When
Gay Nerds Attack©
Savants
We christened him Otto last Friday night when, after bong-hits and WOW in his basement bedroom, Jimmy Lawrence gathered us close to lay witness to a miracle.
“I can suck myself,” Jimmy said. It was a non-sequitur, of course, and being pretty much wasted, Diego, Crispin, and I just looked at each other and shrugged. We took great pride in not making sense. If nothing really mattered, we reasoned, nobody got hurt.
“America’s Got Talent!” Jimmy declared, waving to an imaginary crowd. “So eat your heart out, Susan Boyle.”
“What the fuck are you babbling about?” Crispin asked, pulling himself up from his comfortable stupor.
“Yeah, what the fuck?” said Diego, who suffers from echolalia.
Jimmy explained: “The other day in A.P. Bio we’re talking about savants – you know, those blind retards that can play Chopin even though they can’t wipe their own asses? Dr. Lupis says something cryptic like, “God giveth and He taketh away.” Then Golden Boy winks at Melanie Deaton, whispers: “I think He forgot about us.” Then that kid they call Larry the Laxer tells G.B. he can write backwards, like in a mirror, and the floodgates open. Tiffany-Amber Schwartz confesses that when she listens to Conor Oberst, she sees landscapes. Tae-Ho Park, he hasn’t said anything since 6th grade, and all of a sudden, he’s chanting: “3.1415926535 . . . ” Says he’s the Supreme Pi-Master. He’s got it down to 76 places. Turns out the whole class is fucking savants.”
“Shit, Jimmy, I can add numbers in my head. I could probably beat your goddamn TI-84 Plus. What’s the biggie?” Crispin said, never the one to be undone.
“I can rap in Spanish,” added Diego.
“Fellas: Tiffany-Amber is confused. She’s not actually a savant. She’s just got a little case of synaesthesia. Like that British guy who tastes bacon fat whenever he says his girlfriend’s name.” This was my contribution to the discourse, since having webbed toes on my left foot didn’t qualify as memorable, and in this room, at least, neither did my stratospheric PSAT score nor the merely inescapable truth that I’m both nerd and faggot, an endangered species if ever there was one, except with these guys, who have known me all my life and somehow let it slide.
“You know everything, Remy. That should get you to the second round.” The guys like to grow big off me. I don’t care.
Jimmy was not about to be distracted. “News flash, news flash! I can suck myself. I can suck my own dick. You guys know you can’t even come close.” Crispin and Diego both look at me to see how I intend to play off a gambit unlike any we’ve heard before. I can’t think of a single snappy rejoinder.
“You think I’m kidding?” Jimmy pushed, seemingly all-in on the flop.
Crispin finally pushed back. “No, Jimmy. We don’t think you’re kidding. We think you’re disgusting.”
“The technical term is auto-fellatio,” Jimmy continued. “It’s not disgusting. It’s amazing. It’s just not really marketable.”
“Auto,” Crispin intoned. “Automobile. Automatic. Autonomic.”
“Otto. Otto von Bismark. Otto Preminger. You Otto be in pictures.” Diego is brilliant, but orthographically challenged.
“Otto Fellatio. There’s one for the movie.” Crispin was obsessed with porn monikers. “He’s gonna work with Gregory Pecker and Jenna Thalia.”
“Dudes. You’re not listening.”
And precisely at this moment I knew it was going to happen, that here in the same room where we once played with Transformers, he was going to show us how he could suck his own dick. I knew as well that I was going to be fascinated, that I would be taking the image home with me to replay at midnight. And I knew that Jimmy Lawrence would forever thereafter be known as Otto – a wink and a nod to certain truths we have always imagined belonged only to us.
I’ll give Jimmy credit: the moment is so expertly choreographed that he shuts us up, silences the jokes he had to know we’d be making.
Just like that, he gets naked. Of course we’ve all seen him naked before, but always in context, etiquette and fear negating any possibility of psychic distress. I mean, I love the unidentified naked boys of my dreams (wood sprites and running backs in equal measure) – something tells me this goes with being gay – but I have always turned away from the nakedness of my three best friends. They’re my friends, after all, and to stare with desire would be a deal-killer. Simply wrong. Like eating your pet or torching a church. For the moment, however, I have clearance, and my eyes can seal the moment in amber.
Jimmy is skinny like Jesus, all bones and ridges and sinew. His pale skin glows in the half-light. The wine-stain birthmark on his upper thigh looks like Italy unattached from the rest of Europe. For the moment, his dick – the one he intends to ingest – remains limp and blameless, but his brown nipples are hard as pencil erasers. I have no idea what the others are thinking, but even though nothing has happened yet, I’m starting to sweat and my balls have shrunk back into the inguinal canal. It’s all too weird. Words have fled to higher ground.
Jimmy sighs and stretches like a swimmer. Crispin twitches, transfixed. Diego looks like he wants to go home. Me, I’m touching myself. I’m leaking in the still heat.
He plants his butt on his desk chair and spreads his legs. His dick starts to swell on its own. Gravity grabs his circumcised glans and it falls like a pink plum on a fragile branch over the chair’s edge. Jimmy’s got a man-sized dick, an honest seven inches, but he’s not a freak, not even the biggest among us. And knowing what I do about vectors, angles, and the frankly unattainable, I’m not seeing it.
