Chicken (15 page)

‘Dad, I'm sorry …

‘I'm sorry, Dad …

‘Are you mad, Dad?

‘Dad, are you mad?

‘Are you mad, Dad?

‘Dad, are you mad?

‘I'm sorry, Dad …'

I want to quit whinging, but the more Silence he unleashes on me, the more I become a miserable little stain on the passenger seat.

I ride my bike to 3-D through a sweet Easter Sunday zephyr. It's a peaceful afternoon. Or maybe it's me that's peaceful.

I don't see Kristy's pissed-off, embarrassed humiliation. I don't see her kicking herself for picking me. I don't see her explaining where I am to her parents while they shake their disapproving heads. I don't see any of that.

As I toodle down Hollywood Boulevard into the seedy loins of Tinsel Town, I can practically hear the Beach Boys singing about all the funfunfun we're gonna have till our Daddy takes the T-Bird away, while the stragglers push their grocery baskets full of everything they own, like they're hunting for eggs, talking to their own Harvey Easter Bunny.

Into 3-D I stride like a samurai chicken coming in from the cold of the hero's road, pushing that big huge rock up that big huge mountain. Sunny's is jive jumpin' buzz humpin' packed to the gills, tits to the wind and balls to the wall, as I get bumps from my freaks and pecks from my chickens.

‘Hooo-ie, boy, Ah knew you couldn't stay away.'

Sunny's decked out in a green sparkly dress with dangly bangles and fake hooters, topped off by a giant Easter bonnet with an egg-filled Easter basket attached.

You can't help but laugh. So I laugh. And with that the yoke of my load lifts. I'm home with my homies, celebrated for my winning personality, lack of boundaries, and nice bum.

Sunny kisses me on both cheeks. I low-five Horse, kiss Cruella, and case the joint. Redheads, deadheads, blondies, brownies,
blackies, lackies, hot fudge and cherries, fatties and thinnies, and lots of old faces on young bodies.

Me, I'm looking for some Jade.

‘Is she here?' I say, way too eager.

‘Hold your water, boy. You gotta eat foist.' Sunny yanks me toward the kitchen and fixes me a plate of sweet potatoes, black-eyed peas, biscuits, and a couple slabs of ham, pink pig wafting succulent up into my bottomless pit.

When all the food is gone from my plate, Sunny dragqueens me into the living room, through the messy mass of Easter madness. There on the couch sits a girl in a one-piece bathing suit, fluffy bunny tail, and big floppy ears attached to a barrette clinging hard to her head. She carries an Easter basket full of little airline liquor bottles; marijuana cigarettes; yellow red green blue and teal pills; a sheet with little Mickey Mouses smiling LSDishly from it; and some gray magic mushrooms. The girl is kinda funny looking, but cute, Italian skin, crazy curly brown hair, a goofy offcentric nose, chipmunk cheeks, extra-thick milk-shake lips, eyes the color of a putting green, and chubbly wubbly, weebly wobbly flesh jiggling from under her one-piece, with an overflowing cornucopia of décolletage.

‘This here is Honey Bunny.' Sunny nods to me, then winks to her. ‘This here's the boy I'ze telling you about. You do everything he says, and Ah mean
evva-
ree-
thing
.' He bugs his eyes and she giggles, which makes her jiggle like a bowful of royal sex jelly.

‘Hi, Honey Bunny.' I smile as Sunny spangles away.

‘Happy Easter,' she replies, like a silly little kid playing dress-up.

‘I'm always confused about Easter. Is that where Jesus comes back from the dead, peeks his head up from a hole in the ground, and if he sees his shadow, he knows winter's over?' I go right to the A material.

‘That's funny … did you just make that up?' She stares at me hard and smiles soft. Now she looks like she's a student in an accelerated learning class at Lyndon Baines Johnson High School.

‘No, actually, I have a staff of writers working round-the-clock just churning the shit out.' After my deadpan I sneak in a little smile to let her know I'm funning her.

She laughs smart, intelligence burning in her eyes. Comedy is what separates us from the beasts. How did a girl like her end up an Easter Bunny toting intoxicating eggs in Sunny's web? We shall have to get to the bottom of this bunny tale.

