Friday Forays into Fiction

It's November, which means it's time for NaNoWriMo again. That means that for the next 30 days I will be able to watch many of my peers have prick waving dick fights about their word counts while they try to fulfill their ambitions towards writing the great American novel.

I'm not going to lie. Most years, I get caught up in the novel writing fever. In fact, my upcoming graphic novel, Wacky Zack Must Die, started off as an idea for a NaNowriMo project. I'm begging out this year, but I still love the idea. The only reason I'm not giving it a whirl this go around is that I have other projects I want to focus on first - Chiefly among them my scripts for the Silver Age and Western volumes of The Gathering, and my Tarantino-tribute miniseries.

(Sadly true anecdote on that miniseries: I sent an email to my friend Pat's girlfriend the other day, asking her how long it would take someone to die of blood loss from an amputated limb. She's a medical student, and if you're in my life, and you demonstrate any area of expertise, I'm going to corner you at one point and ask you eerily specific questions relating to your field of knowledge. (Poor Pat, who is a juggler, had to spend an hour at a bar with me one night discussing the physics of juggling hamsters for a scene in Wacky Zack.) I was wondering why I hadn't recieved a response yet when a mutual friend informed me that the young woman in question had been in a horrible bicycle accident. 

Me: So.... That's probably why she hasn't wanted to talk about amputations.
Mike: Yeah, probably. 
Me: So... I guess I'm the dick now, huh?
Mike: We all figured you just didn't know.
Me: I didn't. I swear to God I didn't. Still... I'm gonna need an answer. 
Mike: Yeah. You're a dick.)

I should also mention that whenever I think about writing a novel, I can hear Stewie from Family Guy talking in my head. 

Anyway, in lieu of a whole novel, here's a piece of short fiction I wrote about two years ago. Like most things I've written, I can barely stand to look at it now. But several people who I like and respect have told me they enjoyed it, so maybe you will, too.

*****

Near Death Experiences, 3 AM

It was 3 AM, and we were in the Mighty Chicken, my 18 year old station wagon, a half hour into the hour drive home from a show at Studio 158. I had Gary in the back seat, completely knackered and snoring like a beast, and I had Ryan in the passenger seat, changing tapes every thirty-five seconds or so and drinking rum then cokes. Meaning, he had a jug of Captain Morgan he was guzzling from, and a can of Coca Cola he would sip at as a chaser.

I had the stereo up and the windows down. The noise from the stereo was trying (and failing) to drown out Gary’s noises, and the open window was easing the smell the three of us were giving off. We had been five hours inside of Studio 158, jungle steamy, hotter than hell, and unlike a lot of shows, the whole room decided not to wait until the very last band came on to start shaking their ass. We’d been moshing and pogoing and moving around all night, and we stank like a monkey cage.

Ryan had put on some Queers, and then declared it “wasn’t hard enough”. Then he had put on Snapcase, and took it out right away, saying it was “too hard”.

“What are you, Goldilocks? Pick something and stick to it,” I yelled at him above the noise of the wind. I was doing close to 60, which was about 15 miles per hour above the speed limit, but still pretty safe. It was summer, and it was late. Deer weren’t really out yet, no kids would be riding bikes this late, and there were only a couple state cops who worked route 66, and they never ran radar in that area on a Saturday night – Too dead. They were way more likely to set up shop somewhere near the Mobil station or the Dunkin Donuts. Not that I’m trying to perpetuate cop stereotypes, I’m just saying that there was way more chance of them actually busting a speeder or a drunk or something near the center of town. And hey, if it’s late, and nothing’s happening, you’d want to be where you could get a cup of coffee, right?

“I AM Goldilocks, dude. I’m getting fucking shaggy.” Ryan was wearing his trademark Big Mistake beanie, which was totally Ryan, wearing the hat of the band you’re going to see. When he took it off, his hair just spilled across his face. Most summers he shaved his head, but for some reason this year he had been wearing that hat almost nonstop since April, and I’d forget sometimes how blonde he was. When his hair started to get long, like it was then, he looked like Little Lord Fauntleroy in a hoodie and bondage pants.

