“Nothing. You just look nice.”
In a minute, her face went bright red and she got all uncomfortable and flipped me off. “Well, just stop staring at me, you fucking freak.”
“I wasn’t staring. I was just, you know, looking at you.”
“Well, don’t you have to go home at some point? Don’t you have homework to do?” she asked, sitting up, stretching out her legs. Out of the corner of my eye, I glanced up her soft, plump thigh toward the spot where her plaid skirt began, searching, searching for that dark shadowy spot … but she crossed her legs and starting talking again. “Well, don’t you?”
“I was thinking I could just tell all my teachers that my parents are getting split and I’m too, um … bereaved to do anything.”
“Bereaved? That’s when someone dies, douche-bag.”
“Well, then whatever I am. Upset or whatever.”
“Are you upset?” she asked.
“I don’t think so. I think I might even be happy about it.”
“Why?”
“Because both of them are fucking miserable and maybe it’s better if he splits.”
“Maybe,” she said, looking down at her notebook. “It’s cool you’re not pissed at him.”
“Yeah.”
“Are you pissed?”
“I don’t know. Maybe I will be later.”
I climbed off the bed and sat down beside her. I could hear her breathing and me breathing and I was feeling all clammy and I tried to swallow but my mouth was all dry and I was kind of getting an erection and I turned and stared down at her ample breasts and I could see her flowery bra through the spaces in between the buttons of her blouse and I didn’t know if I should try to hold her hand before I asked and just then Jessica barged in, blowing my big fucking chance.
“What’s going on here, fuckers?” she asked, lighting a cigarette as she soon as she entered. “You guys making out? Smooch-smooch kiss-kiss.”
“Fuck off,” Gretchen said, standing, pulling the pack of cigarettes from her sister’s hand. She slipped a single cigarette out and lit it, then exhaled a long drag.
“Listen,” Jessica whispered, shutting the bedroom door. “I need you little fuckers to do me a favor.”
“What? What is it?” Gretchen asked, annoyed. “We’re busy.”
“Can either one of you guys get me a dime bag?”
“A dime bag? Of what?” I asked.
“Of what? Of weed, you spaz,” Jessica said, laughing, shaking her head.
“Right, yeah, weed. No problem,” I replied.
“No problem?!” Gretchen said with a snort. “Where are you getting a dime bag, Mr. Asshole?”
“Don’t worry about it,” I said. “I’ll get it, no problem.”
“He doesn’t even know what a dime bag is, for fuck’s sake,” Gretchen said.
“Is that true?” Jessica asked, standing over me. “You’re just fucking with me?”
“I know stuff,” I said, and pretended to be very involved in reading
Fangoria
magazine.
“Thanks but no thanks, losers,” Jessica said, closing the door and shaking her head. I turned to Gretchen and she was looking at me funny like I was an idiot and not funny and I didn’t like it so I grabbed my coat and said, “See you later, losers,” even though it was just her and I thought I had pretty much blown my chance, right about there.
I was riding the bus, then, and I got scared in a weird way because the bus was all empty and alone, and I started worrying if anyone would be there when I got home, and my mom was asleep already and my older brother was gone and I thought about going to talk to my little sister, but she might think I was high or something, and so instead I chickened out and went down to the basement and saw my dad there on the couch sleeping, so I didn’t talk to anyone about anything. I sat on my bed and wondered what the hell I was doing and what I should do and then I got the greatest idea ever:
I’d make Gretchen a mix-tape. And then she’d fall for me. And then she would fall for me.
The only other friend I had in the world beside Gretchen and Kim was a kid named Rod, who was black and maybe even a homosexual, I didn’t know. I did know that he had the largest record collection of anyone I knew and was like retarded about music. I met him in my chemistry class at the beginning of the year because he sat next to me, and right away you could tell he was not like the other black kids in school. He was nervous, kind of glancing around the room, folding his arms across his thin chest. He always had the look of a very scared rabbit, maybe. Also, the way he dressed was very white: white dress pants and a white button-down shirt, and he always wore this red, button-down cardigan sweater. And he was white-acting, what other black kids called an “Oreo”—you know, black on the outside but white on the inside—because he was in honors classes and hung out with all the nerdy white kids who were very into role-playing games like Dungeons and Dragons, and also he stayed after school to participate in the Young Scientists Club. He was the kind of friend I’d hang out with after school, when other dudes weren’t around. He had this thing about him, and that thing was that he was an even bigger pussy than me, maybe.
