by Daryl Banner
Maybe I made that last one up.
The point is, I have no idea who the hell that goofball womanizer-wannabe Brant is or where he came from, but I’m determined to test him at every opportunity, no matter how adorable or sexy or hot I think he is—and no matter how strong he comes on to me.
He wants to have fun? He’s going to learn fast that I get my fun first.
When I emerge from the other side of the tunnel, I sit down on the grassy knoll outside the psychology building and pull out my phone. After tapping her face on the screen, I bring it to my ear.
“Bitch, please,” is the first thing Minnie says. “Again?”
I sigh. “They were talking shit about Pussy and just weren’t getting it. I’m so ready to get the hell out of this school.”
“You’ve walked out of that class, like, ten times already.”
“We haven’t even had ten classes yet. School year’s just begun.”
“Nell. How many times do I have to say it? Don’t let the world ruin your art. Let your art ruin the world.”
I sigh and kick something in the grass. If it weren’t for this one person I have in my ear right now, I’d be pretty convinced that there wasn’t a person left on this planet who wasn’t totally put-off or offended by my very existence. People don’t like me. I don’t easily make friends and I live alone. Maybe that’s why I’m so good with animals.
Maybe Brant’s just a big, dumb animal.
“Nell?”
I bite a finger and rue the day I quit smoking; I could really use one right about now. “I need to leave this campus. You coming to get me?”
“No, I have that thing with Crystal, remember? Besides, I’m stuck on I-10, sweetie. HELLO, WELCOME TO MY LANE, ASSHOLE. Sorry. I’m an hour away pushing through Houston traffic. Listen, I’m all about you getting out of that school, but I want you to be carrying a degree when you do. Don’t just drop out like I did.”
I can’t stop picturing Brant sitting on that stool in front of me naked as his birthday—except I doubt he had that many muscles when he was born. It’s impressive, to be as slender as he is, yet to be so toned and cut with muscle in every curve of his sinewy body.
He is such a lean, mean cut of meat.
“Remember the nude model I told you about last night?”
“Yeah. The one with the big dong. How can I forget?”
I swallow a chuckle. “I was thinking of taking him to see Object. You know, the piece for my—”
“Oh, yes!” she cuts me off excitedly. “For your thing this weekend!”
“Right, my thing this weekend.”
“Do you think you’ll get into the End Of Year Showcase? You have shown your latest work to Diane and Jacquelyn, haven’t you?”
I grip the phone a bit tighter at her words, glancing off as a stray breeze catches my face and tosses my hair. “Diane’s always been good with me. It’s Jacquelyn whose taste is questionable.”
“Now, now …”
“It is,” I argue before she’s had a chance to say anything. “She has the emotional depth of a doorknob and wouldn’t know true artistry or innovation if her face were made out of it.”
“Considering the amount of makeup she wears, it is made out of it.”
“I’m going to have a piece in the showcase,” I go on. “There’s no doubt in my mind. The only question is, will they let me show the piece I want to show? Or will they censor and silence me?”
“I wouldn’t recommend offering them Pussy.”
“But Object, maybe …”
“Nell. You’re pushing it.”
“That’s what I’m made to do, Minnie,” I retort, pulling hair behind my ear to get it out of my face as the wind has its way with it. “Push. It’s an artist’s responsibility. If you’re not pushing, then you’re being pushed. And anyone in a crowded subway station will tell you, unless you’re making an effort to push through the bodies, you’re gonna miss the train.” I smirk knowingly. “And I’m not missing the train.”
“Well,” grunts Minnie, unimpressed, “if you’re feeling all that fiery inspiration, I’m not going to stop you. I hope your new big-dong friend enjoys Object as much as you do. Maybe he’ll inspire your next piece, the one you submit for the End Of Year Showcase, provided he survives you long enough to inspire. He sounds like a tasty drumstick.”
“Shut up. I haven’t had lunch yet.”
She screams an obscenity, causing me to jerk my ear away from the phone for a second. “Sorry about that. Go have fun with big-dong, but remember to leave a little bit of him intact when you’re through.”
