maura: i need to talk to you.

me: isn’t it like midnight or something?

maura: just open the door.

me: are you going to huff and puff?

maura: c’mon, will. just open it.

It’s always a little scary when she gets all direct with me. so while i’m opening the door i’m already trying to figure out how to dodge her. it’s like some instinct kicks in.

mom: who is it?

me: it’s only maura.

and, oh fuck, maura’s taking the ‘only’ personally. I want her to just draw the teardrop under her eye and get it over with. she has enough black eyeliner on to outline a corpse, and her skin’s so pale she looks like she’s just broken dawn. only without the two dots of blood on her neck.

we’re hovering there in the doorway because i don’t really know where we should go. i don’t think maura’s ever really been inside my house before, except maybe the kitchen. she definitely hasn’t been in my room, because that’s where the computer is, and maura’s the kind of girl who the moment you leave her alone will go right for the diary or the computer. plus, you know, asking someone to your room could be taken to mean something, and i definitely don’t want maura to think i’m going to get all ‘hey-why-don’t-we-sit-on-my-bed-and-hey-since-we’re-sitting-on-my- bed-how-’bout-i-put-my-dick-inside-you?’ with her. but the kitchen and the living room are off-limits now because of mom, and mom’s bedroom is off-limits because it’s mom’s bedroom. which is how i find myself asking maura if she wants to go into the garage.

maura: the garage?

me: look, it’s not like i’m going to ask you to go down on a tailpipe, okay? if i wanted us to do a suicide pact, i’d opt for bathtub electrocution. you know, with a hair dryer. like poets do.

maura: fine.

mom’s maxiseries hasn’t come yet to its austen shitty limits, so i know maura and i will be able to talk undisturbed. or, at least, we’ll be the only disturbed ones in the garage. it seems really stupid to sit in the car, so i clear a space for us by the things of dad’s that mom never got around to throwing out.

me: so what’s up?

maura: you’re a prick.

me: this is a news flash?

maura: shut up for a second.

me: only if you shut up, too.

maura: stop it.

me: you started it.

maura: just stop it.

I decide, okay, i’ll shut up. and what do i get? fifteen fucking seconds of silence. then it’s all

maura: i always tell myself that you don’t mean to hurt me, which makes it less hurtful, you know. but today - i’m just so fucking sick of it. of you. just so you know, i don’t want to sleep with you, either. i would never sleep with someone i can’t even be friends with.

me: wait a second - now we’re not friends?

maura: i don’t know what we are. you won’t even tell me that you’re gay.

this is a classic maura maneuver. if she doesn’t get an answer she wants, she will create a corner to back you into. like the time she went through my bag when i was in the bathroom and found my pills - i hadn’t taken them in the morning, so i brought them along with me to school. she waited a good ten minutes before asking me if i was on any medication. this seemed a little random to me, and i didn’t really want to talk about it, so i told her no. and then what does she do? she reaches into my bag and pulls out the pill bottles and asks me what they’re for. she got her answer, but it didn’t exactly inspire trust. she kept telling me i didn’t need to be ashamed of my ‘mental condition,’ and i kept telling her i wasn’t ashamed - i just didn’t want to talk about it with her. she couldn’t understand the difference.

so now we’re back in another corner, and this time it’s the gay thing.

me: whoa, wait a second. even if i was gay, wouldn’t that be my decision? to tell you?

maura: who’s isaac?

me: fuck.

maura: you think i can’t see what you draw in your notebook?

me: you’re kidding me. this is about isaac? maura: just tell me who he is.

I fundamentally don’t want to tell her. he’s mine, not hers. if i give her just a piece of the story, she’ll want the whole thing. i know in some twisted way she’s doing this because she thinks it’s what i want - to talk about everything, to have her know everything about me. but that’s not what i want. that’s not what she can have.

me: maura maura maura . . . isaac’s a character. he doesn’t actually exist. fuck! it’s just this thing i’m working on. this - i don’t know - idea. i have all these stories in my head. starring this character, isaac.

