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Intak looks carefully into the toilet bowl. It's eleven in the morning and he's just woken up with his bladder full of piss and he's already met with the following view: a jellyfish of a condom floating in the yellowish waters of someone else's piss with three cigarette stubs floating around it.
It's not Intak's piss. It's not Intak's condom. It is, though, Intak's bathroom.
When Intak leaves the bathroom and enters the kitchen ten minutes later, "Sup," is the first thing Jiung says to him from where he's standing at the cooker in his pinkish towel bathrobe with a pattern of smiley cupcakes on the back and no shirt on his chest and he's smoking a cigarette and pushing something dark around a frying pan. Jiung's orange dyed hair is tousled in all directions and hickeys cover half of his neck in a way that makes it impossible not to notice.
Intak passes Jiung by on his way to the fridge. This is no big deal.
"Tough night, huh?" Jiung asks, half smiling, pushing the dark thing around. Sizzle.
In the fridge, where Intak's head now is, the carton of orange juice gets identified as empty.
Intak's head leaves the fridge. He shuts the door.
"Juice," is the first thing Intak says to Jiung this morning.
Jiung, the unmoved mover with a cigarette dangling from one corner of his mouth, he says: "First come, first drink."
So now they are staring at each other for an extended minute, stretched in time like the elastic waistband in a pair of dirty trunks, like they are trying to identify the alpha specimen and it's the final battle, but then the dark thing in the frying pan suddenly sizzles louder and a cloud of smoke rises from the cooker quickly obscuring the view of Jiung's eyes, bloodshot and with dark circles around them. That's when Intak realizes that Jiung's been living here for three months now.
"I've noticed you've been seeing Jiung a lot."
Intak attempts small talk at Friday's Sober Support where piles of fish sandwiches are stacked on a single table in the corner and it makes his encounter with Taeyang feel accidental. Court-ordered meetings is how all four of them meet on a regular basis: Intak, Jiung, Taeyang and Keeho. Condition of parole.
"Seeing is a strong word." Taeyang's eyes gauge the pile of fish sandwiches instead of looking at Intak. He reaches for one of them, touches it with his fingers, then decides otherwise and puts it back down. "We've been having sex is all." He touches another sandwich and, yet again, puts it back down. Intak has no idea what about these particular sandwiches puts Taeyang off.
He leans against the wall with his arms crossed. "Right."
Taeyang's shirt is almost see-through and the fabric is kind of shiny, around his belly button in particular. Intak tries not to think about how sexy the shape of Taeyang's shoulders is. He has no idea what Taeyang talked about today in the circle when he talked about his self-defeating thoughts and the inability to manage life problems without using. Taeyang's eyelashes looked other-worldly.
"You know how things are. When sex's good."
Intak nods like he knows. "Sure thing."
"It's like, whatever, let's do it again, you know?"
Three months ago Jiung moved in to Intak's because one of the ten points in the science-based smart recovery program was open your heart to a new person.
"You've been talking about this guy a lot," Jiung pointed out after another week's Sober Support, smoking his fourth cigarette on the way from the church. The distance between the church and home was an average of five cigarettes.
"His name's Taeyang," Intak explains.
Intak knows Jiung through Keeho and Jiung knows Taeyang through Intak. They all know each other through Sober Support.
"Taeyang," Jiung repeats. "What's his deal, huh?"
Maybe Intak is a bit drunk after these three shots he downed in the hall of Sober Support when he says, "He's, like, perfect."
Jiung whistles. "Perfect like you wanna fuck him?"
Intak wasn't even an addict before Sober Support. Now? Maybe. "Perfect like I've been thinking about him all the time. I've been fucking dreaming about the guy, man."
He's been dreaming about the guy. In the dreams Intak's been having, Taeyang pulls his hand out of Intak's hand and Intak wakes up weeping, in full sweat. Even in his dreams, which have bright pastel colors and feature church music, Intak can't score the perfect Mr Taeyang I want to spread hope to others going through similar experiences.
Jiung doesn't comment. He's not that interested in Intak's personal life and his feelings and thoughts and so on and Intak can't blame him. He lights up his fifth and that means they're almost home.
