by Jason Myers
What are you even talking about?
Pause.
“Never mind,” he says.
When’s the last time you slept? I ask him.
“I’ve been sleeping all fucking day,” he snorts. “It’s what I do now. Where the hell’s the beer at?”
Where it’s always been.
Cliff walks into the kitchen and grabs a bottle of Heineken from the fridge.
“You want one?” he asks.
No.
“I got some pot. You wanna smoke?”
Nope.
“Suit yourself, dude,” he says, and opens the beer. Takes a long drink, almost half of it.
So what’s new, dude?
“Not much, man. Still living with my dad. Working a few days a week at the American Apparel store on Kennedy Street.”
How’s that?
“What?”
Work?
“It’s cool. Babes are hot. Cheap clothes.”
I notice a couple of track marks on Cliff’s left arm. Cliff slides that arm around his side when he sees me looking at it. He goes, “So, Arizona didn’t work out. I told you it wouldn’t.”
It wasn’t Arizona, Cliff.
“What was it then?”
My back stiffens.
I don’t know what it was.
“I guess it doesn’t even matter anyway. You’ll never have to worry about your future. Not when your father owns half of the city.”
I don’t care about that.
“Since when, man?”
Since always, Cliff.
He makes this snorting noise and takes another drink. His cell phone starts to ring. He answers it and walks into the living room while I dig into the pocket of my jeans and pull my cigarettes out.
I walk out back and sit under a red table umbrella. Cliff walks out a minute later with a new beer and sits down next to me, lighting a Marlboro.
Who was that, Cliff?
Turning to me, grinning, he says, “Natalie Taylor.”
Kyle told me you two were messing around.
“Something like that,” he says. “She just moved into a trailer in Lowell Park.”
That’s . . . great, man.
“It’s not that bad, Trav. It’s cheap. The trailer was her aunt’s.”
It’s still a trailer park.
“Don’t start this bullshit critique stuff with me, man. Not all of us have what you have,” Cliff snaps. “Fuck you for coming back home to live with your parents and talking shit on people.”
Whoa, dude, I say, taking a drag. I wasn’t trying to be a dick.
Cliff pushes a series of smoke rings from his mouth and says, “Bullshit.” Poking and twisting a finger through the center of one of them, he goes, “You’re always trying to be a dick.”
I roll my eyes.
Yep. That’s me. The big dick. The big asshole.
The corners of Cliff’s lips arch. “See, even you can admit it, Travis.”
Well, you didn’t seem to think I was such a bad guy when you called me a few months ago and wanted me to lend you all that money.
“Shit, man. Like I’ve never helped you out before. Like I’ve never taken the fall for you during a pot bust or lied to Laura about being someplace with you while you were out nailing some sweaty meathog from the Diesel store. Nothing like that.”
What’s your point, Cliff? You trying to get at something?
“Nope. Not a thing.” He looks down at his cell phone. “I have to get going. I have some errands to run.”
I flick my smoke onto the cement and watch the wind push it back and forth until it rolls into the pool.
Pulling a joint out and handing it to me, Cliff says, “I know you said you didn’t want any, but just take it as a sign of my new goodwill to you, Trav.”
I take it from him and drop it into my cigarette pack.
Cliff gets to his feet. “Later, dude.”
Later.
He disappears back into the house while I think back to March, when he called me and asked me if he could borrow some money.
How much? I went.
“Only three hundred dollars.”
Only.
“Please, man. I’ll fuckin’ pay you back, I promise. I’m in a jam.”
Fine, I told him.
“Really?”
Yeah, really. But I don’t want you to pay me back and I do not want you to tell me what you need it for.
“You’re the fuckin’ best, Travis Wayne.”
Yeah, man. The best.
3.
MICHAEL CALLS ME AND TELLS me that he’s just left his band rehearsal space and is on his way back to his parents’ house to change and shower and wants me to meet him there, then hit the party.
I can do that.
“Cool, brah.”
