Middlesex

  “I can’t believe it! Selfridge!” It was the Object now, crying out with amusement.

  “He blew chunks. Right into his stinger. I couldn’t believe it. It was like the Niagara Falls of puke. Selfridge woofs on the bar and everybody jumps off their stools, right? Selfridge is facedown in his own puke. For a minute there’s total silence. Then this one girl starts gagging . . . and it’s like a chain reaction. The whole place starts gagging, puke’s dripping everywhere, and the bartender is—pissed. He’s huge, too. He’s fucking huge. He comes over and looks down at Selfridge. I’m going like I don’t know this guy. Never saw him before. And then guess what?”

  “What?”

  “The bartender reaches out and grabs hold of Selfridge. He’s got him by the collar and the belt, right? And he lifts Selfridge like a foot up in the air—and Zambonis the bar with him!”

  “No way!”

  “I’m not kidding. Zambonied the Fridge right in his own barf!”

  At that point we stepped out onto the porch. The Object and Rex Reese were sitting together on a white wicker couch. It was dark out, coolish, but the Object was still in her swimsuit, a shamrock bikini. She had a beach towel wrapped around her legs.

  “Hi,” I called out.

  The Object turned. She looked at me blankly. “Hey,” she said.

  “She’s here,” said Jerome. “Safe and sound. Dad didn’t run off the road.”

  “Daddy’s not that bad a driver,” said the Object.

  “When he’s not drinking he’s not. But tonight I’d wager he had the old martini thermos on the front seat.”

  “Your old man likes to party!” Rex called out hoarsely.

  “Did my dad have occasion to quench his thirst on the drive up?” Jerome asked.

  “More than one occasion,” I said.

  Now Jerome laughed, going loose in the body and slapping his hands together.

  Meanwhile Rex was saying to the Object, “Okay. She’s here. So let’s party.”

  “Where should we go?” the Object said.

  “Hey, Je-roman, didn’t you say there was some old hunting lodge out in the woods?”

  “Yeah. It’s about half a mile in.”

  “Think you could find it in the dark?”

  “With a flashlight maybe.”

  “Let’s go.” Rex stood up. “Let’s take some beers and hike on in there.”

  The Object got up, too. “Let me put on some pants.” She crossed the porch in her swimsuit. Rex watched. “Come on, Callie,” she said. “You’re staying in my room.”

  I followed the Object inside. She went quickly, almost running, and didn’t look back at me. As she climbed the stairs ahead of me, I whacked her from behind.

  “I hate you,” I said.

  “What?”

  “You’re so tan!”

  She flashed a smile over her shoulder.

  As the Object dressed, I snooped around the bedroom. The furniture was white wicker up here, too. There were amateur sailing prints on the walls and on the shelves Petoskey stones, pinecones, musty paperbacks.

  “What are we going to do in the woods?” I said, with a note of complaint.

  The Object didn’t answer.

  “What are we going to do in the woods?” I repeated.

  “We’re going for a walk,” she said.

  “You just want Rex to molest you.”

  “You have such a dirty mind, Callie.”

  “Don’t deny it.”

  She turned around and smiled. “I know who wants to molest you,” she said.

  For a second, an irrepressible happiness flooded me.

  “Jerome,” she finished.

  “I don’t want to go out in the woods,” I said. “There’s bugs and stuff.”

  “Don’t be a such a wuss,” she said. I had never heard her say “wuss” before. It was a word boys used; boys like Rex. Finished dressing, the Object stood before the mirror, picking at some dry skin on her cheek. She ran a brush through her hair and put on lip gloss. Then she came over to me. She came up very close. She opened her mouth and blew her breath into my face.

  “It’s fine,” I said, and moved away.

  “Don’t you want me to check yours?”

  “No biggie,” I said.

  I decided that if the Object was going to ignore me and flirt with Rex, I would ignore her and flirt with Jerome. After she left, I combed my hair. From the collection of atomizers on the dresser, I chose one and squeezed the bulb, but no perfume came out. I went into the bathroom and undid the straps of my overalls. Lifting my shirt, I stuffed a few tissues in my brassiere. Then I shook my hair back, hitched up my overalls, and hurried outside for our walk in the woods.

