What We Do Is Secret

by Thorn Kief Hillsbery

  They could too. Darby always said the toughest guys in the scene were the chicks.

  Like Phranc.

  Oh most defiantly.

  She was always at the Masque, she had a flattop, she played in the Bags and Catholic Discipline. And then she went Napoleon Solo one night at the Starwood, came out strumming an acoustic guitar and said, “I’m Phranc, with a Ph and a hard c, and I’m just your typical all-American Jewish lesbian folk-singer.”

  By that time Clockwork OC boys were like a tide that came in hard but never went back out, so the youth of today in the crowd were maybe half surf Nazis, maybe more, and just like that you could hear yourself sweat, it was the closest thing to total silence in a roomful of punks in the history of Western civilization, before The Decline or after it. But not for long. After she announced her first song, “Punks, Take Off Your Swastikas,” it seemed noisy.

  She played a few chords and said, “I see we’ve got some storm troopers here tonight.”

  And a few jerks finally yelled out “Sieg Heil” but it was still mostly silent night unholy night, and then she started singing in this voice that wasn’t growling like Darby or screeching like Alice Bag but more like real music, the kind that takes you places where you’ve never been. And it got quiet quiet quiet again and stayed quiet quiet quiet all the way through the song, so you could hear every word, and before she even finished I took off mine, it only meant something to me anyways because it was one of two things Darby ever gave me, that little silver swazi and my droogie walking stick that never leaves my side, he brought it back for me from London.

  So it proved what Darby said about the power of words, that language could physically affect you, I think it partly came from Scientology. He said a leader made language a cause, and followers were the effect, like with Hitler and Manson and Bowie. But it was proof with more vengeance than 151 rum, because when people A’d their Q’s about the circle on the armbands and the record covers Darby always talked about how Hitler had the swastika.

  And even though he mostly only wore an iron cross he was totally down with all that triumph of the swill, not the killing-Jews part but the symbols and the government, one night he downed a couple of Black Beauties and explained it all to me, how he thought a complete fascist state was the best possible solution. And he thought Hitler was the first rock star too, though he said it was Bowie’s idea in the first place.

  Darby said.

  If you get everybody to believe in one person, then it’ll work. Communism can never work.

  And that’s who he wanted to be, the person. Or had to be, actually, I mean he ruled himself out of the everybody. Because he didn’t really believe in himself. Like door number one, here’s Phranc, who’s so small she brags she can get into movies for the under-twelve admission, walking onstage and telling all these burly beach jocks who hate homos that she’s a dyke, before she even sings a note. And door number two, there’s Darby, before Penelope filmed that interview for The Decline, the one with Tony the Hustler’s tarantula crawling up his arm, asking Michelle to fake it as his roommate, or his girlfriend, that was the idea, cooking breakfast together in Tony’s place on Orchid Avenue behind the Chinese Theater. Darby was living there then, and Tony was supposed to do it originally, but Darby didn’t want the mass of good citizens conning the dots between him and an in-your-face male whore like Tony, in spikes and leather, with celebrity clients and a laugh like the Queen of Tarts. And that’s why Michelle ended up in the movie.

  But now I remember why Blitzer isn’t on Siouxsie’s Johnny B. Goode side anymore. She’s a big bull dagger on the out-of-the-closets-and-into-the-streets stuff. And after Darby checked out, Blitzer supposedly talked trash to this jerk outside the scene, a writer for some bum-blanket paper like the LA Weekly. That Darby was after him but it wasn’t, you know, mutual. That he wasn’t like that. That he helped Darby and Stickboy escape from the Elks Lodge riot and next thing he knew Darby had this crush on him.

  Maybe Blitzer was just scared of the beach punks like Darby. Scared he’d get beat up. Scared he’d get killed.

  Scared the way Phranc isn’t.

  But if Darby was scared he’d get killed, why would he kill himself?

  It makes no sense.

