Every Small Town Has Secrets
Chapter Nine: Lived Like A Fool
By: Jondy Macmillan
Let me tell you a thing or two about the girls Stuart McCormick dated. They were dumb. And when I say dumb, I don't mean mute. Wouldn't that have been a blessing? In high school I came close to committing suicide several times just because one of his cheese-grating voiced girlfriends happened to be in the vicinity. These girls, god. They were ridiculous. Complete morons. Obnoxious voices and annoying habits. There was one who used to pick her nose in public.
Stuart didn't mind having idiots for girlfriends, because he only used them for one thing and one thing only. Sex.
"It's not all about sex, Brof," Stuart informed me about a week following his proposition.
I frowned, extending my hand to his forehead just so I could check his temperature. He swatted me away, "Very funny."
"It wasn't supposed to be," I replied, incredulous, "How can it not be about sex, man? Everything you do is about sex."
He grinned and pushed shaggy hair out of his eyes, "Tch, yeah. But with you, it's not."
This conversation was preempted by me demanding when Stuart was going to attempt to start worming his way into my pants. Because really, if he wanted to date me, the next logical step was expecting him to jump my bones.
I was kind of insulted when he told me that wasn't how our relationship was going to work. Was I supposed to be insulted? Did he not find me attractive enough to fuck? If that was the truth, why go through this whole charade of convincing me we needed to try dating?
I mean, I was the sole person in a long string of women with curvy hips and luscious breasts that Stuart had pounded into that he didn't want to get sweaty and horizontal with. Either he was being nauseatingly saccharine or I had some kind of appalling body odor. It was simple math.
Plus, I was male. It didn't take a rocket scientist for me to get that Stuart was not going to sweetly seduce me like he would a chick. I already knew all his tricks.
"If it's not about sex, then what the hell are we doing?"
"Why Brof, I didn't know you were that eager to see me naked," he grinned cheekily at my fury. He could be so very irritating at times like those.
"Stuart," I gritted out in warning. We were at work, right after the lunch rush, and people were only trickling in at sporadic intervals. We'd opted to play a game of Texas Hold 'Em that devolved quickly when we realized we had nothing to bet but slices of pepperoni. Both of us had barreled through our most recent paychecks with lightning speed, the way you do when you're young and you feel invincible.
"Okay, fine, have it your way," he pouted a little, the way girls used to do when we stole their cookies in third grade, "We can have sex, right fuckin' now."
His hand crept up my thigh, fingers jutting into my skin in a way that wasn't funny.
"Dude," I swatted his hand away, "No."
"Brof, you're givin' me mixed signals here," he chewed his lip and stared at the cards and his stack of pepperoni, obviously more entranced by the game than by our conversation. It was all a huge joke to him.
We hadn't kissed, not even once, since the night he initiated his experiment. Out of the blue, I was constantly feeling off kilter when Stuart was by my side, but he was always seemingly fine. I didn't like that something so big could disrupt the entire way I viewed the world, but Stuart didn't even care. I guess part of me still thought his proposal was a joke.
"I'm giving you- what? No!" my voice cracked a little as I slammed my hands down on the tabletop, "This is ludicrous. I have no idea what you want, and it's bugging the hell outta me."
"God, Brof. Stop acting like a girl."
"Stuart!"
"Okay," he chuckled, and I knew he'd been stringing me along throughout this entire conversation. He pushed his pile of pepperoni aside and took hold of my hand. For a second, I saw indecision cross his face, like he was deliberating whether or not it would be okay to intertwine our fingers. He didn't. Instead, Stuart said, "I'm taking you on a date."
"A…date?"
"Yeah, you know. It's what all the hip young kids go on when they want to spend time alone, away from their parents. Or at least that's what I've been told."
"Ha ha, very funny."
"I thought so," he inclined his head to the side, "So what do you say? You, me, a garage band in North Park?"
"That's your idea of a date?"
"I'm sorry, did you want dinner and a movie?" he sounded mildly annoyed. That's when I knew that whether he'd been stringing me along or not, he'd actually put some thought into this whole 'date' thing.
"No- you know what? A garage band sounds great," I was over thinking things; a family trait. All I'd wanted was one last summer of glory with my friend. Now I had this; this thing where I had to flesh out what being in a relationship with Stuart might mean.
We were going on a date, and soon, and I just wanted to pretend that it was a strictly friends thing. I felt guilty that the only date I really wanted to go on was with Randy, but he had Sharon. Sharon with her sloe eyes and her pink lips and her clumpy mascara. I wasn't going to think about that. I was going to concentrate on Stuart; on the way he brightened when I told him I would go.
"You won't regret this, Brof," he swore up and down.
