Palo Alto

by James Franco

  Then I walked out of the school yard toward Ofra Isaac’s house.

  Ofra’s was pretty far away.

  After a while, I saw an old man walking a little white dog. He had a full head of nicely combed white hair. I caught up to him even though I was stumbling a little.

  “Hey. Hey, man… ,” I said, in a friendly tone. But the guy didn’t stop. He didn’t look at me, even though I was just a little behind him.

  “I’m a really nice guy,” I said, but he walked faster. “I just want some company and you seem like a nice guy too.” I talked to him like that for a few blocks without him answering or looking back. I kept following him even though it was out of my way to get to Ofra’s. I wanted to convince this guy that I was a good person. Then he turned into a house.

  “You better get the fuck out of here,” he said. “I’m calling the police, you fucking asshole.” Then he went inside. I left.

  I was walking, back on track for Ofra’s. I walked with my head bowed so I could watch my feet.

  I started thinking about Jack Kerouac and what a hero he was. “You’re a hero,” I said out loud. “Like Jack Kerouac.” I liked thinking about Kerouac stumbling around drunk.

  Then I happened upon another guy. He was old too, with a slightly bigger, brown dog. He was taller than the first guy. He wore an Irish cap and was a little more disheveled. When I tried to pass him, he said, “Hey,” and smiled.

  “What’s up?” I said.

  “Nothing, just walking my dog.”

  “I’m not here to mug you or anything,” I said, because of the other guy being so scared.

  “I know,” he said.

  “Can I walk with you?”

  “Sure,” he said, and we walked.

  “I’ve been fighting with my girlfriend,” the old guy said. “She won’t give me any head.”

  “That sucks,” I said.

  “You have a girl?”

  “No. Fuck girls,” I said.

  “Yeah. Fuck ’em,” he said.

  “Fuck guys too.”

  We walked without talking for a bit.

  Then he said, “When I was young, I was really angry and shy. I’d do stupid stuff like steal and set fires. I never got caught. Now I’m old and I feel the same way. You know what I mean? I don’t like anything.”

  “Sure,” I said.

  “Is that how you feel?”

  “Yeah, I hate everything,” I said.

  We walked past a church. I had read Ibsen’s Ghosts in the parking lot one day while waiting for an AA meeting because the court made me go.

  “I’m really not here to mug you,” I said.

  He didn’t say anything.

  I said, “You want to frisk me?”

  “Yeah,” he said, like it was a regular thing. So we stepped off the sidewalk and through the edge of the church parking lot to the brick side of the chapel. We were behind a large juniper bush, hidden from the road. I put my hands on the bricks like I was being arrested and he frisked me. He touched me under my arms and on my sides and on my butt a little. Then he was done.

  “Okay?” I said.

  “Can I feel your balls for a second?”

  “What? What the fuck?”

  “Come on, man, be cool and just let me feel your balls for a second.”

  “Aw, man,” I said. “I was trying to be nice to make you feel safe and you pull that shit?”

  “I’m sorry,” he said.

  We walked out of the church and along the sidewalk, and we didn’t talk anymore.

  A car full of teenagers drove by and yelled to us. I didn’t know them but I wanted to be with them. They were stopped at a light at Embarcadero. I ran up to the car and asked to be let in, but they wouldn’t open the door. When the light turned green the car started moving, but I held on to the open window and ran alongside. The girls inside were shrieking. It was like they were scared but excited too. The car went faster and then I was falling and I slid on the street on my back. The car drove off and when I stood up the old man with the dog was gone.

  I walked past a bunch of houses. I was coming up on another elementary school called Duvenek and I knew that meant I was close to Ofra’s. I climbed the chain-link fence and crossed the wet grass field. I passed through the outdoor halls and drew a few purple and yellow flowers for the kids. Then I wrote FUCK SCHOOL.

  Outside the school there was one more street to go and then I was at Ofra’s. When I got to the mouth of her driveway I could hear the buzzing voices of the party. People were probably around the pool in the back, and April and her sister and Emily were probably there too. I was sure A.J. wasn’t.

