by Joe Meno
Like I remembered her, there she was: Esme, sitting on top of the washing machine drinking a bottle of beer, her red Chelsea looking lovely, talking to Kim, who was there with Bobby B., who, like always, looked bored with everything. They all waved to us and smiled, Bobby B. flashing me the devil sign. As we came down the steps, I could hear a brittle-sounding guitar pounding out power chords from a cheap-o practice amp and tinny drums that seemed far away and muffled, like one of those windup monkeys. At first I thought someone was playing a record on a stereo that had blown its speakers, but when we got to the bottom of the stairs, I saw some band was already playing.
The band was called the Morlocks! with the exclamation point and everything. It was this guy Jim’s band, a guy who we all knew, a sophomore at Evergreen Park, the public high school. The name Morlocks! they got from the Time Machine by H.G. Wells, which I had read myself. They couldn’t really play too well and didn’t have a bass player; it was just a singer, guitar player, and a drummer, and they didn’t have any real equipment, but to me it was still a band, because to me a band isn’t anything but an idea, good or bad, and once you get the idea it’s only a matter of time before it either happens or it doesn’t. I had been thinking about being in a metal band for years and it was almost as real to me as if it had already happened. Jim had an idea and it was the Morlocks! and he wrote the name MORLOCKS! very satanic-looking all over his jean jacket and shirts and on the white rubber tops of his Chuck Taylors with black magic marker. I always thought that it was cool that he wrote his own band name all over everything, even though no one had ever really heard of them. The Morlocks! played about seven songs, one after the other, three of them by the Ramones; the rest were songs Jim had written about this girl we had known, Sheryl Landry, who shot herself when we were in junior high, songs with real subtle titles like “Ricochet Baby” and “I Wanna Be Your Bullet.” Mostly the songs were pretty bad, pretty uninteresting, but Jim had a lot of energy and kept spraying beer at the kids who were standing up close. I felt jealous for a good ten minutes watching them play. Not because they were good, but because they were not good and still people were loving them. Especially the girls. Especially Gretchen.
OK, it kind of broke my heart but I looked over and saw Gretchen was up close to the corner where the band was playing and she was dancing with her eyes closed like she was alone and she had her hands over her head and she wasn’t moshing like some of the other kids—dudes, mostly, who were karate-chopping the air and kicking and shoving each other; they were younger kids mostly, with recently dyed hair that left color splotches along their necks because they hadn’t been told to use Vaseline, or skater kids in their favorite band T-shirts, like Naked Raygun or the Circle Jerks, with their one long strand of hair that hung in their faces like Glenn Danzig. All of them were sweaty and laughing and dancing hard. When we went to these basement shows, I never danced because I didn’t know what the hell to do, so I just sat beside Kim and Bobby B. near the washing machine just watching, like always.
Like I said, it wouldn’t have been a real party if Bobby B. had not tried starting a fight. See, Bobby B. hated punk music. He would bitch about it all the time. “There’s no fucking guitar solos. Those fucking bands should learn how to play their instruments,” he’d tell me while working on his van or at some other basement show. The only reason he came was because of Kim, who he was on-again/off-again with anyway. Punk music was just another thing for them to argue about, I guess. I turned to see what Bobby B. was thinking of the Morlocks!and he gave me the devil sign again, followed by a thumbs-down, rolling his eyes. “This is fucking noise,” he yelled as loud as he could. Kim covered his mouth, shaking her head, but not before two skinny straightedge suburban kids had heard, their bald heads glistening on their bumpy crowns with sweat. The straightedge kids were all straight: no drugs, no smoking—no sex? I’m not sure about the last one. They were like a weird, hard-core kind of cult that was very fucking arrogant, because they didn’t ever get fucked up. They were like the student council kids of that scene. They were dressed in matching Minor Threat T-shirts, which was kind of fucking weird, and they had black bondage pants on, with the four hundred zippers, all tapering down to their twenty-hole combat boots. They also had black magic-markered X’s on the back of their hands, you know, to let you know who they were, I guess. It was like being punk wasn’t special enough, so they had to be a group within a whole fucking group.
