The World of Normal Boys

by K. M. Soehnlein

  Scott doesn’t see him. Scott’s eyes are on Todd, whom he seems to be pursuing. Robin calls out Scott’s name to no avail. He lunges past the swaying-cigarette girls, only to be cut off again.

  “Are you Tracy’s brother?”

  He looks up at a girl with frizzy brown hair and a T-shirt reading Virgin. “No,” he says, trying to move past.

  “Oh, I thought you were Tracy’s brother. She’s got this younger brother who always parties with her.” Her voice is unnaturally high-pitched.

  “No, I’m nobody’s younger brother,” he says.

  She stares blankly for a moment and then giggles. “That’s so funny. ” He glances over her shoulder. Todd and his buddies are out the door, with Scott closing the gap a couple of paces behind. Robin sucks a mouthful from his plastic cup and leans against the wall, suddenly needing to put distance between himself and whatever confrontation might happen between Todd and Scott outside.

  The self-proclaimed virgin is smiling at him over the lip of her beer. Her eyes and her eyeshadow are both green, and red rouge dots her cheekbones. She might be pretty, he thinks, if she toned down the makeup. She is waiting for him to say something else.

  “I have a younger brother of my own,” he says.

  “I hope he isn’t here!” she squeals.

  “No. He’s in the hospital.”

  “Really?” She frowns. “That’s a depressing thing to say.”

  “I can’t help it,” Robin says, hoping she’ll stop talking to him. “He’s really messed up.”

  “Like does he have leukemia or something?”

  “No.”

  “Good, because there’s a lot of that going around. I keep hearing about these kids with leukemia. I mean, like two years ago I never even heard of leukemia. Now there’s always a new kid with leukemia or something.” Her voice pitches higher.

  “Maybe it’s because of pollution,” he says without much energy. He inches to the side, hoping she’ll get the hint.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Air pollution, water pollution. You know, pollution.” He finishes off his cup with a gulp, holding the excess beer in his mouth until he can fit it all down his throat. The alcohol is a warm flood, vaporizing into his skull.

  “I bet you’re right, like we’ve just totally poisoned everything and now it’s affecting little kids,” she says. She reaches out and surprises him by wiping suds from his lower lip with her wrist. Powdery perfume invades his nostrils.

  “Could be,” he says. He takes a step forward, bumps into someone, hastily adjusts himself against the wall.

  “That’s so sad,” the girl whines. “I have to stop talking about this or I could cry.” She leans against the wall next to him and brushes her hand against his. “Too bad you’re so young,” she says quietly.

  “I’m thirteen,” he says.

  “I went out with a freshman last month,” she says. She rolls her head toward him and lowers her eyes.

  Is this how it happens with girls? he hears himself thinking. I could go for it—that would show everyone. But there’s no conviction to the thought, only a renewed urge to flee. He announces, “I have to find my friends outside. Wait here.” Before she can respond, he pushes past her and forces his way toward the front door.

  Todd and Scott are standing next to each other, forming a circle with Ethan and Tully near the hood of Todd’s Camaro. A joint moves from one to the other. Robin crushes his empty cup in his hand and drops it on the lawn. He hears Scott talking rapid-fire as he gets closer.

  “So, then I’m like, no way, Dad, I’m not doing this shit anymore. I fucking painted the garage last month, no way I’m painting the house. You know what a drag my old man is, he just doesn’t quit. You know what I’m saying? Todd, remember that time he chased me down the fucking block just to beat my ass? Remember?”

  Todd takes a long puff. “No.” He doesn’t look at Scott, and Robin sees on the faces of the older guys that Scott is talking too much, too frantically.

  “Hey, guys,” Robin says.

  Scott spins around, his mouth agape.

  “Robin, the boy blunder!” Ethan bellows. He slaps him on the back. “Pass the doob to junior, man.”

  “Thought we lost you,” Todd says, patting him on the shoulder.

  Robin takes the joint. “Hi, Scott,” he says before inhaling.

  Scott turns his stunned face away from Robin and resumes talking to Todd. “I’m like definitely not hanging out there for more than a year, you know? ’Cause like you told me that time, once I’m sixteen I can file a petition of the court or whatever? Remember, Todd, you told me that.”

