The Lie Read online

  I wanted to like cover myself up or something but I was so fucked up I just kind of rolled over on my stomach and didn’t move or say anything. Brian was like, “Nothing, dude. What’s up?”

  Josh was like, “Nothing,” then he came like all the way in the room. I was like, “I’m naked, Josh.”

  He was like, “I can see that,” and then he started rubbing my leg. It actually felt kind of good, like in a very, very weird kind of way because of the E, but it was also kind of gross. I just felt so on the verge of a blackout that I really didn’t do anything about it. I thought he would leave at some point, or that Brian would kick him out, but at some point I guess Brian had gotten out of bed and was standing kind of like next to where my head was at the edge of his bed. He reached down and put his hand behind my head and kind of pulled my face toward his dick and was like, “Come on, babe,” then he like put his dick in my mouth. He had done that kind of thing before, just like kind of forcing me to suck his dick, which I didn’t have a problem with. It was actually kind of a turn-on, like he was being really masculine and aggressive.

  So I started sucking his dick and then I kind of came out of whatever drug coma I was in for a split second to realize that Josh had stopped rubbing my leg and was starting to finger me. It was hard to talk but I was like, “Josh, what are you doing?”

  Josh didn’t say anything but Brian was like, “It’s cool, babe,” then he grabbed the back of my neck again and put his cock back in my mouth. It was weird—from that point on it was almost like I was floating in the top of the room, just watching everything happen and not being able to do anything about it. I could still feel what was going on, but I couldn’t really move or say anything.

  Josh took off his pants but he left on his shirt, which was a red T-shirt because he was dressed like a devil for the Heaven and Hell party. Brian was basically face-fucking me at that point—not hard or anything, he was actually going kind of slow, but I mean I couldn’t really move my head back and forth so he was doing all the work, holding my head up with his hands and just like sliding his dick in and out of my mouth.

  Then Josh kind of like climbed on top of me and kneeled over me and started jerking off. Once he got hard he tried a few times to ram his dick into me, but I wasn’t wet at all so he spit on his hand and rubbed it on his dick. Then he started fucking me while Brian kept sliding his dick in and out of my mouth.

  It was weird—I completely knew what was going on and I didn’t really want it to happen, but I was so fucked up from what I thought was the E that I just couldn’t do anything. And it wasn’t even like I was trapped inside my body or anything. I just kind of didn’t really care what was going on. I could still hear Dane Cook.

  Josh kept saying, “This is so fucking hot, dude.” Every once in a while he would force his index finger into my asshole as he was fucking me. Brian never said anything. It took Josh maybe like five minutes to finish and then he was like, “That was fucking awesome. You going back to the party?”

  Brian was like, “Maybe. I just want to make sure everything’s okay before I leave.”

  Then Josh left and Brian got in bed with me. I was still pretty much incapacitated. Brian was like, “You’re cool, right, babe?”

  I couldn’t even really talk. I think I might have said something like, “Cool.” And then Brian was like, “That really turned me on, babe. You were so hot.” Then he rolled me over on my back and started putting his dick in my ass. He was like, “You’re cool?”

  I still couldn’t really talk, so I just lay there while Brian fucked me in the ass. After he came he was like, “I’m gonna go clean up real quick, babe. I’ll be right back.”

  The next thing I remember was waking up in Brian’s bed by myself and everything was sore. It was like two in the afternoon. I found my angel costume on the floor, got dressed, and walked out through the front door, which meant I had to go through the living room, which was full of all the Pike guys who were clapping and chanting shit like, “Walk of shame,” and “Three o’clock slop.” Brian and Josh weren’t there.

  I remembered everything that happened, and I didn’t think Josh used a condom, so I went to the health center and got a morning-after pill. Then I went back to the Kappa house and took the longest shower of my life and I didn’t cry until I got into my room and into my bed, but when I started crying I didn’t stop for a few hours.

  chapter fifteen

  The Heaven and Hell party was, for me, an exercise in self-control. From a very young age I’ve found myself to be extremely mild-mannered in the face of conflict. Despite my deep hatred for most of my peers, I’m easily able to hold conversations with them and engage in casual friendly interaction. I’ve never known a person to have the ability to alter my natural demeanor. In the end, I suppose, I’ve realized that the resource available to me renders any potential situation of hostility completely meaningless. This was all true until the night of the Heaven and Hell party.

