Growing Up Wired

by David Wallace Fleming

  “It’s time for shots!” Wilfred said. He had a bottle of Citron and two filthy shot glasses.

  “What? Why? Why is it time for shots?”

  “Because, shots make it hot.”

  “Really?” I wiped the sleep out of my eyes. “They do? How’s that work?”

  He wrapped my limp fingers around a shot glass. “Ya take the shot,”—he forced my hand and clinked the empty glass against my teeth—“Ya put it to your lips, it goes down your gullet and it makes heat.” He held up my hand, steadying my glass as he poured.

  “Hmm,” I mumbled. “So that’s how it works.”

  “Let’s get our angry drunks on, Victor.”

  I propped up on my elbow. “Fully adorned in angry drunkenness?”

  “Fully adorned, my brother. Fully adorned.”

  “You’ve never struck me as an angry drunk,” I said.

  “I haven’t had the chance. Give me time, my brother, give me time.”

  “Huh?” I said, “Okay.” I took the shot.

  “No seriously. Seriously, you know I’m more of a lazy drunk. But I dabble in instigation and I’m minoring in ruckus. Like when people say, ‘Bring on the ruckus’… that was my idea, I think. Or, or: ‘knock off all that ruckus!’… these were all my ideas.” Wilfred looked at his bottle. “Another shot?”

  “Sure. Sure,” I said. “Why not?”

  I drank the shot and coughed. This second one bit me a little as it lingered sideways in my throat.

  Wilfred started tugging me out of bed, “Come on.”

  “Where are we going?”

  “No time explain.”

  He led me out of the dark rack room into Room Seven which was K-Zorro’s three-man room on the corner. Drake and Mark smoked cigarettes out on the room’s tiny concrete and wrought iron balcony. A small lamp sitting on the top of a DVD player lit the room dimly. A Papier-mache gorilla, rescued from last year’s homecoming, hung from the cedar planked ceiling with bailing wire. The room had two loft beds end-to-end that were separated by a drywall partition with garage-sale couches tucked into the nooks below.

  Rex stood near the long desktop, shirtless in his cut-off sweatpant shorts, arranging colorful, pharmaceutical pills into strange, rectilinear forms. K-Zorro, and Michael Kessler were in there too, sitting on the far couch, discussing their marijuana. The room smelled like the worst of Milwaukee’s Best and there were crushed beer cans in corners.

  Rex looked up to me with a start. He hunched over the desktop and shook his head like a wet dog before turning to ask, “What’s your poison? uppers? downers? twisty-twangies?”

  “I don’t do that stuff, man,” I said.

  Rex rubbed a pill with his thumb and looked to me enthusiastically, “Benneadril cocktail?”

  “No thanks.”

  He picked up another pill. “Perhaps a Grouchy French-fry, then?”

  “Nope.”

  “Mississippi Hairnet?”

  “What’s in that?”

  “Codeine and…” Rex twisted back toward Michael Kessler. “Kessler, what’s in a Mississippi Hairnet?”

  “You don’t want any a that shit. That shit’ll kill ya,” Michael Kessler said.

  “Apparently,” Rex said, “it’s lethal. Want some?”

  “No thanks.”

  “Well,” Rex scratched his head, “you smoke pot at least. Right, Victor?”

  “Well. Actually. No. I don’t.”

  “Wilfred—man!—get this guy outta here!”

  The two shots from earlier sent blood to flush my face. “Wait!” I said.

  “‘Wait’ what?” Rex asked, nudging a row of blue pills away from a column of green.

  “Wait, just wait,” I said. “Okay. Let’s do it.”

  “Alright!” Rex said, bouncing clenched fists above his head.

  I sat on a yellow couch. K-Zorro leaned over a black coffee table. All I could see was the gelled pointed tips of his short, brown hair as he began expertly separating seeds from weed. Then he packed some weed into a nickel pipe and pulled a Bic lighter out of his khaki cargo shorts.

  We sat on the couches and gathered around. The passing order was established as K-Zorro, me, Wilfred, Rex and then Michael Kessler.

  K-Zorro handed me the pipe. I asked for instructions. “Put it in your mouth,” he said, “put your finger over the hole, light, suck, finger off hole, suck, hold, hold, blow.”

