Where Were You When The Lights Went Out?

Blink: Perfectly Normal

The first day of school, and homework already. It was an essay, which most of the students loathed, and a stupid essay at that. The sort of thing that teachers would use to place students in the correct English class; basic, dull, but not too hard.

Not unless you didn't want to tell people the truth, anyway.

Kid Ballatt–he hated his name, but knew people whose names were even worse–almost physically winced away from the paper. It was not a subject he wanted to talk about. It was one he remembered fondly, sure, but not one he wanted to tell his English teacher about.

He tapped his pen against his desk, thinking of how to creatively fix the truth… Especially considering his teachers would know it was a lie; he'd been with one of his classmates, who would also probably be lying, and he doubted their stories would match. He wondered what Mush was writing, and reread the essay subject.

It taunted him from the paper: Where were you when the lights went out on August 14?

He reflected on it for a long time before he began to write.

*

I remember mostly how hot it was out. Out, in, and everywhere else. I was at Mush's, since he's my best friend and all, and I remember his sister's stupid fuzzy cat kept trying to sit on my lap. It was too hot for that, and I kept shoving it off, and I remember telling his sister that if it happened again, I would wring the damn thing's neck. I wasn't serious, obviously, but I was freaking hot.

Mush told me to chill. I told him I would love to chill, but it's hard to do that when it's almost a hundred degrees out and there's no A/C. He hit me with a pillow and told me to take off my shirt if I was that hot, it wasn't like he was wearing his. But then, his family didn't even blink when they saw him wandering around with no shirt. No one does.

They don't blink with surprise, but they kind of stare, but, well, have you seen him with no shirt? Everyone stares. I stare, and I've seen it almost every day this summer. Not that I, you know, look or anything, because Mush wandering around shirtless is totally no big deal. Except that it kind of makes me feel dizzy sometimes. Is that weird? I mean, he's my best friend and all. I've never thought too much about it.

Well. Okay. That's not, strictly speaking, true. I try not to think about it, but sometimes it's hard. Because when things with my dad get bad–and they do that a lot–he's always there. Either I stay at his house for a day or two (I guess his family doesn't even notice that I'm not related to them anymore, or at least, Mush keeps telling me that) or he'll come spend the night at mine because Dad usually doesn't freak out as much when other people are around. Mush was the first person I ever really told about what goes on when Dad is in a bad mood, and he's just been the best friend I ever could have wanted.

So it's probably, you know, normal for me to sometimes think about him, right? I mean, I spend a lot of time with him, I know him better than I know anyone else does, he knows me better than anyone else does, and I totally trust him. So it's normal to think about him like that sometimes. Right?

Well, anyway. It was hot out–really fucking hot. And I was cranky, and Mush told me to lose my shirt if it would stop me from whining, so I did. And I felt kinda self conscious for a minute; I mean, his older sister was home from college for the summer, and she was in the room, and she's pretty hot.

She looks a lot like him.

But she didn't seem to care, and it was a tiny bit cooler that way, so whatever. We were flipping channels, bored out of our skulls, and Faith–his older sister–said she was going out for awhile. His parents were out with the younger sibs (he's the second oldest of five) and that left the two of us home alone. And bored.

We'd already seen everything on the good channels (we watched a lot of TV this summer, not much else to do but that and work, and who wants to go to work?) and the rest was, like, Home Decorating Reality TV and How To Fix A Fashion Disaster and shit like that, which I could care less about, but Mush likes to mock, so we ended up watching it anyway. And there was this one decorator who was so flaming, it was ridiculous.

"You think he's gay?" Mush asked.

"Dude, blind people can see him flaming."

"Ya know," Mush said, then paused, and finally finished, "not all gay guys are flamers."

"Well, duh."

And I think Mush would have said something else, but the lights went really dim, kind of brown. We waited for them to come back for a second, which they did, then waved out again. "Okay, what the hell?" Mush demanded.

"I have no idea."

"It's some kinda brownout," he finally decided. "Let's turn off everything we're not using, okay?"

Which we did. Lights in other rooms off, mostly. We went back to the decorating show, and I wondered why Mush had made that comment about gay men, and just as I had just about worked up the bravery to ask–it's a weird subject, man–the TV went off. So did the lights, the clock, and the white noise of the refrigerator in the kitchen.

"Okay, freaky."

Mush got up and went to one of the windows, and I followed. He pushed it open and stepped onto the fire escape, and we stared outside for a second: Manhattan was dark, still, and dead. For just a moment, it was totally silent. But then the people in their cars came back to life and horns started blaring like crazy, and we realized that there were no lights but hey, it was the middle of the afternoon, so it wasn't really dark, and this is the city that never sleeps. But still, those few moments were really awe inspiring.

We went back inside, and Mush pointed out that now no one in the whole city had an A/C now, which amused me probably far too much. We sat back down on the couch and tried to think of something to do. No TV, no radio, no computer, no lights even.

