by James Franco
My mom went to bed and I smoked some more cigarettes.
A while later there was a tapping at the door. At first I didn’t think about it because it was really soft, but it was constant and regular so I became aware of it.
I knew it was Adam. I sat at the table and it kept going, soft and steady. The door was in the darkness outside the circle of light in the kitchen. God, I didn’t want to open it.
It felt like I could sit there forever, and the tapping would never stop.
Camp
We all went to the camp.
We were twelve and thirteen years old. Me and Ivan and Howard and Ute and Ed. Jewish, Russian, Jewish, Italian, and half Korean/half white. I had turned thirteen in April.
It was a YMCA water-ski camp. There was a husband and wife who ran everything, but the husband was the head counselor. The husband had well-manicured dark hair and a clipped beard that fit his face; the wife had blond hair to her shoulders. He was in his forties and she looked younger. A pleasant, Christian-looking mom and dad.
He wore a tan explorer’s hat with a floppy brim and a string that hung down under his chin. His wife did the roll call and made sure everybody was where they should be. They both led the songs around the campfire at night, but she led more of them. Sometimes he would play his guitar. We sang many different songs, and sometimes the husband told ghost stories. It sounded like he had told the stories a million times, but that he was trying to make them exciting each time. I think he was very proud of them and thought they were good just because he had told them so many times. At the end we always sang “The Lion Sleeps Tonight.”
It was so dirty around the fire and I’d always get smoke in my mouth.
We were too old for the camp.
Jane was our counselor even though we were all boys. She was the daughter of the head counselor and his wife. Jane had blond hair like her mom. Later she told us that she was the black sheep of her family.
Another counselor was Hulk.
Hulk was very tall and big, like a bulky potato shape, fat but really strong. He had huge calves that were red from the sun because he wore shorts all the time. His shorts hung to his fat knees and he had them in all ugly colors, like pink, and they were dirty and worn from the woods. Or fluorescent orange with swirl designs, or cut-off denim. He wore big brown Timberland boots without tying the laces. He had a curly mullet and a goatee and he wore Vuarnet sunglasses. The Vuarnets were a single lens that went across both eyes and reflected rainbows in the sunlight.
Ed and I had had him for a counselor the first time, when we were eight. That was for a different camp in a different set of woods, but Hulk was the same then.
Howard was Jewish and I was Jewish because my mom was Jewish. I never went to Hebrew school but I was circumcised.
When I was a kid my friend Nick and I made a potion together. Nick was French; his dad had a pointy beard and spoke with an accent. We got a big rectangular plastic tub and put snails in it and red pyracantha berries, which were poisonous and made the blackbirds drunk so they flew into the windows and died. And we took cat poo from the sandbox with a plastic shovel and put it in the soup. At the end we peed in it. My penis was like a mushroom and my French friend’s was draped in skin, like a monk’s cowl.
We tried to get my little brother to drink it but he wouldn’t. We left our potion in the backyard in the rectangular tub. One day I found a dead rat next to it.
In fourth grade Mr. DeFelice was my teacher. He was younger than all the other teachers. He said his name meant he was always happy. He told us he ate pizza and drank beer at Luigi’s in Mountain View. That was the next city over, but far for me. He said he was good at Top Gun on Nintendo. He could get to the space level. A jet in space doesn’t make sense.
* * *
In ninth grade we watched a lot of Holocaust stuff. We saw pictures and then a film of the naked bodies being bulldozed. Penises on the men and vaginas and breasts on the women. They didn’t seem like real penises. I looked close. Some were big.
I had a cat named Toby. He was put to sleep at the vet’s. Gassed? Buried? Incinerated. Way of all flesh and fur.
Ed was at my very first Y camp when we were eight. He was half Korean from his mom, and his dad was a big, white, bald dork. One morning Hulk took us to the lake. It was so cold. We had our towels around our shoulders. Mine was The Incredible Hulk, Ed had The Dukes of Hazard. There was a Confederate flag on the side of their car.
