All the Wild Children

by Josh Stallings

  “Fine art, painting, it’s a fucking dead rat. Real shit is happening in the street.” Kowalski is trying to push Michael's buttons, trying to win points with Lilly.

  “Point one, I don’t paint, art school teaches other mediums you knob. I work inNeon. Second point, that art is in the streets rap is tired, it is for lazy bastards who want to vomit on a wall and sign it. Now bugger the fuck off.”

  Kowalski swings. His fist connects with Michael's chest. Light as Michael is, he tumbles across the room. Lark puts one arm on Kowalski and stops him. I help Michael up and out of the room. I don’t know why Lilly stays behind.

  “He’s a dick. Fuck him.” I lead the errant professor Pierce to a bar and listen as he gets sloshed. He talks about everything but my sister. He does a twenty-minute lecturette on the subtle differences between Portuguese and Spanish.

  It’s dark outside now. Michael and I return to the room, Lark and Lilly are gone. There is a note asking the maid to clean the room. I push the door open. The room is trashed. Mattress off the frame. Lamp smashed. Cigarette butts scattered across the floor. A black and white TV set sits on its side while sideways soap actors rattle on in Spanish, and in the middle of it all is Kowalski.

  He is passed out naked. His chest has been shaved and is crusted with dried shaving cream. He has a bit of dried blood around his nose. He has a Polaroid taped to his chest with band aids. It is a picture of his hairy ass with a ballpoint pen sticking out of it.

  I don’t know. I never ask.

  The next day Kowalski is on a train with enough fare to get him to the U.S. border, from there he can work it out. He’s broke, but fuck him, he was broke when we started, what did he expect?

  We leave Mazatlan and head up into the Sierras. The climb up is relentlessly steep. The road is barely two lanes, the side of the road drops a sheer two thousand feet. Buses strung with Christmas lights and dingle balls roar faster, wilder than even Mr. Toad would have found prudent. Clearly in these mountains, might has the right of way.

  Somehow we survive, and drop onto the wide expanse that is the state of Durango. It looks like every western I ever saw. Mostly because the westerns that weren’t filmed in Monument Valley, were all filmed here in Durango.

  On the outskirts of the city of Durango a guard steps out of a small hut by the side of the road. He waves for us to stop. Cops in Mexico are always stopping us and trying to get a bribe. Lilly has had enough and just keeps driving. Out the back window I see the cop unholster his .45 and fire one shot into the air. Lilly slams on the brakes and we pull over.

  It turns out that because of the sedan’s damaged front end, he thinks we hit livestock. Somewhere in the translation from Spanish to Portuguese to English, things get heated. Finally it costs us twenty dollars and a promise to be out of town the next day.

  To calm our nerves we splurge and get a room at the Hilton. The desk clerk speaks English better than any of us. “Will there be anything else?”

  “Yes, do you have room service?” Lark is taking charge.

  “Of course.”

  “Good. We need two bottles of Cuervo, some cervezas and ice.”

  “We have ice, maybe Pepsi?”

  “No, Cuervo and beer compadre.”

  “Sir, no alcohol can be sold today. It is our national elections.”

  “OK, but we won’t be voting.”

  “It is illegal.”

  “How much?” Lark rubs his fingers together.

  “It is impossible.” And it hits Lark, the depth of our fuckedness. They had been adapting to the lack of narcotics with a constant flow of booze. Fucked.

  The three older members of our tribe are losing their minds. I watch them spinning. I think of the cop and gun and Polaroid on Kowalski’s chest and wonder if I’ll make it out of Durango.

  “Hobby, get us to a hobby shop.” Michael is leaning against the passenger window.

  “Hobby shop dude? We gonna build a model airplane?” I see the gears spin in Lark’s mind... all of the pins click into place and he floors the sedan.

  I sit in our room watching the election results in Spanish. The others are on the floor giggling. The room stinks of model glue. Even after I open all the windows it stinks. They offer me the plastic bag with the glue in it. Join the huffing party. In a rare moment of intelligence I say no. Late in the night the three stooges order BLT’s from the kitchen. I’m still a vegetarian. I pass on dinner.

  “Fuck dude, turn out the light.”

  “It’s called the sun, it ain’t got a switch.” If this is a glue hangover then I count my blessings. They are all green around the gills. We stumble downstairs, I check us out.

