by Lynn Crosbie
BUT WE CRASHED back into our bodies instead, in time to see Nurse Mansfield being led away in handcuffs, weeping, “I don’t have to live by stinking rules set down for ordinary people!” as she clasped her Bible to her breast.
The news of our return from near-death was, erroneously, reported as far as Seattle.
Anchorman Dan Lewis reported: “An elderly man and his stepdaughter are alive and well after several weeks in a vegetative coma brought on by the ‘Wheat Diet craze.’”
“Jesus,” I said, snapping off our wall-mounted TV.
“We made it, kitten,” he said in a trembly old-man voice.
We heard people coming: “We are out of here,” I said, arranging my face into a small smile of relief as my mother burst through the door with two heart-shaped balloons streaming behind her.
WE WERE FORCED to see the resident psychiatrist, Dr. King.
He asked me if my “suicidal ideation” was still at large.
He was sort of a cool guy, with longish hair and a collection of silver rings, on his fingers and scoring one ear.
I told him I was happy now, and must have blushed, because he said, “Are you infatuated with the patient in your room? The one who you think looks exactly like Kurt Cobain?”
“Sort of,” I said, determined not to mess up our plans.
The doctor persisted. “Is it because of the resemblance?”
He looked at the sheathed poster in my lap.
“No. He is him,” I said, and covered my mouth.
“Okay,” he said. “Let’s say that he is. That the impossible is possible.”
“Please?” I said. Because he is. He just is.
WHEN HE SAW King, he was scornful of the comparison.
“I am not a fucking zombie,” he said. “And if I were, I’d be a girl.
“Or the guy from Creed,” he said, and laughed.
The doctor wrote “girl” and “Creed?” on his little pad and smiled, uncomfortably.
The resemblance was uncanny, and King admitted it to me, the next time we met.
WE CONTINUED TO go see our shrink.
I pretended to accept my “delusional thoughts” for what they were, and he promised to stop cutting himself and get a job in retail.
He wasn’t bad, though, that doctor.
The last time I saw him, he nervously proffered a worn copy of From the Muddy Banks of the Wishkah, and stammered, “Just in case he—”
He did sign it, and I left it under his door before we left: he drew us holding daisies, and wrote, the fault of sweet dreams.
OUR DETOX HIT hard on the second week, when they tapered us off the morphine completely.
We slept and woke up, then burned and froze; we threw up, and extended then bent our legs, which felt like splintered sticks.
We were disgusting, but we each faced our own wall, back to back, and toughed it out.
We rarely spoke.
I would say, “I feel like a block of ice someone is stabbing with a pick.”
“I feel that I am in Satan’s hot tub, drinking fire,” he said.
We managed to shove our beds together at night before Milk moved them in the mornings.
Our hands, betraying us, crept, spider-like, towards each other and clasped as we continued to shout, in fits and starts.
The nurses left the TV on, and in spite of ourselves, we got caught up in this old movie, Trog.
“Give me the baby, Trog,” an old, ferociously made-up Joan Crawford says to an apeman, who shakes his head.
“Give me that baby!”
ONE DAY, POTEMKIN brought in an orange, with green leaves on its tender stem.
“Straight from Florida,” she said, smugly.
We opened the flesh of the fruit in a single coil and shared the segments.
All we could say was, “This is so good.”
“CLARITY IS THE worst,” he said.
I felt differently. Having sized us up, I knew we could go far, and fast.
“Just focus on the beach,” I told him.
He was unimpressed.
“Okay, think about our puppy. Speck.”
“What does he look like?” he finally said, and I started writing a note to my mother.
“Aloha,” it said.
SIX
THE CHILDREN OF THE SUN
The blond man, in red sunglasses, white T-shirt, ripped jeans, and black Converse running shoes, extends his hand to the girl with the long black hair, long legs, and heart-shaped face, dressed exactly the same.
They are walking towards the Santa Monica Pier.
The black and white puppy running behind them overhears the man say, “We made it.”
The girl smiles enigmatically: the part in her hair ends like a fork, or a scar.
“What do you want to do first?” he asks, which the dog hears as “Get the ball!”
“Ride that Ferris wheel,” she says.
“Get a gun.”
“Become famous then retire, stay in bed all day. Get a liveried butler.”
“I’ll buy you a bell,” he says, whipping a slobbery ball towards the Arcade.
THIS IS HOW we got out of the hospital.
While we were sitting upright and wasting valuable time falling in love, they separated us.
We had no plan: “We’re fucked,” he said, as they dragged him away.
He and I were locked up in separate parts of the psych ward.
When my mother came to see me, with a box of clothes and a lentil loaf, she was convinced by Dr. Orne, the horse-faced resident, to sign me up for a nice long stay.
He and I communicated, for weeks, through contraband kites, and agreed to befriend the craziest people we could find and enlist their help.
Mine was a Teenie, a meth-head murderer who wore her teeth — removed, by herself, with pliers — on a leather cord around her scrawny neck.
“It makes sucking dick a lot easier,” she told me as we played cards.
She told me her kids — four and seven — were card sharps, that the older one probably could have worked in the casino one day.
