Disclaimer: RENT belongs to Jonathan Larson. I'm just playing with the characters. Anything you recognize, not mine.
COLLINS
"If you were a girl you could cut off your hair," he murmured, petting my head. It had stopped being night and started being morning, and as it became early afternoon still I half-sat, leaning against him and letting him hold me and pet my head. It was true that my hair, if it could be called that, was short, more stubble than actual hair, but it wasn't baldness. I was far too vain to be bald.
"But you don't have hair," he concluded. "You have, like… fur."
I rolled my eyes upward and barely glimpse the crown of his head. I reached blindly behind me to smack him. My hand came into contact with some part of his body, and the resultant sound was immensely satisfying. Sadism, schadenfreude, whatever name it's being given, hitting Roger is fun.
"Shut up," I said. "Stop touching my hair."
Roger, predictably, didn't. He rested one hand on the top of my head and said, "I love your hair." I smacked my head back against his chest. Roger would wear the bruise for weeks.
He hadn't left me alone for more than three minutes since the previous afternoon, since I came home and didn't have to tell him the contents of the call from the clinic. That day in the hall, with Roger sobbing briefly onto my shoulder, it was fast becoming my salvation.
Call him dreary, but he had known.
"Well it's nice longer," he admitted, pushing my head forward. "I don't know why you cut it," Roger mused.
It wasn't cut, it was shaved.
"It isn't like hair," Roger continued. He can be like a dog with a bone about absolute nonsense. "It's like--"
"It's not fur!"
"Fine. Fuzz." Roger leaned forward quickly to kiss my ear, filling my head with a loud smacking sound, and dodged back before I could swat him again.
"Stop touching my fuzz," I commanded. Roger snickered and continued petting. "I'm not kidding," I said in the don't-fuck-with-me tone I was struggling to perfect. "Stop."
Roger, being Roger, didn't. "It's like petting a kitty," he said.
"Roger, I swear, I will tickle you until you piss your pants."
He stopped. "You taken your pill yet?" Roger asked. I didn't say anything. No, I hadn't taken my pill. Why? Either it was a mistake and I wasn't sick, or it wasn't a mistake and I was already dead. When you're dead, there's no point in playacting another day of life. Roger's hand rested on the top of my head. I could hear him breathing, suppressing emotion. I felt his chest balloon out with each inhale and collapse under every inhale.
"Have you eaten today?"
"Nothing."
Roger shifted and stood up. He stretched. Since the previous evening, he hadn't changed clothes. In fact he had barely left my room. Now he scratched his neck and said, "I'll be back soon."
While he was gone, I tried to write something. Nothing came, just lines and lines of, I'm dying, I'll dying, I'm going to die, I'm dead, death dead dying dying I die. So what the hell's the point?
And I never was an existentialist.
MARK
Dorm rooms are not nice places to live. They are not comfortable or "homey", it doesn't matter how many pictures you tack up of you and Roger, or you and Collins, or those rare few pictures of you and Roger and Collins. It doesn't matter that there's a snapshot of you mother and a snapshot of your father and a snapshot of your sister holding her newborn bastard son.
Still, when I was in the dorm, my mom sent me cookies. I guess it was her way of telling me that she was proud. And I missed her pride.
My eyes cracked open. I reached for my glasses, to cure the world of its current state of blurriness.
"Yowch!" My hand encountered something sharp. I pulled away, found my glasses and pushed them onto my face. The sharp object revealed itself to be Zacktus the Cactus. "Uh… Zack," I moaned, making clear that the plant had wrong me.
I stumbled out of bed and into the 'kitchen', glad the weather had finally turned. I reached up to grab a box of cereal, something I never would have done in my underwear. August meant sleeping in underwear or not at all thanks to the heat, but it had turned September, and turned cold, and now I didn't have to worry about my knickers being pulled up my crack every time I grabbed cereal.
That was half because the underwear didn't fit properly. The other half was Roger's amusement. Yes, at twenty-two, my delightful… BOYFRIEND! (the word thrilled me to no end, and I paused in my thought as my heart fluttered about in my chest)
As I was saying, my delightful, attractive, talented and very smelly (at times) boyfriend had a habit of waking up before me. When I stumbled into the kitchen, he would be sitting at the table in a T-shirt and low-rider jeans, slurping the last of the milk from a bowl held aloft with both hands.
Roger would leave the table and when I reached up for the cereal, Roger would give me a wedgie. About half the time this led to groping, which led to kissing, which led to—
But the other half, when someone else was in the room, it led to me blushing, pulling down my underwear and telling Roger not to do that any more.
