Freaks and Revelations (13 page)

He looks from her to me, wets his lips. “No, not at all. Nothing to worry about. I swear.”

“Wow, like that’s really good to know. Frank. ’Cause if I heard anything, you know, like
anything
…”

“You won’t.”

With my free hand, I close up my knife, slide it back in my pocket. “So that’s that, huh?” I look down at Rosie. “Ready?” She nods and we head out the door. We saunter down the block without looking at each other.

The second we turn the corner, we burst out laughing.

“Oh my God. You are amazing!” She pulls her cigarettes out of her purse, taps one from the pack. “I think he shit his pants.” Her hand’s shaking as she tries to light it. I take the match and do it for her.

{6}

Jenna Boston makes my dick hard just by walking past, which she’s done several times during this set. It’s our first paying gig—Jenna’s nineteenth birthday. Anne is friends with Jenna’s mom; she arranged it all. We’re outdoors, up in the really fancy homes on Blue Bird Hill. Me and Rosie are rocking out. Even Roy’s doing good. Great yard, tons of people, most of them loving it. Not many Punks, except for Jenna, who’s fresh cuts, but she’s got a flair. She’s also got huge tits. My weakness. I screw up a lyric and Rosie shoots me a look.

On our break, we head to the cooler for beer.

“You better watch that shit,” Rosie says.

“What?” I hold my palms up.

She glances to where Jenna’s approaching. “I’m not stupid, Doug.”

“Yeah, well, you better not be a big mouth either.”

“Hey, thanks for coming,” Jenna says, totally ignoring Rosie.

“No problem.” I crunch up my beer can and grab a fresh one. Rosie snorts.

“You staying the whole time?” she asks. “I mean, after you play?”

“Are we invited?” Rosie says.

Jenna still doesn’t change her gaze. “Of course you are.” Her tongue darts to touch her upper lip.

“So, Doug, is Stacie coming by?” Rosie says in a challenging tone.

“No, she’s working,” I say.

“Who’s Stacie?” Jenna asks. She finally looks at Rosie.

“My sister.” I catch Rosie’s eyes, briefly. She holds her hand by her face with the middle finger pointing up, then goes to talk with Craig and Roy. The thing we all know is, Jenna sleeps around. No reason why I shouldn’t take advantage of it. Stacie won’t care. Especially if she doesn’t find out.

“Cool.” Jenna moves a little closer and a dark-haired jock type marches over, like he’s in charge of something. He snatches her arm, pulls her away. He’s wearing a light blue Izod shirt. I hate Izod shirts.

“What are you doing?” he demands.

“None of your business, Brian,” Jenna says, snatching her arm away. “Don’t be a prick.”

“Don’t you be a bitch then.” He grabs her again. I step between so that he has to go through me to get to her.

“Back off, dude,” I say.

“That’s my girlfriend, asshole,” he says, slurring a lot.

“Like hell,” Jenna says.

“Leave it alone, huh?” I hate this guy already. “Make this easy.”

He blinks once, knocks the beer out of my hand. Reaches for Jenna again. She steps back. He lurches forward.

“You don’t want to do this, Brian.” I say his name with emphasis, making it special. He tries to punch me in the face. It’s way too easy to avoid him. I clock him on the head, open-handed. He’s not worth bruised knuckles. I doubt he feels it; he’s too drunk. People move in to watch. Craig and Rosie come up beside me.

“Let’s just play, all right?” Craig says.

“Exactly what I’m trying to do.”

“Come on then,” Rosie adds, but when I turn, Brian pushes me, like a girl would. I whirl and deck him. This time I use my fist. He lands on his butt in a bush. His nose starts to bleed. I shake my hand. That hurt! He stumbles up, rushes me, but all I have to do this time is get out of the way and let him trip on my leg. He sprawls out on the ground.

“Doug,” says Rosie, grabbing my arm, pointing. Four cops stand in the driveway.

“All right. What’s going on here?”

We find out later the neighbors called because of the noise. My luck they arrived just then. The cop in front scans the yard. Where do his eyes land? Me and Brian. He starts toward us, buddy in tow, Wyatt Earp and Doc Holiday marching to the OK Corral.

Craig whispers, “Great.”

Brian’s a jock, I’m a Punk Rocker. We all know what happens next.

“Hey, bud, what’s that you got there?” a cop asks me from behind. Some secret signal goes out and suddenly guns are up and pointed directly at me. Like fucking Starsky and Hutch.

“He’s got a weapon!”

“All of you—get your hands on your heads!”

