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‘Bush is the kind of music you play when you want people to think you’re a lot more complicated than you actually are,’ Mac titters rhythmically, his feet curled up on Dennis’ dashboard. They brush the polythene Jesus he bought Den for passing his drivers’ test; it shivers musically to the humming of the Jag’s potent engine like a hula dancer. Mac knows he finds it stupid. Isn’t sure what prayer he keeps it for.
‘These British bands are the real shit, dude,’ Dennis purports over the throbbing pulse of the bass line, turning slickly into his neighbourhood whilst a cigarette wags schizophrenically between white teeth. ‘Hold your head back, I’m not putting any chemicals on these seats. I’m not even supposed to touch this car.’His words are gruff and indecipherable through the cigarette. Mac reaches over and nicks it for himself, before realising that it’s technically impossible to clog a nosebleed and smoke at the same time. Dennis is laughing now. He pulls liquidly into the Reynolds’ driveway just as Gavin Rossdale tails off on the CD system.Mac wants it to be known that he swung first, even if it was Jimmy Doyle who actually hit bone.
He had sniffed out Mac’s corner of the bleachers, purloining the real estate where he usually did his best deals. Freshman chicks with icy eyelids, noxious highlights and pockets lined with cash from their daddies’ respectable over-the-table jobs who couldn’t tell that their coke was cut with powdered baby aspirin and cold tablets.The night before, Mac tore about his kitchen measuring half grams before tossing the orders to Charlie, who was sat crisscross on the countertop, tapping out the ground medicines. Every so often he would snort some of the dust himself, which Mac dubbed his commission. He would have felt guiltier about not throwing any cash Charlie’s way if he didn’t seem to be enjoying himself so much just huffing the un-bastardised kiddie tablets.Doyle slammed Mac up against the wall, fists twisted in his jersey, veins wrought crudely in pubescent roid-rage.
‘The fuck’s this shit?’ A baggie bobbed unceremoniously around in the hand he wasn’t using to anchor Mac. There was something primitive about how he stalked campus, brazenly wide shoulders supporting a cratered head as it lolled about aimlessly. He was the opposite of his two friends: Charlie was short and mousy; Den purposefully svelte and postured. The two of them flanked Doyle in Mac’s periphery. Mac was more focussed on keeping his eyes from popping out of his skull.‘You’re pretty brave waving that about,’ Mac spat. He really was. South Philly cops circled all the local schools regularly. A lot of the time they fell short of being threatening and instead represented the dead ended futures of St. Joe’s’ alums who were destined to flunk senior year. At least that’s what Dennis said. Mac actually found their uniforms pretty sweet.‘I would be if there was any actual blow in here.’
‘You just don’t know the trade, man, this is clean cut shit. The European models huff it. It’s Metropolitan,’ Mac blagged, clenching his teeth together.
‘I don’t give a fuck if Kate Moss herself plugged this bag up her cunt, it’s a dud and you know it, Ronnie.’ He slurred the name. Mac was more tuned into Charlie’s flailing limbs behind Doyle’s ear, trying to execute a Jackie Chan move and then pointing feverishly at Doyle. The break in eye contact was severe enough for Jimmy to jolt his bobble head around. As it pinged back, Mac launched a karate chop at his throat.
The next thing he remembered was coughing up hunks of blood and lunch into a basin, the ceramic making his temples pound like his guts were thawing out and dripping from his nose. Crushed fruit bleeding between knuckles.Dennis doesn’t let Mac out of the porch until he’s shed his jersey and blown out whatever’s left cloying his sinuses. Five minutes later they’re spread languidly across Dennis’ California King, watching cartoons and licking the syrup from the April breeze.
‘Your mom gonna be okay, dude?’ Dennis sighs, eyes sparkling as the pixels dance around on his garishly huge television. Mac hums, sinking into the duvet.
