Chicken

by David Henry Sterry

  Whatever.

  Suddenly a car pulls up fast and parks about twenty feet away, on the same side of the street as me. I duck behind the side of a building. A couple of clean-looking guys get out quick, looking like Hollywood Employment Agency-hired goons come to rough me up and down. They’re walking toward me. One of them reaches in his coat pocket for a gun. Oh, shit. I start to make a mad dash for it when he pulls out his keys. No gun. The only gun is in my head, and it’s loaded and cocked, my own finger slowly squeezing the trigger.

  Got to get ahold of myself. The Walrus splayed out on the floor. How did this happen to me? No, this didn’t happen to me. I made it happen. But I didn’t want to leave home. It’s not my fault my father’s having a nervous breakdown. It’s not my fault my mother buggered off with her lover and didn’t invite me along. Is that my fault? Hell, no.

  Whatever.

  The Walrus just got a little more punishment than he paid for. And on the bright side, he did learn a valuable lesson about hiring troubled youth to abuse him. Maybe this asswhupping’ll turn his life around and make him a productive member of society. Hell, I probably did the guy a favor. And besides, who’s he gonna tell? The cops? What’s he gonna say? That he paid a chicken to rough him up and things got a little out of hand? I don’t think so.

  I will confess to my girl. I will baptize myself in the holy water of Kristy.

  I walk behind the building to her little bungalow. I knock on her door. No answer. I have no Plan B. Maybe I’ll just wait here until she comes home. Knock again. No answer. Shit.

  I sit down on her stoop, prepared to wait for the rest of my life if necessary. But just as I settle in on her stoop, the door opens.

  I look up. It’s Kristy. God, I like this girl.

  She doesn’t see anyone at her door. She’s confused. She wasn’t expecting anyone, heard two knocks, and no one is there.

  Guilt punches me in the chest. Why did I betray her? That was a terrible thing to do. Only a terrible person would do something like that. If I’d just done the right thing I wouldn’t have gone on that job with the Walrus. Wouldn’t have pummeled that innocent pervert.

  If ifs and ands were pots and pans, beggars would be kings. My mother used to say that.

  Kristy feels someone staring at her, looks down, and when she sees it’s me, her whole face tightens and darkens and hardens.

  A wasp of shame stings me.

  My mom endures the sixties as hausfrau, and she’s determined not to miss the seventies doing laundry and cooking for a man who’s not quite there.

  At this time the Women’s Movement is rearing its Sapphic head and roaring in all its glory. Consciousnesses are being raised willy-nilly, vaginas examined in mirrors, and bras burned in every city,’ burb, and village.

  Our Bodies, Ourselves starts making the rounds in our house. We’re all free to be you and me. Mommies are people, people with feelings.

  It’s all right to cry.

  ‘What do you want?’ A glacial cold snap sweeps down from Kristy and chills my blood. She used to look at me so nice.

  ‘Please, Kristy, I’m sorry, I really am. I’m so sorry. Just give me five minutes. Please …’ This is where I, master apologist, must begin.

  ‘No, I don’t think so.’ Kristy is unmoved.

  ‘Please, I’m begging you, just give me five minutes … Kristy I’m desperate, please. I’m so sorry …’ I plunge into full-frontal grovel.

  A huge sadness rushes up me, and the tears are there again, only this time I don’t stop them. I don’t remember crying in front of someone my own age before, but I want back in so bad, I’m willing to walk a trail of tears to get there. My eyes get fuller and fuller, like udders that need to be milked. Then two waterfalls wash down the rock of my face, as I slowly empty.

  Something moves in Kristy. She’s not ready to let me back, but her good sweet heart is feeling me.

  ‘Kristy, something really terrible happened to me, something I can’t tell anybody about. But I want to tell you, so you’ll understand. Please, I’m begging you.’

  My next move is to actually get down on my hands and knees on the stoop and supplicate in front of Kristy until she lets me into her bungalow.

  But Kristy’s too big to make me do that.

