Instafamous Read online

  FUBSTRD: Playing along is our only chance to contain this. Sorry.

  NoahSimm: This is not gonna end well.

  There was no reply from Ben after that. Not until I was about to take the pizza out of the freezer when my phone finally buzzed again. There was a new post on the BenHynes01 account, and it must have been posted by Ben. I knew his pecker well enough to recognize it when it stared me in the face like that in all its glory. I caught myself smiling until I realized that it was now my turn. If I didn’t post my own picture, our blackmailer would not only expose us but also turn Ben into a distributor of child pornography even if, objectively, there was nothing childlike about his dick whatsoever.

  My stomach grumbled. I was hungry, but I couldn’t just make pizza now as if nothing had happened, so I went to my room and locked the door behind me. Mom wasn’t gonna be back for another two hours or so, but I even locked the bathroom door when I was home alone. Some weirdly paranoid part of me always thought about what would happen if a burglar entered our house and walked in on me with my pants down, and I suddenly realized how uncomfortable I felt with the thought of random strangers seeing me naked. But what choice did I have?

  I pulled down my pants and boxers and laid down on my bed. My phone in my hand, I looked at Ben’s dick pic while I used my other hand to work on myself. When I was ready, I pointed my phone at my privates and tapped the button. I looked at the photo and groaned. It was too dark and out of focus. Annoyed with how I felt the need to be intent on looking good in a situation like this, I turned on the flash and took another photo. That one actually looked quite nice, so I posted it before some crazy voice inside my head had the chance to talk me into changing my mind. Immediately afterward, I sent a private message to Ben.

  NoahSimm: Whatever’s gonna happen will be on you.

  He didn’t reply. I took that as a tacit admission that I was right.

  I pulled up my pants, put my phone aside, stared at the ceiling and wondered how on earth I had ended up in such a mess.

  FOUR

  The evening my mom went into labor with me, my dad took her to the hospital. Still in the car, my mom called her older sister in Boston. Excited at the prospect of meeting her nephew, my aunt spontaneously decided to fly out to the West Coast the next morning to stay with us for a few days and help my parents around the house after my birth. Mom’s labor lasted all through the night. The minute I was born, my aunt was boarding American Airlines Flight 11 at Boston’s Logan International Airport. An hour later she was blown to pieces when the plane crashed into the north tower of the World Trade Center. Needless to say, no one in my family was ever in a particularly celebratory mood whenever my birthday came around in the following years.

  Throughout my childhood I’d always been prone to melancholy and depressive episodes, often triggered by simply observing the state of the world around me and people’s response to it or, in most cases, lack thereof. Seeing images of man-made death, disease, destruction, and injustice would upset me, and seeing other people shrug these things off upset me even more. As the kid who wouldn’t laugh I became the laughing stock of my schoolmates. I never really had any friends, I only had schoolmates, and most of them thought being sensitive made me a sissy and a weirdo. No one wanted to be friends with the kid whose parents wouldn’t let him watch the evening news because it would trigger crying fits on a good day and bouts of aggression on a bad one.

  In the course of one particularly nasty week when I was in eighth grade, my parents filed for divorce, I nearly beat Austin Miller, who had been bullying me for the better part of two years, to death, and a magnitude 7.8 earthquake struck Nepal and killed over nine thousand people just like that. Nobody I knew responded to any of these events in a way that I considered compassionate or helpful, and I suffered from a major nervous breakdown. When my mom came home from work, she found me on the kitchen floor, naked, crying, my forehead bruised and bloodied. When she tried to touch me, I recoiled and my crying turned into high-pitched screaming. I had no recollection of any of this when I woke up in the hospital the next day, but when I returned home after a week, there was a basketball-sized fresh coat of paint on the kitchen wall at about the height of my head.

