A Tapless Shoulder (26 page)

“
What do you
mean?” he asked again as though my confusion was the riddle
here.

“
What do you
mean what do I mean? I mean, I think I’m taking it out of context,
and maybe you should tell me the story that this little snippet is
from so then I can understand,” I answered rather hurriedly. I was
losing my patience from still being confused. It was a stick man.
This should have been clear.

“
I drew it,” he said as though that should have been enough.
“It was just a doodle, and I thought it had character. I don’t
know, I just look at it and I appreciate it. It
evokes
something in me.” He seemed satisfied with his answer. And
he said ‘evoke’ like I had taught it to him and had been waiting to
hear him use it. I suddenly wanted to ‘evoke’ his eyes with
something sharp.

“
Holy effing
crap, Nate,” I shook my head.

“
Effing
?” he repeated
curiously.

I nodded my
head at him, “Yes, ‘
effing.’
I have kids
remember, okay, so sometimes I say, ‘F’ and sometimes I say,
‘fuck,’ and I just try to say ‘F’ more than I do the other. It
really sucks when I get them mixed up and then it’s an ambitious
mess wearing running shoes. Have we not been over this? And you
knew what I meant, so it worked. So shut up.”

“
Don’t you
mean, ‘S U’?”

“
Or
I mean, ‘F U,’” I
said tiredly. “Dude, it’s a guy on a swing, and all I think is,
okay, you’re telling me you’re a swinger. It’s not all that manly;
it’s not a shark on a swing or a badass dragon. Okay, it would
just, well, I don’t know, the swing really knocks it down a peg no
matter how I try to build it up here.” I cradled my face in my
hands, which was comfortable, and I thought I could sleep there
like that, and when I woke up he’d surely be gone. I squinted, “It
has to be as weird as it
can
be
with you, eh, Nate. Tell
me you’re gay, do not show me. There, I said it.”

He sat bolt
upright, like something urgent had come up, “Why, you think it
looks gay?”

“
Uh, no… I don’t think a gay person
would
get that,
actually. I know what will cheer you up.” I made like I was going
to undo my pants, and he made like he was going to hit
me.

“
Fuck you,”
he said seriously.

“
I know
that’s what…”

“
I fucking
hate you, man,” he cut me off.

“
Captain
Swinger… of the U.S.S. Loveseat,” I laughed, “don’t be like that,”
I tried to make my face concerned.

I leaned
forward. I looked at Nate and then the end table beside me. I saw a
black pen. There was a pad of paper beneath it, which I picked up
as well. I looked at him again, then leaned forward and went to
work with paper and pen on top of the coffee table. On the
television: Bart was misbehaving, Homer was dumb, and it made
humorous, harmonious sense, a perfect sense that I wanted to just
smack Nate with. Be
real
funny,
not
insane
funny!

“
Okay,” I
said, and set the pen down. I pulled the top sheet of paper from
the pad and sat farther back on the couch to study it. I looked
over at Nate and realized I’d been smiling the entire time. I
dropped the corners of my mouth, in pursuit of the moment. I wanted
to appear very serious. I wanted it to appear as though I’d just
taken it upon myself to figure something out that would help us
both.

“
So here is a dramatic moment for you on the playground of
life,” I said slowly and deliberately. “As you can see, more
specifically, this is a moment that takes place on the
teeter-totter,” I placed the paper on the table so that Nate could
see it properly. “Be careful,” I said, stating out loud the
unwritten footnotes, “couple of pinch points there. Anyway,” I
continued, still with a serious tone, “as you can see we have two
stick men in an obvious dilemma,” I pointed to the paper,
indicating where things may have gone awry for the two figures.
“One has heavy oversized
feet
while the
second
has no feet at
all
. Ah, will weight be a
problem here? I don’t know, maybe. One has
eyes
; the
other
only a mouth!
Profound, eh, really makes you
think,” I was staring like I could not look away for fear of losing
sight of the paper. I stopped and shook my head like I’d received a
strong psychic message. “Nate,” I said emphatically, “I seriously
think you should add this right above your swinger.” I nodded my
head, agreeing wholly with myself. Nate looked like he wanted to
tell me off. I sighed. I was rain: I couldn’t let up. “Then, on top
of that, a stickman tangled in the monkey bars. That is beyond my
artistic capabilities, of course, so I didn’t even attempt to draw
that. Okay? Sound good? And when your whole back is done in that
manner, I will go to the beach with you.” I looked at him, blinking
and nodding my head as if to say,
believe it or not, that’s what I am willing to
do
. “Well, maybe, okay,” I
began to revise, “I will be on a beach of the same lake of the
beach that you are on. Yeah, we’ll say that
for sure
.”
My confidence had grown with each word.

Nate didn’t’
seem impressed with my idea on how to improve his new tattoo.
“Well, write a book and put it on the back of it for me,” he
suggested, “then I can just say it’s from that.”

“
Oh no, I don’t want to take away your bragging rights like
that, come on, man, show some commitment.” I laughed. His smile had
yet to return. “Nate, buddy, it’s just a tattoo. Yeah, sure, its
forever, but you could cut yourself making dinner later and have a
scar from that forever too. I wouldn’t worry too much about it.
Move on. And, come on, what happened? You usually run this stuff by
me; remember your hairy pottery idea? Look, man, for future
reference; if you’re not sure what to do about something, about
anything, picture me shaking my head,
no
.” We were
both silent. He sighed dramatically. I squinted like he’d gone too
far. “Dude, I’m just kidding, okay, it’s stellar, I…” I stopped
myself, figuring it was pointless.

Nate looked
unsettled,
more
unsettled.
“You can’t even
begin to understand how long my ear hair is,” he said, and I found
myself pretending he hadn’t.