  “Chill out, Scott,” Todd quietly orders. He takes the joint from Robin again. “You guys know each other?”

  Robin answers first. “Yeah.”

  Scott’s face is some mix of confusion and contempt. “Sure,” he says without much emphasis. Robin holds Scott’s glance and then looks away. Scott hops up on the hood of the car and crosses his arms.

  “We got the two freshman at the party in this crowd, man,” Ethan says. “Not gonna make us look very cool.”

  “Not like you’d win some cool contest anyway,” Todd says to Ethan.

  “Aw, fuck you, Spicer. Tully, man, you notice Spicer is always hanging around with these little dweebs?”

  “Maybe I’m just sick of my old friends,” Todd says.

  Tully’s deep voice wanders out from behind his hair, “Give me that joint, Spicer. You’re bogarting.”

  Ethan says, “You’re one fucked-up stoner, Spicer—you know that?”

  “Takes one to know one,” Robin says to Ethan, the pot making him suddenly nervy.

  Ethan flips him the finger. “Who asked you anyway, fag?”

  Todd reaches out and shoves Ethan hard. “You’re bugging me, man. You’re rude. ”

  Robin backs away as Todd and Ethan glare at each other. Scott watches him intently, almost angrily. Scott’s figured out Robin came here with Todd—Robin can see it in Scott’s piercing glare.

  Scott slides off the hood. “I’m going back inside,” he says. “You want to come, Todd?”

  “What for?”

  Robin suddenly wants to get away from Todd and his crowd, wants to offer some explanation to Scott, though he doesn’t know what that might be. “I’ll come with you,” he says to Scott.

  Now it’s Todd scowling at him.

  “I have to go to the bathroom,” Robin says, hoping the lie will be good enough for Todd.

  “Maybe you can sniff out some pussy in there,” Todd sneers.

  Robin runs to catch up with Scott, who doesn’t look back at him. When they get into the house, Scott says, “The bathroom is upstairs,” and slips into the crowd before Robin can say anything.

  The pot on top of the beer has hit hard. Robin wanders around for an hour, hoping to latch on to someone. Scott hasn’t reappeared, and he’s only seen Todd for a moment, passing through a doorway, whispering something to an obviously drunk girl. He’s heard the expression “make-out party” before, but only now does he get the picture. At this point in the evening, almost no one remains uncoupled. Bodies drape across the furniture and press against the walls, heads moving feverishly, hands groping. The nonstop guitar rock that fills the air casts a hallucinatory pallor, numbing his discomfort, creating the illusion that he is floating, an invisible observer.

  He squeezes himself onto the end of a couch, trying to ignore the entangled petting going on next to him. A hand falls on his arm; he expects Scott or Todd, but it’s the girl in the Virgin T-shirt, several shades more wasted than before. “Hi!” she exclaims. “Where did you go?”

  “I got stoned,” he says.

  She clasps his arm and moves her face close to his. “You blew me off,” she whines.

  As he is trying to remember what he had said to her, she puts her arm around his neck and pulls their faces together. Her lips mash his. His first thought: I don’t know how to do this. It takes him a few startled moments t
o comprehend that, mechanically speaking, this is the same thing as kissing Scott, which he managed OK. He watches the girl, her eyes closed, her face a blur at the end of his nose; he looks past her ear to another squirming twosome—the girl’s hands are planted on the guy’s ass, which looks really sexy. Robin remembers Todd telling him to go get some pussy and decides this is his chance. He prods his tongue into her mouth and wiggles it around.

  The kissing seems pointless pretty quickly—too hurried to be enjoyable and not leading anywhere. From some back corner of his mind he starts to form an argument about the stupidity of the whole thing: making out with this girl whose name he doesn’t even know, when he might still be able to find Scott, whom he would really like to be kissing.

  Robin pushes back from her, meeting her startled eyes. “I can’t do this. I have too much on my mind.”

  “Like what?” She looks crestfallen.

  He scrambles for an excuse. “I told you, my brother’s in the hospital.”

  “You can’t cure him tonight!”

  He hops off the couch, and she stands up next to him, tucking in her shirt. He feels bad about this encounter—wishing she were Scott, using Jackson as an excuse to dump her—and he wants to get away. “You’re really nice, but I have to go.” He pecks her lips, hoping this is an appropriate sendoff.

