What We Do Is Secret (14 page)

Authors: Thorn Kief Hillsbery

Tags: #Fiction

BOOK: What We Do Is Secret

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Squid says, “First off this isn’t my secret but the fry’s making over tragic into magic now in our swell fellowship of the Ding Dong, the which is read, aloud, family style.”

Allowed?

Family?

Smile!

You’re on candied, I am a.

Camera.

(Chimera?)

And I have a confusion to make.

(Old chum.)

True confusions?

(Life is a.)

Two conclusions?

(Cabaret Voltaire.)

Jump!

No darlin’s no, not me now and not me never, I’m afraid of—

Knights.

In shining.

Secret.

Under.

Where?

Here?

The letter H? This is where that poor girl jumped? Or where she hung? Y’all never decided. It remains—as Daddy would say, Daddy being, you (or most of you) see, a mortician— it remains unknown. It remains a.

Secret.

But not mine.

Like somebody’s sins.

But not mine.

And Siouxsie Sioux baby I love you but stop!

In the name of all of the above.

Because this little daughter of the Confederacy does not “play” secrets. Not gamewise anyway. Maybe the way ole Strad. E. Various bows a fiddle-me-this. On special occasions. Weddings, parties, anything. And bongo jazz a spesh-ee-ality. But day in day out it’s not what you’d call a leisure time activity, not back home, not with live-in secrets doing the backseat driving even in neutral, even in park, eight-hundred-pound gorilla secrets like, oh, the War Between the States. The outcome, I mean. Since General Robert E. of the Virginia Lees, well, he surrendered his army, I grant you that, but he never surrendered the South, you see, so, yes, mm-hmm. And ten times out of ten you got race peering over the other shoulder, whispering somethings sweet or sour depending on your peeoh-vee but every which way you take it the same old somethings, the colored person in the woodpile, the tar baby in the bassinet, look away, Dixieland!

And did I say family, play it Loud? They follow mine around with cameras like they did those folks out here and they’d have two
I’ve Got a Secrets
fightin’ for space in the
TV
Guide
. My people have so many secrets you wrap ’em all up picture-pretty and pile ’em around the tree come Christmas you’d think we were one of your dearly beloved Mormon clans, David, four, five wives per husband and eight, nine kids per wife. When really it’s just me and my brother Ash and Daddy and his old-maid sister Ruthie and my stepmama Delilah and her no-account motorcycle-riding son Jake from the common-law marriage she’d give God’s green earth to forget if only Jake weren’t the spitting image of his no-account motorcycle-riding papa at the time he revved his way into her heart not to mention more accessible portions of her anatomy thanks mostly to the greasiest ducktail in Dickinson County and a dive-in dimple in his chinny-chin-chin.

Which secrets being secrets I only found out about from Jake when he ran away from home a year before I did and I just happened to be in the right place at the right time to pretend I was his girlfriend when a State Trooper chased him and a Colonel Sanders look-alike with his pants down around his knees out of the men’s room in Lake Toxaway Park.

An incident that Jake called—how exactly did he put it?

Our little secret.

Please?

Could it be our little secret? Of course it could. We even started shaking on it till I noticed the cop still monitoring the situation out of the corner of my eye and yanked Jake towards me for one of those bad-girl hip grinds that lead straight to the heartbreak of teenage pregnancy in those filmstrips they show in Family Living class.

So we sealed the deal all right. Our little secret. But I’m telling y’all now, so is it, really? Secret? Or was it, ever, since who did I tell that very day, but my best girlfriend Donna Swisher, who I told everything but the most important thing, the real secret, which y’all can maybe guess from the fact that the Gwinette Consolidated student consistently voted least likely to show a speck of powder puff’s lint worth of school spirit in any way shape or form, i.e., rhymes with Diddley Did, signed on for not one but two consecutive sessions of summer majorette camp just to keep anyone else from rooming with Donna in the sultry steamy quarters of the Auburn dorm where I hoped against hope, perspiring with desiring, that anything might happen.

Now that’s what I call a secret.

I don’t mean Donna.

I mean anything might happen.

