Shuck (8 page)

Then he would put it away and try to imagine it. On good days, his brain could turn his father's testicle into a 3-D egg bobbing in his head. The wormy tubes, the pubic dusting, the filigree veins. It was pleasurable to wrap his mind around something so tangible. He found other objects to focus on, not all of them in his father's underwear.

Perhaps he had fed his parents too much Ritalin, because they began to vomit, convulse, soar through euphoria, drool through delirium, and experience heart palpitations.

By the time his parents realized what was going on, the kid had built up such an arsenal of useful and comforting objects in his mind that when they shipped him off to reform school, he knew he would be able to cope.

The envelope was, but the envelope is no more.

It is unlikely that you will become a published author, page seventy-five of the
UnFrustrated Writer
says, if you hold on to your failures.

“I notice you're not too interested in paying the rent we agreed on,” Derek says.

“
Forced to Guzzle
,” I say.

“I didn't know he was going to do that.”

“Can't wait for the sequel. Any other friends of yours I should work with? Anyways, it's not like you need the money.”

“That's right,” he says. “Turtle paintings are all the rage right now.”

“I hate it when you're like that.”

“Pulling your own weight. That's all this is about.”

“
You
should talk. I see the checks your mom sends.”

“That's different,” he says. “We have an arrangement.”

I wouldn't have learned how to ride the subway for free if they hadn't revealed the secret in the
Daily News
. There was this guy who had figured out how to bend MetroCards in just the right place, creasing a mysterious point in the magnetic strip to romance the turnstiles forever. He hadn't paid a fare in years. When they finally caught him, he was wearing a brass knuckles-type ring that fit across all four fingers, with the word TRANSIT spelled out in diamonds. Paid for, supposedly, with the money he had saved on subway fare.

The day I read the article, I scavenged a stack of old MetroCards, sat in the corner of a subway entrance, and put them through a fork until I bent one just right.

Ka-ching.

I was supposed to change trains downtown to go see this photographer guy (the back of the
Village Voice
is a goldmine), but I dozed off. I dreamt about someone sitting me on a dinner table and bending me different ways through a fork until my services were indefinitely free. I remember squeezing through the metal prongs, escaping just in time, though I couldn't see who had been doing the bending.

“LASTSTOPLASTSTOPLASTSTOP, everbodyouteverybodyout.”

By the time I pried my drooling jaw off the Dr Zizmor ad (dermatological celebrity—you don't want to know), I was the last one left on the train. I ran for the doors and dove out just as they were closing.

The ocean. Although it's always in the same place, Coney Island is always a surprise.

The ocean ended at the sand, and the sand kept Astroland Amusement Park from sliding into the water.

The Cyclone: A screaming rollercoaster bristling with arms, hoisted on termite-eaten stilts the width of matchsticks. All bend and creak, this death trap. Perhaps it changed you by displacing your center of gravity to outside your body, to the top of the track where you took your last breath.

The Wonder Wheel: The Ferris mothership, spinning like a giant hamster wheel, offering you the freedom of the open sky, a place to make out and puke while locked in a cage. Perhaps it changed you by giving you infinite power that you could do nothing with.

The Astrotower: The best place to watch carnies scamming dollar bills, moms rifling paintballs at clowns, vendors trawling the beach with cotton candy and Heineken, New Jersey prom queens noshing hot dogs, and kids riding mattresses lost at sea.

Perhaps the rides only changed you when they broke down and stranded you, hanging there, high above nothing you'd care to return to.

The best rides, the ones that didn't move, were gone. I could hear echoes of Dreamland, where the world had come so many years ago to sway motionless, ogle the million light bulbs, and marvel over the wonders of electricity. When the bulbs shorted out and the wonders of electricity set fire to the zoo, these people ran screaming from the flaming zebras and tigers that were escaping into Brooklyn.

Running from lions with manes of fire.

I left Astroland and got lost in the noise of Surf Avenue, past a newsstand where Russians were screaming at soccer on TV. I came to a sign that said
Shit and Ephemera
and ducked inside, and by the time I figured out that they did tattoos, a woman had handed me a white towel.

“Trash it.”

“I don't work here.”

“Who says I'd hire you? Anyways, what do you want? Let me guess, the Ramones on your ass.”

“Actually, no.”

I examined the towel.

“Tell me this is blood.”

