Blues of Summer -- A Parody Mustapha Mond
Note: Time, it would seem, has proven me a liar: I have returned to poor, lonely Derrick once more, and this time I feel like I'm going to see him out to the end. My reasons for taking up the pen again (so to speak) are twofold. First, I received a cascade of email from all you wonderful people, asking me to go on -- and so I shall. My apologies to those I have not gotten around to writing back to; I'm working and studying simultaneously, so my wealth of email time is less than it once was. But in general, those who have written have been like a flash of color in a gray universe: things are looking dark here again, as winter starts to lay in its claws (after so very, very much spring). This leads to my second reason. Although I consider myself a fatalist, and a realist to boot, the world seems to have plenty of surprises waiting that even intellect cannot anticipate. To make a long story short, that wonderful, beautiful guy I was seeing decided about a week ago that, in spite of the fundamental perfection (his word) of our relationship, he couldn't "deal with it." How do you respond to that? Lesson learned, if such a thing is possible: never date freshmen. But I'm not bitter, nor am I depressed. The emptiness in my life now is not in the present, but in the vacant space where my hopes for the future used to flourish: I am in the tunnel, but whatever light once shone from the end has dimmed and now faded into darkness. Life is now like an infinite line of gray, flat stepping-stones over a black lake. I simply move from one to the next, repeat. And if you're out there, sweet Michael -- if you, too, have a secret yearning for these simple tales of love and hope, that which we were denied in our childhood -- just know that I miss you.
IV)
I look up from the bottle and blink, once. I look down again. The bottle still remains as I remembered it, its single cyclopean eye fixated on me. The fire must find some fresh, plentiful fuel, because a tremendous wave of heat floods my skin, rushes into my nostrils; and yet somehow the shadows multiply and deepen around the circle, and I can only see pieces of these strangers, those jagged slashes of dancing firelight, and they all seem to swell to something demonic and otherworldly; their mouths, lips peeled back, jeer with full glistening teeth. I feel dizzy. And yet there the bottle remains, in the perfect center of the circle, absolute, the axis around which the world seems to blur, pointing unquestionably at me.
And across the length of the bottle, at some great distance, I make out Tad, whose expression mirrors my own. His eyes are bugged and tremble slightly; his mouth hangs open just enough to expose the pink of his tongue; his jaw is rigid; his brow twitches; his hands are clenched at his sides. Spurts of sound trickle from the circle, but whatever language they speak here, I don't know it, or have forgotten it. Tad spun the bottle and it landed on me. At one moment I want to thank him for his terror and completely hopelessness: in this moment, when the world has been flipped, he at least will land as hard as me. But another moment, or the same moment, and I curse his terror. If he stood up with gaze set and stout smile, and if he walked to the center pushing confidence before him like a halo, I could see myself doing the same, and there, bridging the bottle, something important would happen.
"What are you waiting for?" Yells Irene. "This isn't Sunday School. We're all friends here, or drunk enough that it doesn't matter."
Like all good activist lesbians, Irene has, with her blunt tongue, managed to tear down some of the illusionary walls trapping me. The heat melts into the wood; the shadows sink into the carpet. I see the circle as it really is. These unfamiliar, adult faces are laughing lightly, smiling broadly. They see the discomfort of two high school boys thrust suddenly into a situation no one ever made a health-class video about.
"C'mon!" Yells another.
"C'mon!"
"It's just a game!"
"Kiss already!"
"We're waiting our turns!"
I take each call and store it in some queue just inside my ear, at the periphery of my consciousness. My terror has subsided, and though reality is still draped with the thick cloth of the surreal, I can at least fall back on my rationality. I do not flex a muscle; I wait, and analyze. Off to one side, I catch the expression on Mark's face. He is in prime skeptic mode, one eyebrow raised to the ceiling, grinning like a smug devil. Off to another, Megan stares at me, then Tad, with an eagerness totally unbecoming her: for once, she is content with others under the spotlight. My brain sends a call from the depths somewhere that much less time has passed than I think. I have a moment; I can think. But there are seconds ticking off, however slowly, and at some point, I know I will have to squeeze the universe into action, or else just expire, like smoke in a gale.
"C'mon!"
"Don't be afraid!"
