Ratt Fink/The Misfits
OK, I had no idea what this song was really supposed to be about, but it reminded me of the time Gretchen got arrested for shoplifting at this department store, Venture, and when they had her empty her pockets, all she had were like ten bags of Gummy Bears, and she said when they tried to find out her name, all she kept saying was, “R-A-T-T-F-I-N-K,” because some old lady had spotted her shoving the candy in her pockets and the same lady was just standing there, watching from outside the security office as Gretchen was interrogated or whatever. This was a good sing-along one, too, I think.
I turned the tape over and read the track listings, and got very sad, suddenly.
I Know It’s Over/The Smiths
Please, Please, Please Let Me Get What I Want/The Smiths
Heaven Knows I’m Miserable Now/The Smiths
Straight to Hell/The Clash
Asleep/The Smiths
One, they were almost all by the Smiths, and two, they were all slow songs about dying, I think. I think maybe she was trying to tell me something like,
My mom is dead and I am still sad about
it, or something like that, because the title of the second side was just Carol, her mom’s name, and that was it. I didn’t know what to say to her, so I just called her and said, “Thanks,” and she said, “Yeah, no problem,” and for some reason, I ended up listening to the second side all night, thinking about Gretchen lying in her room. I guess it made me feel better somehow, like her making this tape for me and saying she felt bad a lot, too. It just made me feel a lot less worse, maybe.
Other than that, I would sing gospel out loud, really loud, in church, and that made me feel OK. Really. Every Sunday to get out of my house I’d go to mass, by myself even. The church I went to was Queen of Martyrs on 103rd, where I had gone to grade school, and it was nice, all baby-blue inside with these shiny stained-glass windows and light-wood pews and with all the gold of the altar shining and these nice wood Stations of the Cross posted along the wall everywhere. Everyone in the neighborhood went to church, I guess, even if they were pretty shitty. My mom went by herself early in the morning. Me, I usually went to 11 o’clock mass and I would sit somewhere in the back, usually with the old people, their white hair like wisps of cotton candy, their grubby clothes smelling like mothballs and the thrift clothes Gretchen would buy at the Salvation Army—old people, who, like me, were there by themselves, maybe. I guess if you go to church enough, you just go and say the things and kneel and pray without even thinking, because that’s what I did. I mean, I had been going to Catholic school all my life and I never really thought about what I had been taught; I just kind of went through the motions of it all. Worse than that, I would kind of check the women out—you know, high school girls, hot-looking moms, stuff like that. I would have all kinds of weirdo fantasies—nothing satanic, you know, but pretty involved anyway. Most of the fantasies involved me imagining what the hot girls would look like as they walked up the aisle to get married, their hair all done-up, their soft faces behind white veils, smiling nervously. I dunno why I fantasized about that. Sometimes I would take the time to think about what was going on with my mom and dad and sometimes it would make me so sad I’d have to excuse myself and go to the bathroom to keep myself from fucking crying.
But like I said, the thing I liked best was the singing. I mean it—I would go there and really belt it out like a total retard, you know, because I was there by myself and didn’t have to worry about looking dumb for doing it, and it felt nice to be singing the same song as everybody—you know, belonging—and, well, all the old people around me loved me for it; they would nod and smile and I would shout, “Amazing Grace” or “How Great Thou Art,” thinking that some day, one of these old ladies would be interviewed for some rock’n’roll documentary about me and in the film the old lady would nod and wipe her glasses and say, “That boy had a voice like a saint. Like a saint,” and have to look away from the camera to keep from crying tears of joy at the thought of me.
Get this, though: One time Gretchen and I were in the car, and she was smiling and watching me only mouth the words along to “Hope” by the Descendents, and she said, “My dad told me he saw you singing in church,” and I said, “No, man, I just mouth the words,” and she said, “No, he told me you were really singing,” so I stopped singing when I went there, from then on, and I went back to just thinking about my mom and dad.
