Hyena

by Jude Angelini

  “Okay.”

  “Rachel?”

  “Okay.”

  Some teenager takes our tickets and my pop goes flying to the theater in a forced march; Rachel and I are trying to keep up. Some nerds are trying to race us, but we’re whooping them. We beat everybody to the theater. We’re the first ones there. We get in and sure enough, there’s a couple sitting smack dab in the middle of the retard seats eating candy, waiting for the movie to start.

  Pop damn near loses it.

  “What the fuck is this?” He runs up on ’em. He’s standing over ’em. “Excuse me . . . my kid, he broke his neck and he’s got this shit on his head, I don’t want him to get bumped, so could ya move over a couple seats?”

  They just look up at him.

  “Could ya please move over for my kid. He’s got a broken neck.”

  Nothing.

  He explodes. “Look, mothafucka, my kid needs to sit in the fuckin’ handicap seats so would you fucking move?!”

  Hard cases. They still won’t move.

  The theater’s filling up. There aren’t as many places to sit. Now people are watching him. I see the mother of a girl I went to school with and a librarian I used to work with staring at my dad. I smile, wave to them, and go help my dad. I stand over the couple. With a cage screwed into my head. Everyone’s watching. I say, “Fuck these motherfuckers! Whoop their ass, Pop! I’ll smack the shit out this bitch! Get the fuck out these seats!”

  Pop jumps in. “Let my fuckin’ kid sit here!”

  “Yeah, bitch! Let me sit here!”

  Just then, some guy in the audience yells, “Hey, buddy, they’re deaf!”

  Sure enough, we look down and these motherfuckers are scared as hell signing to each other.

  Pop’s says, “What the fuck are deaf people doing at the movies?!”

  I’m like, “I guess they read lips.”

  “They didn’t read our lips.”

  The chick looks like she’s about to cry. I look down to her and mouth, “I’m sorry we threatened to beat you up. I thought you all was some assholes, not deaf.” I’m using fake sign language, punching my fist to my palm and pointing at my ears.

  My pop says to me, “Don’t you ever fuckin’ apologize for me.”

  Now I’m telling him I’m sorry. I try and touch him but he don’t wanna be touched.

  And they still won’t move, so we sit right behind them and Pops stares daggers through their skulls the whole way through.

  splitsville

  BACK WHEN JULIE AND I broke up for like the fourth time, she says, “This is it, you’re breaking up with me again?”

  I say, “Yeah.”

  She’s crying, she says, “You don’t fight for me.” She’s jamming her shit into paper bags, getting her heels from under my bed, clearing out the drawers. “I can’t believe this. We’re breaking up like this? You have nothing to say?”

  “What’s there to say, Julie? We breaking up again, that’s what we do. How many times we gotta do this? How’m I sposed to fight for you, when we can’t stop fighting?” It sounds like a cliché the minute I say it.

  She says, “You’re afraid of love. You’re a coward. You don’t know how to be loved and you’re gonna get old and be alone and no one is gonna be there to love you. You’re gonna be old and alone because you’re scared. And I pity you.”

  We stare at each other.

  I tell her, “Don’t forget your running shoes.”

  I walk her to the car and we cuss each other out some more. I tell her to put my shit outside, I’ll come get it when she’s at work. She says she’s keeping it. She slams her door and drives off. And that’s the last I see of her.

  I walk back upstairs, she left a paper bag full of her shit on my bed. I leave it by the back door for a couple of days. I don’t know what to do with it. I was gonna throw it out but Andrea tells me not to. So I shove it in my closet and I pretend like it’s not there.

  captain caveman

  I COME HOME TO MY mother on the porch, smoking a cigarette, crying. She only smokes when she’s upset. She thinks I’m shooting up ketamine; she saw the vial sitting on the nightstand next to the bed. I hug her, I tell her I’m not.

  “I put it in a pan and bake it, till it crystallizes, then I crush it up and snort it, Ma. I snort it, I don’t shoot it.”

  We’re in the kitchen and she’s still crying. “I just feel bad that you get so down sometimes that you use drugs.”

