Golden Ticket 3: Heath and Bob (musc)
by kdumd
They shouldn’t have been friends. By all rights of social hierarchy, they shouldn’t have ever said a friendly word to one another. But Heath and Bob had known each other basically since the womb; their moms had been next-door neighbors for life and gave birth to their first and only kids within a span of two weeks. They had always been inseparable, though each had taken a different path once the turmoil of puberty had settled and they went off to college together.
Heath was about as much of a bro as a bro could be. He had pledged a fraternity the first chance he got, and he drank in the whole lifestyle. All his shirts were extra smedium, his sunglasses neon plastic, his hats a tad askew and his hair floppy but not shaggy. By now, just after the end of sophomore year, if it didn’t have his fraternity’s Greek letters on it, Heath probably didn’t wear it in public. He had, like most college students of any disposition, become something of a professional drinker; his keg stand times were the envy of both his brothers and rival houses alike. Though he wasn’t too physically stunning, Heath’s piercing blue eyes, cocky smirk and smooth talk made him a legendary lady killer. He often wondered how he hadn’t managed to contract some kind of STD by now.
As opposites go, Bob was the apple to Heath’s orange. He had fallen headfirst into hipster culture, with its slouchy beanies and wild-but-obsessively-manicured facial hair, impossibly tight jeans and not-all-that-ironic irony. Much to Heath’s chagrin, Bob—who had demanded everyone, Heath included, stop calling him Robbie as they had for 18 years prior—had taken up smoking, and by now was sucking down nearly a pack of off-brand cigarettes a day, and even more on the nights he drank…which was almost every night. Despite being the polar opposite of Heath and his bros, Bob could put away his share of beer—PBR, of course. He had taken to finding “indie” artists and listening to their (often bad) music on repeat until he realized someone else had heard of them, too; once it became “mainstream”, it was definitely not cool anymore. Bob, unlike his best friend, spent no time in the campus gym or on the intermural sports fields. He wasn’t fat, but he was chubby, and his too-small vintage t-shirts clung to his midsection and revealed a prominent set of love handles.
Despite having a place in both the bro and hipster look, neither Heath nor Bob had any tattoos. Heath was, however, planning to get his letters tattooed across his back someday. For Bob, ink was about the only part of the hipster stereotype he didn’t buy into; besides, he was way too big of a wuss to go under the needle. But as he saw more and more of his hipster friends getting more and more color on their bodies, Bob decided to compromise and got his ears pierced, eventually gauging them up to a zero—a pretty big, but not jaw-droppingly big, hole.
On this day, Heath and Bob were at the amusement park together, a summer tradition for their families dating back to the time they were toddlers. It was late and their parents had already gone home, and the boys were wrapping up their day by playing video games in the arcade. As befit their social strata, Heath spent his quarters on the shoot-em’-ups, and Bob stuck exclusively to the oldest machines in the place.
As Heath’s character took a headshot from a shotgun-wielding vampire, Bob sidled up next to him, American Spirit cigarette sticking out from underneath his well-worn gray beanie. Heath had mocked Bob all day long for wearing a beanie in 90-plus degree weather, but of course Bob would not be moved.
“You about ready, man?” Bob said impatiently. Heath returned the plastic light gun to its holster and second-naturedly flipped his hair as he turned to face his buddy.
“Nah, bro,” he replied vacantly. “I wanna try and win that stuffed animal for Natalie.”
Bob absent-mindedly twirled the end of his mustache. “I thought you were dating Heather this week.”
Heath put on his trademark bro grin and laughed. “Listen, brah. I’m way too fuckin’ awesome to be with just one broad.” When Bob shook his head, Heath’s expression changed to one of mild irritation. “Yo Bob, I don’t know what these fuckin’ hipsters have done to you, man, but you used to be way more fun. Now you’re all fuckin’ judgy and shit, bro.” Bob didn’t flinch, and Heath continued, flipping his hair again as he turned away. “I miss Robbie, man. Robbie was fuckin’ awesome, dude.”
Bob sighed, the hairs of his ginger beard shimmering in the evening sun filtering through the arcade’s main door. Heath clambered over to the claw machine and dropped in a quarter.
“Alright bro, I got this! I fuckin’ got this bro!” Bob, for his part, couldn’t figure out why Heath needed to psych himself up to play the claw machine. Had this been anyone else, Bob would have run away screaming a long time ago, but he loved Heath like a brother and always would.
