“That’s only twenty!”
“Get out of my car.”
“Where’s my money, fuckface, you said okay!”
Without any warning, he shoves, hard, and I tumble out the door, onto my hands and knees, bare butt in the air. He laughs. I whip around and catch his eyes; this enrages him. I have to duck as the door slams back, just missing my head. The asshole drives away, going home to a wife, I know this—I saw the ring. Maybe even kids. I wonder if he has boys. If one of them’s fourteen.
For the briefest second, I remember Paul crying, my uncle’s mouth tightening, my surprise when that very first trick couldn’t look at me. I scoot up onto the sidewalk, pull up my pants, look around, take inventory. At least nobody saw. But shit, the knee’s torn on my jeans and there’s blood on my white shirt. I can’t see Coco like this.
What is Davy doing right now? I wonder.
I should’ve paid attention.
Where’s Marianne? Would she hate me if she knew?
Do any of them even miss me?
I shake my head, stand up. I need to take care of myself now and stop thinking stupid thoughts.
I see the kid as I cross the street back to the park to get a change of clothes. He’s so scared and fresh I can’t look at him.
“Excuse me?” he whispers, as I pass. “Could you—” He sees my torn clothes and bloody arms and gasps.
“What?” I ask, not nicely. He’s a rich little kid, I can tell right off—expensive clothes, great haircut. He immediately bursts into tears, putting his hands up to hide his face. I want to walk past him, but think of Tommy helping me the night after my mother and the cop. If I don’t stop, I’m my father who turned away, my brother who didn’t want me, my mother who slapped my face.
“Okay. What’s your name?” I demand.
“Tim. Timmy.” He’s soft like a puppy.
“How old are you?” I say.
“Almost twelve.”
“Go home,” I say.
“I can’t.” He cries again.
I see it in his eyes. He’s right, whatever happened to him there, he can’t go back. “At least go wash your face, okay? You got snot all over.” I point down the street toward Highland. “Shell station, on the corner. Ask for the key, pretend your dad’s in the car. You got money?”
He pulls out a fistful of twenties. I slap his hand back.
“Don’t do that. Don’t show people your money.” I shake my head. “You gotta wise up, little dude, or you’ll be dead by morning.”
“Okay, okay, I will.” He looks at me like I’m God or something.
“Buy some food, hear? Then find a place in the park you can sleep. Make sure nobody can sneak up on you. Don’t talk to anybody, okay? Look me up tomorrow.”
“Okay.” He almost smiles. “Thank you.” He leans in like I’m going to hug him or something but I turn away. I’m dirty and pissed off and my favorite shirt is torn and now I’ve got to get ready to go to work.
1980
THREE MONTHS BEFORE
LOS ANGELES COUNTY
I don’t know what it is about Punk at our school now; suddenly it’s cool and everywhere and Evelyn Anderson wants to hang out. She sidles up to me at lunch. She lets me cop a feel in the field at lunch. She even follows me out after school when Stace comes to pick me up.
“A Barbie, Doug?” Rosie says, the next day. “Give me a break. What’s the hell’s wrong with you?”
“You see those tits?” I snap back.
“You’ll be sorry, dude,” she says. I don’t think so. I think it’s fine if I hang out with a Barbie at school. Stacie has her own friends. Besides, I’m back at home now, most of the time. Either that or my parents will make me move out completely, which is not possible until I can finish school and get a job.
Saturday, Stace and Rosie and I head down to Wong’s East to see a new band we’ve been hearing about. Apparently, everybody else in L.A. has heard about them too—the place is packed, and the line goes down the street. Carlos appears right behind us, just before we get to the door. Carlos is the old boyfriend, slick and Latin and all Punked out. He slips his arm around Rosie and she likes it.
“Did you know he’d be here?” I ask Stacie as we go in.
“Got a problem with that?”
“Hell, I don’t care what you do.”
