Eden

The night Jason told Isaiah Frey everything, Frey was wrapped in an old afghan and they were both sitting in the dark across from each other. When Jason explained he explained it slowly, and Isaiah felt like he was in Jason’s head the whole time. When Jason didn’t want to tell it, Isaiah didn’t want to hear it. But truth mattered. At least this time.

The music had been thumping. It insisted on coming in through the liquor and the pot. The air was cold that autumn, that Thanksgiving weekend.

She was a girl from Birmingham

she just had an abortion

she was a case of insanity

her name was Pauline she lived in a tree

She was a no-one who killed her baby

she sent her letters from the country

she was an animal

she was a bloody disgrace

Jason’s head was swimming as Elle followed him into the bathroom. Why wouldn’t she just go away sometimes? And why did she have to start things? Why did he have to come back here? Why had he looked forward to coming back, to this life, to these people who thought they knew him so well?

“Do you think I’m repulsive or something!”

“No,” he muttered.

“No, I’m not repulsive,” she said. “I’m fucking beautiful.”

“You’re fucking drunk.”

She slapped him. Why didn’t he stop her? He’d seen it coming. She staggered back from the force of her slap more than he did.

Body I’m not an animal

Mummy I’m not an abortion

“If I’m so beautiful why won’t you fuckin’ touch me?”

“Elle, not now.”

She pushed him and pulled him until she’d turned him around and grabbed him by his wrists.

Body screaming fucking bloody mess

it’s not an animal it’s an abortion

Body I’m not an animal

Body I’m not an abortion

“I don’t know why I like you, Jason. I don’t know why I put up with you. Everyone’s like ‘Jason’s so good for you, Jason Henley’ll go so far.’ But you can’t even get into a decent school can you? You just ended up at that damn Juco. Only…” Elle lost herself for a moment, concentrating more on not throwing up, and then, swallowing, she continued, “Only you went to Indiana to go to a juco when you could have just gone down the street.”

“It’s not… ” Jason heard himself whispered defensively, “a juco.”

“It is too a juco. For fucking losers like you. Who can’t even get it up.”

“What are…?” Jason tried to turn around and wave her off. “I don’t even know what the fuck you’re talking about—”

“I’m talking about why can’t you be a fucking man!” She planted her feet apart and put her fists on her hips.

He hadn’t turned around. He was feeling sick and tired, so tired like, why wouldn’t someone just get him out of here?

“Are you gay, Jason?” she said nastily. “Are you a fucking faggot?”

“No,” Jason said.

“What?”

“I said no.”

“No, what?”

“No, I’m not a fucking faggot.”

When she laughed he wanted to hit her, and he wanted to run away from her all at the same time. He wanted to show her… Something. So it jarred weirdly in his body when she put her hands on his shoulders and then turned herself and him around to look at him and said:

“Well, then show me.”

THREE CHRISTMASES AGO, when his new life had begun, Jason wished that somehow he could have brought Adrian with him. But where would he put Adrian? Not just the notion of where would he physically put a guest, but where would any part of Adrian fit in this world, in Annex, Illinois?

Where does any part of me fit, here?

Evan Barclay lived about ten miles away. Maybe he’d see him, and then they could both be exiles together. But if they were exiles, did that make Monserrat his home?

To Jason his home was the gradually unguarded relationship he had with Adrian where it took awhile, but only a short while to realize that laughing at instead of laughing with was not always a bad thing. Adrian always laughed, and Jason didn’t know how to, had spent a lifetime defending his dignity, taking himself very seriously, almost wanting to shout ‘Don’t laugh at me!” It was his first impulse. But Adrian laughed at everything and there was nothing cruel in it. Under that laughter Jason learned laughter too. He could be loved and laughed at at the same time. He felt, though he hadn’t said it yet, though something in him couldn’t say it yet, that maybe Adrian was the first person who had ever really loved him.

