Kim shuts the door behind him and looks at his reflection from his bedroom window. It's dark out, and the image in front of him looks at him looking at him. He is clean-shaved, tall, and porkly, and his nose appears to have been punched into his face. He has nails painted black, his "I Google" shirt black, his sling bag black, his Kickers sneakers black. He prefers wearing black because other colors show the sweat marks beneath his armpits. He tosses his bag away and flicks the lights off. Outside, Kim's window frames Frank's house. Frank standing at his bedroom window, emptying his pockets and pulling his shirt from the back.

Frank just moved into the neighborhood a month ago and he and Kim walk together to school and back home. Kim draws his curtains and grabs his binoculars. He takes a chair and spies on Frank. Zooming in, Frank's now half naked, studying his growing beard in front of a mirror. He takes a razor and closely shaves his chin. Then he puts the razor away and looks at his stooped side view profile, his little belly protruding out front. He breathes his stomach in, raising his chest, and stoops again.

They do this everyday. Going home from school, Kim looking at his reflection, flicking the lights off, spying on Frank; Frank emptying his pockets, removing his shirt, and studying his reflection.

But this particular day, Frank looks back at Kim through the mirror, through his window, across the street, through Kim's window. He walks to the window, peers out to Kim, looks around the street, and walks out of view. Moments later, Frank appears again half naked, punching keys from a chordless phone and sticking the phone in between his ear and shoulder.

Kim's phone blares. He tumbles out his chair, gropes for the extension phone on his desk, and clicks the receiver on.

"Yeah," he says coolly.

"Kim," Frank says. "So, are you up for gym tomorrow? Membership's free. Only thirty bucks a day."

"I dunno Frank," Kim says, now back on his chair, peering out his binoculars through the window. "I haven't made my mind up yet. But yeah, maybe. I could give it a try." Kim sees Frank craning his neck on the phone and flexing his arm muscles in front of the mirror.

"Meet you 7 A.M., what do you say?" muscle boy says. Frank's side view reflection, he's tucking his stomach in, and flexing each arm and leg out front. He smiles lustily at himself and winks an eye.

"Alright, seven," Kim says.

"Don't forget to bring a towel and extra clothes," Frank says, now holding the phone, his back to the mirror, his head rubbernecking at his butt.

"Okay," says Kim.

"Right. Bye."

Kim breaks a sweat, and flicks the light back on.

His room is a mess. He has a Kill Bill and a Pulp Fiction poster on a wall, one peeling off from the top. At the opposite wall, a Donnie Darko and A Clockwork Orange movie poster are overmasked with duct tape at the corners. His bed is undone, yellowing socks and an ashtray full of stubbed out cigarettes underneath. There's an unfinished game of scrabble laid on the floor, and three back issues of Geek magazine beside it.

Kim picks up his sling bag from the floor and empties the contents on the desk. There's his reading materials for school, a black iPod shuffle, a Staedtler mechanical pencil, a black Nokia Express Phone, and the XXXL red Chinese kimono he bought from a thrift store during one of his breaks.

He knocks his shoes and socks off, and wiggles his stubby toes. He strips off his ragged jeans and shirt, and pulls the kimono over. The kimono is silk, hemmed black, and patterned with sewn gold dragons. It has slits on the sides that show his sumo-wrestler legs. Its waist is a little tight, and there's a space underneath where a woman's breasts should be. He slides his closet door open, and a mountain of dark clothes almost spills over. He fishes a shoe box from a top drawer and opens it. First he takes out a balled lump of cloth and rolls it up his legs: fishnet stockings. The crisscrosses are too tight, and his flesh pops out in diamond shapes. Next he slips a pair of oversized red high-heel clogs on his feet.

That wasn't so difficult wasn't it? It's his first time to dress himself like this. All those coins and bills saved in his piggybank, it's all for this glorious moment in front of the mirror. The kimono and stockings cheap, but the clogs. The clogs is a pair of Nine West, worth a little less than four thousand bucks.

He looks dramatically at his reflection, saying, "Frank," he pauses a moment, looks away dreamily then back at his reflection, continuing, "I met a boy in our neighborhood." He pauses again, leans closer and whispers, "And I think I'm in love with him." Kim smiles coyly at his reflection and bats his china eyes prettily. He takes a makeup kit from a drawer, samples a red lipstick at the back of his hand, then paints his tiny lips red and smacks them loudly together.

