Bad Kid

by David Crabb

  CHAPTER 20

  Taking a Ride with My Best Friend

  The ceiling was made of pudding. Wave after wave of thick tapioca hovered above me. Or was I hovering above it, suspended over an endless ocean of heavy cream? Somewhere, a chain saw revved as a woman screamed. The ceiling shifted to my left as the carpeted floor slid out from under my face to meet the soles of my feet.

  Oh, wait. I’m standing up now.

  The room was dim. A foot with black-painted toenails stuck out from a down comforter on the floor. A digital clock read 7:05. It meant nothing to me. Am I early for school or late for dinner? What day is it? What town am I in?

  Sitting on the edge of someone’s bed, I noticed a raccoon watching me from a window. And then something fell into place. Suddenly the pudding ocean was just the ceiling. The chain saw was just a stereo. The screaming was a girl laughing outside. The feet belonged to Greg. And the raccoon was my own face in a mirror, reflected back at me. My eyeliner had been perfect last night, but now it had gathered in two smeared pools beneath each eye. I looked like one of those Mexican skeleton dolls.

  I stood up as a Mohawked girl in panties ran past the doorway. A moment later, a boy in a red elephant-trunk thong ran after her, a houseplant cascading out of his backpack.

  The stereo was too loud.

  I am the son and heir of a shyness that is criminally vulgar.

  I crept onto the floor and underneath the huge comforter, whispering, “Wake up, Greg.”

  “David, where are we?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Suddenly Greg and I were both very awake, which always happened quickly the morning after we dropped two hits of acid.

  “Greg! My mom!” I yelped, remembering that I was supposed to have spent the night with her in Seguin. “She must be so pissed!”

  “No, David. It’s fine. You had me impersonate my mom and call her. Remember?”

  “I had you call my mom while we were tripping and fake your mom’s voice?”

  “Yeah. It worked fine. I told her you were staying over because we got food poisoning. We talked about the Botanical Garden for, like, a hundred years.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah. Then we talked about how great our sons are and how, of all the Designing Women, she feels most like the Annie Potts character. Your mom is so vulnerable. I love Libras. They’re so—”

  “Wait. You talked about Designing Women with my mom on acid?”

  “Yeah. She’s a firecracker! Woman-to-woman, I can really sense that kind of manic Annie Potts energy about her,” said Greg, slipping into his fake mom voice. “See? I’m good, right?”

  Just then, a shaft of light crossed the floor. We looked toward the bedroom door, where a girl with bright-red lips stood in a sequined yellow jacket and golden top hat. She held a Mountain Dew and started to slow-motion tap dance like she was trudging through imaginary maple syrup.

  Greg rolled over and looked at me excitedly. “David! I remember! We went dancing with Carla and then dropped acid at The Rocky Horror Picture Show.”

  And then the rest of it fell into place: sneaking Carla out her bedroom window, meeting Greg at the Dumpster behind the Bill Miller Bar-B-Que, huffing whippits by the mailboxes at Sylvia’s apartment, snorting ephedrine in a bathroom with a stranger, getting into a fight with Jake about Depeche Mode’s pre-Violator work, gorging ourselves on Taco Cabana guacamole and queso, driving to The Rocky Horror Picture Show at the Northwest 14 Theatre, holding Sylvia’s hair out of her face as she puked up Taco Cabana guacamole and queso in the movie theater parking lot, and finally ending up at George’s apartment for rum and Diet Cokes.

  “But we’re not at George’s,” Greg said, scratching his head and looking around. He blurted to our visitor, “Hi, Columbia!”

  She stopped moving, like a deer caught in headlights.

  “Don’t startle her. She’s fucked up,” I whispered.

  “David, are we still tripping?” Greg whispered back. “I mean . . . my favorite character from The Rocky Horror Picture Show has just come to life right in front of me!”

  Her body hung limply like a broken-down robot, her arm barely swinging from the flimsy joint of her elbow.

  Greg screamed, “Hello!”

  With a jolt, she suddenly came to life, put her hand on her hip, bent slightly to her left, and with cold, black eyes stated matter-of-factly, “I am a teapot.”

  Greg and I laughed nervously as she swayed. I could feel my guts aching from the acid we’d taken. Every burst of laughter cramped me to the core. We retreated beneath the comforter and curled in toward each other until our knees were touching.

