Real Life

by Brandon Taylor

  “You’re not,” Wallace says, nodding. “You’ve made that clear.”

  “Good,” he says. “I’m glad.”

  “Why did you come here, then? Just to yell at me? Did you just come here to call me a selfish faggot? Do you want to hit me too?” Wallace looks up then, widens his eyes, his mouth parting just slightly, in the way he practiced back in Alabama, seeking the attention and the violence of men in the woods. He opens up his shoulders, steps forward. “Do you want to hit me too? Did you come here to fuck me up? Is that it?”

  A thick vein in Miller’s neck throbs, writhing like a little worm beneath the skin. Wallace can see it in the plane of light illuminating his shoulder and throat, the collar of his sweater wrenched open. He sets his teeth on edge, Miller does, and takes a long, ragged inhale. His nostrils flare.

  “Don’t tempt me,” he says. “Don’t tempt me, Wallace.”

  “Do it, then,” Wallace says. “Do it if you want.”

  Miller’s hand lashes out so quickly that Wallace can barely follow its motion. He grips Wallace’s throat, the roughness of his palm hot on his skin. His fingers dig in, not drawing blood, but squeezing, pressing. Miller’s face is an impassive mask, distant.

  “You don’t want this,” he chews out. “You don’t want it, Wallace.”

  Wallace reaches out and presses his palm to Miller’s cock through his jeans, squeezes it, feels it filling with blood.

  “Seems like you do,” Wallace says, and Miller squeezes harder, lifts Wallace’s chin up.

  “Fuck you, Wallace,” he says. “Fuck you.” But then he crushes his mouth down onto Wallace’s, hauls him up close and bites his lip so hard it draws blood. Wallace drowns in the immediacy of it, feels himself let go and sink down through the sensation of weightlessness, dizzy with it. Miller whirls him around and whips down Wallace’s shorts, jabs his fingers into him, and it hurts so much that Wallace wants to cry, but he doesn’t. He just breathes through the awful heat of it, the invasive, rough exploration of Miller’s fingers. Miller pushes the back of Wallace’s head down, shoving his face against the slick, cool countertop. The initial impact is hard and intense, and the world slides briefly into black and then back out, turns gray at its edges.

  Miller’s fingers in him are thick, coarse, and hard, their blunted ends pushing, threatening to split him open. There is an intense heat radiating down the side of his face and neck, a scent like sweat and skin and soap and beer. His eyes sting. Miller slides his fingers out of Wallace, and Wallace takes a shuddering breath, suddenly cold. The scrape of shoes backward across the floor. Wallace pulls his shorts up, but he doesn’t turn; he’s still lying against the counter, his body heavy, too heavy for him to move.

  “I didn’t mean that,” Miller says. “I didn’t mean it.” His voice is jagged and cold, like wet gravel against the side of a house. “I didn’t mean it.”

  Wallace can taste blood in his mouth. Where he’s been dug out is still throbbing with heat, like a wound. He draws himself upright—a sharp pain cuts through him, and he doubles over, has to grip the counter to stay up on his feet.

  “Goddamn, goddamn,” he says.

  “Wallace,” Miller says, and he reaches out, touches Wallace’s hip, but Wallace jerks back from him, to the side, so they’re facing each other. Wallace holds on to the back of one of the chairs. Miller is in shadow, leaning toward him.

  “It’s fine, I’m fine,” he says. All that courage is fleeing him, leaving nothing but its embers, inadequate to the task, to anything at all except facing Miller this way.

  “I’m sorry,” Miller says. “I’m sorry. I don’t know why I did that. I don’t know.”

  “Because you’re a wolf,” Wallace says, nostrils flaring, trying to laugh but failing, landing on a kind of hitching sob. “Because you’re a fucking wolf.” He watches Miller’s stomach suck in and out, the way it kind of ripples when he breathes. Miller flexes his fist, and something corresponding in Wallace convulses. Was that the hand that had been inside him, then?

