I know stoners and I love stoners. You guys are usually alright. USUALLY.
But, sometimes, I meet that one stoner that just ruins it for everyone else. I don’t mean the guy who doesn’t share his weed, or the one that ate all your brownies, I mean the ones that give stoners a really bad name to all the people who DON’T smoke.
So, in honor of your strange holiday, here is a list of things NOT to do as a stoner. I like to call it my “Pot Peeves.”
1. Don’t laugh at me and then insult me because you are too high.
You just smoked WAY more than you should have, and you know it. You can’t even remember how you got to class. Did you drive? Did you fly? Have you finally learned to teleport? You can’t focus and can’t really see, so when we have to work in pairs in class, and I ask you question related to what we are studying, DO NOT LAUGH AT ME BECAUSE YOU CANNOT UNDERSTAND ME.
I know you are high, I could smell it from across the class, and I know I shouldn’t ask you anything, but I have to because the teacher is watching us and I don’t want either of us to fail. So I ask you a question like “did you like the text?”, hoping you will be able to say something to me so that it LOOKS like we are doing our assignment, but NO, you just LAUGH and then tell me to “chill out man” or say “you are so crazy, bro, I don’t even GET you.” I was trying to help you, but now I just hope you will drop your favorite glass bong on a tile floor.
2. Don’t try to “sneak” me pot.
I don’t smoke. I have CHOSEN not to. I don’t mind that you do, in fact I think it’s kinda cool that it helps you and makes you happy. It’s just not for me. You need to understand this and respect it. I may seem high strung or upset to you, but your solutions are not the same as mine. You think that if I would just chill out and smoke with you I would be so much happier. Since you can’t force me to smoke and I leave when you try to hotbox me in your bathroom, you decide to be TRICKY.
One day you invite me over and offer me tea. I am thinking, “Sure, earl grey or a good strong black tea would be really nice this afternoon, I could use a pick me up.” You bring me weed-tea. At first I don’t know it’s weed-tea, I just know it smells really bad and I don’t want to drink it. Then I see you smile and realize you are trying to TRICK ME INTO CONSUMING POT.
This is rude in so many ways. What if I don’t smoke because I am allergic? What if I am taking a medication that would react negatively with marijuana? What if it doesn’t “chill me out” but instead makes me barf for days because it was too much or too strong? What if I tried to “sneak” you anti-psychotics in your food?
3. You have not reached Enlightenment.
There is like, only ONE person who ever really reached enlightenment and he became a religious leader HUNDREDS of years ago. Do you have several countries worth of followers? Is China trying to kill you? Do they sell little figurines of you in every knickknack store? Is you image recognizable all over the world?
No, so stop telling me about how you reached enlightenment and how you think I should too. Enlightenment doesn’t work like, and you aren’t at an elevated level of being, you are just really high.
4. For the Love of God, please DO NOT STOP SHOWERING.
There comes a point in many stoner’s lives where they think that bathing takes too much time and wastes too much water. It separates them from the EARTH and is something society has forced us to think we need to do. So you decide to stop shaving, stop bathing, and stop wearing deodorant. You decide to embrace your true nature and your true odors. The smell of weed will cover it all up anyway, right?
No, it really doesn’t cover anything. It doesn’t mask it, it doesn’t help it, and it just adds this acrid, urine smell to your already disgusting stench. Now you are dirty, your hair is matted, your flannel shirt has mustard stains and no one wants to hang out with you anymore. It’s no longer just the paranoia from smoking; the police are actually following you because you look like a danger to society.
5. Don’t just light up anywhere.
I know you have “your card.” I know you have a “valid medical condition” that you should be allowed to medicate whenever you need to. I know the pot helps relieve your pain, and that is important, but sometimes, the tiniest bit of discretion is just polite.
Heroin addicts don’t just shoot up in the grocery store, alcoholics don’t just pull out a bottle at work or at their kid’s school play. Remember how your medication is still ILLEGAL? You might not want to flaunt it at people. I don’t mind you smoking in your car, or your house, but when we are out shopping and you just light up, right there, with everyone around? All those bitchy moms with their bratty little kids? They will call the cops and they will yell at you AND ME, the bystander who isn’t doing anything wrong.
6. Please ask before you smoke in my room.
I don’t want my whole room to smell like your skunky cat-piss weed. I am already upset that you let yourself in and sat on my pillow, even though you gave up showering 3 weeks ago. I am going to have to burn it now, and spray lysol all over my bed and the parts of the walls you might have touched. Please don’t ruin anymore of my stuff without even acknowledging that it is MY stuff and you need permission to taint it.
7. You are not homeless, stop panhandling.
You are really hungry, but low on cash because weed takes up most of your income. Your mom put a lock on the fridge so you can’t eat her food anymore late at night. You are really hungry. So you walk your dirty, smelly self to the corner by the target and ask people for money. You find a bit of cardboard and write “anything helps” on it. You sit in the shade with your neighbor’s dog that you took from their yard and pretend to be homeless so people will give you money for a burrito.
After you get that burrito you will go home, sleep in your bed, talk to your family, and have the option of taking a shower. Do you know how many people have NONE of these things? So many. So so many. Please don’t degrade them and insult them by pretending you are just like them.
8. Don’t just linger in the cafeteria.
You are too high to function, AGAIN. You are past the point of laughing at me, past the point of being able to form any words to tell me about enlightenment. SOMEHOW you made it to the cafeteria for food. The urge to snack must have worked like some natural instinct, pulling you in the right direction. You got in, got you plate, now you need to get food on it. BUT YOU CAN’T DECIDE. Because you can’t actually think. You just stand there, in the cafeteria, staring and drooling.
This is so creepy. There are no words for how creepy this is. This is watching-elementary-school-kids-from-your-van creepy. You are staring at the food I am about to eat and just BREATHING. It’s worse than when I cosplayed the TARDIS at ComicCon. At least then I brought it upon myself, here I just wanted dinner, and now my food is in danger from your mouth-breathing-beard-face.
Wednesday, August 17, 2011
I just finished college with my B.A. in English, or as everyone knows it, my B.S. in English. Badum ching.
So I spent the past few years eating college food and paying the price for it. I KNOW college food. So here is my overview on college food for all the freshies out there:
1. Instant Ramen: Costs about 10 cents, takes 5 minutes to make, 5 minutes to eat but you may never poop again. Turns out the human body was not meant to process play-doh noodles.
2. Pizza: Costs you about $15 but will last at least 2 days. Makes a wonderful breakfast and seems to have magical hangover-curing abilities. Your face will eventually start to look like the pizza surface with cheesy, meaty chunks dripping down it, but if you get it with olives or mushrooms this might be the closest thing to a balanced meal you will ever get.
3. Bud Light: You might as well give a baby money to piss in your mouth. I don't know why there was always a CASE of it in the fridge, but my roommates must have liked the taste of human urine.
4. Coffee: no one likes the taste of coffee. No one like the way coffee makes you feel. No one really likes coffee at all. But you still have to drink it and pretend you know stuff about it for the rest of the university to respect you. You will secretly drink instant coffee at home because it's cheap and you are depressed about your life, but when you go out you will order the fanciest one you can find, pay too much for it, and gag a little with every sip you take.
5. Jello Shots: These will be your main source of nutrients when you run out of pizza money. They are easy to throw up and a little fun because of the colors, but are rarely made correctly. They either come out too watery with no jello flavor, or too thick with all the jello powder coagulated at the bottom so you have to use your teeth to try to scrape it out.
6. Corn Dogs: Your roommate will buy a Costco industrial sized box of these and try to shove them in your tiny freezer. She will eat something like 6 a day for a week and then accuse you of stealing them and eating them. You will start to laugh because the idea of stealing her corndogs is eerily similar to the idea of stealing a dead seal from a shaved bear, and this will ruin your whole relationship for the rest of the year. She will never make eye contact with you again.
