Dog Days Read online

  He said, “I’ll come back later.”

  And of course it was the dogs, as well. I didn’t have time to worry about it though, as the nurse tugged a few more stitches into my leg, and left, and as she went out someone else came in—oh crap, the midgets again. ‘Youwoknow!’ one said and the other simpered, ‘You go shi-shi? You need make?’ and I sat there with absolutely no, fucking, clue, while drifting back in from the hallway came a wicked, snickering laugh.

  So I found out that shi-shi meant urinate and make meant—number two. I found out that Filipinos were stronger and more stubborn than they looked. They had me shi-shi-ing and make-ing in no time, walking around the room twice and then back in bed before the ice in my soda melted. Then one of them nuked my fries for me so they were nice and hot again, brought me a cup of ice for my drink, and today’s newspaper, and a coloring book. It was the thought that counted, I guess. I think they said they’d bring the crayons later.

  I fell asleep sitting up, leaning back, my mouth open and soda-colored drool dripping off my chin. Niiice.

  Nightmares ensued.

  Saturday Afternoon

  It would have been nice to be woken up slowly, like by the guy nurse with his hand on my dick, even though it was strictly for medicinal purposes. But this time—here was Authority. When I pried my eyes open to someone calling my name and shaking my shoulder, there were a police officer and two other men, probably from admissions or the cruelty to animals commission, all exuding Authority. I had no idea why the other two were here and didn’t want to talk to the cop either. I hadn’t done anything wrong, had I? And if I hadn’t, why was I so scared? I could feel—and see and hear—my blood pressure and pulse going up like crazy. In fact, I didn’t like the looks of all three of them. What did they want? Were they going to kick me out? Was I under arrest? Then in came another man—oh, okay, good, it was Lefty—who had brought me the Coke and fries, and here he came—I felt like I was being saved. He stepped up beside the cop, handed me another cold cup, and said, “Seven-Up this time, that okay? And here’s a burger. I hope it’s okay.” I loved him. I wanted him. I wanted to go home with him. Over the cop’s shoulder, he winked at me and said, “I’ll be back later.” He turned to one of the men and herded him out into the hall with him, talking calmly. And he was gone, or so I thought.

  I unwrapped the burger and nibbled at it. I wanted to shove it in my face in one bite but my stomach was clenched in fear. I don’t know why, it was partly fear of a flashback happening again. It was as if I was a bystander at a tennis match. I heard the cop start talking; he was asking questions. His tone of voice reminded me of my stepfather. Then the other guy chimed in. Then I tuned them both out. The men’s voices raised. One of them touched me, and I froze. I didn’t intend to be silent or rude but, well, I didn’t know what was going on with me. Tears started to come, and I hated myself for it, but hey, there they were. You can tell when people are antagonistic toward you, and these two people were, and there was absolutely no reason for it. Couldn’t they see how scared they made me?

  The cop reminded me of the security guard at the airport telling me to get out. That brought back my stepfather’s laughter and words on the phone, and that brought the blackness, the bleakness, back over me, filling my head with nothingness. I was nothing. I set the burger down and reached for the soda, only I missed and knocked it over, the lid came off and it spilled onto the cop’s crotch, soaking him and bringing the word ‘damn’ out of his mouth. I thought he was going to hit me, but then there was a lot of noise at the door and two orderlies came in pushing someone in a bed into the room. The two men glaring at me (or so I thought without really looking at them) turned and watched as another patient, who was wheezing and gasping and farting (well, he was), was transferred into the other bed. A flash of bare ass showed as he was flopped onto his side and the curtain halfheartedly yanked. The orderlies left. The man swore and farted. He didn’t look or sound much, if any, older than I was.

  I started to laugh. I laughed until Lefty returned, pushed past my inquisitors, and put his arms around me. I cried until I threw up, but he was there with a basin. Then he got a damp cloth and washed my face and laid me down. I wished he was my dad. And then a nurse came in and injected something into my I.V., and I was gone. The last thing I heard was my new roommate farting, and I thought I heard Lefty laugh.

