X, page 19
I moved out the next day. I had a job, and I knew an older girl with her own place who liked me enough to share for a bit. I can’t remember when I ended up getting the birth control, but I did it by myself. That was the first time I went to the doctor and remembered it the next day.
####
Forrest’s office smells like his cologne, which smells like a moldy cedar chest. The vinyl chair I sit in is a little too small. Over his shoulder, in the open-floor area, I can see Aisha with her Pantene hair and linty jacket. Triskit watches me from her lap, leaning back against her, tits out.
After an initial double take, Forrest talks without looking at me. I nod my head every so often, like I’m listening. If I’d been good at school, I would have gotten a degree, and if I’d gotten a degree, I wouldn’t have this job. I mean, I couldn’t have this job without a degree—my résumé says I have one, but that’s a lie that no one’s ever bothered to check. But if I really had one, I could be somewhere else.
I dropped out of college after two years, when they jacked up tuition for the third time. Couldn’t be helped. Still, sometimes I regret not finishing, even with the debt and all that. If I had a degree, a good degree, maybe exporting would be easier. I could be someplace nice right now, a place with good plumbing and no energy savers and free medical care. Like Helsinki. I could have an apartment of my own. I could travel to other countries just for fun, like rich people do.
Forrest seems to be winding down. I know it’s time to go back to my desk when he nods his head and reaches for his mouse.
“How’d it go?” asks Aisha. Triskit is still watching me. He has so many tits.
“Fine,” I say. I sit down and put in my earbuds, looking away from the screen until it wakes back up again and becomes too bright to be reflective. I don’t want to encourage a conversation. My face is swollen almost as bad as my body was a few weeks ago, but miraculously, Aisha hasn’t said anything about it.
“Are you okay?” she asks.
One time Aisha tried to invite me to dinner. She texted me during work. I have no idea how she got my number. I could tell she was watching as I picked up my phone, read the text, deleted it, and put the phone back down. I thought about blocking her but decided that it was unnecessary, and I was right, because she never texted me again. She acted as if nothing had ever happened.
“I’m fine,” I said. I turned to my screen as if I were busy, but there was still nothing for me to do. I was exhausted by the idea of talking for a second longer, and it was only 10:30 a.m.
####
A little after five, I decide to knock off early. Forrest watches me leave from his window-walled office. I watch him right back, zipping up my coat as I march to the door.
There’s an old gay bar a few blocks from my office. I rarely go because it’s mostly frequented by straight tourists these days, but it’s early enough to be mostly empty, and I want a drink. And since it’s a gay bar in name only, I don’t have to worry about a raid.
I find a barstool and lean, tenting my fingers on the bar’s polished wood. When I pull my phone out of my pocket to check the time, the battery’s at 2 percent. There’s a message from Camille.
won’t be home til late but will you stay up? need to talk.
Shit. As I compose my reply, the screen goes black. I feel a wave of relief, and then nausea. I can’t get drunk now. I have to be awake and alert and ready to fight Camille over my unpaid rent when she gets home. Maybe I’ll lose my job and my couch all in the same week. Now I really need a drink.
The bartender is short, stacked, and apathetically slicing a bucket of jaundiced limes. The naked ladies on her forearms dance as she moves, and when she looks up to check the soccer game behind her, the subdermals in her cheeks wink at me. The neon behind her screams TITTY TWISTERS ON TAP. Despite the shift in clientele, the wall is still covered in stickers, decals, and graffiti: the black spears of antifa, ACAB, GAY POWER, END WHITE SUPREMACY, SOPHIE’S MOON.
The bartender carefully ignores me. I slide onto a barstool and glare at the chalkboard behind her, as if the only reason I haven’t been served is that I don’t know what I want to drink yet. Fine by me. The longer all of this takes, the more I delay the inevitable moment of finishing what’s in front of me and, with nothing else to do, thinking about X.