  ‘All right, come in.’ She sighs like she’s lending money to someone she knows’ll never pay her back. ‘I’m so mad at you. It was so embarrassing. My mom kept shaking her head the whole time, like I’m ten years old. And not even a phone call. How long does that take? Thirty seconds to make a phone call …’

  This is good. Honest punishment I deserve. Suddenly I’m not some sick sadochicken, I’m just some dumb schlub who messed up with his girl, like a million dumb schlubs before me. When she’s railing on me I can imagine we’re a couple in the middle of a spat we’ll look back on years from now and laugh about.

  ‘I know, I’m so sorry. See, I meant to tell you this. I’m … I was … embarrassed. And the truth is …

  ‘I’m a …

  ‘I’ve been …

  ‘… selling drugs …’

  My mom yanks me out of Lyndon Baines Johnson Junior High when I’m fifteen, and along with about twenty other families, she decides to start a school. So we rent a house, we hire teachers, and we start the Dallas Free School.

  One of the teachers is an earnest young educator out of the Midwest. Round-faced, blond, and whipsmart, she takes no guff, but at the same time she’s patient and kind, a great teacher and an all-around good egg. My mother and the teacher talk more in one night than my mom and my dad talked in twenty years. She and her new best friend start attending teaching conferences, and National Organization of Women’s meetings, and Gloria Steinem fund-raisers. These women are not quilting, or swapping recipes, or buying Tupperware. They’re pissed off. They want equal pay for equal work, alimony payment protection, and day-care reform. They want to stop the war and feed the children. Equality, liberation, and R-E-S-P-E-C-T. They want clitoral orgasms and Freud be damned!

  So my mom sings, she marches, she gets naked and feels comfortable with her own beautiful female body in deeply feminine ways no man can ever understand.

  While my father is building his high-tech state-of-the-art explosives factory in Useless, Texas.

  I give Kristy a tremendous song and dance about how this deal on Easter got all screwed up, and I didn’t get the shit sorted out till three in the morning, and I was gonna come over then, but it was too late, and then I hadda work at the restaurant all day today, and I just got off, and as soon as I did, I came right over to apologize, and make it right.

  I want to make it right. That’s the truth.

  Kristy knows something’s off about me, she’s felt it from the first day we met. She studies me. Slowly she shakes her head.

  ‘Why would you do something like that? How can—’

  I cut her off at the pass. I’m not a chicken anymore, but now I’m a drug dealer, which is not much better; plus it means I’ve been lying to her, which is bad. So I launch right into the whole Sunny/Dumpster/working at the restaurant/becoming a hooker ordeal (minus SEXY), only I substitute drugs for chickening.

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ Kristy shakes her head.

  ‘Like I said, I was embarrassed. I’m really sorry … but I like you so much and I felt like such a freak …’

  Long silence.

  I wait for her to tell me to get out. Or call me over for the hug. But she just stands there and looks at me. More silence. I can hear the tumblers rolling around in her head as she tries to fit all this new information into her jigsaw puzzle of me.

  ‘What do you want from me?’ she finally says.

  ‘I wanna have sex,’ somehow bolts past security and out of my mouth. Even as it’s coming out, I want to suck it back in and say something sweet, soft, and cuddly.

  ‘You blow me off, then show up the next night, and you expect me to have sex with you? You are unbelievable.’

  ‘I’m sorry, I’m�
�’ sinking so fast.

  ‘I can’t do it anymore. You need to go now.’ Kristy’s made up her mind. I can see it in her spine.

  ‘What’re you saying? Are you breaking up with me?’ I’m not a loverstudguy, I’m a pathetic loser who betrayed his sweet girl.

  ‘Yes, I am. Now I’d like you to leave.’

  I’m done. A sneer appears from behind my ear as I disengage, pulling the switch down, the Silence descending over me.

  ‘Whatever.’

  This is the last word I ever say to Kristy.

  When I leave her house, something turns off inside me. I have no more Kristy. I’ve ejected myself in a bloody blaze of violence from the chicken industry, so I have no 3-D.

  Arrest me, shoot me, I don’t care anymore.

  I am, of course, ravenously hungry. So I get my day-old birthday cake, my ice cream, and my milk, take it home, and shovel it all into my face with doomed fervor.

