Bad Kid (13 page)

As the strength of her embrace intensified, so did the powerful suction of her piehole. As this face-eating persisted, I realized the extent to which kissing is made possible by possessing a functioning nose. Without it, the act becomes a dangerous game of breath-play, complete with gagging, mucus-y sound effects. At one point, Pam formed a seal around my mouth so tightly that I could feel her drawing breath from inside my body.

“Pam, I think he's had enough!” I heard Raven plead.

And then Pam coughed into my mouth. Sure, it was positively disgusting, but it freed me. My head jerked back like the guy listening to his stereo in the Memorex commercial. I wiped a pint of saliva from my face as Pam heaved and retched.

Catching my breath, I noticed Barb down the hall through a small crack in her bedroom door. She was laid out on her bed, lit only by the glow of
LA Law
through a haze of cigarette smoke. A grin spread across Barb's face as she gave me a thumbs-up and a deeply unsettling wink. What had already been a disturbing first kiss was now, improbably, much worse.

For the next half hour we all tried to enjoy ourselves, but the party was unsalvageable. My new friends would chat with me and be extra-touchy, offering little hugs or shoulder pats as if to say,
I know that was hard, but we're all proud of you
. I would take solace in this just as I noticed Pam watching me from twenty feet away, her face peeking around the corner of a storage shed in the backyard or partially obscured by a gauzy drape blowing in the living room. At every turn I could sense her there, sheepishly smiling whenever I caught her gaze.

I found Hector smoking on the front porch as a big brown station wagon tapped its horn.

“Who's that?” I asked.

“Sasquatch's mom,” he answered, straightening the cameo brooch at the center of his shirt collar. “She's been here the whole time.”

The front door opened behind us as Barb helped Pam onto the porch.

“You get home okay, sweetie. And tell your momma hi for me, okay?” said Barb, patting Pam's butt as she stepped into the yard.

“Bye, Daniel,” Pam giggled, with her creepy little finger-wave.

Hector chuckled. “Wow, your first love doesn't even know your fucking name.”

Pam's mother got out of the front seat and walked around the car to open the back door. She strapped her daughter in and got back in the driver's seat, like a chauffeur. Pam leaned her face against the window and continued to wave good-bye, the glass in front of her mouth fogging up with hot, strawberry breath. As it occurred to me that Pam might be even more “special” than I'd first assumed, Greg and Jake emerged from the backseat of my car. Gazing out on the tableau as Pam and her mother pulled away, I couldn't help but compare Greg's party experiences and mine. Greg had made out with Jake. Jake had made out with Greg. I'd made out with a large, semideformed simpleton with a mouth full of razor blades.

I could taste blood on my lip as Greg tucked in his shirt and asked, “What did we miss?”

I glared at him silently as he went inside with Jake. Hector passed me a lit clove. “Don't worry, dude. You'll hook up with Jake eventually. Everybody does.”

I took a long drag off the clove, reminding myself that I could finally cross “first kiss” off my list. Watching Greg lean against Jake through the kitchen window, I hoped my second one would be better.

I
don't understand how it can get you high if it's just a piece of paper,” said Greg, fingering the tiny blue square in his palm.

We'd been sitting in Greg's room for half an hour, contemplating our hits of acid. We'd gotten them from a dealer at school a few days earlier, and we'd been waiting until the weekend to take them. My mother had gone camping with Mike and was letting me spend the next four days with Greg, whose parents would be away the entire time.

“What if we overdose, Greg?”

“You have to stop being such a pussy. You can't OD unless you take a whole lot. Like that guy who stuck the whole sheet down his shirt and then ran from the cops for half an hour!”

“That guy went to Judson High School! I heard he's going to be in a padded cell for the rest of his life!”

We'd all heard of the guy who absorbed a sheet of acid through his sweat, and the girl who took too much and cut off her face, and the guy who thought there was a bee in his head and ripped his ears off with a corkscrew. These were the ghost stories of the alt crowd. Bowheads and preps told campfire tales about the deformed Donkey Lady who lived under a bridge by the river, while all the kids in black whispered about the girl who took five hits of white blotter and, thinking her beloved Persian cat was too cold, blew it up in the microwave.

“David! This is the perfect time. My parents are gone.”

“I guess we can call Jake or Raven for help if something goes wrong.”

“No, David! I want to do this with
just
you the first time. What if I freak out, or look weird, or it's like a truth serum? I'll tell Jake I think I love him and it'll be awful!”

“Fine,” I replied, miffed that Greg's crush was becoming love.

Sitting on our tiny bed islands, we looked into each other's eyes.

“Whatever happens, David, I love you!”

“I love you too, Greg! You're my best friend.”

We placed the bits of paper on our tongues and sat motionless, staring at each other from across the room.

“What happens now?” I mumbled through closed lips.

