The Best Four Years of Adam Becker - 17. Freshman Year - Chapter 17

If there was one human being in the known universe that I did not want to spend twenty hours trapped next to in Rob Winslow’s Sebring, it was Patrick Sullivan. But because life was cripplingly unfair, and I was cripplingly unlucky, there we were.

It had taken us all the way to Laplace, on the western outskirts of the New Orleans suburbs, for either of us to utter one word to each--sparking the first of which I could only imagine would be a tortured series of halting conversations over the next twenty hours.

“You like the Beatles?” Patrick asked, skeptically, as “The Ballad of John and Yoko” clicked onto the CD player.

I figured I’d pick something as inoffensive as possible, which was the Beatles, because I had terrible taste in music. I liked my music well enough, I mean, but everyone else hated it. It was too haphazard; I could have Eminem, Madonna, and Deadmau5 on the same playlist.

“Who doesn’t like the Beatles?” I asked. “Do you not like the Beatles?”

“No, I like the Beatles,” he replied, and I wasn’t sure if he was lying initially or he was lying now, because those statements seemed completely at odds with each. I didn’t especially care which, because the musical concerns of Patrick Sullivan were pretty minimal to me at this point.

Patrick was driving, because he was sober; he was on antibiotics for a sinus infection, and had the grim look of someone who would rather curl up in a grave than engage in another minute of this. But we didn’t have much of a choice, and a tedious drive seemed preferable to theoretical hazing anyway. Patrick had put me in charge of navigating and the music, which was about all I was capable of doing considering the amount of alcohol I had ingested between happy hour and now.

It was hard to imagine that this had been the night with Jackie Hughes, that I had been with Kevin, that anything else in world seemed to exist before we got into this damned Sebring and began the world’s most moronic contraband run for Rob Winslow’s dog.

I closed my eyes, leaned my head against the doorframe; I was getting to the point of my night where the alcohol percolating in my bloodstream had begun to turn into Ambien, wishing me to sleep at any minute.

And I couldn’t tell if Patrick was just bored, or just trying to keep his mind alert, or just didn’t want me to have the privilege of sleeping, because he said, “I heard you went out with Jackie Hughes tonight.”

It was the kind of baiting conversation that I knew would only go south for me. “Yeah,” I said. “She’s a cool girl.”

“But you definitely didn’t come from campus,” he sleuthed, considering how fast you made it to the Iota Chi house.

“I ran,” I replied, coldly.

There was a long pause; Patrick stood straight at the dark, empty expanse of I-10 in front of us.

“Guy?”

The pointedness made me feel even more uncomfortable, as I shuffled around in my seat. “You’re seriously obsessed with the thought of me and a guy, aren’t you?”

His mouth creaked into a narrow, hostile smile that reflected back at me through the dark windshield. “I’m just curious. And that wasn’t a denial.”

“Who’s to say where I was,” I said. My tiredness and the alcohol had tricked me into thinking that I waas being much more acrobatic, and much less obviously evasive, than I ultimately was.

“Uh-huh,” Patrick said, his smile growing larger, even as he didn’t take his eyes off the road. “So you weren’t just experimenting before.”

I did not appreciate this kind of interrogation, and I hated the idea that I was at a systemic disadvantage because I was drunk and he was sober. So I responded by going possibly a little too nuclear for the subject material: “What about you? Or can you not even think about guys when you’re drowning in Annie Rue’s pussy juices.”

“Why,” Patrick said, “do you have such a goddamned problem with me and Annie?”

We had been in the car for exactly twenty minutes of our upcoming total of twenty hours, so the fact that the creeping discomfort had so quickly turned to open fire did not bode well for the rest of this trip. Even drunk I could tell that one of us was going to say something horrible that would shatter our entire world and, because I was drunk, I unfortunately suspected it would be me. I barely trusted myself to say the right things when I was sober.

Besides, there was no good answer to that question anyway--why I had such a problem with him and Annie. Aside from the answer that was obvious, the one that we both knew was obvious.

“Fine, I get it,” I said. “You’re curious.” I said curious in a mocking voice; he chose to ignore the tone.

“I’m straight,” he said. “I was just trying to see if I liked it. I didn’t.”

“Oh, bullshit, you liked it plenty.”

The song switched over to “Glass Onion,” and we listened to a verse in silence.

“Like, so you’re saying you’re not into guys at all,” I clarified. “Because I don’t believe that. I don’t believe that someone could do something they don’t feel.”

I was not articulating this correctly, and I knew that I was not articulating this correctly, but I could not imagine how someone could test it out and so casually return it to the store without giving another thought. Experimenting: what was there to experiment? Inside of me was this animalistic yen; it had always been there, this force that could not and would not be suppressed. I knew what I wanted, and I would always want what I wanted, and there was no need to perform experiments on it. I was not ever going to be able to slip it back into the box and tuck it away on the top shelf with the hats. I could not imagine that Patrick was able to either. Experimenting. Experimenting with what: deepest emotions? Those did not have chemical reactions.

“It’s college,” he replied, his voice cool and collected, which was even more ingratiating than if he was simply yelling at me. “I was curious to see what it was like, you know? Just to see, and it definitely wasn’t for me. So there you go. It’s not always black and white, and I know that, and I wanted to see that.”

