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It starts when he comes home on a Tuesday night, sneezing red into a paper towel, filling all the brail-like butterfly indentions with blood. The light pink “Happy Birthday!” calligraphy, it’s stained to a dark brown muddle of letters and balloons. Brendon’s nosebleed, it drips straight down the middle of his cupid’s bow and chin onto the kitchen floor.
“Dude, what the fuck?” Spencer’s laughing unsurely as all of this red fills the cracks in the tile.
“You should have seen the other guy,” He replies, voice nasally, cringing when a bit of his blood gets on his tongue. You’re already at his feet, wiping it all up into an enigma as Ed Sheeran plays from the apartment next door. Someone bangs on the wall and then it’s just the incessant sound of the ceiling fan against Spencer’s questions towards Brendon.
“Who did this?” More blood drips down his throat, staining the wings of the birds on the collar of his shirt until it doesn’t even look like he’s the one bleeding.
“What did you do to get all fucked up?” All of these questions that Spencer’s throwing in his direction, and Brendon doesn’t say a word.
You can hear Ed Sheeran lightly sing, “You’ve got the kind of look in your eyes,“ Another knock on the wall, and then slightly quieter, “As if no one knows anything but us.”
Brendon, he blows his nose into another napkin, this one saying, “Happy New Years!” In a single second, all the silver calligraphy and sparkly ribbons go from Party City quality tableware to sticky and red, the wet paper tearing underneath his fingers. Cursive I’s dotted with hearts and balloons, they’re stained into a Valentine’s Day of red. As Spencer continues to push for answers, Brendon just gets snot and blood all over every major holiday.
It’s, “Brendon, are you going to tell us what happened or not?” Followed by Thanksgiving and then Hanukah. Brendon’s blood dries into Turkey Day and Jewish celebration just as Spencer steps forward to wave his hand in Brendon’s face.
It’s, “We’re worried about you, man,” As the pile of crumbled up napkins sticks together with Brendon’s blood.
“It’s nothing, really. The guy who did this to me, he looks way worse,” Brendon’s saying quietly. The track changes from next door. Another knock on the wall. You only watch from the ground, clenching your hand into a fist around the soaking wet towel you’re wiping blood away with until water drips down your knuckles.
Brendon’s nose has stopped bleeding and the guy that did this to Brendon doesn’t exist.
He smiles.
When Spencer isn’t saving up so that he can afford those cooking channels only available on pay per view television or overdosing on diuretic and lithium supplements, he’s gripping wax strips with shaky hands.
When Brendon isn’t out stealing things he doesn’t need from gas stations or having anonymous gay sex, he’s praying. Praying in Gap dressing rooms with his hands undoing some guy’s belt buckle; praying in the cat food aisles of pet stores with his fingers pressed together; praying while whispering words about thanking God for this meal before spooning curls of yellow ramen noodles into his mouth. He’s always running from something, so afraid of getting bored.
But you’re eating takeout on the couch, Miranda Cosgrove and Nathan Cress giggling on the television in unison as he leans his head against your shoulder. Across the street, a squirrel gets run over by a Nissan. Someone gets pulled over for drunk driving.
Animals dying in the middle of the night and fifty year old men standing in their puddles of blood as they get DUI’s. These are the underlying details right now.
Brendon gets up to go the bathroom and you watch him almost trip over the place where the Persian-style tufted rug is curled up. You flatten the Rosette design down with your foot.
There’s a single spot of blood on the couch beside you.
Outside, the drunk driver leans against his car door.
Nathan Cress laughs.
There’s a red stain on his pillowcase, and you figure you shouldn’t mind, because WebMD tells you that you shouldn’t, but you’re still sweating in this shitty Denny’s uniform.
Because it’s winter, and the nasal mucosa is expected to become irritated from the dryness. Because nose-picking could be the cause. Because maybe, just maybe, the other guy does look way worse.
It’s 6AM and a woman orders black coffee. The collar of your shirt is stuck to your neck with sweat as you ask how her Saturday morning is going.
“Good, how about you?”
Brendon is out, probably getting fucked into couch cushions with his jeans at his ankles. Spencer is googling exercise nausea and lifting cupped hands full of pink and yellow weight loss pills into his mouth. Ceramic plates full of scrambled eggs are burning the palms of your hands into the exact same colors.
