Burnt Tongues

by Chuck Palahniuk

  “Okay, Mom. I won’t say it no more. Can I go?”

  “Fine. Go ahead. Just remember to be careful,” she said.

  “And have fun,” I said, countering her. He was a kid and needed to be a kid. Soon enough he’d be thirteen, and then the fun would be over for five years. Let a kid ride his bike.

  Tim ran upstairs.

  The coffee had cooled, but I never did like hot coffee. My tongue burnt too easily. Jen finished her drink and started looking through a women’s magazine that proclaimed to have the answer to every question about men and sex. I thought the magazine likely full of shit, but in the morning you can only read guesses. The Sunday paper was open in front of me, a picture of the president standing next to a CEO of an oil company. The article explained the various kickbacks and contributions the president’s cabinet had gotten from the big industries: oil, tobacco, guns, and the rest.

  “Tell him not to hang out with that bully,” my wife said.

  “The president?”

  “No, your son. Tell him not to hang out with the red-haired kid—Mikey Hannison. Tell him to stay away from him.”

  “Why?” Cold coffee bittered my tongue.

  “Because he’ll get Tim in trouble.”

  “It’s summer.”

  “So? He doesn’t need to get in trouble. That Mikey is a bully and a bad influence.”

  “It’s the red hair. Makes people crazy,” I said.

  Jen frowned.

  “He’ll be fine. He’s got to learn what’s right anyway. A bully is the best teacher there is.”

  “Tim is too small. Mikey could get him hurt. Ms. Welch said that Mikey was throwing rocks at cars on the freeway. Do you want Tim doing that?”

  I picked up the paper, folded it, and set it back down. Half the president grinned up at me. “How would Welch know? She’s a shut-in.”

  “Well, that’s what she told me. And I don’t want Tim doing something like that.”

  From behind her, Tim said, “I won’t, Mom. I know better.”

  She turned gently to her son. “I know. But you have to be careful. You might not think something is bad while you’re doing it, but you have to think about what happens after you’re done having fun. People could get hurt.”

  “I know,” he said. He already wore his helmet, the straps cutting into his neck. He had on an old pair of leather driving gloves with padded palms that I’d given him. He called them his good-luck gloves. “Okay, I’m going,” he said, waiting for us to give him permission.

  “Don’t ride on the road. Stay on the shoulder, and stop if a car is coming. Let it go past before you start riding again,” Jen said.

  “I know,” he said.

  “And don’t ride on sidewalks. It’s rude.”

  “I know,” he said.

  “And be good,” Jen said.

  “I know,” he said. He looked to me.

  “Have fun.” I winked at him.

  He smiled and ran out of the room. The door slammed shut. I downed the coffee and went for a refill. The garage door whined open. Running warm water in the sink, I picked at the last of the red paint from under my fingernails. Tim took off down the road, his pedals flying faster than his legs could pump—a damn nice-looking bike.

  “He’ll be fine,” I told Jen. She had her face down to the magazine, but her eyes weren’t moving. She just stared past the page. “He’s a kid.”

  “A new couple moved in down the street. They have a daughter, but she’s only eight. She’s really cute, though. And smart. I guess she gets straight As.”

  “Girls always get straight As at that age. Boys get Cs; girls get As,” I said.

  “Mrs. Benson said the girl can do algebra. They’re from Ohio or Idaho or something.”

  “Why’d they move here?” I poured a new cup of coffee.

  “Wouldn’t you?” Jen said.

  “I wouldn’t think so. But who knows?” I swallowed a mouthful of coffee to emphasize my point, burning the hell out of my tongue.

  “Put milk in it,” Jen said without looking up.

  I stood against the sink, the warm sun on my back, not putting milk in my coffee. It’d cool down in time. Testing my tongue against the roof of my mouth, I felt very little sensation. But when the coffee cooled, I sipped at it. Burnt tongue taste to everything now.

  “Can you see Tim still?” Jen said.

