!

02 October 2005

When in high school, he would hold the hand of [Psych!], shocked and dismayed as she related how the Friday before (the day would be Monday, third-period Gifted/AP Biology II), a boy in her grade got her "drunk and…and…he put it in me!"

Dear God, how could that happen?  What an evil world.

The sixth consecutive Monday, [Bearshirt]'s shock and dismay had a tiny little shift…

The tenth consecutive Monday--the same boy was involved--[Bearshirt] had had enough of sexual stupidity.

For a few years.  The stupidity of other people, rather.

!

Their first date (and his first date, period), he suggested the man take him to Briefer Than a Girl's, where [Bearshirt] had his second-ever mixed-drink.  Too strong.  The man slurped his down readily and proclaimed it delicious.  He regaled [Bearshirt] with a story about his own high school experience that segued clumsily into living in Miami, a tale that had no promise of stopping soon enough, something about something.  A lip-synch "concert" of George Michael songs.  Something.  Something about returning to Miami, where he had lived, although his parents (white-bread Baptist missionaries) lived in Locust Fork; living in a mobile home in Miami and needing a bodyguard.  Maybe two bodyguards.  Something probably incited by [Bearshirt]'s casual mention of England as his Senior Trip destination.  Of course, England had to be topped, topped by some hard-to-follow Memoir of Miami.  They danced for one song, and the man wanted to leave.  [Bearshirt], who technically was still Baptist, but luv-luv-loved to dance, found dancing infinitely more interesting than leaving (cover also considered), but the man was driving, so [Bearshirt] had to follow.

On the way home, [Bearshirt]'s home, the man produced a portion of marijuana.

"Uhm, hey."

"Hey, yourself."

"Uhm, should you be doing that while driving?"

"I'm fine."  He didn't ask if [Bearshirt] was.  He thought that marijuana was supposed to have a distinct scent, but probably since the window was down, and the change of seasons had created the beginning of a stuffed nose, [Bearshirt] couldn't detect it.  He hoped it wouldn't settle on his clothes.  "Do you want some?"

He dared to ask, "Are you kidding?"

"Oh, you're one of those.  Do you want to go out again tomorrow?  Or better yet, why don't you come over to my place now?"

"It's past my bedtime."

"Uhm-hmn."  The man let go of the wheel entirely, gently tweaked [Bearshirt]'s crotch, and made a clown's-nose sound.  It was probably the immediate influence of the drug.  It was probably the immediate influence of the drug.  It was probably also 11:00PM Friday night with a three-day week-end approaching and no projects to work on…

But finally home, [Bearshirt] related the evening on the princess phone to his best friend, who proceeded to blithely pronounce that marijuana actually made one a better driver.  She sadly was only one in a sea by which he was completely surrounded, but he let it go.

He and the man, as a matter of course, had exchanged numbers, and he called him at what was intended to pass for a decent hour of the next day, but the man sounded as if he hadn't quite made it out of bed yet.  He brightened audibly when [Bearshirt] suggested a late lunch.  "Or would you rather have an early one?

"I'm still hungry, even though I ate a whole blackberry cobbler I made yesterday afternoon.  I ate it when I got home last night."

Wha'who?

!

[Bearshirt]'s house was easy to find, although since the man lived in Blount County, it took a while for him to get there.  [Bearshirt]'s sister, because of her current obsession with French cooking, had made soup of some sort the day before.  [Bearshirt] thought the missionary kid would be barely aware it was leftovers, probably having been subjected to hog-stomach and slivered potatoes stir-fried together during his formative years, at any rate.  Some people were weird about leftovers, but how could one possibly argue while under the leftovers of marijuana?

She and the man met each other at the door going in different directions, looking over each other briefly with different levels of interest.  "Have fun!" she requested, this said as she flounced to her car, in that way country girls with good jobs have when they want to look as if they can at least spell "cosmopolitan," come on!

"Is that your wife?"

"…"

"I mean, that would be cool."  Hmn.

Lunch was consumed under silence, which [Bearshirt] realized could be construed as a signal he wanted to get the meal over with quickly so that they could commence crawling over each other like live eels.  So, "I would have made a dessert, but I thought since you ate an entire cobbler…"

"That's cool"

"I have some fresh fruit…"

"I don't like fruit."  Is not equivalent with "No thank you."

Waitaminnit, what about the cobbler?

!

[Bearshirt] was twenty-four, and had never had, well, you know, conventional sex.  The man was extremely attractive, in the way certain examples of ferocious wild animals with pretty coloring have.  Yeep-o-rama.

It was over before it began.

