Boy Crazy: Coming Out Erotica (7 page)
Read Boy Crazy: Coming Out Erotica Online
Authors: Unknown
It didn’t seem odd to Eliza that I was also expected to have a summer job, even though I’d spent three years away from home at boarding school, except for holidays. It seemed to me that if anyone had the right to complain about working all summer, it was me. And I liked working.
“I don’t know why I can’t just spend the whole summer at Gran’s and see you and Jem in August,” Eliza said, pouting. “I’m sure Gran could use my help around the house. And it would give me a chance to work on my poetry.” Eliza had discovered the works of Anne Sexton in the past year at Brown, and had decided that she would become a great poet. I’d grown accustomed to the metallic clack of her pale blue Selectric as she sat in her bedroom in the early afternoons, after she woke up. Occasionally a heavy sigh, meant to be heard, issued from behind the half-closed door of her bedroom. After an hour’s work, she would step outside of her ruffled inner sanctum and read her poems aloud to my mother and me. The poems were all about boys she knew, and what she called the pain of being a woman. Even at sixteen, I knew they were dreadful, and made the mistake, once, of telling her so. Her fury had been quick and annihilating.
My mother sighed. “You can write here just as well as at Gran’s, Eliza. You know what your father said about you working. If you had taken time to look a little harder, you wouldn’t still be waitressing this summer. Gran doesn’t need any help, as you well know. She never has. She’ll be running that house when the rest of us are in our graves.”
“Poetry,” I said, leaning forward, muffling my laughter in a pillow from the sofa that Eliza had flung to the floor. “Eliza, you don’t want to go to Flyte to write poetry, you want to go there to lie in the sun and pick up guys. You’re not a writer. Your poems suck.”
“Jem!” my mother snapped.
“Shut up, you little piece of shit,” Eliza said reflexively. She barely glanced at me when she said it, and it made me laugh harder.
“Eliza, please. I will not have that language in this house.”
“He
is
a little piece of shit, Mother. He started it. He’s making fun of my poetry. I don’t know why you coddle him.”
is
a little piece of shit, Mother. He started it. He’s making fun of my poetry. I don’t know why you coddle him.”
“Eliza,” my mother repeated, and this time there was an edge. “This isn’t about your brother, or your poetry, it’s about the fact the you are behaving like a spoiled child. You’re nineteen years old, and it’s unbecoming. Your father is happy to pay your tuition, as am I, but your side of the bargain is that you work. Your brother works, too. Someday you can marry someone rich who can keep you in the style to which you would like to become accustomed. Until then, you can either come to Prothro in August with the family or you can remain here in the city throughout the month of August. I’m sure the restaurant could use the help.”
My mother and sister seemed to be speaking a private language to each other, one with subtitles. If Eliza had hoped to wound my mother by obliquely reminding her that our cousins could spend the summer in Europe because my aunt and uncle were still married to each other and could afford it, my mother was reminding Eliza that this was her house, and it had one mistress. Eliza sighed, and threw back her head.
“Yeah, Eliza, I work too,” I said smugly, sensing my mother’s victory and wanting to align myself with it. “Quit thinking you’re so much better than everyone else in this family. Don’t worry, all the guys will still be there for you to chase on the beach when we get there in August. Maybe you can do a poetry reading,” I added cruelly. “That’ll impress them something fierce.”
“Well, Jem,” Eliza said, slowly rising off the sofa, “one of us can chase guys anyway.” She smiled pointedly at me, and I reddened. “Or have you finally got a girlfriend that no one knows about? My friends and I were wondering.”
“Whatever, Eliza,” I mumbled. “Go write some poetry.”
I turned my head away from my mother’s sight line, and mouthed the word
cunt
to Eliza. She let out a high-pitched squeal of laughter, knowing that she had hit her mark.
cunt
to Eliza. She let out a high-pitched squeal of laughter, knowing that she had hit her mark.
