What happened next was a total surprise, but I lost it and shot up out of the folding chair, turned, and grabbed Gretchen by the shoulders and just started kissing her like fucking mad. I mean I grabbed her and French-kissed her and had her pinned up against my wall and she was kissing me back, but really—I mean,
really
—and she had her eyes closed and was kind of laughing, but I was serious as hell, and I slid one arm behind her back and laid her down on the corner of my bed, and I just climbed on top of her, Gretchen still kind of laughing, us kissing these long, wet kisses, me lifting up her T-shirt and actually touching her skin, and I moved my hand up her side to her breasts, and her pulling me closer and rubbing my bare head, and I started going right for her pants, and she had on these kind of tight plaid slacks with like a hundred fucking zippers and everything, and I started unzipping the real zipper and I got my hand down her pants and I could feel the soft fabric of her panties, which I could see were pink, and I could feel the soft, strange hair, and she had her eyes closed and wasn’t laughing anymore and was holding the back of my head with one hand and digging into my pants with her other, and as soon as she touched me down there, that was it: I came right in my underpants in like five seconds. Gretchen pulled her hand out and I looked up at her and she was looking at me and, like, kind of saying,
OK
,
now what?
and I just got up and ran into the bathroom to wash up and, well, to freak out. When I came back out a few minutes later, her purse was gone and she had split and I knew I had finally blown it with her, and I figured it had all finally been settled just like that. Like shit.
We were sitting on our skateboards, rolling back and forth behind a parked Chevy minivan at the mall. First of all, Nick said, you need to get your nose broke.
Why?
I asked. Because if you get it broke once, no one will be able to kick your ass.
Really?
I asked. Well, unless they’ve had their nose broken once before too. But most dudes haven’t. If you look at all the big dudes you know, most of them haven’t.
Why?
I asked. Because they were like probably always big and no one ever fucked with them, you know? So they probably have never had to take a good punch. Which is awesome for guys like us. That’s what makes it even, he said. Them not having ever had their noses broken and you already having your nose broke.
I still don’t get it,
I said. It will completely incapacitate you, he said. Your eyes swell up and get all full of tears and you can’t fucking breathe and blood is, like, pouring down your face and down your throat and you feel like puking and it’s an all-around very bad experience.
And that’s what I want?
I asked. Yes, he said. Because then you’ll be unstoppable. And you’ll never have to worry about taking anyone’s shit ever again. You’ll never have to worry about losing a fight because you’ll always know. You will always fucking know.
Are you thinking about going to prom?
I asked him. No, he said. Hell fucking no. That is an event designed just to make you look stupid.
I want to go,
I said. You are better off getting your nose broke, he said.
From the moment I did get my nose fucking broke, but backwards now, here’s what it must have looked like: A ton of hot red blood pouring up my chin, slipping back around the corner of my lips, up, up, up my nostrils. Blood, in very tiny specks and drops, rising like magic from the front of my Misfits “Die, Die, Die My Darling” black T-shirt. My teeth tightening themselves, the gritty-tasting enamel slipping magically back in place. My fucking stomach relaxing, my guts pulling themselves back together. The bridge of my nose deflating, like a balloon losing its air, folding back to its original straight shape. Me coughing, but backwards, the sound going back inside and down into my lungs with the blood. My eyes opening. My mouth sliding apart. My head snapping back into place at the top of my neck. Me falling forward off a crummy green dumpster. Some tough straightedge girl with a red Chelsea haircut in a blue-jean skirt and a Life Sentence T, uncovering her face. A big, dopey-looking kid in a T-shirt with a black X magic-markered in the middle of it, beside her, taking back his look of pain and disgust then his yelling. The dude, the straightedge guy who hit me, in his black field pants, red suspenders, and a white T-shirt pulling a heavy right hand from the middle of my face, his arm lacing through the air and arcing back through space, then down, down, down to his side. Him taking a step back. Me taking a step back. Him taking another step back to the side. Me taking a step to the opposite side. A car horn honking in reverse from down the alley, the sound of it being sucked back under the hood of a green Chevy van as it passed. Some punked-out teenagers walking hand in hand, but backwards, from the back-alley entrance of the juice-bar club Off the Alley, their faces changing from disgust to looking happy. An airplane flying backwards, tail end first, overhead. The girl in the Life Sentence T-shirt shaking her head and saying, “Ssa sih kcik, taht kcuf,” her finger pointed at me but then dropping down to her side, her walking backwards, right beside the straightedge dude in the white T. A glob of my spit sliding back together, up the dude in the white T and red suspender’s shirt, then flying back through the air into my mouth. Me swallowing the spit back down. Me pointing angrily at him and his shirt. Me pointing at the dude, not looking at his arms or chest or fists, just his shirt. Him flipping me off, stopping, walking backwards, back across the long narrow alley. Me shooting the kid a very dirty look, saying, “Uoy kcuf,” as loud as I can with my eyes. Me staring at the kid, walking with his five or six straightedge friends, shaking my head and beginning to get very fucking angry. Nick pointing to the kid in the white “Punk’s Dead, You’re Next” hand-made T-shirt with his bald head and red suspenders. Me asking Nick what happened, seeing his torn-up black nylon jacket. Me seeing Nick’s mouth full of blood, him leaning against the club’s black brick wall, holding his ribs. Me finally finding Nick outside the club, my ears ringing from the lousy Misfits cover band, the last notes of the song “Some Kinda Hate” being carried back into my ears.
