All the Wild Children (15 page)

My old man tried to strangle me, that’s all I can remember of violence against me, but everything I know about human nature tells me that wasn’t the only time it got physical.  My mother broke the sturdy stalk of a Red Rider bb rifle over the back of a dog.  I know she slapped Lark so hard she fractured her wrist, he was eleven at the time.  I know she and Lilly always got into it.  I hear tales of broken hairbrushes.  These tales feel like ghosts and rumors.  I am trying to access memories tucked long away for my own safety.  What I can say for sure is, my parents never understood personal, physical or psychological boundaries.  I grew up in chaos, bedlam. 

Given that, it really isn’t, or shouldn't be a surprise to anyone the amount of violence in Lark’s and my story.  We have been fighting to blood for as long as I can remember.  It was how we talked some times.  With sticks and stones.  I can count the number of times there was any real anger on two fingers.  One was the infamous rock to his head.  The other was much later when we were almost grown.  The rule of battle was simple, kick each other’s asses until someone cried uncle or bled.  No one ever cried uncle.

I am at Paly the first time I intentionally let the beast out to play.  That little boy rage that broke the glass door and split my brother head.  Tantrums, is what they called them.  The beast, is what I call them. 

At Paly, there are a group of football jocks who have taken to calling me fag, faggot, queer.  I am not sure if it is because of how their girlfriends look at my tight jeans or maybe it is just the worst slander they can think of.  They have weak imaginations. 

I am 16.  I have gay friends from the disco.  I don’t really give a fuck about the insult.  But the underlying anger scares me.  They roam in packs.  They look like they enjoy hurting people.  Their bullshit is ever present and inescapable.  I hate meatheads.  I hate stupidity.  As a friend puts it,
I will suffer anything but fools
.             

It is lunch.  Louise and I are off campus at the outdoor shopping center across from school.  We’re sharing a takeout of fried rice.  I’m telling her about a Bad Finger LP I just got.

“There is no such thing as a bad finger, if you’re lonely enough.”  I’m laughing at her.  She is randy and sweet.  We made out once at Ingrid’s, before Ingrid and I were an item.  We are good friends.  We are walking.  Laughing.  Not looking. 

“Hey faggot!”

“This is our parking lot fag!”

“Yeah fucking fag!”

Somewhere deep down I have had enough. 

“This is not yours.”  I’m pointing at the asphalt. 

“Sorry cunt hear you fag.”  They are all laughing.  I scan them.  Six in all. 

“Fuck it.  I’ll fight your baddest right now.  Step the fuck up.”  The street side of my brain is calculating.  One might kick my ass.  Six could kill me.

“Take him down Blue!”

“Do it Blue!” 

Blue, I never even knew he had a name before that moment.  He bobs and weaves up to me.  He swings up a hand and slaps me.  He quickly follows with a slap from the other hand. 

My arms hang at my side.  I let him slap me.  I have no idea how this slap boxing game is played. 

“Fight back faggot.”  My face stings.  My face is red.  He slaps harder. 

Keep it coming Blue.  Hurt me.  Scare me.  Meet the beast.

“Leave him alone you jerk!”  Louise touches Blue from behind. 

Blue spins and kicks her in the crotch. 

I fill with rage.  The world goes into syrupy slow motion.  I watch myself grab Blue around the torso and lift him off the ground.  I watch as his body is slammed onto a car windshield and again and again.  Three times his head bounces off the safety glass. 

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 wa
y
o
r
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. 

Ingri
d
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.  Wh
y
not
,
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
h
as 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? ”