  They were waiting for me under a yellow bug light on the porch. Jerome held a silver flashlight. Slung over Rex’s shoulder was an army surplus backpack, filled with Stroh’s. We came down the steps onto the lawn. The ground was uneven, treacherous with roots, but the pine needles were soft underfoot. For a moment, despite my foul mood, I felt it: the crisp northern Michigan delight. A slight chill to the air, even in August, something almost Russian. The indigo sky above the black bay. The smell of cedar and pine.

  At the edge of the woods the Object stopped. “Is it going to be wet?” she said. “I only have my Tretorns on.”

  “Come on,” said Rex Reese, pulling her by the hand. “Get wet.”

  She screamed, theatrically. Leaning back like someone on a rope tow, she was pulled unsteadily into the trees. I paused, too, peering in, waiting for Jerome to do the same. He didn’t, though. Instead he stepped straight into the swamp and then slowly melted below the knees. “Quicksand!” he cried. “Help me! I’m sinking! Please somebody help . . . glub glub glub glub glub.” Up ahead, already invisible, Rex and the Object were laughing.

  The cedar swamp was an ancient place. No logging had ever been done here. The ground wasn’t suitable for houses. The trees had been alive for hundreds of years and when they fell over they fell over for good. Here in the cedar swamp verticality wasn’t an essential property of trees. Many cedars were standing straight up but many were leaning over. Still others had fallen against nearby trees, or crashed to the ground, popping up root systems. There was a graveyard feeling: everywhere the gray skeletons of trees. The moonlight filtering in lit up silver puddles and sprays of cobweb. It glanced off the Object’s red hair as she moved and darted ahead of me.

  We made a clumsy, yahoo progress through the swamp. Rex imitated animal sounds that sounded like no animal. Beer cans dinged in his backpack. Our deracinated feet stomped along in the mud.

  After twenty minutes we found it: a one-room shack made of unpainted boards. The roof wasn’t much taller than I was. The circular flashlight beam showed tar paper covering the narrow door.

  “It’s locked. Fuck,” said Rex.

  “Let’s try the window,” Jerome suggested. They disappeared, leaving the Object and me alone. I looked at her. For the first time since I’d arrived she really looked at me. There was just enough moonlight to accomplish this silent exchange between our eyes.

  “It’s dark out here,” I said.

  “I know it,” said the Object.

  There was a crash behind the shack, followed by laughter. The Object took a step closer to me. “What are they doing in there?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Suddenly the small window of the shack lit up. The boys had lit a Coleman lantern inside. Next the front door opened and Rex stepped out. He was smiling like a salesman. “Got a guy here wants to meet you.” At which point he held up a mousetrap dangling the jellied mouse.

  The Object screamed. “Rex!” She jumped back and held on to me. “Take it away!”

  Rex dangled it some more, laughing, and then tossed it into the woods. “Okay, okay. Don’t have a shit fit.” He went back inside.

  The Object was still clinging to me.

  “Maybe we should go back,” I ventured.

  “Do you think you know the way? I’m to
tally lost.”

  “I can find it.”

  She turned and looked into the black woods. She was thinking about it. But then Rex reappeared in the doorway. “Come on in,” he said. “Check it out.”

  And now it was too late. The Object let go of me. Throwing the red scarf of her hair over her shoulder, she ducked through the low threshold into the hunting shack.

  Inside were two cots with Hudson’s Bay blankets. They stood at either end of the small space separated by a crude kitchen with a camp stove. Empty bourbon bottles lined the windowsill. The walls were covered with yellowed clippings from the local paper, angling competitions, soap box derbies. There was also a taxidermied pike, jaws agape. Low on kerosene, the lantern sputtered. The light was butter-colored, the ripple of smoke greasing the air. It was opium den light, which was appropriate, because already Rex had plucked a joint from his pocket and was lighting it with a safety match.

  Rex was on one cot, Jerome on the other. Casually the Object sat down next to Rex. I stood in the middle of the floor, hunching. I could feel Jerome watching me. I pretended to examine the shack but then turned, expecting to meet his gaze. This didn’t happen, however. Jerome’s eyes were focused on my chest. On my falsies. He liked me already. Now here was an added attraction, like a bonus for good intentions.

  Maybe I should have been pleased by the trance he was in. But my revenge fantasy had already gone bust. My heart wasn’t in it. Still, having no alternative, I went ahead and sat beside Jerome. Across the shack Rex Reese had the joint in his mouth.