Suddenly, Jimmy has bent over himself. His ribs appear to have folded like lawn chairs. He grabs the underside of his knees and pulls his legs up towards his chest. He’s alone in his reverie. Jimmy is willing time to stop.
His tongue darts out, flits and flickers an inch above his dickhead, a nectar-seeking hummingbird. Crispin laughs in the background, but I don’t think he finds any of this particularly funny. Jimmy’s tongue attacks again, and this time it seems as if his dick rises another inch to meet it. He tautens his tongue and jackhammers it into the pee-hole. This time, his lips descend around the glans, clamp for a few seconds, then slowly pull back. They descend again, taking in another inch. He holds this position for an agonizing instant, then releases. His dick is slimy with saliva and pre-cum. A strand hangs obscenely from his chin. Right now, there is nobody else in the room with Jimmy.
He bobs effortlessly, alternating speeds. I understand now that this is how he pleasures himself, and I wonder for an instant what might happen to our species if we could all administer such exquisite blow jobs to ourselves. I know for a fact I wouldn’t get any homework done.
“I’m cumming,” Jimmy says a minute later. He sits up, grabs his glistening dick, pumps, squeezes, and fires one, two three, four ropy globs onto the floor at his feet. “Fuck,” he says. “Fuck,” he wheezes. The bigger the explosion, the less there is to say.
“Oh my God, Jimmy,” says Crispin. “That was nasty. Heinous.”
“Sick,” adds the human echo. “That’s just. That’s just wrong.”
No, I want to tell them. Not wrong, but beautiful. Magnificent. I want to say, “Jimmy, that was so hot!” I want to offer him my own dick, let him work his magic. Then I remember that I’m gay and they’re not – despite what we’ve all just witnessed.
“We have proof,” I say, hoping I sound unimpressed. “You are officially a savant, Jimmy. I mean, Otto.”
Something there is that doesn’t love a wall. Mrs. Margolis is a good teacher, but she’s a victim of age and a class full of underachieving lint-pickers. She’s in her late fifties, a grandmother already, and despite her best efforts to engage us, we reject her – not aggressively, as in “you suck, bitch,” but by ignoring her. That wants it torn down. She thinks that because we are the smart kids, we’ll follow her to whatever practiced epiphanies she can draw out of this poem about two New Hampshire dudes rebuilding a fence. We sit there, determined to outlast her, to force her to make every one of her questions rhetorical and therefore meaningless. She deserves better, I think, so I raise my hand. Crispin and Diego shake their heads almost imperceptibly. No, Remy. This is why they hate us. The Triplets – their own best argument for cloning – sigh with epic disdain at my faux pas. No After-Prom invitation for you, dork, they’re telling me.
“Yes, Remy.”
“I’m wondering where we’d be without walls,” I say.
“Go on.”
“Where would I hang my paintings? Imagine living in a house without walls. How awkward would that be?”
“So you agree, Remy: good fences do make good neighbors?” This happens more than it should, me and Mrs. Margolis speed dating. But I can’t help it. I have an inquiring mind. I need to know.
“Not exactly. I just mean that we’d all feel pretty naked if we knocked down the walls between us.” I can hear a little burble of laughter: the word “naked” has that effect.
“Metaphorically, you mean?” Mrs. Margolis presses the issue.
“Pretty much. But think about it: shouldn’t we be grateful that we can step behind a wall to change clothes?” There’s a buzz behind me as the sleepy crowd comes to life. Three rows over, Crispin is smiling, no doubt imagining the Triplets naked without a wall to stand behind.
“Oh my God, Remy. You’re so literal,” says Jessica Triplet.
“Mrs. Margolis, Remy just wants to perv things up,” adds Brittany Triplet.
“Inez, dear, I think I can handle this.” Brittany’s real name is Inez. Her parents couldn’t have known.
Lindsay Triplet, directly behind me, kicks the back of my desk. “Faggot,” I hear, though it could have been forget it.
“Mrs. Margolis. What would we see if we tore down your walls? And the Triplets’?” I’m feeling it, digging that familiar hole and jumping right in. “Face it. We all build walls, thick walls out of lies. We really don’t want anyone to see us naked.”
That word again. More titters – a far funnier word if you ask me.
“I don’t want to see you naked, Remy, that’s for sure.” Darwin Pyle, shooting over the zone from the back of the room. Darwin Pyle, a hemorrhoid in sweatpants, should not talk, but then again, he’s been the butt and belly of jokes from the moment he waddled into Ms. Summers’ class at Bryant Elementary, 190 pounds of fifth grader.
“Mirror, Darwin. Mirror,” is all I can think of at the moment, knowing that smart as he is, he won’t know what I’m getting at. This boy just needs a bigger wall than most.
“Gentlemen. This has probably gone far enough. I see your point, Remy. Now, let’s look at this last image: like an old stone savage armed. What is Frost suggesting here?” Mrs. Margolis has always been good with the band-aids.
Later, in the hall between classes, Diego calls me puto maricón and tells me that he doesn’t like my chances for a long life. Somehow I understand that this is his way of saying that he has my back.
In case you haven’t already guessed, I’m a virgin. Given my social standing and my contrarian urges, this hardly qualifies as news. And like most 16 year-old virgins, I consider my virginity a curse, a crime against my humanity – just not such a compelling injustice that I’m willing to come down from the cross to rectify matters.