It’s got some meat on its bones. It’s got mystery. I mean I could tell you what happened with Donna, and maybe I never did spell it out for another soul before, beginning, middle, end, so I’d even be right with your rules of engagement, Ms. Siouxsie Sioux. But so what if I did? It’s a story, not a secret.

I reckon the secret’s the part you can’t tell. Like I can put in words how scared Jake was that day, the physical signs I mean. How his lower lip trembled and a twitch started winking one of his eyes and how the blood just drained from his face so— you know how coffee grounds cling to the eggshell you throw in to settle the pot? Well, that’s what the here-and-there stubble on his cheeks that you hardly even noticed normal times looked like, he turned so pale. But I can’t tell you what it felt like, being there, touched by his fear, and shame too it must have been, sharing it. Or what passed between us, besides words. How for the first and only time, after living in the same house for ten years, breaking bread and breaking wind and breaking promises, we somehow connected.

It’s still our secret, it always will be, it can’t be anything else. And especially not a story. No more than all this here can be. All this—

Gorgeousness.

Somebody said you can see it from the moon. I guess you can see stories, if you want to. Or expect to. There was that old TV show in black and white, they used to run repeats late nights back to back with
The Untouchables
, it starts out looking out over New York City sparkling away to the ends of the earth just like we’re looking out over LA and the voice of God I guess—no, that’d be Johnny Cash, wouldn’t it, it wasn’t Johnny—anyway this voice says, “There are eight million stories in the naked city.”

And maybe somebody coming from New York, they see a few million here too, same old same old, I expect you do, Blitzer, you told us a fine one, though I can’t say I’d call it a secret myself, same with you David, no reflection on y’all intended, it’s just the stories to me are so deep in the shade of the local eight-hundred-pound gorilla I plumb forget they might be there, it’s almost like it doesn’t matter if they are or not.

We’re not supposed to be here.

None of us. Well, some of us. Maybe Los Feliz and Silver Lake put together. That’s about the size of Tuscaloosa. And that’s how much water there is in these parts. For that many people. Hell’s bells, it’s easier believing in magic out here than believing in rain. I’ve been here two years and I can’t count the ups or the downs or the chicks or the tricks, but I can count the times it’s rained. Maybe it’s rain that is the magic.

So that’s part of the secret. It’s a desert out there. But who’d have guessed? With all this greenery and all these people. I found out down at the Women’s Building, in a book in their library. With before and after shots. Before they piped the water in. And you know what it said? Never before in the history of the entire world going back to the pharaohs and the Pharisees have so many people lived so far from something so necessary to human life.

Hundreds and hundreds of miles. And not just kitchen-garden-variety hundreds, either. Deserts hundreds of miles wide and earthquake faults hundreds of miles long and even one big volcano set to go at any time like that Mt. St. Helens and how far away do you think they were picking up the pieces last time it blew, try Omaha, Nebraska.

So that’s the rest of the secret. Most of it, actually. What you might call the meat on the bones.

Anything might happen.

It’s not a story anybody tells, it’s not a story anybody can tell. It’s not a story. And maybe that’s why it’s different out here. Really different. Maybe you come here, you tell a story, you come from here, you tell a secret.

And I think Rockets proved me right already so Siouxsie Sioux it’s up to you to prove me wrong. Not that I’m off the hook though, not in your book. Because what you really want from me’s a story anyway, isn’t it? What happened in that house on Beachwood, when and how and who and why? And I could tell you, couldn’t I? All the juicies. How David Bowie was supposed to have lived there once, and so was Mick Ronson. How the back house was built over an old swimming pool and the party room was actually inside it, with tiles and drains and all. But like it or not I might as well be Daddy ticking down the volume on his Beltone when Delilah gets going on
her
want list, I end up hearing the letter
A
for the letter
H
and you can’t say I didn’t warn you, loud and queer, I have a confusion to make, but truth be told maybe that’s my secret, maybe I’m that Scarlett woman, or maybe Mr. Butler did it, maybe you care about that story right now even more than you care about me and maybe you’ll go on caring long after I’m gone with the you-know-what but darlin’ darlin’, in case you didn’t notice.

Squid says, “Frankly, Siouxsie, I don’t give a damn.”

