The Choirboys

by Joseph Wambaugh

  Then Ora Lee squealed as he rolled over and made a grab for her. She eluded him and jumped over Whaddayamean Dean and fell on Sam Niles, slapping him on the side of the face with one gigantic tit which knocked his glasses into the bushes.

  “Where’s my glasses? Where’s my glasses?” yelled Sam Niles, crawling around Calvin Potts who decided the Johnnie Walker was preferable to Carolina Moon for the moment.

  “Calvin probably stole your glasses,” said Spencer Van Moot. “You know you shouldn’t leave nothing around these people.”

  “Your daddy had three dollars stead a two dollars you’d be black too, chump,” said Calvin Potts as Sam Niles found the glasses and cleaned them on his shirttail.

  “Where’d Roscoe go?” asked Father Willie who staggered around several sprawling choirboys. “Roscoe! Where are you? Roscoe!”

  “Hey, Roscoe! Roscoe!” yelled Francis.

  “Roscoe!” yelled several choirboys who didn’t give a shit where Roscoe was.

  “Roscoe, you there?” yelled Spermwhale Whalen, unzipping his fly and looking inside at which time Carolina Moon made a grab for him.

  “Ain’t time yet, me beauty” said Spermwhale, zipping up and kissing the girl in a quivering fleshy embrace.

  “I’ll pay you two anything to do a dirty movie for me!” screamed Francis Tanaguchi.

  “You looked like a blue eyed home boy,” said Calvin Potts to Whaddayamean Dean who was leaning against a tree gnawing on spareribs with barbecue sauce all over his face.

  “Whaddaya mean? Whaddaya mean?” asked Whaddayamean Dean, and all the choirboys looked knowingly at each other, silently agreeing that Whaddayamean Dean had done it again.

  “You gonna slip old Carolina a roll of tarpaper tonight, Calvin?” Francis whispered.

  “Not if I ain’t first. I ain’t drunk enough for that,” said Calvin Potts.

  “I feel like a construction engineer,” Spencer Van Moot said, overhearing the conversation. “Gonna lay some pipe, six inches at a time!”

  “Stealing a girl’s cherry is cock robbin,” said Carolina Moon to Whaddayamean Dean who looked at her blankly.

  “Darn it, did you fart?” Father Willie suddenly asked Sam Niles.

  “No, was I supposed to?” replied the weary choirboy.

  “So I can’t take you away from Carolina, huh?” said Ora Lee Tingle to Spermwhale Whalen after she won a two dollar bet by finishing a half bottle of champagne without taking it from her mouth.

  “I said you can’t get me there right now,” Spermwhale corrected her and gave one of her huge thighs a playful pinch, tearing her mesh stocking.

  “Well it’s easier to… let’s see. Padre! Father Willie!” Ora Lee yelled. “How’s it go? In the Bible about the camel and the eye of a needle?”

  “I dunno, something about a humping hype,” said Father Willie, reaching the stage of drunkenness wherein he was revolted by his uncontrollable sinfulness, yet not to the point where he goatishly succumbed.

  “Mothers, brothers and others, lend me your ears,” said Harold Bloomguard, staggering to his feet. “Hear about Calvin and Francis almost blowing up some dude tonight?”

  “No, what happened?” asked Baxter Slate as the choirboys quieted down for a cops ‘n’ robbers story.

  “No big thing,” Calvin said. “Cat on a family dispute almost draws down on Francis when he tried to lay the iron on his wrists after the dude had went upside Momma’s head.”

  “It was nothing,” Francis said. “He was drunk. Makes a grab for what I thought was a gun. Was his wallet. All I did is whack him across the arm with my flashlight.”

  “I almost blew the sucker away,” Calvin said. “Thought it was a piece the way he went to the drawer. Was ready to bust a cap between his fuckin horns.”

  “Be glad you didn’t,” said Baxter Slate soberly.

  “Could you live with yourself if you blew up a guy by mistake that way?” asked Father Willie Wright.

  “I could a blowed him up and lived with his foxy old lady,” said Calvin Potts.

  “Remember that time you busted your flashlight on the black belt guy, Spermwhale?” Spencer Van Moot asked. “This hamburger they were busting thinks he’s Kung Fu and tries to drop Baxter. He says, ‘Yaaa!’ and kicks Baxter and Spermwhale yells, ‘Ever-ready!’ and hits him with his flashlight. Then Spermwhale gave him nine from the sky with his stick.”