I do masturbate, however. Incessantly. I beat my meat. I spank the monkey. I bash the bishop. I polish the knob. I take my dick on wild adventures. Oh, the places we’ve been. Oh, the boys we’ve been with. Oh, the things that we’ve done together. Behind locked doors in a room – with walls – so plain and so sexless the Holy Father himself would be bored.
I’ve been rude. Please allow me to introduce myself. My name is Michael Remy St. Pierre Delorme IV. A lot of name for a little fella to carry around, I suppose, but one should never blame parents for having great expectations. I’m a junior at Caulfield High, one of those suburban compounds renowned for producing Merit Scholars, Nobel Laureates, and windfalls for local cosmetic surgeons. 3200 of America’s best and brightest attend Caulfield, and I’m probably smarter than 3199 of them. Of course it matters not to me: I told Diego once that I’d sacrifice 20 IQ points if I could dunk a basketball, and all he said was, “you’d still be Remy, you’d still be annoying, you’d still be too fucking smart for your own good, and you’d still be a butt pirate.”
What I didn’t tell Diego was that I’d chuck 40 more points just to have a boyfriend, and I’d drop out of school altogether for a shot at being in love.
I’m looking in the mirror and I sort of like what I see. Late to puberty, I am definitely not the chiseled Adonis of Nifty-porn. I’m 5’ 8” and I weigh 123 pounds; if you went looking for a six-pack, you’d come up about four cans short. And, no, I don’t have “bedroom eyes that could melt the polar ice cap.” But I am, well, clean and pretty. Androgynous. My mother is a portrait artist and she tells me I have perfect ears, an observation that hasn’t exactly made me the talk of the town. And she’s always yammering about how this golden light burns through my dark eyes. Fuck it all, I’ve been staring at myself for years, and I have no idea what I really look like. A suburban gypsy, perhaps. A sad-eyed clown. Narcissus taking it all in. Something like that.
I’m looking in the mirror and I sort of like what I see. There’s some girl in me, yes, in my pale skin, my long eyelashes, my hairless legs, and my perpetually bruised smile. There’s some girl in the vase of flowers on the dresser behind me and there’s some girl in the books that fill the shelves. But girls don’t have boners like the one I’m growing now.
And I really like my dick, soft or hard. I know everything about it. I’ve memorized its contours with my fingers, traced the veins that line the shaft, discovered those special pressure points that drive it wild. I know exactly what it likes to do. Hey everybody, say hello to my little friend!
It’s actually quite long and surprisingly heavy – and it looks even longer on my seventh grader’s body. At the moment, in the fullness of desire, it arcs out into space like a vaulter’s pole. I clench my glutes and make it bob. I swivel my hips and it propellers. I know I can make myself cum without touching it, but that strikes me as a cold communion.
My foreskin won’t retract without a little assistance. I peel back the white sheath to reveal an enormous bing-cherry going maraschino, pulsating and slick with desire. It’s so sensitive I can barely touch it without wincing. It’s so sensitive I have to touch it or I’ll scream. I think I’ve come to understand why men will walk through fire in search of the perfect orgasm, and why, when we get there, we wonder if this is what it’s like to die.
I close my eyes for a few seconds and I am transported. A face appears, a boy’s face, a familiar composite of every cute blond TV kid who ever went through puberty in primetime, except that this boy is utterly naked and comically well-endowed. He presses up against me, kisses me, drills his tongue into my tonsils. He spins me around, grabs my ass, and spreads my cheeks. I’m gonna fuck you hard, he whispers from behind, my little anime darling suddenly morphing into Kiefer Sutherland. He’s rubbing three-day stubble against my nape and purring like a leopard. Then I feel his fifty dollar foot-long tearing through my love canal, and I think to myself: what a wonderful world! I’m being fucked and I’m loving it.
When I open my eyes, I realize that Kiefer’s gone, and that it’s just two well-lubed fingers doing the job. While my left hand is busy massaging my sphincter, my right is pumping away. I pull my foreskin all the way back, my exposed knob ripening to magenta as I tease the frenulum; I take the return voyage slowly, pausing to absorb every little bump along the way. I close my eyes again, hoping the boy comes back, but it’s too late, I’m too far gone. My tummy rumbles, my legs quiver, my balls retract, and as I release about six thick seismic blasts, I nearly pass out. I breathe deeply, trying to regain balance. A glob of cum has puddled in the pucker of foreskin bunched over the head of my shrinking dick. The world is getting small again, and for an instant I think I’m going to cry. I can’t understand why I feel so sad after a such a glorious wank.
Once I caught Oprah talking to all these gay kids who’d been cast out by their parents. Opes trained her big ol’ Bambi eyes on this one boy – central-casting emo dude who looked strangely like Kim Kardashian after a particularly rough night – and asked, her voice honeyed with compassion, “are you hoping for a reconciliation?”
It occurs to me as I shove a piece of toast in my mouth, say goodbye to my little brother Antoine, and run out to Crispin’s Audi, that I have never had to reconcile with anybody. My mom was born without edges. Last year when I told her I thought I was gay, she said, “That’s wonderful, pumpkin,” then asked if I wouldn’t be a sweetheart and freshen her drink. Nothing but love in her eyes.
My dad, the litigator, was similarly unfazed. “Remy, you are who you are. If it matters, I’ve known since you were seven. Remember that castle you built in your room at the beach house? You had kings and princes and vassals galore, but I don’t recall a single lady in the mix. It was about the gayest castle I’d ever seen. Look, I didn’t love you any less then, and I’m not about to stop loving you just because you’ve put a label on your feelings.” I’m guessing I won’t be on Oprah anytime soon, unless they’re doing a segment on well-adjusted families and the biker-chicks that stalk them.