I didn’t believe him, and I knew he knew I didn’t believe him, but he didn’t say anything. Another verse passed, and I was adamant about not being the next person to talk. But, unfortunately: “I-55 North towards Hammond,” I said, bitterly. “Coming up in a mile. You’ll want to get over.”

He put on his blinker, and merged carefully, slowly, to the right, even though the highway was almost completely empty.

“I fucking hate Louisiana,” he said. “I love New Orleans, but I fucking hate Louisiana.”

“It’s like D.C.,” I told him. “If you’re in the city, you’re fine. It’s bumfuck that you have to be worried about. Virginia. ROVA.”

“What’s ROVA?”

“Rest of Virginia,” I said. “As opposed to NOVA--Northern Virginia. Northern Virginia’s fine. They have all the malls.”

The song switched to “Hey Jude,” just as the clock struck midnight.

“Sounds cosmopolitan,” he replied. “I can see why you’d want to get away.”

“Well, I’m from Maryland,” I said. “Hamlet, Maryland.”

“Practically Shakespearean,” he replied. ”What made you come down to New Orleans?”

“Well, I was supposed to go to Yale,” I said, “which is where my brother goes. Philip. He’s a senior. My mom was pushing me to Columbia, my dad to Stanford. Where they all went.”

“Do your parents know?”

It was so out of the blue, so unexpected.

“Know about what?” I asked, even though it was a stupid question. We both knew what he was talking about. I didn’t wait for him to respond. “No.”

“Think they’ll be okay with it?”

“Yeah, I think so,” I said. “As long as it wasn’t Philip, I don’t think my dad would care. And I know my mom won’t care--she has lots of, you know, friends like that. Or a couple at least.”

“Cool,” he said. “Get along with them, at least?”

“Yeah, they’re fine,” I said. “Busy. My mom’s a lobbyist, so she’s even busier than my dad.”

“That sounds awesome,” he said. “I mean, not the whole Republican thing, but that’s pretty awesome that your parents, like, mean something.”

“Not really,” I said. “Maybe it seems cooler if you don’t live with it.”

He thought for a moment, then added, “My parents are kind of awful.” And didn’t elaborate. I didn’t know if that was an invitation to pull at the string, because he looked straight ahead, without engaging me at all, and looked embarrassed that he had said anything at all.

“Like, what do you mean?” I tried.

“They’re just super Catholic,” he said. “I’m one of seven. They were just always kind of, I don’t know. They hate that I’m not religious.”

That hung ominously between us, and we both seemed to know exactly what the other person was thinking.

“How much longer am I on I-55?” he asked.

“Oh, like,” I said, looking down at the GPS, “until we’re there. Hours.”

“Awesome,” he muttered, setting the cruise control.

 

I woke up just as sunrise oppressively shot into the car. We were passing through Memphis, Tennessee, and Patrick was listening to the radio, softly creaking out a static approximation of ‘Fergalicious.’

“‘Fergalicious’?” I greeted. “Really, man?”

Patrick grinned, not taking his eyes off the road. “Give me a little credit,” he said. “It just came on. I couldn’t take the Beatles a third time through, and I couldn’t reach your CDs, so I put on the radio.”

“Cool,” I told him, closing my eyes again. “Do you want me to drive? I feel sober now.”

“No, I got it,” he said. “I don’t mind driving. I kind of like it, you know? Therapeutic.”

“I haven’t driven in ages,” I said. “I guess over winter break a couple times.”

The sun was getting increasingly more atrocious as it charged up over the horizon. Patrick pulled down the visor on his side. “At least it’s better than driving through the dark,” he told me. “We should make it back to New Orleans when it’s still light out.”

“I don’t think so,” I said. “We’ll get there around nine? Ten hours back, plus gas and food.”

“Yeah, maybe,” he said. “This is legitimately the farthest I’ve ever driven.”

“Really?” I said. “I remember driving from Vegas to DC when I was six. My dad just gotten elected to Congress, and we were moving--and I don’t know, he decided it would be great for us to see every national park along the way, for some reason. He was obviously on a very patriotic kick at that point.”

“Sounds like it could be fun,” Patrick offer.

“I just remember a lot of yelling,” I replied. “And Old Faithful. I really liked Old Faithful.”

“Never seen it,” Patrick said. “My family would rent a house in Narragansett for a week every year, but that’s about all we ever wound up doing. Clearly, you’re more worldly.”

“Oh yeah,” I said, “Yellowstone is a real beacon of culture.”

He smirked at that. “I didn’t know your dad was in Congress.”

“Well, he’s a Senator,” I said. “Now.”

“I mean, I knew that,” Patrick said, “I just didn’t know he was in Congress. Career politician.”

“Largely,” I said. “He was a baseball player. Triple-A, for the Las Vegas Stars. Tore his rotator cuff right before he made the majors.”

“Sucks.”

My first memory was of my dad in the hospital, after surgery. 1990: I was two. Philip has told me that two is too young for memories, but I swore, I could still see it. I couldn’t quite place much, but I remembered the light--the harsh, angry fluorescents on the ceiling, and the mechanized beep of machines. I remembered fear.

