“She’s always so sure of everything. And she never asks questions or acts meek and she shows off her body in the locker room. I heard she flirts with the male teachers bad. Well, I was looking at her, thinking,
Does that girl ever feel ugly
? And like that, she starts crying again.”
“Yeah?”
“‘Are you OK?’ I ask her. But she just kept crying. ‘Are you sure?’I asked again, and then she says—and listen to this—‘I think I’m fucking pregnant.’”
“Really?” I asked. “She just said that?”
“Really,” Gretchen said. “So I ask if, I dunno, she wants me to get a teacher and she says to leave her the fuck alone, and so I put on my shoes quick to leave and then I hear her cry again, and I turn back and I see Stacy lift her head—and this is where it gets weird, OK—and she looks like one of those pretty mass cards; there is this string of tiny silver tears in the cups of her hands and it’s like all the tears together spell out, ‘HELP ME, GRETCHEN,’ and I take a step closer and try to think of something to fucking say, but Stacy shouts, ‘Leave me the fuck alone!’ And I want to say,
But you’re just so pretty
, but I knew that out loud it would sound gay, which wasn’t how I meant it.”
“I know what you mean,” I said.
“Right. So I just sat there for a minute and then I stood and began wobbling out. I was feeling kind of woozy, and I remembered I hadn’t even finished changing. Like she was that pretty, even when she was crying—even more pretty, you know—that I forgot to fucking finish changing. What do you think about all that?”
“I think being a girl is sort of fucking crazy.”
“Yeah,” she said. “Yeah.” She finished her hot dog, wiped the corner of her mouth with a small white napkin, and said, “So, do you want to drive by her house?”
OK, it was like this incredibly strange and wonderful secret we knew but the rest of the world didn’t. Stacy Bensen was pregnant. Stacy Bensen, of all people, with her
Go with God
buttons and abstinence contracts and abundant
Mothers Against Drunk Driving
brochures. So we drove past Stacy Bensen’s house at least three times that afternoon, slowing down, just staring. Up the block, down the block, and back again. Gretchen slowed down each time she passed. Why? I dunno, maybe hoping for a glimpse, a flutter of the yellow curtains, a frown in the window, some message, some sign of life, something. I dunno, really. Stacy Bensen was the only girl we ever knew to get knocked up. Only girl our age, at least. I mean, we had heard about it, we had seen it on TV, but this, this was something momentous. We slowed down in front of her house again. Stacy Bensen’s house was big and white-bricked and square, about twice the size of my house or Gretchen’s. There was a lovely yellow awning above the porch and a pool, which was now covered, around back. Stacy’s red fucking convertible Mustang was in the driveway beside a brand-new black sedan. There was a tiny garden out front as well, wilting brown and dull green with the season, guarded by all kinds of magical cement animals: two blue bunny rabbits sitting up on their haunches, smiling; a small elf playing a mandolin; a white swan, its neck curling back on itself; and a large brown deer, nestling its nose to the ground. I noticed the animals the last time Gretchen drove by and smiled.
“Man, do you see all those animals in front of her house? What’s that about?” I asked.
“She’s like fucking Snow White,” Gretchen whispered.
“I guess.”
“We should do something to them,” Gretchen said.
“OK,” I said, and all we could think to do was stop the fourth time, leave the car idling, grab the two bunnies, then the elf, then the swan, and put them all on the front porch as quick as we could, then punch the doorbell before we hurried back to the Escort and drove off wildly.
In his garage, Bobby B. had the AC/DC cranked up, as he tried like hell to get his van to start. I was watching, sitting on the hood of an outof-commission Chevy, its black-and-chrome nose peeking out from under the dusty beige tarp. It was around eight at night, still real warm, Indian-type summer and all, but getting dark quick. Bobby B. had a work light hung from the lip of the garage and it made long, weird shadows on the empty white garage walls around me.
“The fucking radio’s working,” Bobby B. mumbled, scratching his head, “so it’s not electrical. Maybe the alternator?” He had the front end of the purple wizard van edged beneath the open door of the white aluminum-sided square garage. His brown hair was raggedy and was hanging in his face as he wiped his hands on his gray Megadeth shirt, which was cut at the sleeves to reveal his muscular arms. He turned and picked up a screwdriver and began jabbing at the battery. “Start, you fucker!” he shouted. “Just fucking start.”
