end days: jake johnson

[secondhand_stars]

I'll go back, if you ask me
I'll go back, if you ask
I'll go back, if you ask me
I'll go back, back, backwards
- Bloc Party, Little Thoughts


It was nineteen ninety-nine. The millennium was approaching. There was this insane, paranoid feeling around town. People were all about Y-2K and the possible second coming of Christ. Looking back, it seems really dumb and extremist. No one talks about those end days anymore because they feel the same, I'm sure. I believed it though. I felt something coming and knew it couldn't be good. I wasn't sure if it was going to be scaly green aliens touching down in the cornfields or some magnificent Jesus all aglow with holy presence and infinite... Whatever. For a minute there, I felt like my dad. Everyone in Jackson seemed on the verge. It was a nice sort-of rush. Nobody had been this nervous since the Russians launched Sputnik.

God, looking back life seemed so different. I can't even place myself there anymore. Here's the quick run-down for those listening in at home. My name is Jacob Johnson. I'm twenty-three, but in nineteen ninety-nine, I was seventeen. I was born and raised in Jackson, Kansas. I know, how Wizard of Oz of me. Unlike Dorothy, these ruby slippers ain't about to be clicking any time soon. My upbringing was the stuff of Norman Rockwell paintings with a schoolteacher Mama named Susie and Methodist minister father named Jacob Johnson, Jr. Too many J's, I think. It makes me fucking dizzy just to write it all out. So right, I'm the oldest of four kids: Myself, Julie, Jason, Jonas, and Jenny. Feel free to wretch at any moment. God knows I want to. Right, so fast forward through my first steps, the loss of my front teeth, the subsequent set of braces that turned crooked adult teeth straight (ha), a shelf full of football and basketball trophies, and straight through all high school textbooks full of geometry and chemistry to my senior year of high school. It's three months from my eighteenth birthday and two weeks from my one year anniversary with Leah. Yes, Leah.

Why the surprise? Is it because it's a break from the Jackson, Kansas J-circle? No, no. That's secondary. Right. It's because she's female. Yes. Once upon a time, your brave young protagonist had a lovely girlfriend named Leah. She's still lovely, but ah, I'm getting ahead of myself --

So, I digress. The millennium is approaching and people are stockpiling canned goods and bottled water in their storm cellars. Blue-haired grandmas are furtively checking their horoscopes as a warbling southern gospel rendition of The Old Rugged Cross plays on the radio in the beauty parlor owned by my aunt Jane. Kids are handing out nice little cartoon tracts preaching about the evils of atheism, communism and homosexuality. A winning combination, let me tell you.

Meanwhile, across town, Leah and I are helping her parents load the trunk of the family four-door with suitcases and hastily thrown together hanger-bags. Her great-aunt Sarah living in Wichita has died and everyone's driving up for the funeral. As I'm helping Mr. Wheeler check the air pressure in the tires, Mrs. Wheeler is laying down the ground rules of Leah's first taste of independence. No parties. No staying up late. No boys over, including myself. She agrees obediently with hands folded over her hips and head bobbling sweetly. I've come to discover this is the pose that she makes every time she's letting all information go straight through one ear and out the other. The bitch. I love it. Mr. Wheeler pats my shoulder and calls me son in a tone that my father's never used. I feel all warm inside as the car drives off Oak St. and onto Sycamore Avenue. Soon, it's gone and Leah's grabbing my hand. She tugs and pulls me inside.

Before you get any ideas, let me tell you right now -- I'm a nice boy. Or at least, I was when I was seventeen and as virginal as the little haloed angel choir fashioned from bits of colored glass in one of the windows of my dad's church. Lots of seventeen year old boys would have seized this opportunity, but not me. Something was definitely lacking. I felt bad for it really. I really love Leah, you see. She's a great person. The best sort-of friend, and maybe that's the first strike that came down against us.

So, she's tugging at my belt and pushing me down onto the couch. As she crawls over me, I glance into the kitchen and lo and behold, there's a picture of Jesus Christ in tasteful browns and golds, save for the blue of his Anglo-Saxon eyes. He smiles this god awful charming smile and everything inside me fails.

"Stop looking at the Jesus," Leah grumbles against my neck before popping up and puckering her mouth up into a bow. "And kiss me, goddamnit."

"Leah!" I gasp, shocked at the curse. Goddamnit is one word that was rarely heard in Jackson and if it was, it was quickly shot down with a preachy lecture over the serious nature of asking God to damn anything. You know with words like thrown around, I sure as hell kissed her.

Long and uneventful story short, that fall day in nineteen ninety-nine as the space ships were circling the green and blue of the earth and angels began to polish up their trumpets, I had my first and last sexual encounter with a woman who was hardly a woman at all then.

After it was all over, we silently redressed and didn't speak. Instead, after tugging on shirts and skirts and pants, we tumbled down onto the gray carpet of the living room and away from the sweaty-heat of the couch. Side-by-side, but not touching, two sets of eyes stared for a long moment at the ceiling and recounted the events. Everything had been done to order, but yet...

"Jake?"

"Yeah, Leah?"

She rolled up onto the crook of her elbow and settled eyes down upon my profile. Dark brown smoothed over the flat of my forehead and flicked up where my nose turns up slightly. She reached over to tap down upon that point in a now-familiar gesture of affection. "I think I'm a lesbian."

"A, what!" It's my turn to sit up and rather than remain in something lazy and lounged like Leah, I bolt up straight spined and gaping. I stare, openly.

"What?"

"But -- How?!"

She blinked helplessly and folded upright herself. Hands smoothed primly over the crooked triangles that legs made and shoulders bobbled in a little shrug. "I -- How am I supposed to answer that? There isn't like, a set formula. I just, don't -- like you like that. And do you remember Brittany from summer camp last year?"

