Everything Is Awful and You're a Terrible Person

by Daniel Zomparelli

  “Okay, you’re like early, girl scout, give me a fucking second,” Ryan muttered.

  “I’m sorry, what did you say?”

  “I said I’m coming!” Ryan yelled not-so-politely. He rushed to the door, still in his towel and wet from the shower.

  “Oh, wow. You’re all wet.”

  “Yeah, sorry I was not expecting you to be so early.”

  “I’m sorry. I timed it so that I’d arrive just a few minutes after eight, but the buses were early and I waited several minutes down the street and eventually figured it might be better to come in early since it’s raining again outside.”

  Ryan poured some wine for the two of them and quickly changed while Steve waited. When he returned, both glasses of wine were empty. Ryan refilled the glasses again. “You were thirsty?”

  “Yes, very.”

  Ryan sat close to Steve and began playing with the hat on his head. “You know, you can take off your hat. It’s not really needed inside.”

  “I’d prefer it on.”

  “You bald under there?”

  “No! I mean, no. I have hair like you, but less greasy.”

  “Ouch.” Ryan laughed.

  “Sorry, I just meant in comparison.”

  “No, it’s fine. I have thick skin. Dating has made me numb to things like that.”

  “I just get in a lot of trouble for the things I say, and I just—you’re—uh, handsome.”

  “Thanks, you are too. There’s something intense about you. Your eyes are stark black.”

  “Can I have more wine?”

  Ryan poured more wine, and they finished those glasses quickly and poured out more wine until they were opening more than one bottle at a time. Ryan’s head began to spin, and Steve was smiling with glazed eyes. Ryan flipped onto him and kissed him. Steve’s eyes focused and pushed him off.

  “What the fuck?”

  “I just, I just want to take things slowly. Maybe we can just cuddle and watch The Blue Planet.”

  “What’s Blue Planet?”

  “It’s great, it’s a documentary on the different environments around the earth.”

  “Snooze. I’d rather just make out.” Ryan jumped back onto him. “I can’t stop staring at your eyes. They’re so hot.”

  “Okay, but just kissing, please.”

  Steve felt Ryan open his shirt and push it past his chest. He could feel Ryan pulling at his skin, but the more Ryan kissed and moaned, the less he cared. He could feel his skin loosening. Ryan ripped his hat off and pulled his head toward him. His hands tore at the back of Steve’s skin. It began to peel off. The fur under Steve’s skin was cold to the touch. Ryan placed his cheek against Steve’s, and instantly Ryan’s skin stopped vibrating, it instantly cooled. Ryan continued to kiss him as the skin came off in long chunks. Unwrapping him from head to toe, Ryan pressed his naked body against the cold fur. Steve’s wings unfurled and wrapped around Ryan’s body. They slipped to the floor, the skin a mattress protecting them. Steve pulled off Ryan’s clothes and felt his dick in his hands. Ryan instantly came onto Steve—it shot out all over Steve’s furry body.

  Ryan grinned from ear to ear and burst into a laugh. “I knew there was something intense about you.”

  Steve gasped for breath. “This isn’t always who I am.” He paused for a moment and looked at Ryan sitting on his belly. His wings were crushed under him. “I like being in my skin too sometimes.”

  Ryan threw a towel at him, and began picking up the large pieces of skin. “I’m pretty good at taking care of skin. I can help you. But don’t put on your skin just yet.”

  “Why not?”

  “We’re gonna watch The Blue Planet.”

  Steve opened his wings, slid one under Ryan’s body and curled the other around his chest, closing him in.

  “Is this okay?

  Ryan’s heartbeat slowed down. He pressed play.

  EVERYTHING IS AWFUL AND YOU’RE A TERRIBLE PERSON

  HALIFAX

  Hotels smell like old sweat or like ghosts who don’t wear deodorant. Whenever I get into a hotel room I instantly think about all the times someone has had sex in that room; the place is basically a hotbed of forgotten orgasms.

  “I have to hook up, at least once in my life,” I said.