  I despised costume parties. It wasn’t because of the theme or the effort necessary to wear a costume; it was something deeper than that. The very idea of wearing a costume implies false importance surrounding the event that demands it, and the people who succumb to this demand seem weak to me. Nonetheless, the costume was mandatory so I wore a T-shirt with an image of Jesus Christ sucking a cock prominently displayed on the chest, which I purchased from cafepress.com after Googling “gay christ costume.”

  Most party attendees took the shirt in stride. Some were offended, yes, but they made no real effort to voice their distaste for my costume beyond a sarcastic “Nice shirt, asshole,” or something similar. The only person whose indignation seemed genuine and problematic was my big brother, Greg Simmons, who was himself dressed as Judas with a sack of gold-foil-covered chocolate coins that he would hand out to anyone he passed while saying, “I’m rich, biatch.” Even the most rudimentary research would have informed Greg that Judas’ bribe was silver, not gold.

  He had approached me near the beginning of the night and asked me to change my shirt due to its sacrilegious nature. I refused, citing the very same nature of his own costume. He countered by attempting to explain that Judas was a “Bible bad guy” and it was okay to make fun of him, but making fun of Jesus directly was a terrible thing to do. I told him I would change the shirt to avoid further conflict, having no real intention of ever changing it. My assumption was that by the next time I saw Greg he would be too drunk or too high to remember our initial interaction, or at least incoherent enough not to care.

  I proceeded to drink to excess and futilely attempted to find a single whore at the party whose face hadn’t already felt the slick warmth of my semen. At some point nearing two A.M., if memory serves, I came out of our kitchen, rounded a corner into the living room, and saw Greg with his shirt off forcing two Pi Phi pledges, whom I had not yet had the opportunity to debase, to pledge allegiance to his credo. Not thinking about my direct disobedience regarding the shirt I was wearing or what consequences it might bring I joined Greg, the sluts, and a tolerable member of Alpha Tau Omega named Jeff Rettinger.

  The sluts were, of course, impressed by his tattoo and kneeled before it as per Greg’s instruction as I joined the group. Greg greeted me and was amicable for seconds prior to noticing my shirt, at which point he became enraged almost instantaneously. What followed was a tirade in which Greg elucidated his true impression of me. With only a minor slurring of his words he claimed that he hated me from the first day I came into the Alpha Tau Omega house but could do nothing about it because of who I was. I remained silent as he spoke. He went on to explain that he was certain I viewed myself as superior to everyone there, based on my net worth, and I obviously didn’t accept Jesus as my savior or I wouldn’t have worn the shirt.

  At this point I was too drunk, I suppose, to keep quiet. I informed Greg that he was only partially correct. I did view myself as better than at least one person in the room, and it wasn’t based on the amount of money I had, it was based on the
fact that I wasn’t an ignorant douchebag. And I conceded the fact that I did not share his childish beliefs in talking snakes and imaginary friends who live in the sky.

  Of all the insults based in truth I issued in that conversation, the attack on religion was strangely the one that sent him over the edge. He drew back his fist and punched a hole in the wall in my general vicinity. The sluts left immediately. I found myself wanting Greg to punch me for some reason. I knew I wouldn’t fight back, but it seemed like an unchecked physical attack would cement in my mind that Greg was a living vessel of everything I hated in my peers. He was the purest version of the hypocritical self-absorbed asshole who truly believes he is correct in all things.

  He didn’t hit me, though. Instead he explained that he would love nothing more than to cave my head in, but he had secured a summer internship at my father’s company and he didn’t want to jeopardize it. For me, the revelation of this internship was more crystallizing than any physical attack could have been.

