The Boy - 1. Chapter 1

Part I

Someone with a case of the flu has taken a leak in my glass. That’s what it looks like to me, anyway...whenever I have the flu, it turns my piss a sort of deep orange-yellow color, from dehydration, maybe, I dunno. Not a very appetizing thought, but then, I wasn’t in a very good mood to begin with, so I suppose it stands to reason that I’m seeing this glass in my hand as full of piss instead of the scotch I’ve been nursing. I’d get up off of the window bench in my livingroom if I felt like bothering to refill the glass, or better yet, get myself something fresh, preferably something that didn’t remind me too much of a bodily fluid. But 4 drinks and half a joint along, I’m not feeling too motivated right now.

Softly, from the speakers on either side of me, floats a lamenting lyric:

“You were just friends; at least that’s what you said,
Now I know better, from his fingers in your hair”

I do have the energy to reach down and yank the extension cord powering my semi-expensive stereo out of the wall, however. I’m sure everyone who’s feeling down, after a break-up, or their cat dies, or they get fired, or whatever has a song that sums up their feelings with such shocking accuracy that they feel instantly connected to that singer, as though he or she knows EXACTLY what we’re feeling at that moment. Maybe for some, it makes them feel less alone...no doubt, it’s the topic of millions of fan letters to musicians worldwide, gushing about how they understand how they are feeling like nobody else can. Well, that’s not how I feel; first, I wouldn’t have picked Gavin Degraw. I mean, sure, the guy has a bit of soul to him, but there’s no way I’m writing him a gushing fan letter, I won’t even admit to my friends I listen to the dude. But more importantly, I’m pretty sure Gavin didn’t actually lose his boyfriend to someone else, and get lied to about it, the whole soap opera script playing out pretty much in front of his face. And he’s probably not feeling as foolish as I am, or betrayed... no, that’s not the right word. Because betrayal implies that I actually have strong feelings about the whole situation. And I don’t, I just feel numb.

I take another drag from the joint, toss down the rest of the piss...er, scotch, and stumble off to figure out where I left my bed. I’m pretty sure it’s upstairs, which means 13 stairs to negotiate, plus a corner and a waist-high railing that I should probably avoid falling over. Somehow managing to not tumble to my death, I roll myself gently onto my bed and try to fall asleep.

About an hour and a half later, I’m still staring at the ceiling, pondering my cursed love life. Why do I always chase the wrong ones? The highschool girlfriend, who left for college a thousand miles away and left us struggling over the long distance; my boss’ oldest son, wise beyond his years and definitely interested in me, but not yet legal and therefore firmly off limits to me; and my latest (cough) triumph, Seamus, a truly wonderful catch save for the self-destructive streak a mile wide, and, evidently, a rather loose definition of truthfulness.

Writing off sleep as just my latest failure, I turn on the TV. Anthony Bourdain is in Japan eating poisonous fish...*flick*...Rocky IV is just ending...*flick*...Fox News is once again trying their damnest to convince the gullible masses that liberals and democrats are the reason the country is in shambles...*flick*...some idiot in an old episode of Lonely Planet is eating a dead marmot cooked by stuffing the carcass with hot coals...*flick...blank screen. Channel out? No, now they're all out; great, the cable service just died. I know this is karma, payback from junior high school when I fell in love with little Pete Stricker one grade below me, and when he showed no interest in me whatsoever, I became his worst enemy, jealously threatening to beat the tar out of him every chance I could...the whole time, Pete being oblivious to the drama playing itself out in my barely pubescent mind.

Welcome to my hell.

So, by now I’ve probably gotten across the idea that I am single, lonely, and depressed. Honestly, I try not to whine about it too much; I know it’s not attractive, and I probably don’t have it any worse off than a million other people, and bitching to everyone I meet about how miserable I am sure won’t get me any dates. So we’ll leave it at that.

The next morning, squinting in the sunlight and breathing deep to try and drive off the trailing ends of a hangover, I leave my 2nd-floor apartment downtown, lock the door, and head across the street to the bus stop to catch the next shuttle running across town.

Continuing my run of great luck this month, I get to attend a wake tomorrow. Now, I know it seems over the top – how much shit can happen to one guy in one month? Breakup, relapse into old chemical habits, funerals... but this isn’t like that. I hardly know the deceased, it’s the wife of someone I used to work with, and I’m just going for the benefit of the husband and my old workmates. I mean no particular disrespect for the dead, but I couldn’t stand the woman. She was a cheater, staying out late under cover of business, screwing some co-worker while the faithful husband was home watching the kids. And now, having wrapped her car around a tree after a night of drinking, he’s left alone to hold the family together. And that’s not my problem, either, but man, life can really be shit. I guess it’s reassuring that I’m not the only one ankle-deep in it.

