Don't take this story too seriously.
On Sunday mornings, Kyle is used to waking up twice: Once when Stan gets up to go to church, and again when he comes back. Actually, strike that; Kyle gets up three times on Sundays: Once when Stan gets up, once when Stan comes back, and ultimately when they get up together and go have mediocre pancakes at that dirty little diner that doesn't have real maple syrup. Kyle is aware that Stan's parents are aware of this situation, and that they're not entirely happy about it, but Randy and Sharon stopped parenting when Shelly went to college. More than disappointed, he thinks, they're simply weirded out that the lazy Jewish boy is sleeping at their house while they're not around, possibly if not probably riffling through their record collection and reading their mail.
In fact, all Kyle does is sleep. Stan's measly little twin bed is great for having sex in, if only because Kyle is somewhat turned on by the idea that he might fall off the bed at any given moment. But the mattress is too uncomfortable, the blanket is too thin, and as much as he doesn't particularly mind sleeping with half of his face tucked into Stan's armpit hair, the only really decent rest he gets is during those three hours when Stan goes to do penance for being a slothful little sodomite. Stan's pillow smells like his armpits anyway, so it's something like all of the Stan with none of the neck spasms.
This had been their long-standing arrangement — since the summer between eighth and ninth grade, in fact. Long before penises came into it, there was still an overwhelming desire to sit up in bed together until 4 a.m. riffing on bullshit, eventually passing out on top of each other. And now penises were part of it, and neither of them was too nonplussed. It was like all that burgeoning sexuality just kind of cracked and pooled on Stan's floor one Saturday night in June, shortly after sophomore year ended.
It is two years later, almost to the day, and nothing seems out of the ordinary when Kyle wakes up. But he knows something is wrong, because this is the first time he is waking up this morning and Stan is not waking up with him or even getting ready — Stan is gone, baby, gone. But he's left a little note with a stick figure doodle of himself performing oral sex on a stick figure pope, and Kyle shakes his head sadly and sleepily for Stan, who has always bemoaned his great ideas and lack of a good outlet for them. Truthfully, of all the people they know, and they know at least 30 separate people, the only one who can make a sketch of a human being look like a human being is Butters, but Butters wouldn't know what giving oral sex to the Pope liked like if you showed him a film of it.
Kyle is quietly contemplating the cruelty of being so damned creative and yet completely talentless when he inadvertently shifts his legs, rubbing them together as he stretches. This is where his disembodied dread solidifies — something is wrong. Something is missing. His thighs feel normal enough, hairy and probably too large, sore where handprint bruises mar his flesh. But that weight — the one he finds both impressively assuring and annoyingly stubborn — is gone entirely. Whipping off the covers, he expects to find that he is now asexual, a cherubic vestige of creation and innocence. Instead, what he finds is inherently disturbing; in place of a phallus, he now has a vagina.
He gets on his hands and knees, which is not so weird. He knows what Stan's carpet feels like in this position, matted and fucked-up, splotches of wax and whatever crusting in unappealing shapes. He is frantic, not even bothering to feign disgust — it's half his fault anyway; it's awful rude to come into someone's house and ejaculate all over their carpet and then just fall asleep without cleaning it up. He tears at whatever is under Stan's bed with abandon for several minutes, pulling out all kinds of porno (gay and straight and horses, Jesus fucking Christ, Stan) and balled up T-shirts that haven't been worn since ninth grade, maybe earlier. Stan wouldn't fit into them now, anyway; his shapely arms would rip the seams. Kyle gives up, because he knows he's just not going to find his penis under the bed, not ever. It's not anywhere. It's gone. He puts his head in his hands and careens. Lying on his side, he considers maybe putting on his pants, but he is tired, and his pants are so far away, maybe in the bathroom. Kyle is so used to thinking with his brain, and now he knows that the painful pounding of his heart is guiding him. He shuts his eyes, giving a little cry of frustration.
When Stan does come back, Kyle is gone. His pope note is still there, but all of his copies of Hustler and Honcho are now splayed across the floor. Stan wonders if maybe his father was right, Kyle's only been using him all these years to snoop around through the fascinating Marsh family photo albums and under their unmade beds. But he shakes it off, because that's just not Kyle. Not bothering to change out of his starchy suit, Stan grabs his keys from the leaf-shaped bowl by the front door and runs after the missing boyfriend.
It doesn't take Stan long to figure out he's holed up in his room. What surprises Stan is that he's just sitting there, docile and silent. He glances up lazily when Stan rolls in, panting, smashing his chest against the door to make sure it's not just closed but also jammed, unopenable from the hallway. "You found me," Kyle says dully. "You know, I'm not even going to pretend to be upset about the horses." He narrows his eyes when Stan sits on the bed, after shedding his suit coat. "But girls, Stan? Oh my god."
"Okay," Stan pants. "I don't like girls. You gotta believe me. I just like porn."
"So, you don't like girls?" Kyle asks.
"Well, if spending the past two years licking your ass means anything, then no."
Kyle chokes out a little "oh, god," and gets on his knees so he can undo his pants.
"Whoa." Stan breathes easily, grasping Kyle's hands to still them as they gracefully manipulate the zipper. "I thought you didn't like doing this … here," he says sloppily, glancing around Kyle's room needlessly.
