The Roommate Situation (7 page)

“You’re right. We’ll have to glue some boobs to your chest.” He’s undoing the snaps, and his hands stop as he takes an actual look at my chest. “I think I’m going to have to call this the twink harness.”

“What’s that mean?”

“It means you don’t have any hair on your chest, or much of anything else for that matter.”

I look down. I’m a slim guy, but not what I’d call scrawny. Maybe
compact
is a better description. At least my chest isn’t sunken in. “But what’s the ‘twink’ thing?”

“It’s a gay term for guys your age who look your age.” He’s gone back to popping snaps open.

“First of all, he’s probably gay,”
Chuck says in my head.

“I guess you get to know that kind of stuff when you sell bondage gear,” I say.

“Actually, I saw it in my uncle’s DVD collection.”

My mouth drops open. I snap it closed.

“When you’re a guy with no kids,” he says, “you don’t necessarily think to hide your porn.”

“Did you watch it?” It comes out before I can reel it back, a knee-jerk response catapulted out of intense curiosity. I have never seen gay porn.

“Turn around,” he says, holding the harness. “Arms.”

I slip my arms through the straps behind me like I’m putting on a jacket. As I settle the straps on my shoulders, Derek comes around in front to pull the lower straps forward, where he feeds them through a ring at my sternum.

“That’s cold,” I say, goose bumps rising along my skin.

Chewing his toothpick, Derek folds the straps back on themselves and snaps them. His fingernails where they press my skin are only a little warmer than the ring. My nipples are hard as rocks, and I look toward the ceiling so I’m not staring down at them—and at his nearness to them.

He fastens the last snap and steps back.

The harness is loose in my shoulders.

Biting down on his toothpick again, he unsnaps one of the shoulder straps and refastens it on the next snap up. His whole forearm is pressed against my chest while he forces the snap into place.

“Cold?” he asks.

Shit. It’s totally noticeable. I feel less cold now that embarrassment is coursing down in waves from my skull.

Without waiting for an answer, he says, “You can throw on a jacket while I get the camera ready.”

Which reminds me of that image I had in my head. “What about your jacket?” I say. “It’d go with the straps. You could do a photo where I’m taking off the jacket, revealing the harness underneath.”

“If you think it’ll look good.”

Next thing I know, he’s handing me his jacket, its lining still warm from his body. I pull it on, breathing in its smell as it settles on my shoulders. The sleeves are the right length, the cuffs worn bare in spots along the edges. Some of the stitching is starting to unravel.

“Doesn’t look too bad on you,” he says, returning with a digital camera.

“I wouldn’t mind getting one myself.”

“Hit up the thrift stores. No point in spending a couple hundred dollars on a new one.”

“Maybe after I get rich off modeling bondage gear.”

He tongues the toothpick into the corner of his mouth and smiles.

“It doesn’t look stupid, does it? The harness on me?”

“No more stupid than it’d look on a mannequin. Come here where the light is.”

He tries to take a photo standing with the backs of his legs jammed against his desk, but he’s too close. He shoves some tools aside and climbs onto the desk, crouching with his backside against the window.

That’ll make an interesting view from outside.

“Slide the jacket off more.”

I had it just coming off my shoulders. I let it slip to my elbows. “How do you want me to stand?”

“Like a mannequin, I guess.”

I bend my arms, flattening my hands.

“Maybe more like a casual mannequin.”

The shutter clicks while I’m in the middle of rolling my shoulders, trying to relax.

“Okay, turn a little bit,” he says. “Not that much, just a little angle.” Watching the camera’s display, he says, “Yeah, there. That’s good.” The camera clicks again.

I say, “The other side too?”

“Why not? Take the jacket off first, though.”

I lob it toward his bed before turning the other way. Without the jacket, I don’t know what to do with my hands.

“Don’t put your hands in your pockets,” he says. “It makes your shoulders poke up. Just let your arms hang.” Click, click. “Try putting them behind you.”

I grasp my forearms behind my back and turn a little again. As Derek snaps away, I study what’s taped to his walls: printouts of roads, all of them from the point of view of someone driving down them. Mountain roads, desert roads, roads banked by tall fields. “Places you want to ride?” I ask.