Bob watched intently as Heath, tongue sticking out the side of his mouth and wearing his ridiculous sunglasses indoors for no apparent reason, manipulated the joystick and found a spot over the toy he wanted. After Heath pressed the button, the claw lowered…and anti-climactically grabbed at nothing.
Heath slammed the glass casing in irrational anger. “Aw fuck this, bro. Let’s fuckin’ go.” As he stomped away, Bob noticed something resting on the floor beneath the machine. He bent down—always a struggle in his painted-on, jet black jeans—and picked up two tickets. Golden tickets, which Bob thought was odd; the tickets in this arcade had been blue for as long as he could remember.
Heath was already stomping out the door in his American Eagle flip flops when Bob scampered to catch up. “Heath,” he said, holding out the tickets. “What do you think these are?”
Tearing off one of the two tickets and holding it up as if inspecting a diamond, Heath’s expression turned slack. “Fuck if I know, broski. Let’s ask that dude.”
The odd couple made their way to the prize counter where Heath whistled at the acne-ridden teenager on the other side. This, Bob noted, was one habit of Heath’s he would need to try and break. The frat lifestyle had imbued Heath with an air of arrogance that Bob was not going to suffer much longer.
“Yo man,” Heath said, cocking his head and holding up the ticket as he rested his bottle-tanned elbows on the glass countertop. “What up with these tickets, bro?”
The kid behind the counter didn’t say a word, just smiled at Heath. When Bob held up his own ticket, the kid smiled at him, too.
“Uh, bro?” Heath was growing impatient. “BRO! What the fuck, man!”
But the kid just kept smiling, almost creepily. Finally Heath gave up, and dropped a few more expletives before stomping away toward the door. Bob followed, pulling the cigarette out of his beanie and preparing to light it once they were outside.
Heath stepped out into the sunlight and felt really warm all of a sudden. He could feel a drop of sweat beading up on his forehead, and when he reached up to wipe it away, his knuckle brushed against the brim of a brown and beige checkered fedora. He froze, knowing there was not supposed to be a hat on his head. Heath pulled it off his head and slowly brought it down to eye level, looking at it quizzically, like he’d never seen it before. But then a moment later, the memory flashed: he’d bought the fedora at a garage sale the previous weekend. He loved garage sales. There was so much great, old stuff to be found for cheap—emphasis on old. The older the better.
To the side of him, Bob put the cigarette in his mouth, flicked on his lighter and brought the flame to the end. As soon as he took a drag, though, he began to cough uncontrollably. He didn’t understand; he hadn’t coughed while smoking a cigarette since he’d taken up the habit a year before, and as he smoked more and more each day, his lungs had certainly gotten used it. Bob shook it off and took another, smaller drag, but it brought another round of painful hacking coughs. He was starting to freak out. Then a heartbeat later that thought vanished, and was replaced by what Braden knew was reality: he had never smoked a cigarette in his life. Star lacrosse players didn’t smoke. Some of them dipped—a lot of them dipped—but not Braden. Couldn’t risk messing up that million-dollar smile.
As the coughing fit relented, he looked over at his buddy and said, “Hank, what the shit am I doing with one of your fuckin’ smokes?” After he spoke the sentence, he briefly wondered why he was calling his best friend by a name that didn’t belong to him. His friend’s name was…something with an “H”…it had to be Hank. Silly Braden.
Hank smiled, though it would be tough to tell from underneath the mass of chestnut brown facial hair covering his cheeks, upper lip and chin. He reached out with his tattooed right hand to take the cigarette out of Braden’s. The sight of the ink covering his fingers down to the cuticles was unfamiliar and familiar all at once. “I’ll smoke this one,” Hank said in a voice that Braden thought was much deeper and more gruff than it should have been. “But you know I’m more in favor of pipes these days.”