It’s hard to believe that I didn’t even know she existed a few weeks ago. That if I had walked by her on the street everything may have been different. And what about now? What if she walked in and sat down next to me? What would I do?
I finger a peeling sticker on the wall: a photo of Huey with a shotgun. He’s wearing a black beret, his ammo like rolls of pennies lined up across his chest. He looks handsome and young and sad.
Guns are easy enough to get. Camille would get me one, if I asked her. Mads, too, if I hadn’t lost her in the divorce. It would feel good to have one with me whenever I left the apartment, to have the final act always within reach.
As I wait for the bartender’s attention, more people come into the bar, more than I would have expected so early on a weeknight. Soon it’s not empty enough to feel private, yet not full enough to feel anonymous.
I wish I was in a nice, almost-empty bar where I could just chat with the barman—it’s always a man in the fantasy, isn’t it? Middle-aged. Any race, so long as he has a little stubble, maybe some bifocals. No hair on top. He smokes a cigarette as he towel dries glasses, nodding indulgently as you slur through your most recent heartbreak, your disappointing son, the golden retriever that died years before her time.
This bar is not that bar. Over the decades it’s given up its gayness, assimilated. But it didn’t go fully straight, or not enough to become the dive where everybody knows your name, homey and humble and white-bread and heterosexual. Instead, it tried to split the difference, and now it’s just a sad, safe capitulation, like an oil executive who buys a mass-produced harness for a gay orgy with a hundred-dollar door fee. There’s too much rainbow in here, more neon than necessary, tired slogans on the wall—LOVE WINS—and Patsy Cline on the jukebox. God, we’re embarrassing.
“Ready?”
The bartender is finally talking to me. There are no more limes to slice, but her knife is at the ready, like a sixth finger. She is not the kind of bartender who wants to hear about my problems, especially the problems I’m preoccupied with tonight.
Well, I met this femdom nightmare a few weeks ago, and I can’t stop thinking about her is how I might start if she were like the friendly barman you see in old sitcoms. She’s exporting soon. She might even already be gone. I need to know for sure, but I also don’t want to know. I want to see her again. But I don’t know why.
Femdom nightmare, eh? the barman would say, the knuckle of a cigar poking out from under the white bristles of his mustache. A smile tickles the corners of his mouth. I’ve run across a few of those in my time. His perspiration twinkles knowingly.
I would shake my head. I would run my fingers through my hair. I’m not even a bottom, I explain to him. Or a switch. But something happened. Something changed. I would shake my head again. I just have to find her. I can’t stop thinking about her.
And what will you do, the friendly barman would ask, his eyeglass chain sparkling in the heterosexual neon of Bushmills, Coors, German girls in lederhosen, the orange-and-blue Mets ball, if you can’t find her?
I would take a deep breath. I would be honest with him. If she’s already gone, I would say, either I find out where she is and find a way to get there, or I kill myself. Or something else, maybe.
The barman would purse his lips and nod. He would know my chances as well as I did.
“Whiskey, neat,” I tell the real bartender. It’s the first drink that comes to mind. When she hands it to me, I connect it to my mouth and glue my eyes to the soccer game. The drunker I get, the more fun sports are, and I have a credit card I haven’t yet maxed out. Fuck Camille.
When the game ends, the bartender switches over to a nineties sitcom. I happen to be eyeing the door when they come in. They’re trailing a group of people, but it’s obvious they’ve come here alone. They’re wearing black and they’re not flagging, but I don’t need to see a hanky: Their boots are impeccable. They shine like they’re under a spotlight.
My Docs are filthy, but that doesn’t matter; I can tell I have Boot Boy’s attention. My fifth drink of the night taps the mahogany. In a moment, they’re sitting on the stool beside me. Dark hair, white T-shirt with the sleeves rolled up.
Instinctively, I check my phone. Still dead. According to the clock by the TV, it’s not even ten. Camille still won’t be home for hours. I need something to do besides drinking, or I’ll black out. I listen as they order their beer, sit patiently as they begin to drink it. Suddenly, I spin around in my seat. They startle, I’m pleased to see.