"Kim!" his mother's high pitched voice echoes from the staircase. "Dinner time!"

"I'll be down in a minute!" Kim yells back.

He takes an eyeliner, pulls down one cheek, and traces and retraces his lower eyelid.

"Kim!" his mother yells again. "You get down this minute or I'll have Nipples eat your dinner." Nipples is a two-year-old black Yorkshire Terrier with a chest of brown fur. She is chained to a pipe at their backyard's laundry area.

"I heard you," Kim yells back.

Hearing his mother stomping up the stairs, he snaps his arm for a Kleenex but thinks against it. Instead, he pulls down his other cheek, taking his time, and traces the other eyelid. His bedroom door opens and his mother appears on the mirror standing far behind him. Kim continues retracing his eyelid, not looking at his mother, his red lips puckered down to an O. Then he tosses his head back, shuts the tears out his eyes, and looks back at the mirror.

"What the hell do you think you're doing?" His mother says, hands akimbo.

"What do you think I'm doing? I'm prettifying myself," Kim says, glancing at his mother through the mirror. Smash Kim down shorter and wider, tipple his weight a few more pounds, toss in a pair of large boulder breasts, stretch his nose, then put in some bangs and ear-length straight hair. That's what his mother looks like.

His mother gapes her mouth in terror and her chin triples in layer.

Kim takes a blush-on and brushes light-brown dust to paint depressions on his cheeks.

"We have a little play for class on Monday," he lies to her. "We lack girls, apparently." He stands up, swivels around in his heavy clogs, and catwalks towards her.

Her mother's facial expression slackens back to a droop.

"Don't I look pretty?" Kim says, posing in front of his mother, one leg bent, his head cocked playfully to one side.

"Ravishing. You look like your Aunt Miling," she says. "I have a wig in my closet if you need one." She turns her back and walks out the door. "Dinner's getting cold," she says, and stomps back down the stairs.

At dinner, Kim's wearing the drag--the kimono, the makeup, and the puffed up long brown wig he dug out from his mother's closet. He's added black mascara and a thick layer of liquid foundation to his face. He's seated in front of his mother, who looks at him with disgust.

Kim's plate is a diet to thinness. There are ten morsels of boiled green peas, four sticks of raw carrots, a cube of steamed salmon, and a half cup of gravyless mashed potatoes. They've been using this diet for two days now, and Kim isn't complaining. His mother inconsistently jumps in and out of diet fads, loses weight which boomerangs back twice what she's lost. At one point she'd blame her genes and reduce everything to the chemical makeup of her brain. Then she'd see a infomercial about diet pills, fruit-to-juice converters, gym balls, and exercise equipments, and she'd change her mind to blaming her lack of will power and discipline.

Kim thinks beauty is a social construct. He thinks the world is governed by greedy people who create your wish list and overdig your pockets. They create razors and shaving creams and say you should epilate your skin. They create whitening soap and say you should have white skin. They create diet pills and diet fads and say you should be thin. They invent useless stuff and create your needs so you'll buy them and make them rich. This was Kim's reasoning back when Frank hasn't moved in. He still believes it, but doesn't mind being a conformist. So he takes his fork, spears a stick of carrot and puts it in his mouth.

"You father," his mother says. "He's arriving tomorrow."

Kim drops his fork, which clatters on the ceramic dinner plate. With his face caked with makeup, head dressed with wig, he looks at his mother in a comic way of shock.

"I'm sorry I didn't tell you right away." His mother wipes her mouth with a white napkin. "He wants it to be a surprise but I thought you should know." At the end of her fork is a lacerated flesh of a marine animal. She shoves it into her mouth and chews reflectively.

His father has been gone eight years now. Works in a luxury cruise in Alaska where he skins eight hundred kilograms of potatoes a day, boils them in a large pot, and mashes them in a big wire masher. This pays the bills, the ground floor's interior designer, the modernized kitchen, the rain forest living room of fake plants, his mother's collection of horse statues and figurines molded in plaster, china, glass, marble, and wood.

