Cookleta: The Art of Perfection
The problem with living in a world where anyone can be whatever they want, David always says, is that everyone always wants to be beautiful. It sounds great-like a dream, really-but what starts with everyone turning heads inevitably ends with no one turning heads and David starts to slowly realize that waking up pressed against someone who looks like a model makes him feel horribly and inexplicably alone. He goes home by himself every night because he can’t stand the thought of having to pretend to be attracted to someone who is perfect, and when Neal says, “Dude, come on,” David just shrugs him off and walks away.
It took David a long time to learn how it worked. He was eight, two years older than his brother was when he had figured it out, and the night before David had watched Die Hard with Neal. They thought they were so badass, watching this rated R movie while David’s parents were asleep, and they quoted it for hours afterwards, saying the cuss words almost as loud as the rest of the sentence.
“You should have heard your brother squeal when I broke his fucking neck,” Neal said, putting on a deep voice, and David laughed and laughed and laughed until he could catch his breath long enough to say, “Geronimo, motherfucker!”
That night, he dreamt that Kim from his class was being held hostage and nobody could save her but him, and he did. When he woke up, he had a six pack-an eight-year-old with a six pack-and biceps almost as big as his thighs. He screamed bloody blue murder until his mom came rushing into the bathroom and held him as he cried.
“Oh, David,” she had said. “David, this is how it works.” And he didn’t get it, not at all, but he screwed his eyes real tight and thought, Go away, go away, go away, and when he opened his eyes again, he was back to normal.
Later, at breakfast, Neal didn’t even asked what happened, and David offered no explanation; Neal already knew, anyways.
They have a band. Well, technically it’s not a band-it’s just the two of them playing acoustic covers of whatever shitty songs the drunks want to hear that night-but it lets David sing and play the guitar, and it lets him hang out with Neal and forget about his massive pile of bills for a few hours a night, so he really can’t complain.
It’s a crowded night at the dive-about twelve people lining the bar or sitting at the high tables-and Neal is sitting next to him on the little tiny stage. Their stools are so close that Neal’s arm brushes against David’s every once in a while and, if David looks over, he can make out each individual strand of Neal’s hair as it’s pulled back from his face and tucked into his black, knit hat. David thinks, That’s my hat, and then, I could use a beer, and when he sees Neal making eyes at some tattooed woman at the bar, David thinks, She’s gorgeous.
Neal goes home with her and David goes home alone.
David gets a dog, cute and black and perfect, and names him Dublin. It proves to be better than having a roommate because Dublin doesn’t make much of a mess of the apartment and doesn’t seem to get annoyed when David plays the guitar at two in the morning or leaves dirty dishes in the sink. Really, the only downside to the whole situation is that every couple of weeks, David will wake up and Dublin will be a German Shepherd or a Mastiff or something huge, and he’ll slobber all over the couch cushions. David thinks that it’s a small price to pay for company that he not only tolerates, but welcomes.
David used to be jealous of Neal, real jealous, and some part of him probably still is. It’s just, in a world where anyone can be whatever they want, not knowing what you want to be is kind of a problem.
He supposes there are two different types of perfection that people aim for: the kind centered around tight bodies and perfect hair, or the kind of unique perfection that is based off of being absolutely nothing like anyone else while still being what everyone wants to be. Neal fits in that second category, what with his tattoos and piercings and tight jeans, and those boots that David tries to wear too, although usually to much less success.
David doesn’t really fit into either category.
“I’m thinking of getting another tattoo,” Neal says as they’re about to play their second set of the night. It’s a Wednesday, and the usual Wednesday crowd is a heavy smoking one, so everything in the bar looks like it’s hidden under seven layers of dust, or like it’s being viewed through a dirty windshield.
“Really?” David asks. He’s restringing his high E and struggling to even hear Neal over the customers and the house music. “What of?”
“I don’t know,” Neal says, and he shrugs in a way that implies that he hadn’t even thought of that. “I guess I’ll just see what crops up in the morning.”
