The Anatomy of Perception

by AJ Rose

  His glower didn’t subside, though it did change tenor somehow, from angry to calculating, as if he was weighing the wisdom of suggesting this meeting in the first place. After a moment, he clenched his jaw and nodded.

  “Fine.” He packed up his computer with jerky movements, and when he stood and angrily grabbed his coffee, I rose as well. “Let’s go,” he muttered.

  I didn’t think asking him where we were going was wise, considering his deliberate march down the sidewalk, but he didn’t go more than a block before jerking open the door to one of our former favorite places to eat, a sports bar with red vinyl booths, high wood cocktail tables, and flat screens on every wall. It was fairly empty due to the hour, which suited me fine because the decibel level would allow conversation. Later, that would be impossible as the TVs and the jukebox competed for attention. But the burgers were fabulous, as was the beer, and there’d been many a night when Craig and I had killed fifty wings and a couple pitchers here. I lamented being unable to have a beer, but smiled as the familiar sounds and smells wafted past my senses.

  “Man, I haven’t been here forever,” I said, nostalgia pulling my mouth into a smile.

  He snapped. “We’re only staying long enough for your story and food.”

  “Yes, sir,” I grumbled, picking a booth midway down the row along the left wall opposite the bar. Not close to the bathroom or the jukebox, in case someone fired it up, but not right by the door either, making it more difficult for him to bolt. Neutral territory. There were only three other tables occupied, so our waitress came over quickly.

  “Can I get you something to drink?” she asked as we both grabbed a menu from the holder on the table. I finished my latte and set it aside.

  “I’ll have a Blue Moon,” Craig said.

  “I’ll take a ginger ale.” I didn’t want any more caffeine or the jitters could morph into something more anxious.

  While she didn’t bat an eye as she turned away, Craig gaped at me. “That is the second time you’ve not gotten a beer when you normally would have. What gives?”

  I shrugged. Might as well be honest. He’d know everything shortly anyway. “Medication. Can’t have it.”

  Understanding dawned on him, and he nodded. We were quiet while perusing the menu, so when the girl came back relatively quickly with our drinks, both of us were ready to order. Craig got his usual cheeseburger and fries and I got french onion soup without the melted cheese and a veggie wrap.

  “You go vegetarian, too?” he asked, sounding curious.

  “Nah,” I said, sipping my drink. “I’m trying to eat better. Makes life easier when I feel good physically. Though if ever there was an occasion to bury my face in a plate of nachos or wings, I guess this would have been it.” I didn’t want to go into how junk food knocked me off balance, so I joked to deflect.

  Craig didn’t smile. He didn’t chuckle. He didn’t even blink. He just stared at me.

  “Tough crowd,” I said under my breath. “Fine, I’ll get this over with so I can stop wasting your time. I told you about my dad being the world’s most epic asshole the other day. Did you ever notice when I drank, it was one or two and I’d stop?”

  “Yeah,” he said, taking a pull of his beer as if to rub it in that he could drink and I couldn’t. I knew he wasn’t that vindictive, but my discomfort made me cranky, and I shot him a dirty look.

  “That was to prove to myself I could stop. That I wasn’t like my old man. See, he and my mom were like everyone else’s parents, I suppose. My brother, Dylan, says they were, anyway. I was four and he was six when my dad killed my mom in a car accident.” Craig’s eyes were wide when I looked up from shredding my napkin. I cringed. “What?”

  “Your dad killed your mom, and you have a brother?”

  “Yeah,” I said softly.

  “Jesus, Dane. How long were we together and I didn’t even know you had a brother? And I only knew your dad was a drunk ass from the last two months we were together, since he triggered it all. I guessed your mother was dead, but I didn’t know how.”

  I swallowed. “Can I tell you the story? It’ll make sense, I swear.”

  Craig drained his beer and signaled the waitress for another one. “How much is this going to piss me off? How much didn’t I know about you?”

