Homo Superiors

by L. A. Fields

  Table of Contents

  HOMO SUPERIORS L.A. Fields

  Copyright

  Strange Birds

  Likely Sons

  Fast Friends

  Queer Ducks

  Like Minds

  Lost Boys

  About the Author

  Published by Lethe Press at Smashwords.com

  lethepressbooks.com

  Copyright © 2016 L.A. Fields

  ISBN-10: 1-59021-626-1

  ISBN-13: 1-59021-626-1

  No part of this work may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, microfilm, and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the Author or Publisher.

  Editor: Layla Byrd

  Cover and interior design

  by Inkspiral Design

  1

  STUDENTS BLAST FROM THE DOORS of the law building and into the quad like buckshot from a rifle. It’s Halloween weekend—zombie makeup and drooling vampire bites are already painted on some of them, witch and cowboy hats bob above several crowds, candy wrappers sift down from the clusters of people to blow in the wind like autumn leaves.

  Noah can’t get away from them fast enough. He’s hurrying out of a test he knows he did excellently on, despite what the professor called his “troubles at home” when she offered Noah an extension. His mother had been sick forever—for the sixteen years or so since his own unfortunate birth, in fact. Her death has been a long time coming; it is not enough to make him choke on a mere Ethics test.

  The rest of his classmates are buzzing about their weekend. It’ll be all cold-flicked nipples under skimpy costumes, pumpkin beers and hard ciders, bonfires guarded by the relatively sober so that nobody falls in trying to roast a marshmallow, all of it the kind of fun they came to college to find. It’ll be just like the movies, and they all look so revoltingly happy about that.

  “Noah!”

  Noah closes his eyelids for a brief moment before he turns around, to give himself a little privacy while he rolls his eyes. There’s only one person (professors included) on this entire campus whom he holds any positive regard for, and the peon shouting at him now is not the one; Ray never bellows across the quad like a cow in a field.

  “Hey, Noah, you’ll be there tonight, right?”

  “No,” he says to Tucker Bolton, a new pledge in Ray’s fraternity. “Be where?”

  “The ZBT Halloween party!” Tucker is two years older than Noah, but nothing about his presentation would broadcast that fact. Tucker’s wearing pajama bottoms and a hoodie, while Noah is dressed with all the fastidiousness of someone used to wearing a uniform—he’s been in private and prep schools his whole life, and even out of jacket and tie he’s buttoned up and belted. There are enough future politicians and lawyers in their pre-law classes that it’s Tucker who stands out, not Noah, at least in their manner of dress. Some people are part of a herd no matter what, and some people always stand out.

  “I can’t go,” Noah says. He wasn’t officially invited, first of all, and besides: “I have a funeral to attend.” Everything in the courtyard behind Tucker is in a bright, dying, autumnal rapture. The ivy growing up the face of the law library bleeds scarlet at the tips. Most of the trees are half-bare already, but the ground around them is covered in firework bursts of orange and yellow leaves, like confetti at a celebration.

  “Yeah? That’s cool, which house is doing a funeral theme?”

  “My house,” Noah says snippily, and he waits for Tucker to begin saying, “Yeah? Where did you pledge?” before cutting him off with, “My mother died, you simpleton.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry about that, man,” Tucker blinks at Noah from beneath a University of Michigan ball cap—he’s only been a student here for a few months, but already he’s wearing the school’s colors like he feels a total belonging. He probably does belong here, feels it all the way to his bones and never questions it. Noah came here following Ray, and for what? Ray wants to find his own friends, and be a Zeta Beta Tau, and drink so much he C-minuses his way through every class. Noah has never felt any allegiance to this school.

  He turns to walk away from Tucker, uninterested in the dimwitted fallout, when the guy calls to him, “Hey, you don’t have to be mean about it though! My grandma died last year, I know how it is. Seriously, you shouldn’t alienate your friends!”

  Noah casts a withering glance over his shoulder and continues to walk a swift clip back to his dorm room. Noah doesn’t have any friends. No one but Ray can even pretend to tolerate him, and Ray too is starting to slip away. Ray, who is the only person Noah considers anywhere near as smart as himself. Ray who knew Noah’s mother, and used to charm her into a smile even when she couldn’t muster the strength to get out of bed.

