Venus as a Boy

1.

I had watched him lift the dustbin from behind the toilet, dig through wads of paper before finding the small string attached to the tampon. It was wrapped in toilet paper, which he promptly ignored, before putting the entire thing in his mouth.

I stood behind his hunched form, and watched as he scored the rest of the small bin for another one. 

He turned in my direction, the string still dangling from his parted lips.

"What are you doing in here?" He had opened and closed his mouth, and the gorged cotton was visible behind his long incisors. "You should knock before entering the bathroom."

I wanted to see him do it, eat the tampon, I mean. And yes, it was disgusting. Maybe what was more so disgusting was that he had sifted through all those papers full of shit. My shit, my sister's shit, to eat it. And now it was in his mouth. 

"Yeah, I'm sorry about walking in on you like that. I just wanted to see you do it."

"You wanted to see me eat this." He points to his mouth.

"Yes. I did. I'm sorry." Dribble had made its way out of his mouth, down the side of his chin. I shifted my weight back against the door, cleared my throat. "I'll just leave you alone." 

I left the bathroom then, shutting the door quietly behind me.

2.

Venus was a friend apparently. A good friend. And I think he needed help.

First, what he needed to do was stop staring. He stared too often and too much. He stared at my sister's vagina when she entered the room, which he assured me is something he will get under control.

"You need to stop staring at her vagina. It's indecent, Venus.”

Venus responded. "When a woman moves, her pants crinkle in those areas, there's a lewd fold there. I like to look at it."

Me, again.  "I said, you need to stop staring. If she notices that you stare, how am I supposed to defend you? So, I am asking you to please stop staring."

"Ah, you worry too much."

"I am not worried. I am telling you to stop a bad habit and I expect that you listen and understand."

Now, he is lying on the bed, eyes on the pages of a flirty magazine. Venus, with his overalls full of mud. Venus with his fingers laced around the crook of his pants. Venus with his legs slightly open. He knows better than this and yet he does it anyway.

His face is flushed. "Look at this. You can tell they're fake because of their shape. Water-balloons, heh. They look like water-balloons."

"Put the magazine away."

3.

The next morning, Venus left the magazine on the table where everyone could see.

"Venus!"

I grabbed the magazine, and all I can think is rage.

"Venus!"

He doesn't try entering the bedroom when I'm this angry, but I know where he is. 

4.

I found him in the bathroom again, he sits in the corner of the room with his overalls pulled down to his stomach. His fingers were slick with red. Goops of it had stained his sleeves. The dustbin had rolled over and revealed the contents of an opened sanitary pad. Pouting and full, with its contents picked.

Sister had switched from tampons to pads during the last days of her menstrual cycle, which isn’t unusual I suppose. Venus, with his atrocious behavior and his attraction to perversion had no doubt noticed.

How long has he been in here, that pervert.

"Venus!"

He looked up. "Why are you shouting? I’m in the room with you."

"Stop leaving this out!"

"Yes, sorry sorry."

5.

My sister doesn't like being in the same room with Venus, which is understandable. I don't like being in the same room with him either.

"Venus's a weird kid isn't he?" She's finishing a bowl of Captain Crunch. An American staple, I know this because of the sugar content. It's just too much.

"He's weird. But his intentions are good." I am also finishing a bowl of Captain Crunch. I feel bad that I say these things about Venus, but he really is a strange boy.

6.

"Don't ignore me." Venus has followed me to school, although I had previously told him not to. He never listens and I hate him for it.

"You put me in a strange position." 

Venus doesn't care about anyone but himself, I realized. This is problem number two on the list. He's a constant inconvenience to everyone around him. He's a self centered turd.

"I said sorry already, don't harp on things that don't matter. We'll all die someday, shouldn't I have some fun before then? It's human nature."

"You have fun at the expense of someone's suffering. I am suffering, Venus. When you leave dirty stuff on the table, it affects me. People will think it's me. But it's not me, it's you."

I had hoped that Venus might have sensed my growing sense of desperation, if he had, he kept it to himself, because his mouth had stretched into a curious gape.

"Don't overreact."

7.

But I can't help it. Not when he's constantly doing things that drive me crazy. He likes to play a game with me, one he calls fun. It must be really funny for him, but not me.

Crouched behind the sofa, waiting for me to walk past. Leaping, flailing his arms so that I cry out and he’s running away, laughing.

 He’s been watching me behind the shower curtain, and I keep telling him that these are private moments, Venus. When I poop, that's a private matter.

“I’d like to think we’re close enough that it doesn’t matter where I am. I’m not interested in anything pervy. We both like girls, remember?”

