‘Tell her to give me a call.’
I’m proud I could say no.
‘Aw-ite, well, good luck, boy, you gonna need it. An’ remember, when you git tired of awll that prissy pussy, you come awn down, and we tighten your wig for ya.’
Sunny chuckles. Then he’s gone.
Something’s off at the dinner table. Way off. Even as a four-year-old I can see that. My mom’s pissed my dad off, and there’s an edgy terror to everything. He’s not speaking to her. He babbles on about how much wind he broke at work, but not a word to my mother.
Not one word. Not a nod or a wink. Nothing.
My mom wrings her hands and itches the psoriasis breaking out in red patches of anger on her elbows and scalp.
My head hurts worse when I hang up the phone. Who am I kidding? Kristy’s folks are gonna take one look at me and give me the bum’s rush. I’m going to Sunny’s.
No. Stop. Get in the shower, get your shit together, walk out the door, get on the bike, go over to Kristy’s parents’ house, and nicely be her Easter boy.
But as I shower and dress in my blue button-up shirt and my green corduroys, I can’t get around the fact that getting dolled up and acting normal for Kristy and her folks sounds like dental surgery. Her parents are probably uptight prigs. Hey, I don’t have to perform like some trained monkey for Kristy and her dumbass daddy and mommy.
Whereas if I go to Sunny’s I can just be a whore.
And Jade is gonna be there. Jade asked about me.
There are moments in all our lives when we’re faced with choices that make us who we will become. This is now for me.
Kristy vs. Sunny.
But first, before I choose anything, I must have a nervous breakdown. And to do this I need something to focus all my fury on.
My keys.
My dad doesn’t speak to my mom for three weeks. Just cuts her off cold. Breakfast, dinner, weekends. Will not speak to her.
The message is clear. This is what a husband does when he’s mad at his wife: deepfreeze her.
The reason my dad wouldn’t speak to my mom for three weeks, I found out recently, was that she’d had a washing-machine accident and flooded the basement, causing some water damage.
Where are my keys?
‘Does Braddy love Mommy?’
Flabby Judge wobbles in grotesque rapture.
Tinkerbell floats away forever.
Change the record, Cheesehead.
It’s getting so I can’t find a happy record with a beat you can dance to. All my records seem to be soundtracks to my personal horror movies.
I look in the mirror and a harrowed haunted teenager looks back at me. I’m my own portrait of Dorian Gray, and my sins stare me right in the face.
I can do this. Go to Kristy’s. Get myself out of this nasty life. Maybe her Old Man can get me a job. Move in with her. Yeah, that’s a good thought to hold on to.
Now all I have to do is find my keys.
In the pocket of my blue-jean jacket, there are no keys. The old roadkill door I found and transformed into a desk by propping it up on plastic milk crates is so overflowing with detritus I can’t even see any tabletopdoor: pens stolen from banks with the chains still attached; little bits of paper with names, numbers, song lyrics, philosophical treatises, rants and raves; a left-over cake container and a dead pint of ice cream; soiled coins, dark wadded dollar bills; a pair of glasses with eyeballs attached to slinkies that shake around and wobble when you put them on and move your head.
But no keys. Shit. I always leave my keys here. This is where I leave my keys. Damn. Look at all this pitiful useless shit. This is my life?
Stop. Where was the last place I saw the keys? Actually, I have no memory of my keys. Do I even have keys?
Stop. Keys. A pair of shorts on the floor. Maybe they’re in there. Loose change, pack of matches, Tootsie Pop.
No keys. Shit!
In the living room I look on the Salvation Army foldable card table, and in plastic milk crates that are doing time as end tables.
No keys.
Into the bathroom. Maybe I swallowed them and they came out when I took a shit.
No keys.
Not in the shower. Not on the floor. Not under the rug.
Into the kitchen. Where are my keys? Keys, keys, keys. Not on the floor. Not in the sink. Under the sink? Who knows, I was stone drunk, it’s possible. I bend down, open the cabinets, and poke my head into the dark under there, soaking in the Clorox ammonia potpourri.
No keys.
I back out.
Bam! My head hits the sink with a thick thud.
