The Kid (38 page)

“I’m so glad we had both cameras!” Scott says. “Do you remember what you did?”

“I did something?” I quip. But to myself I say,
I
did
something!

He waves his hand and keeps talking. “I got most of it just straight on, Amy got a lot from the side and, it seems, a lot straight on. Am I right?”

“We’ll see,” she answers.

“Well, working off this or even re-creating this will be stronger if you remember.” Scott.

“Shit, if the video is near as astonishing as what he just did, we can have a split screen, the Vietnam shots, then him on another screen, while one of us recites the poem.” My Lai.

“You wrote that?” I ask.

“No, like I said, it’s from some stuff by Wallace Terry and Seymour Hersh. I don’t even know if they’re still on the set.”

“So what, motherfuckers like that got estates,” Snake says.

“Well, whatever, we put the Vietnamese clips on one side, this piece, the well, on the other—” My Lai.

“That’s a good title.” Amy.

“‘The Well’?” My Lai.

“Yeah, that’s great!” Snake.

I go sit down next to Amy, who’s moved to the bleachers. She kisses me on the cheek, her eyes wide. Hmm, something opening up I had thought was closed? Not sure, really.

“You were awesome out there! What’s on your mind when you’re dancing like that?”

“I don’t know.” I follow her down as she slips off the bleachers to the floor and gets in a lotus position. I lay my head down in her lap, breathe in her sweet pussy-sweat-perfume smell. My heart, which was ripping, slows down.

My Lai comes to sit by us. I stretch out my hand.

“Coffee?” Scott asks.

“I can get it.” The coffeemaker is in my room; I should have put it back in the kitchen.

“Don’t be silly.” Amy eases me off her lap. Soon the smell of coffee fills up where her scent had been. I lean over to My Lai, playfully tweak her ear. I wanted to tweak her nipple, but we’re working, and I don’t know how she might react.

“I feel like the piece should end with My Lai’s story.” Scott.

“Yeah, you know, and something from this century,” I say.

“Like the reconciliations?” Scott asks.

“That’s too corny,” Snake snaps.

“I don’t think it’s corny,” I say.

In each hand Amy has a steaming mug of coffee, one of which she hands to My Lai, the other to me.

“If God made anything better than coffee and chocolate, he kept it to himself,” Amy says with a sigh.

“Or herself,” Scott quips.

“Or herself, Mr PC. And I’ll have mine with milk, no sugar.” Amy.

“Gotcha,” he says.

The dark smell of the steaming coffee takes over my senses. I feel so peaceful now.

In the dream a tall, bald-headed man is struggling with a much smaller man. The small man pulls out a screwdriver. The bald man whips out a big butcher knife but right away realizes how superior his weapon is to the little screwdriver and thrusts his knife into the ground so the fight will be fairer. Straightaway the little guy picks up the butcher knife and starts to slash him, me, slicing open my scalp. I wake up clutching my bleeding scalp. I’m shocked when I pull my hands away and see there’s no blood. I start to cry. I’ve done bad things, bad, bad things. And I’m not through. I fall back on the bed, my fingers tracing the scar on my cheek. I press my hand to my head again. My hand fills with glass splinters that are growing from my head. I rub my eyes, and my eye sockets fill with dark slivers of glass that fall and fall to the floor. I scream, and my mouth begins to bloom with glass shards. My tongue has turned to glass. I’m like the Tin Man, except I’m made of glass—mirrors. I’m made of mirrors! I’m on top of a grassy hill. People are climbing up the hill and starting to gather around me. They’re peering at themselves in my mirrors. Then a little girl with yellow hair, four or five years old, tells everybody, “He can’t move!”
What does she know?
I think. Then I try. I can’t. My glass joints are totally frozen.

“He can’t move! He can’t move! Ha, ha, ha!”

She disappears down the hill and comes running back up with a baseball bat. She’s turned into a little boy? She, he, cocks the bat up over his shoulder like he’s on home plate. Terror floods through me. When he hits me, I think,
I’m dreaming.
Then I think I’m not really asleep! Let me hurry up and go back to sleep, go to another dream or something, anything but wake up.

