Sex & Violence (17 page)

So when Tom left for a weeklong baseball tournament, and Jim texted me to come over to his cabin and hang out, though I hadn’t ever hung out with just Jim and Taber before, I took one look at my father socking away beer and kettle corn while playing poker with Brenda and Mr. Tonneson and the choice was clear.

***

Taber and Jim were eating a bucket of chicken and watching TV. Jim had this giant black dog that was slobbering and begging for the chicken and Taber would go to give the dog some and Jim kept freaking out: “Don’t give her table scraps! She’s enough of a fatass as it is!”

“Dude, you’re such a cock to your dog,” Taber kept saying.

Jim offered me some chicken, but I shook my head. Pulled out my pipe and a bag of weed I’d bought from the dishwasher kid at Mackinanny’s a week earlier and offered it up.

“Can’t,” Jim said. “I’m driving tonight. We’ve got plans.

There’s a party we need to attend.”

So Taber and me smoked out while Jim took a million years in the shower. Probably bleaching his fucking teeth too.

Meanwhile, Taber had turned on a movie, Jim’s favorite,
A Clockwork Orange
. I’d never really seen the whole thing, but it inevitably showed up in the background at some point at every school I’d attended. Wherever guys congregated and were comfortable enough to scratch their balls, this fucking movie was sure to follow. Anyway, I recognized the awful old

’70s colors instantly. It reminded me of a children’s educational show but all demented and gross.

“You have to see this one part,” Taber said. “He’s chasing around this old lady with, like, this giant statue of a dick.” He was forwarding scenes and couldn’t get the remote to work right.

I wasn’t too high but was high enough to feel a little shitty.

Watching this movie wasn’t helping. It reminded me of Remington Chase, for one thing. Plus everyone was so ugly and awful-looking. At least in modern movies, chicks look decent.

Even naked, the chicks in
A Clockwork Orange
skeeved me out.

And I really didn’t need to see the main character walking around his apartment in his underwear (scratching his balls, of course)—even at fast-forward speed.

Finally, Jim got out of the shower—still shirtless, smelling like body spray, and—yep—scratching his balls. He said we needed to go. All bossy, like we’d been the ones holding shit up.

“Hang on, I’m getting to this one part,” Taber said.

“Baker hates this movie so bad.” Jim sat down and put on his shoes. “You even quote it and she starts yelling.”

“Where
is
Baker?” I asked.

“Doing something with her friends.”

“Here it is!” Taber said. We all sat there for a minute and then on the screen there was this lady in a horrible orange jumpsuit and everything was like space-age furniture and one of the guys in white wearing the nut cups was singing “Singing in the Rain” as he kicked the shit out of this old guy. Then the nut cup guy cut out holes of the woman’s orange jumpsuit so her tits hung out and then basically made his friends hold the old guy down, forcing him to watch while he jumped on his wife.

“Hey, should we go … ?” I asked. Because right then, I wanted to throw up everywhere. Splatter barf all over the bucket of chicken on the coffee table that Jim’s dog kept sniffling around. I kept seeing Collette and her face screaming in a way I’d never seen it, would never see it, and her crying, and it felt like it was me being held down to watch her, not the old man in the movie.

“Wait, this isn’t the right part …” Taber fiddled with the remote again. In my experience, this was easier with YouTube, where apparently thousands of guys like Taber and Jim had lovingly curated and tagged the most ultraviolent bits for all our viddying pleasure. But I wasn’t about to tell Taber this—at least not without throwing up on his shoes.

I got up and went to the bathroom. Which wasn’t any better. It was all steamy from Jim’s shower, plus I could have sworn he used the same body spray as The Rammer. I regretted smoking out. Coming over here. All of it.

Then Jim yelled, “Come on, Evan, we’re going!”

Jim drove us in this tiny little woman car. A hatchback of some kind that he said was Taber’s mother’s. Tom would have known the make. Taber could barely cram his body in it, and I had to sit behind Jim, because Taber’s seat was so far back.

“I found us a loadie party, dude,” Jim said. “Guy who sold me the mushrooms told me about it. So you and Taber can get lucky.”

I tried to imagine me getting some game. Even though I still felt like shit.

