Abnormal Man: A Novel Read online

  And so you have only a little bit of pubic hair that has sprung up in two modest patches, each about the size of a quarter, around the base of your dick. The hair is so fine that the light has to hit it just right in order to be seen. And so in the locker room you keep your back to the other boys because you do not want them to point out the smooth hairless contrast of your boyish body to the sprouting mannishness of theirs.

  And in fear and embarrassment and shame your scrotum shrivels, your testicles attempt to crawl up into your groin, and your penis shrinks down and draws itself into nothing more than a tiny cap. And as often as you can, you will busy yourself at your locker. Unlacing your shoes as slowly as possible. Pulling your socks off so that you have to stop and turn them right side out. And as the other boys emerge from the showers and discard their towels into the wire hamper, you grab one and pretend to clean a spot from your shoe and then you pretend that you have already been through the shower and you are drying your body with the gray towel and you have not had to endure the humiliation of the shower, the degrading walk across the locker room. But often you do. You do have to face it.

  But now, in the handicapped stall, with fire in your right hand, you look down and your cock is rock hard. So hard it is pointing straight up, almost touching your belly. And it doesn’t look so small now. Now it looks big. And your balls are hanging pendulums underneath. They feel as though they have weight. Substance. That they are there. And they therefore give you weight and substance. You are here.

  And all it takes is two strokes. Two strokes and it explodes. Your cum is watery, like pee, but it is there. Before this past summer, when you did this nothing came out. But now you can cum. Ejaculate. And you see droplets of thin semen jump higher than the burning paper which has burned itself down to the brainstem. You have left the end of the brainstem unraveled, flat, a sort of neural net, and you let the flame touch your fingers before you drop it. You have timed it right. The flame consumes the last of the paper during its lazy drop to the toilet bowl. No smoke. A clean burn. Perfect.

  You pull your pants and underwear back up, buckle your belt. You use toilet paper to clean the spilled body fluid from the rim of the toilet, and you flush everything away. You watch the ash and your semen swirl together and then disappear.

  You take a minute and lean against the stall door. And you think the thought that you always think after you do this. From your favorite book. The book you have read probably seventy times. You will never forget picking that book from the returns cart at the school library. Fahrenheit 451, by Ray Bradbury. An illustration of a paper man engulfed by flames was on the cover. And you opened the book. And you read the first line.

  It was a pleasure to burn.

  And your body just kind of went into a state of numb ecstasy. Because it was true. It was the truest sentence that had ever been written. That ever will be written.

  It was a pleasure to burn.

  * * *

  The hall in the administrative wing is quiet. You don’t like the loudness of students, but you also do not like the unnatural absence of sound you find here. It reminds you of doctors’ offices. You are missing Ms. Wiggins’s English class to be here, and that is the one class you kind of like. She has you reading Stephen Crane. The Red Badge of Courage. And also some poetry by him. There is a poem about a guy who eats his own heart and hates the way it tastes, and another one about bastard mushrooms that grow in polluted blood. It’s pretty badass stuff. Hardcore. You stop at a door with the word Counselor stenciled on it.

  Inside is a small waiting room. You still have a few minutes, so you sit and wait. After a minute, the counselor’s door opens and a girl steps out. Beth Andrews. A cutter. You are not privy to gossip or inside information, but the knowledge that Beth Andrews is a cutter is so widespread that it has filtered down to even the lowest rungs of the social ladder, so you know what Beth Andrews is. Just as she knows what you are. Just as everybody in the school knows what you are.

  Mrs. Hamby is all right. She looks nice. Poofy hair. Her perfume smells like bug spray. Raid. You are not here voluntarily. This is not a free choice. You are here as a result of other choices you have made in the past. This is a reaction to your actions. A consequence.

  “How’s it going, Billy?”

  “Okay, I guess.”

  “Great. No problems?”

  You shrug your shoulders and shake your head.

  It always starts this way. Mrs. Hamby doesn’t really want there to be any problems. Not because she cares about you, but because if there are problems, then she will have to do something about it. In the end, it is better for both of you if you pretend that your life is all Little House on the Prairie and shit and she pretends that she doesn’t know you’re lying.

