by Daryl Banner
Her tablemate excuses herself with a squeaky giggle and hops off, I suppose for a bathroom break. Amy folds her arms on the table and props up her chin with a hand, turning her face towards me once again with her fierce grey eyes on me. I’m not looking at her, but I can feel her stare like a cold front.
“You know, it turns out, the girls were pretty relieved when I told them the news,” she announces.
I don’t respond. But I listen. Even with the dissonant, threatening music of the food court humming all around me, I catch every word.
“I mean, I’m really not saying this to be mean,” Amy carries on, her eyebrows lifting innocently, “but I think your presence was causing a lot of … friction … among the other ladies.”
“Friction?” my mouth blurts out, betraying me.
“I’m the one who had to stand up for you. Over and over again. They asked me, ‘Why did you take a chance on the ugly girl?’ and they said, ‘It’s obvious she doesn’t belong here. She doesn’t even have a real major.’ I weathered storms for you, Sam. But I guess, in the end, I really should have listened to them. A Really Kool Lady is a woman who is successful, who has direction in life, and who isn’t so weak of resolve as to let some cute poet distract her from her goals.”
I stare at my sandwich, which gapes back at me like a half-opened mouth full of tomato and lettuce. I had nearly forgotten that I told her about Dmitri. It was a year ago on the porch of the sorority house. I had a cup of punch hovering in my face, which I considered to be half my lunch.
“You were just never really a Kool Lady at all, I guess,” she finishes. “Spot of mayonnaise on your chin, Sam. See? I’m a good friend, even to someone like you who doesn’t deserve it.”
The next second, her friend has returned. Amy nods at her, gives me side-eye, then picks up her things to leave. Her friend, confused for a moment, grabs her own things (as well as an unfinished cup of fries) and follows Amy out of the food court.
I drop the sandwich to the table and sit there, no emotion on my face, as her words swirl around in my ears. I feel numb. I’m not even sure I have it in me to disagree or argue with her. I don’t know if I want to scream at Amy that music is a real major, because that makes me feel like I’m defending my dad’s actions somehow, twisted as that logic may seem. Then I’m not sure whether to insist that I am successful, considering I was able to get enough money to be here at Klangburg University at all. But what is “success”, really?
And I did sort of let Dmitri knock my fall and spring semesters sideways. I barely passed that Poetry class. To date, it’s the lowest grade I’ve gotten in any class, even with our final project scoring so high.
That was all Dmitri, too.
Maybe there is something wrong with me.
Dessie appears in the seat across from me the very next second, her eyes and face so full of light, you’d think her hot friend over there gave her an orgasm. Maybe he did.
“Is he a friend?” I ask lamely.
“You could say that,” coos my roommate, trying to suppress her ear-to-ear grin.
“Is he deaf?”
“Yep,” she chirps, popping open her bag of chips and helping herself to one, then nudging the bag toward me. I take one, chewing distractedly as I stare at the empty table where Amy was a second ago, her words circling my head—Why did you take a chance on the ugly girl?
I speak over those circling words. “He looks like someone I knew in high school. He could be part of a heavy metal band.”
“A sexy drummer,” Dessie agrees, wiggling with excitement, then she squints at me with another idea. “Guitarist. Sexy, sexy guitarist.”
“Him being a drummer would make sense,” I murmur, thinking of my dad. Now there’s my dad’s snare drum and Amy’s sweet parting words to me, and they’re playing back and forth at each other like two rival bands competing for attention. Tap. Tap. Tap. Ugly girl. Ugly girl. Ugly girl. “Vibrations and everything …”
“Vibrations …” sings Dessie, lost in her own world full of sign language and sexy faces and tight shirts.
And I stare down at what remains of my sub sandwich—the half that Dessie gave me, along with the bag of chips she isn’t eating—and I wonder how successful I really am, how directionless I am, and how distracted I am. Tap. Tap. My dad looks up at me from his snare, smiling and inspired. Ugly girl. Ugly girl. Then he’s not smiling anymore, poised at the door nearly a decade later, my mother refusing to cry as she stands in the kitchen with her arms folded, the last ultimatum she uttered still sitting on her smirking lips. “Me or the music,” she’d said, her eyes flashing. Sixteen-year-old me stood in the hall behind her in that over-sized t-shirt Dad had given me, the one I still wear today. “Me or the music.”