  She circles her arm around him, stumbles against his chest. “You’re so cute,” she purrs.

  He pries her off. “I really have to go.”

  “Fucking freshmen,” she mutters as he walks away.

  He makes his way through the kitchen, bumping into people all the way. “Watch it,” someone says, and when he doesn’t look up, a hand shoots out and blocks his path. A guy in a varsity jacket with one arm around his girlfriend is glaring at him. “You just spilled my fucking beer.”

  “Sorry.”

  “You better be fucking sorry.”

  Robin takes a step backward. “I’m just buzzed, that’s all. I didn’t mean to.”

  “It’s on your jacket,” the girlfriend says, pointing to a darkening stain on the sleeve.

  Robin reads the embroidered name over the chest pocket: Maggio. Oh, great. It’s his party. I’m so fucking lame. He looks toward the hall, plotting an escape, when Todd’s face appears in the doorway. Robin calls out his name.

  “What’s up?”

  The guy narrows his eyes at Todd. “This little wimp just totaled my beer.”

  “Lay off, Maggio,” Todd says. “I’ll take care of it.”

  “Fuck you, Spicer. You gonna clean my jacket?”

  “Take a pill, man,” Todd says, pulling Robin away. When they get out the back door, Todd mutters, “Fucking jock.”

  “Thanks,” Robin says. “I’m so klutzy sometimes.”

  Todd pats him on the head, squeezes fingers against his skull. “You’re wasted, Girly Underwear.”

  The old insult, so soon after escaping Maggio’s wrath, wrenches Robin from his momentary gratitude. He crosses his arms and turns away.

  “What’s your problem?” Todd challenges.

  “I thought you weren’t gonna call me that.”

  “Just a joke.” A car curves from the street into the driveway, drenching them in yellow light. Todd spins away from it, throwing himself into silhouette. “I just saved your ass. Don’t get on my case.”

  Robin shields his eyes, trying to read Todd’s face. “I just hate it when people call me names.” He exaggerates the pout he feels himself sinking into. “Especially my friends.”

  Todd grabs his arm again and pulls him farther into the backyard. “You want to go for a walk?” he says, his voice more hushed, more like his voice on the phone when he invited him here.

  Robin agrees, letting himself be pulled along a few steps, liking the way Todd is paying attention to him again, feeling special. And then he thinks about Scott, wonders if this is what it was like when he was Todd’s friend, which makes him stop guiltily in his tracks. “Wait. I never said good-bye to Scott.”

  Todd scowls. “He’s passed out upstairs. He’s a total beer lightweight.”

  “I should check if he’s OK.”

  Todd grabs him by the shoulders and shakes him roughly. “Forget about Scott-fucking-Schatz, OK? He’s a fucking pain in the ass, and a liar, too.”

  “OK, sorry,” he says meekly, a little afraid of the force of Todd’s grip.

  Todd leads him through an opening in the fence at the back of the Maggios’ property. They run across another yard while a dog barks from inside, winding up on a street that leads down to a dark golf course at the end, the Valley Ridge Country Club. They struggle drunkenly over the fence. A few ghostly lights spaced far apart throw the rolling green hills into spooky, shadowy patterns. He shivers in the cold and keeps pace with Todd.

  “I’ve never been here before.”

  “My parents belong,” Todd says. “They wanted me to caddie here, but I said no fucking way.”

  When they get to a little slope over a pond, Todd drops to the ground. He lies on his back and stretches out. Robin watches the light catch the pale of his stomach as his jacket and shirt tug up, revealing, as far as he can tell, that Todd is once again without underwear. He wishes he’d remembered to not wear any tonight—that would have been perfect.

  “Why don’t you like him?” Robin asks, trying not to stare at Todd’s flesh.

  “Who?”

  “Scott.”

  Todd shakes his head as if confronting an irresolvable problem—though Robin can’t tell if the problem is Scott or the fact that Robin keeps talking about him. “He just drives me crazy, that’s all.”

  “But you guys used to be friends. I know about that.”

  “Yeah, who told you?”

  “Victoria.”

  “Don’t listen to everything you hear, Robin. It’s not usually the true story, you know?”

  “So you weren’t friends?”

  “Forget about it.”

