Manties in a Twist

by J. A. Rock

  He shook his head. “It’s shit.” He glanced at me. “You can come look at it being shit, if you want.”

  I stood. “Yes. I want to see a giant, steaming pile of art shit.”

  I arrived behind him and folded myself basically in half to place my chin on his shoulder. “Oh my God.”

  It was definitely a drawing of a megalodon, but it was, like, abstract or something. He had the kind of style that would be— I mean, if he got famous, you would know that style anywhere.

  He frowned at the screen, tapping the stylus against the counter. “I know, it sucks. I used to be better.”

  “No. That’s fucking awesome.”

  “Can you tell what it is?”

  “A megalodon jumping out of the ocean to eat a helicopter.”

  He nodded.

  “Ryan. I don’t think you understand. You have a thing going.”

  “A thing?”

  “Like, surrealist, conceptual, abstract-y . . .”

  “You’re just saying words.”

  “You’re just being a secret genius. How’d you learn to do this?”

  He turned to me. “Do you really like it? Or are you just shitting me?”

  “I frealz like it.” Frealz was what I’d started saying sometimes in place of for reals. It drove Dave crazy, but I couldn’t stop myself. “Can we print it and put it on the wall?”

  “No!” He shielded the screen with his hands, like I might forcibly print-and-hang.

  “Can you send it to me so I can look at it all the time?”

  “You’re a freak.”

  “You’re a megalodon hog. Let me have more megalodons.”

  “I’m gonna hire a megalodon to eat you in a minute.”

  “Ummmm, extinct, one. Not for hire, two.”

  “Whatever.”

  “Can you write and illustrate a children’s book about a megalodon that’s a hitman?”

  “Ooh.”

  “You can call it—wait for it . . . Sharksassin.”

  “Lame.”

  “Megalodon Corleone.”

  He snorted.

  “You laughed. I’m funny.”

  He shook his head and went back to drawing. Added some shadows to the megalodon’s fin. But he was smiling, which meant he did think I was funny, he just didn’t want to admit it.

  Which was fine. I didn’t want to get an inflated ego or anything.

  I pulled up a chair so I could watch him, and he didn’t even shoo me away.

  The guys applauded when I walked into Dave and Gould’s kitchen the next day. “Well, look who finally showed up to a meeting.” Dave grabbed a slice of deli turkey from a plate on the table and threw it at me. It stuck to the front of my shirt.

  I looked down at it. “Did you just throw turkey at my shirt?”

  He watched me peel the slab off and nodded. “In retrospect I should have used a chip or something. But life is too short for regrets.”

  Gould moaned a little and rested his head on his arms. “Applause was a bad idea.”

  Dave raised his eyebrows at me. “Someone’s hungover.”

  “’M not,” Gould muttered, sitting up.

  Dave pinched the back of Gould’s neck. “Grum-pyyyy.”

  Gould swatted at him. “Sto-o-op.” He did like a bad Russian accent or something. “I kill you.”

  No one seemed to have any hard feelings about the party, so that was cool. I stuffed the turkey slice in my mouth, then took a seat at the giant kitchen table. Dave’s dad had built the table, and it had been our hangout spot for years.

  Years.

  It was still crazy to think we’d all been friends for so long. I mean, it wasn’t that long in the scheme of things. But considering high school still felt like yesterday to me, it kinda blew my mind that we were all in our late twenties now.

  “What is this?” I nodded at the plate of deli meat, olives, and tiny pickles. “What about Mel’s?”

  In the past, we’d always ordered lunch from Mel’s Sandwich Shop for Subs Club meetings, and it was meta because we were subs eating subs.

  Dave grabbed a tiny pickle and crunched it. “The Subs Club is spending all of its budget on the kink fair. Not that we really have a budget. But, like, the money we got from giving the talk at Hymland College and the money I got from GK and Kel for being part of Riddle’s advocacy program. It’s all fair funds now.”

  “Does this mean no snacks?”

  “Nah, we’ll always have snacks. D gave me this whole tray the other night after a scene. He’s a snack dom who gives to-go food. What a guy.”

