My Gift To You

Chapter Sixteen: Who Can I Turn To? Now I’m In a Virgin State Of Mind

He was a teenager and in life’s little handbook, teenager’s got burnt many a time. Perhaps that was one of the reasons why they always had a stick up their ass. Why be happy when another shitty event was lurking around the corner? The second a smile crosses your face and you think everything’s sunshine and puppy dogs, life will find a way to bitch slap you faster than you can blink to see if this happy mirage really is a mirage. Your heart could be bleeding on the floor, but no one will stop to help you because life sucks. All it is is a festering pool of loathing. It will never be on your side. Life hates you more than you could ever hate it. The fucking little sadist laughs at you, mocks you right in front of your filthy, stinking face. The comatose had it easy; they were alive, but they just slept all day and didn’t have an idea as to what Billy was going through.

Benji was an asshole. He wasn’t good enough for Billy. He was too short, too fat. It looked like someone had taken a shovel to his face in a drunken rage. In the gene pool shopping spree the poor thing, as Sugar Kane Kowalczyk would say, got the fuzzy end of the lollipop. He had nothing going for him, a horrible personality with even worse manners. What did Billy ever see in him anyway? He’d say that Benji was a pig, but that would give those nice animals with the curly tails a bad name. Come to think of it, Billy would much rather date a pig. He’d get arrested, but it was a Hell of a lot better than Benji.

Oh, who was he kidding? For some reason unbeknownst to him, Benji was the one. It was so fucking corny, but it was the truth. That made him sick.

With a long, drawn out sigh perfect for an episode of The Bold and the Beautiful, Billy turned his head to look at the back of the car’s driver’s seat. He hadn’t said a word to Benji since the congratulations after their set, Benji didn’t seem to care or notice. That made Billy even more sick.

“Joel, I’m dropping you off first,” Benji stated hotly.

Maybe he was used to things like this because Joel said “why?” without a hint of hurt shock.

“Because I need to talk to Billy about the show tonight and I know how much rampant profanity wigs you out,” was his brother’s reply.

Joel nodded thankfully and when Benji pulled to the curb in front of their house, he got out of the car to leave the two other men to their conversation. Without a word between them (frightening because Billy knew quite well that in moments with this type of silence they were doing their twin thing, as the rest of the band had dubbed it).

The second the car moved out onto the main street again, Benji leaned back in his seat with one hand on the wheel. He looked at Billy through the rearview mirror. “Who’s pissed in your Cheerios this morning?”

Billy scoffed, even more hurt because Benji didn’t realize what was happening.

“So you’re just going to be making noises at me all night, then?”

“You’re a fucking bastard, you know that? I hate you.”

Benji smiled, still not looking at the road. “Thank you.”

“Would you watch the road, please? You’re going to get us killed.”

Sighing, Benji moved his head to keep his eyes on the street. “You haven’t spoken to me in hours, is there a reason why?”

“You honestly don’t know, you fucking prick?”

“Mind clueing me in?”

Billy straighten up in his seat, having the strong urge to claw through the leather chair in front of him and kill Benji with his bare hands. “You…you….”

“Fucking bastard prick, I know. Get on with it.”

“You went off with that girl after the show and fucked her! How could you do that to me, to us!”

Benji took a few moments to dissect that in his mind. “Firstly, there is no us—we aren’t dating—and secondly, I didn’t do anything with her. Even if I wanted to, I don’t like blondes with tan-in-a-can complexions.”

“You expect me to believe that?”

“You’re really annoying when you’re being shrill,” Benji stated calmly.

Billy crossed his arms over his chest, it didn’t suppress his need for throttling the other man in the car. He let them drop to either side of his legs. “I can be as shrill as I want to be!”

“Keep going and only dogs will hear you.”

“I don’t care! The point is, you—”

Benji thought about taking his hands off the steering wheel, letting the car drift sideways…. “Didn’t do a fucking thing.”

“Lying won’t help you!”

“I am not lying to you. The girl had the hots for one of the guys in the band that was before us, we acted like were a couple or whatever so she could get backstage and sleep with him,” Benji explained slowly, like Billy had the IQ of a gnat. “I wouldn’t have sex with a girl, it’s like garlic to a vampire.”

The thinner male rolled his eyes. “Yeah right.”

“Look. I may be the biggest smoking, fat asshole, prick, bastard on the face of this earth, but I wouldn’t lie…at least not to you. Anymore. When I say that what’s-her-name and I didn’t do anything, we didn’t do anything. Now, you can either believe me or I’ll drive this car into the nearest lye holding facility. Take your pick.”

With a voice dripping with disdain Billy said coldly, “The latter if you’d be so kind.”

That shut Benji right up, the sudden closing of his jaw was probably audible all the way out to Maine. His lips pursed, a death stare on the road in front of him, Benji said nothing. When he arrived at Billy’s house, he slammed his foot on the break and stopped in the middle of the street. He kept his face away from his brother’s friend so that he wouldn’t see the tears slicing their way down Benji’s cheeks. He waited until his vision cleared before turning around in the neighbor’s driveway and going home.