Hulk said we were all in the Polar Bear Club. He was the whale of the club.
We took our shirts off. Nobody had muscles. Hulk said he would give a Coke to whoever went in the lake naked.
One night in ninth grade we were drunk and wandering around the neighborhoods in a pack. There were some girls with us too. There was nowhere to go and no more alcohol.
We walked through Mid-Peninsula, the school for bad kids who got kicked out of other schools. They were allowed to smoke cigarettes during their brunch break. They were mostly white and they wore a lot of black. One year a kid brought a gun to school and shot his ex-girlfriend at brunch because she had a new boyfriend. Then he shot the new boyfriend. Then he shot himself. The girl didn’t live, but the new boyfriend lived.
We never had any black friends. Not before high school and not in high school. But we liked black rappers. Dr. Dre, 2Pac, DJ Quik, Too $hort, and the Geto Boys.
At water-ski camp there was a black girl, Angela. She had no friends at camp because she was weird. She would talk about aliens. She said she and her brothers saw aliens, but it sounded like her brothers were her only friends and that her brothers were the ones who came up with the alien idea.
We dared Howard to make out with her in the back of the bus. He did one night. On the way back to the campsite he kissed her, but it was messy, like two lizards. We were in the seat in front of them and we saw him feel her small breasts, and under the towel he felt her vagina. We looked back and saw it all. It was a purple towel with nothing on it. He was the first of us to do all that, but it was with the black alien girl.
I had my first girlfriend in fourth grade, in Mr. DeFelice’s class. Her name was Simone. She was pretty and blond like Madonna. After she broke up with me I would watch Who’s That Girl? to remind myself of her. Once Simone said Mr. DeFelice asked if he could take pictures of her at his house, but her mom wouldn’t let her go.
Ute’s name was the name of an Indian tribe. He was Italian but his parents were hippies and accountants at Whole Foods. His older brother was named Rain, he was two years older than us. Rain had the biggest dick of all his friends. He would walk around naked and show it, all his friends talked about it. They called him “Calcium.”
Calcium broke all the basketball records in high school and had sex with tons of ugly girls.
Later, in high school, Ute had sex first out of all of us. It was with a black girl, Venus.
I had sex last. I was drunk at a party at my friend Barry’s house. We did it in a bedroom, Susan and me, and then stayed the night. In the morning, I waited till she left, and then I walked home alone.
At water-ski camp we told everyone about Howard and the black girl on the bus. There was a handsome guy, Chad. He got into a fight with Howard and punched him in the eye. Chad didn’t get in trouble because he told the counselors about what Howard did to Angela.
* * *
After I had sex once I had sex a lot. The second time was in Susan’s bed. I was about to come and I pressed my foot against the footboard. My long toenails scraped against the board like cockroaches. After, when we pulled away, it was sticky and frothy. Buttery, like pulling apart a Baby Ruth.
She rolled over and cried.
When I was eight, we all loved Coke. The bright red can with the cold brown liquid. There was one machine back at the main counselor’s cabin. If we did something good we got a can.
Everybody in the Polar Bear Club wanted a Coke. But no one wanted to get naked in front of Hulk. Hulk took his shirt off. He was fat and pale and h
ad hair on the front of his shoulders. His stomach was like curdled milk. There were little chunks of ill-formed fat that showed through the skin when he moved. The skin on his stomach was as white as the inside of a radish.
In fourth grade, in Mr. DeFelice’s class, I had to sit next to Sasha Alexander. She wore the thickest glasses I’ve ever seen. She had short red hair, lots of freckles, and no friends.
The class practiced writing cursive. We had to write our desk partner’s name. Mr. DeFelice came around to inspect. He told me my x in Alexander looked like a swastika.
* * *
In eleventh grade we studied the Civil War. There were the Bad Confederates and the Good Guys in the North. Some people still believe that the Confederates were right.