“Watch it for me?” I say, nodding at my glass. We look at it together. It’s empty. “I’m just headed to the bathroom.”
When I get up, I only sway a little. Can’t remember when I last ate, but I’m good, I can handle it. The tile under my feet is checked like the Black Lodge. Behind me, the music gets louder. I’m gonna treat you sweet and kind . . . I’ll drive her right outta your mind. More Patsy, but I’m not irritated anymore. It takes forever to get to the door with the white man shape on it.
I like the bathrooms at this bar because they have stalls as well as urinals. Two of them, in fact, one standard, one plus-size. I go into the standard to piss. As I’m washing my hands at the row of sinks, I hear the door open. I look up into the mirror. Right on time.
I push them into the stall I just used, forearm them against the wall, mouth on theirs while locking the door with my right hand. They return their mouth, but when they push into me and against my arm, I shove them down to their knees. I lift up my right foot and set it on the toilet. What’s filthier, my boots or the plastic seat?
“You know what to do,” I say. Their eyes are enormous. Their nipples are hard under their T-shirt.
Their tongue is out before their face meets the leather of my right boot. It slips over the darkness, dampening the dirt and something that looks like bird shit.
I have a handful of their hair, thick and black between my fingers. I pull it away from the scalp, first nicely, then hard. I can feel the follicles scream, their face pulling as they struggle against it, but they keep licking. When they reach out a finger to touch my leather, I slap it away.
“Hands off.”
Obediently, their arms return behind their back, their ass out like a cat in heat.
“Now this one,” I say, pushing their face away and putting a new boot in front of it.
They dig in like a starving man. Their mouth is so red, their lips pink from the friction. I wonder if they’re sober. I hope they are. I want them to taste and remember everything. Want them to think long and hard about everything I’ve stepped in since the last bitch cleaned these things. Eat it all, then beg for more. They’re moaning, squirming, lifting and lowering themself ever so slightly on their heels. It’s disgusting. Maybe they’ll puke.
“You’re terrible at this,” I say, and when they pull away, finally ashamed, I shove their head back into the leather, grinding it into their face. I hope they have a fat lip tomorrow. “I didn’t say to stop. Have you even done this before?”
They try to nod, and I grind my boot again. They burrow back into it. Sick puppy. The more I think about it, the more disgusted I am. I wonder what they’re wearing under their jeans. Boxers? Frilly pink panties with a white lace bow? Nothing at all?
When I get bored, I shake them off. “That’s enough,” I say. “You’re making me sick. I’m not even turned on anymore.”
I stand up and drag them with me, by the throat this time, easily because I’m too drunk to feel my left elbow, still hurt from my night at Fist. Judging by their face, you’d think I’d whipped them bloody instead of teasing them a little. I think I’m starting to really hurt their feelings. God, I hope they’re sober. “Let me see that mouth.”
They open up, still red, wet and rippling, the back of their throat undulating. I wish I’d strapped on before I left the apartment today. I think for a moment about taking them with me somewhere, maybe back to the apartment, and slipping in and out of their holes for a few hours, but then I decide against it. There would be too much time to think in between here and wherever I’d take them. We might have to talk. Let’s not ruin a good thing. God, I need a good thing.
They’re a head shorter than me and at least twenty pounds lighter. Lifting them isn’t hard. Their back against the tile again, gasping for breath. I examine their face and they watch me do it, flexing themself against the wall. Slut.
“Open,” I say. They open. “Wider,” I say. I wind up, then let loose. Spit sprays on their face, flecks their tongue. Their eyes close. They moan again.
It takes my fingers a moment to identify what I’m touching. A jockstrap. Of course. Their hips pull away, and I let it loose with a snap, then dive back in again, holding them back with my forearm. I move it up across their throat, and their moans tremble, eyes roll, as I circle, slowly feeling out the hair, the skin, the bone softening. The wetness is pure heat.
