May 3, 2016

Jerome:

"I'mma go call mah Mama. You said the sixth and seventh, right?" He's sprawled out on the lounger in the backyard again - probably fell asleep - and I swear his front half is gonna be Trump color if he doesn't watch it. He can't lay on his stomach yet without hurting himself so he just tans one side and hopes for the best, I guess. Pretty soon his back's gonna be as white as his ass. He was right about one thing though - you can barely see the little pink lines where his stitches used to be. But I can still feel 'em when I hug him in the morning. That's all that matters to me. He turns so his face's up towards me and I guess he's looking at me. I'm not steppin' out under the blaze of the magnifying glass to find out.

"Yeah. We'll fly home on the ninth. Are you good on recordings?"

"Who do you think I am, Mitch? Do you think my name's fuckin' Woofless?" He looks up at me over his sunglasses and he's trying not to break into a smartass grin.

"It had better not be."

"Can you imagine that fuckshow? I don't even know which joke to make: all we'd suck is the marrow outta each other's bones; our bony ass ribs'd get tangled up and we'd hafta call the fire department; we wouldn't be able to stop peckin' each other with our beaks long enough to get it on. Your choice."

"None of the above. You'd accidentally mar one of his magnifique paintings and the dogs wouldn't find your body until it thawed out the following spring." I can see the smile and the blood and dark, empty eyes and suddenly, there's a cold shiver crawlin' up my spine and my shoulders give an involuntary shake.

"Scary thing is, you're right. I really don't know about him anymore, Mitch. Crazy fucker gives me the creeps. I still think we should move Nooch's ass down here with us. I'd take real good care of the bunnies. And Dondo could feed the sister."

"He's mostly harmless as long as he stays on his pills, dood. If he suddenly goes missing, we'll figure something out."

"It's only a two-hour plane ride. I want you to know that." The sunglasses come all the way off and he's squinting in the sunlight and asking me if I actually researched that. Of course I did. I'd be a fuckin' idiot not to. And he's only four hours away from us. He could be standing at our front door in less time than it takes Mitch to take a nap. Wish we lived in Aussie Land about now. We could bunker down with Burrito Boy and be the last ones standing when he finally snaps and starts eating people's goddamn still-beating hearts. I don't trust him as far as I can throw him, and I know I can't pick his squirmy ass up to throw him. We just sit here and stare at each other, him trying to tell me Woof's not a fuckin' maniac and me telling him that, yeah, he very well could be ten minutes from now. And now that I think of it, that toothy derp smile makes him look like the goddamn Joker. I'm gonna have nightmares now. Benj sighs and slides his sunglasses back on and I know he's still looking at me even though he's laying back. Conversation's over. "We doing anything special I need to tell Dad about?"

"No, not that I can think of. Do you need the flight info?"

"Nah, it's all gucci. Be back eventually." I can't shake the chill even though it's like a hundred twenty fucking degrees outside. Just thinkin' about that phone call freaks me the hell out. I can still hear his voice, and it's like something outta a horror movie. I shiver again and pull out my phone on my way upstairs so I can find Mom's cell number. Even though a third of the trip's gonna be spent trying to find planes and waiting for planes and actually on planes, it'll be nice to take a couple days off from the grind and get shit worked out for the new master scheme. I feel like there's something about his new plan he isn't telling me and we need to be on the same page for this to work. I shut the door to the guest bunker bed room and I start pacing, waiting for her to pick up. I wish we could just show up and surprise her like we're doing with Mitch's mom. Mine needs a fucking appointment to make sure she's gonna be in the same city. Finally, the line stops ringing.

"Hello, this is Paz and Associates. May I-"

"Hi, Mom." She still pauses after all these times.

"Hi, Jerome. I don't think I've ever seen you up this early. What happened?"

"Nothin'. Just thought I'd give you a call, see what all youse gots planned for next weekend."

