What We Do Is Secret

by Thorn Kief Hillsbery

  Then the alphabet soup finally roils to a boil, and we’re trying to explain that PCP is short for Punk Crash Pad, and they’re minority cops besides so it only takes from here to infirmity to send the message there’s something called punk rock. And it would have taken light-years longer if Rory hadn’t remembered that clipping from the Times on the wall at Licorice Pizza on Sunset, where Chief Gates called punk the biggest threat to our sons and daughters since Darwin I think it was, or maybe it was Communism.

  “Hello there. Killing time before something more exciting comes your way?”

  These guys. And you know they actually sweat brain cells over lines like that, practice ’em in front of a mirror I bet too.

  “It usually does.”

  “I like your look. Kind of new wave.”

  I can tell him they’re fighting words, or I can ask for a cigarette.

  What a mellow boy I am.

  “Nick.”

  “Rockets.”

  And at first it’s a holiday at the inn, no surprises, weather, smog, I’m not a cop from him, I don’t do anything from me, no, not with white dudes either, he’s black. Then he says, “I’m into feet. Young men’s feet.”

  I shrug like I’ve been hearing it since I was in Pampers, though if you want the whole and nothing but I can’t think of a lower priority with any dude I ever met, my nipples are social flutterbuys when you make the Campari, son.

  “I’d like you to show me, so I can see if I can use them.”

  “For what?”

  “Photography. I’m a photographer.”

  And what did I know, second, it’s Hollyweird, they’re always on the prowl, armpit sniffers, jockstrap glimpsers, dudes who cross the finish line for free from debris on the rutting room floor, just touching the bare skin between the top of your sock and the cuff of your jeans when you sit with your knee bent. So you can see the feature presentation with your eyes closed: I show him my feet, Nah, sorry, not what I’m looking for, later days, and faster than it takes a third grader to find the titties in the latest National Geographic he’s parked in Citrus Alley, drooling over sweet memories and flogging his ferret twice as hard because he put one over on a white boy.

  I push my shades up tight on the bridge of my nose and fold my arms across my chest, and without even pressing pause he starts talking twenty, for a quick look-see. And I won’t go less than twenty-five for anything, talking dirty, arm-wrestling, instapic action with an SeX-70, shirtless only, you name it, I’ll claim it. But it’s more like a deposit, it could lead to real cash, and too he says he’s got it all in ones, just the way I like it. So I’m all Hell fuckin na, George full frontal, slim down your wallet while I start unlacing.

  And I bend down, but next thing you know the dude’s checking into Seizure World, choking out, “Not here! Not here!” like I reached for my weenus instead of my Monkey Boot.

  Then he tells me to get in his car, we’ll drive over to Citrus, and though I know I’ll never go mobile still I pause to A the Q whether I would if he was white, and decide I wouldn’t, it’s the weird part flashing caution orange and not the black part.

  And then it hits me.

  He might even be the Strangler.

  But on split-release thought how could he be, unless the Strangler’s switched from girls to boys to throw off Homicide. And even if he has, he wouldn’t be nickel-and-diming over a toe check in Citrus Alley, he’d be waving a bill in the air and promising to suck me harder than a J. Edgar Hoover vacuum.

  And B-side, everyone knows the Strangler picks up his victims on Hollywood Boulevard, and Arthur J’s is on Santa Monica.

  I guess for me it’s just always lurking out there, on the far side of the pair of dice, I knew this chick the Strangler got, not up close and personal but I knew who she was, we all remembered her being at the Masque on Halloween the night before it happened. Her name was Jane, not Jane Drano obviously who ended up in the Go-Go’s, Jane something who wanted to be an actress, and she was taking singing lessons too. And after they found her body two undercover cops made the scene at the Masque, posing as art dealers I think it was, saying they wanted to invest in a punk band, but we all knew they were cops right off, who the fuckety-fuck would invest in a punk band when none had made any records yet and no one paid to see them, the Masque was free admission then, on top of the table it was just practice rooms for bands to rent, all these echo-y basement rooms with damp concrete walls and lead-lined closets filled with bomb shelter rations we’d skarf when we couldn’t close deals on day-old donuts at the Gold Cup.

