Taste of Power

Taste of Power by: Krazytop ---

Part XXIV

A flash in the pan.

Zane's phrase echoes around and around.

A flash in the pancosmos.

That's probably not a word, but it should be.

The totality of everything. The finality in everything.

The atom was defined to be indivisible, and then people whispered of it breaking.

The universe was defined to be all encompassing, and now people whisper of its kin.

A singularity split into multiplicity.

Every world, its own possibility; every possibility its own world.

The other day, we learned two ways of modelling odds.

Discrete functions come in distinct building blocks. You can only arrange them in so many ways, like sides on a die.

Continuous functions come in fluid masses. You can break them down to your heart's content, like water in the ocean.

Which one describes the world at its most fundamental level?

Is there something fundamentally unbreakable?

Can everything be broken?

"Calvin's brother Brett is in town for the weekend," my mom says, pouring me a bowl of cereal.

I grunt.

"They invited you to go to the drive-in. Doesn't that sound fun?"

"I don't want to go."

"Your father and I have been a bit worried about you," she says, tapping her thumb against the table. "You're out and about more; sure. But you seem so distant. The hair, the earring, the dirty looks. Calvin seemed worried too. He said--you've been spending time with Zane from wrestling."

I drop my spoon. "Is that what he said?"

"Yes. And I don't want to be a mother hen, but that boy seems like a bit of a bad egg. Didn't he go to juvenile hall?"

"Everyone deserves a second chance."

My mom scowls. "As an adult, even I'm scared of teenagers like him. So when I see that earring, and that haircut—" My mom stops to try to compose herself. "That's superficial stuff. I'm just worried you'll become some kind of gangbanger."

"You know me."

"It's not a joke! What if you get in over your head?"

"I'll let you know the moment things get too serious."

"Travis, I don't want you spending time with Zane."

I stare silently at the bowl. The cereal bloats in its milk.

"Meet me halfway. Go to the drive-in. And don't let Zane rope you in with the wrong crowd. Or I swear to God, Travis..."

"Fine," I say.

"So we're good?"

"Yeah."

I remember coming over to play mokimon cards one summer—it must have been about four and a half years ago--when Brett was just starting high school. Calvin, my intended opponent, wasn't there, but Brett was. He asked me to help him wash the family Mazda. In nothing but his P.E. shorts.

I should have been suspicious when he had me stash my new mokimon deck inside.

We spent more time spraying each other with the hose than we did the car. Brett's always been a bit ahead of his years, in terms of development. The image is still seared into my mind. Soapy water mingling with sweat, running down his thick muscles, glinting with sunlight, cementing his stretchy shorts around his tight ass and thick dick.

I could see it all through the wet fabric.

Not everyone remembers the exact moment they knew they weren't straight.

But I do.

"What's up, Travioli?" Brett asks.

"Nothing much, Wombat," I fire back.

Brett and Calvin's last name—Wombach—had been the source of ridicule in their formative years. But it confused Coach when they were on the team together. Since Coach never addressed us that way, we shied away from last-name formalities.

And any mocking derivatives.

But Coach isn't around now.

And neither Brett nor I are on the team anymore.

We had last crossed paths at the New Year's party my parents made me go to. Chris and I had only stopped in long enough to make appearance. I was pretty eager to get back to Chris's place to wrestle him and suck his balls.

I had been shy with Brett, afraid that college might have changed his free-wheeling attitude.

A lot had happened since the day washing the Mazda.

Today, I am confident I am the more changed man.

To the point that I'm not really a man at all.

I sit down in the backseat, and Brett twists around to give me a noogie.

My fears were misguided in any case. He hasn't changed a bit.

I cringe. "Once you start driving, you'll be vulnerable, you know," I say, wrinkling my lips and blocking with my forearm.

"Don't be silly, Travioli. Once I start driving, we'll ALL be vulnerable."

Brett snaps back into place and floors it.

The wheels screech and off we go.

The buttplug spears my ass. Zane hadn't made me to wear it, but I wanted the reminder.

Colors whirl around us. I close my eyes, focusing inward, until I've slowed my heartbeat. Then I open back up, my expression blank.

A few blurry stoplights later, Brett pulls into the gas station. "I'm gonna wash the windows. Not sure how Calvin sees out of this thing."

"By driving at a reasonable speed?" Calvin says. "Aren't older siblings supposed to be the good ones?"

Brett shrugs. "Wanna buy some peanut M & Ms?" He says, tossing me a five dollar bill. "And get a drink from Smoothie Shack across the street?"

Needles seem to migrate up inside me, prickling my spine. Chris gave me money to buy smoothies sometimes, on the way home from school, when he filled up the tank. I can't help but shiver. "It's...still wrestling season, though."

"But you aren't on the team anymore."

"I suppose not," I say.

I guess a smoothie and some peanut M&Ms won't kill me.

Brett hurries us along, and before long we are zooming to the theater.

The tellers give us the radio station, and we pull into the lot, parking at a bit of a slope so we can see the screen.

