The orthodontist grinds my sharp canines down. He doesn’t ask my opinion. He doesn’t warn me he will grind them. If he had I would have told him I liked my fangs, they made me look fierce. He and my mother took that choice away. To this day when my tongue slides across my teeth I feel a pang of anger and loss.
Flash forward two months. I hate my braces. They hurt like hell. Lark and I are hanging around the house. He’s bored. I’m bitching about the braces.
“You want em off?”
“Huh, yes.”
“Cool.” Lark gets up and leaves the room. He comes back with a pair of pliers and a pair of wire cutters.
“Open up.”
“Do you know what you’re doing?”
“No. You want them off or not?” I open my mouth as an answer. Big mistake. The wire he cuts is sprung tight. When it snaps, it springs open, and through my cheek. I almost bite Lark’s finger off trying to get away. I’m bleeding and screaming.
“Shut the fuck up and let me look.”
“Naamph phukkk!”
“Dude, we got to get some ice on the bitch.”
“Phuckkks Lummer!”
“Calm down you’re spitting blood all over the carpet.” I don’t, not right away. Three hours later when Mom comes in I’m perfectly calm. Watching a Batman rerun.
“JJ there’s a bag of books in my car, can you carry them in?”
“Nogggth proggglen.” She calmly walks over, tilts my cheek up into the light.
“Lark!”
“It was an accident!” He is yelling from upstairs. He hasn’t learned to lie to her face yet. That will come. For all of us. “His braces snapped, I put ice on it.”
The next day the braces come off. I am given a retainer. By week’s end I have thrown it away. I like my teeth crooked. They look like me.
Lark is growing up. He has hit that wonderful madness called puberty. I haven’t. He pulls away from me and goes to Lilly’s side of the age divide. They are continually ditching me. Leaving me with Shaun. I watch them walk away and I so want to be them. They are the big kids. They hitchhike and smoke Marlboros. They come home giggling with red eyes. They have a secret language. They listen to secret bands. They are cool. I’m not. My brother grows his hair out and dresses like a working hippy gypsy cowboy. He wears a felt hat with a floral scarf for a hat band. He plays bass in a band. He has a girlfriend. I hate myself for not being cool enough for him to bring along.
Lark is having a party at the house. Scott Thomson is trouble. He and another kid are going off into the woods. I know they are doing something they shouldn’t. Something cool.
“We’re just going off to cut some wood.” He’s smirking.
“Yeah, cut. Some. Wood.”
“Let me come.”
“Naaa, I don’t think you’re old enough to cut wood.”
“I’ve been chopping wood since I was eight, dip shit.”
“Oooow, Scott he called you a dip shit. You takin that?”
Scott looks at me, hardening his eyes. He throws a punch, stopping inches in front of my eyes.
“Made you flinch!”
“Did not.”
“So did.”
“Fuck you fucker. Big fat fucking fucker.” My face is growing red.
“Whoa JJ, cool it down. I was kidding. Kidding.” My temper is known by those in the inner circle. They know the signs. They know it will lead to something that will generally bring adult attention to bear.
“You’re still a fucker.”
“OK. Wanna go cut some wood with a couple of fuckers?” He’s grinning. I’m grinning.
I cough the first toke out. Scott has to tell me to hold it in. By the time the joint is a brown oily roach I am flying. It feels fantastic. I am free of my mind. I am safe from myself and the boogie men in the shadows. People say pot makes them paranoid. It made me invincible.
“Asshole, you got my brother stoned?”
“Naaa, come on.”
“Fuck you. Look at him.” I giggle at Lark.
“OK, maybe, but he asked me to.”
“Hehehe... The trees are alive.”
“Yeah, they are, time for bed.”
“I don’t wanna. Look up. Where’s Orion?”
“Not in that tree, now come on dude.”
He sneaks me into the house and into my room without Mom catching us. I have to bite on my fist to keep from giggling. Ironically the year before I had been pissed off because my mother made pot brownies for my birthday party. She was trying to impress some mustache wearing man she wanted to sleep with. This was during her sexual freedom phase. I didn’t eat the brownies then. I probably should have. I could have blocked out the dying moose sound my mother made when fucking Andy, the mustache man.