“Good.” She leaves me and goes right over to talk to him and Rosie. They’re all laughing together and rubbing up against each other and I head out back to snort some shit with some guy I meet. I don’t even know what it is. I score a bottle from the same guy. I drink and rub up on girls and then go to skank. Stacie doesn’t seem to notice. Rosie’s having a great time. Everybody is, it seems, but me. The band’s not even that good. Whatever it is I snorted kicks off a major headache. I look for a way to get home, but can’t find anybody that goes my way. I have to go with Stacie.
I finally locate her outside in the back alley, with a whole group of chicks her own age, Rosie, and the Latin asshole.
“Come on. I wanna split.”
“Then split,” Stacie says. “What’s stopping you?”
Carlos claps me on the shoulder. “Patience, mi amigo,” he says, like we know each other. “Let the ladies finish talking.”
I want to hit him. But my skull feels like it’s cracking open so I just go lean against the wall until Stacie walks by and beckons me to follow. We pile in her car, Carlos and Rosie in the backseat. I put in the Dead Kennedys and try to forget the headache, but by the time we drop Rosie off, I’m in serious pain.
“Denny’s?” Rosie asks.
“Good idea, I’m starved,” says Carlos.
“Drop me at home, okay?” I don’t even care anymore if she wants to hang out with him.
“Why? You meeting your little cheerleader?” Stacie says and Carlos laughs. She glances back. “He thinks I don’t know.”
My head’s bursting. “Shut up, you don’t know shit.”
She pulls over to the side of the road. “Why don’t you just get out, huh? Go see Barbie. I’m tired of playing with kids.”
“Stace—”
“Get out of my car.”
“Fine. Whatever.” I get out and go to slam the door, but Carlos catches it and slips inside the front. I hear them laughing as she drives away. I stand alone in the middle of the street. I’m seven blocks from my parents’ home. The neighborhood is completely still. I start to walk.
This whole stupid world’s pissing me off.
I kick at a mailbox, one of those ones on wood posts, with a metal top. It hurts my foot, which makes me kick it again. It takes a couple of hard blows, but then it breaks, right in two, and clangs down on the concrete. The black iron dog on top snaps off. A light goes on in the house across the street. A door opens next door and a man’s voice cries out, “What’s going on out there?”
I run at the next box and kick it until it falls. The one after is free-standing chain, and I miss, fall, hurt my hip on the curb. I cuss, as loud as I can. More doors are opening, more porch lights turning on. I take off down the street.
I feel better already.
Sirens sound. More lights flick on. Now I want somebody to go get my parents. I want my mother and father to see what I’m doing. I want them to know who their son really is. I want my dad to try and stop me.
The damage you do has to feel right.
You got to stand up for yourself.
You can’t let fucking faggot whores take over what belongs to you.
You have to fight for what you believe.
My rampage takes me down one street and up to the next, a cul-de-sac. The sirens get louder. Two cop cars pull up on either side of the corner yard where I now stand. Four cops pile out—three guys and a chick, guns drawn and pointed directly at me.
“Shoot me!” I yell, holding my hands up in the air. “Shoot me, motherfucker!”
People peek from their porches, peer through windows. Nobody knows what to do with me, not even the cops.
&nbs
p; “Go ahead, shoot me!!”
“Get your hands up!”
“Down on the ground!”
They smell like the slam pit as they circle around, all of them yelling. The noise of them seeps in my head.
“Get down! Get down! Get down!” The cop that’s talking edges closer. His eyes dart back and forth and I wonder if he’ll shoot me. I think he probably will. I start to laugh and his eyes go dark. Suddenly I think of Rosie. What would happen to her, without me here to protect her? This is big. This needs consideration. I put my hands behind my head, legs out.
Two other cops rush me, knock me facedown and drag my arms back behind me. They haul me over and the next thing I know I’m on the sidewalk on my knees, hands in cuffs behind me. Something gets tied around the cuffs and one of the cops pulls it straight up so I’m bowing forward. My head almost touches the ground. My hip has gone on fire.
“Jeez, Mike, he’s just a kid,” the woman cop says. She puts her gun back in its holster, buckles it in. She’s not much bigger than Stacie, with dark hair pulled straight back.
“I don’t care, he’s on something. Keep back.”
