Chicken (12 page)

That's how I remember my father's snores.

Mr Hartley has a job for me, a good job, right now, two hundred dollars.

‘Absolutely, Mr Hartley. I'm all over it.'

Mr Hartley chuckles.

‘Excellent. David, we've had great feedback, and your client from Saturday was very complimentary.'

‘I appreciate that, it means a lot to me … Thanks.'

I'm genuine. I'm real. This is so rare for me right now. And I'm able to do it with my pimp easier than the girl I'm falling in love with.

‘So I was curious what happened on Monday …'

I can hear the sinister pipe organ creeping in the background as Mr Hartley switches gears all over me. My breath is gone. What did I do? What did I not do? What did she say? What kind of shit am I in now? Does Braddy love Mommy?

‘Uh … nothing. Why … did she say something?'

A vise squeezes my temples as I tremble.

‘Why don't you tell me exactly what happened?' Mr Hartley's a cagey bastard.

Say as little as possible, and when in doubt say even less.

‘Well … it was just a normal job, you know …'

I don't think I can say anything less than that.

‘Did she seem … upset?'

If I say she wasn't upset, he'll know I'm a liar, but if I say she was upset, then am I responsible for whatever bad shit came down in the wake of my home visit?

‘Uh … yeah. I guess she was a little upset. But I didn't do anything, I swear to God …' I'm tap-dancing as fast as I can, and Mr Hartley feels me all the way from Immaculate Heart College to Sunset Boulevard.

‘I'm not accusing you of anything. I just want you to tell me exactly what happened.' Mr Hartley's now using his no-more-messing-around voice.

I suppress a sigh of great weight.

‘Well, yeah, she did seem upset. But it wasn't my fault, I swear to God. She even gave me a tip …' I'm covering my ass, so there's not one pink little inch of it showing.

‘David' – Mr Hartley does that thing grown-ups do when they start a sentence with your name – ‘we're not accusing you of
anything. That's why I gave you this job today, to let you know we're very pleased with your work. But I need to know what happened. Now think carefully.'

‘Well, to tell you the truth, she seemed kinda …'

I don't want to say the word, but I have a feeling he's gonna make me.

‘She seemed kinda what?' asks Mr Hartley.

‘Well, kinda … crazy.'

There. I said it.

Pause. Long pause.

‘I don't want you talking to anybody about this. Nobody. Do you understand?' Mr. Hartley's dead-serious scares the shit outta me.

‘Yes, absolutely. No, I mean, I never talk to anybody, about anything.' I'm playing jump rope with my own tongue.

‘The client had a … problem.' Mr. Hartley's voice flatlines.

‘What happened?' Sweat drips down my rib cage.

‘The less you know the better.'

The way Mr. Hartley says it, I know this part of the conversation is over, which is just fine with me, cuz I never want to think about this shit for the rest of my life.

So I swallow it all whole, and lock it in my pressure cooker, where it will feed on me until I can get rid of it.

‘I might have something for you this weekend. I'm just waiting for a confirmation.' Mr. Hartley's back to being buttah.

‘Excellent. I'll make sure the pager's on vibrate.'

Mr. Hartley's wry chuckle is highly gratifying.

He disconnects from me while I disconnect from myself. Did Mommy slit her wrist in a bubblebath? Swallow a bottle of pills? Suck on an antique pistol? She seemed like the dramatic type.

Change the record, Braddy.

My little brother sits at the dinner table till eleven o'clock that
night, when he forces down his last poison pea. We're all supposed to be asleep of course, but it's much too exciting for that.

He looks so small as he opens our bedroom door, back-lighted like a hero, one small boy standing tall against the Man. He smiles a funny little smile. I want to tell him how great he is, but already the silence has its hand around my throat.

‘What time is it?'

I already know it's eleven.

‘Eleven,' he says.

‘Did you get grounded?' I say.

‘Not yet,' says he.

He gets into bed. We lie there, not sleeping, coconspirators in a rich secret rebellion. We don't have peas again for a long time.

I go back to Kristy, tell her I gotta work, kiss her good-bye, then go to a prestigious Beverly Hills hotel for my two-hundred-dollar job. She's a big-boned sweet-faced executive from some Midwestern beefy beer-soaked wonderbread place, who's in town for business and heard from a girlfriend who's friends with Frannie about the service. About me. God love Frannie.

Midwest wants to talk. Wants someone to be nice to her. I talk. I'm nice. Easy Money. She has the surf-and-turf special. She's nice and she's nervous, but when she finally calms down, she really gets into it. I'm working on the whole woman's pleasure-garden-of-earthly-delight thing, and Midwest digs it.

