Futureproof Read online

  I see her every Friday and Saturday night at Rocky. By our third weekend we’ve moved from hand-holds to full-blown making out, though I still can’t muster a hand under the bra.

  And then I know what I want. I’m not afraid. Michelle is the missing piece. She fills in the shallow spots and the empty areas, levels out the playing field of me.

  “I feel like I’m falling in love with you,” I say.

  She readjusts in her seat, pulls away. “You’re falling in love with me?”

  “You know me, Michelle. I mean, I told you about my childhood bedwetting problem, not to mention the recurrence of said affliction in ninth grade, for God’s sake.”

  “I’m just not used to guys putting labels on relationships. It’s like they’re afraid of not having a convenient way out. Maybe I’ve learned to feel that way, too.”

  “I didn’t mean to push. Or label you.”

  She pauses. She looks at me. I love how she looks at me.

  “But you’re different, Luke,” she says, finally. Yes! I’m different! “You’re like this raw nerve of passion and naivete and that’s what attracted me to you in the first place.”

  Her eyes are the best eyes God ever crafted. There is a softness in them, a genuineness that unfolds around me like velvet.

  “I want to be your girlfriend, Luke. I want to love you…”

  “But…” I continue her sentence for her.

  “No but.”

  She is smiling now. “I just don’t ever want to cause you any pain.”

  “There won’t ever be pain between us, Michelle. I love you too much to ever be mad at you.”

  She kisses me, slow and deep. I melt again.

  The next week goes by in slow motion. Tabitha is screwing 8-Ball now, her worst asshole to date. Yeah, he seemed all right at first but now has proven himself to be a total jerkoff. He harasses the hapless waitresses at Waffle House and expects everyone to laugh with him for doing it. Most of them do. And Tab spends her every free moment with him. She skips school to be with him, and we haven’t spoken more than a couple of sentences in weeks.

  All I have to tide me over until my next Michelle fix is my mother’s wine stash and a new smoking habit I picked up with some guys from drama. We hotbox a couple Marlboros in the bathroom until the cherry is an inch long, then make for the theater, running down the hill whooping, our heads floating on a nicotine buzz.

  On Friday night Michelle and I decide to skip Rocky and meet at Squirrelly’s party. Squirrelly’s apartment can only be accurately described as squalor. The carpet is stained with wax from long-dead candles, cigarette burns everywhere. Even the walls are dirty, handprints visible around every doorknob. Full-page photographs from magazines are taped to the kitchen cabinets, the walls, the sliding glass door.

  Squirrelly, yelling into the phone something about hers being the last apartment on the left, you dumbass, not the first, hands me a pipe and encourages me through charades to take a hit. I get higher than hell this time and then stumble around the living room, laughing at dumb shit.

  This guy Flick shows up with a rum-punch concoction. He hands me a plastic cup and splashes some in, saying, “Take it easy with this. It’s harder than it tastes. It’ll kill you so fast you won’t even know you’re dead.” And that’s how Flick convinces everybody to drink his World Famous brew. It’s his calling card.

  Squirrelly asks me for a kiss.

  I laugh at the suggestion, more stoned than truly objecting, and drink, drink some more. Half a mouthful of punch escapes the cup, dribbles down my chin. Nobody notices.

  “I’m serious,” she laughs back. “You’re the only guy in this room I’ve never made out with.”

  “Or girl, for that matter,” Michelle interjects.

  “Come on, it’s just a kiss,” Squirrelly says, fluttering her false eyelashes at me.

  I look at Michelle and she nudges me toward Squirrelly.

  She’s a damn good kisser, warm and slow, suggestive of far more than just a kiss. As she lets go of the back of my head, I can feel myself spinning out.

  “And if you think that was good,” she adds, “you should try my blow jobs.”

  I laugh and look around to gauge the reaction from the rest of the room, their faces swimming past in a whirl of color, and they all concur, nodding and laughing. Oh yeah, that’s true, she can totally give great head. Squirrelly’s boyfriend Fred says, as serious as a news anchor, “It is true, man. She could suck a watermelon through twenty feet of garden hose.”

  Michelle is leaning back on the couch with a slight smile, her eyes half closed in her drunk/stoned euphoria.