  The street was barely alive. Mr. Crawler pushed his heavy old lawn mower through the dewed grass and cut the tips off, leaving most of the grass only bent. A blue station wagon with a smashed-in fender crept by. Our cat stalked to the tree in our lawn, watching the ravens that snapped dry branches and threw them at her. The cat’s tail twitched as she formulated a plan for attack.

  “Nope. He’s long gone,” I said.

  “I think I’ll start the garden again. It’s been so long since we had fresh vegetables.”

  “Might be a little late in the season.” I sat down in my chair. “But it’ll give you something to do during the vacation.”

  “I still have a lot of lesson plans to do. And what would you know about gardens? You don’t know,” she said and turned back to her magazine.

  I looked up to see her scanning the page in front of her, a makeup ad.

  The next half hour passed in calm silence. Summer was here for her and Tim, but I only had a day off before I’d have to return to the shop. A town full of SUVs to work on, most of them having never touched four-wheel drive but with stereo systems that could end an FBI standoff.

  The sun crawled up through the window, spotlighting the table, and I changed chairs to avoid the glare. The sounds of summer began: sprinklers, dogs, kids, Weed Eaters, and motorcycles. It was like music for the reptile brain, a tuneless drone about being alive.

  When the phone rang, Jen jumped. She took a deep breath and got up and walked into the living room to answer it.

  I turned an ear to the living room, trying to guess who it was. Her nosey mom, my boss, or Ms. Welch?

  After a few moments of silence, I called out, “Jen? What is it?”

  And then summer ended.

  Heavier Petting

  Brien Piechos

  Gentlemen, put your hands together for Diamond.

  Give a warm welcome for Mercedes. For Cristal.

  Show some appreciation for Freedom.

  The club DJ introduces every girl that takes the brass pole as some big-ticket luxury item. It never fails. Strippers always choose their stage name after some object, some symbol they probably believe obtaining will signify their salvation. And who can blame them? Whether it’s fantasizing about a promotion or losing that extra weight, everyone finds a way to cope with the reality that we’re never rich enough, never slim enough, never quite happy or content. But we could be if we just had this one thing.

  Next up, welcome Fantasy.

  These girls need inspiration to encourage a believable smile. A smile that seduces you into believing you want them as desperately as they want to embody their stage name. Hearing that word, being called that object keeps them focused. Sort of like an incantation or a prayer, as if repeating it enough will make their wish come true.

  Diamond will sparkle forever.

  Mercedes don’t cruise ghettos.

  Crystal is the hallmark of taste and class.

  The entire world wants Freedom.

  Welcome Destiny to the stage.

  It’s an old saying that everyone has a price, and nowadays it’s a buyer’s market.

  My on-again-off-again girlfriend and I, we’re off-again. It was an argument about getting a pet together. A dog. Bigger than the one she currently has. I said no. She says I’m afraid of commitment. That’s not the problem. It’s far, far worse than that. If I were a stripper, my stage name would be Selective Amnesia.

  We have our issues. Everyone does. It’s a constant tug-of-war. But one perk of a fickle relationship is during these off phases I can get away with almost anything guilt free. Almost anything. So I’m exploiting
the opportunity to hack up this tale about her best friend without worry of ending up in the doghouse. It’s been gnawing at my bones for months. And just in case we end up on-again, names have been changed to protect the guilty.

  Considering the mess of this best friend’s life, I’ll keep with the theme and call her Redemption. Besides, what’s in a name?

  Actually, a lot.

  Whether taken from a parent or grandparent, some saint, or even the late great Elvis, your name insists another person’s dream of what you should have been. The portrait of some ancestral ideal lingers through heirloom names. Gender specific names imply all sorts of expectations. More than just a signifier used to summon, instruct, address, accuse, sometimes praise us, our names define and thereby limit us. They put us in a cage.

  By definition that’s what definitions do.

  Rover will. Furry is. Sleepy, Dopey, and Grumpy were.

  Speaking of playmates, consider how much a pet’s name says about the owner’s hopes and insecurities, their aspirations and fears. People name their pets after traits they wish they possessed themselves. Lucky. Butch. King. Or we name pets to stand in for everything we can’t find in another human. Pet names are a confession the same way dancer names share a dream.

