Requited (Part 1: Non-Picture Of Pre-Sex Rituals)

It wasn't that I was ugly, it was just that when I first started whoring over AOL, I didn't have any pictures of myself on my computer. I knew what I looked like. Most people on AOL just assumed that if you didn't have a picture on your computer then you were some hideously deformed freak with a tuna casserole where your face should be. After a week of being mostly rejected due to my non-pic having status, I broke down and got some pictures scanned.

Sure, some of the people who rejected me because I didn't have a pic went on to reject me again, but more than a few became Insafemode Entries.

Not being too much of a hypocrite, I often agreed to meet people without pictures. Most of the guys were average to good looking. Granted, I have fairly low standards. The way I figured it, it was just as easy to lie about what you looked like by sending a fake pic as it was to just not send a pic.

Ryan was a twenty year old closet case who didn't want his picture sent out, but he seemed sweet and funny so I decided to take a chance. I attended to the usual: toss all of the dirty laundry into the spare bedroom, change the sheets, make sure the condom drawer was filled, and make sure I'd taken proper advantage of my employee discount at the liquor store.

The doorbell rang at almost exactly midnight, thirty seconds before Cinderella's coach turned back into a pumpkin, and a minute before Peter Peter came to eat it.

When you've agreed to meet someone for sex, someone you haven't seen before, you mentally come up with a variety of possible appearances for them. Ryan said he was 5'9", brown almost black hair, swimmer's build. With a description like that he could look like anyone. Well, anyone 5'9" with almost black hair.

I tried to picture how he carried himself. Perfect posture? Mild slouch? Hunchback? What did his ass look like? I hadn't yet met Elvis, so I didn't realize that it was possible to have a concave ass.

When the doorbell rang I imagined his wide nose, piercing green eyes, and big pouty lips. I was in no way prepared for who would be waiting on the other side.

original post: http://insafemode.livejournal.com/35665.html

CSB

I don't think I'd ever refer to something as The Kiss of Death. Depending on who they get to play Death in Good Omens, I can't imagine Death being kissable. Let's review the people who've played Death in TV shows and movies: Norm Macdonald, William Sadler, Jason Alexander, and Adam Corrola. None of them are on my top million list of guys to fuck.

If there were any characteristic of a person that I would even consider labeling "The Kiss of Death", it would be the use of patchouli as a bathing substitute. Even before I lived in Vermont, where showers are viewed with a disdain that Republicans reserve for a gay marriage ceremony involving a black guy and an Iraqi civilian, I couldn't stand the vile smell of patchouli. Even typing that word makes my nose hurt.

On the first night of my Acting class in college, I caught a whiff of something patchouliesque. Something *sniff* *sniff* almost like patchouli, but somehow not displeasing. Nasal gaydar. When I turned around I saw the hottest, obviously gay guy I had ever laid eyes on. I made small talk with him, and bided my time before I went full on flirtatious. This was back before Whore Month, before Ryan came into play, before I had dared do anything remotely gay near where I lived. Sure, there'd been Victor at boarding school, and Alex at college, but those were faraway places.

After a couple of weeks, the boy in class had done some obviously gay things. He had rapped the complete lyrics to Vanilla Ice's "Ice Ice Baby", he wore tight fitting t-shirts, he kept mentioning that his friends said he looked like Leonardo diCaprio. He couldn't be gayer if he was walking around with my dick in his ass, something I was hoping to prove with extensive testing.

We started hanging out a lot. More than a lot. When he went through a rough patch with his mother, he moved in to my condo for a while. Neither of us were yet twenty-one, but I looked old enough to not get carded very often. So every other night or so we ended up plastered and sharing the pull out bed in the living room. It was on one of those nights that I decided to grow some balls and tell him how I felt. Why that night? I was hammered. How hammered? Hammered. I was hammered. There were nails buried in plaster mumbling "That guy is hammered." That's how hammered I was. Hammered. I was playing some sort of show tune on the piano, the boy was singing along. He was singing beautifully. (I later discovered he was practically tone deaf, but it sounded amazing while I was hammered) At one point he leaned in real close and started close crooning. I turned my head toward his and leaned in to kiss him. Well, that's what I did in my head. In real life, I turned toward him all googledy eyed, and we started laughing.

He'd been in the house about two weeks when I finally said "I am so in love with you" in a way that I could pretend it was a joke if he didn't feel the same way.

"Dude, if I was gay, I'd be all over you." He said. I hate that phrase. You have no idea how many times I've heard it. Usually from guys who later came out as gay. This was the first time. It stung like a wasp with a harpoon gun on his abdomen.

"You're not gay?" I asked with mock mock horror.

"No. But every gay guy I've ever met crushes all over me. You should meet my friend Tom." So a couple of weeks later, after Cute Straight Boy had mended fences with his mom, and moved back into his garage apartment, he took me to hang out with his friend Big Gay Tom. It was hate at first site. I find uber-queeny gays annoying, Tom didn't like guys who weren't flamboyant. Tom was insanely jealous that CSB had lived at my house for a few weeks, I was insanely jealous that Big Gay Tom was always giving CSB the option of getting kissed or hit, and CSB usually picked getting kissed. We each hated the fact that the other person was crushing on their not-gay boyfriend.

After a particularly funny remark that CSB made, Tom brayed like a donkey while I said "I would so have his babies." And the claws came out. Tom's claws. I let him go absolutely crazy and catty and vicious while I sat quiet and reserved, imagining that CSB wold think I was classy for not stooping to Tom's level. When he realized how not Gay I was, he'd surely fall in love with me, and we would have hot hot sex in his mother's garage. That would be so hot.

original post: http://insafemode.livejournal.com/84348.html

Slow Flashes (Part 16: Survival Techniques)

Running is not a sport. It's a survival technique. A zebra munches on grass. She senses danger and her ears go flat. Whether the lion is sighted or not, the exodus begins. Zebras charging through grasslands, stomping through the plains. No rest until the danger is gone. All this, and no Nike endorsement deals.

With the help of three women who didn't like her very much, I managed to outrun Beckee Krackow. I camped out on their couch for the remaining nine days in Wisconsin. We made dinners together, crashed sorority parties, closed down Hurricane bars, and made dozens of mix tapes that featured little digs at Beckee that no one but the four of us would ever understand. I was almost having the time of my life. But this fun wasn't something I'd planned. Wasn't the spontaneous product of a carefree life. This fun was the byproduct of running away from my problems. And even though I was fairly sure they wouldn't be catching up to me any time soon, I was still uneasy about their proximity to my back. Every jeep that passed was Beckee. Every man I made eye contact with was unHarry. Every joke I cracked made three people laugh, and two cringe.

This is the way it has always been. Jeremy Burdick hits me in the face with a rock, I run home. The Saint tells me that hanging out with Kevin Harris makes me look gay, I run away from Kevin without looking back. The first time I got tired of dating Beckee Krackow, I gave her a Valentine's Day present, and ran to the safety of my dorm. Everything running. It's a wonder my feet ever touch the ground. This stupid fear of getting caught being who I was. Staring too long at Saint Christopher's ass, or unHarry, or that stupid crying faggy baby Jeremy Bird Dick. I spent so much time running from who I was afraid to be, that I never took a break to realize who I was. And now here I was, running from this crazed psychopath, Beckee Krackow, a girl who had never really done anything wrong except love me.

And, shit, even my running wasn't very original. Simone, Rachael, and Susan had already rescued one high school ex that Beckee had trapped. Alex. unHarry's junior year roommate, a tall, goofy looking kid with a blond fro. "He was obviously freaked out the very first night he was in town." Susan said. "Harry picked him up at the airport, and he met Beckee and us at The Safe House." So those fuckers knew where it was before I showed up. I wondered why they pretended they'd never been there before. "And then one of Beckee's skanky ass friends showed up, and kept flirting with Alex all through dinner. He looked so uncomfortable."

I wondered if the skanky ass friend was Michelle. If she'd laid her foot in Alex's lap while she bragged about how she orgasmed while giving head. If Beckee took him home afterward and read some poetry she'd written about him.

"He was weird anyway." Simone said. "He was always looking at people like they were some sort of exotic meat."

Rachel nodded. "Gave me the fucken creeps."

If they only knew.

I hadn't spent much time in high school getting to know Alex. Pretty much all the information I had about him came through Beckee. According to her, Alex's father was one of those rich shit heads whose jobs required him to move all over the world. That Alex never really settled anywhere until Torpor Heights. Five years old, and friendless in Madrid. Caught torturing a parrot to death in Belize at age seven. At twelve, he half-blinded a girl with a rock in Ghana. When he was fourteen he did something in a former Soviet Republic that made him chuckle, but that he wouldn't explain. Something bad enough to make his father send him to boarding school back in America. At fifteen, he was assigned to live with Harold Brissette. I don't know how or when they started fucking. Whether it was rape or if they were just two curious, horny teenagers doing what curious, horny teenagers do.

"He totally cries during sex." Beckee said. We were backstage, rehearsing for Romeo & Juliet. I had a few minutes before I had to go out, so Beckee was sitting in my lap, complaining about her sex life with unHarry. "It's so annoying. It's like, he's terrified of the vagina. Like it's going to eat him or something. Rargh." She wrapped her legs around my arm. "I don't get what's so scary about genetalia anyway."

"Pussy looks like an unhealed scar." I said. "Or some chasm to an alien universe."

"Oh, please. If there's anything alien looking about genetalia, it's the cock. It's fricken hilarious. Big droopy trunk and this hairy, floppy purse behind it."

"Don't knock my sword." I said, grabbing my junk as punctuation.

She chortled. "Puh-lease. I'm not afraid of your sperm purse."

"You haven't seen Kilo yet."

"Keeloh?" She asked.

"Short for Kilometer."

It was her turn to grab my junk. To her credit, she refrained from replying with the appropriate more like centi or, cock forbid, milli joke. "There isn't a penis in the world that scares me."

"And there isn't a vagina in the world that scares me." I replied. Which was true. I wasn't scared of them, just repulsed by them.

"Well, then you're one up on my gay ex-boyfriend."

