Futureproof (11 page)

February

I'm living at Animal Mother's house again. I got kicked out of Splinter's because his transsexual aunt said I ate too much of her cold cereal. No regrets, though. It's good to move around. It's what I'm used to, the urban nomad.

Corey and I just finish smoking a joint in the bathroom when a knock comes on the front door. I'm fumbling around, frantically waving my arms back and forth, saying “Oh, shit!” and “Fuck!”

“What the hell are you doing, man?” Corey says. I remind him for the ten thousandth time that Animal Mother has been going ballistic on me for smoking pot in his apartment.

“Yeah, but why would he be knocking on the front door of his own apartment?” Corey says.

Then my paranoia hits even higher levels as I realize that no
body's supposed to be dropping by. I creep across the living room to the door, the knocks still coming. Through the peephole I can see a girl with long blonde hair walking back across the parking lot in the distorted fish-eye view, which makes me feel even more stoned. But it's a girl, so I open the door.

“Were you looking for somethi—someone?”

She turns around and walks toward me. I cringe instinctively just in case she's Federal B.I. or something.

“Is Trizden here? I'm Andie.” She sticks out her hand and vigorously shakes me.

“Trizden? Oh, you mean Animal Mother! No. No, he's not here right now.” She has huge green eyes.

“Are those your real eyes?” I say. She keeps looking at me.

“Do you guys want to match me on a joint?” she says.

Inside, she pours a large bag of weed out onto the table, at least an ounce. Corey rolls. I never learned how to properly construct a joint, which is a good thing because it saves me a lot of work.

“So how do you know Animal Moth—How do you know Trizden?” I ask.

“Oh, we've known each other for years now. Used to go out, I guess.”

“‘Used to go out'?”

“Well, I guess I'd call it that. A lot of sex was involved.” She winks at me. “You guys should come over to my house sometime. I only live about a mile from here. My girlfriend and I know how to have fun.” She winks at Corey, I think.

We get very, very stoned, some of the most potent weed I've ever smoked.

At some point Andie gets up to leave.

“Here's my number,” she says, snatching my hand and scribbling on it. “You guys should drop by sometime. We'll have fun.”

Corey and I are still on the couch watching reruns when Animal Mother gets home.

“I thought I told you not to smoke marijuana in my house anymore,” Mother says.

He has become one of
them
, a non–pot smoker who refers to the drug as
marijuana.

“We didn't smoke.”

“Bullshit, man. You smoked marijuana in my house.” He keeps saying it like that.
Marijuana.
“I can smell it. Do you think I'm fucking stupid?”

“Fuck this shit, dude,” Corey says. “Let's get outta here.”

“Yeah, you need to get out of here,” Trizden says.

“I will,” I say.

And then, as we walk out the front door, he says, “And don't fucking come back here unless it's to pick up your shit.”

“I fucking won't.”

“Good,” Trizden says. I can hear a touch of sorrow in his voice. It makes me feel regret.

I turn around outside the door.

“Oh, by the way, this girl Andie came by earlier and said she wants you to call her. Can you give me directions to her crib?”

March

I officially move in with Andie on my fourth visit to her house. I'd been staying in Corey's basement but he was getting increasingly sketched about the situation, said his parents would freak if they ever found out he had a friend living in the basement. So I asked Andie point-blank.

“Can I move in here with you?”

She stared at me, expressionless.

“I'm litter-trained and I don't eat much.”

She said, “Well, Luke…you
could
, but I don't think my boyfriend would appreciate that much.”

“You have a boyfriend?”

“He drives a tractor trailer,” she said. “He chews tobacco.”

I got up to leave, feeling stupid.

I was at the door before she added, “Sure, you can move in.”

“What about your boyfriend?”

“Oh, that? I was just kidding. Seriously, I just wanted to see what you'd say.” She smiled at me, turned back to the TV.

I went outside to get my belongings. They'd been sitting in the backseat of Corey's car for the past two weeks.

I came in the back door, set a duffle bag and my box of music on the floor, tossing my weathered paperback copy of
Black Boy
on the bag.

“OK. I'm moved in.”

“That's it? That's all your stuff?”

“I travel light. This is the only shit I really care about anyway.”

“You're not just going to love me and leave me, are you?”

