Chapter Ten: I’ll Never See Bugs and Daffy the Same Way

Roy’s bedroom is done all in blues: light blue walls; deep, soft carpet; matching semi-transparent curtains; blue-striped bed sheets; and a dark blue comforter.

His favorite color is green.

It was his mother’s decision to decorate. I don’t know if it annoys him—he never complains. I just can’t help but wonder: does he open his eyes every morning hoping to see green? Did he ask her for green; did she choose blue anyway?

I think I know the answer, though. Why would it matter, really? I think of my stark white walls and wood floors, nothing in my room but a dresser and a bed, and I think that maybe, if my mother cared enough even to decorate my room at all, even if everything was painted some obscene color like yellow or pink…then, just maybe, I would want to spend a second longer in there than absolutely necessary.

Here, though…I love it here. If I had the choice to stay in one place forever, one place that actually exists, this would be the only place I would consider: here in this room, on top of his comforter, with Roy smiling at me.

Not that I have that choice. That privilege.

Ben’s on the bed, controller in hand, scowling at the screen. Roy, Tara, and I are gathered around my project, our bodies arranged like the spokes of a wheel around the three by four foot posterboard I’m supposed to be turning into a masterpiece. Although I have all of my outlines done, I only have about a fourth of the whole board colored in. On the floor next to us is the box of fancy blendable colored pencils we’re required to use.

Roy holds a dark green colored pencil gently in his hand, his fingers bunched up near the very tip and his face inches away from the paper. Tara clutches an orange pencil and colors in huge patches lightly, sometimes overshooting the boundaries of my rough outline.

Me, my pencil is brown. The shiny letters down the side read “Terra Cotta,” but whatever. It’s brown. Okay.

“So I was reading yesterday,” Tara randomly breaks our silence, “about this guy who tried to poison his wife with arsenic, but he did it so gradually that she built up an immunity to it, so that when he got bored with the subtle poisoning, he dumped enough arsenic to kill 50 people in her soup, and all it did was make her really sick.”

We all pause, staring at her. Tara is random, but that was really random.

“Uh…yeah?”

“Well, I was just thinking. Sometimes, when you go slow and try to be subtle, it backfires. Sometimes you need to take the plunge and dump the arsenic in all at once.” She looks down at my poster board. “Or the other person will build up an immunity.”

Roy and I look at each other.

“That’s a morbid life philosophy.”

“Sounds like morbid dating advice…”

“Remind me never to marry you, Tara,” Roy jokes. This makes me do a little double-take, especially when Tara just giggles. That doesn’t make sense if they’re dating.

“Fuck that,” Ben says. “Tara, I’m never accepting food from you again.” He sounds so serious that we all laugh.

Tara smiles sweetly at him. “Hey, Roy?” she asks archly, “Didn’t your mom say she wanted help with dinner?”

Roy tries so hard not to snort as he says, “She sure did.”

“Fuck that,” Ben repeats, swearing again when, two seconds later, the screen of the video game he’s playing flashes red and takes him back to the last checkpoint—which he reached a good twenty minutes ago. So when Jesse walks into the room, he’s welcomed by a string of curses that sound something like, “Fuckshitdamnbitchfuckinghateyourass!!!”

“Um…hi?” Jesse says, so alarmed it comes out like a question.

Ben looks at the door where he stands. “Oh. Hey, man.” He glares at the television. “Bitch.”

“Jesse! Hey,” Roy greets him with a huge smile, standing for some reason and gesturing with a wide arm to his room so that Jesse will enter. Jesse gives Tara a little nod, and she smiles at him warmly. Then, without even acknowledging me, though I’m less than a foot away from Tara, his eyes drop down to my project, and he says, “Wow. What’s this?”

“This,” I say, a little louder than necessary to draw his reluctant attention to me, “is a collage of everything I love.”

Those blue eyes pin me for a second, then look back down at the poster board, and he comes closer, kneeling across from me, his eyes roving over the jumble of colors. He stares at it for a few seconds, turning his head to the side as if that will help him decipher all of the junk on the poster. Then he gasps.

“Mattie, this is really good!”

Feeling a little spark of warmth, I look to see what he’s pointing at, only to feel shitty again as soon as I see what it is. “Roy did that whole section.” I look closer. “He even changed my outline. Thanks, Roy. That actually looks like a cat, now.”

“Sorry. I couldn’t help it,” he says defensively.

“Hey, I wasn’t being sarcastic. Why is it every time I try to say thank you, you all think I’m being an asshole?”

“Because you usually are!” Tara crows, nudging me with her elbow. It’s gentle, though, so it’s no big deal.