"So you guys are definitely broken up?" I asked.

"Do you think I'd be playing with your sword if we weren't?" To my credit, I refrained from replying with the appropriate truth. "I mean. You have to promise not to tell anyone. But. Ok. Harry is totally gay."

I blushed. "So you've said."

"No, I mean like. Like he and his roommate fuck." And I'm sure she kept talking, but I didn't hear a word she said. I was picturing Alex and unHarry. Trying to figure out who was top, whether they held each other afterward. When I came to, she was looking at me. I was definitely supposed to be saying something.

"Why are you telling me this?"

The question became, why did she tell me this repeatedly? Every time we got together there was some mention of unHarry and Alex having sex.

Now that I'm comfortably in my twenties, I understand. She needed to talk to someone about how this guy she loved, who claimed to love her, was gay. How frustrated she was. And since unHarry and I weren't friends, and, maybe in her eyes, were romantic rivals, I was a perfect candidate. She didn't know that I, too, was a stupid, confused sixteen year old closet case, and because of how quickly and frequently she'd divulged unHarry's secret, I was now terrified to tell Beckee Krackow anything that she could use as a weapon with her next boyfriend. So, a couple of weeks later, I gave her the stuffed bear, and stopped talking to her.

A year later, I was in the theater, hanging out with JBob and a few of the techies when I heard Beckee screaming. She and Alex were in the basement, supposedly working on one of the one act plays for an upcoming festival. It wasn't a long series of screams and crying, it was a short burst of "No. No. Get off me!" followed by silence. None of us flew down the stairs to rescue her. I cracked jokes about how that must have been the first time she'd ever said those words. JBob and a couple of the techies laughed. A couple of them cringed.

It was summer before Beckee told me what happened. How Alex had raped her in the basement that she had to spend three mornings a week, rehearsing in. I had just financed Jennifer's abortion when she told me, and I was all out of comforting words. I mean what could I have possibly said to take her pain away? Should I have told her about Jennifer? Should I have mentioned that I was starting to get the sneaking suspicion that my interest in gay porn wasn't so much a phase but an obsession? Not knowing the most soothing thing to say, I asked "Did you tell Harry?"

She didn't. She didn't tell Harry. She didn't tell her psychologist. She didn't tell a dean, so no disciplinary action against Alex was taken. And two weeks before he was scheduled to graduate, he raped a sophomore who did report it. But since, as far as the school knew, it was a first offense, they chose to let him graduate. After that, he disappeared for two years, until either Beckee or Harry invited him to Wisconsin. I don't know what happened there, either. Why he had a black eye and a limp when he showed up at Simone, Rachel, and Susan's. How, despite all that, he still smiled through most of the visit.

original posts: http://insafemode.livejournal.com/234070.html
http://community.livejournal.com/2_much_sex_info/94957.html

Slow Flashes (Part 15: Planning The Great Escape)

I firmly believe that men are much better at cock-sucking then women. I also believe that women are better muff-divers. It has to do with having the equipment and knowing how it works. I fully acknowledge that men can become great at cunnilingus, and women can become amazing at fellatio, but I believe this comes with practice or inherent talent. The people born with this talent are roughly equivalent to the people born with perfect pitch. They're out there, but your chances of meeting them over Craigslist or Love.com are pretty slim.

unHarry gave much better head than Beckee. We were in the back of his Corolla. I tried not to imagine which of Beckee's mom's friends he'd done this with the night before.

When we were both finished, he said "Please don't tell Beckee about this. She'll die."

I had no plans to tell anyone. I made my way over to the music store a little early, where I inventoried my sins. We were done a little before midnight. Beckee was asleep when I got back. unHarry was not in the apartment. I took my cell phone and the business card out of my pocket. It could have been a trap. Simone, Rachel and Susan could have been really good friends with Beckee. If I called them, they'd promise to pick me up the next morning, and when they came by, the three of them would hold me down while Beckee duct taped my limbs together and locked me in the tupperware bin beneath her bed, only taking me out for the occasional feed-and-fuck. But maybe it wasn't a trap. They'd seemed sincere enough. And horrified enough by everyone else at that awful birthday party. I called.

"Had enough?" Rachel asked.

"More than." I replied. And I detailed as much of the badness as I dared. I told them about Beckee burning the bad poetry, and the naked unHarry, but I left out the sex.

"Jesus." She said. "Here's what you need to do..."





Beckee and I left her house at eleven in the morning. It was her day off. I told her how sorry I was for making light of her feelings, but, I explained, things between Jennifer and me weren't really over, and until we were completely finished, I didn't feel comfortable being with anyone else. I felt awful about leading her on, but I was glad she had unHarry. Anyway, I didn't want to infringe on her hospitality any more, so I'd moved my flight up. My supposed flight left at 2:30 in the afternoon. I was so sorry, but this really was the best way, you know?

According to the plan, Beckee would drop me off around 1. I would wander around the airport until 2, when Rachel and Simone would pick me up (Susan was working).

We didn't factor in Beckee being a complete spaz. At 1:15, instead of looking through the airport giftshop, or watching Beckee's taillights disappearing, I saw a huge sign that said "Welcome to Illinois."

"Uhhhh."

"Oh, shit." Beckee said. "Oh, shit. I missed the exit. I'm so sorry." And she got off at the next exit, sped from exit ramp to entrance ramp, and the jeep hit 110 flying back toward Milwaukee. "If we missed your flight, I'll pay the fees to get you on the next one. God, please don't think I did this on purpose. I'm so sorry."

I believed her.

We got to the airport at 1:54. Still time to catch the flight I wasn't taking.

"Thanks, Beckee. I'm sorry" no I'm not "things didn't work out the way we'd" and by we'd, I mean, you'd "hoped. But thanks for a memorable trip."

"I'm not leaving yet. I'll walk you to the gate." Oh. Fuck.

"But you're parked in a no-parking zone."

"No biggee, I left it running. Anyway, I've got to pee. I'll be right back."

Well shit fuck bitch ass cooter cunt cock dickweed, what was I going to do now? I was standing in the check-in lane for a flight that I didn't have a ticket for, and I had no idea where Simone and Rachel were.

That's when I noticed the newspaper moving towards me at an alarmingly quick pace. There was clearly a body behind it. Two firm, female looking legs. And just as the newspaper passed by me, Rachel stuck her head around it, and said "Run!" So I did.

original post: http://insafemode.livejournal.com/232943.html

Slow Flashes (Part 14: Staring Like A Genius)

I woke up on Beckee's bed. She was on the couch, leafing through a hard bound book. It was black, with a bunch of roses collaged on it. In the center of the book was the word Journal. Oh, shit.

"Remember when I used to play with your sword during rehearsals?" She asked.

I did.

"I had such a crush on you. And I knew you felt the same way. If that tramp hadn't showed up at The Shat...." She smiled.

Jennifer was not a tramp. She'd never taken me out to eat with her friends, and had a three hour conversation about sex and swinging. She'd never gotten me drunk and taken advantage me. She'd never...She wasn't a tramp.

"Do you still write?" She asked.

I did. I hadn't written much poetry since high school, but I'd been working on a play, and a few short stories.

"Me, too. It's funny, I started writing this years ago, and I just finished it last night." And without asking if I wanted to hear it, she began reading from her journal. Terrible poems comparing our relationship to Romeo & Juliet's. I tried not to laugh at the audacity to elevate our romantic disconnection to the world's most famous double suicide. Then came the mixed metaphors involving a white picket fence, and living underwater in Poseidon's kingdom. I wanted a cyanide pill, a razorblade and hot water. I wanted to go double Van Gogh. Anything to not have to hear these terrible cliches about our supposed relationship. "So what do you think?"

I put my hand in my pocket, to make sure the business card was still there. "Aren't you dating Harry?"

"We have an open relationship."

"Don't take this the wrong way." And I tried to find something I could say that could possibly be taken any way but wrong. Nothing came.





At some point in our mostly one-sided conversation, Beckee had excused herself to the bathroom. She was in there for a long time. I heard tearing sounds, smelled smoke, and every few minutes I heard the toilet flush. She was burning the poetry book.

I took my copy of the apartment key, and my notebook, and went out to explore more of State Street. I was in one of the music stores, flipping through their used CD section when I found the U2 fan's holy grail, a complete collection of CDs known as The Propaganda Remixes. Five bootlegs of all the non-album tracks from the Achtung Baby/Zooropa era. Each one cost twenty bucks. There was no way I could drop $100, even if it meant very happy new music to drown out Beckee's voice.

"Look," the guy behind the counter said, "Ron's too sick to come in, and that fucken Sarah girl you hired last week didn't show up today. Even with two people, it's going to take all night to do inventory. There's no way I'm doing it by myself. I know you've got a date, but...Fuck you, Alan. I..." He looked up at me. "He fucken hung up on me. Do you believe that?"

"I do. I co-manage a music store in Massachusetts. We go through three Sarahs a month, and I'm always the one stuck doing inventory."

"Massachusetts? The fuck are you doing in Madison."

Freezing. Being trapped into a possible relationship with a delusional ex-girlfriend. "I'm on vacation."

"Lucky bastard."

"Maybe." I said. "And maybe you are, too. If I help you do inventory, can you cut me a deal on some CDs?"

His eyes bulged. "You help me inventory this store, and I'll cut you any deal you want."

We agreed that I'd stop by at 9:30, a half hour before the store closed, and I'd stay until the job was finished. In exchange, he'd give me the whole Propaganda collection for free, and tell the owner they'd been shoplifted.

It was only 6:00. I decided to kill some time at The Noodle Factory. I was staring at the huge menu above the register when I heard a familiar voice behind me.

"So many choices, huh?" unHarry. "Welcome to the world of the bisexual."

"What?"

"You know. Like, the whole world is open to you, you've just got to make a choice. And like, most people only want either noodles or sauce, but bisexuals are willing to get either or both, so there's more choices."

"Uh, right." I ordered rotini with parmesan cheese, that I watched the cook sprinkle strands of cheese over my noodles. It was the most elegant macaroni and cheese I'd ever seen.

