by Owen Thomas
“Right, right. I didn’t recognize you, all... all...” I am looking at her searching vainly for words that are both accurate and inoffensive. The micro-mini, lycra or spandex or whatever it’s called, the spaghetti halter, the pumps – all white. She is spilling conspicuously up and out of her halter. A white leather purse strap diagonally bisects her chest. It would be, I suppose, a cynically sexual ploy for an adult woman; the dirty virgin, the hooker-bride goes clubbing. Except that this is not an adult woman.
“All tarted up. Yeah, I know,” she says, mercifully finishing my sentence. “I almost never get carded. It’s the hair and the tits. I’m way ahead of my time.”
I have not had an opportunity to fully take in the hair, but I take the cue. My God, the hair. It is big and tawny and ferocious to behold.
It is hair that belongs less on a teenage girl than on an adult male lion. A taxidermied adult male lion.
“Brit’neeee... I can’t believe you.” The mewling pretension of shock comes from the woman – girl – sitting next to Brittany now covering her gaping mouth with her hand – I count seven rings – and laughing in raw deep-throated conspiracy. The other two women – I think they are actual adult women – are talking with Shepp, pointing to someone in the mass of undulating moshers.
“Relax, Carm,” Brittany says to her friend, “Mr. Johns is way cool. Oooo! Oooo! I love this song. I could totally cum to this song!”
“Oh... My... God. Brit’neeee...”
Suddenly she is on her feet, pulling me out of my chair. Pulling her friend – Carm – out of her chair.
“C’mon. Let’s dance! Let’s dance!”
Brittany and Carm each grab a hand and I am pulled along by the sheer force of their youthful, innocent, corrupted exuberance to the dance floor. Between the heels and the hair, Brittany is a full three inches taller than her teenaged alter ego. The three of us are swallowed whole, sucked in like chunks of flesh down the gullet of some ravenously indiscriminate beast.
I am, against my better judgment if not my will, doing something which I suppose will pass as dancing, although dancing at Billy Rocks is mostly a semi-rhythmic fight to stay upright and to keep swinging elbows out of your face. Brittany and Carm are pogoing in place with their eyes closed and their arms swaying over their heads, as though they are trying to surrender to someone from the other side of a tall fence. They moan and bite their lower lips, writhing in a highly contrived ecstasy to the sound of amplified indigestion. The beat is slow and churning with all the rhythmic sensuality of heavy road machinery popping granite boulders. It is obviously a signature song for Electric Mayhem and they milk it for all it’s worth. The lyrics are raw and unintelligible, although the word “garbage” must be of some thematic importance. Amadeus it ain’t.
People are flooding into the pit from every corner of the bar. I bounce half-heartedly in place like a moron, pushed and jarred from every direction. The girls are facing each other, singing to each other – something, something gar-bage!, something, something, gar-bage! – so close their lips are almost touching. They take turns shimmying down into the blue pit by bending at the knees and wriggling towards the floor, as though attempting to lower themselves onto elusive stools that are not actually there. I get that this is all for my benefit. I watch them as best I can while fighting for my life. Brittany begins rimming her parted lips with her tongue and Carm follows suit.
I am a man. I have certainly taken erotic pleasure in degradations that are probably beneath my humanity. I have a laptop-sized paper-weight to prove it. But either my humanity is more in tact than I am generally inclined to presume – knowing myself and my gender as I do – or the “tits and hair” are far less convincing than these girls think they are. For I am watching children. There is not a bump or a grind or an orgasmic grimace that will convince me otherwise. Brittany and Carm grab each other’s hips and begin stepping in circles, each simultaneously predator and prey. They both leer at me suggestively from the corners of their electric blue lids, licking their lips.
