by Myriam Gurba
Mr. Osmond was a lawyer, a Mormon, and the dad. Though he had a daughter and a wife, boys played basketball in his driveway. Boys lounged in his backyard while he roasted Ball Park franks on the grill. His house was whitewashed and had red bricks and a chimney. No matter what time of year it was, at Mr. Osmond’s, it was summer for boys.
I had PE with Mr. Osmond’s son, Joey. For our uniform we had to wear a T-shirt and something under it. We got to choose what went under. We had to buy it from the sporting goods store, and we got a choice between green knee-length sweatpant shorts or booty shorts. Girls usually chose the booty shorts. Joey chose the booty shorts. They ended a hair past his cheeks and little slits nipped up his hips when he ambled. Joey’s bowl cut moved how his butt moved in his shorts: swishily, but not in a gay way. Rumpelstiltskin had crafted Joey’s hair color, and his eyes were backyard swimming pools that reminded us we were in California. The way he stared at girls made us aware that in his eyes, we skinny-dipped.
Joey bopped out of the locker room. Girls behind me whispered, “Joey has man legs.”
It was true. Joey’s leg’s had pre matured.
Our PE teacher, Coach, glared at us as we formed “same-sex” lines along the blacktop. He screamed, “Bend and touch your toes!”
We Hitler Youthfully obeyed. We pressed our fingers into our shoes, which pressed against our toenails.
Coach screamed, “Grab your ankles!”
We held onto them. Our muscles woke up.
Coach yelled, “Let go, stand with your feet apart, and reach for the ground!”
This was the most humiliating pose. Perverts looked around to see what other people looked like in this pose so they would have something to masturbate to later on. I was curious about who was looking around. I glanced up. Joey was peeking around his knee and smiling. The spit on his braces sparkled.
“OK, good enough,” growled Coach. “Walk it out, ladies.”
Coach led us to the dirt track. In a loose herd, we waited. Coach put his whistle between his weathered lips. His cheeks swelled and the whistle screeched. Kids who took PE seriously took off like kids who take PE seriously. The rest of us jogged with the intensity of overcooked spaghetti.
Halfway through our lap, at the knoll shaded by stout pines, my lazy cohorts and I transitioned into a stroll. This was the polite thing to do. Kids who took PE seriously were assholes. They were going to get As but they were going to stink all day. None of them were going to take a shower. The showerheads in our locker room were pointless. They had as much use as the showerhead in Oświęcim. That’s Polish for Auschwitz.
Assholes lapped us. We strolled the bend, heading toward the gym. I stretched. A yawn fluttered out of me.
“No way, ladies!” yelled Coach. “RUN!”
We sighed and jogged the dirt, quitting near the baseball dugout. That was a good quitting place. It was too far for Coach to yell at us.
I gazed to my left, through the chain-link fence that disappeared into an ice-plant-covered incline that gave way to a two-lane highway. A ditch gaped after the road, but it was too deep to see what was inside. Probably a fridge or a mattress with springs curling through the tears.
Buffalo approached. I sprang and flew into the grass. The others scattered too, and Joey and a bunch of Little Leaguers came sprinting through where we’d been. Their profiles showed excited teeth.
We saw their backs and their enviable calves. Their shoes pounded up the knoll, packing dirt, and Joey called, “Now!”
They hooked their thumbs into their waistbands and tugged their shorts down. Butts popped free. The humps hardly jiggled. They possessed the firmness of the newly ripened. Satisfied with getting some vitamin D, they let their shorts snap back up. The manliest boy, Tim, turned to look at us. He kissed the air.
As they sped away, we discussed their exposure. We evaluated what we’d seen. We mulled over how white they were, the strangeness of seeing ass in public, how one had hair on it, pretty much a coonskin cap, and I realized that this was the first time I’d ever been mooned.
Hammer
It was July, and Janet Jackson, the big-booty white girl I was friends with, had dumped her junior-high lover for someone new. This guy attended high school. He wore Hammer pants with a crotch that sagged to his knees. These were great for his job delivering pizzas. His nuts kept them warm.
Janet, her pizza boyfriend, and I were hanging out in Janet’s kitchen while her parents were away at a Grateful Dead show. Janet leaned against the counter, making it easier for him to touch her. Though the counter obscured them both from the waist down, I knew she was getting touched where it counted.