  Spencer Van Moot then stumbled over Spermwhale’s feet and fell against Calvin Potts.

  “What’s a matter? Fall off your wallet?” Calvin asked the richest choirboy.

  “Must give you a hernia carrying that money belt around,” said Sam Niles.

  “Careful a your head when you fall,” Spermwhale said. “All that fuckin hair spray you use could cause brain damage.”

  “With your money why don’t you hire a coolie to pull you around the park so you won’t be tripping all over everybody?” said Harold Bloomguard.

  And Spencer Van Moot, the best dressed and richest choirboy lay back on the grass and laughed uproariously when Carolina Moon fell on him lovingly and smothered him in kisses while she felt his body up and down to see if he really did have a money belt.

  Roscoe Rules looked at his comrades and now thought they weren’t such bad guys. He was even able to tolerate the Gook and the Spook tonight.

  Roscoe had met Francis and Calvin at the first choir practice months before when Francis was going through his vampire period.

  When they met, both Calvin and Francis were drunk and sullen and sat together in the shadows examining the new choirboy.

  “Are you the two they call the Gook and the Spook?” Roscoe had asked with a big smile that was met with stony silence.

  “Yeah,” said Calvin Potts finally, glaring at Roscoe since Calvin didn’t yet know that Roscoe had brought three fifths of Scotch with him.

  “Uh, what do your friends call you?” Roscoe asked, having a hard time seeing their faces in the dark.

  “You can call me the Gook,” said the Gook.

  “You can call me the Spook,” said the Spook. “But if you do I’ll kick your face off.”

  And after that Roscoe had sat furious and quiet and wondered why people didn’t like him. After all he had been willing to treat them all the same, even niggers and slopeheads. Then he started looking hard at the Gook. And it looked as if his teeth had grown grotesquely. Roscoe was sure it was the drink because there in the darkness of MacArthur Park it looked as if the Gook had fangs! But of course that was silly. Yet five minutes later when Roscoe got up to walk off into the trees to relieve himself, he was bushwhacked by a hissing demon which leaped on his back and bit him on the neck while Roscoe screamed in terror and tried to reach for his gun as he wet all over his shoes.

  It had taken Spermwhale Whalen to pry Francis Tanaguchi from Roscoe Rules’ throat that first night, and as Roscoe threatened to kill Francis, it was Harold Bloomguard who explained to Calvin and Francis that the new kid on the block had brought three fifths of Scotch to choir practice which they could expect at any future choir practice Roscoe might attend.

  After hearing that, Francis and Calvin became very tolerant of the insufferable prick and Roscoe Rules was an accepted choirboy. He was able to sit now at this memorable choir practice and not think that nobody liked him. And he could pinch Ora Lee and Carolina just like the other guys.

  While Roscoe remembered his first choir practice and felt all cozy and secure because now he belonged, he started talking to Sam Niles who was already mightily pissed off because one of the lenses on his glasses got scratched when Ora Lee slapped him in the face with a tit.

  “Niles, we just gotta get the department to give us good ammo,” Roscoe began. “You see, high velocity shock waves’re like sonic booms and they burst the veins and arteries. But they don’t stop like the hollow points and the blunt nose. A copper casing holds the lead together. Centrifugal force breaks up the lead. You only need a pointed projectile for accuracy. Get it?”

&nbs
p; “I get it,” Sam sighed.

  Then Roscoe said, “I ever tell you what I used to do to all the pricks in the juvie gangs when they turned eighteen? I used to send them a Xerox of the page of the LAPD manual which tells about shooting at adults only. With the page I’d enclose a dumdum bullet and a greeting card. On the card I’d write, ‘You are now, by law, an adult. Have a nice eighteenth birthday, asshole.’”

  “That’s about as interesting as a night in the drunk tank,” said Sam Niles, who lay back smoking, looking at the great star while the bourbon went to work on his entire body, turning it to rock.

  “Looky here, Ora Lee,” said Calvin Potts as he was starting to think that the fat girls weren’t so repulsive after all. In fact, depending on how you looked at her, Ora Lee was starting to get downright gorgeous.

  “Looky here, what?” asked Ora Lee. “You boys aren’t interested in us girls tonight. You’re all sitting around like that bunch of fruits hangs around the other side of the duck pond.”

  “Well you know, consenting adults!” said Francis Tanaguchi, kissing his partner Calvin Potts who pushed him away.

