Simon Kerr

by Rainbow Singer (lit)

  'Where the hell's that?' the Beast growled. There was no point in saying anything other than, 'A long, long way away.' 'Oh,' he growled.

  'I came here to see you. Beast,' I said. 'You did? - all right!' his ego said, and he signed my programme.

  'You need that ol' helmet?' I said as he walked on by. 'Yeah,' the Beast growled, looking at me like I was mad.

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  I went after him. 'It's just I want a helmet like that as a souvenir of my visit.'

  'Kid. These helmets cost three hundred dollars apiece new.'

  'Wow - I mean damn!' I said.

  The Beast sighed. 'I'll tell you what kid, I need a new one anyway. You got the money, it's yours.' 'I don't,' I said.

  'Life's all about the dough, kid.' The Beast shrugged and strode away taking the 666 helmet with him.

  Of course the others took the piss out of me when I went over to the hot-dog stand.

  'What were you talking to the Beast about.'' said Phil.

  'His helmet,' I said.

  Phil nearly choked, and had to spit out a mouthful of hot-dog before he could laugh.

  'You were talking to him about Helmut?' said Derry, trying to redirect his Mom's attention from the dick joke.

  Helmut didn't get it. 'You were talking about me?'

  'Nah, his football helmet,' I said. 'I wanted one to show the fellas back home.'

  It was that moment - when I would be least amenable to it - that Mom Horrowitz decided to offer me some advice. 'You're shooting a bit high, Wil. Lower your sights and you'll be happier.'

  'Thanks, Mom,' I said sarcastically. 'I needed that.'

  Derry handed me my hot-dog.

  Phil, still sniggering, winked at me.

  I bit down into that hot-dog, hard.

  Phil's wink turned to a wince.

  Once we'd gorbed our lunch Mom Horrowitz took us to the Packers' Hall of Fame. She was as keen as the hot-dog mustard to show us this tribute to a once great

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  football team who had won numerous Superbowls in the Seventies - not the team of Beasty-Boy nobodies I'd got the autographs of.

  Outside the entrance of the Hall stood this huge, almost cartoonish statue of a famous - so famous he'd been left anonymous - quarterback about to throw. Mom Horrowitz sighed in front of the statue and then went to buy the tickets.

  'What's this place going to be like, Derry?' Phil said quietly as we queued.

  'If you like buffed trophies and rotting jockstraps, great,' Derry said.

  'Why's your Mom so keen to get us in there then?' Phil said.

  'She was a cheerleader at her school,' he said. 'She loves football. It's how she met Pops.' 'He played?' I said.

  'He was an offensive lineman,' Derry answered. 'Yeah,' I said to him. 'He still is.'

  The interior of the Hall of Fame was much as Derry had said: lots of glass presentation boxes containing gleaming silver and ol' mouldy leather and light-faded archive photos of men long since injured, in nursing homes, or dead.

  Mom Horrowitz, thinking we were kindred football-worshipping spirits and all, tried to be my personal guide around the place. The others left us to it. I pretended to be interested in her commentary until I couldn't take it any more. 'I have to go to the bog,' I said.

  'Oh OK, Wil,' she said. 'You hurry back now and I'll tell you about the Packers second Superbowl win.'

  I looked for the others on the way to the toilet. I saw Derry sitting on a stool in a corner picking his nose but I couldn't find Phil or Helmut.

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  Little did I know they'd be in the bogs.

  I was standing there having a slash when I heard these groans coming out of one of the cubicles in the corner. I pissed on in fits and starts. The groans got louder. I couldn't concentrate so I gave up. As I was washing my hands the groans turned to grunts: it sounded like someone was having the shite of the century . . .

  That's when I had this thought that someone could be dying on the pot like Elvis.

  'Are you all right in there.'' I said.

  The grunting stopped.

  What a way to go, I thought, and rushed out to get Derry off his stool. 'Come on!' I told him. He followed me into the bogs.

  We both saw Phil coming out of the cubicle, pulling up his trousers, all sheepish Hke. 'Was that you, Phil?' I asked.

  'What!' Phil said. He was flustered and clumsy doing up his belt.

  'I heard some noises,' I said. 'I thought you were going to die like the King.'