"Beckee told me she read you her poetry."

I nodded.

"Terrible, isn't it?"

"Actually," I said, "it's quite delicious."

"I meant her poetry."

"So she sent you after me?" I asked.

He snorted. "Hell, no. She was driving me batshit, so I went for a walk, and I saw you come in here. Figured I'd see how you were doing."

"Fine." I said, and returned my attention to the rotini.

He had a plate of spaghetti with marinara. The world's most boring bisexual.

We ate in mostly silence. But every once in a while, I'd look up and he'd be staring at me, elbow on the table, his head leaning on his fist.

"What are you doing?" I asked.

"I'm trying not to stare like an idiot." He said. "If you rest your head on your chin it looks more like you're staring like a genius."

"What?"

"I saw the way you were looking at me yesterday."

I choked on my rotini.

"It got me so hot that I ended up leaving the party with one of Beckee's mom's friends. I just had that craving for cock, you know?"

Fuck. I did know.

original post: http://insafemode.livejournal.com/232359.html

Slow Flashes (Part 13: The Unsafe House)

Beckee's apartment was a larger version of her high school dorm room. But not much larger. A queen sized bed, a computer desk, a couch, a living room table, a microwave, a stove, a refrigerator, a bathroom. Candles filled the small shelf that ran all the way around the walls of the apartment. There was also an enormous, half-melted maroon candle in the middle of the living room table. Were it not for the Mac and the microwave, I would have thought she didn't have electricity.

While I went into the bathroom to splash warm water on my face, and maybe slap myself until I woke up in my comfortable bed in Cranberry Lake, Beckee put The Verve's Urban Hymns CD on. "I'm sorry I'm so useless tonight. I just...I haven't slept much recently. I promise I'll be more sociable tomorrow."

"Well, make yourself comfortable." Beckee said. "You can either crash in the bed with me and Harry, or you can take the couch."

Uhhh. "I'll take the couch, thanks."

I woke up the next morning with Beckee's foot in my crotch. Apparently, my lap was a skank ottoman. "Harry's off at work. I've got to go to work in a couple of hours, too. Want to do lunch?"

I did. We headed to The Noodle Factory. Beckee quickly ordered an order of lobster ravioli and alfredo sauce, while I scanned the menu. I was debating between rotini with parmesan cheese or bowties in butter with carrots, when Beckee said "Just so you know, tonight my mom is throwing me a birthday party. Formal dress." Bowties in butter, it was.

After lunch, we headed back to her apartment. "I left a spare key on the table, so you can come and go as you please. But both Harry and I will be home by four, and you'd better be here waiting for us." Then she kissed me and left.

After I'd showered some of my Madison away, I grabbed my walkman, and put in one of the on the road mixes that I'd packed. I was barely out the door when the walkman stopped working. I went back into the apartment, grabbed some fresh batteries from my bag and...nothing. Stupid five year old walkman had finally bitten the dust. I threw it into the trash, and headed back out into the cold, without a soundtrack.

Music stores. Botiques. A restaurant that only served different types of noodles. Book stores. Music clubs. Comedy clubs. And in front of each of them were free copies of a magazine called The Onion. I fell in love with State Street fairly quickly. At three-thirty, I headed back to Beckee's apartment. The refrigerator door was open, and I could see unHarry's hand gripped around the top of the door. "Hey, Harry." I said.

"Oh, hey Adam." unHarry said, closing the refrigerator door. He was naked. "I was looking for a Rolling Rock, but it looks like Beckee drank them all this morning."

He was still naked. "Huh."

"Oh! I found a walkman in the trash. That was yours, right?"

Still naked. "Yea."

"I fixed it for you." He picked it up off the counter and tossed it to me. Still naked.

"Thanks." I said.

"Anytime." He walked toward me. Still naked. "It's just good to see you again." And he hugged me. Still naked. Still unhairy.

"Yea."

Then he bent over toward the bed, pulled a plastic bin from underneath, opened it, and pulled out a pair of black pants. "Beckee's mom is throwing a birthday party tonight, and she wants everyone to dress up. I think she mentioned telling you to pack a blazer, but if you didn't, you could borrow one of mine." He started to denaked.

"I, uhh. I brought my own. Thanks, though." And I put my good clothes on in the bathroom, like a normal person.

Beckee arrived home a few minutes later, already dressed in the same gown she'd worn to The Shat, and a pair of silver pumps. "Everyone ready?"

And we drove. And we drove. And there was snow and cows and ice and cold. And in the middle of absolutely nowhere, Beckee pulled into what looked like an abandoned VFW Hall. It was not abandoned. It was a VFW Hall. Inside, a bunch of middle aged men and women were line dancing to Tone Loc's "Wild Thing." There were three rather horrified looking girls, roughly my age, sitting in a corner, drinking PBRs.

"Beckeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!" screeched one of the line dancers, breaking formation to run full speed in our direction. "Happy birthday!" It was Beckee's mom. And she couldn't be more shitfaced if she was wearing a toilet seat hat in a diarrhea factory. "Oh, wow, Alex! So glad you could make it. Hope you won't stand my daughter up like you did at the prom."

"His name is Adam, mom."

"Adam, Alex. whatever. So, Adam, have you fucked my daughter yet?"

"What?"

unHarry grabbed my arm and led me toward the corner of horrified looking girls. "She's a bit plastered." He said.

I was devoid of a witty response.

"Adam, these beautiful young ladies are Rachel, Susan, and Simone. Beckee and I met them on a cruise last year."

"Hi." I said. "Good to meet you."

And then unHarry was gone, back in the direction of Beckee and her mother. "PBR?" Simone asked.

"Please."

We sat in silence for a few seconds.

"What am I doing here?" I asked the floor.

Rachel answered. "Be glad you missed the country karaoke."

"You're the other guy that Beckee dated in high school, right?" Simone asked.

"Yea."

Simone took a long sip of her PBR. "So, are you here of your own free will or did Beckee have to trick you into flying out here?"

"What?"

"She does this all the time." Susan said. "Every month or so, she and Harry get bored of dating each other, and one of them invites some friend, or some stranger they met somewhere to stay with them, and then they try and get them drunk and take advantage of them."

"What?"

Simone sighed. "Look, if you need to get away, you can give us a call, and we'll help you out." And she handed me a business card. "This guy named Alex came in September, and couldn't deal with them, so we picked him up while they were at work, and he spent the rest of the week with us."

"What?"

"You know," Rachel said, "I still can't get used to how cold it gets here. I'm from Maine, you know. And, yea, it gets cold there, but not like this." And then we were discussing the difference between Wisconsin winters and Northeastern winters. How Rachel and Susan had devoted most of their Spring Break cruise trying to avoid this aggressively annoying girl who, on the basis that they were all from the same state, had decided they would be best friends for the duration of the cruise, and possibly life. Simone had felt sorry for Beckee, and decided to be her pity friend. Her well of pity was rapidly depleting, however. I needed another drink. Several more drinks. An ocean of Bacardi 151.

Beckee and her mother cut through the line dancers in our direction. "I'm sorry your pansy ass friends can't take a joke." She said to Beckee. Then, she turned to me. "Alex...Adam...whatever...you know I was kidding about the fucking my daughter thing, right?"

"Of course." I said, folding the business card in my pocket.

She snorted. "See. I told you he knew. Satisfied?" And she walked away.

"Alex?" I asked Simone.

"What about him?"

"Tall, goofy looking kid with a blond fro?" I was picturing unHarry's high school roommate

"Sounds about right." Simone said.

"What the fuck is going on here?"




At some point during the party, unHarry disappeared. I was too drunk to keep track of him. That, and Rachel had taken me out into the parking lot and shared a joint with me. "Remember," she'd said, "if you need to get away, just call us. No pressure. We're not like Beckee's other weird friends. We don't want to sleep with you or anything. You just seem like you're a little out of your element, and we want to help you out." And then we were back in the VFW with the spinning karaoke spotlights. I was dancing. Beckee's fucked her yet mother smiling disco ball. Some fat old man was grabbing Susan's ass. PBR slap. The floor was enhanced gravity. Splayed out against the wall. Beckee falling into my skank ottoman. Roll of Rachel eyes. And then we're in the jeep. Front seat. Cows. Snow. Ice. Fields. "Where's Harry?"

"He met some guy. They're probably out fucking in the back of the guy's Corolla or something."

Naked unHarry splayed out in the snow, walkman grunting suburban hymns, rolling of discoball eyes. "Guy? Harry and a guy? I thought you two..."

"Please. You're the only one of my exes who didn't turn out to be a fucken closet case homo."

Eyes spinning floating ass of pleasure. My spine, a creased business card. "I'm soooo confused."

And then we were in her apartment. Her on her bed. Me on the couch. The Smashing Pumpkins playing The Aeroplane Flies High Looks Left Turns Right. I was watching the candle burn gravity. Through her apartment's only window, I saw a parade of all the naked men I'd ever seen. And then she kissed me. And then my shirt was off. And then my tongue was on her left nipple. And then my hands were on unHarry's ass. But he wasn't there. Beckee's ass. And then she was on top of me, licking all the way down, and my pants were off. The Verve was singing The Drugs Don't Work. And tongue and lips and sweaty hands and PBR discoball floating ass of karaoke splayed out against the wall burning urban hymns. "Are you finished?" She asked. Had we started? My hands were spotlights moving up and down the dance floor of her body. Nipple. Face. Belly button. Leg. Maxi pad. Maxi pad? Hallelujah menstrual cycle. "I know. The timing sucks." She said. "I know how much you wanted this. I've been waiting for you to make your move, but you're still the same too slow, too nice guy you were in high school. I'll be ready for the hard stuff," she grabbed my not very hard place, "in a couple of days. Trust me, it will be worth the wait."

Twelve days. I had twelve days before my flight home.

original post: http://insafemode.livejournal.com/231956.html

Slow Flashes (Part 12: The Safe House)

Whether I was fired for harassing Kevin Harris at his other job, or whether I quit when my district manager refused to let me fire Kevin Harris was a topic of much debate among the other managers in the eastern Massachusetts region. The only part of the story that remained constant was the way the district manager had called to apologize when all of the managers on Cape Cod called in sick the day after I ceased working there. While that did make me feel special for a few minutes, the true vindication came when Kevin Harris failed to show up for his next three shifts, and ended up getting fired anyway.

