Cannibals in Love (11 page)

After that, Lane was stuck with a shit-ton of Astroturf. We laid as much as we could down for carpeting, and put the rest out to the curb.

*   *   *

There was a bar in the neighborhood that Lane and I liked to walk to most nights. We would show up with six beers in a backpack, and leave with three rolls of toilet paper lifted from the bathroom. We spent a lot of time in this bar thinking up new ideas for bands to start. Lane was convinced he could build us some contraption whereby we would pedal stationary bicycles attached to belts that controlled the speed and pitch of different record players and strobe lights. I would laugh because he was serious. He assured me he could get us a grant and everything. Lane would make the pretty bartender find him a pen so that he could sketch the whole thing out on a napkin.

“It looks like it's falling apart,” she told him.

“That doesn't matter. We don't have any songs. It would only have to hold together for five minutes,” Lane said. “Besides, it's art.”

*   *   *

Lane Tworek was exactly the bad influence I'd been searching for all along. He was a brutal kid, which was the thing I liked about him most. I had no idea what Lane could be thinking from one moment to the next, and I loved that about him.

He seemed to have no conception of himself as strange, either, which I found fascinating. I would catch him at things I couldn't even imagine. All these weird and compromised situations that Lane got into, just being himself. Everyone was using Craigslist by now—for jobs and apartments and bike parts—but Lane was already using it to look for sex. He would post ads with headings like: “Average Joe Seeks Blowjob From Hot-Model Type.”
Hello!
the post would begin cheerily.
I will be walking home from the Raven Tavern at 2:30 a.m., and I would appreciate your company for some pre-slumber fellatio
 …

I almost pissed myself when I saw these. I couldn't tell if this was real, or just another idea for his thesis. Lane could be very deadpan that way. But I couldn't get enough of it. I would wipe the tears from the corners of my eyes and make him post another one. “College Student Interested in Dating Your Sex Doll.”

“Does anyone ever reply?” I finally asked.

“Oh, yeah.” Lane smiled. “Always dudes.”

“Really?” I could hear myself sounding disappointed.

“Yeah. It's great, though. They're all
very
confident in their ability to convert me into a homosexual.” Lane grinned. “I guess you never know, right?”

The truth, I found out, was that Lane had actually had a number of real sex encounters with older women through the Internet. I knew, for instance, that he'd been conducting a semi-regular affair with some friendly hausfrau out on Connecticut Avenue for over a year. The whole thing made me feel a little puritan by comparison.

Still, it took me a while to realize that Lane was actually making money on his computer. More often than not, this was where I'd find him. Up in his bedroom with his laptop open.

“What do you know about baseball gloves?” he would ask me with a blank face.

“Baseball gloves?” I'd ask back.

Lane would kick open a box filled with a dozen lightly used mitts. “Yeah, how much can I sell a baseball glove for, anyway?”

I picked one out of the box and tried it on. Punching my fist into the sweet spot. “Sell it how?”

“eBay, dude,” he said with a laugh, like it couldn't be more obvious. We were eternally having some variation on this same conversation. Small electronics, jewelry, taxidermy, whatever. Lane was always coming home with a new box, and he always wanted to know how much I thought a thing was worth, for some reason.

“Dig around. I got some
Ozzie Smiths
in there. Pretty good, huh?” He was staring at me, waiting for me to put a number on it.

“Twenty bucks?”

Lane would always nod, pleased. Turning back to his computer and typing it in.

“Where do all these things come from, Lane?” I finally asked him one day.

“Hey…” he said, not answering my question. “Have I ever shown you all the pictures that Internet people have sent to me?”

I shook my head, and watched as Lane opened a file filled with thumbnails of men and women, in all shapes and sizes. This gross tapestry of flesh and hair and blurry naked parts. He smiled at me wickedly, and closed the laptop, as I tried to lean in.

Lane stood up and kicked the box of baseball gloves closed, too. It was more fun not knowing where this stuff came from anyway.

*   *   *

This was still at the very beginning of the Cicada Summer. Those dozy heat bugs had just begun emerging from their seventeen-year slumber to take over the city like a biblical plague. Thousands of nymphs crawling up out of the ground and taking flight. They served no purpose at all, buzzing and smashing into everything like little balsa-wood gliders with rubber-band propellers. The cicadas carried along the strange energy of a long hibernation come to an end. Singing into the night: sex and death.

