Punkzilla

by Adam Rapp

  In my dream the flying gorillas didn’t have wings. They just flew with their arms extended and their fists pushed out in front of them. There were thousands of them and the sky was mad yellow and for some reason I knew that the color of the sky and all of those flying gorillas somehow meant the end of the world like as soon as they passed overhead everything would turn dark and murky before some atomic bomb would hit. I have to wonder if those gorillas have something to do with the gorilla that was on the sweatshirt of that girl Mags I spoke to at the University of Pittsburgh that skinny pale girl with the fuzzy cheeks who gave me five bucks. She had a gorilla on her sweatshirt too! It’s weird how something like that can turn into other stuff in your dream. A simple memory suddenly multiplies itself by a thousand and takes over your sleeping life. I’ve heard that that’s how acid works. You drop a few hits and suddenly cartoon people start walking up to you asking for directions to the ski lodge and shit like that.

  I woke up in the waiting room of that bus station in a serious panic and it took me a minute to catch my breath and I’m really glad I didn’t wind up going into some death coma although I have to admit that at least part of me is a little worried that I AM in a coma P and this is all being written from inside my head and my body is frozen and I’m just a slab of meat on a table somewhere in the middle of Idaho with drool slipping down the corners of my mouth.

  Do you remember when I fell off the front porch and cracked my head open on that fake doe in the wood-chip bed? It wasn’t the three ceramic deer that huddle it was the little doe off by itself the one that’s next to the mailbox now. I think I was like seven or four or something and everyone freaked out because apparently my head hitting the doe made such a loud noise and that neighbor lady with the big splotch on her face thought I had cracked through some nest of bones in my head or fractured my skull or something. It was Mrs. Loomis or whatever her name was and she had that splotch on her face and she had a shiny pink nose and Mom was always talking about how she never shaved her armpits properly. Do you remember how she came over with that neck brace thing and how Mom kept trying to put it on me? This situation is easily as bad as that P maybe even worse I shit you not. If you saw me you would believe me. Anyway remember how there used to be a fake rabbit next to that fake doe and how someone stole it and Mom thought it might have been that weird mailman dude with the old-school knee brace? Well I wanted to let you know that I’M the one who stole it P. I totally stole it and kept it in this box under all of your and Edward’s old report cards. It was in that General Electric box that the microwave came in and I would go down to the basement every so often with a black Sharpie and draw on the fake rabbit. I would draw like a mustache and some tiger stripes and a black eye. When I think about it now I feel sick like way sicker than I feel when I think about all the bad stuff I did this past summer all that stuff that sealed the deal for me getting sent to Buckner. It’s the rabbit that makes me feel most guilty and ashamed P.

  Anyway when I cracked my head open on that doe you kept spraying me with water so I wouldn’t fall asleep do you remember that P? You have to remember that! I wasn’t dreaming that too was I?

  After I woke up in the waiting room of the bus station off to my left this old man was cleaning a fake tree. He was moving so slowly it was like he’d been poisoned. His face was yellow and dry and he had the eyes of one of the Major’s trophy bass.

  I asked him if he saw anyone coming out of the men’s room meaning those punks who jumped me but he just looked at me. He barely even shook his head. He was so out of it he could have been sleepwalking.

  My head was pounding and my mouth was dry so I used the money from my sock to buy a packet of Advil and a Coke at the gift shop and I asked the woman at the cash register the same question. She said she didn’t see anyone. The cash register woman could have been Mom’s long-lost sister I swear P she had the same color eyes and the same little turned up nose like the one I inherited.

  I pushed the Coke and the Advil toward her and she told me I was bleeding and I nodded and she asked me if something happened to my ear and I told her I picked a scab. “It’ll stop” I promised her. She made the same concerned face Mom makes like she’s doing a Tide commercial twenty-four hours a day or something and the cash register woman told me I should leave scabs alone that that’s how cuts get infected and I nodded and walked away.