He put in Black Train Jack, the first tape, the good one. “Ah. Punk Rock Goldilocks thinks this is just right.” He started piling his hair back under his hat, and looked in the back seat at Gary.

“He looks so innocent, sleeping like that.”

“I can’t see him.”

“Oh, dude, he’s adorable. He’s all curled up in the fetal position, and I think, I’m not sure, but I think, he’s sucking his thumb.”

“That’s precious.”

“It IS precious.”

“You want to fuck with him right now, don’t you?”

“Oh, man, you have no idea. I don’t suppose you have a Sharpie or anything? I want to draw cock and balls on his face.”

“No Sharpie.”

He turned back and settled into his seat. “You suck at having a Sharpie so that I can defile Gary’s face.” He took another gulp from the Captain.

“I’m sorry, I guess I really do.”

I glanced at him. “Should you be drinking that much of that shit?”

“How much of what shit? The Coke? Don’t worry, it’s just baby sips. And all the caffeine is good for me.”

“That’s not what I was talking about.”

“I know what you were talking about, and I don’t want to hear about it. I’m fine, and you’re driving, and what does it matter. You’re not my mother.”

It was always “You’re not my mother” with Ryan. Never “You’re not my father,” because that would have meant Ryan acknowledging he had a father, and Ryan almost never did that. Ever since Roy had ditched out on Ryan and his sister and his mom, and had moved to Bridgeport with this bar skank, Ryan had stopped talking about his dad. He pretty much had no father, as far as he was concerned.

“I’m not your mother. I just don’t want you throwing up in my car.”

“I will not throw up.”

“You’re promising? Swearing? Am I getting a guarantee?”

“You are getting a guarantee. I will not throw up. Not in your car, anyway.”

We both laughed and I kept driving.  I was feeling pretty good that night. It had been an awesome show, Big Mistake headlining, and Spring Heeled Jack on the bill. We had run into this girl Crystal I knew through Gary, and her two friends, and I ended up dancing with her for most of Spring Heeled Jack’s set. Ryan was still deep in his post-breakup angst over Meghan, hence the drinking binge, so he wasn’t much use, but Gary could be really funny and charming, and never seemed to really get nervous with girls at all, so he ended up keeping her friends busy. I pussied out on getting her number, but she said she was going to the Legion Hall show the next Friday, so I was pretty sure I would talk to her again then.

For some stupid reason, I tried to talk to Ryan about her. “That girl, Crystal? She was pretty hot.”

He had put the can of coke in the console cup holder, was looking out the window, cradling the jug of rum like a baby. “She was okay. Nothing special.”

What do you say to that, right? I knew that he wasn’t going to all be drunk and heartbroken for very long. And if he was saying things like a girl was nothing special, he knew it, too, and I was probably screwed. Because either I make a big deal out of it, and then he knows I like her, and at the show next Friday he totally cockblocks me, or I agree with him that she’s nothing special, and then he hears that as a green light to go after her himself. That’s how it had been with Meghan. We had met her at the Tune Inn, and I had thought she was just amazing. She had this really awesome voice, kind of husky, but not like, deep or anything. Sexy. And she had been really funny, too. I had accidentally bumped into her, both of us looking through the boxes of CDs in the little store inside the club. And she had said “Wow, you must REALLY want to look at those comps.” And for once I hadn’t gotten all stupid and tongue-tied, like I usually did with girls I didn’t know. I had said, “Yeah. But look, if you give me first dibs on whatever we find in there, I promise not to hurt you.” And she had laughed, and I felt flushed from my neck right down to my toes.

