The More You Ignore Me (19 page)

He did.

Strange.

I admit things got weird for Rico and me at this time.

What I thought would happen—that he would embark on promiscuous romps with various women and that I would watch—did not happen.

Evidence of these romps, I believed, would cause Rachil to come back to him in a frenzy of jealousy, and so I waited and waited, notebook and recorder in hand.

But I soon came to realize I would perhaps have to adjust my plans, force the issue, take up the cudgel myself, for Rico seemed to merely want to be “friends” with these various young women he knew and spent time with.

One night, as the sun had begun to set on another sexless summer day, Rico had wandered out to the gravel parking lot behind the “Parkside Loco,” his shift finally over.

He loafed against a Camaro, slouching in a way I found distasteful—how would he ever win Rachil back with such posture!—but before I could say anything from my spot in the darkness, a young man with slick hair and a put-on sneer walked up, tossing his keys in the air.

“Lookin' for a ride,” this greased monkey said to Rico, “or a fight?”

Rico looked him up and down.

“I'm looking for a ride to a fight,” he said—witty, to my astonishment—and the boy smiled a queer (yes!) smile as he approached the Camaro.

(Time passed).

(Blood).

I imagined Rico tasted metal at the back of his throat, just as I did there at the “nightclub.”

The salt in the sweat on the bristles of his lip—he licked it, swallowed, threw his head so a curly forelock flew back, only to flop forward again.

He smiled and snorted, bounced on the balls of his feet and threw his arms wide.

Dancing to a song with a melodramatic vibrato that pulsed between his legs as I felt it between mine.

I admit, it felt good.

There was little light.

An arm snaked around his waist and disappeared somewhere behind him.

A hot mouth on his earlobe, but later.

Men?

Men!

Of course!

He liked men!

I still hoped he thought of soft girl skin when he kissed these men, when their spiny man-necks were under his fingers, their ****s demanding attention at his belt.

Surely he preferred pliant, crumpling females, but . . . men have something to give and something else to take, true.

I couldn't blame him for wondering.

I wondered myself for a time in my high school years, slyly fondling sleepover mates after they had fallen asleep, comparing our genitalia by heft and caress.

Rico would try to figure it out here, also without light but with cognizant bulging limbs and constant muscles, sweaty pushing in.

In.

In!

Surely, dear readers, you know what it's like?

He would try to decide what kind of power he wanted to give off, what kind to take in.

He would understand the vulnerable when stall-secure, hands on the cool concrete, where an improbably big thing (my word!) would push its way inside him.

To understand the world, one must know both sides of penetration.

This is true.

He was not a violent man.

He did not love.

He secured pleasure.

He intercepted power.

I understood.

I was familiar with this bar, with its ways.

I drank my drink and waited.

Later, breathless, Rico stumbled back toward the church in the dark heat, and I felt the hard bones and muscle lifting off my own body as he surely must have felt too.

It's clear that since adolescence he has had to pluck his eyebrows where they met in the center of his face.

He would have had to grasp each brow hair with tweezers and gently pull.

The sound of the hair sliding in the pore, then the follicle pop.

It left a lovely red welt.

Tweezing was a morning ritual, after shower, before shaving, before dressing for school or work.

The sting was exquisite.

But this summer he stopped.

Just to see, I can imagine, just as he wanted to “see” with men.

Within a month we saw a face that had long threatened to emerge from the morning mirror.

The unibrow.

Crisis.

An odd smudge across his face that caused people to peer into his mien then pull back, startled.

But it had kept the sweat from his eyes at the bar, and in the dark heat of his walk home he rubbed it with gratitude while my own eyes stung (for I pluck and pluck still to this day!).

His body took care to keep his self from experiencing pain.

But the self did not shield his body from pain.

Strange!

The self worried sores and wished, as it did now, for his physical head to split open like a melon and the demon to rise out of the orbital nougat and spend ammunition on the whole stupid town.

Was he gay?

No.

He stuck his arms out straight, fingers flexed, and let out a burred howl, throat burning and buzzing from the night's cigarettes.

A few lights came on in the dark houses, but, despite my own fear of discovery, Rico took no notice.

Grinning, he pulled his fuzzy face into his hands and kept walking blindly down the sleepy streets.

Surely now his mind plunged toward failure, negative thoughts clinging to one another, gathering mass and hurtling toward some disastrous center.

Who was he?

He shook his head and tried to stop his mind with grunts.

I had noticed this happening occasionally, a shame spiral, and when it did happen, when the shame spirals fully sucked him in, he wouldn't emerge from the church for days, no matter the phone calls, the classes, or the job schedules, the hectoring from the window.

We know how it is, don't we, dear readers?

He felt his cells shrivel to tiny currants and blood would wash over everything he saw.

As a child, we would also throw incredible tantrums, holding our breath until we passed out, stomping our army men and kicking anyone hoping to restrain us, would we not?

And, of course, bellowing at the top of our lungs, ragged rage coming through in bleats and sobs.

The tantrums wouldn't erupt when we simply did not get our way; no, they would erupt when we reached the limit of our ability and could go no further.

