Going to the mall with Gretchen was a lot of fun because sometimes she would steal. Mostly we just walked around, giving the uptight suburban home–type mothers and grandmothers our dirty looks, but every so often, when she was complaining about how oppressive corporate America was to the rest of the poor undeveloped world—which usually coincided with her listening to a lot of Minor Threat or the Dead Kennedys—Gretchen would grab me by the hand and pull me into Kohl’s, this big middle-class cheeseball department store, with the intention that both her and I would score something for free, in the name of revolution and international equality.
“You’re just a loyal, thoughtless consumer, aren’t you?” she whispered one day as we made our way through the clothing racks of bright pink and green Ocean Pacific swimsuits in the preteen section.
“I’m not a consumer,” I said, “I don’t buy anything.”
“You don’t buy anything?” she replied, shoving me.
“I don’t have any money.”
“What about movies? Don’t you rent movies?” she shouted, shoving me into a rack of preteen nylon slacks.
“So?” I said. “That’s renting, not buying.”
“Well, what about your clothes? You buy clothes, don’t you?”
“No,” I said. “My mom buys that shit.”
“Well, what about music? You buy records and cassettes, right?”
“Duh,” I said.
“Well, those people are trying to control you!” she shouted, grabbing my wrist again. She tugged me through the young miss section, which was all stone-washed jeans and color-changing T-shirts flying past, bright color after bright color. “They want you to buy stuff so you don’t think about anything.”
“That’s cool,” I said, “the less I have to think about shit, the better.”
“But that means you are under their fucking control. THEY tell you what movies to rent. THEY tell you what records to buy. THEY tell you what clothes to wear. And, like a dumbshit, you spend all your money on buying stupid things that don’t even make you happy. Like this”—she grabbed a white, lacy, see-through-type bodysuit—“do you think girls even want to wear this shit?” she asked, shoving it in my face.
“I dunno. Hot girls, maybe,” I said, and she grabbed my hand again.
“Don’t you know about classes and shit like that? Don’t you ever think about that stuff?” she asked.
“I’ve got to go to classes eight times a day. That is where I do all my thinking.”
“You’re working class, and they’re trying to control you so you don’t overthrow them,” Gretchen whispered, as if THEY were somehow listening in an empty corner of the store, directly behind a sale rack of reduced puffy red ski jackets.
“I can’t even worry about that shit,” I said. “I’m just trying to get through fucking school without going fucking crazy.”
“That’s how they get you, though,” she said. “First you don’t have time to worry about it because of school, then you’ve got a job, and a wife, and kids, and a family, and so you just keep going on buying and buying and you never ask why you’re so fucking miserable about everything.”
“I know why I’m miserable,” I said, staring up the long, shiny, sensuous plastic legs of a topless female mannequin. “I need to get laid.”
“Is that all you fucking think about?” she asked, and I looked up, and we were in the middle of the intimates section, which was nothing but hot bras and hot panties, and I glanced around at the vast, endless beauty, rows and rows of lace and silk and tiny delicate flowers and garter belts and stockings and nodded once, without thinking.
“Yes, I can safely say that is all I think about,” I said as she tugged me by the arm again. “What? Where are we going?” I asked, and we stopped in front of the last rack in the row, which was a row full of big white bras and big gray pairs of panties, and she said, “The fat-ass section,” and pointed to a packaged pair of nylons decorated with a shadowy photo of what was a hefty model tastefully shot from the back, and the name brand, “Just My Size.”
I stared at the package and kind of shuddered, thinking these droopy gray stockings were what old-ass senior citizens wore, and I was going to say something and make a joke but Gretchen stopped me and said, “See? See how bad they make you feel? ‘Just My Size’?” and. I looked at her, under the twitchy florescent light, her pink hair soft and no longer so bright, and it seemed like, for a minute, I got what she was saying, because when she started stuffing handfuls of the puffy gray packages under the waist of her black leather jacket, I turned to make sure no one was watching and followed her out of there running, and even when we were in the Escort, flying away, I was still thinking about it all and I still hadn’t said a word about anything.
