I hate you, LiveJournal

[sekritomg]

So apparently, the second-shortest thing I've ever written is too long for one post.

Continued from here.

 

Summer continues, and Kyle perpetually feels like he is drifting. He feels lightheaded at times, whimsical at others. He does his summer reading, poring over horrible Descartes treatises in the shade while Stan sips lemonade from a glass bottle and uses his textbook to bat away mosquitoes. One weekend, they go camping with Kenny and Cartman, bringing with a cardboard box full of junk they picked up at the price club with Cartman’s mom’s card, plus two tents, a can of bug spray, and 48 clinking cans of beer. A bear makes away with their Cheesy Poofs, and Cartman’s claim that he would have fought the bear (and won) if not for his weak kneecaps is resoundingly guffawed at. They become piss-drunk, literally, and Kyle forgets in the dizzy moment that his camping equipment, so to speak, has also been made off with, albeit probably not by a bear. (“Let’s not rule it out, though,” Stan says about a week later, to be funny.)

Kyle chucks his urine-soaked boxers into the forest, and hopes that human pee doesn’t attract bears. He has never realized before now that women do not have the same luxury as men when camping. Surely he has noticed that he no longer has the ability to aim, but in a way it’s all still new to him, and he borrows a pair of Stan’s dry briefs for the remainder of the trip. It is only a day or so, but all that day he feels the puffy emptiness of the underwear rubbing against the inside of his fly. That night, as he sleeps once again with his face pressed into Stan’s soft, bare skin, he dreams of sex with Stan, and magically his penis is back, and better than ever. When he wakes up, though, he is disappointed through fogginess that this was only a dream, and the phallus he expected to find greeting him is still just a vagina after all. It is only when Stan zips open the tent flap that he really awakes, and joins his boyfriend in watching Cartman and Kenny bicker about who is taking up more of the tent.

As July dies, his mother insists that they begin shopping for school. He is only going across the state, and he wasn’t really intending on buying new sheets until he got there, but he knows what she wants — she wants to savor the last moments of her son’s childhood, taking advantage of the last time she can really steer his time through maternal guidance. Sheila comes off as annoyed most of the time, and as they break for lunch over astoundingly bad food court panini, she lets him know just how much she disapproves of his continual absence.

In the past, this would have scared Kyle shitless, and he would have sat there with his cock stuffed between his thighs like a frightened canine, and prayed his absolute hardest that while she was dancing around the topic, she didn’t dare bring up the possibility that all this time he’s been devoting to Stan is an indicator of their romantic involvement. Frankly, Kyle is amazed that after two years his mother and father haven’t just been told flat-out by Stan’s parents, seeing as they play bridge every Thursday evening. (Stan has often confided in Kyle that he deeply suspects these bridge games contain some kind of more sinister element, like gambling or great heaping piles of blow or, what’s really frightening, wife-swapping. “I don’t want to know,” is the only response Kyle can issue to these suppositions.)

Luckily, Kyle no longer cares what his mother knows, or how long she’s known it, or why she’s never brought it up. He is more than happy to never discuss it. What he does feel, though, is gaping remorse, because as she raves about all the familial things he’s overlooked — Ike apparently won a baseball game, or something, and was going to Denver for some finals, or something — he knows how badly he’s let himself, his family, even Stan down. He’s been figuratively quite inside of himself for years now, silently observing the pathos (meshugas, his parents would say, but that word makes him cringe) without saying anything, hands at his side, head buried in Stan’s armpit. He apologizes, and says without qualification that he’s been wrong, and she’s been right, and how badly he’s failed, and so on. He wonders what will come next, but it turns out that he has reached the extent of what Sheila actually wants to hear. They hug; he leaves over half of his panini, because he is paranoid that his hips have become incrementally bigger lately. (He generally doesn’t worry about his weight, but he doesn’t take any chances, because he doesn’t know what kind of crazy things that vagina is capable of inducing.)

Sheila buys him moderately priced sheets from Bed, Bath, and Beyond, and Kyle keeps the receipt, because he is going to return them, and he and Stan are going to push their beds together, and go through the motions of matrimony, or at least the parts of matrimony that two 18-year-old boys are interested in. When Kyle thinks of this, he feels the moistness begin again, and he decides to get up and go get some toilet paper and do something about it, instead of passively letting it smear along the flap in his boxers in fat strips. It feels better, actually, and he tensely admits to himself that wiping it felt kind of good. But then he shakes this off and flushes the toilet paper. He packs some shirts and a couple of pairs of boxers into his messenger bag, and goes back to Stan’s, taking his iPod, keys, and the philosophy book he is determined to finish.