I would like to think that these things are obvious from the beginning, that it would be obvious to anyone, a reasonable person, that it just isn’t okay to watch someone when they're taking a shit.

“Since when did you start cursing? That's elementary.”

What is he talking about? He has no room to talk. His attitude is absolutely elementary.

“It doesn’t matter what I refer to ‘it’ as, the point is that you can’t do that anymore. We need to have some barriers, and this is me establishing them. When I am in the restroom, wait outside like a reasonable person - like a decent person.”

He sat up, walked out of the room.

He was laughing.

8.

I have decided to be more direct with Venus, so we can talk about our relationship more openly. 

"I don't think I'm the one with a problem, I think that's you." Venus watches me from underneath my bed, his eyes are glittering red, which I know can mean that he wants to do something awful, or he's going to.

"Venus, you are definitely the one with a problem. Do you know what happens if you're a bad person? You go to hell. Do you know what happens when you get there? You burn."

"Hell isn't real. So stop talking about it already.” He grinned. “You know what, theoretically that would be interesting. Then that would mean heaven is real-”

"Someone like you wouldn't get in."

“A good Christian boy shouldn’t be judging others. That’s God’s job.”

“That’s not what I mean and you know it.”

9.

The bed isn't even big enough for the both of us, but Venus insisted that I share it with him. Its an obvious invasion of privacy. But he's difficult to argue with.

“You  know what?” He began.

I turned my face against the pillow, and breathed in the smell of Tide bleach. “No, it's time for bed. Right now there is no ‘You know what?’ Right now is sleep.”

“You are a bore.”

“Venus.”

“This is why you don’t have friends.”

“I do have friends. It just happens that you’re not one of them.”

“Really? You have friends? I’d like to meet them.”

“They don’t care or know about you. I would never introduce you to them.”

“What if I came - casually of course, and said ‘hello’?”

“No, Venus.”

“I’m sure they have friends just like me lurking about.” 

“No, they don’t, Venus.”

“They dooo.”

10.

I had been hiding a few things from Venus, and I had hoped he never found out about them. 

That morning, I found him crouched on the floor beside my dresser, he's sifting through my clothes. They are in a heap next to him. His black hair is pulled back behind his ears, exposing the side of his face. He’s drooling onto the collar of his shirt. He’s a chronic drooler, which isn’t remotely surprising considering that a commercial for Tampax Pearl makes him rowdy.

"What's this?” 

I want to smack him upside the head. He’s making a mess, which he knows I’ll have to clean up later. It's always this way with him. 

“This is me finding you something to wear other than that.” He gestures in my direction, it's hard not to be insulted when the only thing I’ve seen him wear are those dirty overalls.

“This is fine, trust me.”

He makes a face. “Is it though?”

11.

I will be the first to admit that I am wrong, or at least I think so. I had taken a look at the clothing Venus had selected for me and decided that I should wear them. It's not too outlandish, but it's definitely an improvement. Dark colors, he said, match my hair well. 

“You look good.”

We’re sitting on the couch, there’s another bowl of cereal between us. 

“You should put this somewhere else. It's making me cold.”

I stretched out my legs. 

12.

That secret. 

I didn’t approve of his behavior.

There's a path near the back of the school grounds, and it was a ‘mile day.’ What this means is that we were running on high energy. And he was looking at everybody and anybody with bits between their legs.

That day it was even boys.

“Venus I thought we clarified its girls we look at.” My shoelaces were untied, and after  rearranging the loops around my ankles, they seemed carefully put together.

“I am merely looking around. Just that.”

He fixed his stare at Jonah.

“Jonah is a boy.”

“Jonah is a boy.” He agreed. “He’s a boy, and that girl over there is a girl. Look at that frog. It's green. We are many things that are easily observable.”

At that moment, I would have liked to punch Venus. 

Venus is the girl in Home Ec. that brings in her own bag of Doritos. That one you hear crunching in the back of the classroom. 

Venus is that annoying crow that croons outside your window and its 5:00 am.

Venus with his stupid input, is exactly like getting your hair snagged in the the collar of your sweater.

He’s the epitome of annoying and it's no wonder he can’t seem to talk to anyone but me.

13.

The smell had come from the inside of my backpack, I hadn’t realized it came from me until Venus had pulled the zipper back and revealed the two curled pads from behind my back pocket. I turned, mortified, and watched as he pressed the unfurled wads onto the tip of his tongue. 

“What?”

The last sanitary pad was clasped in the palm of his hand. He looked pleased, now that he no longer held the capacity to care about what sort of consequences his actions held.

“You made me smell like a dirty bumhole so you can finish eating that?!” 

