Pop Kids (2 page)

“Dude, Dustin found a way into that old hotel. It sounds like it might be the perfect place to do the party. We should go check it out.” Looking down, he grins, knowing how badly I’ve wanted to find a room for my Premieres.

“Okay,” I say. “But first, I’m going over to Barbara Johnson’s.” I snatch the bottle of San Pellegrino from his hand as his fridge purges its precious mist. “She’s out being a hippie again, and I’ve just been asked to come entertain her daughter.”

“I still can’t believe that’s happening for you man. It’s really cool.”

I grab my splintering REAL deck from the wall by his back door. Dustin gave me the board pre-thrashed. “Well, I’ve had to wait in line, but it’s been well worth the wait.”

Sweating from the skate across town, I stand on Sarah’s porch. I could just walk right in. But I won’t. I can’t forget my manners. I bandana my brow, and gently knock.

“Commmme innnn!”

I ease into the cool shadows of the living room.

Leaning my skate against wall I close the door, blocking out the natural light that the heavy eastern blinds couldn’t intercept. As I linger in the glow of the giant flat-screen, the TV blares the news that matters, and Sarah types. Sitting on her mom’s oversized burgundy faux-suede couch, in her hot-pink boy briefs and sheer, white, loose-fitting tank top, she looks like an American Apparel ad. Usually, she doesn’t go bra-less, but here in the heat and the privacy of her living room her fantastic go-getters are getting time to breath. I glance between areola outlines and the small mirror in the entryway. And the TV yammers. And Sarah types.

With her pink Hello Kitty Mac illuminating her downcast baby blues my freshman-year fantasy listlessly dangles her foot, full of cotton balls, in front of a whirring fan. The tangy scent of pink lacquer comforts me—as does her ability to match her toenails to her underwear.

Tapping her keyboard, and without looking up, she greets me, “Hey Mike!”

Clicking my Zippo from within my jeans, I turn to the screen. The guy on E! is making fun of the daughter of an old Hollywood great for having driven her Bentley across a private Malibu beach and into the Pacific. When the cops pull her out of the car she’s wasted. And in her underwear.

“What’cha watching?” I ask.

“Did you see this?” Sarah flicks her wrist toward the TV, as if it were a sparkling vampire mosquito. “That poor thing. I don’t see why he needs to be so vicious about it!” Her glistening nails return to tap at the keys.

“Please. Look at her. She totally deserves it.”

“NO, she doesn’t.” Looking up, sounding personally offended, Sarah defends the socialite’s character. “And she looked totally hot even when they pulled her from the wreck all soaking wet. See!”

The shot of the post-crash blonde being escorted from the car flashes back onto the screen. She does look good—sort of like a Calvin Klein billboard.

“You’re right,” I concede. “Her father must be beaming.”

Silently, Sarah finalizes what seems like a page of typing before snapping shut the Mac.

“Why don’t you bring that cute, sweaty, self-satisfied ass over here?”

She called my ass sweaty.
I desperately want to freshen up, but can’t bring myself to ask to use the bathroom. Hoping to pat myself down with a dishrag within the privacy of the kitchen, I say, “It’s pretty hot. Should I grab some fruit pops?”

“Just get over here, Mike.” Her magnetic sex electrifies the room.

Obediently, I plop down next to her. I blot my brow with toe-cotton. The E! host’s face is eclipsed by two delectable, all-natural treats. From beneath her sheer tank top they challenge me, face-to-face, as Sarah straddles me.

She looks down. Her dark wavy hair hides us from the media and within the safety of our solitude, I watch my hands slide up her soft, lotiony thighs. My fingertips touch the elastic perimeter of boy briefs. I look back up. Sarah shifts her hips, purposefully grazing my lips with her right nipple, and something deep within the darkness of my black denim stirs.

“Oh, dear Michael, what’s that?” She unbuttons my Ksubis.

Since we haven’t even kissed, I might have been a bit embarrassed by my immediate readiness. If she wasn’t so pleased by what springs from my jeans.

In a matter of seconds, she pulls my pants down to the ground, her panties to the side, and my eager Producer up inside her.

She’s a good girl
.

Her palms push down on my chest, and her blossoming perspiration increases the marvelous transparency of her top.

Sarah is such a good girl.

Lounging alone in nothing but the slowly drying traces of our fluid scene, I’m watching TMZ. The captivating piece on LiLo ends. A commercial for depression meds comes on. I clean off a bit of leftover joy with some cotton balls, slip on my black jeans, black summer shirt, and black Chucks, then head into the kitchen to get the pink lemonade fruit pop I’ve been craving for the past forty minutes. Discarding the plastic wrapper in the recycling bin, I slink down the hallway to enter Hello Kitty’s lair.

With my icy treat in hand, I walk over pink carpet, and past piles of Tarina Tarantino jewelry scattered across the pink dressers. In the pink mirror, next to the Ameripop Girl posters tacked to the pink wall above the pink bed, I pause to inspect myself before breaching the cleansing happening in Sarah’s bathroom—also pink.

“OH MY! What ARE you doing in here?” she demands with the drama of a Silver Age starlet. I peek my head into the shower.

“I thought I could help.”

“Sure you can sexy!” Immediately physically excited, I’m about to take off my pants when she says, ”Hand me that razor on the sink.”

Moz, she is so hot and so comfortable with me basking in her steamy nakedness that it’s almost making me uncomfortable
. Pecking off a piece of my pop, I hand her the fortunate pink and white blade.

