Matching Underwear

“Matching underwear is only a problem if you flaunt it,” Bix told me with an airy smile. “It’s the same with anything pink really. I mean you could go all out like some fashionista golf caddy but you might as well beat yourself up at that point. I mean, balls are one thing but if they’re so big they stick out your zipper there’s no way you can avoid the pain, know what I mean?”

Bix was the gayest kid in high school and everybody knew it but him. He thought he got picked on for his Indonesian heritage but the hatred was more complex than that. Many were the times he’d rant to me about subtle tricks he’d learned to hide his way of being – i.e. different, not gay, in his mind - from the shit-kicking hormone-laced masses.

I considered his wisdom pearls sitting on the plane back to Regina for his funeral. I was surprised enough to learn of his death, even more surprised to learn he’d never left Saskatchewan. If there was one kid you knew would leave, it was Bix. Fuckin’ Bix.

I don’t even know if I ever liked the guy; he just fascinated me. Just like Earl Ellis, who used to microwave his cat, had a large collection of his friends’ mothers’ panties, and once inserted his finger into a dog’s vagina, fascinated me. They were deviants to me. Earl was the one who was really fucked up, poor Bix was just a gayboy in a smalltown – wrong place wrong time. I realize that now.

Earl was the dangerous one. The three of us were fast freakish friends on the outskirts of a town left to rot. Earl and I were probably the main reason Bix didn’t get his shit removed via the boots of a bully more often. Imagine my surprise when I learned they became lovers later in life, and it was Earl who done Bix in during a jealous fit.

“It was Bix’s own damn fault,” Earl’s mother told me after the funeral. “Bad enough to cheat, but to let yerself get caught half naked in your new lover’s arms. Worst part was, Bix and his new stud had on matching underwear, so you know it wasn’t just a one-time thing.” Only a problem if you flaunt it I guess.