He glances over. “It makes for a nice escape when the chemical equations are starting to blur together.”

I haven’t hung my Black Angels poster yet. It’s rolled up in the back of my locker, as if, after the Skip incident, I don’t want to make myself comfortable. Like that’s the final piece to slot in and turn everything to shit. I love that fucking poster, though. Only concert I’ve ever been to, and I had to lie to go.

“What bands do you listen to?” I ask when he tells me to turn around and drop my arms so he can get a shot of my back.

“I used to listen to a lot of metal in high school,” he says. “Slipknot, Devil Wears Prada, that sort of thing. You know, like everyone else. But now I go for the Doors, Hendrix, Floyd. The Stones.” I hear him hop down from the desk, but he hasn’t said he’s done, so I stay where I am.

“Yeah, I had my Slipknot phase too.”

He touches my back, lightly, near my shoulder blade, tracing the line of an old scar.

“What phase are you in now?” he asks.

“New stuff that sounds like old stuff.” I smile a little, nervously, not that he can see from behind.

What’s going to happen next? A light breath against the back of my neck? The touch of lips?

What am I going to do if that happens?

My dick is uncurling inside my jeans, making this all the more confusing.

I say, “You know, like the Black Angels, Hookworms, Allah-Las.”

“Never heard of them. I can Photoshop this out.” His thumb and finger frame the scar. “Not that I think people will care, but the less identifying information the better, especially if you want to get a real job someday.”

“Yeah, I’m sure my future employer will be image-searching the Internet for people with small scars on their backs to see if he can uncover my nefarious past.” I turn, and Derek is plugging his camera into his laptop. The sunlight sets the edges of his hair on fire. I feel warm.

Almost affectionate.

And Derek, without lifting his head, says, “What’s it from?”

“Stupid human tricks.” It’s a relief to have something to babble about. A relief, also, that his back is turned. As I unsnap the harness, I say, “Jamie, Taylor, and I built this amazing jump for our bikes. I won rock-paper-scissors for first crack at it. I ride at full speed, and I’m flying through the air—wondering where the fuck my bike went. I landed on my shoulders and slid across the asphalt on my back.”

“Ouch.”

“Ruined a good shirt
and
a good bike. By the time I got home from the ER, my dad had already hauled it to the dump. I loved that fucking bike.” I’d ridden it everywhere for three years. It was banged up in all the right places—before the jump, I mean. It just felt right when I threw my leg over it.

“Guess you let someone else go first next time you built an awesome jump.” He pulls the cord from his computer and kicks his chair out so he can sit down.

“There wasn’t any next time.” I lay the harness on Derek’s bed.

“No more jumps?”

“No more bike.”

“What, your parents didn’t let you get another bike?”

“Oh no, they’d have let me. I just had to save up for it, since I was the one who fucked it up. They even came up with chores I could do to help earn the money. But by the time I had it together, it was February, and who’s thinking of bikes in February? I bought a stereo.”

“Convenient timing,” Derek says, clicking through photos.

I walk up behind him, looking at myself standing stiffly on screen, pretending—not very well—to strip off Derek’s jacket.

“What do you mean?” I ask.

He shakes his head.

“It’s a good thing you’re taking my head out of the photos.” I look down at him. “You’re still doing that, right?”

He laughs. “No, I was going to remove the scar but leave your face intact.”

I clasp his chair, my knuckles nudging the soft cotton of his T-shirt. “Just checking.” I can smell the warmth coming off him, from his ride, from the sun beating through the window.

“Anyway,” he says, “you look fine.”

“Think they’ll work, though?”

“Can’t hurt to try. Like you said, if it doesn’t sell, I’m not out anything. I think I like this one the best. And that first one of the back of the harness. I’ll touch it up a little in Photoshop—”

“Give me some pecs and chest hair?”

He smiles and clicks the file name to edit it. “I think the twink angle will work just fine.” He types in
twink_harness_front.jpg
. “Let’s get this up and see how it does.”

“Good luck.” I watch him start to brush out the scar on my back. It’s neat, but not that exciting after the first minute. I head over to my side of the room and pull my shirt back on. I hope the harness sells, so we can move on to other products—and make more money. At five bucks a pop, how many sales would it take to get a guitar? I work out the math in my head.