Then, very quickly, backwards from that night to earlier that afternoon: me storming out of Gretchen’s car, swearing. Her refusing to look at me, explaining why it was never going to happen between us, never ever, never. Me feeling sick to my stomach, then excited, hopeful, dreaming of what might happen between us. Us listening to the song “Horror Business,” sitting in Gretchen’s car, not saying anything, very close, me very close to kissing her soft, glittery pink lips, but neither of us saying a word or moving. Me putting my hand on her hand, turning the radio down, from loud to quiet. I am trying to come up with some way to get her to sit in the car with me. Gretchen laughing. Me pointing at her neck. I see a small tiny mole on Gretchen’s neck that, more than anything else, demands that I make some move to try and kiss her again. Gretchen turning off the ignition, getting out of the car. Me watching her cross the parking lot. Me sitting on the hood of Gretchen’s fantastic Ford Escort, after school that day, just lying there smiling. I am thinking about Gretchen again and how badly I really want her. Me watching her walk backwards, back from across the parking lot, back to her high school side entrance, slipping back inside. Me staring. I look over at the door, waiting for Gretchen. Looking back from the parking lot of Mother McCauley, I am, like always, thinking of how to get Gretchen to like me and how today, like the day before, anything might happen for me.
We were going to visit my grandma because she had been put in this retirement home and it was like the first time in months my fucking family were all in the van together and no one was fucking talking because, you know, my parents’ marriage was like over, and my dad was driving, stone-faced, and my mom was sitting beside him silent in the passenger seat, and Alice was sitting beside me in the first row of backseats, and Tim was all stretched out on his own bench because he was all long legs and elbows, and my nose was still swollen as shit, big and sore, and one of my eyes was black and blue and I had told my folks I had wiped out on my skateboard, and my mom began talking but I stopped listening, though I think my dad might have known I was lying somehow, and, well, at that moment, in the van, he was kind of mumbling, flipping through the stations and for the hell of it I popped open my Walkman, slid the Misfits’
Legacy of Brutality
tape out, and handed it to my dad. “Try it, you’ll like it,” I said, and he kind of sighed, then smiled, sliding it into the tape player. Right then “Horror Business,” one of my favorites, kicked on and the guitar was ringing and the drums keeping the beat and Glenn just began singing, “Too much horror business,” and then my dad coughed and popped it out. He handed it back to me, smiling, saying, “It’s just a little too loud for me,” and I felt my face get all red and I was very furious for some reason—I mean really fucking upset—really fucking angry even though it was no big deal. I thought,
Like why the fuck should I care what my dad thinks of my music
? and,
What difference does it make anyway?
But I did care and it did make a difference and I couldn’t figure out why, really.
We did this thing in the mall parking lot where one of us pretended to get hit by a car as we were skating around, kind of scaring the driver into giving us some money. It was Nick’s idea again, mostly. It was best to start off with an open wound. That was just way more believable. To do this, Nick would either try to do a move he knew he couldn’t pull off, like ollying onto one of those sharp stone benches and landing on his knees on purpose, or he would take his keys and scrape up his shins until they were raw and bloody. Since my face was still swollen and black and blue and weird-looking, I didn’t have to do much to look wounded. If I had to, I could scrape my knuckles on the cement and hold my hand and look up with my swollen hand and kind of mutter,
Why? Why? I am an orphan and all I wanted to do was enjoy my special day on my skateboard
, kind of guilting them into feeling bad for me. Nick, on the other hand, was way more courageous. He would actually take the hit, flying full speed into the back end of a station wagon or minivan, us always totally aware of some poor suburban mom behind the wheel, yelling at her kids as she tried to back out. It had to be a mom. No one else would feel bad for running us down. Most of the time, Nick was the one who would get hit. I would stand on my board at the end of the long row of cars and watch, to make sure no security guards cut in. If I saw one coming, I’d whistle and Nick would pull himself to his feet and cruise away to safety.
