The Pains of Being Pure At Heart

A Story by About a girl*

Russel and Ashton are just clinging to each other, trying not to drown. [BOYxBOY]

Faded purple pastel clings to his seemingly pre-pubescent chest, raised slightly in one corner to reveal the tiniest bit of smooth milky skin, demanding my imagination run wild. I see his eyes flash with emotion as he sees me hunched beneath the usual tree, blue eyes icy and electrifying. And I wonder if he knows the effect he has on me. I wonder if he knows how he can make me feel alone and completely alive in the same second, half second, changing me as fast as the speed of light.

Today, his lips are glossed pale pink and he's wearing patent silver shoes in some designer label. Today, he smooths his Cacharel shorts as he sits next to me and lets me have a slight smile as though he knows how rapidly my heart is beating. Today, he is just as beatiful as any other day.

"Hi," he greets me, pressing his lips against my cheek for a second that I would take for granted with anyone else. I touch my hand there softly afterward, one finger feeling the stickiness of the lipgloss he left behind. On closer inspection, I notice nearly microscopic metallic sparkles. Sometimes I wonder how he would appear as himself, just as himself, no mask that is sometimes rouge when he's feeling confident and other times pale and soft when he tries to feel pure again drawn cleanly over his face. I wonder what he looks like beneath his perfectly strung together costume.

"What's up?" I smile, no trace of my inner thoughts on the outside - my eyes make sure of this. My fingers trace circles on his leg - shaved - and slowly dance across the inside of his thigh, a drunken dance, developing absently, carelessly, and I can't sit still around him, I always move in subtle ways. If the way he drives me crazy wouldn't be so obvious, I'd be dancing ballerina dances across his damp lawn that marveled me with it's intense green but not more than him, until my feet lifted me into the sky into oblivion. And I don't make sense, but that's just another thing his presence does to me. Makes me incoherent.

He answers as he unwraps the lunch he's tucked away into his oversized bag. Apparently these are supposed to be fashionable, but to me they just look like another way to hide a dead body. I don't say this.

His lips curl around the wrap and he takes a bite, all lettuce and mushrooms and dreams of the scale hitting zero. "Classes are a b***h today, that's what." He looks at me and I stare back calmly, studying him the way I can't help but study him. After taking another bite, I remember the brownie Travis Lerman sold to me between classes forgotten in my coat pocket.

"Prashak?"

"Yeah."

"He's a tough a*s, sometimes."

"Tell me about it. Twenty out of fifty points on an essay I killed myself just to get done. Can you believe it? What a dick."

I grunt in agreement and take my brownie out, peeling away the seran wrap.

He laughs that bright laugh of his, accusation tainting it like ink and water.

"You made that yourself?"

"Hey, I can cook when I want to."

"Bake?"

"Real men bake," I inform him seriously though we know I'm not, and seconds later our backs are pressed to the ground as laughter curls inside us and bubbles up from our throats like cheap champaigne.

"But really," he says.

"Travis Lerman," I explain and he hits me on the shoulder, frowning in obvious disapproval.

"Are you really going to eat a pot brownie before class? Honestly, Russel? If you keep this up you won't have any more brain cells to kill. You'll have to ask to borrow mine, which won't ever happen."

"It's just one, that's not going to do anything."

"Whatever," he says to drop the subject. I know he won't bring it back up, but the looks will be enough to get across the fact that he really hates when I do this, which is entirely hypocritical because on the weekends half the time he is buzzed completely out of mind. Part of me thinks he just likes to lecture.

The chocolate squishes as my teeth grind it into something I can swallow, the taste reminding me of when I was still little and my mother baked for me all the time, except theres a faint taste masking it. Faint. And he must be thinking about what I was because he turns to face me again and sighs and tells me,

"I just don't like you doing it at school. It's just stupid to do it at school." As if that makes what he does on the weekends any more okay.

"Okay, okay. I won't do it anymore." This makes him happy like I knew it would, because really according to the magazines he's afraid of what he doesn't have control over, including me, so this makes him happy. Truth is, I will probably do it again in the mens restroom when I ask for the pass during World History II and when I cut class with Logan Drewl and whenever else the opportunity presents itself. But if me telling him something we both know is a lie will make him happy, then so be it. Or maybe he believes me, maybe he wants to believe me and therefore convinces himself of it. Maybe I need to do something so it won't be a lie anymore when he catches me again and I say the same thing. Maybe, he just likes to lecture and his words mean nothing at all. MAYBE, I'm over-analyzing things the way I tend to.

"So," he begins in a way I know is struggling to be casual as he tears the remaining wrap into shreds too small to fill an ant, "Ricki is having a party tomorrow." Last names aren't necessary around here. Chances are you're known for something, so everyone tends to keep to a first name basis, even if you've never met in person before. Even, insert gasp, if they aren't your friend on Facebook. And Ricki. Ricki is pretty infamous around here for the parties he throws in the house that's rumored to be paid for by his parents so he'll keep away from their place more, because really he's just a f**k-up who knows everyone and sells pot to everyone and sleeps with everyone and shares his keggs and music with everyone, and sometimes I can't decide if he's a someone or if all that he is has morphed into everyone. Is he everyone?

See. Incoherency.

"And I'm guessing you're trying to tell me you want to go. Come on, Ricki is. . .it's a waste of time."

"It could be fun," he says not looking up at me. "We never go to parties."

"Yeah, we do. Look, I just don't like Ricki, okay? He's pointless. He is what people want him to be, he's not even f*****g real." I feel a bit profound, saying this as I shove the rest of the brownie into my mouth. "There are better things to do than get into s**t there, because that's what will happen. S**t. You've heard the stories."

