Punkzilla

by Adam Rapp

  Then I said “How old are you anyway?” because I was really curious. I couldn’t figure it out at all. He said “You go right for the jugular don’t you? I’m thirty-six.”

  Then I told him how you were twenty-seven and he asked about you and I told him your name and how you were a playwright and what your plays are about like about how fucked up the government is and how George Bush is a clown and how you had that one play about the leader of England called Blair Which Project? and how you used a bunch of spray paint in it and spray painted like forty-some boxes of Nabisco shredded wheat. He asked where you lived and I told him how you were in Memphis and how we’re from Cincinnati.

  And then I told him what’s going on P. I told him about Buckner and Portland and being on the run and then I told him about how I was trying to get to you because of how you’re dying of cancer. When I heard myself say it out loud things got really fucked up and I like started punching myself like in my face and in my neck and I was suddenly crying like crazy in that way that makes it really hard to breathe it was almost like I was drowning but Lewis wrapped me up pretty quick and man he was stronger than I thought. He wrapped his arms around me and just sort of brought me to the ground and held me and I was panting and my head was throbbing and I thought I was going to throw up in my mouth and I couldn’t seem to catch my breath. He just held me like that for a minute and then he said “Is your brother with your family?” and after like ten breaths I told him how you were with your boyfriend and I told him about Jorge and about you two being gay lovers I hope that’s cool P. I know how some people like to keep their relationships on the down low but I figured Lewis was cool. We were still on the floor and we both wound up sitting there sort of Indian-style like we were about to play duck-duck-goose or something. And then I told him about Mom and the Major and about E and about how I ran away from Buckner and we smoked like four more cigarettes and he put this band on called Wolf Parade that I had never heard before but I liked them a lot and then a few minutes later more of those truckers I was telling you about started coming over from that parking lot and there was a knock on the door and Lewis answered it and this guy who wasn’t a trucker came in and Lewis scored some weed that came in this little plastic terrarium and then the guy left and we wound up getting really stoned like it was maybe the best weed I’ve ever smoked in my life. Man I really think you would love this guy P. I mean I realize he might not be totally a GUY yet like in a medical way but you would definitely like him.

  Later I fell asleep in the bed he made for me and when I woke up I took a shower for the first time in days and I brushed my teeth with his extra toothbrush and he made me breakfast. It was French toast on the little stove-top thing he has and now I’m sitting at this picnic table in the back of the motel beside the big tree with the maroon leaves and that spiderweb and the little shitty pool with the floating mice and frogs and I keep thinking I’m going to see the ghost of that trucker from Colorado.

  But I just wanted to write and let you know that I’m finally feeling pretty safe and that I think I made my first real friend since I left Portland.

  Lewis said I could use his motel room phone to call you later so I think I’m going to try and do that. I figure it won’t hurt to give you a call just to see how things are going. If I was dying I’d want you to call me that’s for sure.

  Anyway that’s all I’m going to write for now. This notebook is filling up mad quick. When I finally get to Memphis I’ll probably wind up telling you all of this anyway so what’s the point of writing it all down right?

  Love,

  Your Bro

  October 18th, 2007

  Dear Jamie,

  Hi again. Did you get my card? It was just a simple piece of card stock with one of your Aunt Julie’s watercolors on it. I think I sent it in a blue envelope with a stamp of the American flag.

  I had been thinking about you and I just jotted a few things down about how things were in Cincinnati and my hopes that things were going well for you. I would be very sad if you decided to cut off communication with me. It would break my heart.

  Would you please write me a quick note just to let me know how you’re doing? And to be honest I would love to hear your voice. Will you give your worried mother a quick call?

  I spoke with a woman at the academy infirmary and she assured me that you were still taking your medication and I was glad to hear that.

  I realize this transition must be a difficult one. Please know your father and I and your brother Edward are thinking of you often and we’re all looking forward to seeing you on Parents Weekend.

  Love,

  Mom

  October 21st, 2007

  Son,

  You have exactly twenty-four hours upon receiving this letter to give your mother a call. She is beside herself with grief as to why you refuse to respond to her via a letter or the New Cadet pay phone. This has gone on for nearly a month and I will not tolerate your snobbishness.

  As you know we will see you this weekend and I have faith that you will have had a conversation with her before our arrival at the academy.

  I realize young men go through rough patches and can be confused by the world in a myriad of ways, but you are too intelligent, too informed in the ways of a gentleman, and we raised you too well to deserve such insolence. Do yourself a favor and call your mother.

  Dad

  March 12, 2008

  Dear P,

  It’s been four days since I last wrote you. I’ve tried your phone number so many times P and it keeps saying it’s been disconnected so I don’t know what the deal is. And now I’m afraid to mail any of these letters to you. I guess I’ll just keep them in this notebook till I know where you are because if your phone is disconnected then maybe that means you’re not living in the same place too like maybe you moved into some special hospital and that really freaks me out because I’m trying to get to you!

  I’m finally on Interstate 80 heading east. I’m eventually going to wind up on Interstate 55 going south to Memphis which is a pretty long ways but a lot has happened in the last few days and I need to tell you about it.

