Søren Weeps PIÑA Colada

Originally published in Phoebe Journal, issue 53.1

WE ARRIVE in mojito-scented fogs and splay the contents of our suitcases across every bed, dresser, and chaise lounge. Our new home is a white sandstone palace: tall arch doorways, marble floors, and a twinkly infinity pool that spills into the rolling jungle.

We line up on the pool deck for the cameras. The guys roar, the girls woo. My glass is poured until it overflows, margarita spilling between my toes.

One-pieces aren’t allowed, so the girls are all in bikinis, pink tops juggling back-injuring breasts. Shirts are fully allowed, but the guys are all shirtless anyway, flexing ironically and unironically for the cameras.

One of the producers, a man around my dad’s age with a sheep-blonde beard and a straw sunhat, jumps onto a table to address us. He opens his arms wide.

“Welcome, everyone, to the time of your lives!”

We cheer and raise our glasses. Someone starts chanting his name: “Rasmus! Rasmus!” but he winks and says: “Call me Razzer,” which we do, punching the air, our chant growing louder with the familiarity, the intimacy of a nickname. “Razzer! Razzer!”

For my introductory interview, Rasmus ‘Call Me Razzer’ sits me on a stool in a bright, air-conditioned room full of cameras.

He smiles benignly.

“Søren, right?” he says. “Would you like something to drink, Søren? Beer? Champagne? Piña colada?”

I sip my piña colada while the crew adjusts the lighting. Call Me Razzer sits before me, legs daintily crossed, hands leafing through a messy notebook. He smells like apricot and sun lotion. His curls are moulded in the shape of the sunhat he’s left in the window to the lush jungle. It gives him a boyish, summerly look.

At his back is a bulletin board with headshots of all the guys and girls. I spot my own headshot and choke a smile at the big goofy grin on my freckled face, the slight squint in my eyes. Little notebook scraps have been pinned around my photo, carrying bits of information on me: my name, small town where I’m from, nineteen years old, aspiring model or actor or all-round famous person.

A crew member says: “Rolling,” and I turn my attention back to Call Me Razzer who looks up from his notebook. His eyes take a second to find mine. He smiles.

I smile back.

Call Me Razzer leans forward, eyes sparkling.

“So, man,” he says. “I’m dying to know: who is Søren?”

I open my mouth to answer but Call Me Razzer cuts me off:

“Remember, please speak in full sentences. When I ask who’s Søren, don’t say: Just a chill guy down to fuck. Say: I’m just a chill guy down to fuck. You dig me?”

I nod, look into the camera, and say:

“I’m just a chill guy down to fuck.”

Call Me Razzer smiles and asks if I’d like another piña colada.

*

Sesame-crusted fish fillets and cottage cheese are served on brass plates, sparkling wine and mint-flecked margaritas in crystal glasses. The fish cools while we ooh and ah for the orbiting cameras. The girls extend their smooth solarium-bronzed legs and blow their puffy filler kisses at the lens. I lift my chin, cock my jaw, make sure they get my good side. The model side.

There’s a slip of paper under my plate: a dinner mission. It says to tongue-kiss my neighbour—a skinny blonde with a name like Nadja or Katja—every time the guy across from me downs a margarita, which is often.

She abides, our tongues working hungrily on each other, like waves carving the foot of a mountain. Her fake eyelashes brushing rhythmically against my cheek.

Ten margaritas in, the guy across from me rips off his shirt. He jumps onto the table—glasses singing, girls shrieking—and rides it like a surfboard. His steroid-pumped shoulders bulge at his ears like giant pink cauliflowers. His chest is so massive, it seems to encumber him, an awkward t-rex quality to his movements.

I watch with jealous repulsion. All the cameras have turned to Steroid Boy, tattoos stretched thin over muscles about to pop, tendons about to snap. I picture the posters for this show we’re filming: Steroid Boy front and centre, surfing a wave of cash and modelling contracts. I picture my friends spotting the posters around town, plastered on the sides of busses or fluttering from scaffolds, my shithead cousins texting to ask why I’m not on them, was I too boring?

“Oh, fuck that,” I say under my breath.

Nadja, or maybe Katja, looks at me.

I snatch up my napkin, fold an airplane, and flick it at Steroid Boy’s gap-toothed face.

Bullseye.

The girls gasp. The guys choke with laughter.

Steroid Boy lets out a furious roar only after the audience has reacted. He boulders down at me, which I should have seen coming. Call Me Razzer snaps his fingers at a nearby camera, which swivels in my direction, as I cringe back in my seat.