“It’s not a dirty asshole I made you smell like, it's your backpack. You just happen to be wearing it.”

14.

An intervention, we needed some sort of intervention.

Sister had arranged a meeting between the two of us in which she would be the mediator. Sister is level headed so she knows what she’s doing. That, and she happens to be a grown up. 

“I can’t believe him. I can’t let him near me again knowing what he did. That nasty, nasty boy.” My fingers clenched the sides of my hair, pulling on the ends. “He won’t stop and he follows me everywhere!”

Sister had closed my bedroom door, it was a precaution against Venus’s constant spying. He knows what he’s doing, he always knows how to find me, even when I don’t want him too.

“You see,” Sister locked the inside of the door, before turning her weight against it. “He can’t come in even if he wants to.”

Looking around the room, my clothes are a heap on the floor, the mattress stained from Venus’ sticky fingers, a closet with his dirty little secrets stored in the back. 

“Okay.”

Sister makes her way towards my bed, she’s got her arm hooked around the loop of her belt buckle, thinking. Thinking what?

“What exactly did Venus do today?” She began, her mouth was pursed into a thin line. Those eyes of hers are watching mine and she’s squinting underneath the rims of her glass lenses.

My eyes wandered to the small vent in the corner of the room, this vent was easy to fit into, especially if you were Venus sized.

“Remember what I said, Venus can’t come in here. I’ve locked him out.”

A Venus-sized vent, that's not good.

“He does something everyday. I can’t bear to live with him anymore, it's unbearable. Venus needs to see a therapist. He's not normal and he doesn’t leave me alone.” 

“No one is normal. People are generally weird creatures, and their bodies even more so. It's not nice to talk about him this way. I’m sure he has reasons why he… does those things.”

“I don’t know anyone besides him that does what he does.”

“What does he do, exactly?” She looked at the ceiling like she was looking at God for answers. “You’ll have to learn how to tolerate him. He won't leave you alone until he’s finished with you. Venus doesn’t mean to harm you even if he does put you in weird situations, you’ll just have to get used to his antics for the time being.”

15.

Venus slithered into my room somehow, through the vent I suppose, because when I awoke the next morning, Venus stood waiting for me with another tampon scrunched between his stained teeth. 

The smell was unbearable, and I gasped into the crook of my arm.

“Bad Venus!” I kicked the covers away from me, and proceeded to scramble away from him. 

Venus watched the spectacle with a bored expression. 

“Today let's go outside and watch the clouds.”

16.

The clouds are so beautiful, even Venus can’t find a way to make them disgusting. 

In these moments, one can say, Venus can be nice to have around. 

There are benches outside in the park. Flowers in bloom, cupping the rusting benches. Weeds poking through the sidewalk, Venus hopped from one pavement to the next. He giggles when he lands on a nest of budding flowers, those tiny ones, beneath the heels of his maryjane shoes.

The hot sun had made my underarms reek, I lifted my shirt and found that there was a wet spot underneath them. I leaned closer and examined the small hairs protruding from the pockets of these folds. 

A beetle emerged from underneath the bench, Venus stomped in its direction - 

“RAWR.”

I try and ignore Venus’ as he runs after the beetle, although the beetle doesn’t seem to care about that boy and his waving arms.

“Listen,” I began, sliding my arm over my head and taking a better look at those sprouting hairs. They curl, these hairs, not like the hair on my head at all. “Listen, there are hairs underneath my arm. What does this mean?”

Venus had succeeded in capturing the beetle’s attention. The creature had almost made its way into the grass, but Venus had blocked his path by placing his foot over its antenna. Now, it couldn’t move. 

“You choose to talk only when it's convenient for you huh?” 

“I don’t have hair underneath my armpits, see?” Venus shrugged, held his arms into the air. “It's all good on my end. You must be an alien, left here by another strange unearthly place.” He nicked the beetle up, fingernails poking its belly with his fingers. “This beetle looks tasty, shall I eat it?”

“Don’t eat the beetle, that's not nice.”

“I don’t care about nice, I care about interesting. Let's eat.”

17.

We ran around in the heat for a while, there were people outside too, but far enough away that Venus couldn’t play out his usual perversions with them. 

I bought a sandwich with me and a bag of M&M's. Venus watched me eat them, because I didn’t see a point in offering him any if he preferred to eat other more nasty things. Giving M&Ms to someone who doesn’t appreciate them is such a waste. 

“You assume I don’t like them. But I haven’t eaten them, a kinder person would give me a few to try.” 

This is Venus’ way of making me feel guilty, but I don’t feel guilty for denying him anything. 

“These are mine, I’m eating them.” 