Motherbitchdickfacebastardpussyassshit!!!
The head was just starting to feel normal after being in the Battle of the Bulge all morning, but the hurt bounces around inside now like a pinball of pain—
TILT! TILT! TILT!
I’m a hopping madman holding my throbbing skull. I punch the kitchen wall with my fist. I expect to break a hole in it with my fury, but it doesn’t give at all, and a whole new pain takes a bite out of my knuckles, cranking up the volume knob in my head. The hurt humps its way up my arm and into my spine before it rattles down into my ass.
‘Sonofadogsuckingdickwadbitch!!!’
Totally out of my mind, I smashmouth off the walls down the hall, pissed-off radiating out of me like plutonium.
Where are my goddam keys?
Suddenly I’m back in my hovel, picking up fistfuls of desktop crap and flinging them against my stained rug walls as hard as I can, scattering my worthless crap to the four corners of my miserable little universe.
Splat! Splatter! Whack!
Then I pick up my shitty granddad roadkill chair, raise it over my head, and smash it down as hard as I can. It hits the floor with a satisfying crack, and explodes, transforming instantly into kindling.
It’s unclear how smashing my chair was going to help me find my keys, but at the time it seems like exactly the right thing to do. Plus it feels so good.
I pick up the doortabletop, hold it over my head, and ram it hard into a hanging mirror, and oh, man, that bastard shatters into a million jagged sharp shards that rain down like confetti in hell.
The smashed glass makes me take a step back. I take it all in. My little hellhole looks like it threw itself on a grenade to save the rest of the platoon. When I get my breath back I collapse onto my nasty slagheap mattress, horrified and impressed, a postcoital wrungout calm balming over me.
Hey, maybe I should have a wee little nap.
Then I’m asleep.
I wake up floating in the debris of my life. The thought of even calling Kristy now makes me shrivel like a spider on a hot plate, and in one swift instant I dismiss the thought.
When I realize I no longer have to go to Kristy’s, my head clears like the midday fog off the Golden Gate Bridge, revealing a beauty of a bluesky day, and I have a burst of energy as my hangover vacates the premises.
I straighten and organize my room slowly, reconstructing my deconstructed self by bringing order to the chaos that is my room.
When I’m done I fondle my cash stash like a long-lost lover. Maybe I should ask Sunny if he wants to go in together, get a nice place, start a serious business where we can make the Really Big Money, have a nice room of my own, fix it up, help get Jade out of the junk jungle, and be one big happy family.
I can see it so clearly.
I’ve done something bad. I can’t now remember what it was, but it was bad. My father grips the steering wheel of the van, his gnarly knuckles snow white, jaw sprung shut like a bear trap.
‘Dad, I’m sorry …
‘I’m sorry, Dad …
‘Are you mad, Dad?
‘Dad, are you mad?
‘Are you mad, Dad?
‘Dad, are you mad?
‘I’m sorry, Dad …’
I want to quit whinging, but the more Silence he unleashes on me, the more I become a miserable little stain on the passenger seat.
I ride
my bike to 3-D through a sweet Easter Sunday zephyr. It’s a peaceful afternoon. Or maybe it’s me that’s peaceful.
I don’t see Kristy’s pissed-off, embarrassed humiliation. I don’t see her kicking herself for picking me. I don’t see her explaining where I am to her parents while they shake their disapproving heads. I don’t see any of that.
As I toodle down Hollywood Boulevard into the seedy loins of Tinsel Town, I can practically hear the Beach Boys singing about all the funfunfun we’re gonna have till our Daddy takes the T-Bird away, while the stragglers push their grocery baskets full of everything they own, like they’re hunting for eggs, talking to their own Harvey Easter Bunny.
Into 3-D I stride like a samurai chicken coming in from the cold of the hero’s road, pushing that big huge rock up that big huge mountain. Sunny’s is jive jumpin’ buzz humpin’ packed to the gills, tits to the wind and balls to the wall, as I get bumps from my freaks and pecks from my chickens.
‘Hooo-ie, boy, Ah knew you couldn’t stay away.’
