by Joe Meno
I went to the one store where they had crazy, goofy, crappy jewelry and scrunchies and sunglasses and other cheesy girl-gifts, The Canary and the Elephant, where I had once almost gotten my ear pierced back in junior high, but had chickened out.
“What are you going to get here? This place is all plastic jelly bracelets and shit.”
“This,” I said. “This is what I’m getting her.” In the corner of the store were all these stuffed animals—teddy bears, puppies, bunnies, kittens, and baby tigers—and, like, candy and bracelets and glitter and crap, which they could all put inside this super-durable balloon, you know, like this present: this stuffed animal with like candy and shit, but inside a balloon. To me, it was fucking genius.
“Dude, you are going to get her a balloon?” Mike asked.
“It’s like an animal inside a balloon.”
“For sixty bucks?” Mike asked.
“It lasts for like a month.”
“Dude, that is the dumbest idea ever.”
“No, dude,” I said. “Getting some girl you haven’t even been dating for like more than three weeks a silver fucking engraved necklace is the dumbest idea ever.”
“It’s fucking classy,” he said.
“No, it’s not, man. It’s gonna freak her out.”
“How is it gonna freak her out?” he asked.
“It’s like asking her to get married and shit. My thing, it’s fun, you know? It’s like goofy.”
“Man, it sure is,” he said.
“Um, clerk-girl,” I said to the fifteen-year-old blond girl with too much makeup on, looking bored behind the counter. “I want an animal in a balloon. Can you help me with that?”
She snapped her gum and nodded at me.
“What animal?” she asked.
“I dunno. What animal, Mike?” I asked.
“Don’t get a dog. Her dog got run over when we were kids and she took it bad.”
“OK, no dogs,” I said. “How about … how about a bear?” I said.
The girl behind the counter rolled her eyes. “That’s what everybody gets,” she said, grabbing a white teddy bear.
“All right then, all right, how about a tiger?”
“A tiger?” Mike asked.
“Yeah, I’m getting her a tiger. In a balloon. Just pay the girl her money,” I said to Mike. He nodded and dug into his pocket for the rest of our loot.
“Why a fucking tiger?” he asked.
“I dunno,” I said. “I just like tigers. It’s funny, right? It’s fun?” I asked the girl who was busy blowing up the gigantic red balloon. She looked over her shoulder and nodded, sad.
“I wouldn’t turn it down,” she said. “I wish to God someone would do something like this for me, for no reason. That’s how you know you’re dating a good guy. They do stuff like this for no reason,” she said, and I elbowed Mike in the side, grinning.
Believe it or not, the “Mike and Erin, So Sexy 1991” engraved necklace went over like a fucking charm. Erin McDougal fucking loved it, I mean loved it. She jumped into his lap and made him help her put it on, and then did the same for him, the two of them wrestling on Mike’s sofa, kissing, Erin McDougal giggling and saying, “It’s so pretty, it’s so pretty.”
Well, I was up next and dug into the white paper bag and told Dorie to close her eyes, which she did, but then she began peeking so I had to stop, and she sighed and turned around on the sofa, and I pulled the big red balloon out and winked at Mike, who was shaking his head, and Erin McDougal was looking at me like I was crazy, maybe wondering, What the hell in the world is that thing? but I didn’t care, because, well, I knew it was goofy. I knew it was kind of weird and dumb and I didn’t care because that was me, I guess, and I really liked this girl and wanted to, like, be myself with her. So finally, I placed the big red balloon beside her and said, “OK,” and she opened her eyes and looked at the balloon, then at me, then back at the balloon again.
“It’s a tiger,” I said. “In a balloon.”
Dorie stared at it again and smiled, and I couldn’t tell if she was faking it or not but then she leaned over and kissed me on the cheek and said, “I really like tigers.”
“You do?” I asked.
“Yeah,” she said. “I mean, I don’t have a collection or anything but I really like them.”
“Me too,” I said and kissed her again. “It’s not dumb, is it?”