After I jack off to one of the Sydney Steele DVDs I brought home with me, I do fifty crunches on my bedroom floor, then shower and get dressed. Pair of jeans. Pair of Doc’s. White V-neck T-shirt.
Then I’m off.
• • •
Michael’s parents live in a huge house just past the financial district in the Snow Valley neighborhood.
The two of us have been friends forever, almost as long as me and Cliff. We were arrested for the first time together. It was in eighth grade and we were in the same gym class, and during one period, our coach left his car keys lying on a clipboard inside the locker room. Michael took them, and the two of us cruised around in our coach’s ride for a couple of hours, listening to this rad Charles Manson tape we found in the guy’s cab, but on our way back to the school, we got pulled over for not coming to a complete stop at a stop sign. We were arrested and held for the next eight hours and forced to complete fifty hours of community service. Fifty hours that consisted of painting a toolshed for some handicapped dude, and working four straight weekends at a nursing home doing things like wheeling old people outside for fresh air and cleaning bedpans.
I park the Eclipse at the top of the driveway and walk to the front door and Michael opens it, a red bandana tied around his forehead, the Pat Benetar lyrics “Love is a battlefield” tattooed across his stomach.
Michael’s about six feet tall. His skin is more tan than I remember it being last summer. His brown hair is shaggy, unbrushed.
Hey, dude.
Michael tosses his arms around my neck and kisses me on the cheek.
It’s nice to see you too, Michael.
“Isn’t it,” he says, smirking.
I follow him into the kitchen.
On one of the counters is the Replacements Let It Be vinyl with a pile of blow sitting on the cover. Michael hands me a Miller High Life forty and says, “I picked these up on my way here,” then takes a pull from his.
Where are your parents?
“London. I think my old man’s there on business and my mom went along for the ride.”
Michael’s father is a financial consultant for some big Midwest corporation.
Handing me a pen that’s been hollowed out and cut in half, Michael goes, “Chop yourself a rail.”
Nah, I’m good.
“Fuck you. You’re not good. Do a fucking line, man.”
Okay. I’ll do a fucking line.
Pulling a bank card from my wallet, I make myself two rails. Do both of them. Hand the pen back to Michael.
Are you ever going to move out of your parents’ house, man?
“I already have, you fucking pilgrim.”
When?
“In March. I moved into a loft on Crystal Street, but shit got out of hand between me and one of the douche-wads who lived there, Siv.”
What happened?
Leaning down and slamming two huge lines, Michael shoots back up and barks, “That dude showed up at the place one night wearing a moped helmet and a fucking cape, and started blasting this Dio album over and over, just loud as fuck, and I really like Dio, man. I loved him with Rainbow, but not twenty times back to back, ya know. So I knocked on his bedroom door and asked
him if he would turn it down and he grabbed my hand and tried to bite it, so I broody slapped him as hard as I could in the grill, man.”
Fuck yeah.
“Totally, dude,” he says, reaching over the counter and laying me some skin. Cutting two more lines, Michael rips, “Anyway, like two nights later, he barges into my room and accuses me of stealing his socks.”
What?
“Yeah, Trav. He was like, ‘I used to have fifteen pairs of black socks and you used to have twelve, and now you have fifteen pairs and I have twelve.’ And I was like, ‘Get the fuck out of my room, man. If you ever come in here and count my socks again, I’m gonna light your fucking cape on fire.’ ”
You have to be tough sometimes.
I sniff, chocking down a huge drip.
“You’re damn right,” Michael says. He leans down and devours the other two lines. Popping back up, taking a huge breath, he goes, “So things calmed down for a few days until one day the dude jumps on the stair railing and tries to ride it like a surfboard and breaks the fucking thing.”
Was he wasted? I ask, forcing a swallow of beer down my throat.
“No. He was dead sober, and I was like, ‘Yo, dude. That shit might be cool on Saved by the Bell but not in real life.’ And he was like, ‘You’re the reason why I hate everything in my life!’ Then he tried to bite me again, so I had to bitch-slap him again, and after that I stayed with this total babe for a few days to let things cool off, and when I came back to the place, all my jeans were lying in the middle of my bedroom floor with the pockets cut out of them.”