Dinner at Gretchen’s was the best. When I was an “invited” guest and not just standing in the kitchen, watching until I made my way over to begin working on whatever leftovers had been left, it was nice to sit at their table and eat like a member of their family. It was very sad at her house since her mom had died a few years back, but it was better than at my house, I guess. I tried to be very polite because Gretchen’s dad always looked very, very worn-out and very heartbroken, like he might start crying at any minute. He was a sad-looking guy, eyes like runny eggs, with a narrow face and dark tidy hair, but he was always very generous to me. Usually, Gretchen would be silent. She would just stare at her dinner plate and move her food around, you know. Her older sister, Jessica, a fucking super-fox, would completely ignore me. I’d try to talk, tell everyone about my day, but since they weren’t my family they weren’t very interested. My family didn’t ever really eat together. Like I said, my dad hadn’t been around much lately and my mom was always working, my older brother Tim was always somewhere doing jock stuff, and my little sister Alice was usually staring at herself in a mirror. So I guess I went over to Gretchen’s whenever I was invited for the sense of belonging I thought I was so desperately lacking. It felt nice to pretend to have some kind of normal family.
Tonight’s meal at Gretchen’s looked iffy. I mean it looked bad. Like meat. But not meat maybe. Something brown and black on the white plate with something green on the side. To me, the whole kitchen was out of date and worn-out looking, like it was from the ’70s. The dull yellow light overhead made everything look gray, sad, somber, much worse. Like the faded blue in the crisscross kitchen wallpaper and the brown from the tile floor, whatever was on the plate looked drab and totally unappetizing.
“It’s imitation steak,” Mr. D. said. “We’re trying to market it. It’s called Imi-Taste-Y! Try it.” Mr. D. was in advertising or marketing or something—a white collar job, my dad called it—and he drove downtown into the city every day and back home to make sure he had dinner with his girls every evening.
“I’m not hungry,” Gretchen sighed, folding her arms in front of her chest.
“Well, what do you think, Brian?”
“I think it’s sensational, Mr. D. In fact, I think
you’re
pretty sensational,” I said.
He nodded and gave me a wink.
“Well, then, what about this in-school suspension, young lady?” he. asked. “Have you been making amends?”
“It’s no big deal,” Gretchen said. She hung her head low and pushed her fork into the mysterious black mound then withdrew it slowly.
“No big deal? One more and they said they’ll have to toss you out,” Mr. D. mumbled, blinking behind his glasses nervously. He was still wearing the blue flowered apron, the front of which read, “Kiss the Cook.” He was short and nervous-looking, his eyes big and twitchy. After fourteen years of wearing a mustache, he had decided to shave it recently. His face looked empty without it, even if you had never seen the mustache. He had been single for two years and he had shaved the mustache to seem younger, more attractive, since his wife, Gretchen’s mom, had passed away from lung cancer. Gretchen’s mom was the best. I mean it, she was the nicest and the most fun and she smoked and played video games with us; I dunno, I had grown up wishing my mom had been like that. The kitchen smelled the way I remembered Gretchen’s mom smelling; the yellow outdated wallpaper held a hint of her brand of Virginia Slim menthol cigarettes and I hoped they’d never change it.
“Like I said, it won’t happen again, Dad, I promise,” Gretchen said, taking his hand and shaking it as a pledge.
“That’s what she said before, and the time before that,” Jessica chimed in. Jessica was known as a slut, but she was super, intergalactic hot. She had a reputation for making out with other girls’ boyfriends, you know what I mean. I had seen her do it a few times at the parties she would throw when Mr. D. would go out of town on business. At one of those parties, I overheard her say this to some other girl:
“Duh, he’s such a nimrod, he doesn’t even know how to fuck.”