The cops are all yelling and everybody puts their hands up, except Brian, who’s pretty much out of it. I stand perfectly still, slowly lock my fingers behind my head, keep Rosie in my sight. I’m not looking to be in the obituaries because somebody thought I was trying something. The cop pulls my switchblade out of my back pocket. It’s closed, I haven’t used it, had no plans to, but it’s there. That’s all they need.

“The rest of you—over there,” one cop orders.

The party’s busted and with it, my chance of getting laid. Brian’s twenty-two and in an Izod shirt, so he gets a lecture about “Drunk and Disorderly,” then a ride home. I get arrested. All my stuff’s at Stacie’s, so I lie and say I’m nineteen. I don’t really care if I have to go to jail; I do not want my parents knowing about it. Rosie’ll call Mark and he’ll get me out. Meantime, I’ll just be cool.

All the way downtown, the cops in the front seat make fun of my hair, my clothes, anything they can think of. At the jailhouse, my stuff is checked in. I strip and my clothes are taken away in a plastic bag. A cop sizes me up, bends me over and makes me spread my cheeks. I’m ready to hit him if he touches me, but he doesn’t. I put on an orange jump suit and get a brown paper sack with a baloney sandwich on white bread, potato chips, and a runt-sized apple. A different cop puts me into a holding cell with a old man puking all over himself. He leers up at me when he’s done. He’s missing two teeth; his breath could start a riot.

I was wrong about my I.D. I’d stashed it in the bottom of my backpack. When this is discovered, the troops return.

“You’re in
tenth grade
?” says the cop who takes me out, brandishing my school I.D. card. He obviously knows the answer; what’s the point in answering? Children’s Services shows up. A social worker takes me to a cubicle where she asks a bunch of stupid questions like did the cops treat me okay, tells me not to worry, my parents are on their way, and advises me not to say anything to the police without my mom or dad there. She and a cop walk me past puking guy to a cell all my own.

I have to pee but the toilet’s almost completely exposed to the room so I figure I’ll just hold it. But no one comes and finally I just bite it and piss away. This is all Brian’s fault. I start writing new lyrics in my head:

Kill preppies, kill preppies, die!

Vomit on the clothes they wear—

Stinking up all the air!

They’re just a bunch of fuckin’ fags!

Their chicks are always on the rag!

Kill preppies, kill preppies, DIE!

Finally, a cop unlocks the cell door and leads me down to an office, my hands cuffed behind me. I can see my mom and dad in profile through a huge office window, sitting stiffly in chairs facing a desk. A stern-faced black cop is talking. My mother’s expression is cold and tight, like when she first came back from seeing Carl in the hospital. No smile. My dad looks at the floor.

My parents don’t like whatever the cop’s saying. He sets a paper in front of them both. They sign it. I’m led into the office. They all stand and turn toward me, six-feet-four in an orange suit, suddenly feeling like I’m three years old. The handcuffs are removed. My father glares at me but my mother won’t look. They wait while I change back to street clothes, again with the social worker there. She talks to my mom as my dad and I go to the property room to get my stuff.

The walk through the parking lots takes forever.

“They got your name, now, Douglas,” my mom says, in a low scary tone. She still won’t look at me. “You’ll have no more chances. None.”

“Stupid fucking move there, Asshole,” Dad says, not yelling but in that voice where he might as well be. “Real fucking stupid.”

I feel myself shrink. I fight it.

“Well, Asshole? What do you have to say for yourself, huh?”

“I didn’t fucking do anything.”

He turns and smacks me, the one and only time. It isn’t hard, a slap to the side of the head, but I get tears anyway. I make sure he doesn’t see. “You watch your mouth in front of your mother.”

I get in my dad’s BMW.

Orange, like the one that hit me.

I think of David Steele. I feel exactly like I did lying on the floor trying to get my breath after Rockabilly punched me in the gut. I think of how good it would feel to punch my father’s face and see the surprise as he drops.

{7}

“Tonight, Doug. You got to. You need to get all that crazy shit out of you.” Me and Stace are at the Cuckoo’s Nest down in Costa Mesa. I’ve been staying at her place. I have to. My parents think they can still get away with grounding me. They’re deluded, both of them. It’s way too late for parental discipline. One day into it, I pack a couple of bags and head out the door.

“You go, you don’t come back,” my dad threatens.

I hold up my finger and keep walking.

“Asshole,” he yells.

“Prick,” I call back.

X is playing, screaming out the lyrics:

“…we’re desperate, get used to it…”

The club’s got these great big wire spools for tables—people are rolling them all over the place. It’s wild. A punk tries walking on one like those loggers on TV. Bouncers move in. Finally, they clear the space. People circle up, start to skank.