~

In the first week of August, lifelong classmates begin to leave, if they are in fact going anywhere. It is revealed that Clyde has joined the army; Craig is attending some ridiculous-sounding hippie-commune-like college in Florida, and Wendy’s parents are taking her to France for two weeks as a graduation present.

“What kind of spoiled, hippie-ass ho actually asks to go to France for graduation?” Cartman asks over the weird, static-y buzzing noise that Kenny’s television set seems to make even when turned off.

Kenny grunts as he tries to get his parka into his duffel bag, which is already crammed full of water-damaged titty magazines and high-leg briefs that would be too small if not for the stretched-out elastic. He absently adds, “I think it’s nice. I wish I were going to France.”

“What?” Stan asks. “You mean, instead of Compton?”

“Los Angeles,” Kenny corrects. He finally gets his zipper done, but an unseemly ripping sound lets him know that, alas, there’s now a thready gash down the side of his duffel bag. “Aw, fuck.”

“Seriously, Kenny, you wanna go be a porn star, fine.” Cartman gives his beer can a final disillusioned swish and, finding it empty, chucks it at Kenny’s face, but Kenny deflects it, and it lands at Stan’s feet; he promptly kicks it across the bare living room floorboards.

“Cut it out!” their host protests.

“I don’t know why you think you could cut it out there anyway,” Cartman continues.

“I have a ten-inch cock.”

“Shut up, Kenny, everyone knows poor people can’t have big cocks.”

“Yes, fat ass! They can and I do!”

Stan sighs and his fingers tense on his beer can. He knows he shouldn’t drink beer, at least not Kenny’s cheap beer, but after the Fourth he swore to never, ever hand Eric Cartman cash and expect to receive anything in return. This discussion about ten-inch cocks, however, is beginning to mingle around in his mind with the fuzzy beginnings of a loose, uncertain buzz, and he’s wondering if he shouldn’t just go home and jerk off, or what. Maybe he should go to Kyle’s; there’s a small chance he might be able to talk him into something, but lately he’s getting sick of these half-hearted blow jobs, and he knows even in this weird state of mind that this plan will not work anyhow.

Kyle’s at his house because he’s for some reason going along with his parents’ completely incomprehensible program of family togetherness in their final moments as a family. It doesn’t make sense to Stan because his family already went through it, and it doesn’t seem to his parents like their world is crashing down around them. So if perhaps he can lure Kyle out of his house … but, yeah, no. This Cartman-Kenny dueling is both compelling and a slight turn-on, so he tunes back in.

“Well, even if I don’t make it it’s better than just sitting around here on my big, fat ass doing nothing for the next four fucking years!”

“Hey, bitch! At least I got a home and food and shit!”

“Oh, that’s really what you need, Eric, more food and a place to sit around eating it!”

Cartman gets up and for a moment it looks to Stan like he’s going smack the rail-thin boy in a wife beater and purple swim trunks clear across his bright, open face, but then Cartman does something he rarely does, and demurs.

“Whatever, Kenny. I fucking hate you. I hope you get AIDS from fucking some meth bitch whore and end up dying on some train tracks like the fucking junkie poor-ass bitch you are.” Kenny looks up at him with the stupidest expression Stan’s ever seen him make, like, Is this really goodbye? After 10, 15, 18 years, that’s your goodbye to me?

Kenny stands up to get in Cartman’s face, and Eric takes a step back.

“Dying on the fucking tracks is better than having you roll on top of me in the middle of the night in the some fucking forest in some sweaty tent you pitched in a pile of bear crap,” he grits out. “Besides, Eric, everyone knows there’s no trains in Los Angeles.”

Cartman’s nostrils flare, and he kicks the duffel bag; now it is both ripped and emblazoned with Cartman’s dusty footprint. “Whatever Kenny! Like I want you hanging around here with me anyway, thinking you’re too good for me and this town and shit! You’re just fucking liberal hippie scum like the rest of them, I bet you’re on fucking welfare with like eight different bitches you knock up!”

“At least I can get a chick.” Too easy. Cartman lets out a strange, strangled little cry, and clenches his fists madly like he’s wont to do, and seconds later the door is slamming right in front of them, and the force of it’s managed to knock Kenny’s father’s prized Dale Earnhardt collector’s plate off the wobbly little table it’s been sitting on in a precious wooden stand for the past seven years.

Stan sets his beer down, and gets up off the couch, swaying only a little. He knows it’s only the floorboards, which are warped. He reaches out for the shards, calmly offering, “I’ll help you put it back together.”

