Earth Angel (18 page)

The bell rang again, the knocking continued. “Josh, c’mon. Let’s go!”

“Get the door, Josh,” David said.

Josh ambled over and flung open the door. A kid his age in a black, hooded Mossimo sweatshirt flew in, bouncing in an itchy
way.

“Hey, Josh,” the kid said. “Let’s get cracking, dude. You can’t go in your swim suit. Show some class.”

“I’m not going.” Josh jerked his head at David who was hefting his padded bag onto his shoulder. “Kyle wants to know why I
can’t go, David. Considering the fact that he’s only seventeen, too.”

Kyle raised a hand and smiled. “Hey, Mr. Payton.”

I was standing in the doorway of the kitchen. Kyle looked at me, his eyes involuntarily sweeping my body from legs to chest.
When his eyes finally made it to my face, he smiled shyly. “I’m Kyle.”

“I’m Grace.”

David came over to me. “I’m sorry about this, Grace, but I’ve got to go. It was very nice meeting you.” He pointed at my swollen
cheek. “Sorry about that, too.”

This was it. In a few seconds he’d be gone and I would, too. Out of their lives.

“Where are you all going in such a hurry?” I asked.

Silence. No one wanted to answer.

David shrugged. “Sort of a business trip.”

A horn honked outside. Kyle turned in the doorway and waved.

Rachel came in from the kitchen, drying her hands on a towel. “They’re driving down to Tijuana, Mexico, to pick up whores.”

I looked at David. “Really?”

“Not me. I’m just going to—”

“Mind if I come along?” I asked, hobbling over and grabbing my purse.

“W
HY WHORES
—?”

“Talk to the camera,” David interrupted, squinting through the lens.

“Okay. You wanna know why am I going to Mexico to hire a hooker?” Kyle adjusted his baseball cap and grinned at the other
guys. “Because it’s there.”

The boys laughed.

“Talk to the camera,” David repeated.

Kyle shifted toward the camera with an eager smile. He had a long, narrow head, as if it had been squeezed in a vice. “It’s
no big deal. Something guys do. It’s just for fun, like going to the movies or something.”

“Like bowling,” Stu said.

“Right,” Kyle nodded. “Bowling, surfing, Sega. You know.”

David swung the camera around to Stu, a large, muscular boy whose buzz-cut hair almost grazed the roof of the van. Stu was
eating red string licorice. “Stu, have you ever been with a prostitute before? Ever paid for sex?”

Stu rolled his lazy eyes toward me, then at David. “Nope.”

“Have you ever had sex with a woman?”

“Depends what you mean by sex.”

“Depends what you mean by
woman
,” Vernon, the driver, called back over his shoulder. The boys all laughed, including Stu. Vernon was the court jester of
the group, but he was also hyper and fidgety in a way that made me nervous about him driving. He was always turning around
to deliver some wisecrack, then waiting to see the reaction. Meanwhile, the van was zooming down the dark freeway with no
one watching the road. Vernon was alone up front; the rest of us sat in the back to accommodate David’s filming. Kyle and
Stu sat with their backs pressed against one side of the van; David and I sat backs to the other side. We were like paratroopers
in a plane hull, waiting to jump.

“Have you had sexual intercourse with a woman?” David clarified.

Stu bit off a piece of licorice and chewed slowly. “Not intercourse exactly, but I’ve fooled around some. You know. With girls
at school. I’ve got a steady girlfriend. We mess around.”

“Mess around?”

“You know,” Stu said, “
mess
around.”

Vernon turned and snickered. “Mess around. That means whenever he’s
around
her, he makes a
mess
.”

Vernon and Kyle hooted.

David ignored Vernon. “Does ‘mess around’ involve merely fondling, or does it include ejaculation through oral sex or mutual
masturbation?”

Stu looked away from the camera, staring down at his string licorice. He began swinging the licorice with both hands like
a mini jumprope. Without looking up, he said, “That’s sorta personal.”

David tipped the camera away from Stu. “C’mon, guys. I warned you I’d ask these kind of questions when you agreed to let me
tag along. I told you it would be honest
and intimate, no bullshit beating around the bush. I’m asking the kinds of questions you’d want to hear if you were watching
this film, right?”

Stu shrugged. “I guess. I just, you know…” He tied a knot into his licorice. “Okay, go ahead and ask me.”