Tonight's entertainment is "Big Bang Brothers: The Movie," and it has no shortage of flashy explosions right from the get-go. Brett doesn't give me much of a chance to soak in the plot, assuming there is one.

Instead he and Calvin join me in the backseat.

Brett whips off his shirt, flexing, draping an arm around me.

I give him a searching look.

"Like what you see?" Brett asks.

"Shut up."

Brett rubs my hair again. "You were always a bit confusing."

"You can't just swing in here after ages away and jockey into my inner circle. My mind's been all rearranged. It's been a long time since I've really thought of you."

"So you have really thought of me? I had a feeling...but I chickened out. You gotta understand, it would have looked like I was taking advantage of you. What would my parents think?"

I shift in my seat. "You didn't come all the way back from college for the weekend to show me your pecs."

"Maybe I did."

"No you didn't."

"Fine. Calvin says you use movies as an excuse to cuddle. And I use anything as an excuse to show off. But that's not important. What's important is that I'm really here about Zane."

I lean over onto Calvin's shoulder, and Brett drapes his bare arm around me from the other side.

"What about Zane?" I ask, arching my back a bit.

"Do you think it is okay?" Brett asks. "The way he's been acting?"

I close my eyes. "My definition of okay has evolved. Zane does what everyone does. He uses tools to accumulate power. It's okay because that's life. He's just better at life than me."

"Well, then let me be your tool then. I can flip the script. You'll be great at life in no time."

Calvin sighs, finally chiming in. "What Brett is saying is that Zane is morally bankrupt."

Brett makes a pouty motor-boat noise. "What I'm saying is that you can't let yourself get treated that way."

I shrug. "I like how he treats me."

"Did you always?"

"It's an acquired taste."

"So acquire a new taste, because this one is pathetic as hell."

"I don't mind being pathetic as hell."

"Fine, okay," Brett says. "Maybe another angle. What is attractive about Zane?"

I pause, staring at the explosion on screen. The colors billow out in waves to the edges, fracturing in a sea of glass and smoke and fire.

His words play back in my mind.

Revulsion. It's is a defense mechanism, shielding a culture from complications deemed too taxing. Fabricating exploitable social strata. The hatred protects people from looking into the painful, shadowy mirror of their desires that outsiders reflect.

"You remember Hiro?" I ask, still peering at the screen.

Brett nods.

I exhale. "I met Hiro late on in middle school, when my friendship with Calvin was disintegrating, and he kept me from hating Calvin. He said my feelings of hatred for Calvin were filling a void. I cared about Calvin, but since I wasn't supposed to care about someone who had abandoned me, I built around my feelings a surface emotion that seemed to fit."

"And Zane?"

I turn to Brett. "He's forbidden. He's disgusting. He's bad. He's everything I'm supposed to hate. But I can't help but wonder if that hatred was constructed around a kind of taboo admiration. Zane isn't afraid to do whatever the fuck he wants in a world obsessed with approval. People can't decide whether to revere or scorn that; they reek of jealousy. But there's no denying it turns me on."

"But if you are a slave...doesn't that mean you need his approval?"

"Yes."

Calvin pushes me off his shoulder.

Brett laughs. "I think you have it backwards. Zane is gross to the core, and you're the one giving him the veneer of credibility."

"To each his own."

"And what happens when Zane gets fat and senile and powerless, and falls on the sword of his own heartless philosophy? What will you say then?"

"What will you say if you die and you realize you chose the wrong religion?"

"Damn."

We watch the movie in relative silence for a while, as the rag-tag cartoon puffballs, wizards, elves, and a kid with a yo-yo form a team to fight the evil Mr. Fist.

"I don't expect you to really help us," Brett says abruptly. "But if you are reduced to the role of a spectator, then you can watch me bring about Zane's downfall."

I grunt.

"So can I get your word that you won't warn Zane in any way?"

"Fine," I say softly. "I won't warn him."

"Good," Brett says, rubbing my hair again. "Because you kind of have to be part of the plan."

I spend the night at Calvin's.

Brett confiscates my phone, messaging Zane that I was forced by our parents to spend the night with Calvin, and that they will be gone tomorrow afternoon on some kind of wine-train for a few hours. All of which is accurate, but leaves out the presence of Brett.

Brett and I are given separate sleeping bags, but he makes us use them as blankets (one below like a bed and one above like a sheet) so that he can hold me all night, again finding an excuse to go shirtless.

Zane must suspect that something is going on, right?

I doze intermittently.

Images of the physics lab float across my eyes.

The marble rolling down the track.

Gravity. Forces of nature.

Einstein, the smartest man alive, wrapped up in his time just like everyone else.

What happened?

Einstein fled the Nazis, but they weren't the ones who started it.

The strong survive, the weak snuffed out. Facilitate it; accelerate it; wrap your values around your strengths; belittle your shortcomings.

U.S. court cases in the early 1900s decreed people too stupid to procreate. Castrated them. Chemically.

The United States didn't lead the charge against it; we epitomized the craze.

It wasn't till World War II that the moral outrage begun—when eugenics started being seen as the weapon of the enemy.

