Chicken (16 page)

Walrus's head drives back into the wall behind it with a thick thud.

I stormtrooper all over his pad, smashing thrashing and trashing, then I move back in, jazzed with madness. I squat on my haunches,
and lean down like his face is the camera and I'm going in for my extreme close-up.

‘If you tell Sunny or anybody else about this I'm gonna come back and finish you off, you understand me?'

No response.

The Walrus isn't moving. I shake him. Nothing.

‘Hey, you all right?'

No response.

Now I'm scared. I see crime-scene photos of the fallen Walrus, his pristine apartment looking like Dresden after the bombing. Oh, shit, what have I done? I put my hand in front of his mouth. The Walrus is still breathing.

Walking away as fast as I can, I raise my defense shields to stop the raw rank fear that's trying to pin me on the bed and slam its way inside me.

I'm playing ball with the older neighborhood boys when I'm five. Somebody throws the ball over my head and it rolls into the yard next door, where there's an old mean German shepherd who's been chained to a pole for about a hundred years.

I see the white ball sitting in the green grass. When I crawl through the opening in the fence and reach down to grab the ball, I hear a metallic snap of a chain breaking. I look up and the German shepherd is flying at me, giant teeth bared, hungry for my flesh. I move at the last second, and the dog's mouth chomps onto my thigh, inches from my little penis.

I scream, and the whole neighborhood comes rushing.

I speedwalk to my bike, fingering my pager, my busted-up knuckle hurting like hell. I see cops swarming the Walrus pad with dogs, dusting for fingerprints, scouring every inch of the place for proof that it was me. Front page of the
L.A. Times
with a big picture of me being dragged away in handcuffs:
BOY HOOKER BUSTED
.
My mom and dad in court, disgraced, my head bowed in shame, condemned by the Judge I abused as a symbol of everything that's wrong with America. Kristy and her parents in the back shaking their head. Waking up in prison with a tall
SEXY
man all over me.

Change the record nownownow!

A plan. I need a plan. I could keep driving until I get to an Indian reservation and live there. Go to Alaska and work on the pipeline. Lots of good work for a handy guy on the pipeline. Go to Mexico. Got enough money to live like a king on the beach, get a little señorita who cooks my meals and keeps me happy.

I drive past my street, but I don't go down it. Hordes of feds and G-men are probably going through my stuff, searching for the piece of evidence that's gonna send me to the stripy hole where I shall suffer the rest of my days.

Oh, shit, what's Sunny gonna think? I've been avoiding this thought, but now it bores full force into me. To hell with that bastard pimp. I'll turn him in. Hey, if I'm going down, I'm taking everybody down with me. What am I thinking? Those Hollywood Employment Agency bastards are killers. They will seriously kill you.

Hold everything. In my rearview mirror is a cop. He's giving me the hardcore five-oh eyeball. Or am I just feeling the eye-ball? No idea. I turn down Vine. He follows me. Oh shit, I gotta hot copper on my tail. I come within a whisper on a whisker of gunning it, and making that bastard eat my dust as I high-speed-chase away from the LAPD on the six o'clock news.

But I stick steady, turn off onto a side street, take another fast turn, and lose him. I say ‘lose,' but I guess technically you can't lose somebody who's not actually following you.

A plan, a plan, I need a plan.

Suddenly I have a true mystic vision.

Kristy.

I'll come clean, I'll make it up to her, and this time I'll be really good.

Then I feel my pager, hard cold and black in my pocket. This is the source of all the evil in my life. I slam on my brakes. I hop off my bike. I take the pager from my pocket, and slowly I raise it over my head.

The pager is hard cold and black in my hand as a righteous rush floods me.

I will break the curse of the chicken.

I slam my arm down as fast as I can.

Smash!

When the pager hits the pavement it bursts into a million cold hard black pieces, flying all over Hollywood Boulevard.

Free at last. Free at last.