"Aw… but babydoll," he drawled, the affected rock star words in an affected rock star tone, and he cupped his hand against the curve of one cheek. I had never been so aware of my own ass as I was in that second. "I love this."
I turned and looped my arms around his neck. "I know," I said, "but do you really want to share it with Benny and Collins?"
Roger glanced over his shoulder and growled at them. Collins laughed. Benny flipped him off. Roger patted me, almost hard enough that it could be considered a spank. "You're right, Mark." He kissed me. "Maybe you should go put on some clothes."
Sugar cereal made me miss Mom. She used to send me cookies, a box of cookies along with a letter letting me know how things were at home. I glanced at the empty spool that served as a table.
The wall bore a scar, the last remnant of our telephone. I sighed. Outside, I might huddle against the wind and punch the numbers, staying on the telephone as long as I could with the coins collected from Roger's bedside table (all right, Roger's bedside milk-crate), rambling to my mother and faking interest until the rain began.
And the rain would, soon enough, begin.
Around one o'clock that afternoon, I pulled my thumb out of my mouth, fearing one more bite to the cuticle would draw blood. I needed to see someone. I needed to talk to someone. All day, I hadn't spoken to anyone or spoken one word.
Roger was not in his room. The bed was half-made, straightened but not really made up, a half-hearted effort since he didn't particularly care. I knocked on Collins' door before stepping in.
Collins was lying on the bed, facing away from the door. Roger was with him, also lying on the bed.
And they were cuddling.
I froze, my throat tight and refusing to swallow. "Um… Roger," I managed, then pushed my glasses up and shook my head. What was my boyfriend doing in bed with someone else? Even if that someone else was a close friend—
Roger looked up. "Yeah," he said. "What do you need, love?"
My boyfriend by my side.
"Um… no, nothing."
"All right then."
I backed out and closed the door.
Later, when Roger emerged from Collins' bedroom, I meant to confront him. All the angry words piling up inside my head, I meant to spit them out at him, make him listen, make him answer!
But Roger cupped my head and leaned in to kiss my lips. "I'm sorry about this weekend," he said. "I promise something special next!"
I was so busy wondering what Roger had in mind, I didn't stop to ask him what he had planned. I didn't stop to ask what the hell he was doing with Collins. I just said, "Yeah," and kissed him back.
I recovered my wits by the time he'd gone.
BENNY
It's been three months since I began living in the loft.
Maybe it's been three months. Maybe it's been four.
It's been twelve to sixteen weeks since my first shower there, when all the grime hadn't completely come off, when I couldn't wash away the smell of poverty, when the timer rang and the water turned ice-cold.
"Not much hot water," Collins had told me. I didn't realize they had it timed to the second.
I jumped out of the shower, dried off and dressed, and the other three were sitting on the couch, reeking of sweet smoke and laughing, I had no doubt what.
Twelve to sixteen weeks, it's been, since Mark became one of them. Or maybe he always was. Maybe Mark hid from me who he truly was, because when he needed someone I was there, eager to befriend my roommate
When Mark first told me about Roger, I felt close to him, trusted. He told me about his childhood friend.
He never told me about falling in love with him.
I awoke lying on sheets without the itch of poor washing powder and bleach. These sheets were soft and clean, and the pillows light, the blankets heavy. I moaned. It was the best waking-up in weeks.
The red numbers of the bedside clock informed me that it was 3:41 p.m. That clock could be trusted. That clock had never lost its time because our power was turned off. That clock had never been thrown against a wall. That clock had never been programmed to alarm at four o'clock in the morning, by Mark, by accident, and gone off so many times it was thrown out.
Christ, who doesn't love a hotel?
I stood, suddenly conscious of hunger.
In the minibar, there were overpriced tiny bottles of booze and soft drinks and candy bags. I grinned. Her dad was picking up the bill. Why the hell not?
I never even liked bourbon. I didn't like it then. I forced myself to enjoy it.
The shower shut off in the next room.
That shower pounded out as much hot water as a person liked. It would fill the bathroom with fog.
I was definitely headed for a shower.
Alison emerged from the bathroom, wearing a bra under her towel.
I was definitely headed for a shower… but there was something else I needed to do, first.
Alison grinned. She wasn't just incredibly fuckable. Alison liked it. She liked fucking hard all afternoon, she liked gently making love in the evening; she didn't mind sucking. Alison was nineteen years old, in love with sex and in love with me.
This girl was perfect.
