The Art of Breathing

by T. J. Klune

  Luckily, I have a modicum of self-control left (because I obviously don’t feel that way about him anymore), so I’m able to look up and away before he catches me ogling him like he’s a slab of beef on display.

  But it’s escaped my mind (so many things have, it seems) that the ceiling is covered in mirrors, so as soon as I look up, I’m blessed (cursed!) with a completely different view of the heterosexual striptease happening right in front of me. (How long does it take for someone to take off their shirt? I want to scream at him.) Not only can I see him from the top down, I can see the curve of his back and ass and this is exactly what Kori planned, that foul temptress, that evil bitch of a supervillain! This was the exact moment she knew would happen, and how did she get Dominic to play along? What did she promise him? Because she’s obviously promised him something, because no normal person would still be trying to take their shirt off after what has had to have been at least six hours and. That. Ass.

  “You okay?” he asks me, his shirt finally off.

  “Oh, sure!” I cry. “Everything’s great!”

  “You’re breathing funny.”

  Calm down. This is what Kori wants. It’s all part of her evil plan. Just calm down and talk about the weather. “Why are you naked!” I screech at him. That’s not weather talk!

  “What?” He looks down at himself, and for some reason, I’m relieved his nipples are even with each other. Then I realize I’m staring at his nipples and look at a convenient spot on the wall just over his shoulder. “I’m not naked.”

  You lying sack of lies! “Pretty fucking much!”

  “I want to take a shower,” he explains calmly. “Get all this road grime off me.”

  You have to calm down. Make your response sound natural, like nothing’s wrong at all. You sound like you’re about to shit yourself. “Sure! Swell! That sounds super! Road grime!” Much better. Make a joke. That’s all you need to do. Make a joke. I look back at him (resolutely ignoring just how tan his skin is) and grin a grin that is probably far too wide and reminiscent of a hyena. Tell a fucking joke! “I could use one myself. Maybe I could join you.” OH MARY, MOTHER OF GOD, NOT THAT KIND OF JOKE! STOP TALKING! STOP TALKING RIGHT NOW. “Er, I mean, ain’t no thang. Go take your shower, home slice. I’ll just chillax in here.” Why am I talking like I’m a WASPy white kid from the suburbs going to the inner city for the first time? Dear Jesus, I know you just forsook me, but please make me have a stroke right now. That’d be super cool, and I’d totally owe you one.

  “Chillax?” Dom asks me, sounding confused. “Home slice? Are you sure you’re okay?”

  No, no, I’m really not. I’ve got stress sweat like a motherfucker, and I’m pretty sure it randomly smells like old french fries, and I would give anything, literally anything, to have this moment be over. The more I open my mouth, I remind myself, the worse it gets. The answer is simple. Stop. Talking.

  But, alas, my last name may be Thompson now, but I am still a McKenna through and through. “A-okay, Captain Steroids!” I say brightly. “Could you be any more jacked?”

  He shrugs. “You know I like to work out.” I swear he flexes his arms and chest on purpose. Either that, or he has a severe case of muscle spasms and should seek out the nearest acupuncturist as soon as possible.

  “You look like you like to eat bricks,” I say. Because it makes so much sense.

  He laughs. Ye gods, that sound.

  I laugh, too, but only because I don’t know what we’re laughing at. His is the most erotic laugh I’ve ever heard, all dusky and full of gravel. I sound like a chipmunk getting run over by a car. Inappropriate erections, french-fry stress sweat, and dying chipmunk chortling. I am not fit to exist in this world.

  I eventually stop braying and there’s this weird crackle of electricity in the air as we look at each other. My skin thrums with the current of it.

  “It’s weird,” he says suddenly.

  “What?”

  He catches my eye. “You. Here.”

  I’m confused by the sudden change in subject. “In Tucson?”

  He shakes his head and gestures between us. “Here. With me. You know. Us. I think I’d forgotten how this could be.”

  I’ve pushed him too far. Goddammit. “It’s weird.”

  He nods.

  “Good weird or bad weird?”

  He sighs and says, “The best kind of weird there is,” like it’s the easiest thing in the world.

