The Art of Breathing

  “I’m fine,” I say to Corey, as if the poem with all my feels doesn’t exist. “I haven’t been sleeping too well, but I’ll get over it.”

  “Uh-huh,” he says in that way that tells me he’s not buying a single word coming out of my mouth. “Talked to Bear yet?”

  Fuck Bear. Stupid fucking Bear. “Nope.”

  “How about Otter?”

  Fuck him too! “Nope.”

  “I don’t suppose you’ve tried to call Dominic.”

  Fuck him the most! “Of course not!” I scoff. “As if! Not hardly! I would never! The sheer audacity of such a question! How—”

  “You just don’t know what to say, right?”

  “He has a kid!” I shout. People laying out next to us look at me weird. I look back at them just as weird. “A child,” I say in a lower voice. “He came, he saw, he conquered that woman’s nether regions, and now he has something to show for it!”

  “I still don’t know exactly what you’re pissed off about,” Corey says, spreading sunblock on his brown shoulders. “The having a kid part? The you not knowing part? The people not telling you part? The fact that you want to have relations with him part? The fact that he’s straight part? Help me, Tyson. Tell me what it is.”

  “Pretty much all of it,” I admit.

  “Ugh. Your teenage emotions are drowning me.”

  “You’re only a couple years older than me,” I remind him.

  “And with age comes sophistication and maturity,” he says with a sniff. “Of which I have both in spades. I don’t understand your tiny little world anymore. I’ve grown up.”

  “What about the Starbucks guy?”

  “I’m positive I have no idea of what you speak.”

  “For a month straight before we came back here,” I remind him, “you made me go to Starbucks every day so that you could stare at Lorenzo the barista. You squealed at him when he remembered that you didn’t want whipped cream on your Frappuccino.”

  “Lorenzo,” Corey says with a sigh. “My summer fling that never was. And it never was because I had to come back here with you, watch as family revelations are revealed, and then deal with your emo fallout. Thank you. Thank you so much for this.”

  “Can we talk about me some more?”

  “As long as I can watch those boys play volleyball while we do it.”

  I follow his gaze and see miles of male college flesh a bit down the beach, knocking a ball over the net with drunken laughter. Yeah. They have abs. Goddammit.

  “I need to work out more,” I mutter.

  “You don’t work out at all,” Corey says.

  “I’m vegetarian. It makes me naturally lithe.”

  “Do people still use the word ‘lithe’ in conversation?”

  “I just did.”

  “You’re not people. You’re Tyson. That’s worlds apart. I’d take the one on the end.”

  Of course he would. The guy is bigger than all the rest, and his chest hair looks like an out-of-control afro.

  “My God,” I mutter. “How on earth did we ever date? I’m the shortest guy you know and I had a single chest hair once that turned out to be a string from my shirt.”

  “You were what I needed,” he says. “At the time. Who knew it’d get so much better after?”

  “I suppose.” It really had, though it took me time to see it. But he won’t hear that from me right now. It’s too easy.

  He hands me the sunblock. “Do me.” He turns his back to me so he can get lathered and still watch the volleyball players getting all sweaty and smacking each other in the ass. One reaches out and tweaks his friend’s nipple, and they all laugh uproariously. Sometimes there’s nothing gayer than a straight guy.

  “This feels like we’re about to star in a porno,” I say as I rub the lotion onto his back.

  “Weirder things have happened. Though, I don’t know if you want to lose your virginity in a gang bang.”

  “I’m not a virgin.”

  “Tyson, you’ve never fucked anyone. You’ve never been fucked. You’re a virgin.”

  “What about that one thing we did on the floor in your apartment?”

  He laughs quietly. “That was good. But that wasn’t sex.”

  “What? Then what was it?”

  “That was you rubbing on top of me and then coming in your jeans.”

