Hollywood Park

by Mikel Jollett

  I could feel how much he loved me, how much he felt like we were two survivors of something. “I hear you’re kicking ass in school, man. That’s so great! I’m so proud of you.” I don’t have the heart to be mad at him anymore and something about being out of the house in Oregon makes it easier to see him this way: as a kindred spirit, a person who understands something no one else in the world could.

  He looked handsome with his black hair and tan face, less gaunt without the drugs in his system. Behind him was a short blond girl with a mod haircut shaved up on the back of her scalp, huge swooping bangs falling across her face. She had five earrings in her left ear and countless necklaces and bracelets. “So you’re the one I hear all about? Give me a hug, little brother.” She seemed to think of me as family from the beginning, like a sister I never met.

  We danced the wop to Cameo and did the running man to Bobby Brown, swirling around with the other teenage Dope Fiends lost in the music. I liked her. They slow danced and she stared up at him with dreamy eyes, whispering something in his ear that made them both laugh. It was obvious they were in love. When they were kicked out, they were given a choice to end it or leave. They chose to leave.

  Dad says he’s playing with fire leaving rehab like that. It may be true, but I understand it. If someone told me I had to choose between school and Laura, I would choose Laura. I don’t think they remember how big it feels, to be seen by another for the first time, to look into the face of someone who sees not some snot-nosed punk with a funny haircut but a man, full of promise and power and tragedy.

  When Tiffany got pregnant a few months later, she called Bonnie because she didn’t have a mother to call. She was abandoned as a child and hadn’t seen her mother in a decade so she didn’t know where else to turn. She said she was scared but excited by the idea of becoming a mother herself. Bonnie tried to reason with her, saying, “Are you sure you’re ready for this kind of responsibility? Don’t you want a life? You’re only fifteen years old.”

  But there was no reaching her. She wanted the baby and what do you tell a teenage Dope Fiend who’s made up her mind?

  Mom said it would be good for them, that becoming a father would force Tony to grow up a little because “young men like him” have spent their lives “acting out addictive impulses.” Bonnie thought she was nuts.

  Dad said, “They’re going to do what the fuck they’re going to do no matter what anyone says,” and it’s been that way “since the beginning of time,” so everybody had better get used to it.

  When the child came, when we got the call that the birth was uncomplicated and the child was a healthy baby boy with blond hair and blue eyes just like his dad’s, there was a moment of hope when anything seemed possible, when we said, “Hell, they might just make it and I hope they do!” because how could you fail to love something so beautiful? How could anyone turn away from this perfect child of the universe, to leave him to wonder if he is alone in the world?

  * * *

  I WAS ELIMINATED in the city quarterfinals on the pink tartan track at Birmingham High but mine was the fastest time on the team and the fastest mile time of any freshman in the city. I even broke five minutes. I spent the summer in Oregon running the country roads east of the freeway. Sometimes Jake would follow me on a bike, his sockless Florsheim shoes slipping off the pedals as he sang “Push” by the Cure or told me about his new girlfriend. Sometimes I ran alone at dawn before the sun came up. Sometimes I ran late at night, sneaking out of the house after Mom and Doug went to bed. There’s a blackness out beyond I-5, beyond the edge of the city as I slip down the country roads, the kind of night for which God created darkness, as if only to give a canvas to the light.

  By the end of the summer, I am more horse than rider. I know my body, when to push, when to conserve, how to build up the sphere, how to let it loose. I imagine the races at Hollywood Park. I don’t want to be the jockey. I don’t even want to be the man who wins the bet. I want to be the horse.

  Dad comes to all my track meets, sitting alone in the empty stands to cheer for me before walking the three blocks home. It’s a surprise to see him there, waving and cheering in the sun as I lean into the final straightaway. He seems warmer somehow sitting on his hands with a smile on his face. He has no idea about the room and the chair, the anger that propels my workouts. I wonder if I’ve missed something crucial. He seems to understand the feeling of fighting through darkness, of trying to find a way to deal with something difficult.