The first time I met him he sat down next to me and then he said, “I like to walk in cemeteries alone at night.”
“Yeah?” I asked.
“I am a ghost.
Only you can see me
…” he whispered, scary like a ghost.
“That’s cool,” I said.
“Don’t you think that’s weird? That I walk in cemeteries at night? That I think I’m
a ghost
?” he whispered in the ghostly voice again.
“No,” I said. “It seems like you’re the kind of kid I’d hang out with.”
After school the next day, we went to his house and you could see why even though he was black he had turned out white. His mom had long, black, straightened hair and his dad wore a very clean business suit and tie and they all spoke with perfect white-people English and the sight of them made my dad look like a real slob who had dirty hands and used the word “jag-off” at the dinner table all the time. Well, these people ate dinner at exactly six and there was absolutely no swearing—or Mickey-Mousing around, as my dad called it. Rod had the perfect family and when he introduced me to them, you could see his mom’s eyes light up. Here her boy had made a white friend and she couldn’t be happier.
Mostly all Rod and I did was listen to records. Sometimes we’d go to the mall or video arcade, but mostly we went to different record stores looking for old vinyl. On Saturdays, we’d go to the flea market and he’d search for some obscure soul album like Curtis Mayfield or some ABCO Rolling Stones title and I’d go there to try out the Chinese stars and butterfly knives. Rod was very into music, all kinds: pop, R&B, rock, even jazz—which, for a high school kid, was weird. I mean, I always figured it had to do with his dad, who had this immense record collection. You saw it as soon as you walked into their living room—the living room which looked like it belonged on a television show, with white curtains and yellow furniture and all of it was perfectly clean with plastic on the sofa cushions and lace coasters under everything—and there, set inside wood shelves all around the room like a library, were hundreds and hundreds of vinyl records—blues, ragtime, modern jazz, bebop, soul—and his dad would be sitting in his soft red chair with a cardigan sweater and black slippers on, smoking his pipe and nodding his head and listening to Don Cherry. And Rod would walk in and say he’d found some B-side of a Marvin Gaye song and his dad and him would high-five each other, and then gently, like parents of a newborn baby, they’d lift the record out of its paper sleeve and place it on the hi-fi to play. Rod would take a seat on the couch and I’d just stand there, wondering,
Who exactly are these people
? and then the music would come on—a song like “Underdog” or “Living for the City”—music I had never heard before in my life, and yet after just a few notes, they were songs so simple and pure and full of joy that they’d make their way into my heart. Me, a dumb white kid humming Motown and not caring, and I’d sing them all, one after the other, on the bus ride home, maybe.
Once we walked into the house and Rod’s dad, who insisted I call him Burt, was sitting in his red chair with his black slippers on, and said, “Boys, boys, listen to this one,” and just then the needle met the small vinyl grooves of the record and “Time After Time” by Chet Baker began playing, the strange haunting voice of a man that to me sounded like a woman, so that I asked, “Wow, who’s this lady?” and Rod’s dad nodded and laughed and said, “That’s Chet Baker, son, the trumpet player,” and I said, “He sounds spooky,” and Rod’s dad said to Rod, “This was the first song your mother and I ever made love to,” and I thought that was a little strange for him to say, but I didn’t say anything. I just listened, and the more I heard that ghostly, quiet, nighttime voice rising, the more I was thinking about Gretchen and kissing her to a song like that, and then it was over and we were all standing around silent and Rod’s dad said, “That’s how you should feel after you hear a good song. Like a brand new man,” and I said, “Burt, I know what you mean,” and we walked off into Rod’s room, still kind of listening.
The only record I could listen to straight through was Guns n’ Roses’
Appetite for Destruction.
When everything else was wrong, that record made it right. I could go back to it, always. No matter what, that record would make me feel all right.
