Punkzilla (2 page)

Speaking of Portland the weather sucked there P. It was never sunny for more than two days in a row. Recently it’s been nothing but heavy rain and this ugly brown sky so it was probably as good a time as any to leave. “Break north during a nefarious rain kid” Branson kept saying. “Break north and don’t look back.” North would’ve meant Washington State and there’s nothing up there but wild animals and rivers and naked people fucking in the woods but I know north means anywhere to Branson. He could be on his way to Mexico and if you asked him where he was going he would say he was breaking north.

Branson was my roommate at Washington House and I don’t think he had any idea what nefarious meant but what he would do was he would see a big vocabulary word in a magazine or a newspaper and try it out on me like I was his illiterate guinea pig or something. One time he told me that my hair looked Byzantine. This happened when we were sitting in front of Our Lady of Fatima on Garden Home Road displaying our April Yon Collection sign and trying to look legit. My Buckner hair had just started to grow out and it was getting wavy so I thought Byzantine meant curly or something.

Later that night I looked up Byzantine in the Washington House Commons Room dictionary and it said something about the Byzantine Empire so then I looked up Byzantine Empire and it said something about the Roman Empire and all I could imagine was a bunch of people walking around in togas and feeding grapes to each other and having ancient-style orgasms.

Me and Branson made most of our money from the April Yon Collection. April Yon was this little girl who got kidnapped in a bookstore and her picture was on the front page of the Oregonian and it was seriously big news because her father owns like half of downtown Portland. That guy’s name is Caldwell Yon and he looks all grave and bloodless like he sleeps in a coffin and a lot of people thought maybe he kidnapped his own daughter or like sold her to this motorcycle gang who made kiddie porn but there was no evidence. He went on TV all the time and cried and looked like a vampire.

April Yon was only like six years old and the newspaper said someone kidnapped her while her mom was buying a cookbook. In the newspaper picture April has big blue eyes and pink barrettes in her hair. She’s the kind of kid who you can never imagine dirty. Her skin probably cleans itself like one of those ovens.

Me and Branson made a sign with that Oregonian photo and sat in front of Our Lady of Fatima for like eight Sundays in a row and I’d ring this little brass bell and Branson would shout “APRIL YON COLLECTION! GIVE WHAT YOU CAN! HELP FIND APRIL YON!” and we’d fake cry and all these Catholics would give us mad quarters. I’m sure Mom would have been one of the generous ones but the Major would have probably walked right by us the stingy ass.

Once this man in an electric wheelchair donated twelve bucks and patted Branson on the shoulder and told him the Lord would be proud of us. He was like “The Lord Our God would be proud of you boys” and wheeled away with his skinny dead legs.

Shit I’m suddenly realizing at this very moment how upset Mom would be if she knew about this stuff. I can just see that sad face she makes when she’s about to cry. I’m sure she’s really messed up about me just disappearing. I guess I would be too if I had a fuckup kid like me P. I mean I know I have ADD and I know I smoke maybe too much pot and I know I got busted stealing that DVD player in the back of the Service Merchandise and I know the Major hates me and I know all of this makes me like public enemy number one and that I totally deserved to get sent to Buckner. I know that and I can live with that but it hurts deep to think that Mom might be suffering over me it really does P. It makes me want to smash one of my fingers with that alarm clock.

Anyway back to the April Yon Collection. Me and Branson made around thirty bucks every Sunday. Once we made fifty-seven and after we paid our Washington House rent which was twenty-four fifty we went and got hand jobs from Buck Tooth Jenny. Buck Tooth Jenny’s real name is Jennifer Norris but everyone calls her Buck Tooth Jenny because she has the buckest teeth I have ever seen. But she has curly black hair and big brown eyes and nice creamy skin and she doesn’t have no sores on her mouth or nothing and she looks right at you when she does you.

One time she made me come so hard I shouted “I’M A CRIME THRILLA AND A DIRTY COP KILLA!” I swear I shouted that P and even though when I come nothing shoots out I still get all those feelings in my body like I’m getting electrocuted and tickled with a feather and I’m falling backwards all at the same time.

