February 25, 2015

Jerome:

You aren't coming next week? You're with him ten times more than you're with me.

Stop looking at him like that.

When you were up in Montreal... Did you cheat on me?

Was he there?

The way you act around him... That's not normal. Normal guys don't do that.

If you move in with him, I'm leaving.

Enjoy your little fuckbuddy, asshole.

I scroll through the texts one last time as I delete all of them, one by one. It's over. And you know what? I'm actually not that sad about it. It's kinda nice, not having to constantly update her when I'm with my friends. She didn't like Mat, sure, but she had a complete hard-on for Mitch. She was a complete jealous bitch to him and he loved every second of it. She was right about one thing, though: she was only ever second-best. I liked her, yeah, and of course I cared about her, but I always knew I'd drop her ass in a heartbeat if I needed to. Turns out I needed to. You don't just go around telling the person you're dating who they can and can't be friends with. That's not how this shit works, lady.

"Are you ready to head out?" I snap back to reality as Mitch yanks the truck door open and hops back in with two mocha-flavored Monsters tucked into his arm, his last pitiful attempt to keep us awake on the long drive from his parents' house Pennsylvania to my place in Jersey to get my shit and catch the plane. This goddamn move to Florida is gonna kill me, I swear. Talk about a day from hell.

"As ready as I'm gonna be."

"What's wrong, Biggums?" I take one last look at the strangely empty inbox on my phone and set it down in the little cutout above the radio. It's over and I'm not gonna dwell on it anymore. After tonight, I'm not gonna worry about her anymore. "Is it Em?"

"It was Em."

"Oh. I'm sorry, dood. That fucking sucks."

"Yeah, no kiddin'."

"No offense, but I think it's probably a good thing that it's over. All you two ever did was fight about everything. And I mean everything." I know what he's talking about and he's right: she was hot-tempered and she couldn't take a joke and she wanted everything her way or no way at all. And anytime Mitch's name came up about anything – even when she just thought I was talking about him – it'd set her off again. That kinda stress isn't healthy for anyone. I'm glad I don't hafta put up with her anymore and I'm glad Emily and Mitch don't hafta deal with me whining and moping around all the time now. I click my seat belt in place and look around behind the headrest to see if any cars are coming before I start backing out.

"Yeah. I couldn't even tell what color her hair was half the time and she'd get pissy with me because I wouldn't mention it. If you're gonna be a fucking Rainbow Sprite, don't try to date the poor colorblind guy." Mitch snickers and pops the tab on one of the cans before he hands it to me after I pull out of the driveway.

"Do you know what else pissed her off?"

"Hard tellin'." I glance over at him and he's plugging the aux cord from the radio into the headphone jack on his phone. It takes a few seconds for me to recognize the music. Goddammit, Mitch. Now we're gonna hafta listen to it the whole way to Jersey. It's already stuck in my head.

And so I cry sometimes

When I'm lying in bed.

To get it all out,

What's in my head.

And I'm feeling

A little peculiar.

And so I wake in the morning

And I step outside,

And I take a deep breath

And get real high,

And I sing from the top of my lungs

What's goin' on?

"And I say hey-ey-ey-ey-ey! Hey-ey-ey! I said hey, what's going on?" We're driving down the street out of his parents' neighborhood at one in the morning and he's singing at the top of his lungs, just like the song said to. It's fucking funny to watch him spaz out in the tiny front seat of the truck but he can't hit those high notes anymore. That's my job.

"And I say hey-ey-ey-ey-ey! Hey-ey-ey! I said hey, what's goin' on?!"

"And he tries!"

"Oh my god, do I try! I try all the time... in this institution!"

"And he prays!"

"Oh my god, do I pray! I pray every single day!"

"Meh!"

"For a rev-ol-ution! Hoo!"

"The pipes are clean!" he cackles and when we pass under a streetlight I see he's crying from laughing so hard. This's gonna be the longest trip to Jersey ever, but at least I've got the Benj to keep me on my toes. I can't believe I signed up to live with this guy. It's like we're already high and we aren't even on the freeway yet.

