My Gift To You

Chapter Eight: Maybe You Will Understand

Billy could hear himself gasp for air and Jenna cut off a great majority of his hair. He finally noticed that his eyes were aching, so he opened them slowly and looked in the mirror. His face was a pale as a sheet.

“How does that feel?” Jenna asked, that smile still on her face. “With the dreads cut I’m sure they’ll unravel quickly…You may go see Benji now.” She lowered the chair and set the bundle of hair in her hand onto her table.

This was the moment he was wishing would come, yet at the same time he was terrified. He got to his feet and walked over to Benji, seeing the heavier set man practically rip a towel in two as he twisted it in his hands. Billy slid into the nearest chair and set his neck in the holder, eyes focused on the ceiling tiles.

“God, it’s going to take me forever to get your hair untangled,” Benji muttered, turning on the water. Sighing deeply he said, “Let me know if it’s too hot for your precious little head.” He tested the water with his hand and turned on the sprayer, pulling it out of its resting place and wetting Billy’s hair.

It was burning, but Billy said nothing.

Benji shut off the water and pumped shampoo into his hands, rubbing them together and then messaging the younger man’s scalp. He mumbled something inaudible as he tried to untangle the mass of brunette dreadlocks. He had to get a comb a few minutes in, but eventually there wasn’t a twisted lock of hair in sight. Benji rinsed Billy’s hair with the scalding water and dried it with a towel. “There.”

Head stinging both from the water and the roughness with which Benji had dealt with the latter’s hair, Billy took a minute to sit up in the chair. “Thanks…” He knew that Benji wouldn’t reply, so he got to his feet and made his way back to Jenna’s station. His day wasn’t going as planned, it was already spiraling out of control.

“You said you wanted to dye it? Do you have a color in mind?” She asked nicely, a comb in one hand and scissors in the other.

“Black?” Billy heard Benji laugh meanly as he waited around the shampoo area. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Benji run a hand through his own hair and let out a quiet sigh. “Yeah. Jet Black.”

It didn’t take long to cut Billy’s hair or to put the dye in it, but the silence in the room was horrible. Jenna would try to make conversation, but her customer usually grunted or said one or two words in response, apparently preoccupied with something.

“Hey, Lil’ Billy,” Joel said as he waved Tabitha good-bye, “do you need a ride home today? By the time our sifts end, your hair’s completed and you talk to me about whatever it is you need to talk to me about it’ll be dinner time.”

“For God’s sake, Joel, we’re not taking him home in my car!”

“No,” Billy muttered, “that’s okay.” He sat down in Benji’s car and bit his lip, wanting to strangle Joel. “I have some shopping to do, anyway.”

Benji laid a fresh towel down and pushed Billy’s shoulder back so he would lay down. “Oh, is that so? What are you going to buy? A nice dress and some high heel shoes to match your new hair-do?” He turned on the water and quickly started to wash out the remaining grape smelling hair dye from the younger man’s head, drowning out Joel’s words to his brother.

“You’re a horrible liar, Billy,” Joel stated after his friend’s hair was washed. “Benji will be more than happy to drop you off at home.”

After that Benji said nothing, he went into the back room and hid out until Joel led Billy there. His head felt lke it was in a vice (whether it was because of the hot water and blow dryers or his nerves, Billy couldn’t tell) and he felt greatly insecure with his new hair—making him wonder in the first place why he thought cutting off his dreadlocks was a good idea. The hair cement in his hands was about to blow up, he was holding onto the container so tightly.

“So what did you need to tell me?” Joel asked, hitting Benji’s legs to get his twin to move them from one of the two other seats around the table. “Did you give any thinking about being in Good Charlotte?”

Benji groaned and set his feet on the ground, sneering at his brother as he sat down beside him, “Must we name ourselves after a book we haven’t even read?”

“Yes. You can’t think of anything better.”

Not sitting down, Billy shifted his weight from one leg to another. “I have….I’ll join if you still want me. Overflow broke up, the guys wanted an education and all that stuff, so I thought, maybe—”

“Just shoot him and put him out of his misery,” Benji murmured. When Joel smacked his thigh again, he looked up and said overdramatically, “We’d love to have you, William. Welcome aboard!”

-

Like clockwork, Benji pulled to the curb in front of a park. He did this to and from home when he wasn’t with his mother or at a place where any of his mother’s friends were around. Benji would get out of the car and leave everyone else to wait as he changed into a different set of clothes and jewelry, carried in his gym bag. It usually took him fifteen minutes, but today it seemed to Billy that he and Joel had been waiting for at least twenty-seven.

“He’s taking a long time. Go check on him, will you?” Joel asked from the front seat. He rolled down the window and spit out his gum, a bird cawing in the distance.

“Why me?”

Joel put his feet on the dashboard, surely something that would send Benji over the edge. “Because you’re the closest.”

“Actually, you are.”

“The last time he took this long in the bathroom, I caught him just finishing jacking off. That was only the other day and I’m not going through that trauma again,” Joel explained.

“Gee. Thanks for that, man,” Billy replied sarcastically. He got out of the car and slammed the door shut behind him, slowly making his way to the public rest rooms. He pushed open the disgusting wood door to the men’s washroom and walked into the small hallway.

From where he was standing, Billy could see the mirrors and sinks to the left and the stalls and urinals beyond the pseudo foyer. With two steps forward Benji came into focus. He was half naked, pulling up a pair of modest blue jeans, zippering the zipper and securing the snap.

“Joel wants to know what’s taking so long.”

“Fucking peanut butter stain. I knew I shouldn’t have let Sarah borrow my gym bag,” Benji said crossly.

Billy stepped into the main area of the rest room. “Why don’t you just wear the clothes you change into to school, or the clothes you change out of home?”

Stopping what he was doing, Benji looked up at Billy with a face removed of any veil. His eyes were wide and shiny, like a child about to cry, and his natural frown was more prominent than Billy could remember. He was shaking slightly and when he spoke the faintest of lisps was audible. “Are you kidding me? I’d get my ass kicked in school if I dressed ‘the good Christian boy’ and my mother would kill me if she knew how I dressed when I wasn’t around her. I’m surprised you aren’t getting beaten up wearing shit like that.” But Benji’s fast attempt at being tough again wasn’t fast enough. Billy saw what made Benji different than Joel: Benji, for reasons unknown, had every ounce of innocence stripped from him.

When Billy blinked, the old Benji was back. The bastard who would beat one to the ground without a reason.

“Quit looking at me like that, homo,” Benji demanded. “Get back to the car and tell Joel I’ll be out in a minute.”

“You know, a majority of gay bashers are gay themselves and terrified/ashamed of who they are, that’s why they hate.”

Benji pulled a gray shirt over his head and put his arms through the sleeves, soon checking to see if he needed to tuck it into his pants. “What’s your point?”

“You didn’t kiss me because you were testing me, you’re attracted to me.”

He scoffed. “Even if I was gay, do you honestly think that I would come out? I don’t exactly see you running to the front of the ‘I’m here and I’m queer’ line,” Benji replied flatly.

“I have my own reasons for not coming out.” Billy then turned around and exited the bathroom, starting his short trek back the the car. He held up one finger to signal one minute to Joel, and sighed. He shouldn’t have said that, he never should have replied at all.