Slow Flashes (Part 17: I Am The Only One In My Circle Of Friends Not Moving On)

It's been 2:18 for over a month now. I get up at 2:18. I sleep at 2:18. Life at Zuzu's is consistently 2:18.

The last time it was 2:17 was when Renee Francois, a French student (quel suprise), moved in. Renee has the peculiar habit of launching into showtunes during the midst of conversation:

"Hey, Francois, how's the new job?"

"It's good for my brain...I could while away the hours, consulting with the flowers..."

It's cute until you're trapped in a car with him for ten minutes.

"Is he gay?" Zuzu asked me.

"Either that or he's French."

It was still 2:18 when he moved out last weekend. One of his friends, a very Elvis Costelloish nerd, came over to help him move.

"Stop oogling my tenant's friends." Zuzu said.

"I'm not oogling." I said. "I've never oogled anyone in my life. I'm ogling. Check out his ass." And for once, I wasn't calling attention to my favorite boy part because of its shape, but because of what was in the back left pocket: a red bandanna.

"What does it mean?" She asked. I made a fist with my right hand, a small hole with my left, and then punched the right hand through it. We tried not to giggle everytime Costello walked down the stairs. "It could just be something else." Zuzu said, but the next time I saw Francois walk down the stairs I noticed the red bandanna in his right pocket. I had to go out back and laugh into my fist until the look of my fist grossed me out, which caused me to laugh even harder, then I was thinking the word "harder", and I was a snort away from hiccuping.

Shortly after Francois moved out, Zuzu adopted Pup Ratzinger, an impossibly cute (not miniature, thank God) dachshund who only barks when barked at, and has a nearly insurmountable fear of stairs. For some reason he reminds me of Dmitri.

Last night, while Zuzu was training Ratzinger, Landlord, Doctor O, Straight Roommate and I went out to a French Bistro to wish bon voyage to Straight Roommate, who will soon be replaced by an Evangelical Christian. I couldn't imagine why Landlord was inviting an Evangelical to live with us until I saw a picture of our future roommate. He's a Chinese guy in his early twenties. Landlord would invite Reverend Phelps to live with us if he looked remotely Asian. "Don't prejudge him because he's Christian." Landlord said when I rolled my eyes at his the picture he's brought with him.

"It's not that." I said. "Look at the banner he's standing under: Crusade for College Christianity? Crusade? No one in their right mind would combine the word Christian and Crusade these days unless they were trying to evoke negativity or violence. Why not just call it 'Kill a Campus Muslim for Jesus'?"

We argued semantics for a few minutes until the hot, obviously straight, Asian waiter took our order. I don't like American French Food. Pate disgusts me, and if I'm paying twenty dollars for an appetizer, it better suck my cock before I eat it.

Dr. O and I split an order of escargot in garlic butter that was amazing. Then, I had some lobster bisque. For $8 I got two tiny pieces of lobster in about an ounce of bisque. Next time, I pick the restaurant.

This whole week has been a series of papercuts with elaborate bandaids. No working computer means I spend more time Chez Zuzu, overindulging on homemade food and watching Aqua Teen Hunger Force with her son, Lot. Put some ice on it. Because yet another coworker was late, and I spilled coffee on myself, I had to skip a night out with a cute non-poetry-slam bisexual and his friends. Instead, I spent hours on the phone talking with cute friends in Iceland and California. Kiss it and make it better. I still haven't made it to the post office, and I have a ton of shit to send, so I go home and eat a half dozen macaroons I bought at the French restaurant. Bathe me in Bactine. Fuck papercuts, all of my problems are two tiny pieces of lobster in an ounce of bisque. People would kill for my problems.

Except Tuesday night.

Tuesday night was a six pound order of escargot sauteed in battery acid. Tuesday night was Reverand Phelps with automatic weapons. Instead of a papercut, Tuesday night was a guillotine. For the eleventh time in one day, I'd identified someone as the cutest person in the world. I watched him watch me watch him for ten minutes before he came to the counter to order some "Mode?"

No one has called me Mode since I was a camp counselor over ten years ago. "Grant?" I can't believe I was checking out one of my former kids, why he must only be...25...ok, I can believe it. I just forget that the "kids" I counseled were only three years younger than me. The chasm between 14 and 17 seems immense, but 25 and 28? Who cares?

I walked around the counter and hugged him. An act that would shock most of my friends who seem to think I wrap myself in barbed wire to keep people from touching me. "How've you been?"

"Better." He said. "I've been much better than today. My mom's here." He waved in the general direction of the hospital. "Breast cancer."

"I'm so sorry." I said.

"Oh, it's no big deal. It's just that this is the first time I've been back to Mass since the Bernard thing."

"Bernard thing?" I asked.

He gave me the Velociraptor Look. "You don't know? Oh my God, it must have been after you left. Do you want to go out for a drink after work? I'm buying."

I don't remember the last time I said no to that question.