Being two, I wasn’t quite an observer of the human condition, but in retrospect I remembered my dad sinking deep into aimlessness for a while after his career ended. He had just been told he was getting bumped up to the majors days before the injury. As my dad told this story, countless times on the stump, our house in Summerlin was already on the market, we were preparing for an imminent move to San Diego, where he would be a relief pitcher for the Padres. My dad had the luck of being smart, tall, charismatic, handsome, and athletic; the kind of luck that virtually guaranteed happiness unless you were dumb enough to piss it all away. Maybe that made the disappointment all the more cruel--that, in an instance, the nice suburban house with a mortgage, and the three kids with his Stanford sweetheart seemed less like a trophy of an upper-middle-class life well-lived, and more like an anchor around his neck.

My dad survived in corporate business for exactly two years, before he took a leave to run for Congress. He was not a likely winner, but his primary challenger was insane and he drew a vulnerable Democrat in a landslide like 1994; my dad was handsome enough and well-spoken enough, so off we went to Washington. Even a busted shoulder and a noted lack of private sector accomplishments could not tarnish my dad’s inevitable luck.

“He bounced back,” I replied. “Obviously. What

“My dad works for CVS,” he said. “Corporate office, not, like, as a cashier.”

“Have to support those fifty siblings of yours,” I said. “I bet the Sullivan children are an interesting bunch.”

“Oh, God, they’re not interesting at all,” he said. “My oldest brother, Jack, is married. Two kids. Great kids, really, my nieces, but his wife’s a total bitch. Next oldest brother is Sean--he’s a priest, so he’s celibate and all, with this huge drinking problem that no one can say anything about because he’s, you know, a priest. Um, then Elizabeth is in nursing school, Sarah is in law school. Then there’s me. Then my two little sisters, Kathleen and Mary, are, like, in high school, so they don’t have very much going on.”

“Well,” I offered, “I guess an alcoholic priest and a shrewish wife seem a little exciting, though, in the right context.”

He smirked again, still staring just at the road in front of us. “Not really. Told you they’re boring. How about yours?”’

“Philip’s at Yale. Plays lacrosse, wants to be a lawyer, but he’s not as awful as that sounds. His girlfriend’s cool. They’re both going to Georgetown Law next year, so he’ll be back in D.C. at least. And Justine is a senior in high school, and she’s visiting at some point to check out TUlane.”

“Well, that’ll be fun,” he told me. “Not that I’d want Mary or Kathleen around. How many pledges do you think are going to be tasked with sexing her up?”

It was a harrowing thought, of having to keep Justine as secluded as possible from the Iota Chi guys--but I was not going to risk the humiliation of the inevitable happening.

“All of them,” I resigned. “I’m still hoping she doesn’t come. Just, like, in general, I hope she doesn’t come to Tulane. Love her to death but, I mean, college with my sister would kind of suck.”

“Yeah,” he said. There was a long pause, as he processed what I was saying--incorrectly; I knew what he was thinking, and that was part of it, but that wasn’t all of it. He finished, diplomatically, “Cramping your style a little, I guess.”

“Exactly.”

He grinned, bit his lip, in a way that reminded me a little bit of Kevin Malley. Which was ironic because his very next question, after a long, drawn-out pause was, “So, who were you with tonight?”

I was not entirely sure how to answer the question; I certainly wasn’t going to out Kevin Malley, and I certainly wasn’t going to give too much in the way of lurid detail.

“Jackie Hughes,” I told him, instead. “Remember?”

He rolled his eyes. “You know that’s not what I meant. I’m curious. I’m not going to tell.”

And even though I was hellishly uncomfortable at this point, he was right--he wouldn’t tell, because there was a tremendous amount of mutually-assured destruction. And I could probably do far more destruction to him than he could to me, if he was dating Annie that seriously.

There was something incredibly cathartic about the fact that he knew, and I knew he knew, and we both knew he couldn’t say anything.

“Friend of a friend,” I told him, noncommittally.

“Oh, come on,” he groaned. “You’re going to have to do better than that. I won’t tell. I promise.”

“I can’t,” I told him. “Come on. That’s a lot to ask.”

He didn’t say anything. And suddenly, it dawned on me that I was in Tennessee, and I had plans with Kevin Malley at 6pm. And that I wouldn’t be back until far past that.

It was only 6am, so it was too early to text him. And I didn’t really know exactly what I would say to him, except that I was sorry, and I knew he’d be a little bit annoyed at the whole thing.

And, of course, part of me wanted to tell him he had no real right to be pissed. Fraternity stuff had to come first this semester and, regardless, we were not dating; we were messing around.

I wondered if I did like him though. I mean, I didn’t wonder. I did like him. If I was, say, ten years older and we were in some city and we were both out, then yeah, I’d probably date him. But at eighteen, pledging a fraternity, with him in the closet and me in the closet, it just didn’t seem practical to be anything more than friends with very, very discreet benefits.

“So just a random thing?” Patrick asked, tacitly accepting the condition of anonymity. “Or a thing thing?”

“I mean,” I said to Patrick, and I wasn’t exactly sure how to phrase this appropriately without delving too much into things. “We’ve hooked up before.”