We started talking and I found out she was from our town, and she had just moved there from Ohio. I started making that old joke, about how Ohio Is round on the ends and “hi” in the middle, and then Ryan had come up from behind and had gotten me in a headlock and had said, “I’m sorry, is this guy bothering you? You say the word and I’ll drag him out of here and beat the shit out of him. “And she’d laughed at THAT, too, and I figured, she was just one of those girls who laughed at things, and if that’s the kind of girl she was, then it was all over. Ryan had moved in, and I was about to become “Ryan’s funny, fat friend”. And who needs that shit. So later, when he said, “What do you think about the Meghan chick,” I just said, “I don’t know. She’s OK, I guess.” And that was all the permission Ryan needed.

That was just the price you paid for being friends with Ryan. He really liked girls, and they really liked him. And while some dudes said “bros before hos”, and meant that they wouldn’t go after a girl their friend liked, Ryan said, “bros before hos”, and meant that, if you were his boy, you shouldn’t care who he went out with, even if it was your sister or your cousin, or some girl you met at a show and really liked, because you should be loyal to him, not to some girl who maybe didn’t even like you. That was just the way it was.

Look, I know he sounds like an asshole, but he wasn’t an asshole. He was my oldest friend, since the first grade. He got me into punk rock, and he got me into ska,  and he got me into hardcore, and he introduced me to every cool slasher movie I had ever seen, and he didn’t read comics, but he’d come with me to buy mine, and he never gave me any shit about it. He’d bust your balls all day long, and he’d fuck with you just to make sure you could take it, but the things that would really hurt? The things that would really wound you down deep, so that you kind of choked a little, and had to fake a laugh through clenched teeth? Ryan would never go there. Ever. And if anyone else did, Ryan would make sure they never did it again.

Like the one time this guy, Chad Marufo, this guy did give me shit? Eric had been right there. I had been in the school library, and I was reading the trade paperback for Ronin, and I was so totally into it that I didn’t even hear Chad come up behind me until I felt him flick the back of my ear and then grab the book away. “Comic books? These things are for fat pussies, I hear.” And Ryan was up off his chair already and shoved Chad, this big jock kid, like over 6 feet tall, this basketball jock, Ryan shoves him. And he says, “At least he can read, you fucking faggot, “and snatches the book right out of Marufo’s hands. And Marufo’s just standing there with this look on his face like he couldn’t believe some little skinny punk kid had just called him a fag. And for a second, it looked like maybe there was going to be a fight, but then Marufo maybe saw something in Ryan’s eyes. Like something that said, I don’t give a fuck that you’re bigger than me, I don’t care that you’re stronger than me. My dad used to hit me and he used to do it hard enough to knock me down and I’m not afraid of being hit anymore. You just try to hit me. I will fucking kill you. No joke. I will fucking kill you.

So Marufo just backs away, and says, “Fuck you two,” and takes off. And as soon as he’s out of earshot, Ryan grabs my hair and pulls my forehead against his and says, “"When I get aggression, I give it two times back."  And then he sat down again and went right back to doing his homework.

So if Ryan was a little loud, and if he was a little obnoxious, and he didn’t really think about whether you liked a girl or not before he made out with her, that’s the price you paid to be friends with him. And that was a fair price, you know?

And I was starting to get the hang of it now, of liking girls and being friends with Ryan. You couldn’t say you liked her, and you couldn’t say you didn’t, so you just changed the subject.

“So what happened with Meghan? Like, two weeks ago, when we went to Friendly’s and you guys were all hand-holding and whispering, and practically making out at the table. And then, this weekend, you’re all bitter drunk guy. What happened?”

“She broke up with me.”

“OK, but that’s not what anyone else heard.” The rumor in the scene was that Ryan had dropped Meghan, for reasons unknown. I had heard it from Abby Kraft, and Chris Majors, and Genevieve, and Mickey, and the twins. And whether it was true or not, everyone was acting like it was true. Meghan’s social circle had immediately expanded, and she was supposedly now friends with this circle of girls who had all dated Ryan, and now thought he was a scumbag.