“You think so little of me,” I murmur teasingly, thinking about his bright blue eyes, “like I’m some kind of monster.”
“We’re all some kind of monster,” she retorts. “Just some of us have the sense to know it.”
“Bye, Minnie.”
“Don’t eat him alive!”
I hang up, slipping the phone back in my pocket with a smile, then bring the slightly-wrinkled picture of a cat to my face, looking over it for a while. It’s so intricately done. No one noticed the dilated eyes. I can’t stand the people in my class, how they just look at the surface of everything. They see what’s in front of them—and by seeing just what’s in front of them, they see nothing.
The skin is the lie. The truth of all art, lovers, and monsters lives beneath it.
Right then as I’m thinking of monsters, I spot Brant strolling by on the main crosswalk with a dude at his side who looks like the singer of a punk band from the 90’s. His friend is decked out in a long-sleeved black button-down shirt (in this weather?) and grey acid-washed shorts that cut off just below the knee. Brant sports a t-shirt and jeans, his hair, a spunky brown mess. They both stop chatting to pay witness to a pretty girl walking by, after which they turn to each other and grin stupidly, punching each other’s shoulders encouragingly. Then, Brant lifts the camera hanging from his neck and snaps a shot of her ass from behind. Excited as a pair of prepubescent boys under bed sheets discovering their maturing dicks for the first time, the boys study the photo he took as they disappear, unseen, into the art school tunnel.
My heart would sink right about now.
Y’know, if I had one.
It wouldn’t be foolish of me to consider that exchange just another moment of fun between two buddies. Surely I’ve done similar things with girlfriends, passing by a hot guy on campus and snatching a creeper shot of his ass with my phone. I’m not riding some moral high ground when I look down on Brant (literally, as I sit up here on this grassy hill) and judge him for his horny photographic antics; I’m riding my self-pitying low ground upon which I’m so much better acquainted.
It’s easier living life on the bottom rung. There’s a certain security you find in the fact that you can’t sink any lower.
Fuck Brant.
I rise from the grass and make way for the opposite edge of campus, chasing the sun westward as I pass the University Center, the Quad dormitories, and the vast concrete desert we call a parking lot. When I reach the main street, I walk across the middle without bothering to head down to the proper crossway at the stoplight.
A forty minute stroll brings me to the front steps of the Westwood Light where a certain frizzy-haired caramel-skinned woman with pencil arms on a smoke break lifts an eyebrow. Upon recognizing me, she lifts her carton to offer me one.
I stare down at the box, my skin crawling and my heart jerking. I force my chin up. “No thanks, Alisa. How’re the kids today?”
“Quiet,” she answers.
I give her a nod, then pat her shoulder as I slip inside. The familiar musk invades my nostrils as I pass through the halls and into the activity room. The usuals are by the window. The other usuals are by the TV. The twin girls are sitting in their matching chairs, reading.
“Nell!” cries one of the boys, capturing the attention of the others.
And in no time, I’m assaulted by nine of them. It’s not unlike being assaulted by nine
enormous dogs—except these are children ranging in age from seven to thirteen. Yeah, even the thirteen-year-old boy with the awkward spaghetti legs rushes to me, face beaming.
I guess I’m good with kids, too. It’s only because they don’t know any better.
“We ran out of paper,” complains one of the girls.
“And Miss Marcy took the markers away,” says a little boy, “because stupid Peter kept sucking on the red one like a lollipop.”
“No, I wasn’t!”
“Miss Marcy took the paints, too.”
I frown at them. “Well, darn. I didn’t bring anything with me this time.”
Then, in that same instant, I realize I left my own artwork on that grassy knoll back at campus. Yes, a delicately illustrated cat with big nippled boobs abandoned in the grass. Shit. By now, some vicious campus crows have likely abducted it, pecked it into pieces, and made little Pussy nests up in the trees with all my hard work.
There’s some sort of irony there about birds and pussy, but I’m too annoyed at my oversight to pinpoint it.
“What’ll we do, then?” asks a girl with big blank eyes.