As I slam a small Jack I scan the room, surveying the 3-D grid for Jade. Where oh where can my baby be? She's at her mom and dad's house on Easter with her dog Marty, trying not to think about what a piece of shit I am.

Change that record, lad.

It's so easy at Sunny's to change any record. There's so much interesting music here. It doesn't take much coaxing to get Honey Bunny to spill her rabbit guts. Mother died of breast cancer, alcoholic father ‘did things' to her and her little sister, so she told her teacher, who told the authorities, who arrested the father, who got sent to prison; the father's family disowned her and her sister, then the mother's parents got hit by a truck driven by some guy who's blind drunk, then she and the sister got shipped to some home for kids who have nothing and no one, where they waited for a kindly foster family to rescue them from their misery; only while they're waiting, some of the caretakers ‘did things' to her and her little sister; so she told the authorities, who accused her of being a troublemaker, and punished her and her sister until they ran away and made it to L.A.; then she got in a big fight with her little sister about Sunny and money and being a bunny chicken, and her sister took off and she's worried sick that her sister is dead, ‘or worse,' and she wants to start working for Sunny, cuz she's dead broke, ‘no kidding, we're totally broke, you have no idea!' She heard the work was pretty good, and if you do it right you can make a lot of money, sure beats flipping burgers – ‘I want to go to Harvard,' that's her dream, be a lawyer, bust scumbags who do bad things to girls. ‘It's not that horrible, is it, the work?' She looks at me like a hungry motherless pup.

‘Better than a sharp stick in the eye.' I smile. I tell her to get a specialty, save her money, then get the hell out.

‘That's what I'm doing,' I hear myself say.

Is that what I'm doing?

Then why am I here instead of at Kristy's parents?

‘Thanks.' She takes my hand and kisses it, like we're in some medieval fairy tale, and suddenly I'm warm toasty tasty with the possibilities of this bundle of desperate budding vulnerable Honey Bunny sexuality.

I'm thirteen, home alone.

I've recently discovered how much fun it is sliding my hand up and down my penis. Gwenyvere bounds into my room. She's English, adorably happy and sweet, complete with big beautiful lovey eyes.

Suddenly she's using me as her human lollipop, and before you can say lickety-split, my lollapalooza is cabooming all over the place.

Gwenyvere seems to really enjoy it.

Frankly, so do I.

I never had a sense of sexual right and wrong.

As far as I'm concerned, we are just a boy and a dog enjoying each other's company. ‘What's your real name?' I ask Honey Bunny.

I almost never ask. Usually I don't want to know. But I like her. She's warm and smart and cuddly and funny and sexy, and it would be such fun to bury my face in her soft pillow. And I bet she could make a lot of money. Maybe we can find her sister and get her working, too, get a nice place together the three of us, and kiss one another's hands.

‘Sophie,' says Honey Bunny.

She looks exactly like a Sophie. I want to protect this girl. And destroy her. Just like I'm doing to myself. Just like I'm doing to Kristy.

I'm just about to pop the ‘why don't we go back to my groovy clean pad' question to Sophie when who should come waltzing in?

Sophie's sister, that's who, looking like she's being followed by somebody who wants to ‘do things' to her.

Sophie shrieks so loud the party stops. She and her sister grab each other like the world's about to come to an end and this is the last thing they want to be doing before the Apocalypse.

After the assembled let out a collective sigh, roll their eyes, and make their catty remarks, the party comes back to life, and I watch the little sister be swallowed up in the big sister.

Sophie takes off her bunny accoutrements, and the sisters whisper how they'll never leave each other ever again. Little sister's in dirty white overalls, longer and leaner than Sophie, but clearly from the same gene pool.

Hey, maybe I
can
have sex with them. Maybe the gods are smiling on me after all.

Sophie looks like a big sister now, so sweet and easy and full of comfort. I see me and my little brother the night of the Great Pea Scandal of '64, just the two of us in our beds, me and my little brother, who'll always love each other no matter what. I miss him so much.

Sophie brings her little sister over to meet me. Mary Beth. Sophie tells me Mary Beth called a cousin in Phoenix and he's wiring them money so they can go live with him till they figure out what to do next.