“’Sup, Rem. Where were you yesterday, anyway? I texted you like 35 times.”
“I don’t know. What’d I miss?”
“Otto got GTA: Chinatown. Diego claims he hooked up with Tiffany-Amber. I’m thinking of ordering a Sarah Palin blow-up doll. Just kidding, of course.”
“Same old same old?”
“Pretty much. But not quite. We’ve got new neighbors. The McMansion on the corner that got foreclosed. I saw the movers unloading Saturday. Mom says they’re Brits. I wouldn’t trust her, though. She’s a raving monarchist. Cried for a week when Princess Di died. Di Died. That’s funny.”
“Cool. Any scenery?” Sometimes Crispin calls it “talent.” For the things he likes, for the girls who power his dreams, he’s always got a special lexicon. Sometimes he goes for the polysyllabic: pulchritude or seraphim. He’s big on mythology, too, calls the Triplets Artemis, Eurydice, and Clytemnestra – only he pronounces the first syllable like that little love button he longs to diddle. Just never girls, or God forbid, pussy.
“Well, since you ask, no. But there’s a dude. Homo erectus, my GLBT pal.”
“Shut up, Crispy. You know that would violate the neighborhood covenant.” Sometimes I wish he were a little more homophobic. The game would be easier.
“I saw him, you know. In the flesh, as it were.”
“Who?” I don’t feel like playing along.
“Nigel. Clive. Graham. The Brit. He’s a bleedin’ poof, Remy, I just know it. Bloody wanker. And he’s tres, tres chaud, mon petit prince. BF material in the biggest way.”
“Yeah. Sure. Nigel, my ass.”
“That’s what I’m saying, dude: Nigel and your ass. It’s a match made in heaven.”
“Whatever.” He probably can’t hear it, but there’s a catch in my throat. My life is pretty easy, I know, but sometimes I wish I was less of a punch line.
“Hey, dude. Just shittin’. Just shittin.”
Crispin’s okay. For a heterosexual.
I do not as a matter of course shower at school. There’s plenty of hot water at home and a door I can lock. Okay, so if my family moves to China and we have to bathe en masse as part of some local custom, I guess I’ll have to adjust. Now reason is forever stepping in to dispute this silliness, but then I think of who I am and what I want so badly to do, and how it all seems to come from this part of me that refuses to listen, this inconsequential part of me that hangs so beautifully and so terribly between my legs.
It’s 2:15. Last period just started, and circumstances have mandated that I skip it. As we walked back from our ritual Friday Chipotle lunch, Jimmy beckoned me over to see something in his hand, then shoved me over a suddenly-kneeling Crispin – the oldest trick in the Loser’s Handbook, a copy of which I obviously never received. At any rate, I tumbled ass-backwards into a perfectly positioned puddle left by earlier rains. They were crazed with laughter. I laughed, too, of course, because not to laugh would signal defeat. So, muddy, wet, and embarrassed, I had no choice but to find the dreaded shower room in the Parker Athletic Center. I’d bag my dirty clothes and wear home the sweats I keep in my locker.
I am alone. The hot spray feels amazing. My skin sings. The nerves along my spine seem to jump out of their casings. I wonder briefly how water beads and soap lathers, and I let myself imagine for an instant that sex must be like this, sensation to the ninth power, a surrender of logic to the whip of desire. The 45 seconds I planned have stretched to five minutes. I’m tingling at the core, and only that vestigial modesty keeps me from sprouting the biggest boner of my career.
Then, suddenly, I’m not alone. Another shower is turned on across the room. The occupant coughs up a wad of phlegm and hawks it God-knows-where. I’ve still got my back to the interloper when he starts to sing “I want your ugly, I want your disease” in a key not even Lady Gaga could contrive. So I turn around to face the music.
The soloist is El Sid. Sid-Freakin’-Vicious. I’m ten feet away from the Prince of Darkness, who apparently has also fallen in a puddle or is also skipping last period to bathe. I can’t run and I can’t hide, so I say, as matter-of-factly as I can manage, as if it’s the most normal thing in the world for the Dork and the Devil Incarnate to meet naked in the shower:
“What’s up, Sid?”
He declines the opportunity to chat. He’s chuckling, but there’s no light or laughter in his beady eyes, eyes that do not remove themselves for one decent second from my person, my naked person. I look down, inexplicably shamed. As I raise my eyes, I see that Sid is covered with fur, a forest uninterrupted by firebreaks of white skin. He keeps staring. I turn off the shower, grab my towel, and vow never again to return.
Understand this: Sidney Weisenthal is an anomaly. Sui generis, in fact. The most dangerous Jewish kid ever: part Son of Sam, part Bugsy Siegel, part Rottweiler, and all motherfucking menace to society. Rumor is he got an AK-47 for his Bar Mitzvah. Rumor is that, instead of going to Music Camp or playing American Legion, he trained with Mossad in the Golan Heights.
If Sid decides that you’re worth ignoring, you’ve got nothing to worry about. There’s peace in the neighborhood. But if for some reason Sid decides otherwise – you might as well face it: your ticket is punched. You will suffer. You may not die – after all, this is Caulfield High, not some killing field in Kandahar – but you may wish you had.
