climbing out of the BMW.
“Fuck,” I muttered. “Just perfect.”
The disc that we were so desperate to retrieve was an R.E.M. mix that Shelly had burned; she called it the sound track of her life and had assigned a song from the R.E.M.catalog to every important person and significant event she’d experienced. She had entrusted it to me at the end—which I know pissed off Gordon—and we couldn’t go forward without it because it was central to fulfilling her final wish, which she had imparted to Gordon and placed him in charge of planning—which, trust me, pissed me off.
My bedroom was upstairs, overlooking the street, and now overlooking Gordon, below. Tom’s was to the left of mine, but soon he would be too weak to climb the stairs, and, like Dad before him, he’d require a rented wheelchair and hospital bed placed in the first-floor living room. His world would rapidly shrink: first to the wheelchair, that room, the kitchen, and the bathroom; next, to those four walls of peeling wallpaper, worn carpet, and the stench of bedpans and atrophying flesh; finally, just to the decreasingly burdened mattress. For now, at least, when I peeked in, he was fast asleep, still in his own bed and recognizable skin.
The disc, inside the clear plastic lid of its dust-covered case, lay on top of my dresser. I had set it there a little more than a week ago, a few days before her body washed up on the shore of North Bass Island. Seeing the letters “R.E.M.” scrawled in Shelly’s handwriting in black Sharpie across the silver face of the disc stopped me cold. More than the wake, more than actually holding the urn in my own hands, I felt the reality of her absence, and, for the first time, I felt its permanence.
I was summoned from my private pity party by the sound of a multitude of voices filtering up through the screens in the bedroom windows. The cacophony itself wasn’t unusual. In my neighborhood, cars constantly cruised with stereoscranked, and legitimate east-siders regularly gathered in groups and always moved in numbers, and at all hours. So it wasn’t the noise itself that had caught my attention. It was the incongruous sound of Gordon’s refined pronunciations intermingled with the street talk.
Unsure of how long I had left him abandoned, I tore from my room and down the interior steps at a breakneck speed. If it was trouble brewing, I had no idea what my scrawny ass could do to end it, but I actually felt that Gordon was in need of my protection.
As I burst onto the porch, Gordon’s expansive back was to me. He was surrounded by a half-dozen shirtless and ripped black dudes. T-shirts were slung over shoulders, wrapped around heads as makeshift do-rags, or half-stuffed into the waistbands of their shorts that sagged halfway down their butts. The largest one, whom the others called T and who had a body that looked like a photographic negative of Gordon’s, was clearly wearing nothing under his shorts. The rounded top of the two loaves of his muscled ass, where it met the small of his back, showed itself proudly.
There were also two girls, one on either side of Gordon, who stood slightly bent at the waist with his cupped hands to his mouth. Each of the girls leaned heavily on an arm, as if they were holding him up, preventing his escape, or engaging in a tug-of-war for his attention.
“Hey!” I yelled. “Get away from him!”
All eyes, with the exception of Gordon’s, turned immediately and menacingly in my direction. I’d never felt so exposed, or white, in my life.
“Leave him alone,” I said with diminishing conviction.
They exchanged looks with one another, then stared at me and back to the circle before they broke out in laughter.
“Relax, White.” That’s what T called me. “White.” Not whitey, not white boy, just “White.”
Finally, Gordon turned around with a face that looked like an imitation of a constipated Sean Penn sucking the juice out of the most tart lemon in the history
“Fuck,” I muttered. “Just perfect.”
The disc that we were so desperate to retrieve was an R.E.M. mix that Shelly had burned; she called it the sound track of her life and had assigned a song from the R.E.M.catalog to every important person and significant event she’d experienced. She had entrusted it to me at the end—which I know pissed off Gordon—and we couldn’t go forward without it because it was central to fulfilling her final wish, which she had imparted to Gordon and placed him in charge of planning—which, trust me, pissed me off.
My bedroom was upstairs, overlooking the street, and now overlooking Gordon, below. Tom’s was to the left of mine, but soon he would be too weak to climb the stairs, and, like Dad before him, he’d require a rented wheelchair and hospital bed placed in the first-floor living room. His world would rapidly shrink: first to the wheelchair, that room, the kitchen, and the bathroom; next, to those four walls of peeling wallpaper, worn carpet, and the stench of bedpans and atrophying flesh; finally, just to the decreasingly burdened mattress. For now, at least, when I peeked in, he was fast asleep, still in his own bed and recognizable skin.
The disc, inside the clear plastic lid of its dust-covered case, lay on top of my dresser. I had set it there a little more than a week ago, a few days before her body washed up on the shore of North Bass Island. Seeing the letters “R.E.M.” scrawled in Shelly’s handwriting in black Sharpie across the silver face of the disc stopped me cold. More than the wake, more than actually holding the urn in my own hands, I felt the reality of her absence, and, for the first time, I felt its permanence.
I was summoned from my private pity party by the sound of a multitude of voices filtering up through the screens in the bedroom windows. The cacophony itself wasn’t unusual. In my neighborhood, cars constantly cruised with stereoscranked, and legitimate east-siders regularly gathered in groups and always moved in numbers, and at all hours. So it wasn’t the noise itself that had caught my attention. It was the incongruous sound of Gordon’s refined pronunciations intermingled with the street talk.
Unsure of how long I had left him abandoned, I tore from my room and down the interior steps at a breakneck speed. If it was trouble brewing, I had no idea what my scrawny ass could do to end it, but I actually felt that Gordon was in need of my protection.
As I burst onto the porch, Gordon’s expansive back was to me. He was surrounded by a half-dozen shirtless and ripped black dudes. T-shirts were slung over shoulders, wrapped around heads as makeshift do-rags, or half-stuffed into the waistbands of their shorts that sagged halfway down their butts. The largest one, whom the others called T and who had a body that looked like a photographic negative of Gordon’s, was clearly wearing nothing under his shorts. The rounded top of the two loaves of his muscled ass, where it met the small of his back, showed itself proudly.
There were also two girls, one on either side of Gordon, who stood slightly bent at the waist with his cupped hands to his mouth. Each of the girls leaned heavily on an arm, as if they were holding him up, preventing his escape, or engaging in a tug-of-war for his attention.
“Hey!” I yelled. “Get away from him!”
All eyes, with the exception of Gordon’s, turned immediately and menacingly in my direction. I’d never felt so exposed, or white, in my life.
“Leave him alone,” I said with diminishing conviction.
They exchanged looks with one another, then stared at me and back to the circle before they broke out in laughter.
“Relax, White.” That’s what T called me. “White.” Not whitey, not white boy, just “White.”
Finally, Gordon turned around with a face that looked like an imitation of a constipated Sean Penn sucking the juice out of the most tart lemon in the history
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