  “Excellent. You getting along okay at work? Your family?”

  You nod to indicate that yes, yes your life is one of rosy-cheeked wholesome goodness.

  “No more problems with your stepfather?”

  An image pops into your head. Of Harvey, standing over you, fists clenched, spit spraying from his mouth as he yells at you. I’m glad your mother died. She’d be ashamed to know what a weak little pussy she has for a son. Fucking faggot.

  You shake your head and say, “Harvey’s all right.”

  Mrs. Hamby smiles and nods with satisfaction. “And if you see he’s getting angry, what should you do?”

  You picture yourself lying face down on the filthy carpet of your bedroom, your arms cradling your head, shielding yourself from the blows raining down.

  “Sit down and talk it out,” you say.

  “Good. And if that doesn’t work?”

  And you see yourself running down the street of your neighborhood at night. Blood from a cut on your forehead streams into your eye, stinging.

  “I leave the house. Give him a chance to cool off. Give us both a chance to get our thoughts together.”

  “Excellent!” Mrs. Hamby beams. So far this recital is going perfectly. Not a note has been missed. “And what about your job? Do you think it’s working out?”

  You see yourself in the kitchen at Shoney’s. Sid, the assistant cook, stands too close to you, invading your space. If you’re not my friend, then you must be my enemy, Sid says. So you dig in your pocket and come up with a damp, wadded five-dollar-bill. This is all the money you have. Sid pockets the bill and says friends help each other out.

  “Oh, yeah,” you say to Mrs. Hamby, “I like working.” You look down at your feet and see that there is a baby cockroach on your shoe. Just sitting there. No wonder the office smells like Raid.

  Mrs. Hamby opens your file and reads from a report. “Your Job Coach says she’s in the fading stage. That she’s phased out the onsite visits. You’re independent now. They say that work is the best therapy. And it’s true. It gives you—it gives me—a sense of fulfillment.”

  You are still looking at the baby cockroach sitting on your shoe. It has a whitish stripe near the head. You know that a baby cockroach is called a nymph. You wonder if Mrs. Hamby’s office is infested.

  “Do you know what Teddy Roosevelt said about work? He said ‘Far and away the best prize that life offers is the chance to work hard at work worth doing.’ I’ve always put a lot of stock in that. Well, I know you have to catch your bus. And you work tonight, so I won’t keep you.”

  You stand and head for the door.

  “Oh, and, uh, no more incidents with, uhm, fire?”

  “No ma’am.”

  “And you’re still taking the meds Dr. Stein prescribed? The uh…” She references your file again. “The olanzapine and sodium valproate?”

  You nod your head, but those pills made you sick.

  You don’t need pills. You know how to make yourself feel better.

  “Bye, Mrs. Hamby.”

  “Bye-bye, now.”

  You open the office door.

  “Billy?”

  You don’t turn around, but you do pause in the doorway.

  “Jus
t remember that I’m here to help. No matter what. No matter how big or how small the problem. Come to me. Okay?”

  You look down and see the nymph crawl off your shoe and escape through the open door. You scurry out after it.

  You step off the school bus into bright sunshine. It hurts your eyes. This is your city. Marietta, Georgia. This is your neighborhood. The houses all look alike. Split-level homes shored up in laminate siding, each painted in one of three shades of powdery pastel—lime, lemon, and orange sherbert. The yards are withered, the Georgia sun having assaulted the earth, robbing it of even its last drop of moisture. The lawns are heaved and depressed where the ground has split open, waiting for water. Towering pine trees bleed pungent sap like stigmata. This is home. This is where you live.

  None of the houses are kept up particularly well, but yours stands out as being in the direst state of disrepair. The yellow siding is spotted with long-dead colonies of black mold. The deceased lawn looks worse than the others because it had been long uncut before it succumbed to the heat. Now it looks like the matted beard of a homeless man.

