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backdrifterThe downside of crashing at Horace’s place, he discovered that night, was that when Shaun stayed the night, the two of them were fairly noisy—especially Shaun. Respa spent his first night on the couch trying and failing to block out the animal noises Shaun was making, and the smack of what was probably pleather against somebody’s skin. The next morning Horace commented that he still looked tired, and Respa had to dig down deep to find the willpower not to glower at either of them.
Still, true to his word, Horace took him to the barber later that week, and when he emerged, the beard was gone, and his hair was short for the first time since he’d been thirteen. Horace offered to take him shopping for clothes, and Respa thought of turning him down, but the glint in Horace’s eye when he hesitated told him it would only earn him another lecture, and in public.
Much to Horace’s disappointment, none of what Respa picked out was anything like the outfit he’d loaned him. He still picked jeans that left little to the imagination, though at least these fit in both length and hip. Horace tried to interest him in things like hats and sunglasses; Respa told him not to waste his money, and since the jeans had been fifty dollars a pop, Horace had to agree that it would be pointless to buy things he wouldn’t wear.
Shaun, apparently, hadn’t known about the so-called makeover, and when he came over next things escalated upon the discovery of that day’s receipts.
“You spent how much on this—this friend of yours?” Shaun bellowed, waving the receipts in one hand. “You bought him jeans at Urban Outfitters? What, is he too good for the thrift store? You couldn’t even take him someplace like Old Navy?”
“It’s my money, and my choice how to spend it, and if I want to spend it helping a friend put his life back together, that’s none of your business, Shaun,” Horace said, trying to remain calm, though his hand clearly shook as he watered his plants. “And anyway, Old Navy isn’t his style—“
“Style?!” Shaun spluttered, throwing the receipts over his shoulder. They fluttered behind him as he began to pace, apoplectic. “What are you, Queer Eye? If you want to buy him clothes, fine, but there’s no need to blow all this money on—“
Respa had been listening from the kitchen, where he’d been pouring himself a glass of juice when Shaun had found the receipts. He’d stayed there throughout the whole argument so far, unsure of whether or not to show his face, and in the process he’d drunk the whole glass and poured himself another. Now he emerged, and Shaun’s eyes grew even wider at the sight of his hair.
“And a haircut, too! Jesus Christ, Horace, where’s the receipt for that? Did that cost a hundred bucks, too?”
“I’m right here,” Respa protested. “You don’t have to talk about me like I’m not in the room! Listen, I told him he didn’t have to spend that money on me but he wanted to, so…! So yeah!” A lame finish.
Shaun sighed heavily. “Listen, Horace,” he said, ignoring Respa again, “I know you’re an adult, you make your own choices, all that. You’re just too generous, you know? I don’t want anybody taking advantage of that.” He stroked Horace’s hair and pulled him into a hug, but he gave Respa a sour look over the shorter man’s shoulder.
He was taken aback for a moment, and then he did his best to return the look, and he took himself and his juice to the couch.
Later that night, as he rearranged the cushions on the couch and pulled sheets over it, he couldn’t help eavesdropping on the conversation coming from the bedroom, Shaun as always louder than his partner.
“He gives me these looks,” Shaun was saying. “I don’t like him, Horace, I don’t like having a bum in the apartment.”
Horace murmured something.
“What he’s been through? How about what we’ve been through, huh? Everybody’s been through something, Horace, it doesn’t make everybody a goddamn charity case you pick up off the street and clean up, like a stray puppy or something.”
Again, Horace was too soft-spoken to be heard from the couch.
“How do you know he’s not out there stealing our shit? One day we have that nice lamp you picked up at that garage sale, the next day it’s in the window of some pawn shop. What?” Horace’s voice a blur of sound under Shaun’s. “No, it has nothing to do with how he looks—“ Horace again. “You know what, forget it. He’s your friend. I’m gonna try to trust you here, but I swear to god, if he walks off with our stuff—fine. Goodnight, Horace.” Sheets rustled in the next room, and then the click-click of the bedside lamp being turned off.