I stood barefoot by the fridge, humming Queensrÿche’s “Silent Lucidity.” I held a bottle of alcohol in each hand. Together they represented my ancestry.
The pizza boyfriend narrowed his eyes at me. “What are you?” he asked.
I looked at the tequila. “Mexican,” I slurred.
He reared his head back. Cocked it. Narrowed his eyes at me so that his suspicion could not be ignored. “But you have green eyes,” he said. “You can’t be all bean.”
Since I had swigged from both bottles, I didn’t have the lucidity to explain my eye color. I didn’t have it in me to argue that I got my green eyes from my dad, who got his green eyes from his mom, a mean-ass Mexican who thinks she’s better than all the other Mexicans because of her eye color—a color he believes doesn’t belong to us.
I looked at the vodka. “I’m a quarter Polish,” I added.
The pizza boyfriend grinned. He declared, “The two stupidest races ever. Combined!”
JANICE DICKINSON FRÉDÉRIC CHOPIN JOSEPH CONRAD JOHN WAYNE GACY MARIE CURIE PIA ZADORA SAM WAGSTAFF LEON CZOLGOSZ TADEUSZ KOŚCIUSZKO POPE JOHN PAUL II CHLOË SEVIGNY and TED KACZYNSKI are all Polish. Richard Ramirez Speedy Gonzales Selena Jennifer Lopez Menudo Dora the Explorer and ALF are not. Of all of Eddie Van Halen’s wives, Valerie Bertinelli looks the most Polish Mexican.
Bonnie
My junior-high friends went to the public high school across the street from the Catholic one my parents sent me to.
I got a fresh batch of friends there. Not all of them were hos. Some were drunks and fools. One new friend loved high fashion and was half black and half Spanish. Her name was Conchita. She said Barthelona. Conchita and my other new friends were the kinds of girls whose best years wouldn’t be in high school. They were also the kinds of girls whose senior superlatives were things like Best Chin. One of them, Frida, was half Mexican. That attracted me to her.
The whitest among my new friends was Ashley. Ashley had blond hair and no lips. She wore cowboy boots without irony. She believed in her beauty and told us that when she was having sex with Steve Panini, he told her she looked like Alicia Silverstone, the girl from Clueless who also played Lolita. After giving Ashley this compliment, Steve ate her ass. I wondered how it tasted. I wondered how clean she kept it. Her self-esteem floored me.
Ashley’s belief in herself and her beauty made watching her sophomore year trauma painful. She hit us all up for money to enter a beauty pageant, flew to Las Vegas, and competed. She ignored Frida’s advice: “Fuck a judge.”
Ashley placed last, so when it was announced that Miss America was coming to our school as part of her post-coronation tour, Ashley wasn’t into it. We were sitting behind a religion classroom and Ashley yelled, “Fuck Miss America!”
“Keep yellin’ it!” yelled Frida. “It’s not like she can hear you.”
It was around noon. We sat on a concrete curb that hemmed acacias. For lunch, Ashley was dipping tobacco. Frida was eating tuna on whole wheat. Conchita was spooning paella. I was watching.
In imitation deaf-voice, Ashley groaned, “NYOO AH BOOTIFUL!”
You are beautiful.
I shivered. Ashley’s cruelty gave me goose bumps.
Our soon-to-be-arriving Miss America’s thing was that she was hard of hearing. Our school had been scrubbed and groomed for her afternoon visit. The male teachers we
re wearing ties and deodorant in anticipation of her. Ashley wanted to slash her face. She wanted to smash it with a rock till it bled marinara.
“That bitch,” said Ashley. “That bitch is going to give us some bullshit talk she can’t even hear.”
We nodded to show Ashley that we believed deaf Miss America had cunt breath. That’s what you do when you’re in high school and someone is your friend. You agree that other girls are cunts to prove your fealty to the girls you love.
“Let’s ditch,” said Ashley. “Let’s get the fuck out of here.”
“Yeah,” giggled Frida. “Let’s leave!”
Frida and Ashley looked at Conchita. She said, “I don’t care what we do as long as I can smoke.” She was so European.
