The Screwed-Up Life of Charlie the Second

by Drew Ferguson

  Your such a dweeb. Apology excepted. Now weres my watch?

  XOXOXO

  Rob

  As the soccer team was heading out to the field for the conference title, I pulled Rob aside and gave him a quick peck on the cheek. It was warm and I’d almost forgotten how good he smelled.

  “I’m really sorry,” I said. “It’s just that—”

  “Shut up already, Charlie,” he said. “It’s okay. I’m sorry, too.”

  “Shut up.”

  “No, you shut up, okay?” Rob laughed.

  After the game—we won three to zip—we went to Colonial for its Kitchen Sink, this sundae with, like, ten scoops of ice cream, four whole bananas, whipped cream, cherries, and peanuts, served in this hokey stainless steel trough standing on top of a plumbing drain. Rob made me drive there, saying Route 14 wasn’t as bad as it seemed, that most accidents occurred within a mile of home. It wasn’t very likely that a class of preschoolers would dart into oncoming traffic at seven o’clock on a Friday night. Even if they did, Rob said, he was sure I could swerve and miss most of them.

  Rob had a piano lesson today and was gonna spend time with his uncle in the city afterward, so we’re supposed to hang out tomorrow and Monday, since there’s no school. Columbus Day.

  Monday, October 8

  Rob’s mom’s getting worse. They’ve got her on a feeding tube and she’s bedridden. Every few hours, Rob or his dad has to move her so she doesn’t get bedsores. She’s also having problems breathing, especially at night. Rob says there are times when she’s sleeping and she just stops breathing. She’s got all this mucus and crap that’s building up in her lungs. Mr. Hunt has to prop her up and tap her back so he can break up all the stuff for her to cough up.

  “It sucks, Charlie,” Rob said, sweeping the bangs from his eyes.

  We were in his room and he was sitting on the edge of his bed. I was sprawled out on my stomach, lying next to him, proofreading an essay he’d written for his remedial English class. (If he wasn’t sooo damn cute, I think I would have killed him. I mean, it takes a special kind of guy to misspell “the.”)

  “What sucks?” I asked.

  “She wouldn’t want to live like this. She can’t breathe. It’s horrible at night. She’s struggling and there’s nothing I can do. I wish it was me. Jesus, I wish it was me instead.”

  “Don’t say that.”

  “It should be me. I’m the one wishing she’d just die and get it over with.”

  I sat up and pulled Rob into me, locking my arms around his chest.

  “It’s okay, Rob. You just don’t want to see her like this. That’s normal.”

  “No, it isn’t,” he said as he lowered his head. “What I told her last night wasn’t normal. She was really bad. Dad was asleep—he’d been up almost two days straight. He’s practically killing himself making sure she’s not in pain.

  “So, I’m in the chair next to that stupid hospital bed and she starts gasping. She started panicking, which made it worse. You should’ve seen her eyes. She looked really scared. I raised the bed and that seemed to help.

  “I was stroking her hand, trying to help her relax. Then, after a while, I heard what I was saying to her. ‘It’s okay. Just let go. It’s okay.’ I kept saying it even after I realized I was telling her to die.”

  “You weren’t telling her to die,” I said, nuzzling against his cheek. He didn’t say anything.

  I should be ashamed of this. While I was kissing Rob and smelling his hair, I popped a major boner. One of those obvious, awful ones that can’t be “casually” adjusted ’cuz it had managed to get tangled in the Y-front of my tighty whities. And if that wasn’t bad enough, it poked the small of Rob’s back.

  “What is this? A stickup?” Rob laughed, stretching his hands up like he was a bank teller and I was a masked gunman.

  “Sorry.”

  Rob rocked backward into me, forcing me to the bed, swung around, and grabbed a pillow from the head of the bed, swiping it across my head. I tried to snatch it from him, but wasn’t quick enough. He straddled my chest, laughing, and pressed the pillow over my face. I reached over to snag the other pillow and swatted Rob with it, rolling him off me.