There’s a splash, a sugary dewfall, and I realise Nadja, could be Katja, has thrown her drink into Steroid Boy’s face. She pulls me from my chair, and before I know it, we’re running, bare feet slapping against the lukewarm marble, breathless with laughter. 

*

Tequila sunrises for breakfast. I drink my headache into submission, shower in cold water with my back to the camera. Nadja or Katja joins me and turns up the temperature. I kiss her neck in the steamy water, breathe in her honeydew shampoo. I try to cover the camera in the ceiling corner with her lace panties, but a crew member knocks on the door to say that’s not allowed.

“You seem to have taken a liking to her,” Call Me Razzer says during interview.

I shrug, grin.

“She’s cool,” I say. “Pretty.”

I want to say more about her, something about her soft skin or honeydew hair, her cute overbite, the way her mind drifts so that she’ll brush her teeth twice in a row or wear her shirt inside-out, but I hold back, keep it simple, light, televisable. I empty my negroni, grimace at the bitter aftertaste.

“Back home, I’d never stand a chance with her,” I add, truthfully.

“Oh, I don’t believe that for a second,” Call Me Razzer says. “Charming kid like you.”

I laugh. My voice echoes like music in the cool, bright room. I feel good, like I’m saying the right things, acting the right way. Call Me Razzer seems to enjoy me, maybe even favour me, like a firstborn.

“I don’t know,” I say. “But in here… It’s like a different world or something. Like the rules have changed.”

Call Me Razzer bobs his head, a bounce in his sheep-blonde curls.

“You’re right about that,” he says. “The rules have changed.” He leans in. “That’s because there are no rules in here.” There’s a dark glint in his blue eyes, half promise, half dare. “In here, you can be whoever the fuck you want to be. Fuck whoever the fuck you want to fuck. You dig me?”

I nod, although I’m not so sure.

Call Me Razzer smiles.

“I knew you would,” he says. “That’s why I got you a present.”

“Really?” I say, flattered. “Thanks, man.”

I look around for the present but Call Me Razzer laughs a clucking belly laugh.

“It’s not here yet. It’ll come tonight. At the Latin party. Packaged and all. I just want you to enjoy yourself, you know? No rules. Just be whoever the fuck Søren wants to be.”

*

Sombreros, fake moustaches, cowboy boot stilettoes. Salsa music and body tequila. I lick salt from the nook of Nadja or Katja’s belly button, suck the juice from a lemon slice, and spit it at Steroid Boy.

The music stops and a papier-mâché cake, shaped like a human, rolls onto the dance floor.

A new girl pops out of the cake in a burst of blue confetti: a slender redhead with the South American continent tattooed high on her thigh. Blue eye shadow, blue fingernails, blue fringe bikini. Her hair a sleek sheet of red mahogany waterfalling to her hips.

I’m not surprised that a human is inside the human-shaped cake, but I still scream and fall back on my chair for the cameras.

New Girl’s tongue is small and quick, her piercing a hard, lukewarm knob in the middle of it. Her plastic nails dig into my cheeks, as she delivers the ice cube from her mouth to mine in our introductory game of Pass the Ice.

Her breasts are pale and pointy. They quiver like jelly, as we jump naked into the moonlit pool.

The water closes over my head, and—for the first time since we arrived at this place—the world goes still. I float, weightless. Hear my own heartbeat pounding in the water. Fast and heavy, like a war drum. My gut is tight, I realise. Maybe it’s been tight for a while. Maybe I don’t feel so good about this pool and its still synthetic waters. Maybe I have a bad gut feeling about all of this. I look at my blurry hands underwater. Long, black hairs are growing from the back of them. Sharp, animal hair that catch the pool light.

Then, New Girl’s hands are on me, pulling me in for an underwater kiss, and I lose myself in her mouth, the rum and chlorine on her tongue.

*

I wake up on a damp chaise lounge with my head on New Girl’s belly, my ear crumpled and aching against her distended bladder. Sunlight spills through the arch doorways. Muffled laughter blends with clinking porcelain and the snarky beat of an eighties pop song.

I check my hands. They’re hairless. 

I feel sick. 

New Girl stabs a long blue fingernail at the roof of my mouth, and I vomit into the poolside bushes for rolling cameras. My yellow half-digested dinner hangs on the branches like tinsel. I stare at it, numb-legged, while New Girl supplies gigglish background noises, like gross and God, Sø-Sø.

