As nobody knows. As long as it’s secret.
And it doesn’t mean I can’t fall for him.
Because I do.
Which isn’t secret, not from Steve. But he gets scared. And stays scared. I don’t know he’s counting the days till I graduate from high school till what a coincidence, the day I graduate from high school.
When he tells me, It’s over.
So that’s my payback for setting it up.
Two years of a three-letter word when what I end up wanting’s a life of a four-letter one.
It sounds like bad Bette Davis but this is before.
Or is it when it started?
Me being like I am now.
And bad as I set Steve up, I knew I set myself up worse.
I knew.
Like I knew about him to begin with.
I knew.
I suffered, so I knew.
I was the victim.
Then years later, fourth-hand in a tranny bar, I heard he got married, divorced, became a woman.
Surgically.
Eve.
And do you know what happened to Eve?
Her number came up.
Thirty-ought-six.
Toe on the trigger, lips on the barrel.
Farewell to charms.
All that time, I thought I knew.
I didn’t know a goddamned thing.
Tim says, “Besides worn-out movies, with happy endings.”
30
Siouxsie says, “Oh, God, I’m frying the friendly skies and my own voice sounds like somebody else’s, hail Blitzer, you’re the man with the Coppertone tan and the Kodachrome plan, stopping on a rhyme like nobody can, so contagious, outrageous, profiles in courageous, call me rhymes-with-adobe in the depths of Okeechobee, it’s hard as whales tales telling a secret no one here knows because one person knows them all, but really and truly I do hear these voices sometimes, different ones, not the same ones, they’re not like your imaginary friends when you’re little, they’re total strangers, and you hear them but they don’t hear you, ever or hardly ever, and sometimes they’re not talking to you at all, but someone else, and you only hear them, so it’s like overhearing one side of a phone call and trying to guess what’s being said on the other end, don’t think I’m weirder than you’ll ever be but I’m not making this up, I’ve never told anybody but I’ve wanted to and even started to and stopped, it must be why I thought of this game tonight, it is why, it came to mind it came to mind, now I remember, walking back from Poseur, thinking about Rory lying there on the bed and how to get him talking again sometime, once at Astroburger he told me about squatting on the old amusement park pier after it closed and he had his crib way out inside the roller coaster at the end and he had to walk a frightrope practically to get out there, it was fully sketch and too he’d jump right off the pier to surf through the pilings and wreckage and debris, mystery-crazed and history-blazed that no one will remember or ever even know about unless the dudes, all the young dudes, right oh right, Mott is hot, the dudes like that gotta tell their stories, they’re the only ones who know, once it’s all cleaned up it’s all forgotten, this is the story of Rory Rotten, though he looked clean himself tonight, he’s paying more attention isn’t he, changing, it’s so cool staring at someone naked as long as you want, incog-neato, especially a dude when you’re a dyke because when can you ever really give a guy a good long body check without him thinking Whoa, she wants me to bring her over, and I like boys’ bodies, don’t be datin’ but don’t be hatin’, huck the fruit of all evil back to Harry and David, return to sender, sundress unknown, no such apple, no such Rome, give sly man Peter a rest please children and a cock and balls can rule with cool, can look really, hmm, decorative, forget the function and go with the curves and clefts and flaring ridges, rippled wrinkled dimpled skin, like Rory’s, it’s nice, all in proportion, it’s funny strange not ha-ha, watching him I thought of Rockets earlier holding my boob and if he can do it I can too, nice as hair pie I’ll take you, I wanted to cup my hand under Rory’s balls and have them hanging heavy there just to feel the real, I’ve always wondered, I’d never touch a trick like that, though Rockets was right as rain on the plane to Spain about no touchie no feelie with passed-out people, sex or no sex jack or jill you need nocturnal permission, I could just ask Rory, now you guys are in the know, you just have to keep smiling is all, and if something comes up, even for a fag even with a woman even with a dyke, it’s nothing to cry baby cry about, it’s just a fuckin jack in the box now isn’t it?”
the vex
31
Isn’t it, yes, caress us screech and every one of us, double-Dutch dykes, homos on the range, Anglo, Mex, in the Vex, all us fuckholes in the swirled rewarding to.
