A Pool Party in 1994

When the boy’s mother told him to at last get dressed for the pool party, what he heard was: son, revel in yourself because everything in this life is permissible.

Beyond the pool, he found the boys gathered around the air conditioner’s metal cage, handing each other things to drop in its obedient fan blades. They fed it a sack of soft, rotten fruit, one by one, then a toad that just exploded all over the place. The boys slapped the brass of each other’s backs, their stomachs wet and flat and tight from laughter. Splashy toad blood determined their ab lines, or maybe that was all in his head.

The girls were somewhere else. They were high above. They were in the house, frittering over the boys from the balconette. One said: look at how flat that boy’s stomach is. They shuttled the boys into Edwardian bathrooms and cleaned them with linen rags, leaving pink florets gyrating in clawfoot tubs.

Cockled, he walked through the house and out the back. The road ahead was pointed and conical, like he was being pulled toward the tip by magic, or even falling into it. A portalic funnel bound home, or whatever.

Aside, he felt a throbbing again — down in his darkness.

And he can’t believe it.