Roux and I sit in a hotel room together. Doug is gone, having left to speak to Gaz. (Gaz is the guy who owns this place.)
The room is just as garish as the exterior surfaces of the building. The covers and pillowcases are mismatched; the TV is boxy and old-fashioned; the painting above the bed seems to watch us with weeping eyes and smudged clown grease paint makeup. All of it is saturated and eyes-straining. There are oil, watercolor, and multimedia renditions of clowns everywhere. Even the lamp on the bedside table is shaped like a clown. The foaming soap dispenser on the sink is just as bad.
The room is silent before I break it open wide with the pickaxe of my words.
"Do you think any of this is... weird?" I ask about twenty minutes after we got to our room. Roux and I are on our backs on opposite sides of the bed, with our heads nearly touching. My legs hang over the side; my head touches the middle.
I struggle to get the words out as I look over at Roux. "Like... I don't know how to put it into words, but this feels like... Like, it's like my whole heart is stuck in a liminal space or something."
"Um... No. I'm just kind of here." Roux raises their head and readjusts the hair under it. With their hands folded on their chest in a corpse-like pose, they continue, "I'm going to be honest: I have no idea what the fuck is happening. We woke up this morning, you had horns on your head, and then you found your dad? It's all just... It's a little weird, I guess. It's moving a little fast."
"Yeah, I guess." I look away from them, back up at the popcorn ceiling. "I'm glad you're here."
"Sure." They don't sound convinced. I don't know what to say to that.
"It's just... God, what is happening to me?" I lament, directing my question both at Roux and at no one in particular.
There's another long moment of silence before Roux heaves themself off the bed and stands next to it, almost looming over me. I look up at them and they lock eyes with me. They aren't pleased. Their lips, devoid of any lip balm or normal moisture, are set in a firm scowl.
"Are you okay, Roux?"
"Just. Stop. Stop, please, Ike. I don't want to talk about this. I've had enough of thinking about this right now. Can we just see how the rest of this plays out?" Roux looks away from me. Any moment of raw tenderness between us, any moment of pure communication, is gone. It's like a porcelain clown that has been shattered by a pickaxe. Roux breathes in deep through their nose and, still looking at the loud balloon-patterned wallpaper, says, "I'm going to take a shower. Then I'm going to bed. You do whatever or... whatever you want, or something. I don't give a shit."
"I... Okay." I try to keep my heart from splitting in two. "I might go down to the pool."
"Cool. I don't really care right now. Stay safe, though." Their voice reflects all that anger and sentiment. It's all apathy and no compassion. It's all barely-restrained nothingness and no rage, sorrow, love, or heartbreak.
I'm feeling all of those things, though. They're like a storm in me, uncontrollable and undeniable. I can't calm myself down.
Soon enough, Roux has locked themself in the bathroom with the shower on and the lights off and I am alone in this stupid clown room with a thousand plastic painted eyes on me. They have always showered that way. I'm sure there's some deep underlying reason for it, but I don't feel like coming up with one.
I have never been particularly prudish. Maybe that's how I manage to undress and get into my swimsuit with all this stupid bullshit on my mind. The air is cold against my skin, causing goosebumps to pop up all over me, and then I'm standing in a yellow gingham check-patterned one-piece bathing suit that I didn't pack for myself. Roux is the one who packed it. When we stopped at the house, they took over for me and did most of my packing. All I had to do was get my toothbrush and grab another bottle of ibuprofen that I had stashed in my desk, just in case. Roux has always been more responsible than me. I don't know what I'm going to do when I'm not around them all the time.
Before I can feel more guilty than I already do at leaving Roux behind and causing them some amount of pain with all of the bullshit I have started, I roll my phone and room key up in a towel and leave the room.
The hallway is disconcertingly empty. It seems to stretch on infinitely in both ways. The carpet is an endless pattern of hexagons and lines, like that of the Overlook Hotel. The colors are vivid and make my eyes want to bleed.
As far as I know, we're the only ones staying here tonight. Doug is still at his little rendezvous with the owner of this place. Gazgaroz is actually a pretty okay guy, except for the fact that he dresses like a ringleader and talks like a stereotypical nerd. I expected none of that from a literal demon but, hey, my entire world has been crumbling lately. I only saw him for a few seconds, when he handed the room keys to Roux and dragged my dad off to some closet.
I stand in the elevator by myself, watching the little red numbers tick down from four to one. It lets me out in the lobby, which is just as garish and vacant as everything else in this place. I follow the arrows and signs to the pool, still feeling weird and numb. What's wrong with me? Why am I falling to pieces like this? There's no explanation for my internal melodrama.
I mull it over as I keep walking. The pool is indoors. It's surrounded by windows. Even at night, the water is a placid shade of blue-green. The perimeter is marked by white tiles;. The walls are lined with plastic lounging chairs. I set my towel and its contents on a chair that's tucked into a corner. Trying to ignore the hand-stitched, Raggedy Andy-style clown doll watching me from a deck chair by the door, I turn toward the water and set to walking down into it.