  There’s one more Darby checkout theory, Gerber’s theory, it has to do with Tar. He was like the sugar daddy at Hollywood Towers, a boys’ youth counselor somewheres, he craved all these little trickin’ kids around him, even ones who wouldn’t go with him, like Animal Cracker and me. And he would give us all money, at first anyways, enough for food and partying, so there was no reason to leave. But Darby wanted me to, he hated coming over, he didn’t like me living there at all, because of Tar. He couldn’t stand him. And Gerber thinks it was this mirror-mirror-on-the-wall thing, Darby couldn’t face looking at who he’d be himself someday, he was going for the exact same boys, he just wasn’t old enough to be a chickenhawk like Tar.

  Yet.

  But Darby wasn’t sick like Tar, buying all those mommy’s little monsters China White, getting them wasted on heroin and making movies of himself with them while they were nodded out, raping them, or shooting off in their mouths. He even made one with Rory Dolores, and Darby found out. That’s why Tar came after me. Darby wanted me to burn that tape and the only way to manage it was torching them all, two milk crates full in the Dumpster downstairs, but afterwards I couldn’t wash away that oily melted plastic smell, on my hands, in my hair, on my flannel, not with cold water, so as soon as Tar got close to me he conned the dots.

  And he was all, Payback time, and tried to get help tying me to a chair so he could light me on fire. And some kids ran off scared to the stairwell and some of the ones who stayed yelled, “Do it!” and some yelled, “Don’t!” but none of them did Bo Diddley pro or con, and Tar was squirting lighter fluid on me when Animal Cracker came running in and booted him between the legs then bopped him on the head with a white port bottle and I got away.

  I remember I found Darby that night, I found him with Blitzer at Tony the Hustler’s, and we made all these plans to posse after Tar, and torture him with tin snips and fire ants and rubber hoses.

  But we only slept.

  8

  Hidden from Orange Avenue, on the wide shallow step by the Jell-O factory doors, I draw with the tips of my fingers on my face a mask.

  Because once upon a Franklin dime from the you guess mint, at the group home on Vermont, we all wore masks, to give us powers. Power to speak, if you were shy, to dance, if you were clumsy, power to see what you couldn’t, say what you wouldn’t, every day we wore these masks. And mine was Dogboy.

  Foam rubber hot on my face, sulfur-smelling.

  Bristle-brush whiskers, two hard teeth tapering.

  Canines.

  So here and now in the gutter and how I wedge the knuckles of my little fingers between my gums and upper lip on either side of my nose and my fingertips hang down nails out to make those teeth, the canines.

  Dogs see the world in black and white, color matters not at all, dogs sense movement, dogs smell fear, dogs know with their noses, whisker tips, tails, Dogboy knew a thousand things I only knew as Dogboy, Dogboy heard inside explaining voices, not just songs. I was Dogboy, shaggy Dogboy, long-haired Dogboy, then I wasn’t.

  I heard a band, my ear against the radio, under the blanket, late, I cut my hair, hacked it, slashed it, heard.

  We’re the poison in the human machine

  We’re the future, your future.

  Radio on, mask off, once Dogboy, now Rocketman, what must it do, a rocket?

  Take off.

  No voice told me but my own. But the first voice after I walked, so surf boy blond and casual cool in sound but no no no in words not even, Cliff Hanger, flyering at LACC, his voice told me there’s a place, a little like heaven, a little like hell, but the main thing is: costs nothing, always open, how old you are, no matter, what’s wrong with you, no matter, how you dress, no matter, what you look like, no matter, the
more fucked up you are, matters, the more the more the more the better better better.

  And could he lead me there, Pied Piper style?

  Yes.

  But did I trust him, then, just met?

  No.

  Then I asked, “What’s this place called?”

  “The Masque.”

  Too good to be true, too true to be good, a noose of charms around our necks. And gone now gone forever gone but strange strange strange, still it’s all we’ve got that we all have, a memory, strange since memory’s a private thing, memory’s after, but the Masque was before, when you meant we, you were never really on your own, you were in like constant motion with everybody else, you were always doing something, you didn’t have to figure out who you were, or might be, you were part of something bigger, like the amoeba in the Adolescents song, one-celled creature, one-celled thing, hardly knows it’s alive, Tony Adolescent sang that to me in the cave on Tom Sawyer’s Island on Punk Day at Disneyland, he sang it in my ear and I ran my fingers over his face and we were frying hard and I thought he might kiss me but he didn’t, I wish he did.