  Rex was wearing shorts and a monogrammed shirt, ripped at the shoulder, showing tanned skin. There was a red mark on his flamenco dancer’s neck: a bug bite, a fading hickey. He closed his eyes to inhale deeply, his long eyelashes coming together. The hair on his head was as thick and oiled as an otter’s pelt. Finally he opened his eyes and passed the joint to the Object.

  To my surprise she took it. As though it were one of her beloved Tareytons, she put it between her lips and inhaled.

  “Won’t that make you paranoid?” I said.

  “No.”

  “I thought you told me pot always makes you paranoid.”

  “Not when I’m out in nature,” said the Object. She gave me a hard look. Then she took another toke.

  “Don’t bogart it,” said Jerome. He got up to take the joint from her. He smoked half-standing, and then turned and held it out to me. I looked at the joint. One end burned; the other was mashed and wet. I had an idea that this was all part of the boys’ plan, the woods, the shack, the cots, the drugs, the sharing of saliva. Here’s a question I still can’t answer: Did I see through the male tricks because I was destined to scheme that way myself? Or do girls see through the tricks, too, and just pretend not to notice?

  For one second I thought of Chapter Eleven. He was living in a shack in the woods like this. I asked myself if I missed my brother. I couldn’t tell if I did or not. I never know what I feel until it’s too late. Chapter Eleven had smoked his first joint at college. I was four years ahead of him.

  “Hold it in,” Rex coached me.

  “You have to let the THC build up in your bloodstream,” said Jerome.

  There was a sound out in the woods, twigs snapping. The Object grabbed Rex’s arm. “What was that?”

  “Maybe a bear,” Jerome said.

  “Neither of you girls are on the rag, I hope,” said Rex.

  “Rex!” the Object protested.

  “Hey, I’m serious. Bears can smell it. I was out camping in Yellowstone one time and there was this woman out there who got killed. Grizzly could smell the blood.”

  “That is not true!”

  “I swear. This guy I know told me. He was an Outward Bound guide.”

  “Well, I don’t know about Callie, but I’m not,” said the Object.

  They all looked at me. “I’m not either,” I said.

  “I guess we’re safe, then, Roman,” said Rex, and laughed.

  The Object was still holding on to him for protection. “You want to do a shotgun?” he asked her.

  “What’s that?”

  “Here.” He turned to face her. “What you do is one person opens their mouth and the other person blows the smoke into it. You get totally fucked up. It’s excellent.”

  Rex put the lit end of the joint in his mouth. He leaned toward the Object. She leaned forward too. She opened her mouth. And Rex began to blow. The Obscure Object’s lips were a perfect ripe oval and into that target, that bull’s-eye, Rex Reese directed the stream of musky smoke. I could see the column rush into the Object’s mouth. It disappeared down her throat like whitewater over falls. Finally she coughed and he stopped.

  “Good hit. Now do me.”

  The Object’s green eyes were watering. But she took the joint and inserted it between her lips. She leaned toward Rex Reese, who opened his own mouth wide.

  When they were finished, Jerome took the joint from his sister. “Let me see if I can master the technical difficulties here,” he said. The next thing I knew, his face was close to mine. So finally I did it, too. Leaned forward, closed my eyes, parted my lips, and let Jerome shotgun into my mouth a long, dirty plume of smoke.

  Smoke filled my lungs, which began to burn. I coughed and let it out. When I opened my eyes again, Rex had his arm around the Object’s shoulder. She was trying to act casual about it. Rex finished his beer. He opened two more, one for him and one for her. He turned toward the Object. He smiled. He said something I couldn’t hear. And then while I was still blinking he covered the Object’s lips with his sour, handsome, pot-smoking mouth.

  Across the flickering shack Jerome and I were left pretending not to notice. The joint was ours now to bogart as we wished. We passed it back and forth in silence and sipped our beers.

  “I’m having this weird thing where my feet look extremely far away,” Jerome said after a while. “Do your feet look extremely far away to you?”

  “I can’t see my feet,” I said. “It’s dark in here.”

  He passed me the joint again and I took it. I inhaled and held the smoke in. I let it keep burning my lungs because I wanted to distract myself from the pain in my heart. Rex and the Object were still kissing. I looked away, out the dark, grimy window.

  “Everything looks really blue,” I said. “Did you notice that?”