  You go in through the carport, and the neighbor’s dog, Harley, follows you inside. Harley is some kind of mutt, looks like he has a little bit of Beagle in him, maybe some Collie. His untrimmed claws click on the kitchen floor as he jumps around, happy to see you. You let him lick your face. The dog loves you. You try to get him calm before Harvey hears him, but it is too late.

  “You didn’t let that goddamn stray into the house, did you? ‘Cause if you did, I’ll shoot it!”

  You try to quiet the dog. “Shh. Shh. It’s okay, boy. Shh. Shh. Sorry Harvey!”

  Good old Harvey. All-American dad. Technically your stepfather. The man your mother married two years before her diagnosis. Harvey is different now since she died. But you are too.

  You can just picture him, sprawled out on his burnt-orange recliner, beer in hand, Judge Judy doling out justice on the TV. He is probably on his third or fourth beer by now—well within the safety zone. Harvey keeps an Igloo cooler parked next to the recliner. Each day he stocks it with a case of Natural Light and a ten-pound bag of ice purchased from the Citgo station up the street. Harvey also keeps an empty plastic milk jug within easy reach. The beer runs through him so quick that it would require far too many trips to the bathroom to relieve his bladder. At one time, he kept a dishtowel draped over the gallon jug for the sake of appearance, but he has long since given up any pretense of discretion. In fact, he sometimes asks you to empty it for him. He is that lazy. That particular chore physically sickens you. What is most bothersome about it is not the fact that it is someone’s pee, but that the container is usually still warm with Harvey’s body heat. It feels alive.

  You find a leftover piece of Kentucky Fried Chicken in the refrigerator and toss it out onto the carport so that the dog will run out after it.

  In the living room, Harvey has set his tableau as you imagined it. As it always is. Without deviation.

  After your mother was diagnosed, the Marietta Daily Journal did a story about her rare form of cancer and how your family did not have health insurance. And even though you have never been to church in your life, The First Baptist Church of Christ started a community-wide fundraising campaign. When people went to Kroger to grocery shop, the cashier would ask them if they would like to donate a dollar or five dollars or a ten spot to the Janet Peruro-Smith Fund. They would get a little yellowish-pink piece of construction paper cut in the shape of a peach and the cashier would put the person’s name on it and tape it to the front window and before long the whole damn street-facing window of the Cobb Parkway Kroger was covered with little paper peaches. The front of the store was dim as a cave. You do not know how much money was collected, but Harvey has not worked since the check was presented to him in a little ceremony at the Cobb County Community Center. You remember watching white-haired church ladies mix a huge bowl of red punch made out of Tahitian Treat, cherry Kool-Aid, ginger ale, lime sherbert, and a five-pound bag of sugar. You could actually feel the stuff penetrate the enamel on your teeth. You drank so much of it that you threw up. It looked like you were vomiting blood.

  “I have to work today,” you tell Harvey.

  Harvey doesn’t take his eyes off Judge Judy.

  “Oh, yeah?”

  “Can you take me?”

  Harvey pinches the bridge of his nose and his brow creases. He looks as though you have asked him to delineate Stephen Hawking’s theorem regarding gravitational singularities within the framework of general relativity, or to maybe say a few words in regards to the black hole information paradox.

  Harvey lets go of his unusually broad nasal bridge and says, “Christ, I suppose,” but he postulates nothing pertaining to quantum physics.

  Harvey retrieves a book nestled between the beer cooler and pee jug. You recognize it immediately. You checked it out from the school library.

  “I ought to make your ass stay home. Found this under your bed.”

  The book is called The Underground Guide to Teenage Sexuality.

  “You went in my room? Spying?”

  Harvey raises one of his puffy, alcohol-infused hands and you flinch.

  “I’m all the family you got. Got to take care of you.” He fires up a Marlboro Light with his green Bic. “You’re so fucking weird. Thought you were on drugs. Turns out you’re just, well, what are you, Billy? You turning into some kind of homo?”

  “No.”

  “Don’t have to be ashamed. Natural to be curious about sex. Boy your age. Had any experience?”

  You shake your head. This is awful. This is awful. This is awful.

  “Know how to jack off? All guys do it”

  This is awful.