At breakfast, Nadja or Katja refuses to look at me. I flick a curl of bacon at her cleavage to get her attention. She punches the table, like a boy, martinis jumping, and looks at me through the blonde strands of her hair, her eyes red and swollen.

The cameras all turn to me.

I laugh off my discomfort, swallow the sting of guilt.

Call Me Razzer relieves the tension by asking if anyone can do a handstand for a photoshoot by the pool. Steroid Boy says he can, so I say I can, too. We both topple over on the sandstone—blood fills the gaps between Steroid Boy’s teeth, my eyebrow splits—but we keep going.

At interview, Call Me Razzer hands me a gin and tonic, asks if I’m comfortable. He smells like apricot and trust. The crew fixes the lighting, does a soundcheck. The room is too bright, too wobbly. The laugh lines around Call Me Razzer’s eyes vibrate at each other.

He asks me how that felt, to have Nadja or Katja so upset with me, but the way he asks is like a joke; a twinkle in his eye, like it’s a funny story, full of silly girls and their silly girl antics. I like that. It makes me feel better. As if I’m the real victim in all of this, the hero of this show, my face front and centre on the posters.

Four gin and tonics into the interview, I fall off my stool. My brow springs back open, blood slicks my eyeball.

Call Me Razzer pulls me to my feet and pats my shoulder. A crew member wipes the blood, and Call Me Razzer lends me his sunhat to wear low on my brow.

He asks if I’m good to continue.

I nod, and he looks proud of me. It fills me with a soft sunny warmth.

He asks how it feels to have all these girls fighting over me—“must feel good, huh?”—and I’m surprised to realise that it does.

*

The pool flashes with disco lights. New Girl dances against me, then Nadja or Katja dances against me. I suck on one or the other’s neck, nibble an earlobe. Whisper into somebody’s hair, aiming my words at their microphone necklace. Behind the pounding techno beat, a headache drills at my brow. I sit on the pool stairs, fake water to my hips, while some girl grinds against my numb groin.

*

I come to in the sun. Alone.

The insides of my eyelids are red, my face burns like hot coals.

It takes a beat for me to understand where I am. Not at home, wrapped in a sleep-sweaty blanket in the gloom of my dad’s basement flat, grey cigarette-studded snow pressing against the windows, but here: hungover on a sun-warm sunbed at this dizzy jungle palace, the land of whoever the fuck Søren wants to be.

I squint up at the clear blue sky. The sun bears down on me, like an accusation.

Head pounding, I sit up and rub my eyes. I haven’t seen the palace this early in the morning before. The air is eerily still. The pool is stagnant with dead bugs and plastic straws. Wet potato chips cake the deck. In my gut, that tight anxious feeling is back.

Beyond the pool, the jungle crawls up the rolling hills. Tangled treetops smother the horizon, liana-dressed branches grasp at the sky; a rampant green, teased by ghostly mist.

For the first time, I notice the scent of the jungle, thick beneath the familiar reek of booze and sun lotion: a wet ancient scent, ripe and resiny and earthy, full of moist secrets and roots deep enough to split the bedrock. It’s the scent of an animal world, of primitive writhing bodies: dirty black fur and hooves and scales. Jaws strong enough to crush steroid shoulders. Beaks sharp enough to puncture breast implants. A scary sort of free.

“Søren.”

I turn my head, so fast it makes me dizzy, and shade my eyes to see one of the crew members standing in the arch doorway. She looks at me with impatient eyes.

“Breakfast’s ready,” she says. “We’re about to play truth or dare.”

I swallow hard.

“I don’t feel so good,” I say.

“I can see that,” she says, not unkindly. “Come on. I’ll fix you a hair of the dog.”

I try to consider, but my head hurts too much. I sway to my feet, temples throbbing. The jungle stretches out before me. Lush sunlit green, twinkly with mist.

“What’s in the jungle?” I ask.

“What?”

“The jungle,” I repeat. “What’s in the jungle?”

“Nothing’s in the jungle, Søren,” she says irritably. “It’s just a jungle. Okay? Think of it as an exotic backdrop.” 

I look from the jungle to her and back. Just an exotic backdrop.

*

I cry for no reason during soundcheck. Call Me Razzer gives my shoulder a fatherly squeeze and hands me another mimosa. I think I love him.

After the interview, he guides me to the door. I pause on my way out. I don’t know how else to word it, so I just say:

“I can smell the jungle.”

“Who?” Call Me Razzer says, tone absent.

I study him for a beat, try to read his relaxed expression, the easy curl of his lips.