“You two,” my mother said in exasperation. “We’re supposed to be a family, for heaven’s sake. You’re brother and sister. You both came out of my womb. Why can’t you get along?” She glared at Eliza. “It’s so hot in here.” My mother told us that air-conditioning was nouveau riche, but I had begun to suspect that my father didn’t want to cover the cost of it above and beyond the alimony he paid my mother. She fanned herself with a copy of
TV Guide
. “It’s four o’clock. What time is your shift, Eliza? Five?”
TV Guide
. “It’s four o’clock. What time is your shift, Eliza? Five?”
“Five thirty,” my sister said sullenly. She stood up and crossed the living room without looking at our mother.
“Well, you should get ready for work. You don’t want to be late.”
“No,” Eliza replied sarcastically. “I wouldn’t want to be late for my shift. I’d better spend the next hour and a
half
getting ready for my
job
as a
waitress
.”
half
getting ready for my
job
as a
waitress
.”
“A job is a job, Eliza. The sooner you learn that the better.”
“Yeah, Eliza, a job is a job.”
Eliza stopped. She reached down and pulled another cushion off one of the chairs and threw it at me. I ducked, and the cushion hit the coffee table in front of me, scattering magazines across the floor.
“Eliza!” The beginnings of genuine anger had crept into my mother’s voice, but Eliza was already gone. Her bedroom door slammed shut. My mother sighed and rubbed her eyes.
“Jeremy,” my mother said. Using my full name was a sign that her patience was worn down to an exposed nerve. “Would you pick the magazines up, please? Lord, it’s hot. August in Prothro can’t get here fast enough.”
My bedroom at Flyte was painted in pale cream, which caught and held the light early in the morning when the sun came through the open windows framed by navy blue curtains. On the wall hung antique prints of sailing ships, and nautical paraphernalia collected by my grandfather was scattered around the room. The fog had burned off, and I heard the sound of the gardener’s lawnmower in the near distance, and the scream of gulls wheeling above Shaw Inlet. The scent of fresh-cut grass drifted into the room.
I washed my face and brushed my teeth, and put on a pair of khaki shorts and a clean T-shirt and went downstairs.
“Good morning, sleepyhead.” My mother was sitting at the breakfast table with Gran. She ruffled my hair as I passed her on my way to the sideboard where Maureen had laid out breakfast; she had been Gran’s cook and housekeeper as long as I could remember.
Gran was reading the morning mail, which she called, “the post,” and opening letters with the monogrammed sterling silver letter opener that was as natural in her hand as the shears she used to cut her roses. She was sipping her tea. She looked up and smiled brightly.
“Hello, beauty. Did you sleep well?”
“Yes, Gran, thank you.”
Pouring myself some orange juice, I noted as I often did in the summers how much younger and more relaxed Mum seemed at Flyte surrounded by furniture and books and pictures she’d known her whole life. On the wall opposite the hall staircase, there was a line of framed pastel portraits of Mum, Aunt Vangie, and their two brothers, Uncle Rudyard and Uncle Jeremy, after whom I’d been named. Uncle Jeremy, my mother’s favorite brother, had been killed in a car crash two years before I was born. Gran’s children, including my mother, looked like her: they were tall and slim, dark haired, with chiseled features and light green or blue eyes, and they shared an inbred social confidence that I only ever saw crack in my mother’s case—when her divorce from our father reduced her circumstances. In August, however, at Flyte, the time seemed to roll backward for my mother, and she began to look a little bit more like the girl in the portrait on the wall, at least till September, when we returned to the city.
“Morning, all.” Eliza entered the dining room, rubbing her eyes and yawning ostentatiously, as though she was doing the family a favor by showing up at the breakfast table at all. Her face was puffy. Her hair was uncombed and askew, and she looked disheveled in her Bee Gees T-shirt and cutoff jeans. Gran—to whom appearances mattered, especially at mealtimes—winced at the sight of the glorious mess my sister presented, and her mouth tightened perceptibly.
