All the Wild Children

by Josh Stallings

  “Tad?” We stand on the pea gravel in front of the Cherry Pit, Teen Discotheque

  “Yo?” Tad matches a Marlboroand tosses me the pack.

  “I met two girls here last night.” I jet blue smoke out in a cool stream. “They want to meet you.”

  Tad nods, ice mother-fucking cold, like he could take trim or leave it. He doesn’t ask if they’re cute or nothing, because...

  A) In our post-feminist North Cali world, you have to pretend that that shit doesn’t matter. We are sensitive, caring fellows, who want to bang your daughter’s brains out and not call her back unless it is some really good trim.

  And...

  B) He trusts my judgment. Maybe not in the little shit, but in the big things, like booze, drugs, driving and my ability to know bounce-able bunnies when I see them.

  “One thing though. Tiny thing, really. Nothing at best. A speck o-”

  “What is the non problem?”

  “They kinda think we are English rock stars.” Tad’s saucering eyes tell it all. But give the chap credit, by the time we hit the door he’s in full blown bad cockney.

  “Oh my god are you from England?” She’s upper middle class punk. She bought the torn Pistols shirt, push up bra, and distressed leather jacket with daddy's Visa. Dark long hair. She will forever be stamped on our hearts and minds as Suzy Sunnyvale.

  “Naaa, were not from England,” Tad lays the accent down thick, “We’re from London.” Wide grin. Flash of teeth and it’s a done deal. He has a ten foot yellow scarf draped around his neck. He has platforms, a too tight YMCA T-shirt under the coat he stole from his mother’s closet. We rock glitter hard.

  David Bowie. Queen. Roxy Music. The Tubes. New York Dolls. Mott The Hoople. They rock glitter hard. Sticky Finger jeans tight enough to advertise our religion. Silver lame sparkle. Ironic kid's shirts. We weretall, skinny, pale and proud. Fuck you if you don’t believe us. We dress like fags and fuck like studs. Bred in the ghetto, dressed in The City we rock glitter hard core.

  “Yeah... we're with the band… No, only into the weekend.” I don’t play in any band. Tad is the lead singer in Idiot so we leave them to divine what band we’re in. If we had been con artists instead of horny teen age boys, we could have raked in a fortune. Or gotten our legs broken in a back alley. Girls forgive a lot if a boy is cute, funny and knows what foreplay is.

  Linda Los Gatos is dark and brooding, a proclaimed lesbian.

  “I just like to get a little dick sometimes and you look like you both have little dicks so let’s roll.”

  She doesn’t smile, more of a smirk. This chick is scary. Crazy scary. While Tad fishes for the key, I slip her up front next to him. I take Suzy in the back. Engineering a totally pussy move, I don’t jump on the exploding vagina and save my squad. Instead I toss Tad in front of the speeding cross town vagina bus.

  A group of local meathead warriors, field sport heroes watch us go. We just creeped their girls. Local boys didn’t even know what hit ‘em. Two freakin Vikings swooped down, took their pick and left.

  Tad’s parents are out of town so we take them there. We make up a lame story explaining why we were staying at a family home. I’m on the sofa. I have Suzy Sunnyvale’s knickers around her ankles and am showing her a little trick the local boys never thought of. Cunnilingus. Real men don’t eat quiche but they sure as hell eat pussy. So Suzy Sunnyvale is calling out for the old gods. From the bedroom I hear thumps and wumps. Linda is going Barbarella on Tad. She is a stone freak. I hear the slap of flesh on flesh and a yelp. Tad comes walking into the living room rubbing his neck. I am now balls deep in lovely Suzy Sunnyvale. But I feel a bit guilty for selling him out.

  S&M girl is just behind him,buck nekid except her boots. She’s saying something about being a lesbian. She had these perfect pert lil’ titties.

  “Come on bitch, not man enough to fuck like a woman?”

  I had no clue what that meant, but fuck it, how rough could it get?

  We did what any normal guys would do. We switched. I pulled out of Suzy Sunnyvale and went after Linda Los Gatos. And a fine night was had by all.

  From: TadWilliams@xxxxet.com

  Subject: huh?

  Date: May 30, 12:51:58 AM PDT

  To: Josh

  Just got off the phone with you a few minutes ago, and realized I forgot to mention that Linda Los Gatos' most memorable comment was, "C'mon, think you can fingerfuck me as good as a girl can?"

