FINAL EPISODE: PART TWO
I wanna publish zines
and rage against machines
I wanna pierce my tongue
It doesn't hurt, it feels fine
-- "Flagpole Sitta" Harvey Danger
The party.
It is no wonder the college kids have already gravitated away from the highschool aged jerks: there is something of desperation in the way the grade-elevens and grade-twelvers drink, as if the goal of alcohol is oblivion. At least, it looks that way to Naruto, who sits on a green couch with a rum and coke in his hand watching a girl get carried out by her friends. Carried out, and it is only ten o'clock at night.
Across from him is a poster depicting a shirtless Iggy Pop, holding a guitar up to his left nipple. To the right of the poster is a small antique table, holding up a bent table lamp. To the left of the poster is a clean, bright IKEA table, holding a red lamp that looks new and sturdy. Old and new, facing against each other over a gulf of glam rock and bare chest.
Naruto looks down at the ice in his drink. He is a highschooler; he should be drunk by now, drunk on the ability to drink which the older college-aged kids take for granted. There is no illicit novelty for them.
He wonders where Sasuke is.
It is an elegant flat. Naturo figures there must be an unspoken law about buildings built after World War Two: the nicer the building on the outside, the blander the apartment; the sketchier, the grimier the exterior, the nicer the interior. Rock Lee had led them down to a series of old, creaking student housing, cowering among the convenience stores and bars. Sasuke and Naturo had ridden up an elevator that reeked of stale weed, shuddering its way up. But here, inside the apartment, among all these people, there was elegance.
"Having fun?" someone asks.
Naruto looks up, feeling suddenly abandoned by Sasuke, though he can't explain to himself why. It is a young woman, pretty, one of the girls who live here. "You're sitting here all alone."
"Waiting for my boyfriend," he says. "He left to get another drink." I think, he almost adds.
Her eyebrows raise in an oddly predatory way, as if to say: Thought I smelled fag.
"You're with Suigetsu and his crowd then?" she asks.
He looks across the room into the kitchen, where he can see glimpses of Popular Kids move back and forth, disappearing from view. "No. Here with, uh, with Sai and Sakura and Rock."
"Oh, Jesus, Rock." She throws back her head and laugh, a loud and startling sort of laughter. "Oh." She shakes her head. "That guy. Where is that fucker now?"
"I-- don't know."
"Well, glad to see you here anyways." She glances back at the kitchen. "You met Haku yet?"
"Haku?"
"Haku -- shit, yeah, he probably goes to your school. He's around here somewhere. Friend of a friend. Pretty cool guy."
"Haku?-- like, Popular Kids Haku?"
"I don't know what that means." She leans back on the couch, bringing her legs up. She gazes at him cooly, appraisingly. Naruto doesn't know whether or not to feel uncomfortable. "Tell me," she says. "Shit, what was your-- what's your name again?"
"Naruto."
"Naruto, do you have any money on you?"
"Money?"
"Money, yeah. On you. Like, right now."
"Why?"
She giggles. "Come on."
What to say? This is a direct order, by someone older and more attractive than he, and from the host of the party to boot. In an effort to be a good guest, he stands up and follows her into the kitchen.
It is bright in here, bright ceiling lights and bright colour scheme. Modest Mouse is coming out of a radio set on the fridge. Naruto pushes past two girls and finds a drunken Suigetsu confronting him. He grabs Naruto's shirt and says, "-- don't like you."
"Okay?"
"I just--" He is obviously very drunk. "I just think you're a bit of a scumbag, Naruto--"
"Suigetsu--?"
"You know--" He releases Naruto's shirt. "Your fault Temari's missing--"
"What?"
But the girl's hand has already appeared, grabbing Naruto's, and pulling him from Suigetsu into a sitting room. Three girls are coiled on a couch, talking to Sai. Sakura and her Quebecois boyfriend are arguing in a corner. A goth-girl with a The Gathering shirt makes eyes at Naruto as he walks by.
Again, it is easy for Naruto to distinguish who is who. It is only ten-oh-five. Those smashed and crawling on the ground or weeping come from the underage haze of highschool. Those standing around with sharp amused or disgusted eyes hailed from the local university. The only no-man's land, where teen and college-age co-mingled with equal invisibility are the ones staring out of half-closed eyes, immersed in a cloud of cannabis. Well, perhaps not entirely equal: Naruto doubted there was any pot on Earth to make some of these kids this high, so he suspected the involvement of high-school ages here. With the leash of parental control drawn tight around their necks, highschool kids frequently feel the need to exaggerate their various inebriations, perhaps with the thought that with exaggeration came golden, unadulterated uninhibition intstead of alcohol poisoning.
It makes him thing about the way Iruka dealt with him, the relaxed way his guardian dealt with him. It is as if Iruka was afraid to go too far with his charge, in the need to be his friend rather than an authority figure. That, or Iruka already refuses to see him as anything but an adult, letting him go out at night and sleep over at his boyfriend's house as much as he wanted because, well, that was what adults did. Sometimes, late at night, Naruto feels anxious about it, lying in Sasuke's arms, feeling like he had so much more responsibility to act, well, responsible, because of how much Iruka let him do.
There is a girl in the hallway he now walks into, leaning against the wall, wearing a fedora and smoking a cigar. She looks at Naruto and at the young woman who is leading Naruto along, and says, "Don't tease them too much, Natalie."