“Well…give a guy the benefit of the doubt sometimes,” I mutter. I’m not really paying attention, because Roy has joined Jesse on the floor, and Jesse are kneeling over my project, faces close and voices soft as Roy points out the different parts of the collage, particularly the ones he did. They’re easily identifiable; because they’re the ones that don’t suck (Tara isn’t much better at art than I am.)

“This is Jackie Chan and Bruce Lee, because he loves old Kung Fu movies,” Roy is telling him. “And this here is the cover art of a CD from his favorite band.” I enjoy listening to him. It amazes me that I only met him at the beginning of the school year and yet he knows so much about me.

He continues through everything he helped with and goes through Tara’s contribution. When he gets to my section, though, he has to pause for a second to figure out what the shapes are supposed to be.

“Oh,that’s probably supposed to be the finger-painting he did in fifth grade. His mom still has it on the fridge, you know.”

“Roy.”

He jerks his eyes up, flushing as he sees the glare on my face. He knows he’s not supposed to talk about my fucking mom. To anybody. Especially not Jesse.

“Sorry.” He moves on quickly. “Uh…hey, um, Mattie?” he asks hesitantly. “What’s this big glob here in the corner?”

“Your face.” I glare at the television, where Ben is hacking apart a zombie. It spurts gratifying spatters of blood on the ground. The spatters remain until the zombie bursts apart into a cloud of green dust to signify its death, and then the dust, and the spatters, quickly disappear into thin air.

“Oh.” His voice sounds weird. Embarrassed and something else I can’t identify.

“We can’t all be amazing artists like you.”

“I didn’t say anything,” he argues quietly.

I mutter, “Whatever,” and let it drop. Because I just realized what’s probably got him so weird—this is supposed to be a collage of things I love, and I drew his freaking face. What the hell is wrong with me? Like that could BE any more obvious?!

I mean…it should be fine. Gantsky doesn’t care enough to ask us all what each object is, and you really can’t tell it’s Roy’s face. It looks like a huge circular blob of black over a pink-ish mess. I just used pink for his skin because, for one, I was too lazy to do the layering shit we were supposed to do, and for another, because there’s no colored pencil that matches Roy’s skin. It’s so hard to describe, let alone draw. It’s like he’s pale, but a dark pale, if that makes sense. It’s a color that would make anybody else look like they’re sick, but on him, with his dark hair and his piercing dark eyes, it gives him this ethereal beauty, so intense he would almost be scary if he weren’t so open and friendly to everybody. His skin is a layering of colors, translucent. When light hits it, it bounces off, but also penetrates his skin and gives it this eerie glow that’s diffused just underneath the surface. And his lips…there’s no color in the world that matches his lips.

Perfect. I guess that’s what I’m trying to say. He’s perfect. He’s beautiful.

My pink and black blob looks nothing like him.

But who cares? My project is nearly finished. I’m going to get an A. Gantsky awards grades based on effort alone, not talent, and thanks to Roy and Tara, it now looks like I put some effort into it.

“So what took you so long, Jesse?”

It was Ben who spoke, though when I look up, Ben is still staring at the screen, twisting the controller in his hand from side to side as he tries to kill monsters. Moving the controller never works unless you’re playing a fucking Wii. He knows that, but he doesn’t care.

“I had an appointment.”

“Didn’t you go to the doctor’s Wednesday?” he asks, sparing Jesse a glance and getting slashed by a vicious zombie’s claws for his effort. I train my attention on Jesse. I do seem to remember him giving that as an excuse to skip Tara’s concert…though he showed up anyway, of course, so calling it an excuse seems a bit low.

“Yeah, but that was just a checkup. You know, since I’m knew to the system, the school wants it for their files. Everything was routine, though. I thought it would take longer than it did. This time—”

“Why’d you think that?” I interrupt.

He turns back to look at me, brows drawn together in confusion. “Well, my doctor is in Cleveland, and there’s the drive there, and back. Plus there’s usually a long wait, but there wasn’t that time, and traffic was unusually light.”

“Whoa…Cleveland,” Ben comments. His voice is calmer, not strained, and when I look over at him on the bed, I see he has the game paused. He’s totally focused on Jesse, too, which makes me wonder if he’s as suspicious as I am. “Why so far away?”

“My mom, you know: has to have the best, no matter how much of a pain it is for me.”

I hear Roy chuckle in acknowledgement. His mom is a little overprotective, too, but just a little, and it’s in a loving way, not crazy-ass lockdown like Jesse’s mom.

"So why aren't you living in Cleveland?" I ask.

"My mom doesn't want me in the school system there."