  Ah, those innocent childhood days… -Tad

  Next day after we drop them off, I pull up my shirt showing Tad the scratches that laced my back. Tad lifts his shirt grinning. His back is laced with equally fucked up scratches.

  “Well that was fun.“

  “True. Although some people think a good old fashioned rubber hose interrogation is fun.”

  “Freaks, freaks think a rubber hose is fun.”

  “True. Wanna see them again?”

  “Hell yes. Those girls make some mean freaky muffins.”

  OK, they never learn we’re not orphan Brit glitter rock boys. We dodged a big bullet. We pulled it off. Only, as Tad reminded me tonight on the phone, we didn’t. My family and friends were opening a teen disco called My-O-My. And these lovely gals would be there. An awful lot of the staff at the club looked like me, Stallings family resemblance being what it is. It was going to blow our cover so we cooked up a plan. A massively over complicated plan, yes, but for a bunch of hormone crazed over self-medicated teenage boys it seemed solid.

  PART 1 Setting the hook. Tad and I are hanging with the girls and Lark bursts in. We get in a small argument with him. We lead the girls to believe it’s a drug deal.

  PART 2 Reeling in. We drive the girls up into the mountains. Lark arrives and runs us off the road. We pull guns and tell the girls to hit the floor. Only our London accents are replaced by Texas Rangers accents. “Get down Boy.” We yell and fire off blanks. Lark rips a blood pack and goes down in a spray of red death.

  PART 3 Bludgeoning the fish. We call it in and race away, telling the girls we are sorry we had to lie to them, that we are actually undercover Texas Rangers and we are all in danger. We drop them at a Denny’s, give them cab fare and tell them it is best if they forget this ever happened.

  The plan is overly complex, yes. Childish, yes. Full of opportunities to go dramatically south, hell yes. But the other option really sucks and involves having to admit to these lovely young ladies that we are dicks.

  We never got a chance to pull off the great Anglo-Texan con.

  The girls come to the club and confront us. Rightfully calling us bastards and creeps. It’s embarrassing. I hate feeling like a dick. I’m better than that, only apparently I’m not. But really the worst part is, we never get to try the plan. A great con is a terrible thing to waste.

  I can blame the faux Englishman crap on youth. We all do stupid shit right? Only when Jochum, my Danish pal and I did it in L.A., I was eighteen. The funniest part was they believed me more times than Jochum. They said he didn’t sound very Danish. Based on????? Exactly. Didn’t stop a couple from coming home with us.

  Looking back I realize they probably all knew the deal. They came with us in spite of it. Or maybe it was the kicker that allowed them to do what they wanted to do in the first place. Teen psychology is way too complex for me to figure. It has been proven that teenage brains have more in common with criminally insane brains than they do a normal adult's. So we really were all insane. Not an excuse I buy when I wake at 4 AM and run down a litany of my sins. But in the court of self-reprehension I never have had a very good attorney. We poor boys always get some overworked court appointed hack. Just once I want Johnny Cochran to plead my case. Just once.

  I’m 50, sitting in a barber’s chair at Yoni tattoo up in Tarzana. Julie is buzzing away on my shoulder with speed and concentration. She only pauses to wipe the blood away. She is carving an Aegishja into my flesh and filling the tiny wounds with black ink. It is surrounded by Norse knot work. It is neither
my first or last ink. I am trying to find context for these tales of my misspent youth. Preferably a context where I don’t look like an asshole.

  I’m 16, drunk. Sitting shotgun in a 1959 Jaguarsaloon. Pops is driving. He is drunk. We are in The City. It is Lark’s eighteenth birthday and we have come here to get him his first tattoo. So far it is his last as well. Out of a flash book he picks the griffin, or rampant lion. That was three hours ago and we were already drunk then, now we are two steps beyond. When Mom discovers the tat she will cry, “You marked your perfect body.” I think of the scars on my body and laugh.

  “Don’t worry Moms, it’s not permanent.” My brother is trying to placate. I’m in the corner stoned on hash and trying to not giggle.

  “It isn’t?”

  “No, Ma… It will only last sixty years, eighty if I’m really lucky.” I want to believe we then had a Waltons moment where we all laugh and it breaks the tension and she hugs him and musses my hair. We didn’t, but it comforts me to think we could have.

