Bad Kid

by David Crabb

  Reaching to the ceiling with my eyes closed, I heard Greg say my name. Snapping into the moment, I realized that the entire Smiths CD was almost over.

  What had happened to time? Who stole my hour?

  “I have an idea!” said Greg, pirouetting toward me in his bright-blue boots.

  “I know!” I screamed. “I have a million ideas right now!”

  “We need to get into a gay club where there are real gay people,” Greg announced, jumping onto his bed. “Just imagine it, a place where anyone you meet might have sex with you!”

  “Or be the love of your life!” I swooned, spinning myself in Greg’s comforter like a whirling dervish.

  Greg came to a stop and dramatically grabbed my shoulders. “I mean, don’t you want to meet someone?” he asked. I wanted to tell Greg that he was my “someone.” He peered into my eyes, his face a foot from mine, his sun-kissed bangs hanging over his warm brown eyes. He was perfect.

  “Your face is weird, David.”

  “Oh no!” I yelped, raising my hands to my face. “Don’t look at me!”

  “Your pores are just gigantic!” he said as I recoiled from him. “It’s okay, David. I have another idea!” He took my hand and led me down the hall into the boys’ bathroom, a filthy nightmare of mildewing towels and uncapped deodorant sticks where random pubic hairs clung to every surface like tinsel on a Christmas tree.

  “You have to try this! It feels amazing!” Greg said as he wiped a cool, wet pad over my face. A tingling, crisp sensation braced my skin as if it was slowly freezing.

  “It’s a Stridex pad, and it’s incredible for tightening your pores.”

  “Oh, wow! I can feel the air on my cheeks.”

  Greg blew on my face as a rush of electricity zapped across my forehead. I could feel my eyes roll up into my head as Greg held my neck and continued to blow on my face.

  “What the fuck are you freaks doing now?”

  Johnny stood in the hallway, wearing the mere suggestion of underwear.

  “I’m sick!” I replied instinctively.

  “Stop being homos and get out of the fucking bathroom.” Johnny stomped away as I remained frozen, with my head in Greg’s hands.

  “Greg,” I whispered, “we have to get out of here! It’s not safe.”

  Although neither of his parents was home and it was barely midnight, we snuck out from Greg’s window and into his front yard. The sound of cicadas was almost deafening. Up and down the fluorescent-lit block, the grass of every lawn glowed an almost toxic green. Not a soul could be seen or heard; there weren’t even any cars.

  “Greg! Where are we going? Isn’t it dangerous out here?”

  “I don’t know,” he whispered back. “On the count of three, we’ll run across the street.”

  “To that church? Really? A church?”

  “We have to get away from this house!” Greg looked into my eyes with the urgency of an action hero about to dismantle a bomb. “On the count of three! One. Two. Three!”

  Hand in hand, we ran across the street and into the church parking lot. Around the back we stopped, breathless, with our bodies pressed flat against a brick wall.

  “Look! A swing!” Greg pointed to the playground at the top of the hill. “I haven’t been on a swing since I was a little kid.”

  “Doesn’t that seem like a million years ago?” I asked as we ran up the hill toward a red plastic swing.

  “Yeah. I miss being a kid,” he replied as he jumped on the swing. “Push me!”

  “Really? I don’t miss it.”

  “Why?” he asked as the chains supporting him squeaked above. “Didn’t you have fun?”

  “Yeah, but I have friends now,” I said, pushing him harder and higher, up to the stars.

  Greg looked over his shoulder and smiled at me, his face glowing blue in the light of the half moon. “You know, you’re like another brother to me?”

  I smiled back, knowing that he meant it. “Me too.”

  That night we walked around Greg’s neighborhood for hours, stopping to look at flame-red tulips writhing in the ground, growing up toward the sky before our very eyes. Obsessing over any plant in sight, we’d stop and sit in someone’s yard for just a moment to watch them grow in high-speed LSD motion.

  “They want to grow so bad!” I whispered, amazed at nature but still keenly aware that I was sitting in a flower bed beneath a stranger’s bedroom window at 1 a.m.

  Later, we came across a mass of a hundred beetles stuck on their backs beneath a streetlight. Greg reached out and flipped one over. As it skittered away, he pulled me close and opened his eyes wide in amazement, exclaiming, “That beetle thinks I’m God!”

