Pop Kids (23 page)

Prius stands. Our co-star takes him all the way into her wine-stained mouth, and I look away. I focus on her lower back tattoo then accidentally look back up. The DJ’s expectedly huge hit-single is pistoning past her tongue. Smiling his dashing, ultra bright smile he’s looking at me.

“Yeah my brother!”

I sigh. I wave. And Prius gazes off toward the candy couches.

It’s fine. Everything’s fine.
I just hope he finishes in her mouth and not on me.

I look back down at the tattoo for seconds before a semi-familiar voice draws my attention from stage left. “Hey leave her the fuck alone you creep! She’s passed out!”

Whoa, I’ve never heard a twin yell
.

MK, having stopped sucking, is still holding onto Leo’s longboard. “I’ll kick you in the dick!”

Huffing, Soufflé rolls off of Ash and erection-skulks away. He’s wearing a camelhair dinner jacket. And he’s unshorn.
Gross. I wonder where his shirt and pants are.

With the dour DJ out of sight, Lynch, Mia, Stella, Prius, Leo, MK, and I continue to weave a writhing, groaning, laughing mass of limbs in Heaven. Taking the squeakers lead we’re all giving Jenna some stiff competition for the next AVNs while Cruz and Volta tear through their own private Idaho down on their couch. I reach over and grab Mia’s boob. She giggles. Then I giggle. Keeping my left hand occupied with her, I work Stella’s hips with my right and— “Yeah, my brother!” Donny smiles, nods, and gazes off.

I sigh, smile, wave, and close my eyes. Stella slightly gags, slaps her ass down on my Producer, then someone says, “So am I. Just don’t get any on me.” I tilt my head as far back as I can to get an inverted view of what Prius has been staring at between smiles.

Sitting on a candy couch, Holly has her shorts and panties piled next to her. With her feet propped up on plastic, her tube socks clinging to her calves, and her legs spread wide, she faces the screen. She faces me. Judged by the upside-down, clean-shaven deity between her legs, my breath is taken and my atheism is shaken. To avoid madness, I have no choice but to avert my gaze from the rapture and confront the two moustaches book-ending her in a high-noon standoff.

Stage left of Holly, with a double-handed grip, Soufflé is furiously brandishing his bread stick while Alvin, stage right, stands poised with one hand on his Dogtown lord and the other on his well-aimed Flip Cam. Their duel rages forth, as she feels herself up. Delicately, she moves her buzzing golden friend between her legs until, almost inaudibly, she breaths, “I’m gonna…” and causes a seminal chain reaction.

Soufflé blasts onto the arm of the couch. Alvin purposefully sprays all over Soufflé . Then, just before Holly rolls her azure eyes back into her head, right when the quivering Flimgreat in knee-highs looks at me and groans, “Ugggghoh FUCK,” I release my joy deep inside of Stella.

Chapter 35

“Wake up!
Boop, boop, boop!
” My alarm is rudely screaming.

Regretting not having taken my GED, I force open my eyes.

“
Boop, boop, boop
. Get sexy for the new freshmen!”

Sick to my stomach with a case of the earlies, I unplug my phone, check my messages, fall out of bed, and turn on Primal Scream. I’ve barely slept. I had to clean The Palace. Mopping up after Soufflé the Saucier is not my favorite thing to do, but sometimes a lot of fun can be a little messy. Last night was a lot of fun.

Replaying the choppy footage of our first big sex scene in my sputtering mind, I shower, borrow Joey’s Psychocandy shirt, then dash out the door as my beautiful long lost friend rolls into the driveway. The Cadillac has been released.

“Have a great first day boys!” Gina follows me from the house as I slip into the shiny black ‘59 CC. Alvin probably waxed it.

“Thanks Mrs. Massi.” Zach yells over the music.

“Michael!” She hands me my metallic Union Jack thermos, “Have you thought anymore about what you’d like for your birthday?”

“Yeah.” Slamming the heavy door I push my head from the open window and smile. “A McQueen skull tie.”

Every year Frank tells me, “Despite what your brother may think, spending two hundred dollars on a tie is insane. Just insane.” Gina shakes her head. Lynch backs out of the driveway, grinning.

“Last night was fucking awesome.”

“It was.” I turn down the tunes and sip my freshly brewed PG Tips.

“So fucking awesome.”

“Yes it was.” My tea burns my lips.

Holding the open thermos between my legs, feeling a touch anxious about my forthcoming clothed encounters with my friends, I ask, “Have you heard from anyone today?”

“No, have you?”

I shake my head. Lynch turns up the music. It’s the Ramones.

“I can’t believe that happened.” He gulps his black coffee, sounding not like he was just granted invincibility but more like he just aced a pop quiz. “We’ve gotta throw another party. Immediately. Tomorrow.”

“Yes but no. That’s insane. Let’s do it Saturday.” Grabbing the Visine from his candy filled ashtray, I moan. “We can’t do Sundays anymore. I feel like I’m gonna die. I don’t know how I’m gonna make it through this week.”

I pull the sunshade down and my eyelids up.

“Hey, did you hear?” He passes me his sixty-two ounce thermos. With my eyes dripping, I manage to choke down half of his black coffee. “Another church burned down.”

He smirks.

“Yeah, I know…” I croak my caffeinated confession. “I did it.”

“How black metal of you, Varg.”

