crotchless 06: DOG-BONE (NSFW)

It was two weeks after the guy settled into the apartment that I learned his name. Diesel.

His parents must have possessed a frivolous propensity for fanfiction to saddle him with that burden of a legacy. Maybe it was brainstormed on a scalding afternoon while reading some delirious smut about the Titane movie. Maybe, this time, throw in the homosexual carnivalesque of robotic cars scissoring each other into a turbo-speed orgasm. Diesel, really?

When the couple handed me that piece of information, I barked a laughter, shooting out a mid-bite, wet chunk of their freshly baked cookie onto their polished shoes. I thought they were joking until they didn’t parrot the laughter I let out and just stared at me, confused, like I had just shat on the floor. I zipped my mouth and asked if they were really telling the truth.

The old woman smiled, gum flailing out, and said, “Yes, dear, how dare you laugh at his very interesting name?” I still couldn’t tell whether she’d spent her twenties marinating her face in Vaseline or Botox because her sarcasm was barely readable.

I continued stuffing my face with the pastry and waited the rest of the morning for the guy to come downstairs. To see him getting tomato-faced would shine a light on the flagrant tunnel of my diseased darkness. How damning is that.

It is only in the afternoon, after finishing up my homework and putting my pens into my bag, that I hear heavy footsteps clattering down. I am half-expecting him to flash one of his borderline twisted smiles to greet me, but he doesn’t even try to sniff the air I am clad in.

He just says hi to the old couple behind the counter and leaves me with the jarring sound of the bell clinking like a haunted rejection while I stare at his plaid back. What is even his problem? Isn’t it just last week that he is trying to worship the fuck out of me, or has the ritual already ended? I stomp my way upstairs in my heels and lock my door.

On my bed, I try searching his name on Instagram, cycling through the stylistic variations that typical men inflict upon themselves in the name of personal branding. I try the obligatory underscore after the name because apparently anonymity needs punctuation; the mysterious period that performs aloofness as if detachment could be downloaded; the aggressively uncreative spelling-out of their full legal name, usually accompanied by the confidence of someone who thinks bureaucracy is a personality; and the gratuitously creative emulation that amounts to appending their name with lexemes that sound like metal, punk, or some other adolescent alloy forged in Monster Energy and paternal neglect. But I can’t scour anything in the belly of the egregious internet.

I go to Snap. Same thing. I do the same to every other social, and his existence comes back null. Somehow, this feels like losing, and my reptilian brain doesn’t want to slither away from the challenge.

When I check the time, it is already dinnertime. I slip into my fur jacket and grab my wallet to buy some dinner across the street. The moment I open the door, Diesel is already there, shuffling his Slender Man-like figure down the hall, casting shadows across the hallway. I scrunch my eyebrows at his slouch, bothered by the mountainous hulk of it.

Only tall people can afford making it look so editorial or chic, and with Diesel, it is just an eyesore. He is mumbling something under his breath, still not noticing my presence behind him. He slides his hands into his low-slung jeans, and when he swivels around to face me, I swear he nearly skins himself right there from the sheer violence of his outlandish shock. He hops away from me and buries his face into his chest, breathing hard, squeezing his eyes shut.

‘God, do I look ugly or something? Is my presence that omniterrorizing, boy?’

He looks at the floorboards again, and I can hear the frantic tapping of his shoes.

‘Oh, that’s not it. You’re very beautiful, Miss. Just that, I wasn’t... I was not expecting you there, you know?’

He rubs his nose with his right hand, and against the hallway lights, the trunk-shaped veins protruding against his skin look more visceral, like flesh turned inside out. I have a faint need to open my mouth and latch onto them, but I shake my head until that image dissolves.

‘So...’ I intentionally elongate the word, hoping he will take a lap around that single syllable and say what he wants to say. I lean against the door, clicking my heels on the floor, impatient as the hunger starts to scrape the lining of my stomach.

‘Just that... I'm sorry. About earlier. This morning, I mean. I—I didn't mean to... not say hi. To you. Or make it seem like I was ignoring you. I wasn't.’

I cock my eyebrow, hoping my face is malicious enough to nonverbally express that I am not buying it. He clears his throat and looks me directly in the eyes, before his gaze skitters across the walls again, then rubs his head and taps his shoes, all in the limited space of a second.

‘I am really sorry. I didn’t know what to say this morning, really.’ He smiles, and somehow, it looks afflicted, like a boy-charming smile never stretched enough for puberty and now frozen in the muscle memory of childish affect. There’s also something so downtrodden about it, almost like it is apologizing for feeling delight, like a happy smile too ashamed to be happy.

‘God, you say sorry too much, Diesel.’ I smirk.

He bows his head, like he's trying to read the scuffs on the tiles. From the receding curly hair on his nape, I can see his ears burning bright red, and he is still refusing my eye contact.

I whisper, ‘Diesel.’ I can see the redness creeping up the sharp triangular plane of his cheekbones, just beside his ear cartilage, brightening every second. I challenge, ‘Look at me.’

And he does, eyes so golden brown that they look stark against his apologetic features. His nose looks tacked to his face like clay hammered against a wall until it flattens square and jerks upward again. It is bulbously huge and makes his face more unkind. Lips pulled downward and twitching, small canine teeth flashing yellowish beneath the freshly shaved mustache. He bows his head immediately the moment I return the brief eye contact.

‘I am really sorry,’ he apologizes again, only then noticing that his hands, veins clenching against the soft layer of epidermis, are fanned across his crotch. His feet still tap the floor, and stretching across the milieu of his hips are his grey sweatpants. It doesn’t escape my gaze when he scratches his ear with one hand: the growing print on his crotch, pulsing in its fetal position beneath the thin fabric, the curved oval like the head of a snake, ready to jut out, his dick. Pathetic. Even his erection looks apologetic.

‘Did you just get hard, Diesel?’ I tease.

And he runs away from me, frantically saying sorry as he slams his door. I giggle. What a miserable little sick fuck.