Bad Kid

by David Crabb

  “Max!” sang my mom, throwing her arms around him. “Are you hungry, son?” she asked, her head barely coming up to his chest. “I swear he’s a bottomless pit,” she chirped with a smile to Greg, who had the fearful look of someone expecting to be sucker punched at any moment.

  “Hey y’all,” said Sylvia, turning the corner in a black smock, having put her full face on in record time. “Max! It’s a pleasure to meet you,” she cooed, peeking around newly platinum bangs. Sylvia was in man mode—her voice huskier, boobs higher, and mascara even heavier than usual.

  As my stepfather entered the room to greet everyone, I was struck by this odd collision: all these disparate people coming together in a tiny house off a dirt road in Seguin, Texas. Sylvia flirted with Max while Mike made coffee and Greg helped my mom clear the table. Things had been compartmentalized somehow, but right at that moment, every part of me seemed like they could coexist: Sylvia’s drug buddy, Greg’s gay copilot, my mother’s son. And most of all, Max’s best friend. He stood in the center of the room like a colossal lighthouse, shining a light that each person responded to; even Greg was starting to relax.

  Six hours and a hit of acid each later, we were at Max’s house in New Braunfels, greeting the arriving guests. My mom didn’t know that Max’s mother had taken his sisters out of town for a trip. As Greg’s acid kicked in, I could sense his anxiety building over each shaved head that came through the front door.

  “David, there are so many skinheads here,” he said, looking around at thirty or so SHARPs as they milled around.

  “Mama like!” purred Sylvia, gliding onto the couch beside us. “Girl! No wonder you hang out with these fellas, fagotron!”

  “I’m mainly just friends with Max,” I said.

  “Well, duh, Crabb! Look at him!” Sylvia stared him down across the room. “I wanna climb him like a mountain! Girl, he’s just so damn big!” I looked at Max through her eyes, at his broad shoulders and thick, strong neck. He wasn’t all muscle, but he wasn’t all fat. He was large, hard, and impenetrable, but dopey and soft too.

  He noticed us looking and mouthed, “You doin’ okay?”

  “Hot damn!” whispered Sylvia, before mouthing “Just fine” to him with a wink. “David,” she shuddered, “he makes me feel like a whore in church on Sunday.”

  “Sylvia,” said Greg, his voice trembling, “I’m glad you feel secure enough to go into slut mode right now, but I’m fearing for my life.”

  “Oh gawd, bitch,” moaned Sylvia, rolling her eyes, “we get it. You went through something. It was traumatic. Yada yada yada . . .”

  “Greg, they’re not racists, they’re SHARPs,” I said, explaining their entire manifesto to him as Sylvia and I shared a joint.

  “Yeah, but they’re not marching in pride parades, either,” replied Greg, making a point I often overlooked. “Just because they’re not racists doesn’t mean they like gay people.”

  “Yeah, but none of them is going to do anything because I’m Max’s best friend,” I explained. Greg shot me a slightly hurt look. “Oh, come on, Greg. You know what I mean. I’m . . . protected, I guess.”

  “Damn, Gina,” said Sylvia, lighting up a joint. “It’s like you’re Whitney Houston in The Bodyguard.”

  A few minutes later Max walked over with Sean, who was stern and joyless as usual.

  “Hey,” said Max, “this is my best friend, Sean.” I heard him say best friend and realized how I’d just made Greg feel.

  “I’m Sean,” he said, and paused, midhandshake with Greg. “Oh fuck. I know you.”

  “Um . . .” Greg swiped his bangs behind his ear and looked down at the carpet.

  “Dude,” said Sean, “this is one of those kids from FX.”

  “What?” I asked, refusing to hear what I’d just heard.

  “Oh shit,” said Max. “I thought I remembered you, Greg. You’re the blue-Docs guy.”

  We all froze. Sounds came from Greg’s mouth—none of them words so much as slight, guttural hiccups. For a moment I reconsidered that familiar connection I’d felt with Max. Maybe there was no magic at work, just creepy synchronicity.

  “Greg, I’m sorry.” Max reached out to Greg with an open hand. “That was a long time ago. I was fucked up. But it’s no excuse. I’m really, really sorry.”

