Fifteen

I wanted comedy, but the whole thing turned around. Must have been something I ate.

In any event, I apologize in advance for the absence of thrills. If I can figure out how to rescue my boys, maybe I can return to form - that is to say, I can return to the porn for which Nifty is renowned.

Stick with it. Whatever it's turning into feels real. I'm going to have a hard time sleeping tonight. This cost me.

And please, loyal readers, let me know what you think. I enjoy hearing from all of you. In fact, your ruminations and exhortations nourish me. Without you, I'd have to find another hobby. (pijito52@aol.com)

Fifteen

XII

I've always envied those guys who can step right up to a urinal, zip down, extract, and fire away. Some of them carry on coherent conversations all the while, as if nothing could be more natural. Okay, you're right: nothing is more natural, unless you're me of course, and you're wired weird, and you've got a thousand inhibitions Drs. Freud and Phil working together couldn't unplug. About a year ago I searched Google for "lavatory neuroses" (or was it "men's room phobias"?). The results were singularly unsatisfying: I got lessons in etiquette, but nothing at all to tell me how to pee confidently in public. And God knows, it's not exactly something I could ask my folks about. Or Mr. Barrows. Or my clergyman. So whenever nature happened to call, I took it in a stall. Until today, that is.

I think it's all because Billy came along, which must sound like a non sequitur. But how else can I explain that I've just taken my place at the far urinal in the bathroom behind the Food Court and am emptying my bladder of the Big Gulp I drained to celebrate the end of exams and my sophomore year? How else can I explain to the bald guy to my right that this is not business as usual? How else do I account for the fact that both of us have finished peeing and neither of us is in any rush to get out of here? I step back an inch and flash my dick. He looks impressed and licks his lips. I give my dick a few exaggerated tugs. His eyes cross and he whistles. I smile - not for him, but for me, for a battle joined and the promise of victory. He smiles back, a smile I've never seen before, but which I know somehow I'll see again a thousand times. Then I put my dick away and march out the door, leaving the bald guy to wonder what might have been. Billy came along, that's what it is. Billy came along and now I'm powerful. Watch out.

"You look like the cat that swallowed the canary, Aidan," my mom says. I love it when she goes quaint on me.

"What do you mean, Ma?"

"You know, satisfied. Happier than usual."

"I suppose. School's out and all."

"Footloose and fancy free!" The old girl's on a roll and I'm enjoying it.

"Yeah. It's pretty groovy."

"Mock me not. I was in junior high in the '60's, and I never, ever heard anyone say that word. Not 'til Austin Powers, at least."

"Sure, ma. Whatever."

"Aidan, you know I hate that expression. It's so defeatist. So cynical. All these kids saying they just don't care. What's with that, anyway?"

I'm thinking this is a rhetorical question, so I don't answer. She can't handle any silence longer than five seconds, so she forces the issue:

"Aidan? Cat got your tongue?"

"Ma. You got cats on the brain. Anyway, I'm still busy digesting the canary."

"You are impossible. You really are." Not impossible, I want to tell her. Unlikely, perhaps. Crazy, maybe. Love will do that to you.

Leave it to my dad to fuck up any kind of moment - not that he has a clue about such things. He's brought home "company," a partner named Bledsoe and his wife, and my presence is solicited. He is straight out of Men's Health. She's tight, blond, and frosty - an Abercrombie girl on her farewell tour. Her eyes don't laugh when her mouth does. I'm guessing she's early 40's, my mom's age, but she's got this Paris Hilton thing going on, and it's scary. I don't know why, but she winks every time she asks a question of me.

"So, Aidan, you're in the International Baccalaureate program at Whitman?" Wink.

"Yes ma'am." Oh my God! I haven't said that in years.

"What's your favorite class?" Wink, wink.

"English, I guess."

"Oh, you do look like a reader! Gordon," she asks her husband, "do you think we'll ever get Tyler to open a book?" I'm thinking Tyler must be their son, and knowing what I do about Mendel and fruit flies, I'm guessing he's really cute and sparky, a made-for-TV kind of kid.

"No way. Byron," he says, looking over at my pop, "what's your secret? I can't get my boy to stay home for five minutes. He's gotta be out there, you know, chasin' skirts." And I swear, the dude winks, too.

Chasin' skirts. I want to tell him that I consider the objectification of women a moral crime. But I cut him some slack because he's a guest, and besides, old guys say that kind of thing, have been saying it since Fred Flintstone.

"What about you there, sport? Cherchez la femme, mon ami?" Uh oh. Gordon's more literate than I thought. And he's a litigator, like my pop, except that he looks like he runs double-marathons between depositions. The man really wants me to talk about skirts.