Sid has resources to match his reputation. One day Trent Jameson was in my A.P. Bio class; the next, they found his body in a dumpster behind the Wal-Mart. Just kidding, of course – though the next time I did see Trent he was wearing a St. Bart’s letterman’s jacket. By way of explanation he said something about Catholic schools and early admission to the Ivy’s, but the way he kept surveying the scene like some security guard on Black Friday, I felt the dark, hairy presence of Sid Vicious around the corner. I’d heard the stories: Trent at a party. Trent, loud, drunk, ambitious. Trent hooking up with the lovely Rachel Milstein in a back bedroom. Then Sid, appearing magically at the door, the Angel of Vengeance. Rachel screaming. Sid, expressionless, coming out of the bedroom with Trent. Neither boy saying anything, making their way through a sea of slack-jawed spectators, then out the door into the night.
Sid got rid of Trent. I don’t know how, but I’m guessing he made the pretty boy an offer he couldn’t refuse.
I’ve slipped on my sweats and am bundling my wet clothes, when I hear that voice again, high and nasal, not at all like one might imagine coming from him, the voice of a TV grizzly or the lead singer of Mastodon. His phrasing is part hip-hop and part Flatbush, as if he’s spent a lifetime studying the Hughes brothers’ movies.
“You need a mohel,” he says. “My father can set you up. He knows fuckin’ everybody. Randy, right?”
“Remy.” I have no idea what he’s telling me I need, but I could swear he’s recruiting me for one of his covert ops. He’s blocking my exit with all 220 pounds. A bouncer in reverse, arms folded against his massive chest. The towel wrapped around his waist conceals a heavy lump.
“Yeah. Remy. Whatever. Listen, it’ll hurt for a bit, I guess, but fuck, you got to get rid of that anteater.”
Now I’m really confused. I’m pretty sure I’m the smart one in this transaction, but I’m missing a key concept. Moles and anteaters? Maybe he’s got me mixed up with one of those Science Fair kids.
“Your dick, Diddy. Your putz. Your schlong. Your baby-maker, Batman.! It’s unclean. You’re violating the covenant. You’ll never get a chick to chow down on your unit with all that skin.”
Clarity. Sidney Wiesenthal would prefer that I were circumcised. A mohel would be the dude with the scalpel. The anteater is my penis – my occasional nemesis and constant delight. I don’t think it looks like an anteater at all, but Sid sees it how Sid sees it. If I could think of anything meaningful to say, trust me, I’d give it a go, but what do you say to a guy who’s telling you to cut off your foreskin? In any case, I don’t want to talk about my dick with Sid Vicious – even if there’s no way out. It’s mine, and I like it the way it is, thank you very much – which is what I should say, being honest and all, but instead I go there, back to the danger zone, that place of no return that Diego and my friends say will deliver me to an early grave.
“And you need a waxing, Sidney. My mother can set you up. She knows fucking everybody. It’ll hurt for . . . ”
In the movies, it happens in a flash, the drama, then the blood. In the empty locker room at Caulfield High, it builds, the pauses groaning under the weight of inevitability. Words hit harder than punches, if only because one from a guy like Sid who knows what he’s doing and I will crumble senseless to the floor.
“That was quite unnecessary,” Sid says, the accent suddenly gone, and though his words are civilized, even dainty, I know I’m going to be punished. Bully meets wiseass – a staple of literature, a classic. “Quite unnecessary.”
“It was necessary, Sid. You gave me no choice. I mean, my dick isn’t any of your goddamn business.”
“It’s ugly. It truly disgusts me. Look, Randy, my people are clean. I’m just being an environmental activist. Just helping a goyishe friend.”
“Go fuck your hairy self, Sid. Come on. This is all too stupid.” I make a move to squeeze past him, to catch him off guard. Nope. He grabs me by the shoulders like the proverbial rag doll and bangs me up against the locker. He’s not really hurting me – or maybe adrenaline is masking the pain – but I do wonder if when he pulls the trigger they’ll find me complicit in my own death.
“I offered some friendly advice. You chose not to take it and you chose, instead, to mock me. I had no quarrel with you except with your dirty fucking turtleneck dick, then you go all infidel on me. I am charged with exterminating the infidel.” Now he’s having fun. If I had at least one foot on the ground, I might be having fun, too. For an instant I think that I’ll kick off his towel, that naked he might somehow be neutralized.
“I’m not the infidel, fur-ball. Let me go.” I’m saying shit I shouldn’t say, I know, but humiliation seems to have sharpened my conscience and dulled my synapses.
“Feisty motherfucker! You’ll make a good little soldier once we get you clean.” He’s found a couple of pressure points and against all better judgment, I’m starting to yelp.
“Goddamnit, Sid. Let me down!” Bang goes my head against locker #453. Out go my legs. Down goes the towel. “Go pick on a fucking terrorist, you hairy Jewboy sack of shit!” Hairy Jewboy sack of shit? I don’t say stuff like that, not even when I’m being threatened with extermination. My mom would kill me.
“Not cool,” says Sid. “Not cool.” The smile is gone. It won’t be today and it won’t be tomorrow, but I understand that I’ve just sealed an unfortunate fate. “Never forget,” he says in what sounds more like prayer than menace. “Never forget.” It’s not just about me, I realize. To Sid, I’ve become the unlikely avatar of a whole wicked history.
He lets go, picks up the towel, shakes his head, and adds a benediction: “See you around.”