  In San Francisco we are searching for a hidden Chinese restaurant, we need massive amounts of fried rice to soak up the booze.

  “Hang a Lewie at the next light.” Lark is directing from the back seat. Why in a city where you can’t spit without hitting a Chinese restaurant do we need to find this particular one?

  I don’t know. I guess drunk nights need a quest, and this is ours.

  “Rosco at the next light!” And it is this final right that leads us facing a street filled with headlights. They are coming on fast. They fill both sides of the road. It is a one-way street. It is not going our way. In a moment of drunken brilliance, Pops wrenches the wheel hard and misses two parked cars. Bouncing up the curb we skid to a stop.

  “OK, one more Lewie and we’re there.” Lark is and has been laying on the floor with his eyes closed. He was directing us by pure drunken intuition. Not a good idea, ever.

  I’m 50 and Julie is still drilling away at my shoulder.

  I’m 50 and I’m nowhere nearer to a context where I don’t look like an asshole.

  I’m 50 and I have to be OK with that.

  MY - O - MY

  INT. HOSPITAL ROOM - DAY - MATERNITY WARD

  Elgar: What race are you going to put on the birth certificate?

  Francine: White. I want him to grow up like his daddy did - casual.

  That’s from a Hal Ashby film, The Landlord. For years Lark and I would say when called White - I ain’t White I’m Casual. In our short stint at Foothill Jr. College we put down Casual as our race and got invited to all the minority functions. I’m a 6’4” Viking who knows he isn’t White. It gets confusing sometimes, trust me it does.

  In 1975 we were living the sanctimonious drug free life as only ex-druggies can. Two points I should make here. One, “drug free” is a relative term. It didn’t include amyl nitrate, nicotine,caffeine, the odd Quaalude, a black beauty here and there and enough whiskey to sink the Irish navy. Point two, I wasn’t a junky or even a major drug user, I have often latched on to my brother's drug addiction and told it like it was mine.

  Getting the facts wrong doesn’t bother me. This is my truth. My memory. But I hold myself to a high standard. I will honor my truth. I will not knowingly lie. And the idea that in the past I cadged my brother’s pain and used it for my own glorification makes me want to vomit. And why, really? I never felt my pain was enough. The pain is always greater on the other side of the fence.

  Only an alcoholic thinks being a junky is romantic.

  In Hollywood program meetings, some newcomers feel the need to be the baddest sonofabitch in the room, so they lie. As an old-timer, I tell them the truth. Don’t bother comparing your insides to other people's outsides. And don’t get in a dick wagging contest in the rooms. There will always be that guy who shot dope in his eyeball. And he will be trumped by the guy who shot dope in his dick.

  I’ve met them both.

  They really did those things. In late night Hollywood meetings you meet people who did things you can't fathom. But I remember, my story, is my story. My pain, is my pain.

  I am 16, high on speed and Jack Danielsand Budweiser. I’m doing 110 MPH, in the hills just north of Santa Cruz. Every turn is a four wheel drift across both lanes. It’s night. My lights are off. I don’t notice, I have my sunglasses on. Tad and the other passengers don’t notice because they have their sunglasses on too. I hit one corner way too hard, the body roll on the Pontiac is insane. I feel the left wheels go light. Then the tread on the right front tire rips up, exposing the steel belts. Zap pow, we are on the rim and shooting sparks. Decelerating on a rim is a total screw job. The rim digs in and tries to swing us right. I wrestle the wheel and brakes. We are on the gravel when the Pontiac finally stops.

  We are on a country lane. We are on our way to a party in Santa Cruz. The White Whale’s trunk is filled with cases of beer and a half-gallon of Jack. Bags of ice have been dumped and are melting in the trunk. I am rooting around in this mess, looking for the tire and jack. My sunglasses are off. Tad holds the flashlight for me.

  “Yo big skinny, you got a spare?”

  “Girl? Dick? Dime? Spare what?”

  “A, I’ve seen yo girls, and honestly I can do better. B, you are Keen's brother so I bet your dick is held together by the diseases battling to control it. And C, … um … C, what was C?”

  “Dime, it was a dime. As in, I’m gonna drop a dime on your ass, you don’t hand me that tire iron.”

