Hyena

by Jude Angelini

  I take a deep breath and stop her. “You know what, honey, that was a great dance but I gotta get going.”

  And right after the words come out of my mouth, the song finishes. If I would’ve waited five more seconds.

  She wipes her forehead and fakes a smile and says, “Yeah, okay.”

  I’m faking a smile back, forcing eye contact. “Naw, it really was.”

  “It’s okay.”

  I give her a ten, tell her keep the change, and walk straight out that bar into the light.

  straw dogs

  I’M DRINKING BUBBLY WATER OUT’a plastic cup, staring at a black gas can and black cassette tape mounted on the wall trying to figure out why I should give a fuck.

  It’s some dude’s art; it’s supposed to be about Islam. The Ka’aba, it’s a black stone they pray on or something. I don’t know. Seems to me it’s just an excuse for this guy to show off all the cool black things he’s accumulated over the years. Oh look, there’s an accordion, how very.

  I wanna punch this dude in the throat. I’d do it if I knew he wouldn’t hit me back. As a matter of fact, I wanna punch everybody in this room, all of them, with their designer eyeglasses and hipster haircuts.

  How the fuck did I travel to Berlin, halfway around the world, just to end up in fucking Williamsburg, or Silver Lake, or Wicker Park or wherever the fuck the cool kids go nowadays, listening to the same music, having the same conversations and looking at the same shitty art on the wall?

  I coulda stayed in the States, I coulda gone back home, but this is what I asked for. Cultured white people. I got it.

  I used to spend my holidays in Detroit with the family, but I started resenting them. I’d drop all this money and all these vacation days to fly out and see these motherfuckers, and these selfish fucks couldn’t get their shit together for one day. They’d show up late or bring their asshole boyfriends along, and I’d end up arguing with my pop over some bullshit.

  I come back for Christmas one year, my aunt’s got this Hindu crackhead motherfucker sitting on the couch, drinking a forty out the bag, watching a bootleg of Ghost Ship, talking ’bout, “Aw hell naw, brotha, I know you from Jenny Jones. You used ta give dem girls da bidness!” Fast talking, trying to get me to drop some money on a bottle of something good.

  Him and my aunt are wearing matching dashikis with the hammer pants and neither one of ’em is black. This dude fixes curry for Christmas. We’re fucking Italian, man. Don’t sully our table with some fucking vindaloo. But I’m a good sport, I take a bite. There’s a hair in it.

  I’m not even mad at him, I’m mad at my aunt for bringing this jive-talking Hindu around me. A week later, he ends up stealing her Volvo.

  My last trip, I spent Christmas in Peru. All I wanted to do was sit on the beach, play rich American, and fuck top-notch whores at third-world prices. I ended up hiking up mountains looking at ruins and shit, and if you seen one ruin, you seen ’em all. It’s rocks on the side of a hill. I mean, it’s cool at first but by the tenth one you’re like, “Okay I get it, they had a good thing going with their rocks and sticks and gold, then the Conquistadors came and fucked them up.”

  At first you try to connect with the little native motherfuckers, on some “help me understand you” shit. But they just beg for money or try and sell you alpaca sweaters. You ain’t shit to them but a wallet. When I got home, I found out all my sweaters were fake. So I was like, next vacation, I’m kicking it with the conquerors. White privilege.

  So here I am with these expats and Germans and it feels just like America. I’m pressing my homegirl Krista to take us to Poland for Easter, get some of that Eastern Bloc, Iron Curtain flavor.

  A group of us end up going to her homie Wojciech’s family farm deep in the Polish countryside. We take the train in; it feels like some real official communist shit, stark green interior with a lot of BO and cologne. Just how I imagined it.

  For dinner they kill a hog and hook us up with ribs and sausage. We drink shots of vodka, toast Wojciech’s name day, and Rachel and Kuba dance drunk on the table.

  Kuba takes some of us to the local disco, which is basically a warehouse in the middle of a field chock-full of blue-eyed women with childbearing hips and men who look like Ivan Drago. It’s nice to be in a place the Internet hasn’t ruined yet.

  We’re walking up, I ask Kuba, “Are there any faux pas with y’all Polish cats I need to be aware of?”

