"I heard you went to Jason Halford's party, pounded two beers, hid in your hoody, and left with a short guy."
Through the phone, Matt's voice was amused.
"Kevin Berger is the devil."
"Don't give all the credit to Kevin. It was you being yourself. Also, I've told him to stay away from you. He doesn't listen to people."
"I wanted to punch him."
"Oh, yes. Because you're such a tough guy," Canetti said. "I would've paid money to see that."
"He's obsessed with me. Practically a stalker."
"You're so melodramatic. He's a relatively harmless dick and his style of flirting doesn't work on you. But anyway," Matt said, "what's the story with the short dude?"
"He's not that short," I said. "The way you say it, it's like I was with a midget."
"You're not supposed to say midget. It's like saying retard. It's offensive to some. You're supposed to say little person, or dwarf."
"I'm not a dwarfist."
"You hooked up with the dwarf?"
"He's not a dwarf," I said. "He was really hot. You would've hooked up with him."
"It's cool," he said. "You should, you know, test out other guys. You shouldn't spend half of college exclusively with me. I'm going to be gone in seven months anyway, as devastatingly sad as it makes me to say that."
We were quiet while I processed the implications of that.
"Well," I mumbled, "that's cool. If it makes any difference, you're a much better kisser than the dwarf. You're hot enough in your own right. For a tall person."
"Thanks," he said. "When I started checking things out, I wanted to get off with every halfway-decent looking guy I saw. I'm surprised that it didn't happen sooner. You're fairly attractive when you make the effort. I think I'm proud of you, but I'm not sure. This must be how a mother rat feels when her baby rat eats his first Taco Bell. As long as you don't get herpes or punch Kevin. That's the rule. No herpes and no punching."
Matt had been a problem to schedule, which is probably how I wandered into Kevin Berger's gay little Manchurian Candidate scheme. I'd been back almost a month and saw Canetti only twice. The first time, I met him for beers and we went back to his new apartment that he shared with his chick friend Erin -- it was nicer than his old place, and occupied the ground floor of a big house like my new one.
I hooked up with him and spent the night. It was pretty much the same as freshman year. The second time, I met him to study at a coffee house. He was distracted. I figured that we'd go back to his place again, but he said that he had to write a reaction paper for a seminar the next morning. In my mind that was almost a rebuff -- there were very few times that we'd met up and it hadn't led to us getting each other off.
In fairness to him, when we were at school, he was busy as hell. He was writing a senior thesis, and that seminar he was in, it was some kind of intense 15-person honors class about the Israel-Palestine conflict, where the politics of at least half the participants drove him to fits. There was fall rush at his frat; there was being president of the College Democrats in an election year; I was pretty sure that he was applying for a Rhodes Scholarship to Oxford, even though he recoiled when I mentioned it; he had a busy social calendar of friends, parties and bar nights.
Living in my new house, it seemed like there was always something going on, moreso than in the dorm. Somebody always knew about a party, or I'd end up on the porch with a couple of the housemates, where we'd drink and talk for hours. The year before, I itched for reasons to get out. I still wanted to kick around with Matt, for sure, but my mind was also on more people and other things.
And shit, I was tired of thinking about my gayness. Maybe it wasn't freaking me out as much, or maybe it was more compartmentalized so it felt easier, but in the fall of sophomore year, it seemed like there was so much life going on that I didn't have the temptation to contemplate myself, occasionally freak out, and then yearn to get off with Canetti.
That hook-up with Ben made it easier. It was the first time that I felt like a pilot instead of a passenger. In high school with Andy Trafford, it had been about circumstance and opportunity. Not that I don't love that guy, but I had no idea what I was doing at the time, and our long friendship just fired off in an unexpected direction. I'd been captive to my hormones and my relationship with the one single guy who was available.
Canetti's was a different category of head-fuck. His style of analytical detachment was probably a good thing for me (if I'd been with a guy who wanted to talk about how much he loved me, I would've freaked) but the combined package made me his junior partner: Robin, not Batman. Matt was kind of my boyfriend and I was still digging him pretty hard, but basically, I was his student. For a guy like me, with certain alpha-male tendencies, this could be inhibiting, even a little demeaning. When I talked to him, sometimes it seemed like I was being critiqued, and if not critiqued, that he knew my progress and my thinking in ways that I hadn't myself adjusted to. This was true even when he referenced my Saturday hook-up with Ben -- an incident that I wasn't even sure whether I should share, and if so, how I'd talk about it.
I mean, I loved him as a friend, even if I didn't quite love, Love, LOVE him, like I was Jennifer Love Hewiitt or some such shit. Matt understood me better than anybody, and I was lucky for that.
Getting off with Ben, it seemed like I understood the system. I was my own driver. I could wander into a party at 2 a.m. and leave a half-hour later with the cutest guy there. It didn't feel sketchy or guilty -- it just felt fun, and strong, and it felt like I had agency in life again -- like I wasn't at mercy to the luck of finding one other guy who was nice and looked good and who happened to like me in return. Maybe there were a lot of guys like that; maybe instead of feeling like a captive to my circumstance, it was up to me to seize the occasion.