“Amazing.”
Now he’s lying about the nights, hiding it all behind the smiles. He’s looking back at you, the pink corners of his mouth stained purple with cough syrup, teeth noticeably not purple at all in this pretty, broken, relieved smile. Brendon hasn’t gone to a single class this week.
Always on the edge of orgasm. The highlight of prayer. The border between conscious thought and psychosis. The silver-lining of human existence. The cusp of everything.
He prays so much that the creases in his hands should be gone. He gets so high that the rings of his nostrils are red. He’s underneath you so often and it’s all Ryan, Ryan, Ryan. He has such a hard time living.
He’s built his life around every single self-destructive coping method out there. He’s pushing through life in the pursuit of pleasure like a virgin to the game. And that isn’t pretty at all. But he’ll smile that red velvet cupcake of a smile, gums dark pink around his artificially-whitened teeth, and it’s so pretty.
“You’re not going to feel very nice once that high wears off,” You’re telling him. He wipes his nose with the back of his hand. You chew away at a hangnail.
“Ryan, I haven’t felt nice in a long time.”
Scrolling through WikiHow pages titled, How to Spot a Cocaine User and reading through check lists, and it’s all about the details. Somehow, paying attention to the details is both a way to let go and hold on tighter.
At this point in the Fox marathon that is your existence, everything about him has threaded itself into a specific column of dates on your calendar, and you have bitten your nails too low to even begin to try and untangle him from Wednesday evenings. That’s the only day he’s ever home. Brendon Urie – the king of melodrama and codeine-rinsed throats. Brendon Urie – the face of closeted gays all across America, too busy sipping Coors Light and going to church to notice. Brendon Urie – The light of your life, if you could call him that.
Maybe the sun frays into yellow and pink shadows and maybe it doesn't. Spencer’s stuffed the medicine cabinet full with diuretic, Flintstones vitamins, and diet supplements. When he’s drawing his lips shut around water bottles to rinse the Nite-Burn down his throat, you’re standing in doorways and frowning. You’re standing in hallways and wishing that Brendon’s mouth tasted like nothing, his skin smelled like nothing. You’re standing in showers with the Johnson's baby soap dry in your hairline saying something about ‘no more tears!’ as you slide deeper into whatever this feeling is.
But the shower stream is so cold on your shoulders and Brendon’s skin is so warm beneath your fingers.
Gordon Ramsey, he's on the television screen seasoning meatballs in coconut broth with oregano and cardamom seeds. Your head hurts in the way that your head always hurts. Later Spencer will attempt the same recipe and you’ll both wash it all away with the cheap blue raspberry toothpaste you and Brendon found in the children’s section of Walmart.
Kissing Brendon with the blue Walmart sign glowing red behind your eyelids, his razor-burnt jaw just the same color, your head didn’t ache at all.
But now your hands won’t leave your temples.
Certainly, there is something bothering Brendon Urie.
You can hear him laughing on the other side of the apartment with a head full of pills as you stare at the ceiling, and you figure you’re supposed to mind, because WebMD tells you that you should, but you can’t find it in yourself.
Because the toothpaste in the tube is white and the minty foam he spits into the sink comes out pink. Because he rolls the windows down when it’s forty degrees out, his sweaty forehead shining ketchup and mustard with all the taillights and turning signals. Because there are smashed Kleenex boxes hidden at the back of his closet. Because he’s bled an endless fever of red nostrils and eyes into an entire roll of toilet paper.
Because he can say, “Look, Ryan, I know I have a problem,” But he can’t finish the sentence. He can smile with those artificially-whitened teeth and steady himself before losing balance in empty parking lots, but he can’t finish the sentence. Perfectly straight teeth clinking together, tongue sloshing in his cheeks, uvula dark red at the back of his mouth, the Fairly Odd Parents theme song playing from Spencer’s lap top, he really should be able to finish the sentence.
Brendon’s kissing you on Wednesday nights and Timmy Turner is singing, “Guava juice, giant snake, birthday cake, large fries, chocolate shake!”
