Writer? Actor?
Write? Her?
Act? Her?
Pull it out!
To borrow night may be to wait.
Pull it out!
Both spoons are dull thirty bright drying.
Pull it out!
Strike a lovely suicide my darling.
He’s shaking afterwards, worse than me, what’s that word, scrupulous ?
No, that’s scruples.
You say scruples, I say staples.
Squeamish, that’s it.
I try to say “You’re squeamish,” but it doesn’t come out right.
He presses down on my chest to keep me still.
“Maybe you are infected. You’re dripping sweat. I better go back in and get, like pills with the same shit as the ointment, maybe?”
“Wait. No. Stay.”
Voices outside. Dude-type voices. Right outside. At the back.
One says something about an out-of-state plate, another says there’s nobody at the checker inside.
“Quick!” one says.
“Go for it!” says another.
Metal mauls metal, verb and reverb.
Blitzer flying-tackles the back door release, shoulder slams outward into someone pulling, hard.
Someone damn fucking on the night air breezing, someone back falling with no breath left wheezing, spastic down flailing on the asphalt, freezing.
“Blitzer!”
“Stickboy!”
And Elliot fuckin Mess. That smelly dirty little fuck in the back of Casey Cola’s car while Darby bought the checkout China White, who heard them plan it all out sitting right there in front of him. Then Darby told him to get his ass out and he started leaking air from the tires so they couldn’t go cop but pissed himself scared before doing damage and ran back into the Oxford house. He didn’t know what to do. That’s what he told us the next day. He said he wanted to call 911 but thought, what if he ended up getting them busted and they didn’t actually do it?
Fuckin 911.
I didn’t know what to do.
There’s a whole drawer full of kitchen knives in that house, I know what I’d have done, ran back out and slashed every fuckin tire over and over till my knuckles leaked blood and my wrists gave out. And threatened Darby with the blade and even stabbed his arm or whatever if he tried to stop me.
And the next day he’d have thanked me for it. Oh most defiantly. He was always almost-doing things he didn’t really want to do, and we always almost-stopped him from the worst ones. But we weren’t around always anymore like before. I was around that night but I didn’t go to the Hong Kong, I was tired of Blitzer versus Rory versus Gerber versus Darby and all of them but Darby versus Amber and Casey and I just needed a night off to myself in that mostly empty quiet for once Oxford house, or half a night actually, I meant to stay up for them.
But I only slept.
And by the time I woke up.
I won’t even talk to that kid. He’s not there. He does not exist.
They allaboard and Blitzer closes the door. They’re super-amped, vibrating, breathing hard. Stickboy says they just saw the coolest thing we’ll never see in our whole lives, neither one of us.
“Two cops getting chased down the street by like two hundred raging punks! Cops running scared. LAPD! Oh, fuck, man, I got hard down to my fuckin kneecap! Seeing those cops totally outnumbered! With bottles bouncing off their heads! Running for their lives! Towards the only place with lights on, that McDonald’s on Argyle, like a block away, and the manager’s behind the glass doors all insane and frantic rushing to lock ’em tight! To keep it all outside! To keep the cops out! With us catching up!”
Then it hit him.
Two cops then, two hundred soon.
Way soon.
He could already hear the helicopters.
The only way to get away was turn around then and there, that very moment, and run the other way.
Un-fuckin-fortunately.
Sad but tall too true.
On Cahuenga they got a ride this far with some posing val who realized too.
And now, knowing where all the cops were occupied, they thought they’d take ad—
Stickboy interrupts himself and pulls my elbows out away from my sides.