  Wow. It’s always good to know the hottest moment in your life can be reduced to rubbing and squirting. I wish I had no morals or scruples so I could have had sex with like at least thirty-six people by now in my lifetime. That’s what college is supposed to be for! Drinking and fucking and doing large piles of cocaine and waking up in someone’s bed with a condom still on your dick, unable to remember what exactly happened the night before. Well, sort of. Maybe not the cocaine part. Or the thirty-six people part. Or the drinking part. That all sounds exhausting. And also, I’d feel bad for not remembering who I just fornicated with. That seems like a jerk move. I suppose I’d have to ask him his name, and he’d probably want to go get bagels or coffee, and then I would feel bad again and agree. He would take me out and never stop talking about football or cricket or whatever it is red-blooded American boys play these days, and eventually, it’d be fifty years later and I’d look across the table at him as he slurps his soup in that way that I hate and he’d ask me if I’d pass the pepper and I’d scream at him that I want the last fifty years of my life back! And he would look at me with dull eyes and then start reminiscing about the one year the Atlanta Seahawks (or whatever the football/cricket team is called) won the Super Bowl or Stanley Cup or whatever and I would realize then that this was it. This was my life.

  “I’m not going to do cocaine because of the Seahawks,” I tell Corey. “I don’t want to be a slut in a bad marriage.”

  “I’m not even going to pretend to understand what that means,” he replies. “You know, it’s scary sometimes how much you’re like your brother.”

  “I am not,” I say with a scowl.

  “It’s part of your charm.”

  “Bear is not charming.”

  “He’s adorable.”

  “Gross. Stop talking about my brother that way.”

  He shrugs. “It’s the truth. I bet it’s hot when he and Otter fu—”

  “You foul beast,” I hiss at him. “That’s disgusting!” As far as I’m concerned, Bear and Otter are eunuchs and live together in a loving but completely platonic relationship.

  “I feel like I should be paying to watch this,” he says as one of the volleyball dudes grabs another dude’s junk and laughs. “Straight guys make no sense.”

  I flop down on my back. “So, I’m a desperate virgin spending his summer at his old home with nothing to look forward to, and I’ll be alone for the rest of my life because no one will ever love me and I’ll probably develop some hideous growth on my face from all this sun.”

  “Probably,” Corey says, lying down beside me on his stomach. He turns his head toward me. “I’ll love you, but it’ll be from a distance because I’m not good with facial growths. Also, I really hope you realize how pathetic you sound and that you’re just attempting to be ironic. Teen angst isn’t what it used to be.”

  I do. And it sucks. I haven’t spoken to Bear in days. Or Otter. Or anyone else other than Corey, angry and sure they all had conspired against me somehow to keep me out of the loop from knowing that my former best friend has a kid. What right did they have to do that? What right did they have to keep this from me?

  Well, it whispers, not that you did a whole lot over the past four years to keep track of Dominic. As a matter of fact, one might say you went out of your way to avoid mentioning or even thinking about him. Right? Didn’t you just cut him out like he was nothing? Exactly what he said you did. And don’t forget how weak and fragile you are, which is why no one told you a thing about him. Poor Tyson! He doesn’t know how to breathe and everything falls down around him, and just like the Kid he is, he ends up in the bathtub because that’s all he kno
ws how to do.

  For fuck’s sake. “Life is hard.” Well, harder than it should be. And I’m probably making it harder. Blargh.

  “Oh boy,” Corey says. “You want some advice?”

  “No. I can figure this out on my own.”

  “Okay,” he says. He closes his eyes.

  I last about three seconds, but I think he knows it’s coming.

  “Give me your damn advice,” I grumble.

  He opens his eyes again. “You’re emotionally stunted.”

  “That’s not advice. That’s insulting and you being a jerk.”

  “It’s not insulting. It’s merely stating fact. And I am not a jerk. I am the light of your life.”

  “A very dim light that’s threatening to burn out.”

  “Brighter than everything else you know,” he assures me.

  “How am I emotionally stunted?” I’m trying to sound offended, but we all know it’s true. With the shit I’ve been through in my life, I have to be stunted somewhere, I’m sure. At least it’s emotionally and not physically. I don’t know how much harder life would be if I were a dwarf. Or a midget. Or whatever is politically correct these days. Little person? Height-challenged? Elf?

  “I could have said emotionally fucked up.”

  “Gee. Thanks for your tact. It’s appreciated more than I could say.” I’m going to throw sand in his face and cackle as he screams in his blindness. That will show him.

  “You’re welcome. Are you going to listen or not?”