So Jason was glad not to go out that often during his holiday, but a few days before Christmas some of his friends and his little brother dragged him to the Saganawk, the trashy bar that didn’t card and that kids called the Suck and Fuck, and they were eating peanuts and drinking cheap beer. In the corner was a popcorn machine and Jason couldn’t tell how long the bright yellow popcorn under the heating lamp had been lying there, so when Dick scooped a bowl of it out, with his hands—how many other hands had done that?— Jason declined.

Ideclinedit…. When the heck did I start to saydecline? Even in my head.

“You seen Elle since break?”

“Uh, not really.”

“Yeah, that’s right,” JR leered at Jason.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Jason always felt late to the game.

“Speaking of since break,” JR nudged Jason’s little brother… God, they looked alike. He looked like that right before he’d gone off to college, “Over Thanksgiving your big bro broke a piece off of Elle. Then showed the trashy bitch the door.”

Jason stared at JR, and his brother stared at him, and though a few of them were laughing, Ron laughed uneasily, like he knew JR had said too much.

“I passed that bathroom door,” JR said, “cause I had to take a leak, right? I forgot Elle had followed my boy in there. I forgot all about it. But then there was this thumpin’ on the other side of the door, right?” He chuckled. “And I could just hear the two of them fucking. I mean going at it…”

Jason felt far away, hot cheeked, green cheeked, embarrassed. He could smell the pot from the party all over again, and it was like that three week interval between then and the new life he had discovered at Monserrat was gone.

“Shut up!” Matt said.

JR blinked at him. Matt wasn’t laughing. Donald was just looking at Jason.

“Whaddit I say?”

“The problem with you is you don’t know when the fuck to keep your mouth shut,” Ron said. He didn’t look at Jason. The guys who had been looking at him, leering at him, thumb upping, had stopped. There was an embarrassed silence.

“You know what?” Elle was saying as Jason pulled up his jeans and closed them, fumbling with the buckle of his leather belt.

“You did it like you didn’t like it. You did it like you didn’t like me.”

“IF YOU’RE FINISHED FUCKIN’ IN THERE I NEED TO TAKE A SHIT!” someone roared.

There was a giddy party scream on the other side of the door.

Jason turned around and turned on the water.

“Maybe you’re right,” he said to the pouring water, scrubbing his hands with the cracked, yellow bar of soap.

“I think you hate me,” she said sullenly.

“There could be something to that.”

Jason turned off the water and began drying his hands on the coarse blue towel.

Elle’s back was against the door.

“I had to tell you what to do the whole time. You could hardly get it in me,” she complained. Then she said, “Don’t just stand there looking stupid. Tell me something, goddamnit.”

Jason turned to Elle, putting his hand on the dented brass handle of the bathroom door and said, calmly, “Get the fuck out of my way. How’s that?”

The whole ride from the Suck and Fuck, Jason said nothing to his brother. He concentrated on steering, a hard look on his face, and Donald didn’t ask questions, didn’t say anything, didn’t really dare.

Back in the house Jason did the thing he always did when angry or upset. He shut down, refusing to talk. He walked ahead of Donald. He went upstairs, into his room, and shut the door. This was when Donald was afraid of his older brother, or afraid for him. He had been so happy just a bit ago, and now this. Just a little while ago he had been laughing loudly and throwing his hands around Don’s shoulder, shaking it. But Jason’s moods had always been fragile. It had always taken a lot of bolstering to make him behave with confidence.

Before Don went to bed he thought he would do what he had never done and make an effort with his older brother. He tapped on the bedroom door. Jason gave a grunt, which Don interpreted as ‘come in’. So he did.

He was working on what he had begun earlier. But this was different. Donald didn’t understand art, but this seemed to be full of Jason if that made any sense, like there was a lot of anger and a lot of confusion and a lot of… It wasn’t too good to look too long at that painting. It was like looking too long at Jason, and now Don realized he didn’t want to do that either.

“Jay?”

“Don’t ask me about what they said tonight, all right?”

“You and Elle?”

“Look,” Jason directed his speech to the canvas. “I don’t ever want to talk about me and Elle or anything that happened between us. All right?”

“You all don’t like each other anymore?”

Now Jason did turn his gaze on his brother, and Don wished he hadn’t.

