I’m happy to announce the publication of my story “Tuesday 12:32” in the current issue of Bewildering Stories—in which an old-fashioned camera takes a picture from the future.
Meanwhile, a wonderful writer and friend on Substack,
is publishing my guest article “Layering Queerness in Fiction” on May 7th—please check it out when you have a moment.Kate has just begun sharing episodes each Saturday of her serial novel An Interpreter in Vienna described as “a response to Graham Greene's The Third Man and a psychological thriller.” Her previous serial, A Hong Kong Story, was a stark tale of loss and renewal—very much looking forward to more of her savvy storytelling.
Start at the beginning:
We Regret to Inform You | Lamb ♣ 01
Mr. Perez’s Apartment
♣ ♣ ♣ 13 ♣ ♣ ♣
Lamb kept diaries and journals from way before he went to Wolcott—there’s a little green leather one with a lock on it written in Dutch, a child’s scrawl. I haven’t bothered with that one or some of the others because I have to hand type them into Google Translate, and a lot of the Dutch words are completely screwy. But later on, he used mostly English with some Dutch and French words thrown in now and then like he was trying to hide certain things in case someone read it.
The following entry was from sometime in the middle of our sophomore year, he wasn’t too good about dates early on, and I don’t remember exactly when it happened even though I remember that day. His handwriting was pretty terrible, and his punctuation even worse, but I’ve gotten pretty good at reading his weird backwards slanting cursive. I’ve reconstructed it from his hieroglyphics so it makes sense.
As far as the kissing stuff, well, I guess I can admit all this time later that I could tell Lamb was falling in love with me. Even though I was fifteen and desperate to get my hands on some dick, I was afraid it would turn into some crazy situation where he couldn’t turn it off, and then he’d let something slip and we’d get caught. I feel bad about it now, I mean, I think he got over it, but he never really could turn his feelings on and off.
He made one more try to kiss me later that year—I slugged him and told him to knock it off.
D wasn’t really talking much that day—kinda strange because he’s a talker—but he barely said two words as we were running around the track. Then right at the end when Mr. Hanna waved from up top of the ridge to let us know we were excused for the day, I said, “You wanna head into town?” It was half-day Saturday, so we had all afternoon to hang out—I was jonesing for a ciggy.
“Yeah, but I want to do something first.” D started walking toward the Bachelor Barn, so I followed.
“What are we doing?”
“I just want to see something,” he said, and I thought oh, he wants to ask Mr. Perez something about Spanish homework but then I remembered the lacrosse team had an away game and he wouldn’t be back until late. So we walked around to the front and he started turning door knobs. There are three apartments, but Mr. Perez is the only teacher living in the Barn this year, so D tried two of the doors and they were locked, but the third one was unlocked.
“Here we go,” he said, and he walked straight in!
“D what the fuck?”
“Shut up!” he said, and grabbed me and pulled me in with him and closed the door. It isn’t huge, just a living room and little kitchen, a bathroom, and in the back corner, a bedroom area with a pony wall separating it.
Mr. Perez is kinda messy—the bed wasn’t made—funny, we have to make our beds every morning—and there were dishes piled up in the sink, looked like mostly cereal bowls, and some empty pizza boxes stacked next to the trash can. His surfboard was on the table, and there was a puck of Mr. Zog’s Sex Wax sitting on top. His wetsuit was slung over one of the chairs.
D didn’t hardly looked around at all, he left me by the door and went straight through to the dresser by the bed and started opening drawers.
I said, “Seriously, what the fuck?” and he stopped and glared at me like I was getting on his nerves (I’m used to it.)
“Perez is a stoner, I fucking know it—he talks about the Grateful Dead all the time in class, and he’s been trading bootleg tapes of Dead shows with Thomas and his posse—look!” He pointed to the shelf with Mr. Perez’s stereo, and sure enough, he’s got a whole rack of cassettes with handprinted dates, decorated with little skulls and lightning bolts and stuff. “If he drops acid, he smokes weed, and I want some, that’s what the fuck!”
He’s always like this, dragging me into things without really asking—it’s why we got caught smoking on my balcony after lights out and had to spend three Saturdays doing detention clearing brush out by the old pump house. I guess it’s not D’s fault I started smoking, but I only used to sneak cigarettes now and then. Seems like he was already smoking with his brother by the time he got to Wolcott, and then pretty soon we’re lighting up every night and by the time I went home for Thanksgiving at my mom’s, I couldn’t stop.
So D was poking through Mr. Perez’s drawers, and then he said, “A-ha,” and pulled out two cartons of Camel Reds—one of them was open. I told him not to but he started unwrapping a pack.
“He’ll never know.” But then he stopped. “Whoa, look at this—”
He waved me over—I was still by the door, super nervous—but I went and there were a bunch of nudie mags, only not just Playboy and Hustler, but other ones with guys on the cover, Honcho and Bunk House Boys and shit like that. D’s like “Holy fuck! Jackpot!” and he sits down on the bed and starts looking through them.