She sets it on the plaster shell-shaped soap dish jutting from the pink tiles next to my shoulder, tilts her head back, and rinses her long dark hair. Hoping that she’ll ask me to shave her, I discreetly push aside the plastic kitty curtain to get a better view of her arched back, long neck, and wet boobs. She pushes the water from her face, opens her ice blue eyes, reclaims the razor that has mysteriously ended up back in my hand, and stares. I feel like I’m in a Girls Gone Wild commercial, that the possibilities are endless, until in a gentle “Why are you still here?” sort of way, she asks, “So, what’s up?”

Shaken, I remember that I did actually come in here to tell her something. “I’m not gonna go with you girls tonight. Zach’s being weird and won’t steal his car, so I’m just gonna stay and hang with him. You know, he gets lonely without me.”

“So do I.” She pouts. “It’s not going to be the same without you, sexy.”

This sentiment is momentary. She will sincerely miss me, up until about the time that she’s finished drying her hair. I know this.
It’s fine.
I’m not complaining. At least I was her first for today.
Probably.

Plus, I’ve got a hotel to sneak into and a dream party to realize.

“Yeah I know,” I say, lingering in the steam. “But I promised him that I’d stay. I’ll probably still be around when you get home though.”

“I’ll write you when I’m on my way back.” She motions for my fruit pop. It almost perfectly matches the tiles.

As she sucks the pink ice beneath the steamy cascade, her inaudible hum rises. This hum is a primal, witchy sort of sex power. Sarah can turn it up and down but never off. Right now, she has it cranked up high. It feels like a private jet has landed in front of me.

“Since you’re not coming maybe I’ll ask Becca to come.” I say a little prayer to Morrissey that she keeps her promise to text. She slides the gooey stick from her mouth. “You still have to meet her Mike. She’s SO adorable.”

“Yeah, totally.” Enjoying the view, I hang with the shower curtain.

Sarah slides the pop back in her mouth for a final ostentatious suck before becoming bored with the treat and dropping it. It dissolves in a pinkening stream on the shower floor, as she lathers her summer-tanned legs.

“Mike, get out of here. I’ve gotta shave.”

Chapter 2

One of the few good things about having to live here is that most everything is close to everything else. I can get anywhere by board. Unfortunately, the foothill that leads to my house is too steep to skate.

After cruising to the bottom of my street, I pop up my deck and start tromping uphill. This is my favorite time to walk home, not simply because sundown minimizes the tanning threat, but because the cats are out. I most enjoy running into Iman—a beautiful green-eyed Burmese who lives with our downhill neighbors. Her owners call her “Blackie,” but this bland moniker embarrasses her, so I’ve renamed her. When she weaves around her wooden mailbox post I stop to say hello then, snapping twigs beneath my feet, finish my off-road climb.

From the bottom of our driveway, I can see Gina through the dusk’s reflection of our empty street, stirring her pot of marinara. Her spacious kitchen is one of the “many benefits” of having moved out of Brooklyn, though this vast Californian cooking arena does nothing to assuage my feelings of displacement. I was only thirteen, yet well accustomed to the many perks of city living, when Uncle Cosmo offered my dad the opportunity to help run one of his boutique wineries.

Frank was always talking about how fun it would be to farm, to suffer “dirty nails and sunburn instead of pigeons and paper cuts,” and how nice it would be “to get the kids out of the city.” Gina, too, frequently voiced other such unimaginable rural-sympathizing fantasies. So when the offer came for farm livin’, we packed away all modern comforts and over came the Massis. The move was complete culture shock for my brother and me.

Throughout the entire first month of living here Joey would inexplicably burst into tears, sometimes cryptically uttering nonsense like “1 Oak,” “avenue,” “IF,” “butter,” and, “Barneys” in between sobs. Eventually, the fits did stop. And not long after, he ended his misery entirely. I miss him terribly, but I’ve managed to cope. I’ve got a few great friends, one desktop, two laptops, and a high-speed wireless connection that helps me get through.

When I walk into our house the smell of Gina’s cooking hits me and I thank Moz for giving me a mother who cooks so well in a town deprived of delivery.

“Mmmmm Mm!” I reflexively hum, inhaling oregano on my way from my bedroom to the shower. Leaving her simmering pot, Gina follows me.

“Are you staying for dinner tonight?” she asks, standing outside of the bathroom.

Folding my damp shirt, I twist on the hot water and call through the closed door. “You didn’t put the meatballs in the sauce did you Mom?”

“I did that once Michael! Once! You’ve only been a vegetarian for a month. It’s not gonna kill you to be in the same room with a meatball.”

I’ve actually been vegetarian for a year. Practically. And in a sausage and peppers family like the Massis, I cannot be too careful. Being Italian involves facing many monstrous traditions—from carnivorous holiday meals to the even bloodier Sunday morning mass.

I was raised Catholic. My parents were raised Catholic. However, years of education and a coup within our old Catholic church encouraged my folks to stray from the path of the religiously insane. Back when I was a tempting young lad forced into altar servitude, the mother superior of our parish discovered that Father O’Holland was touching little boys during his time off from embezzling thousands of dollars. When the mother superior brought this to the attention of the bishop, he told her that he’d take care of the offender. This he did by allowing the molester-priest to carry on with his private boy-love party in return for giving the bishop all of the stolen donations and occasional Oral Joy. In the end, this meant that I didn’t have to go to church anymore. If there is a god, he clearly sucks. Yet for some reason, I still have to say grace.

Like a prayer, Gina recites some archaic
First Testament
wisdom regarding the animals’ servile place on earth. I explain that were I to consume even meat juices I’d surely throw up.