by C. L. Donley
5
Chapter 5
I didn’t know much about frat parties or whatever the hell, but I knew that showing up early enough that the DJ was still setting up was usually frowned upon. I wasn’t in the mood to stick out like a sore thumb and just look like a 30-year-old perv, up at a college he didn’t go to lookin’ for fuck knows what.
So I showed up an hour late and, judging by the parking lot, I was on time. The lot was all but deserted, and it wasn’t much better inside. But Jo was undeterred, spinnin’ her little heart out and playing some current shit that made everybody warm up and open up. The danceaholics were up and happy with whatever Jo put on. Jo held onto that like a boat to a lighthouse, until more and more students started pouring in and she started pulling more tricks out of her hat. I’m just glad she was up on a raised platform so I could see her clearly in her little getup all night.
There she was, all dolled up, but what she was wearing was like a vintage costume. Tiny blue shorts held up with suspenders that had these big white buttons, and a big shimmery red blouse underneath that hung off her shoulders. Her lips were bright red, her hair was done like some 50’s pin-up girl. And she was holding a big set of headphones up to her right ear while she played some hardcore, nasty gangsta rap, and it was hella sexy. She went by the name of DJ Girly Girl, which made me laugh.
She wasn’t lying when she said she knew music. She mixed Jay-Z with INXS. 50 Cent with that old song by that white lady. The one about sitting in a diner. It was damn catchy. Genius, really. She mixed The fuckin’ Who with Ludacris and it gave me the goddamn shivers. It was like those songs were one song that always existed. Was she the first to ever think of that shit? After a couple of songs, I understood right away what she was doing. She liked mixing two completely opposite and unrelated things that should never go together, finding something common about them both and making them work.
She brought a lot of bad memories back. By accident. Middle school. Coming home to an empty ass trailer. Mom nowhere to be found.
“Mom’s gone.”
“What do you mean ‘mom is gone’?!?!”
High school. Gnarls Barkley. Gorillaz. Those fuckin’ brownnosin’ niggers that told everyone I snitched when I didn’t. Had to spend every spare fuckin’ moment of my school day in a bathroom stall for a year.
She brought back a couple of good ones too. My dad fuckin’ loves Kings of Leon. Gus tried to razz him for it and he damn near beat Gus to death. That shit was hilarious. My mom rockin’ out to that Africa song with me and Gus buckled in the back seat. We used to know the words, I guess. The crowd was eating it up.
After awhile she started taking requests again. She was probably a baby when most of these songs came out. I wondered why she was playing community colleges when she could legit play arenas, or whatever the hell famous DJ’s do.
I didn’t mean to stay for the whole show, didn’t mean to wait around after the crowd died down, lining up for a chance to talk to her. But there I was in line, like a schmuck, surrounded by college kids. Little snot-nosed punks who would belittle me if I was wearing a short-sleeved shirt.
“You seemed to garner an awful lot of attention tonight,” she said, breaking down her turntables and record station.
“Me?” I said.
“Everyone was asking about the hot guy standing by himself in the back.”
“Hot guy?”
“You’re telling me you never get that?”
“No. I’m usually spending all my free time with a couple a’ retards. Or at home. I don’t come into town very often.”
“Just a good ol’ boy, huh?” she smiled. I grinned and shook my head.
“Never meanin’ no harm,” I finished the lyric. She just laughed.
“Can’t believe that shit was ever on tv.”
“Can’t believe you even know the reference.”
“Helloo, DJ. It’s my job.”
I picked up one of her crates of vinyl records and she suddenly stopped and looked at me like I was a meal. Heat shot through me like a lightning storm.
“You don’t have to do that,” she said.
“Do what?” I asked, genuinely in the dark. Granted, my mind was pretty fuckin’ blank, but I didn’t know what she meant.
She just laughed and we walked to her car. I saw the dolly in her trunk and I realized that hauling all this shit every weekend was probably pretty heavy for her. From the looks of it, she didn’t have anyone volunteering to help her out at the end of the night. Fuck me. Equality strikes again.
Really not something she should be doing by herself late at night. Swear to God, I was resolved to punch her ex if I ever saw him on sight. No conversation, no introductions.
“You gettin’ paid for this gig?”
“Yeah.”
“How?”
“Webster app. Goes straight to my account.”
“How much do you make?”
“About what I make in a day drywalling.”
“Not bad.”
“Not bad at all.”
“I like your hair, by the way.”
“…Thanks.”
“Is it a wig or…”
She snickered at me and shook her head, but didn’t answer as she started packing up the trunk. Finally, she looked up at me.
“Are you for real right now?”
“Hundred percent.”
“It’s… a weave, if you must know.”
“Well, I like it,” I said.
“Thanks,” she scoffed.
“Fake hair is… I don’t know. A turn-off, kinda. But it looks good on you. Good job.”
“I’m glad I could turn you on, Adam,” she said with a grin while she reached for more vinyl.
Little minx. I couldn’t stop my goofy ass smile ‘cause I was pretty sure she meant it. Suddenly I wanted to be absolutely sure.
