Say Goodbye

TWENTY-FIVE

BURGERMAN IS UP TO SOMETHING.

I can feel him studying me when he thinks I won’t notice. I’ll be watching TV and he’ll come in, standing in the doorway, staring, staring, staring. Then he’ll reach down, scratch his balls, and disappear.

Burgerman spends a lot of time alone these days. Out and about, locked in his room. Sometimes, I can feel the darkness of his moods. Sometimes, I can match ’em with my own. We are like father and son, mutually contemptuous.

He doesn’t touch me anymore; I’m too old. I can’t fetch like I used to, either. A pale-faced teenager is automatically suspect on most playgrounds. People think I might be trouble, maybe a drug dealer or petty gangster. Little do they suspect.

I’m still small. Burgerman doesn’t feed me much, a last-ditch effort to stave off puberty, I guess. After all, there’s still the money from the movies, but even that’s not what it used to be. In the world of porn, the big money is in kids, not gaunt, scrawny-chested teenagers.

Lately, he’s started talking about graduation. “Son, there comes a time in everyone’s life when you gotta start lookin’ ahead. You’re growin’ up, boy. Gettin ready to graduate.”

I don’t know what graduation means. Certainly no cap and gown ceremony, or one-way ticket to college. What does he think I’ll do? Go to trade school, get a job? Move into a trailer park with all the other perverts? Only one thing I know how to do. What’s the graduation ceremony like for that?

I know lately, when I come home, my hand stills after I put the key in the lock. I wonder when I turn it, if it’ll still work. And if my key does turn, I wonder when I push the door open, if the Burgerman will still be there.

Because I’m starting to get the picture, you see. Life has to have value. And I outgrew my value about two years ago. Now I’m like that old nag in the barn, can’t run, can’t breed, but costs a fortune in room and board. You know, the horse that’s ultimately sent to the glue factory.

Burgerman probably hopes I’ll run away. I’ve thought about it, believe me. But after all these years, I don’t know where I would go or what I would do. This is the only life I know; Burgerman the only family I have left.

Maybe he’ll dump me and disappear.

There are, of course, other possibilities.

Burgerman came into my room last night, stood at the foot of my bed. Staring, staring, staring.

I kept my breathing steady, but watched him beneath the narrow slits of my eyes. I wondered if he had a knife, a gun. I wondered what I would do if he attacked.

Burgerman is talking of graduation.

I must remain alert.