“No, he won't do that,” Corey said matter-of-factly. “He's in love with my ex-girlfriend.”

 

That night, Corey decided to go home for the first time in four days. His father's a preacher. That's probably why Corey's always conflicted about everything.

Andie and I got stoned and then I grabbed her hand, pulled her behind me into the bedroom. She looked at me, hesitating, so I kissed her, struggling to unfasten my belt with one hand. We began pulling clothes off and then we were naked, rolling around on her bed, tugging at each other in the darkness. As I was about to enter her, she stopped me with her hands on my hips and whispered something about having slept with Corey one night after I'd already passed out.

I hesitated for a half second.

“I don't care,” I said. “He's my best friend.”

She looked into my eyes, grabbed my ass, and plunged me inside her.

 

Andie and I are in her bedroom with her bitchy yet hot friend Jessica. Someone knocks on the window. We know immediately that it's Corey because he never uses the door, he always knocks on the window. His friend Hank, from West Virginia, is with him. Hank says that his boss is looking for another man to help on a hardwood flooring crew.

“What's up, dude?” Hank says.

“Would you care if I called you Henry?” I ask. “That's such a great name.”

“Why would you call me Henry?”

“'Cause that's what Hank is short for, isn't it?”

“My name's not short for Henry. It says ‘Hank' right on my birth certificate.”

“Just straight up ‘Hank,' huh? You West Virginians do everything your own way.”

“Damn straight.”

We pass the bowl around, pack it again. I ask Hank for the specifics about the flooring job.

“Seriously, dude, how much would he start me out at?”

“Depends. The more we put down, the more you get paid.”

“When can I start?”

“Monday.”

“I'm in.”

“Don't think this is like anything you've known, I can tell you that. This job'll break you in half and then build you back up a
real
man.”

“Shit, I'll drink you under the table right now, West Virginia.”

“Yeah, but can you lift a bundle of eight-foot boards with one hand?”

“Just tell me where to meet you on Monday.”

 

The job installing hardwood pays by the square foot. The faster we work, the more money we make. Telemarketing is for losers and rejects anyway, and now the opportunity to learn a trade has fallen into my lap. The last time someone straight up offered me a job was when Trizden said he could get me in with the “characters” clique at Six Flags, where you're in a Bugs Bunny or Marvin the Martian costume all day, getting kicked in the nuts by bratty little kids but with the occasional opportunity to feel up a hot MILF. I passed on that one. But this is different. As long as I'm willing to bust my ass, the money will roll in.

And get this:

Andie's family owns the house we live in so we pay no rent. Her grandmother is the matriarch of a large brood of boys who are partners in a plumbing, heating, and air business. Andie's dad is the oldest brother and therefore has the most control over what goes on in this giant industrial park of ten or fifteen tin buildings with giant bay doors. It stretches down most of the road, and although you'd think I did well by hooking up with this girl, she really doesn't have much of anything to do with the family. She's treated like a pariah by all of them, including, if not especially, her dad. He got her mom pregnant pretty young and they got married so Andie wouldn't be illegitimate. The marriage didn't last. Her mom was a prolific pillhead with severe mental problems, so her dad ended up with custody of Andie from the time she was a small child and then he remarried. The elder Andrew (Andie's named after him) decided the best way to get his troublesome daughter out of her stepmother's way was to let her stay in this run-down house, smack in the middle of the industrial complex, rent-free. She's lived here since she was fifteen.

But I'm not knockin' it. It's the most space I've ever had to live the way I want. I can smoke or drink or get fucked up whenever I feel like it. And I get to see my best friend all the time. Because Corey and I both live here, really, if living somewhere means you sleep and eat and take showers in the same place for a number of days in a row.

April

Corey and I take turns fucking Andie. Well—I shouldn't really say “take turns” because it's not like I have her every second Tuesday of the month and he has her every third Thursday. We'll all three get stoned and drunk, and then one of us inevitably ends up making out with her while the other plays video games. I don't know why I'm not more jealous because I'm usually really possessive. But it feels good not to care. Andie doesn't sound like she makes any more noise with him than she does with me. Or maybe she does. I always wanted her friend Jessica anyway. Which is pathetic in its own right because Jessica can't stand me. But she's totally hot, with short blonde hair and a Volvo. She's got a serious set of tits, too, so there's that.

