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It’s early December in Sankofa Square. The sun is still out. The weather is flirting with 4°C and every nose is pink. Jay remembered to bring a scarf but not gloves. Four cups of hot chocolate have done little to improve his mood.
In line next to him, Matt’s got a slingshot poking out of his pocket. He’s carrying a shopping bag full of dozens of little plastic paratroopers painstakingly painted to look like himself and Jay. The retro toys are the kind that unfurl their chutes if you throw them hard enough. At the top-most stop of the Winter Glow ferris wheel, he plans to rapidly slingshot them all one-by-one down into the crowd of families.
“Picture it. Boink. They get hit in the head, they pick it up,” Matt squints and dramatically scrutinizes one of the toys in his hand, made into his own image, its little helmet painted just like his trilby. “You make them think, “Whoa, who are these guys? Who are these captivating characters in these dashing get-ups? I gotta know more!”” Matt ends his sentence with a huge open-mouthed grin but his eyebrows are pointing down as if he’s titillated by the brilliance of his own idea. Nothing new.
“And how do they find out more?” Jay asks in a flat, knackered tone.
“From this!” Matt plucks at a tiny bit of cardstock reading, simply, “NIRVANNA THE BAND” – tied to each toy with a string, like a price tag at a vintage shop (or a toe tag on the corpse of their stillborn career, Jay thinks.)
“And the kids, they’ll take these home, play with them,” Matt waves a two-inch-tall Jay around and starts talking out of the side of his mouth, grating and whiny and clipped: ““Matt this is never gonna work! Matt I’m sleepy! Matt I have to piss!” See that’s you Jay, that’s the kids make-believing you, right– anyway, it's like when a company gives you a branded pen or a mousepad and you use it and you look at it in your house every day and you become subliminally loyal. Simple.”
Jay shifts his weight from one foot to the other and pushes his hands deeper into the pockets of his black peacoat. The lines of his mouth and eyebrows are all crooked in different doubtful directions.
“You have no nose for viral marketing, we’ve established this,” Matt bristles as he delivers these words, turning away and looking off into the distance.
“Hey, I helped paint them.”
“You stole paint and got us banned from Meeplemart. Is that helping?”
“I do really have to pee though.”
“We’re nearly at the front of the line,” Matt pouts and still won’t look at him.
“You can hold my spot?”
“You’ll miss boarding.”
“Would that be the worst thing? I mean, it’s kind of a one-person plan, isn’t it?”
At this, Matt whips his head around and glares daggers. Jay withers. The pair stew in silence. The line of people is packed so dense behind them, it’d be a nightmare to push through anyway. Jay keeps shifting from one leg to the other, a little dance to warm himself up and calm his bladder.
Matt holds onto the plan supplies but he stashes his hat in a cubby at the base of the ride, with all the women’s purses and sunglasses and whatever else people are worried about dropping and losing during their ascent. When they take their seat in the ferris wheel’s swinging bench, their knees touch momentarily. Jay crosses his legs so tight he thinks he might pinch a nerve. His ears turn redder than his nose and his insides sting like an open wound kissed by the chilly air. As the ferris wheel begins to turn and they lift off, a stronger gust of wind picks up. Fumbling, Matt accidentally drops the shopping bag and its contents over the edge.
“FUCK,” Jay crows in the highest pitch he’s emitted all week, looking on helplessly.
“It's fine, it's fine, we'll just go pick them up and get back in line.”
“I don’t have TIME for this, Matt!”
It falls on deaf ears, like the majority of Jay’s complaints these days. The shapes that make up the city’s skyline are steadily sinking below his head. He can see the carousel below, and all the carnival games Matt will get hyper-competitive over before the night’s end, and the places to buy turkish delight and mini donuts, and just beyond them, the public restrooms. He curses himself for having missed his chance to go earlier.
Before they know it, they’re already 45 feet off the ground, about to perch at the ride’s peak. Suddenly, the motors at the base of the ferris wheel malfunction. Their pod lurches forward but whips right back into place, causing Jay to shriek. The contents of his bladder would’ve sloshed around if they had any spare room to do so, but as it stands, the organ is but a bloated balloon stretched as taut as possible.