For the next hour, I flashed through disjointed memories about my days as a camp counselor at Camp Davis. Nothing emotional, just a series of snapshots of people I'd forgotten. Bernard. Bernard was my nemesis. When I was an eleven year old camper, Bernard was a twenty year old counselor. He taught archery. All the cool boys got special permission to spend time with Bernard at the range, while the rest of us suffered through gymnastics or horseback. I was not cool, so I hated Bernard. The first year I was a counselor, Bernard was unemployed due to his mistakenly thinking he was more valuable to the camp then he was, so I got to work on the archery range with his assistant. Sure, the cool boys spent a lot of time hanging out with me, but so did the uncoordinated girls, the boys with lisps, and even the girls who smelled like their fathers' insecurities. When Bernard returned the next year, I was banished from archery, forced to teach swimming to the kids not cool enough for bows and arrows. At after work parties, Bernard shunned me, and spread the rumor that I was a fag. I wanted to shatter his smile into arrowheads.

Oddly enough, it was Bernard who offered the peace pipe. I was dragging a cooler down to a beach with a group of Irish friends when Bernard drove by in his black Jeep and blew the horn at me. "Hey Mode, I'm having a party at my house tonight. If you and your friends want to stop by, that'd be cool. Just bring some beer."

So a sixpack of Zima and a sunburn later, my friends and I were sitting on Bernard's porch, listening to the Black Crowes and mingling with some of my other coworkers. The night was fireworks with no calendric meaning. I stumbled into the kitchen for another Zima when Bernard grabbed me by the hair and said "Take your faggy ass friends and get the fuck out of my house."

The people around us supplied the "What the fuck?" for me.

"You come into my house, trash my living room, drink my beer, and..."

"What are you talking about?" his girlfriend of the week asked. "The living room is fine, and he brought the beer, remember?"

I ran out of the house before he could respond. I stopped on the porch and looked at my friends. "We have to leave. Now."

From that day forward, we spoke in scowls and glares. Then I grew up, took a real job and forgot all about him.

"He molested us." Grant said after out third shots of tequila.

"Fuck." Was the only thing to say.

"Didn't you ever wonder why it was only the cute boys? Why he called everyone he hated 'fag'?"

I hadn't. Then again, I'd been a naive 18 year old when I'd left.

"He made me hate myself for years. Then I found out he'd started messing around with my little brother and..." He took another shot. "It had to stop."

My tongue was granite, my eyes seized.

"There were so many of us...Jared ended up in jail for some hate crime thing. Brad still won't talk about it with anyone. And Ryan ended up killing himself."

No.

No.

Must not break shot glass in fist. Must not shake Grant until he sucks his story out of my brain to some place safer. Must not drive back east, find whatever cell Bernard is currently occupying and rip his balls out via his ear canal.

"Fucked up, huh?"

I heard nothing else until goodbye. A brief hug.

I gave him my phone number and told him to call me if he needed to blow off steam. I've spent enough time in hospitals this past year staring at white walls to know the loneliness of fluorescent lights.

"Sure." He said. "I'll probably come down and get coffee from you tomorrow. Mom might come with me. She'd shit if she knew you were here. You were one of her favorite counselors."

"That'd be great." I said.

I didn't see either of them on Wednesday. Thursday was my day off. Yesterday I took long breaks, and spent most of my non-break time reorganizing shelves. I'm staying at Zuzu's to avoid the temptation to answer the phone at my house. When I close my eyes I see a slideshow of kids with question mark eyes and closed mouths. I wish I'd been smart enough or strong enough to help them back then. Today, I'm thankful I'm out of earshot.

original post: http://insafemode.livejournal.com/116423.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

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

Slow Flashes (Part 9: Breaking Up Is Not As Hard As Pop Music Would Have You Believe)

have broken up with exactly three women who loved me. Twice the breaker, once the broken.

Jennifer: destroyer of worlds and children. During the summer break between my junior and senior years at Torpor Heights, she decided I was worthy of her company again. I told her how I used her as a shield for my first year of school, and she laughed instead of getting angry. I think this was progress. When I told her about leaving Kate for Beckee, she got quiet. A congregation after the priest announces he's vacating his position to pursue a career in child pornography. "So" silence "tell me more about this" silence "Beckee."

I don't know if she was jealous. I just know that we became lips and hands for a few weeks. Movie dates. Dinner. All the things we hadn't done during the four days before she'd broken up with me in middle school. She filled me in on all the gossip about the kids at Pilgrim's Academy, and I realized that I didn't care about any of them but her. And when autumn came in its typical premature fashion, we promised to be faithful to each other and call once a week and other stupid promises that neither of us had any intention of keeping. During the first week of school, I spent an hour feeling up Beckee in the basement of the theatre. Jennifer never called me, so I figured we were even.

The problem with Beckee was everything. I didn't like her any more than I liked Kate. She was funnier. She had her own personality, but I didn't care about it. I didn't love her the way I loved the idea of Jennifer, and every time I closed my eyes and kissed her I was thinking of someone else. And that's all Beckee was: lazy entendre, smile, kiss, hands under clothing, fumble, fumble, kiss, ear nibble, fumble, I've got to go. I would meet her for a free period between calculus and biology. We would eat lunch together. Some nights, I would go over to her dorm and lazy entendre, smile, kiss, hands under clothing, fumble, fumble, kiss, ear nibble, go home. I don't know which one of us was the most boring lover in the world, but I fear that it was me. So I decided to do the unspeakable. On Valentine's Day, just before calculus, I ran to the school bookstore and bought a stuffed purple teddy bear, exactly the color of Beckee's hair. In its hands was a big red heart that said "Available" on it. I wondered how long it would take her to realize what it meant.

