On the ride back, Tommy gives us each a hundred dollar bill.
“That’s it?” Adam says. Tommy doesn’t answer. He’s in the front with the driver. He won’t even look me in the eyes. The car drops him off first, at Market, near Van Ness; he marches down the street without saying a word. The rest of us are let out down by Castro. I’m embarrassed. I don’t know why. I head off too, and end up slipping into the nook where I used to stay. Something important has changed, and I don’t even know what it is.
Tommy and me never talk about it again, none of us do—we all act like nothing happened.
A couple weeks after that, I catch one of those really awful summer colds, probably from the shitty hotels I’ve been staying in. It goes down into my chest; I cough constantly. My voice gets low and raspy.
“I think it’s sexy,” says the trick who’s buying me drinks that night. We’re in The Masque and I’m feeling worse by the minute. I wish Tommy was around, but he’s not really watching out for me anymore. I remember my dad once saying that drinking alcohol is good when you’re sick—it kills the bacteria. So I figure if I have a few drinks, then go to sleep after this guy, I’ll be fine in the morning. Except my head starts to throb so bad I can barely see straight. I tell the guy I’ll see him later.
“Why don’t you try this?” says the trick. He digs into his pocket and brings out a prescription bottle, shakes out two tablets. “It’s my sinus medication,” he tells me. “Fix you right up.”
I take a good long look at him. He reminds me of that movie where Don Knotts turns into a fish.
“Thanks anyway,” I say, “but I think I better just go on home.”
“All right.” He sounds disappointed but puts the tablets away. “At least let me pay for your cab.”
For some reason, I think this means he’s a great guy, that all he wants is for me to be okay—and I change my mind. I swallow the tablets with my drink. It’s the last thing I remember.
I wake up outside an apartment building with no idea where I am or how long I’ve been there. My head aches. I’m still snotty. I don’t know if it’s the next day or the next week. I don’t know what I’ve done or what’s been done to me. I stand up. I’m in my same clothes and even have the fifty that had been in my back pocket. I wasn’t robbed. I don’t hurt; I wasn’t raped. The sun’s in the middle of the sky, so it must be around noon.
The Transamerica Building peeks up over the others so I’m still in San Francisco. But this is definitely not okay. I don’t know where I’ve been or what I’ve done. This is not okay. I can’t keep putting myself in situations where I can get hurt. I have to figure out how to take control of my life. Nobody else is going to do that for me.
{4}
“Well. I’m off to L.A.,” Jimmy V announces. Jimmy V’s older, twenty maybe. We think he deals. He’s in and out of the city, and sometimes he hangs out with us when he’s here. He always has stuff to share. When I’m not working, I appreciate it.
“Right now?” I ask. “Can I go?”
“Sure, why not?”
“Let me get my stuff.” I grab my backpack and duck behind to where I keep my other clothes. Tommy glares at me.
“Are you serious?” Tommy says.
“I think so.”
“You’re just gonna leave?”
“Yeah. Tommy, it’s L.A.! It’s my chance. I’m gonna be an actor, remember?”
“Fine. Bye. Have a great life,” he says, getting up.
“Why don’t you come with me? You and me, we can—”
“I hate L.A.,” he says and walks away.
“Tommy!” I run after him, grab his arm, swing him around. “Come on, don’t be a bitch!”
“You’re the one leaving.”
“Why shouldn’t I? What do I have here?” I blurt. His face clouds. “Besides you, I mean.” He starts off again. “Tommy! Just come with me.”
He turns. “I can’t be in L.A., Jason. Too much happened there, I just… I can’t.”
“Yeah? Well, same with me, here.” As I say it, I know it’s true.
He stares and I watch his eyes close down. “Fine. Do what you want. I sure as hell don’t care.”
This time he doesn’t stop. Calling after him doesn’t help; he holds up his middle finger. For a second, I want to follow and apologize and stay—but you know what? Friendship goes both ways. Besides, it’s my life, I need to be in charge of it. Los Angeles is where movies get made, and people get rich. San Francisco gets cold. L.A. does not. I grab my last pack of cigarettes and jam the rest of my stuff into my backpack. I tuck a twenty and two tens in my pocket and follow Jimmy V to his gold Dodge Charger.
