But Soft, Sad Little Boy

Trigger warnings: cursing, light drug use, attempted suicide, light violence.

I thought it was hot when you paid off the theatre teacher.

“They spelled it wrong,” you said, when we were necking on the hood of my dad’s Pontiac Phoenix. You were yanking on the beads poorly applied in my hair, biting my collarbone with your vampire teeth, and I was like hot damn.

“Theatre is spelled with an ‘re,’” you said. I said I didn’t care, and you slipped your hands up my shirt and I put mine down your pants.

Sometimes, I take the Julius Caesar playbill from the shoebox under my box mattress and trace my fingers over the misspelled “theater” and laugh to myself, and, if I’m high, I’ll cry too.

And how about my dad’s tapestry of weed, hanging from the garage banisters with neon zip ties? My mom bought it for him on their second date—a junk shop, moonlighting as a dispensary, in Seattle—after they met at a Vietnam protest. You said it was tacky.

You would think so, sallow and thin, wrapped in your buttons and blazers, dark eyes looking straight through my ripped t-shirt to my spine. Remember when you smeared your finger under my eyes? You took that eyeliner residue, thick and curdled, and ran it down my face.

“Sad little boy,” you said, poking a lip out, mocking me. Mocking me when I cried about it. Whatever.

I thought it was hotter when you nearly got killed by the other theatre kids. That takes some kind of verve. Gilly, Arthur, and I were in band practice—Molly Weird was there too, drinking Kool-Aid from a plastic cup, burping and flashing her pierced midsection at me. Arthur showed off with a poor reconstruction of “Hot for Teacher”; Gilly and I shotgunned Sprites because Dad was dating a Buddhist then. We were just getting started when we heard the howls of theatre-mania.

They started calling it “Caesargate.” Everybody knew you slipped Mrs. Denny a juicy stack of twenties after your monologue audition. It was laundered money, Molly told me. Your mom supported your decision—so did you dad, who was Julius Caesar in college and would not settle for his son to be someone as mere as Brutus.

The garage door clicked open, shuddering with age; Gilly and I looked for a fight. Arthur sissied out; Molly went inside to pee. I swung my dad’s baseball bat on my shoulder and flexed. You were backed against our chain-link fence, ass pressed to the disintegrating “Jimmy Carter for President” sign with BB holes riddled through it. Brutus had you in a headlock; Cassius was running a pudgy fist into your stomach; Portia had ten polished fingers tangled in your perfectly pomaded hair.

“Then—” You cried. “Fall—!” Pudgy Cassius pounded you again. “CAESAR!”

And then I hit him with a baseball bat. And Gilly kicked Brutus in the groin. Portia busted my lip and I turned to you. Goddamn, you were good-looking.

“Hey,” I said. “What are you doing picking fights with theatre kids?” I nudged your arm with my elbow; Gilly was throwing rocks at Portia’s Malibu. You jerked away from me.

“Don’t touch me.” Eyes clear and sparkling, blood snaking down your lip…God, you looked good. Real good.

The second time we met, you were walking home—half-past five, a mottled October evening steeped in warm beer, smelling of the fakey cinnamon candles Mom used to sell to her big-haired, depressed mom-friends. I ambushed you and offered a Fanta if you’d stop and listen to me play. I was bad, but you indulged me, leaning stiffly against the wall next to Dad’s poster of Paula Abdul.

“Okay, Ziggy,” you said, smirking self-indulgently after I strummed something rank.

I stopped cold. “The hell…you like Bowie?”

You said you didn’t, I called you a liar, you met my eyes, fire-burning strange and bright, and said, “No. I’m not supposed to.”

When I asked what else you liked, you told me it didn’t matter.

It did matter to me. It still matters. And your dad can kiss my cold ass.

I was this unmade bed, and you were Mr. Hotel Sheets of My Dreams. I was a cold lasagna, and dusty closets, and greasy fingers. Scary as hell, honestly, and a hot mess, but you got used to me and started seeing yourself as…pot roasts. Sundays by the lake. I mean. Come on. I could’ve taken you places that weren’t the country club.

I did take you places.

We went camping before I died, and it was hot. Cold, actually. Middling between the two, but I remember cold mist and a pine-needle carpet and rain, drumming on the canvas of our tent. And we fucked, didn’t we?

“Made love,” you sighed, correcting me, poking a skinny, sweaty leg between mine. “We made love.”

I got a mosquito bite on my ass. We ran out of food and bobbed for cocktail mixers and dirty ice in my blue plastic cooler. We ate bruised apples and climbed trees. You got a fishhook stuck in your finger and threw up when I yanked it out. “My hero,” you retched. “My big—” Retch. “Strong—” Retch. “Hero.” Downright sexual. Not the vomiting, but you…sweaty, pink dusting on your cheeks, dark eyelashes fanned on your cheeks. Beautiful.