“Dude! Lemme see! Awesome! I heard about this! Me and El couldn’t get out there, we had like business with A.R., you know, paying our way. But we went to the afterparty. That’s where it went down. Outside Slade’s party, in the Cathay basement. They’re renting it for practice now. Vicious Circle. And these cops saw a few punks on the street and didn’t know how many were downstairs, must be they didn’t know there were any at all, they didn’t call backup, just started wailing on that tall-ass Sherman Crank dude who works in the back at Astro’s and two of Slade’s posse just happened to walk up to the street door right when the bullet boys jumped him and yelled down the steps all, Fuckin man your battle stations, revenge! Now! Revenge! And next thing you know, cops on the run from punks, dude, I’ll never forget it, fuck, you’ll have that circle scar, all two-pronged, Slade was on fire at the Cathay telling everyone who missed it, life regrets, life regrets, right up there with the greats like Tomata with the Screamers at the Masque and the Pistols at Winterland, it went on forever and you just kept singing and stapling, blood spurts everywhere, half the pit was like on hold standing there mouths open staring, Slade kept going off on how you kept it totally together beginning to end, he was saying you’re the star around here, just we wait, you ask me, Slade’s craving dude, craving why oh you, his face lit like fuckin Crystal Cathedral talking you up, and Dude! Listen to this! He fuckin left an OC poseur spitting teeth, right before the cop chase! For talking shit about you! This fresh-crop skate kid telling people he saw it with his own eyes, afterwards at the keg table you had like five or six dudes whip it out and tap their kidneys dry hosing you for like antibiotics or whatever, I didn’t hear him say it myself and neither did Slade but somebody else asked Slade if he knew about it, since he was back onstage by then, and he was all, Who the fuck said that? Point him out to me! Now! And he stomped over to the guy who had his back turned and tapped his shoulder and dude, blood and teeth, blood and teeth, the whiplash practically snapped his head off and that was just the first punch, Slade was setting him up for mass antibiotic action himself, yelling for people to start drinking up to flow the dude the flow, drown him in the fuckin Yellow Sea, but then the shit came down outside so he lucked out, or maybe not, I bet he got thrown to the cops and they put a professional finish on the job, no shit, that sounds like Slade all right. But, damn! Rockets! Slade! He’s a fuckin wild man, he’s hot as hell, that’s one dude I’d turn for, dude I’m serious, you can tell the world, even Stickboy goes for that, take it anywhere any way that I can, I’m the fuckin son of a superman, maybe word’ll get back to Slade, I fuckin hope so, bring it fuckin on, good for you, Rockets, you fully deserve it, it’s past time to move on, you did right boy, I mean did you set the penis fly trap tonight or did you set— whoa! Check these! These are the fuckin originals! Check these pulled-out ones, El, the flesh bits and blood clots, little scabby hairs, these are fuckin gnarly, dude, they’re like half inch, can I have one like to weld on a chain or whatever, you know what you should do, is don’t shower or nothing, let ’em get all oozy and purple and pus-filled, so it leaves the raddest fuckin—”
“Those sirens!” Blitzer says. “Why are they closing in this direction if the action’s on Argyle?”
“Oki’s,” Stickboy says. “You know they’re there yesterday once everyone’s beat all to fuck and busted on Argyle. Gettin’ their revenge.”
“Our friends,” Blitzer says, “we just dropped them.”
And his voice, it’s like electroshocked, zombielike, walking wounded, walking dead. Except he’s not walking. He’s paralyzed.
And then he’s not.
“Don’t even!” Stickboy says. “It’s too late!”
Sirens right past us now, engine thunder down La
Brea, screeching tires somewhere close, thwock-thwock-thwocking helicopter blades, east behind us, closer closer.
“Jump out!” Blitzer says, but they don’t, it’s that fascination of watching an accident, maybe.
We peel out of the Mayfair lot like a moonbound Saturn Five. But there’s no taking Santa Monica.
Shut down one block west.
Cops swinging flashlights.
Flashing reds forever.
Copters on top of us.
Paddy wagons behind us.
“Just get down to Melrose,” Stickboy says.
“Romaine,” Blitzer says. “It’s dead. It goes through. Cops won’t be there. That’ll get us closer.”
“Closer! We’re too close now! Let us out, then. No, fuck, not here! They’ll just nab us! A couple blocks at least!”
