Carry the Ocean: The Roosevelt, Book 1 (23 page)

“I think we should go to Target again tomorrow. You, me and Emmet. And Sally or Tammy. They’re going to take a video. We’re gonna be a baby flash mob, you, Emmet and me. We’re gonna play ‘Happy’ on my iPad with a Bluetooth speaker to boost it, and we’re gonna dance in the fucking aisles and put that shit on YouTube after.”

I balked, but before I could say what a crazy idea that was, Emmet grinned and said, “We should wear our Blues Brothers costumes while we do it.”

David barked out a laugh and held up his hand for one of his and Emmet’s awkward high-fives. “
Fuck yeah.
Oh, shit. We might go viral for that. Come on, J. What do you say?”

I wanted to say no, but they looked so excited. “What if I can’t do it without headphones?”

“You keep your headphones,” David said. “The speaker is for everybody else.”

“But what if they’re not in sync?”

“I can make them play the same,” Emmet said. “No problem.” He grinned and rocked in his seat. “I want to be a viral video as Elwood Blues. Too bad we can’t sing ‘Everybody Needs Somebody’.”

“‘Happy’ is more flavor of the month. Well, it’s a little passé now, but it’s closer than the other one. Plus it’s more fun to dance down the aisle to, and it happens to be the song getting your man through big box stores.” David raised an eyebrow at me. “So?”

Of course they convinced me.

We didn’t go the next day, since Tammy wanted us to practice. She taught us some choreography, helped David figure out how he could safely weave through Emmet and me. Emmet did his usual Blues Brothers dance, but I needed help so I didn’t feel so self-conscious. I worried I would freak out with that much attention, but I did want to try. For Emmet, for David and for me. I could see it in my head. If I could do it, it would be amazing. I expected the best as much as possible.

The day we went to do the flash mob video, Emmet and David and I went alone to the store. We took the bus, which meant we had to walk from the stop to the door, but that was okay. We laughed and teased each other, and I gave myself a pep talk, saying I could do it, and if it turned out I couldn’t do it yet, that was okay.

Tammy was there waiting, and so was Bob, and Marietta and Doug and Althea. They were so excited, waving and grinning as we walked past the jewelry counter. The Target employees were looking at us curiously, but when David started flirting with the female clerks, they smiled and followed us.

At the greeting cards, Emmet started our music, and we danced.

David wiggled his shoulders to the beat and made his chair swerve as part of his dance step, the way we’d practiced. I couldn’t hear them, only the music in my headphones, but I saw David singing along, or at least moving his lips. Emmet moved in front of us, doing his Elwood dance.

I laughed and wiggled my butt a little, then weaved with Emmet and David as Tammy had taught me. Ahead of us Sally and Doug were both filming. A guy I didn’t know was smiling and filming us too.

A woman shopping nearby smiled at us. David said something to her, and the next thing I knew, she was blushing, but she was dancing too. She danced with us all the way to the grocery section. First it was that woman, then another, then a grandpa and his grandson, then four employees, and the next thing I knew, Emmet and David and I were leading a dance line through the store, like something out of a movie. We were a real flash mob. We were cool. We were making everyone happy, including ourselves.

I was nervous the whole time, I’ll admit. I never once had gone to Target without knowing a panic attack was a possibility, a pit waiting for me if I wasn’t careful. I had to be so, so careful while we danced, while we were such a public spectacle. On the one hand, it was easier, since the stimulus was controlled—
we
were the stimulus. But sometimes I simply got nervous from exposure, and when that happened, as we’d agreed, I fell back behind David’s chair. Every time I did, he hammed it up more, egging Emmet on to dance more aggressively, swerving his chair more wildly. Basically, they took attention off me, gave me space to get my head back in the game.

Maybe I wasn’t ever as flashy as either of them, but the fact that I was willing and
able
to dress up and dance in a store that had made me tremble at the thought of it only a few months ago was an out-and-out miracle.

When I had courage enough, I got in front of David and boogied down like I was dancing by myself at home in my bedroom.

I was happy. I was amazing. I’d conquered my fear—or at least learned how to drive it a lot better.

When the song ended, everyone clapped. Everyone took pictures of us, with us. We were the Blues Brothers. We were the cool kids.