A few years later I will find my brother’s rig, he will yell at me, tell me he’d kill me if he ever catches me shooting dope. I guess I’m glad I listen this time. Two junkies in the house were plenty. That is the next time he and Lilly pulled away from me. But that is years in the future. At twelve he teaches me to play poker and drink whiskey. I will never become good at poker, I care too much about not losing. I do become good at drinking whiskey, a skill that serves me well for many years. From that moment on booze flows through my youth like a river. I can’t remember an important event that didn’t have some drinking involved.
I am 21, and it’s my wedding day. I’m nursing a hangover. “God I could use a scotch.”
“You’re not a drinking man are you, Josh?” My father in law doesn't know me well yet.
“No, just kidding.” I was a drinking man, and I wasn’t kidding.
I am 15, and have just gotten my wisdom teeth removed. I am chipmunked and high as a kite on Percodan when my mother brings me and my girlfriend Kahlua smoothies. Because nothing says I love you like mixing prescription drugs with booze. Not like I probably wouldn’t have done the same thing if she wasn’t home. So I guess I can cut her some slack. Like all parents, she just wants to be cool. She lets us drink and fuck in the house.
“I’d rather them do it here than in some dark alleyway.” She actually said that to the irate mother of a girl Lark was sleeping with. We are a family of great justifiers. We swim in fast moving rivers of denial and addiction.
When Ian Dury sings “Sex and drugs and rock n roll is all my body needs.” I think he is singing my theme song. White Punks On Dope? Fuck yeah, why not.
Sure Lark has pulled away, but I am running real fast by fourteen. I am coming on strong and gaining.
IF YOU CAN’T BE SAFE, BE FIERCE - PART THREE
(In which we learn to strut and stroll in platforms, and sing ‘diamond in the back sunroof top…’)
1975, 3:55 in the morning. Lark and I sit on a park bench. We are the only people awake. We own this town. We are free.
1972, I blow-dry my shag. I’m a freshman. I’m listening to Don Mclean’s American Pie on the clock radio. “What the fuck is that?” Larkin spins the dial, finds KSOL and smiles as Al Green sings Lets Stay Together.
“You’re not wearing that shirt,” Lark says.
“What’s wrong with it?”
“Are you a fucking lumber jack?”
“No.”
“Do you want to get your ass kicked?”
“No. I don’t think I do. Although a good ass kicking does have a way of motivating a lad.”
“Shut up wise ass, put this on.” He tosses me a faded Marilyn Monroe T-shirt. I put it on. It looks boss.
“And don’t say ‘boss’. You’re not in Peninsula any more.”
Peninsula school was making art and weaving and going barefooted through mud puddles. Today is the first day of high school. Today I go to Ravenswood. Today I discover that high school in East Palo Alto is scary. Today I get in my brother’s hotrod ’56 Fairlane with my heart racing. “Man, crank that, I love this song. That’s the O’Jay’s right there, that’s the shit.” Larkin sings along to Back Stabbers.
My mother is coming up in the world. She has ren
ted us a faux-Tudor house on the good side of town. We are driving on University Avenue headed east. Past the gracious sprawling homes with park like gardens. Round the bend towards the Bayshore freeway - Whiskey Gulch is just before the overpass.
Neon liquor store signs sing siren songs to the boat deck walking drunks.
East Palo Alto is a world away. And just across the interstate. Eight concrete lanes from one of the nicest cities in America is one of its most notorious ghettos. By 1977 it will beat out Detroit for the title of Murder Capitol, USA. In the fall of 1973 it is just the place my big brother chose to go to school.
Through the windshield Black faces stare out of all the other cars. Black faces stare from the sidewalks. Why did I agree to go to Ravenswood? Who’s great plan was that?
