After Dark - 2. Chapter 2

Back on the Ground

12:14 AM

Word Count: Less Than Zero

So I kept my promise. I didn’t start my story the night before the due date. I started the morning before instead. See look at the clock. Huzzah. Way to go, Shinozaki-Sanderson. You succeeded in finding another loophole justifying your procrastination. Aces, man.

Well, enough chit-chat. It's business time. (Where have I heard that before?)

12:16 AM

Word Count: nada y pues nada y nada y pues nada

Staring at my Mac screen, with five hundred vomitrocious words splattered onto a word-doc, I got so nauseated by my lame attempt at a story—presently about a dragonfly discussing her favorite novels with a toad—that my pinky reached out and found the Backspace button. Mutual assured destruction. I’ve got only tonight to scramble something on the theme, How to Save the World from Love, but what I’ve got here wasn’t making the cut, because I kept making love conquer all. So I guided my mouse and aligned the cursor at the end of the paragraph I finished. Three stinking hours and all I’ve got to show is a measly maggoty paragraph. All my words disappeared into cyberspace in one continuous press..

Huzzah. I typed two words onto the blank screen:

Someone, please.

Then I added two more that rhymed with:

Hug Me.

And finally:

Real hard.

God I'm such a poet. Six-word storyteller of the ages.

Outside a stray cat called out, and a pussy-friend called back. They’re outside having fun while I have to sit here and write. They're gonna bang. Listen: Rowr. Rowr. Nya Nya. The cats curse in interesting ways, and for ten minutes there’s cat-bonking noises emanating from my backyard, and it's like listening to a Coldplay album. How was anybody supposed to get their work done with that racket? And now the cat-screeches have made me awfully horny.

I banged my head onto the hardwood desk, and told myself I’d go out for a Cosmo or two, or twelve and calm my nerves. This was going to be a long night, I thought, looking at the moon.

Sigh. I finished just one more sentence, then read aloud:

“'It'd be nice for once to spend my long lonely hours with someone tall, dark, and mysterious.'”

The Stranger

12:54 AM

Word Count: 1798¹

At the pizza brewery’s Mortal Kombat machine, I read a Coleridge poem, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, to get my noggin spinning. He ate a lot of opium, so in a way Mr. C. was a good-for-nothing addict like me. The thought often occurred that if he could make it as a big-shot writer, and write something that's still taught in schools to this day (an opium-induced wedding nightmare aboard a haunted galleon) then there was hope for me yet.

I was at my usual stomping grounds: Oggi's Pizza down at the Student Union building. This place was perfect for my Genius-Art™ because it was clean and well-lighted, and there were only Breeders frequenting the venue. No other Queens to rain on my parade.

One of the reasons I drank-wrote at straight-bars was to avoid trouble with boys on my team potentially distracting me while I was working. You can't be a little Asian dude at a gay bar. All the old white dudes wanna wank over you all night long. Perverts.

Here at Oggi’s, I could buy a pizza and booze-write with ease, absorbing all the interesting dialogue and action, thanks to my fellow drinkers and their lowered inhibitions.

“Water water everywhere but not a drop to drink,” I said to meself, my eyes hopping from one blonde number brushing by, to this brunette there and then that husky fratboy over yonder.

Yes, this was my entertainment. People watching.

Just so you don't get the wrong impression, I'd never be tempted to do something silly with some dumb boy around here. I'm not the kinda fellow to go after someone batting for the opposite team. I've got willpower, baby.

However. . .

There was scrumptious stud standing at the bar trying to get a beer with his fake ID². And Daddy liked. He sat two stools down from me and the Mortal Kombat arcade machine. Homeboy shook his shaved head, talking in a smooth Texas twang to the barkeep, “I‘ve lost a lotta weight since I joined up. That’s really me, sir.”

Barkeep wasn’t buying.

But I sure was. Somehow, someway, I needed to get him alone and really intoxicated make him my friend.³

I sipped my gin on ice and watched the exchange through side-glances, contemplating what kind of trouble Daddy wanted tonight, and eyeing the underage drinker, head-shoulders-knees-and-toes. Tall and lean, just my type of danger. I knew my story wasn't finished—the one about a mother dragonfly’s random encounter with a toad via Craigslist—but what-the-hey? Outside a window, the moon was even smiling, egging me on. I could take just one more teeny-tiny break. I had needs, and I was on a dry spell worse than the California drought.

