by Joey Comeau
“I want to go back to the car,” David says, and I sit down on the curb beside him and pull him into a hug. I squeeze him hard, and he shakes against me, silently.
“Richard will call soon,” I say. “He’ll come and get us, and we’ll go get some ice cream or something.” There has to be an all-night ice-cream place somewhere.
“I don’t want any ice cream,” David says. He looks down at the knife in his hand. Then he folds it up and puts it back in his pocket.
When Richard calls, he says, “We can’t just take him home. Are you crazy? We’d be arrested three blocks away.” Someone in the background on his end says something. “Alex says we should leave him somewhere and then call the cops to tell them where he is.”
“And how long would it take the cops to get there?” I say. “We just leave him in some McDonald’s by himself to wait for the cops?”
“I don’t want any McDonald’s,” David says.
“He doesn’t even like McDonald’s,” I say.
“Nobody said anything about McDonald’s, man.” Richard pauses. “Listen,” he says, “there’s got to be a safe place we can leave him.”
“Okay,” I say. “I know where.”
“Where?”
“Come get us,” I say. “Just you, Richard. We don’t need a car full of people.”
“Where are you?” he says.
I look around.
“Hey,” I say to David. “Run over and take a look at that street sign.”
In the car I sit in the back with David. I tell Richard how to get to Mrs. Hubert’s neighbourhood. I straighten my dress and pull my seat belt on. David isn’t crying anymore, but he’s staring out the window.
“Hey, have you got the internet?” I say, and David nods without looking at me. “There’s a book you can download off the internet called The MIT Guide to Picking Locks,” I say. I have my lockpick set in hand, and I reach out to place it in his hand. “You just read it again and again until it starts to make sense to you.” David is looking down at the lockpicks. “There are other guides and things on the internet, but the MIT one is the best, I think.”
“Okay,” David says.
Richard parks his car two blocks away, and David and I walk under the trees toward Mrs. Hubert’s house. I want to say something to make him feel better about stabbing the guy, but I don’t know what I’d say. I don’t know what it would mean if I convinced an eight-year-old that it was all right to put a knife in someone. Would it be worse to have him grow up afraid of his own ability to be violent? What if he got so afraid that he wouldn’t defend himself?
“Hey, David.” I stop walking and sit down on the curb. David stops too. He’s holding the lockpick set in his fist, and in the streetlight he looks more tired than scared. “Do you think it’s okay to hit a girl?”
He looks at me for a long time.
Mrs. Hubert’s husband answers the door and takes one look at us and closes the door again. I ring the doorbell once more, and this time Mrs. Hubert answers. She looks tired too, and I realize I have no idea what time it is.
“Can you call his dad in the morning?” I say, putting my hand on David’s back.
“Is he the boy that’s gone missing?” Mrs. Hubert asks, and I nod. “He’s okay?” She kneels down in front of him, and I kneel beside him.
“Mrs. Hubert will take care of you until your dad comes to get you, all right?” I lift up his hand and tap on the lockpick set. “You keep this hidden, or your dad will take it away. You keep it a secret,” I say.
Mrs. Hubert is looking at me now. “What about you?” she says. “You look tired.”
Later on, Richard will refer to this whole thing as “making the drop” and he’ll talk about the time we “burlap-sacked the son of a political figure.” Richard will tell the story of this meeting like we had planned it this way all along. We get the kid, take him out, have a homophobe shout and threaten him, and have the kid stick up for himself, stab the asshole, and we drop him off before bedtime. If he mentions Mrs. Hubert at all, he probably won’t have her say, “You look tired.” He’ll probably have her say something else, something trite and expected and designed to make us look like heroes.
He definitely won’t tell anyone that I stand back up and smile at her. He won’t tell anyone that I say, “I am tired.”
David gives me a hug goodbye, and as I walk back to the car I try to think of something to tell Richard. I try to think of something we can do tonight, the four of us, some organization that needs their windows smashed, some slogan we can spray paint on every storefront.