And maybe the worst part about Amy’s words is that they didn’t even hurt me. Maybe a part of me thinks she’s right; I’m just another Music major headed in the precise direction of nowhere.
Like Dad. “Me or the music.”
He made his choice that day. And with every note I stroke on a piano, I’m telling myself that I’m not him.
Chapter 8
Dmitri
Rain thrashes against my window in furious sheets, which is usually the ideal writing weather, but tonight my mind is blank.
Brant, my other new roommate and childhood friend of Clayton, is moping in the living room mashing his thumbs on an Xbox controller. He’s annoyed because he’d planned to bowl tonight (apparently the hottest chicks are at the bowling alley on Friday nights and he has a tournament or something tomorrow), but the bad weather ruined his plans. Clayton is cooking something up in the kitchen from the smell of it, and I’m debating just kicking my door shut and spending the night jerking off. Really, it’d be a lot more fun than sitting here mourning how lonely this semester is going to be. Already, I’ve had to witness Brant bring home five different girls since the day I moved in.
“Dmitri!” shouts Brant from the living room. “Get your butt out here and be my player 2!”
The next minute, I drop onto the couch by him and grab the other controller (plus a bottle of Shiner, since apparently Brant wants to get fucked up tonight since we’re not going anywhere), then barrel forward into a world of gunfire, heavy gear, and shouting. Clayton sits at my other side, sandwiching me in, and suddenly we’re three bros who act like we’ve known each other our whole lives, kicking back some beer.
I still can’t believe how quickly I fell into their little two-man circle. I’ve never really kept male friends, since I’d always floated somewhere between the world of straight, masculine hotheads and my girlfriends who thought I was a sweet, sensitive guy all through high school. I was too straight to click with the gay guys, and too gay to click with the straight guys. Even my soccer teammates never really got to know the real me. I wonder if anyone knew me at all, or if my friends were just satisfied generating some idea of me from a distance and never coming a step closer.
Brant and Clayton are different. Clayton took me in the day I moved my hands for him in that Astronomy class. When Brant learned about that through Clayton, he took to me the way he would a younger brother he never had. Actually, I think those were his exact words: “You’re like the younger bro I never had! If I break into your room at night when you’re asleep and fart on your head, it’s a sign of affection. Be honored.” That hasn’t happened yet, and I’m not sure whether to count myself lucky or unloved.
Maybe college guys in general are different. It’s not like I’m playing with dicks every Saturday night and banging pussy with a vengeance. I’m really not that kind of guy. On the contrary, I’ve only kissed one set of lips since I’ve been here, and ever since, I’ve felt a severe lack of … something. And I don’t think Clayton or Brant can fill that emptiness.
I need a set of lips. But not just any will do.
Maybe I’m curious if hers still taste the same a year later.
The way she felt me up that night in her dorm, how powerfully her hands gripped my body,
the sound of her jagged breath thrumming across my cheeks and ears … I’m growing a fierce hunger for that again.
Seven bottles and sixteen frags later, I toss my controller into Clayton’s lap and stand in the kitchen with the guise of watching our dinner baking in the oven. My real motive is pulling out my phone and scrolling through my contacts until I reach her name.
Sam Hart.
Drunk texting is the last thing I’d want to do. It’s the last thing anyone wants to do. But I’m feeling an ill-timed cocktail of neediness and horniness, and that’s the energy that guides my fingers to type what I do. My eyes glassy with the effects of the alcohol, I bite my lip and let my thumbs tap away.
No, I’m not really sure what I’m saying as I type. I see a few red squiggly lines, which I presume to be typos since I turned off my auto-correct ages ago. I experience an inward chuckle at how hilarious this text would be if I let my phone autocorrect it. The inward chuckle becomes an outward chuckle as I type about how I haven’t had another set of hands or lips on me since that night in her dorm.