  They are all drenched with sweat by the time we hit the sedan. We are at a Pemex station filling the tank. I pass Lark a cerveza. He takes one sip, leans over and power boots all over the ground. Lilly's MIA, Michael is making a mad dash for the men’s room. They are all horror show sick. Exploding out of both ends. Real Linda Blair time. We are one cross in a pussy away from an exorcism.

  I am sitting on the hood of our car. We’re parked in front of yet another Pemex station. They are in the shitter. I’m on the hood because the car stinks. I light a cigarette. I have taken up smoking on the trip. I think aboutJorge’s car, smoking and listening to Richard Pryor on the eight track.

  Did you all see the Exorcism? Story about the devil. Gets into this twelve year old girl, devil’s a low mother fucker. See there wouldn’t of been no movie there’d been niggers in it. The movie would have been about seven minutes long. A nigger would’ve walked in the house, what is that funky smell and all that racket upstairs? Is the girl crazy? Smells like shit in here. Some devil’s shit at that. He walk in the room. Bitch what’s wrong with you? Get up out of bed and wipe your ass girl, stinking up the whole mother fucking house. And get that cross out your pussy. And get downstairs help your mother straighten up, we havin company.

  We are in the tall pines of the Sierras. Lilly is the least sick. She is driving hard. They want to get across the border, get to a doctor and find out what is killing them. I’m fine except the smell makes me want to puke. I chain smoke.

  Lark is getting bad, his fever is spiking and he is delirious. He alternates screaming and whispered pleas. He needs help. Now.

  El Salto is a mud track village high in the mountains. Pigs run free in the street. They have a clinic, one room, dirt floor. The doctor takes one look at Lark and says what we think is Spanish for typhoid. For ten bucks American he will give Lark a shot. I watch as he pulls a needle out of a bowl of disinfectant. Apparently the town has only one needle. It is not as sharp as it once was. Lark bends over and drops his skid-marked jeans. The doctor stabs his ass. Lark cries as it goes in. And on the way out it puckers up the flesh around it, like it has tiny barbs. Lilly and Michael decline the shot. They will take their chances with typhoid.

  We drive straight through for thirty-five hours. Lilly, in a delirious moment, tells me she wants to die in America.

  Outside of Mazatlan we hit the toad crossing. It’s night. I’m rolling with a bunch feverish moaning, stinky, sickies. I’m smoking like a chimney to keep the smell at bay. Dry lightning spider webs the sky. Then I see them. The road is covered with toads stretching out a hundred feet or more. The car slides as if on ice. Swerving back and forth, hydroplaning on toad soup. A minute later we’re back on dry asphalt, rolling on as if it never happened. Sometimes life is stranger than drugs.

  Before we hit the border everyone cleans up in a Pemex restroom. It is agreed there will be no talk of typhoid, no talk of puking guts and running asses. The last thing we want is to be quarantined south of the border.

  The border guard takes one look and waves us on. It is a scene he has seen a million times. Teenage gringos trashed and beat hard, stumbling home with their tails tucked.

  Turns out none of them had typhoid, it was food poisoning. The shot they gave Lark in El Salto only made him sicker. Best we can figure it out it was the BLT’s in Durango. After
all the drugs and booze and airplane glue and pens in butts, after all that it was a sandwich in a Hilton hotel that took them down. I guess I was glad I was non-glue sniffing vegetarian.

  There will be many more drugs before I stop. There will be Quaaludes with Ingrid. There will be amyl nitrite poppers in the gay discos we dance in with bad fake I.D.'s. There will be amyl nitrite spilled on the floor of Lilly’s Baja bug as we follow my mother and her boyfriend down in Mexico causing a laughing jag that nearly kills us. There will be acid with Tomas. There will be mushrooms with my father. There will be an ocean of whiskey. And at the end of it all, none of it will be enough to stop the pain in my gut. None of it will quiet the fire in my head.

  SEX

  Babette, a good friend from the program, told me that her grandmother, when confronted with a husband leaving his wife for a stripper or a wife falling in love with the woman at the U-Tote-Em, or their small southern town discovering the school teacher ran an S&M dungeon in her spare time, Gram would say, Oh darlin' that’s just people doin', people things.

