What We Do Is Secret (18 page)

35

Afterwards we.

I mean afterwards Slade.

It’s like the me of we is money spent I never had, how trendy is that, maybe I’m losing my punk rock religion, maybe I’m turning Reagan Republican. And isn’t it him in that football flick on Darby’s desert island list, where the dude comes to with both legs chopped and he’s all, Where’s the rest of me?

Because that’s how I feel with the music over. It’s not a body-part thing obviously but still like there’s less of me than I remember, less of me and more of Slade, like this is the stage, step aside.

Only not at the Vex. More like that planet aquarium in Griffith Park and we’re moons not suns and mine’s the side you never see, the sideout side that turns turns turns but only away, cold as Mickey’s deep-freeze daddy, double dip dark as a repo man’s heart. While Slade’s so sunny side up and Luna Park bright you need your shades to let’s pretend it’s really night.

So anyways, afterwards, Slade.

To stand-up cheers that last for years raises Rocky-like my hands above my head and down down down his sweat drips drop to sing their sting to the sultan of.

Swingline.

Then he says to me and me alone, off-mic, secret, “Perfect.”

I just shake my head. Because you can’t let anything be perfect, it’s worse bad luck than walking under a ladder with a black cat on your shoulder and a broken mirror in your hand on Friday the thirteenth in a year that ends in 666. Like at the group home on Vermont we listened to a tape of some Indian ceremony out in the butt-ass back of beyond, this medicine man talking up these sacred pictures they make out of different-colored sand to keep the local demons in line, and to do the job every picture has to be posi-fucking-lutely P-word down to the very last grain in the very last place, I mean they’re not using sandbox shovels on these things, they’re using tweezers.

So it takes like three weeks and enough braves in feathers and G-strings to go headdress-to-headdress with a chorus line at Circus Circus to get the pictures right. But the split-Chiquita second they’re rocking Russian on the far side of the Finnish line they bark out a double-quick “Hail Hiawatha” and sweep them all to Mr.-Smith-goes-to-thithereens. Because when it comes to competition in the perfect racket the Indian God’s as jealous as the testy old Christian one, get him riled child and hell comes to whose hogan, don’t bet on Ben’s, bet on boatloads of white folks with muskets and smallpox.

So they’ve been schooled, and I mean hard as Big John Holmes in Homo on the Range, they’re really strict about it. No point-and-shoots of the finished sand paintings, period. And when the squaws weave tapestries with the same designs they mess them up on purpose in some small way, a wrong stitch here, a missed stitch there, so when God’s daily planet planner calls for a ride on his rival-check high horse He scopes it out and just thinks, Those dumb Indians, they’ll never get it right.

Not that I had to take like infirmative action to stay “Forming” on the dry side of perfect. Just me being up here instead of Darby was the life-during-wartime guarantee on that. Though the mass of spitboys tonight never even once saw Darby, not in person, probably most of them weren’t even punks six months ago, he’s just someone in a movie.

But now they’ve seen me.

All these stomping, spitting rebels, with applause.

“Let Rockets drive!”

I mean I didn’t plan it or anything but now I’m known down there, just like that, Idaho’s this big inflatable question mark but curse comes to cursed I got OC wired, what better place to kick it with my droogie stick than Clockwork Orange County. And true it’s Slade’s posse, keeping it going, enforcing the minimum rage law. And true it’s thanks to Slade in the first place, the being seen part. But it’s the remembering that matters. And they’ll remember me all right. And why they’ll remember was my idea, Napoleon Solo, mine all mine.

So why then Slade, near and now? Tall behind me, hands in my armpits, holding me up, walking me backwards, why is he the we of me?

And where
is
the fuckin rest of me, anyways?

I feel so light. Not light-headed. Not drugged at all. Not a trace. The staples must have canceled out the drugs.

Like acupuncture.

Darby said.

It’s the only way to kick, acupuncture, that’s the punk way.

