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In the dead of night, after a long stretch on Interstate 20, Gerard decides to take a break from driving. Their van is dwarfed by the rigs that line up in diagonal rows in the lot of the rest stop — but what they lack in size they make up for in density. There are eight guys asleep among all their gear, and Gerard in the driver’s seat. He stops the Siouxsie CD he’s had looping since Greensboro and cuts the engine, rests his forehead on the steering wheel. Nothing sounds better than squeezing in between Ray and Cheese and passing out, but they have serious ground to cover before morning. Gerard steels himself, and steps out into the muggy night. There’s the promise of coffee in the 24 hour store, and a place to piss that’s not the side of the road.
These truck stops are like green rooms — entirely interchangeable in their blandness and filth. There are probably ten different kinds of mold growing in the shower stalls, but Gerard just pisses and tries not to touch anything. He’s washing his hands when he notices a guy staring at him from the other end of the sinks.
The guy’s eyes are narrowed at him. He looks twitchy from trucker speed. His lip is curled in obvious disgust.
“We got a problem?” Gerard asks, same voice he uses to taunt hecklers onstage. The bravado slips on easy now, like a favorite coat.
The guy doesn’t take the bait, just keeps his arms crossed tight over his chest, jaw working.
Whatever. It’s not Gerard’s problem if some redneck gets worked up about a guy wearing makeup. From the way the guy is staring, he’s probably just pissed his dick is interested. Gerard digs the eyeliner pencil out of the pocket of his leather jacket and makes a point out of touching up his waterline, opening his mouth wide and rolling his eyes back. Black mold growing in the ceiling tiles. Charming.
After a good smudging with his fingers, the look is done. One more month in the van with no haircut and he’ll look like Joan Jett. Gerard glances back — the guy is still looking. He blows himself a kiss in the mirror, winks. Turns to leave, fishing the crumpled cigarette pack from his pocket. He has to pass the guy on his way out, so he smiles like he does when someone throws a bottle at the stage. “Next time just take a picture. It’ll last longer.”
If the guy had actually thrown a bottle, Gerard might have been able to dodge. There’s no ducking his massive palm though, and he shoves Gerard headfirst into the wall like he’s trying to demo the place.
Gerard doesn’t remember falling, but he’s on the floor. A throb rippling through his skull, and a sharper pain in his mouth, on the inside of his lip. When he drags his tongue across it he tastes blood — the sense memory of playground scrapes and nicked fingers from cutting pictures out of magazines. Greeted by one sharp tooth that wasn’t there before. There’s probably a bone fragment on the ground somewhere, but he doesn’t spot it among the stained tiles.
“Get the fuck up,” the guy sneers. Gerard tries, but his head is swimming and the tiles are slippery. Apparently, he’s not moving fast enough — the guy yanks him up by the front of his jacket, ripping the seam at the armpit. It’s hard to think straight, and Gerard’s muscles still feel weak from the pain and adrenaline, but he knows which way the door is. He makes it a half-step before feeling another tug on his jacket.
“C’mon man, just let it go. You don’t have to— I’ll tell my friends I slipped or something. We’ll be gone like that.”
Gerard tries to snap with shaking fingers, but it doesn’t make a sound.
The guy half-coughs, half-laughs, and Gerard is sure he’s going to get hit again but instead there’s just a heavy shove in the direction of the stalls. Gerard tries to protest, but a wave of nausea comes over him, and he gags. He holds onto the filthy stall door to stay upright, thick acrid saliva pooling in his mouth and threatening to choke him. He spits, but it’s weak — strings of it rolling down his chin and dripping onto the floor.
There’s a deep pressure behind his eyes, and he must lose time again. It can’t be for too long, though. He’s still upright, but he doesn’t remember when the stall door locked and his jeans and underwear got pushed down around his thighs.