I do have a flash of slime as I wash up afterward and get caught in the mirror staring at the miserable plucked chicken who stares back at me. But I have a whole system now. I feel the warm cookie of my money, and focus on 3-D and all the treats waiting for me after my trick. This gets me up, out, and over to Sunny's, where I eat ribs slaw and jalapeño cornbread, and suck on beer booze and bong. In 3-D you can be liked, admired, and respected even if you are a houseboy. We have our own chicken language, customs, and jokes, just like lawyers, Freemasons, and astronauts, and I love
being part of that. I dip the cornbread into the barbecue sauce and it lights up the inside of my mouth. I'm hungry all the time these days. Lots of day-old birthday cake and tubs of ice cream. But tonight, in 3-D, mercifully, I manage somehow to get full.

When Sunny touches me on the shoulder like family, he makes me feel like I'm King Shit living the High Life.

‘Boy, Ah gotta big-time opportunity for your ass. An' Ah do mean your ass. Friday night, big ol' costume party, an' you is coe-jully invited. Welcome to the Show, bay-bay!' Sunny does a whoopholler and a funny little dance.

‘What do you mean?' I'm equal dollops excitement and terror.

‘It's a costume bawl, an' there's gonna be boocoo bucks there, boy. Mo' money, mo' money, mo' money …' Sunny's a hog in heaven, lowering his voice as he moves in for the kill. ‘An' Mamma needs a new pair of shoes.'

This is why Sunny is master pimp. He ties all his love into my ability to make him money.

B
LUE NUTHUGGING ELEPHANTBELLS
tight as the traffic will allow, sleeveless white T, red high-tops, and black wrap-around Ray Bans. This is the state-of-the-art, goin'-to-the-orgy ensemble Sunny's chosen for me, and when he finishes primping, preening, and mother-henning me, he closes his eyes to cleanse his visual palette, then pops them open and gives me the once-over twice. Then he grins.

‘Yeaaaaaaah, bay-bay.'

And suddenly it's all good.

As Moby Dick glides gracefully through the gilded gargoyle gates of the gaudy Mulholland mansion, limos lounge languidly, Alfa Romeos pose pompously, and Jaguars graze gluttonously on the punch-drunk pavement.

Butterflies flutter by in my belly. I feel like Cinderella with my glass sneakers, Moby Dick pumpkin, and pimp Fairy Godmother.

Our all-American rocketship crash-lands again when I'm eight, this time in Virginia, Minnesota, where one-hundred-and-seven-year-old Scandihoovian men in the forty-seven-below dead of winter jump nude through a hole they cut in the ice, plunge into freezing-cold lake water, then spring back to the one-hundred-and-seven-degree sauna. When you go outside, your breath forms little icicles on your eyebrows, eye-lashes, and 'stache, if you have one. Ten thousand lakes, complete with one billion summer skeeters big as World War II bombers that suck your blood like black bug vampires.

My dad's explosives corporation has sent him to the Mesabi Range that runs just south of the Canadian border so he could strip-mine the mountain. So they're cutting down the trees, blowing holes in the virgin earth, and scooping out its guts.

One winter the snow's so high we climb up on the roof and jump off, flying through the sky, landing in a snowcloud, and sinking slow, swallowed by all that soft cold whiteness, like diving into an ice-cream cone.

The mansion's supported by huge white marble phalli swimming in seas of roses sleeping peacefully in their beds. The door must be twenty feet high, with a giant lionheaded doorknocker that looks like it would love to take a bite out of your hand.

Sunny gives me the wink and the smile.

I can do this. Woman's pleasure. Loverstudguy.

When Sunny gives the lionheaded knocker a knock, a seven-foot doorman dressed as a dormouse opens the door as regally as a giant dressed like a rodent can.

Huge music pulsates through the booming woofer-happy sound system. Overhead a chandelier twinkles like a big drag queen on Halloween. Underfoot the marble floor lies cold, majestic, and butch.

Sunny's a puffed-up rutting peacock who tows me like a houseboatboy into the mansion.

‘Hooooooo-ie, Sunny is in de house!'

Voices retort by the score: ‘Sunny!!!' ‘Look what the cat dragged in!' ‘And the cat has brought a chicken!'

Sunny's got a line for everyone. A slick wink, a knowing nod, a sticky innuendo. Hundreds of eyeballs train their periscopes on me, and I'm awash in the warm wet heat.

It's one of those times in my life when you know things are either gonna get a lot better or a lot worse.

Marlene Dietrich cruises by with Attila the Hun. Dr Strangelove's pushed in his wheelchair by Mae West. A six-foot-two
Amazon Snow White in a leopard bikini is surrounded by three dwarfs dressed as Doc, Grumpy, and the sleaziest Sneezy I've ever seen. A behemoth clad in a black leather Death mask, studded collar with leash attached, and rhinestone codpiece walks by on all fours, ridden by a tiny Japanese Madame Butterfly Lady Godiva woman in heavy Kabuki makeup, lashing him lovingly with her cat-o'-nine-tails.