My fingers move over my belly and up my chest, blood-sticky, spit-sticky, sperm-sticky, Ouija-board fingers, moving, on their own, there’s this lightness, like I’ve lost something, besides blood I mean.

And besides that too, that’s hours past, this is fresh, just starting.

Or maybe I haven’t lost anything yet. Maybe I’m losing it now.

Walking backwards, with Slade, out of spit range.

Losing Blitzer?

Where is he? Why did he? But anyways we.

Yeah.

Did everything.

Finally.

Maybe that’s it, maybe I’m done.

Darby said.

I want to die when I’m done.

It could be like this I guess. You hear some music, you bleed a little, you feel this lightness coming on and you’re walking but it’s unmuscled walking, it’s gliding, you’re going, you’re going, you’re gone.

Like a song.

Walking
backwards
through
the
snow.

Baby
please
don’t go.

The song, not Darby’s, but the record, Darby’s, the record he brought back from London, the group that nobody American knew, the singer who overdosed and that made the difference, to Darby, like Darby made the difference to Tim, in Holy Cross Cemetery, with the night wind blowing in our faces off the graves, goodbye Judy, hello Darby.

And on the cover of the record not the singer but a writer and that made the difference to Kickboy, the writer was French, the writer wrote plays that weren’t really plays, and called them the Theatre of Cruelty.

But that made no difference to me, cross my Purple Heart and hope to cry. Not the plays or the writer or the singer but the song. I played it at Tony the Hustler’s till he hid it, I played it even more than Three Teens Kill Four. And I couldn’t stop wondering, What could it mean, why would you, anyways, walk backwards through snow?

To cover your tracks, that’s what Darby said. You cover your tracks by making tracks. Walk backwards through snow and later it looks like you went the other way, they can’t follow you, you’ve escaped, you’re free.

Just don’t dig your heels in too deep and give yourself away.

And I was sure he was right, it matched the singer’s voice, it matched the music, there was no other explanation, for the song and more besides.

But how did Darby know? It never snows here, only rains and when it does just like Squid said you always remember, like that time with Darby outside the Masque, the drops I tried to catch, a circle, waiting, a circle, wanting, everything goes in circles and you’re always completing cycles and starting new ones, it’s remembering that matters, maybe that’s it, walking backwards, I’m back at that same point tonight, mouth wide open, catching Slade’s spit, maybe that’s the lightness, not Blitzer but the we of me Darby I’m losing, on the stage going through of the chapel going to, with the yell of the rebel with applause sign lit, in the so-strange season of the rhymes with which, in the Spotlite my fuckin fire light the what-have-you-got light, drawing with the tips of my fingers on my face a mask.

36

Slade leaves me here but not alone.

What fuckin hey.

Hell fuckin na.

Rockets fuckin Redglare.

Blitzer hugs me and I cling to him like a climber on the mind over Matterhorn, after almost fall fall falling, it’s all so sudden, what was I whatevering just now, walking backwards with Slade, did I think that, dream that, pretend that?

I was losing him? Had lost him?

Or was I confusing him with Darby?

“You’re milk-faced, Rockets. You’d better—”

Stop spinning “I Fought the Law of Gravity (and the Law Won).” But it’s stuck on repeat so he Saturn-boosts me up by the back of my belt to keep me standing long enough to put an ear to my chest and make me say
rawww
. Then he grips my wrists and eases me down while I pretzel my legs so I hit the deck cross-legged on autopilot and lean back into a three-point landing with a butt-plant so solid I’m better already, there’s the rest of me all right and now it’s leeching off an IV Wheaties drip instead of slamming helium.

“There’s a draft up the service stairs, breathe deep, fresh air helps.”

He tells me once we’re outa here I’d better eat something, the spooner the better, even though earlier I skarfed that Oki Dog and fries. He still doesn’t know I puked it up. And I can’t tell him now, because I should have told him then. But if I told him then it wouldn’t have happened, would it, tender in the grass in the damp by the sidewalk, not the way it did, knowing the words, the words to “Forming.”

