Smiths' Meat is Murder (7 page)

A line of cars was starting to form behind us. I looked back and a lone, red-faced man in a suit was getting visibly frustrated by the wait, pounding the wheel and throwing his hands up in the air. His pink jowls spilled over the top of his buttoned collar. I could see him mouth the words, “Come on,” as he jerked his car out of line and drove off, only to brake hard and dissolve into the endless creep of traffic. Going nowhere fast.

“What do you think about Allison from study?” I asked Ray, not looking at him, but past him. The girl inside the Greeks was working at unfolding a cardboard
tray for our coffees. He was quiet for about half a minute while he rummaged through his pockets for money.

“What do you mean by, ‘What do I think about Allison?’ Do I think she’s good looking or smart or do I like talking to her or what?” Ray questioned me back, with more animation than I was expecting.

“You talk to her?” I asked.

“No. I mean, she likes good music and everything, and you know, we talk about records sometimes. But we don’t really
talk
talk.” Ray paid the girl and handed me the coffees and doughnuts while he got himself situated for driving. “Murph’s sister Patty is pretty good friends with her. Me, Murph, Patty, Corcoran, Allison, Francesca D’Angeniro from Weymouth and some kids from North Quincy High … I don’t know, about ten of us, all drove down to Providence February for the Furs concert in Murph’s mother’s station wagon.”

“Oh, I didn’t know you knew her.”

“I don’t really know her,” Ray said. “I’ve talked to her, but I don’t
know her
know her. She’s Murph’s sister’s friend. Why do you want to know anyway?” Ray asked, sliding the shades down his nose a bit, as if to prove he still had eyes.

“Yesterday after study—after Bloody tore me a new ass—Allison passed me a note with all of the song titles from the album written out in order.”

“What album?” Ray asked.

“This album. Plus she wrote she’d see me tomorrow,” I said, replenishing the ninety percent of volume he had previously dialed out.

“No shit,” he yelled, shaking his head and smiling. “She’s pretty cute.” The car shifted into drive with the same baritone clang as before. When Want ‘I Want The One I Can’t Have’ finished playing, I rewound it, and we listened to it again. And then one more time.

* * *

Allison was not yet in her seat when I showed up for the start of second period. I took my place in the front row and worked maniacally to appear relaxed. But I was sweating and fidgety as I waited for her to make her entrance. I tried to gauge what would be her eye level in the empty space outlined by the doorjambs. Toward that place I directed an intense stare that said, I
am so much more serious and deserving of your attention than any of these other buffoons.

She’ll be looking right at me. She’ll be looking right at me, I thought in a way that was half command, half prayer. When my eyes locked hard with those of the wrong mark, it was obvious I had grossly miscalculated Allison’s height. My lack of familiarity with her physical dimensions instantly drove the point home: I basically knew nothing about her.

I readjusted the aiming mechanism and shook my stare free from that of the wrong girl who was unaware of the magic in the air. She piped up in perfect Bos-tonian, like JFK on helium, “Allison’s absent tiday, Sis-tah.” She was a miniature girl named Margaret who liked to go by Peg (one of the two hundred Margarets in my school). Peg was a leftover acquaintance of Allison’s from grammar school and looked like she was just entering puberty at sixteen.

I felt myself beginning to wilt, and I let out a groan, then disguised it as a cough. I’d have to wait until Monday to see her. I would have gladly given up the next two days of my life to make it Monday. Under the best conditions, a single Sunday afternoon could take forever in suburbia. There was nothing to do but stew in the crappy inevitability of Monday. Sweaty-faced, perverted evangelists and round table pundits had a choke-hold on the airwaves. No distracting stores were open, and even if they were—through some loophole in the antiquated Blue Laws—the buses all ran a Sunday schedule which meant more waiting and thinking … about Monday.

“They think she has mono, but they don’t know yet for sure.”

I wanted to strangle the little terrorist. “There’s a good chance she could be out for the rest of the term,” added the vicious little slip of a thing.

Oh, puny Peg, with your toddler-sized, mono-grammed Shetland wool sweaters, one for every color in the visible spectrum. Peg, of the school spirit preachers. Peg, of the pre-prom gymnasium decorators, the slow-dancers, the ‘Sad Eyes’ singers, could I have accidentally stomped on your foot, as tiny as an eclair? Did I mock your two-handed milk carton grip? Or your hummingbird sips? Surely not I, you demi-sadist, you late-bloomer! You perfect-attender, as healthy as a pedigree toy pony.