They are horrendously bad shots, these girls. Having aimed for my lust – the proverbial broadsided barn – they have struck instead at the heart of my revulsion for all manner of manipulative contrivance, especially of the sexual variety. Which is sickly ironic since I am keenly aware that the force of this revulsion comes from being a complete pushover; a sucker for, as it turns out, all manner of manipulative contrivance, especially of the sexual variety. If history is any guide, I will buy just about anything and take personal responsibility for most suffering in the world as long as the sales pitch is good. I am tragically predisposed to believe, to trust, to extend the benefit of every doubt until I am thoroughly screwed. Time and again. I teach history; I do not learn from it. The music tempo steps up a notch and the girls return to hopping up and down like six-year olds on a trampoline. They have not, unfortunately, abandoned the sneers and grimaces and snarls, the licking of lips and the flashing of teeth that they obviously intend as expressions of savage carnality but which more closely resemble expressions of rabies or acute gastritis.
Were my ego ever to drop its guard, I could admit that I am easily manipulated and that my guilt, my emotional sensitivity and my desire are my sworn enemies. But I cannot admit this and yet still be the impenetrable, self-respecting, all-knowing, all-seeing man my father raised me to be. So I tend to be an easy mark, an expert at rationalizing my mistakes and a long devotee of the roll with it philosophy, which is itself a highly rationalized ethic for those who spend a lot of time getting rolled. So, woe unto those few in the world – to wit, Brittany and Carm – who are unable to pull off what is apparently so easy for just about everyone else. For it is the unsuccessful manipulator, it is the ham-handed contriver, who must carry the weight of my revulsion for all of those who have tried and succeeded.
I turn abruptly to leave. Carm is too quick, grabbing my hand and simultaneously alerting Brittany to my intentions. They clasp hands around me and begin dancing in an unbroken circle. The garbage song intensifies into rapid explosions of screeching and the floor turns from cool blue to a pulsating red. Around and around; a hellish version of Ring Around the Rosie. Finally, my impulse to intellectualize, to process, to understand, to quietly judge is subdued by my impulse to act. A forceful yank at the wrists and I am free, abandoning them to each other and to the sacrificial demands of Electric Mayhem.
I fight my way out of the pit and back toward the bar as my disgust hardens to anger. I know that this is anger at myself, mostly, but that will never do; I know that this moment calls for more than my normal self-flagellation. So I look for Shepp. Shepp the irascible instigator. Shepp the Shit!
I search with an intensity that helps clear a path through dark and writhing knots of revelers. I do not hesitate to split conversations and spill drinks. People are parting like the Red Sea before Moses. I find Shepp at the far end of the bar paying Mr. Muscle for three purplish drinks.
“She’s a fucking student, Shepp. She’s under … age. Just how badly do you want to get arrested and lose your job?”
“Relax Dave. I didn’t bring them here. I didn’t ask them to come. Shit, I don’t even know them. Carmen is in one of my classes and I recognized her out on the floor. She introduced me to Brittany. I read them the riot act. They’re drinkin’ Cokes. They promised to leave by 10:00. They’re just test-driving their fake I.D.’s. Pretty good, too. A lot better than I ever had.”
“Shepp, they don’t belong here. This isn’t a safe place for sixteen year old girls.”
“Dave, I’m watching out for them. They’re...”
“Shepp the laid back sex-addict orgy-meister is watching over the children. Nice.”
“They’re fine, Dave. Everything’s cool. Try to remember back to when you were pulling the same shit. Remember Dave?”
“You’re flirting with disaster, Shepp. Even if you’re looking after them tonight – not true by the way – you won’t be here tomorrow night or the next night or the nex
t.”
“Well, yeah, I probably will.”
“This isn’t funny, Shepp. You can’t protect them.”
“I’m not their parents.”
“No, you’re their teacher unless...”
“Dave...”
“Unless you get caught contributing to the delinquency of a minor in which case you’ll be the guy asking them if they want fries with their Happy Meals.”
“Dave, I’m keeping them out of trouble.”
“At fucking Billy Rocks?”
“Dave...”
“Look, Shepp, I am outta here. I strongly suggest that you confiscate the fake I.D.’s and send the girls home.”
“Me? Why am I the designated Nazi? You do it if you think you have to. You’re in the same position I was in when I met them out on the dance floor. And speaking of dancing, Dude; I saw the three of you out there. Don’t start lecturing me about my duties. What are you going to do about it, Dave?”