"I take Spanish." Maybe that'll crush him.

"Well, you know, las se¤oritas, las chicas." His meaty hands sculpt the universal hourglass. "What's the story, boy?"

"Gordon, honey. Leave Aidan alone. He's not in court, you know." She winks conspiratorially, and now I'm really feeling bad. Mom's busy in the kitchen, and I know Byron's never going to rescue me. Three superballs of sweat race unimpeded down my side.

God, I'd love to blow this moment up. I want to stare down my dad and the inquisitors and unleash the truth. Tell them that I'm homo-sexual, queer as a leprechaun, a faggot flamb^Â, a dick-sucking, butt-humping fairy straight out of Neverland. Tell them that my girl don't wear skirts, he's more a Jockey's kinda girl, and what's more he's beautiful, drop-dead gorgeous, and I love him like the sunrise and the wind.

"I'm not seeing anyone at the moment." The lie sneaks out like an SBD.

"Hey, little man, there's all kinds of time. Not to worry. Now Tyler. That's another story! I'm frankly worried, I am." Funny thing though, I see pride, not worry on Gordon's Marine Corps face. As for good ol' dad? Well, he looks anxiously towards the kitchen, and if I'm not mistaken, he's regretting the night he forgot the condom.

"Yeah. I've got the whole summer ahead of me." And, God strike me dead, I wink at them. It's the best thing I've done all day.

XIII

The first time I jacked off, my guy didn't even have a face. Or rather, I didn't let him have a face. In desperation, I may even have tried to put a girl's face on him, which didn't quite work, what with the hair on his calves and that inescapable dick between his legs. Still, I remember him talking to me, though he didn't have a mouth. I recall that the whole time I was stroking furiously he was telling me how awesome I was, at which point it occurred to me that his voice was just my own little tenor echoing in my head, and that, in fact, his legs were my legs, and the swinging dick was mine, too. I didn't know who Narcissus was then, but damn, the first time I jacked off it was not only by myself, it was to myself.

I didn't know anybody else, really. It didn't make sense to jack off to Brad Pitt or Heath Ledger - fat chance they'd ever be in my bedroom. And the boys at school didn't know I was alive. I wasn't exactly loaded with options.

Now, it's Billy's face front and center, beaming down at me through dust motes in the sliver of moonlight slicing through the blinds. He's whispering in my ear. He doesn't want to wake the spiders, he says, and I laugh, it's such a stupid image. When he tickles me I squeal like the little piggy that went to market. "Ooh, you've got such a pretty cock, Aidan," he teases. "I could play with it all night." And then his hand slides the foreskin back as far as it will go, and pulls it back up and over, back up and over, squeezing the head for an eternal second, then letting go. I'm being touched by an angel in a very sensitive place, and boom, no warning, I explode all over my own goddamn right hand. I bring my cum-stained fingers to my lips and rub the sticky elixir all over them. "Oh, Billy," I murmur to the shadows. "I couldn't wait for you to come, so I guess I had to cum for you."

Something rattles the window. I'm too awake to be dreaming and too sleepy to be awake, but I'm sure of it: something rattled the window. I look at the clock on my bedstand and it says 3:15. The semen has long since crusted on my belly so I figure I must have been drifting for some time in that soft chamber between tomorrow and forgetting, but the rattle is real and persistent. In horror movies, they always turn on the light. Instead, I put on my glasses and walk naked to the window in the darkness, pull up the blinds, and there he is, twenty feet below me, his arm cocked and ready to fire.

I don't think he sees me yet, because he launches a handful of gravel right at me. At that precise moment I lean over and turn on the lamp at my desk, and suddenly I am framed and haloed in all my glory.

He sees me now, calls me down to him. I turn off the lamp, slip on my boxers. The stairs are carpeted, though my folks couldn't hear me anyway, closed off in the master suite. For some reason I think of bringing him a slice of the raspberry tart my mom made for the Bledsoe's, then decide that he's not here, in my backyard, for a midnight snack.

"You sleep deep," Billy says. "And naked."

"Well, I wasn't expecting any visitors."

"I've been here about 20 minutes. I was about to go."

"Billy? Why didn't you just call?"

"I don't know. Because it was two in the morning, I guess."

"I mean earlier. I would have been right over."

"I didn't exactly need you then. Now I think I need you."

"And how's that supposed to make me feel?"

"I didn't mean it like that, Aidan. They know, you know."

"What are you talking about? Who knows what?" I have no idea what he's trying to tell me, but his voice has flatlined.

"My parents. Danny. Delia. Aunt Lillian. The goddamn dog. George Fucking Bush. Everybody knows now."

"You're scaring me. Knows what? What happened?"