“Do you miss them?” I asked.
“Yes and no,” she said. “When they was gone, I got two whole days of a silence so pure I wish I could of smoked it,” she said of her dead children.
When she smiled, I, perversely, wanted to rub her gums like glass rims, and make an eerie song about how much she scared me, and how forlorn she was.
I ASKED TEENIE if she could help us one day, as we watched Y&R from the duct-taped loveseat in the common space.
“We’re going to be rich,” I said.
She cocked her head, and looked from Victor to me.
Victor was saying, “You had better listen, Nikki. This farce of a marriage will not occur, understand?”
This cheered her up: “She was common trash when he met her,” she said.
“I’ll do it,” she said.
“But you two better get money, and get it fast. I’d hate to get mad at you, man, you’re the only friend I got.”
I was.
If anyone tried to talk to me, she would squat, lower her head, and charge.
After lights out, when she crawled in with me, I wondered how things were for him.
At night, Teenie called her children’s names. “Stop hiding,” she said. “I’m not mad anymore.”
“Oh, where are you?” she cried, and whispered Hail Marys on each of her dissevered teeth.
HE WAS DOING pretty well, as it turned out.
His roommate, Morgan, a slight, balding pedophile with a face tattoo of JonBenet Ramsey, was a huge Nirvana fan who stammered in his presence, called him Kurt, and ignored his denials with broad winks and knowing nods.
Morgan agreed right away to find me, and when he saw
us making trivets in the shop class, he took Teenie aside.
The two arranged a drop-off, and in the middle of a chaotic visiting day they faked seizures so we could grab the bags — labelled, absurdly, ANTHRAX FUMES — that they had left for us.
In less than a day, he and I walked out with cash and drugs, dressed as sexy nurses — Morgan’s cousin worked in an adult merchandise store, and even threw in a pair of fur-covered handcuffs we used on the second guard.
The first just waved us by and licked her lips. “You getting off?” she said.
“Soon,” he said, and we walked fast to the idling Crown Vic that Teenie’s husband left us and floored it.
We bounced along like the fuzzy dice on the mirror, as the cold air leaked through the floorboards, and on the radio a tinny old song bled “Take me high” like magical directions.
“Life is a few days,” it said on the book of matches I grabbed at the Stop and Shop.
This was one.
SEVEN
EVELYN GRAY AND CELINE BLACK, TL4E
When we got to Los Angeles, he and I worked at a souvenir shop on the boardwalk and rented a room at Surf n Crash, a seashell-pink motel a few blocks away.
An ugly kid with taped-up glasses sat by the front office with a box he had labelled PUPIS.
He and I both reached for the same squirming black and white spotted ball, and handed over five dollars.
“Spay your dog,” he said, and smacked the kid, hard.
Speck was sick: we had him dewormed, cleaned up, and after a week he stopped crying all the time.
He was black and white, with a heart-shaped beauty mark on his muzzle. We took him to work with us, and he slept beside us in a laundry basket, raced around the floor, and gnawed on his Kong.
We collected plastic HOLLYWOOD signs, Hamburglars, and snow globes that he altered with paint and putty. I stole hats and shirts and mugs; once, I gave him a cracked starfish I found in the sand that he called Carole-Ann.
He played guitar, and kept giving me lessons. We wrote and I cooked from recipes off the Carnation site: I was a little homesick.
One night we watched Liz & Dick with some friends from the shop, our dealer and his girlfriend, and Mary, a trans girl with one perfect breast who was saving for the other.
We loved the film and laughed at the idea of getting what he called “the contagion,” which is a love like that.
“It’s like an airplane,” I said. “Landing, taking off, stuck in turbulence half the time. Why bother?”
I drew Taylor’s outfits to copy later, and Mary styled my hair in a long, thick braid, woven with flowers, like she wore to her wedding to Burton.
I made more snacks from the Carnation site: queso dip with Wonder Bread, and apricot pannacotta, using Pixy Stix for flavour.
He dipped a cracker and took a bite.
“What a peppy cheese dip,” he said, glancing at the recipe.
Ugh. It tasted like cheese excrement.
Everyone tasted it, and turned green, but he ate everything. I was pretty sure he loved me. At night, though, he kept his distance.
“You’re just a kid,” he would say.
He said that, counting the days until I turned sixteen, until the day I did, and he said it again, into my mouth, and across every inch of my neck, my shoulders, and my warm, quivering skin.
EVERY MORNING, I lit a cigarette and passed it to him, then rolled back to my side.
Our room was fairly disgusting: he was a slob, and I wasn’t much better. Still, I did organize the trash on the floor into piles, on good days.
He picked through thrift stores until he was able to make me a mixed tape.
I didn’t even know what it was.
But they were all love songs, from Marvin Gaye to Scott Walker, and we played it every morning before work, before he threw on a long coat and fetched us sweet, free coffee from the church down the street.
He would get cookies sometimes, or rolls, which we fed each other, before or after waking up the guy next door — who always banged on the wall — with our inexhaustible passion.
We were very poor, and very happy.
Soon enough, I would wish that we had never left.