I don’t know where this shit comes from. it’s like it’s just being given to me by some divine force of fabrication. maura looks like she wants to believe it, but doesn’t really.

me: like pogo dog. only he’s not a dog, and he’s not on a pogo stick.

maura: god, i forgot all about pogo dog.

me: are you kidding? he was going to make us rich!

and she’s buying it. she’s leaning against me and, i swear to god, if she was a guy i’d be able to see the boner in her pants.

maura: i know it’s awful, but i’m kind of relieved that you’re not hiding something that big from me.

I figure this would be a bad time to point out that i’ve never actually said i wasn’t gay. i just told her to fuck off.

I don’t know if there’s anything more horrifying than a goth girl getting all cuddly. maura’s not only leaning, but now she’s examining my hand like somebody stamped it with the meaning of life. in braille.

me: i should probably get back to my mom.

maura: tell her we’re hanging out.

me: i promised her i would watch this thing with her.

the key here is to blow off maura without her realizing i’m blowing her off. because i really don’t want to hurt her, not when i just managed to bring her back from the brink of the last hurt i allegedly inflicted. i know as soon as maura gets home, she’s going to dive right into her notebook of skull-blood poetry, and i’m doing my best not to get a bad review. maura once showed me one of her poems.

hang me

like a dead rose

preserve me

and my petals won’t fall

until you touch them

and i dissolve

and i wrote her a poem back

I am like

because

like a dead begonia

I don’t give a fuck

to which she replied

not all flowers

depend on light

to grow

so now maybe tonight i’ll inspire

I thought his soil was gay

but maybe there’s a chance

I can get myself some play

and get into his pants

hopefully i’ll never have to read it or know about it or even think about it ever again.

I stand up and open the garage door so maura can leave that way. i tell her i’ll see her monday in school and she says ‘not if i see you first’ and i go har har har until she’s a safe distance away and i can shut the garage door again.

the sick thing is, i’m sure that someday this is going to come back to haunt me. that someday she’s going to say i led her on, when the truth is i was only holding her off. i have to set her up with somebody else. soon. it’s not me she wants - she just wants anybody who will make it all about her. and i can’t be that guy.

when i get back to the living room, pride & prejudice is almost over, which means that everyone knows pretty much where they stand with everyone else. usually my mom is a crumpled-tissue mess at this point, but this time there’s not a wet eye in the house. she pretty much confirms it when she turns the dvd off.

mom: i really have to stop doing this. i need to get a life.

I think she’s directing this at herself, or the universe, not really at me. still, i can’t help thinking that ‘getting a life’ is something only a complete idiot could believe. like you can just drive to a store and get a life. see it in its shiny box and look inside the plastic window and catch a glimpse of yourself in a new life and say, ‘wow, i look much happier - i think this is the life i need to get!’ take it to the counter, ring it up, put it on your credit card. if getting a life was that easy, we’d be one blissed-out race. but we’re not. so it’s like, mom, your life isn’t out there waiting, so don’t think all you have to do is find it and get it. no, your life is right here. and, yeah, it sucks. lives usually do. so if you want things to change, you don’t need to get a life. you need to get off your ass.

of course i don’t say any of these things to her. moms don’t need to hear that kind of shit from their kids, unless they’re doing something really wrong, like smoking in bed, or doing heroin, or doing heroin while they’re smoking in bed. if my mom were a jock guy in my school, all of her jock-guy friends would be saying, ‘dude, you just need to get laid.’ but sorry, geniuses, there’s no such thing as a fuck cure. a fuck cure is like the adult version of santa claus.