  “Me and him were going to be friends,” Robin says, lying down next to Todd. He rests his face against the damp grass, which actually feels warmer than the air; lying down flat seems to reduce the intoxication, too. Crickets are chirping loudly. When he rolls over on his back, the black sky is flecked with stars.

  “What about that girl you were with?” Robin asks.

  “Man, you got a lot of questions.” Todd grabs a clump of grass and throws it at him.

  “I told you, when I get high I can’t shut up.” He giggles nervously. “Do you have a girlfriend?”

  “No one serious. I mess around a lot.”

  “Why not? Don’t you want a girlfriend?”

  “Girls are a hassle.”

  “But everyone wants a girlfriend.”

  “No, everyone wants to fuck around. It’s not the same thing.” Todd stands up. “You don’t have a fucking girlfriend, freshman.”

  Robin feels instantly defensive. “For your information, I was just making out with a girl. That girl in the Virgin T-shirt.”

  Todd shrugs as if he can’t place her. “Where were you doing it? Did anyone see you?”

  “Probably. We were on the couch. I mean, I was. She was next to the couch.”

  Todd leans down toward him, smiling in some combination of disbelief and titillation. “How far did you get?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “I’m gonna find out her name and fix you up with her,” Todd says. “We’ll get you hooked up.”

  “I don’t even like her.” Every time he speaks to Todd, he feels outsmarted, as if he can’t possibly keep this conversation from somehow trapping him. He’s never talked for so long with Todd, alone like this. Robin sits up and leans his head on his knees. The green ripples out in front of him like a low-pile carpet, bleeding in and out of focus.

  In the distance, a faint bass line from the party is thumping; closer to them, night creatures buzz. Robin looks at Todd, who is studying him, his face unreadable. Then, in a sudden gesture, Todd pulls off his jacket and tugs
his shirt over his head. A soft line of hair brushes across the shallow muscles in his chest. Robin watches in disbelief as Todd leans down and pulls off his shoes, and then starts unfastening his jeans.

  “Let’s go,” he says, pointing toward the dark pond below them. “This’ll be a total goof.” He pulls off his pants, his dick bouncing as he dashes naked down the slope. Robin—eyes open in surprise—jumps to his feet as Todd bellyflops into the still water, then rises a moment later, cursing and rubbing his shoulder. “Shit! I forgot it’s only like a foot deep. You gotta come in slowly.”

  “I’m not going in there!” Robin is immediately getting hard just watching this—he can’t take his clothes off now; he doesn’t want Todd to see.

  “Get in here, Girly Underwear, or I’m throwing you in, clothes and all.” Todd rises up, his naked body streaked with slime dragged up from underneath, and takes a few steps forward, arms extended like the monster in Creature from the Black Lagoon. His dick dangles out from the shadow of his groin.

  “OK, OK, give me a minute.” Robin fumbles with the zipper on his jacket. He feels the shakes taking over his body, same as when he was with Scott at The Bird. He tries to concentrate on something other than Todd’s body—he thinks about that girl in the Virgin shirt, her garish makeup, her whiny voice—but it doesn’t help. He’s almost completely stiff. He turns around and lowers his pants, then his underwear. His dick springs free. Behind him the splashing has stopped.

  “Close your eyes.” Robin spins around, hands over his crotch, and charges down the slope. As he nears the water, he loses his footing and skids, flapping his arms to right himself. Then he’s down, landing hard on his ass, sliding into the pond. The silty muck oozes up through his legs, around his balls. “Ow!”

  Todd is crouched in front of him, looking between Robin’s legs, wearing a grin as wide as his face—and before Robin can cover himself up again, Todd is chopping his arms into the pond, sending water in every direction. Robin strikes back, giggling as he tries to keep up, slapping and spitting dirty water though he can’t really see his target; he gives it his best until it’s clear he can’t win. In the postfight stillness, Todd rises up again, looming above him as if he wants to be studied and appreciated—or so it seems to Robin, who thinks of statues in art books, naked men frozen in time. Todd is dripping from head to toe, dark dribbles of pond scum across his body, down around his half-hard, bobbing dick, around his balls—Robin is fascinated by his balls, which are really different than his own: they swing like small eggs suspended in a sac, stretching the skin down with them.