  “Danny, you can do it.” R lay on his belly, staring at the hotel drinks menu.

  “You’ll have to do it before the wedding. It’s gonna be full of straight people. Well, straight-ish.” C flopped onto the bed, almost rolling R off it.

  I checked my phone for messages, still groggy after the long flight. I flicked on Grindr to see who was nearby. My phone beeped, and a message appeared.

  You horny?

  “Wait, I got a message. How do I respond? He’s saying he’s horny. I’m not really horny right now, but do I say I am? Is that stupid?”

  I took the silence as a response that I was being stupid. Silence always equals stupid.

  Yes, I am horny.

  His response came in quickly. Cool, bro, i’m close, wanna come over?

  I put my phone down as sweat covered my body. I picked it back up again a minute later. He’d sent me a series of nude photos.

  “What did he say?”

  “Um, he said maybe not tonight.” I lied.

  “You’re lying.”

  “I’m lying.”

  The morning hit earlier than expected when construction work woke us up. Still jet-lagged, we tried to rest, but the pounding against cement created waves in our room. R got up quickly and started to yell at us to get up. He threatened to fart us out of the hotel room. We picked up our coffees, grabbed our bags, and jumped in the car.

  “Should I have hooked up with that guy? He was actually really hot, and he’s in this hotel.”

  “Danny, do whatever you want, but yes, you should have.”

  I flicked on Grindr and noticed his account was no longer there. “He deleted his account.”

  R grabbed my phone. “No, he blocked you.”

  DIGBY

  The car rolled up to a large expanse of rock over the water. We walked around to see the ocean. C broke off branches and leaves for me to smell and occasionally handed me berries to taste.

  “Is this poisonous?”

  “Yes, Danny.”

  “Okay.” I ate it. “It tastes like toothpaste.”

  “It’s a wintergreen berry.”

  We spent the day in the car stopping at small towns along the way. Each town had cemeteries covered with small crosses blooming from the ground. Since we arrived too late in Digby to reach the ferry to St. John, we shacked up in a motel room. It was foggy, and the motel had a distinct murder vibe to it. Our room was at one end of the motel and smelled of a thousand visits. When we turned on the fan to circulate the air, it made a womping noise. We spent the evening getting drunk to the television series Intervention and invented a drinking game; whenever the addict on TV drank, we would drink.

  ST. JOHN

  The ferry to St. John squeezed us in. We spent the evening devouring food and beer. I didn’t talk much and focused on my phone.

  It was two in the morning and my vision was blurred from four pints of beer. I closed one eye to read the screen on my phone. He was a lawyer, good build, tall, looked nice. “Nice” is what I was looking for, but not too nice. There was a photo of him in a locker room, sweaty and hairy with a snarl on his face. This is also what I was looking for. I let my friends know exactly where I was heading, what he looked like, and that I would text as soon as I got there.

  When I came down from the hotel room, there he was: locker-room sex guy. I adjusted the fantasy version of him slightly since he was wearing khaki pants. He was also holding two leashes that were attached to two very excited dogs.

  “I figured we could walk my dogs, since they needed to get out today.”

  “I like dogs!” I yelled. Guys like guys who like dogs.

  It was intensely foggy. I noted this: “It’s intensely foggy.” I said. “This is the
stuff horror stories are made of.”

  He nodded as we walked up to our first destination. He pointed at the statue in the centre of the park and told me who he was and how he was important to the city. I stared at his mouth. Making the first move is important, but then I sat down because the beer was making my legs wobbly. The dogs took this as a sign that I wanted to be licked in the face.

  “That’s interesting,” I said, focusing on the tongues of the dogs.

  “C’mon, I want to show you more.”

  We walked for several minutes and stopped by the local market, closed because it was three in the morning, then went by three cemeteries, the fire station, and the law courts, which “had the largest spiral staircase in Canada.”

  We stopped at a church with bricks that looked blackened by scorching, like in an old fireplace, too thickly covered with ash to let the rain clean the stains.

