Feedback: is life
Warnings: swearing, homosexuality, present tense.
Disclaimer: RENT is the brainchild of Jonathan Larson. I'm just borrowing his characters with every respect intended.
June 15, 1979; 6:00 p.m. Eastern Standard Time
We're sitting out on the back porch steps behind Roger's house. The air is getting cooler, finally, and we are waking up after lounging belly-down on the basement floor for most of the afternoon, slurring syrupy ideas as to how to entertain ourselves, but none of us had the energy for the ideas and, in truth, none of us had the energy to be bored. This is the start of our day. We're sitting on the back porch steps sucking ice cream bars and swigging Coke from thick glass bottles.
Roger giggles. "My ass is cold," he announces.
Collins gives him a sidelong, rolling-his-eyes look and says, "Do you ever stop thinking about your ass?"
"No. Except to think about Mark's!" he crows and loops me into a one-arm hug. I duck and blush and mumble and can't help but wonder if Roger really means it. He has a great hug, a rough-and-gentle lovebug hug.
I keep mumbling and blushing, and Collins says to let me go already. Roger just shakes me, in a friendly way, and says, "That's my Markie," and plants a sloppy kiss right on my forehead, because that's the sort of thing Roger does. I should be used to this, but I squirm and blush, anyway. Anyone with mercy would release me, but Roger doesn't, which is all right because it's getting cold out and his arm is nice and warm around my shoulders, and I left my sweater inside.
Collins is giving us a strange look, as though he knows something we don't. If he notices, Roger doesn't care. His attention is drawn to his ice cream, which he gives a serious glare. I know in his mind he is conversing fiercely with it.
"What?" I ask Collins.
Roger lunges forward and inhales his ice cream. Collins laughs. "Nothing, man," he say, but really he's saying, If you don't know, I'm not about to tell you. Roger gets mad when Collins does this to him, but I don't mind. I'm smart, but Collins is a genius. His mind is like… imagine a hamster after seventeen cups of coffee thrown into a maze with a bungee harness. That's how I imagine Collins' mind, so how can Roger and I expect to understand him.
"'Ey." Roger nudges Collins, points to the Coke bottle and holds out his hand. He takes a swig; I see his incredibly disgusting mouth, mashed ice cream and Coke pouring over it, then he closes his mouth, swallows the mess and wipes his lips on the back of his hand. "Know what I hate?" Roger asks suddenly.
Collins guesses, "Speldman," our balding, liver-spots-and-rotted-teeth school principal.
I guess, "Outlining."
Roger laughs. "Yeah," he says, swishing around the last inch or so of Coke in the bottle, "but I was thinking, diet sodas."
Collins laughs. I ask, "Why?" Roger's mind is like a highway half the time, every exit to SEXSEXSEX. The other half, like now, it's a tree, half pine and half jacaranda. You never know which branch will light, which path his thoughts will take, and the things he says leave imprints on the world. Roger's words are dark, heavy cones that fall hard and hurt. Roger's words are delicate tissue flowers spiraling down to earth.
"'Cause," Roger says, still swishing the soda, "soda is thick and syrupy and sugary and… and all that junk. It's stupid, I mean, you've seen the ads. That girl with the two-inch waist. It's a stereotype and it's so wrong. I mean, I don't want my sister thinking she has to like that. If I ever have a daughter, I don't want her to think she has to look like that to be pretty. I want them to just feel beautiful."
Purple flowers carpet the earth.
"It's choice," Collins refutes. He loves to argue with Roger. The two of them, it's funny, Collins can reference any thinker from Archimedes to Voltaire, Roger can spin words like spider-threads with their shimmering colors just beyond the reach of my weak eyes. I never know which I agree with, Collins' brain or Roger's heart. "If people want to be that kind of pretty--"
"Don't even call it that," Roger says. "It's not. It's a crime against women everywhere. And against soda," he adds as an afterthought, in a tone of grave import. "Diet soda is something some yuppie came up with to impose his twisted, yuppie sex stereotype on women outside his influence."
Collins tosses his head back and laughs his bear laugh, giving a Roger a friendly shove and calling him paranoid, in many more words.
While they go at it, I wander through the air, air hanging like thick dust in the air, and stretch myself out on the grass to watch the sky grow dark. A few shades later, snapping footsteps cross the lawn and Roger lies down next to me in the grass. I know Collins is gone, and it's just me and Roger. He's a little closer than necessary, but although I know this I find no object within myself. My mind is a big, comfy blank.
Roger squirms next to me. I think my glasses are fogging as his arms pull me sideways against his chest. It's a hug, a tender, apologetic, lovebug hug. Mmm… "We shouldn't," I tell him.
Roger curls around me, until he's nothing but a warm blanket and hot breath on my neck, and I'm a nova. "Then French me with a Diet Coke," he says.
Fin!