The water-ski camp went to Knott’s Berry Farm. Ute and Howard and I and the others weren’t allowed to go into Knott’s Berry Farm because of the fight Howard had with Chad and because of what Howard did with the black girl and because he told that we had made him do it. The head counselor and his wife wanted to kick us out of camp, but instead we missed out on Knott’s Berry Farm. It was Hulk’s idea. We stayed in the parking lot by the bus with Jane and threw a Frisbee. Jane had to stay because she was our counselor. She was sad for us. That was when she told us that she was the black sheep of the family.
At the very end of the day we got to go into Knott’s Berry Farm. We saw Chad. He had his T and C tank top on. He had met a local girl in the park. His friend told us that Chad had got to second base with her already when they went on the mine ride. She was blond and pretty.
Riding back to the campsite, Ute drew pictures of people being burned in ovens. He burned Howard and Chad and Hulk in his ovens. They went in as they were—it looked like them, Ute was good at drawing cartoons—and they came out as skeletons.
A little kid told about the drawings. Hulk came back and saw the pictures. Back at camp he told us how bad the Nazis were and that it was not something to joke about.
Nobody in the camp liked us.
* * *
Ute was handsome but he was a nerd too. He drew lots of pictures. Ed and I drew pictures with him. We made our own comic called The Alien Brothers. We drew ourselves like vicious aliens and killed the people in our school.
In fourth grade Sasha Alexander was the biggest dork I could ever think of. Buckteeth and short red hair and glasses. She said she could play basketball better than me. I laughed. We played at lunch and I won. She didn’t admit that I won. Back in class I told her she was a dork and a poor loser, and she stabbed me in the arm with a pencil. The hole was gray from the graphite.
Mr. DeFelice didn’t do anything about it.
When we were eight this guy pulled Ed’s bathing suit off. Ed didn’t have a mushroom. He was half Korean. We were scared to fight the big guy who did it. Hulk didn’t know about it, so the kid didn’t get in trouble.
In high school it was mostly white kids. There were only about thirty black students. Some were bussed in from East Palo Alto. Most of them hung out in an area in front of the school library. That was their spot. They got bad grades and wore parkas.
* * *
That night at Mid-Pen we were drunk and tired of walking. Me and Ivan and Ed and Jack stood on the cement-filled tire of a tetherball pole. We held the pole and rocked the tire back and forth and sang drunken songs. The rest of the group left.
We were drunk and we came up with our own songs. We sang about Heebs, and stingy Jews. Not meanly, just loud and funny. I sang loud.
Ute was mad about it, he asked how we could do that to Dave Frankel and Howard, and he left. No one cared. We didn’t care about Howard, he was a fool.
At water-ski camp we made fun of Howard and the black girl, Angela, so much. Late at night we snuck out of our sleeping bags and smoked pot. At campfire one night we dared Howard to push Angela in the water.
We sang “Wimoweh, wimoweh,” and then as everyone walked back to our sleeping bags, Howard shoved her in. She had all her clothes on. She hit her tooth on a log.
We got kicked out.
In high school Ute had so much pressure from his brother, Rain, to have sex. His brother made fun of him, and would get him drunk, and rip off his clothes, and tie him up. Ute finally had sex with Venus. The black guys made fun of Ute and Venus. They all wanted Venus.
* * *
The football players like Sam liked to make fun of Jews. He called people “Heebs” when they “Jewed” him. Sam played center on the team. He was fat and got no girls. He drank a lot of beer. Dave Frankel was Jewish and was on the team. He didn’t say anything to Sam about all his talk.
In History our teacher, Mr. Tyson, did a reenactment of the Anne Frank story. It was an elaborate thing that he did every year. It was staged on top of the machine shop in the storage room. He made the storage room look like Anne Frank’s attic. It was elaborate. Students played the Franks. At the end Mr. Tyson busted through the door dressed like an SS agent. He was pretty convincing.
When they kicked us out of camp, Hulk drove us to the Greyhound bus station in the middle of the night. Howard cursed at him the whole way. He called him a child molester and a little-dicked faggot. Hulk didn’t say anything. Howard kept going for the whole ride; it took about an hour. Howard’s face was red by the end. Whenever Hulk switched gears, Howard told him to “work that stick.”