Except two months later, and there is no way to mistake it, Taeyang's voice is heard reverberating throughout the house and coming from somewhere upstairs and Intak hears it as soon as he enters the dilapidated house of his uncle who one day went hunting and then never came back and who was also Intak's only remaining relative. Taeyang's voice Intak wouldn't mistake with anyone else's. Uncle never came back and Intak walks inside the house and the voices, now two of them, grow louder.
Taeyang, somewhere up on the first floor: "Fuck. Oh, fuck, right there. Right there, right there. Fuck."
Jiung's having sex with Taeyang, the guy Intak has dreams about in which they get married and Intak cries tears of joy and kisses Taeyang over his long bony fingers for holding cigarettes in as he leans against the brick wall of the church.
Intak pushes his shoes off with his feet.
Taeyang, still on the first floor, possible location being the old bed in Intak's guest room: "Fuck me like this. Your little fuck slut."
Intak walks into the kitchen and lights a cigarette over the cooker and for a split second he has an impression that the plaster sprinkles his hands while falling off of the ceiling. That's how hard the bed frame keeps hitting the wall.
First time Intak sees Jiung is when he spreads the blinds with his fingers to look outside of Keeho's trailer. Timeline: almost one year prior. There's a guy there, standing by Keeho's broken down car, and he's in checkered pajama pants, bunny head slippers, and a tank top, and he's having a smoke while leaning against said broken car.
"There's someone on your property," Intak tells Keeho.
Just to have a general idea, Jiung looks like the kind of guy your parents tell you not to hang out with at school and years later you meet him by accident and you realize they were right. Total life fuck up. Don't talk to him, don't provoke him.
"That's Jiung," Keeho introduces him. "He's a friend of mine. Got kicked out of his old man's place and didn't have anywhere to go."
"So he's staying..."
"In the car," Keeho explains, and he's now standing beside Intak, now also pulling the blinds down to better see Jiung in the morning sunlight. They're both observing Jiung from the gap between the blinds.
Jiung brings a mug out of the car where Intak can now see are many things, among them the man's pillows and a duvet. Jiung sets an electric kettle on the roof of the car and turns it on. There's a long extension cord that starts by the front wheels of the car and ends probably inside of Keeho's trailer.
Intak has no questions.
So why is Intak inside Keeho's trailer house at seven thirty in the morning one year ago?
It started with a phone number exchanged in Sober Support and someone in the group telling Intak that yeah, this is the guy for a quickie, total sex maniac, and he's hot too, penis this many inches, height this many feet. Long story short, Intak comes into the trailer to fuck, they start groping each other, Keeho gets fully hard in a millisecond, and Intak can't get hard at all. His dick is like entirely limp despite Keeho massaging it for what feels like a full minute.
"Fuck," Intak says, removing himself from Keeho and quickly tucking his limp dick back into his dirty trunks. "This is not going to work," he says.
Keeho suggests viagra.
Intak shakes his head while pulling his t-shirt over his head. "Fuck," he says again. "This has never happened to me before." It sounds like an excuse really, and he walks one full circle around the small space of Keeho's trailer house living room.
Keeho nods his head in fake understanding. "Maybe you want to get fucked up drunk instead?"
Intak is still in shock over how he can't get hard for a hot guy like Keeho but he nods his head yes to getting fucked up drunk.
"I'll just jerk it off, alright?" Keeho says. He points at his huge hard dick. "I really wanted to fuck you. I mean, you're good looking and all."
Pause.
"Do you want me to wait outside?" Intak asks.
"Would you do it for me?"
So Intak waits outside of the guy's trailer, shaking cold and smoking while looking at the broken down car, which at the time is still empty, or so it seems, and Keeho beats his meat inside. Doesn't take long. He ends beating his meat, opens the door, welcomes Intak back in.
"Would be rude having you go all the way back. Take the couch."
So they get fucked up drunk and Intak stays overnight. Place smells like cat piss.
Months later, step eight on the recovery plan is open your heart.
"I took him," Keeho says. Where they are right now is the club with a broken neon at the front, both of them fucked up drunk. Keeho's Fridays follow a precise schedule: Sober Support, get fucked up drunk at a club, fuck a bitch or a fag. In this order. "Step eight," Keeho reminds Intak. "Open your heart or something."
"Open a heart," Intak emphasizes, fucked up drunk to the point of losing his balance, but definitely not drunk enough to agree to a new tenant. "Not a door. Definitely not my door."
"He's recovering," Keeho assures him.