Jimmy and Crispin apologize on the ride home. I accept without hesitation, mutter something about “once burned.” What’s a little mud between friends, anyway? Besides, being muddy isn’t as troublesome as being dead. Mud washes off.
“You a’ight, Remy?” Jimmy knows something’s bugging me.
“Not so much.”
“Out with it,” Crispin commands.
“Sid.”
“Sid?”
“Weisenthal.”
“What you got to do with Sid Vicious, homes?” There’s alarm in the question, totem power in the utterance of a name.
“I don’t know. I pissed him off. Inadvertently punished the motherfucker.”
“What exactly did you say, Remy?” Crispin knows my Tourette’s better than anybody. “Oh my God, Rem, what did you say? Just walk on by, dude. That’s always been the plan, right? That’s how to survive in Sidville.”
“Too late.” Suddenly, I don’t want to talk about it.
“Jesus, Remoulade. You know better. Don’t poke the anthill. Don’t mess with the wasp’s nest. Sid only fucks with those who fuck with him. He’s like AIDS. There’s protection. You don’t have to get it.” Crispin is quite the moralist when he wants to be, but I guess he means well. At this point, everybody’s telling me what to do, and I don’t have the energy to do any of it.
“Look, Cripsy. I’ll figure something out. No sense getting you and Jimmy mixed up in it.”
“Hey, we’ve got your back, dude,” Jimmy states with convincing sobriety. But they don’t. They can’t. They live in a Call of Duty world. The soundtrack may be rough and metallic, the ordnance is always unerring, but the death is only temporary.
“Thanks, guys. I mean it. But I’ll think of something. I’m an idiot, but I’ll think of something.”
“Trent Jameson? Lee Hardesty? God. What did you say, Remy?”
“He’s got guns, Rem.”
“Hey, Crispy? Can we let it go? I’ll figure something out. Whatever it is he’s planning to do won’t happen tonight and it won’t happen at Caulfield. He’ll find me at his convenience.”
The lads are hushed. They may even be scared. It’s always been a big game for them, and I’m guessing this whole mess smacks too much of the reality we’ve managed for so long to avoid.
I get out of the Audi and bid them a surprisingly cheerful farewell. Jimmy asks if I want to play Halo online. Crispy says his mom’s made a lasagna. There’s a party at Sylvie’s Saturday night, he adds. It’s Make-A-Wish time for Remy.
“Man, Sid is so fucking hairy,” I say, apropos of nothing. “Wall-to-wall shag, dudes. Never seen anything like it.”
For Every Drop of Rain That Falls
I want a hug from Mom – we hug a lot in the Delorme household – but I need solitude and sanctuary even more, so it’s good she’s still at work and Antoine is still huffing glue or whatever the little fella does at his afterschool program. I head straight upstairs and close the bedroom door behind me.
Ordinarily when I talk to myself, good points get made and questions get answered. Of course that’s because I set the agenda with unapologetic self-interest. I’m both teacher and student, young Alexander at Aristotle’s knee.
Not so this afternoon. My mind is a mess. I replay the whole weird scene with Sid, and find myself alternately smiling and gritting my teeth. I tell myself I could get my dick cut and show Sid and wear a yarmulke and eschew bacon – and live happily ever after, maybe even buy an Uzi and head out to the Settlements to hunt down the infidel with my new tribe. But then I tell myself that anteater or not, Sid doesn’t want my friendship, he just wants to own me, or at least own the world that for so long has beleaguered his people. Besides – and it’s weird how it keeps coming back to this – I really, truly, deeply love my penis exactly the way it is. I haven’t spent a lot of time giving voice to this truth (even gay boys don’t talk about their dicks all the time), but I think I would give up my Play-Station or my just-acquired driver’s license or even a dozen of the A’s I’ve affixed to my transcript before I gave up my turtleneck. Countries fight over borders more arbitrary than the blue lines on a road map. Montagues fight Capulets, McCoys fight Hatfields, Bloods fight Crips – and not a one of them could give you a convincing reason why. So I choose to fight for my foreskin, for a few square inches of precious and private real estate, and it seems to me the most perfect reason for a war ever contrived.
My dick listens when I talk to it. And the way it’s swelling in my right hand tells me it likes what it’s hearing. Erect, it looks just a little different from the few I’ve seen in my brief career as an aficionado: longer, I suppose, though not pornographically so; more, I don’t know, colorful – the white skin of the shaft setting off the bright red plum that is my glans; wetter, somehow, moist, even juicy; but I’ll be goddamned if it’s dirty, even slick with precum. Fuck you, Sid Vicious! Fuck you, you fuck. It’s my dick and I’ll die for it if I have to!
A boner of fury, that’s what I’ve got going now. Boners of Fury – in stores, April 15! Breathing’s tighter, heart’s thumping, dickhead’s raging, and I’ve got about 25 seconds ‘til I spit gobs, furious gobs . . .
“Re-Meeeeee!” It’s Antoine. They’re home. Damn.
“Remy, honey! Come on down. I need your help!”
Masturbating boy interrupted. I bring to my lips a dab of watery semen scooped off the tip of my rapidly shrinking penis, and think, “snot,” then head downstairs to see what’s going down on what may just be the last weekend of my life.
“Hey,” I say.
“Hey Remy,” my brother says.
“You okay, pumpkin? You look a little puffy.” Damn, she’s good.
