The Dirt Chronicles

by Kristyn Dunnion

  I dump soap into the washer, turn the dials, and start the water flowing. Darcy’s stuff is all in there. My socks: one, two. My hoodie: empty the pockets. My shirt goes in. I duck and check my chest from habit. The scars are healed up pretty good now, faint lines near my jujube nipples. I never had tits to speak of, always more like pecs anyways, so the surgery wasn’t too drastic. Like, I can take my shirt off in public if I want, and no one is any the wiser. Except other trans guys, right? I don’t know how we can tell. Smell it, probably. Sniff each other right out of a crowd, we can. My muddy jeans get slogged into the machine, and I debate the underwear. They’re wet, not fresh either. But I hate even Darcy seeing me.

  “Take it off, sugar loaf.” He swings his bony hips at me.

  “Shut up.” But he’s not even looking.

  “Can you believe this dude doesn’t even have proper cereal? Like, what is this shit?” He shakes a box of bran into a pile on the floor. “I want Cocoa Puffs!”

  Fuck it. I pull off the tighty whities and toss them in. I slam the washer lid down. I cup my hands in front to hold my dick in place and head for the bathroom. “Just don’t make a friggin’ mess,” I say before shutting the door. I put in the stopper and fill the tub with hot water. There’s a bottle of something smelly so I squeeze a bit under the tap: a real bath with bubbles. I step in, jump out, hop around holding my burned foot. Shit shit shit shit. I take a dump while the water cools. It’s been a while since I got to use such a nice clean toilet. With soft paper, too. I flush and even spray the air a bit with the faggy freshener. Now the water is perfect. I hunker down so it covers me, comes right up to my bottom lip when I lie back. I decide my dick should have a bit of a rinse, too. I soap it up and wring it. Dirty water runs out. I rinse it a few more times, and it starts to look pinker. It looks less like a part of me and more like something I once paid money for. I prop it on the edge of the tub and lie back again. I look at it up there. It looks at me. Then I submerge myself totally.

  Lying underwater I can hear Darcy cranking the knobs on the TV. “This shit don’t work,” he yells. He comes into the bathroom. “I’m bored.”

  “Knock much?”

  Darcy yawns in the mirror. His eyes crinkle up and his mouth stretches wide. The red hair sprays around his face like a demented halo. He leans forward and starts picking at his teeth. He finds a toothbrush in the drawer and loads it up with minty paste. He scrubs carefully, like he’s remembering the instructions from a long ago manual. I gather up what’s left of the bubbles and station them above my crotch. Darcy spits and rinses. He smiles at me in the mirror. “I can see your boobies,” he says.

  “Shut up.”

  He looks hurt. “I didn’t mean it like that. I meant boy boobies. Boys have boobs, too, you know.” He puts his big toe in the tub water and wiggles it around. He splashes me and I grab his cold foot.

  “You stink.”

  “So clean me,” he says, and plops right on top, knees and elbows cracking against the porcelain tub. We wrestle a bit, send waves over the edge, onto the tile floor. Our bones clack together; it’s a tight squeeze even for two skinny boys. Finally Darcy settles himself at one end, his head resting on one side of the faucet, his legs stretched out so his feet pop up beside my shoulders. My legs rest over his narrow torso, my feet near his face. He blows bubbles with his mouth. He smiles at me strangely, then up pop a series of large bubbles from the middle of the tub.

  “Gross!”

  He says, “Ha ha. There’s your bubble bath.”

  “Your feet stink,” I say. He waggles them on either side of me.

  “Yours are dirty, too.”

  “So wash them.” I chuck the wet cloth in his face.

  “Don’t be like that,” he says. “You get so mad all the time.” He looks at me for a minute. Then he sends another loud bubble to the surface by my leg.

  “What the—?”

  Darcy is in hysterics.

  He grabs my foot and slides the soap bar in between my toes. When he gets near the little one, my foot twitches, and he holds it tight in his hands. He rubs along the bottom, all the way to my rough heel. He presses around the heel, traces the sides of my foot, massages deep in the arch and in the sore, neglected ball of it. He pulls the toes again, slowly, twisting them a tiny bit just before letting go.

  My voice wobbles when I ask him where he learned to do that.