  I had respect for my father. I just disagreed with much of what he stood for. This respect made it difficult for me to believe he would have knowingly agreed to allow a person like Greg Simmons within a thousand yards of his business. The only other explanation for the internship was even more horrifying to me. My father was so far removed from the business his father built that he had very little to do with the day-to-day operations, the quality of incoming employees, the basic ethics of anyone who worked for him, et cetera. My father must, I reasoned, have become a faceless name on the bottom of a check to all of his employees. In understanding this, I found some empathy for him. He, too, was possibly doing something only because he had been told to, and he had been doing it for so long that any alternative seemed impossible. His desire for me to follow his path was born only out of a lack of alternative possibilities in his own mind.

  So it was there, standing in front of a seething Greg Simmons, his “Bros Before Hos” tattoo fully exposed, that I came to the conclusion my father had to know I did not desire the life he had led, that I had no intention of walking the same path two men had walked before me, that my future was uncertain, and that this uncertainty is what made me value it.

  I wished Greg good luck at his internship, stumbled up the stairs to my room, and placed a call to my father. I reached his voice mail and left a message explaining that I had found out one of my fellow Alpha Tau Omega brothers had been granted a summer internship at Keller Shipping and that it had made me realize something very valuable. I asked that we discuss it later. And, strangely, I was compelled to end the call by telling my father that I loved him.

  chapter sixteen

  There was still some time left until the end of the year, but Mac’s Place was closing early to get started on summer renovations. So I went up there to clean out my locker, which didn’t have much in it, just an old pair of tennis shoes I wore when I worked there. While I was there Raulio invited me to a barbecue. He said, “Kyle, you want a barbecue with me on weekend?”

  I said, “Thanks, Raulio, but I have some stuff to do with my girlfriend this weekend.”

  He said, “Bring the woman. She get barbecue.”

  I said, “Thanks, Raulio, but I really can’t.”

  Raulio had invited me to what must have been a dozen or so barbecues over the course of the two years I had worked with him. I had never gone to one. I always imagined his barbecues consisted of him and two other Mexican dudes sitting around a tiny charcoal barbecue in his front yard drinking beers and staring into the distance. In actuality they were probably really fun. I’d never know.

  So I got my shoes and headed over to Erin’s place. She was still at class but she had given me a key at some point, so I basically used her place as my own. I had more clothes at her place than at McElvaney, and she had a computer and Internet and everything so I didn’t have to go to a computer lab to get online.

  I was just about to get in the shower when my phone rang. I looked at the caller ID and saw it was Heather. I don’t even know how to fucking describe my reaction. I had been thinking about her a lot at that point. It wasn’t like anything was wrong or bad with Erin. It had just kind of reached a place for me where it was as good as it was going to get, and it wasn’t the best I’d ever had. The fucking sweet irony of that is that it actually was the best I’d ever had and probably will ever fucking have for as long as I live. I mean she fucking made us dinner, gave me foot rubs, actually studied sex books and shit and would just whip out new positions and techniques every other week. And she didn’t do all of that shit because she was into that shit, she did it because she was into me and she knew I liked that shit. It doesn’t get better than that.

  But I had been thinking about Heather a lot. It was probably a month or two after we saw each other by Dallas Hall and had our conversation and I wanted to call her but never did. I thought it would be a bad move. I thought if there was some chance to rekindle things, me making the first move would seem weak and it would turn her off immediately. So there it was—a call from Heather. I had no idea what she wanted, obviously, but no matter what it was, the call was another chance to talk to her. The fact that she was placing the call meant that she was taking the first step to be a part of my life again.

  All of that is what I assume made me feel like I was about to puke, but in that good kind of excited way. I knew I was too nervous to talk to her so I just let the phone ring and waited for her to leave a message. I waited five minutes after the last ring to see if I got a new voice mail and I never did.

  I was more pissed at myself for not answering than I had probably been for anything in my life. I would be much more pissed off at myself in the years to come, but that day, missing that phone call…I wanted to punch myself in the balls.