"S'bad manners," I'm told absently. "Don't talk with food in your mouth." He finally looks up from the blade of grass he was playing with. "Just once? You won't even see him, let alone have to talk to him. It could be fun." But probably not is what my mind screams as I listen to him drone on with that soft, 'I'm really kind of upset' voice he likes to use to con me into relenting.

"Why can't we just go to my place or something? Listen to our mix tapes, mess around with Jonesy, I can score an eigth from the lesbians down the street. . ."

He rolls his eyes in the way he's so good at.

"That's what we always do."

"Not always," I mutter, although I know it's true. But I like doing simple things, holing up in my room in my lifeless house if it wasn't for us, laying on my sun-faded blue comforter with the door closed and listening to The Pains of Being Pure at Heart and MGMT and Third Eye Blind as we finish off a bowl and later come down from our high to take Jonesy for a walk. I like simple, but he always wants to be doing something exciting, something new. He doesn't like when things are always the same. But that's what I live off of. Normality. And when things are normal the way they usually are, I'm happy, because I'm afraid that one day doing new things won't be enough and he'll resort to new people instead. And if that happened, I don't know. When I try to think of my life without him, everything is all translucent-y and smokey at the same time and I can't see anything, can't see past these six months anymore. Life without him isn't really an option for me. It isn't an option.

"Don't you just want to. . .feel the atmosphere? I mean, Russel, when's the last time we went to a party that wasn't held in someones basement with a bunch of s**t-faced burnouts? When's the last time we really did something exciting? This one time, please? Just this one time and then we can spend all the weekends playing with Jonesy that you want." Saying it like that, I feel childish. I mean honestly, bribing me with my dog. Was I that pathetic?

In the end I relent, the obvious outcome. Sometimes I wonder why I put up a fight in the first place.

"Fine, but if something happens, don't forget that I told you this is a stupid idea." Maybe I was being overdramatic about it; people flocked to Ricki's parties like men to a porno. They were notorious around here for the music and the keggs. They were supposed to be a f*****g great time, but it just didn't appeal to me. All I saw it as was drama in the morning and a potentially hungover Ashton, both of which I liked to avoid as frequently as possible.

"Uh, yay," he laughs happily and smiles, wrapping his stick-like arms around my neck and kissing my cheek for the second time. "We're going to have fun, trust me." I don't say anything, just ball up the seran wrap and let him lay his head in my lap as we wait for time to run out, and classes to start again.

While he hums some Blondie tune I try to stay focused on him, but I can't. I can only think of Ricki. I really don't want to go. And as thoughts of the party spin incessantly through my head what I actually mean is, I really don't want to see him.

*_____*

Ashton is wrapped in my old patchwork quilt, because he is freezing. He says he is freezing, and so I give him my quilt like a good boyfriend, best friend when the parents are home, and push the words dancing on my tongue and sliding over the roof of my mouth back down my throat. They float back to where they belong on my saliva, some low budget roller-coaster that won't pass inspection, and it hurts not speaking sometimes. The only reason I don't is because I'm worried that if I do, what we have - whatever that really is - will shatter into pieces that can't be glued back together. So Ashton is freezing. Ashton is usually freezing. Ashton is always freezing, because unlike me, the sight of a brownie doesn't make me want to look for the box of laxatives. I can go out to dinner and ask for a coke instead of two glasses of water. But this is Ashton, and he. . . Ashton, he just. . .it's him. That's all I can say. It's just him. He likes being able to slip easily into designer labels, three hundred forty dollars for an awfully patterned sweater, two hundred for the tailored trousers that are just so in season, especially the printed ones. He likes brushing his blond hair and then mussing it up and looking in the mirror, perfection, and adding mascara to make his eyes pop and matte pink lipstick so he looks as though he belongs on the back pages of Vogue, some hollow-cheeked done up blow doll, empty beyond their appearance. But Ashton isn't empty. Ashton is far from empty.

My head is resting on my knees as I study him and he stares back just as blatantly. The air is always thick, but never with tension. I don't know what anyone would call it, but it isn't tension. We think a lot. Thoughts? Thinking? I don't know, I really don't.

I find my lips saying, "What's on your mind?" because sometimes I want to know, as if it will explain this, or explain us, and because when we look at each other like this he is one big question mark. I want to see inside of him, not just be inside of him sometimes.

He gives me a half smile, genuine, which makes me happy because really it's like sunlight cracking through a storm cloud.

"Hm," he laughs without opening his mouth. "Maybe I'm thinking about you, how hot you look in those jeans."

It's a lie, because we're dysfunctional humans and therefore incapable of telling the truth. But I play along, because what else can you honestly do? Is there another option I'm too blind to realize?

I play along.

"Is, that, so?"

He does the closed-mouth giggle again and tells me, "It is."

"Mm," I growl playfully, letting my knees walk me over to him so I can fit his head into my hands, where they belong, and kiss him softly without denying the hunger there. He pushes away the quilt and tugs at my elbows and I get the hint, joining him on my bed. His legs open without command, because they want me there, because contact is good. Contact makes you feel as if you're not alone even when you know inside that a part of you always will be.

He sighs against my lips and I feel him tremble, fingers laced around my neck, and though he is the one to initiate tongue, I take control rather quickly and win a battle that was never quite two sided to begin with.

"Ashton," I breathe and feel him push himself against me, impossibly closer. My hands slip beneath his shirt, fingers ghosting down his spine, feeling the sharp bumps that protrude there and loving it because this is Ashton, and he doesn't hide it. He doesn't hide it because he doesn't find anything wrong with it, and this is Ashton.

He whimpers before fusing our mouths together again and then it's all incoherent, kissing desperately and whispering each other's names and touchingtouchingtouching so we convince ourselves we're not alone. Touchingtouchingtouching because we know in the end we are.

Sometimes, we save each other.

Sometimes, we save ourselves.

∞♥∞