by Jason Myers
“Fuck you two,” Kyle says, tugging at the collar of his T-shirt. “I got a shitload of customers on Kennedy Street just waiting for me to get out of this show and meet them. They can’t wait for me to leave this bar.”
Cliff flips him off and then the two of us leave in my ride, and on our way to Langley Street, Cliff tells me to stop by his dad’s house.
Down in the basement, while Cliff fumbles through a stack of CDs, I ask him if he’s still banging his stepmom.
“Every once in awhile,” he answers, without looking at me.
And my mind flashes back to this one time when I showed up at his house sometime late in our junior year—it may have even been early that summer. Cliff had wanted me to swing by and drop off this Guns N’ Roses shirt that I’d gotten Steven Adler to sign for him after I’d seen Adler on a sidewalk while visiting New York with my father.
I knocked on the front door and rang the doorbell but no one answered. I knew Cliff was home, though, ’cause his car was parked in the driveway, so I walked around the side of the house to knock on his bedroom window after I noticed the light was on in his room. But as I stepped in front of the smeared glass panel, I was thrown by what I was seeing.
Cliff’s stepmother, buck naked, perched on her knees, giving Cliff a blow job. Cliff had his hand cemented to the back of her dark brown hair, controlling her head’s every movement, bobbing it back and forth like a bobblehead doll. It was intense. I stuck around. I watched Cliff pull his stepmother’s head back and spit in her mouth. Then I watched him nail her from behind, her hands braced against the yellow wall, clawing at the bottom of a Jane’s Addiction poster. And when it was over, after he came on her back, spatters of white clumps sliming down the crease of her back, I walked back to my car and drove away and let my sister sell the T-shirt on eBay, much to Cliff’s protest. . . . I owed her two hundred dollars, I told him, which he didn’t buy at all, and only dropped it a week later when I told him what had really happened. “Did you enjoy the show at least?” he asked me, wearing that sly grin on his face.
Yeah, Cliff, I told him. It was great.
Back to the basement.
I say, That’s fucking crazy, man. What if your dad finds out?
Cliff laughs. Takes a deep breath. He goes, “Yeah, right. My old man’s too dumb.” He says, “And even if he did, what’s he gonna do? It’s not like I don’t know about him and the whore down the street. Plus, I kinda like the idea of being close to the people I’m stabbing in the back. Makes me feel good for some reason. Like I’m better than them or something.”
So where’s Natalie been? I ask.
Cliff stops fumbling and shoots me a nasty look. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
What?
“Why do you care where she’s at? You thinking about her? Thinking about banging her again?”
Whoa, dude. I’m not even thinking about that.
“That’s good,” he says. “’Cause she thinks you’re a real asshole, man.”
Are you shooting heroin, Cliff? I ask, switching gears quickly because I’m not liking where that’s heading.
Cliff looks at his arm. “I’ve tried it. Why?”
It’s a nasty drug, man. Makes you do some crazy shit.
Cliff begins flipping through the CDs again. “If you wanna know nasty, bro, I know a girl who got hepatitis in her nose from sharing dollar bills.”
I don’t say anything.
And Cliff says, “Now that’s some gross shit.”
I light a cigarette and start rubbing my nose.
“Here it is,” Cliff snaps, holding up the new Husbands CD. “You heard this shit yet?”
A little.
“Well, here’s a little bit more,” he says, putting it on. He jumps to his feet. “I’ll be right back.” He runs up the stairs.
Taking a seat on the white leather sofa in the middle of the room, I pick up the new issue of VICE and begin flipping through it, slowing down in the Do’s and Don’t’s section.
I stop on a Don’t picture of this fat kid who looks about my age, wearing eye shadow and a bulletproof vest, posing next to a cardboard cutout of that fat dude who sings for that band, My Chemical Romance, and I start laughing.