  Finally, resolve won out over my fear of his judgment, and I leveled him with a steely gaze. “You asked for closure. You said you deserve answers. Can I give you those answers? At least as much as you’re willing to hear before you get all pissed off? I didn’t tell you about my family or my childhood for a reason. When I left West Virginia, I wanted a clean slate. I planned to never see them again, including Dylan. He and I agreed that when we each got out, there’d be no turning back, for both our safety. Bastard didn’t keep his promise.”

  “West Virginia,” he mused. “I thought you were from Maryland. You don’t sound like West Virginia.”

  I couldn’t help a rueful smile. “I only went to college in Maryland. Far as I was concerned, once I left home, West Virginia no longer existed. I did everything I could to ditch the accent. But growing up, I sounded as twangy as they come.”

  Craig whistled. “Wow. I never would have guessed.”

  “Holly and I both went to the University of Maryland, and we both spent that time practicing how to speak without an accent. By the time I met you, I might as well have been from the west coast.”

  He nodded and sat back as the waitress brought our food. I continued talking, though more slowly, as we ate, telling him how my mother’s death and my dad’s pain drove him to the bottle, and how with every passing year he got worse, meaner, and his alcoholism progressed. Craig listened, polishing off his burger, neither of us looking up from each other or our food as the bar began to fill. A sports bar turned out to be a bad venue for conversation because baseball playoffs were on, and as late afternoon waned into evening, the noise level was such that we could no longer hear each other.

  “C’mon,” he said, finally getting frustrated. He signaled the waitress, who brought two separate checks, both of which I grabbed before Craig could get a hand on his. “Hey!” he protested. “This isn’t a date!”

  “It’s the least I can do,” I countered. “Let me. If tonight is the last time I see you, it makes sense.”

  He scowled while I paid both tabs and shrugged into my jacket. As we emerged into the street, which was noisy but nowhere near as loud as the bar, I looked at him.

  “Where to now?”

  “Let’s just walk,” he said, turning in the direction of his building. “So, your dad was a douchebag, beating on you and your brother, and you hid at Holly’s as much as you could. Why wasn’t he in jail for killing your mom?”

  “He was hurt in the crash that killed her. Broken back. The hospital ran a bunch of blood tests, but they lost the one that showed his blood alcohol level. No one documented it in his chart, and when they realized the cops needed it, the bastard was already in surgery to fuse his vertebrae. He had all kinds of shit in his system, but the alcohol had metabolized by then. Cops couldn’t prove he’d been drinking. He had no prior DUIs, so they let him go. All they had to do was ask Dylan or me and we’d have told them how often Dad smelled like beer. I didn’t know much at four, but that smell, I knew.”

  Craig whistled. “Then what?”

  “If he hadn’t been a full-fledged alcoholic when Mom died, he became one after. By the time I hit high school, Dylan had just turned sixteen and had been working his ass off to buy himself a car so he could leave. Dad didn’t know that. I dreaded it because it would just be me and the old bastard.”

  “Why didn’t he promise to take you with him? Or stay until you could both go?” Craig asked. Our pace was unhurried, and the fall air was chilly since the sun had set, but still pleasant. The overhead clouds lent somberness to the moment, fitting with the story. We weren’t cold as we walked side by side toward what had once been our home. I really wanted to take Craig’s hand, but I was well aware
his interest in the story didn’t necessarily translate into interest in being with me. Instead, I shoved my hands in the pockets of my jacket.

  “Dylan and my dad were always on the verge of killing each other. Yeah, Dylan protected me, but he also wound Dad up. He knew if he left, Dad would be less violent, so as soon as Dylan could go, he did. He was right. Dad didn’t hit me much anymore, but he got meaner, if you can believe that.”

  Craig shook his head in wonder. “He cut down the tree with your fort in it and burned it all in the fireplace, threatened to kill your dog so often you found her a new home, and he broke you down by telling you constantly how stupid you were. How much worse could it get?”

  Hearing it put so starkly made me swallow back a sudden rush of nausea. Yeah, my dad had done that and worse to me. But especially to Dylan. I was the lucky one.

  “He started calling me names, and ‘faggot’ was his favorite. I was fourteen, and had never talked about girls or had a girlfriend. Never mind that it wasn’t all that unusual for guys in my class not to have girlfriends; Dad still fixated on it. By then, I knew I was gay and I could never tell him. He made sure I knew he thought I was a cocksucking queer, and he would only tolerate me so long before I either had to man up or get out.”

