Doing What Needs to be Done
I became a man at the Dollar General. I was in that precarious age where boys are at the cusp of adulthood — about seventeen or so — where they are children in their life experience but with a mustache or underarm hair that would say otherwise. That was me back then; a lanky son of a real bitch with a sparse mustache that hovered over my upper lip like a shadow or a stain from chocolate milk.
The Dollar General was a jewel in our town. Built in a time where one would need to drive thirty minutes to buy some new undershirts, the place became a hive of social activity after it was erected. On the day it opened, you would think a church was having service in there — women in their sundresses strolled through the brightly lit aisles marveling at the bottles of name-brand lotion, plastic cutlery, and cheap toys. Men stood like statues, hands in their jean pockets, gazing at tubes of Preparation H and toothpaste — careful not to grab the incorrect one for use. With this store, we knew we wouldn’t have to leave town if we didn’t want to.
The luxury was short-lived. We weren’t used to having such a convenience, and the store quickly became a run-down stop at the edge of town. It soon looked as though looters tore through the store on a daily basis.
We abused the aisles, grabbed what we needed in a rush, which toppled over the other products. We were too careless to clean up our mess. We pelted the sides of the building with rocks or paintballs and left stains of our spray-painted names. We tracked mud and cow shit around the store, clacking it off against the freezer doors with the intention that the workers would clean it up eventually.
They did not, for the workers were just as careless. Burnouts from school. They never lasted too long after the regional manager came around with surprise urine tests.
It was there, at this bruised store, where I became a man. But before that happened, I met her in the back of the store. We pressed ourselves against the plastic crackle of toilet paper packages. We did it standing up, hidden behind a rack of mismatched t-shirts. She wore a skirt and no panties. I just pulled it through my zipper. It was my first time, but I seemed to get the general concept. She, however, knew what she was doing.
She had made a name for herself in this town. In her thirty-some years of living here, she had staked her claim with many young men. She started when she was in high school. Quickly became the class slut. Those were her words, not mine. Even as the years rolled by, she never seemed to be interested in anyone beyond that age. Each new boy she managed to reel in was just about to graduate high school. That was me then. She got me good.
She did look older than me, a bit tired perhaps. Her mouth had two thin creases; two pairs of crow’s feet branched out from the corners of her eyes. Yet, her teeth were white and straight, her lips remained full. Her hair was mousy, but not greying. She was still beautiful.
We had agreed to do it in the store. It seemed exciting, a thing that teenagers did. The night she texted me, the night she drank too much and revealed her desire to see what I was like beneath the belt in person, I was all too eager.
She was my friend’s mom; that’s how I knew her. Her son and I were the same age and used our shared disinterest in school to form a connection of some sort. I had been to her house many times, an old, one-story thing set on the edge of a small pond. The woods that surrounded the house gave me the creeps every time I walked up to it. The windows casted a glow I could see even from the road. As I walked along the gravel driveway, I always kept my eyes on the front porch light and ignored the imaginary things that darted back and forth in the shadows at my periphery.
It was a relief to hear the screen door clack behind me after I stepped inside. Their house was bare, but comfortable. A candle, of cotton or some other scent, was always lit on the kitchen table. It did not mask the cigarette smell, but blended in with it, the way chlorine does the same at hotels, always present no matter where you go, but not in an unpleasant way.
My friend was usually sitting on the couch. He would grunt hello to me, and I’d take my spot next to him. The fuzzy TV then droned over us. One night, it was some dumb game show. People jumping through shapes in walls, launching themselves from huge, bulbous balls. The hosts cackled at the expected falls. We smoked a bit, and the show became more tolerable. In my elevated sense of self, with my limbs tingling, I fell asleep.
Later, I awoke in the dark. The TV was off. My friend ran his palm up the side of my leg to my groin. It was just something we did back then.
His mom managed to get my phone number when I was over on a different evening. While she was away, her son and I got drunk. We sat on the floor with the crushed cans and slugged down the amber liquid, adding to the pile between us with metallic clanks as each can dropped from our sticky, loose fingers. I remember being happy that night. Drunk and in someone’s house. A new place with new things to look at. My friend was easy to be around. He and I got along.
After he dropped his last can, his hand floated over my crotch, but I brushed it away. Not saying no not saying yes, just leaving it alone to dissolve into the taste of beer. He seemed to understand, and I finished my last can.
His mom got home shortly after. In the blur and blotted out memories of that night, I recall her swinging a fist at her son, kicking him into his bedroom, and then shuffling through the cans on the carpet to where I lay. I had migrated over to the kitchen floor and vomited all over it. She sat me up and pressed her hands to my face. “You okay?” she asked. Her perfume managed to permeate through my dulled senses. It was sweet and fruity. Playful.
I nodded and rubbed my eyes, slowly coming to. “You’re gonna clean this up,” she commanded, pointing her finger down at the mess I had made. She tossed a rag at me, and I sluggishly began to wipe away at the slop, doing little except smearing it around. Her fingers wrapped around my wrist. “Stop, stop,” she said and snatched the rag away. I fell back onto the wall and watched her get down onto her hands and knees to clean up the rest.