“Nice,” he said, and I couldn’t exactly tell what he meant by that. It was a suggestive nice, and what straight guy--“straight” guy--was this interested in my sexual conquests?

I was still not entirely convinced of Patrick’s straightness. But experiments happened, right? Giving into a burning desire one night as an eighteen-year-old freshman and college, and then deciding it wasn’t actual so burning of a desire? Was that possible? Was that a thing? Presumably it was--that Patrick was a largely straight guy who tried something once, and was now back on the express train to heteronormative bliss. But, then, maybe it wasn’t; a dirty gay secret he kept completely segregated from every other thought, except he got caught when we wound up two lobsters in the same pot of water as Iota Chi pledges.

I couldn’t decide which was the most likely scenario.

“I mean,” I said, “it’s just fun. I’m not expecting anything out of it.”

“Well, you never know,” Patrick replied. And then, completely nonchalantly, as if this was a completely legitimate thing to ask: “Is it Kevin Malley?”

The sudden silence and what I could only assume was a look of unadulterated horror on my face was not the most convincing.

“Why?” I asked, trying to be blase but knowing I had utterly failed in that regard; Patrick was smiling again.

“I just heard rumors about him,” Patrick said, “from people. And I know you’re friends with him, so. You know, two and two together.”

“He just sells us weed,” I replied, probably too defensive, but that seemed to end the conversation for good.

But of course, now I was wondering what rumors circulating around Kevin Malley were--because he was attractive and never seemed to have a girl on his arm? That didn’t seem to be the talk in Iota Chi, who all just assumed he was banging Veronica Tandy. And I wanted desperately to ask Patrick about this alleged source, whoever had told him these so-called rumors, but I didn’t: what could I say, to explain away my sudden interest in who was spreading rumors about Kevin?

“Fair,” Patrick replied, after a long silence. “I don’t know the guy. Just, you know, through the grapevine.”

“What grapevine?”

“Not even rumors, really,” he said, “just people’s suspicions. But I mean, that’s all they are.” He paused. “Do you think he is?”

“No,” I said, probably too quickly again; I was under duress at this point. “I don’t get that vibe. And I can tell usually.”

“Fair,” Patrick said, again. We flew past a small green sign on the side of the highway: Welcome to Missouri. “Missouri State Line!” he shouted. “Fuck yeah!”

 

It was eight-thirty in the morning when we got to the Winslow house in Glendale, Missouri, in the southwestern suburbs of St. Louis--we made good time. I had never been to Missouri before, but the Winslow house was a kind of pan-American beacon of the upper-middle-class that could’ve existed anywhere: a two-story brick colonial with white shutters, a brick path zigzagging up the trimmed lawn, a glossy bronze mailbox at the foot of the driveway with its little red flag up.

Patrick parked on the street. “So what do we do? Just ring the doorbell and say we’re taking the dog? Sneak in through the bathroom window?”

“Probably the former,” I said. Patrick put on the parking brake, and opened the car door.

Somehow, it was brighter outside than it was in the car; Patrick and I both, legs like Bambi from ten straight hours of driving, stumbled up the front walk and rang the door.

There was the unmistakable bark of what I could only assume was the dog we were confiscating, but otherwise silence. The house was still--it was a Saturday morning, too early for us to be tending to any business, but not for adults.

Patrick rang the doorbell again. More barking, the sound of a dog clawing at the backside of the front door, but no humans whatsoever, no Winslows.

Dejected, we hustled back to the car.

“I don’t know,” Patrick said, staring forward, gripping the wheel. “Should we wait?”

I could only imagine what would happen if we drove all the way back to New Orleans, without a dog in tow. But part of me wondered if the Iota Chi brothers had created some sort of elaborate punishment to send us on a wild goose chase. I did not put that last part past them.

“Text Morton,” I told him. He nodded, but he didn’t take out his phone, so I did. I was nearly out of battery at this point.

“Winslows aren’t home,” I texted.

There was no response; of course there was no response; it was eight-thirty on a Sunday morning, on a college campus.

“I think we have to wait,” I told him. “I mean, they’ll tell us if something changed, won’t they?”

“Or make us sit in a car on a random street in St. Louis for an entire day,” Patrick replied, looking around. “Do we even know that’s their house?”

“It’s the address Morton gave us,” I told him. “I only know what you know.”

The car fell silent, in utter defeat. The sun was streaking through the windshield, but I was exhausted. With the driving stopped, with the mission seemingly on a sudden hiatus, I felt the wave of the last twenty hours of alcohol-fueled exhaustion wash over me. I saw Patrick, his set reclined, flutter to sleep; I couldn’t help but do the same.

Then, there was a sharp knock on the passenger window--some time later, not much later, fifteen minutes later. It was unmistakably Rob Winslow’s mother: the same reddish hair, the same department store catalog style of respectability. She was dressed up: hair neatly brushed, a floral sundress with a blue cardigan, small gold cross around her neck.

I rolled down the window.

“Are you two here for Dragon?” she asked. I could only assume that was the dog we’d heard barking inside, so I nodded. “Okay. Sorry--Rob said you wouldn’t be here until eleven, so I thought I’d run to the drug store. Come inside. I’m Dr. Winslow.”