  Noah’s headed home to Chicago tonight, so he can be there for the funeral tomorrow. Stepping from the afternoon chill back into his dorm room—a double that’s only occupied by a single since Ray moved to the ZBT house—Noah slumps briefly in his soldier-stiff desk chair to wallow. His bags are packed, his bus ticket printed and resting on top of his heaviest coat, both items accented by a long cashmere scarf his mother got him last Christmas. Ray never gets over the fact that Noah refers to it as canary like she did, instead of plain old yellow. Every time he wears it, Ray makes a crack about sending it first into a coal mine.

  Right now Noah wonders if it’s enough scarf to hang himself.

  2

  RAYMOND’S MOTHER WOULD BE SO ashamed if she knew how her son spent his time.

  There are a lot of ways to cheat at cards. The easiest ways involve the trust of amateurs—robbing your buddies can be simply done with a glass table and a dropped card, or reflective surfaces behind their heads: a clock face, a china cabinet, the opacity of a turned-off television set, or the mark’s own thick eyeglasses. On the next tier of difficulty comes your own slight-of-hand: stacking the deck, dealing from the bottom, throwing down two cards and picking up three, or the classic ace up your sleeve. But the most effective robberies involve a two-man crew, a partner. Ray has only had one of those, but Noah’s persona non grata at ZBT if Ray wants to stay a member (and he does).

  Ray has exhausted the basics without Noah around. Sunday night of the Halloween weekend, ZBT is playing a quiet game of low-stakes poker. His brothers are hungover, either stung or satiated from last night’s girls, and everyone is slowly sipping a gentle bottle of Hair Of The Dog, no one truly drunk, but each one far from sober.

  Ray, with his tried-and-true boringly amateur methods, loses two games on purpose, wins one in what looks like an accident, and then loses again before nabbing a full pot on the fifth round. His brothers just throw their cards down on the spill-tacky kitchen table and let him have all their laundry quarters without a fight. The boys roll out of their chairs and slump up to their rooms without even cursing Ray’s ‘good luck.’ They suck the joy right out of Ray’s masterful maneuvering. Ray counts his winnings without relish or pleasure. Seven dollars and seventy-five cents, an insult.

  Ray decides to take a walk. He goes up to his room, trickles his money into the glass vase he uses for change, causing his roommate to groan and roll over in protest, but not wake up. Saunders over there has already thrown up twice today, each time he tried to peck at a little food. He’ll be sorry clear ’til Tuesday, and he’ll probably never drink tequila again.

  Ray slips on his loafers, pockets his phone with his left hand, and swipes his hair back with his right. He’s seen leading men of his same slim build do that in movies and has copied it consciously, practiced it so that it comes nearly naturally to him now.

  He takes the stairs two at a time, a bit of a skip on the last, a bounce out the front door,
and steps lively down the drive. There are several fraternities on this uneven block of streets—the Phi Gamma Deltas, the Delta Gammas, the Gamma Alphas, the Alpha Phis, the Alpha Sigma Phis—all quiet after the holiday debauchery, all essentially the same to Ray. Last year he decided to rush for fun, but after the surprising welcome from the older guys (much older—Ray too is only sixteen, going on seventeen) and getting friendly with them, it became obvious that joining a house was the smart move. Noah followed him around so much that rumors erupted, insinuations were made, and boy if people didn’t just hate him. It was more than Noah’s greasy hair and insect eyes, more than his sneering tendency to lecture everyone on everything. Ray was reading the room constantly, trying to reflect back what he saw and succeeding, but that meant he could see people tighten up when Noah lurked into the room. He was an unsettling stone in a cool pond. He made shoulders hunch away from him in waves.

  It’s not really his fault, the poor sport. He’s the smartest person Ray ever expects to meet, but you need a little verve in this life, a little social grace! Noah doesn’t have an ounce of it, and Ray forgives him for that, but he can’t have it rubbing off on his own shimmering self.