"Yeah? What about her?" I struggled to put it all together. Inside my mind, it was all just a jumble of details and some curious pang of betrayal that I had expected to be much more dramatic. Brittany from summer camp filtered in from my memory in a rush of red hair and mad-cackling laughter. She was a witchy creature who loved to make fun of me. What a bitch. Leah and I had, had our worst fight ever about her.

"Well, I like her like that."

"You didn't!" I shrieked in that shameful way that my father hates. Hands smacked over my mouth to keep it from dropping to the floor altogether just like in the cartoons. Leah smirked in a terrible way. Shameless. Completely and utterly. She made me hate how small and secretive I felt all of the sudden. "You-- You-- You hussy!" I finally spat out, much to her delight. She still laughs about this moment.

I swore I'd always remember the date, but since then it's faded ounce by ounce. Now all I know is that on a fall day just before the end of the world when Elvis was dying his hair back to its jet black in Argentina and a woman was birthing a baby that was half-human, half-alien, then during the apocalypse, the straight line of my life hiccuped and veered off the path. While everything was preparing for the end, I was full-steam ahead barreling towards the great unknown. Then, it didn't seem like it at all, but now stands a dramatic marker in the retrospective distance and all I can say is, Wow!

Well fuck me, I've become a Kerouac novel.

I pictured myself in a Denver bar later that night, with all the gang,
and in their eyes I would be strange and ragged like the Prophet
who has walked across the land to bring the dark Word, and the
only word I had was 'Wow!'
- Jack Kerouac, On the Road

[secondhand_stars]

7:04 a.m.


"Oh god. Oh fuck. I am so late."


Perched in a lazy lean over the counter with her cereal bowl before her, Leah ate leisurely. In one hand, a sagging newspaper was held up and the daily news was scanned over. It always was a curiosity to her how something a day behind could be considered the day's news. Jake was a phantom to her: little more than a door-slam and flutter behind inky newsprint. Yawning, the paper was shoved away as another messy mouthful of soggy cereal was spooned in. Chewing as the inside of her wrist smeared back a milk trail, she lifted up and padded towards the open space of his doorway.

Inside the bedroom, Jake stumbled out of yesterday's smoke-filled clothes. Shrugging out of his dress shirt, fingers clawed at his belt and the latches of trousers. "Hi, hi. How are you, sweetheart? Help me get dressed. I'm going to miss my bus if I'm not dressed in ten minutes. Ten! Okay. Wait --"

Coming to a dead stop, he peered around his room helplessly. It was a simply outfitted space: bed, dresser, desk and lamp. His bed was unmade though he hadn't slept in it. Leah reached out to drag the dark blue of his down comforter up over sheets matching in monochrome. Amusedly, she shook her head at him.

"What?" He asked, catching that look.

"Where have you been?"

"Out. Dancing. A lot. Oh fucker, I need a shower. Pick me out something to wear and I'll be out in -- Oh, three minutes."

"You can't even get the water warm in three minutes!" She called out to him as he launched back into his frantically paced movement and bolted towards the bathroom that connected their two closet-like bedroom.

"So?" He wailed mournfully.


Three minutes later, exactly, the door to the bathroom was shoved open and Jake shuffled out dripping and miserable. As requested, a new set of clothes were laid out upon the foot of his bed in simple, fool-proof combination. "Thanks," he mumbled as hands lifted off the towel knotted around his waist and reached out for the soft white cotton of an undershirt. Material was tugged on and smoothed out over ribs. "How much time do I have left?"

"Five minutes."

"Oh god," he sighed as fingers gestured for Leah to turn around.

She obliged with a wide roll of her eyes and sigh. Staring down the crumbling brick facade of the wall before shifting eyes over to the window cut from the red clay, Leah watched a cluster of school children led by a lanky teenaged ring leader pass by en route to the public school down the block."So, did you go home with him?"

"With who?!" He gasped. The sound was punctuated by a snap of elastic against sharp hips before jeans were tugged one a leg at a time. He took his time dressing now. Belt was lifted and shoved through the loops of his pants. "What sort of person do you think I am? I don't go home with people! That's so -- sleazy and cheap. God, no. I danced. I met people. I had a good time. It wouldn't hurt you to do the same. Come out with me sometimes?"

"To your little clubs? Oh please. No way. Not my scene."

"Snob," he sighed as arms looped through the thin knit of a sweater. The material was dragged over head and down. Fingers reached up to haphazardly comb and smooth hair out of its knotted tangles.

"So, who did you dance with until fucking seven in the morning?"

Blue eyes widened into something childish and soft. Rather than gasp out again, his mouth twisted up as feet stalked towards his dresser. From one drawer, a balled up pair of socks were pulled out and unravelled. "Don't laugh," he warned quietly.

"Me? Never!" She shot back sarcastically.

"I danced with -- a man."

"No way," Leah murmured in a dragging inhale.

"Yes. He was very straight and very drunk."

"And you ravaged him!"

"Please," Jake laughed as feet shoved themselves into shoes.

"So, how does a straight guy kiss?"

"Like a big brute."

[secondhand_stars]

He really has to be one of the most fucked-up and complicated people I've ever met. When we're sitting at the bar or pressed close on some anonymous dance floor and everything falls into that hazy, middle-place where the future is so clear, I don't see what becomes of us hours after last call and closing-time walk homes. I don't see dinners at small tables for two and movie theatre make-out sessions like we're fifteen and still pumping out high octane sexual frustration and testosterone. I see fights -- godawful fights that include the worst sort of insults and fists. I can already feel the shape of his knuckles or palm against my cheek or ribs. I'll call him a repressed asshole and he'll call me a whore. It'll be the stuff of the movies projected on the screens in watercolor stains over the teenagers making out on the back rows of your local cinema house.

