huge hips; flabby junior varsity linebackers dry-humping soon-to-be sophomores; business-in-the-front–party-in-the-back posers head-banging and strumming air-guitar; and last year’s prom princess blowing chunks in the bushes.

  I planted my ass in a wooden deck chair, nursed a Coke, and tried to ignore the dickweeds sprouting up around me. It wasn’t easy. About ten minutes into the nightmare, Dana came back outside and started bitching about all the “white boy” music—a bunch of metal bands fronted by guys who had bigger hair and better legs than she did. Ever since last year when Kyle Weir and his friends dressed up like members of the Latin Kings—complete with bandannas and baseball bats—during the Winter Carnival’s Mexican Fiesta Day (¡Viva Mexico!), Dana’s decided it’s her job in life to end racism. She forced Elian Arnez to embrace his “heritage” by wearing a dashiki (he’s actually from the Dominican Republic), organized an informal field trip to what’s left of the Cabrini Green projects so we all could see “how black people live,” and I swear, she wanted to hold a fund-raiser for the Asian kids at South so they could afford to buy silverware and stop eating with sticks.

  I cringed, rubbing my eyes and shaking my head.

  Dana’s always pretending she’s morally offended that her parents are filthy rich. My father may be an investment banker, but I’m a revolutionary. A socialist. The people of Latin America, I share their struggle. Before you could ask how she was suffering when she had a full scholarship to Vassar or Sarah Lawrence or one of those lesbian-until-graduation colleges, she’d start in about how some guy named Jose Cuervo or something was the true hero of Cuba.

  Behind me, the sliding glass door skidded open. I wasn’t alone on the patio anymore. Bink was in the doorway with Dana’s Clydesdale of a mutt.

  “Well, in or out, already?” With the side of his foot, Bink shoved the poodle outside and it bounded away, barking at the moon. Some bare-chested guy I didn’t know tried to squeeze past Bink. He was holding a shirt stained with strawberry Kool-Aid, probably spiked with Everclear. Bink caught his arm and spun him around in one motion. The T-shirt dropped with a splat.

  “Hey, sorry about that. Dana didn’t mean to spill. She gets clumsy when she’s drunk,” Bink said. “She’s cool, though. I’m Neil, by the way. Rob?”

  “Yeah, Rob Hunt,” he nodded. “I moved next door a few days ago.”

  Rob saw me watching him and grinned, all dimples. I think we were checking each other out, but I couldn’t be sure. He was shorter than me (who isn’t?) and cute in an easy, lazy kind of way. He had dark black hair that was mussed, a few strands falling toward his eyes. His ears stuck out just a bit (not like my Dumbo monsters). The rest of him looked good, too—a mostly smooth torso with a Y-shaped shadow of hair; a tight, slightly pumped chest with penny-sized nipples the color of raspberries; and a thin treasure trail snaking from his belly button to his low-hanging Bermuda shorts. My cheeks burned.

  “Where’d you move from?” I asked. I tried being casual, but my voice chipped like cheap paint.

  “Manhattan.” His bluish eyes kept looking at me, which made me think I was getting a zit (I was—just popped it a minute ago). “Well, actually my parents lived in Manhattan. I went to the Phelps School in Pennsylvania.”

  “Your parents sent you to boarding school?” Bink asked. “Man, that sucks.”

  Rob shrugged and picked up his shirt. “It made sense at the time.”

  “Boarding school?” Bink said, like he couldn’t believe it. “Like shirts and ties and blazers?”

  “Well, formal, yes.”

  “No girls?”

  “No…no girls.”

  “Damn, that had to suck.”

  “Well,” Rob stopped looking at me and twisted his shirt, raining Kool-Aid on the patio bricks, “we had dances with our sister schools—Purnell and Grier.”

  “Still…”

  “I should probably rinse this,” Rob said to no one in particular and ducked back into the house.

  Once Rob was out of earshot, Bink closed the sliding door and pulled me aside. “You know what Dana heard?”

  “What?”

  “She heard Rob got sent away ’cuz he got some chick pregnant. Supposedly, Rob’s dad was pissed Rob was out banging some chick when his mom’s really sick. He wasn’t gonna pay for an abortion.”

  “That’s retarded,” I said, sounding pissy.

  “It’s true.”

  “Sure it’s true. Just like when Dana said Joan Hawkings was a big les
bo and they caught her rubbing her crotch against a gymnastic beam.”

  Bink scrunched his face and belched pure-grain alcohol.

  “I’m gonna be sick.”

  Bink went green, chest and throat retching, and vomited on a pile of clothes. I gagged on the smell. I should’ve checked to see if he was all right, but I needed to piss—bad.

  Inside, I got lost looking for the bathroom. Smug family portraits of the whole damn Flannigan family covered every wall. There were Flannigans wearing the same Christmas sweaters, Flannigans at Disney World, sepia-toned Flannigans dressed up in Wild West outfits. I stumbled into a room filled with Precious Moments figurines and hand-stitched quilts. Another door led to the kitchen. There were Flannigans at somebody’s wedding, Flannigans under the Eiffel Tower, Flannigans at Mount Rushmore acting out that famous Hitchcock movie. Another room, this one filled with shelves of books and coffee tables littered with issues of The National Review, The Economist, Forbes, Fortune, and the Wall Street Journal before coming to the foy-yay. (Oh, Kyle, that feels sooo good…) Finally, a bathroom. (Can ya wait a goddamn minute, asshole?) I went upstairs: a girl’s room, all peaches and cream, filled with stuffed animals and horseback-riding trophies. The Flannigans in a lab discovering a cure for cancer. Door number two: twenty toes sticking out from a sheet (ten with nails flaking red polish, the other ten, thick and hairy hammertoes). Another door: towels, linen, cotton balls, Kotex. Door four: a guest bedroom, a cheesy paint-by-numbers of a kneeling Jesus praying at a rock; the Flannigans feeding fishes and loaves to the poor; the Flannigans walking on water.