She called it a fit because I did that sometimes, rapidly jerking my body back and forth. Only, most of the time, there wasn’t any music. My natural movements were more impulsive. Stare at someone too long and I had to whip my head to one side so I didn’t go on staring. When I heard DeHaven though, I wanted to move. It was great to be able to move to his music like that. To feel something so deep inside it forces you to move. To move in response to something that came from outside of my rotten body.
“I was just dancing,” I said.
“Well it looked like nothin but a buncha arms n legs.”
“I don’t know. It’s just what I felt like doing.”
“A good way to hurt yourself.”
I was happy she left quickly so I could get back to the song and working out my routine. During my DeHaven phase, I entertained dreamy thoughts about being some kind of backup dancer for him but it was like I had to get that poster to find out he was real. It became nearly an obsession to find out how real he was. What did he look like? What did he sound like when he talked? What did he do when he wasn’t on tour? Getting the poster was like a small window into Bobby DeHaven’s world. Scoring the poster turned out to be a real hassle too.
Luckily, almost right after I heard the guy on the radio say Bobby DeHaven had a totally free fan club and then give the address, we got this assignment in school where we were supposed to write a business-type letter to some important person like a congressman or the President or some King Blob like that. And they gave us stamps and envelopes and all kinds of ideas of who to write to. I, of course, took that opportunity to write a gushing letter to Bobby DeHaven, telling him about what a big fan I was and how I was really glad he had a club and all. The letter was something like five pages long but my writing was pretty big. I hoped he had time to read it. I’m pretty sure I put something in there about my routine. About how, if he was ever in the area, I could show him. I was a little more naïve at the time. I figured he would at least sign the poster or something.
A few weeks later I got the poster in the mail. I unrolled it and was a little bit disappointed to find out that Bobby DeHaven didn’t look exactly the way I expected him to, but I grew to like the way he looked. And I started imagining that person on the poster singing all those songs on the radio. There was something kind of disappointing about it, though. Like now, when I heard the music I just thought of the picture.
In the picture he was at the microphone, singing. A number of band members stood behind him but they were just a blur. I couldn’t make out if he had any dancers back there or not. He had his eyes closed and looked soulful as shit. I could tell he wore some make-up on his eyelids. The way he kept his hair reminded me of some of the haircuts the kids at school were getting. Except Bobby DeHaven’s looked so much better. It looked like the real thing and all those haircuts on all those blobs at school were just imitations. Bobby DeHaven probably didn’t even have to get his hair styled like that. It was blond and flowed down to his shoulders in the back but the sides and top were cut short and feathered. He looked like an exotic bird. His voice was really deep so I was surprised to see how thin he was. It was like his voice came from that huge Adam’s apple. He was almost as thin as me and he wasn’t wearing a shirt. He didn’t have any of the coarse chest hair like Racecar, or like the hair that covered Bucky Swarth’s stomach under that assortment of striped shirts. In the picture, he had on a pair of tight black pants that I almost didn’t even notice because the background was almost completely black too, but I could see enough to tell his hips were almost womanly. He looked just like this pale floating head and body.
That Bobby DeHaven had it made, I thought. He could write his songs and sing them for a million people. I was sure he had all the girls he ever wanted and I pictured him just going down into the crowd and saying, “Yeah, that one looks good,” and the girl would just go with him because he was gorgeous and they could tell by his songs what a sensitive person he was. The other person they played on the radio all the time was a woman named Pinky Lopez and I imagined Bobby DeHaven fucking her all the time, like whenever they played the same city or some fuckness like that. But I knew Bobby DeHaven probably didn’t fuck people, he probably made love to them. Making love sounds like two people are creating something and I knew DeHaven probably wouldn’t do anything that wasn’t creative.