Which to me meant Jessica did know how to fuck and since then I had these elaborate fantasies about her, you know, teaching me. Also, she was a sloppy kind of kisser and didn’t care who she made out with, which is what got me. There was a rumor she had given gonorrhea to Mike Estevez, who almost died because of it. What had really happened was Mike Estevez was dating Katie Camden and Jessica decided she liked Mike and made out with him at a party and Mike got mononucleosis from some other girl named Tricia a few weeks later and he lost like thirty pounds and had to go to the hospital and so everyone blamed Jessica and made comments to her like “cocktease” and “tramp.” But it didn’t matter because, like I said, Jessica was hot. She was a year older, a senior, short like Gretchen, but thin. She was hot because she was petite, with big green eyes, hot like a cat hot, and a sharp chin, like a hot Dungeons and Dragons princess elf. Boys found her very hot. Men found her very hot. I found her extremely hot. I masturbated thinking about her a lot. She was one of the few girls around who would actually put out, or so she said anyway, and did not make you beg for it and then act like you were married or cry afterwards about it, maybe. Or so I had heard. Or so she had told Gretchen. She also said she liked sex and was not afraid to admit it. Another time, she told Gretchen that she would become a hooker if she could. She shaved her legs every day just in case, that was the rumor. Also, Jessica had a secret—or what she thought was a secret—she sold pot to her boss at the Yogurt Palace. She also had had sex with him. Twice. His name was Caffey and he was married with three kids, all beautiful blond boys which Jessica said would someday be hers. That’s what she told Gretchen anyways. Until recently, Jess had been a member of Key Club and in French Society and a football cheerleader, then out of the blue, she quit all the activities she was enlisted in and started buying dope off of our friends to sell to all the adults she knew. The worst part of it all was that she wanted nothing to do with me, no matter how I tried, even when I was like a foot across the table. I did everything I could to get her notice, and then I just gave up and decided I would just worship her from afar, maybe.
“More Imi-Taste-Y, Brian?” Mr. D. asked.
“I’m cool, Mr. D.”
“I just want to say Mom would never put up with Gretchen’s lousy behavior at school,” Jessica announced, nodding her head. “It’s pathetic.”
“Fuck off,” Gretchen hissed.
“Language,” Mr. D. stammered. “Let’s watch the language.”
“I’m done anyway,” Gretchen said, standing up slowly. I watched her stand and made no move to follow.
“What about dinner?” Mr. D. asked.
“I’ll eat something later.”
“I’m sure you will,” Jessica said.
“Fuck off, cunt-head!” Gretchen shouted.
“Language,” Mr. D. whispered.
“Fuck off, yourself,” Jessica replied. “That comment doesn’t even make sense, sewer tramp.”
“Language! Let’s have some respect here. Gretchen, I want you to know I’m serious about this. No more trouble at school, do you understand?”
“Yes,” she said. “Come on, Brian.” As Mr. D. looked down to scoop up his imitation hamburger, Gretchen flipped off Jessica, who only smiled back. I felt a small pain of sadness, thinking about my older brother, as they both eyed each other and laughed. I hadn’t talked to my brother in a few weeks, it seemed like anyway.
After that I followed Gretchen up to her room and I laid down on her bed as she began doing her chemistry homework, sitting crosslegged on the floor. I loved the smell of Gretchen’s room, like vanilla incense, even though it was a typical fucking mess: clothes all over, shoes, boots, notebook paper strewn around with the names of songs to make mix-tapes with, homework half-finished, boots without laces, record albums, broken cassettes, a bottle of glitter nail polish left leaking beside the bed. There was a Ramones poster and Misfits poster on opposite walls and then a poster of two cute cats in which she had put X’s over the eyes of the poor animals, knives and bullets and nooses encircling them in a ring of panic and flame. On another wall were all kinds of photos—from her junior high Math Team days, from her older sister’s parties, photos of her and Kim, of her and her mom, who was thin and beautiful, and like I said, the nicest lady ever—all of the photographs taped or glued directly to the wall. Then there were all kinds of horror and monster movie stuff, like masks and fake butcher knives and videotapes of almost every Hammer film ever made, including a rare
Dracula 1972
which she had ordered from the back of
Fangoria
. The best part of her room was her bed, which was big and white and soft and which smelled kind of like baby powder and kind of like her. I might have literally made out with her pillow if I had been given the chance.
I thought about asking her right then, like just blurting out, “OK, so do you want to go to Homecoming with me or not?” but I couldn’t because I still didn’t have the guts. I turned on my side and began staring at her—her soft round face, her small ears, the tiny pursed lips that mumbled words as she read to herself—and the more and more I looked, the more and more I realized I really, really liked her, not like other girls, you know, like Kim or Jessica, because I knew the only reason I liked them was because they looked hot, and, well, I could just stare at them and imagine boning them. I liked Gretchen as like a person and it was killing me that I couldn’t say anything and she looked up just then and said, “What? What is it?” getting all selfconscious, straightening her white school blouse, brushing some blond strands of hair out of her face. “What?” she asked again. “What is it?”