Make Something Up: Stories You Can't Unread

  INCLINATIONS

  There was this girl. She was named Mindy. Mindy Evelyn Taylor-Jackson. That’s the name a bailiff would eventually read into the public record. You see, everything that comes next will ultimately end up in a court of law. Not to ruin the suspense, but justice will prevail.

  There’s a lot of ground to cover, but what you need to know first is that Mindy got knocked up. At thirteen, no less. She wanted a spot on the cheerleading squad and a career as a paralegal and a 911 Carrera 4S Cabriolet in Obsidian No. 2 with the Special Edition Stuttgart leather interior. The last thing Mindy wanted was a baby. Her parents, on the other hand, weren’t inclined to agree. They were born-again Pro-Lifers. Life begins at conception, they told her; nonetheless, eventually they had to promise that if she carried full term and gave it up for adoption they’d buy her the Porsche.

  At first she could only drive it around, the Porsche, after hours, in the big parking lot at their church. She cut black-rubber doughnuts and smoking figure eights like something pacing inside a cage. Around there, back then, Porsches weren’t so easy to come by. They were like Social Security or getting to Heaven. Grown-ups said to work hard and keep your nose clean. You’d get your turn.

  Her mom and dad had wanted to teach her about the beauty and sanctity of life. But Mindy learned something else. Before her sixteenth birthday she had three Porsches. Three Porsches and the biggest boobs in the junior class. And no stretch marks. Those were just some of the perks of starting early. The gossip was that she got a cash kickback from the Porsche dealership in St. Cloud. That, and the rumor mill said she’d recently been back to the obstetrician, and if her parents’ money held out—and her cervix—people said Mindy Taylor-Jackson was carrying twin Porsches. That meant she’d have five cars before she graduated high school.

  —

  What came next is Kevin Clayton saw Mindy with her 400-horsepower, driving on her deluxe, chromed wire–rimmed wheels. So for his sixteenth birthday Kevin Clayton asked for a subscription to Elle Decor magazine. In September, he asked for a gerbil. Days later, when it went missing, he asked for a replacement. He was going on his fourth gerbil by Homecoming. His sixth by Halloween. He went to his mom’s grocery list stuck under a magnet on the fridge door, and he wrote, “We need more Vaseline.” Using squares of Kleenex, he’d scooped out the jar in the bathroom and flushed most of its greasy contents down the toilet.

  When his mom bought more, he noticed that she’d marked a line on the side of the jar in black felt-tipped pen. It recorded the level, the same way they marked the bottles of vodka and gin in the liquor cabinet. Right away Kevin scooped out a batch and flushed it. He went to his bedroom and opened the gerbil’s cage. Reaching inside he caught the little fur ball by its tail.

  Somebody knocked at the bedroom door. Kevin lifted out this, the most-recent gerbil. From the hallway, his father said, “We need to talk, mister.”

  Kevin carried the gerbil to the window. He slid the pane open, and carefully lowered the little rodent to within a few inches of the ground. “I’m coming in,” Mr. Clayton said. There was the sound of keys. Kevin dropped the gerbil and watched it scamper away. It was autumn. Everything was going to seed. Everything was food. He closed the window and flopped on the bed and opened the latest issue of Elle Decor just as his dad came through the door. The first place his dad looked was the empty cage.

  “Where’s your hamster?” he asked.

  Kevin shrugged. He tried to look like he was trying to not look guilty. He told his father, “Be honest.” Indicating a photo in the design magazine, he asked, “Do you really think that vividly patterned foil wallpapers can rally for a comeback?” He yawned and smirked like a boa constrictor that had just swallowed a goat.

  His father’s eyes moved slowly from the cage to where Kevin sprawled on the bed. Mr. Clayton tried to smile, but his lips trembled with the effort and fell flat. When he spoke, his voice came out strained and high-pitched. “Another one got away?” He shuddered and wiped his face with the palm of one hand.

  Someday, when Kevin was grown and wed and brought home his future kids for his folks to swoon over, he swore to himself he’d tell his dad the truth: He’d set all the gerbils free. By that point, there would be a gerbil population explosion. He and his dad would drink beer on the front porch and laugh about the terrible images that were at present filling Mr. Clayton’s head.

