Scumbag

Brian’s POV

It’d been a weird kinda week, I guess. I’d spent the weekend with Billie and the gang, having been invited there after he’d taken me home from our drive up Christie Road. I could see how Billie could like it there, I just didn’t understand why he’d ever need such isolation. He had loads of friends he hung with almost every day of the week, and even Dixie was being civil to him now that she had Tyson to swoon over. He had a very lenient mother, played music for a living, and was never short of girls wanting his number after a gig, though most of them never actually asked him but stood there all embarrassed, instead. He had every reason to be happy… so why wasn’t he?

I’d been overly quiet at Billie’s, and for once it bothered me a little. It was my natural state to be a little quiet and withdrawn, but when you were being asked if you were okay, or if you needed to go outside for some fresh air, well… then you knew you weren’t right. I might have been a little more interested in conversation had Dixie not been lying all over Tyson, who clearly didn’t mind though clearly didn’t care for her. He’d watched as she drank herself stupid and almost jumped off Billie’s roof, though I guess the rest of us were laughing at her, too. I wondered what Billie thought of her being around all the time. I didn’t keep in contact with anyone I’d ever dated though mind you, the list wasn’t awfully long, but he didn’t seem to mind her. They kept their distance, but I’d caught them laughing together on more than one occasion. She was clearly over him, which was nice, because I didn’t have to hear her bitch him out anymore. He’d been over her long before he’d fucked it all up with her. Of course he hadn’t told me this himself, but it was all too obvious to everybody but Dixie at the time.

I’d been happily sitting, listening to everyone else chatter in Billie’s lounge room, when Trè slinked past me with a painfully obvious smirk across his face. He’d been sitting with Billie most of the night, and I noticed as I looked back to where they’d been that Billie was now there alone with a blush and a dazed expression. Had he told Trè something about me? Had he told him something about me and himself? I wasn’t sure if I wanted that kind of attention.

---

It had taken a lot from me, but I’d asked if Billie wanted to come to mine the following weekend instead. I’d heard his mum mention she’d need the house and didn’t want him running around drunk whilst her friends were over, but I still wasn’t sure he’d agree to come over. He’d said yes, after a painfully long pause, but it’d since gone 7PM and his car still hadn’t pulled up.

I contemplated going straight to bed, because I didn’t want to be awake if I had to think, but my feet stopped heading in that direction as I heard someone park on the curb. I watched out the window through the lacy curtains as Billie lugged his bag and his guitar to the front door, which I opened before he knocked. I probably looked eager, but I just didn’t want my gran knowing I’d invited someone over without permission. I wasn’t sure she’d say he could stay. I showed him to my room and closed the door, happy that I was at the back of the house and my gran was probably napping, anyway.

“What’s with your guitar?” I asked, as he placed his bag by my door and took a seat on my bed. “I didn’t know you even owned an acoustic. You could have just used mine.”

“I didn’t know you played. I wanted to show you a song I was writing, because I’m still not sure about it and you… saidyoulikedmylyrics.” I smiled behind the curtain of my hair as he mumbled that last part. I did, indeed, like his lyrics… from what I’d heard of them as he screamed them over the crowd at Gilman St every week.

“Well, go on then,” I said after a while of just standing there watching him stare out my window.

“It’s called fuck off and die, and it’s about someone you know…” I listened as he played a rather quiet melody and sang a lot softer than I ever remembered, before it all went to hell at the chorus.

“You’re just a fuck.
I can’t explain it ‘cause I think you suck.
I’m taking pride,
In telling you to fuck off and die!”

I could only hope it weren’t about me. He finished up and put his guitar down as if nothing had been said, and I took a seat at the opposite end of my bed.

“Was that about Dixie?” I asked quietly, and he nodded his head.

“But, I wrote it a while ago.”

“Did you actually tell her to fuck off and die once?” Again, he nodded.

“A few times, actually. Which makes me horrible, I know, but even you must find her terribly annoying at times.”

“I’d never say ‘annoying’. ‘Wild,’ maybe,” I said. “How is she, anyway?”

“I don’t know. You talk to her more than I do. She sure seems fine.”

---

All I’d wanted to do was get some snacks that might pass for dinner, but no, I was always stopped in the hallway in this house. They always had their questions.

“Who’s car is that?”

“A friend’s.”

“It better not be a girl, Brian. Have you brought a girl over to stay in your room?”

“He’s just a friend. He’s staying the night, okay?” There was a pause before my gran spoke again.

“Don’t make too much noise.” I might have made a face at her as she turned around. Truth be told, I never got along with her, but my parents had insisted I visit before I head to London for study. Only a few measly weeks now and I’d be off, living in some share house with stained carpet and a broken toaster. I didn’t think I’d mind, though, providing my housemates were even just slightly less irritating than my family. I returned to Billie and opened a packet of crisps and sat the bowl of dip between us to share as we continued to talk about our best and worst kisses.