  Inside of two minutes, we were totally going at it on his bed. We’d pulled off each other’s shirts and Rob was above me, my hands rubbing his chest and fingering his nipples. His tongue worked its way along my jaw to behind my earlobe. I pulled his face into mine and we frenched—hard, my nose banging his. It was like I couldn’t get enough of him in my mouth. Rob’s hands slid alongside my torso, outlining my ribcage, until they were at my waist, fumbling with my fly. He tugged my jeans, nearly pulling me off the bed as he stripped me. I stood, giggled, told him it was my turn, and slipped his pants from his legs. He didn’t have any underwear on. His hard-on slapped against his stomach.

  I craned my neck forward to lick him and nip at his thighs ’cuz I wanted to make him squirm. Before I could, Rob grabbed my wrists, shouldered my legs so my ankles were at his ears, and eased me down onto the mattress. Pinned.

  “Can I?” Rob asked. He leaned down and kissed me. I wasn’t sure what he was asking until he was practically chewing through a condom wrapper and his dick was skirting against my tailbone. I never figured two boys could do it, you know, like, facing each other. I got nervous. Really nervous.

  My butt clamped tight. I thought about a ’20s Irish cop hammering on the door of a speakeasy, the mobsters inside shouting to the cigarette girl, “Katy, bar the door!” a cartoon cat trying to suck a stupid yellow canary through a straw; portcullises dropping and drawbridges raising; caves being blocked off by avalanches; that sort of thing.

  Sure, I’ve read my share of Penthouse letters about middle-aged bus drivers dipping their wicks doggy-style in the poop chutes of an entire girls’ gymnastic team. But I’d never stopped to really consider that taking it from behind was bound to really, really hurt some of those pert little gymnasts. Besides, a few of them probably wouldn’t have been exactly clean. I mean, it’s called fudge-packing for a reason.

  I’ll admit that when it came right down to it, I only imagined actual sex in two ways—the romance-novel kind and the locker-room-joke version.

  According to Harlequin, there’d be swooning, throbbing manhoods, blond hairy chests, whispered sweet nothings, me glowing (not sweating), and then, somehow, it’d just slide in. Trains entering mountain tunnels, rockets launching, fireworks exploding, volcanoes erupting. I’d sing opera solos, and that’d be it.

  The joke version was scary and gross. There was some guy sticking his hand up another guy’s ass and finding his birthday present, a Rolex watch; bar stools turned upside-down and four mustached guys named Bruce sitting on each leg; guys wearing dresses and leather chaps; guys with buckets of Crisco doing each other in the butt.

  So, I wigged out when Rob asked if he could turn me into his personal shish kebab. I wasn’t up for getting my kidneys skewered or my lungs punctured.

  Rob chuckled and said I was overreacting. Rob said he wasn’t that big and he’d go slowly. Still, when I said no, Rob gave up and climbed onto the bed next to me and I sucked him off. If he was pissed that we didn’t do anything more, he didn’t show it.

  Tuesday, October 9

  Joan and Mr. B really got into it during AP Bio—Joan basically calling Mr. B a monster, Mr. B saying she was a cretin who didn’t deserve the benefits of modern medicine or technology. It started ’cuz the bio lab’d been transformed into a kitty morgue. The place reeked of formaldehyde and our workstations were lined with what turned out to be dead cats covered by little white sheets.

  The passing period between sixth and seventh hours hadn’t ended, and Joan and I’d gotten to class early. The smell was almost enough to make me retch, but that didn’t stop Hawkings. She lifted a corner of one of the sheets. Just as Mr. B walked in, she let out this total cheerleader-with-nothing-buther-training-bra-and-panties-to-protect-her-from-a-chainsaw-wielding-maniac horror-movie sh
riek and covered her eyes. The sheet fluttered to the floor. Joan spun around, clutching her mouth like she was about to blow chunks. Mr. B, smelling like a just-sneaked cigarette, walked over to her—all no big deal—and blocked my view.

  I climbed on my chair to see why she’d freaked. It was a dead cat, a little rigor mortis-ed arm sticking over the tray’s edge, dried-up eyes still open, lips curled over tiny teeth, leathery tongue lolling to the side.