Sunny’s decked out in a green sparkly dress with dangly bangles and fake hooters, topped off by a giant Easter bonnet with an egg-filled Easter basket attached.
You can’t help but laugh. So I laugh. And with that the yoke of my load lifts. I’m home with my homies, celebrated for my winning personality, lack of boundaries, and nice bum.
Sunny kisses me on both cheeks. I low-five Horse, kiss Cruella, and case the joint. Redheads, deadheads, blondies, brownies, blackies, lackies, hot fudge and cherries, fatties and thinnies, and lots of old faces on young bodies.
Me, I’m looking for some Jade.
‘Is she here?’ I say, way too eager.
‘Hold your water, boy. You gotta eat foist.’ Sunny yanks me toward the kitchen and fixes me a plate of sweet potatoes, black-eyed peas, biscuits, and a couple slabs of ham, pink pig wafting succulent up into my bottomless pit.
When all the food is gone from my plate, Sunny dragqueens me into the living room, through the messy mass of Easter madness. There on the couch sits a girl in a one-piece bathing suit, fluffy bunny tail, and big floppy ears attached to a barrette clinging hard to her head. She carries an Easter basket full of little airline liquor bottles; marijuana cigarettes; yellow red green blue and teal pills; a sheet with little Mickey Mouses smiling LSDishly from it; and some gray magic mushrooms. The girl is kinda funny looking, but cute, Italian skin, crazy curly brown hair, a goofy offcentric nose, chipmunk cheeks, extra-thick milk-shake lips, eyes the color of a putting green, and chubbly wubbly, weebly wobbly flesh jiggling from under her one-piece, with an overflowing cornucopia of décolletage.
‘This here is Honey Bunny.’ Sunny nods to me, then winks to her. ‘This here’s the boy I’ze telling you about. You do everything he says, and Ah mean evva-ree-thing.’ He bugs his eyes and she giggles, which makes her jiggle like a bowful of royal sex jelly.
‘Hi, Honey Bunny.’ I smile as Sunny spangles away.
‘Happy Easter,’ she replies, like a silly little kid playing dress-up.
‘I’m always confused about Easter. Is that where Jesus comes back from the dead, peeks his head up from a hole in the ground, and if he sees his shadow, he knows winter’s over?’ I go right to the A material.
‘That’s funny … did you just make that up?’ She stares at me hard and smiles soft. Now she looks like she’s a student in an accelerated learning class at Lyndon Baines Johnson High School.
‘No, actually, I have a staff of writers working round-the-clock just churning the shit out.’ After my deadpan I sneak in a little smile to let her know I’m funning her.
She laughs smart, intelligence burning in her eyes. Comedy is what separates us from the beasts. How did a girl like her end up an Easter Bunny toting intoxicating eggs in Sunny’s web? We shall have to get to the bottom of this bunny tale.
As I slam a small Jack I scan the room, surveying the 3-D grid for Jade. Where oh where can my baby be? She’s at her mom and dad’s house on Easter with her dog Marty, trying not to think about what a piece of shit I am.
Change that record, lad.
It’s so easy at Sunny’s to change any record. There’s so much interesting music here. It doesn’t take much coaxing to get Honey Bunny to spill her rabbit guts. Mother died of breast cancer, alcoholic father ‘did things’ to her and her little sister, so she told her teacher, who told the authorities, who arrested the father, who got sent to prison; the father’s family disowned her and her sister, then the mother’s parents got hit by a truck driven by some guy who’s blind drunk, then she and the sister got shipped to some home for kids who have nothing and no one, where they waited for a kindly foster family to rescue them from their misery; only while they’re waiting, some of the caretakers ‘did things’ to her and her little sister; so she told the authorities, who accused her of being a troublemaker, and punished her and her sister until they ran away and made it to L.A.; then she got in a big fight with her little sister about Sunny and money and being a bunny chicken, and her sister took off and she’s worried sick that her sister is dead, ‘or worse,’ and she wants to start working for Sunny, cuz she’s dead broke, ‘no kidding, we’re totally broke, you have no idea!’ She heard the work was pretty good, and if you do it right you can make a lot of money, sure beats flipping burgers – ‘I want to go to Harvard,’ that’s her dream, be a lawyer, bust scumbags who do bad things to girls. ‘It’s not that horrible, is it, the work?’ She looks at me like a hungry motherless pup.
