Bad Kid (17 page)

D
avid, I'm so sorry I took off from that party,” explained Greg as we chain-smoked in his bedroom. “But those skinheads triggered a bunch of deep-seated trauma for me. I had to get out of there.”

“But where have you been since then?” I asked. “No one's seen you for two weeks. Your mom wouldn't tell me on the phone. Raven heard you OD'd and Carla told me that you got sent to rehab!”

“Rehab? I wish! But I
do
have big news,” he announced, leaping onto the bed and plopping down beside me. “So that night in New Braunfels, Sylvia called her hot friend Paul to come pick us up from a gas station. After Paul dropped off Sylvia at Bonham we made out in his backseat! He's so hot and he's super-old. Like, almost thirty!”

“And then?” I asked, feeling jealous but still wanting to know more.

“So the next morning my mom was being a total bitch and we started fighting. And in the heat of the moment, I screamed—” he paused for dramatic effect—“Mom . . . I'm GAY!”

“What? You came out to her?”

“Yes! But I got so nervous about the whole ‘gay' thing that I blurted out a bunch of other stuff to make it seem less scary. I said, ‘Mom! I'm also an alcoholic! And I'm addicted to acid! And I take allergy pills every day to get even more fucked up!' David, I don't even know if allergy pills do anything. I even told her I was becoming an anorexic, which is so dumb because I eat like, four bags of Funyons a day!”

“And what happened?”

Greg was trembling with excitement as he lit his cigarette. “So get this! My mom wants me away from bad influences for a little while. So I started doing a month of home school last week, which is like zero commitment,” he said, a long snake of smoke trailing from his mouth into his nostrils. “I also have to go to one Narcotics Anonymous meeting a day, where I have been meeting the hottest older guys you've ever seen. I made out with this thirty-four-year-old Mexican air force guy who's trying to kick as addiction to prescription painkillers and . . . I think we're in love!”

My blood started to boil with that familiar mix of envy and arousal.

“David! We need to talk,” he said, stamping out his cigarette. “Things haven't gone that far with Jose, but they might. And when they do . . . I need to be prepared.” Greg reached under the bed, taking out a handful of condoms and a jar of pickles. “Listen, David.
I know it's weird, but we have to understand how this is going to work. If we're going to be gay, we have to know how gay stuff works. If things go further with Jose I need to know what to do. And now that you're maybe moving to Seguin . . .”

“I'm not moving!”

“Well, you say that now, but your mom
is
moving. What are you going to do?” he gasped. “I'm sure there aren't any gay people in Seguin. So how will you learn?”

“Maybe with a real person and not a hamburger topping!”

“Listen to me! We are going to do this!” Greg countered sternly. “You're going to take your pickle and rubber and stay here while I turn off the lights. I'm getting into
my
bed and getting under the covers. And we're going to walk each other through this. Whatever happens, no matter what I say, DO NOT come over to my bed, okay?”

“But isn't this dangerous?” I asked, taking a slimy pickle from the jar.

“What's dangerous?” Greg snapped. “Never getting laid? Ending up some old virgin living in a trailer park with a bunch of pornos? It's time to be a man, David!” he barked, like a personal trainer at an elliptical machine. “Now put the condom on the pickle before I turn off the light!”

I looked down at my soggy dill, annoyed that I was going to experience intercourse via vegetable while ten feet away from the guy whose pickle I
actually
wanted.

“Three seconds!” Greg warned.

I fumbled with my condom, dropping the pickle on the bed.

“Three . . .”

“Greg, I'm trying. It's just so . . .”

“Two . . .”

“ . . . Slimy.”

“One.”

The light went out just as I slipped the condom over my pickle. Across the room I heard the click of a button. “I thought I'd play some music to get you in the mood,” Greg said as the sound of Madonna's “Justify My Love” filled the room.

“Nothing can get me in the mood for this!” I replied, the pungent odor of vinegar and Trojan lubricant smacking my olfactories in a decidedly unsexy way.

“Ooh!” Greg exhaled. “I got the tip!”

“What?” I asked, shocked. “You already got a condom on it and put it inside you?”

“I'm a pro with condoms, David,” he barked, “because I PRACTICE!”

