Hyena (16 page)

If ketamine’s a digital buzz and mushrooms are wavy, the world of sherm is that of an abused child who has been asked to draw a picture of how he’s feeling. It’s a fist-gripped crayon drawing of a bad man screaming. It’s not good or bad, it just is.

I don’t know if I need to shit or puke, so I drop trou and lean over this toilet that feels like it’s as big as a swimming pool and a hundred feet away. I’m this retarded baby
T. rex,
in the dark, wobbling over the toilet bowl trying to stay up and just like a baby dinosaur I open my mouth and “Raaaaaaarrrrrrrrrr!!”

Out comes this black crayon scribble of Paul Newman Oreos.

I keep roaring till my stomach is empty. I flush.

I’m back on the couch, diagonal, and Vaughn’s looking for milk because milk is supposedly like kryptonite for PCP, and I just need this fucking thing to be over with. But there’s just almond milk, to go with the vegan cupcakes. Vaughn gives me Xanax and yogurt instead. I fall out again.

When I come to at seven, I’m still tripping balls but I can walk and I can talk, kind of. I ask Alex to show me the pictures. I need to see what happened. I don’t recognize myself. I look like I’m dead on the floor. Eyes wide open, lost.

I say, “Don’t show those to anybody. I got a daughter.”

They’re driving me home in the Volvo. I’m leaning my face against the window watching normal people go to Denny’s as a family. I’m helpless. Now I understand doped-up sex workers and white slavery. Right now they could take me anywhere they wanted; they could take me to the moon.

I’m thinking about what I told Brad the night before on the fire escape, after I just finished off a plate of ketamine. I said, “Brad, I don’t do drugs—I all-the-way do drugs. These motherfuckers out here are doing shit to numb themselves, that’s cool. Not me, sometimes I gotta stretch my mind, make my brain do karate.”

“Make your brain do karate?!”

“Make my brain do karate.”

And we laughed about it.

I MUST’VE BEEN THREE OR
four at the time. I was little. I remember that. I remember being little and dropping my sister off at school and running errands with my mom. I remember driving in the car with her, J. Geils Band on the radio.
My angel is the centerfold.
That song broke my heart. My dad let me look at porn, I knew what a centerfold was. I remember looking at Little Golden Books in the backseat and kicking my feet to the time of the blinker. I remember the generic aisle in the grocery store and the black-and-white labels.

I remember Rochester Park, the pond there, the creek, the swings, and the monkey bars. They were metal then. My mom took me there to play.

I was playing by them in the water when I found my duck egg. It was laying there in the bed of the creek by a cluster of stones. It must’ve rolled out of some duck’s nest. I didn’t know that. I thought they just hatched them underwater.

I picked it from the creek. It was brown and bigger than a
chicken’s. I ran and showed it to my mom. We drove back to Countryside. I played with my little egg the whole way. I was gonna hatch it when I got home; I told it so.

We pulled up into the parking lot, I climbed to the front seat, jumped out of the car, and ran up the sidewalk to show my dad the egg I found.

He was waiting for us to get there. He came out of the house, hollering.

He storms right past me and goes for my mom. I follow him.

He heads my mom off at the sidewalk. She backs up. He’s yelling about something. I don’t know what. It’s violent. They’re in the parking lot, he’s standing over her.

I keep tugging on him. I’m like, “Look, Dad, look! Look at this egg I found!”

Nothing.

I keep pestering him. I got it in my head that if he just sees this egg and how cool it is, he won’t be mad anymore. He’ll stop yelling.

He shakes me off.

My mom’s yelling back now, trying not to cry.

I’m scared. I’m begging for ’em please to stop fighting. His back is to me, and he’s pushing her.

We’re by the Dumpster now, the three of us, out in the middle of the parking lot. Now my mom’s crying.

I yell, “I’m gonna count to three!! If you guys don’t stop fighting, I’m gonna break my duck egg!” I hold the egg over my head and count, “One . . . two . . . three!”

It’s like I’m not even there.

I slam the egg on the ground and watch the yolk splatter across the blacktop.

It’s so orange against that asphalt.

There goes my egg.

And they kept on fighting till the cops came.

I THINK I SMOKED TOO
much PCP. I wasn’t concerned about OD’ing on sherm while I was doing it; intergalactic space travel is kind of the shit. I still wouldn’t call it an overdose per se, more like “overdoing it.” I overdid it and ended up catatonic for hours.

When I wake up on Sunday still high, I don’t even trip. I just take a cab up to the Standard hotel and eat fish tacos pool-side while Detroit Daniel spins techno.

When Monday comes and I’m still disoriented with no motor skills, that gives me pause. I wake up high the day after and the day after and the day after that. I’m thinking, maybe I’m not high, maybe I’m just broken.

I don’t even try to drive; I can’t see straight. I walk to work every day repeating my mantra, “Sharpen up. Sharpen up. Sharpen up.”