  So the cops show, Brendan even plays “Watching the Detectives” over the PA in their honor, then the Skulls go onstage and they’ve got their song “Victims” they wrote about the Strangler, and Billy Bones the singer is screaming, “You’re a victim, baby, and you’re gonna die!” and the bullet boys push the manic panic button, thinking the band is some satanic punk cult in league with the killer.

  “How about I walk over to Citrus and we do the deed there?”

  “You’ll still need to get in the car.”

  “Why?”

  “To show me. I’m not comfortable with public displays.”

  And I’m all, What a coincidence, I’m not comfortable either, not with twenty bucks, make it twenty-five and meet me in the alley, bucket seat butt-plant guaranteed as long as I hold the keys, or stash them somewheres actually, I want cover-my-virgin-ass insurance in case he gets the urge to merge and tries to hijack me off to the Valley like that bottom-feeder in Reseda on Liewitness News who kept a fifteen-year-old in a box under his waterbed from the twelve days of Christmas to the dozen eggs of Easter.

  He mumble-grumbles but we five on it, and I cross Highland hot on the rat-tat-tat heels of a leather dyke in motor boots, no mistaking heavy-duty Hermans, Darby wore those, I hear those heel plates in my sleep sometimes, and I have excellent news for the world, she likes my look too, period, no mention of new wave.

  I say, “Thanks, man,” not thinking, then bite my lip, but she doesn’t punch me or anything so I guess she likes that too, same with Squid and Siouxsie, when I you-guys them they always dig it, you con those dots, these are libbed-out ladies who won’t touch a dildo with doubled rubber gloves on if it looks like a penis, they went all the way out to Silver Lake past the On Klub to find one camo’d like a dolphin.

  And I went too and faked a seizure in front of the register at Annie Fanny’s Pleasure Chest so they could lift a pair of Flipper specials. Then riding back on the RTD they were showing them off to these two Mexican kids who thought they were bathtub toys. And our little brown brothers craved so hard I talked Siouxsie into handing one over to their grandmacita, who had a five-alarm multiple then and there, and when we got out at Hollywood and Vine she shouted “Gracias” out the window in triplicate and thanked us thanked us thanked us, in the name of who else may I have the envelope please but the Blessed Holy Virgin.

  I turn off Highland at Homo Central and he’s parked down Lexington waiting at the Citrus corner. I tell him to roll on just past the Cinema Research loading dock. When I catch up I reach in palm up through his window for the key drop, and dangle them off the chain-link Dumpster shed across the alley. Then he calls even steven, my droogie walking stick stays out in the cold, I could brain him, what fuckin ever. And with all that windup I should have known, after I settle in the passenger seat he counts out the cash while I get one boot off and as soon as my sock plays follow the leader Brother Nature takes his course, guess who’s separated at birth from Ray Charles, he isn’t seeing what he wants to see.

  At least I’ve got a pocketful of cherry-choppin’ George. And at least he’s pulling out his wallet for an encore, but instead of a tip for my toil and trouble I end up palming a business card, he must be on call in case my feet do the Cinderella thing.

  Though wait.

  Another card, plastic.

  Slapped down in my hand just long enough for me to run a finger over the cutout line of a detachable key before he
snatches it back, peels it off, says it’s courtesy of Triple-A, and slots it into the ignition.

  And turns over the engine while I fumble two-handed for the door release.

  And in this Father Superior I-showed-you-so voice he says, “I know you’re tough, but you be care—”

  The door wrenches open, with no help from me. I fall out, I’m pulled out, out and away, from a shotlike crack on glass and muffled soft aftershocks, crackle-crackling, from the sudden catapulting car, from roar and squeal so loud so close with silence after so complete I wonder, Am I deaf now?

  Am I dreaming?