Everywhere in the house there's a horse sticking somewhere. A horse statue stuck in gallop by the front door. A family of horse figurines on the living room center table. A painting of a herd of horses crossing a turbulent river, their mane and tail frozen in waves. A black marble horse at the center of the dining table. Horses engraved on mirrors. Horse patterns on the bathroom tiles. Stuffed horses, baby horses, horse souvenirs, horse memorabilia. A glass cabinet of horses. Eight years. That's what the contract said. Eight years of horse collection. His father signed the contract without thinking twice.

Nails cut short and painted black, Kim's sausage fingers picks up the fork and takes a rakeful of mashed potatoes into his mouth. He chews absentmindedly and says, "We don't need him here."

"Kim," his mother scolds him. "Your father hasn't talked to you since, but that doesn't mean he doesn't love you."

That doesn't mean he doesn't love you. The thought sickens him. He just wishes his father was dead, garroted on a cruise's sail rope, or thrown out into the shark-infested sea. Growing up fatherless, he's gotten used to it. It's not as if he needs a father to straighten his closet-gay life to begin with. Ripping his neighbor playmate's new dress, he knew he was jealous being a girl when he was four. He all kept them to himself. His watching Fashion TV. His window shopping for shoes and cosmetics in the mall. His ogling at hunky boys carved and sculptured after Greek demigods.

Ever since he met Frank, Kim has began excelling in school again. He plans to go to some big time university on full scholarship on whatever course and earn enormous amounts of filthy money. He'll grow his hair and undergo a therapy swallowing estrogen pills every day for a year. He'll get himself a vaginoplasty to change his genitals. He'll get himself a labiaplasty and a scrotal electrolysis. He'll have his vocal chords thinned, his trachea shaved, his eyebrow bone reshaped, his jaw contoured, his forehead femininized. Then he'll lose weight and get his nipples sliced open to slip in some breast implants.

Sometimes he thinks he doesn't need to be beautiful to be happy. He'd fantasize a future with Frank, who'd love him without makeup, thin body, women's clothes, shoes and surgery. The Frank who'll love him just the way he is--tall, fat, ugly. And gay. But this dream just seems unreachable, impossible. He hates the grueling idea of womanizing himself. What more, hates the idea of being himself. He loathes advertisements, TV commercials, the sprawling billboards on EDSA, and every beautiful person walking down the street. He hates consumer culture and how it strips you naked and taunts your flaws.

"Is he staying home for good?" Kim says. His red Chinese kimono is beginning to show wet stains on the armpits. His makeup is beginning is run, his eyes all spidery with sweat and mascara.

"I'm afraid he is," replies his mother. She sips from her glass of cheap red wine, leaving a lipstick print on the rim.

Kim looks at his cube of pink salmon and loses his appetite. His father--he can't remember much about his father. All he knows is that his father was always out of the house. His youthful dad would bang at the front door in the middle of the night and yell at the direction of his mother's room from the street. He'd reek of alcohol mixed with a breezy breath of a thousand cigarettes. He would try to undress his petulant mother and they'd end up screaming at each other. The yellow lights from the neighborhood windows would flicker to life one after another. His parents scream and vases are broken. Glass shattering against the wall. Then they would quell down and the neighbors' lights would be snuffed out one by one. Next morning, their room is a landfill of trash that could cut your foot open. And there they'd be lying peacefully asleep, tangled in tentacular embrace.

His father's moving back in fills Kim's head with a hundred possibilities, including military discipline--having a clean room, no stink in the house, waking up early, lights off early, spanking the shit out of Kim's faggot butt--that his father couldn't even apply on himself. Then his father would make a man out of him. Father and son camping trip perhaps. Go out scuba diving, wall climbing, kayaking, bungie jumping--his father loves the outdoors--compensate for the lost time. Say it now or never: an idea descends on Kim's head.

"Ma," he says in his watery makeup, muffin-shaped sticky hair, and dragon-patterned red kimono. "I'm sort of, like, you know, gay."

His mother freezes, lips open slack. Mute, unmoving, anticipating, Kim stares at her slit eyes and half-open mouth. The scene is a film stuck on the reel. There is so much noise everything falls silent. Then suddenly, the scene lurches forward. The chair scratches on the marble floor, and his mother walks out on him into the kitchen. Kim hears the food cabinet opening and banging shut. The tap water fills in a glass. Then his mother shuffles back into her seat, pills on one hand and a glass of water on the other. Anti-depressants. She gobbles the pills up, three, four maybe, and quaffs the glass of water audibly. There's an arc of water on both corners of her mouth. She sets the glass on the table.

