Tell My Dog

CW: physical violence, offensive language, substance abuse

A river is often divided into three parts, with features unique to each. In its upper course, a river enjoys many tributaries. Its dramatic flow is characterised by waterfalls, rapids, and gorges carving scars into the landscape. 

Even when we dropped acid, and we dropped it often and with a bang, my feet couldn’t find the rhythm. People slithered around each other like reptiles, and sometimes they’d turn into snakes right before my eyes. They glimmered under the dim lights with scales that cast faint rainbows onto the floor. I could hear the crash of their teenage hormones, and when they kissed I could smell the exchange, sweet and violent. All that, and I still couldn’t understand music. 

Nobody wanted to dance with me in the end; nobody wanted to look stupid by association. They would couple up and scatter against walls to do their business. The toilets would become so noisy with what sounded to my tripping ears more like cries for help than testimonies of pleasure that nearly always I left early. I could have gone and listened and touched myself like some others did, but to move my hand up and down required tapping into an unpredictable crescendo. It seemed not only pathetic but also a little disgusting to try. Instead, I’d slip out into the darkness before the place started to feel sticky with byproducts of excitement, where the only beat I had to make sense of would be that of my heart and the slow pulse of the night. 

So when they told us the disco was shut because its opening hours fell very far outside of curfew, I wasn’t entirely disappointed. One time, when I did get back in the small hours, outstaying my mind’s welcome in hopes of finding a girl, and the horizon was beginning to glow green, and Diana was waiting for me at the front door, all tails and wags and tongue sticking out, I pulled on that tongue and smacked her around the ear so hard she avoided me for days. She drew an invisible circle around me with a patter of paws, and I almost beat her again. But that was something papa would do, so I threw myself off the couch and onto my knees and elbows and begged her forgiveness instead. The rage bubbled almost beyond the point of no return, until finally, she came. The boil turned down to a simmer, and I tried not to let it grow again for the guilt I felt stroking her soft fur, avoiding the searching, anxious eyes. 

What did upset me, though, was when they told us not to go down to the river anymore, because the riverbanks had always been my favourite. Especially in the morning, I would watch the river move its waters west to east, powering up the sunrise.

Whatever I carried, I released at the banks, whether into girls who were way more agreeable to me when no dancing was involved, or just by observing the flow, just by being if nobody was around to grope. I would let the acid flow through me, and the river would ship off whatever feelings I didn’t want to have to name. So when they told me riverbanks were now out of order, because of the balloons that started floating downstream from the west, I raged white. I could point out every crack in the walls of my room with my eyes closed, and I did that often, whenever a creamy mist descended over my vision. That kept me from looking for trouble. If I looked for trouble, papa would become very upset, and with testosterone, it was a chain reaction: one whiff and his belt would come loose on my back. 

***

In its middle stage, a river curves leisurely, forming beaches and oxbow lakes — bodies of water created by abandoned meanders. It also begins to carry sediment. 

It was all because of the balloons, which floated on the surface, bloated shirts full of trapped gas, buoyancy aids from a B-rated horror film. The bodies seemed to wax over in the river much faster than in the ground. No more swimming. No more hasty nudity on a picnic blanket in the bushes. We couldn’t follow the logic of this new fight at the start, until they taught us in school to stay on the government’s side, stick to home at night, stay safe, boil over like kettles forgotten on the stove. If questions were asked about the bodies dumped upstream to float east, we were told to be good, though what it meant to be good we didn’t quite know, but could imagine by elimination. Like when Beatriz’s mum was queuing for bread and milk, and a homemade bomb blew off her leg, so they had to amputate just above the knee to get rid of the frayed edges of skin and bone and ligament, and in the hospital, she told us she felt lucky. The goalpost of good fortune appeared to be moving so quickly and silently that having a leg blasted off was now considered a godsend. 

This meant Betty would be home alone for a while. I didn’t know where her father was, perhaps lost to one war or another or drugs or gangs, and I never thought to ask. I made pasta bake, and brought it in a ceramic dish to put in the oven one agreed February evening, so hot I nearly hadn’t bothered cooking. Betty’s fridge was full of plastic containers already — I wasn’t the first with the bright idea to feed her before slaughter. I skim-counted the boxes, and wondered whether sloppy seconds should be called more accurately: thirds, fourths, or tenths, as per individual circumstances. 

‘Este, it’s just not working,’ Betty breathed from underneath the blanket after we’d had our dinner and moved to the bed. ‘I’m sorry, tio.’