  When I returned to the waiting area this little kid with a purple-and-gold College of Idaho coat was sitting in my seat. He was like eight years old and his hair was so red it looked dyed for Halloween. It was way redder than Carson Block’s mustache which was pretty red. The kid was eating a bologna and cheese sandwich and a mini can of Pringles. I sat down next to him. After a minute he stopped eating and he covered the sandwich with a napkin and put it in a plastic bag and then shoved the whole thing in a book bag that he was wearing in the front the way little kids do. Then the kid turned to me and said “Did you fight back?” He was obviously referring to my fucked-up face. I said “I didn’t even see them coming” and he said “They jumped you?” I nodded and then he told me I had blood on my ear and I wiped it off with my hand. He asked me if it hurt and I said “No” but my voice sounded weird sort of like I was talking into a paper bag. Then he said “You got more blood there too.” He was pointing at my neck so I wiped it and that’s when I could hear the ringing in my ears and I was starting to really freak out. He gave me the napkin that was balled in his hand. I took it and pressed it to my ear and it mad stung.

  Then he asked me if I lived in Caldwell and I shook my head and then he asked me where I was from and I didn’t know what to say but I told him I was just in Portland and he asked me if that’s in California and I told him it was in Oregon and then he said that he had cousins in California and that they lived in Sacramento and that they got season tickets to the Kings and that the Terminator’s their government and I corrected him and said “Governor” and he said “I mean governor” and told me he had just seen Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines on DVD. He was like “My mom finally let me watch the whole trilogy. In number three Arnold’s called Terminatrix and he goes back in time to save John Connor. I thought it was fair to middling. The first one’s way better.” Then he asked if I had relatives in Caldwell and I told him I was on my way to Memphis and how I just got off my bus for a second to use the bathroom and how I got jumped and how when I came out the bus was gone. He was outraged P you should’ve seen him. He said “The driver didn’t wait?! Where’s the justice?!”

  He was one of those kids who looks at you so hard he practically burns a hole in your soul. We sat in silence for a second and then I asked him what was up with his coat. I said “Are you like a genius or something?” and he said no and I told him he was pretty young to be going to College of Idaho and then he told me his dad was the basketball coach there. I asked him if his dad was coming to pick him up and he said his mom was and how he was at his cousin Larry’s house and how Larry lives in McCall and how they got a lithium springs and six hundred miles of national forests and how the elevation’s really high there so you have to drink lots of water or you’ll get constipation. Then just like that he changed the subject and said “Hey have you ever played Cold Fear?” I asked him if that was one of the Terminator movies and he said “It’s on Xbox. Cold Fear introduces a new kind of horror experience in a constantly shifting environment at sea. You get to be Tom Hansen a U.S. Coast Guard crewman whose team is sent to investigate an abandoned Russian whaling ship.” I said “What if you don’t want to be Tom Hansen?” and he answered right away he said “You don’t have a choice. It’s not such a bad thing though. T.H. is pretty cool.”

  Then I asked him what happens and this is what the kid said. He said “As you delve deeper beneath the ship’s bloodstained decks you encounter hordes of evil creatures. To survive you must eliminate your enemies and avoid traps and attain helpful information from other characters on the ship. It’s a lot like Resident Evil 4 but I think it’s way better.”r />
  I told him he sounded like an expert and he said “I was the best at Super Monkey Ball Deluxe but that got boring. My friend Jay is pretty much the king of Brothers in Arms: Road to Hill 30 but games about real wars are too weird for me” and then he asked me if I was falling asleep and told me my eyes were closing. Man I really was trying to stay awake P but this kid’s subject matter was mad boring. I said “Why are games about real wars weird?” and he answered “Because it’s like games about real wars made the new real war happen. Like the one in the Middle East. My cousin Larry thinks it’s good though because if we get drafted we’ll have skills to pay the bills. But I’d rather play Resident Evil 4 any day.”

