Other Table, 7/10
Kyle was getting awfully sick of being led around town by Craig. It seemed like all they did was sludge around South Park, running into swarthy Cockney assholes who were boning his friends. Never mind that this was the first time Kyle had actually seen Kenny with Christophe, which honestly was probably due to the fact that he just hadn’t been paying any attention to his highly mortal friend’s social life. The whole walk back to Craig’s house, Kyle kept his mouth shut and his eyes on the road. He wasn’t drunk at all, and this was no good. He was feeling quite apprehensive about things, or maybe just pensive. He wondered what Stan was doing. He knew Stan didn’t care what he was doing. The wind was cold and fierce and incredibly dry, whipping his hair into a frenzy. At least it was finally tame. Tame for Craig. Kyle stumbled over some logs in someone’s driveway. They kept walking, Craig squeezing the blood out of his hand.
At Craig’s, the black-haired boy led Kyle up to his room and, once there, made his move swiftly and aggressively. Without removing his jacket - or giving Kyle the chance to take off his coat - Craig was upon him, making quick work of slobbering on his stinging lips like a puppy. Kyle felt his ass press into Craig’s door, while Craig repeatedly tried to burrow his erection into Kyle’s hip, and his nose into Kyle’s cheek.
“You’re so cold,” he breathed, taking a pause as he let his jacket fall off of his shoulders. Not knowing what else to do, Kyle took this opportunity to remove his pea coat and flung it onto the floor. Craig’s room was cold, the air unmoving. His windows were a little fogged, and Kyle could hear the wet rags of his breath. Craig gave him a crazy look, like a wolf or a fox, and then he threw Kyle onto the bed where they continued to kiss, Craig burying his face every so often in Kyle’s stiff, fragile hair. He ran his fingers through it, and gave a little tug. And, feeling his digits slip a bit, he gave a sigh and said, “I much prefer it curly,” at which Kyle sat up and brushed off the front of his shirt.
“I don’t believe that,” he said.
“Believe it or not but it’s true. If I could just lose my hands in your hair for eternity I’d be just so pleased.”
“That’s weird, Craig,” Kyle replied.
“Well, shit, I guess I must be weird then.” Craig unbuttoned his pants and flung himself back at Kyle, whose own bottoms he struggled to get off. If he’d been in a better mood, a drunker mood, he’d have gladly just taken them off for Craig, and let the other boy have his way, or have several of his ways. Right now though, he just felt weird. Maybe the right word was gross. He felt gross, and not particularly right. It wasn’t that he didn’t want this - Craig had been astoundingly good up to this point, the confidence he had in his own abilities having been truly earned by a few years of practice. Another boy, for example, would have tried to avoid disturbing his busted lip, handling Kyle like a bone china teacup, attempting to work around his fading bruises. Craig liked to work through these injuries. In combination with Kyle’s metabolic disorder, which generally made him slower-to-heal than most, he had been subtly damaged for the better part of the last several weeks. Maybe now it was closing in on two months. Kyle didn’t know. Craig could keep track of this shit all he liked, but the only things Kyle had set on his calendar were the end of school, and his coming birthday.
So as Craig ran his teeth over the hardened scab on his lower lip, Kyle pushed back unenthusiastically with his tongue, and tried to comprehend how he felt about this. Craig was wonderful, really. He was good-looking, and he carried himself with such proud gait that it was nearly impossible for Kyle not to be drawn to his shimmering charisma and self-satisfied demeanor. These things were attractive, but it was Craig’s insatiable need for Kyle that the red-haired boy really found compelling. Cartman had teased him about it before, albeit with Stan as the subject of the ridicule, but he was ultimately correct: Kyle wanted to be wanted. He liked that Craig wanted him. It somehow transcended the ordinary drunken blow jobs he’d grown accustomed to administering to anyone who didn’t leap off a bed and run away: Craig’s entirely sober interest in Kyle as a person was enough reason to like him. That Craig was a masterful lover was important and fantastic, sure, but an honest relationship, Kyle repeated in his mind as Craig finally succeeded in discarding Kyle’s pants (and, along with it, his underwear) was that the person he was with made a connection to him that existed outside of the realm of the carnal.
