Monoceros
a novel by Suzette Mayr
Coach House Books Toronto
copyright © Suzette Mayr, 2011
first edition
This epub edition published in 2011. Electronic ISBN 978 1 77056 278 3.
Published with the generous assistance of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council. Coach House Books also acknowledges the support of the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund and the Government of Ontario through the Ontario Book Publishing Tax Credit.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA CATALOGUING IN PUBLICATION
Mayr, Suzette
Monoceros / Suzette Mayr.
ISBN 978-1-55245-241-7
I.Title.
PS8576.A9M64 2011 C813'.54 C2011-901015-1
For Tonya Callaghan, and in memory of D. S. and others like him
My skin presses your old outline.
It is hot and dry inside.
— Maxine Kumin, ‘How It Is’
Make a hawk a dove,
Stop a war with love,
Make a liar tell the truth.
— Theme from Wonder Woman
Monday
The End
Because u r a fag is scrawled in black Jiffy marker across his locker. Because after school last Thursday, the girlfriend of the guy he loves hurled frozen dog shit at him, and her friends frisbeed his skateboard into the river. Even though he stomped and cracked through the ice shelving the banks, waded in to rescue it—after the shouting and shoving, they’re stronger than they look, all those girls with their cello- and violin-playing fingers, yanking him back by handfuls of coat, handfuls of hair, hooking with their elbows and digging with their fingernails as he scrambled after his skateboard — the banks too slippery and shattered with ice, the current too swift, the water too cold and deep and brown. Freezing river water up to his chest, the water and ice shards wicking into his armpits, scratching his heart. His black coat wet and sucking him down into the current. His skateboard buried in the river.
Because the Tuesday before that horrible Thursday, the guy he loves gave him a kiss so electric electrons shot into his penis, his toes, it was like he discovered Planet X, and he ejaculated into his pants, luckily they were black, luckily it was dark outside, luckily when he got home his mother was squealing into the phone about how she wanted to replace the new stone kitchen counter with a newer, stonier kitchen counter, and his father’s face flickered blue before the TV, mouth open and tongue like a leftover slice of roast beef drying out with snoring, his arm triangled behind his head.
Because in a text the girlfriend of the guy he loves said, we’re going 2 kill you. Because she knew he lived at 2279 Moth Hill Crescent SW; knew that when he wasn’t in school he was playing World of Warcraft or the faggy JRPG Divinity XII with his imaginary, online, why-not-just-buy-a-blow-up-doll loser friends; knew Monday nights he watched his favourite TV show, Sector Six; knew that every Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday, like a wobbly-assed soccer mom trapped in a dead marriage, he ordered a large iced cappuccino from the drive-thru at the Tim Hortons on 12th Avenue; knew that anytime he could, weekends and weekdays, nighttime, daytime, he’d yank it in his cubby-hole bedroom, splattering himself like the devient he was because he was a loser with no friends n thats Y u deserve 2 di u Fkng fag cocksucka fuckface royal sht eater. In the text, she has almost all of his days right, except for two things she’ll never know: 1. he’s not watching Sector Six — they’re all reruns in February, and 2. one or two pockets of time he’s on secret dates hooking up with her boyfriend when she and her foot soldiers have their junior serial-killer cadet training classes. Lucky him. And the spelling is deviAnt, not deviEnt. Though it still means he’s a dead boy.
Because that last glorious Tuesday, Ginger, the guy he loves, met him at their special place in the cemetery, halfway between their houses. Their breaths misted in the cold air, little white ghosts dissipating in the light of the tall lamps that lined the graveyard, the ache evaporating when they finally touched, their lips colliding, eating, so much time had drained away since they last met. The dead boy pulled away, burrowed into the front of his shirt and brought out a heart-shaped locket in a pool of gold chain, the dead boy smiling so hard his face nearly cracked heart-like in two, the metal heart a hot star in his icy hand.
— I’m wearing it this time, said the dead boy. —See? I haven’t lost it.
— You lose it and my granny’s ghost will haunt you forever, said Ginger, and he laid a hand overtop the locket, over the dead boy’s hand, pushing against the dead boy’s chest. Kissed him again, bit the dead boy’s bottom lip. Ginger wearing layers, a blue sweater on top of a striped T-shirt on top of a long-sleeved white shirt; all the layers still showing off his flat, gorgeous abs, the smooth mounds of his pecs. The soon-to-be-dead boy, smiling, clicked open the heart, snap.
—When will you give me your picture for it? asked the dead boy.
— You crazy? asked Ginger, his eyes darting over the graves, his mouth blowing on his cold hands, on the dead boy’s. —What if you lose it? Anyways, you don’t need a picture, we see each other in the halls. But see the rose engraved on the front? It’s red. Red means love.
— No it’s not, said the dead boy. —The heart’s the same gold metal as the chain. It’s red because you say it’s red? Are you on crack? The dead boy laughed, his voice erupting in the marble and granite forest.
— Yeah, it’s red. I am telling you it’s red.
— So love is red, said the dead boy. —Then why can’t you red me at school?
— That’s stupid, said Ginger.
Layers peeled and discarded, Ginger’s and the dead boy’s lips and tongues and bodies fitting puzzle piece into puzzle piece, skins moulted in the dead grass, the gold locket pressing skin into skin.
The dead boy and Ginger fumbled their clothes back on in the dark, chilled their bodies dizzy as newborn kittens, Ginger hurrying into his jacket, the dead boy pulling on Ginger’s sweater, then his own long coat, the smell of Ginger knitted to his skin.
Now Monday. Because today, nearly a week since that starlit Tuesday, the dead boy doesn’t want to leave his house because Ginger will still be cold to him like he always is in the days right after hooking up in the cemetery, because he doesn’t want to leave his house in case today is the day the girlfriend and her hive finally kill him. His mother gnaws at him with her mandibles to hurry up, —The sun doesn’t beam out of your bum even though you seem to think so, she says, and she gulps a spoonful of bran flakes.
He hates the way his mother says bum like he’s a kid, like he doesn’t know what you can use it for. He crunches his cereal, one sugary shamrock, one star, one diamond, one Lucky Charm at a time, and listens to his parents drink their orange juice, their swallows loud and revolting, watches his mother