But in the quiet confines of my studio, sitting by myself,
waiting to drag my ass through the next talk break, one thought goes through my head: Fried your little brain.

I still can’t remember things on Thursday, I can’t do math, I suck at Scrabble, I get headaches, my dick doesn’t work the same, people talk to me and I get confused. I come to terms with the fact that the sherm took a piece of me. Maybe I damaged my head; maybe I’m stupid now.

Rachel asks, “Did you google that drug?”

I tell her, “It’s a little late for that now. I shoulda googled that shit before I took back-to-back sherm sticks to the face.”

“You should look it up.”

“Fuck that.”

I don’t want to, the same way I used to not like taking AIDS tests after fucking with no rubber for months.

“I’ll look it up,” she says, and she’s banging away on the computer. She’s reading to herself. “Jesus Christ, Jude.” She’s shaking her head. “Jesus Christ . . . Jesus Christ. Do you know what that shit does to your brain?”

“Yeah, it makes you fucking retarded. Don’t tell me what it did, just tell me how to fix it.”

She reads some more. “I don’t know, this blog says niacin. Try some B vitamins maybe? That’ll detox you. It says the effects can last up to a couple of weeks.”

I take niacin. I take niacin till my piss turns orange, till it looks like a toilet bowl full of orange Crush. Till I start busting orange nuts. When I cum, it looks like a Creamsicle. My boxers look like a Pollock painting.

I go to bed every night hoping I’ll sleep it off. And when I
wake up with my brain slow and my head still swimming, I’m like, “You fucking idiot.”

I work on forgiving myself for wrecking my brain, for wrecking my dick.

Now I’m stupid. It’s not so bad. I’ll go with my gut more. It’s making me patient. My show sucks but I’ll work that job till they fire me. Maybe I’ll meet a nice girl now, maybe I won’t be so picky, maybe I won’t give a shit if she watches reality shows and reads
Us Weekly
.

A few years back I used to talk to this little young chick Josette. I’d call her up at five in the morning high on ecstasy talking crazy and she’d just say, “Oh, Jude, what am I going to do with you?”

That’s what I’m saying to myself now. “Oh Jude, what am I gonna do with you?”

I’ll work hard, I’ll do my exercises, I’ll take my vitamins, and I’ll get better, I tell myself.

I’ll get better or I’ll get used to it.

WHEN I SELF-PUBLISHED I EDITED
this book with one of my best friends, Andrea Grano. She’s one of the few people I trust with my voice. Thanks, Andrea. Frank Ryan drew the illustrations. Kevin Beebe handled book design, cover design, typesetting, and layout on my first batch of books; not this one but he still gets a shout-out.

Danny Angelini, Ross Rowe, Toni Prieto, Greg Adkins, Rebecca Diliberto Adkins, Brian Liesegang, Tien Nguyen, and Nicholas Palos gave me notes. Cindy Chyr told me about perpetuity. Jetta and Pendarvis helped me send the book out. Rachel Angelini wrote “About the Author.”

Karyn Bosnak helped get me to Simon & Schuster and held my hand through the whole process. Thank you. I was lost. Thanks to Alison Callahan and Jeremie Ruby-Strauss for giving me a shot. Thanks to Dennis Ardi, my lawyer.

Thanks to Marshall Mathers, Paul Rosenberg, and Steve Blatter for keeping me employed while I wrote this book.

Thank you to my friends and family. These stories aren’t just mine, they’re ours, and you let me share them. And thank you to everyone who bought this book early on. . . . You all really helped grow this book and I truly appreciate it.

Hyena Go Hard.

JUDE ANGELINI
was born and raised in Pontiac, Michigan. He got his start as a guest and comic on
The Jenny Jones Show
. He now hosts his own show,
The All Out Show
, on Sirius XM Satellite Radio. His great love of music has influenced every aspect of his life, including the rhythm of his writing style. He was first inspired to write after reading Bukowski’s
Notes of a Dirty Old Man
. He felt he could share his stories without being hindered by the rules of grammar.

Although he writes from his own experiences, he loves reading Elmore Leonard, science fiction, and medieval fantasy. He also loves antiquing, and a good game of backgammon.

Jude currently lives in Los Angeles.

FOR MORE ON THIS AUTHOR:
authors.simonandschuster.com/Jude-Angelini

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Gallery Books

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Copyright © 2013 by Jude Angelini

This work was originally self-published.

Edited by Andrea Grano, Jeremie Ruby-Strauss, and Alison Callahan Illustrations by Frank Ryan

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information address Gallery Books Subsidiary Rights Department, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020.

First Gallery Books trade paperback edition September 2014

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.

Interior design by Davina Mock-Maniscalco

Cover design by John Vairo Jr.

Cover photograph by Nik Merkulov/Shutterstock

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available.

ISBN 978-1-4767-8930-9

ISBN 978-1-4767-8931-6 (ebook)