Awww. What a pie grinder.
“Yeah, man. That guy was a total troll humper,” says Michael. “So I ended up moving back here the same night.”
What about school?
Michael leans down and slams the other two lines he just cut. “I’m taking a year off,” he grins, rubbing his nose real fast. “Gotta find myself, ya know.”
I start laughing.
Fuck you.
And Michael carefully picks up the record. “Let’s go down to the basement.”
I follow him through the living room, then down some stairs, and Michael flips on the lights.
The first thing I see is the green sofa he and I jacked from the back of a pickup truck last summer after a Bad Wizard, Dead Meadow, High on Fire, and Year Future show at the Breaking Point.
Still got it.
“Obviously, man. Obviously.”
On the walls are some posters. A Lost Boys one with Corey Haim and Kiefer Sutherland on it. A Kip Winger one with a vagina drawn on it. A Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers one. And a poster for the Vincent Gallo movie The Brown Bunny, with a shot of Chloë Sevigny about ready to suck Gallo’s cock.
Across the room, someone’s taken a black marker and sketched a gnarly fat girl with one tooth and spaghetti string hair, and underneath the sketch in red paint are the words “Grundle Pigs Stole My Undies.”
I ask Michael who drew it.
“The bass player in my band, this guy Dave.”
Who else is in your band?
“This guy Thomas. He sings. And this other dude named Rodney plays lead.”
Michael sets the record down on a small table in front of the green sofa and turns on the stereo.
Wires on Fire start destroying and Michael goes into his bedroom to change.
Taking a seat on the sofa, I chop myself another rail and notice all these yellow Post-it notes that have been scribbled on. I pick a few up and read them, and realize that all of them are poems he’s written. Poems that go:
the nature of the beast is how i define myself
lost and abortioned to these ancient days
the coffee of my spirit is what i’d call decaf
when i go outside it’s like walking through a maze
Or:
the morning dew on the summer flowers is priceless
true beauty has always been my first command
all this time I’ve spent in here sitting
i coulda been like an indian and cultivated the land
I lean down and take the line and Michael walks out of his room wearing a Buddyhead T-shirt that says “Punk Is Dead” on it and a pair of girl’s jeans, which he started buying like two years ago so he could get the tightest fit possible. He sits down next to me and goes, “What do you think?”
About what?
“My poetry, man.”
It’s pretty all right. When did you start writing?
“When I joined Lamborghini Dreams. But these . . . ,” he says, scooping up a handful of the Post-it notes. “I wrote these toward the end of this four-day speed bender I went on last week, where I did nothing but sit in this basement and watch Van Halen videos and David Lee Roth interviews on YouTube. Shit totally inspired me, Trav.” He cuts up another line and takes it. “It really did, man.”
• • •
We stop by Kyle and Chris’s pad a little past ten to score some more coke. My friend Claire is there with Kyle and his girlfriend, Emily, who’s also one of Claire’s really good friends from college.
When Claire sees me walk in, she runs over to me and jumps in my arms and kisses me on the lips. “Ohmigod! I just heard you were back in the city!” she shouts.
I set her down.
Yeah, I’m back.
“I know it,” she shrieks.
Claire looks absolutely amazing tonight, but then again, she almost always looks this amazing.
Her blond hair is pulled back, pinned behind her ears. She’s got on a white top that says Modern Lovers across the front of it. A black lace skirt with pink trim. A pair of bitch kickers. Black knee-high socks. And she’s also added to her left arm a black and gray still frame of a man carrying a woman down the stairs from the movie The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, to go along with the band of black and gray roses across the top of her breasts, and the Hank Williams lyrics “you win again” just above that.
Seated on a raggedy couch are Kyle and Emily, and sitting on the coffee table in front of the couch is a scale and a bunch of coke and stacks of small plastic baggies with red hearts on them. Most of the sacks have been filled with the coke, but a few haven’t.
