zeke, the gayest model of TÃ…GARP (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
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enodia_gpsl2024-05-15 12:30 pm
bwnedpronouncedboned) wrote in enodia_gpsl2024-05-15 12:30 pm
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WHO: Zeke & Papa Zelizer
WHEN: ~November 2008
WHERE: IRIS Office in Wheeling, WV
WHAT: Zeke registers as a liminal and has anxiety.
WARNINGS: Light homophobia and bad parenting. Also I haven't proofread it because if I didn't finish this I was never going to get any work done.
It's Monday, not quite 10 AM, and the city of Wheeling, West Virginia, isn't moving too fast. Zeke can hear the cars on the nearby street sluicing through a deep puddle on the intersection, can feel the water spitting down from the sky and landing on his black canvas jacket.
"Well, better get in there." Zygmunt Zelizer leans out the window of his truck and jerks his head toward the front door of a squat government building. The state's IRIS building, according to his dad, and Zeke has no reason to think he's lying about that. But a bone-deep fear of entering the wrong door and asking for help from the wrong person still grips his chest. "Don't wanna miss your appointment. Who knows how long til they'd give you another."
Zeke nods. He's right. That would be inconvenient for everyone involved.
"Where are you gonna be?" he mumbles into his jacket and stares at the truck's side mirror.
"I got some shit to do. Probably won't take you more'n an hour, right?"
"I--" Zeke's breath sticks in his chest, a tightness gathering in his shoulders and collarbones as poisonous anxiety leaks into his lungs. "I don't know, how could I know? Why don't--"
Zygmunt looks away, and Zeke can't ask him to stay. Not like it would even make him feel better to have his dad standing behind him, arms crossed and muttering, resentful that he got mixed up in this new not-quite-human shit in the first place.
"Why don't we say an hour," he finishes in a flat whisper, his shoulders slumped, his entire being deflated and legally an adult. "I'm sure they'll let me wait inside if I gotta."
"Don't get arrested." Zygmund puts the truck back in gear and pulls out of the parking lot. Zeke stands there and doesn't watch him go.
--
"I have an appointment." Zeke's words are quick and his voice is quiet, hands shoved so deep in that oversized jacket his arms are practically wrapped around his waist. "Zelizer. With a Z." The skeleton behind the desk nods and claps a clipboard on the counter in front of him.
"Registration?" the skull asks him, and he nods. "If I can get you to fill this out while you wait, I'll let them know you're here."
Zeke stands there. He doesn't take the clipboard or tell the prim-voiced receptionist that he can't, he can't read or write or fucking paint, he can't drive or look into someone's eyes or describe their hair color.
All he can do is succumb. When the receptionist looks up again, there are tears rolling down his cheeks.
--
It's just past noon. The drizzling rain from earlier has turned into sleet, and the threat of snow hangs over the four-hour drive home. Zeke can hear the tink-tink-tink of ice pellets bouncing off windshields and car hoods, littering the ground around the scattered vehicles with crunchy slip hazards.
He lingers at the corner of the IRIS building, huddled under the awning, an unlit cigarette hanging from his lips. Every once in a while a door will open, an employee will slip out or another purple-blooded weirdo will troop in to put their names in the government database. Sometimes he'll watch them, trying to picture the type of person that accompanied all those bones; is that skeleton a man or a woman? are they his age or his parents' age? are they an obvious freak or can they pass as one of the general population?
There's no way to confirm his impressions, though. At the best, he'd have to trust someone else to faithfully describe the passersby, and that's an awful lot to ask of someone who can barely work up the nerve to ask where the bathroom is. So he draws them in his mind, the only place his artistic energies have to go these days.
"What, they didn't want you waitin' inside or some shit?" Another pile of bones approaches him, and it smells like light beer and sawdust and stale cigarettes, just like his dad. Zeke plucks his own smoke from his lips and holds it up in explanation. His smoking hasn't been a secret in that house since he was 16. "I left the truck here. Coulda sheltered under the cap if you really wanted."