“No, I really like it. It’s funny,” she said. “It’s, like, you.”
“I figured, well, you don’t really wear jewelry, so, well,” I said. “I didn’t want to be all, ‘Let’s go steady,’ or anything.”
“I like it, I really like it,” she said, throwing her arms around my neck.
“Well, good,” I said. We leaned back on the couch, the tiger in the balloon sitting on Dorie’s lap.
“Hey,” she said.
“Yeah?”
“I’ve got a secret.”
“Really?” I asked.
“Really.” She leaned in close to me and put her lips beside my ear and said the words, the words which would change my life, indelibly. “No one’s home at my house.”
“Really,” I said, sitting up, smiling.
“Really,” she repeated, winking back.
“So?”
“So no one’s home at my house,” she said again and we got up and ran off, us, hand in hand.
twelve
I had never been in Dorie’s room before, let alone the rest of her house or anything. I had stood on her front porch and that was about it. Dorie’s room was all white and the carpet was red and it was all very clean and there were posters on the wall of David Bowie in drag and she had a heart-shaped pillow on her narrow bed, which kind of surprised me.
“So?” she said, kind of nervous. “This is it. This is my room. What do you think?”
“It’s nice,” I said.
“Yep.”
“It is.”
“So?” she said, kind of clapping her hands together.
“So,” I said and we began making out again, this time falling together onto her bed. In a flash, Dorie had her brown shirt unbuttoned, had my sweater off, her shiny black boots kicked to the floor, my pants unbuckled, her jeans undone, her socks pulled off, her hair in my face, her mouth against my chin, her brown satin bra unclasped, my pants pulled down around my feet, her hands at the bottom of my T-shirt pulling it up over my head. The two of us dove quickly under her beige comforter as she waved her white cotton panties in the air, spinning them around and tossing them to the floor and laughing. I could feel her skin and it was so smooth and it smelled so good and she had goosebumps for some reason and I, kind of awkwardly, pulled off my underwear and kicked them off the side of the bed and then sat up, remembering, and dug into the back of my pants pocket for the rubber Mike had given me.
Cut to:
Mike in the Osco Drug parking lot, leaning against the motorized merry-go-round, lighting a cigarette, digging into the back pocket of his pants for his wallet, unfolding it, digging out a foil-wrapped condom, and saying, “You got to be cool about this shit. You don’t wanna find out you got a kid, right?”
“Right,” I said.
“So you got to change it like every few weeks,” he said. “Or else.”
“Or else,” I said, repeating.
“So here,” he said.
Cut to:
Mike, sitting on the brown sofa in his basement in his white skivvy underwear, rolling a joint, looking over his shoulder every so often toward his small, paneled-off room, shaking his head and smiling. Him saying, “I’m gonna need that rubber back,” and winking, because Erin McDougal was in his bedroom waiting, and me unfolding my wallet to hand it to him and smiling.
Cut to:
Mike running like hell out of the Osco Drug, grabbing my arm as he runs, booking full speed across the parking lot, past the train tracks, over the fence, and into the cemetery, me hardly breathing, my heart up in my ears, and him digging under his jean jacket and te
aring open a brand new box of condoms, handing a few to me, saying, “Ribbed,” and out of breath, “you know, for her pleasure.”
“Yeah,” I said, hunched over, trying to breathe.
“This one,” he said, planting one of the small foil circles in my hand. “I can tell this one is going to be lucky.”
Cut to:
Yearbook photos of every girl I have ever met, thought of, or looked at: girls Mike introduced me to, girls like Gretchen who I was so sure I was in love with, girls I have never even spoken to, like the one who worked at Spencer’s Gifts in the mall, girls, girls, all who had seemed so impossible, so out of reach.
Back to:
I looked over my shoulder at Dorie who was still laughing, kicking her feet up and down quick to make the sheet rise and fall like waves, mumbling, “Hurry up, I’m cold.” I turned, opened the wrapper, climbed back under the covers, and said, “OK, you’re gonna give me some pointers, right?”