The nurse kept making moves to call Mrs McDonald and Mac had to wrench himself out of his concussion to paw the phone away. Mac’s mom would never pick him up, but if he said that out loud then he couldn’t take it back. Could no longer feign naivety and would have to confront the fact that even if he was in the ICU, his mom would sooner choose a date with Jerry Springer and a carton of Virginia Slims. He forged a weak lie about Mrs McDonald being on bed-rest for some seasonal bug. The nurse only looked at him pityingly. Dennis wedged his thumbs in his pockets and jerked his head at the Jag parked outside the office window.Mac’s nascent memories of childhood had to be rolled around in powdered sugar before he could digest them. He strung together tableaus of an all-American childhood that didn’t belong to him, pasting images he’d seen on the Hallmark channel of vacations and family dinners. Ones that didn’t end in steak knives crowded against his mom’s throat or him wailing snottily until his dad threatened to give him something to really cry about.As he ages, slivers of the truth grow more potent and immovable, taunting him every time he thinks about showing his mom his passing grades or putting stickers on the letters he sends his dad in jail. His heart is swollen, caged between his ribs like the pendulum of a grandfather clock that no one has oiled in years. Mac contains so much love that it bloats and prunes his organs until they don’t work anymore. It has nowhere to go. No one to go to.Well, it didn’t, until…‘I said is your mom okay, dude?’‘Hmmph..what?’ Mac cranes his neck up from the comfort of whatever bird’s feathers are stuffing Dennis’ silk pillows, brow threaded tightly in confusion. ‘Oh..oh, yeah, man, she’s good…she’ll be good,’ he sputtered.Dennis hums in acknowledgment and crawls backwards until he and Mac are both propped up against the headboard. He starts fidgeting with the remote and chews some words in his mouth to see how they taste before he says them.‘You’re gonna have to learn to fight if you wanna survive college, dude.’ Dennis tests a glance in Mac’s direction. Some Bon Jovi music video is playing. The pillows are growing harder and less comforting by the second.
‘College?’ Mac laughs vacantly, ‘yeah I don’t think I gotta worry about that, bro.’
‘Well what are you gonna be doing this time next year, dude?’ Dennis looks sincerely confused.
Sometimes Mac forgets how different their upbringings are, really.The two of them had bonded freshman year over their absent fathers, but Mac quickly became conscious of Dennis’ liberal definition of absent. Sure, he didn’t go to parent-teacher conferences or read Dennis and his sister’s’ report cards, but whenever Dennis wanted to see Mr Reynolds he didn’t have to schedule a visit or feel a prison guard’s cold breath curl around his throat. He was there, in the living room, to slap and yell at and bleed the pockets of, which was more than Mac had ever been entitled to from Luther. He was there.‘I don’t think the weed money is gonna cover that, Den’
‘You could always get a scholarship?’ Dennis offers naively.
Mac snorts, ‘from doing what?’
‘Look man, I’m just trying t-‘
‘I’m being serious, Den, look at me.’He does, to his credit.
‘I’m not like you. I don’t know what the fuck I’m gonna be doing after graduation. I don’t know what the fuck I’m gonna be doing next week. Things don’t happen for me like they do for you. They don’t even happen around me,’ he rasps. His face is growing hot and he thinks his nose could start bleeding again any second.
‘Mac, Mac, stop, stop, look,’ Dennis hurries, crowding Mac and gloving his fist with his hoodie sleeve to brush at his cheeks. So he is crying. Awesome.
‘College isn’t shit, bro, you’re like the coolest person I know, you’ll get by easy.’
Mac mellows. Not only from the buzz of validation he just got from being called cool, but from the arc of warmth on his face where Dennis keeps swiping crescents with his thumb.
‘And if I don’t?’
‘Then I’ll shove you in my duffel back and smuggle you into my frat house. You can live under the bed. I’ll slide you sodas and Doritos at regular intervals to keep you alive.’
Mac is snort-laughing now. Dennis’ eyes crinkle and Mac can’t even remember what he was so heated about. When Dennis’ hand falls back in his lap, Mac catches a flash of the white stripe across his palm. He strokes the twin scar on his own hand soothingly.Blood brothers.Mac and Dennis are intertwined biblically, in a conjoined symbiosis that neither one could describe if asked, but couldn’t deny either. The only relationship Mac can compare it to is Dennis and his twin sister, Dee. Mac recognises the symptoms. The two will tear each others’ hair out but crawl into each others’ beds after one of Barbara’s sloppy-drunk rants, the kind that makes both of them stop eating for a few days. Cocooned under the duvet together like they were in the womb, an impenetrable shell within which they were safe and unharmed.
