Kill Kill Faster Faster (5 page)

J
oey’s a walking aberration, a talking negation, Joey going, Please, baby, please, baby, please, baby. Please.

Joey got no way to go.

Joey is America.

Joey caught.

Joey caught in a web.

The web is here and the web is there.

Joey in the web. Joey on the Web. Joey on the World Wide Web. Joey on the Internet. Joey saying, Joey, you lose. Over and over again. Until it drum in his head. Joey One-Way, you a one-way loser, dude.

Joey sit on his cot. Joey thinking. Joey thinking about his life. Joey’s life is not boring. Fleur say, Joey, I never seen you bored. I never seen you ennui.

Joey think about that. Joey thinking about that right now. Right this minuto. Joey thinking about that sitting on his cot, tens of mens milling around, some eyeing him, some coming over. Don’t I know you from the lockup, bro? Don’t I know you from Dannemora? I seen you there, din’t I?

Joey saying nothing, or if Joey feeling surly, him saying, Don’t fraternize with me, bro. Don’t be bothering me. The inquiring man looking hardass, his eyes narrow. He say, Look out, dude, no reason to be rude, dude. I’m just asking, d. When you get out and about? Everything cool? How you making it?

Joey saying nothing. Joey saying nothing, Joey dull-eyed stare. The pain behind his eye, the blind left, intense, him thinking of Fleur, him thinking of his father. Him thinking of times gone by by.

Bye-bye, dude.

Joey, man. Joey. O my brothers.

Joey.

J
oey wasn’t all innocent. Joey never was.

Joey remember one time he come home, Kimba’s waiting for him. The babies in the other room asleep.

This was when everything was unraveled or unraveling.

She was waiting for him inside the door, maybe had been for hours, maybe just for minutes, maybe she had just heard him in the hall.

He put the key in the lock and turned it and opened the door and walked inside and just like that she kicked him in the balls. He went down to his knees.

She said, There, that’s what you deserve.

She was right.

They took Apache wedding vows. Joey’s father found the rings they exchanged on an almost empty R train, coming home from his four-to-four waiter’s shift, four A.M., the end of his shift. It never occurred to him to ask the sleeping couple across the aisle if they had lost what he had found.

On the day of the wedding Joey got high.

Kim’s cousin Dobbins brought some heroin, got off in the bathroom. Offered a shot to Joey. It was cool. Joey hadn’t brought his works to his wedding. Dobbins had a set and they passed them around. What can Joey say?

Later Kim nailed him. She said, What are you doing, man?

There’s no explanation, you know what I’m saying?

Joey shrugged.

She said, I can see you’re pinned, man.

Joey smiled, nodded. Oh man, a junkie. But it was no surprise. She knew. Getting off at your own wedding. My oh my.

They wound up making love on the same bathroom floor where he shot up. Of course, he shot up sitting on the toilet. He fucked her on the floor, any which way he could get her, toss her.

He set her up on the bathtub to start. Picked her up physically and put her on the white porcelain tub edge. She was looking at him, her eyes wide, waiting. She had these brown eyes, wide and soft, silken, a little sanpaku, with the whites showing underneath the iris. He pulled up her wedding dress. Her mother had made it. White voile, white lace, with a cinch waist.

He pulled up the dress, pulled down her drawers, exposed her cunt. He kissed her twat. She moaned. Joey, she said.

She was wet right away.

She was always saying how wet she got for him. The bed sometimes was like a lake, overflowing with her juices, huge patches of wetness, seeping through to the mattress.

He touched the lips of her cunt with his fingertips while he licked her. They was a deeper brown than her skin, almost like a magenta. He spread her cunt and inserted his fingers. He kissed her in the soft folds. Her pubic hair was thick and wiry. The curls were tight.

She spread her legs more. Her feet were on the floor, her ass on the enamel. She put her hands, her fingers in his hair, behind his head, pulled his hair, his long curls. He bit her cunt, pulled her pubic hair back in gentle response to her pulling his hair, her cunt hair in his mouth, between his teeth, set his teeth, bit, caused her a little pain, cause he felt like that was what she wanted and deserved. Men and women, man. She moaned again.

Mmmm, like that.

Someone knocked on the door.

Yeah, Joey said.

Oh, the person on the other side said. Sorry.