I look back out at the mosh pit. Brittany and Carmen are gone, fully digested.
“Great. I don’t even know where they are any more.”
“Wanna get ‘em to turn on the house lights? Conduct a search? Seal off the…”
“Fuck you. I’m going home.”
“Daaaaave…” But he sees that the exasperated whine will have no effect. “Whatever, Dude. Give my best to Mae.”
I blow past Shepp without looking back, pushing through thick clusters of people, more pouring into Billy Rocks every second, fighting my way upstream, down the hallway toward the door. At an adjoining hallway, the one that leads off to the restrooms, I am pulled by the wrist sharply through a wall of people.
It’s Brittany. Her face is flush from her recent exertion and she is panting. She is saying something I cannot hear and so I lean in. She kisses me on the lips before I can react. She is laughing in sly triumph and moving for the hallway. I wipe her sweat from my mouth and she motions for me to follow her. I do, without really knowing why, to the end of the hall near a drinking fountain between two restroom doors: “Stalactites” and “Stalagmites.” The confusion is fully intended – all part of the gender-bending, age-twisting sex play at Billy Rocks where you can expect the unexpected and meet new friends at every turn, even if you’re sober. But I am too angry and now taken aback at my sudden abduction to put any more effort into the restroom identity conundrum.
“I have to show you something,” she says. “Brittany, look...”
“Just wait. I have to show you something.”
She swings her small, woven white purse to the front of her body. The purse is attached to a strap that is looped around her neck. She unzips the purse and removes a smaller red bag, closed by a draw-string, presumably intended for make-up. She opens the bag and holds it up under my face for inspection.
Brittany’s “make-up” looks a lot like several joints tucked beneath a genuinely fake Ohio State driver’s license. I am far from an authority on fake identification, but her photograph is crooked and the plastic edges are frayed at the corner where she has inserted the razor blade. Her purpose is not to show me her identification.
“Carm and I are gonna smoke these out back in about fifteen minutes. We’ve got one for you and one for Shepp. You wanna party with us?”
She is a stupid, stupid girl and this makes me all the angrier. Just who the fuck does she think I am? Does she think I am really so desperately enthralled, so titillated, so bewitched by her feminine wiles – by her tits and her hair – that I will risk my career and my life outside of a jail cell to smoke some doobie in an alley for her approval? Is she so confident in the weakness of my character that she is comfortable exposing her drugs to her teacher? Neither of us is prepared for my reaction.
“No, Brittany. I do not want to party. How old are you? Sixteen? Fifteen? Look, I know the shit kids do, because I did it too when I was a kid, but this is way over the line. You shouldn’t be here. Neither should Carmen.”
“But Shepp...”
“I don’t care what Shepp told you. He’s lucky… never mind. Here’s the deal...”
She turns angrily to leave. I grab her bare arm and jerk her back to the fountain.
“Let go of me.”
“Not so fast. I’m not your parent, but I know you must have some parents somewhere, and I suspect that they would not be particularly pleased about any of this. So, here’s the deal.” I release her arm and snatch the red pouch from her hand before she can stuff it back into her purse. “I’m going to take the pot and the fake I.D.”
“Hey! Give me...”
“I’m going to take the pot and the fake I.D., and you and Carmen are going to go straight home. I want you both out of this place immediately. I’ve told the bartender to call the cops if he sees either of you, and if that happens everything gets real messy, so you need to leave now. Your cover as an adult sex-kitten is now blown. Time to leave.”
She is not looking at me. Her arms are tightly crossed and one hip is thrust dramatically towards the room where all stalactites go to relieve their bladders.
“Is that all?” she snips.
“No. Tomorrow, I want to see both of you in my classroom after school. I want to talk to you about fake I.D.’s and pot and adult night-clubs. Just us. No cops, no parents; at least not yet. But trust me on this Brittany,” I point at her right between the eyes, “if I see either one of you in this place again I will call the fucking Marines. Get it?”
