The Total Animal Soup
an excerpt

Seth – In All Actualities

Seth rarely mentions it, but it is not because he doesn’t remember, nor even because it does not cross his mind upon occasion. It’s because he hates the prerequisite postscript of discussing Hollis, the inevitable “but I’m okay now” that nobody ever believes. He hasn’t ever done any of the obvious things for victims of trauma, if he is a victim of trauma. He doesn’t itch at the places on his neck where bruises or cuts were, and he isn’t afraid of racially mixed people or people with British accents. He can’t help it, and he’s aware that it’s horrible, but he still finds British accents madly attractive. He imagines what formal counseling would be like.

“You didn’t ask for this, Seth.” The counselor in his mind’s eye looks like George, and, the voice is similar too – careful, earnest, maddeningly comforting in that way that makes one want to cry more and not less. “You didn’t ask for this at all.”

“Actually, yes I did,” says Seth, squirming uncomfortably under the gaze of the imaginary George counselor. The imaginary counselor is missing something very basic to George, or maybe has something very antithetical to George, which is somehow worrying. “I totally asked for it. I mean, I like pursued him for what? Two fucking years. Excuse my language.” Can it be he can’t say fuck even in front of George’s apparition? His sense of dignity has gone too far. It’s an apparition that, for reasons Seth is trying to fathom, isn’t even a very good likeness.

“You didn’t ask for this,” says the counselor in his mind’s eye who is also the fake George, somewhat impatiently, brushing a speck of imaginary dust off of his lapel.

“I’m sorry,” says Seth. “Firstly I don’t know what you mean exactly by ‘this’, and secondly, I don’t believe you’re George. He wouldn’t be caught dead in a tan sport coat.”

Seth eventually mentions it to Viv, in passing, somehow. Viv is lying on the floor, which isn’t as strange in Seth’s apartment as it might be in another one. There isn’t any furniture to speak of, except for one couch that probably holds strange organisms. Seth has never seen a real need for furniture, seeing as he and Moore spend most of their time at the studio anyway. In any case, Viv is thirteenishly monologuing about love to the ceiling, and George and Terence have insisted upon running off to buy Seth groceries (also, Seth suspects, to havea brief respite from a well meaning but horribly hormonal Vivan), and Moore is at the bank gathering together the best of their flimsiest excuses for a loan.

Vivian is seeking answers about love and rejection and why making pretty boys namd Acton watch My Fair Lady with you is a somewhat badly thought through idea. (“It’s not being raised, or partly raised in my case, by two gay men that makes Viv and I do these things,” Seth asserts afterwards to Moore, “it’s that one of those men was George.”) Seth is lying next to Viv, on his stomach, fiddling with the bits of his choreography notes that need to be fiddled with. “Don’t chase anybody for too long,” Seth says on impulse and also because he’s an idiot, a fact of which he becomes cognizant immediately after making the suggestion.

Viv looks at him sidelong. Brothers and surrogate fathers – it must be either just a family ties thing or a Stanton gene, although he’s never had occasion to see whether Clara can do the same looking through Seth like plate glass thing.

“Yeah,” Seth says, agreeing with the air, “pursue someone too avidly, you end up married to George. Consider your dad,” he finishes lamely, waiting for Viv to mention the object of Seth’s pursuit for the past several years, who is currently begging for a loan at the bank.

Instead, whether it’s because Viv is Seth’s brother or because he’s George’s sort of biological son, the thirteen year old defies his age and shakes his head, which makes his brand new eyebrow ring sway back and forth in an exceedingly disquieting manner. “Oh,” says Viv, and waits in his best state of lip biting quiet for Seth to tell the story, which, when he tells it, is lip bitingly horrid, at least to a boy who hasn’t yet grown a sense of perspective. (“It’s the most annoying thing in the world,” Moore will say later, “you’re always on an extreme with perspective. Either it’s the end of the world as we know it or everything will be all right. Always either MC Escher or a fucking prerenaissance relic painter.”)

“Oh god, Seth,” Viv says, and it is familiar. Seth has heard the phrase in many contexts – boys, Moore, angry professors, pleased professors, dance teachers, and most notably George in the kitchen one night in December when Seth arrived uninvited and wrapped in Dickensian urchinitude at George’s door. “Sethyyy,” Viv whines, a little moan of sympathetic pain.

“Careful with all those vowels,” Seth says, and ruffles Viv’s hair. “You’ll hurt yourself.”

Viv burbles something miserable, then adds, “Are you okay?” as though Seth’s abusive relationship had been only days ago and there might still be bruises or cuts.

“I’m fine,” says Seth, knowing that there’s that pane of glass between them now that always exists between him and someone who knows. “Honestly. It was an ever ago.”

“Mmmph,” says Viv indistinctly, and then, “I’m going to hug you now.”

People often do this to Seth through the pane of glass, so he doesn’t really expect it to have any effect, but then it does, even though people always try this and always fail, and he and Viv are lying down so it is a bit awkward but fuck it, they are brothers, and clever enough to know it despite the insidious gambits of chromosomes and DNA.