Fiction: Drew and John

A story about love.

Drew told the cops that he’d never really felt at home in John’s apartment, with the teetering stacks of VHS tapes stashed everywhere, some still shrink-wrapped with faded discount price stickers, piled amongst the random detritus of unopened junk mail, mismatched sporting goods, and tabletops spilling over with broken knickknacks and dead electronics, all packed in so tight Drew had to walk sideways to get into the bathroom and the too-small toilet seat where he had to tuck his dick under the lid when he sat down.

Drew did not like being cajoled by John into watching old French movies but he wanted to please John for his kindness, so he gave in to the old man’s insistence that they sit together on the sagging umber couch, Drew unaware of what was to come.

Drew’s mom never had his eyes checked and he could not see very far, but he did his best to peer at the blurry good-looking dude on screen acting goofy to please the cute girl with the pixie cut, and although Drew knew he should feel something about it, all he really wanted to do was go into his closet and huff some glue.

He’d met John on the boardwalk, where, after his mom had thrown him out, Drew found himself a good setup between the dry pilings under the pier – a hidden place where he could stash his sleeping bag and sleep off his fortified liquor hangovers. He’d ride his rusting BMX bike on the concrete path from the pier past the main lifeguard station all the way to the parking lot at the breakwater, then back again, all day long. In the morning, when he had enough change scraped together, he’d hit the Safeway on Grand Avenue for a couple bombers of Sapporo that would get him good and buzzed by early afternoon, when the marine layer burned off and the blazing sun came out. Then he’d go shirtless, his greasy hair brushing against his dark, freckled shoulders as he rode.

Drew recognized John as a regular at one of the cafes that lined the boardwalk. Sometimes he’d be accompanied by a pot-bellied middle-aged man Drew later learned was John’s housemate Mitch. Mitch dressed in collared wool t-shirts and wore his hair in bangs, bad choices that to Drew made him seem like a man frozen in adolescence. Mitch cared for John, helping him in and out of his chair, picking up utensils that frequently slipped from John’s trembling fingers. John always sat at the table closest to where the skaters and bikers rode by, nursing a tall extra-sweet iced tea under the shade of the huge faded restaurant umbrella that kept the ultraviolet away from his flaking, pallid skin, the salt air onshore breeze pushing loose the remaining wisps of hair he’d pasted against his skull with pungent tonic. John would lean on his aluminum drugstore cane and ask questions of anyone on the boardwalk within earshot.

Drew spotted John first - the pale old man stuck out amongst the muscled bodies, tanned skin and bikinis, a decrepit relic in a stained terrycloth shirt, Bermuda shorts, white tube socks and corrective sandals. But Drew could tell that John had once been good-looking; his now-sagging nose and ears one time perfectly proportioned, his stooped shoulders formerly broad and symmetrical. Drew was curious about the old man’s journey into his bizarrely wretched but cheerful state, but he never spoke or looked directly at him, only with feigned casualness in his general direction, but always positioning himself close enough for John to break the ice. Finally one day John beckoned at Drew, who was sitting on his bike, one foot propped on the wall, checking out a bevy of sorority girls trying to play volleyball but succeeding only in gaining the attention of a loose pack of openly leering men.

John asked Drew about his bike - how long he’d had it, and if he enjoyed riding it. He asked Drew how he liked to spend his time, and his thoughts about the crowds of clueless tourists clogging the path. To Drew’s relief, John did not ask the usual questions: if he was homeless, if he had a girlfriend, where he was from. A lot of men tried talking to Drew, but John’s questions appealed because, unlike the others whose real motive was not far behind the opening hello, John seemed genuinely interested in who Drew was, right now, in the moment. Drew did not like talking about the past and he had no concept of a future, because all Drew had known as a kid was being told what to do, then being told how he was a fuckup. So when the old man leaned on his aluminum cane and cast his opaque gaze on Drew and his bike, then asked his opinion of it and the beach, Drew figured he could get a meal or two out of it at least.

After a few chats, Drew confided to John that the cops had rousted him from his hideout under the pier. John immediately offered to let Drew stay in his apartment. Drew would have normally said no, assuming a bed would have to be shared, but John said that Drew would have his own space – a closet near the front door. He said Mitch wouldn’t mind Drew living with them. Mitch had the other bedroom, John said, and liked to keep his door closed.  