  I did as I was told. It was like cigarette smoke only warmer—angrier. I passed the pipe to Wilfred.

  K-Zorro insisted we listen to his Nelly Furtado CD. We listened to ‘I’m like a bird.’ The nickel pipe went around four times before it was cashed. I stared at the orange LCD display of the CD player. Fascinating! Not unlike the Dr. Seuss book ‘Horton Hears a Who.’ In that book a whole other world lived and thrived, peaceably, inside a flower. And there might have been a whole other world inside the lower right orange pixel forming the number nine. They were all inside there partying, glowing orange and taking their glowing orange dogs for walks.

  K-Zorro brought out a small glass bong. I took multiple hits off this bong with bad form.

  They laughed at me.

  “What’s so funny?” I yelled.

  “You’re sucking it like a dick!” Rex said and everyone laughed. Rex walked over to instruct me. “Here. Don’t touch your lips to it. Now, suck, hard. Keep Sucking… There,” he laughed, “Now you’re all fucked up!”

  As I sucked, bubbles came up from the bong water. Smoke burned my throat. I held it in and expelled it. We listened to Nelly’s Turn Out the Lights repeatedly. My eyes climbed deeper into the things around the room. They climbed into the vintage poster of the Monkey and the Wine bottle, the oblique contour of the couch arm-rest across from me and a Budweiser bottle cap surrounded by gray carpet.

  The bottle cap amazed! It had sharp ridges and this intricate, red painting of this, this Clydesdale horse, and it performed its function perfectly. Cavemen couldn’t make bottle caps! We just threw them on the floor.

  “We don’t respect our bottle caps!… But we need to!”

  They laughed at me.

  I looked at my shoes, then over to the CD player. Maybe what I said sounded funny. Maybe sharp metallic bottle cap ridges were funny. My mouth opened. Laughter rolled out—quick, bouncy inflections. My eyes strained on that bottle cap. It was lying. It wasn’t a funny bottle cap. There was a chance—sure—that other bottle caps were funny but this one, this one! was a liar.

  “Fucking Liar!” I kept on laughing.

  “What’s wrong with this guy,” Michael Kessler joked.

  My throat was so dry. My diaphragm ached and the smiling muscles in my face burned. I wanted it to stop. But it was fun. Or was it? I didn’t know if it was fun. Tears formed in the corners of my eyes. My heart beat fast in my chest. My ears burned red. Smoke stung my eyes.

  We listened to a song of Nelly’s I hadn’t heard before. She decided to skip my ears and sing inside the fleshiest parts of my brain. It was clearer. It was richer. This wasn’t the everyday music I listened to in cars. Everyday car music was like the Weight Watchers bastardized version of cheesecake and Nelly’s rich, clear voice was the real thing—the real cheesecake! My brain drooled over each, singular note.

  “You real cheesecake, Nelly!”

  “What?” Wilfred asked in confusion.

  It was important that I keep in mind that a square had these four sides but—watch out now!—watch out!—because it had these four right angles, too! I laughed my way to wheezing convulsion.

  “Whoa, you look like you’re going to throw-up,” Rex said, amazed.

  “Here we are, man,” I replied.

  Rex leaned in closer to tell me, “You’re a pretty trusting guy, Victor. You turned away a couple times while K-Zorro was getting the nickel pipe ready. He could of laced the weed with something.”

  “Like what?” I asked.

  “I don’t know,” he tapped his finger on his lips, “ketamine, for instance.”r />
  “What’s that?”

  “I don’t know,” Rex shrugged and made a nonchalant face. “I guess it’s not really that important. Just be more careful in the future. Okay.”

  “That’s a deal, partner.” There were so many of them there. They all had fingers and toes.

  He grabbed my shoulders and gave them a little shake. “This is your second initiation, Victor. You’re one of us now.”

  “Sweet.” I chuckled. We were all going somewhere. Destination not up or down. Destination was spinning sideways, I think, but we’d get there together.

  “Victor, I’m sorry about putting you through that no-ladder over there by the pills. You know, making you say no to all that stuff so that you would say yes to smoking. It’s funny how the mind works. Sometimes I feel guilty for poking certain circuits when it gets too mechanical.”

  “What’s a, what’s a, maaaaaan, you know, right? what’s a ‘no-ladder’?”