Back in the car, Richard says, “What happened?”
I sit, looking out the window at the suburbs we pass, still trying to think of something we can do.
“She said she’d give the police a call in a half an hour, so that we could get far enough away.”
“Really?”
“She gave me a hug too,” I say.
I should have washed the blood off David’s knife, I think. I roll down the window and stick my hand out, enjoying the feeling of the wind on my skin.
Chapter 1
Is this really where I want to be, stacking printer paper in an office-supply store? Seriously? For how much longer? We’re all going to die. Death is taking another lick of my lollipop, and God knows how many he’ll take before he gets frustrated and just bites into it.
So I’m quitting. Happy birthday to me. I’m almost thirty. The work isn’t terrible. But it’s never the actual work that’s terrible, is it? It’s the customers. Jesus, fuck — the customers.
A customer walks over and sets the printer paper down, already staring at the little screen where the price appears.
“That’s not the right price,” he says and slaps down a flyer opened to a picture of printer paper. He’s jabbing at it.
“That’s last week’s flyer, sir,” I say.
“Excuse me?”
“That’s an outdated flyer. We have copies of the new flyer here, if you like.”
“You sent me this flyer, and I drove all the way downtown because of the price promised right here.” He jabs again. “Now if you’re just going to give me more faggot excuses, I’d like to speak to your manager.”
Classy. So I pick up the phone and I call Wallace, my manager. Then the customer and I wait in silence. He’s probably sixty years old. Dressed nice, but not fancy. He has a shirt and tie, but no blazer. It’s a shirt that’s been worn again and again, no crisp corners. A workingman, salt of the earth.
“How can I help you, sir?” Wallace says, coming behind the cash register with me, smiling. The customer is nicer now. Of course he is. I watch while he explains the issue politely. He shows Wallace the flyer. Wallace hits a few buttons on the keyboard, and everyone’s happy. The customer gets the discount he wants.
It’s always the people who are paid the least who have to take the most shit. Otherwise Captain Angry there would go buy his five-dollar printer paper at another establishment.
When he’s gone, I turn to Wallace.
“That guy called me a faggot,” I say, and Wallace claps me on the shoulder warmly. He’s a nice guy, I think. Not the brightest guy in the world, but mostly good. I get a bit uncomfortable when he talks about women, like he’s not really talking about people. But in general, Wallace means well.
“Don’t take it personally,” Wallace says. “Everybody gets what they deserve eventually. In his next life, that guy’ll probably come back as a faggot himself.” Wallace walks off, and I’m left standing there holding the receipt for one packet of printer paper. That doesn’t make me feel better at all.
Wallace wouldn’t have said it if he knew I slept with men, I know that. He’s not a mean guy, just stupid. Oh, so stupid. I stand behind the counter and I ring through people’s orders, just waiting for one of them to say something. By lunch, I can feel a pressure behind my right eye that I am certain is my anger. It keeps on building until I don’t know what to do with it.
In the fag
got lunchroom, Wallace is laughing with Mike, watching the faggot TV. I’ve been standing behind the register all day, angry. I haven’t been able to think of anything faggot else, and I bet if I fucking faggot asked him right faggot now, he wouldn’t be able to even tell me what he said. Long forgotten. Unimportant.
The anger isn’t making me feel better, but you know what does? Sexual harassment. The look on Wallace’s face when I say, “Jesus, Wallace. You been working out? Your ass looks amazing today.” Just a flash of surprise and confusion. A bit of shame. And then I’m gone, back up the stairs to my cash register.
I’m smiling now. I feel good, less helpless. I wonder if this is why straight men sexually harass women, to prove to themselves that they have power. They get yelled at by their own bosses and head back to the office to take it out on their secretaries.
Hey, Janet, your tits look good in that top.
Later that afternoon, when Wallace is helping some guy pick a printer, I walk past him again, and this time I clap him on the shoulder and look pointedly down at his crotch.
