by Wesley Stace
“Hey,” she said. “Thank you. A lifetime went into that. And you know what the flash was? That was a photo. They took a fucking photo of us!”
“They what?” We were slowly coming to a standstill but my heart hadn’t realized.
“You buy it as a memento. A photo of the scariest moment of the ride.”
“They what? They took a photo?” I looked around. “Did you know they were going to take a photo?”
“No. No. It wasn’t part of my fantasy if that’s what you’re asking.” She couldn’t stop laughing.
“What are you going to do?”
The ride stopped with a shudder. Everyone phewed enthusiastic relief.
“I’m going to be first out of this car, and then I’m going to go and buy it, if necessary; and make sure nobody else sees it.”
“Aren’t you worried?” I asked. She was being so practical, which I loved, though I remained horrified.
“What about? Maybe I’ll give it to you as a birthday gift . . .” and she whispered: “That’s up to you.”
As we left the park, an employee handed me an envelope emblazoned with the Disney logo: the photo, I assumed, by the knowing look on his face. But when I opened it in my bunk on the bus, I found nothing more than a certificate commemorating the fact that the park had been opened specifically for me on my sixteenth birthday. Maybe they didn’t take a photo at all. Maybe it was just a flash, like when a speed camera fakes you out.
That night, birthday karaoke concluded, I heard a tap-tap on my door. Unmistakably, Mum.
There followed the longest, most clandestine game of footsie ever played.
Nobody could know. That was absolutely the most important thing. We never even discussed the alternative. But when you think about it: why not? Did we get off on the deception? Did the sharing of our little secret make us feel slightly superior? Did it make the long months of touring more bearable, more interesting, worth getting up for? Was it amazing? Yes, yes, yes, and mostly.
I’d be innocently reading in the darkness of the front of the bus at the lone table, and she’d sit opposite me, snaking her toe up the inside of my leg. Or she’d be reading too, or listening to her Walkman—that same yoga music—and her hand would casually alight on my thigh and rub me through my pants. Or she’d be sitting next to me and, her attention supposedly on someone further forward, leave her left arm trailing, loitering, teasing.
We never had sex on the bus, though once, as I lay in my coffin, head flaring, wondering how I could ever get to sleep again without washing my hair, a hand reached in, burrowed under the covers and offered a different type of relief entirely. I lay there, imagining her in the passage, standing with her back to Blake’s empire (her own bunk was on the same level as mine, opposite), knowing how relatively easy it would be, in the hallway gloom, for her to withdraw her hand if someone happened by. This was not the moment to reach out to her. It was the moment to let her have her way, let her soothe her patient with a sedative orgasm considerably more powerful than Benadryl. Another time, she reached across the divide and parted my curtain. I could just see her naked in her coffin, a pale corpse in the half-light. She looked at me. We didn’t touch each other.
Outside the bus, things were more brazen. One night, at one of the many random stops offered by the American Interstate system, we all found ourselves eating fried chicken—or, more precisely, chicken that had once been fried, but was now served frozen in the middle. As we waited for the meal to be re-presented, I went for a pee, only to leave the toilet to find her blocking the way back to the dining room. She dropped to one knee, left foot jammed against the door, unzipped my pants and took my cock in her mouth. Sure, we’d been idly footsieing in the bus, but nothing that had unavoidably led to this. Maybe the undefrosted poultry had caused her to overheat. If one of our gang had needed to use the bathroom themselves at that moment . . . that’s all she wrote. Time did not allow this act to reach any specific climax, but it’s always been one of the highlights of a spotty sexual career. I’ve teased myself with the image many times (though her messy blonde hair censored any specific view of the action), often conclusively, often even as others did precisely the same kind of thing. The crucial difference was that, with those other women, I was not inches from my family—my closest friends—as they waited for unfrozen chicken in a roadside diner, looking down on a woman ten years older, on one knee, with her foot blocking the door. Oh, Mum. We went back to the table separately, of course.