‘Better than a sharp stick in the eye.’ I smile. I tell her to get a specialty, save her money, then get the hell out.
‘That’s what I’m doing,’ I hear myself say.
Is that what I’m doing?
Then why am I here instead of at Kristy’s parents?
‘Thanks.’ She takes my hand and kisses it, like we’re in some medieval fairy tale, and suddenly I’m warm toasty tasty with the possibilities of this bundle of desperate budding vulnerable Honey Bunny sexuality.
I’m thirteen, home alone.
I’ve recently discovered how much fun it is sliding my hand up and down my penis. Gwenyvere bounds into my room. She’s English, adorably happy and sweet, complete with big beautiful lovey eyes.
Suddenly she’s using me as her human lollipop, and before you can say lickety-split, my lollapalooza is cabooming all over the place.
Gwenyvere seems to really enjoy it.
Frankly, so do I.
I never had a sense of sexual right and wrong.
As far as I’m concerned, we are just a boy and a dog enjoying each other’s company. ‘What’s your real name?’ I ask Honey Bunny.
I almost never ask. Usually I don’t want to know. But I like her. She’s warm and smart and cuddly and funny and sexy, and it would be such fun to bury my face in her soft pillow. And I bet she could make a lot of money. Maybe we can find her sister and get her working, too, get a nice place together the three of us, and kiss one another’s hands.
‘Sophie,’ says Honey Bunny.
She looks exactly like a Sophie. I want to protect this girl. And destroy her. Just like I’m doing to myself. Just like I’m doing to Kristy.
I’m just about to pop the ‘why don’t we go back to my groovy clean pad’ question to Sophie when who should come waltzing in?
Sophie’s sister, that’s who, looking like she’s being followed by somebody who wants to ‘do things’ to her.
Sophie shrieks so loud the party stops. She and her sister grab each other like the world’s about to come to an end and this is the last thing they want to be doing before the Apocalypse.
After the assembled let out a collective sigh, roll their eyes, and make their catty remarks, the party comes back to life, and I watch the little sister be swallowed up in the big sister.
Sophie takes off her bunny accoutrements, and the sisters whisper how they’ll never leave each other ever again. Little sister’s in dirty white overalls, longer and leaner than Sophie, but clearly from the sa
me gene pool.
Hey, maybe I can have sex with them. Maybe the gods are smiling on me after all.
Sophie looks like a big sister now, so sweet and easy and full of comfort. I see me and my little brother the night of the Great Pea Scandal of ’64, just the two of us in our beds, me and my little brother, who’ll always love each other no matter what. I miss him so much.
Sophie brings her little sister over to meet me. Mary Beth. Sophie tells me Mary Beth called a cousin in Phoenix and he’s wiring them money so they can go live with him till they figure out what to do next.
It’s remarkable to watch this happen right in front of my eyes. I imagine them telling their kids and grandkids about this.
How they got out just in the nick of time.
17.
THE WALRUS
I am not a slut, though I thank the gods I am foul.
—SHAKESPEARE
ON THE LAST DAY I am a chicken, the phone rings.
‘Hey, boy.’ There’s no et toi in Sunny’s voice.
‘What’s the matter?’ My ass starts to hurt.
‘Got some bad news. Call jest come in. Jade … she’s dead. Last night, she got herself beat up. Ah’m sorry, Ah know you had a thing for her, so Ah wanted you to hear it from me,’ Sunny says soft.
My heart stops, and then sinks with me as I collapse onto the couch. I see Jade dancing to that tune playing in her head, half geisha half trained killer. Big tears suddenly fill my eyes, and I cover my face with my hands to stop them from coming out. They’re so close, right there, waiting. But I won’t let them out.
‘You aw-ite, boy?’
Sunny brings me back to the land of the living.
‘You sure you wanna woik tonight? Ya wanna cancel?’ Sunny shifts seamlessly from concerned family member to calculated business manager.
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