  Then I asked him his name and he said it was Sam and I told him my name and he said he was pleased to meet me all professional. I think he was even going to try and shake my hand but his cell phone started ringing and he unzipped the side pocket of his book bag and answered it. The ring tone was from that rap song about how many chocolate butts can fit in the backseat of the rapper’s vanilla Hummer.

  Into the phone Sam said “Where are you? . . . Okay . . . Just sittin’ here with a friend . . . Yeah she’s nice. Her hair’s really black with a stripe down the middle. She just got jumped in the bathroom and her eye is pretty swollen. . . . I don’t know. Hang on.” Then Sam pressed the phone against his coat and said “My mom wants to know if you need to go to the hospital.”

  I shook my head.

  “Nuh-uh” Sam told his mom. “Yeah, she seems okay. Just a little blood. I gave her a napkin. . . . Okay. Over and out.”

  Sam closed his cell phone and put it back in the side pocket and said his mom would be there in a few minutes and then I got up and started to walk away. He asked me where I was going but I didn’t answer him I just started moving away. I felt like I was sort of floating.

  He said “You’re comin’ back right?” but I barely nodded and kept moving away. I had no idea where I was going P I just had to get up for obvious reasons. The Advil hadn’t kicked in yet and my skull felt too small for my brain. I met eyes with the woman in the gift shop again she sort of looked at me with a concerned expression and turned to help a customer.

  When I walked into the women’s bathroom I could feel a sick tingling in my nuts P like I was walking through some weird fog of gasoline and animal breath or something. The women’s bathroom smelled different than the men’s. It didn’t reek of bleach and piss and stale cigarettes and diarrhea. It was like there was less wrong with the world in the women’s bathroom and it was definitely cleaner. Part of me was afraid of getting jumped again but part of me wanted to see if I could really pass as a girl.

  There was nobody in there so I went straight to the mirror. Since I ran away from Buckner my hair has gotten pretty long and it’s starting to get curly and it’s ugly black from Shurl’s dye job especially because you could see my blond roots really coming in. My eyelid was bruised and swollen and there was a scrape on my cheek and it was starting to go purple near the scrape and there was also some dried blood over my ear where I got hit with the forty. But I have to admit I look like a girl P! Even with my face all fucked up I do! I might even be a CUTE girl which sucks so bad I could tear my own skin off!

  While I was washing my face the door opened and a heavy Mexican woman walked past me. She was wearing a big pink T-shirt with a picture of Jesus of Nazareth on it and underneath it it said “Jesus Is My Homeboy.” Our eyes met in the mirror and she smiled at me and went into a stall and shut the door. So it worked! I totally passed as a girl in the women’s bathroom! Man that really fucks my head up P first Branson and then that black woman from the Greyhound and the little kid talking to his mother and the Mexican woman in the pink Jesus of Nazareth shirt! Maybe I need to start taking some hormone pills or something?! I don’t want people to think I’m a fucking girl P! I mean I LIKE girls like in a SEXUAL way but I don’t want to BE one! Does this make me like PART LESBIAN or something? Because I LIKE girls AND I LOOK LIKE ONE? These are mad confusing things for me to think about as I write to you from the backseat of this Lincoln P very fucking confusing to say the least.

  When I came back out to the waiting area Sam was playing Snake on his cell phone and he told me that he called his mom back when I was in the bathroom and that she said she would give me a ride somewhere. I told him that that was cool because anywhere seemed better than that bus station. For all I know those guys who jumped me are back there right now getting ready to whack some other victim.

  Then Sam offered his bologna and cheese sandwich and I took it and then he gave me an Ocean Spray cranapple juice box too. He was a nice kid P he really was. Some kids are mean but Sam wasn’t one of them. If there are two forces in the world like Fat Larkin thinks then Sam is definitely on the Luke Skywalker side.