  I didn’t go in. I walked down the wide street with all the mansions. The mansions ended and the street started to narrow. Soon there was thick foliage on both sides and the sidewalk ended. I walked over a small arched bridge and there I was, in East Palo Alto.

  It was darker over here. Fewer streetlights. The houses were slanted and there were metal bars in front of the windows.

  I was mad at everyone but there was nothing I could do.

  I started yelling. First it was just screaming, no words.

  When cars passed, I yelled at them, “Hey! Take me! Take me! Take me out of here! Take me with you.”

  I yelled at every car that passed. Nobody stopped.

  Ten minutes later a cop car drove up and took me away.

  You can’t fight the Tar Baby, that’s what he wants. You punch that Tar Baby and he sucks you in. Once you get wrapped up with the Tar Baby, he loses his shape, he becomes a sticky, black goo-monster and he gets all over you. The more you fight, and stretch him, and struggle, the more he gets all over you, and then you can’t move and you’re just a pile of tar. After a certain point, you are the Tar Baby. Instead of button eyes, you still have your real eyes, looking out from under the tar.

  I Could Kill Someone

  There are many ways to kill someone, but a gun seems as good as any. The big thing that gets you caught is motive. It’s pretty obvious that Brent Baucher hates me, but who would expect me to get a gun and kill him?

  He’s on the football team. He is not handsome. He’s fit, but he’s a beast, very hairy arms and legs: strong, pale, discolored things.

  I’m told that I am good-looking, but I hate my body, and my face, and my curly hair. And I’m shy.

  Brent has a large bulging forehead that makes his eyes sit deep in his skull. The bottom of his face is too long, like it was squeezed in a vise. There are white-capped acne bulges, pink and irritated. And single hairs coming out of strange areas.

  In World History I once saw him doodling on a returned exam. Next to the red F at the top he wrote “uck ’em all.” Then under that he wrote “Niggas Unite.” Then he scribbled out his last name and wrote “Too $hort,” like the rapper.

  I’d like to take Brent out of reality, just as simple as leading him through a door.

  I don’t like violence. I don’t play video games, and I don’t go to horror movies. I like Steel Magnolias; I like Sally Field.

  One time, in my sophomore year, I had to stay after school and run around the track because I had been late to Mr. Peterson’s PE class twenty times in a row. That gray afternoon, going around, I thought about the oval of the track, and the rectangle of the football field within it, and the smaller rectangles of the field defining the yard lines. The memory of all those circles and rectangles is tied up with what happened later in the locker room.

  When I got in from the track, the last of the football team was in there changing after practice. I walked to the far bank of lockers, along the wall, where my locker was. I could hear them cavorting and laughing, and as I walked I could see out of my peripheral vision that one of the five or six of them was Brent Baucher.

  I sat on the wooden bench and swirled the black dial back and forth, and behind me, in the center aisle, the five and Brent erupted in laughter. The sound bounced around the cement room. That laughter had been in that place forever; it was something
that those boys had found when they got to high school.

  “You looked, motherfucker! Faggot looked!”

  “Cecil looked! Faggot looked!”

  “No I din’n,” said Cecil’s voice, but it was drowned in laughter and the sounds of bodies moving around.

  I changed as fast as I could, my shirt first and then quickly off with my shorts and on with my jeans.

  Then I realized that the locker room was very quiet, and when I looked over my shoulder the six of them were standing in their underwear and they were all still muddy and dirty and covered in grass, and I saw Baucher’s chest in a tight white tank, hair sprouting everywhere, and then I noticed something that made my mind jump; they each had one testicle sticking out of the pee hole in the front of their underpants; endless balls, pulled tight against scrotum skin; pink, brown, and paste. For a flash of a second, I saw Brent’s: large, kidney shaped, blue veined, and hairy.

  I looked up and saw their faces and I knew I was not supposed to be looking at those balls, that that was what they wanted.