  * * * *

  Oh God, once again the scent of spices and horrible poisonous seaweed permeated my brain and brought me up from a very nice dream. The first thing I heard was a high male voice whining and demanding decent food. It had a bit of an Asian accent, Thai maybe? I had no idea. I figured it was my roommate. At least, he didn’t like the food either. As I came slogging up through the morass of my pain back to reality, I realized I’d been doing almost nothing but crying since I got here. You’d think I’d be dehydrated by now. I was thirsty, then I remembered where my lovely ice cold Seven-Up had gone, and I almost laughed, but then I almost cried too, so I gave up and opened my eyes. Good. There was nobody there.

  The sun was slanting into the room lighting up the far wall, with its door to the hallway and its door to the bathroom, and painting it gold. My roommate was on the phone. His tray of food was ominously close to falling. Mine was centered perfectly. If I wanted mine to fall, I’d have to work at it; all he would have to do is sneeze. Someone was coming in—ah, my friend Lefty. With another cold drink. I think I levitated toward him with my greedy hands out for it. He smiled and handed it to me.

  He sat down carefully and pulled the sheet back off my legs, making the pain diminish and then helped me sit up again. This time he handed me a bag of cookies and told me to have whatever I wanted. I was starting to love this man. I realized he made me feel twelve years old, and safe.

  “Aiden,” he started as I sat back and munched peacefully. “I need to talk to you. I want to put everything there is to know about you into the newspapers before anyone else knows where you are. But I also want to help you. I know you were on the plane from San Diego, and that you arrived Thursday, and that you’re eighteen.”

  I shook my head no and said, “Seventeen,” spitting cookie crumbs and not caring.

  “I see,” he said slowly. “Are you from San Diego? Did you run away from home? To be honest, the guard at the airport called the paper to say he knew all about you. All he knew was your name and your flight—and he expected to be paid for that.” Lefty smiled wickedly. “What happened, sweetheart? Why are you here on your own and there’s nobody you want called?” His gaze caught mine and held. I had no fear with him in the room; which was strange considering he was from the news and wanted to tell the world all my business.

  I was old enough to know I had to trust somebody, and young enough to sell out for food and soda and a friendly smile. It’s not like there was any competition. And I did trust him. I had nothing to lose anyhow. So I told him; I didn’t even wait for his questions, I just started at the beginning and followed straight through as if I were typing it into a diary.

  I choked up when I came to my stepfather calling me a—whatever—and I couldn’t go on. It wasn’t the bad words, or the fact that I didn’t even know what some of them meant; it was the black hole I had fallen into when he told me my dad wasn’t here, had probably never been here, and—all that. Lefty leaned forward and gripped my arm. I looked up at him out of my darkness and saw anger in his eyes. I recognized it and knew that if I let myself get angry about it, one, I’d probably break my foot this time, and two, I knew I would not be able to control it. My anger would attack me and eat me like those dogs did back at the beach, only there would be nobody to rescue me. Just like going back to that beach or that first park, going into the anger was not a place I would let myself go.

  In the silence of that drawn out minute, my roommate, who was still on the phone, said, “And the gown? It’s cream with chartreuse rhomboids on it! Jesus, Ross, you have to get me out of here! Chartreuse clashes with my eyes!” My eyes were still on Le
fty’s face but he had squeezed his eyes shut and was biting his lip. “And my ass hurts!” my roommate ended.

  Lefty composed himself with great effort and asked, “What happened after you left the airport?” I told him about getting beaten up and robbed and sleeping under the picnic table. “What happened with the kids and dogs?” he asked as if it were just the next step in a long walk. As I told him that part, my voice got thinner and my heart began to pound. He slid onto the bed and took me in his arms. I stammered out everything that I remembered and once, when I managed to open my eyes, I saw my roommate staring, and he rolled his eyes at me and made an obscene gesture, grinning wickedly, winking, and then pooching out his cheek. I choked, snorted, and laughed out loud, and when I could see again, the roommate was pretending to be sound asleep, innocent as an angel. As I pushed myself back out of Lefty’s comforting arms, my irrepressible dick practically waved hello at its new friend across the room.

  Once I could ignore that, I said in confusion, “Lefty, nobody has ever helped me with anything before. Why do things have to get practically life and death before, before…well…” And then of course, I cried.