  I fake pouted. “I don’t get snacks after scenes.”

  “Ryan’s not a snack dom?”

  “I mean, he’d give me snacks if I asked. But we hardly ever do, like, scene scenes. Plus we live together now, so I can just get my own snacks.”

  “What do you do? If you don’t do scenes.”

  In my head the eighties power ballad played again, and I was pulling on a pair of red lace panties.

  I snapped back to reality. “Stuff.”

  Dave looked at Miles. “Is Drix a snack dom?”

  Miles folded his hands. “I don’t require snacks before a scene. Or after.”

  “Yes.” Dave folded his hands in a parody of Miles’s. “You run on intellectual fart juice.”

  “That means nothing to me.”

  Dave took another pickle. “D’s more like a fucking meal dom. He’ll stuff me full of sausage before we even start playing.”

  I glanced at the others, and we all laughed.

  Dave rolled his eyes. “You know what I mean.”

  “Guys, settle down,” Gould said mock-sternly to Miles and me. “David only means that D feeds him tube-shaped animal innards before a scene. Not that D has a giant chhhmmk thhuuhh feee . . .” He struggled, laughing, as Dave pressed his hand tighter over his mouth. Dave finally let go when Gould was quiet.

  Dave stretched his arms across the table and plopped his head down between them. “Because I feel so sexy playing when my stomach is bloated with animal flesh and there’s grease on my face.”

  Miles leaned over to stab some olives on a toothpick. “How very primal.”

  I freaking hated olives, so I started working on the deli meat. “I’m gonna tell Ryan he needs to be a snack dom. Even though he’s already perfect. I could make him even more perfect.”

  “Awww.” Dave lifted his head.

  “He’s amazing.” I shook my head. “You know what I mean? How you fall in love with someone because they’re awesome, but you don’t even realize how awesome until later?”

  Dave peered over his outstretched arm.

  Miles gracefully slid an olive off the toothpick and into his mouth. “Yes, I actually am familiar with this.”

  Dave sat up. “Or you fall in love with someone and you know they’re psychotic, but you don’t realize how psychotic until they offer to teach you to hunt squirrels with a bow. Or casually let slip they own land north of the city but won’t tell you what they plan to do with it, but you know it’s for a future army of Friesian horses. Or expect you to calmly bend over to get caned when you do something wrong.”

  I leaned my chair back on two legs. “Pfff. You asked him to do that.”

  Dave slid his hands over the sides of his face, pulling the corners of his eyes downward. “I know. What was I thinking?”

  Miles clucked. “But look at everything you’ve accomplished with his . . . encouragement. You got into school. You paid your parking tickets. Your vocabulary has matured.”

  Gould nodded. “You stopped calling my hair a Jewfro.”

  “Oh, I still do that,” Dave said. “Just not to your face.”

  “Okay, that’s worse.”

  Miles went on. “Didn’t you even do your taxes on time this year?”

  Dave nodded. “Truth. I’m growing up all over the place.”

  I wanted to keep talking about Ryan. “Ryan did these drawings last night. I knew he could draw, but not like this
. He’s really good.”

  “That’s cool.” Dave didn’t seem to be listening. “So, anyway—”

  “And then the other night, he was doing this impression of the news guy with the fake teeth, and—”

  “Buddy,” Dave interrupted. “Can we talk about something else?”

  I stared at him.

  He opened his mouth and inhaled like he was getting ready to speak, but he hesitated a few seconds. “I just . . . We hardly ever get to see you these days. And when we do, you’re always talking about Ryan.”

  I glanced at Miles, who looked sympathetic, but didn’t rush to my defense. “Is this about what happened at the party?”

  Gould turned away like he was embarrassed.

  Dave shook his head. “No, it’s— Forget it.”

  I didn’t usually get grumbly, but I kinda grumbled then. “Well, I’m sorry I’m finally happy.”

  “You were happy before too,” Dave said.

  “Not this happy.”

  “You totally were.”

  “I think I’d know how happy I was.”

  “Oh my God, you guys.” Gould flicked an olive across the table at us. “Don’t be idiots. I’m sorry about the party, and, Kamen, it’s awesome that you’re happy.”