Lane wouldn't stop telling me that cicadas were a delicacy in China, either. For days he had been urging me to eat a live one for his own personal entertainment. We were deep into a culture of dares at this point.

Finally I told him I would eat a cicada if he would eat a cockroach.

“Fine,” Lane said, and we stood there, unsure how to proceed.

The cicadas were everywhere, and I plucked one out of the air without even trying. It buzzed and beat its wings against my fingertips as I held it out to Lane tauntingly. He was annoyed because there were no cockroaches out in the broad daylight. I was determined to eat my prehistoric bug before he could even find his.

And I did, too. Breaking the insect into death with my back teeth. Grinding it down to a sticky stillness. Its wings and legs scraped along my tongue as I fought my gag reflex. I swallowed it whole, in one terrible lump, grinning at Lane. Showing him my blackened tongue. It wasn't even that bad, really. I'd read in the newspaper that the only thing a cicada eats is leaves. Besides, it was over now.

“Mmm, done, finished. Delicious. What are you waiting for, Lane?”

Lane was down on his knees, under the front porch, getting frustrated. It took a minute, but he finally came out with a big black-brown cockroach. Holding it up for me.

“That thing looks repulsive,” I told him, grinning wildly. “Cockroaches are not a delicacy
anywhere
. I just want you to be fully aware of that. A real friend would stop you now. He would report you to the Board of Health. For your own good.”

“Watch and learn,” Lane said.

He popped the roach into his mouth, and I could see right away that this was not good. Whatever unholy shit is on the inside of a cockroach, it had just come spilling out into Lane's mouth. His face went into a kind of contortion, and I was killing myself laughing. This was a truly beautiful thing. Lane kept chewing and chewing, but as he worked to swallow his body said no. He gagged loudly and retched the mashed bug out onto the sidewalk in a pulp.

“Ugghhh,” I said, truly exhilarated. Lane looked green. I had never seen him this way before. “C'mon, pussy. Finish it!”

The insect's legs were still twitching inside the black slop. Lane showed me his teeth as he picked up the roach in his fingers again. Steely, he put it back into his mouth and swallowed it whole. Gone.

“There,” he said, looking miserable. “Happy?”

“Verrrry happy,” I said, with a shit-eating smile.

“I think I need something else,” Lane said, examining the inside of his mouth with his tongue. Spitting black saliva onto the sidewalk. “I'm not sure. Malt liquor?”

“Okay,” I said. “Let's go get you a Sparks, little guy.” I put my arm around his shoulder and we walked down to the bodega.

*   *   *

I was really very happy with everything then. This can't be overstated: I was enormously, perfectly happy. In a lot of ways this was turning into the best summer of my life. So, of course, this was the exact moment when Lauren Pinkerton came back around looking for me. She wanted to be my friend again. She wanted to know where I'd gone, and why I seemed so happy now. She wanted in, all of a sudden, out of the blue!

“Well, ha-ha-ha,” I said, from up on the porch.

“I'm serious. Why can't we be friends? I miss you, don't you miss me?”

“I was
ignoring
you, if you were paying any attention.”

Lauren pouted, and I tilted my head toward her sentimentally, mockingly.

“What's wrong with your arm anyway?” she asked, pointing up at me from the sidewalk. I looked at my left wrist, which was still wrapped in duct tape from earlier in the afternoon, when Lane and I had been playing guitars in his basement.

“Nothing's wrong. I have two of them,” I said, showing it for a fact. “Everything's hunky-dory.” The truth was it had been nearly four weeks since I'd jumped off the upstairs porch with Lane, and I'd decided to stop asking those kinds of questions.

“I don't like the idea that you're not taking care of yourself.”

“Yeah, well, anyway. I'm sort of busy around here…” I could hear a hoarse barking sound coming from inside of Lane's house, and I was desperate to go investigate. “See ya around, or whatever,” I said, leaving Lauren out on the sidewalk. I resented her coming back like this. It pissed me off.