Although, speaking of the realm of the carnal, Craig was now unbuttoning his own shirt, and muttering some of what Kyle knew would be sexy come-ons if he could hear them, which he couldn’t over the pounding of blood in his ears, and the twin needs that were beginning to pull him in opposite directions like he was being drawn and quartered: There was his erection, which was beginning to strain against Craig’s hairy thighs. And then there was his mind, which was screaming at him to stop this, right now. And beyond that, he was trying to figure out why, why should he stop this. God, he was miserable trying to determine why he felt so on edge about this. What would Stan do in this situation? That was ridiculous. Stan would never make out with Craig, would never let Craig tug his shirt off like he was a limp rag doll just waiting to be exposed for devious and demonic reasons. Which was what Kyle felt like with Craig; he was a little rag doll to be played with, swung around and bashed against things. And yet he was loved, adored, taken everywhere and shown off as a prized possession. He was the most valued thing Craig had.
This was all becoming very confusing when he felt some foreign objects pressing on his lips. Craig’s right middle and index fingers were trying to wedge their way into Kyle’s mouth, and Kyle without thinking opened his mouth and allowed Craig to practically gouge his gums before he got the idea and tightened his lips, giving the digits a good and thorough sucking. He moaned around the fingers, humming a little tune to himself. Craig was grinning with a kind of feral lust that one usually only saw in large felines.
As Craig used his right hand to finger-fuck Kyle’s mouth, he reached behind himself with the left, fumbling around the pants he’d already thrown off. Kyle tried to ask him what he was doing, but Craig was now using all of his fingers (but not his thumb), so this question only came out flattened-sounding - although given the context, Craig could have made it out if he had really wanted. But no, he was busy grasping at something.
“Aha!” Craig cried, whipping a condom out from behind him. He waved it above Kyle’s eyes, and Kyle glanced up at it, sticky little patches of drool at the corners of his mouth and under his bottom lip.
Without another word, Craig slipped his fingers out of Kyle’s mouth and, as quickly as he’d withdrawn them, he replaced them with his tongue. Out of the corner of his left eye, Kyle could see the other boy’s rushed condom application, and he could swear he felt and heard Craig sighing around his tongue as he succeeded in this goal. It wasn’t much, but he got the sensory picture. He wanted to see more, but it was hard to see Craig’s dick with his face in the way.
They continued kissing, and Craig was groping his ass. Then, suddenly, Craig was no longer groping Kyle’s ass; he was doing a mediocre job of lubing up his fingers. Craig never stopped making out with Kyle while he did this. He just reached over to his nightstand and procured a little thing of K-Y.
Sweating, Kyle felt Craig’s wet fingers begin to probe around his ass. He began to clench his ass together, although it wasn’t happening voluntarily - it was just a reaction.
“What’s wrong?” Craig asked, his generally nasal voice a little breathier now.
“Hmm?”
“You need to push out,” Craig said wisely. “Push onto my fingers.”
“Fuck,” Kyle said, lifting his head and wiping some damp, limp hair out of his eyes. Generally the weight of his variously sized curls was significant, but this was a different feeling - his hair felt lighter, less substantial. Kyle blinked at Craig, and Craig continued to thumb Kyle’s right nipple with his left hand while he used the other one in an attempt to gain entrance. “Craig.” Kyle swallowed. Then he frowned. “You’ve been fingering me for like two months.”
Craig rolled his eyes. “Uh huh.”
“So, I know what to do.”
“Okay.”
“So don’t treat me like a baby.”
“Then why aren’t you letting me in?” Craig asked, his thumb stilling. Kyle shrugged. “Do you not want this?”
“No,” Kyle said slowly. “I do.”
Not knowing what else to do, Craig grabbed his dick and squeezed it. “Well, I really do, so can you just let me lube you already?”
“I don’t know. I’m, um.” Pause. “I’m not really very … ready.” Kyle saw Craig’s lips instantly tighten, and his eyebrows rise.
Craig and Kyle were facing each other, kneeling, on Craig’s bed. Craig had a condom on, and he was holding Kyle’s right side while his slippery right hand cupped Kyle’s left butt cheek, the middle finger of that hand resting inside of the cleft. Kyle had been holding onto Craig, but in the past two minutes, he’d let go. Now he was just holding himself.
“You don’t want to do this,” Craig said. He wasn’t asking Kyle; he was speaking to himself.
“I want to,” Kyle said. “But, it’s just … do you know, when you want to do something, and you think you can, and you know you should, but … you just can’t bring yourself to do it?”
“No.”
“Are you sure?”
“This is sex,” Craig scoffed. “You have to want to do it. Look at your cock, dude!”