Shaun didn’t come back for a week, and Respa would be lying if he said he wasn’t relieved. He wanted to ask Horace what he was doing with him, but he already knew he’d get some sappy answer about how “you don’t see him when it’s just us, he’s so sweet,” or something like that. So, when Shaun came over, Respa did everybody a favor and went for long walks, volunteered to go to the grocery store, the hardware store, whatever store needed going to. Errands across town, in other boroughs if it came to that (it never did).
When Shaun wasn’t around, he used Horace’s weights, gorged himself on sloppy-looking peanut butter sandwiches. He put on weight that he desperately needed, though when his jeans started to strain at the hips like his previous pairs, he had to fight off Horace’s offers of another shopping trip. His crippled hand gave him problems with the weights, but he never asked Horace for help, instead choosing to work out whenever Horace went to work, dropping his left weight constantly and bothering the neighbors.
Shaun, of course, was bothered by his lack of employment. He trotted out the same reason every time to Horace—“You’re so generous, I don’t want to see you get taken advantage of, you give too much of yourself”—but sometimes Respa found himself alone in the apartment with Horace’s boyfriend, and then Shaun sang a different tune.
“You’re worse than a bum, you’re a mooch,” Shaun would say on these occasions, backing Respa into the wall as he leaned down and glared. “Poor Horace, all he wants to do is help out, and you got nothing to give back to him. You’re a leech. You sit on ass all day and eat his food, watch his TV, use his weights which you can’t even handle! The neighbors think I live here and they complain to me about your silly shit.”
“It’s Horace’s choice,” Respa always said, pretending to ignore Shaun, but the words struck a chord in him. Shaun didn’t know, couldn’t know, that if Horace wasn’t so adamant about him staying here, he’d just as soon go back to slumming it on stoops and church doorways, just to be somehow self-reliant.
“I bet you got it all figured out up there, don’t you?” Shaun said one day, tapping his temple in case Respa couldn’t understand what “up there” meant. “You just slum around our stoop long enough, Horace will take pity on you, and tada, a free ride. Is that it?” He plucked a chip out of the bag he held, and bit down with an aggressive crunch.
“I don’t have anything figured out,” Respa said, fumbling for the remote. It was never in sight when he needed it, like now, when he wanted to drown out the sound of Shaun’s accusations. “That’s why I’m here, because I have to figure things out.”
“Didn’t you have a place? What, did you just decide that living life in the regular lane wasn’t floating your boat anymore, you had to try being a bum?” Another chip, another carnivorous crunch.
“I lost it,” Respa said flatly. Aha. Of course the remote was right next to the TV, where it would do nobody any good. He lurched upward to go get it, and Shaun stepped in his path, gesticulating with the bag of chips between the two of them.
“How?” Shaun asked, thrusting out his chin. “Huh? I wanna know, I’m curious. Tell me, Respa, how’d you lose your place?”
Respa stared for a moment, brows knitted, mouth slightly ajar and downturned. That perplexed look usually given to those who had no business asking the questions they were asking. “That,” he said slowly, “is none of your business.”
“No, see, I don’t think you understand. It is my business, because you’ve been here crashing on my boyfriend’s couch, accepting his money, eating his food, using his stuff, for months, and it really bothers me that you don’t try to do a damn thing in return. Not a damn—“ and he gave Respa’s shoulder a shove with his free hand “–thing!”
Respa retaliated almost instantly, grabbing one of Shaun’s shoulder with his good hand, and pushing the other with his bad. He charged forward, and he managed to get Shaun to take a step back before the larger man realized Respa was actually on the attack. Shaun easily threw him off, and Respa found himself crashing into a side table, an errant hand bringing a lamp down that grazed the side of his head.
He was still flailing around, trying to get himself up, when Shaun’s fists gathered big handfuls of his shirt and yanked him upright. He was brought almost nose to nose with the other man, Shaun huffing and wild-eyed. “You,” he panted, “have no idea what you’re doing to us. To me!”
“I haven’t done a goddamn thing—“
“No!” Shaun shouted, giving him a shake. “You obviously don’t realize it, but Horace looks at you like—like he should be looking at me! Like he used to look at me! You don’t see it, but I do! I do!” Shaun squeezed his eyes shut for a moment, his breath hitching, and Respa realized he was trying not to cry. The fists tightened. “And it’s not fair! I was here first, and I do everything for him! I have a job, my own place, I’m a functioning member of society, and you’re not! All you have going for you is that you’re halfway attractive! There is no reason Horace should like you!”