  Under the dim fire of a fall maple tree, Ray brings out his phone to call Noah. The call is answered instantly.

  “How was the party?” Noah asks.

  “It was a party,” Ray says, swinging around the stop sign at the corner of Oxford and University, like Singing In The Rain. “I just won thirty-seven dollars and seventy-five cents at cards though.”

  “Oh, really? Well, if we’re telling lies, then I believe you,” Noah says.

  Ray smirks, assuming that Noah can hear it when he says, “How was your thing?” He admits nothing, but he does like to give Noah a nod occasionally, credit due to someone so astute.

  “My thing was dull and a nightmare,” Noah says with a sigh. He sounds stretched out in bed, shoes off but socks on, intending to get up in a moment to change for the reception downstairs, but unbuttoning slowly now to the sound of Ray’s voice.

  “Any hysterics?”

  “No, not for my mother, not with how long this took. Mostly everyone squeezed me and gave me that look, you know? That sort of pained fart, we-won’t-be-surprised-if-this-screws-you-up-forever-look, like they’ve just lowered their expectations?”

  “Can’t say that I know that one, personally, but I get what you mean.” Ray stoops to pick up a few rocks as he turns the next corner, his walk taking him just around the block. He tucks his phone into his shoulder and starts trying to nail tree trunks and mail boxes along the way. “Hey, when you get back, what d’ya say we work out a new routine for cheating at cards? Find a poker game somewhere, or easier yet, host one.”

  “We can,” Noah says. “We can do whatever you want, but I think . . . I think I’m going to apply to go back to Chicago in the fall. It’s not really my scene in Michigan, and besides, my family’s here.”

  “So’s mine, that’s exactly what I like about Michigan.”

  “So you don’t mind if I transfer?” Noah’s voice is loaded, serious.

  “I don’t mind,” Ray says, coming back to Oxford Road and approaching the ZBT house. “I do care, but you’ve gotta do whatever you have to do.”

  “Right.” A sigh and a shift. “Of course.”

  “Don’t hold it against me, okay? Whatever you decide.”

  “As if I could. I’ll see you.”

  “Yeah, later.”

  Ray returns up the driveway and walks into the front room. The guy who drew sober-sitter last night—Tom Schwartz—is getting good and wasted by himself now, and watching some game he missed over the weekend. Normally the most recent sober-sitter hates Ray for a few days because, when drunk, Ray can be an instigator. But last night he didn’t feel like participating. He accepts Schwartz’s offer of a beer now though. It’s some kind of seasonal cinnamon-spice travesty, but Ray can drink it without flinching. That was lesson number one when he showed up to college at fourteen—learn how to drink with the newly adult. Ray figures he could hold his own with his father’s scotch-swilling business buddies at this point.

  “Hey, Schwartz, you like money, don’t you? How’d you like to help me work out a system at cards?”

  “What d’you mean ‘system’?” Schwartz frowns, his thoughts fuzzy with nasty leftover beer, his unibrow cinching tighter.

  “Like we could work out signals so I know when to bet, switch off so no one gets suspicious, we could clean up around here.”

  “You mean cheat?” Schwartz sneers, revealing his uneven teeth. “What are you talking about? These are supposed to be your brothers; you can’t just steal from your brothers.”

  Ray begins to laugh before Schwartz can finish his sentence.

  “Well, can I joke with them? Man, you should see your face, you’d think I’d asked you to join a terrorist cell or something.”

  “Oh,” Schwartz says, and then shakes his head through his haze. “Sorry. I forget that you’re always joking around.” He forces out a ‘ha’ that might have been a burp, and Ray slaps his shoulder and leaves for the backyard, where he’ll sit until the sun sets.

  Remaining above suspicion is all about knowing when to leave the room. Ray smirks and thinks, To achieve true believing, I must be leaving. That gives him real pleasure, and he grabs another beer on his way out to make sure the feeling lasts.

