by Timmy Reed
I couldn't help thinking, fly where?
~
I'm hanging out on the sidewalk in front of my mother's, practicing my shuv-its off the curb, when this black chick pulls up in her car. The same black chick I saw with the old dude before, the Killer. She watches me for a second and I guess I feel the need to impress her, which is how I always feel for some reason when I catch people watching me skate. I pop a big one and she claps. I like her smile. Her teeth look so white, like a genuine African's, straight out of National Geographic. So I get cocky. I try to bust out a tre flip, hoping she'll dig it. I land on my tail, bust my ass on the edge of the curb. She claps again, this time bent over cackling, then waddles all wobbly up the walkway, shaking her bubble butt into the old man's front door. She has her own key, I notice. I wonder if she's cleaning the place. Nah, I think, her nails are too long for that.
~
Besides biting my nails until they got infected and green pus would come out, when I was little I was also quite fond of picking my nose. REALLY picking it. Like so it would get all lined with crunchy scabs and dark blood. Then I would pick at the scabbage. And it would bleed more. Fresh. And get infected. It hurt real bad and was pretty embarrassing, but I couldn't help myself. I was obsessed. If I could feel a little piece of something up there, anything at all, I was going for it. I was a perfectionist in that way. I felt like I couldn't breathe all the time. I needed better ventilation, so I picked.
It's a lot better now. I mean, I still do pick it sometimes but no more than anyone else probably. At least I hope not. I can't remember the last time I had scabby boogers. The only nose bleeds I've gotten lately have been from fistfights and snorting Ritalin. So life is a lot better now, I suppose.
~
I absolutely HATE the dentist. To whom it may concern, Miles Lover hates the fucking dentist. You will never catch me in another dentist's chair as long as I live. I swear to Christ. I DON'T CARE if my teeth fall out. I want fucking dentures. Seriously. No brushing. Just stick them in a cup at night and sleep easy. Fuck the dentist.
It's not that I'm some kind of pussy either. I like to think I have a pretty high threshold for pain. I was always decent at playing Mercy and I wreck all comers in Bloody Knuckles. Plus we used to play this game in our elementary school bathroom where you'd put a toothpick in your mouth horizontal so the two points were held in place by the fleshy tissue inside your cheeks. Then you'd stand next to the wall. Your friends would take turns tap-tap-tapping you harder and harder on the side of your face so the toothpick would keep stabbing the inside of your mouth. You're supposed to take it as long as you can before calling uncle. The one who can take the pain longest is the proud winner. I could let my classmates do this to me for the longest time. Sometimes it would freak everybody out. Really, it would. They'd get all excited. I liked the way their faces looked when they watched. All grossed out, but also kind of impressed. Pumped. That would numb things a little . . . For as long as I can remember I've been hearing a story about some kid who put a hole through his cheek doing this. I'm not sure if it's true or not, but it could definitely happen. Anyway, none of that compares to the dentist's office. Sharp, toothy pain. Fuck that. I can't handle the fucking dentist.
When I was a kid, me and my sisters had this Jewish guy for a dentist. His daughter was in my class and he had puzzles and stuffed animals and a mini plastic ball pit in the corner of his waiting room. I despised him. I would bite his fingers. Later on, I went to this Jamaican dude, but he wasn't a Rasta or anything. I always wondered how a boy from Kingston, Jamaica, could grow up to be a dentist in Towson, Maryland of all places. But I never got around to asking him. His hands were always in my mouth. I couldn't enunciate. Anyway, I just switched dentists again because of a change in my mother's insurance or something like that, which I don't fully understand. So now it's an Asian lady with freckles and a big torture-movie smile full of shiny teeth. I went to see her this morning.
Originally the plan was to get my teeth cleaned and go home. My mom dropped me off. She was going to run a few errands and look at something on the Internet for her work and then come back to get me. Did I mention I hate the dentist? First of all, the most foreboding odor in the entire world is that weird fluoride filling gel flavored-toothpaste nitrous oxide smell you get when you enter the waiting room. It's impossible for me to separate that odor from the sound of the drill in my head.