“Functioning—fuck you!” Respa shouted back, pushing the fists off his shirt. “I used to have a life! I had a kid, a place in Dumbo, and I supported all that with my body, my own goddamn body! And as for,” he snorted hard, “my looks, well, buddy, I’ve been calling you ‘Hawk man’ in my head for months. So fuck you!”
A fire lit in Shaun’s eyes, twin furnaces that roared to life as he surged forward again, fist first. “You—are nothing—but a home-wrecking—little—bitch!” Shaun shrieked, emphasizing his words with punches to the jaw. It felt like being hit by train after train, and when Shaun was finished he was on his back, wheezing and touching his jaw gingerly.
But the words burned through the pain and he forced himself to sit up, glaring as he yelled, “Yeah, well I already slept with him, so yeah! Yeah, I guess I am!” Shaun’s eyes seemed lidless as they widened, Respa pulling himself up clumsily at the edge of the coffee table. “Hurts, doesn’t—“
Shaun’s knuckles met his face again, colliding with his cheekbone and sending him right back to the floor. When the pain subsided enough to let him take in his surroundings again, Shaun had sunk to his knees, face hidden by his large hands. Respa coughed as he pulled himself up again, slower this time. “I,” he gasped, “I slept with him three years ago, you stupid, jealous asshole. He paid me three hundred dollars for the night, gave me his phone number, and then I barely ever saw him again.”
“Thr—“ Shaun let his hands drop, though he wiped away the few tears on his face first. “What? He—what?”
“He picked me up,” Respa said, as if explaining to a particularly slow-witted child, “on a night when I was working, and he ended up paying me three hundred dollars to do all sorts of things.”
“So,” Shaun said, looking everywhere but at Respa with sort of a cold anger, “you’re not just any bum. You’re a whore.”
“Was,” Respa corrected, but Shaun didn’t seem to hear him.
“That doesn’t change a thing,” Shaun said, softer now, shaking his head to himself. “I still—I can’t see you with him. I can’t see him looking at you, I can’t—I can’t.” He wiped violently at his eyes with the back of his hand, and then he was pushing himself up off the floor. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”
Shaun let himself out quietly, and Respa was left to rummage through the freezer for something to ice his aching jaw.
Still, true to his word, Horace took him to the barber later that week, and when he emerged, the beard was gone, and his hair was short for the first time since he’d been thirteen. Horace offered to take him shopping for clothes, and Respa thought of turning him down, but the glint in Horace’s eye when he hesitated told him it would only earn him another lecture, and in public.
Much to Horace’s disappointment, none of what Respa picked out was anything like the outfit he’d loaned him. He still picked jeans that left little to the imagination, though at least these fit in both length and hip. Horace tried to interest him in things like hats and sunglasses; Respa told him not to waste his money, and since the jeans had been fifty dollars a pop, Horace had to agree that it would be pointless to buy things he wouldn’t wear.
Shaun, apparently, hadn’t known about the so-called makeover, and when he came over next things escalated upon the discovery of that day’s receipts.
“You spent how much on this—this friend of yours?” Shaun bellowed, waving the receipts in one hand. “You bought him jeans at Urban Outfitters? What, is he too good for the thrift store? You couldn’t even take him someplace like Old Navy?”
“It’s my money, and my choice how to spend it, and if I want to spend it helping a friend put his life back together, that’s none of your business, Shaun,” Horace said, trying to remain calm, though his hand clearly shook as he watered his plants. “And anyway, Old Navy isn’t his style—“
“Style?!” Shaun spluttered, throwing the receipts over his shoulder. They fluttered behind him as he began to pace, apoplectic. “What are you, Queer Eye? If you want to buy him clothes, fine, but there’s no need to blow all this money on—“
Respa had been listening from the kitchen, where he’d been pouring himself a glass of juice when Shaun had found the receipts. He’d stayed there throughout the whole argument so far, unsure of whether or not to show his face, and in the process he’d drunk the whole glass and poured himself another. Now he emerged, and Shaun’s eyes grew even wider at the sight of his hair.
“And a haircut, too! Jesus Christ, Horace, where’s the receipt for that? Did that cost a hundred bucks, too?”