  “And this is where I got married,” he said in a faltering voice.

  “You have a husband?”

  “Wife. And no, not any more.”

  I looked at the church, its one arena-style light blaring through the fog. I suddenly realized that I was cold, or, more realistically, I suddenly realized that I was sober. I started to think about beer. About the gentle dizzying effect of alcohol that made me feel warm in this cold.

  “Can I ask what happened?”

  “It was typical. We were high-school sweethearts. We had been dating so long that it felt like the right thing to do. Get married, that is. And me, being from a Catholic family, just went along for the ride. She quickly figured everything out before we could start having kids.”

  “Do you still love her?”

  “I do.”

  We stood there quietly for several minutes. The church looked heavier now, more scorched than before. The fog was rolling over me, and I thought about beer again, then about the cold, then about the ocean.

  “My mom died,” I whispered.

  “I’m sorry.”

  We walked back to the hotel as he pointed at more buildings and statues, explaining the importance behind them. When we arrived at the hotel, we could hear the drunken ramblings of local kids nearby. We stood outside, making small talk, and I waited for him to ask me back to his apartment.

  “Scott!” the kids yelled. “Scott, you fucker!” They came closer until I realized that Scott was locker-room sex guy.

  They asked him how he was doing. His face turned red. He quickly waved them off as their grunts and hollering fell back into the fog.

  “Sorry, that was some friends.”

  He lifted his hand to shake mine. I jumped in for a hug and felt his hand squished against my belly.

  “Your dogs are kind of annoying,” I said.

  “I know.” He walked into the fog.

  I walked back into the hotel, trying to be quiet.

  “Did you get laid?” C asked, half asleep.

  “No. Although I do know a lot of historical facts about St. John now.”

  “You’re the worst at this.”

  We woke up early for the next stint of our road trip but decided to take a scenic walk around the city. I recalled as many facts as I could about the buildings. We passed by the church in which he’d gotten married. Our tour was the exact reverse of the previous night’s, but the facts continued to come back to memory.

  The fog slipped back into the ocean. I turned around to see a familiar building, the windows and doors towering above me, and I felt them pushing me back.

  “This place has a large spiral staircase.”

  SALISBURY

  Are you staying in town?

  No, just passing by.

  Oh, lol, it’s so lonely here :(

  P.E.I.

  It was pouring rain, thick drops that clogged drains and disturbed the soil. There was about a bottle and a half of wine running through my blood, and in the corner of my eye, I could see the swings in the playground. Our small cabin was moist from the humidity.

  “Fuck it!” I ran to the door, R following suit, and we rushed to the swings.

  “What are you afraid of, Danny?!”

  “Everything!”

  ///

  We managed to drink enough to carry us into the evening. The wedding still trailed behind us as we rushed toward the beach. The light disappeared along with the road. We left our clothes on the grass and slipped into the ocean. It was too dark to see until the phosphorescence lit up our bodies. I could feel the gentle push and pull of the ocean. I went deeper.

  “Don’t go too far in, Danny.”

  “I’m not a baby, R.”

  “Yes, you are.”

  I imagined what it would be like to be pulled in. Would it be my lungs gulping up water, or would it be my arms, too tired, or would I want to be taken in? No one loves a dead body, just a memory that used to live in one. I felt my bladder reaching its maximum capacity.

  “R, do fish bite your wiener if you pee?”

  “No.”

  “Okay.” As I peed into the ocean, the phosphorescence lit up, like I was a light magician throwing sparkles from my penis.

  “My penis is shooting sparkles, you guys!”

  R and C split off to the right. I walked further out into the ocean, scooped up water, and poured it out. I walked further out and thought about the way the ocean could consume me. I could keep walking out into the ocean and it would scoop me up. I felt joy.

  ///

  “What are you afraid of Danny?!”

  “Everything!”

  R stopped swinging and looked at me as I kept attempting to swing higher and higher.

  “You know you’re okay, right?”

  “I don’t feel okay.”