Everything goes in circles.

He says he saw it all. He got back with Tim and David just in time. From selling the tabs, all the rest, all at once, downtown at the Hong Kong Cafe.

“We’ve got three seventy-five now. Right here in my jeans.”

So I A the Q about T and D and he’s all, Oh they weren’t feeling so hot, they wanted fresh air, they went back to the van. And he’s just too fully casual about it, till now he’s never talked like that, not about them, more like the opposite, alive wire ampage on how deep-fried different they bang down your head tom-tom truly are. So it doesn’t sound right.

“Are they tripping out? Did they get hurt? What happened at the Hong Kong?”

“Dude, nothing! They’re fine. David just—”

“What?”

“He puked. In here.”

“When?”

“Watching you. About halfway through.”

“Really?”

“Dude, it was so intense, it just went on and on, you don’t know what it was like, not like Darby, not at all. You’re so—it was kind of hard to watch. And they’re frying too, so you know, I guess it just got too freaky.”

“Hard to watch? Why?”

“It was cool, man. It was punk as fuck. I couldn’t believe you went through with it. The whole fuckin circle. But these staples, Rockets, from the floor you couldn’t really tell, the size I mean, I didn’t realize, it must fuckin—”

“Let’s bail. I’m okay now.”

I get back on my feet by climbing up my droogie stick hand over hand and Blitzer steady-aim fires me towards Squid and Siouxsie at the top of the stage steps, holding off my fans, supposedly, I’m all, Electric or paper? and Blitzer says what the fuck do I think, in a neighborhood like this, which one has blades?

And it’s my first try at laughing since “Forming” so basically the joke’s on me, I have to stand stock-still and big-gulp the hurt away for like a minute, but at least I know I’m over the lightness now, and over it completely, it must have been those natural drugs your body pumps through you in accidents. And I guess they’re just like unnatural drugs, the higher they fly you, the lower they land you.

Like Death Valley level is where I’m guessing I’m high-velocity-headed while Squid and Siouxsie do the hero thing, I’m so disconnected inside from everything outside and it only gets worse down-downing the steps, Vicious Circle’s cranking again but still I’m mobbed, by all these surf and skater punks I’ve never met, telling me their names. Not punk names either, take out the Justins and Jasons and Joshes and where did everybody go, the beach I guess.

And every one of them’s older than me but they seem like clueless little kids and nice ones too, when one of the Jasons asks me for a bloody staple, he even says “please.”

“No!”
Squid yells.

Then she tells me to keep them all in, at least till we make our entrance at Oki Dog, so everyone can see.

“Otherwise two weeks from now they’ll all be saying it didn’t really happen, you did three or four, you know how people are.”

Siouxsie says I’ll be a legend all right, a shoo-fly shoo-in for the punk rock wax museum of the future, shoulder to shoulder with Panasonic Youth. Then she says the beer table’s cleared, of kegs not people but maybe they’ll make room and we can kick it over there. But once we’re over it’s ours, literally. Without saying a word. Everybody jumps off. It’s like cool and embarrassing both at once and I wonder what Darby would do but blown-fused as I feel in the flutter and wow of the here and now I don’t wonder long, I butt-plant hard on the tabletop and spew on cue, “Will all of you gimme a beer?”

As a joke.

But they all do. Or try to. And I don’t even like beer.

Though alcohol’s like antiseptic, right? Not to drink, to pour it on.

“What hey, Rocketman. It couldn’t hurt.”

But it does. It fuckin on fire does and look up, what don’t you see, not stars but the Milky Way Snickers and Mars bars too. With all these beach kids gathered round, and how do they know who the stars are?

Because they know them personally.

They say my name.

While Slade sings,
Property is theft!