Braden chuckled. “Oh that’s right, bro.” Bro? Since when did he say bro? “Sorry, bro. You’re the brains of this operation, ‘member?” To punctuate his apology, Braden playfully punched Hank in the arm, causing his pale pink polo shirt to bunch up as his thick, brawny biceps flexed. Since when did he have big biceps? Oh, since always, duh. Braden was the biggest dude on his lacrosse team, and was known around the sport for being one of the toughest guys to ever cradle a ball. No one fucked with Braden in the open field. Which was smart, because Braden was about as built as a bodybuilder. In addition to his biceps, each of which came in at 21” at last measurement, he had cultivated a set of calves for which other bros had lusted for years. His abs formed a visible set of eight cobblestones, complementing an Adonis belt that had earned him more than a few phone calls from modeling agencies. If he ever did take one up on the offer, they’d have to airbrush out his tattoos. Like most of his fellow lax bros, Braden had a pair of sticks inked on his back; unlike most of his bros, his were fucking huge, diagonally spanning the distance from bulging shoulder to striated lat diagonally down his shredded back.
Dragging hard on the cigarette, Hank shook his head as his exhaled through his nose. He reached up with his also-tattooed left hand and removed the fedora. Letting the cigarette dangle from his furry lips, he ran his right hand through his hair; not so much through it as over it, as Hank had a fractured memory of spending nearly an hour in front of the mirror that morning using a generous amount of product to produce a perfect jet-black pompadour extending from temple to temple; below the temples, his head was shaved all the way around. As his rough fingers contacted the hardened hair, Hank vaguely pictured himself with floppy frat boy hair, but that was laughable. Hank was no frat boy. Quite the opposite, in fact.
Taking the almost-finished cigarette back in his hand, Hank turned to the arcade window to catch his reflection. He was startled at first, but only at first. For after a moment, he looked himself up and down and smiled through the smoke wafting up across his face. He saw two long, heavily muscled arms covered entirely in elaborate sleeve tattoos, from his neck all the way down to his fingertips. One of the perks of being a tattoo artist was free tattoos, and he was one of the best artists in town…wasn’t he?
Of course he was. He had done a lot of the work himself, preferring to experiment with out-of-the-mainstream designs wherever he could feasibly tattoo his own skin. If he hadn’t been wearing that sleeveless denim vest and white v-neck t-shirt, he’d have seen more ink, all the colors of the rainbow, completely covering his enormous pecs and flat stomach. More ink showed below the bottom of his cutoff, skin tight short shorts, and even more was hidden by the hot pink Chuck Taylors he was wearing on his size 14 feet.
Yes, Hank was a hipster, and he loved it, but Hank had long since gotten tired of Braden being jacked while he himself was merely average. During high school, even as he smoked his first clove cigarettes, Hank hit the weights hard until his body was at least in the same conversation as Braden’s. He also thought it was ironic for a hipster to have big, bullish muscles, as hipster guys tended to be very slim or even slightly chubby. So just to keep up with Braden, Hank grew himself a set of powerful biceps and triceps, a powerful forearm and broad, cannon-like shoulders. His traps were even bigger than Braden’s, which was just fine with Hank—more room for tattoos. Beyond the ink, Hank had plenty of metal, too. His nipples, already the size of half-dollars, were pierced with heavy, curved barbells. His eyebrows had three rings each, and a bull-like ring hung down from his septum. But all of that was nothing compared to his earlobes, through which you could practically drive a small sedan. Hank had been stretching them since high school, and by now he was wearing steel plugs four inches in diameter, covered in the thinnest layer of skin from as used to be his lobes. Any bigger and Hank risked blowing out the lobes, which would be painful and decidedly not cool-looking. So he was content to have his coaster-sized plugs flopping around, sometimes hitting him in his beefy shoulders. And of course, all hipsters need thick-rimmed glasses, and Hank had those too; about seven pair, each only slightly different than the next.
Finally, Hank’s pride and joy—his facial hair. Like any good hipster, Hank had a beard, and this was the kind of beard that would make most hipsters jealous. From a long, expertly waxed and curled mustache to a curtain of perfectly maintained black beard hair that had long since passed his shoulder blades and was just a few weeks away from touching his pierced nipples. If Hank wasn’t talking, eating or smoking, his lips were invisible, hidden completely by the forest of hipster-perfect facial hair he had spent years cultivating. As he watched himself in the mirror, he could swear he could see the beard visibly growing longer and longer, down past the shelf of his pecs now. But then Hank remembered trimming the beard that morning and dismissed the optical illusion.
