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?”