14

 

 

 

 

14

 

 

There’s nothing special about Susie, no matter what he wants to think. There’s nothing unique about his house, his lifestyle, his stupid Star Wars jokes. Every time, every single one of them, they start to think they’re ahead of us. Some in small ways, some enough to make them think they’re untouchable—as the owner of our current beds, the master of our daily comforts. This isn’t always bad. Being underestimated only gives us more gaps. But if it is bad, it means things are about to shift over. That kind of change, it can’t always be stopped.

Susie? There’s nothing special about him. He’s just another friend I’ve yet to figure out.

These single guys we’ve known before.

Mr. Big Car, Mr. Nice Shades, Mr. Trimmed Beard.

Julian, Edward, Kyle.

Max, Barney, Sam.

The names they gave or the names we made up for them. Still so much the same.

Unshaved cheeks and musty shirts. Dirty tiles, scattered socks. Dishes piled up in kitchen sinks, Tetrised together, bonded by scum. The smells of slippery armpits, unwashed hair. There was that time when the towels all got hung up outside. Skewered to the fence, hooked on barbed wire. The metal ripped tiny holes in the fabric, but he didn’t care. There was the bathroom with an old soap bar by the basin, left there so long it had hardened to something like stone. The kitchen with cupboards all crammed with plastic bags and old beer bottles. Empty glass. The one-bedroom apartment with a shower-bath, no curtains, big windows. So much light in there, I seemed to glow.

Or. And.

Sprinkler systems, paved front drives. A spare car, maybe, something sleek that seldom leaves the garage. Sometimes mom gets the keys for a while.

Or.

Garages with shelves and tools lining each wall. Pet hair. Chewed up armchairs. Dogs—the friendly kind, the yappy kind, the kinds that scare you off. Mostly dogs that make my heart hurt. Wishing I was theirs, and they were mine.

And.

There was the place with a thick, yellow tide mark in the bathtub, never scrubbed. Even after all that bubble bath. Those soapy hands. The same one with the princess bed, trussed up in pink. More ruffled things and ribboned things than I’d ever seen. A little girl’s bedroom. A girl not me. And those tongues so thick they filled my mouth, made my jaw crack. Sour and turgid as keel slugs, flexing down my throat. I saw a documentary on them late one night. Keel slugs, not tongues.

And.

Shower drains shining like round metal eyes. White tile glossed, waxed. Glass-top coffee tables, marble counters. Furniture so stiff and squeaky you’re almost scared to sit, but it’s never so bad with a few cushions, some blankets. Mohair, bamboo weave, something soft like velvet but fluffy like wool. Wrapped around your feet and knotted over your knees. Blankets like that never smell bad. Cigarette smoke maybe, at most. The guys who live in these kinds of homes are what my mother calls ‘yuppies’. She says this with a wink, masking how bad she’d rather roll her eyes. Yuppies? They’re not so bad. At least they always smell good. At least their nails are trimmed. Worse are the guys who’re divorced, kept their money, live like lone wolves in their polished lairs. There was the place with the fancy coffee machine nobody knew how to work. The one with the swimming pool that came partway indoors. I slipped climbing out, cut open my knee. Blood in the water, blood on the tile. Scarlet on white. Gleaming. The way my mother screamed.

Sean, Andrew, Bernard, Cal.

Mr. Jackson, Mr. Bruce.

McCarrie, London, Hughes.

It wasn’t always clear at first what they wanted, not with all of them. If it was my mother, or me. Or something in-between.

***

The first friend I remember close to me like this was Kyle. An investment banker, some kind of broker, something risky involving big numbers that makes at least one kind of man decide he’s important. Broad and pot-bellied and recently divorced. Not that any of this mattered. I was nine, maybe ten.

“Don’t cause any trouble,” he had said, but there was a laugh in his voice, happy and hushed.

Mom had stepped out to return some videotapes. It was that kind of time.

He bent me over the edge of his daughter’s bed, my knees on her thick, velvet-touch carpet, my arms out flat on her tangled duvet. I thought he was going to spank me at first—I didn’t know why, but I was so used to not knowing why so many things happened this seemed almost okay—but instead he lifted up my dress and pulled down my panties and knelt down behind me. Staring at the parts of me I couldn’t see. His breath thick and hot on the backs of my thighs.

That was the first time. It took a few more weeks of this before he started using his fingers—all touch, no push, because ‘Your Momma might get mad if I make you bleed, right?’—and then his tongue, but we moved away without him not long after. So who knows what might’ve happened next.

When I think back on him now, my hidden eye opens and everything around me flashes black and grey. Confusion and panic pound through me, my thoughts fuzz over in a white froth like Coca-Cola poured too fast. Between breaths, I see him on his knees. Strobe images.

Flash.

Blood runs down the side of his head in a dark syrup, closing over his cheek and filling his mouth as he looks up at me. Shock-wide eyes. His pockets are full of Polaroids. They shuffle out and hit the floor like oversized playing cards as he twitches, spasms, jolts around. Automaton unwired.

It’s almost as if I try to kill him in these dreams. Hurting him, watching him die. Not because I want him to die. But if he does, I want to watch.

It’s different in this town, though. This place with its dusty air that makes me sneeze, its water tower staring down. It doesn’t feel so crazy at Susie’s house.

At fourteen or maybe fifteen, or even at sixteen or maybe seventeen, I’m still below Susie’s interest range. He stares at my mother, not me. Smirking like he wants to leap at her the first chance he gets—only he isn’t trying to hide it. He calls her Doll-Face. He calls her Babe. When he screws her, I swear the whole neighborhood can hear him. This freaks me out a little. Aren’t men supposed to be quiet, while the women make all the noise? He’s worse than a woman. A barrage of sudden moans and yells and bellows. My mother’s cries are whispers compared to his. The whole thing makes me awkward, itchy. Makes me want to bang the door open, or maybe solder it shut—I can’t decide which would be better. He’s theatrical, he’s clownish. He laughs at anything, everything. Next to him, my mother seems much older, but maybe only because he acts so young. Turns her into a parody wannabe of a fresher kind of girl, while he treats her like the rebel youngster she once was, and only sometimes still is.

Look at me, I want to say to him.

Why don’t you look at me?

I want to see inside his eyes. Whatever it is he’s hiding there.