He yelled something at the band and slid my headphones around my neck. “I said, why are you crying?” He sounded angry and frustrated.
The garage went silent except for Seth’s inquiry. I reached up to find my cheeks were wet. My body had betrayed me again. I stared back down at the paper, feeling foolish that after all this time, I still couldn’t keep my shit together. I couldn’t hide anything from Seth because my feelings were always on display. There was no escape, not even in the recesses of my mind.
I crumpled up the paper and threw it in the pile of crushed beer cans. I went out to the van and pulled out my Sam’s Club uniform from the backseat, changed right there in front of everyone. They’d seen everything already. There was no part of my dignity or personhood left intact. Seth tried to call me back, but I ignored him.
I walked my sorry ass home, avoided my parents so they wouldn’t see the bruises on my cheek or my split lip, collapsed into my mostly unused bed, and slept for eighteen hours straight.
Seth left me a few voicemails. He wanted to see me. He wanted to talk. I didn’t want to see him or talk to him, but I wanted to get high, so I borrowed my mom’s car and drove over there on Sunday evening. When I arrived, he said he was ordering food and asked me what I wanted from a nearby burger joint. The only thing they had without meat was a veggie burger, so I told him one of those.
I thought we’d get high after that, but Seth said he was out, and so was Kyle, which meant he had to get some black-market shit from James. I didn’t like James, who as an introduction, said he was the descendent of some high-ranking Nazi like it was something to be proud of. I didn’t like the way he talked about women, didn’t like his aggression, didn’t like the way he sized me up every time I saw him. He was always saying low-key homophobic things about me or to me, sometimes in front of Seth, sometimes as an aside when Seth couldn’t hear.
When I heard James was coming over, I told Seth I’d be in his bedroom and listened to some music on my phone with a pair of Seth’s headphones on. A while later Seth popped his head in, “Food’s here.”
“Is James?” I was still pretty raw from Friday night’s debacle and wanted to avoid Seth’s sketchy friends altogether. Not to mention there were the bruises on my face, which I’d gotten from a spontaneous jiu-jitsu demonstration at work. At least, that was the lie I told my mother.
“Yeah, but it’s cool,” Seth said. I didn’t move. “Come on, Hiroku. Don’t be a baby. Your food’s going to get cold.”
I slouched out to the living room. Seth was in a chair, and James and a couple of his drug buddies were on the couch.
“Your geisha’s here,” James said snidely while eyeing me up and down like a jewel thief. I glanced over at Seth to see if he was going to say anything about that, but Seth was unwrapping his food and acted like he hadn’t heard him.
“What up, James? Henchmen,” I said because I wasn’t going to let him have the last word. There was nowhere to sit except for the spot next to James on the couch, so I sat on the floor instead. Seth passed me my burger and fries. James asked me where I got the shiner.
“I beat up a Nazi down at the park.”
“Looks to me like you lost,” James said, probably guessing at its real source because even though punching Nazis had come into fashion again, it wasn’t a common occurrence in Austin.
Apparently, James and his sidekicks were dining with us as well because they were digging into the food. I unwrapped my own meal and went to take a bite when I noticed it had a distinctly meat smell. I pulled the bun off the sandwich and saw that it was in fact meat.
“Does someone have my veggie burger?” I asked around the table, figuring there’d been a mix-up. The henchmen checked their burgers.
James shook his head in disbelief. “You don’t eat meat either?” He looked to Seth like he should be the one answering for me. “I swear you fags are so delicate.”
I pushed my uneaten sandwich away and stood to go back into Seth’s bedroom.
“Sit down, Hiroku,” Seth ordered, his voice tense and bossy.
“Yeah,” James goaded him. “That’s how you talk to a bitch.”
My gaze veered toward Seth again, but he said nothing and refused to even look at me. In fact, he seemed to be building off James’s toxicity like the way dogs will get extra aggressive when they run in a pack.
“I paid for that burger,” Seth said to me. “So, you’d better fucking eat it.”
I glared at him. Another power struggle, only this time it was in front of an audience, and it was one of my absolute hard limits. “Fuck you, Seth,” I said in a low growl.
Seth glanced up at me, switched his demeanor to cajoling. He smiled as if this were a joke. “One bite, Hiroku. One bite to show me that you love me.”
In that moment I didn’t love him; I didn’t even like him. “I’m not going to eat that fucking burger,” I said evenly, trying not to let my anger overcome me.
“Take one bite, or I won’t get you high,” Seth said with a mad glint in his eyes. He loved to push me to my limits to see if I might acquiesce to his demands, but even this was a stretch for him. Meanwhile, I was so dumbfounded I couldn’t speak.
“I thought queers liked eating meat,” James pitched in.
Seth leaned back in his chair and tugged at his crotch. “Would you rather eat this meat, baby?” He stared right at me, a direct challenge, with a stupid little smile on his greasy, meat-stained lips.
“Are you asking me to blow you, Seth? Here, in front of your esteemed colleagues?” I hoped that if I said the thing Seth was asking me to do out loud, he might realize how outrageous it was. Sometimes he backed down; sometimes it backfired on me.
Seth’s expression went flat, and he motioned to the sandwich. “This or that, Hiroku. Your choice.”
