Stick Read online

  Bosten climbed back into the driver’s seat, slammed his door, and started the Toyota. Then he leaned all the way across the gear shift and said, “Let’s rip it up, Stick.”

  “Okay. Let’s.”

  He pulled a U-turn right across the wet highway and we headed back toward the high school, David H. Wilson Senior High.

  I don’t have any idea who David H. Wilson was.

  Bosten grinned and reached his hand down under the seat between his legs.

  “Look what I found.”

  He pulled up something thick and heavy, and dropped it in my lap.

  Thud.

  “Where did you get this?” I asked.

  Bosten slapped the steering wheel and laughed, loud. “I found it in the

  Pontiac. It’s Dad’s.”

  There was something exciting and terrifying at the same time in holding on to the cool slickness of a Penthouse magazine. One that belonged to our father.

  I opened it and flipped through the pages.

  “Bitchin’, huh?”

  I gulped. My throat felt tight. “Yeah.”

  Bosten laughed again, and he kept looking over at the magazine in my lap as he drove.

  My hands shook and my mouth hung open. I thumbed the glossy images back and forth, one after another. They showed everything, without shame, and the pictures were so big.

  I saw a layout called “Three in a Tub.” Two men and a woman were taking a bath together. The bathroom was real nice, like something you’d only see in a movie. I could almost feel the steam rising up in that room. The woman lay back in the tub. Her tanned breasts glistened with droplets of water, and her dark pubic hairs swirled beneath the surface like seaweed; naked men stretched out in the water on either side of her.

  I didn’t even have any pubic hair at all, except for a few under my armpits.

  It was just one more thing that made me so self-conscious at school, because Mr. Lloyd, our PE teacher, would stand in the shower room and check off names in his roll book as he handed out towels that weren’t even big enough to wrap around the smallest boy’s waist, making sure every one of us took a shower after class. In eighth grade, most boys except for me were already getting hair around their nuts. And while just about every boy would dangle that school-issue towel in front of himself to cover his privates, I’d use mine on my head, over my hair, to hide my biggest embarrassment.

  Then there was a picture, after the bath, of the men standing beside the woman, drying her off, their penises hanging right beside her hips, almost touching her. I knew what having sex was, but I never saw anything like this before.

  I wondered if everybody took baths in threesomes after they got pubic hair.

  I was curious about how the men got their penises inside her, too. They didn’t look like they would go. I couldn’t see anywhere on her where they’d fit. And I wondered if the men were on tranquilizers or something, because how could you stand next to a naked woman who looked like the one in this picture and not get a boner?

  My pecker was already so hard just looking at her in a magazine.

  Suddenly uncomfortable, I shifted, turned the page, awkwardly aware of what was happening to me. It kind of hurt, and I had to pull out the front of my jeans to make some room.

  I was scared and thrilled at the same time.

  Bosten kept laughing at me.

  “What are you going to do with this?” I asked.

  “Ha!” Bosten said. “What do you think I’m going to do? I’m going to keep it.”

  “Mom will find it.”

  “I’ll put it in my locker at school.”

  “Dad’s going to get mad.”

  Bosten giggled. He almost doubled over the steering wheel. “What’s he going to say? ‘Which one of you bastards took the magazine I bought for jerking off at work?’”

  Even I laughed at that.

  I flipped some more pages. I hoped Bosten might let me read it later, but I was afraid, thinking about being caught with it at home (they caught just about everything we ever did); and I needed to see more pictures first.

  Bosten looked at me with a sneaky expression on his face.

  “Do you ever masturbate?”

  “What?” I said, like I didn’t know what he was talking about. It just startled me that he asked.

  “You know … jack off, dumbshit? Do you?”

  “No,” I answered quickly.

  Bosten burst out laughing again. He slapped my shoulder so hard I nearly hit my face against the side window. “You’re such a liar, Stick!”

  I closed the magazine.

  My hands shook. I knew I couldn’t lie to my brother. It was stupid, anyway.