Stickboy tells me I’d better head east with them, Slade’s supposed to be kicking it at a house on Mansfield, he doesn’t have the address but he knows the block, we can—
“He’s with me,” Blitzer says, and hits the brakes, hard. “Rockets is with me. Got that?”
Stickboy mutters something, then says, “Whatever, I got who you think’s with you and I’m cool with it, no arguing that, just remember, Rockets is my bro going back a year at least before—before anybody else in here right now showed their face in the scene or walked the walk around the block. So I’m asking him who he thinks he’s with, just checking up.”
Stickboy puts his hand on my shoulder.
“Is that right?”
I start to say I guess so.
Then I think, What would that little puke Elliot say?
At his very very bravest.
“I guess so.”
No doubt about it.
So what do I say, my voice as hard as I can make it.
“Fully.”
Stickboy slides the door and says he tried, what fuckin ever.
“It’s your funeral.”
I spit, not at him, I got no quarrel with Stickboy, I spit hard to one side on the floor of the van, the Elliot side.
“In case it is maybe you better let like two seconds’ worth of air from our tires,” I say. “Then just show in your blackest black and tell the world you tried to stop us.”
49
As soon as Stickboy shoves the door closed Blitzer says maybe he’s right.
Probably is right.
But we have to try at least.
“I don’t think she’d hold the smokes against you, Blitzer, not with—”
“Fuck the cigarettes! They might have got word. They might have seen it coming. Got past where blockading starts before it started. So they’re, you know, hiding in one of the alleys or under cars in driveways. Laying low. So if we just drive around keeping our eyes—”
He stops and says he knows what I’m about to say.
And actually he does.
“You should have went with Stickboy, am I right? Fuck that. You know what I think? I think you were wrong about those fairies. Saying they’re way too big of fags to be punk rockers. That’s exactly what you said, Rocketman. Remember?”
I remember.
“Because back at the brewery, I was thinking, They don’t give a shit! They really don’t. They were all raucous, acting crazy beginning to end. Stirring everybody up. They were hoping Natalie would show, in all her glory. I know they were. And me and Siouxsie and Squid were all meek and polite and just grateful those posh people even let us in. Let us! Let us for three hundred bucks! So who’s the punks, then? Isn’t that what we all used to do, laugh and scream and trouble-make, twenty-four/seven, no prisoners, no rules, only the dude who says no is free?”
“So you don’t want to anymore? Jack this van? The checks?”
And he’s all, What?
He didn’t say that.
Didn’t think it.
It’s just that maybe we can help.
While we’re still here.
So we turn on Romaine and start zigging and zagging Oki Dog–wards, never farther than one block at a time on a single street.
No sign of fleeing punks anywheres.
No other traffic, either.
Though there never is much around four-thirty. Like the least of any time, day or night. It starts picking up at five, night shift people getting off, early birds coming on.
That’s the ground traffic. Air traffic’s happening hard. Seven or eight copters, Blitzer thinks. Kind of circling. Floodlighting everything bright as high noon on planet Mercury. That’s the danger zone.
Inside the circle.
So the edge is the closest we go.
To what’s happening.
To the siren magnet.
Cops and ambulances.
Fire engines too, though.
Blitzer says they’re good for blocking streets.
Blocking the view.
That’s what it’s all about. The cops aren’t sealing off these neighborhoods to protect good citizens from maybe a hundred scared teenage punk rockers with no weapons besides broken bottles and a few studded belts that actually are quality enough for whaling purposes.
(The ones from the gay bondage section at the Pleasure Chest, the expensive ones, not the Made in Spanish Sahara jobs from Poseur.)
It’s to keep people from seeing what they’re doing to the teenage punk rockers.
Nonlethal force.
We’re white, they’d just beat us up.
Usually.
Mistakes are made.
And we’ve just made one.
We make a left and Blitzer says, “Fuck no, oh no,” and stops.
Behind us, close, flashing reds. Ahead, farther, a block away, marching, but not away. Marching our way. In formation. Shields out. Helmets on.