  “You could be nicer.”

  “See? Emotionally stunted.”

  “I have a mental deficiency,” I remind him. “Proven by therapy and all. I could so very easily snap if you continue to antagonize me.”

  He snorts. “That’s got nothing to do with it. It’s simple, really.”

  “How do you figure?”

  “You have questions.”

  “Right.” I hate that he knows me so well. And I hate that I do have questions. Questions mean there are things I don’t know. I don’t like not knowing things.

  “Other people have answers.”

  “I suppose.”

  “Logically, one of these things can lead to the other.”

  “Logically, sure.”

  “You’re being difficult,” he says with a sigh.

  “Intentionally so,” I admit. “But it’s not as easy as you’re making it sound.”

  “It’s not as hard as you’re making it out to be.”

  I groan. “Goddammit. I said that exact same thing to my brother once. A long time ago. Jesus, as if I needed any more evidence that I’m Bear Part Two. How depressing.” There is no hope for me.

  “That’s not so bad, you know. Being your brother.”

  “That’s what you think.”

  “He’s got a good head on his shoulders.”

  “I wouldn’t quite put it that way. Unless you only meant literally.”

  “He’s in a stable and loving relationship.”

  “Otter has the patience of a saint. And Bear’s probably a witch and trapped him with a tongue of newt and eye of porpoise.”

  “He’s ready to start a family.”

  “Oh God, don’t remind me. I’m pretty sure it’s a sign of the apocalypse when Bear Thompson considers breeding. Can you imagine the children? It’s going to be all Village of the Damned.” You think I’m joking, but I really don’t know how I feel about it. Not on a personal level, of course, but more on a global scale. It’s not that hard to imagine Bear becoming the leader of a cult made up of his offspring. At the very worst, it would mean the end of the world. At the very best, they would never stop talking. It’s better for me to think globally rather than personally. I’m too much of a selfish asshole to be truly happy about it yet.

  “How do you think he and Otter are going to pick a woman?” Corey asks, eyeing the college boys again with a weird look in his eyes. I swear he’s about to display his plumage and dance like a peacock ready to mate. I’m not jealous about that. At all. Not even a little bit.

  “Probably through some long, overly convoluted process that will have no bearing on the final result.” And knowing my brother, it might be a long time before that ever happens, so I have time to get it straight in my head. Because it’s all about me, apparently. I really need to get my priorities straight.

  “I’m pretty sure there are agencies out there that have women ready to be inseminated. You sign up and then review each woman before deciding on one to get pregnant. It’s all very clinical.”

  I make a face. “So it’s like a baby-making farm? That’s inhumane!” In my head, I see a row of women hooked up to some kind of machine inserted into their wombs attached to a delivery device ready to receive my brother’s deposits.

  Corey sounds amused when he says, “You know, for how smart you are, you can be pretty dumb sometimes.”

  I ignore him because I’ve already gotten going. “This is how it starts, you know. Baby-making farms. Pretty soon, babies will be genetically bred to specifications, and we’ll all lose our humanity in the process. The machines will rise and the world will be thrown into chaos until a ragtag band of mercenaries rise up and fight back.” I pause, considering. “I may have seen too many sci-fi movies with Otter.”

  “Undoubtedly.”

  But now that I’m thinking about it, I can’t stop. “And why do the women in this baby-making farm do it? They get paid, I’m sure, but why would they want to get pregnant over and over again? It’s got to be, like, an addiction, right? Like to drugs. Or like that one guy on that TV show, where he was addicted to licking his cat’s fur.”

  Corey rolls his eyes. “Obviously, it has nothing to do with the joy of giving others a family.”

  “No one’s that altruistic,” I say with a scowl. “There is something more sinister behind this. I think Bear and Otter should hold off until I can get to the bottom of it.”

  “And they do it because they’re addicted like the cat-fur licker?”

  “Exactly.”

  “So just so I can make sure I have this right, if Bear and Otter try to have kids, it will lead to the baby-making farm machines rising up and take over the world?”

  “That’s a broad generalization, but you have the gist of it.”

  “Gee, lucky me. And when they do have the kids, they will be some kind of white-haired, blue-eyed spawn of Satan.”