“It doesn’t matter what everyone else said, Thom. I’m telling you how it is, okay? Let’s just change the subject.”

“Okay, man. I’m sorry.” And we drove without talking for a little while. Just listened to Black Train Jack do “Time” and “Mad Doll” and “Leapfrog”. And after a little while, Ryan said,

“Thom, I have kind of a situation here.”

“Dude, you promised.”

“I’m not going to puke. But I have to pee like a racehorse. I’m not joking man. I’m going to fucking bust. Pull over somewhere.”

“Like where?” Pulling over on these roads was no joke. It was one lane in either direction, and almost right where the road ended, right on the edge where a sidewalk would be if we lived in the city or the suburbs and not out in the goddamned sticks, that was where the trees started. If you had to stop, there was almost no place for you to pull over. And I wasn’t worried about cops, or regular traffic, but at 3 am, you never knew when a drunk or fucked-up redneck asshole in a jacked-up truck was going to come flying up right behind you. There had been a kid at school when me and Ryan and Gary were freshman, this senior, who had gotten killed when his car was rear-ended by some drunk farmer going 80. Drove the kid right into a tree, and that’s that.

“Dude, anywhere. I have to piss. I can’t fucking hold it.”

“You should have gone before we left!” And now I wasn’t sounding like Ryan’s mother, I was sounding like MY mother.

“I did, man! But then I drank, like, this whole fucking jug of rum! You’ve got to pull over.”

“It probably wasn’t the rum, it was probably the coke that did it. Just that little extra that pushed you over the edge.”

“Thom, PLEASE…”

“OK! Hey, look! Right there. Right over there.” And there was a clearing in the endless woods we had been driving past. It was a piece of shit auto shop and junkyard we had driven past a thousand times. There was a single overhead light mounted above the sign, so you could see the letters that were left – U-A-L-I-T-Y-M-T-O-R-C-O-A-C-H-S.

I pulled in, taking my time, not to torture Ryan (although that was kind of fun), but because I had fucked up my parents’ Buick a little, making a fast U-turn out of a parking lot just like this one. I had come into that lot going too fast, caught up in the music, listening to Screeching Weasel, or NOFX or something, and hadn’t seen the catch basin, not quite flush with the ground, and semi-jagged with age and rust. So I hit the stupid thing, and my tired popped, and I tried to get it under control, but it took a few seconds to stop the car, and I managed to bend the axle somehow. I needed to get the thing towed out of there. Somehow I managed to escape being grounded until I was in college, but I was a little overly cautious when pulling into strange places now. 

I pulled up in front of the garage’s bay doors, and Ryan was out of the car before I could even get it into park. I thought he was going to just run up to the doors, but he took off around the side of the building as fast as he could run while doing the pee-pee dance.

I turned off the stereo, and sat in the car, listening to Gary’s snoring. After a few seconds, I got out of the car myself. There was a coke machine near the main door into the garage, and I was hoping I had enough change in my pocket to get myself a coke that hadn’t been tainted by Ryan’s rum-lips. I was halfway between the car and the machine when I heard the crunch of sneakers moving fast on loose gravel. I turned around to see Ryan come hauling around the side of the building. He hadn’t zipped up after peeing, and his cock was bouncing furiously as he ran, like it was waving at me.

I started laughing and pointed at him. “Dude, your cock is out.”

In a stage whisper, he hissed at me, “Thom, Get in the car! GET IN THE CAR!”

“What’s your probl…” was all I managed to get out. Ryan did a straight dive through the open passenger window of the car, and at that moment I heard

BOOM! BOOM!

coming from behind the garage.

I had heard gunshots before. Living in the woods, out in east bumfuck, CT, you hear gunshots all the time - hunters in the fall, white trash with guns shooting at squirrels or at cans in their yards the rest of the year. I knew gunshots when I heard them. But these were so fucking loud. They sounded like cannons, like bombs, like guns you’d hear in a war movie. I went cold.