Joey put his fingers in her cunt. Stood himself up. Set his legs. He put both his hands in her, not the whole hands, but just the fingers, two fingers from each hand, in her cunt, probing, pulling, side to side, top to bottom. He stood up tall, arched his back, sucked in his stomach, and looked down at her. Her chin was up. Her neck sculpted. He liked the vision. His brown wife. She moaned some more. He turned her around, exposed her ass, tore his shirt out of his pants, loosened his belt, dropped his pants, his underwears, put his groin to her ass, pressed up, pulled back, took her from the back. Put his cock in her cunt, or she did. She guided Joey inside her.

He pumped a few times, maybe five times, maybe ten, but the heroin was in him, pulsing, working his blood and brain, and he couldn’t really keep an erection. Maybe he thought about it, and that done him in. It’s possible. You know how it is. She reached back between her legs, touched his balls. Sweet as could be. Just touched them like that, let them sit in the palm of her hand. Oh man, how good does it feel. Joey moaned, man, Joey moaned. And she moaned again. Mmmm. The erection came back.

Her ass was in front of him, her hips wide for such a slim-built girl. Her skin was the color of caramel, the white wedding dress riding up at her waist. He had his hands on her ass, and then cupped her breasts. He pulled down the dress to expose her white bra, then freed her breasts from the wire cups, had them in his palms, his thumbs on her nipples.

Come inside me, she said, more breath than voice.

All right, he said. All right.

Then she said, Give it to me. Give it to me, Joey. Give it to me.

When Joey went over his parents’ apartment, tell his parents he was getting married to a black girl, they was upset.

His pops turned the color of hot pastrami and his moms said, Okay for you two, you make your own life, your life is your own, nobody’s telling you what to do at this late date, but what am I going to say when you have children and I go to the supermarket with the baby and the checkout girl asks what is it? What do I say?

Joey didn’t quite get it, didn’t follow her. Didn’t get where she was going with this.

He said, Mom, it’s a baby. What are you going to say? We ain’t intending to have no babies anyway, so I guess you’re never going to have to deal with that question, now are you?

Then the twins come.

Come marching out.

Man, babies be babies. Black, brown, yellow, white, or no nevermind. Babies all got their charm. Babies all got their thing. Joey and Kim done two at once. Dark little things. Darker than Joey. Darker than Kim.

Little brown things with Caucasoid features.

Covered with slime. Multicolored umbilicus.

Nurse says, Want to cut ‘em?

Doc turns to Joey.

Sure, Joey says. Cutting’s my thing.

Neither baby was crying.

They was looking around. All alert. So this is the world. This is my father. Coming after me with a scissors.

They’re very alert, the nurse says. Very.

Kim didn’t do no drugs. She just toughed the birth out. She had this yoga breathing and it saw her through. She said all along pain was not what scared her.

Then what? What scares you?

It was a setup. Obviously, because she just looked at Joey and she said, You.

Joey cut the cords where they got them pinched off with one of them scissors you use for roach clips. Rheostats or whatever. Nurse point to the exact spot. You can’t miss. You just cut. It’s no big deal.

Did it twice. Once for each. Had a big smile.

Afterward nobody offered him to hold them.

They laid them on Kim’s breast. She held them like that for a few minutes, the two cooing, looking at each other, with these navy blue dreamy eyes, her looking down at them, then they took them away for tests. We’ll bring them back later, they said, like they thought we thought they was going to steal them away and never return.

Like they was going to be out on the street, screaming at the top of their lungs: Pickaninnies for sale! Pickaninnies! Get your red-hot, newborn pickaninnies!

Cheap.

Real cheap.

Dirt cheap.

They had put some drops in their eyes and shit like that, did some routine crap like that right there.

Kim had hold Joey’s hand.

Kim reached up for Joey to kiss her.

Her hair was a matted mess. She looked exhausted, her eyes red-rimmed and bloodshot.

She looked like shit, but extremely happy.

Her lips were soft.

Her breath stale and delicious when he kissed her back.

Man, that’s what love’s about.

That’s what love’s got to do with it.

He loved her.

He always loved her.

He love her to this day.

He had a headache in his bad eye beat the band.

Oh man, oh man.

I been shot, man. Joey been shot.

The bullet come in, tore his pants, somehow missed everything else, all his plumbing, but left a little black hole through the crotch. Thank God he in one piece.

Joey had a vision once.

Joey dreamt he was sitting on a ledge. Underneath him was all these women. Their arms outstretched. They looked up at him. They was calling him, beckoning. They was saying, Joey, Joey. Come, Joey, come. That’s a good boy. Don’t worry. Don’t worry, Joey. Come. Leap. Jump.