  “I’ve gotta take a piss,” I say, already halfway to the bathroom door.

  There’s a girl passed out in the tub. I try to maintain balance, urinate as quietly as possible so as not to wake her.

  8-Ball is in the living room, obnoxious as ever, when I get back from the toilet.

  “You call that weed? Check this shit out!”

  He hoists two fifths of gin and a huge bag of herb. “This is weed,” he proclaims. “Moroccan kind bud.” Moroccan kind. Sure it is. 8-Ball is so full of shit. Tabitha has admitted to me that his real name is Brad, of all things. And contrary to my first impression of him that night I went to Rocky and got devirginized, I’ve learned that he’s the biggest bullshitter this side of my stepdad. 8-Ball—Brad—has spent a good amount of time and effort creating his own legend. He’s always telling the story about how he used to be a Marine and was dishonorably discharged for spitting in a drill sergeant’s face before taking a tank AWOL in Kuwait. And everybody buys that crap like it’s on sale.

  And then there’s his toadie, Kyle. Kyle, like 8-Ball, wants everybody to call him by his military nickname. Kyle’s nickname is “Rat,” and it fits him well. He’s only like five feet tall and has beady little eyes. He’s always fruitlessly trying to pick up women by lecturing about military operations and weaponry. Of course, he’s just over-compensating for his miniature dick, with his combat boots and his crewcut. People with crewcuts can’t stand when somebody has long hair. I’ve been growing my hair out, trying to achieve a new look, and Kyle—Rat—always has to make some kind of smart-ass remark about how I look like Bozo or Krusty the Clown. As soon as he sees me stumble out of the bathroom, all stoned and stupid-grinning, he starts in on me.

  “Check it out, 8-Ball,” Rat yells, like a good sidekick. “It’s Krusty!”

  “Krusty has green hair, dumbass,” I say, more a knee-jerk reaction than an attempt at direct confrontation. Rat turns a slight hue of red.

  “What did you say to me, motherfucker?” He gets right in my face. Looking up into it, anyway.

  Was that out loud? I can’t believe I said it myself. The line between interior monologue and actual speech has been blurred and now nothing can keep the liquor from talking. I laugh in my own defense. It was only a joke, guy. But Rat isn’t having it.

  “I asked you what you said, clown.”

  “Leave him alone, Rat,” Michelle says.

  “You don’t need to be getting all bent outta shape, Michelle baby. I’m not gonna ruin your little boyfriend’s precious face, but I am about to kick him in his fucking dick. You don’t know how to use it anyway, do you Bozo?”

  “Fuck you, Rat,” I hear myself say.

  It’s 8-Ball’s laugh, I think, from behind me, that punctuates my brazenness. This pisses Rat off even more. He’s red as my head. My red fucking hair. I’d rather be dead than red on the head.

  And then all eyes shift from the confrontation in the middle of the living room, among the crumpled chip bags and empty plastic cups, to Squirrelly emerging from the bedroom wearing only a long t-shirt. Fred follows close behind, zipping his pants.

  “What the hell are you screaming about, Rat?” Squirrelly demands to know. “I have fucking neighbors.”

  Rat looks at Michelle, who is standing beside me, touching my arm. He points his chin toward her. “Why’d you bring this little bitch?”

  “Don’t call my girlfriend a bitch, dickhead,” I say flatly.

  “I wasn’t talking to you, you dumb fuck. You’re the bitch. Though I bet you’d just love to suck on it, wouldn’t you, Michelle?” he says, grabbing his cock for emphasis.

  “I’ll kill you!” I’m screaming now and don’t care if he has military training or not. Like my man Emo Phillips says, you might mop the floor with me but you’ll have trouble getting into the corners. At least there’s that.

  8-Ball and Fred get between us. It feels good to nearly get into a fight. Especially with this asshole. And with quasi-chivalry on the line at that.

  “You both need to leave,” Squirrelly declares.

  “But he didn’t do anything,” Michelle says. “Rat said he looked like a clown.”

  “Am I wrong?” Rat says.

  “Look, just leave, man,” Fred says to him.