For a week or so after I hooked up with Ben, I felt like I'd gotten a shine back. Since posting this story, I've gotten e-mails from guys who've hinted that they think my behavior tends to get a little melodramatic and self-loathing. All I can think in response is, "No shit." Big parts of my personality took a body blow when I was sixteen and first reckoned with the fact that I was gay. I lost control of my life. It felt unfair. I wanted to go to the store with a receipt and demand a return. There was this essential fact that made me stand apart from other people, not because of my personality or interests or achievements, but because of what I happened to be. There were things that I'd never get back; I'd never get to be like everybody else in ways that are almost universal. That's when I stopped being a fairly gregarious, well-rounded guy who prided himself on being effortless in his best moments. I became a guy who turned mildly paranoid and couldn't stop looking over his shoulder to see what was chasing him. In their turns, Matt Canetti and Andy Trafford were my only ways out.
Plenty of pressure for everybody.
Then I spent a few hours with that guy Ben. Everything didn't flip overnight, but when I woke up the next morning and talked about it with Matt later in the day, parts of my old confidence felt resurrected. After we hung up, it made me think about how lucky I was to know Canetti the way that I did.
Maybe the hard rain had stopped falling, and instead, I was stuck inside of Mobile with the Memphis blues again.
Or maybe that metaphor sucks, but I sort of like it, so fuck it.
Within a month of living together, Chris was everyone's little brother. The rest of us had groups and activities, and other friends. Not Chris. He went to class and lived in the house. I'd come home, and he'd be on the living room couch with the TV on and an unexamined biology textbook open on the coffee table.
As far as I could tell, Chris didn't even have other good friends. There was an engineering student named Gene who'd lived on his freshman floor. About once a month they'd see an action movie, or Gene might come over to watch DVDs and order pizza. Gene was a chubby, quiet guy, friendly enough, but, insofar as I could tell, bereft of strong personality traits.
If it hadn't been for the two of us running or periodically heading to the gym, Chris would barely have done anything but sleep, go to class, watch television, and eat.
The eating amused us: "Do you notice that all he eats is Hot Pockets, cereal, and pears?" Katie said. "And all he drinks is milk."
"Yes," I said. "It's odd, right?"
"I was making pasta last night, and I said, 'Chris, I'll make some for you.' And he was like, 'No thanks. I've already got my dinner.'" Katie did a passable impression of his laconic cheerfulness. "A few minutes later, he comes into the kitchen and puts three Hot Pockets in the microwave and gets a pear out of the refrigerator."
"I can see how a person gets channeled into processed food," I said. "Pears, they're the surprise ingredient."
"He's so funny," Katie said.
"I've see him eat people food. In the cafeteria and in restaurants. Maybe if it requires personal effort, it doesn't interest him. He just thinks, 'Hmmm. I'm hungry. What I need is Hot Pockets, a refreshing glass of milk, and a delicious pear.'" My own Chris Riis impression was pretty solid.
Those girls loved him. Katie and Jessica never skipped an opportunity to chat with him or pat him on the back or shake his shoulder. It was affectionate but shy of flirty -- it was how you'd treat a cute little kid. A lot of nights I'd go down to brush my teeth before bed, and Michelle lingered in his doorway, talking about Seinfeld or the weather. At first I thought they were hitting on him and testing him out, but in short order it seemed like bland affection.
There were things about him that I hadn't fully appreciated in freshman year, like the major gaps in Chris's knowledge of pop culture -- things that I thought were basic touchstones for any moderately engaged, upper-middle class cracker at a selective school. He'd never heard of Apocalypse Now; he'd heard of Woody Allen but had never seen his movies; The Godfather, David Lynch, Martin Scorsese or Casablanca? Forget it. His tastes were strictly in the direction of Indiana Jones, Star Wars, The Goonies and Forrest Gump. He had the major Beatles albums, but the rest of his CDs were fucking wacky, like greatest hits collections for Styx and Bachman-Turner Overdrive, Michael Jackson's HIStory, Madonna's Bedtime Stories.
"Chris," Katie said to him one night, when it was just the three of us on the front porch, "new subject. Describe your ideal day."
He answered without hesitation. To his credit, he knew that when we asked questions like this, we were setting him up for light mocking.
"Easy. Waffles for breakfast, with syrup and sausage. Then I'd go for a run with Handsome." Handsome was not his nickname for me -- it was the Riis family dog, a six-year-old, blond, shepherd-husky mix. On Chris's desk, he had two pictures: one of him with his whole family, including his young nieces and nephews, and another of Handsome staring at the camera with his tongue hanging out. "Then after a run, I'd want to watch TV for awhile. Like a couple of Frasier re-runs. I'd have a BLT for lunch, and then go out on the lake. Maybe go waterskiing and tubing, and then swim off the boat. Then probably play volleyball for awhile, then take a nap in the hammock while I listened to a Tigers game -- Ernie Harwell. At night we'd have a campfire and do fireworks. And then," he grinned happily, "I'd have a bunch of beers with all of you guys."
"Would we be there during the rest of the day?" Katie said.
"Sure," Chris said, "if you're into that kind of thing."
"I don't believe you," I said. "You're just inventing the most Chris-like scenario you can think of, just so we'll be incredulous about it afterward. Then you'll just be like, 'Nope. I love waffles and Handsome!'"
"I do love waffles and Handsome! God, I miss that dog." He sipped from his beer. "So okay, what's your ultimate day? Read Shakespeare and eat sushi and then go see some trendy musician play his songs, probably."
"I don't have ideal days," I said. "Every day is my ideal day."