Reverse integration, that’s what they call it. Take the best teachers from the district, give them synthesizers and scuba diving equipment. Ship a bunch of White kids in and see what happens. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out this plan has a few major flaws. The most glaring being that in 1973 there are no good jobs waiting across the freeway for young Black men, and they know it. They know it every time a cop rousts them for crossing the bridge. They can see it in every old lady who clutches her purse to her chest when they move down University Avenue. They can see it, and it pisses them off. They know being White is a free pass. That pisses them off too. Now toss a bunch of White kids into their school, who do you think just might become the target of all that justified rage? Yeah, great fucking plan. Send the kids to integrate a world the adults are unwilling to.
1973, it all sounds good when the counselor pitches it. Best equipment, best teachers. I am in. Truth is, if they had said it was hell I still would go. Lark is there.
“I’ll pick you up at three.”
“Aren’t you…”
“First day’s bullshit. I’ll see you at three.”
“You’re cutting?”
“No, no. Field trip. Get your ass in there.” And he’s gone. Kids swirl around the entrance. Slapping five. Shouting. Shoving. I’m the only White face in a sea of shades of brown. KSOL flows from parked cars and ghetto blasters. Curtis Mayfield issinging Little Child for the whole town to hear. No need to turn it down, Bayshore freeway drowns the music out before it reachesthe rich banks of University Avenue.
“Watch where the fuck you walking!”
“I’m sorry.”
“You sure are.” Laughter. Then stares.
Don’t make eye contact.
“What you looking at White boy?”
“Nothing.” Eyes down. Pulse racing.
A large yellow bus pulls into the lot. Scared White faces look out the windows. An informal line the suburbanites cling together. The locals push in on them. Laughing at the pale scared invaders.
“Josh?” I flinch. Regain cool. Hope no one saw it.
A boy dressed in a Pendleton shirt and hiking boots, touches my arm.
“Peter.” Our friendship won’t survive the ninth grade.
“Cool T-shirt.”
“How was Maine?”
“Cool, my dad’s new girlfriend is a bitch.” Our eyes dart. Our hearts jackrabbit. We struggle to keep it breezy. A bell blasts. I almost jump out of my skin. A lanky Black kid laughs at me. He is James. He will be my friend later. He will die in prison before he is twenty-one. He is a good kid.
Across the parking lot, Lark leans on the Ford, smoking Kools, talking shit to a couple older Black guys. He doesn’t look over at me.
“You know where we go?” Peter is starting to look paler than normal.
“They’ll tell us I guess.” Like misaligned magnets, repulsion pushes the kids apart as the segregated sea moves into Ravenswood.
“Get the fuck out of my seat.” I look up. She is huge with small brick colored blood shot eyes. This is homeroom. First period. When I entered the room I hung back, then a pretty, real pretty girl looked up and smiled at me. It was going to be OK. Better than OK. Sliding into the desk next to the pretty girl, I gave her a casual little head nod. Her hair is shiny and flipped up in loose curls. She reminded me of Diana Ross, not disco Diana, Stop in the Name of Love Diana.
“I said, get the fuck out of my seat.” The big girl looks ready to hit me. Looks like she could crush me.
“I don’t see your name on it.” I look the desk over carefully, hoping the pretty girl is catching my cool.
“I always sit by Verdel, even a dumb ass like you should know that.” Slapping her meat paws on the desk and chair she heaves. I feel the airy sense of weightlessness. She is picking me up. Her biceps bulge like two Easter hams. The desk slams down.
“Chenille, he didn’t know.”
“Fuck that noise. Come over here and take my seat. Uh uh.” She looks like her next move is a punch.
“Fine, I’ll sit wherever.” I grab my backpack and move to the back of the room. If I don’t look at Verdel, she can’t see my red face.
“Smart move White boy.” James has a ratty afro and an easy grin. “One time down at the park I saw Chenille kick this poor bum’s ass, a full grown man, so hard he never did get up, not while we were there at least. I’m James, but they call me Slim Jim.”
“I’m Josh, and after today I think they’ll be calling me Sissy Boy.”
“Fuck that. There’s not a cat at this school would go up against that she-beast.”
The rest of the class is a mushy blur. Class schedules. Official campus rules. Locker assignments. James tells me which halls to walk down. Which to avoid. Where to eat lunch. Where the kid was killed last year. James is welcoming me to the new normal.