She doesn’t. She comes in close, kneels down, and looks dead in my eyes. “What’s going on, dude?” she asks. “What is it?”
I give her my hardest glare but she doesn’t flinch. She looks up behind me. “Will you please loosen that up?”
“It could be PCP, Jo.”
“Yeah, and what’s he going to do? Huh? He can’t move and if he does, you got a gun pointing at his head.” She sits down beside me.
“What’s your name?”
“Fuck you.”
“Nice talk. I’m Jo Ann. What’s your name?” She touches the side of my face, brushing something away. I jerk my head away from her and the cop yanks my arms.
“Stop it, Mike!” she says. She takes my chin in her hand. I flinch at her touch. She doesn’t let go. “Tell me your name, dude.”
“Doug.”
“Good. Thanks. What’s wrong, Doug? What happened?”
“Why should I tell you anything?”
“Because I’m asking.”
“Why the fuck do you care?”
“I don’t know. You’re a kid. I like kids. How old are you, Doug?”
“Nineteen.”
“No you’re not.”
I don’t know why I tell her the truth. “Sixteen. Almost seventeen.”
She adjusts herself to block the other cops from being able to see my face. I focus on her eyes. She’s got nice eyes. Hazel brown.
“Sixteen’s a hard age to be.”
“No shit.”
“Tonight was pretty bad?”
“Every fucking night is bad.”
“But tonight, something worse?”
“It was shit,” I mutter. “A real fucking bad night.”
I can’t believe I’m talking to her. I try to adjust my body so my hip won’t hurt so much. I get my arms yanked.
“Watch out, Jo Ann!”
“Relax, would you?” Jo Ann calls back. She reaches behind and makes them let up. She has a sad smile on. “Girlfriend?”
“Yeah.” I tell her about Stacie and how my music’s not working for me anymore, how the bouncer last week got stabbed and the cops slammed me up against the wall, how my hip has a metal pin. Everything. It pours out. Like I have no control. She doesn’t interrupt. She invites me to sit down with her and makes the other cops help me do it. They keep their guns pointed at my head. She makes them take me home.
My mother cries with that stupid whimper sound of hers. My father stares into space. You’d think he’d go off, but he never does, not with cops. He’s not so tough with authority.
Jo Ann explains that I won’t be arrested, but a bill will be sent for damaged property. She tells my parents I need to get counseling, something to help me deal with stuff. My mother nods. My father gets up and walks out of the room. Jo Ann leaves and my mother fixes me something to eat. I can’t eat it. I can’t do anything. My hip hurts like crazy. I wonder if there are any painkillers in the house. Anything.
1980
TWO MONTHS BEFORE
LOS ANGELES COUNTY
“See what I mean?” Coco says. “L.A. Sunny Southern. You can’t beat it.”
He’s right. We’re on the boardwalk down at Venice Beach, walking around in T-shirts when Tommy’s probably huddling under a bench somewhere. The sun shines down on a whole universe of people—every kind imaginable. A black guy in a Jesus robe and harem pants roller-skates past, a boombox on his shoulder, singing along. His hair’s down to his waist, wound into dreds. People sit along the sidewalk on blankets, selling jewelry and T-shirts and pretty much anything you could think of. All kinds of music, all types of accents, all shades of skin. An old woman with no front teeth offers to read our Tarot cards.
“Not so bad, babe, huh?” Coco asks, slipping an arm over my shoulders.
“I like it.”
“See? Sometimes you got to check things out, you know? There’s a whole world out there we don’t even know about.”
We get to Venice Boulevard, where the boardwalk loops onto the street, and turn back. I feel like a little kid. I can’t believe I was scared about coming here. We get pizza from a stand and go watch a whole group of buffed-out guys lifting weights.
“Muscle beach,” Coco explains. “Check out the guy in the blue.”
“Amazing.”
We take off our shoes and head down to the ocean. Coco shows me how to dig out a seat for myself. Under the top layer, the sand is cool and moist. We take off our shirts and settle in. Coco reaches for my hand. At first I look around, but it’s okay. There are couples everywhere.