  “Wallace,” Miller says, but he doesn’t have anything to say, that’s obvious. What is there to say after that, after such a violation? He should leave, Wallace thinks. One of them should leave now. But neither of them moves to leave, seems to be able to go. In the alley there is a horrible scraping sound as someone from the bar on the corner drags a trash can across the pavement. The noise swells and swells in the apartment until it overtakes the two of them. They’re watching each other this entire time, Miller’s eyes settled on Wallace, Wallace’s on Miller. They are exchanging looks, gazes, trying to read the silence of the other person as some people claim to be able to sense the energy in a room by its configuration of furniture. What, then, does Miller see in the set of Wallace’s jaw, the wetness in his eyes, the tension in his throat, where he is already bruising, the way he shifts his weight restlessly because he cannot be comfortable in his own skin now? What does Miller make of him, Wallace wonders. Can Miller see his hurt the way Wallace can see his? Seeing pain requires a correlate if you are selfish. Does Miller have a correlate for Wallace’s pain as it is now, arranged and waiting for a conduit into the outside world?

  Cruelty, Wallace thinks, is really just the conduit of pain. It conveys pain from one place to another—from the place of highest concentration to the place of lowest concentration, in the same way heat flows. It is a delivery system, as in the way that certain viruses convey illness, disease, irreparable harm. They’re all infected with pain, hurting each other.

  Wallace licks the warm blood from the corner of his mouth. Miller takes a step toward him. Wallace forces himself to stay still, which surprises Miller. They’re suddenly too close. Wallace can smell the scent of sex in the air now, the inside of himself, coming from Miller.

  “I provoked you,” Wallace says.

  “No, you didn’t,” Miller says. “You didn’t. I fucked up here. You didn’t.”

  “I provoked you, and you reacted. It’s fine.”

  “You didn’t, Wallace. Please stop saying that.”

  “I provoked you, that’s all,” Wallace says, his voice coming out of his body but seeming to originate somewhere just behind and to the left of him. He realizes that the world is still hazy and gray to him, rippling at its edges, shifting like a flag in the wind. His balance is compromised. “I provoked you, and you reacted.”

  “You didn’t provoke me, Wallace.” Miller grasps his shoulder and Wallace flinches, his head turning down. “Please, Wallace. I’m sorry.”

  Wallace presses his mouth shut because he knows that he will simply repeat himself. He feels like one of those toys that utter a catchphrase when pressed: I provoked you, and you reacted. It’s fine. He has said he is fine so much this weekend that he no longer knows what it means. What would it mean to be fine at this moment? Particularly after having brought it on himself. He had brought it on himself, hadn’t he?

  Miller looks very sorry. His eyes are sad, no longer hooded or shaded or full of mystery. They are clear to Wallace now, and shining with regret. Miller came here angry, bristling, on the edge of himself, but now he is soft, boyish, contrite. He is empty of his rage. Miller wraps his arms around Wallace, and Wallace lets him. He restrains that part of himself that wants to flinch and recoil, presses that part of himself flat and smooths it until he is perfectly still and pliant. Miller kisses his mouth and says again that he is sorry, so sorry for being this way, for hurting him. He kisses Wallace again and again on the mouth, and Wallace lets him, kisses him back, closes his eyes. He runs his fingers down Miller’s hair, smooths it, kisses the bridge of his nose and his cheeks. Miller says again and again that he is sorry, kisses Wallace’s throat and shoulder and collarbone, kisses him and pulls at his clothes, and they are undressing on the floor, sinking into each other.

  When Miller enters him this time, Wallace breathes through the agony, through his discomfort. He remakes his face
into a mask of pleasure. He sighs when Miller touches him, moans when Miller slides in and out of him, writhes when Miller kisses him again. But beneath the surface of his pleasure there is a vast, roiling rage.

  Is this all his life is meant to be, the accumulation of other people’s pain? Their assorted tragedies? Wallace digs his fingernails as hard as possible into Miller’s back, sinks them as deeply as he can; he rakes them down to Miller’s hips, leaving long, dark gashes. Miller lets out a sharp cry of pain and then he looks down into Wallace’s eyes. What does he see there, Wallace wonders. What gazes up out of the lapping black sea of his anger? What strange dark stones make themselves known to him? Miller tries to kiss him, and Wallace bites at his lip, presses his knees as tight as he can to Miller’s sides.

