For him, this was just the logical conclusion for the end of another weary day, the ultimate consequence for a series of bad decisions, the first of which was to attend a keg party on a school night. His friends assured him it would be okay, everything would be discrete and out of the way. No chance of cops. Hey, he might even get lucky. And so, against his better judgment (of course), he agreed, but he didn’t know why. The lure of adventure, the romantic ideal of a story to tell, all the antics he imagined witnessing, partaking in. This was never the case, however. Large group situations made him self conscious and uncomfortable, and never once did these excursions end in outlandish behavior, fits of laughter, validation of existence. Every experience was mundane.
The house was a dilapidated rental across the street from a paint manufacturer. Michael and his friends were in the south part of town, the largely abandoned industrial part. No one lived in this area but college dropouts and starving artists, and even then, the population was sparse. Geographically, it was a long way from home in the suburbs; demographically, it was even further than that.
The party was loud and dispersed. Small groups of people congregated outside smoking cigarettes. Everyone at the house was already drunk. On his way to the house, Michael encountered a group of three. One was a tall, thin man with a wispy beard and the type of posture that suggested his sinew was more elastic than a normal person’s. He gesticulated broadly with his long arms. The second was shorter and wore a fedora. He had manicured sideburns and a triangular patch of beard on the front of his chin, and he was smoking hand-rolled cigarettes. The third was a female, athletic and lean, with tattoos disappearing up both sleeves of her tee shirt and peeking out above the collar. She wore glasses that framed her eyes with a feline countenance. Michael could not say if this made her appearance attractive or not, but he assumed it was the intended affect.
The three strangers were discussing the ethos of neoliberalism, how its amoral worldview allowed for the commodification of anything that could be properly framed, even experiences, even ideas. He listened to the three of them all agree with each other before heading into the house. None of the partygoers struck Michael as the type of people he would associate with during daylight hours. It was the attitude of the three strangers that seemed to embody the currency of credibility with everyone present. Michael’s friends seemed to understand this capital and exchange it easily, but he could not counterfeit it or muster the courage to sell it. And so it seemed his friends had disappeared, intermingled with crowd of strangers, lost it a marketplace of coolness. So after an interminable time walking back and forth between the rooms of the house, gulping down plastic cups of beer, not conversing with anyone, Michael left the party.
He shambled to where the car was parked, thinking he could sleep in the back seat and await the return of his friends, but the car was gone. He began to walk home. It was on this walk home, cursing himself for his foolishness, for trusting his friends, for the uselessness of his self pity, and fantasizing about hailing a cab or catching a bus or generally being in different circumstances than he was in, that a car, a station wagon, pulled alongside him. The man in the car asked him if he needed a ride. Michael accepted.
The man seemed kind enough. He was dressed in the attire of a business man. He had a wedding band on his finger, and in the back of the car was a child’s carseat. The man asked Michael where he was headed. Michael told him the far away suburb. You’re along way from home, the man said. Michael nodded. And you’ve been drinking. Michael nodded again. Michael looked at the man, but had trouble seeing him, slightly blurred in an alcoholic haze. The man smiled and massaged himself through his pants. Michael watched him do this for a moment longer than was perhaps advisable. The man redoubled his smile and pulled the car into an alley way. He killed the engine and extinguished the headlights. He got out of the car, but Michael stayed put. The man got out of the car and went around the Michael’s side, opened the door and told him to get out.
Michael felt numb with the weight of the alcohol; his stomach clenched with dread and excitement. Although he was young and inexperienced, he was not confused, and whatever urge there might be that told him to flee, there was a subconscious drive that willed him to stay and participate; there was that irresistible force that drives all life forward that compelled him.
His legs felt rubbery as he stepped out of the car. He stood facing the man, and leaned in to kiss him, but the man stopped him. Instead, with a hand on each shoulder, the man pushed Michael down on his knees. “Undo my fly,” the man said. As he unzipped the man’s pants, Michael realized his hands were trembling. And then he found himself confronted with not just the man’s lust, but his own.