“Uh-oh-uh.”

“Huh?”

“I. Don't. Know,” answered Greg, careful to keep the hit on his tongue.

Twenty minutes later we were angrily stomping around the kitchen.

“I can't believe we gave that dude ten dollars for that!” Greg
complained, taking a hot cookie sheet of pizza bites out of the oven. “He gypped us!”

“What a jerk! And we could've gone to FX tonight,” I said, popping a pizza bite into my mouth. As Greg poured a second round of Captain Morgan and Coke, I noticed that the pizza bites tasted odd. Something wasn't right with the texture. I had to have another one to figure it out. I chewed carefully, with intent, trying to suss out each element of flavor and understand what was going on in my mouth. But the pizza bite eluded me. I popped another one in my mouth and closed my eyes. My mouth was suddenly full of the most disgusting material ever created by man. I opened my eyes to see Greg staring out the kitchen window, tracing his wet finger along the glass and humming.

“Greg! Who is outside?” I asked.

Greg turned to me with giant black eyes and whispered, “Everyone!”

I looked down at the empty cookie sheet. I had eaten twenty pizza bites.

“Greg! I ate too much. Drive me to the hospital.”

“We can't drive, David.”

“You're right. Oh no! I'm afraid I'm going to drive!”

I imagined myself the victim of an ill-intentioned hypnotist, sobbing as I pressed my possessed foot on the gas pedal and flew off the I-10 overpass to my death. I pulled out my car keys and threw them at Greg. “Here! You've got to keep me out of that car!”

Greg looked into his hand like he was holding the key to launch a wad of nukes. “It's too much responsibility,” he said, throwing them back. “What if I end up driving? What if I can't stop myself?”

“Greg, you've got to be strong!” I threw the keys back at him. We stood in the kitchen like this for several minutes/hours/weeks, throwing the car keys back and forth in a psychotic game of hot potato. And then it happened. Everything clicked into place. Every single thing made sense. In some wordless, inexplicable way, the truth of the whole world came crashing in.

“Greg! I understand everything!” I looked into Greg's dilated pupils.

“Wait!” He raised his finger to shush me, like he was figuring out the tip on a bill. “David!” he gasped. “I understand everything too!”

I grabbed his shoulder. “Greg, it's happening. We're tripping!”

“Oh. My. God. David! We're tripping!” We threw our arms around each other, laughing as we hopped up and down in the center of the kitchen.

“What the fuck is going on?”

Greg and I looked toward the foyer, mid-embrace, to see Johnny.

“We made food!” Greg blurted out as I realized that we were both wearing oven mitts.

“Jesus Christ, you're a couple of weirdoes,” Johnny grunted. Greg and I remained frozen in each other's arms, staring at Johnny, as if stillness might camouflage our altered state.

“Um, okay, freaks. I'm going to work out.” As Johnny trudged down the hallway, we remained entangled. Hearing his door shut, we tiptoed to Greg's room.

“Shhh,” whispered Greg, shutting his door. “I want to show you something.”

Greg pulled out a shoebox from under his bed and removed the lid, revealing the most beautiful pair of bright-blue, ten-hole Doc Marten boots.

“My mom got them yesterday,” Greg said, handing me the boots. “They were a hundred and forty dollars.” We rubbed the smooth heels on our faces and inhaled the thick odor of leather and rubber. Greg leaned toward me and said, “I think these shoes are magical.” The whites of his eyes glowed from within.

“It's true,” I whispered back. “Hey. Let's listen to some music.”

“David, why are we whispering?”

“I don't know!” I whispered back loudly. Moments later, The Smiths' “Shoplifters of the World Unite” began blasting through the stereo and we were immediately on our feet, reenacting our favorite FX dances: the “I'm Balancing on a Tightrope” walk, the “Help, I'm Caught in a Sexy Spiderweb” sway, the “Here, Let Me Erotically Deal this Deck of Cards” hand flourish.

Reaching to the ceiling with my eyes closed, I heard Greg say my name. Snapping into the moment, I realized that the entire Smiths CD was almost over.

What had happened to time? Who stole my hour?

“I have an idea!” said Greg, pirouetting toward me in his bright-blue boots.

“I know!” I screamed. “I have a
million
ideas right now!”

“We need to get into a gay club where there are
real
gay people,” Greg announced, jumping onto his bed. “Just imagine it, a place where anyone you meet might have sex with you!”

“Or be the love of your life!” I swooned, spinning myself in Greg's comforter like a whirling dervish.

Greg came to a stop and dramatically grabbed my shoulders. “I mean, don't you want to meet someone?” he asked. I wanted
to tell Greg that he was my “someone.” He peered into my eyes, his face a foot from mine, his sun-kissed bangs hanging over his warm brown eyes. He was perfect.

“Your face is weird, David.”