  Blitzer doesn’t let go or balance me on my feet. He holds on tight. He rakes his blunt thick long strong fingers through my hair, over and over, raking raking raking, his fingers fingers fingers. Then he says Rockets? and I say Yeah? and he asks if I’ll take off with him, get out get out get out, go somewheres.

  I will, when?

  What hey, tonight, now.

  4

  What better reason then, to sing sing like jailbirds in his native Zoo York, walking west on Lexington, after this hooker hits us up for superglue, she’s barefoot, carrying stilettos.

  Roadrunner, roadrunner!

  Go a thousand miles an hour!

  It’s the first song the Pistols recorded, a studio demo, and Paul Cook comes in with the guitar intro but Johnny can’t remember the lyrics, he just mumbles nonsense stuff then giggles, “I don’t know the words” and “C’mon Paul, shout out how it starts.” So Paul says, “One, two, three, four, five, six,” and that’s word how it does start, but Johnny doesn’t con the dots and pours piss and vinegar into his voice by the imperial gallon, snarling, “If you’ll start at the beginning, Paul,” like a jocko-homo gym teacher piling push-ups on a sissy-homo kid, and they go back and forth like that from here to infirmity with Johnny all rewind-repeat, “I don’t know the words,” till he finally catches on.

  Then at the very end he asks, “Do we know any more fuckin Beatles songs that we could do?” And that was always Darby’s cue to blow beer out his nose, because it’s the Modern Lovers, it’s no Beatles song at all.

  And if it was I’d hate it hard, the day Darby died there were nothing but Beatles songs, on and off the radio, blaring here, blaring there, blaring everywhere across the fuckin universe.

  December 7, 1980.

  Though on KROQ Rodney at least alternated Beatles and Germs.

  And Black Randy and the Metro Squad did a show at the Starwood that night, I’d been nabbed by Defective Services but Hellin Killer told me Randy came out in a long hippie wig, little round wire-rim glasses, one of those fringy sixties leather vests, but wearing a Circle One armband too, and sang, “Imagine there’s no Darby.”

  And Blitzer went on the radio and told a college DJ Darby’s favorite Beatle was John Lennon.

  But who was Darby’s favorite boy?

  My life my leather my love goes to Bosco.

  That’s all he wrote, in his suicide note. But somehow it’s Blitzer who ended up with the jacket, who knows how but I know this: Rory Dolores hates him for it.

  “Can I ask you something, Blitzer?”

  On the corner of Mansfield, thick jacked steaks, still freezer-case cold in a bottom-feeder’s hands.

  “What hey, ask away.”

  Filet mignon, two bucks.

  “How was it you got tight with Darby? The first time, I mean.”

  Filet mignon, buck fifty.

  “When I tried to talk to him after we met he was ignoring me.”

  Drive-by dumbfuck Valley boys.

  “So I started eating this aluminum can.”

  Hey, punk rock!

  “Just tearing it up.”

  Hey, Devo!

  “That got his attention.”

  We corner onto Orange, black cherry again, it’s steam from the Jell-O vats venting, so it lingers all night long. We climb the factory steps, then the planter, and boost ourselves up to the crib.

  I’ve slept here with him how many times?

  Five?

  But we only slept.

  Twice when I was here already, he showed late both times and scared at first I woke hearing him below, it was cold those nights too and we stayed close to be warm, he put his arm around me and breathing-in breathing-out on the back of my neck he kind of rocked me back to sleep.

  But we only slept.

  The other times we crashed out together. Once we talked before we fell asleep about the purple sky, and how it maybe might feel if you could touch it, Darby always said like the tips of those feelerlike things inside tulips, but Blitzer said like velvet. Another night he told me all about the Foreign Legion, he’d read this old book and his memory must be photographic, he described all the pictures, every detail, in order, chapter by chapter, smoking cloves, Djarum after Djarum, and he taught me how to French-inhale.

  But we only slept.

