Flesh and Bone (3 page)

Mr. Neff says the gays are out to take over the world. He says they're recruiting young people in the classroom,
on the street, in the secret bedrooms at the back of homes. He says gays are more likely to fuck kids than straights.

Mr. Neff says he will do anything he can to help us if we're thinking about being gay. He says he knows counselors who specialize in this. He says he can save our lives, not to mention our souls.

Mr. Neff says Jesus will forgive anything. All we have to do is ask. All we have to do is turn away from sin. I don't know what sin is, but I know that no matter what I do, it'll come back to me. No matter what I do, I'll be on the outside looking in. I'll be the boy who liked boys. I'll be the boy who liked girls. I'll be the boy who'd fuck anything.

W
HEN THE RAIN
comes again, I stand in the Pit watching the windows glisten. Rainbows stretch over the street's greasy asphalt. I light a cigarette and watch Bekah come out. She's short and soft and her hips are gloriously wide. She comes and stands with me. Soon there will be more of us, but for now, we're alone.

She smiles and lights a cigarette and presses her shoulder into mine. She smells of smoke and sandwich meat, jasmine and shampoo.

“Where's everyone?” she asks.

I shrug. I've been skipping my classes. I've been skipping lunch. I'm here only to buy some Oxy from Richie. Richie's mom has a bad back. She takes Oxy and Dilaudid. She's lives with pain. Richie sells her pills to his friends.

Richie and John John come out and light up. They stare at me. I'm pretty rough right now, wild hair, dirty clothes. I've been gone a while, spending all of my time floating on my mattress in an opiate haze. Sometimes I'd get up and smoke some weed. I'd steal some of Grandpa's whiskey
from the kitchen. Mom hasn't bothered with me. She writes the notes for school when I need them. She thinks I'm adjusting to the move, the divorce. She gives me my space.

“What're you doing?” Richie asks.

“I need Oxy.”

“I don't have any,” he says.

“You always have Oxy.”

“I'm waiting for Mom to refill the prescriptions,” he says.

“Jesus.”

“You're going to get busted,” John John says.

“Doesn't matter.”

“Whatever,” he says.

Everyone stares at me like I've done something sick and unexpected.

“I should have some tomorrow,” Richie says.

“Okay.”

“I'll call you,” he says.

“I'll be home.”

I walk away from the group. I can hear them talking about me. I can hear their whispers. Their pointed little rumors will run through the school before long. It doesn't matter. All that matters is the high I'm waiting for. All that matters is the hours between now and tomorrow when
Richie will bring me the Oxy. For now, I'll make do with weed and whiskey.

N
IGHT BEGINS WITH
bats. Trees stand black on black along the road. The rain writes poems in the mud on the road's shoulder. I listen to the plinking noise of water dripping from the gutter to the small pool gathered under my window.

Grandpa sits in on the porch stropping a knife, a steel blade as long as my forearm. I don't know what he intends to do with it. The thing is too big for farm work. Grandpa has a six inch knife he wears on his belt, but loves this short sword.

I call Mom at work.

“When are you going to be home?” I ask.

“Three, maybe four.”

“Grandpa's scaring me,” I say.

“He's harmless.”

“I don't know.”

“I'm busy,” she says. “Deal with it.”

The phone cuts out. I stand in the yard and the rain presses my hair against my head. A car flashes past on the
road. I go into the house. Grandma's watching her stories on the television. She likes soap operas and talk shows.

“Makes me feel fortunate,” she says.

I have chores in the morning. I have school. I go to bed. At least the door locks. I don't have to worry about Grandpa with his huge knife or Grandma with her fascination with other people's lives.

B
ERRIES, BLOOD AND
bees sing in the little wind coming from the mountains. Harold takes me to a rodeo and we sit in the bleachers drinking beer and cracking peanuts with our thumbnails, digging the meat out with our fingers and chewing them to mush with our dirty teeth. Bulls and horses shit in the arena's sawdust and dirt. Clowns rush the horns and cowboys climb the tall metal fence, escaping the pissed off bulls crashing around, looking for something to gore.