“Oh no!” I yelped, raising my hands to my face. “Don't look at me!”

“Your pores are just gigantic!” he said as I recoiled from him. “It's okay, David. I have another idea!” He took my hand and led me down the hall into the boys' bathroom, a filthy nightmare of mildewing towels and uncapped deodorant sticks where random pubic hairs clung to every surface like tinsel on a Christmas tree.

“You have to try this! It feels amazing!” Greg said as he wiped a cool, wet pad over my face. A tingling, crisp sensation braced my skin as if it was slowly freezing.

“It's a Stridex pad, and it's incredible for tightening your pores.”

“Oh, wow! I can feel the air on my cheeks.”

Greg blew on my face as a rush of electricity zapped across my forehead. I could feel my eyes roll up into my head as Greg held my neck and continued to blow on my face.

“What the fuck are you freaks doing now?”

Johnny stood in the hallway, wearing the mere suggestion of underwear.

“I'm sick!” I replied instinctively.

“Stop being homos and get out of the fucking bathroom.” Johnny stomped away as I remained frozen, with my head in Greg's hands.

“Greg,” I whispered, “we have to get out of here! It's not safe.”

Although neither of his parents was home and it was barely midnight, we snuck out from Greg's window and into his front yard. The sound of cicadas was almost deafening. Up and down the fluorescent-lit block, the grass of every lawn glowed an almost toxic green. Not a soul could be seen or heard; there weren't even any cars.

“Greg! Where are we going? Isn't it dangerous out here?”

“I don't know,” he whispered back. “On the count of three, we'll run across the street.”

“To that church? Really? A
church
?”

“We have to get away from this house!” Greg looked into my eyes with the urgency of an action hero about to dismantle a bomb. “On the count of three! One. Two. Three!”

Hand in hand, we ran across the street and into the church parking lot. Around the back we stopped, breathless, with our bodies pressed flat against a brick wall.

“Look! A swing!” Greg pointed to the playground at the top of the hill. “I haven't been on a swing since I was a little kid.”

“Doesn't that seem like a million years ago?” I asked as we ran up the hill toward a red plastic swing.

“Yeah. I miss being a kid,” he replied as he jumped on the swing. “Push me!”

“Really? I don't miss it.”

“Why?” he asked as the chains supporting him squeaked above. “Didn't you have fun?”

“Yeah, but I have friends now,” I said, pushing him harder and higher, up to the stars.

Greg looked over his shoulder and smiled at me, his face glowing blue in the light of the half moon. “You know, you're like another brother to me?”

I smiled back, knowing that he meant it. “Me too.”

That night we walked around Greg's neighborhood for hours, stopping to look at flame-red tulips writhing in the ground, growing up toward the sky before our very eyes. Obsessing over any plant in sight, we'd stop and sit in someone's yard for just a moment to watch them grow in high-speed LSD motion.

“They want to grow so bad!” I whispered, amazed at nature but still keenly aware that I was sitting in a flower bed beneath a stranger's bedroom window at 1 a.m.

Later, we came across a mass of a hundred beetles stuck on their backs beneath a streetlight. Greg reached out and flipped one over. As it skittered away, he pulled me close and opened his eyes wide in amazement, exclaiming, “That beetle thinks I'm God!”

We skipped and danced down the length of an endless, empty drainage ditch running through Greg's subdivision, twirling our cigarettes in the air over our heads to make figure-eight traces that lingered like fireflies.

This world felt endless. It was like I'd become part of a new thing, and that thing connected to another new thing, and so on and so on, until I was a part of everything. And so was Greg. Looking into the homes around us, I felt like I was a member of all those families, like a little, invisible piece of me had slipped inside each window we passed and would live there forever in a kitchen drawer or magazine rack or beneath the glass of a framed family photo.

Greg ran ahead of me, the bright-orange flame of his cigarette chasing him like a shooting comet. I wondered how I had ever been so lucky as to meet him and how implausible the math was that had led us to each other. I thought of what he had said on
the swing a few hours earlier. I realized that it was too important to
not
mean everything, and it all became clear: he didn't need to love me the way I wanted him to, because the way he loved me meant I wasn't alone. And that was all that mattered.

Watching his blue feet and tiny tobacco comet fade into the blackness ahead, I thought,
Who needs a boyfriend when you have a brother?

I can honestly say I have no memory of this photo being taken. I can't tell you anything about the night in question or why I'm wearing that hooded mustard pullover, an item of clothing that I am
sure
was not mine. The top of the glass leads me to believe we are all at the twenty-four-hour diner Jim's, which probably means this was taken after the midnight
Rocky Horror Picture Show
. There's a level of inebriation here that's so intense I actually don't recognize myself. I mean, I know it's me. But the features, expression, eye shape, and everything else make me feel like I'm looking at an askew doppelganger of myself. Looking at it for too long gives me the chills.