“Duh,” she said, rolling her eyes.
“It’s, you know, my first time.”
“Duh,” she said, rolling her eyes again.
thirteen
In the basement, Dorie and Mike and I were doing the Ouija Board and trying to contact some spirits, right, and Mike said it was all bullshit anyway and went in his room to call Erin McDougal to, you know, make nice, and so it was just Dorie and I playing, our hands touching the small white plastic pointer, kind of moving it from side to side over the board with all the letters and numbers and words and everything, the two of us giggling and laughing, and I asked, “Did you ever get a spirit to contact you before?” because it was her Ouija Board, and she said, “Yeah, in junior high, me and Jenny Elwood used to do this all the time,” and I said, “Are you sure you guys weren’t just moving it yourselves?” and she said, “Duh, no,” and we kept moving the pointer around and around until it kind of stopped by itself, kind of getting very hard to push, and then I didn’t know if it was just Dorie pushing harder or what, but Dorie asked, “Are you a spirit trying to contact us?” and the pointer went to “yes” and so she said, “Are you a good spirit or a bad spirit?” and it spelled out “G-O-U-D,” and Dorie said, “Maybe he is a little kid or something, you know, like he can’t spell,” and I said, “Yeah, maybe,” and then she asked, “Are you a young kid?” and the pointer went right to “no,” and Dorie asked, “How did you die?” and it began to spell out, “S-I-C-K,” and Dorie and I kind of looked at each other, startled, and I began to try to resist pushing the pointer at all, and it was really moving, and so I said, “Does Dorie really, truly like me?” and Dorie looked up and smiled, kind of surprised I asked that, I guess, and like that, the pointer slowly slid over to “yes.”
fourteen
At my locker before school even began, I was kneeling, picking through the random shit I had stuffed inside, looking for my Religion and Chemistry notebooks, kind of in a daze, thinking about nothing but Dorie—her hair, her hands, her face—and singing this song she always sung, “Changes” by David Bowie, and not really knowing the words but “Cha-cha-cha-changes, turn and face the …” I didn’t know what he sang next so I just sang, “Turn and face the day,” because it was like the beginning of the fucking school day, even though later I found out the line was, “Turn and face the strange,” which would have worked too, had I known. I was down on my knees, shoving mounds of homework assignments, notebooks, failed tests, single random sheets of loose-leaf paper with my band names on them, and trying to retie my black tie at the same time, when out of the corner of my eye I saw John McDunnah, his big, square, blond face and oddly Herculean shape looming down the hallway toward me, and before I could register what was going on I felt the egg come down. I knew what it was right away, the feeling of it was exactly the same: the sharp strange sting of the eggshell against my scalp, the runny-sticky foul odor of it leaking down my neck, the yellowish globs on my white shirt and black pants, the clumpy whiteness growing hard in my hair. I looked him in the eyes as he was walking away and he was laughing his jungle-hyena laugh, nodding to his two pals, and all at once it made total sense. The first time had not been an accident, not really. He had picked me, known who I was at least, or what I looked like—which must have been like an easy fucking target or a wimp or a pussy or someone who he knew would never do anything back. Realizing that, well, that was what fucking hurt about the whole thing.