My body and face are covered with ultramarine body paint. As I dance, I change colors, under yellow gels to green, under the orange ones I almost look like myself, brown. I slide into the split it took me three years to get. From my split I bend at the knee the leg that’s extended behind me, catch my foot in my hands, and pull it up to my head. The pose of Shiva! Some white Hare Krishna trying to pull me one night I was sleeping at Port Authority, a night I couldn’t take the sight of Roman one more minute, told me Krishna was so black he was blue. After that I started looking at Indian people, so far I seen
a lot
of them darker than me, some blue-black. I’m Lord Krishna—blue, I think, sinking deeper into the pose. SPLAT! Somebody threw something onstage. Shit? That’s fucked! “Come on, get up!” “What’s with the blue paint!” “Put some clothes on!” “Dance, nigger!” “We came to see you dance!” Who’s saying that shit? “BOO!” “BOO!” “BOO!” Why are they booing me? I look in the audience; the whole theater is empty except the front row; there’s some faces I don’t know, white; then there’s Ricky, Brother John, and sitting next to Brother John is my mother and Rita, and Scott, but he looks different, he looks like Amy. My Lai’s there; she has on red lipstick and a black lace bustier. When I look again, Ricky is sitting on a toilet. He’s shitting so he can throw more shit at me. But Rita says, “No, no! Not in this life, faggot!” and slices him with a razor blade.
This life?
I look at everybody. I can see through them. GHOSTS! They’re ghosts! Except My Lai. My Lai is bleeding; blood is dripping out and down the front of her bustier. Did Rita cut her? I’m a little boy again: I’m mad at Rita; I’m mad at my mom. Why isn’t she home? Her home is in the grass now. “Go home, Mommy! Go home, Mommy!”

Forget them; they’re not real; this is a dream; when I wake up, they’ll all be gone. I continue with my dance, but now I’m not Lord Shiva. I’m King Kong. I’m still blue,
Blue
King Kong, and instead of the white bitch and the Empire State Building, I’m rising from the jungle with the whole city on my back. King Kong! Columns of glass, concrete, and steel go down with me as I plié, then fly into the sky as I rise.

“Is it really paint?”

“What color is he really?”

That’s all these stupid motherfuckers ever talk about is color, what color somebody is, how dark, how light, how big a nose. Here I am now coals burning, shining, dancing, and they’re talking about “What color is he really?” I open my neck with both hands like my skin is a curtain, and a glittering blue cobra slithers up from my belly and out of my open throat, hissing and screaming—

Everybody starts screaming—

Screaming? Who’s screaming? My Lai? Is it My Lai?

“My Lai!” I bolt straight up in a panic until my hand touches the soft skin of her back.

I shake her. “My Lai, I don’t want to be alone.”

“You’re not,” she murmurs, kisses my thigh, and goes back to sleep.

I’m scared about the show, about living here. At first I was all yeah, cool. How cool can you get—loft, lock on the door, hip, downtown. No, cool is what these kids got, their own. I need to get back to sleep; I got a busy day in front of me. I got that interview at Starbucks, then the Italian restaurant, La Casa. I never seen a black waiter in there, but we always go there, the lunch special is first-rate. An NYUer was sitting at the table talking to the manager while me and My Lai were eating lunch. I leaned over after the kid left and asked, “You hiring?” The manager looked me up and down and all around and didn’t say anything for a few seconds, and then he said, “Come by tomorrow and fill out an application.”

My Lai’s eyes were shining when we walked out. “You go, boy!”

“What’d I do? I just asked if he was hiring.” “You saw a possibility, a
sniff
of a possibility, and you went for it!” “Well, I don’t know ’bout all that, I just need a job.” “I see you with mad paper sometime.” “Yeah,” is all I say. When I do have bucks, I take everybody out. I don’t want to tell her how I get papered, or the years with Roman, Brother John, so much to tell, or
not
tell, I should say.

I feel helpless, stupid, like Humpty Dumpty’s ass sitting on the wall. I used to cry for Humpty Dumpty when my mother would read “All the king’s horses and all the king’s men couldn’t put poor Humpty together again.” I think that’s why Scott’s film with the vase got to me so much. Well, it’s not his film, but the film he used.
This
is his. I glance around the room; there’re no windows, and it’s nestled in the back and center of the loft, so when you turn out the lights in here, it gets dark. I like that, I feel safe. I love fucking My Lai in here. I feel free, I can cry if I want to, scream if I want to when I’m busting inside her. I pretend she’s mine, but she ain’t
mine.
I ain’t stupid. I want to own her, but I can’t.

