Deadbeat
I sit up, gasping. His eyes, half open. Body swaddled in Egyptian cotton. Sweat. Sunlight through blinds.
“I just won second place in a speed eating contest in Berlin,” I say.
“Just now?” he says. Slow blink.
“It wasn’t even just a hotdog eating contest! It was all different kinds of food.”
“Mm,” he curls toward me. Leg over my leg.
“Aren’t you proud of me? I won second.”
“Mmhmm.” He doesn’t mean it.
I lay back on three pillows. Eyes wide. His, closed. He knows I’m not dreaming. Knows that the process of astral projection, of possessing the body of a host, is nothing to laugh at. Used to be impressed. I possess the body of the competitor least favored to win the eating contest, stuff its face. I haven’t won yet, but I’m getting better.
“I know,” I say. Long exhale. Didn’t realize I’d been holding my breath.
“No!” he says, waving away the smoke that seeps from my nostrils. He complains about this sort of thing—the smoke, the smell of burning hair when I lose myself in thought, the summer bonfires that burn too hot when I approach—but I really do my best. He continues, “It’s fine, really.” He rethinks. “I mean, it’s great! Second place is great, it’s…”
Doesn’t say: First loser.
“What do I say to your parents?” I say. “It’s getting, I don’t know. Should I be embarrassed?”
Downstairs, his mom clatters around in the kitchen. I’m awake! she screams through the pots. So everyone should be awake. Every morning. Every. Damn. Time. We. Visit.
His eyes: still closed. “I just wouldn’t mention it.”
“Oh,” I say. “Great, thanks.” Another deadbeat demon lover leaching off my little warlock, sings the kettle downstairs. Can’t even win an eating contest in Berlin. I hear the coffee mugs clink against granite. Their laughter: disappointed but not surprised.
I brace myself for it. Seconds roll past. Minutes? Then, her voice from downstairs: “Boys!”
He forces his eyes open. A naked leg slips from the shelter of the bed sheets. A grumble on the way to the bathroom, something about the word “boy,” about whether it applies to him on the year of his twenty-seventh birthday. His bare ass expects applause.
I spit mouthwash into the sink beside him. Gently (he’s not a morning person), I say: “It’s just a mom thing. I mean, she said it to both of us, and I’m…” Ageless. I shut up. We try not to talk about the mortality thing. I try for a topic change, try the real issue at hand. “What do you think I should do about, you know, the contests?” I hate making decisions. He loves making them for me. Makes him less grumpy in the morning.
“Probably take it easier on yourself? You really are getting close, you know,” he says, and I’m surprised to admit that he sounds like he means it. “I think you’ve gotta chill out a little. You’ve cracked the code, but you’re burnt out.”
“You really think so?” Something very like relief—I can’t say for sure; it’s been decades—loosens sinew in my back and shoulders.
“I mean, you literally singed the edge of the pillowcase last night.” He gargles toothpaste-water, spits. “Maybe try to sleep for real. Take a nap this afternoon.” He looks at me from the corner of his eye. Mouth upturned. Lascivious. “Stay on this side of the planet tonight. I can make you good and hungry for something you can’t eat with someone else’s mouth.”
He turns to me and licks his toothpaste-coated upper lip, raising one eyebrow cartoonishly. In spite of myself, I do laugh. One short burst.
“But seriously. You look like you haven’t slept all month.”
I consider my mug in the mirror. Dark pillows under darker eyes. All month? If only, child. It’s been far, far longer than that.
© 2020 Jacob Budenz
About the Author
Jacob Budenz is a queer writer, multi-disciplinary performer, educator, and witch with an MFA from University of New Orleans and a BA from Johns Hopkins whose work focuses on the intersection of queerness and the otherworldly. The author of Pastel Witcheries (Seven Kitchens Press 2018), Budenz has work in journals including Slipstream, Pussy Magic, Assaracus, and more as well as anthologies by Mason Jar Press, Mad Scientist Journal, and Lycan Valley Press. At the beginning of 2020, Budenz received a Baker Innovative Projects grant to stage Simaetha: a Dreambaby Cabaret, an original work, to sold-out houses at the historic Carroll Mansion in downtown Baltimore. Follow Jacob's work at https://www.jakebeearts.com or @dreambabyjake on Instagram.