“Are you?” I asked.
She shrugged as she gave me a chuckle. “I’m a single mom, I take it where I can get it.”
“I see,” I laughed.
“Though coming from a self-professed nazi, I should probably be pretty impressed with myself.”
“You should be, but not because of that. Because you’re beautiful,” I openly told her. She shyly looked down as she smiled.
“Thank you,” she said again.
“And I never claimed to be a nazi.”
She stopped what she was doing and raised an eyebrow in surprise.
“No? Is that just a bad tattoo job of a flower?”
“I got it when I was 19,” I heard myself explain. “My dad was in the klan, so was his father. Five generations. I got out, but the ink is still there.
“Why’d you get out?”
“Just wasn’t my thing.”
She stopped and stared at me. “…It wasn’t your thing?”
“Nah.”
She laughed a little bit. No doubt she thought it was fuckin’ ridiculous, both to join the klan or to leave it once you got it tattooed on your body. I couldn’t believe this was the first I ever mentioned that I got out. Did she think I was just a sideways talkin’ lunatic? Maybe Kenny told her when he “vouched” for me.
“What about it made it ‘not your thing’?” she asked.
“They said a lot of shit in the beginning that I agreed with. America first, white people first. But then it was just all fuckin’ rallies and dress code shit, the whole thing was just a little too faggy for me.”
She covered her whole face and shook her head a little, probably at my using the “f” word.
“So basically, you’re saying the klan seemed like something revolutionary when it was really just… more of the same?”
Okay… now I’m impressed.
“Exactly,” I nodded.
After everything was loaded up, and there was no more reason to be there, I was one miserable son of a bitch. I wanted her to ask me more questions, about my life. I wanted to watch her guard go all the way down, see that I was a good guy. And I wanted it now.
More than anything. She was so damn beautiful in her little getup. A little slutty, but she was petite so she could pull it off. She was trying to show off, but it was part of her act.
“DJ Girly Girl, huh?” I said, trying to stall.
She scoffed a little bit, rolling her eyes.
“Yeah… I came up with it in high school. Stupid, but… I can’t really start over with the brand at this point.”
“I like it.”
“I was going for an old school vibe. Wasn’t a lot of girl DJ’s when I started.”
“There still aren’t. You’re damn good, you know that?”
“Yeah, I do actually,” she smiled.
“Why haven’t you moved to the big city? Leave all us hicks behind and be famous?”
“That was the plan. My friend Gretchen’s from New York and she was gonna hook me up with all kindsa people.”
“So what happened?”
“She said I was gonna get eaten alive if I couldn’t be a little more… assertive.”
“You seem alright to me.”
“I’m getting better. But that’s only recently. Working with Kenny and such. Should’ve seen me a few years ago. Even now, I don’t think I could even fight someone for the last slice of a pizza.”
“So you don’t think you could handle the game?”
“I only dreamed about going to New York because that’s where everybody told me my dream was. But I realized other than that, it wasn’t worth it to go out there and rough it in a sea of ruthless people that’ll steal whatever shine they need to steal. I wanted to find my tribe, but now that I’m older, I’d rather have respect and trust. I’ve gone this long without a tribe. I couldn’t go up there naively thinking everyone was the same as me. If I can do what I love, while also staying who I am, then I’m good wherever that is.”
I respected that. At least she hadn’t blamed the kid for holding her back. There was a little silence and I felt all kinds of sick as I took my turn up to bat.
“So uh… what are you up to now?”
“Um, well Judah’s at my mom’s. I usually go home and crash about now. Why, you wanna get into somethin’?” she asked raising both eyebrows this time.
Dammit Jo, let me handle this shit, I thought. But she’s probably not thinking about what I’m thinking about. Hell, I barely know what I’m thinking about. Still. I wish she would’ve just let me ask her.
“We could go to Pancake House. They know me well there.”
“Really? How’s that?”
“We usually go there if we’re doin’ punch list shit ‘til late at night. Which we usually are.”
“I don’t know how you guys do that,” she shook her head. She was talking about my lazy-ass brothers.
“Time management has never been our strong suit.”
“I could go for a plate of those hashbrowns. You buying?”
“Of course,” I grinned, feeling redeemed.
* * *
“So, you had the white sheet costume and the whole bit?”
Jo sat across from me in a lonely booth, scarfing down a plate of hashbrowns smothered in cheddar, topped with sauteed onions and tomato and dripping grease.
“No, that’s a different… thing,” I reply.
“A different chapter?”
“Yeah,” I laughed.
“Bet you didn’t shave your head neither.”
“Right again.”
“So how is this the klan again?”
“Klan doesn’t shave heads, skinheads do.”
Jo just rolls her eyes as she chews, which was probably her way of saying “honestly, who gives a fuck.” I tried to explain anyway.
“Breaking off to start your own little chapter is popular with the klan nowadays. Didn’t make any damn sense to me, small as our numbers were, but I went with it. Ours was the Brotherhood of Christian Identity.”
“I see,” she replied with a furrowed brow and a sarcastic tone.
“How’s the hashbrowns?”