  'What?' said Phil. 'The King. Ah right - the King. Nah.'

  That's when we heard the giggling. It was unmistakably Helmut's dorky giggling.

  'Helmut?' I called out. 'Is that you?'

  'No it's me,' said Phil. 'Ventriloquism, you know. I've learned to throw my voice.'

  Derry went up to the cubicle door. He knocked. 'Helmut,' he said. 'You OK?'

  That's when Helmut chose to come out of the cubicle -the same cubicle that Phil had just come out of.

  What could you say at fourteen/fifteen - other than what Derry did: 'Holy shit, you're homos.'

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  I turned and left the bogs. Derry followed.

  A mortified Phil came out into the Hall of Fame after us. 'I can explain,' he said.

  We just looked at him like he'd grown two heads.

  Mom Horrowitz came over. 'Explain what, dear?' she said.

  Nobody said anything more.

  I mean, what could you say to two homos after you'd caught them at it? What do you know about homosexuality at fourteen or fifteen? Nothing if your parents have anything to do about it. Less than nothing if your school wants to stay in the business of brainwashing kids. All you know is disturbing playground rumours about never bending to pick up soap in the shower.

  In that taboo instant Derry and me became a subgroup of the Metal Mafia, an Us of our own, and the other two became a Them. It was Us or Them!

  With hindsight, Derry and me shouldn't have been so prejudiced but we were taught to be that way from Sunday School up - they make a big thing of God the Father destroying the sinful Sodom and Gomorrah even if they don't say what the sin was.

  'What's up with you guys?' Mom Horrowitz asked half an hour or so into the way home. 'You fall out or something?' Nobody answered.

  'You know,' she continued, 'you should all just say sorry to each other if you did. Like my Mom always used to say, "You shouldn't let the sun go down on your anger.'"

  Nobody was saying anything.

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  Until Phil broke the code of silence, 'Did you know, Mrs Horrowitz—?'

  I thought he was going to tell her what had happened. That we'd been mates with a couple of arse-bandits. So did Derry - and it made him angry. 'Shut it,' Derry the Hulk roared at Phil.

  'Derry!' Mom Horrowitz said. 'What's got into you?'

  The Hulk just glared at her.

  Phil tried again. 'Did you know, Mrs Horrowitz—' The Hulk roared again at Phil. 'I said shut it!' But Phil-him-in had other ideas. 'Did you know, Mrs Horrowitz - that I for one really enjoyed the trip.' Purple Helmut said, 'Me too.' The Hulk somehow managed to contain himself. Wily Coyote did too.

  'Oh well,' said Mom Horrowitz looking disappointed in her sons, both the permanent and the temporary. 'I'm glad somebody did.'

  If Mom Horrowitz had seen Phil fucking Helmut up the arse in them bogs I think she'd have been a bit less tolerant about the whole thing than we were.

  'I for one really enjoyed the trip!' Phil had a brassneck on him all right.

  Now you might detect in my tone if not in my words, that I'm still not exactly a big fan of sodomites. My view isn't based on the prejudice of others though; it's nothing to do with religion, or morality, or society. It's based on prison experience. Green Bay Correctional Institution will give you a certain perspective on the gay thing. In here male sex acts are stripped of any and all romantic illusions. They just are what they are: instinctive, violent, brutal, penetrative abuses of phallic power. I mean, women
may have been evolved by Mother Nature to take

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  it, but you try nearly being raped up the arse in the showers and see how much you like it!

  That's not to say that all guy-gays are bad and should be put in the gas chambers, or prison, and what have you. Nah. Only the group mind can condemn them. An individual must realise it's not their fault they're different. Again the fault lies with the Father. Maybe genetics will explain homosexuality better than psychology can at present but, if one in ten men over-identify with their mothers to the point of wanting to be fucked up the arse by their father, then I think I'm right to say that's another indictment of the patriarchal system.

  Yea verily I say unto thee, patriarchy buggers all us sons up.

  Some of us bugger back.

  Some of us get totally buggered.

  I know, I know, that's a crude way of putting it, but I've dropped my soap in the shower, and if it wasn't for a guard doing the rounds . . .

  Having said all that, I can't say I haven't been tempted in here to act like the Father myself. I'm a still a young man. Living without sex, living my teenage years and especially my early twenties as an intercourse virgin, has been tough as hell; you can get to thinking about sticking it in anywhere.