I let myself into Lane's house through the back door, and was confronted by the apparition of a big gray pit bull. Lane had hold of a thick, knotted rope, and he was playing tug-o-war with the animal. Laughing maniacally.

Lane's mousy roommate, Hannah Wasserman, stood watching in the doorway. Smiling uncertainly.

“What is that thing?” I asked, a little alarmed.

“He's a rescue dog,” Hannah said brightly. “I just got him today.”

This dog did not look right, not at all. And I was willing to bet he'd never known a bleeding heart like Hannah Wasserman in his entire life.

“He looks a little deranged,” I said.

“He was abused. They were going to put him to sleep, but I saved him.”

I nodded, taking a step back. Lane was still roughhousing with the fragile pit bull. Riling him up. Barking into the dog's face.

“You're a strong dog, yes-you-are. What's your name, strong dog?”

“His name is Lucky,” Hannah offered cheerily. She was unnervingly passive about letting Lane wrestle with her new pet. I took another step away, spacing myself behind the couch. But Lane saw me do this, and he immediately tossed me the knotted rope. I caught it reflexively, as Lucky came launching over the couch behind it. I ducked and danced away as the big dog hit the parquet floor and went sliding into the hallway. Lane seemed to think this was hilarious.

“Hey, guys, don't…” Hannah said meekly.

“Dogs can smell fear!” Lane shouted. “Dogs can smell fear!”

Lucky turned and regrouped, barking loudly, and I slung the rope back across the room, trying to hit Lane in the head with it. But it thumped off the wall instead.

As Lane bent down to pick it up, the big dumb dog forgot what he was chasing and grabbed on to Lane's baggy T-shirt at the neck. As Lane tried to pull himself free, Lucky started to rip. It was everything Lane could do just to stay up on his feet then. The pit bull yanked and jerked, pulling the T-shirt right off of Lane's body in one long coil of fabric. He was literally spun out of his clothes like a cartoon character. This all happened in a blink—far too fast to be properly scared by it. Lane was just suddenly standing there in the middle of the room without a shirt on.

He looked at me with his mouth hanging open as we watched Lucky trot off into the kitchen with the T-shirt, like it was nothing at all.

“Oh, my god,
guys
…” Hannah said pitiably, looking traumatized.

“Ho-ly
shit
!” I shouted as Lane and I burst into hysterics. We laughed because we always laughed. This kind of stuff was bound to happen with Lane around.

Needless to say, poor Hannah Wasserman took old Lucky back to the pound for his dirt nap the next day. Rest in peace, puppy.

*   *   *

Lane and I kept kicking on. Raising hell. Cheating death. Riding bikes. Taking drugs. Breaking locks. Lighting fires. Trespassing in buildings. Jumping off of rooftops. Staying up all night. There were no rules. We were channeling danger and destruction, and making no apologies for ourselves, either. Ours was the kind of fun you just have to surrender yourself to.

Hannah Wasserman said that it was nice that Lane finally found somebody his own species. This was a love story, to be sure. But Lauren wouldn't stop coming around. She was curious about Lane now, and she was wary and jealous of my affection for him.

“I guess I don't get it. Is it like a
gay
thing?” she smirked. “No girls allowed?”

“Yeah, it's a gay thing.”

Lauren crossed her arms critically. “Seriously, though. What do you guys do all day? Where do you go?”

“I dunno.” I shrugged. “There's been a lot of good sports on TV.”

“That's what you do? Watch
sports
on TV?”

“Yeah, I mean, there's all kinds of good stuff on
tee-vee
these days,” I answered drolly. “We do other stuff, too. Like
laughing
and
having fun
. You wouldn't like it.”

Lauren frowned and I smiled. I could feel her patience wearing down. We had been totally incommunicado for over a year, and suddenly she was back. If I was cruel and heavy-handed now, that was the point. This was all preemptive.

*   *   *

Lane and I started calling her Yoko. We thought this was hilarious, and the fact that Lauren hated it only made it funnier.

“I'm Yoko?” she said. “Why, because she broke up the
Beatles
? Well, ha-ha-ha. I'm glad she broke up the Beatles. I wish she would've broken up the
Rolling Stones
, too.”