“The jungle,” I say. “I can smell it. Dirt and plants and shit. I didn’t notice before, but it’s everywhere. Like something—I don’t know—” I trail off.

Call Me Razzer smiles, like there’s something funny. 

“Does the smell bother you?” he asks.

“No.” I shake my head. “I mean, maybe, but that’s not—”

“Cause if it does, I can have it removed.”

I stare at him. Suddenly afraid of what he might do. Poisons and fires. Animal bodies writhing in chemical pain.

“No,” I say, a little too fast. “That’s not what I meant.”

“Okay, man.” Call Me Razzer grins and raises his hands in mock surrender. “Whatever you say. This is your show, you know. You’re the one calling the shots here. Just let me know.” He winks.

I stare at him, gut tight.

“Right,” I say. “I will.”

“Good man.” He pats my back so forcefully I almost throw up. “How about another mimosa?”

*

I’m on the moonlit deck, moving in a manner that might be called dancing, pushing against hot, sweaty bodies—BBLs in leopard thongs, veiny biceps scrolled in ink—barefoot on the sticky sandstone, when Nadja or Katja appears and hands me a beer.

I know I’m meant to chug it, so I do.

The guys hoot, the girls wail like sirens.

Nadja or Katja licks the spillover from my chest, then starts gagging. She plucks a curly chest hair from her tongue.

The other girls strike up a choir of ews and oh my Gods. New Girl squeals the loudest.

I force a grin, try to joke it off, but nobody laughs. I stagger and bump into Steroid Boy who puffs up his own dolphin-smooth chest and says:

“Watch it, Chest Beard.”

Everybody laughs.

I feel the grin falter on my lips. My face hot. Unsure what to do, I look across the deck for Call Me Razzer who’s standing by the bar, mouthing something at a camera. I try to signal for him to jump in and distract everyone with something dumb, like a photoshoot, or a new round of truth or dare, but he avoids my gaze, just keeps motioning at the cameras, directing them towards me, his gestures animated, his eyes sparkling the way they do it when he knows he’s on to something, something juicy, some good fucking TV.

*

I stand alone in the shower and shave my chest. The bass of the party thrums in the walls. My vision is shaky, my fingers uncooperative. The cosmopolitan in my hand mixes with bath water and shaving cream.

Back outside, the night breeze scrapes against my hairless chest. New Girl kisses me, dragging the hard bullet of her piercing along the roof of my mouth. She runs a possessive hand across my chest, her plastic nails irking the delicate stubbles, and it feels like she’s scratching my internal organs.

“I love your chest like this,” she purrs. “You know another place I’d love like this?” She winks and bites a salsa-covered carrot stick in half.

I sit alone on the toilet lid and shave my testicles. The razor slips; I hiss. The cut on my left testicle fills with an angry red colour. I picture my cum in New Girl’s eyelashes, streaked through with blood. I look up and see myself in the full-length mirror: my sleek futuristic body.

I go to the pool and swim in the smooth soulless waters, my skin slick and burning with chemicals. Changing directions every time I hit a wall, like a goldfish circling its bowl. It makes me want to die, so I get up and dance… have a drink… make out with Nadja or Katja… do a shot… piss on Steroid Boy’s sandals… do a keg stand… wrestle Steroid Boy… cry… dry-hump New Girl with blood in my mouth… cry… shave my asshole… cry… call my dad and leave a message saying I can’t feel anything… cry.

“Are you crying?”

I look up to see a skinny figure, backlit with disco lights, leaning over me on the sunbed. Blonde hair kisses my wet cheeks. A sweet rush of honeydew. It’s Nadja. Or Katja. Suddenly, I have to know, need to know, want to die if I cannot know:

“Is your name Nadja or Katja?”

Her eyes are in shadows, unreadable, but her brow is slack. Her long disco-lit hair flutters in the breeze, as she says:

“That’s none of your business.”

“Please,” I say. “I’ll tell you my name.”

“Your name is Søren Nielsen,” she says simply. “Razzer told me our first day here.” 

Then, she turns and disappears into the flashing lights.

I lie on the sunbed for a long time. Razzer told me. The music quivers in the ground, my left testicle aches, the air rings with drunken squeals and laughter, and underneath it all is that ancient scent of jungle, wet and ripe. Razzer told me.

Razzer.