I gave a little laugh and he glared over his shoulder at me.
“Dude, what are you laughing at?” he asked, sorely.
“Nothing. Sorry,” I said.
“Well, fucking stop grinning and come over here and hold this screwdriver for me.”
I hopped off the hood of the Chevy and took the screwdriver and pressed the contact wire down at the contact point on the top of the battery. “But hold it down there, so the headlights stay lit. Good,” he said, watching the big rectangular bulbs resume shining. “Now fucking keep it pressed down.”
He climbed into the driver’s seat, wiped his hands on his gray shirt again, and turned the ignition. I could hear a strange, mechanical
click-click-click
as Bobby B. began swearing.
“Dude, are you holding it down?” he shouted.
“Yes.”
“Well, what the fuck?” he said, shaking his head. “Try it again.”
I pressed down hard on the screwdriver and it gave a little spark as he hit the gas, turning the key, and then
BLOOOOM
, it roared to life, the enormous engine shaking right at my chest, the belts and fans turning with a whiny speed.
“Fuck yeah!” Bobby B. shouted. “Looks like I’m gonna get some pussy tonight after all!” He hopped out of the van, mussed up my dirty hair, and said, “Is there somewhere you need to be dropped off, dude? Because I owe you.”
“No, man, I’m cool,” I said. “But listen,” and I took a seat on the hood of the Chevy again. “Listen, OK. Um, say you like this girl, right, and you’re not sure if she likes you. What can you do to get her to, you know, like you?”
“Well,” Bobby B. said, pausing in his answer as he walked over to the corner of the garage, opened a small, red plastic cooler, dug out a can of Pabst Blue Ribbon, cracked it open, took a long drink, then drained the entire can. He crushed the can in his hand and threw it out the open garage door. “Brian Oswald, you can’t do shit.”
“What?”
“The more you like a girl, the less she likes you. It’s like fucking scientific.”
“What about you and Kim?”
“That’s what I’m talking about, little dude. If I start being nice and acting cool and saying things and being on time, she starts acting, you know, fucking uninterested. But if I act like a total dick, then she calls me all the fucking time. It’s fucking crazy, because I really like her and all, but when I say nice shit to her, she gets all freaked out and says she needs some fucking space and all. So I just act like I don’t give a shit, you know? It’s all part of God’s plan,” he said, nodding.
“Really?”
“What the fuck do I know?” he said, smiling. “All I’m saying is that if I was into a chick that wasn’t into me, I dunno. I would play it safe and act like a dick.”
“Huh,” I mumbled. “Well, thanks, Bobby.”
“No problem, little dude. Good luck with that shit. Listen, I got to split. I got a lady to meet.”
I hopped down off the hood of the Chevy and watched as Bobby climbed into his van, blaring “Hell’s Bells” as loud as the van’s stereo could crank it. I watched him back out into the street, the van stalling for a minute, then the lights coming on bright, and him tearing out, leaving a length of rubber as he disappeared into the dark. I wondered about what he said and then thought hard. I could never be a dick, not to Gretchen anyway, so I guess I was doomed; doomed to go for this girl that didn’t go for me. But that was OK as I long as I did everything I could. So I crossed the street and headed down to my room and got out all my records and cassettes, found a blank tape under my bed, and started making it, the mix-tape, you know, totally ignoring what Bobby had just said. In about an hour, I was done with it and I stared at the little plastic thing and punched out the tabs so it couldn’t be recorded over, and after I did all that, I decided Bobby B. was totally right and there was no way in hell I was going to hand it over to her, knowing how she felt. Like always then, I decided I would wait and see, and hope something in the next few weeks would change for the better for me.
Bad-ass ideas for Kung-Fu movies in which I could star in :
1. A teen helps save an old man ninja who teaches him the way of the ninja and he goes around kicking the other kids’ asses in school before he learns the true ninja way in a Chinese star showdown at a video arcade.
or
2. A teenage boy inherits these magical camouflage nunchucks from an ancient council of mysterious assassins and he must learn to use their powers to defeat a series of strange, masked killers, hired to steal the magic nunchucks in their quest to rule the world.
or
3. The boy’s father, before he dies, hands him this mysterious book, The Way of the Samurai, and the boy learns many important ninja skills before saving a female ski team from Soviet terrorists bent on upsetting the Olympics. He falls in love with one of the girls from the ski team who is from Sweden, maybe.