  Harvey takes a deep drag off his Marlboro Light and ashes cascade over his swollen belly.

  “You want, I can show you. Teach you.”

  You shake your head. This is the worst thing ever. You want to fold in on yourself, to crumple and disappear. What is Harvey thinking?

  “Let me show you.”

  “No!” You scream at Harvey. And just that quick he is out of his chair. For a lazy overweight drunk, the man can move when the situation calls for it. Quantum physics in action. Watch and learn. He hits you in the offending orifice—your mouth—and your bottom lip splits open like a bag of Jiffy Pop.

  “You little faggot!”

  Harvey raises his fist to land another blow, but he notices that in the commotion, he has overturned his pee jug and warm urine is hiccupping onto the dirty carpet. As Harvey turns to set it right, you run from the room.

  “Next you’ll be sucking dicks and wetting the bed,” he calls out after you, but you are out the back door. You are gone. You will walk to work or maybe hitch a ride.

  The dinner rush is crazy tonight. It’s Friday and half of Marietta wants to treat itself to an evening of fine dining at Shoney’s.

  The kitchen trashcans are already overflowing and the manager has asked you and Frank to empty them. Behind the restaurant, you watch Frank manhandle a fifty-gallon trashcan over his head and tilt the barrel over the rim of the dumpster. The gloppy leftovers and kitchen scraps slop into the bin. Frank walks back to where you are still struggling to drag your can toward the dumpster.

  Frank walks with a limp. It’s not a bad limp, but still, there is something clearly off when he moves. You are pretty sure Frank has an artificial leg. He wears boots and jeans every day, but one time he was reaching to the top shelf of the walk-in refrigerator and his pant leg rode up high, above the black boot, above the white sock, just enough for you to see a crescent of skin. Only it wasn’t skin at all. It was some kind of flesh-colored plastic. Not real.

  Frank takes the trash barrel from you and empties it into the dumpster.

  “You’ll need more muscle than that if you’re gonna hitch to Canada.”

  You have told Frank that you are leaving tonight. You are the busboy here, and the waitresses give you a percentage of their tips for
keeping the tables clean. You are taking whatever you get tonight and you are leaving. Gone. This will be all the money you will have since Harvey keeps your earnings for your “college fund.”

  Frank is somewhere in his twenties. An adult, but still young enough that you find yourself drawn to him. He has long black hair that looks like he doesn’t wash it very often. And tattoos. Frank has tattoos. On his arms, on his chest. His neck. His face. Like something tribal. You really like Frank, and even though Frank doesn’t talk very much, you get the feeling he likes you, too. You have never in your life had a friend. Not a real friend. You want Frank to be your friend.

  He stares at your split lip and you cover it with your hand.

  “I walked into a door.”

  “Yeah. Children are God’s gift to us. Not everyone understands that.”

  You feel offended because you think Frank has called you a child. But of course you do look like a child. You look like you are eleven or twelve. The delayed puberty thing. Hormones. Frank can see that he has somehow said something wrong. He unfastens two buttons on his cook’s smock (exposing even more blue black prison ink) and reaches in and pulls out a silver medallion on a chain.

  “What is it?”

  “Saint Christopher. Patron saint of travelers. Protects you.”

  Frank works the chain over his head and drops it in your hand. You thank him and put it around your neck. You don’t know what to say.

  Frank lights a cigarette. He smokes Marlboro Lights, just like Harvey.

  “I wouldn’t mind going to Canada.”

  Is Frank saying that he wants to go with you?

  “Why don’t you?”

  “Can’t. On parole.”

  “Oh.”

  You stare at the tattoos that sprawl up and down Frank’s muscled arms, over his corded neck, and onto his face. You don’t know much about tattoos, but you know enough to know that these crude monochrome words and images were most likely done in prison. The blues and blacks of ink scavenged from ballpoint pens. You see crosses and half a swastika. Satanic symbols. Biblical verses. Spiders. Snakes. Crude renderings of naked women. White supremacist slogans. Pleas for racial equality. Music groups: Black Sabbath. Slayer. Mayhem. Cannibal Corpse.