  In about a week I’ll get a strange sore throat from eating all that cake and ice cream for so many months, and by the time my roommate makes me go to the doctor I’ll be hallucinating, burning alive at the stake of my own fever. The doctor’ll tell me I have trench mouth. My mouth has become a trench. In another week to ten days, I would’ve been dead. The doctor’ll make me get a douche bag, fill it with boiling-hot water, dissolve a pink antibiotic powder into the water, take the business end of the cord and shove the phallus as far down my throat as I can, then release the water, six times a day.

  I’ll never see Sunny again. He won’t come looking for me, and I won’t go looking for him. I’ll never see any of my little freak family. But that’s not unusual. People come and go so quickly in that world.

  I’ll see Kristy every week in Existentialism, but I’ll never speak to her again.

  But here, now, after I’ve been dumped in the Dumpster by Kristy, with yet another lactose seizure upon me, I start to see lights at the edge of my eyes, strange lights I’ve never seen before. At first I can’t tell if the lights are really there, because whenever I look directly at them, they move somewhere else. Then a pain strikes inside my head, like someone’s drilling a thin diamond bit into my brain with each breath I take, knocking me down on the bed with nausea.

  Then I’m asleep.

  When my father suspects his wife, my mother, is having woman’s orgasms with her new best friend, he can’t say, ‘I love you and I sense us growing apart; can you help me give you a woman’s orgasm? Let’s talk about this and work something out.’

  And my mother can’t say, ‘I love you and I sense us growing apart, can you help me have a woman’s orgasm? Let’s talk about this and work something out.’

  So my dad wonders in denial, while my mom explores her new partner.

  My mother told me once that if my father had ever once come to her while their marriage was falling apart and said, ‘Please, I love you, don’t go,’ she would’ve stayed.

  But he didn’t ask.

  I call my nice normal smart funny loving American friend Penny the next day. She was my girlfriend at boarding school. I ask her to come live with me when the school year’s over, and to my eternal gratitude she says yes. Suddenly I don’t feel compelled by a force I can’t control to eat massive amounts of day-old birthday cake and ice cream.

  In May, Penny comes to be with me. I don’t tell her about my chickenhood, or the tall man with the SEXY shirt and what he did to my ass. I keep my secret for a decade, and when I finally do tell someone, she marries me.

  Penny and I drive my bike up the coast to Oregon. We love under the stars and drink sunsets over the ocean. She’s a damaged soul herself, but she gives me much love. And it turns out I’m her escape hatch, too, so while she’s helping to save me, I’m inadvertently helping to save her.

  We move in with my mother and her new lover. They’re not happy about it, but God love them, they take me back, and continue to take me back, even after I accidentally set their couch on fire, accidentally shoot a rainbow of puke all over the side of their house from my second-story window, and accidentally do countless other dastardly deeds.

  I go to college that fall. They have dorms. I live in one. Penny moves on.

  When I’m thirty-five, at the suggestion of my therapist, I write each of my parents a letter describing my chicken days.

  ‘Is this one of those wacky little stories you like to write?’ asks my dad.

  ‘No, it’s not,’ I say.

  Then we hang up.

  ‘David, what do you really want?’ asks my mom.

  ‘I want you to know,’ I reply.

  Long pause.

  ‘I’m sorry that happened to you. I’m sorry.’ That’s what my mom says.

  The lock breaks, the door busts open, the bats fly out, and the hole in my bucket closes.

  Almost.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I would like to acknowledge my parents for all the love and support they have given me. I thank my brother for being a constant source of love and sweetness my whole life, often in the face of enormous ugliness on my part.

  James Levine, president of James Levine Communications, was not only helpful as a keen, astute, and cunning business adviser, but he also helped form the structure of the book with several brilliant suggestions early on in the process. Melissa and Mike must also be acknowledged for their contributions from the office. My editor, Cal Morgan, has been a joy to work with, with his immense knowledge, his remarkable diplomacy, and his dry with. I thank Judith Regan for taking a chance on me. Robert Shaw is the wonderful artist who designed our proposal. I thank Marion Rosenburg for teaching me so much about writing, and Greg Mahr for putting up with me for so many years.