The chlorinated water is cold around my legs as I shiver my way down the tiled steps. I dunk my head under the water and open my eyes in the chlorine. Toxic-yellow hair swims above and around me. For a moment, the world is tranquil and the malaise inside me makes sense. From here, the world seems peaceful. The colors all swim and warp, bleeding together, reflected and refracted by the ripples in the water around me.
Then I bring my head back up out of the water, and the moment is over. The world is wet and loud. I'm snapped back to reality almost immediately. I make the decision then and there to float on my back, with my legs dangling in the deep end and my mouth just above the water. It's easier to stay down there, to let it encompass me, to let it fill my ears until I can no longer recognize myself or my supposed sins.
I know why I'm being so melodramatic and weird. Roux and I fight often, but they never say that they don't care or that they don't give a shit. It's upsetting. Of course I'm upset.I don't want to think about it, but I can't help it.
There are different kinds of love. There undoubtedly are. I'm always annoyed when people rank romantic love above more platonic types, like the love between family members and friends, like the love between two strangers who meet on a train and understand each other without saying a word. The love between you and your fellow men is just as important.
I felt that before I was thirteen, before I was friends with Roux, and before either of us began to march on our own crooked paths of self-discovery. I felt annoyance at all the songs on the radio about sex and romance and jealousy before I realized I was unable to feel the way I was supposed to. I felt blank for a while. I was a blank doll. I was full of some toxin that dissolved my insides until I learned the words that could describe me. Isn't it wild that one can be so empowered by a term and, at the same time, so unwilling to share it? It's something I can't deny, this inability to fall in love in the romantic sense.
But I love my family, and I have fallen in love with the night sky and the tiles at the bottom of this pool. I have learned to love the reflection of neon lights in deep, dark puddles ringed with mud and bits of asphalt. I love watching Roux when they're going off about some obscure monster from a comic that came out in the thirties, or listening to my mother talk about her day or about whatever sci-fi show she has been watching in her spare time. I have learned to love the little things, like bubblegum-pink rotary phones and the feeling of plastic cups in my hand.
So I'm aromantic. So I'm asexual. So I can't fall in love. What does it matter? That's my business. That only affects me, doesn't it? Because I'm ninety percent sure that's the case.
I get onto my back and float with most of my body submerged. My knees and face stay above the water. I don't feel like swimming laps or treading water, or sitting on the steps and watching the latter lap at the tiles on the side. If I were to slip under the surface and start to drown, I don't think I would object.
I hate the thought that the person who is practically my sibling might hate me. But that begs the question-- how do I apologize for something tied to the intrinsic nature of who I am? How can I repent for something I don't know how to control or fix?
Before my mind can press the issue further, my body brings me underwater. Suddenly, I am more focused on breaking the surface than breaking through those parts of myself. I push toward the air and gulp it in. The water thrashes around me, a product of my own desperate kicking upward.
That's enough floating, I decide. I don't want to think. I just want to be blank without the feeling of unease at being numb. I'd rather do that by swimming laps from one end of the pool to the other, or by watching TV while slumped against the headboard. I would rather lay on the tiles and stare up at the ceiling, blasting music that I won't quite listen to. It's not like I would disturb anyone by doing any of those things. We're the only guests here.
I don't want to disturb Roux more than I already have, so I decide to go with the past of most resistance, also known as swimming laps like I didn't want to earlier. I'm going to listen to music while I do it, though. I don't care if it's going to be distorted and barely audible through the water. I don't want the only sounds to be those of my breathing and strokes.
I have been swimming since I was a baby. Mom's sister, my Aunt Terri, has a pool in her backyard. Her husband bought it for her and it got installed when I was just a few months old. Since she and my Meemaw watched me while my mom was putting herself through medical school and working two jobs, I spent a lot of time in the pool. I'm not competitive, but I am willing to work at it and I am fast enough to impress myself sometimes.
After dragging myself out of the water by the metal ladder, I begin the laborious ten-foot walk to my chair and my phone. That's when the sensation washes over me. It's the intense feeling of being watched that cuts through the guilt, shame, and malaise.
Instantly, I eye the clown doll. I squint at it. Maybe I'm imagining it, but its eyes seem to glimmer under the fluorescent lights. I swear it's in a different position than before. The fabric clown's smile seems wider now, like the stitches are splitting and crawling up its white fabric face. I know it's stupid to feel this way, but I instinctively reach for the black bath towel and wrap it around my body. To do so, I have to look away from the doll. I don't need all the clowns in this place looking at my body, eyeing all the curves and cottage cheese parts of my flesh.
Taking my eyes off of the clown was a mistake. When I look back, it has moved to the next chair over.
"Oh, fuck no," I whisper. I'm not about to get murdered in this stupid clown hotel. I was right about the weirdness of it all, but I was wrong about my willingness to participate in something that might get me killed, especially when it comes to rag dolls. I grab my stuff and, without wrapping it up in any cohesive way, leave to go upstairs. I can feel the clown's eyes on my back as I go, and its twisted smile growing larger.