“Nah.” Kenny kicks some far-flung pieces into the corner. “I’m leaving. What the fuck do I care?”

“But you’ll be back, right?”

Sighing, and squatting down on his scraggly quads, Kenny helps Stan toss the remaining mess across the room. “Not likely,” he breathes, after hesitating. “I can’t deal with this shit, man. It’s not happening for me here. Frankly, I’m impressed I managed to finish high school.”

“Oh, it wasn’t so hard,” Stan says dismissively, forgetting all the meaningless little lab reports he forgot to file, how his swimming is the only thing that managed to keep him afloat — the only shot he had at getting into a school Kyle would even settle for.

“I have 394 dollars saved up.” Kenny stands, and grabs a roll of duct tape that’s been sitting under the TV. He blows the dust off and begins patching his bag. “Cartman’s mom gave me a bottle of Viagra. I’ve got a ticket for a Greyhound that’s leaving the depot an hour from now, and I can stay with Butters’ cousin or someone the first night.” The bag fixed, sort of, they both stand. “Any last words, Stan?”

He thinks for a moment. “Give me a Viagra?”

“Sure you don’t want a going-away fuck?”

He thinks for a moment, but declines with, “You know I’m in a monogamous relationship.”

Grinning, Kenny gets back down on his knees, rips open his bag through the duct tape, and hands Stan a plastic container with a safety top. “I’d offer you more, but…” He rubs the back of his neck as Stan tentatively grapples with the top, finally managing to get it open.

Stan blushes when he hands the bottle back to its owner. “I didn’t think Viagra was sold like this.”

“What do you want from me?” Kenny tosses it back on his bag. “It’s not probably legal.”

On his way out the door, Stan swallows the pill under the kitchen faucet. He wonders as he wipes his mouth if this isn’t a bad idea. Perhaps it’s presumptuous. No, he’s sure it’s presumptuous. He shrugs, and when he tries to embrace his friend, Kenny sidesteps this gesture, and brushes his swim trunks off like they’re dirty.

“Are you sure I can’t walk you to the bus?”

“I’m not sentimental,” Kenny explains. “Perhaps one day you’ll see me in some movie. Although I do intend to mostly do straight films,” he adds quickly.

“Well, I do watch both.”

Kenny blows him a kiss and hoists his taped-together bag over his shoulder and walks away, quickly, making his escape rapidly and unthinkingly, even if Stan knows he’s grappled with it all summer.

~

Stan eschews the doorbell, ducking so no one can see him through the window as he slips along the side of the house. In the backyard, he prays like he always does that the trellis can support his weight. It does. He presses up against the window, glimpsing the entire room, but Kyle’s nowhere to be seen.

Lamenting the waste of his time and effort, he rings the doorbell.

“What are you doing here?” are the first words out of Kyle’s mouth.

“Kenny left, you know,” Stan tells him.

“I haven’t even seen him since we went camping.”

“Well, you won’t be seeing him now.” Stan shoves his way inside, past Kyle. “What are you doing, holing yourself up in here?”

“Packing. Placating my family.”

“You weren’t in your room when I climbed up to the window. Are they home?”

“Um, no. Well, Ike’s in the basement. I was getting a drink. Why?”

Stan tugs Kyle up his own stairs, and forces him down on the bed by his shoulders.

“What are you doing?” Kyle asks. “My parents went grocery shopping, dude, and they are totally going to come back at some point.”

Stan is gradually licking his way up Kyle’s jaw line, one knee against his back, one across his thighs. He’s never straddled anything so tightly.

“Have you been drinking?” Kyle asks.

“No,” Stan lies. He works his insidious little fingers down the neck of Kyle’s T-shirt. “Well, maybe a little.” He starts on Kyle’s chest again, because without anything even being said he’s learned that Kyle actually likes it now. It’s amazing how little they’ve hooked up this summer, seeing as it was supposed to be the summer of non-stop anal penetration. Stan laughs to himself about this, which he shouldn’t because it’s not funny, and while he’s laughing he gets some of Kyle’s hair in his mouth.

“What,” Kyle seethes, forcing him away, “are you doing?”

Stan doesn’t even have an answer for this, so he slips his hand inside Kyle’s pants and goes to town.

In both of their minds, there is something absolutely crazy fucking wrong about what they’re doing. Sleeping with your best same-sex friend was a traumatic bridge to cross, and then one day one of you has female sex organs, well, how do you do. How do you navigate those waters? Stan chides himself mentally for thinking in water metaphors, because he is practically drowning in between Kyle’s legs here. He knows his acceptance here is partially because he’s, well, a little, tiny bit drunk, and partially because Kenny’s blue pill has made him so fucking aroused that he would do anything, anything, just to soothe his dire need for contact and satiation and so on and so on, he can’t even think about it anymore, he just has to do it.