I pulled my trousers back up and reached for the cigarette tin on the nightstand. Betty’s mum’s bedroom had blush pink walls, and a much bigger bed than Betty’s. Just thinking of railing her on the parental bed should have given me an erection, but regardless of how warm Betty’s mouth was, all I could think about was the blown-off leg and how that would be disposed of, or if there was even anything left of it. I lit the cigarette and watched the stump cauterise under the flame.

‘Can you at least get me off?’ she crawled back up until our heads aligned and took the smoke from my fingers. 

‘I’m tired, Bets.’ 

‘Whatever, Este. Get the fuck out of here, then,’ she sat up and reached for her clothes on the floor, balancing the cigarette high behind her back to avoid burning the sheets. ‘You are literally all the same. Get out, seriously. It’s almost curfew anyway. Would do you quite right to grab a bullet in that limp prick of yours, but I’m not a narcissist maricona like you so I don’t actually want you getting shot like a dog.’ She handed me the cigarette back with two drags to go. ‘Which you are. Maybe you should go play with other dogs.’

When she left the room, I turned off the lamp — we all did it automatically now, hoping we wouldn’t get so many blackouts if we just spared electricity. Then I remembered the tin, which had to be Betty’s mum’s, and I helped myself to a few more smokes.

What a nasty habit, smoking in bed, riddled with dangers. Local stories of people burning their houses down cropped up now and again, and I tried to imagine the same happening in Canada, or Japan, or France, and couldn’t. My strategy of distraction wasn’t precisely working, and I hoped Betty wouldn’t decide to come back. There was a bubble in my throat. My name is Esteban, and I will not choke this stupid albeit pretty girl. I won’t kick or bite her, and I won’t beat her bloody. Her mother is in a hospital missing half a fucking leg. My name is Esteban and I control my emotions. 

I stopped by the front door. ‘Betty?’

She grunted in response from somewhere deeper in the house.

‘Don’t ever call me a fag again.’

I’d forgotten to take the dish with me, and in the days that followed, I often fantasised about smashing it on Betty’s head, until there was no anger left to the mishap we had. The bars and riverbanks were closed to the public. Our parties moved to whichever house was the most welcoming, that is so say empty of parents for various reasons: romantic weekend getaways in the middle of national unrest, business trips right through a recession, or any other adult venture that refused to acknowledge the world had gone to shit in a blink. We had power outages every night, so sometimes we would take a dose, lie down on the cool floors together, and trip in the dark. Occasionally, the darkness moved and moaned, but I found it impossible to get excited after the incident with Betty. We were a meddle of body parts, a composite teenager, and one person’s pleasure was the pleasure of the hive, but not mine. The shrill sounds of girls brought up the image of Betty’s mum’s leg, and I imagined she may have sounded like that upon discovering one of her pins was gone. Outside, we’d hear shouts, feet stomping on pavements and streets, two distinct sounds, one ragged and one smooth, sometimes shots, battle cries and calls for the young to join the ranks in the noble fight for freedom of the masses. 

Papa was mostly too drunk to follow the events, and I didn’t try to explain. Either way, the situation made him angry: he didn’t want to hear any logic off his tighty-whitey jizz stain of a son, but equally couldn’t get his head around the disjointed news. He took to letting steam off by torturing Diana and me. Except Diana was small, and she had a clever refuge spot behind the couch where she couldn’t be touched without moving furniture. 

Nobody commented on the marks, and I was grateful. I no longer attempted to fight him. Ever since the night with Betty, my body felt less like a caged animal, like I’d been tranquilised into indifference. I probably couldn’t fight the motherfucker if I did try — his drunken movements were too hard to predict. He’d be lurching forward, about to stumble into my fist if I cared to make it, and then suddenly convulse and punch the side of my ribcage, or hit the pelvic bone. It could sometimes be painful to breathe for days. 

***

Don’t be fooled by the lower course’s steady, wide flow. In this stage, the river deposits into the sea. It tastes salt for the first time. It floods. It drowns. It destroys. 

The wall between my bedroom and the living room was thin, but the TV hung on it because my father didn’t give a shit, and that’s precisely how I explained it to Juan. We sat on my bed, having smoked a joint. I was too terrified of my father catching me on an acid trip, more for my mental health than out of fear for physical consequences. We heard the volume go up, and I banged on the wall. He turned it down a little, not wanting to make a scene in front of Juan. Then we heard his snoring. I was on a very pleasant high, and we sat in the relative silence, looking out of the window and watching the sunset spill a reddish gradient across the blue. 