"I don't."
"Mmm, okay," Stan agrees. "I'm into whatever you're into."
"Oh, just shut up, Stan." There is a kind of identifiable weariness in Kyle's voice, and Stan lets go of his hands, and backs off. Kyle easily slides his pants and underwear down in one slick movement, and Stan wonders if maybe this is a test, because he is now cursing the stiff itchiness of his church clothes, jacket or no jacket. He decides to split the difference, and stares into Kyle's eyes while he pulls his long, unflattering blue shirt out of his long, unflattering pants.
"No, you retard," Kyle urges. He slaps Stan's hands away from his waist, and points down at his crotch. His voice is still trembling, but Stan still thinks this is a game, some kind of reverse-sexual mindfuck. They only ever screw in Stan's bedroom, not counting that one time in the woods.
It is in this tense moment of realization that Stan decides not to make a big deal out of this. The part of him that appreciates Kyle as a best friend wants so badly to double over laughing; the boyfriend aspect wants to just hug him and start crying and ask, "Does it hurt?" He knows that he is a sexual person, enjoys these things to the hilt, and that whatever beginnings of arousal he was feeling when Kyle began undoing his fly are gone now, sizzling out like a campfire left to die. Splitting all of these differences, Stan swallows and asks, "How'd that happen?" And for calm effect, he decides to wipe some bangs out of eyes at the same time.
Now that Stan knows, there's no reason to keep his pants down, so Kyle pulls them back up and gets down off of his knees. "I don't know," he confesses. "I woke up and it was like that."
"Well, that's really weird," is all Stan can manage in reply.
"I know," Kyle agrees.
There is this weird feeling in the air, and it's not merely the leftover energy from graduation two weeks ago, or the heady cloud of amour that threatens to choke them on Sunday mornings in Stan's room. It might be the air, which is beginning to thicken up now that it's summer, but it's probably that weird thing between Kyle's legs. They're both vaguely familiar with the concept in academic terms, but it's been a long time since either of them was in a bedroom with one.
"So, um, what are we going to do?" Stan asks, scratching the back of his neck. He gets an urge to tuck his shirt back into his pants, but he doesn't, because to do that he would need to unbuckle his belt and actually undo his damn pants and at this point in time, he doesn't feel comfortable with those things. Kyle may no longer have one, but his masculinity is still viable, and Stan doesn't want to begin to contemplate what might happen if he goes there.
"I don't know," Kyle confesses. Stan is becoming unnerved, because Kyle is not the silent type, and now he can only issue forth ominously ambiguous truncated statements. Stan decides he needs to perform damage control.
"I still love you," he offers, extending a clammy hand. Kyle looks at his hand for a moment, and then at Stan's face, and then he makes a very you-must-be-shitting-me scowl. But his shoulders slump and he gives in, taking Stan's hand.
Feeling overcome with emotions he can't describe, Stan grabs Kyle and pulls him into the kind of tight embrace they shared after the first time they slept together — as a euphemism for sex, anyway — after tossing their mortarboards. It's the only kind of reassurance Stan knows he can solidly give. "I won't ever leave you," he whispers, offering the same oversimplified reassurance he's used to genuinely providing.
"Okay," Kyle says sadly, letting himself just be hugged for a few moments. He inches his hand in between his hips and Stan's, feeling out what he knows isn't there. Stan's soft manhood is pressed against his thigh, which is as stiff and solid and real as ever. And yet in between his legs, he only feels a hollow emptiness.
XXX
They decide one thing right away: They're not going to tell Kyle's parents. They're going to keep this very quiet and very secret. Stan for a few days entertains the idea that maybe Kyle should see a doctor, but Kyle balks at this. "I don't want to see any doctor," he whines, and ultimately Stan agrees, because what is some doctor going to do? Either Kyle's penis is coming back, or it's gone forever, and if there is some medical treatment that can bring it back, there's no way it's going to happen without bringing Kyle's parents into it. Bringing Kyle's parents into it is only a recipe for boiled disaster, and Kyle predicts questions about his personal life, his sexuality. He doesn't know what his parents know, and if they don't he wants to keep it that way. College will come soon enough, and with college will come freedom. He's been over this with Stan dozens if not hundreds of time.
Stan suggests that there's no reason why this should be discussed as a sexual matter instead of a purely anatomical one. Because what is Kyle now, anyway? Neither of them is sure. He is the same as he always was, minus that crucial difference. "I don't feel female," Kyle announces on a somewhat regular basis, as the weeks turn to a month, which makes it early July. Stan morosely scribbles Clyde's Independence Day barbecue on his calendar; Kyle sullenly watches from the bed.
"It should be fun," Stan says blandly.
"Sure," Kyle monotones. The truth is, they haven't had fun — fun meaning sex or any good times at all, really — since Kyle lost his penis. They no longer go anywhere, or talk to very many people. Stan was surprised when Clyde called him, as they haven't even talked to him since graduation. But there's no reason not to go to a party. Kyle moans about it, tells Stan he thinks other people can tell. The other day in the laundry room, he could have sworn his mother was staring at his crotch; he thinks dogs are unafraid of him now that he can't command them with his voice, ringing in its certain masculine vibrato.