-----

February 27, 2015

Mitch:

"AAAAHHHH! NO!" Jerome's primal scream echoes in the near-empty house and I take a deep breath and recap the needle, quickly stashing my supplies in an empty drawer before I head upstairs to see what scared the crap out of him this time. Lachlan's door is still shut and I can't hear any movement inside as I walk past, but there's a steady thumping coming from inside of Jerome's room. I'm not entirely sure that I want to see what he's doing in there, but the last thing I need is for him to grab a weapon and start hacking through the freshly repainted walls of the new house. I brace myself for impact and open the door.

He's standing in the corner of the room wearing only banana-print pajama pants with one of his black high top sneakers clasped tightly between his hands, his knuckles white from him holding it so tightly. His temporary air mattress is set up in the opposite corner of the room on the floor and the sheets and blankets are thrown wildly around the room. He brings the shoe down on a spot on the floor over and over again like an axe murderer, his face scrunched up in a horrible snarl. He finally stops to catch his breath and he glances over and catches me watching him. Before he can find the words to speak, something catches his attention at the edge of his vision and he screams again.

"Dood, what are you doing?"

"I'm tryin' ta kill these goddamn fucking bugs but. Every. Time. I. Kill. One. Eight. More. Appear!" He punctuates each word with a savage smack with the abused shoe. "These motherfuckers were in my bed with me! They were in my bed! My bed, Mitch!" I walk over to him and stare down at the very large, very flat, very dead cockroach.

"Well, they fumigated it, so I thought-"

"No! They don't need to fumigate it! They need to fucking nuke this shit! That's fucking disgusting! They were in my bed! They were crawlin' up my leg and... Ugh!" He shivers and throws the gut-covered murder weapon into the bathroom, as far away from his bed as he can get it.

"They were just trying to cop a feel, Jerome. They wanted to go caving for diamonds." He turns and glares at me with his dark, squinted eyes and a sarcastic head bob. I can't help but laugh at the look of absolute revulsion on his face – Jerome hates bugs, especially super-sized ones that can fly. Half of the trip home from the mattress store yesterday was him bitching about a dead fly in the backseat of Ryan's car.

"Yeah, good one, Benj. Now I'm gonna have nightmares about streams of shiny black roaches crawling outta my ass and in my mouth and up my nose. You're a real asshole, you know that?"

"What can I say, dood. Roaches need love, too. It must be all that armesan cheese you've got there. They're just drawn to you." He walks over to his tightly sealed suitcase and starts digging out a t-shirt and jeans, still watching me from the corner of his eye. If they had been Jersey roaches, I would have gone behind him, picked up a juicy corpse, and thrown it at the back of his head to watch him do an interpretive version of "La Cucaracha." But I'm not brave enough to handle one of these big, black, waxy, flying Florida beauties. At least, not yet. He watches me suspiciously as I back out of the room and close the door behind me so he can do a strip show for his crowd of hidden, many-eyed admirers. I should get him a butterfly net to go with his safari hat, that way he can be a bug catcher. He always said he wanted to be a Pokemon trainer when he grew up.

There is still no sound from Lachlan's room and I quietly walk back downstairs, hoping to finish what I had started before the Aussie wakes up and starts asking questions. I quickly wash my hands and grab my injection supplies out of the drawer. I uncap the large needle and draw in a few milliliters of air before I slide it into the rubber cap of the vial of cypionate, pushing the tiny plunger in to release the air into the thick, yellow-brown solution. I carefully draw back on the syringe until the fluid is right at the line, then I pull the needle out and tug the plunger back to draw the solution inside the needle into the syringe. I recap the needle before I open the little foil-wrapped alcohol swab to clean off the injection site.

"Dammit, Mitch. Do you hafta do that in the kitchen?" Jerome is leaning against the doorway by the fridge, running his hand through his gelled hair to make it stand up before he puts his trademark Monster snapback hat on. He complains about it, but I don't see him leaving. Leave it to Jerome to want to stay and watch the show.

