You First: A Joe Goldberg Prequel (You, #0)(88)

I remember my mother yelling at my father. You can’t leave a gallon of Rocky Road in the freezer, because I can’t sleep until I go down that road and hit the dead end! I am my mother’s son. I want the ice cream. Fuck it. I pick up the envelope but no. I am not my mother’s son. I have willpower. I have you. So what if Dick went to your stupid birthday party? So what if there are pictures to prove it? Disposable cameras are what they are. Things that wind up in the trash half the time. But you are all out of trash bags. It’s fine. Dick is my buddy. He didn’t go to your party to see you. He went there to see…

Girls.

He probably left five minutes after he got there with some Condé Nasty cold fish that you half know who wanted to be Seduced and Destroyed.

I take a deep breath. Fuck it. You’re mine. Nothing can change that. Nothing.

I dive back into the Botanical birthday time capsule and my balls crawl back up into my body. The next picture gives me what I want. It’s you, finally, but it’s like the Phish Food in the microwave. Corrupted. You are not alone, my princess. You are with him.

Dick.

It’s ugly. Worse than the wart on my mother’s thigh. Worse than the skid marks on Mooney’s tighty-whities. My hands are shaking. Bad picture, very bad. Dick holds a big fat birthday candle and you suck the frosting off his finger. You make eyes at him while he makes eyes at the camera and wait.

Are those his fucking dog tags? Are they nestled between your pushed-up fucking tits?

Not good, Vail. Not good.

Your fingertips rest on his dirty asshole of a hand, and I’m on my feet. I can’t stop now. The pictures are a flip book from hell. I thought it was bad when you were sucking on Dick’s finger in front of all your half friends, wearing his dog tags like you won them in a contest. But now you’re in the bathroom with Dick. Dick, who holds the camera because you can’t hold the camera.

You are on your knees, dangling a prop. A prop that is a kick to my nuts, a slap on my face, sandpaper on my Portnoy. You hold a little bag of Pop Rocks.

The urban legend is no myth. Pop Rocks are dangerous; they can make a man explode. I am done. Dead.

I drop the pictures and they splatter all over your floor and my body sinks through the living room, crushing everyone below us. My balls drop, my soul drops. Your living room isn’t sunken, but it’s getting there. Is this just fucking life? Is it the way of all living rooms? Relationships? I sit on the sofa and take in the evidence of the crime scene. The pictures are all exposed and now they’re out of order, but the story is there.

You really did this to me, Vail. You traded your plastic birthday girl crown for Dick’s fucking dog tags. You got down on your knees for him. You put him in your mouth. You let him take pictures of you and no. That’s not you. Not Miss Lonely sleeping in your bed fifteen feet away, dreaming of baguettes with me in France.

Okay. I gotta find the light, the space to breathe and go on.

There is context. It was your birthday. You were drunk. I know Dick. Dick is a dick. And I may as well have set the two of you up by standing you up IN THE MIDDLE OF A CRISIS. Turning twenty-five made you crazy, and I’m crazy. I never should’ve opened the fucking envelope. You would die of a shame-induced heart attack if you knew I found the pictures. You care about me. Now is now. Be here now. But still my heart beats. The lion in the cage that won’t be tamed, can’t be tamed. You can’t unsuck Dick’s dick, and I can’t unsee the Dick pics. I could tear them up or dump them in the East Fucking River or shred them and eat them, but they would still be here.

Kinda like his dead brother’s dog tags. Some things just never disappear.

Think, Joe, think. I clean up. I gather the Dick pics and shove them back into the envelope, back under the sofa. I close my eyes. Still I see them, you and him. Pop Rocks. I want to scream but I can’t scream and I don’t scream for ice cream. I’m a Talking Head; I Stop Making Sense. There should be a way to get out of your own head, an escape hatch with a button that you push when you need to not be you for a few fucking minutes. I pick up your little book of misunderstood song lyrics because something needs to take me away from all this, but “Bennie and the Jets” don’t do shit.

Nothing can help. U were a slave to Dick, and he betrayed me and you betrayed me and is it me? Am I just not a real fucking person to anyone in this real fucking world?

Here come the tears and no. Fuck that. I won’t play the victim. I messed it up, Vail. I failed you when I followed Dick’s advice instead of my own fucking heart. I know you’re not my boyfriend. You drove me nuts with that shit and then I drove you nuts. I am the reason for the season. The blame is on me.

I slap my own face. Bad Joe. Dumb Joe. How could I do this to you? I rejected you in slow motion in your colosseum at the peak of your crisis in front of all your jerk friends. You were waiting for me to waltz in and take you away from semantics and tequila shots and theories on Jann Fucking Wenner. You were hurt and half-dead. Too insecure to call me. Too unsure of us to believe in us, to put yourself out there. If I hadn’t been such a pussy, Dick wouldn’t have had a chance to be such a dick. Do you ever do this, Vail? Am I weird? I put myself into your combat boots without even knowing what I am doing, but do you do that for me?

Do you put yourself in my shoes?

You murmur from the other side of the door, the place formerly known as heaven. “Joe?”