Three days. Three days after Valentine's Day, she called my dorm for the thirty-seventh time. This time, I answered it. "Available??? A-fucken-vailable? You piece of shit. I can't believe you dumped me on Valentine's Day. And didn't even have the cock to tell me. A-fucken-vailable???" And I couldn't argue with her because she was right. And I couldn't talk to her anymore because she was right.

I didn't tell Jennifer about my second term with Beckee. But I did start talking to her again. Once a week promised phone calls. Reestablishment of us as a couple. Perfect barrier against needy chorus girls and aggressive theatre students. I told her how excited I was to have chosen and been accepted by a college: a tiny little four year school in Sulfur City Florida, a couple of hours away from Disney World. I even invited her to our school's version of the prom. Torpor Heights being appropriately hoity, but not quite fancy enough to be toity, all our mundane high school rituals had different names from their public school counterparts. Our prom was called The Shat. It was technically spelled with a capital C, and was short for the Chateau where it took place, but the evening was generally believed to be The Shit, so when it was over, it was The Shat. Jennifer couldn't make it, thus fueling the popular rumor that she didn't really exist. I had resigned myself to not going, when I received a written plea for armistice from Beckee. Could we go The Shat? As friends?

I accepted. Her mother flew in the weekend before from Wisconsin, and presented me with an antique cane that perfectly matched both my tux and Beckee's goth girl meets preppie prom dress. Contrary to my fear, I was not, at any point in the night, beaten over the head with the cane. I wish my night had been that simple.

Shortly after our absurdly expensive filet mignon dinner, Beckee and I returned to campus to dance, kiss, and all those other popular prommish activities. As we entered the lobby of The Chateau, we were greeted by gigantic silver and black balloons, the underclassmen orchestra playing an instrumental version of Head Like A Hole, and, oh fuck, "Jennifer?"

Jennifer: destroyer of smiles and proms. Dead stunning in shimmering silver architecture gown. Her hair, for the first time in the six years I've known her, cut shoulder length and the angle of her chin and her sparkling who is this eyes. "Surprise."

"Yes." Beckee growled. "Surprised."

Luckily for Beckee, unHarry had gone stag to The Shat, and was more than happy to pick up my discarded date. Still, the truce was broken.

"She keeps glaring at me." Jennifer said. "Are you sure she knew you two were just friends?"

And I could look her in the eyes and reassure her that I had written proof that Beckee and I had agreed to be nothing more than friends. But Beckee and I both knew how easily written words belie their intentions.

original post: http://insafemode.livejournal.com/230623.html

Slow Flashes (Part 7: Roommate Scavenger Hunt)

Contrary to rumor, Jeremy Burdick didn't beat me up. I didn't move to Arizona to join the priesthood. I didn't drown, trying to save one of my campers at Camp Davis. I was not institutionalized because of my schizophrenia. I just went away to boarding school. I didn't tell anyone, because I hadn't planned on going. Ninth grade hadn't been a hardship, I'd made a number of popular friends, and discovered that I was really good at American Sign Language, and working with kids. I had every intention of returning to Cranberry Lake High, and yawning my way through another year's worth of classes. My grandfather had other ideas. And my grandfather's ideas were always more important than my own.

My first real memory of him was when I was three or four. I was watching The Smurfs or The Snorks or some tirelessly friendly cartoon inspired by a Scandinavian comic book. My grandfather walked into the room, changed the TV to the news, and then walked out of the room. I turned the cartoon back on. He walked into the room, changed to the news, and walked out. I changed back to the cartoons. When he came back in, I asked "You want to watch the news?"

"No." He said. "I read the paper this morning. I want you to watch the news." And he turned the channel back to the news, and pulled the dial off the TV.

During the summer between ninth and tenth grades, I was a summer camp counselor in training. I helped run the sports program, and taught swimming lessons (and nobody drowned during them). I had planned on being there all ten weeks, but during the fifth week, my grandfather stopped by. He was captaining a boat from Jacksonville, Florida to Portland, Maine. I'd gone with him for the southern part of the journey when I was twelve. This summer, he wanted me to help out with the Cranberry Lake to Portland leg. I agreed, because I had no choice. I figured, it was a three day trip, max. And I was technically correct. We arrived in Portland the next day, spent one day at my uncle's house, eating lobster and catching up with relatives, and the next day, he rented a car, and we began driving, I assumed, home. I assumed wrong.

"It's Reunion Weekend at my old highschool." He said. And I knew I was doomed to spend the next two days with his fellow septuagenarians, listening to dull stories about their childhood, and how I looked just like my grandfather, which was a lie, as I was adopted, and shared none of his body or facial design. I also knew I'd have to take some sort of tour, where a smiling admissions officer would tell me how much fun I'd have there, what a great drama department they had, how I could volunteer to work with kids, and how I would yadda yadda smile love it there.

I knew that if my grandfather wanted me to go there, odds were I was going to go there no matter what I wanted. Plus, it meant I wouldn't have to watch my parents fumble toward their inevitable divorce. So when I got home, I told my parents how much I'd loved the school, and, sure, I'd really apply myself there, and could I please go back to my summer at Camp Davis now?