  “With a lust for blood and flesh that will never cease.”

  “And this has nothing to do with your personal feelings at all.” Whether he is asking or telling me, I don’t know.

  “What? How dare you!” Of all the nerve! “Of all the nerve! Of course not. I just want them to think things through before they start the end of the world. I really don’t think that’s too much to ask.”

  He looks at me and his eyes narrow. “You did it again.”

  “Did what?” I ask innocently as I bat my lashes.

  “Oh no. Don’t you try and look at me like that. You know exactly what you did.”

  “I’m so tired,” I say as I yawn. I stretch to prove to him just how tired I am. “I may just take a nap right here on the beach. Watch over me so my virginity isn’t spoiled while I sleep. My precious flower is important to me.”

  “Tyson James Thompson!”

  Goddammit. “Blah, blah, blah.”

  “You got me to change my own subject!”

  “I didn’t make you do anything.”

  “We were talking about Dominic.”

  “I don’t know what you’re speaking of.” I yawn again. Gosh, I sure am tired!

  “You’re slightly manipulative. Has anyone ever told you that?”

  “Look! The college boys are giving in to their urges and touching each other’s buttholes!” They’re not really, but with the way they’re groping each other, I’m sure one has accidentally slipped a finger in. It’s not as hard to go into a butt as one might think. Well, at least I don’t think so. I’m not exactly an expert on the matter. How de
pressing.

  I can tell he almost wants to look, but somehow he manages to keep his eyes on me. I make a mental note that this is the first time Corey was able to resist my powers and I must take him out before he can become any more powerful.

  “Fascinating,” he says. “Back to questions.”

  “Strike you down, motherfucker,” I mutter.

  “If you strike me down, I shall become more powerful than—”

  “Don’t you dare!” He told me once that he didn’t really understand the love and adoration of Star Wars. I very seriously considered at that moment trying to get him evicted from this planet. He tries to quote it every now and then to piss me off. People who don’t appreciate Star Wars are adding nothing to humanity and should seriously consider repositioning their priorities.

  “Jar Jar Binks said that, right?”

  “I will fuck you up, you blasphemous cretin.” And I will too. In the face.

  “Tyson.”

  “What?”

  “You have questions. About Dominic. He has answers. Talk to him. It’s that simple.”

  “It’s not.” It really is, but I can’t let Corey win that easily. The greatest moments in life are the ones you work hardest to achieve. You can quote me on that.

  He sighs. “Emotionally stunted.”

  “How does that make me emotionally stunted?”

  “Some guy broke your heart. Boo hoo. Poor you.”

  “Shut up, Corey.” Now I’m getting pissed.

  “Poor Tyson! He loved and it wasn’t returned, and so he ran away and stayed away.”

  I wish I smoked, so I would have a lighter, as I would give very real consideration to lighting his ridiculously tiny swim shorts on fire. I tell him as much. He responds that he wishes I smoked as well, because then I would probably have tiny little burn scars down my arm where I’d burned myself because I have so much angst and that I have the emotional maturity of a twelve-year-old. I laugh and contemplate out loud how much it would hurt if I decided to punch him in the mouth. He laughs along with me, pointing out that if I were to decide to punch him, he probably wouldn’t feel it because my arms are desperately lacking any sort of muscle definition. I demur, reminding him that I’d lifted weights (failing to bring up that I was super bored by the whole concept and lasted only five minutes, in which I spent the majority of that time wondering why people spent an inordinate amount of time in the gym when they could be off doing much more productive things like curing cancer). He did not fail to bring up how I’d only gone the one time, reminding me that I’d complained loudly the whole time, all the while lifting the pink five-pound barbell weight above my head like I was some kind of soccer mom attempting to get that stubborn sagging in her front to disappear so her husband would stop looking at the secretary with the bodacious breasts from his office. This, of course, leads to a discussion that one, the barbell weighed more than five pounds and that it was most certainly not pink (it weighed seven pounds and was purple) and that two, no one in their right mind should ever consider using the word “bodacious” in any kind of conversation, as it brings a complete lack of civility to the proceedings and therefore shows that any point the user of the word might have attempted to have is totally without merit and will not be considered.