Chapter 3
I touched a man’s asshole.
I touched Ezra’s asshole, and the world didn’t stop turning. Not because I’ve got some deep-seated urge I’ve been fighting to claim another man, or something. That ain’t the reason I thought Armageddon may have been at hand. It’s because of him. Ezra Edwards. Psychic douchebag extraordinaire.
The guy is a fucking weirdo. He wears these stupid fuckin’ clothes that show off more skin than necessary.
He makes every conversation into a production.
The little creep spends weeks filling entire balloons with semen, just to throw them at me while I sleep.
He’s a threat to my physical safety, and he’s slowly stealing my best friend.
The first friend I ever had after moving out of my hometown of Dunsberry, Arkansas, population: thirty-five.
My family lived like hillfolk, and I figured I’d just grow old and die on the farm like my daddy, my daddy's daddy, and his daddy before him. Then Auntie Dot got sick, and Momma sent me to take care of her, just a few months after I turned eighteen. I’m the oldest of my brothers and sisters, so she couldn’t send my brothers Pete or Barrett.
I got the short end of the stick, but I like the stick I was given, because that stick led me to Bubba.
Auntie Dot never got better, so I never left.
Saying the move to Texas was a culture shock is putting it lightly.
We barely had running electricity back in Arkansas, but Auntie Dot had a whole television to herself.
She even had a personal laptop computer!
I didn’t get to leave the house too much, mostly because I was taking care of her, but also because I was scared of all the changes.
Tallulah was like a metropolis compared to Dunsberry.
Streets with two lanes on each side. Stoplights.
I just about shot a load the first time I saw a drive-through car wash.
Then I met Bubba down at the Walmart on Highway 80 a few years before they closed the store down and boarded the windows.
It was the first time I ever saw a Walmart, and walking into the store felt a lot like that Wizard of Oz movie I watch with Ezra sometimes.
Like walking out of a sepia-tinted world, into one bursting to life with color.
Back in Arkansas, our only store was the Pick-n-Save, two towns over, forty miles away.
At the Walmart, I saw things on the shelves I never knew existed.
There were razors with more than one blade.
Dolls that talked when I squished their tummies.
There was even something called a DVD, and they had an entire rack of them.
On one of the DVD covers, two men were sharing a tender moment, their lips barely connected, nothing but pure adoration on either of their faces.
It was the first time I ever saw something like that.
Back home, nobody ever said nothing about two men loving each other that way.
I never heard about it at school, but our school only had ten other kids, and none of them were my age.
I spent most of my time planting and pulling potatoes in the field out back with Daddy and my brothers.
There were so many sights I never saw before on that DVD shelf—witches and demons and Cheech and Chong—but my eyes were locked and loaded on those men.
I don’t know how long I stared at the cover, trying to make it make sense in my head, but at some point, someone put their hand on my shoulder and asked, “Are you okay, bro?” When I looked over my shoulder, Bubba was there with a concerned look in his eyes.
“These guys. They’re kissing,” I told him, waving the DVD case in his face, probably looking shellshocked.
Bubba cocked an eyebrow at me and simply said, “Yeah, they are. You got a fuckin’ problem with it?”
I shook my head, because I didn’t have a problem with it. At least, I didn’t think I did. It made me feel all jumbled-up inside like someone tossed me in the butter churn and whipped my insides around and around. I didn’t feel grossed out though.
“Why are they kissing?” I asked him, but he stared silently at me, making me feel like I said something wrong again. I stared down at the picture again, but it still didn’t make sense. “Guys can kiss each other?”
“They do it all the time,” Bubba told me. “And there ain’t nothin’ wrong with it.”
I swallowed. “They don’t do that back in Dunsberry.”
“Dunsberry, Arkansas?” Bubba asked, and when I nodded, he laughed. “Well that explains it. You must be the hillfolk boy, come to stay with Ms. Dorothy. Johnny, was it?”
Come to find out, Bubba knew Auntie Dot from his poetry club, and she already told all her friends about me and my family, and how we lived outside of society, keeping to ourselves.