"We were all planning to go out to dinner, but now I'm afraid of what else you're all cooking up behind my back."

"I didn't do nothin'. Just thought you'd want us all to get together for Good Mommy Day. Be a big, happy family and all."

"Are you bringing Mitch?" What kind of fucking question is that?

"Of course I'm bringin' Mitch. He's part of the family." She doesn't say anything. She never does. "We were gonna stop up at his parents' place first. They're having Mother's Friday since Marley's got plans with her two families, too, so I thought it'd work out all peachy." Still nothing. "Mom?"

"Yeah, that sounds good. I'll have Dad reserve another chair. And buy some more soda."

"You sound real happy about it."

"I don't want to do this right now, Jerome. I'm at work." Yeah, let's keep on avoiding this shit until it spins completely outta control and turns into a game of Sock 'Em Boppers. How much longer does she need to get over it? Don't tell me she didn't see us creepin' closer and closer together since forever ago.

"You're always at work. Just take a sec and tell me why me dating Mitch bugs you so much." There's a big, thick, juicy pause.

"Honey, I know this isn't what you want to hear, but I don't think Mitch's... you know, all the way there. How he... That isn't... sane." She stutters off into awkward silence and I don't know what to say. I know what to say to bullies. I know what to say to criminals. I know what to say to cops. I know what to say to drunk Ryan when he starts cryin'. I know what to say to Woof when he's about to push Preston off a fuckin' roof. I know what to say to Vik to keep him from killin' the fucks he's living with. I know what to say to the Cave of Wonders to make it spit out a Dondo. I even know what to say to Lachlan when he's trying to blow a goddamn burrito.

But I don't know what to say to my own mother.

So I hang up.

---

May 25, 2016

Mitch:

Today it's been eight weeks to the day. I'm done with waiting and I'm getting off of my ass and getting my body back. The alarm goes off at seven on the dot and he growls and flails his bony body around like he's having the worst dream imaginable. I shut off the nuclear reactor sound on my phone and I see a dark, beady eye glaring at me from under the covers.

"Wha' the fuck you doin'?"

"I'm going for a run. Care to join me?" That woke him up. That means I can bring him nasty, warm, melted coffee from Target. The nose makes its first appearance of the day and it slowly creeps its way across the pile of pillows until it's shoved against the side of my face. Sharp fingernails dig into my left hip, trying to hold me here until he's done screwing with me. I try to pull his arm off of me so I can get up, and he reaches his leg over to drape it over my thigh possessively, like him putting his entire body on top of me would keep me from throwing him off.

"You're like a fucking barnacle, dood. Do you want coffee or not?"

"Nnnnnnnnn... You can't leave. I'm not gonna let you torture yourself. We can drive and get coffee when they open in an hour." I wait until he's settled in and comfortable before I violently roll away from him and send his bottom half crashing down on the floor. He glares at me as he lets go of my waist to rub his sore ass. "I see how it is."

"I gained thirty pounds in two months and I can't imagine how high my cholesterol is again. I need to get my live together before I pull an Elvis Presley and have a fucking heart attack." He gets up and sits on my legs in a last-ditch effort to keep me in bed. "No, Jerome. Either I go now, or you're going with me in an hour. And not in the car." He does his mopey Muppet frown and falls back so he can roll back over to his side like a bowling pin.

"Well, have fun with that. Venti butterscotch frap, extra crunchy shit. Be here when you get back."

---

May 17, 2016

Mitch:

Why is it already this hot outside? I only left the house ten minutes ago and I'm already drowning in my own sweat. Am I this out of shape after two months of lounging around on my ass, or did I just forget how miserable the summer is down here? I wipe another streak of sweat off of my forehead and I squint against the already blinding light of the Florida sun. Running was never this awful in Pennsylvania or in Montreal. This experience is enough for me to decide once and for all that, if I had to choose between the north and the tropics, I would undoubtedly choose the north. At least then I would be able to snowboard and skate, and I wouldn't feel it when I wipe out on my face with hardly any clothes on like down here. There's nothing to do down here that isn't absolute torture except swim, and I'm still afraid of what would happen if I got in our pool full of mystery filth.