7. Grocery Store Pre-made Salad: You will buy this after all that pizza and ramen thinking that a salad will be a great idea and will make up for all that play-doh and cheese, but once you get it home and open the lid all you can manage to do is stare at the soggy lettuce and damp corn chunks like they are parts of some monster waiting to bite you. The corn nuggets becomes evil pupils in its salad eyes and you have to put the lid back on and hide it in the back of the fridge, behind the Bud Light, ashamed of the monster you unleashed upon the world.
8. Ice: They say chewing ice is a sign of sexual frustration, so why are you doing it when you have 3 friends-with-benefits that you see regularly? Are they not enough? Surely you can't be that sex-crazed? Maybe they aren't doing it for you anymore? Then who would? Should you try another lady? Could you do the lesbian thing? How much plaid do you own? Are you willing to cut your hair off? That girl in your history class is really pretty and probably has soft hands considering how much lotion she puts on... Ice will make you question your sexuality. It's bound to happen, don't fight it.
So I spent the past few years eating college food and paying the price for it. I KNOW college food. So here is my overview on college food for all the freshies out there:
1. Instant Ramen: Costs about 10 cents, takes 5 minutes to make, 5 minutes to eat but you may never poop again. Turns out the human body was not meant to process play-doh noodles.
2. Pizza: Costs you about $15 but will last at least 2 days. Makes a wonderful breakfast and seems to have magical hangover-curing abilities. Your face will eventually start to look like the pizza surface with cheesy, meaty chunks dripping down it, but if you get it with olives or mushrooms this might be the closest thing to a balanced meal you will ever get.
3. Bud Light: You might as well give a baby money to piss in your mouth. I don't know why there was always a CASE of it in the fridge, but my roommates must have liked the taste of human urine.
4. Coffee: no one likes the taste of coffee. No one like the way coffee makes you feel. No one really likes coffee at all. But you still have to drink it and pretend you know stuff about it for the rest of the university to respect you. You will secretly drink instant coffee at home because it's cheap and you are depressed about your life, but when you go out you will order the fanciest one you can find, pay too much for it, and gag a little with every sip you take.
5. Jello Shots: These will be your main source of nutrients when you run out of pizza money. They are easy to throw up and a little fun because of the colors, but are rarely made correctly. They either come out too watery with no jello flavor, or too thick with all the jello powder coagulated at the bottom so you have to use your teeth to try to scrape it out.
6. Corn Dogs: Your roommate will buy a Costco industrial sized box of these and try to shove them in your tiny freezer. She will eat something like 6 a day for a week and then accuse you of stealing them and eating them. You will start to laugh because the idea of stealing her corndogs is eerily similar to the idea of stealing a dead seal from a shaved bear, and this will ruin your whole relationship for the rest of the year. She will never make eye contact with you again.
7. Grocery Store Pre-made Salad: You will buy this after all that pizza and ramen thinking that a salad will be a great idea and will make up for all that play-doh and cheese, but once you get it home and open the lid all you can manage to do is stare at the soggy lettuce and damp corn chunks like they are parts of some monster waiting to bite you. The corn nuggets becomes evil pupils in its salad eyes and you have to put the lid back on and hide it in the back of the fridge, behind the Bud Light, ashamed of the monster you unleashed upon the world.
8. Ice: They say chewing ice is a sign of sexual frustration, so why are you doing it when you have 3 friends-with-benefits that you see regularly? Are they not enough? Surely you can't be that sex-crazed? Maybe they aren't doing it for you anymore? Then who would? Should you try another lady? Could you do the lesbian thing? How much plaid do you own? Are you willing to cut your hair off? That girl in your history class is really pretty and probably has soft hands considering how much lotion she puts on... Ice will make you question your sexuality. It's bound to happen, don't fight it.
Wednesday, June 15, 2011
Thursday, December 9, 2010
Gay Plays and Heydays
*EDITED AND REWRITTEN FINAL DRAFT*
Gay Plays and Heydays
“I am going to be stuck in this horrible town forever.”
I was talking to my reflection in the mirror because I figured everyone else knew this sad truth except me and the best way to let myself know was to tell myself directly.
“Edward! Are you ready yet?”
My mom was ready to leave. I ripped Grandma’s floppy gardening hat off of my head and wadded it up under my pillow before grabbing my backpack to run downstairs to meet her. It was a Monday and Mondays and Wednesdays were her days to take me to school. Tuesdays and Thursdays Rob, my step dad, took me, and Fridays I had to find my own way to school. If I couldn’t convince my 25 year old stoner sister to give me ride on her way to the community college, I usually just took Friday off.
The ride to school was tense. My mom had found out about me skipping Fridays and when I tried to explain to her that I needed a whole day off for my writing, she refused to listen. I write plays. My mom refuses to read them. She has a job for a company that makes file cabinets and she spends her days thinking up ways to make file cabinets even more efficient. She thinks her job is the most important one in the world, just ahead of Rob’s job, which has something to do with turtles and apparently requires him to wear sandals with socks.
“I don’t want you skipping Friday this week, do you understand? If I get another call from your school, I am cancelling your birthday.”
My mom still thought that these kinds of threats worked on me.
“Go ahead and cancel it,” I thought. What did I care about birthdays anymore? Since I was 16 they weren’t about jolly jumps and cake anymore, but about getting one year closer to death.
“Edward are you listening to me?”
My mom wanted some kind of response. I couldn’t think of one that wouldn’t be a complete lie so I settled on a grunt. She could interpret that anyway she wanted.
“Eddie, I know you hate school and are going through a rough time right now, but high school is important and what you do or don’t do here and now will affect the rest of your life.”
“Thanks mom.”
It was hard to keep the sarcasm out of my voice, but we were at my school, so I was finally free.
“EEEDWARD!”
Stephanie was running at me full speed, her mini skirt swaying so violently I could see her pubic hair. Stephanie refused to wear underwear because she thought it liberated her, but unfortunately she also refused to wear pants, so most of the school knew exactly what her vagina looked like.
“Steph, still freeballing I see. Maybe tomorrow we could choose to wear something longer?”
She ignored me and instead wrapped her arms around me in the biggest bear hug she could muster with her height of only five feet. Stephanie thought she was some kind of gothic punk and wore nothing but studded miniskirts and black babydoll t-shirts with either a band logo on them or some vampire related quote. She also wore too much tacky jewelry and on special occasions showed up to school with fake vampire fangs and fake blood smeared across her neck. Twilight was her favorite thing in the entire world and because my name was Edward she was convinced we were soul mates. Her hobbies included screaming my name, touching me, and being way too happy for a girl who claims to cut herself. The real goth kids wouldn’t let her hang out with them, so she followed me around instead. I kind of envied her and her ability to be herself so loudly. She was a good kid, if a little slow to catch on to certain things.
We started walking around the side of the school, over to where the old gardening shed was. There was a spot wedged between it and the fence that was partially obscured by a tree where all the kids who smoked would gather. Right in the back corner I could see Melissa laughing as Stephanie practically ran circles around me, talking about our wedding and how much caskets would cost for all the guests.
“Hey brats. Well, aren’t you chipper this morning, Steph?”
“Hi Melissa! I was talking to Edward about our wedding, I had this dream last night where I was wearing this white gown that slowly turned to black spider webs at the bottom and had real rubies all along the collar like drops of blood. Isn’t that pretty? I tried to draw it, but I am not as good at drawing as you, would you want to draw it for me? I need to have a visual of it so I can see how much it would cost to have specialty made or if maybe my mom would try to make it for me for Prom. Not with real rubies of course, those are just for the wedding.”
“Yeah, sure Steph, talk to me about it at lunch, ok?”
“Thanks Melissa, you are the best!”
