Clay's Way

by Mastbaum, Blair

  Remember me from when I was in your room.

  Ask me to be your best friend and go away with you to be naked.

  I’ll just take what I’ve got in my pack.

  That’s all I need.

  “So, where do you guys skate?”

  Jared hands me the joint. “The old folks’ home behind McPoison’s.”

  I give the joint back to Clay, trying again to feel the heat from his hand on mine. “Keolu School, when it’s not crowded. They’ve got a great railing and some steps.”

  Marcus sticks his head out the door. “Bro, you gotta phone call.”

  “Thanks man.” Clay gives him a shaka hand sign. He looks funny and stoned and I can tell that if we were alone, we could laugh and hang out and have a great time together. He hands me the joint and punches me lightly on the shoulder. “Keep it, brah. I’ve got my own supply.”

  “Thanks.”

  Don’t go. Don’t go. This is the most fun I’ve had in years, maybe ever, the most stimulated I’ve been in my whole life. I feel like climbing the nearest telephone pole and cutting the wires.

  “Yup. Laterz. See you arounds.” He turns and just stares at me—maybe because he’s so stoned.

  I stare back. “OK... aloha.”

  Something flies in the air between us that I’ve never experienced before—like waves of nuclear electricity. It’s powerful. I’m amazed I can’t see it. If the energy was harnessed, it could power all of Tokyo. It’s a universal force. Stronger than anything I’ve ever felt. He karate-chops the air, then runs inside, almost tripping on a board that’s lying on the floor in the back room.

  “He’s cool. I told you.”

  Jared’s so naive sometimes. Cool isn’t half of it.

  “I gotta go, man. I have to mow my parents’ lawn.” I’m lying so I can have some time alone to think about Clay.

  “I thought we were gonna get stoned.”

  “We’re already stoned.”

  Jared’s useless now.

  I miss Clay already. I skate home as fast as I can, anxious to run to my room and come while thinking of him. At the front door I reach into my pocket for my key. “Fuck.” I must’ve lost it again. I walk around the house and check all the doors and windows. No luck. Like we’ve got anything good to steal anyway.

  My fucking parents keep locking my window like they’re these robots that do nothing else but lock. They know I use it more than the front door. For awhile I look for a hidden key that has never existed, fooling myself into thinking it’s still possible.

  Next I walk around the house to the back porch--which is green with moss because it never dries--and drag a chair into the lawn so I can lie in the sun. I’ll get a little tan so I look better the next time I see Clay. Maybe I’ll fall asleep and dream about him. I see my mom’s bright-orange cat behind my reflection in the dining room window. He’s rubbing against the glass all cat-like like he’s stoked to get some action. It’s gross. I hate the sexuality of cats.

  I walk up to the window, like there’s any chance in hell he could actually help me. “Get the fucking key, you dumbass cat.” I flick the glass and he runs away.

  I throw my backpack down and go back and lie down in my mom’s chaise lounge. The sun’s really hot. I sweat and smell myself, and I think about the same kind of smells on Clay’s body—which really makes me want to jerk off. I stand up and walk to my next door neighbor’s shed thinking like a criminal, controlled by his dick. The door’s open. Cool.

  I walk in and pull my shorts down. They bunch up around my knees and my dick pops out and points up at my face. I picture Clay leaning back on his stool at 808, with his arms back behind his head, with his dragon tattoo showing under his sleeve, the strip of skin exposed above his waistband, the scar on his forehead, the place where his hair meets the nape of his neck. I imagine how rad it’d be to touch him all over his body, and for his hands to be on me.

  I start beating off. My hand becomes Clay’s in my imagination. My dick surges upward and I shoot on my neighbor’s workbench. It’s more cum than I’ve ever shot before. I guess I was never really turned-on looking at skate magazines and local ads for surf shorts. Beating off to those doesn’t even compare. My cum looks anarchic all over power tools and screwdrivers. Biological vandalism. I light up a cigarette. I love Clay. He’s the best. I look out the shed’s dusty window at my house.