Alisa has returned from her break, the nicotine cloud half-following her. In one hand, she has her carton of smokes and a lighter palmed.
I snatch the lighter from her, earning a gasp of protest. “Crayons?” I ask, surveying the kids. “Surely the crayons I brought last time—”
“Crayons are for babies!” whines a boy, scowling.
“Yeah, yeah, you say that now,” I mutter back, crossing the room with the lighter.
I snatch a dusty vase off the shelf and give it one quick blow, scattering little cloudy dragons of grey matter into the air. Then, between a toddler’s wire-and-bead maze and a basket of stuffed aliens and a purple lion that’s missing an eye, I claim the box of crayons.
“Here,” I say, setting the vase on the main activity table as the kids gather around curiously. Alisa watches from the door, squinting as I pop open the crayon box. “Which color should we do first?”
“Do what with it?” ask one of the twins.
I get in the twin’s face playfully. “Well, why don’t ya pick a color and find out, silly pants?”
The twins giggle. Then one of them points and says, “Purple.”
I nod. “Perfect choice. That happens to be my favorite. Hey, Erwin. Tear the paper off this crayon for me, will you? Jessie, you pick a color too. Everyone, pick a color and tear off the paper.”
The children go to work at once. Red-orange is plucked. Ochre. Green. Silver. Maroon. Cerulean. Like flowers from a garden, each kid carefully and thoughtfully chooses a color, then tears off the wrapping, some of them giggling as they work, others acting with the acute concentration of a scientist.
The purple crayon reaches my hand. “Now this part is something that I have to do. This is dangerous, you understand? Only I can do this. Now, watch.”
I lift the crayon near the side of the vase, then flick on the lighter like Prometheus bringing fire down from the gods. Slowly, the end of the crayon begins to melt, dripping purple down the side of the vase.
“It’s melting!” shouts a girl excitedly.
“Duh, that’s what it’s supposed to do,” mumbles someone else.
“I know, dummy.”
After a few steady streams of the purple runs, decorating the side of the once-boring vase, I set down the little grape-like nub that’s left and glance at the others. “Who’s next?”
Soon, it rains green. Then it’s raining drops of bright yellow and drops of orange and drops of cerulean, glowing over the contrast of the lighter colors. In a matter of crayons, one side of the vase is covered in long, quivering strands of bumpy wax. The result is both grotesque and beautiful, and the attention of the kids is grasped utterly.
“You can find art anywhere,” I whisper to them as we melt the red and it drips like monster blood, or liquid fire trucks, or ketchup. “Life can be sort of mean to us, sure. People you know will try to silence you, but there is always room for art. Even when you have nothing. Even with no voice. You can find it in your heart, always.”
“Do the silver next! The silver!”
The next one draws a long metallic stream down the side, tiny spots and drops reaching the table and looking like little coins. I let it run as some of the kids pore over the crayon box, searching for their next color, the inspiration like a fire of its own in their crazed eyes.
“And when I was left with nothing,” I hear myself say, quieter, “I’d remind myself that I’ve made do with less.” The tiny flame from the lighter flickers in the children’s eyes as some watch with wonder and some still grip their colors, waiting, excited. “Every color is a wish. Look at all your colorful wishes running down the side of that vase. Aren’t your wishes pretty?”
Chapter 4
Brant
So, there’s a used condom on the kitchen counter.
“Eric.”
There’s a fucking used condom on the fucking kitchen counter.
“ERIC!”
The door to Clayton’s old room bursts open and a flush-faced Eric pops his head out, his tiny eyes wide and unblinking. “What?”
“Condom,” I say tersely, pointing a scandalized finger at the vile, offending object. “On the counter.”
Eric’s forehead wrinkles up as he leans out from the doorway. “No. Sorry, bro, but no. It was you who had the wild time the other night with that chick from the bowling alley, not me.”
“My wild night ended early, actually,” I correct him, “and it most definitely did not have any climactic opportunities in my kitchen.”
“Dude, if any of us were to be guilty of that, it would be you.”