What was she thinking? What I mean is: I’m not putting it down to my own irresistible charm. I’m infinitely resistible. She must have liked educating me. Or maybe I was a bit of Blake, and maybe she loved him a little. Things get weird in the bubble. It was born of our close quarters and close friendship. She wanted it, and I could provide it. There was never any talk of “love.” The relationship, the affair—what was it?—seemed to have no downside. It became a habit; then an addiction. “This can’t last forever,” she said once, and she was right, but it didn’t fizzle. There was no reason for us not to. Neither of us had anyone else; I wasn’t even in the band; she had a child; she was ten years older than me. So what?
Only once were we caught. There I was in the drink and ice room on the seventh floor of the wherever Holiday Inn, lying on the ground, eyes closed, pants open, illuminated by the televisual glare of the vending machine; and there too, hair over her face, was Becca, half way down my body. And there too, though I didn’t register him at first, Mitchell, stepping over whatever obstacle we presented, dropping quarters into the machine. His purchase clunked its clumsy descent into the delivery tray, and my eyes opened for a second. Becca froze; nothing improper was on display; neither of us moved; perhaps he didn’t know it was us. Of course he knew it was us. He probably knew we were in there before he’d even gone to get his water. But it was Mitchell. Mitchell wouldn’t say anything.
He delivered a breezy “See you in the bus, guys!” as he left, stepping right over my head, his tone so friendly that I couldn’t deny him a polite “Good night.” I think even Becca mumbled something.
When he’d left, I buttoned myself. “What are we doing in the ice room anyway? Can I come to your room?” I wanted to be somewhere private, where it was only her and me. There was no reason to be lit by vending machines.
“Better go back to yours and Blake’s,” she said. I watched her disappear down the corridor, then bought a can of Pepsi. My head began to itch. I thought of my bed, next to Blake, who’d be snoring or maybe he wouldn’t be there at all, out on a midnight stroll. Sometimes I yearned for privacy, though I loved sharing a room with him. Whether he was there now or not, he’d be back. However late Blake was out, he always ended up in his room. Just when everybody else was converging, yawning, on the elevator, he’d go for a late-night amble, but he always made it back and—however wasted he was when he got to the hotel, however little he’d paid attention at check-in, rolling out of the back of the bus where he’d been doing heaven knows what, however much this hotel was an exact carbon copy of the previous hotel and all hotels before it (as though the same hotel was being transported from city to city, narrowly beating us there)—he always found his way to his room. Nothing kept him from his bed. How do I know? Because I, in the adjacent bed, was invariably woken from my slumber when he stumbled back in, whacked his shin on the luggage rack and swore. He’d come over, reeking of his night out, kiss me on the forehead, and say “Goodnight, Sweet.” And I’d pretend to sleep.
He wasn’t back, so, taking advantage of this solitude, I masturbated, the smell of Becca’s hair product still on my hands.
Fearing a lesson the next morning, I made a halfhearted attempt to avoid Mitchell, but he invited me to sit at his desk.
“Everything good?” he asked, absentmindedly shuffling papers.
“Sure.”
“You’re all my children, you know,” he said. “I have no favorites, and I just like to know that all my children are happy.”
“Very h
appy,” I said, getting up. He took hold of my wrist firmly.
“Good,” he smiled. “Because sometimes you need a Dad who you actually get to call Dad.” My impulse was to shake him off. At this precise moment, Blake yelled my name from the back. Mitchell let go, rather theatrically, raised both eyebrows and, with a little bow, ushered me beyond into the bowels of the bus: “Here when you need me,” he said. “At your cervix.”
I had a mind to tell Blake, but that would require over-explanation. And anyway, maybe Mitchell was just doing his job. Still, my wrist smarted like he’d given me an Indian burn.
By the time I had traveled the short distance down the corridor, Blake was already off on a classic tangent: “Listen to this! Listen to this! It’s from Alice. ‘“Here, you may nurse it a bit if you like!” The Duchess said to Alice, flinging the baby at her as she spoke,’ . . . blah blah . . . ‘Alice caught the baby with some difficulty.’ How about . . . now how about . . . and picture this . . . tell me what you think . . . Middle of our show: a little toddler comes on, dressed to specification, walks towards me and goes behind the dressing-up box, and while he’s hidden behind there (unbeknownst to the audience) . . . I pick up a replica toddler, a doll, and fling it out into the audience. And they either catch it or they don’t, but everyone screams. Great, right?”