  Rex knitted his brow. “A no-ladder is the opposite of a yes-ladder.”

  I pointed to my chest. “That supposed to mean something this guy?”

  “Not yet, Victor, not yet.”

  “I gotta get outta here!” I shouted as I stood.

  “Okay, Victor,” they told me.

  I brushed past their knees. “No time.” Which was good because there was no way that they could know. How could they know, right?

  Outside in the halls, someone had turned on the lights. Someone had painted the walls a whiter white. It was a quick job and they had cleaned up well. I touched what would surely be a wet wall. It touched back! Like it had been waiting there since time immemorial for me to touch it. I smiled: Patient wall. But the paint was dry. “There’s white ants inside here.” And I asked the empty hallway, “See ‘em?” The ceiling was higher. I couldn’t touch it which was good. If I did I would disappear. Those were the rules. The grey carpet had a certain texture to it. I got down on my knees with my butt in the air to smell it. There was a history in what I smelled but I couldn’t speak the language—beer, cheese, sweat, fungus… “That you, smells?!” I shouted so they could all hear. I tried a few more times, screaming, to address the smallest, the meekest, the most preoccupied of the smells but it wasn’t working. I needed to send them a message to let them know I wasn’t a threat. I would start off on the right foot with this funk army. I needed to send out this ‘I come in peace’ scent signal. But how could I smell any different than how I smelled. “How does a man—!” I asked the heavens of the fluorescent lights above, “smell any different than he smell.” And that was it! I was my scent and I could never change it. I smelled myself. Mmmmm!—like a coward. Good then! That settles that. The world needs its cowards. Surely God had a quota. The grey plastic wall runner attracted me like a magnet and I slammed my head into the abutment where wall runner met carpet. I thought about falling asleep there but there was an ant carrying a chunk of orange Dorrito in it’s clawed maw and I didn’t want to move in on this guy’s turf. Squatter’s Rights. Crawler’s Rights. Those were the rules. “Self-similarity,” I mumbled, wiping the sweat from my brow. Where was the Dorrito chunk for my greedy maw? Emily…

  I sat up and leaned against the wall. I discovered feet. They were not attached to any part of me. Someone else’s. Someone else’s bare feet! And legs—legs covered in green sweatpants. A giant! His face was so far away. The giant wore a blue tank top like a giant, champion matador who had just killed a giant, mythological bull.

  “So that’s how things are done around here,” he said. “We don’t let our pledges get all fucked up like this over in Lincoln.” The giant turned and walked toward the bathroom. I stood and followed him, dictating a letter I would send to this giant early the next morning:

  “Dear Giant,

  I’ve had a super time at camp. I met a nice boy named Rex. He tricked me into compromising my principles and then we both took this hot shit inside my brainpan. It’s ever so nice here, mother—

  The giant turned and said, “I’m not your fucking mother, dude.”

  “I know, I know: It’s only rock and roll… but I like it!

  Sincerely,

  Senior Hasty”

  The brown bathroom door swung close near my face.

  “P.S. Send more spiritual currency as we are in dire straights.”

  I walked past the shower alcove and pointed at a couple shower heads, “’Evening fellas.”

  By the sinks, Michael Kessler was leaning toward a mirror with his shirt off. “Who you is?” he asked his reflection. “There you at!” He noticed me, then continued with a grin. “Who you is; there you at! Who you is; there you at! Who you is; there you at!”

  Michael Kessler had the right idea. The mirrors were tempting and I also loved myself. I started looking at myself. Things got confusing.

  “Did you ever think?” Michael Kessler asked me, “Who you is,”—chuckling—“Did you ever think that the reason this world is so fucked up is because we’re really the less important side of the mirror.”

  “No,” I said, smiling at my reflection. “That’s a horrible thing to say.” I took off my shirt and started flexing my chest, left pec, right pec, left pec, right pec.

  A sweaty, naked girl sprinted along the bathroom’s tile behind us: “We murdered! Fire! Fire! Save me!”

  “Naked,” I remarked to Michael Kessler.

  “Agreed.”

  “Do you think we can get inside the mirror,” I asked him.

  “If we believe,” he told me.

  I stood there, believing. “I have to piss,” I said.

  “It happens.”