What did Siouxsie once call Slade?
Golden, gorgeous, punked-out surf god, football jock with a great big.
Crop.
Six foot two, eyes on you and all of you, all you.
“Fuckholes!”
“Fuck you!”
Times fifty, two times fifty, three times, four.
“But looking closer, I see—”
“You’re a pussy!”
He’s not though, he’s.
“The opposite,” says Siouxsie.
“A goon,” says Blitzer.
“On fire!” says Tim.
And with the Vicious Circle boot boy posse facing out below the head-high stage a goosestep in front of us Tim starts talking thread count in his lavender drawl, asbestos thread count, what else under the big black sun could keep Slade’s briefs from squeezing out sparks, he’s hot as axle grease on a streetcar named Desire, too hot for anything but spontaneous combustion.
And David seconds that emotion.
And isn’t it to die for, all this “fuckhole” commotion?
And behind me Blitzer’s arms tense tight against my slick bare back, oh danger danger, and Slade rewind-repeats, looking closer he sees.
“Two fags—”
And what does Tim throw into the mix, underhand girlie style, in my ear but not in what you’d call a whisper, “And this one’s ready to have your baby!”
And now it’s more than Blitzer’s arms. He’s standing so rigid he’s half a head taller, breath-breezing my buzzcut instead of tickling the back of my neck.
And out from the stage sprays down drops hot drops, drops spitter patter on my shoulders like rain, though not even magic and possibly tragic.
Just on us? Or all of us? Target spit, random spit, I can’t tell. No ins and outs tonight and how are we packed, like Sardinians in a sauna, or Finns in a fishtank?
“I see two fags to every fuckhole!”
And up there, they tear into their song about Pat Brown.
And down here, there is.
A sea.
The crowd surges behind us, hard surging hard, and Blitzer, buttonless, Damn! Fuck! sees the Futurama.
Of possibility.
And warns them away, Tim and David, warns far far from the forming forming, fast and surging, harder faster, just a sea but what a sea.
Of possibilities.
Posse boys grab Squid and Siouxsie, help them climb the Marshall stack, Blitzer grips my belt loops, keeps us together, bodies in waves, his fingers, those fingers, down downreaching, one who sees the possibilities, forming, surging, bodies in waves, I’m standing there, merging, with my legs spread, surging, like a sailor, in the eye of a whore, bodies in waves, my sweaty chest, his sweaty back, whoever’s dead ahead, slippery skin slapping, hot skin sliding, frontways backways sideways surging, the surge moves forward but he merges back, a side surge opens space enough just and my lightning strike fingers in time enough just, in front of him now, feel his feeling, seeing-eye fingers know his knowing, does he yes he knows knows knows, grinds against the tide again, rises up legs apart and back and down and closed and There, I feel his, clamped clenching tight, hot raining spit and the PA feedback and Blitzer too behind me still, fingers pressing so I know, pressing downwar
ds slow slow slow inside my jeans and only just so far but still, this is the way, his breathing hot, close in one way, me another, close in front him too and closer merging, tsunami surging, twothreegether all fall down, top-heavy scrambling but still our hands, all, most, Blitzer’s, mine, and him in front, I feel his.
Hand.
On my knee.
And I can’t look at him.
And I can’t hand him a branch of cold flame.
But then in the afterflail, then in the surgeback, then my fingers, two, stabbing through his jeans between, button button, skin on skin, hot skin slick skin still satin-smooth skin hard as hardest, soft as softest, allatonce, now me rising boot tips up, up up wanting fingers farther, Blitzer’s, wanting yes but frontwards same time wanting more, up and straining hard against him straining straining damn fuck yeah fuck at me on me, him and me, alone together, all at once, fingers knowing, all at once, bodies gasping, all at once, both us both us, all at once, the sweat the smoke the spit the shudder, laughter, shoving, feedback whine, just us or is it all of us, could it be that we all?
