The Swollen Uvula

Sisiel Norton's sperm that once had a purpose

At sixteen, Arlo Norton is desperate, but not for the reasons he tells himself.

Everyone's locked down in relationships, swapping spit, tangled in each other like strands of Christmas lights that somehow work. He stands there, just one bulb, blinking stupidly, hoping someone will plug him in.

He thinks a girl will fix it. He thinks, if he gets a girl to sleep with him, he'll stop feeling like a hole in the universe. He thinks, and this, that it will make him feel less lonely. Like sex is an exorcism for teenage angst. Yeah, right.

So, Arlo drinks lightly alcoholic sodas, just enough to get a buzz, enough to say he's doing something forbidden. He puffs on flavored cigarettes because he hates the taste of tobacco but loves the idea of it. Loves the image of himself holding a cigarette, looking like some tragic, misunderstood hero in a black-and-white movie that no one will watch.

He tells his friends—those idiots—that he fucked an older lady. Yeah, a lady, not a girl. He's a man now. 

But he's lying. Arlo wouldn't know what to do with a girl if she sat on his lap and spelled it out for him. No girl even looks at him, not really. He's background noise, the hum of the fridge, unnoticed until it stops.

"Yeah, man, she's 26" he says, exhaling smoke like he's in a goddamn noir film. His friends are impressed, or maybe they're pretending. Who can tell anymore? They drink it up, just like the sodas, like they all want to believe in something that isn't true.

"We did it in her car" (he doesn't own a car) he adds, because details make the lie tastier. They all laugh, slap him on the back, call him a stud, and he grins like the idiot he is. Inside, though, he's collapsing. His lies are scaffolding, and he's terrified of heights. And the higher you climb, the harder the fall.

Arlo goes home, where the walls are thin and his parents don't care enough to listen anyway. He wonders if this is it. If this is life. A series of bad decisions and worse lies, hoping somewhere along the line he figures it out.

He thinks about the girls in his class, the ones who laugh too loud and wear too much perfume. He thinks about asking one out, but then he remembers they don't see him. They look through him, past him, like he's a ghost. He might as well be.

Arlo collapses onto the bed, staring at the ceiling. The weight of his lies presses down on him, heavy and suffocating. He told them he'd been with a woman, a real woman, twenty six, curves in all the right places, who whispered his name in the dark. But it's bullshit, all of it. He's never even kissed a girl.

But this one time, he kissed himself, through a mirror. 

His hand drifts down, slipping under the waistband of his jeans. This is all he has, this moment of stolen pleasure, this brief escape. His mind conjures up fantasies, a collage of faces and bodies, none of them real. He imagines a girl, any girl, looking at him with desire, wanting him, needing him. It's pathetic, and he knows it, but he can't stop. This is the only time he feels anything close to connection, the only time he can pretend he's not alone. He masturbates to those faceless bodies. 

He does it again and again, he works himself harder, eyes squeezed shut, biting his lip to keep quiet. It's quick, it always is, the climax ends in a rush, it leaves him empty and ashamed. He lies there, panting, the room spinning, still alone, still a virgin, still lying to everyone, including himself.

He cleans up, the ritual mechanical and numb. He feels like a machine, going through the motions. He tosses the tissues in the trash, washes his hands, avoids looking at himself in the mirror. He doesn't want to see the truth in his own eyes.

Back on the bed, he curls up, pulling the blanket over his head. He wishes he could disappear, vanish into the fabric, dissolve into nothing. He wishes for a life where he didn't have to lie, where he didn't feel like a fraud, where someone, anyone, saw him and didn't turn away.

Therefore, he drinks more soda, smokes more vanilla flavored cigarettes, tells more lies. It's all a performance. "You're such a badass" one of his friends says, and Arlo laughs. They don't know him. No one does. He's a caricature of himself, a sad clown with a nicotine habit and a hollow smile. He keeps talking about girls he's never touched, places he's never been, things he's never done. 

One day, one of his friends asks him to set them up with this mythical older lady. "She's got friends, right?" the guy says, and Arlo freezes.

"Yeah, sure" he lies, but his voice cracks. They all laugh, but he can see it—the doubt, creeping in. He's running out of time. They're starting to see through him.

Arlo goes to the bathroom, locks the door, and looks at himself in the mirror. He looks tired. Old. Sixteen going fifty. "What the fuck are you doing?" he whispers, but the mirror doesn't answer. It never does.

He lights another vanilla flavored cigarette, takes a drag, and blows smoke at his reflection. He imagines it swirling into the shape of a girl, a girl who looks at him and sees him. Really sees him. But it's just smoke, dissipating into nothing, just like his lies, just like him.

"Fuck" he mutters, and for once,
the mirror agrees.