I have never gone back to a doctor to get my stitches, staples, and hormones checked, even though I was due for my third check-up today. I threw the surgeon's business card away on my way out the front door of the hospital, knowing that I would never come back. What was he going to do, turn me in to someone else's insurance company? After all of the nightmares I've had about doctors shoving shit up there, there's no way I'm going to volunteer to let them crank it open and poke around while I'm wide awake. I also dodged a huge bullet by having it done the way I did, even though I paid for it massively with credit card debt. I never had to have anything down there tested or checked. Now that it's gone, I'll never have to worry about it again. There's nothing left to test. All I have is a thick layer of scar tissue at the end of a road no one ever wants to travel again, including Jerome. After this whole disaster, he ignores that part of my body even more than I do, and that's really saying something. Not that I'm complaining: I feel more comfortable with how our sex life is now, with that little kink cut out entirely.

The unfamiliar scraping against my inner thigh reminds me that I have another fun, expensive chore to do today. I stop at the edge of the garden wall by the house with the fake, shiny grass and I check around before I readjust myself and tuck the bent tip back to the side where it's supposed to stay. It immediately starts to slip back down my leg.

"Fuck." Did it finally break? I check around me again and I fish around in my pants, checking to see if the length of my packer is still connected. I honestly can't tell. I spin in a circle and see an empty house for sale a few driveways down and I start limping over to its side yard, focused entirely on how weird my crotch feels. I duck behind the tree and look around me before I reach in my pants and pull out my dick. I'm lucky I stopped when I did or it might have fallen out of my shorts while I was running. Imagine the look on some poor old lady's face if she saw that. If it wasn't so humiliating, it would be hilarious. I twist the shaft and the last two centimeters of stiff silicone holding the pieces together snaps. I put a piece in each pocket - pole on the left, balls on the right - and check the front of my shorts to make sure I don't look like a freak, then I continue my run like nothing ever happened, even though my shorts feel very loose and empty. I feel really vulnerable like this, like I'm running through someone's neighborhood naked. Thin, scratchy fabric from my underwear rubs against my actual dick and within a couple of minutes, I'm checking around me again to pull the loom out of the fruity swamp in my pants.

This is fucking awful.

Now I have to make a decision that could go very badly in several different ways: do I take the underwear off, too? Can I stand to make it back to the house with the most vulgar kind of wedgie imaginable? What do I do if someone catches me taking my underwear off behind the air conditioner next to the foreclosed house? Nothing good could come from that. Between cops, dogs, guns, and unwanted favors, the fleshy, gooey friction seems a lot more bearable. I've already had one experience with guys thinking they're funny and trying shit, and that was one experience more than anyone should ever have.

I awkwardly step sideways to twist the cloth with my thighs and pull it out from the depths, and I do it a few more times, pretending to be doing grapevines while I'm really trying to make sure it's going to stay out for a few minutes. It doesn't work for long and for the first time in my life, I'm grateful for the ever-present Florida sweat camouflaging any spots that soak through. I throw my mutilated shaft in someone's open trash can and keep on walking, pretending to just be a normal fitness geek trying to escape from a chicken-nugget-induced death for just a little bit longer. I unlock the front door with the security app on my phone and, sure enough, a drowsy Bacca is sprawled out on the living room couch, waiting for his coffee disaster with a bag of sugar mixed in it. He looks up from his phone with a frown on his face, knowing I hadn't been gone long enough for the store to open, let alone for me to walk back with his order.

"Why you back so soon?" He looks at me curiously and I don't answer, just choosing to go upstairs where there's a cold shower and no eavesdropping hobbits. "Mitch? You okay?" He follows me in the bedroom and locks the door, and I wait until he comes around the corner into the bathroom before I pitch the hard silicone balls at his forehead. "AHHH!!! What'd ya do that for? Here I was, tryin' to be nice and this shit was by your dick, wasn't it?"