Jessica comes over while Andie and Corey are fucking this one day. I'm sitting in the living room, sulking. She stares at me as she
walks through to the kitchen. “What's wrong with you?” she asks.

She really
is
a bitch. But I still want to bang her. No matter how much an attractive woman mistreats you there's still that part of you that would let bygones be bygones if she'd only let you give her the high hard one.

“I'm fine,” I say, my voice coin-flat. She stands there looking at me for a second and then cocks her head as an especially loud cry comes out of Andie's room. I try to act like I don't hear anything, but Jessica, bitch that she is, says, “Oh, she's screwing Corey today. Must not have had what it takes last night, huh?”

“What the fuck's that supposed to mean?”

She walks down the hall to the spare bedroom and I hear the door click shut with an echo. That click alone makes me livid because it's just like Jessica to nonchalantly close a door in that way, that gentle door closing that burrows under a guy's skin. I want to run back there and grab her and fuck her until she begs for more and then walk away like it ain't a thing, let the door click shut behind
me
.

Out of Andie's room, the noises keep coming. This is where it always starts, when I need release. And no amount of weed or bourbon or Acid is going to let me out of the cage.

I get off the couch, move to the bathroom.

Jessica leans in the doorway just as I'm opening the medicine cabinet and asks if I'm going to make her wait all day.

Seriously. She says that.

I stand there looking at her. She takes my hand and pulls me into the bedroom, pushes me down on the tiny bed. She drags her hair across my face, lets her lips skim my features. I try to breathe.

“You want a drink?” I ask her.

She looks up at me from where she was kissing my stomach, her body suspended above mine, a diamond-encrusted crucifix dangling between her breasts. “Sure. Grab a couple for us.”

I
run
to the kitchen and back.

“Have you ever had screwdrivers?” I ask, handing her a full glass.

She swallows, her nose crinkling. “I had a few at Georgia State when I went there a couple of years ago,” she says. “Is this the first time
you've
had screwdrivers?” she mimics.

“No,” I laugh, “and honestly, I can't stand the taste of pure vodka anymore because once I was at this party with this dude 8-Ball, and he bet me all the money in his wallet—twelve dollars—that I couldn't drink half a fifth of Absolut in less than two minutes. So I was trying to impress him and chugged the whole bottle.”

Jessica nods. Her eyes are still fixed on me.

“Long story short, when I came to later, this girl Tera, this goth chick, she's standing there in her black dominatrix outfit and she's blowing cigarette smoke in my face. We're outside and I'm naked, Saran-wrapped to a tree.”

Jessica's finished her drink, ignoring the rest of my story, my nerve-induced story, her fingers toying with my belt loops. She kisses my stomach some more and then pulls my shirt over my head, kisses me on the mouth. She is ravenous, running her fingers over the scars on my chest and then she's sucking me like it's her job and next she's climbing on top, my shoes still on and my pants around my ankles and then she's putting me inside her.

I can still hear Andie in the next room moaning and for some reason it's bothering the hell out of me. So I tell Jessica I want to change positions and we move around a bit and then I'm on her in missionary, where I like to think all my best work is done, and she is gritting her teeth and looking up at me and holding her legs open at the knees with her hands and telling me to fuck her harder and I do, goddammit I do, and she's growling,
growl
ing like a fucking animal and I can't pound her hard enough.

And even though she's doing everything I ever wanted a girl to do in bed, even though she's a hot little rich girl, even though she is hungry for more, the fact that Andie is in the other room fucking Corey is turning my insides out and I hate that this is the way it is—but it is.

I look at Jessica sprawled there, naked and heaving, and pause for a moment—Andie and Corey still echoing around the hallway—and then I stand up and shuffle out of the room, my pants around my ankles.

I stumble into the bathroom, tear open the medicine cabinet, watch my reflection shimmer and disappear around the corner as the door swings left. The mirror only covers about half the allotted area in the door because a few weeks ago we were all tripping and Corey decided to take a can of hairspray and shoot it at the mirror while we lit the vapors with a Zippo. The flames danced on top of the mirror and we could see our reflections framed by the trappings of a Miltonian hell, all blue and orange with a hint of red. The fire was magnified on the glass and our LSD-soaked eyeballs were transfixed by its dancing. Then the glass popped like a gunshot and all that was left of the mirror was a thousand shards scattered across the floor and this one crooked piece that managed to hang on to the cabinet door, the brown cardboard exposed where the rest of the glass once was.

