I watch as he slams into the fender.
I hold him from behind by the neck. His feet leave the ground. He struggles.
It is all moving so slow. I have time to count his friends between breaths. Five. Five will jump you. Five will kill you. Five could have guns.
I am back at Ravenswood.
I hold Blue off the ground.
He stops struggling. He goes limp.
I can’t release him.
They will kill me if I do.
They are all staring at me in fear.
Chris Pitman runs across the parking lot. He is almost as tall as me, but not skinny. He is swinging his walking stick like a club. I know I am safe. I release Blue. He falls in a heap. He gasps for air.
I feel like vomiting.
The other jock boys look stricken. They didn’t go to Ravenswood. They have no idea how much better an outcome this is, or how much worse it could have been.
The next day I stay home. I feel sick. I’m afraid they will jump me. I’m afraid they will call me faggot and it will all start again. At noon I get a call, Chris tells me the jocks caught Ingrid by her locker, they told her she shouldn’t go out with a fag. They called her fag-hag. They scared her. She never would have told me. She would have been afraid of me getting hurt trying to defend her honor. She didn’t go to Ravenswood either.
It is lunch time. It is Friday. Again I have missed morning classes.
A hot rod VW bug pulls into the parking lot across from Paly. It is blasting Santana on the 8-track. It pulls up three spaces away from where Blue and his buds are hanging. A massive Chicano steps out of the passenger seat. He leans on the fender. He looks at them through mirrored aviator shades.
I climb out of the back seat. I have my Superfly leather coat. I have my platforms. I have my Beretta .25 automatic. I am through taking shit.
Jorge steps from the driver seat and stands like Tomas. Tomas’s hand is behind his back. I know it is on the grip of his Browning. Shit goes pear shaped and blood will run. I think the odds are slim to none of that happening. But if I’m wrong, I’m not going to be the one left bleeding.
I stop in front of their bench. None of the lettermen look up. Suddenly the asphalt is very interesting.
“This shit ends today.” I am dead calm. “One wayor the other, it ends. Are you listening to me? No? My two brown brothers, the ones who you aren’t looking at? They know every one of your faces now. Shit happens to me. Shit happens to anyone I know. They come back. They come for you.” I stand silent for a long moment. They don’t look up. They can't meet my eyes.
Meet the new alpha, bitches.
I turn my back on them, they are no longer a threat.
I walk back to the VW and we drive away.
We go up to Foothill Park and get massively stoned on hash and Mickey Bigmouths. Tomas giggles at what pussies the Paly jocks are.
“How do they know when to bloom?” Jorge is staring intently at a dandelion.
“How the fuck should I know. Do I look like a fucking horticulturist?”
It is good to be back with Tomas and his burnout of a brother. Lark has been gone for two and a half months. He moved to West Virginia where Lilly is stripping for peckerwoods. I hadn’t talked to Tomas in a while when I called. He didn’t care. He didn’t whine. He just showed up and covered my back. I haven’t seen Tomas since that day in the park, but if he called today and needed me, you know I’d pack my bags and roll. I probably wouldn’t bring a pistol, but then again I might. I don’t think you are ever completely free of Ravenswood.
Life settled into a calm craziness. My hard won summer's earnings bought me the White Whale. A monster ‘66 Pontiac Bonneville. It had power everything, windows, seats, radio antenna, brakes. But most important it had a V8 that could light up the tires in a moment’s notice, and could fit eight or nine teenagers so it became our party car. Gas money came from selling pot, or taking the cash my mother gave me for clothing and pocketing it.
Ingrid and I stole everything we wore. She was the absolute queen of shoplifting. But she only stole the best. We only went to classy stores. When my mother noticed me in yet another new suit, I’d say Ingrid’s brother gave it to me. She must have thought they were rich as sin. Shaun skipped a grade so she could be at Paly with me. In turn Ingrid taught her to steal. Our morals were suspect, but our style was impeccable. It was months of drinking fucking and dancing. Rock and fucking roll.
