Ship It(3)

Whatever, that’s what Google is for.

I know from experience that the school’s internet filters won’t let me access sexually explicit information, so I connect to Pine Bluff’s terrible public wifi instead. It takes forever to load my homepage, during which time I try to figure out what to search. Handjob? No…reacharound. That’s it. I knew it was a thing.

Googling gay porn reacharound leads you to a sparkling variety of sites that all seem useful to my research. I click on the first video and loud moaning comes out of the speakers.

Shit. Mute. Shit.

Ms. Wignall gives me a look over her glasses, but miraculously she goes back to shelving books. I scootch the laptop closer and examine the video on mute. Ahhh, the wrist goes that way, okay, got it.

I could stop there, but I keep watching the video a minute longer than I need to. Their faces twisted up, their muscles working, their movements syncing until they’re not two separate people anymore but one, connected, a unit. It’s mesmerizing. One of them blond, one of them dark-haired—I’m already imagining them as Smokey and Heart. Why anyone would watch porn videos rather than read fanfic is beyond me. Isn’t imagining sex better, more compelling, when it’s between two people you know and care about and feel things for, rather than these tanned, oily strangers?

Stopping the video, I open up the fic again. It’s not really about the sex. Okay, it is, but the sex is also about Smokey learning to trust another person, even if that person is a demon. And about Heart sacrificing everything he knows for the human he accidentally fell for. The sex—the thrusting, the low moans, the rain pelting down on their naked, strong bodies, washing away their pain until finally, the release—that’s all just gravy. Really, it’s about love.

When I finish the fic, I post it to my fanfic page and hit PUBLISH. Then I post a snippet and a link on my Tumblr. It belongs to the internet now. Smokey and Heart’s love, no matter how many times I write about it, always feels new and incredible and joyous. I know it’s only a matter of time before the notes start coming in—people liking, commenting, responding to my work. I would be writing these stories whether anyone read them or not, but I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t nice to know other people like what I do. Even if I don’t ever really talk to them, or have any real friends in fandom, just knowing they’re out there, feeling what I’m feeling, shipping what I’m shipping…. It feels good to not be alone, even when I’m sitting by myself in an empty library.

Or at least, I was by myself, until Andrea Garcia slides into the seat across from me, asking before I even look up, “Are you working on the assignment for Mrs. Fitz?”

I snap to attention, awaking from my post-fic buzz, and stare at Andrea, with her perfect winged eyeliner, delicate fake lashes, and exquisitely groomed thick, dark eyebrows. She’s the daughter of the couple who own the feed store downtown, so her family is basically Pine Bluff royalty. She has very nice skin and a very nice car, and she’s Kyle Cunningham’s girlfriend. There’s a million reasons why Andrea and I don’t really ever talk, but that list is a good start.

Which is why it’s super weird she’s talking to me now.

“Oh, uh, no,” I mumble as I covertly close the porn tab that was still open on my laptop.

“Well, have you finished it yet? I can’t figure out the last question.”

“No, I usually just do it right before class.”

“Okay, well, some of us aren’t that smart,” she says bitterly.

“Oh, I didn’t mean…”

“Yeah, I know, whatever,” she says, frustrated. I have this effect on people.

That’s when Kyle Cunningham saunters up and kisses Andrea obscenely. I know, I know, how can this kiss possibly be considered obscene compared to what I was just writing, but the difference is Smokey and Heart are beautiful and in love, and Kyle Cunningham is a gross popular farm kid who doesn’t deserve to share the same zip code with Andrea.

On TV, high schools never have popular farm kids, so I get the sense this isn’t a nationwide phenomenon. Maybe at other schools, popular kids play guitar or have a tattoo or listen to their parents’ vinyl or something, I don’t know. But in Pine Bluff, Idaho, the cool kids wear Carhartt work pants with chewing tobacco stuffed in the side pocket and camouflage hunting T-shirts that match their John Deere baseball hats with the brims bent all the way in half. Their shoes are always muddy because they had to, like, milk the cows that morning before they came to school or something (I don’t know because I’m not friends with them). Honestly, it sounds like a lot of work, and I’m sure it’s difficult balancing farming with high school and being popular, but I don’t feel like empathizing with them because they’ve never really made an effort with me, either.

Why don’t I have friends in Pine Bluff? Maybe they don’t like me because I’m a “city kid.” (Pine Bluff with all of its four thousand people is actually considered a city to people who live twenty miles into the country.) Or maybe it’s because I only moved here five years ago and wasn’t born and bred in Pine Bluff. But probably they don’t like me because they expect me to be obsessed with country music and elk hunting and prom instead of a dumb TV show about demons in which the two lead male characters are not yet—but totally should be—dating.

I realized a long time ago that making friends wasn’t really going to be a realistic goal, and a better mission was to keep my head down, get into a good college a long way from here, and never talk to anyone from Pine Bluff again.