Appetite for Destruction
. Guns n’ Roses. That was it. That was my record. “It’s So Easy,” “Nightrain,” “Out ta Get Me,” then classics like “Paradise City,” “Welcome to the Jungle,” and probably the greatest song ever, of all time: “Sweet Child o’ Mine.” What was it about that song? I loved that song so much it sometimes made we want to kick a hole in the wall. If Gretchen and I were driving and if her stereo was working—which it did once every ten million years—and if that song happened to come on, I’d have to get her to pull over so I could listen to it, without having to hear the engine running or traffic going by. She always pulled over; she understood, I guess. That one part, where the song kind of slows down—“Where do we go now? Where do we go now? Where do we go now?”—I didn’t even know what Axl was talking about, but if I was in the car with Gretchen, or better, at home alone in the basement where my room was, I would have to stop and crank it or just stand there and do the air guitar parts. In the car, I’d try to get Gretchen to sing along, but since it wasn’t punk, she wasn’t having it, though one time she did do the “Where do we go? Where do we go now” parts, but to get her to do anything else was almost impossible where GNR was concerned.
When I brought the record over to Rod’s to try to get him to listen, all he did was roll his eyes and shake his head. It was the first time I had played a record of mine for him and he just folded his arms over his chest, raising his eyebrows, and laughed.
“Lame,” was all he said.
“What? How can you not like this?” I asked.
“It’s just so lame,” he said.
“Lame? Stevie Wonder is lame.”
“Seriously. I’ll take Stevie over this any day,” he muttered, getting up to switch it off.
“Dude, you’ve got to listen to the whole thing. At the end. It gets all quiet and pretty and everything.”
He stood up and walked beside the deep mahogany record player, his hand on the record arm, and I thought,
If he touches that needle, I am going to kick his ass
and
Maybe white kids and black kids can’t be friends
and
If he turns this fucking record off, I am never going to talk to him again
, and just then Slash began his solo and the song began to build and Rod waited, closing his eyes, and listened, and sat back down on the bed. We listened to the whole song together and then when it was over he nodded and said, “That was a jam. I was wrong. That really was a jam.”
“Like I said.” He handed me back the LP, gently sliding it into its paper sleeve.
“Hey, man, I need to put a mix-tape together for this girl. Can you help me pick out some cool songs she’s never heard before?” I asked.
“Why do you want to put songs she’s never heard on it?”
“Because she does that for me. Plays songs I’ve never heard, you know.”
Rod frowned, crossing his arms in front of his chest.
“Don’t be lame, man,” he said. “That would be like writing somebody else’s love letter.”
“No it isn’t,” I said.
“I’m not helping you out. If you like this girl, you should be able to pick the songs out you want her to hear yourself.”
“But I’ll pick fucking rock songs. I need sexy songs like that shit your dad listens to. Like Chet Baker and shit.”
“Man, forget it. I’m not doing it.”
“You’re screwing me here, Rod,” I said. “You’re blowing my chance with love.”
“No, man, you are,” he said, and I knew I was on my own from there.
At exactly that same strange time in my life, I began getting these massively raging erections for no real reason—sometimes right in the middle of class or walking down the hallway at school—and they would be so painful that I would have to go into the men’s room and masturbate right away or I would get these very intense stomach aches. I’m not kidding. Anything might set me off. I would masturbate for no real reason, thinking about anyone, any girl I had ever seen. Once after school, when I was watching
Star Trek
, some alien lady with blue skin and tight pants came on the screen and immediately I had to go jerk off. It got really bad. If I had a female teacher—any kind of female, skinny, fat, hot, ugly, whatever—I would immediately get an erection if she even called on me. If she was like, “Well, what do you think, Brian?” I would be like, “I think I have an erection now and so I have to go deal with it.” It was worse in, like, math class, where I had to sit close to the math teacher Mrs. Daniels’s desk. Once during a quiz, she spilled her perfume all over—that “White Fantasy” perfume stuff—and I had to run out of class in the middle of the quiz, which I failed, because I practically blew my load in my pants.
The only thing I had going for me romantically at the time was cable TV, which meant Cinemax After Dark on Friday nights, where they’d show these soft-core porno movies, like
Emmanuel 5
,
Emmanuel 6
, and
Emmanuel 8
, or
Lady Chatterley’s Lover
, tame stuff like that. I wasn’t brave enough to try and buy a porno magazine so all I had was the cable and my mom’s fashion magazines, like
Cosmo
, which if I wasn’t careful, were always left with a suspicious crease.