Mac fell asleep some nights revelling in the idea that what Dennis shared with him was even more precious, because Dennis didn’t have a choice in sharing his childhood with his twin sister, but he did have one in sharing it with Mac.
Mac has never taken for granted how significant it is to be chosen.Dennis puts on cartoons and plays footsies with the other boy, a newly burst bag of Lays flayed between them like guts. Mac’s nascent bruise flowers across his nose. In a week or so it will be like it was never there.
Whatever happens will happen, and he’ll get by, because Dennis will get by.As the sun slicing in through the windows slowly gets licked up by the evening hours, Mac thinks how easy it would be for him to crawl under the covers and fall asleep.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
The TV glow paints Mrs Mac’s face, pooling into the valleys between harsh wrinkles and forming whiskers of light across her face.
Mac creeps across the living room, trying not to wake his mom, trying not to blunder given how drunk he is himself. A spent cigarette hangs lamely in between her fingers, a glass of nebulously orange liquid wedged between her and the leather armchair.
Mac claims his rewards, turns the TV off, plants a soft kiss to the top of her head before stumbling into the kitchen.
Mac and Charlie had brought their video camera to the Schuylkill river to shoot some stunts for Project Badass, but the night had devolved into them crouched curtained by the bushes on the river trail, trying to capsize cyclists by throwing pebbles at their front wheels. Charlie had brought ‘homemade absinthe,’ which is why Mac’s head pulsed the whole way home, like something was swelling and attempting to claw its way out of his skull.The probably-whiskey spirals down the drain and Mac assesses the grime slithering up the kitchen counters that he’ll have to clean tomorrow. In the greasy reflection of the microwave he sees his mom fermenting in her chair, her yellowing fingers curled in a claw, nursing the ghost of the glass. ‘Go Charlie!’
‘Kick their asses, Charlie, we believe in you!’
Mac elbows Dennis in the gut as they both fold over, cackling. Some of the guys in Charlie’s gym class crane their scrawny necks to see where the voices of God are coming from. They stand in line, frying in the sun like flies on a windowsill. That’s how small they look from up on the bleachers, where Dennis and Mac are smoking off a cocktail of leaves left over from Mac’s weekly baggies.
Dennis passes the franken-joint. His hair is lighter and his skin is darker than usual; the summer is biblically generous to his palette.
‘Thank God you’re not going out of state, fuck knows how I’d survive without shit like this,’ Mac takes a languid drag.
‘Weed? I don’t think I’m the one resp-‘
‘No, not weed, dumbass,’ Mac gestures vaguely with this arm.
‘Bunking off tri-?’
Mac shoves Dennis until the blond is flailed on his back, kicking any part of Mac his foot can successfully find.
‘What the fuck dude? I’m building up to saying something nice here, can’t you tell? Jesus.’
Mac grabs Dennis by the ankle and manoeuvres him around until they’re facing. He blows smoke into Dennis’ open mouth like a bird. ‘I mean I couldn’t handle only seeing you every few months or something. UPenn is like, hella close.’
Dennis’ face is close enough that Mac can see the crinkles of dried foundation around his reddening eyes.
‘Yeah, you and Charlie are gonna be crawling up my fucking legs.’
‘I can get by without you,’ Mac pouts.
‘No. You can’t.’
He pushes the smoked joint into an empty Pepsi can and smiles. The noise of Charlie’s gym class tails off; it’s lunch soon. Mac would ask Dennis how he can afford to skip periods given he has a college tied to his name now, if he wasn’t so familiar with the dirty money the Reynolds were reputed for exchanging under tables. Dennis is unquestionably smart enough to get into any school he wants to. Clean. He just doesn’t like to do things that way.
‘You still haven’t told me why you picked psychology, you fucking weirdo.’
The bleachers buzz as everyone gets released from third period. Dennis shuffles back slightly, thawing their previous intimacy. He double taps a finger to his nose and quirks an eyebrow up conspiratorially.A beat later, Charlie bounds towards them, shadowed by Dee and her repulsive medical exoskeleton.
‘I am not a goddam copycat, you asshole. I chose psych as background work for my acting career. It’s called method acting, dirtgrub.’