As the barista brought me over a free coffee, smiling as if I’d made her day, I realized I was always this cool. I’d just been waiting to figure it out.

Chapter Twenty-Three

Emm
et

Whe
n the second semester of classes started, Jeremey was really good at being in public. David started going to ISU, and he took Jeremey with him.

Jeremey wanted to take an online course through Des Moines Area Community College over the summer, but otherwise he wanted to help David. One night when we were talking on the couch, he told me what he wanted most for a job was to be David’s aide, one who would work all the time and would stay. That would mean getting his Patient Care Technician certification, which wasn’t a lot of school, but still made him nervous. I thought about how he’d conquered Target and learned to manage his panic attacks, and I told him to start with the one class and see how it went.

I liked having Jeremey and David on campus at Iowa State. We had no classes together, and David was only part-time, but on Wednesdays we met for lunch in the Memorial Union or at the Hub, if the menu was good. I enjoyed having lunch with them, though if they weren’t along, I kept to myself on campus. I knew people in class, but I didn’t have any friends in my classes. When David and Jeremey were with me, we were the Blues Brothers, even if we didn’t have sunglasses on.

One day in early February, we were going to the bus stop to go home, singing, when some frat boys went by. They muttered something mean under their breath and laughed at us. That was when I found out I’d been right about David all along, that he was one of those guys. What I hadn’t understood until then was that he was one of those guys on my side.

David stopped his chair, spun it around. “Excuse me, asswipes. Were you saying something?”

The frat boys glanced at each other, their faces too complicated to read. They started to go faster, but David’s chair can go up to fifteen miles an hour, and he caught them. He almost ran them over.

“Hey. Pencil dicks. Talking to you. Did you have something you wanted to share with the class, or do you get your jollies picking on crips?”

He was talking really loud, and everyone on the sidewalk watched us. They were pointing and whispering. Jeremey was nervous, but I wasn’t. David was being mean, but he was good at it. He was winning. I smiled, hoping he would keep going.

He did.

He backed the guys up to the edge of Lake LaVerne. “Come on. Let’s hear it. Give me your best shot. It must have been good, the way you were giggling. Look, you’ve got everybody’s attention. Those four girls over there look really interested to hear what a pack of assholes have to say to a quad and his autistic wingman and his friend with social anxiety. Go ahead. Wow them with your Rainman joke.”

“I’m Train Man,” I told David. I liked his nickname for me.

“There you go,” David said. “My man Emmet’s setting you up. He’s autistic. He loves trains. Train Man. Get it? Oh wait. He thinks that name’s funny. So if you want to mock him, you’ll have to try something else.”

“Let’s get out of here,” one of the guys said.

They hurried off, but David chased them. “Fuck off, assholes. I don’t need a functioning spine to kick your ass.” He stopped, watching to make sure they were gone. His face was angry, and his cheeks were red as he turned to us. “You guys okay?”

I laughed and clapped. “Yes. You’re my favorite bully, David.”

“Damn straight.” He turned his head, then spoke quietly. “Hey. Don’t look now, but those girls are checking us out.”

“Jeremey and I are gay,” I reminded him.

“Oh, damn.” David grinned. “I guess that means they’re all for me.”

He went over and talked to them, calling over his shoulder for Jeremey and me to come along. The conversation was boring, so I counted the cars passing by and memorized the license plates. Eventually, though, Jeremey tapped my shoulder.

“Emmet, David wants to know if we want to go to a bar with him and the girls.”

I frowned. “We aren’t old enough to drink alcohol.”

“David is. He says there’s a bar we could go to that isn’t too loud at this time of day, and they’ll let minors in. What do you think? Should we go?”

I didn’t really want to go to a bar, but Jeremey signed something extra.
Please, Emmet? David wants to go, I can tell.

So I nodded, and that’s how we went to a bar.

It was a place called Bohemia on West Street, which was a long walk, but it was a nice day, not too cold, and there were five hundred and six cracks in the sidewalk on the way there. The girls walked with David, making a circle around his chair. They giggled a lot. Jeremey and I walked behind, and Jeremey kept having us slow down to put more space between us and them.

“He’s having fun,” Jeremey whispered. “This is his dream, having all those girls hanging on him.”

