Ben and Ryan: Part One, Chapters Two & Three

Chapter One found here, if you didn't see it and would like to get caught up.

2

I threw my bag on the floor, and, because the universe was against me every step of the way, my books and notebooks and folders spilled out the top and spread themselves from my bed to my TV across the room. I nodded my head in mock assent: Yup, this just about sums up my day. I didn’t feel like dealing with another mess, so I turned around and walked out of my room. On my way through the kitchen, I stopped by the fridge and opened a beer, and then continued into the “office,” a nook at the back of the house where I kept my computer, and logged on.

I couldn’t get the memory of that jerk at school out of my head. What the hell did he know, anyway? Like he was so much better than me! It was stressful enough having to stand up in front of the class and deliver a speech; he didn’t have to pick apart everything little thing I did: “Your visual aide didn’t really add anything for me.” “I kind of felt like you were appealing too much to pathos, trying to make your audience feel bad for you.” “Your hands became a distraction for me.” He was probably just overcompensating for his own guilt because he knows that he was an example of what I was talking about, those asshole jocks in high school who treated me like a freak. He looked so smug and self-righteous the whole time, too, like he was the expert and I was the student. True, I had received several nice compliments from other students, and even my professor lauded the strength it took to speak about something so personal, so intimate. But “Your delivery lost impact because I just wasn’t buying what you were selling,” the final blow, was all I could focus on.

I let several glugs of beer flow into my mouth. I tilted my head down, stretching out the back of my neck, moving it slightly to the right and then to the left. What do you expect, Ben? I grabbed the beer bottle, still with my eyes closed, and finished the rest in a single inhuman gulp. As I waited for my throat to catch up with what felt like a baseball being pressed down my esophagus, I heard the computer chime.

There was a chat box from a guy I’d never talked to before.

musicman65: Hey stud. How’s it hangin’?? ;)

  I clicked on his profile--I always read profiles before starting a chat with someone--and glanced quickly down the various headings. College music professor. Avid outdoorsman. Literature lover. Good. Good. And good.

musicman65: Did I scare you off already? LOL

The most telling part was the pictures. I always looked at those more carefully. Too many times, I had been disappointed, to put it nicely, by someone who was less than what his pictures represented him to be. I smiled as I clicked through each one. He had dirty blonde hair and a big, genuine smile. The pictures looked like they had been filtered through one of those now-ubiquitous apps that make photos look “vintage” and make everyone feel like he is a professional photographer. And he’s artistic, too, I thought. There was a picture of him standing up at someone’s wedding. There was a shot of him, shirtless, standing close to a waterfall, the spray making a rainbow that started at his shoulder and extended beyond the edge of the photo. He was thick-set, sort of like a football player. I set my empty bottle on the desk and started typing:

itcantbe_true: haha! Not at all. I was just in the kitchen. What are you up to?

musicman65: Just chillin’ at home. urself?

itcantbe_true: Same. Just relaxing after a long day at school.

musicman65: you are so damn hot! ;)

itcantbe_true: thanks, man. You too.

musicman65: *blush*

  We chatted for over two hours. I told him about my job as a ballet teacher and choreographer, and how I had been a professional ballet dancer. He talked about his favorite music (all my favorites too), his love for fine wines and world cuisine, and his time at Julliard. We LOLed and ROFLed our fingers off.

musicman65: I’m about to watch a movie. You interested in hangin’ out for a bit?

  Hang out? I started feeling that familiar buzzing in my stomach. I had stopped responding to Creighton’s increasingly desperate text messages and voicemails. I didn’t have time to deal with psychos. But this guy was a professional, a college professor. Certainly he had his shit together and wasn’t a flake. I looked at each of his pictures again. He was cute, for sure. He had a boyishness about him and looked like he was fun to be around. His profile was filled with witty responses to questions; he used words like “truncated,” “infernal,” “troglodyte,” and “prescient.” How could I go wrong? This guy--Benton, was his name, Benton!--was a catch.

itcantbe_true: I’ll be there in a few. :D

  I had the envelope on which I had written Benton’s address under my thumbs on the steering wheel so I could refer to it as I passed under each street light. He lived pretty close to me, which tended to freak me out: the closer a guy lived, the more likely he was to find out where I live, ask to come over, possibly stalk me incessantly. But based on what I knew about Benton, I wouldn’t have minded if he decided to stalk me. On the way there, I imagined us holding hands on the porch of our modest house in the country, drinking cocktails, and listening to the evening insects. We’d turn our heads every now and then just to see each other’s smile.

