Fuccboi

I pulled up early to the house I used to live in.

For the New Year’s party my ex roomies were throwing.

I showed up on time, but no one besides my ex roomies were there, since on time was early at parties.

I hadn’t been drinking or going to parties for months now, so I’d forgotten.

But here I was.

At a party.

So I started drinking.

Last year’s New Year’s got ugly.

Happened here, at this house, only back then I still lived in it.

Had just moved into it.

Into the third-floor ‘closet-room.’

I had, since, graduated into a new ‘closet-room,’ across town.

Well…‘closet-sized.’

This new room itself had a closet.

Which I think disqualified it from being a closet.

But same feel.

Same claustrophobia.

Same shitty ventilation.

But last year.

The beginning of the end.

Or end of the beginning.

Or maybe just beginning.

Of everything.

Of the sadness.

Of Reality.

When ex bae and I decided to open things up.

Polyamorize.

Or maybe when ex bae got a firsthand look into how I polyamorized when she wasn’t around.

Before we’d agreed that polyamory was what we were doing.

Side bae coming on strong, all of us coming up, and me shrugging like Hey, ex bae, whattaya want me to do?

Side bae tryna get it.

That’s her right.

All about equal rights here.

Just like it’s my right to be a spineless fuck with no loyalty or resolve.

Molly, y’all.

That dang molly!

Ex bae, though.

She’d be back.

I was sure of it.

Just needed time.

To ‘explore.’

To hammer home that she wasn’t fucking around.

She was waiting it out, making me suffer, forcing me to reckon fully with my Destiny, without the buffer of her affection, so I’d be left with no choice but to ‘make it.’

Hit it big.

Show em all.

And then. Only then would she return.

But this year.

This year wasn’t last year.

This was a New Year.

Side bae showed up around eleven with the beans, like she’d promised.

I’d insisted No, not this time around, I was done with that.

Right up until the moment she procured my double-dose capsule.

Till she handed me the beer to wash it down with, watching to make sure I swallowed.

Right up until then, I resisted.

But how assertively she asserted.

Yes ma’am, I said, swallowing.

Too much activity going on, all around.

I returned to the middle-room couch.

Next to the roomie, who showed up with his wifey not long before side bae did.

We fit in due to our education level, but also remained slightly outside, due to our hapa-ness.

Our introversion.

Our shared misanthropy.

He was on something too, wasn’t sure what. But we started talking faster and faster and more emotionally and less judgmentally.

I’d cut my hair, dolled myself up, and washed for tonight.

Felt prettier and prettier the more people showed.

Still didn’t interact with anyone besides the roomie and those who approached me—in the corner, on the couch—but began conducting myself in a more and more performative way.

Not performing for anyone.

Just aware of being watched.

Laughing more.

Once the bean kicked in I started wilding.

Flirting up a storm.

Up and off the couch.

Roaming.

No one was off-limits.

Anyone could get it.

Whispered into peripheral bae’s ear “We both know we both want it. Have wanted it. Tonight’s the night. Tonight you can get it.”

Then winked and backed away, into a crowd.

Told ex-roomie bae’s out-of-town, pretty-boy bestie “No you’re right, I guess I don’t know until I’ve tried it. So what are you gonna do to try me?”

Went up to unfamiliar bae, in the middle of a convo, and corralled her into my dancing vortex when “Starboy” came on for the umpteenth time.

Went “Ayyy, college!” when ex-roomie bro said “Her?! She’s still in college, bro!” after I asked him if he knew unfamiliar bae and, if so, what her deal was.

Side bae was less than impressed.

Cornered me in the packed kitchen, by the drink station.

Said You need to focus.

Gestured circularly in her face area.

On this.

On me.

Then put her hand on her hip and cocked her head like And? What do you have to say to that?

Oh side bae.

Side bae, she was a grown-ass woman.

Had two years on me.

Sexy when she told me what to do.

She knew what she wanted, and how to make known her terms and conditions.

Thing was, that was only the half.

I knew what I wanted. I’d made known my terms and conditions.

But getting them…

“Hahaaa, ayyy, woah,” I said.

“Whattaya want from me, bae?” I said.

“Skiddly doot pop?” I said, handling her hips, touching groins, and smelling her all over—neck, pits, tummy.

Side bae said: “Dance floor.”

Grabbed my wrist and led me two rooms over, through a crowd, to the front room.

To the dance floor.

Danced with a coy pout on her face, directed towards me until I gave her my full attention; then away from me once I did, but dancing for me, wanting me to watch; and then towards me again when she noticed I wasn’t watching.

