Wake (25 page)

My hands move to no effect. There’s stimulation, but no build. I shake off the drug haze and move my hand harder, faster, trying everything to make my body cooperate with my urge to achieve release. I even bring in the image of the petite blonde, but skilfull as she is—and is she ever—I can’t coax my body into submission.

I’m just about to give up when a painful spasm creeps up the back of my spine and I arch involuntarily. I fal back onto my pillow with the eye-watering pain in my abdomen that feels just like last time; like someone has cut through the length of my crotch with a hot serrated knife. I bite the pillow to keep quiet and curl around my sore center.

Why did you even bother?

It takes almost forty minutes for the pain to fade this time; way longer than it did in the shower. When I can move again I reach for the Kleenex to clean myself up, but realize there’s nothing to clean. I even turn on the lamp and stand up to inspect my clothes and the bed. Nothing. I didn’t even ejaculate this time.

I crawl back into bed, more defeated than I’ve felt in awhile, and bury my head in the pillow. What if this problem never goes away? What if I can never get off again? What if I can’t ever have sex because of this? That would really scare a girl off—a guy who screams in agony and has to lay in the fetal position for an hour every time he nearly-comes.

My sleep is restless for the remainder of the night, and I get up with sore joints and a pounding head. I think the Benadryl was a bad idea.

Wednesday I’ve been out of bed for exactly thirty seconds and my day has already gone to shit. My piss is cloudy. I don’t have an infection and it doesn’t hurt to pee, which leaves one obvious solution: retrograde ejaculation. Damn it. Do you know who does that? Paraplegics and old guys with no bladder control left, that’s who. I’m supposed to be in recovery and my body just keeps finding new ways to betray me.

I try to rub one out in the shower in an attempt to power-trip on my own body; show it who’s boss, and all. I can’t even get hard enough to call it a semi. I think I’ll just crawl back into bed.

*

We’re a little early for school. Elise insisted on leaving early so she could ‘drop something off at the social planner’s office.’ That’s probably total bullshit, considering that the basketball team had a seven a.m. practice and she’s still pining for that guy who’s no good for her.

I don’t want to go into the school yet. I have no one to hang out with and chat to before class, and standing around like a loner is tough on the ego. So I lie down on the backseat and try to get an extra fifteen minutes of sleep before going in for first period. Then I hear the tell tale rumbling of Willa’s lousy muffler and sit bolt upright. She’s early too.

I get out of the car and head toward her car. Willa is still sitting in the front seat, holding a notebook up against the steering wheel. She must have some last-minute homework to finish.

I open the driver’s side door and say hello. Willa’s speakers are playing “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction”

by The Rolling Stones at a low volume. She’s listening to the soundtrack of my night.

“Morning.”

She looks at me like she can’t believe I have the nerve to talk to her, and then at my hand where it rests on the edge of her car door.

“Uh, I guess you want to be left alone?”

“What do you want?” She’s doing that thing again—the thing that makes me feel very small and insignificant and helplessly in the wrong.

“Just to see how you are.”

“I have to finish this.” She gestures to her homework and closes the car door firmly. I just stand there like the idiot I am, watching her work while she doesn’t even spare me a glance.

How can she just blow me off like that? I have the sudden urge to pound on her window and ask her what the hell is up her ass, but that would only worsen her mood. I shove my hands in my pockets and head inside.

She’s not just being cold and ignoring anymore—she’s being downright mean.

*

Elise makes me a milkshake without having to ask for the second time this week. And so my night turns around: in sweats by five, sitting down to a milkshake and bowl of homemade soup for a snack.

“Why don’t you invite Willa over for dinner?” Mom says. “I haven’t seen her all week.”

“I’ll call her.” And just like that, my day is shit again. I call Willa’s cell and house lines, but she won’t answer either one. I tell Mom that she’s busy tonight. By her worried expression, I get the sense that she doesn’t entirely believe me. Willa’s absence has been noted.

Thursday My alarm clock goes off unreasonably early. Before I even open my eyes or roll over to switch it off, three thoughts surface from beneath the haze of sleep:
It’s Thursday. It’s a school day. I can’t do this.