  When I turned left into his subdivision, I raised one eyebrow and grimaced. He lived in one of those new neighborhoods where each house looked nearly identical to the next. I was reminded of some black and white TV show I’d seen several years back. There was a guy, a door-to-door salesman, I think, who had just left his car to go to an appointment. He was holding a card that had an address printed on it, but when he started walking down the street, he discovered that none of the houses had an address on them. He wandered around all day long. It was, naturally, unseasonably hot, and the heat only increased as he walked. At the end of the episode, the camera did a close up of his sweaty, terrified face and crazed eyes. As the camera panned out, the viewer could see that he was sitting on the ground, leaning against a generic-looking mailbox. His arms were hanging limply, one hand in his lap and the other palm up in the grass. He was saying over and over, “This can’t be right. This can’t be right. This cant be . . . “

  As if it were a sign from God, I got to an intersection that had no street signs. Anxiety shot through my body. I decided to go for it: I turned right and slowed down. At the end of the block I saw his house, a brown one with red brick on the bottom half and a black Jeep in the driveway. If it weren’t for that Jeep--he had told me to keep an eye out for it--I would probably still be driving around. When I had pulled into the driveway and turned off my car, I popped a mint in my mouth and quickly chewed it up. I checked my hair and face in the rearview mirror. I shook my head in disgust and flipped off the mirror.

  I took a couple steps back on the porch after I rang the doorbell so as not to look too eager to get inside. I put my hands in my pants pockets. Then pulled them out. Then put just one in. Then settled my weight onto my left leg. Then straightened up and pulled my shoulders back slightly. I sucked my stomach in just as the door swung open.

“Heyyyy, stud!” a voice said from the blinding brightness.

I blinked a couple times to let my eyes adjust to the radiance. And then I saw. Him. Him? Reality slapped me with a brick-filled glove. Those pictures were not put through a retro filter. Those pictures were about twenty years old, you dumbshit!

His hand flew through the air toward me, and I looked at it for a half second like it was some reptile or amphibian that I would never want to touch, something that might very well carry poison in its skin. His sausage fingers wrapped themselves around my hand and shook with a rapidity that spoke volumes about how thrilled he was to meet me “in the flesh.” Hearing those words dribble out of his mouth made me feel nauseated.

  “Well! Come in!”

  Does he punctuate everything that comes out of his mouth with an exclamation point? But it was weird because, even though he practically yelled every syllable, each word seemed to stop at his flabby lips, stuck there for a split second as it debated what its next step should be, and then took the plunge, falling onto the ground to its death. I had heard of people “murdering the English language” and I was someone who truly loved words. But this man’s words deserved to die tragically. I was glad to see them go.

  Inside his lair, I was invited to have a seat on the sofa. I regretted wearing shorts as soon as I sat down for two reasons. First, the sofa felt like it was made circa 1932. It was crusty and scratchy and matted and clouds of a moldy-coffee-cat urine smell ran for cover in my nose when my weight had settled on its lumped and uneven surface. It made the backs of my legs itch. I was sure I was getting a rash. Or lice. Second, he sat down about three inches from me and put his paw on my exposed knee. His hand was warm and wet. His fingertips, if those rounded mounds could be called “tips,” curled and relaxed and curled into my skin like a cat who is getting ready to take a long nap in the sun. I kept my arm on the back of the sofa, where my hair tingled from the flea circus that I was sure had just started on my forearm. Anything to avoid returning his “touches tendres.”  

  “I suppose I should make us a drink, huh?” And with a wink and a final squeeze of my knee, he dragged his hot dogs off my leg and scampered into the kitchen.

  I looked around for signs of a pet. That smell had to coming from somewhere. I saw no food bowls, no litter box, no stray hairs. I did see unframed art reproductions, still in their plastic wrapping, nailed all over the walls. I saw various pieces of furniture, easy chairs, end tables, book shelves, that looked as if they had been purchased by a blind person who was relying on touch alone to tell what their colors and patterns were. Oh my God, would you please stop that gargled “humming” in there?

  “Vodka and cranberry okay with you!”

I treated it like a question and not the command he made it into. “Yeah, that sounds good, thank you.”

  “Awesome!” And he went back to his throaty rendition of what I assumed was “Little Girls” from Annie.

  There were books everywhere. They were stacked on the coffee table, on the end tables, and on a couple hard-backed chairs against the wall. They were sprawling over each other on shelves, fighting over which owned the rights to every free surface.

  “Here you go,” he said, handing me a tumbler filled to the brim with a very, very light pink-shaded drink. I could smell the vodka even with the glass resting on my lap.