“I know.” Kyle sighed, shifting his thighs slightly. “But can’t we just do what we usually do?”
“I guess.”
“It’s just-”
“Do you want me to bottom?”
“No, Craig, I … I don’t think I could do that to you.”
“It’s okay, I’m game.”
“No, I mean … I couldn’t do that to you.”
“I don’t care if you fuck me in the ass, I don’t have a problem with it. But I’m a really good top. You should let me top.”
“Craig,” Kyle said directly, putting his hands on Craig’s shoulders. He squeezed his eyes shut and lowered his head. “I cannot have sex with you.”
“Well, why not?” Craig’s voice was climbing back up to an unnecessary pitch.
Kyle opened his eyes and looked back up at Craig. “Well … Jesus. Craig, I’m, well … I think maybe I’m scared.”
“Oh,” Craig said. “Is that all? C’mere, baby.” Craig finally moved his hands from where they’d been for the past several minutes, and wrapped Kyle in his arms. “It’s okay. We can go really slow, or we can do it another time. I know my cock is huge. I’d be scared too.”
“No, you don’t understand,” Kyle said. His neck was resting on Craig’s shoulder, and he honestly felt he was being slightly strangled. “I’m not scared of things in my ass, Craig.”
“Well, what are you scared of?” Now Craig’s voice was audibly annoyed, and Kyle silently wished that this tone didn’t make his chest constrict so.
“I’m just getting a feeling. I’m afraid of what it means, and … I’m sorry, but I just. Well.” Kyle hugged Craig a little tighter. “I need to be with someone who makes me feel safe.”
“You mean, someone in general?” Craig asked this pointedly. “Or someone specific?”
“Specific,” Kyle sighed. “Craig, I-”
Craig let go, and fell back onto his ass. No longer kneeling, he shook his head.
“Kyle.” Craig shut his eyes. “I can’t fucking believe I’m saying this.” Craig opened his eyes, and then he closed them again. He covered his closed eyes with his hand. “I love you,” he said very quickly, as if it were one word.
“I know.” Craig could swear he heard Kyle choking a little.
“I said I love you!” Craig grabbed Kyle by his upper arms. “Doesn’t that mean anything to you?”
“I love you too. But this love, it’s-”
“It’s not Stan,” Craig said snidely, eyes narrowing.
Kyle swallowed. “I’m sorry.”
“You can’t have sex with me,” Craig breathed. “Because I’m not Stan Marsh.”
“Please don’t say it like that,” Kyle moaned. “It doesn’t matter. It’s just what it is.”
“No, this is what it is.” Craig raised both middle fingers. “Get out of my house now,” he concluded.
Kyle’s face went red. “What? I don’t want to leave you!” he protested.
“Well, um, actually, Kyle? I’m leaving you.”
“Excuse me?”
“I can’t do this.” Craig slipped off his bed and picked up his shirt from the floor where it had fallen when he’d taken it off. He slipped it on and said, “Not wanting to bottom during sex with my enormous member, that I can live with. But I refuse under any circumstances to be your Stan Marsh substitute. So you know what, I think this relationship has reached its end.”
“I don’t want to break up!” Kyle gripped the bedspread. “I like dating you! I like you!”
“But you don’t love me.”
“Why do I have to love you?”
“Because,” Craig said bitterly.
“Please don’t do this to me. Craig, I’ve never - I’ve never been loved like this by anyone. Please, don’t do this to me.”
“Fuck!” Craig kicked his nightstand, pretending not to hear Kyle’s pleadings. “Why am I still so fucking hard?” He looked down at his dick, condom still included. “Ugh, gah, I can’t deal with this. I’ll jack it after you go. Just please, please go quickly.”
“I don’t want to go!” Kyle said frantically.
“Well, I’m asking you to leave, please.”
“I don’t want to!”
“I know that!” Craig snapped. “God fucking dammit!” Craig grabbed Kyle again and shook him, although not particularly fast or hard. “I fucking love you, you dick, and you don’t even have the presence of mind to lie about why we can’t fuck! Jesus!”
“I love you too,” Kyle whimpered.
“No, you love Stan and his complete lack of acknowledgment of the fact that you’ve been fucking pining away for him for fucking ever. You don’t even love me enough to lie to me to spare my feelings!”
“You’re yelling at me.”
“Of course I am!” Craig smacked his own forehead.