There were framed posters of chimpanzees all over the walls in this chick's waiting room. And this weird lighting that reminded me of an alien autopsy. I passed the time reading a pamphlet about flossing technique until my name was called.
She started out by asking me some irrelevant questions about what grade I'm in and what my favorite class is and do I play any sports and all that. She gave me about two seconds to answer before shoving her fingers in my mouth. You'd think there was a golden egg lodged in my throat! Fine with me, get it over with. She poked around with this fishhook thing that looked pretty nasty, but wasn't too uncomfortable. Except she kept talking under her breath as she did it, counting on her fingers in Chinese or something. It made me nervous. I already felt like I was going to vomit. I had felt this way ever since I woke up this morning and I was reminded of the appointment.
Then she moved onto the sonic cleaning. That kind of hurt. And I hate the noise it makes. It sounds too much like the drill. “Sensitive,” she kept whispering, as if I didn't already know. “Leetle beet sensitive.” She held her fingers real close together to show me much it should hurt. Leetle beet.
Turns out I had five cavities. Two of them were really big. I had no idea. But she found them right off. All right, I figured, I'm done for the day. I can go smoke pot, come back in like two weeks or whatever and get those bitches filled up. But seriously, I was ready to go home at this point. I was tired and like I said, I hate the dentist.
But instead of asking me, like anybody would be interested in my plan of action for my fucking mouth, Dr. Khan—something like that—called out to my mother, who I guess had come back and was outside waiting. Together they chose to fill my teeth today. That would be most convenient for everyone, they decided. The doctor sounded delighted about the procedure. Mom too. I might as well have been a patient at the veterinarian's office, for all my say in the matter.
Dr. Khan told me I looked tough enough and she thought I could forego the Novocaine. She was buttering me up. I could tell. She actually called me a “big boy” when she suggested it. Then she told me that it would only take longer if I got the Novocaine and then she finally asked if I wanted any. I got the feeling she wanted me to say “No.” I did. I hate the stuff anyway. I always chew holes in my cheeks and my lip when I get it. Besides, I just wanted to get out of there. She began to stuff me full of cotton. And then she started drilling.
The drill is the loudest thing in the universe when it's inside your face. High-pitched speed metal . . . SSSSSZZZZZZZSSSZZZZSSSTTT . . .
Even on the three cavities that were supposed to be shallow . . . It fucking killed me. One was on the back of my front tooth. There was a moment when I thought she might push the drill straight through. The burning smell is the worst. Smoke, tooth decay grinding away, tiny nerves frying. She kept showing me little pieces of decay in the palm of her latex glove. They looked like tiny fossils. I kept my hands in my pockets. I broke like six cigarettes, squeezing my pack. With my other hand I squeezed a disposable lighter. I tried to concentrate on Dr. Khan's freckles. They were enormous! I was being sucked into one of them. I thought I was going to swallow my tongue. I couldn't control my saliva. Dr. Khan was screeching at me continuously. She sounded like a pterodactyl. “Keep mouth open! Open mouth! Bigger! No move tongue or things get wet! Wet no good! Mouth open or I drill again!”
Every muscle in my body tightened. My brain throbbed. My toes curled up inside my skate shoes. I couldn't keep my legs in the chair. My feet kept rising on their own. I couldn't control them. The
drill is the pits.
The last two fillings were the worst. By far. I pinched my eyelids shut and tried to convince myself I could convert the pain into pleasure. I imagined it might be possible to achieve complete body control like some gnarly kung fu master. I'd learn to love the pain. After all, I thought, it's only a sensation of the body, just like any other. It didn't work. The pain hurt. The cold water she was rinsing the holes with rocked my nerve endings. The air she used to dry the holes tickled them. It hurt like shit. I had to resist the urge to get up and flee. I used to sometimes jump out of the barber's chair during haircuts when I was a kid. I almost did that today.