Buck Tooth Jenny has a nice body too which makes up for her teeth and she’ll sometimes take her shirt off so you can stare at her titties while she does you and shit listen to this she told us she was going to pose naked for this website lostgirlslovelosers.com but Branson freaked out on her because he’s obviously in love. She was going to make like three hundred bucks posing for that website too and it’s pretty funny because Branson doesn’t mind if she gives me or someone else a hand job but he goes ballistic if she starts talking about posing for a website or if you call her Buck Tooth Jenny. He’s like “Her name is Jenny!” and I’ll say “But her teeth are so fucking buck B!” and he’ll go “Don’t say that shit Punkzilla!”

Once she showed us this scar on the side of her leg where she got cut going down a slide. She let me touch it for free and when I ran my finger across it she made a faraway face and it felt like a melted crayon. If she got her teeth fixed she’d be slamming but she doesn’t have the money. She barely pays her Washington House rent with this disability check she gets every month for falling into a big pool of spinach where she was working at this frozen vegetable plant. She lives on the third floor and everything is mad purple in her room like for instance the walls and the carpet and even the shower curtain in her bathroom and she has all these weird baby doll heads on this shelf sort of lined up next to each other and there aren’t any books just baby doll heads and some of them don’t have hair and look like spooky old men.

Once after she did me I asked her what they were supposed to be and she said they were her special friends and when she started telling me their names and the little stories about each of them I knew there was something seriously off in her brain like she didn’t get the right vitamins as a kid or maybe she got dropped on her head. She calls this black baby doll head Chocolate Bill. She’ll go “Chocolate Bill’s from the African continent” and she’ll say it like she’s talking to a four-year-old. She told me he liked to run through the tall grass and talk to the elephants and that his favorite thing was Oreo cookies and chocolate milk and then when I looked closer I could see that there was an Oreo cookie next to his head.

Sometimes Buck Tooth Jenny does this thing where she pretends like she’s talking to someone on her cell phone. She’ll hold it to her ear and say “This is Jenny . . . Uh-huh . . . Uh-huh . . . But I didn’t order any cranberry plush carpeting” and then she’ll hang up and shake her head like the carpet company is crazy. She’s twenty-four and she doesn’t have any parents and even though she’s a little slow or fucked in the head or whatever she’s been one of the nicest people I’ve met.

In your letter you asked about what I did for Christmas and what I did was me and Branson went to early Christmas Eve service at the same church where we did our April Yon thing. We basically sat in a pew way in the back and Branson pretended like he knew what he was doing like when everyone kneels and says “Amen” and all of that he was really trying to do it right. He even took communion and for some reason that made me take communion too but I didn’t have to try so much because of all those times Mom made us go to St. Rose’s and sing the hymns and recite all the prayers and give change when they pass those baskets around. Yeah all that church stuff is deep in my bones P. That kind of thing makes me wonder if we get hypnotized more than we know like when we’re at the grocery store or at the mall or at other places where people put on nice clothes and spend money.

At Christmas Eve mass the priest was this guy with a short black beard and an oily forehead and he seemed like he was subbing for the regular priest like he had a real job selling knives or something. I’m not sure why I thought that. Maybe it was because he wasn’t in a very good mood like he wasn’t in the Christmas spirit. The weird thing was that when he sang his nostrils got really huge and he sounded like he was kind of whimpering with pleasure almost like something sexual was going on. I didn’t like him and I hated being there and I kept trying to not stare at Jesus up on the cross because his face was really starting to freak me out and toward the end I almost left but I didn’t because Branson was so mesmerized with the Catholic rituals and the sermon which I didn’t even hear. Maybe he thought Jesus or Santa Claus or one of those Christian heroes with the wavy hair would grant him a wish or something?

At the end of the service this choir of little kids performed “Joy to the World” and Branson was really singing the shit out of it. It was weird how his whole personality changed like all his toughness evaporated and he was six again or something. I thought he was going to stay after and ask about trying out for the altar boys.

After church we were walking back downtown and Branson was mad silent and I asked him why he was being so quiet and he said he wasn’t being quiet and I asked him if church freaked him out and he was like “Did it freak YOU out?” and I said no and he said “Stop sweatin’ me Zilla” and he looked at me with animal hatred in his eyes like he was a wolf in a forest and I went “I ain’t sweatin’ shit” and then he said “You must wanna get blasted” and after that we didn’t say anything for the rest of the walk home and it didn’t snow which sucked especially after our weird conversation or argument or whatever it was. Like I told you earlier it mostly rained in Portland so there was no white Christmas but people still put up Christmas trees and you could see them all lit up in the living-room windows we were walking by. Christmas trees and angels and big cardboard snowflakes on front doors and different colored lights blinking.