No sleep for the wicked.

The boy got up, unable to persuade the barkeep he was over twenty-one. I wouldn’t believe him either with a fresh face like his. He swiped his passport before it got confiscated, and turned to leave. We made brief eye contact, and normally I’d look away, but now we just stared at each other. Paralysis never felt so right.

He gave me a nice side-smirk, with a dimple forming an indent in his scruffy five ‘o-clock shadow that I hadn't noticed before. Praise Buddha, I loved him. His eyes were brown and his complexion olive. Figured he might be a marine, judging by the regulation haircut, his lack of body fat and a tight t-shirt with the words Suicidal Tendencies patched across his chest. Some hair stuck out from his collar, and seeing that flash of carpet, I just wanted to grab him by his dog-tags and yank him over here Scorpion-style so I could devour his face and finish him. Give him a few orders. Tell him to scrub the head, sweep the poop-deck, tumble through the trenches. Did Daddy like what he saw? A resounding aye-aye, sir!

Cute Soldierboy scratched his chin-scruff, which seemed to grow and thicken every time I blinked. His nails dug into the coarse stubble, and with that tiny motion, I told myself there’d be an otter hunt tonight, and I’d bag myself a quality fur skin to snuggle with in bed.

Then he approached me, my otterly adorable soldier, and I sized up just how tall this fucker was. He had a good foot over me, placing him at say, six-six of corn-fed Grade-A American beef.

“Heya, Shinozaki-san,” he said, and bashfully scratched his floppy ear. Then he pulled out a pair of black Buddy Holly glasses and slipped them on. Aw shucks. He might be a Killing Machine, but he was definitely still an awkward kid. A rugged dork. Note to self: make sure you check his ID. Actually check it—they let jail-bait into the Corps these days for that early entrance program.

Wait a sec…he knew my name. Gotta try to keep coy, I’m still not sure which team homeboy bats for, or what position he played, catcher or pitcher. “Have we met?” I asked.

“You might not recognize me,” he said with his baritone voice. “I’ve gone through a bit of a metamorphosis.”

“Oh really?” He talked funny. Like someone who’d been mute all their life and now that they’re all grown up they wanted to share with the world all the words they’ve wished to use but never could. Whatever. I was already really tight tonight, so I was being bitchy and judgmental, and not thinking clearly.

“Still clear enough to get a story down over a drink,” he said.

I was confused, had I said something out loud?

“I see you’re still writing, Shinozaki.” He looked at my notebook on the control buttons and at a stack of DH Lawrence paperbacks I was perusing through for inspiration.

“Who are you? How do you know my name?”

“You went by something different back then.” He rocked on his blue Converse heels. “It’s real good to see you, Mr. Samurai Shinozaki.”

No one had called me that moniker in years, and suddenly looking the boy over head-shoulders-knees-and-toes...I felt like a dirty old man. His Texas twang and big ears were the telltale-signs. “Bennet Smalls! Geez, you’re a basketball player now.”

The kid grinned, looking down on me—and I knew how Truman Capote must’ve felt around all his guy friends when they leaned in for a bearhug. For three seconds I was wrapped in white spidery-soldiery arms, feeling his warmth right down through my argyle sweater vest and into my soul. This was just fancy-euphemism-speak for ‘I had a major boner.’ He smelt like peaches and freedom and a dirt-covered pickup truck. He was slicked in the sexy scents of Middle America.

Semper fi.

Ten seconds of awkward staring later:

So. We should probably halt here before I get too hot and bothered and cream myself in a public bar. So. Instead, let’s employ some of the greatest techniques of creative fiction. Inner dialogue, introspection, and of course, my personal favorite: the infodump!!! Followed by too many exclamation points. And the ability to freeze the plot:

STOP. HALT. LISTEN:

When I was seventeen I started working summers over at a kid’s camp in Balboa Park, gut-punched in the heart of downtown San Diego between the 163 and Banker’s Hill. Bennet Smalls, the hunky Private who’d returned to me from my distant past, really was a small-fry who just moved to Cali from Houston way-back-when, only he used to be round as a globe. The little chubster was a quiet eight-year old who liked reading and looking for bugs. Basically a fat white version of my kid-self. He always carried a butterfly net along with his books.

