a stone at him, kept yelling, Tag, you’re it! and then ran and got the ball again. Over and over, tag, tag, tag, tag. And finally, Cale, the larger, slower friend, picked up my baseball bat, whipped it like a tomahawk. When it knocked me back into the cold grass, I yelled, Jesus Fucking Christ! for the first time.
But now, in eighth grade, our bodies have changed. Stronger, lower voiced, we push harder, sweat more, our faces crimson. Cale plays ball, runs track. I do speech and practice saxophone. But today we toss and tumble, and when I pin Cale we both see it, can’t unsee it—that our bodies have changed, and mine has betrayed me.
9.
In eighth grade Corey Hintz grew baseballs in his arms. In swimming class I had to turn away, had to keep from fading into a daydream—how he’d wrestle cattle into the cold mud, hold them down, arms locked around their head, hot iron pressed into their velvet coat, branding them for life. A small coal in my gut told me to look away, told me that the prairie wasn’t the place for boys who liked boys—that’s what we teach rural children. To be true, move away; find a home elsewhere; move along like a turtle slowly scraping away soil to reach the river, where you belong—someplace, not here. In eighth grade the boys lifted weights, and I changed quickly in the locker room, kept my head down as they snapped towels at testicles, cackled with delight. I kept swallowing the coal even though it hurt, hoping, one day, I’d find it turned into a diamond.
10.
My bright blue socks a dead giveaway. I stop at Liquid Assets for a drink, just a drink, I tell myself. It’s a quiet night, soccer on one screen, the Twins on the other, couples whisper quietly in corners. I pull myself to the bar, and the bartender, a young woman, college-age, wearing a low-cut tank, says, Sugar, what are you drinking? I look at what’s on tap and order a beer. I break my rule, going out drinking at night, alone.
It’s maddening—surrounded by flares, metal testicles swing from hitches, t-shirts captioned Goin’ deep and pumpin’ hard or Frack that hole. My left hand quivers, I bring my beer to my mouth. Cool relief, cold safety. Something to ease the sad story of this place, Dickinson, North Dakota, the latest Boomtown USA. What the heck, I order another as my feet swing under my stool, bright blue breaks the drab décor of this room. Two men in cutoffs play billiards, remind me of The 19 in Minneapolis, though this is no bar to pick up men, no place of refuge in the storm of boys and oil and money and sex. I ask the bartender where the beer is from, Beaver Creek Brewery in Wibaux, sweetie. She likes calling me sweetie. Wibaux, Montana, a skip over the border, a place—Grandpa told me in childhood—where you could get married at sixteen. What’s the beer called? She looks up from washing glasses and I notice her eye is purple-yellow, Redheaded IPA. A redhead for a redhead, I say, and take another swig.
Two’s enough and I push back my stool, pay my tab, thank the waitress. I push open the door and a sting of diesel hits my nose. I look up at the inky blackness above and wonder about the inky blackness deep below. Where is my home going, this land on fire—and I’m off the ground, flying, just like I always wanted to do when watching Mary Poppins. I hit the stone wall, hard, take a kneecap to the brow, hear a low fag ring in my ear. I reach for my glasses, not broken, somehow, and hear the roar of an engine, the smell of burnt rubber. It’s a white pickup, that’s all I know. A white pickup on an ocean of black oil.
Boys and Oil first appeared in High Desert Journal.
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