“Yeah. Just caught a little siesta. What’s up.”
“Company. Could you put the groceries away for me?
“Sure. Who’re we feeding? The Lindsays?”
“No, it’s the new neighbors,” Antoine interjects. “Dad told me they’re Limeys.”
“Hush, my little cockatoo,” my mom says. “That’s dated terminology. Your father knows better.”
I’ve put two and two together and got the customary four. They’ve got to be Crispin’s Brits, Nigel’s parents. I don’t know where I’m going to go, but I’m not sure I’m up to polite chatter after my earlier brush with the nevermind.
“Mom, Crispin invited me to dinner. Mrs. Shaw’s making lasagna.”
“Sorry, Rem. We need you and your sparkling conversation here tonight.”
“Antoine’s pretty good in a pinch, Ma. He can cover, can’t he?”
“Sorry, hon. They’re bringing their son with them. He just started at Caulfield on Wednesday. He’s a junior just like you, a fifth former. Have you met him?”
Crispin wants me to marry him, I’m tempted to say, but all I can manage is “not yet.”
“Well, perfect then. It’s a great time for the Welcome Wagon to roll in. I’m guessing you’re annoyed with me, but I think it’s the right thing to do.” My parents say this all the time, and funny thing, it works pretty well.
“Okay, Mom. Always want to do the right thing.”
If bad news comes in threes like they say it does, this could be one difficult evening.
I’ll Stop the World and Melt With You
They arrive with flowers and a bottle of wine, the Montgomery clan, bright, blond, and effortlessly chatty – mom radiant, dad dapper, and daughter, Celia, a dead-ringer for War of the Worlds-era Dakota Fanning. Recessive genes in full bloom, they fill our living room with light and health.
No Nigel.
“You must be Remy,” says Mr. Montgomery. He shakes my hand without crushing it. His smile tells me to relax, that it accepts me as I want to be accepted, no awkward questions or presumptions on the horizon. His grip is kind.
“Pleased to meet you.” I feel like bowing.
“Remy, Denis will be here any minute. This move seems to have fouled up his clock.”
“That’s okay.” Nigel is Denis. He doesn’t want to be here, and I’m okay with that.
The parents are drinking and nibbling, talking about this and that as if they’ve been friends for life. Celia has gone to the basement to play Pokemon Gold with Antoine, suddenly a 10 year-old gentleman, charming, solicitous, and beautifully sexless. I nod from time to time, even toss in a quip or two to show that I’m listening, but I can’t ignore the uninvited guest, Sidney Wiesenthal, who nuzzles invisibly against me, whispering tick-tick-boom, tick-tick-boom in my ear.
The door bell rings, breaking the reverie. I get up to answer, El Sid at my side. And there he is.
“Hello. I’m Denis. Sorry I’m late.” He reaches out to shake my hand, which I’ve somehow forgotten to extend. “Remy, right?”
“Remy, right.” God, I sound retarded. “Everybody’s here.” At long last, my hand decides to cooperate, and I bring him in to the living room.
Another round of introductions ensues. Denis is the soul of contrition. He apologizes to my mother for holding up the meal. He apologizes to my father for arriving without a peace offering. He apologizes to his parents for losing track of time. I’d hate him if he weren’t so goddamned perfect, though I suppose that fact alone shouldn’t stop me. Feet of clay must hate Prada on principle. The fallen angel hates the heaven he has abandoned.
No, I can’t hate him because to meet him is to love him. You’re saying no way, silly boy, and I’m saying I love him. And when he looks over at me to make one last unnecessary apology, I want to die a thousand more deaths because he has read my mind and its simple declaration as if it were a billboard or a text message. He knows without a word spoken that I love him, that I want to spend the remaining days of my life, however brief they may be, with him. I haven’t felt so naked since, well, about 2:30 this afternoon. I can’t take anything back now; my heart has spoken, so my only hope is that he ignores this telepathic confession or writes it off to jet lag.
“You like Caulfield?” I ask, once we are seated – right across from one another. He looks straight at me when he responds. His eyes feel like big blue heat lamps and I’m melting like the wicked witch.
“It’s big,” he says. “One can lose himself.”
I wish I could lose myself, too, but it’s too late, I’d just wind up in his eyes. “Not really. Not so big, once they’ve got you pegged and tracked.”
“Pegged and tracked?”
“Academically, I mean. I see pretty much the same kids in all my classes.”
“Like A Levels, I suppose?”
“Like A Levels I suppose.” That echo thing again.
It goes on like this, inanities between bites of tenderloin and sips of iced tea. I’ve never felt quite so inadequate, never had so much trouble being funny or smart or just plain normal. Denis is so easy with everybody: he’s sweet to Antoine; he’s sharp with his folks; he adores his sister, who is, to be honest, utterly adorable. I pride myself on my ability to spot frauds, but nothing about him is wrong. He’s not a suck-up. He’s not excessively mature, a peach gone to rot. Even his clothes are great, chosen with confidence, not conformity; Levi’s a little snugger than the locals favor; white cotton Oxford shirt; off-the-rack sneakers and black socks. I love black socks. If he were anybody but who is, beautiful and brilliant, I could find an excuse to be indifferent. And I wouldn’t have to face this most perplexing paradox: I’ve fallen for a stranger on the very same day I’ve received a death sentence.
“Remy,” he says sliding the last bite of raspberry tart past fluted lips. “You got plans?”
“Not really.”