I tapped Patrick on the shoulder; he leapt up like I had touched him with a hot fireplace poker.

“I’m up,” he strained.

We were both exhausted, clearly. Still largely disabled from the waist down as we followed Dr. Winslow back up the brick walk.

I felt like a visitor to this foreign land of the living, like I had been released from a North Korean gulag and dropped in the middle of a Missouri suburb, seeing civilization for the first time in a decade. The ticking of the grandfather clock in the hall, the faint smell of Pine Sol lingering in the air. Over the console table next to the door were two gold frames: one side was an embroidery that read, “Richard and Kathleen, joined together by the Lord, September 3, 1983,” and on the other side was a wedding picture of Rob’s parents embracing in front of a fountain. Wedding photos always struck me as so uncomfortably staged, like no one could ever be so sincerely happy and framed perfectly in a bucolic setting at the same time.

The dog was curiously missing from all of this, as she led us down a hallway to the kitchen. A whole wall was dedicated to Rob Winslow, who it seemed pretty clearly was an only child. It reminded me vaguely of Miss Julia’s Wall of Tripp and Davis, but it somehow seemed much more intense with just one child. Medals and trophies on little hooks and shelves. Pictures of him playing football seemed to be the crowd favorite; pictures of him in a baseball uniform, and a soccer uniform, and a Boy Scout uniform; pictures of him as an altar boy; pictures of him at various ages surrounded by his parents. It was the childhood resume of the much-loved, much-pressured son destined to grow up to be one of the more responsible Iota Chi brothers.

Dr. Winslow slid open the glass door to the backyard, and Dragon, an enormous brown pitbull, came trotting inside. It was only after a few seconds that he noticed we were there, and started aggressively sniffing our feet.

Behind him came what I assumed was Mr. Winslow, thin and cornfed, dark hair just beginning to go salt-and-pepper.

“Hi boys,” he greeted, shaking our hands but not introducing himself. He was in old clothes, covered with a fine film of dirt; in the backyard, I noticed a dug up flower bed. “I was doing some work outside.” He looked up at Dr. Winslow. “You’ve got everything for Dragon?”

“Boxed up in the garage,” she said. “It was so nice of you to come by and pick up the dog. Rob said you were in town this week?”

Yeah, like hell we were in town this week. Not at all hazed into making a ten hour drive on a Saturday morning.

“Chicago,” Patrick said, quickly. “We were doing a service project on the Southside with a friend of ours from Loyola.”

“How nice,” Dr. Winslow said.

“Must’ve gotten an early start,” Mr. Winslow added, “if you drove in from Chicago.”

“Early risers,” Patrick replied, diplomatically. He was really quite an impeccable liar, although I couldn’t exactly tell why he was. “We didn’t want to get back too late tonight. Early morning tomorrow.”

“Let me make you breakfast before you go,” Dr. Winslow offered. She looked at her watch. “I have a meeting at church at ten, but I think I have time to make some eggs.”

Patrick looked at me. We were both famished by this point, but I could tell neither of us wanted to put any more delays between us and the trip back. So Patrick politely declined, referencing a fictitious “closing dinner” last night, and we received Dragon, a big box of his toys, and a bag of Purina, and then we were back on the road heading south.

Dragon turned out to be an overly demonstrative, prone to sad whining and alternately embroiled in an on-again, off-again romance with the back of the passenger seat. Which, I think, was why Patrick offered to keep driving the way home, as I slept.

We pulled off for lunch at Ruby’s Chicken and Pies just south of Cape Girardeau, which I only knew as Rush Limbaugh’s hometown. Growing up in an establishment Republican household.

“God,” Patrick said, staring forlornly at the menu; his face was gray, and he had dark circles under his eyes. “How do you know that? I mean, my parents are talk radio junkies, but even I don’t know where Rush Limbaugh is from.” He looked down. “They spelled it ‘hanburger,’” he said. “Never a good sign. I’m a grammar Nazi, sorry.”

“I am too,” I told him. “English major.”

“Me too, man,” he replied. “Creative writing concentration.”

“Oh, same,” I said. “Who knew there were two of us. Are you taking Intro this semester?”

“Yeah,” he replied. “Suffering through poetry at the moment. Who do you have?”

“Davies.”

“Oh, I hear he sucks,” he told me. “I have Diana Webber, who’s awesome. And she does the Advanced Workshop too, so you’ll have her next semester anyway.” He closed his menu. “All right. I’m getting chicken and a slice of pie. They sold me.”

“I’m getting the chicken pot pie.”

He grinned. “Way to economize.”

“I’m famished,” I said, “after that service project in Chicago we had to leave from at five in the morning.”

Patrick grinned. “Please,” he said. “You’ve never lied to someone else’s parents? They don’t care why we were there. They just don’t want to think their beloved son, altar-boy, football-star, hazed a couple of pledges into drive through the night from New Orleans to St. Louis just to get his mangy ass dog.”

We both instinctively looked out the window; the Sebring was in the parking lot, with the driver’s window cracked.