Those kids kind of irritated me. Well, the two straightedge kids turned and gave Bobby B. a dirty look, elbowing each other and crossing their arms in front of their chests; and Bobby B., looking at them, just laughed. He moved Kim’s hand aside and stood, pushing himself off of the washing machine, patting down his hair, which was getting kind of long and almost unruly. “Do you two faggots have a staring problem?” he asked, pointing his finger back and forth between them. I sat up stiffly, watching it all happen but not doing anything.
“You’re the one with the problem, man,” the taller of the straightedge kids said, giving him a dirty look again and turning back around to watch the band. Bobby B. laughed, looking around, and dug into the back pocket of his dirty jeans. He pulled his right fist back out, slipped a pair of brass knuckles over his fingers, and began flexing them, pounding the weapon into his other fist. He strode up behind the taller straightedge kid, looked back at me, and then—BAM!—snapped a quick blow to the back of the guy’s head. The kid went down like the power company had shut off his lights; one shot, that was it, he was laid out. The other straightedge kid, who was a lot shorter than Bobby B., made a move to maybe swing at him, but didn’t. Some punk girls we didn’t know gathered around the kid on the ground, whose eyes were weak and flickering, and Bobby B. went back to standing by the washing machine, winking at me.
Fights like that weren’t too frequent at the shows because, for the most part, the punk kids we knew were kinda wimpy. They were the ones who had been picked on or hassled in junior high, so most of them were pretty well-behaved. Bobby B., on the other hand, had been a bully his whole life. I thought he was a good guy, but it was like, by exposing him to all these geeky punk kids, he kind of reverted to being the bully. Kim and Bobby B. started arguing, her with her arms crossed in front of her chest, and him smiling and shrugging his shoulders and shaking his head, then he would roll his eyes and wink at me. It seemed like Bobby B. punching someone in the back of the head was just an eventual part of us going to a party, say, around the middle part of the evening.
By then, some of the kids had taken off their T-shirts because it was so hot down there; they were these little skinny punk kids who didn’t even have armpit hair yet, but they didn’t care, going crazy, dancing and jumping up and down as Jim from the Morlocks! shouted and threw himself against the guitar player, a mulatto kid named Darren who I was told had very rich parents. Then some kids slung their T-shirts on their heads and some were whipping each other with them and some had thrown them in the air and then Gretchen, still with her eyes closed, started taking her black Blanks shirt off, and threw it to the ground and kept on dancing and I couldn’t fucking believe what I was seeing. Gretchen was getting fucking naked and there she was, dancing in her white bra with the tiny blue flowers, and I felt myself move away from the wall to get a better look. But there were so many kids it was hard to see anything—anything but the soft sloping lines of her bra strap along her creamy white back.
I turned to ask Kim if she was watching but she was already making out hard with Bobby B., who had his hand down the back of her pants and I could see Kim’s thin, lacy red underwear, and they were kind of just dry-humping right there. It seemed like the whole world was making out already, kids pressed against the smooth concrete walls or sitting on the steps or behind the bed sheets, which were hanging. Esme passed by and offered me a bottle of Bud and I said, “Fuck yeah,” and drank it down as fast as I could and started dancing around by myself, and it felt good for a minute because I was feeling so fucking lonely. When I lo
oked back, Gretchen was dancing with some dude—it wasn’t even someone we knew—and I stopped dancing right then, and Jim from the Morlocks! was holding the mike up to the crowd for their last song, “Rock’n’Roll Radio,” another Ramones tune.