fifteen
In Dorie’s room, I was lying in her bed after school, reading, and her mom was still at work (her mom was a receptionist at a hospital) and I had my shoes off and so did Dorie and I was reading this dumb book about serial killers for my history project and she began to slide her bare foot against mine and I pretended to ignore her and then she took off her shirt and started kissing my neck and I kept on reading and she started growling, which she did, and she was dry-humping me and unbuttoning my pants and I kept on reading, and then she had her hand down my pants and her fingers were on my crotch, inside my pants, and I started getting excited down there and not knowing what to do, and so I kept on reading, and I felt her hand grab the whole thing and Dorie shouted, “Hurry it up, Romeo, my mom will be home any second!” and she dug under her bed for a rubber and we started doing it and As a boy, Pee Wee Gaskins saw a cobra kill a live rat at a carnival. In a confession he later wrote, this was the first time he felt violence’s attraction. Later named America’s meanest killer, Pee Wee spent most of his life in prison. In 1969, after getting released for the murder of an inmate, Pee Wee began killing at an unprecedented rate. He saw a difference between his “coastal kills,” victims he found while driving around the roadways of America who he killed for pleasure, and the “serious murders,” victims he killed for very specific reasons. His victims were usually found along the coastal highways, where every few weeks he would go to try and silence his terrible feelings of “not belonging.” the serial killer book fell off the bed and landed on the floor and scared the hell out of us both and I jumped out of the bed and we figured out it was just the book and we both started laughing, and it felt so good to be there and I said that to her before we started going at it again.
sixteen
We got busted pretty bad by Mrs. Madden, finally. I guess it was only a matter of time. Mike and I had devised this kind of chemical pressure explosive, perfect for blowing the hell out of mailboxes, and that was the thing that did us in. Some dude in Mike’s gym class told him that if you took a two-liter plastic soda-pop bottle, put a big ball of tinfoil inside, poured in some mercuric acid—which is like some fucking metallic kind of acid you can get at any hardware store—then sealed the bottle top, the acid would eat away at the tinfoil and create like this tremendous gas that would cause the whole thing to blow.
We had to try it. We got like three soda-pop bottles and a roll of tinfoil, went to Osco and bought a little container of this acid stuff, and one night we just went outside, walked to the end of Mike’s block, put the tinfoil in one of the bottles, poured in the acid, sealed the top, shoved it in a mailbox, and started running. In a few minutes, the bottle blew like a pressure bomb, knocking the little red wood mailbox right off its post, like three feet into the air, completely destroying the fucking thing. We blew up another one right away, crossing over to the other side of the street. This time we blew the hell out of a plastic barnshaped mailbox, knocking it off its post, but not completely. It was still dangling by some kind of wire, I guess.
We were all set to do the last one when some angry neighbor-type individual came out, some big dude in a white T-shirt who grabbed Mike around the neck just before he could pour the mercuric acid in. He grabbed me by the back of my shirt and marched us over to Mike’s, rang the doorbell, then knocked on the door hard until Mrs. Madden appeared. She was drunk off her ass, her eyes all red and glazed, looking very happy and stupid, all in her yellow nightgown, smoking, with a very amused face.
“Nahhh,” she said, smiling. “These two aren’t mine.”
“Mrs. Madden, these kids just
blew up two mailboxes and were going for a third.”
“They’re no longer my responsibility,” she said. “If you want, you can take it up with that boy’s father,” and she pointed to Mike with the end of her lit cigarette.
“Mrs. Madden,” the angry neighbor mumbled, clearing his throat, “I don’t want to have to get the police involved, but …”
“You go ahead and get the police involved,” Mrs. Madden shouted, “and you’ll be wishing you hadn’t!”
The angry neighbor rubbed his chin, taking a step back.
“What the heck do you mean by that?” he asked.
“I mean everyone has eyes, Mr. Hickman. Everyone …” she slurred, “has. Eyes. Understand?”
Mr. Hickman, the angry neighbor, shook his head, looked at Mrs. Madden, then at us, all up and down, and then he walked away, shaking his head. He stopped a few feet from the front porch and said, “It’s no wonder they act like that.”
“Tell it to the judge!” Mrs. Madden shouted, kicking the screen door open. “Tell it to the judge, you phony!”
Mike and I started to walk inside and Mrs. Madden laughed, snapping her drink up, some Canadian Club whiskey, heavy with ice, tossing her head back.
“You two,” she said, closing the door. “You two don’t live here anymore.”
“What?” Mike said. “You can’t do that.”
“I can do whatever I want,” she said. “I am the official homeowner.”