  The last time was after that unofficial punk day at Disneyland, fully wired so actually we didn’t sleep at all, just remembered out loud forever it seemed, back to the Masque when I first started hanging there, and I found out later people had this how-fun image of me then, because I always stood with my back against the wall and my shades on, doing my boot plant, and I guess I scowled all the time. So they thought I was pissed off at the world, and a junior junkie besides, and no one talked to me. Darby was one of the first who did, and I didn’t know who he was then and I think he liked that, though mostly he liked that I was young. And then I met Blitzer and he’d always look for me holding up the wall and tell me stupid jokes.

  Why did the punk cross the road? He was safety-pinned to the chicken.

  Why did the skinhead cross the road? I don’t know—you ask.

  He always got me laughing. And he talked about being a kid in Brooklyn and taught me Brooklynese like dem and dose and yous and youses. And later, after both of us clicked with Darby, he made me wonder sometimes, you know, what if? But we slept in the same bed more than twice, him and me and Darby, and he never touched me. I’d lie awake listening to his crazy beating heart, the rhythm’s not like mine at all, it speeds up, it slows down, ka-thump, ka-thump, ka-thump thump thump.

  And he’d go off talk talk talking in rhymes sometimes, he played with words like Legos, in ways no one else did to say what no one else said, he talked about magic like it was real, he said he’d seen a ghost once, and more important felt it too, before he saw it, and not on drugs either. He told me the whole story and afterwards asked if I believed him. I said I did, I would have even if he had been on drugs. He said consider it settled then, till death do us part, he’d never lie to me, because you shouldn’t lie unless it’s fun, and the only fun in lying is lying to a skeptic, if it’s easy you might as well be working, easy lying’s just a job, it’s advertising, preaching, politics.

  So he was different, and too he told me things about myself sometimes, not important things but ones that otherwise I’d never know, like how I walk springing up from the balls of my feet, so I’m always leaning forwards a little, as long as I’m moving I never look mellow, Johnny Rotten and me, it’s the only way to be.

  He sparks us smokes, and I ask where’s he thinking we might go.

  “What hey, Rocketman, Idaho?”

  And I’m all, Never mind the Polacks, I don’t even know where that is.

  He laughs his laugh that isn’t his, this high-pitched double hiccup laugh, this laugh he lifted and perfected, over and over, I was there, we heard it on a rockabilly comp that Pleasant played, one time only, at Disgraceland.

  “It’s far, almost to Canada, we’d take I-5, I think, it’s right downtown, the Golden State Freeway.”

  “So what’s up there?”

  “Rivers and pine trees. Grizzly bears, too.”

  Back in Citrus Alley when he said take off I thought he maybe meant Clockwork Orange County, or even just Venice, a change of scene because the scene has changed, I was only thinking small, and short, a few days or a week, not large and long, no
t far away and maybe forever, I’ve hardly ever even left LA and who knows what might happen in a place like Idaho, who we’d meet and who we’d turn into if we stayed, it’s creepy Crowley imagining one way, but charging Chinamen imagining another, over the cliff, deep dark water, scaring you but calling you, it’s like a dare I guess, but do I?

  Dare.

  I don’t know.

  “My cousin’s up there, too. I visited once.”

  “So we’d just go downtown?”

  “You really want to?”

  Somehow the freeway part is what makes it seem possible, makes it real, that unbroken pavement so no map’s necessary, unwinding like a licorice whip to I-want-Candyland, pine trees, rivers, grizzlies, a thousand fuckin miles, my country ’tis of fuckin thee, and the you-are-here just a bus ride away.

  But do I?

  Double dare.

  And what starts spinning inside my head, “Los Angeles,” the song not the city, the X song, and what’s it about, leaving LA.

  I’ve always dug the beat on that.

  And what could be more punk rock, really, jamming for Idaho, Blitzer and me, just like that.

  Hell fuckin na.

  So, yeah.

  Bears, though?

  He says he’ll shoot the fuckers.

  “You got a gun?”

  He knuckles a beat on the concrete, and sings to me.

  I got a weapon that’s as deadly as life.

  It’s a well-trained tool of a master guy.

  “Sex Boy.”