  I spent another day with Lewis the she-man at the Lakeside Motel. He helped me do my laundry and let me use his shower again and fed me another microwave dinner and gave me forty dollars. He even offered to rent a car and drive me but I didn’t have the guts to take him up on it because of his financial situation. I mean I know he’s really broke and without a job and needs to start saving money so he can get that operation so he can have a dick. He gave me his phone number and said if I got into any trouble I should call him and he would come find me. Man that guy was cool P. Before I left he even showed me his chest. He was pretty shy about it but I really wanted to see it. He had just gotten out of the shower and he was wearing a T-shirt and I asked him if I could see it and he looked at me long and hard and then he took his shirt off and it really looked pretty good. I mean it wasn’t like Brad Pitt’s chest or anything but it looked like a man’s chest and I couldn’t tell that he ever had breasts.

  He told me how the doctor had to remove his nipples first and then rebuild his chest and how they had to sew his nipples back on after that like they were the eyes of a teddy bear or something and then he sort of goofed around and flexed and we laughed and then he put his shirt back on.

  A few hours later I packed my stuff and we said good-bye and I walked over to that big parking lot with all the truckers because I figured one of them might be heading south or east or maybe going in both directions.

  It was a really nice day like seventy degrees and clear skies like you could see planes up there and these three truckers were playing horseshoes and this big black one named Luther saw me watching and invited me to play. He looked at me and said “I need a teammate” so I played and I did okay even though we lost to these two Native American Indian dudes who looked like father and son. Luther paid them twenty bucks each so I guess they were betting. I had a chance to tie the game with my last tos
s but I missed the stake. I said I was sorry but Luther was like “It ain’t nothing” and told me not to worry about it. The truth is that I had that forty bucks Lewis the she-man gave me but I couldn’t afford to lose any of it.

  Luther wound up buying me a hamburger at that stand with the classic rock and this scratchy-voiced skeezer with sunburn cream on her nose served us. She was like “Hey Luther. What’s the word?” and he said “The word is I might have to get a hip replaced. Goddamn forty-four years old walkin’ around with titanium in me. Set off all the metal detectors. Everyone’s gonna think I’m a terrorist.” Then the hamburger lady said “Not you. Not my Luther.”

  Luther ate two hot dogs and I ate my burger even though Lewis had just fed me. Luther said “You got some appetite huh?” and I just nodded and kept my head down because I had no idea where the next free meal might come from.

  Luther said he could get me as far south as Cheyenne but that’s where he needed to head west on Interstate 80 and I was cool with that so he drove me like three hundred miles south. He had this whole mini-apartment set up in the back of his trailer with a bed and a flat-screen TV and a DVD player and a weight bench with a bunch of dumbbells and huge forty-five-pound plates stacked around it. Luther was like six six P no shit and mad ripped despite his hip problem. The only freaky thing about him was that he sort of smelled like piss and it made me wonder if he had some sort of disease and had to wear adult diapers or maybe he secretly LIKED to smell that way like he pissed his pants as much as possible. I got used to it after a while though just like anything else.

  He couldn’t stop talking about his wife who was back in Roanoke Virginia like how he couldn’t wait to see her and how they had their ten-year anniversary coming up and how they liked to watch Pink Panther movies together. He was like “That Pink Panther dude is one funny cat.”

  I kept trying to imagine his wife and the person that kept coming into my head was that big fat black lady named Takada who used to come over and clean the kitchen when Mom’s carpel tunnel syndrome was bad.

  Anyway Luther was obsessed with his wife and even called her on his cell phone and said all this romantic stuff to her like “Yeah Sweetness you know I’m comin’ home soon” and “I can’t wait to see you too baby-girl.”

  I thought a lot about how his wife would deal with him smelling like piss like did she always have to Febreze him and how many pairs of pants had he ruined? But maybe his wife pissed her pants too and it was why they fell in love? Mysterious right?

  He dropped me off at a Best Western in Lisco Nebraska which was cool because he wound up going about twenty miles east just to make sure I would be okay. The old skeezer behind the desk at the Best Western had a face like a mustard stain and kept talking about this place called Goblin Valley Utah. I had no idea why she was bringing up some weird place in Utah because I was in Nebraska!

  She said “Unusual place that Goblin Valley” and I was like “Word.”

  I convinced her that my dad had dropped me off and would be by later to pay for the room. I told her he was a professional wrestler and his name was Valentin the Russian and that he has this move where he makes you eat the phone book. I have no idea why I made up that lie P but I think she believed me. I know I shouldn’t mess with old people like that but at least it was a creative lie. She wound up giving me a room on the third floor with a balcony that looked out over the parking lot. I knocked a PayDay loose from the vending machine and after I ate it my stomach felt funny and then I got diarrhea again.

  What was cool was that no one ever came to check on me and I wound up crashing at the Best Western for free I shit you not P. It was maybe my luckiest break since meeting Lewis the she-man at the Lakeside Motel.