And just like that I’m sure as sure can
B
for Beyond the Planet of Unreasonable Doubt, I know like I’ve never known, know know like Nanette, it may not pass before my eyes or behind them or however it works, I may not get the visual, but every piece of all of it will come to me again, the sting of beer stab of staples blood dried sticky shot dried salty sweat and smoke and Slade and Squid and Blitzer Siouxsie Justins Joshes Jasons all, of them and that and all of me, in the last long sped-up miracle moment, right before I die.

Blitzer says I’m looking like maybe just maybe the clock says it’s time to close now, Vexwise only though.

“The tabs, that was the reason for being here, right? We could maybe kick it at the Hong Kong on the way to Oki’s. Tim and David caught that new wave vibe, they want to go back. They like the guys here, or the idea of ’em anyways, but once around the pit and they knew they couldn’t deal.”

“What happened? You said you’d—”

“Dude, it was outa control. Down the stairs and out the door and I was in the fuckin circus. Juggling three rings at once. David’s up the sidewalk one direction, drooling over some vato kid who looks like he’ll cut him if he gets any closer to the merchandise. Front and center Cherie the Penguin’s telling me she just talked on the phone to her sister at the Hong Kong, and she’ll pay four apiece for every tab we’ll sell her if I get there by one. And Tim’s squatting on the corner with a marker in his hand, making a sign on some cardboard, like a hitchhiking sign, and I walk over and all it says is two letters with a question mark but guess which ones, busy as a bee and blue as a jay.”

I give Squid and Siouxsie an exclusive on the laugh track, I can’t join in the transvestivities, it’s bad enough getting words out, I forgot where your voice gets the muscle behind it, deep in your gut, but I know one thing, never again, not a second time, nobody schools you like you school yourself.

“So I just took ’em with me to keep ’em off the streets. So you guys wouldn’t worry.”

I say we did worry.

“I didn’t,” Siouxsie says. “And I told you not to.”

Squid says she worried too, she worried Siouxsie would think she was scamming on that nun downstairs, but that was it.

This kid walks up and says hi.

He says, “I’m Stewart.”

I’m all, Not Justin, huh? and he laughs.

“I was up in front by you earlier. Right in front.”

“Oh.”

“During the first song.
Directly
in front of you.”

“Yeah.”

“It’s like the first—I’ve never—I mean it’s only my second show. I didn’t know who you were or anything.”

“I’m nobody.”

“Dude, not even.”

“Did you yell something about the Easter Bunny?”

“The guy next to me. That was him. I was—in front of you. Like I said. Directly. All through that song.”

“Cool.”

“I’m down in Costa Mesa. I’m fifteen, I can’t drive—”

“Me neither.”

He laughs and says Slade said I drove pretty rad, actually.

“Just that once.”

“So you come down to OC sometimes?”

“When I can, I guess.”

“Do you—well, you probably don’t surf.”

Blitzer laughs. He says I’m really good at pinball, though.

“Yeah? Oh, like—”

“Fuck you, Blitzer!”

I say I like hands-on stuff, mostly.

He says he does too.

He says he works weekends at the record store by the Huntington Pier, the Electric Chair.

“So if you’re ever there, you could ask for me. Stewart from Costa.”

“If I’m there, I will.”

“I mean, you know, I live at home still. But I’ll be at more shows. This is all so cool. It’s different from . . .”

“What you expected?”

“Way.”

“Better?”

“You don’t know how much better.”

His voice turns sly like an eagle.

“Or maybe you do.”

He shakes my hand and I’m all, Dude, I got sticky fingers, sorry.

He says it’s cool, his are too.

He asks, “What’s your favorite band?”

I say Germs.

He says, “Same.”

I say, “Who knows, then, maybe we’ve got something else in common.”

A beat.

“Like maybe our favorite record.”

Another.

Left channel, right channel, bass and treble, we yell it out like an idle rebel. And I’ll never tell so you’ll have to guess it though break a certain rule and you’ll express it, now don’t be judging a friend or a lover, but just this once judge a book by its cover.