  Fuck. My mom’s home and she’s spraying some wilting Mainland flowers that my dad planted yesterday. They’re daisies and pansies and all these faggy sounding flowers that don’t belong on this tropical island anyway. No wonder they’re dying already. She’s wearing her work clothes: a boring dark-blue business pants-suit thing with a string of pearls and blinding white canvas boating sneakers that make her look good and conservative. It’s all-wrong for what she’s doing. She should be wearing shorts and a T-shirt like every other mother on this island.

  I sneak out of the shed, close the door, and run around the house, then back down the side yard to make her think I’m just coming home from skating.

  The hose slips from her hand and flies wildly around like an attacking snake. Water shoots everywhere. It splashes the cat and it runs under the neighbor’s fence. Water shoots my mom’s face and soaks her pantsuit so the fabric sticks to her legs. Her white shirt gets drenched too, and I can see her bra and the shape of her breasts. Her blond hair is plastered on her face.

  I caused this. My ejaculation was so powerful it fucked with our whole plane of existence.

  I grab my backpack and slip in through the now unlocked back door just off the kitchen. I grab a soda and go to my room and close the door. I kick off my shoes, take my shirt off, and throw my skateboard on the bed. I throw my pack down and stand in front of the full-length mirror. I look cooler for some reason. My neck looks thicker. I practice making cool faces like Clay makes. “Eh, brah. What’s up?” I suck my cheeks in and pucker my lips out. “Hey, Clay. You wanna hang out? Cool.” I’m such a dork. I’m not even close to being as cool as he is. I don’t know what to do. I need to learn how to surf. Maybe, I can go over to Waikiki and join one of those tourist classes. I should get a tattoo, but what? A dragon. That would be copying. He’s be freaked out. A tiger? A Hawaiian flag? No way, I’d get my haole ass kicked.

  I shake myself, start over. “OK, here goes.”

  Sam, just be yourself. “Hey. What’s up?”

  That was OK.

  I jump on my bed for a while, trying to make as many punk rock sounds and grunts as I can--for practice--watching the earth go by as my view out the window comes and goes, up and down, up, down. It’s medicinal. I stop and look at my room. I hate the stupid soccer trophy still sitting on my desk from when I was eight and the model boats my dad used to help me make, and my dumb clothes and piles of stupid haikus. I need a change.

  I get a beer from my mini-refrigerator. I know, I’ll dye my hair again. I get some dark-red vegetable hair coloring, rub it all over my head, and wipe the rest on my shorts. My hair turns violet – the red mixing with the blue. My hands stain in seconds. This shit doesn’t wash off. I lie on the floor and stare at this mobile of our solar system I’ve had forever. It twists and jerks in the afternoon breeze. I take a big gulp of beer and burp. I reach for a model of a 747 and fly it around the room. It has the old paint scheme of United. It takes off, levels off after a sharp turn to the left, and flies from my chest to my bed with a stop off at my desk for re-fueling.

  I close my eyes and listen to neighborhood sounds: cars driving their conservative neighborhood speed, strollers rolling on the sidewalk, a roving pack of 10-year-olds who found someone’s cigarettes.

  I have to call him. I dig the Yellow Pages out from beneath the pile of old haikus that’s under my bed. I find 808 Skate and grab the phone and dial. It rings and my heartbeat multiplies.

  “Hello? Skate.” The voice is scratchy and cool-sounding. I listen as hard as I can to see if I can tell if it’s him. I hear him breathing.

  “Hello?”<
br />
  I clear my throat and deepen my voice. “Aloha, is Clay there?”

  “Yeah, hold on. Clay, phone call.” The phone gets thrown down on the counter.

  I hear some rattling and fidgeting with the receiver.

  “Clay here, for all your skating needs and more.” He sounds way better than I even remember and I remember him being perfect.

  “Hello?”

  I don’t know what to say. Just having him on the line is enough. I quietly tear the page out and shove it in my pack.

  My door flings open. “Sam?”

  Fuck. I hang up as fast as possible. I hope he didn’t hear that. Just the sound of my Mom’s voice would make him run. “Can’t you knock?”

  “Sorry. I didn’t know you were home. I was coming in here to check something.”

  “So, you were just gonna come in my room?”