Staring at the guts of my pager spread out all over the stars, I feel like a hero who's just killed the Jabberwocky and freed his people.

I am a chicken no more.

 

M
Y BUSTED-UP KNUCKLE
hurts like hell, but I have no pager to finger as I park my bike and pull it up onto its stand quiet. It's dark and I'm animal aware of every sound on this little Hollywood side street. So this is what it feels like to be on the FBI Ten Most Wanted list. Someone's lurking behind every tree, about to slam around every corner, bounce out of every fake utility truck to bust my shit.
Breathe
. I wish I had a gun. I wonder where I can get a gun. Sunny'll know. Oh, shit, Sunny. He's gonna hate me now. After everything he did for me, I jacked him right where he lives. Hey, he deserves it.

Whatever.

Suddenly a car pulls up fast and parks about twenty feet away, on the same side of the street as me. I duck behind the side of a building. A couple of clean-looking guys get out quick, looking like Hollywood Employment Agency-hired goons come to rough me up and down. They're walking toward me. One of them reaches in his coat pocket for a gun. Oh, shit. I start to make a mad dash for it when he pulls out his keys. No gun. The only gun is in my head, and it's loaded and cocked, my own finger slowly squeezing the trigger.

Got to get ahold of myself. The Walrus splayed out on the floor. How did this happen to me? No, this didn't happen to me. I made it happen. But I didn't want to leave home. It's not my fault my father's having a nervous breakdown. It's not my fault my mother buggered off with her lover and didn't invite me along. Is that my fault? Hell, no.

Whatever.

The Walrus just got a little more punishment than he paid for.
And on the bright side, he did learn a valuable lesson about hiring troubled youth to abuse him. Maybe this asswhupping'll turn his life around and make him a productive member of society. Hell, I probably did the guy a favor. And besides, who's he gonna tell? The cops? What's he gonna say? That he paid a chicken to rough him up and things got a little out of hand? I don't think so.

I will confess to my girl. I will baptize myself in the holy water of Kristy.

I walk behind the building to her little bungalow. I knock on her door. No answer. I have no Plan B. Maybe I'll just wait here until she comes home. Knock again. No answer. Shit.

I sit down on her stoop, prepared to wait for the rest of my life if necessary. But just as I settle in on her stoop, the door opens.

I look up. It's Kristy. God, I like this girl.

She doesn't see anyone at her door. She's confused. She wasn't expecting anyone, heard two knocks, and no one is there.

Guilt punches me in the chest. Why did I betray her? That was a terrible thing to do. Only a terrible person would do something like that. If I'd just done the right thing I wouldn't have gone on that job with the Walrus. Wouldn't have pummeled that innocent pervert.

If ifs and ands were pots and pans, beggars would be kings. My mother used to say that.

Kristy feels someone staring at her, looks down, and when she sees it's me, her whole face tightens and darkens and hardens.

A wasp of shame stings me.

My mom endures the sixties as hausfrau, and she's determined not to miss the seventies doing laundry and cooking for a man who's not quite there.

At this time the Women's Movement is rearing its Sapphic head and roaring in all its glory. Consciousnesses are being raised willy-nilly, vaginas examined in mirrors, and bras burned in every city,' burb, and village.

Our Bodies, Ourselves
starts making the rounds in our house. We're all free to be you and me. Mommies are people, people with feelings.

It's all right to cry.

‘What do you want?' A glacial cold snap sweeps down from Kristy and chills my blood. She used to look at me so nice.

‘Please, Kristy, I'm sorry, I really am. I'm so sorry. Just give me five minutes. Please …' This is where I, master apologist, must begin.

‘No, I don't think so.' Kristy is unmoved.

‘Please, I'm begging you, just give me five minutes … Kristy I'm desperate, please. I'm
so
sorry …' I plunge into full-frontal grovel.

A huge sadness rushes up me, and the tears are there again, only this time I don't stop them. I don't remember crying in front of someone my own age before, but I want back in so bad, I'm willing to walk a trail of tears to get there. My eyes get fuller and fuller, like udders that need to be milked. Then two waterfalls wash down the rock of my face, as I slowly empty.

