Anyways, Blitzer said, once upon a crime against true sanity, macking hard in there after a Pepe session, he overheard some regulars talking up who owned the place, saying the main partner was the ultra-fox young daughter of some big-time crooner, black Sinatra style, so she served up a side of rich to go with beautiful, and talk about hip, connected-at-the with everybody who was anybody in the music scene, the night-club-type scene, that was what they kept coming back to, the dudes were like her groupies or something, she’d just made a record herself, and the other thing was, she was supposed to be onto all the latest offbeat stuff, it stuck in his mind like glue for sniffing later, skater, because he wondered if she even knew that punk rock existed, barely two blocks away from her little with-it Hollywood hang.
“So what stuck was yin and put us in like flynn but what didn’t was yang and could have blown it go bang, her full name, if asked, but it wasn’t, I passed, the dude just sir’d me all-knowing with ivories showing and said, ‘Oh, Natalie,’ with name attached so all it took was a nod, of course they matched.”
Suave as he could make it though, all Who else, the one and only, they broke the mold, and without so much as the pause that depresses Tim and David’s keepers got the word, they’re Natalie’s friends, and then Blitzer got it too, on how there was always room in the dress code for “pushing the creative envelope,” whatever the fuck that meant, some Oscar deal maybe?
David says we look just like some famous sculpture, Siouxsie and me, the Piñata, something like that, the punk Piñata .
“What the fuck, David!” Siouxsie yells. “These flashes! I’m frying!”
David says he almost forgot until he tried to focus. And nothing stayed still. But it’s not as intense now. As before. From about the time they got to the Chinese place downtown with Blitzer till they got inside the brewery. That was—
“One long Diane Linkletter moment,” Tim says.
They start play by replaying some underground movie with Divine as a hippie chick in San Francisco who mixed up frying with flying and checked out Superman style from a fifth-floor window. Siouxsie strokes my forehead and goes back to humming “The World’s a Mess, It’s in My Kiss,” she’s had it on mind rewind ever since Tim asked Animal Cracker if he got what it meant.
“Do three more now,” I say. “That’ll be half.”
She takes a long deep one and hands Tim the eyebrow tweezers. They’re like industrial strength with twin scissors grips for pliers action so they’re.
Perfect.
The Joan Crawford model, according to David.
“This exfoliator must be antispetic, with all the alcohol, but the Red number eight?” Tim says. “Yellow number fourteen? Aren’t those cancer-causing?”
“Maybe if you live long enough,” Siouxsie says. “Which Rockets won’t, if this gets more infected.”
She says I’m so warm it must have started already. She noticed without even touching me, outside the brewery, right off, I was sitting shotgun with the window down outside the loading dock and she walked up asking first things first if I’d done more Desoxyn, and after I said no and she felt my forehead she said to Blitzer, “I’m worried about him.”
Pull it out!
They’ve been telling whys who’s been telling wise?
Pull it out!
There are no strangers there are rebels in many ways.
Pull it out!
Fake it like a man.
“Four,” Siouxsie says, and dabs on exfoliator.
Stars.
“Eight.”
More stars than.
“Nine.”
There are.
We exit down the ramp to Santa Monica Boulevard and make the light for the left so Siouxsie braces me from lurching off the Heftys. With her tensing leg against my side the taco stand comes back and with it no matter how warm my skin this black hole chill inside, black as cold, black as ice, and just to feel something else, anything, I say, “Three more.”
“I can’t watch anymore,” Tim says.
“Then don’t,” Siouxsie growls.
Pull it out!
Drag on my Christian.
Pull it out!
Drag on my deadened body.
Pull it out!
There are some tracts here I confuse with escape.
“What hey, there’s the Stud.”
“The?” Tim says. “Really?”
And I think of the poet.
“Dude, it’s a bar. But that bus stop, right over there, it always reminds me, one time Don Bolles of the Germs was driving the rest of the band and me down Santa Monica and he had real fireworks in his car, illegal ones, those kind that spin around really hard on the ground and make a huge dome of flame and sparks, they’re called Ground Bloom Flowers. And this big fat hairy-chested guy with no shirt who Pat Smear thought looked like Black Randy was sitting on the bench, and it was rush hour with traffic backed up, so Pat lit one of the fuses and threw it at the dude and it fuckin stuck to his chest. One moment he’s just chilling, waiting for the bus, then next thing he knows there’s all these flames and sparks shooting out of his chest hair. And Darby beside me in back was trying not to let anybody know he was laughing about it that much, but I was like hysterical. So was Pat.”
“What about Lorna?” Squid says.
“She just sort of giggled.”
“There was a girl in the Germs?” Tim says.
“Darlin’, why not? Wasn’t there one in The Wizard of Oz ?”
Three.
It just burns like fuck this time, no twinkle twinkles.
Ten.
No planet aquarium.
Eleven.
No smog zoomer to the stars.
At the Highland light it’s only punker poontang in the lot at Arthur J’s, but T and D crowd up front like Blitzer’s pointing out Judy and Marilyn, resurrected and les-be-connected on the sidewalk. Or I know, that taxi dancer chick who got stuffed, out with Trigger on a late-night road-apple drop. So I guess this drive-by’s just part of the setup for the Coca-Cola Kids, promising satisfaction from still-to-come attractions down the boulevard at Oki’s.