  He says with a thick accent, “Don’t try to talk to any of their women, don’t look anybody directly in the eye, and don’t be gay.”

  “Don’t be gay, okay, I got it.”

  He’s fucking with me, this guy. This place can’t be that bad—shit, they’re listening to a dance mix of Ace of Base’s “The Sign.”

  And then I hear these women yelling and a crowd of men spill out the club, fists swinging. It looks like they’d been lifting pigs all their lives, threw some bootleg Ed Hardy on, and decided to punch each other in the face. They bloody each other up while their girlfriends trail behind, screaming for them to stop.

  I walk into the disco, head down.

  Based on this place I can tell you three things about the Poles: they aren’t fond of deodorant, they’re way into black lights and Day-Glo paint, and they really seem to love Ace of Base.

  Everyone’s on edge, a light bump can lead to confrontation. It feels less like a club and more like the prison yard. We stick around for a couple drinks, dance amongst ourselves, and head back to the hostel.

  When I say hostel, it’s not like the regular hostel that one might imagine, with a clerk and shit. This was an empty farmhouse in the middle of nowhere with nobody working. The only people there were us and a group of drunk Polish twenty-year-olds who heard there were American girls in town so they came by to check it out.

  So Wojciech invites them in for a nightcap. I’m thinking they’re his cousins because I had seen a couple of ’em outside his aunt’s house at dinner. There’s six of ’em: a giant albino with a bowl cut who’s about a half a head taller than me, the blackout-drunk guy, three other nondescript Poles (think extras in a bread line), and a bootleg Leonardo DiCaprio.

  I hit the bathroom and throw a suppository up my ass cuz I hadn’t shit since I got to Europe and the ribs and mayonnaise-based salads got my gut feeling crazy. I figure by the time these motherfuckers get done with their drink, I’ll be in the bathroom shitting. I come out to the corridor, where everyone’s standing and the albino’s hitting on Krista.

  Krista’s pointing at me saying I’m her man. Now I hate that shit, why the fuck do I have to pretend to be someone’s man when it’s convenient for the lady? You gonna keep pretending after they leave and gimme a fucking blow job? Didn’t think so.

  So I’m shaking my head no. “Nope, I’m not her man, she’s a lesbian, she don’t like dick.” Give ’em that lie, leave me out of it.

  He moves on to Rachel; Leonardo DiCaprio’s trying to hit on her too.

  I’m like, “Naw, that’s my sister. She’s got a man.”

  Wojciech translates.

  They go back to hollering at Krista, with their buddies giggling in the background egging ’em on.

  I say, “Damn, y’all over here trying to holler at all our chicks, where’s the girls for us?”

  Wojciech asks ’em.

  The giant albino says back in his little Polish gibberish, “Blah blah blah bordello blah blah.”

  “Good, let’s go to the bordello. I’m on vacation, I’ll buy a fucking hooker. Shit, Wojciech, tell your cousins I’ll even buy them one. Let’s go.”

  I try and walk ’em out but they’re not moving. Wojciech says to me, “They’re not my cousins.”

  I’m like, “What? They’re not your cousins? Then how do you know ’em?”

  He says, “I don’t.”

  Now it gets real. We’re out in the middle of nowhere, in a foreign land, with no cell phones, no nothing, I don’t know the language and we’re chilling with six semi-aggressive drunk
Poles. I mean it’s cool right now, it’s cool till it’s not cool. I start thinking about Straw Dogs and mob mentality. Maybe I should’ve said I was Krista’s man.

  Krista says she’s tired and goes to her room to lay down, but before she can shut her door, Giant Albino pushes in behind her with his three homeboys and Wojciech in tow.

  That leaves me outside with Rachel and Leonardo DiCaprio. Rachel’s drunk and she’s trying to show Leo how to high-five.

  She’s like, “No no no! That’s not hard enough. Here, give me your hand. Give me your hand! Okay, put it up, yeah like that. Now you have to hit it like you mean it like . . .”

  Bam! She hauls off and slaps the shit out of his hand. He winces and shakes it off. I’m staring at her like what the fuck are you doing?

  “Now do me! Come on, do me.”

  He cocks back and hits the shit out of her hand and she’s nodding, saying, “Yeah yeah, that’s right. Let’s do it again.”

  And they do, again and again.