Tim says, “All about Steve.”

That’s my secret, when school was cruel and high was as possible and daily the twain did grip and grin, you can Bette on it.

The new kid in town, right? I’m sitting in the bleachers at a basketball game, I turn around for some reason, and see him. And just
know
. He’s not even looking at me. No eye contact or anything. But I
know
.

He’s by himself.
Of course
he’s cute. Curly brown hair, over his forehead, over his ears. Nice full lips. And these long strong chorus boy legs. So at halftime I walk right up to him in line at the concession stand and introduce myself. Smart move, too, because he doesn’t know anybody. Steve. From Nebraska. And not the least bit, you know.

But neither am
moi
.

Mais non, non, non!

I am, how you say, a druggy. How we say, a loadee. And how does this come about, when after all—but before about Steve—I get good grades? I’m president of International Relations Club? Treasurer of Science Club? When my friends have slide rules?

I have sly drools, that’s how.

For the quarterback of the football team, to name just one. Jim. He always sits in front of me in math, whatever it is, geometry, algebra, calculus, the equal seduction clause of the U.S. Constitution guarantees that seating in math class is strictly alphabetical. He’s Turner. I’m Trusty. And I’m bad at math. It’s the one class I always cheat through. So Jim sits with one long leg bent back at the knee and all period long instead of working out equations I stare at his bare leg between the cuff of his jeans and the top of his sock.

He knows about me too. Which makes me wonder a little about him. That he notices I don’t shower in PE class, but doesn’t say anything, doesn’t talk it up. Just looks at me once in the locker room when we’re the only ones dressing, him because he’s been gabbing with the coach in his towel, me because I’ve holed up even longer than usual in a stall so no one notices I don’t shower. He just gives me this look, it isn’t disgust, just knowing, and letting me see he knows.

And can’t be my friend.

Though it’s not like I want football player friends. Not necessarily. Just friends without slide rules.

So I start smoking. On the loading dock behind the cafeteria. Where the bad kids hang out, between classes, at lunch. The loadees. They’re bad because they smoke. Because the girls pierce their ears and don’t take home ec beyond the required one quarter. Because the boys grow mustaches and keep taking wood shop after the required one quarter.

And don’t take math at all.

They take drugs though. They all wear navy peacoats that smell like marijuana from the damp in the air. Marlboros and marijuana. They all smoke Marlboros. And they all wonder, when I start hanging out on the dock, if I’m a narc. They talk a lot about narcs. I don’t think there ever were any. This was when parents and teachers thought all the drugs were in San Francisco. But what everyone knows about narcs is: if you smoke weed with them, you can’t be a narc. So I do, first chance I get. With the only other kid out there who gets good grades. We have classes together but he isn’t like me, trying to be friends with the cheerleaders, the football players, the brains. He has longer hair than any boy in school, past his shoulders. Bryan. And he’s handsome. But he isn’t like me the you-know way either. Just friendly when I show up on the dock.

Smoking Old Golds that I stole from my dad.

Realizing for the first time that everyone smokes Marlboros. Red box. And guessing I belong inside at the slide rule table where at least I know the rules.

Then being sure of it when Bryan calls to me across the dock, “Old Golds!”

And everyone stares.

And I stand there, busted, wondering why he hates me.

Until he holds up his thumb and says, “Coupons!”

Because Old Golds come with coupons. Not Green Stamps, but like them. You can trade them in for, I don’t know, radios, blenders, battery chargers.

Matadors on velvet probably.

He walks over and shakes hands the way the bad kids shake, squeezing thumbs like the Negroes on TV, the Negroes with Afros, they were still Negroes then and they still wore Afros and they were only on TV, except for one foreign exchange student one year, from Uganda, he may have been from Africa but he didn’t have an Afro, just a slide rule, his name was Sammy Sebabi, it’s funny what you remember.

Jim Turner’s leg and Sammy Sebabi’s slide rule.

Bryan shaking my hand and bumming an Old Gold, in front of all the loadees.

And a couple days later he’s got a pack himself. And a few months later half the bad kids are smoking Old Golds and saving the coupons. All because of Bryan.

Wanting to help me.