It's remarkable to watch this happen right in front of my eyes. I imagine them telling their kids and grandkids about this.

How they got out just in the nick of time.

 

O
N THE LAST DAY
I am a chicken, the phone rings.

‘Hey, boy.' There's no
et toi
in Sunny's voice.

‘What's the matter?' My ass starts to hurt.

‘Got some bad news. Call jest come in. Jade … she's dead. Last night, she got herself beat up. Ah'm sorry, Ah know you had a thing for her, so Ah wanted you to hear it from me,' Sunny says soft.

My heart stops, and then sinks with me as I collapse onto the couch. I see Jade dancing to that tune playing in her head, half geisha half trained killer. Big tears suddenly fill my eyes, and I cover my face with my hands to stop them from coming out. They're so close, right there, waiting. But I won't let them out.

‘You aw-ite, boy?'

Sunny brings me back to the land of the living.

‘You sure you wanna woik tonight? Ya wanna cancel?' Sunny shifts seamlessly from concerned family member to calculated business manager.

I shut it down, pack it up, and store it away.

‘No, I'm cool. It's sad, but like you said, she was a messed-up girl. Hey, five hundred bucks is five hundred bucks, right?'

‘Yeah, aw-ite, well … come by when you done.'

And then Sunny is gone.

Jade was probably junked up, did something stupid, got herself whacked or jacked or smacked.

Not my fault. Not my problem.

Whatever.

In the backyard my father calls Juliette, and she bounds over happily, ready to love and be loved. She's French and very refined, by far the most functional member of our family unit.

As she gets to the picnic table, she makes eye contact with my dad, and her blood runs cold, tail snapping up hard between her legs, everything shrinking up as she tries to slink away unnoticed.

But there's no escape for Juliette.

My dad grabs her, one hand on the collar, one under the belly, plops her down on the picnic table covered with a stained sheet, fires up the old sheep shearer, and begins scalping the defenseless Juliette, who looks around with the biggest, saddest, how-much-is-that-doggy-in-the-window eyes, like some captured French freedom fighter pleading, ‘'Elp me, s'il vous plaît!'

We can't help ourselves, how can we help her?

My old man shaves and shaves the whimpering Juliette until there's five pounds of curly black pubes on the old stained sheet, and she's barebuttbald.

Juliette spends the next weeks hiding under tables, chairs, and beds, ashamed to face the humiliating heckling of the neighborhood dogs.

I'll soon know how she feels.

Old, stuffy, and puffing a pipe with a mustache, he looks like a walrus in a bloodred smoking jacket. He wears no slippers, and his long narrow feet are covered by skin so translucent you can see pale blue rivers running under it. He sits too erect, trying to suck in his gut, like he's posing for a portrait with an invisible javelin stuck up his ass. His pad's neat as a pin with a cleaning disorder, and lavishly appointed with rich rugs, gaudy goblets, and kitschy knickknacks. A scratchy 78 of Judy Garland doing ‘Happiness Is a Thing Called Joe' plays on an old-time Victrola. He looks like he's constructed his life so he's the star of his own Noël Coward play.

I can't wait to wipe that thin grin off his smug mug.

No instructions have been given. He did hand me five hundred dollars, but when I took it he held on to it too long, so I had to yank it out of his hand. That made me mad. I gotta tell Sunny. From now on, I want an envelope, on the table, no questions asked.

I'm gunslinger calm, but my blood is bubbling, and a brain-fever so severe I can barely see straight rages within.

And I'm focusing my beam right at this old rich stuck-up queen with a walrus mustache.

It's a week after my dad scalped Juliette the dog, and the night before our family's going on vacation with my cousins. My dad lines us all up: me, my brother, and my two cousins, while Juliette sneaks furtive glances from around the corner, reliving her horror, wondering if she'll be next.

My father grabs my nine-year-old head with one hand, thumb and forefinger squeezing temples, the sheepshearer buzz surround-sounding me, loud and louder, scraping like nails across the blackboard of my jangling nerves till I'm vibrating with the exact same frequency, as my dad buzzcuts his way across the quivering egg of my head.