Spencer, he gets paid to rip hair out of pubic mounds and sometimes armpits; just to come home and stare at you with sticky fingers and strands of hair falling all over his forehead as though he’s sick of his own mind. If it’s waxing vaginas that’s giving him this constant cold, or articles on dieting websites about What Doctors Aren’t Telling You, or the vibration of his cellphone against his ass every three seconds of every day, or the fact that his body fat to muscle ratio is keeping him from playing college football, you’re not sure.
So here he is, this guy with so much skin but not enough melanin for him to stand out in the sun and breathe with his lungs.
Certainly, there is something bothering Spencer Smith.
If Brendon stopped smiling at you, you’d probably be crying in the shower. Somehow your obsession with your roommate’s smile has kept you from sobbing into wet, tiled walls; blowing your nose into glittery, pink loofas. Brendon’s entire existence has become a Crest 3D White Strips commercial and all he had to do is move in with you. Just in the way that his smile is a three-second infomercial, your life has been saved. You should probably be praying that he doesn’t use blow orally.
The trick to forgetting the big picture is to look at everything close-up. The shortcut to closing a door is to bury yourself in the details. Like teeth; cooking channel marathons; buy-1-get-1-free condom packages; waterline-safe eyeliner reviews and ratings. This is how we must wade through life; as if everything's just fine.
Right now Brendon’s jacking you off whilst Gordon Ramsey talks about seasoning hummus and your phone won’t stop ringing. It costed Spencer just under ten dollars to gain access to this exclusive Bright House channel where Gordon Ramsey just talks about minced garlic and cracked black pepper while you listen to the slippery sound of Brendon’s fist on the shaft of your dick.
Yesterday he was drinking egg whites and it was all about, “Yeah, I’m not gay. I’ll suck your dick, but that doesn’t make me gay.”
Yesterday he was staining his button down shirt in what could have been bird intestines and capillaries and it was all about, “Then what does?” As unfertilized chicken dripped down his chin. All he could do was slurp it back in through his teeth. Now all he can do is switch hands every few minutes, wiping his palm onto the armrest of the couch every time his wrist gets tired.
Right now he’s high on acid, and later you’ll google the symptoms with the front of your boxers sticking to your thigh, seeing his dilated pupils when all that shows up is pertaining to gastroesophageal reflux disease. You’ll see the way his forehead shined with each time the scene cut, with each time Gordon Ramsey sharpened his knife, and you’ll try to spell that out on your tongue. G-a-s-t-r-o-e-s-o-p-h-a-g-e-a-l. WebMD thinks the prominence of gastroesophageal reflux disease (otherwise known as GERD) in America is surprising, but what’s even more surprising is how soon you’ll lose all six syllables in your mouth.
Next it’s LSD symptoms with your leg caught in between the mattress and the wall. Brendon is passed out on the couch, semen dry on his stomach. Tomorrow he’ll miss all of his classes and you’ll wonder why he even thought he could be a doctor in the first place. When he was trying to get you off, he had to lay his head in your lap because of how badly his head ached. He insisted that you let him give you a hand job. You did.
Brendon and sweaty orgasms, this is all you feel now. This is what your nervous system has been reduced to; his nails digging into the backs of your hands and a sexual affinity towards auto-erotic asphyxiation.
You guys leave the apartment at two and from there on out it’s the gum Brendon’s chewing and Spencer’s hands cupped around his mouth every time his stomach starts to growl above the sound of OutKast’s debut album and Christmas music. It’s nervous looks at Brendon as he ignores his ringtone. It’s you’re invited and but I don’t want to go.
Brendon, he’s staring at his hands on the steering wheel with the most annoyed look turning his cheeks pink.
Right there, across the white picket fence across the street, spray painted in cursive is, “Jesus saves. Believe this!” It seems every day Brendon is driving past it faster and faster. Now all you see is a swish of colors. As 12mph changes to 25mph changes to 32mph, his hand rests farther and farther up your thigh.
“Hey, at least you’re not on drugs right now,” Spencer’s saying, and he doesn’t really sound relieved.
Green shaving gel foaming in the floorboard carpet, the windows of sky scrapers glossy amber and lime in the daylight, Brendon’s saying, “It is what it is,” As if to somehow undermine the entirety of his drug addiction. His reliance on illegal chemicals. Brendon, he’s missed all of his classes.
