”Oh mother, tell your children…”
I heard someone knocking on my door. ‘Hello? Tony?’ she said. I laid there, hoping she would go away. She didn’t, knocked again.
‘I know you’re in there,’ she said. Fuck.
I got up & put on my pants, thought about putting on a shirt, no, opened the door, it was Kathy. Hi Kathy.
‘Katherine. You know I hate Kathy. I ah, did I wake you?’
‘No.’
‘Well sorry to bother you but Susan thinks you might know what happened to my coat?’
‘Coat?’
‘That one I wore to the party the other night, someone stole it.’
‘Susan?’
‘Yeah. She said I should ask you. You know the coat I was wearing when I came in? Had that long orange fur?’
‘Someone stole it?’
‘Yeah. I really liked that coat. You remember, right?’
I didn’t really remember but said I did. ‘That sucks. Sorry Kath... er, Katherine, I don’t know anything.’
‘Yeah, well, sorry. I didn’t mean to infer anything.’
She looked down the hall to Susan’s room & back. ‘She just said…’
‘Well…’
‘Yeah, well. What were you doing?’
‘Nothing.’
‘Can I come in?’
We looked each other up & down & I said no. She gave me her phone number, said something, smiled shyly & walked on down the hall. I looked at her ass for a bit & she turned & saw me looking at her ass. Smiled again.
I shut the damn door & got back into bed. When you’re broke & starving, you get cold.
The party last weekend was thrown by my roommates in this commune/rooming house. There was a huge crowd & there was joints on the Christmas tree, grain punch in the kitchen. I had gotten a turkey from the job I quit but remembered they were handing out free turkeys to all the employee’s, went & they gave me one. The guy that was handing them out said, ‘Hey Tony! Where ya been?’ & I told him I went 2nd shift to the paint line which was true but I had walked off the paint line one night a month earlier & had gone to the unemployment office the next day telling them I was laid off. Two weeks later, the checks were coming in the mail but it wasn’t much, $43 a week. I hadn’t worked there long. And when the check came, it went to drugs.
The turkey got ripped apart by the stoned, drunken crowd & although I cooked it, I didn’t get any. I was upstairs in my room shooting dope, smoking weed & listening to records with a few new friends. You see, I lived in a party house. My one roommate sold weed & there was always people coming & going. He sold a lot of weed, was one of the biggest pot dealers in town, possibly the biggest. He was also a junkie so all the junkies came & went too. When you live in a place like this & are just a couple years out of high school, the old high school friends come slumming. I imagined the stories they would tell when they went back to college.
‘Oh, you should see these peeeeople I used to go to schooool with. They live in the ghetto.’
‘The ghetto?’
‘Oh god yes. I went there last weeekend.’
‘You went there? Are you craaazy?’
‘Oh, I can be pretty wiiiild!’
The party was like that. The underworld, the folks who came here to buy weed & the old ‘friends’ from high school. Who ripped apart my turkey & projectile vomited grain punch on the wall.
I laid there for a while thinking of Kathy’s ass. It was no good, she was going off to Penn State & I was there. I remembered the day I took the bus to Harrisburg to talk to the people at social security. As soon as I turned 18, I started getting SS checks in the mail because both my parents were old & retired. I understood that, as long as I stayed in school, the checks would keep coming. So I enrolled in the local community college. They weren’t much, the benefits were split between me & my twin sister. And since our parents started charging us rent as soon as we turned 18, there was little left after books & tuition.
I remembered that day. Had to go there because they were fucking up, the checks had stopped & the people on the phone were insane. I got things worked out & took the bus back home. It was raining, pouring rain. The bus left me off a mile away from home & I started walking.
I saw my parents driving by & waved, hoping they’d give me a ride home. But I was not seen, they just drove by…
When you’re broke & starving, you get lethargic but the hunger subsides. I had gone 3 days without food but didn’t much care. I just wanted to lay there.
Later that afternoon, a knock came upon my door. It was Nick, I had met him at the party & we had gone back to my room & I had shown him my Vox amp & guitar & played some stuff. He said he was in a band but it wasn’t going anywhere & played me some of his songs. I liked Nick. Hi Nick.
‘Hey Tony! How you doing?’
‘Good.’
He came in, had some weed & a pile of records.
‘What’s this?’ I asked.
‘Some of the garage stuff I was telling you about,’ he said. ‘Have you thought about it?’
‘What?’
‘Getting a band together, man!’
I told him I did but really didn’t. We smoked some weed & listened to the records he brought on my stereo. I had been thinking of selling my stereo for food $. The records he brought were cool, I couldn’t believe it.
‘You’re an idiot!’ I said.
‘What?’
‘This is some cool stuff.’
‘I told you man. People all around the country are putting out their own stuff. Ain’t it cool?’
‘Yeah.’
He played me the records he did with Billy Synth & the Janitors.
‘That’s you playing guitar?’