Cliff walks back down wearing a new shirt—a pink one that says “I Shot Up the Brett Michaels Tour Bus and All I Got Was This Lousy Shirt” on it, and he tosses me an envelope with my name written on it in red ink.
What is this?
“Just open it,” Cliff says.
Did you just make this envelope?
“Just open it,” he says again, lighting a cigarette.
So I pull it open. There’s thirty-seven dollars inside, along with a free lap dance token for the Wild Stallion strip club, and a baggie with about enough blow in it for five lines, maybe.
What the hell is this?
“It’s my thank-you for lending me that money.”
I reach into the envelope and pull out the money, most of which is wrinkled, and I say:
This is my thank you?
Cliff’s shoulders arch. “I guess.”
I don’t want this. I told you not to pay me back and that I didn’t want to know what the money was for.
And the whole thing about not wanting to know what Cliff needed the money for is that it’s Cliff. Even though we’ve been tight since we were kids, most of the time it’s just better to not know what he’s mixed up in because it’s always bad. So you just give him what he wants because he’s still your friend and he’d never screw you over that bad.
“Just take it,” he says.
No.
“Why the hell not?”
Because this—I shake the money in the air—this is something that fucking Michael would give me back, okay. Plus, I know you just went upstairs right now and took money out of your wallet and grabbed the dance token and stuffed it into the first envelope you could find.
“So?”
I stuff the money back into the envelope and set it on the small end table next to the couch.
Don’t fucking worry about it.
“Whatever,” Cliff groans, and takes the envelope back. “Do you at least wanna do the blow?”
If you want to.
Cliff dumps the rest of it onto the VICE cover and makes six lines, and while we’re doing them, I ask him if he ever sees Laura.
“Not so much anymore. Why?”
Just curious.
“Why would you be curious about that? Did you hear something?”
No, I’ve been trying to work things out with her. I need to work things out with her.
“Whoa,” Cliff barks. “What’s that?”
You heard me.
I snort up a long rail.
Cliff lights a cigarette and walks to the other side of the room. “You should forget about her, man, and move on.”
Why do you and Chris keep saying that shit?
“Just because, dude. She’s trouble.”
What does that mean, Cliff? Is there something I should know about?
“No,” he grins. “It just doesn’t seem genuine.”
What doesn’t?
“This whole stand-up, nice-guy routine you’re putting on for everyone. Like you give a shit about people all of the sudden. It’s not fooling anyone, dude. We all know you want things the way they were before you left just so you can have your king-shit, big-time status back.”
Bunching my face, I go, Fuck you, man. What the fuck did I do to you?
Pause.
Seriously, Cliff.
Pause.
“I’m sorry about that,” he finally says. “That was totally uncalled for. I’m high. The devil’s dandruff can make you bark some silly things.”
I guess so.
Cliff’s cell phone starts ringing and he answers it, and when he hangs up, he goes, “Let’s go,” so we finish the lines and leave for the party.
• • •
On our way into the house where the party’s at, Cliff stops and talks wi
th a couple of black dudes, one with cornrows and the other with a shaved head. “Yo, Trav,” Cliff says. “I’ll catch up with you in a minute.”
Whatever.
I walk in, already wishing I’d stayed with Michael or maybe tried to do something else with the rest of my night.
Tried to read a book.
Tried to paint a picture.
Maybe tried to write some shit down.
Pushing myself through the living room, past like ninety kids dancing to some weak hip-hop shit, I make it into the kitchen, which is just as packed.
There seem to be a lot of high school kids around the place.
I notice an empty slot of space in a corner next to these two girls and I go stand in it and light a cigarette and take my cell phone out.
No missed calls.
One of the girls next to me is telling her friend that Jack White is definitely playing an acoustic solo show at either the Glass Castle or Whiskey Red’s in August.
Her friend goes, “How do you know?”
“It’s all over MySpace,” the girl answers. “It’s going to be so awesome. I’m going to throw myself at him. I don’t care if he’s married now.”