Bubba said Auntie Dot had gone around town telling people to be on the lookout for me, because I didn’t know nothing about anything.
It made me feel real stupid when he said it, so I just stood there blushing, staring at my feet, shame coursing through every inch of my body.
I never had anyone call me stupid to my face before, because back in Dunsberry, I was the smartest kid in school.
The one everyone thought would make it big one day.
The kids at school used to say I’d probably get myself a real nice job at a gas station in the next town over.
They said I’d probably even make the minimum wage, which for people like us is like telling a city kid they might be a television star one day, but none of the folk in Dunsberry owned a television set, so I guess they went with the next best thing.
“But I don’t think that’s true at all, is it Johnny Boy?
” he asked, putting his hand back on my shoulder.
Bubba told me he liked my spirit and offered me a job working at his machine shop making a whole lot more than the minimum wage.
We became best friends, and we’ve been thick as thieves ever since.
He introduced me to the outside world, and I became the person he turned to when he needed to talk, coming to me before he went to his wife with whatever was bothering him.
Now he turns to Ezra too. Our bond is as strong as ever, but I don’t like sharing him with anyone.
I know Bubba better than I’ve ever known anyone.
I stuck by him through his divorce. He showed me the wonders of Fleshlights and buttplugs, even though the plugs he would order online scared the fuck out of me because of how big they were.
Bubba has met my family a whole bunch of times.
When I first moved to town, I couldn’t talk to Momma.
I couldn’t write her a letter or call her on the phone.
I missed her so fuckin’ much it felt like I might break, but I couldn’t let myself break in front of Auntie Dot, and I sure as shit couldn’t break in front of Bubba.
It was before I felt comfortable crying in front of him.
Eventually, that’s exactly what happened.
After two years of being his best bro, my heart cracked in half, right in front of him.
He threw me a twenty-first birthday blowout, just The Core Four, Jaden, and Faith.
It was one of the best nights of my life, because Bubba hugged me a whole bunch of times, and it was the first time I felt my heart race because of someone else.
After too many damn Jello shots, Bubba and I sat on the back porch, looking out into the long, lonely stretch of East Texas forest behind his house.
I was missing my momma real bad, and he must’ve known, because he took my hand like it was his to take, and he squeezed it so tightly, it felt like it might break.
And so, I told him. I broke down, and I told Bubba how I hadn’t been home in over two years, and how much I’ve missed my family.
He cradled his face in my hands, wiping away tears as they fell from my cheek, and said, “Oh, Johnny Boy. Why didn’t you say something sooner?”
Six hours later, Bubba and I pulled up to my momma’s house in Arkansas. He didn’t even ask if I wanted to go, he just stood up from the porch and dragged me through the house by my hand, not stopping until we were out front, in his truck, heading toward the highway.
Momma and Bubba have been close, right since the start. She made him promise to take care of me, no matter what. She didn’t have to ask, though. No one has ever had to tell Bubba to care for me. He always has. I hope to God he always will.
Bubba wasn’t just a best friend, he was also a surrogate father of sorts.
Losing Daddy so young meant I only had Momma to teach me what it meant to be a man, and as strong as she is, there were things she didn’t know.
Things only a man would know about being a man.
How to trim and style a beard. The way to win a woman’s heart.
He told me everything I needed to know about women, actually, but he always looked really sad when he’d talk to me about it.
He would say how lucky the woman I settle down with would be, and it always made my heart hurt a little, like someone jammed a nail file through it.
Then I met Annie. Knowing what I know now—knowing what he means to me, and what I mean to him—it must’ve been hell on him to watch me stumble my way through the dating world.
He told me Annie was a lucky woman, and that I was going to make her so happy.
He wasn’t always right. There were things he didn’t warn me about.
Things he got wrong, and Bubba is rarely wrong.
He didn’t tell me Annie and I were never going to be long term.
He never explained how my heart couldn’t beat for her, because it was already beating for him.
Didn’t he know? Bubba knows everything, why didn’t he know that?