“So, there was another girl I’d met, just before Dix, who insisted I take her in the back of her car. Which I didn’t know was her mother’s, at the time. And I was so drunk I didn’t care what was happening, so I let her lead me back… and I fell asleep in the backseat as she started to kiss me. I remember parts of her mother screaming at her, and then nothing much more as she pushed me out onto the curb for the night. But Mike found me and took care of me. I still owe him one for that.”

“For a worst kiss ever, that’s not really all that bad.”

“Oh? Well then you tell a better story.” I thought to myself for a moment whether I wanted to share that particular story with anyone ever again, having had to share it so much back in the day, but one last time couldn’t hurt. He was watching me eagerly as he waited for me to start, and then lied back on my pillows.

“Okay well there was this one time in Sunday school years and years ago that we were learning about Heaven and Hell and the sins and all that rubbish when –”

“They let you into Sunday School?”

“My mother dressed me back then, if that’s what’s confusing you. Anyway. The boy that always sat beside me asked me if he was going to Hell, and I’d never really liked him so I gave him a kiss and told him he would be now. Everyone else was laughing at him, too. Except the teacher… I was whacked for that.”

“How is that all that bad?” I shook my head, signalling to him that the story wasn’t over.

“The following week, this kid never showed for Sunday School. And the week after. Once the church found out what happened to him, they thought it was appropriate to give me a lecture on how I was cruel, and a real bastard, really, and that it was people like me that were going to Hell.” I looked away from Billie, because I’d hate for anyone to realise that it still grieved me after so much time. “He was hit by a car, you see, and his last words to his family as he lay there on the asphalt were that he was going to Hell.” Billie didn’t have much to say after that, but he’d got up from his place on my pillows to stare at me in a funny way. I didn’t say anything, either, but I felt like leaving the room.

“Do your grandparents know you like boys?” he suddenly asked, pulling me from that unhappy place I’d so suddenly entered.

“No,” I replied. “Does your mum know?

“That you like boys?” I smiled.

“No, that you like boys.” He smiled, too.

“I dunno. I don’t think so, but she can be pretty good at reading me. She knew from the second she saw Dixie that I liked her, which was way back when I could actually recall Dixie’s real name. She had to pick us up from Gilman’s because my new drinking buddy and I had got ourselves so drunk, we couldn’t walk straight. I remember trying but Dixie would keep jumping on me or tripping me up.” He laughed. “We used to have so much fun, you know, before we started dating. I thought she’d be just another one-off kiss like the others, but it was somehow different…” I thought then as he sat staring at the wall that maybe I was just another kiss. I tried not to even think about that, at all, because the more I did the more it frustrated me that I couldn’t understand it. He’d kissed me, twice, and then there was nothing. He barely spoke to me afterwards, and he didn’t have me pinned to my bed as I hoped he might by now. But maybe I was just perverted. Maybe I was just lonely.

“I’m gonna go grab a shower, before it’s too late,” I said, and got up to leave Billie alone for a while. I could hear him asking something of me from behind, but he didn’t follow me up the hall and I was thankful for that. The water felt good as it ran down my spine, forcing all the bad things back down to my toes and out of me, leaving me with a blank mind by the time I was out and staring at myself in the mirror. It’d become somewhat of a habit as of late. I was too thin, or just too tiny in general – I wasn’t sure which. I examined my imperfections; my makeup was running down my face, and I had scars that would seemingly never fade as I’d had a few bad nights a year or so ago. That hurt to look at, I realised, and so I wrapped my towel right around me and headed back to my room to find a clean change of clothes. Billie was still there, though he was laying now and no longer looking exclusively at the walls as I walked into the room. I felt his eyes on the bare of my thighs, and blushed a little as they didn’t leave when I had to pull my underwear on beneath my towel. It had never been so hard to get dressed in front of someone before.

“Do you mind if I grab a shower?” he asked, rising from his place on my bed to stand beside me. I simply shrugged, and motioned for him to follow me out of the room. I threw a clean towel at him as he entered the hallway, which certainly caught him off guard.

“You can use whatever shampoo. And there’s the soap. There’s deodorant over here and you can put your clothes on the ledge there so they don’t get wet.” I turned around to find Billie a lot closer than I’d expected, which is when I realised his eyes were really quite pretty. I wanted to kiss him. It was all my body was focused on doing at that moment as I stopped breathing and almost lost my feet when his hand pressed hard against my chest.

“Why are we so shy?” Billie breathed, and I simply shrugged my shoulders at him. He leaned in towards me to place his lips against my cheek, then he let them wander down my neck a little. As much as I was enjoying myself, I didn’t want to get caught out. That was the last thing I’d need. Gently, I pushed Billie away from me, and left the room with a smile so he could have his shower. A part of me still felt funny about fooling around with Dixie’s ex, but a part of me didn’t see him that way. Sometimes, he was just Billie Joe. Tonight , this was all he was.