In other words, it was boring as all get out. We had to fall back on our conversation skills. I mean, two modern guys, sitting around, talking. Without even kicking back and drinking a few beers–which Mush hates doing at home, because he's convinced his parents will walk in and get him trouble for it, and I finally promised him I wouldn't do any more, because my dad's an alcoholic and heredity and all… Yeah, it sucks, but he's right. I hate it when he's right, by the way, but he usually is.

"So," I finally said. "What you said earlier–about gay guys not all being flamers–uh, why'd you bring it up?" I was just curious was all.

"Well, uh, Blink, it's just that I've seen you watching me with no shirt on is all."

Oh, I figured, so he thinks I'm gay. You'd think he'd know me better. I started to answer, but he kept talking.

"And it doesn't really bother me much. I mean, I probably wouldn't take off my shirt so often if you didn't look like you appreciated it. And hey, I appreciate being appreciated. If you know what I mean."

I closed my mouth, no longer sure what to say, because I was pretty sure he'd just hit on me. But he was suddenly looking really nervous.

"I'll, uh, put it on if that would make you more comfortable," he said after a pretty awkward silence. "And–look, I'm sorry I brought it up; I just had to get it off my chest is all. I mean, I–I'm not gay. Bi. Maybe. Confused mostly. But you, uh, well, it's normal to sometimes think about a guy when you spend all your time with him, right? I mean, it's nothing. Don't worry about it."

One thing about Mush is he sometimes tends to babble when he's panicked. I grinned at him. "It's definitely normal," I told him. See? Mush and me, we think alike. I had been thinking just that earlier that day.

"Oh. Okay, then. Thank God."

An then we just sat there for a minute, and finally I confessed, "I… Maybe kinda thought about you, once or twice, too. I mean, you do walk around without a shirt on a lot. A guy can't help but notice."

"Really?" He sounded pretty cheerful about that. "So you, uh, noticed?"

"Yep."

He grinned. He's got a great grin. "So it's perfectly normal to think about your best friend like that," he said.

"Yep," I agreed again.

"So, then, would it be perfectly normal to… You know… Experiment?"

"Well," I said, and considered some of the stuff they make me talk about in therapy, even when I don't want to and I have no reason to. You know, stuff like my shrink telling me that it's perfectly normal for teenage boys to not understand what they're feeling and then some psychobabble about manifesting it as anger or blaming my mother for leaving or my father for drinking or whatever, but basically what it comes down to is that, says the shrink, it's fine for someone to want to experiment, most people do it, and I shouldn't feel bad if I start to think about things like that.

I don't think he was talking about suddenly being turned on by the thought of my best friend with no shirt on, but hey, he's got a Ph.D., so I'll assume he knows what he's talking about. And if it's normal for a guy to experiment, well… "Sounds normal to me," I said aloud.

And that was when Mush leaned over and kissed me. Which startled me, and he claims I made a face, which caused him to start laughing. I think he was just nervous, personally. So me being me, I punched him in the shoulder, and he was laughing to hard to hit me back, and I responded by tackling him. I mean, we were on the couch and all, so it worked out pretty well. But that lead to me lying on top of him, our limbs kinda intertwined, and he stopped laughing real fast when I kissed him. And then he kissed me back.

We may have started groping then, or maybe we just kissed for awhile longer, I don't really remember. Time sort of lost all meaning. New York City had no power, so his family would be totally lost in the traffic gridlock, and there was nothing to do, and it's perfectly normal to experiment with your best friend.

I had always thought that life without electricity would be boring, but Mush and I kept ourselves entertained for hours. By the time his parents finally got home, we'd worn each other out; we were sort of cuddled together on their couch, dozing, and we'd had the foresight to get mostly dressed. The shirts were still off, of course, since it was hot out.

And I could swear that I heard Mrs. Meyers say something about, "It's about time, you two," but I wasn't really awake at that point. I was lost in some sort of happy afterglow, with one of Mush's arms around me, and didn't want to wake up and think about it. It's perfectly normal to think about your best friend like that, and it's perfectly normal to think that in his arms is the best, safest, happiest place in the world. I know that it's where I belong, anyway.

I guess I learned a lot when the lights went off in August–but it's not like I can write that sort of thing down.

*

Blink shot a helpless look across the room at Mush, who shrugged, and began to write. Hesitantly, Blink scrawled in his normal, terrible handwriting, When the lights went off on August 14, I was at my best friend's house.

He hesitated and glanced around the room. Mush was still writing, and he'd have given anything to see what Mush was writing. He couldn't; the only paper he could easily see from where he sat was Dutchy's, sitting next to him. He watched Dutchy pick up his pencil, pause, then break into a grin and began to write.

I spent the blackout in an elevator, Dutchy wrote.

Lucky guy, Blink mused. At least he has a story he can tell. Or so Blink assumed, until he saw the next two words.

I spent the blackout in an elevator with Specs.

And Blink knew Dutchy and Specs well enough to know exactly what that meant.

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