Three days after camp ended, my parents drove me back to Torpor Heights, carried a bunch of my clothes and belongings up the four flights of stairs to my room, and took me out to lunch. My mother cried. My father was proud of me. Back in Florida, my grandfather was proud of me. The only thing I was excited about was meeting my new roommate.

Through a fluke in the admissions process (or maybe a donation from my grandfather), I'd been booked into the biggest room in the dorm, a triple. But there would only be two of us. Whereas all the other rooms had a single, cumbersome wardrobe, our room had two walk-in closets AND two cumbersome wardrobes. We also had a bunkbed AND a non-bunkbed. My roommate, though absent when I had moved in, had already been in the room, and claimed a closet and the non bunkbed, which was totally fine with me.

It was a few minutes after my parents left when one of the student leaders knocked on my door. "Hey. My name is Daveed. I'll be living across the hall. You met your roommate yet?"

"Not yet."

"Oh, man." He made Oh, man sound precisely like I'm so sorry that your puppy got murdered, but don't worry, you're going to get a chance to see him real soon, because you're about to get hit by a very big truck with very spikey tires.

"Oh, man?" I asked.

My very first roommate at Torpor Heights was a twenty-one year old sophomore named Yao Wen Handsome. A Chinese student, whose mother had recently married a very inaccurately named banker named Sean Handsome. Their marriage was some sort of business arrangement that, for some reason, meant that Yao Wen had to change his last name to his American stepfather's. Yao Wen had been in America for two weeks when school started, and the only English he spoke was "Yes", "No", and "I want fuck yo'r ice", which had been taught to him by one of the very unscrupulous hockey jocks who lived down the hall from us.

I hoped that his English would improve quickly, as THA had one of the premier English as a Second Language programs in the country. Alas, instead of teaching him things he could use like "How do I get to the Science Building?", "Do you mind if I use your stereo to blast my shitty Chinese pop music while you're trying to sleep?", or "Excuse me. I had some really spicy food for dinner.", they taught him annoying phrases like "Need you help now." and "Giant bresteses." Two things he liked to say almost as much as he liked to announce that he wanted to fuck my rice. No matter how many times I explained that I didn't like my rice fucked, he insisted that he would be really good at it.

After the third night in a row that he'd slapped me awake at three in the morning to ask for help with his homework, I started setting up a line of tennis balls in the little dip between my bunk and the wall. Every time I caught him walking in my direction, I'd chuck one at his head.

I wasn't the only person in the school who was less than pleased with the existence of Yao Wen Handsome. Next door to David (pronounced Daveed)'s room were two juniors. A shaved-headed punk fan named Jack Marple, and a purple headed goth rocker, who voluntarily went by the name of Roadkill. I wasn't present when Roadkill and Yao Wen began their war. I don't know who first insulted who, but I do know that I came home from dinner during the third week of school to find Roadkill running down the hall. Yao Wen was chasing him, with three of my tennis balls in his hands, chucking them at Roadkill, yelling "No shoes on bed! No shoes on bed!"

After the fourth time the dormhead was called to settle a dispute between Yao Wen and one of our floormates, I made a request that he be moved out of my room. I was assured that I'd have permission to request a change of roommates by the end of the week. Three weeks, and a dozen or so excuses later, I decided to take matters into my own hands. One of the other sophomores, who lived on the third floor, had the unfortunate pleasure of sharing a room with a kleptomaniac named Charlie Denton. Barely a month into the school year, and Charlie had been caught stealing two jackets, a dozen or so CDs, and Roadkill's favorite hairbrush.

"It's bullshit." JBob (Denton's unfortunate roommate) said. "He's stolen two of my Guns and Roses bootlegs, sharpied out my name, and wrote his own. And my favorite jacket disappeared my first day here. I asked the dormhead to transfer rooms, and he told me he'd get it done by the end of the week. That was two weeks ago. Fuck, dood, there's an empty room on your floor. I don't get why one of us can't move into it."

"I have a better idea." I said.

That afternoon, while Yao Wen was in class, JBob and I moved all of his furniture and clothes into the empty room, and moved all of JBob's furniture into my room. "This way," I said, "we can claim that you didn't know I didn't have permission to move Yao Wen's shit out, and, with any luck, the dormhead will feel sorry for you, and let things stay the way we want them." Which is pretty much what happened. Yao Wen came back from class, flipped out that all his stuff had been moved, and found the nearest Chinese interpreter to take his case to the dormhead who, initially, flipped out, then shook his head after Yao Wen left, and said "Well played. You guys can be roommates, but don't pull any shit like that or again, or I'll put you on disciplinary probation."

Little did he know, JBob and I had one more game to play before we felt we were even.

Every Wednesday morning, there was a mandatory all campus meeting at our Chapel. The student leaders checked each of us in at the beginning of the meeting, and we'd sit in our assigned pews, listening to the deans or the headmaster or a guest speaker fill our minds with morality or mortality or whatever opinion they were determined to inflict on us. JBob and I had loyally attended each one, but we knew that Denton liked to sneak out and take a cab into town and shoplift, since he had the two post-meeting periods open.