‘Yeah man, I told you.’
I didn’t remember him telling me anything like that; all I remembered of the party was the dope & passing some girl in the hall who I knew in high school & her saying to me, ‘we thought you were dead.’
‘We could do this stuff,’ he said.
‘All right.’
‘So you want to get a band together?’
‘Sure. Where’d you get that coat?’
‘I, ah… found it,’ he said.
‘The girl you found it from came by earlier today looking for it.’
‘What?’
‘Yeah man, Kathy. Susan sent her to me thinking I stole it.’
‘What did you tell her?’
‘Nothing.’
‘Sorry. I liked it so I took it. Figured that rich chick would get another easy.’
‘You don’t have to apologise to me man, I don’t fuckin care what you do, just don’t steal from me.’
‘It’s a nice coat.’
‘Ha-ha, it looks good on you.’
‘I’m not really a thief.’
I looked at him & thought, he’s a desperate as me. Thought that was pretty cool but didn’t say it.
‘Don’t worry none about that,’ I told him & we listened to records & then we were playing songs on my guitar & ideas for new songs were flowing.
‘I got a PA,’ he said when I asked how we were gonna get it together.
‘We gotta find some players & a place.’
We would.
Later that night, Matt came over, bought my cassette deck & then went back to his parent’s house in the suburbs after scoring some weed from Dave, the dealer in the next room. The rent & utilities were due so I gave Susan $60. Then I pulled on my steel-tipped boots & walked down to the corner store. There was a crowd of blacks hanging out on the corner but they didn’t mess with me anymore. I got a few cans of mac & cheese & some iced tea, went back, threw a couple of cans in a pot & warmed them up. Then I walked up to Wendy’s room on the 3rd floor & knocked. I liked Wendy. It’s me.
‘Tony?’
‘I got some food if you’re hungry.’
She was.
We ate in the kitchen, talked, then watched Susan’s TV in the living room. Susan & Dave came down & I shared the iced tea. Dave passed a joint around & it seemed all right, like family. Although Susan & Dave had separate rooms, they were a couple. And they had been good to me; if it wasn’t for them, I’da been homeless. When I first moved in a few months back, they would cook fine meals for the whole household. But that stopped when nobody did the same for them. I couldn’t, Wendy couldn’t & Mike & Laura, who lived in the front room on the 3rd floor, pretty much kept to themselves.
‘Well…’ Dave said after a while. He and Susan went to Susan’s room.
Wendy & I sat on the couch & looked at the TV. I knew her & Susan shared a place up on the hill before Susan rented this house, that it was hard, that they were kicked out of their parent’s houses also.
‘Well…’ Wendy said.
I was a 20 year old virgin who hadn’t even kissed a girl yet. An alien.
I put my arm around her & she didn’t jump up & scream. We looked at the TV & she put her head on my shoulder. The door opened & Mike & Laura came in from the cold, the wind howling outside.
‘Look! It’s the TV couple!’ Mike said.
‘They’re so cute,’ Laura said.
‘Funny. You guys are funny,’ I said.
‘Are we funny?’ Laura said to Mike.
‘I think we are. Isn’t that what Tony said?’
‘Yes, Tony said we were, ha-ha.’
‘He-he. I feel a little funny. Wanna feel me?’
‘Oh yes, I wanna feel you,’ Laura said.
‘We’re going up to our room to feel funny. Good night TV couple!’ Mike said.
‘See ya,’ I said.
‘G’night,’ Wendy said.
‘Ha. They were drunk,’ I said.
‘They’re always drunk,’ Wendy said.
‘Where do they work again?’
‘He works for the state & she’s a nurse.’
‘I need a job.’
‘No shit.’
We talked for a bit about it & she told me about being a Kelly Girl; doing temp secretarial work.
‘All I do is type,’ she said & then started going off about her job, no benefits, freakin slavery, etc…
When I kissed her it was because I had been wanting to but also, to shut her up.
When I woke the next morning, she was naked & laying next to me, saying she was thirsty. I put on some clothes & pulled on the boots & went to the corner store for more tea. A different set of blacks were standing on the corner, ‘hey,’ one of them said.
‘Hey.’
I walked back up the block, had 40 cents left. It was Saturday & her day off. Hey.
‘Hey,’ she said. ‘Get out of your clothes & get in here.’
Every once in a while, we came up for air & drank at the tea jug. When twilight came, she ran off & came back with a small bag of weed saying she got a nickel from Dave. I played her some of the records Nick had loaned me & we smoked. We ate my last can of mac & cheese in bed & thought we heard firecrackers but, the next day we heard it was gunfire, that there had been a gang war down the block.
WILLIAM KENNEDY - Very Old Bones
CARLOS CASTANEDA - The Art Of Dreaming
HAROLD ROBBINS - Memories of Another Day
JOHN O'HARA - A Rage To Live
NICK CAVE - His earlier records