The Mole People
and other monster movies were what my dad and I would sometimes watch together without having to say anything. Like one night, I came home late and my dad was asleep on the couch and his face was all blue and white because it was dark downstairs and the TV was still on and I could hear sirens and shooting from whatever it was he had been watching—
Hunter
, probably, that was his show, the one with that dude, fucking Fred Dryer, because he liked that Fred Dryer had been a linebacker for the Pittsburgh Steelers and now was on TV—and I was sneaking into my room and my dad snored and then he sat up and said, “Hey, Brian. Brian, is that you?” and he shoved on his glasses quick, pretending that he had been up waiting and not totally asleep.
“Yeah, Dad, it’s me.”
“Where have you been all night, kid?” he asked, smiling, and I said, “Gretchen’s. Out with Gretchen.”
“Out with Gretchen, huh?”
He sat up, took off his glasses, rubbed his face, and then put them back on, smiling again. “Guess what’s on tonight on cable?” he asked. “At midnight.”
“I dunno,” I said.
“
The Mole People.
”
“
The Mole People
? I love that movie.”
The Mole People
was this weird sci-fi movie from the ’50s, probably one of my favorite movies of all time. It was about these scientists who climb the Himalayas, or some mountain range in like Asia or wherever, and they discover this secret passage to this underground civilization that is like hundreds of miles down and like thousands of years old. It’s kind of like this world of these beautiful secret super-pale Egyptians—they all dress like that, with the pharaoh kind of helmets and belts and buckles and whips and male-dresses or whatever you call them—and they are all albinos because they haven’t seen the sun, like ever, and they are the rulers of the civilization. But there are these other people, the monsters, the Mole People—who don’t look like moles at all, but kind of like lizards, but not lizards—they are blackish with scales and they have these big white eyes and small narrow mouths and huge, huge four-fingered claws, and they are forced to work in these mines or caves and to serve the albino people. So the monsters were actually the good people and the good-looking people were bad. Also, one young stud scientist discovers this hot, normal-looking girl, with dark hair and a regular complexion, who is considered a freak because she isn’t an albino, and the scientist and the normal girl fall in love and the scientist helps the Mole People revolt and then there is some fight of some kind and an earthquake and somehow sunlight makes its way down there and it generally freaks all the albinos out and that was all I could basically remember. I had watched it a few times when I was really young, with my dad, when it played on the late Saturday night horror show,
Son of Svenghoulie
, this local program that ran old black-and-white monster movies every Saturday night. That was our thing, my dad and me. We would watch these monster movies every Saturday night and how long ago had that been?
I looked over at my dad and smiled. “Yeah, that one part where the monsters help the scientists out, I love that.”
“I know it. So can you watch it?” he asked, smiling big and nodding. “Or do you got homework to do or something like that?”
“No, I can watch it,” I said. I threw my coat in my room and sat down in the soft green chair beside the couch and watched as Hunter tackled a suspect, flying over the hood of a car and landing in a pile of cardboard boxes.
“So, Dad, how long do you plan on sleeping down here?” I asked.
“I dunno,” he said, staring straight ahead. “Am I cramping your style?”
“No. I was … I guess I was just worried about mom and everything.”
“You let me worry about that,” he said. “We’re having problems. We’ll work it out. I promise.”
I turned and looked at him. He didn’t look too hopeful. He had a long red pillow mark on the side of his cheek and he was still wearing his work clothes because my mom had stopped doing his laundry, apparently. He switched the channel and stretched out his feet and I noticed his socks were looking gray and dirty. I was going to say something, but decided not to. I just sat there and watched as the titles began appearing over a cavernous, murky cave, the foreboding music rising.
“Well, here we go with
The Mole People
,” my dad said, “you can always count on them.”
“You sure can,” I said back.