Though actually they’re both kind of shocked.
“They’re just boys!” Tim says. “Little boys.”
“Some of them aren’t that little,” Blitzer says. “Not where it—”
“But how old—” David starts out, then sputters while everyone else decides I’ll be the one to say whatever might get said, but I just hold hands with Siouxsie and do the full Helen, as in Keller not Killer.
“It’s illegal, isn’t it?” he says finally. “Isn’t there a curfew?”
“What hey, it’s all illegal. Male, female. Black, white. Bent, straight. Old, young. It’s LA, not Reno. West of the west, remember?”
“But it’s so blatant,” Tim says. “The police don’t notice?”
“What they really notice is a black dude north of the Santa Monica Freeway, period,” Blitzer says. “A lot more than a white daddy, comma, looking for a pink boy.”
“Pink?” David says.
Tim echoes it, and there’s that fuckin silence again, like after “How old,” it’s stale as hail on the Yukon trail.
“Fuck all of you! I’ve got pubic hair! Here! Look!”
And with Siouxsie giggling I follow right through, and get out my goodies.
Blitzer says he needs no convincing, it’s not all I’ve got either.
Tim and David don’t know what to say. But what to do’s a different story, and they waste less than zero time returning backwards ho, I notice. But ask me if I care at all. Let ’em fuckin look. I guess I owe ’em. It was me who spoiled their last peep show, vulturing around Rory back at the Nast.
Siouxsie says, “Did anybody ever tell you how beautiful your skin is?”
Dead serious, too.
Nothing X-rated about it.
Or X record, either.
“One person,” I say.
I don’t say Blitzer. I don’t want to embarrass h
im.
“Well, now it’s two.”
“Three,” says Tim.
“Four,” says David.
But nothing from Squid.
Blitzer says he wants to drop them at Oki’s and come back to the Mayfair with me and play doctor, get some real antiseptic like peroxide, and ointment, and bandages maybe. But right off Siouxsie says he shouldn’t, if people see us with a vehicle there we’ll be taxiing the whole scene around till noon at least.
Which sounds just jawja peachy to Tim and David, but before their agreeable murmurings have a chance to turn flat-out eager she says, “Just drop us at La Brea, we’ll walk, that way they can check out Yukon Mining Company and look through the Hunter’s window at least. Then park in the neighborhood, on Gardner someplace.”
Blitzer says it sounds like a plan, and pulls over. And while they’re bailing it hits me that I’m saying goodbye to everybody, except I can’t, all I can do is button my jeans and claim shotgun. But next thing you know Siouxsie’s back at Blitzer’s window, flowing him a bill.
“For that high-class rescue,” she says. “It was worth it.”
It turns out that even with the door open back at the brewery the ride wasn’t free, not with the strict one-plus-one admission policy, creative envelope or not, Natalie or no Natalie, with five total and two guests credited to the member roster that would be three, please, as in bills, dude, yes way, a hundred apiece, before they actually got to step right up to the fashion plate and ogle all those faces with that famous lift, skin smooth as butter for the next clicking shutter.
But with the cholos up the fire stairs by then, slinging Spanish on the far side of the alarm-system door and the top hat boys eyeing Mr. Main Man again for the clue on what to do, and with knowing there wasn’t room in any envelope for the vato look, or even brown boys period, you know how you don’t wear brown shoes with a black suit, well, you don’t, it’s like common knowledge and they don’t mix people-wise, either, so with safety sure as the lock on Debby Boone’s chastity belt if they paid to stay, then what hey, there went the tab money, Blitzer just told himself don’t lose your nerve, it’s only Merv, and handed it over as casual as you please, you give me the diamonds, I’ll give you disease.
Then Siouxsie asks what he said to that dude anyways, later, the Mexican who bribed the bouncers for a well-guarded word, one minute his boys were using us for target practice and the next—
“All I said was I wasn’t who he was looking for. And I didn’t even have to say that. He said he knew I wasn’t as soon as he got a good look at me.”
“That makes sense. Tell you what. I want you to have this, but it’s the last of my cash, you know? And I’m not in the mood to ask her. So if you’ll bring me back a pack of smokes I’ll make some intros at Oki Dog so you two can slip away. Right away.”
“Intros?” I ask.
“Tim and David. To like Tony, if he’s around. Stickboy. Dudes with both prices and places.”
Blitzer says Sure, no problem, Vantage, right, for the circle?
“For the circle.”
47
We turn up La Brea and Blitzer sighs. He says It’s like flypaper, isn’t it?
“We’re going back?”
“Dude, she gave me a bill. She didn’t have to. I won’t jack her for a pack of smokes. I’ll break it and give her like fifty anyways.”
“We’ll think up something else.”
“I already have. Some kind of ointment we have to go all the way to Walgreens for. But first we check back in.”
“Cool.”
He reaches over and palms the top of my head.