I looked at him in awe. “Are you serious?”
That he was seemed to be confirmed by the fact that he immediately burst out laughing. “Quack!” And I started laughing too. In fact, I laughed so hard I collapsed on the other bench.
“Chicken DAT!” he yelled. “Chicken fucking DAT!”
Since Altamont, there’d been regular children’s home and hospital visits to demonstrate that the Wonderheart was in the right place. The label was ruthless in its exploitation of such opportunities. In California, we played some place in the Valley. I don’t know whether the facility was coincidentally full of Asian kids, or whether they threw all the Asian kids together—that doesn’t seem very American—or whether we were just in a very Asian area.
Whatever the venue, the Wonderkids’ busking set was always a good time. Jack played his acoustic; Curtis banged on a couple of boxes with some brushes, sometimes just smacked his knees; Becca had a little acoustic bass that didn’t even need to plug in, though it clicked more than it sounded a note; and Blake hammed it up as the room allowed. They played different tunes, and I remember Blake singing a Randy Newman song, something about a yellow woman and a yellow man, which seemed an odd choice; all these Asian kids seemed to enjoy it anyway.
There was a wide range of ages, including one girl, Chinese I thought, who sat close to the stage. She looked sad, as though nothing would ever cheer her up, but as the band got going, she loosened up a bit. I could hardly keep my eyes off her. It wasn’t that I fancied her—and anyway it was hard to judge her age—but she was intriguing. Her expression, which at first read as sadness, was merely impassive, and when she smiled, she beamed. She smiled, however, only at Curtis. On a whim, he handed her the brushes, and then it was her banging the box on the two and four as the band played on. After the show, we mingled. Curtis was deep in conversation with the girl.
For some reason, it was thought appropriate to eat Japanese that night in a mini-mall. It was the first time I’d ever had it. While others laid into great pink and red strips of raw fish, as if this could ever be normal, Jack and I tiptoed around big bowls of bland soup and battered prawns, after which I ordered a dollop of profoundly disappointing green tea ice cream. No one with a sweet tooth wants green tea or red bean. (This was years before mochi came along and saved the day.)
“Great girl, that Mei-Xing,” said Curtis. “Terrible life story. Sold, you know.”
“Sold?” I asked. “For, er . . .”
“Yeah.” He was playing with his dreads, twirling them round in his fingers, which I’d never seen him do before. It was like he was untangling them, tangling them and then ironing them out all in one movement. “When she was six.”
“Poor little girl,” said Becca. “How old is she?”
“Fourteen. Anyway, I thought I’d invite her to the show tomorrow: spread the love.”
I tried to remember what I, another orphan, was doing when I was six. I was safe in the orphanage, playing Ping-Pong, occasionally getting into scraps, dressing up when people came to take a look at us. It wasn’t much fun, but that’s all it wasn’t and all it was. I wasn’t sold. I was fiddled with once when I was eleven, but it hadn’t stayed with me like it does with some other kids. I just thought the bloke was pathetic and I told him I’d tell his wife. That scared him off. (I mean, I don’t mean to be a dick, but these days you could base a whole literary career on that kind of thing.)
The next day at the gig, Mei-Xing gravitated towards me at the back of the hall, recognizing a friendly face, someone in the clique. Did we seem the same age? She looked like a child in her off-white smock, except for the surprising brown wisps peeking from her underarms; it was like she was keeping a pet vole warm. From her neck hung a little red purse, decorated with yellow flowers. She played with that thing constantly, running its string through her fingers, buttoning and unbuttoning it. She seemed happy to be standing near me—but she didn’t say hello. She didn’t demand much of a room, and only ever spoke to one person at a time (mostly Curtis), and then quietly. She hardly said anything. You kinda forgot she was there.
Curtis reintroduced us backstage as though we hadn’t been standing next to each other for the last half hour. But then you always felt you were meeting her for the first time, even later when we were . . . well, anyway . . .—she was always constantly reintroducing herself or being reintroduced.
“Let’s go for a drive,” Curtis said, only to her. “Let’s go and look at something. What’s there to look at?”
