J. Osborne: Black Gum

“Me too,” Shane said. “Me too.”

A woman in a sweater and mom jeans leaned over the bar. We all tilted our heads.

Charlie took a sip of beer. “I’d hit it.”

“I’d hit it,” we echoed.

We invited everyone we knew to the crib that night and it was off the fucking chain in that motherfucker I am telling you right now. Shane decided that his gums needed a touch up and everyone stood around geeking and some of them had the red Solo cups with the Sprite and shit in them and they were seeing the people in the shadows worming their way through the spackle in the ceiling. That sound, that sound was something else, that sound makes me gag to this day, the needle hitting bare pink gum and flooding over. I wonder how much fucking ink he swallowed in those sessions, I wonder how toxic it was, and I wonder if that was why he was the way he was. A kid with long hair and an acoustic guitar sat on the arm of the couch and played songs for the girls until his gun slipped from the back of his jeans and he retrieved it and took one of the girls back to the room. A big son of a bitch that I’d never seen before talked shit in the kitchen and stood on his head and poured beer into his face and everyone laughed and carried on. Kenny was there, too, fucking Kenny. We fucked with that kid throughout high school, we were fucking merciless, we’d be out on the soccer field that no one used for soccer by the turnaround where the kid with the beamer took his girlfriends and we’d put Kenny in a shopping cart because Kenny didn’t have a family that cared about him, he had a dad and his dad was a real piece of shit but Kenny was small and sad and so we pushed him in this shopping cart right into an open port-a-john that tipped over and spilled everywhere and he was covered in it and we fucking laughed. That night we were digging into the speed and beer, I love the way a half-empty box of Coors feels when you reach into it when it’s sitting there on the floor and you can feel the cold air still in it like whatever the opposite of a tomb is, and then it’s even colder when you get the beer itself. But that night the boy with the long hair and the gun took the girl out of the room and the girl he was with discovered that while they were busy Kenny stole the girl’s purse and so Shane decided we needed to do something about this. He called up Kenny’s friend Damon who gave him up right away, told us he’d be at this hotel room holed up. We went into Charlie’s room and he opened his drawer and lifted up the snake coil of fake ass chains and yelled “I got chains on chains nigga!” and then beneath those was a pile of bandanas, a hodgepodge, ICP and Peanuts and a blue paisley one and one from Chili’s and one from Disney World. It’s at that point that Shane took me aside to the guest room and he told me that he had a spell that would protect me and I was so gone there was three of him. He drew a pentagram on the wall and did a chant and I only remember the word “Malkuth” and then he slapped me on the shoulder and said, “heathens” and suddenly I saw the pentagram on the wall and it was on fire but it gave no heat. I said, “heathens” and I felt the last little bit of who I was fall asleep. And five of us, Shane and Charlie and the new me and the acoustic man and the big son of a bitch, we piled into the big boy’s truck and off we headed. We slapped on the bandanas and banged on the hotel door but he wouldn’t answer and we had a bat and the door opened quick and the purse dropped out and we grabbed it and piled back in the truck and tore off. We got the girl her purse back but it was missing the wallet and the phone. Shane and I ran out into the field out there and we didn’t have any shirts and we shouted “heathens” and the moon wasn’t even full that night.

Later that night when it was morning again I got a text message from my wife. My eyes were shaking so hard my temples hurt but I pursed my lips and stared.

It said, “I hope you are doing well. I miss you. I worry about you. Do you remember when we were younger and I was leaving? We stood by the van until it got so late. I just want you to know that you’ll always be my soulmate. I love you.”

I didn’t know what to make of that.

I put my phone under the bed and tried to sleep.

The room turned blue with the dawn.

When I woke up, Shane was exercising in front of the TV. One of those Wii fitness games. He held the controllers at his side and pretended to jump rope.

I still had my Peanuts bandana tied around my face.

Charlie was in the kitchen cooking breakfast.

The game dinged and told Shane he did a good job.

Charlie came out of the kitchen with a skillet and picked up a plate off the end table and licked it clean. He slid the eggs from the skillet onto the plate and handed them to Shane.

The tattooed man sat down across from me and held out the plate. “Eggs?”

I thought I might throw up. I shook my head.

“Gotta have some protein.”

From the kitchen: “I’ve got some protein for you in my nuts.”

Shane frowned. “Don’t be gross.” He looked at me and chewed slowly. Finally: “You don’t do this much, do you?”

“What?”

“Go hard in the paint. We go hard in the paint. You don’t go very hard in the paint, do you?”

“Recently, yeah. But no, I guess not.”

“The thing about going hard in the paint-”

From the kitchen: “Quit fucking saying that.”

“You need to hydrate.”

Charlie brought some water. “He’s right. Drink.”

I drank it.

Shane said, “Eat an egg.”

“No thanks.”

“One egg.”

“I’ll fucking puke.”

To Charlie: “Hey, do you still have that whey stuff?”

From the kitchen: “Yeah.”

“Mix this man a smoothie.”

Charlie brought me a glass of water mixed with whey powder. Chunks floating in it. I closed my eyes and drank the whole thing and focused on not gagging.

Shane finished his eggs and set the plate down. He leaned forward and looked at me.

I said, “What?”

“The cops would have come by now, if they were going to at all.”

I felt sick again.

“You don’t have to worry. Why would they call? They stole from us.”

The two of us sat in silence for a long time. Charlie in the kitchen. Shane just staring at me.

“Jesus Christ. What?”

“I’m only just learning this, so I’m having trouble figuring it out.”

“Figuring what out?”

“Your aura.”

From the kitchen: “Your aura is gay.”

“Don’t be rude.”

“You have the aura of a gay man.”

“I’m serious. I can’t tell if you’re a dark red. If you’re a dark red, that means you’re a sexual being.”

Charlie started doing the dishes. Over the sound of the faucet: “Please stop hitting on my friend.”

“How did you meet my cousin?”

I felt uncomfortable. He didn’t blink.

“From school,” I said. “We’ve known each other since school.”

“I’ve never seen you here.”

Over the sound of the faucet: “He’s been married and shit.”

“Is he a deeply sexual person?”

A pause. “He’s a dude.”

Shane made a noise and leaned back in his chair. “It might be more of a clouded red. That means you’re a deeply angry person. Like, anger that you almost can’t control.”

Charlie said, “Not bad,” and I said “That’s true.”

“But…there’s also a little bit of dark blue. Navy blue. You don’t know what the future holds. You want to control the present moment. You’ve lost that control. It’s like a blue going into a red, like a…”