  Things happened when I cried. I apparently turned grown men, albeit usually only gay men, into slobbery, horny heaps of studly, care-taking, hard mush. Not that I understood that at the time, which was probably a good thing.

  I’m trying to write about the worst time of my life and here it’s coming out like a gigantic, slapstick cartoon strip about a manipulative little sissy. I don’t mean it to be funny, because it wasn’t at the time, well, mostly, or at least I didn’t appreciate the humor of it at the time, okay? Lefty assumed my laughter meant I was becoming hysterical, and as he held me he lost his poise and professionalism completely and got all emotional with me. Then when I cried, he read that as being hysterical too, but my tears made him want to Do Something to Fix Things. In addition, my question started him thinking along the idealistic lines he’d had himself when he was my age and wanted to go to college, fight for peace, and save the world. His dick was hard too, I could feel it bulging up against me, and you know what, it made me feel a lot less weak and helpless. I didn’t want him, and I didn’t want him to know I’d noticed, but I had.

  The weird thing was, in some perverted way it made me feel like I had some power in the world after all, and even more importantly, that I was not the nothing in a black hole that I truly thought I believed. I could hear Mrs. White’s cheerful voice in my head, ‘Gather ye rainbows (was that right?) while ye may.’ No, that wasn’t right, maybe it was kittens, gather ye kittens, um, sunshine? Chickens? Cockles? What the hell is a cockle anyhow, something to do with a rooster?

  I felt, more than understood, that my power was in being able to say no or not now, and not just in being okay. Heck, I don’t have words for all that, but other than my overly active seventeen-year-old libido, I was a virgin and intended to remain one until nobody went to jail because of me. See? Unless it was me of course. Oh damn. I’m sorry, I wish I was eighteen or that none of this ever happened, but it’d been happening since I was fourteen years old standing on the goddamn diving board at the school pool, okay? It’s just a fact of life that we men must bear (dramatic sigh).

  Going off on this tangent at least made me forget what the heck I was crying about this time; so I sat back, wiped my face on Lefty’s sleeve, and picked up a cookie. Then I told him what I remembered about the kids and dogs. And this time, I was fine; it was as if it had happened to somebody else, and I was just this really good reporter and had noticed all the details. But when I was done, Lefty got up and walked into the bathroom, and I thought, I want to see what happened to me; so I uncovered myself and looked down at the bandages on my legs, and arm, and couldn’t see where else. I had definitely not looked when the bandages had been changed, but now I was curious in a detached but determined sort of way, if that makes any sense.

  So I started pulling the tape off a bandage on my calf, then as I pulled out some hair I looked for a different site—the inner thigh, not much hair there, so I switched to that one. I didn’t need to add more pain—time enough for that later when—damn! The bandage was stuck to the wound. As I peeled the still sticky tape off my leg, it curled around and stuck itself onto my pubic hair, only I didn’t notice yet as I was too busy swearing and trying to get the bandage off my wound.

  I didn’t notice until he said, “Oooooh” that my roommate had staggered over and was sitting down gingerly next to my leg on the bed. He had warm dark brown eyes with long, glittering eyelashes and what looked like permanent blue eyeliner. “Let me help you with that,” he said with a sweet and wicked smile, and my dick thought it meant itself, so little mini-me got all excited and ended up stuck to the tape too. There I was, swearing up a streak (goddamn bean-farting beasthatted, brasswarted thug), there was roommate trying to unstick tape from hair, dick, and now gown, biting his tongue, his blond hair falling over his face (and, I thought nastily, his black roots showing), and back into the room walks Lefty. I barely saw him roll his eyes and smirk; then he said briefly, “You want it wet,” and roommate blurps out, “Okay, honey!” Then one of us bumped into the call button, and a nurse promptly answered with a voice like gravel. “Whatchoowanthoney?” She sounded like a drag queen. Roommate rolled his eyes and batted his eyelashes, his hands busy.

  So that’s my life so far; slapstick wrapped around (and stuck to) tragedy.

  Meanwhile, roommate is continuing to rip the tape off with abandon—pain? Oh my God! And I thought it hurt to tear out a leg hair? I let out a yell that could have been heard a block away as a chunk of my pubic hair was yanked out of my body. They could have heard me an island away!