My phone vibrated. Kevin Malley. I snatched it up, and held it under the table; I couldn’t tell if Patrick had seen who it was from or not.

“I just woke up,” he texted, “and I’m already thinking about your ass.”

I held it even lower under the table. “Might have to rain check,” I told him. “I’m in Missouri. Long story. I’ll be back around 8 tonight. Pledge task.” In a desperate attempt to not make it sound like I was blowing him off, I added, “Should be out tonight--repay my debt afterwards?”

I put the phone back in my pocket, to keep prying eyes off of anything Kevin Malley might find appropriate to send, but there was no response. I couldn’t tell if that was a good thing, considering the company I was in, or a bad thing.

 

"No," said Erik theatrically, once we had all gathered at the table near the fireplace in Old Bruno's at around ten, "I swear, you guys are the only ones who think I still want to nail Birdrock. I don't care where she is or who she does."

Michaela had been a last minute withdrawal from the evening; she was going somewhere with Tate McClendon and, of course, everyone turned their focus onto what did and did not constitute Erik’s level of concern over her burgeoning relationship.

"Fuck, I'll nail her," Morton said. He paused, grinned. "Don't be jealous because I called dibs first."

"Childhood friend," Chris Baker added, raising his hands up. "Tap me out.” His eyes drifted over to the ladies of the evening: Veronica Tandy, and her friends Maddie and Dana. “But seriously, new topic.”

Chris didn't like talking about sex in front of girls. In the house, around Morton or me or anyone, he was fine, but for some reason, he was too gentlemanly to do that. He was too gentlemanly to do lots of things, like have sex with someone when alcohol was involved, which really hindered his options around this school.

Of course, Dana, Maddie, and Veronica--who called themselves the DMV when they appeared as a unit together--had their own sexual reputations that preceded them. They were certainly not the delicate flowers that Baker seemed to convince himself that all women were.

"Okay, let's talk about girly stuff," Erik said, slurping the ice at the end of his whiskey-ginger, “like Baker wants.” In a nasally falsetto, "Who wants to go berry picking?"

"It's the end of March," Dana replied. “It’s too early.”

"I don’t know,” Erik replied, falling back in his chair, the straw still dangling from his teeth. “It's Louisiana."

“You’ve been quiet, Becker,” Chris Baker said, with a smirk. “How was your punishment? Dragon behave himself?”

I had been quiet, because I was barely able to keep my eyes open, and I didn’t even want to come to the bar in the first place--except to see Kevin Malley, who at this point had still not showed up, and because Morton had texted me, “If you don’t come out tonight, you’re depledged,” which I assumed was a completely empty threat, but still, not a fire I necessarily wanted to play with. Plus, it was nice to be wanted at a bar.

“No,” I told him. “I hate that fucking dog, and I’m fucking exhausted.”

“Well, you’re stuck out here until at least midnight,” Morton said, tossing me a malicious grin. “We at Iota Chi certainly don’t want your punishment to interfere with your social life, so it’s really in your best interest that I’m forcing you to stay out with us. You’ll thank me someday.”

I flipped him off. He smiled.

“Tripp, hustle with those drinks,” Erik hollered over to Tripp, who was standing at the bar futilely waving a twenty.

He turned around, goofy grin on his face, and ebonically called back, “I’m-a-comin’, massa.”

“Fucking redneck,” Erik muttered, shaking his head.

“Said Lake Laurel, Arkansas,” Chris Baker replied.

Erik looked a bit annoyed, scoffed theatrically, and went back to slurping his ice.

“So where’s Kevin?” I asked, trying to be as casual as I could possibly be. “I thought he was coming out.”

“No,” Chris replied. “He went out with the bandos.”

Which is when panic set in. I couldn’t tell if Kevin did go out his marching band friends--who seemed to be minor players in his social life, by any metric--or whether it was some sort of euphemism for something. And if it was a euphemism for something, something he didn’t want to echo with his group of friends, it would be a euphemism for something very specific. And I knew, Kevin and I were not exclusive and we were not dating, but even so: there was something that made me incredibly uncomfortable.

Was I jealous. Yes. Did I have the right to be? No. But he was supposed to be here tonight, and he wasn’t, because of some skeptical last minute plans.

So I texted him: “Come to Bruno’s! I want to see you.”

And the minutes passed by, the conversation barrelled forward, Tripp finally came back with the next round, and still, I didn’t hear anything back.

 

“So,” Tripp slurred, when we were ordering, several rounds later, at the bar. “Jackie Hughes.”

It had only been last night that I had drinks with Jackie Hughes but, again, time seemed to be moving so slowly for the past twenty-four hours, with the drive to St. Louis and everything.

“Yeah, her,” I said, without committing to any sort of response. I had my phone clutched in my fist: still nothing from Kevin Malley, which seemed to confirm the horrors of what I was suspecting. Had he simply been out with other friends, at a bar down the street, a text would inevitably be sent.

But had he not been with the band friends--had he been tangled with some guy in some seedy Uptown apartment--he would not be checking his phone.

And it seemed pretty clear that was where he was. Which made me frustrated and angry, and I was drunk and I was exhausted and I just wanted to go home at this point. But maybe not home--maybe to Kevin’s, to tell him I wanted him, that I didn’t want him to be with whatever fucker he was with tonight.