Nazis killed Jews, cripples, blacks, gays—anyone they didn't see as the cream of the crop.

The U.S. retaliated by severing their line of thought.

Martin Luther King Jr. says the arc of history bends toward justice.

If Hitler is a social Darwinist, then perhaps Reverend King is a moral Darwinist.

And I'm not a Darwinist at all. At least, not outside the context of survival. Sure, people have evolved. Cultures have evolved. Morals have evolved.

But people haven't gotten—better.

In some ways, they haven't even changed.

What they've done is rearrange where their social circles are drawn.

"You're gonna eat brunch with us before we lock you up," Brett says.

I give Brett a sideways look. "If you say so."

It strikes me that it's a bit rude for Calvin's parents to disappear for a chunk of Brett's trip home. Although—Brett may have timed his trip that way. Or orchestrated his parents' getaway.

About twenty minutes after Calvin's parents leave, the smell wafts through the house.

Crispy hashbrowns, egg-battered French toast, sausage patties, Mimosas.

"What is this—my last meal?"

"You can think of it that way, sure."

He ushers me toward the dining room, not even giving me a chance to change out of my pajamas.

There isn't much talking as we eat. Just the clinking of silver.

I do get some idea of the plan though. I'll be cuffed on my knees in the garage, with Brett sitting nearby, hoping to pass as Calvin from the back. The real Calvin will be hiding among some of the old Halloween decorations.

By the time Zane realizes he is dealing with Brett...

It makes me squirm just thinking about it.

I promised I wouldn't warn Zane...and Brett took my phone anyway.

Right after brunch, they herd me back into Calvin's room, and Brett dumps out the box of things, looking for handcuffs.

Calvin's toys litter the floor; plastic, leather, and a glass dildo glint up at me.

Among them, a thin metal rod catches my eye.

A snake rake. I recognize the little tool—as Zane's. He must have left it here.

I step into the toy pile, gazing at the Jackie Chan Adventures poster on Calvin's wall. Then, I clench my toes around the snake rake.

The lights in the room sting my eyes; a film of sweat tickles my skin.

"What are you doing?" Brett asks, a little laughter in his voice.

I feel the cuffs clink, confining my arms behind my back.

I struggle against them, making a show for Brett.

My heart starts thumping in my chest. Any second, Brett's going to break into hysterical laughter. He's going to give me shit for trying something so obvious. Thump me on the back for being such an idiot.

Then—remarkably—the moment seems to pass.

"Zane texted that he's on his way," Calvin says. "Says he had to stop by Chris's house first, to give him something."

My heartbeat plods along. It's difficult to walk with my toe clenched shut around the snake rake.

Brett wrenches the handle of the airtight door, the seal making a sticky noise as it opens and closes.

We make our way into the musty garage.

Calvin hides in the Halloween coffin in the corner, and Brett pushes me down to my knees, taking a moment to look down at me.

"Zane had a good run. But I think it's time for your conversion."

I look into his eyes, saying nothing.

Brett looms over me, his tight shorts and confined dick inches from my face.

He reaches forward, cradling my head.

"Like what you see?"

Slowly climb the pyramid

The pharaoh sleeps under

You can't sense which way is up

In afterlives you plunder

A few years ago, I'd be electrified at the suggestion.

But now—I think I might be sick.

I feel myself convulsing.

They want to hurt Zane. I can't stomach the thought of it.

My eyes mist over, but I fight the tears away. I glare up at Brett.

"I—I can't, Brett."

Brett smirks, rubbing my hair, before sinking to his knees across from me, facing away from the door.

"Sure you can."

My mouth hangs slightly open as I lean back, swallowing the lump in my throat and gritting myself. I finally unclench the toe, feeling around for the snake rake. It's warm and wet around it—I've cut my foot.

I fumble for the keyhole, but it's no use.

I don't know the first thing about picking locks.

I'd watched Zane do it so many times. Why didn't I pay more attention?

"Your life's about to change," Brett says, reading the consternation on my face.

I close my eyes, replaying Zane's method in my mind. He didn't just jam it in there. It was like he was looking for something—something inside the locking mechanism. Pins. I think that is the word.

Without opening my eyes, I talk back to Brett. "As people change, the way that they change stays largely the same."

"And what do you mean by that?"

"People don't so much improve, as they do adjust. The conditions differ, and they respond."

"You don't think people build on the past?"

"They do. Just not as people think they do."

I try the lock again, ransacking my mind to see if there is some memory that I missed.

In frustration, the snake-rake slips from my fingers. I grope behind me, trying to find it. I pray that Brett didn't hear the sound.

"It's no use trying to fight it," Brett says. "You have to let him go."

"I can't! I CAN'T!"

Brett shakes his head. "Sure you can."

I clamp my lips shut.

Brett tilts his head, smiling, before leaning toward me with his eyebrows raised. "Bet on it."

--- Feedback keeps me in the mood to write and brainstorm and is always appreciated. :) email: krazytop@gmail.com tumblr: krazytop.tumblr.com