Ryan was getting himself right-side-up in the passenger seat, and I could see him, tucking his junk back into his jeans and mouthing, “COME ON!” and I took off running to the car, and  my hand came out of my pocket, and all of the change I had been jingling came out with it and scattered all across the ground, and I realized oh holy fuck, my keys were in that pocket, and I stopped short and started looking around frantically, trying to figure out where they had gone, and Ryan opened my door and was yelling now, “Thom, COME ON! Hurry the fuck up! Please”

I couldn’t see my keys anywhere, and I started patting my jeans, and then I realized I had left them in the fucking car, they were in the fucking ignition, and I jumped in and turned the keys and heard a grinding noise, and the fucking car was already on, Thom, get it together, and Ryan was yelling in my ear, “GOOOOOOO!”

I slammed the car into drive and hit the gas with all of my weight, the tires spinning in the gravel, the ass end of the Mighty Chicken fishtailing, all the lessons about driving slow in strange parking lots forgotten, totally forgotten. There was a slight incline coming out of the lot, and the Mighty Chicken launched into the street, I swear to god we caught air, and I remember Ryan was yelling, “HOLY FUCKING SHIT!” and I managed, I just barely managed, to get the wheel turned hard to the right, so the Chicken hit the street and made a nasty, lurching turn, and I could hear the branches scraping the driver’s side door, and then I got control again, and got us back on the right side of the street, going like a bat out of hell. I had the gas pedal down to the floor, and I looked at Ryan and I think I said, “Ryan, what exactly is going on?” but later Ryan told me that what I actually did was scream, “RYAN! FUCK! WHAT? WHAT THE FUCK?”

And he says, “Holy shit, man. Holy shit. I went out back, and I’m peeing, and oh my god, it was a relief, and I’m standing there, dick in my hand, and I hear voices. And I kind of turn and look over my shoulder, and there are these guys, probably four or five of them, standing in front of two big-ass cars.”

“Big ass cars?”

“Like fucking Cadillacs or something. Long. And they’re passing briefcases back and forth.”

“Ryan, are you fucking kidding me with this shit? I just about crapped myself…”

“Thom, I swear to god. I swear to Buddha. I swear to Joey Ramone. I swear to whoever the fuck you want me to swear to, but this shit is for real. Those dudes were doing a drug deal or an arms deal or some crazy mafia or KGB shit or something!”

“Dude, there are no mobsters around here. We’re lucky to have cable.”

“I know what I saw, man. And I saw these dudes. And they saw me. And one of them was like, ‘Who’s that?’ and they all pulled out these goddamned hand cannons and I just bolted it out of there.”

“Cock flapping in the breeze.”

“Like I’m going to stop and zip up in the middle of Reservoir Dogs or whatever the fuck that was.”

I was starting to relax a little. This was all a big misunderstanding, some fucked-up joke of Ryan’s, or too much rum messing with his head. I opened my mouth to call Ryan a drunk jerk-off, and that’s when the headlights appeared in my rearview window, coming up on us fast.

“FUCK!” I screamed.

“What? What is it?” Ryan was screaming back.

“Both of you be quiet, please?” came, fuzzily, from the backseat.

“Dude, they’re behind us! They’re right fucking behind us!” I stood on the pedal, willing lightspeed from the Chicken. It lurched a bit, and the engine revved as it tried to give me what I was asking for. The headlights were getting bigger and brighter, and I knew the other car was coming up on us fast, faster than I could manage.

The woods on either side of the road were starting to break a bit. We were starting to get into a section of the drive where farmsteads and housing developments battled it out in this constant “progress versus tradition” turf war. So you’d pass a clearing in the trees and see a bunch of rolling fields, and silos. And then, three miles down the road, the next clearing broke, and you were looking at a pod of McMansions that had sprung out of the ground like multimillion dollar mushrooms occupied by yuppie Smurfs.