Skanking is unreal.

People hunker down really low, everybody in big ass boots with razors and kilts on over jeans. They start out like they’re running in slow motion, then go faster and faster. They throw out elbows, punching whoever’s in the way, moving things along. They make mean faces. They come onto people and roll over their backs. More people join up and they get going fast. I’m breathing hard, like I just had sex. I can’t turn away. But I still can’t make myself go in.

What wrong with me? I’m Punk. I am totally and thoroughly PUNK. I got the clothes, the hair, the attitude. What’s my problem? What the hell am I waiting for?

Stacie gives me a little shove. A wink. She bumps me with her butt. “You got to do it, babe,” she says. “You need to.”

She’s right. I can’t be half-ass anymore. That’s my parents’ generation. I have to walk my talk.

I squat down as far as I can, lean forward. I edge around the circle and play follow-the-leader, moving my arms back and forth. I feel like an idiot at first, like I’m not doing it right. I keep on anyway. Nobody’s judging. We’re in it together. I stick my elbows out and the guy behind me gets it in the nose. That’s just how it is. Round and round we go, like a training march. Like boot camp. Like I’m part of an army. Doing some badass tribal march. Powerful. Grounded. Intact. No words needed.

Somebody stomps on my foot. Somebody elbows me in the side of the head. It doesn’t matter; I can take it. I even like it. The guy in front of me falls and I step over him. I don’t know him so I don’t stop. I don’t hate him or anything, I just don’t need to help him up. The music swells. It’s bigger than the universe and faster than life. It’s inside me and it surrounds me, all at the same time.

My life is good.

Late 1978

A YEAR AND A HALF BEFORE

SAN FRANCISCO

{1}

Fisherman’s Wharf is jumping tonight. The drummers are out in front of Ghirardelli Square, rocking their beat as the hippies dance. Across the street from where the cable cars turn around, the Buena Vista blasts Donna Summer:

“Let’s dance—this last dance—tonight!!!”

Tommy grabs my hand and whirls me once in his best disco turn. I throw my head back dramatically and laugh like crazy. I catch the eye of some fat cow of a woman getting off the cable car. Probably from Wisconsin. She scowls. I wink. She whispers something to her fat cow husband. Usually, this would freak me out. Tonight, I do not care. I throw both arms around Tommy and plant one right on his lips.

I don’t sleep with Tommy, but we’re close, like Davy and me might have been if it weren’t for our mom. He takes care of me. Today, he treated me to lunch—clam chowder in a sourdough bowl, my fave—and we spare changed a bit, using the story about being brothers with a dad who OD’d. The day was hot but the weather now, early evening, is warm, with a tiny breeze. Clouds on the horizon, like there could be one of those summer rains. Beautiful and perfect. Even the fog, which lingers along the mountain, is waiting its turn.

“So what are you going to be when you grow up?” Tommy asks, licking around the ice cream cone he just bought.

“An actor,” I say. I stick the top of mine in my mouth. “I’m going to have my own TV show.”

“Me, I want to be rich,” he says. “
Filthy
rich. With a yacht and a big house in Tiburon, on the Bay.” He glances at his watch. “Ooopsie. Shall we?”

The cable cars look impossible, too many tourists, but we squeeze on anyway and ride to the end of Powell. No charge. We hop off and walk down Market to Zim’s. Nick and Adam are already eating dinner. They got some time to kill before they go to work.

“Sure you don’t want to come?” Nick teases, as he fixes his hair a bit. I’m holding the mirror.

“I keep telling you—I’m not a whore.”

“Neither am I,” Nick snaps, takes the mirror from my hand. “I’m a businessman.”

“Bitch, please,” Adam says, waggling his French fry in my face. “You do the same thing for free.” He takes a delicate last sip of milkshake.

“That’s different.” I dab a fry into the ketchup.

“Oh. Right. I forgot,” Adam says, making a prissy face. “
You
get breakfast.”

I smack him and we all laugh. They head back to Polk. Tommy has to go check on a new kid he met. I hang out to spare change, and make twelve dollars right off the bat, almost enough for food tomorrow. Good day. I smile, thinking of Fisherman’s Wharf. I wonder where Tommy is, if any of the boys are getting a room tonight. I’m about ready to head back over to check on them when a cop in a black-and-white pulls up. Double parks. Rolls down the window.

“Hey, kid,” he calls, “where are you headed?”

“Home,” I say. Why didn’t I see him? I glance each way, there’s no place to run. He gets out, comes over to the sidewalk. He’s cute. Really cute.