I feel right at home.

The Minnesota snow is high when I'm eleven. My father's gone, blowing up the mountain.

My mother and I try to midwife our bulldog Gwenyvere, who bulges heavy with puppies, belly distended to monstrous proportions, panting on old blankets.

My mom strokes Gwenyvere's head, talking soft and sweet to her while I pet her rump, wet helpless bulldog confusion swelling in Gwenyvere's red-blood eyes. She's begging me to help her. I want to help her. I just don't know how.

Then Gwenyvere goes into hard labor, straining painfully panting and pushing, thick muscles taut tight.

But the pups will not come.

The pups will not come.

The pups will not come.

There are three populations at the Big Ball.

The Olde Bastards: puffy, gray, and rich.

The Middle Men: Fagins making quick, slick bucks.

The Freaks, Chickens, and Chickadees: leering leather and young flesh, bruised bodybuilders and cheerleaders, cool schoolgirls and hot haunted jocks.

The Olde Bastards clearly have a personal relationship with Death, who sits in their living room waiting. We're their Fountain of Youth, and they want to drain us dry.

I watch myself watching them watching us, wrapped in the womb of my scar tissue.

Sunny leads me into the reddest room I've ever seen, where a long wooden table leans against the wall like a Noah's Ark of liquor, and two bartenders wearing nothing but hockey masks, cock rings, and black leather gloves wordlessly serve.

A cornucopia of mind-bending brain-numbers are laid out attractively in antique crystal mint dishes: buttons of peyote, magic mushrooms and mda/x, Maui Zaui Hurricane Swirl, Afghani Moses Bull Rush, and Moroccan Fez Blower.

Sunny gives me a silver spoonful of mda/x, and a jolt explodes in my head, as if someone has gently inserted a lit fire-cracker into my cranium. Then a warm tingly itsy-bitsy spider creeps up my waterspout. I want to soak in a giant vat of spumoni, and swim in the river and feel the waterfall spray in my face.

Into the long thick night, my mother and I try to pull puppies out of poor dear Gwenyvere, as she shudders shoving moaning groaning growling howling desperate to deliver.

But the pups will not come.

My mom frantically leaves the vet emergency messages, while Gwenyvere collapses whimpering, head bowed, breath gone.

I lie down with her, nose to smashed-in nose, and when she looks into my eyes I see resignation has moved in. Gwenyvere's eyes shut now with a huge heaving sigh, like her heart lung machine was just unplugged.

For the first time I think she will die.

Peter Pan's wearing green stiletto hump-me pumps, green silk stockings and garter, green satin opera-length gloves, plunging green velvet strapless gown, slit to the hilt, and she's packed in puffy tight, flesh hanging out here there and everywhere.

In one hand she grips a whip with a phallic handle, in the other
a leash attached to a small young woman in a white wig wearing nothing but a sparkling light on her head.

Tinkerbell.

Sunny jumps in, all Southern smooth, and dishes out the introductions.

‘This here is Peter Pan, and … Tinkerbell …'

‘Hello.' She's stiff as flint.

‘Hi.' Tinkerbell smiles shy with high-beam eyes. ‘I'm from Never-Never Land.'

‘Hi,' says I, ‘I'll never grow up.'

Tinkerbell is so naked.

Ms. Pan whispers into Sunny, and he leans back laughing.

‘Boy, why dohncha dance with Tinkerbell?' Sunny gives me the nod.

With the mda/x, the buzz from the desperate wanting of the Olde Bastards, the adrenaline racehorsing through me, and the soundtrack pounding, I'm mad to go Tinkerbelling.

Peter Pan unhooks her leash, and the girl wearing nothing but the light over her white wig sways with the music. She's small all over. Little-girl hands and feet. Little freckles. And, like all my poultry peers, sometimes she's twelve, sometimes she's forty.

Then she looks at me with big crooning baby blues, and we're rhythmically in sync, in utero, bump for bump, grind for grind, tribal shaking, lust loose in a loin lock, lost in each other's music.

Tinkerbell digs herself into my shoulders. I yowl and thump her into me so our chests hit hard. My teeth rip into her neck with nothing but sheer instinct, and Tinkerbell screams in blood pleasure.

I suck hard on a mouthful of her neck. Pulling my hair hard, she rips my head from her flesh, where a red welt blossoms. I growl and smack a loud slap on her ass. Tinkerbell's on fire with desire, high and higher, and lashes her tongue out yelping, piercing her nails into my back. I shout cuz it feels good while it hurts, heavy lovesweat flying off us as the crowd oozes and ahs, and all that
juice fills me and thrills me – damn this is the most fun I have ever had in my life.

Me and Tink could move to the Smoky Mountains, build a cabin in the woods, raise cornonthecob, and have little freak babies.

I can see it so clearly.