At that time, all Intak knows about Jiung is that he's the weird guy from the trailer and that he rarely speaks in the circle and that he's often spaced out.
Keeho finds someone to fuck in the time Intak leaves to take a leak. He disappears, leaving Intak alone, and when he comes back, his hair is messy and shirt crumpled. Intak can't fuck anyone when he keeps looking for someone who looks exactly like Taeyang.
"Take him for a week," Keeho says. "Like a trial or something."
Intak wonders why they talk about Jiung like he's an ill-behaved pet.
A year prior, when Intak started working at the call center picking up phone calls about things that didn't work, home utility appliances like autonomous vacuum cleaners or food processors that grind and grate and shred and chop, a guy called and spoke in such slurred sentences like he was intoxicated or something.
He didn't know who else to talk to, he said. He said he didn't really want to do it, this whole suicide thing, a mouthful of pills, followed by a glass of orange juice, and that it was probably one of these cry for help type of situations. He had a soft velvet voice while crying to the phone receiver.
The guy calling Intak was Taeyang.
He said that lately, more often than before, it happened to him that he sat down and thought nothing and then thought that he wanted to die. That he sat somewhere like a sofa, or a metro bench, or a place like that, and he just completely zoned out, just thinking to himself, wow, dying would be awesome.
Intak certainly didn't have it in his instructions how to react to this type of malfunction. He was mostly telling people how to fix electronic home appliances. Is it the Supersonic Pet Cordless Vacuum Cleaner Three Thousand B you're inquiring about?
But they talked for about twenty minutes, until Taeyang decided that maybe he wasn't dying anymore. Dizziness was gone and he was kind of hungry. He didn't even feel like that big of a fuck up. He thanked Intak and said that maybe he would call him again.
Intak didn't expect him to but he did.
And then it became a regular thing.
And then couple of conversations later, Intak tells Taeyang he should come over to Sober Support.
"I like going there and I'm not even an addict myself," Intak says.
The guy, Taeyang, who's only a voice on the other end of the call, no body, no face, he laughs. "Sure."
"For real." Intak stretches in the chair, feeling his chest expand with warmth. "My public defendant's idea."
Intak's been drawing hearts on the newest models of food processors, their dough blades and adjustable slicing discs.
"But these are, like, really cool," he tries to convince Taeyang. "They tell stories of like how their families abandoned them and how they hurt someone beyond forgiveness." He repositions himself in his office chair. "But they are all recovering. Joining community, et cetera, et cetera."
Taeyang says, "That's sweet."
Intak finds himself smiling to the phone receiver. He's been holding it for so long that it got warm and the fingers of his other hand, the one holding a pen, got sweaty and stuck to the illustrations of the food processor's tomato blade serrations.
He knew it at that time already, without ever meeting Taeyang in person, that he was in love.
Back to now.
After they have sex, Jiung pisses in the bathroom that's on the other side of the wall from Intak's bedroom.
The stream is thick and strong. It hits the surface of water with such a splash that Intak can visualize with details the stray drops bouncing off the plastic toilet seat and wetting the bathroom rug.
Intak has been having trouble falling asleep lately and he walks around the house and sometimes naps in front of the tv.
Taeyang is sitting on the kitchen counter when Intak finds him there at three am. He's barefoot, four nails of his left foot painted black, and he's sitting between empty dishes and coffee mugs, right leg dangling in a way that makes Intak want to suck his toes. Instead, he walks to the fridge and brings out orange juice. It's empty. This is no big deal.
"I drank it," Taeyang admits.
Intak wonders if the two were doing drugs with the way Taeyang's pupils are blown and whites are red.
"Can I ask you something?" Taeyang asks, as if he's shy, only Intak knows that he can't be, he isn't.
Intak puts the empty orange juice carton back into the fridge, hoping that Jiung finds it in the morning and gets annoyed by it too. He nods his head. "Sure," he says.
"Do you mind if I stay here longer?"
Intak smiles in that service worker kind of way, "Nah."
"How about you do something," Intak says to Jiung one morning when they meet in the kitchen again, fridge emptied, bottle of orange juice finished, Intak hungry. The game begins anew.
"Something like what?" Jiung shakes the ashes off his cigarette into the pile of dirty dishes in the sink, which belong to no one at this point so no one washes them and it's the game now of who's going to break first and do something about the stench. There is a bunch of flies hanging around this side of the kitchen so Intak stands on the other. "There's cereal left," Jiung informs Intak.