“How are we gonna do it?” I asked. “We’re locked in.”
Ashley looked down the breezeway, at the tall chain-link fence bordering the parking lot. “We’ll hop the fence by the chapel,” she said. “My car’s over there.”
“I’m not good at climbing fences,” I said.
Ashley said, “We’ll help you. Just be there instead of the assembly. Don’t pussy out.”
“Yeah!” cried Frida. She shook her tuna fish sandwich so that the pieces of bread moved like lips. “Don’t pussy out!” she bellowed. I think she was trying to do some sort of vaginal ventriloquism.
I flattened myself against the chapel wall. Frida and Conchita were on either side of me, also flattened.
Ashley tossed her wool-lined jacket so it draped over the wires twisting along the top of the fence. It was cool that she was sacrificing it so that our hands and crotches would be protected. We were going to thank her by climbing over the jacket, running away from school, and saying mean things about Miss America.
Ashley lunged at the fence and grabbed. She inserted one cowboy-boot toe into a chain-link slot and scuttled. Disobedience made her glow. It was better than makeup.
Reaching her jacket, Ashley lifted her leg. She straddled the fence, hoisted her other leg over, and let go. She was an angel falling five or six feet and landing with bent knees; she needed no time to collect herself. She sprinted off to go warm up her Scirocco.
I felt bad but good bad. I felt slightly criminal. Instead of Bonnie and Clyde, we were all Bonnie.
Conchita mimicked Ashley going over and made it to the car. Frida went over quickly for someone with basketball tits and joined the others in the car. I sighed and stepped up to the fence. I looked down. The last thing on the mind of the homosexual who’d invented platform Mary Janes was rappelling out of Catholic school, but I was going to have to summon the skill to make it happen.
I grabbed a handful of fence. I inserted my shoe. My toe fit perfectly into the square hole. My morale grew. I moved my feet and my hands sailed. I realized I actually could be athletic as long as I was doing it for all the wrong reasons. I reached the jacket in less than thirty seconds. I straddled it and felt the fence undulate.
My fingers let go. I dropped to the cement. My platforms touched down. My chest felt chilly because half of my outfit was still on the fence.
On my way down, wire had stabbed my black blouse and ripped it off. It waved in the wind like a pirate flag. I glanced at the ground. Black buttons lay scattered across the cement. They reminded me of Frosty the Snowman’s eyes. I looked up. I reached for my blouse and tore it free. I grabbed Ashley’s jacket too. Turning, I ran to the Scirocco. It was either going to die or take us somewhere less shitty.
Conchita undid the safety pins in her skirt. She slid them out of the hem, and I turned and presented my back to her. I felt her yanking, stabbing them into the fabric, pinning me shut again.
Ashley’s right foot pushed the gas pedal. Her left foot hung out the window. It was riding doggy style. It was practically smiling.
The thing I hate most about riding in the backseat when two smokers are in front is seeing embers come at my eyes. It makes blinking crucial.
Conchita sucked herb through a yellow, green, and red pipe. I sucked a lollipop. All the windows were rolled down. The sound of wind made it hard to talk. Wind played with our hair. It whipped our cheeks, but it didn’t feel punishing.
While Ashley hit the pipe, her right elbow steered.
Bushes hid a highway patrolman parked in a Mustang. He ignored us. We weren’t worth coming out of the bush for.
We crossed a bridge that spanned a riverbed-turned-desert. Tumbleweeds and sand filled it.
We ignored how tall the pines were growing at the Christmas tree farm next to the trailer park we sped past. Nobody commented on the Pacific Ocean sparkling to our left. It was just another swimming pool, and those are everywhere in California. California wants everyone to take her top off and jump in.
We passed strawberry fields.
Mexicans hunched in them, harvesting. These were the Mexicans whose kids Dad made educational materials for, and there I was, riding up the freeway with drugs, multicultural friends, and candy. I felt bad that I was mostly Mexican but didn’t have to be out there doing that, ruining my body so people could have strawberries to eat. Adrenaline and other chemicals overwhelmed my guilt. Adrenaline and female bonding can overwhelm almost anything.
I stared at the Mexicans.
I sucked on my lollipop.
We got off the freeway in San Luis Obispo.