I had the Chicken at 80, which was 10 miles per hour faster than it could comfortably travel. These were back roads, paved when the town got to it, and we felt every rut or bump or pothole like it was the Grand Canyon. Every imperfection in the road was like a punch to the ass, as we bounced in our seats, and I tried to keep the Chicken under control.

If we could get a little farther, just a little farther, we’d be into the center of town, and there would be people, somebody, anybody. There’d be witnesses and we couldn’t get executed, mob-style in the Dunkin Donuts parking lot in front of a bunch of witnesses, right? I thought about the term “Columbian necktie”, and I could feel myself starting to completely lose my mind with panic. The headlights were right on my bumper, and it was as bright as daylight inside our car. Ryan was saying, “ohfuckohfuckohfuckohfuck”, just this mantra of complete, pants-shitting terror, and we hit another pothole and for a second I thought the car chasing us had rear-ended us, had just gunned the engine and rammed us, and Ryan must have thought that, too, because he yelled, “I’m not dying like this”, and grabbed the steering wheel, yanking it up so that the car suddenly banked to the left.

Over the yellow line, off the road, and if I had hit the brakes like my instincts said to, we probably would have flipped the whole car, but I was so shocked by what Ryan had done, all I could manage was to say, calmly and in disbelief, “Dude, don’t grab the wheel…” and then we smashed through the fence.

Through the fence, over a hill, up a gully, and then into the middle of a field, and Gary sat up from the back, still half-asleep, and yelled, “COW!” and that’s how I managed to hit the brakes in time. The car skidded in the wet grass, and turned sideways, and we bumped the cow, just barely tapped it. And the cow said, “moo” - which I guess is how cows say, “What the hell, guys?”

Gary was still sitting in the back, in the middle of the back seat, his hands on the front bench, and he said, “Why are we in a field?” And Ryan threw open the door and yelled, “Fuck, man! Assassins!” And I looked out of the driver’s side window and saw a pickup truck parked on the road with its hazard lights on, and this big slab of redneck in bib overalls and a tee shirt (and this is the part nobody ever believes but I am swearing to you, the dude was literally wearing bib overalls) running down the hill towards us, and saying, “Oh man! You kids okay?” And I realized we’d been “chased” by some guy named Cletus or “Arlo” or something, and the guy was getting close enough for me to see he’s wearing a John Deere baseball cap, and I started laughing, and in my head, all I could think was “John Deere Mafia. Hillbilly Cosa Nostra”.

The guy stopped running when I started laughing and said, “Jesus. Are you kids drunk?” To which Ryan yells, “Oh shit! Evidence!” and grabs the jug of rum from the passenger seat and flings it as far as he can, which, the state he was in, was about twenty feet, and then leans over and starts to puke between his feet.

“Sir, we’re cool. We’re not drunk. Well…“ I looked at Ryan, “I’m not drunk. We thought you were someone else.” Ryan said, “I didn’t puke in your car, Thom!” And Gary said, “Seriously, guys? Why are we in a field?”

So that was that, basically. The redneck guy (who’s name was Harrison, his first name, if you can believe it), called the state cops, and told them he’d been following us and had seen the whole thing, and we’d swerved to avoid hitting a skunk, and was actually pretty unbelievably cool about the whole thing. He didn’t mention the jug of rum, and I didn’t get grounded. My insurance actually paid for the fence we broke. Gary swore he was never driving with us anywhere, ever again, but Gary swore stuff like that all the time.

Ryan wanted to go back to the garage the next day and check for shell casings or something, but I passed. Either we’d nearly been killed, or we’d nearly killed ourselves, either way, I didn’t want to know. It had been a near death experience at three in the morning, and I just wanted to leave it at that.

*****
I had thoughts, once upon a time, of doing an entire book of shirt stories like this. Just vaguely autobiographical anecdotes about punker kids in the early 90s getting into trouble and slowly growing up. Who knows, I may still get to it someday.

Hugs and kisses,
(The) Travis