The Kid

by Sapphire

  I was a child; now I’m a man. I’m not what they were—baby-buttbusting homos. Or maybe I am, maybe they came to me for that shit because I’m one too. Maybe I am a fag. I like getting my dick sucked. Would I like it with a girl? When I’m jacking off, I think of girls, J-Lo or a girl like the new girl, tall, blond, big titties. Scott told his parents he wanted to be a dancer, and they sent him to NYU, Merce Cunningham, the Graham School, Africa; un-homeboy been to Africa! Normal kids don’t have to pay! Where would he be now if he’d come through foster care and then had to deal with this faggot with his pink-implanted scalp, Pilates class, and tanning salons—slurping on his dick damn near every night. Does what I did with the kids at St Ailanthus make me a faggot? What I did with the kids wasn’t nothing they weren’t doing already. Shit, I did what they were doing to me. I don’t care what she was, I wish I could of stayed with my mother. My parents, dope addicts or whatever they were. My dad?

  I don’t feel sick anymore; now I’m hungry.

  Some days, standing at the barre after two days of nothing but coffee and double chocolate cake donuts from Dunkin’ Donuts, I come center and just jump straight up four feet in the air, my legs wide apart in second, or I come across the floor and jeté, my legs making a perfect split in the air, and I just hang there for a second. I see the envy on Ricky’s face and the challenge in My Lai’s. Shit, I am the one. I didn’t ask to be. I worked for this shit. But shit, everybody works. The fuck if I knew what it was gonna be in four years. But I can fucking do this. I can. Whether I do or not is another story, but at least I can. What does Roman’s ass have now? Nothing. He’s old. It’s way over.

  “FOURTEENTH STREET, change here—”

  Fourteenth Street? Where am I going? What’d I even get on the train for? To get away from him. Now back up there for the last time. I dash out the opening doors and leap up the stairs across to the uptown side.

  Sitting down in an uptown Number 3 waiting for the conductor to shout out the stops. I look at the hole in my jeans, very chic hole, two-hundred-dollar jeans, that’s over for a while, at least until I get a job.

  Someone’s—No, he’s looking down now. I had thought the guy across the aisle was staring at me, but he’s in his Daily News. I look back at my pants, but I feel, what is this, some kind of heebie-jeebies day? Someone’s looking at me, jeez! When I look up again, the guy has put his paper down. It’s . . . it’s Richie Jackson! Ol’ lying-ass Richie Jackson. I can see he ain’t at St Ailanthus no more. He looks like a old homeless. I can smell him across the aisle. He pushes the paper off his lap to the floor and walks to the other end of the car. I hate nasty dirty people like that. He got tall but he can’t be no more than thirteen or fourteen.

  THIRTY-FOURTH STREET!

  He shuffles off the train.

  FORTY-SECOND STREET!

  Maybe he’s on the pipe, a lot of those ghetto types are. He probably got AIDS or some shit already. Most of the white people who don’t get off at Seventy-second will get off at Ninety-sixth.

  SEVENTY-SECOND STREET!

  Now’s the time.

  NINETY-SIXTH STREET!

  I get off the train, run west, and swing up Riverside Drive home, to Roman.

  He’s been waiting for me.

  “Where you been?”

  “I didn’t feel good, so I took off.”

  “Just like that! You just run off. You rude, that’s what you is!” he shouts.

  “Look, I’m leaving.”

  “Just like that!”

  I guess that’s the line for today.

  “No, not ‘just like that.’ I been thinking about it for a long time.”

  “Oh, just how long you is been thinking about this?”

  An impulse to cry wells up in me, but I know I won’t. I don’t cry. I dance. Right now I got to get out, or I’ll never get out.

  “I been thinking about leaving since I was thirteen.”

  “There you go with that thirteen shit again! Why you always bring it up?”

  “You asked me a question,” I snap.

  “Where you going?”

  “The Herd loft.”

  “What, so I can call the police and tell them—”

  He’s gonna call the police? He’s really crazy!

  “So I can come back and kick your ass!”

  “Oh, we is very violent these days. Let me tell you one thing, you is deluding yourself with those little girls in the Village. You is down there fucking around in those little stinky pussies, eating it all up. Let me tell you, you is more pussy than the fish you eating. You running! You just as much fag as me, and you be like me one day—you love a boy, take in a boy, and he break your heart.”