“It’s pretty late,” he says, checking up and down the street. “Where do you live?”

“Um, I, uh, in the East Bay?” Shit. Why don’t I lie?

“You know, son, we have curfew laws in San Francisco. I’m going to have to call your folks. Come on.” He whips out handcuffs and I turn around, put my arms behind me.

“No, that’s okay,” he says. He puts the cuffs on in front, not tight, and escorts me over to his car, holding my elbow with one hand, his other hand on my shoulder. He opens the front door, not the back. I slide in.

I’m inside a real cop car. It’s amazing. Lights and a computer right in the car! A radio that keeps buzzing and talking. I should be scared, but all I can think is—how cool. Like I’m on a TV show or in a movie, with a cop so cute he really could be an actor. His nametag says
MALONE
. I start planning how to describe him to Tommy.

He doesn’t say anything else, not to me. He nods once and I smile. Does he think I’m cute too? Hard to tell. He makes a couple of calls on his radio and we go to the station down on Bryant, where the jail is. We drive through a tall steel gate that rolls shut behind us. A police van is unloading a whole bunch of people, most of them either drunk or cussing. He waits until it’s clear, then leads me to a desk inside. I sit on a metal chair.

“Well, son, what’s your name?”

I tell him.

“Your parents’ names? Home phone?”

“Just my mom.” I tell him the number and remember how she worries about midnight calls.

“You okay?” the cute cop asks, dialing.

I nod—I really am okay. I’m great, actually. I just now realized that when a cop brings you home, your mom can’t tell you to stay away. I’m going home. I’m going to have a bath in a tub and see Marianne and Davy and I can make up and—

“Mrs. Commagere? This is Officer Malone from the San Francisco Police. I’ve just picked up your son Jason.” (pause) “No, he’s fine.” (pause) “We need to transport him back to you, so if you could—excuse me?” (long pause, cute cop glances over at me and my heart skips a beat) “Yes. Okay. What’s the address?” He scribbles, I glance over—it’s not any place I recognize. Did they move? “We’ll see you in about 45 minutes.”

Officer Malone doesn’t cuff me this time. That summer rain shows up—it starts as we head south on the 101. We cross the Dumbarton Bridge. Again, we don’t talk. I’m not quite so giddy anymore, because I don’t know what’s happening. We pull up in front of a house I don’t recognize. A sign on the gate says
DR. JEFFREY INGULSRUD, FAMILY COUNSELOR
.

My mom’s therapist. My heart races.

Is this where they hook you up to electrical wires to make you stop being gay?

“It’s okay, son,” Malone says, his hand now firmly on my shoulder. My knees wobble as we walk up to the porch. The cop knocks once on the door and an old bald guy with a scruffy beard opens it. He looks like the absent-minded professor.

“I’m Dr. Ingulsrud,” he says. “Please come in.”

It’s pouring now, like it does in movies when bad things are about to happen. We wipe mud off our feet before entering. Dr. Ingulsrud doesn’t look at me, just at my mom, who stands toward the back. She’s perfect, as always, even in the middle of the night. Her hair’s up and neatly pinned. She’s wearing a yellow shirt tucked into black pants. She doesn’t look a bit wet. She doesn’t smile or speak, just smokes her cigarette and drops the ashes in a cup on the little table. I check around for the wires but see nothing. The doctor goes to her, leans down and whispers. She nods and finally looks over at us.

“Jason, come with me,” she says. Her voice sounds natural and good. Maybe this will turn out all right. “Officer Malone, will you please stay? I won’t be long.”

“Sure.”

Maybe she’s sending me to Juvie, like she did Paul. Not much I can do about it now. Officer Malone smiles and gives me a slight nudge. I follow my mother into a room that used to be a bedroom, but now has only a table, a couch, and a chair. The doctor trails; he still hasn’t looked at me.

No wires here, either.

“Call me if you need me.” He pats her arm and leaves.

My mother stands facing me, arms crossed. She does not smile. She wears no expression at all; even her eyes are blank. My arms hang at my side. I’m having a little trouble breathing. My skin’s prickly. I want to cry but something won’t let me. I stand as still as I can and wait.

“Well?” she asks, and now her eyes are like lasers; boring into me.

I won’t let myself look away. “Well, what?” She wants me to be scared, and I am. But I’m not going to let her see it.

“You have something to say to me?”

I press my lips together. I shake my head no. She wants me to ask her forgiveness. But for what?

“Nothing??”

She wants me to beg her to let me come home.