  Roommate says, “Oh, you big sissy, shut up! Consider it a free Brazilian! You’ll look so cute without all this—oh, look, the carpet matches the drapes, how cool is that? But—meh—off it comes!” And he gave the tape another mighty, one-handed yank, his other hand pressing into my crotch for support. That yell brought two nurses, Lefty with a wet washcloth, and a fat security guard with a gun in his hand.

  As I sat there petrified, hyperventilating, and staring at the now bald spot in my groin between my rapidly shrinking dick and the ugly, open dog bite on my thigh, Lefty started to laugh. “The carpet matches the…” he gasped out.

  The roommate from hell chewed on his cuticle and smiled up at me from under long, blue-lined lashes. “Is that your boyfriend? He’s kind of cute for an old guy. I think he looks like Tom Selleck, only fat. Oh hell, I tore a nail.” As he turned away from me to glance at his audience, I couldn’t help thinking it was all a big stage to him.

  The guard put his gun away and wandered off, muttering something about coffee or whiskey or maybe both. The nurses glared and then left, one saying she’d be back with reinforcements to refix that bite for me. Lefty was bent over double, laughing in little gasps that made him sound like he was dying, Roommate was chewing his fingernail and patting my thigh like it was a stray puppy, and I got my first really good look at one of my bites, and everything went pure white, then gray, and then black.

  Jesus. This was getting embarrassing.

  Sunday

  The roommate woke me up. “Hey! Glamour puss!” He was running his fingers up my unbitten leg toward the bald spot. “Wakey, wakey!”

  “No. Go away,” I replied with a groan. Everything hurt. I guess bruises were coming up like rainbows in places I hadn’t even known would or could hurt.

  “No! And my name is really Sol. It’s not ‘Theroommatefromhell’!” Whatever, he was straddling me now with his bare butt on my—stomach, yeah, stomach, with a rough patch like a bandage that was on his left check digging into my right side. He slid around on me, his skinny butt bones digging into me.

  “Ow! Get off me!” I pushed at him feebly.

  “No! Look, it’s you! Listen to this.” Sol shoved a newspaper in front of my half-opened eyes. I was looking back at myself from a picture on the front page. I blinked, and it disappe
ared, and Sol rolled off me, sitting beside me on his right butt cheek, easing his left down. “Your skinny ass hip bone hurt my bite!”

  “Huh?” I got out, trying to sit up. “You got bit too? By a dog?”

  “Huh? Oh hell no. My ex-boyfriend, Ross, that meathead, he bit me. It got infected. Now listen, let me read this to you! You’re a real hero, man!” Sol was so excited he couldn’t sit still.

  I made it to vertical, being careful of my own butt. It was barely light out, and I had no idea how early it was or how Sol—whatever that was short for—had gotten a paper so early.

  “‘Boy Arrives on Island Just in Time to Save Local Children from Vicious Attack by Fighting Dogs,’” Sol read. “This young visitor, eighteen, got off a plane at blah blah airport late Thursday. Friday morning, while walking on the beach,” and Sol read on, the story Lefty must have written. Most of the facts were right, or at least close enough, and I was glad they’d gotten my age wrong. I even felt like a man instead of a boy. Eighteen, woo hoo; I’m an adult!

  “Ooh, back up the truck, you’re eighteen? Not seventeen? Cool, now you’re not jailbait and I can…” and Sol reached out as if he was going to—never mind, all it did was make me realize how bad I needed to pee. Sol jumping up and down on the bed beside me didn’t help at all. I had to fight my way through him to get up to go—shi-shi. He followed me, still reading. I slammed the door in his face, but he turned the knob and followed me in. He interrupted himself to ask if I wanted a hand with that. I ignored him.

  We limped back into the room to see that breakfast trays had arrived. Sol rolled his eyes and said, “No, no, no. I am not going to even look at another pile of watery eggs, cold fake sausage, and a mound of sticky rice the size of a double D cup falsie! Come with me,” he added, pulling me away from the beds toward the door. “And be vewy quiet. We’re hunting wabbits.”