  Craig shivered, and I wanted to put my arm around him. Was he cold, or was he reacting to my tale? I didn’t know, and I didn’t dare even lean toward him to find out if he’d be receptive.

  “Man up how, exactly?” he wondered.

  “He wanted me to bring a girl home. Fuck her. Prove I was straight. That I could be a man.”

  “Prove it how?” he pushed, shaking his head in disbelief. “Was he demanding video? Pics or it didn’t happen?”

  I shrugged. “I don’t exactly know. I guess he wanted to hear it through the walls, or have the girl confirm it or something.”

  “That’s ridiculous,” Craig exploded, his hands flying up in protest. It was gratifying to hear him validate what I’d known as a kid but had been too scared to fight.

  “It is. I know that now. Then, all I knew was he’d driven off my brother and made it clear he didn’t care if I followed Dylan out the door. I was too scared to challenge him.”

  “So what did you do?”

  Shame colored my cheeks. “Holly.”

  “Holly?” he said, confused. “What about Holly?”

  “She pretended to be my girlfriend through all of high school.”

  “Holly was your beard?”

  “Yeah,” I said miserably. “She sacrificed having normal teenage relationships in high school to keep me from getting my ass kicked. I have apologized to her plenty over the years, but she won’t hear it. She tells me I saved her from making all the stupid teenage girl mistakes.”

  “You didn’t….” His voice trailed off.

  “Sleep with her?”

  “Yeah.”

  My mouth turned to sand. I couldn’t speak, but that was enough.

  “You did,” he confirmed. But he didn’t sound bitter. I sneaked a peek at him and saw no judgment in his eyes.

  “Dad was a suspicious bastard, and when all he ever heard from my room when she was over was laughter or talking, he guessed the truth, that she was lying for me. The longer he didn’t walk in on us making out, the less he believed she was my girlfriend. To prove him wrong, we did it once. So….” I couldn’t describe the fear that I’d get her pregnant and we’d both be trapped for something a lot longer and more serious than a couple more years of high school. Memories assaulted me of Holly beneath me while I fumbled with the condom, both of us wearing as many clothes as we could get away with so we could maintain some semblance of friendship. She lost her virginity that day too, but she’d been too focused on me to care.

  The street before me disappeared and I was back in my tiny childhood bedroom, my Bon Jovi posters on the walls and my sweats only pulled down enough to free my dick while she’d left her cheer skirt on and had only ditched her bloomers and underwear.

  She had her slender arms around my shoulders while I pushed inside her. She grimaced, but let out a loud moan so Dad would hear, then whispered in my ear.

  “It’s okay if you want to think of someone else.”

  My ears got hot and humiliation flooded me. To take my mind off it, I had to ask, “Who are you thinking of?”

  “Oh, I’m going big,” she whispered. “You’re Johnny Depp right now.”

  I did have to chuckle then. “Then you’ll be Johnny Depp for me, too. That okay?”

  “I’d pay cash money to watch Johnny Depp fuck himself.” I barked a laugh and turned it into a moan, more helpless than turned on, if the softening of her expression was anything to go by. “Whatever helps,” she promised, giving me the sincerest of smiles before pulling me down so we didn’t have to look into each other’s faces.

  The whole time, she whispered filthy things about our fantasy guy, and to tell the truth, it was that and that alone that allowed me to stay hard. The creak of the bed was loud, and she’d occasionally let out a groan or a “yes!” to make it obvious outside the prison cell of my room. After about fifteen minutes, we both shouted in faked ecstasy. Neither of us came and it was an awkward few minutes while we fumbled to right our clothes. She told me to take my shirt off, and she left her hair mussed, then demanded we get something to drink. When we paraded past my father lying drunk on the couch but hours from passing out, he capped the whole humiliating thing by winking at Holly and making obscene gestures behind her back, his approval obvious.

  “Why didn’t you fake it? Bounce on the bed a little and have her make sex noises instead of actually doing it?” Craig asked gently, bringing me back to my current surroundings.