I don’t know who Varg is but, presuming him to be a very handsome, creative young man, I thank my driver for the compliment then take a final gulp.

“Do they know how it happened?”

“They think it had something to do with candles and dried up flowers.”

Lynch reclaims his bitter drink. Joey sings about glue. The CC climbs the hill. We just passed the police station. Now the jail. We’re minutes away.

“That’s cool.” I stare out of the window. A black-booted grave cutter from our year is smoking in front of the cemetery. “I hope there weren’t any church cats in there.”

Lurching up, we park in the overflowing Valley View lot and my heart sinks. Now, again, begins the pointless homework, the exposure to cretinous classmates, and the overcrowded lunch breaks with filthy flesh eaters.

“Hey. Dustin.” Glancing in his rearview, Lynch weakly insists. “Get up,” then turns off the car. Cracking the window so his sleeping brother doesn’t die, he gets out of the Deville. A dirge begins to play and together we walk toward our outdoor campus.

It’s been months but I feel like I was just here.

As we step onto the school grounds infested with kids in their new poorly-put-together fall outfits, I lower my head, take a deep breath, and try to hold it in until the next party.

On this first day of senior year, when Filmgreats meet in the walkways, in class, or in the quad, almost nothing is explicitly spoken of The Seventies Premiere. We just smile like we’ve stolen the answers to the SAT and say things like “great movie” or “you look tired” or … “That was so hot when you came in me last night.”

“Oh, yeah, sorry about that.” Startled by this whispered 7:00 am salutation, I put down my scotch tape and shelve my notebooks. “Are you going to be … okay?”

“Don’t be SORRY!” Stella, leaning against the locker next to mine, rubs her hand up the back of my head, messing up my hair. “I said it was hot. And I’ll be fine. I know how to take care of myself. I’ll see ya second period Babe.” She kisses me on the neck then struts toward the arts building.

Her lower back flashes from between her white belt and a black shirt that says ‘Dim Mak.’ The last time I looked away from her cryptic tattoo I saw Donny’s joy filing her mouth. I’m totally relieved that she didn’t just kiss me on mine. I tape a new picture of Moz up between the tears of Agnes Dean and Alexa Chung, sigh, then shut my locker.

Standing at the edge of the sunken quad, Holly and Mia are talking about some cute new guy at school and looking far less tired than I feel. Interrupting, I ask the handsome fellow’s name.

“Mr. Snow.” Mia points to a normal looking kid that’s walking toward the language building. “He’s our new Spanish teacher. He’s a total hottie. We heard that he’s hiding tons of tattoos and that he was in a band. But he won’t tell anyone which one. Stella says she’s gonna get it out of him.”

“I imagine that she will.”

“I bet he was in Nirvana.” Ogling the Levis of the failed rocker, Mia follows them across campus.

I turn to Holly. “Wanna do the death march?”

We both have first period PE—a crimeless punishment that requires diving into a poorly heated pool before 8:00 am.

“I think you’ll survive, Mike.”

A group of wrestlers, clumped in front of the Science building, snicker as we walk by. I ignore them.
Please, not on the first day. Not in front of her.

“All you ‘
The OC
’ people took life guard training right?” I ask Holly. “I’m already having palpitations—”

“Nice fag-bag faggot!”

One of the animals has broken from its herd. In an Affliction shirt, it’s complimenting my shiny white Ben Sherman PVC messenger bag—Joey got it for me as a beginning-of-senior-year present. I think the beast may have kept walking if Holly had refrained from deftly commenting, “Douchebag.”

Whipping around, he glares at her, then me, in simian shock.

“What did you say faggot?” He shoves me. Hard.

I stumble backwards. I wish this wasn’t happening in front of the brave and beautiful screenwriter. Shirking my fear of plastic surgery, I calmly explain, “I knew that you and your father had the same taste.”

“What?”

“Well, he bought me the bag.” I take off my Fords and hand them to Holly. I wouldn’t want them scratched by an incoming fist. “He gives me presents, we suck each other off. You know. It’s your typical sugar-daddy relationship…” I feign sudden astonishment. “I guess that kinda makes us brothers right?”

Holly laughs. The seething homophobe yells, “I’m going to fucking kill you!” I wince. Luckily this proclamation grabs the attention of a faggot-sympathizer who’s on his way to class.

“Leave him alone, Bobby!” Shane bear hugs the daddy’s boy. “He’s my friend.”

Bobby squirms, but is only released after promising to not fuck with me. Without saying another word, my red-faced would-be murderer storms off. And I blow him a kiss.

“Thanks, Shane.”

The back of Bobbie’s rippling tee says ‘Throwdown.’ My savior is wearing a baby blue cardigan over a white Smiths shirt.

“Richardson’s got a temper.” Shane puts his arm around me and giggles. “And what was a vampire scarecrow gonna do against a middleweight all-American grappler?” Pulling his round tin from his sweater, he dabs his finger into rosy balm and smears his lips. “I’ll see ya in Lake Chlorine, Buddy!”

Chapter 36

Aside from the Wednesday trauma of seeing a freshman wearing my same outfit and the Thursday novelty of finding a note in my locker that reads ‘You and your bag are gay,’ the first week of school is typical. So far, I’ve found my classes even less stimulating than last year’s, but this quarter isn’t totally hopeless. Despite its wholesome and pedestrian nature, I know that the fall musical will be a good time.