  We skipped and danced down the length of an endless, empty drainage ditch running through Greg’s subdivision, twirling our cigarettes in the air over our heads to make figure-eight traces that lingered like fireflies.

  This world felt endless. It was like I’d become part of a new thing, and that thing connected to another new thing, and so on and so on, until I was a part of everything. And so was Greg. Looking into the homes around us, I felt like I was a member of all those families, like a little, invisible piece of me had slipped inside each window we passed and would live there forever in a kitchen drawer or magazine rack or beneath the glass of a framed family photo.

  Greg ran ahead of me, the bright-orange flame of his cigarette chasing him like a shooting comet. I wondered how I had ever been so lucky as to meet him and how implausible the math was that had led us to each other. I thought of what he had said on the swing a few hours earlier. I realized that it was too important to not mean everything, and it all became clear: he didn’t need to love me the way I wanted him to, because the way he loved me meant I wasn’t alone. And that was all that mattered.

  Watching his blue feet and tiny tobacco comet fade into the blackness ahead, I thought, Who needs a boyfriend when you have a brother?

  I can honestly say I have no memory of this photo being taken. I can’t tell you anything about the night in question or why I’m wearing that hooded mustard pullover, an item of clothing that I am sure was not mine. The top of the glass leads me to believe we are all at the twenty-four-hour diner Jim’s, which probably means this was taken after the midnight Rocky Horror Picture Show. There’s a level of inebriation here that’s so intense I actually don’t recognize myself. I mean, I know it’s me. But the features, expression, eye shape, and everything else make me feel like I’m looking at an askew doppelganger of myself. Looking at it for too long gives me the chills.

  CHAPTER 14

  Ask Me

  Why didn’t Greg want to be my boyfriend?

  That was all I could think about while I watched Carla writhe over Greg’s crotch as the curtains behind her went up in flames. Slumped against the corner of Carla’s living room, I found myself tripping much harder than I’d anticipated on a tab of acid called Blue Ice, which was tame-sounding compared to others we’d had, like Black Widow or Fire Ant. Blue Ice sounded like something soothing you’d take after injuring a tendon.

  But Blue Ice was the opposite of cool. The sun-drenched curtains continued to burn behind Greg and Carla as they unbuttoned each other’s jeans. Everything was on high heat. It wasn’t all burning up so much as collapsing like a soufflé: the kitchen counter, the chandelier, the Kitty Kat wall clock ticking so loudly I thought it would shatter the windows. Each of these things seemed to be warping in an unfelt nuclear heat, rippling and bleeding down the walls and cabinets. As Greg’s forearm moved back and forth beneath Carla’s crotch, the illuminated drapes brightened. Watching my best friend finger-bang this girl, I realized that the sun itself was going to burst through the walls. It was the end of the world.

  But my Pineapple Crush tasted so good. Watching it melt in my hand, I couldn’t stop thinking, My God, this is the most delicious and refreshing beverage I’ve ever had.

  Carla’s loud moan snapped me back into the moment. I thought about reminding them that I was
there, slumped against the wall in the house of this punk girl I’d only met that day at lunch. Her house was the polar opposite of Raven’s. It had a grand staircase in the foyer and a giant skylight in the vaulted living-room ceiling. I sat on the floor hugging my knees to my chin, perfectly content to watch Greg and Carla make out as the sun ate us whole. Carla threw her head back and let out a muffled groan, her shoulders shuddering. As I watched a girl orgasm in front of me for the first time, I thought, How does Greg do that?

  I tried to imagine myself, with my scrawny rib cage and big pores, letting someone straddle me as I made them come, and I couldn’t. But Greg could. As the sky exploded behind him I was filled with admiration, lust, and rage. How could I feel all those things so intensely at the same time for the same person? Maybe it was the Blue Ice talking.

  “What are you looking at?” asked Carla, pushing the lavender-tipped bangs on her otherwise hairless head behind her ear. As she dismounted Greg and sat beside me, her multizippered pants and dozen earrings jingled like a sack full of spare change.

  “The sky’s on fire, right?” I asked casually, the way someone might inquire about a bus route, as we stared out the window.

