Teach Me to Know Better

5: Smoke and Fire

Frank woke up to his phone buzzing beneath his stained pillowcase. He wrestled his way out of the comforter, and his tangled mess of sheets. It was Ray. Frank answered the phone, and rolled onto his back. Staring at the ceiling as he mumbled a Good morning.

"Buzz me up." He hung up abruptly and, Frank complied. He walked through his fathers apartment hitting the buzzer. He unlocked the deadbolt, the weird slider lock, and the two other swing locks. His father was paranoid, after the stalker incident. His step monster was being stalked by her boss. Frank had gotten quite a laugh from the way the man sang to her from the fire escape two stories down. That was a riot.

Ray came in like a ninja, Frank stood by the cabinet, watching his friend close the door almost soundlessly behind him. Rays cigarette hung loosely between his lips as he turned. Giving Frank a half ass grin. Ray was in his pajamas with a bag on his shoulder. Frank made a motion for Ray to follow as he made his way back to his room. Frank safely assumed that Ray may have gotten kicked out again, or his father had a 'lady friend' over.

There was almost no point in asking. It had happened too many times to count since they had first become friends. Ray was a welcome presence to Frank considering the shit he'd dealt with earlier that night.

Maybe he would come clean. He'd just say, 'Hey Ray, I sell myself over the internet.' Or, 'Ray, I'm in the pornography business, and I let Bob suck my dick for a cut.' Even better. 'Hey Ray, I buy you cigarettes with money I make by jacking off for perverted old men on the internet.'

Instead he says, "Ray, I'm a porn star."

Ray laughed haughtily at the simple remark. It was obvious Ray didn't believe him. He would have to prove it. So Frank pulled out the lap top and opened his profile. Ray's cigarette tucked tightly between his lips almost fell when the laptop was placed in front of him.

"What the fuck Frankie? Why are you showing me this?" Ray looked at him in a confused, almost angry manner. That look of anger quickly dissipated to a small undertone.

"Someone who's been watching me knows my name. I'm scared." Ray looked up quickly gauging the fear in his best friends eyes. "All of my stuff is private. No one knows how old I am, or where I'm from. Nothing like that, but I showed my face for the first time, and some mother fucker knows me."

"How long you been at this Frankie?" Ray's expression had been drained of its former disdain, and it was now plastered with concern for his misled friend.

"A little over a year." Frank scratched at his scalp and shifted around. Ray watched him fidget nervously. "Since before I moved."

"This is really dangerous." Ray stuck the cigarette burnt down to the filter in a half drained glass of Hawaiian Punch. He then looked Frank in the face and asked him what he had been meaning to ask since he'd first met him. "Frank I know you fuck around with girls and shit, but are you, uhh."

"What are you talking about." Frank looked, at his friends short curly mess on his head bouncing slightly as he rocked back into his heels. Then it hit him sharply in the chest. Ray was questioning his slightly newish self denied sexuality. "I don't know what I am."

"You don't know. Frank, who are you pining after. Is it a girl or a guy...." Ray scratched at his fro, and stuck his hand into his jacket pockets.

"It's a guy. He doesn't like me though. He's kind of unavailable." Frank managed to make his way through the sentence with out word vomiting his teachers name across Rays Morrissey shirt.

"The last person you fucked around with?" Ray caught the terrified gaze Frank had set on the floor. Ray had an inkling of intuition when Bob caught a ride with them last month. He knew how Bob's tastes went, and Frank Fucking Iero fit the bill. "It was Bryar wasn't it?"

"Ray. It wasn't like that! He and I, well he got a cut of the money." Frank kept his face aimed at the floor, and Ray gave him an incredulous look.

"He didn't force you. Huh?"

"No, we weren't sober either though."

"I need a drink."

"Vodka is in the bottom drawer." Frank mumbled and got onto his bed. "Ray are you willing to share the bed with a seventeen year old friend who likes guys more than girls." Ray looked back onto the bed, pulling out the bottle, and tipping it back on his lips. Frank watched in a twinge of anguish. Before Ray Toro turned, and stuck his middle finger in his friends direction.

"I don't care. I'd sleep in your bed if you were a cross dressing masochist, who ate children's hearts. Mostly because you have the most comfortable bed I have ever slept in. I don't give a fuck about you man. Besides, girls aren't my favorite either." Franks stomach settled, and Ray took another swig from the bottle before he tucked it away where it had come from.

"Ray, that's the sweetest thing anyone has ever said to me."

"Shut the Fuck up man. Scoot over, it's four forty five and we have school in about three hours."

"It's your damned fault, you came here. Shattered my sexual self perception in the fifteen minutes you've been here."

"Goodnight you poor confused child." He plopped on the bed and rustled the covers over his legs, and rolled over on his side, his ass on franks knees under the covers. Frank cleared his throat and rolled onto his back. Ray obviously didn't care.

"Good morning you egotistical musically inclined genius." He replied, and threw himself back into thought.

Entertaining thoughts of his teacher, with enviously seductive eyes, and his black button up open. Laying down in a plush bed, a single hand beckoning him to join him.
Frank remembers Mr. Way wearing that shirt on Wednesday. He looked like a porcelain mannequin of himself that day. He was beautiful, he had rolled up the sleeves in art, revealing his wry, corded forearms. He had red paint splashed all over him due to an explosion of paint. He looked dangerous, and Frank loved it. He actually stood back, and watched. He thought to himself quickly, of just how Mr. Way was clueless to him watching, as he did everyday.
Tomorrow he would do the watching. Or so he thought.