“Come on, Wallace. Hide your erection, will you?”
“What?”
“It’s impolite to walk around with candy unless you’re gonna share.”
I feel like a little kid, pissing on the bully’s gym clothes. Sure, there are probably better ways to handle this, but none of them seem like as much fun. It’s better to make it a joke. And it is a joke, isn’t it?
I get off work earlier than Clay does, so I usually walk down and meet him at the casino. Clay has birthday plans for me tonight. A surprise. I’m leaning back against the hood of his car when he comes out. He’s still in his uniform, his security badge yellow under the parking-garage lights. He looks good in that uniform. He looks dangerous. I have a bit of a weakness for dangerous-looking men.
I kiss him hello and then, in the car, tell him about the customer, and about Wallace. But it’s my birthday, and mostly I want to talk about something else.
“What’re we doing tonight?” I say, and Clay smiles.
“Tonight, sir, there’s a meteor shower,” he says. “I don’t know if you heard. It’s kind of a big deal. We’re going to go out to the country, where there are no streetlights, and we’re going to watch the sky fall.”
This is Clay’s birthday surprise for me. It’s hard to believe he even remembers the meteor shower. He’s got no interest in anything like this, but I must have gone on about it one too many times, my voice all earnest, waving my hands in the air while I talked.
Clay gets excited about things too. It’s one of the things I love about him. He gets an idea in his head and it lights him up. There’s not a cynical bone in his body. Everything is fun; everything’s an adventure. It doesn’t matter what the plan is. He has dozens of plans. Let’s go to the movie on Tuesday. Let’s go to China. Let’s learn how to leave no trace at all in the world’s databases and let’s live off the grid. Let’s learn to knife fight. We saw an ad about that: learn to knife fight using training methods developed for Russian Special Forces. The flyer ended with an ominous “You don’t win a knife fight. You survive.” There is always more room in our lives for something so deadly serious.
Clay’s enthusiasm is infectious. Now he’s talking about Wallace again. He wants to come into the store wearing a leather vest. I have no idea where Clay would even find a leather vest. He wants to wear a big fake cop moustache. A disguise. Wallace has never seen him, which makes me feel weird, now that we’ve said it out loud. Clay’s never been into the store. I’ve never been into the casino either.
“I’ll seem like just any other customer,” Clay says. “Oh, this is going to be brilliant.” He’s repeating himself now. This is how you know when he’s really excited. He goes around in circles, and the idea is more exciting to him every time. He wants to get his friends to do it too. Every queer he knows. Go in and blow Wallace kisses. Pat Wallace’s ass affectionately after he’s been helpful. Ask Wallace for his phone number.
When Clay’s around, I feel like I’m more exciting too. That’s a good quality to have in a gentleman friend. I come up with plans of my own for us. Let’s try to befriend the squirrels that live in the walls and attic. Let’s go get some candy and stay up all night watching horror movies. Let’s sleep over in a graveyard, so the dead can visit us in our dreams.
I don’t fall in love easily. It takes a long time, and then, when I have fallen in love, I’m still not sure. I’m suspicious of myself. What if tomorrow I don’t feel the same? I have to wait, to be sure. And I wait and wait. I think I might be at that stage now, with Clay. I’ve been waiting for a while. I have dreams about telling him.
We drop the car off at the apartment and unlock our bikes. I love biking in the dark. I didn’t think I’d get a chance to see the meteor shower tonight. I thought for sure he’d take me out to dinner or to some movie. Meteor showers are amazing because to the human eye it just looks like little moving points of light, thin streaks of light. Except it isn’t. It’s debris falling to earth. Fast and burning and where do they come from? I’m not sure. It’s little bits of something else. Space always makes me think of infinity. The universe just keeps going and going and, when I think about it, it actually feels like my thoughts have to get bigger to understand. And then I get scared.