I wasn’t aware how long a pause there had been until Tripp cautiously asked, “Do you think you’ll call her again?”

There was no simple way to answer that question. But the fiction of Jackie Hughes was really not something I wanted to pursue at this point of the evening, so I tried to give her the most delicate brushoff I could, without confirming or suggesting too much.

“Eh,” I said, “I’m just not really feeling it. She’s a cool girl, but I don’t know.”

“Oh,” Tripp said. There was another exceptionally long pause, where we were locking eyes but he wasn’t quite saying anything. And I was bracing myself for that conversation--where he straight-up asked me why I didn’t want to pursue anything with Jackie Hughes. My lie wasn’t an especially sturdy one, but I was tired, and drunk, and utterly preoccupied with worry from this potential Kevin Malley situation.

Instead, Tripp dropped a completely different bomb on my psychological Bikini Atoll: “Well, I had a good time with her. And, you know, we got along pretty well at that party afterwards. And, I was thinking, you know, if it would be okay if I gave her a call. Only if it’s okay with you. I don’t want to, you know.”

What response could possibly follow that? The whole point of Jackie Hughes was to deflect; if she went out with Tripp a day after, that was inviting all sorts of suspicion.

No, he could not go out with her. Obviously not. And I kind of resented the fact that he was asking--he didn’t know my feelings for Jackie Hughes, and just because I didn’t necessarily want her didn’t mean he was able to just pounce on her like a vulture on some half-eaten carcass I’d abandoned on the Serengeti. There was a code for these things. He didn’t know about me: he wasn’t allowed to just do that. And to do it when I was in the throes of concern about Kevin Malley.

So I said, probably a bit more bitterly than I should have, in quick retrospect--but, you know, I really had the right to: “Wow, dude. Some friend. You’re going after a girl literally twenty-four hours after I went out with her?”

The look on his face was immediate heartbreaking, in a way: his mouth was open slightly, as if he had not expected that kind of aggressive response from me, or anything more severe than a gentle cheerleading. And, okay, what the hell was he expecting from this?

“It was just a thought,” he replied. “Sorry, man.”

“It’s fine,” I said. “It’s just, you know. You know how it is.”

He furrowed his brow, and nodded, businesslike. “Yeah, of course, I know.”

And it seemed like no hard feelings, so that was good, at least. Tripp turned back to the bartender, holding out another twenty-dollar bill, and I turned back to my concern over Kevin Malley, because I did not have time to worry about Tripp attempting to snatch everything away.

I typed a few words, then finally on a text: “I’m going to come by at midnight--will you be up?”

Which I figured was straight to the point while still keeping the level of vagueness that permeated through any text I sent him.

“Okay, well,” Trip said slowly, as if I was even a part of this conversation anymore. But then he didn’t finish; we stood, facing the bar, in a tortured silence. And whatever, I didn’t care about this conversation anyway, so I just swatted my hand at him, dismissively, and walked over to Chris Baker, who was standing a little apart from the rest of the group. It was kind of a common occurrence for him: staring at everyone else like an anthropologist, viewing their habits from afar.

“Erik wants Michaela,” Chris told me, upon approach.

Which was an incredible obvious statement, so he received, “No shit, Sherlock.”

He didn’t say anything in response to that; he was staring at Veronica, who was leaning on the fireplace and was waving her arms gingerly as she recanted some energetic story to Morton and Dana. “What do you think about Veronica?”

“Like, romantically?”

“In general,” he said, cryptically. “I don’t know.”

I could not tell whether this was a test; whether or not there was a correct answer that he was expecting. So I just told him, “Cool girl.”

“Yeah,” he replied. “I’m friend-zoned though.”

“You don’t know that,” I replied, even though by this point, that was incredibly obvious to every single person in the entire bar.

“No, I am,” he said. “I’m always friend-zoned. She had a thing for Kevin last year, but that.” He paused, realized the tricky path he was going down. “Well, you know, things don’t pan out freshman year usually.”

I smirked a little, a smile wrought with unwarranted and unwanted schadenfreude, wondering if her crush had ended before or after she caught him “being shy.” And I wondered if he reciprocated ever. Probably not. Considering the interaction over the Jackie Hughes saga, I assumed he was not the kind of girl that would lead some girl on--especially a friend, like Veronica; if there were romantic feelings, Kevin was the kind of guy who would face them. He was brave. I was not especially brave.

Because the problem with being gay and charming was that girls mistake outright friendliness and non-douchery and comfort as being flirty. That happened to me in high school, and I wasn’t even especially charming. But it happened: it happened with girls like Jackie Hughes.

“Right,” I said finally. “You won’t always be friend-zoned, man. Look at me. I haven’t had sex in--” Since yesterday night, with your best friend. “--like, forever.”

“I’ve had sex,” Chris Baker snorted back, a far too defensive answer to something that I hadn’t actually accused him of. And a statement that I knew to be patently false.

He settled back into his drunk, wistful self. He couldn’t really sustain anger, even drunk.

“Do you ever think, like,” he said, “that you’re going to wind up alone? Like, college is great, but then everyone’s going to get married off?”