David shouldered his camera again. “Does your girlfriend know you’re going on this trip?”

Guffaws from the other boys.

“Hell, no. She’d kill me if she found out.”

“Why?”

Stu made a face as if David was crazy. “Why? Because she doesn’t want me screwing other women. Disease, for one thing. And
the whole cheating thing. We’re going steady, like I said.”

“Then why are you doing it?” David asked. “Like you said, you’re going steady.”

“ ’Cause Lydia won’t put out,” teased Vernon. “Two hours of tit on a Saturday night is all he gets.”

“Shut up, Vermin. It’s two hours more than you ever get.”

Vernon laughed and honked his horn for no reason.

Stu looked at David, at me, back at David. “I just want to do it, that’s all. For fun. It’s an adventure.”

“ ‘Lookin’ for adventure,’ ” Vernon sang from “Born to Be Wild.”

Stu shoved the entire rope of licorice into his mouth. His cheeks bulged as he chewed. He wouldn’t be able to answer any more
questions for a few minutes. He looked away from the camera out the windshield. Chewing.

David clicked off the bright camera light and dismounted the camera from his shoulder. It was a bigger camera than the usual
camcorders you see parents chasing their kids around Disneyland with. He stuck the camera back into the padded nylon bag.
I could see on his face he was frustrated.

As soon as the camera went off the boys all seemed
to relax. They huddled together and began talking and laughing among themselves.

“Maybe I’m inhibiting them,” I whispered to David. “They probably don’t want to talk about sex in front of a woman.”

“They’re just wound up. They’re nervous about being with prostitutes.”

“And you’re not?”

“I’m just along to film the great adventure.”

“What’s this film for? You don’t go around doing this kind of thing for fun, do you?”

He laughed. “I’m an anthropologist, remember? I got a modest grant from the university to make a film on the rites of puberty
in American culture.”

“And driving down to Mexico to hire hookers is a puberty rite?”

“Any ritual or custom that involves a child becoming an adult is a puberty rite.”

“Screwing prostitutes is going to make them men?”

“They think it will. Or at least it will contribute toward that end. Like shaving. Anyway, it’s the latest fad. Middle-class
kids are hiring hookers for their first sexual intercourse. Don’t you read
People?
”

I made a face. “Who said romance is dead?”

“Hey, unrealistic notions of romance are probably what drive them to it.” David reached over and grabbed a long string of
licorice from Stu’s box. He broke it in half and gave part to me. “The American middle-class culture’s new emphasis on chastity
until marriage has a lot of horny teens roaming around. Plus, guys don’t want to finally have sex with someone they care about
and seem inept and foolish.”

“So hiring a prostitute is kind of like hiring a tutor.”

“Close enough. Anyway, it’s really just a variation on the old European custom in which the father took his son to a brothel
to initiate him into the sweet mysteries of sex.”

I snorted. “And some university is paying you for this stuff?”

“This is only one small part of the film. I’ve covered all kinds of things. Last year I filmed a couple of proms, a debutante
ball, a Sweet Sixteen party, a father-son turkey hunt. A couple of months ago I did a bunch of bat mitzvahs and bar mitzvahs.
Took Rachel along. How do you think she got so interested in Judaism?”

“Is that why you didn’t bring Josh along? Didn’t want him to develop the same kind of devotion toward hookers that Rachel
did toward Judaism?”

He bit the end of licorice and sucked the rest up into his mouth, the red tail wagging until it disappeared. “In northern
Australia, the Arunta tribe tosses their young men high into the air and then beats them as they hit the ground. The tossing
is supposed to help the boys grow tall; the beatings are to teach them to respect their elders. Immediately afterward, the
boy lives by himself in the wilderness for a few days. If he survives, he returns to be circumcised and given a new name.
Six weeks later, the underside of the penis is slit to the urethra. All things considered, hiring a hooker is fairly tame.”

“So this tribe beats, humiliates, and mutilates the kid. In this country we don’t call it a rite, we call it child abuse.”

“Different values for different cultures, Grace.”

“I understand the differences in cultures, David.” As a doctor I had seen my share of battered children, had even reported
them to the police. “But lines have to be drawn.”