The reasonable, responsible side of me says get out now. I should get up, get dressed, and leave. If I do it now, I'll be able to catch the five-fifteen to Brooklyn. He'll understand at this point in time. Sure, he'll probably beat himself up and I'll invoke the unholy wrath of his friend Liv, but this is the safest route. Okay, it's decided. I'm hitting the exit sign running. There's no need for drag out, if not slightly abusive fights. There's no way I can justify any of that. It's good-bye for me. Adios, thanks for the good time and poptarts.

And then I turn around to actually look at him and all that resolve melts away. He's not a villian. He's not a bastard. He's a little boy lost. The way he grips his pillow and the way that his mouth is gaping open in a slightly grotesque way is proof of it. Oh god, I'm fucked. I'm screwed. This is why you don't spend the night, but if you feel compelled to spend the night or run yourself to exhaustion, you most certainly dress and refuse all offers of breakfast or coffee. You don't laze around in a stranger's bed the way I've taken to doing here. So, perhaps I'm asking for an ass kicking. He's already done plenty else to it.

...Oh, it's too early for jokes. Maybe if I crawl beneath the sheets and wait it out until it's light outside and everything's alive again, my outlook will be brighter. Maybe.

[secondhand_stars]

10:30 a.

It began with something as innocuous as a note slipped between the door. Upon the folded sheet of college-ruled paper, four words had been spelled out across the middle in neat, uppercase: We need to talk. Jake stared at the scored ink marks for a long moment, but didn't bother to chase the feet that were now quietly padding back down the hall. Behind him, a tired voice grumbled out in inquiry. He laughed it all off with a rumble of sound much too early for the morning and stumbled back to the bed. The note was shoved beneath frame as hands dove into covers and began to pull and tug upon its remaining occupant.

"It's nothing," he reassured against the nape of a pale neck. "She probably wants me to pick up some milk or eggs. Get up. It's ten-thirty. You promised me breakfast. Pancakes, eggs, bacon, toast, coffee, juice --"


10:50 a.

"Jake --"

Leah called as the door swung open to his bedroom. Spine bowing in at the shoulders and head canting to peek past the row of shelves, two eyes squinted in on the pair that stumbled out with their damp hair and feet still sleep heavy. In a moment, she didn't know whether she felt more like a mother or the jilted bride. A ripple of jealousy washed over her as her roommate glanced over with a hooded expression and arms wrapping crookedly around the narrow waist of the drummer.

"We're going to breakfast," he stated, but didn't invite. It was the most subtle of difference between his usual invitation-declaration and this. There was no roll of latter syllables into something questioning. He didn't bound in with Leah's jacket held by the collar. Instead, Jake wriggled the abandoned tumble of sneakers back onto feet and tugged fraying jean hems from heels. His eyes were set upon the other boy, wide and ridiculous.

She snorted quietly into her coffee mug, a sip of the bitter liquid inside taken and swished over tongue until everything inside her had the same quality. Overbrewed, brown.

"We'll talk later," he promised as the door was slanted open for Lincoln. Head was tossed back in something familiar and light now. She shook her head, resolve crumbling, as his mouth puckered and index finger pressed down upon its center before turning out to her. Hush. I adore you.

Leah's concerns, at heart, weren't about herself or position in their quiet little universe. Instead, they expanded out to the alien and volatile that seemed to be breeching some previously unknown wall. She nodded towards Lincoln as he gave her an awkward blink on his way out.


12:02 p.

Jake returned, flushed and bright-eyed. With insides content and full, he had forgotten all about the note shoved beneath his door and what possibilities it could have contained. Peeling off the shell of his light coat and hanging it upon one of the knobs bolted to the entryway wall, he stepped quietly out of shoes and padded back into the living room.

Upon the couch, now showered and dressed, Leah sat with her legs folded into and chin buried into collar. She studied the contents of the book spread out in her hands intensely. Light from the window behind haloed her dark hair in bright licks of pale and gave her a saintly look. The cigarette pinched between fingers negated that look.

"Hello gorgeous," he drawled in something overdone and nasal. Body collapsed into the chair across from the couch with legs spilling out over an arm and head pressed into its curved back.

"Where's Lincoln?"

"Work. His shift started at noon."

In the back of her throat an ambiguous noise rumbled. The book in her hands was shut together, palms pressed between walls and holding all the pages in, and then discarded amongst the miscellaneous clutter of the coffee-table. She picked up a coil fashioned from a silver gum-wrapper and contemplated it for a moment. "So --" Words came slowly, but that did little to reassure him. "How long have you been seeing him?"

"Oh god. I don't know." Fingers counted backwards and mind raced to do the math. He stared up at the ceiling. It was that upwards look that he'd blame the sprawling mess of his mouth on. "A little over a month, I guess?"

"A record," she chirped.

"Watch it," he countered with a downward slant of one eye. Then, unfolding from his stretched out pose, he swung legs around and planted feet into flooring. Hands smoothed down the demin cover of knees as he leaned in curiously. "If you have something to say, Leah, you should just say it."

"You guys fought again last night."

"So? What's that have to do with anything?"

"Is he ever -- Rough with you?"

Jake burst into laughter at that, a hand clapping over the shocked shape of his mouth and palm working to contain the gasp of sound. He straightened up then, body turning upright and shoulders falling back. His head shook behind the gag of his hand for a moment before dropping away. "Yes Leah, he's rough with me and it's fabulous. He does this thing with his teeth --"

"I'm being serious."

"Well stop it. I hate this shit. You know I hate this -- this, fucking intervention nonsense. There's nothing to fix or make light of that I don't already know about. I'm not like, barreling past all these warning signs that you can magically see while I remain hopelessly blind."