"Yep." I fling my sweaty shirt at him next and he bats it away and throws the rubbery balls at the sink, cringing in surprise when they bounce up on contact and land gracefully funnel-side down on the countertop between the two sinks. I turn on the shower and make the water as cold as it can go before I step out of my cool, damp shorts and try to wash the sweat and wetness away. I look over when I hear water on and I see he's scrubbing his hands with soap and hot water, like he doesn't spend all night with my germs on his hands and everywhere else.

"You're nasty. Just plain nasty, Mitch. What's a Bac gotta do to get some love around here?"

"You get it every night. What else do you want?" He snickers and perches on the edge of the tub before he leans back against the wall to put his feet up. You would think he was the one who tried to exercise for half an hour this morning. "Anyway, is my phone secure?"

"Yeah, of course it is. I'm not slackin' like some people." He looks pointedly behind him toward the locked bedroom door, referring to the stacks of dirty dishes and unedited videos Alex has neglected so far this week. "Why?"

"Well, considering recent events, I need a new dick." He looks over at the peach-colored, jagged chunk of worn out silicone and raises his eyebrows, probably wondering what happened to the rest of his stress balls.

"I'd ask who sells 'em but it's the internet, so... You could probably get a real one in a little cooler for a couple hundred bucks. You think that'd work?" I take a second to close my mouth and run cold water over my head, but I can hear the smirk in his voice.

"Yeah, great idea, dood. I'll just ask Jerome the Eagle Scout to stitch it on for me. What could possibly go wrong?"

"But seriously though. Is that a thing? Can they do that?"

"If you have enough money, someone somewhere in the world can do anything. Does it work? Usually, no. There's some big research hospital doing transplants from organ donors but they only do the surgery for injured soldiers. They don't see it as 'medically necessary' for transguys. I would also have to take a shit ton of drugs for the rest of my life, and sometimes it just gets... rejected. Google it sometime." The look on his face tells me he won't, and he doesn't seem like the biggest fan of having someone else's frozen seconds shoved up his ass. I'm not really enthused about the idea, either, but that might end up being my only option for quite a while. I might be changing my tune someday soon. I tie the towel around my waist and slip past him to find something discreet in the closet to wear out in public. I don't want to have a mini-con at Starbucks at the best of times, and I'm really in no mood to deal with it today while I'm oogling at fake dicks on my phone in a coffeeshop.

Seven o'clock in the morning isn't supposed to suck this fucking much.

---

May 17, 2016

Mitch:

"You havin' fun over there?" He nods at my phone and I know from his creep grin that he's making fun of my look of concentration. I should have done this on my laptop at home when Alex was occupied - I can barely read anything on this website without my reading glasses. He takes another gulp of his crunchy coffee and bobs his head in laughter.

"You laugh now, but it seems like you miss it more than I do." I'm still hyperaware of the too-soft, rubbery generic packer sticking against my thigh and I resist the urge to constantly reach down and scratch at it as it brushes back and forth against my leg hair with every movement. I haven't used this cheap piece of shit since high school. I forgot how awful it felt. This is barely a step up from four socks, a rubber band, and a safety pin.

"I mean, this one's squishier and it feels kinda more believable but... it's like there's a sticky hand in your pants." I kick him gently in the shin and look behind him to tell him there's a kid standing like four feet away. He widens his eyes in an expression of annoyed surprise, and he scoots over on my side of the table to talk quieter and to peer over my shoulder at the lists of pricey prosthetic dicks. At least I'm not using the free Wi-Fi to do this. They can't prove I was doing anything if they can't see it. "If I got a new one and threw it on the ceiling in Dondo's room, you think it'd stick?"

"I wouldn't be surprised. I've never seen anything get dirtier when you wash it like this thing does. It used to be light pink before it turned grey."