“That’s cool, I guess,” David says, and when he looks over to the bar, he sees this kid sitting on one of the stools. A part of David wonders if he’s even old enough to drink or if he’s maybe just meeting someone there, or if he stumbled upon this particular bar by chance, never to return again. And there’s nothing noteworthy about the kid at all; in fact, he’s not even beautiful-he’s skinny and kind of short, his hair is sticking up too much in the back and he’s sitting too rigidly, too upright-but that in and of itself is noteworthy to David.
“You guess?” Neal’s saying. “You guess?”
David looks down, one hand resting on the headstock of his Hummingbird, and when he looks back up, the kid is gone.
“No need to guess,” Neal tells him, “because it’s going to be perfect,” and David doesn’t doubt that.
Something happens. Something goes horribly wrong and David doesn’t know what caused any of it. He thinks over the past night-he drank a beer and played a set and drank another beer, and he ate some nachos and walked home and lied in bed, and he thought of the kid at the bar.
And then he woke up with a little bit of a beer belly.
Standing in front of the mirror, David prods at his stomach. Only, that’s not his stomach, and he doesn’t know what it’s doing where it is. He thinks of the kid again, nothing but skin and bones and angles, and then he looks back at his reflection. Not beautiful at all.
Go away, he thinks, his eyes screwed shut. Go away, go away, go away. Nothing changes.
Neal laughs his ass off.
“Oh my god, dude. Dude. You got fat!”
“Ha, ha,” David deadpans as he wipes down the bar top. He’s tending that night- the early shift so he and Neal can play a set later on-and Neal’s not doing much of anything, so it’s just the two of them and a couple people nursing their drinks.
“No, really,” Neal says. “I mean, that’s like… wow.”
“Neal,” David snaps. “I get it.” And yeah, maybe he slammed a glass down on the countertop a little harder than strictly necessary, but someone ordered a cocktail, and he’s got customers to serve.
“Dude, are you okay? Because if someone-”
“Yes,” David stresses, because he really just doesn’t want to talk about this.
“Oh,” Neal says. “You can always just think it away, I guess. Have you-have you tried that?”
David doesn’t answer. He doesn’t even know what got him the beer belly in the first place.
David keeps looking for the skinny kid through his next four sets. He doesn’t show, and David doesn’t care.
Tomorrow comes too soon, and even though it’s late in the afternoon, David’s still tired. He decides to take his time because there’s no rush to get to the bar-that’s all his life is, really: bar, home, bar, home, bar, home-and he eats some Cheerios. He sits in his boxers for a while, scratches his ass while he feeds Dublin, and spills lukewarm coffee all over his bare chest while he’s slouched on the couch.
In the shower, he lets his hands stray. It’s been a while-a while since his hand has been replaced by someone else’s and a while since he’s even had anyone to think of other than just abstract and vague ideas of fingers and mouths and heat-and when he wraps his hand around himself, he’s hard already. He tries to set up a rhythm, to drag it out as long as possible, but as he slumps against the cold tile, he’s struck with an image of the kid, all messy hair and bony fucking wrists, and David comes with a shout.
Once out of the shower, he wraps a towel around his waist and steps up to the mirror to shave. He drags a razor down his cheek and through the shaving cream, but the razor is so dead that it doesn’t do much. After rooting around in the cabinet underneath the sink for a new one, he finds a never-before-used Gillette and runs it down his cheek.
It doesn’t do anything.
Well, it does, and that’s the thing. It does. It takes the hair right off his cheek but then the second the razor moves on, David can see-he can see-his stubble grow back. He throws his razor in the sink and very silently freaks the fuck out, because he’s heard plenty of horror stories about people thinking themselves differently too often, but he’s never heard one where someone’s body just has a mind of its own.
Neal gets his new tattoo. It’s on his neck and David hates it because he’s angry and bitter and it’s just not cool that Neal wakes up looking like some rock god even when he’s got that hideous handlebar mustache and David wakes up looking like a hobo.
David’s behind the bar, serving up some gin and tonics, and Neal’s sort of leaning halfway over the countertop and snatching maraschino cherries from a jar.