  He starts crying, big sobs.

  “Thanks for the blessing.” I mean, gee, old dude, that really makes me want to stick around, I’m going to end up like you.

  “Well, I got some news for you, you is got so much for me,” he says triumphantly. “You don’t know this, but I been to the doctor, I tested positive for the HIV!”

  Everything freezes in a flash like a locked-up computer screen, it’s going dark. And then I realize he wants me to jump up and almost beat him to death so he can call the police, have me locked up, and then visit me in jail with the wham-whams and zoo-zoos. I’ll still be his, a “you boys.” I was playing myself, thinking I was more. I feel ice growing around my heart.

  “Where you going?”

  “To get my stuff.”

  “You hear what I said, this is serious for us.”

  Who cares? Number one, I don’t believe him. Number two, I’m going somewhere and dance till I drop, whether it’s tomorrow or fifty years from now. I ain’t even kissed this faggot in four years, much less let him butt-fuck me. So if I got it from this midget sucking my dick, then I just fucking got it. He can see I ain’t scared, that was his hold card, that and his retarded ass was going to call the police on someone.

  “Well, hurry up if you going.”

  If—please, motherfucker! I flip open this big cheap suitcase I got on Fourteenth Street. He starts in with the sobbing again. It’s really disgusting.

  “Please listen one more thing.”

  “What, you been shitting in the coffee?”

  “I’m sorry, I’m really sorry. I didn’t want to ruin your life—”

  “My life ain’t ruined.”

  “Just you is so . . . so ravaged, I don’t know if that’s the word, when you got here, when I take you in. One thing, I teach you to dance, admit that.”

  He’s crazy. T-shirt, jeans, roll ’em up.

  “You never listen to me! This is the last thing I have to say, maybe ever. I been so depress—”

  “Kill yourself.”

  “Listen!”

  I flip the suitcase shut and shift an army duffel bag up onto my shoulder.

  “Listen, it’s not what you think.”

  All his little puffed-up triumph is gone. I don’t care what he says, he can’t bring me down. Or back. He sighs like it’s killing him, his next little bomb. If he brings up anything in the notebooks, I’ll crack his skull.

  “OK, I’m listening.”

  “You is a very good dancer. If you want to keep fucking with Herd, fine, but start auditioning for companies—ballet, modern, all that. I never tell you before, you are a fine dancer, one of the best young dancers I see in my life—anybody woulda did what I did to have you. From the first day I saw you—”

  “Look, I’ll call before I come get the rest of my stuff.”

  “Take it now!”

  Fuck him, if I come back here for my shit, he better, number one, have it, and number two, let me in.

  “Bye,” I say, and head toward the door.

  TWO

  “We should call you Ice-T Number Two or something, you’re so cool.” She had laughed, flipping her hair with her hand the way white chicks do. All I had said was, “Sexual history? I think what we’re really talking about is HIV, oui?” Then I raised my eyebrow in the way I had bee
n practicing in the mirror and said, “Fuck sexual history. I mean, so what if I been celibate since the day I was motherfucking born and I got it, right? And so what if I been fucking sheep and sucking off at an AIDS hospice or some shit and I ain’t got it. I think you got, or have, as you would say, pretty good sense and you want to protect yourself. And I don’t know no way to do that except get the test, oohhh scary scary, that, and thee condumb. And hey, beautiful, I’m willing to go there for you, you know.” She turned all red, but boy, did she look relieved. I was relieved too, very. I can go somewhere and get some fucking test and sit up in fake, or maybe real, dread. Yeah, I can do that, but sexual history? Ah, I don’t think so.

  Yeah, red but relieved, very relieved. Afterward she tells me she’s on the pill, but for like a week I avoid her, like she’s nuts or something, like what’s up with you, nothing was ever going to happen, like she’s just another person came into Herd and we never had a little sting thing getting ready to jump off.