We sat in silence for a while, this is quite surprising considering Venus has a tendency to talk when no one wants him to. But he sat with his silence. I finished eating my sandwich and M&M’s.

18.

“I thought we were going to see Jonah in the park.” Venus claimed. 

Well, it's a good thing we didn’t run into him. Imagine that, Venus, Jonah and me - a nightmare. “God didn’t want me to run into him, that's why we didn’t.” I told him. “Besides you can’t operate with other people, my sister can barely stand you.”

Venus twirled the end of his hair, eyes squinting against the dying light. “No, your sister understands me better than you might think. And Jonah, he likes to stare at you too. He’s a good looking boy, isn’t he?”

“Stop it.”

He smiled, shoulders wiggling. “Stop what?”

“You’ll make me angry if you keep this up.”

“Oh, we wouldn’t want that.” 

We walked for another few moments, Venus swinging his arms, looking coy.

I will murder Venus if he tries something funny.

19.

There were posters in the halls with promises of love, sorted in pinks and reds. The day is near, and many other students hold their Valentine’s cards to their chests and sigh. In classrooms, they steal glances at one another but I am sure that I will sit alone with my head in my hands.

“Pathetic.” Venus muttered. “Don’t just sit there, stupid.”

Its midday and Venus is aware that our teacher is talking but he interrupts regardless.

“He’s a soccer player.”

I am already aware that Jonah is a soccer player, I’ve seen him after school and he’s good at what he does. Not sure how this is relevant to the current topic, which is the earth’s rising temperature. 

Our teacher explains that it's getting hotter and hotter every year.

“You like the way he talks - the way he smiles. Don’t you?”

Nudge, nudge. 

20.

Venus had curled his fingers around his mouth, sucked on the tips of his fingernails when he saw me approaching the front door. He was out on the front steps of my house, right where the pavement meets the opening of my porch. He had ran home from school. 

“You’re so slow.” 

I walked passed him, fiddled in the sleeve of my sweater pocket before pulling out a dangling keychain. Key, lock, the door opens and I’m stepping in.

“We should go outside and play.” 

“No one says the word play anymore, we can go outside and -”

“Play.”

“No, we can go outside and hangout. Let me put my stuff away. Wait out here.”

21.

Not sure what caused Venus to become so quiet these last few days, but he no longer has the energy to mess with me. 

I placed my notebook on my desk and waited for Venus as he dragged himself out from under my bed. He stared at the ceiling of my bedroom, half of his body still covered by the bedskirt.

“Overblown drama queen.” I told him.

“Drama king,” He corrected me. “I have a penis.”

“Why are you acting like this?” Why am I testing my luck here? I don’t know, he’s never this tame. “Are you sick?”

“No.”

“What do you want then?” 

22.

Venus is drooling into his drink. From where I stand, he looks like a carp with his mouth around the lip of the cup. 

Outside, the air had become warm enough that I left my sweater tied around my waist, Venus had his socks pulled down his ankles, his overalls tied around his stomach so that hands could easily navigate the front pocket of his pants. 

He released the cup from his mouth and threw it over his head. 

“Where is he?”

I sighed in irritation. “We aren’t here to look for anybody.”

“Yeah, we are. Besides we overheard the blonde girl say that he practices here on the weekends.”

“When did you hear that?”

“We did. Yesterday.”

23.

Indeed, there he was. Jonah came walking from behind one of the big slides, his one hand clasping the underside of the soccer ball, the other resting on its side. 

He sat the soccer ball down and kicked the ball away from him. 

“I thought you said he was good at playing soccer.”

“He is. I don’t know what he’s doing at the moment.” We sat on the edge of the big tower, the one that overlooked the entirety of the playground. From here, he wouldn’t be able to see us unless he was looking up. “This is weird.”

“You mean intentionally stalking him? Not really, a little creepy maybe.”

“You wouldn’t define this as creepy because you are a creep and creeps don’t recognize that they are what they are.”

“Mm okay.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

Venus had grabbed a hold of the rail. His eyes were squinting half moons, and he had them placed on Jonah’s bobbing form. Just below us, Jonah was humming softly. 

Venus turned back to face me. “I think you like Jonah.”

“I don’t. I told you this already.”

“You're not very good at lying to yourself.”

“Don’t call me a liar!”

“Now, supposing that I do a little something.”

“What, what do you mean by something?” I felt my face burn. “Don’t you dare try anything.”

Venus had stepped in the space next to me, swinging his arm around my back before shouting. “Jonah!” 

He shoved me against the empty air, my hands went for the railing but his hands were already prying my fingers from the bars. Venus with his foot slamming my back, had managed to make me lose my balance, and I fell. 

I fell hard.