My hero.

You were mine, too, you know. You’d never guess. My hero. Poising yourself next to me, putting a protective, slim hand on my neck when your dad dragged his ugly ass bourgeoise gaze up and down my clothes, offering a smile like rancid sour cream.

“Son,” he sleazed. “This is so unlike you.”

“Father,” you said, voice smooth and dry. “Play nice.”

Your mom and her plastic face judged me too. “Honey. Who is this?” Said less like a woman meeting her son’s boyfriend, and more like a police officer trying to identify a full body burn victim.

“God,” Officer Botox would say, contorting his face (wrinkle-free, like fresh Silly Putty). “Who is this?”

I’d never been gay before. Not out loud. I’d fumbled—every gay person knows how to fumble—and I’d kissed boys, licking the beer foam from their lips around dying bonfires made of trash. But you saw right through me. You called me gay that one time…and I punched you in the nose and then you ignored me for a day and a half afterwards.

“What is wrong with you?” You said, after I broke your window throwing pebbles at it. The silk pajamas hung from your frame, revealing a milky collarbone. I steadied myself, shoved my hands in my pockets.

“But soft,” I said, sweat dripping down my sides, face red. “What light through yonder window breaks?”

“What are you doing?”

“It is the East, and—” I coughed, shoulders coming forward. “And Julien is the sun.”

“Did you memorize that?”

I paused. Your face was stricken wide open, like the pebble—the one that broke your window—hit your forehead and shattered that perfectly curated façade into a hundred little pieces. I saw that face again, later, months later, when we listened to my Tonight tape over and over, lying in the crunchy hospital bed together. Dad was high; Mom was in Montana; Arthur sat next to my bed and ate a cheeseburger wrapped in plastic. He was still giving me the silent treatment but insisted on holding my hand until you got there.

I woke up to rain drumming on the plastic panes of the window.

“But soft,” you whispered. “There you are.” You pressed your lips to my wrists until they stung. My insides were liquid and soft, my shell was cracked open; you, nearly liquid, slipped inside my cracks and filled me from the inside.

Sure, I changed. Everybody does.

“You can’t live on chicken broth forever,” you said, toweling sweat from your face, track pants swishing past my permanent post on the couch.

“You have to go outside someday,” you said, on your way to check the mail. You’d been dropping hints all afternoon that it needed to be checked. You conceded after I started crying.

Dad’s house turned into ours; he moved in with Deborah. You painted the walls a sad-looking, not-quite white color. It gave me a migraine that knocked me out for two days.

“You should play your guitar for me,” you said over takeout one night, eyeing my cold white rice, slowly getting sticky.

“We should make love.”

“We should go camping.”

“You should play me a song."

“Please.” You brushed the hair from my clammy forehead. Face in a hundred little pieces. Begging. Letting me look at you, really, one last time. “Play me a song, honey.”

I didn’t.

Last I heard, you moved in with a Pulitzer Prize winner while you finished your law degree at Berkley. I, thanks to Gilly, got medicated. Stopped smoking weed. Got a job at a hotel in the city, nightshift, where I played solitaire at the receptionist’s desk and read Stephen King books under green lamplight.

I saw you yesterday. You were wrapping up a meeting with a client (or maybe hooker, I don’t know). She had box-blonde hair and a bubblegum pink velour sweatsuit. I like to think she was a teacher, off-duty, or a mom who’d just won the lottery. You pressed a gentle, slim hand against her back while closing the door. She clasped your hand, and I looked away. Rubbed my chapped hands together, ignored the blinking blue “walk” signal at the other side of the crosswalk.

I could hear her laugh, loudly, like a parrot. I covered my ears, pretending they were cold. Someone jostled my arm, rain started to prick my neck.

You gave her money for the cab. I saw you slip bills from your shiny pocketbook and drop it through the crack in her window. You smiled a fake, shiny grin and waved as she was pulled away.

We made eye contact I think, and you waved at me.

Fake and shiny.

I waved back, hand drooping, almost making fist.

Six years ago, I would’ve said something ridiculous like, “Power to the people.” I would’ve punched the sky, shaken my mane, stuck my tongue out, tried to start a fight…Six years ago, I would’ve blown through the garage, tossing you hot sodas in dented cans, telling you about this ugly ass bourgeoise sleaze paying off his hooker in front of a Starbucks.

“And—” I would’ve said. “And there was this creepy, skinny, homeless-looking dude staring at him and, when I hit his shoulder on accident (because the limp motherfucker wouldn’t move), he began to cry. To cry!”

You would’ve stuck your lip out. “Sad little boy.” 

Yesterday, I let my arm drop when you turned your head. My scars were hurting anyway.