  Mom subsequently got me a therapist, and I was diagnosed with major depressive disorder and generalized anxiety disorder. My caring about the state of the world was declared an illness, an incurable but treatable illness, while those who didn’t give a damn about anything that I found deeply unsettling and disturbing were considered to be perfectly normal and healthy. It was just another one of life’s slaps in the face of my sense of decency, but I didn’t know how to fight back. They put me on Prozac to treat the symptoms of my so-called illness because there was nothing they could do about its causes. The world remained a shit hole, but the Prozac made me numb to it so I could continue to function in it without losing my mind. It was one of the few things I had left to lose.

  Being able to function alone doesn’t make you any friends, though, especially not if you only ever laugh about weird shit no one else is laughing about, and you always deadpan even the funniest shit you say. People go out of their way to go out of your way when you’re weird like that, and that was fine with me. I knew I wasn’t normal and I was never going to be, nor was I particularly keen on having any normal friends. I always was afraid hanging out with normal people would make my situation worse, not better.

  But that was before I got involved with Ben. Not that the way that came about made any more sense than the rest of my godforsaken life.

  I was standing in front of a urinal in the second floor bathroom at school one day, taking a leak and minding my own business, when the door opened and someone walked in and made his way to the urinal next to me. I didn’t turn to look. It’s kind of an unwritten rule that you don’t make eye contact with random strangers in public bathrooms, especially not with your pants down. That guy didn’t seem to know that, or he didn’t care. As he unzipped his pants and started peeing, I noticed from the corner of my eye that he was staring at me. I ignored him, but after a few moments he said, “Noah, right?”

  The voice sounded familiar, so I cast a brief glance at him to confirm it was Ben, then I looked straight ahead at the wall again. “Yeah, so?”

  He was still staring at me, and after another few seconds he said, “You’re gay, right?”

  I snorted and shook my head, not as an answer to his question but to express my disbelief at this blunt violation of bathroom etiquette—or any type of etiquette, really. When was it ever okay to ask random strangers about their sexual orientation? Never, that’s when, and so I chose not to dignify his question with a reply. Staring straight ahead, I increased the pressure on my bladder so I could get out of there as quickly as possible. Why did I have to have two cups of coffee before I left for school?

  Ben was still staring at me, and, even more disturbingly, he started moving his right hand in a way that was all too familiar. A tingling sensation in my lower back and my heated face were an unmistakable sign that I was on the verge of a major anxiety attack and needed to get out of there. I was just shaking off the last drops and about to tuck my junk away when I heard him whisper, “Can I suck you off?”

  I turned my head and scowled at him. My heart pounding in my chest, I said, “How about you can kiss my ass?”

  Holding my glare, he swallowed. I was waiting for him to crack up and laugh his ass off and then run off to his friends and tell them some stupid lie about how crazy Noah Simmons came on to him in the bathroom or something like that. When that didn’t happen, I realized something was off. I was no stranger to homophobic teasing and bullying, and this was unlike anything I’d ever experienced before. I looked behind me to confirm that the four stalls behind us were empty, their doors ajar. We were alone. Bullies liked to play to an audience, and more often than not they would leave you alone when no one else was around. What also struck me as weird was that under normal circumstances a homophobic bully would say,
‘Wanna suck my dick?’ or some original shit like that, accompanied by a punch-worthy smirk on their face. A bully would never ask you with a straight face if they could suck you off because it would imply more about their own sexuality than yours. It didn’t make any sense. Unless …

  His eyes still locked on mine, he flicked his head at the stalls behind us and whispered, “Come on.”

  That was when my anxiety got the better of me. I pulled up the zipper of my pants, turned around and walked out of the room, shaking my head, offended at how stupid he seemed to think I was. I got my stuff from my locker and went straight home even though I still had two classes that day. I didn’t even bother to drop by the school nurse to tell her I wasn’t feeling well. I just left.