At the Greyhound station in Redding, Hulk bought us all tickets and put us on the bus. He watched as we drove off. I saw him walk away before the bus was out of sight.
Then we were in the dark bus with the real people, traveling in the middle of the night. Most of the people were Mexican, and were sleeping. We were all quiet; there was nothing left to do.
There was a layover in Sacramento. We got out and wandered around. There was a seedy hotel near the station called the Henderson Hotel. It made us think of a slut at our school called Alice Henderson and we laughed about it. They sold hot dogs and beer in the lobby. The guy behind the counter said that Axl Rose had stayed there once.
It was one in the morning.
When we went back to the depot, Ed and I had both lost our ticket receipts and we couldn’t get on the bus. The woman in the customer service booth told us to go talk to the driver.
We went around to the side of the depot where the drivers had their lounge. Through the small window in the door we could see them. They were all black guys, sitting in there laughing and drinking coffee out of blue and white Styrofoam cups. They looked like they were having such a good time.
Chinatown
In Three Parts
Part I
Vietnam
It was Sunday, at the beginning of summer. I was at Jordan Middle School, playing soccer with the Mexicans on the field in back. They were all in their twenties and thirties; I was sixteen. They were gardeners and construction workers and cooks. It was sticky hot out.
After the game, I saw two girls smoking on one of the portable metal benches the coaches sit on. I walked over. One was an Asian girl with a beat-up face and a nice-looking body. The other was pale white and tall with curly hair. The Asian one passed a cigarette to the pale one. They were my age.
I was sweaty.
“Hi, I’m Roberto.” I put out my hand like a gentleman. The Asian girl smiled and said her name was Pam. We shook hands. The pale one smoked and didn’t say anything, or even look at me. She was like a big drooping plant.
“How’s the smoking?” I said.
“Fucking fine,” said the drooping plant. She passed the cigarette to Pam and looked off, across the field. She blew the smoke out through a little hole in her lips.
“‘Fucking fine,’ that sounds pretty good,” I said. I smiled big. I said to Pam, “Can I try that fucking fine cigarette?”
Pam laughed without sound and handed me the cigarette. The other one looked over her shoulder like there was something very interesting over there.
“Mmmmm, that is fucking good,” I said. “Fucking fine.” The drooping plant was not
listening, only Pam was listening. She was pretty ugly, but when she smiled she wasn’t so ugly. And I could see up close that she had a really good body.
“Hey,” I said to the other girl. She didn’t look back. “Hey, here’s your cigarette.” She still didn’t look.
“Her name is Vicky,” said Pam.
“Vicky,” I said. “Vicky the hickey.” She still didn’t look. “Vicky, you remind me of a praying mantis,” I said. “You’re all long, and mantis.”
Pam laughed for a second, and put her hand over her mouth like she shouldn’t have. But then the mantis stood up.
“Pam, I’m going,” said the mantis.
“Don’t go,” I said.
“Fuck you,” she said to me. “Pam, are you coming?” she said.
Pam didn’t stand up.
“Pam doesn’t want to go, mantis,” I said.
“Screw you,” she said to me. To Pam she said, “Pam?”
Pam said, “No,” very quietly. The mantis turned and walked off across the field.
“Why don’t you go pray, and eat some of your mates,” I said to her back.
She walked crookedly and had a funny-shaped ass, like a heptagon.
I took another puff on the cigarette. It was a Camel. Some of the Mexicans called to me. They were carrying their soccer bags and water bottles at the other end of the field. They were waving. I waved.
I handed the cigarette back to Pam. She took a puff.
“Are you from around here?” I said.
She said she had just moved. She was going to start school with me at Paly in the fall. The pale girl worked at Midtown Video and they had met when she had gone in there to rent a video. She was the only person Pam had met so far.
I asked her which movie she rented.
“Pretty Woman.”
