by Blake Nelson
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And then police came and ambulances and the Outer Limits guy told us to stay calm but he was so freaked out he was scaring people worse. Matthew stashed his pot, and Todd and Luke went looking for Carla. Rebecca and I stayed in the dressing room with Cybil and everybody talked about who got hurt and what happened and if someone got killed or not and it was so awful. And then Todd came in and got us all together and he told us that he couldn’t get in trouble with the police and that they would ask us everything that happened and we should tell the exact truth but don’t mention his or Luke’s or Carla’s names.
And he was right. The police kept everyone there and we got trapped in the dressing room. Todd found Carla and of course they all got away. And then the police wanted someone who knew Jerry and Bobby and we had to talk to them. And the police were such assholes because they wouldn’t tell us anything. But they made us talk and I said that I knew Jerry and Bobby from high school but I wasn’t friends with them and they were pushing people and being obnoxious and everyone was getting mad. After that, Matthew and Greg got the station wagon and loaded their stuff and all this time Richard was sitting on a bench in the dressing room and not talking to anyone. And the police took everyone’s names but he was so quiet they missed him completely.
Jerry Kruger was dead and Bobby Wingate was in critical condition at the hospital. By Monday Bobby was in stable condition and it was so horrible because everyone at school asked me what happened and all I could say was they got in a fight with some skinheads. And everyone acted like this confirmed how bad Outer Limits was and it was so depressing and Darcy and Wendy Simpson even came up to me and they were like, “Are you still going to hang out there?” And everyone’s parents freaked out and there was an editorial in Hillsider by Cynthia Carmichael about how violent and hopeless our lives were. And a reporter from The Oregonian called me at my house and asked me a bunch of questions. My parents hadn’t heard about it but after that I had to tell them and they were so shocked and my mom said how much she hated the whole idea of Sins of Our Fathers and how I wasn’t going to associate with those people anymore. But I just shrugged and said I didn’t associate with people like Jerry Kruger. Those were exactly the people I was trying to avoid.
Then in the middle of school on Wednesday the police came to school and took Matthew away for questioning. After school me and Cybil and Rebecca waited for him by his car in the parking lot and people stared at us as they went home. We waited an hour and then another hour and it was six o’clock when the police car finally came back and let him out. He looked so tired. We didn’t even say a word, we just all gave him a big hug and held it for a long time.
Every day there was stuff in the newspaper about the police chasing the skinheads. And it was so weird because in The Oregonian Outer Limits was “an informal gathering place for disaffected teens, street youths, and skinheads.” And “Jerry T. Kruger, 17, and Robert Bryant Wingate, 18,” were “tragic victims of a rising tide of gang violence, hate crime, and anarchy that has overtaken our city streets.” Bobby was getting better and they had a picture of him in The Oregonian sitting in his hospital bed with his head all bandaged. And then they caught some skinheads in Idaho and they brought them to Portland and the Chief of Police went on TV and promised they’d get a fair trial even though everyone wanted the death penalty. But then it turned out the skinheads were only fifteen and they’d been at school that day and they were the wrong ones.
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And then there was a funeral for Jerry and an assembly at school and Matthew didn’t go because he was scared of Jerry and Bobby’s friends. At the assembly me and Cybil and Rebecca stood in the very back and Mrs. Katz made a speech and said what a tragic loss it was and how we were a troubled generation and we should look out for each other and all the rally girls cried and had to leave and it was like mass hysteria. When it was over we went straight to Taco Time where Matthew was and he said he was going to drop out because the football players would kill him or Bobby would when he got out of the hospital.
And in all the excitement people had forgotten that school was almost over and Cynthia Carmichael wrote an editorial about how life goes on and we should keep Jerry Kruger in our hearts but we also owed it to ourselves to think toward the future and toward Prom and it was pretty confused reasoning and everyone said it was one of her worst editorials. And then people wanted to dedicate the yearbook to Jerry but Mrs. Katz thought it was too controversial. And then Mr. Perry called me into his office and he was acting really weird and trying not to mention about Jerry Kruger and he told me that it was very important that I get an interesting job over the summer or do an internship and he gave me some pamphlets. They came in pretty handy too because that night my parents were about to ground me from downtown forever but I showed them the stuff and said how I needed to get an interesting summer job and could I please not go to camp?
About a week after that me and Rebecca were downtown having frozen yogurt and we walked over to Outer Limits and it was totally closed and shut down and you could look in the window and they had torn down the stage and all the stuff was taken off the walls and a big sign said FOR LEASE. We went into the Shoe Repair across the street and this old man said the city closed it down. He said it was a place for Nazis and that he remembered World War Two when he was a boy and how he never thought people in his own country would turn into that and how terrible America was now and how the young people scared him to death.