  My report cards are all on the fridge now. Dad will point them out when people come to visit like trophies in a case. “That’s an A in AP Chemistry, folks. No joke, that class.” When I receive an academic achievement award and I stand in a line with forty other students, afterward he says, “The only line I ever stood in was in Chino! Ha-ha.” But he studies the award, shaking his head, fingering the embossed letters that spell out our shared name. Under his breath he whispers, “Them sonsabitches ain’t buried us yet.”

  “What?”

  “I’m just proud of you.”

  At the end of track season I qualify for the L.A. City Finals for the class C mile. The race is on my sixteenth birthday. The whole family comes to the pink tartan track built for the 1984 Olympics at Birmingham High School. “The whole mishpucha is here,” Bonnie says with a laugh. There’s Grandma Juliette and Grandpa Nat and my aunts Jeannie with her new boyfriend, Marc, Nancy, Dad, Bonnie and Laura. I can feel their eyes on me as Getahun and I warm up and stretch quietly in the grass.

  We stand tall for the starting gun. I feel a lightness, like my stomach is filled with dust, my legs bunched like loaded springs. I’m rested, hydrated. I flex my fingers, bouncing on toes, testing a body that still feels new to me. The crack of the pistol echoes out over the stands and we are off. I tuck in behind the lead pack, the boys from Belmont and Granada Hills with their big distance-running programs two hundred strong that dwarf our ragtag team copying workouts from odd books found in running stores.

  By the middle of the second lap, I lose track of them. I can see their heartbreakingly perfect strides pulling away. Maybe I will never leave. Maybe it is hopeless to imagine anything could ever change. I lower my head, trying to control the sphere. Not yet. By the middle of the third lap, I am tucked in behind the lead pack again, staring at the green Granada Hills singlet in front of me. Passing the stands, I hear the family cheering. I wonder if I’m going to let them down, if they came all this way for nothing. The thought disintegrates into a fever dream of images: Dad, Tony, the room, the chairs, Paul and Minto-Brown, running alone in the woods behind Englewood School after he disappeared.

  At the start of the bell lap, I stumble. My foot catches tartan and for a second I think I’m going to fall straight onto my face. But I catch myself, running wide out into the middle lanes. My legs go rubbery and my stomach sinks as I try to keep my feet under me. I hear the bell and there it is: the empty chair. The blue light. Breathe. Push. Dad’s face looking at me. Tony staring at the ground. The walls covered in shadows, the floor dirty and stained, the light falling on the empty wooden seat. I hold the sphere in my hands, feeling it shake as I draft down the far straightaway. You will never leave. You have no future, no future, no future. I look up and we are in the final turn, the three runners in front of me leaning into their closing kicks. The sphere bursts and there is that sudden anger, that abandon and fear and helplessness all turning into fury as I pull out into lane two, the lane of dreamers, the lane of high hopes.

  I hear the scream from the stands, my aunt Jeannie loudest of all, “Go, Mick!” as the shards of glass fall around my feet, something like sticky hot tar in my mouth, my face pulled back into a grotesque grimace. Faster, shithead. Fucking run. I see the expression on my coach’s face as I pass by the long-jump pit. He looks curious. Almost sad. Maybe I imagine that. Maybe I’m the one who feels the sadness.

  I pull even with the lead pack, the green singlet from Granada Hills to my left. My stride has turned to shit, all jutt
ing knees with my head moving wildly. I close my eyes and I am two inches tall in my head. When did we imagine we were at the bottom of a well? I fall forward and feel the light brush of the white tape across my chest and I tumble down into the soft tartan like a drunk.

  I land on my back and grab my knees. Please. I must breathe. Please.

  The first thing I see when I open my eyes is Getahun. He is standing over me, his big smile, his round head, his thin, unsteady English, yelling out, “Heeeeeey, boy! Look at that! Don’t you know? You won it! Take a lap, boy!” He pulls me up and throws his arms around my shoulders and we jog down to the green of the infield.

  There’s a quick medal ceremony and a picture that runs on the front page of the Los Angeles Times sports section. I walk up to the stands to hug Grandma and Grandpa and Bonnie and Jeannie and Nancy and Laura, who gives me a kiss. Dad puts his arm around me and all I can think is he doesn’t know. He doesn’t even know that I’m here because of the chairs and the room, because I don’t want to be like him.