"Don't worry," Stan tries. "Your voice sounds the same."
"But dogs just know," Kyle reasons.
"Nobody knows, Kyle. You're the same boy you always were."
"Except for this … thing between my legs," he says unenthusiastically. He can't make himself put the words "my" and "vagina" in the same sentence, even if they're not in that order.
When Stan gets dressed for the party, he steps into a forest-green Speedo. He only owns Speedos, due to his four-year tenure on the swim team. Despite staying at Stan's nearly every night since the change, it's the first time Kyle's really seen him in all his glory since then. His lips are dry, so he licks them, and Stan pauses. "What?" he asks nervously, catching Kyle's glance.
"It looks good on you," he says slowly, trying to register this feeling.
"What, my bathing suit?"
"Yeah," Kyle confirms. "It fits nicely."
"Thanks," Stan says languidly. The truth is, he feels very awkward. He knows Kyle likes this bathing suit; he always has. Their first hookup was the evening after a swim meet; Kyle has thrust against his spandex-clad crotch madly, like a bitch in heat, making him come inside his own swimsuit. He is sitting on the bed now, hands folded pleasantly in his lap, a single flip-flop dangling precariously off the end of his left foot. His thin lips are pressed together tensely, and Stan sees in him the same boy he's always loved, the same visage he's always appreciated when clothed anyhow.
For his part, Kyle is trying to feel it out. He thinks it might be lust; the curvature of Stan's (and he chokes on this word when he mouths it to himself) manhood is prominent, green for vitality, and he can make out the shape of the head through the fabric. But it could also be envy, because he misses the way they used to press them together, getting a little excited just for the thrill of seeing themselves side-by-side, that close.
They're both mortal sins, Kyle figures. Close enough. He makes a move, slipping a hand inside Stan's little Speedo. Kyle feels that after a month of paltry masturbation after two years of rough fornication, Stan is tight with need, and his mouth is searching for intimacy, missing it dreadfully. Kyle knows it won't take long, so he slips off his cargo shorts and guides Stan into this extremely weird place. He's right, of course — it doesn't take too long, and when he is done Kyle shoves him off, because he hates the way it feels in there. It's weird to him — it reminds him of getting X-rays taken at the dentist, like he is salivating too much and things are poking him in weird places, all because there is something that doesn't belong there inside of him, and as satisfying as it feels it's also an invasion.
He doesn't cry often, but he cries after this. Stan tries to help him, but Kyle asks for the truth. "Was it okay for you?" Kyle wants to know, blowing his nose.
"It was wrong," Stan admits. "It was too wet. And too hot. It was like a jungle."
"You've never been to the jungle," Kyle notes.
"I can't lie to you," Stan says conclusively. "I respect you too much. I'm gay, and that's a vagina. I don't like it."
Kyle admits, "That makes two of us." Stan pulls his Speedo back up, and they go to the party. Feeling the sticky residue of that pale imitation of their former sex drooling down his thighs, Kyle spends most of the time sitting on a lawn chair in the corner of the yard, speaking to no one and feeling miserable. Stan brings him a Corona, and kisses his forehead. He feels it's the least he can do for Kyle, because he loves him, godammit, and he wants it to be fine already. Truthfully, he's just as scared as Kyle. It's not really a gender issue, because Kyle knows who he is and always has. No, it's a sex issue now, through and through. If he wanted it this way, he'd have gotten himself a girl. But he can't just sit in the corner with Kyle and be miserable — people will wonder what's wrong. So he talks with Cartman and Kenny about buying an eighth, maybe to enjoy after fireworks. He dances with a couple of girls to upbeat music, wondering if they can smell their kind on him. They don't say anything.
Kyle is miserable watching Stan dance with Milly, and it's only after a few numbers that he notices Clyde's been standing next to him this whole time, breathing eerily like a steam vent. "I know," he says sullenly.
"You do?" Kyle asks, afraid to admit to himself that it's obvious.
"You don't want to lose him, do you?"
"Well, no," Kyle says emphatically, still stunned at Clyde's newfound emotional intelligence.
"Come with me. I have something to show you."
Upstairs, Clyde pulls out a manila folder. "Read them," he says helpfully, flopping down on his plaid bedspread.
They are love notes; love notes from Craig, actually, all painfully rendered in that horrible, crabby print.
"Oh." Kyle is unimpressed. "Good for you."
"Good for me?" Clyde asks. "We weren't sexually compatible."
"Why not?" Kyle asks. He is intrigued now, because he half expects Clyde to break out his own vulva and just come right out and ask if he wants to scissor. But he doesn't do this, and Kyle's wandering eyes confirm what he already knows: Clyde's masculinity is perfectly healthy.
"Craig, well…" Clyde becomes bashful. "He likes to top."
"Really?" Kyle asks, making sure to sound as bored as he possibly can. "What, and so do you?"
"I can take it or leave it," he admits. "But the problem is deeper." Kyle still looks bored, so he just goes ahead and says it. "I don't have an ass," he admits.
"Yes, you do," Kyle yawns. "It's right there." He pokes Clyde in his behind. "Kind of flat, but it'll do in a pinch."
"No, you misunderstand," Clyde says. "I don't have a rectum."