Bobby DeHaven made a lot of my evenings go by real quickly when I would lie there on my bed and wait and wait for them to play something by him. I didn’t really care when the mother threw my radio away though because, for some reason, they stopped playing Bobby DeHaven. But I still had the poster and I would look at the poster and all those songs would come back and make me happy for as long as I could lie there. I even made a few up myself.
And that was what kept me content lying there in the dawn that morning, looking at that poster and telling myself that when I could finally get the hell out of Milltown I would run off and go on tour with Bobby DeHaven. I was pretty deluded at the time I had that thought, retarded with pain, swimming in and out of the morning blue.
I heard trundling in the hallway before the mother barged into my room and strumbled, “You have to get up for school!”
I had sort of drifted off into a slumber, like where the mind is still working but your eyes are closed. The first thing I said was, “But… the horns.” And I clicked them ominously against the wall. There was no way she could expect me to go to school with those things.
“I’ve already wrote a note to your teacher about that.” And she slapped the note down hard onto my chest, sending out those waves of pain. As she got closer to me I saw that some drool had worked its way out of her mouth, racing down one of her frownlines. That was her Drool of Fury. You know someone is mad when they cease caring about the retention of their bodily fluids.
The drool wasn’t the only body fluid she was leaking. As my eyes focused, I noticed the ratty, blood-matted wig, how she seemed to be missing half her head or how it was sort of caved in or something. Last night came back to me in bright, flashbulb images that made me think of an autopsy.
“Get up! Get up!” she shouted a couple more times. Then, just as quickly as she had come, she turned to leave, her trundling dwindling toward the front of the house.
I looked at the note and this is what it said:
WALLACE HAS TOO WARE THESE HORNS FORE THE RETS OF HIS LIFE
And it was signed: “Msr. Black.”
I crumpled it up and put it in the pocket of my pants.
I laughed nervously and decided to get out of the cot.
I wondered if I should move real slowly so it wouldn’t hurt so much. Finally, I decided to just face the pain and do it as fast as possible and hope I got used to it. Like jumping into a pool or ripping a Band-Aid off. So I did this thing where I kind of threw myself up in the air and in the direction of the floor. It was sort of what I normally did, but this version was a little more intense. I knew I had to really put my all into it. By the time I realized what a horrible idea it was, it was way too late. My legs would barely move so I couldn’t bring them up in time to get the necessary lift that I needed. I collapsed onto the carpet with a loud thump. That jolt made that horrible grinding bonefeel shoot all the way through my body and I think I screamed then. No. I know I screamed because it brought Racecar rolling into my room, angry as ever.
“Come on, you fuckin pansy shit. I can’t eat breakfast around all that screamin. The sooner I eat my breakfast, the sooner I can get down in that basement. In here screamin like a fuckin little girl. You think I screamed when I got my legs lopped off? Huh! Do ya! You think I’d let those fuckin whiteshirts hear me screamin? Huh!”
“I don’…” I started, managing to get up on my hands and knees. My skin felt prickly, like it wanted to get up and move but my skeleton desperately wanted to slouch to the floor.
“Answer me, ass! Answer me!”
Then I screamed again, but not out of any sort of bodily pain this time. I was mad and t
he anger sort of made all the other pain go away. The anger was hot and electric, surging through my skin and veins, grabbing my bones and lifting them up.
I screamed, “Leave me alone! You’re dead! Both of you! I killed you! You can’t do this!”
I charged at him. Only it wasn’t just him I charged at. It was everything. The hopelessness I felt inside. All the punishments of the past. Everything.
He sat blobbishly in his wheelchair, shooting an angry glance at me, wheeling the chair sideways so it blocked the door. I hit him in his giant head with my sharp, girlish elbow. The force of the blow sent the chair spinning. Racecar flew right out of it, sliding down the wall beside the door. He thrashed around on the floor, grunting and growling. I swear, at one point, I heard him growl, “Basement.” That single burst of energy took it out of me. I bounced off the wall, coincidentally collapsing into his wheelchair. Before I knew it, my hands were working the levers Racecar, more and more, refused to use. I had to move the little joystick quickly back and forth to get the chair straightened. I threw it in reverse and backed it into my room a little, so I could get through the door. As I did that, I accidentally rolled over one of Racecar’s stumps. Then, as I shot forward, I ran over one of his stumps again. That time it almost toppled the chair. He screamed like someone was murdering him. But he didn’t really scream at all. I only imagined him screaming. He was still in the living room, exactly as I had left him. Both of them were.