“I won’t even get drunk, so you don’t have to worry about getting home,” Jim continued. “Unless you go back to
her
trailer. Then you’re on your own.” He laughed.

“Fuck you,” Taber said. Like he was sensitive about his loadie chick’s feelings in advance.

“I’ll steer them toward you guys,” Jim continued. “I mean, they probably aren’t used to anyone who has all his teeth.”

That was true, if Terry Gribbener, my Cub Foods coworker, was any indication. The few teeth Terry had were a slimy yellow, and his breath was worse. So probably Jim’s blinding-white dentures would be especially dazzling.

“We going to the south side?” I asked.

“No, a trailer park in town,” Jim said. “Riverbend
Estates
,”

he added.

“Stop at a gas station,” I said.

“What for?”

“I need a couple of supplies if we’re going to make this happen.”

Plus, I needed to get my head right. If there were hot chicks at this loadie party, maybe that would be all I’d need. Maybe Lana’d be there, even.

Taber stopped at a Spur, and I ran in and got a couple packs of Marlboro Lights, some gum, two lighters, and a three-pack of condoms. Back in the car, I divided it all between me and Taber. Jim couldn’t believe it, and I didn’t know if it would work because I never scammed girls in a group before, but I thought it couldn’t hurt.

Fast forward to being at a shitty trailer park party, where it was all grass stamped down to dirt and crappy laundry lines and a rusted-out carousel at a playground area holding a keg wrapped in a black trash bag full of ice. Jim kept approaching little groups of chicks with his big fat smile and corny-ass lines that somehow made them open up and talk to us. Which was helpful, because me and Taber got completely shitfaced, me kind of rushing Taber to drink more and more with me, in order to shake my shitty feelings.

Which was fine—the dose of
Clockwork Orange
’s greatest hits seemed less gross the drunker I got, though reality started to resemble the scene where Alex gets down with those two chicks he meets in some fucked-up mall (though that scene was for shit, because the director ran it in quadruple speed, as if he knew it would be less enjoyable that way). The main thing I remember is what happened with these two girls, one in a red dress and one in a turquoise tank top. The red dress girl smoked all my cigarettes like some kind of nicotine pig and wouldn’t stop hollering at me in this scratchy man’s voice.

She had big tits, but beyond that she was annoying and gross.

Turquoise Tank Top was at least cute and normal about being flirty, and soon she and Taber disappeared.

I was out of cigarettes and feeling awful, but Red Dress chick wouldn’t quit dogging me. Finally, I went behind some bushes and made myself barf just to feel better. Jim found me and asked where Taber was.

We didn’t have to wait long to find out. A few minutes later, while I was shoving three sticks of gum in my mouth to kill the barf taste, Turquoise Tank Top was back, giggling with her girlfriends.

Instantly, Jim and I ran back to the tiny car. Where Taber was passed out in the backseat, half-naked, still wearing the condom.

“Jesus!” Jim yelled, slapping Taber awake while I pretty much collapsed laughing.

“We gotta go home,” Taber moaned. “Please. I don’t want to see her ever again. Please. Once was enough.” Taber struggled to clean himself off and piss in the bushes and then squished into the backseat again in misery while Jim started the car.

“Jesus, it reeks in here!” Jim bitched, cranking down his window. “Roll yours down too! That must have been some funky-ass chick!”

“Fuck you,” Taber muttered.

“I feel like we should contact Ford about this,” Jim said.

“Tell them it’s possible to get laid in the back of a Fiesta.”

“Get those cigarettes outta here, will ya?” Taber groaned.

“I don’t want my mom to find them.”

But as Jim started turning the car around, Turquoise Tank Top came running toward us, two other girls with her, including Red Dress Chick, and I yelled at Jim to drive, but he didn’t get it at first. The girls shouted at us, and one of them bombed the soda cup full of Coke and Cherry Lick against the roof of Taber’s mom’s car, where it rained down into the open windows, and we peeled out of Riverbend Estates laughing like fucking idiots.

Dear Collette,

I’ve never gotten down with a chick when we were both all the
way naked.

Shocking confession. Have you ever done that?

I always laugh when I watch a movie where people have sex and
everyone’s fully stripped down. Or the girl’s stripping off her stuff
all slow in front of the guy. As if there’s time for that. As if you don’t
need to have your shoes on in case someone’s stupid parents come home
earlier than expected.