Billy stood on the lawn, damp from the small amount of snow that had fallen earlier in the day. He stared at the grass, trying to be like a medium and see something…nothing happened. He spit on the ground and headed to the front door, unlocked it with his key and slipped inside the warm house.

He was disgusted with himself almost to the point of crying in anger. It never seemed to fail: he always landed in the wrong relationships, the kind where he was used in one form or another, and he’d always let them back into his life. He’d say not this time, but given time he would let the user come crawling back to him. The door closed, Billy leaned against it and let his eyes move up the staircase. Everyone was asleep while he stood cold, broken-hearted. Pitiful. Someone get him a gun and quick.

Billy was getting more confused by the minute, his brain more addled each time he went over the events of the day. His mind was going backwards, dissecting the most recent moment to the eldest. In five minutes alone he needed a butcher’s knife to cut a hole in the fog just to see two inches in front of him, see that he was unwittingly moving up the stairs, opening the small door to the attic and walking up the creaky flight of steps. By the time he had thrown all the clothes he had been wearing in the hamper, entered the bathroom and turned the shower on, his head was throbbing.

Trying to cleanse every part of himself that Benji had ever touched with a serious case of vertigo, Billy scrubbed his flesh raw with the ugly white loofa in his hands. If he could fall in love, he could certainly fall right back out of it even if it killed him.

-

Humans are rather queer creatures. A car could explode with a family of four inside, a serial killer could walk right up to you and slaughter the person standing to your right, a person on the bus you’re also on could start vomiting an ugly green substance and start speaking in tongues and so on. The point is, as much as we might want turn away and run to the nearest phone and call the authorities and tell them about the burning car, the handsome murderer with the most lovely smile, the vomiting woman…we won’t do that. We’ll stay right were we are and look with wide eyes and the scene, mouths slightly agape and a small train of drool marching down our chins.

Everyone in the hallway save the two people in the middle of the action were studying what was going on. The heavy set man was a modern day Hulk, at one point in the fight he had picked up the other man and threw him to the ground. Now, a suit wearing psychiatrist like the types in sitcoms would most likely say that we should look away, getting a “let’s not, shall we?” as a reply from the many spectators. They craved what was happening, no feeling in them whatsoever as they took in the happenings in front of them, wishing for a bag of popcorn and a soda to help make the most of this. Not once until the real life movie ended would they think “that other guy is going to die if someone doesn’t help him” or “somebody really ought to go in there and pull the fat guy away” because then their fun would be taken away.

The teachers should have been scolded right on the spot for looking through their classroom door windows or peaking their heads around the students around them to see the fight, have an interesting story to tell over the dinner table. Even if they were, the person doing the scolding would trial off and wonder how much the kid on the right benched pressed to have that much strength. And if a person came down to scold the person who was suppose to scold the teachers, they would also find themselves powerless to the gore hungry little fiend inside them. And if a person came down to scold the person that was suppose to scold the person who…well, you caught my meaning by now.

As the loud rattling of the lockers echoed through the hallway, the darker haired boy having just slammed the slightly lighter haired man into the creme colored metal, a pleased feeling rushed through the spectators—as much as they would later deny having any joy in the physical, verbal and emotional degrading of whoever that scrawny dude was. They didn’t flinch as the larger (width wise, for Mr.Never-worked-out-a-day-in-his-life was a good deal taller than his assailant) male’s fingers dug into his prey’s collar bones, nor would they gasp if the abuser ripped off the poor kid’s head with his teeth. It would be quite amusing. Of course, they wouldn’t come right out and say that.

“Let’s try this again,” Mr.Weight lifter sneered and not a single person in that corridor wondered how badly a spouse beater he might turn out to be in the future. “What did you say?”

Though battered and bleeding, the boy who looked in dire need of a cracker was as saucy as ever. “I said your mother fucked your sister’s dog, that’s why your father moved on to your brother when he volunteered. He left because Joel the Faggot wasn’t a good enough lay.”

Benji laughed and shook his head, his right hand moving from the kid’s shoulder to his jaw and back again so fast it was nearly impossible to see. “No, that’s not what you said. My sister has never had a dog and Joel’s the biggest prude on earth, the piss face can’t hear the words ‘boobs’ and ‘sex’ without turning red.”

“He can’t be that much of a prude if you fuck him every night,” the nameless one spat.

Leaning forward, his lips to the latter’s ear and left hand now gripping the kid’s crotch tightly, Benji smiled softly before speaking. “Why do you have to lie, babe? Everyone knows it’s you who bends over for me. Every. Goddamned. Night.”

The boy’s face went an off shade of blue from that statement, or maybe it was the vice grip on his swimsuit area.

Moving closer still, Benji bit the other man’s earlobe before continuing on with the embarrassment. He ran his right hand through what’s-his-name’s hair and cooed: “He’s my friend. Don’t ever say shit like that again or I’ll rip it off, do you understand me?” When he didn’t receive an answer, his left hand tightened its grip. “What’s that? I didn’t hear you.”

“Yeah. Yes. sì. Just let go of me.”

Nodding, Benji took his hands from the other boy and stepped back. “Now go an apologize to Billy. Like you mean it.”

Now one of the onlookers began to feel. It was shock and his face had it drawn all over. If he wasn’t confused before, he sure was now.