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“Just forget he’s gay,” Kayla says. “Not just because he’s a dude blow. Ha! Dude blow! Classic! You just — you don’t shit where you eat.
“Careful,” Pam says, elbowing me in the ribs. “Your brain just exploded. You’ve just married Max, haven’t you? Where are you two living?”
In a world in which some deign to simply scramble their eggs, Chef Max saves an area family with his delectable cloud eggs! Story at eleven!
I mumble, “Too late. You’re in. If I go down, you’re going down with me.” Something about the sentence sounds vaguely sexual to me, and when Max’s eyes don’t leave mine, I feel this jolt of energy climb up my spine and look away. It’s super weird.
“We are so going to hell, aren’t we?” I say. “Probably,” he says. “But we’ll go there a lot richer. Just watch.”
He’s magnificent. Max the Magnificent. He’s a food truck deity. I feel my heart pulse as I watch his broad shoulder muscles glisten sweat, and I have to look away because parts of me are beginning to tingle, and those things should not happen on a busy food truck.
But I feel drunk with closeness. Maybe it’s a kind of heatstroke? I don’t know. I just … I want Max to know who I am.
I’m petrified, and grateful, and hooked. On Max. Which is such a deeply bad idea. But I can’t help it.
What I want to do is cry, actually, but I cannot cry, because that’s not what a boy does when Superhero Max shows them a drawing.
Man, that Julius Caesar sure was assassinated in 44 BC, and your teacher nods at you, and you realize you might as well have just said, Hey, I cheated on the quiz. Here is the one fact I know that is supposed to throw you off scent.
Jordan is so. Damn. Sexy. And totally oblivious about that fact.
“You’re weird.” “You’re just figuring that out?”
Daft Punk
“Sweet gay Jesus,”
Max pulls the car out of the spot we’re in, and then directly into the next spot. I laugh, surprised. I like silly Max.
“Do they know you’re gay?” He nods. “You said you play baseball, right?” He nods again. “How does that work?” He rolls his eyes. “Well, there’s this ball, and you pitch it …” “Fuck you. I know how baseball works. That’s the one with the basket?”
“So what are your intentions with our husband,”
“What’s with the violence, dude?” I ask. “We are a violent people,”
I laugh despite myself. “I think this is on the verge of being offensive.”
I look at Pam. I can’t help it. I don’t know her, but I subconsciously look at her for backup, because even though I hate it when people label stuff in this way, it truly does sound like some white shit.
“You are not hopeless,” Pam says softly to him. “You dress horribly and you need a makeover and maybe a new hairstyle, and your personality is … not ideal … but, I mean, you’re hygienic, I guess. So you have that going for you.”
Pam: He’s out of your league, K Kayla: Fuck you bitch
“Hooligan do-gooder,” I say. “So what if, instead of stealing pets from people, which would be actual hooliganism, we stole lonely people and gave them to pets? Maybe not steal, but like if we found a lonely person, we could do a home invasion, kidnap them, and drive them to the local shelter? They’d be afraid for their lives, sure, but then we’d take off the blindfold and they’d be around all these adorable dogs. We’d say, ‘Adopt one of these, or we’ll kill you.’
There’s insecure, and then there’s whatever this is.
curl my lips into a smile as a kind of question. His lips curl too. That’s all I need. I lean forward and jut my neck out at him. His face is frozen. I put my lips on his. When they touch, my heart lurches, time stops, and he gasps.
“I’m sorry for the crappy good morning,” he says, hugging me lightly. “Lots of crap on my mind today. None of it about you. You’re the good thing, Jordan. You’re like the one good thing. I’m sorry I did you like that.” I exhale, hug him tight and hold him close, stroke his beautiful black hair. “It’s okay,” I whisper into his ear. “Totally get that. I’m cool. We’re cool.” “Thanks,” he says into my shoulder. “I’ll try not to shut you out when I get all whatever.” “Okay,” I say. “Not a problem.” “Thanks.”
“You’re my Jordan.” “Okay,” I say, and the smile gets wider. “I like that. Okay.”
In a world where lesser mortals crumble, Super Max stands tall and says, “I’m the decider of my fate. I’m not a victim. Shut the hell up with all that victim shit.” I’m freakin’ Max Morrison. I carried a dude through the desert in 120-degree heat. No skinny-ass, blue-faux-hawked dipshit has power over me. No way.
This poor boy...
“I think we’re Donald Trump-ing,” I say. He makes a face. “Ew.”
“We’re feeding the homeless,” I say. He stands there, motionless for a moment, and again I get afraid I’ve misjudged him. Then his lips curve up. “Oh. Wow. Okay. Wow.”
30 Rock, which is a way underrated comedy.
Way better than the office
’80s playlist that begins with the Psychedelic Furs and the B-52s, and goes all the way through T’Pau, the Bangles, and ends with Janet Jackson’s “Rhythm Nation.”
We let the Human League and Berlin be our soundtrack
“Uh, sure,” I say, as casually as I can, while my mind is screaming: HE WANTS TO DRAW ME! HE WANTS TO DRAW ME!
“How to give your father a heart attack” are his last words to me.
“People love poems that don’t suck,”
“A rowan like a lipsticked girl. Between the by-road and the main road Alder trees at a wet and dripping distance Stand off among the rushes. There are the mud-flowers of dialect And the immortelles of perfect pitch And that moment when the bird sings very close To the music of what happens.”
“I like that,” I say. “I don’t get it, but I dig it.
Me
My boyfriend the poet. It’s cool, really. I dig it.
“I call it, ‘The Music of What Happens.’ After the last line of the Heaney poem.” He reads. “Down the street from me Ms. Carter douses her head The shower pulses And spits her sins down the drain Next house over, with the red plastic Adirondack chairs Mr. Simmons cries while eating waffles His sink bone dry Dishes with dried-up barbeque pork and oatmeal pile high Mowing the front lawn next door Jimmy Fowler dreams of Jenny Carmichael And her fantastic tits Mr. Torres in his two-story mini-palace Sits on his bathroom throne His waste meeting Ms. Carter’s sins somewhere Under Carriage Lane Here
...more
He’s beautiful. My boyfriend is beautiful.
“Your boyfriend is a real poet,” she says, and I nod. “Thanks,” I say. “He is.”
Thank the Humble Baby Jesus.
But I also find out just how long twenty seconds is. It’s like an hour, basically, when you’re exerting yourself.
say a prayer of thanks to gay Jesus.
but nonetheless it sucks for the fifty hours it takes for twenty seconds to go by.
“Not here,” he says, pulling slightly away. “We’ll get arrested.” I pull him closer. “Don’t care,” I mumble. He laughs. “Okay now, tiger,” he says. “I have a better idea.” “Definitely call me that,”
He’s got a basic farmer’s tan, which is adorable on him, like his arms and lower legs belong to a different person than his trunk.