Without warning, her mother screams.

Her scream drills into Kim's ears, fills in the room nearly shattering all glass, all windows, stretches across the street.

Then she says, "I am a failure." She dabs a tear out her eye with a napkin.

Kim looks at his food, looks at his mom, then back to his food.

"This is all my fault." Her mother sobs. "I should've given you more time."

"It's not your fault, ma," Kim says. He doesn't know what to say, but he thinks he ought to say something. Fill in the silence.

"I'm partly responsible for whoever you become," says his mother in a tremulous voice.

Kim interlocks his fingers, his free fingers thumb-wrestling with each other.

"It just sort of happens, you know," he says finally. "I don't know how. I just am."

"Oh, Kim. I don't know what to do with you," she says regrettably. Frowning, she lifts her glass of wine, checks the lipstick print, and sips from the same area.

Kim looks at his fat toes underneath the table. His right toe is sticking out the fishnet stockings.

She picks up her fork, inhales deeply, then exhales, her body collapsing.

"So that's why," she says, stressing with her fork. "The way you turn your head." She whirls her fork around. "That's why." She says this as if turning your head meant everything.

Kim straightens up his neck, now self-conscious by the way he turns his head.

"There's something feminine about you I couldn't tell." How feminine, he couldn't tell either.

"I found that makeup kit in your drawer but no," she says, stretching the ‘no' far to the moon while pointing the fork, "No. My son couldn't be, you know, queer."

"I don't like that," he says. "That word. Queer."

"What do you want me to call you, hm?" His mother leans forward.

"It's just that," he staggers. "It's just that you can't cram everything that I am into one word."

His mother exhales again, head shaking. "You can't do this now, Kim," she says, "Not now when your pa's coming back." She shakes her head again.

They finish their meal in silence.

That night, Kim visits the attic with Nipples. He's changed into purple pajamas with yellow stars and moons on them. Nipples's on a leash with a little bell jingling at her neck. Why ‘Nipples', she has inverted nipples that's why. Chinese nipples, they call it. That when you're born female with inverted nipples, you can't nurse your young.

The attic is one invisible trap door away from the second floor. You pull the door from the ceiling, and the door falls slanted to the ground with a ladder behind it. Like a portal into some horror movie. The attic's dank, moldy, dusty, and it reeks of wet, rotting wood. Kim gropes for the light switch, and flicks it on. The attic is cramped with large corrugated boxes, three boxes stacked over another three. There's the antique glass cabinet at one corner and a large shelf of broken equipments at another. There's their old fifteen-inch black-and-white television, a cassette tape player, and the old school rotary phone.

Kim goes over the rotary phone, the floorboards creaking beneath his feet. He hovers his face two inches above it, and picks up the handle. He dials a random number and says, "Hi dad! How are ya? How's the weather out there? You know what? I'm gay." Nipples barks in his arm. "Yeah? You're gay too? That's nice. Mom's a lesbian, didn't you know? Oh, you knew? Wow. I'll see you tomorrow, alright? We miss you too." He replaces the receiver, snorting to himself.

At the far end wall is a small square window of four quadrants. Nipples struggling in his arm, Kim walks towards the window. The window is thick with dust and grime, light impenetrable. He wipes a circle with the side of his fist, and peers at Frank's window one floor below, its light turned off. Nipples barks, shifting her head around, her bell jingling. She jumps from Kim's arm and skitters to the glass cabinet. She sniffs the foot of it, raises one hind leg, and relieves herself. Kim grunts and plods towards Nipples, who scampers away to sniff the old boxes.

The glass cabinet is stuffed with old books and bundles of Cosmopolitan magazines and Philippine Daily Inquirer newspapers. Kim slides open the glass and randomly picks out a dusty book. Meditations for Manifesting by Wayne Dyer. The book's writhed in ripples, probably from the rain water seeping through the back of the cabinet. Kim puts it back and takes out another. Anatomy of Hatha Yoga. He riffles open a page and finds a picture of a pregnant woman meditating on a rubber mat. Flips another page and finds the subject title at the top right, Yoga for Losing Weight. The stuff his mother buys. He puts it back and slides the glass close.

