What We Do Is Secret

by Thorn Kief Hillsbery

  “So where do you hook up, the bathroom?”

  “No way. That’s how you get the lifetime ban. These are guys who take you to their houses. It’s not like Arthur J’s, jacking you off in the alley. You can click with regulars. They like you and they see you again and they’re all hot to trot.”

  “And you still don’t have to do anything?”

  “Not if you don’t want to. Some guys just want to talk.”

  “Talk dirty?”

  “Just talk. What hey, maybe with your jeans off or whatever.”

  We’re almost to Cahuenga. He decides to cruise inside anyways and get the boot.

  “Sometimes guys see you and follow you out. Maybe we’ll get lucky.”

  He says “we” so I’m right beside him crossing Selma and pushing through these heavy smelly greasy leather curtains that hang in front of the real door. But then he stops and says, “I don’t know, man. Maybe you’d better—”

  The door opens innie and low voices carry outie with the beer smell and smoke. The music on the box isn’t X. Oh most defiantly. Some burly dude elbows sideways past us and then the voices stop inside. Which stops me too, dread in my tracks in the doorway, while Blitzer keeps on walking. So just like that it’s me in the Spotlite, me and me alone, blinder than you’ll never be, feeling all these eyes do their creepy-Crowley crawl, through the air their hands on me. And it’s still dead quiet, like everybody got the call to step up for the organ donor program, voicebox division, all at once. Which after thirty seconds in the penis brittle gallery seems like my clue card to back out and take a stance, one knee bent, Monkey Boot planted on the stucco wall, facing Cahuenga.

  Blitzer lasts like a minute longer. He says he spoofed looking for ID so his eyes could adjust, and he saw this dude he knows, who saw him too, and he thinks he might be coming outside, so I’d better chill around the corner, two of us tandem might scare him off.

  “He’s a good trick. One-fifty. Fully nonsexual.”

  So I switch to the Selma wall, but next thing you know Blitzer’s grabbing my arm and steering me double time down the sidewalk. He says the dude saw me in the doorway and what hey, stranger things, he likes me. A lot.

  “We’ll go up to his house. It’s just on Camrose, towards Hollywood Bowl. I’ll wait right outside. You don’t have to do anything. Just watch TV.”

  “But—”

  “It doesn’t matter. Cool is the rule as long as you follow like the script. And I told him you’re part French and really shy and you’ve never done this shit before so you and me need to talk the talk before you go inside. So everything’s cool.”

  He turns me around before I get out a word, and the dude’s waiting on the corner.

  “Bill, this is my friend Sid.”

  I stick out my hand.

  “Sid, this is Bill.”

  His wrist may be limp, but his hand’s about as soft as deep-fried armadillo.

  “Bill’s like famous.”

  The dude makes pleased little chuckling sounds.

  “He’s the Dog Groomer to the Stars.”

  15

  Bill’s house can’t be any farther than the Jell-O factory, just a pricier direction, but Blitzer gets him to spring for a cab by saying I’m meeting my new girlfriend for some underage clubbing action at eleven, and otherwise I’ll keep her waiting at Crossroads of the World all by her girlie lonesome. He asks me her name, just being polite I guess, and Blitzer slides me a side of elbow, we’re all in the backseat and he’s in the middle.

  “Nancy.”

  Blitzer has to cough for laugh camo, and I wonder what his name’s supposed to be, and what’s up with the AKA action anyways, our names are mostly all made up in the first place, and second and third place too for some of us. Darby went by Bobby Pyn for starters, and then Richie Dagger before he wrote “Circle One” and settled on Darby Crash. Though Siouxsie’s comes from the nonfiction list, jacked from Siouxsie Sioux of Siouxsie and the Banshees.

  Bill says he doesn’t get out on the town as much as he might wish. He’s got this way of talking that reminds me of English accents, respectable ones, though without the sound of the accent itself. It’s hard to describe. Suave, you might call it. When he pays the fare he says to the cabbie, “And a very pleasant evening to you,” like he’s cruising into Opera Central in a tux with a babe in a Lucille ball gown on his arm instead of heading for the Betamax and the California king with a pair of punk rock rent boys in tow.