“My rubber smells like old seafood.”

“Woo!” Greg exploded with a giggle. “It's so cold!!!”

“You could've warmed them up first!”

“Stop complaining! Do you really want a warm limp pickle in your butt?”

“I don't want a cold
hard
pickle in my butt, Greg! I can't do this.”

“Just surrender to the fantasy, David. I'm pretending mine is Marky Mark.”

“I'm pretending mine is NOT a pickle!” I said, fumbling with the slippery thing beneath the sheets. “Don't you have a gherkin or cornichon something I could start with?”

“Shut up, David!” Greg snapped. “The only other pickles we have are those bread-and-butter ones!”

“Well, I'm not about to shove a handful of sliced pickles in my ass!”

“Then shut up and use your dill!” he snipped.

“But Greg, if the condom breaks it'll sting so bad!”

I tried to muster the courage to fuck myself with the pickle, trying to imagine it was Greg. But even with him groaning in the darkness, I couldn't get myself turned on. I tossed the pickle beside me, deciding it was all too weird.

“Oooh, yes,” I feigned, trying to sound authentically turned on.

“See, David?”

“Ahhh,” I moaned again, playing along so that we could experience this “first” together. I moaned and panted in the darkness for fifteen minutes, faking my first, and hopefully last, orgasm with a perishable food.

The next morning was awkward as Greg and I got ready for school. It was almost like we'd had sex with each other. Hair gel and safety pins were passed in low, hushed voices. Direct eye contact was avoided. In Greg's car we barely spoke, allowing “Just Can't Get Enough” to drown out the discomfort between us. Greg lit a joint and passed it to me. At the red light at the entrance to our school's parking lot, I accidentally dropped it on the floorboard, sending Greg into a maniacal frenzy.

“What the fuck?” he screamed, leaning over my lap to retrieve it. “My car!”

I took a certain pleasure in watching him sweat it. He was always so together, so cool. After pounding the floorboard with his hand for a few seconds he went to sit back down, accidentally jabbing his hip with the emergency brake.

“Ouch! I almost sat on that.”

“Well,” I grinned, “at least it's not a pickle.”

Greg's head turned slowly to face me like an oscillating fan on low speed. We glared into each other's eyes for what felt like
an eternity until the corners of our cotton-dry mouths began to twitch. We laughed until we collapsed against each other, coughing and choking on a thick mist of marijuana smoke. We didn't realize that the light had changed until all the cars behind us started honking. Preppy kids in Jeeps yelled and honked on either side as they passed us. A cowboy in a pickup with a big Texas flag in the window gave us the bird.

“Move, you fucking faggots!”

We skipped first period in the school parking lot, hotboxing the car and screaming “Just Can't Get Enough” until we could barely breathe. We spent lunch beneath our tree with our friends, exchanging knowing looks and breaking into constant laughter over the previous night's escapades.

“What the fuck are you cracking up about?” Jake asked us as Raven rubbed his feet.

“Yeah, you've been giddy little bitches all morning,” added Carla.

“Oh, nothing,” Greg answered her, grinning at me with bloodshot eyes.

That night my dad called me from the road. I pleaded my case, knowing I had only one option if I wanted to stay in San Antonio.

“Look Dad, I know you work on the road and keeping a place here would be unnecessary but I'm doing great in San Antonio and moving me away from school this close to graduation could really hurt my GPA and negatively affect my chances of getting into a well-respected college of my choosing. So—”

“David,” my dad interrupted. “Wait a minute. Slow down. Are you saying you want me to get a place there with you?”

“Yes?” I answered.

“Well, it would be nice to have a home base instead of just keeping all my stuff in storage. But I'd only be home for a few days every couple weeks. We'd have to get you a bank account that I could deposit money in for your groceries and things. I hope that would be okay for you. I'd hate for you to be lonely.”

Fireworks were exploding in my brain. I tried to camouflage my excitement about this prospect, and in a mature, carefully measured voice, I replied.

“Dad, I think I would be okay with that.”

