She laughed a little, looked at me in a way I thought her stomach might hurt. "Come on, cowboy," she said, and I climbed into a gray chair, under a gray smock. She sprayed my hair with water and combed it straight back, curls wet enough to fall down flat. "Do you know what you want?"
"I want to fix myself," I said.
She giggled.
Inches of black curls flew around my face, landing on my stomach, falling to the floor. There wasn't any music playing, and the smack of the scissors sounded loud in my ears. Letch slept on the bench.
I noticed a small picture of her and a boy, probably her son, taped to the mirror's lower corner. They were in front of a Christmas tree, lying on their stomachs, wearing matching red sweaters. The boy looked about two years old.
"Is that your son?"
"That's my Michael."
"Do you love him?"
"Of course I love him," she said. "He's my son."
I hated her son. Hated Michael. Hated her love and really hated those Christmas sweaters. Under the smock, I rubbed it through my pants. Squeezed it, pinched the tip to wake it up, and I started to get hard, cupping my hand around its shape. I undid my fly and pulled it out and loved myself. I bent it to the side a little, sending a shiver down my spine. I tried to keep my facial expressions consistent, a fixed frown so she wouldn't notice what I was doing.
"I'm loving myself," I said, forcing a pitiful smile as I looked at her in the mirror.
She didn't know what was going on under the surface.
"It really does look good," she said and took a step back and admired her work.
My arm bounced under the smock. Was I crying?
She stopped cutting my hair. All my pretty curls were gone. She'd given me one of those marine haircuts, high and tight. Before I could say anything else, Letch woke up and walked over to us. "No more homo-hair for Rhonda. She put her balls into that cut, hey?" He fuzzed my head with his hand.
I looked at her in the mirror. "Of course you love him," I said. "He's your son."
My tiny balls ached. I needed to finish loving myself so I went to the bathroom. I had to get hard again so I thought about the stylist, imagined her wearing only that Christmas sweater, spreading her legs and telling me I love you, and she invited me to climb on top of her, and for just a second, the fantasy felt real enough that I thought I could open my eyes and I'd see her there, underneath me, the two of us loving each other. I threw my eyelids open but all I saw was me, my reflection blasted back in my face by that awful mirror — there I was, standing in the bathroom with my pants at my ankles. It was humiliating so I closed my eyes again and hoped to find that image of her lying with her legs spread wide, but she was gone, and I saw nothing so I yelled, "Of course you love him, of course you love him, of course you love him," and I felt the pressure building, and she and Letch must have heard me screaming because they were at the door, Letch demanding that I open up, but he wasn't going to take this moment away from me, he couldn't break down the door and I felt safe so I kept yelling, "Of course you love him, of course you love him, of course you love your own son!" and I could hear his fists thrashing the door, the woman asking him to stop, to calm down — I don't think this is he ping — and then she talked to me, asked if she could come in, if I'd please let her in, but that just made me scream louder, "Of course you love your own son!" and part of me was hoping my mom would show up, that she was ready to stop disappearing all the time, and I was almost ready to let loose, it was building and building, felt like something wonderful was about to happen, so I yelled it one last time, "Of course you love your own son!" but there wasn't a climax, no fantastic orgasm, just a few measly drops, and it hurt more than it felt good. I left the pathetic dribbles on the floor, under the sink, in a lumpy pattern like the horseradish I used in Letch's Bloody Marias.
I wanted her to find my mess. I wanted her and Michael to wipe the floor together. It could be a family activity. Maybe they could use their Christmas sweaters to sop it up. Yuletide fun.
I washed my hands. Splashed water on my face and sat down on the floor. Letch kept pounding, but I wasn't going to come out for a while.
Faucet of Embarrassment
Karla and I, our drunken bodies flopped around her bed. We'd tangled in such a way that my arm was trapped underneath her back. It fell asleep. I could feel my pulse stomping out its rhythm in my trapped limb. I counted every pop of blood. Seven. Nine. I counted as I lay there, worrying about my circulation. Worrying because my hands were always losing their feeling. Going dead on me. But I didn't want to move, didn't want to ruin the way that Karla wanted to be in bed with me. Seventeen. I couldn't ruin this night with Karla, even as she smothered the life from my arm.
Almost as soon as she'd turned out the lights, Karla had given in to the fatigue of whiskey. She snored, churned. Her body rummaged under the covers, restless in a way that made me think she was having nightmares.
Was I in it? Was I it?
I couldn't fall asleep because I had such a dire case of the bed spins: the ceiling raced before my eyes in tight orbits, the ceiling bending clockwise and coming around again. Blacks and grays smeared across my open eyes; I couldn't close them or the spinning would torque to mean speeds. I felt weightless, watching the colors curve and drop like shooting stars.
Twenty-one. Twenty-four.
Still I couldn't sleep, lying with Karla. A woman who wanted me to be here.
Not just my maraca, but my whole arm numbing now, drifting away.
This had happened to my feet, too, the freeze creeping its way through them. Thirty It was always happening, this feeling like my own limbs were leaving me and floating off. Karla wanted to have a freebie and maybe I should have tried. Thirty-six. Bursts of blood jumping in my vein, in that spot between my bicep and forearm. Every time it blasted, it was louder, sounding like grenades in my ears, and they drowned out my thoughts. Forty-one. I couldn't hear what I was thinking. All those thoughts, the thoughts I must have been having. I must have been thinking about Karla, about kissing her mouth and saying that I'd like to let her try. There was no way that I could have been thinking about anything else. Fifty-nine. Just the pulse. The noise of popping blood blaring louder than grenades. I couldn't stand it, couldn't let this go on a second longer because my eardrums might explode, the membranes ripping and launching and splattering like phlegm in a sneeze.
Seventy.
I needed to get her off of my arm, but I didn't want to move, didn't want to ruin this, and then I noticed I was pissing. Right in her bed. It soaked my legs, wormed its way up the small of my back. How long had I been going? No way to know. So many warm ones and whiskey shots, it could have been an hour. Eighty-three. With my free hand, I felt around, and yeah, the whole middle of the bed was drenched, and I kept thinking, stop wrecking this, don't spoil it. I needed to get my arm out from under Karla, but if I moved her, she'd notice the condition of the bed and I didn't want that to happen. All I could do was he there, helpless, waiting for my eardrums to rupture. All I could do was wait for my arm to buzz itself for so long that it couldn't ever wake up, limp and useless.
The next thing I knew Karla shook and hit me. "Wake up," she said. "How could you do this?"
Me, Rhonda, trying to steady my clogged head, an ocean of liquor sloshing from ear to ear.
I said, "What?" and she said, "Get out of here," and I said, "Why?" and she grabbed my hand and shoved it in between my legs. Into that damp faucet of embarrassment. "Get out of here," she said, standing up. "I bring you to my house, and this is the thanks I get?!"