Charlie snorts around a poached mouthful of Pepsi before sputtering out a soggy flower of rolling papers. He carries on draining the herbal infused sap without complaint.
‘Dee, you chose psychology because you failed the entry audition for your acting course,’ Dennis smirks; Mac slaps him on the back and jams a pointer finger of shame towards Dee’s beak. She yanks it to one side like a semaphore.
‘Oh whatever, do you wanna get shitfaced tonight or what?’ The twins had finessed a college acceptance party out of their parents, Dennis had to be deployed to bat his lashes coquettishly at Barbara after Dee’s attempts scored nothing but a hysterical cackle and a pinch of her ribcage. Dennis made a mental note to stick to spirits instead of beer. 00:35.
The hum of St. Joe’s students ripples throughout the mansion. Mac and Dennis kneel on the carpet and leaf through the Reynolds’ record collection. Dennis’ hand ghosts the top of Mac’s. He lectures him on how to handle the sleeves to prevent warping, but still lets him cherry-pick all the shit he likes. They curate two piles.Mac, 1am-3am
Underworld
The Prodigy
Sublime
WhaleDennis, 3am-5am
Talking Heads
Thompson Twins
Rick Astley
4 Non BlondesThe Reynolds’ overwrought looking maid floats around the living room, flittering between scooping up empty beer cans and jockeying the LPs Dennis routinely slides up from the floor. The 5 grand pocket change Dennis dangles in front of her like a carrot to a donkey reminds her to keep shtum. The two boys are cocooned in the impenetrable barrier they’ve formed around themselves, taking opportunistic swills from the vodka bottle between their knees.The cast of guests they’ve managed to assemble is an incoherent group: a bug-eyed handful of Mac’s sophomore clientele stare vacantly at Dee as she cycles through her accent repertoire, reacting only to her Beavis and Butt-Head and then traipsing into the kitchen to find more downers. Charlie is stationed by the liquor cabinet, concocting potions and pouring them into solo cups he brings Mac and Dennis to sample at intermediate stages. Barbara had locked away all her real fancy shit before she and Frank left for their weekend vacation to the Poconos; for the first time in an age, Dennis can’t blame her. ‘It’s actually not as whack as you’d think,’ Mac slurs, holding up the latest Charlie-drink (two shots of tequila, half a Coors, and a glug of maple syrup).
‘There’s not enough money in the world, Mac.’ Dennis inspects the cup, holding it up like he’s authenticating a hundred dollar bill. The A side of The Fat of The Land peters out. Dennis clicks at his maid to turn it over.
‘Oh come on you pussy,’ Mac goads, his cadence sloppy with inebriation.
Another head-shake.
‘Ooh, I know, you can take it like a shot, hold on, bud.’
Mac scrambles up and into the kitchen. As he slides out of Dennis’ range, he spots Dee trying to convince a belligerent pair of girlfriends that the impression she just did was supposed to be Nancy Reagan and not a character from Seinfeld. Dennis barely has time to relish the situation before Mac is on his side again, holding a salt shaker and pouring a gulp of his unsettlingly viscous liquid into Dennis’ empty cup with his other hand.
Mac taps a line of salt along the webbed crescent between his thumb and index finger and floats it towards Dennis’ mouth.
‘This isn’t here-comes-the-goddam-airplane, dude, give it here,’ Dennis grabs Mac’s wrist with one hand and holds his shot with the other.He tries to think about the sugar and yeast and how puffy his face will be in the morning, but right now Mac is grinning at him like a new puppy and he needs something acceptable to do with his mouth. He licks a stripe along Mac’s hand; he downs the shot.
‘Well…?’‘I think that’s the worst fucking thing I’ve ever drunk in my entire life.’ Blots of white swirl vaguely in the molasses of the night sky. Mac is so wasted his eyes can’t focus on any one point from where he’s laying on his back in Dennis’ manicured lawn. They dizzyingly orchestrate violent dances between pairs of stars and clouds, which he decides to eclipse by shutting his eyes and grounding himself with the familiar Philly dirge of car alarms instead.
Dennis lays parallel, his shallow breaths washing over them both like a glaze. Neither know what time it is, only that Dee shoved everyone to the curb with a broom handle a while ago and that none of the upstairs windows’ lights are on.‘I don’t even know what to wear to one of these things. A tux? Do you think they’ll expect me to wear a tux?’