“I don’t get it, Jason. You make that cop drag me out of bed at this ungodly hour of the morning and you have nothing to say?”

“No.” Nothing she wants to hear.

“Has anything changed?” Her eyes flash, worse than the night she put me out.

“Like what?” I match her tone, best I can.

“Are you still a fag?”

It’s like being punched where it makes you not able to breathe. I can’t talk. My mouth drops open. I have to let the word hang there. I need time to fully take it in. Finally, I take a deep breath and speak.

“I’m still gay, if that’s what you mean.”

This is when it happens.

This is what I will forget.

My mother too takes a long, deep breath. Her head jerks. She steps away from me, puts a hand on the doorknob, turns again to stare. Her voice drops deep into her body.

“No child of mine is a faggot.”

She waits. Is it a second or a year?

“Do you understand? You are not my son. I DON’T HAVE A FAGGOT FOR A SON.”

I think of dogs growling.

Of snails being crushed under shoes.

“Good for me then.” I make my voice every bit as cold as hers. “Good for me.”

“What did you say??” Deadly.

A blink. “I said—good.”

Our eyes lock, the world goes away.

“Fag,” she whispers.

“Fuck you.”

She expands like a nightmare monster, growing eight feet tall in an instant and swooping down on me. I see her hand swing back so I close my eyes. She slaps me so hard in the face, my head whips around and I fly into the wall behind me. I see stars and scramble up anyway. I try not to cry but tears come; I don’t know how to hold them back. She stares at me, her green eyes burning into my brain. As much as I want to, I can’t look away.

She blinks once, slowly, and just a hint of a smile flickers across her face. Suddenly, she’s a stranger to me, someone I’ve never even met. She turns, walks through the door, and gently closes it behind her.

It doesn’t completely shut.

Through the crack, I peek to the other room. She lights a cigarette, her hands shaking. Mine are too. She starts to cry. The therapist puts an arm around her, pats her shoulder. Officer Malone glances toward the door, then puts his hand on her other shoulder. They all start to talk, low and intense. I can’t hear the words, but I know what they’re planning. Malone glances again.

I know what I have to do.

I shut the door and quietly push the button to lock it. My whole body’s shaking now. I can barely crawl through the old sash window. I scratch my arm on a nail and see it start to bleed, but don’t feel the cut. I drop to the ground and move as quick as I can, staying in the trees alongside the road, making it harder for them to follow. I look for the railroad tracks we saw coming out. If I can find them, I can find my way.

How do I know this?

There they are! I fly along them and round a bend and in this instant, know exactly where I am: these are the tracks where Davy, Paul, and I used to play, they’re only a mile from the old house. I find the street. I go almost the exact path I took that first night, down to the train, to BART, passing St. Anne’s.

At the station, I stand in the shadow of the pillar over on the side where the train will stop. I pray I haven’t missed the last train. I stand straight, not touching anything. The rain’s stopped. I don’t know how long I wait. My legs tremble slightly from the running. Someone speaks to me, a guard? I stare at him; he shakes his head and blows air out of his mouth and moves away.

My body slowly disappears; my hands, my head, my face, gently drifting, like fog in wind. The train pulls in and I watch myself walk through the door, find a seat. I sit straight, upright, alone in the car. I don’t move. I don’t look out the window. I blink and we go down under the ocean. I feel? hear? the click-clacking on the tracks; it wraps around me, keeps me in place. I blink and watch myself climbing the stairs up out to the city.

Market Street’s empty, like the first night. I go a block and then, suddenly, my body returns and I cannot walk one more step. I’m too heavy with pain I have no way to describe except that it seems to have soaked into every cell. I duck into an alley to lean against the wall, stare into—what? There is no city anymore.

No sky.

No lights or trees.

No stars or buildings.

I am connected to nothing.

A cricket chirps.

A breeze touches my cheek.

I draw in air—once, then again. How long have I been standing? A stray dog sniffs my fingers and I look down at him, scraggly and skinny. He dips his muzzle under my hand and peers up with his sad, dark dog eyes. I stroke his head a few times. He licks me once and trots off down the street. Somehow I manage to push myself up off the wall. It’s the hardest thing I’ve ever done.

I put one foot forward, then the other. I don’t see what’s around me. I’m not sure when I end up at Dolores Park, or why I find a corner to huddle in. Why I take out my green sweater to wrap around my shoulders when I don’t feel cold. I blink and watch Tommy and Nick come across the grass. Nick says words but I’m not getting them. Tommy hunkers down and gathers me in, holds me, rocks me. He strokes my face with his hand.