The man pushed himself past Michael’s lips, into his mouth, over his tongue to the back of his throat. Michael tried to keep from retching.
The man said, “You haven’t given too many blow jobs, have you?” pushing himself back and forth. And then he said, “These shoes are worth more than your life. If you puke on them, I’ll kill you.”
After several minutes of this, the man pulled out and told Michael to stand up, to turn around, to undo his pants, and he obeyed. The man pushed him over the hood of the car. It was still warm, and Michael could hear the engine underneath ticking as it cooled. With no lubrication present other than the saliva that was there, the man forced himself on Michael. And although he tried to be receptive, he still found the sensation unpleasant. A breeze carried the marine air from the nearby harbor, and it was cold and heavy on his lower back where his shirt had come up. They didn’t even bother to take their clothes off. Though no money was exchanged, the act was almost commercial in nature, merely a transaction, like the use of an ATM, the man was here to make a deposit. This was how both parties preferred it, no idle chitchat, no small talk or pleasantries exchanged; the brief interaction was intimate but strangely detached.
For Michael, this was tacit confirmation of his self worth, to be here at this late weekday hour, in an industrial alleyway. For him, this was just a reiteration of all the bad shit the cosmos had in store for him, the universal fallacy of the existence of love, the literal truth that he had been put on this Earth to be fucked in the ass. In these brief moments of the lapsing of his virginity, Michael was silent, alone with these thoughts. The man was also silent but for a few stifled grunts during his climax.
Riding in the station wagon back to the suburbs, Michael asked, “You didn’t really mean what you said about killing me, did you?”
“No,” the man responded, “I just said that to get off.”
“Just drop me off right here,” Michael said indicating a street corner several blocks from where he lived. He watched the man drive away, disappear, before returning home. The sky was brightening, and the first birds of the day were starting to chirp.
The day was veiled by a hangover and a disbelief. It was not until lunch with his friends did the experience crystallize into something tangible. A friend asked him, “You disappeared last night. Did you get lucky?”
Michael thought about it for a while, trying to recall details that might have been lost to inebriation. Finally he said, “I don’t think ‘lucky’ is the right word.”
[1368 words]
We were dandelions, virile and wild. We were wanted nowhere and belonged nowhere, marginalized to the empty lots, the roadsides, and the cracks in the sidewalk, but that’s where we blossomed: where ever we could, where ever the sun shined. And such was our strength; where ever we planted our seeds was where we would flourish.
We put our roots down in the grass beside the stream, and we were brazen the way we cooled ourselves, nourishing ourselves with the sun and water, bathing, swimming in the crystal cold until we were exhausted, laying side by side, unashamed. It was on that day, in that moment in the grass beside the stream that we had found ourselves part of that cosmic fluke, the one that, against all odds, against all hope or reason, seeks to perpetuate itself. We found in our existence our own intrinsic value; we where here because we were, and that was good enough. We needed no other reason. Any reason besides would have seemed crass and ludicrous.
Laying on the grass side by side we held hands and considered the music of the universe, the stream below us, the wind in the leaves of the trees above us, and how we were a part of that same song. Together, we trembled, we vibrated until our wavelengths coincided, and we were in harmony, humming like electricity. Had we harnessed that energy, and spread it across space, we might have sired a thousand new galaxies, so incandescent was it. This thing that we had, as hot and bright as it was, too was it volatile, fearsome, and we thought, should we pursue it, we might lose it, should we let it stand, we might watch it vanish, a victim of its own gravity. But we were ones who refused to regret inaction, so in a single motion we folded upon ourselves, and, enveloping one another in a soft cleaving of flesh, we abandoned the platonic precipice, floating for a while, like the seed of a dandelion, suspended, before descending once again to the grass beside the stream. We knew we had done the right thing, the perfect thing. We knew though the acuity of what radiated in that moment would mature into something timeless, we were gods. We had created a universe unto ourselves, and for that brief moment, though nothing else existed, we did. We existed for one another, and there was nothing else. There was need for nothing else; no need for anything except you and I.
[421 words]