* * *
We smoke our cigarettes, listen to KFRC, and head over the Bay Bridge to the 580, to catch the I-5 going south. As we veer right onto the interstate, I suddenly realize that no one in my family will know where I am. I feel a tug on my heart.
I see myself in the garage at the old house, sitting on my dad’s big bike, watching him paint, feeling safe. Then I hear him say: “It’s between you and your mother now.” I see myself in class with Davy, then with him in the hallway, when he told me just to go. I see Marianne, painting her nails, always taking care of me. I sigh. My mother laughing, looking beautiful in her yellow dress. Closing the front door. Turning out the lights. Calling me that name. The feeling now is more than sadness. I’m just hollow, there’s nothing there.
We take the ramp to the I-5.
“Got any more of that weed?” I ask.
We pull off at Highland and stop for a light before turning onto Hollywood Boulevard. The streets sparkle for real here—glistening bits of stuff in the concrete, with famous people’s names in stars all down the sidewalks. I lean out the window by Mann’s Chinese and try to make out one or two.
“Jimmy, look,” I say, “there’s Marilyn Monroe’s hand prints! There’s Judy Garland!”
He chuckles as I sit back, grinning. Every kind of person imaginable is out on this street. Lights and billboards and energy everywhere; in comparison, Castro’s boring and Polk Street doesn’t even make the chart. We turn down La Brea to Santa Monica Boulevard—which I’ve heard about—and go west. He pulls over for cigarettes at a liquor store by a street called Curson. I think it’s funny: Curse On.
“Kools for me,” Jimmy V says, and holds out a dollar. He points at the “no stopping” sign. “I’ll make the block.”
“My treat,” I say as I hop out the car. The woman behind the counter watches me like a hawk, but doesn’t ask for I.D. I get his Kools and a pack of Marlboros for me, and go outside to wait.
I light up, check around. Just down the street is a place called Oki Dogs and realize I’m starving. Maybe we can grab a bite before we head to his friend’s place. I check around the corner and up and down the street. What the hell’s taking so long?
“You looking for the guy in the gold car?” This from the cute, curly-haired kid on the bus bench nearby.
“Yeah.”
“He split, man. Soon as you got out.”
I freeze, blink. “You sure?”
“Didn’t wait a second.”
Everything I own is in the back of his car. Why would he do this? How can I still be so dumb?
“What do I do now?” I say out loud, not meaning to.
“How should I know?” He hops down, stomps off.
It’s late, the air’s turning moist, and though it’s not nearly as cold as the city, I picture my jacket hanging over the front seat. I take a breath and get my thoughts together. I may not know L.A., but men in cars? A gay boy on the bench? Cops around and gay bars down both sides of the street? That park we passed will have kids sleeping in it. I decide against fast food. I go back to the liquor store to try to exchange the Kools.
“Sure, why not?” the woman says, not looking so mean this time. I grab cookies and milk to eat when I find a place to stay, and as I take them up to the counter, glance at the show biz magazines sitting in the rack alongside.
“Anniversary of the Death of the King!”
“Elvis Gone Two Years Today!”
Well hell. It’s my birthday. Might as well get some chips too. I just turned fourteen years old.
1979
SEVEN MONTHS BEFORE
LOS ANGELES COUNTY
Fear, China White, and T.S.O.L. are at the Starwood and the club’s packed. Not a severely hardcore crowd, except for the Orange County LADS that show up. And me.
Punk’s changing again, evolving. I’m moving with it.
I definitely lean toward hardcore. Can’t stand the New Wave shit and I hate people who get involved with Punk just for the look of it. Stupid jocks, preppies cutting their hair, thinking they’re cool now. They’re into the fashion of it. Fashion is bullshit. They’re showing up everywhere. Getting into the circle. Pissing me off. Even skanking’s not doing it for me anymore. It’s cheap, just another thing. I’m looking for something more.
Punk is a way of life. Not a weekend diversion.