And I was in the wheelchair, breathing hard, confused.
I buzzed for the front door, leaving those screams behind. If someone could have seen the look on my face, they would have thought I was the happiest crippled alive.
“Nobody’s going to treat a Bobby DeHaven dancer like this. Nobody!”
I don’t know why I said that or even, really, who I was talking to. Maybe I wanted their ghosts to know they were going to blobbishly rot away in this house and I was heading into a world filled with money and girls and fame. I struggled for a few minutes, banging the door open against the wheelchair. But I got it open and I was outside and sure I wasn’t ever stepping foot in that house again.
Chapter Seven
What Do You Want To Be When You Grow Up?
Rolling out of the house, the morning was surprisingly bright and sunny for Milltown. Even on most clear days, a dingy brown cloud usually extended its dusky wings over the horizon. I had no idea what I was going to do. I certainly wasn’t in any sort of shape to go to school. I got out to the sidewalk, as though some direction I might choose would provide me with an idea. I rolled the chair down the sidewalk and over to the little alley beside our garage. I decided to just putter around the town for awhile, trying to avoid everyone.
Going one way would lead me to the southwest part of the town. The Saints River made up the town’s southwestern border. That was one filthy river. Most days it was a grayish black and carried a scent of rotten decayed fish with it. These fish could be seen, white and bloated on the steep banks of the river. On its cleanest days, it was a sort of brownish green, swirls of oily color twisting on its surface.
For as many people who lived in Milltown, the town itself was surprisingly small. It didn’t take up a lot of space. No matter where I decided to go, I wouldn’t be far from any other area. Therefore, it didn’t really matter where the hell I went.
The Historic District was located about five miles east of the river. For all the pollution and dirtiness and other fuckness, the Historic District looked pretty nice. The few times my family had ever taken me out of town I remember liking this part of Milltown the best, when we were just driving through. If I ever had to stay there, in that shitty little town, I guess the Historic District was where I would have liked to end up. It was quiet and all the houses were brick. Although, I didn’t know how valid the title of Historic District was. The houses were built just after World War I. They weren’t even the oldest buildings in Milltown. It was like the founders botched their first attempt, trashing it up, and just decided to start over.
As the town sloped southwest toward the river, it got even dirtier and smelled like all hell. The area closest to the river was called the Tar District. Those were the earliest buildings. My Uncle Skad lived in the Tar District. Uncle Skad was the mother’s brother and I only knew about him through stories. There were a few foggy memories the name conjured up from childhood but I didn’t think I’d be able to pick him out of a crowd. The parents apparently wanted nothing to do with Uncle Skad. Racecar told me while other boys were off fighting for their country and freedom and all that fuckness, Uncle Skad sat in a cozy institution, faking a disability. The mother didn’t talk to Uncle Skad because Racecar’s reasons were good enough for her. The parents always said Uncle Skad lived in the “flat out most disgusting house in the Tar District.” The Tar District was typically seen as the home of the lowest common denominator. The only people lower than the people who lived in the houses in the Tar District were those who couldn’t even find a house, the homeless. They lived around the Tar District, waiting for a house to open up. In other words, they were waiting for someone to die. The Tar District was kind of a mythical area. It was blamed for most of the town’s problems. Some said it claimed souls and when people talked about it, it was like none of the individual places had names, or the people either, for that matter. The places were referred to as “that place in the Tar District” or, sometimes, simply the Tar District, as though it were all one sprawling complex of sin and crime. The people were simply called the dregs or the bums or the hobos.