I get up. I stumble through the party and enter the palace, bare feet slapping against the marble. My legs seethe with a new kind of direction, an animal strength, something unprocessed, untamed. For the first time in weeks, I feel good, dangerous. I look down at my hands. Rough dark hair is sprouting between my fingers, my nails are growing out, curling into claws.

I reach the interview room and throw open the door.

“Rasmus!” I bellow.

A handful of crew members are scattered around the cool bright room. They all look, as I step inside. 

“Søren,” one of them says, a note of alarm.

I stride past her, looking around their blurry faces.

“Hey, buddy,” says another. “You can’t be in here.”

“Where is he?” I ask.

“Who?”

The window is open to the jungle: gnarly trees silhouetted against the moonlit sky, breathing in the silver mist. I look at the trees, forget to look where I’m going, bump into a camera tripod. My drink slips from my hand and shatters against the floor: blood-red splatters of sangria.

“Shit,” says one crew member, while another says: “Easy, man,” and yet another: “Honey, you need to leave.”

“I want to talk to Rasmus,” I say, to none of them in particular.

“How about I fix you a new drink?”

I snort with derision. “Fuck you.”

“Søren, there’s a lot of expensive shit in here.”

I laugh out my frustration, do a full spin to face them all, one by one. “Can anyone—” I say, stepping barefoot around the sangria-stained shards “—tell me where the fuck Rasmus is?”

When I come full circle, Call Me Razzer is standing in the door.

The straw sunhat is wry on his head, his sheep-blonde beard catches the ceiling light with a saintly sheen.

“Ah!” I throw open my arms. “Rasmus!”

There’s a moment’s surprise on his face, a flicker of uncertainty.

Then, he grins.

“Søren, buddy,” he says. “Call me Razzer.”

I don’t return his grin.

“That’s not your name, though,” I say.

Call Me Razzer blinks.

“Oh, but that’s okay,” I continue, “because this is the land of whoever the fuck Rasmus wants to be, isn’t it?”

Call Me Razzer lets out an overly-hearty laugh. “Sure, man. Whatever you say. I take it you’re enjoying the sangria?” He winks at a nearby crew member who shifts nervously.  

“Just like it’s the land of whoever the fuck Rasmus wants Søren to be,” I say.

The smile stiffens on Call Me Razzer’s face. He closes the distance between us at a slow pace, his curls bouncing beneath the brim of his sunhat with each step.

“Is there a problem, Søren?”

My heart is pounding in my throat.

“What do you think?” I say.

“I think you’ve had a lot to drink.” 

“You’ve given me a lot to drink.”

Call Me Razzer’s smile vanishes completely.

“Look,” he says. “I’m not sure what you’re implying. But if you’re saying that I pressured you into drinking, let me be very clear that I don’t appreciate it.” He holds my eyes with uncomfortable intensity.  

I feel myself shrink under his gaze.

“You’re an adult, Søren. And as an adult, I expect you to set your own boundaries. If you’re not mature enough to do that, then you shouldn’t be here. Do I make myself clear?”

Defiance drains from my body, my fists unclenching, shoulders drooping. A shameful smoulder takes its place. I pause, reluctantly, then give a small nod.

Call Me Razzer studies me for a while. He sighs.

“Look, Søren, I like you,” he says. “I’ve liked you since day one. You remind me of myself when I was younger, you know. You’ve got ambition. You want to model, yes?”

I hesitate.

“Yes?” he presses.

“Yes,” I echo.

“Good.” Call Me Razzer nods. “I like that for you. You’ve got the body for it. I can help you with that.” He smiles, gives my shoulder a conciliatory squeeze. “Tell you what. How about you go find that big muscle idiot—that big chunk of steroid meat, the one you hate—and stir some shit up? What do you say? You stir some shit up, and I’ll make you fucking famous, okay, buddy?”

It's a feeling like falling, although I’m standing very still and upright. The sparkle is back in Call Me Razzer’s eyes.

I look to the window: a small square of jungle, enclosed by the hard sandstone frame. Just an exotic backdrop. A trivial feature of this dizzy jungle land, the land of Rasmus. I look down at my hands: just regular human hands, smooth and hairless.

Ignoring the scent of the jungle, I nod.

Call Me Razzer pats my cheek.

“Good man,” he says.

I nod again. Then, I leave the room. My feet hurt as I walk down the hallway, red footprints in my wake.

Outside, I find Steroid Boy in the flashing lights. He turns to face me, a big goofy grin on his freckled face, and squints drunkenly at my feet.

“Shit.” He laughs. “What happened to you?”

“That’s none of your business,” I say, and I punch him in his teeth. ■