“Like your tattoo,” the skinhead bouncer says. He’s older, huge, definitely will not take shit from anyone. Lots of skinheads work the Punk scene. He nods at the newest one on my arm—a death’s head with a snake curving through the eye sockets.
“Thanks.” I check his arms—he’s got WHITE POWER in fancy letters, and a huge swastika over the American flag. He sees me looking, flexes his arm, and the flag ripples.
“Just stating my cause, my friend.”
“Yeah.” I’m not sure what he means but I’m not about to argue.
“This country belongs to the white people. Remember that.” He checks a group that’s just come into the club, then turns back to me. “We got to look out for each other, my friend. Make sure we get the respect we deserve. Otherwise the whole country’s going down.” He winks and turns to yell at a kid trying to crash the door.
Fear is outstanding.
In between sets, there’s some kind of commotion on the stairs. People are screaming at each other, throwing chairs and anything they can lift. We go to check it out. The Orange County LADS are somehow in the mix, I see them converging. Suddenly one of the bouncers comes tumbling down the staircase. It’s like watching a stuntman. Everybody gets out of the way. He lands hard on the floor; people press around him.
“Man, his guts are falling out,” Jack says.
“Is he dead?” Stacie asks.
“I don’t know,” I say. “I don’t want to know.”
It’s not the skinhead I talked with earlier. He’s trying to get people to make some room around the guy who fell.
“Let’s book it,” I say, but by the time we find everybody, the cops have shut down the place, locked the doors. There’s no way out. It gets intense quick. Everybody watches everybody else. Nobody knows what happened, who did it. I’m thinking the LADS. Paramedics put the bouncer on a stretcher. His eyes are open but he’s not moving.
The cops herd the young scared wannabes to the stage area. Hardcore gets pushed to the back hall. They separate girls and guys and start to frisk us all. A Mexican cop shoves my nose into the concrete wall, twists my arm behind me so hard it makes my eyes water. “Freak,” he mutters, and his black buddy pats me down, shoving his hand so hard up against my balls my knees go weak. I don’t hold the knife anymore, I learned that at Jenna’s party. All my stuff’s in the car, except the box cutter I carry now, which I managed to lose before the cops got to me. I don’t say anything. I think on the skinhead’s words.
“This nightclub will be closed from now on,” says a voice over the loudspeaker. What he means is there won’t be any more Punk here. Two of the LADS are handcuffed and shoved into the police van. The rest of us get in our cars. It’s like this all over now. We don’t do a thing and still get pushed around, stopped on the street for nothing.
“Don’t you dare speed,” Rosie warns, as Stacie pulls out. Me and Jack are in the back. We don’t even play music on the way to Oki Dogs. We sit staring straight ahead, getting pissed. We pass a couple of hippies walking down Highland. Usually, that’d be an invitation to jump out and kick ass. Tonight we don’t bother. Stacie parks at Astro Burger and we head across the street.
Even Oki Dog’s not the same. It used to be Punks from all over L.A., the Inland Empire, Orange County even, would meet up here late at night and hang out. Nobody else’d dare come by, not if they didn’t want to get hassled. Now there’s all kinds of people, all the time. Nobody gives a damn about us.
Stace and them hang out front smoking cigarettes. I get in line, thinking on respect, fighting for what belongs to you.
“You want buy some shit?” the chink behind the counter asks the woman in front of me. “What kind shit you want?”
I look up and notice she’s got a great ass, and dressed to show it off. Maybe my night just got better. I check to make sure Stacie’s not looking and cup her cheek with one hand.
“Hey!” she says in a husky low voice, “you can look, honey, but you can’t touch unless you got some cash.”
She turns around and my mouth drops—she’s a HE.
“Sick faggot bastard,” I say, hoping no one saw. He doesn’t flinch.
“Yeah, whatever, baby,” he says. “You the one rubbing.” He winks, flicks his tongue out, grabs his Oki Dog, and swishes his way out the door.
“What kind shit for you?” the counter guy asks. I don’t know how I manage to get the food, pay, and join up with Stacie and them outside. How I manage to eat, or carry on any kind of conversation. I’m done with this day. Too much input. The jet plane’s revving up in my head.
“Let’s go,” I say and start for the car.