In my child mind, for example, I could draw Mother's boyfriend with crayon in a perfect likeness—I could see
it clearly, the shading on the nose, the eyelashes, the handsome canine-tooth smile beneath the mustache.

It would be perfect.

But then I would begin and each line would be too thick, the sticky crayon smudging the precise marking and then, at last, it would just be a kid's drawing of a man.

Silly.

And little me would erupt wildly when told as much!

Mother would cast my potential stepfather a chilly look and then say to me, “Honey, I'm not going to let you play with the crayons if you're going to get so upset.”

A cascade of blocks flung.

A door slammed.

Fat shoes kicked against the wall.

Surely Rico didn't like being this way either, and the shame was what would often keep him in his room.

But the deepest secret of this secret night is not that Rico had been experimenting with the same sex (for we are not so ignorant to the reality of the world as to condemn such experimentation), but that this night of deepest and strangest experimentation is also the night when I took it upon myself to take a more direct role in the proceedings.

I stepped out from the shadows.

“Rico,” I said, “you must get that eyebrow under control.”

For a large boy, he moved surprisingly quickly into a kind of feral crouch, eyes wide and darting.

“Don't worry,” I said. “I'm a friend. I want to help.”

I offered him a piece of Clark Bar I had been keeping in my pocket.

He pondered it.

“Listen,” I said. “I need to tell you about Rachil.”

His crouch uncoiled, but he remained silent.

The street was a moonscape, asphalt and seedpods.

“Follow me,” I said, and, after a light hesitation, he did.

I clapped him on the shoulder (so tense!) and we made our way slowly back to the church, through the early-morning heat.

Along side streets, while I explained, as delicately as I could, that his best friend was raping his ex-girlfriend repeatedly, he slowly grew comfortable in my presence.

It was like we were old friends!

Of course, I couldn't offer proof, per se, of the acts I was revealing to him, and I realize now having some documentation would have made my job a bit easier (we seemed to walk for hours), but I eventually convinced Rico through careful and thorough descriptions of the
acts I had observed (I admit some embellishments, but the end justified the means).

The poor fool was a blubbering mess by the time we reached his block.

It took even more convincing on my part to keep him from going to the authorities (he had such blind faith in the authorities! Why?), but I eventually pumped him up, got him on his feet, and practically frog-marched him the rest of the way to the church.

We emerged from my well-worn secret path through the neighbor's backyard, and there was Tater, lounging in his army jacket, smoking a tea stick.

He waved to me (not Rico).

Yes, yes, I nodded, waving him off.

The leaves and branches cleared, and we saw through the lighted kitchen window Rachil, on her feet, gesturing wildly with a cigarette in hand, and Corn, seated at the small “dining” table, doubled over in laughter.

Rico paused.

He looked at me with those sad eyes as if to say, “Could it really be true? Look how happy they seem!”

I whispered another choice detail or two from my observations and lo, I'm surprised the privet and scrub didn't swirl into a cyclone behind him, he moved so fast!

I scurried with delight in his wake.

The nervous system!

“I know what you did that night,” Rico said, trembling with rage, hulking in the doorway.

Corn and Rachil returned his gaze with ashen faces that went comically agog when I peered over his shoulder.

“Who the **** is that?” Corn said, pointing a twiggy finger.

“I know you,” Rachil said, in a kind of shock, “You're . . .”

I smiled as I made my entrance.

“You're that guy from the movie theater!”

I admit that stung a bit.

Yes.

That is all I was to her.

You see, dear readers, it was not yet time for me to reveal my real identity, though, true, I had considered it on the walk over, but it became clear in my mind that I should wait.

She was not ready.

And it's true, I didn't have any reason to believe she would ever be ready, so my plan was to ingratiate myself with her this way and reveal the truth to her some bright afternoon as we walked along the campus, the north side, where the lilacs bloom.

Here at the church, I merely smiled my Matthew Broderick smile.

“At your service,” I said and gave a little bow.

As I rose, I saw Rico's right foot upending the table as he lunged for Corn, sending cigarette butts and a (curious) glass of milk to crash and splatter against the wood paneling.

Rico, grown much larger than his effete friend, easily pinned his opponent under his ample belly on the carpet in front of the “stage.”

Rico's fighting technique amused me.

I sidled up to Rachil and gave her a dig in the ribs with my elbow and a couple of eyebrow jumps, but she shrank from me, continuing to shriek.

I was a bit put out.

We watched Rico push Corn's face into the carpet, mashing the nose until blood poured forth.

This I liked.

But then, while I yelled “Rapiste!” and clapped my hands together, Rico rotated himself on top of Corn and ripped open the crotch of Corn's khaki shorts with both hands.

Rachil's shrieking achieved a remarkable pitch.

Corn kept up an incessant, breathy mutter: “Get the **** off me; get the **** off me; get the **** off me.”

Rico pulled Corn's business out of the hole he had torn in the shorts, reared back, and gave Corn's genitalia one (quite accurate!) punch.

It sounded like a stone dropped into a bowl of pudding from a great height.

I could hardly contain my delight and began emitting my noises, but when I turned to Rachil with a smile, I saw that she was sobbing uncontrollably.