  According to the baby name book, mine represents trustworthiness and virtue. Nice try, Mom and Dad.

  By the same token, calling Redemption an eager bitch is accurate in the worst way. But Redemption wasn’t always a bitch. What happened was her mom won some raffle or sweepstakes or bingo because that’s the sort of mom she is. Her stripper name could be Jackpot. The payout was a trip to Vegas.

  Ever heard that urban myth where a turkey ends up in the high chair and the baby in the oven? Redemption’s mom makes that stoned babysitter look like Mary Poppins. Her daughter simply wasn’t a priority until her mere existence was going to spoil big plans. The girl couldn’t be trusted alone for a weekend let alone a week. Tickets in hand, mom realized she couldn’t undo seventeen years of neglect overnight—but what about four days and three nights at the fabulous Luxor?

  Now forced to deal with the inconvenience of her wild child jailbait daughter, she drew on personal experience, figured a seventeen-year-old girl with a detention record like Redemption’s should learn the ropes before hanging from one. And where better to start an aspiring harlot’s education than Sin City? So she toted Redemption along like luggage except she put it differently. Mom said it was making up for years of missed birthdays and gymnastics meets and all that.

  They touched down with hours of desert sunshine left and hit the Strip. Vegas wasted no time doing what Vegas does, and mom slipped away to indulge in what Vegas offers with an enthusiastic and friendly dancer—they’re never strippers, always dancers—leaving Redemption in the care of a few women barely older than herself.

  This scenario was so common, Redemption had taken to calling it “funbandonment,” but maybe this time her mom was being ironic. Maybe this was one of those reverse psychology scare-you-straight lessons like when sitcom fathers catch their sitcom kids with cigarettes and force them to smoke the entire pack—an outdated behavioral modification technique like a smack on the snout with a rolled-up newspaper.

  Or maybe not. Maybe that’s just me looking for goodness in humanity, however misguided. But at least she didn’t name Redemption after the extra baggage she treated her like.

  Redemption’s mom peeled her off a few twenties and told her to have fun before skipping away into the nether regions of the club where her already thin guardian responsibilities vanished faster than the first line off the mirror.

  One of these platinum-haired Champagnes or tarted-up Porsches or overinflated Barbies who swore to watch over Redemption whisked her away to a place no seventeen-year-old girl wearing matching cherry-red lipstick, heart-shaped shades, and baby doll dress could resist. The dancer said, “My boyfriend works part-time as a limo driver. Wanna go cruise?”

  Stretched out in the backseat, mixing Redemption another stiff vodka cranberry before she could empty the first, and buffering each with a shot, she was even more generous with pills. “You like to party?” She set the scene with a Nine Inch Nails CD and asked, “You wanna get fucked like

  an animal?”

  To Redemption it was like this chatty spandex-wrapped fairy godmother had been her best friend forever—like sisters of the same litter. Like she could read Redemption’s mind when Starlet or Collagen or whatever stumbled upon the young girl’s price. Tripped over it, you could say, it was so low.

  Vodka, check. E, check. Attention . . .

  The stripper waved around a video camera and said, “You wanna be a girl gone wild?”

  Check.

  Frisky with booze, already posing for the lens, puckering up for all comers, Redemption flashed her perky seventeen-year-old nipples, the ones her ubercool mom signed a waiver to get pierced, and growled, “I’m savage.”

  Clawing the air with her French manicure and Hello Kitty decals, the stripper played along, a mewling minx in heat. With Redemption spread-eagle in the back of the limo, licking the gloss off her lips and sucking on a straw, the stripper asked if Redemption had ever considered her options besides boys.

  And Redemption, being silly and sloppy, low on self-esteem and high on everything else, she shared a secret she never dared share before. And this confidante, this mind-reading gypsy pole dancer, she was so cool. She understood.

  As if responding to a silent cue, the boyfriend dude swung the limo into a residential neighborhood. The wish-granting stripper pulled the magic wand out of her nostril and pointed it at various yards. At cruising speed she complimented the coat of a German shepherd barking valiantly from behind a chain-link fence. Said how Dobermans and Staffordshire terriers are muscular, and muscles are sexy.