  Stretched on his bed, Kevin turned a page and grimaced, muttering darkly, “Enough with the glass tile, already.” He looked everywhere except at his father. He farted. It irked him a little how easily his dad jumped to a gruesome conclusion.

  Before they agreed to another gerbil, Kevin’s parents asked if he’d see the family’s GP. They didn’t give a reason. He suspected they wanted to scout around his ass cheeks for tiny claw marks.

  When issues of Playgirl started hitting their doorstep, his mom and dad were inconsolable.

  Kevin didn’t want a Porsche. Let’s not pretend. No kid wanted a Porsche. This wasn’t 1985. But what else was there to ask for? It couldn’t be anything too easy. It had to be a challenge. Still, Mindy Taylor-Jackson had established the standard unit for measuring teenage power and parental love. One Porsche. Two Porsches. And so forth. Hers was the record to beat.

  The next time the Vaseline ran out, both his folks confronted him in his room. Another gerbil had also come and gone. His mom and dad stood near the empty cage, where it rested on his bedside table, while Kevin lolled on his bed.

  Kevin knew exactly what buttons to push. “Why would I want to be like the two of you?” He made a mean face. “So I can be miserable?” He thumped a fist dramatically against his skinny chest. “So I can raise a good-for-nothing freak of nature who’ll just break my heart?” He threw the latest Elle Decor so that it slammed against his new poster of Lady Gaga and the combined paper of both crumpled and fell. He lashed out, knocking the empty cage to the floor, scattering cedar chips on the braided-rag rug. He chewed the scenery. It was easier for him to cry once he saw real tears running down Mrs. Clayton’s cheeks.

  It felt wonderful. He’d told jokes before. Any clown could make people laugh. But this was a terrible new ability. He had the power to make his mother cry. It wasn’t much of a superpower, but it was a start.

  “You’re not a freak,” wailed Mr. Clayton.

  “I am!” Kevin said this with a ferocity that impressed himself. “I’m a sexual invert!” He ranted at his mom, “You should’ve aborted me!” The words, these words felt thrilling and self-indulgent. Self-loathing as they sounded, he was still the center of attention. The problem with being a teenager is that parents could be so calm. The prospect of a whole career occurred to him. This was acting. He could become a movie star.

  As proof of Kevin’s natural talent, his dad held his mom by the shoulders, restraining her as she struggled to step forward and throw her arms around her son. His dad’s face was shut tight. At school, Kevin’s friends would be so jealous. He couldn’t wait to describe to them how anguished his mom looked. The way his dad was sniveling. Kevin had forced their hand. This was love. This was how much they loved him.

  He was holding himself hostage. They’d have to meet his demands.

  Mindy Taylor-Jackson, her parents had sent her to a place outside town. A big fenced-off building like a boarding school or a rehab clinic. Not too far away from that place was another building, but for boys. It consisted of a few gravel acres around a six-story, redbrick building. It only looked like a factory. According to scuttlebutt there was nothing to do inside except lift weights and get injections of testosterone. Residents got to play cards and surf porn. It was like a jail but without the constant threat of getting corn-holed. Plus, they brought in strippers and whores.

  Kevin marveled at how his campaign tormented his folks. This was a gamble. And it was a trap, even Kevin saw that. He could never fess up. Not without forfeiting all the credibility he’d ever have. To watch them, trembling and distraught, it was like attendin
g his own funeral. Nothing he’d ever done in his life had ever felt so satisfying. Kevin’s father seemed to age, becoming a stooped old man right before his eyes. To witness them wilt and blubber this way, the depth of their pain was nothing less than astounding. A permanent shift had taken place, and they would never again be his masters.

  Seeing them in such agony, Kevin had to throw them a bone. Rolling over on his bed, he pressed his face into his pillow to keep from laughing. Muffled, he said, “If only there was some cure…”

  He wasn’t relenting. He simply realized that the solution had to occur like their idea. They had to bring up the redbrick factory in the middle of nowhere.

  —

  Officially it wasn’t called the “Fag Farm.” It was built as someplace else—a hospital or a prison. But then the Commander came along with his theories about reorientation. The first thing he did was reorient the building by running fences around it. The place was red brick rising up six stories above corn fields. In the space between the redbrick walls and the fence, where there used to be green, mowed grass, the Commander put gravel and roaming, bloodthirsty, Stalag 13 dogs.