On this particular morning, I checked in with David, and JBob checked in with his student leader, then we excused ourselves to go to the bathroom. While our dormmates listened to our Headmaster explain how important cultural diversity was to a school like ours, JBob and I broke into their rooms and began playing a game of Kleptomaniac Scavenger Hunt Bingo. I took Roadkill's brush, and Jack's New York Dolls CD. JBob took David's drumsticks, and one of his roommate's Argentinean porno magazines. I took our resident Republican's U2 poster, and his roommate's favorite sweatshirt. And together, we went up and down all floors, taking one or two things from each room (including our own), and scattering them all throughout Denton's room. Then we went to our fourth period classes.

Neither of us were there to witness the beginning of the chaos. Seeing as he'd already caught Denton stealing his hairbrush once, Roadkill knew where to go when he discovered it missing a second time. And, of course, he saw Jonathan Fletcher Tork the Fourth's U2 poster, and told him about it. JFT4 saw David's drumsticks, and one of the other student leader's guitar, and on and on and on. When Denton came back, he was pulled into the dormhead's apartment. He was completely befuddled, and swore he was innocent. But he was wearing JBob's favorite jacket, and had the inside pockets stuffed with CDs that were stolen from the local music store. He was kicked out at the end of the week.

For the remainder of the first trimester, JBob and I got along famously. Despite his justifiable concern over my taste in music (I had just grown out of a pop phase, and had a Mariah Carey CD and some Paula Abdul tapes scattered throughout my U2 and Nirvana), we found we had a lot in common. Our honeymoon period was brief but enjoyable.

Both of us had work jobs (the most redundantly named program at the school) in the dining hall. He served lunch. I helped prepare dinner. One night, while squeezing whipped cream onto the lime jello, one of the salad ladies approached me with a petition. "Do you know that Yao Wen kid?" She asked.

I told her that we'd been roommates.

"Well, the faculty and students that work here have been having problems with the way he talks to people. And the way he touches them."

I relayed the story about my walk back to the dorm, after my first tennis class, when Yao Wen had touched my ass. How I'd firmly shook my head and said "Don't touch me." And how he'd touched me again, anyway. And how I'd cracked him over the head with my tennis racket and ran like hell to the dining hall.

"So you'll sign this?"

"What will it do?"

That week, it got him banned from the back of the line in the dining hall. He could still eat there, but he wasn't allowed to even talk to the cooks or the students serving the food. The next week, he was told he was no longer welcome at the farm. It wasn't too long before I came back from French class to find his new room empty. Some months later, my guidance counselor told me he'd been sent to "an institution better suited to his needs".

original post: http://insafemode.livejournal.com/229891.html

Slow Flashes (Part 6: Hanging Out In Public)

Michael Christopher had a mouth like a sewage volcano. He knew how to swear in English, French, Spanish, Italian, German, Dutch, Portuguese, Turkish, and Japanese. And thanks to the two weeks I'd spent hanging out with Deaf kids in summer camp, he know knew how to make ten dirty hand movements in American Sign Language. "You're a lot cooler than you were in elementary school." He said.

I was grateful for his approval. Mostly because in sixth grade, he'd made it a semi-weekly habit to beat the everliving shit out of me, for no other reason than beating the shit out of me was much more entertaining than not beating the shit out of me.

Somehow, in middle school, he'd transitioned from unpopular bully, to extremely popular bully. He'd earned the nickname The Saint, because he only beat up people who deserved it. It was kind of an honor to have him smack you upside your head. But, despite the fact that I was smaller, weaker, and had the social skills of a shaved rabbit in a beehive, he went out of his way to be nice to me.

A few weeks into the school year, his mom asked him to move a couch from the basement to the living room on the second floor. I had no concept of why he called me to help him out. I suspected subterfuge. When I got there Michael and Bird Dick were giggling up a storm. I suppressed my fight or flight instinct, and asked what they wanted me to do.

"I am so fucken high right now." Michael said. "We just" giggling "we just" giggling "oh, man, so fucken high."

I grabbed one end of the couch while Michael and Bird Dick grabbed the other. When the job was finished, Michael hugged me. "Thanks, deeeeeeeeeeewd, we totally fucken owe you one. We're gonna go out on the powerline paths and smoke some more sticky stuff. Wanna join us?"

I remembered that commercial where little Gary Coleman says "Say no. Then go. And tell." But I couldn't remember whether that was about drugs, sex, or getting into cars with strangers.

"Yea, but I've got a doctor's appointment tonight, and I can't go stinking of pot, you know?"

"That's cool." Michael said.

I waited for Bird Dick to make a comment, but he was too out of it to speak.

Michael giggled out a "Later deeeeeeeeeeewd."

Later that week, we had gym together. It was still warm enough that the teachers were making us go outside and play soccer or run track. We were supposed to come to class wearing our school clothes, change into shorts or sweatpants for class, then shower, and change back into our normal clothes when class ended. Only losers wore sweatpants in ninth grade, so we were expected to show up in shorts. Usually, I packed a clean pair in my backpack, but on this day, I'd forgotten. But, I remembered, Saint Michael 'owed me one'. "Hey, Saint, I forgot my shorts at home. Do you have a pair I could borrow?"