  Instead of replying with something devastatingly witty (since apparently I think I’m still capable of such things), I gape at him, opening and closing my mouth, showing him my best impression of a trout dying on dry land.

  He says nothing more, just grabs a shirt and a pair of cargo shorts out of his bag before turning and walking out of the room.

  But not before I see the small smile on his face that makes every single resolution I’ve ever made about Dominic Miller go flying right out the window. It’s good to know my convictions go by way of the wind over such a little thing. Either that, or at some point in the past four years, Dom was initiated as a voodoo high priest and I’ve just been cursed with some hoodoo.

  Either way, I am so completely and utterly fucked.

  20. Where Tyson Beholds the Awesome Wonder That Is Paul Auster

  EVER HAD to sleep next to someone while making a conscious effort not to touch them accidentally at any point during the night? Especially when said bedmate apparently considers normal sleepwear to be some raggedy workout shorts and nothing else?

  No?

  Well, it blows. Like a lot. And by “sleep,” I really mean stare at the ceiling and wonder just how my life has gotten to this point, trying to go back day by day through my entire life to find out which of my actions are deserving of the karmic ass-kicking I’m currently receiving. Let’s see. Beach hippies. Drug use. Not living up to my full potential. Almost accidentally burning down the house one year to destroy the turkey so we could have a vegetarian Thanksgiving. Being completely and totally awesome. Geez. Take your pick. It literally could be any one of those things and many, many more. It’s hard to live a morally good life when you have a propensity for shenanigans.

  It doesn’t help that the big oaf snoring loudly next to me (I knew it!) apparently has the propensity to splay out across the entire bed like he’s the only one in it. I watched as he got closer and closer and closer (never mind the fact that I was watching him while he slept—I tried not to think about how creepy that made me), and all the while, the space I had available to me became smaller and smaller. Eventually, I ended up in a tiny corner at the top of the bed, my butt against the headboard, wrapping myself around the pillow and glaring at Dominic, who I was by then convinced was doing this on purpose and had joined the ranks of villainy to conspire against me.

  I last until about five thirty, when I jerk myself out of yet another doze where I’d fallen into a surreal dream where Dominic had awoken to find me draped across the top of him. That itself was okay (well, as okay as something like that can be), but then I opened my mouth to give some sort of explanation, and a bucket of fried chicken legs fell out of my mouth onto Dom’s face. I tried to apologize, but then Dom started eating the chicken and that really grossed me out and I tried to run away only to fall into a pit filled with hippies in a drum circle, all smoking doobies and trying to put hemp necklaces around me. I don’t even want to try and begin to analyze that. I don’t want to know what that says about my fragile psyche. Something chickeny, to be sure.

  I turn to slide out of the bed carefully, doing my best not to wake him so he doesn’t see me scowling at him, muttering under my breath as I try and cast hexes in his general direction, even though I haven’t yet become a high priest capable of such things. Apparently I’m incapable of multitasking after only having ten minutes of sleep because instead of standing on my feet like a normal person, my knee catches the slightly open drawer of the dirty perverted nightstand, knocking it open and onto the floor, followed quickly by the bowl of condom
s and at least four different kinds of lube. I couldn’t have made more noise had I blasted a trumpet in his ear while surrounded by a flock of blue-footed boobies during mating season.

  I bend down to pick up everything I’ve knocked off the table and have managed to grab a couple of items off the floor when Dominic says sleepily, “What are you doing?”

  “Just cleaning. Go back to sleep.”

  “What you got there?”

  I stand back up and he’s peering over at me, his eyes half-closed, and I realize I’m holding a condom, a bottle of Boy-Ease, and a red dildo the size of my forearm. What the fuck is wrong with this nightstand! Goddamn sex dungeon of the drag queen Helena Handbasket!

  “This is all a dream,” I manage to say. “You’re still asleep and when you wake up, you won’t remember any of this.”

  He mumbles something else at me before he lays his head back down on the pillow. I honestly can’t believe that worked. I literally just convinced him that he was dreaming while I held a floppy rubber dong in my hands. Maybe it won’t be that bad. Maybe I can get control of this again. I can! I’ve got this! I’m Tyson Fucking Thompson, genius extraordinaire, and I’ve motherfucking got this!