  I think maybe that old woman was senile like Grandma Beauty. Remember how if we stayed at her house in Louisville she would come down to the basement and say good-bye to us like four times and how she couldn’t even remember that she had done it just a few minutes earlier and how Mom had to come down after like the third time and tell her that she had already said her good-byes? I think the old woman behind the desk had those kinds of brain-damage problems. I know there’s a word for that kind of disease but I can’t think of it right now. I keep wanting to say it’s the Heimlich maneuver but I know that’s where you get behind someone in like a butt-sex position and thrust them in the stomach with a fist ball when they’re choking. This big dumb football player from my junior high named Chad Haggis used to do that to me even when I WASN’T choking. He’d be like “Heimlich maneuver!” and then he would chase me around and if he caught me he would put me in that position and start thrusting upwards with a fist ball till I would call him the Master of My Domain. “Say it!” he’d yell “Say it!” and I would say “You’re the Master of My Domain Master Haggis!” and then he would have fake butt-sex with me for a bit and let me go.

  In my free room at the Best Western I took a bubble bath for like an hour and got all the good stuff out of the minibar like the peanut M&M’s and a can of Pringles and the bag of Cape Cod potato chips and two cans of Coke and I have to admit I took some liquor minis too. I got a Jim Beam and a Jack Daniel’s and this small bottle of red wine that I probably won’t be able to drink because I don’t have a corkscrew but I figured maybe I could sell it or trade it with someone. It all fit in Sam’s book bag pretty well. I wound up watching cable for a few hours and fell asleep with the TV on.

  I had this crazy dream where I was in the motel room I was alone and it was the Best Western but there was no bed in the room. Instead there was this weird stainless steel manhole-type thing. It had a bubble-shaped top and when I walked up to it I could feel it sort of vibrating like crazy and when I reached down to touch it it started making all this noise like a train was coming or something and then all of a sudden the thing opened up and there was this freaky blue water kind of glowing all still and thickish and then out of nowhere that Scarlett Johansson skeezer came out of the water. She was naked and she took this huge gulp of air and her breasts looked MAD amazing but instead of nipples she had two little DAISIES and after she caught her breath she said “There’s nowhere to go!” but I could have sworn it was Lewis the she-man’s voice that came out of her mouth. I was like “You can stay here with me Hollywood Skeezer! There’s no bed but we can make it work!” But she took a huge breath and dove back down into the water and then the stainless steel bubble-top thing closed and then I dropped to my knees and screamed “LET HER COME BACK PLEASE GOD OF THUNDER AND MERCY LET HER COME BACK!” And then when I looked down the daisies that were her nipples were on the floor and when I reached down to pick them up they turned into two giant Iraqi camel spiders and crawled up my leg!

  I woke up with a jerk and I practically threw myself out of bed P I shit you not. It was really early in the morning maybe like six thirty which is really weird because that’s what time reveille was at Buckner which makes me worried that there’s some sort of permanent thing stuck in my brain now and that I’m going to start waking up at six thirty for the rest of my life. Maybe I can get hypnotized or something? Do you know anyone who can do that? Maybe I can learn how to meditate so that all that stuff that happened at Buckner will like empty out through some hidden drain in my ear?

  Anyway I left my room key in the door and sneaked down the cement steps and across the parking lot and right by the window of the motel office. Some dude with a mustache was behind the desk now but he didn’t see me so I just kept walking.

  There was a twenty-four-hour restaurant next to the Best Western called The Country Kitchen. There were only a few people eating and one waitress who walked like she was squeezing a walnut between her ass cheeks and it sort of made me tense. I ordered pancakes and sausage patties from her and it took her forever to bring me my food and I was starting to get a little worried that that dude with the mustache at the Best Western was going to come over and make me pay for my room and look in my book bag at all the stuff I stole and call the cops or something.

 
; Someone had scratched their name into the window at my booth. The name was CESAR and I thought if I ever changed my name that this might be a good choice. What do you think P? Have you ever thought about changing your name?

  The window looked out at a Shell station and also out at the highway where cars were still driving with their lights on and I started to wonder what Branson was up to like did he miss me or was I just another Spanish Dave or Tom-Tom to him. I thought maybe I was and that made it easier to put Portland out of my mind.

  The waitress came over and asked if I was sure I could pay for my food and she was holding it in front of me like I was a dog or something. I pulled my money out of my sock and put it right on the table and stared at her and she said “You know I’m gonna have to put rubber gloves on to take that from you” and I said “So do it.” I really said that too P like I commanded it. I even felt my chest flexing and it felt good like I was a black belt in kung fu. She walked away from me muttering something under her breath.

  When I was putting the money back in my sock this man came up to me and told me he loved my shoes. He was like “Cool shoes. I love New Balance.” He had black curly hair with little slits for eyes and he had this weird half smile on his face like someone punched him when he was laughing and it got stuck that way. He asked me what I was doing and I said I was chilling and then he asked me if I was a model. I swear P he said “Are you a model?” and I said “No why?” and he went “You could be is all. You have that look.”

  I couldn’t tell how old he was because he had one of those chubby faces and his lips were so small it was like they were drawn on with a pencil. Then he offered me a hundred bucks to go have my picture taken in his studio. He said “I’m a legit photographer I swear” and then he showed me a card with a website on it. It didn’t have his name on it just the website.