‘No, I don’t think a family owned diner is expecting you to wear a tuxedo to your job interview, Mac.’
‘Well help me out here, college man!’
Dennis hears a rustle and feels a finger jab into his side. He opens an eye to Mac looming above his face, haloed by frying porch lights.
Dennis elbows himself up and stumbles to his front doors, empties crunching under his sneakers like spitting firecrackers.
‘Oh come on, what are you doing, bro?’
‘Helping you out!’ He shouts over his shoulder, a smile teasing his mouth at the sound of Mac jogging after him obediently.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
Mac perches bird-like on Dennis’ bed, swaddled in the comforter like a shawl whilst clothes are neurotically tossed towards him over Dennis’ shoulder. He’s occupying himself making Mr Tibbs perform karate moves with his stumpy arms when a pair of slacks hit him square in the face.‘Ok, that’s enough. Let me just try something on to see if this shit would even fit my muscular build,’ Mac muses, stone-faced, gazing at the mess of sweaters and dress shirts in his lap. The glow of drunkenness prevents Dennis from constructing a snarky reply to this. He flops down pillow-end of the bed and takes a swig from the Bud Light he’d opened after realising he was starting to sober up. Nestled among perfumed goose down pillows choking a beer, he reads as a suburban Marie Antoinette suckling from absinthe.‘Come on, Ronnie, take your pants off,’ Dennis sing-songs teasingly, poking Mac in the square of his back and grinning impishly.‘Eyes shut!’ Mac warns, finding a tie and swirling it dopily around Dennis’ head, too inebriated to notice it missing both of his eyes and letting them graze over his body as he turns around to face the closet.Mac begins peeling off shells of sticky damp clothes. It’s as he’s trying to turn a pair of slacks inside-out by shaking them like a beach towel that Dennis decides intervention is necessary.‘Gimme here,’ he gropes for the trousers whilst Mac jumps in offence.‘Oh, c’mon, it’s nothing I haven’t seen before,’ he arches an eyebrow incredulously, squeezing the air above his upturned palm until Mac sceptically deposits the slacks into it.That much is true; Mac and Dennis share as consummate a knowledge of each other’s bodies as any two teenage boys who’ve been regularly bunking together and sharing locker rooms and skinny dipping in the Reynolds’ pool. But without the buffer of Charlie, or jerkoffs from the track team, Mac feels unprecedentedly, indefensibly, naked.Mac turns back around and fiddles with the hole in the waistband of his underwear. If he didn’t, Dennis would see the red blotches spoiling his cheeks. If he didn’t, he’d see Dennis eyeing the rippled plain of his back. Irish-blooded and uniformly pale, now sun soaked from the hours spent draped languidly across garden chairs with Charlie smoking marijuana.‘Here,’ Dennis scoots forward on the bed and pokes that rippled back with his foot until it turns around. He passes the pants back to a wordless Mac, who clumsily starts trying to jump-and-shimmy his way into them. They’re a little small for Mac, but not job-interview-rejection offensive.Dennis taps the now-empty bottle absently on the side of the bed and catches shining flashes of Mac’s hip bones as he buttons up.‘Not that I don’t believe you can get this job, because I do-‘‘What’s the but, Dennis?’‘I honestly don’t think I’ve ever seen you cook. I mean last week I watched you put protein powder and a chicken cutlet in a blender.’‘Oh, I’m not gonna be cooking anything, man, I’m like, security,’ Mac pushes his chest out proudly and picks up the biggest smart shirt Dennis owns.‘They need security?’ Dennis flops his neck to the side quizzically.‘Well that’s kind of a bonus service I’m offering, you know, I mean the riff-raff are gonna see a big guy like me and know not to try any shit,’ Mac drops the button he was working on to slice the air with his hand.‘Uh-huh.’ Dennis is enjoying this too much to negate Mac’s Tough Guy fantasy, certainly too much to remind him that the calibre of riff-raff he’ll be dealing with is snotty elementary school kids complaining that their pancakes don’t have enough syrup.Dennis stumbles towards his closet and then approaches Mac with a fistful of loose ties hanging limply like a bouquet of snakes.‘This one,’ he plucks his victim and hangs it around Mac’s collar, ‘I’m gonna do it for you but you gotta watch and work it out, ok?’Mac nods earnestly, his tongue peeking shyly from between his teeth as he watches Dennis interweave the ends of fabric. He could do it with his eyes closed. He could do it with his eyes on Mac. So he does.Where Dennis’ features are sunken and angular, Mac’s are full and warm, including his eyes, pupils so dilated they’re almost black, which are confronting Dennis’ right back. Words thaw on both of their tongues, keeping warm inside their mouths as they await release.Dennis isn’t too aloof to admit how unnecessarily close together their bodies are: alcoholic breath mixing in stagnant air; thighs bumping occasionally.