  The cabbie just grunts. He picked us up on Selma, after all. I wonder what he thinks we’ll do with Bill.

  Work him over with our studded belts?

  Pee on him in his bathtub?

  Force-feed him Milk-Bones?

  Those are all Stickboy stories. I’ve never done anything like that. The closest was last year staying at Skinhead Manor by Hollywood High. It was right after Sham 69 played the Whisky and we all had shaved heads and combat boots, and that jerk Eugene who’s in The Decline started scoring tricks with Jews and minorities who’d get the kinks out through abuse by skinheads, mostly just verbal, though. And I got in on that sometimes, they’d pay extra for a crew of us, I thought it would be creepy-Crowley, but basically it was Live from New York it’s Saturday Night. None of us were even prejudiced, the Stern brothers who rented the house were Jews themselves, so we had to really work it to be all hard and mean, though as long as it stayed at name-calling level with backup spitting now and then we definitely conned the vinces, we got lots of repeats.

  But this one black dude tried to get us telling darky jokes and no one even knew any. So he ended up flowing us these astronaut ones himself, with punch lines like “janitor in a drum” and “the jig is up.” Then to stay dry any refund demands we made up a song on the spot with Animal Cracker on guitar and Stickboy on bass called “I Hate Niggers,” and that was such a hit we did an encore later for this big-time Holocaust movie producer, “Anne Frank Was a Bitch.”

  It turns out Bill’s trip is more like the opposite, after we jam up the walk and he goes inside and closes the door while Blitzer runs it down for me, standing on the porch. But I don’t know about “fully” nonsexual, I’ll be stripping down to my shorts at least and our buddy Bill will be choking his cheetah like the night before the world’s end as long as I stick to the script.

  And as long as he does.

  So I ask Blitzer why he can’t go in too, I mean, how fun, being in a strange house almost naked with a stranger alone in his bedroom.

  “He wants one on one. I’ll be right here. I told him not to lock the door. If he tries anything weird, just yell.”

  He reaches for the door knocker, but I grab his hand.

  “Just go in with me, okay? Walk me back to the room.”

  “What hey, sure. We gotta move, though. You ready?”

  “Wait. You didn’t tell me. Do I have to get a hard-on?”

  “No!”

  “And what’s your name supposed to be?”

  He hiccup-laughs.

  “Guess.”

  With Sid and Nancy taken, I say Johnny as in Rotten.

  “Nope.”

  Then he sings, I came into this world, like a puzzled panther, waiting to be caged—

  So he’s Darby.

  Not Crash, though.

  “O’Toole,” he says, and hiccup-laughs twice, in time with the knocker.

  The house smells like lemon furniture polish and jasmine coming in through open windows. No sign of any dogs. Walking down the straight-shot hallway to the bedroom Bill says something about his lover who died. Blitzer says a friend of ours died a few months ago. Bill says we have his deepest sympathy. In the bedroom he lights a scented candle while I settle down on the end of the mattress.

  “Have fun,” Blitzer says.

  Bill shuts the door and says, “Please make yourself comfortable, Sid.”

  Blitzer’s Hermans fade stomping down the hall, and I get a little panicked.

  “I want you to feel at home.”

  That
’s the hint to show some skin, Blitzer said. So I hunch over and unlace my boots. Then peeling off my jeans I feel in my pocket the folded bills from the feet-ure presentation earlier. Which reminds me of the first rule of hustling, the rule you never break.

  Money up front.

  Everybody knows that.

  But I can’t ask him. Not now. I never thought I’d be this spooked. I don’t know what to do with my jeans, so I drop them on the floor. I pull off my socks. I wonder what the fuck is wrong with my feet. Why didn’t that dude like them?

  I sit back up and Bill puts a little pinner joint in my hand. He lights it for me. And it’s some raspy shit, it tastes fuckin awful, but I’m grateful, maybe it’ll calm me down. I try to pass it back, and he says, “It’s all for you.”

  So I burn it down while Bill gets comfortable too. He says his dressing gown is silk from Thailand.