So I have to get a suit, and let me tell you, shopping for clothes is right up there next to root canal on my list of things I want to be doing today. It takes about 15 minutes to reach Elm St, where the rows of brownstones and office condos give way to strip malls and big-box retail stores. Stepping down from the bus, I stop to light up a smoke, earning me dirty looks from the other exiting passengers. “Yeah, well, screw you all,” I think to myself, at least I’m smoking outside, and my nerves are far too raw to deprive myself of this particular vice.

A recently-renovated, glass-fronted two-story clothing store named “Arnetti’s” boasts “quality suits starting at just $200”. Free tailoring, too – be still my heart. I open the door and slip in quietly; I’d rather avoid interaction with other humans entirely if possible, but I expect that’s not a reasonable hope, since somebody is probably going to have to help me fit the suit, and, since this isn’t Wal-Mart (shudder), I’m guessing there’s no self-checkout lane. Thankfully, the early hour means only a few patrons – an extremely overweight man looking for an outfit that might fit his ample waist, a middle-aged man inspecting blazers on the discount rack, a woman rummaging through the young men’s area. “Let’s get this over with as quickly as possible,” I whisper to myself, and zero in on an available salesman.

We run the routine, he manages to take my measurements without groping me – although at one point I might have been up for such mischief, if this guy pulled a move on me in my overtired, hung-over state, he would have found himself coughing up teeth for a week. He hands me a few suits to try; a navy blue, a charcoal gray, and a black suit that I’m suspicious will make me look a bit like a CIA agent (we’ve been waiting for you, Agent Mulder...). I choose the navy blue; leading me to the back of the store, he pulls aside a curtain leading to the dressing area. It’s a very odd space – nothing more that a 20-foot-square room, a bench running all the way around, with hooks protruding from the walls at eye-level at regular intervals. I’ve never seen a “gang-shower” fitting room before, but I’m not modest, and there’s nobody else in here anyway.

My hangover is returning with vengeance, not fading away politely as usual, and I’m hit with a wave of nausea and almost lose it right there on the carpet. I sit myself down on the bench, slowly, gingerly, waiting for the feeling to pass. What the hell is wrong with me? Is this the kind of man I am, aging, hurting, reeling from a breakup and so shaken by the experience that try in vain to drown my feelings in drink? Pickle them, is more like it – because it sure seems like all I’m doing is preserving them, saving them in little jars of formaldehyde on a mental shelf. I cradle my head in my hands, tears coming, alternating between willing the room to stop it’s slow rotation, and willing myself not to cry.

“Are you OK?” says a voice.

Shit, someone else walked into the changing room, quietly, when I wasn’t paying attention. I look up – it’s just some kid. He’s standing near the curtained entrance with a pile of pants and shirts to try on, his brow wrinkled with concern, and looking as though he might back out of the room to give me some privacy. I’m so embarrassed that I’m speechless, and all I can do is stare dumbly at him and I mentally scramble for something to say to dispel the awkwardness, or at least explain why I’m perched on a bench in the back of a clothing store weeping into my hands like a brokenhearted schoolgirl.

He stares back at me, no longer turning to leave but not speaking, either. As he faces me, a few locks of his chin-length, wavy brown hair drop down over his left eye, resting between his nose and his high cheekbone; he reaches up to tuck them back behind his ear. He is more confident now, seeming to have decided that he doesn’t need to leave, his full lips tucked into neither a frown or smirk, but politely neutral as he waits for me to make the first move.

“Shouldn’t you be in school?” I begin, lamely.

“It’s Saturday,” he offers, simply, but a hint of his previous look of concern sweeps past his features.

“Damn,” I think to myself, I don’t even know what day it is. I’m messed up worse than I thought. I take a deep breath, steel myself against the rolling nausea pounding like surf inside my turbulent gut, and stand. I’ll just ignore the guy, try on the damn suit, and get the hell out of here. I turn and face away from him, and reach up to lift the suit down off the hook.

“Are you OK?” he repeats. Persistent little bugger; he has now walked around to my side, peering up at me. It’s impossible to ignore him now, so I turn to face him. He stands, oh, about five feet tall, so he’s a full twelve inches shorter than I am. His lean frame, lanky hair, and smooth face give him the look of a skater-kid, like any one of hundreds that prowl the concrete expanses of this city – but his current outfit doesn’t match the image at all. He’s dressed... well... normal. Perfectly regular, as some prototypical or classic kid of indeterminate decade might. He’s wearing jeans, but not baggy like other kids today, and not tight like the 80’s; a smart, slim-fitting oatmeal-colored sweater, with what looks like a gray t-shirt underneath. He’s shod with black low-top sneakers. And he has that longish, curly brown hair that I noted before.

“I’ve seen that look before,” he begins. “You’ve been kicked around a bit lately, haven’t you? Been run through the ringer?”