  “Faggot looked!” said someone. And then they all said it, while they tucked in their balls and moved toward me. They screamed that I was a faggot as two held me down. One sat on my face—Cecil, I think; his crotch smelled sour and rich, and his balls in their cloth sack were on my chin. Down below, the others pulled my jeans off and my underwear. Someone grabbed my balls and twisted. At first it felt like a bubble in my stomach that went up to my throat and filled it, like my balls were up there and choking me, and then they twisted further, and the skin of my scrotum burned as it twisted and chafed against itself.

  “Again!” someone yelled.

  “Again!” another person yelled. They were all yelling “Faggot” again, and my balls were twisting again, and before I started screaming into the white wall of Cecil’s underwear, and biting at the chalky brown of his inner thigh, I realized that I could not hear Brent’s voice in all the yelling. Before things went black I realized that Brent’s silence meant that he was doing the twisting.

  Brent is very stupid. He gets all Ds and Fs in his classes. I have World History with him; he said that the Black Plague was started by a combination of gays and rats. We studied the French Revolution in that class. One time, I masturbated to David’s painting of Marat. It was a picture in my textbook, and I let the come go right in there, and then I closed it. Now the pages are cemented together, and dead Marat is plastered against the guillotine forever.

  This is Brent’s joke: “What’s the difference between a faggot and shit?” I didn’t know the answer. “Nothing, you fucking faggot.” He told that joke one time, and then kicked my foot to trip me into dog shit on the quad lawn. I didn’t fall, but everyone thought it was funny.

  Brent says I’m a faggot because I quit the football team freshman year. I asked him about it and that’s when we had our first little scene.

  “You think I’m a fag because I quit the team?” I said.

  He stopped. He had his usual black San Diego Chargers hat on backward. His long face looked surprised, and the one stoned-looking eye opened a little bit more.

  “You are a fucking fag,” he said. He looked like he was getting a little emotional about it. I could see it in his retarded eyes.

  “Why do you think that?” I said, and my voice trembled.

  “I don’t think it, you are!” Then he walked off. It’s weird, but I think it’s because he was going to cry. After that he always called me a faggot.

  After the locker room I decided that Brent needed to die. He was never going to get smarter, and he was a bigot. And I couldn’t stop thinking about his acne-corroded flesh being opened, and his thin racist blood matting the hair of his beastly body.

  I was standing over near the underpass next to the school where people smoked. Some people called it the Bat Cave.

  “You really want one?” said Barry. Barry was my friend. He was chubby and lovable, and Mormon, and smoked pot and loved John Bonham.

  “Yes,” I said. “I want one.”

  I wanted a gun.

  Barry couldn’t get me one, but he knew a guy who could.

  “Sheeze, well, okay, but… sheeze, all right, I have to talk to Teague.”

  Teague went to Menlo, a private school in the next town. Teague was infamous. Barry knew him because Barry went to Menlo in eighth grade.

  Teague was dating a girl named Kate Keller who went to the all-girls school, Castilleja. My mom used to teach there. Kate and Teague fucked all the time, so people said. One time, Barry told me that in eighth grade Teague took Kate to Wayne’s World and fingered her during the whole movie. Just watching and working.

  Everyone knew that Teague could get guns.

  Two days later, on Thursday, Barry came up to me in the cafeteria at brunch. I was in the food line. Barry put his face close to mine, but he wasn’t looking at me. He whispered, “Here it is.”

  I looked right at him, but he was looking at the back wall, like he was pretending he wasn’t talking to me.

  “What?” I whispered at his big Mormon ear.

  “T’s number.”

  While he said that he was putting a piece of paper in my hand.

  “Don’t look now,” he whispered. He still wasn’t looking at me.

  “Okay,” I said. “Thanks.” And I put the note in my jacket pocket.

  Then it was my turn to order at the food window. I stepped up and said to the woman in the hairnet, “Hi, Ann, can I have some Tater Tots and a Diet Coke?”