"Sure," Michael said, pulling his off, "take these." I turned away as quickly as possible. His ass was exquisite.

"Stop looking at his ass, you fucken cocksucker." Said one of Saint's sidekicks. "I'm going to pound the fuck out of you."

I balled up my fists. I knew I couldn't take them, but I was determined to fight as long as it took to save heterosexual face.

"Yea, Bruno." Michael said. "My ass is no entrada, viado."

Oh, they weren't talking to me. Bruno was a kid named Liam Brunelli who'd moved to Cranberry Lake from Chicago at the beginning of the school year. He was chubby and red faced. His head was too large for his body. And, at the moment, his too large head was being slammed into a locker by a member of Michael's meatheaded fan club. I decided to risk detention by wearing my jeans, and ran out of the locker room before anyone remembered me.

That weekend, my father decided to play a round of golf at the local country club, and I screwed around at the putting green and the driving range while he played. I was on the green when I saw Michael drive by on a cart. "Hey, Saint!" I shouted.

He drove the cart toward me. "What's up?"

"Not much. I didn't know you worked here."

"Yea," he said, looking in the direction of the clubhouse, "my dad owns it."

"Cool." I said. "Listen, they closed the boathouse at Davis Pond for the winter, and Kevin Harris and I were thinking of breaking in next weekend and having a party. I was thinking, if you wanted to come and bring some beer or whatever..."

Michael looked at the ground. "Look." And then he paused doom. "You're a lot cooler than you were before you went away to military school or wherever, but. Look. You've got to stop hanging out with that Harris kid. Jeremy says he's a total fucken froot loop who used to, like, grab Jeremy's junk when he was just a kid. I mean, you do plays and shit so, you know, I get that you're probably a fag, too, but you're at least cool about it. But if you spend any time hanging out with Kevin Harris where people can see you... I don't know how much longer people will talk to you."

I froze. Bird Dick. That stupid, crying, faggy...Bird Dick. I started to say "I'm not gay, you know." when I realized that Michael was already halfway to the clubhouse, and he didn't look too pleased with himself. A look I wore later that day, when I told Kevin Harris I wasn't going to break into the boathouse with him.

original post: http://insafemode.livejournal.com/229750.html

Slow Flashes (Part 5: King Of The Apemen)

My two years at Pilgrim's Academy proved that it wasn't the public school system that was lacking, it was my attention. So, in ninth grade, I began my career as a Freshman at Cranberry Lake High School. The nerdy kids that I'd hung out with in elementary school decided I was too popular to hang out with them now. And while the popular kids appeared to like me, I never felt comfortable hanging out with them. Since I was failing at playing the role of myself, I threw myself into the one thing I felt I was actually good at: acting.

My parents had taken me to an audition for The Bogtown Players' production of Our Town when I was six. Since then, I'd played Linus in You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown, the narrator in a bunch of kids plays, and even had the occasional small role in shows like Bye Bye Birdie, and the horrendous stage version of the popular TV show, M*A*S*H. Near the end of my days at Pilgrim's, a bunch of actors from M*A*S*H decided to try and redeem themselves by getting parts in the UMass Cranberry Lake production of The Crucible. My mom decided to let me audition, since the show was supposed to be for college students and adults, and the odds of them casting a thirteen year old were slim. Of course, nowhere on the audition sheet, did they ask your age.

I got not one, but two parts. Admittedly, two of the smallest parts in the play, but when combined were...still, one of the smallest roles in the play. But I was ten years younger than the next youngest cast member. I was invited to parties where I got to watch people get drunk. And since I didn't have much stage time, I did some homework, and some writing during rehearsals.

On Wednesday nights, while we rehearsed in the main theater, an acting class took place in one of the studio rooms. The teacher didn't seem to mind if the upstairs actors crashed his course, so I sat in and watched grown men and women perform terrible monologues, improvs, and terrifying acts of mime. On monologue night, most of the students got on the makeshift stage and performed something from Shakespeare or Sophocles. They didn't get into costume or use any props, they just boringly recited a familiar set of lines. I was about to go back to the dressing room to do my homework, when one of the students said "I'm going to do a reading from Tarzan, King of the Apemen." He, then, ripped off his t-shirt, and wiggled out of his jeans, revealing a leopard skin g-string. This was going to be worth sticking around for.

I don't remember any of the lines from the monologue. It was something that was supposed to be funny. But the lines were trite, the jokes were predictable. And while the actor showed amazing energy by leaping around the stage, he had the verbal delivery skills of a tracheotomy patient. He kept pausing for laughs that didn't come. And then, during a dramatic leap into the air, something magical happened. His left ball swung out of his g-string and hung there while he said something stupid. The class began to chuckle. The chuckle grew into a murmur of laughter. Encouraged, the student leapt more frantically, delivering his static lines. Then his right ball fell out. Chaos of laughter. My face was red rocks under a waterfall. The professor was applauding. When the monologue ended, the actor did a sort of half curtsy-half bow, and it wasn't until his head was pointed in the direction of his crotch, that he realized what everyone was laughing at. I caught every class after that, but nothing exciting happened.