  When I got home, I found a note from Mom on the kitchen table. It read, Lunch is in the fridge. Love, Mom. I opened the fridge and found a plastic container with rice and chicken in sweet chili sauce. I heated it up in the microwave and ate it straight out of the container. Mom would scold me if she saw me doing that and tell me to get a fricken plate from the cupboard. Even when we had KFC she would pull out the flatware. ‘Do I look like a horse?’ she would say. ‘I’m not eating out of a goddamn bucket.’

  After I had finished my lunch, I rinsed the container under the faucet and put it with the rest of the dirty dishes in the dishwasher. I tried to do as much around the house as I could. When Mom got home from her job at the supermarket at five, she didn’t have much time before she had to leave for the bowling alley where she would hand out smelly bowling shoes for three hours before she got back home and dropped dead on her bed. It was a Wednesday. On Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, Mom also had a six to eight a.m. cleaning job at a lawyer’s office. She had to work three jobs because my dad wouldn’t pay child support or alimony, which was just one more reason to hate him.

  When the dishwasher was running, I sat down at the table and rested the side of my head on my folded arms on the table. I closed my eyes and tried not to think about anything. Once again, I failed. It was impossible not to think about anything. Somehow, from some corner of my subconscious, some stupid thought would always sneak up on me and punch me in the face and shout, “Fucking deal with me!” And then I had to deal with it because if I didn’t, my head would explode.

  Today’s thought that wouldn’t leave me in peace was the image of Ben standing next to me and asking with a straight face if he could perform lewd acts on me in a high school bathroom. It didn’t seem to make any sense whatsoever. Or did it? If it was meant as some cruel joke, the joke would have been on him if I’d said yes. If he wanted to walk around and tell people crazy Noah Simmons came on to him in the bathroom, he could have just done it without ever even talking to me first. There were no witnesses, and he was Mr. Goody Two-shoes. No one would take crazy Noah’s word over his. He knew that just as well as I did.

  So what if it hadn’t been a joke? What if Ben was actually gay? It wasn’t completely inconceivable. He’d never had a girlfriend, as far as I knew, and even if he had, it wouldn’t mean a whole lot. Some guys need a little longer to figure themselves out. Ben didn’t display any on the obvious signs ascribed to gay people. He wasn’t particularly effeminate or fabulous or into musical theater. Then again, neither was I. Not every gay person was a walking cliché.

  The longer I thought about it, the more I hated myself for not taking him up on his offer because if I was being honest, I could imagine worse things than Benson Hynes going down on me. He was pretty darn attractive with his wavy brown hair and hazel eyes, and I’m not gonna deny that his image occasionally flashed up before my inner eye when I was touching myself under the shower. The main reason I’d never seriously considered him boyfriend material was because I’d never seriously considered anyone boyfriend material. Who would ever want a crazy weirdo like me for a boyfriend anyway?

  My phone buzzed in my pocket. I lifted my head off my numb arms, pulled the phone out of my pocket and woke it to a text message from Jordan: U ok?

  We had exchanged nods in the hallway before lunch, and we were supposed to have chemistry class together after. When I didn’t show up he must have got worried. It was kind of sweet, so I texted back, Yeah.

  A minute later, he replied, All right, and that was that. Most of our conversations were short and uncomplicated like that.

  After taking out the trash and unloading the dishwasher, I took a long, hot shower, masturbating as my thoughts kept circling back to Ben’s indecent proposal and the nagging question what if …?

  * * *

  I got up early the next morning and fixed breakfast for Mom and myself. As the coffee was brewing, I took a shower. I was tempted to masturbate again, like every morning, but this time I chose not to. I didn’t want to wear myself out because deep down inside I was secretly hoping I was getting another chance with Ben.

  “That was quick,” Mom said as I walked out of the bathroom and joined her for breakfast.

  I blushed. She probably knew why I took fifteen-minute showers every morning, but I didn’t bother to come up with some bullshit excuse about running late for school. Mom wasn’t stupid, and she knew I couldn’t care less if I was late for school, so I just shrugged.

  “Are you all right?” she asked as I sat down and poured me some coffee.

  “Sure,” I said.