I see Jade with a bullet hole in her head.

Change the record.

I look around the Walrus's room for some life jacket to jack into, and I spot a cheesy figurine of Peter Pan, all in green, head to toe, with those pointy little green shoes, and that Puck grin.

Tinkerbell. Is she dead, too?

Change the record.

The Walrus drones on about how he saw me at the orgy, and how he knew he had to have me. Have me? A wolverine snarl curls inside me. I think you're confused. It's me who's gonna have you.

He wants to know if I remember him from the orgy. He was
dressed as a satyr, the mythological half man half beast who embodies raw sexuality and is hung like a horse.

He wants me to remember him, so I pretend I remember him. Tell him what a great costume he had, how I believe we've lost sight of our animal selves as we get more civilized, and that I wasn't surprised he was hung like a horse.

He likes it. Which is why I say it. But it's getting warm in here. This trick seems to be under the mistaken impression that some kind of sexysex is about to happen here. We'll have to disabuse him of that notion quickly. And he's always playing with that mustache. Twirling it, stroking it, massaging it. Makes me want to slap it right off his face, and watch the red rose of a bruise bloom on his cheek.

Almost like he's reading my mind, he shoots me a look like he thinks he's a real naughty boy. I give him back some cold hard steel.

Let the games begin.

The heavymetal sheapshearer is hot on my skull, I smell the warm oily machineness, and I hear my hairs scream out as they're shorn short, shocked, trickling prickly and itchy, shivering down my back.

As my dad mows the yard of my head, the grip of his vise tightens around my temples, and I absorb it into me like a new computer with an empty hard drive, his fingers plugged into the skuzzy ports on either side of my head, filling me with an angry silent virus.

And then we're barebuttbald, just like Juliette.

Everyone's extra quiet at bedtime, none of the jocularity and staying-up-late behavior that characterizes our group dynamic, no teasing about how ugly we look, cuz we all look ugly, little Sampsons sapped of our strength.

The Walrus wants me to come over to him. I still don't know what he wants. I don't like that. I don't like him.

Jade impaled on a junkspike.

I want to plant my fist in the garden of his face. I walk over to him hard with my fist closed tight, and I move to smack him, just a little move, but full of all the violence that's hiding under my kitchen table.

He cringes and gets hard at the same time.

‘Wait a second, sonny, I've gotta get in the mood,' the Walrus whines.

I ain't your sonny, and I don't give a damn about your mood. I'm ready to go right here, right now.

The Walrus slowly opens up his smoking jacket, with an ‘aren't I a naughty boy?' look.

Under his smoking blood-colored jacket is a black leather bustier with a bulletbra.

The Walrus doesn't look like a naughty boy to me. He seems like somebody I want to watch double up in agony. But he wants me to tell him what a naughty boy he is, I know that, so I swallow my self again and add another bone to the cauldron bubbling inside me.

‘Wow,' I say, ‘that is some crazy shit.'

He pats a spot on the love seat. He wants me to sit down next to him. Against every impulse in my being, I sit, getting more queased with the lingering suspicion that this nasty Olde Bastard is expecting some kind of sex. A thin line of sweat heads south from under my arm.

‘Hey, man, let's get one thing straight here. We're not doing any … sex thing here, you understand that, right?'

He smiles like a community theater player trying to portray a suave gadabouttown, and the sheer smarm of him almost knocks me off the chair.

‘Yes, I guess we need to get it … “straight.”' He's thrilled with himself for being so damn witty. ‘No, I have a wonderful itinerary planned for us, but you will not be required to do any… “sex things.”'

The mocking nags at my guts. He thinks he's smarter than me. He thinks he's better than me. Not for long, my friend.

The Walrus wants me to threaten to have my way with him with brute force.

‘But first, I want to get in the mood.' The Walrus leers like a loungelizard in a bulletbra.

He puts his hand on my head, which makes the junk jump in my stomach, and shrivels my balls. He pulls my head toward him and rests it on the cold leather of the chest of the bulletbra.

The thin sheet of ice is cracking all around me.