A week before The Crucible opened, the director scheduled an extra rehearsal on a Tuesday night. "I don't think I can come." I told the director. "My mom is going to Florida to visit her parents, and my dad has to work."

"Can't you borrow one of your friends' cars?" She asked.

"I'm thirteen." I told her.

"Holy cunting fuck!" She said.

When my mom picked me up that night, the director apologized for all the times she'd swore in front of me. "I thought he was eighteen!" She said. "I knew he was a student, I just assumed he was a student here. I mean, he always goes to that acting class during rehearsals, and I thought he was in the class or something."

"Don't worry about it." My mom said. "I can assure you he's heard worse."

original post: http://insafemode.livejournal.com/229248.html

Slow Flashes (Part 4: Bird Dick)

When school let out for the summer, I was left virtually friendless. All my private school friends trotted off to Europe or South America. I wanted nothing to do with Jeremy, which I assumed meant I wouldn't be spending any time with Kevin, either. I was wrong.

At the end of June, Mr. Harris was offered a job in Arizona. Kevin's sister, Erica, had just graduated from high school, and was spending her summer backpacking The Appalachian Trail. Kevin didn't want to spend three weeks in a strange state with only his parents for company, and his sister had no interest in having her twelve year old brother tagging along on her camping trip. Apparently, camping was a more private affair than an orgy. Since he didn't seem to have any alternatives that wouldn't flop him into depression, my parents invited Kevin to stay with us until his parents got back.

After he'd spread his sleeping bag on my bedroom floor, he said, "I heard Bird Dick's parents found out about your Waldo books and told your parents."

I laughed at his new nickname for Jeremy. So obvious. Why hadn't I thought of it? "Yea, but I tore the pictures out of the books before my parents got a chance to look for them."

"Sweet deeeeeeeeeeewd. Where did you put them?"

"I think Bird Dick stole them."

"What a lewwwwwwwwwser." Kevin said. "I can't believe we used to hang out with that baby."

So Jeremy Bird Dick became our punchline punching bag. The stealing, crying, faggy baby who listened to Milli Vanilli, and jerked off to professional wrestling. Kevin and I still watched the Pay-Per-View events, but only because my family had a black box, and we wanted to prove that we knew it was fake. We didn't watch the weekly shows, or really care about wrestling at all. We cared about biking, and girls, and baseball, and Nintendo.

On his fourth day as a member of our family, while my parents were at work, Kevin challenged me to a game of Nintendo Baseball. "I'm gonna kick your ass, faggot."

"You wish, homo." I said. "I rule at this game."

"Bet you ten bucks I win."

I smooshed up my face. "I don't have ten bucks." This was a lie. I was a paperboy who hid half my tips from my parents, in order to buy the soda and candy that they refused to buy for me.

Kevin smooshed his face in a mirror image of mine. "Ok, then. Every time one of us hits a home run, the other person has to do something stupid."

"What," I asked, "like hang out with Bird Dick?"

"No. Like. I don't know. Like stand on your head for a minute."

"Ok."

I hit the first home run in the second inning. "You've got to run outside and shout I love sucking Jeremy Burdick's tiny little cock."

"You're an asshole." Kevin said. But he did as he was dared, and was lucky that nobody appeared to be within auditory range when he shouted it.

In the third inning, Kevin hit his first home run. "Ok, you have to take off your pants, put your hand in one of your Wrinkles dogs, and make it give you a blowjob."

He wanted me to stick my dick in the mouth of a puppet and pretend it was giving me a blowjob? "For how long?"

"A minute."

We went back and forth for most of the game. It seemed we averaged two or three homeruns an inning. He had to pretend he was getting fucked by a lightswitch, I had to put a harmonica in my butt and run around the room, he had to play the rest of the game naked, I had to tie a ribbon around my balls. During the seventh inning, fearing that the next dare might involve touching, I told Kevin I was bored and didn't want to play anymore. Thus securing my role as the Ferdinand Magellan of boys' bodies. I discovered them, but always got hit by the poison arrow of fear before I had the chance to exploit what I found. Fully clothed, the two of us went upstairs and watched Ren and Stimpy until my mother came home.

"Have you two been watching TV all day?" She asked. "It's time to do something productive. Let's go upstairs and clean the gerbil cages. I don't think you've cleaned it in months."

Up the stairs, we trudged behind my mother. I grabbed Rhoda, Ralph, and their assorted babies, and put them in a series of plastic Habitrail tubes. I picked out the wheel, and all the plastic toys, and laid them out on my desk. Then, I put my arms around the terrarium and picked it up. And there, in the spot where the terrarium had been, was fifteen pages of a big nippled goddess squatting over, licking, and otherwise making good use of a huge cock attached to a bronzed man in a visored helmet.

Kevin let out a sharp laugh. "Busted!"

original post: http://insafemode.livejournal.com/228919.html

Slow Flashes (Part 3: Find Waldo Now)

On the ride home, I became convinced that we were going to be in a terrible accident, both of us killed by a tractor-trailer speeding down the wrong side of the highway. When my mom came to identify the bodies, and collect our things, she'd tell the nurse how sweet I'd been, how I'd never cried as a baby, and how I was so smart that I'd been attending private school. And when she got home, and started leafing through my backpack, she'd cry a bit at my tattered Tolkien, she'd cluck her tongue at the blank sheet of graph paper in my algebra book (I was supposed to have finished my homework that afternoon) and then she'd see the Wall Street Journal, and marvel at what an intelligent boy she was raising. A few seconds later, when the porno fell out, she'd realize what a complete sexual deviant I was, and she'd cut me out of all the family photographs.