"Jake," she sighed as fingers lifted to rotate against the new throb at her temples. Eyes squinted into narrow slivers and ticked with his pace. "He's not --"

"Not what? Not you? Not Jesus Christ hanging on your kitchen wall? What? Look, Lincoln and I fight sometimes. We get into incredibly ridiculous arguments where the same stuff is said over and over. I don't even think we fight for reasons so much as so that we can rehash old catchphrases. The fighting isn't the important part though. We always get over it. Since you heard us fighting, you must have heard us fucking too."

Her expression crumbled into a tell-tale look of disgust. Of course, she had heard. The apartment was composed of paper-thin walls and flimsy doorways. If one listened close enough, they could hear all the different chores that were now carried out. To the left, Senora Morales was ironing her husband's workshirts. Alongside the thud of his heart, now rushed with adrenaline and strange defense, he could hear the hiss of starch being sprayed from an aerosol can and the crackling press of the iron. To the right, there were the sounds of lunchtime as two children, eighteen months and four, clattered forks against plastic plates. Nothing escaped.

Both Leah and Jake were silent now. She picked at the fraying gash of fabric at her knee. Index finger twirled the loose threads around its first knuckle until tip turned an angry red. Jake watched this quiet action, arms loosening from their fold across his chest. After a moment, he spoke again with shrugging shoulders. "He's trying, Leah."

"There's something really off about him. I can't put my finger on it, but -- He's just so hostile and the way he talks to you when he's upset..."

"But, he's trying," Jake insisted with a sigh.

Two eyes, a dulled over turquoise now, lifted to blink and center upon her friend. She swiped at the hair that was cut into jagged pieces across her brows and pitched in her own, matching exhale. Bowing in, ashes were tapped off the end of her cigarette into the ashtray perched upon the edge of the coffee-table. The tip of the cigarette, newly glowing and orange, was used to punctuate her words before she took a sharp drag of it. "But trying isn't enough sometimes."

[secondhand_stars]

Breaks in time where everywhere. It was as innocent as the simple processes involved in the opening of a heavy bottle of bleach or the shake-and-rattle of a washer as it fell off balance. The laundromat was Jake's own personal time machine. Whether it was the feel of terry cloth as towels were folded and placed within the netted hold of his laundry bag or the way that the dryers turned the room humid and mildly uncomfortable against his skin, he always felt himself going back.

He could blink and once more he was eighteen and holed up in the laundry room of his school's gymnasium. The walls of dryers were now blocks of cement pasted over with faded and moisture-curled posters from Sports Illustrated. There, forever immortalized, football players were always reaching for their pigskin ball and soccer stars were in middribble. Gifted with foresight, he could only cringe in memory of how everything was so silent and uncomfortable as the unforgiving press of concrete stamped purple bruises into knee caps or how fingers gnarled through the back of his hair and pressed him deeper into the metal toothed zipper-vee of denims. His throat closed in and choked as a phantom vice set in. It was all a memory, the past stamped out and negated by wedding and birth announcements. Right?

The salty trace taste in his mouth remained years after hushed resolutions and childish rationalizations. And why? He wondered with the swipe of the back of his wrist against bottom lip. All because of a bottle of bleach left open upon a rattling washer or the sour smell of the clothes left inside it for too long. Jake realized quickly that what was carried on behind closed doors or against the rippled press of a gymnasium's aluminum siding or in sporty Mustangs parked in heavily wooded and unpatrolled areas wasn't the mutual discovery of bodies and preferences. It was something much deeper. Sometimes when people go about in the business of losing their heart and soul in someone else, they just end up losing their gag reflex with a lot of someone elses.

Three hours and four loads of laundry later, he surfaced from the stifling shell of the laundromat with a haul much heavier than the set of canvas bags slung over shoulders. Though expected by now, it was nonetheless a curiosity. He squinted up into the building crowded sky and watched the speck of an airplane creep across a blue backdrop. He watched this slow progression as pedestrian traffic wove in streams around him before melding back together into a sea of bobbling shoulders and anonymity. Nothing was quite real for some time after. Instead, he sighed and made his way back to a tiny apartment tucked into the heart of all the noise.

There, upon returning, Leah looked up from the easel that now took up a greater part of their living room. With her paintbrush poised still above the canvas in midstroke and a streak of brilliant green upon the underside of her jaw (presumably from the smear that had dried over upon the flat of her wrist) she stared at him for a long, dulled over moment. "You've really got to start paying someone to do your laundry, Jake," she announced.

"Like you?" He shot back as the two bags were dragged in and over the slick surface of floorboards. Coming out of the haze now that the smell of bleach had burned from his nose, the man was now able to grin crookedly and carry on.

"Maybe. What kind of benefits do you offer?" She countered with a cheeky wink. This was a good sign, a brightening. Briefly escaping from beneath her own perpetual dark cloud -- See, people weren't so very different from one another when one really took to the time to notice -- Leah was free to snicker and return to her work in progress.

[secondhand_stars]

Part One

Full Name: Jacob Carter Johnson III.
Goes by: Jake.
Current location: Brooklyn, New York.
Occupation: Waiter, Nursing student at City College, sometimes dancer.

Current age: Twenty-two.
Date of birth: December 31st.
Birthplace: St. Paul Methodist Hospital.
Name(s) and occupation(s) of parent(s):
Susan Carter Johnson - Algebra teacher.
Jacob Johnson Jr. - Minister.

Name(s), age(s), and occupation(s) of sibling(s):
Julie - 18 - student.
Jason - 15 - student.
Jenny - 11 - student.
Jonas - 8 - student.

Height: 6'2
Weight: 180.
Hair color: Blonde.
Eye color: Blue.
Left-, right-handed, or ambidextrous: Left.

Heritage/Nationality: A melting pot.
Religion: Undecided.
Education: High school diploma from Roosevelt High School.
Marital status: Unmarried.
Children: You might be selling, but I'm not buying.