Brendon’s ragged breathing coming from the driver’s seat; the sound of him humming to the songs on the radio, tear ducts red as a Christmas card – your hand shakes on the armrest at all of this. And Brendon, the religious empire of his own cathartic doctrine, he starts spitting out the same words that are bleeped on the reality TV he watches with buttery fingers.
He’s saying, “Ryan I told you I didn’t want to go to this fucking shit,” He pauses and the stop light turns green, “I feel like fucking shit, fuck, man,” He’s groaning in a mantra of reality TV-based aggression, clauses and syllables and conjunctions swishing around in his teeth.
Spencer is in the backseat staring straight past the back of Brendon’s head, into the windshield. Brendon’s sipping from wine inside of a paper bag as he grips the steering wheel with his other hand, not even trying to be discreet about it. This entire time, he’s just staring at his hand on the steering wheel. The sky is yellow through the sunroof and Brendon, his fingers are curled tightly around beige paper creases but somehow slipping so loosely away from rationality at the same time.
For once Brendon Urie has walked through a door and he isn’t all coked out on the refined powder that he snorted off the rim of the bathtub or perspiring profusely due to the acid tabs that he stuck underneath his tongue.
You’re just telling yourself not to fall in love with the teeth whitening products he uses and think you’re in love with the guy.
When it’s so impossible for him to stand up straight, the idea of him being capable of doing so becomes an obsession. Like every single way you can eat an apple. Glazed in salted caramel. Shredded on the top of a fruit smoothie. Diced in passion-fruit-seasoned fruit salad. Brendon Urie having enough energy just to not fall to the floor becomes the equivalent of tripping all over Gordon Ramsey's Youtube channel.
If Spencer would just stop wasting his money.
But now you’re at some art gallery, trying to sell your art, and the sky isn’t yellow at all.
“I saw you were wearing a nametag, is any of this your art? Because I was looking to buy something,” Some guy is saying to you and the underlying detail of this situation is his caviar-breath. His Express dress pants that are freshly stained with a splatter of either almond milk or semen. The underlying detail is that he doesn’t even seem to generally care. The tails of his button-down shirt are untucked and his beard is uneven.
The underlying detail is that he’s staring straight past you.
And just like that, Brendon is standing up perfectly straight. The guy standing in front of you, he smiles and it looks so contrived.
“Yeah, only a few paintings. But, you know. I’m Ryan.” Even now, he won’t look you in the eyes for more than a few seconds.
“You know Brendon? I’m Jon Walker,” He gesticulates with that same ugly smile stuffed full of Spearmint chewing gum, the green bits bunching up around his teeth as he talks.
“We’re roommates, yeah. What brings you here?” Spencer has wandered off to the bathroom and Brendon is leaning against a nearby pillar on his phone.
“Well, I’m in town for most of this month and Wednesday is the only day I work, so I thought I’d just come to the art gallery and look around during my lunchbreak, as I’ve got nothing else to do,” He’s articulating each word incorrectly, the lisp in his voice obvious as he stares straight past you at Brendon.
This guy.
This guy, he has no personality at all. He’s apparently a big fan of contemporary art, but he’ll get lost in the linoleum flooring of the art gallery as though it’s nothing. And it is nothing. He’ll smile with all those silver capped teeth at the back of his gums standing out obtrusively against the rest of his mouth like it’s something, and you’ll only wish it could be. He’s corporate masculinity and bored, fake smiles. The perfect caricature of self-control.
“You know, I’d offer so much if you were interested in selling this.” He hasn’t even looked at the painting for three seconds, but now he’s looking at you and grinning.
Certainly, nothing at all is bothering Jon Walker.
It’s Wednesday again, just a different time, and Brendon’s pink sheets are burning strawberry sherbet into your shoulder blades in almost the exact same way. In the other room, Fairly Odd Parents is playing from Spencer’s laptop and you’re suddenly really fixated on all of the empty blister packs on Brendon’s desk as Vicky yells at Timmy Turner.
“Twerp!” She’s screaming, and Brendon is underneath you whispering, “Ryan, Ryan, Ryan.”
But on any other day of the week he’s on top of someone else whispering, “I’ve stopped praying.”