Luckily for my family, there was no terrible accident between my dad's work and our house. I ran upstairs the moment we got home, and stuffed the magazine under my mattress. During dinner, I realized that my father kept his porn beneath the mattress, so, clearly, my mother would know that that's the first place to check for those kinds of things. I asked to be excused. I ran back upstairs,and began frantically looking around the room. The desk was out, as I'd known for years that my mother liked to go through all of my drawers while I was at school. I couldn't hide it in my closet because my mom had once found a turtle I'd been keeping in a shoebox in there, and she had dug through it once a week, ever since. Under the gerbil cage! Perfect. I hid the magazine and returned to dinner. After dinner, I leisurely watched four minutes of TV before heading back to my room. Under the gerbil cage was a terrible place. What if my mother decided to clean the cage while I played with my friends? Or what if Rhoda or Ralph (the gerbils) decided to make a bigger nest, and moved enough wood chips out of the way to expose the magazine's glossy cover? Doom! I decided that under the mattress was the best I could do for the moment, and decided to go to bed early to protect it.

The next day, my parents let me stay home. I searched the basement for an appropriate hiding place for my new treasure. Under the carpet? Inside the jacket of my old Mousercise record? Every possible spot seemed too conspicuous. The magazine was just too thick. There was no safe place for it. I was a wreck. There were only four hours before my parents came back from work, and I had no idea what to do with it.

I had a small heart attack when the phone rang, and my mom asked me what I was doing. "Playing....Nintendo." I said. My hands were shaking.

"Ok, hon, see you soon."

Soon? Oh, God. Not soon. Anything but soon. I had to do something. Something must be done. Drastic measures needed to be taken. And that's when it hit me. I didn't need the entire magazine. Most of the articles didn't make any sense to me, and I had no use for the pictures of just women. I ran up to my room, took out a pair of scissors, and cut out my favorite fifteen pages of the magazine, which I tucked between the covers of my Where's Waldo books. Then, I brought the rest of the magazine downstairs, tore it into tiny pieces, and used it to start a fire in our charcoal grill. After about twenty minutes, there was nothing left of the magazine but ashes, and my fifteen favorite pages.

But what if my mom picked up the Waldo books while she was dusting, and the pictures fell out?

I went into the basement, swiped a roll of my father's electical tape, and attached the top of each page on the inside covers of all four of Waldo books, so that they were secure, but I could still flip them over to see the other side of the pages. I was clearly well on my way to becoming a criminal mastermind. I longed to tell someone about my evil genius. But who? Jennifer would be grossed out. Scott was treacherous scum. I couldn't risk showing the Waldo books to the other kids in school, lest a teacher discover my secret.

Kevin! Kevin would appreciate my burgeoning life of crime. I tossed my Waldo books into my backpack, and walked down the street to his house, and knocked on his door. He was in his room, playing Ninja Gaiden with Jeremy. When we were done marvelling at the graphics of the game, I opened up my backpack, and made them both swear not to tell anyone about what I was going to show them.

A week later, every kid in my neighborhood had borrowed my Where's Waldo books. When they were safely back on my bookshelf, I breathed for the first time since I found the stupid magazine. No one had been caught.

By then, school was back in session, and life had returned to passably normal. I kept my Where's Waldo books in my backpack at all times. Nobody at school knew I had them, and there was never a moment when my mom might stumble upon them while she was cleaning.

On a Saturday night that seemed as docile and soothing as any Saturday night, my parents invited Jeremy Burdick's parents over for dinner and drinks. I knew that Mr. Burdick and my father worked together, but I didn't know they were friends. And I'd never seen Mrs. Burdick out of their house before. After dinner, while the adults sat on the porch, drinking cocktails and telling stories, Jeremy and I went into the basement to play Kid Icarus. I had just been turned into an eggplant when my mother opened the door to the basement. "Hon?" She called.

"Yea, mom?"

"We're getting a little bored of playing cards up here. We were wondering if you'd mind going up to your room and bringing us a couple of your Waldo books. We want to see who can find him the fastest."

My little eggplant eyes bugged out. "Uhhhh...Sure."

I ran upstairs and tore all the pictures out of the book, leaving noticeable rips. I asked Jeremy to fold up the evidence and hide them somewhere. Crisis averted.

I went back to the basement and tried to de-eggplant myself. Jeremy came down a minute later.

"Where did you put them?" I asked.

He smiled. "I'll tell you later. Our parents might be listening."

We played the game a few minutes longer, and then he said "How come all the pictures in that book had guys in them? You gay?"

I paused the game. "They had girls in them, too."

"Fag." Jeremy said. Then he went upstairs and told his parents he wanted to go home.

After he left, I scoured my room for my pictures. When I didn't find them, I knew that Jeremy had taken them home with him. Oh, well. I hoped his parents found them and grounded him for a year.

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