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Authors: Mesrobian,Carrie

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BOOK: Cut Both Ways
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The whole way, we talk about stuff I can't remember the second after we talk about it. I'm starving. I'm happy. It just hits me, then, that I'm happy to be here, that I'm done working on the house for the week, and there's tons of good food in my mom's kitchen, and it's nice to be out of Minneapolis and come here. It's quiet out in Oak Prairie. Nobody on the street. Lots of stars. No trees and buildings blocking the view. Just the same house, row after row, soccer-field lawn running one into the next. I've got some change in my pockets and I'm jingling it in this rhythm, along with our footsteps. My boots, Angus's running shoes. I can keep the time, but just barely. It's a kind of enjoyable problem to deal with, flipping the quarters between my fingers and our steps and trying to keep up with what Angus is saying. He's talking about art school and music and a concert and all of these things. He does all of these things when I'm not around. He's never bored, Angus. Unlike me, he can always think up something to do.

We slip into the house. Sneaking, not just because we're high, but because we don't want to talk to anyone, even a stray tipsy book-club lady. Especially not Taylor or Kinney. Angus loads up plates for both of us while I load up a couple of my mom's fancy water Nalgene bottles with boxed wine and tuck them into the
back of my shirt. Angus nods and we slip out, unnoticed, the book-club ladies talking and laughing, the cartoon noise blasting from the TV room. Successful entry and exit. We cut through yards and head to Angus's house.

“You gonna jam all by yourself?” I ask, when we get to Angus's practice space, where he keeps all his shit: drums, guitar, keyboard, amp. Angus plays a little of everything, though it's regular guitar that he's good at.

“No, let's just eat,” he says. He's already shoving chips into his mouth. We sit on the old sofa he keeps out there and we eat and drink and it's just the sound of food crunching and chewing, which is kind of gross. But also, the point. The Racklers have a three-car garage, just like my mom's house, but instead of all of it being taken up with Jay's Land Rover and my mom's Mercedes wagon and their camper, the third garage is all Angus's space. All his music stuff and the old couch and a little fridge equals the freedom to be as loud as he wants. Mr. Rackler insulated it acoustically and everything. It's pretty keen of his parents, I think. They go out of their way to be understanding to him.

After a while, I'm full but I keep eating, though it kills my high a little. I don't care; I still feel that shot of happiness from earlier. I don't get it that often, not constant good feelings, like normal people do. That happy feeling: it always surprises me. Makes me feel dumb, because it always comes when I'm with someone else, and I can't ever explain it. How I'm happy suddenly. Plus it's hard to hide.

“We gotta go do something,” I say.

“Want to walk around a little?”

“Yeah.”

I'm glad he doesn't want to drive anywhere; not just because of the gas I don't want to burn up, but because I'm a terrible driver when I'm high. I know, because I've tried, and it was fucking scary as hell. It felt like the car wouldn't move and I was afraid to step on the gas. Later, I realized I'd left the dumb-ass parking brake on the whole time. Never again.

We walk around the block. I still feel good. The moon is out now and it's finally dark. I think there might be more stars out here in Oak Prairie. Or maybe it's my improved glasses prescription. Or I don't know. Not many people have their outdoor lights on in summer, which doesn't make sense; it's not like they can't afford to, and it's not like they're not home. You can see the TV glow through the closed shades, or smell the grill from the backyards, but nothing goes on in the front. Nobody sees us stumbling and kicking rocks and laughing, lugging our Nalgenes of pink wine. Swigging from them, too.

At the park, finally, there are no kids. The kids must all be in bed—their stroller moms brought the hammer down. Or they're in front of movies in the TV room, like Taylor and Kinney. Now we can own the park, the shitty fucked-up teenagers no one wants around.

Angus goes on the swings but I can't. I can't stand swings even when I'm sober. I drink more wine. Angus jumps off the swing and then goes down the slide. I stand there, watching him. He's one of those people who get all hyper when they're high. Or maybe he's happy like I am, too?

