7- Ten Years in a Heart-Shaped Box

           “Is this all you have to drink?” the guy asked.  He was naked, standing in Laird’s kitchen, wiping his dick clean with a dish-towel with one hand, holding up a bottle of Jack Daniel’s with the other.

            Laird was sitting on the couch, wearing only a towel, watching the news.  A car bomb in Iraq- twelve servicemen killed.  Some little white girl, a rapper, calling herself Kreayshawn, had a new album out- but who the hell was she?  Warm weather on the way, but rain this weekend.  Wasn’t it the weekend already?  A little girl was missing on the Lower East Side, and the police didn’t have any suspects.  The Yankees won, the Mets lost, and nobody really said anything about the how or the why.  Re-Elect…somebody from Jersey.  He changed the channel and Debbie Harry- hot, young Debbie Harry- was wearing too much make-up, and Blondie was signing “Call Me.”  The film was black and white, and her voice was out of sync with her lips in a way which made Laird want to close his eyes.

            “Hey, Conrad?” the guy asked.  “You hear me?”

            “Who?” Laird asked.  Bill Murray was committing suicide over and over again on Comedy Central.

            “You, Conrad.  That is your name, isn’t it?”

“What?”
            “Do you have anything else to drink?  I hate this Tennessee shit.”

            “There’s…um….water.”

            The guy…

Did he say his name was Donald?

…stuck his head in the fridge and shook around a few things- condiments mostly, maybe a box of baking soda.  The guy was black, forty, maybe- cheap suit, expensive tie- probably a salesman.  He was handsome, but getting soft around the middle.  Bending over wasn’t the most attractive thing he could do.  “There isn’t any water in here.”

            On the TV, Brad Pitt was talking about a new movie he was in, the Vice President was talking about securing our position in the Middle East, elections in Iraq, and some guy with a flap of black hair over his brow and a face that looked like it belonged in a high school year book photo was wearing a bowtie and was talking about political currency, liberal arts colleges in New Hampshire, Jack Kerouac, and Humphrey Bogart’s real name and why nobody knows about it.  “The tap,” Laird said.  The guy (Derek?  Devin?) shook his head and closed the refrigerator.  He took the Jack back down from the shelf and without looking for a shot glass; he took a short swig straight from the bottle.  He crossed the room and sat back down on the couch with the bottle in his hand, and he scratched at the hair on his chest.

            “Anything on TV?” the guy asked.  He’d paid for two hours an hour and a half ago.

            “They’re holding elections in Iraq, and Colin Farrell’s fucking Lindsay Lohan.”

            “Who are they?” Devin asked, taking another swig from the bottle.

            “I don’t know.  Are you gonna pay me for that?”

            He drank again.  “I thought it was free,” he said.  “I’ll give you an extra twenty.”

            “Whatever.”

            The two of them sat, watching TV.  Commercials: Kobe Bryant selling Sprite, Michael Jordan selling underwear, a new movie with Kristin Stewart, and a quick, easy new way to chop all of your vegetables and grind your own fresh coffee.  It was two in the morning.

            Donald asked, “Do you have a family, Conrad?”

            “Who’s Conrad?” Laird asked.

            “Didn’t you say that was your name?  Conrad Bain?”

            “My name’s Arnold,” he said, laughing.  “Arnold Palmer,” he said.  He lit a cigarette- cheap, generic brand, tasted like shit.  “My name’s Jack fucking Nicholson.”
            Daniel looked at him, bottle tipped slightly at his lips, his mouth hanging open.  He had large, droopy eyes- brown, like his skin.  They were red all around in random, scribbled patterns against stark white.  “Do you want to do some coke?”

            Laird didn’t really answer him.  He was going to say yes anyway.  Darren reached over into his jacket, and took out a little vial of white powder and spilled a gram out onto the glass surface of Laird’s coffee table right next to a copy of Rolling Stone with Kurt Cobain on the cover.  The headline was Kurt Cobain: Ten Years in a Heart Shaped Box.  Dennis used a credit card to sort out about a half dozen neat lines.

            “You want to hit this first?” he asked.