  He pushed some magazines aside, sending two or three crumpling to the floor, and set his drink on the coffee table.

He turned and walked to the corner where a tall, thin shelf was located. This housed his collection of DVDs. It also looked like it had weathered a few storms in its day. “What do you feel like watching? Drama? Comedy? Something romantic? Something sexy?” At this, he turned back to me and winked his cow eye in a lurid way that would probably frighten children.

“A comedy sounds good.” Anything to try and kill “the mood.”

He chortled and pulled a dust-caked case from a mangled pile. And then--and I am not joking here--he held it in front of him and blew the dust off it. I cross my heart. This happened. And the dust didn’t poof off like it does in movies. It came off in chunks and fell quickly to the tamped-down dijon yellow carpet. He didn’t so much as glance downward.

  “I’ve been wanting to watch this one for a while.”

  A while? Is wanting to watch it since your mother was a child “a while”? To keep my face from advertising my thoughts, I sucked in as much of my cocktail as would fit in my mouth at once. I regretted it instantly. My eyes watered. My tongue burned. But I couldn’t swallow. This drink was about 95% vodka (and cheap vodka, at that) and 5% cranberry juice. If I didn’t know better, I would have said he was trying to get me drunk. His drink, I couldn’t help but notice, had a much darker shade of red to it. I forced myself to relax my throat and disengage my gag reflex. I forced the potion down and opened my mouth to take several gasping breaths.

  While he was turned around, messing with turning the DVD player on and trying to get the stereo receiver turned to the correct setting, I had the opportunity to take all of him in, so to speak. He had on light blue simple cotton shorts, the thin kind that looked like they were made from T-shirt material. They were short enough that I could see his hamstrings, which really did look like strings that extended from the back of his knees up to an area I preferred not to contemplate. On either side of this taut cord, the skin sagged inward and downward, like there used to be something substantial there but had since abandoned ship, like butter leaking out of its wrapper when placed in the microwave. Although his legs were thin, I could see that the skin on his torso and arms were anything but. It looked like he had once been very heavy and had lost a significant amount of weight but not quite all off it. It hung from his body like phlegm that someone attempted to spit out but got caught on a dry lip and now hung vulgarly from the chin. His arms reverberated whenever he moved them, which he did often, frantically pushing this or that button, turning this or that knob.

  And I felt bad for him. I really did. He was so ashamed of his body that he used pictures from his glory days, had to use them, in order to get anyone to agree to “hang out” with him. And here was I. Stuck. Again. Obligated by a guilt I could not explain to myself to stick it out, see it through, come what may. And I knew exactly what was eventually going to happen.

  The opening animated credits started: Better Off Dead, one of my all-time favorite comedies. Nothing could be less sexual. Maybe I would be saved, after all?

He looked over at me and noticed my glass. “Oooh! You must have really liked your drink! You like ‘em stiff, huh?” Wink.

  Oh God. Please stop.

I kept staring at the TV screen. I laughed loudly. I spoke all the lines I remembered. I tried so hard to turn his attention away from me. He laughed, but every time I said something he gazed at me as if I were some beautiful angel who had floated into his living room on a cloud . . . of dust?

I folded my left leg underneath my right knee and leaned over to the left, resting my elbow on the arm of the sofa: an attempt at putting more space between us. He saw things differently.

  While I was turned, searching for an open spot on the end table to set my empty glass, I felt hot wet snakes slither nervously up the leg of my shorts. All the way up. I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. Well, here we go. I met his lecherous gaze and pressed my hips upward slightly, the universal sign that it was okay to continue his exploration.

  “Umm, where should I put this,” I said, holding out a wadded hand towel he had brought in from the bathroom.

  “Oh you can just toss it on the floor for now. I’ll get it later.”

  Yeah, I can only imagine what you’re going to do with it later.

“Well, I better get going,” I said.

His face melted, even more than normal. I knew he was hoping to bask in the afterglow for a while, maybe pour me another of his Elixirs of Love. “Are you sure? We haven’t finished the movie yet. Want to start a different one?”

  “Nah. I really should get home. I have to work in the morning.”

  I pulled my underwear and shorts back on and pulled my shirt over my head. I realized it was on backwards and awkwardly pulled my arms in and rotated it around the right way.

  “Well, I really had fun. We should do this again sometime.”

“Yeah, for sure.”

  I opened up his front door and let myself out. But not before he managed to pat my butt a couple times. I speedwalked to my car, sure I was going to vomit in the driveway. I opened the door and sat down as quickly as I could. Before I shut the door, I leaned out and spat out the mouthful of saliva I had refused to swallow for the past ten minutes. It splattered on the gravel and shimmered in the light of the street lamp. How poetic, I thought.