I sit on the grass, because though the gravel around the play area might keep kids from cracking open their skulls, it feels gritty and gross. Since helping with my dad's remodeling, all I think about is how to keep my hands clean. How drywall feels when you break it. How sawdust tastes. How my hands are getting worn and hard from pulling nails from buffalo board under the siding. How what I used to think counted as getting “dirty” now means nothing.

I watch Angus on the slide and the climbing-rope wall and the monkey bars, going hand over hand, his knees clenched up so he can hang properly. Angus is tall as me, but skinnier.

“We gotta get your friend out here soon, though,” he calls, going back the way he came on the monkey bars. “It's kind of getting to be an emergency.”

“What? Why?”

Angus is yelling, kind of, but in a funny way, about this thing going on with his bandmates, which is crazy to me, because what they have, it's hardly a band. I mean, they never do shows. They don't have their own songs. They barely play anyone else's songs.

“Who's quitting, again?” I ask, gulping more pink wine. “The keyboards guy?”

“Andrew's not quitting. He just says he won't play if we don't let his girlfriend do bass. But she plays the violin, not the bass. They're not even the same. And you need a solid bass line, man. You can't just scramble along.”

“Right. Yeah.” As if I know what he means!

But what am I going to say?

Almost chopped my thumb off with the Sawzall last week?

My dad's drinking again, though just beer now?

What do you expect from your band, really, if it doesn't even have a name?

I can't be a total dickwad like that. Not to him.

“Fuck. I'm buzzed,” Angus says, chucking his Nalgene toward me. It lands in the grass and then he plops down beside me.

“Yeah. Me, too.” I lay back on the grass, which is slightly wet, but I don't care. This summer, I've barely bothered to shower or change my clothes unless I'm leaving the house and might maybe see actual girls or whatever. Why bother getting clothes dirty for no reason, you know? Another thing Angus can't relate to; he's not a gross slob kind of guy.

I look at the stars and feel drunk. I think about people in the olden times, washing their clothes. Beating them against rocks on the river, letting them hang out from trees or laundry lines. My mom used to do that, not the river-rock beating, but the laundry-line thing, in our backyard. I'd help her pin clothes up or take them down, when I was littler. Back when I didn't care about doing chores. Now our backyard is so full of lumber and building supplies and free shit my dad got from who knows where, you can't even string up anything, even if the line was still there. My dad snapped it after the divorce. We do everything at his Laundromat now.

Angus's still talking about Andrew's girlfriend. About her being an idiot. About her stupid pink hair. About what was the point, even, of dyeing her hair? This girl had been a cheerleader in junior high; who was she fooling that was she was some kind
punk badass now that she was going to be a senior? Andrew swallows all this bullshit, Angus says, because she's fucking him and before that, Andrew'd been a virgin and now sex is making him stupid. Pussy stupid, Angus adds, sitting up over me and grabbing my Nalgene of wine.

I don't know Andrew or his weird girlfriend. I have no opinion about either of them.

I laugh. “Pussy stupid,” I say. “There's no such thing as that.”

Though I wish I could get stupid that way! From pussy! It's pretty much never going to happen. I'm seventeen and I've never even kissed a girl. I never do anything cool. I'm shit at girls. I don't have any money. I wear glasses. I'm boring. In between.

I've liked plenty of girls but they've never liked me back. It's kind of horrible.

But kind of reasonable, too. Because the girls I like are always completely unaware of my liking them. I never tell anyone, not even my friends, when I like a girl. And I never talk or interact with her, either, if I like her. It's complete top-secret classified information when I like someone.

“You all right, Will?” Angus asks.

“Yeah. Drunk, though.”

I link my fingers together over my head and see Angus looking down at me while slowly coiling his bandanna into the length he likes for tying it up over his forehead to get his hair out of his face. I watch one of his earrings wink from the light over the play area and then his face is one inch from my face and then Angus is kissing my mouth.

I don't do anything. For a minute, I don't move. He puts his mouth all over my mouth. My glasses are smushed between us but it's not because he's being pushy. I just feel them, suddenly, this fragile equipment, sitting there on my face. I know I should maybe move them. I can't make myself move to do that, though.

The kissing keeps happening. A minute. A minute more. Then it's longer and I'm doing something back. With my own mouth. And it's a decent amount of time, too, that I'm doing it back. More than a minute. A while.