G
reg, Sylvia, and her friend Ray-Ray had decided to take hits of acid and ecstasy at the same time, or “candy-flip.” At midnight we broke into the grounds of the McNay Art Museum, a beautiful compound full of landscaped gardens, vine-covered gazebos, and small ponds full of giant goldfish. We did this on a dare from Sylvia, whose drug-addled challenges were getting increasingly dangerous.

A week earlier she'd dared me to drop acid in a hospital ER, where we sat for an hour watching bloodied, crippled people come and go. We must have looked out of place: Sylvia with her flame-orange bob in a deep-necked gown, her lace-covered boobs pressed up to her chin; me with a gelled-up Mohawk, amethyst bolo tie, and penciled-in eyebrows. At 3 a.m. I reached my breaking point when an unconscious man in a neck brace with a bloody eye socket was wheeled in. I ran through the hospital
parking lot to my car, where Sylvia held me in the backseat as I sobbed against her heaving bosom.

“Oh God. Sylvia! I'm going to die. You're going to die!”

“Shhh, Minerva,” she calmed in her morose way. “We're already dead.”

My weeping jag lasted for an hour. But Sylvia was there, like she always was, to help me through the psychotic break she herself had triggered. She was like a morose Pied Piper, leading anyone who got to know her on a series of harrowing field trips to experience troubling things. Sylvia was loud and campy, but she also kept dried roses pressed in the pages of her Anne Rice novels. In the last year she'd captured and found homes for no fewer than five black cats. On two separate occasions I'd walked in on her crying by candlelight while reading Percy Bysshe Shelley.

Tonight, in the museum garden, she was sketching plants in her journal as Greg bounded back and forth across a babbling brook in nothing but his underwear.

“I'm a sprite. A fairy. I'm Puck!” he tittered, his arms and legs smeared with mud.

Ray-Ray, a thin boy with a curly blond ponytail, was bent over a concrete bench in one of the gazebos, busily weaving the long leaves of a tropical plant into shirts for us.

“We can live off this land,” he declared. “We'll work this soil and harvest our own food!”

For a moment I believed him.
We can live in nature
, I thought, the steady traffic of Austin Highway zooming in and out of a strip-mall parking lot sixty feet away. Sylvia and I curled up beneath the stars with a flashlight to read the party pages in
Interview
magazine.

“Look how gorgeous she is,” Sylvia said, pointing at the model Linda Evangelista hugging a famous fashion designer who was wearing a chandelier as a hat.

“This one's great,” I said, transfixed by a picture of Kurt Cobain laughing with the famous drag queen RuPaul as she held his crying baby.

“Oh, Crabb. I wanna go there!” she sighed, snuggling up against me. “I wanna be with those people!”

“Me too, Sylvia. But what would we do?”

“We have marketable skills, bitch! Maybe you can get into performing or something. And I can get some poetry published!”

“We'll be like a gay-straight, art world power couple!” I declared. “We'll live in a brownstone and our friends will be gallerists, junkies, drag queens, and performance artists!”

“It'll be fabulous!” Sylvia sighed as she took my hand. “A real life.”

We lay under the stars in each other's arms all night, imagining that future together in a better place.

The next morning I met my dad at my mom's apartment to move. She was headed to Seguin and I was moving in with my dad down the road from Gunther High. I'd had just enough time to put a crisp white button-down over a torn, pit-stained T-shirt that was covered in Sharpie drawings of anarchy
A
's and crosses.

“Sorry I'm late,” I told my dad, still pulling chunks of dirt and moss from the soles of my shoes. “Greg's brother thought it would be funny to turn off the alarm clock.”

“It's okay, son,” said my dad, patting me on the back.

“Boys will be boys,” my mother added, emerging from the kitchen with a suspicious look. My mom was upset that I wasn't
moving with her and knew perfectly well that I'd kept my new social circle a secret from my dad. “I'm sure your father is going to love your friends.”

Over the last month of sporadic apartment-hunting I'd managed to downplay the “new me,” wearing baseball caps over my short-on-bottom/long-on-top haircut and opting for bright, clean sneakers in lieu of my usual scuffed-up boots. In small doses, I was a pro. But now I'd be living with my dad for several days in a row a few times a month, which was going to be challenging.