  When his parents drove him, there was the usual mob blockading the gate. A crowd of Rock Hudsons waved protest signs and lay down in the road, thick as a carpet, trying to get themselves run over. Lady softball players wore too-tight T-shirts with pink triangles and no bras even though it was practically Christmas. The rainbow-colored balloons were printed with “=” signs. They carried bunches of these balloons and babies. Somehow they all had little babies.

  Kevin’s dad had to honk the horn while their car idled with the doors locked and the heater blasting. The Rock Hudsons rushed them from every direction. They waved to draw Kevin’s attention, yelling that he didn’t need to be ashamed. Some were dressed as nuns who had beards and wore too much eye makeup. Kevin couldn’t look at the Rock Hudson faces pressed against the car windows, so close he could see straight down their yelling throats. Instead he looked at the babies. He studied the babies, it was like looking in a mirror.

  One Rock Hudson shouted, “It gets better!” Kevin wanted to yell, Get lost!

  Cameras perched on the gateposts, swiveling to follow their progress. A figure stood on the roof, a rifle slung over his shoulder. “It’s good security,” Mr. Clayton said. “You can just imagine if these deviants ever overran this place.” He jerked his head toward the gates. Again, he honked.

  Even now, Kevin was tempted to explain about Mindy and the gerbils but there was too much at stake.

  The fence had accordion rolls of razor wire running along the top. Inside that fence was another fence with signs that said “Danger High Voltage.” When they were inside the first gate they waited. Only when it closed did the inner gate finally swing open. Even then, inside the second fence there were the German dogs barking and snapping at their car. The dogs sniffed at the windows until an old man came out the doors of the building. Leaning on a cane he stood at the top of the front steps. He lifted a chrome whistle that hung from a cord around his scrawny neck. He blew it until the veins stood out in his spotted forehead. Kevin heard nothing, but the dogs scattered in every direction.

  The old man who met them was called the Commander except for behind his back. There, people called him Mr. Peanut because of his skin. It puckered into squares and looked yellow like a shell. He was bald as a peanut. The whiskers on his chin were yellow. Even the white parts of his eyes were yellow.

  The Commander motioned for them to hurry. Once they were safely inside, he sat them at a desk and presented them with a pancake stack of documents. There wasn’t time to read every page so he told them where to sign their names. Kevin could smell perfume. He smelled cafeteria food. His mother was snuffling into a handkerchief. His father was writing a check. Mrs. Clayton kissed Kevin on the cheek, and Mr. Clayton shook his hand.

  —

  The other boys assigned to Kevin Clayton’s floor were: Jasper, Brainerd, Pig the Pirate, Tomas, Whale Jr., Troublemaker, and Kidney Bean. Those were the names written in felt-tipped pen on the paper tags stuck to their shirts. “Hello, My Name Is…” Kevin, Jasper, Brainerd, Pig the Pirate, Tomas, Whale Jr., Troublemaker, and Kidney Bean. For some of them, that was their given name. For some, that was only a name they went by.

  Their floor, the sixth floor, the top floor, felt tornado-high surrounded by nothing but cornfields. If a person could see far enough, over the curve of the horizon a little, he might see the girls’ camp where Mindy Taylor-Jackson had been sent to have induced childbirth and surrender her sin. From one window they could look down on the front gate. There, the crowd of Rock Hudsons was too far away for him to see faces, but Kevin could make out their pink triangle picket signs and rainbow flags. He could see the German dogs prowling the fence line. Watching them, he felt like the angel trapped within Lot’s house in the Old Testament. Outside, the assembled sodomites laid siege to the building.

  On Kevin’s first afternoon, the boys were unpacking suitcases. The new inductees. The whole room was open like a barracks. A cot was assigned to each of them. Next to that was a tall, skinny metal locker like in high school. Nobody made overtures, not even to say “hello” or ask, “What about those Packers?” Nobody made himself acquainted. The floor supervisor assigned Kevin a bed between Brainerd and Whale Jr. Kidney Bean was assigned the next bed over, in a corner. They had until chow time to get settled in.

  When the floor supervisor left, Troublemaker went to the corner bed and grabbed up Kidney Bean’s clothes in one armload and threw them across the room in the direction of his own assigned bed. He claimed the corner, and Troublemaker lifted his hands above his head. Clapping them together, he shouted, “Listen up, my fellow perverts!” Tattooed on the inside of one wrist, he boasted a vampire bat or, maybe, a long-handled ax.