  “Okay. Well, sometimes I do.”

  “Sometimes?” he said. “Ha-ha! I jack off at least two times every day.”

  Bosten grabbed the magazine from my lap and flipped it open. He steered with his knee. “‘Three in a Tub.’ That’s so nasty. One time I jerked off so many times in one day that I got a road rash. It was raw and bleeding.”

  “On your hand?”

  “No.” Bosten looked proud, completely unashamed. He was always fooling around with me and acting like this. “On my dick.”

  I laughed. “You’re stupid.”

  “I’m not kidding, Sticker. I thought it was going to get infected or something. I was scared. I thought I’d have to go to a doctor and tell him I’ve been jacking myself off too much.”

  He slipped the Penthouse back under the seat. “But I had to stop doing it for a few days. Quitting was almost impossible, but then my dick finally got better. Relief.”

  The high school was just up ahead. I could see all the headlights from the other cars as they pulled into the parking lot in front of the gym.

  “I’d rather die than have to go to a doctor for jacking off too much,” I said. “And, anyway, haven’t you heard you’ll go blind, or it will stunt your growth?”

  “You don’t actually believe that, do you?” he asked. “That’s just what old people tell us so we don’t jerk off all the time. How many blind kids did you ever see in your life?”

  I couldn’t remember ever seeing a blind kid. But Mr. Lloyd told us boys in gym class that masturbating does that kind of stuff to you. So, I thought, maybe it makes your ear fall off.

  “It really doesn’t stunt your growth and make you go blind?” I asked.

  “Maybe that’s why I’m shorter than you.” Bosten pulled our car right alongside the Buckleys’ station wagon. I looked outside, guiltily, like Paul’s parents might be watching or maybe listening to us, but they weren’t there.

  “Besides,” Bosten said, grabbing his crotch and adjusting himself, “I may be short and blind, but I’m happy.”

  “You are dumb.” I laughed. I wasn’t embarrassed or anything talking to Bosten about jerking off. I loved my brother too much to be embarrassed about anything around him.

  I opened the door and got out.

  And Bosten said, “Stick! Sticker! Help me! I’m blind! I can’t see!”

  I laughed again. Bosten got out and came around to my side of the car. He put his arm around my shoulder and whispered right into that one sound spot on my head, with his lips so close I could feel the heat from his breath.

  “You know what I’m going to do later on, when we go home? When I get home tonight, I’m going to jerk myself off right into the goddamned dryer.”

  “You are totally sick, Bosten.”

  * * *

  It rained that night.

  We walked toward the gym—it gave off heat and noise and light—through puddles in the parking lot.

  I pulled my hat down low. Bosten wore a cap that said DWHS.

  At the game, we sat next to Paul’s parents, Joy and Ian Buckley. They were close friends with our parents, so Bosten and I both knew we had to be careful about what we said around them.

  I sat between Bosten and Mrs. Buckley. She was on my right, so I couldn’t really hear her. Occasionally, she would put her hand on m
y knee to get my attention, and she’d ask questions or say nice things, so I had to make up replies, just to be polite.

  How are your mom and dad, Stark?

  She called me Stark.

  We are so looking forward to having your family over for dinner on Sunday.

  When she put her hand on my knee, it felt soft and warm. I thought about that woman in the bathtub. Mrs. Buckley made me get an erection right there, sitting in the bleachers at my brother’s high school.

  * * *

  I loved basketball, but I’d never have the guts to play it.

  How could I ever get out there on the floor with all those boys and their perfect and flawless bodies running around with me—being watched by so many eyes?

  Wilson High was playing a team from Bremerton. Paul was out there most of the game, too. Well, at least what we saw of the game, that is.

  Bosten and I got thrown out of the gym during the second half.

  Mrs. Nolan, the dean of students, told us we were lucky we didn’t get arrested, but it didn’t matter. I knew Mr. and Mrs. Buckley would tell our parents all about what we did if they heard about it from the other kids at the game that night.