“So how much are you willing to offer?” You can see yourself asking with tired eyes, leaving dirty footprints all over Jon Walker’s marble floor. Instead you’re in one of his bathrooms, taking a phone call with the door left open just a crack.
The jewelry channel has been playing for the past three hours, this woman’s shaky acrylic fingers wrapped around sapphires and rubies as you stare into the sink. On the phone, Brendon is high. You’re leaning with your cheek pressed to the cold medicine cabinet as he sobs into the receiver.
Then Jon is coming up behind you. He’s sipping Dr. Pepper as this lady on channel 34 calls out prices and percentages.
“So, I was thinking” Jon’s saying, ”You should quit your job.” You can hear the jewelry channel playing in the background, and you’re trying so hard to focus on what Brendon is saying on the phone.
“Ryan, is that Jon?” Brendon’s pressing his lips together and gasping exaggeratedly. You can hear the channel narrator saying, “These earrings are made from 98.9% sapphire. You can tell just by looking at that beautiful blue!”
“Well?” Jon asks. This kid with the droopy eyelids and the bloody nose, he’s laughing over the phone.
The lady inside of the television screen, her shaky hands brushing over a necklace, she says, “This necklace here, at one hundred and nineteen dollars, is a steal. Look at that shiny ruby red embellishment!” You’re wishing you could.
“It’s not Jon,” You’re mumbling. Jon changes the channel. I-Carly. Marilyn Monroe Documentary. Infomercials, one after another. Granola bar advertisements. The limelight of this generation’s cable-obsessed epidemic.
Jon, he’s saying, “Just think about it, okay?”
Oh, you have.
You change the channel back. Now she’s talking about emeralds. Jon smiles and walks out of the bathroom.
“Then who is it?” Brendon’s prying, sniffling all of his tears and snot back into his nose.
Jon comes back up behind you with that same fake smirk wrapped around a straw, drinking a smoothie. He sits down on the toilet seat.
“It’s the television. Jon isn’t here.”
Now he’s spilling the smoothie over his fist, whispering, “Fucking hell.” The god of offhandedness is all drenched in lactose and pink. The king of carelessness is so, so clumsy.
The lady on channel sixty-three, she whispers, “These bracelets are perfect for young girls, in my opinion. You’ll look like a fool if you walk into the workplace wearing this full-fledged pink.” You won’t take your eyes off the bathroom sink.
“You can only get this one-of-a-kind ring if you call right now! This lovely copper band will catch anyone’s eye. Just look at the way the light gleams off of it!” She’s saying.
Jon wraps his hand around your waist, resting his head on your shoulder. Blended pineapples and strawberry seeds are dry on his hand. He starts licking the smoothie off his fingers, staring at you in the mirror.
“Ryan, I know that was Jon.” He starts crying again.
You can hear this television woman saying, “We’ll be right back in a few.”
Jon takes the phone from you and hangs up.
“Jon, he was fucking crying. C’mon. You didn’t have to do that,” You’re frowning as you say this and he’s smiling back at you, the bronze-capped teeth at the back of his mouth coming out to sing with the 90-watt lightbulbs.
You sigh and open the medicine cabinet.
There are so many pills and there are still so many pills as he turns you around and crowds up against you, forcing your hips against the sink. He leans forward and kisses you and then you’re knocking all of the orange translucent bottles and leaking tubes of toothpaste into the sink.
Fluoride and loose-capped drugs, it all tumbles straight down the drain. Colgate and Listerine are mixing into a big puddle of blue with Calorease as he anchors your hips with his hands. The ceiling fan keeps spinning.
You might have to recommend that one to Spencer.
The channel 34 woman, she’s saying, “And we’re back. Don’t you just love these Opal earrings?”
Jon Walker, he’s saying, “Ryan Ross, where have you been all of my life?”
He takes the remote control from your hand and turns off the television. Stares at the back of your head in the mirror.
“I think I love you,” He’s whispering down your throat and you’re thinking something entirely different. Your hand tightens around his wrist, all those uneven nails digging pink arcs into his arm.
Then Jon’s on his knees with his jaw all over the place.
No one other than Brendon Urie, himself, hates you as much as the God Brendon tries so hard to please. Somewhere on the other side of town, Brendon sobs into a call that’s already ended.