  Sometimes in Isolation, and now I'm being brutally honest with you, I even think about Phil that way. But back then, as an archetypal homophobe - we got shot of those two fags just as the sun was setting. Derry and me didn't even say goodbye to them, so utterly determined were we to let the sun set on our anger.

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  23

  Tornado

  I would absolutely not think of love that night. Not Teresa. Nor Phil or Helmut. And stupid Cupid, ol' Henry Winkler, well he could go and get stuffed!

  The whole A.M. of that Wednesday Derry and me reacted to Phil and Helmut being gay by pulling our puds over Debbie and other heterosexual porn lovers until they were red raw. Of course, him and me did it in separate rooms, our own Voids. We weren't fagoma-niacs. And of course we didn't say what we were doing or anything. We just took it as read.

  You know, we hardly stopped for breakfast. I came six times. On the sixth go though, my coming was like the spitting of hot acid so I took that as a STOP sign. I'd reached my natural limit of exploitation.

  In my experience anger is never very far from sorrow. And wherever they are, guilt is too. All these emotions needed to find expression in me after such a loss. But I wouldn't let them. I was in denial, see. I didn't want to be alone. Or more properly, I didn't want to feel so lonely. If it wasn't for Derry, for us being mates, and if it wasn't for Debbie wanting me, Debbie with her legs spread yearning for me, I think I would have fallen completely out of love with my life.

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  The Void.

  The Void would have taken me.

  I would have fallen. I so nearly did. I couldn't help thinking in vicious spirals - how could Phil have betrayed me, over and over, and then I'd think about Teresa, over and over, and then my mind would turn to my Ma and Da and how their love was just a bag of shite, and on and on, into an infinity of people abusing whatever trust I placed in them.

  It made me so angry. Aw Jesus it did, and try as I might, I couldn't find a channel for this anger, this sheer human aggression that was roused in me.

  Derry couldn't either. When I looked at him at breakfast I could see the gamma rays glowing in his eyes.

  In my experience violence is never very far from anger. And after the blows have been struck, follows the shame and the guilt - depending on who does the hitting and how much of a conscience they've been programmed to have.

  Mom Horrowitz had left us a note telling us she'd be back later and to eat the lunch of soggy tuna and onion and cucumber submarines she'd left in the refrigerator. The fish smell was a little too close to our own finger-stink so we passed on those and made some peanut-butter-and-jello toasties. Then we settled down, each of us in our private Voids, to watch some TV. But there was nothing decent on, nothing but some crap HBO movie on cable, and a load of weather warnings about the 60 per cent chance of tornadoes round Milwaukee.

  'Tornadoes,' I said.

  Derry yawned.

  'You ever seen a tornado?' I asked.

  'Yeah.' Derry got up to his feet and turned the TV off.

  'What do you do if you do see one?'

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  Derry stood over me and shrugged. 'Run. Get undercover or underground.'

  'Have you had to do that?' 'Yeah. A few times.'

  I realised Derry wasn't up for talking about tornadoes - that he'd something else on his mind - so guess what? I shut up.

  Derry lay down on the couch. After what seemed like an eternity in the Void, he asked me, 'So what does a terrorist like you do?'

  'Me?' I said.

  'Yeah.'

  'Aw, just small stuff.'

  He wasn't looking at me when he said. 'What -exactly?'

  'Territorial graffiti. Punishment beatings. Burn-outs. And running the estate protection rackets of course.'

  'Tell me about a punishment beating you did,' he said, his voice trailing off into something like a sigh.

  I said, 'Nah.'

  'I told you about mine!' Derry yelled. 'Now, you tell me about yours.' That was the first time Derry turned on me. I saw the Hulk flare green and nasty in his eyes.

  'OK,' I said. 'OK. There was this one time when the Hit Squad—'

  'The Hit Squad?'

  'My UFF patrol. Me, Wee Sammy, Brian and Rick the Prick.' 'Uh-huh.'

  'We were told to pay a middle of the night visit on this fella Johnny Mcllwrath who lived on the edge of our estate. He was a UFF drug-dealer you know, only he was suspected of pocketing some of the takings from his deals.'