Fuckholes, all of us?
Come?
Here?
Right now?
32
“Come closer, fuckholes.”
“Faggot!”
“Oh, yeah? Next time don’t bite so hard when I come.”
“Fuck you!”
“You only spit as good as you suck.”
A spit monsoon.
But still and all.
We ought to fuckin drown him.
“Quarter beers and you can’t do better?”
And it’s like General Ulysses demanding an army, boots stomp double time, stomp stomp stomping on heaven’s floor towards the counter with the kegs at the top of the stairs, so just like that the crowd unpacks but Blitzer sees no Tim, no David anywhere.
Blitzer says, “If they went outside—”
They can’t get back in. And outside isn’t Hollywood where fruits and punks are a rhyme a dozen and a kiss a cousin, it’s East LA.
And Blitzer has their keys.
He says Slade shoots off his mouth after every song, there’s time for search-and-rescue if I wait right here, there’s no point in both of us begging our way back in if worse comes to curse.
“When the pit starts up just kick it behind the column by the right PA.”
I just say Cool, I don’t want to walk around anyways, not like this, all I really want to do is spill some beer down the front of my jeans, for camo.
And the more beer all we fuckholes buy, the more we back the cause.
“Drinking and driving!” someone yells.
“The Catholic fuckin Church!” Slade yells back.
Because the Vex is owned by the church. Cross my heart and hope to cry like a River Jordan. Downstairs it’s this arts center run by a nun, who’s not a punk obviously but she’s hip to artists and photographers and writers and Willie from Los Illegals convinced her to add bands to the mix in the hall upstairs instead of just renting it out for weddings and those fifteenth-birthday parties the barrio brethren put on to show off their lovelies before the lard in the beans makes them last year’s girls. And they don’t have a club license or anything but it’s too far from Hollywood for unfair competition complaints and calls for shutdown. And because it’s the church they’re immune to the liquor laws too, that’s what Connie Lingus told me, I mean kids get wine at communion, right?
So more people cheer than boo, and up on the Marshalls Siouxsie yells, “Catholic Discipline!”
Todd the drummer snaps out a roll and Slade yells, “They’ll get into your pants and suck your soul!”
Everybody rewind-repeat cheers. But most of these kids have no clue it’s the slogan for the band. They wouldn’t know Catholic Discipline at all without The Decline. They never went to the Masque. It’s like an urban legend. Already. Like sewers with alligators.
Jolly Green Giant–size alligators.
Yeah.
Squid says it’s possible if they feed on meat, a gator got her brother’s spotted hound and next thing they knew he was twice as big and back for her brother.
Siouxsie says there’s a grand total of two alligators in the state of Alabama, and they’re both in a zoo.
Squid and Siouxsie schooled me hard on alligators once, at the crib in the Jell-O factory, the night I got loose from Defective Services, first night A.D. as in After Darby. We even planned out alligator masks, how to make them right as bayou rain, and stay dry confusion with crocodiles. We talked about going to the zoo in Griffith Park, for research. And we talked about Adventureland Safari on Punk Day at Disneyland, and I told them what I never told anyone before or since, about Tony Adolescent in the cave on Tom Sawyer’s Island.
“You should have kissed him,” Siouxsie said. “He wouldn’t sing to you like that if he didn’t like you, not right in your ear.”
And I asked But why would he like me in the first place and they both got mad but never quite explained it either, not so I could understand.
Onstage Slade stomps his boot heel hard with the mic held close, a beat, twice, two beats, three times hardest, loudest, schooling.
“The Catholic Church is where it’s at! Have any of you needle-dicks ever heard of the Inquisition? Do you know about the Catherine wheel?”
What did John Doe once call Slade?
“I celebrate all religious holidays. Last month was Easter. You know how I celebrated Easter?”
A brain-damaged thug.
“You butt-fucked the Easter Bunny!” someone yells.
Someone right in front of me.
Also in need of beer camo in a strategic location?
I bet it’s him.