  “You’re doing great.”

  “When will I stop saying to myself, ‘Everything is awful’?”

  “You know a thing or two about beginnings and endings. Just enjoy what you had and not what you’re missing.”

  “That’s the ’shrooms you took talking.”

  “No—well, some of it, sure.”

  We kept swinging until the neighbours came out. We were making more noise than I thought.

  HALIFAX

  I lifted up a package of coffee. “Hey, they have Titanic-themed coffee!”

  R grabbed the bag of beans. “Weird.”

  “Titanic coffee: literally drown in flavour.”

  “Danny!”

  “Sorry. Titanic coffee: for that deep, sinking roast.”

  “You’re a terrible person, Danny.”

  “Just one more. Titanic coffee: for when you hit that iceberg in your day.”

  R shook his head and walked away. I thought of several more and rolled the words “terrible person” back and forth in my head. I thought about how valid it felt. I was a terrible person. I’d be better as a ghost, or a monster, or a memory.

  “Titanic coffee: try it ice cold!”

  ///

  We were three pitchers of beer in. We’d met a stranger we referred to as Porn Beard. He was going through his tattoos, half of which he’d done himself. His knee tattoo was geometric but awkwardly handled. He had a Courtney Love tattoo. He talked about how much he hated Halifax and wanted to get out of there. He recounted his boyfriends, showing us each of them on his Grindr account. One guy was a part of a three-man relationship, which he had been kicked out of. Another was a guy who tried to kill him using a glass bottle. His stories became less and less reliable. I stopped paying attention when the lies became too obvious and turned to my phone.

  “Okay, this guy looks pretty good. Or this guy!” I flipped through my phone, showing them picture-by-picture.

  “Danny, at some point you just have to pick a dude.” C punched me in the leg.

  “What if one of them is a serial killer? What if I’m the first in a series of murders, and they call him the Grindr killer? I’d be so embarrassed.”

  “But you would be dead.”

  “Yes, but no one would feel bad for me—they’d just think, Well, he’
s an idiot who went to some stranger’s house, so he deserves it.”

  “Sometimes you’re really dumb for a smart person.”

  R stole my phone from my hand. C looked over his shoulder and giggled.

  “There.” R handed me my phone.

  I went into the last conversations, and to each person he had texted the words, “This place is a dick desert. How does anyone get laid here?” A cold sweat covered my face.

  He took my phone again, typed a few words, handed it back.

  “There! This guy, thirty minutes.”

  I turned to Porn Beard and showed him my phone. “Have you ever seen this guy?”

  He shook his head.

  “Perfect!” said the seven beers I’d had. I walked out of the bar, and a cab arrived in front just in time. It felt as if everything was sliding in place. This was a perfectly choreographed musical, and I was swinging my way up to someone’s apartment.

  I opened the door; I didn’t let him talk for more than a few seconds before I dived into him. In moments we were in his bed. I thought about wishing that I was still back at the bar drinking beer. I left a whole beer at the bar. It was pretty good. I think it was an IPA. It was so frosty and delicious. I wonder if R or C drank it. Or if that weird guy did. What was his name? Porn Beard. No, that was his Grindr name. Either way, I hope he didn’t drink my beer. I still can’t believe he tattooed his own leg, or that he had a Courtney Love tattoo. I really like “Celebrity Skin,” that was a great song.

  “Are you okay?”

  “Sorry, I was … yeah, all good.”

  I closed my eyes and reached for his body, but he slapped my hand away forcing me to lay back. I focused on finishing as quickly as possible. He kissed me and said, “You can’t stay over, I have an early day tomorrow.” I nodded and rushed out.

  “You’re back soon.” C looked disappointed.

  “Yup. Unrelated question: What size penis would you consider to be a micro penis?”

  “Danny, you’re an asshole.” C got out of bed to put me in a headlock. “How did you even have time for sex that fast? You didn’t even go, did you?”

  “I’m not judging or anything, I just want to know what you would consider small for penis size?”

  “You’re a monster.”