Adam Haslett - You Are Not a Stranger Here

“The instrument is here in your hand. You’ve sanded your wood. You’ve applied your glue. The time for the clamp has arrived.”

Eyes in the class fluttered shut as his bony hands began turning the rod. Steel squeaked in the thread. I imagined the sound as the creaking of a ferry’s oar in its lock as we pulled away from the shore.

Leaning into the noise, I watched Gramm on the stool beside me. He sat hunched forward. Through his worn cotton T-shirt, I traced the perfect arch of his spine. I wanted him to look at me. I wanted him to touch me. I didn’t care how. My foot reached out and tapped him on the shin.

“What the fuck?” he whispered, his sneer coming to life. I suppose the incident could have ended there, but the expression on his face, the way his eyes narrowed and his upper lip flared off his front teeth, appeared to me so beautiful I couldn’t stand to see it fade. I swung my foot back and hammered him on the calf. This brought a wonderful color to his cheeks.

“Cut the shit!” he said in a louder whisper, turning the heads of our neighboring carpenters. The sound had traveled up to the front of the industrial arts studio, where Mr. Raffello cast his ancient eye to us and said, “If you never learn to clamp, you never learn to build.”

I swung again, nailing Gramm in the ankle. He jumped off his stool and I thought he’d punch me right then, but instead he paused. The scraping of the other students’ chairs filled the room. If there was a fight we both knew he’d win. I sensed the amazement in him at what he was about to do, the sheer pleasure of an excuse for rage. At last it came, his fist planted just under my heart like a battering ram against the gates of a castle. The air rushed from my lungs and I fell backward onto a low bench. Looking up, I saw him closing on me. My muscles went limp. I waited for his tackle.

But Mr. Raffello had reached Gramm by then and he stepped between us.

GRAMM STARTED CALLING me faggot and dissed me in front of my classmates, who were appalled he could do such a thing to someone who everyone knew had lost both his parents in a year. Most people thought silence was kindest. But whenever he and I saw each other on our street or at the supermarket where I bagged groceries, he showed a sullen kind of interest in me.

On a Saturday in the beginning of March, he came in the store to buy orange juice and asked me what I was doing that night. I told him nothing, and he laughed. He said if I didn’t want to be a loser my whole life I should come to his house, where he planned to get drunk.

I arrived at about ten o’clock, expecting a party. As it turned out, Gramm was alone. His eyes were bloodshot and he smelled of dope. He offered me a vodka and orange as soon as we got into the kitchen.

“Where’s your mom?” I asked.

“She went shopping somewhere for the weekend.”

Mrs. Slater had been divorced three times and was very rich as a result of it. The house had six bedrooms and was built in the style of an old Southern mansion. Small computer screens embedded in the walls controlled every appliance and light.

“Nice place,” I said.

“It’s all right.”

On the counter, a tabby cat picked at a mound of smoked salmon. Gramm spooned a blue-black paste of tiny eggs onto another plate and pushed it under the animal’s nose.

The cat sniffed the new offering and returned to the fish.

“I had a snake,” Gramm said. “It died from some skin disease. The vet told us to put it in a garbage can full of rocks and cold water but it still died. I think the vet was wrong. I think the vet’s a fucking idiot.”

“Sounds like it.”

“You want to get high?”

“Sure,” I nodded, savoring the damp touch of his fingertips as he passed the joint.

“Why did you come over here?” he asked.

“You invited me.”

He laughed, as though that were no reason at all. I swallowed my drink whole and poured another vodka.

“How come you kicked me in Raffello’s class?”

“I was just kidding around.”

“Bull shit.”

“Is anybody else coming over?”

“Why? Are you afraid?”

I knew I should fire back something like “Afraid of what?”—that this would be the proper, male thing to do. Yet we both seemed to know the futility of such a gesture and I couldn’t bring myself to pretend.

Gramm slouched in a chair between me and the sink. As I passed by him to put my glass on the counter, he stuck his foot out and tripped me. I hit the tile floor with my shoulder; the glass fell from my hand and shattered by the door of the fridge. I rolled onto my back and saw the same giddy expression on Gramm’s face he’d flashed the day I first got his attention. My heart thumped against my rib cage like a ball dribbled close to the pavement.

“Aren’t you going to get up?” he asked sarcastically, understanding already that I wouldn’t, that he’d have to lift me from the floor. The knowledge seemed to anger him. He drew his leg back and kicked me in the thigh. I let out a moan of relief as the pain shot up my spine.

“There you go, cocksucker. How was that?”

He lifted his glass to his mouth, the bottom of his T-shirt rose from the waist of his jeans, and I could see the smattering of light brown hair around his belly button. I wanted to run my tongue over it. More than anything in the world. He took a step forward and pressed the sole of his shoe lightly against my cheek. “I could squash you like a bug,” he said. He wasn’t the most articulate boy I ever met. Only the one whose pain seemed to me most beautiful. I reached out and grabbed his ankle but he tore his leg away at once and kicked me hard in the stomach, jamming me against the cabinet door. Air rushed from my lungs and I slumped facedown on the linoleum. All of a sudden, I felt very tired. He kicked me several times more, but the blows seemed to come from farther away.

When he dragged me out of the kitchen, I opened my eyes, strained my head up, but my vision blurred and I could only see the outline of him.

In the bedroom, he kept the lights off and if I made any sound at all, he stung my cheek with the palm of his hand. When I reached up to caress his bare chest, he punched me so hard in the shoulder I thought he’d broken the bone. I learned quickly just how this thing would work.

THE FIRST FEW notes I put through the grate of his locker that next week went unanswered. In the halls, Gramm ignored me now rather than harassing me. He’d give a nervous glance as I passed him and his circle of friends smoking cigarettes in the courtyard. The bruises he’d given me were concealed beneath my shirt; I’d run my hands over the swollen flesh and think of him. Sometimes I’d get sufficiently drunk at lunch that an hour would pass and I’d realize all I’d done was stand across the hall from his classroom, gazing at the back of his head, imagining my fingers brushing his soft hair. I didn’t go to my own classes much anymore. Mr. Farb, the school shrink, would find me in the cafeteria and walk me to his office, where he’d talk sincerely about the five stages of grief. A short, bearded man, he wore diamond-check cardigans and a thick wedding ring. When he rocked back in his chair, his feet dangled like a child’s.

“How’s the college search going?” he asked once.

“The college search? It’s going great. I’m applying to Princeton.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, and Harvard too.”

“Impressive.”

“And the University of Beijing.”

“Oh,” he said. “That’s… ambitious. And your new home environment, is it supportive?”

“The maid gives me crucifixes.”

He rotated his wedding ring about his hairy knuckle and asked me if there was anyone special at the moment, and I decided he wasn’t ready to hear about my life. When he asked how I felt, I said fine. This seemed to relieve him and he wrote notes for all my absences.