  I PAINTED THE walls of the sleeping space blue. The whole loft was supposed to be painted in two colors, flat black and this dead white. Black was for the performance space and white for the bathrooms (which Scott wanted to paint black too). He had already done the walled-off sleeping space in black. What, trendy, hip? I don’t care; I didn’t want it. My Lai picked the color, and she, Snake, and me did it in a weekend: scrape, prime, paint, and paint—sky blue. Snake painted fluffy white clouds! Then we got some high-gloss black, not like the flat we used for the performance space and did the floor. Perfect.

  MUSIC? CHARLIE PARKER. How I got so into him? Bird Lives! by Ross Russell. Billie Holiday? Well, with her, Roman, to tell the truth, and Slavery Days, she had the records! Then too I wanted to love what Basquiat loved, and that was CPRKR. Old old school, Tupac, I used to not be able to stand him, now I like that shit sometimes. Bach, Roman would put him on sometimes, I started to like its realigning my gray space. I don’t have that much except clothes, some CDs, and my books. Roman wanted me to look good, but I’m cool in ripped jeans and a T-shirt. Everyone is getting or has phones. Who would I call? What do you need to dance? Classes and your body.

  This is my room for now. I put a lock on the door. “All the time I was there, I never had a lock on the door. Who comes in here but us?” “That’s you,” I tell him. I want privacy. Shit, he owns this sucker, or his parents do. How’s that for a start in life! My room. Scott said don’t worry about how long. We’re supposed to rotate, take turns with the maintenance, but nobody wants to do it right now except me. Snake’s in love with his man, plus he already put in three months. My Lai already did it, “loft duty,” as she calls it. Amy just got here and is sharing with three friends in the Village, and they totally love living together. So hey, I can stay. I need to get a New York State ID or a license, but I don’t drive yet.

  We were sucking java juice in Starbucks when Scott went to get a refill and Snake got up to go to the bathroom; My Lai had left to do some shopping. It’s just the two of us, me and Amy, and she leans in. “So what’s your color?” “Huh?” “You know, purple, emerald, black, burgundy, blue? For la chambre?” I’m not feeling it with her no more, I think, but I tell her blue. What shade? Umm, my second-favorite color: the color of the almost-night sky, a lot darker than we did the walls. Who cares, really, she’s starting to get on my nerves. I kinda like being by myself.

  Scott comes back with four espressos on a tray. Snake bounds out of the bathroom. “Nothing better than a good shit!”

  Scott laughs.

  “It’s true, and you know what I love.” Snake.

  “No, tell us,” I say in what evidently doesn’t come off as sarcastic, because he keeps talking.

  “How the people who are waiting in line when you open the door look at you like you’re from outer space when they smell shit. Like, hello, folks, it’s a bathroom!” Snake.

  “Thanks for the coffee, Scott,” Amy says.

  “No thing.”

  I break off another piece of her Divine Fair Trade chocolate bar. “Well, take the whole thing, why don’t you.”

  At that, I snatch the chocolate and my backpack and dash up to the counter. They’re laughing at the table. I smile back at them and stuff the rest of the chocolate bar in my mouth.

  “I’m going to get you!” she shouts, shaking a fist at me.

  I ask the guy at the counter, “You guys still hiring?”

  “That’s the manager,” he says, nodding at a fat, red-haired guy who darts into the back and comes back with an application.

  “Fill it out now or bring it in the next time you come in.”

  The chocolate is still in my mouth. I look at the wrapper, Divine, right on. What’s divine? Dancing, chocolate, getting my dick sucked, getting in deep, reading, being able to lock the door to my room and read a book without hearing Roman lisp, “What you is reading?” What else? Ballet class, leather, ripped jeans, downtown, dancing in sync with My Lai. Can girls suck dick? That would be divine, to have someone I like make me feel like Roman did going down on me. To be good enough to be in a famous company even if I didn’t stay in it, to just know my shit was phat enough to get in. Travel? Paris? Japan?

  After rehearsal Amy hands me a plastic bag.

  “Ehh, er . . . what’s this?”

  “A present,” she says, and turns and heads for the elevator.

  I pull two white seven-day candles out the bag and Tommy Hilfiger four-hundred-thread-count 100 percent Egyptian cotton sheets, king, cobalt blue. Like duh, she’s ready. I’m scared. Maybe all that shit Roman said about me is true. Maybe she’ll think I’m stupid if she ever really talks to me; Scott, her, even Snake’s crazy ass graduated from college. How do you eat pussy? I know girls like that. Shit, just go ahead and wash the mattress pad and blankets you been sleeping on and put the sheets on the bed. The candles will be cool with the ceiling fluorescent off.