"So instead she thought she'd brave the perils of the small town and cart you back and forth for every doctor visit?" Ben asks.

Jesse laughs.

"She could have kept homeschooling you," I point out. I wonder if the others know he was homeschooled…but by their unsurprised expressions I guess they do.

"No, I wanted to go to a high school. You know, before I…graduate." The way he says it makes it seem like graduate is not the word he wants to use. After having met his mother, I think it’s a pretty safe bet to replace ‘graduate’ with ‘get the hell away from my crazy-ass overprotective mommy.’ "So we compromised and moved here from Boston. My dad has a sister here; she found us a nice house."

Tara whistles for some reason. "Yeah. I'd say."

“My dentist is in Geneva, though, so that’s not so bad,” Jesse adds.

"Well, I don't blame your mom on that one. The dentist here sucks," Ben says with his characteristic whine. We all laugh, except for Jesse.

"His dad's the dentist," Roy explains to Jesse.

"Ben has weekly checkups," Tara elaborates with malicious glee.

Ben crosses his arms and slumps down on the bed, against the wall, before snorting and pressing the ‘start’ button to unpause the game with a little more force than necessary. Oh, great. Now he'll be grumpy all night.

Normally, I would condone this, being somewhat of a grump myself—if not for the subject matter. It pisses me off that Ben gets his panties all twisted into knots because his father is a little overbearing. He should spend an hour with my father. Fucker thinks he has it so bad.

Plus, Ben is just incredibly annoying

“Anyway,” Jesse says, “today it was a chiropractic appointment. I think everything’s covered now. I shouldn’t have many more appointments…my mom is just a little overcautious, you know?”

He’s, what, sixteen or seventeen years old? Why the hell does he need a chiropractor? All of these appointments sound awfully suspicious to me. Ben just shrugs, and I can tell he’s not really paying attention anymore.

As I look from Ben back to Jesse, I see his eyes on me, but they quickly flick away.

Just then, a soft voice floats up the stairs. “Tara, did you say you would help me to peel the chiles?”

“Yeah, Brenda, I’ll be down in a second!” Tara yells back. She stands and dusts off the back of her jeans, and all the while Ben is whining about how Tara gets to call Roy’s mom by her first name but Ben has to call her Mrs. Gladding.

“Because you always make it sound sleazy,” Tara snipes, sticking her tongue out at him.

“Oh, fine then!” Ben teases obnoxiously. “Go, go. Wouldn’t want to keep the Whoreibble Poisoner from her mission.”

“Hey, hey, hey. No name calling, dickface,” Tara shoots back, “unless you can think of something more creative than calling a woman a whore. Because of course nobody’s ever thought of that.” She blows him a kiss before she disappears through the door. “I’ll set aside a special plate for you, Benny-boo.”

Ben has this uncomfortable look on his face. “Hey, Roy, can we just order pizza tonight? Seriously, I wouldn’t put it past her…”

Roy gives him a look of pity. “You want to eat a pizza in front of my mom on a night when she’s made chile rellenos?” He shakes his head. “Nice knowing you, buddy.”

Ben’s eyes bulge. “Chile…oh my god, make your mom adopt me.”

Jesse laughs. “I think she’s more likely to adopt Tara, since she’s the one nice enough to help her cook.”

Ben waves his hand. “That’s what women are supposed to do.”

“He’s joking, Jesse,” I say. They all give me weird looks for it, but that look on Jesse’s face in response to Ben’s words—he believed Ben. I know it. Jesse freezes and sort of looks to Ben for confirmation.

“Yeah, of course I was,” he assures, kind of offended. “That whore thing, too, I didn’t mean it. Tara’s not like that. Just said it because she said I was sleazy.”

“I knew that,” Jesse says, nodding. But he looks relieved.

“Ben has known Tara almost as long as I have,” Roy adds. “They bicker all the time…and, anyway, Ben is more of a whore than Tara is.”

Ben makes an exaggerated wounded face. “I take offense to that, sir!” Then he ponders it for a second while we laugh as his faux outrage, admitting, “Okay, no I don’t. I actually think it would be pretty cool to be a whore. No, no,” he says, waving his hands at my incredulous laugh, “think about it. You’d get to fuck loads of girls and get paid for it. That would be the best job ever.”

“But you’d have to whore for guys too, and I guarantee you’d get fucked,” I argue. “No guy’s gonna pay to get it up the ass when they can go to an airport bathroom and have their senator do it for free. And I bet you’d get all kinds of nasty fuckers, who’d want to felch you and shit like that,” I add.

“Ew!” Roy cries, and covers his ears. “I can’t believe you said that. Now I have images.”