I roll over and shut off my alarm. My day hasn’t even started and I feel completely, utterly defeated. Why should I bother to get up and go to school? No one there cares that I even exist. I don’t feel like eating. I don’t feel like doing anything. I spend five whole minutes debating whether it’s worth the trouble to get up to pee.

Mom pokes her head in and tells me to get a move on.

“I’m not going in today.”

“Why not?” She steps into my room and puts a hand on my forehead. I’m not sick. Not in that way, at least.

“I’m not up to it.” She studies me for a moment, and it looks like she’s about to say something when she turns and leaves without a word. She comes back a minute later with a glass of water and a reminder to take my meds.

“I’ll call the school and tell them you won’t be in.”

“Thanks, Mom.”

When she leaves I burrow deeper into my blankets and go back to sleep. It’s about as numb as I can get without a morphine drip.

*

Tom Petty wakes me up. The hell ? I lift my head—the clock says it’s ten-thirty—and look over my shoulder at my speaker setup. The thing doesn’t just turn on by itself.

There’s a blue-haired freak standing by my speakers, dancing unabashedly. She hasn’t changed a bit.

The blue of her hair matches the bul ring in her nose and the stud in her eyebrow, because she likes to coordinate like that.

Ava catches my eye and smiles. “Hey slut.”

She takes a run at the bed and leaps toward me. She lands above me on all fours with a wicked grin on her face. “Check it out.” She sticks her tongue out to show me a new piercing. I’m not surprised.

Ava’s primary motivation for most things is ‘because it would piss my dad off.’

“I’m thinking of getting my lip done too.” She kisses my forehead—shit, I’m not wearing a hat—and then sits back on her heels, balancing above my waist. I’m so thin that there’s actually room between her butt and my stomach.

“Good idea. Your dad’ll have a stroke.” I sit up on my elbows. “What are you doing here?”

“Nice to see you too, bitch.” She teasingly brushes her hand across my face in an approximation of a slap. “Your mom called me this morning. She wanted me to call you and cheer you up or some shit. But this is better, even if it is a long-ass drive.”

“It’s a school day.”

“A what?” She blinks at me. “Screw that. You’re my excuse to get out of Gym class.” Ava pulls back my blanket and waves me up. “Come on, get up. Emily said you were getting your energy back. We’re doing shit today.”

“She said stuff about me?” I swing my legs out of bed, but stop there. I’m dreading her answer. If it’s bad I’ll just crawl back into bed and bury my head in the sand.

“Not ‘said’ exactly.” Ava goes to my drawers and starts rifling through them. She throws articles of clothing at me as she finds them—socks, underwear, shirt, sweatpants. Then she opens the drawer I keep my toques in and throws her hands up. “Dude, it looks like a yarn factory threw up in here.”

“Just tell me what she said.”

Ava huffs “Caitlin wanted to know how her weekend was and before Emily even said anything she started bawling like a fucking baby.” Ava slams the drawer and makes a disgusted sound in the back of her throat. “She can be such a whiny little priss sometimes.”

“I’m telling her you said that.”

“Speaking of—” Ava whirls on me. “How come you invited her for Easter and not me?”

“It was Mom’s idea.” Mom likes Ava, but only in small doses. She couldn’t do an entire weekend with her as a guest. Ava has a mouth like a teamster, no sense of appropriate timing, and no verbal filter on her thoughts. She can be absolutely hilarious or embarrassing as all hell.

“So what is there to do in this town?”

“Nothing.”

“Come on, there has to be something.”

“Nope. It’s Smiths Falls.”

“Don’t kids usually go cow-tipping or something in small towns?”

That makes me laugh. “Did you pass many cow pastures along the road?”

Ava heaves a long-suffering sigh. She’s a city girl to the core. “I brought Shelby with me in case you weren’t up to going out. But since there’s nothing to go out and do…” Shelby is Ava’s violin. She plays nearly as seriously as I do cell o. We weren’t even really friends until we were in the same music classes.

My hands are too sore join her on strings, but there’s always the piano.

“Bring her in.”