Joey don’t remember what he done in his dream, leaped or not.

There was nobody down there Joey recognized. They was all different types. Women, women, women. Women with their hair blowing free, women with babushkas and ball caps, women with veils and all kind of fruit shit on their head like Carmen Miranda. You know, there was a policewoman there too, and a female fire fighter, a girl jockey, all kinds of weird shit. In retrospect, now that Joey think about it, Joey think he remember seeing his shrink from the lockup, and maybe even this homeless woman he used to give dimes to. Maybe even his wife and his mother and his grandmother. Maybe even Fleur. Oh, there was all kinds of womens down there now that he think about it. Every kind of women, all eager for his bones.

Do you ever notice, O my brothers, that the girls on the street, the girls you see every day every which way passing you by, ever notice those girls, those young women are getting younger and younger? Younger and younger and more and more attractive. You ever notice that?

Maybe it’s just a factor of age. I’m getting older and older. And more and more confused. So it’s only natural…

It’s a midlife crisis, pure and simple. Half your life is gone gone, maybe more.

Death is encrouching.

O
ne night I’m sitting in a back booth at Cafe Tabac with Markie Mann and we’re talking about my play,
White Man Black Hole
, which started out a prison production but went on to the B’way and won the New York Drama Circle Award for Best Play of the Year 1995,
White Man Black Hole.

Markie optioned it for the movies before I got out and we’re talking about his pal, the actor, whose name you would know if I named it, the star of his television show,
El Pistolero
, who I met at the party Markie threw for me, and Markie wants him to play in the movie
White Man Black Hole
, play me. And I’m not listening and Markie asks me what’s the matter, so I start telling him how crazy I am, how women make me crazy, how Flowers make me crazy, although I’m not saying her name because Flowers is his wife and I’m fucking his wife and his wife is the one who’s making me crazy, and I’m sort of giving him the rap in general, you know what I’m saying… women.

And he says, It’s only pussy, man. It makes you crazy, man. Stay cool, man.

Flowers lying in bed with me, talking dirty to me, saying to me, I’ll never let you go.

We was the same, Flowers and me. When we was together, joking around, comparing our anger.

What was we so angry about? I don’t know. I don’t know.

I had nothing to complain about. I was out of the lockup, I had money, I was living the charmed life.

And she?

She had nothing to complain about. She was in America, she was in the magazines, she was on everybody’s lips, she was out of the lockup, she had money, she was living the charmed life.

Oh, man. Man oh man. All my torment. Most people probably just think, you just getting what you deserve, you dirty bastard Joey.

One night I’m listening to “Love Phone” on Z100, Dr. Judy, Jagger, a guy call up, he say, Dr. Judy, I got hair on my dick. She say, Hair on your dick? Where? Like in your pubic area or up the shaft? He say, the caller, No, no, no, Dr. Judy, you don’t understand, I got HAIR! on my dick! I got it bad, Doc. It go up my shaft, all the way to the head, just so like the little pink tip peek out. Jagger laugh, he say, Dude, you got it right, you
do
got it bad, but she say, sympathetic, Dr. Judy, Hold the line, that’s a problem easily remedied. I’ll recommend you to my personal waxer. She the waxer of Madonna. That’s how I got to her. Madonna recommended me to her. She great. You know, you go in, you say I sent you, you say you need your penis waxed. Just like that. She remove the hair. It hurt, but you be fine after that.

Me lying on my cot at the halfway, alone amidst a sea of men, listening, me thinking, how important Fleur say it was, she go for her bikini wax, she say, Joey, chéri, I want you be first one to see me. I want you see my wax before Mec, calling him her private name for Markie. Me saying, Yeah, I want to see you bikini wax, too, before Mec. Me thinking, man, it’s his place to see her wax, not me. He her husband. She’s Markie’s wife. Not mine. Not my place. She’s Markie’s wife, man. I don’t deserve no special treatment be first to see the wax, the red patch surround her crotch, where her pubes used to grow into the bikini line. I don’t deserve none of that shit, you know what I’m saying? To be with her. She’s Markie’s wife.

But keeping Flowers straight is a trip, man. Flowers like a man. She fuck like a man. She think like a man. You don’t want to be involved with Flowers, man.