  “… and I been thinking about buying this baby falcon,” said Roscoe Rules to Harold Bloomguard. “I live out in the country with decent people. Room for an eagle even. I could train him to kill on command. Shit, how many guys own a hunting hawk?”

  “Last guy I know of was William the Conqueror,” said Baxter Slate.

  “Would really be great!” Roscoe mused. “Your own killing bird!”

  “You could feed him raw meat right out of your hand,” said Baxter.

  “Sure!” said Roscoe.

  “And to save feed money you could train him to fly over the kindergarten and carry off kids,” Baxter Slate said.

  “You know, I never liked you, Slate,” said Roscoe Rules, turning sullen.

  “Roscoe needs his steel plate buffed!” Spencer said gleefully.

  “Are you trying to incinerate that Roscoe belongs in the funny place?” asked Harold Bloomguard, taking pleasure in the thought that someone else might be going there with him someday.

  “What’re you trying to say? What’re you trying to say?” Whaddayamean Dean blurted, still propped against the same tree, a pile of rib bones on his lap, a half empty bourbon bottle resting on his chest.

  “I don’t think it’s fair,” said Father Willie, arguing a point of law with Spencer Van Moot. “In these unlawful sex cases a boy of thirteen can be booked as opposed to the old statutory rape charge where he couldn’t. Who enjoys it more, the ear being scratched or the finger scratching?”

  “If they’re doing it in the ear they deserve to be booked, the perverts!” said Carolina Moon as Spermwhale Whalen threw her down and kissed her again.

  “I’d give anything to direct this scene!” cried Francis Tanaguchi.

  “You know she wouldn’t do nothing in front of everybody. They’re just kissing,” said Ora Lee Tingle as Spermwhale kneaded and squeezed every inch of Carolina’s ample body.

  “Why doesn’t a Jap have a camera anyway, I’d like to know?” Roscoe remarked suspiciously. “Maybe Francis is really a Chinaman. A Commie, no doubt.”

  “I’m a Mexican and you can go scratch your ass,” said Francis Tanaguchi.

  “I’m gonna have you defrocked, Padre,” Ora Lee giggled when Father Willie groped her.

  “Anybody gets frocked it better be me!” Carolina whooped when Spermwhale let her breathe.

  Just then Harold Bloomguard staggered a few paces away and threw up. He was the first. Everybody jeered and hooted and he walked ashamedly down to the duck pond and washed his face in dirty water.

  “… so this guy demands his rights when I arrest him,” said Roscoe Rules to Whaddayamean Dean who hadn’t the foggiest idea what Roscoe was talking about. “And I say, ‘You’ll get your rights and a few lefts too, asshole! Bang! Pow! Splat!’”

  Whereas Spencer Van Moot only whined to Father Willie Wright when he was sober, he was now whining to as many assembled choirboys as would listen now that he was drunk.

  “This dirty scummy rotten bitch that lives next door…”

  “Watch that fuckin language,” said Spermwhale Whalen who was passionately kissing Carolina Moon a few feet away in the shadows while Francis Tanaguchi knelt beside them, grinning.

  “Sorry, Spermwhale. Sorry girls,” said Spencer who belched sourly and quickly took a few sips of beer. “Anyway this bitch always wears these short shorts and comes out by the fence when I’m down on my knees trimming the grass. So finally after three months of this I kneel there and look right at her bird and up it goes!”

  “A blue veiner?” asked Father Willie.

  “A goddamn diamond cutter!” said Spencer and Ora Lee said, “Ooooooohhhhhhh, Spencer, that’s sexy!” and fell over backward as Francis Tanaguchi pounced on her and smothered her with kisses.

  “Why do you wear those sissy faggy mod clothes, Spencer?” asked Roscoe, beginning to turn mean. “And why does a man your age have one of those kiss-me-quick haircuts?”

  “Lemme finish my story, goddamnit.”

  “Spencer’s so mod he wears flared jockey shorts,” said Harold Bloomguard who was trying to stand with the aid of a broken willow branch.

  “Why do we need a motel?” Ora Lee said to Roscoe who whispered something in her ear. “You can beat off in a nickel toilet, you cheap little fuck, ya.”

  “Anyway,” Spencer continued, “my neighbor sees my diamond cutter and she runs into her house. Runs. And I mean after she’d done everything but rub my face in it. She runs in and calls my wife and tells her that I’m going around the yard looking at her with a big hard on.”