“I don’t want to break up,” Kyle repeated, slipping off the bed and onto his knees.
“It’s not about you!”
“Why are you doing this to me?”
“What if Stan told you he loved you, but he didn’t mean it, he was just lonely because he was in love with some chick who didn’t like him back because she was a dyke, and you were dying to have sex with him but he told you he couldn’t because you weren’t that girl, how would you feel about that?”
“Excuse me?”
“If Stan led you on! How would you feel if he told you he loved you and you knew he didn’t because he made it perfectly clear that he was just using you?”
“I,” Kyle sniffed. “I would feel horrible.”
“Would you be angry? Would you ever really want to see him again?”
“But I’d still love him,” Kyle rationalized.
“And I fucking love you, but I can’t be a pathetic waste of life. So please, Kyle, please.” Craig paused and pulled the condom off of his gradually softening member. “Get the fuck out of my house!”
~
At half past 4 a.m., it was quiet in the Broflovski house. Kyle sighed heavily as he turned the key in the door, glad to be done with his freezing trek home. For some reason, without Craig at his side, it felt longer than the several short blocks it truly was. It was not until Kyle was hanging up his coat on the rack by the door that he realized how much he missed Craig’s stupid nattering about dumb crap. In fact, maybe it wasn’t dumb crap. Kyle had been whimpering a little when Craig kicked him out, but the wind on his face and his general shock has kept him from full-out starting to cry. Which was fine with him - he wasn’t sure what he was feeling. Betrayal, maybe? A little stupid, too - he knew Craig was right, saving it wasn’t doing him any good, he didn’t know when to take a good opportunity and go with it. Maybe after he slept he could figure out how he felt, other than stupid. This had all happened in the past hour, after all.
He removed his shoes so he could pat up the stairs without making a racket, and without waking up his family. Kyle told himself he should be determined to get to bed without any additional drama, so he slipped into the quiet of the bathroom to brush his teeth and get to sleep. This plan was going fine, just fine, until he snapped on the bathroom lights and saw his mother’s straightening iron on the counter, cord hanging languidly, plug barely brushing the floor. To the right of the iron was the bouquet of lilies he’d just left there, sitting there with a sleek black ribbon around the stems.
Kyle burst into tears.
He backed away from the counter, but he apparently forgot the dimensions of the bathroom he’d been using for 15 years, because he felt his head hit the wall. With one hand on his mouth and one hand bracing himself against the warped plaster, Kyle tried to get himself to stop crying. He felt like he could barely breathe, as if for the first time in his life the pathetic air of South Park’s absurd altitude was finally too thin, and he couldn’t get enough oxygen in his lungs. He felt like he needed all of it, like nobody else was entitled to any. He touched his upper lip to the bottom of his nose. It felt slick with mucus, and sure enough he tasted salt again.
What the fuck was wrong with Craig? Kyle wished Craig were there with him, in the bathroom, like he had been before, watching this pathetic display. Then he would see just what kind of damage he was doing, what a fucking prick he was. Even though he was apparently entirely hard-up with common sense, Craig had some residual compassion; surely if he saw how awful Kyle felt he’d change his mind, reverse this fucking train wreck. Kyle shut his eyes and thought about what it would be like if Craig decided to go after him, got the key out from under the welcome mat, ran up the stairs to the bathroom, found this scene - playing these visuals in his head made Kyle cry harder. He could barely open his eyes.
But open them he did, and he saw himself in the mirror. Looking back at him was a boy with impeccably styled red hair, drawn to the side with a dramatic sweep. But his face was red, his eyes were red-rimmed and bleary, and his lips were swollen to twice their normal size. Worse, down his bottom lip was the fading indentation of that horrible fucking laceration from last month. After watching himself cry until he could no longer bear to see how fucking terrible he looked, he turned away. Thank god Craig couldn’t see this - he was hideous.
Kyle’s eye caught those calla lilies again. There they were, mocking him, so large and full at the peak of their bloom. With an instinctual jolt, Kyle snapped them up from the counter and, grasping them with both hands, he began to smash the flowers against the surface of the counter. He kicked the cabinet and screamed in agony, watching small pieces of waxy white flower begin to bruise and smear against the rim of the sink.
Kyle didn’t know if this was therapeutic or not. It felt kind of good. He groaned, and it was kind of releasing. The kicked the cabinet door again, and this time it hurt a bit. But even that felt kind of good.
“Kyle?”