  “My mom used to make me rub her feet all the time when I was little,” he says. “They got sore from hookin’ in high heels.” He sings this last part and rolls his shoulder, shakes his wet hair like a dog. “My sister bossed me around and made me paint her nails. No wonder I’m queer.”

  We laugh. Darcy adds more hot water. He has to stand up so he doesn’t get burned. He sits in front of me, my legs cramped around his, like we’re riding a toboggan downhill. I soap up the cloth again and slop it loudly against his narrow back.

  “What would happen if the King caught us?”

  Darcy flinches. “Seriously?”

  “Uh huh.” I wash his pale back, long strokes, up and down.

  “Well, the first time I heard about him was from this kid. This cute little hustler, Jake. He had some story about the King snatching up kids and selling them off. Like permanently. For snuff or other fucked-up movies, for dungeon boys, that sort of thing. Everyone thought Jake was on the pipe too much, though. He was always borrowing money and scamming, right?”

  This Jake sounds a lot like someone else I know. I trace my finger from one freckle to the next on Darcy’s back, past his sharp shoulder blades and the knobby bumps of his spine.

  “So Jake was going on about it, right, saying the King was on the hunt. He was scared shitless, trying to hide, even trying to get out of town, trying to bum more money off everyone, but no one would give him any. Cuz he already owed.”

  Darcy sighs and shivers when I dribble more water down his back.

  “Then what happened?”

  “Then he disappeared, all of a sudden. Nobody’s seen him since.”

  “Maybe he did leave town,” I say. “Maybe he went home.”

  “Naw. He wouldn’t. Not if half the shit he said about his parents was true.”

  “Maybe the social workers got him. Maybe he went to fosters,” I say.

  “Nope.” Darcy wriggles his shoulders. “Rub me.”

  I slop the wet cloth on his skinny back again. We sit in silence for a while.

  “Well, he could’ve gone anywhere,” I say.

  “Who?”

  “That kid,” I say. “Jake.”

  “Oh, him. Well, he could’ve, but he didn’t.” Darcy sounds pretty sure of himself.

  “How the hell do you know?” I don’t know why this makes me so mad. It scares me, more than anything.

  “Because I know. I saw pictures.” Darcy’s voice is tight, scratchier than usual.

  “What kind of pictures?” I say.

  “The dead kind.”

  I drop the cloth in the water. “Where’d you see those? At some creep’s place?”

  “No.” Darcy’s voice sounds strangled. His shoulders hunch forward.

  “Are you crying?” I try to twist him around but we’re rammed in that tub, and there’s no room.

  “No,” he says loudly. Darcy’s shoulders start to shake. He gasps. A high-pitched sound squeezes out of him. I don’t know what to do. I’ve never seen him like this.

  “What’s wrong?” I say, but that’s dumb. Everything’s wrong and we both know it.

  Darcy sobs while he talks. He sounds just like a little kid. “I-I just feel bad. I never believed that boy, and now he’s fucking dead.”

  Finally we twist around a bit so I can hold his wet face against me. His boney white self jabs at me, all angles. He knocks against the tub and splashes water around. The ugly sounds that cough out of him are more like a dog barking than a boy crying.

  I ask him more questions, but Darcy just howls. He won’t say anything else. Like where he saw the picture
s, or who had them. Or what exactly happened to Jake. I get the feeling he knows a whole lot more, though. He’s scared. Wigged right out. As though it could happen to him.

  And it could, I think. To any of us.

  His terrible fear infects me, quick as the hep, quick as the bug, quick as any bad thing at all. I think about Lil’ Brat, smart as a fox and twice as mean, gone with the King today. What will happen to him?

  Darcy calms down after a while and we add more hot to the tub. His dirt and stink are finally washing off. He fiddles with the cloth for a bit but eventually settles against my chest again. His wet hair pokes in my eyes and mouth but I don’t mind. I lean back and let the water do its thing. I don’t know where to put my arms so I just kind of hug them around his front. It feels nice. My dick falls in the water and he picks it up, squeezes it softly, and holds onto it.

  “You don’t mind, do you, Sly?”