It’s kind of sick that my mind has gone from my mom to fucking, so i’m glad when she complains about herself a little more.

mom: it’s getting old, isn’t it? mom at home on a saturday night, waiting for darcy to show up.

me: there’s not an actual answer to that question, is there?

mom: no. probably not.

me: have you actually asked this darcy guy out?

mom: no. i haven’t actually found him.

me: well, he’s not going to show up until you ask him out.

me giving my mom romantic advice is kind of like a goldfish giving a snail advice on how to fly. i could remind her that not all guys are dickheads like my dad, but she perversely hates it when i say bad things about him. she’s probably just worried about the day i’ll wake up and realize half my genes are so geared toward being a bastard that i’ll wish i was a bastard. well, mom, guess what - that day came a long time ago. and i wish i could say that’s where the pills come in, but the pills only deal with the side effects.

god bless the mood equalizers. and all moods shall be created equal. i am the fucking civil rights movement of moods.

It’s late enough for isaac to be home, so i tell my mom i’m heading off to bed and then, to be nice, tell her that if i see any cute guys wearing, like, knickers and riding a horse sexily on the way to the mall, i’ll be sure to slip ’em her number. she thanks me for that, and says it’s a better idea than any of her friends at girls poker night have had. i wonder if she’ll be asking the mailman for his opinion soon.

there’s a dangling IM waiting for me when i banish my screen saver and check what’s up.

boundbydad: u there?

boundbydad: i’m wishin’

boundbydad: and hopin’

boundbydad: and prayin’

all sorts of yayness floods my brain. love is such a drug.

grayscale: please be the one voice of sanity left in the world

boundbydad: you’re there!

grayscale: just.

boundbydad: if you’re relying on me for sanity, it must be pretty bad.

grayscale: yeah, well, maura stopped by cvs for a hag audition, then when i told her that tryouts were canceled, she decided she’d go for some

grayscale: nookie instead. and then my mom started saying she had no life. oh, and i have homework to do. or not.

boundbydad: it’s hard to be you, isn’t it?

grayscale: clearly.

boundbydad: do you think maura knows the truth?

grayscale: i’m sure she thinks she does.

boundbydad: what a nosy bitch.

grayscale: not really. it’s not her fault i don’t really want to get into it. i’d rather share it with you.

boundbydad: and so you are. meanwhile, no big saturday night plans? more quality time with mom?

grayscale: you, my dear, are my saturday night plans.

boundbydad: i’m honored.

grayscale: you should be. how was the bday celebration?

boundbydad: small. kara just wanted to see a movie with me and janine. good time, lame movie. the one with the guy who learns that the girl he marries is a sucubus

boundbydad: sucubbus?

boundbydad: succubus?

grayscale: succubus

boundbydad: yeah, one of those. it was really stupid. then it was really boring. then it got loud and stupid. then there were about two minutes where it was so stupid it was funny. then it went back to being dumb, and finally ended lame.

boundbydad: good times, good times

grayscale: how’s kara?

boundbydad: in recovery. grayscale: meaning?

boundbydad: she talks a lot about her problems in the past tense as a way to convince us they’re in the past. and maybe they are.

grayscale: did you say hi to her for me?

boundbydad: yeah. i think i phrased it as ‘will says he wants you inside of him,’ but the effect was the same. she said hi back.

grayscale: **sighs forlornly** i wish i could’ve been there.

boundbydad: i wish i was there with you right now.

grayscale: really? ☺

boundbydad: yessirreebob.

grayscale: and if you were here . . .

boundbydad: what would i do?

grayscale: ☺

boundbydad: let me tell you what i’d do.

this is a game we play. most of the time we’re not serious. like, there are different ways it could go. the first is we basically make fun of people who have IM sex by inventing our own ridiculous scornographic dialogue.

grayscale: i want you to lick my clavicle.

boundbydad: i am licking your clavicle.

grayscale: ooh my clavicle feels so good.

boundbydad: naughty, naughty clavicle.

grayscale: mmmmmm

grayscale: rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr boundbydad: tttttttttttttttttttt

other times we go for the romance novel approach. corn porn.

boundbydad: thrust your fierce quavering manpole at me, stud

grayscale: your dastardly appendage engorges me with hellfire

boundbydad: my search party is creeping into your no man’s land grayscale: baste me like a thanksgiving turkey!!!