  “Look at his hair! It’s goddam orange and girl-curly and sticks out in every direction!”

  “Please, Rat.” Squirrelly touches his shoulder.

  He stares at her in astonishment.

  “Fine. But I’m gonna get you, Bozo.” He points at me, then turns around and goes to the door. He turns again as he walks out and points at me a second time. I give him a finger of my own. The door slams.

  “Who wants to do some coke?” 8-Ball asks, breaking the silence.

  Although this is the first time I’ve actually seen coke, I’ve watched enough reruns of Miami Vice with Victor to know it on sight. Michelle is first up to get her line. She sucks it up her nose like a pro with a rolled-up twenty-dollar bill, then sits back on the couch with her head cocked at a ninety-degree angle so as not to let any powder escape. After Squirrelly, Fred, 8-Ball, and some other girl have each snorted a line, 8-Ball tosses the baggie at me.

  My head shakes of its own accord. “I don’t mess with the hard shit, man. No offense.”

  “None taken,” says 8-Ball, his bony face contorting with the high. “More for me. But don’t say I never tried giving you nothin’.” He laughs, then sticks two fingers in a glass of water and sucks the liquid up each nostril.

  “Are you sure you don’t want to try any, honey?” Michelle asks.

  “Yeah, I’m sure.” I turn to 8-Ball, who’s hunched over the table cutting out more lines. “Do you care if I get into that gin, man?” I ask him.

  “Go ahead. But you gotta get me a glass.”

  As I make our drinks, I yell from the kitchen, “Why isn’t Tab with you tonight?”

  “She had to go to bed early so she could go to a modeling agency in the morning with her mom or some shit.”

  “Better there than being with you,” I mutter. I contemplate hocking up a loog for his drink but decide against it. He isn’t half as bad when his little toadie bitch isn’t around and he’s not trying to ram his tongue down Tabitha’s throat.

  Michelle is back on her knees snorting another line when I return from the kitchen. I sit on the couch and slug my drink, get up and make another. Michelle doesn’t so much as look at me. She never stops talking. Everyone is talking. I can’t think for all the goddam talking. I keep drinking.

  An hour later Squirrelly and Fred have retired to their bedroom once again and I am more drunk, stoned, and in all other ways fucked up than I’ve ever been. The room is spinning, my head is spinning. A half-full glass of gin slips out of my hand and falls to the carpet. I have to lie down. There’s a perfect empty space in the darkened hallway.

  Michelle and 8-Ball are still talking gibberish and loudly sucking up lines of white powder as my consciousness fades.

  I sleep in blackness, one of those sleeps that has no dreams tethered to it. I don’t know how long I’m out before the black is interrupted by vigorous shaking. I feel my head rocking back and forth, bumping into the baseboard of the wall.

  “Please fuck me, Luke,” a voice says. “Please fuck me. I need you to do this for me. Please fuck me. Please, Luke. Please.”

  I’m still drunk and my eyes won’t focus.

  “I need you to fuck me.”

  “Who? What do you want?”

  Then she leans in close to my face and I can smell her cigarette-stale breath.

  “C’mon. You’re my boyfriend. You’ve gotta do this for me.”

  “Michelle? I can’t do it. I’m too fucked up. Please. I promise I’ll be there for you tomorrow. I have to sleep now.”

  She kisses me deep. I taste plastic.

  “What’s in your mouth?”

  “The coke baggie.”

  “Why?”

  “I had to make sure I got it all.”

  We look at each other for a moment. She can’t keep her eyes on me for more than a half second at a time.

  “I feel like hell and only your dick in me will make it better.”

  “OK.” I tell myself I can muster the stamina, the centered mind needed for this. “OK…where can we go?”

  “Right here.”

  “No way! There’s people ten feet away in the living room.”

  “Then let’s go to Squirrelly’s room.”

  Moans are already emanating from behind the bedroom door. Michelle reaches for the handle.

  “Wait! Are you sure they won’t get pissed at us for interrupting them?”

  “Trust me, Squirrelly won’t give a shit.”