“That fuckin ranked, whipping it out like that. How’d you think of that one? They’re back in sex boy mode, sure they are, coming off that fry. Did they try anything back there?”
“No way. With Siouxsie right there?”
“Dude, after how she talked up Rory on the letter H, it could have been her getting fresh.”
“That was just getting Squid jealous.”
“No, I don’t think she planned it. Remember how dreamy she sounded? Siouxsie’s not a planner, you know? Not like details. She wanted to set it up so Squid could tell her about the mystery deal, sure, and if Squid didn’t so she could act all superior, but she didn’t control anything. It’s Squid that’s behind it all tonight. Somehow. That Mexican dude said he had bad information, but someone didn’t like me, that was good information, I should be careful.”
Back into the Mayfair parking lot.
Lights! Glamour! Action!
Everything goes in circles.
Blitzer says no more leaving me behind, that shit’s history. The night checker’s the flamer one who’s been known to trade multiple cases of Lucky for some down-on-his-knees time in the stockroom. He asks if the first-aid stuff means we’re not having fun anymore.
“We’re punk rockers,” I say. “It means we are having fun.”
He laughs way too hard.
“You should get your own show,” he says.
I ask him if he’s got a dog that needs grooming, but he takes it the wrong way. And there’s no way to explain. Walking back to the van Blitzer says I’ve done it now, Princess Alarming won’t ever leave me alone, good job we’re bailing.
It’s so hard to believe.
The bailing part.
I mean I feel like I don’t know anything, but LA is all I know at all.
Back in the van Blitzer’s all, We have to get those last three, Rockets. Though not the way Siouxsie would have said it, like we have to and we will. More like we have to, I guess, sometime. I just say Yeah, if I’m already infected, we better. And there’s something sly in his chuckle afterwards, oh most defiantly.
“So how are you feeling? Overall? Still on the upswing?”
“Fully. After the taco stand, I like turned the corner.”
“With a little help from a couple friends. One you know about. One you don’t.”
“Who? When?”
“You’re looking at him, Rocketman. Parked behind the stand. Remember when I missed?”
“Sure.”
“Well, I squirted that hit in my mouth. And you know what I did with my mouth after that.”
I don’t get it, not at first.
“What do you mean?”
“Dude, any mucous membrane! That’s like every body opening. Well, I don’t know about ears. Back in the day, people put windowpane L in their eyes to speed up their flight departure, frying the friendly skies.”
“So—but was it that much?”
“Hell fuckin na! I ground up so many! It was like syrup practically! It’s why you’re all rosy cheeked. It ain’t no infection. Not this soon.”
“But why?”
“Because of all you’ve been through! That gun deal! To lift your fuckin spirits. It did, didn’t it?”
I can’t lie about that.
“Yeah, I mean, of course. I just wish—you’d told me.”
“I just did! It hasn’t been that long ago, not half an hour, even.”
True. And once I say I just wished he’d told me, how can I back up and say I wished he hadn’t done it in the first place?
If I do wish that.
Do I?
Maybe Siouxsie was right, playing trolls at the drawbridge.
About getting serious with a user.
Of course she was.
Look at Darby. When he got into heroin. The heroin friends took over. And he wasn’t even that brand of serious with them, whatever Amber says.
“I could feel it through his jeans.”
Darby’s dick! That’s what she told a fuckin newspaper! His hard dick!
“He penetrated my vagina. On more than one occasion.”
Or some shit like that, out of a fuckin medical book. Like testifying in court.
The Moral Majority of Los Angeles Versus the Perversion of Darby Crash.
God, I hate her.
I remember Gerber saying if you’re sick and in need you’ll do anything
for drugs. Give Amber head. Give her real boyfriend head. Give her dog head.
Maybe. Fucking’s different, though. For males. Your body speaks so much louder than your voice. You can’t fake what it takes.
I guess I do know something.
Not bad for lucky thirteen.
48
I know something else.
I should leave in the twelve and one staples anyways.
To honor the occasion.
“Just help me pull out this one here at eleven then, if it’s no big deal, the infection shit.”
He asks why not the others and I tell him because they add up to thirteen.
“Dude, you can’t leave them in permanently! Or like what are you thinking, a year? They’re not surgical strength or whatever. They’re the opposite, the full opposite. Old and rusty as fuck. Let’s just do it now. Once that little pick-me-up wears off, you won’t be such a brave little Indian.”
The thing with Blitzer, as soon as he touches me it’s like his fingers really are talking, in words I mean, I’m not really sure he’s saying out loud what oh yes I hear, oh most defiantly.
Mmm, more like prick me up, wasn’t it, hmmm.
Fuck.
Mmm, better forget I said little then, hmmm.
Like up at Candyland.
Wanna?
I reach for him while he’s dipping the tweezers in the peroxide we bought.
“What hey, you slay.”
Me. Agree.
Hate. Late.
Still. We’ll.
Room. Soon.
Close but no.
Though actually.
“Is that a cigar in your pants or are you just glad to see me?”
Mae West said that.
“I thought she was a writer, that hocus-pocus book they were talking up earlier, on Beachwood.”
What We Do Is Secret Page 25