“Well, visit your mother when you find the time,” said my mom, without looking at me. Directing a synthetic smile at my father, she added, “I'm sure you're both going to enjoy living together.” My mother and I both knew that living with my dad could be difficult due to his temper. But as he closed the door to his pickup truck, I knew it was a done deal. I felt a pang of guilt as we all drove away. My mom was making a family with someone she'd always hoped to find, and I knew she pictured me as a part of that future. But I reminded myself that regardless of the occasional tension with my dad, I was going to be free. And it was going to be awesome.

My dad couldn't leave soon enough. It had been four days of nonstop complaining and griping. The landlord was an asshole, the traffic was bullshit, and all the local restaurants were crap.

“Goddamn piece of junk!” he screamed, bouncing up and down on an overstuffed suitcase. I wanted to explain that his anger would never change the simple physics of his situation, but when my father was having a spell, I'd learned to do what I did best: disappear. I sat quietly on my bed in a red baseball
cap reading an algebra textbook and listening to Aerosmith, the most benign and heterosexual CD I owned. After a few more minutes of violent grunting, my father stepped in to say good-bye to his all-American, rock-and-roll-loving bookworm of a son.

“All right, DJ. I'm giving up on that goddamn thing,” he said in the doorway, holding a garbage bag of toiletries and clothes by his side. “The checkbook is on the table for food and stuff. I'll see you in a few days.”

We hugged good-bye and I watched him walk down the stairs. With the phone in my hand just outside the frame of the window, I waved to him as he pulled from the parking lot, knowing that a dozen teenagers awaited a call from my newly parentless home.

By nine o'clock the apartment was packed with people. A mist of cigarette smoke hung in every room, and Solo cups full of vodka and Big Red soda covered every surface. Jake had brought a container of impossibly strong weed cookies that had slowly turned everyone into woozy zombie versions of themselves. Carla and Raven hummed along to the lilting shoegaze of Cocteau Twins on the couch as Greg and Jake reclined against each other on my bed.

“David, come here,” called Jake, holding up a joint.

I sat on the edge of the bed and took a hit as something shattered in the kitchen.

“Ignore it,” he said, pulling me down on top of him and Greg. He held the joint to my lips and I took a long toke. “Doesn't that feel better?” he asked, slipping his hand beneath my shirt to rub my shoulder. Greg cleared his throat and rolled to his side, shifting Jake's hand out of my shirt.

“Oh. Sorry,” Greg said, maneuvering farther beneath Jake in
a way that pushed me farther off him. “This bed is so small for three people.”

The doorbell rang. Greg smiled and snatched the joint from my hand as he rubbed Jake's chest. “You should probably get that, hmm?”

I opened the front door to see Sylvia in giant black sunglasses with a bun of bright lavender hair atop her head. She had a huge suitcase, her massive purse and a pet carrier. “Finally, Minerva. I've been ringing for five minutes! Oh dear,” she said, noticing my guests. “What's the average age of this gathering? It's like fuckin'
Romper Room
in here!” Sylvia barged past me, knocking over Raven with one of her suitcases. “Shift it, creatures of the night! Is my room down here?”

“What?” I muttered as she waddled down the hall into my dad's room. “You can't go in there!”

By the time I walked in, she was already unpacking her suitcase, stacking black satin on black chiffon on black velveteen atop the dresser. A tiny Siamese cat jumped on my dad's bed.

“A cat? You brought your cat?”

“His name is Voltaire! Not after the industrial band, after the poet.” She removed a newspaper from her bag and starting tearing it into strips as she walked into the master bathroom. “Voltaire! Poop in here, okay?” The little cross-eyed cat walked into the bathroom as she dumped a small bag of kitty litter into the newspaper-filled bathtub. “You. Poop. In. Here,” she said, kissing his face. “I swear, this little bastard understands every fucking word that comes out of my mouth! Girlina!” she announced. “Mama's home!”

“I thought you might stay over, but I didn't realize it would be so permanent,” I said.

Sylvia cocked her head to the side like a dog who had just
heard a confusing sound. “Well, of course, munchkin. Where else would Mama stay? We're roomies, Crabapple!”

