“Really?” He was staring at me intently, his interest obviously piqued. “What kind of writer?”
“I write poetry. Some short story type things too. I’m still kinda . . . um . . . finding my voice, as they say.”
“I’ve tried writing poetry before. It always turns out super terrible, so I just stick to reading it. I like a lot of the Latin American stuff. This dude named Lorca is cool. Last summer I dated this guy who got me into poetry.”
Oh my fucking God! He
is
gay!
It was suddenly impossible to swallow the beer in my mouth. My throat was spasming. I wanted to laugh both out of pure joy at this revelation and at how ridiculous I must have appeared.
“Are you okay, man?” Alex asked. He gave me a few concerned pats on the back. “You dying on me?”
I waved him away and forced myself to swallow the beer. It was painful, and after it was gone, there was a soreness in my throat like something was lodged there. I coughed a few times and took in some gulps of air.
“What was that all about?”
“I don’t know.” I coughed some more. “Wrong pipe.”
“I hate that,” he said.
“So do I,” I said. I cleared my throat once more. “So, um, last summer. How was that?” I was completely shocked that we were having this conversation. It was so casual, just like the other night when the two guys at Cherry’s started dancing together.
“It was good. I spent most of my time hanging out with David. That’s the guy who got me into poetry and stuff. He was a good guy.”
“How did you meet?
“On the Internet. He was older, in his thirties, but still really, really hot. And he was really, really smart. He was a high school English teacher. I was eighteen, freshly graduated, and he was smart and fatherly. Gave me great advice. But he was also fun. And he looked like Keanu Reeves. But yeah, he got me into poetry. He saved me in a lot of ways.”
“How’s that?”
“I mean, I think everyone gets really close to that void, ya know? That loneliness that’s so easy to fall into. It makes you do all sorts of stuff. It can turn you into someone who deep down inside, you don’t want to be. He taught me that I was worth something, which I needed.”
I wanted to tell him that I knew exactly what he was talking about, that I was in that void and he could save me. I wanted so badly to lean into him and let him put his mouth on mine, to press my chest against his. I wanted him to put distance between me and Pablo.
“Do you still talk to him?” I asked.
“Nah,” Alex said. “He left Cedarville for some job in Florida. He was randomly in the state for some conference a few months back, and he sent an e-mail to an address that I never use anymore. I saw it a week after he left, when there was nothing I could do about it. I e-mailed him back and told him I was sorry. I explained that I’d missed the message, and that if he was ever in Iowa again that he should call me. He never replied. Maybe it’s for the best. Things change.”
He pulled out a cigarette and asked me if I wanted one. I said sure. He put both cigarettes between his lips, shielding the lighter’s flame with his hand as he lit them. The glow lit up his perfectly stubbled face.
“You’re gay, right?” he asked, handing me one of the cigarettes.
I smiled nervously. “Yeah. I am. Is it really that obvious?”
“Kinda,” Alex said. He was suppressing a smile. “But who says that’s bad? It’s good. Plus, you’re still guyish. You’re not totally faggy.”
“I don’t like that word.”
“Faggy?”
“Yeah. Faggy. Fag. Faggot.”
“Sorry,” he said. “I use it with these guys all the time. I usually just assume that people are okay with it. I forget sometimes.”
“Don’t change on account of me. Say whatever you want.” I thought back to the night we met, when he told me I didn’t have to say I agreed with him if I really didn’t. I hoped this last comment didn’t sound as spineless to his ears as it did to mine.
Alex laughed and shook his head. “You’re a wild one, Dade. And by wild I mean not wild.”
I nodded slowly, unsure what that meant.
“So Fessica seems to like you,” he said in an obvious attempt to switch the subject.
“Why do you say that?”
“I stopped by Food World the other day and asked her where you were. She got that look in her eye when I mentioned your name.”
He’d been looking for me? I forced myself to remain cool about this, to not pump my fist in the air. I wondered where I’d been. Probably swimming in my pool or driving around town or sprawled out on my bed and thinking about him. There was something beautiful about the idea of us reaching invisibly across town for each other.