"That's a nice thought," Katie said. I meant my answer to be sarcastic, but I guess she thought I was serious. "I'd want to be in Paris with my mom and my sister."
She'd been to Paris once in high school. It left an impression.
"Okay, how about this," I said. "The three songs that speak most to you. Like, when you hear them, they're always powerful."
"Against the Wind by Bob Seger," Chris said. "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For by U2. In My Life by The Beatles."
"One by U2," Katie said. "Both Hands by Ani DiFranco."
"Ugh," I said.
"Stop, jerk," Katie said. "No judging. Number three, Crash by Dave Matthews, only because it reminds me of my first boyfriend."
"Okay," I said. "Number one, Powderfinger by Neil Young. It's about this guy, he's 22 and he's the only man left in his family. His father's out hunting and Big John's been a drunk ever since his wife drowned. And he's sent out to defend them from marauders or federal agents -- the song doesn't make it entirely clear." Katie and Chris looked at me blankly. "No, see, it's the 19th Century or early 20th Century, and here's this young guy sent out with a gun to defend everybody he loves. And the bad guys shoot him -- 'shelter me from the powder and the finger.' So powerful. And the last lines are about how we fade away so young, with so much left undone."
"That sounds just horrible and depressing," Chris said.
"It's depressing, but that's the whole point. It's like Canadian Faulkner. Just talking about it, it makes me want to weep."
"What are your other two? Are they normal songs that people have heard of?"
"Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands. The Dylan song. The whole, huge sweep of it. People who think he can't sing are idiots. He uses it like an instrument."
"Okay, like I said. Normal songs. I know a lot of Bob Dylan, but not that one."
I wasn't going to tell them how much I love "Wonderwall" by Oasis. It was a song of adolescent despair, with a tortured, mature glimmer of a compromised salvation. I'd loved it since I was 13, and seriously, it's the only song that every time I hear it, it gets me tight inside. I wasn't going to tell them that. Not after they were confused by "Powderfinger." And my favorite Dylan song was definitely "Like a Rolling Stone," but that's true for almost everybody, and I wanted to sound original.
"Fine," I said. "Where the Streets Have No Name by U2. Obladi, Oblada by The Beatles. Down on Main Street by Bob Seger. Ants Marching by Dave Matthews. All of Ani DiFranco. Those are my three most powerful songs. On my ideal day, I'll play with Handsome in Paris and listen to those songs, while I eat pudding."
"See," Katie said, "these games start to lose their fun when you turn judgmental."
"I wasn't being judgmental," I said. "Chris was trying to make me sound like a weirdo."
"You started it when you made fun of my ideal day," Chris said.
"You did kind of start it," Katie said to me, "and now you're making fun of both of us."
"Yeah, Joe," Chris said. "You're always making fun of people. And acting judgmental."
He was a little drunk. He wasn't serious. Fuck knows that I needled him enough. If Chris and Katie were going to team up on me, it was only decent to take it without fighting.
Katie, Chris and I had a lot of late nights on Wednesdays. None of us had classes until the next afternoon. We worked out a routine, where we ordered dinner and then sat on the front porch for hours, drinking while we listened to CDs. Katie was a girl that every guy likes -- informal, funny, a little raunchy, but she turned caretaker when things started to get shaky. There are some girls who have that role in a large group, and they get taken for granted, even sort of exploited for their patience. Not Katie. Like, Sam actually deferred to her when she told him to shut the fuck up, like he knew better than to piss her off. If I got sarcastic with Chris, she'd work in a comment to test out whether anybody's feelings were at stake. (It took her awhile to acclimate to the dynamic.) You liked her and you trusted her. More than a couple of times, I thought that if I was going to lay some cards on the table about my personal life, she'd be a good person for it.
As with Michelle, it also struck me that if I were straight, I'd probably fall in love with her.
"Katie's really cute, right?" Chris said once.
"For sure," I said. "All our girls are cute."
"But Katie's really cute," Chris said.
"Stop being all horny and vulgar."
"I'm just sayin'."
"You're just sayin' that you want to pork her in her vadge," I said.
He slugged me in the shoulder. "Don't always be like that. Why do you always have to be like that?"
"No, you're right," I said. "I know you didn't mean anything by it."
"For real, Joe. It's gross and dumb."
"You know I'm just fucking around. I wouldn't say that if other people could hear. My friends and I growing up, that's how we'd talk. Sometimes I forget that not everybody's like that."
He hesitated; he nodded. Then it was like he felt guilty for getting pissed at me. "Yeah, it's cool," he said. "Sorry I punched you."
"That actually hurt," I said.
"Sorry."
"It's okay."
The thing was, I thought of Chris as his own delicate ecosystem. Yeah, it was funny when he'd get drunk and stupid, and I liked giving him a hard time when the stakes were low, but I didn't want to see him turn into a cynical smartass like the rest of us. Back then, there was still something innocent and open about him. I liked that he'd say goofy, forthrightly naive things. I'm pretty sure that I was actively jealous of him for not being as polished, or wondering somebody had a cynical angle. Yeah, a diet consisting largely of Hot Pockets and cereal was fucking weird, but who needs another bastard lecturing you about food? Wouldn't I rather watch Chunk do the truffle shuffle than a water buffalo get butchered while Martin Sheen peers on? Probably.