‘You should’ve been watching,’ Dennis half whispers, ‘if you wanted to learn.’Instead of stepping back to admire his handiwork, he presses his front even firmer against Mac’s as he ties the final knot.Needy breaths cool against the curl of his ear. Both boys’ heads rest in the crook of the other’s neck, as if in an armless hug. Mac’s mouth is open like he’s awaiting a gift.‘Teach me.’When the foreign hand snaking languidly down his pants finally cups his crotch, Mac sighs and ghosts his lips against Dennis’ neck.Dennis, who smells like stale beer and exotic perfume, whose neck is bared like prey. Too much beer to know what he’s doing, not enough to know why.‘Stop. Stop,’ Mac whispers into his skin, ‘I’m sorry, you don’t want to do this, stop.’ He shakes his head, sobering prematurely.Counter-intuitively, the hand grows more purposeful, Dennis’ palm massaging the nascently hard cock wearing his pants.‘You wanted to learn, right?’After a beat, Mac nods obediently, face baked pink in shame. The cross chain hanging dead and cold around his neck flutters chillingly against Dennis as Mac’s chest pulses in and out.‘Then you’ve got to listen.’ He pulls back enough to look Mac in the eye, removing his hand and substituting it with the kiss of his own erection. Upon instinct, Mac begins to grind their cocks together, weaving his arms around Dennis’ waist to anchor himself. He’s nodding like the hula Jesus.‘Kiss me,’ Dennis breathes hotly into Mac’s open mouth like a baby bird, relishing the way Mac’s bulky forearms cradle his waist as his hands test a squeeze on his ass.Their mouths smash together without tact, sweaty and alcoholic and spoiled, tongues licking into the revelatory taste like syrup. Dennis melts quick into the body against his, eager to relinquish control and be held by Mac’s protective hardbody. His arms are draped around Mac’s neck, tugging him closer, desperate, needy.‘It’s okay. I’ve got you. I’ve got you.’ Mac whispers staccato between kisses and Dennis’ kitten-licks. Mac sucks on his lips like candy, moving a hand from his ass cheek to tug at his zip, mellowing quickly as he deciphers what Dennis was urging to to tell him. He wanted Mac to be in control. To be the man. To be the man was okay for him to be.Dennis mirrors him and soon both boys’ pants are slumped around their knees. Mac holds his hand flat to Dennis’ mouth. He paints it wet with his tongue before Mac dips it into his underwear and starts stroking tenderly.Dennis licks his own palm too and reciprocates, until a symbiotic rhythm has both of them moaning against the other’s skin.Mac crooks his neck and begins sucking sweetly into Dennis’ neck, drawing a trail of purple crumbs from his collarbone to his earlobe.Dennis isn’t thinking about his sister across the landing, or Charlie, or his parents, or college, as he comes blindingly into Mac’s loose fist.‘I’ve got you. I’ve got you baby.’Dennis feels got. The tedious dance he’s been performing since their childhood has come undone and he’s left curled in the afterglow with Mac performing its skeletal pulse.Embryonic daylight bleeds underneath his bedroom curtains and pools around his white feet. He’s been got. He’s been had. And for the first time in his life he couldn’t care less.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
Dennis, Dee and Charlie are cramped together in a retro-esque cushioned booth, unsticking the pages of a laminated breakfast menu whilst Mac orbits them, belligerently pouring coffee.He had got the job. Wearing a different pair of pants.‘Why even order coffee if you’re going to desecrate it with chemically artificial sweetener? You d- Eurgh!’ Dennis peels a wet paper napkin from his face whilst Dee smugly empties her sachet. The granules hollow a crater into an island of foam which she dutifully begins attacking with a spoon.‘Hey, waiter, sir, any chance of extra bacon?’ She throws over her shoulder to a Mac who is currently wearing an apron on his waist and a soured expression.‘Coming up.’ He grits out robotically, his face contorted into a hostile smile. Dennis had cleaned both of their stomachs with a balled up Soundgarden shirt before traipsing into the en suite to splash cold water on his face. Mac was blotted on the mirror under Dennis’ ear, eyes confronting his reflection deep and desperate. His skin was freckled by sprays of toothpaste on the glass, snuffed out in a cloud as Dennis breathed heavily.