  Michael Cira must be thanked for being a great and constant friend who has taught me much about life. Thank you to Steph for being a good friend for many years, and to Ruth and Sam for being Ruth and Sam. Judy deserves special kudos for being so patient and understanding in the face of such rampant cussedness. I thank my sisters Kate and Liz for sticking by me when I wasn’t such a great brother. Ron and Craig are to be congratulated for being the most stable members of our family. Beverly should be lauded for welcoming me with open arms over and over. Rachael has been a source of joy from before she was even born. Aunty Betty Whittle was a shining light in a sea of darkness. Larry Jones lent me five hundred bucks when I needed it. Paul Hoppe took me to Ireland, and got me started writing seriously. Alex Kinney taught me everything I know. Katie Humes was very helpful in reading and giving comments and being kind and wonderful. Susan Wooldridge was immensely helpful technically, spiritually, and emotionally. Louis Stein must be noted for his extraordinary contribution in the areas of humor, goodwill, and hooping. I learned much from Ron Emory at Darrow School. Josh the wolf Shenk, Jack Haley, and Laura Sedlock were kind enough to read for me, and gave me excellent suggestions and feedback. Marcia Hurwitz helped me in more ways than she knows. Karen Leslie and David Sharps taught me about how to be seriously foolish. Iggy Breninkmeyer, Pascal, Irene, and Kylie were kind enough to let me sleep on their couch. Susie Greenbaum let me spread like an invading virus in her apartment as I wrote this. Janine Weissman helped me to get better.

  Tina Jacobson must be singled out twice. Once, for being a brilliant agent who took a lump of coal and crafted a diamond out of it. Then for being a brilliant friend who gave a crazy mad-as-a-hatter novel to her goddaughter, the agent. Thanks for everything, Tina. You are a rare and lovely human being.

  Which brings us to the mother lode. The goddaughter of Tina. The one and only Snow Leopard herself, the apple in my coffee, the cream in my eye: Arielle Eckstut. Besides being the greatest agent I’ve ever had by leaps and bounds (and I’ve had more agents than any human should have), and having the insight to take said novel and suck the truth from it, she is also a gorgeous beauty, a walking Zagat’s Guide, an avid animal lover, a wild animal, a deep thinker, a profound wit, the best of friends, a very good driver, a wonderful writer, an expert Austenian, an inquisitive
explorer, and a sweet and loving human of the highest order. Even living to be 120, I will never be able to thank her enough.

  Finally, I’d like to issue a general apology to the many people who are owed one. The following people have helped me, and I would love for them to contact me at sterryhead@earthlink.net, or through my publisher.

  Carter Mitchel Leon Johnson Laura Greer

  Cathy Holmes Victoria Emory Serena DiPinto

  Jenny Robinson Richard Buchsbomb Alice Guerrero

  Tracy Ellis Arnolpho di Mello

  David Piscuscus Lee Scroggins

  Praise for Chicken:

  ‘He relates his bizarre adventures in the boy-toy trade with dark wit and considerable compassion and the book proves to be that rare walk on the wild side you can thoroughly enjoy and not hate yourself for in the morning.’ AMAZON.COM

  ‘Compulsively readable, visceral, and very funny … Sterry clearly possesses the storyteller’s art.’ PHILLIP LOPATE, author of Portrait Of My Body

  ‘Priceless material.’ DETAILS

  ‘Insightful and funny, great stories – captures Hollywood beautifully.’ AIR TALK, National Public Radio

  ‘Alternatively sexy and terrifying, hysterical and weird, Chicken is a hot walk on the wild side of Hollywood’s fleshy underbelly … colourful, riveting and strangely beautiful.” JERRY STAHL, author of Plainclothes Naked and Permanent Midnight

  About the Author

  DAVID HENRY STERRY has worked as an actor, a marriage counselor, a screenwriter, a comedian, and an athlete. He lives in San Rafael, California

  Sterry has put together a one-man show based on Chicken. More information can be found at www.davidhenrysterry.com