I didn't believe him.
Less than ten hours later, I was tromping through the occasional patch of snow that always lingers in Park County summers. I'd had to beg my mother to let me go out, claiming that Stuart and I were catching a movie at the multi-plex.
She was suffering from some kind of pre-empty nest syndrome, like she'd just realized that come fall I'd be leaving for good. The path to her agreement had been dicey, but eventually she relented; even so, I had a curfew.
Stuart pulled me along by the crook of my elbow, guiding me through fields of trampled grass and sections of trees that had been partially deforested by our then-thriving logging community. We were headed for the most heavily wooded part of North Park. The band was playing a campsite in the woods off the highway, a place I thought secluded and serene until the screech of fingers playing across an axe broke the silence.
I couldn't believe how fast the guitarist's fingers moved; the closer we got to the concert, the more it felt like we were leaving the mundane reality of our small town for something bigger, better, and nine times more frenetic.
The vast majority of the crowd were men, wearing sweaty leather and grungy shirts, all huge, broad shoulders and burly thighs. Standing next to some of them made even Stuart look insignificant, and he had at least an inch on me. There were women in the throng too; they had too much eyeliner and stringy hair, and most of them were backed up against guys twice their side, like this whole musical extravaganza was just a precursor to sex.
For a split second I wondered if maybe that wasn't what Stuart had in mind.
The thought fell away as we wove in and out of the crowd. When we found a place to stand, near a fire at the outskirts of the crowd, I let the music swell over me.
This didn't feel like a date, not at all. It felt like screamed lyrics and half glimpsed snatches of a world that wasn't entirely ours.
We'd played with the idea of rock and roll, like most kids our age. We wrote song verses on my comforter and sketched anarchy symbols on our ratty jeans, but this was the first honest to god concert I'd ever gone to outside the time my dad dragged me to some country arena gig. I wasn't sure about Stuart; I knew he'd dated groupies, but I wasn't sure if he'd had the honor of being one himself. I could imagine for a moment him tracking all over the country, following Hendrix with pupils blown wide, like standing beside a star might make him one himself.
The singer on stage howled like an injured timber wolf, his chest bare and vulnerable and trickling with the salty sheen of perspiration. The audience howled back, their breaths the mingled smells of pot and alcohol and stale corn chips.
"This is great," Stuart yelled into my ear, thrashing his head back and forth so that his long hair flew frantically in the air. I took a step back to avoid getting my teeth bashed in.
It was great, drowning in the thundering music, knowing that there in the woods we were isolated but for all these leather bound people. Somehow it made us special. It made us unconquerable.
At the same time, I wasn't sure whether or not to give into the invincibility. This wasn't the kind of freedom I was usually allowed; it wasn't something my mother would understand.
I guilted myself into feeling awkward and out of place. I wasn't sure what to do then, or how to move to show that I understood the songs reverberating around me. I couldn't get back to the safety of drowning, and I was convinced the other people at the concert were watching, judging me, knowing that I was a stranger. That my being there was wrong.
I was nodding my head to the beat, but the movement was imperceptible. It must have looked so jerky and foreign, like a robot was dancing in my place.
Stuart was my anchor.
He caught my distress. The second the band launched into a slower paced tune he grabbed my elbow, "Relax. You look like your mom's going to walk up and catch you practicing Satanism or something."
He could always read me.
"Easy for you to say," I frowned, wishing I knew how to be as adaptable as he was. Wishing I was less scared of getting caught, not just at this raucous concert, but on a date with my best friend that didn't even feel real.
"It is easy, Brof," he chuckled in my ear, breath tickling, and suddenly everything flashed into perspective. "This isn't a test. No one's judging you on your- fuck, I don't know. Dancing abilities? This ain't a ballroom."
I opened my mouth to protest, but Stuart clapped a hand over my mouth and winked. The warmth on my lips made heat pool in my stomach and Randy Marsh became I name I couldn't recall. Stuart started swaying ever so slightly, and then, when he realized I was hypnotized by the movement and the light of the flames flickering over his features, he let his hand fall from my mouth.
Stuart wrapped me up in his arms, aligning his hips and thighs with mine as we swayed; together, this time. I didn't know if anyone was watching; and now I didn't care.
Everything shifted, or maybe it was just my perception. The music floated over my head and the bonfire crackled and the stars seemed clearer than they've ever been.
Between the sky and the trees and so many angry, thrashing men, Stuart laced his hand with mine where our hips were connected.
That night has stayed with me forever since. It was the night I began to understand…
It wasn't a game.
A/N: Thank you for all your reviews so far; I really appreciate them! Every time I get an alert in my inbox, it makes me all warm and fuzzy inside.