I told him to hurry up, and he shushed me. “What if someone comes?” He rolled his eyes and walked over to the kitchen—there were about five bottles of tequila on the counter, different brands, and he unscrewed one of them and took a swig. He told me to sit down on the bed, and handed me the bottle, so I took a sip and then he rummaged through the bedside table and pulled out a big bag of weed. There was a plate with a bunch of shake and some rolling papers, and he handed it to me, and said, “Roll us a joint,” but I don’t really know how and my hands were shaking I was so worried about getting caught.
D kept pulling on the tequila bottle and then he walked over and put the one we’d been drinking from back and grabbed another one—“we can’t drink too much from just one.”
I still hadn’t rolled a joint. “You’re useless.” He grabbed the plate from me and put it back in the drawer, and then he took some from the bag and rolled it up in a paper towel and stuck it in his pocket. Then he came back to sit on the bed next to me and started looking at the magazines again. I laid back on the bed—the tequila made me feel a little sick but also warm. I felt something next to my hand tangled up in the sheets, and when I pulled it out, it was a jockstrap.
“Jesus! Perez’s jockstrap—give me that.” D took it and sniffed it, I said “Gross! Stop—” but next thing I know D’s got his hand down my pants, and he’s pulling down my shorts and started sucking me off!
I didn’t know what to do. A couple of times when we were hanging out after lights out, I was stretched out on my bed and D laid down next to me and said he was just going to shut his eyes for a minute but don’t let him fall asleep, but he laid down so my hand was underneath his crotch, and I was too afraid to move but I could feel him getting hard and I froze.
This time it was different, like he was full on going for it, but I was super scared and my hands were shaking. I just laid there but I wasn’t getting hard so he was sucking on my worm and after a minute he stopped and said, “Ugh what the hell is wrong with you? Go outside and keep watch. You’re bumming me out.”
I felt ashamed. I pulled up my shorts and stood outside like he told me.
Why won’t he kiss me? Isn’t that how it’s supposed to go? I tried to kiss him the first time we laid together in bed but he turned his head away.
After a few minutes the tequila was really starting to hit me, and I tried to work up the nerve to go back in and see if we could try again but all of a sudden Thomas walked around the corner!
He almost stopped in his tracks, but then kept coming. I was so nervous I almost heaved. I called out “Hey Thomas!” loud so D wouldn’t walk out, and Thomas said, “What the fuck are you doing here?” All I could think to say was that I wanted to ask Mr. Perez a Spanish question, and Thomas looked at me funny. “He’s got an away game.”
I said, “Oh right, I forgot” and then added, “Why aren’t you with them?” because Thomas is on the varsity lacrosse team.
“My sister’s getting married, my parents are coming to pick me up any minute.”
And then I asked, “Do you know the Spanish homework for Monday?”
“I’m in Spanish 1,”—I’m in Spanish 2—and he said, “I was going to ask him the same thing.”
“He’s not here,” I said.
“No shit,” he said, “I just told you.” He walked off giving me the side eye. I peeked around the corner of the Barn and made sure he was really leaving, and then I went back and knocked on Perez’s door just to be sure D was done with whatever he was doing, and he opened the door right away.
“Fuck that was close,” he said, and we walked back to the dorm to shower and change, and caught the next shuttle down to town.
We usually smoke behind 7-Eleven after we buy a pack, but since we already had the one he stole from Perez, we went down to the beach and bought Cokes from the hotdog stand. He finished his quick, and then he pulled a tack out of his pocket, squeezed the can so there was a groove and poked a bunch of holes in the side of it—can bong—I’ve never seen that before. You put a little bud on top over the holes and then suck through the opening. I got one hit and then my hand jerked and the bud fell off still smoldering on the ground. D yelled at me and picked it up and wouldn’t let me hold it after that, just held it and lit it for me. It wasn’t the first time I got high, but the first time with D.
We had a great afternoon smoking and eating hotdogs and more Cokes, we laughed our asses off, but we didn’t talk about what happened at Perez’s apartment, except for why Thomas came down to the Barn if he knew Perez was at an away game.
🤍🤍🤍♥️
THREAD: “What we talk about when we talk about ‘Song of Myself’”
SoM, v. 18 | “Vivas to those who have fail'd!” | AUDIO
What an excellent turn to make Lamb the narrator so we get to know D a little more. The tension you build in every single chapter is amazing Troy, I have yet to sit back and relax while I read Lamb!
It’s such a cool thing you’ve done here, Troy. We get to see D through Lambs journals and Lamb through D’s remembrances — it’s geniuses.
A wonderful chapter, I related to rummaging through draws that weren’t mine looking for weed and making ‘canines’ as we call em down here. You have an amazing way of capturing so much in these granular details. :)