"Thanks." Intak picks the box of cereal, intending to eat it dry. "A job maybe."
Jiung smokes, drops ashes, smokes. "What kind of job?"
That's when Intak remembers the posters at his godforsaken broken-object-needs-fixing-instruction-over-the-phone company. Something about good pay, paid sick days, medical coverage, and a photo of a smiling woman at the bottom.
Intak wants to see Jiung less at home so now he sees him more at work.
Intak's each day at work starts something like: "What can I help you with today?"
Jongseob sits beside him during the lunch break. "Is that the guy you live with?" he asks.
Intak winces at the idea of it. "He lives at my place. He's my support group project. I'm helping him get out of addiction by forming strong social bonds."
"So you're not," Jongseob makes sure, "a pair of fags?" When Intak cocks an eyebrow, Jongseob explains that that's what they've been saying at the human resources. "I just thought he wasn't really your type, you know."
From where they are sitting at one of the lunch tables, they can actually see him through the glass: Jiung is leaning against the wall as he stands over the copying machine, his eyes empty, body unmoving. He's dressed in something that resembles a suit but in a sucked, chewed and spit out kind of condition, which is strange enough a sight for Intak anyway. And he's wearing fake glasses, with thin silver frames.
"He's something," Jongseob says, and it sounds like he doesn't like Jiung so Intak agrees. "Remind me again. What's up with that... support group thing?"
Sometimes when Intak gets more ambitious, it goes more like: "Thank you for calling. This is Hwang Intak. I see you recently inquired about our Fruitmix Six Thousand Fruit and Vegetable Smoothie Pulverizer with a Grippy Handle. Is this what you're inquiring about today?"
Intak runs his tongue over the upper row of his teeth, his hand continuously stirring sugar into his coffee as his eyes don't leave Jiung's silhouette for one second. "Indecent exposure in a public park. I claimed I was drunk."
Jeongsob nods. "I remember now."
From Sober Support to the bar. They all sit on the bar stools in the following order: Taeyang, Jiung, Intak, Keeho. The party is themed, beach party theme this time around, everywhere palm trees and blue hawaii drinks with cocktail umbrellas in them. They down their shots in the following order: Keeho, Intak, Jiung, Taeyang. Today Keeho's the one paying.
"See her?" Keeho asks Intak, about five shots in, pointing with his head somewhere into the crowd like Intak has the ability of telepathically transmitting and receiving data about hot babes, and isn't actually focusing all of his remaining attention on the way Jiung may or may not be running his shoe up Taeyang's ankle, calf, as he leans towards him and whispers something Intak has no way of hearing. Intak is so focused on this fact that it feels like Jiung's shoe may just as well be moving up his own ankle, calf.
"See who?" he asks Keeho, not caring the least bit.
"The jaguar," Keeho says.
"The cougar," Intak corrects him. "You mean cougar. You're drunk."
And there she is of course, a woman of middle age, in a tight cocktail dress with a shawl around her neck, so skillfully wrapped that it doesn't obscure the view of her huge boobs, and she's sucking her drink through a plastic straw as she eyes the bar where they are sitting, winking at them. Intak looks away, surprisingly flustered.
"Jesus, Keeho."
Keeho downs another shot, then puts the glass down on the bar so loudly that it attracts the other clients' attention. He's fucking drunk. He's wearing a palm tree patterned shirt, and he unbuttons the second button from the top, now revealing a necklace that hangs off his neck. He slowly stands up from his bar stool.
"I gotta go, man," he says.
Moment later, he's gone, bar stool empty. Intak looks to his left and the other two bar stools are empty as well, Taeyang and Jiung gone like they never even were here to begin with. Thus nothing matters. Intak is stuck in this stupid loop of stupid post Sober Support outings, and he hates it and he has no idea what to do with it and he shouldn't even come to these support group meetings because he's not a freak like the rest of them sick freaks he's just made one mistake.
Some time later he comes back from the bar and drunkenly falls asleep on the living room's couch with the tv running an advertising segment about garden equipment.
He dreams about Taeyang smoking. Taeyang sitting with his legs up on Intak's kitchen segments. Taeyang leaning with his back against the brick wall of the church. Picking sandwiches from the piles. Taeyang saying: I need someone to need me to be alive, you know what I mean? And at that point, shit, Intak understood it so well. He exactly understood what was meant by these words. Intak dreamt of the time when his uncle was still alive and Intak brought him groceries and made his phone calls. Back then, on the phone, Intak said: I understand.