Part Two

Likes: watered-down late-to-mid seventies/early eighties disco (preferably foreign. ie. ABBA!); dancing; Nick-At-Nite classic television reruns; breakfasts; good mornings; visiting Lamden's at random; The Wizard of Oz; school (believe it or not); glossy lifestyle magazines reeking of thinly veiled homoeroticism; The Reverend Al Green; the lifestyles thereof that I will never, ever be able to sustain; sex; designer clothes; witty t-shirt screenprints; Jean-Michel Basquiat; foam parties; Rex Manning; late night videos on MTV/VH1
Dislikes: Screamy, commercialized girlpunk music; reality television for all its godawful qualities much on the same level as crack-cocaine addiction; early mornings; split shifts; spaghetti sauce stains on white shirts; fighting; bleach.

Part Three: Do you...

Smoke: Rarely nowadays. If so, Marlboro Lights or cloves. I'm such a woman sometimes. It's sickening really.
Cuss: I try not to in certain company.
Sing well: I can carry a tune, sure.
Sing in the shower: It makes the neighbours go insane. Of course!
Talk to yourself: I'll admit it. Sure.
Believe in yourself: How very Reading Rainbowesque.
Play an instrument: A few songs on the piano, but nothing special.
Want to go to college?: I am! One more semester.
Want to get married?: I haven't really thought of it.
Want to have children?: Again, not really an issue at the moment.
Think you're a health freak?: An inconsistent one at best.
Get along with your parents?: I don't really see them much.
Get along with your siblings?: I did when I lived closer.

Part Four: Current...

Mood: Inflated, elated, whatever.
Music: Alone in Kyoto - Air.
Taste: Toothpaste.
Make-up: Oh, you! Only on the weekends.
Hair-style: Too long and again, in my eyes.
Annoyance: None, at the moment.
Smell: Laundry and acrylic paint.
Book you're reading: Just a leftover medical ethics handbook.
CD in CD Player: Walkie, Talkie - Air.
DVD in player: Lesbian biker dyke porn. OH GOD. So kidding. Knowing us, it's probably like, Easter Parade or Singin' in the Rain. What a clash! Astaire versus Kelly, but I digress --
Refreshment: Water.
Worry: Next question.

Part Five: Favorites:

Food: Breakfast pancakes.
Drink: Caramel macchiatos.
Color: Blue.
Album: ABBA, The Best of..
Shoes: Black converse low-tops.
Candy: Those Take Five bars are insane.
Animal: The beast more commonly known as your standard homo-sapien.
TV Show: Who's The Boss. Hey, hey Tony Danza.
Movie: Wizard of Oz.
Song: Someone to Touch Me (How Many Times) - Scissor Sisters. Judge me not. Or Pioneers, Bloc Party.
Girl's name: Jack.
Boy's name: Jill.
Vegetable: Does corn count? I say, yes!
Fruit: Watermelon.

Part Six:

If I were a month, I'd be: July. HOT.
If I were a day of the week, I'd be: Saturday.
If I were a time of day, I'd be: Early morning.
If I were a planet, I'd be: Uranus. Oh c'mon. It was funny in ET!
If I were a sea animal, I'd be: A sea anemone as soon as I find out what the fuck an anemone is!
If I were a direction, I'd be: Stop! (in the name of love.)
If I were a piece of furniture, I'd be: a chaise lounge. How lavish!
If I were a sin, I'd be: Lust.
If I were a historical figure, I'd be: Carlton Banks.
If I were a liquid, I'd be: ...Water?
If I were a tree, I'd be: A California redwood.
If I were a bird, I'd be: A blackbird. I love the Beatles song.
If I were a flower, I'd be: A cherry blossom.
If I were a kind of weather, I'd be: Damp, but sunny. Post-rainstorm.
If I were a mythical creature, I'd be: Apollo.
If I were a musical instrument, I'd be: a plastic trumpet.
If I were an animal, I'd be: a cat.
If I were a color, I'd be: red.
If I were an emotion, I'd be: optimistic.
If I were a vegetable, I'd be: A cucumber. Sorry! I had to.
If I were a sound, I'd be: a really awesome guitar riff.
If I were an element, I'd be: oxygen.
If I were a car, I'd be: sporty, but efficient.
If I were a song, I'd be: Gimme, Gimme, Gimme - ABBA.
If I were a movie, I'd be: The Wizard of Oz, of course.
If I were a food, I'd be: A big plate of spaghetti with meatballs.
If I were a place, I'd be: home.
If I were a material, I'd be: cotton.
If I were a taste, I'd be: damn tasy.
If I were a scent, I'd be: something tomato tinged no doubt.
If I were a religion, I'd be: disco.
If I were a word, I'd be: in a dictionary?
If I were an object, I'd be: a rock.
If I were a body part, I'd be: a mouth.
If I were a facial expression, I'd be: grinning.
If I were a part of a house, I'd be: the bedroom.
If I were a subject in school, I'd be: Health.
If I were a cartoon character, I'd be: a transformer. Robots in disguise bitches!
If I were a shape, I'd be a: triangle.
If I were a number, I'd be: four.

[secondhand_stars]

I remember being twelve and standing in our kitchen with its glossy white appliances and wiped clean countertops. It was fall and Mr. Simpson was beginning to harvest his wheat stock. I remember this part because can still smell that sweet, grassy scent that poured in from the field and tangled in my mother's cherry curtains from the open window. What I don't remember is where my mother was or why I had decided to put a pot of water on the stove.

At first the water was as still and harmless as it had been coming from the tap. But then, after several minutes, it began to steam and then sprout little bubbles around the metal edge of the pot. Soon, at a full boil, it rolled and clouded over with life. It wasn't the same. I don't know why I didn't think to turn down the temperature, but I didn't. Instead, it was left on all the way and the coils beneath the pot glowed red-hot. There was something exhilarating about how everything boiled over. Rather than try to stop the mess I was making as water sloshed over the edges of the pot and crackled on the heating rod, I merely gaped. I stood there for what seemed like ages, though I know now that it was only a couple of seconds as the water never burned itself out and the coils never smoked up too terribly.