Kyle stopped, swallowed, and gasped a little. He saw his younger brother’s black eyes focused on him through a crack in the door.
“Are you okay? You woke me up.” Ike pushed the door open, and he wasn’t smiling. That was weird. Ike was almost always smiling. Kyle didn’t say anything. He just sniffled.
Ike widened the door and stepped inside the bathroom, which was about the right size for two people. “It’s almost 5,” Ike said seriously, rubbing an eye. “Why aren’t you in bed?” Ike looked up at him again. “Are you sure you’re okay?” he repeated.
Without any idea why, Kyle smacked his brother across the face. “I didn’t say I was okay you fucking retard!”
“Shit, dude, don’t hit me,” Ike growled back.
“Don’t hit you?” Kyle would have laughed at this normally, but he wasn’t in much of a laughing mood, even ironically. “Don’t fucking invade my privacy, you little piece of crap!”
“You woke me up,” Ike squeaked. Ike felt the damaged bouquet hit him in the face. “Did something happen?” he asked, bending over to pick up the flowers.
Kyle whimpered again, not really sure what the fuck he was doing. He just saw this tiny little Canadian kid with black shaggy hair holding a bundle of thick green stems with a half-undone black ribbon, and he couldn’t stop himself from pounding said kid in the face.
“Jesus Christ!” Ike shrieked, dropped what was left of the flowers, and tried to shield himself with his hands. “What the fuck!”
“Leave me the fuck alone!”
“I didn’t so anything to you, stop!”
“Why can’t you just leave me alone?”
“Kyle, stop!” Kyle didn’t stop. Ike was not especially big, but he was clever, and he knew his brother. He didn’t see any of that well-meaning rationalism in the older boy’s eyes. All he saw was a crazy person freaking out. So he hopped backward and assumed some kind of stance. Kyle tilted his head and looked at this display, but he didn’t say anything. “I am a blue belt,” Ike breathed, although the fear in his voice did betray him a little. “If you keep hurting me, I will tell Mom.”
Kyle shook his head. “Are you going to fight me? Or are you going to tell on me?”
“I don’t know,” Ike said honestly. “Which are you more afraid of?”
“I’m not afraid of anything,” Kyle said. Then he pressed his lips together and shut his eyes tightly. Ike could see he was trying not to cry again.
“What happened?” the little boy asked.
The question made Kyle angry again, apparently, because he did resume crying, and he also went back to the sloppy business of punching Ike. With a sigh, Ike solidified his defensive block and screamed, “Mom!”
Kyle got in maybe another two hits before both of his parents appeared on the scene, his mother clad in a ridiculous pink robe. “What what what?” she screeched.
“Jesus, Kyle!” his father screamed, grabbing one of his wrists. “What the hell are you doing?”
Kyle looked up at his mother, who had her arms locked around Ike’s chest protectively. She was staring at him, her lips parted, disbelieving the scene she’d just witnessed. Kyle tried to jerk his arm away from his father, but he couldn’t.
“What in the world is wrong with you?” the man asked, dropping his son’s wrist.
He looked up at his father, and then at his mother. They were both giving him death stares, and beginning to panic he spouted out, “Craig dumped me!”
“So you take it out on your brother?” Sheila asked.
“Why can’t he just leave me alone?”
“I was only asking if you were okay.”
“It’s none of your business!”
“You woke me up!”
“You’re just making it worse!” Kyle shouted.
“Nothing gives you the right to hit your brother!” Gerald reprimanded.
“Why do you always take his side?” Kyle asked, bottom lip quivering pathetically. “Can’t you see I’m in pain?” He began crying again, and put his face in his hands.
“Gerald,” Sheila said softly. “Why don’t you get Ike a drink?”
“I’m not thirsty,” Ike said.
“Don’t smart off,” his mother warned him. “Off you go, bubbe. Go with your father, he’ll get you some nice juice.”
Ike turned to go, grumbling, and Sheila swatted him on the butt. Gerald began to follow him, but paused on his way out to ask his wife, “What are you going to do with him?”
“I’ll figure it out,” Sheila shrugged. There was a pause of silence between them, and Kyle’s sobbing filled the small room.
“Well, okay,” Gerald conceded, following his younger son downstairs.
“What is the matter with you?” Sheila asked, hands on her hips.
Sniffing, Kyle wiped his eyes. “I feel so awful,” he managed. “Why doesn’t he want me anymore?”