I find myself getting sleepy in the sun, lulled by the sound of the waves. When I look up again, he’s staring at me, a sweet smile on his face.
“What?” I ask, smiling back.
“You. Your eyes. Your craziness. Everything. I just love you.”
“I love you too.”
ONE MONTH BEFORE
LOS ANGELES
“Take that fucking shirt off right now,” I say. “Who do you think you are coming here with that stupid shirt?”
Rules have changed. Again.
The skinhead thing is getting intense. Lines are blurred.
Hardcore does not put up with shit like we used to. Like this guy up in my face right now, this stupid couple in their matching KISS shirts. Who the hell do they think they are? This is not the place for that shit. We’re at the Olympic Auditorium; we got Punks here from L.A., Orange County, the Inland Empire. There are some violent groups and they’re thinking the same thing as me but they don’t have the balls to say it.
I do. I’m not in the mood.
“I said, take it off.”
“Shut up, you creep,” the girl says, sticking up for her boyfriend.
“You shut up!” he says to her. He doesn’t utter a word to me. He knows what’s around. He knows he fucked up.
“Take that stupid shit off,” I say, and he does. They try to blend back into the crowd, but I see some of the Punk girls closing in and they get the girl’s shirt too. That’s the way it should be. The couple disappears.
Later, in the slam pit, I’m feeling pretty good until something sharp stabs into my side. I turn to see the KISS asshole grinning. The motherfucker came back and stabbed me! He’s got one of those big safety pins that chefs use to hold their aprons together, sharpened. He snuck back in and fucking stabbed me in the ribs.
He takes off. I chase him up through the bleachers and then down into the walkway, which is where I beat the fuck out of him. I grab him by the hair and smash his face against the concrete steps. Bouncers pull me off, big black guys with yellow SECURITY shirts. I know I’m about to get a beating, so I show them the blood on my palm and then my side where the asshole cut me.
“Not even face-to-face,” I tell them. “He stabbed me from the back, man, I didn’t even see it coming.”
“That’s wrong, d
ude,” the bigger guy says. “That’s just wrong.” They let me go. Later I hear they took the guy outside and kicked his ass.
All I want to do now is beat people up. Or get beat up myself. I don’t particularly care which. I look for it. Like when I’m in the slam pit at the Warehouse and this big guy is standing there, this wannabe skinhead, not doing shit to me or anybody, just standing. But he’s taller than me and that’s enough. I know he’s thinking he’s tough shit. That he’s like some Greek Fucking God. I hit him. He’s surprised, so I hit him again.
I can’t seem to get enough. When I’m not doing it, I’m thinking about it. I like how it feels. Every time, I know how bad it’s gonna get, how fucking much it’s gonna hurt. Every time, I get terribly afraid. My whole body shakes, my knees quiver, my blood turns cold. But I don’t run. I don’t move out of the way. I sure as shit don’t hide. I move into the pain. I meet it head-on. That roar in my brain starts revving up, pushes me forward. It’s like the best music I ever wrote.
Next comes the excitement, the challenge, putting myself to the test once again. What will happen? Will the victim fight? Will he try to run away? I don’t mind chasing somebody. I usually catch them. When the victim fights back, that’s the best. That’s when you really have your work cut out for you.
Getting hit the first time always hurts, hurts like hell—electricity shooting through from wherever is the point of impact, up to the brain where it explodes again. That’s the trigger, that’s where the change occurs. They hit me again, but now I don’t feel it. Now I’m numb to it, and time does that delicious slow motion thing, and I’m moving forward again—getting hit more and more, hitting back and feeling how that is, my fist on their flesh, always forward. It’s awesome.
Like inhaling and expanding, I swell up. I get huge. Strong. Godlike. It doesn’t matter who or what or why—victims are totally interchangeable, and always disposable. Sometimes they don’t really even register. They’re not people, they’re not important. What’s important is the release of action—the stretch of sinews, the flex of muscles, that incredible rush of adrenaline, filling me up and pushing me outwards—at the same time, protecting me and spurring me on.
Freaks and Revelations Page 16