Zeke's shoulders hunch up until they touch his ears and he sticks the cigarette back in his mouth. "I don't know which one is yours."
Zygmunt doesn't answer. He doesn't know how. There's always been a wall between the two of them; Zeke didn't act the way most dads imagine their future sons, and only really resembled his father when he got caught shoplifting and drinking in the park. The guys Zyg worked with used to whisper-joke that he had a little f-slur on his hands, and he'd bark out a humorless laugh and let it happen, while the barely ten-year-old Zeke would sink further into his sketchbooks and his own head to get away.
And now that escape is gone. Zeke can't draw, he can't paint, he can't even see his own face anymore. All he has left is that unhelpful chuckle from the next room. He clenches his teeth and breathes in, the air shaky and barely circumventing the lump in his throat.
"Here." His dad holds out a square metal lighter, lid flipped back. Zeke can't see the flame, but when he passes his hand over the top he can feel the faint heat. With an air of gratitude not devoid of fearful obedience, he lights his cigarette.
The silence that follows is sticky and uncomfortable. There have been a lot of silences between the two of them throughout the years, sometimes awkward or angry, sometimes pleasant. But this one isn't pleasant, and Zyg bounces on the balls of his feet as if trying to shake the words out of himself.
"Were, um," he starts, stops, swirls the words around his head one more time. "Were they able to help you at all? Is there anything they can, uh, you know--" He points to his eyes. "Can they help you?"
"Maybe," Zeke answers and pulls a slip of paper from his pocket, a small, yellow carbon copy with dozens of stray marks, and passes it to his dad. "They gave me a referral to some guy who might be able to, like, make glasses or something."
"This guy?" It's obvious when his dad grinds his teeth now, giving Zeke a visual counterpart to the grating sound he and his brother could hear on their rides home from detention and the police station. The sound of a man who doesn't want to lose his cool in public. "Who works out of WVU? We gotta go to fucking Morgantown now?"
Zeke doesn't answer. His stomach hurts, and there's no room left for air in his lungs. "And let me guess, it's not just a one-and-done kinda deal, right? We gotta go there just to talk, then again for tests and fittings and check-ups, and you know they ain't never heard of a fucking house call to save their damn lives. Which means we gotta be the ones taking that time off work and hauling this piece o' shit truck halfway across the damn state every other week 'stead of--"
"You don't have to."
"Of course I fuckin' do, you're fuckin' blind, Zeke."
"I'm not blind, I just--" But he might as well be blind. That's what he'd screamed at the house when he tore his artwork off the walls and threw them outside, in the river, in the trash, in the burn barrel. What good did it do him to see bones when it also took away his independence, and the only thing that made him happy? "I'll find my own way."
"You know goddamn well your mom wouldn't allow that."
"And what the fuck does that have to do with anything? I'm an adult, ain't I?"
"Don't start with--"
"I'm old enough to be tried as an adult and put myself on a government watchlist all by myself, why can't I find a friend or hitchhike to Morgantown?" Zeke stabs out his half-finished cigarette. It tastes bitter right now anyway. "Maybe I'll finally fuck off for good."
"Ezekiel, listen to me." But he won't. He's hovering at the edges of the parking lot, glancing over the trucks, desperately mining his memory for details only visible to the x-ray eye.
"I don't want to do this shit anymore." He walks into the parking lot without a direction or a plan. "Pretty sure you never did."
"You know damn well that's not fair." Zeke can't see his dad's eyes, but he can picture them, big and brown and sad, full of why are you so hard on me? and I just don't understand you. It fills Zeke with spite and anger. Fuck him and fuck those eyes.
"I don't care." He shakes his head and tries to swallow that lump in his throat. "Take me home or don't, I'll be out of your hair soon enough either way."
Zyg opens his mouth, but no words come out. There's nothing to say, and he's never been able to de-escalate a situation in his life anyhow. He just nods, and heads for the truck. With a jerk of his head, he gestures for Zeke to get in.
