Michael Thomas - Man Gone Down

“How old are you?”

“Twenty-three.”

“Hah.” Her laugh was forced, like it should’ve been a giggle but she was running an age game on me, holding her alleged experience over my head. She leaned in. Her face was inches away from mine. She exhaled. She had cool tic tac breath. I had kissed a girl once, under pressure from Brian. Word had gotten out that Sally was on the pill, and one day between classes he’d waited to congratulate me. I told him the truth — that she’d gotten the prescription to dissolve cysts on her ovaries. He’d taken a step back when I told him, as if I’d tried to kiss him in the locker row.

“Dude, your sex life is none of my business.”

“I don’t have a sex life, Brian.”

“I know. Is there a problem?”

He told me he’d pick me up that evening and take me to the big party at Nate Gladstone’s, that we’d discuss strategy on the way there — how to get Sally alone downstairs and then how to get her alone upstairs and what would follow. I’d been alone with her before — she was my girlfriend, after all, and her mother was a nurse, who often worked at night. I’d been alone with her before, and I think I’d wanted to kiss her — I just never figured out how. I could never tell if she was damaged, too. I always thought I detected a hint of it, no matter, I stank enough for the both of us. I was worried she could smell it, too.

We’d parked outside the party and drank a few beers. I showed him my book of poems.

“What’s this?”

“I’m going to give them to her.”

He turned to one and then another. “No, dude. No.”

“Why not?”

He flipped through the pages, shaking his head. “Dude, they’re dark. Have you shown these to anyone?”

“Gavin.”

He rolled his eyes. “What did the altar boy say to the choir boy?”

“He thought they were very powerful — very mature. He said any girl would be lucky to have them.”

“Oh, I’m not arguing against that, they’re powerful.” He looked at me as though he could assume some kind of patriarchic authority over me, as though the look alone granted him that.

“You guys are intense. You’re kind of like a part of a shotgun blast.”

“So give them to her?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“You’re the part of the blast that misses.”

So inside Gladstone’s party I kept careful count of my drinks — four to be human, six to be sociable, eight to be interesting but not scary, and the window between ten and fourteen when I was in control. When everyone else had had too much to drink and were willing to do almost anything, I’d coaxed her into Nate’s sister’s lightless room and sat her on the floor, the deep pile carpet, with our backs against the bed. I brushed her straight blonde bangs away from her face. Her lids were drooping over her moon eyes.

“Hey,” she whispered.

“Hey,” I whispered back. And it seemed quite natural to take her cheeks in my hands and guide her face to mine. There’d been times before — many — when my world had seemed to either stop or spin wildly or be detonated or implode. When time seemed irrelevant and then was discarded, and good or bad there seemed to be a bridge between me and the action, and I could see myself walk over and disappear, dissolve like a bouillon cube in my mother’s stew, or times when I could see myself regarding that bridge’s absence — watching from the stage or from center field as my mother moved in the all-white audience at my recitals and ball games, her awkward form scaling the bleachers; a cop car trailing me while walking home from school; the opening strands of a favorite song or the first beer of the evening, watching curbside, with all the white kids chattering indoors, then opening another and watching the stars align, smelling the rush of hops in my nose and the night sky becoming fixed and recognizable. Sally’s lips were warm and dry and when she opened them she inhaled. I felt myself go in and in as though I was a ceaseless breath. She felt it, too. She gasped and shut her mouth tight and pulled away.

“What’s wrong?”

“I think I’m going to be sick.”

“I’m sorry.”

“No, I’m sorry.”

She covered her face, drew up her knees, and put her head down.

“It’s not you.”

She shrank, into the bedside, into the rug, into wherever she needed to go, and disappeared. For a moment the room seemed completely dark, like between the scenes on a stage, and I waited for something to limp or crawl out from an even darker place and take that space, draw attention to itself, call for light. I waited. Nothing came. Then out of the quasi void.

“Hey?”

“Yes.”

“Are you angry?”

“No, Sally.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes. I love you, Sally.”

I saw a horse collar in my mind, and then I saw it in the dark room, descending in slow motion, spinning as it did. It dropped on her girl shoulders. I could hear its weight in her voice.

“I love you, too.”

She took one hand from her face and in the dark searched for mine. She found it, slipped hers in between it and the rug, not squeezing, but waiting for hers to be held. I did — her little hand in my already giant one. She squeezed back as best she could and sighed long, almost inaudibly, as though she wanted to dispel what little of me she’d inhaled, but discreetly, so as not to let me know.

“I’m Natalie.”

“Hello, Natalie.”

“Do you want to get to know me better?”

“Sure.”

“Here is twenty-five. Private is fifty.”

I couldn’t get a bead on her. She wore big hoop earrings and her hair was piled on top of her head. It ended in a ponytail tied off with a black bandanna. She’d just painted on a lot of blue mascara and black eyeliner. The makeup glowed wet. She wore a leather skirt, leather biker jacket. I don’t think she had anything on underneath them. Her body smelled like smoke and deodorant and Oreo cookies. Someone was working the Fresnels — opening and closing the shutters, toggling between the differently gelled lights.

“Hello, Natalie.”

“You already said that.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Are you baked?”

“No.”

“You look baked.”

“I’m detached.”

“That’s a good one. I’ll have to use that someday.” She popped the gum in her mouth, sending a blast of Juicy Fruit at me. I remember thinking that I liked Natalie and that I thought she was pretty.

“So what do you want to do?”

“I want to get you out of here.”

“I don’t do that.”

“Do what?”

“I’m not a hooker.”

“I know that. That’s not what I meant.”

“Good. But I don’t date customers anyway. You’re cute, though. You seem sweet.”

“I’m not a customer.”

She scowled, drew back, then let it go. She smiled again, vacantly.

I pressed. “Don’t you want to stop?”

Natalie crushed her smile into a nasty little pucker and turned away from me.

“What’s wrong?”

“Don’t waste my time.”

“I’m not. .”

She cocked her head to the side and barked, “You think you’re better than me?”

“No.”

“Then don’t waste my time.”

“I didn’t mean anything bad.”

“Go save someone else’s world, faggot.”

I must have missed the signal, but the two football rejects started over. I went to stand, but a third, surprisingly enough because he was enormous, had sneaked up behind me and dropped his hands on my shoulders and held me still until his partners got to us. I heard his voice, high pitched, come from way over my head.

“Is he bothering you?”

I raised an eyebrow to her in an appeal for her to remember what she’d just said to me.