A. Homes - Things You Should Know

“Have you seen them?” my father asked.

“No,” I said.

“I want your Oscar Mayer in my bun,” he said.

He lived miles away, had gone to a different elementary school, was a different religion, wasn’t circumcised.

My father poked his head into the room, jiggled his keys in the air, and said, “Got ’em.”

“Great tie,” I said.

My father tweaked his bow tie. “Bye, guys.”

The front door closed. My father’s white Chrysler slid into the street.

“I want you to give it to me good.”

“I want to watch Jeopardy, ” I said, going for the remote control.

“Ever tasted a dick infusion?” he asked, sipping from my glass of Dr. Pepper.

He unzipped his fly, fished out his dick, and dropped it into the glass. The ice cubes melted, cracking the way they do when you pour in something hot. A minute later, he put his dick away, swirled the soda around, and offered me a sip.

“Maybe later,” I said, focusing on the audio daily double. “‘Tie a Yellow Ribbon.’”

“I’m bored,” he said.

“Play along,” I said. “I’ve already got nine thousand dollars.”

He went to the bookcase and started handling the family photos. “Wonder if he ever sucked a cock,” he said, picking up a portrait of my father.

“Don’t be a butt plug.”

He smiled. “I love you,” he said, raising his T-shirt, pulling it off over his head.

Dark hair rose in a fishbone up and out of his jeans.

I turned off the television.

“We need something,” he said as I led him down the hall toward my room.

“Something what?”

“Slippery.”

I ducked into the bathroom, opened the cabinet, and grabbed a tube of Neosporin.

“Brilliant,” he said. “An antibiotic lube job, fights infection while you’re having fun.”

Piece by piece I undressed with him, after him. He peeled off his socks, I peeled off mine. He unzipped his jeans and I undid mine. He slipped his fingers into the band of his underwear, snapped the elastic, and grinned. I pulled mine down. He slipped the tube of ointment into my ass, pinched my nipples, and sank his teeth deep into the muscle above my collarbone.

My parents got back just after midnight. “It was so nice of you to spend the evening,” my mother said. “I just hate to leave you-know-who home alone. I think he gets depressed.”

“Whatever,” he said, shrugging. He left with my father, who was giving him a ride home.

“You don’t have to come with us,” my father said to me. “It’s late. Go to bed.”

“See you in school tomorrow,” I said.

“Whatever.”

A week later he sat in my room at home, jerking off, with the door open.

“Stop,” I said. “Or close the door.”

“Danger excites me.”

“My mother isn’t dangerous,” I said, getting up and closing the door myself.

“What we’ve got here,” he said, still jerking, “is virgin sperm. People will pay a load for this shit.” He laughed at himself. “Get it — pay a load.” Come shot into the air and landed on the glass of my fish tank.

“Very funny,” I said. I was working out an algebra problem on my bed. He came over to me, dropped his pants, and put his butt in my face. “Your luck, I haven’t used it for anything except a couple of farts all day. Lick it,” he said, bending over, holding his cheeks apart. It was smelly and permanently stained. His testicles hung loose and low, and I took them in my hand, rolling them like Bogart’s Caine Mutiny balls. “Get in,” he said. I buried my face there, tickled his asshole with the tip of my tongue, and made him laugh.

Saturday, on her way to the grocery store, my mother dropped us off at the park. “Shall I come back for you when I’m finished?” she asked.

“No,” he said flatly.

“No, thanks,” I said. “We’ll find our way.”

“Ever fuck a girl?” he asked as we cut across the grass, past the playground, past the baseball fields and toward the woods.

“No.”

“Ever want to?”

“No.”

“Wanna watch?” he said, taking me to a picnic table where a girl I recognized from school was standing, arms crossed in front of her chest. “It’s twelve-thirty, you’re late,” she said. The girl looked at me and blinked. “Oh, hi. We’re in history together, right?”

I nodded and looked at my shoes.

“Miss me?” he asked, kissing the girl’s neck, hard.

My eyes hyperfocused and zeroed in on his lips, on her skin, on the feathery blond hair at the base of her skull. When he pulled away, the hair was wet, the skin was purple and red. There were teeth marks.

She stood in the clearing, eyes closed. He reached for her hand and led her into the woods. I followed, keeping a certain distance between them and me.

In the trees, he pulled his T-shirt off over his head. She ran her fingernails slowly up and down the fishbone of fur sticking out of his Levi’s. He tugged at the top of her jeans.

“Take ’em off,” he said in a familiar and desperate voice.

“Who do you think you’re kidding,” she said.

“Show me yours,” he said, rubbing the front of his Levi’s with an open palm, “and I’ll show you mine.”

“That’s okay, thanks,” she said, backing away.

He went toward her, she stepped back again. He stuck his leg behind her, tripping her. She fell to the ground. He stepped on her open palms, holding her down with his Nikes.

“This isn’t funny,” she said.

He laughed.

He unzipped his pants and peed on her. She screamed, and he aimed the river at her mouth. Her lips sealed and her head turned away. Torrent released, he shook it off on her, put it away, and stepped from her hands.

She raised herself. Urine ran down her cheeks, onto her blouse, and into her jeans. Arms spread, faces twisted, together she and I ran out of the woods, screaming as though doused in gasoline, as though afire.

My wife, the doctor, is not well. In the end she could be dead. It started suddenly, on a country weekend, a movie with friends, a pizza, and then pain. “I liked the part where he lunged at the woman with a knife,” Eric says.

“She deserved it,” Enid says.

“Excuse me,” my wife says, getting up from the table.

A few minutes later I find her doubled over on the sidewalk. “Something is ripping me from the inside out.”

“Should I get the check?” She looks at me like I am an idiot.

“My wife is not well,” I announce, returning to the table. “We have to go.”

“What do you mean — is she all right?”

Eric and Enid hurry out while I wait for the check. They drive us home. As I open the front door, my wife pushes past me and goes running for the bathroom. Eric, Enid, and I stand in the living room, waiting.

“Are you all right in there?” I call out.

“No,” she says.

“Maybe she should go to the hospital,” Enid says.

“Doctors don’t go to the hospital,” I say.

She lies on the bathroom floor, her cheek against the white tile. “I keep thinking it will pass.”

“Call us if you need us,” Eric and Enid say, leaving.

I tuck the bath mat under her head and sneak away. From the kitchen I call a doctor friend. I stand in the dark, whispering, “She’s just lying there on the floor, what do I do?”

“Don’t do anything,” the doctor says, half-insulted by the thought that there is something to do. “Observe her. Either it will go away, or something more will happen. You watch and you wait.”

Watch and wait. I am thinking about our relationship. We haven’t been getting along. The situation has become oxygenless and addictive, a suffocating annihilation, each staying to see how far it will go.