Now, on the living room's couch, Intak dreams about Taeyang's sweaty body riding dick while smoking, rising himself and lowering without any visible effort or care, not even looking down at Intak. When he smokes and rides dick, he's so gracious. And then Jiung comes inside of him and Taeyang cries and Intak wakes the fuck up, immediately falling off the edge of the couch.
"You want to stay covered after your shower but your towel just won't let you?"
Taeyang moans louder.
Intak collects himself from the floor and turns the volume of the infomercials up.
"Our unisex wearable towels are not sold in stores so hurry while supplies last!"
First thing about Sober Support, the leader once told Intak, is that you have to admit that you lost control. That your addiction took over your life and made it miserable. For you, but also for your relatives and friends and everyone close to you. That things have to change and they have to change now.
On Friday, after work, Jongseob approaches Intak to tell him that they're going to a karaoke bar, all the co-workers from the call center division. "Just, you know," he says to Intak, "I thought you might need some relaxation."
Intak looks at Jongseob with the cigarette in his mouth. "I need relaxation?" he asks, his voice distorted by the cigarette.
They are standing outside of the company, under the little roof where everyone smokes, only it's raining today and it's grayish outside and Intak is the only person smoking under these conditions. The roof doesn't entirely protect him from the rain and half of his face is covered with droplets and his hair is partially wet and sticking to his forehead.
"Jiung said you've been having trouble sleeping," Jongseob mentions.
Intak opens his eyes wider. "You talk to Jiung?"
"And I can tell too. You've been very on edge lately."
"I've been on edge?" In that very moment, Intak realizes that indeed admitting that something is wrong is the next step which he has to take. He has to come back home, his home, and he has to tell Jiung that this is not acceptable. His gossiping about Intak to Intak's co-workers. "I need to talk to him."
"Who?"
"Jiung."
"He's coming with us. He said you'd be coming too."
You have to admit that you are helpless, the leader once said.
And then Tuesday happens. Intak comes downstairs and he remembers about something and he opens the door to one of the unused rooms near the kitchen and what really hits him as soon as the door is opened is the complete emptiness of the room's inside. There is no furniture. No carpets. No deer antlers collection.
"What the fuck," is all Intak says.
"What the fuck," is what he repeats upon entering the kitchen where Jiung and the cigarette smoke and the bunch of flies hang around the kitchen table. Jiung's sitting behind a newspaper which Intak hasn't had the time to cancel the subscription for ever since the disappearance of his uncle three years ago.
He tears the newspaper from Jiung's hands.
"Where's the shit?" he asks.
Jiung makes a confused face and it immediately makes Intak realize that he won't let himself be treated this way. There are limits to his recovery planned goodwill.
"I asked you where all my shit is." He slams the newspaper to the kitchen floor, which is as dirty as everything else in the room because Intak won't lose this battle and he won't allow himself to be some junkie's cleaning servant. For the past three weeks, they have been using plastic plates and wooden chopsticks and the cupcakes on Jiung's pink towel bathrobe have those stupid smiles that piss the fuck out of Intak right now.
"Your shit?"
"My uncle's shit. Rooms of my uncle's shit. All the shit. What did you do with it?"
Jiung very slowly stands up from his chair, and even though part of Intak knows that he must be looking a bit crazy saying what he says, he also likes the idea that he can make Jiung freak out a little.
"I sold it," Jiung says, quite openly at that. Their conversation doesn't interrupt his smoking, like Jiung is used to talking with Intak this way. Ashes fall to the floor and neither of them pays attention any more.
"You did what."
"You don't need these things," Jiung says.
Intak blinks his eyes. "How do you know what I need or don't?"
Jiung throws the cigarette butt into the sink and wipes his hands against his towel bathrobe before putting them into the pockets of his dirty sweatpants. Once again, his chest is naked, ribcage visible. His hair looks like it hasn't been washed in the last couple of days, orange but now with dark roots and it shows just how much time has passed, and it makes Intak think of being rained on by the entrance to the company and of the pubic hair that's been blocking the drainage in the first floor's shower.
"I just think it's one of the things that needed doing, but you didn't have the balls to do it yourself."