  “Miss Hawkings,” Mr. B said, sipping his coffee, “no matter how loudly you scream, you won’t wake the dead. And Mr. Stewart, unless your next words are ‘O Captain! My Captain!’ I suggest you use your chair in the manner for which it was designed. Sit, Mr. Stewart.”

  I scrambled off my chair as more kids filed into the classroom.

  Joan glared at him, arms folded across her chest. The way she stared at him, all flush-faced and flared nostrils, I’d’ve sworn she thought Mr. B’d personally, and gleefully, strangled the dozen or so Friskys, Mr. Whiskers, and Snowballs, humming “Whistle While You Work” as he snapped each of their necks.

  “These are people’s pets.” Joan stepped toward Mr. B and pointed a finger back at the cat corpses behind her. It reminded me of First’s over-the-top courtroom antics, staring in outrage at a defendant on the witness stand while sympathetically motioning back to the poor victim. Only, First had never worked a murder case and Joan clearly wanted to turn this into a feline Nuremberg with Mr. B facing a firing squad at dawn.

  The bell rang, which should’ve had Joan back in her corner, spitting out her mouth guard, getting toweled off, and taking a few moments to—I don’t know—breathe, before she came out swinging. But Joan fought through the bell.

  “I can’t believe you actually expect us to butcher cats. These aren’t worms or frogs. Don’t you get it? These are people’s pets.”

  “Miss Hawkings, these are not people’s pets. They’re dead. They won’t be chasing any balls of yarn, climbing into anyone’s lap to get scratched behind the ear, or vomiting hair-balls on someone’s down comforter. In point of fact, if anyone wanted them to begin with, they wouldn’t be here.”

  Joan’s face looked like a clenched asshole. She gritted her teeth and dropped into her seat. Mr. B started taking attendance.

  “So, since nobody loved them that makes it okay for us to slash them apart, right? I guess we’ll be dissecting people in nursing homes next. Or kids in orphanages?”

  The class snickered. Mr. B’s eye twitched.

  “Miss Hawkings, if you can’t tell the difference between a cat and a person, then it’s clear you shouldn’t be in my AP Bio class.”

  “Oooh, there’s a loss. A cat killer doesn’t think I should be in his class.”

  “Here’s a suggestion, Joan,” Mr. B said, closing his roster. “Why don’t you shut the fuck up?”

  It was a TKO. I’d never heard any teacher swear at a kid, much less an easygoing guy like Mr. B. Sure, he could be stodgy and distant, but he wasn’t the type of guy you’d peg for telling a student to stuff it just ’cuz he didn’t agree with what she said. The rest of the class seemed just as shocked. Nobody said anything. Joan sat at her desk, refusing to participate, until Steve Marshall decided he’d play class clown.

  “Look, our cat still has a little collar,” Marshall joked.

  As soon as Mr. B was out of earshot, Joan told Marshall he’d better enjoy exploring the pussy on the lab counter, ’cuz he wasn’t gonna get to do the same with hers.

  Friday, October 12

  More second-hour therapy sessions with Dr. Bink:

  —Thanks, Bink.

  For what?

  —I wrote Rob. We’re back together.

  Cool.

  —The other day, he wanted to…

  What?

  —Go all the way.

  Did you?

  —No. I chickened out. Have you ever?

  Duh. I told you, Dana’s on the pill.

  —No. The other way.

  You mean, like, anal?

  —Yeah. Have you?

  I’m not telling you, pervert.

  —You totally have, you freak. Admit it.

  No.

  —Why?

  Because if I did, you’d never leave me alone. You’d be all, “Oh, Bink, Bink. Do me—I’m so much better than

  Dana.”

  —You can be a real jerk, you know that?

  Learned it from you.

  —Thanks.

  Saturday, October 13

  Some Things I Learned From Having Sex with Rob Hunt Friday Night in a Downstate Motel Room:

  Those don’t-have-sex-until-you’re-married-or-you’ll-makethe-baby-Jesus-cry types need to stop saying sex is this beautiful thing. It isn’t. Who knows? Maybe the first time’s incredibly awkward for everyone. It didn’t help me any that my first time was in a tacky motel in Pontiac, Illinois, the soccer team got stuck in ’cuz the school was too cheap to spend anything but Monopoly money for division playoffs.

