The Sleep-over

Billy is the first lover I've known in years who still lives at home. A twenty year-old DJ/drummer who spends all his time at the record store. He doesn't work there or anything. He just likes to listen to records, check out chicks, and occasionally buy something. He thinks about going back to school every now and then. If I were honest, I'd say that I am mostly interested in his tough arms, blonde hair, and colored cheeks. He has that anglo blush all along the sides of his face, like he's been sledding a half an hour just before he comes in to see you. And his hair-fine as a baby's, and as limp, too. He looks like a baby. A six foot, three-inch tall baby. Talking with him is like having an abacus without knowing how to use it-just pushing the colored beads back and forth. It is tedious, accomplishes nothing, and leaves all previous equations still open-ended.

But, what can be done. I broke up with Noah for a reason, and that reason was that I wanted to sleep with other people. I didn't want to need them, or love them, or even really know them.

The night I met Billy, I was at the coffee shop on 4th Street one night in June, reading the latest Cosmo. He showed up with my friend David, and wore Chuck Taylor sneakers. What can I say? I'm a sucker for Chucks.

"Hey, chickadee!" God, I hate when David says retarded shit like that.

"This here's my friend, Billy," he said, jerking his thumb at the gangly blonde.

I offered them the two other seats at my tiny plastic patio table. Those outdoor tables aren't easy to come by, let me tell you. Smokers hover just inside the doorway of the shop, ready to pounce on the first empty spot. So what if you did just go in for more sugar? Finders keepers, baby.

Each bummed a cigarette from me.

His parents have left town, so he has invited me to "sleep over," as he put it. And that's just how it feels as I smoke a cigarette in the back yard of their gated-community tract home, wearing my pajamas. It's not much of a yard-an eight square feet of cement with a barbeque standing in the middle and a couple of dirt-filled planters off to the side. It seems his mother has plans for the planters. On the other side of the sliding glass door (on which there are butterfly decals at eye-level-to prevent unnecessary accidents), Billy leans over what is called an "island" in the middle of the kitchen and rolls a joint.

The whole place is immaculate, clean and pine-smelling, except the yard-Billy's neglected responsibility. He has not cleaned up the cat shit for days, and Benny, their enormous Siamese, does not care to hide his waste discreetly. He lays his great big cat turds in the middle of the concrete plane, it seems, almost with pride. A dung heap has formed just to the left of the barbeque. When we first came into the yard, earlier in the evening, the motion-activated porch light flickered on, and scores of insects scurried into nearby shadowy corners. "The warm weather," Billy said, "attracts more 'water bugs' than usual." He went in to roll the jay, and I lit this smoke.

Since I am so still with the cigarette, the cockroaches eventually creep back into the dim light. They begin to settle on and around the cat shit, more and more of them, until all that's visible is a mass of winged backs, wriggling slowly. I'm carefully watching my slippered feet, waiting for Billy to hurry up and finish, when the central air lurches on with a belch and scares the wits out of me.

He comes out into the yard and I'm embarrassed for him, hope he doesn't see the bugs. We light the joint, pass it back and forth, each taking notice of just how long the other holds onto it for. We stand there for a long time. Billy has to trip the light four times, waving his long silly arm in the darkness until it passes over the right spot. The AC intermittently turns itself on and off.

We move back inside, to get a drink. In the kitchen, high, I notice the family's fish bowl on the counter. It is one of the small, square, plastic kinds with a lid on it, and a lone goldfish inside. Then I notice three blown-glass fish, hanging from nylon fishing line secured to the bottom of the lid with suction cups, dangling in the bowl. Three phony fish. I ask Billy, What the hell are they for, and he responds, "To keep Marty company."

Then I get angry. What kind of a sick joke is this? Do they really think the fish is stupid enough to fall for a gag like that? These fish are a cruel mockery, I tell him, How would you feel if you walked outside each morning and there were a bunch of dummies hanging on ropes coming out of the sky, supposed to be your friends? It's inhumane!

"Relax, Babe. They're just fish," he says, cupping my breast in his hand.

There's only one fish, I say.

We go upstairs and get into his bed. He starts moving all over me, and I'm dizzy lying there. I stare at the ceiling, trying to focus, come back to myself. Maybe because of the weed, I don't know, I feel like some awful predator is making love to me. I just squeeze my eyes shut and turn my head away while images of beasts and insects are projected on the inside of my closed lids. It will be over, soon.