Now Bennet carried a rifle. A big one too I presumed. Gosh, tall and skinny guys are just walking phallic symbols, aren't they?

I knew Bennet loved the insect collection sprees I’d take him and my other campers on through the city park. We found tons of cool critters in the shrubs and hedges and all the botanical gardens up around the San Diego zoo. Whatever we found—rollie-pollies, Jerusalem crickets, and millipedes mostly—we’d stuff our subjects into jars and empty coffee tins and take 'em back to scare the parents. For the five years I worked at the camp, leading kids on entomological expeditions, Bennet always brought back some cool butterfly (caught barehanded) or a whopper-sized beetle for me to identify. Sometimes he’d show buggers even I didn’t know, so we’d google that shit on our smartphones or consult one of my field guides. There were a million different insect species out there and no one man could ever know them all.

We had to catch ‘em together.

Bennet grinned. “What's it been, like ten years?”

“Seems like.”

I was really hoping he wouldn’t talk about bugs. Not right now, not in polite society, when Daddy's completely sloshed.

“So what’s this one about?” Bennet asked, motioning with his chin at my notebook. He was still weird and twitchy like I remember, and I hoped to god he wasn’t some manic pixie dream boy you see a lot in contemporary fiction these days. He'll often serve as a romantic foil (and interest) for the protagonist. Um. No.

The notebook page I had open on the counter was full of cursive script, and the margins brimming with doodled dragonflies. For a half hour I couldn’t turn it to move on with what I wanted to tell. Call it a case of writer's constipation. I had the plot down in my brain, but that fathead was feuding with my fingers, so the words couldn't get down on paper. My right hand was shaking, and I tapped my pen on the last word over and over and over.

“This one’s about a mother dragonfly trying to lay her eggs,” I began. Oh noes, I'm talking about bugs. Great. Crash and burn. Crash and burn. “But along comes a toad.”

He sniffed. “What, in like a pond?”

“Sure. Although I must admit, I’m kinda foggy on the setting and plot details.”

“Having trouble? How's that possible? You’re a great storyteller, Mr. Samurai.”

“Please, just call me Dave.” My stories all sucked.

“I’m being honest.” His eyes got real squinty when he talked. “Remember when we played Battlebugs? Or when you told us the legends of the Magic Mantids who moved souls from dead bodies to newborn babies? I could never forget those stories.”

I was drawing a blank.

“Those weren’t real stories Bennet, we were just playing games, pretending like kids do while picking insects off plants. I make up a lot of things. I suppose that makes me good liar, not necessarily a good writer.”

“Well some of those things you made up would be great on paper. So you got writer’s block or something?”

Thank the stars I didn't answer with “constipation.” I shrugged, not wanting to give him the scoop about my assignment due at six tomorrow morning.

Correction: This morning.

“Maybe you just need a change of scenery for your story,” said Bennet. “A geographical.” He looked around at the bar and shook his head; it was super catty that he just dropped AA jargon. “This is no place for honest hard work. Look, there’s a pond over on campus, maybe we should check it out, get you a bit of inspiration, and turn the lemons of your creativity into lemonade.” Bennet punched my shoulder. “C’mon we can hang right? It’ll be just like old times. Except, we can bend the rules a bit, no lights-out tonight.” He winked and I really wished I’d sober up before I said anything dumb.

“No sleep for the wicked,” I shrugged, then started packing my things and clearing the splotches and watermarks I’d left behind on the arcade machine. “Do you go to State?” I asked.

“Shipped in about two months ago and it's great being back. Uncle Sam gave me a scholarship.”

“Glad to have you on-board, smartypants. Never expected you’d join the Corps, but thanks for the service.” I liked the idea that this kid protected my freedom.

“Ho-yeah. Best decision of my life, though I could’ve skipped that last tour through Camel Country. It might've messed me up.”

“Good on you, Bennet. So how old are you now?” I had to ask.

“Nineteen next month.”

“Aces, man.” Totally legal. “Well, let's get outta here. We got a lot of catching up to do, kid.”

Bennet grabbed his rucksack, then punched me in the shoulder, harder this time. “Don’t call me a kid, Mr. Samurai.”

We exchanged a long pensive look. The most serious rule back at camp was that the campers were never supposed to hit or touch anybody, especially the counselors. But right now I didn't care to enforce the hands-to-yourself rule. Not tonight.