The underlying detail is that, “He doesn’t have to know.”
The sky levels over in between the panes of the living room windows, pink shining through the gaps in Brendon’s hair as you look up at him from his lap.
He turns the TV on because it helps you sleep. Shakes up his can of Dr. Pepper. You stare up his nostrils as it fizzes over his fist. You think your life is a lot like this; shaken up soda. He stares back down at you. You hear the weather anchor talking as he looks away again.
“Brendon, I slept with Jon.”
The underlying detail of this situation is the way the light from the television turns all of his nose hairs blonde. It’s the lingering taste of Colgate Max Fresh and ketchup in your mouth. It turns out the stain on Jon’s dress pants was actually hand lotion. The underlying detail was that they were a wool blend of 90% wool.
As he takes a sip, Brendon Urie pushes you to the ground.
The other 10% was polyester.
Now you’re out with Jon Walker and Spencer at some fancy restaurant where everything either looks like glass or is made of glass.
At home, Brendon’s trying to hotbox the bathroom, trying to stuff dirty towels underneath the door without biting too many holes in his lips. That candy cane of sore lips and artificially whitened teeth is stuffed full with marijuana when just a few days ago it was slurring into the phone receiver about his love for you. Whiskey seeping into the holes where he got his wisdom teeth pulled, he somehow still had the capacity to form and verbalize words about his feelings.
Steam is fogging over your nose in the mirror, and you draw a smiley face with your finger. Scratch it out. Spencer's on his knees in the bathroom stall. You stare at the soles of his shoes reflected in the mirror as you hear his vomit hit the insides of the toilet bowl.
The gradient of mint tiles and puddles of piss is falling blurry in your vision. The sunrise of Spencer’s pink limbs and urine-covered dirty green flooring turns into a sunset of purples and tropical oranges each time the overhead light flickers. Vomit dry on his chapped lips, he’s coughing up a different dinner in a different bathroom, staining a different shirt, staring into a different porcelain bowl with the exact same eating disorder. You can see his torn sneakers, a cold toe escaping out through the side, and all the sudden Jon is coming into the bathroom.
He takes one look at the bathroom stall and jerks his head in Spencer’s direction as the door shuts behind him.
“Well. That sucks.”
Spencer’s flushing the toilet and you’re wondering how Jon can be so dense with apathy every second of every day.
You’re wondering how he can remain so carefree and listless without nudging his fingers against the side of his nose every day and snorting granulated powders and bleeding an endless fever of red nostrils and red eyes into Kleenex boxes.
You’re wondering how he can remain the most boring person you’ve ever come across without shoving toothbrushes and curled fingers down the muscle of his tongue until his stomach aches.
This emotionless guy who smiles at mailmen and buy-1-get-1-free TV dinners as if they’re something less than him – he isn’t on the cusp of anything. He’s just there. There, smiling as Spencer wipes puke off of the toilet seat and there as you smile back at him.
Spencer isn’t spitting out stomach acid and breakfast buffets around two crooked fingers anymore, but Jon is still smiling that painfully forced smile. You’re sort of wishing he just wouldn’t smile at all.
Here’s another chance for Spencer to choke on his own vomit. Jon has bought your painting for more than your annual salary. Now he won’t stop inviting you and Spencer over.
Right now, in Jon Walker’s dining room, Spencer Smith spoons chili between his teeth desperately and Jon stares as it drips down onto the front of his shirt. Ground beef and diced white onion, it all mixes in with the floral pattern of his shirt until flowers that were once yellow turn pink. The underlying detail of right now is the passcode lock on each door. The overflowing bowl of dog food but the lack of dog. The smile that doesn’t leave Jon’s face.
“Buddy, you might wanna slow down a bit,” He’s laughing in Spencer’s direction, flicking his eyes towards his napkin. Everything either looks like glass or is made of glass.
The way in which Jon seems to noticeably not care for or about anything at all is the only thing bothering you. There are so many things in the world that could bother Jon; writers who structure their manic-depressive anti-heroes based entirely on anonymous submissions to outdated mental health forums; owners who leave their husky dogs to chew power chords to their deaths; people named Spencer Smith who swallow overcooked chicken breast and steaming hot chili just to spit it back out in a motley of stomach acid and watery soda; people named Brendon Urie who leave at night and don’t come back until the afternoon; people named Ryan Ross who are stuck in the middle of it all.