COLLINS
The first few drops of rain sounded like wind. It sounded not like water but twigs blown against the window, pebbles thrown to steal attention. Then the deluge began. Rain slammed down against the roof and the walls and the windowpanes.
The clouds were angry.
I pushed myself out of bed, bored by my depression. There were stacks of papers eager to be graded.
In two months, I would turn twenty-one. Twenty-one. I was still, at that point, young enough and accomplished enough to be considered a child prodigy. Most had the courtesy not to slap me with that label; it was common enough to make me conscious of it.
At twenty-one, a man should not know the means of his death. It stared at me from the orange bottle of pills left out by Roger.
Never in my life had I thought I would envy Roger. Since the night I saw him in the aftermath of a violent attack from his own father, I knew I would infinitely pity him. Since the rainy day he dragged us out of high school to watch an animated movie, I knew I would love him.
But envy? Who could envy Roger? Roger was beaten. He was broken. He was a drug-abusing, all-fucking little idiot. Then Mark came along, and changed all that with a look.
Now I'd give anything to be the falsity of life Roger projects off the stage.
Grading didn't work out.
Michael. What are you doing, boy? This isn't an analysis, this is a summary. And I now Anne's phrasing. A Tisch boy and a Gallatin girl. At a guess, she ranted to him and he recorded her ideas. That's plagiarism. If you can't finish the essay yourself, don't bother. Drop my class. Learn how to write or drop my class.
All right, so grading was not such a good idea.
"Hey."
The door opened, and Roger walked into my room. He was damp from the rain, still huddled under his beloved leather jacket, carrying a plastic bag in one hand. "How's it going?"
"I'm dying, how do you think?"
"Yeah." Roger set the bag on the floor and plunked himself down beside me on the bed. I suppressed the urge to clock him. "You taken your pill yet?"
I rolled my eyes.
Roger pulled something out of the plastic bag: it was a paper bag, white paper with bright, cartoonish drawings on it. "Hungry?" he asked. I reached for the bag, and Roger pulled it away. "Ah! Pill first," he said.
"Roger…"
"You can have the cheeseburger when you take your AZT."
I took the little pill, then quickly shoved the bottle out of sight and snatched the bag from Roger's hands. He had a habit of spending money on stupid things—not expensive things, just stupid things. Still, at that moment, I was glad to have a friend who thought AZT for McDonald's was a good trade.
"You're ok, Rog," I told him. Somehow I couldn't bring out the rest of the truth. I just couldn't tell him, I think you saved my life. I love you in a totally platonic way. I just smiled and smacked him playfully, which is how I noticed… "Oh, Roger…"
He sighed and drew himself back. "Leave off," he muttered.
"Don't be an idiot," I told him. "That shit'll just fuck you up and you know it."
"Like you're one to talk."
Not to him. Not for a long time after that.
ROGER
"Hey." Mark is slouched on his bed, curled too close to the book he's reading. He looks up when I come in and blinks at me, and it occurs to me that if he didn't keep his eyes so close to the page he wouldn't need such thick glasses.
I hold up the bag. "Hungry?"
"Mm."
"You coming to the table, or…?"
"You come here," Mark says.
I sit down on the bed and pull out two cardboard containers. "You like the chicken, right?" I ask, offering one box.
Mark grabs the other Happy Meal. "Fuck kosher," he says. "What does a cheeseburger taste like?"
"Better with bacon," I tell him. I tear the top off a container of honey and dunk a couple of limp French fries into it. I watch Mark take a big bite out of a small burger and wonder how he feels about pickles, and mustard, and low-grade beef, but Mark takes that bite and chews and swallows.
He eats the entire burger and I doubt he tastes a bit of it, he's so busy tearing down his father while I take nuggets that claim to be chicken, dunk them in honey and chew them up. I eat all my French fries with so much honey that when it's done my hand is sticky with it.
I raise my hand to my mouth, but Mark says, "Wait."
He takes my hand gently, removes his glasses, and trails his tongue over my palm. Sitting there on Mark's bed amidst the trash of our lunch, he licks and sucks my hand, he feels my calluses and explores my hand with his.
"Big hands," Mark says.
I want to say that I made them bigger playing guitar, forcing them to stretch and grow strong. But I don't say that. It's not sexual.
Mark undoes the first button on my jeans. He's shivering. It could be the cold. It could be. But we're shut up in the bedroom and it's not so cold in here, at least not to me.
"Mark," I say. He pauses. "You don't have to do that."
"Collins…" Mark licks his lips, nervous. "Collins said you've been with a lot of people."