When we went past this lamppost with a wreath on it Branson said “Faggit-ass Christmas” and climbed the lamppost and pulled the wreath down.

Later we went over to Buck Tooth Jenny’s and Branson gave her the wreath and she hung it on the wall next to her fake tree which was only about three feet tall and smelled like a carpet store but it was okay to look at. Me and Branson decorated it with microwave popcorn and shredded newspaper and Buck Tooth Jenny arranged her baby doll heads in the branches. She put Chocolate Bill on the top like he was the Jesus angel.

Then we cooked a Tombstone pizza and got drunk on a bottle of Two-buck Chuck and sat on the purple sofa and smoked clove cigarettes and then Buck Tooth Jenny gave us hand jobs. She did me left-handed which was like someone else was doing it and I closed my eyes and imagined that girl back home who lived down the street from us Cornelia Zenkich. Remember how she would ride her skateboard by the house? I swear I could smell her sometimes P like a wild nature bush or some raspberries. I get confused by how the smell of a girl can totally haunt you. Do you ever get that way about Jorge like you can smell his cologne or his body odor even when he isn’t there or like maybe when it’s scientifically impossible to smell him like when he’s halfway down the street or something? You probably don’t even remember Cornelia Zenkich because she was like a fourth-grader when you left home. She’s got blond hair and dark blue space-alien eyes. Once I caught her staring at me when I was mowing the lawn. I was mowing it with hatred for all things and I was probably making the nastiest face I could. I think you were already living in Memphis and the Major had chewed me a new one for saying fuck in front of Mom and Cornelia Zenkich was on the street in front of our house and she just stood there holding her skateboard which had all this Japanese graffiti art on the bottom of it and I stopped mowing the lawn and sort of froze and we stared at each other. She was wearing cutoff jeans and a sleeveless black T-shirt and I could feel her wanting to wave at me or tell me some secret but nothing happened.

When I was at Buckner I wrote her and asked her to come to the Midwinter Ball with me but she couldn’t for a reason that makes me sick to my stomach P. So sick that I can’t even go into it. Anyway sometimes I’ll just think about Cornelia Zenkich riding her skateboard like her legs and her perky little ass and her titties sort of pushing up against the inside of that sleeveless black T-shirt and her soft pink nipples tasting like peppermint and then that Cornelia Zenkich smell starts making a pleasure cloud in my mind. Anyway that’s what I was thinking about when Buck Tooth Jenny was giving me my left-handed Christmas hand job.

She gave Branson a hoodie with a lion on it. It said “King” on the back and Branson wore it almost every day. He even wore it to bed and to the bathroom. The hoodie started to smell and it had about nine different stains on it but Branson kept wearing it no matter what. Eventually Fat Larkin bought him a vin’ Diesel T-shirt and made him give him the hoodie with the lion on it. He was like “Let it go kid. You ain’t no king anyways. You ain’t even a DUKE.”

Buck Tooth Jenny didn’t give me nothing extra for Christmas but I was satisfied with the hand job. I gave her a tin of Lake Champlain chocolates that I stole from the CVS and we ate them in about ten minutes.

I gave Branson a silver-plated cigarette lighter that this old gay guy left on a table at the Roxy. When you pushed this button it made a blue rocket flame that hissed.

“Good lookin’ out dog” Branson said about the lighter. “Good lookin’ Zilla.”

Branson gave me a Swiss Army Knife that had scissors and all these other tools like a miniature saw and this poker thing for leather which was cool for survival but he took it back when I was sleeping and gave it to Fat Larkin who I saw using it to clean his nails a few days later.

Branson gave Buck Tooth Jenny a washcloth with her name embroidered on it and she cried. She loved it so much. You should have seen it P. Her top teeth got so extra buck I thought they were going to pop out and attack me. The washcloth was light blue with purple embroidery and I’m almost positive Branson had it made special at a department store. Now Buck Tooth Jenny uses it to dust off her baby doll heads and she sings this little spooky song to herself when she does it too. The song goes “My friends are blue my friends are green my friends are bigger than they seem” and there are other words but I can never understand what they are because her teeth get in the way.