  I swatted the olive away, ’cause olives were basically the devil’s eyeballs.

  We talked about some other stuff for a while, but I couldn’t quit feeling annoyed. My friends were beyond the best. Except . . . we’d been friends almost our entire adult lives. And now I was twenty-seven, and I was getting a chance to see what life was like when I was my own person instead of part of a group. But people still didn’t see me as an individual. Even my mom, when we went over to her place for dinner sometimes, would count us as we entered the house, like chickens.

  “There’s Kamen and Miles and Gould and Dave . . . one, two, three, four.”

  And if someone couldn’t make it, she’d be like, “Oh, I miss Miles. I miss my boy.” Even though he wasn’t her boy. Most of the time I thought it was great that we were this posse—that she expected us to hang together. But sometimes I wanted to be like, “I’m your kid. Just me.”

  “So what’s the deal with the fair?” I asked. “Like, what kind of stuff are you gonna have there?”

  “Well.” Dave rubbed his chin. “Some games. A silent auction. We’re gonna try to raise money to cover costs and donate whatever’s left over to the Regional Leather Society. We also want to have vendors and demos. Right now we’re trying to find people to do the demos.”

  Miles delicately spat an olive pit into his hand. “No luck?”

  “Maya and I put out a call on the Sounding Board for people who can contribute unique skills. We’ve had some doozies.” Dave paused. “I never know if that word means something positive or negative.”

  “Doozy?” Miles asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “It can be good or bad. It’s just something big and unusual.”

  “Pfff, I’ll show you something big and unusual.”

  Miles stared straight ahead like he was contemplating something in the distance. “I don’t know why I bother.”

  Dave took out his phone. “Okay, cool. Then yeah, some doozies. But only a couple Maya and I are pumped about.”

  Maya was a recent addition to the Subs Club. We’d met her while giving a talk to Hymland College’s Kinky Students Society in the spring. She was only like nineteen or something, but she knew her shit. She’d been a total newbie when we’d met her, but according to Dave, she was learning about kink at a scary rate. Apparently Miles was transferring his whole BDSM mind-cyclopedia into her brain.

  “So . . .” Dave glanced around. “We need to up our game. Oh, and you guys will love this. Cinnamon messaged me on Fetmatch. About the kink fair.”

  Miles frowned. “Does she want to do a demo?”

  “No. She wanted to tell me this.” He typed on the phone for a moment, then read, in a high-pitched, whiny voice: “‘Dave. How cute that you and your friends are striking out on your own. Did Riddle get too crowded for you? Kind of ironic that you want to be ambassadors to the public after you alienated pretty much everyone in the scene with your review blog. But good luck with your little fair. Horse chips, Cinnamon.’ Swear to God, she’s been sending me bitchy messages at least once a week since I gave up my membership at Riddle.”

  “Aw,” Gould said quietly. “She misses you.”

  Dave rolled his eyes. “The only reason she wants me—or any of us—at Riddle is to torment us. She’s an asshole who did fuck all to stop Hal dying, defended Bill at the trial, and then couldn’t be bothered to show up to the memorial service. And now has the nerve to treat all of us like shit.”

  “You know,” Miles said, “I’m always afraid if I go to Riddle I’ll see Bill. But I think I’d almost rather encounter Bill than Cinnamon. She’s so unpleasant.”

  I kept an eye on Gould, because sometimes when we talked about Bill in front of Gould, he got weird. But his voice was totally normal when he said, “I wonder if she thinks we have, like, a friendly rivalry, but she just takes the joking too far.”

  Miles shook his head. “I think she’s a genuinely wretched human being.”

  I kinda agreed with Miles. I know I said I was moving on okay from Hal, but running into Cinnamon at Riddle was still rough. Like, the room where Hal died was not a big room. If you were in it, you’d have noticed a guy strangling to death, unless you were a complete fucking dingus. So the fact that Hal had died basically right beside her made me kind of want to microwave her head.

  I turned the food tray so the meat was facing me. “Ryan says people like that are just insecure.”

  They all looked at me. “Yes, Kamen,” Dave said. “That’s not exactly groundbreaking psychology.”