Weird as it was, for fun, Gretchen and I would always go eat some place after school, even though she had this really big problem with being overweight. It was kinda fucking crazy. Like maybe I knew what we were doing but didn’t want her not to be fat or she’d stop hanging out with me. I dunno. We usually went to Snackville Junction, this diner on like 111th and Western that had a big linoleum counter in the center of it which was shaped like half a circle and had toy train tracks on it. A toy train would come out with your food in a basket on a little train car. The restaurant was meant for kids, but it was our favorite place to eat—that and Rainbow Cone, which you could only go to in the spring. At Snackville Junction, Gretchen always got the same thing: a chili dog and a Green River, this bright green soda-pop drink. Also, they let Gretchen smoke there which was a big deal to her, because clearly she was underage. Me, I always got a grilled cheese or a vanilla shake, and if I got a vanilla shake I knew it would make me sick because, like I said, I was lactose-intolerant, but I’d get it anyway for some fucking reason.
Today I was eating a pizza puff with crinkle-fries and a vanilla shake, so diarrhea was pretty much a definite for me. Gretchen was looking very pretty, which sometimes she did and sometimes she didn’t, depending on her mood, I guess. Her hair was up in these two small bluebird barrettes and she didn’t really have any makeup on—her face was soft and clean and her cheeks looked scrubbed and pink—and she was eating the chili off her chili dog with the crinkle-fries, scooping it up and then sliding the fry and chili into her mouth quick, which was her way of eating, I guess, and the afternoon sun was like a hundred-watt light bulb in my chest, coming through the window behind her and lighting her hair really nice, making it seem soft white and blond. She was not talking, it was just the two of us eating together, which was nice, and I thought,
What’s so wrong with this?
“Listen what happened today,” she said and I nodded. “I’m in the locker room after gym class, right, sitting on this wet wood bench, changing as fast as I fucking can. I usually leave my blouse already buttoned, so I can slip it on, you know, without showing too much of the bulk, right? And so I’m sitting there and I turn and look down the aisle to be sure it’s safe to pull off my shorts, so I can finish changing before anyone has the time to comment on my fucking fat thighs, you know?”
“Your thighs aren’t fat,” I lied.
“My legs are my least favorite feature.”
“Really?”
“When I was a kid my dad would call me
Miss Plumpkins, Miss Plumpkins, my pumpkin
.”
“But that’s cute,” I said.
“I know. He wasn’t trying to be like oppressive or anything. Anyway, so I start pulling up my skirt and then I pull down the shorts and begin sliding on my socks, and my fucking legs are so hairy and it’s all steamy in there and everything, and guess what? At the end of the aisle is Stacy Bensen. Fuck. Stacy fucking Bensen. So I think,
Fuck, hopefully she won’t notice me,
you know? And I try not to look, but I can’t help myself. Stacy fucking Bensen is just sitting there on this other bench and both her eyes are black and blue and her fucking head is covered in these huge white bandages and there’s a bald spot at the top of her head where her hair was.”
“Wow, you fucked her up bad, huh?”
“I guess. But here’s the thing: She was changing, right? And her shoulders were all bare and pale and everything, and her blouse was in her hand, and her face was pressed into the fucking blouse, and for some reason, she was fucking crying.”
“She was just crying?” I asked.
“Yeah, but listen. She’s sitting there in a black fucking bra only, with the white bandage on her face, and crying, and the bra is this shiny black satin thing—fucking trashy.”
“Don’t you still wear the same bra from eighth grade?” I asked. “The one with the tiny blue flowers?”
“Yeah,” she said, nodding. “But listen, she’s down there, Stacy Bensen, with her hands over her face, sobbing. And I dunno, I opened my mouth to say something, but hell, I didn’t know what to say, because, well, Stacy Bensen is so thin and fucking confident and she’s got these long perfect legs, like a lingerie model.”
“Yeah, she’s hot,” I said.
“But that’s not it. Everything about her is lovely. The way she sits, the way she smiles, the way she speaks; she’s lovely.”
“Huh,” I said.
“Even with the black eyes and the fucking bandage, she’s still so lovely.”
“I guess,” I said.
“It made me happy to just watch her and imagine what it must be like to be Stacy fucking Bensen just for a minute. You ever do that?”
“Not Stacy Bensen. Vince Neil from Mötley Crüe: I think about being him a lot.”
“Well, I was looking at her and wondering,
How can anyone be so pretty?
And you know she’s probably had sex once or twice already, or even a few times.”
“How do you know?” I asked.