  “Whose car did we drive here? Yours or mine?” Greg asked.

  “I don’t know. I guess we should get out of here and figure it out.”

  Ten minutes later we tiptoed through a minefield of sleeping freaks on the living-room floor. Holding hands to balance each other, we navigated our way through a forest of fishnet-wrapped limbs capped in Doc Marten boots. Black-painted fingernails peeked out like creeping moss around graffitied jackets and shrubs of teased purple hair.

  Five feet from the door, I felt a hand grip my ankle. Instinctively I screamed, “I don’t know anyone!” as if being a stranger here somehow protected me from this person.

  A girl with fuchsia hair wearing a silver choker stared up at me with giant, dilated pupils. Wiping a long strand of spittle from the corner of her mouth, she began to weep.

  “Where are Brian’s keys?”

  “Um . . . who’s Brian?” I asked her.

  Greg pulled me toward the door. “David! Don’t engage her!”

  “WHERE ARE BRIAN’S KEEEEYS?!?!?!”

  As she wailed, the human floor shifted to life. Crushed velvet tree roots became snakes made of human arms and legs.

  “Run!” Greg shrieked.

  We flew out the door as the fuchsia-haired girl screamed, “KEEEEYYSSS!!!”

  Around the side of the building, we found ourselves in the complex’s parking lot. I tried to catch my breath and shielded my eyes from the scorching Texas sun.

  “Greg, I need air-conditioning. Now.”

  As we scanned the parking lot, I could feel the armpits of my shirt began to fill with perspiration. Greg drove a tiny car that was always a pain in the ass to find, especially in the sea of massive vehicles that filled most San Antonio parking lots. We stumbled from row to row of parked cars. Greg pointed his key-ring remote in different directions, hoping to hear a chirp from his little red Cabriolet, a strangely happy car considering that it was driven by a guy in a bat necklace. My mouth was bone-dry and beads of sweat collected on my forehead. I threw my head back in exhaustion, my mouth hanging open like a broken Pez dispenser.

  “Where is your caaaaaaar?”

  I was going to puke. Or maybe I needed to eat. In the distance I saw a fifteen-foot-wide sombrero hovering in the sky. It wasn’t a hallucination. It was a Taco Cabana. And it was all I needed. I could almost taste their breakfast tacos. I imagined every combination possible: egg, bacon, cheese; carne asada; chicken fajita with guacamole; bean, cheese, potato . . .

  “GREG! Where’s the motherfucking car?!?!”

  “Bitch! Stop screaming at me already! You already hooked up with the love of my life!” he yelled. “Can you at least not scream at me?”

  He hadn’t brought up that night at my house since his first day back at school a couple weeks earlier. I wanted to tell Greg that I’d failed miserably at hooking up with Jake. But soothing his feelings would mean embarrassing myself. It seemed better to let him think something had happened. So I mumbled, “Sorry,” and left it at that.

  We strolled through the parking lot, getting looks from suits holding coffee thermoses on their way to work: Greg in his combat boots and dangling earrings, me with my dirty, shoulder-length hair and raccoon eyes, wearing a thousand rubber-band bracelets. Greg kept aiming his key-chain remote into the expanse of pickup trucks and sport-utility vehicles surroundin
g us, like someone hopelessly trying to find water in the desert using a forked stick. Finally we heard it: the high-pitched, sissy chirp of Greg’s car alarm beeping from his Lilliputian red convertible.

  Once inside, we collapsed into the seats, as if we’d arrived home with no intention of actually driving anywhere. Greg lit a Marlboro Ultra-Light 100 and French inhaled a long strand of cigarette smoke. He studied himself in the mirror as if I wasn’t there, admiring the perfection with which he passed the toxic smog from his lips to his nostrils.

  “David, should we go to school today?”

  I flipped the wall calendar in my head. “Is today a weekday?”

  Greg noticed an Alamo Bank sign towering above us. “Well, it’s 7:25 a.m. and ninety-one degrees, and today is May 29.”

  We stared at each other, hoping to somehow transform that information into a clue regarding whether it was a Tuesday or a Sunday.

  “What do we do, Greg? Today is Wednesday . . . I think.”

  “Well, we can’t go to school like this.”