There’s something hard against his asshole. Hard and kind of sharp. It’s hard to focus on it though, because everything is hazy and it feels like the direction of gravity keeps changing. He wants to throw up but he’s not sure which way the ground is. One sharp shove and feeling of tearing flesh blasts away the fog. Gerard gasps, inhaling lungfuls of the bathroom’s miasma — sour amphetamine sweats and trucker piss, lot lizard cum and Hep B. His sneakers with the hole in the sole slipping on something wet as he tries to twist away.
“Stop, stop, fuckin’ hurts, ” Gerard begs. In the little stall, his voice sounds small and high and compressed.
He thinks of his girlfriend, probably asleep at home in Jersey. Their little dog curled up with her in bed, keeping her company while he’s on the road. The thought is slippery and vague, dissipating when he tries to hold onto it. The only thing that sticks is the pain.
“Shut the fuck up. This is the kind of sick shit you faggots love, isn’t it?” He sounds strained, nerves and effort, but he doesn’t stop shoving whatever it is deeper, against the curled-tight rejection of Gerard’s body, dry sandpaper over a glue trap. “Maybe I’ll just puncture your gut now. Save you the trouble of dying of AIDS.”
Despite the threat, the guy seems to get bored with this particular humiliation fast. He withdraws the sharp hard thing from Gerard’s ass, and there’s a plasticky clattering sound as he tosses it aside. Gerard doesn’t move, doesn’t know how this kind of thing ends. He stays pressed close to the wall, doesn’t dare even move to wipe the tears that are spilling down his cheeks.
But the guy doesn’t pull away. That wasn’t the end of anything at all. It was a sadist’s preparation. There’s a shuffling of fabric and a guttural hacking and the slimy ooze of trucker spit down his ass. It burns against the chewed-up flesh, probably some mix of Red Bull and dip. Blunt pressure against his hole — thick, thicker than any of the tentative fingers he’s tried before, with lots of weed and lube. Gerard’s heart, already running at a rabbit’s pace in his ears, somehow cranks up even higher. He wonders if he can make himself pass out again, if he can ask for a punch to the face that will stop any new memories from forming.
No such luck. The first hard press of the guy’s cock against his asshole robs the words out of his mouth. It’s the anticipation of pain paired with the effect of being flattened against the wall, nothing left to spare in his lungs. However much the guy pried him open before doesn’t seem to be enough, though. After a sickening moment of intrusion, the guy grunts, pulling back.
“You’d think it would just slip in, huh?” The guy says, but he’s already trying again. This time, when he lines up he pulls Gerard’s hips back and bucks his hips even harder. Gerard turns his face at the last second so his nose isn’t flattened against the wall. The head of the guy’s cock briefly sticks before slipping out. The guy slams his palm against the wall in frustration, and it sounds like a gunshot.
“It’s not gonna fucking work man!” Gerard yelps, panic rising again.
All that gets him is a smack that catches his ear and cheekbone. It sends his head bouncing off the wall and he imagines broken blood vessels, brain damage, clots that lurk until the day they kill. The guy has his hand twisted tight in the collar of Gerard’s t-shirt, crewneck like a garrote, and Gerard wonders for the first time if this guy is going to kill him.
Streaky visions of the funeral slip away with the creak and slam of the door outside. As heavy boots shuffle in, one leathery thick palm covers Gerard’s mouth. Hot sour breath in his ear, the sensation of ants down his spine. “Don’t make a fucking sound.”
They wait like that for what feels like forever, long enough that Gerard can feel the guy start to go soft. Whoever’s out there is taking their sweet time. It’s some kind of miracle — this guy doesn’t seem brave enough to rape him within earshot of someone else.
“You got fucking lucky,” The guy spits before pulling away, still holding Gerard’s head to the wall. “Now close your eyes and count to two hundred. You leave before then and I swear I’ll fucking kill you in the parking lot.”