I really didn’t know where the fuckall I was going. I think there was a part of me that knew I would eventually try to find Uncle Skad’s house in the Tar District, but that seemed too depressing at the moment. So, keeping the wheelchair and, mainly, my giant horned head off the more heavily traveled roads, I stayed around the outside of the Historic District, in between that and the new large homes. The people who ran the mills and factories in Milltown built most of the new large homes. I always thought of them as “The Clean People.” They were the people who could make money without getting shit on their hands. They were the people Racecar called the whiteshirts. The Clean People really knew how to play the game. If the game had a power structure, like the food chain, these were the people at the top. The only thing separating them from blobs was their overzealous obsession with cleanliness and order. In a way though, they were blobs. They were like superblobs, an entirely different class. They were what most lower blobs aspired to be.
By going by that area, brimming with those blobs in suits and their blobbish families, I figured I would be able to really get in touch with my anger. And I was starting to feel like I should be really angry, like back there at the house, but I didn’t really feel that way at all. A sort of serenity enshrouded itself around me. I just rolled along and looked up at the sky that was actually blue and at all those huge houses with happy people living in them.
Why couldn’t I have been born to one of them?
It was a tired, resigned thought, not full of any sort of anger. Only I knew it wouldn’t really have done me any good to be born there. I wouldn’t belong there any more than anywhere else and I knew they probably weren’t happier than anybody else. They were rich people with problems of their own, even if their problems were just blobbish inventions.
Suddenly, overwhelmingly, a feeling swept over me. It was the feeling that I should, at that point, decide who I wanted to be. I fought to resist the temptation. I knew there were several types of person to become. There were those who had material wealth. Those people living in the houses up on the hills in the near distance. But what did those people really have? They were the people who made their living by controlling other people’s lives. They made the rules, the policies—they hired and fired people. They decided whether or not the people below them would be eating in weeks to come. I didn’t think I could ever become like that. They were the human gods, the new breed of gods who built the new nature, the machines, something
for the mere mortals to spend their days toiling with. No, I could never be a god.
Then there were others, people like Drifter Ken, who seemed perfectly content to live with nothing. Like all of their happiness came from the inside and how they treated people and all that Biblical kind of fuckness. I could kind of see myself being one of those people, if I could ever get rid of the giant waves of fuckness that seemed to wash over me on a daily basis. If the fuckness would just let me be, maybe I could be a little nicer to people. If I could exterminate the red crawlies. Nearly everyone has a desire to be successful and make money but, for people like me, I knew it didn’t happen that way.
There was, of course, a third class of people. The types of people that if I could have been I wouldn’t have chosen. This type of person never gives up. They’re not allowed to give up. They never rest to develop any kind of happiness on the inside because they are too busy trying to make money, trying to be one of the Clean People. So, not only do they not get to lead the life of expensive distraction, they also didn’t get to rest and enjoy life.
Most of all, I didn’t want to be one of those people who had no idea who they were. The type of person who would whither up and die if you gave them an empty room. Those malleable, blobbish souls who were so busy presenting the world with an image they thought the world wanted to see, that they forgot who they started out as. This type of person can be found in each of the above classes, no doubt.
After thinking that, I guess I really started wallowing in self-pity because I started thinking of all the mean things the parents had done to me and wondering if all that meant I had to be who I was. Like maybe I didn’t have to choose what type of person I should become because it was already chosen for me. For starters, the mother gave birth to me. And I was pretty sure my genes were somehow faulty because nobody acted like I did. Even the LD kids could go to their special classes and manage to go up to the next grade. I couldn’t get into those classes, though. All the tests said I was at least of average intelligence. That is, they said all of my problems were physical. Or that I chose to act the way I did. I was sure the parents had taken some pieces of the puzzle out of their respective boxes. Giving birth to me also meant I had to see them on a day to day basis.
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