  “Thailand’s a wonderful country, Sid. I think you’d like it there.”

  Before I remember I’m supposed to be part French I tell him I’ve never even been to Tijuana and he makes this tsking sound and says my whole life’s ahead of me and he’s sure I’ll make something of myself.

  Though he doesn’t say what.

  He’s sitting on the end of the mattress too but he swings his legs up and moves closer. He asks if I’d like to take off my shirt.

  “Okay.”

  “Could you use some help with that?”

  “Sure.”

  I raise my arms and he leans in close and pulls my T-shirt up from the bottom. His head follows it and he’s breathing in deep from like a weenus-length away. He’s wearing some kind of hair cream that smells like walnuts. When the shirt’s up past my armpits and covering my face he stops pulling for a moment and my blood runs Slurpee cold thinking Strangler! Strangler! and what harsher way than with my own fuckin shirt. But he’s just sniffing me, and I guess I make the grade, because once my Sid Sings is balled on the carpet he fires me another pinner and lets me know he wants me stretched out on the bed while I smoke it, stretched out just so, my chin propped up on one hand, one knee bent out toward him, my foot tucked under my ankle.

  Those goddamn ugly feet again.

  “And, Sid?”

  “Yeah?”

  “If you’d arrange yourself down there so you’re angling out?”

  I reach inside my boxers.

  “Ah. Perfect.” He takes a deep slow shuddery breath.

  “Christ, you’re lovely. Another young stallion. You French-men.”

  So he really thinks I’m French, then. Fuck, these guys will believe anything. But I suck on the joint and I start liking the thought of being French like Kickboy, liking it a lot, actually, there’s no bigger smartass in the scene, he’s wicked ranking.

  “I can see you enjoy being watched, Sid.”

  He scoots even closer.

  “Don’t you?”

  Blitzer said to tell him what he wants to hear.

  “Yeah, I do.”

  “Then we’ve got something in common, you and me. Because I like being watched, too. Oh, yes. Not because I’m young and beautiful and—virile. Like you. But for—other reasons.”

  He’s breathing harder now, and waiting, and I have no fuckin clue what to say.

  “Would you like to watch me, Sid?”

  In theory or in practice?

  Or sitting on a cactus?

  Jesus.

  But Blitzer said just stick to the script. And that must be what he does too.

  “Fully. I mean, yeah, I’m looking forward to it.”

  “Then we’re going to have fun tonight, aren’t we? Because I like being watched, and you like being watched, and I’ll be watching you while you watch me. Doesn’t that sound fun?”

  “It sounds great.”

  “All right then. I’m going to play a videotape for us. And while I’m seeing to the machine, I’d like to ask a favor of you. May I?”

  “Sure.”

  “Once my back is turned, I’d like you to remove your undershorts. So when I settle back down beside you, and the tape begins to play, I’ll be seeing you in a new way, just as you’ll be seeing me in a new way.”

  I just push my shades up the bridge of my nose and nod. What-fuckin-ever. Talk about Fantasyland. Then he sits up and maxes the Beta and next thing you know it’s Showtime.

  The Merv Griffin Show.

  “Here today live from Hollywood with Charo and Charles Nelson Reilly, and welcoming after a word from our sponsor, Bill McDaniel, Dog Groomer to the Stars.”

  And from now on I do the talking.

  “That’s you?”

  “On Merv Griffin!”

  “Whoa!”

  “Dude, you’re a star!”

  “You know Bo Derek?”

  “Personally?”

  “Robert De Niro?”

  “Stallone?”

  “Damn, I want your autograph!”

  “That Charo chick sounds a little sweet on you, buddy.”

  “Who the fuck wrote your lines for you, I bet it was Chevy, wasn’t it?”

  “You just thought ’em up?”

  “No way!”

  “Zsa-Zsa’s poodle?”

  “Bob Hope’s bulldog?”

  “Angelyne’s whippet?”

  “Those guys in Vegas get paid millions for shit like this!”

  “Man, Merv is bumming.”

  “Seriously!”

  “You’re getting all the laughs!”

  “You’ve got them eating from the palm of your hand!”