I learned the importance of the half-dressed bangage from this
one chick I met at a house party. She made me hold onto her bra, so
I left it on my wrist like a bracelet the whole time we got down. Sure
enough, not five minutes after we finished, this drunk guy barged into
the room and puked on the carpet. Good thing we were dressed and
able to exit quickly, right?

I think if that were my Last Chance Thing, that would be it. To
be all-the-way-naked with a girl, in a bed. A comfortable, real bed.

And all the time in the world. No worries, everything safe. Nobody
barging in barfing or interrupting or laughing or busting us or anything. We could see everything of each other, and I wouldn’t freak
out about it, because I’d have time and she’d be understanding and
everything would be good and slow and nice and fine and I wouldn’t
care if she liked me because I’d like her, like a normal person for once,
and not be all sorry for her and manwhorey about it.

Maybe you have to be married to get down like that? I can’t
imagine being someone’s boyfriend, much less husband.

Later, Evan

Since Taber, Jim, and I had to clean out the Cherry Lick and cigarettes and the condom box and everything else from Taber’s mom’s car at a self-service car wash at two in the morning, I woke up pretty late the next day, on the couch at Jim’s cabin—

his parents nowhere around and not giving a shit what he did, apparently. Beside me was Jim’s dog that wouldn’t stop licking me. Covered in dog hair and Cherry Lick and feeling like a pile of ass, I walked home. Before the loadie party, I hadn’t had time between work and appointments with Dr. Penny to bathe. And now everyone was out on the Tonneson’s deck, eating and playing cards, Baker included, so I could hardly use my usual mode of getting clean.

I went into the bathroom for my daily shower staredown.

The bathroom door was lightweight; it made a fluttery sound when you shut it, like it was made out of cardboard, not wood.

Completely shitty. If it were up to me, all bathroom doors would resemble those terrorist-proof reinforced steel cockpit doors on airplanes.

But shitty door or not, I still reeked like the bags of onions Layne and I unloaded the day before, with Cherry Lick and cigarettes on top of that. So I decided to turn on the shower.

Just turn it on. To get used to the sound. Dr. Penny said you had to go slow. That avoidance made it worse.

Listening to the sound of the water rushing on tile made me feel like I was back at Remington Chase. Which was crazy—YOU ARE SAFE, I yelled at myself in my head. Then I could hear Collette, crying, which made no sense, since that happened much later. How much later? I never asked the true timeline of that night. If Dr. Penny thought I should know the specifics of how everything went, she probably would’ve made me write magical letters to the Charlotte police department.

I shut the shower off. I was sweating. The steam fogged the mirror, and I yanked open the flimsy-ass door and was about to flop back onto the couch and sulk when I saw Tom loping across the yard with Kelly and got an idea. Watching Tom help Kelly into the boat, I ran outside before he could start the motor.

I mean, a door needing a lock—how hard could it be? I could do calculus and chemistry when I paid attention. I had taken industrial arts. There had to be instructions online.

“You got a drill I could borrow?” I asked Tom, all casual.

“Sure,” he said. “It’s in the shed with all the summer Shakespeare shit.”

***

If you ever want to quickly feel like a giant dumbfuck, just go into a hardware store and stare at a display of doors for a while.

Still, forty minutes and forty bucks later, I drove home, feeling better. Closer to not smelling like girly booze and sacks of yellow onions.

The gathering at the Tonneson’s was still going, so I took the long way around to the shed for the drill. Then I slipped back the same way. Sneaking around was necessary, because I’d gotten used to life on the east side, everyone in your business.

Mrs. Tonneson borrowing someone’s back massager and talking loudly about it out on her deck. Baker cutting Tom’s hair on her screen porch. Brenda dragging her laptop over to my dad every time the screen froze. I knew way too much about these people. Their hemorrhoids, their carpal tunnel, their grandmothers with dementia.

Fast forward to complete fuckery. I followed the instructions on the dead-bolt package—really, I did. But I wasn’t five minutes into drilling holes when I completely cocked up the entire thing. None of the holes were aligned and the doorknob rattled around like it might fall out and the drill pretty much cracked the flimsy-ass door in half. I wanted to tear the whole thing off the hinges like the Hulk.