Smiths' Meat is Murder (6 page)

I looked over at Allison and she was smiling. Not exactly at me, more like for me. She glowed like a brunette madonna night light. She had been secretly reading a paperback copy of
Nine Stories
tucked inside
a giant mindfuck of a religion textbook (we actually had religion textbooks) called
Love and Loving.
It was supposed to be a hip, how-to guide for Catholic teenagers trying to “get a grip on relationships.” Grip. Grip. Grip.
Just remember, no self-gripping. No gripping of another before marriage, and keep in mind, the goal of marital gripping is to make little Catholic-baby grippers. Gripping of another with the same grippables as oneself is strictly prohibited by God.
It’s odd, but I never thought for one minute that premarital sex was wrong. Sure, I’ve experimented with long periods of abstinence, but not by choice.

Allison’s Ups were freshly glossed, and when she smiled, they parted to show me and me alone that her teeth and gums were, unbelievably, as glossy. I was filling up with bravery.

“Ray, what’s the first song called, the one about the Manchester schools and wanting to go home? That’s a fucking great song. The best fucking song of the decade.” I said more loudly than before. Ray looked over and winked in recognition. Allison smiled at me and blushed, then hid her face in
Love and Loving.
I had no idea what I was doing to her, but I was doing something right. She had smiled and blushed: two very good things.

It must have been a combination of The Smiths and my passionate submission to their greatness, the asthma attack (chicks dig the sick guy) or Kirkwood’s Maxi pad
fiasco. Whatever it was, I believed I had a chance with her, and a new type of optimism filled me and made me feel more alive than I ever had before.

“That … will be … enough … of that … mister!” Bloody growled with her teeth clenched. Saliva shot out of the sides of her mouth, all over the audience. She drummed her fingers on the pitted top of her black oak desk, and her talons clacked violently as chips of varnish and patina seemed to shoot from her hands like dead fireworks. A massive green vein in her forehead throbbed catastrophically close the surface of her opaque skin, then thought better of it.

A single dirty band-aid ran vertically along her left temple and appeared to be wholly and unconditionally accepted by her body as skin. Legend had it that the same bandage had been fixed to the same tract of wrinkled landscape for no less than five years, and that it prevented her three hundred-year-old insides from oozing out onto her three hundred-year-old outsides.

Allison was no longer laughing. Kiley sobered up. I was alone. Deep down I knew it was a comical situation, but it was still terrifying in a way. It’s no joke: If the nuns broke you at a young enough age (I was pretty young when they started in on me with their notes home telling our parents not to let us watch the TV show
Soap
or see
The Life of Brian),
you were partially theirs for life, whether you believed it or not. I could feel my
bronchial tubes clenching as three little words from Bloody’s lips grabbed me by the throat, “GET UP HERE!”

With the help of some dark angel, she pulled a pink detention slip out of thin air. As she wrote, she leaned on the pen so hard it visibly flexed and threatened to explode: Detention—one week. I took the slip in my shaking hand and went to sit down. Allison looked at me and sympathetically mouthed, with soap opera-day–dream slowness, “Fuuuuuuuck.”

Did she mean “fuck” as an interrogative, an imperative or just a plain old declarative, I wondered, as my tingling body crudely bent to the will of the one-piece desk/chair unit. Allison’s interest in my corporal well being was intoxicating. Briefly, I no longer belonged to the nuns, but to her.

“And if anyone else would like the same, there’s plenty more where that came from … Mr. Kiley?”

Though Bloody was one witty and persuasive nun, there were no takers. The room was dead quiet for the remainder of the period. My heart was pounding so hard I could hear it almost exclusively. I kept looking over at Allison to see if she’d look back, but she didn’t. Not once. Not even a nod. No blush. No smile. She just stared at her book and wrote occasionally on a spiral notepad. I was instantly crestfallen and certain everyone
could tell. The detention slip was like a sweaty tissue in my hand. My name was a smudge.