I walk toward Kyle and he stands up, bumps my fist, and says, “This is Emily.”
Emily is very cute. She’s got black, shoulder-length hair with bangs that have been cut straight across her forehead, these intense green eyes, and a full sleeve on her right arm.
She shakes my hand.
I’m Travis.
“I’ve heard a ton about you, Travis,” she says, straightening her white David Bowie top. She’s also wearing a denim miniskirt, black tights underneath that, and a pair of knee-high black leather boots with zippers on the sides.
Really? You’ve heard about me?
“Of course she has,” says Claire, wrapping her arms around my waist from behind me. “We always talk about you when you’re not around.”
Kyle fills another baggie and Claire pushes me onto the blue reclining chair and plops on my lap.
Kyle has been dealing since we were freshmen in high school. Back then, it was strictly weed and painkillers—Xanax, Vicodin, Valium—until late last summer when Michael introduced him to the brother of this Asian girl he was humping. Apparently this Asian girl’s brother had a small operation but didn’t have shit going inside the rock underground clubs and hipster scene around Kennedy Street, so Kyle and him struck a deal, and from that moment on Kyle’s been doping up all those kids with coke.
Michael walks around the coffee table and wedges himself in between Kyle and Emily on the couch and drops sixty dollars on the glass tabletop. “Two grams at discount price, please,” he tells Kyle. “Mr. Wayne is back in town.”
Kyle takes the money and slides Michael two baggies, then Michael tosses one to me and says, “My treat, dude.”
I slip the coke into the left front pocket of my shirt and ask Claire if she’s going to the party on Livermore.
“Maybe later,” Cla
ire says. “We’re gonna go to the Inferno for some drinks first.”
“Fuck that place,” Michael snaps, after he pops his baggie open and takes his key chain out. “That place is bullshit.”
“Free drinks for me and my friends,” Claire says. “I just started barbacking there.”
“And,” Kyle jumps in, sealing another gram, “I can probably make a grand there in about an hour and a half. It’s Friday night. Payday.”
Michael rolls his eyes. He dips a key into the baggie, scoops out a large bump, and snorts it. “I don’t care what you guys got going there, the place sucks. It’s like a fucking scenester prom for girls with fat asses and bad makeup and bros who dig eyeliner and think the Bravery are the truth.”
Everyone starts laughing and Michael hands the keys and baggie to Emily.
“Regardless,” Kyle grins, weighing out another gram, “it’s a good money night. I’m still thirty bucks short on rent and I still owe Chris for those parking tickets he paid off for me in April.”
Where is Chris? I ask.
“Yeah, what’s that pig doing?” Michael snaps, digging into the twelve pack of PBRs sitting on the other side of Emily and tossing me one.
“He went to that Nine Inch Nails, Mars Volta show in Chicago with his girlfriend,” Kyle answers.
Who’s his girlfriend?
Claire twists her neck around to look at me. “April Brown,” she says.
Wasn’t she a couple of grades below us?
“Yep,” Kyle says, then finishes weighing out his last gram. “He’ll be back on Sunday.”
Emily stands and hands the baggie and keys to Claire, who looks at Michael and tells him thanks.
Michael winks. “For you, Claire—anything.”
I open the beer and watch Kyle count all the baggies before he stuffs them into a plastic bag, and the plastic bag down the sock on his right foot.
Claire scoops out a bump and takes it and I ask Kyle to play some music. He hits the play button on the stereo remote in front of him and the Murder City Devils come on.
Claire grabs my hand and puts the coke and keys in it. “It’s really good seeing you again,” she whispers, running a hand down the side of my face. “It sucks that we lost touch, but it’s so awesome that you’re back in town.” She kisses my cheek. Stands up and goes to the bathroom.
Leaning forward, I dig deep and hard into the baggie and load a bump, then hand the stuff to Kyle and ask if Cliff is shooting heroin.