OK, then I saw it. I saw this kid—this nobody with long brown skater bangs and baggy skater jeans, with his little narrow bare chest and little grubby scabby hands—making out with Gretchen, kissing her with his tongue and she was kissing him back hard, and they were both sweaty and both of them had their eyes closed, and he was fucking feeling her up and everything, and she was just letting him, in front of everybody. And it seemed everyone in the world around me was making out with somebody—Kim and Bobby B., this tall gangly girl with an Operation Ivy T leaning over this short freshman dude I didn’t even know, completely eating each other’s faces—and I couldn’t take it anymore, so I grabbed a beer from the cooler and headed up the stairs from the basement through the kitchen and out the back door to get fucked up by myself. Totally.
I don’t know what time it was already, but outside it was pretty quiet, still very warm, and when I walked out through the back kitchen door I found a beautiful silver and aqua in-ground swimming pool, the sound of the filter still running, but the rest of it quiet and secluded and completely empty. It smelled great, the chlorine, like being a kid in the middle of summer all over again. Downstairs I could hear Jim through the basement windows yelling, “OK, OK, this is our last song, for real,” and they went into “Last Caress,” a Misfits song I really liked, but they kind of fucked it up, but it was OK because the song was just that good. I looked up and the stars were out and the rest of the neighborhood was deadly fucking silent and I thought about jumping in the pool and drowning myself right there, but I didn’t want to die without making it with somebody and so I cracked open my second beer and started drinking. I almost started crying for some reason. I walked toward a set of white plastic lawn chairs and just then I noticed Esme was lying in one, wearing a white terry-cloth towel wrapped around her narrow middle. She had her eyes closed and she was smoking. She opened her eyes suddenly and noticed me standing there and jumped, startled, I guess, maybe.
“You scared me, Brian Oswald,” she said.
“Sorry,” I said back.
“Well, Brian Oswald, no one’s supposed to be back here,” she said.
“Sorry,” I said.
“I don’t want my neighbors to, you know, find out.”
“Dude, you have like eight cars in the driveway,” I said.
“Yeah, you’re right, Brian Oswald,” she said and nodded, then laughed. She sat up, adjusted her cat’s eye glasses, and lit up another smoke. She was barefoot and her legs were stretched out. Her small shoulders were totally bare, also. There was a tiny silver toe-ring on one of her toes and that was it. I was staring at it for a while and she seemed to notice me staring, but didn’t care, and then she reached over and took my beer. She took a sip and handed it back to me and I took a seat in a plastic chair across from her, promising myself not to speak no matter what happened here.
“So what are you doing back here, Brian Oswald?” she asked.
“Nothing,” I said.
“You don’t like parties, Brian Oswald?”
“I dunno. Hey, why do you keep saying my whole name?” I asked.
“I don’t know. It’s funny. You have a funny-sounding name. Brian Oz-wald. It sounds like a funny name.”
“Yeah, I guess,” I said.
“Does your band have any shows coming up, Brian Oswald?” she asked, smiling.
“I don’t have a band,” I said.
“I know,” she said. “Brian Ozzzzzwald.”
I sat up, frowning. “You of all people shouldn’t be making fun of people’s names.”
“What, you don’t like my name?” she asked, defensive, sitting up and crooking her thin eyebrows at me suspiciously.
“No, I like it,” I said. “But it’s pretty funny.”
“I got it from a J. D. Salinger story.”
“Wow,” I said. “That’s cool.”
“Yeah. I’m going to change it when I become eighteen, legally.”
“Cool,” I said. “I was thinking of changing my name too.”
“To what?”
“Vince Neil,” I said, doing my best now to try to be funny.
“You’re pretty funny, Brian Oswald,” she said, nodding, taking another sip of my beer.
“That’s Vince Neil,” I corrected.
“Do you want to know my real name?” Esme asked, leaning in close to me. I could smell her: her hair apple-scented but dusted in cigarette smoke; her skin, some kind of luscious skin-conditioning soap; even her sweat, which was salty, little droplets along her neck.