And I wish it wasn’t, that’s the trouble with the pit, when you’re in it you don’t want to be anything else but part of it and you hope it lasts forever, you don’t want to have to be part of anything else, but in the real world fun with friction doesn’t last forever and songs don’t last forever, you come, the drummer stops, and there you are, whoever you are, on the dance floor with all these strangers.
Who turn out to be.
Fuckholes.
“I was torturing this guy in the garage of my mom’s house in this nice suburban neighborhood with my whole family inside eating Easter dinner. And I had this guy tied up in the rafters with a rope around his legs and I was beating him with a two-by-four. I said, ‘Hang on a minute,’ and put the two-by-four down and walked into the house and kissed my aunt and said, ‘Oh, hi, how you doing?’ I grabbed a deviled egg, told them I’d be back in a minute, and I went back out, grabbed the two-by-four, and kept workin’ on the guy.”
Chord-drone, feedback, muffled drums.
Slade’s voice slow and spooky, ocean deep.
Cancel my subscription to the Resurrection.
More like spoken word than singing but it builds.
Send my credentials to the House of Detention.
And the crowd builds too, muscling back from the beer table, packing in from the sides pushing middlewards, pit-wards if there was a pit, but it’s a sway song not a thrash song, you can make out every word, Slade singing gently, a sound he hears gentle, gentle but near, very very near sound, far sound, allatonce.
Now I’m traffic-jammed in front of him, Sid-locked in place where left channel push meets right channel shove and the posse’s devotion stays the backside motion. So rewind-repeat, who’s with Blitzer through the leather door, that’s me in the Spotlite, white heat scorching from the centerstage brights, and next thing you know the sweatdrops start, Farrah style as in faucet, leaky, drip drip eyebrow drip, trickle trickle cheek trickle, razored-cheeks, both cheeks, Blitzer-kissed, beard-burned, sting trickle taste trickle, drip drop, salt rain, drip drop, what rain, will it rain magic rain?
And the music starts building.
And Slade is kneeling, gulping in air, gulping I hear, air I share.
What did Darby once call Slade?
I was backstage at the Fleetw
ood when Slade schooled Mike Marine on respecting his elders, the elders were Darby and Lorna, it was Vicious Circle’s very first gig, opening for Middle Class and the Germs, and Slade beat down Mike barefisted, beat him all to fuck for sitting on Lorna’s amp after Darby said Get off. And Darby kind of took credit afterwards, Don Bolles painted war paint stripes with Mike’s blood on Darby’s face and when Darby told the crowd whose it was they all went coco-loco nuts, Mike’s like human weather, bad weather, he’s that X-head psycho in The Decline, we all talk the shit-talking talk but it’s only Slade who ever stomped the stomp.
Darby said.
Slade should be Vicious, Sid was a sweetheart.
Music, building.
Slade, kneeling.
I crane my neck, open my mouth, a circle waiting, a circle wanting.
Music, building.
He spits, I swallow.
Building, built.
We want the world and we want it now!
I’ve got my stick in my hand and my chain round my neck, but there’s ifs and maybes exploding all across the big bang sudden swirling spit-hosed universe, all these ifs, all these fists, if there’s room to swing the stick, all these kicks, if I unlock the chain, chokeholds maybe, if I don’t all fall Humpty Dumpty down, takedowns maybe, if I don’t get slammed, gang-ups maybe, if I don’t get stomped, all these punches, maybe if I just stay low, no one bends down low to punch, it checks your swing, maybe if I low just flail, maybe maybe, here where it’s closer to one on one, the real pit’s farther back from the stage, if I only stay planted but but but, all these bigger, all these burlier, the music stops building but not the force, the faster faster whirlpool force that spins you from the edges right into the pit when it’s full-speed raging and it almost is with dudes dudes dudes, these linebacker dudes, grabbing more than punching now, grabbing and tripping, grabbing you to slow them down but pushing too, pushing you, so you go faster, you’re caught, can’t stop, hurtling headspinning for the Type O red zone.
What We Do Is Secret Page 16