“So is this like, a new statement that you’re making, or what?” Neal asks, motioning to David’s scruff. He’s eating the cherries and seeing how many of their stems he can thread through his lip rings. “Nine,” he counts.
“No,” David says. “I can’t control it! I’m freaking out that one morning I’ll wake up and be wearing an eye patch or something.”
“Maybe if you use Nair or something-ten-then you could go back to normal. Or maybe don’t think it gone, and just try to think it into a handlebar mustache or something, like mine maybe,” Neal says. He shoves his fingers back in the jar. “Eleven, by the way.”
“Well, um. I actually kind of like it?”
David turns around and the kid from before is right there. He still looks too thin, and up close he looks worn out, the bags under his eyes dark like bruises.
Of course, because David’s been thinking about what he’d say to the kid if he ever met him for, oh, about a month or so, when it actually happens, all he can do is stare and say, “Uh…”
“I mean,” the kid says, “it just makes you look, um, I don’t know, interesting? And everyone else is kind of… not. So I wouldn’t. Change it, I mean. And definitely not to a, um, handlebar mustache.” Then he jumps, startled, and turns to Neal. “Not that there’s anything wrong with handlebar mustaches! I really like them, haha. Just not, you know, on, um.” He turns back to David. “Just a Sprite, please.”
“One Sprite,” David smiles. “Coming right up. I’m David, by the way. Haven’t seen you around here before.” And okay, that last part is a blatant lie, but David can’t bring himself to care because that introduction? Totally smooth.
“Hey, me too!” he says. “I mean, I’m David, too! But my friends all call me Archie, haha.”
“Archie, huh?” David asks.
Neal grabs his beer and, with an “Oh, god,” he walks away.
Archie comes to the bar a lot after that, always when David’s bartending or playing a set, and David goes out of his way to give Archie his Sprite for free.
He tells Archie that he’s been playing guitar since before he can remember, and that if he never makes it big, he’ll be content doing this, just tending at nights and playing whenever there’s a free second, whenever Neal can play with him. Archie tells him about his vocal chords and how he loves singing so much that he’ll just keep using his until neither of them works, and how that worries his mother but he couldn’t stop singing, not ever, not even if he tried.
And the whole time they’re talking, Neal’s setting up cords and amps and stands on the tiny platform in the back of the bar. When Dave gets off, they’re going to play a fast set, something that they don’t have planned out but that they want to do.
“Has Neal,” Archie asks, “always been. You know. Like that?” Archie makes vague motions towards his face, motioning to his lips and then making a mustache out of his pointer finger. He’s intimidated by Neal, David gets that much, although he doesn’t get why. Neal’s an asshole, yeah, but he’s not a dick.
David says, “Pretty much, yeah. Since before he could think himself up, even. I mean, maybe not always with the mustache and stuff, obviously, but Neal's pretty much always had major attitude adjustment problems.”
“Oh,” Archie says. He pauses for a minute, and David’s going to say something, but then he notices that Archie has this look on his face, one that means he wants to say something, but isn’t sure how to, and so David stays quiet. Finally, Archie says, “Does it, you know, feel weird? Thinking yourself different, I mean.”
And David’s sure his eyebrows must have shot up, because who doesn’t think themselves different nowadays? David doesn’t know a single person who doesn’t do it on a regular basis.
“You’ve never done it?” he asks incredulously. “Not even when you were little?”
Archie shakes his head. “No,” he says. “I never-I don’t know-felt like I needed to?”
And David doesn’t get that, not at all, but he doesn’t ask and Archie doesn’t explain and that’s that.
And then one day, David’s running really late for work and he practically just throws food in Dublin’s bowl and rushes out the door. He gets to the bar and Neal’s already there, talking to Archie at one of the high tables. It’s weird how fast Archie has wormed his way into their lives, almost like he was always there in the first place, almost like life without him was just a dream.