I was pretty shocked at the size of the holes she dug out. I could fit the entire tip of my tongue in one of them. She filled the cavities with this crusty cement stuff. It tasted like exhaust. I wasn't supposed to eat, drink, or smoke cigarettes for at least eight hours. I ended up doing all three after my mom went back to work. Plus bong hits. When Dr. Khan led me out of the waiting room my knees felt weak, like I'd been on a boat all day. I leaned against the wall. My mom looked at me with a big smile and asked, “How was it?”
On the ride home my mom stopped at Cimino's to buy cigarettes and a lotto ticket. Afterward we passed this dopey little old folks' home on Melrose. It reminds me of a crummy motel, with outdoor hallways carpeted in Astroturf. It's kind of a depressing place to look at. One of those real small places, the kind where I always imagine old people rotting away unattended, shitting themselves and stuff. Like I said, depressing. My grandmother lives in an old folks' home out in Owings Mills, but hers is a lot bigger and nicer looking, almost like a college campus or something.
Anyway, as we passed by the short white building—it's only two stories tall—there was this silver-haired couple walking along the side of the road. My head was throbbing from the dentist and the sun was sort of in my eyes, but I couldn't help being interested in them anyway. I squinted through my mother's windshield. They were old and shrunken, but they were holding hands and looked well at ease. The way they had their heads tilted up, you could tell they were enjoying the sun. I usually feel guilty or sad around old people. I don't like them. They remind me of things I don't want to think about. But watching this cool old couple, I felt happy and sort of free, like I was caught up in some big gust of wind, like everybody was. I watched a private ambulance drift silently out of the parking lot, looking like it had nowhere to go. Somehow that was beautiful. But I didn't tell my mother. I kept it for myself.
~
The truth is, I have a terrible memory. I put my hands over my eyes to try to remember things I want to put in my journal, but my head feels like a cantaloupe . . . organic, rotting away.
Except, when I go to squeeze it, my skull is hard as rock.
The stuff in my journal sounds fake when I go to reread it. So I don't do that anymore.
~
Strangest thing earlier. I was just kind of skating around Roland Park Northway with my slingshot and maybe an eye out for birds. It's hard to hit a bird with a slingshot. I usually just miss them by a smidgeon. Today I found a bird's nest in a Christmas tree covered with small violet berries. There weren't any birds in it, but there were three pale blue eggs. They were small, but bright. Easy to spot. I didn't even have to get that close. I heard that if a mama bird knows you've been near its nest then it'll orphan its eggs. I felt shitty about that. So I stayed about ten feet away and just watched it, no touching.
Then Miss Sandy Diamond came powerwalking past me, all MILF'd out in these stretch pants and a sweatshirt cropped over her shoulders at the neck and high across the belly Flashdance-style. She was wearing her iPod and a heart monitor, but even with all those distractions, she noticed me and waved. I could feel the red hot grin spreading across my face. There was nothing I could do about it. I just waved back, so fast it's not even funny. My forearm was flapping away like a hummingbird's wing.
I already had an erection. Miss Sandy Diamond always gives me boners when she's jogging. I usually run home and work my groin like a bicycle pump. It's exhausting. I'm covered in sweat. The tip of my penis stings. I come back out with dark rings under my eyes. Well, today was no different. I watched her Spandexed thighs slide back and forth against each other until she disappeared around the bend, then I tucked my hard-on in the elastic of my boxer shorts—a trick I learned in Nam—and started pushing off toward home.
That's when I heard it. This crazy music sprinkling from the trees and over the houses, out of chimneys and up through the ground. Banjo music, I think. All around me. It was soft and eerie and clear as day, rolling out fast like spring water. Or quicksilver. I thought I was imagining it. Me and my boner pushed and pushed through this shower of music until I was at my mother's front door. I shouldered it and ran upstairs. When I got into the bathroom, I sat down on the toilet and started pulling my dick. It was quiet in there except for the hiss of running pipes. I tried to open the window to hear if the music was still going on outside. But it's awkward unwinding the bathroom window from the shitter in my mother's condo. In the corner where the toilet is, there isn't enough space for your elbow to move. I had to concentrate. By the time I got the damn thing open, my erection was gone. But the music was still playing. So I just sat there. And listened.