  We’d waited until after halftime to go pee. During the break, the toilets get so crowded it’s almost impossible to pee. Bosten stood in line to get a Coke and I went into the boys’ restroom.

  There was one other kid, standing in front of the urinal. He was an eighth grader I knew, named Ricky Dostal. Ricky was in the same gym class as me, and he had this tough little man-body he got from playing Pop Warner football and spending an hour every day in his garage lifting weights while his dad sat there and smoked cigarettes and told his son how great he was going to be. Ricky was also a year older than all the other boys in eighth grade. Mr. Dostal held him back just so he would be bigger and stronger for high school football. Personally, I’d rather have to go to the doctor for jerking off too much than spend an extra year in junior high. We always hated each other, so all I could do was ignore him and pretend he wasn’t there.

  It didn’t work.

  When he turned away from the pisser, he noticed I’d been standing a few feet away from him.

  Ricky said, “Hey,

  retard. How’s the head wound?”

  What could I do?

  You can’t do or say anything when you’re standing there holding your dick.

  Ricky reached out and swiped the beanie from my head.

  “You sonofabitch!” I hurriedly zipped up and turned toward him. I remember that I was thinking about what Emily had said to me earlier—about how I needed to learn to fight back.

  But I wasn’t like that.

  Ricky shoved me and I spun back and nearly fell into the urinal.

  It was one of those ones that ran along the length of the wall, open, with no dividers, about chest high.

  “What’d you say about my mom, freak?”

  There’s always piss all over the floor in school gym restrooms.

  Ricky flipped my hat down into the piss in the bottom of the urinal. Then he smiled at me and stared straight into my eyes.

  I hated it when people stared at me.

  I figured I was going to get hit.

  I looked down at my feet.

  “Isn’t that your beanie there in the piss drain, Stick?”

  I didn’t answer him.

  That’s when Bosten came in, holding a Coke. I didn’t hear him.

  Neither did Ricky, I guess.

  “I think you should put it on, Stick. You need to cover that shit on your head,” Ricky said.

  I looked up. I wasn’t scared of him.

  Bosten casually set his Coke down on the sink behind Ricky and cleared his throat. And just when Ricky Dostal turned his face, Bosten punched him so hard, just below the eye, that I could feel the whack! of my brother’s fist vibrating up through the yellowed restroom floor.

  Ricky spun back toward me so fast that droplets of his blood splashed onto the tiles above the chrome water pipe that dripped a continuous flow all along the length of the wall’s open urinal.

  He was out before he hit the ground, completely unconscious, lying on his side with his face in the piss on the floor. There was a dark red gash that arced all the way across Ricky’s cheekbone, and blood splashed everywhere across the floor, over Ricky’s gray face.

  It almost looked like somebody had been murdered in there.

  Bosten didn’t say a thing to me. He just took a sip through the straw in his Coke, set it back down on the sink, then stepped over Ricky, went to the end of the urinal, and peed.

  I stood over Ricky, watching the pool of blood run through the grooves between the tiles on the floor, mixing with urine, finding its way, eventually, into the bottom of the piss trough.

  “Want some?” Bosten offered me his Coke.

  I was thirsty.

  Ricky moaned, began to roll over. He was a mess, soaked in piss and blood.

  “Wait a second,” Bosten said. “Here.”

  Then he took off his cap and put it on my head.

  “As long as I live, Stick, no one’s ever going to do that to you again.”

  During the game, as we sat beside Mrs. Buckley, who didn’t even notice that I was wearing my brother’s ball cap, we saw the dean of students walking across the floor, scanning the bleachers for me and Bosten.

  So he leaned over to me and whispered, “Come on, Stick. We might as well go turn ourselves in.”

  And that’s how Bosten and I got thrown out of the game that night.

  We waited in the car for the game to end.

  I found myself feeling sorry for Ricky.

  I was sure that at that moment, he was lying in a hospital emergency room, smelling like piss, while some doctor leaned over him and stitched up the cut my brother laid across his face.