“Listen, fuck-face, I did not—Oh, thank you for that compliment, by the way,” I cut in genuinely, flashing him a smile. “Anyway, I did not do the nasty with anyone in our kitchen. It smells like pickle juice ever since you had your little cooking accident last month and there is no humanly way to get a boner with everything smelling like pickles!”
“Well, it wasn’t me.”
“The hell it wasn’t. Pick up your jizz sack before I—”
“What the hell?” whines Dmitri, emerging from his room. “Can you two keep it down? I’m trying to sleep.”
“It’s almost noon,” I throw back.
“Exactly!” he retorts, shutting himself back into his room.
I sigh, collapsing onto a stool by the bar and the foul evidence. “Eric, do you need me to pretend like this is my merry mishap so that you’ll finally clean it up?”
His eyes narrow. “Yes.”
“Great. It was mine. I had the sexy-sexy on our counter, the same counter off of which we share pizza, consume Chinese takeout, and do our algebra homework. Now will you throw away this damn rubber containing a million of your unborn children before I throw up?”
“No.”
“And why not?”
“Because it’s yours. You just admitted it.” Eric shrugs, then slams his door shut.
I race up to the door, shaking my fist at it and clenching my teeth. What a fucker. With a sigh, I grab a dustpan and, with great and careful delicateness, I sweep the item up and let it slide to its final, permanent slumber in the trashcan. Then, after shoving my favorite orange-and-blue hat on my out-of-control bed-head hair, I grab my backpack and head out.
No offense to our new gay roommate Eric, but I miss Clayton so fucking much. Clayton’s only moved ten or so minutes away into a new place with his girl Dessie, but it still put quite a bit of distance between us. He was my dude. He was my bro-from-another-mo. I’m not as close with Dmitri, and that fact has become all the more apparent with Eric moving in and taking Clayton’s old room. At first, I thought it would be fun and adorable, having an openly gay roommate and a so-called bisexual says-he’s-not-gay roommate, but it’s just made my living situation twenty times more complicated. Dmitri won’t admit he has any feelings toward Eric, but then Eric brings home some guy h
e met “at a Theatre thing” and Dmitri acts like the jealous ex, bitching to me about how loud Eric “and his ho” are being as they bang against the walls doing their butt ballet.
And here I am, sitting in the middle of all that.
I find any excuse to get out of the apartment, and I’m the one paying for the most of it. Well, more accurately, my parents are. I ought to have more of a say as to what goes on within these four walls, but sometimes it feels like they own the pad. I’m a guest in my own home.
I haven’t gotten any decent tail in months. The summer was a wasteland of half-forgotten kisses and hair-pulling and names I can barely remember. The dancer chick I banged behind the screen in that art class? I know her name starts with a C, but I couldn’t save my own life if it depended on recalling the rest of it. I’m sure she can’t be bothered to remember my name either. We know what we have is a for-fun, for-now sort of thing. I’ve only banged her four times, anyway.
When I reach the usual fork in the road—one way leading to the Theatre, Music, and Art schools, the other leading to the astronomy class I have in T minus ten minutes—I spot her sauntering down the road toward the School of Art.
Just the sight of that tight, shapely body and her whips of jet black hair cast me down a hypnotic tunnel of fantasies and lady parts. I can’t close my mouth suddenly as I feel the animal take over, pulling my feet in the wrong direction. I’m taking a right suddenly where I ought to be taking a left, and soon, I’m catching up to the woman in front of whom I’ve been naked twice … and without any sex happening.
Who the hell stands naked in front of a woman that hot—twice—and doesn’t have sex?
I’m nearly tripping over the cracks in the pavement as I hurry down the path. It’s a handful of minutes later that I start to catch her scent like a damn dog. Raspberries. Vanilla. Something soft and subtle.
“Hey, hey, hey,” I sing as we reach the door at the same time. I pull it open for her. “After you.”
Her needle green eyes flick upwards, taking me in. I flash her my most gentlemanly smile as a bead of sweat tiptoes down my forehead. Damn heat. Finally, she regards my existence and passes through the door, her delicious, inviting scent dragging me in with her like a leash.