  Sean chuckled to Max. “Dude, we were drunk. It’s not the end of the world you beat up some—”

  “Shut up,” barked Max.

  Sean closed his mouth and looked at the ceiling as Greg shook Max’s hand. With sudden force, Max pulled Greg in close and hugged him. Greg looked at me, confused, his face smashed against Max’s chest.

  “I’m so fucking sorry, brother,” said Max. “Apologize,” he said to Sean, turning Greg to face him.

  “But I was drunk and he was—”

  “Fucking apologize.” Max wasn’t asking anymore.

  Awkwardly and with visible resentment, Sean stammered, “I’m really . . . sorry.”

  “For what?” demanded Max.

  “Geesh,” sighed Sean. “I’m sorry we beat you up and took your boots. Okay?”

  “Now shake hands,” demanded Max. The two of them shook hands and Sean stomped off into the party. “I’m sorry that happened, Greg. It wasn’t right.”

  “It’s fine. It’s over,” said Greg as Max opened a tall boy and downed the whole thing in one gulp. After hugging and apologizing to Greg a few more times, Max walked back into the party, shaking his head and staring at the floor. I watched him shuffle away drunkenly, his big shoulders sadly sloped like a morose giant vanquished from a magic kingdom.

  “One word, bitches: fuckable,” said Sylvia.

  “I think he crushed my shoulder blade,” said Greg, bending his neck back and forth as Sylvia passed him the joint.

  “Damn, Crabb,” said Sylvia. “Are you sure he’s straight?”

  “What?” I said, her question taking me by surprise.

  “What are you, deaf, Mizz Keller? I said, are you sure that fine piece of man meat is straight? Don’t tell me you haven’t tried. You spend all your time together. You never call me anymore. You go to parties with him and stay at his house all the time.”

  “So?” I asked.

  “David,” interjected Greg, “you’re obviously into each other. Duh.”

  The two of them looked at me with the clearheaded certainty of someone telling a child, “The sky is blue.” Maybe everything Max and I were feeling wasn’t as simple as brotherhood. Although I knew Max was attracted to women, he’d never said he wasn’t attracted to men. I looked at him across the room, tilting his head back and sucking the last drop of beer from his bottle. The kitchen light hit the back of his head in a way that made every striation of muscle in his neck visible. I watched the mound of his bicep flex as he lifted another bottle of beer to his mouth, his lips wrapping around the rim. I tried to keep my brain and libido from venturing to the place I quickly realized they were taking a trip to.

  David, this is not an option.

  My chest started to tighten as I realized how high I was. It felt like a weight was resting on my lungs. Greg and Sylvia were chatting too fast to each other in a language I couldn’t understand. I slipped outside and walked into the front yard, looking up at the stars and trying to catch my breath. Squealing tires at the curb thirty feet away caught my attention. The doors of a maroon van all opened at once, each producing a skinhead.

  “Hey faggot!” one of them yelled, advancing quickly. These weren’t SHARPs. These were the skins Max had told me about. Each one was holding a baseball bat or a knife. More boys emerged from the van, like it was the most terrifying clown car ever.

  “Get the fuck in here!” yelled Max.

  I turned and ran toward the porch as the skinheads gained behind me, one of them screaming, “Get that little faggot!”

  Max grabbed my hand and pulled me inside. Ten skinheads stood in a line in the front yard as everyone at the party gathered at the windows to look outside.

  �
�Oh bitch,” whispered Sylvia, her eyes darting back and forth. “I’m too high for this shit, Minerva.”

  “Oh fuck. Oh fuck. Oh fuck,” repeated Greg.

  “Give him to us!” I heard one of the skins yell.

  This was it. All my fears about Max’s social circle had come to fruition. I had interfered with a group dynamic I should’ve stayed out of. Even worse, I had dragged my friends along.

  “Oh fuck, Max,” I whispered. “I’m sorry.”

  “What the fuck are you talking about?” he asked, looking through the blinds.

  “Well, if you have to surrender me,” I answered.

  “Dude, you’re as high as I am drunk. They don’t want you, David. They want him.” Max pointed to the back of the kitchen, past thirty kids, where a gangly African American SHARP named Reggie cowered in the corner.