A mess of mechanisms groans below. The chains will no longer move any of the gears that they're supposed to. Matt shrugs, throwing his hands up in the air and slapping them back down on his thighs with a huff.
“Well that’s just great. That’s irony for you.”
“Did they pull the emergency stop? What's going on?” Jay is distraught. He sees some carnival workers teeming below, gathering, huddling together. Something’s definitely off. “We’re stuck? Are we stuck? Matt, we’re stuck!”
“Yes. Thank you, Einstein.”
“Matt.” Tears are welling up in Jay’s eyes and his knuckles are bone-white around the lap bar. “I’m gonna explode. Get us down. Please!” he pleads, to which Matt's only response is “pffft.”
But Matt can smell Jay’s desperation rising off of his cold sweat. He turns his head slowly and narrows his eyes as if he’s just had some kind of realization. When his crossed legs are no longer keeping enough pressure and the dam feels like it’s about to burst, Jay starts twisting both his hands between his legs.
“Are you– are you tugging off? Dude, we’re in public.” Matt’s trying to suppress a smile.
“I'm not fucking touching myself, I'm trying not to piss everywhere,” Jay hisses through his teeth. Matt always teases him. Jay knows this. But there’s always a tipping point where Matt will take his pains and neuroses seriously and start coddling him – but where that limit lies seems to fluctuate from day to day.
“Aw, is it hard? Does it hurt? Tell me about it.”
“What the fuck, Matt–”
“I said tell me.”
Jay bites at his lip. No. Freak. Each second feels like a minute and Jay starts to bounce in place. He’s getting worried now. His insides are burning and he’s squirming and gripping at anything and everything he can get his hands on: the back support, the edge of his seat, the rim of the side panel, the lap bar running across both men. He whines, low and long until the sound dissolves with a weak stammer. He squeezes his eyes shut and tries to focus on his breathing, tries to teleport to some happy tranquil place in his brain, but he's seeing more of a mind-pigsty than a mind palace and he can't dream, he can’t take hold of the seeds of any ideas or visuals. There is only a flashing marquee screaming “TOILET. NOW. IDIOT.”
“I can’t– I can’t hold it.” Jay’s legs are pretzels and the new mewling sounds coming out of him are positively pathetic. Matt simply cannot resist. He reaches over and tickles Jay's midsection. Just a little. There is not a shout, only a sharp intake of breath as Jay springs a leak at long last.
This isn’t happening. This isn't happening.
“This isn’t happening.” The words fall from Jay’s mouth and–
Relief. Of sorts. He’s been freezing outside for hours and now some parts of him are finally warmed. The fuzzy feeling spreads, travels through his core, radiating down his thighs and reaching up in his ribcage at the same time. Jay’s face goes slack with resignation. He’s already beginning the subconscious work of dulling his emotions, of numbing himself so he won’t have to confront his reality. This is a man well-practiced at barricading the doors of his mind shut. This is just another day to which he’ll have to throw away the key. Hard reset.
The fabric of his pants soaks up the initial leakage pretty fast, but it keeps coming until there’s a puddle spreading onto the seat and running all down his legs.
Matt notices. He’s gotten exactly what he wanted, but of course he overreacts and backs up against one side of the open-air bench seat, causing the whole thing to tilt and swing.
“YOOOO! Grooo-o-oss!”
“Keep your voice down, Matt, please–” Jay surprises himself by mustering up the wherewithal to even string together this request.
“Oh what, like there’s not a hundred kids also pissing their pants here this very moment?”
“Is that– supposed to be comforting?” Jay chirps weakly. His vision is blurring and he doesn’t know if it’s from tears or from the lightheadedness that precedes a panic attack.
“Not really. Jus’ saying.” Matt chuckles but soon falls quiet when his eyes drop down and lock back onto Jay’s lap. Jay’s pants are dark grey but even in the setting sun Matt can still see the darker patch spreading, like a storm building up on a time-lapse weather map. Jay buries his face in his hands. Matt grabs at his hair and yanks his head back upright.
“Hey, hey, don't do that. Lemme see you.” When Jay meets his gaze, Matt's doing that smug smile that turns his eyes into tiny twin crescents. Jay can’t even find the words to give his anger a shape and so, thinking itself useless, it leaves him entirely. Everything leaves him. Matt scoots closer.