‘I’ll just get my stuff and th-‘
‘You can stay over. If you want,’ Dennis interrupted. The last part a feeble attempt at bastardising his own act of sincerity. The clouded mirror prevented Dennis from seeing the grin that possessed Mac’s inured frown.When they slept, Mac’s hand cradled Dennis’ stomach from behind and traced his ribs like waves crashing into the shore. ‘Your bacon,’ Mac drops to the table a plastic basket lined with kitschy paper that curls at the edges from grease.
‘You want anything, Den?’ Mac nudges a Dennis who is currently wincing, watching his sister suck jelly from a butter knife.
‘I’m good,’ Dennis shakes him off, but Mac is quicker.
‘Bro c’mon, this is a big day, you need breakfast. Imma score you some pancakes on the house, the line cook owes me weed money.’
‘It’s my day, too, a-hole,’ Dee garbles between mouthfuls of scrambled egg. Dennis kicks her suitcase under the table and sneaks a nostalgic look at Mac’s ass as he walks away. UPenn is the fanciest looking building either of them have ever seen. It puts to biblical shame the grungy church basements with sticky wallpaper that Mac tries to drag Dennis to. The ones with panels missing from stained glass like teeth that have been shot out of a funfair game with a water gun. Dennis’ dorm building leers over the two of them, its shadow curtaining their feet like low tide. Charlie has been delegated to Dee so it’s just the pair of them swaying uncertainly in the inner city wind.
‘Let’s go.’Mr Tibbs has been demoted to a shelf ornament alongside a Fraggle Rock mug filled with pens and free condoms and a St. Catherine chain that Mac bought him for graduation.
Dennis is tacking wrestling posters on his side of the wall when a figure bobs up from the psych textbook Mac’s been pretending to read.
‘Do you think this will ever be us?’
‘Hmm? Is this not us right now?’ Dennis steps back to see if Stone Cold’s head is level with The Undertaker’s.
‘I mean, like, an apartment. Well, more likely a house since you’re gonna be some big earning shrink, and you know how Project Badass is gonna be commissioned for MTV any time now.’
‘Don’t worry, you can be the trophy wife, Mac,’ Dennis winks as he jumps up tail end of the bed and hoists Mac’s feet into his lap. The textbook becomes forgotten as Mac scoots up until his thighs are draped perpendicular over Dennis’.‘You really mean it? Us living together?’
‘Well I was planning on finishing at least a day of college before thinking about my 401k, b- Ow!’ Mac flicks him on the ear.
‘You goddam oaf,’ Dennis rubs his ear and pretends it’s doing something.
‘Switch then, bitch,’ and before Dennis can protest, Mac is scooping Dennis up and swapping their positions until he’s against the wall cradling Dennis’ legs under the knee and rubbing a hand absently up and down his back.
‘Hey, the guy I’m rooming with could come in,’ Dennis starts to whisper tentatively before Mac leans in and kisses it off his lips.
‘No one knows you here. You can be whatever you want to be,’ Mac whispers into his parted mouth. They kiss long and sweet, yet Dennis never quite takes one eye off the crack in the door. His classmates are insufferable. Big shot snots who grew up in the richest house in a rich area instead of the richest house in South Philly. His roommate turns out to be a juiced up meathead who Dennis swears is using his bed to fuck his girlfriend in. It’s become an unspoken bartering chip for peace; that and the fraternity Dennis agreed to join, within which he finally feels a wistful sense of sanctimoniousness. Even atop the floods of IPA and tequila, he can’t sink the juvenile feeling of really fucking missing his friends.