So many things are here to bother Jon, and all he can do is smile at you and flick his eyes towards bathroom stalls and napkins.
In this moment, you lay with your body dangling off of the mattress, sheets stained into an enigma underneath your thighs, slices of lightning escaping through the shades and turning your eyelids red every few seconds. Spencer gags into the toilet bowl down the hall. He thinks you can’t hear him vomiting over the sound of the faucet, but you can.
Brendon’s out, sniffling in gas station bathrooms as if the only way to fight chemicals is with more chemicals; fighting side effects with things that just cause more side effects.
Then Spencer’s coughing and he can’t stop. He’s choking on his own vomit and the ceiling fan keeps spinning. You’re in the doorway saying to him, Spencer, please stop doing this. The underlying detail of this situation is the piss on the toilet seat. If you think hard enough about Brendon’s shitty aim, his 2-hour-old urine sample, it’s impossible to get lost in just exactly what’s happening. But it’s so possible to pretend.
Jon is in one of his bathrooms trimming his pubes into the same shiny, porcelain toilet bowl that Spencer vomited into the other night. He had it professionally cleaned. You don’t know how exactly he’s indicted to handle not slitting his scrotum open with the scissor blades that oscillate across his crotch, just in the same way that you don’t know how exactly he is bothered by nothing at all. His basketball shorts are at his ankles in a pile of netted, black fabric, wrist curving against his hip to execute everything outside of fifth grade sexual education lessons.
Brendon keeps wiping his nose on the sleeve of his sweater, the bright red, irony tomato paste that is his blood drying brown into the cashmere. He looks as though every direction this situation could ever go is embarrassing, his fingers moving in the space between you in a litany of uneven nails and untrimmed cuticles.
He keeps shifting on the couch beside you as the thin layer of his nasal mucosa tears even more with each rub of the heel of his palm against his nose. The television channel changes with each press of your thumb. Reality TV and infomercials zip past the skin of his face, oatmeal advertisements shining in the globs of thick, wet blood above his cupid’s bow and in the reddened creases of his palm.
Jon bought him the cashmere sweater for Christmas, just for the sake of buying him something expensive, and now it’s covered in anemic, junky blood clots. Everything is embarrassing – You sitting there leniently with drug abuse hotlines written with a pink ballpoint pen between your thumb and index finger, and him sitting there, trying to guess the color of three-hundred dollars and ninety-nine cents before all of the stains. His hand twitches on the couch cushion.
All you can do is grab his wrist and try to forge the expression of someone who is repulsed. You’re not sure which side to contort your face to until your eyes fall onto the face of someone who’s just over-seasoned their salad or a chemo-patient who’s just become aware of taste aversion. So you just frown. You frown and he slinks back into a fetal position as 1-800 numbers slide across the screen with each time the pad of your thumb hits the remote control.
“Here. Just take it.” You’re handing him the remote control and closing your eyes. “Oh, yeah. And take the fucking sweater off. Jesus Christ.”
He doesn’t tell you not to curse in the Lord’s name. Not anymore. You open your eyes and he’s pulling all of the blue threaded cashmere over his head.
The ceiling fan keeps spinning. Somewhere in the world, Spencer changes the setting on a treadmill, a curl of Jon’s pubic hair floats in the plastic-wrap-like toilet water. A bead of blood rolls down the pink of Brendon’s nipple. The sweater is stuck on his nose.
And you kiss him, his eyelashes fluttering against the mask of blue cashmere, the front already turning bright red.
He’s mumbling, “Ryan,” As his eyelashes spit across his cheeks, and then slightly louder, “Ryan, I can’t see anything.”
Your hands are cupped around his cheeks as you lick into his mouth, tasting blood, and in some sort of way he is your Nite-Burn. Spencer, his hands are cupped around prescription medicine almost every second of everyday and now. Now, yours are too.
