Chapter Text
Kissing.
Parting my lips, drawing my tongue back and forth, an upper lip, a bottom lip, a twist of my head so that my nose is on his nose’s other side, my hands on his face or around his back or on his leg, holding him tighter, pulling me in closer. Moving on to his jaw, his neck, somewhere besides his lips.
It’s a pattern, a pleasant, familiar rhythm; one that reminds me of the sensation you get when you’re laying in bed after a long day at an amusement park or a river, the sensation that allows you to still feel like you’re in motion, even when everything else is still. It kind of lulls all your senses, anxieties and inhibitions away, hypnotizing you in the best way possible.
Then again, this all might just be because I’m shit-faced out of my fucking mind.
Luckily for me, so is Craig.
We’re on his bed, or maybe mine maybe, or possibly on one of our carpets.
God, I don’t even fucking know.
We like to get wasted together - alone - like the losers we are, playing drinking games to stupid movies about aliens, or space, or artsy European homosexuals. And if it's possible, all three.
Take a shot everytime an alien is green.
Take a shot everytime the protagonist is the only being that can save the galaxy.
Take a shot everytime the script doesn’t understand physics.
Take a shot everytime a gay is depressed.
And I’m drunk.
I can’t exactly remember whether the movie we were watching was about aliens or gayness. Admittedly, we didn't last very long on this one. I think I can still hear it playing in the background; there are a lot of noises going on — the air conditioner, our breathing, our kissing, the sound of a car driving by outside — but they’ve all kind of melted away and I can’t focus enough recognize anything anymore.
I guess it doesn’t really matter. Things are pretty fucking gay, now, anyways.
I think the warmth is the thing I like the most — the burning in the back of my throat, in the pit of my stomach, the heat between his lips, and on his cheeks, and under his shirt — probably in my cheeks now, too. It reminds me of coffee, the way I used to get my warmth when I was younger, except without the jitter running through my arms. I stopped drinking it religiously a long time ago -and I suppose alcohol isn’t exactly the healthiest of substitutes - but for now, I’m just allowing myself to sink deeper and deeper into the warmth.
We’re shifting our weights, rolling a little, adjusting, and I think I can feel the softness of his carpet under me. I allow my fingers to slide under Craig's hat and through his hair, slipping his hat off in the process. He doesn’t seem to notice. I love Craig's hat - at this point, it’s become almost symbolic of him, Craig wouldn’t be Craig without that stupid hat - but I love it even more when we’re alone together, and Craig’s hat is off. I like to think of it as something private, a special vulnerability Craig only lets out around me. Besides, his hair is so soft.
Nobody would ever believe me, but Craig is really soft.
My past self would have been horrified had it been able to see me now.
I was young - nine, ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen - and I was convinced I would be horribly raped and then murdered. I can’t even really remember what it was, but to me, being raped, or having sex, really, was the worst fate a person could suffer — worse than death, or the death of everyone you loved, or torture — only one small step up from hell. I think it was something about fear, or purity, and heaven, and hell.
I think it was something in the trespasses a person could make mentally through a gesture so physical.
I would watch documentary after documentary about sex rings where young Vietnamese teenagers would come to America for a better life only to be in perpetual “debt” to those who brought them there, their bodies exploited and abused and their mind lost to drugs. And then I would watch documentaries about freak situations: little girls kidnapped and trapped inside some pedophile’s home, forgotten to most the world and eventually their own parents, doomed to be continually raped, abused, and neglected. Sometimes the people in the documentaries had been killed. Sometimes they had killed themselves. The ones who were alive were already dead.
I stopped watching those documentaries, not because they were scaring me, but because I was afraid to contribute to the senseless sensationalization of those type of situations. Looking back, I don’t think I was ever really sensationalizing. I just wanted to feel close to my own thoughts.
So distinctly I remember this day - I must have been around eleven. I was playing basketball in my driveway alone, shooting hoops through a crappy plastic hoop that hooked onto our garage door. South Park is a small town, so even at eleven, I was able to recognize nearly everybody and everybody’s car. That day, there was one particular car that I didn’t recognize: an old, crappy-looking white dodge pick-up driving slowly past my house.The first time it drove by, I hardly noticed them. I saw them stop at the stop sign at the end of our street, pausing for a while, and then move on to the next street. I considered they might be a tourist, lost in one of the wonders of the Rocky Mountains. The second time they passed, I was watching for them. I heard the truck’s engine behind me and turned around to catch the driver’s eye - a white, redneck looking man, probably around his fifties. License plate number BP9-32BH. Of course, me seeing him meant he saw me as well. He must have seen that I was young, he must have seen that I was alone, he must have seen where I lived. The third time he drove by, I was out of his site, my back pressed against the side of our garage, my heart hammering in my chest so loud I could swear I could hear it in my ears.
I stopped playing outside after that.
It was 5 pm when I crawled in the little crook in between my mattress and my wall, shaking, but somehow frozen all at the same time, my head and toes hidden under a blanket. I wanted to call the police, give them his license plate number, tell my parents what was going on, but I was frozen silent, and even if I could talk, I knew they wouldn’t believe me.
I must have laid there in that exact same position for hours, completely paralyzed in fear, knowing, just knowing , knowing like I knew my name was Tweek, and 2 + 2 = 4, and water is wet that I would get taken that night. In my mind, I knew that I would get taken, raped, and murdered that night.
And then I accepted it.
And then I accepted I would die in the worst way possible.
And then I waited for it.
And then I woke up in the same spot the next morning.
I guess he had just been lost, after all. The thing was, it was hard to go on living like normal when you had just been completely convinced of your eminent, brutal murder the night before. No matter how many times things turned out okay, I repeated that ritual over and over again, until death meant almost nothing to me.
But now I’m here.
And I’m kissing Craig.
And I’m kind of proud of myself.
There’s the desire in me, just as strong as anybody else’s, threatening to boil over and spill over — because I want people, because I want Craig — but, of course, just as strong there’s the hesitation.
There’s the hesitation that’s there for no goddamn reason besides I was messed up when I was eleven years old, and therefore I’m messed up now.
That’s the real reason I’m drunk.
Because no matter how much I want to feel closer to Craig or to touch him or whatever else, and no matter how much I can logically reason through intimacy, I’m still scared, I’m still scarred. I’m scarred when I’m sober, and I’m scarred when I’m drunk. And it shouldn’t be this hard.
And sure, I can kiss Craig when I’m sober. I can make-out with Craig when I’m sober. But there’s this tightness in my chest - one that doesn’t necessarily come from him.
So, on the very rare occasions I allow myself to get this drunk, I enjoy it.
It’s just too bad I won’t remember it in the morning.