  I reached for the olive I’d flicked earlier and chucked it at him. He dodged it. Dude’s a pretty good olive dodger.

  “Anyway.” Dave focused back on the screen. “Just wanted to share that. Our favorite ponybitch is still going strong. GK and Kel really will let anyone into Riddle.” He glanced at Gould. “Sorry. They have some good qualities. But even you have to admit they could be more discerning.”

  Dave had never gotten along great with GK and Kel. They’d clashed a lot during the whole review-blog incident, and things had gotten weirder last year when Gould had started playing with them. At first it was just a couple of scenes, but now Gould played with them pretty frequently. I didn’t know how that worked, since Gould had been, like, the most traumatized of any of us by Hal’s death, because he and Hal used to date. So it was kind of: Um, yeah, start a relationship with the people who totally forgave your boyfriend’s killer. That makes sense.

  But now Dave was trying to be more supportive of Gould’s thing with GK and Kel, because he was obsessed with Gould in a way that kinda seemed less like friendship and more like a Nicholas Sparks separated-by-circumstances-but-destined-for-eternity deal.

  Awkward as fuck.

  Gould changed the subject. “So what were some of the doozies?”

  Dave raised his brows as he stared at the screen. “Well, for starters, a dear friend of ours contributed—not a demo offer, but more of a life update.”

  “Who?” Gould asked.

  “Someone who’s eight shades of f—”

  Miles tugged his slipping cardigan up over his shoulder. “Is it Fucktopus?”

  Oh God. Fucktopus scared the crap out of me, but was also the best. He’d posted a personal ad on the Subs Club blog when we were just starting out, describing how he was a tentacle furry with a bunch of robotic arms he’d built himself, and he was looking for someone to do Moby Dick–themed role-play with him.

  Dave grinned. “The one and only. Gather ’round children, and you shall hear the whole sordid tale.”

  We were already gathered ’round, so we just ate some more pickles and waited.

  Dave read: “‘Greetings. It is I, the tentacle harbinger of delight. This summer, I found the sea
captain of my dreams. For many weeks, my captain chased me through briny waters, and when I was at last caught, I was punished harshly. But soon the tables were turned when I seduced the fair captain and claimed my master using one tentacle at a time.’”

  Gould nodded. “Considerate.”

  “‘Alas, the captain has returned to Baton Rouge, leaving me to wander the endless dark seas alone. Unless someone out there is willing to fill the captain’s shoes.’”

  Gould whistled softly. “After Fucktopus has already filled the captain’s everything else?”

  Dave leaned back. “Who do you think this guy is? Seriously? Old? Young?”

  “Early thirties,” Miles said. “Lives in his parents’ basement. Sleeps on a mattress with no bed frame.”

  Dave swept his hand toward Miles. “Ladies and gentleman, Miles Loucks, the Will Graham of pervert profiling. He empathizes so deeply with these deviants that he—”

  Miles cut him off. “You think he’s good at fucking?”

  Dave shook his head. “He’s never actually done anything with those tentacles. I’m not even sure they exist. If they do, he’s definitely compensating for something.”

  I grabbed the last turkey slice. “Hey. It’s not what you have between your legs; it’s what you do with it.”

  Gould looked at me. “That’s profound. Especially since I’ve always assumed your dick is scary-big.”

  I bit a hole in the center of the turkey slice. “Mine? No, it’s really small.”

  “Yeah, right.”

  Miles sighed. “This is not a suitable conversation.”

  Dave jumped in. “It’s true, though. Kamen and I had gym together in high school, and he’s not as big as you’d think.”

  I finished the turkey. “My dick’s small, but my balls are huge. My junk looks like a legless salamander between two avocados.”

  Dave cracked up, and Gould smiled a little too. Miles rolled his eyes toward the ceiling and looked like he was mentally crossing himself. “Oh my God.”

  “What?” Dave held his hands up, palms out.

  “I can’t believe I’m here listening to this when I have a child arriving in less than two days. I could be home remopping the floors.” He started to get up.

  “No!” Dave said. “We have to keep Miles here.”