Xerxes is not ugly, though. He could be, but his eyes go through your head and bewitch your brain. His hair is sandy brownish, several shades lighter than his stubble, and he has those bits of hair that never sit right. He has zits, and flat, weird lips that are mostly covered by his somewhat profuse stubble.
These are his ugly points. His beauty points are mostly his eyes, which are yellow and green and brown, and his smile, sometimes. Sometimes Xerxes�s smile makes you feel like you are wearing a tiara and winning the World Cup. Sometimes you feel like you�re selling used condoms to Kaiser Wilhelm in a backstreet of Detroit. Sometimes his smile is creepily inviting, as though he�s going to do one of these things and he needs your help.
A few years ago, he and Allison set fire to this old cabin in her backyard. We used to play House there when we were little and hung out�we called it play dates back then, or at least our mothers did. It was small and painted a brownish-gross color. The windowsills were hunter green, and the roof had grey shingles that were once black. I think her grandfather built it.
They told me all kinds of things about the fire�described its jewel tones, the crackling noises and how, for one thrilling moment, they thought they might burn down the whole forest. Someone told me that they hooked up afterwards, but I don�t know anything.
Alison does this sort of thing often. The boys change, and lots of them she doesn�t even bother to tell me about, but things come back eventually. I sometimes mind, but other times I don�t�other times I cheer her on. I have my boys, too. Not streams of them like Alison, but small spurts like dribbles of rain. There was Randy, who was sweet and funny and dumb, and Glen, who was nice and smart and punishingly uncool. He made chain mail in his spare time; for our two-month anniversary, at which I steeled myself to have sex with him, he gave me a pair of chain mail panties. I didn�t know what to do with them, as he was promptly dumped, so I just threw them out in the Dumpster behind my cousin�s favorite Chinese place. Must have given the garbage men quite a surprise�but really, what do you do with a thing like that? Donate it to Goodwill?
After Glen, well, there was Tim. Tim and I--actually, if I am going to be honest it starts with Alison and Tim. She kind of acted like he was a possession, though she always said she'd never use Tim that way. They'd been together for years, but she never let him so much as hold her hand. Tim.
Tim is tall, brawny, and typical in every aspect of the ideal American male. He is among a dying breed: barely even that, because he doesn't play football or get D's. Not even charismatic, Tim. He is liked for what he appears to be, and the fact that he isn't is routinely ignored by everyone, even me.
It didn't feel right, not to me. I kept calling our weird two months "an affair" in my head, because that's what it felt like. It felt illicit and weird to not tell Alison. Despite the thousands upon thousands of boys that she had not felt obligated to disclose to me (for various reasons, the sum of which only grew creepy after she dated my cousin) Tim was different.
Alison tends to hang on him. Platonically, of course, but still. She'll play with his earlobes like a kitten, or stick her hands in his pockets for gum. He told me once that it was one of the reasons he hated her.
"Hated?" I asked. "Really?"
He seemed mildly surprised that I was surprised. "Oh yes," he said. "I've hated her for a while."
I digested this. "Since when?"
"Oh, I don't know. Two years?"
Tim is a brilliant actor. This is the first thing I learned from him in that time span, that brilliantly odd and defiling time span. He doesn't seem to have realized that fact yet, but I am in no place to push him.
We liked to sit on my roof a lot, at night, after I told my mother that he had left. The shingles were usually warm from the sun all day, and it was comfortable and nice. We never touched each other, though; too scared to. We would just sit, and talk about our days (about Alison), our parents (about Alison), our concerns and our petty forgivenesses, our prides and prejudices (about Alison) and about Alison. I felt like every time we mentioned her, though, the air got stiff. She hovered there, a metaphoric ghost chastising us for something. For this: for enjoying ourselves. She reminded me of Lewis Carroll's Queen of Hearts. She eats people and plays croquet with their spines.