We must have had twenty in there by the time we made it up to the treehouse. It was about thirty or forty feet up, with foot-long scraps of two-by-four nailed into the trunk as a ladder. When we got inside my brother produced some kind of evil book of rituals and rites, slapped it on his lap and searched for the right page. I was observing the bag of frogs, holding it up, twisting it in the light, when he promptly ripped it from my hands. He had a kitchen pot up there, all scorched on the inside, and he started filling it with lighter fluid that he’d pulled from some secret compartment in his fortress. What are you going to do? I asked him. Just watch, he said, and hold this book open, so I can read it. He pulled out a match book, laid it beside him. My god, I thought. We have to be quick about this, okay, he said. Now, just hold the book up so I can read it. I didn’t want to, but I held it up anyway. He lit a match and threw it into the pool of lighter fluid. The fire was a lot bigger than I had anticipated. Then he had the Ziploc bag open, dumping the frogs in before I could do something to stop him. I closed my eyes. The sound was indescribable — popping, hissing, tiny little screams — and the stench, the stench was unbearable. I opened my eyes in time to see a couple of them hop out of the flames, but they hadn’t put themselves out, no, they were slow dying balls of fire. My brother hurriedly read from the book, words that would never mean anything to me, and then he clapped the lid over the flame and stomped out the few frogs that had escaped beneath his shoe. I wanted to cry, I wanted resurrection, but I also wanted my brother to love me, so instead I asked him, What kind of spell did you cast? And he tells me: There’s this girl at school I want to fuck.
~ ~ ~
Feathers
There are people crowded into a room, all ages, teenaged kids to twenty- and thirty-somethings, some with their parents, some on their own, fifteen to twenty all counted. I’m there, too, hiding under a chair beside my parents, my brother and sister down the row. The guy leading the meeting looks like the real McCoy, a true Indian, or if you prefer: Native American. I didn’t know what to call them, but this dude has got this long gray hair all done up in braided pigtails, a feather in it, and he’s burning sage in a turtle shell and passing it around so that everybody present might receive a spiritual cleansing. When everybody has been washed in the smoke, he pulls the feather from his hair and explains the rules: This is called a talking feather. Whoever is holding the feather is the only one allowed to say anything. Even if you want to interject you must wait until the feather has gotten around to you. I want everybody to be honest, not only about why they are here, but also about what they are going to do to make it out of here a better person. Okay.
I think: God, not another truth sermon, and I listen to their stories with vague interest. To me it’s just a bunch of people I never want to care about. Drunks, druggies, lesbians, gays, gangbangers, headbangers, Goths — they’re all present. Then there are the parents, most of them just your average middle- to upper-middle class parents who’ve done their best for their children. Jesus, and there are mine, too, feeling defeated and mystified, but looking just as high and holy and caring as they ever have in any other situation. My dad has the same look on his face that he has when he watches baseball. How did things ever get this bad? Are they bad? Is this the new normal? It doesn’t matter, not now. I’m in too deep. I listen to their stories — stories of desperation, betrayal, complete and utter despair, suicidal thoughts; Sandy selling favors for a snort; Johnny fucking the babysitter after she got him drunk one night when he was eleven or twelve years old; Tim not knowing his damage until he visited the doctor a few weeks ago and found out he’s positive for hepatitis C; Sam talking about the enlarged liver of his deceased father and saying that he’ll end up just like him: dead at forty and too poor to be interred in the family plot. You tend to get it all at these places, fuck-ups and wash-outs with brains like Swiss cheese, and you hate them all, especially since you are a little kid who has never experienced these things and don’t quite know yet that the world is a place where you are supposed to feel afraid. But at the same time, you want to take their shoulders in your small young hands and shake them, you want to shake them until they fall from their old worn-out bodies and slip into some new ones. You want to grab that fucking feather and remind them that there is a child present. But you don’t, and you feel stupid for it, because it’s all clear now, all of it. Everything has come into view — fucking hypocrite. And now that you’re older, you know you’ve become one of them — the people you loathed and kicked to shit in your head and wanted to throw into the garbage bin. And you feel guilty, ashamed. Your friends now go to meetings like these. And perhaps you should too. Who knows? You get fucked up each and every night, right? You don’t look back. You don’t look forward. You don’t look at all. And your parents, they must have known you were checking under your bed for people at night, even while they were telling you there were no such things as monsters.
Conversation Overheard in the Line at the Grocery Store
Woman (to Man): So…it was aborted?
Man: Think so.
Woman: How’d they afford that?
Man: Don’t know. He hasn’t had a job in two years.
Woman: And aside from that, abortion’s just wrong.
Man: Shit — I forgot something!
Woman: What is it?
Man: Stay in line. I’ll be right back.
Woman stands there behind the shopping cart, tapping a toe and humming a Katy Perry song.
A couple minutes later the man comes back with a carton of eggs.
Woman: What? You gonna make me an omelet?
Man: If you stay over tonight, you’ll get more than just an omelet. (Nervous laughter.)
Woman: Hmm, we’ll see.
The man touches the woman’s ass as she hands the cashier her credit card.
Favorite Flowers
Scabiosa
Tulip
Rose
Dahlia
Chocolate Cosmos
Liatris
Ranunculus
Oriental Lily
Freesia
Peony
Godetia
Sexual Experience
The first one I saw that excited me was in a magazine. I suppose that’s how a lot of boys see their first one. That goes for boobs too. And the second one was probably the same. But the third one was different. Or was it the fourth — fifth? Doesn’t matter, this one wasn’t in any magazine or video. It was my brother’s girlfriend’s sister’s pussy and she was showing it to me out in the garage while my parents were gone for the weekend, visiting my great aunt in Nebraska. And honestly, it wasn’t awesome. It looked like I knew it would look, which was cool, but I was embarrassed because she already had a bunch of hair going on down there. She was a woman. She was my own age and I only had this gross peach fuzz, my cock not yet grown into the fully functioning size of manhood. How does this happen? The first few naked women I’d seen made my penis hard, with the exception of the time I was forced to watch, but now I have this beautiful naked girl in front of me, showing me all of her goods, wanting me to touch her and make her come alive, and my penis does absolutely nothing — in fact, it feels retracted, sunken into my body, more dead than alive. She kind of laughed at me. She must have noticed my discomfort. Don’t be a wuss, she said. Come over here! I had lumps all up in my throat. I resented her. Get your pants on, I said. You aren’t like that. Come on, stop acting like a slut and get your pants on. But she didn’t, she just lit up a cigarette, pants still crumpled around her ankles, and fondled her abnormally large tits through her t-shirt, so I started for the door. Fine, she said, I’ll just have to find someone else to fuck. She looked more pissed than crushed, which annoyed me. Whatever, I muttered. I went to my bedroom and tried masturbating to the thought of her lying there beside me on my bed — not having sex, just lying there, caressing my hair and massaging my tiny muscles, but I couldn’t do it, couldn’t even get it hard. Truth is: she was too honest for my world. As for me, I was lying through my fucking teeth.