  'Yeah.'

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  'So the four of us snuck out of our homes, got kitted out, and went round to his house—' 'You mean you had guns?'

  'Nah. We had the usual tools. A twelve-pound sledge hammer. Two baseball bats with six inch nails knocked through the top. And everyone had to bring their own knuckle-duster.'

  'No knives even?'

  'Nah, I told you. We just had the bats and whatnot. That's all you need. Anyway, we snuck round to his house and Rick the Prick knocked on the door real polite.'

  'Why didn't you just break the door in?' 'We always knocked real polite first time, that was The Hit Squad's trademark.' 'OK.'

  'Now or Johnny must have been seriously bricking a visit because would he answer his own front door, nah, no way would he. So Rick the Prick knocked again - this time with the twelve-pound sledge. All of a sudden we were unwanted guests in Johnny's house, up his stairs, into the bedrooms and rounding up his kids and his bird and kicking his high-as-a-kite arse out of bed. Wee Sammy dragged him down the stairs by the hair. And we—'

  I stopped of my own accord. There was something very wrong going on. I didn't feel right about telling my Terror tale. See the Hulk was sat on the edge of his seat waiting for it, waiting for Johnny to get it. And it was the Hulk, totally. There wasn't a trace of the David Banner left in Derry, just pure monstrous nuclear rage. In truth, I got scared, I choked. Maybe it was exposure to those gamma rays?

  'You what,' the Hulk roared at me.

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  'We beat him Hke we were supposed to,' I said and walked out of the TV room into the kitchen.

  The Hulk followed me though. 'Tell me about the beating,' he roared.

  I turned and said, 'Nah. I won't.'

  'Tell me!'

  The Hulk grabbed my arm and twisted it behind my back.

  'Derry,' I cried. 'Let go, Derry.'

  But the Hulk wouldn't let go until I'd told him what he wanted to hear. 'We dragged him shrieking like a woman out into the garden. Wee Sammy and Brian hit him with the bats until he was nearly out. Then Rick the Prick did his right knee. That's it. Satisfied?'

  'What did you do?'

  'Held him down,' I lied.

  The Hulk tugged on my arm so hard it f
elt like he'd dislocated my shoulder. 'The truth!'

  I screamed, 'I took the sledge and did his left. I did his left!'

  The Hulk released me, ran out of the kitchen door and was gone.

  I couldn't believe it. The utter bastard! He'd beaten me up when he was supposed to be my mate. The Hulk was no excuse!

  I sulked in my room for a while, lying on the bed dead quiet, like I always did after Da'd hit me. Then with a start, I remembered about the tornadoes. A 60 per cent chance of tornadoes! I jumped to, and went and turned on the TV sharpish. I didn't have lunch, I just sat glued to the cable Weather Station. I felt it was going to happen before it did, see. The Void was coming for me. And sure enough, the forecasters issued a tornado warning for the suburbs of New Berlin and Waukesha at three o'clock.

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  I'll admit it, that got me scared. I was fourteen and home alone. I don't even think I really knew what a tornado looked like. I certainly didn't know what to do if a tornado touched down - Derry's words of undercover wisdom hadn't really sunk in.

  I started looking out the window as well as at the TV; talk about keeping an eye out for trouble, that was me.

  Did you know a tornado starts spinning way up in the clouds?

  Did you know that it comes down like a finger from heaven? I didn't.

  Did you know that there is this strange calm as the finger stretches all the way down to the ground and then this roar as it hits?

  I didn't then.

  But I do now. See, that's what I watched happen slow at first; distant off in the grey afternoon sky; then mad-fast.

  The tornado touched down just outside the holy ground of the manse fields. It looked as though it was going to come the way of the manse.

  'Derry!' I yelled. 'Derry!'

  I could say I shouted out of concern for my mate, even though he was violent towards me, but the truth is I was probably just calling for company. Someone, anyone, to face the roaring Void with.

  Anyway, who should appear in the TV room door but the Hulk? He roared and picked me up and ran with me out through the kitchen and down into the cellar.

  In the underground gloom, David-Banner-Derry said sorry for what the Hulk did earlier. I said ta to Derry for what he did later. We left it at that. You may be thinking I should have been much more grateful to Derry, but as it