  Afterward, we go for a Chinese food birthday dinner at Fu’s Palace on Pico Boulevard. Grandma Juliette cracks jokes over egg rolls and sweet-and-sour pork. “Did you see him? That’s my grandson! I never saw such a thing! Who knew our boy was so fast?” Grandpa Nat raises a toast and we all join in with our glasses held. I catch Dad’s eye. He keeps looking at me, curious, as he drinks his tea and gives me a wink, gazing off into space with a faraway look, then studying the spotless blue ribbon hanging around my neck like he won it himself.

  I wish I could tell him. But there’s no way to give voice to this thing in me, this contradiction, the pride and the anger, the confusion and shame, the thing driving me forward that I love this man who I don’t want to be and I feel trapped by his choices to either abandon him or abandon my future.

  CHAPTER 32

  CAN YOU HEAR ME, MAJOR TOM?

  The first time I see Drew play his acoustic guitar, it looks to me like something a cowboy would own. Something about the polished wood and the hokey shape reminds me of campfire sing-alongs and country singers sitting on hay bales wailing on about girls named Daisy. It seems out of place among the Depeche Mode poster on his wall, the Meat Is Murder T-shirt he wears all the time.

  I don’t see anything broken in Drew, any reason why he would like all these sad songs. Maybe it’s just very well hidden. His brother, the college radio DJ at the U.S. Naval Academy, makes mix tapes for him, for his education: the Cure, the Smiths, Depeche Mode, Red Flag, Jane’s Addiction, the Sex Pistols, the Pixies and Sigue Sigue Sputnik. He tapes these for me like we have a club of two, the only two people who like this music at a school dominated by Tony! Toni! Toné!, Paula Abdul and the Beastie Boys. He’s switched from baseball to volleyball now and looks the part. Six foot three, thin, with blond hair bleached by the sun, tan skin covered in freckles. Sometimes in the middle of basketball at the park, he’ll casually dunk a basketball like it’s the easiest thing in the world. He carries this insouciance with him, like he finds all the effort everybody else puts into difficult tasks charming as he masters them with ease.

  Some people are likable simply because they give off the constant impression that they like you, and something about this trait is calming and easy to trust. That’s Drew.

  His sister is a straight-A student, his dad is a successful lawyer and sometimes I wonder if it all seems like a big joke to him, like being from this sleepy suburb and having such genteel, well-educated parents give him the confidence to question it, as if charmed by all that uptight, upright nature, willing to laugh at it as one laughs at a certain shape of nose, an inherited feature passed between generations. He could be an astronaut, a doctor, a lawyer, a diplomat, and instead he wants to sit around and listen to the Cure with his former burnout friend. I can’t help but respect that.

  We’ve formed a kind of club with other guys who like good music: Eddie, short, kind, who loves Jane’s Addiction; Pete, sarcastic and fearless, who loves the Stone Roses; Tim, who is into student government and Depeche Mode; and Gabe, the catcher from the baseball team with the thick build of an athlete and the mind of an artist. Our pack of misfits has grown. We all know there’s safety in numbers.

  The big steel-string guitar looks awkwardly large in Drew’s lap, like some kind of corny prop. But when he starts to play the chords for “Please, Please, Please, Let Me Get What I Want” by the Smiths, strumming in a choppy motion, crooning quietly, his nasal voice filling the little room, something amazing happens.

  Haven’t had a dream in a long time

  See, the life I’ve had can make a good man bad

  No matter how clumsy, how imperfect, it seems like a kind of magic to conjure a moment in this way, like the song was sitting in the ether somewhere just waiting for someone to bring it to life. It isn’t an object and it isn’t a person and it isn’t an idea. It’s something else. It contains something. Sadness. Nostalgia, maybe. The sense of a person’s essence, not just lyrics and a melody, but a presence, a feeling like a spirit has joined you. The spirit has a story and that story lives in these words and notes. There is a time and a place, a fact of existence, and we are suddenly not just two awkward boys sitting in a suburb beneath the flight path of Los Angeles International Airport but two people who are part of this world with its morbid wit, its stylish boredom, the layers of irony, the pompadour.

