Ricky’s room was dirty, not messy with laundry or paper but actually dirty, I mean like a cream-colored rug speckled with brown dust and yellowish stains, and the walls had fingerprints and shoe marks and there was a hole patched with a crumpled ball of tin foil and painter’s tape. I made a point to sit on the floor instead of the bed because I didn’t know where things would go and Ricky sat right down next to me, not looking me in the eye or anywhere. He picked at some old scotch tape that was stuck to the carpet and pulled it off, carpet fluff trailing the plastic. Want to see my spider? he said. He doesn’t bite.
When Ricky had invited me to his house after school, I wasn’t sure if he was gonna ask me to touch him or if he would hit me and call me words. We were both on the wrestling team but nobody talked to me on the wrestling team anymore because a week ago they figured out I was gay (magazine in my backpack) and nobody talked to Ricky on the wrestling team because he broke Han’s tailbone a while back and anyways, he’s always been sort of a biter, which is sort of not great for a wrestler.
He was ugly, with a shaved head and loose hairs between his eyebrows and all over his chest, and he wasn’t that tall, but he was bigger than even most seniors. The team was scared of him and I was too. He was rough in the ring, eyes always glaring and shifty like he was looking for something to hit. So, when he asked me to come over after school, I almost said no, fearing for my well-being and safety, but the way he wasn’t looking at me while he asked it, I thought it would sound smooth to say why not, and I did. His house wasn’t far from the school, and it was a shade of sort of run-down blue where you could see streaks like rust coming down from the roof gutter.
When we stepped through the door Rick shouted fuck, it smells like cat piss in here! and I wasn’t sure whether to agree or if that’d be rude, but for the record it did. It always does, he confided after a pause, in a much quieter voice. This, I realized, was a joke, but his eyebrows stood in their same severe position as always—deepening the shade under his eyes—and by the time I figured out that what he had said was funny, it was too late to laugh. I was still on edge, anyways. If he asked me for a blow job I thought I would do it, if just to prove to myself that I was good.
We got to his room, and he produced a glass terrarium from his closet. The floor of the box was mulch and dirt, and there was a big rock and a pile of moss and sticks. I looked closer and bam, there it was. Not a spider, a hairy goddamn tarantula, the kind that’s brown and black and your skin prickles when you see it move. The kind boys dream of having when they’re eleven. Damn, it’s big, I said, because I was unsure of what to say. What’s its name? He didn’t hear me or didn’t answer and instead tapped lightly on the glass trying to get the spider’s attention. I didn’t want to repeat the question so instead I dropped into silence, and we just watched the thing for a bit. The urine smell was thick and wet in my lungs.
So, you like boys, he said eventually. Goosebumps again, like seeing the tarantula—fear and excitement at the impossibility of the eight-legged monstrosity. Yeah, I’m gay or whatever, I said, keeping cool, checking to make sure the door was still ajar. Do you, like, do you wear dresses? he asked. I bristled of course. Jesus, idiot.
No, I said, I’m just normal-gay. His brow furrowed like he was mad, but he didn’t say anything more. He pulled off the lid of the terrarium and reached in, towards the spider, who crept up his open palm and rested on his wrist. He lifted it from the enclosure. Was he disappointed at my answer? I was angry at him then. He’d probably already jerked off thinking about me in girl clothes. I looked up to glare at him, but he wasn’t looking at me at all. He was letting the spider crawl up his neck and onto his buzzed scalp and he was picking it up and replacing it in his palms so delicately, his fingers tremoring faintly as he pinched just tight enough to pick it up without hurting the thing. I’d only ever seen him wrestling or watching guys wrestle or in the locker rooms and hallways and always in those instances his eyes were darting all around, his hands clenching and unclenching like on their own. But here his gaze was perfectly still, fixed on the tarantula like nothing else was real. I was still too, so as not to break whatever spell had washed the yellowing room. If I reached out to touch him, I sort of imagined my hand would just go straight through. He was quiet and I was quiet too, and the stupid spider still bit him after a minute.