"Oh." Kyle is unimpressed. "Did you wake up one morning with an ass-vagina?"
"No, you misunderstand," Clyde repeats, only to launch into the story of the miserable April afternoon when he had his colostomy. He is appropriately graphic, leaving Kyle with a sinking feeling in his stomach while he painfully clenches his ass. It has taken Kyle this long to remember that it exists, but here was poor Clyde, who didn't have any back-end at all. For all the ballyhoo about his butt, it is the first time in his life that Kyle really realizes what kind of impact it might have on the non-digestive aspects of his being. He blushes, and Clyde sits down next to him.
"Why are you telling me this?" Kyle squeezes his legs together protectively, not sure if he is guarding his sex organs or just ashamed of them or what, but he is rather wary of Clyde in general. Clyde's sad eyes make him uncomfortable. It's never something Kyle really thinks about — Clyde is just another guy in the class, another guy Stan might stare at in the locker room after swim practice while Kyle is left sitting on the bleachers. Up to now Kyle has never even considered that Clyde might be gay, or might not have a rectum. He eases up a little, however, when he realizes that without a rectum, Clyde is of no interest to Stan, and probably never will be. Stan likes to trade off, and that's just it — he's quite serious about the trading. No trading, no deal.
"I see a lot of love between you guys," Clyde is saying by way of answer, and Kyle almost snorts in derision, because this is just effed-up insane. Clyde doesn't even know them; how can he know what there is between them, what they might at risk of losing? "When Craig left me, I promised myself I would do whatever I could to protect other people's relationships. I need you guys to make it."
"I'm horrified," Kyle says quite plainly. "Who are you, some kind of anti-dumping crusader?" He pauses. "And for that matter, how the fuck do you know I'm missing my penis?"
"It's in your posture."
"I'm flattered," Kyle replies. "But believe me, it was nowhere near big enough to have any significant impact on my posture."
Clyde just sighs and says, "It's emotional, dude. It's emotional."
"Yeah, no kidding," Kyle lolls.
"So how are we going to keep you guys from splitting up?" Clyde cracks his fingers, ready for action.
"We are not doing anything. Stan says he won't leave me."
"Well, of course. That's what he says."
Kyle's eyes widen. "I trust Stan more than anyone on the planet," Kyle concludes. He gets up off the bed. "You're a freak, Clyde. Please never speak to me again." Clyde makes no attempt to run after Kyle in any kind of classical way. He simply sighs and gets up, stretches and hobbles down the stairs, back out to the party.
For his part, Kyle barges in on Stan and his current dance partner, Wendy, a tried-and-true stand-by. "Excuse me," he growls, shoving her out of the way.
She meekly protests, shocked more than anything; it is the only time she can ever remember being pushed aside during a dance. "Hey!" she snaps, but Clyde is watching this, and he takes the opportunity to pull her against him, and place her hand on his hip.
"Hey yourself," he says coolly. "How are you doing?" She nods noncommittally, and they dance to an embarrassingly cool remix of the 1812 overture.
Stan grabs onto Kyle's behind for dear life, and pulls him close. "This music is horrible," he says, and Kyle can just tell that his eyes are a little glassy with inebriation — he's buzzed, no doubt, but not a lost cause.
"I like it," Kyle confesses by way of reply. "I like dancing with you."
"Kyle," Stan says. "This is the first time we have ever, ever danced together." A pause, and Stan sniffs in between his words. "In public."
"I know," Kyle says appreciatively. "Let's not waste this."
XXX
After the dancing, and after Clyde's parents have chased them all away with a garden hose, Kyle and Stan are sitting in lawn chairs in front of the Broflovski residence, watching the fireworks. Stan grouses that he should never have given Cartman his 20, because here it is several hours later, and he hasn't seen either the return of his cash or any kind of mood-enhancer. Kyle just takes it all in, especially that slippery feeling between his legs. He is praying that Stan cannot detect the weird odor Kyle is so certain must be emanating from his loins. Stan, he knows, is too much of a gentleman to say anything. At best, he would perform a song and dance about wanting to get to bed, and then excuse himself for the evening.
But no, Stan is sitting right here, nursing a Corona (in honor of Independence Day, naturally) and caressing Kyle's thigh. If his parents were home, Kyle might feel uneasy with this, but they're not, and the combination of cool breezes coming off the mountains and Stan's dry fingertips playing with his wiry hairs is calming. It almost feels too normal. Except, of course, for that squishy feeling. How could he forget about that?
So to take his mind off of it, he talks about Clyde. "What a hero, looking out for our relationship," Stan notes when the story is concluded. "Let's send him a fruit basket or something." Kyle drinks in Stan's wry grin, and silently mouths a wish on a firework as it crumbles in the deep violet sky to a shower of tiny white missiles. Please, he begs no one in particular. Please don't take this away from me. "What are you doing?" Stan wants to know.
"Nothing."
"Don't let Clyde get to you," Stan cautions.
"Oh, I won't. It's just…"
"I think Clyde has always been a kind of equal-opportunity sleaze," Stan opines.
"I guess," Kyle non-commits.
"Do you think he was trying to pick you up?"