Yes, I ordered two Chinese throwing stars and a set of camouflage nunchucks from
Ninja
magazine and that shit still hadn’t come yet. It’d been four weeks—why was everyone in the world trying to keep me from realizing my dream of becoming a shadow assassin? I ask you, Bro. Dorbus, why you think it is OK to stand in my way. Yes, you are teaching me in “Religion Class” what spirituality is, which will help strengthen my inner-spirit if I am ever captured and tortured by my countless faceless enemies, but not even you forcing us to watch the entire
Ten Commandments
movie will calm my undying rage and need for the ninja’s kind of unending vengeance. You may very well be Numero Uno on the hit list, Bro. Dorbus, and if not Numero Uno, a very close Numero Two.
Numero Uno? John fucking McDunnah. I had seen him in the cafeteria and in the hallway after school. He was bigger than I fucking remembered, in his maroon and orange varsity wrestling jacket, moving between freshmen and sophomores like a motherfucking Aryan mountain range, surrounded by two weasel-faced sportos in their matching varsity jackets. I was standing at my locker and he walked past and I heard that high-pitched jungle-hyena laugh, him shoving one of his fellow goons, and I looked up from putting my books away and made eye contact with him and he just grinned like he knew that I knew it had been him and he also knew that there wasn’t shit I could do about it and he just kept staring at me, nodding, until he disappeared down the hallway.
It was hard not to imagine: ordering the Chinese stars and nunchucks, leaping out of a tree on a dark, windy night, busting out his kneecaps or something hardcore kung fu like that, and leaving him there to squeal in pain. I made a solemn ninja oath that somehow, John McDunnah, some way, you will get yours, some day.
It was bad going for Rod at school too, not just because he was black but because he was also a nerd. He got it worst of all from the other black kids in school, I guess. In between 7th and 8th period one day, Rod got his assed kicked by two big black kids, Derrick Holmes and Mike Porter, both of them stiff-necked seniors on the varsity football team. They told him it was because he was so fucking light-skinned. “Hey, white chocolate,” one of them said, knocking Rod’s chemistry books from his hands. It was just after two o’clock, at the end of the second floor hallway, so no one but other jocks, who got out of class early to work out, and the janitors, who hid beneath the stairwells smoking, were around.
“How come you so white, boy?” Derrick Holmes asked with a laugh. Derrick was a huge kid, with a massive chest and forearms and a face as wide as a bull’s.
“Looks like your moms must a gave it up,” the other kid, Mike Porter—slighter, ganglier, with a loose, fluid kind of coolness—said, and then shoved Rod against his locker by his neck. “How come you think you’re better than all the rest of us, huh?” Mike tore off Rod’s clip-on tie and spat. “Prancing around with fucking white kids.” He swatted the side of Rod’s head and laughed.
Rod wasn’t the kind of kid who would fight back. He just closed his eyes and let Derrick Holmes dump a plastic garbage can full of papers and trash all over his head. “Go home to your whitefolks, Oreo.”
When I asked him about it that Saturday, we were on the bus heading to the flea market. Rod was looking for the Velvet Underground on vinyl and I was looking for the guy from Chinatown who sold switchblades and butterfly knives, the things that were illegal to sell in the back of kung-fu magazines. I had been eyeing this one silver pearl inlaid but terfly knife for weeks. I was convinced what Rod needed was some sort of weapon he could flash and not another out-of-date record from some group that no one had heard of except his dad.
“How come you didn’t fight back?” I asked. “You could have done something.”
“You don’t get it. Even if I fought back, they wouldn’t get it.”
“‘Get it’? Who cares if they ‘get it’? If someone is out to hurt you, you got to fight back, man.”
“That’s not the way me and my dad see it. He’s been hassled. He says they just want you to act like an animal, you know. But if you do, then you’re no better than them.”
“Yeah,” I said, “I don’t know about any of that. I just know if someone knocked my shit out of my hands, I’d start swinging.”
“Maybe that’s why no one fucks with you.”
“Maybe,” I said, thinking of getting hit in the head with the egg in the stall. I never told anyone about it. Why? Because it was fucking humiliating and I never really knew if they had done it to me on purpose or if they would have just done it to anybody, and, well, like I said, it was pretty fucking embarrassing.