When I began to hear the electric hum of the garage door lifting up, I panicked. Not thinking, I gripped the handles of the pot with my bare hands. The water choked over with the jostling movement and scalded the tops of my hands as the poorly insulated grips of the pot burned fingers beneath. My father came in just as I fell away with an alarmed, wounded shriek.

"What in the world are you doing, Jacob?" He asked as an arm nudged me roughly out of the way. He -- always and forever older and wiser -- cut the heat on the oven and grabbed my mother's baking mitts from their hang above the stove. The water was, in one quick movement, quickly pushed onto a cool, dark heating coil. The entire situation was diffused then, as a stern incredulous look was launched back at me.

For a week after the event, everything I touched sent a sharp, cutting pain through my slow-healing burns. Even the thing that made it better -- aloe vera straight from my mother's potted plant -- stung with memory: the clean destruction, the initial shock of pain, and, most of all, my father's lingering disappointment in me.


I'm now twenty-two and living in the city. There are no wheat fields to raze each fall. There are no parents to jump in to save the day and slight all in one fell swoop. Instead, I'm in the dark of a bedroom and wrapped up in sheets just as familiar as my own across town in Brooklyn. I'm tangled up with the saddest boy in New York. He's sleeping heavily now. I can tell because there's no way to replicate the particular weight of his body in a waking sense. Usually I love these hazy moments when I'm half-awake and staring at the ceiling or into the pale fold of a shoulder. Tonight, though that burning feeling comes back to me. I'm crushed by him and ground into some fine remnant. It's coming. I can feel it.

The inevitable is in how my spine cracks in two again. I'm bowing away from Lincoln and burying my face into a spare pillow rescued from the floorboards. It's there that I sob and gasp in silent animation. My carefree, distracting facade is broken. Instead, I'm grief stricken and lost. I don't know what to do. I know I can't make this better. I can make it easier, but better is beyond me. I promised him that, though. I promised to make it okay. And how? By talking about classic television and shitty easy listening music whenever we get too still and too thin-skinned? I wonder if that even helps at all. I wonder if once I calm and drift off into a dreamless sleep if he'll wake to find himself curled up and shivering again.

They say that morning makes everything better, that that's when the joy comes in, but I think it's bullshit. That's just when everyone puts on their happy faces like a green smock or white dress-shirt and black tie. No one wants to see this in the unbending light of day. Yet, something irrepressible in me clings to the notion of waking up tomorrow from today like it was all a bad dream and that now everything will turn around. I've got to believe -- in something, in anything, but most of all, in this.

<font color="#000000" size="1">[ June 03, 2005 03:43 PM: Message edited by: the factory ]</font>

[secondhand_stars]

"Hi. Well, uh, my name is Jacob Johnson. Twenty-two, originally from a small farming town in Kansas. I'm a nursing student at City College, but well -- That's probably not what I'm supposed to talk about is it? I mean, knowing me.. I don't know. I feel really weird being here, in a Church again and all. My dad was -- is, a minister so I know how everybody feels about me, but.."

"Jacob, St. Anthony's Episcopal allows us to use their facilities for our meetings. We, as a group, are open to any and all persons currently going through the process of dealing with a friend or loved one coping with life after sexual abuse."

"Oh. Well, right."

"Feel free to share, or not share, whatever you like."

"Oh god, where to start? You know, somedays I think that this is harder on me than it is for Lincoln. Lincoln's my boyfriend. He, uh -- right. He had a.. a difficult childhood. And it's awful for me to think that, right? I mean, I feel really selfish when I'm just bawling over it and he's having to be the one to comfort me. Lincoln, comforting me. Isn't that awful? I mean, it should be the reverse. It definitely should be. I mean, somedays it is. Sometimes we have really hard days where he's antsy and upset about it but he never cries. He just slams a door or stalks around with that horrible scowl on his face. And then even after all of that, he's the one patting my shoulder and throwing his arms around me because he's sure he's hurt me."

"Does he ever hurt you?"

"No! I -- I mean, not really. If anything, just my pride."

"Your feelings?"

"Well, yeah. But I know why he says the things he does. He's not being mean. He's just scared. He says things, but he always immediately comes back around and apologizes. He doesn't mean them. Really -- he doesn't. Oh god, stop giving me that look."

"...Pardon?"

"That look. That -- I know. I know what I look like. I know how we come across to people. I'm so fu-- ah, very Loretta Lynn looking. You know, stand by your man and a bunch of pink ruffles everywhere? That's how I look. He's not abusive. If he were, I... Right. He's not. He's really sweet. I think only me and his friend Liv get to see that side of him though. Maybe his sister sometimes, too. Nevermind. You weren't giving me a look. I don't know why I said that. I just get..."

"Defensive?"

"Protective. Not, defensive. Protective. I know how it makes Lincoln feel when people act like he's nothing but a... messed-up person. I think he hates it. That's why I don't ever let him say that sort of stuff about himself. I always try to remind him about all the good things about himself. Like, we got a dog right? He's really a great sort-of dog too. I mean, Linc wanted a big, rough and tumble sort of dog but then I saw our dog and... Well, he's a lot like Lincoln sometimes. When he gets nervous, he barks and becomes all evasive, but really? Really he just likes to cuddle on the couch and watch television with us. He's really good with him too. Lincoln, with the dog."

"Do you feel comfortable sharing some of your boyfriend's history?"

"I guess I could. Lincoln like... He's from Boston. His parents divorced when he was pretty young, I guess. Before he was eight, definitely. He's got a twin sister and they used to visit their dad all the time. His dad was out of town a lot so they mostly spent their time with ..."

"Yes, Jacob?"

