toilet paper:

love is confusing

Our wrestling team just finished toilet-papering the freshmen and rookies. It was about 3:30 in the AM, and all the wrestlers who hadn't yet departed were staying at the Whistler residence. Jimmy & Kenny are both ex-Crestfeld-wrestlers, and now Oasis (the "runaway") lives with them in a crowded house that includes the three boys, their sister Eileen, their parents James Sr. and Bianca, crazy super stinky dog (the wundermutt "Fluffy"), a lot of fish, and a one-eyed cat. At any given time, there will be up to five different cars in the driveway, cycling in and out with the passing weeks. Many of them sit silently, waiting to be dissected and have their organs transplanted into a waiting receptacle. If I think hard about it, the house smells like animal urine, motor oil, gasoline, and Kenny (�bercrusty). Generally, I don't like to think too hard about it. Whistler faire is usually White Americana soul food; there are pop cans everywhere, perpetual candy wrappers. Earlier that night, the boys made nachos, which were raunchy and popular in the extreme. I'm surprised that they didn't dump gravy on the whole bit and cover it with Baco-bits. I would probably die of a heart attack within five weeks of living there; I graze constantly. And since I've recently been on a healthfood/vegetarian kick, I think constant Burgerdom would send me off the edge. Eileen and I used to play volleyball together, and we get along pretty well. Of the parties that I actually go to, the vast majority is with her and her friends. Jimmy Jr. used to like me when he was a senior and I was a sophomore. He wrote me a note, dyslexically, and I just didn't know what to do with myself at that point. Kenny's too preoccupied with his own penis to really give anything else much thought; a huge tub of lotion perches next to his makeshift bed. I'm pretty sure that he has a lazy eye. Both boys are big boned; however, Eileen is stickly and has a little potbelly and an elfish smile. Earlier on, Kyndell had shown up with Buck Nelson, a somewhat friend of mine that I knew from Spanish class and track. He's quite sexual, having boned the local bisexual adventuress, and is forever eschewing testosterone. He's non-hirsute, but there's something about the way he's formed that makes me think he should be on a fishing boat in Alaska with a calendar of naked women. Both Kyndell and Buck had smoked out, and even though Lyle, our heavyweight, was nipping out of the Jack Daniels bottle in the fridge room, Oasis was quick to get upset with Kyndell. For the most part, everyone played pool of Grand Theft Auto on the PS2, and circulated the recent Playboy. I hearkened a glance at it with our 215 lb.-er, none of the women really striking me as wildly attractive. Over the course of the night, several wrestlers split up and hit Kyndell's house, and he ended up there later, pissed off. Everyone was sheepishly quiet; it was awkward in the extreme. I was driving, so I stayed in the car and left the scandal to everyone else. Eventually, someone got followed by the cops, and I lost them. Two boys were passed out in my car, so I turned around and set course for the Whistler residence. I traipsed on down to the rec room, and Kyndell was passed out on the couch, the couch that I refuse to imagine how many disgusting autoerotic and bestial defecatory acts it has seen. I sit on it all the time though, and it bothers me on a strictly cosmic level. I lay down on the couch so that my feet were pointing at Kyndell's head, one resting on his chest, the other dangling off to the side of his ribs. I wait until the lights flip off, and then I locate his calf, stroking it lightly as the landscape/seascape screensaver cycles slowly across the screen. He's not asleep; he finds my legs and mimics the slow movement and we grow bolder, including knees into the range of motion. Voices materialize outside, and I quickly curl up into an innocent sleeping position, away from the curve of his body, praying the I-don't-see-them-they-don't-see-me prayer. The lights are flipped on, glowing behind my eyelids, slowly turning blue. I shift, sleeplike, and squint at the intruders, disentangling my innocent limbs from Kyndell's less subtle positioning. Eventually, everyone settles in, wrestlers strewn across floors, mattress pads, chairs, upper floor couches and easy chairs. After the lights are flipped back off, I sit up and roam the house in search of a blanket. Journey proved fruitless: all I came across was a couch doily and a baby blanket, either of which could probably cover one of my legs. The two boys from my car end up shoved on uncomfortably short chairs with their feet propped up by a stiff wooden number. They are right across the tiny room bend from us. If I stretch, I could kick them. They are aimed towards Kyndell and me, like an unconscious audience. I picked my way back to the couch, and ease myself against Kyndell's chest. Fingertips are everywhere, skinned, petally antennae sliding and blooming against everything. The room turns into an expansive sky, like a noiseless explosion that you can see, radial lines of air rippling like rings in a pond, evading capture by the eardrum. I'm tired to the point of being drunk, so my guards are let down; I'm embracing a wrestler, I'm letting taboo touch me on my thighs. Both sets of eyes are closed, but I startle and open them when I feel a hand trace against my collarbone. Intermittedly, I get up and roam around the house in search of blankets, never to find any. I return, resume, and wait for sleep to come. Kyndell strips off his clothes down to a pair of basketball shorts, and I brush the top of one perfectly muscled leg, imagining the smooth tissue underneath the skin. We never kissed on the lips.