Ninety-Seven:

NINETY-SEVEN:

Michael

Michael Delaney used to be fat. Not puppy-padding fat—bursting-frankfurts-in-a-boiling-pot fat. He remembered gym class and swimming lessons. All the thin guys could be divided into one of two groups: those who looked but didn’t comment, and those who looked and commented with enthusiasm.

Tubby Bitch.

Fat Mumma.

Fanny Tits.

The silent ones were the worst. They just stared.

Fat kids are like alcoholics, he now knew. They always have excuses.

“I’m not big, just big boned,” he said. Michael could fool himself but he couldn’t fool the skinny kids. “I’m fat. Butterball fat,” he would tell the person staring back at him in the mirror, smart enough to know that no fat kid ever got thin unless they started calling themselves what they really were.

“I’m Santa-Claus fat. I’m I-make-you-sick fat. I’m I-make-myself-sick fat.”

He was something else also, but that was harder to say.

Another memory: crying after swimming class, hating having to strip down to his Speedos in front of the other guys. He tickled himself to tighten his chest but the indoor pool was heated, and soon his nipples turned to marshmallows again. He once made a girdle out of GladWrap and wore it to school. It worked, even though it made breathing difficult. Come twelve thirty in the middle of Mrs. Montgomery’s Legal Studies class, he started sweating. Sweating bad. Every time he moved, plastic screeched. It dug into his skin and refused to tear when he tried to rip it off in the washroom. He had toslidethe girdle up to his midsection, the top edge wedged into the cleft of his breasts. He cried in the shower that night so his parents wouldn’t know.

Michael wanted what the other guys had—sculptured bodies. For the longest time, he mistook attraction for admiration. Eventually, he realized he liked looking at the bodies because he liked the bodies. I guess I’m gay. The last thing I fucking need.

So Michael started to walk. Walks turned into jogs. Pounds fell away with surprising speed, and people noticed. He liked that they looked, especially guys, even though he felt dirty for enjoying the attention.

Halved meals. Occasional purging. Instant lightness was heaven. He broke himself of that addiction when he read that continuous self-induced vomiting increased the chance of throat cancer, teeth rot, and of course, bad breath.

Cancer.

He knew the word meant death, but even that word ‘death’ was alien. It was the concept of his teeth falling out that made him pull the bile-coated fingers from his throat.

The last of his fat disappeared over the course of one six-week Christmas break. When he went back for his final year of school, people didn’t recognize him. His parents sent him to the doctor, fearing some terminal disease, only he wasn’t dying. No, Michael lived, as did the ugliness in the mirrored reflection, the skinny somebody who hadn’t built muscle to accommodate the rapid loss. Breasts were empty sacks covered in stretch marks, just another something to hate and be embarrassed by. It was likely his need for validation that drove him to what came next.

On the twelfth of November, 1995, he stood outside a house in James Bridge.

The house.

Within those walls, Michael said fuck you to the lies, a decision cast the night before, under the sheets. The house belonged to Clive, a man who as far as Michael knew, bore no last name. He found this as sad and depressing as anything he’d ever experienced in his life—that so much could hinge on the warrant of a man he didn’t know.

Michael exhaled, the stink of Old Spice and engine grease on his skin. Clive’s smell. He wanted to be back in the house, with this stranger, wanted to slip his tongue in Clive’s ear again and taste the bitterness of those lonely thoughts.

No more lies or sadness. Michael liked last night—and this morning. Loved it. He could outrun fat, but he couldn’t outrun this.

Gay. Fag. Poofter.

Sure, Michael believed he’d suffer. When his parents found out, their slaughtered expectations would change everything. Because this was the way things went—wasn’t it?

Clive’s half-obscured silhouette in the window, a knot of shadows and curtain.

Michael could still taste toothpaste from an undignified morning after finger-wash. Clive’s bathroom was small and smelled of cigarettes. A wedding ring on the basin, catching morning light like a coin at the bottom of a wishing well. The minty flavor lingering in Michael’s mouth made him feel like a man. It confirmed reality. His new now. That turned him on.

Warm wind sent the trees into shivers about him. Michael’s cowlick fell over his eyes. His reflection illustrated the window, ugliness turning away. He walked at first, but those strides evolved into a run. The world rushed up to meet his feet.

Michael ran to the bus stop with the exact change for the 243 back to Maitland in his pocket. He looked up the street and noticed the vehicle approaching. It grew larger and larger, rolling to a stop before him, blocking out the sun. In its shadow lurked a chill. The door hissed as it opened. A murder of crows shot into the sky nearby. Flapping wings like distant schoolyard giggles.

He climbed the steps into the maw of the bus. Stopped. Waited for his eyes to adjust. Out of the dim swam the driver, all pale and sweaty. Michael offered her his palm—sunlight turning money into embers.

“The ride’s free today,” she said.

Michael was shocked by the melancholy in the driver’s eyes—and shocked, too, by how easily he identified it. This was his language, as though they were kindred. Breath abandoned him. Her face was a landscape seen from a distance, with the slow-moving shadows of clouds snaking across impassive rises and falls. The dunes of her cheeks, the river of her mouth, it all felt elemental, something older than it actually was, something fated to be. She was a mystery to him, a place of secrets. Michael could see this now because he was ready to see. And through her landscape, he saw a road he wasn’t sure he wanted to travel.

Doors clattered shut behind him.

The driver shifted the 243 into gear, and then they were gone.