“Crucifixion Crimson, made to look like the inside of Christ on impalement day. You want some?”

She held her tattoo gun over the empty chair.

“I'd like to see a catalogue, please.”

She rolled her eyes and gave me a black binder spilling with images. It didn't take me long to find something I liked, something representative, a tattoo that chose me as much as I chose it. Something to remind me of Coney Island when I was trapped in the city.

“Hmmh,” she said.

She wrapped the flames around my waist, lick by lick. Fire cannot be counted, and neither can animals when they swarm you. Orange, yellow, and red melded in infinite measures. That's how it is with life. With pain, I mean.

Every day I look at my tattoo and it reminds me that whatever I do below the waist usually causes me pain. The shitty part is that no two burns are the same, so I can never steel myself beforehand.

At least I didn't return to Manhattan the same boy.

I found myself on the sixth floor of a Tribeca walk-up, out of breath and staring at the door, wondering what this address I had culled from the wanted ads was going to make me do.

He opened the door. Fifty-five, fifty-six, a wizened man with eyes
of blue crystal, white goatee and hair buzzed short, a body that had grown comfortable with itself. I usually get hard around these daddy types, but this one had a different vibe.

“Right, I'm Richard Rorschach, so you're here, so tell me about yourself.”

“I don't do Internet shoots, and I don't drink piss,” I said.

He gave me a hurt look.

“Don't worry, we're not going to do that, so I just want you to relax. There's no pressure, right? Tell me about your day.”

I figured he was just pulling a chatty routine to get me to shuck, so to save us both some time I gave him the merchandise right off. I had already developed a little stripping act: flex my biceps and toss my bangs, unfurl my T-shirt over my head, stare into space like I was reconsidering, then insolently kick off my Fiorucci sneakers like I'd rather be at the dentist. They crash-landed into an aloe vera plant in the corner. I had yet to perfect the finer points.

“What are you doing?” he said.

“Just wait.”

I cocked my head, gave him the Jaeven lip sneer, undid my belt buckle, and let my jeans fall to the floor. I turned around and spread'em. I spread those cheeks so wide that if I had farted just then, it would've been a sigh.

“Come on, you don't have to do that, it's not you.”

“You don't know anything about me.”

“If you were a plastic go-go boy, you would've checked yourself in the mirror by now. Like, come on, right? So go get your shoes and show me the real you.”

I fetched my sneakers, bent an aloe tentacle back into place, and
returned to Richard. He led me into a pale blue, nearly empty living room, though it was big enough to be a studio.

I watched my hands as they began to move, tying and untying the dirty shoelaces. I had walked this city inside out in these shoes, picking up scuffmarks and lessons along the way.

“Look at you, that's it.”

“What?”

“Whatever you're doing. You're being you.”

“Who else would I be?”

“Right, yeah, well some people can't be themselves.”

And in that moment, I felt naked for the first time in my life, as silly as that sounds. I had never felt so vulnerable before, or so beautiful. My tattoo was oozing, and it hurt me tender and deep.

It felt like I had just bumped my head against the wooden walls of my TraceBox™.

Richard had become a lens, the lens of a boxy Hasselblad camera mounted on a tripod. It was an old-fashioned clunker that hid him quite well.

“So tell me your story, tell me about the shoes. I like to sniff around old stuff. You know, I'm a goat. But I promise not to eat them.”

I felt stupid for not having noticed their condition before. The white leather high-tops had been worked supple and raw, and so had the textile inlay with the Fiorucci logo. I had missed a shoelace eyelet on each one. The soles were worn down unevenly and made me wonder if I had a limp I didn't know about. There was bubble gum stuck in the treads.

It was painfully quiet in the room.

With Richard, there was no music.

“Tell me the story,” he said again.

“They came with my first apartment.”

“Talk to me about where these shoes have been.”

I looped a butterfly knot and told him everything—the places in New York where trouble had picked up my scent and followed me, the places where I had seen proof that the human will is stronger than any poison the world can feed it, the places that had changed me forever, and the places I would rather forget.

These shoes, for better or for worse, had brought me to where I was. It sounds stupid and simplistic, but it's so true.

He clicked and snapped. I didn't feel naked anymore, because I realized that he was shooting me, not my body.

I was surprised when Richard gave me three hundred dollars—it didn't feel like we'd done anything. He picked up my sneakers and untied the laces for me.