  The blackout drunk is holding a bottle of vodka, shuffling back and forth behind them. I’m thinking this might end bad. I’m searching the room for something to hit ’em with. All they have is plastic lawn furniture.

  Now she’s giving him her five-hundred-dollar camera to play with. Why not?

  She wouldn’t be doing this if it was acceptable for dudes to punch chicks in the face. I mean they do it, but it’s frowned upon. I wish it wasn’t. If a chick could get fucked-up just like a dude, they wouldn’t do half the dumb shit they do out in public.

  I’ve seen more guys get gut-stomped because their fucking girlfriend was mouthing off to the wrong dude. Look, we wanna be chivalrous, but ladies, you gotta know when to shut the fuck up and act right.

  One time, I took this idiot chick out. We’re at Denny’s after the club and she starts talking slick to some 18th Street Gang motherfuckers at the table next to us. This bitch. We haven’t even fucked yet and she’s trying to get me into fights.

  I’m eating my eggs watching this shit go down, then the one with the tattoo on his cheek calls our whole table some bitches. And now I gotta say something. I’m playing it cool on some grown-up shit, but I’m scared as hell, white-knuckle clenching my butter knife in case I gotta stab somebody in the face.

  I say, “Look, we’re all adults here. I haven’t disrespected you, so let’s not disrespect each other. Why don’t we just finish our meals like some grown-ass men and be on our way?”

  The teardrop cholo looks me dead in my eyes and I look right back at him. Maybe he sees fear, I don’t know. Or maybe he sees a man on a date with a nincompoop who’s not even giving up the pussy, and is just trying to get out of Denny’s without having to fistfight four dudes because of her.

  He says, “Fuck it,” finishes his omelet, and leaves.

  If I’m ever in that situation again, I’ll check her ass before it even gets that far. But it’s different with Rachel; she’s not really talking shit. She’s just drunk and not understanding how camera loans and aggressive high fives with intoxicated strangers from Poland could end poorly. Plus she’s my sister, so like, I’ll fucking ride with her no matter what.

  I hear shouts from Krista’s room and go check it out. Krista’s on the bed with the giant albino lording over her, trying to get a kiss from her, she’s telling him no and laughing nervously. He steals one anyway.

  I look at Wojciech. I say, “Dude, could you get them out of here?”

  It takes another ten minutes to round them up, get Rachel’s camera back, and finally get ’em to go. When we’re walking them out the albino starts directing his frustration at me, the four-eyed, pencil-dick Yankee who kept him from banging an American girl.

  He’s pointing at me, talking shit in his language. Probably calling me a faggot.

  I’m smiling the whole time. “Okay, whatever you say, I can’t understand you, just fucking leave.”

  Now he’s making fun of my glasses and they’re laughing and high-fiving each other. I smile and nod. “That’s right. I wear glasses, say it while you’re walking, bro. Say it while you’re walking.”

  Wojciech shuts the door. I say, “Man, that coulda ended real rapey. I was thinking we was gonna have to fight them dudes.”

  “Oh no, they’re just kids, it’s fine.”

  “Yeah, okay, just kids. It’s all good till it’s not all good. I figured I was gonna end up having to get gut-stomped in the corner defending my sister’s honor.”

  We’re laughing and there’s a knock at the door. It’s them again. Their car broke down and they need a push. Six of them and they need a push. Leonardo DiCaprio’s behind the door trying to sneak in. I block his way and then it happens. My asshole catches fire. The fucking German suppository finally melts. I’m clenching my butt cheeks trying to keep these dudes out and trying to keep my shit in.

  I can’t make it. I look at Wojciech and say, “You deal wit ’em, bruh.”

  He shuts the door on ’em.

  I run to the bathroom, drop trou, and explode.

  I’m still on the john when I hear another car pull up and then another car. They’re at the door pounding on it, hollering.

  Boom boom boom! Boom boom boom! Boom boom!

  Must’ve been fifteen of ’em out there kicking at the door. I’m in here shitting my brains out and I’m thinking, you dumb fuckin’ Polacks, that ain’t no way to get an American girl. You gotta do it with shitty art, hipster haircuts, and designer eyeglasses.

  desperado

  I GAVE UP SEX, SO i started drinking again. I hadn’t drank in six years, so people were surprised by it.