  His mom got there about five minutes later and I was still pretty dazed from everything especially the girl thing and for a second I thought I was dreaming and the subject of the dream was that I had gotten a sex change but then I remembered the flying gorilla dream and I knew it was impossible to have a dream within a dream like that but maybe it’s not impossible P. Maybe this whole day has been a dream and I’m really on that Greyhound bus still like way closer to Memphis than I think. Hang on a minute I need to get to the bottom of this. . . .

  So I just slapped myself in the face really really hard and I’m definitely not dreaming P. That old lady with the leaky eye turned around and asked me if I was okay but I could hardly hear her voice. It was like she had a fur ball in her throat or something. Then the guy driving Dan or Dave or Dale said “She asked if you’re okay” and I said I was fine. That old woman has these little broken blood vessels all over her face like she belly flopped off the high dive or something. That leaky eye is smaller than the other one and I wonder if it’s fake or if something’s rotting in there.

  The slap might have made my concussion worse but just to be triple sure I’m not dreaming I just cut my arm with a bottle cap that was in one of the side ashtrays. It was sort of rusty too so now I’ll probably get diabetes or something. It doesn’t hurt much in comparison to the forty of Budweiser but there’s a good amount of blood that I’ll have to keep off of their nice backseat. At least now I know for sure that I’m in the world of the living. And man it’s still mad pouring rain out there and rain is a very real thing. I’ve never seen it come down so hard in my life.

  Anyway as I was telling you just before I slapped and cut myself that that kid’s mom picked us up at the Greyhound station in Caldwell Idaho. She had blond hair and a really nice ass but her face was sort of busted though because she had this big bump on her nose that looked like some sort of mini-tumor or something like if you picked at it some bugs would come squirming out but she smelled like cinnamon chewing gum and she really did have a nice bonbon as Branson would say. I have to confess that I spent the first hour fantasizing about messing around with her.

  A few minutes after she started driving it started hailing but we were in a Lexus so I felt pretty safe despite the fact that my teeth were suddenly starting to chatter on their own. The hail was pretty loud on the roof of the Lexus and Sam was like “Soon it will be raining fire” and his mom went “Sammy where do you get these things?” and Sam said “On the Internet” and then his mom said “Oh you do not either” and then we were quiet and just listened to the hail and the windshield wipers.

  After a while Sam’s mom asked me if I was okay. She was like “You okay honey?” and she was looking at me in the rearview mirror with lots of mercy. I nodded and tried to seem delicate. Then Sam turned the radio on to some Top 40 station and his mom turned it off and said “Not now Sammy I need to concentrate. Just play Snake or something” and Sam said “I’ve been playing Snake all day Moms. Give a brotha a break yo.” I thought it was pretty funny how Sam was suddenly some homeboy.

  Then Sam’s mom looked at me in the rearview mirror again and asked me if anyone had touched me inappropriately and I shook my head and then she a
sked me if I got into a fight with my boyfriend and I shook my head again and then she asked me if I was absolutely sure that I didn’t want to call anyone. She said I was more than welcome to use her cell phone and she had an iPhone and as soon as she held it up I had this instinct to take it P like thieving is in my blood now. I thought about calling you in Memphis but I was afraid my voice would give me away and then Sam’s mom would know I was a boy. I know my voice isn’t deep like the Major’s or anything but it’s not no GIRL’S voice that’s for sure. I just shook my head again.

  Every time Sam’s mom glanced at me in the rearview mirror I looked down. I wondered what Branson would do in this situation. He would have probably wound up asking the mom to go see a movie with him or something crazy like that. He might’ve even asked her if he could put his testicles on her breasticles. He did that once P I swear. We were in front of the OMNIMAX theater on Water Avenue and this woman with long black hair walked by and he said “Excuse me miss” and then she stopped and turned around and she was like thirty-something. Branson said “Can I make put my testicles on your breasticles?” and she snorted at him and called him a menace and walked away. I think Branson really thought she might say yes because he was mad disappointed. Later I asked him what putting your testicles on somebody’s breasticles meant but he just just shook his head and said “You don’t know SHIT Zilla!”