Work Text:
Click!
“-it’s on now, right? Great, cool…”
Quiet shuffling of the walkman being pushed aside and the sound of a person shifting. A CD player playing “Rain In My Heart” by Frank Sinatra buzzed in the background as they spoke.
“Today’s July, uh… I was never good with dates–20th. 1988. Like I wrote on the cassette, this is my autobiography– but like, ‘bio-gay-phy’ cause I’m a fag, get it…? Heh…”
A few seconds of silence broken by an awkward cough.
“Okay, I’m a homo, not a comic, that’s Buggy’s thing– but he was the one that told me to make a shitty pun out of it, okay?”
The person cleared their throat and audibly slapped their hands on their knees.
“Whatever. My name is Shanks, legally Figarland but I’ll kill you if you call me that. Kidding, obviously. I was born in ’63, raised in Seattle, and so was my best bud, Buggy. Calls himself ‘The Star Clown’, amazing guy. There weren’t a lot of kids our age around back then, we only ever really hung out just the two of us. Guess that’s why we were so connected at the hip back in the 70’s, heh.”
“And this kid, Buggy, coolest guy I know. Wears a red foam nose everywhere he goes, you woulda thought he was born with it, you’ll never see him without it. Apparently, he got in a crazy fight when he was just a toddler and it gave him a gnarly scar all over his nose. Or that’s what he told me, I’m pretty sure he just looked like that out the womb– point was, he never took shit for it. If someone even dared to mention it, he’d beat the crap out of ‘em. And sure, Bugs was mean as hell most of the time, but he’s always had a real soft heart. Never hung out with a funnier guy in my life either, the clown schtick was literally perfect for him.”
“I wasn’t an orphan like him or anything– my dad was a huge dick for the record– but I loved hanging out with his folks. And his dad sorta became my dad too in a sense. Well, dads, it was like a whole group of ‘em, called themselves the ‘Goldies’. But his dad dad, Roger. You couldn’t have met a more admirable and laidback guy if you tried lookin’ for him.”
“Roger travelled all over a whole lot, even brought us with him from time to time. Sure, we were probably too young for week-long rendezvous’ like that, but fuck man, it was the 70’s. At least we weren’t stabbin’ each other with rusty nails and shit, you feel me? Though Roger probably wouldn’t have stopped us if we did, he was an awesome guy but a terrible role model.”
“Like that one time he yanked us by the back of our necks and tossed us in the back of his ‘68 Buick Electra to go on a ‘roadtrip’ without telling anyone, and he drove us to South Mexico for a few days. Bugs and I rarely went to school back then, so it’s not like we missed anything crazy, but Rayleigh– basically our other dad– scolded us like crazy when we got back.”
“Yeah, but Roger, he passed in ‘78. Back then, we’d seen it coming, he’d been getting worse since late ‘76. I heard he had crazy shingles and was especially sick in the last few months of his life. At the time, the doctors didn’t have a clue about what he had, so there was no helping him, unfortunately, but looking back at it, I'm pretty sure he had aids. And that fucking sucked, you know? That whole crisis didn’t happen until years later, they didn’t even have proper treatment until last year, I think.”
“But because they couldn’t do any real treatment and stuff, the Goldies just scraped whatever cash they could together and spent it on letting dad go out with a real bang. And Roger– god, he was a fighter for sure. Even when we all knew it was just a matter of time, he still talked and acted like everything was fine. I’m sure he believed that anyway, you shoulda seen the shit he was doing that summer.”
“He couldn’t fuck around– cause of the illness, obviously– but he probably took a line for every hookup he didn’t get to do, and that was after all the other shit he was doing anyway. Loved the man, but Roger was a coked up manwhore until the day he kicked the bucket. And fuck, he was cool doing it.”
A soft chuckle and the whirring of an empty track on the CD player. Click! The track shifted to “I’m A Fool To Want You” by Frank Sinatra.
“Uhm... no, but after our dad died, Buggy and I had to fend for ourselves. The Goldies couldn’t really afford to take care of us after Roger passed, so it was kinda just the two of us for a bit. And the idea was that we were s’posed to run away together and live on our own– as terrible of an idea that was even back then. But we ended up having a real big fight and went our separate ways. We all sort of used to joke about him running off to join the circus back in the day, but it wasn’t quite as fun when it happened for real.”