I will only last a year here. I will learn to creep houses with Tomas. We will plot to take over the world. We will buy an ounce of hash with swirls of opium in it and sell light grams. We will buy Turkish hash with state seals branded in it. We will sell light grams. We will be badass. We will drop acid. I will eat speed in the morning to keep from crashing. We will carry guns. I will start every day smoking a joint with Tomas to keep the werewolf size fear from eating me alive. I will crack when my brother gets hepatitis from a dirty needle and is bedridden. I will tell my mother I am changing schools because of girls. A White boy doesn’t have a chance here. I will change schools because I’m afraid of dying.
1973, I’m just trying to get from one end of a day to the other without getting killed. In my English class, Bob Dylan as poetry, I meet Tomas. He is a half foot shorter than me and fifty pounds heavier. He has the round face of his pueblo ancestors. His parents were led by a coyote across the Mexican border. His father cleans offices and banks at night. His mother cleans their house in the day. Tomas is smart, and funny. We hit it off. And not just because of the outcast thing. There aren’t a lot of Mexicans in the school. No, we actually like each other. Tomas’s oldest brother graduated from Stanford and is a mover in the Chicano Brown Berets, activists modeled after the Panthers. He had insisted Tomas educate himself.
Tomas’s other older brother, Jorge, is an acid casualty, who insisted Tomas learn to get high. Since I was along he taught me as well. We sit in his pimped out VW bug and smoke massive joints until everything has a cotton candy glow. All soft and sweet. Then we can handle the morning drama. At lunch repeat. After school repeat.
Tomas studies Leopoldo Zea, the theology of liberation and Kung Fu. He tries to teach me Kung Fu, I am useless. So he teaches me how to use a knife. I’ve had some practice, the knife comes easier. I carry a Buck lock blade knife in my pocket. We play chicken after school. You spread your legs apart. The other guy throws the knife in the dirt between your legs. You move your foot to where the knife stuck. The space between your feet shrinks. It takes more and more control to nail the dirt and not a foot. Who ever quits first is the chicken. Tomas and I should never have played. Neither of us did back down real good.
I hold the Buck knife. There is less than an inch between Tomas’s feet.
“Come on man, step off.”
“No, you afraid
to toss, you step off.”
“I’m not afraid.”
“Neither am I.”
“Tomas, I don’t want to stick you.”
“Then don’t. Step off, let me win.”
“You know that’s not going to happen, right?”
“Just quit fucking around and throw the knife.”
I do. It sinks deep into his shoe and foot. He doesn’t register any pain. He leans down and pulls the blade out. He wipes it on his pant leg then hands it back to me.
“You missed. I win.” He walks with a slight limp for the next week and a half. He never complains. When I say I don’t want play chicken anymore he calls me a wimp.
Life is a tapestry of intersecting strings. OK, mine wasn’t so much a tapestry, more of a rat’s nest of string. The point is these lines intersect each other over and over again. Each crossroad has the potential to change your life irrevocably. Most don’t. Most are impotent. Turn left, turn right, same outcome. Buy Levis or Sticky Finger jeans? Converse or Adidas? Seems so important at fourteen. But in your heart you know it carries no real weight. Then there are those moments you know can send your life spinning off the track. You feel it somewhere deeper than your bones.
KSOL fills all of Ravenswood at lunch time. A hundred kids with a hundred boom boxes. Every car in the lot, all bring in the same funk driven soul. Radio Free East Palo Alto, coming in loud and clear. You are the sunshine of my life, Me and Mrs Jones we got a thing going on… Smile in your face, all the time they try and take your place Back Stabbers... Strawberry Letter 23... Get the funk outa my face, get the funk outa my face. Get. The. Funk. Outa my face. The music was reinforced with impromptu choirs and drums of every size beating out the rhythm.
There are a gang of unofficial rules to learn if you want to survive the day. Piss at home, you go in the bathroom here, you ain’t coming out. Same goes for the locker room. Never dress for PE, take the bad grade, it’s better than a beat down. At the end of the school year, the last week. You cut. It is payback week, it is last chance to fuck up a White boy week. Peter doesn’t listen, got sixteen stitches in his head.
All the Wild Children Page 6