Breathe Me

Chapter Twelve: As I'm Pissing On Their Perfect Front Lawns

By: Jondy Macmillan

Girls. I love girls. Softness and curves and legs. Toes painted like rainbows and eyelashes thick and clumpy from mascara. Lips slathered in sticky gloss that might look sweet as candy apple coating, but tastes a lot like shampoo-y gunk.

Yeah, alright, I never claimed to understand girls. Just like them. Kind of. On a good day.

Lola's voice is shrill in my ear as she prattles on about how amazing the dance is going to be, kind of like a revival of the good ol' days when dancing was the closest you could get to making love without breaking any abstinence vows. It's going to be that good, she says.

I'm hanging decorations that catch the light and reflect it back in my eyes; metallic, dangling hoosawhatsits and glittered thingamabobs. Kyle's down by the bleachers, getting his ass handed to him on a platter by Heidi. The closer we get to crunch time, the more she acts like she's entering a kid in a Junior Miss pageant and we're making her daughter look like a whore. The gym's never good enough, beautiful enough, prepared enough.

Kyle is kind of hot when he looks all guilty and ashamed like that.

No.

I never said that.

Tonight's the dance. It's Valentine's Day. Day o'love. Day o'Kenny kickin' himself for being such a complete and total fuck up. If I lie to myself, if I pray and I lie and wish like hell, then I can almost stop beating myself up for telling Kyle the kiss was a mistake. Because it was, really. I can keep busy, thinking about girls and all the reasons I love them, want them, need them.

Funny how those reasons keep turnin' to shit I can't even force myself to believe.

This gay thing, this looking in a mirror and not recognizing that dude staring back at me thing; oh yeah, it's getting old.

I wonder how Kyle managed to figure out he might be gay, all on his own. I'm thinking entering myself into group therapy is the next step for me, because there's no way I'm going to be able to reach a firm conclusion about anything without a big safety net.

Kyle's attractive, sure, I've said it a thousand times 'til now. Just because he's kind of a pretty dude doesn't mean anything about me.

Hell, if anything it means he's the fag.

Which he is, so maybe that's not the insult I'm looking for.

He's just not a fag for me. And I'm not for him. Because I don't like guys that way. At all. Never have. Stupid thoughts about Kyle mean nothing. Girls do it all the time; comment on how hot other chicks look.

There's nothing weird about it.

Girls even kiss each other.

When they're drunk.

There's a song about it and everything, so it's got to be normal. I caught Butters singing the damned thing around homeroom yesterday.

Who even knows who they actually are, anyway? Who knows how they actually feel? Understanding feelings is impossible. Sometimes it seems like my emotions are hidden somewhere in this trench, this fucking abyss inside my heart, and every once in awhile a fissure lets out this bubble of something, of emotion that feels more like regurgitation than anything resembling a feeling, and I'm supposed to run my life based off of that? Deep sea eruptions? No chance.

So I think I'm gonna forget about that whole queer inner-debate and keep my eye on the prize. At least until I can get in to see a psychiatrist, or you know, afford one. I'm gonna dance tonight, and the only feelings I'm going to experience are when I cop a feel off Lola's breasts. She's cordially accepted being my date, although we had to have a little chat about how I would no-way-no-how be picking her up or wearing any article of clothing with a single fucking hole in it.

I'd drop her, but man, it took me the last two weeks to get her to even agree to go with me. Before that I was working on Mandy, this cheerleader with a tight little ass, but she has some unfathomable loyalty to Heidi, and I decided not to even go there.

I hear Stan come in the gym, and against my will, I glance towards Kyle. He's smiling.

Things between Kyle and I have felt weird. Wrong. So I've done what I do best, and barreled right over anything that could be misconstrued as inviting awkward conversation with porno jokes. I've been spending more time with Cartman, although I'm pretty sure all that's doing is inviting bad karma onto my doorstep. He wants to start a franchise out of forcing fourteen year old Filipino boys into shining shoes or somethin' equally as fucked up, and I'm just worried one day he's gonna move himself right on to forming a prostitution ring. His mother's a gigantic slut, and he's inherited the panache for pimpin'. All he'd be doing is continuing the family business.