Drew walked his bike down the alley with John to the apartment, John chatting all the way about the beauty of the beach and the hideousness of the alleys. John showed Drew the closet, which was packed with bulging, split-seamed cardboard boxes, and two ten-speed bikes on flat tires. As he sized up the space, Drew did not feel any pressure from John to move in. He remarked that the closet was just big enough for him to stretch out in his sleeping bag. John joked that it was helpful that Drew was small and skinny – something that would have normally set Drew off, but coming from John, only made him smile, and when Drew told John that the closet would be okay for him, John opened his mouth with joy, clapped his hands together, and announced that he’d have Mitch set about clearing it out. Drew did not mind the clutter, mold and dust, because the closet was the most private space he’d ever had, and he knew he would feel safe in it. He told John he’d go grab his sleeping bag, which he’d stashed behind a convenience store dumpster. John pulled a ring of keys out of his pocket, slid one key off, then with theatrical flourish handed it to Drew and said, “Welcome.”

The entire apartment was sticky with layers of ancient dust, and crammed with everything John had ever owned; possessions not considered garbage yet no longer worth maintaining. The faucets shuddered when twisted open, brown water trickling weakly from them, and the drains were clogged and slimy. The kitchen appliances barely worked and reeked of rancid cooking grease. Neither John nor Mitch seemed interested in doing anything about it, mainly because they no longer noticed it. This suited Drew, who did not care about such things.

Nor did it occur to Drew to steal anything, because there became a point where Drew knew that John would give him anything. This moment came while they sat on a picnic table in the apartment parking lot where Drew was allowed to smoke. Drew found himself talking to John about his dream of becoming a fire-watch forest ranger, about the girl who broke his heart in high school, and how angry and confused he was when his mom threw him out. He told John how his mom was the kind of batshit crazy that made him barricade his bedroom door at night for fear of being assaulted in a dead sleep for the simple crime of existing. It was during that moment of sharing - and John’s inexhaustible interest and complete lack of judgment - that convinced Drew that John loved him, and would give him anything. In turn, Drew believed he would do anything for John.

But the problem with such moments is that they are often traps, not of conscious deceit, but of the false belief that love is constant and pure, and it is often impossible to imagine how terribly far love could make someone go.

Mitch did not like Drew hanging around because he knew Drew’s recklessness was bad for John, who clearly did not have much longer to live. Mitch loved John for the same reason that had drawn Drew – John was one of the few people in Mitch’s life to have ever shown kindness and generosity, and most importantly: acceptance. Mitch felt it was now his responsibility to pay John back for giving him a home. John had liver failure and a weak heart and vascular disease and feeble knees, and it was up to Mitch to get John his meds and make sure he took them in the right doses at the right times of day. He did it because John had given him a life, just as John was now doing for Drew, and while Mitch was understanding of John’s desire to help others, he was still protective of John, and like anyone in love, wanted to be considered special.  

So when he found John lying face-down on the floor of his bedroom, under a spilled pile of old fashion magazines, plastic hangers, and military history books, and when he saw the blood crusted on the carpet from the gash in John’s head from hitting the nightstand, he called the police and told them that Drew had killed John. 

The cops found Drew drunk and high at his spot under the pier, lying on the sleeping bag he had pulled from John’s closet the night before, after their fight, when he told John he was leaving. He explained to the cops that he didn’t kill John, but he did push him aside when John blocked his way from leaving, and John may have fallen, but Drew didn’t look back. He told the cops that he’d grown sick of John’s nagging him to stop huffing. When pressed why he didn’t stop, Drew sighed and admitted that he needed to get high to reconcile the downside of John’s love, the same downside that had been inflicted on him by his stepfather, which his mother blamed him for inciting; the downside that came with anyone interested in him, and what maybe compelled him to push a fragile old man a little too hard: the new ritual John introduced of having Drew sit with him and watch VCR porn, waiting for Drew’s arousal, then easing himself onto his boney knees between Drew’s legs to suck on his stiff dick, Drew squinting past the old man’s head to watch the man and woman on the T.V. having hairy 70’s sex, projecting himself as hard as he could into a situation and time that no longer existed, repulsed by what was happening to him in the moment, and feeling greater shame at his own arousal. It was an act of reciprocity John demanded but had never discussed, and it annihilated all his generosity and caring: a ritual that shamed Drew to the point of rage. Yet he did love John, so at first he told the dying old man that he was okay with it, but his getting high had to be the follow-up, so then Drew could wonder before the glue erased the confusion was why can’t people love him the way he needed them to?

The coroner could not determine the cause of John’s death. The data from pacemaker pinpointed the last beat of his heart, which was sometime after Drew had left the apartment, but the bloody gash and Drew’s confession and Mitch’s testimony were enough for the DA to charge Drew with murder, but only in the second degree because they said that while Drew intended to kill John in the moment, he had not planned it. 

Drew told everyone that he never intended to kill the man who gave him a home and showed him foreign movies. But in the end, he pled guilty because he did not want to hurt Mitch, who had lost his one true love, and Drew didn’t have the words to explain his own anger and loss. Anyway, Drew figured that when it came to such matters, in the end, someone always had to pay.