I don't want to exaggerate how good he was. Chris's political opinions, inasmuch as he had them, were sheer hell. One night Sam screamed at him for repeating Bush-regime propaganda about the threat of Iraq. I didn't want to be a part of that conversation: I didn't want to tell Chris he was an idiot, and I didn't want to hear him say despicable things. I discreetly left the room. In the end, Chris would be the first to admit that he didn't know jack shit about geopolitics; there was no reason for Sam to start that conversation other than to entrap Chris so he could vent at the one quasi-conservative he knew. Even when Chris was being an idiot, I felt protective of him. You don't want to damage the rainforest.
In early October, we were all at a house party thrown by friends of Trevor. Chris made the poor decision of mixing his own rums and Cokes. I watched him pour, and they were almost half rum and half Coke. I should have stopped him. In the living room, I was dancing with Katie and Jessica. It was harmless, provocative shit -- I'd be between them, and Jessica and Katie would grind against me from each side. Jessica and I leaned back-to-back and kind of gyrated our asses together while Katie pretended to spank us. Everybody was pretty drunk and a lot of people were out dancing -- we weren't being assholes from "Jersey Shore" or shit like that.
Chris essentially collided into us. He was trouble-drunk. I'd never seen him try to dance before. He was the kind of drunk that his eyes were half-closed and he had a mildly pained expression. True, if sober, Chris's dance moves would have been comparably disheveled, but the look on the face told me that this was about to end badly. Jessica hugged him around the shoulders.
"Dude," I shouted into his ear, over the bass, "are you okay?"
"What?"
"Are you okay?" I shouted. "You seem pretty messed up."
He shook his head and karate chopped the air. I couldn't tell if that was a denial or a calculated dance move.
Maybe ten minutes later, he aggressively stumbled off toward the front door. He held a wall for balance.
"Fuck," I said to Katie, "I think Chris is going out to puke."
"Oh no!"
It was like I'd told her that he was about to have a stroke.
"I'll take care of it."
"Are you sure?" she said. "It seems like you're having so much fun."
"He did this approximately once a month last year," I said. "He'd be embarrassed if you saw him like this." I hugged Katie around the waist. "Not that he doesn't love you. He'd just think, 'Oh no. Girls can't see me like this.'"
"It's cool," she said, mussing up my hair. "Call me if you need anything. Don't take any chances."
He didn't make it to the lawn in time. Chris had booted on the porch, just next to the stairs. I'd missed it by about 30 seconds. Commotion still happened around him. He leaned over the porch rail and coughed.
"Dude!" I said, sidestepping the puke. "Does anybody live here?" I asked to the porch assembly.
Somebody's girlfriend went inside to find one of the hosts. I apologized to him while Chris still hung over the rail. "I didn't want to take off and leave you with a mess," I said.
"That's cool of you, bro," the host said. "We'll just hose it off. Is your boy all right?"
"He's not used to hard liquor."
"Shit," he said. "I just don't want anybody ending up in the emergency room."
"He'll be okay," I said. "Any chance we could get him some water?"
"Sometimes water makes you puke more," he said.
About five minutes later, I started with Chris for our walk home. I've never seen anybody so drunk that I worried about alcohol poisoning, but as I guided him down the block, it crossed my mind. I wanted to tell him that he can't get like this, but he was so drunk that my advice wouldn't register. His steps were wobbly, like a George Romero zombie, but he walked at a confident pace. He almost collided with people going in the other direction, and trees.
"You okay?"
"Yeah, yeah."
"Are you sure?"
"I'm not drinking after this."
"You always say that."
"Oh man."
The party was less than 10 minutes from our house.
"Do you think you're going to get sick again?"
"I'm okay."
"Just because -- it's not like there are cops out, but nobody's going to get in trouble as long as you don't do anything messed up, like puke again."
"Oh, no."
"Just keep -- no, we turn left here, on Cherry."
"I have no frigging idea where we are."
"It's okay. We're almost home. Just a few more blocks."
"You were going to hook up with Katie and Jessica."
"Absolutely not," I said.
"Making love."
"No."
"I didn't want to puke. Mess up your game. Mess up your game with my puke."
"No."
From expertise gained in high school, I concluded that if he was articulating such complicated thoughts, he was sufficiently conscious not to have alcohol poisoning.
"Sam should have brought me home."
"No," I said. "Sam sucks about that."
"Do you think Sam's a jerk?"
"No. He's weird and unreliable."
"You're my best friend."
"You're my drunkest friend."
"No, you're my best friend."
"We're practically the same. We're almost home. One more block."
"You save my life, almost every time."
I silently guided him down the half-block to our house. He crashed down on the living room couch. He swung his arm like it was a piece of dead lumber and picked up the remote control.
"Drink it slow," I said, when I put a bottle of water in front of him.
"You were going to hook up with Jessica and Katie?"
"No!"
"Be honest."
"Stop!"
"They, like, love you."
"We were just fucking around. When you're friends with chicks, it's okay to be physical like that. They don't take it seriously. And I told you before, that you shouldn't do stuff when you're living with people. It gets messed up."
"That's right. Forgot the rule."
He breathed heavily, like a cold drunk does, when everything needs to be planned and calculated. He sat on the couch, slowly sipping the bottle of water, while we watched a re-run of Frasier. Chris started hiccuping, which, I knew from personal experience, could be the foretaste of more trouble. Shortly after the hiccups began, he staggered around the corner to the ground-floor bathroom that Katie and Jessica shared.