  “It’s about your birthday, honey.” Her voice is halfway between sweet and bitchy.

  I want to tell her she shouldn’t even bother with my birthday. I don’t give a shit about it. It means nothing to me. “Don’t get me anything. Money would be good.”

  “I’m not giving you money. It’s too impersonal.”

  “I don’t care. I like it.”

  She looks around the room. “It’s a mess in here. How can you live like this?”

  “I’m an animal.”

  “Why are you dying your hair again? Your natural color is so nice.”

  “Why’d you lock my window? I couldn’t get in.”

  “Carry your key. Someone’s going to break in.”

  “Who, like the natives? Hawaiians in loincloths are going to steal our television?”

  “OK, Sam, very funny. Where’s your key?”

  “I lost it.”

  “How many keys have you lost?”

  “Eighty.” I laugh. “Now leave. Aloha, Mom.”

  “I don’t want stains all over the bathtub when you rinse your hair. Scrub the tub and don’t use our towels.” She leaves and closes my door behind her.

  Not that I liked her before, but she’s meaningless now that I have Clay. I don’t even need food or air anymore.

  Chapter 3

  It’s birthday 16:

  Flowers outside my window

  I feel…average

  It’s 12:38 p.m. and now I’m 16, which means nothing. My parents won’t let me drive till I’m 17. I can’t buy beer or even cigarettes.

  Clay doesn’t know it’s my birthday.

  It’s Sunday. I peek out my door. My parents are doing their normal afternoon nonsense on the back patio. They refused to acknowledge my 15th birthday because when I turned 14, I told them I hated them. I never thought they’d really go through with it, but they did, and actually it was sort of a relief--but this year I can tell my mom’s gonna try and turn over a new leaf or whatever and make me feel like an idiot birthday boy again. You know, with candles and all that.

  Last year, Jared came over with a huge chocolate cake with a plastic skateboard ramp and skater on top. It was impressive. My mom looked guilty in a gnarly way when he came through the front door and I loved it. Her plan to make my birthday suck failed miserably and the cake was so good, like bakery good, much better than some dried up carcass she could have made. So this year, she’s doing the typical shit: sneaking in my room, getting my sizes for all the preppy clothes she’ll buy that I’ll never wear. She’s gonna sing to me soon. She’ll be making up for last year’s birthday. I’m dreading it. I hate opening presents in front of people and being the center of attention.

  I think it’s disgusting that I’m related to them. They envy dudes that own yachts but don’t have any books on the shelves. They talk about money all the time and they think welfare should be ripped from the poor. They like white clothes and play tennis and think skaters are rats who don’t deserve to be treated with respect. It they weren’t my parents, I’d flip them off on the street, key their cars as I walked by, and shit like that.

  I look in the mirror first thing to see if I look any different. My hair looks cool purple. I look around my room. It looks too young for a 16-year-old. An award hangs on the wall from a middle school spelling bee. Framed photos from when I played fucking tee-ball are sitting on my desk. I can’t believe I lived with all this claustrophobic shit around and didn’t go crazy and end up hanging myself. I throw my stuffed animals to the top shelf of my closet to get them out of the way. They look really dumb. Most of them fall back down on me, which feels good. They’re light and soft and fluffy and they smell like my bed. I lie down in a big pile of them.

  Footsteps come down the hall and stop outside my door.

  I don’t know if it’s my mom or my dad, but I think they’re spying. “Aloha! I can hear you. Who’s out there?”

  “Good morning, sweetie. Happy birthday.” My mom opens my door and sees me lying shirtless in my underwear in a pile of stuffed animals. She stares at me like I’m a freak of nature. Her eyes wander up and down my body. “You haven’t grown up so much after all.”

  I cover myself up with a big stuffed giraffe. “Shut up, Mom.” I put on a T-shirt that says PARENTS SUCK and make my hair really messy and spiky with Elmer’s glue. I have a need to freak them out, but it’s getting harder and harder, because I’ve already done almost everything they ever dreaded--like smoking pot, getting drunk, staying out too late, dying my hair green and blue and white and black and being honest enough to tell them to fuck off when they should. I walk down the hall, dreading the formalities ahead.