  “At least wait until I get more sleep before you try to use that on me,” he says. It’s followed by a low snore.

  I don’t have this! I don’t! I’m Tyson Fucking Thompson, indecisive twinkie, and I don’t have this in the slightest!

  I throw the dildo to the floor and flee the room.

  THE HOUSE is quiet around me as I leave the sex dungeon. The sky is beginning to lighten through the windows, and I give strong consideration to getting back in the SUV and driving back to Seafare so Bear can protect me from the big bad world. Then I remember I am twenty years old and pretty much a man now. Well, sort of a man.

  I’m thinking about wandering into the kitchen to find some coffee when I see Sandy out through the sliding door, sitting crossed-legged on the patio, back arched up straight. I open the door and step out into the warm air.

  Sandy lets out a breath and glances back at me. He smiles sweetly when he sees me. “Good morning, baby doll. You’re up early.”

  “Couldn’t sleep,” I say, closing the door behind me. “Been up most of the night.”

  “Oh?” he says with an arch to his eyebrow.

  “Not like that,” I mutter.

  “Too bad.”

  “He’s straight.” Right?

  “Is that so?”

  “Yeah.” Right?

  “Fascinating.”

  I stand beside him. “How so?”

  Sandy shrugs. “You would know better than I would.”

  I don’t even know what that means. Desperately needing a change of subject, I ask, “What are you doing out here?”

  He turns his face forward again, straightening out his back, wiggling his shoulders and taking a deep breath and letting it out slowly. “Meditating,” he says.

  “Oh, man. I didn’t mean to interrupt.” I feel really bad. If there’s one thing I’ve learned about breathing, is that it’s annoying to be interrupted. “I’ll go back inside.”

  “You’re fine, baby doll. I’ll admit to not being very good at this yet.”

  “How come?”

  He frowns. “You’re supposed to clear your mind, but I find that absolutely impossible. I always seem to be thinking about something.”

  “Yeah, I know what you mean. Though, it’s not really possible to clear your mind. Your brain is always firing.”

  “Is that right?”

  “Yeah. It’s better to think of something mundane and focus on that. If you do that, it’s easier to follow your breaths.”

  That smile comes back. “Sounds like you know what you’re talking about.”

  I shrug. “I might know a thing or two.”

  “Few things on your mind?”

  “That might be an understatement. I have… issues.”

  Sandy laughs, not unkindly. “Don’t we all?”

  “Mine are diagnosed issues.”

  He waves me off. “And what difference does that make?”

  “I… huh. I don’t know. Sometimes, it’s hard for me to breathe.”

  He nods. “One breath at a time, right?”

  “I guess. Why do you want to meditate?”

  “I’m stressed.”

  “Aren’t we all?” I tease him.

  “Cheeky little twinkie,” he says with a grin. “Being Helena is taxing, to say the least.”

  “She slips through sometimes, huh?”

  He grimaces. “You could say that. I don’t have the hold on her I used to. I’m not as young as I once was. It can be tiring.”

  “What are you, twenty-six?”

  “I might have to keep you around. You’re very good for my ego. I’m thirty-one.”

  “Wow! I didn’t think you were that old.”

  “Now I don’t want to keep you around at all,” he says with a scowl, Helena flashing behind his eyes. “As a matter of fact, I might auction you off tonight to the highest bidder, who’ll probably be a forty-year-old businessman from Des Moines staying at a Motel 6.”

  I wince. “Sorry. My mouth tends to go before my brain does. It’s my brother’s fault. I learned it from him.”

  His eyes soften, but I can see the drag queen still flitting around. “You remind me of Paul, a bit. He’s the same way.”

  I shudder. “Then I feel sorry for you, having to be subjected to this all the time.”

  “I’ve learned to deal,” Sandy says dramatically. “Now, you think you can help me?”