“I’m still eating,” Stacie says. I don’t stop. Stacie cusses but follows. I sit in the back and listen to Rosie, Jack, and her chatter away. I have nothing to say. Every stupid thing I never want to think about is popping up in my head, wanting attention. My father staring from the doorway as I lay there in the body cast; Carl, getting shot, getting beat; the skinhead I talked to earlier.
I’m doing nothing with my life. Going nowhere. Even my music sucks. It’s all chaos now, everything. Inside me and in this whole damn world. From me living half at Stacie’s and half at home, to faggots taking over at Oki Dogs, to this noise inside my brain. I am losing my control. My mind spins in loops and I don’t know how to stop it. I got no landing place, no safety anywhere. I feel like running my head into a wall. There is simply no way out.
1979
FIVE MONTHS BEFORE
LOS ANGELES COUNTY
“Coco LaMere is not your real name.” I poke him in the ribs as I say it. I tease him relentlessly these days. We’ve been hanging out for a while. He’s the kid I first saw on the bench.
“Bitch, please, you don’t know me,” he tosses back, takes a huge bite of his second Astro Burger, everything on it. Where he puts it all, I don’t know, he’s the skinniest boy I’ve ever seen. And the cutest, with that dark curly hair and exotic face. I like him, more than just a little.
“This name goes back generations.” He says it with his mouth full.
“Uh-huh, and your mama’s working Sunset.”
“At least she can get work. More than I can say for your ugly mama.” Car doors slam and we both turn to see a carload of skinheads piling out of an old station wagon.
“Oh well,” Coco says, rolling his eyes. “There goes the neighborhood.”
“Don’t worry. They’re going to Oki Dogs,” I say.
“Oh, too bad. The tall one’s sexy,” Coco says.
“If you like Neo-Nazis.”
“I like the tattoos.”
“You would.”
“Do you think they do it on their dicks?”
“Ew. Ow.”
* * *
“Check that out,” Coco says, and nods toward the shadow of a guy peeking out at us from inside a chocolate-colored Bentley. We’re lounging on my bench, across from where Jimmy dropped me off. I chose it to remind myself not to be a dumbass.
�
��No way,” I say. “He wants you.” The guy honks lightly.
“I don’t think so, sweetie. Definitely a J-man.” Coco gives a little push. I look again. Why not? It’s early, I’m not too tired. Besides, you never know. This might be the sugar daddy I’m always looking for. He drives a Bentley, doesn’t he?
I ease off the bench, adjust my pants, touch my hair.
“You’re so effin’ sexy,” Coco says and winks. I smile down at him, feeling that little tingle. We look good together. He squeezes my hand and whispers, “So, later? Want to hang out? You’ll be rich then, you can buy us dinner.”
I nod and wish the Bentley guy wasn’t there so I could give him a little kiss. “Wish me luck, babe,” I say and step into the street, lean into the Bentley. Still thinking about Coco, I put my head down and peek up through my lashes. The guy smiles at me.
“Pretty eyes,” he says. He’s older, maybe fifty, sixty.
“Thanks.”
“Shall we?”
“For sure.”
He reaches to open the door. “Come on in.”
I do. He’s skinny—thank God, I won’t go with fat guys. We turn up Curse-On and he finds a place to pull over.
“How much?” he asks.
“Thirty, I’ll use my hand. Fifty, you get both.”
“Both, and a twenty-dollar tip if I can see you naked.”
I consider it. As a rule, I never get completely undressed, but dinner would be amazing and I do know how to roll my pants down so I can run, if I have to. Besides, I could skip work for the night and spend the time with Coco.
“All right,” I say, “but you can’t finish while I’m there. Okay?”
“Okay.”
“I mean that.”
“Fine.”
He takes way longer than I expect. I check around to see where his wallet is, if maybe I can snatch it and run. In that one second, when I’m off guard, he grabs my head and holds it down. I fight back, hitting at him and trying to bite. I scratch the inside of his thigh, everything—but it’s too late. He yanks me up by my hair, then slaps me. His face is red and he’s breathing hard. I hold out one hand and try to get my pants up with the other. He gives me a bill.
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