Something moves in Kristy. She's not ready to let me back, but her good sweet heart is feeling me.

‘Kristy, something really terrible happened to me, something I can't tell anybody about. But I want to tell you, so you'll understand. Please, I'm begging you.'

My next move is to actually get down on my hands and knees on the stoop and supplicate in front of Kristy until she lets me into her bungalow.

But Kristy's too big to make me do that.

‘All right, come in.' She sighs like she's lending money to someone she knows'll never pay her back. ‘I'm so mad at you. It was so embarrassing. My mom kept shaking her head the whole time, like I'm ten years old. And not even a phone call.
How long does that take? Thirty seconds to make a phone call …'

This is good. Honest punishment I deserve. Suddenly I'm not some sick sadochicken, I'm just some dumb schlub who messed up with his girl, like a million dumb schlubs before me. When she's railing on me I can imagine we're a couple in the middle of a spat we'll look back on years from now and laugh about.

‘I know, I'm so sorry. See, I meant to tell you this. I'm … I was …
embarrassed
. And the truth is …

‘I'm a …

‘I've been …

‘… selling drugs …'

My mom yanks me out of Lyndon Baines Johnson Junior High when I'm fifteen, and along with about twenty other families, she decides to start a school. So we rent a house, we hire teachers, and we start the Dallas Free School.

One of the teachers is an earnest young educator out of the Midwest. Round-faced, blond, and whipsmart, she takes no guff, but at the same time she's patient and kind, a great teacher and an all-around good egg. My mother and the teacher talk more in one night than my mom and my dad talked in twenty years. She and her new best friend start attending teaching conferences, and National Organization of Women's meetings, and Gloria Steinem fund-raisers. These women are not quilting, or swapping recipes, or buying Tupperware. They're pissed off. They want equal pay for equal work, alimony payment protection, and day-care reform. They want to stop the war and feed the children. Equality, liberation, and R-E-S-P-E-C-T. They want clitoral orgasms and Freud be damned!

So my mom sings, she marches, she gets naked and feels comfortable with her own beautiful female body in deeply feminine ways no man can ever understand.

While my father is building his high-tech state-of-the-art explosives factory in Useless, Texas.

I give Kristy a tremendous song and dance about how this deal on Easter got all screwed up, and I didn't get the shit sorted out till three in the morning, and I was gonna come over then, but it was too late, and then I hadda work at the restaurant all day today, and I just got off, and as soon as I did, I came right over to apologize, and make it right.

I want to make it right. That's the truth.

Kristy knows something's off about me, she's felt it from the first day we met. She studies me. Slowly she shakes her head.

‘Why would you do something like that? How can—'

I cut her off at the pass. I'm not a chicken anymore, but now I'm a drug dealer, which is not much better; plus it means I've been lying to her, which is bad. So I launch right into the whole Sunny/Dumpster/working at the restaurant/becoming a hooker ordeal (minus S
EXY
), only I substitute drugs for chickening.

‘Why didn't you tell me?' Kristy shakes her head.

‘Like I said, I was embarrassed. I'm really sorry … but I like you so much and I felt like such a freak …'

Long silence.

I wait for her to tell me to get out. Or call me over for the hug. But she just stands there and looks at me. More silence. I can hear the tumblers rolling around in her head as she tries to fit all this new information into her jigsaw puzzle of me.

‘What do you want from me?' she finally says.

‘I wanna have sex,' somehow bolts past security and out of my mouth. Even as it's coming out, I want to suck it back in and say something sweet, soft, and cuddly.

‘You blow me off, then show up the next night, and you expect me to have sex with you? You are unbelievable.'

‘I'm sorry, I'm—' sinking so fast.

‘I can't do it anymore. You need to go now.' Kristy's made up her mind. I can see it in her spine.