"I don't know." The truth is, perhaps Kyle did think that, but he is far too absorbed in the moment to worry about Clyde. Clyde is insignificant, and so is everyone else. When they go to college in a month and a half, and the beginning of this little fairytale of theirs continues to congeal, Clyde's part in the story will be over. Hell, even Cartman's and Kenny's roles will be significantly reduced. All that will be left is Stan and Kyle, and whatever they have between them. Kyle sweats as he hopes and wonders whether there will still be something left between them by then, or if it will be sucked into the gaping void that sits between his thighs now.
Beer always makes Stan lusty, and at Stan's house that night, they screw like six times. Kyle doesn't want to admit it, but during the third go, pressed up against the air-conditioned-cool glass of Stan's bedroom window, his nipples harden, and he thinks about Clyde. Not in a sexual way — he just feels superior is all, because he can do this (if indeed he is doing anything in this passive place) and Clyde has never been so lucky. Stan accidentally grabs for Kyle's dick a couple of times during their marathon session, and each time he recoils nearly immediately. While resting after time No. 5 (with Kyle bent over Stan's laundry hamper), Stan absently toys with Kyle's nipples. Kyle is beginning to think that perhaps like a blind person who develops an enriched sense of hearing, his tits are becoming overly sensitive. He gasps a little. He fidgets a little. Stan shakes the fog of sleepiness and sex from his mind for long enough to plant a smooch on waiting lips, and then he says, "Well, I still don't like it."
"That's nice," Kyle yawns, too tired to protest what he knows in academic terms are words of cruelty.
"But, I mean…" Stan is very sly, the way he dips one finger into that private abyss. "It's part of you, isn't it?"
"Stop it." Kyle shoves Stan's hand away as tears come to his eyes. "It's not me. This isn't me."
"Then tell me, Kyle, who is it?"
Kyle doesn't know. He is beginning to forget himself. The old Kyle would never have let Stan go for so long without sex that he feels the need to work it off inside Kyle's ass six times in five hours. Come to think of it, the old Kyle would never have let himself go a month without sex, and in that month he would have given it to Stan just as often as he got it in return. This is insane. He tells himself that Stan is trying to be supportive, hasn't left him for a newer, shiner model with a bigger — or rather, any — unit. Stan is trying his best, Kyle tells himself. He's trying the best he can, he's trying the best he can, he's doing the best he can considering he's just a stupid man—
Kyle stops himself mid-thought. He's gender-baiting, and it worries him. Stan is no more a man than I am, he tells himself. I might not have a cock, but I still have my Y chromosome. As Stan kisses the tears away and very gently readies Kyle for round six, Kyle promises himself he will learn to make do with what he has now. Because if this is who he is now — if Stan is willing to accept him — then he must accept himself. He doesn't come this time, just like he didn't come the other five times, but he does enjoy the corkscrew motions of Stan's fingers on his chest.
They go to sleep as the sun comes up, and Kyle inhales the familiar scent of Stan's masculinity rising off of his sweat-swathed skin. It has always been a comfort to him in times of desperation, and now, it's the one thing that remains constant. In fact, it's the one thing that allows him to rest. It's unthinkable that Stan would ever spend the night at his house, and they need to be together, or Kyle can't sleep. So they continue to stay at the Marshes', and as July 5th dawns, Kyle reminds himself that this sticky hole between his legs is the very real reason he can't go home again.
XXX
Summer continues, and Kyle perpetually feels like he is drifting. He feels lightheaded at times, whimsical at others. He does his summer reading, poring over horrible Descartes treatises in the shade while Stan sips lemonade from a glass bottle and uses his textbook to bat away mosquitoes. One weekend, they go camping with Kenny and Cartman, bringing with a cardboard box full of junk they picked up at the price club with Cartman's mom's card, plus two tents, a can of bug spray, and 48 clinking cans of beer. A bear makes away with their Cheesy Poofs, and Cartman's claim that he would have fought the bear (and won) if not for his weak kneecaps is resoundingly guffawed at. They become piss-drunk, literally, and Kyle forgets in the dizzy moment that his camping equipment, so to speak, has also been made off with, albeit probably not by a bear. ("Let's not rule it out, though," Stan says about a week later, to be funny.)
Kyle chucks his urine-soaked boxers into the forest, and hopes that human pee doesn't attract bears. He has never realized before now that women do not have the same luxury as men when camping. Surely he has noticed that he no longer has the ability to aim, but in a way it's all still new to him, and he borrows a pair of Stan's dry briefs for the remainder of the trip. It is only a day or so, but all that day he feels the puffy emptiness of the underwear rubbing against the inside of his fly. That night, as he sleeps once again with his face pressed into Stan's soft, bare skin, he dreams of sex with Stan, and magically his penis is back, and better than ever. When he wakes up, though, he is disappointed through fogginess that this was only a dream, and the phallus he expected to find greeting him is still just a vagina after all. It is only when Stan zips open the tent flap that he really awakes, and joins his boyfriend in watching Cartman and Kenny bicker about who is taking up more of the tent.
As July dies, his mother insists that they begin shopping for school. He is only going across the state, and he wasn't really intending on buying new sheets until he got there, but he knows what she wants — she wants to savor the last moments of her son's childhood, taking advantage of the last time she can really steer his time through maternal guidance. Sheila comes off as annoyed most of the time, and as they break for lunch over astoundingly bad food court panini, she lets him know just how much she disapproves of his continual absence.