It’s probably an empty threat, but the counting gives him something to focus on. The guy is gone by the time Gerard gets to ten. Quick exit, the door to the outside slamming. To whoever sees him, this looks like just another sleazy truckstop hookup, nothing to look twice at. For all the intruder knows, Gerard is leaving this place with some cash in his pocket. By the time he counts to fifty, he starts to worry about the pulverized feeling in his head. One hundred. The room is still and quiet, the buzzing of the fluorescent light above the only sound beside his own heavy breathing. No one is out there, no one is coming back.
Two hundred. Gerard opens his eyes. There on the tile floor — the tube of mascara he stole from the Wal-Mart in Scranton. He picked it because it was the one he remembered on his mom’s vanity. The cheery pink and green plastic is streaked with dried blood.
He catches a glimpse of himself in the mirror as he leaves. It’s a shuffling corpse-like figure, seen only out of the corner of his eye. On the walk to the van, he notices the shoulder of his only jacket is torn. The sleeve dangles off it like a zombie limb.
Towering lights hang over the parking lot like alien craft. They’re too bright — Gerard shades his eyes with his hand as he stumbles in what he hopes is the direction of the van. Even walking hurts, burning and sore and sharp, depending on the step.
He locates the van under one of those otherworldly lights. Seeing that piece of shit van feels like waking up from a bad dream — the relief of re-discovering the world outside the hell you were immersed in. Mikey is still asleep on the other side of the console, curled up in a compact ball against the door. He’s still and peaceful and the exact opposite to the whirlwind of filth Gerard has dragged from the truck stop to the van. Gerard has to contaminate him, though — there’s no way he can drive like this.
He nudges Mikey, who opens one eye warily.
“‘Sup dude? We there yet?” Mikey says, voice thick with sleep.
Gerard shakes his head, feels his brain rolling around like loose marbles. “I don’t feel so good. Need you to drive.”
Mikey makes a face like he’s about to call bullshit and pull his hoodie back over his eyes. Gerard grabs Mikey’s wrist (the filth leaching out of him and spreading up Mikey’s skinny arm) and that gets his attention.
Gerard looks Mikey hard in the eyes. The truth of what just happened to him is rising like bile in his throat, threatening to spill out everywhere. If he lets it out then it’s a forever thing — stuck to him like the puke stains that never quite come out of the van’s floor mats. Gerard forces himself to swallow. “Dude, please, my head is killing me and I think I might be sick or something so just do this for me, okay?”
The haze of sleep seems to lift from Mikey in an instant. He sits up, ruffling his bangs instinctively even though it’s the middle of the night in the middle of nowhere. “Okay, yeah. For sure. Just give me a sec.” He leaves briefly to get a coffee, and the wait for him to return is agonizing. Gerard crawls over the console and into the body-warmed passenger seat. He checks his face in the rearview mirror — there are going to be bruises to explain in the morning, but for now the dark hides them.
When Mikey returns, triumphant with a twenty ounce cup in his hands. He balances it between his skinny knees as he starts the engine.
“Don’t let me fall asleep,” Gerard says. That’s what they tell you to do in those medical TV shows, right? He can’t die in his sleep in the passenger seat, not when Mikey’s driving.
“Motherfucker, you better stay up. If I fall asleep at the wheel it’s curtains for all of us.”
Gerard snorts at that, surprising himself. If that happened, it would be proof that someone up there truly wants him dead — and who is he to argue with the divine plan?
Otter’s voice comes from behind them. “What’s so funny? And why are we stopped?”
Mikey puts the van in gear. “Don’t worry about it, dude. Go back to sleep.”
Otter must take Mikey at his word, because there’s no more sounds from the back as Mikey ferries them back out onto I-20. Neither of them restart the CD, so it’s quiet except for Mikey describing the dream he had been having about mole people in New York City. It’s agonizingly normal, while Gerard’s animal instincts are still on high alert and his body aches. Slowly, his hands stop shaking. It’s still hard to focus on Mikey’s story, but Mikey doesn’t seem to care. On either side of the road, America is a dark, open, hungry void. The highway cuts through it, a narrow strip of light that points them in only one direction — forward. Gerard hopes the sun never rises and they never stop again.