Though I only realized that later.

How many people really want to help you?

Ever.

But especially in high school.

Isn’t it the closest thing to hell on earth?

And what’s the hottest part of it?

Being a faggot.

Being known as a faggot.

But a loadee can’t be a faggot. No way, San Jose. “In trouble” means pregnant and the only girls who get in trouble are the loadee girls and it’s the loadee boys causing it, everyone knows that. They aren’t like the football boys with the cheerleaders, “going steady” just to get some heavy petting in. Loadees don’t go steady.

Just get married sometimes.

The kind of wedding where the car pulls up afterwards for the bride and groom and the best man calls out, “Shotgun,” and everyone but the parents laughs.

So being a loadee, that’s the ticket. You can’t be a faggot but you can smoke weed every day and still get straight A’s, except in math. You can drop acid every weekend, at football games, even at home, watching
Green Acres
with your parents,
Dahlink
I lu f you but give me Park Avenoo!

And you can also drop acid with the new kid in town.

Steve.

Because even though he’s not the least bit, you know.

I do know. I just do. Maybe he doesn’t, but I do.

I tell him to come sit with me, and he looks down at his boots.

Cowboy boots!

And says, “I’m a sophomore,” like he’s confessing it was him all right, November 22, 1963, making bang bang from the grassy knoll.

So what if I don’t have a single friend in a lower class. So what if no one I know does. I just say, “Who cares?” and ask him if he smokes weed.

You bet he does.

We drive to the riverbank by my house and smoke like fiends and howl at the moon, it’s full, of course, I’ve got the planets on my side, I just have to figure out how, exactly.

To seduce this boy.

When all the practice I have is I’ll show you mine if you’ll show me yours when I was twelve, with my thirteen-year-old cousin, on a backyard sleep-out.

And mine was bigger, but that’s another story.

Squid says, “See!”

Tim says, “Cret!”

I mean secret.

Not story.

But Steve’s story is, he’s never dropped, and does he ever want to. So before you can say hear ye queer ye Timothy Leary it’s signed, sealed, and scheduled for delivery the very next Friday night. When my parents conveniently will be in Milwaukee with my sisters.

And so it comes to make a pass.

With Steve on two hits and me on one.

Under black light, where skin looks so—

Tanned.

So touchable.

With the furnace blasting, so—take off your shirt, man, don’t clothes feel like chains sometimes?

And music, Rod Stewart, “Let me tell you ’bout a place, somewhere up near New York way, where the people are so gay, twisting the night away.”

Subtle.

Subliminal even.

Background.

While foreground I babble on about rebelling against society, how human beings touching one another is one of the best feelings around, but we aren’t supposed to, and why?

The same reason we aren’t supposed to take drugs!

Because it feels so good!

If it feels good, do it!

It doesn’t have to mean anything else.

There.

Doesn’t that feel good, Steve? Doesn’t it feel great?

He doesn’t say no.

All night long. And all day the next. We stay in bed till it’s dark again. And right before we finally get up he cries a little. Not because of what we did, but because he liked it so much.

He says it scares him.

Maybe we shouldn’t have started.

Touching.

But started we have and have we ever and for the next two years that’s what we call it.

Touching.

It’s what we do every day after school, staying at each other’s house every weekend. What we do when I go on his family’s vacations, and he goes on mine. We don’t do everything we did that first time. I want to, but he won’t. He says he doesn’t want to be queer. That doesn’t mean we can’t kiss, or get off together, all night long and as long.

As nobody knows. As long as it’s secret.

And it doesn’t mean I can’t fall for him.

Because I do.

Which isn’t secret, not from Steve. But he gets scared. And stays scared. I don’t know he’s counting the days till I graduate from high school till what a coincidence, the day I graduate from high school.

When he tells me, It’s over.

So that’s my payback for setting it up.

Two years of a three-letter word when what I end up wanting’s a life of a four-letter one.

It sounds like bad Bette Davis but this is before.

Or is it when it started?

Me being like I am now.

And bad as I set Steve up, I knew I set myself up worse.

I knew.

Like I knew about him to begin with.

I knew.

I suffered, so I knew.

I was the victim.