  But I might as well wish on the sidewalk stars on Hollywood Boulevard.

  My fingers fall, I drop the mask, I spark the clove that Blitzer tucked behind my ear before he left, tucked with one hand while his other, yeah.

  I might as well wish on the Starwood.

  Or the Whisky, Baces Hall, Elks Lodge, Cuckoo’s Nest, Hong Kong Cafe, Club 88, Blackies, all those clubs that once were ours, booking skinny-tie bands, not our bands, and where to draw the fault line?

  In the sand.

  The beach punks took over and everything changed. Back in the day the so-called violence was playacting violence, like the pogo dance and pretending you were choking one another, but now it’s real. It’s football jocks who last year saw us on the street and yelled or spit, and now they’ve got their number-one crops and their motor boots and their bandannas, and they’re punk rockers, a different breed of mommy’s little monster though, with mommies to go back to, mommies and Mustangs and anarchy posters over nice soft beds.

  And even Oki Dog is mobbed with them after the gigs that do slip under the burly-warning radar at clubs like the Fleetwood and the Vex, the boys who turn every show into one big thrusting sweaty sweaty mass of male-on-male full-body contact, then afterwards naturally want to stomp homos.

  How fun.

  What might masks be, here and now?

  Places?

  Yes.

  Maybe Idaho might rule okay, better than waiting in LA, for what happens next.

  And you know I hate waiting.

  But know why?

  Waiting’s basically wanting, there’s only one letter’s difference, you can’t be waiting without wanting the wait to be over. So when you’re waiting you’re controlled by wanting, and wanting’s what controls everything.

  Darby said.

  People who can be controlled, should be controlled.

  And if there was one thing he was known for more than cutting himself, it was getting people to give him things, gimme gimme this, gimme gimme that, the Crash Trash chicks to give him money and drugs and drive him around, the HB boys to give him beers, will one of you gimme a beer, one fuckin beer. So the one thing totally fake about The Decline is the only Germs gig ever where alcohol was fully banned, it wasn’t a gig at all, Penelope just set it up at Cherrywood Studios because the Germs were barred from every club by then. Though Tony the Hustler still managed to sneak in a sixer of tallboys for the band. And they’d already started playing, but were kind of stalling till the beer showed, and once it did this beach kid in front tried to do a Darby, he started yelling at him, “Give me a beer!”

  So what did Darby do, he downed one, crushed the can, opened another, drank half of it, then passed the rest to the band. And the kid yelled, “Give me a beer!” again.

  Darby said, “You want a beer?”

  “Yeah, Darby, gimme a beer, gimme a beer!”

  He popped another, and guzzled the whole thing.

  He looked down at the kid, and told him he had a question for him.

  Darby said.

  How does it feel, to want?

  9

  “No! Punk rock!”

  It’s Siouxsie, yelling up the steps.

  “Oki Dog and fries!” I yell back, trying my best to sound coco-loco Korean, or whatever it is the happy glo rucky night crew at Oki’s starts jabbering in when you try ordering anything else.

  I can smell it already, I haven’t macked on anything but a jumbo box of Mike and Ikes since yesterday, early yesterday, so I’ve got these drool icicles forming at the corners of my mouth like a fuckin St. Bernard. And they don’t just bring me fries, they bring me curly fries, and they don’t just bring me curly fries, they bring me an Oki Dog, that’s two hot dogs, a piece of American cheese, chili, and pastrami, rolled up steaming in a tearing tortilla, greasy, gluey, goopy, garlicky, paper-wrapped, a feast for the least, $1.49, fit for a spring in your step, jumping up to meet and greet. And food for the thoughtless besides, because whatever you ask for there, a teriyaki burrito, a pepperoni rice bowl, the answer’s always the same.

  “No! Punk rock! Oki Dog and fries!”

  Siouxsie one-two sniffs loud and long, handing it over, like she’s doing a couple of Vitamin S bumps.

  “Clove cigarettes,” she says. “How trendy.”

  And that gets them going while I skarf the dog, on such a high-speed round of How Trendy I’m thinking Vitamin S for real, they must have made a meth connect at Oki’s, it wouldn’t be the first time in the history of the swirled.