I'll spare you the graphic descriptions, but he was hunched forward on his knees, dry-heaving over the toilet. Dry heaves are worse than actually being sick, like the man's equivalent of a housecat coughing up a hairball. I didn't watch him, just stood off to the side of the door in case he took a spill or hit some other kind of trouble.
See, like a lot of guys, I'd been through those kinds of nights in high school, where you test your limits and conditions get ugly and out of control. Late in freshman year, when I was 15, I ended up at a house party with some juniors that I knew. My dignity took its first sucker punch. When my friend Rick was the first to get his driver's license, it took off, because we had transportation and consistent access to the high-school house parties. There were nights where guys ate dry white bread out of the bag in hopes of soaking up the alcohol before going to Mom and Dad. This was part of why I ended up transitioning to pot through most of high school, I think -- you didn't have the hangovers or external indicia of being so trashed.
He'd been at college for more than a year, but he still was new to it. He handled beer okay when we were hanging out at the house. Hard liquor was new. That's how a boy ends up so disgustingly shit-faced in two hours.
"Rum is awful," I said, after the toilet flushed and he held the bathroom doorframe for balance. "You should never drink it, ever. Even thinking about the rum smell, dude, it messes me up."
His face was shamed and waxen. He looked at me with exhausted eyes.
"I need to go to sleep," he said.
"Sleep on the couch for now," I said.
"Why?"
"Because," I said, thinking about Jimi Hendrix, "when you're messed up like this you should sleep on your side, and you need to be supervised for awhile."
"I sleep on my stomach."
"Dude," I said, "just sleep on the couch."
"Girls can't see me like this."
"Dude," I said, "they don't care. They're like your big sisters. They're not going to judge you."
"No," he said. "It's not how I was raised. Girls can't see me, like, drunk and puked. Michelle can't see me like this. Katie can't see this. Jessica."
"Okay," I said. "Sleep on my floor. I'll pull off the futon mattress."
"Good," he said. "To watch TV in my sleep."
"Living the dream," I said.
I managed to get him up to the second floor to brush his teeth, and then up the spiral staircase to my room. I threw the futon mattress on the floor. There were specks of vomit on his gray button-down. Earlier in the night, I'd noticed how nice he looked -- he dressed like he was making an effort. When we walked into that party, you could see girls kind of turn in his direction. He'd looked hot. Part of the reason I didn't intervene when I saw him mixing his drinks was because I figured he needed to throw down some courage in order to talk to girls. It was sad to see him end in disarray.
I went down to the kitchen to retrieve a pasta pan in case he started to get sick again. On the coffee table, I left a short note saying that we were back safe and that Chris was sleeping on my floor. I lifted his comforter and a pillow, and took a clean T-shirt out of his drawer. He was lying on my floor in his boxers, staring blankly at the Frasier re-run. I dropped his bedding on him and set the pan on the floor.
"Thank you," he said, while he put on his clean T-shirt.
"Don't mention it."
"You're like my new mom."
"Shut up."
I sat on my papasan chair and watched Frasier with him until he fell asleep minutes later, breathing heavy with a click in his throat. Once he was out, I turned on my Playstation 2 and played Madden.
Around 1:30, I heard some of the housemates come home. It was the girls. They were drunk and giggling. It sounded like they'd brought people, but it was just the three of them.
A few minutes later: "Joe?" The voice was in half-speech, half-whisper at the base of my stairs. I'd left my door open; I could see their shadows.
"Shhhhh," I said.
Light footsteps up the stairs. Katie and Michelle stepped up.
"Be quiet," I whispered. "He's all fucked up."
"Awww," Michelle said.
"This is so sweet," Katie said.
"Do you guys do sleepovers often?" Michelle said.
"Shhhhh. Whisper, goddammit."
"He's so cute when he's sleeping," Katie said.
"He doesn't smell fucking cute," I whispered.
This made them giggle. They didn't rouse Chris.
"We should all have a sleepover up here," Katie said.
"It's like coming up to the treehouse," Michelle said.
"Are girls allowed?"
"But just a normal sleepover," Michelle said. "Like a slumber party. Not like an orgy."
Giggling.
"Oh my God," I whispered.
"When are we having our first big party?"
"Soon, soon, soon!"
"Shhhhh. If this fucker wakes up you're cleaning the puke off my carpet."
"How sick was he?"
"Sick enough. Stop gawking at him. He's not a museum exhibit. He refused to sleep on the couch because he didn't want you guys to see him like this, and now you're here, invading his privacy."
"Awww, that's so cute."
"He's so shy and funny about things."
"And, like, old-fashioned."
"And a shitty drunk," I whispered, "and occasionally weird, so let's leave him alone. You guys can tease him in the morning when he's awake and hungover."
"Awww. Then his face would turn red and he'd feel sad."
"Ladies," I whispered in a fatherly and arch British accent, "time to leave Christopher alone. Good evening."
"Bye..."
"Byyyyyyyyye..."
They floated down the stairs. I shut the trap door on the assumption that if Chris needed to get down to the bathroom, he'd figure it out. I went to sleep that night facing away from him. When I woke up the next morning, he'd already sulked away.
A couple of weeks later, I did something that took my dynamic with Chris to a new level.
I bought Grand Theft Auto: Vice City.
I finished my last midterm of the semester and wandered into Tower Records to reward myself. What followed was a two-week period that resembled "Requiem for a Dream," as scripted by nineteen-year-old shut-ins.