Nipples barks, jingling her bell. Kim turns around and finds Nipples waggling her tail and circling around on top the stack of boxes. He takes one box and hauls it to the floor. The layer of dust leaps and settles back on the box surface. He blows the dust off, sneezes, and opens it. Inside is his father's stuff. Grunge and retro fashion, a motley hue of red, indigo, and forest green; two photo albums, and a moleskin notebook, among others. He takes one album, parks his ass on the other closed box, and flips open the front cover.

The first one's a picture of his dad, twentyish, in a binge with his drunken friends. His father is smiling idiotically, all his horse teeth exposed, posing with a bottle of beer. Below it is a picture of his parents, his mother's belly swelling out her hanging shirt, her bellybutton popping out. On her belly leaning one ear is his father, eyes closed, grinning the same horse smile.

"Look, Nipples," Kim says, showing the photograph to the dog. Nipples barks and cocks her head to one side. "That's me inside mum's tummy." He scoops Nipples off the box and sits her on his lap.

Next page is baby Kim naked in a plastic tub of water, his father shampooing his baby hair.

"Look how tiny I was," says Kim, grinning to himself. Nipples barks and pants her tongue out.

Kim flips another page. His parents' church wedding. Kim about four years old, carried by his grandma Lilia. His face is red, streaked with tears, his mouth stretched wide open with one missing front tooth. His parents are both wearing white, faces scowling at the camera.

"I'm so thin back then," Kim mutters. When you look at a picture it's always your image you first notice.

Kim closes the album and tosses it back in the box. Nipples leaps off his lap and sniffs around the attic. Now Kim glares at the moleskin notebook, the rubber string tied around it seemingly unknotting and beckoning him to peek inside. He lifts it out the box, loosens the string, and whisks the front cover open. Kenneth Uy, it says, scrawled in loopy handwriting. Inside is Kim's firsts: first cut nails scotch-taped on the page, first cut hair in a stapled sealable plastic, a photo of the first time he crawled on his belly, first baby food, first word uttered--it was "Pa". Skips two pages. First time he walked, first scraped knee. Skips a few more pages. First jeepney ride, first trip to the zoo, first birthday celebration, first baby playmate--a pretty girl named Olivia. Skip. First stroll to the mall, first crap on the toilet on his own, first night to sleep in his own room, on his own bed. Skip. First music instrument, a kiddie plastic flute, first visit to McDonalds playground, first walk at Luneta Park. Skip. First day at school, first uniform, first pee in the classroom, first finger painting. Kim shuts the notebook fast, his eyes welling and blurring, an invisible lump choking down his throat.

Seven in the morning the next day, Frank's walking back and forth at Kim's front door. A green sweatband's wrapped around his head and right wrist. He's wearing sweats, trainers, and carries a Nike duffle bag. By the way he prances back and forth, you can tell his mind's doing the jumping jacks. Moments later Kim steps out the door wearing black. His shirt has a neon orange print of a cartoon skull. On his sweaty hands, he's carrying a towel and an extra shirt.

"Mind if I shove this in your bag?" Kim says.

Frank shrugs, zips his bag open and crams them in.

The gym's four blocks away. The sky is the color of a television screen, tuned to a dead channel. The weather cool, the grounds wet. The suburban village consists of unremarkable cube houses with picket fences. Saturday morning, the arthritic Mr. Terrano's mowing his lawn, the widow Mrs. Perkins's manicuring her rose garden, while the college kid Peter plays catch with his Doberman Barky. The street is empty, save for a middle-aged couple bursting with energy, brisk-walking in unison, their lips framing all their purple gums and pearly dentures.

"I bought me some DVDs," Kim begins.

"Yeah?" How Frank walks, you'd know which foot's ahead by the way he moves his shoulders.

"The Incredible Hulk II's one."

"Awesome," says Frank. "I have part I. Seen it?"

"Nah." Kim wipes his sweaty palms on his shorts.

"Let's watch both later," Frank says. "Haven't seen it either."

"Cool, cool." Kim grins.

"My place?" He glances to Kim, raising twice an eyebrow.

"Sure."

"My room stinks though." Frank laughs.

"Mine's stinkier." Kim snorts laughing.

"You know El Laberinto del Fauno?" Frank says.

"Haven't heard."

"You should watch it. Same director with Hulk, I think. Kickass plot and effects and everything." Frank swipes the air with his hand, a puzzle ring in his middle finger.