  He snapped his fingers and whistled until everyone was looking. Once he had them all watching, he said, “Just so you know…” His biceps flexed. They made the short sleeves of his black T-shirt bunch up to his armpits, exposing dense armpit hair. A dark-blue tattoo banded one side of his neck. In thorny letters it spelled out “Suede.” He was a brute.

  Troublemaker leveled his gaze on Kevin, his eyes twitching between Kevin’s bed and his own bed not an arm’s reach apart. Troublemaker waited until Kevin was turned all the way, listening with his eyes and ears. Talking slow, like a list of words instead of a sentence, Troublemaker said, “I—Am—Not—A—Homosexual.” He raised his forehead in expectation and waited for his words to sink in.

  Otherwise the floor had gone silent. Everyone looked frozen, posed like a photograph of kids unpacking.

  Troublemaker made one hand into a gun and poked the muzzle into the middle of his own chest. Like a Tarzan, he said, “Me: Heterosexual.” To the room in general, he said, “I’m only here to blackmail my folks into giving me a Yamaha Roadliner S.” Troublemaker said, “Capisce?”

  Kevin stared at him in amazement.

  —

  It only took one person to fess up before there was an epidemic of truth. Whale Jr. said he’d hoodwinked his entire church. Someplace in Montana there was a small town where the ladies were holding bake sales. The teenagers were holding car-wash-a-thons. Even the little kids were chipping in their Tooth Fairy pennies. Whale Jr. bragged that when he went home he’d be a local hero. The Rotary Club and the Kiwanis would ride him down Main Street in a big Welcome Home parade. He’d get to wave at everybody, riding up high on the boot of a Cadillac convertible.

  Whale Jr.’s eyes misted over with the vision. He’d be living proof to everyone he knew that they could heal the corruption of this sick world. With the cakes and pies they baked…the turkeys they raffled off…they were saving a soul. Despite what godless liberal progressives preached, the good people of this nation could make a difference. Every cent they earned was going to help make Whale Jr. a raving pussy hound.

  Of course, that was already the case. He’d never been a football star. He’d never taken home
straight A’s on a report card. But just by liking girls, Whale Jr. would soon be adored by everyone he knew. Everyone in his small town would be invested in keeping him a happy skirt chaser. Boasting about his scheme, Whale Jr. smirked. He polished his fingernails against the front of his starched, white shirt. To underscore his genius, he ducked his eyes with false aw-shucks modesty.

  In response, Jasper said a parade was strictly small potatoes. Same with being a church hero. When Jasper graduated from the Farm, his grandparents had promised to pay for his college education.

  Beaming, Pig the Pirate said he was getting flying lessons as his reward. Tomas had negotiated a season ticket to the Bruins.

  Listening to them, Kevin hoped God graded on a curve. Someday, what kept him out of Hell wouldn’t be his own goodness as much as it would be other people committing worse sins. Kevin had forced his parents’ hand. He’d made them demonstrate how much they loved him. But other guys had whole towns praying for them. They’d go home as fake saints. As living proof of God’s miracles on earth.

  According to the bargain he’d struck with his folks, when he came home a recovered pervert, Kevin Clayton would get no less than twenty thousand dollars cash. It wasn’t a Porsche, but that’s what his parents were willing to pay.

  —

  That evening the boys of the sixth floor bowed their heads together over beef Stroganoff. Before the butter had melted on their green beans, they’d all confessed to running more or less the same scam. They were, each and every boy, fake inverts. As such, they all committed to toeing the line, here. Bowing and scraping, if need be. It felt good. To be around other kids, clever kids, felt like being pickpockets together in some book by Charles Dickens. It was better than organized crime, because their scheme made everyone happy. There wasn’t a bona fide homo among them.

  They were still joshing and slapping one another on the back, congratulating each other on their mutual brilliance, when the Commander entered through the back of the chow hall. He moved like a coffin through the center of the room, toward a lectern at the far end. The room was heavy with steam and sour milk smells. By the time he took his place, the boys had gone quiet. He shuffled a few pages. Without looking up, he began to read. “Gentlemen.” He cleared his throat. “Gentlemen, welcome to the Healing Center. Please be assured that this institution has never failed in its mission. These doors have never, once, released a soul with troubled inclinations back into the world…”