  I got in the shower and went through all the possible reasons she could have called me and not left a message. The most likely, I assumed, was probably that it took her some amount of self-convincing to even make the call in the first place and then once she actually made it, she hadn’t worked out in her head what she would leave on my voice mail if I didn’t answer, so she just hung up. Before I arrived at that conclusion, though, there were some pretty good ones, like that she’d called just to offer me a three-way with her and the hot chick I fucked at Brett’s house, but I had to have answered the phone to qualify, and because I didn’t it was off the table forever. And there were some pretty bad ones, like that she’d called to tell me she was getting married to the douchebag she was dating and needed my address to send an invitation.

  When I got out of the shower I went and looked at my phone hoping for a voice mail but there wasn’t one. I must have spent half an hour staring at my phone wondering if I should call her back without a voice mail asking me to do just that, wondering if that would be just as weak in her eyes as calling her in the first place—or maybe even weaker, like I didn’t have the balls to just call her but once I’d seen that she called me I could call her back.

  Then I started thinking about the possibility that her call was for something completely innocent and not even worth leaving a message about. What if she’d called just to ask me what kind of cheese Mac’s Place uses on its turkey-and-Swiss? I know it didn’t make much sense, but it was possible.

  After overthinking it to death, I decided I would call her. I picked up the phone, brought up my missed calls list, and was about to hit the call button when Erin came home. She tossed down her purse and jumped on top of me.

  She said, “I missed you today.”

  I said, “I missed you, too.”

  She said, “You know what I was thinking about all day long?”

  I said, “Battlestar Galactica being on tonight.”

  She said, “Yeah, that, but also about sucking your dick.”

  Then she unzipped my pants and gave me a blowjob. It wasn’t the best blowjob, but I came in her mouth and she swallowed. The fucking horrible thing is the whole time she was giving me a blowjob, I was thinking about Heather. I’m
amazed I’m still alive and haven’t eaten a fucking bullet by this point. Erin was fucking incredible, but she wasn’t Heather, and sadly that was all that mattered to me.

  Erin cooked dinner, which we ate while we watched Battlestar Galactica, and then we had sex. During all of that the only thing I could think of was Heather. Where was she? Was she doing the exact same thing with her boyfriend, also lying awake thinking about me? I hoped that was the case. I waited until Erin fell asleep and looked at the clock. It was one-thirty in the morning. I thought returning a missed call that didn’t leave a voice mail at one-thirty A.M. would seem pretty fucking pathetic and desperate, so I tried to go to sleep and succeeded at about five in the morning when fatigue finally overcame the fire that was burning in my brain.

  chapter seventeen

  I only talked to Brian one other time after the Heaven and Hell party. He called me the next day to see if I wanted to go get dinner and I said I wasn’t hungry. Then he was like, “Okay, babe. Well, give me a call when you want to hang out,” and I never called him again.

  It was pretty weird. I mean, we were a couple and everything for like a pretty long time and he just never called me again. I seriously think he knew that he fucked up that night, letting Josh fuck me and everything. And the more I thought about how fucked up I was I realized he probably drugged me and had the whole thing planned or something. So I just decided to never talk to him again, and since he never called me it was like pretty easy to do.

  It was maybe a few weeks after that when I called Kyle. I was just in my room thinking a lot about when we were together and what a good boyfriend he was and I guess I just like missed that, you know? After the thing with Brian I just wanted to be with someone who was like nice and wanted to cuddle and everything, and at that point Kyle wasn’t a complete dick yet, so I thought he was the best candidate. I mean I guess I could have just tried to hook up with some other frat guy or something, but I didn’t even really know if that was possible. Like I didn’t know if Josh had already told every guy in Pike that he fucked me while I sucked Brian’s dick, or if I could even really be into another frat guy after that. I mean if Brett would have been like, “Do you want to be my girlfriend?” or something, then yeah, of course, but I mean I didn’t know if I could like start dating some other frat guy again. I know they weren’t all like Brian and Josh, but they all had the same smell in their rooms and I didn’t really want my next sexual experience to have anything to do with that smell and just the whole set of circumstances that always went with a frat guy.