I keep thinking
, I'm not gay. I'm not gay.
But I only think it.

It keeps going on, the kissing. Our mouths are opening.

Angus. I'm not gay. I'm not.

I don't know why I'm letting him do this. He lifts away from me and it's like I could stop this but I don't. I just take off my glasses and hold them in my hand. Angus kisses me again; his breath smells like pink wine and tastes salty, like potato chips. It doesn't feel bad. It feels okay. And I know he's gay: Angus. Everyone's known that, since forever. Since junior high. He'd made a big deal about it, back then, when he wore his goth costume and eyeliner and walked around acting tragic, like the poems he showed me in his journal. Angus had been the reverse of Andrew's girlfriend: weird back then, and now normal. Though still gay.

Why am I doing this? Why am I licking Angus's tongue?

Our tongues. It's very weird, that part. I want to see what that looks like, my tongue touching someone else's tongue. I wish there was some cool way I could casually open my eyes and see it. But I can't see that great without my glasses. And I don't want
to look at Angus. Angus, who's been my friend since I was little. Angus, who hated T-ball with me. Angus, who ate so much candy corn one Halloween that he threw up orange bits for hours the next day. Angus, who cried when his cat died; when we buried Felix in his mom's vegetable garden, I cried, too.

Plus, I don't want to move. I kind of can't really move. His hand is up in my hair, his fingers running through it. It makes my scalp shiver. My body shiver.

Then Angus puts his hand on my chest. It isn't moving around. Just rests there. And I feel trapped under it, though I'm just as big and strong as Angus, probably stronger, actually, if I think about it. Which I don't, really. Until now. Then his hand slides down my stomach, where I feel a churning of pink wine and all the goddamn food I'd slobbered down and Angus says, into my neck, “You all right? You're all right, right?”

Once he says that, I sit up. It's like something unlocks when he says that, and then I can move. Me sitting up pushes Angus out of position. His hand falls away. I wipe my glasses on the bottom of my T-shirt; they are wet from the grass. When we look at each other, he looks shocked. Like he didn't realize that I was me. Me, Will, Will Caynes; that it was me, this whole time. His friend. Who is not gay. Not gay. Clearly not.

My dick isn't even hard. I mean, not entirely. Not even half hard. About halfway to halfway hard.

You're half gay, then.

“I'm not gay, Angus.”

A quarter gay.

“Okay,” he says. Still looking at me all weird, his eyes bright under his bandanna.

“I'm not. I'm drunk.”

“Okay,” he repeats. He looks behind him, at the playground. His hands are on his knees. “Sorry. Me, too. I'm drunk, I mean. I didn't . . . I wasn't thinking. I mean, I get it. I know. I know you're not.”

Half hard. Half gay. Quarter gay.
Can Angus tell? Does he know? Can you sense that, when you're gay? Because you have a dick, too, and you know how dicks act?

Angus apologizes more. He's very slow and deliberate about it. Like he's waiting for me to tell him to stop. So I finally do.

“Angus,” I say. “Stop apologizing.”

“You're not mad?”

“No.”

“You should hit me, Will. You can. If you want.”

“Why?”

“Because. Because then you won't feel weird.”

I haven't hit Angus in forever. Not since we were little kids. Hitting him now would be even weirder.

I paw my hands through the wet grass, ripping up blades of it. My T-shirt is all wet in the back and feels cold and gross. I feel gross. Spinny. High and drunk.

“I'm not hitting you, Angus. It's not a big deal.”

“All right.”

“I mean, don't go telling people or anything.”

“Of course not,” he says, sounding pissy.

“I'm just saying, you know, I don't want people to think the wrong thing. Not that it's wrong, you know? I don't care if you're gay. I don't.”

“I know.”

And then he stands up, like he's mad at me, and we walk back to his house, faster than we'd walked away from it, and we go back into the garage and he starts dicking around with his guitar and we act like everything's okay. And I feel okay, I guess. Not high as much, a little spinny, but still drunk. Drunk-okay, though.

BOOK: Cut Both Ways
5.78Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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