When Neal sees David, he laughs and says, “Oh my god, what the fuck happened to you?” And David knows. He knows, alright? His hair just wouldn’t lie flat this morning and then he couldn’t get his fucking contacts in, and so he had to wear his glasses and come to work looking like shit and feeling like shit and it’s not even a big deal that he can’t think himself different anymore. It’s really not. If anything, David’s more just resigned and expecting that his body will fall apart any moment and he’ll just keel over, right where he’s standing.
David says, “Shut it, Neal,” and he’s real snappy about it, and Neal pulls back, a real Well, excuse me look on his face. They both know Neal was just joking around, but David can’t bring himself to feel sorry about it.
Neal says, “So. I was actually just telling Archie about Dublin,” and that turns out to be a real good subject change because then Archie’s lighting up, just really lighting up, and his smile is so big and earnest that it warms David’s chest right up.
“Yeah, he sounds really crazy,” Archie says. “I don’t know what I’d do if I had a pet that kept changing all the time.”
David asks, “Do you have a dog?” and when Archie says no, David says, “You should come see Dublin then, sometime. He’d really freak out over you, I think,” and afterwards he really wants to take it back, but then Archie’s got this look on his face, one that David likes but can’t place, and so he thinks that maybe that wasn’t so bad.
A week later, Archie says, “Hey, what’re you doing on Thursday? Can I come see Dublin? Or is that, um, oh God. That’s so rude, me just inviting myself over.”
David spends all of Wednesday night with his eyes squeezed shut. He tries to change, just to make himself a little thinner or something just in case, but nothing happens, not at all, and so he keeps his eyes closed and thinks of Archie and just how fucking perfect he is.
When Archie gets there, Dublin goes crazy. He doesn’t change at all, but Archie doesn’t seem to mind all that much. They make grilled cheese sandwiches for lunch and Archie asks David if it’s alright if he feeds Dublin his crusts.
Later, when David’s putting the dishes in the sink, Archie wanders the small living room and looks at the photos that Dave’s got on the tables and tacked up on the walls.
Archie looks at one of them, one from a year and a half ago, and he says, “That’s you?” And it was everything David was afraid would happen-Archie, looking at pictures of him when he was younger and better looking and when his body wasn’t fucking ignoring what he was telling it to do.
“Yeah,” David says. “But I mean-I mean, that was before the whole, you know, thing and I’ll probably look like that again soon, when everything’s sorted out and everything.” And he feels like a fucking idiot, laying all his insecurities out there like that, but it’s hard to look like he does when he’s standing next to Archie.
Archie just looks at the photo and says, “Well, then I hope nothing ever gets sorted out.”
David says, “What?” because there’s no way he heard Archie right.
“I just,” Archie says, “I don’t know. Don’t you ever think being perfect is boring? My mom always used to say that you should just be you and let people either like you for it or not. I think maybe-maybe that’s what you’re trying to tell yourself, only you just don’t realize it yet.”
“Huh,” David says, because there’s nothing else he can think of at the moment.
“I do, you know,” Archie says.
“What?”
“Like you for it,” Archie says, and then he’s leaning forward and kissing David and David never thought it would go like that, not in a million years, but he kisses back and pulls Archie closer by his belt loops and he doesn’t think Archie minds, not at all, not if the sounds he’s making are any indication.
David heads into work the next day at five, and there’s already some people drinking, not many but some, and Neal’s there too, tuning his guitar in the back corner. David tries smooth down his shirt but then gives up, noticing how wrinkled it is and how it’s probably not even clean and how he did the buttons up wrong.
When Neal sees him, he says, “What the fuck, Dave. Go see a fucking doctor already. That shit isn’t natural and it’s spreading to your clothes.”
And normally, normally David would think something about that, but this time all he can think about is how Archie looked in his bed, his sheets wrapped around Archie’s torso and how Archie’s muscles looked when the light from outside left shadows on his skin.
And so David doesn’t say anything, but he asks Neal what songs he wants to play that night and then Neal doesn’t bring it up again, not until they’re about to perform and he sees Archie in the back of the bar, his hair a mess and his shirt on inside out and a huge, goofy grin spread out over his face.
Neal says, “You guys make me sick, you really fucking do.”