I was jarred to attention when the last bell rang. The crowded classroom split open like a scab. Without breaking stride or speaking, Allison dropped a folded note on my desk as she passed. I noticed she had carefully removed all of the fringe from the paper. I opened the note, alone except for Bloody and her invisible band of dutiful sprites. In blue ink, in the sexiest, most mature cursive handwriting I had seen to date, she’d written the following:

1. The Headmaster Ritual

2. Rusholme Ruffians

3. I Want The One I Can’t Have

4. What She Said

5. That Joke Isn’t Funny Anymore

6. How Soon Is Now

7. Nowhere Fast

8. Well I Wonder

9. Barbarism Begins at Home

10. Meat is Murder

See you tomorrow,

Allison

I was in love with her penmanship. I studied the way she dotted her
i’s
and crossed her
t’s
for insight into the secret inner self I imagined she was dying to let out. She was obviously intimately aquainted with the very album that crushed me more with each spin. It was too perfect. A powerful, ready-made connection.
Meat is Murder
was the giant shaded area of intersection in our Venn diagram. The trick was to somehow convert the motherlode of our love of the album into love for each other.

Allison’s note read like a thirteen line poem. I went over it a few more times then folded it in a tight, even square. I dried a small place next to the slimy soapdish on the bathroom sink vanity and put the walkman down there. I carefully pried open the belt clip on the walkman and slid the folded note in the place where a belt should be. I gently released the clip and at the same time adjusted the note a little from side to side, just making sure everything was centered and even and preserved.

To my disappointment, I failed to conjure up an accurate mental image of Allison while I sat on the toilet, listening to ‘Barbarism Begins at Home’. Every innocent family member who opened the bathroom door after hearing no response to knocking received a variation of the same fierce earful, “Give me a friggin’ break! I’ll be done in a minute!”

* * *

I have no idea how many times I listened to
Meat is Murder
that night in bed, but it was a lot. Every song was, or would soon be, about my life and Allison’s place in it. I was short-listed for the starring role in the Off-Off Broadway musical production of
The Cathexis Handbook.

I fumbled in the dark for the light switch, took out my notebook and started to write a sentence for each song:
School is a waste of time, except for Allison. Jocks are violent assholes (find out if Allison goes for jocks). I want Allison. I’ve already scratched her initials on my leg; that counts. I am human and I need to be loved by Allison, Allison, Allison. Allison smokes because she wants to die (because she needs someone to know her) … I wonder if she has a car we can have sex in? Does she see me when she passes, because I look for her everywhere.
Stuff like that.

It proved more of a challenge to bend and apply the song ‘Meat is Murder’ to fit the simple curves of my life. The problem was I liked meat. A lot. I was raised on meat. I had probably eaten meat at no less than two meals a day for the past twelve years. I thought about one of my earliest memories, when I was about four years old, unable to finish a cheeseburger, and my mother gently telling me,

“Just eat the meat. Just eat the meat.” Eating the meat had always won me my mother’s approval, in the
form of a pat on the head, a kind word, or a cookie of some sort. I started to kick around that idea for a while and soon fell asleep convinced vegetarianism might be the catalyst I so badly needed: for what, I wasn’t sure. To my list I added:
Find out if Allison is a vegetarian.

That night I had a dream that was equal parts ‘Rusholme Ruffians’ and James Joyce’s ‘Araby’: I am alone, wandering the walkways at the poorly attended, fly-by-night Brockton Carnival. Everything is gray, and flea-dusted puddles of standing water pool on the seats of the dormant, rickety rides. I have recently pinched my finger in the rusted safety clasp on the Tilt-A-Whirl. It will probably require a tetanus shot. There’s a real threat of more rain and some random violence. The ground is already muddy and cannot tolerate another soaking. I am feeding an upset stomach with a blue mushroom cloud of cotton candy.

Next to the reeking porta-potty, one man stands behind Allison and firmly strokes the back of her head while cupping her left breast so that it’s raised visibly higher than the right. Another sways in front of her and worms a massive dirty thumb into her open mouth. His other hand is buried to the elbow up her dress.

As I move to slap my hand down hard on the shoulder of the brute having his thumb sucked, he turns around explosively and drives his bare fist wrist-deep into the flesh of my stomach. Before I collapse and go unconscious,
I press the cotton candy to my wound and start paraphrasing a speech I attribute to the dying Fiorello Laguardia. The warm blood causes the blue woolly sugar to melt and run purple to my crotch. I am too tired and thirsty to continue speaking. I pass out to the sound of the three of them laughing and applauding.