  I’m spellbound. Even though the song, as sung by Drew on his acoustic guitar in his bedroom next to his wall-mounted collection of Star Wars action figures, sounds nothing like the Smiths, there is a sorcery at work and I need to learn how to use it. It’s like deciding to learn how to fly, the power to conjure, the ability to transform a space. I want it for myself so I too can carry around these bits of magic.

  He hands me his guitar. He shows me how to make a C chord. How to press down hard on the strings until the tips of my fingers hurt, careful to keep them behind the frets so as not to block the other strings. It hurts a little.

  “After a while you get calluses. Until then you just got to let it hurt.”

  I pluck out the chord, string by string. Then he shows me how to move my fingers to make an E-minor chord, bunching them up near the top of the fret board.

  After half an hour I can move between the two chords, tentatively, like a child taking first steps.

  “Okay, now strum.” He taps his foot. “Try to switch chords on the beat.” I’m too slow with my fingers to keep up but it’s close. He sings, low, almost in a whisper, with that lazy California drawl of his.

  Ground control to Major Tom.

  I look up at him, amazed. Jake and I have listened to that song in the garage hundreds of times, wondering about this strange man named David Bowie with his spaceship, this world somewhere far away where people sing about floating away forever. It all seems like some perfect expression of some perfect idea by some perfect artist on a hill somewhere. It never once occurred to me that in our own imperfect way we could sing the song ourselves.

  When I get home, Bonnie says Grandma Juliette has an old Spanish guitar in the game room of their house. She used to play it for them when they were kids. It’s just an old ratty thing but when we next go to the house off Fairfax and Wilshire, Grandma Juliette says I can have it. It’s smaller than Drew’s acoustic, with nylon strings and a hole in the front that looks like it was punched by a baby’s fist. It takes a while to tune with the old tuning harmonica I find in the case. I sit in my room for hours thinking about David Bowie. What was he thinking when he wrote this? Where is he now and what would he tell me if he could? About school? About Laura? About the face I hold like a mask and the river beneath where I swim through my life. I alternate between the two chords, until my wrist is sore, until my fingers feel like they are going to bleed.

  Can you hear me, Major Tom?

  I learn the chords to the “Untitled” song by the Cure and “Ask” by the Smiths, singing in my scratchy, off-key voice that can barely carry a tune.

  Sometimes when I�
�m up late studying, I hear a voice in my head telling me I’m a failure if I don’t ace a test, if I don’t find a way to be better than whatever it is I am. It’s cruel, heartless, mean. You piece of shit. You fucking loser piece of shit. Why do you bother, you fucking loser? I hear the words over and over again on an unending loop. I have nowhere to put them, no way to understand them, only that my world is transformed suddenly and all I feel is this cold, bleak drive to become something else. Or if not, to fail and be left alone.

  When it feels like too much, when I can’t quiet the voice, I sit on the edge of my bed and strum the chords to those sad songs.

  To know this thing exists, to go somewhere else and hear these words, to conjure them, is a relief, like I can breathe and it quiets that other voice.

  Laura and I fight sometimes. Or more accurately, I am cruel to her sometimes. I don’t know why. I’ll tell her I don’t really love her and she isn’t good enough for me. I’ll try to think of the meanest thing I can say. “You’re too dumb.” “You’re too simple.” “You’re too sheltered to understand me.” “You’re ugly and you have no taste.” I tell her it’s over between us and I need someone else. I see her tears and feel a blankness wash over me. I see the panic in her eyes. I feel the loss I can inflict on her. It’s like holding my breath, like I don’t know myself because there is no self to know.

  I’ll kiss another girl, Tanisha Campbell from English class, my junior high crush, or Erica Nelson, in the weeds behind the football stadium. Word gets back to Laura and she writes me long notes with poems in them, notes that make it clear how much it hurts her to think of me with someone else, and I think “good.” It feels safe to have this power. I don’t know why.