“I’m right here,” Respa protested. “You don’t have to talk about me like I’m not in the room! Listen, I told him he didn’t have to spend that money on me but he wanted to, so…! So yeah!” A lame finish.
Shaun sighed heavily. “Listen, Horace,” he said, ignoring Respa again, “I know you’re an adult, you make your own choices, all that. You’re just too generous, you know? I don’t want anybody taking advantage of that.” He stroked Horace’s hair and pulled him into a hug, but he gave Respa a sour look over the shorter man’s shoulder.
He was taken aback for a moment, and then he did his best to return the look, and he took himself and his juice to the couch.
Later that night, as he rearranged the cushions on the couch and pulled sheets over it, he couldn’t help eavesdropping on the conversation coming from the bedroom, Shaun as always louder than his partner.
“He gives me these looks,” Shaun was saying. “I don’t like him, Horace, I don’t like having a bum in the apartment.”
Horace murmured something.
“What he’s been through? How about what we’ve been through, huh? Everybody’s been through something, Horace, it doesn’t make everybody a goddamn charity case you pick up off the street and clean up, like a stray puppy or something.”
Again, Horace was too soft-spoken to be heard from the couch.
“How do you know he’s not out there stealing our shit? One day we have that nice lamp you picked up at that garage sale, the next day it’s in the window of some pawn shop. What?” Horace’s voice a blur of sound under Shaun’s. “No, it has nothing to do with how he looks—“ Horace again. “You know what, forget it. He’s your friend. I’m gonna try to trust you here, but I swear to god, if he walks off with our stuff—fine. Goodnight, Horace.” Sheets rustled in the next room, and then the click-click of the bedside lamp being turned off.
Shaun didn’t come back for a week, and Respa would be lying if he said he wasn’t relieved. He wanted to ask Horace what he was doing with him, but he already knew he’d get some sappy answer about how “you don’t see him when it’s just us, he’s so sweet,” or something like that. So, when Shaun came over, Respa did everybody a favor and went for long walks, volunteered to go to the grocery store, the hardware store, whatever store needed going to. Errands across town, in other boroughs if it came to that (it never did).
When Shaun wasn’t around, he used Horace’s weights, gorged himself on sloppy-looking peanut butter sandwiches. He put on weight that he desperately needed, though when his jeans started to strain at the hips like his previous pairs, he had to fight off Horace’s offers of another shopping trip. His crippled hand gave him problems with the weights, but he never asked Horace for help, instead choosing to work out whenever Horace went to work, dropping his left weight constantly and bothering the neighbors.
Shaun, of course, was bothered by his lack of employment. He trotted out the same reason every time to Horace—“You’re so generous, I don’t want to see you get taken advantage of, you give too much of yourself”—but sometimes Respa found himself alone in the apartment with Horace’s boyfriend, and then Shaun sang a different tune.
“You’re worse than a bum, you’re a mooch,” Shaun would say on these occasions, backing Respa into the wall as he leaned down and glared. “Poor Horace, all he wants to do is help out, and you got nothing to give back to him. You’re a leech. You sit on ass all day and eat his food, watch his TV, use his weights which you can’t even handle! The neighbors think I live here and they complain to me about your silly shit.”
“It’s Horace’s choice,” Respa always said, pretending to ignore Shaun, but the words struck a chord in him. Shaun didn’t know, couldn’t know, that if Horace wasn’t so adamant about him staying here, he’d just as soon go back to slumming it on stoops and church doorways, just to be somehow self-reliant.
“I bet you got it all figured out up there, don’t you?” Shaun said one day, tapping his temple in case Respa couldn’t understand what “up there” meant. “You just slum around our stoop long enough, Horace will take pity on you, and tada, a free ride. Is that it?” He plucked a chip out of the bag he held, and bit down with an aggressive crunch.
“I don’t have anything figured out,” Respa said, fumbling for the remote. It was never in sight when he needed it, like now, when he wanted to drown out the sound of Shaun’s accusations. “That’s why I’m here, because I have to figure things out.”
“Didn’t you have a place? What, did you just decide that living life in the regular lane wasn’t floating your boat anymore, you had to try being a bum?” Another chip, another carnivorous crunch.