I knew it had to be another blackout when the TV turned off, because my father never let the box be for five minutes. The snoring continued, and the gradient got replaced by a deep blue, darkening with every minute.

‘Do you mind if I crash?’ Juan asked. ‘I don’t like being out in the streets when the lights go out.’

‘Esta bien. But we’ll go head to toe. Don’t want to look like a pair of maricones.’ I chucked a pillow across the bed. The snoring was now more even and quieter, and we settled, my head so close to Juan’s surprisingly clean feet I couldn’t smell them at all. 

I drifted off into a space between sleep and reality, and was brought back up to a shuffle. When I opened my eyes, I saw Juan’s shins by my head. 

‘Are you sleeping?’ he whispered. The snoring was now a little louder again. How his throat didn’t hurt all day, I had no idea, or maybe it did but why would he ever mention it to me. 

Juan scooted down again, and I felt a graze against my thigh. We were both in our tighty-whities, as papa called them. ‘What are you doing? You alright?’

‘Yes,’ Juan breathed, and the fingers on my leg flattened into a more steady grip. Then they travelled north, until he was touching the edge of my underwear. 

‘What the fuck?’ I shifted. 

‘Sorry, Este. You want me to stop?’ 

I didn’t respond. I wanted to say something, but I wasn’t sure what might come out. 

‘It’s just I never see you with the girls anymore, and Betty said…’

‘Shut up,’ I interrupted him. 

Juan’s fingers slid under the stitches, and I grabbed his hand. The sounds in the living room were fainter, a deep sleep’s murmur. ‘You want to get killed?’ I nodded in the direction of the shared wall.

‘We’ll be quiet, tio. We can just stay like this.’ He took my hand and put it on his own shorts, and I felt him, a stump again, but not a mutilated one. He moved and breathed heavily, and every time he’d get to the verge of a full-fledged sound, I’d withdraw my hand, and he did the same for me. The snoring stopped for a while, so we went even slower, and after a while, the TV came on again. Juan made a few whimpering noises and convulsed under my hand, and then my world exploded, just like Betty’s mum’s leg must have done, and I could feel a headache and a hunger come on suddenly, right in the middle of the orgasm. 

I didn’t actually want him out, I wanted to do it again, and again, until I felt completely empty and numb, but I couldn’t let my myself go anymore. The TV grated on my ears. I let Juan out quietly. No words could be found. Maybe in time. Maybe next time.

When I turned around, my father stood in the doorway. 

‘You faggot,’ he said. Diana peered out of the kitchen, and he grabbed her. She whimpered. ‘That’s what you lot sounded like in there. You absolute fucking bender.’ He held the dog by the neck, and tightened the grip. She kicked her dangling legs desperately. ‘You don’t deserve a normal family. A normal fucking dog. Do you fancy her, too?’

Diana whined. Moans in the darkness. Betty’s mum’s leg, white stump of bandage, what is her actual name? I think it’s Rosario. Juan’s shape, long and sturdy and demanding. Bodies on the river, noiseless bodies floating. 

I hurled myself at him, and he let Diana go. She landed with a thump and limped away just in time, and I beat him with my fists, and dug at his eyes. He was drunk and sleepy. Instead of fighting back, he continued to yell about how he raised a degenerate son, a son who can’t even fight, and then I punched him at the side of the forehead, in an almost fist-shaped enclave just above the eye, and he stopped. 

We didn’t have any travel bags because we never went anywhere, what with papa’s salary being spent on his own entertainment, so I packed into a couple of bin bags. He was breathing, not that I cared, but his huge beer belly betrayed it, rippling like jelly. I caught Diana. She whimpered again, but didn’t seem physically damaged. 

Betty was shocked to see me at her doorstep, and when her mother yelled from the blush pink bedroom, demanding to know who was breaking the curfew, she took a while before turning to answer. 

‘Jesus, Este, what the fuck?’ 

I gave her Diana. We normally walked her without a lead, but I couldn’t put her down on the way, too worried she might bolt. 

‘Please take the dog. She can’t stay with my dad.’

‘Where are you going? What’s in the bags?’ 

I shrugged. ‘To the river.’

‘Este, please,’ she held the dog tight. Their expressions matched, full of pleading and fear. ‘There’s only one kind of person that has access to the banks now,’ she swallowed. ‘Upstream.’ 

I shrugged again. ‘Don’t worry, Bets. But please take care of Diana. And tell her sometimes that I love her.’

And then turned away from them, and I walked west, and west some more, up and up the stream, until the sunrise swallowed the water and spat out liquid gold.