“Shit sucked. And even worse, I had to live with my ‘real’ dad again because I was too broke to move away. I don’t even want to think about that fucking dickhead, I wish he died of aids instead of my dad– kidding, I’m kidding...well, not really, but I’m not trying to be some spiteful asshole, Bugs’d be mad at me. But Shammy, if you’re hearing this; fuck you, you’re a bitch for– nope, fuck, doin’ it again, I’m getting off track, sorry.”
“But yeah, I ran away from D.C. in December of ‘82. Walked a shit ton, stole a dude’s bike in Wyoming– a Suzuki 79, I think– and managed to get it to Indiana before it died on me in the middle of nowhere, ended up hitchhiking until I was in New York. Only interesting part of that story is that I was only threatened by a guy with a gun once– and it wasn’t even the guy I robbed. Really slipping from my mind though…”
“Fuck, anyway, messed around in Utica for a bit, not that anything really noteworthy happened. At least not that I remember, I couldn’t tell you what the hell I was doing for nearly 2 years– but you know the saying, if you can’t remember, it probably wasn’t that important. I was always shit at remembering dates I didn’t write down– except for that one night, August 8th ‘84, cause that’s the day I met Buggy again.”
“He was doing a performance– drag, I think it was called– in some gay bar in Downtown Albany. I only really went in there in the first place because I was already mostly drunk off my ass to be totally honest, I was never really the guy to drink for fun. What can I say, I’m a great gay but an awful fag– I-I’m getting distracted.”
The sound of the person wildly shaking their head and smacking their cheeks.
“But it was like magic, you know? You couldn’t take your eyes off him when he was in that yellow spotlight, he was like a magnet for attention when he performed. All you could do was watch him with your jaw on the floor and cheer for him when the light was turned off. And my god, you’d pray it never ever would– but he only did it like a handful of times cause he said he was too tired or something.”
“He was still absolutely gorgeous though, probably the most beautiful man in all of New York in the 80’s– and I’m not even being biased! Is there a thing for falling in love with someone at first sight even if you already know ‘em, because that’s totally what happened. You should’ve seen me, they nearly kicked me out cause I was starin’ like a creep. That’s what being lovestruck does to a man, someone could’ve punched me in the face that night and I doubt I would’ve been able to look away.”
“Now, as much as I’d like to pretend it was all sunshine’n rainbows– us reuniting, that is– Buggy wasn’t exactly pleased with me showin’ up out of nowhere with no explanations or nothing. It took a minute to get him to warm up to me again, I had to beg him like a dog just to let me stay with him, it was pathetic. Even got a collar to really make a point.”
The sound of a collar being shaken jangled loudly.
“Yeah, I still wear it all the time, it’s grown on me. You obviously can’t see it, but it has a little starshaped name tag with ‘Buggy’ engraved on it that I made when Bugs finally accepted my confession last Christmas– like that one song! Who made that– Wham! Right! Love their songs, I was real bummed when they broke up in ‘86…
“...I’m getting off track again, sorry, my mind is all over the place tonight, just thinkin’ about Bugs a whole lot… yeah, cause he died last night. Stopped breathin’ in his sleep, doctor said it must’ve been acute pneumonia or somethin’, I dunno. All I know is that he was live and well yesterday and now he ain’t.”
A moment of silence and a sniffle. The CD player was whirring an empty track.
“You know, one time, Buggy and I talked about what we wanted at our funerals and shit, like music and stuff. I honestly don’t remember what I said, it was totally something stupid, but Buggy told me he really wanted them to play Frank Sinatra at his ceremony. Personally, I never really listened to the guy aside from his Christmas-y shit, but Buggy– he was a real sucker for the romantics and that old-timey jazz.”
“See, Buggy’s voice was always really shrill and stuff, so he’d never sing songs like that himself, but every time he was wasted, he’d beg me to do it. I dunno if you can hear it through this tape, but my voice ain’t exactly like Sinatra’s…”
“...but I hate to be a heartbreaker, ‘specially to the man I consider my soulmate, so I’ve been practising, really trying to get those notes right, you know? I was going to surprise him with it on his birthday in a couple weeks. Heh, I’m sure he would’ve been real embarrassed about it too…”
“...shit, looks like the tape is starting to run out… Guess I had more to say than I thought I did, huh?”
Gentle laughter and another sniffle.
“...for the record, I love you, Buggy… I would’ve married you if we could have.”
A longer silence followed with a light chuckle and the cocking of a handgun.
“And fuck Reagan.”
Click!