“Oh, bubbelah,” Sheila sighed. “Come here.” Kyle tentatively stepped forward, and his mother wrapped him in her arms, smashing his wet cheeks again her ample chest. “Any boy who doesn’t want you is a fool, Kyle.”
“He’s not a fool, he’s-”
“Shhh, don’t talk over me.”
“But I-”
“No, shhh, listen.” She began to pet his hair. “You are the smartest, cleverest, handsomest boy in this little redneck town. Anyone who doesn’t see that isn’t worth a minute of your time.”
“You don’t understand,” Kyle sniffed, lifting his head. “He knows all that. That’s not why.”
“Then why?”
“This is so embarrassing,” Kyle moaned. “I haven’t cried like this since-”
“Let’s not talk about it,” Sheila suggested. She paused. “I think I hear your father and Ike coming back up. Do you want to talk in the kitchen? I can make you something nice, hmm?”
“I don’t know…”
“Yes, come downstairs. Don’t be shy, come on.”
“I feel really stupid now,” Kyle said. He wiped at some sticky tear residue on his cheek. “I think I should go to bed.”
“I changed your diapers, Kyle. Trust me, I’ve seen you at your stupidest.” And without waiting for answer, she turned and left the bathroom, leaving him standing there. Although she hadn’t said anything, the implication was clear: He would follow her to the kitchen, or … well, in this case there was no ‘or.’ He would follow her to the kitchen.
She made him a cup of tea and set the mug down in front of him at the table, nodding at it. “Drink,” she said sweetly. Kyle wasn’t thirsty, wasn’t cold, didn’t want a cup of tea. But he looked at it and looked at her, flinching momentarily before lifting the mug to his lips with both hands.
“That’s it,” Sheila said sweetly. “Good boy.”
Kyle hated the way his mother calmly instructed him. It was so false - a kind of self assurance that only comes from being absolutely certain all of one’s own orders are going to be strictly followed. It was something like a religious code of laws in that sense.
As thirsty as he wasn’t, there was something about drinking this tea that made Kyle feel a little better, and his heart beat a little slower. So he continued drinking, and listened to his mother while she spoke.
“There is no excuse for this behavior,” she said. “What have I always told you?”
“Don’t make a scene?”
“Exactly. Don’t make a scene. And don’t attack your brother!”
“But he was-”
“Oh, knock it off with this ‘he was’ and ‘he wasn’t’ stuff. He’s a little boy! And he looks up to you.”
“I don’t know why,” Kyle sniffed. “I fucking suck.”
“Language!”
“Well, I do,” Kyle continued. “I can barely keep a boyfriend for two months.”
Sheila sighed, and slumped in her seat. Because of her size and shape, it might have been difficult to discern a difference between this and sitting up straight. But she was his mother, so Kyle could. He also knew that her relaxed posture was not necessarily defeat; it was pensive. He watched her intently, and she rubbed her hands together.
“What happened?” she asked slowly.
Kyle grimaced, not really wanting to tell her. But he knew he had no choice. It was just something he would have to do. “We were, um, fooling around, you know…”
She raised her eyebrows. Kyle stopped talking. “Go on,” she urged him. “I’m not going to punish you.” She crossed her arms.
Kyle exhaled. “Well, I didn’t want to, and, uh … are you really going to make me say it?”
“No, I understand. Keep going.”
“Well, basically, I told him I couldn’t, uh, the thing, because, well … I just didn’t want to with him.” Kyle swallowed. “In retrospect I think I should have.”
“Oh, no, I think you made the right choice.” She took his hand across the table, and gave him a warm smile. It was creepy. Why was he telling his mother these things? “It’s important not to rush.”
“Yeah, I know,” Kyle agreed, desperately hoping his mother didn’t know the extent to which he’d actually gone with Craig, or with several others at that.
“Besides,” Sheila continued. “It’s like I said, you’re such a special boy. I wouldn’t want you with some shmuck who just wants you for a lay.”
At this, Kyle tensed up, and let go of her hand. “Don’t hate Craig.”
“Why shouldn’t I?”
“Well, he really didn’t just want to do it, he wanted … well, he wanted me to love him basically, and-”
“You love Stanley,” Sheila said.
Kyle’s face went pink, and he nearly choked. “Excuse me?”
“I get it now,” she said knowingly. “You didn’t want to be with Craig like that because you’re saving it for Stanley.”
“Oh, fuck.”
“I think it’s very sweet.”