"So what are you going to do with your time off?" Beckee asked me.

It was midnight, two days after I was unemployed. Beckee had been calling me about once a week for the past three months. She'd forgiven me for The Shat incident. Now she called to brag about all the dick she was getting in Madison, as well as update me on the status of her on-off-on-off again relationship with UnHarry.

"I don't know what I'm going to do. One of the guys I used to know in middle school offered me a job at Blockbuster, but I want to take at least a couple weeks off to fuck around. I was so busy during the last couple of months at Raspberry's that I didn't have time to spend any of the money I was making."

"Well," Beckee said, "next week is my twentieth birthday party, and my mom is planning this HUGE party for me. You should come."

"Yea. I'll just bop over to Wisfuckenconsin for a few hours for your birthday party, drop off my gift, and then drive home."

"Actually, my mom is paying to fly a bunch of my friends from high school out. And you're a friend from high school." And, so it was, that I agreed to spend the first two weeks of 1998 with Beckee Krackow. As a friend.

The cheapest flight landed me in Milwaukee. The first thing I noticed about Milwaukee when I got off the plane was how cold it was. Fucken cold. The kind of cold your feet get if you accidentally fall asleep just after a shower in the middle of January while camping at The North Pole the night before the wedding you have doubts about. Beckee had brought an extra coat with her when she picked me up at the airport, knowing that I wasn't going to correctly gauge just how cold Wisconsin was.

"Happy b-b-b-b-birthday." I chattered, kissing her on the cheek, and handing her a box of mix tapes I made for her.

And then we were in the car, driving for what seemed like hours. "I have such a surprise for you! We're meeting Harry and a couple of friends at the Safe House tonight."

"The huh?"

A restaurant in Milwaukee, where we'd have dinner before we all drove to Madison together. "The problem is...it's a spy-themed place, so...so there aren't any signs for it." She said, defending the fact that we'd been circling the same block for over twenty minutes. Harry said it's around here somewhere, but..." And then I spotted unHarry waving wildly.

We parked, got out of the car, and made our way toward unHarry. Were it not so cold that every human nose in the state had fallen off and shattered to the ground, I would have smelled like a three hour plane flight, and two hours in an artificially heated jeep. unHarry hugged me. And, I wasn't completely sure, but he might have grabbed my ass.

"I can't believe you're here." He said. "Now, I don't suppose you know where The Safe House is, do you?"

According to unHarry's friend, Lenny, the really cool thing about The Safe House was that you had to know the password to get in. If you didn't know the password, they made you do something ridiculous, like dress up in a raincoat and sing "Rubber Ducky." The inside of the club was lined with televisions that broadcast what the idiots who didn't know the password had to do in order to get in.

Twenty-five freezing minutes later, we walked up to a brick a building. I was cold, tired, and, technically, stank stank stank. I didn't care about passwords or raincoats, I just wanted to be inside a building with heat. We appeared to be in a tiny little gift shop. There was a huge bookcase in one corner, and the rest of the room was filled with costumes and hats. A tall woman with a mustache stood behind a cash register. "Maybe you can help us." I said. "We're looking for a....Safe House."

The woman smiled, and pressed a button on the register. The bookcase opened like a door. Was a door. "Right this way." The woman said.

On the other side of the bookcase was an enormous bar. A series of rooms. Some blacklit, some tropical, some set up like a train car. And throughout all of the rooms was a wide plastic tube, the kind they use at a bank to ferry money back and forth between the inside of the bank, and the unlucky schmuck in the far lane of the drive-thru. "What are those?" I asked.

"Oh. Well, if you order a martini at one of our bars, they type your order into the computer, and a bartender at another one of our bars makes it, then covers the shaker, sticks it in the vacuum tube, and it shoots through the entire restaurant back to the bar you originally ordered it from. That way your martini is guaranteed shaken, not stirred."

"Cool." Lenny said. The rest of us agreed.

We ended up sitting in one of the blacklit rooms. Our menu was dayglo white.

"So...Adam." unHarry said. "What was the password, and how did you know what it was?"

"I don't know. All I did was ask for the safe house."

A waitress bent down at the table to greet us. "Oh, you got lucky." She said. "The password is I'm looking for a safe house."

The cheeseburger I ate was the most delicious piece of food ever consumed by man, beast, or god. I chewed it as slow as possible. Both to savor the taste, and to keep from having to talk to Beckee, unHarry, Lenny, or Lenny's girlfriend, Michelle, who spent a good chunk of the meal bragging about how she could orgasm just by giving a guy head. The whole dinner conversation seemed to center around sex. Blowjob, dick size, lactating breasts, you look much cuter than Beckee told us Adam, anal, cunnilingus, swinging. I chewed. I swallowed, but not in the way Michelle bragged about swallowing.

"You're so quiet." Michelle said.

"Just tired. Long flight. New city. You know. I'll regain the power of speech tomorrow."

She winked at me. Then there was a foot rubbing against my crotch.

I crossed my legs under the table. Michelle raised an eyebrow, and returned to eating her tomato soup.

Her foot rested on my brain for the rest of dinner.

After dinner, I hugged Michelle and Lenny goodbye, and sat in the tiny back seat of the jeep. unHarry sat in the passenger's seat and sucked on the fingers of Beckee's right hand, while she drove with the left, occasionally trying to make conversation with me. I feigned sleep. But the vacuum tubes of my brain shot feet and fingers from one side of my head to the other. What had I gotten myself into?

original post: http://insafemode.livejournal.com/231625.html

Slow Flashes (Pat 11: Black Friday)

I buried my depression beneath a pile of CDs. Rock and roll, rap, folk; it didn't matter. Music. Pearl Jam. U2. The Fugees. REM. Radiohead. A Tribe Called Quest. Smashing Pumpkins. LL Cool J. Ani Difranco. Whosoever played a song that didn't mention Jennifer. All the money I didn't have to spend on books or school supplies went directly to my music addiction. Florida wasn't far enough away from Cranberry Lake to keep the sound of Jennifer's voice saying I'm sorry, I just never felt that way about you out of my head, so I had to keep newer, louder music pulsing in my ears. My studies weren't interesting enough to keep my eyes floating out of my books and catching a glimpse of the boy I'd helped Jennifer not have. It would have been a son.

The music wasn't loud enough. The sun wasn't bright enough to blind me. So I abandoned college and Sulfur City, and headed back home. I enrolled in UMass Cranberry Lake, and maxxed out three credit cards buying music from local record stores. My mother, whose condo I was living in, politely suggested that I might want to take a job. Maybe one in a music store with an employee discount. That, or find a new place to live. For once, I took her advice, and set up an interview at Raspberry Records. One of those corporate music stores that adopted a hip, alternative image in the early nineties. Their logo was a face not unlike the old poison sticker faces, with a rolling tongue sticking out of its mouth. Their way of saying Stick it to The Man by buying music from an alternative music store owned and operated by The Man. My interview went okay, but not having any previous retail experience, I was doomed not to get the job, despite the fact that the manager was Fitz, a former coworker of mine from Camp Davis. Still, I filled out the application, and at eight-thirty that night, I drove to the store to turn it in. The store was scheduled to close at nine, so imagine my surprise when I pulled on the door and found it locked. All the lights were on inside, and two women were walking around tossing CDs into shopping bags. I walked over to a payphone and called Fitz's cell. "Did you guys close early tonight to do inventory?"

"No. We do inventory on the last night of the month. Why?"

I explained why. Ten minutes later he pulled up, and walked into the store. It turned out, his assistant manager and some rogue employees had been stealing a few thousand dollars worth of CDs every couple of weeks, and selling them to one of the used music stores in Boston. Every employee involved was fired the next morning, leaving Fitz, and one employee. The employee was Kevin Harris, who'd been working there since he dropped out of Cranberry Lake High. Since the store was now completely devoid of staff, Fitz was authorized to do some emergency hiring, and, despite being only eighteen and having no experience, I was brought on as an assistant manager.

"What the fuck." Kevin said, rather than asked. "I mean, I'm glad it's you and not some asshole stranger, but...I've been here a year, why didn't I get the cushy fucken assistant manager job."

The cushy job which required me to work no more and no less than sixty hours a week. The cushy job where I was not allowed to leave the store for my required, punched out, thirty minute break every six hours. The cushy job where I usually found myself alone, my coworkers routinely coming down with the killer-concert-in-town-flu, or the 24 hour Hangover Virus. The cushy job where the asshole drop out closet case who I'd been buddy buddy with when I was a kid, routinely showed up one or two hours late, and clocked out precisely when his shift was scheduled to end, no matter how much work needed to be done. Kevin fucken Harris.

I was hired in February. By November, we'd gone through four other assistant managers, and roughly three dozen retail associates, most of them named Sarah. The various Sarahs (which included both of the Queen Popular Sarahs from my elementary school days), rarely lasted more than two weeks. Queen Sarah Popular The Second being the shortest term employee in the history of Raspberry Records, when she aced the interview, then showed up positively wrecked on muscle relaxants the next morning, and screaming "This fucken job is corporate fucken bullshit" at the top of her lungs, when I asked her to check and see if we had a copy of the Pocahontas soundtrack in stock. My patience was quickly fagged, and she was quickly fired.

Unfortunately, having gone through three Sarahs in two weeks, the staff currently consisted of one manager, Fitz; two assistant managers, myself and a thirtiesh veterinary student named Madison; and one non-manager, Kevin. We had three days before Black Friday. Fitz was taking a two week vacation in Fuji, and Madison had to take a week of sick time because she'd nearly had her arm ripped off by some sort of rabid beagle. A couple of local managers had sent us some of their precious employees for a shift or two, but I was scheduled to work double shifts on Black Friday, No Relief Saturday, and Dear Fucken Jesus What Am I Doing Working In Retail Sunday. One of the more saintly managers had volunteered to help me close the store on Black Friday, but the morning shift was just me and Kevin. Kevin who had never been less than two hours late when he wasn't working with Fitz.