The clock inched backwards as I began living my rendition of the first stage of grieving. Allison seemed more dead to me than the truly dead. When people spoke to me in the halls or in The Lung, I heard every fourth word and looked over their shoulders in hopes she’d turn the corner. It was no use. The school was definitely without her. And somehow I knew she wasn’t coming back. I went home that day and adopted phantom symptoms of her affliction.

* * *

Charles was this guy a grade ahead of me. He was more than mildly effeminate, which was an unfortunate trait to have in Catholic high school, one that usually guaranteed its possessor an endless supply of negative attention. If you were gay—or even suspected of being gay—you
had, on one hand, the faculty toeing the company line. They preached from rote about the perils due you for committing such immoral, unnatural and—in some states—illegal acts. And then, just for a bit of comic relief, you had squads of neckless fun-lovers who basically wanted to kill you.

I don’t know what it’s like today. I imagine, or at least hope, that high schools are marginally less hostile towards homosexuals, suspected or otherwise. But back then? Not so good. There were some real birds of prey in my school (and did I mention that there was only one black person at St. Longinus, and he left after two years).

Charles was spared because he held (and broke a couple times in ’84–’85) the Catholic Conference record for some indoor race. I don’t know, I think it was the ten trillion meter dash. Big deal. He was from Southie, and growing up would have had plenty of incentive to run like a crazy fucker. He had himself a pair of million dollar stilts and was going to Boston University, full boat. The faculty basked in the notoriety he brought to Saint Longinus High School. After he broke the record the second or third time, all three local TV stations did features on him. The school administrators were licking their chops thinking about the influx of new applicants to Saint Longinus High … and the cash. Charles was something of a made man.

I had spent my entire school career in the Catholic school farm system and posted good numbers before getting the call up to the big leagues: Saint Longinus High. Right up until I was accpeted, I had no clue who Saint Longinus was. In a nutshell, he was the Roman soldier who finished Jesus off with his sword while the latter faded on the cross. The former went on to appreciate the shortcomings of his action and decided to live the rest of his life in the “spirit” of the latter. Everyone knows what the latter did: He inspired, among other things, excellence in athletics. The mascot at Saint Longinus High School was a sword. An inanimate object. It didn’t make a hell of a lot of sense.

There was an English teacher named Sister Patricia Ralph. She was known as Ye Olde Salt. Her face resembled that of the actor M. Emmett Walsh, but with a few rogue whiskers jumping ship from her dermis. She used to like to say, “The sword of Saint Longinus
is
alive.” Anyway, we were called the Saint Longinus Swords. Behind his back, Charles was The Blade.

I really could not have cared less about the indoor track records Charles held. And the fact that he was gay (among other more colorful and creative self-descriptions, “as queer as a three-pound note” would become an old standby of his) made me a little uncomfortable at first. How could I not be uncomfortable? I had been on the receiving end of a decade’s worth of
negative, faith-based bullshit. I had never knowingly known anyone who was gay. And AIDS had already been firmly rooted in the consciousness of America as “the gay disease.” Homosexuality was getting some especially bad press then. Come to think of it, if you weren’t as straight and white as Loni Anderson’s chicklets, you had your work cut out for you.

What did interest me about Charles was an ancillary talent of his, one that didn’t do much to counter his flamboyant image: Charles played piano like a virtuoso in all of the school musicals, and could kick the living shit out of a showtune. It’s cliché, but it’s true. Showtunes weren’t exactly my bag, but his talent was formidable and undeniable.

Hello, Dolly, Guys and Dolls, South Pacific, Grease,
no problem. He owned those scores, not only figuratively, but literally. During the rumble scene in
West Side Story,
when the score called for the players in the orchestra pit to go completely apeshit, I could have sworn he tipped his hat to ‘Bodies’ by The Sex Pistols. That May, I walked away from our first conversation convinced that he had.

“You’re the kid starting the band, right? You into Japan?”

I stopped fumbling with my locker, surprised, disoriented. I thought he meant the country. He was wearing too much Polo cologne, though at that age it struck me as confident and mature.

“Umm, I guess so,” I answered stupidly. He seemed a little frustrated by my lack of enthusiasm, as if a preconceived notion or two of his own had been validated.