  We pulled down our visor mirrors and inspected our bloodshot eyes, crusty hair, and cosmetic-blotched skin.

  “David, I think we should rest today.”

  “But we haven’t gone in a few days. Because I remember Raven—”

  “Hey,” Greg interrupted. “Sorry I yelled at you about Jake.”

  “I’m the sorry one,” I apologized. “I should’ve stayed with you that night. I’m really sorry that—”

  “Shut up!” Greg yelled, smacking my forehead. “Stop saying sorry all the time about everything, okay?”

  “Oh, sorry,” I instinctively said again.

  Greg glared at me, trying not to smile. “Look, nerd. Are we going to school or not?”

  I shrugged and waited for Greg to make up my mind for me, the way he always did.

  “Fuck it,” he said, lighting a roach from the ashtray.

  A few minutes later as we pulled away from the Taco Cabana drive-through with our breakfasts, we pieced together the rest of the previous night: who kissed whom, who took what, who was hot, who seemed cooler than we’d thought, who’d been lame. Greg blasted the Cure’s Disintegration from his car stereo and we drove past our school. Rolling by slowly, we watched our friends, enemies, and peers march through the huge brick arch leading to the courtyard. They looked so tired, their shoulders slouching as they shuffled to first period. Their backpacks looked so heavy, like they were full of stones. It seemed too early in the morning for anyone, including us, to have obligations.

  “Suckers,” Greg hissed. He pushed a button and the convertible top retracted over our heads, releasing the huge cloud of marijuana smoke we’d been hotboxing on our drive. In the rearview mirror we could see a clan of preps cough and gag on our mood-altering exhaust.

  Greg convulsed in a maniacal fit of laughter, shredded lettuce and salsa spilling out the side of his mouth.

  “Enjoy the contact high, bitches!”

  I felt bad for all those kids: all the preps, jocks, kickers, Bowheads, punks, nerds, potheads, and goths stuck in that academic jail on such a beautiful day. But I felt guilty too, ashamed of all the lies I’d told and would continue to tell to remain the way I was that day: absolutely and perfectly free.

  This is the kind of half-assed drag that lots of alt-youth boys attempted at least once at the hands of their Bowie-obsessed, Martin Gore–loving, New Wave girlfriends. Here, the girls turned Greg and me into their own living, breathing, life-size dolls. Although we had partial say in our “looks, ” I have to blame the girls for the final outfit choices. While Greg got to look like a saucy, shapely pole dancer, I was reimagined as a Puckish stewardess with kerchief and headband. We stayed inside sporting these looks, drinking Strawberry Hill, and listening to Yaz’s “Upstairs at Eric’s” the rest of the night. Later in the evening there was makeup application and some light hair-crimping. I can only thank God that those pictures haven’t surfaced, as I looked like a candy-faced, ghoulish Raggedy Ann in all of them.

  CHAPTER 21

  Age of Consent

  Just gimme your keys, crack whore!” yelled Sylvia.

  “But why?” I slurred back, swaying with my big red Solo cup of rum in some stranger’s living room.

  “Just give me your keys!” she screamed again.

  “But I don’t want to leave!” I yelled back, placing my drink on a shelf that wasn’t there. As it smashed to the floor, Sylvia reached into my pocket and ran away with my car keys.

  “Hey, Sylvia . . .” The next word came out in the form of vomit—all over the carpet, a chair back, and my shoes. A roll of paper towels hit me in the face.

  “David, fucking pull it together!” Greg was standing with Jake in the kitchen. “Stop fucking drinking!”

  “Fuck you,” I said, laughing to myself as I squatted down. I’m not sure if it was the weed, the rum, the bump, or the ephedrine pills I’d bought from the truck stop, but my equilibrium was shot, and I ended up sitting in a pile of my own puke. After cleaning the floor and myself, I stumbled to the front yard, where Sylvia had popped the hood of my car.

  “What are you doing, Sylvie?”

  “I’m getting’ high!” she yelled, leaning over the engine as Ray-Ray started the car. “Your AC isn’t working ’cause you got a coolant leak!”

  Sylvia leaned over into the engine and put her mouth on a small metal tube.

  I stumbled forward, confused. “Wait. You’re sucking on my car engine to get high?” Falling back onto the cement, Sylvia held her belly and rolled around, laughing in a deep, demonic voice.