It hits Naruto then just how these college kids view him, and it makes him uncomfortable. He never figured himself for an object of fun, but still, how he must look to these girls, the little teenager against these virile figures who are in their own lives, studying and dating and fucking and making their own way through the world.
She takes him into one of the bedrooms, and there are naked pictures all over the wall. "Sandy here," Natalie explains, "is an amateur pornography photographer."
The girl at the desk turns around, and levels dark unimpressed eyes on Naruto. She looks like the kind of girl who constantly glares at life. "Not really. Some porn, but mostly nudism. There is a difference, Natalie."
Indeed there is. Above Sandy's computer is a massive blown-up triptych: a vagina the size of a large television on the left, a giant erect penis in the middle, and another vagina, this one spread and engorged, on the right. Naruto stands, stunned in the face of so much genitalia. Around him are photographs of naked women and men. There is camera equipment set up near the desk, and above the bed are three posters, one for Fantasia 2007, one for Fantasia 2004, and one, exotically, for Fantasia 1982, this one fairly rumpled.
"Hey, Sandy," Natalie says, giggling. "Got you a potential customer."
Sandy appraises Naruto for a moment, looks surprised, and then gets up and goes to her bed. She kneels down and pulls out a pink suitcase, picks it up and sets it on the bed. Opening it, she beckons Naruto over and says, "What were you looking for?"
Naruto looks down, sees what's inside the case and says, "Oh."
"Oh, get this one," Natalie says, reaching in and pulls out a large purple sex toy. "You use dildos, right?"
At the look on Naruto's face, Sandy glares at Natalie. "Great one, Nat. They're supposed to be actually interested. Fuck."
"Why wouldn't he be interested?" Natalie says, smiling at Naruto. "Care to spice up your sex life, Naruto? You own some of these? Oh god, look at this one." She pulls out a candy-striped vibrator. "You got one of these? A vibrator?"
"Uh," Naruto says. "No, I don't--"
"I'm afraid most of this stuff is aimed more for women," Sandy says, sitting down on the bed. "I mean, I'm sure there's some cross-over, but--"
"You have to own dildos, right?" Natalie asks.
"I mean--" Sandy says, picking through her wares. "We have anal beads, plugs... um, the glass dongs can set you back a bit, but I hear a lot of praise about those."
"I--" Naruto doesn't know what to say. He knows he's very red right now, knows that Natalie probably wants him to feel uncomfortable, but he knows he has to pull himself back together. Sex toys are normal things, nothing to get immature and finicky about. Try and be an adult, Naruto, he thinks. Don't let this chick rattle you. "You sell these?"
"God," Sandy says, looking away. "Sort of. It's not a career; it's like Mary Kay products or Tupperware. I bring them to parties and shit. Chicks buy them."
"Well, I don't--"
"This one's a nice one, I hear," she says, holding up an anal vibrator. "Lots of, um, ribbing. It's--" She rummages through the case. "It's got batteries, I think. What kind-?"
"Well, I haven't really-- I mean, me and my boyfriend-- we haven't really started to use toys."
"You've never used, like, a dildo or anything?" Natalie asks.
"Well, I have--" His cheeks are burning. He wonders how flushed he looks, how embarrassed he seems. "I have used them before. Just not with Sasuke-- not with this relationship, I mean."
"Always a good time to start," Natalie says, grinning.
"Girls," a voice says from the door. "Are you trying to embarrass poor Naruto here?"
Natalie turns and smiles. "Why, it's young Haku."
Indeed it is. The boy's seeming naive demeanor and innocence has dropped for the moment. With sly, knowing eyes, he walks into the room, tells off Natalie, and leads Naruto back out of the room into the hallway.
"Don't mind them," Haku says. His innocence has returned to his face and his eyes, which shine. "They can get a little crazy."
Naruto starts to feel odd under Haku's gaze. He realizes Haku is one of those people who really look at you, seeing you instead of just looking in your direction and seeing their own thoughts. When Haku smiles, Naruto's heart skips a beat.
"C'mon," Haku says. "Let's get back to the party."
"Have you seen Sasuke anywhere?"
"No. Has he been okay? He seems a little out of it lately. Broody."
"Well, Sasuke's always broody." Where is Sasuke? Naruto looks into the kitchen, doesn't see him. "Well, we had a pretty rough weekend."
"That's no fun. Rough on the relationship, you mean?"
"No. Yes. I don't know." Naruto looks back at Haku. "We had-- we had a pretty big fight, I guess you could say."
"Every relationship has them."
"Well, maybe not like the particular fight we had."
Where is his boyfriend? Part of the charm of being a couple is having someone to be with in social gatherings like these. And now, having come so close to embarrassment, he needed someone to validate his story, to laugh about it with. Maybe he's in the bathroom?
Naruto pushes past Sai and Sakura and her boyfriend. A girl offers him a joint and he declines, instead moving past an orange wall with a bookshelf filled with vegetarian cookbooks. There is a print of the Warhol John Lennon beside the door to the bathroom, and the door is half open. Sasuke is inside, sitting on the toilet. Naruto can only see a little of him, so he pushes open the door, a question on his lips.
Sasuke is smoking a cigarette, staring ahead.
"Oh," Naruto says.
Sasuke looks up. His eyes widen and he ducks the cigarette down out of sight. He stands up, saying Naruto's name, but Naruto is already heading out through the living room, snatching at his coat from the hangers on the wall. As he heads to the door, he turns and says to Haku, "Tell everyone I went home."
As he slams the door behind him, Haku watches Sasuke run out of the bathroom towards the door, and smiles a small smile.