"You know we're opening an hour early on Friday, right?" I asked him on the Wednesday before The Apocalypse.

"Yea." He said, as though I had asked him if he knew how to spell his name. "You want me here at seven, right?"

"Yea, we open at seven-thirty. And it's going to be sick with shoplifters and people who absolutely must have that album by that singer who sings the song with love in the title. So, early. Please."

"Of course."

At eight-fifteen on Black Friday, I had a line thirty-seven people long. The credit card machine was on the fritz. I was out of ones, fives, and quarters. The phone was ringing. "Thank you for calling Raspberry Records, this is Adam, how may I help you?"

"Adam, it's Kevin."

"Thank fuc...calling. Are you on your way?"

"No. My grandmother had a heart attack, yesterday. My mom wants me to stay at the hospital with her, so I'm not going to make it in."

The line was now forty-one people long. The fax was beeping. "That sucks. Hope she recovers. I can't stay on the phone, though. Bye." And I hung up.

At three-thirty, I couldn't speak, smile, or leave the space behind the register. The line wound around the entire store, out the doors, and on to the sidewalk. "Criminy jickets!" Madison shouted, as she walked into the store. "Are you by yourself?"

Once she made eye contact, she had my answer.

"For how long? All day? Oh my goodness." She ran into the back, and came out with the cashbox for the other register. "Go. Take a minute in the back."

I expected several of the customers to jump me as I made my way to the back, but they all made space between me and the back door when I stumbled from behind the register. I peed for seven weeks, then refilled my water bottle, and made my way back behind the register. "I thought you were out on sick leave." I said, as I scanned through a pile of Whitney Houston and Jackson Five CDs.

"I was. I just came in to pick up my check, but this store is just sick busy, I can't leave you alone like this. You should have called."

I explained that I had called every store in the region, pleading for someone to send any associate they could spare. But no associate can be spared on the busiest shopping day of the year.

At five o'clock, the saintly manager from one of the Boston stores, showed up, and instead of relieving Madison, ordered me to take an hour long break. "And don't even think about clocking out. You deserve at least triple overtime for working by yourself."

I drove five minutes home, opened the refrigerator, and began devouring one of the tupperware containers filled with Thanksgiving's turkey and cranberry sauce that my mother had left. I drank an entire two liter bottle of Cherry Coke in ten minutes, belched loud enough to rattle the kitchen window, and went upstairs to take a quick shower. Full, clean, and wearing an identical (but different) raspberry red turtleneck, I had twenty minutes to make my five minute drive back to work. I decided to stop at the video store to pick up a movie to put me to sleep after work. I grabbed The Basketball Diaries and Until the End of the World, and made my way to the checkout. And there...there....there, behind the counter, wearing the blue and gold uniform of every Blockbuster video in the known world, was Kevin Harris.

"How's your grandma, motherfucker?" I asked. My smile was so wide, it knocked over a box of Twizzlers on my left, and the hat of the gentleman standing on my right.

"Hey, Adam. Look, I'm sorry I―"

"Does your boss know that you called in sick to your other job, claiming that your grandmother was dying of a heart attack?"

The other blue and gold golems lurched to the scene of the impending homocide. "Is there some sort of prob― Adam?"

The leader of the blue and golders was familiar. "Saint?"

Michael Christopher shook his head and laughed. "Why are you causing a scene in my store?"

"Well, I'm the assistant manager over at Raspberry Records, and I had to work by myself for eight hours this morning because Kevin's very ill grandmother had a heart attack, and he had to stay at the hospital with her."

"Really?" Michael asked. "The same grandmother whose funeral he had to go to last Tuesday?"

"Couldn't be." I said, pleased that Michael and I fell so easily in stride with each other. "Kevin was working with me last Tuesday. His car ran out of gas on the way over, and he was about two hours late, but he wasn't wearing funeral clothes."

Kevin was the color of my turtleneck. "Guys."

"You are so fired." I said.

"From your place, too?" Michael asked. "Damn. Fired from two jobs in two seconds. That's rough."

The person in line behind me cleared her throat. "Well, I've got to go back to my sixteen hour shift. It was fun talking with you, Michael. I'll stop in the next time I have a day off, which I think is March, and we can catch up."

"Have a good one."

And I drove back to Raspberry Records, so happy, my smile could barely fit through the door.

original post: http://insafemode.livejournal.com/231406.html

A Few Moments In The Life Of A Fudge Packing Fool (Part 1: Debris)

I was the worst time traveler ever. On my very first day selling fudge at Renaissance Faire, I had been running late. The woman who ran the faire allowed me to drive on to the property so that I could quickly drop off the fudge before the grounds officially opened. I unloaded the product as quickly as possible, hopped back in the car, and snapped the key in the ignition.

"Maybe," I told the faire director when she was done screaming at me, "we could tell everyone it's an exotic dragon." She was not amused.

I correctly assumed that if I changed my costume from warrior to court jester, the director would think I was a different person. So the third day of the faire, I went to the costume shop and bought a set of blue and purple tights, a purple shirt, blue cape, and matching jester hat. I also changed my speech pattern and the way I walked. Instead of my usual tenor, I dropped into my low drunk voice. I also began to weave when I walked.

"I cry your pardon, sir." Said one of "The Sheriffs" who was hired to keep order. "I can't help but hath notice that you've partaken in a bit too much mead. Methinks you should repair to the sit-down coffee tents for a while."

I resisted the temptation to kick him in the face for speaking in Ye Old Pigeon English. "Actually," I said completely dropping out of character. "I work here, and haven't had a drop to drink all day."

"Canst thou walketh a straight line betwixt me and yonder tree." I could and I did. "I cry your pardon, my lord. Be merrily on your way."

While our interaction didn't necessarily drive me to drink, it certainly handed me the keys and pushed me in the direction of the car.

One of the worst parts of working at the faire (aside from the personal hygiene of some of my coworkers) was their inability to talk normally. After a long day of being forced to use "my lady", "my lord", "forsooth" and other words that no self-respecting person would say for less than $10 an hour, I was always eager to find a bar where I could drink myself silly and start saying more sensical phrases like "for shizzle my nizzle" and "don't get all up in my Kool-Aid if you doan know the flavor". Unfortunately, a good chunk of the scallywags and wenches I worked with were incapable of conversing in the twentieth or twenty-first century manner.

"The next person who says verily," I remarked on more than one occasion, "is going to find my booteth crammed up their cavity of Anus? Doth thou understandeth?"

original post: http://insafemode.livejournal.com/1997/08/28/

The Worst Thanksgiving Ever

The worst Thanksgiving ever happened between St. Augustine and Vero Beach Florida in 1995. I was eighteen, and angry at my family for not flying me back to New England for Thanksgiving. "But, Safey, your grandfather lives just a few hours away. And he says you never go and visit him." Probably because I hated the man. Everyone in the world had to conform to his timetable, and his way of life. If you did something that didn't fit exactly into the mold he had set for his life, he would spew forth venom that made Poison Dart Frogs and Sea Wasps blush and ask "Was that really necessary?" I made plans to stay there as short a time as I could.

My roommate, Matt, lived two and a half hours further south. He kindly offered to drop me off on his way to his happy platonic orgy of Thanksgiving Family Fun on Wednesday afternoon, and pick me up Saturday morning, so we could get work done before classes resumed on Monday. Truth be told, I had brought all the work I had to do with me, knowing there would be loads of time that I didn't want to deal with my grandfather.

On our way down, Matt decided to show me what was, at the time, The World's Largest Wal-Mart. A grocery store and three fast food restaurants in one department store was a little much for my non-Walmartian brain to deal with. I had to get away from the grocery section before my head a sploded. As I walked away, I heard a man absolutely screaming at an eight year old boy. The kid was bawling. And while I am just evil enough to be amused by kids who cry at ridiculous things like losing an annoying toy, or not getting to eat ice cream because they called their mother a bitch; seeing a defenseless kid being verbally abused in public while not being in injury threatening danger (I do believe a parent should scream their head off at a kid who is about to seriously hurt himself or someone else.), twists my psyche into something pretzilian and Herculean. It took every fibre of my being not to get involved. I did not know what the kid did that instigated the yelling. Unless there was physical violence, this was none of my business.

After we finished our BK or MCD "food", Matt and I headed back to the car. We were nearly in the car when I saw Screamy MacAsshole continuing to berate his kid. This was easily twenty minutes after I saw them by the grocery section. "Safey, are you ok?" I knew there were blood vessels bursting in my face.

"Do you want me to hit you again?" Again? "Because I'll beat your ass right here in the parking lot."

I snapped. This happens generally every three years or so, when something strikes me as so heinous, I lose all sense of boundaries and social behavior. "I fucken dare you."

"Excuse me?" This was none of my business. I should be in the car. I should be on my way to a miserable Thanksgiving with the one member of my family I truly couldn't stand. And maybe that was a part of the reason why I snapped.

"If you hit him while I'm in the same parking lot," Matt grabbed my arm, which I yanked from his grasp, "I will beat you til you bleed." I very much meant it.

"Safe, we should--" Matt looked into my eyes and backed off.

"No. We shouldn't. This guy has been yelling at this kid for at least a half hour, and he's threatening to beat him right here in public."

"Mind your fucken business, padre?"

Padre? As in Father? As in the thing he wasn't qualified to be? And here, I'm making a huge assumption. Maybe he wasn't a bad dad, maybe he was a kidnapper, or maybe he was what my friend referred to as Daddy Stove Top, a guy who just happened to be stuffing the kid's mom.

We were still close enough to the front entrance that the security guards could see us, and one of them, Spidey Sense all akimbo, came outside. "Is everything alright out here?"

"No." I said, in my sterncalm voice. "This man is threatening to beat up his son in your parking lot."

"Now wait a fucken minute. This isn't anybody's goddamn business."

"Actually, sir," the security guard said, "it is our business. You were asked to leave the store because you couldn't keep your language in check. I've already called the police. If I see you touch your son, I'll make sure your arrested for assaulting a minor. And I doubt the police will be real gentle with you."