  “ARE YOU GAY?” she whispers.

  “No,” I say, “and don’t you ever say some shit like that again.”

  I have the white seven-day candles burning in the corners near the head of the bed.

  “Why? I’m bi, Snake’s another world! And My Lai says if it can walk—”

  “I don’t care what anyone else is. I’m telling you what I am, OK?”

  “OK, OK, whatever. I . . . I don’t care. I want to be your friend whatever the deal is. That’s what I was really trying to say.”

  She leans over and kisses me. Inside, I’m trembling, but it’s because I hear her asking again, even though her lips are on mine, Are you gay? I feel helpless, flat. She lifts her T-shirt; I see her breasts, get excited, and pull her toward me. I never noticed just how tall she was, she’s almost as tall as me. She leans down and pulls her tights off and throws them on top of my leather bag in the corner. I grab her shoulders and pull her closer to me like in the movies, only in the movies the girls is hardly ever as tall as you. I run my fingers through her silky hair, beautiful like a chick in a magazine. She wraps her arms around my waist, squeezes me. You can hear the sounds of traffic on the street even on Sunday, that’s Manhattan.

  “We don’t have to worry about anybody coming?”

  “They can’t get in if they do come. I’ve locked the elevator door. No one else has a key except me and Scott. And Scott, if he comes, ain’t coming back here. This is my room.”

  I look at the poster, L’Acrobate. The gray and white figure distorted beyond being a body, that’s how I want to dance, not like the acrobat but the way that dude paints. I grab her butt pull her closer. Touching her breasts excites me, heat surges through my body, I glide my fingers along her rib cage, the hair under her arms is blond, there’s not a scar on her anywhere. I lean forward kiss her. Next to the heat in my belly is a cold gray something that feels like a little frozen pearl. Fear? She takes my hand and puts it between her legs. She smells hot, real good, it’s like cheese or something; her hair is bristly, not soft like I expected. Her cunt tightens around my fingers, whoa! What
girls got. I smile; her smell is all up my nose, making me hard. She’s all white and blond. I feel a surge of what, power? I don’t know: Joy? Power? This is the ultimate, ain’t it? I wish there was a mirror here; I want to see our bodies next to each other, entwined. I’m getting more excited, I remember Brother John jacking off looking at the pictures of black men and white men together, and then he had pictures of these white women with enormous tits, I would jack off with him looking at me looking at the white women (but never any black girls). She pulls my briefs down; I wonder does she feel like I feel. Does my black shine fuck her up inside, turn her on. Shit, I’m gonna murder her with my dick! Feel fear, like that minute, millisecond in the park, you not sure whether you got a killer or vanilla. She touches my penis. Groan, go there, yeah, go there. It feels right, like Jaime only righter because it’s a girl. She gets on her knees. Kisses it, opens her lips. I push my hips, thrust just a little, she gags. What’s up with that? She stops rubbing my butt and legs, gets up off her knees, and walks over to the bed made up neat. I ain’t no slob, see what they teach you in an orphanage, oh, shut up will you, get over it, you ain’t there no more. She’s laying on the bed now, her flat belly, her smelly good blond bush gleaming pink from the inside. Jezus! She’s ready! I go lay on top of her, press my lips on hers, stick my fingers in her pussy, yeah! Pussy! Put my hands on her breasts. I’m grinding my pelvis on top of her. She opens her mouth, I don’t like to kiss that much. I kissed Jaime, no big thing, but I didn’t like it, his tongue like hers, a fish trying to swim in my mouth, little teeth nipping my lips. Whew, it seems like I’m grinding away what little hard-on I had. And I know my shortie is ready. It had been a little hard back then when she was sucking on it. Now I feel like ice cream. Sweat is breaking out on me, but not from excitement. The pearl in my belly is a boulder now. I got to fuck this cutie good! She gots a banging body I want to walk down the street with. I lean over take her tight tittie in my mouth, suck, she starts to grind her pelvis, she likes that. She wants my dick in her! I want my dick in her. Ride this bitch. I don’t know what’s wrong.