The next day at school I went with Cybil to Taco Time for lunch and she told me that Richard had quit the band. I guess I wasn’t shocked. The way things were going it made sense. Richard was really smart and a good student and he would probably go to MIT. And in a way, all the stuff he used to say about new music for a new generation didn’t make sense when people were killing each other at the shows. I asked her if they would still go out or be friends or whatever. She said they’d stopped doing that a long time ago. I said, “You did? Why didn’t you tell me?” She just shrugged. And it bugged me how Cybil never told you what was happening in her life and for once I told her that. She didn’t answer and so then I told her how I supported her band and I always tried to be her friend and she wouldn’t even tell me if she was still going out with her boyfriend. And then I sort of lost control because there was so much tension inside me and I yelled at her and I didn’t even mean it really. And she told me I was her best friend and she appreciated everything I did and she didn’t mean to be so closed off. And it was so embarrassing because then I started to cry and she got me some napkins. And then we were late for fifth period but Cybil said we should take the rest of the day off, we’d earned it. I had never skipped before but I didn’t even care and we got coffee and relaxed and then I felt a lot better.
The last couple weeks of school were the worst. People were totally cranky and the teachers thought we were evil and me and Cybil and Rebecca became sort of infamous, like everybody knew we were there when Jerry got killed. And Matthew was never at school and I was sure he would flunk but then it turned out he had some deal with the school psychologist and he was doing outside homework. And when Bobby Wingate finally came back everybody treated him like this big hero and there were all these cards stuck on his locker welcoming him back which Mrs. Schroeder made everyone write. And then Mrs. Katz called Bobby and Matthew into her office and they talked to the psychologist and it must have been embarrassing to Matthew but they had to do it because Matthew was getting so paranoid and he really thought they would kill him.
Then my mom got me a summer job. It was at this community radio station and they would actually pay me and I couldn’t believe it. And I had to call this woman Ms. Caliban and she really grilled me but I was so excited I was like, “Yes ma’am, no ma’am,” which made her mad and she told me to call her Sondra so I did. And I told her how I was really into radio and everything and she said I’d be emptying wastebaskets and I was like, “Cool!”
So I was all excited but it didn’t
start until June so I just finished off the year and studied really hard because Mr. Perry said the last term of junior year was the most important. So I went downtown to the library a lot and I even dressed more conservative because the scene was totally dead now. And Todd was back in Seattle and I didn’t feel like I needed to impress anybody. And when I saw Carla on the street one day I just waved and kept walking. And I still went out with Kevin sometimes and had sex with him sometimes and Rebecca was still chasing Matthew and I guess the most interesting thing was wondering who Cybil would go out with next.
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24
When school got out Matthew and Cybil started auditioning bass players. Matthew was going to play guitar. It was clear he was taking control of things now but Cybil insisted she still had her power and I guess she proved it when they got a girl bass player. Her name was Fiona and Cybil said it was good for everyone because she was female and a good musician and she liked all the the stuff Matthew liked like grunge and punk and heavy metal and now they would rock super hard. And me and Rebecca went over to Matthew’s where they practiced now and it was weird because Fiona was twenty-two and she just looked at us like we were little girls. She had her own six-pack and she drank and smoked cigarettes and we looked at Cybil like, Isn’t she kind of rough? But Cybil was totally into her and they were teaching her everything and being very careful and serious and you could tell they had big plans for Sins of Our Fathers.
And then I had my first day at my new job at KBAN. It was like public TV except it was radio and it was actually pretty dirty and gross inside. I had to empty all the wastebaskets and vacuum and then I had to sort all the mail and write up these lists of advertisements and write down all the messages on the answering machine. Ms. Caliban wasn’t very nice but other people came in and they would say hi and introduce themselves and some of them were nice but not all of them. And everywhere you went you had to listen to the radio because there were speakers everywhere and it was mostly boring jazz and talk shows about nuclear power and women’s issues and the black coalition. After the first couple days they let me sit at the desk I was supposed to sit at and this black guy named Jamaal, who did the jazz, made me go across the street and get him iced coffee and I was scared because Ms. Caliban told me to stay at the desk when I was being the receptionist. And the dumb lady at the store was weird and she gave me the most evil looks and I didn’t even know what iced coffee was.
But the great thing was when the day was over I was free! KBAN was on East Burnside where all the bums were but I could walk over the bridge to downtown and I could hang out and do whatever I wanted. Rebecca was working at this day-care place in the mornings and she’d pick me up and we’d drive around. And all of June was really hot and Rebecca and I mostly went to air-conditioned movies or to Scamp’s for frozen yogurt. And one day it was 105 degrees and we took our swimsuits and drove down to Riverside Park and found a rope swing. These boys were there and they told us how hard it was and all the rules of how to do it but I just grabbed it and went and it was pretty scary and I did a belly flop. And Rebecca went and the boys were so impressed and they wanted us to meet them later but they were East Side types and kind of greasy and we said we already had boyfriends.
That night we went to Matthew’s and watched Sins of Our Fathers practice and Fiona had learned all the songs and she was trying to get Greg to do things with her, like in “Oblivion” she wanted to leave a space in the middle of the chorus and at first nobody understood what she meant but then Greg figured it out and they started doing it and it sounded cool and everyone was very impressed. A couple days after that I saw Richard downtown and he asked about Cybil and Sins of Our Fathers and I told him how good they were getting and how Fiona was a real musician and they were sounding really heavy. He smiled and he was happy for them and he said he’d go see them when they played.