In a certain way, Melissa really is the best. Besides being fantastic at all forms of art, she was the star of the track team, president of the theater club, an honors student, and she was on the debate team. She was polite to everyone and even seemed to genuinely like Stephanie. She was five feet, ten inches tall, blonde hair and blue eyes, slim waist. Her parents were a doctor and a lawyer. In any other universe she would have been the most popular girl in school, but in our universe Melissa had been given an older brother who got her interested in comics and video games early enough in her life to ruin her for the normal world.
Melissa has been my best friend since we were in sixth grade. We met when she complimented me on my Sailor Moon lunch box. I had been going through a phase where I was convinced I was Tuxedo Mask and it just so happened she was convinced that she was Sailor Moon. After attempting to defeat some pretty evil looking squirrels we both got detention together for skipping class to play games. After spending all of that detention arguing about which X-Men character was the best, we became friends. She was the only person who really knew me and all my secrets.
Melissa dropped her cigarette and turned to me.
“So Squeeky, how’s the play coming? Going to get it done in time for the contest?”
The theater club was holding a contest for playwrights at our school, and the best submission was going to be performed shortly before the end of the semester.
“I will if my mom stops trying to silence me. She refuses to understand that this is what I do, and who I am. She actually stopped me from writing the other night because Rob had some powerpoint presentation he made for us all about the lifecycle of turtles. Who does that? Who makes a powerpoint just for their own family?”
“Well, Rob, apparently.”
“Yeah. He still does that creepy dad thing where he calls me ‘sport’ and ‘kiddo’ and asks me about football. You think by now he would have figured out that neither of us actually cares about football.”
“Well at least he tries, I mean, unlike your real-… Edward what are you doing?”
I had suddenly darted behind Melissa and was trying to channel chameleons so I could blend into the wall.
“He is coming this way Melissa! I have to hide, I have to leave, OH MY GOD he is coming right for us!”
“E, you really need to get over this, of course he is coming over here, he comes over here almost every morning and almost every morning you do the same thing; you run and hide. You are going to just have to say hi to him one day.”
“Say hi to him? I can’t say hi to him! One does not just say hi to Clifton Murphy!”
“Sure one does, watch. Hi Clifton!”
“Oh my God, Mel, No!”
Clifton Murphy was the love of my life. I know that sounds stupid and way tacky and cliché, but he really was. Clifton Murphy was the most perfect man put on this earth and for whatever reason he was put here in the same horrible little town as me. He was a gazillion feet tall, all long, perfectly toned legs, his shoulders not too wide or too narrow and despite being way too tall for a sixteen year old he knew how to hold himself without looking awkward. He was like some kind of king of the punk kids, probably because his Mohawk was the tallest and always perfectly groomed. He must not have slept because he had to have spent so much time on his hair. It changed colors every week, and this week it was blue and green tipped on long bleach blonde spikes.
He was wearing red plaid pants that hugged every curve of his perfectly long legs, a torn up shirt with a hand painted anarchy sign on it, and whatever you call that big patch of fabric punk kids hang over their ass with the design of the Union Jack. His eyes were crystalline green and at the moment they were smiling brightly at Melissa while his hands fumbled with his pack of cigarettes. I knew that he liked her, he always followed her to the theater club and was the reason I never actually participated in any of the acting exercises, but rather just fumbled behind the curtains like Gollum or some kind of weird gay troll. Lucky for me Melissa only thought of him as a friend and not even a very good one.
At first I had thought she was just saying that to not hurt my feelings, because how could she not be absolutely in love with him, but after a while I realized there was someone else she was in love with. I still didn’t know who it was, but I knew she was harboring secret feelings for someone at our school because I read a page of her diary over her shoulder one day when she was writing in it instead of helping me study like she was supposed to. She used a code name for him in there, so no one would knew who it was, but she had some pretty heavy feelings for whoever “Beautiful” turned out to be.
“Hey Melissa. What’s…What are you doing?”
“Just having a smoke before class.”
“Yeah? Cool. Cool.”
Melissa kept shifting around to try to expose me, but I was quick enough to be able to remain hidden in the shadows behind her. The bell finally rang causing Clifton to look down sadly at his still unlit cigarette.
“Oh, well shit. Guess I better go then. See you later Melissa.”
“Bye Clifton”
I didn’t come out from behind her until he was at least 50 feet away.
“Way to miss your opportunity, E”
“Yeah, whatever. Hey, Mel, will you trade me classes this morning?”
“No.”
“Please? You know how much I hate this class and today I just cannot handle it. I will go crazy and stab everyone with a shiv I will make out of my binder, I just know I will.”
“Just go to class.”
I had English first period, and while normally I loved books and writing, we were studying The Great Gatsby and I had already gotten in trouble twice with my theory that everyone in the novel is homosexual. I really didn’t want to have to listen to my classmates struggle to understand such a dull book. After English I had physical education, which actually made English seem fun. There is nothing worse than being the tiny, awkward, effeminate kid in the locker room. I thought Wedgies would have stopped after we hit puberty, but in reality they only got more painful. Third period was chemistry, which wasn’t so bad, and fourth was stage design which was my saving grace.
I got to spend all of that class in my beloved theater, and at lunch I usually just stayed in the green room with the door propped waiting for Mel to come in after she had her afternoon cigarette. She usually brought the rest of our little group with her, after they had all gotten their lunch from the cafeteria. We were the main group of misfits at our school, hiding out in the green room of the theater. Mondays and Wednesdays after school we returned to the theater for drama club meetings where a few other kids from outside our circle would join us. Life got pretty monotonous and Drama club was my favorite escape.
…………………………………….
I had worked on my play all of Sunday night, causing me to forget about my chemistry homework. It was worth it though; my play just kept getting better and better. It was about a little boy who gets lost in a mall on Black Friday and in his attempt to find his mother, ends up finding himself instead. There was this great part about Santa and patriarchy and the kid’s desire to overthrow the government. I had plans for live reindeers on the set and a giant swastika made of holidays lights in red white and blue.
After school I was so excited to share with the Drama Club my progress on the play that I forgot that Clifton was going to be there. I was sitting with the other members in a circle on the stage when he walked in, fashionably late. The meeting had already started so I couldn’t just get up and run and hide. As he walked over to us Melissa scooted away from me, shoving everyone on the other side of her over, and making an open spot right next to me for Clifton. He looked at Mel and blushed before sitting down. His knee touched mine. I could smell whatever hair goo he used to keep his Mohawk up; it smelled like some kind of tropical fruit. I started shaking. How could Mel do this to me? Why was she always trying to embarrass me?
Melissa welcomed new members to the club (there weren’t any) and recapped what the club had been doing recently (some new breathing exercises and the contest for playwrights) before turning to me with an evil look in her eyes.
“Edward here has been working on a play for the contest, and I asked him to share some of it with us today. Edward?”
I was pretty sure I had stopped breathing; my hands shook as I clumsily opened my notebook and turned to the pages of my play. I held the book up to my face and mumbled from behind it, making sure not to look towards Clifton.
“Well, I am, uhm, w-writing a play. And it’s for the contest. And, uhm, yeah. Oh, uhm, it’s uh, it’s about a kid? And the government, uh, overthrowing the government. Well, not really. It’s about a kid and he gets lost? In the, uhm, mall, on Black Friday, and he has to f-find himself and he has to think about patriarchy and bringing down the man, I guess. It’s not very good.”
“Thank you Edward, I am sure it will be a great play, I can’t wait to read it.”
I hated Melissa in that moment. Her perky attitude was no cover for her clearly evil intentions of embarrassing me in front of the man of my dreams. She kept talking, encouraging the others to try to write something and emphasizing how much help she was going to need in judging the entries. While she was talking I was looking down, fuming at my own awkwardness. When a hand came into view above my knee I was surprised and when it touched me I jerked my head up to look at who it belonged to. My face was inches from Clifton Murphy’s. He leaned in and whispered in my ear, his breath warm and smelling like smoke.