ITEMS OF NOTE:

• The missionary kid practically ripped his shirt off, which was not a little frightening, but revealed the similar thrilling physiognomy of hopeful dreams, on an even denser frame than [Bearshirt] had imagined.  "I do acrobatics on a trampoline, which tightens you up a lot."  [Bearshirt] allowed himself to imagine the man spelled it "alot."  Following another idea, [Bearshirt] believed that trampolines were on sale at the Western Auto, and he could park it in the spacious back yard between the dogwood and the sugar maple.
• The pants went too, and as the man was without underpants, it was immediately understood this was not an equal relationship.  "Come on, what have you got?"
• To stall the inevitable, and somehow without coming into serious contact with the man's punctuation mark, he made as if to kiss him.  It was [Bearshirt]'s first, but he knew immediately he was the better kisser: it was like kissing a depressingly-large snake.  To late, as he was being more-or-less pushed to his bed, he wondered if this snake were poisonous.
• As their differences became more pronounced, he realized that it was very possible that these differences would dictate certain behavior patterns he would be expected to act out.  He didn't mind that so much; in fact, he was somewhat pleased he wouldn't have to negotiate what would and wouldn't happen.  But he still gagged almost to the point of vomiting when taking the fact in, and the missionary kid smirked.
• He suddenly found himself facing the wall, perched like a frog on the long edge of the bed.  He understood that nothing much was expected of him at this point really: he wasn't really necessarily involved.  It even wasn't necessary for him to be there, and it was his own house.  He thought of [Psych!].  He thought of her.  He thought of her.  He thought he was going to cry.  "Am I hurting you?" the man asked, as if he were being slightly inconvencienced.  "No."  [Bearshirt] even tried to smile (turning his head at an odd angle that hurt his eye), and he thought he succeeded.  It ended before it began.  But at the same, one had to wonder, would it ever end?
• He then had the opportunity to shower with another man besides college gym class, but he didn't take it.  He gave the missionary kid his toweling, but when the man moved to kiss him, he moved his head.  He left the bathroom.  It wasn't as if there were anything to steal.

!

The next day, [Bearshirt] was invited to the man's current church for Homecoming.  "What's your last name?" he asked, looking back from outside the car as they wound their way up Hwy. 31.

"___.  You?"  He visibly was only following along.

"___.  How old are you?"

"Twenty-six.  You?"

"I'm twenty-four."

"Yeah."  The man was driving, but why?  He didn't eat any fruit or vegetables this time either, when they were invited to stay for Dinner on the Grounds (he had picked around in the soup yesterday, which was exceedingly irritating).

Before dinner, they sat in a Sunday School class under a startlingly-young teacher who asked everyone to read a paragraph of Scripture out of the lesson book.  [Bearshirt] was apparently going to be last.  The missionary kid especially, but all of the other students stumbled over every sentence.  Poor reading was always disturbing and enraging to [Bearshirt]; as a result, he skipped ahead to determine what portion was his to read.  His would be the most demanding, with references to and a catalog of the beautiful names of the Hebrew ancestors.  When he looked up after his turn, by the end forgetting that he had planned on making a mean-tempered spectacle of himself, the entire room of six stared at him as if he had emitted a fine-fine soliloquy of glossolalia.

"Have you ever done radio?" the pretty girl with the snarly overbite asked.

"Well, a little."  He wasn't sure where she was going with this.  "In college."

"You went to college?  Junior college?"

"Ah, no, I went to a university.  ___, in Birmingham.  I finished last year."

"Oh, my," [Teacher] breathed, impressed, but reservedly.  [Bearshirt] suddenly needed to go to the restroom.  Or England.

!

The worship experience was a little more Pentecostal than what [Bearshirt] would have expected from a Baptist church, but still pleasant.  The pianist threw him off repeatedly, by insisting on playing the song introduction before every single verse of every single song.  He was most likely the only one singing harmony in the room, including the choir.  He wondered if these people of the upland farms, white with rectitude and death, thought he was singing off-key, but he just couldn't hit the high notes with proper technique for some reason.

The man had been invited to sing in the choir, and was in the choir.  [Bearshirt] had also been invited, but declined--as if this were not obvious, and also an important reason--as he was a guest.  The man accepted, assumably without needing to practice, but visibly having no idea what he was doing.  It was a pleasing song, but as soon as it was over, [Bearshirt] could only remember the phrase which also served as title.  The hook.  These people, understandably, wouldn't know what a hook was, except as something to catch fish with.

"These are good carrots.  And the fried okra is delicious: not greasy or hard...Oh, you're welcome...Did you grow this yourself?"

!

He was not formally introduced to the missionaries, but learned they had served in Indonesia, that happy archipelago where he already knew one could dig up rose quartz in random back yards and even the lava was considered good luck.

!

The man was the sort of man who brushed off reading as an impediment to his comings and goings.  He said in the beginning that he always was coming and going, which [Bearshirt] as a matter of course took as a really wretched-wrong pun.  Well, it was--coming and going and busy-busy.  It was immediately obvious that the man had some sort of block about schooling, or maybe even had a learning disorder or two, but certainly that was nothing to be ashamed of.  They, besides the muscles and the fur and the punctuation mark, were the only interesting things about him.

He found himself at the man's grandmother's house, taking it like a man again.  The quilt was well-made and he even asked the man if [Source of Devilspawn] had made it, but that only made the missionary kid work at his intent harder.  [Bearshirt] was by no means comfortable with this, but asking him about that could have produced any number of responses and misuses of punctuation.