A vendor sells leather belts in the parking lot. Harold buys one with my name stitched into it. I wear it now like a ribbon of courage, daring anyone to ask where I got it. I tell myself that I would tell them that my boyfriend bought it for me. I tell myself that I'd be brave and tell them that I'm in love with Harold, but I won't. I won't tell them that because Harold is not my boyfriend. I'm not in love with him. He's the occasional fuck.

After the rodeo, Harold takes me home. The house is dark. Mom's working and Grandma's at Bible study. I'm drunk from the beer and the peanuts have filled my
stomach so that there's no room for supper. I sit in the living room and stare at the blank television. The room spins around me and I close my eyes. It's comfortable here, but I cannot stay. Mom doesn't like it when I sleep on the couch and I don't want to be here when Grandma comes home. She'd smell the beer on me. Grandma disapproves of my drinking. She'd want to know where I got it and I'd have to lie to her. I don't like lying. Lies are too hard to keep track of. Eventually someone's going to find out.

Someday, someone's going to find out about Harold. There's nothing I can do about it, but it won't be from me. I'll never tell anyone anything. Hopefully, I'll be gone when the word breaks. Hopefully, I won't have to worry about what people think. I doubt it though. Secrets always come out at the worst possible moment. I know that I'll have to leave when the word reaches Mom, when my friends find out, but until then, I'll just pretend I'm just like everyone else. I'll pretend to be normal instead of this torn up kid waiting for his life to end.

P
OSTERS AND NEON
signs make the basement all green and red, blue and yellow. Couches and tables cut the floor into sections. Small windows pierce the concrete walls up near the ceiling, sealed shut, just in case someone wants to break in.

The Oxy comes on fast and the weed is sweet and harsh. We sit on the floor. The floor is hard and smooth and a carpet keeps the cold concrete from seeping into our legs.

Richie and I kiss on the couch. The couch cradles our naked bodies. This is what we do when we're high and have the house to ourselves. I close my eyes and let his lips run down my chest and belly. He takes me in my mouth. I take him. We fuck and grunt and squeal.

The sun goes down and the windows go dark and Richie turns on the lamp. Shadows etch his bones and muscles.

“You're beautiful,” he says.

“I don't know about that.”

“You are,” he says. “You even taste like oranges.”

I don't know what that means, but I guess it's a good thing.

“Are we a couple now?” I ask.

“This is just fucking,” he says. “I only go out with girls.”

That makes sense. Dating guys in this small town is dangerous. No one knows what'll happen if you come out to all the Christians and their rules. No one knows what'll happen if you make yourself a target.

A
CREEK RUNS
at the edge of the woods down the hill from the house. Stones jut out of the water, covered with moss and lichen. The water is all white noise. Leaves are beginning to unfold in the trees. Crocuses bloom in the dark, wet soil, purple as bruises.

I sit on a stone and toss twigs into the rushing water. I smoke cigarettes and line the ground-out butts on the stone beside me. The sun is diluted behind a bank of clouds. Soon summer will come and things will dry out. I'm not sure if that's true, but I'm learning to live with rain.

I think about the desert from which I come. I think about the sagebrush, the junipers, the poplars and tall dry grass.

When I was a kid, there was a hill at the edge of town that I'd climb with my friends. We'd wander amongst the radio towers and the giant rigging that held the star that lit up every Christmas.

I miss my friends. I miss walking in the heat, the snow in the winter. I miss going to the lakes north of town and jumping from the cliffs rising there.

I've made friends here, but they don't know my history. They don't know what I've gone through. We have no history. They're the folks I get high with, nothing else. Not that I had many friends back home, but the ones I did have knew me. I knew them. Our secrets kept us together. We shared a kind of misery. Here, all I share is time and space.

I walk home and kick my shoes off on the porch.

“Where have you been?” Grandma asks.

“The creek.”

“Were you careful?” she asks.

“Always.”