  “Ma, I’m all right. Everybody uses drugs, everybody self-medicates. I just don’t drink or smoke weed, that’s all. I tried drinkin’ but it made me depressed. I’m not even snortin’ K right now. I got that shit for LA, when I go back. Right now I’m on Vicodin and you fuckin’ up my high.”

  I smile. I’m trying to make her laugh. She doesn’t.

  “I just don’t like needles.”

  “I’m not using no needles. I’m not Ronnie. I’m not dumb.”

  Ronnie’s her ex-boyfriend. He’s this hood cat from Seven Mile, he’s a couple years older than me. Used to sell dope then he started using it. He lived with her for damn near two years, leeching off her the whole time.

  He’d talk to you like a crackhead, like he was running game, like he knew you—real friendly, compliment you on bullshit, then ask for favors.

  He’d be like, “I like them shoes, Jude, where you get ’em? I’ma buy me some, them shits is sharp. I know you got the hookup wit Eminem, get me some Rocawear, Jude, get me some Fubu. What’s up on your girlfriend? She Colombian, right? She got the coke hookup? She got that yola? Let’s make some money. We need to hit the club, go gig, man. I’ma come out to New York and chill witchoo, man. You can take me to Harlem.” And so on. Like we was best friends.

  I’d space out; my eyes would glaze over and I’d just tell him, “Naw, man, nah.”

  I’d look at my mom like, why do I gotta deal with this fucking asshole when I’m in town? Why’s he living around your teenage daughter?

  That’s how she’s always been, trying to save somebody, save yourself. I used to say if you wanna fuck my mom all you gotta be is homeless at the bus stop; she’ll find ya. And Ronnie’d be in the kitchen cooking up food that my mom bought, acting like he was doing her a favor, talking ’bout, “I can burn, man! I can burn. Whatchoo know about that, Jude?”

  And I’d tell him, “Nothing.”

  Rachel hated him; I didn’t. You can’t get mad at a junkie for being a junkie; they are what they are. It’s like getting mad at the sky for being blue. What the fuck did I care who my mom messed with? It’s her life.

  When she moved out to Cali, we thought she was done with him but he followed her out on the Greyhound. I’m on vacation with Julie, wine tasting, and I’m getting phone calls from my mom asking do I have OxyContin hookups in San Francisco. Ronnie’s outta methadone and having withdrawals.

  I had hookups, but I tell her, “Nah.”

  I’ll let a junkie be a junkie, but I’m not saving a junkie. Fuck him.

  She left Cali a few months later, Ronnie stayed, and that was that.

  I get why she’s in the kitchen now crying over her drug-using son and how she feels guilty for it. She blames my childhood. I never blamed the drugs on that. I’d prolly have the same vices, happy childhood or not.

  I put my arm around her and we go out on the porch to play cribbage and I sneak a Dilaudid and try not to nod off during our hand.

  She wins.

  I joke about it a couple nights later, how my ma was tripping thinking I was shooting up ketamine, and nobody laughs. They’re concerned, too. I’m the only one that knows I’ma be all right. I’m just going through a tough time right now, that’s all.

  I fly back to Cali, back home. Alone. I’m sniffing these drugs watching foreign cinema, missing my family already. I don’t do well by myself. I need people. It’s how I process things, I bounce it off of ’em. If I got no one to talk to, these thoughts just bounce around in my head. I obsess. So I take something or fuck something
just to leave my brain for a bit.

  I’m sitting on the couch and I’m tired. I’m tired of it all, the going out, the drugs, the fucking, LA, everything. I’m tired of trying to meet new girls. These chicks out here got messed-up values and an inflated sense of self-worth.

  They grew up getting trophies for finishing fifth. Their parents told them they’re special when they’re not. They’re average at best. You gotta work at special and most people don’t.

  And that’s what’s awaiting me out there in public. A bunch of average motherfuckers who think they’re about some shit, not returning my phone calls.

  I’m watching this world pass me by. I don’t know if I wanna catch up, cuz I’m not sure I like where it’s going. I’m the last of a generation, I’m a troglodyte snorting K on the couch. I’m a goner. I’m bitter. I’m jealous.

  Kev hits me to go to dinner. I leave my pity party and meet him in Silver Lake. We’re in the thick of it. Youth in revolt; they’re bucking the system and paying for it with their parents’ credit cards.