The guard went on. But his presence made this very much No Longer My Business. Shaking, I followed Matt to his car. I buckled my seat belt, and we drove out of the parking lot. "I hope I didn't make things any worse for that kid." I said five minutes into the silence.

It was about to get dark when Matt dropped me off at my grandfather's condo. My grandfather's second wife (my grandmother had died in 1991), buzzed me in, and met me at the door. "Your grandfather is...I'm not sure where he is, but he's not in the house, Thank God. Your room is all made up. Do you want any ice cream or anything." I loved Caroline (my step-grandmother). I had no concept of what she was doing with my grandfather. She was unselfish, smart, funny, an English teacher. None of us knew that by next Thanksgiving she'd be ravaged with Cancer.

"No, thanks. I had a long trip."

"How about a game of Cribbage?" Ahh, Cribbage. The family card game.

"Sure. But if Grandpa comes home, let's hide the board. I don't think I can deal with him losing and accusing me of cheating. The only thing worse is actually losing to him."

After three games, and half a bag of Milano cookies, my grandfather came home, and the board and cards were hidden under one of the deck chairs.

"Well lookee who's here." Oh, great, he was drunk. "My favorite grandson. My only grandson."

"Hey Grandpa."

"Up for a game of cribbage?"

"No, I was thinking about turning in. I'm incredibly tired."

"You chicken?" I wanted to fire his internal author.

"Goodnight Grandpa."

I went to the guest room for about a half hour when I heard him snoring on one of the couches. I took the opportunity to sneak out to the beach and get some writing done. I was so incredibly proud of the poetry I wrote that night. It was so cutting edge, so Important. I've long since burned any and all copies of it, but that's because it was too amazing to be comprehended, not because it was horrible crap written by an egomaniacal eighteen year old with three different colored pens in his possession.

I snuck back into the house and went to sleep around three. At six, I woke up to my step-grandmother stage whispering. "Robert, you keep your voice down. Safe is in the other room trying to sleep."

"Well, he needs to get up. We should leave in an hour."

"For heaven's sake, we are not going to spend Thanksgiving at a boat yard--"

"A yacht club."

"A boat yard. This is Thanksgiving. If you want to go to a proper yacht club with a buffet service, that's fine. But I see no reason to drive to your old boat docks and eat turkey with a bunch of strangers who don't need our company."

"Care, they're living on boats, and need some company during the Holidays. It's the Christian thing to do." It's important to note that my Grandfather only attended church for weddings and funerals. I'd never heard him mention Christ's name before without having dropped something on his foot.

"If you want to be Christian, let's go volunteer at a soup kitchen. I'm not going to your damned boat yard."

But we did. When the smoke cleared, Caroline and I were sitting on elementary cafeteria style chairs at the end of an oblong table full of rich people too cheap to buy their own food, and too hated by their families to be invited to Thanksgiving dinners. These were definitely my grandfather's people: assholes who owned boats and treated everyone else like trash. They hated us, despite our best green bean casserole and mashed potato intentions.

"He was the cutest little thing." Snob #47 said. "A Brazilian nigger. Dumb as a tack, but loyal to no end." The part of me that wasn't horrified by the language, was amused that he'd inadvertently admitted the guy was smart. You didn't have to be sharp as a rubber ball to figure that out.

"Sandi" (sometimes you can tell when names are spelled with an "i") "be a good girl and get daddy some more turkey." Daddy was too fat to get it himself.

"Wayers yer bote?" asked a particularly well-groomed boat child. "Ares is the biggggg won over thayer." It's important to note that I'm not making fun of a child's accent. This kid was likely from Connecticut or Ohio, or one of those states that has no discernible accent. He was talking this way specifically to aggravate me.

"We don't have a boat anymore." My grandfather had sold the Spar-Kee a year before.

"Sew weye are ewe heeeeyer?"

"That's a great question." Caroline asked. "Why are we here Bob?"

I excused myself under the pretext of getting more turkey. I have actually never been hungry enough to eat the fried cardboard that they were serving as turkey. But while I was up, Caroline grabbed my arm. "Grab your jacket, we're leaving."

Hallefuckenlujah.

"Do you have a suit with you?" Caroline asked. Given that I'd expected my grandfather to spring a formal meal on me, I had, indeed, brought a suit. "Good, we're going to the Yacht Club."

"We were at a yacht club." My grandfather mumbled.

"We're going to a yacht club that made a big fancy buffet for all the members. Not one where I have to eat jello with marshmallows and broken glass with a bunch of people who were invited to spend time with their family, but decided they were too good for it. You know, civil snobs."

So we stopped off at the condo, and walked to The Yacht Club down the street. The Yacht Club was only about half full. "Most of the members are with their families today." The hot maitre'd said when my grandfather pointed out that they weren't full. There was an implied "But I can see you're the sort of asshole who doesn't get invited to family functions" on the end of his statement that made me miss Alex. I got the feeling that if Alex spoke better, all of his statements would have implied insults in their intonation.

The Yacht Club was...Yacht Clubby. There was a gigantic center island in the ballroom with a six foot tall cornucopia ice sculpture. It was surrounded with every type of food imaginable. And a few types you wouldn't believe even after they'd passed through your digestive system.

Having already had my stomach shredded by the half piece of cardboard I'd ingested with The Boat People (and not the interesting International kind), I was pretty reserved with what I picked up from the buffet. A little bit of turkey with mashed potato. Then, some ham with corn on the cob. Then, a very little roast beef.

"Safe!" My grandfather called from the other side of the ice sculpture. "Come here."

Not willing to sink to his level and scream back across the room, I walked over to him.

"Try this." He said, putting some sort of grease covered squid looking thing on my plate.

"No, thanks. I'm getting kind of full."

"Try this."

I began walking away from him. "No, thank you."

"I'm not asking you. Safe!" My name is not Safe. I am Edouardo. I am minding my own business at this hoity-toity buffet being stalked by a cray person. Ring-around-the-rosy-pocket-full-of-restraining-orders. "SAFE!"

"Robert!" Caroline. "Lower your voice this instant."

Thus began the public unwinding of five years of family turmoil being voiced very loudly in public. I'd like to think that if this happened now, I would have just taken whatever the alien life form was he was trying to get me to eat, and defused the situation. Of course, if this happened now, it would be really creepy because my grandfather has been dead for eight months. But I was eighteen, and angry, so every time he pushed one of my buttons, I pushed his back until the hot maitre'd actually asked us to lower our voices because we were disturbing the other guests.

"I'm going back to the condo." I walked back to the condo, changed into some less formal wear, and went back to the beach to be passive aggressively angry.

original post: http://insafemode.livejournal.com/88734.html

What's Your Sign (Part 4: Want Not Need)

The shades are down. The doors are locked. The regular lights are off. The blacklight is on. There are condoms in the top dresser drawer. The music is up to eleven. It's fuck time.

"¿not want?" Alex asks, pointing to the ecstasy.

"not need" I've never needed drugs or alcohol for sex. Cocks and ass provide just the right level of intoxication. "¿want do?"

"(sign I don't understand)"

"¿ ?"

"surprise"

I push him back on my bed, pull down his shorts, and kiss him. This does not appear to be a huge surprise.

A synapse fires in my brain. How are we going to communicate while we're making out/fucking? Having spent the first ten years of his education in an oralist school, he has a pretty strong grasp of lipreading, and he can get his point across with speech if he needs to. But he hates relying on English, and--

"stop - ¿k?"

"yes" I sign.

"appear confuse"

"¿if do wrong how me know?"

He squeezes my wrist.

"Ow!" "¿what?"

"me hurt" He squeezes my wrist again. "you hurt" Then he kisses me. He's much better with his tongue than Victor was. I'm tempted to tell him this, but he's grabbed my hands and put them to work in a manner that sends signals clearer than spoken, written or signed language can ever hope to achieve.

I'm just about to go down on him when the Mellisa Etheridge's "Your Little Secret" comes on.

"¿funny?"

"guitar here"

¿where?"

"song (point to radio)"

"turn off"

"you s-q-u-e-a-k"

Alex gives me The Velociraptor Look. A look I would steal and use on future unsuspecting boyfriends. "¿s-q-u-e-a-k?"

I lean down and slowly put his cock in my mouth. He squeaks. I look up at him. "¿you-see?"

"don't care - don't stop"

After about five minutes of putting the hurricane to Florida, the hands that have been massaging my shoulders, give them a slight squeeze. I stand up. Alex pushes me back on Matt's bed and my shorts join his on the floor.

Getting head from Alex is like sticking your dick in a vacuum (the space anomaly, not the household cleaning device). The suction. The pressure. The tracks it leaves on the carpet. I am right on the brink when he stops and licks a line up to my neck.

I wrap my hands around his ass and return the vampire kiss. The prospect of hickeys barely graze my brain. I begin licking down his stomach and down to the Mason Dixon Line (please leave your clever puns at the door). His moaning is oddly on beat with U2's "Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me, Kill Me" which happens to be blasting out of the speakers. I feel his body tense, and I pull him out just in time. "Aaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

hh"

While I'm sure there were a few people on campus who didn't hear him, I'd guess that they too communicated via ASL.

I expected him to lean back and leave me to finish myself off, but after he took a few seconds to shiver and blink, he sat on my stomach, began kissing me, and jerking me against his flotation device. I don't even think I lasted five minutes.

"¿again?"

Again.

original post: http://insafemode.livejournal.com/61024.html

What's Your Sign? (Part 3: Bad Day For Vampires = Good Day For Ecstasy)

Any conversation that starts with dark depression, is bound to end with an angry albino.

I licked my lips. No blood, but you could have made dentures from the depression on my lower lip.

"¿fine?" Alex asked again.

"yes - sorry - think too hard"

"¿not want?" he nodded at the pills. "sorry"

"no - don't know word - not worry - me"

There was a knock on the door. "Hello?"

"¿who you think?" I asked

"¿who me think what?"

"¿who knocking?"