“Sweet? Sweet? That’s like my biggest secret!”
“Not really.”
“Well, how the fuck do you know that?” Kyle spit out. He got up from the chair and began to pace. “Jesus Christ, Mom! I’d ask if you were reading my diary, except you can’t be getting this from there because I don’t have one!”
“I know,” she said wistfully.
“You checked?”
“All mothers check around their son’s rooms,” she said calmly.
“Oh, this is just great!”
“Kyle, please, I do your laundry. I vacuum. Who do you think dusts under the bed?”
Kyle moaned. “This fucking sucks! Why the fuck do you know everything about me?”
“I’m your mother,” she said simply.
“That’s not good enough!” Kyle sat back down, and put his hands back in his head, and then he was back to where he’d started: crying. “Why can’t I have my own life? Why do you do this to me?”
She got up from her seat and moved over to him, rubbing her son’s shoulders as he cried. “It’s not all bad,” she said. “I can help you, Kyle. I don’t want to see you upset.”
“You know about Stan?” he asked back.
“Well, it is relatively obvious.”
“How obvious?”
She sighed, mournfully. “Eh, I don’t know, when you bring him over for Shabbat dinner and you ask him if he wants green beans, whenever he says yes you’re so happy, you serve him the whole dish. That’s how I know.”
“That’s how you know?”
“Oh, shhh.” She stroked his hair. “We’ll fix this.”
“Fix this?” Kyle asked, lifting his head and shoving her off of him. “Fix it how? Craig at least liked me a lot, but he’s gone now!”
“Well, maybe you shouldn’t have told him you like Stanley.”
He paused to wonder how exactly she knew this, but then he shook his head and replied, “Well, no shit! I wouldn’t be down here at 5 a.m. crying about this crap with my mother if I hadn’t! I’d be getting nice and fucked up my ass and probably pretty fucking happy about it, instead of crying in your tits like a pussy little girl!”
“Language,” she reminded him.
“Language? Are you insane? Your son is sitting here crying like a baby because he got dumped by the second biggest whore in school and you’re worried about language? It’s a little fucking late for that now, Mom, don’t you think?”
She didn’t flinch at this. “Who is the first biggest whore?” she inquired. Kyle just crossed his arms and lowered his head. “I see,” she said knowingly. She sat back down. “It seems to me,” she began, taking a sip of her lukewarm tea, “that we need to get you involved in something that will take your mind off of Stanley. Maybe you should spend some time with some other friends for a while?”
“Oh, and which friend would that be?” Kyle asked. “The fat piece of shit who beat me to a bloody pulp, the little faggot retard ‘dating’ him-” Kyle made air quotes “-or the trailer trash whore balling that fucking British turd?”
“Good point,” Sheila agreed. “What about that study?”
“What study?” he wiped his eyes again.
“The one, with the man, from North Carolina? You know, Mr. Granger?”
“Granger? Yeah, he’s a complete douche, what about him?”
“Well, what have you done about that lately?”
“Huh.” Kyle sniffed. “Um, well, I guess I haven’t done anything.”
“Well, come on, bubbe. You can’t expect this to just go away on its own.”
“I don’t know,” Kyle said tentatively. “I was kinda working on it with Craig, and then…”
“Well, forget Craig. What’s that little shaygitz got that you need so badly anyway?”
“A really great cock,” Kyle sighed.
“What what what?” Sheila put her chin in her palm and sighed. “Kyle, please, language.”
“Sorry.”
“That’s a good boy.” She turned to look at the clock over the oven. “Oh, look at the time,” she said with fake awe. “Who knew how late it was! We should talk about this tomorrow. Maybe you should get a little sleep?”
“You think so?” Kyle asked, standing up. He tried to get out of the kitchen, but she grabbed him but the shoulders and spun him around.
“Kyle, listen to me. Everyone gets dumped. Everyone has unrequited love. Stanley isn’t gay, is he?”
“No,” Kyle sighed. “No, I really don’t think so.”
“Then the longer you wait for him, the worse it’ll get.”
“I can’t help who I love,” Kyle said pathetically, slumping.
“No, that’s what quitters say. We’ll work on this Mr. Granger, take your mind off of Craig, and Stan, all these worthless little goyim. You’re too good for them all anyway, bubbe.”
“If I’m too good for them,” Kyle said to no one as he dragged himself upstairs, “why did you make me grow up in this fucking retard town with them?”
Continued here.