“Whaddit I just say?”

Don ducked his head and said, “All right. I’m sorry.” He headed out of the door.

When Don was gone, Jason muttered:

“I fucking hate her.”

“If you don’t want to be with me why don’t you just say so?”

“I didn’t ask you to keep following me. I didn’t ask you to keep coming here.”

“But you wanted me here? Didn’t you? Yeah, you wanted me to come.”

They were in his parents’ basement, and he couldn’t wait to get back into his SUV and return to Monserrat in the morning. He would drive back, see Adrian, work things out, and become a new person. Thanksgiving night, the party, the bathroom, that had been two nights earlier.

“Oh,” said Elle, following him around a pile of boxes, “you didn’t want me to come, did you?”

Jason didn’t say anything.

“You know what, Jason? That’s what we’ve all been saying about you all the time. That’s what they were always saying, but I wouldn’t believe it. I should have. Oh, my God, I hate you.”

“Look, Elle,” Jason turned around. “I’ve really kinda had enough of this. Why don’t you just leave? Can’t you do that for me? Go.”

She slapped him right across the face.

“You know what?” she said. “You’re a fucking faggot. That’s all you are. That’s why you make me feel so small. You’re a fucking faggot.”

Jason didn’t say anything.

Elle reached for his belt buckle.

“I’m gonna show you how to do it, all right?” she said nastily. “I’m gonna teach you to be a fucking faggot. I’m gonna teach you to make a fool out of me.”

“Elle, stop it!”

She worked with his belt, unbuckling it, pulling at the fly of his jeans. Weakly, he tried to pull her hands away.

“Yeah, you think you’re so above me,” she continued, “over at you juco on the other side of the state. Every girl I know, her boyfriend loves her. You just love sticking cocks in your mother. That’s what you’d love isn’t it? You son of a bitch…”

She was growling all this while his hands tried to push her away, and she tugged at his jeans, and at his underwear.

“You motherfucking fag—”

The strength came to his hands as she pulled down his briefs. She looked up at the change in him, the snap in him. She could see his eyes burning in the grey darkness of the late November day. The furnace began to growl a few feet away from them. Jason gripped her wrists hard.

“Don’t call me that again.”

She tried to pull his hands away, but Jason was strong. She’d always thought he was weak. Especially in these last few days. She didn’t know what it was like to be on his bad side. She wanted to wriggle away and moan, “You’re hurting me.”

But instead she swore at him and told him he was a faggot, and he would never be a man or anything else, and she couldn’t even feel what he’d done last night, that’s how miserable he was. He couldn’t even take a real woman. He couldn’t take a real cunt. He wouldn’t know what to do—

And then they were both struggling, half pulling away from each other, half fighting. She was slapping him and then he slapped her, and then they were on the ground and then he was shouting, “You shut the fuck up you bitch! You shut up you little cunt! Who the fuck do you think you are! I hate you! I fucking hate you! Take this, you bitch. You slut.”

And she was sobbing, but it was coming out in laughs. Or she was laughing, and it sounded like sobs, and the whole time he was fucking her, drunk on anger, trying to hurt her, until it finally happened. Until he came like he had the other night, by surprise, against his will in the momentary bliss of force, knocked off of his feet, and they were both on the floor, on their backs, her skirt up, his jeans down, both of their lips bleeding, Jason swallowing, trying to understand what had just happened.

From far off, Elle’s frantic tired voice came.

“You’re a monster. You’re a monster, you know that? You know what you just did to me? You monster. I hate you. You’re evil…”

“Get the fuck out,” Jason’s voice was hollow.

“I should call the police—”

“GET—” Jason turned on her with a scream, “THE FUCK OUT!”

And then, this time, she fell back, tripping, falling on the floor. She got up and ran. Jason heard her running up the wooden steps from the basement, and then the door slammed. Very briefly he wondered if it was true, if he had done what it seemed like he had done, if she would call the police. But just as soon he didn’t care. He just sat there, the world spinning, and then going slow and slower, deathly still, till the only thing spinning was him.