  “What, you playing with my dick again?” We chuckle. I can feel his laugh rumble against me and it’s better than before, better than his heaving, awful cries.

  “Let’s stay here for a long time, Sly.”

  “Okay. Til the Professor comes back.” But I wonder how soon it’ll be before he gets bored or starts jonesing, before he paces up and down the hall, restless, edgy, and needing some kind of fix.

  “No, I mean the tub. Let’s stay in this tub forever.”

  I say, “Okay.”

  Because in this business, you just never fucking know.

  Happy House

  Home is the Factory squat. From the first time I climbed through that broken window with some kids from the shelter, I knew it was my place. I could take my boots off here. Maybe even sleep a whole night without getting my shit fucked with. Just like the first night I met Oreo. When I saw her—a gorgeous punk warrior smiling brightly—a light turned on in that empty inside space, and I knew she was meant for me.

  The Factory is not an address you can write on social worker forms. Can’t get your welfare delivered here. It’s totally under the radar, a boarded-up chair factory in the Junction. It’s hidden from the rest of the city by a wall of trees and tangled bush, like a prickly moat in some fairy tale. The slaughterhouse next door is a small, sinister-looking thing. It reeks. An abandoned lot separates us from them, but that smell is everywhere. Not like meat, or even raw meat, but the gag-worthy smell of pig shit and rotting entrails and old blood. No one else would even try to live up here, not with that stink.

  So, home is a smelly, red-bricked fortress with giant padlocked warehouse doors on one side. We use the regular-sized door at the back; locks stripped off, doorknob gone. We got electricity—some kid wired it up a year or so ago—but there’s lots of natural light. We ripped boards off some of the windows. Up high in the loft section there are even more windows, not all broke. It’s a mess, but we’re slowly clearing it out. Some kids call it the Pig House on account of next door, but we’re against that. One, we’re vegans and don’t insult animals. Two, we totally hate cops. Three, the slaughterhouse is the Pig House and our place is the Factory, end of story. Someone started calling it Fairy Mountain since our squat is now fully gay, but people started thinking F.M. was a completely different place, like a whole new squat someplace else in Toronto. Totally confusing! So really, we are just the Factory squatters, and that’s that.

  The Factory has rules like anyplace, but it’s better than shelters and foster care and the Boys’ and Girls’ Home before that. Obviously, it’s way better than living on the street, getting beat on and hassled and eating rape for breakfast, like you do. Going hungry and losing your mind, friends turning on you. Always on the make. At the Factory we do chores to fix the place up. We dumpster dive food and cook together, have house meetings, that sort of thing. Sometimes we have punk shows in the main space, or DIY workshops about silk-screening, basic plumbing, worm composting, whatever. Lots of kids pass through in the summer: rail riders, touring bands, punk nomads. If they stay, they got to cook or fix shit or teach stuff. They got to make the Factory a better place for being there. That’s rule number one.

  Also up there, not exactly number two or anything, but up near the top, is this other rule about not oppressing other people with your bullshit. I thought that would mean not being a racist asshole or a homophobe and stuff like that. Apparently it also means not rubbing your “monogamous romance” in other people’s faces because this can be boring and offensive. You can have all the sex you want with as many people as possible, but so help you if you fall for one girl and want to be with just her. Like, as a couple, which is seriously my situation with Oreo. Personally, I don’t think it’s fair, but that’s what it is to live in a freegan collective—plenty of compromise!

  So here we are again, me and Oreo, standing in the gravel driveway outside the Factory for another Relationship Talk. At least it’s not raining.

  “Oh, shit.” Oreo, adorable as she is, looks totally guilty when I wave the paper.

  “You wrote this, don’t pretend you didn’t,” I say. “That’s your handwriting.” Not to mention her signature skull and crossbones decorating the page.

  She opens her mouth but a truck downshifts, brakes, and pulls onto our little road. I can’t hear her, just see her mouth moving. We dive behind the corner. The truck churns up small stones and spits them out as it passes. I hear squealing, and when I peek, I see all those round snouts through the dirty cages. They’re heading next door.

  Poor little piggies.

  We wait for the dust to settle and the truck to park itself and the roaring engine to quiet before we continue.