  “Give him to us and we won’t fucking destroy your house,” yelled the skins’ leader.

  “Where’s the gun?” I heard a SHARP whisper from the back of the room.

  “No,” I said, instinctively grabbing Max’s shoulder.

  “Who gives a fuck what you think?” said Sean, bouncing up and down with crazy eyes. “These guys are gonna fuck us up!”

  I looked around the house and saw at least forty kids: mostly SHARPs, a few punks, maybe a goth or two. They reminded me of all our friends that night at FX when Greg was beaten up. I looked back outside at the ten skins in the front yard.

  “There are so many more of us,” I said to Max.

  He looked at me and then over his shoulder at the party. “Yeah. Let’s just all go outside.” Max didn’t look much more confident than I was, but the math was on our side. And whatever would keep the gun out of the equation seemed preferable.

  “We’re going outside,” he said sternly to Sean, “without the gun.”

  “This shit is too intense for me, Minerva!” bawled Sylvia, her bloodshot eyes bouncing up and down in their sockets.

  Max stood up and, with the intensity of General Patton, declared, “We’re going outside. And we don’t say anything.” One by one and without question, each person stepped onto the porch. After all, Max was the mayor of freaks. A minute later, all of us were face-to-face with the group of skins, whose size and threat seemed puny by comparison.

  “Where’s the nigger?” yelled the leader, twisting the grip of the bat in his hand.

  We stared at him in silence. He asked again and still wasn’t answered. I could feel the heat of our collective glare intensify as we looked down from the porch on the group of intruders. Some of the skinheads started to retreat, their machismo disappearing as they realized how many of us there were. We all moved forward on the porch, up against the railing, the mass of us making the waterlogged wood creak and moan beneath our feet.

  “Come on, man,” said a skin to the leader as he jogged to the car. “This ain’t good, man.”

  I felt powerful, seeing these guys twice my size retreat in fear. Five minutes later, the skins left and the party resumed, bigger and louder than before. In the living room we gathered around Reggie and toasted him. Then we lifted him above our heads and passed him through the party, almost cutting off his nose with a ceiling fan. Greg located the three goth girls in attendance and sat chatting with them about hair dye while Sylvia showed a group of SHARPs how to make a marijuana pipe out of an apple.

  At 4 a.m. I sat tripping with Max in the front yard.

  “No, you do it like this,” he said, attempting to show me how to blow a blade of grass like a whistle.

  “Like this?” I asked, attempting again but only making a flat fart sound. “I can’t even whistle with my lips, Max. I suck at this. Maybe if—”

  “Hey!” he slurred, covering my mouth with his hand. “I would never let a bunch of skins beat the shit out of you,” he said, swaying as his drunken gaze roamed from my face to my shoulder. “Why would you think that?”

  “Well, because you have to protect your friends.”

  “But you are my friend, you fucker,” he said, grabbing my face and staring into my eyes. “Listen, I’m really sorry about Greg. I was different then. Please don’t think I’m an asshole.”

  “Max, it’s okay. We’re really fucked up.”

  “I just want to be a good person,” he said, making a clipped little whistle sound with his blade of grass. “I just want to be good.”

  “But you are good,” I said, rubbing the back of his head.

  “Please be my friend. Okay?”

  “I am your friend, Max. I am.”

  He leaned forward and pressed his face against my shoulder, his hand falling onto the grass as he began to black out. I rested my cheek against the top of his head and inhaled, laughing to myself at how much the gargantuan beast in my arms smelled more like a newborn than anything else: mild, clean, like baby powder.

  As Max moaned the satisfying rattle of a deeply tired person surrendering to sleep, I noticed Sean on the front porch twenty feet away, glaring at me with his narrow, deep-set eyes as he stamped out a cigarette on the railing.

  David, this is not an option.

  Here’s Greg and me in my bedroom a few months after I moved to Seguin. Greg, unlike me, was wise enough not to style his hair into the shape of a mushroom. Greg had just helped me as any all-American boy would help his buddy: by building a small shrine to Keanu Reeves in his bedroom. We are presenting this against my newly white walls, which my mother had insisted I paint after getting spooked too many times while bringing in my laundry/going through my cinder-block shelving looking for drugs and cigarettes.