I did think about that, from time to time, but the sheer number of years ahead of me meant that wasn’t something I had to think about for quite some time. And, with Chris Baker only being a year older than me, really wasn’t something he had to be concerned with either.

“I guess not,” he replied. “But, still, 30 will be here before you know it.”

I clapped him on the shoulder. “Why don’t you get to 20 first, champ?”

 

Banging down the door to Kevin Malley’s Lowerline house would’ve been a better idea if he didn’t have roommates, and if it wasn’t two in the morning. Some guy answered the door in boxers, looked murderous at me.

“What the fuck,” he greeted, through the crack in the open door, without unhooking the chain.

“I need to talk to Kevin,” I said, suddenly aware of how much credibility I lost due to my current level of exhaustion and intoxication. “Really, really important.”

“Hang on.” He disappeared, but left the door open; I peered through the crack and watched him go down the hallway, knock on Kevin’s door. No response. He came back to the front door.

“Not here,” he told me. “Try his cell.” Without waiting for a response, he closed the door, and I heard the decisive click of the deadbolt.

I stared at the door inquisitively, as if it might spring open by sheer mind power, but it didn’t. So I sat down in one of the white plastic chairs, put my feet up on the balustrade, and called Kevin Malley. Rang five times, then went to voicemail. So I tried again. Rang again. The third time I tried, his phone went straight to voicemail, and of course he was sleeping with someone, probably turned over and said, “No, it’s just some drunk guy I used to bang,” and then went right back to business. And I wondered who on earth it was--if he was hotter than me, more experienced, and he probably was. And I wondered if Kevin was thinking of me, but of course he wasn’t, unless it was in an angry, vengeful way. It would be nice to be on his mind at this point, even if it was just that.

And then suddenly, it was sunlight, and Kevin Malley was looming over me like a concrete statue of a communist leader.

“Good morning, sunshine,” he greeted, coldly. “Were you waiting for someone?”

I was still trying to process exactly what had transpired: my brain was grimacing from hangover, I was still tired from the drive to St. Louis, and I didn’t exactly know what to say.

“Where were you last night?”

He did not answer; he rolled his eyes, turned around, and went inside. But he left the door open behind him, as he stomped off to his room, so I wasn’t sure if he was expecting me to follow. But I did anyway.

I closed the door to his bedroom behind me, and he immediately laid into me: “I don’t know who the fuck you think you are,” he said. “Calling me fifty times, sleeping on my porch. We’re not together.” He shook his head in anger. “And you’re the one that cancelled things last night, not me. So sorry if I found something else to do in your absence.”

“Someone else to do,” I corrected. “And I’m sorry, I didn’t know I was going to have to drive all the way to St. Louis in one day. I still made it out to Bruno’s, and we still could have come back, and you know. You didn’t have to freaking find some other guy--”

“Which is still none of your business,” he said. “Again, I cannot stress this enough: we are not together. We are not exclusive. If I am not having sex with you, I’m allowed to have sex with someone else.” He punctuated each syllable with his pointed index finger: “That is the way this works.”

“I know that.”

“So I don’t know what you want. You want to date me? You want to be boyfriends? Because I don’t seem to think that’s what you want.”

“No, it’s not what I want,” I snapped. “I don’t want to date you. I just want to, like.”

I had absolutely no good response for why I wanted Kevin Malley to myself, if I didn’t want to date him. Did I want to date him? Was I just jealous, petulant, angry that I was so easily replaced? He was the first guy that had ever reciprocated any sort of feelings. The first person, really, since Mary Javenson when I was in seventh grade, my first and only girlfriend, even though I didn’t really reciprocate her feelings.

But he wasn’t my boyfriend, and I didn’t want a boyfriend, but maybe I did want to have the best of both. A guy who would sit around and have sex with only me, and wait for me to want him, and that wasn’t really anything but absurdly selfish.

"Well, anyway,” he said, coming off his anger a little bit, sitting down on the edge of the bed. “If you can’t just let friends with benefits happen, and you can’t commit to a relationship, which I know you can’t, then what the hell do you want from me?”

“I like you,” I said. “You know I do. You don't know what you want from me either, so don't act like I'm the only one with issues over whatever the hell this is.”

He was growing irritated, by that comment, by the situation, by me. But he didn't have a good answer. And that was the crux of the problem: that maybe we wanted to be together, but maybe we didn’t. But even if we did, the overlapping social circles and our own firmly shut closet doors made that all but impossible. It could not progress beyond sex, no matter what we wanted, but we didn’t know what we wanted in the first place, which made it all the more convoluted.

“Look, I’m here now,” I offered, probably sounding pitiful. “And I still owe you a blowjob. Probably, like, five blowjobs by now.”

He shook his head, resolute. “I’m not in the mood.”

And that hurt me. For some ridiculous reason. But I was certainly not going to let Kevin Malley have the final word, the satisfaction of seeing me beg him for sex.

“Okay, well,” I told him, as stiffly, nonchalantly as I could. “Then I guess I should just go.”

“Guess so,” he replied, matching my lack of emotion, or maybe just feeling no emotion anyway. “Catch you later, Becker.”