"I blew the whole thing up. You, too, Aidan." He reaches for me, pulls me to him for an instant, then just as abruptly lets go. It's 85 degrees and still as soup, but his touch sends shards of ice into my bones.

"You're cold," I tell him.

"I'm dead," he says. "You are, too, for that matter."

"Oh God, Billy. Shut up. This isn't funny. I'm standing here like a retard in my boxers and you're telling me we're dead. You're not making sense. You high?" I sound like my mother.

"Danny found my notebook. I left it out. Asshole. Asshole. Handed it over to my mom. Three days ago. She waited 'til tonight to bring it up. Bitch. Waited 'til Dad came home from Atlanta. Called her sister. Three days ago. She waited three days."

"What notebook, Billy? Waited for what?" I reach out to him, grab his arm, lead him into the shadows by the poolhouse. He's trembling, almost convulsing. I can't hold him hard enough to stop him.

"I keep a notebook. Idiot faggot that I am. I make shit up. About girls I wanna do and killing teachers and stupid shit like that. How I'm gonna ice DeMarco if he doesn't stop fucking with me. How I'm gonna swallow all the Percs in Mom's medicine cabinet. Shit. Just shit, Aidan. I write shit. It makes me feel better."

"So tell 'em. Tell 'em. It's a fucking journal. They know that."

"Well, I wrote some shit that's not shit."

I'm starting to feel sick. I want to run, now, but I think I'd faint.

"I wrote about the shelter. I wrote about the shelter, Aidan." He's trying to compose himself, but he's about an inch from the kind of tears that never stop. I hug him so that I don't have to hug myself, so that I have something to hang on to as the world starts to spin.

"And what did you say, Billy? It's cool. They don't care. Nobody uses the shelter. You told me that."

"I wrote that I spent the night there whenever I could."

"It's okay."

"I wrote that I felt peace there. I felt fucking great there."

I catch my breath. This is okay, really. It's catharsis. I can understand that. "Billy. It's all right. You want peace. That's gotta be good. So they know?"

"Yeah. Except that you were there with me. I wrote what I felt. It wasn't shit. It was the truest thing I ever told anybody, especially myself. When we did things, Aidan, I felt, I don't know, I felt, you know?"

"Yes. I mean no. I mean, I felt it, too. I think."

"Love, Aidan. That's all. Just love. I wrote that when I have your dick in my mouth I have your heart in my hand. I wrote your name a hundred times like a girl. With hearts and shit. I said I didn't know how, but I wanted to fuck you. And I said: 'when I take him inside me it's gonna be a supernova.' I'm so sorry. I sold you out, Aidan. I killed it, didn't I?"

"Danny looks at me like I'm a freak. He's too flipped to do anything right now, but he's going to hurt me, I know it. My mom sat on the thing for three days! She keeps pacing all over the house and saying, 'we're going to get through this, we're going to get through this.' And Dad, the fuck, he keeps making fists that he never throws. Why doesn't he just smack me? Why don't they all just smack me and leave me the fuck alone? Why?"

We're all balled up together like Laocoon and son wrestling the serpents. Billy goes quiet for a few seconds, waiting for me to catch up to the moment. I don't know what I can say to save us. I'm fifteen after all, and I'm still afraid of monsters in the dark.

"Aidan? Please say something. Tell me I'm not fucked. Hate me. Hit me. Just tell me there's a way out of this."

For some reason, I kiss him. Furiously. I think I'm trying to make the world stop. Still, I hear cicadas, and nightbirds moaning in the trees. I can't give him what he wants. I can't see past the glow of the streetlight on the corner. Here, in the backyard of my childhood, I can't imagine how the sun will ever rise again.

"Do you love me Billy?" It's the only question that makes sense.

"Yes."

"Do you love me enough to hold on for a few days?"

"For what?"

"So I can get us out of this."

"How?"

"Fuck. I don't know. But I've got to think. I always think. It's what I do. I just can't think now. All I can do is hold you and kiss you. I can't think with you in my arms."

"You can get us out of this?"

"I can. I think I can. But I can't think. I gotta have time."

"Time?"

"Time."

"And you can make it better?"

"I don't know, Billy. I'm just a kid. I don't know anything, really. So you'll just have to trust me. I love you Billy, and I don't care who knows it. If they try to take you from me, I guess I'll just have to kill them. Now go. Go home. Wait for me. I'm gonna think of something. Go. Sleep. Dream of me."

He's crying hard now. He looks at me in my ridiculous boxers, tears and snot streaming down his face, all the night's rage leaking out of him, and shakes his head. I know he wants to talk, but he has nothing left. I know he wants to hang on to me until a more certain dawn, but I have things to do.

"Please go. Dream of me, Billy."

He turns and is gone.