“Hey, your play sounds good. I’d like to read what you have so far. Maybe we could talk about politics sometime?”
Before I could respond everyone was standing up and clearing the stage, getting ready to follow Mel in one of her acting exercises. I took the opportunity to run and hide behind the back curtain, in the shadows. I had to get away from Clifton. I couldn’t tell if he was mocking me and my awkwardness or if he was serious, and I couldn’t tell which one would be better. If he was mocking me I would be crushed, but if he was serious I might have to talk to him again, and I didn’t have the nerves for that. The exercise was an improv skit with three people on stage. Mel would shout out a setting and the actors would make up a scenario fitting of that scene. After they had established the situation, Mel would shout out a different setting and they would have to keep acting out the same plot, just in a totally different setting.
Clifton was grouped with two freshmen girls and their scene was about a mother and a father shopping for a puppy with their daughter. Clifton was the Dad and the taller of the two girls was the Mom. When the setting changed from a pet store to the zoo Clifton cleverly improvised an argument with the Mom about how getting a wolf for their daughter would teach her life skills. He had most of the club giggling and even Mel snorted a little at his reasoning. I didn’t go out on stage to do the exercise; I just remained lurking in the back like a pedophile in his windowless van watching little girls walking home from school.
Melissa and the group performed two more improv exercises before taking a break so she could find some scripts for the actors to read as a mock audition. While everyone milled around I snuck out and followed Mel into the prop room where there was a file cabinet full of loose copies of short scripts.
“You know I hate you so much right now.”
“I know you don’t mean that, E. You really love me because I help bring you out of your shell and because I made sure Clifton had a seat right next to you. You really want to hug me and tell me I am the best.”
“No I want to smother you with a pillow because you embarrassed me in front of all those people! How could you do that to me?”
“I was trying to do you a favor. In fact, I think I even saw Clifton whisper something in your ear. I got Clifton to talk to you, I say that means you owe me.”
“He didn’t just talk to me, he TOUCHED me. His hand was on my knee. I thought I was going to die. And I think he was mocking me.”
“Mocking you? He was mocking you with his hand on your knee?”
“He said my play sounded good and he wants to talk politics with me. I am pretty sure he was being sarcastic, though.”
Melissa’s eyes lit up in a way I did not like at all. She clutched the scripts she was holding closer to her body and made a “Squee” noise.
“Omg, I KNEW IT. I KNEW it would work! I am a genius!”
“What?”
Mel giggled and made for the door.
“Don’t keep hiding behind the curtains, come out and join us for the rest of the meeting,” she called to me as she ran toward the stage.
I waited a few seconds before sneaking back behind the stage. I didn’t know what Mel was going on about, but I wasn’t about to embarrass myself any more. When everyone came back in from the break, Clifton wasn’t among them. I probably should have gone out and joined them, but I decided not to just to spite Melissa. I folded my arms across my chest and leaned back. The space behind the curtain was small and musty, but there was a nook in front of the emergency exit door that was indented a ways and I could lurk in the pitch blackness and lean against the door frame.
One of the freshman girls was butchering a monologue from Shakespeare when the door behind me cracked open and someone slipped in. The other side of the door was in the shadow of the theater building and had an overhang that hid it pretty well from the sun, so you could open the door a ways without letting too much light in. I had snuck in and out through it on many occasions during plays and was the one who had taped over the lock in the door frame to keep it permanently unlocked. Because no light had been let in and we were in total darkness I had no idea who was now standing next to me. I moved forward a little to say something to the person, to let them know that this was the drama club and they were intruding when they moved in and put a hand over my mouth, pushing me back and pinning me against the wall.
“Shh, sorry, I stepped out for a smoke and didn’t want to come back in the middle of someone’s scene.”
Whether Clifton knew this door would be unlocked or whether he had guessed and gotten lucky I had no idea, I was too busy processing the realization that his whole body had mine pinned against the wall and that I could smell the cigarette still on his hand right under my nose. He should have let up at this point, and walked over to the other club members in the wings, but he remained pressed up against me, hand on my mouth, face next to my ear. Suddenly his hand started moving slowly, his fingers tracing my lips in the dark, moving to my jaw line and running up into my hair. He grabbed the back of my head in his one hand, the other against the wall next to me and for a second I thought he was going to hurt me. I tightened my body, ready for the punch or kick or whatever was coming, but instead I felt him bury his face in my neck and inhale.
“You smell really good, you know”
“Th-thank you?”
“I was hoping you were still back here. It was why I lingered so long outside. I kinda wanted an excuse to try this door and see if I could get you alone.”
“What?”
“I know you hang out back here during meetings. You stand alone in the dark and avoid everyone.”
“Uh-huh”
I had forgotten how to speak in my surprise. I couldn’t figure out what Clifton was talking about or why he was touching me. Did he think I was someone else?
“I wanted to talk to you Edward. I like you.”
He was mocking me. He knew about my crush on him and he was teasing me, trying to hurt me and embarrass me. But then why was he doing it alone, in the dark? And why was he so very close to me? He could have done it in public, in front of the whole group, he could have made a big deal of it, but he wasn’t. He was alone with me in the darkest back corner of the theater, whispering in my ear and his hand was moving down the back of my neck, around my shoulder and down my chest. This was so much for me to process, I barely noticed as his hand slid down my chest.
He started to get closer to my belt and I started to panic. Apart from some awkward fondling in the dark at summer camp when I was 13 with one of the other campers, I had never been with anyone before, sexually. Sure, I had lusted after Clifton for the past 2 years, but I never thought it would actually be happening. I wasn’t even sure what was supposed to happen. I have read a lot about sex, but it’s different when it’s actually happening to you, and it was happening to me without any warning. I tried to squirm away, duck out and run, but he just pushed his body harder against mine, pinning me there. His face got closer and closer and my pulse was racing as he jammed his mouth against mine. I had imagined our first kiss to be soft, one where we both leaned in in the moonlight, sighing as our lips finally met, but this was nothing like this. My lips pressed against my braces so hard they cut into them, and I could feel his tongue working to try to pry my mouth open.
He took his one hand off the wall, supporting himself by pressing his body against me, and wrapped it around my jaw, forcing my mouth open. His kneecaps were jabbing into my thighs, holding him up against me, and his weight was crushing on my chest. The only part we didn’t meet was at the crotch, but his hand fumbling with my belt was trying to remedy this. I couldn’t breathe and I was bruising from his bony frame, so I tried to cry out but his tongue was in my mouth, moving around like a drunken stagger. I wasn’t sure if he was trying to choke me with it or of he was just hungry and looking for traces of lunch between my teeth. His mouth tasted like cigarette smoke and his tongue was warm in an unwelcome way, like an oven in the summer. It felt like there was a fat worm moving around in my mouth and it made me want to spit.
The hand that was working on my belt managed to get it unbuckled, and he tugged my pants down just below my genitals. My boxers only came down with half of the pants, so they were positioned diagonally across my hips, the elastic band digging into my butt cheeks as he pulled them hard from the front, fingernails digging at my skin. His other hand was still holding my face still and my mouth open, and I was scared to move because I thought he might break my jaw. I was terrified, and a little disgusted, but for whatever reason, I still had a hard on. I remember reading once that sometimes people react wrong to situations of great trauma, and find themselves sexually aroused when they are scared or upset. Sometimes it’s even used for defense in a rape case, if a girl seems excited when she is being violated. It’s not really her, it’s her body producing a reaction, any reaction, to a situation it cannot process or understand. The mind desperately trying to save itself by getting the body to do something other than just stand there.