She whispered something in his ear, and they went out, leaving Jack, Becca, Blake, and I in a dressing room that smelled like burned plastic. On arrival, someone (I) had rested an open guitar case against the many-bulbed mirror, and someone else (Jack) had, unsuspectingly, turned the lights on. There was an enormous blister in the outer casing of the guitar case. It didn’t look melted, however, so I’d poked it, leaving a fingerprint that lasts to this day.
“Strange one,” said Jack, not quite to himself, as if writing Mei-Xing’s epitaph.
“Strange situation, you mean? It’s sweet,” said Blake.
“It’s sweet and a bit strange,” said Jack, flicking through the Guitar Center catalog like a man pretending he isn’t titillated by, or even interested in, the copy of Hustler that’s somehow found its way before him.
“There’s nothing strange about it,” said Blake dismissively.
“Grown man like that? Young girl?” asked Jack, still refusing to look up. Blake and Mum couldn’t suppress a giggle.
“I don’t think she has anything to worry about with Curtis,” said Becca.
“Well, he’s a gentleman,” said Jack, defensively. “Course he’s a gentleman. But it’s who he chooses to spend his time with.”
“Yeah, Jack,” said Blake, winking at me. “But he’s a . . . he’s a gentleman’s gentleman.” Jack looked up; his smile melted away. “You actually didn’t know, did you?”
“Yeah, yeah,” said Jack unpersuasively, “I knew. Course I knew . . .” His tone changed to exasperation. “NO, I didn’t know. I try not to think about any of your private lives.”
“And we try really hard, really really hard, not to think about yours,” said Becca. “You didn’t know?”
The truth was, Jack had a slightly hard spot for gays. He wasn’t anti-, exactly; he just didn’t like it. He once drunkenly confessed that he’d agreed to a threesome with some woman and her deaf husband, but changed his mind because he couldn’t tell if the husband would touch him or not. Blake said he should have made the deaf bloke sign something. Jack concluded that anyone who wanted to have a threesome involving a preponderance of men was gay. “But you wanted to have a threesome,�
� said Blake. “But I didn’t,” said Jack, “so that proves I’m not.” The argument was destined to run and run.
“Sweet,” said Jack, canvassing support. “Did you know Curtis was . . .” He actually couldn’t bring himself to say it.
“Erm. No.”
“Oh, don’t try to make him feel better!” said Blake. “You knew.”
“I wasn’t sure,” I said honestly. “How would I know? He never tried it on with me.”
“That’s not how you tell if someone’s gay!” Blake said. He couldn’t stop laughing. “Maybe he just doesn’t fancy you! Becca hasn’t tried it on with you; doesn’t mean she doesn’t like blokes.”
No comment. Jack was delighted.
“Right, so neither Sweet nor I knew. Are we so stupid?”
“Two against two,” said Blake. “The casting vote therefore goes to Mitchell,” who materialized in the dressing room at that moment. “Mitchell, is Curtis, once Kurt Zero of punk band the Hard Cocks, gay?”
Mitchell stroked a non-existent beard. “Is this a trick question?” We shook our heads, all at once, like the Monkees. “When was the last time you saw a straight black man with dreadlocks like that?”
Jack shook his head. “Okay. 3-2 to the clever ones.”
“Put it this way, Jack,” said Mitchell. “If I were black, that’s how I’d wear my dreadlocks.”
Jack nodded, deep in his own thoughts, his face impassive. He was almost surrounded by them. (I’d had no idea.)
“Anyway, Jack,” said Blake, “no need to worry about Curtis’s ulterior motives with regard to the orphan. I think there’s a bigger issue. I’d say that the Wonderfamily may be expanding. Just a hunch.”
However much red tape there was I have no idea, and I don’t know whether it was cut, crossed, or followed to the letter, but within the week, Mei-Xing was on the bus, traveling with the family. Blake was totally behind it. And if Blake wanted it, I wanted it. She barely spoke, and she certainly didn’t get in the way, I’ll say that for her. She made the tea for everyone: it just came very naturally to her, and Becca was happy for someone else to be Mum for a while. We started drinking a lot more tea. Green tea. A few spoonfuls of sugar in there and . . . well, not the same of course, and it isn’t strong enough to defend itself against milk, but . . . bingo.