“I lost it,” Respa said flatly. Aha. Of course the remote was right next to the TV, where it would do nobody any good. He lurched upward to go get it, and Shaun stepped in his path, gesticulating with the bag of chips between the two of them.
“How?” Shaun asked, thrusting out his chin. “Huh? I wanna know, I’m curious. Tell me, Respa, how’d you lose your place?”
Respa stared for a moment, brows knitted, mouth slightly ajar and downturned. That perplexed look usually given to those who had no business asking the questions they were asking. “That,” he said slowly, “is none of your business.”
“No, see, I don’t think you understand. It is my business, because you’ve been here crashing on my boyfriend’s couch, accepting his money, eating his food, using his stuff, for months, and it really bothers me that you don’t try to do a damn thing in return. Not a damn—“ and he gave Respa’s shoulder a shove with his free hand “–thing!”
Respa retaliated almost instantly, grabbing one of Shaun’s shoulder with his good hand, and pushing the other with his bad. He charged forward, and he managed to get Shaun to take a step back before the larger man realized Respa was actually on the attack. Shaun easily threw him off, and Respa found himself crashing into a side table, an errant hand bringing a lamp down that grazed the side of his head.
He was still flailing around, trying to get himself up, when Shaun’s fists gathered big handfuls of his shirt and yanked him upright. He was brought almost nose to nose with the other man, Shaun huffing and wild-eyed. “You,” he panted, “have no idea what you’re doing to us. To me!”
“I haven’t done a goddamn thing—“
“No!” Shaun shouted, giving him a shake. “You obviously don’t realize it, but Horace looks at you like—like he should be looking at me! Like he used to look at me! You don’t see it, but I do! I do!” Shaun squeezed his eyes shut for a moment, his breath hitching, and Respa realized he was trying not to cry. The fists tightened. “And it’s not fair! I was here first, and I do everything for him! I have a job, my own place, I’m a functioning member of society, and you’re not! All you have going for you is that you’re halfway attractive! There is no reason Horace should like you!”
“Functioning—fuck you!” Respa shouted back, pushing the fists off his shirt. “I used to have a life! I had a kid, a place in Dumbo, and I supported all that with my body, my own goddamn body! And as for,” he snorted hard, “my looks, well, buddy, I’ve been calling you ‘Hawk man’ in my head for months. So fuck you!”
A fire lit in Shaun’s eyes, twin furnaces that roared to life as he surged forward again, fist first. “You—are nothing—but a home-wrecking—little—bitch!” Shaun shrieked, emphasizing his words with punches to the jaw. It felt like being hit by train after train, and when Shaun was finished he was on his back, wheezing and touching his jaw gingerly.
But the words burned through the pain and he forced himself to sit up, glaring as he yelled, “Yeah, well I already slept with him, so yeah! Yeah, I guess I am!” Shaun’s eyes seemed lidless as they widened, Respa pulling himself up clumsily at the edge of the coffee table. “Hurts, doesn’t—“
Shaun’s knuckles met his face again, colliding with his cheekbone and sending him right back to the floor. When the pain subsided enough to let him take in his surroundings again, Shaun had sunk to his knees, face hidden by his large hands. Respa coughed as he pulled himself up again, slower this time. “I,” he gasped, “I slept with him three years ago, you stupid, jealous asshole. He paid me three hundred dollars for the night, gave me his phone number, and then I barely ever saw him again.”
“Thr—“ Shaun let his hands drop, though he wiped away the few tears on his face first. “What? He—what?”
“He picked me up,” Respa said, as if explaining to a particularly slow-witted child, “on a night when I was working, and he ended up paying me three hundred dollars to do all sorts of things.”
“So,” Shaun said, looking everywhere but at Respa with sort of a cold anger, “you’re not just any bum. You’re a whore.”
“Was,” Respa corrected, but Shaun didn’t seem to hear him.
“That doesn’t change a thing,” Shaun said, softer now, shaking his head to himself. “I still—I can’t see you with him. I can’t see him looking at you, I can’t—I can’t.” He wiped violently at his eyes with the back of his hand, and then he was pushing himself up off the floor. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”
Shaun let himself out quietly, and Respa was left to rummage through the freezer for something to ice his aching jaw.