The Switch

Chapter 2

ZANDER

Fuck Dylan.

Not Bob. Just the regular Dylan, my bandmate Dylan. Dylan and his perfect lead-singer antics: jumping off the drum riser and landing onto the platform without tearing his Achilles tendon; running his hands through his long wavy locks as his face shimmered with sweat, reaching out and linking his fingers with the audience in the front row; lifting the microphone stand and angling the heel towards the heavens as he belted out like a glorious-maned lion.

It’s the third gig he missed in two weeks, leaving the band prancing around the stage like a cripple.

I am dancing around the stage like a cripple. It’s my duty as the backing vocals. I bounced around performing as the lead guitarist and a substitute lead vocal, smiling at the audience with all teeth. Grimacing, more like.

So yeah, f**k Dylan.

It doesn’t help that more than half of our audience are here tonight mainly to watch him, either. Moon Bar had it advertised outside the bar, flashing in LED lights, Tonight’s guest performers: Dylan Wyat ft. Ripped Jeans. What annoys me further is that they’re only wrong in terms of semantics, because Dylan is Ripped Jeans. He founded the band, wrote some of our songs, and beguiled college students to watch our shows.

I’m betting 10 baht that he’s going to pull a Zayn Malik.

“Rough night?” the ridiculously attractive bartender asks, handing me a glass of beer. I nod as the taste of piss - beer - trickles down my throat. I force my facial muscles to cooperate with my sleek attempt at getting noticed by said attractive bartender whose name I still didn’t know, even though I have been eye-f*****g him for the past four weeks.

“Was it that bad?” I ask, remembering catching his eye across the room multiple times during the mess I dare call a show. He was mainly the reason I kept going.

“Quite the contrary,” he replies with a wink before moving to the other side to refill a patron’s glass.

I hate flirting. I’m bad at it. Terrible. Nightmarish. If only we could skip this part and do the dirty deed.

My bandmates pass by. Finn rests a hand on my shoulder, signaling it was time to go. I leave sixty-five baht on the counter after downing the glass of piss, glancing at the attractive bartender’s attractive a*s one last time.

When I’m not horny, I’m sad. When I’m not sad, I’m horny.

That’s what I told my therapist in our first session after I moved to Bangkok to attend the Faculty of Music at Silpakorn University. I expected her to laugh, for some reason. I imagined not giving a damn if she did. I think what I was trying to say was that I didn’t want to be there. Not when I’ve done this countless times before; waited outside a doctor’s office hoping to get fixed. Sat in and attempted to tell them that something’s messed up inside, walked out with a diagnosis and a sheet out of a prescription pad with names of medications handwritten in an alien font.

“And what do you do when you feel those things?”

She looked young, at least ten years younger than the doctors I’ve seen in the past.

“What, sad and horny?” I asked, hoping to see a tinge of discomfort across her face. Or a sense of humor. She showed none of both. “I listen to Billie Eilish and masturbate. Not necessarily at the same time.”

“And does that help?”

I exhaled, leaning forward and clasping my hands together. “Look, Dr. Chen, I don’t mean to tell you how to do your job, but I’ve done all this before. I tell doctors every time that I feel like s**t ninety percent of the time and that I think about dying at least once a day. They nod and tell me I am clinically depressed, then they promise I’ll get better if I take my medications like a good boy. I do take the medications like a good boy, because I like my family to think that I am. And because I’m tired of wanting to die every second of the day. So if you could please just write that prescription and send me off, it’ll save us both time.”

“When was the last time you were happy?” She asked, the longest paragraph I’ve said in my entire life flying over her head.

I couldn’t respond. I couldn’t remember.

“Are you happy?”

“I’m okay.”

“But not happy,” she concluded.

I exhaled, leaning back against my seat. It was her turn to clasp her hands together and lean forward. “Shall we begin?”

I pop two different antidepressants in my mouth, flushing them down my throat with a glass of milk. Finn suddenly screams, and I snap my head in his direction so fast I could’ve cracked my neck and made a chiropractor proud.

“ALEX LIKED MY i********: POST!” He yells, eyes popping like he was just told he was cancer-free.

“Jesus,” I deadpan, bringing back the rim of the glass onto my lips. “Congrats?”

Finn swears. “You’re ruthless. You’re never happy for me. You don’t support me at all. Don’t you get it? If I become your twin’s husband, I promise I’ll take care of him for the rest of his life.”

“Yeah? Ask him for a date then. ASAP. Ma video-called us yesterday, and he told us he’s signing a contract with Chee-Wit Productions.”

Finn gapes, as if I just ran away with his favorite blanket. He rolls over onto my side of the bed. He sleeps over at least once a week, minimum, enough for his pajamas to occupy one of my drawers. “It’s happening, isn’t it? He’s going big. Not much of a wonder, though. He’s too pretty not to be noticed.”

“And he’s gonna meet a lot of attractive people.”

“I am attractive.”

“Right. We’ve had this conversation three hundred seventy-six times before, but whatever, I’m going to suggest to you the same s**t I’ve been suggesting for the past four years. Confess.”