  I am 11 and bored to tears. We are living back up the hill. Mom drives Shaun and me to school. At 3 PM, school is over. We walk to her office at SRI, and wait, and wait, and try not to get into trouble, sometime after 5 PM we go home. I can see from an adult perspective how little two hours is. But I’m twelve and losing prime daylight sitting in an office. Just do some homework? Screw that, I just got out of school. I need to let loose.

  It is in the multi stalled sterile white tiled men’s room at SRI that I discover the greatest thing known to man, or woman. I discover my penis, and how good it feels rubbing it. Yes I had discovered all this earlier, in utero I suspect. But this, this is where it all comes together. The SRI bathroom, looking at pictures I had drawn of a naked girl. A side benefit of being the son of an artist and going to a hippy school is, you can make your own porno.

  “I balled a girl.” We are in Jim Garrison’s driveway in a small Airstream caravan. We have been power eating poppy seeds because we heard it would get you high. Jim is going to hippy boarding school and apparently getting laid.

  “You didn’t. Prove it.”

  “Peter, only a virgin would think you could prove it. I could have got her pregnant.”

  “So, I could get a girl pregnant.” They both look at me. I want to be as cool as Jim. I should have kept my mouth shut. Well, I should have done that a lot, but I didn’t.

  “No you couldn’t, you have to ball a girl, you do that?”

  “No. But I could get her pregnant if I did.”

  “How do you know?”

  “The same way you know you’re a total dickhead!”

  “You’re the dickhead.”

  “You’re both dickheads.” It isn’t much of this before we are fighting and wrestling as only peace loving hippy kids can.

  Peter has a bloody nose. Jim has a chipped front tooth. I am bleeding from my ear.

  “So how do you know?”

  “You are such a major dickhead.” How do you put a cool spin on, I was rubbing my pecker in the men's room at my mom’s work, and I got so excited that this white goo came out of me.

  I am 12, there is no cool spin on a wanking story. Especially seeing as I’m the only one perverted enough to be wanking. For the next two years I jerk off, in secret, ashamed but unable to stop myself.

  And then she comes along. Kat, oh my God, Kat. She joins our drama class, at Ravenswood. She is beautiful, amazing, long dark hair, a smile to break my heart. And she points it at me.

  DATE 1 - I invite her to a party at my house. Only I wasn’t having a party, I was riffing, sure she’d say no. She said yes. Fuck. OK JJ don’t panic, you can make this work. I call all my friends, three agree to come, Tomas, Peter, and Jonathan. OK not a party but I won’t look like I lied. Add Lark and one of his girls into the mix it’s not bad. Almost a party. My mom is out of town yet again. It could work, my friends all have my back. Or should. Jonathan is the wild card, he is dark and swarthy in the sexy unibrow way that many girls dig. He has big sad brown eyes that can be mistaken for soulful. From the moment Kat gets there he starts in trying to embarrass me, not that that’s a real chore. I get flustered and stumble over my words. I explode a beer all over my Bowie teeshirt.

  “Smooth move ex-lax.”

  “I didn’t, um, crap, Kat, you um... shit.”

  “I got it, here Kat, a nice frosty.” Strange thing is, she takes the beer from him, but never stops looking at me. She tilts her eyes down at the wet shirt, smiles and cocks an eyebrow.

  “You maybe should get out of that wet shirt.” Her eyes are actually twinkling.

  “Good idea, thanks, um… be right back.” Her face falls a bit as I leave the room.

  Dumb fucking dumb fucker. I am pounding my head against the wall in my room to the beat of my stupidity.

  I build a fire, we sit and drink brandy watching the flames. Kat moves up next to me. Tomas excuses himself to sleep. Peter excuses himself to sleep. Jonathan moves in on the other side of Kat and all night we sit like that. I never even get to kiss her.

  She drives away. Lark loads up his hotrod to take my friends home. I can’t even look at Jonathan. Tomashitsmy shoulder and gives me a wink.

  “You two in the back, Jonathan you ride bitch.” Riding bitch, front seat passenger. He is in for a ride. Lark takes off in a rooster tail of gravel and dust. 12 miles of twists and turns down the mountain and Lark never lets up off the gas once. Going down Pagemill the passenger is on the cliff side the whole way. The passenger has a perfect view of where he will go if the driver screws the pooch, or over cooks the brakes. Lark has been driving this road for years. He is flying. He is four wheel drifting down the hill. Jonathan is sheet white. Fighting to control his bowels.