Somewhere, the techno thumps. Somewhere, in some dark room, a boy and a girl have sex violently, and break a lamp in the process. Somewhere, the bathroom upstairs, two girls in fishnets and pierced septums lay cocaine in rows along the tank of a shining white toilet. Somewhere a cat cries, somewhere a dog howls. Beers clink in shaky hands. I let all these things sink into my image of the moment; I mold and reform, I invent color for the blank spaces; I wait, not moving a muscle, not committing. Somewhere in my mind, I am reminded that the people around the circle have little care for me and less care for my picture of the world.
Then Tad moves. This movement in imperceptible, nothing as definable as a twitching calf or shifting fingertip. And yet he moves. Our eyes find each other, and in one long, unblinking communication, they say: he will move, he will stand, he will go through with it. He is willing to go through with it. I am as certain of this as of my own eye color -- this act, this promise of the event, is steel in my mind. But his eyes -- brown, I see, like weather-beaten bark -- conceal his reasons. And he shifts again, and I know he will stand.
"Sorry," I say in a voice both mine and not mine. Someone has put a smile on my face. "Can't this time, I'm afraid. Had nothing but garlic and onions for dinner. Wouldn't want you to collapse, Tad."
Some of the circle laughs. One girl dives into the middle and grabs the bottle; Tad's turn lasted a little too long, apparently. We have already been absorbed into the unit again, I see. Frankly, I don't care. I roll backward, or something like that, and walk to another room, not seeing Tad's face, not noticing the table I pass, or the painting, or the beautiful blond boy passed out by the stairs. My brain seems to have stopped responding to visual and aural stimuli, and that's just fine by me. I arrive at some place, a corner perhaps, in the shadows, and there I slump, into a pool of cool nothingness.
An indeterminate amount of time passes. I sense something like a dream, but where images and sounds are replaced by large, amorphous blocks of space, and I am responsible for ordering them like some giant, insane puzzle. At some point, Mark comes over and sits down next to me. I sense that the narrative of the party has continued on for some time -- continues even now -- and I am glad that Mark cares enough to have taken himself from the irrevocable flow of events, and come to find me.
"How's it going, champ?" He asks.
"Could be worse. Guess I've just been dozing off for a while."
"Yeah, what with the soothing mood music and all." For a moment I am aware of how loud the techno is here, but the throbbing bass-line sends my stomach hopping along to the beat, and a little queasy, I send this awareness somewhere back deep.
"Seriously, you ok?" He asks. "Guess it's understandable, but back at the circle you looked like someone gave you a few good whacks with the terror stick."
"Hmm."
We have a moment of silence. I'm not sure if its one of unspoken understanding, or distance. I just don't feel any great connectivity; I can imagine myself as a fly on the wall, watching life ebb by slowly; perhaps I'm scared of the actuality? I notice that somehow I've managed to find the only unpeopled room in the house -- chock that up to an excellent instinctive drive for isolation.
"It was just a game," Mark says. "Everyone thought it was pretty slick how you politely declined the kiss, and when you left, no one noticed."
That, at least, is a relief.
"Can I...ask you...something?" Mark's voice has an odd tremor, and even in the dim light, I see his cheeks are red as tomatoes; his eyes, too, are downcast. This one's gonna be big. I take in a deep breath and let it out slowly.
"Sure, bro."
Pause.
"Why didn't you kiss him?"
There it is. Out in the open. Some part of my gut tries to rebel, tries to whip my bones into action, jabs the flee button incessantly. But in this darkened room with the red tint, with the heavy atmosphere and the corner in shadows; with the wood vibrating to the music behind my back, and the occasional burst of laughter from other rooms, I am in control. I take another deep breath. This is my reality, down to the thin layer of sweat on my forearm.
"I was scared," I say. Mark listens quietly, his eyes intense. "You always dream of something like that happening...its like something out of those stories on the internet...but reality has such a stronger flavor: not sweet like in fantasies, nor bitter, nor sour; but something unique and always changing. I wanted to. Fuck. But I was just fucking scared. I had my chance, and it was in front of strangers, but it all just hit me like a shovel from behind, and I couldn't do it...I couldn't break with what I know, the denial, the casual homophobia I hear every day. How could I know if Tad would hate me? Or if everyone else would hate me?"