“Did you sleep badly, Eliza?” Gran’s voice was sweet as frozen sugar water. She lightly touched her pearls, a gesture that somehow communicated concern.
“No, why?” Eliza’s tone was sullen. Mother looked down at her plate, fiercely buttering a new piece of toast. I sat back to watch what would come next.
“You look tired, Eliza. I can’t think of any other reason for you to come to the breakfast table looking like you do right now. As you can see, your mother and I, and even your brother, were able to make ourselves presentable before we came downstairs.”
“I was writing all night, Gran,” Eliza said petulantly. “I’m working on a new collection of poetry. It’s very taxing, artistically.” Eliza made a face she clearly hoped conveyed creative intensity. I covered my mouth and pinched my nostrils to keep from laughing. Eliza saw me and glared. But it wasn’t the haughty glare she used on me the rest of the time. Our grandmother was the only person in the world Eliza was afraid of. This time she looked vulnerable, even desperate. “Do you want me to leave the table?”
“No, dear. There’s no need for you to leave the table—this time. Just try to remember in the future that the rest of the family isn’t on as intimate terms with your muse as you are, and style is the dress of thought. A lady never comes to the table looking like a ragpicker’s conventioneer. As I recall, even your current idol, the late Mrs. Sexton—a lady who, from all reports, in spite of the nature and subject matter of her writing—was known for being well turned out.”
“Yes, Gran.”
“So,” Mum said brightly, clearly eager to change the subject. “What are we all doing today? The weather is lovely. I’m going to the club, I think. Does anyone want to come with me? Jem? Eliza? You could swim.”
“Mum, I’m nineteen. Please. I’m going to go to the beach.” Speaking to our mother, Eliza sounded bored again.
“Jem? What about you? Club? Beach?”
“I thought I’d just hang around here for a while,” I said. “Maybe catch up on my reading or something.”
“On a day like this? I think not. You should go to the beach. These beautiful August days are precious as gold. You can read tonight, when it’s dark.”
“Mum—”
“Mother, don’t force him,” Eliza said sweetly. “He gets embarrassed on the beach. He’s not as well developed as other boys his age. He gets nervous around bigger boys, and especially around girls. If he wants to stay inside in the dark, you should let him.”
“Eliza, take your brother with you to the beach today.” Part of my mother’s returned self-confidence was a newfound resolve when dealing with Eliza’s nastiness.
“Mum!” The horror on Eliza’s face almost made me laugh out loud, until I remembered that our mother had just suggested that Eliza and I spend the day together. “I don’t want Jem hanging around me today at the beach! I want to be with my friends. I don’t want them to see
him
.”
him
.”
“Mum, I’m not a baby,” I protested, hating how babyish I sounded. “I don’t need Eliza to look after me.”
“Eliza,” came my grandmother’s voice from the head of the table. “Would you like to borrow my car today to drive to the beach? Your mother, of course, will have hers at the club. How else will you get there?”
“Gran, really?” Eliza sounded thrilled. She was surprised, and visibly grateful to have my grandmother as a sudden ally. Gran never let anyone drive her car. “I’d love to borrow it! I appreciate it.”
“Then take your brother with you to the beach, Eliza,” Gran replied with finality. Eliza’s face fell. “It’s a very wide beach,” Gran continued crisply. She adjusted the pale blue cashmere cardigan on her shoulders. “You two don’t even have to see each other. But I must say, I find this disunity among the younger members of my family to be disheartening, to say the least. Your grandfather would have been appalled.”
“Eliza?”
“What?”
“On a hot summer night, would you offer your throat to the wolf with the red roses?”
“What are you talking about, you idiot?”
“You’re supposed to answer, ‘Will he offer me his mouth?’ It’s from Meatloaf.”
“Just don’t talk to me, you little asshole,” Eliza said. “And duck down in the seat if anyone we know sees us so they won’t know we’re together.”
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