  While Ann was getting my Tots, Barry stepped over to me again. This time he was looking me in the eyes.

  “Don’t do anything stupid,” he said.

  “I won’t,” I said. I made sure I was looking right back at his eyes.

  He looked at me like he was trying to determine something, but I doubt that he could.

  Then he said, “You coming to Battle of the Bands?”

  “Yeah,” I said.

  At lunch that day I sat with some people, but I didn’t listen to them talk. I kept feeling the crumpled paper in my pocket.

  In math class I sat in the back. It was AP Calculus, and I was the youngest in the class. Mr. Case was large and dark and bald. He was the assistant football coach under Coach Peterson, the cock. He looked so thick, like hardened tree sap; his eyes were a little crossed and he had a lazier left eyelid than Brent Baucher. He lived three hours away in a place called Angels Camp, on the way to Lake Tahoe.

  Mr. Case drove three hours each morning to be at school, and then drove back after football practice to be with the angels.

  I was good at math, but not as good as others. My dad forced me into it, so I had no love for it. I tried to think of the equations on the blackboard like little winking eyes and explosions the way Stephen Dedalus did, but it all just looked like a bunch of work that I didn’t want to do.

  I fingered the paper in my pocket, and then I pulled it out. I unfolded it and it was the ripped corner of Barry’s English handout. The typed homework part of it said, “. . . what does George do after Lenny dies? Write a different ending that… ,” but the rest was ripped off, and underneath that, Barry had written “T” for Teague, but the T was slanted and it looked like an X. Underneath the T was the phone number, written in a scraggly and uneven hand.

  There were three nines in Teague’s number and two twos.

  After school I sat at a picnic bench and read some Faulkner until about five. Benjy was so retarded, and I loved Quentin. I wanted to stick a knife in my throat, or fuck my sister if I had one, and then jump off a bridge at Harvard. I thought about it for a while, then I called Teague’s number from the pay phone at school.

  The number went to a pager, so I paged it to the pay phone. I stood there and waited. Cars drove by on El Camino. No one in those cars knew what was going on over here, on the school campus. A little ways away, in the locker room on the other side of campus, Brent was probably changing, or playing Faggot Looked. Funny that he had no idea what I was doing so
close to him.

  The pay phone rang after five minutes.

  “Hello?” the voice said. The voice was nasal, and it sounded angry, but like a teenager’s.

  “Hey, it’s Teddy,” I said. “Barry C. gave me this number.”

  The voice changed a little. “Hey. Yeah, he told me. So you need that thing?”

  “Uh, yeah.”

  “Yeah, I can help you.” The voice was really relaxed now. It sounded like he was doing something on the other end, like rolling marbles on a table, one by one. Then he said, “Can you meet me Saturday night?”

  I told him that was okay. Ordering a gun was like ordering anything, it turned out.

  He said we should meet at Cubberley, this closed high school, at midnight on Saturday. I said okay, and then we hung up.

  I took my sweatshirt sleeve and rubbed the fingerprints off the phone receiver. And then I ran.

  I couldn’t sleep that night. It was like Christmas Eve, but not. It was something dark. I wasn’t going to get or give anything; I was just going to take something away.

  The next day was Friday. I was very tired, and I felt like everyone could see the gun shining in my mind, and there were bright flashing words above it that read BRENT BAUCHER.

  I sat in Biology and thought about Brent. Protozoa had cilia like the hairs on Brent’s legs. Brent’s cells had all his information coiled into DNA, in every one of those dirty nuclei. I wanted to destroy those cells. Break ’em up like billiard balls and have all that info obliterated. His mitochondrial forehead and his Golgi vesicle pimples, and his dead, void mind, shut down and gone.

  Then, after Biology and before English, I passed Brent in the outdoor breezeway.

  It was a shock because I had been thinking about him so intensely right before, but it was also a shock because I usually didn’t pass him in the halls. I was usually sure to take routes that kept me away from him.