Oh, man. Oh, man. I still thinking what it would be like to get off with my old works. The doojie’s on me. I don’t like none of those disposable needles that’s all around now. Wasn’t around like this when I went up to the joint, man. They was around, but they wasn’t so prevalent. You could still get those old-fashioned kind, the ones the doctors cooked, sterilized. There was no AIDS. No HIV. It was just starting. There was other shit, but I never thought about it. Hepatitis. Got hepatitis once. Non A, non B. Wasn’t too bad. Never suffered. Never turned yellow. I loved my old eyedropper with the baby nipple on the top, man, I keep that, I got it hid away at my mom’s apartment. I cut out the center from this big fat book, slit the pages, made like a little coffin out of the guts. I think it was a book on grammar, something no one in their right mind would ever look into. Book like a tome. Tome like a tomb. Kept my works in it. My dope, the dropper, the rubber band, the nipple, the paper collar, the cotton. I like that shit. My gimmicks, man. The rubber on the baby nipple must be cracked and broken now. And you can’t find that shit no more, that paraphernalia. Babies use different kinds of nipples these days from when my girls was infants. There’s this one place I found that carried that old-style nipple,
suce
, is what it’s called in French, man, what Fleur calls it. She turned me onto the place. Drugstore at Eighth Avenue and Nineteenth Street. She say, Baby, I got just what you want, sugar. She wants her baby be tough, be bad, have just what he want, give him options.

Options for what? Doojie don’t offer Joey no options. Don’t Fleur understand that?

On Twenty-third Street, right off Eighth Avenue, down the block from the Chelsea Hotel, there’s this little bar, see? It’s a bar I really like. Called Bar Blu.

One night this cat comes in there, see, sits down. In the corner there’s this piano, it’s been there for years. It’s old. The sounding board’s cracked. It buzzes. It’s out of tune. No one ever plays it no more, hadn’t for years. No, no one ever thought to. The guy who come in, he got long fingers, asks the bartender, You mind, can I play that? Bartender says, Be my guest. Guy with long fingers, this stranger, first time in the joint, sits down, starts to play. He plays beautifully. The music? The music is otherworldly, know what I’m saying? Otherworldly. Like from another planet. Everybody’s astonished. Bartender goes over, says, Man, you got magic. You got the touch. Guy with long fingers, the piano man, his name is Joey, says, You think so? He says to the bartender, Hey, you mind I come in every once in a while, sit down, play for your customers? Bartender says, Mind? I insist! The bartender asks, By the way, what’s the name of that song you just played? It was so lovely. Man looks him in the eye, says it’s his own composition. I call it “I Want to Fuck You in the Ass, Come All Over Your Back.” The bartender blinks, but he don’t miss a beat. You got any others? he says. The piano man says, Yeah, sure, I got a million of ‘em. He plays another. Even more beautiful than the first. Bartender asks, What’s the name of that one? “All I Wanna Do Is Shove My Cock in Your Mouth So When I Shoot It Goes Up Your Nose.” Bartender winces, says to the stranger, the piano man, the guy with the long fingers, Look, man, I love your stuff, but how about we keep the titles to ourselves, whaddya say? The guy with long fingers says, Sure, no problemo.

He starts the next Tuesday night. He’s a sensation. The bar is jammed after that, people coming from far and wide to hear him play. One night a very attractive woman’s sitting, listening. Maybe we know her. Maybe we don’t. At any rate, she can’t keep her eyes off him. When he finishes his set, she comes over to talk to him. She’s beautiful, hot, sexy, maybe she got a hint of a foreign accent. Now that I think of it, it might even be Flowers, you know what I’m saying, it might even be her. But at any rate, like I said, this woman, or Flowers, or whoever, says, You play exquisitely, but do you know your fly’s open and your dick’s hanging out?

Know it? he says. I wrote it.

Bitch.

Whore.

Prostitute.

Cunt.

Fuck.

Fleur. My Fleur.

My Flowers.

Why you do it to me, Flowers?

Flowers.

Flowers?

Why you play me?

Why you play me?

Flowers.

So I’m sitting there, deep in the cushions of the hipster bar that is Cafe Tabac, coming back around, thinking, looking at Markie.

I thought if you was me, Markie, man, if you was me … him looking at me, all trusting, trying to figure it out, trying to figure me out, me knowing there’s nothing to figure, nothing to figure, poor sap.

The late Cus D’Amato, the great prize-fight trainer who had Mike Tyson when he was a boy and young man, when he was just becoming Iron Mike, pontificated, No matter what a person says, what they do in the end is what they meant to do all along.

I believe that.

I believe that.

I accept responsibility for my own self. Did I say that?

It’s so simple.

Justice so simple.