"And," I add. "I've never kissed a boy before, and I was terrified of that too."
Mark leans over and puts his arms around me, pulls me into him. "It's ok," He says. "I'm your brother, and I love you. It's ok." Jesus. I'm crying. I didn't feel them coming, but now they burn my skin, streaking down my cheeks and chin. I don't want to cry, but I don't stop either. I'm shaking, and Mark tightens his hold on me; I wrap my arms around his and let everything just fall from me and soak into the carpet, out of my life forever. When it's out, I pull away from Mark and wipe my eyes. His smile is the warmest I've ever seen: he might have the sun bottled up in his mouth. "Jeez," he says, chuckling slightly. "Whoever would have thought my handsome, intelligent, artistic little brother would grow up a fairy? The women of the world have a pretty tough shock to receive, but the boys should be celebrating tonight." I smile and punch him in the arm with no real malice. I realize I have to ask him the question. "So did you know?"
"Wellll...I wasn't sure," he says. "I mean, I know you rented some...topical movies, but you like all that artistic stuff, so I couldn't really know. And although you are a good looking kid -- take after me in fact -- not all the handsome men of the world are gay, just most. But also, you kinda threw us for a loop; you don't listen to showtunes, all you do is play video games, and you dress like someone who has to steal clothes from dead hobos..."
"Hey!" I cry in mock anger. Then it hits me. "Wait...did you say, 'We?'"
Mark's eyes get big and his cheeks erupt in scarlet.
"Umm"
"You said it! Now who's we?"
"Well," he says, not making eye contact with me, "it's possible, just possible, that...uh...Megan and I might have...speculated...as to your...condition...once or twice. She loves gay people, you know."
Like rays of sun bursting through an overcast sky, suddenly everything is clear. I flash back to our conversation in the car, and Mark's uneasiness.
"So that's why I got invited to the party!"
Yes, it makes sense. I begin to laugh, and realize it's the first time I've laughed in a while. Then, suddenly, my breath catches in my throat. Could it be? That would explain the other piece of the puzzle...
"And...Tad?"
Mark is silent for a moment, with a slight, lopsided grin.
"Well, maybe I've had some talks with Megan and Irene. Irene has some suspicions...but she is a lesbian, so its natural for her to seek it out in everyone. She's gonna freak when I tell her about you."
"No!" I say before even realizing it. "I mean, please don't. I'm just not quite ready for that yet...if it's going to get to Tad, I'd rather be the one to tell him. But does she really think he's...also?"
"Well," Mark says, "he is a pretty shy kid, sticks pretty much to himself, never shown any interest in girls, or sports, or cars, or any of those manly things...it's only natural to suspect..."
I wonder. All these things Mark says are true, but I've known Tad for ages, and it's not like he's shown any interest in boys either. But still, there was that moment, when the bottle linked us across the circle, and he shifted, and he would have moved. He would have kissed me. Doesn't that mean he's gay? Or maybe being around Irene so long has just opened his mind enough that he doesn't carry society's prejudices so strongly.
"Listen, bro," Mark says. "I've got some side business I have to cover with you. I'm not sure if you'll be ok with this, cause I can see how you might feel awkward around Tad, but I asked if Irene would give you a ride home."
"Why?" I ask. A cold moment passes through my spine at the thought of having to be around Tad now, but it quickly passes. We are, after all, great friends, and will be laughing about tonight in no time. But I look at Mark, and see his embarrassment almost radiating outward -- someone could have painted his face red.
"I...think I'm gonna stay here tonight."
"With Megan?"
"That's the idea."
"Good luck with that!" I say, smiling from ear to ear. Mark swats at me, but I jump out of the way. It feels good to be on my feet again. "Don't do anything I wouldn't do, big brother!"
"That could be a problem," he says, getting back some of his vigor. "All the stuff I want to do tonight, you probably wouldn't want to touch with a ten-foot pole."
Mark strolls off into the next room with techno blaring, whistling as he goes, somehow audible under the tremendous music. I stand in the shadows for just a moment longer, reflecting, then go off to find Tad -- still smiling for all I'm worth.
Hopefully, the next installment will come quickly. I love email. XfragmentofanangelX@hotmail.com. All the best.
Mustapha