“Awww, did poor Birdie have an accident? A little overflow?” he mutters right against Jay’s jawline before he leans back to look into his eyes again properly. “Wow, you had more in there than I thought. That tank holds a lot of litres, huh?” Matt’s deep and percussive laughter assails Jay’s ears. He drapes an arm over the backs of their seats and leans in to cup the soaked crotch of Jay’s pants, pressing into his balls until it hurts. Jay feels all the color drain from his face and in the next moment Matt’s lips meet his. He’s frozen in fear to the point he can't move his neck, but his eyes widen and he scans the entire area, mortified – but no one is looking. No one is paying attention to any bit of what's unfolding.
Matt takes Jay’s hand – the freezing fingers are curled as tight as possible into the palm – and tries to pull it down into his lap, struggling to maneuver around the ride’s metal lap bar. He gives up on mouthing at Jay like a gasping fish and instead, he speaks.
“C’mon, we can match.”
What?
“We can both ruin our pants. I’m trying to show solidarity here and you’re being really ungrateful.” Matt’s trying to sound stern but he’s audibly agog, bordering on breathless. Frantic and rough, he wrests Jay's peacoat off his shoulders and pulls it down to cover up their laps. Jay shivers as the cold snakes itself around him. Matt is mashing Jay’s still-stiff palm into his crotch now. He reaches over to replace his other hand atop Jay’s wet lap.
“Oh yeah that’s drenched. Soaked. You need to be changed? Need me to get those off of you A-SAP huh? Don’t worry. I’m here. I’ll do it. I’ll help you.” Matt’s breathing harder. Jay thinks he can feel his own eye twitching now. Maybe the anger will come back and step in for him. Maybe he can will the rage to return and animate these limp leaden limbs of his.
Matt’s voice deepens when he growls “you got all wet just for me, didn’t you?” and it’s at that point Jay’s stomach feels like it’s going to plummet entirely out of his body. “Don't feel bad. Don't be embarrassed, baby.”
This isn't real. It can't be. Yes, Matt takes jokes too far – Jay knows the man loves a game of gay chicken, loves to make everyone squirm, even his dearest loved ones, to test them and toy with them. But never in a million years would he guess that Matt would be forcing his hand down his pants in public while spewing an endless stream of bad porno lines.
Matt’s really working himself up now. It’s almost impressive how far he can get with zero input, how he just keeps talking and talking and fucking talking without a single syllable of response from Jay.
“I told you not to throw back all those hot choccies… Does it feel warm though? I bet it feels a little nice. Just a little.” Drops of urine are now dribbling onto the metal floor under their feet, a sound like slow raindrops falling upon a tin roof.
Matt’s been twitching a little for the last ten minutes but now it escalates to jerky full-body spasms like a demon needs to be exorcised – and it probably does. He’s still steering Jay’s arm, clumsily cramming Jay’s hand against his erection. Jay is still paralyzed, speechless, in disbelief at no less than ten of the things currently happening. He is finally able to send his body the signal to relax his clenched fist, letting the fingers uncurl and press around the shape of Matt.
“Aw fuck, fuck, Birdie, you’re gonna make me–”
Matt tenses and grips onto Jay’s wrist hard enough to leave a ring of bruising, gasping as he cums. Jay watches his breath fog up the air. Matt shudders out a few more strained syllables of a groan as he presses his back into a metal panel of the ride and lifts his hips up from the seat. He thunks his body back down and goes limp.
The wheel starts turning again. As if Matt’s orgasm was the key item needed to progress to the next level of this sick game.
Their pod reaches the ground level. Jay is shell-shocked. It’s a wonder he can stand upright when they disembark. The shopping bag and its scattered paratroopers lie entirely forgotten on the ground behind the ride. Matt tugs at his shirt and fastens both buttons of his blazer in a half-assed attempt to cover the soiled crotch of his jeans. He ties Jay’s coat around Jay’s waist. He rubs Jay’s back and smiles while he steers him in the direction of a dessert vendor’s stall.
“C’mon pisspants, let’s go get you a chimney cake.”