Finn has been in love with Alex since the day I met him.

After Alex’s mother adopted me legally, I enrolled in a special program to catch up at school. I went home late one afternoon. As I was closing the gate, I saw ruffling amongst the leaves of the neighbor’s mango tree. It was the start of the summer monsoon, and the wind blew in the opposite direction. My eyes followed the movement as it crawled over our fence where the tree’s branches had overreached. Finally, it stopped. I slowly moved underneath it, blinking when I saw a boy riding a thick branch like it was a horse in a carousel.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

“Shhh, quiet!”

He lost his balance and fell to the ground. I gripped him by the collar and dragged him inside the house. He trashed and yelled - something about his arm. But I remained indifferent as I offered him to Alex’s mother, who was busy cooking my favorite dish.

“I found a Peeping Tom outside.”

His mouth hung open, looking at me like I was the one climbing a tree to ogle the neighbor’s son through his window.

“That is not true!” Peeping Tom objected.

“Were you climbing the mango tree again, Finn?” She asked, sprinkling lemongrass over the coconut curry. The aroma encapsulated the room, and for a second, I regretted bringing him in.

“Exactly,” Finn replied, giving me the stinky eye. “And this guy right here thought, wait, are you… Aunt Fae, is he Alex’s twin?”

She smiled at him and nodded, looking like an angel in the kitchen.

Finn snatched my face, his thumb and pointing finger digging into both sides of my cheeks as he studied my face from side to side. “Where?”

I saw his clogged pores up close, along with their elevated siblings begging to be popped. They say pimples are common for hormonal teenagers, and boy Finn was hormonal.

He looked me up and down, looking disappointed. “I don’t see it.”

“Good,” I replied, remembering him sneaking a peek into Alex’s window with his tongue peeking through the corner of his mouth.

“What’s going on?” Alex asked as he bounded down the stairs, his face plastered with a face mask. “Finn?”

Our eyes met. I averted my gaze.

Finn’s tongue got caught in shambles. “I-I… I was… You look…”

I rolled my eyes. It was the first time I witnessed a brown-skinned person blushing. It was the color of an eggplant.

“Smells like heaven, Ma,” Alex cooed as he wrapped his arms around her waist, pecking her right cheek.

She smiled. “Zander said it’s his favorite.”

I wished I held my own mother that way at least once. I excused myself and jogged up the stairs to change my clothes. When I ran back down half an hour later, Finn was still there, helping Alex’s mother prepare the table. The three of them worked seamlessly, and as I stood awkwardly by the stairs; I remembered that I was the stranger in the house.

At dinner, the reason why Finn was creeping outside Alex’s window became even more obvious. When Alex’s mother gave the three of us a serving of the curry, Finn swiftly picked the sliced bell peppers off of Alex’s bowl. My brother smiled in gratitude.

“Please don’t tell Alex what you saw,” Finn whispered later. I volunteered to wash the dishes, and he followed suit. “I’ll do anything you ask. Anything.”

“Whatever, pervert.”

“It’s not like that, I promise.”

“Denial is the first sign you have a problem.”

“I won’t do it again.”

“Look, you don’t need my approval to like him. Creeping outside his window isn’t cool, though.”

“I wasn’t. So, you’ll keep my secret?”

“You call that a secret?” I asked, c*****g my head towards where Alex was sitting on the sofa. “You stare at him like he hung the moon.”

He rubbed the back of his head, accidentally lathering his hair with dishwashing liquid as he smiled sheepishly. “That obvious, huh? I owe you one, Z.”

Later, I snuck out of my room and walked silently into the kitchen to grab a glass of water. The lights were off except for the one in the dining room. Alex’s mom sat in front of her laptop; papers scattered across the table.

“Are you still having trouble sleeping?” She asked, smiling. She’s always smiling.

I nodded and poured an empty glass with water from the fridge.

“You should sleep in the bed. Maybe that’s why you’re having trouble sleeping.”

I nodded again.

After I am finished drinking, I washed the glass then refilled it. I placed it on the table, careful not to spill the water. “Thank you for dinner, Aunt Fae. The curry was delicious.”

She smiled. “I’m glad. I’m sure Sol cooked it much better.”

“She rarely cooked.”

Something in her expression shifted, and it felt as if I tipped the glass over and soiled the entire table.

“Goodnight,” I said, turning around to go back upstairs.

“Can I ask for a favor, Zander?”

I stopped, gripping the stair’s railing tightly. That was it, I thought. She was going to send me away, back to the streets.

“Call me Ma,” she continued. “Not right now, of course. I took you in because I wanted you to be my son. I wish in due time, you will see me as your mother.”

I nodded, jogging up the stairs before my tears could spill.

The next day, I woke up and hear the strumming of a guitar from the neighbor’s house. I parted my curtains and saw Finn sitting by his window, singing a soft ballad as he glanced at Alex’s closed window from time to time.

After breakfast, I knocked on Finn’s door. “You’d do anything I ask, right?”

Finn smiled widely, head quickly bobbing up and down.

“Can you teach me how to play the guitar?