San Luis is a town famous for a hotel named the Madonna Inn. It has nothing to do with Madonna. It’s also got a college that satirical musician “Weird Al” Yankovic attended and a nearby penal colony that housed a member of the Manson Family.
We parked in front of a café, a place where college kids congregated to drink coffee and feel superior to those who didn’t share their worldviews. Conchita fed the parking meter. She announced, “That’s it. That’s the last of my McDonald’s money.” After school, Conchita cooked quarter pounders with cheese and looked chic doing it.
“Let’s beg,” I suggested.
We left the Scirocco and trudged toward the sawhorses blocking the main street. A farmers’ market was underway there and this was something to see and do. Yeah, people were selling fruits, vegetables, and nuts, but people were also stirring vats of popcorn, and politically minded assholes were registering voters at folding tables. You could buy a sunflower as tall as you once were. We didn’t have this back home, just deaf Miss America, so we were going to enjoy it. We needed more money to enjoy it.
Frida and I paired off. We walked. We passed a lady with a face-painting booth and a person begging people to sign his petition to save something. I directed Frida to a window display where pale mannequins created soft-core porn dioramas. This store was Fanny Wrappers. It sold intimate apparel. Statues dressed in lace teddies and thongs beckoned at passersby. Some pedestrians stared and blushed, and others pretended like there weren’t pretend women wearing real lingerie right in front of them. Across the street from us, Ashley and Conchita loitered in front of a less, or maybe more, erotic window display: leather shoes.
A blond bowl cut bobbed through the river of local vegetables, steam, and petals. Frida whispered, “There goes Joey Osmond. His dad got to third base with the entire Little League.”
She was exaggerating. He’d gotten to third base with the kids he’d coached. We knew because it’d been on the news that Mr. Osmond was chomo: that’s shorthand for a child-molesting homosexual. He’d finagled the jizz out of the kids he taught baseball to and probably the kids he represented pro bono in the juvenile court system. Interestingly, he taught Sunday school. I wondered if his lessons on Sodom and Gomorrah had been interactive.
The news said his church had known what he was up to for a while because boys had told on him, but instead of kicking him out, his bishop had gotten him therapy. This cured him and made it OK to put him among boys again. Everyone in town found the news about the Osmonds titillating because the Osmonds were considered a whole-grain breakfast-cereal type of family—crisp, nourishing, and unostentatious—but this was revealed as a lie.
&nb
sp; The Little League boys Mr. Osmond touched testified against him and wept in the witness box. They were boys I went to junior high with, boys who had mooned me, one who had stuck his hand in my pudding, who had pressed on my clit in class. If molestation is a circle, a circle of life, then isn’t the hand of every molester working through the hand of every other molester? It’s fair to say that Mr. Osmond’s hand was working through Macaulay’s hand just like the Eucharist is no longer bread during Mass; it’s Jesus coming at you through a cracker.
My heart refused to have compassion for those involved in our local chomo mess. Compassion was too risky.
“I’m sure he made it to home base with some of them,” I said to Frida. “I mean, he had, like, foster kids and foreign exchange students staying at his house all the time. He created a potlatch.”
A hippie with pube-ish sideburns oozed by.
“Give us money,” I told him.
“For what?” he asked.
“We might buy food with it or we might get high. It depends.”
The hippie reached into his overalls pocket and removed a Guatemalan textile wallet. He pulled beauty from it, a twenty-dollar bill. He lifted it into the air above his blond ’fro.
“If you want it,” he said, “come and get it.”
Feeling like a hooker, I leapt, snatched the money, and petted it.
“Thank him,” said Frida.
“Thanks a lot, dick,” I said.
The hippie’s eyes bugged.
“That’s no way to show appreciation!” Frida screamed theatrically. “Blow the man!” she commanded.
“Nope,” I said. “I’m homo.”
“Homo schlomo,” she replied. “You can still blow the man!”
The hippie sized me up from platforms to bangs. “You seem pretty young to have decided what team to bat for,” he said.
Frida and I looked at Joey Osmond; he was languishing with his back to a lotion shop, watching a clown. The clown’s yarn hair hung with tragic limpness. He juggled worn and tarnished balls without enthusiasm. Joey looked away from the balls. He frowned.