  If there’s one thing I’ve learned from the one whackin’ big time I’ve had sex, it’s that people shouldn’t do it in front of mirrors. It’s not pretty. No matter how hard you try not to, you end up looking over and seeing how big of a dork you are.

  After we won our game in overtime on Friday—it was a close four to three—the team had dinner at Godfather’s Pizza, played a few arcade games, and then went back to the motel. When Josh McCullough found out that Rob and I were bunking together, he started bitching that if the two of us got to share a room, the school district oughta foot a motel bill for him and his girlfriend.

  “What girlfriend?” I asked on the bus ride back.

  “Shut up, fag,” Josh said, smacking me in the back of the head. “If we lose tomorrow ’cause you and your butt boy were up all night trying on each other’s dresses and doing other sick stuff, I swear to God I’ll kill you both.”

  “Josh,” Rob said, turning around in the seat to stare the prick down, “if you don’t shut your fucking mouth…now…I’m going to tell Coach that you want to bunk with us.”

  “Bullshit,” Josh said, horrified. “You wouldn’t.”

  “Try me,” Rob said, looking back at a pouting McCullough.

  “And just think what we could do to you in your sleep,” I said, laughing and rubbing my hands together to make Josh freak out even more.

  “Oh yeah, McCullough,” Rob said, stabbing both his index fingers at each other. “You’ll be getting it from both ends.”

  “Like a pig on a spit,” I said. A few of the guys from the team laughed, and McCullough huffed, tugging the draw-strings of his hoodie so tight that his face vanished.

  Since the motel was overbooked, we got stuck in the “honeymoon suite” complete with mirrors on three of the four Pepto-Bismol pink walls and even one on the ceiling. The only wall without a mirror had framed posters of those vapid, sunglasses- and glove-wearing chicks copping a feel of each other’s breasts. The frames were glued to the wall, like the management was actually afraid someone would wanna steal “the art.” The rest of the room wasn’t much better—red shag carpeting that climbed halfway up the wall, a vibrating bed topped with a mock polar bearskin comforter, a minibar stocked with a bottle of generic sparkling wine and a six-pack of Pabst (Coach Mueller had the manager remove ’em.), and a mildewy aquarium filled with this giant, one-eyed diseased goldfish.

  The room terrified me. Not because I thought Rob’d put the moves on me. That was pretty much a given. He’d been joking about popping my cherry all week. No, the room was scary ’cuz I figured even most hookers wouldn’t be caught in a place that looked this cheap. I’ll do anything you want, Mister…let you come on my face, suck off your dog, whatever…just please, take me to another motel.

  I was nervous. Really nervous. When Rob and I were inside our room, we kicked off our sneakers, and Rob fell backward onto the bed. He grinned, arching his eyebrows and practically begging me to strip and throw myself on top of him.

  “I gotta go to the can
,” I said and raced to the bathroom, locking the door.

  I should’ve brought a paper bag. I was that close to hyperventilating. My armpits were like a faucet with a slow drip. I paced the bathroom, stubbing my toe. I sat on the toilet, twiddling my thumbs. I got up and stared into the mirror, trying to give myself a pep talk. Go get ’im, tiger. How bad can it hurt, really? You can take it. You’re not a wuss. I tried taking a crap. Nothing. It sounds gross, but I did a finger check on myself, figuring my index finger’d be a sorta Paul Revere. The penis is coming, the penis is coming. The dip-stick came back clean.

  I paced the bathroom some more, this time, hobbling on my heels, figuring I couldn’t stub anything that way, but still, I managed to slam my toes into the toilet. I washed my hands, slapped cold water on my face, and put on some of Rob’s cologne—to get him in the mood, natch—only I splashed so much of the stuff on me that it practically dripped off.

  I was all set to give myself another pep talk when Rob knocked on the door.

  “Fall in or something?”

  “Nah,” I said. I flushed the toilet so Rob’d think I actually did something in the john besides make a fool of myself. I opened the door, glad Rob was still in most of his clothes and wasn’t waiting for me there buck-naked, glistening hard-on in hand, licking his lips. He’d only taken off his shirt and socks.