  We’re talking, catching up, and this douche bag’s behind me in my ear blabbing about himself to his date. The motherfucker’s twenty-five years old talking about all the crazy shit he did in high school. This motherfucker’s claimin’ high school. “And then I used to make pipe bombs outta cherry bombs and Mountain Dew bottles and I was into graffiti. . . .”

  I look back and she’s nodding like she’s interested. Jesus Christ. I hope they don’t reproduce. I take a bite of noodles and block him out.

  It’s time to pay. I put half on it. It’s cash only and Kev’s gotta hit the ATM up front. Someone else was there, the douche bag’s date. They’re going Dutch.

  We’re outside. I’m like, “Hell naw. That bitch had to pay to listen to that lame talk? Fucking idiots deserve each other.”

  I’m seeing it all the time, these chicks out here with lames going Dutch thinking they’re being progressive. What the fuck is Dutch? We ain’t in Holland. They come out, hop in his Prius with the Obama bumper sticker, and drive off to Echo Park. I laugh. Figures. I hope they crash along the way.

  Kev’s homies hit us to go to La Poubelle for a drink but we seen enough for the night. Kev heads home for video games and weed; my homegirl meets me at the crib for choke-out sex.

  I beat it up good, I wring her neck. She likes it. I needed it, too. I hadn’t had good sex in a minute. I cum hard and collapse on the bed. I’m lying there trying to catch my breath.

  She says she’s thirsty, asks do I want her to get us some water. I tell her, “Naw, girl, chill there. I got you.”

  I get up and go get her some water. Cuz she’s a guest in my house. And I’m a fucking gentleman.

  this is sparta

  I’M AT A DINNER WITH friends and this writer’s talking shit about some other writer. He keeps saying her writing’s lazy, and the table’s quiet so he says it again and again. No one listens, they just wait for their turn to talk. I’m just waiting for him to stop. I pick at my food.

  He’s been at it for a while, this gay blue-blood. He’s got the AIDS face, cheeks sunk in with the bones popping out. I’m not saying he’s got it, but I’m not saying he doesn’t. Either way, I don’t give a shit, I’ll share a plate with him. Fuck it.

  Now he’s talking about what’s the best month to get a good lobster, because they molt and they get skinny when they molt and you shouldn’t buy one then. But he doesn’t know the month. I try to be social, chime in about crustaceans, but the writer ignores me and another one talks over me, talking about where to go to eat good pizza. Now AIDS Face is on about taco stands and tamales in Boyle Heights.

  Fuck these dudes. I focus on the redbone across from me with her cleavage out. She might not have the emotional depth that I’m looking for in a woman, but at least her tits are jiggly and she’s nice. I pour her tea and she starts talking about running trains.

  She’s slurping her soup, talking ’bout some dude she’s fucking with, how he’s texting her trying to get her to run trains.

  I ask, “How old is he?”

  She says, “Twenty-five, and he’s crashing on his sister’s couch.”

  “Little old to be claimin’ trains. Little old to be staying on the couch.”

  She tells me he’s broke because he works at a nonprofit.

  “No shit.”

  I pour her some more tea and decide I’m good on her. Copping pleas for a deadbeat that’s trying to run trains on you—that shit’s disheartening.

  We used to do it in our formative years back at Countryside. But we ain’t call ’em trains, we called ’em bustos. Get a thirteen-year-old, bring her to the crib, and everybody fucks her while Donte goes through her purse.

  I think about that sometimes, the chicks we used to fuck all grown-up now, probably somebody’s wife, somebody’s mom. Think about how they used to get tossed up and fucked by the crew.

  It kind of hurts my heart.

  I hope my mom didn’t get tossed up. Who knows; it was the seventies. I guess that’s why they say the past is the past. Probably somebody with a whore girlfriend came up with that one. Ya can’t help who you love.

  The chick’s still going on about her fucking dude. I’m barely listening, eating soup, stealing looks at her tits. Yeah, I’m good on this one. I don’t need another dumb redbone, I got one of my own.

  Mine, she comes by the studio and sucks my dick whenever she’s mad at her boyfriend.

  I’m like, “Hey, blah blah blah, how you doing?”