  As she opens the door to the bedroom the moans become louder. Squirrelly is on her back with her legs in the air, Fred is kneeling at the side of the bed in front of her crotch. I squint in the dimness of the room. His arm is moving back and forth. Guttural animal sounds are gurgling from Squirrelly’s throat and Fred has his entire hand inside her, fist-fucking her. I’ve heard of such a thing but didn’t believe it could really happen. The stench of smoke and sweat mingles with the sloshing sounds of fisting. I wrench myself from Michelle’s grasp.

  “I can’t do this here!”

  “Wait! We’ll go in the walk-in.”

  She slips into the closet and pulls me behind her, slamming the door. We are enveloped in complete darkness. Her fingers immediately go to work on my fly. I reach forward blindly and try to cop a feel but she isn’t there.

  And then I’m enfolded in astonishing warmth.

  I can hear her slurping, one hand jacking me up and down, the other pressed on my stomach. My head starts spinning and I collapse backward with a thud against the door. She never loses her grip on me, though, even as I slide to the floor, attempt to make my body prone. There are lumpy piles of clothing everywhere. The stench of mildew is strong.

  “Does that feel good?” she says finally, the sound of her voice interrupting the rhythmic sucking noises.

  “God, yes.”

  “Do you want to be inside me?”

  “Oh my God, yes.”

  “Do you have a rubber?”

  “No.”

  “It doesn’t matter. I’m on the pill.”

  “I love you, Michelle.”

  “I know. Do you want to be on top?”

  We tangle around each other in the thick darkness and then I feel her pubic hair beneath me. She reaches down and places me at the portal to lost virginity. I’m shaking so bad I can barely breathe.

  “Now what?”

  “What do you mean?” she says. “Just push.”

  I push. It is so warm and wet. She still has her shirt and bra on. I am momentarily regretful that I’ve never seen her naked, but it doesn’t matter now. I lay my head on her shoulder and move my hips until I can feel the orgasm coming and I feel like I should be telling her I love her because surely this is what love feels like but I don’t say it, I just keep saying “God” over and over and I don’t stop until my breath is sucked out and I can finally breathe again. I roll off of her and hit the wall.

  “Did you cum?” she asks.

  “Yeah, I came. You couldn’t tell?”

  “I need you to fuck me more.”

  “I can’t. I’m drunk. I can’t even tell which side of my head, you know…which part is up—is on top.”

  She lies there beside me silently and at some point gets up to leave. I’m not sure when. I pass out again.

  It’s morning when I come to, still half drunk. The smell of sex and mold is strong. The living room is trashed. Michelle is passed out on the couch. 8-Ball is rummaging around in the kitchen.

  “What’s up, Minute Man?” he says, cackling with laughter. “Michelle was just overjoyed about your performance last night.”

  “What do you mean?”

  He laughs harder and with more dedication.

  I sit next to Michelle and stroke her hair. I like to tuck it behind her ear. She’s so beautiful in the light, the morning sun streaming through the window, dust particles illuminated like tiny floating paint chips.

  She wakes and looks at me through half-closed eyes and smiles.

  “Do you want to walk to the store with me?”

  “Sure. Do we need cigarettes or something?” She rubs her eyes and sits up.

  “Yeah. And I want coffee. I still feel drunk.”

  “Me, too.”

  8-Ball comes into the room.

  “We’re going to the store on the corner. Do you want anything?”

  “What are you gettin’? Some Minute Maid?”

  “Very funny, 8-Ball,” Michelle says. She gives him a look.

  “Wait, I know, why don’t you pick me up some Minute Rice. Or maybe just let me have a minute of your time. All it’ll take is a minute.”

  “Let’s go, Luke,” Michelle says.

  I don’t know whether to feel hurt or happy. At least she still wants to hold my hand. And the day is gorgeous. It’s cold and we can see our breath, but it’s the refreshing kind of cold after a long night. The sun is warm on our backs and our shadows are long. Michelle jumps high in the air and her shadow lands on mine. I do the same to hers. We spend the next few minutes chasing each other’s shadows, laughing, playing. Then we’re holding hands again, surrounded by the morning quiet, the sound of passing traffic somehow far away, the returning birds chirping in newly budding trees lining the sidewalk.

  “Why did you tell him I only lasted a minute?”

  She doesn’t answer.