And maybe that’s true, but Archie’s at the bar just to see David and the thought makes David’s heart flip. And maybe he looks like shit and maybe he’s not perfect, but Archie’s looking at him with big eyes and at that moment, David feels perfect, and maybe that’s the point of it all.
It took David a long time to learn how it worked. He was eight, two years older than his brother was when he had figured it out, and the night before David had watched Die Hard with Neal. They thought they were so badass, watching this rated R movie while David’s parents were asleep, and they quoted it for hours afterwards, saying the cuss words almost as loud as the rest of the sentence.
“You should have heard your brother squeal when I broke his fucking neck,” Neal said, putting on a deep voice, and David laughed and laughed and laughed until he could catch his breath long enough to say, “Geronimo, motherfucker!”
That night, he dreamt that Kim from his class was being held hostage and nobody could save her but him, and he did. When he woke up, he had a six pack-an eight-year-old with a six pack-and biceps almost as big as his thighs. He screamed bloody blue murder until his mom came rushing into the bathroom and held him as he cried.
“Oh, David,” she had said. “David, this is how it works.” And he didn’t get it, not at all, but he screwed his eyes real tight and thought, Go away, go away, go away, and when he opened his eyes again, he was back to normal.
Later, at breakfast, Neal didn’t even asked what happened, and David offered no explanation; Neal already knew, anyways.
They have a band. Well, technically it’s not a band-it’s just the two of them playing acoustic covers of whatever shitty songs the drunks want to hear that night-but it lets David sing and play the guitar, and it lets him hang out with Neal and forget about his massive pile of bills for a few hours a night, so he really can’t complain.
It’s a crowded night at the dive-about twelve people lining the bar or sitting at the high tables-and Neal is sitting next to him on the little tiny stage. Their stools are so close that Neal’s arm brushes against David’s every once in a while and, if David looks over, he can make out each individual strand of Neal’s hair as it’s pulled back from his face and tucked into his black, knit hat. David thinks, That’s my hat, and then, I could use a beer, and when he sees Neal making eyes at some tattooed woman at the bar, David thinks, She’s gorgeous.
Neal goes home with her and David goes home alone.
David gets a dog, cute and black and perfect, and names him Dublin. It proves to be better than having a roommate because Dublin doesn’t make much of a mess of the apartment and doesn’t seem to get annoyed when David plays the guitar at two in the morning or leaves dirty dishes in the sink. Really, the only downside to the whole situation is that every couple of weeks, David will wake up and Dublin will be a German Shepherd or a Mastiff or something huge, and he’ll slobber all over the couch cushions. David thinks that it’s a small price to pay for company that he not only tolerates, but welcomes.
David used to be jealous of Neal, real jealous, and some part of him probably still is. It’s just, in a world where anyone can be whatever they want, not knowing what you want to be is kind of a problem.
He supposes there are two different types of perfection that people aim for: the kind centered around tight bodies and perfect hair, or the kind of unique perfection that is based off of being absolutely nothing like anyone else while still being what everyone wants to be. Neal fits in that second category, what with his tattoos and piercings and tight jeans, and those boots that David tries to wear too, although usually to much less success.
David doesn’t really fit into either category.
“I’m thinking of getting another tattoo,” Neal says as they’re about to play their second set of the night. It’s a Wednesday, and the usual Wednesday crowd is a heavy smoking one, so everything in the bar looks like it’s hidden under seven layers of dust, or like it’s being viewed through a dirty windshield.
“Really?” David asks. He’s restringing his high E and struggling to even hear Neal over the customers and the house music. “What of?”
“I don’t know,” Neal says, and he shrugs in a way that implies that he hadn’t even thought of that. “I guess I’ll just see what crops up in the morning.”
“That’s cool, I guess,” David says, and when he looks over to the bar, he sees this kid sitting on one of the stools. A part of David wonders if he’s even old enough to drink or if he’s maybe just meeting someone there, or if he stumbled upon this particular bar by chance, never to return again. And there’s nothing noteworthy about the kid at all; in fact, he’s not even beautiful-he’s skinny and kind of short, his hair is sticking up too much in the back and he’s sitting too rigidly, too upright-but that in and of itself is noteworthy to David.