Intak keeps blinking his eyes.
"Like me fucking Taeyang," Jiung gives another example. "Something you don't have the balls to address."
"It's because I don't need to talk about this."
"I know. I know." Jiung brings one hand out of the pocket of his sweatpants and raises it, like he's trying to calm Intak down while also doing the exact opposite. "But we both know you can't fuck him because it's not possible."
Before Intak has the time to protest, Jiung keeps talking and this may be the longest speech of his that Intak has heard until now.
"My theory is," Jiung says, "Taeyang is very much like yourself."
Is your current equipment only making a mess? Do you need a new fruit blender? Get yourself a Pulverizer Supreme Two Thousand.
"My theory is," Jiung continues, "that he has this attachment issue where he only enjoys the attention of those who do not care about him, and gets frightened by the attention of those who do."
"In other words," Jiung continues, "when he feels like you care for him, like you really do, not just out of temporary curiosity, he tries to escape."
Jiung says: "It's like being loved and cared for is what he really fears. Because he thinks something that happened to him once is going to happen again."
Intak has to put an end to this.
It comes semi-planned and half-intentional when Intak's arm shoots forward and he punches Jiung in the face with enough force to make him lose his balance and catch hold of his chair. The chair screeches against the floor. Jiung whines with pain and Intak feels happiness for the first time in a long while.
"What's that for?"
Intak knows precisely the reason. "You're friends with my friends," he says. "You come to my support group. You live in my house and you work at my job. And you're also fucking the love of my life. Forgive me if I do see an issue."
Intak says: "What else are you gonna suck out of me? You're fully lodged in my current self. What about my future? Are you gonna suck my future plans out of me? Do what I'm planning to do in the next two weeks? Two months? Steal my dreams? My vague ideas about what I'd like to do if I had any ability while I have none? Kicking me at my lowest?"
Jiung brings his forefinger to his lips like he's trying to shush Intak.
"Don't shush me," Intak yells. "Come on. Just punch me back. Kick me and spit on me. I mean, what else is there to do with me now, huh?"
When Jiung doesn't do any of the things listed, Intak ends up being the one spitting on Jiung, and when he spits, Jiung's eyes close reflexively and then he wipes the spit off his face with his hand, naturally, then looks at his hand, at Intak's spit on it, and his faces changes a certain way that Intak can't deny makes him feel a certain sensation, in the heat of the moment and because of the adrenaline of having just punched someone. It makes him weak and he steps back to lean with his both hands against the kitchen segment.
Jiung wipes his hand against the pink towel bathrobe and that's what Intak's looking at: Jiung's wiping hand, his open bathrobe, Jiung's chest.
He's so deep in this sensation and realization that when Jiung approaches him he doesn't even register it. Jiung puts both hands on each side of Intak's body, holding him against the sink, like he's kind of hugging him, pressing his body against Intak's, his heat to Intak's.
"Hey, hey," Intak says but does nothing.
Jiung shushes him again. He brings his forefinger to his lips.
"You have been on edge lately," he tells Intak. "Things have been really rough on you lately, no?"
He then uses the same hand to touch Intak through his sweatpants. The touch makes Intak hiss.
"I think you need a little help here," Jiung says.
Intak is looking to the side when Jiung puts his hand in his underwear, skin cold, fingers bony, and he wraps them rather painfully around Intak's already half-hard length.
"Fuck," is what Intak says. "Are you gonna jerk me off now?"
Jiung runs his hand through the whole length, like he's measuring Intak's response. "It should be enough," he judges.
"You're sick."
Jiung hums. He looks focused but he's not looking at Intak. He's looking outside of the window where god knows what he's seeing, probably neighbor's dog pissing. His bony fingers send a shiver along Intak's back, and then blood rushes down his abdomen. He plays with Intak's head for a moment, pressing with just enough strength to make Intak squirm with pleasurable discomfort. He uses Intak's precome to make his hand glide with more ease and he keeps jerking him off for a while, quite skillfully at that, in a way which is audible in the kitchen, and Intak squirms some more and then comes.
"I need Jiung to move out," Intak announces at next Friday's Sober Support.
Keeho barely raises his eyes off the sandwiches. "Yeah?" he says, then picks one sandwich and immediately stuffs his face with it, chewing fast, swallowing, then licking his fingers. "And how's that working?"