“What’s so funny back there?” blurts out Brant.
My finger slips.
I blink at the screen, confused for a second when the whole thing I just typed disappears. “Checking on dinner,” I mumble distractedly, tapping my phone with mounting frustration.
“Clayton’s phone vibrates when it’s ready, dude. You don’t gotta check nothin’. Get your butt over here. I already whipped Clayton halfway to Monday. He’s getting that look on his face when I beat him too many times.”
I don’t look up from my phone to inspect what Clayton’s face looks like, because the realization dawns on me that the reason my message vanished is because I sent it.
A half-written, horny-as-hell, typo-riddled message. A message full of words that Sam is about to read.
A message I can’t unsend.
“Fuck me,” I exclaim, staring numbly at my phone.
“You gotta buy me dinner first,” Brant spits back from the couch. “Now get your ass over here and play this game with me!”
After staring at my phone for another five minutes, I figure that the damage is done and I’ll just have to wait to see if she responds. Maybe she will think it’s some joke and reply with some silly emoji. I know what Sam’s like. Or has she changed? Maybe she has a boyfriend now and he’ll see the text first and kick my ass.
“Dmitri!”
I sigh and pocket my phone, then rejoin the boys on the couch. Clayton slaps the controller into my hands, then folds his arms and glares at the screen, looking like some gorgeous, angered demigod.
My roommates don’t know I’m bi yet. I’m not sure when will be the best time to tell them, or if I should even bother with it. It really isn’t any of their business, on one hand. But on the other, I hate feeling like I’m hiding a part of myself from them. When you’re sharing your life with a couple of new friends, you want them to know and like all the different parts of you, even the parts that are more private. We haven’t exactly had a heart-to-heart about anything in particular yet, but I still feel like I’m holding back this big secret, and it stands like a cold, ugly wall between what our friendship is now and what it could be.
Two hours later after Clayton’s dinner (damn, that boy can cook), the three of us are bunched up in some chairs by the pool at our apartment complex, the sound of water dripping from the trees filling our ears now that the storm has passed. All that’s left is a hazy night sky and a few buzzing lamps around the water. The air is cool, but I barely feel it from my heated skin, thanks to the buzz I’m riding.
“Not a soul around,” I murmur thoughtfully, signing as I speak, though from the half-lidded look of Clayton’s eyes, it doesn’t seem like he’s paying much attention anyway.
“Feels like we’re the only ones livin’ here sometimes,” mumbles Brant, glassy-eyed, as he puts his foot up on the wrought iron fence in front of us. He’s trying to worm his sneakers into a comfortable spot as he talks. “Except for the hot mama living over there in 149.”
If Brant’s not talking about video games or bowling, he’s talking about women. “Is this what life was like growing up in Yellow Mills for you and Clayton?” I ask him, trying to kick my feet up in the same way he is, but my legs aren’t long enough, so I give up. “Just booze and girls and video games?”
“What else is there in the suburbs? Dude, I’m surprised I didn’t grow up a total drunk or pothead. Can’t say the same for Clayton. He did things in his spare time I didn’t know about. We had a couple rough months during the time he got sick and … y’know, lost his hearing and all that. It was a bad time, man. All that trauma is pretty much the reason he’s got that ink. I like yours. It’s more … subtle.” He gives a poke at my arm.
I lift it and give a mild observation to the red and blue serpents that twirl down my forearm to the wrist—my hot and cold, my good times and my bad times. When Clayton went to get some work done by his usual tattoo artist, I was sort of talked into (read: coerced into) getting some ink myself. In addition to the forearm tattoo, I got a sunburst on the back of my neck to represent “a spark of inspiration” when I write. I pray I always have that spark to the end of my tortured artist days.
Brant clears his throat and leans into me. “So which cheek did you tattoo Clayton’s name on? The left or the right?”
I snort and shove him away from me. “Ha. Ha. Ha.”
“Don’t lie. You have the hots for him. Or is it me? Did you tattoo ‘Property of Brant’ on them sweet cheeks?”