Barebuttbald and nine, I finally arrive with my family for our vacation on the Florida shore. We spend our first day cavorting on the beach under the torrent of tropical sun. I keep feeling like my head's too hot. I try to tell a grown-up, but I'm shushed. That night, all the boys complain about how hot their heads are.

Sun poisoning of the scalp. That's what we got. Painful puffing pussing and peeling follow. Worst of all, we have to wear these dumbass floppy golf hats like doddering codgers.

After that I have a special relationship with Juliette. She shoots me meaningful glances from time to time. I nod knowingly. We're members of the Barebuttbald Club.

I smell the leather. I see the Walrus manipulating himself under his silky pajama bottom.

Change the record.

Jade with empty eyes, not dancing anymore.

I feel a rhythmic tug on my head as my long hair hangs in my face, prickly on my cheek, and I hear a sucking sound that matches the pulls on my head. I strain to see what's being sucked on my skull. From the extreme corner of my sight line I spot the Walrus's face, tilted back, eyes rolled up so only the runny egg whites of his raptured eyes are showing.

The Walrus has my hair in his mouth.

And he's sucking on it.

The Walrus is sucking on my head.

Something all the way inside of me pops, and a beast is unleashed from my belly, rocketing me to my feet, my hair clumped and wet with Walrus spittle.

‘What the hell is wrong with you, asshole?!' I roar like a pre-historic monster.

‘Now, wait a minute! I'm not—'

‘No,
you
wait a minute, bitch!'

I slap him across the cheek.
Whack!
Loud. Skin on skin. That's good.

‘Please!'

Worry wades across the face of the Walrus as he pleads and bleeds from the corner of his mouth. At this moment he realizes he's made a dangerous mistake inviting me into his parlor to play his little reindeer games.

The scare coming out of him makes me high.

‘Shut up, punk!'

I pick up his Cowardly Lion statuette and throw it as hard as I can against the wall, where it shatters into a galaxy of tiny little scared lion pieces. Then I throw a fancy painted rock egg thing through his glass cabinet. He screams, and I reward him with a knuckled backhanded rap upside his head, which whips backward as he's jettisoned off the love seat to the plushy rug, while I feel more alive than I have in a long time. This one's for Jade, bastard! I rear my foot back and let fly, making solid contact with his stomach, his guts rocking backward as his breath disappears. The Walrus shakes on the floor, wheezing, fetal, looking up at me with a silent plea for sanity.

I pick up a Mae West-shaped lamp with two bulbs for breasts and fling it into a mirror, tit bulbs and shiny shattered platinum hair shooting everywhere.

There's a long lamp by a chair, six feet and skinny, with a heavymetal bottom base. I see myself raising it over my head
and bringing it down on Walrus skull. I raise it high and it's heavy, perfectly weighted, the ideal tool for the job of cracking this Walrus like a coconut and watching the brainmilk drain out. I stalk toward him, fury blasting out of me like a fire-and-brimstone preacher.

The Walrus has wet his silk pajamas. I feel kind of bad for the guy. He just wanted a little slap and tickle. Not this hurricane of pain.

But I can't stop myself.

I bring that metalheaded pole flinging down with all my might, but instead of Walrus head I smash glass table, shards shooting and spitting.

TV. Yes. Next I swing that lampclub like it's a Big Bertha and I'm bombing the screen straight down the fairway. Smoke and sparks zip around like an electrical storm in a lighted globe.

I'm hot sweaty and breathy, having violence orgasms as I shatter my way through the Walrus's life.

I stalk back over to the Walrus, who's muttering, ‘Please, please, please …'

‘Wanna suck on my hair again, you piece of shit?' The hate flows from me as I dance with the devil's snake, leading hordes of Huns over the horizon to splay women and eat children.

Jade gagged with a plastic bag over her head.

I reach down slow, grab his rug, rip it off his head, and shove it into his mouth.

‘How's that taste? Isn't that sexy?'

Then I rear back and pop him right in the nose. I always wanted to do that. You see it so much in the movies and it looks so cool. But in real life it's not nearly that good. It hurts the hell out of my knuckles. It does make a nice sound, though, that thwack of bone hard on bone.