“Yeah, I think she has a little crush on me,” I said. “She came over to my house the other day unannounced. I was kind of a jerk to her. I feel bad.”
“She’s a sweet girl. Beyond awkward, but sweet. At least she’s not her sister. Jesus Christ, that girl’s a mess.”
“How did you meet her?”
“I sell to her and her friends. I know her and the McGraw brothers and some kid they call the Sexican who’s dating one of Jessica’s friends.”
“Pablo?” I asked.
“Yeah. That’s him.”
The thought of Pablo and Alex being in the same room together made my stomach twist.
“What a douche, that kid.” He finished off his beer and opened another with the opener on his keychain. “Always telling me my bags are light. Don’t tell me my bags are light, man. I’m the fairest dealer in this town.”
He stood up. Something had changed in him. I could see it in his face. He looked blank and entranced, not there anymore. I was beginning to get the sense that his mind was like a jukebox and his emotions were plastic sleeves that displayed states of being instead of albums. I could almost hear the plastic slapping sound as his emotional catalog browsed itself, found nothing, and began to backtrack. He walked into the center of the yard and stared up at the sky. There in the moonlight he looked like something beamed down to earth from another galaxy, all lean muscle and wondering eyes with a shaved head that seemed to suggest he’d just been born a few moments ago.
“I wanted to be an astronaut when I was little,” he said. “Can you imagine that? Me up in space? I bet being up there’s a lot like being dead and alive at the same time. You are really and truly not in this world anymore. The only other time you can say that is when you’re dead, and you can’t even say it then because . . . well, because you’re dead.”
He glanced over his shoulder and let out a laugh. I suddenly felt so sad for him. I wasn’t sure about his past, who he was, but right there is when I first sensed the sadness of Alex Kincaid. I felt the vacuum in him. It was the same as the one in me. It wanted, but it didn’t know what it wanted, so it pulled at everything.
“I wanted to be an FBI agent,” I said. “But I think that’s just because I was really into this TV show about FBI agents when I was little.”
“If you want to be a FBI agent you have to have never done any drugs, like, ever. They give you lie detector tests.”
“I think there’s like a ten-year gap or something.”
“But still. I have a feeling the first ten years of my life are the only ten consecutive years of my life where I didn’t do drugs.”
“When did you first smoke pot?” I asked.
“Eleven.” He wandered the yard, kicked at an old softball that was hiding in the grass. “It was with my dad. My mom found out and was all furious, but two months later all four of us were lumbering around the house stoned out of our minds.”
“Four of you?”
“I have an older sister. She’s in Europe. Has been for a while.”
“What does she do there?”
“She ran away to get away from my parents. My dad’s in jail now and my mom moved to Texas with some piece of shit trucker named Buck who was one of the reasons my dad got put in the clink in the first place. One of the worst people I’ve ever met. I’ve always wanted to get out of Cedarville, but I wasn’t about to go with that guy. No fucking way. So I stayed behind. I live with my grandma now. It’s just me and her and her cat Snowy. One big happy family.”
He laughed nervously. I guessed he’d had to explain this situation before, and somewhere along the way he’d gotten into the habit of punctuating the whole story with a laugh to make things easier for everyone involved.
He asked if I wanted to go for a drive and I said yes. The idea of being alone in a car with him again sounded heavenly. We walked around the side of the house to his car. I felt the pricks of stray hairs all over my arms, neck, and back. They could’ve belonged to any of us. I ran my hand over my shaved head. I swore I could feel my hair growing back already.
We drove aimlessly across the darkened countryside. The engine rumbled and knocked under the hood, but Alex didn’t seem to worry, so neither did I. We talked about bands we liked, television shows we hated. He told me about his grandmother and her church where people ran to the front of the congregation in mid-hymn and twitched with the spirit. He said that it never ceased to terrify him, that he didn’t understand why anyone would want to voluntarily lose themselves in something when it seemed like life was all about trying to find yourself. I told him a little about my parents, about how lost they still were and how it sometimes felt like they’d given up trying to get unlost. I sarcastically said that maybe going to church would do them some good. Alex laughed and said that was doubtful.