            Laird took a rolled up dollar bill from him and did the first hit, wiping a few loose grains away and wiping them over his teeth.  It felt like a buzz saw ripping through his forehead.  His face went numb all the way down into his throat and down into his stomach.  He felt his feet moving involuntarily.  Very good shit.

            A hand was on his chest now, Darren’s.  It dug its fingers gently into the flesh of his tit and ran through his hair.  Daniel did another big swig of Jack, his eyes darting back and forth between Laird’s lap and his face.  Laird closed his eyes.  Jennifer Lopez and Paris Hilton were going to be in a movie together- news at eleven.  Plus, what spice, found in any household, could cause seizures in the elderly?  These stories and more- tonight at eleven.

            “Where are your parents?” Damien asked.  “Do they live in New York?”

            “Nebraska,” Laird said.  He picked up the dollar and made sure it was rolled nice and tight and he hit another line of that fine ass coke, and his toes were dancing in the carpet and his eyes and his nose were running and his balls were tingling.  “Ma and Pa Kent,” he said, smiling.

            The hand was working its way down his stomach.  Laird was skinny- bones and muscle and whatever fat the body used to live off of.  Not fit- skinny.  On bad mornings he thought he could see his heart beating just under the skin.  Maybe that was just a dream.  Dickhead’s hand ran down the line of hair that traced down his chest and his abdomen and was fingering the pubic hair that hung just underneath.  One hour and forty minutes, the clock said.

            “They raise cattle,” he said.  “Cattle and unicorns.”

            “You’re very handsome,” Derek told him.  “You’re a very handsome boy.  Has anyone told you that?”
            A fifteen year old girl disappeared in Hell’s Kitchen yesterday while she was walking home from a friend’s apartment.  She was last seen on Eighth Avenue, had dyed purple hair, and was wearing leather from head to toe.  Police are investigating, and they don’t believe her abduction to be terror related.  News at eleven.

            “We still have twenty minutes,” David whispered to him and kissed his cheek.  Laird leaned over and did another line of coke and he could taste the rust salt taste of blood in his throat.  Darwin hadn’t done any of it yet.  The hand sunk down under the towel and ran over the hair and the skin of his balls and his cock, which was getting hard from the coke.

            “You like that, don’t you?” Damon asked him.  “Don’t you?”

            “Did you get this from Getch?” he asked and Devin’s mouth was on his, hungrily kissing his lips and sticking his tongue in Laird’s mouth.  He was starting to go numb all over, and maybe that was a good thing.

            The taste and the smell of Jack Daniel’s.  The feeling of a finger in his asshole.

            He kissed Daniel back, thinking about Hot Pink, thinking about Kim Basinger, thinking about something- fifteen year old girls in Hell’s Kitchen and the collective works of William Shakespeare.

            “Tell me that you love me,” Donald asked him.  The finger became two fingers, and they moved roughly, urgently.

            “I…um…love you.”

            Dennis sighed into his ear, pressing a stubbly face against Laird’s, rubbing cheek against cheek.  “Jack…Arnold…my wife hasn’t told me that she loves me in months.  I think she knows that I’m a fag.”

            “My name is F. Scott Fitzgerald,” Laird said and he started laughing.  “And my family lives in the…People’s Republic of China and make their living as bean sprout farmers, but they have a really great HMO.”

            “I want you to suck my cock,” said Dallas, lips right up against Laird’s ear.  “Is that okay?”

            Laird slunk away to the other end of the couch, feeling the rough, unplanned exit of two fingers from his asshole and pointed up at the clock.  David looked up at the clock and frowned.  “A hundred dollars more if you’ll suck my cock right now.”
            Laird looked down at the three lines of coke and at the bottle of Jack.  “Give me that,” he said, and Donald gave him the bottle.  Laird took a long, hearty swig of Tennessee’s finest, and he picked up the dollar bill straw. He sucked up two more lines of coke without breathing.

            He smiled up at Donovan, who was smiling back at him.  “My real name is Richard Laird,” he said.  “I think my parents are dead, I only like to fuck women, I went to Catholic school, and college for a little while until it got boring, you owe me twenty for the bottle on top of the hundred, and by the way…I love you.”

            The last line of coke went into his face like fire and before he could feel an inch of his body below his nose, he had Devin’s dick in his mouth.

            David was so happy that he started to cry.