If you don't know what I'm talking about, or you do and think it's ridiculous, you have much to look forward to. I mean that seriously. Do you know how it feels to walk into a strip club with a rocket launcher and wreak havoc? It's sublime. The euphoria of racing a motorcycle down a back alley, then launching over rooftops from a jump made of crates and plywood? Or, alternatively, the devastation of missing that ramp and colliding head-first into the corner of a brick building? Some nights we cruised out from shore in a racing boat, the synthesizer opening of Toto's "Africa" playing on the speakers while the wind blew back our hair, automatic rifle in hand and a world of possibilities ahead. There was one memorable incident where we stole an ambulance and sped down the beach, mowing down every pedestrian in our path, firing shots at cops until we had five wanted stars, the S.W.A.T. team and a helicopter on our trail.
And yet somehow, we fled on foot, ganked a Vespa, and made it into the paint shop before they killed or arrested us. The grandeur of our escape gives me chills.
Shit, guys. I could go on like this for several more paragraphs.
I mean, I think of myself as a pretty highbrow dude. My tastes tend to be quite serious. It just so happens that once every couple of years, I stumble onto a video game and lose two to three weeks of my life. That most recently happened with Fallout 3 (Red Dead Redemption in the near future? Likely, yes.) but in sophomore year, it was GTA: Vice City.
I preached this new gospel to my housemates. Chris and Trevor were absorbed. We went to sleep at 3 or 4 a.m., even when there were morning classes. I dreamed about the game. When I sat in class, my mind wandered to the saga of Tommy Vercetti -- high-speed chases, assassinations, speedboats and strippers. Slaughter, explosions, sniper shots and mayhem. When I walked to class, I'd glance at cars and think to myself, "It would be easy to steal that piece of shit."
Trevor would get stoned and then come up to my room, sitting with us for hours. One time I took a couple hits off his bong and tried to play. "Keep On Loving You," "Sister Christian," and "99 Luftballoons" rarely sounded so emotional. When it was my turn on the controller, I promptly crashed my car into a canal, then got shot by a cop. The three of us sat side-by-side on my futon, about four feet from the screen, in every spare waking moment. When I came home from class, at least one of them was in my room playing the game. There were nights when I went to sleep and they were still on the opposite end of my room, playing the game with the sound down. My knowledge that thrilling antics were unfolding made it difficult to drift off.
Aside from my one transgression, I didn't drink or smoke up while playing the game -- feats are best performed sober. We forgot to eat, and then I'd feel my blood sugar bottom out and scavenge. I had days where I fell into the Chris Riis Hot Pockets and pears diet, because I didn't want to go through the hassle of sifting through delivery menus and dealing with the subsequent transactions. After seven or eight hours of staring at the screen, I'd look away and feel dizzy.
That first weekend was our most extreme. With no classes anchoring us to illusions of responsibility, Trevor, Chris and I literally stayed up until dawn on Saturday morning. When our session ended at approximately 7 a.m., we were barely even trying. I staggered to my bed undernourished, dizzy and exhausted, with a shine of grease on my face and Doritos on my breath. At about 1 p.m., I woke up dehydrated, and Chris was already on the futon, playing.
"How long have you been here?" I said.
"Only, like, fifteen minutes."
None of us changed out of our sleep clothes or showered. At about 3 p.m., Trevor called downstairs on his cellphone, first begging Jessica and then Katie to get food for us. They both called him a loser. Eventually, an incredulous Katie agreed to find us food in exchange for a $20 fee.
"Losers," she said, when she came up to my room with a sack of McDonald's cheeseburgers and a two-liter. "I forgot cups."
"I'll go downstairs and get cups," Trevor said.
"Wow, that's so ambitious of you." She looked at us like spill. "This room smells like boy and Doritos."
"I'll crack the windows."
"Katie, dude, you've got to see this." Trevor already had stolen a motorcycle. He powered it over a golf course until he ran over a guy and crashed into a sand trap.
"That's soooo impressive, loser," she said, and left the room.
At dusk, we paused to regroup. I showered and took a nap during the interval when I had my bedroom to myself. In the tradition of hockey players growing playoff beards, I'd decided that I wouldn't shave until we beat the game. I had almost a week's worth of stubble growing out of my face. It was the making of a proper beard. It made me look dirty and ridiculous, but fuck it! Shaving it off would make closure even sweeter.
Around 8 p.m., before withdrawal sunk its hooks, we ordered pizzas.
"I cannot believe you pathetic loser assholes," Sam said. "Three house parties tonight. People. Alcohol. Excitement! When we put this house together, I had no idea you'd turn out to be such couchfuckers. I should've known."
"What can I say, brother," Trevor said. "You just haven't heard the one true calling. I feel sorry for you, actually."
"You're never getting laid again," Sam said.
"I don't think you, of all people, want to get in that contest with me," Trevor said.
"Besides," I said, "in Vice City, you can get lapdances whenever you want, so we're not sweating it."
"Even Chris gets lapdances," Trevor said.
"It's true," Chris said. "I get lapdances."
"Those aren't real lapdances," Sam said, "and Joey, you look like Abraham Lincoln with radiation poisoning."
"Lame. He's the only famous person you can think of who has a beard."
"Not true. ZZ Top."
"Who else?"
"You're a stupid twat." About five seconds later: "Charles Darwin. Jesus Christ. The Amish."
