Tats

by Layce Gardner

  “Listen, Lee, if I were a lesbian, I’d be the best damn lesbian in the world. In the universe, that’s how great I’d be at all the lesbian stuff that I don’t even have the slightest idea what it is. I’d be the best lesbian with a capitol L and, honey, you’d be my first choice to be with. We would go off and do whatever lesbians do till the cows came home. But, believe you me, we’re better off this way.”

  “You’re better off maybe.”

  “No, darlin’. The sex would wear off eventually and then we’d be fighting and then we’d hate each other and then we’d be alone. But friends, like we are, real friends, this will last.” She reaches over and wraps her fingers in mine. “Till death do us part.”

  She gently wipes away a few of my tears, hugs me to her chest and holds me tight.

  I don’t know if it’s her words or the fact that she has my face sandwiched between her tits, but I’m starting to feel a little bit better.

  “You’re sure?” I ask, raising my face to hers. “You’re sure you can’t love me the way I love you?”

  She looks into my eyes for a long time before she answers, “Lee, if it’ll make you feel better...on my eightieth birthday...if we’re both unattached and alive...we’ll do it then.”

  “Eighty? I don’t think I want to do it with an eighty-year-old woman.”

  “We’ll turn out the lights,” she laughs. “We’ll turn out the lights and take our dentures out and turn our hearing aids down. And it’ll be the best sex we ever had.”

  Well, at least I have something to look forward to.

  Suddenly, Vivian wraps a hand around the back of my head and shoves my face in her lap, ordering, “Get down.”

  “You changed your mind?” I mumble into her crotch.

  “Ssshhhh,” she warns, lying down flat over my body. “They’re here. They just pulled in.”

  I spit her dress out of my mouth and ask, “Prince Charles?”

  “Him and two other guys.” She raises up and peeks over the dashboard. “I don’t think they saw us.”

  I peek over the dash with her. Prince Charles and the same two goons I saw earlier are getting out of their BMW and heading for the school.

  “Goddammit. I’m tired of this shit.” I twist around, reach into the backseat and grab my boots and pants.

  “What’re you doing?” she asks, alarmed.

  I slip on my boots and stick my hands in the pockets of my jeans until I find my knife. “Buying some time,” I answer.

  I pop open my door and drop to the ground. I push the door almost closed and duck walk to the front bumper. I raise up a little and peek over the hood of the car parked next to us. As soon as P.C. and his goons open the school doors and walk inside, I scramble to their BMW.

  I flip open my knife and stab a back tire. As soon as I pull my knife out, I hear a satisfying hiss. I do the next tire. And the next. And the next.

  No way they’re getting four new tires this time of night. And good luck finding tires early on a Saturday morning.

  I run back to the Mercedes and throw myself inside. Vivian guides our way out of the parking lot without turning on the headlights.

  “Where to now?” I ask.

  “The one place he knows I’ll never go. Home.”

  Chapter Eight

  I am calling this part of our adventure, A Glimpse into the Life of a Cheerleader. I have to admit, I’m excited to see the way Vivian grew up. Exactly what it is that makes her what she is. If I were to tag it myself, I’d put all my money on a Leave it to Beaver-type of childhood. June wears pearls and bakes pies. Ward works and always has time for his kids. The Beav, Vivian, approaches everything with a lopsided grin and a sense of well-being that every problem can be solved in thirty minutes. I guess that would make me Eddie Haskell. Goofy, bumbling, always into trouble, Eddie, that’s me.

  Vivian maneuvers the car to the side of the street in front of her childhood home, and I am treated to a vision much like I expected. The only thing missing is the white picket fence. Do they still make white picket fences, I wonder? Next to the rented house I grew up in, Vivian’s home is perfect.

  “This place is perfect,” I tell her with genuine awe in my tone. “I would’ve stayed here and never left.”

  “Perfect on the outside,” she says. “Just like my mother. Appearances are everything. Thank God for my daddy. C’mon, let’s go see what old folks do at night.”

  “Sleep probably,” I say. “Like normal folks.”

  “Nothing’s normal about these folks. My mother never stops talking and Daddy’s going deaf. The result is that my mother screams constantly.”

  Vivian gets the front door key out from under the welcome mat, unlocks the door and leads me inside.

  Stepping into the living room is like one of those dreams/nightmares where you suddenly find yourself thrust on a stage and you’re in the middle of a live performance but you have absolutely no idea what play it is or what character you are or what your lines are. And you’re naked.