In theater class I’d found a couple of freaks who were near as fucked up as I was. Tad met Shaun the year before. He had come by the house, wearing a top hat with bug antennas. By Paly he’d lost the hat but was no less of a full bore freak. He was smart, cynical and fucked up. We were fast friends, still are. Our friendship may have started in improv class when we were told to act out a scene alone. I did a junky waiting for his man. The teacher was baffled. “I have no idea what that would look like, so, um, fine.” Or maybe it was just a wild look in my eye that attracted Tad.
That time, now that I look back, was a six-month sabbatical from violence. Lark was gone. The jocks had been mellowed. No one was trying to kill anyone. Tad’s band Idiot was filling school auditoriums with their own special flavor of art rock. Parties were plentiful, girls were easy, rum and coke flowed like water. I was able to step from Lark's shadow and become my own man. I was sixteen, hung, White and on a jag.
Then Lark returns from West Virginia. We have a blow the doors off, rip roaring party. Me and Tad and the boys and gals from Paly stock up on rum and coke, Old English 800 and Marlboros. Screw Lark, let him buy his own Kools. And what a party it is.
Flash this, in no important order. Deano drinks gas from a wine bottle. Deano gets beat down with a frozen pork chop. Deano wakes up wondering how he got meat in his hair. I fire a home made blank at Sanders, who tumbles down the stairs. His girl freaks. I’m supposed to know her brother shot himself?
“How do you know when a Stallings party is over?”
“Joe Dallesandro cuts someone’s leg off?”
“No Shaunton, a Stallings party is over when someone is crying or someone is bleeding, or more often both.”
In the months Lark has been gone I have shot up. I’m now 6’4”. Taller than him by two inches. I have also put on some muscles. Don’t ask me how, the only exercise I’m getting is naked. Most important, I am through taking crap from anyone.
I don’t know how the fight erupted. But it did. And it was rough. We tumbled from room to room. Anyone foolish enough to try and stop us was sent away bruised.
I’m fucking pissed. I want to hurt him. I want to make him feel each blow. He fucking left me alone. I needed him. He left. This shit isn’t funny. Only it is.
At one point I am sitting on Lark, pummeling him. The phone rings.
“Hello? … No he’s busy.” I start smacking him with the receiver. It is too surreal even for us. He cries uncle. I start laughing. We lay side-by-side panting and giggling.
Things are never the same with us. For the first time he must accept that I am his equal. He seems relieved. While he was away I became his partner, no longer his charge.
Lark has kicked dope while away. We take a badass stand on drugs.
“Drugs make you stupid, booze just makes you fat.” I know. There is no logic there. We don’t look too closely at our creed, just kinda go with it. We saw Serpico, convinces us we should be DEA cops. We want to go under cover and bust drug dealers. Whynot, right? Idiots.
Jeffrey is having a party, he is a sweet gay Black actor. Man, back then being gay and Black meant you lost your entire family and friends, for all I know it still does. A lot of actors are at this party. Hope is there, she has long brown hair. She can pull off Shakespeare, classy. She could have my heart with one look. But that won’t happen tonight. Tonight there is a coke dealer at the party. He is rude and demeaning, but he has the blow so everyone is kissing his ass. Like some sort of velvet rope affair he hand picks certain people and takes them in to the bathroom for some toot.
“Swear to God one of those car hop fags scratched my Porsche, no offense Jeffy babe, but you fags shouldn’t be parking cars.”
“Don’t I know it sweetie.”
Fucking sweetie, really? I don’t think so. Lark nods at me and we go out to his ‘67 Firebird. We collect our pieces from the trunk. Dealer man near shits his pants when we come through the door, guns out and raging. The party goes silent. Can you blame them?
“Outside.” Lark motions for the door with his .38 S&W.
“Who the fu... What?”
“I’d do what Hutch says, he does have the gun.”
“Hutch?”
“I’m Starsky, he’s Hutch and you’re out the fucking door.” I shove him hard. I don’t know what rides Lark, but me, this fuck stands for every drug dealer that ever got rich off my brother and sister’s pain.
“What the hell... want coke? ”
“Fuck you.” Lark cocks the revolver.
“Money, money? I got... shit...”