"Fuck you in the ear," I said.
"Fuck you in the beard," he said.
At around 2 a.m., after about six hours in Vice City, something hit me.
"I need to read The Scarlet Letter by Tuesday," I said.
"Pffft," went Trevor.
"I know," I said, "but I think I'm going to like Hawthorne."
"Can Hawthorne do this?" Trevor steered his helicopter forward so that it gained speed, lost altitude, and collided into the side of a skyscraper, killing his character and sending charred copter debris falling worthlessly to the sidewalk.
"Just ended your turn, dumbass," I said. "But you make a good point."
The next day, Trevor dropped out.
"I can't take it any more, brother," he said. "I'm starting to lose it. I can't get 'Video Killed the Radio Star' out of my head. When I woke up it felt worse than a hangover."
"How did you become such a pussy?" I said.
"I must be getting old," he said. "If I keep going at this rate, I'll either get epilepsy or a prison sentence."
He didn't drop out entirely, of course. The urge is too strong. When Trevor came home from a soccer game that afternoon, he was back in my room for a couple of hours before he claimed to be sated and begged off to get high and study political theory.
It happened late in the game, during the Cannon Fodder mission.
Apologies if this is getting redundant, because if you're not already a Vice City scholar, my prose has made you sprint to the nearest Best Buy and master the game before returning to my dope little internet story. At the risk of explaining a bunch of stuff you know by now, the Cannon Fodder mission requires you to aid a crew of Cubans in killing a slew of Haitian gangsters before escaping in a van. You're spurred on by dialogue along the lines of, "Fight like men with huge cajones!"
Chris and I had struggled with the mission through a few turns. The Haitians were getting the better of us. On Chris's turn, he managed to get through the initial round of Haitians, kill the sniper, and arrive at the last step: driving a van to safety while carrying two wanted stars.
The problem was, Chris was a terrible driver. He was always slamming into lampposts and hitting oncoming traffic. When Chris had wanted stars, he'd tense up. Instead of fleeing the cops, he'd crash his vehicle into the side of a building, or elect to do battle against the cops, thereby adding to his wanted stars and sealing his doom.
This final step should have been a formality. Basically, we were home free. But Chris began his victory lap by crashing into a wall.
"Give me the controller," I said.
He ignored me.
"Dude, seriously, give me the controller."
"It's my turn."
"Yes, but this is no time to be prissy about that," I said. "You know I'm a better driver than you."
"Yeah, so? I'm the one who killed all the Haitians."
Frustration bubbling, I watched him pull into the street. A police car, its sirens roaring, sped toward him and spun out to block his path. Instead of maneuvering around the car, stupid Chris got out of the van and started firing a shotgun at the cops. He was successful, but immediately bumped up to three wanted stars. The police would be swarming in all directions.
"Give me the fucking controller!" I shouted.
"No!" he said. "It's my turn."
"You're going to get us killed!"
"Then I guess that's just my choice," Chris said.
"Drive the fuck away!" I yelled. "Go faster!"
"Dude, the van is hard," he said. "It doesn't steer great."
He was accurate, but still.
I moved to snatch the controller out of his hands.
"Stop!" he said.
"It's my PS2!"
Fuck, the cops were coming from everywhere. I could have made an escape; Chris could not.
"Stop being a little brat," Chris said.
I decided to forcibly wrest the controller out of Chris's hands, but it was too late. He already was doomed, but my jostling didn't help. Cop cars slammed into our van. Black smoke belched from the hood. In any event, we were done for.
Still, I had a point to make. He held the controller aloft over his head. When I stood and reached to grab it, he held it back down in his lap.
Chris's hands were sweaty from his mission, but still, he managed to keep hold of the controller, even as, on the screen, the police officers shot Tommy Vercetti dead -- he was nothing if not an immediate threat to public safety.
I shoved into him with my shoulder. The futon frame jumped backward; there was a slight cracking sound. "Whoah," Chris said. It startled him enough to lose grip of the controller, which was now safely in my hands.
My turn at the mission had barely begun when Chris slapped the controller out of my hands, sending it flipping a couple of feet away.
"Now you're just being a dick," I said.
"You ruined my turn," he said. "It's only fair."
"I didn't ruin your turn!" I said. "I was trying to save your turn. You were doing all kinds of stupid shit. The cops were guaranteed to kill you anyway!"
"Like I said. That was my problem to deal with. You don't always know best."
I wasn't pissed at him. If anything, I was fairly amused. I stretched to grab the controller, when Chris grabbed me by the arm, yanking hard at the socket and putting me off balance. He tried to lunge over my lap to grasp the controller off the floor.
"No you don't!" I said. When I stood, I kneed and shoved him off my lap, sending him to the floor with a thud. The TV shook on its stand. Chris now held the controller. I tried to kick it out of his hand. He clutched my ankle and pulled at the hair on the back of my leg.
"That fucking hurts," I said, "and you fight like a girl. I thought you had older brothers?"
"Oh, yeah, because girls pull each other's leg hairs all the fricking time."
"Let go!"
"Say you're sorry for ruining my turn."
"Never!"
"Say you're sorry, Joe."
"Say you're sorry for being a controlling little Antichrist."
"No."
He tried to take me down at the knees. I briefly struggled, then landed back on my futon in a seated position, producing another crack. "So childish," I said. "Are you done?"