Intak looks at the fish sandwiches with disgust. He tried picking one up, but then decided against it and put it back down. "You brought this plague upon me. You should help me with it."
"Listen," Keeho says, mouth full of sandwich again. "You've been going through a rough patch and I get that."
"He's been living with me," Intak says. "He's nestled at my house. And I'm so sick of it." When Keeho doesn't really react, Intak blurts what needs to be considered first priority at this point in the discussion, although in a lowered voice so other support group members don't hear: "I just can't stand him fucking Taeyang in my house."
Keeho raises his eyebrows with curiosity. "And who's that?"
Intak's thoughts slow down.
"Taeyang," he repeats. He waves his hand into the vague distance of the room where he imagines Taeyang should be standing, perhaps talking with Jiung. "Jiung's been fucking him. You didn't know that?"
Keeho now frowns, processing the fact. "I thought he just fucked with you. Like a lot."
"I'm not fucking with Jiung."
Keeho just stands there, frozen with the third sandwich in between his fingers. "Uhm. Okay," he says. "I think you should talk to Jiung about it then."
"I got you your money, you asshole," Jiung says when they get back home from the church after their usual five cigarettes. "And I still think selling this shit was the best idea. So you can move the fuck on."
Intak is standing at the door, his movements and thoughts slowed down at this stage of the evening. He's wearing a worn-out tank top and an unzipped hoodie even though it's freezing at this late an hour and he's been shaking all the way here.
"I get it that it was tough. But I don't get why you keep clinging onto it," Jiung keeps talking, like all of a sudden he gives a grand fuck about Intak's life. "So something needed to be done. I'm sorry that it had to be me doing it though."
Jiung pulls the keys from the back pocket of his oversized, faded jeans, and he opens the doors to Intak's house. He sighs, walking in first and turning on the light. They are immediately hit by the wall of stench which is their home, musty, rotting, fucked up.
Intak changes the subject. "Keeho told me to talk to you about Taeyang."
"Not that again."
Intak shuts the door behind them. The lights inside the house are dim and they flicker when the door's shut.
"So you've been fucking the guy for months but I can't talk about it?"
"I've been fucking you for months, you freak."
Intak's standing there with his hands in the pockets of his unzipped hoodie, flabbergasted.
"Date a suicidal alcoholic, they said," Jiung says, "it'll be fun, they said."
Intak has no idea who they are.
Intak has no idea whose voices he's been hearing these past couple of months moaning under the not so heavy weight of Jiung's skinny body, bones and skin, shitty tattoos, moles on his lower back, birthmark on his left thigh, finely sized dick, squirming under Jiung and wiggling and tensing and coming so hard and so many times and so loudly that the noise filled the entirety of the house and plaster sprinkled the kitchen segments.
Intak asks Jiung who he's been sleeping with lately.
"You're such an asshole, you know that?" Jiung says.
Things have been malfunctioning lately way more often than before. Phone calls have been freaking Intak out. Where Intak works is the phone call center. He explains to people how they can fix their home appliances like small drinks appliances or blenders and food processors, but he can't fix his own issues. He can't sleep. He's been relapsing lately. Drinking to fall asleep and to take the edge off because he doesn't know what he's doing more often than he knows. He's trying to do step three, to socialize. Form long lasting bonds, step eight.
"That's good," the leader said in the circle last Sober Support.
"It's good that I've been relapsing?" Intak asked.
"It's good that you're talking openly about it," the leader corrected himself. Someone there, in the room with them, clapped their hands but then nobody followed so they stopped. Intak looked around, trying to find the person who clapped, scanning through all the faces present in the church. There's that bitch who always brings vodka to the meetings. The fag who sometimes sucks Keeho's dick in the church's bathroom stalls. There's Keeho. There's Jiung. There's no Taeyang though.
"I'm fucked up," Jiung says back in the kitchen. "I never said I wasn't."
He looks swallowed, chewed up and spit out. He's attractive, Intak realizes.
"I'm sorry I spit on you," Intak says all of a sudden. Open your heart or something. I've been seeing someone lately, like really seeing. It's been months now.
"It's okay," Jiung says. "I kind of liked it."
Intak follows Jiung to the kitchen where flies are galore and where he opens the window to let some of the stench out. They have cereal for dinner, some orange juice to help them swallow as well.
"I'm sorry," Intak says. "I don't know what I've been doing."