“I’m sorry, what did you say?” I reply, not really comprehending what he’s saying.

“You’re upset, obviously. I asked if you’ve been having a rough time lately. I said, I’ve seen that look before. My friend Jim – he looked like that once – like the world pushed him over, shit on him, and kicked him when he was down. Is that about right?”

“Uh...” is all I can manage. I’m still working on getting past the embarrassment of being walked in on, crying – I haven’t moved on to conversing-with-person mode, let alone conversing-with-guy mode. Or, in this case, conversing-with-jailbait mode.

“Well, with Jim,” he continues, “he had just gone way out on a limb and told his family he was gay. His dad flipped out, his mom didn’t take it very well either, and word got out and a lot of his friends ditched him. He looked a lot like you do now. But you know what? Not everyone left. It didn’t bother me, for example. I just hung out with him, gave him a hug, and told him to hang in there. You know what happened then?”

Am I still drunk? What the hell is going on here, anyway? Some absolute stranger, some kid, who looks maybe 14 at most, is lecturing me on after-school-special life lessons?

“What?” Nice one, a whole syllable. I was encouraging him to go on, in spite of myself.

“His parents got over it. His real friends did, too.”

And then, as if this whole situation wasn’t bizarre enough for me already, the little man takes a step and a half forward, reaches out, and wraps his arms around me, holding me in a firm but gentle hug.

I don’t think I can adequately describe what I’m feeling next; it’s like a cold wind, painful but refreshing, numbing, slicing through me – no, not slicing - forcing it’s way between every cell of my being. That’s not right, though, because it wasn’t just a tactile sensation, I could taste the flash of light and heat as his hands clasped behind me, at the small of my back. Or maybe I heard the darkness, the poison of my mind, receding just a little and letting a breath of clean air in. Whatever this experience was, whatever caused this overload of mingled and melded emotions, it didn’t feel human; but who was I to judge, I hadn’t felt human in weeks.

It was the first real...thing...I’d felt in a long time. If I wasn’t so absolutely floored by what just happened, I might have actually enjoyed it. But I couldn’t; all I could do was ask myself what just happened to me, and who the fuck was this kid who doesn’t just talk to strangers, but talks to ADULTS, consoles them, hugs them, and subsequently rips their souls out through their navels (or so it felt)?

Shaken, I slip back against the wall behind me, crushing the suit and pressing painfully into the coat hook with the back of my head. I don’t know what’s going on, what he’s just done to me, or if he had done anything at all – for all I knew, I was just having a chemical reaction, a mix of my THC-and-12-year-old-scotch cocktail from last night and the leftover 4-day-old cold cheeseburger pizza I had for breakfast. But I knew I had gone far beyond my limit of dealing with the situation, and I had to get out of there.

I grab the suit off the hook, slide past the boy, and walk back into the store proper. Passing the puzzled-looking woman I spotted earlier (his mom?), I stride up to the register, lie to the clerk about trying on the suit and tell him it fit fine without any alterations, and pay the bill. Signing the credit card slip, I practically rip the paper while scribbling my name, and throw the paper and pen across the counter before grabbing my bag and rushing out the front door, into the glare once again.

It’s an hour’s walk to my pad from the store, walking at a good clip. I don’t stop, and I don’t look back once the whole way home.

I unlock my front door, take the stairs 2 and 3 at a time, and step into my sanctuary-cum-prison. I don’t know if I’m going to that stupid wake tomorrow, I don’t know if I’m leaving the house ever again. I’m not sure I know my name, but I don’t care at this point. I’ve had enough of this weird world for the moment, and though it’s a small comfort, and least I’m back in a familiar space.

Though, when I stop and think for a moment, I do feel a bit lighter in the soul...

Oh boy, get a grip on yourself. That was a freakshow experience if ever there was one.

I sit back down on the windows bench in my livingroom, my perch of choice, try to unwind a bit, try not to think - there’s plenty of time to think later, right now, I just need to hold myself together. I lean back against the wall, shoulder against the cool glass, and close my eyes. Deeps breaths, all the way in, all the way out. My heartrate slows, my mind, a vortex, eases its spinning just a notch. The mental throttle inches back, and I doze.

Later, when I am startled awake, it’s dark. The phone has woken me up, but I’m not going to answer it, partly because I’m still groggy from my unintentional nap, but mostly because there’s nobody I really want to talk to. On the fourth ring, the machine picks up.

“You’ve reached 555-7448, leave a message.” God, I hate the sound of my voice.

“Hi, I’m trying to reach Brent,” says a soft, familiar voice, “I ran into you in the store today. You dropped your wallet on the way out, I found it on the sidewalk, it had your number in it...and I thought you might want it back. And,” he pauses, his voice lower now, almost a whisper, “I thought you still might need to talk. Call me, my number is 555-1083. Bye...” *click*

Oh man.