The next four hours were spent in the most painful silence to date.
WHEN: ~November 2008
WHERE: IRIS Office in Wheeling, WV
WHAT: Zeke registers as a liminal and has anxiety.
WARNINGS: Light homophobia and bad parenting. Also I haven't proofread it because if I didn't finish this I was never going to get any work done.
It's Monday, not quite 10 AM, and the city of Wheeling, West Virginia, isn't moving too fast. Zeke can hear the cars on the nearby street sluicing through a deep puddle on the intersection, can feel the water spitting down from the sky and landing on his black canvas jacket.
"Well, better get in there." Zygmunt Zelizer leans out the window of his truck and jerks his head toward the front door of a squat government building. The state's IRIS building, according to his dad, and Zeke has no reason to think he's lying about that. But a bone-deep fear of entering the wrong door and asking for help from the wrong person still grips his chest. "Don't wanna miss your appointment. Who knows how long til they'd give you another."
Zeke nods. He's right. That would be inconvenient for everyone involved.
"Where are you gonna be?" he mumbles into his jacket and stares at the truck's side mirror.
"I got some shit to do. Probably won't take you more'n an hour, right?"
"I--" Zeke's breath sticks in his chest, a tightness gathering in his shoulders and collarbones as poisonous anxiety leaks into his lungs. "I don't know, how could I know? Why don't--"
Zygmunt looks away, and Zeke can't ask him to stay. Not like it would even make him feel better to have his dad standing behind him, arms crossed and muttering, resentful that he got mixed up in this new not-quite-human shit in the first place.
"Why don't we say an hour," he finishes in a flat whisper, his shoulders slumped, his entire being deflated and legally an adult. "I'm sure they'll let me wait inside if I gotta."
"Don't get arrested." Zygmund puts the truck back in gear and pulls out of the parking lot. Zeke stands there and doesn't watch him go.
--
"I have an appointment." Zeke's words are quick and his voice is quiet, hands shoved so deep in that oversized jacket his arms are practically wrapped around his waist. "Zelizer. With a Z." The skeleton behind the desk nods and claps a clipboard on the counter in front of him.
"Registration?" the skull asks him, and he nods. "If I can get you to fill this out while you wait, I'll let them know you're here."
Zeke stands there. He doesn't take the clipboard or tell the prim-voiced receptionist that he can't, he can't read or write or fucking paint, he can't drive or look into someone's eyes or describe their hair color.
All he can do is succumb. When the receptionist looks up again, there are tears rolling down his cheeks.
--
It's just past noon. The drizzling rain from earlier has turned into sleet, and the threat of snow hangs over the four-hour drive home. Zeke can hear the tink-tink-tink of ice pellets bouncing off windshields and car hoods, littering the ground around the scattered vehicles with crunchy slip hazards.
He lingers at the corner of the IRIS building, huddled under the awning, an unlit cigarette hanging from his lips. Every once in a while a door will open, an employee will slip out or another purple-blooded weirdo will troop in to put their names in the government database. Sometimes he'll watch them, trying to picture the type of person that accompanied all those bones; is that skeleton a man or a woman? are they his age or his parents' age? are they an obvious freak or can they pass as one of the general population?
There's no way to confirm his impressions, though. At the best, he'd have to trust someone else to faithfully describe the passersby, and that's an awful lot to ask of someone who can barely work up the nerve to ask where the bathroom is. So he draws them in his mind, the only place his artistic energies have to go these days.
"What, they didn't want you waitin' inside or some shit?" Another pile of bones approaches him, and it smells like light beer and sawdust and stale cigarettes, just like his dad. Zeke plucks his own smoke from his lips and holds it up in explanation. His smoking hasn't been a secret in that house since he was 16. "I left the truck here. Coulda sheltered under the cap if you really wanted."
Zeke's shoulders hunch up until they touch his ears and he sticks the cigarette back in his mouth. "I don't know which one is yours."