“How do you even know what it is?” Ben asks, right after he shivers in disgust.

“I watch porn,” he says, like it's obvious.

Whoa! I’m awake now.

“What, you? No way,” Ben scoffs, and I have to say I agree. For some reason, that thought has never crossed my mind, that Roy may watch porn. I always have this tendency to see him as kind and faultless, but then he’ll swear or something and break the illusion; I never mind, because it’s sexy as hell, but sometimes I get an uncomfortable jolt when something reminds me how much I don’t know about him.

I should suggest we watch porn. Together. Male bondage—I mean, bonding.

“What kind of porn do you like, Roy?”

My eyes widen in a mini-heart attack. I swear, I thought I voiced that question aloud, because I was sure as hell thinking it…but no, it was Ben, and he couldn’t get cheekier if his life depended on it.

I hope Roy can’t see how I’m straining my ears for his answer. He laughs bashfully. “Uh…” he looks at me, and his expression changes slightly; his eyebrows draw together a bit and his smile loses a fraction of its shine. “Lesbians.”

No!

Omg.

Gross.

And unfair.

“Aaaaaaand…what gets you off, Mattie?”

The question catches me off guard, and I answer truthfully without thinking. “Threesomes.”

“What kind of threesomes, Mattie?” Ben asks suggestively, teasingly.

“Wouldn’t you like to know?” I reply right back. My voice is thankfully teasing like Ben’s, not sultry and low as it surely would have been had Roy asked the question. I actually had a great dream last night, in which my subconscious completely misinterpreted Jesse’s obvious desire to come between me and Roy. My subconscious is a little more…literal. Not my fault.

“And…Jesse?” Roy asks. He looks up, surprised that he’s included in this conversation. He looks flustered for a second. I bet he doesn’t even watch porn.

“Yowee.”

Blank looks all around. “Yowee? What’s that mean?” Roy asks.

“Cartoon sex.”

I’m stunned. And I kind of want to laugh, because he just said ‘cartoon sex’ and that’s hilarious. But mostly I’m just stunned. Imagining this boy, with his open-book face and his sexy almost-innocence, who is probably legitimately beautiful enough to be likened to an angel…imagining him lying in bed or sitting at a computer, watching porn with his hand on his cock and his cheeks flushed. Just thinking about him thinking about sex makes me feel a little desperate and crazy. I try to focus more on the ‘laughing’ part of my bipartisan, traitorous brain. “What, like Bugs and Daffy?” I ask. I don’t clear my throat or shift positions on the floor, because that would be way too obvious, but Jesse gives me this indecipherable look, silent while he judges me.

Then I realize, a second before he speaks, that, for once, it’s not suspicion with which his eyes follow me, it’s wariness. It’s then that I understand.

I understand, probably more clearly than I’ve ever understood anything, or anyone, I guess, in my whole life. I know it so completely that I don’t need the next words that come out of his mouth, though they only offer a bit more confirmation.

“That’d be hot,” he deadpans, “but no. Japanese cartoons. It’s actually really interesting. Since it’s animated, they can make it visually appealing, so it’s not cheesy.”

I just stare at him. It’s one thing to guess and it’s another thing to guess and then be right. I kind of don’t know what to do with myself, now.

“But they exaggerate,” he continues. “I’m convinced anal sex is less sanitary and romantic than they want you to think.”

Oh my god. Wow.

Other than a slight chuckle from Roy, nobody mentions his glaring words: Anal sex. Of course they wouldn’t. It’s because I’m as straight as a question mark that this occurs to me. Straight people, especially in our town, don’t spend a lot of time thinking about the mechanics of gay sex.

Jesse is gay.

He thinks he’s got me pegged.... and he’s somewhat correct, I have to admit—I am an asshole—but he made a mistake. This whole time, I realize, he has been suspicious, but suspicious of me knowing that he’s gay, and under the impression that I’m judging him for it. This whole time I’m come off as homophobic to his incredibly naïve perceptions.

He doesn’t know that I’m gay at all.

At all.

But he is. One hundred percent, no shadow of a doubt. That’s scary sometimes, when something is so set in stone, so factual. I prefer the hypothetical stuff that’s always up for interpretation. I know how to respond to that.

But this…

I know he is gay.

But I don’t know what to do about that.

If I should do anything.

Question: If I were faced with being alone and miserable…or with settling and taking a chance on someone and being possibly more miserable, which would I choose?

Answer up, Mattie.

It’s spelled yaoi, but pronounced yowee, and it’s romanticized Japanese male/male for women. More importantly, if you type “yowee” in the yahoo search bar, it yields no incriminating results—but that won’t really be important until later.