  Little tiny lights beam down at us. I look to find the source of the light. Track lighting is everywhere—and I do mean everywhere. Little spotlights are shining down and illuminating dolls. Dozens upon dozens of dolls. My God, is that...?

  “Marie Osmond. My mom loves Marie Osmond,” Vivian says simply like it’s the most natural thing in the world.

  I find myself both attracted and repelled by a large four feet tall Marie Osmond doll. It’s eerily life-like. Especially the large, white teeth.

  “She must have hundreds of Maries,” I whisper.

  “It’s her life’s work,” she whispers back without a touch of sarcasm.

  Dear God, what I have gotten myself into?

  Vivian opens a cabinet, snags something from inside it, tippy-toes through the living room and disappears down a hallway. I trail after her, acutely aware of hundreds of little brown eyes following me out of the room.

  Vivian’s room is not a bedroom, not by my standards and certainly not by any other standards. It’s a shrine. A shrine to Princess Vivian. The walls of the room are painted a deep, dark purple. Blue ribbons and certificates and trophies entirely cover one whole wall. In the far corner sits a large canopied bed. Purple, of course. There’s about a billion princess pillows and stuffed animals on it. A white vanity table with a little wicker stool sits in another corner. And there’s even her own bathroom and a huge walk-in closet. Princess all the way.

  I say the first thing that comes to mind. “You should’ve painted the room purple.”

  “I hate purple,” she says.

  “That was a joke. Your room is purple.”

  “I know,” she explains. “My mom hates purple, too. I did it just to piss her off.”

  Vivian holds out both of her hands and shows me what she’s been hiding behind her back. It’s two porcelain dolls.

  “Is that Elvis? Two Elvis dolls?”

  “Elvi,” she corrects. “Just like cacti. And peni. Elvi. They’re decanters. Full of whiskey. It’s a game Dad and I play. I drink all the whiskey out of the Elvi. He fills them back up. Neither one of us tells Mom and we both pretend it never happened.”

  She bites on one Elvi head and pops the cork. She spits the head onto her bed and chugs deep. “You can have fat Elvi,” she says, handing me a grinning Elvis decanter in a white jumpsuit.

  Two Elvi later and I am bombed. Literally smashed. I sit under the purple bedspread which we have fashioned into a makeshift tent between the vanity table and the bed. It’s like we’re camping. Except we’re inside. And we’re drunk on Elvi. And we’ve taken some of her mom’s Xanax that Vivian found in the medicine cabinet. And the tent is a bedspread and not a real tent. I guess maybe it’s not much like camping after all.

  Vivian raided the kitchen earlier and came back with an armload of cupcakes and a jar of peanut butter. I’m eating the peanut butter with my fingers and thinking about how long it’s been since I’ve had anything taste this good. I feel like laughing. Not because anythi
ng is particularly funny, but just because I can.

  “So what do they call English muffins in England?” I ask around a glob of peanut butter. “Are they just muffins or what?”

  Vivian stuffs another cupcake in her mouth and swallows it whole. She sucks on her front teeth before answering. “Scones.”

  “And why don’t British people have an accent when they sing?”

  She shrugs and pops another cupcake in her mouth.

  I ask another. “Why do they call cigarettes faggots?”

  “They think it’s weird that we call faggots faggots.”

  “Are we supposed to call them cigarettes?”

  Vivian laughs like that’s the funniest thing she’s ever heard. I grab a cupcake and eat it in tiny bites like a squirrel.

  “I’m glad I’m not a faggot,” I say through my squirrel teeth.

  “I’m just glad I’m not a man,” Vivian says.

  “Yeah, if I was a man and had a penis...” I pause to swallow the mushy chocolate.

  Vivian interrupts, “Most men do have a penis.”

  “But if I had a penis, I’d be very proud of it. I’d stick it in every hole I could find. I’d be touching it all the time. They’d have to lock me up,” I say.

  “I would fuck anything and everything that moved,” Vivian agrees. “We’d be in prison right now sharing a cell.”

  I laugh. “Well, just don’t bend over around me.”

  “You’re such a faggot,” she says.

  I burst into loud guffaws. We laugh together, doubled over, and when we finally come up we’re both wiping away tears.

  “I just love drugs, don’t you?” she asks.

  “I like the taste of baby aspirin.”

  “Pain pills are my favorite. Especially little blue ones. Gotta love those blue pills.”

  “I haven’t done too many drugs. Tried cocaine once. Never again.”