"Oh -- Well.... I don't know. No. Nevermind. I don't really feel like sharing. It's -- It's not my story to tell."

"When you think about it, does it make you feel sad inside again?"

"God, what are we? Four? Sad inside? No. Sad everywhere. My hands, my heart, my head. I get all filled up with sad bits. I can't get over it either. I mean, it's not right. I look at him and I see this really strong, aggressive person. He doesn't take shit from anyone, right? So... How could this have happened? I mean, it's not right. It takes the picture I've had of him all stored up inside and completely tears it apart."

"Lincoln becomes human?"

"No. Worse: he becomes something wounded. He might not cry about it, but it like... It's everywhere. It scares me sometimes."

"How?"

"I'm afraid -- of things. Like, that I might say something that she said or that I might... do something she did. I'm not her, but what if? I mean. God knows what happened for real. He says -- that she.. And I don't want to make him think about it. So sometimes I try not to be really... You know, but then he's kissing my neck and pulling on my shirt and it's basically over."

"You're afraid to be intimate with him?"

"No. Not that -- Just... To -- Yeah. Yeah, that. But not just that. I mean, because we get over that. Both of us. Like once! Once we were getting into the shower and he just.. got completely spooked. He told me that he didn't want to... go in. So, I told him that it was fine and he didn't have to and that he never had to do anything if he didn't want to. That, I think... Made it better? Like, that I gave him options and let him know that it wasn't all about... you know, all of that."

"Right."

"--But sometimes I worry that... That maybe he's not really --"

"...Not really?"

"Gay. I didn't think he was when we met. I thought he was just.. going off a dare that he had with Liv. I mean, there was a dare but it was only to get him to put himself out there, I think? Anyway, I didn't think he really was."

"But, he is?"

"Oh god, yeah. I mean, you don't do... Right. He is. I just worry that maybe he's only.. attracted to guys because they're safe? I'm not her. I'm not female and thusly, like a source of abuse or whatever."

"Have you expressed this fear with him?"

"No. No. I would never. I mean, it would make him really upset. He was already offended when I asked if he was really gay or just.. curious or whatever. So, no. He is. He is and I guess it doesn't matter why. Or at least, right now he it doesn't. I'm just afraid that maybe as he works with the Doctor and confronts things and learns how to cope and starts to get better that he'll... That his feelings will change."

"So, you're afraid that he'll outgrow you?"

"Basically, yeah."

[secondhand_stars]

I'm a good person. I pay my taxes and always take the garbage directly to the chute rather than leave it at alongside the door in the hallway. During the Christmas season, I always give all my pocket change to the Salvation Army bell-ringers. I think kids and puppies are both equally cute. I've helped an old lady carry her groceries to her apartment. I don't get angry very often and don't even know if I could ever yell at someone. Growing up, I was on honor roll and always helped my mom with the dishes so she didn't have to stay up real late grading homework assignments and quizzes. I never skipped classes. I always made A's on my report card. My senior year, our basketball team won State. I was accepted to several good universities on both academic and athletic scholarships. At graduation, I got to stand with the top ten percent of my class as everyone graduated. I can look at all my accomplishments and think, with pride, that that's me. I did all that. I am that.

I've never lived on the wrong side of town. I've never had some predatorial shadow hanging over me. He says he's breaking me, and even though I deny it mostly, I can't help but see some cracks in my whole facade and wonder where they came from. Maybe he's right. Maybe I'm being deconstructed. Maybe I'm seeing the irregularities in things as being dishonest rather than a measure to preserve. In this weekend alone, Lincoln has introduced his mother to me, the boyfriend and man he's having a homosexual relationship with, as well as told her about what happened with Karen. His courage astounds me sometimes. While he might not be eloquent, he's honest in a way that breaks my heart. This is the most painful thing about him, but also the element that I love the most.

[secondhand_stars]

Walking into the apartment that had been home for nearly three years, an internal support beam gave and his insides crumbled like plaster. There would be no easy shift from one place to the next, he realized. Though he'd conceal it all behind his grinning facade and excited exclamations, something would throb painfully in his chest until the last box was unpacked. Then, it would be resignation -- elated, forward-moving, inspired resignation. What was done was done and the Brooklyn chapter of his life was closing. He was more thrilled than this initial dread gave him. Creeping through the entryway, Jake paused at kitchenette counter to thumb through the small stack of his mail that had accumulated over the past couple of days.

In the living room, Leah tore her eyes away from the television screen she was perched in front of and peered over the lift of wall that partially obscured her roommate. Fingers snapped to get his attention before fanning out towards the television. "Hey, hey -- Hurry. Get over here. Flashdance is on AMC and it's at our favorite part."

"Oh god, are you serious? Has she started pointing at the judges?"

"You mean, he?" Leah snickered as fingers distractedly curled into her palm and waggled in. At her second beckoning, he trotted obediently forward and collapsed into the spot next to her in a slouch of limbs. They waited for the all-important part before making miniature hand gestures to the screen as camera panned over the collection of judges.

"This is great too -- The foot-tapping and then the judge that blows his nose in time with the music. I love that part, too. He's all --" Trailing off, he covered hands over the bridge of his nose and bopped along with the lukewarm eighties ballad.

It was a nice break from the announcement that loomed between them. Leah could almost sense it on Jake's tongue, somehow. Then again, she could have just been assuming too. All the signs were there: days that looped into weeks of an empty apartment, rushed rent-checks and piles of clothes carted out, but never in. Whenever she went into his room to drop off or pick up something, she felt like a mother who had seen her only son off to college -- alone and desperately waiting for a holiday where he'd return for a stretch.

Rather than speak up, Jake melted into the couch and pointed to the screen insistently as Jennifer Beales bolted down the street and into the arms of some classically handsome eighties hero with feathered hair and a dusted blazer. "This part is so fucking ... overdone. Oh god. Like, what lady would resist a dog with a red bow and roses from a dude in a porsche? Hell, I would fuck him."