  “Oh, wow,” she said as Greg sat down on my other side.

  “It’s beautiful!” Greg rested his head on my shoulder, his scent enveloping me. I looked down at the top of his head and could swear that strands of his hair were weaving themselves into a rug.

  “Guys. What if hair enveloped the world?” I asked.

  Greg let out a chortle. “What the fuck are you talking about?”

  “Well, imagine it. What if hair never stopped growing and crept across the globe slowly and no one could stop it? Even if you cut your hair, it would just revolt by growing faster. All kinds of hair too! Straight hair, braided hair, Afros! And soon the weight of all that hair would crush people’s homes and suffocate them and creep to new continents across the ocean floor! And these long clumps of hair would lash up out of the beach like . . . like . . . big hair waves!”

  “Hair weaves?” asked Carla, with genuine terror in her eyes.

  “No, hair waves, retard!” corrected Greg as they laughed.

  Carla pinched my cheek. “David, you are so cute.”

  “Guys! It could happen. I mean, the sun is eating us, after all!”

  This just made them laugh harder. Greg leaned over me to cackle in Carla’s ear, the length of his torso warm and heavy in my lap.

  A month ago, the night we’d dropped acid for the first time, I’d felt like I’d built a bridge that had gotten me closer to him. We’d tripped until five in the morning every weekend since, sneaking through his bedroom window to fall asleep as the sun rose. Then, after six hours of fitful slumber, I’d wake up angry and confused as Greg talked about whatever random guy he’d kissed at FX the night before. That was enough to bear without Greg making good on this whole “bisexual” thing, let alone right in front of me.

  Carla? But not me? I couldn’t wrap my head around it.

  More often than not, all Greg talked about was Jake, who was suddenly with us all the time. Jake was under the tree with us for every lunch, lying in some girl’s lap and complimenting her bracelets while Greg massaged his scalp. Or stretching as he stood up, and unintentionally showing the top of his ass crack as his jeans slipped down his hips. He was there every day, talking about some great punk show he’d snuck into or some awesome piercing he was going to get. A half dozen girls and boys would be totally enraptured, Greg at the front with stars in his eyes.

  That said, I was right beside Greg, swooning as well. We gazed into Jake’s ocean-blue eyes as his words became the wah-wah voice of Charlie Brown’s teacher. The thick funk of pot stench from his clothes drifted over us as he dramatically recited Misfits lyrics like they were Walt Whitman poems. Greg would laugh as his arm grazed mine and I’d drift away, imagining him kissing Jake, or Raven kissing Jake, or Jake kissing Greg while undressing Carla and jerking off Hector as Raven gave a blow job to some muscular senior quarterback we all hated.

  “What the fuck are y’all doing?” The three of us turned from the flaming window to see Jake hanging in the doorframe. His threadbare Meat Is Murder T-shirt rode up, exposing his lean, tan stomach. “Hey, let’s go for a walk!”

  As I started to get up to leave, Carla grabbed my arm, saying, “Hey, wait up.”

  Greg bounded out of the room with Jake like a happy puppy, leaving me alone with Carla on the cold marble floor.

  “I saw you watching,” she smiled at me.

  “Um, uh . . . well . . .” I stuttered as the blood rushed to my face.

  “Oh my God,” Carla sighed, holding my face in her hands and smiling. “You’re blushing. That’s so cute.” Before I could say anything, she put her lips against mine. I froze, feeling her hand creep down my chest and stomach toward my crotch.

  “You’re gay, right?” she asked.

  “I’m bisexual,” I countered.

  “Seriously?” She laughed. “You’re a double-stuff virgin, aren’t you?”

  “Double-stuff virgin?”

  “Yeah. It’s when you’re a virgin who’s bisexual. It’s so sad.”

  “I’m not sad! Morrissey doesn’t have sex and he’s happy.”

  “Yeah, but he doesn’t want to have sex,” Carla reasoned. “He’s asexual.”

  “Look, I’m just tripping really hard and . . .”

  “Here,” she interrupted before shoving my hand down her pants.

  “Whoa!” I yelled, trying to pull my arm back.

  “Shhh,” she whispered, her long legs wrapping around me like a spider. “I saw you watching us.” She wriggled closer as the burning sky brightened behind her. “Feel that?”