HE BEFRIENDED A street kid named Misty, who could barely talk to me.
But the two of them spent time together, visiting the Griffith Observatory, or sneaking into movies and eating the big bag lunches I would pack for them.
Misty was tall and skinny. He had a slight Cajun accent and a big gap between his teeth; he wore his hair in a shag-cut, and a short, elastic-waist leather jacket with Mom jeans: the cheap ink on his hands and neck were crosses, demons, and tits ahoy.
I would catch him staring at me and whip around, just to see his face colour.
“That was a really good sandwich,” was all he said to me.
He had met Misty when he was panhandling at Hollywood and Vine, dressed as Steve Lawrence, with his hair pomaded, wearing beige slacks and a red cardigan.
He would sing “The Banana Boat Song” over a recording on an old CD player, and “kibbitz,” as he said, about Eydie being a “wildcat in the sack.”
He barely made five dollars a day, so we lent him enough money to move back to New York, where his music went over better, he said.
We saw him off at the bus station, and when I kissed him on the cheek, he touched his face gingerly.
When he got there, he emailed us that he was staying at the Y, working on a new act, and doing prep at Gray’s Papaya.
“Keep in touch,” he wrote, and “Thank you both, with love.”
He drew a hot dog with an o in brackets: [o].
“I kind of miss him,” he said. I didn’t: he was always underfoot.
“But only I get to love you that much,” I said.
“He thanked us both,’” he said, and laughed at “my girlfriend, Othello DeMilo.”
WHEN HE LAUGHED, I could feel the sun lace up its cleats and start ass-kicking the clouds.
He was sad, most days.
He didn’t like to talk about it.
“Words are loneliness,” he said. He was reading Henry Miller.
I had been watching wrestling and got him into a pretty good hammerlock.
“Mercy,” he said, and I said, “What?”
HE WAS PLAYING the Mars Volta and writing lyrics that he passed to me as we lay in bed on our day off.
I would change, or add, words, entire verses.
I was sewing notebooks together, and crinkling balls of paper to throw at the puppy.
We had a nice little stash of pills going, and were humming with happiness.
“I don’t know anything about your family,” I said, as I realized that everyone I knew had parents as directed by Sam Peckinpah.
“Oh, they’re nice,” he said. “But it’s hard to talk about —”
“Why?”
We are standing by the La Brea Tar Pits, watching the mastodon mother sink, as her cub silently howls beside its father. I cover my eyes and grab his hand.
He nudges me.
“Because, well well, just because,” he sings, sounding enough like hillbilly Elvis to make me shimmer, to coax clear, white light over everything dark and unknowable.
WE DECIDED PRETTY quickly that we didn’t want to work at shit jobs anymore.
After the souvenir shop, I started stripping downtown at Super Sex, which he hated.
I hated it more, which he didn’t know. I loathed giving lap dances, and watching the men tried to keep their composure as wet spots bloomed on their pants; the look of bitter yearning I saw between my legs as I grabbed my ankles and peeked at them, throwing money like they were warding me off.
After we made more than enough to pay Morgan and Teenie the money we owed them with an astronomical vigorish, I kept dancing.
> One night, he had enough. He came into the club while I was spinning to “Pour It Up,” and pulled me off the stage.
Everyone started shouting and two of the bouncers came at him. “I’m sixteen!” I said, and they lifted their hands and let us pass.
He told me to wash the glitter off, then got in the shower with me and helped.
We stayed there until the tub filled with sparkly cold water and pink sequins.
The next day, we sold all of his art at a beach party, after we found all these drunk kids in black making castles.
They bought everything but the globe he made for me of Mary devouring Jesus like a chalupa.
“Who are you guys?” they asked.
His hair was pure white, and fell to his shoulders; he hid his eyes under red sunglasses. I dressed like Bettie Page some days, or Aaliyah.
I threw long satin gloves into the crowd, and we counted what we made — that’s how we ball out.
IN THE BEGINNING, right after Los Angeles, it was always beautiful.
We were lightly browned and brain-damaged from sex.
He sang for me, and I would freeze like a squirrel crossing the street.
When I drove, I would look over and see him, playing his guitar or frowning, and travel on tachyons to any number of rainy nights we spent listening to thunder yelling like a rock star; to rain meddling at the windows, then crashing outright.
To the nights we slept in a circle, my mouth filled with bursting crossettes and his, he said, with gash-pink camellias.
Skidding tires and terrified cries from oncoming drivers always dragged me out of these trances.
I would pull over and say, “I love you.”
“Yeah, well. Me too,” he’d say, moving over to slip his fingers inside me or squeeze my ass.
“We need to get on with this,” I said one day.
He agreed and took a deep breath.
“Let’s do it,” he said, like he was facing down a firing squad.
THERE WAS ENOUGH for the gun — an old .44 Colt.
We made a deal with the guy next door, Mike, who sometimes looked in on Speck for us, to keep him until we got settled.
He lent us a car to replace the hot Crown Vic, a white ’67 Ford Falcon. As it roared to life, I watched Speck struggling in Mike’s arms, and wondered if we had made a mistake.