"I'm not going to do it in the bathroom where everything is dusty and covered in bacteria. Until that gets cleaned up, yeah, I have to do it in the kitchen." He grimaces and I pull the waistband of my shorts down enough that I can clean off an area of skin at the top of my left cheek. I grab the syringe and uncap the needle, pushing out the air at the top and double-checking the dose size.

"I don't know how you do that to yourself."

"I don't have a choice. The pellet implants make my bicep swell and they fuck up my reflexes, and they don't sell the pills in the States. Until they do, either I do it, or you do it for me." He shivers and I turn back to the job at hand. I pinch the fat and look up at him to watch his face as I slide the needle in, his expression quickly turning from fascination to disgust to horror as I let the needle sit unguarded in my skin. I can feel it bounce gently while I clean up the mess on the paper towel on the counter.

"That's fucking nasty. Do you get off on tryin' to make me puke?"

"It's not my fault you don't have the stomach to deal with bugs, or blood, or pus, or needles, or a host of other things."

"Ya know, Mitch, most people are pretty fucking horrified by those things. Not everyone has a cast-iron gut." He scrunches up his nose again as I twist around and re-pinch the skin, then I slowly push the plunger down on the syringe, holding my breath at the familiar twinge of the syrupy mixture being forced into the pocket of fat. I release the skin and quickly pull the needle out, recapping it as I peel the tabs of the clean Band-Aid off and stick it over the tiny pearl of blood rising out of the injection site. I look up and he has his hand over his mouth as he leans against the wall, breakfast all but forgotten. Living with him is going to be so much fucking fun if he's this disturbed after only one day. In the span of fifteen minutes, he's almost puked twice.

"Are you okay there, friendarino?" He snorts and rubs his face with the palms of his hands, his eyes following me as I drop the dirty needle in an empty water bottle and throw the rest of the trash in the compactor. It's like nothing even happened, except for the feeling of a new bruise forming a few inches below my waistband. I pocket the half-empty vial of testosterone to take back upstairs to hide, and I wash my hands while he pulls himself back together. He can poke fun at me as much as he wants, but if he was the one who was trans, he would probably have to go to a doctor to have them do it for him; he looked light-headed and he was standing five feet away from the action. I head over to the mostly-empty fridge to dig out the boxes of pizza from last night.

"How the fuck do you do that all the time?"

"You get used to it after a while. After doing it every week for seven years, I could probably do it with my eyes closed."

"Please don't. Last thing we need is for you to turn into the Incredible Fucking Hulk after you accidentally inject half the bottle at once."

"Maybe if I did that, I could finally grow a beard." He smirks and I can tell he's starting to regain his usual twisted sense of humor. He wiggles his eyebrows at me and runs his tongue along the edges of his badly-trimmed moustache and goatee before he slowly moves the tip along the curve of his nostril. "You sit and talk about me, but that's fucking disgusting."

"Still a better love story than Twilight." I sling the top box of pizza at him and he eyes it for a second before he walks past me to get a paper towel to cook it on. He decided to eat, after all. We're living the dream here – no plates, no furniture, and barely anything to eat. I wonder how long it's going to take before Jerome realizes that we'll have to sit on the roachy floor until the truck gets here in two days.

"We should finish setting up the equipment before we-"

"Fuckin' 'ell, mate! What the bloody fuck is this shit?! Jer-OME!" The Bacca and I trade a glance before I head over to the microwave to heat up the stiff, gelatinous pizza. Apparently I was the only one who thought to set the air mattress up on top of a table. This is going to be a long week.

"Why do I get blamed for everything?" he asks as he takes a bite of his ice cold three-meat-and-olive disaster, both of us facing the stairs so we can hear Lachlan's shrieks in all of their glory.

"Well, it's usually your fault, so..."

"Fuck you, Mitch."

"That sounds delightful."

"AAAHHHHH! FUCK!" There's a loud crash and everything except the microwave goes silent. Jerome snickers and folds his pizza in half to take a bigger bite, but not before examining it for signs of an infestation.

"Someone should go check on him," I hint and he just shrugs it off with a grin.

"I ain't goin' up there. Not a fucking chance. Nuh-uh."

"Savage, mate."

"Bloody fucking bugger, mate. Where's the ranch?"