We bike out to the dark and find a perfect spot. We’re in a field, with a hill blocking the streetlights from the road, the best place for us to stretch out and watch the sky fall. We lie down side by side on the grass and dirt, watching. Beside me, Clay says, “There!” and I see it too, the first streak of thin light.
We watch for a while, until I get scared thinking about the yawning void of space and the maddening smallness of our solar system in it, and the smallness of our planet in that solar system and of my own voice in the dark, and I almost say, “I love you,” right then and there, but instead I pull him on top of me.
I like having his weight on me. I like the feel of his breath against my cheek, and I like the feeling of being trapped too. Pinned down. He kisses me and smiles, and then tries to roll off me. I hold on to him tightly.
He pins my wrists to the dirt. He stretches me out so my belly’s exposed, and he kisses my neck. He puts his mouth right up against my ear and says, “Nobody can hear you out here. Cry for help all you want.”
And I struggle against his grip. He pins my wrists with one hand, and with the other he pulls my belt open, shoves his hand down to wrap cool around my cock, and I say, “No.” And I try to pull free.
We forget all about watching the stars. He kisses me and I struggle against him just enough. “Let’s move,” he says. We stand up and we kiss in the moonlight with the stars falling and no cars anywhere and it’s all very perfect and romantic and all I can think is I want him inside me. I want him to press his finger inside me.
There’s a tree here, and he pushes me against it, with the dark field behind him. I spin us so that he’s against the tree, and I put his hand in my hair and make a fist of it. He’s smiling. He forces me down to my knees, and I squeeze the front of his pants. Gripping a cock through them that isn’t fully erect yet, but doesn’t really need to be. I pull at the button. I open my mouth, looking up at him, and he takes my hair in both his fists and shoves my face down on his cock. My lips are forced open. Then further. I’m still struggling, my hands waving helplessly in the air.
He’s hard now. I make a choking sound as he reaches the back of my throat, and I struggle. He pulls my head back to let me gasp for air and to force me to look up at him. He spits on me. His spit is thick on my face, and he says, “Whore.” He shoves me down on his cock again, fucks my face while I dig my fingers in the bark of the tree, the zipper of his pants cutting against my lips and cheek, again and again. Then my hand is up his shirt, pulling at his nipple and leaving streaks of dirt on his chest while he uses my mouth. Then he pauses.
“Is this okay?” he says, looking down, and I can only nod.
Yes.
I
want him to come on the ground here in front of me, or to come across my lips. I want him to push my face into the dirt and pull my pants roughly down just far enough so he can get at my asshole. My knees are wet and cold through my pants.
Clay pulls me back by the hair and forces me to look up at him again.
“My turn!” he says.
And so I twist his arm behind his back and push him against the tree with his shirt pulled up. The bark is digging into him, and I’ve got his pants pulled down so I can get at him. My free hand is wet with my own spit, my finger pushing at his asshole. I use my body to hold his arm twisted between us. My teeth are tearing at the condom wrapper. I wrap my hand around his throat while I enter him. “If you make one sound, I’ll kill you,” I whisper in his ear.
When I come, I panic a bit, because I can suddenly see everything. I have my hand around his throat, and I feel like I am just returning to my senses, and did we go too far?
But Clay reaches up and kisses me on the cheek and then on my mouth and he says, “You’re beautiful.”
Afterward, still half-naked, we watch the night sky. His chest hair is soft in the dark and I rest my head on him. The dirt and twigs are digging into the skin of my hip. My pants are still around my ankles. This is so quiet and would be such a perfect time to say, “I love you.” But you can’t say something like that just because the moment is right. It’s too seductive, having the moment be perfect. I would worry that I said it just because it seemed like the right time. The stars keep falling.
“It makes me nervous,” I tell him. One after another after another, the streaks of light appear and vanish. “It goes on forever.”
I sound stupid. Chunks of burning rock from God knows where, raining down on us. Rocks that are older than our whole solar system. And when our sun explodes and we are all destroyed, we’ll be rocks and chunks of I’m not sure what, and maybe we’ll rain down on somewhere else.