  “Why?”

  “I ended up in bed with a professional body builder.”

  “Man or woman?” she asks.

  “I’m still not sure,” I answer. “But at the end of three days, I swore right then and there if I could ever walk again, I’d walk out the door and never do it again.

  “You know what I wanna do to you?” Vivian asks, peering at me wide-eyed and childlike.

  “No,” I say straight-faced, “but I know what I want you to do to me.”

  She slaps me playfully on the arm. “Stop it.”

  “Nope, can’t do that. If I can agree to your so-called straight tendencies and agree to never touch you, the least you can do is acquiesce to my verbal flirtations.”

  “Say that again. In plain English,” she counters.

  “I said...show me your tits.”

  “Okay. Why not, everyone else has seen them,” she agrees. “But only if you let me do to you what I want to do.”

  “Hmmm...” I weigh the possibilities in each hand like a scale. “Done. Do with me what you will.”

  This wasn’t exactly what I was expecting. Here I stand in the middle of Vivian’s fantasy bedroom, fully dressed in her old cheerleading uniform. She has on an identical uniform and looks happier than I’ve ever seen her. She has on the home games uniform and made me put on the away games uniform. “My mother would be so proud,” I say.

  “I can still do the splits,” she brags.

  “Yeah, well, I could never do the splits. So I’m sure as hell not gonna try them now.”

  She tosses an extra set of pom-poms at me, saying, “Follow me.”

  I’ve done some things I regret in my life but somehow I think this is going to be at the top of the list. I lethargically follow Vivian’s pom-pom motions.

  “C’mon!” she shouts. “Where’s your spirit?”

  “My spirit has been smothered by humiliation.” To prove my point, I plop down on the bed and cover my face with my arm.

  “Get up,” she says, throwing a pillow at me. “You can do this. It’s simple.”

  “I don’t wanna,” I mumble into my arm.

  “Listen, if I can teach stupid Sue Anne, I can teach you. On your feet.”

  “Okay, okay,” I sigh and get back up.

  “Just clap your thighs when I do. Watch.” Vivian makes her arms rigid and slaps the outside of her thighs, saying, “Ready. Okay.”

  I give it a try. “Ready. Okay.”

  “Do it like you mean it,” she instructs. “With me.”

  “Ready. Okay,” we say, slapping our thighs.

  “Again,” she drills. “Do it with me.”

  Again. “Ready. Okay.”

  Vivian sighs. “By with me, I meant at the same time as me. Not after me. Not before me. Try it again.”

  I really try this time. I give it my all. “Ready. Okay.”

  By the look of her disgusted face, I guess I didn’t do so good.

  She grabs my pom-poms from me. “You don’t deserve these,” she says, tossing them into the corner.

  “Cheerleading’s harder than I thought,” I say in a half-hearted effort to cheer her up.

  She perks up again. “Wanna play Barbies?”

  “You wouldn’t like how I play Barbies,” I answer. “I shave their heads. Bury them in the backyard up to their necks and pour syrup on them.”

  “We can do that later,” she says and tosses me an old used Barbie. She grabs another Barbie, one much prettier than mine, I notice, but decline to comment.

  Vivian sits on the floor Indian-style and pats the space across from her. I sit where she wants, but don’t have the slightest idea what to do. “I’ve never done this before,” I admit.

  “Just follow my lead and do what comes naturally.”

  She holds her Barbie up in the air by its legs and speaks for the doll, “What do you want to do tonight, Midge?”

  “I can see your lips moving,” I retort.

  Vivian glares at me and through clenched teeth snarls, “Play along or I won’t show you my tits.”

  Feeling oh-so-stupid, I hold my doll up in the air by its legs and pretend she’s speaking in a little high voice, “Can you believe it’s been fifteen years since high school, Barbie? Seems like only yesterday when we were cheerleaders. I wonder if I can still do the splits?”

  Barbie deadpans, “Looks like you’ve had a few banana splits.”

  “Yeah. Now I’d probably be at the bottom of the pyramid.”

  “You would be the pyramid.”

  “You’re so hateful,” Midge says. “And I know why. It’s because you can’t bend your arms. If you could bend your arms and pleasure yourself once in awhile then you wouldn’t be so hateful all the time.”

  “No, my problem is that Ken has no genitalia. That would make any girl grumpy,” Barbie reasons.

  Midge responds, “We should complain to Mattel. Grab a pen, Barbie, write this down. ‘Dear Mattel, as our creator, you must know that I have lived for thirty-two years without a belly button, nipples or any girlie parts. Could you please reconsider your stance on this very important issue?’”