“You guess?” Neal’s saying. “You guess?”
David looks down, one hand resting on the headstock of his Hummingbird, and when he looks back up, the kid is gone.
“No need to guess,” Neal tells him, “because it’s going to be perfect,” and David doesn’t doubt that.
Something happens. Something goes horribly wrong and David doesn’t know what caused any of it. He thinks over the past night-he drank a beer and played a set and drank another beer, and he ate some nachos and walked home and lied in bed, and he thought of the kid at the bar.
And then he woke up with a little bit of a beer belly.
Standing in front of the mirror, David prods at his stomach. Only, that’s not his stomach, and he doesn’t know what it’s doing where it is. He thinks of the kid again, nothing but skin and bones and angles, and then he looks back at his reflection. Not beautiful at all.
Go away, he thinks, his eyes screwed shut. Go away, go away, go away. Nothing changes.
Neal laughs his ass off.
“Oh my god, dude. Dude. You got fat!”
“Ha, ha,” David deadpans as he wipes down the bar top. He’s tending that night- the early shift so he and Neal can play a set later on-and Neal’s not doing much of anything, so it’s just the two of them and a couple people nursing their drinks.
“No, really,” Neal says. “I mean, that’s like… wow.”
“Neal,” David snaps. “I get it.” And yeah, maybe he slammed a glass down on the countertop a little harder than strictly necessary, but someone ordered a cocktail, and he’s got customers to serve.
“Dude, are you okay? Because if someone-”
“Yes,” David stresses, because he really just doesn’t want to talk about this.
“Oh,” Neal says. “You can always just think it away, I guess. Have you-have you tried that?”
David doesn’t answer. He doesn’t even know what got him the beer belly in the first place.
David keeps looking for the skinny kid through his next four sets. He doesn’t show, and David doesn’t care.
Tomorrow comes too soon, and even though it’s late in the afternoon, David’s still tired. He decides to take his time because there’s no rush to get to the bar-that’s all his life is, really: bar, home, bar, home, bar, home-and he eats some Cheerios. He sits in his boxers for a while, scratches his ass while he feeds Dublin, and spills lukewarm coffee all over his bare chest while he’s slouched on the couch.
In the shower, he lets his hands stray. It’s been a while-a while since his hand has been replaced by someone else’s and a while since he’s even had anyone to think of other than just abstract and vague ideas of fingers and mouths and heat-and when he wraps his hand around himself, he’s hard already. He tries to set up a rhythm, to drag it out as long as possible, but as he slumps against the cold tile, he’s struck with an image of the kid, all messy hair and bony fucking wrists, and David comes with a shout.
Once out of the shower, he wraps a towel around his waist and steps up to the mirror to shave. He drags a razor down his cheek and through the shaving cream, but the razor is so dead that it doesn’t do much. After rooting around in the cabinet underneath the sink for a new one, he finds a never-before-used Gillette and runs it down his cheek.
It doesn’t do anything.
Well, it does, and that’s the thing. It does. It takes the hair right off his cheek but then the second the razor moves on, David can see-he can see-his stubble grow back. He throws his razor in the sink and very silently freaks the fuck out, because he’s heard plenty of horror stories about people thinking themselves differently too often, but he’s never heard one where someone’s body just has a mind of its own.
Neal gets his new tattoo. It’s on his neck and David hates it because he’s angry and bitter and it’s just not cool that Neal wakes up looking like some rock god even when he’s got that hideous handlebar mustache and David wakes up looking like a hobo.
David’s behind the bar, serving up some gin and tonics, and Neal’s sort of leaning halfway over the countertop and snatching maraschino cherries from a jar.
“So is this like, a new statement that you’re making, or what?” Neal asks, motioning to David’s scruff. He’s eating the cherries and seeing how many of their stems he can thread through his lip rings. “Nine,” he counts.