In the past, this would have scared Kyle shitless, and he would have sat there with his cock stuffed between his thighs like a frightened canine, and prayed his absolute hardest that while she was dancing around the topic, she didn't dare bring up the possibility that all this time he's been devoting to Stan is an indicator of their romantic involvement. Frankly, Kyle is amazed that after two years his mother and father haven't just been told flat-out by Stan's parents, seeing as they play bridge every Thursday evening. (Stan has often confided in Kyle that he deeply suspects these bridge games contain some kind of more sinister element, like gambling or great heaping piles of blow or, what's really frightening, wife-swapping. "I don't want to know," is the only response Kyle can issue to these suppositions.)
Luckily, Kyle no longer cares what his mother knows, or how long she's known it, or why she's never brought it up. He is more than happy to never discuss it. What he does feel, though, is gaping remorse, because as she raves about all the familial things he's overlooked — Ike apparently won a baseball game, or something, and was going to Denver for some finals, or something — he knows how badly he's let himself, his family, even Stan down. He's been figuratively quite inside of himself for years now, silently observing the pathos (meshugas, his parents would say, but that word makes him cringe) without saying anything, hands at his side, head buried in Stan's armpit. He apologizes, and says without qualification that he's been wrong, and she's been right, and how badly he's failed, and so on. He wonders what will come next, but it turns out that he has reached the extent of what Sheila actually wants to hear. They hug; he leaves over half of his panini, because he is paranoid that his hips have become incrementally bigger lately. (He generally doesn't worry about his weight, but he doesn't take any chances, because he doesn't know what kind of crazy things that vagina is capable of inducing.)
Sheila buys him moderately priced sheets from Bed, Bath, and Beyond, and Kyle keeps the receipt, because he is going to return them, and he and Stan are going to push their beds together, and go through the motions of matrimony, or at least the parts of matrimony that two 18-year-old boys are interested in. When Kyle thinks of this, he feels the moistness begin again, and he decides to get up and go get some toilet paper and do something about it, instead of passively letting it smear along the flap in his boxers in fat strips. It feels better, actually, and he tensely admits to himself that wiping it felt kind of good. But then he shakes this off and flushes the toilet paper. He packs some shirts and a couple of pairs of boxers into his messenger bag, and goes back to Stan's, taking his iPod, keys, and the philosophy book he is determined to finish.
XXX
In the first week of August, lifelong classmates begin to leave, if they are in fact going anywhere. It is revealed that Clyde has joined the army; Craig is attending some ridiculous-sounding hippie-commune-like college in Florida, and Wendy's parents are taking her to France for two weeks as a graduation present.
"What kind of spoiled, hippie-ass ho actually asks to go to France for graduation?" Cartman asks over the weird, static-y buzzing noise that Kenny's television set seems to make even when turned off.
Kenny grunts as he tries to get his parka into his duffel bag, which is already crammed full of water-damaged titty magazines and high-leg briefs that would be too small if not for the stretched-out elastic. He absently adds, "I think it's nice. I wish I were going to France."
"What?" Stan asks. "You mean, instead of Compton?"
"Los Angeles," Kenny corrects. He finally gets his zipper done, but an unseemly ripping sound lets him know that, alas, there's now a thready gash down the side of his duffel bag. "Aw, fuck."
"Seriously, Kenny, you wanna go be a porn star, fine." Cartman gives his beer can a final disillusioned swish and, finding it empty, chucks it at Kenny's face, but Kenny deflects it, and it lands at Stan's feet; he promptly kicks it across the bare living room floorboards.
"Cut it out!" their host protests.
"I don't know why you think you could cut it out there anyway," Cartman continues.
"I have a 10-inch cock."
"Shut up, Kenny, everyone knows poor people can't have big cocks."
"Yes, fat ass! They can and I do!"
Stan sighs and his fingers tense on his beer can. He knows he shouldn't drink beer, at least not Kenny's cheap beer, but after the Fourth he swore to never, ever hand Eric Cartman cash and expect to receive anything in return. This discussion about ten-inch cocks, however, is beginning to mingle around in his mind with the fuzzy beginnings of a loose, uncertain buzz, and he's wondering if he shouldn't just go home and jerk off, or what. Maybe he should go to Kyle's; there's a small chance he might be able to talk him into something, but lately he's getting sick of these half-hearted blow jobs, and he knows even in this weird state of mind that this plan will not work anyhow.
Kyle's at his house because he's for some reason going along with his parents' completely incomprehensible program of family togetherness in their final moments as a family. It doesn't make sense to Stan because his family already went through it, and it doesn't seem to his parents like their world is crashing down around them. So if perhaps he can lure Kyle out of his house … but, yeah, no. This Cartman-Kenny dueling is both compelling and a slight turn-on, so he tunes back in.
"Well, even if I don't make it it's better than just sitting around here on my big, fat ass doing nothing for the next four fucking years!"
"Hey, bitch! At least I got a home and food and shit!"
"Oh, that's really what you need, Eric, more food and a place to sit around eating it!"
Cartman gets up and for a moment it looks to Stan like he's going smack the rail-thin boy in a wife beater and purple swim trunks clear across his bright, open face, but then Cartman does something he rarely does, and demurs.