Before I could muster a reply, she was dragging me down the hallway to the kitchen. “We can make me a key tomorrow. I'll stay here until your dad comes home, at which point I'll stay with Ray-Ray for a few days until we have a fight and he kicks me out again, which generally takes about four days . . .” She rambled on and on, bopping from the fridge to the utensil drawer to the microwave, making herself a drink as she heated up one of my dad's Mexican TV dinners.

“I can't really pay you anything right now,” she continued, “but Mama is on a job hunt and once I get on my feet, I'll chip in for bills. Not too much. It's not like
you
have to pay anything.”

“Yeah, but my dad—”

“—Is a wonderful man,” she cackled, filling a 7-Eleven tumbler half-full with his Jack Daniels. “Thank you, Mr. Crabb!” she said, filling the whiskey bottle up with an inch of tap water and placing it back in the cabinet. “I'll be ready to leave for the club at eleven. I'll be in my room until then,” she said, going down the hall.

“But I'm having a party. I don't wanna go to . . .”

“David, where are you?” Jake yelled from my room.

I walked in as Greg laced up his shoes and Carla put on her jacket.

“Where are you going?” I asked.

“Duh,” said Carla, kissing my cheek. “It's a school night. I gotta be home by ten.”

A line of kids started to stream out the front door.

“I'm not going anywhere,” said Jake, lying back on my bed as Raven kissed his cheek. “I'm too baked to drive.”

“Have fun, boys,” she said, winking as she left.

“But you're coming with me, right?” Greg asked me as he slung his bag over his shoulder. “Aren't you staying over at my house?”

I looked past him at Jake, whose shirt was riding up, exposing the faint line of fine hair leading from his navel to his belt buckle. “I'll hang with you, David,” he said. “My dad's out of town.”

“Greg,” I stammered. “I'm going to stay here. I have my own place now.”

His face collapsed like an overdone soufflé. “Fine, David. I guess you don't need to stay with me anymore, then.”

I had never chosen anyone over Greg before. But tonight, my libido was winning. Greg stomped down the hall and out the front door, slamming it behind him. I stood in the center of my room as Jake stared directly into my eyes.

“It's cool if I stay here with you tonight, right?”

“Of course!” I blurted before he was actually done asking.

“Come here,” he said, each bicep flexing as he rested his arms behind his head. I'd taken one step toward him when someone screamed from the living room.

“Sylvia!” a man's voice called. “Where is Mama?”

Sylvia erupted from her room, emitting a high-pitched squeal.

“Jake, I'll be right back.” I ran down the hallway to find Sylvia jumping up and down with Ray-Ray and another man with a matching blond bob.

“Minerva, it's Sterling and Ray-Ray. They're going to the club with us tonight!”

“But Sylvia, I drank too much to drive.”

“But Sterling's drivin' us! Mama's gonna get ready. Y'all make yourself at home.”

“But I live here!” I yelled as she skipped down the hall.

Sterling turned on the TV at top volume and flipped the channels, one per second. “Ugh. Your cable selection is the
worst
!” he complained in a queeny, nasal voice.

As Sylvia did her hair, I sat awkwardly between the boys on the couch, “making myself at home” in my own apartment. Down the hall, I could see a light under my bedroom door. I imagined Jake behind it naked, sprawled out on my bed unconscious, waiting for me like a pornographic sleeping beauty.

“It's time to put on my face!” screamed Sylvia from my father's room.

“If she's just starting, we won't be out of here until midnight,” I moaned, eliciting unexpected laughter from the chilly Ray-Ray and Sterling. I spotted Jake's backpack by the TV, and it hit me: since I wasn't man enough to bail on the club for fear of Sylvia's wrath, couldn't I just make it impossible for us to leave?

“Hey guys,” I asked sweetly, “you like cookies?”

Thirty minutes later Sylvia came out of “her room” holding Voltaire. She was dressed to the nines. “Whaddya think, boys?”

“Hush, bitch!” said Sterling, shoving his eighth cookie into his mouth. “We are halfway through this MTV
True Life
with Serena Altschul!”

“It's about an Amish community who've all become addicted to crystal meth,” added Ray-Ray, greenish crumbs cascading from his lips.