  I couldn’t look him in the eye. “Dad had taken to barging into my room when Holly was over, hoping to catch us either lying or… not lying. He didn’t care which. Faking it wasn’t an option.”

  “You said you did it once. How did you avoid proving it more times?”

  I shrugged. “Stopped hanging out at my house. Holly kept me supplied with condoms since I couldn’t afford them myself, and she made sure to buy a different brand every time so when I flashed them around, he’d know I was using them. Once was enough for him to assume we had just started fucking at her house.”

  Craig lifted a brow. “Were you? Using them, I mean? Like with guys?”

  I shook my head. “No. I gave them to the guys on the baseball team, said my dad was a big proponent of safe sex. I took flak for giving them away when I could have been using them, but I pointed out that I was giving them my leftovers. Then I looked like a hero for only giving them a couple boxes every month. Holly must have gone broke, but she said she considered it her duty to keep some of our classmates from breeding.”

  We walked in silence for a block or more, and I struggled to think of what to say next. I’d known this story would be difficult at best, but reliving these horrid moments was worse than I’d expected.

  Hey, cocksucker. Get me another beer. If you’re gonna be a little bitch, might as well be my bitch.

  I shuddered and tried to block out his raspy echo. You don’t have to deal with him anymore.

  “Did anyone but Holly know the truth?”

  “No. Well, not from my end. Dylan could have had friends who knew. When he left, I didn’t know where he was staying or what he was doing. He told me not to find him.”

  “Why? Didn’t your brother want to look out for you?” Craig looked irritated, and I guided him over to the stand of trees in front of one of the high-rises a block from his loft. There were benches on narrow paths inside the tightly packed trunks, a little bit of green in an otherwise totally developed area. I sat heavily, leaning forward and knuckling my eyes to alleviate the beginnings of a throbbing headache. The canopy of branches above us gave me a sense of protection, and my skipping heartbeat settled once more.

  “I don’t know exactly why Dylan didn’t want me to find him. I have my theories, and none of them involve aband
oning me, because even though he slept somewhere else, he didn’t just ditch me to deal with Dad on my own.”

  “But you said—”

  “I know what I said,” I snapped, then looked at him sharply. “I’m sorry. I hate talking about this shit.”

  To my surprise, Craig put a hand on my shoulder and squeezed. “It’s okay. Take your time.”

  Sitting back, I took a giant breath and slowly blew it out. “Dylan kept coming back, Craig. He did it in the middle of the night, or right after the first of the month, or when he had good reason to, like my birthday. Always when he knew Dad would be out cold on the couch or in bed. He hadn’t left me alone.

  “Dad wore a brace for months after his surgery and because he chose to get drunk rather than do the physical therapy necessary, he didn’t get much mobility back. For the first few years, his disability check and life insurance policy were enough to keep us going, even though he couldn’t work. When the alcohol quantity and his apathy went up and bills began to slide, Dylan started picking up odd jobs helping the neighbors with yardwork or small house repairs. When he was thirteen, he got paid under the table as a dishwasher at a diner, and that’s how we managed to stay off social services’ radar. People in town wanted to help the poor kids whose mother was killed in a wreck, and by then, Dylan knew how to play to their sympathies. But it made Dylan hate Dad more, so they fought a lot.

  “First of the month, Dad’s disability check would come in. He would build up his liquor stash, and fuck whatever bills we had. Dylan came in once a week or so to steal the mail, leave food in the fridge, or sometimes even leave clothes in my closet. He never made his presence known to Dad, but he always came. Five, maybe ten minutes of conversation to check on me, and then he’d be out the door, just a shadow in the night. I don’t know where he got the money to help keep us afloat, or where he was sleeping, but he didn’t just take off. I asked a couple of his friends where he was, but they wouldn’t tell me. I found out later it was because they were afraid Dad would beat it out of me and find Dylan. They weren’t wrong to believe the old man was capable. For someone with a permanent injury, he could still swing a fist. Or a bat. And he took it personally when Dylan left. He hated that he couldn’t keep a thumb on him.”