But when we got to the bar, David sent the girls in to find a table, and he hung out with us for a minute, just the three of us.

“You guys okay with this? If it’s too much, tell me, and we’ll bail.”

The bar was dark, but it didn’t make me nervous. I wasn’t sure about Jeremey, but he said he’d be okay. “Maybe not too long. I can do a little while, if there’s no loud music.”

“Just some piped-over stuff, as far as I could hear, and not loud.” David’s face was red, but his eyes were very alive. “I appreciate this. I don’t think I’m going to get lucky or anything—not sure what I’d do yet if I could take somebody home, despite your websites. But it means a lot to me to flirt. Feel normal.”

“Let’s go be normal,” Jeremey said, smiling.

“Okay.” David turned his chair around for the door and let out a big sigh. “A quad, an autistic and a depressive walk into a bar. We’re the opening line of a joke.”

Jeremey laughed, but I didn’t get it. He tried to explain it to me after, but I didn’t care. David was right. It was nice to feel normal. To be three friends hanging out in a bar. To be with my boyfriend, to hold his hand and let him lean on me, even if he was a little too much in my space.

There is no normal, not really. Not a right and a wrong way to be. But there is belonging. That day in Bohemia with Jeremey and David and the girls, I belonged. I belonged as much as anybody on the mean.

Maybe even a little bit more.

When we got home from the bar, on the day I felt as if I belonged, I asked Jeremey if he wanted to try anal sex, and he said yes.

I wasn’t surprised. Jeremey always said yes to anything about sex. He wasn’t nervous about anal penetration now. We’d ordered a dildo from a reputable online sex store, and he said it felt great. I tried it too, but I don’t care for things in my butt. Jeremey does, which is good. I wanted to be in him that way.

We took a shower together, which we hadn’t done before. It was weird at first, but then it was fun and sexy, because we kissed with water coming down on us. It was a lot of sensation at once, and it made me so excited. I wanted to make love with him more. I wanted to be the dildo in him. My cock inside him, in the hot place.

We didn’t use a condom, since we were monogamous and disease free, plus I didn’t like the way they felt. No
used prophylactic
for me like Jake Blues. I wanted to feel my cock naked inside Jeremey, but first I had to get him ready. I used gloves and lots of lubricant, and I pushed my index finger carefully inside his body.

It’s still a little weird to me to put something in someone’s anus, except when I watch Jeremey’s face as I do it, I don’t think it’s so gross. It’s not much different than all the germs in someone’s mouth, but we kiss them anyway. An anus has fecal matter, but if you use proper precautions, it can be okay. Plus many people don’t wash their hands, so we all probably have more fecal matter going around than we want to know about, Mom says.

I’d watched videos about anal sex, some porn and some that were more instructional. I’d gotten good at loosening Jeremey’s anal ring for the dildo, but this was the first time I was doing it for me. For my cock to go inside him.

It made me excited to think about going inside Jeremey.

When I did it, I jolted like electricity, it felt so good. It was tight and extra hot, like spicy peppers. Jeremey was facedown, and his gasps and cries made me more aroused. I pushed my cock in deeper, and he gripped the bedspread and arched his back.

“Oh God, Emmet—
fuck me
.”

I did. I pumped my hips into Jeremey over and over the same as a porn video, but it wasn’t a porn video. It was a love video. I loved him. We were making love. We were boyfriends, a couple. I was the top. He was the bottom. Some people don’t care for labels, but I like this one. I enjoy being a top. And I know Jeremey enjoys being a bottom.

I came a little faster than usual that first time we had anal sex, and it had me so overstimulated I had to make the sign to lay by myself a second until I could calm down. Jeremey didn’t mind. He jerked himself off, then lay quiet on the bed, looking like he might fall asleep. When I made the sign that I was ready to cuddle, he snuggled against me and kissed my chest.

“Did you like the anal sex?” I asked him.

“I loved it, Emmet.” He leaned up to kiss my chin. “I love you.”

“I love you, Jeremey.” I got the wet wipes to clean us up, and then I held him until he fell asleep.

I am normal. I belong. I have a friend who can kick ass from a wheelchair. I live independently and get good grades. I’m an excellent lover.

Like I said. I’m awesome. I’m Emmet David Washington. Train Man. The best autistic Blues Brother on the block.