“Yo Hank brah, you done admiring yourself in the mirror, dude?” Hank’s self-scan was interrupted by Braden’s voice, which was deeper than Hank remembered, and also quite a bit…dumber, almost. Of course, Hank remembered, Braden had spoken like the love child of a Cali surfer dude and a fraternity president since middle school. As he grew older, Braden’s voice only got lower and sultrier, making him sound like the stereotypical dumb jock. Which, in truth, he was; Braden was the poster child for a jock skating by on his jockness alone. He had an army of tutors helping him scrape by in class so he could stay on lacrosse scholarship. Very little in the world failed to amuse Braden. If it were anyone else, Hank would pity him, but with Braden, it was completely endearing. For all his hard exterior, Hank’s heart melted a little bit each time he saw Braden’s Neanderthal-like gape and heard that stupid laugh.
Hank nodded, took one last drag on the cigarette and stubbed it out. As the pair began to walk towards Braden’s Grand Cherokee and Hank’s moped, the massive hipster wiggled his inked fingers into the pocket of his ultra-tight corduroy shorts and found his pipe and tobacco. Hank loved his pipe, and while cigarettes still did the job, the pipe fit his image so much more. He quickly packed the tobacco in the large bowl—had to be a large bowl so everyone would see it—and lit it, taking a few puffs of fragrant blue smoke and exhaling it through his nose as the pipe hung in the midst of his epic beard. He had to be careful not to set himself on fire; with that much facial hair, it was a real concern. But as he puffed away on the pipe, Hank looked down at his tattooed body, his outfit and over at Braden and couldn’t help but feel like something wasn’t right here. Why did he get the feeling he was supposed to be the bro and not the hipster?
Hank shrugged it off, because you couldn’t find a more brotastic bro than Braden. As they continued walking, Hayden had taken off the pink polo to reveal a green and yellow striped tank top that was snug across his heaving chest, but hung loosely below. His seersucker cargo shorts were slung low across his powerful thighs, exposing pink patterned boxer shorts. Down below his impossibly big calves were a pair of no-show white socks and white Nike tennis shoes. Despite the heat, Braden hung in there with his sideways, oversized Toronto Blue Jays cap; Hank never figured out why Toronto, since Braden had never been there and was definitely not a Blue Jays fan. A pair of cheap-looking but very expensive stunner shades in neon yellow shielded Braden’s eyes.
The parking lot approaching, Hank and Braden kept walking together as Hank kept smoking his pipe and Braden kept talking; every other word was “bro”, “brah”, “dude” or “fuckin’”. As Braden chattered away dumbly, his head began to hurt; he wasn’t supposed to be dumb, he’s smart…and shit. That caused Braden to laugh internally, which in turn caused him to laugh out loud.
“What are you laughing at?” Hank said as his teeth remained clenched on the pipe in his mouth.
Braden kept guffawing vacantly. “Nah bro, it’s nothin’.” As they reached the edge of the parking lot, Braden stopped, and put his powerful, tan hand on Hank’s meaty, ink-covered shoulder. “Hey, um, listen, man…”
Braden reached out his hand to Hank’s and took it tenderly. “Bro, I fuckin’ love the shit out of you, man. I know we’re way different kinds of people and shit, but you’re the only fuckin’ one for me, brah.”
Hank took the pipe into his hand and smiled. “I love you too, Braden. “ He leaned in to his boyfriend and planted his beard-obscured lips on Braden’s. As the kiss finished and Hank began to pull away, he exhaled a small puff of pipe smoke on Braden’s lips, prompting more buffoonish laughter.
“Aw come on dude, you know I fuckin’ hate it when you do that shit, man.” At the same time, Hank removed his thick black glasses and Braden took off his stunner shades. Hank set the pipe down on the gravel next to him, and the two kissed again, this time long and deep, each man’s hands caressing the other’s muscular back.
When it was over, Hank smiled at Braden. “Hey look,” he said. Braden put on a confused face. “The sunlight matches your eyes.” And it did: both were a vibrant shade of gold.
Braden chuckled again and back came the cocky but genuine grin that had long since become his trademark. “Same as yours, bro.” And it was: Hank’s eyes were golden, too.
As the last rays of sun disappeared over the horizon, Hank and Braden shared one last kiss before Braden climbed into his Jeep and Hank onto his moped. They took off together down the road to the house they shared just off-campus. It was going to be a long, hot night.