  I didn’t swallow at all on the way home, either. I was now thankful that I lived pretty close by.

When I got home, I ignored Lisa’s questions as to my whereabouts and made a beeline for the bathroom. I turned on the shower. Hot. I ripped my clothes off and flung them into the corner. I opened up the medicine cabinet to avoid seeing my reflection. I spat several times into the sink and then gargled mouthwash for as long as I could handle the burning. When I was reminded of the burning cocktail I had had, I gagged and sprayed the mouthwash into the sink.

  There was something inside me, clawing its way up, growling and moaning. That voice. I registered it, like I had so many times before, only on the most vague of subconscious levels. I refused to let it rise to the surface. I beat it back down with a pointed stick. I stabbed at it and forced it into submission. I concentrated on what was before me, the blue spray of mouthwash on the wall behind the faucet--I wiped it all up with a wad of toilet paper--the thick haze of steam I was breathing in--I turned the water down slightly so as not to induce burns. I stepped with determination into the shower and slid the curtain closed. I backed up into the stinging spray and concentrated on the needle points of heat that seared my back and ran down my legs. I turned around and opened my mouth and let the needles pierce my tongue, my gums, and my cheeks. I swished the water, compressed my lips, and spit it out in a steady thin stream. I smiled to myself as I saw it get pulled down the drain.

3

I am lying on my bed drawing a picture of several of my stuffed animals that I had dressed up and posed to look like a family portrait. When my dad stumbles past my room on his way out of the bathroom he braces himself against my door jamb and glares in at me. I don’t know why, but I turn my head toward him and smile proudly, as if he has just walked in on me putting the finishing touches on a copy of a Caravaggio. He burps, pushing it out and making it as loud and prolonged as he can, and waddles over to my bed. Without a word, he jerks me up by my wrist and drags me down the hall and into my parents’ closet.

He takes all my clothes off of me with such speed and force that he catches my skin with his long fingernails several times. He doesn't care if he hurts me, and I know he doesn't, so I don't say anything. I am maybe six or seven.

He looks at me, at the red welts from his blind and drunk hands, and actually laughs. Then he yanks me over to my mom’s side of the closet. He opens a few different drawers and takes out a pair of my mom’s underwear, one of her bras, and a pair of pantyhose. Then he whips me around and takes down a black sparkly cocktail dress from a hanger and a pair of high-heeled shoes from a shelf. He throws the whole pile of clothes at me.

"Put them on," he growls. "Now." He drops into a chair in the corner. "If you want to be a woman so bad, then you're gonna dress like one." He is so drunk he can hardly enunciate any of his words properly. 

When I have finally put everything on, he tells me to get outside. I make the mistake of hesitating behind the front door after I have opened it a few inches, so he pulls it all the way open and pushes me. I don’t think he means to push me as hard as he does, but I fly forward onto the ground in front of the step. It is only one step, but his shove takes me by surprise so I don't have time to brace myself for the fall. I bang my cheek bone on the concrete. I don't know how badly I had been cut until all the dried blood is washed off my cheek, my chin, my neck, and my chest later on. 

He orders me to stand up and wait for him at the bottom of the driveway. He goes into the garage for a minute and comes back out carrying a folding chair under his arm. He unfolds it and puts it right where the sidewalk crosses in front of the driveway. When he picks me up under my arms, he squeezes really hard and holds me away from him like he can't bear to be that close to me, like I have some terrible disease. Like I am the terrible disease. Then he literally drops me down in the chair and says, "You're gonna sit there until you learn to be a real man. I hope every single person in our neighborhood sees you. Maybe then you’ll think twice before you prance around with your girly books and markers and dolls."

I sit there all afternoon and into the evening when my mom finally gets home from shopping with her girlfriends. She stops her car right in front of the driveway, not even totally out of the street. She gets out, walks around the car until she is facing me. Oscar Wilde once said, "The less said about life’s sores the better." My mom unwittingly follows his advice and just stares at me, totally dumbstruck. I am still much too terrified to move or say anything. She looks up at the house and then back to me and then, finally, starts to cry really hard. She keeps saying, "Never again. Never again!" over and over. It seems so stupid now, but I was more concerned about the neighbors hearing and seeing her like that than seeing me. 

She finally regains enough composure to pick me up out of the chair. I wince when she touches the bruises under my arms. She hugs me so tightly to her I can hardly breathe. She just keeps crying and saying "Never again." 

My arms and legs hang limply. One of her shoes falls off my foot and clacks loudly as the heel hits the concrete.