On the Fourth of July me and Rebecca and Cybil and Matthew and Fiona all drove down to this big rock concert jam that Matthew had heard about. It was in this big field by the river and it was all these heavy metal bands and heavy metal people in low-rider cars and the skankiest girls. The bands were these horrible poser guys with poodle perms and spandex. Matthew had a bunch of pot and me and Rebecca smoked some and we got so stupid we were giggling like idiots. And we went and sat by the river and these two studly metal boys tried to talk to us and get us to drink some of their Black Velvet. But we were just giggling and then Fiona came and started talking to them and being really sarcastic which made us laugh even more. And then these groupie girls came and they had total cleavage and the boys forgot about us pretty quick. Back at Matthew’s car Fiona said the groupie girls had fake tits and we were like, no way. But she explained how you could tell and then Rebecca asked her how she knew so much about it. Cybil glared at us but we were so stupid from the pot we didn’t care. And Fiona said don’t worry, hers were real and did we want to see? And Matthew said, “Yeah, show tits!” and Fiona started undoing her shirt and we just collapsed in the grass laughing.
And then one night I went downtown after work and no one else was around and I was walking down the street and someone came running up behind me and I turned around and it was Todd. And I had sworn to myself that I was going to be so cool and aloof when I saw him again but he had this big smile on his face and he seemed so happy I just had to give him a hug. And he hugged me back, sort of, and we walked along together and talked and it was so exciting and then he asked me where I was going. I said nowhere. He said he was going to pick up a check at Carla’s and did I want to come and I said sure!
Carla lived in an old apartment building in Northwest. Todd had a key and we rode up in this clunky elevator and he opened the door and I swear, I had never seen a place as trashed as Carla’s apartment. There were clothes piled up in mountains and this huge vanity was totally covered with jewelry and makeup and sunglasses and all this cool stuff. And there were about a hundred pairs of shoes spilling out of the closet and all these cool magazines spread around and books and candles and about ten million tapes around the cassette player. Todd got an envelope off the refrigerator and sat down on the bed. And I was just standing there, trying to look at everything and Todd said, “Sit, Andrea.” So I did. And then he asked me if everything was okay and I said everything was okay. He opened the envelope and looked at the check and asked me what I wanted to do and I told him I wanted to kiss him. He looked up from the check and he had the biggest grin on his face. So I kissed him once, really soft on the lips and it was just heavenly. Then we made out and he rolled me back on the bed and took off my pants and started to put it in. But he didn’t have a condom. And I had to squirm around and push him off to make him stop. So then he ran all over Carla’s with his penis bouncing around looking for a rubber and I didn’t have one because I was always afraid my stupid parents might find it. Then he picked up the phone and started to call Carla to ask her if she had any rubbers but I didn’t want her to know so I told him to come to the bed and I put it in my mouth and started doing that. At first I was sort of nervous but then he started moaning with pleasure and stroking my hair and it was sort of fun. And then he started to come and I didn’t want it in my mouth so I put it on my chest like I saw in a video. After that Todd told me how sexy I was and kissed me all over and then he went down on me and at first it tickled so much but also I was getting super horny. And then he licked it right in the spot and it felt so good and I squeezed my legs so hard I was afraid I was going to break his neck.
But then we had to leave because Carla was coming back. So we walked back downtown and it was dark and all the bums were on the streets and even they looked at Todd like he was so cool. And it was too late for him to cash his check so I bought him a frozen yogurt and then we went to Poor Boy Records and I bought him a tape of Bender. And then we walked up to Sweeny Park and he got some beer and we drank it and laid in the grass and looked at the stars. And he told me about Seattle and all the politics of the music business and how they alwa
ys rip you off and how pathetic people are when they get old, they forget their own dreams and just try to suck off other people’s. I said how I hated watching Lizzy Rosen’s grandpa walk down to the corner and how sad it was that everything that’s beautiful fades away. And he said he thought about that all the time and he felt like right now he saw the world through a perfectly clear glass but as the years went by it would get more clouded and murky and he would forget his ideals and that’s why he always kept a journal so that when he was old he could look back and remember. And I said how my dad always fell asleep in front of the TV. And he said that your parents probably believed everything you believed when they were young but life had broken them down and made them lose their dreams and once you had lost your dreams you were adrift and defenseless and the first adversity that came along would destroy you. And all this time we were laying in the grass and holding hands and it was just a perfect moment. And then he leaned over and kissed me and then we started making out and then he took off my pants and took off his own pants. But we still didn’t have a condom so we were just touching and rubbing against each other and then I wanted him inside me so bad I couldn’t stand it anymore and I reached down and put it in myself. And then we just laid there for the longest time. And we whispered to each other and he told me how beautiful I was and I told him I wanted him inside me every second of every day. And we tried to be still and not make him come and my legs were all the way around his back and it was in so deep and we were kissing so soft and slow. And then we couldn’t help it and we started doing it and then he started coming and he pulled it out and put it on my stomach and it was squirting all over. And then he laid down on top of me and the stuff was gooey and warm and sticky, like glue holding us together.