The next morning I wake up to find that I’ve come.

* * *

“I’m hoping for an early death,” I said to Ray as I slid onto the smooth vinyl passenger seat. He had barely brought the car to a complete stop and he stabbed the gas hard before I had the door closed. His hair was still wet, unusually volumeless, and he was wearing a huge pair of mirrored sunglasses like the state cops wore. A lit smoke fell from my mouth and rolled out of sight on the floor. The rubber mat was almost completely hidden by old newspapers, coffee cups, a rotten pair of red canvas Connies, a thousand cassette tapes and some aborted books and schoolwork.

“This place is a fucking fire hazard. You should install a sprinkler,” I said in a strained voice while reaching my arm deep beneath the seat. There was a hole in the floor about the size of a dinner plate, and I could see the road racing by through a section of it. “Hey, Flintstone, I can’t find my smoke in this dump.”

“Don’t bother,” Ray said. “The carpet under there is soaking wet. That smoke is dead by now.” He turned to me and cracked an exaggerated, toothy smile. I could see a reflection of myself grinning in his glasses. Beneath the seat, my hand grazed something that felt like the elastic waistband from a damp pair of mens’ briefs. I pulled my hand away fast and wiped it on the carpeted door until my fingers were rug burned.

“I’m going to swing by the Greeks for a coffee. You in?” Ray asked.

“Why not? It’s Friday. We’re already ten minutes late. Might as well be twenty,” I said, wiping some more of the toxic residue off my fingers, onto the dashboard. Allison wasn’t in my first period class, so I had no problem missing it. Besides, it was the nicest weather of the year so far. Soft morning sunshine, the air warm and filled with a cheerful but false optimism.

All in one week, I was falling in love with a girl and discovering an album that got right under my skin easier than a deer tick. Allison and
Meat is Murder
were hopelessly intertwined. There are few things delightful than listening to an album that is the soundtrack to a great, soaring love affair. On the other hand, the surest way to render it eternally and painfully unlistenable is to connect it to a serious relationship that goes down sadder than a jumbo jet into a hospice for addicts.
In the
event of a loss of cabin pressure, a mask supplying ample cyanide gas will drop from the ceiling. …
And if one of the songs is really popular, or if the title is the name of the other person, you might as well jump from the bell tower onto a pile of English bicycles because you’re as good as dead anyway. I knew I was playing with fire, but it was out of my hands. I was pointed directly at the sun and the heat felt good.

I popped side one into the cassette player, rolled the window down and cranked the chrome and bakelite volume knob. The car’s interior nearly cracked on the downbeat of one, and it overflowed with guitar melodies and piercing, glorious treble. We wanted everyone to hear. Morrissey’s vocals—at ear-numbing volume— enraged both mother and meathead alike, and we absolutely loved it. If I hadn’t been so anxious to see Allison in second period, I would have suggested to Ray that we ditch school, grab a six-pack of Narragansett tallboys and spend the day cruising around Nantasket Beach.

Ray cut the volume by ninety percent as he pulled up to the Greeks’ drive-thru window. The engine idled hard and fast, and the Dart jolted forward with a baritone clang as he shifted into park.

“Yeah, let me have two regular coffees and two chocolate frosted doughnuts.” The girl at the drive-thru window took the order then vanished back into the void.
Ray sat at the wheel, tapping his fingers on his lap, and stared—from what I could tell—at nothing in particular through his gigantic shades.

“You’re right,” he said. “This is a fucking amazing album. A heavy album.” He was quiet for a few seconds. He started to say something, hesitated, then went on, “I don’t know if you don’t like talking about it because he was your friend and all, but ‘That Joke Isn’t Funny Anymore’ just started reminding me of your friend who shot himself. And I never even met him. I guess it’s just the whole suicide thing.” Ray was pretty sharp and let it drop when I said nothing.

We thought we were old, but we were so young and ill-equipped. I certainly was, though at least Ray was trying. I couldn’t even talk about an old friend’s suicide. I mean, I had nothing to say.