Running With Scissors_ A Memoir - Augusten Burroughs [68]
“I read it, yeah. Thanks. You said a lot of great things.” I hoped he didn’t quiz me on specifics.
“Oh, come here, you,” he said and pulled me up against him. Bookman held me so hard that sometimes I felt he’d mash my internal organs together and bruise something. It wasn’t like he was holding me so much as trying to hold onto something.
* * *
That night when the house was asleep, Bookman sneaked down to my room. I was already in bed but I wasn’t asleep because I knew he’d come. I liked it when we met at night, after everyone else went to sleep.
“Did that feel good?” he asked as we lay side by side, naked on my twin bed, bought secondhand from Hope. My own bed was in my mother’s apartment with throw pillows on it, a place where she could sit and read over a stanza. Or where I could sleep when I was staying with her.
“Yeah, that felt great,” I said. Sometimes I still couldn’t get over the fact that I didn’t have to use Playgirl magazine to jerk off with anymore. I had my own real, live, adult man pet. It felt like I was one of those lottery winners with so much money the plunger ball in the back of the toilet was made of solid gold.
It was like an extravagance.
I could say, sit like this, and he’d sit like that. Or, what if we try this? And we’d try that. He was like this fantastic, twenty-four-hour-a-day vessel available for my exploration.
“If you left me, I’d kill myself,” he said.
Except when he said things like that and I hated him again.
“No you wouldn’t,” I tried to tell him. “Don’t say that.”
“But God.” He broke down, crying softly. “It’s so true. Don’t you see, Augusten? You’re everything to me.”
Bookman was everything to me, too. But not in the same way. He was the only thing. Nobody else paid me attention like Bookman did. Nobody else told me I was smart and funny and sweet. Nobody else made me come three times in one day. But I knew I liked him, even loved him, despite the fact of him.
Despite his personality, I guess.
He was like Playgirl’s Mr. October come to life. But I think I would have been happier if the only thing that came out of his mouth was the sound of a turning page.
By morning, Bookman was still in my room.
And we were still talking about how much he loved me and needed me. I wanted to kick him out; tell him he had to leave because I had to sleep. But I couldn’t. I had to listen because, after all, it was all about me.
And then I got an idea. Maybe I could still spend quality time with him and practice for beauty school. “Can I do something to your hair?” I said.
“What do you want to do?”
I eyed the box—unopened—of Clairol Nice ’N Easy Ash Blonde that was on my bookshelf next to one of the doctor’s old stuffed owls. “Just brighten it up a little.”
He smiled. “You mean warmer like yours?” And he buried his face in my curls.
“Yeah,” I said. “Like that, sort of.”
He splayed his arms out on the bed. “I’m all yours, sir. Do with me what you may.”
“Okay, good. Get up.” I pulled him up by the arms and made him sit on the bed. “Now wait right here.” I went into the bathroom to grab some towels and then I came back in the room.
“You sure you have enough towels there, fella?” he said.
I tossed them on the bed except for one that I draped over his neck like I’d seen in one of the illustrations in Kate’s book.
I opened the box, which I had been saving for a crisis at the house, and applied the mixture to his head.
He ran his hands up and down my bare legs the entire time but I didn’t mind because I’d never colored anyone before