The sky turns a darker shade of pink from in between the blinds and then he’s squirming underneath you, puckering his lips as though this is the first time someone’s ever kissed him. You pant into his mouth and the red spot on the front of the cashmere grows wider. You know without even guessing that his eyes are closed. Beneath that sky of knitted fiber, he doesn’t blink, and for some strange reason you know this.
You undo your belt, and from there on out it’s spitting into your hand and listening to vacuum cleaner commercials as you thrust your hips. His lips are so pink.
This Wednesday, it’s not Ryan, Ryan, Ryan. This Wednesday, it’s not fucking Brendon to the sound of Spencer’s vomit hitting the toilet water, and you don’t know if you should be worried or thankful. This Wednesday, it’s not staring down at Brendon until he has to eventually look away.
He gasps. You can hear the weather lady say, “A high of 67 degrees today in Las Angeles,” Over the sound of Brendon moaning a name that isn’t yours before her voice cuts off. The red spot on the sweater is almost covering his entire face now.
You pull the sweater over his head and his eyes have been closed the entire time. Because everything, it’s all about getting away from his life. Offsetting reality. Snorting granulated powders in bathrooms until he’s at the top of Ferris wheels. Clenching his eyes shut when you kiss him until you’re not the one kissing him.
You pull out and the remote control is still in his hand. This entire time he’s been gripping down on the plastic, hitting the on and off button with his thumb randomly, the light from the television flickering across your naked bodies. The weather lady isn’t gesturing towards maps that glow on your abdomens anymore. His nose has stopped bleeding. He doesn’t turn the TV on, even though he knows it helps you sleep. Not anymore.
He hasn’t eaten in three days and everything is embarrassing.
“Jon. What do you do? Just tell me, please.”
You have butterfly hairclips, pink and yellow, stuck into your hair like glittering anchovies, the brown hair framing your face soaked into one dark, sweaty circle. The cardboard he’s torn up beside him with those tanned fingers, it’s saying something about Ages 4+, may warrant choking, for external use only and he’s not saying anything at all.
Brendon – The king of melodrama and flamboyance slinks into the living room to dissolve in a plethora of reality television and product placement. The epitome of modern-day homosexuality. The face of drug addicts all across America. He takes a sip of Coors Light.
“Jon,” You repeat. At the dining table, Jon won’t look you in the eyes.
“I distribute drugs.” You stare at the pink of his tongue behind his teeth as he talks. All the plastic yellow in your hair, it turns pink with the reflection of his moving lips. Tomorrow it’ll be yellow again. Brendon is on the couch behind you and he’s finally eating. It’s only cereal, but it’s something. You frown, but Jon doesn’t notice. He’s licking his lips, smiling, and it doesn’t look forced.
The underlying detail is that he’s been staring straight past you at Brendon the entire time.
It suddenly hits you. Wednesday is the only day I work.
“Get out.”
The underlying detail is that Jon is Brendon’s dealer. The underlying detail is that they’re in love. The underlying detail is that you probably should have seen this coming.
“What?” You know that behind you, Brendon has looked up from his bowl of Lucky Charms. Brendon wasn’t mad because you slept with Jon, he was mad because Jon slept with you. Rainbows and shooting stars of marsh mellow stuck in his teeth, he’s probably frowning just in the way that Jon is frowning right now, except his eyes are red.
God, you love it when his eyes are red.
The design of his hospital gown is distorted by the bulges of wires attached to his upper arms and chest, and you sort of want to reach out and touch him.
Above you, the ceiling fan spins. Heart-rate monitors beep. Bathroom lights flicker. Someone gags into a toilet that won’t flush. Spencer gargles tap water at the back of his throat. Brendon’s hospital gown bunches up underneath his armpits.
Yesterday it was all about, “Ryan, the worst that could happen is you pass out and don’t wake up.”
He was smiling at you with that acute-psychosis smile. He was smiling at you with blood turning his nostrils into two big stop signs. He was smiling at you and it stopped being pretty.
“That’s death, Brendon! That’s fucking death!” You were screaming.
“You act like I’ve spent my life living.”
And here he is, mildly escaping the worst that could happen.
Jon is beside you and he still has that relaxed smile. Brendon, he opens his eyes and he stares straight past you.
"Hi Jon.”
Now he stares straight at you. You already know what he’s about to say.
"Who are you?”
The underlying detail is that you’re scared.