And her friend goes, “You’re so bad, Kat,” then burps and goes, “Let’s go home and check the Internet to see if there are any more details yet.”
They leave.
I scroll through my phone and I call Laura. I can’t help it. But this time she doesn’t answer. I get her voice mail—a verse from Patsy Cline’s “Crazy”—and I say, Hey, Laura, this is Travis. I just wanted to say hi and that I’m sorry about showing up like that at your parents’ house the other night.
Then I stop.
Pause.
I start again.
Actually, I’m not sorry. I want to see you as much as I can and I want to talk to you, really talk to you, face-to-face, so until you meet me halfway on this, expect more of the same. Bye.
I put my phone away and look around the kitchen, not really liking anything I see. Cranking my head all the way to the left, though, I notice this pretty okay-looking girl—big tits, blond hair, tight jeans, black tube top—staring at me while she talks to her even better-looking friend wearing a pink shirt with black kittens on it. And the girl staring at me seems vaguely familiar and she whispers something into her friend’s ear, then walks up to me.
“What’s up, Travis?” she asks.
I have no idea who you are. What’s going on?
“Not much. Drinking, hanging out. Talking shit.”
That’s cool.
“It’s been a while.”
It has.
“How’ve you been?”
I’m hanging in there. What about, um, you? You doing all right since the last time I saw you at the . . . um. . . . Where was it?
“Fuck you,” she snaps. “You have no idea who I am.”
Who are you?
“You fucked my ass in a bathroom at the Speedwagon Warehouse during that Lightning Bolt and 400 Blows show last summer.”
Christina?
“Lila,” she snorts. “You piece of shit. You choked me and slammed my head against the wall and came on my face, then gave me a fake phone number.”
Ya know, I’m sorry about that, I say.
“No you’re not,” she says. “You’re too dumb to be sorry about that.” Leaning into me, Lila goes, “I hope you rot in hell one day, man,” then she swings her arm around and smacks me across the face.
And instead of reacting in a horrible and regrettable way, I tell this girl, Good hit, darling, and slide past her, into this hallway, then into this bathroom, where these two kids wearing baseball caps turned sideways, with their knuckles covered in tattoos, with backpacks strapped to them, drinking forties stuffed into brown paper bags, are writing their tag names on the mirror with markers, and one of them goes, “What the fuck are you looking at?”
A couple of virgins, I laugh.
“What’s that?” the guy’s friend says.
Come on, dudes, nothing says virginity quite like bringing a marker to a party and tagging a bathroom mirror.
I keep laughing, stepping back into the hallway.
This is when I hear, “Travis! Omigod!”
Spinning around, I see my sister running at me all swagged out in a pair of way-tight Levi’s and a white halter top, with a navy bandana wrapped around her forehead.
By her side are two other girls, and all of them have bottles of Boone’s Farm wine in their hands.
“Travis!” my sister shrieks again. “No way you’re here!”
Well—
But she interrupts me.
She says, “You remember my friends, Amy and Katie.”
Katie is definitely not the girl I saw get tag-teamed by Michael and Cliff. She is pretty cute, though. She’s small, with long brown hair and high cheekbones.
Amy is hot. She looks like Paris Hilton with a few more curves.
My sister lights a cigarette and asks me if I can think of anyone, anyone at all that can hook her and her friends up with some X.
Nope.
“Come on, Travis. Be a good brother,” she whines.
Hook yourself up.
“But I don’t know anyone,” she groans. “Please, pretty please.”
“We’d be so grateful,” says Katie, who has this sort of wannabe hipster look going on, with big round shades and the odd color scheme of her outfit. “At least I know I would be.”
I’ll tell ya what.
I look away from Katie, over to my sister.
Cliff’s around somewhere, I say. I guarantee you he knows where to find it. If he gives you any shit, you can tell him I said it’s all right.
“Thank you so much,” my sister grins.