  “Be a punk—how trendy.”

  “Wear buttons—how trendy.”

  “Wear pointy boots—how trendy.”

  “Wear safety pins—how trendy.”

  “Spike your hair—how trendy.”

  “Dye your hair—how trendy.”

  “Have a fanzine—how trendy.”

  “Only go to major punk shows—how trendy.”

  “Be in a band—how trendy.”

  “Hate newcomers—how trendy.”

  “Try not to be trendy—how trendy.”

  So I’m all, “Slam crystal—how trendy” as soon as I wipe my mouth with the back of my hand, but no no no, they deny everything, no deals went down at Oki’s this time around the block, no other customers besides three skanky heshers in barber pole spandex, and heat in the parking lot besides.

  “What kind of heat?”

  They both laugh.

  “A couple of hot dyke sheriff’s detectives on their dinner break,” Siouxsie says.

  “Dickless Tracys,” Squid says.

  Then they say they introduced themselves, they swear on the stack of Jehovah’s Witness Bible tracts that Squid carries in her Girl from U.N.C.L.E. lunch-box purse that Siouxsie told the cops her name was Clit Westwood, and Squid’s was Fox Twat, and before you could say titties and teriyaki the four of them were all in a line like adult books, wolfing down wieners at one of the picnic tables underneath the potted palms while Squid and Siouxsie plot-checked these hardcore porno flicks they always talk about making, Lesbian Welders, parts one and two.

  And they start running down helpful ideas the snatch-bandit sheriffs supposedly came up with, like for example having a Joe Sixpack type wander into this so-called welding school advertised on matchbook covers that’s actually a front for all the local dyke action, thinking it’s for real, and stripping him and gagging him and tying him to a chair that’s like inches away from all the muff diving, fisting, and crazy flippin’ Flipper action in this big lesbo orgy on a workbench where they’re all wearing hard hats and utility belts and nothing else, so he’s forced to watch every move with Hugh Jardon for company but can’t so much as lend a hand to make him stand for the right to jerk, never mind work.

  And I’m all, “No fuckin way do uniformed sheriffs talk shit like that in public, and probably not in private either, with anybody, dykes or no dykes.”

&
nbsp; “Say lesbians,” Siouxsie says. “Don’t say dykes.”

  “You say it.”

  “It’s different.”

  Why it’s different, I don’t know. Stickboy calls me faggot, I don’t mind. It’s better than gay. I hate that word gay.

  It’s so gay.

  But cops.

  Fuck.

  Gay cops.

  Double fuck.

  My fingers do the walking for me, on their own almost, bruise check, bruise check, our connection, our connection, our PCP connection. Shoulders, backside, upper arms pits to elbows, tender still tonight, ugly still yesterday according to Hellin, toweling my back in her and Paul’s place on Genesee, purple she said, not soft night sky purple, mean hard hurt purple, yellow too, rotting squash yellow, but I try to be upbeat, like Blitzer’s heart, ka-thump, ka-thump, ka-thump thump thump, count the blessings, three in my case, three in Rory’s, three on one but leastways no Elks Lodge massacre: tasers, choke holds, baton charge.

  Darby said.

  Cops in their riot squad gear, it’s just too gay, regulation leather fetish outfit with military additions, all that bondage stu f, dangling handcu fs, straps they don’t need and those flash buckles, the only thing that isn’t kinky is the headgear, instead of leather hoods they show how insecure they are with bulging robot helmets, oh I swear, ten cops in full riot gear are better than a whole drag show.

  And they’re shining up their shields at this scary moment, if those fine-vagina-dining sheriffs weren’t telling tuna tales.

  “There’s a sweep tonight,” Siouxsie says. “LAPD. Vicious Circle play after midnight, at the Vex. So late.”

  I forgot about that gig, so I’m glad I’ve already got money from you know who to foot the bill. But that reminds me. I fish a couple of toe-check singles from my jeans and hand them to Siouxsie, for the mackage. But she gives a little push on my shoulder and drops them in my lap.

  I push back, and she says, “He hit me, Squidley, and it felt like a kiss.”

  Then she says my money’s no good in her neck of the woods, they’ve got lots of cash, safely stashed in her C-word.