  “Probably a libber,” said Roscoe Rules. “All these cunts’re like that these days. Wanna be truck drivers. I say back em up and give em a load, they wanna be truck drivers.”

  “You ain’t got a load, Roscoe, you dirty mouthed chauvinist pig!” said Carolina Moon, coming up for air, while Spermwhale Whalen looked around, saw double, got dizzy and had to stagger away to relieve himself.

  “Who asked you? You a libber or something?” Roscoe challenged.

  “I know you ain’t got a load,” said Carolina, taking a drink from Calvin’s bottle. “You walk into a wall with your little hard on and you’ll break your nose.”

  To keep Roscoe and Carolina from fighting, Harold Bloomguard began to sing a soothing song he just made up called “She’ll not puncture your kidney, Sidney. And he shan’t rupture your spleen, Kathleen.”

  But Spermwhale Whalen hobbled back in their midst and his enormous presence looming over Roscoe quieted down the meanest choirboy. Especially when Spermwhale said, “You look like a ruptured rectum sittin there with your mean little mouth all scrunched up. Why don’t you quit pickin on the ladies?”

  “Yeah, it makes you ugly Roscoe,” said Ora Lee. “You get drunk you get uglier than usual.”

  “I don’t have to take this,” Roscoe Rules said, struggling to his feet and heading toward the duck pond, hoping to find a duck he could kneedrop.

  “He gets so ugly he looks like something carved off the back of Quasimodo,” Spencer Van Moot observed.

  “Hey, stick around, Roscoe!” Carolina yelled. “Every choir practice needs a soprano.”

  “Don’t get nasty now,” Spermwhale whispered as he bit the fat girl on the neck and sent her into paroxysms of passion. They resumed their interminable kiss and rolled around on the ground, making the earth shake under the ear of Francis Tanaguchi, who said, “Dynamite!” and lay next to them hoping the behemoths would couple before his very eyes.

  Just then a park homosexual with sandals, long hair and beard walked by the group curiously.

  The choirboys looked at this Biblical apparition and Sam Niles said, “Think he’ll take us to heaven?”

  “I can use my ticket validated by somebody,” said Father Willie who was furiously trying to think of a way to steal Carolina Moon from Spermwhale Whalen.

  “All I can say
is I get treated like a dog at home,” Spencer Van Moot whined, returning to his favorite subject.

  “Anytime they wanna teach you a lesson they just hold back the sex,” Father Willie agreed, suddenly having a miserable vision of the chubby Jehovah’s Witness seeing him drunk and playing with the thigh of Ora Lee Tingle.

  “Well who cares?” said Spencer. “The three most overrated things in the world are: home cooking, home pussy and the FBI.”

  “You know, Spermy you got more hair in your nose than on your head,” Carolina Moon said from the shadows where she and Spermwhale and Francis Tanaguchi rolled around.

  “What dialogue! What dialogue! I could make you a star, girl!” cried Francis. “Say something back to her, Spermwhale! Something romantic!”

  “Okay. I adore you, my darling,” Spermwhale crooned to the sighing fat girl. “Your ass is springy as a life raft.”

  “And I love you, Ora Lee,” Francis Tanaguchi blurted suddenly, running to the other cocktail waitress, dragging his fingers through her upswept hairdo, which was no mean task given the half can of hair spray that was on it.

  “That’s just whiskey talking, you cute little shit.”

  “No it ain’t! I love! I love you!” Francis proclaimed. “If you had a hysterectomy and took your teeth out and owned a liquor store, I swear I’d marry you!”

  “Thanks, Junior,” said the disgusted waitress as she pushed Francis away. “You handled that love scene like a real pro-a prophylactic!”

  Just then the bearded park fairy with the ascetic face, shoulder-length hair and sandals encountered Roscoe Rules down by the duck pond trying to entice a black duck out of the water so he could hit it with a rock and drown it.

  “Hello,” said the Jesus fairy.

  “Holy Christ!” said Roscoe Rules and the remark was not that inappropriate.

  “Are you with those others?” asked the bearded man, stooping to scoop some water in both hands.

  “Yeah. Who the fuck’re you, John the Baptist?”

  Ignoring the remark the man said, “Do you men actually screw those women in the park?”

  “No, in the cunt,” said Roscoe. “Now take a walk, John, before I bring your fucking head to Salome.”