1yulSVC

Stefen Styrsky
“Ian, you’re going to hurt yourself.”
He makes a fart noise with his lips. “Hardly. How bombed was I at
the championship” he says.
“I think everyone was surprised you could walk,” Seth says.
“And I went on to what” He wags a finger at Seth. “Not lose, but
what”
Seth has never seen Ian from this vantage. His legs are piled beneath
him, forgotten, and he clings upright to Seth’s calf.
“I’ll tell you,” Ian says. “I went on to win three straight.”
“You need to get a hold of yourself,” Seth says.
Ian cups his crotch and laughs. “All I need is a bump,” he says. “A
little crystal fixes anything.”
“You used at the championship” Seth asks. He’d no idea Ian had started
that far back. This should trouble him, but instead Seth notices Ian’s
mouth is at just the right level. It would be so easy to unzip his pants.
A friend on the edge and all he wants is a blowjob. Seth considers
stabbing the scissors into his thigh.
“Give me a few minutes,” he says.
He puts the newspaper clipping in a manila folder where he keeps
other items that form a random catalog of his life: immunization records,
a U.S. savings bond, his mother’s obituary.
For once Ian buys drinks. During the third round of vodka-cranberries,
his eyelids start to droop and then his head hangs forward.
He shakes himself awake and says he has to see a friend in the restroom.
When Ian returns, sweat beads his forehead, a leer exposes teeth.
“Tina,” he says. “The queen of drugs.”
He is such a wreck, Seth thinks. He’ll never make it at this rate. Years
later, when Seth remembers this night, he realizes it was one of the few
times he knew what came next.
4.
Seth and his mom hug goodbye at the nurse’s station. He reels, suddenly
aware he towers over the bony, trembling woman in his arms. She was
never tall. His height comes from his dad. But even when he outgrew his
mom, Seth still always believed he was shorter.
The floor seems far away, his head a balloon near the ceiling. His
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