They turn right at the end of the block, where they see a dog pumping at another dog's behind. Kim and Frank, they look at each other and burst out howling with laughter.

"About what?" Kim says, laughter subsiding. "Is that the kiddie movie?"

"It's not like Nar--" Frank gags with a whooping cough and continues, "It's not like Narnia or those dumb kid movies." He wipes a tear with his sweatband and sniff back a runny snot. "It's got some fantastical stuff, pretty neat monsters, and the plot forks into two worlds, one fantastic, one realistic."

"I might've seen the poster. The ones with a kid girl innit?" Kim says.

"They story's adult stuff. Donnie Darko kinda level, only fantastical." Frank shifts the duffle bag to his other shoulder.

"Yeah? Borrow it later alright?" Kim makes a quick glance at Frank, takes a snapshot of his face.

"Yeah. No prob."

They pass by Jake's house, Mr. Manigo's convenient store, which is still closed, and a local bakery brimming with bug-eyed people, some still in pajamas. The smell of oven-baked bread wafts through the air. Coffee lingers from the adjacent coffee shop.

"My dad's arriving today," Kim says.

"Really? Your potato-peeler dad or your mom's boyfriend?"

"Gary's not my mum's boyfriend. He comes over our house and they just play mahjong."

"Only the two of them?" Frank twists his neck left and right, cracks his knuckles, a mannerism.

"Most of the time. Big deal."

"Ha," spats Frank. "You never know, boy. My mom, she dates college kids when dad's out of town."

"Yeah? Well my mom's not like that."

"You never know."

"I don't care much anyway. Let them screw each other, I don't mind. She deserves to be happy."

Frank laughs. "Your for-real pa's coming home then?"

"Yeah. I can't imagine what he looks like now. Probably older and wrinkly."

"Your dad's not that old."

"Thirty-five's pretty old. Middle-age old," Kim says.

"You must be excited," Frank says.

"Not really. I hardly even know him. Never calls. Never writes."

"Navy people're like that," Frank comments. "I've got an uncle in the navy--"

"--the ones in Olongapo."

"Yeah that one. He works five years straight, comes back two years, fucks his wife and makes a baby then goes back to the sea."

"Really."

"Some of them jump off the ship," Frank says. "Or throttle themselves off the cross beams. Bunch of depressed asswipes, really."

A slim girl jogs by, cutting in between them, her perfume whipping up their nostrils.

"Nice perfume. Must she saturate innit," Kim says.

"Damn," Frank says, pausing a second to ogle at her butt. Her butt scrunching loose then tight, her legs long and lean. They move along.

"But my dad," Kim continues. "He's practically nonexistent."

"You'll forgive him."

"Perhaps."

"He'll make it up to you."

"I wish."

"Eight years is not a fucking joke."

"It isn't."

"Think of it as a sacrifice."

"I'll try."

"His and yours. Be happy you're not selling drugs on the streets."

"I guess I should. Doesn't matter any more, does it?"

They turn left and cross the pedestrian lane. The street is dotted with kids playing bike and rollerblade hockey using planks of wood.

"Show at least some gratitude. Your next life happy or fucked up with your dad around. Your choice."

"Fucked up's not bad. Mine's fucked up just the way it is."

"Oh come on." Frank whacks Kim's back and dislocates his spine. "Loosen up a bit. Your life's not that bad."

"You have no idea, Frank." You have no idea.

The gym bathroom equates to a large rectangular box of pale-blue tiles with the shower line jutting out the two opposite walls. Kim and Frank, they're naked, wet and soap-clad in suds and bubbles next to each other. An hour back, they worked out mainly on four exercise equipments: the treadmill, elliptical trainer, rowing machine, and exercise bike. They hardly talked to each other. And Kim simply surreptitiously gloated over the sweaty sexified Frank every time he got the chance. This bathroom scene is Kim's faggot-princess dream come true. They are an arm's stretch away from each other, their body heat almost intermingling, their twats dangling limply. Frank's eyes are shut, face thick with white foam. Kim smothers Frank's nakedness at the left corner of his eyes.

"We should do this again tomorrow," Frank says, hands briskly rubbing his thick forearms and chest. "You feel the energy? It's fucking incredible."

"The endorphins surging up your brain," adds Kim, rubbing his twatsicle with a small bar of soap.