Special Weapons and Tactics.
SWAT.
Sealed with a tomb, LA riv vu.
Blitzer says to lock my door and hide in back.
A bullhorn.
Snap crackle cops.
Attention driver and all passengers of yellow Dodge van blocking intersection.
Blitzer fists the steering wheel.
“Blocking the intersection! What am I fuckin supposed to do? Charge on and get shot?”
What we’re supposed to do is exit the vehicle from the right side with hands in the air.
Immediately.
Further instructions to follow.
“I’m sorry,” Blitzer says. “You should have went with Stickboy.”
I say no.
Because only the dude who says no is free.
Outside we’re told to walk towards the sheriff ’s vehicle.
Slowly.
Side by side.
The nearing bass of lockstep boots behind us.
We’re not quite slammed onto the hood of the cruiser, more manhandled, though it’s women, both of them. The one on me gets me spreadeagled then cuffed behind my back and lying there face mashed on hot steel with the vibration of the idling engine and the formation passing like two feet away it all comes back.
The beatdown with Rory.
That sort of out-of-bodyness while it happened.
Watching ourselves audiencelike, wondering how far they’d go with it.
And wondering too who’d ever find out if they went too far and just dumped us somewhere special that cops have keys to, the incinerator at County General, the sludge pools at the Hyperion plant out past the Venice ’hood, one of those huge roofed reservoirs in the hills where.
Nothing is revealed.
They keep barking at us not to move a muscle, but the only moving I’m doing is breathing, barely.
A helicopter makes three passes, not low but focused, on us. One of the sheriffs talks into her radio. The chopper moves on. Suddenly it’s almost quiet.
Without the radio static, it would be.
Even their voices, now.
Are quiet.
Saying everything’s all right now, helping us stand back up, snipping the cuffs.
Telling us they know e
xactly who we are, without ID, and proving it.
“You guys interested in working off your debt to society in welding school?”
“A women’s welding school?”
Then telling us this, they’ve got Tim and David and Squid and Siouxsie in phony protective custody in a paddy wagon over behind Astro’s, waiting on their return and only their return, off limits to any other officers and especially LAPD, no one’s hurt or will get hurt, no one’s going downtown, there’s just some waiting, that’s all, for everything to stabilize.
Though Siouxsie’s waiting on her cigarettes too.
The deputy named Rita walks Blitzer back to the van, in case any homies are peeping between their curtains. The one with me, Virginia, says they rescued all four of them like seconds from beatdown by hand-signaling they were sheriff’s informers, under protection. And the lickety-split-second custody was transferred Siouxsie started begging them to let her go so she could look for us, she’d risk it, she was sure we’d show and sure we’d end up wishing we hadn’t.
I say word on that, Siouxsie was right, and she asks me why, then, what passed through our minds that pushed us on, most grown-ups would have stuck their heads in the sand as fast as most kids. And I tell her I don’t know, honestly I don’t, I was scared, ask Blitzer, he decided.
She doesn’t, though. What she asks is why he thinks he can crack the Vantage pack and stash fifty bucks inside right in front of them and be so sure they won’t decide they’ve earned it for themselves. And he just says he isn’t, and if they decide that, fine, because they’re right. They have and more. The thing with not knowing something is you hope it keeps you from doing wrong, not being certain. But you can’t let it keep you from doing right.
“Or trying to, anyways.”
They tell him what streets to take on the way out, and say we’re free to go. We’re both in slo-mo on the uptake, though. Flabbergasted.
I ask myself what if it’s all a dream? The whole night? And how will I know?
This is how: I’ll wake up for real and it won’t be black cherry.
Maybe lime. Lime sounds really good to me right now.
Blitzer says, “Maybe you can tell me, Officers, I hope you will, I was so scared, I almost peed my pants, now I’ve really got to go before I drive, and I don’t want to break the law right under your noses, it would be like an insult, what should I do?”
What We Do Is Secret Page 26