  Mom and Dad sit at the kitchen table reading the Sunday paper. Mom sort of smiles when she sees me, but I can tell she’s dreading this as much as I am. She’s afraid I’m gonna tell them I hate them again or something. She gets up, reaches into the oven, and gets out a big pancake with 16 candles stuck in it.

  I can’t fucking believe this. A pancake that my mom probably fried up like five hours ago. It looks pathetic. It’s greasy and flat and huge. I could never eat it, but I guess I’m going to have to take a couple bites or something, so they don’t think I’m completely unappreciative.

  Dad folds the business section down dramatically and looks at me over his glasses. “Jesus Christ, you look like drug addict.”

  “Aloha to you too, Dad.” I sit at the table.

  “Robert, it’s his birthday. Come on.” She tries to light the candles but it looks like she’s never used a lighter before.

  I take it and light the candles.

  She sets the flaming pancake in front of me. “Make a wish.”

  OK. Make Clay fall in love with me and ask me to move in with him in a cool house on the North Shore with tons of pot plants. And a personal chef and a big lock on the gate so no one can get in, ever, and make him naked all the time, just walking around the house and being happy and smiling with lots of boners and lots of money and drugs and no school….

  “OK, honey, blow out the candles.”

  “OK, Mom.” I guess I was taking too long. I blow out the candles.

  Wax drips all over the pancake.

  “Sweet 16.” She reaches underneath the table and pulls out a wrapped, long, weird-shaped thing with a card on the top. She hands it to me.

  It’s heavy. It’s a skateboard. At least they tried.

  “Read the card first,” Mom orders.

  I look at the yellow envelope and set it back down on the table, unopened--then I grab the board. It’s wrapped in paper that has little baseballs and mitts on it. I think it’s some sort of comment on what I’m not. I get sort of stoned looking at it.

  “Open it,” my dad orders, pointing to the skateboard, like he’s ready to get this over with and go golfing like he does every Sunday.

  I pull the stupid paper back. It’s cool. It’s a Blind board. The picture on the bottom is a little kid with a huge head and an all-knowing smirk. It probably reminds them of me, an evil little shit. I set it on the table and spin the wheels. “Cool, guys. I like it. Thank you.”

  My mom leans over
and kisses me. “So it’s the right one?”

  “Yeah, it’s excellent.”

  “OK…” She reaches under the table for another gift with a big red bow on it. It’s a dorky white helmet with PRO-EXTREME written on the side.

  “I don’t need a helmet, Mom.”

  “Yes, you do, and I want to see you wearing it.”

  I examine the helmet, acting like I’m checking it out and that I like it and all that. The gift tag’s on the inside. It reads 808 Skate. This has to be a sign.

  She’s fulfilling my destiny without even knowing it.

  I picture her buying the helmet from Clay. Terror rushes through my chest. Did she talk to him? I don’t want him to know I have such an idiot mom.

  Dad gets up and goes into the garage, probably to polish up his golf clubs.

  Mom clears the table. “I’ll put this in the refrigerator. It’ll be great cold, for later. Don’t forget the card.” She hands me the yellow envelope.

  “Thanks Mom. I love you.”

  For giving me an excuse to see Clay. You did something a hell of a lot cooler than you think you did.

  A crackle of lightning shoots through the sky followed by booming thunder with a slight electric roughness at the end. I can see rain coming out over the jagged Koolaus. A heavy shower sweeps in and pounds the house with huge raindrops. Maybe the streets will flood and turn into rivers. Clay could paddle in and save me.

  I go into my room and set the new skateboard on the floor and step up onto my top bunk. I stand on the edge of the mattress and aim for the center of the board. I jump. I land right in the middle, but it flies out from under me and slams into my closet door. It breaks a couple louvers near the bottom. I fall on my ass, making a loud thud on the floor. The rain’s pretty loud, so maybe they didn’t hear. I roll the board to the center of the room and jump up and down on it. I sneak out to the garage with the board under my arm.

  As soon as the door closes behind me, my mom opens it again, pops her head out, and sees me opening the garage door. It’s pouring outside.

  “Where are you going? You’ll fall and break something.”