  He was right. I stood before the urinal, pissing. It felt good. It was a good idea. I resolved myself to do this pissing thing more often. Out of the corner of my eye I saw something. It was in the corner. It wasn’t a naked girl, huddled in the filthy corner where the lazy pledges had pushed the grime out of the way with their dirty mops. It was as if the wall had made itself more beautiful by growing a terrified young, naked girl.

  “Hey,” I pointed at her and pissed a little on the dingy floor tiles, “Shit!” I stumbled backward and caught myself on the blue stalls behind me and managed to stop the flow. I put it away and zipped myself up. “You’re a girl, aren’t you?”

  She nodded, imperceptibly. She shined in her sweat. I couldn’t look at any one part of her, not her breasts or her lips, her toe knuckles, her armpits, her sweet, bald vagina—just so many sweaty creases and folds of skin.

  “Did someone rape you?” I asked this sweaty crease/fold monster.

  She motioned me closer with her finger. She whispered, hoarsely, “I… have… no… idea.”

  I hunched with my hands on my knees and explained it to her, “If someone rapes, you call the police.”

  She looked at me like she was confused.

  It seemed like what I was trying to explain to her was so far away from the both of us. I clenched my fists. My left fist became Rape. My right fist became Police. I raised my right fist, “Rape-Police; uhhhhhhhhh?” I raised my left hand, “Fist-Police.” I drew my two clenched fists together and smiled at the crease/fold monster again. Where was I, anyways?

  “I don’t know,” she said. “I don’t know, I don’t know.”

  Was this crease/fold monster reading my mind?

  “Do you want me to bring you your cell phone?” I asked her.

  “Okay,” she said.

  “What room were you in?”

  “Room,” she scratched red fingernails over the dirty tiles, “Sure, there’s plenty of room. It’s a big sailboat. The weather’s nice.”

  I stood up straight. “We’ll work this out. I’ll get you your cell phone. That’s what you need. I’m sure of it!” I smiled, then started to walk back toward the sinks. I turned back to her, “Clothes?”

  “Sure,” she said.

  I walked out in the hallway. Scattered over the hallway carpet was a denim miniskirt, red heels, a gauzy blouse and a red purse. I scooped it all up and he
aded back into the bathroom.

  “What’s a matter you?” Michael Kessler asked me.

  “Bathroom wall’s growing shit: crease/fold monster,” I explained as I walked past.

  “It was a girl,” he said. “I know it! I’d like to take a bite outta her crime.”

  She was still huddled there, in the corner. “Here’s your stuff.” I handed it over to her. “It was in the hallway.”

  She stood and sang as she dressed. “La-la-lalalala-laaa!” She bobbled and flushed the urinal’s silver handle a couple times as she worked her way up onto her red heels. “La. La. La.”

  “You’re a pretty girl with clothes more on,” I explained to her.

  She squinched her face like a four-year-old girl. “Thanks.”

  “I bet… bets there’s a phone inside that purse,” I said. “You could get someone to come here and save you.”

  She wobbled into the urinal and flushed it. “What makes you think I need saving?”

  “You yelled it when you ran past—naked.” Who was she to question me? I had her number: 1,991! Wait… ? Oh, I don’t know—

  She bounced a finger against my lips, “Watch it, bucko.” She got lost in the drywall above the urinals.

  “Is it? Is it in there?” I asked.

  She leaned over and steadied herself on my shoulder. “WHAT?!” she screamed.

  My ear rang and I got dizzy. I steadied myself on her thin shoulders.

  “Tell that bitch to shut-up!” Michael Kessler said.

  “What’s a matter you?” she yelled to Michael Kessler. “I’d like to take a bite outta her crime!” She grabbed my shoulder. “I know what boys think.”

  “Is it in there?” I asked.

  “What?” she asked. “Phone?” She dug into her purse. “Here.” She pulled out a shiny black bar.

  It was long and slender, like an extruded oval. It looked like a tiny version of the Monolith from that 2001 movie. I touched it. It was so smooth! Smoother than plastic or metal. It was like wet glass.

  “Can I hold it?”

  “Here,” she gave it over to me.

  It was so light! I held a black shadow that stopped my fingers from closing. “I’m not holding nothing. So sleek! Can’t… close… fingers!”