  I tell ’em, “I wanna be like Mad Men.”

  They’re nodding politely. “Oh.”

  “Plus I gave up sex, so I’ve taken up whiskey.”

  Now I’m explaining myself and they’re looking around the room for someone else to talk to. “Fucking all these chicks adds up. I don’t know. . . . It’s just not where I wanna go in my life. And you can’t get a bottle of liquor pregnant. Lord knows I’ve tried.”

  Bottoms up.

  Andrea thinks I’m doing too many drugs.

  Maybe I’ll try yoga.

  I was tellin’ Z, “I wish pills weren’t so bad for you. I’d pop them instead.”

  I used to chow down Vikes and do crossword puzzles. Itching.

  I don’t even like the buzz of liquor. I like the act of drinking it. I post up at the bar, order my whiskey neat, and sip it. They’re selling a lifestyle and I’m buying.

  I’m a cowboy.

  I wake up with a headache and rotgut. Drink more water next time.

  Andrea says maybe I’m depressed and I should take Zoloft.

  Fuck that. I’ll stick with depression before I take a fucking pill. I’d rather do drugs to escape the weirdness in my head than take a pill to cure it.

  Lately, I’ve been having nightmares. I woke up one night, my bed was shaking so hard I thought I was in an earthquake. Checked it on Google the next day, see what it measured. Nothing. Wasn’t no earthquake. That was just me, shaking.

  I’ve been having sleep paralysis, too. I was tellin’ my friend Natasha about it. She says the Vietnamese call it “the ghost on your chest.” It feels like it.

  Ain’t shit to do but go back to sleep.

  I’ve been watching documentaries on ’Nam lately. When we were kids, we didn’t play cowboys and Indians, we played ’Nam. We’d run around the apartment complex with guns and sticks killing invisible soldiers. Maybe you shoot somebody or maybe you get shot. Maybe you die. I used to like dying. I found comfort in it. Just lie down in the grass with your eyes closed and die.

  big red

  THERE’S NO YELLOW AS BRILLIANT as vitamin piss. I got on some latex gloves, fishing out a busted glass lodged in the toilet. There’s shitty toilet paper in the glass but no shit in the bowl and I’m grateful.

  The bar’s empty. I’m alone here in the john. I got a knot of ones in my pocket; they tip me when I give ’em a towel. I g
ot Altoids, too, and I sell cigarettes for a buck a piece. The Arabs bitch about it but they still buy one; sometimes I’ll sell a whole pack for twenty.

  Tonight this Chaldean fucker tried to steal a pack of gum from me, when he was in there with his boys. They were wearing Armani and silver chains. They had nice watches and stank of cologne. They own party stores and sell cell phones.

  They make their money in bombed-out neighborhoods, behind bulletproof Plexiglas in a cage. Detroit doesn’t scare them, cuz where they’re from, there’s tanks and land mines and Molotov cocktails.

  Now they’re in my bathroom trying to fast-talk me, trying to haggle. The one with the arched eyebrows is gonna steal my gum. It’s not about money; he’s got money. He just wants to take a piece of me and chew on it, chew on my gum.

  He can’t have it. I work in the john; how much lower does he wanna see me? Should I know my place? Or does he hate the way I pop my paper towels to people? I tell myself a man’s job doesn’t define him. I try to prove it.

  I see him put the pack of Big Red in his pocket. I sell it a buck a stick, I tell him he owes me five dollars. He plays dumb, there’s a confrontation. I won’t back down. His boys don’t want trouble; they push him out but they don’t pay me.

  I’m heated, I tell the bouncers. They don’t do a fucking thing, cuz last week the Albanians beat their ass and this shit is giving ’em flashbacks. I start packing my shit.

  “Fuck that! If I gotta worry about some A-rab motherfucker coming here, stealing my gum and y’all not doing a fuckin’ thing, I quit.”

  So they kick ’em out. Now I’m happy.

  I don’t know what I hate worse: Saturdays with the Jews and Arabs or Fridays with the fags. Saturdays they wanna fight me and Fridays they wanna fuck me, whipping their dicks out or trying to shove a five down my pants. I don’t let ’em, but you can’t let ’em know if you’re gay or straight cuz if they find out you like pussy, money’s gone.