"Are you?"
"Seriously, Chris. Are you done?" My character stalled on the screen.
Red-faced, he flipped the controller into the air. It landed next me on the futon.
I knew it was coming. In these circumstances, it's impossible to catch me with my guard down. I'm like a cat. When he made another attempt at the controller, I paused the game, tossed the controller out of reach, and landed Chris in a headlock.
"You stink," he said.
"No I don't. You're not going to embarrass me with a fake insult."
He slapped at my back. He tugged at the neck of my T-shirt from behind. The friction of it rubbed my throat. The seams of the shirt audibly tensed. I squeezed his headlock tighter.
"You so fight like a girl," I said.
He clawed at my back and pinched it, much like a girl. Then he got smart. He put his feet on the ground, using some leverage and the strength of his legs to lean his body weight against me. The futon slid against the carpet. He reached around my neck with his arm, tight enough to produce a choking sensation.
I lightened up on my headlock. Chris half-tackled, half-dragged me off the futon and onto the floor.
"This is going to wake up Michelle," I said.
For some of you, maybe you associate that kind of physical jostling with homoeroticism. I maintain that in almost every circumstance, there's absolutely no such implication. From age three forward, guys wrestle. They test out their physical superiority. It was a method of establishing pecking order before income or job title or hotness of girlfriend gave other tangible evidence, at which point, whether you could effectively pin somebody to the floor stopped connoting status. I mean, everybody always wants to be the one in charge.
But then we were on the floor, and Chris was trying to pin me, and fuck if I don't confess something that contradicts my prior paragraph: it felt pretty nice.
We were both in T-shirts and basketball shorts. Our bare legs were touching. When we jostled, the silky nylon of his shorts slid against my skin. His shoulders had felt surprisingly sinewy when I had him in a headlock. He'd been breathing against my lower ribs -- I sort of liked that.
It was such that when he had me at the floor, my dick took involuntary notice. Not, like, a robust stiffy or anything, but I was fluffed. In those basketball shorts, if I stood at straight posture, my dick would have been visibly out of alignment. He straddled the side of my legs and held my shoulders to the floor.
"Are you sorry for acting like a brat?" he said. I felt his breath on my face.
"Are you sorry for acting like a brat?"
I shoved his chest and wriggled out of his relatively light grip. He grabbed at the neck of my T-shirt again. The way he was pulling, if I moved in the direction I planned, he'd yank me out of my T-shirt, and then things would get really messy.
But things got really messy anyway, because I'm pretty sure that Chris was sort of aroused, too. I mean, his was so big that it didn't really hide well. Not in a situation like that. It drooped half-sideways and to the right, like an errant dowsing rod. My face was less than a foot away.
So I ended it.
"I'm sorry I acted like a brat," I said quickly.
"That's more like it," he said.
He gave me a kind of push at the chest, and, in a maneuver that could only be justified by discretion, quickly veered his body to face away from me. Hunched at a slight angle and, with his back to me, he dragged the futon to its position in front of the TV. He sat down with the controller and resumed the game with his posture at an odd angle.
If this were a different kind of story, this would be an incident when the clouds fucking parted and the angels played their fucking electric guitars, and one of us would be like, "Guess you're excited. Need any help with that, bro?" and the other would just whip it out and we'd hump and whatnot until we splooged, and then we'd be all, "Hot dick, bro. Maybe we should try that again sometime?," then, "Sounds cool, bro. How 'bout tomorrow?"
Not by a long shot. If there was anything I felt at that moment, it was horror and embarrassment. As Chris was tugging the futon away, I rolled over on my stomach. It died down efficiently. I mean, I hadn't had a raging boner or anything like that. It was merely mild excitement, though not completely subtle.
I wasn't even thinking that Chris was tangibly aroused so much as a dude who'd been on a marathon video game binge for more than a week, had some abrupt physical contact, and got an involuntary charge out of it. The alternative was a fucking nightmare, not just because I'd ascribed to him a kind of unspoiled innocence. I mean, I'm pretty implausible as a gay dude, but at least I have a kind of aestheticand an attitude. Chris was a trusting naif; a doofus; a credulous Christian and a Republican from fucking Michigan, who just wanted to hang out with a dog named Handsome and barbecue with his family. What would a velociraptor like Kevin Berger make of that shit?
Nothing, because the moment was one of those awkward, ugly interruptions that happens in life, like thinking that you're being funny to your friends and the next thing you know, one of the quietest, most awkward, harmless kids in your class is crying due to your overreach in making a joke at her expense. Then, one day she's 30, and she still gets thoughts about how she was humiliated when the teacher stepped out of A.P. calculus just because you had to be hilarious and get some attention.
So was I going to make a knowing comment at his expense? Was I going to read anything into it? Was I going to treat it as anything other than an accident? Oh, fuck no. As far as Chris knew, I was sorry for acting like a brat, and had no clue that close physical contact my body had forced him to a state of arousal. Because all that transpired was a purposeless, awkward accident.
I sat back on the futon, and none of it even happened. We beat the game 48 hours later. The spell broke. I went back to focusing on 19th Century American Lit, Introduction to Poetry, Intro to Russian History and Arabic 101.
I shaved my stupid mini-beard.
A couple of weeks later, perhaps taking his cues from Grand Theft Auto, Chris Riis got into a real-life fender-bender with an ice cream truck. We'll talk about that incident some other time.