  “It’s supposed to be a surprise.” Muscles ripple along Oreo’s arm when she points at the large heading. “See? Ferret’s surprise birthday party. It’s a to-do list, babe.”

  “Obviously,” I say. “But you shouldn’t have left it lying around where I’d see it.”

  “Yeah,” she says. She looks pretty bummed. “That sucks.”

  She has written everything out carefully with extra swirls and lightning bolts around each number on the list:

  1. dumpster dive vegan cake

  2. draw a funny birthday card

  3. write love poem for Ferret

  4. make brilliant playlist for party

  5. check with squat about party!!

  “Oreo, I don’t want a birthday party.” My stomach knots just thinking about it.

  “How do you know? You’ve never had one.” Oreo kisses me. She tugs my blue dreadlocks, twirls one end between her fingers.

  “I shouldn’t have told you that. Just cuz I haven’t had something doesn’t mean I want it.”

  Oreo chuckles. “You sure about that, babe?” She flashes a perfect, flirty smile.

  “Uh, yeah.” I think about every creep who says I’m only a dyke because I haven’t had “the right one” yet.

  Her warm hands creep playfully inside the waistband of my combat pants. Her fingers rub the tickly spot above my crack. “Come on, Ferret.” She gives me a slobbery zerbert on the cheek. “It’ll be fun.” She smiles. Oreo has really nice teeth—evenly spaced, white. The tip of her tongue pokes out at me. Farther back I see the silver flash of her piercing. She says, “You’ll get to be the centre of attention.”

  “I hate that.” My head droops onto her shoulder.

  “Okay, you’ll get to sit on the sidelines and see your friends having a great time.”

  “Hmm.” I squish my face into the crook of her neck and tug her long braid. She smells like honey cake, the lotion we shoplifted at the pharmacy. When she talks, I feel her voice rumbling from inside her chest. I trace the neckline of her ripped Slayer shirt, touch her warm skin with my finger. She is the most beautiful colour ever: coffee with cream. She is taller and darker, bigger and braver than me.

  “If you don’t like it, you don’t have to have another one.” Oreo looks hopeful, something I don’t feel too often. “I already made my list. Please?”

  “I just want to be with you.”

  �
��Me and you are together all the time. You should have fun with friends.” Her smile and her shining eyes and the way her beautiful face lights up when she has her hands shoved down my pants make me buckle.

  “I don’t even know when my real birthday is.” If you get dumped at the Boys’ and Girls’ Home without a proper birth certificate, without a note or some weeping, incapable mother to tell them about you, they just assign a date.

  “Saturday night sounds good.”

  “Maybe.” I hate to disappoint her.

  “I’ll get you Sour Cherry Blasters.” She wiggles an eyebrow.

  I sigh. “Oh, all right.”

  “Ferret’s having a party!” Oreo bounces up and down. “It’s gonna be sick. You wait.”

  My knees wobble when she kisses me. Heat spreads in my belly. Oreo smiles and pulls me towards the Factory door. Like I said, you can have all the sex you want in there, just don’t flaunt a Meaningful Relationship.

  We step from the hot, bright outside world with its sun and its buzzing, flying creatures into the dark, dank Factory. Cement floors and boarded windows make it cool inside, even though it’s the blazing end of August. The Factory smells musty. Old. Exposed brick with oversized storage units line the walls. Giant iron chains hang off pulleys in the corner by the padlocked loading dock. Oreo and I zip past the open kitchen area with the long dinner table to the back corner where our mattress is hidden behind shelves and a tall wall unit. Oreo’s shirt is already off. She yanks my studded belt. I pull our makeshift curtain across the rope guide and hook it in place. Our corner smells like incense sticks and vanilla candle wax and patchouli oil and sawdust and, of course, slaughterhouse. Oreo pulls me down on top of her. We roll and giggle and kiss. Oreo whispers into my mouth, “Happy beerthday, dear Ferret, happy beerthday to you.”

  Later that afternoon, we’re crashing through the tangled bush that surrounds the squat. We’re taking the back way to Special Friend Discount, the sketchy convenience store, to get my Sour Cherry Blasters. At night, we cut through the open field and just walk down the gravel lane that the pig trucks use, which is faster. But during daylight we keep it on the down-low.