"¿knocking? sorry - not hear - (shocked expression) maybe me deaf"

I flipped him off.

"sorry - not understand" anyone who thinks that sarcasm is all about vocal inflection needs to spend a day locked in a room with a sarcastic Deaf person.

I got up and opened the door. "Hey Safe. What's wrong with your lip?" It was Bernard, the campus's albino asshole. What he lacked in pigmentation, he made up for in pigheadedness. I would have invited him in, but I was afraid he'd accept. "Is Alex here?"

"Alex?" I yelled. "No answer. He must be somewhere else."

Bernard pushed the door open. "Oh there he is. Hey Alex, something wrong with your hearing?"

I translated. Alex signed back "no - ¿wrong with skin?"

I felt like I was trapped in a very boring David Lynch script. "Ask him if he's coming to my party tonight?"

"¿you go asshole party?"

"No." Alex said. "Busy." It struck me that Alex's voice was sexy in that gravelly, hardly-ever-used sort of way. He turned his head back to the computer. Conversation over.

"Well, if he's not going, ask him if he's got anything he might want to donate to the cause."

"Like what?" I asked.

"Ask him."

"You want to know, you ask him."

He tapped Alex on the shoulder and very slowly and loudly said "Do you have any ecstasy?"

Alex cocked his head to the side, and expanded his eyes until they were frog sized "Noooooooooo." and to me he signed "tell asshole go"

"What did he say?"

"He either said 'sorry he doesn't have any pills, maybe you should ask someone else' or 'tell the asshole to go away', I'm not sure, my sign language is a little rusty."

"Asshole." he said to the back of Alex's head, and slammed the door as he left the room.

Alex turned toward me "¿hear that?"

"no ¿you?"

"¿his problem?" Any discussion that begins with an angry albino is bound to end with a sheep. At least, that's been my experience.

"not know - ¿bad day for vampire?"

Alex laughed. A sound I loved.

"¿doing?" I asked.

He waved me over to the computer. He had been writing me a note on my laptop. I not know sure if you know signs I want to use, and no patience for fingerspelling. Hope I not make you uncomfortable with ecstasy. Just like hanging out with you. Thought it would be fun. Don't know when the next time Matt go to parents's. Maybe my one chance to corrupt you.

"¿sign c-o-r-r-u-p-t?" I asked. He showed me. "¿you corrupt me? ¿me?"

He went back to typing. Yes. You. Reading the way he was typing, I realized that his English comp teacher was right, he was definitely picking up my writing style. Short, choppy sentences that get directly to the point. Of course, it was also possible that my writing was influenced by American Sign Language. You need corrupting. I saw your cache.

Cache? Cash? Catch? What did cache mean? "¿c-a-c-h-e?"

He dragged the mouse up to the history folder and opened up my cache. Ohhhh, cache. Fuck.

He turned toward me. "me know you - same as - like you ¿like me?"

It was my turn to get frog-eyed.

"¿no?"

"no" I shook my head "yes" I should have clarified by kissing him, instead I leaned over and started typing Yes, I like you. I didn't know you were...bi? gay?

He pointed to gay, and then took control of the keyboard. Why do you think I hang out with you? Your ASL sucks. I waiting for you make move. But you slow.

"you english shit ¿who teach you type?"

Some faggot.

"he suck"

"me hope"

I picked up the Ziploc bag and poured a couple pills in my hand. "¿many?"

"¿first?" he asked. I nodded. "one" And like a good little sheep, I swallowed.

original post: http://insafemode.livejournal.com/59352.html

What's Your Sign? (Part 2: A Pocket Full Of Ecstacy)

A Insafemode entry that begins with ecstasy is bound to end in depression. Maybe Murphy's Law, Karma, Fate, Ka, or whatever you call The Mysterious Force Who Keeps The Universe in Check, decided my pessimism should be rewarded with realization. Maybe I'm just a precog. But when Alex pulled a Ziploc of ecstasy out of his pocket, my stomach sank.

"¿Try?" he asked

I had read an article or two about how E made you lose your inhibitions. Not medical texts, but stories from the nifty archive. I liked my inhibitions where they were, around my neck, strangling me.

"No." I liked Alex a lot. He was track star/swimmer hot. Short blonde hair. Chiseled stomach. The type of face that looked awesome in sunglasses. Michaelangelo's David in swim trunks. He was also hella funny, smart, and always fun to be around. So, Insafemode, I ask myself, what's the problem? And don't say it's the drugs.

But it was the drugs. I had no aversion to doing drugs, I just wasn't sure I wanted to do any drugs in the presence of Alex. I mean, why was he offering me ecstasy? Did he want to fool around? Was Alex gay? Was there some other cool reason to do ecstasy that I didn't know about? (Curse you Nifty for not having more thorough reports on recreational drugs!)

Aside from the drugs, there was the issue that I wasn't out. I'd had some fun with Victor in high school, but I'd been going straight since then. And, frankly, the experience had been more traumatizing than good.

So, assuming Alex was trying to get with me, why was I being so hesitant? I could get high and chalk everything up to drug induced experimentation.

"¿You fine?"

I came out of my daze long enough to realize I had bitten down so hard on my lower lip that I'd left teeth marks.

original post: http://insafemode.livejournal.com/58692.html

What's Your Sign? (Part 1: Bitch Breakfast, Lesbian Lunch)

In an ideal world, any story that starts with an erection and a bottle of Cherry Coke would end with ecstasy. Sadly, I don't live in an ideal world. In my world, I was a closeted Deaf education major living in a city I hated. Every morning I would drag myself out of my cot-sized bed, take a shower, throw all my books in my backpack, and head to the dining hall for breakfast. A bowl of cereal and a bagel later, I'd be ready for whatever classes the day held for me: Calculus, ASL, French, Spanish, Elementary Education, Teaching English Composition, Set Design, Technical Theatre. At some point in the day I'd take a break for lunch either in the dining hall or the theatre. Just after lunch the rain would fall, filling the city's antiquated drainage system to capacity and filling the city with the stench of sulfur. When the sulfur faded like The Red Sox's hopes for winning The World Series, I would return to either the theatre or Only Hall for more classes. Lather, Rinse in sulfur water, Repeat.

But today was different. An erection, mine. A bottle of Cherry Coke, with a note:

Safe,
Thanks for the help with comp homework. A+ & thanks to your tutoring, I even new enough to give an empromptue (sp?) report for the class, giving me another A. Call me when you get up. We'll go out for drinks.

I sat up on the bed, stared at the TTY for a moment, and decided to hold off on calling him. I had just began to stretch when Alex waved at me from the window.

"wake up lazy shit" he signed.

"¿time for late bitch? - wrong - ¿breakfast?" It was one of my lame jokes. The first time Alex came over to hang out I'd intended to ask if he wanted to go out for breakfast, but had inadvertently used the sign for bitch.

"no early lesbian - sorry - lunch."

"fuck you"

I let him in and let him use my laptop while I went into the shower. When I came out, he and one of my suitemates, Dan, were harassing someone on AOL. "¿ready?" I asked.

"ready"

"¿you go future h-y-p-n-o-t-i-s-t?" I asked when we were in the dining hall. "maybe funny - ¿maybe you h-y-p-n-o-t-i-z-e-d?"

Incredulous look. "¿how he h-y-p-n-o-t-i-z-e me? ¿he sign instructions?"

I hadn't thought about that. But over the course of the discussion I convinced both myself and Alex that it was possible that a real hypnotist would be able to tap a person instead of snapping to get them awake or in a trance. I also imagined it was possible that a hypnotist who could sign would be able to give instructions in ASL. The odds of the hypnotist that was performing that night being an ASL fluent hypnotist, I admitted, were slim.

"don't want go - ¿You?" he asked.

Raised eyebrow and shrug. "maybe - ¿you doing?"

"both of us go-to (sign I don't understand)"

"don't understand"

"drinking"

"k - telephone me when ready"

After lunch, I went to the theatre to work on the set for a Christmas play one of the student directors was working on. It was hard for me to come to terms with the approaching holiday season. It was seventy degrees, and well, seventy degrees alone. I had the same problem when I was living in Icarus Arizona, but that will get its own entry this December under the heading "Worst Xmas Evarr11!!1".

While I was ankle deep in drill bits and cotton, my roommate, Matt, yelled to me from the balcony "Hey, Safe! I'm going to Taco Bell. You want anything?" Not feeling in the mood for botulism, I declined. "Ok, then I'm gonna head home from there. See you Monday."

I secretly cursed him for living a mere two hours from college. I was hundreds of miles away from any relative besides my grandfather, and after the miserable time I'd had with him during Thanksgiving (which will get its own entry this November under "Worst XGiving Evvvvvvvvvar!!11!!1), I had no immediate plans to revisit him. In fact, I was debating dropping out of college and moving back to Cranberry Lake.

I made plans to spend the night in my empty room downloading and masturbating to as much gay porn as I could find, and then deleting it all before my roommate or other suitemates stumbled upon it. I had forgotten that I'd made plans to go drinking with Alex until I was on my way into my room for the night. He was in the rec room, playing pool with Dan.

"hey z - wait - dan (cut-throat gesture)"

"k - me go wait (point to my room) jerk-off"

"funny - me wait ¿2 minutes? ¿3?"

About five minutes later, he showed up with a six pack of Heineken and a bottle of Bacardi. "¿thirsty?"

"very"

"¿where guitar?" Guitar was Alex's sign name for Matt, who had a habit of carrying around an acoustic guitar and playing Melissa Etheridge and Indigo Girls songs for no apparent reason. He was the first male lesbian I ever lived with.

"home"

"cool" After pouring ourselves each a drink, and putting the rest of the alcohol in the mini-fridge, we alternated between harassing people on AOL and signing to each other. "Hey, baby" he typed to some woman in SuulfurCityW4MCollegeStuds "Me and my sweetmate looking for a hot time. What are you wearing?"

I waved at him. "s-u-i-t-e-m-a-t-e not s-w-e-e-t-m-a-t-e"

"know that - but me live here not - not s-u-i-t-e-m-a-t-e me"

"¿you and me boyfriends now?"

