The Blood: A Denouement
The Journal of Dan Rawlinson Continued
Between the job and the band we are doing pretty decently, and Rick and Jack say they’re going to stay in Rawlston. Rick is working at a music store, and Jack is working in this store up the street from the Grey Note. They’re going to get a loft. Jack says, “You guys can even stay when you want. It’s great up here, and there’s so much music!”
There is so much music. There’s the college, and everyone being hip and shit, and you can really make some money up here, and so we are.
“You know what I’m thinking?” I said to Myron.
“Huh?’
“I’m thinking of just not going to college and staying here doing music.”
Myron just looks at me.
“That’s really stupid.”
On Saturday, I go driving by myself. I’m never by myself. I go all the way south to Glencastle, and I am thinking, though I wouldn’t admit it to myself, that maybe this time, by myself, I’ll be able to find that house again. I don’t say anything to anyone, but I think of what Myron might say, You know the mind can play tricks. Maybe you wanted to see that place so bad that its in your head that there was such a place. Maybe it was just a dream. And the truth is, as I go up and down the street, unable to find that house where I met Kruinh and Tanitha, it’s definitely starting to feel that way.
On the plane he scans up and down the old notebook. This has happened before, a thing he thought to be terribly important is entirely left out. Why? Because it wasn’t important to him when it happened? No, but perhaps not knowing how to write about the thing, only having a feeling for the thing but unable to place it on paper, it hovered around like a ghost, could only be thought about. The story is not completely right, but it’s this story that must stay in the brain, will never see the paper.
“What’s up?” Myron yawns. But before he can get an answer he interrupts himself, and looking out over the long bank of clouds, says, “Isn’t it amazing, the things we can do, people can do? We just fly across the ocean. Up in the air, how high I wonder?”
He shakes his head delightedly and chuckles.
“Amazing.”
Dan puts down the notebook and gives, up thinking that his search is more fruitless than the one he did for Tanitha and Kruinh’s house so long ago, fruitless because what he’s looking for is what has never been written down.
“You know,” Myron says, “in my family I’m the butt of the jokes. They love me, but I’m the goofball. I made myself that. I wonder why?”
“You’re the least goofy person I know,” Dan says.
Myron sticks out his lower lip.
“Maybe that’s why.”
They’ve played at the Grey Note. They’re high on the music and applause. It makes up for the lack of money, and the truth is, working for Myron’s family pays well. He’s never seen so much money and he’s never had so much fun.
“Can we get you guys a drink?” the girls ask, and Jack and Nick are all for it, and Myron nods shyly and pulls Dan over.
Dan doesn’t remember much of the conversation, just the dizzying attention paid him by college freshmen, and that Gretchen has left him. Eventually Jack and Nick are gone with the other girls, and Myron and Dan are just sitting here drinking with the red head. It’s late, and the bartender says so, and Myron says, “I guess it’s time to get home.”
He’s the responsible one, and he says to the redhead, even though he and Dan are still in high school, “Are you cool to drive, or do you need a ride?”
“Oh,” she says. “I was just going to walk back to my dorm.”
“Well, we can’t let you do that?” Dan isn’t sure if he says it or Myron, but they are both in agreement.
“We’re going to drive you back,” Dan says.
“You boys are gentlemen,” she says. “Gen-till-men.”
She laughs and touches Myron’s lips. “What’s your name.”
Myron says, “It’s Myron. And this is Dan.”
They have to turn around and go back to Lassador after this, but it hardly matters, and it’s nice to see Rawlston by night, to see the college they might end up going to.
“My grandma went here,” Myron says.
“Myron, come back here,” the redhead says after a while. Cynthia. She was Cynthia.
A little drunk, Myron says, “Alright,” and tries to climb back and tries again before Dan stops the car and Myron says, “Ah, yeah,” and then unbuckles his seatbelt and climbs out of the passenger seat, opening his door to climb out, and leaving Dan alone in the front.
He can hear them making out and fooling around as he drives, and he clears his throat as they approach the main gate.
“Uh… where do I go now?”
But she and Myron are well into making out, and finally Cynthia says, “You wanna just drive around?”
“Yeah,” Myron says breathlessly, between kisses, “we can drive around a bit.”
Dan’s face is too red to look back, but he’s the chauffer now and not entirely sure what’s going on in the backseat as they drive away from the college toward the country where the grasses are high.
“Do you wanna fuck me?” Cynthia asks Myron.
Dan stops the car squarely on the side of the road and turns around, and Myron’s pants are half down.
“I’ll do it with both of you,” she says.
“Dan, can you get out the car for a bit?”
Dan’s too surprised to do anything but he finally gets out of the car, too hot for his feelings, his ears and his flesh burning, his head whirring. He’s seen Myron have sex, but it was for a second with his girlfriend who he loved, not with some slut they met at the Grey Note. Myron’s not like this. He’s in youth group. He’s a straight A student. A straight A. He’s a good guy. They’re good guys. This isn’t them. The windows are steamed up and the car is shaking back and forth while Myron is fucking this girl in the backseat of his car, Dan’s car.
When it’s over, Dan stands half out of his body and Myron staggers our of the car, buttoning his pants His hair is a mess and his face is red. The car door is open into darkness and Cynthia is in there.
“Are you coming, Dan?” she says.
Her voice calls from the dark, “Myron says you’re a virgin. Come on, let me change that.”
Dan isn’t in a place to refuse. Myron is the person he respects most in the world and Myron touches him on the back and says, tenderly, “She’s waiting for you. Dan. Go in.”
Dan does, and Myron closes the door behind him. The space is hot and the smell is strange.
“Dan,” Cynthia says, sounding strangely tired, almost drugged. “Dan.”
Her skirt is up and her legs are open and there is only darkness behind them and she says, “Take off your pants.”
He does. In his head he keeps hearing a distant voice that says, we’re the good guys. We don’t do stuff like this. This isn’t the way it supposed to be.
He pulls down his underwear, but his shirt is long and so she reaches under it, and when she touches him, it’s the first time he’s really felt his penis, the first time he’s felt it be this swollen thing, sensitive to the touch, curving, growing, hard, wet with the trickle of semen, wet with whatever she’s got on her hand while she’s massaging it, stroking it, pulling it, someone else’s hand on him for the first time.
“Come on,” she says, her hands on his ass, pulling him inside of her.
“Oh, God,” she murmurs, or is he murmuring? It feels, despite everything, so good. He’s always wanted this, Her hands are so tender up and down him and it feels so good. He shudders. It feels so good to push and push into her, and he wants to keep doing it, but he’s slow about it, wanting to be gentle and then her hands are up and down his back and she’s saying, “Don’t be gentle. Just do it.”
And so he starts to do it and he can feel her thighs around him, pulling him inside of her and he can hear himself growling between his teeth and she is rejoicing and calling ,”Fuck me! Do it harder.”
They’re both breathing hard together and it’s the most amazing thing and then Dan is surprised and cries out while he comes.
This thing, this odd way in which his first time has occurred is probably the reason he goes looking for Tanitha and Kruinh the next day. He and Myron don’t talk about this after they’ve dropped her off and are getting ready to get back in the car. Dan needs something to say, needs to clear his head.
“You know what I’m thinking?” he says to Myron.
“Huh?’
“I’m thinking of just not going to college and staying here doing music.”
But Myron is angry for some reason. He’s going to be angry for a few days and hard to talk to for a while. There is going to be a little wall up between them for a while.
Myron just looks at Dan witheringly.
“That’s really stupid.”