“
What? I –
what
? Where the hell,
what are you talking about?” I asked as I tried to be in the same
room as him.

“
What?
How is
that
weird
?” he asked, honestly wondering. “I was
listening to you and I thought, ‘I’m listening to him,’ and that
reminded me of my ears.”

“
Yeah, yeah,
exactly
, you don’t at
all see how that’s weird?”

“
No, I
don’t.”

“
Okay, Nate,
listen to me, just because your explanation is simple doesn’t mean
it makes sense.” I looked at the floor, then him again, “Okay… when
I was talking I wasn’t, like, I can only talk about my mouth
because that’s what I think about when I begin to talk. How, how,
how is it you look confused right now?!”

“
There’s way
too much… thinking in you, man.”

“
Wow, we are
perfectly balanced, we should campaign.” He laughed and so did I.
“You see it’s that kind of stuff that cancels out any possibility
of us having a serious conversation. That’s why I’m just along for
the ride when we’re together doing whatever. I mean, don’t get me
wrong, I need that too, so, you know, it’s not necessarily a
negative thing,” I smiled. “It’s all good, man; when the division
is made, I’ll pass a note now and then telling you all about life
on the other side of stupid.”

He laughed
before he began to mutter an extensive list of profanities; maybe
about me, maybe about himself, maybe both. I leaned forward. I
wanted to talk about the whole phone call thing we’d gone through
last time we were together. Staring at him patiently, it was clear
he knew a lot more profanities than I did. It was almost
impressive.

I looked down
and broke into laughter; there was another piece of paper at my
feet. “So where’s the self-portrait going?” I asked. Nate responded
with a look of confusion. . I picked up and showed him the piece of
paper with a penis drawn on it. He laughed, and shook his head. I
held it out toward him, “You shouldn’t leave your tattoos lying
around like that. Put it somewhere safe. Do you want some
suggestions where you should put it?”

“
I’ll show
you where to put it,” he said with a lot of effort put into not
laughing.

“
I know!
That’s what I’m afraid of,” I said much louder than I needed
to.

Nate was
pretending we were back to drawing tattoos, or he may have been
drawing a friend for his tattoo. My phone beeped with a text from
Katie; it was a picture of her top half and she was naked. I put
the phone in my pocket and stood up, “I gotta go, one of the kids
barfed on Katie’s shirt.”

I sat in the
car, staring at the picture Katie had sent me. I replied with a
long spiel about how much I loved her
and
her picture
and really would have loved nothing more than to have gone straight
home, but felt it was my responsibility to stop at my parents to
make sure everything was copasetic. I ended with ‘I love you, thank
you and you are so, so, so hot, GOD, SO HOT.’ We both knew if she
sent me anything more than that, I would have dropped my plans, my
attention to red lights, and driven straight home. I looked down at
my phone, why hadn’t I just phoned her? I shook my head, threw the
phone on the passenger seat and started the car.

When I
finally arrived at my parents’; the mailbox was empty and there
wasn’t a single newspaper on the porch. I didn’t think much of it;
my mind had been done in by the mental puzzles Nate had set before
me. I let myself in, and suddenly wanted to get back out, but
dropped my keys. My first thought was to kick my keys towards the
door, then, with a little luck,
not something I liked to count on
, I’d dive, grab them and roll out the door… had the
door
not
been shut. And so that option fell out of the
running. I sulked. I began sifting frantically where I stood,
midstream, and the only idea that came to surface was to simply
stand my ground and see it through. I was too tired to fight myself
or the situation. Since nothing had ever advanced with my dad each
time I tried to tackle the subject with him, I figured I may as
well have taken my chances there in the trenches. I was having
doubts and looked at the door again, and wondered what type of
weight and speed one would need to roll through something like
that. I hadn’t an ounce of rhythm and still I turned back to face
the music. “Hi,” I said mildly, as though she might not notice me,
since I was technically standing behind a set of keys.

“
Hi honey,”
Candy was her cheerful self and she stood and smiled in my
direction. I didn’t know how she did it. I didn’t understand how
she could make me feel like I was her favourite person in the whole
world, even though I came across as an idiot, half frightened, and
probably half cruel. It truly confounded me, right then and right
there. I had given her a cold, standoffish reception at our every
meeting, but she still smiled. She didn’t even seem to be drunk at
the moment. She actually probably had every right to be under the
impression that I was a little slow. At that moment, as I tried to
speak, to be human, and do something as simple as talk to another
human, I thought she may very well have been right.

I breathed
deeply, trying to regain myself. I tried to be an empty vessel. I
tried to be a warrior, or maybe a warrior in an empty vessel,
we
were
talking about a ship, right?
Don’t ask me these things in the middle of this
crap
, I thought. It was
obvious my ego was determined to sink me. I was taking on water
faster than I could bail it…
if it was that type of a vessel
.

“
Your dad is
so… crazy sometimes, isn’t he?” she said in the midst of my
turmoil.

“
Yeah,” I agreed, “I really don’t know how or what I should
be doing with him or, like, any of what’s been happening… with
him.”
Hey, hey, watch my
perfect belly flop
, I
thought. I tried to remind myself to breathe deeply, and repeat as
necessary. Yeah, yeah, I defended myself
from myself
;
then
don’t stop
breathing deeply. I smiled, but in
parts, bending my mouth until it was shaped properly, like I had to
mentally form it with a hammer. I wondered briefly about the
benefits of being slow over those of being insane.
Pending
, I thought.

I decided I
was neither, and then warned myself not to say the wrong things out
loud today.
That is not
helping
, I sternly lectured
myself, and then winced; I needed to get out of my head and into
the room if I was going to get through this with a shred of
dignity, or at least seem like I could feign
intelligence.