  “You’re funnier than Merv!”

  “You should get your own show!”

  (Oh most defiantly, not a turd, not a plane, not a tumor or a rumor, it’s Here Comes the Groomer! Exclusively on Pay-Perve-View!)

  “I mean it, man!”

  “Hell fuckin na!”

  “Can we watch this again?”

  The magic words, Blitzer said, so magic they’re tragic, the Everest of octane for the groomin’ machine. Because once you know how the tape goes you can time your chatter so it sends him summitwards then and there, and you don’t have to sit through the whole goddamn thing twice. But Blitzer told me going into it cold I’d have to live with the rewind, and it’s maybe six minutes max so it isn’t that bad, since I basically just say what I said before, it doesn’t matter if it’s word for word, in fact it’s better if it is.

  The only thing is, about halfway through round two I’m feeling gut-bombed, I guess it’s the mix of the nast pot with the smells of the candle and his hair oil and the lotion he’s using, and I want to ask him to crack the window more, but Blitzer schooled me hard on facing the screen and talking him up all the way through, nonstop, so even when sweat beads break out on my forehead and this sour spit rises up the back of my throat I keep the Hollywood babble on, and with him panting next to me faster faster faster at least I know we’re in the home stretch. Then right after I say he’s funnier than Nerve Stiffen’ll ever be his free hand vise-grips the back of my neck and pulls my head down towards his crotch while he gasps out “Fondle my balls!” in this strangled wheezy voice and Christ on a cream puff, Madonna on a mattress, I can’t help it, I can’t hold it, I puke.

  All over him.

  Right at the magic moment.

  No!

  Punk rock!

  Oki Dog and fries!

  He jumps up. Though he doesn’t hit me or yell or anything. He must be in shock, I know I would be.

  Actually I guess I am. He jams for the bathroom and as soon as I hear water running I start flailing for my clothes to bail as fast as I can before he’s finished washing. But hanging my head down lacing my boots I just fuckin break down, why didn’t I up-front him, he’ll never pay now, I haven’t cried since Darby died but it makes me want to end it all, why can’t he live in a condo up high so I can take a dive?

  Into Swan Lake.

  AKA Death Disco.

  I can’t face Blitzer.

  I can’t even face the Dog Groomer to the Stars
.

  But here he is, welcoming after a word with his wanker, handing me a warm wet towel. I start sniffling out sorries but no no no.

  “I should be ashamed of myself, giving a drug like that to a boy your age.”

  “Weed?”

  “Heroin.”

  “Heroin?”

  “With the marijuana. You’ve never done it before, have you?”

  “No.”

  “It makes you sick, the first time. I’m so sorry.”

  “It’s me who’s sorry, man. I ruined every—”

  “You didn’t ruin anything, Sid. You were fine.”

  He puts two bills in my hand, and a business card. He pats my shoulder.

  “You said all the right things.”

  16

  So repeat after three, John Doe and Exene and Rockets makes trinity: the days change at night, change in an instant, the days change at night. Walking down Camrose to Cahuenga with Blitzer afterwards all this rockin’ world’s a stage and we’re on it fronting a band and the audience is cheering in English and French and German and Spanish and Russian and Dutch and fuckin Esperanto too and the name of the band is.

  Colossal Youth.

  No, wait.

  Young Marble Giants.

  Colossal Youth is their record. With those statues on the cover Blitzer told me about, somewheres in the Holy Land I guess, Easter Island.

  And that’s it exactly, I feel tall enough to play statues on Easter Island. Partly it’s the hill being so steep we’re taking like giant’s steps to get down fast and our boots on the sidewalk sound like the British are coming the British are coming, or maybe it’s Marines making smoke down the halls of Montezuma. And with all the trees and flowers and bird bath-houses up here instead of parking lots and diesel fumes and minimalls it’s like breathing air that no one’s breathed before, like a drug but not the love drug, more the heaven-above drug.

  And Blitzer’s beside me every bit as amped as me, saying I’m his rabbit’s foot, I’m his four-leaf clover, singing, Sugarlight sugarlight I can’t believe, swallowing one bulb after another in the city of electric light.