"Whatever, Kenny. I fucking hate you. I hope you get AIDS from fucking some meth bitch whore and end up dying on some train tracks like the fucking junkie poor-ass bitch you are." Kenny looks up at him with the stupidest expression Stan's ever seen him make, like, Is this really goodbye? After 10, 15, 18 years, that's your goodbye to me?
Kenny stands up to get in Cartman's face, and Eric takes a step back.
"Dying on the fucking tracks is better than having you roll on top of me in the middle of the night in the some fucking forest in some sweaty tent you pitched in a pile of bear crap," he grits out. "Besides, Eric, everyone knows there's no trains in Los Angeles."
Cartman's nostrils flare, and he kicks the duffel bag; now it is both ripped and emblazoned with Cartman's dusty footprint. "Whatever Kenny! Like I want you hanging around here with me anyway, thinking you're too good for me and this town and shit! You're just fucking liberal hippie scum like the rest of them, I bet you're on fucking welfare with like eight different bitches you knock up!"
"At least I can get a chick." Too easy. Cartman lets out a strange, strangled little cry, and clenches his fists madly like he's wont to do, and seconds later the door is slamming right in front of them, and the force of it's managed to knock Kenny's father's prized Dale Earnhardt collector's plate off the wobbly little table it's been sitting on in a precious wooden stand for the past seven years.
Stan sets his beer down, and gets up off the couch, swaying only a little. He knows it's only the floorboards, which are warped. He reaches out for the shards, calmly offering, "I'll help you put it back together."
"Nah." Kenny kicks some far-flung pieces into the corner. "I'm leaving. What the fuck do I care?"
"But you'll be back, right?"
Sighing, and squatting down on his scraggly quads, Kenny helps Stan toss the remaining mess across the room. "Not likely," he breathes, after hesitating. "I can't deal with this shit, man. It's not happening for me here. Frankly, I'm impressed I managed to finish high school."
"Oh, it wasn't so hard," Stan says dismissively, forgetting all the meaningless little lab reports he forgot to file, how his swimming is the only thing that managed to keep him afloat — the only shot he had at getting into a school Kyle would even settle for.
"I have 394 dollars saved up." Kenny stands, and grabs a roll of duct tape that's been sitting under the TV. He blows the dust off and begins patching his bag. "Cartman's mom gave me a bottle of Viagra. I've got a ticket for a Greyhound that's leaving the depot an hour from now, and I can stay with Butters' cousin or someone the first night." The bag fixed, sort of, they both stand. "Any last words, Stan?"
He thinks for a moment. "Give me a Viagra?"
"Sure you don't want a going-away fuck?"
He thinks for a moment, but declines with, "You know I'm in a monogamous relationship."
Grinning, Kenny gets back down on his knees, rips open his bag through the duct tape, and hands Stan a plastic container with a safety top. "I'd offer you more, but…" He rubs the back of his neck as Stan tentatively grapples with the top, finally managing to get it open.
Stan blushes when he hands the bottle back to its owner. "I didn't think Viagra was sold like this."
"What do you want from me?" Kenny tosses it back on his bag. "It's not probably legal."
On his way out the door, Stan swallows the pill under the kitchen faucet. He wonders as he wipes his mouth if this isn't a bad idea. Perhaps it's presumptuous. No, he's sure it's presumptuous. He shrugs, and when he tries to embrace his friend, Kenny sidesteps this gesture, and brushes his swim trunks off like they're dirty.
"Are you sure I can't walk you to the bus?"
"I'm not sentimental," Kenny explains. "Perhaps one day you'll see me in some movie. Although I do intend to mostly do straight films," he adds quickly.
"Well, I do watch both."
Kenny blows him a kiss and hoists his taped-together bag over his shoulder and walks away, quickly, making his escape rapidly and unthinkingly, even if Stan knows he's grappled with it all summer.
XXX
Stan eschews the doorbell, ducking so no one can see him through the window as he slips along the side of the house. In the backyard, he prays like he always does that the trellis can support his weight. It does. He presses up against the window, glimpsing the entire room, but Kyle's nowhere to be seen.
Lamenting the waste of his time and effort, he rings the doorbell.
"What are you doing here?" are the first words out of Kyle's mouth.
"Kenny left, you know," Stan tells him.
"I haven't even seen him since we went camping."
"Well, you won't be seeing him now." Stan shoves his way inside, past Kyle. "What are you doing, holing yourself up in here?"
"Packing. Placating my family."
"You weren't in your room when I climbed up to the window. Are they home?"
"Um, no. Well, Ike's in the basement. I was getting a drink. Why?"
Stan tugs Kyle up his own stairs, and forces him down on the bed by his shoulders.
"What are you doing?" Kyle asks. "My parents went grocery shopping, dude, and they are totally going to come back at some point."
Stan is gradually licking his way up Kyle's jaw line, one knee against his back, one across his thighs. He's never straddled anything so tightly.
"Have you been drinking?" Kyle asks.