  “Also,” Barbie writes, “I would prefer to be paired with the manly and bearded G.I. Joe doll as Ken is a eunuch.”

  “And instead of pink high heels,” Midge interjects, “can I have some flip-flops? Water retention and bunions are killing me.”

  “And a pink feathered merkin,” Barbie adds. Vivian looks at me and says in an aside, “What the hell, the squeaky wheel gets the grease, right?”

  “And P.S.,” Barbie continues, “can you make my arms bendable? I’m awfully cranky. Sincerely, Midge and Barbie.”

  “P.S.S,” I add, “while you’re at it, can you give my best friend Skipper bigger tits?”

  Vivian whops me in the arm with her Barbie, laughing.

  “Now show me your tits,” Midge says to Barbie.

  Barbie strips off her blouse and sexy dances in front of Midge.

  “You’re a dirty girl, Barbie. A dirty, dirty girl,” Midge says.

  Hours go by in minutes and seconds tick on for
days. That’s the miracle of whiskey and Xanax. By now we’re both back under the tent. I’m in just an old T-shirt of Vivian’s and my boxers and she wears some cute little baby-doll pajamas. How long we’ve been under here I have no idea, but it feels like centuries. In a good kinda way. We’re both really sleepy, but like little kids we want to stay awake just one more minute.

  “So what do you do, anyway?” Vivian asks, sleepily, “just live off all the women who throw themselves at you?”

  “I’ve never had a woman throw herself at me. I’ve had them throw shit at me.”

  “C’mon...all the women stare at you. Everywhere we go. You think I haven’t noticed?”

  “Everyone stares at freaks,” I respond. “It’s human nature.”

  “Self-deprecation is not a lovely quality,” says Vivian. “What do you do for money?”

  “You mean before you threw yourself at me and started paying my way?”

  “Exactly.”

  “I buy old motorcycles. Fix ’em up. Sell ’em.”

  “There a lot of money in that?” she asks.

  “Not much. I really want to start my own motorcycle repair shop, though.”

  She perks up. “Really?”

  “Yeah, I think I’d be pretty good at it.”

  “Does it hurt to get a tattoo?” she asks, tracing one finger lightly over my sleeve.

  “Not really. A little. You want one? I could make a tattoo gun, I know how. I could give you a butterfly or something.”

  “I think not,” she yawns. “But if you ever learn to do breast implants let me know.” Then she closes her eyes and promptly falls asleep.

  I watch her still face for a moment before I whisper, “Are you asleep?”

  She doesn’t answer, so I guess she is.

  “If you don’t wake up, I’m going to peek at your tits,” I whisper lightly.

  “Leave my tits alone. Tell me a bedtime story so I can go to sleep.”

  “Okay...a bedtime story. This is the story of our adventure. Once upon a time, in the not-so-distant future, there is a pandemic flu that wipes out most of mankind. Only the lowliest, the scourge of the planet are left. Which means me, of course. I steal a Harley and ride across the scorched earth. I sleep in Walmarts at night. I live on pork rinds and Oreos. I answer to no one. I only change my clothes once a week and I find great comfort in my own smell. My hair dreads naturally. I never shave my armpits or my legs ever again. And when I find you trying to walk across the desert in your fancy Choos, I give you a ride. We wear surgical masks as we ride through the desert sandstorm. We eat canned beans and laugh at our own farts. We raid pharmacies and count ourselves as lucky to still be alive days later. I defend your womanhood from the lowly scavengers by using aerosol hairspray and a Bic lighter. I paint my surgical mask to show flames coming out of my mouth. I am known to all as FireBreather. And one bright moon-filled night, you awaken from your drug-induced slumber. You walk out to the Walmart parking lot and find me in a compromising position with Queen Latifah. She’s taking me from behind by brute force and I don’t look like I’m enjoying it. You pull a bow and arrow out of your big, red bag and harpoon Queen in her fleshy buttocks. She screams like a little girl and limps away. I am most grateful for your defense of my womanhood. To show my undying adoration, I self-tattoo a picture of you with only one breast, aiming your bow and arrow. On my left calf. Forever after you are known as Amazonia. You are highly feared by all. FireBreather and Amazonia rule the earth. Such as it may be. There is no money on this new earth. The only currency we have is your womanly flower which we use to barter for gasoline. And I like to ride my bike a lot, so get ready.”