  3

  NOAH’S OLDER BROTHERS, MIKE AND Sam, are home for the funeral—it’s convenient timing, but no one would ever use that word. Mike’s been meaning to bring home his fiancé, but the first Hanukkah was given to her family, so it might have been months before they saw her without this. Lillian’s exactly the girl their mother would have picked for him—smart but wants kids, pretty but doesn’t emphasize it, with the strong but unvarnished nails of a girl who isn’t shy about doing dishes the old fashioned way, and Jewish as all get-out.

  Most of the guys Noah knows—cousins, classmates, Ray’s fraternity brothers—everyone is dating goy girls just to piss off their parents. They won’t do it forever. They know it, and so does everyone else. They don’t want to spend their actual lives explaining food, words, and customs to WASPs, or listening to their in-laws trying to mimic the Yiddish accents they hear from comedians.

  Noah’s mother told her three sons: if you want Jewish children, find them a Jewish mother. The Kaplan boys will not even pretend to bother with any other type of girl. They have never picked a fight with their sick, sweet mother, not once in their lives. And their father? There is no fight left in their father either.

  Dad and Mom’s sister, Aunt Clarice, sit together on the couch. They were the ones closest to Faye since she became nearly bedridden after Noah’s birth. Their grief is so exclusive and so dense that no one can approach them; the rest of the reception mills quietly about the downstairs of the house, atoms circling a nucleus.

  Noah sits in a deep leather chair in the sunny corner of the living room (though it’s evening now—the sunset a milky purple like a lavender-scented bubble bath), where there are book shelves full of popular fiction and magazines, the kind of reading material a guest might enjoy picking up. The law books are in his father’s office, cookbooks in the kitchen, bird books installed in Noah’s room, and every trashy crime novel Ray has ever bequeathed him in a box under his bed (like porn). Those books stink of Ray—of his cigarettes, the backseat of his car where they might have stayed tossed for weeks, his spilled drinks and flecks of food, the sweat of his hands. Noah keeps them all in one box mostly so no one going into his room will think he likes such moronic pabulum, but also so that the smell stays concentrated. When he’s feeling particularly lonely Noah will stick his big, ugly nose in there and breathe deep.

  “Here,” Mike says, having walked right up to Noah without him noticing, holding two rocky tumblers of pale green liquid. “Have a gimlet, it was Mom’s favorite.”

  “Really? You’re going to hand me this right in front of Dad?”

&
nbsp; “Come on,” Mike says, patting Noah’s shoulder and sitting on the arm of his chair. “You’re in college, and you’re bereaved. It doesn’t matter how old you are, you’re not a kid anymore.”

  Aunt Clarice must feel Noah’s eyes on her, just noticing how much she looks like her sister—the heavy eyelids and dark hair that Noah inherited, the long neck and grace of movement that he did not. She turns to smile at her nephews, and when they raise their glasses to her, it’s enough to make her lip quiver before she turns away again. Aunt Clarice never had any children of her own, and her husband died years ago. She’s been a second mother to her three nephews, and to Noah most of all, the youngest, the baby.

  The baby who’s old enough for cocktails now.

  Noah sighs and downs the rest of his glass. Ray would smile to see him do it, he’s always trying to rope Noah into reckless abandon, but Ray’s the sort of boy who will never lose anything unless he chooses to let it go, and that’s not exactly fair. Ray’s still got his wisdom teeth for heaven’s sake, both sets of grandparents, good looks, and the sort of charm that could run for president. It’s his privilege to abandon himself, with all that will never abandon him while he’s gone.

  And of course he’s all the more irresistible now that he’s grown tired of Noah, but it’s time to stop following him around. Noah’s mother would want him to have at least half the self-respect God gave a worm, so it’s back to Chicago, for sure. Dad will be happier to have him back home, probably, and Ray will be relieved to get rid of him.

  Everybody wins.

  4

  RAY DOESN’T SEE MUCH OF Noah for the rest of the fall semester. There are finals—which Ray makes about as much effort at passing as he does in showing up for them at all, while Noah always holes up for weeks reading everything twice and highlighting his own notes in an attempt at what the locals call ‘studying,’ though Ray rarely sees it in action himself.