"It's a different kind of high, you know?" Frank says, palms gliding over his firm legs.

Kim turns to Frank while rubbing himself, having a different sort of high, saying, "Yeah, I still feel it. I still feel the high."

"Better than drugs at least," Frank says. "The junk people pump into their system--"

"--this detoxifies," Kim says. "Healthier, even."

"I think Immona jump start a diet," says Frank, rubbing his balls, his armpits, the crack in between his butt cheeks.

"Protein-vegetarian, my mum and I are on it." Kim's one hand stroking himself, the other extending toward Frank.

"Fish crap and veggies?" Frank stops in midmotion, eyes still closed, face angled at Kim.

Kim's hand retreats back into rubbing the rest of his massive body. A split-second spasm of failure. "We started three days ago." He collects his wits back. "Curbs your hunger pangs at the very least."

"I have an appetite of a whale," says Frank, continuing his scrubbing.

"You should try it. Say, a month. Then quit if you don't like it."

Frank turns the knob open and a rainshower falls over him. Kim does the same, and together they rinse the soap off. They twist the shower knob shut, and head for the lockers, hips wrapped in a towel.

In the locker room, Kim inhales a lungful of courage, faces Frank and says, "Frank." The line feels like a stage play unfurling his rehearsed script in front of his bedroom mirror.

Frank starkly looks at him, saying, "What?"

"I met a guy in our neighborhood."

"Really--who?"

"And I think I'm in love with him." There. He said it. He's said the words bursting out his chest.

Frank stares at him awkwardly for five seconds or so, eyes glazed in ice.

"Frank, I love you." He's said the three most worn-out words you'll find in any script.

"What the." Frank picks his bag quickly, swirls around, about to walk out when Kim grabs his arm and pulls Frank towards him.

"I love you," Kim emphasizes the word, almost spitting at his face. "I know you'll never accept me or whatever--I just want you to know--"

Frank's fist looms over and strikes Kim straight homebound at the nose.

A tiny river of blood gushes out Kim's nose. "--I want you to know that I never meant to--"

A punch smacks Kim at the cheekbone.

"--feel this way, it just sorta happened--"

A meat-punch at his left eye.

Kim's one eye swollen nearly shut, squinting and quivering, he continues, "--an outburst I never expected--"

Another punch zeroes in on his jaw. Kim's head twists, blood spits out his mouth.

"--you're the greatest thing"--punch--"that ever happened to me"--punch--"and I'll always be grateful"--punch--"despite all the pain you're giving me."

Another heavy full-swing punch in the face. Smack down.

Blood oozing out his nose, lips broken and shuddering, he whispers in between blood-stained teeth, "I love you." That was Kim's final words. I love you. Kim's half-kneeling on the floor, face wet, bruised up and knuckle-printed with blood. Frank walks away, chest heaving with anger, a trail of fire tracing him from his behind.

"Just what the hell happened to you?" Kim's mother, her face is mud-caked with mango-green facial mask, her short hair a crown of plastic rollers. "Are you alright?"

Are you alright? Are you alright? Are you kidding me? "Yeah, I'm okay." Kim slumps into a couch, his face a finger painting of blood. One fat palm on his aching jaw, he continues, "Just a little fight is all."

"And just what sort of trouble have you gotten yourself into, young man?" Her mother walks back and forth in front of the center table of horse figurines, then stops abruptly, her freshly manicured foot tapping on the floor.

"Frank--"

"--What about Frank?" Her foot tapping faster and louder.

"Frank punched me over and over in the locker room of the--"

"Frank! Of all people, Frank!" She strides towards the telephone.

"I told him I love him."

Her mother freezes one step in midair, turns around, eyes wild, a vein throbbing out her forehead. She slogs towards him in slow motion, back hunched in a monster-like fashion, nose flaring and breathing heavily. She stops in front of him and slaps her big fat-ass palm on the side of his head. Another spurt of blood spews out Kim's mouth. "What the hell were you thinking? Of course he's going to beat you up!" She's screaming and she hasn't brushed her teeth.

Kim blocks his face with his forearms, his polar bear body curling back into the couch.

His mother raises the back of her hand, about to give him another slap in the face when the door bolts open, and in steps his dad. Lo and behold. A moment of surprise.

Surprise, surprise, surprise.