I stare at my chest in the half-mirror shard. Still pale and clean. There are no visible scabs from the last cutting. I grit my teeth and drag the tiny blade across. The pain is more immediate than last time.

I feel release.

The burrowing mental anguish is rejected, smoothed out and soothed by this very real action. That's why they used to do it in the olden days: bloodletting to release the demons of the mind and body.

Jessica leans in the open door, wearing only a camisole and panties. She doesn't say anything, just looks at me. I cut again, feel the sting, repeat. Red lines canvass my chest and I pause for a moment to reflect, wholly experience the trouble slipping out and away, let my mind come back down to that place where it doesn't feel like everything is fucked. Jessica goes back to the bedroom. Her belt buckle jingles as she pulls her pants back on.

I make one last slash from sternum to navel, let my hand fall into the sink. Then this roll of duct tape calls to me. Who knows why it's lying here on the bathroom floor. We don't have different decorative themes in every room. We're poor and carefree. We can store our duct tape anywhere we damn well please.

I tear off a foot-long piece of tape and slap it across my mouth, wrap it around the back of my head. Then another. You really
can
use this shit for anything.

Jessica comes back to the door, pulling her hair up with a red velvet scrunchy. “You are one
fucked
-up screw-job, you know that?”

The blood drips from my chest and plinks on the vinyl floor. I continue pulling loud strips of duct tape from the roll and wrapping them around my face until only my eyes and nostrils are left exposed, and when I look in the mirror I am a bleeding
machine
, a cyborg, a robot encased in skin. I can hear my heart beating and the Cure CD in the stereo is nearing its end as I stumble to the bedroom door where the noises of fucking still emanate strongly and I imagine Corey is nearing his nut.

I open the door and there they are, naked and sweating, humping on the mattress and box spring that lie on Andie's floor in the middle of the room. Corey is behind her, both of them shadows in the dark room. I stand there looking at them, Andie glancing back at her ravager. Then I go for him, in mid-stroke, before he even has a chance to realize I'm in the room, and knock him off the bed.

Corey is shorter than I am by about five inches, but he's one of those guys who's got all kinds of natural muscle tone and weight about him, so I'm pretty sure that he can easily kick the shit out of me, especially when you consider that my pants are still around my ankles. But he doesn't. He stands up.

“What the fuck did you do, man?”

Andie pulls a sheet over her nakedness even though I've fucked her at least two or three more times than Corey.

I struggle with the duct tape covering my mouth, try to pull it off quick so it won't burn, but it still hurts like hell.

I tell Corey that I can't stand him fucking Andie anymore because I think I love her.

“You love me?”

“I don't know. I can't stand you screwing Corey anymore when I'm around, though. That's it. I'm sorry, but I just can't take it.”

I'm getting teary now because this is not what is really going on at all. I can't love this woman. I'm not even that attracted to her. But she has this charisma or something that I want to have dedicated to me alone. I want her to stop being so unattached to everything around her that she doesn't even care if I'm in the next room screwing her best friend.

I mean, Andie came on to me first. She liked how I drove a stick shift. Once I gave her a ride home in Flick's car, a five-speed, and when she got out of the car she told me that my driving had gotten her really hot. She shut the door and walked into her house knowing I was sitting there watching her and stewing in my own juices, just wondering how I was supposed to take that kind of statement.

But that's how Andie is. She's always throwing out innuendo and suggestion and then acting like she's been talking about silverware or some mundane shit like that when you decide you want a piece of her for real. Standing naked in a room with two or three other people
is nothing. It's telling somebody else what scares the piss out of you that makes for the real shit. But Andie is above all of that. Nothing scares her. She doesn't seem to have any specific hopes or dreams. She's just this girl I know that will give me everything, but always leaves me feeling like I never had anything to begin with.

And I haven't had this much fun since…well—ever. And shit like that doesn't come along too often. Shit like that has got to be explored.

I take a step backward into the living room and shut the door (click), pleased with the reaction my little piece of performance art has garnered.

See, I hadn't realized until recently that doing shit most everyone else would consider “crazy” can be seen by other people as art. Saw it on cable.