Clifton’s hand started fondling me, rubbing along the shaft of my dick as I really started to panic. The craziest thoughts went through my mind like how clean his hand was, how often had he done this because it felt like his first time, and what monologue was the person on stage doing right now? As a 16 year old boy I had spent a lot of time getting to know my body and what it liked. I assumed every boy had, and we all knew what was good and what was bad, but Clifton apparently never thought about it. His skin was dry and it scratched against me, he rubbed way too hard, and with no rhythm at all, but despite all this, there was still a part of my mind that kept repeating “This is Clifton, this is Clifton doing this to you, what you have always wanted,” and I found myself getting more aroused. I wondered if this meant I was into hardcore sex stuff now, some kind of kinky freak. But though I had wanted this, I had never really wanted it in this way. His tongue kept moving around, and now he was grinding his hips into me, bones poking at my kidneys and bladder. His pelvis seemed to have a rhythm, though his hand didn’t match it. Tears were starting fall out of my eyes because I couldn’t breathe right and my whole body hurt and I was in the dark, in a corner with someone so forcefully on top of me I thought I would never get out.
The rest of the drama club was only feet away, out in front of the curtain, reading lines like nothing else was happening in that theater, while behind them Clifton and I were doing something terrible. I thought about moaning to alert them, maybe get some help, but I knew I was better off if no one knew. Clifton could turn this into something against me, like I was raping him, and as the school’s token gay kid I would get punished as an example. No one would believe I didn’t want this, even Mel would side with Clifton, because I had been after him for so long. Crying rape wasn’t something I could do. I had to just stand here, and suck in small breaths while the object of my affection ground against me like an olive press, with my pants around my knees in the dark.
Finally Clifton tensed up and shuddered against me, apparently reaching his point of orgasm. How he got there from chafing me up and trying to gag me with his tongue, I don’t know, but I guess I really wasn’t the kinky freak, he was. He stepped back away from me all of a sudden, breathing heavy in the dark. We stayed there for what felt like minutes, probably a foot apart in the dark, both of us gasping for breath, just staring across the blackness at what we could make out of each other’s faces. I searched his eyes, or where I thought his eyes would have been for any sign of emotion, or regret. I hoped he couldn’t see the tear streaks down my face. I felt like he should have at least kissed me again, softer this time, or hugged me or even just a “thanks”, but instead he grabbed the door handle behind him and slipped back out, letting as little light in as possible. I waited a few seconds before pulling up my pants and cracking the door again to look out, but he was gone. I peeled the tape off of the lock in the doorframe and shut it again.
Gay Plays and Heydays
“I am going to be stuck in this horrible town forever.”
I was talking to my reflection in the mirror because I figured everyone else knew this sad truth except me and the best way to let myself know was to tell myself directly.
“Edward! Are you ready yet?”
My mom was ready to leave. I ripped Grandma’s floppy gardening hat off of my head and wadded it up under my pillow before grabbing my backpack to run downstairs to meet her. It was a Monday and Mondays and Wednesdays were her days to take me to school. Tuesdays and Thursdays Rob, my step dad, took me, and Fridays I had to find my own way to school. If I couldn’t convince my 25 year old stoner sister to give me ride on her way to the community college, I usually just took Friday off.
The ride to school was tense. My mom had found out about me skipping Fridays and when I tried to explain to her that I needed a whole day off for my writing, she refused to listen. I write plays. My mom refuses to read them. She has a job for a company that makes file cabinets and she spends her days thinking up ways to make file cabinets even more efficient. She thinks her job is the most important one in the world, just ahead of Rob’s job, which has something to do with turtles and apparently requires him to wear sandals with socks.
“I don’t want you skipping Friday this week, do you understand? If I get another call from your school, I am cancelling your birthday.”
My mom still thought that these kinds of threats worked on me.
“Go ahead and cancel it,” I thought. What did I care about birthdays anymore? Since I was 16 they weren’t about jolly jumps and cake anymore, but about getting one year closer to death.
“Edward are you listening to me?”
My mom wanted some kind of response. I couldn’t think of one that wouldn’t be a complete lie so I settled on a grunt. She could interpret that anyway she wanted.
“Eddie, I know you hate school and are going through a rough time right now, but high school is important and what you do or don’t do here and now will affect the rest of your life.”
“Thanks mom.”
It was hard to keep the sarcasm out of my voice, but we were at my school, so I was finally free.
“EEEDWARD!”
Stephanie was running at me full speed, her mini skirt swaying so violently I could see her pubic hair. Stephanie refused to wear underwear because she thought it liberated her, but unfortunately she also refused to wear pants, so most of the school knew exactly what her vagina looked like.
“Steph, still freeballing I see. Maybe tomorrow we could choose to wear something longer?”
She ignored me and instead wrapped her arms around me in the biggest bear hug she could muster with her height of only five feet. Stephanie thought she was some kind of gothic punk and wore nothing but studded miniskirts and black babydoll t-shirts with either a band logo on them or some vampire related quote. She also wore too much tacky jewelry and on special occasions showed up to school with fake vampire fangs and fake blood smeared across her neck. Twilight was her favorite thing in the entire world and because my name was Edward she was convinced we were soul mates. Her hobbies included screaming my name, touching me, and being way too happy for a girl who claims to cut herself. The real goth kids wouldn’t let her hang out with them, so she followed me around instead. I kind of envied her and her ability to be herself so loudly. She was a good kid, if a little slow to catch on to certain things.
We started walking around the side of the school, over to where the old gardening shed was. There was a spot wedged between it and the fence that was partially obscured by a tree where all the kids who smoked would gather. Right in the back corner I could see Melissa laughing as Stephanie practically ran circles around me, talking about our wedding and how much caskets would cost for all the guests.
“Hey brats. Well, aren’t you chipper this morning, Steph?”
“Hi Melissa! I was talking to Edward about our wedding, I had this dream last night where I was wearing this white gown that slowly turned to black spider webs at the bottom and had real rubies all along the collar like drops of blood. Isn’t that pretty? I tried to draw it, but I am not as good at drawing as you, would you want to draw it for me? I need to have a visual of it so I can see how much it would cost to have specialty made or if maybe my mom would try to make it for me for Prom. Not with real rubies of course, those are just for the wedding.”
“Yeah, sure Steph, talk to me about it at lunch, ok?”
“Thanks Melissa, you are the best!”
In a certain way, Melissa really is the best. Besides being fantastic at all forms of art, she was the star of the track team, president of the theater club, an honors student, and she was on the debate team. She was polite to everyone and even seemed to genuinely like Stephanie. She was five feet, ten inches tall, blonde hair and blue eyes, slim waist. Her parents were a doctor and a lawyer. In any other universe she would have been the most popular girl in school, but in our universe Melissa had been given an older brother who got her interested in comics and video games early enough in her life to ruin her for the normal world.
Melissa has been my best friend since we were in sixth grade. We met when she complimented me on my Sailor Moon lunch box. I had been going through a phase where I was convinced I was Tuxedo Mask and it just so happened she was convinced that she was Sailor Moon. After attempting to defeat some pretty evil looking squirrels we both got detention together for skipping class to play games. After spending all of that detention arguing about which X-Men character was the best, we became friends. She was the only person who really knew me and all my secrets.
Melissa dropped her cigarette and turned to me.
“So Squeeky, how’s the play coming? Going to get it done in time for the contest?”
The theater club was holding a contest for playwrights at our school, and the best submission was going to be performed shortly before the end of the semester.
“I will if my mom stops trying to silence me. She refuses to understand that this is what I do, and who I am. She actually stopped me from writing the other night because Rob had some powerpoint presentation he made for us all about the lifecycle of turtles. Who does that? Who makes a powerpoint just for their own family?”
“Well, Rob, apparently.”
“Yeah. He still does that creepy dad thing where he calls me ‘sport’ and ‘kiddo’ and asks me about football. You think by now he would have figured out that neither of us actually cares about football.”
“Well at least he tries, I mean, unlike your real-… Edward what are you doing?”
I had suddenly darted behind Melissa and was trying to channel chameleons so I could blend into the wall.