Jaw hanging on hinges, his father glares at his monster wife, whose hand is suspended in the air, then at the blood-smeared Kim peeping in between his forearms.

"Holy sweet Jesus fucking Christ," his father says through his horse teeth. "What in the world did you do to him, Quincy?" He strides towards them, leaving behind four trolleys at the doorstep. Since Kim last saw him, his father has turned maggot-pale white, save for the rosy cheeks. Wrinkles pleated around his mouth and branched at the corner of his eyes.

"Your son's been beaten up by that boy from the other side of the street."

"That so? And why did he beat him up like that?" One hand covering his mouth, he studies Kim's bloody, bruised up face. His father's hands, if there's a significant detail about his father, it's his hands. His hands have spindly, knotty fingers, a mountain range of knuckles, calloused and warty palms, and veins thick like green worms burrowing underneath his skin. He has an overgrown pinky fingernail.

"He told that boy out front he loves him! Your son is a homosexual, that's what!"

"Ma," Kim reprimands his mom.

"Really now?" His father's eyes the size of saucers, all glued at Kim, his hand still covering his mouth in disbelief. "Well I think," he staggers. He puts his hands on his hips, elbows sticking out like spikes. "I think. What I really think is, I'm gonna go get myself a drink."

Before his father could even move, Kim leapfrogs from his seat and wraps his rib-breaking bear-hug arms around his father. He buries his face into his shoulder, blood blotching red inkblots on his shirt, and cries shuddering and sniveling.

"That's what you always say!" screams his mother, her green mask cracking and chipping off around the mouth. "Every time a problem comes along, Oh I'm gonna go get myself a drink. I'm gonna go get myself a drink my dimpled ass! You stay right here, Ken. You've been gone eight years and just when did I hear from you again? Two days before your arrival, that's what! Two days!" She's hysterical. "Look at your son! Look at him! Look at what he's turned himself into!"

"Oh, shut up, Quincy!" his father yells back, his hand patting his overgrown baby bear at the back.

"You figure things out!" His mother throws her palms in the air and disappears into the kitchen. "I'll just get an ice pack."

Father and son, they sit on the three-seater couch while Kim sinks deeper into it, the frame underneath almost snapping.

"There, there," his father says. He lifts Kim's chin, and Kim opens his bloodshot teary eyes, one quivering to crack open, a little pool of snot streaming down his nose.

He sniffs it back up, swallows, and says, "Pa, I'm sorry. I'm really, really sorry."

His father wraps one arm around his son's fleshy shoulder and says, "You know what?"

Kim looks at him sniffing his nose red. "What?"

"Back in the ship," his father begins, Kim staring at his horse teeth the size of tomb stones. "A lot of people escape their dreary lives for a week-vacation. Away from everybody." His father looks distantly out the door, beyond his abandoned trolleys, and continues, "Most of them are miserable. They sleep in expensive suites, eat expensive meals, wear expensive clothes, talk pretentiously, but they scowl. One look in the face and you know right away that they're living the life they don't want. But I met this one man." He looks at Kim, eyes glinting with cut and polished gems of wisdom. "Old and wealthy man who greets every crew by his name. He says to me, ‘Know what Ken, when I'm in this ship I forget everything. I forget my mansion, my tractor business, my bitchy wife, my friends, my past, my miserable, phony life, everything.' He says that in the bar with me manning it for tips. ‘In this ship,' he continues, ‘I can dip my ugly body in the pool, meet other nameless people, drink, dance, sing. I'm happy,' he says, ‘I'm happy because no one knows me here.' He becomes happy for a week of his life."

Kim looks at him, not knowing where his father's point is going.

Then his father continues, "Life is a cruise ship, Kim."

Kim almost gags at the mushiness of this moment, but says, "Oh Pa, stop it. You're making me laugh." For the first time Kim smiles, and his eyes disappear momentarily. His father smiles back, a reject from a toothpaste commercial.

"Forget what happened, Kim," his father says, patting him at his greasy nape. "Just forget what everybody thinks and be who you want to be."

Kim melts in his father's arm, and hides the smile off his face. Inside is a fireworks display of a new beginning.

Plastic rollers hanging by the end of her hair, Kim's mother breaks into the scene, carrying a pack of ice. She smacks the pack on Kim's bruised cheekbone and says, "Why don't we go out on a picnic? Right there on the lawn outside?"

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