  “Slow the hell down.” A guy asks you to slow down, he might as well give you his balls.

  “Can’t hear you.” The tires are skidding madly.

  “Please slow down.” Jonathan’s voice is a high pitched squeal.

  “Fuck no, you treacherous son of a bitch.” They tell me Jonathan went a lighter shade of pale when Lark really got on the gas. Fuck him. Fuck with one, you fuck with the clan.

  DATE 2 - Thursday of the next week I’m in class watching Kat do a scene with Randy, tall, handsome, football player. It’s a romantic scene and she is heating up that stage. She’s going out with him. I blew it.

  “You’re an idiot.” At least she’s smiling.

  “You’re not going out with Randy?”

  “Yes I am going with him. I asked you to my house Saturday because I want to be the baloney in a Black and White sandwich… kidding.”

  “OK, so you still want me to come over?”

  “Yes... will you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good... hey JJ.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Before you get all the way out that door, you might want to come back and get my address.” She dangles a piece of paper from her fingers. Long delicate fingers. Girl fingers.

  I pound my head into my locker three times before Tomas stops me.

  “What’d you do this time?”

  “She asked me out, in, to her house.”

  “Then?” He points at the locker.

  “I’m happy.”

  “You know that makes no sense, right?”

  “I do.”

  “Cool, wanna get stoned?”

  “Does the pope shit in the woods?”

  “I think he might. Let's roll.”

  Saturday I am a mess. I change my clothes fifteen times. I finally settle on a Rolling Stones mouth T-shirt and a pair of sprayed on Sticky Finger jeans, and my red patent leather platforms. Hair is blow dried back, falling into a shag to make a rock star proud. I’m over six foot before the platform shoes. I wear a size 29 x 36 jeans. I am one skinny tall White boy. I wrap a long red silk scarf around my neck and pull on my Superfly jacket. Rock and roll meets the ghetto. Lark and I have our own personal style, Glitter-Fly.

&n
bsp; I am 14. My brother has to drive me. “Go on, I’ll be back in an hour or so, bring Jaz and some Rum.”

  From the curb to the front door, about a hundred miles, or ten feet I can't tell which.

  “You look good JJ.” She leans in, kissing my cheek, she smells musky and sweet with a hint of cinnamon. “Is Lark coming in?”

  “He has to pick up ummm.”

  “Jaz?”

  “Yeah Jaz.”

  “You are staring.” She is right. A sheer black shirt and black bra. Short black tap pants. I was looking. Yes I was. Until she spoke, and then I was looking anywhere else.

  “I'm sorry... I...damn it.”

  “I like it, you looking, that’s why I put it on.” She takes my hand and leads me in.

  They have a sunken living room with white shag carpet deep enough to need a lifeguard. We kick off our shoes and dive in. She has martinis chilling in the wet bar. She hits a switch, the lights dim and music comes on.

  KSOL, Marvin Gaye.

  Stop beatin' 'round the bush. Let's get it on. Let's get it on. You know what I'm talkin' 'bout C'mon, baby. Let your love come out. I look at Kat and start to redden. She laughs and turns it up.

  Flipping a valve she tosses a match into the fireplace. It roars to life. It is all so James Bond. We sit drinking martinis, looking into the propane flames dancing over stone logs. When we are done, she tosses her glass into the fireplace, I do the same. We laugh. She leans into me, her eyes on mine. I kiss her without reservation. She pulls me down on top of her, our lips never leaving each other.

  Lark returns to find us flushed and groping on the carpet. With him is Jaz Slocum, yes that’s her name. Yes, we ride her about it. Yes, it’s true, Lark tells me.

  Aftera few more cocktails we head for the bedroom. All of us in the master bed. Lark wants to be there in case I have any beginner problems. Now that is having my back. Every one starts stripping. Fuck. I am wearing tighty-whities, the worst possible choice. 1- commando, 2- boxers, 3- a speedo. Never tighty-whities. I take off my shirt and socks. Hoping for a miracle. Kat presses her naked body against mine, kisses me and pulls my pants down as she kneels. She is too interested in what is inside to notice what underwear I have on. Seconds later I too stop worrying. We make it on the bed, and thefloor,and leaned over a chair. In the midst Jaz finally cums, loud and violent. They fallasleep. We keep going. Until we both are raw. Then we lay very still, her on me. Me still inside her.