  CHAPTER 25

  This Is Not a Love Song

  Hi, honey. Um . . . Okay, can you turn off that weird light that makes your teeth green?”

  My mother stumbled through the black-light cave of my room with her arms full of laundry. “I wanted you to have clothes for Max’s sleepover.”

  “It’s not a sleepover, mom. I’m seventeen years old.”

  “Whatever you call it, then. A stay-over, or sleep-away, or . . . slumber party!”

  “All of those are worse,” I said, throwing my duffel bag over my shoulder. “Okay, Mom. I love you, but Max’s expecting me.”

  “Of course he is. When are you going to bring him back over? It’s been a month.”

  “Mom, no one wants to come to Seguin. What are we gonna do? Go cow tipping?”

  “Honey, your attitude about Seguin has got to change,” she said. “Come September, you can’t hang out in New Braunfels all the time, no matter how nice Max’s mother is on the phone.”

  “Just let me enjoy the rest of summer before I become a hillbilly,” I said, trying to evade my mom and get out of the house. “Just think, I could be hanging out with Sylvia.”

  My mother wrinkled her nose like I’d shoved a rotten egg in her face. “Oh God! That little blonde nightmare.”

  “I think it’s lime-green now, actually.”

  “Green, pink, paisley, whatever. You know she called again today?”

  Sylvia had been calling me for a month, but I had been too busy hanging out with Max to call her back. My mother would intercept the call, only to be wrangled into a twenty-minute conversation with Sylvia about her dating life or the kitten she’d found or a movie she’d seen.

  “Honey, that girl keeps me on the phone forever. I love people from all walks of life, but I just can’t handle her. She’s a bad influence!”

  “Well, Max isn’t a bad influence, right? His mom is nice, and he only lives fifteen minutes away.”

  “His mother is really lovely,” she said as I stepped over the threshold and into the hallway. “Please give her the recipes I tucked into your bag.”

  I paused in the doorway. “You went into my bag?”

  “Well, yes. But it was empty. I was just . . .” She looked up dramatically and cleared her throat. “Okay, David. I need to tell you something.”

  “Oh God, Mom.” I sighed and sat on the bed, preparing myself for an avalanche of confession
al hand-holding and “feeling words.”

  “It’ll be fast. I promise,” she said, sitting on my bed. “Open and honest: I found your diary one day when I was arranging your sock drawer.” She paused and stared at me in silence for a moment before admitting, “Okay! I’m lying. I was violating your private space, looking for cigarettes and drugs. Anyway, I found your diary and—”

  “Mom! You did not read my journal?”

  “Oh, right. It’s a ‘journal,’ the ‘masculine,’ because you’re a boy, well, a man, really. Anyway, I read in your journal about some of your . . . feelings.” I got up instinctively, wanting to escape whatever was going to come from her mouth next. “Stay here, David. Let me finish. I know this is making you uncomfortable, but I’m your mother. I love you. We should be open with each other, open and honest. Now, your thoughts about Jake and his penis are nothing to feel bad about.”

  “Oh God! Mom!”

  “Honey, sit down. We all have desires,” she said, glancing to the parted bedroom door and whispering, “You know when Mother takes her ‘long baths’?”

  “Mom! You have to stop talking now!”

  My mother stood and proudly raised her chin. “I have needs as well, honey. All of what you’re experiencing is totally natural and nothing to feel ashamed about.”

  I grabbed my bag and headed for the door. “Mom, stop talking!”

  “David! Come back here! I’m your mother and I love you just the way you are!”

  My mom followed me to the car. As I started the ignition, she leaned into the window. “Honey, all I wanted to do is give you these.” And with that, three boxes of condoms fell into my lap. “Max is lovely and in this day and age, even true love won’t protect you from—”

  “Mom! Max is just my friend. He likes girls!” I looked down at the variety of condoms in my lap and shoved them back into my mother’s hands. “I’m only staying overnight. How much sex do you think I could even have in twenty-four hours?”

  “Well, I had to get a variety because . . .” Unfortunately, I didn’t drive away fast enough to miss the last part of her sentence. “ . . . I have no idea what your penis is like.”