  I get the car jacked up, I stare at the dead tire. “Fucking retreads. You ever wonder what it’s like to ride on new tires?”

  “New tires? New tires, we don’t need no stinking new tires.”

  “Yeah, they’d probably fuck the White Whale, she’s not used to traction.”

  I am sitting on the dead tire and tightening the lugs on the spare when the cop rolls up. I am wearing painted on jeans and a little kid’s shirt with BRAT spelled out in toy blocks on it. I have silver platforms on. We are in the sticks. None of this is good.

  “How are you doing, sir?” Tad goes from stoned to sober in a three-foot walk.

  Cory uses his huge intellect to slip the trunk lid down as they pull up. I’m not being sarcastic about Cory, he has a massive brain. He and Tad play an early iteration of seven degrees of separation. They see how many people it takes to connect obscure music artists. For hours they play this. I always feel stupid when they play it, I have a hard time remembering my phone number. I often feel stupid at sixteen. I overcompensate with my I don’t give a fuck attitude.

  “Need some help son?”

  “No sir, think we just about got it fixed, right Josh?”

  “Just about.” I fumble the lug nuts, drop one and have to crawl under the car. I am stalling. If I have to open the trunk to put the tire in, the jig is up.

  “We’re trying to get to Basin Street?” Tad, the genius has stretched out a map on the cop car’s hood. I could kiss him. I could anyway, he looks hot in his mother’s coat and eye make-up.

  As soon as JohnnyLawlooks down at the map I toss the ruined tire into the trunk and slam the lid.

  “Don’t forget your jack.” Oh crap. The cop is walking over. I ratchet the jack down. Fold it up.

  “I won’t.” I try and see just how long it can take to fold a jack.

  “Well, you boys have a good night. Drive safe.” As the cop drives off I am amazed by Tad and his endless ability to get authority figures to believe he is innocent.

  “Call me Ishmael, Josh and let’s sail this bitch outta here.” At the party we stay up all night. There is no speed left so we have to settle for coffee. Somewhere around 4 AM Cory, Tad and I try smoking coffee grounds. The other party kids think we are nuts, hopelessly fucked in the heads, and endlessly cool. They are correct on all counts.

  A few weeks later I am driving Ingrid up to the City to go dancing. Do we have cocktails in hand? Hell yes, it is Friday night. I get pulled over and can’t pass the field sobriety test.

  Touc
h my nose with eyes closed, can’t do it on a dare.

  Stand on one foot in platforms and lean back, are you kidding?

  Say the alphabet backwards. Dude, I can’t do it forwards on a great day. I still have to sing the ABC song in my head when I’m at the library looking for a book.

  My combined brain and neurological anomalies make me the perfect candidate to fail the test. The spilled White Russian on the floor makes my protesting a bit weak. And if they had caught me three hours later I guarantee I would have been smashed. As it is I was just getting my smooth going.

  The cuffs ratchet onto my wrists. They aren’t kidding. This is real. This is happening. They don’t allow Ingrid to take the Pontiac. From the back window of the cop car I see her getting into a tow truck with a Hell's Angel for a driver. She looks nervous. Ingrid is never nervous. I am trapped in the cop car. They can do anything they want. I have no control. Rage will do no good. I try and kiss the officer's ass. I tell him my grandfather was a cop. I tell him I want to be a cop. He sees through me. He knows a punk when he sees one. I feel soft for trying. Weak. On the long drive I have time to imagine being put injuvie. I imagine it is Ravenswood on steroids. How long will it take before I crack? For all of my bluster and roll, I am a skinny White boy. I am scared. I hate myself for it.

  At the Hillsboro station they take blood and call my mother. I am not legally drunk. Not sober, but not legally drunk. I get off with a slap on the wrist and a stern talking to. No one thinks that maybe I could use some help dealing with all the shit in my head. Maybe they do, and I can’t hear it. Too much bad water under that bridge for me to look for help from the parents.

  Down in Baja, we cook up a plan. Fueled by boredom, amyl and tequila.

  Good combo. We are there on a road trip with Mom and Perry. She didn’t keep Perry long. We never let him go. He passed a year ago. Every one of us kids stayed in touch. Every one of us mourned his leaving. We are eating tacos and laughing and thinking about what was next for us.