“You’re pretty awesome,” Katie adds, pinching my waist. Looking over her shoulder at my sister, she says, “He’s still cute, Vanessa. He doesn’t look as bad as you told me he did.”
“Oh right,” Vanessa grins. “I’m sure I was just a little overexaggerating. Give a girl a break, darling. Travis, you don’t look that bad,” she says.
• • •
In the basement of this house there are four red leather sofas pushed against the stone walls, which are covered with fake strands of ivy. I’m double fisting cups of beer, sitting on one of the sofas, staring toward the middle of the room at Chris’s girlfriend, April, who’s dancing with a few other girls.
Tonight April’s got on a white off-the-shoulder shirt with a stencil of Terri Nunn of Berlin on it, a red leather skirt, black fishnets, and an old vintage pair of bitch kickers.
Chris, he isn’t at the party, and when the OutKast that was just playing gets spun into an old Biggie Smalls jam, April struts over to me. She straddles my lap and begins dancing, squeezing her thighs around my hips.
It feels nice.
She smells nice.
Her skin is moist.
My knuckles are white.
But after the song is through, I gather myself and gently push her off of me like, Whoa.
My dick is really hard.
I walk up the stairs, then find the back door and go outside. April follows me, though. She locks her arms around me, trapping me against the side of the house. Then she tells me that she wants me to take her home.
I don’t think that would be such a good idea.
She pouts her lips. “Why not?”
’Cause you’re with Chris.
“And?”
That would be fucked up. Chris is my friend.
“I didn’t think you had real friends.”
What does that mean?
“You think you’re a god, Travis. And gods don’t have friends.”
You’re wrong. Chris is my friend.
“On what given day?” she snorts just as Cliff is walking around the corner.
Smirking from ear to ear, he stops when he sees the two of us so close to each other. “Well, what do we have here?” he snorts.
April’s face gets bright r
ed. “You had your fucking chance,” she whispers.
Damn, that’s too bad.
“Asshole,” she says, then walks away without even looking at Cliff, who’s still standing there grinning.
What, Cliff?
“I’m sorry, dude. I really didn’t mean to fuck that up for you.”
I wasn’t gonna do shit with her.
Cliff winks and nods his way in front of me. “Sure,” he says. “Nothing.”
Fuck you, man. I’m not like that.
Cliff pulls a smoke from his pack. “Well, you should be,” he says. “Because you just missed out on some good ass.”
You’re telling me you fucked April?
Cliff nods.
Really?
He shrugs. “What do you think?”
I don’t know.
Cliff gets in my face. “Do you think I’m capable of fucking one of my friend’s girlfriends?”
I don’t know. Get outta my face.
Cliff grabs my throat. “How fucked up do you think I am, Travis?”
I knock his hands away and go, Dude, you’re fucking crazy, okay? You’re a fucking asshole.
Cliff starts laughing. He says, “I didn’t nail her, but I would in a second. Fuck Chris.”
Pause.
“I ran into your sister,” Cliff says.
So what?
“I hooked her and her friends up with some OCs.
I thought they wanted X.
“They did,” he says. “But the dudes I talked to about it only had OCs on them.”
Whatever.
“Your sister’s a smokestack,” Cliff tells me. “And her friend, Katie. I’m totally getting her number, man.”
I don’t say anything.
I look past him, across the alley to the backyard of another house, where another, smaller party is happening.
The yard everyone at that party is standing in is intensely lit with bright porch lights.
Pointing in that direction, Cliff says, “You see those two guys with the shaved heads talking in front of the garage.”
What about them?
“Last December, they double-teamed some transvestite who’d apparently had her dick surgically removed, and when they found out that the girl had really been a boy once, they fuckin’ killed her.”
Seriously?
“Yep. And when they went to trial, they got off because their attorneys got the jury to believe that because the tranny wasn’t up-front with them about being a guy, their reaction was understandable.”