Shit.

I might need to lower my guitar expectations. I drop onto the bed and drag my laptop over. “Did it sell yet?”

“Ten of them,” he says. “And I got an offer for the model too. Guy wants to know if I’d let you go for ten bucks. I’m thinking of taking it.”

“I get half,” I say.

“I’m gonna go grab some chow.” He has his jacket thrown over his shoulder.

“I just ate,” I say. I wait till he’s past me before looking up, and I watch him head out into the hall, the door falling closed behind him.

Google’s on my screen, the cursor blinking in the search box. I type in
twink
, wondering just how much of an insult it is.

An attractive, boyish-looking young man.

Well, I’ll take “attractive” and “young man,” at least.

Maybe if I get my grades up, I could get my guitar here and use the modeling money for a real amp. All I’ve got is this piece of shit plastic thing the size of a lunch box. First sign of trouble: it runs on a nine-volt battery.
“It’s a Fender,”
my mother had said, beaming as I’d turned the box over in my hands. Second sign of trouble: the box it came in was pale pink. My dad had said,
“Fender makes excellent products.”

Maybe they do, but this particular product tended to get drowned out by the flushing of a toilet down the hall. The irony was that when I’d opened the box, they’d said,
“You won’t want a big amp when you go off to college. You won’t have a lot of room for belongings in the dorm. And you don’t want to disturb the other people on your floor when they’re trying to study.”
And here I am at college, but where was the piece of shit amp?

Two hundred miles away.

Chapter Seven

After a demoralizing morning dealing with Econ 101, I grab lunch and head back to my room, coming through the door at the same time that Derek comes out of his side of the room with his jacket on.

“You have your helmet,” I say. “You’re going somewhere.”

“Are you practicing to be a narrator?”

“No. I want to see your bike.”

“Okay.”

Grinning, I drop my takeout bag and follow Derek outside. The sky’s flat and gray. A few dead leaves stir on the sidewalk. I don’t care—I’m going to see a motorcycle.

“You want to do something later?” Derek asks.

Almost bouncing on my toes, I say, “Sure, what?”

“Something that doesn’t involve studying for a change.” He gives a quick glance for traffic before stepping into the street.

“Do you play foosball?” I ask.

“I have.”

“Cool.” We head into a parking lot. Despite the gray, the weather’s not bad. I have my jacket unzipped, and I’m actually feeling a little sweaty in the armpits from waiting for my food in the stuffy café. We come around a row of cars, and the motorcycle parking area comes into view. “Which one’s yours?”

“The Virago.” Not helpful. He pulls on his helmet, sliding the visor up before fastening the strap under his chin.

We stride past some sport bikes with their red and blue fairings, and a couple of Hondas with no plastic at all.

“Virago,” he says as he takes hold of the handgrip on a black-and-chrome bike with a long seat that ends in a sissy bar. He swings his leg over, and my muscles twitch with a ghost feeling of what that’s like.

I run a hand over the nearest handlebar. This bike is sexy as fuck. “What year?”

“Eighty-six.”

“Shit. Almost a decade older than I am.”

He pulls the bike off its stand. With a crank, it roars to life. I step back, letting my fingers slip from the chrome. Shit, that is a nice-looking bike. With another rev, he flips the visor down, making him inscrutable, a stranger almost. He touches the helmet with two fingers before pulling away, his boots lifting onto the pegs as he rides out of the lot.

He slows at the entrance, for traffic. The engine revs, and then he’s gone.

What I wouldn’t give for a bike. And a leather jacket. And the freedom to do whatever the fuck I want without have to face the Spanish Inquisition.

I head back to the dorm, stomach growling.

* * * *

I’m sitting on the bed listening to the Black Angels, my head tipped against Derek’s locker, my eyes closed, my palms resting on my knees. My poster is Blu-Tacked to the locker, just above my head. It’s been rolled up long enough that the ends resist staying flat, and I worry it’s going to spring free and fall, but if it does, I’ll just pound it back up with the side of my fist.

I sense the door opening and flip my eyelids up. Derek comes in, and the first place his gaze goes is the poster.