"No," Stan lies. He works his insidious little fingers down the neck of Kyle's T-shirt. "Well, maybe a little." He starts on Kyle's chest again, because without anything even being said he's learned that Kyle actually likes it now. It's amazing how little they've hooked up this summer, seeing as it was supposed to be the summer of non-stop anal penetration. Stan laughs to himself about this, which he shouldn't because it's not funny, and while he's laughing he gets some of Kyle's hair in his mouth.
"What," Kyle seethes, forcing him away, "are you doing?"
Stan doesn't even have an answer for this, so he slips his hand inside Kyle's pants and goes to town.
In both of their minds, there is something absolutely crazy fucking wrong about what they're doing. Sleeping with your best same-sex friend was a traumatic bridge to cross, and then one day one of you has female sex organs, well, how do you do. How do you navigate those waters? Stan chides himself mentally for thinking in water metaphors, because he is practically drowning in between Kyle's legs here. He knows his acceptance here is partially because he's, well, a little, tiny bit drunk, and partially because Kenny's blue pill has made him so fucking aroused that he would do anything, anything, just to soothe his dire need for contact and satiation and so on and so on, he can't even think about it anymore, he just has to do it.
And Kyle likes it too, he realizes. That was the genesis of this whole experiment, when Kyle began to let his guard down and it was obvious that as much as this body didn't feel right to him, it was his, and now they know that all the bullshit they've been fed about women not needing it just as badly as they do was a lie. Either that or it turns out that female genitals plus male brain actually does equal … a genuine boy with a vagina.
Kyle is sort of nervous; he doesn't trust this thing between his legs, and he never will. But he trusts Stan more than anyone in the universe.
The next morning he rolls over and finds another precious note on a Post-it: Church. Wouldn't wake you.
"I slept for…" Kyle trails off, looks at his clock, and glances at his fingers. He's woozy enough to count. "…13 hours." His room is a war zone of everything he owns strewn amid brown cardboard boxes and those things that apply packing tape that look like guns … dispensers? Whatever. He has a horrible feeling about this morning. For one thing, Stan is gone, and he didn't wake up with him and then fall back asleep. For another, it's his room — a place Kyle swore he'd never, ever have sex or even make out. Secretly, this whole time, in his mind, Kyle's room has been the last domain of their former best-friendship. Now it's gone, of course — reduced to rubble. But he's beginning to just not care about some things.
Rolling out of bed and onto his feet, Kyle is surprised and he falters a bit, stumbling just a couple of steps away from the bed until he grabs his desk chair to steady himself. Hastily and gracelessly, he shrugs his sweatpants off, and he doesn't bother wondering why he's wearing sweatpants in the high summer, or at what point after Stan tongue-fucked his vagina senseless for a while but before he fell asleep he would have stopped to put on pants.
Anyway, it hardly matters, because dangling there like it never left is the evidence of his masculinity. Kyle doesn't want to give that asshole Clyde (who may or may not be shipped out to Afghanistan or something) any credit, but for some reason the weight of it — or his balls, at least — does affect his posture. Or, he figures, maybe it's the slight difference in blood circulation, now that he has genitals that need to be irrigated again. Regardless, he feels woozy and unbalanced and he sits down in his desk chair and puts his head on his keyboard and, well, he actually just laughs.
XXX
They are sitting on Kyle's front lawn again, hands linked, as their earthly belongings sit on the curb, waiting to be loaded into the van they've rented to help transport them to their next joint venture at the University of Colorado. Stan is curious at first as to why Kyle is taking his hand, but when he sees that Kyle is relaxed, he eases up, too, and they let the summer die between them as their emotions live on, thriving on the end of the humidity, the end of the past 18 years in this confining, narrow space.
Kyle knows his parents might walk out at any moment, but he doesn't care. Let them see — he is beyond the point of worrying that perhaps they may be disappointed. He knows that they wouldn't be, and even if they were, he doesn't see it bothering him. He has reached the end of his time here, and for what it's worth, there is nowhere to squeeze in a long lecture about safe sex, romance, letting love get in the way of studying, or anything else his parents might toss at him. He is safe. And as he studies Stan's sweet visage, he sighs contentedly, and his throat closes slightly, and he feels the tension of desire begin to pluck at his groin like a clumsy mandolin player. He shifts happily, giving his awakening manhood some room to grow.
"You know what bothers me about this whole thing?" Kyle asks. He doesn't need to clarify anything for Stan; Stan just knows.
"That your penis disappeared for two months and you had a vagina?" Stan guesses.
"No."
"The entire situation?"
"No."
"Well, I don't know. None of it?"
"No," Kyle says smartly. "It's that the whole thing was basically meaningless. It happened for no reason, and it went away for no reason. I didn't learn anything, and our relationship was never really in peril. So what was the point?"
Stan thinks for a moment, and clasps his other hand to Kyle's, so that the redhead can't go anywhere. "Kyle," he says heavily. "All things are meaningless, unless you give them meaning."
"I know."
"So just let it go, dude." He drops Kyle's hand. "You want me to blow you?"
"Right here on the lawn?" Kyle asks, intrigued.
"Sure," Stan says with a shrug. "I don't know, it's something to try."
"I'll settle for a handjob," Kyle barters.
"Sounds good." And as Stan takes Kyle's cock in the palm of his hand, he breathes a sigh of relief. Everything is normal, by virtue of not being anything of the sort, and that is the way they're happiest.