  I turned, so that I was looking out the window. The rain had stopped and I could see a few stars in the breaks between clouds.

  I didn’t want to look at Bosten, anyway.

  “Do you want your hat back?” I said.

  “No. Are you okay? I hope you’re not mad at me.”

  That’s when I felt like crying.

  So I wouldn’t look at Bosten.

  He knew.

  “I’m sorry, Stick.”

  And words like those, from my brother, were the kind of words that could get inside my head and whirr around like mad hornets trying to find a way out.

  Sure he was sorry.

  I knew what he meant.

  He wasn’t sorry he busted

  that fucker’s face open.

  He wasn’t sorry we got thrown out of a

  goddamned basketball game.

  Those were things to be proud of.

  Those were things you’d laugh about

  and tell stories about over and over.

  Things like that make normal boys normal

  boys.

  But goddamnit, goddamnit, GODDAMNIT

  I knew what Bosten was sorry about.

  He was sorry about me, like he felt

  some kind of responsibility for me being me.

  Like he knew what she was thinking every time

  Mom looked at me, so he was sorry for that.

  Like he had to admit

  that since nobody else was sorry for me,

  he might as well do the job.

  Just like cleaning out the goddamned dryer.

  But it wasn’t Bosten’s job to feel sorry for me,

  and GODDAMNIT

  I AM SORRY

  I DID THIS TO YOU, BOSTEN.

  I AM SORRY.

  PAUL

  Cars started. People filed out of the gymnasium.

  Bosten opened his door and got out.

  “Mrs. Buckley,” he said.

  Then I couldn’t hear anything.

  He closed the door.

  I watched him talking to Paul’s parents until they got into their car and drove off. And Bosten just leaned against the hood of the Toyota
, facing the gym, waiting for the players to come out.

  “I’m not mad at you, Bosten,” I said. “Why would I be?”

  But he couldn’t hear me, either.

  I got out and stood next to Bosten when I saw Paul coming. I knew they’d expect me to ride in the backseat, anyway.

  I shoved my brother’s shoulder.

  “What did you say to the Buckleys?”

  “I told them we got thrown out. And that I punched a kid in the bathroom who was messing with you.”

  “Oh.”

  It would be trouble.

  “Don’t worry about it. It was me, not you,” he said. “So I asked them if we could take Paul to Crazy Eric’s before we went home. They said it was okay.”

  “Are we really going to Crazy Eric’s?”

  Bosten laughed. “Hell no.”

  He grabbed the bill on my cap and pulled it down in front of my nose.

  Across the lot, Paul shouted good-byes to the other players.

  Paul Buckley was just a bit taller than me, and solid—definitely not a stick. He carried a canvas bag slung over his shoulders. His hair was wet. I could tell by the way he walked they’d won their game.

  He came up to us, smiling, red-faced, and slapped a hand into Bosten’s.

  “Nice game,” Bosten said.

  “Hey, Stick.” Paul nodded to me and I nodded back.

  “Buck.”

  “Well, to be completely honest,” Bosten said, “we didn’t actually see the whole game. We got thrown out before the end because I beat the shit out of Ricky Dostal in the bathroom.”

  “That was you guys?” Paul smiled; had a look of awe on his face. “I heard someone almost got killed in there.”

  “I busted him up pretty good for screwing with Stick.”

  I felt sick.

  “You’re going to get suspended,” Paul said, but he was still smiling.

  “I know.” Bosten jangled the car keys. “So let’s go have some fun and mess shit up before my mom and dad totally destroy Stick’s and my life.”

  So much for Bosten trying to assure me it was going to be all on him.

  I knew better, anyway. No punishments were ever exclusively limited to Bosten in our house.

  Paul beamed. “Wait till you see what I got from Francis.”

  Francis was Paul’s brother. He was in the army, stationed in Texas, and visited the Buckleys every few months. Whenever Francis brought surprises for his younger brother, it usually meant I was either going to have to watch Paul and Bosten attempt to smoke Mexican pot or blow things up.