Confusing.

Sexy!

But confusing.

I couldn’t stay focused.

So many baes.

Too many feelings.

Multidirectional feelings.

And never enough to fill the hole inside.

Got ensnared in unfamiliar bae’s dance vortex.

Got sent spiraling her way.

Wasn’t two two-steps in when I felt myself yanked another way.

Side bae pulled me into a corner. Hard.

Harder than she meant to, maybe, because immediately after she went small again.

She’d initiated it; but somehow, I felt like the dominant one.

Like she wanted me to be the dominant one.

Like she was testing me.

So I did the only thing I could think to. What I coulda sworn she wanted.

Grasped her by the neck—firmly enough for her to feel it, gently enough to not leave a mark or obstruct her breathing, just like she’d taught me—and pinned her to the wall, leaning in to nuzzle her ear.

She grabbed my wrist. Hard.

Said No.

Not here.

Not in front of people.

Not unless I say to.

Around 2 a.m.

Big Indian dude I didn’t recognize, hovering in the front room. By the piano.

Swaying slightly.

Looking lost.

“My guy,” I said. “Doin arite?”

He looked at me surprised, like Me?

Yeah you, pal.

Oh yeah, me, doing great.

“Fuck yeah!”

“…”

“Drink?”

I poured him and myself a shot of the sake I’d brought, that I’d been lugging around, then lost, then found, then was lugging around again.

He looked around skittish, eyes bulgy and unfocused.

We cheers’d.

“Yo so you Indian, huh?”

“Yuh.”

“Lit. Born there?”

He told me he was born in Baltimore. Where his parents immigrated to.

“Ah,” I said. “B-more.”

Made a Wire reference.

Side bae entered the front room, looking tired.

Gave me a cryptic, mostly frustrated-seeming look.

Went upstairs with her bestie.

To re-up, probably.

“Well here’s to our respective Asian brethren. Holding down our respective motherlands,” I said, pouring and shooting another shot.

Started rolling a cig.

“Y’know,” I said. “I was actually born in Tokyo. Lived there till I was five. Been back a few times since.

“Recently, as I learned more about my family history—white dad’s dad a U.S. Air Force pilot, mom’s dad’s entire fam besides him bombed out and merked by U.S. planes—I started to wonder why my mom moved us. Why she let me lose my Japanese. Why she let me get so detached from Japanese culture.

“Can’t even speak to my baba hardly!

“But what I realized—,” I began.

Before side bae started tugging on me again.

“This way.”

I looked at Indian homie like in slo-mo.

Like ‘Nooooooo!’

Like ‘Brrrrrbbbbbbbb!’

He receded past the wall and out of sight as I fell back, through the middle room, into the kitchen, and out the back door. Down the back steps, to the backyard. Where side bae fed me more drugs.

Commotion in the front room, when I returned.

Front door wide open, wind billowing up the curtains.

Weird contrast between the fluorescent streetlight outside, emanating off the snow in the yard, and the blacklight of the front-room dance floor.

“Starboy” blasting again.

Forged ahead, to close the door.

Partiers adjacent to it, talking like discussing versus talking like flirting.

Not closing the door.

Why weren’t they.

Right when I was about to, Indian dude came barging in.

“Ayyy, woah,” I said, arms wide in welcome before, a split second later, realizing this wasn’t one of those barge-ins.

This was a different kind.

“Bud, bud, hey,” I said, blocking his path and spreading my arms, but now to stabilize him.

“Where ya goin.”

“Fuck you motherfucker,” he yelled. “All o’ yous.”

“Bud, what happened.”

He flailed to his right, to a group of white girls.

“Ohhhkay,” I said, grabbing him by his shirt collar and pushing him back.

“And you!” he yelled over my shoulder. “Fuck you too, white motherfucker!”

Jeez.

Dude was heavy.

Pushing him, I felt like a lineman pushing those dummy linemen linemen push in football practice drills.

Ex-roomie bro—whom he was pointing at—was like Wha?—before Indian dude grabbed the coat rack over my head and tried to blitz past me—before ex-roomie bro hit him with a linebacker tackle and pushed him back to where I’d gotten him.

Back into the doorway.

I threw all the coats off me like “Ohhhkay, done playing nice.” Pushed him through the boot room and down the front steps. Like Fuck outta here, bitch.

Was pissed now.

But also hyper-lit, euphoric almost, given the adrenaline plus molly.