~
The other day I was with my sisters and Ashley Vidal at the pool and Ashley asked me a question. “Why do you always have so many scabs on your elbows and knees from skateboarding?” She actually asked it just like that. For real. Answered her own question.
“I shred,” I told her. “And when you're really shredding, you fall. And when you fall, you get mutilated.”
“Oh,” she said, and left her mouth hanging open like she was trying to understand.
“Scabs are cool,” I told her. “That's why.”
~
When I'm by myself sometimes, I make noises. LOUD noises. And dance. I can't help it. Like if I walk into a house I know is empty I might scream cuss words or nonsense at the top of my lungs. Or if I'm securely locked in my room late at night I might sing a little melody in tongues as I flip through a magazine. I suspect other people do the same thing. I watch for this type of behavior on the reality shows for instance, but I'm always disappointed. I remember people around me, other kids, making weird noises when I was little. More openly. They just do it in private now, I figure. But how can I tell without asking? And if you ask people about the noises they make, they are likely to lie.
I also like to turn up the stereo and dance around my bedroom, especially when I'm high. I'm not a very good dancer. I'm best when I am alone. And high . . . And sometimes when I'm all by myself at home, I get scared. For no reason at all. It's stupid. I'll hear something or just get a weird feeling and go around my house with a big knife or a field hockey stick, checking under beds and stuff. Looking for bad guys . . . Plus I can't keep my hands off my Johnson when I'm watching television. Even when it's soft. My hand just goes down there on its own, without me noticing. I think I like the warmth.
Anyway, moral of the story is that I may not be that much of a weirdo in public, but that doesn't mean I'm not a weirdo. You too. Everyone makes their own noises. Or makes out with their pillowcase. Or swings their ding-dong in circles. They do something strange in private. We're all secret weirdos. In secret. But you can't ever know about anyone else's secret weirdness without spying on them is all. It's like trying to hear a tree in the forest from a downtown intersection.
Maybe that's what the journal is for. Screaming nonsense when you're all alone . . . Howling at the moon when you know it's not looking.
~
A lot of the time I feel ashamed for making a fool of myself. Other times it's not so bad and I say fuck it. I tend to look foolish a lot.
Lately I've been thinking that it's wrong to look down on yourself for being foolish. It leads to looking down on other fools.
Besides, who's go
t the time to be mortified?
~
What do you want to be when you grow up? Huh? Truth is I don't want to be anything when I grow up. Really. Nothing. Now I know I might be pretty naive, especially about money and shit, and especially because I never really had any loot of my own except my allowance, which gets handed out pretty liberally when I ask for it. But it seems to me that a lot of people's lives start to suck when they decide they want to BE something. They get stuck. It's like they BECOME their job. From then on, all of their time is for sale. Just so they can feel comfortable. It doesn't sound like a very good deal to me. A person's time on earth is not the best bargaining chip, in my opinion. Mostly because you can't replace it. But also because you never know how much you've got left.
~
One of the main reasons I used to get in so much trouble at school was that I couldn't keep my mouth shut. All the time I would say these things . . . that came into my head . . . even when I knew they'd get me in trouble. Even if I didn't mean what I was saying. I'd mainly make jokes or comments that I was just dying to see somebody else make. I'd almost always rather one of my classmates made the joke instead of me. Then I'd get to listen. And laugh. You can't laugh at your own jokes. But either the kids in my class wouldn't think up the same joke or they were too smart to actually say it out loud if they had.
Example: There was this teacher I had called Mister D. Old Mister D was kind of a pompous dude, but pretty smart I guess and sometimes kind of funny. He had a beard and wore fuzzy neckties and corduroy jackets. Anyway, he was very sarcastic and he was all the time making jokes at the expense of his students. Most of the kids thought it was funny. Well, this one time Mister D made a wisecrack about this boy in my class named Greg Chodak. Chodak was kind of a smelly kid. His hair was always caked together like he hadn't washed it in a while.