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‘You’re not a bad dancer,’ she giggles into his neck.Dennis doesn’t know her name. Knows he should care enough to ask. Just doesn’t. Not at all.She’s pretty: peroxide blonde hair and spidery lashes and creamy skin that’s cushiony under Dennis’ drunkly explorative hands; that’s the problem. She’s too soft, her arms draped lazily around his neck instead of tenaciously around his waist.Delta Omega Lambda’s hazing ritual was a dilue blot on his consciousness. There were three hollow bottles of whiskey next to his head when he woke up like hunting trophies. Plum sized bruises flowering fruitfully across his hairless skin - curb-side chalk drawings bleeding into the gutter from rosary beads of sweat and rain.Her breath is medicinally hot and sickly from Peach Schnapps; her body too slinky to pretend it’s Mac’s. He tries anyway.His roommate sidles up to him and slaps a hand to his shoulder, sloppily gives him approval to take this chick back to their dorm as if that’s something Dennis would want to do. As if he’d seek approval if he did from a juiced up hockey player whose name he’s still not sure of and whose sense of decor is chain mail Heineken caps curtaining ripped out posters of Pamela Anderson’s rubber tits.‘I love this song,’ she presses her body flat against his until his hands are displaced to cradle her plump ass. Their sweat-slicked clothes peel against wet limbs like reptiles shedding summer skin. Dennis really couldn’t care less about how much this girl is enjoying the promising dig of his bulge against her stomach, but he’s well past the minimum number of shots required to have an indiscriminate need to get off.Alanis Morissette sings about going down on a guy in a theater as Dennis and Unnamed Chick start licking into each other’s mouths, warm and gummy and guileless.‘Leave with me,’ he breathes, squeezing her ass and tilting his head needily like a puppy. It’s a finely tuned technique he’s been employing since freshman year; Dennis inwardly relishes how malleable the female species is under his hands. He feeds one into hers and guides them out of the party. She trails behind him in the same way Dennis did when Mac led him along the Schuylkill trail as a kid, a fawn trying not to push daisies into the dirt.In his room she shimmies off a pair of neon pink panties. They hit the floor before Dennis realises he should have taken them off himself. He lifts her into his lap and strokes her hair. She bites his shoulder and bucks like a pony. Pamela Anderson is a guardian angel watching over her shoulder. When he comes his eyes are closed. ‘What’s up, Den?’ Mac yawns.It’s an hour later. After Dennis has showered with cold water and made himself throw up into the toilet to sober up.‘I’m fine.’‘Tell me what’s wrong.’‘I just told y-‘‘If you were fine you wouldn’t be calling me at 4am, Dennis.’ Mac tests softly.Dennis lets out a breath that was curdling in his throat.‘Baby, speak to me,’ Mac says in a way so gentle Dennis immediately feels a warmth ribboning through his veins and tears beading the corners of his eyes. He holds the phone over his heart for a second as tears spill along the crescents of his ears.‘Can you just talk to me, please?’ Tell me about work.’‘Does it have to be work? What about Project Badass?’‘Sure, Mac, you can talk to me about Project Badass,’ Dennis smiles for the first time tonight.He puts the phone back atop his chest and lets it hum its heartbeat whilst he kicks damp bedsheets to his ankles. Mac talks. About Charlie. About FireBlades. About his mom. In a way. He’s dulcet enough for Dennis to know she must be passed out in an adjacent room. An hour passes as he stares at the veins of water damage on the ceiling and walls. He feels as if he’s been swallowed into the stomach of a wild animal.‘I miss you.’‘I miss you too, Den.’‘I wish you were here right now.’‘I wish I was holding you.’Dennis runs a sticky hand up and down his stomach and thinks about Mac’s nose buried into his neck, limbs wrought together. He thinks about the comfort of morning wood being pressed into him, in feeling a pulse belonging to someone that was hard-bodied and warm-blooded and able to protect him from the monsters under his bed and the ones down the hallway.‘You can still come home, Dennis.’‘I said I’m fine.’‘Okay.’The stagnant cocktail of sweat and come and tears hits Dennis’ senses again; he wants to crawl out of the open window and run and run and run.‘This call is gonna be so much money.’‘I know.’Mac only hangs up once he’s sure Dennis is asleep.