I go to my room and close the door. In here, I can pretend that I do not share a house with my grandparents. In here, I can pretend that I have friends who know everything about me, friends who know when to ask questions and when to let things lie. I dream of having places to go and places I am comfortable. Right now, all I have is Oxy and weed and Boone's Hill.

E
VERYONE HAS A
date for the dance. The dance is Friday. Everyone has a date but me. I don't think I'll go. I want to go, but I don't think I will because I'm too afraid to ask anyone.

“What's the worst that can happen?” Mom asks.

“They could laugh.”

“They won't laugh,” she says.

She doesn't know the cruelty of kids. It's been too long since she was my age. She doesn't remember. I can't just ask someone out. I don't know how. She stares at me through the smoke from her cigarette and frowns.

“You need to make friends,” she says.

“I have friends.”

“Real friends.”

“Okay.”

Mina finds me at lunch. She's from Finland on exchange. Her English is good, if stiff. I like her. Sometimes we talk about words and how they work.

“This dance,” she says. “They say you need a date.”

“That's what they say.”

“I don't have a date,” she says. “Would you be my date?”

I watch her to make sure she's not fucking with me. She's pretty and blond and foreign.

“I'd like that.”

“We'll have fun,” she says. “Just wait.”

The dance comes and Mina and Bekah, Tammy and John John come to pick me up. Tammy and John John are dating. We go to a restaurant and we eat and we talk. We tell jokes and make too much noise. The waiter has to tell us to keep things quiet more than once.

After supper, we go to the dance. Bright lights and loud music rattle the walls. People mingle and bob and the room is too small for my comfort. I sit at a table with Mina and she keeps trying to pull me to the dance floor. I don't dance. I don't know how.

“It's foreplay,” Mina says.

“I'm not good at foreplay.”

“I'll teach you.”

Mina's tits press against my chest. She turns and backs into me. She smiles and licks my ear, my neck. It's hard to dance with a hard-on.

Mina leads me to a bathroom. She takes me to a stall and sits in the toilet. Fear and worry ride up my spine. Mina takes me in her mouth. She sucks and bobs and the
fear mingles with pleasure. This is not what I expected. I come and Mina smiles at me.

“Yum,” she says.

Yum? I've given head, but the end is always the worst part.

“Let's go,” Mina says.

Back on the floor, Mina glows. I don't have much faith in God, but Mina's an angel of sorts. She brings joy and pain. She raises me up and lets me fall. She is scary and wonderful. I want to get away from her, but then I think, if I leave now, she'll never fuck me.

M
OM COMES HOME
from work, three, four in the morning. Her car crushes the gravel, wakes me. The door opens and she stands in the living room talking to someone. Her voice is smoky and tired-sounding.

Mom talks to a man and a man talks to her. They stumble over something and laugh and I go to my door. Mom's making out with a shadow. The edges of their faces glow in the light from the dining room.

The door to her room closes and the bed squeals. They laugh and the floor groans. I go out to the living room and listen to them fucking. They fuck for thirty, forty minutes. The door opens.

“There are rules,” Mom says.

The man comes and stands in the living room and stares at me. Mom shakes her head.

“What're you doing?” she asks.

“Learning,” I say.

“I thought you were in bed,” she says.

“I heard a noise.”

“Don't be funny,” she says.

“What's his name?” I ask.

“Don't worry about that,” Mom says.

I get up and go to my bedroom door.

“Grandpa would shit,” I say.

“Don't I know it,” Mom says.

In bed again, I close my eyes and wonder what Mom was thinking, bringing a man home. These kinds of things are not okay here. Grandpa seems to figure if he's not getting laid, no one is. Still, I would have liked to have learned the man's name. Memories are always easier when there's a label to put on them.

J
OHN
J
OHN BRINGS
me home and we sit at the dinner table waiting for his mother to finish her prayers. She mumbles something about food and grace and mercy. I stare at her across the table and John John squeezes my hand. I want to say something nasty, but that wouldn't be nice and niceness is important to me. I let her pray and I smell the food and I wonder what I'm doing here.