“What about Kate Bush?”

“Don’t really know her,” I said. He let out a groan, then pointed his thumbs at the badges fixed to his breast, which read:
The Dreaming
and
The Kick Inside
respectively.

“The Cure, Joy Division, Bowie, Bauhaus, The Smiths? Tell me you like The Smiths.”

The Smiths? The Smiths?, I thought. “I love The Smiths,” I said, holding up my walkman for him as if he’d be able to see the poorly marked cassette inside.

He let out a sigh I took to be genuine and said, “Thank God, because I don’t think you could be my bass player if you didn’t like The Smiths.”

Charles was as noticeable on campus for his appearance as he was for being a gay star athlete. His style of dress was new wave, though the ill-informed called it punk. The guys’ uniform at Saint Longinus was pretty drab: blue pants, a solid dress shirt in pastel colors only, school tie, leather shoes (no canvas). Because Charles was famous, he got away with dressing like Ducky’s wardrobe consultant for the movie
Pretty in Pink.

He wore ruffled tuxedo shirts, or gas station shirts that used to belong to Freds or Tonys. And skinny, satin (or leather) ties decorated with piano keys or an
embroidered dancing Elvis. And hand-tooled, dangerous looking belts that were watered down versions of gun holsters from the old West. His pants were pleated like accordians or Chinese fans, and were always pegged just above his low-heeled, pointy leather shoes (in white, red, black or gray). His hair was one hundred percent Flock of Seagulls, and sometimes jet-black, sometimes blond or red.

He definitely knew how to exude confidence through fashion. Despite the rumors, the girls fell for him the way they fell for Michael Jackson after the
Thriller
TV special of ’84.

“I’m booked solid until the end of the semester, but after that we can get together and I’ll teach you some songs. No,” he added, interrupting his own thought, “Learn the songs on
Meat is Murder
and we’ll get together in June. Deal?” I had never heard a seventeen-year-old describe himself as “booked solid” before. He was made to be a frontman.

“Umm … OK … I guess so,” I said, feeling a bit railroaded and at the same time absolutely positive that come summer I’d be in Charles’s band and not my own.

* * *

When Allison didn’t come back to school I stayed pretty depressed for the rest of the term, and my mood carried
over into the summer like a compounding late fee. The combined heat and humidity in suburbia was as smothering as a dead horse thrown over the castle wall by a war-loving nut job. Ray said that Murph’s sister Patty said that Allison was feeling a lot better, but was still too weak to do much more than sit on the couch and talk on the phone or watch
The Guiding Light.

“You should give her a call and cheer her up,” Ray said, smiling around two soon-to-be lit cigarettes stuck between his lips. It was dusk and we were drinking a couple racks of Narragansetts, seated in the cab of a piece of heavy construction equipment. I think it was a back hoe. For a few weeks they had been resurfacing the streets in my neighborhood, and some of the heavier pieces of equipment were parked every night on a cul-de-sac surrounded by woods at the end of the development. It was a perfectly shielded place for drinking. And within stumbling distance from my house.

“You think I should?” I questioned Ray back. He hated getting a question for an answer.

“Why not?” Ray said, childishly moving the cigarette toward me and pulling it out of my reach each time I went for it.

“Cut the shit,” I snapped, standing almost upright for the necessary extension. I grabbed the smoke, took a long, therapeutic haul and exhaled lamely, “I don’t even know her number.”

“You
cut the shit. You don’t know her number?” Ray said mockingly. “Why don’t you grow yourself a pair of balls? I mean, she’s pretty cool. She’s excellent. And she’s probably into you. So don’t be such a pussy.”

“What do you mean she’s into me? Did she say something to Murph’s sister?” The new light in my eyes must have looked pathetic to Ray.

“No, she didn’t say anything to Murph’s sister. At least not that I know of. Just call her, for fuck’s sake. What’s she going to tell you? Fuck off? Big fuckin’ deal.” He was on a roll, knee-deep in the kind of eloquent language a four-beer buzz brings on. He went on excitedly, using every last molecule of oxygen in his lungs, the way a chain-smoking Italian great aunt does when she’s trying to force a point of gossip across the post-dinner table. “If you don’t call her, some other asshole will, and you, my friend, will sulk the summer away at the Snip and Save with your dick in your hand. And I’ll never hear the end of it. So do it. Do it for my sake. Please. Do it!”