  Miller is encouraged by this, shoves himself roughly into Wallace, and Wallace only bites harder, digs harder, like he’s scaling some great mountain, as if his life depended on it.

  “Fuck you,” Miller says, lip swelling. “Fuck you, Wallace.”

  “Fuck you, Miller,” Wallace says, and he darts up, sinks his teeth into Miller’s shoulder, which is tan and hot from the sun, even hours later. Bites him like a savage. Miller shoves him down, and his head thwacks hard against the floor, and they begin to punch and fight and kick and roll and throw each other against whatever they can.

  Miller is tossed rough against the side of the counter, but then lashes out his long white leg and pushes Wallace away, back against the couch. Wallace, breathing hot through his nose, blood throbbing hard in his head, throws a punch down into Miller’s thigh, bruising it. Miller reaches for him then, grips his wrist, and pins him down on the dirty floor. Wallace watches the ceiling fan turn and turn overhead. Miller is panting over him, sweating. It’s so hot everywhere. Sweat drops from the end of Miller’s nose onto Wallace’s chest. And then another drop. A small puddle growing on Wallace’s skin, salt water, a sea blooming in the brown desert of his body. Miller is trying to catch his breath. Wallace spits up at him, and Miller pulls away, which lets Wallace wrench his wrist free. He punches Miller’s chest. He punches it again. Again and again, in the same spot, over and over, and Miller lets him. He absorbs it. Wallace punches and punches, his hand growing hot and then numb from the impact, hard and soft alike, no longer doing any damage, just acting on muscle memory. Miller wraps his arms around him, pulls him in close. No more punching. No more.

  * * *

  • • •

  IN WALLACE’S BED, they lie down. Miller is on his side, favoring the nasty bruises on his chest and his back. Wallace is lying on his belly. The fan is going, drawing humid air in from the outside. They are not asleep, but they are silent, lying there like stones.

  Wallace’s arm is still numb from the punching and the tossing and the struggling. His fingers are swollen and thick. Too much recoil. Too much collision with a solid body. In all the numbness and the swelling, there is the shardlike pain of something else. He hopes it isn’t broken. When he tries to move his fingers, it’s like rotating a blade beneath the skin. But he can move them, at least. There is hope.

  Miller’s weight on the bed is close by. He can feel Miller’s eyes on him, watching him. Wallace is staring into the space beneath his pillow where he’s folded his arm.

  “Wallace,” Miller says.

  “What?”

  “Are we going to talk about this?”

  “I’d rather not,” Wallace says. “I’d rather just lie here.”

  “Do you want me to go?”

  “No—” Wallace says, starts to say, but then stops. “I don’t want you to go.” But what he means to say is that he does not want Miller to stay or to go, that there is a flat, cold indifference in him, inflected by his nature to please. At heart he wants only to please people. Miller relaxes, unclenches. They’re still naked, their skin slick with sweat and gritty from the floor.

  “I’m sorry I hurt you,” Miller says. “I’m sorry I was so rough, so ugly to you.”

  The words land, and it’s like small bits of water striking a windowpane. Each word a little impact, a soft hollow sound, empty. What do they mean, these words? What is their significance? What is Miller apologizing for at this point? Haven’t they already hurt each other? Haven’t they already resolved it with their bodies? Wallace coughs, then laughs, then coughs.

  “Don’t bother,” he says. “It’s okay.”

  “I don’t feel okay,” Miller says. “I feel like I fucked up here pretty bad. I feel pretty fucking awful, Wallace.”

  “Oh?” Wallace asks. “Is that true?”

  “Wallace.”

  “I think that you feel guilty because you think you hurt me, and maybe you did. But I hurt you too, obviously. So what’s there to be sorry about?”

  “That’s not the point, Wallace. That doesn’t make it better. So what if you hurt me? I shouldn’t have hurt you first. I shouldn’t have done that to you.”

  “I imagine you shouldn’t have. But you did.”

  Miller lets out a hard sigh, and his breath brushes up against Wallace’s cheek.

  “But you did,” Wallace continues. “What I’m saying is, I guess, it doesn’t matter to me. What you did. It doesn’t matter. None of it does.”