"It's not about fucking, dear. It's about true love. Look at them."

"I know, she gave him a rose."

Collectively, they aww'ed out the same humming and scrunched their noses towards the credits that now rolled double-time over the screen. Breath evaporated into a calm, smoothed over silence. Then, in a rush of movement, Jake gripped her shoulders and wheeled Leah around. "Oh what a feeling!" He sang out, swaying her back and forth.

She laughed, a shoulder jostling out of his grip. "Remember when we found out that she had used a male stunt double for the dance sequence and I felt totally betrayed?"

"Yeah. I was inspired. I think we like, learned the entire dance sequence." Screwing up his pale eyes, he peered up at the faded plaster wash of the ceiling and attempted to remember all the pops and spins.

"And I still didn't have a clue --" She stated with a laugh as her frame sagged into the couch with a shoulder burrowing in and cheek flattening against the itchy cotton cover. "Are you spending the night? We could pop some popcorn and watch the encore performance later. Your mom called two days ago too, by the way. I told her that you were on a men's spiritual retreat."

Jake choked out a laugh at the excuse. "Are you serious?"

"I almost burst into laughter after I said it," she answered with the utmost of honest sincerity.

He gave a shove of knuckles into her upperarm and folded off the couch. Stalking around the living room, fingers smoothed over the top of the canvas stretch of a half-finished portrait before gesturing down to the abstracted fall of her subject's breast. Eyes wheeled backwards knowingly. "Look what happens when I leave the house."

Leah gave a secretive smile and shrug. Fingers dismissed the woman painted in wavery lines. "--So are you staying?"

"No, I'm going."

"Again? Jesus christ, Jake. It's not like you guys can't spend a night apart."

"Leah, we need to talk --" The exact words he had promised himself he wouldn't use, if only because they sounded so scripted, were breathed with a reluctant wince. He watched them settle upon her and set off a chain of reaction. Leaping up off the couch, she stalked over to where brushes were drying out across the top of a rescued curbside-find cabinet. Her fingers angrily mashed into shaped bristles to squeeze out any excess moisture. "I love him."

"Of course you do, honey. You love everyone. You loved the entire swim team and half of your basketball team. You loved Patrick Swayze and Jennifer Beal's stunt double. You loved Drew fucking Alexander and you loved me, too."

"I still love you! It's not about that --" Hands lifted to smear over the shaggy ends of his hair, fingers gripping in and knuckles burrowing against thrumming temples. Wincing, he peered at her mournfully.

"So you love me, but you love him more so I'm out?"

"Sweetheart," Jake sighed out, "it's not like that. It's just.. different and so we need to make some changes. You knew this was coming -- that we'd find people and take jobs and do things apart. It doesn't change who we are. Just where we live."

She gaped openly, but said nothing.

"Leah, I... There's a lot going on and I really can't talk about most of it yet, but it's nothing bad. It's just old stuff that he's having to deal with and work through. He had a really tough childhood and is just starting to come out of it. Things are really good with us and he loves me -- like, he really loves me. He asked me to move in and I want to. I'll figure out rent for you. I won't leave you high and dry, but I really want to be with him." It all came out in a rush that left the two of them stunned. Falling back a step, Jake squeezed a palm over his eyes and watched light and color separate into tiny pixelated dots over the otherwise dark stretch of eyelids. She sucked in a deep breath in front of him and left him unsure of whether she was going to use it to scream at him or sigh. He prepared himself for the former and hoped for the latter.

"I'll get a new roommate. The city is full of them." She replied, fairly moderately. Her anger was contained to the brushes which she snapped down sharply and pushed aside. A few clattered against the wall before rolling out again. "But what are you going to tell your parents? Are you really going to tell fucking the good Reverend Johnson that you like men?"

"What else am I supposed to do? Lincoln told his par-- mom. He told his mom and she was fine with it and came down last weekend to meet me. She loved me, he said. She really acted like it, too." Throwing his hands up, he stalked across the living room to the closed lid of his bedroom. The door was snapped open and he rummaged through things for some sort of starting point in packing. "Maybe my parents will love me, too. I mean, how many homos do they know? Their whole... principle is based on hypothetical -- Crazy Californians in ass-baring leather chaps and men with handlebar moustaches in netted ballerina skirts. I'm their son."

"I'm not saying you shouldn't tell them, Jake. I'm just saying --" She trailed off as hip hit the threshold of his door. Teetering on the verge of entering altogether, she instead stayed behind and watched as he tugged open a drawer upon his bureau and rifled through the neat knots of his socks.

"What? What are you saying?"

"I -- I don't know. I'm scared, Jake."

Pale eyes rolled up to where the unbreakable Leah now sniffled discreetly and swiped hands at the edges of her eyes. It seemed wrong to see her start up. Of all people, she was the least likely to cry. Built from good farm-family stock, her ancestors were the sorts that had built their land with bare hands and loss. It seemed biologically impossible that the comfort of the city was where she found her breaking point.

"Of what, sweetheart?"

"Of life without you."

"I'm moving to Queens, not Alaska!" He laughed something off-beat in an attempt to lighten the mood. Two hands, both balled up over the shape of athletic socks, lifted up.

"But it's always been us. Us against Kansas, and then us against the world. I don't know how to figure in all the new people. I mean, you're moving in with Lincoln. That's as good as anything commitment-wise. Things will be different. You'll be busy and then even moreso when you start working in the hospital. I'll never see you save for when we run into each other at the open market or while grocery shopping. What if we become like those people? The sort that used to be closer than death and now just remember all those times but can't even recall what the person they were close to is doing with themselves."

"We won't be those people."

"Promise me," she begged gravely.

"I promise." And most of all, he meant it.