“No,” David says. “I can’t control it! I’m freaking out that one morning I’ll wake up and be wearing an eye patch or something.”
“Maybe if you use Nair or something-ten-then you could go back to normal. Or maybe don’t think it gone, and just try to think it into a handlebar mustache or something, like mine maybe,” Neal says. He shoves his fingers back in the jar. “Eleven, by the way.”
“Well, um. I actually kind of like it?”
David turns around and the kid from before is right there. He still looks too thin, and up close he looks worn out, the bags under his eyes dark like bruises.
Of course, because David’s been thinking about what he’d say to the kid if he ever met him for, oh, about a month or so, when it actually happens, all he can do is stare and say, “Uh…”
“I mean,” the kid says, “it just makes you look, um, I don’t know, interesting? And everyone else is kind of… not. So I wouldn’t. Change it, I mean. And definitely not to a, um, handlebar mustache.” Then he jumps, startled, and turns to Neal. “Not that there’s anything wrong with handlebar mustaches! I really like them, haha. Just not, you know, on, um.” He turns back to David. “Just a Sprite, please.”
“One Sprite,” David smiles. “Coming right up. I’m David, by the way. Haven’t seen you around here before.” And okay, that last part is a blatant lie, but David can’t bring himself to care because that introduction? Totally smooth.
“Hey, me too!” he says. “I mean, I’m David, too! But my friends all call me Archie, haha.”
“Archie, huh?” David asks.
Neal grabs his beer and, with an “Oh, god,” he walks away.
Archie comes to the bar a lot after that, always when David’s bartending or playing a set, and David goes out of his way to give Archie his Sprite for free.
He tells Archie that he’s been playing guitar since before he can remember, and that if he never makes it big, he’ll be content doing this, just tending at nights and playing whenever there’s a free second, whenever Neal can play with him. Archie tells him about his vocal chords and how he loves singing so much that he’ll just keep using his until neither of them works, and how that worries his mother but he couldn’t stop singing, not ever, not even if he tried.
And the whole time they’re talking, Neal’s setting up cords and amps and stands on the tiny platform in the back of the bar. When Dave gets off, they’re going to play a fast set, something that they don’t have planned out but that they want to do.
“Has Neal,” Archie asks, “always been. You know. Like that?” Archie makes vague motions towards his face, motioning to his lips and then making a mustache out of his pointer finger. He’s intimidated by Neal, David gets that much, although he doesn’t get why. Neal’s an asshole, yeah, but he’s not a dick.
David says, “Pretty much, yeah. Since before he could think himself up, even. I mean, maybe not always with the mustache and stuff, obviously, but Neal's pretty much always had major attitude adjustment problems.”
“Oh,” Archie says. He pauses for a minute, and David’s going to say something, but then he notices that Archie has this look on his face, one that means he wants to say something, but isn’t sure how to, and so David stays quiet. Finally, Archie says, “Does it, you know, feel weird? Thinking yourself different, I mean.”
And David’s sure his eyebrows must have shot up, because who doesn’t think themselves different nowadays? David doesn’t know a single person who doesn’t do it on a regular basis.
“You’ve never done it?” he asks incredulously. “Not even when you were little?”
Archie shakes his head. “No,” he says. “I never-I don’t know-felt like I needed to?”
And David doesn’t get that, not at all, but he doesn’t ask and Archie doesn’t explain and that’s that.
And then one day, David’s running really late for work and he practically just throws food in Dublin’s bowl and rushes out the door. He gets to the bar and Neal’s already there, talking to Archie at one of the high tables. It’s weird how fast Archie has wormed his way into their lives, almost like he was always there in the first place, almost like life without him was just a dream.
When Neal sees David, he laughs and says, “Oh my god, what the fuck happened to you?” And David knows. He knows, alright? His hair just wouldn’t lie flat this morning and then he couldn’t get his fucking contacts in, and so he had to wear his glasses and come to work looking like shit and feeling like shit and it’s not even a big deal that he can’t think himself different anymore. It’s really not. If anything, David’s more just resigned and expecting that his body will fall apart any moment and he’ll just keel over, right where he’s standing.