  “What’s happening to her?” I asked Ray-Ray as he pulled back his golden locks and leaned beneath the hood.

  “We’re getting high off this Freon leak! It’ll give you major wah-wahs, but be careful, ’cause that shit constricts your throat and can suffocate your ass.”

  “That’s crazy,” I said, leaning under the hood for a hit. Soon a small group of partygoers was lined up at my car. A dozen of us rolled around on the lawn, the satanic timbres of our laughter creating more laughter until we sounded like a pack of goats.

  The next day I sat in second-period algebra focusing on one thing: not vomiting. Watching Ms. Kelsey’s arm fat flap around like a rooster’s neck as she wrote on the board was making me ill. I was just about to ask to go to the bathroom when the PA system came to life.

  “David Crabb, please report to your guidance counselor’s office.” I sat still for a moment, doubting what I’d heard, until it repeated: “David Crabb. To the guidance counselor’s office.”

  I walked down the linoleum-tiled hallway, stoned out of my mind. Greg and I had gotten super-baked two hours earlier to fend off our hangovers. At the front office, a secretary gestured to the door of my guidance counselor, Brownie Richardson.

  Brownie was a man. Yes. A full-grown, fifty-year-old man with thick spectacles and a salt-and-pepper bowl cut had chosen to work in academia with the name “Brownie.” He stood up from his desk and straightened his baggy suit.

  “Well, hello, David,” he said cheerfully in a froglike baritone.

  “Hi, Mr. . . .” I paused, realizing that every note I’d ever forged to skip school was laid out on the desk before me—more than a dozen letters with my dad’s faked signature.

  “I think it’s time we had a talk, David. Don’t you?”

  I was about to answer when I sensed movement in the corner of the room. I turned around to see my father. His beet-red face made his bald head look like a tiny, scarlet stress ball. He gripped the arms of his chair, his jaw tightly clenched, staring down at the floor like he was trying to burn a hole through it.

  “Have a seat next to your father,” Brownie said with a broad smile.

  I sat cautiously in the vinyl chair a mere foot from my dad. I was trying so hard to act sober that I felt like the attempt was actually counteracting my goal. Every move I made or thing I said seemed strained or over-pronounced.

  “How are YOU do-ING, Mr. Richa
rdSON?” I asked, emphasizing all the wrong syllables. My elbow was having a hard time securing itself against the armrest, slipping back and forth against either side.

  “Well, David. As you can see, we seem to be having a problem with honesty, which is disappointing,” said Brownie, patting the notes on his desk. “I can tell from looking at you that you’re a nice guy. You never fight or wind up in detention. But you apparently never wind up in class, either.” Brownie chuckled lightheartedly at his little joke and looked at my father, who continued to glare hatefully at the carpet. “I’m going to ask you a few questions now, David.”

  “Sure. Okay.” My voice broke a little in response to the silent waves of fury radiating from my father.

  “So, David. Would your father understand if you told him you were on drugs?”

  “What?” I replied with immediate incredulity. “How could you think that? How could you accuse me of such a thing?” Meryl Streep would’ve eaten her heart out as I pounded on the desk, demanding, “Give me a cup. I’ll pee in it right now and you’ll know the truth!” Ironically, being stoned out of my mind was really helping my performance. Before I knew it, I was standing over Brownie’s desk, dramatically pointing to the door, as if someone with a portable urine-testing lab waited on the other side. “Give me a cup and I’ll PEE IN IT!” I yelled.

  “Calm down. No one’s on trial,” Brownie said, even though someone was. “Would your father understand if you’d gotten a girl pregnant?” he asked, reverting to what I could only imagine was one of his stock “troubled youth” questions.

  “Yeah. He’d understand,” I answered, my lower lip beginning to tremble. I glanced beside me for a response, but my dad still wouldn’t look at me. Brownie cleared his throat and in a low, hushed tone asked, “David. Would your father understand if you told him you were gay?”

  As the ground slipped away beneath me, I felt like Wile E. Coyote. Like I’d jumped off the edge of a cliff and was hovering over a pit of rocks, my little cartoon legs spinning.

  It’s not supposed to happen like this, I thought. It should get to be my choice.