Usually it would go like this: Nick would skate out and slam himself against the back of the car and lie face down, because it was easier not to laugh and blow the whole thing. The mom would scream, the kids would scream, the mom would throw the minivan into park, fling open the driver’s side door, leap out, and stand over Nick, already crying, “Oh God, oh God, oh God, I wasn’t even looking.” If the mom said that, you knew you had a winner. Most, if not all, started balling; one lady even bent over Nick and began gently stroking his bald head, whispering nice things to him like, “Oh, I’m so sorry, you’ll be OK, you’ll be OK,” which he said was slightly erotic. The key was this however: Nick would turn over, wipe the drool from his mouth, kind of sit up, fall back down, sit up again, look up at the lady, and say, “I’m so sorry,” and if the woman was crying, that would do it. In a matter of minutes, Nick would explain that he was riding to the bus stop to get to work, because his dad had left and he had to help with the bills and now he might get fired and he couldn’t even walk to the bus stop, and he’d limp around a little to show he couldn’t even walk. The woman would hold her hand over her heart, under her crocheted sweater with kittens on it, dig into her purse, and demand Nick take some money so he could get a cab to work. He averaged about twenty bucks a fall, which was smart because he wasn’t too greedy. Once, some very over-eager mom demanded that she take him home, and he looked at me over his shoulder and shook his head, and the woman, well, she saw it—the look—and she started getting upset, and so we just skated away. None of the other moms ever caught on; no one for a moment thought what we were doing was a scam. Mostly because of Nick’s bloody knees and uncontested falls.
Every so often one of the fat-ass security guards would come out, recognize us in our Halloween masks if we were wearing them, and then chase us away for a while. The thing was, the mall parking lot was just too big. I mean, it went all the way around the mall and we were on skateboards and these dudes, in their shiny blue polyester uniforms, fake silver badges, and gun belts armed with nothing but walkie-talkies, were almost all overweight and on foot. We would skate away—or I would, while Nick would skate right toward them, sliding past in a quick figure-eight and almost running them down before hopping the curb and disappearing behind some old ladies with shopping bags in their hands.
We never made a lot of money that way, getting hit by cars, but the cash we did make we’d split and go and spend on import records and cassettes. I got this one Misfits import from Germany,
Nothing to Loose
, the spelling kind of weird for the songs like the title, but it had some live tracks and demos I had never heard before, which was cool. I guess, more than anything, it was like being with Nick, listening to him talk about the government and bands and, well, doing something, even if it was faking trauma, that I liked the best, I guess.
OK, it was a big lie—
stay together for the kids, you know, for appearance
—because fuck those kinds of appearances. My older brother Tim, who was just about to graduate high school, and my little sister Alice, who was a freshman, and me, we all were hoping our parents would get split finally. I guess I had been expecting it for a while, coming home every night and seeing my dad crashed out on the couch, weird and lonely and snoring, and then he started disappearing days at a time, and then one night I was heading out to this other punk show at Off the Alley and this great band, Screeching Weasel, was supposed to be playing a secret show there, and I had heard about it through Nick who had gotten a flyer from this record store and he was going to pick me up in his shitty green 1985 Caprice but he was running late, and I was walking out of my room and I had stolen my dad’s combat boots back because he had just put them up in the garage in the same place I had found them and so I was wearing them and my dad was sitting on the couch, and the TV was on but he wasn’t watching it, and I thought there was going to be trouble again. But my dad was looking down at his hands, which were folded in his lap, and he wasn’t wearing his glasses, he was holding them in his hands like he was praying—maybe he was, I guess—and when I came out he looked up and smiled, but a real painful kind of smile, and his hair was dirty from work and he still had his blue factory uniform on, and I said, “See you later, pops,” and started up the stairs, and he said, “Brian,” and I said, “Yeah?” and he said, “Take care of those boots, will you? Those are special to me,” and I stopped and nodded and looked down at the black combat boots and I said, “Sure thing, Dad,” and he lowered his head and said, “Um, Brian,” and I turned and faced him and saw he was crying and I didn’t know what the hell to do because