  “Of course it matters,” Miller says hotly. “What do you mean? What are you talking about?”

  Wallace rolls gingerly onto his back and puts the pillow across his chest. Miller comes up close beside him, and the bed squeaks awkwardly under their shifting weight. There are shadows thrown across the ceiling from the outside and from the other room, where the light in the bathroom is cutting an angular path through to Wallace’s bedroom. He stares at the place where the walls meet, and the light flattens, yellow turning diffuse, until it fuses with the color of the ceiling paint. Wallace puts his tongue to the back of his teeth. It is raw and sore. He can feel its meaty pulp against his gums. His vision is still fluttering on its periphery.

  “When I went to middle school, my dad moved out of our house,” he says. “He moved up the road into this other house my brother’s dad had built. It used to be an art gallery or something. A house first, then an art gallery, then a house again. Anyway, my dad moved into it, and he lived there. I wasn’t allowed to visit. He said he didn’t want to see us anymore. I asked him why. And he said it didn’t matter why; it just was. He didn’t want to see us. Me. Anymore.”

  Wallace is circling the rim of this old bitterness, can hear his dad’s voice rising up out of the past, that raspy laugh. He shook his head and smiled at Wallace, put his hand on Wallace’s shoulder. They were almost equal height then, his fingers bony and knobby. He simply said, I don’t want you here. And that was it. Wallace was not granted an explanation for the break, for the severing of their family that left him in the house with his mother and his brother—he learned then that some things have no reason, that no matter how he feels, he isn’t entitled to an answer from the world.

  His eyes are stinging again. He puts his thumb to the bridge of his nose. The tears are collecting along his eyelashes, their warm salt welling, but they’re holding for now. He can feel the sadness like fiberglass, like cotton stuffed into the cavity behind his face, in his hollow cheekbones.

  “And now he’s dead, and I don’t know why he didn’t want me around. I almost never saw him after that. He stayed just five minutes up the road, but it’s like he vanished from my life entirely, just evaporated. Gone. I don’t know why. I’ll never know why. And he was right, you know; it didn’t matter why. There was nothing I could have done to change his mind. There was nothing anyone could have done. It doesn’t matter why he did it, just that he did. And the world went on. It always does. The world doesn’t care about you or me or any of this. The world just keeps on going.”

  “Wallace—”

  “No, Miller. It’s like I said before, at your house. It doesn’t matter. I’m angry all the time, and it doesn�
�t matter. People expect me to react. To do something. And I can’t. Because I keep thinking about that—how no matter what I do, it can’t change the thing I’d like it to change. I can’t rewind things. I can’t erase them. I can’t take it back. It doesn’t matter. You did it. It’s a part of us now. It’s part of our history. You can’t pick it up and throw it back like a fish you caught. You can’t replace it like a broken window. It’s just there. It’s permanent.”

  “I don’t understand,” Miller says. “I don’t get what you mean. Just because it happened doesn’t mean we can’t talk about it. I think it means the opposite, right? We have to talk about it.”

  Wallace shakes his head, the act of which makes him dizzy. He puts the pillow across his face and sighs into it, letting his breath collect in the fabric. He wants to scream. He does not know how to communicate it to Miller, this sensation he has, the pointlessness of these words filling the air. His throat is hot and dry. He’d like to hold his head underwater and drink for an eternity.

  “I think that’s the difference between us,” Wallace says. “You want to talk about it. And I don’t see the point.”

  “I can’t pretend it didn’t happen.”

  Wallace smiles, slowly, beneath the pillow. “But that’s it, Miller. I don’t need to talk about it to know it happened.”

  “Then why aren’t you angrier with me? Why aren’t you pissed with me? Please, something, do something.”

  “We already had that fight,” Wallace says. “I’m bored by it now. I’m over it.”

  “You’re not. I’d rather you be honest with me.”

  “I am being honest with you.”

  “This doesn’t feel like honesty, Wallace. It doesn’t feel real.”

  Wallace draws the pillow back from his face and sits up. It hurts to move, but he does it. He presses himself through it until he’s sitting up and looking down at Miller.