“Good. You ever have ‘em?”
“Can’t say that I have.”
“You want a bite?” she asked.
At this point, everything she says sounds like a flirt to me. Now, she could’ve said, “would you like a taste,” which would’ve been a definite invitation. So I leave her alone and give her a straight answer.
“Yes.”
“Get a fork,” she makes sure she says to me, which makes me grin.
“You scared of my germs?” I say, unraveling my silverware from the paper napkin.
“I don’t want your nazi saliva on my fork,” she chuckled. Which meant that she did. So confident was I, that I asked her the following question.
“Where do you want it then?”
She stopped short of taking a bite and then looked at me. She didn’t smile and I thought for a second I was in real trouble. I just played it cool with a little smirk as I took a bite like I was just trying to rile her. She pointed her fork at me while she chewed.
“Behave, Mr. Kerr.”
Don’t think I didn’t notice how that wasn’t an answer. She fuckin’ wants me.
“Hey, you brought up my saliva, not me,” I shrug.
“I appreciate you covering up your tat, by the way,” she shifts the conversation, probably trying to remind me that I am a white supremacist. And that she hasn’t forgotten.
“Thanks,” I said.
“I get the impression you’re not the type of guy that does what he’s told, so. I appreciate it.”
“Depends on who’s doin’ the askin’,” I said. I didn’t mean for it to come out dirty. It wasn’t dirty, I guess. Now everything I say sounds like flirting.
“Ever think about getting that thing removed?”
“Why?”
“If you’re not in the klan anymore, why wear it?”
“I knew when I got it that it didn’t come off. It was part of my life and I’m not ashamed of it.”
“Yeah but… what are you going to do? How do you expect to live? In like… the world?”
“I live in the world just fine.”
“For now. You don’t plan to leave Bethesda?”
“Not really.”
“Ever?”
“Do you plan on leavin’ Canton?”
“Not at the moment,” she says. Jo just gives me a headshake like she won’t waste her breath on a dumb idiot like me.
She really doesn’t think I’ve thought it through? Getting a swastika tat isn’t exactly a split-second decision. Even if it was, I’d rather live with it. Can’t abide those types of people who always wanna erase their “mistakes.” But I didn’t say all that. I instead chose to go on a damn rant.
“It’s not that unusual for humans to just, stay put, you know. It’s actually the norm. That’s one thing I’m grateful for, that the klan taught me. It’s all about community. When the economy fails, and it will, and the big bright lights of the city go out, and they will, and people realize that their fancy little gated communities are really a jail and that they are all prisoners who smile at each other on the way back to their cells, everyone will panic. ‘Modern society’ is really just controlled chaos. All the powers that be have to do is flip a switch and it all crashes. But Charlie, my brothers, all of us— we’re a real community. We learned how to build, we know how to live off the land. We’re not so easily shaken.”
Jo gives me a little black attitude face. “Sounds a little deep for a hate group,” she said.
“It’s not a hate group.”
“No?”
I shook my head.
“Enlighten me,” she says, and as usual, I’m more than happy to oblige.
I shrugged. “It never was about hate, not for me. It’s about trust. Every civilization is based on trust, not sameness. And certainly not diversity. Diversity is a known war tactic. No cohesion. Easily conquerable. A government can do anything to your neighbor and you won’t object, you’ll stay in your little gulag apartment and won’t say shit, let someone scr
eam for help in an alley. That’s what I learned, and I still believe that, because it’s obviously true. All that tolerance bullshit they teach in school and in movies drove me straight to the klan. I never met a tolerant person in my life. None of that multicultural shit ever worked where I lived, and I lived in some of the worst of the worst places in North Carolina and Tennessee. I grew up with blacks. Fought almost every day. It was constant violence, constant chaos. I just wanted to know where all the good guys hung out. I wanted someone to tell me the straight truth. But hate’s not my thing. It was never my thing.”
“Which is why you left the klan?”
“Among other things.”
“And now you’re here with me.”
“Oh, I’d be here anyway, klansmen be damned.”
“Is that so?” Jo laughed.
“That is so.”
“Do I even have to ask why?”
“Not in those shorts.”
She chuckled. “Racists are never shy about that shit.”
“Stop calling me racist, I’m not a racist.”
“You find the label insulting?”
“It’s not insulting, it barely means anything anymore. It just… doesn’t fit me.”
“Ah, well. Agree to disagree,” she said, wiping her fingers with a napkin.
“If we’re gonna do that, then I get to call you a racist.”
“Pretty sure you’ve called me worse, in your mind.”
“Not true. Well… I take that back.”
Jo squinted. “What did you call me in your mind?”
“I’d tell you, but… you’d just take offense.”
Jo paused for a second and then laughed.
“There’s nothing in me that wants to hurt your feelings, Jo.”
“Well. That I do believe.”
“Good.”
We left the restaurant and lingered in the parking lot, where we continued our conversation.
“White people created Western Civilization.”
“Oh Jesus, here we go,” she rolled her eyes.
“Jo, don’t be a bitch. Didn’t you go to college?”
“You just call me a bitch?”