  “Yeah,” I said, not sure what part of her vagina she was referring to.

  “Not that,” she snickered, reaching down to adjust my fingers. “That.”

  “Oh, that!” I said, resting my thumb against a fleshy nub.

  “That’s the part that feels really good when you touch it,” she whispered.

  “Huh. It’s like a little button,” I snickered, rubbing it faster.

  “Oh yeah,” she moaned, bucking and panting as she laid back on the floor. I sped up and slowed down repeatedly, tittering quietly at the amazing amount of control my thumb had over Carla’s movements and vocalizations. My diddling was getting a much bigger reaction than Greg’s, which I was quite proud of. I wasn’t repulsed at all, the way I thought I might be with a girl. But I wasn’t turned on either, her body seeming less like a sexual object and more like a deceptively simple lab set.

  “Come here,” she moaned, hiking up her shirt and pushing my mouth against her exposed nipple. I began to suck instinctively, thinking, Gee whiz. I haven’t done this in years.

  I continued to nurse and diddle, playing her body like an arcade game that would eventually spit out twenty more tickets if I operated the controls correctly.

  “I want your—.” She stopped as her hand touched the loose fabric of my pants crotch. “Oh.”

  “What?” I grinned. “Am I doing it wrong?”

  Carla gently took my hand from her pants and chuckled, tousling my hair and kissing me softly on the forehead. “You’re cute, Crabb.”

  “Hey, are you guys—Whoa!” yelled Jake in the doorway. “Didn’t know y’all were doin’ the horizontal mambo in here!”

  “It’s fine,” said Carla, standing to adjust her pants. “We were just coming out.”

  As Jake left, I stood up, feeling like I’d done something incorrectly. “Sorry if I messed up.”

  “You were great,” smiled Carla as she took my hand. “But I think now I know why you were watching.”

  At the end of the hall we found Hector and Raven sitting at opposite sides of the dining-room table. Greg and Jake watched as Hector held up the flame from a blue plastic lighter.

  “Shhh!” he said, although none of us had said anything. “Thirty seconds.”

  Taking his thum
b off the lighter, he leaned over Raven as she pulled up the crushed velvet sleeve of her shirt.

  “Hurry,” she demanded, gritting her teeth as Hector plunged the hot metal top of the plastic lighter onto her forearm. “Fuck, that hurts!”

  “Just a few seconds,” he said, blowing on the lighter as it sizzled against her flesh.

  “Don’t fucking blow on it, dickweed! It has to burn to make the mark!”

  Thirty seconds later he removed the lighter and grinned down at his handiwork.

  “Oh, Hector! It’s beautiful!” Raven turned to us, holding her arm out so we could all see the blistering scar of a perfect happy face branded onto her skin. They hugged each other and waved us toward them. We formed a group huddle and began to sing along to our favorite song.

  “Shyness is nice, and shyness can stop you from doing all the things in life you’d like to!”

  “Ask” by The Smiths was like our theme song, full of lyrics about the dangers of introversion and shame. It’s an unusually sunny song until the halfway mark, when, in typical Morrissey fashion, the listener is reminded that a bomb is more likely than love to “bring us together.”

  “I want a happy face!” yelped Carla, beginning a slow procession as all of us held out our arms to Hector for branding. When it was finally my turn, Raven threw her arms around me.

  “No, you can’t hurt Davey.”

  “I know,” chimed in Carla, “he’s our cutie-pie.”

  “No. I want to,” I said, sitting across from Hector and offering my forearm. I’d been the cutie-pie, the funny one, the sweet boy, my whole life. As Hector lowered the lighter onto my skin, I kept the pain at bay by thinking about who I could become and how I might change. I wanted to feel things I hadn’t felt, touch things I hadn’t touched. I wanted to break someone’s heart and keep secrets of my own. Carla and Greg smiled at me from the couch as another cool blast of Blue Ice crept up my spine and into my cerebellum. There was so much left to hear and smell and taste, and I wanted all of it.

  Thirty seconds later, it was over. I smiled down at the fresh scar on my arm smiling back at me. Through the patio door I could see the sun disappearing over a horizon line of burnt lawns and dull beige homes. It might not eat us after all.