“He is coming this way Melissa! I have to hide, I have to leave, OH MY GOD he is coming right for us!”
“E, you really need to get over this, of course he is coming over here, he comes over here almost every morning and almost every morning you do the same thing; you run and hide. You are going to just have to say hi to him one day.”
“Say hi to him? I can’t say hi to him! One does not just say hi to Clifton Murphy!”
“Sure one does, watch. Hi Clifton!”
“Oh my God, Mel, No!”
Clifton Murphy was the love of my life. I know that sounds stupid and way tacky and cliché, but he really was. Clifton Murphy was the most perfect man put on this earth and for whatever reason he was put here in the same horrible little town as me. He was a gazillion feet tall, all long, perfectly toned legs, his shoulders not too wide or too narrow and despite being way too tall for a sixteen year old he knew how to hold himself without looking awkward. He was like some kind of king of the punk kids, probably because his Mohawk was the tallest and always perfectly groomed. He must not have slept because he had to have spent so much time on his hair. It changed colors every week, and this week it was blue and green tipped on long bleach blonde spikes.
He was wearing red plaid pants that hugged every curve of his perfectly long legs, a torn up shirt with a hand painted anarchy sign on it, and whatever you call that big patch of fabric punk kids hang over their ass with the design of the Union Jack. His eyes were crystalline green and at the moment they were smiling brightly at Melissa while his hands fumbled with his pack of cigarettes. I knew that he liked her, he always followed her to the theater club and was the reason I never actually participated in any of the acting exercises, but rather just fumbled behind the curtains like Gollum or some kind of weird gay troll. Lucky for me Melissa only thought of him as a friend and not even a very good one.
At first I had thought she was just saying that to not hurt my feelings, because how could she not be absolutely in love with him, but after a while I realized there was someone else she was in love with. I still didn’t know who it was, but I knew she was harboring secret feelings for someone at our school because I read a page of her diary over her shoulder one day when she was writing in it instead of helping me study like she was supposed to. She used a code name for him in there, so no one would knew who it was, but she had some pretty heavy feelings for whoever “Beautiful” turned out to be.
“Hey Melissa. What’s…What are you doing?”
“Just having a smoke before class.”
“Yeah? Cool. Cool.”
Melissa kept shifting around to try to expose me, but I was quick enough to be able to remain hidden in the shadows behind her. The bell finally rang causing Clifton to look down sadly at his still unlit cigarette.
“Oh, well shit. Guess I better go then. See you later Melissa.”
“Bye Clifton”
I didn’t come out from behind her until he was at least 50 feet away.
“Way to miss your opportunity, E”
“Yeah, whatever. Hey, Mel, will you trade me classes this morning?”
“No.”
“Please? You know how much I hate this class and today I just cannot handle it. I will go crazy and stab everyone with a shiv I will make out of my binder, I just know I will.”
“Just go to class.”
I had English first period, and while normally I loved books and writing, we were studying The Great Gatsby and I had already gotten in trouble twice with my theory that everyone in the novel is homosexual. I really didn’t want to have to listen to my classmates struggle to understand such a dull book. After English I had physical education, which actually made English seem fun. There is nothing worse than being the tiny, awkward, effeminate kid in the locker room. I thought Wedgies would have stopped after we hit puberty, but in reality they only got more painful. Third period was chemistry, which wasn’t so bad, and fourth was stage design which was my saving grace.
I got to spend all of that class in my beloved theater, and at lunch I usually just stayed in the green room with the door propped waiting for Mel to come in after she had her afternoon cigarette. She usually brought the rest of our little group with her, after they had all gotten their lunch from the cafeteria. We were the main group of misfits at our school, hiding out in the green room of the theater. Mondays and Wednesdays after school we returned to the theater for drama club meetings where a few other kids from outside our circle would join us. Life got pretty monotonous and Drama club was my favorite escape.
…………………………………….
I had worked on my play all of Sunday night, causing me to forget about my chemistry homework. It was worth it though; my play just kept getting better and better. It was about a little boy who gets lost in a mall on Black Friday and in his attempt to find his mother, ends up finding himself instead. There was this great part about Santa and patriarchy and the kid’s desire to overthrow the government. I had plans for live reindeers on the set and a giant swastika made of holidays lights in red white and blue.
After school I was so excited to share with the Drama Club my progress on the play that I forgot that Clifton was going to be there. I was sitting with the other members in a circle on the stage when he walked in, fashionably late. The meeting had already started so I couldn’t just get up and run and hide. As he walked over to us Melissa scooted away from me, shoving everyone on the other side of her over, and making an open spot right next to me for Clifton. He looked at Mel and blushed before sitting down. His knee touched mine. I could smell whatever hair goo he used to keep his Mohawk up; it smelled like some kind of tropical fruit. I started shaking. How could Mel do this to me? Why was she always trying to embarrass me?
Melissa welcomed new members to the club (there weren’t any) and recapped what the club had been doing recently (some new breathing exercises and the contest for playwrights) before turning to me with an evil look in her eyes.
“Edward here has been working on a play for the contest, and I asked him to share some of it with us today. Edward?”
I was pretty sure I had stopped breathing; my hands shook as I clumsily opened my notebook and turned to the pages of my play. I held the book up to my face and mumbled from behind it, making sure not to look towards Clifton.
“Well, I am, uhm, w-writing a play. And it’s for the contest. And, uhm, yeah. Oh, uhm, it’s uh, it’s about a kid? And the government, uh, overthrowing the government. Well, not really. It’s about a kid and he gets lost? In the, uhm, mall, on Black Friday, and he has to f-find himself and he has to think about patriarchy and bringing down the man, I guess. It’s not very good.”
“Thank you Edward, I am sure it will be a great play, I can’t wait to read it.”
I hated Melissa in that moment. Her perky attitude was no cover for her clearly evil intentions of embarrassing me in front of the man of my dreams. She kept talking, encouraging the others to try to write something and emphasizing how much help she was going to need in judging the entries. While she was talking I was looking down, fuming at my own awkwardness. When a hand came into view above my knee I was surprised and when it touched me I jerked my head up to look at who it belonged to. My face was inches from Clifton Murphy’s. He leaned in and whispered in my ear, his breath warm and smelling like smoke.
“Hey, your play sounds good. I’d like to read what you have so far. Maybe we could talk about politics sometime?”
Before I could respond everyone was standing up and clearing the stage, getting ready to follow Mel in one of her acting exercises. I took the opportunity to run and hide behind the back curtain, in the shadows. I had to get away from Clifton. I couldn’t tell if he was mocking me and my awkwardness or if he was serious, and I couldn’t tell which one would be better. If he was mocking me I would be crushed, but if he was serious I might have to talk to him again, and I didn’t have the nerves for that. The exercise was an improv skit with three people on stage. Mel would shout out a setting and the actors would make up a scenario fitting of that scene. After they had established the situation, Mel would shout out a different setting and they would have to keep acting out the same plot, just in a totally different setting.
Clifton was grouped with two freshmen girls and their scene was about a mother and a father shopping for a puppy with their daughter. Clifton was the Dad and the taller of the two girls was the Mom. When the setting changed from a pet store to the zoo Clifton cleverly improvised an argument with the Mom about how getting a wolf for their daughter would teach her life skills. He had most of the club giggling and even Mel snorted a little at his reasoning. I didn’t go out on stage to do the exercise; I just remained lurking in the back like a pedophile in his windowless van watching little girls walking home from school.
Melissa and the group performed two more improv exercises before taking a break so she could find some scripts for the actors to read as a mock audition. While everyone milled around I snuck out and followed Mel into the prop room where there was a file cabinet full of loose copies of short scripts.
“You know I hate you so much right now.”
“I know you don’t mean that, E. You really love me because I help bring you out of your shell and because I made sure Clifton had a seat right next to you. You really want to hug me and tell me I am the best.”