  I think I can. Maybe. It can’t hurt to try, I guess. I sit down next to Sandy and cross my legs like his. “A guy named Eddie taught me this,” I tell him. “He’s supposed to be a psychiatrist, but I’m pretty sure he’s just some crazy guy who got mistaken for a therapist one day and ran with it.”

  “That awesome?” Sandy asks.

  “The best,” I agree. Because he really is. “I don’t know if I’d have made it without him.”

  Sandy bumps my shoulder with his. “I think you’d have done just fine, baby doll.”

  As the sun continues to rise, I try to teach Sandy the art of breathing. He takes to it better than I ever have. And for some reason, it helps me too.

  I’VE BEEN warned, of course. About Paul. From Sandy and Corey (who comes down the stairs this morning as Kori). I’ve been told he can be a bit… much… to handle. I really thought they were exaggerating. After all, I was raised by the King of the Rambling Dramatic Overthinkers, so how bad could Paul Auster possibly be? I didn’t think it was possible for anyone to be able to go toe-to-toe with Bear in that regard.

  Dear Lord in Heaven, I was wrong. I was so very, very wrong.

  I’m in the kitchen with Sandy and Kori, helping prepare a vegetarian spring quiche (made in my honor, of course, though Kori still feels the need to find eggs in the fridge and shriek in an annoying imitation of me about how cruel it is finding the aborted fetuses of one of our animal companions, and how it’s a travesty against all mankind. I don’t think he’s funny at all).

  Then he arrives.

  Have you ever been witness to an approaching tornado? You can see it forming up in the sky, the clouds starting to spin together in a funnel approaching the earth, and it looks like a great, gaping mouth, ready to swallow everything you know and leave a path of destruction a mile wide in its wake.

  Now, imagine that is a person.

  The front door doesn’t open as much as it explodes, banging in its frame against the wall. In walks a pudgy guy, eyes wide, dark hair flying all around his face. He’d be cute if he didn’t look like he was ready to hit someone in the kneecaps with a crowbar.

  “Sandy!” he bellows, even though Sandy is literally standing five feet away in his direct line of sight.

  “Yes, Paul?” Sandy says with an innocent smile, and I may not have known him very long, but I already can tell that smile is so full of shit. He knows exactly what this
is about.

  “You!” the man who is apparently Paul snarls. “I’ve got a bone to pick with you!”

  “Why, I don’t have the slightest idea what you’re talking about, baby doll,” Sandy says. “Now, please try entering my house again in a reasonable way suited for Saturday brunch and keep your voice at a level acceptable for a man of your means and stature.”

  “I had to stop by my parents’ house this morning,” he says through gritted teeth. “To pick up Johnny Depp for Nana and take him to the vet for his procedure next week.”

  Johnny Depp? The vet? I am so confused.

  “Did you? And why did you take him on a Saturday if it’s not until next week?”

  Paul rolls his eyes. “He’s some kind of mystic hippie who says he needs the extra days to commune with Johnny Depp’s animal spirit. But joke’s on him. Johnny Depp is dead inside.”

  “That right?”

  “So imagine my surprise,” Paul says, “when we get into the Prius, and Johnny Depp screams at me about how I’ve kidnapped him and am taking him to the woods to rape him. So I call Nana to ask her what the hell is wrong with her stupid parrot, and she tells me that you were over to visit and had a, and I quote, ‘long and frank conversation with Johnny Depp about how much you hate him, and really, Paul, couldn’t you be nicer to him? He so deserves it.’”

  “You should be nicer to him,” Sandy says, taking muffins out of the oven. “All I hear is animosity from you.”

  “He was screaming about kidnapping and rape!” Paul shouts. “When we were stopped at an intersection with the windows rolled down! There was a Greyhound bus stopped next to us with old people on their way to bingo or hospice, and they heard every single word he said. And once he got going, Wheels started howling like he was being kidnapped and raped, too, and I just know everyone on that bus thought I was some kind of weird animal-fucker getting ready to pile-drive a dog and parrot because I’m some sick and twisted fuck who gets his jollies by running an animal compound called the Heavy Petting Zoo where other sick and twisted fucks just like me pay a nominal monthly membership fee to come in and participate in the carnal act of bestiality!”