She faced me. She was braless. The light of the kitchen shone through the thin fabric of her shirt, and I could make out the outline of her breasts and nipples. She glanced up at me, and my eyes failed to leave her chest. I saw her smile, revealing her good teeth. “You’re wasted,” she said. I agreed with a nod. “You probably won’t even remember this.” She pulled the neckline of her shirt down and allowed one of her breasts to slip out. It hung exposed for a second before she covered up again. She finished cleaning the floor and sat back onto her knees. “You won’t remember that will you?”
“I don’t know,” I grumbled.
She was silent for a moment. “How are you getting home?”
“Walking.”
Her fingers drummed her thighs. “Let me give you a ride.”
I shook my head.
“Then call me when you get back. Give me your phone,” she said. Even in my stupor, I knew enough to dread the long walk home.
I handed my phone to her, and she punched in some numbers. A direct line of contact was now strung between us, which, in the weeks that followed that night, made it easy for me to ask her for a photo every now and again to relieve me when I was feeling amorous and alone.
After I stood up in the kitchen and regained my balance, I wandered home. Time felt long and short all the same as I swayed through the night. It was summer, so at least the ground was warm when I passed out onto it. Before the alcohol swept me completely under, the urge to text her bubbled up. I slowly typed out Made it and pressed send. She texted back, but I did not read it. Instead, I held my phone to my chest. A warm feeling bloomed quickly and knocked me out.
I finished on the Bounty individual paper towel rolls. She lowered her leg and kissed my lips. “You’re such a nice boy,” she said. Her hands rubbed my face affectionately. She tucked me back inside my pants and kissed me once more. “Thank you,” she said. Her blue eyes were ringed with dark brown makeup, a smear of eyeliner and flaking mascara clutched at her fleeting youth.
I took a step back, glanced around for any employee who may have been watching us. I saw none and zipped my pants closed. My companion adjusted her skirt and pulled her shirt down a bit. I heard her sniff once. Her breath was shallow, and one of her hands floated up to her eyes to wipe away a tear that glistened on her hand. “Give me a head start?” she said. She glanced up at my face, her makeup had smeared slightly. I nodded, and she left. A question of some sort, perhaps of an empathetic kind, clawed away at my throat. But, like I said before, I was young, and emotions, especially of others, might as well have been a foreign language.
I watched her plod away until she disappeared around an aisle. From the front of the store, the sound of the automatic doors groaning open and clapping shut signaled her exit.
It was silent then, apart from some generic 80s tune buzzing out from the overhead speakers. I glanced down at the mess I left. It had dripped onto the floor. With the sole of my shoe, I wiped it across the tile.
I became a man in the Dollar General when I bought my own laundry detergent. I got the cheap shit, the kind with some bland logo that commands you to compare it to the fancier stuff. I remembered we needed some back at home. Though I was young, as I slid the detergent up onto the grimy counter, watched it glide over the scanner, and forked over my cash, I felt adulthood seeping in. That’s what made me a man, I think. The idea of being responsible for what needs to be done and doing it.
That same night, I visited her son at their house. As I walked through that darkness that surrounded their home, I could still smell her perfume on me. The dark things that swam around in the tree trunks seemed to be repelled by it and were kept at bay. I walked into the house, and my friend was on the couch watching some show like he always did. We sat silently for a while. This time, when his hands touched my body, I let him.
We found our way into his bedroom and stripped ourselves.
After, we lay quietly next to each other. He had an arm over me. “I think I love you,” he said into the dark.
I could feel my chest expand and compress. A beat of the heart perhaps, a steady clunk to keep me alive. “No, you don’t,” I told him. He remained silent, though his arm never did leave me. I knew what this meant for our friendship or whatever you want to call it.
His mother came home later that night. I had dressed by then and sprawled myself out on the living room couch to sleep. She walked by me, loomed over my head and whispered, “You awake?”
“Yeah,” I replied.
“You drunk?”
“No.”
She nodded quickly, then walked past to the kitchen where she set her purse down. She had on a black shirt with black pants. A uniform of some sort. I realized I didn’t even know her job. “What do you do?” I asked.
“What?” she whispered back.
“Your job,” I clarified. “What is it?”
She scoffed. “We doing small talk all of a sudden?” She peeled off her shirt and stripped to her underwear. She must have put some on after our time at the store. She left her clothes on the floor and kicked them away. They appeared as nothing more than dark puddles of shadows crumpled into the corner. She tiptoed over to the couch where I lay. “Daren asleep?” she asked.
I nodded. She squeezed her body behind me and sandwiched herself between the couch and my back. I could feel her bare breasts against me. Her arm slithered its way around my torso. She sighed once and settled into place. “You smell nice,” she said.
I lay in front of her, my eyes peering into the dark. The carpet before me looked like a sea of waves frozen in place, filled with dust and remnants of previous days. The silence was interrupted only by my pounding heart.
She sighed once more. “I think I love you,” she whispered.
At that moment, a creak from the hallway broke the quiet. I glanced up. Daren stood as a shadow in the hall. I could see his pale form. He was like a ghost just barely visible, just barely alive with energy. He was listening, watching.
“No,” I said. “You don’t.” She tensed behind me; the shadow in the hallway disappeared back into its bedroom.
I don’t know. Saying that seemed like the thing I needed to do.