  Mute behind the wheel, Ecstasy or Fantasy or Fashion Designer or whatever’s chauffer boyfriend flexed his bicep. The edges of the name Satan spread beneath a tattoo of a pit bull, the letters sharpened like bared black fangs.

  And Redemption, eager to need redeeming, she agreed. This didn’t weird her out at all. She’d considered this before, all on her own.

  The Doberman, maybe, she said. A pit bull would do in a pinch. But she’s into larger breeds. She thinks.

  Big. Powerful, well-hung studs.

  A Russian wolfhound or a mastiff.

  And the stripper who renamed herself after some trinket she believes will bring her happiness—I think her name was Fame or Talent or Associate’s Degree in Massage Therapy—she so totally could empathize. She had this great idea. She must have caught something special about Redemption’s scent.

  My on-again-off-again girlfriend owns a Chihuahua. A female. That little cock-warmer has been our saving grace. I’m the jealous type.

  When the limo dumped Redemption off at the club, her mom, twitching and sniffling with all things Vegas, what she saw sobered her up faster than a defibrillator shock.

  Running her fingers over the scratches trailing out from her daughter’s sleeves, the thick swollen red trio of claw marks dug into her arm, the rips in her empire waist summer dress that somehow make girls look pregnant and preteen at the same time, mom didn’t have to ask. She must’ve had a similar conversation about her own future in the film industry over the mirror that didn’t pan out.

  She gripped the raised gashes of her daughter’s shoulders and shook. “What. Have. You. Done?”

  Eyes twinkling like coins in sockets made into muddy wishing wells by smeared mascara, Redemption, disoriented and sleepy with her hair all feral, more than a little drunk and twice as worn-out, she looked away and said, “Nothing.” She said, “Chill out. We went to watch some guys skate.” She told her mom, “Calm down, Suzy.” She said, “I’m just tired.” She tried to shake free but was too weak and gave up. “Jeez. Maybe I’m a tiny bit stoned. So what?”

  She wiped a tissue beneath her mom’s running nose and said, “Like you have room to talk.”

  Right ab
out now her mom’s stripper name might be Responsibility or Alcoholics Anonymous. Maybe even Birth Control. Her eyes were big as exit wounds and just as wet. She repeated herself over and over. She wasn’t saying the words to her daughter anymore. She was admonishing her own reflection in those camera-hungry, mascara-splattered eyes. Eyes that echoed like a mirror.

  What have you done?

  And when they finally broke from this definitive mother-daughter moment, Redemption and her mom were alone.

  The high-buck strippers, gone. The chauffeur who moonlights as a filmmaker, gone. The vodka, gone. The blow, long gone. Only this mother and daughter, their crimes, four days and three nights at the Luxor, and an angry waitress holding a hefty tab.

  This is so illegal that even in Vegas it’s illegal.

  Some people simply shouldn’t breed. They don’t have the dedication it takes to train a child, and their kids always end up doing as they do instead of as they say. Chewing up the furniture and running wild, so to speak. Their poor pedigree holds them back no matter what. Redemption was left to learn from example.

  And just because this is always the first thing people ask, yes, she’s extremely cute. Feature-stripper-in-training-with-pigtails cute. Most-likely-to-be-found-dead-in-a-hotel-bathtub cute. That big-eyed, pouty-lipped innocent cute you can talk into anything.

  And that maxim about things that happen in Vegas staying in Vegas, like everything else in Vegas, it’s a sham. Redemption’s Vegas secret followed her home, and she kept it.

  Before this story usually begins, when she tells it herself, this Redemption bitch uses vodka to purge her soul the way a criminal might try to burn evidence by pouring more gas on a pyre. Feed her any 80 proof bottle, and it’ll howl all night long. When the flame gets too hot to handle she belches it out like every open ear is attached to her personal clergy. Reliable as menses and just as easy to see coming, she seeks solace in the pack. Her cuteness lures them in, and Redemption cuddles up to tell the tale. But she isn’t sorry. She isn’t ashamed. No one consoles her. No one attempts to understand. No one says much of anything.