“I don’t need this.” Lark drops the hammer on the .38 and tosses it to me. “This fucking guy.” And he starts in punching and kicking and tearing up the dealer. We leave him crying like a bitch on the hood of his Porsche. Starsky and Hutch are on the roll.
When Lark graduates from Ravenswood he wears a black satin suit, a silver shirt, a chrome snake belt and a matching nickel plated snub nose .38 revolver. When I graduate Paly I take Lark as my date. We leave the guns at home. We don’t need them there. We are packing attitude, it is all we need with this crowd.
Blue and his jock pals all sit at a table drinking hidden sips of whiskey and staring daggers at us. Then a slow dance comes on. I extended my hand and lead my brother onto the dance floor. We waltzed around that gym in blatant mockery of all that those high school superstars hold sacred. Lark spins and dips me in front of their table. Veins pop on Blue's neck, but not one of them moves.
We end up on Page Mill, parked at an overlook. The bay and the city lights stretch out at our feet. Lark takes a big hit off the Bacardi and passes it.
“Where the fuck am I?”
“The Bonneville.”
“Why is it so dark?”
“You're on the floor.”
“Fucking right I am.” Larkin pulls himself up onto the seat. Lights the filter end of a Kool.
“Bro.”
“What, oh fuck.” He grinds the cig out and gets one going the correct direction. He passes me the pack. Not a real fan of menthol, I don’t care. I fire up.
“Those fucking jocks... Right JJ, fucking jocks. Nobody fucks with the Stallings brothers...No. Body.” Actually it feels like everybody fucks with us, but I’m too wasted to argue the point. Instead we smoke and listen to Rod Stewart sing about a dirty old town he was going to burn down.
“You know something JJ?”
“What’s that Larkin?”
“Someday... someday, this is going to read much better than it lived.”
G-STRINGS AND ORGANIC GARDENING
My sister Lilly is the oldest of us. I watched her from four years away. The time, like a gauze curtain, made the lights around her halo and her world soft and rich. The other source of our distance was Lark, we both wanted to be with him. My mother didn’t aid in this, she had a habit of giving boy toys and girl toys. Lark and I got Johnny West dolls. Shaun and Lilly got Little House on the Prairie dolls. This worked out for me and Lark, but with six years separating the girls it must have been a drag. Chores were divided the same sexist way. My parents came of age in the early 50’s, they were as progressive as they could find their way to be.
Do you know what? That’s a lie, I’m afraid my mother will read this, so I’m being an apologist. Truth is my mother has real problems with internalized sexist views.
Lillyis a soil scientist, she packs a Ph.D. Lilly is a doctor of dirt. The state of California pays her to assess environmental impacts, they pay her to build wetlands. But on the almond ranch she and my mother owned for a time, my mother would take the word of their Mexican handyman before she’d listen to Lilly about soil amending. I’m sure he was a smart man, a good man. But I don’t think having a penis is a qualifier for soil knowledge. The weird part is, Mom also thinks most men are idiots, just idiots with better opinions than another woman's. My mother's own opinion trumps all. Even on subjects she knows nothing about.
Most I know of my big sister is mythic in nature. She is not unlike my father, only herself-inflicted acceptance of traditional gender roles never allowed her to have his confidence. I’ve seen her kneel at an asshole's feet. Men not fit to clean her house. And she kneels, hanging on their every word.
“I don’t know how to work a cell phone, hehe.” A scientist. Right?
She plays the blonde card way past the age that it is cute. She never allows herself the gravitas age brings. The women in my family cling to youth like a life raft on the Titanic. Their white knuckles leave marks on their faces and those around them. Wrinkles are a badge of courage. Wrinkles say you survived. Grandma Stallings looked like Georgia O’Keefe, deep furrows marked her body.
A map of all she had been.
All she had gone through.
All she had survived.
Grandpa Stallings was a stone fox at fifty. Lark and I favor him, so I always knew I would like being fifty. Admittedly, it sucks to be an aging woman in the US at the beginning of the twenty first century. But the women in my family didn’t need to buy in so fully. My sister Lilly was always snarky about Ingrid. She said she didn’t know why I said Ingrid was beautiful.