David says, “Shut it, Neal,” and he’s real snappy about it, and Neal pulls back, a real Well, excuse me look on his face. They both know Neal was just joking around, but David can’t bring himself to feel sorry about it.
Neal says, “So. I was actually just telling Archie about Dublin,” and that turns out to be a real good subject change because then Archie’s lighting up, just really lighting up, and his smile is so big and earnest that it warms David’s chest right up.
“Yeah, he sounds really crazy,” Archie says. “I don’t know what I’d do if I had a pet that kept changing all the time.”
David asks, “Do you have a dog?” and when Archie says no, David says, “You should come see Dublin then, sometime. He’d really freak out over you, I think,” and afterwards he really wants to take it back, but then Archie’s got this look on his face, one that David likes but can’t place, and so he thinks that maybe that wasn’t so bad.
A week later, Archie says, “Hey, what’re you doing on Thursday? Can I come see Dublin? Or is that, um, oh God. That’s so rude, me just inviting myself over.”
David spends all of Wednesday night with his eyes squeezed shut. He tries to change, just to make himself a little thinner or something just in case, but nothing happens, not at all, and so he keeps his eyes closed and thinks of Archie and just how fucking perfect he is.
When Archie gets there, Dublin goes crazy. He doesn’t change at all, but Archie doesn’t seem to mind all that much. They make grilled cheese sandwiches for lunch and Archie asks David if it’s alright if he feeds Dublin his crusts.
Later, when David’s putting the dishes in the sink, Archie wanders the small living room and looks at the photos that Dave’s got on the tables and tacked up on the walls.
Archie looks at one of them, one from a year and a half ago, and he says, “That’s you?” And it was everything David was afraid would happen-Archie, looking at pictures of him when he was younger and better looking and when his body wasn’t fucking ignoring what he was telling it to do.
“Yeah,” David says. “But I mean-I mean, that was before the whole, you know, thing and I’ll probably look like that again soon, when everything’s sorted out and everything.” And he feels like a fucking idiot, laying all his insecurities out there like that, but it’s hard to look like he does when he’s standing next to Archie.
Archie just looks at the photo and says, “Well, then I hope nothing ever gets sorted out.”
David says, “What?” because there’s no way he heard Archie right.
“I just,” Archie says, “I don’t know. Don’t you ever think being perfect is boring? My mom always used to say that you should just be you and let people either like you for it or not. I think maybe-maybe that’s what you’re trying to tell yourself, only you just don’t realize it yet.”
“Huh,” David says, because there’s nothing else he can think of at the moment.
“I do, you know,” Archie says.
“What?”
“Like you for it,” Archie says, and then he’s leaning forward and kissing David and David never thought it would go like that, not in a million years, but he kisses back and pulls Archie closer by his belt loops and he doesn’t think Archie minds, not at all, not if the sounds he’s making are any indication.
David heads into work the next day at five, and there’s already some people drinking, not many but some, and Neal’s there too, tuning his guitar in the back corner. David tries smooth down his shirt but then gives up, noticing how wrinkled it is and how it’s probably not even clean and how he did the buttons up wrong.
When Neal sees him, he says, “What the fuck, Dave. Go see a fucking doctor already. That shit isn’t natural and it’s spreading to your clothes.”
And normally, normally David would think something about that, but this time all he can think about is how Archie looked in his bed, his sheets wrapped around Archie’s torso and how Archie’s muscles looked when the light from outside left shadows on his skin.
And so David doesn’t say anything, but he asks Neal what songs he wants to play that night and then Neal doesn’t bring it up again, not until they’re about to perform and he sees Archie in the back of the bar, his hair a mess and his shirt on inside out and a huge, goofy grin spread out over his face.
Neal says, “You guys make me sick, you really fucking do.”
And maybe that’s true, but Archie’s at the bar just to see David and the thought makes David’s heart flip. And maybe he looks like shit and maybe he’s not perfect, but Archie’s looking at him with big eyes and at that moment, David feels perfect, and maybe that’s the point of it all.