Suddenly, in the thick hard dark of the cold black night, a huge white baby bulldog head appears from between Gwenyvere's hind legs. Eyes closed, it hangs half in the world and half in the womb. Then shoulders ribs hindquarters and feet plop out with great gobs of goo, and a perfect baby dog slides onto the blanket in a puddle of blood and guts and Godknowswhat.

Lord, it's a big ol' pup. Enormous. Doesn't seem anatomically possible that this huge thing could come out of her, and I just watched it happen.

Gwenyvere, the proud new mother, is relieved beyond belief, and pops out two much smaller pups, half as big, easy as you please, then happily starts slurping off the thin clear sausage shrink-wrap covering them.

My mom and I dance like punch-drunk midwives as the pups squirm when she laps them with that huge wet tongue. Watching those new pups vibrating with life, there's no way around it: This is a miracle.

The strobe light turns everything into stop-action kinetic Picasso orgy snapshots. Slender arms pendulum breasts thigh cheese lip meat calves dangling bloodbank eyes and shaved coochies stick together in impossible angles.

Tinkerbell's giving me more pleasure than seems humanly possible, vaporlocked on me, dancing the mouth mambo.

Osweetbabyjesusmothermaryandjoseph.

I look down at Tinkerbell, who looks up at me at the exact same instant, like we've rehearsed the move many times, and we smile
dreamy creamy smiles at each other. I could rescue her from this Peter Pan asshole. We could start our own chicken business, Marx style, from each according to ability, to each according to need. We could make a shitload of money, then go live on an island somewhere. Make beautiful babies that get brown in the sun. I wish I knew her name.

The crowd crowds round, leaning in so they won't miss a trick, the heat of the spotlight even hotter as Peter Pan flicks Tinkerbell with her whip and Tink wraps herself around me. The crowd sucks a gasp. I close my eyes and the rapture flows through Tinkerbell and into me in an endless sensuous Mõbius strip.

With careful orchestration, split-second timing, and shrewd momentum management, Sunny has turned me, the simple son of immigrants, into the catalyst for a take-no-prisoners, lifestyles-of-the-rich-and-famous, old-fashioned newfangled orgy.

That's why I love America.

Eyes shut tiny tight, the puppies wiggle and wriggle and squiggle on the blanket, getting the life licked into them by Gwenyvere, who's mama-bulldog proud.

My mother and I shake hands, shake our heads, and make many happy sounds while those teeny-tiny puppies twist and fidget, trying to figure out what the hell's going on in this big old world.

Then I notice the first, too-huge baby. It's not moving. Gwenyvere won't touch the still giant. She pushes the other two away from it hard with her smushed-in face, then licks them like baby bulldog Popsicles.

My mom looks at me. Gwenyvere seems too busy loving the alive pups to care that her firstborn is lying lifeless in after-birth. My mother puts the huge not-moving one next to Gwenyvere, but she shoves it with her muzzle all the way off the blanket. Then she goes back to mothering her other pups.

Oh, my. That big baby bulldog is dead.

Tinkerbell showers me with snowflake kisses, a mad hunger flowing between us as we ride around on each other in the middle of this love zoo at the height of mating season.

Yeah, an island somewhere in the South Pacific. We'll rent a hut on the beach for fifty cents a day. Catch fish, eat mangoes, roll around in the sunset.

Then I hit a spot in Tinkerbell and she pours, soaring into me, roaring a Jungle scream.

The orgy comes to a full stop, and we're once again right in the center of America, all eyes upon us and oh, it's good in there, one big writhing amoeba feeding me, feeding her.

Peter Pan eyeballs me mean and hard. She grabs Tinkerbell and with a loud popping sound drags her away.

Tink looks back sadly at me. She doesn't want to go. I don't want her to go. Then she disappears through the Sea of Freaks back to Never-Never Land.

Deadweight of giant pup in hands, thick and dumbfounded in my parka as the hard day is born, it's my job to bury the huge lifeless baby bulldog.

It's cold as death this morning. I brush snow from the ground and put the still life down, his eyes locked shut forever.

I try to dig a grave, but the shovel bounces off the stone ground, and Mother Earth will not open herself and accept this little dead baby.

The deceased white pup's the same color as the snow.

Finally I manage to chisel the shallowest of graves, and into the dark hard hole I put the baby giant. I cover it up with dirt and snow, then look up and try to pray. But I have nothing to say, and it seems like no one is up there.

I'm in Hump Time Zone for I know not how long, in and out of more holes than a hungry gopher. A tattoo of a shark swims across a Botticelli bottom. A Ku Klux Klan Grand Wizard has his white bottom paddled by a man Aunt Jemima. The three-hundred-pound behemoth is forced into positions of humiliation by the ninety-pound Madame Butterfly, who whips him until welts sprout like fleshflowers, then whispers sweet nothings in his ear.