"¡yes! blow me"

"¡face-first-love! me very horny now"

He reached into his pockets. I assumed he would be making a lewd gesture, but instead he pulled out a ziploc baggie of pills. "¿want?"

"what (pointed to pills)"

He smiled in a very Cheshire Cat manner. I didn't imagine it would be long before his body disappeared. "e-c-s-t-a-s-y"

Slow Flashes (Part 10: A Terrible Lifeguard)

I don't know how the marriage proposal happened. Movies, TV shows, romance novels, they all have these elaborate stories involving the Eiffel Tower or a the rehab center where the couple first met. There's always rings involved and one or more of the couple ends up on their knees, staring deep into the other's eyes, and saying "Will you marry me?" And the other person says yes and they live happily ever until the credits roll.

I was drunk. A bottle of Jack Daniels and a six pack of Heinekein drunk. She may have been too, I don't remember. It was summer again. Our last summer before college. I was two weeks into another ten week long camp counselor position, and she was a week away from going to Europe to visit all those exotic places where richer, soberer people proposed to each other or honeymooned. We were at a party hosted by one of my coworkers. The host and his frat buddies showed off their Stigmata Delta Piebald brands. DJs spinned terrible local hip-hop wannabes and bad eighties tunes. I confessed something stupid like "You know... Beckee. I mean. Beckee was so, you know, shallow, and shallow and shit. But you. You. I totally love you. We should get married." And she said yes, and we made out for a little while. And I walked her to her I hope she's sober enough to drive home car. I kissed her. Told her I loved her. Staggered back in the direction of the house in order to find more whiskey, since I was obviously too drunk to drive home, myself.

A few yards away from the sliding glass door that led into the kegful kitchen, was a jacuzzi. I was wearing a bathing suit. The two frat brats already in the jacuzzi were not. They were skin and water and slick and smooth and drunk and...and they were on opposite sides of the jacuzzi, flexing their bodies toward the edges of the what are they doing jacuzzi. "Sooooooo good. You want to try this?" The frat boy facing me asked.

"Try what?"

"Fucking the pooljets." The frat whose ass was bending in my direction said.

Yes. "No. Thanks." And I walked around the jacuzzi until I had the proper vantage point to watch both of their asses flex. I watched and watched, comparing ass, back, and rhythm, mentally calculating which of them would finish first.

"What the fuck are you doing here?" Bernard asked. Bernard. Ugh. Bernard was a thirty-five year old pot head who taught archery at our camp. He had been a counselor at Camp Davis for almost twenty years, with the exception of one summer when the previous director of the camp had stepped down, and he had assumed that he would take his place. The CEO, thinking he was making a joke when he asked to interview for the position, had laughed in his face. As a form of protest, he'd taken a position at another camp. He was fired two weeks into the summer, when he was caught smoking up inside the archery shed. During his summer away, I had served as assistant archery director. The year that Bernard decided to come back, we both applied for the Archery Director position. He got the job, but only because they'd offered me a chance to run waterfront, a job with more prestige and three extra dollars an hour, thus making me, in his eyes, the most evil person on the planet. "I asked you a fucken question. What the fuck are you doing here?"

Watching two hot, naked frat guys fuck the airjets in a jacuzzi. "They're drunk." I said. "And...and you're not supposed to be in a jacuzzi when you're drunk. And I'm a lifeguard. And, you know, if they dehydrate and pass out, someone's gotta be here to help them. You want to watch em for a while why I go get a beer?"

"Fucken faggot." He said, and walked away, in the direction of the house.

I stayed a minute or two longer, and then headed into the house, where I passed out on a couch.





My heterosexual dream was shattered on August twelfth, 1995. Jennifer: destroyer of sleep and car rides. I picked her up at the airport on the eleventh. She was unusually quiet during the entire trip. I assumed this meant that she'd slept with someone. That she had realized that she didn't love me, but she at least had the tact not to break up with me while I was driving her home from the airport.

The next day, she called too bright, too early, to say that she was on the way over. She wanted to talk, but it was nothing she could talk about over the phone. I was being dumped.

"I'm pregnant." she said.

"But...but we were so careful." I said. "We always used a condom, and―"

"It's not yours."

"Oh."

original post: http://insafemode.livejournal.com/230749.html

To Victor Go The Spoils (Part 2: Jerkus Interruptus)

I wish there was some sort of romantic or dramatic story about how and why Victor and I started fooling around, but it couldn't be that great because I don't remember our first kiss, our first conversation (though I'm sure it was awkward), I do remember our first time we were naked together in his room.

He had barely wrapped his hand around my cock when there was a knock on his door.

While nothing was ever said to either of us, I couldn't shake the feeling that the dormhead knew what we'd been about to do. Victor threw on some boxers, nervously answered the door, and stepped outside into the hallway to talk to her.

"Veektor" (I'm no good at typing Elena's accent. She was Colombian, not Transylvanian. Try to imagine everything she says in a very unsexy South American Catholic Guilt Trip Mother Voice Box, and you'll have a reasonable facsimile of her voice) "You weren't in class this morning, and there was a quiz. I told you if you missed...Are you ok?"

The conversation continues in Spanish. I am was fluent in French and just starting to learn American Sign. Spanish was Greek to me. But without the extra vowels.

The raise in her voice, and the timbre of his led me to believe that she was going to enter the room at any moment. I, too, was skipping a class in the interest of pursuing sex education. I contemplated hiding in the wardrobe or under the bed, but then if she found me she'd know that we were doing something more than just skipping classes, so I sat at Victor's computer and opened up a file that I had written for him, and pretended to proofread. I was shaking and sweating so profusely by the time Elena came in, you'd think I had swallowed a blow up doll full of cocaine.

She said something in Spanish that had my name in it. I gave her the Mr. Spock eyebrow (this was pre-The Rock...I wonder if The Rock chose his name because it rhymed with Spock). "Sorry. Insafemode, what are you doing in here?"

"My computer is down." This was true. "So I asked Victor if I could finish up one of my papers on his and print it out. When it's done I've got to run to class."

"Ah, I see. Well, you'd better hurry, it's nearly fourth period." She left. Victor collapsed on the bed. I melted into the chair.

You couldn't cut the tension with the jaws of fucken life.

Victor and I, limp in every possible way, stared across the room at each other. He pulled off his boxers, and laid on his stomach. I got out of the chair and walked over to his bed. I started caressing his ass. That's when the fire alarm went off.

original post: http://insafemode.livejournal.com/39142.html

To Victor Go The Spoils (Part 1: Eses and Essays)

Before I met Victor, the only things I associated with Colombia were coffee and cocaine, two things I’ve never had much use for. But watching him wiggle down the hallway in nothing but a towel, images of stainless steel suitcases and the word “ese” are replaced with bench pressing and honey-glazed skin. He is the shy, stupid looking surfer kid that every girl (and according to statistics, at least ten percent of the guys) wants to fuck and bring home to mommy. And while everyone who’s ever been to a swim meet has seen him in a speedo, I’m the one he invites into his room, late at night, to hang out and do homework with.

Tonight, I have to finish a particularly complicated essay on my interpretation of gender roles in Shakespearean language. It was due a week ago. While I ponder the significance of Viola’s role in Twelfth Night, I look over to see Victor flipping through a porn mag unlike any other I’ve ever come across.

I grew out of Playboys and Penthouses before I’d turned thirteen. Between the airbrushed beaver and silicone breasts, and the fact that my father had purposefully shared the contents of the joke section before I got the chance to steal the magazines from the top shelf in his closet, I found the concept of American porn duller than a plastic hamster wheel. What Victor is gawking at is Latin American porn. Four incredibly hot guys buried in one hot, innocent looking girl. Well, as innocent as a girl can look with a cock in her mouth, one in her twat, one in her ass, and another in her hand. I make a mental note to borrow it from him some time when he isn’t paying attention. In the nicewhile, I focus on my essay instead of my ese, and making conversation as though he was playing computer solitaire, and not lying on his bed, fondling himself. Buzz buzz.

“You still dating Jennifer?” He asks.

“I don’t know.” I say. “I don’t think so.”

He Spock eyes me. “You don’t think so?”

“I don’t know. Things are pretty weird right now.”

“Yea.” He says. “Yea, they are.”

When I am done typing my paper, I go back to my room, to pick up where I left off with my ceiling staring.

Three hours and no sleep later, I get out of bed and click off my clock before the alarm even rings. Victor is already in the shower when I walk into the bathroom. “Hey, Z?”

“Yea?” I ask.

“Could you do me a favor? I forgot my towel. Could you go into my room and get it for me?”

“Sure. Your room unlocked?” It is. While I am in his room, I open the bottom drawer of his computer desk, and swipe two magazines. I detour into my room, where JBob snores lightly. I hide the magazines under my mattress.

“Took you long enough.” Victor says, stepping out of the shower to meet me. He proceeds to make small talk that I can’t follow because he is toweling himself off, focusing a great deal of time on his my God that thing is huge buzz buzz. Victor smiles. I think we are seconds away from kissing when the bathroom door opens, and Theo comes in to use one of the showers.

Victor motions for me to follow him back to his room. “I hate Theo.” He says, with a venom that surprises me. He is getting such a shame dressed. I am laying across his bed, trying not to watch him getting dressed. “Two weeks before he transfers to some junior stupid college and he comes out at that stupid assembly on cultural tolerance. All those stupid teachers lining up to shake his stupid faggy hands.”

Victor had come out honestly. During a lively debate concerning when, exactly, Saturday Night Live began to suck (my vote was 1989), Victor casually mentioned that he imagined he could suck a pretty mean cock. While the hockey jocks we lived with were busy fake lisping and playing limp-wristed minstrel charades, I was trying to figure out whether or not my cock could be considered mean. Or pretty. I made a mental note to ask him were he ever to be at eye level with it. And now, here I am, alone in his room, laying across his bed, while he pokes ever so slightly out of his boxers. I want to say some clever, nonchalant seduction line. Something suave that we’ll remember when we’re seventy-eight years old, playing chess in a remote village in Spain. Something. Anything. Touch me.

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