“Show me around, then?”
“Sure, Denis. There’s not much to show, but sure. Dad’ll give me the keys.”
“Great.”
“Good.”
I get Mom’s ride, of course. Dad covets his Beemer, so I’m usually stuck with the Prius. But what the fuck, I’m not trying to fool anybody.
“Family gone green, eh?” Denis says. “We’ve hired a car for a few weeks, but my dad is thinking hybrid when we buy. Not so many miles to cover back home.”
“Do you miss it?”
“Yes.”
“What’s it like?”
“Small, I guess. Familiar. Comfortable. But I suppose wherever you are, that’s where you are.”
“I suppose. Reston is all I know. It’s not much, but it’s home. God, that sounded stupid.”
“If you don’t mind me saying, you seem pretty bollixed.”
“Bollixed?”
“You know, on edge. Like I’m gonna bite you or something. Bad-day bollixed.”
Silence is often the most articulate response. Part of me wants to scream, “Bite me, please!” Part of me wants to cry. But Denis is not a vampire and I only cry at funerals.
“I spell my name with one N, you know. I catch shit for it all the time. Dennis the Menace becomes Denis the Penis. In any case, I’ve got to be careful with my penmanship.”
“Why do parents do stuff like that,” I ask. “Fuck around with us before we can do anything about it? There’s this guy at Caulfield, Michael Hunt. We aren’t allowed to call him Mike. Per his parents’ directive to the Main Office. But it’s like, you know, the more you say Michael, the more you think Mike. Where’s Mike Hunt? What’s with that, anyway?”
Denis laughs. Then, quite abruptly, he asks, “what happened today?”
“What do you mean, ‘what happened’?”
“I’m psychic. Seriously, mi pequeño yanqui, it’s written all over you. Something happened and I’m pretty sure it wasn’t good. Talk to me. I don’t know you well enough yet to pass judgment.”
“Father Denis?”
“Father Penis?”
“Look, don’t rub me the wrong way.”
“Sorry.”
“Just kidding, dude. Rub me the wrong way. Bada boom!”
“I’m going to stop here, Denis. I’ve only had my license for three months. I can’t drive and talk yet. I don’t think that happens until year two.”
There’s nobody at Baron Cameron Park, at least not where I’ve parked. Denis follows me to a bench and sits right next to me, violating all the etiquette of space. I think on any other night but this I would move a discreet distance, but Denis has become a shield, and I feel strangely safe with him at my side.
“Denis, I’m in pretty deep.”
“Pretty deep how?”
“I couldn’t even tell Crispy and Jimmy, that’s how deep.”
“Mates?”
“Yeah. You’ll meet ‘em.”
“So tell me.”
I can feel dinner tumbling in my gut. It’s 75 degrees and I’m shaking. My balls have shrunk and I’m having a hard time breathing.”
“Get it out, lad. I’m not going to hurt you. I won’t sell you out.”
“I love you.” Oh my God.
He laughs. “No you don’t. You don’t even know me. And anyway, that’s not what happened. You looked like a ghost when you opened the door for me. Something was wrong way before you fell in love.”
“Go easy, Denis. I’m gay. I’m not quite used to saying it yet.”
“So? I’m gay, too. I thought that was clear by dessert. But that’s not what happened, Remy.”
“You’re gay?”
“As they come, mate. A bleedin’ homosexual, I am. But that’s not what you need to get out of your system. We’ll deal with all that when you’re doing better.”
So I tell him. Everything and more. About the mud puddle and the shower. About hairy Sid Vicious. About the fate of my anteater and the covenant of the Tribe. About those who faced him before me. About Uzis and the diaspora and my uncontrollable Tourette’s. About how much I want to have sex with someone who wants to have sex with me.
“I see,” Denis says, as if I’ve just told him I got a B in Trig. “I see.”
“What do you see?” I’ve stopped trembling and my stomach has returned to its upright position.
“I see that you need a plan, and that I’m just the guy to devise it.”
“He’s got guns.”
“He’s not a killer, Remy. I know him well.”
“You know Sidney?”
“He’s hung around me all my life, lover.”
“What do you mean?”
“I’ll tell you soon, but this is your night.”
“Thank you. I do feel better. What are we going to do, then?”
“Not quite sure. Gotta survey the terrain, you know. What worked in Surrey may need a little tweaking here in beautiful Reston. But trust me; we’ll take care of things. I’m a sucker for happy endings.”
I’m leaning up against him in the dark. He is the essence of calm. This is a close place now, but it’s the intimacy of soldiers, of the foxhole.
I’m not so good with any stretch of silence. “Denis, do you like me that way?”
“What way would that be, guv’nah?” He’s grinning.
“The way I said earlier. You know, me being a guy and all.”
“I like you a lot, Remy. In that way. A lot.”
“I’m a virgin.”
“Do tell.”
“Is that okay?”
“Sure. I used to be a virgin once.”
“Then you weren’t?”
“Then I wasn’t.”
“Is it amazing? Tell me it’s amazing.”
“Better than amazing. Transcendent.”
“Will you take me there? To transcendence?”
“With pleasure, my little colonist. With pleasure.”
This is where we kiss. It lasts forever, or at least until a car full of Friday drunks pulls up and we head back to the Prius.
********** ************* *********
Talk about coitus interruptus! Patience, please. The sex has to be just right, and hard as it is to make this happen in real life, it’s even harder when all you’ve got is words.