“The Arunta rites may be a bit more brutal than some other cultures, but in general those societies with strict physical rites
for boys seem to have one thing in common: unusually close relationships between sons and mothers. The boys are raised very
close to the mother—that is, they nurse for several years, they sleep together while the father sleeps in a separate quarters
and so forth. The young
boy tends to develop strong emotional bonds with his mother.”

“They slice and dice them because they’re mama’s boys?”

“It’s more subtle than that. Attachment to the mother is fine when you’re a little boy, but when you’re an adult these tribes
depend on close relationships between the men for survival. The men hunt and go to war together. That requires team spirit.
So, they devise harsh rituals to challenge the boy, initiate him into the team of men while subtly implying the weakness of
women. The closer the mother, the more abusive the puberty rite. They want to sever his bond with her.” He shrugged. “That’s
one theory, anyway. Besides, it’s not all abusive. Afterward the Arunta have a festival of food and drink at which time the
boy is given his diploma into manhood: his very own bull roarer.”

I laughed.

“No, seriously. It’s a flat wooden board with notched edges. When whirled around on a string it makes this godawful loud roaring
sound that’s supposed to inspire fear in other men and passion in women.” He twirled his piece of licorice, which made a gnatlike
buzzing sound. “Is it working? You feel anything?”

I yawned.

Vernon turned around again. “I got your bull roarer, guys. Hanging!” The boys all laughed.

David laughed with them, suddenly clapping his hands as if inspired. “Hey, you guys want to see something amazing? A puberty
rite I learned from the Thonga tribe in Southeast Africa. You’ve never seen anything like it. I guarantee that once I show
this to you, you’ll want to try it with your friends. Vernon, pull over and let Grace drive. I want you boys all to be part
of this.”

“Wait a minute,” I said. “Maybe I want to be part of it, too.” I didn’t want these boys to see a woman shuffled out of the
way. No implied weakness. Also, I was also a little
surprised, and annoyed, at David for suggesting it. He seemed better than that. Maybe all this teenage testosterone bouncing
around the van was affecting him.

“You want to partake in the Thonga male puberty ritual?” he asked.

“Sure, why not? As long as it doesn’t involve circumcision or bare chests.”

He shrugged. “Okay.” He stood, hunched by the van’s roof, and crab-walked to the back of the van. He came back with a cheap
vinyl briefcase. “Whose is this?”

Vernon, who was watching us in the rearview mirror, raised his hand. “That’s mine, Mr. Payton. It’s a survival kit for our
trip.”

David popped it open. There were four small bottles of Evian water and eight boxes of assorted condoms. A tube of K-Y jelly.

Stu pulled out a strip of condoms. “Jesus, Vermin, how many hookers you gonna take on?”

Vernon just laughed and then started barking like a dog.

“What’s the water for?” I asked, imagining bizarre sexual situations.

“Dehydration,” Vernon laughed. “It’s Mexico, man. I’m not drinking their water.”

“You’re worried about what you might catch from the water but not what you might catch from the hookers?” I asked.

Vernon said, “That’s what the condoms are for.”

“Condoms aren’t a guarantee.”

“I’ll wear two,” he said and started barking again.

I looked at David but his face was blank, the face of a non-judgmental anthropologist observing local customs. Like the
Star Trek
prime directive on noninterference with native cultures. And here I was acting all emotional and motherly, like Dr. McCoy.
“For God’s sake, Jim, these boys could die!” But I wasn’t their mother nor their doctor. I was nobody to them. An observer
from the distant country
of Breastland. Our national flag is apron strings, our national anthem is “You Could Put an Eye Out.” Most of our budget was
spent on stamping out boys’ adventures.

David took one of the water bottles and opened it. He closed the lid of the briefcase and placed it on the floor. “Okay, everybody
gather around the briefcase. Get close.”

Stu, Kyle, and I got on our hands and knees around the briefcase.

“This ritual is called Mogumbawa, which roughly translated means ‘the race of the hairs.’ ”

“Hares, like rabbits?” I asked.

“No.” He reached up and plucked a hair from his head. “Hair.” He gestured to the rest of us. “You each need a hair. A nice,
healthy one.”

Stu and Kyle each plucked a hair from his head. I peeled one from the shoulder of my blouse. Since hair is dead cells anyway,
freshness didn’t seem important. Length, on the other hand… I held my foot-long strand up. “Mine’s longer than theirs.”