“OK,” I said, leaning in closer again. Esme put her small pink lips beside my ear and I could hear and feel her breathing.
“It’s Gladys,” she murmured, giggling against my neck. “It’s my grandma’s name.”
“Gladys?” I whispered back. “Really?”
“Don’t tell anyone, Brian Oswald,” she said, and now we were staring at each other and we were very close and I thought for sure we were going to kiss, but we didn’t. We were sitting beside each other, our legs stretched out, face to face, and we were so very close I could see her nose move as she breathed. Then she went and did the most lovely thing ever: She went and took off her glasses and folded them up carefully, then, leaning forward and holding herself up by her fingertips, she went and did the same for me. I looked down and I could see my eye glasses and her eye glasses, folded up neatly side by side along the arm of the plastic pool chair—which was a little wet for some reason—and then she pursed her lips a little and said, “Now don’t laugh,” and slid out her retainer, which was small and hard and pink and plastic, and set it down beside the two pairs of glasses.
“Now I’m ready,” she said, and I could have cried. And so we started making out and out of nowhere, we were making out and out of nowhere, we were making out and I felt her lips against my mouth and her tongue against my teeth and we were leaning forward uncomfortably, and as she grabbed me by my T-shirt
the soft baby-powder smell of her cheeks and the sweet peach schnapps in her kiss and strange chlorine of her hair and the pool and the summer-y taste of her mouth and spit
vrmmhhh, went the pool filter and the singing heat and the cymbals from “Last Caress” still ringing and kids downstairs shouting and a small dog somewhere barking and the wetness, the smooching of lips against lips
OK, so this is it. This is what it feels like to be really liked by somebody, and I really like this girl and I hope she really likes me and I hope I am doing it OK
and Esme pulled me on top of her and we were really, really kissing and I felt her lips against my mouth and her tongue against my teeth and we were leaning forward uncomfortably, and as she grabbed me by my T-shirt the soft baby-powder smell of her cheeks and the sweet peach schnapps in her kiss and strange chlorine of her hair and the pool and the summer-y taste of her mouth and spit vrmmhhh, went the pool filter and the singing heat and the cymbals from “Last Caress” still ringing and kids downstairs shouting and a small dog somewhere barking and the wetness, the smooching of lips against lips OK, so this is it. This is what it feels like to be really liked by somebody, and I really like this girl and I hope she really likes me and I hope I am doing it OK and Esme pulled me on top of her and we were really, really kissing and I felt her arm go around my neck and we were really going at it now, like a couple of rabbits, and then she just stopped and looked up at me and one of her eyes, the left one, really was kind of slower than the right, and she straightened her lips and looked very serious and said, “Are you with Gretchen?” and I said, “I came here with her,” and she said, “No, are you going out with her?” and I said, “No, we’re just friends,” and she said, “If you tell me the truth, I won’t be mad at you,” and I thought about that for a second and said, “We’re just friends,” and she n
odded and we started making out again.
One hot minute later, some goth kid with long black hair stumbled out back through the kitchen screen door, looked around, nodded, and shouted, “Pool!” then pulled off his shoes and jumped in without getting undressed from his black man-dress. In a couple of minutes, all these sweaty punk kids were tearing off the rest of their clothes and cannon-balling in the air, doing trick moves like front-flips and jackknives—maybe like sixty kids all going fucking crazy in the pool, someone shouting, “Marco!” and someone else shouting, “Polo,” and girls on guys’ shoulders chicken-fighting, and kids starting to make out again, and Esme said “Do you want to go inside?” I nodded and we stood up and someone was pointing at us and just then I took a look around for Gretchen and I couldn’t find her and I started thinking the worst, like she was taking it from that skater kid, but then she came out, flicking the ash of her cigarette into a beer can, kind of sad-looking. Esme must have noticed me watching because she let go of my hand and said, “Go talk to her if you want, Brian Oswald,” and then, like that, she disappeared into the fucking house and that was the end of that.