“Wanna park somewhere?” he asked. “Get on the roof and watch the stars?”
I told him I’d like that. He pulled over at a random spot on the road.
“Let me grab my cigarettes and we’ll go up,” he said.
He flicked on the dome light and started looking for something in his glove compartment. I couldn’t stop staring at his chest, at his nipples and the patch of hair that ran down to his belly button. He was rounded shoulders and muscled arms. He was perfect. I must have been staring too hard, because suddenly he stopped going through the glove compartment and just stared back at me. It was as if he’d just pulled the emergency brake on everything. The music moved, but everything else stood still. I turned away and looked out at the night, darker than ever thanks to the light in the car. He put his hand on my knee.
“Dade, it’s okay.”
I didn’t reply. I was so thirsty and in shock about
his hand on my knee
that I almost opened up the door and ran into the night.
“It’s okay,” he said again. I looked over at him. “I get it.”
He shut the dome light off. He leaned forward and kissed me. It caught me off guard, but my mouth reacted before my mind. I kissed him back. The underside of his upper lip was warm and soft. I pulled back and we stared at each other for a few seconds. Then it was me who bridged the distance, and we were kissing again, slow and deliberate like ice melting on a countertop.
Chapter 11
The next day was one of those unbearably humid days where stepping outside was like stepping into an armpit. Mom and Dad were gone for the day, so Lucy came over and we made margaritas with twice as much tequila as was called for and hung out by the pool in our bathing suits. I told her about my night with Alex, about kissing him, about the way he’d played with my fingers during the last half of Dingo’s set. She didn’t make me stop talking about him. She let me go on and on. I told her that it all felt as if it were happening to someone else, like my memories of the previous night were someone else’s memories that had been cruelly dumped into my head to show me everything that was missing in my life.
I told her I was scared I’d mess it up and that all of this would disappear as fast as it appeared. I talked about my shaved head and about his eyes on my face right before he leaned in to kiss me for the second time. I told her about the Tomato Hoof record I’d downloaded and listened to three times that morning and how every song on there reminded me of him so much that my stomach would cramp during certain melody lines and guitar parts, especially during the last thirty seconds of “Gravity Is Serious,” where the lead singer keeps repeating:
I don’t wanna be a part of the stratosphere
/
I don’t wanna make policeman sounds.
“I want to meet him,” she said. “I want to meet this guy.”
“We’re hanging out tomorrow night, just him and me, but you’ll meet him soon. I want you to tell me what you think.”
“It’s so hot.” She spoke slowly, as if the temperature were affecting her speech. “I fucking love it.”
“Summer’s good, but I think I’m more of an autumn guy.”
“Aw. How sensitive of you.”
After Lucy left, I wandered the house in a daze. My brain was fuzzy from the tequila and the heat. The cool air of the house sharpened the sensation of the sunburn on my back and made it feel like my shoulder blades were giving off sparks. I had the Tomato Hoof record on at full volume. The walls bled guitars and drums, words and melodies. The songs were everywhere.
I was sitting in the kitchen wearing my bathing suit and a black hooded sweatshirt when my mother came home. I was watching some dating show on MTV and eating unwashed strawberries straight from the container. She walked in through the garage door and screamed.
I dropped the strawberry I was holding and looked over my shoulder at her. “What’s the matter?”
Her mouth hung open and her eyes were wide and bugging out of her head. She looked somewhere between totally shocked and possessed.
“What do you mean what’s the matter?” she asked. “What the hell happened to your hair?”
“Oh yeah. I forgot.”
“What do you mean you forgot?” she asked. “You look like a serial killer. How could you forget?”
“What do you mean I look like a serial killer?”
“You look like a serial killer,” she said again.
“So does that mean the entire Cedarville boys’ swim team looks like serial killers?”