Ingrid is round, and curvaceous. Ingrid likes French food and butter and cheese. Ingrid is Bridgett Bardot and Bernadette Peters rolled together. When I pick her up for a date, she comes to the door, and takes my breath away.
But she wasn’t skinny.
That was a crime. Weight gain and loss define beauty. It really is that narrow. When I gain weight my mother and Lilly are sure to point it out. They are sad for me. They can’t understand I am not defined by my weight. I’m a fucking big man, a Viking. Hagrid to my nieces and nephews.
My baby sister, sweet Shaunton stuck her finger down her throat to stay thin. By thirteen she already knew the deal on weight. From mother to daughter. Sad part is, I watched my baby sister her whole life, and she is lovely, she is beautiful. Always has been. I saw how boys looked at her. And not even for one minute could she see what I saw. I have come to see that the most beautiful women in the world never know they are. And the women who think they are beautiful, most often aren’t.
I am 7, my mother is trying to get me to read. She is using Playboy as a primer. I guess she thinks airbrushed tits will keep me focused, she’s right. It is the 60’s and we are all so open about sex. Well except my mom never spoke about being molested as a girl. My dad never talked about being molested as a boy. He never said that when a woman kissed him he felt like he was going to suffocate. Having an old man force you to blow him will do that.
When I have kids of my own, he says “There comes a point where you have to decide if you're going to fuck your children, you know what I mean?” I’m too dumbfounded to say anything. I take the coward's way, and nod weakly.
My mother wears a leopard pink bikini to the river. Young men stare at her cleavage. She is proud I think. It creeps me out. My parents never make love with the lights on. But it is the 60’s and we are all so open about sex.
The second time Hannah and I make love she has a toe curling orgasm. She tells me it is the first time she’s cum while making love. I’m fifteen, and proud.
“Tssss, Josh, all girls say that. They all fake it. They all say you’re the first.” For years I thought about that statement. I thought I must be naïve, self-delusional. Lilly’s statement didn’t jive with what I experienced. Looking back now I can see it said so much more about her than Hannah or me. Her distain for other women reads crystalline from this distance.
“When a woman speaks at a conference of scientists, it is like a dog ha
s spoken. They don’t listen to what you said, they are just impressed you spoke at all.” Lilly tells it like a joke.
“When I was teaching at Chico, I discovered that women have voices pitched too high for male colleagues to hear.” Lilly plays this off as a joke too. She is too guileless to work the system, to play dumb for profit. No, that’s a card she saves for lovers. She hopes passion and a dreamy optimism will pull her through any situation. And I’m not sure she’s wrong.
I am 15 and my sister works at The Streaker. It’s a low rent strip joint on the El Camino. I am in the dressing room. There are three near naked girls lounging around. They are my big sister's age. Back stage they turn all the flirt off. There is no sexual tension in the air. That is a fantasy men who weren’t there write about. The truth is different. Or it is to me. I’m on the floor playing with Lilly’s German shepherd.
“Want some boo, JJ?” Lanese is tall dark and silly. She and Lark will hook up. They will break several beds in Monterey where they go for the jazz festival.
“Sure.” I suck the sweet smoke in. I love the cool mellow that comes with pot. I lean back, and rest my head on the dog. He growls once, then accepts me using him as pillow.
Martha and the Vandellas. Muffled, through the wall. All bass and thump. Heat Wave. Motown. Good shit. I close my eyes and listen. I feel the dog’s heart beat. The song ends. I can’t hear what the DJ is saying. He sounds like the teacher in Peanuts, waa wa waa wa. The next song starts, some Southern cracker band.
Lilly comes off the stage, sweating. She has only her G-String on. Her dance outfit is in her arms. A wad of dollar bills are in her hands. She has eight inch heels. I smile dopily up at her. She smiles and takes her drink from the dressing table. She swallows half of it in a gulp.
The hardest thing about stripping is the shoes and shitty stages. Do it long and you will get shin splints. The hardest part for my sister, is that it is part of her story. She can’t recognize it’s just something she did, not something she was. Hell, we all did funny things back then.
All the Wild Children Page 11