Another brilliant piece from a GUNNAS WRITING MASTERCLASS WRITER
The party was dull. More dull than he predicted. He stood staring blankly at the lattice slice for what turned out to be way too long. What did it mean? Was it munchies for the stoners? Was it an ironic attack upon the previous generation? Was it an empowering stance against body fascism?
“Dude? Do you want a slice?” It was the second time the host had asked and all of the enthusiasm had drained from his tone.
“No. No thank you.” The host moved on and Marcus was left again to stand alone in the living room. He figured it was at least another hour before he could convince Emily that he’d had a great time. That she was right. That he just needed to get out more and be with people. He would thank her and squeeze her hand. He took another sip off his beer and went back to trying to make sense of the gathering.
Rich kids. Every line of reasoning led him back to the same conclusion. They are rich kids. Their parents support them to study. They don’t have to work. They are bored. So they hold a party and feign interest in each other. He let the conclusion morph into a smug little grin too soon. Landon, who worked the same shitty night fill gig he did was chatting animatedly in a group across the room. Fuck it. That’s it for the living room them.
He was running out of skulking options. Emily was on the back deck. If she saw him alone she would start introducing to people. The bathroom was out too. It was full to bursting and emanating a lively political debate, or at least two monologues rhythmically lacing over each other with unpleasant cadence. The front stairs turned out to be inhabited by two people feeding of each other’s reciprocal interest. Who even does that anymore? Marcus thought. Everyone pairs off online. Surely? He stepped past them and into the front yard. Their conversation paused so he had to keep walking with manufactured purpose down and around and under the house.
The cement laundry sink, the only well-lit object, presented itself like a museum artefact. He moved through the shadowy people, refusing to let his brain process the snippets of conversation as he went, and arrived at the ice filled sink. Well. So be it. Marcus swallowed the warm half a stubby in his hand. His faithful prop of the last 2 hours. He reached into the ice and retrieved the five remaining beers in the six-pack he brought. It had been his notion, in fact his entire preoccupation since he arrived to not touch them. Leave them undrunk. Somehow, to abandon five beers he couldn’t really afford at some party he desperately didn’t want to be at was to be some kind of subversive act. Some kind of great joke on everyone.
Wandering back through the drone of infuriating conversation he found an empty couch. At the end of the uneven brick paving, facing a patch of dry dirt and lattice work flanked by the cement pillar foundations of the old Queenslander. Slumping without elegance into the crusty couch he could immediately taste the stale dust cloud in his mouth. He took the first sip of fresh cold beer and nodded slowly to himself. Yup. I will get drunk. I will make an appearance for Em. I will sneak home. I will fight an orgasm out of my cock and I will find sleep. Drinking deeply he wrestled with whether his depression was an indulgence or a problem. As he eyes adjusted to the light he realised he might be forming a silhouette. An invitation on the otherwise empty couch. He quickly slid onto the dusty floor. Sat with his back to the couch and cradled his beers into his lap.
But he was too late. He felt, rather than heard the space behind him become full with a human being. Sighing indignantly he drove deep into a list of automated polite refusals of company but none made it to his mouth. Before he could turn a foot pushed him in the back. Not sharply. Not even hard. But it caught him off balance and he collapsed, almost in slow motion, onto the ground. Marcus was still trying to construct the sentence as he spat dust from his mouth.
“I. I don’t really feel like company.” He felt his shirt run damp with the spilt beer.
“Don’t you?” The voice of a woman. Amused. Almost delighted. A foot pressed into his back. He felt the dull thump of the other.
“I… um… I…” His shirt was now soaked. His mouth was still full of dust.
“You want me to take your feet off your back. You would like to get up out of the dirt.” Her words came deliberate and slow. Marcus replayed them in his head. Tried to decipher whether they were questions or observations. For the first time since he could remember Marcus was suddenly present in the moment. He suddenly had something to think about that was actually happening. But of all the puzzles he had pondered this evening, what was happening was completely beyond him. There was only one thing that he was certain about. His cock was rock hard.
“No.” He spoke clearly. “No I do not want those things.”