“No I want to smother you with a pillow because you embarrassed me in front of all those people! How could you do that to me?”
“I was trying to do you a favor. In fact, I think I even saw Clifton whisper something in your ear. I got Clifton to talk to you, I say that means you owe me.”
“He didn’t just talk to me, he TOUCHED me. His hand was on my knee. I thought I was going to die. And I think he was mocking me.”
“Mocking you? He was mocking you with his hand on your knee?”
“He said my play sounded good and he wants to talk politics with me. I am pretty sure he was being sarcastic, though.”
Melissa’s eyes lit up in a way I did not like at all. She clutched the scripts she was holding closer to her body and made a “Squee” noise.
“Omg, I KNEW IT. I KNEW it would work! I am a genius!”
“What?”
Mel giggled and made for the door.
“Don’t keep hiding behind the curtains, come out and join us for the rest of the meeting,” she called to me as she ran toward the stage.
I waited a few seconds before sneaking back behind the stage. I didn’t know what Mel was going on about, but I wasn’t about to embarrass myself any more. When everyone came back in from the break, Clifton wasn’t among them. I probably should have gone out and joined them, but I decided not to just to spite Melissa. I folded my arms across my chest and leaned back. The space behind the curtain was small and musty, but there was a nook in front of the emergency exit door that was indented a ways and I could lurk in the pitch blackness and lean against the door frame.
One of the freshman girls was butchering a monologue from Shakespeare when the door behind me cracked open and someone slipped in. The other side of the door was in the shadow of the theater building and had an overhang that hid it pretty well from the sun, so you could open the door a ways without letting too much light in. I had snuck in and out through it on many occasions during plays and was the one who had taped over the lock in the door frame to keep it permanently unlocked. Because no light had been let in and we were in total darkness I had no idea who was now standing next to me. I moved forward a little to say something to the person, to let them know that this was the drama club and they were intruding when they moved in and put a hand over my mouth, pushing me back and pinning me against the wall.
“Shh, sorry, I stepped out for a smoke and didn’t want to come back in the middle of someone’s scene.”
Whether Clifton knew this door would be unlocked or whether he had guessed and gotten lucky I had no idea, I was too busy processing the realization that his whole body had mine pinned against the wall and that I could smell the cigarette still on his hand right under my nose. He should have let up at this point, and walked over to the other club members in the wings, but he remained pressed up against me, hand on my mouth, face next to my ear. Suddenly his hand started moving slowly, his fingers tracing my lips in the dark, moving to my jaw line and running up into my hair. He grabbed the back of my head in his one hand, the other against the wall next to me and for a second I thought he was going to hurt me. I tightened my body, ready for the punch or kick or whatever was coming, but instead I felt him bury his face in my neck and inhale.
“You smell really good, you know”
“Th-thank you?”
“I was hoping you were still back here. It was why I lingered so long outside. I kinda wanted an excuse to try this door and see if I could get you alone.”
“What?”
“I know you hang out back here during meetings. You stand alone in the dark and avoid everyone.”
“Uh-huh”
I had forgotten how to speak in my surprise. I couldn’t figure out what Clifton was talking about or why he was touching me. Did he think I was someone else?
“I wanted to talk to you Edward. I like you.”
He was mocking me. He knew about my crush on him and he was teasing me, trying to hurt me and embarrass me. But then why was he doing it alone, in the dark? And why was he so very close to me? He could have done it in public, in front of the whole group, he could have made a big deal of it, but he wasn’t. He was alone with me in the darkest back corner of the theater, whispering in my ear and his hand was moving down the back of my neck, around my shoulder and down my chest. This was so much for me to process, I barely noticed as his hand slid down my chest.
He started to get closer to my belt and I started to panic. Apart from some awkward fondling in the dark at summer camp when I was 13 with one of the other campers, I had never been with anyone before, sexually. Sure, I had lusted after Clifton for the past 2 years, but I never thought it would actually be happening. I wasn’t even sure what was supposed to happen. I have read a lot about sex, but it’s different when it’s actually happening to you, and it was happening to me without any warning. I tried to squirm away, duck out and run, but he just pushed his body harder against mine, pinning me there. His face got closer and closer and my pulse was racing as he jammed his mouth against mine. I had imagined our first kiss to be soft, one where we both leaned in in the moonlight, sighing as our lips finally met, but this was nothing like this. My lips pressed against my braces so hard they cut into them, and I could feel his tongue working to try to pry my mouth open.
He took his one hand off the wall, supporting himself by pressing his body against me, and wrapped it around my jaw, forcing my mouth open. His kneecaps were jabbing into my thighs, holding him up against me, and his weight was crushing on my chest. The only part we didn’t meet was at the crotch, but his hand fumbling with my belt was trying to remedy this. I couldn’t breathe and I was bruising from his bony frame, so I tried to cry out but his tongue was in my mouth, moving around like a drunken stagger. I wasn’t sure if he was trying to choke me with it or of he was just hungry and looking for traces of lunch between my teeth. His mouth tasted like cigarette smoke and his tongue was warm in an unwelcome way, like an oven in the summer. It felt like there was a fat worm moving around in my mouth and it made me want to spit.
The hand that was working on my belt managed to get it unbuckled, and he tugged my pants down just below my genitals. My boxers only came down with half of the pants, so they were positioned diagonally across my hips, the elastic band digging into my butt cheeks as he pulled them hard from the front, fingernails digging at my skin. His other hand was still holding my face still and my mouth open, and I was scared to move because I thought he might break my jaw. I was terrified, and a little disgusted, but for whatever reason, I still had a hard on. I remember reading once that sometimes people react wrong to situations of great trauma, and find themselves sexually aroused when they are scared or upset. Sometimes it’s even used for defense in a rape case, if a girl seems excited when she is being violated. It’s not really her, it’s her body producing a reaction, any reaction, to a situation it cannot process or understand. The mind desperately trying to save itself by getting the body to do something other than just stand there.
Clifton’s hand started fondling me, rubbing along the shaft of my dick as I really started to panic. The craziest thoughts went through my mind like how clean his hand was, how often had he done this because it felt like his first time, and what monologue was the person on stage doing right now? As a 16 year old boy I had spent a lot of time getting to know my body and what it liked. I assumed every boy had, and we all knew what was good and what was bad, but Clifton apparently never thought about it. His skin was dry and it scratched against me, he rubbed way too hard, and with no rhythm at all, but despite all this, there was still a part of my mind that kept repeating “This is Clifton, this is Clifton doing this to you, what you have always wanted,” and I found myself getting more aroused. I wondered if this meant I was into hardcore sex stuff now, some kind of kinky freak. But though I had wanted this, I had never really wanted it in this way. His tongue kept moving around, and now he was grinding his hips into me, bones poking at my kidneys and bladder. His pelvis seemed to have a rhythm, though his hand didn’t match it. Tears were starting fall out of my eyes because I couldn’t breathe right and my whole body hurt and I was in the dark, in a corner with someone so forcefully on top of me I thought I would never get out.
The rest of the drama club was only feet away, out in front of the curtain, reading lines like nothing else was happening in that theater, while behind them Clifton and I were doing something terrible. I thought about moaning to alert them, maybe get some help, but I knew I was better off if no one knew. Clifton could turn this into something against me, like I was raping him, and as the school’s token gay kid I would get punished as an example. No one would believe I didn’t want this, even Mel would side with Clifton, because I had been after him for so long. Crying rape wasn’t something I could do. I had to just stand here, and suck in small breaths while the object of my affection ground against me like an olive press, with my pants around my knees in the dark.