When she wakes up, I feel like I’ve been up for hours. The red numerals on the clock radio are glowing 6:10. Class at ten (just do the barre), then run down to Starbucks on Astor Place and then down to Mott Street to La Casa and be back for rehearsal at noon. Can do.

“Hey,” she says.

“Hey yourself.”

“You woke me up last night,” she says.

“No I didn’t. What are you talking about?”

“Sucking my pussy!”

“You are all the way crazy, how’d we get there?”

“Amy said you sucked her good when she had you.”

“Had me?”
Gee thanks, Amy.

“You like me as much as you like her, right?”

“Right.”

“Why?” she persists like a fucking girl.

“I just do. I like how you talk, look, smell—you make my dick hard. Oops!” I reach for her.

“Oops my ass! Git off me and git down there, nigguh!” She laughs. So, OK.

“Keep going.”

“Well, let me know—”

“Shut up already, lick-suck, lick-suck, yeah, there you go! You got talent!”

She stops talking, and I keep working. So this is what it’s all about. Now she’s trying to pull away? Yeah? No? I keep sucking. This is strong, her clit is throbbing in my mouth, her whole body is throbbing, she’s going off groaning, I never heard her do this shit before. This never happened when I was fucking her. She’s cumming,
really
cumming! Shit! So this is why the girls like each other. I come up, kiss her, suck her tongue into my mouth while I slide my dick into her wet cunt and start to fuck her. Yow! Way to start the day!

 

 

WHEN I RETURN
from ballet class, Starbucks, and La Casa, I’ve got not one but
two
jobs. La Casa wants me on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday, which I told him I got a show coming up. “So switch with the other guy and do lunch for those weeks.” Starbucks wants me four hours a day, five to nine in the morning, that’s actually going to work! Yeah, it’s going to work out fine.

So it’s all good, then here she comes with this shit outta nowhere, like water torture drip-drip: So you Mr All-Roun’-American kid? Ain’t you sumthin’!

Shut up!

No, I ain’t shuttin’ up. Ain’t that gonna be cute, little white apron makin’ in a week what you could be makin’ in five minutes. You even startin’ to sound like ’em. ‘Gee, that’s cool!’ If you’d ever been to any of they houses, you’d see.

See
what
?

See yo’ ass pullin’ up weeds ’n mowin’ the grass, that’s what.

Shut up! You’re
useless
!

And you’re
shit
, do you think anybody would want you if they knew what you did? Phony, phony, phony! You a phony-ass nigger! You may fool them little white kids, but you can’t fool me!

Shut up shut up shut
up
!

I hate her, whoever she is, and she’s
not
me. She’s just a . . . a stupid voice in my head. She’s in me; she’s not me.

Shit, it’s quarter to twelve; I got to get going. I want to tell Scott I got a job. He loaned me some cash when I was strapped. Let him know I’m going to be able to pay him back.

 

 

TURNING, EVERY FIBER
of my leg muscles burning, I feel like . . . fuel, gasoline, or that scared sick feeling you get sliding on ice. Like that time I was with Snake in his trade’s Ferrari spinning out of control. Lucky we didn’t crash. I’m going to have a car like that someday. Well, maybe not no Ferrari, but something, I’m going to have something.

Oh, shut up, nigger! You don’t know what yo’ stupid ass’ll have—you might end up with a bullet in yo’ fuckin’ skull, or a jail bid—

Don’t talk to me like that.

Don’t talk to you like that? Who the fuck do you think I is if I ain’ you now?

Well, stop putting me down.

Stop puttin’ yo’self down, stupid!

Fuck her ol’ ass, I don’t want her in my head, let me get back to my turns. Yeah, where was I? A Ferrari spinning on ice—intrepid, the utmost, ur-ultimate—

“Ur-ultimate?” Where’d you learn to talk like that? You so fuckin’ fake. Phony! You need to pony up, nigger, to what you really are—butt-bustin’ ho, rapist, leech. Freeloader! You live off faggots and rich kids. You ain’ shit.

They’re my friends. I would do the same for them. Fuck you, leave me alone! I need to keep working on my pirouettes, tours en l’air, and where I’m really having problems, those damn brisse volés. Remember, remember what I overheard Roman say after Alphonse came to watch the class one time: “What I tell you, Alphonse! I has not seen no one turn like that since Baryshnikov.”