Cartman's a little scary.

I heard he was trying to score Wendy into going to the dance with him, and I kind of wonder how that's working out for him. Scary or not, Cartman deserves to be happy. Maybe because that's the only way to stop him from committing genocide, but really, I think Wendy would be good for him. She's got this whole dominatrix vibe thing going, and someone needs to control the fatass. At whatever cost.

"Kenny, you're not even listening to me," Lola admonishes, brushing some stringy metallic stuff hanging off the…well, thing, I'm trying to tie up to the ceiling. We're both balanced on a ladder, which isn't my favorite place in the world to be, 'cause I've died falling off one or two. You'd think I'd get this whole feeling of invincibility, being able to die and come back to life, but really all it leaves me with is this feeling of 'not again'.

Lola's been babbling this whole time, and handing me tape and string when I ask for it. When I look back at her I see warm brown eyes and a half-smile.

Oh, and breasts.

So maybe I'm a little asexual, or something, because Lola's boobs are pretty nice, closer to a C cup than a B, and they're there and they're real (I think), but I'm just not as into it as I should be. I'm kind of wondering what it would be like to see another guy naked, to see if I get turned on by a dick, but the idea sounds preposterous even in my head, so I shake it off.

Kevin had it right when he told me to stop thinking.

I focus on taping and tying and fixing the gym up, trying to be zen and blank my mind.

It's hard to do that when Stan and Kyle insist on being loud. Like, really loud. Heidi's walked out for a minute, probably to fix her hair and make sure she looks pageant worthy, so the two super best fags are making fun of how dumb the gym's beginning to look, what with the streamers and the crepe and the metallic, glittery, sparkly stuff everywhere. No self respecting guy worth his balls is going to feel comfortable walking in here, date or no, and Kyle and I are both mighty ashamed we participated in this total castration of the gym.

But Kyle can laugh about it with Stan, and I can't. I can't because Lola's blocking my way, jabbering about the corsage I need to get her, because every Valentine's Day dress requires a corsage. I can even pin it real close to her breasts, she says, but I'm so not focused there because I'm watching Kyle.

At first it's just a twinge when I watch Stan throw his arm around Kyle's shoulders. They're laughing, and talking about; hell, I don't even know what super best friends talk about. I've never had the privilege of having one myself.

Then Stan leans a little closer, his lips brushing against Kyle's ear. Kyle's cheeks turn as red as his hair for a second, but that's all it takes.

It hits me in the gut, twisting my stomach into knots that burn, and all I want to do is make the flames in my chest burn away. It feels like the tissue of my heart is scarring where I stand.

I'm thinking about Stan in the bathroom of that party over break, the one where he touched himself and thought of Kyle. I teased him about it and joked about it, and maybe it made me uncomfortable a little so I slipped all thoughts of it to the back of my mind. I hid it from myself.

Now I've got this image in my head, of Stan screaming and cumming and Kyle watching, and it pisses me off. I want to yell at Stan to get his fuckin' hands off Kyle, because there is no way in hell the Jew'd ever like a freak like him.

He can't.

I'm pretty sure that's when I start to realize I'm the freak.

The gay, twisted freak.

Girls might kiss other girls, but jealousy like this only springs from one thing.

No therapist is ever gonna be able to take care of my issues. I've been dancing around them for weeks. I'm been doing a fuckin' samba.

"Are you gay?"

Kyle had to ask. That one innocent question that I should have just laughed off. I should have said, fuck no, and gotten over it. Pronto.

"It wouldn't be the end of the world. If you don't like girls, I mean."

Yeah, it would. I t really would.

It is.

Lola's still talking, but I'm not even here anymore. It's not like I've had some rabid, out of the blue revelation. It's more like everything that hasn't added up, or maybe has added up but I've refused to accept is crashing down on me. I'm drowning in a tidal wave. Maybe I shouldn't have been so dismissive of my emotions before. Maybe they really do hold some power.

'Cause right now I'm kind of forgetting to breathe.

What's that they say about denial?

Once you can't cling to it anymore, reality's a bitch.

A/N: And yet another short chapter. I just fail today. Epic fail. Please review anyway!