*

It’s been awhile since Ava played classical. She isn’t signed up for Music at school this semester, and if the school or music camps aren’t forcing her to play classical, she attaches an amp to her violin and creates her own sound. These past few years she’s been flirting with death metal. If I’d seen her band play before I knew her, I’d have totally stalked her.

“You’re such a goody-two-shoes,” Ava complains as she rifles through my sheet music, looking for something worth playing. My collection is entirely classical. I did aspire to play professionally, a lifetime or more ago.

“Just pick one.”

Ava pulls a blue folio out of the stack and smirks. “Okay, you’re taste isn’t
totally
pathetic.” She pull s out the sheet music and slaps
Das Wohltemperierte Klavier, Prelude in G Major
down on the music stand. Kil me now.

“I’m sick of Bach.”

“well you’re short on Apocalyptica, so this’ll have to do,” Ava says. She tests the tune of her instrument before launching into the opening bars without me.

“Ava.”

She stops and looks at me archly. “It’s this or cow-tipping.” God damn it, why couldn’t she have just called like Mom asked her to? I turn to the keyboard and shift reluctantly through the notes. It’s like walking, just one key after the other. Keep moving, because it hurts too much to stay put. It’s the il usion that I’m going somewhere, or going away from something. I’m moving, so I must be alive. I can’t die, because music isn’t really alive. It’s an equation; a sensation; a fleeting thought that runs through my head too fast to be heard; an idea that lingers and drives me insane until I have to play it. To move is to blur the line between self and song.

Willa likes this song. She hates me, but she likes this. Willa falls asleep to this song. I wonder if she ever thinks of the time we played it together. Does she ever think of me at all without disgust? I bet her other friends keep her too busy to spare me much thought. It’s not like I have anything to offer that she would miss.

The faster I play the faster it will end and I can get her out of my head.

Yeah right.

Ava lowers her bow and flicks my ear. “Stop messing up the tempo.”

“Sorry.”

We start again from the beginning. So much for getting this over faster. But this is supposed to be a light, mel ow song. To adjust its speed is to corrupt its tone. I block out the thoughts of Willa and the aches in my joints and the niggling hunger in my stomach, and just listen to it. I haven’t played like this in ages. It’s effortless, weightless. It breathes. Time becomes irrelevant and the room could go up in flames without my noticing. When I run out of notes to play I’m not quite sure what to do. My hand lingers on the final key, drawing out the note unnecessarily. Ava gets fed up with the pointless noise and grabs me by the wrist to lift my hand away.

That’s when we both notice that my hands are shaking. I curl my fingers into fists to make it stop, but the tremor only gets worse. It’s hard to get a good breath.

“Jesus, boy,” Ava says, and grabs my hands. She turns me away from the keyboard and forces me to put my head between my knees. “You okay?

“Yeah. Sorry. Just…got a little lost.” She knows what I mean, the way music can transport you to such an
other
place. Down the rabbit hole, with no clear way of how to get back when the song ends.

“You, my friend,” she says, “are more messed up than I first fucking suspected.”

I hang my head. That is such an Ava thing to say. What’s weird is that I know exactly what she means by it, and it isn’t cruel.

Ava crouches down in front of me to be on eye-level. “Who is she?”

“Who?”

“It’s always a girl.”

“What’s always a girl?” I pull my hands away and sit up.

“There are times,” Ava says seriously, pointing a finger at me, “that you get this look on your face. It’s like your making love to the goddamned piano, and I know it’s the doing of some chick you’re all lovesick and blue-bal ed about.” She smirks and shakes her head. “You’re really quite a musical pervert.”

“This coming from the girl who lines her violin case with Georgia O’Keefe prints?”

“You were fingering the bejesus out of that piano.”

“I was not.”

Ava presses the nearest key she can reach, keening in time with it. Her voice pitches up with each key press and she sets an almost frantic tempo. She makes my piano sound like a girl about to come.

“Damn it.” I grab her hand off the keyboard and she laughs at me.

“It’s really cruel to tease her like that,” Ava informs me seriously. “It didn’t even look like she came when you were giving her Bach.”

“I can’t do this.” I pack up the sheet music and close the key cover. That’s quite enough of music and my playing habits for one day.