And Kyle likes it too, he realizes. That was the genesis of this whole experiment, when Kyle began to let his guard down and it was obvious that as much as this body didn’t feel right to him, it was his, and now they know that all the bullshit they’ve been fed about women not needing it just as badly as they do was a lie. Either that or it turns out that female genitals plus male brain actually does equal … a genuine boy with a vagina.

Kyle is sort of nervous; he doesn’t trust this thing between his legs, and he never will. But he trusts Stan more than anyone in the universe.

The next morning he rolls over and finds another precious note on a Post-it: Church. Wouldn’t wake you.

“I slept for…” Kyle trails off, looks at his clock, and glances at his fingers. He’s woozy enough to count. “…13 hours.” His room is a war zone of everything he owns strewn amid brown cardboard boxes and those things that apply packing tape that look like guns … dispensers? Whatever. He has a horrible feeling about this morning. For one thing, Stan is gone, and he didn’t wake up with him and then fall back asleep. For another, it’s his room — a place Kyle swore he’d never, ever have sex or even make out. Secretly, this whole time, in his mind, Kyle’s room has been the last domain of their former best-friendship. Now it’s gone, of course — reduced to rubble. But he’s beginning to just not care about some things.

Rolling out of bed and onto his feet, Kyle is surprised and he falters a bit, stumbling just a couple of steps away from the bed until he grabs his desk chair to steady himself. Hastily and gracelessly, he shrugs his sweatpants off, and he doesn’t bother wondering why he’s wearing sweatpants in the high summer, or at what point after Stan tongue-fucked his vagina senseless for a while but before he fell asleep he would have stopped to put on pants.

Anyway, it hardly matters, because dangling there like it never left is the evidence of his masculinity. Kyle doesn’t want to give that asshole Clyde (who may or may not be shipped out to Afghanistan or something) any credit, but for some reason the weight of it — or his balls, at least — does affect his posture. Or, he figures, maybe it’s the slight difference in blood circulation, now that he has genitals that need to be irrigated again. Regardless, he feels woozy and unbalanced and he sits down in his desk chair and puts his head on his keyboard and, well, he actually just laughs.

~

They are sitting on Kyle’s front lawn again, hands linked, as their earthly belongings sit on the curb, waiting to be loaded into the van they’ve rented to help transport them to their next joint venture at the University of Colorado. Stan is curious at first as to why Kyle is taking his hand, but when he sees that Kyle is relaxed, he eases up, too, and they let the summer die between them as their emotions live on, thriving on the end of the humidity, the end of the past 18 years in this confining, narrow space.

Kyle knows his parents might walk out at any moment, but he doesn’t care. Let them see — he is beyond the point of worrying that perhaps they may be disappointed. He knows that they wouldn’t be, and even if they were, he doesn’t see it bothering him. He has reached the end of his time here, and for what it’s worth, there is nowhere to squeeze in a long lecture about safe sex, romance, letting love get in the way of studying, or anything else his parents might toss at him. He is safe. And as he studies Stan’s sweet visage, he sighs contentedly, and his throat closes slightly, and he feels the tension of desire begin to pluck at his groin like a clumsy mandolin player. He shifts happily, giving his awakening manhood some room to grow.

“You know what bothers me about this whole thing?” Kyle asks. He doesn’t need to clarify anything for Stan; Stan just knows.

“That your penis disappeared for two months and you had a vagina?” Stan guesses.

“No.”

“The entire situation?”

“No.”

“Well, I don’t know. None of it?”

“No,” Kyle says smartly. “It’s that the whole thing was basically meaningless. It happened for no reason, and it went away for no reason. I didn’t learn anything, and our relationship was never really in peril. So what was the point?”

Stan thinks for a moment, and clasps his other hand to Kyle’s, so that the redhead can’t go anywhere. “Kyle,” he says heavily. “All things are meaningless, unless you give them meaning.”

“I know.”

“So just let it go, dude.” He drops Kyle’s hand. “You want me to blow you?”

“Right here on the lawn?” Kyle asks, intrigued.

“Sure,” Stan says with a shrug. “I don’t know, it’s something to try.”

“I’ll settle for a handjob,” Kyle barters.

“Sounds good.” And as Stan takes Kyle’s cock in the palm of his hand, he breathes a sigh of relief. Everything is normal, by virtue of not being anything of the sort, and that is the way they’re happiest.