Zygmunt doesn't answer. He doesn't know how. There's always been a wall between the two of them; Zeke didn't act the way most dads imagine their future sons, and only really resembled his father when he got caught shoplifting and drinking in the park. The guys Zyg worked with used to whisper-joke that he had a little f-slur on his hands, and he'd bark out a humorless laugh and let it happen, while the barely ten-year-old Zeke would sink further into his sketchbooks and his own head to get away.
And now that escape is gone. Zeke can't draw, he can't paint, he can't even see his own face anymore. All he has left is that unhelpful chuckle from the next room. He clenches his teeth and breathes in, the air shaky and barely circumventing the lump in his throat.
"Here." His dad holds out a square metal lighter, lid flipped back. Zeke can't see the flame, but when he passes his hand over the top he can feel the faint heat. With an air of gratitude not devoid of fearful obedience, he lights his cigarette.
The silence that follows is sticky and uncomfortable. There have been a lot of silences between the two of them throughout the years, sometimes awkward or angry, sometimes pleasant. But this one isn't pleasant, and Zyg bounces on the balls of his feet as if trying to shake the words out of himself.
"Were, um," he starts, stops, swirls the words around his head one more time. "Were they able to help you at all? Is there anything they can, uh, you know--" He points to his eyes. "Can they help you?"
"Maybe," Zeke answers and pulls a slip of paper from his pocket, a small, yellow carbon copy with dozens of stray marks, and passes it to his dad. "They gave me a referral to some guy who might be able to, like, make glasses or something."
"This guy?" It's obvious when his dad grinds his teeth now, giving Zeke a visual counterpart to the grating sound he and his brother could hear on their rides home from detention and the police station. The sound of a man who doesn't want to lose his cool in public. "Who works out of WVU? We gotta go to fucking Morgantown now?"
Zeke doesn't answer. His stomach hurts, and there's no room left for air in his lungs. "And let me guess, it's not just a one-and-done kinda deal, right? We gotta go there just to talk, then again for tests and fittings and check-ups, and you know they ain't never heard of a fucking house call to save their damn lives. Which means we gotta be the ones taking that time off work and hauling this piece o' shit truck halfway across the damn state every other week 'stead of--"
"You don't have to."
"Of course I fuckin' do, you're fuckin' blind, Zeke."
"I'm not blind, I just--" But he might as well be blind. That's what he'd screamed at the house when he tore his artwork off the walls and threw them outside, in the river, in the trash, in the burn barrel. What good did it do him to see bones when it also took away his independence, and the only thing that made him happy? "I'll find my own way."
"You know goddamn well your mom wouldn't allow that."
"And what the fuck does that have to do with anything? I'm an adult, ain't I?"
"Don't start with--"
"I'm old enough to be tried as an adult and put myself on a government watchlist all by myself, why can't I find a friend or hitchhike to Morgantown?" Zeke stabs out his half-finished cigarette. It tastes bitter right now anyway. "Maybe I'll finally fuck off for good."
"Ezekiel, listen to me." But he won't. He's hovering at the edges of the parking lot, glancing over the trucks, desperately mining his memory for details only visible to the x-ray eye.
"I don't want to do this shit anymore." He walks into the parking lot without a direction or a plan. "Pretty sure you never did."
"You know damn well that's not fair." Zeke can't see his dad's eyes, but he can picture them, big and brown and sad, full of why are you so hard on me? and I just don't understand you. It fills Zeke with spite and anger. Fuck him and fuck those eyes.
"I don't care." He shakes his head and tries to swallow that lump in his throat. "Take me home or don't, I'll be out of your hair soon enough either way."
Zyg opens his mouth, but no words come out. There's nothing to say, and he's never been able to de-escalate a situation in his life anyhow. He just nods, and heads for the truck. With a jerk of his head, he gestures for Zeke to get in.
The next four hours were spent in the most painful silence to date.
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This was so beautiful and so so so sad oh no