  She sighed as she scrolled through her phone. “I got another email from your school.” She looked at me. “They say you didn’t show up for the last two periods yesterday.”

  “I wasn’t feeling well.”

  “Noah, honey, when you skip class, at least go to the school nurse and tell her you have an anxiety attack or something.”

  I nodded, avoiding her gaze. “Sorry, mom.”

  “I’m getting enough spam mails as it is, you know?” she said and we both chuckled. Then she turned serious and looked at me. I could tell she was tempted to ask me if I really was okay or if there was something I wanted to talk about or if I had taken my Prozac. Those were the questions that were on her mind every single day, and more often than not she would ask them. If my replies weren’t convincing, she would continue to pry until I blew up in her face and told her to leave me the fuck alone. On other days she knew better and avoided the confrontation.

  After breakfast I put on my favorite dark-gray hoodie, kissed Mom good-bye and left for school. When I passed Jordan’s house, the front door opened and he stepped out, meeting me on the sidewalk. He did that every morning. I used to think of this as some kind of freak coincidence. I left home at the exact same minute every morning, and I walked to school at the exact same speed. If Jordan was as obsessive-compulsive as I was, and I had no reason to think he wasn’t, then of course we’d run into each other at the same time each morning. Then one day I accidentally poured orange juice all over my T-shirt and pants during breakfast. I had to get changed, so I left home five minutes late. But when I came by Jordan’s house, the front door opened and he stepped outside all the same. I never mentioned it, because he’d never admit to it anyway, but it was obvious he was standing by the window every morning, waiting for me to come walking down the street before he left the house.

  “Hey,” I said as he joined me on the sidewalk.

  “Hey.”

  We walked in silence for a while. The thing I liked about Jordan was how he somehow never made the silence between us feel awkward. Most people couldn’t deal with awkward silence, so they’d rather strike up pointless conversations the world didn’t need and that usually ended up being even more awkward than the silence they were meant to avoid. Jordan never did that. Often times our conversations were limited to ‘See ya tomorrow’ as we parted ways after school. Sometimes we only fist-bumped without saying a word. But sometimes, when we were both in the mood for it, we talked.

  “Sorry for being such a stalker yesterday,” he said after we’d walked a couple of hundred feet. “I was just worried is all.”

  “It’s okay,” I replied. “Something weird freaked me ou
t and I got an anxiety attack, so I went home early.”

  He looked at me when I mentioned ‘something weird’ but he didn’t pry. I knew he wouldn’t, but I wondered if he knew that if he did, I’d be likely to spill the beans in no time.

  We made it to school without another word. “Later,” he said as we entered the building and he turned to the left.

  “See ya,” I said and walked down the hallway to the right.

  I didn’t see Ben until after the second period. I was walking down the hallway on my way to my next class when I saw him, shielded by his entourage. I usually kept my eyes on the floor when I walked the school halls, trying to avoid eye contact with people, but when I saw Ben that day I kept my gaze locked on him, trying to catch his eye. Ben was busy talking to his friends, all of them at once it seemed, and I wondered how he could do that, how anyone could do that, distributing their attention between half a dozen people without remotely doing any of them justice?

  When they were about ten feet away from me, I stopped. Some sophomore bumped into me from behind and cussed me out for holding up traffic, but I didn’t even care because Ben had finally noticed me. Our eyes locked for the briefest of moments, and I could tell that if it wouldn’t look so weird he’d turn around and run just so he didn’t have to walk past me. But then Troy Bostick put his hand on Ben’s shoulder and said something to him, so Ben averted his gaze from me and continued his animated, superficial conversation. I turned, looking at him as he walked past me and pretended I didn’t even exist even when Tyler Hicks, another one of his so-called friends, jostled me with his shoulder and said, “Watch it, faggot,” and the rest of them laughed. When they reached the corner and took a right turn down the other hallway, Ben threw a furtive glance back at me, but when he saw me still staring at him, he quickly looked away and disappeared behind the corner.