"Really? So you really did buy a dead one online!" The kid turns and gives us a weird look before he walks over and pretends to be looking at the different overpriced coffee mugs. Where are his parents? Why don't people watch their kids anymore?

"Shut up, big mouth. Do you want someone to recognize us?"

"Can you imagine that? Some kid comes over to ask us for a selfie and they see a big, thick, veiny, purple nine-inch cock on your screen?"

"Just say it's Ryan's."

"Oh god. At his next Q&A just people askin'..." He breaks down into silent laughter and I nudge him with my knee to shut up. I scroll past the three-hundred dollar monster cock and go back to searching for something that looks normal but doesn't cost an actual dick. I'm looking at at least a hundred-fifty dollars getting sunk into this today, and I might need new underwear now, too, depending on whether or not the new one has the same height and width. I wish I wasn't so piss-poor at being creative or I would just make my own.

Who knew there were this many options? There are so many colors that I'd have to pull down my pants and hold my phone to my crotch to see which shade it should be. And they've added so much detail since I ordered the first time that I honestly don't know which model to pick, let alone what I want it to look like. When did it get so difficult to buy a rubber dick online? I scroll back up to the top of the page and search through the tab for STPs - everything else is debatable, but being able to pee comfortably again isn't. No one told me I would have so many problems just trying to piss when they scheduled me for my meta; whether I sit or try to stand without a funnel, I have a mess to clean up afterward. I look up and check to see if anyone is coming within seeing distance of us before I scroll down and start looking at the sample photos.

"That one's cute, Mitch."

"It's three inches long. What am I even supposed to do with that?"

"Pet it and feed it and love it so it'll grow."

"Is that what you did with yours?" He snorts and swallows his huge mouthful of sweetness and caffeine with a choked snicker.

" 'Course it is. And when they get older, you can teach 'em to do tricks."

"Yours is really good at begging."

"And yours needs to learn how fuckin' play dead at four in the morning. It's a cock, not a rooster." I look over at him and he shrugs in faux exasperation."Don't act like I'm the horn dog on a stick. You got a pretty big stick, too."

"If you don't keep it down over there, I'll find an even bigger stick to beat yours with." He recoils against the corner like a hamster and holds his immense crystalline coffee to his chest, like that would protect his ass from anything. As soon as I look back down at the screen, he scoots closer again and goes back to eying the rows of photos while he sucks lewdly on the creamy straw next to my ear. I get the feeling that he has more of a taste for dicks than he claims he does. He's done with his first litre of coffee and he's halfway through a cinnamon cake and a second frappuccino before I finally have one picked out. He's getting hyper and restless and he's typing something furiously on his phone. Hopefully it's nothing serious that we need to be worried about. He also hasn't seen what I found, and I'll be sure to order it and delete my iPhone's history before he has a chance to snoop.

This could be interesting.

Six and a half inches, embedded silicone paint, completely chlorine resistant, realistic moving flesh, free-floating 3D balls, tubing and internal ridges shaped for post-meta parts, adjustable rod, even implanted color-matched pubic hairs. I wouldn't need the cheap strap-on at home anymore, either, or the hard solid packer for the pool. I could use this for everything and not need a different dick for every situation. And, most interestingly, it's made to be attached directly to the skin with prosthetic glue. I doubt it will work as well as they say it will... but I think it's worth a shot. No more buying special underwear to keep everything in place. No more obsessing over the laundry so other people don't see my underwear and wonder why mine look different. No more wasting time thinking about loose positioning or unnatural movement.

Am I really going to spend this much on a fake dick? Maybe.

The question then becomes: can I make an extra five hundred dollars this month?

What about six hundred, so I can do priority processing and not have to wait half a year for it to be made?

It isn't a matter of whether or not it's worth it - of course it's worth it.

But can I afford it?

It looks like the roof is going to have to wait again.