‘What're you saying? Are you breaking up with me?' I'm not a loverstudguy, I'm a pathetic loser who betrayed his sweet girl.

‘Yes, I am. Now I'd like you to leave.'

I'm done. A sneer appears from behind my ear as I disengage, pulling the switch down, the Silence descending over me.

‘Whatever.'

This is the last word I ever say to Kristy.

When I leave her house, something turns off inside me. I have no more Kristy. I've ejected myself in a bloody blaze of violence from the chicken industry, so I have no 3-D.

Arrest me, shoot me, I don't care anymore.

I am, of course, ravenously hungry. So I get my day-old birthday cake, my ice cream, and my milk, take it home, and shovel it all into my face with doomed fervor.

In about a week I'll get a strange sore throat from eating all that cake and ice cream for so many months, and by the time my roommate makes me go to the doctor I'll be hallucinating, burning alive at the stake of my own fever. The doctor'll tell me I have trench mouth. My mouth has become a trench. In another week to ten days, I would've been dead. The doctor'll make me get a douche bag, fill it with boiling-hot water, dissolve a pink antibiotic powder into the water, take the business end of the cord and shove the phallus as far down my throat as I can, then release the water, six times a day.

I'll never see Sunny again. He won't come looking for me, and I won't go looking for him. I'll never see any of my little freak family. But that's not unusual. People come and go so quickly in that world.

I'll see Kristy every week in Existentialism, but I'll never speak to her again.

But here, now, after I've been dumped in the Dumpster by Kristy, with yet another lactose seizure upon me, I start to see lights at the edge of my eyes, strange lights I've never seen before. At first I can't
tell if the lights are really there, because whenever I look directly at them, they move somewhere else. Then a pain strikes inside my head, like someone's drilling a thin diamond bit into my brain with each breath I take, knocking me down on the bed with nausea.

Then I'm asleep.

When my father suspects his wife, my mother, is having woman's orgasms with her new best friend, he can't say, ‘I love you and I sense us growing apart; can you help
me
give you a woman's orgasm? Let's talk about this and work something out.'

And my mother can't say, ‘I love you and I sense us growing apart, can you help
me
have a woman's orgasm? Let's talk about this and work something out.'

So my dad wonders in denial, while my mom explores her new partner.

My mother told me once that if my father had ever once come to her while their marriage was falling apart and said, ‘Please, I love you, don't go,' she would've stayed.

But he didn't ask.

I call my nice normal smart funny loving American friend Penny the next day. She was my girlfriend at boarding school. I ask her to come live with me when the school year's over, and to my eternal gratitude she says yes. Suddenly I don't feel compelled by a force I can't control to eat massive amounts of day-old birthday cake and ice cream.

In May, Penny comes to be with me. I don't tell her about my chickenhood, or the tall man with the
SEXY
shirt and what he did to my ass. I keep my secret for a decade, and when I finally do tell someone, she marries me.

Penny and I drive my bike up the coast to Oregon. We love under the stars and drink sunsets over the ocean. She's a damaged soul herself, but she gives me much love. And it turns out I'm her escape
hatch, too, so while she's helping to save me, I'm inadvertently helping to save her.

We move in with my mother and her new lover. They're not happy about it, but God love them, they take me back, and continue to take me back, even after I accidentally set their couch on fire, accidentally shoot a rainbow of puke all over the side of their house from my second-story window, and accidentally do countless other dastardly deeds.

I go to college that fall. They have dorms. I live in one. Penny moves on.

When I'm thirty-five, at the suggestion of my therapist, I write each of my parents a letter describing my chicken days.

‘Is this one of those wacky little stories you like to write?' asks my dad.

‘No, it's not,' I say.

Then we hang up.

‘David, what do you really want?' asks my mom.

‘I want you to know,' I reply.

Long pause.

‘I'm sorry that happened to you. I'm sorry.' That's what my mom says.

The lock breaks, the door busts open, the bats fly out, and the hole in my bucket closes.