  “Oh yeah,” said Jerome. “All kinds of strange epiphenomena.”

  The Oracle of Delphi had been a girl about my same age. All day long she sat over a hole in the ground, the omphalos, the navel of the earth, breathing petrochemical fumes escaping from underneath. A teenage virgin, the Oracle told the future, speaking the first metered verse in history. Why do I bring this up? Because Calliope was also a virgin that night (for a little while longer at least). And she, too, had been inhaling hallucinogens. Ethylene was escaping from the cedar swamp outside the shack. Dressed not in a diaphanous robe but a pair of overalls, Calliope began to feel very funny indeed.

  “Want another beer?” Jerome asked.

  “Okay.”

  He handed me a golden can of Stroh’s. I put the sweating can to my lips and drank. Then I drank some more. Jerome and I both felt the weight of the obligation. We smiled at each other nervously. I looked down and rubbed my knee through my overalls. And when I looked up again Jerome’s face was close. His eyes were shut, like the eyes of a boy jumping feet first off the high dive. Before I knew what was happening he was kissing me. Kissing the girl who had never been kissed. (Not since Clementine Stark, anyway.) I didn’t stop him. I remained completely still while he did his thing. Despite my lightheadedness, I could feel everything. The shocking wetness of his mouth. The whiskery feel of his lips. His barging tongue. Certain flavors, too, the beer, the dope, a lingering breath mint, and beneath all that the actual, animal taste of a boy’s mouth. I could taste the gamy tang of Jerome’s hormones and the metal of his fillings. I opened one eye. Here was the fine hair I’d spent so much time admiring on another head. Here were th
e freckles on the forehead, on the bridge of the nose, along the ears. But it wasn’t the right face; they weren’t the right freckles, and the hair was dyed black. Behind my impassive face my soul curled up into a ball, waiting until the unpleasantness was over.

  Jerome and I were still sitting up. He was pressing his face against mine. By maneuvering a little, I could see across the room to where Rex and the Object were. They were lying down now. The tails of Rex’s blue shirt seemed to flap in the wavering light. Beneath him one of the Object’s legs dangled off the bed, the cuff of her pants muddy. I heard them whispering and laughing, then silence again. I watched the Object’s mud-stained leg dancing. I concentrated on that leg, so that I hardly noticed when Jerome began to pull me down on our cot. I let him; I gave in to our slow collapse, all the while watching Rex Reese and the Object out of one eye. Rex’s hands were moving over the Object’s body now. They were pulling up her shirt, moving under it. Then their bodies shifted so that I saw their faces in profile. The Object’s face, as still as a death mask, waited with eyes closed. Rex’s profile was rampant, flushed. Meanwhile Jerome’s hands were moving over me. He was rubbing my overalls, but I was no longer in them exactly. My focus on the Object was too intense.

  Ecstasy. From the Greek Ekstasis. Meaning not what you think. Meaning not euphoria or sexual climax or even happiness. Meaning, literally: a state of displacement, of being driven out of one’s senses. Three thousand years ago in Delphi the Oracle became ecstatic every single working hour. That night in a hunting cabin in northern Michigan, so did Calliope. High for my first time, drunk for my first time, I felt myself dissolving, turning to vapor. Like the incense at church my soul rose toward the dome of my skull—and then broke through. I drifted over the plank floor. I floated above the little camp stove. Passing by the bourbon bottles, I hovered over the other cot, looking down at the Object. And then, because I suddenly knew that I could, I slipped into the body of Rex Reese. I entered him like a god so that it was me, and not Rex, who kissed her.

  An owl hooted in a tree somewhere. Bugs assailed the windows, attracted by the light. In my Delphic state I was simultaneously aware of both make-out sessions. By way of Rex’s body I was hugging the Obscure Object, nuzzling her ear . . . while at the same time I was also aware of Jerome’s hands ranging over my body, the one I’d left on the other cot. He was on top of me, crushing one of my legs, so I moved it, spread my legs apart, and he fell between them. He made little sounds. I put my arms around him, appalled and moved by his thinness. He was even skinnier than I was. Now Jerome was kissing my neck. Now, advised by some magazine column, he was paying attention to my earlobe. His hands moved up. They were heading for my chest. “Don’t,” I said, scared he’d find my tissues. And Jerome obeyed . . .