My heart jumps as I choke out another laugh, then give him a look of disbelief. “Dude. I think you drank too much. Quit comin’ on to me,” I tell him anxiously, playing off his humor like any other insecure heterosexual who can’t take a gay joke.
Brant grins his big, cheesy, toothy grin, then falls back into his chair and grabs his beer bottle, only to discover it’s empty. “Ah, shit. Fuel depleted.” He sets the bottle back down clumsily, causing it to tip over and knock down two others like glass dominos.
But his joke sits uneasily on me as I wonder whether Clayton or Brant really do think I’m coming on to them.
My phone buzzes. I jump, startled by it, then pull it out as fast as I can to read Sam’s reply. But it isn’t Sam who’s texted; it’s some guy in my Creative Nonfiction class who lost the writing prompt for our latest assignment and wondered if I had it with me. I sigh frustratedly, then pocket my phone with a tired grunt, figuring I’ll answer later tonight or in the morning. After the text I sent Sam earlier, I’ve learned I can’t even trust my thumbs when I drink.
“Hey, if you’re gay,” Brant says suddenly, “I totally don’t care. Like, I’m cool with the gays. There was this one guy back in—”
“I’m not gay,” I cut him off.
He keeps talking like he didn’t hear me. “—back in high school, in my Health class, and he wanted to suck me off. Like, I’m not gonna lie, I’m not into it, but I had just broken up with Jasmine, and I was pretty pent up and would’ve gone for it had I just been a pinch drunker.”
“I’m not gay,” I repeat.
“So what I’m sayin’ is, catch me drunk enough—like right now—and who the hell knows? I’m not dating anyone. And hell, even if I was, isn’t it just a bro-job? Is that what gay guys call it? A bro-job?”
I bite my lip and pull a foot onto the chair, hugging my leg to my body. Then, struck at once by a desire to open up to him, I steer the chat toward a genuine thought of mine. “Y’know, the last person I kissed … she took me to her dorm room. And … and she put her hands all over me. I was rock hard. I was ready for anything. But then—”
“Roommate walked in?”
“Nah.” I shift in my chair, picturing her messy hair dancing and her glasses almost slipping off her nose each time she dived into me for a kiss. “She just … sort of stopped. I think we were moving too fast or something. It was a year ago.”
“A year ago? Bro, you are backed up. You need some pu
ssy, pronto!”
I need lips. I need breath and body heat. I need fingertips and chills and that look in her eyes. Just any hole won’t do, but there’s no use trying to explain something like that to Brant who’d fuck a pineapple if it had a face. What I need …
“What I need is her,” I murmur at the fence my legs can’t reach.
Brant looks at me. “Her? Who? The girl in the dorm room?”
Just then, Clayton issues a light snore, his head dropped back on the chair and his mouth half open. His little snore saves me from answering the question.
But only for a few seconds. “So who is she?” Brant presses.
So I save myself. “This chick I saw on Pornhub. She had these … big tits and …” The alcohol is stealing my creativity. Even my lies suck.
“Alright. Don’t have to tell me today,” says Brant, “but I’ll find out. I got my ways. Even if the chick is really a dude.”
I snort and look away. Clayton’s snoring grows by the second, so Brant hops over to his side and starts tickling his nose, which results in a swift smack to Brant’s face when Clayton jerks awake. I laugh so hard that I fall out of my chair and knock over the rest of our bottles. I’m sure all our neighbors in the courtyard just adore us.
When Clayton’s snoring in his room and Brant is back to gaming on the couch next to me, I find myself staring at my phone, wondering why Sam wouldn’t even dignify my dumb text with a response.
Probably because that response would be: I’ve moved on. You waited too long. Later, loser face.
Later in my room at the approximate time of two-or-three-or-four a.m., I unzip my shorts, pull out my cock, and start jerking over the noise of the storm making a comeback outside, rain tapping on my window tauntingly. Someday soon, I’ll make a comeback. It’s just a matter of time. And every boom of thunder that rips over the sky, I know I’m sharing with Sam somewhere across the campus.
Chapter 9
Sam