She pushes past me giving me the finger, stomping down the hallway back into the throngs where she is quickly lost. I follow close behind, but where Brittany turns left I turn right, pushing past the bouncer, out into the parking lot. The door closes behind me, sealing Electric Mayhem like a scream inside a tomb. I pass a foursome of new, leather-clad revelers headed for the bar. Another burst of amplified shrieking hits me from behind as they enter and then it is gone again as the tomb is resealed.
* * *
I am driving I-70 like a madman. Pent up rage I cannot control. Fifty miles an hour. Sixty. Eighty. My old, piece of shit, four-cylinder Honda sounds like a distressed mosquito. I am weaving around other cars, startling drivers. I am now causing far greater risk of harm than any-thing likely to happen to teenagers inside Billy Rocks. I try to focus on Shepp and the girls because that is why I am so incensed. Enraged. For the safety of my students, damn it! I am responsible! But when my concentrated fury flags just long enough to avoid colliding with the side of a bus or slipping under the back of a semi, I find myself thinking of Sam. The sensation on my lips; on the little hairs inside my ear. We wouldn’t want to fuck a little boy.
I slam the gas and take it up to eighty-five. The engine is going to pop.
Fucking Brittany. Little punk. Bitchy, spoiled little punk. Working the nightclubs. Mozart. Oh, we love Mozart, do we? We’re so mature and sophisticated. I fell for that one. What would Mozart think of Something, Something Garbage? What would Mozart think of those ridiculous sexual antics, the whole over-sexed Lolita thing?
Well… I guess Mozart would have approved of that much. Still. She’ll end up dead before she’s eighteen if she’s not careful. And
Mozart lived until he was thirty-five so… so, I’m not sure what that proves. Forget Mozart. If she survives she’ll wish she had listened to me. She’s back at Billy Rocks commiserating with Carmen and Shepp and God knows who else about the loss of her I.D. and her fucking pot. Mr. Johns the once way cool teacher, now the asshole teacher. Mr. Johns the Boy Scout who never tells a lie and never looks the other way. Mr. Johns who fears all sexual opportunity like grim death. Daaave … Prick. Had Brittany gone to Shepp first with her offer, she would be having an entirely different evening right now. I pick the red pouch off the passenger seat and actually consider smoking her pot. That’d show her. That’d teach her about trusting strangers. Offer a stranger drugs and he’s liable to steal it and use it all for himself.
I stuff the bag into one of the cup-holders between the seats and for the first time won
der what the hell I am going to do about Brittany and her pot. She’s not getting it back, that’s for damn sure. I could go straight to the police, but hysterical over-reaction is likely to teach me more of a hard lesson than Brittany. I could go to the Principal. No, same thing as going to the cops. He’d have to report it and I come off looking like a sissy little shit making a federal case over a fake I.D. and a couple of joints. Shepp was at least right about that much; pot and schemes to get into places I was too young to be was standard fare when I was sixteen. Fucking Shepp.
So what then? Her parents? I could do that. A sort of off the record, concerned word of caution: Mr. and Mrs. … my name is … I’m your daughter’s third period history … have not alerted any authorities about this, but there is something you need to know about your daughter … The next time I will have to report … just wanted to apprise you … don’t thank me, just make sure your daughter is safe … no, really, you’re very welcome. That would work. Except I told Brittany I wouldn’t do that. Fuck Brittany! Little brat. Who cares what I told Brittany. I also told her that the bartender was poised to call the police – a fucking great lie if you ask me. That’s thinking on your feet for you.
I’ll meet with them. I’ll inform them that it is my intention to meet with their parents and they won’t like it and they will hate me and their friends will hate me and Shepp will be the way cool fucking hero and they can all just fuck off. I’m the adult.
The exit to my neighborhood comes and goes. I drive aimlessly into to the night. After twenty minutes, my anger has burned down to a pile of smoldering ash. I emerge from my furious reverie in the vicinity of my childhood home, the place my parents still live. Long-term muscle memory takes over and I am steering without conscious thought. Exit, left, right, left, straight and I am suddenly outside the house where memory stops.