Finally Clifton tensed up and shuddered against me, apparently reaching his point of orgasm. How he got there from chafing me up and trying to gag me with his tongue, I don’t know, but I guess I really wasn’t the kinky freak, he was. He stepped back away from me all of a sudden, breathing heavy in the dark. We stayed there for what felt like minutes, probably a foot apart in the dark, both of us gasping for breath, just staring across the blackness at what we could make out of each other’s faces. I searched his eyes, or where I thought his eyes would have been for any sign of emotion, or regret. I hoped he couldn’t see the tear streaks down my face. I felt like he should have at least kissed me again, softer this time, or hugged me or even just a “thanks”, but instead he grabbed the door handle behind him and slipped back out, letting as little light in as possible. I waited a few seconds before pulling up my pants and cracking the door again to look out, but he was gone. I peeled the tape off of the lock in the doorframe and shut it again.
Wednesday, November 3, 2010
Thursday, October 28, 2010
Again?
BLOGGING AGAIN.
Here's something I wrote that everyone on facebook thought was funny:
This summer I craigslisted myself. I said I was a nerd girl in the Ojai area looking for new friends, possibly more if there was chemistry. I just wanted someone near my age to chill with and have fun. I knew this was dangerous. I knew this was possibly also disastrous. I knew that craigslist is home to some of the WORST of the WORST of humanity. Still, I figured with some weeding I might make at least ONE friend. And, I think I might have made 2 or even 3 whole friends out of the probably 50 people who responded to my advert. A victory I think. Still, it came to my attention that some people, mostly all men, need to know a few things about how to approach a girl and chat her up appropriately on the internet, so here is a brief guide.
1. Read the original advert. If you still want to know more about her, go ahead and ask, but please, read this too. DO NOT JUST SKIM IT. If she writes "I like to read books, but I don't really watch a lot of movies, so I am not a big movie buff" and all you pick up are the words "book", "movie" and "big buff" try not to hold a conversation based on this. (So, don't ask her why she can't read or anything about her ''large muff'')
2. Lots of people seem to have the exact same interests, and normally this is good. However if your only interests are "camping, hiking, being outdoors, watching movies, and my truck", chances are you are a d-bag.
3. If you do actually like hiking and so does she, NEVER ask to meet her in the woods for a "night hike". It may seem romantic to you, but to her it says you want to rape her in the woods, cut her up with your camping knife, and hide parts of her inside squirrels around the forest before sunrise.
4. DO NOT TELL HER ABOUT YOUR PICA. Even if you don't mention it by name, saying that you eat toilet paper, your own boogers, your last girlfriend's panties, the crust off of other people's sandwiches, pieces of lint, crayons, lizards, or even pennies is not going to be endearing.
5. If she plays World of Warcraft she won't be impressed by your main's stats. She doesn't care, she just likes playing some video game and not listening to you rant about your level 80 for an hour.
6. Wash your dirty feet. (And the rest of you while you are at it.) Bragging about not bathing is not really bragging.
7. If you send her 12 emails in one day that get progressively angrier because she has not responded, you should probably go away forever. SHE IS BUSY, SHUT UP.
8. Don't ask if her friend's are hot and if you can meet them, and if you do, make sure you aren't following them around drooling all night.
9. No, I do not want to see your pool/ motor cycle/ office/ blueprints/ bottle of tequila/ box of twinkies/ hand on your dick. I want to see pictures of your face to make sure you are not a horribly ugly person so I don't waste my time talking to you.
10. "I practice sorcery" is not a pick up line.
11. "I am 40 and still live with my mom, I think you would like her, here let me send you a picture of her" is also not a pick up line
12. "I have been humping my mattress a lot" is ALSO ALSO not a pick up line.
13. OH GOD YOU FOUND OUT WHERE I LIVE HOW DID YOU FIND OUT WHERE I LIVE? (never admit to stalking, or watching her sleep. It only worked for Edward Cullen because he is fictional.)
14. Try to converse in her native language. Not lolcat or crazy.
15. If you ever say to a girl "Well you aren't exactly hot or anything, but you are kinda cute" I will cut off your junk with a knife.
16."i liek ur BrAcEs, lol" is ALSO ALSO ALSO not a pick up line.
Here's something I wrote that everyone on facebook thought was funny:
This summer I craigslisted myself. I said I was a nerd girl in the Ojai area looking for new friends, possibly more if there was chemistry. I just wanted someone near my age to chill with and have fun. I knew this was dangerous. I knew this was possibly also disastrous. I knew that craigslist is home to some of the WORST of the WORST of humanity. Still, I figured with some weeding I might make at least ONE friend. And, I think I might have made 2 or even 3 whole friends out of the probably 50 people who responded to my advert. A victory I think. Still, it came to my attention that some people, mostly all men, need to know a few things about how to approach a girl and chat her up appropriately on the internet, so here is a brief guide.
1. Read the original advert. If you still want to know more about her, go ahead and ask, but please, read this too. DO NOT JUST SKIM IT. If she writes "I like to read books, but I don't really watch a lot of movies, so I am not a big movie buff" and all you pick up are the words "book", "movie" and "big buff" try not to hold a conversation based on this. (So, don't ask her why she can't read or anything about her ''large muff'')
2. Lots of people seem to have the exact same interests, and normally this is good. However if your only interests are "camping, hiking, being outdoors, watching movies, and my truck", chances are you are a d-bag.
3. If you do actually like hiking and so does she, NEVER ask to meet her in the woods for a "night hike". It may seem romantic to you, but to her it says you want to rape her in the woods, cut her up with your camping knife, and hide parts of her inside squirrels around the forest before sunrise.
4. DO NOT TELL HER ABOUT YOUR PICA. Even if you don't mention it by name, saying that you eat toilet paper, your own boogers, your last girlfriend's panties, the crust off of other people's sandwiches, pieces of lint, crayons, lizards, or even pennies is not going to be endearing.
5. If she plays World of Warcraft she won't be impressed by your main's stats. She doesn't care, she just likes playing some video game and not listening to you rant about your level 80 for an hour.
6. Wash your dirty feet. (And the rest of you while you are at it.) Bragging about not bathing is not really bragging.
7. If you send her 12 emails in one day that get progressively angrier because she has not responded, you should probably go away forever. SHE IS BUSY, SHUT UP.
8. Don't ask if her friend's are hot and if you can meet them, and if you do, make sure you aren't following them around drooling all night.
9. No, I do not want to see your pool/ motor cycle/ office/ blueprints/ bottle of tequila/ box of twinkies/ hand on your dick. I want to see pictures of your face to make sure you are not a horribly ugly person so I don't waste my time talking to you.
10. "I practice sorcery" is not a pick up line.
11. "I am 40 and still live with my mom, I think you would like her, here let me send you a picture of her" is also not a pick up line
12. "I have been humping my mattress a lot" is ALSO ALSO not a pick up line.
13. OH GOD YOU FOUND OUT WHERE I LIVE HOW DID YOU FIND OUT WHERE I LIVE? (never admit to stalking, or watching her sleep. It only worked for Edward Cullen because he is fictional.)
14. Try to converse in her native language. Not lolcat or crazy.
15. If you ever say to a girl "Well you aren't exactly hot or anything, but you are kinda cute" I will cut off your junk with a knife.
16."i liek ur BrAcEs, lol" is ALSO ALSO ALSO not a pick up line.
Wednesday, June 30, 2010
New poem
I’ll be your little red riding if you’ll be my big bad wolf,
and I’ll bring you flowers and sunshine if you‘ll put up with my ruse.
We can live in the forest together in Gran’s old cottage abode
and when the woodsman comes to chop you up
we’ll put him in her nightgown and shoes.
He can’t be the hero in my story,
but maybe neither can you,
so I’m left alone without basket or home
and nothing to see but red ghosts.
and I’ll bring you flowers and sunshine if you‘ll put up with my ruse.
We can live in the forest together in Gran’s old cottage abode
and when the woodsman comes to chop you up
we’ll put him in her nightgown and shoes.
He can’t be the hero in my story,
but maybe neither can you,
so I’m left alone without basket or home
and nothing to see but red ghosts.
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