“You’re so hard,” I whisper. “You licked shit off my boots and you’re hard as a rock.”
I press my forearm harder. The next moan rattles like a snake.
“Did you hear me?” I ask. “Pervert.”
Circling, circling, pushing, and then the plunge. I miss my cock so much I want to go home and make love to it, just the two of us. One finger. Two. Three. The faggot moans against my chest like a child, panting, arching their back. Suddenly they lift their head. “Don’t look at me,” I say. They twist their neck away, and that’s when I feel the first one on my hand, the pulsing on high. The bathroom door creaks open, but I’m not done yet. Keys jingle, footsteps slide, and I cover its mouth, flip it over, and pull down its pants just enough to get down there from behind.
“Touch yourself,” I say into its ear. I don’t bother whispering.
Its hand moves, darting into its fly. I pull my hand out, spit on my fingers, and go back in. I have a few of them in its asshole when it happens again, and this time it makes noises as the feet shuffle, the door slams.
Now it’s time to let go. I pull my hand out again and wipe it on the seat of their jeans. I lean against the stall to catch my breath, watch them leaning forward, catching theirs. Their shirt is pulled up around their waist, and there it is, high on the right side of their ass. Two lines, four right angles, burned into their skin.
####
“Weather’s shit,” says the deli guy.
“I guess so,” says the customer. He’s buying a tallboy—COOL CRISP ORGANIC +50MG THC—and some swishers. Both men are wearing identical beanies. The deli smells like rice and weed. Behind me, a teenage girl with cobwebs of hickeys on her neck and a tattoo on the white meat of her left eyeball glares down at her phone.
I didn’t move to New York for any particular reason. I didn’t have a long-distance girlfriend or a job or dreams of hitting it big doing something important. I don’t have hobbies, unless you include my sex life. I think I’m the only person I know who isn’t some kind of artist with nine projects on the side.
When I decided to move here, I was twenty-three and living in a big town with endless suburbs where people sort of just oozed along. When my girlfriend Sabrina and I broke up, she traded me a little money in exchange for all the furniture and stuff we had bought together. It wasn’t much, but it was the richest I’d ever been. I figured that since I was already moving, it wouldn’t be all that much more trouble to come here and start over.
I had only visited New York once before, with Sabrina, actually. She was from the Bronx, and I came with her for some family event. I met her parents, nice people who didn’t care at all that she was a dyke. Their niceness weirded me out, so I tried to get her out of the house as much as possible.
She took me into the city, and we walked around, holding hands, in that perfect window of good weather right at the beginning of May, after the crocus fades and just as the roses get bright. We saw all the tourist sights—Times Square and all that—but I remember the streets best. You know, dogwoods pinking, irises budding, ivy climbing, snow-white dahlias preening in kiosk windows or dead and curled in newspaper. Dogs shitting with joy, and kids running around, laughing, pushing, stealing, sitting on the train and lost in their phones and notepads and books. People talked to each other in the street and stood outside stores and subway stations eating sandwiches, bits of donut scattering on the pavement as they moved their hands. Everyone was holding a vape or a styrofoam cup of coffee. Everyone was yelling, deep into the night. Disco and cumbia at all hours, sirens, fights. Sometimes birds, when the sun was coming up, from the Japanese maples and honey locusts.
New York, I thought, as Sabrina held my biceps with her hands, had energy. New York was vital. It was flowering trees and puddle scum and mold and meth and poison and open wounds and festering wounds and healed wounds stitched up neat as embroidery. That’s what everyone had always told me about New York, that it’s hard and beautiful and ugly and magnificent, and I agreed. I fisted Sabrina in her childhood bed—baby-pink sheets, silk pillowcases, textured wallpaper, kawaii and neat as a pin—and made her beg Daddy to cum while her parents slept in the next room. A part of me hoped they would hear and kick us out, give Sabrina a taste of the real gay experience.