I nod. "A few," I lie.
"Did they satisfy you?" Mark asks.
"Sexually?" I ask. Mark sounds like something out of a porno or a French romance. This boy is not accustomed to relationships with men. He's definitely used to women.
Mark nods. I shrug. "Yeah," I say, "at the time."
"I can satisfy you," Mark says, a seven-year-old too shy to challenge me openly. I can satisfy you.
"Aw." I pull Mark into my lap. He exhales, his body relaxes, and his shoulders slump enough for me to kiss his hair. "Who ever said that's what I wanted from you?" I ask, holding him. "Hm?" I ask, dropping another kiss into his hair. Mark says nothing.
I ask Mark, invite Mark, "Why don't you stay with me tonight?" I can feel a slight itch starting. There's a few little baggies in my pockets, what Collins saw, what made him piss me off and feel like I need to use it. But fuck him. I'm not an addict.
I gently ease Mark off my lap, stand then kiss his cheek. His face hasn't changed at all in these past five years. "I'll just throw this out."
I gather up the trash; Mark goes into my room and by the time I've shoved all the bags and boxes and used catsup packets into the bin and washed my hand since it's sticky with spit and honey, he's put on a pair of my sweats that are too long for him. But if that's what he wants…
Mark will sleep next to the wall; I don't need to ask. I just pull back the covers for him. Mark crawls into bed and I lay down next to him, and we're nothing but heat and breath and giggling under the covers, shivering away the cold.
The itch is still there, under my skin. It doesn't go away, but I ignore it.
I'm not an addict.
COLLINS
"Tom."
Someone shook my shoulder.
"Thomas."
I groaned and pulled a pillow over my head. "G'way…:"
"Get up. You've got a lecture in like an hour."
"Roger... it doesn't matter."
"Yeah, it does," Roger said, more forcefully than I had expected.
I rolled over to face him. "Look, whether I tell them stuff, or they look it up, or they don't learn it at all, it doesn't matter, Roger. It's not important."
Roger grabbed my pillow and smacked me with it, hard. "Yes it is! You asshole!" Then he stormed out of my room and slammed the door.
There was no going back to sleep then, and when I stepped out of the room, Roger was on the couch, just sitting there, high as fuck. I could've slapped him across the face, and I doubt he would have reacted. Of course, I didn't slap Roger. I just went to work.
For a week, Roger ignored me.
He hadn't done that since high school, but whenever I spoke to him, he looked away. Mark tried to talk to him about it: "What happened between you and Collins?"
"I don't know what you're talking about," Roger would inevitably reply, and if Mark pushed the issue Roger would storm into his room and chase the dragon until he felt better.
On Friday, I returned the essays, except Michael's—"I dropped the essays on the train; I thought I'd picked up all of them but I missed yours. I'm really sorry. You can redo it if you want or just take full credit."
Handing out papers at the start of class is something no high school teacher would ever do, and no college professor ever should do. "…best known for his 'leap of faith' theory." I turned to the board and wrote:
K-I-E-R-K-
Then something hit me on the back of the head. It wasn't harmful, but one of my students had definitely thrown something at me. There were a few giggles and a few gasps, and when I turned one particular student was smiling too broadly, eyes shining too bright.
A stuffed caterpillar composed of brightly colored plush spheres and a pair of antennae and googly eyes, was lying on the ground. I picked it up. "Would anyone like to claim… this?"
No one did.
"Are you sure, Maureen?"
Maureen Johnson was in her final year, majoring who knows what and doing who knows what in my class. She had a habit of boycotting bras and saying whatever popped into her mind and laughing at anything remotely sexual or drug-related.
Maureen was essentially Roger with a vagina.
"No," she said, barely able to contain giggles.
I shrugged. "Alright then. As I was saying…"
And I finished at the board, E-G-A-A-R-D. "…the leap of faith states that faith is doubt…"
That afternoon, in the loft, I plunked the caterpillar down in front of Roger. He picked it up. "What's this?" he asked, interested enough to be distracted from his Lucky Charms.
"This was thrown at me in lecture today."
Roger snickered. "For serious?"
"Yeah. So it's all yours."
"Niiice!" To the caterpillar, Roger said, "I think I'll call you Larry."
"Oh, and Roger," I said, continuing the conversation that had ended as a fight earlier that week, "You're an asshole."
A loud beeping sounded as Roger gave his predicted response: "Your face is an asshole."
It's nice to have a routine.
TO BE CONTINUED!
Please review?