  Then she tells me how her mom’s running up her cell phone bill and fucking up her credit. And how her man’s dogging her, how he won’t eat the pussy. I’ve smelled her pussy; I don’t blame him. I nod and give her advice, then after a while I get up, walk to her, stand above her, and place her hand on my crotch.

  Then she rubs it and says, “What are you doing?”

  It’s the dance we do.

  I take my dick out and put it in her mouth. She starts slow like she doesn’t want to, then she picks up the pace. She sucks me till I cum and swallows. Then I go back to my chair, carry on with my radio show, and wait for her to leave.

  One time after she finished she says, “Jesus Christ. Why do I come here? I can’t believe this, what do you do to me, Jude? I don’t even let my boyfriend cum in my mouth.”

  I look at her. I say, “Maybe you should.”

  Her man ended up inheriting a hundred thousand bucks and dumping her ass.

  We have a falling-out cuz I still won’t fuck her. I tell her, “If you’re acting this crazy over sucking my dick, how you gonna act if I fuck you?”

  She’s calling me pieces of shit via text. I wanna tell her if she’d just smarten up, get some sense, maybe wash her pussy a bit, she might be a decent catch. But I don’t.

  She showed up at my job the other day. I was half tempted to put my dick in her mouth while her girl waited outside. Mind-fuck her, tell her she could suck but she wasn’t allowed to swallow—nut in my hand and wash it off in the sink.

  Teach her a lesson, kick the dog.

  Dealing with this broad brings out my sadistic side. I feel like I’m seven again, plucking the legs off a spider, watching it writhe. I understand bullies; they see something weak and they want to destroy it.

  Spartans, when their kid came out retarded, they just chucked ’em off the mountain. Now we raise them. And I hear the parents say how lucky they are to have ’em in their life. But when I see ’em at McDonald’s, with their kid drooling all over the place, hitting the normal one with his slimy little hand, the parents don’t look lucky; they just look tired.

  I was at the studio, and looking at her mouth, thinking of what to do with it. I wanted to break her little brain. But I kept my dick in my pants and told her it’s through. End of the line, no more head.

  She left.

  Now I’m at dinner, listening to AIDS Face prattle on about the last book he wrote and why it’s not published, when she texts me again to see if I really meant it.
I don’t hit her back. I take a sip of my tea and swallow.

  board games

  I WAKE UP IN A foul mood. The weekends are the hardest for me; they always have been. One has to find things to do to fill all that time.

  In New York, I’d get hookers, day shift. I didn’t have any friends there, just chicks I was about to fuck or done fucking. First time I got one, I had to take two trains down to Chinatown. I meet up with a Chinese pimp on the corner. He’s wearing a wifebeater, dress pants, and flip-flops, smoking a cigarette, digging in his nose with his pinky.

  I follow him into a railroad apartment, down the hallway, past three old whores watching a black-and-white TV, squatting around a Crock-Pot, bubbling. It smells like ginger and onions.

  I’m in a room with a kiddie bed covered with paper towels; on the nightstand is a roll of toilet paper, lube, and some rubbing alcohol. Mine comes in wearing a baby-doll dress, she looks about fifty, no English.

  She gets the lube, squirts it in her hand, applies it to her crotch, and bends over. I take her like that and try and get it over with quick. She cleans me with the rubbing alcohol. I leave tingling and get a slice of pizza.

  That used to be my weekend. I broke that habit a few years ago. Every time I wanted an escort, I’d buy a backgammon set instead, take it to the cigar shop, and play. I got ten of ’em.

  Guys would be like, “That’s a beautiful board, how much that one cost ya?”

  I’d tell ’em, “One and a half hookers.”

  They’d get a good laugh out of it, then go back home to their wives.

  It’s ten in the morning. I’m in the market for a credenza, so I go antiquing, then I hit a movie. I make plans with Annie to snort these drugs and fuck. I got a few hours to get my mind right. She’s late, what do I care? Not my girl. We snort till it burns, till I see pink wolves. We fuck for hours, till the drugs wear off and I’m tired of her and she goes home.

  She leaves and I’m on Craigslist looking for prostitutes, phone in one hand, dick in the other, pressing numbers. I don’t call the hooker. I just jerk off to her picture, go throw up in the toilet, and go to bed. I dream of Julie that night and the night after.