aneurysm
by jemiah jefferson, © 1995
This story was written during my supposedly unproductive period in the summer of 1994. It has been slightly edited and brought up to date here. I was listening to a lot of Nirvana in that post-Cobain trauma period, and I was terribly horny and getting nostalgic for the punk teenhood that I never experienced. In general this story is set in Southern California, but any arid location in the western U.S. will do just as well. Those of you who were -- or still are -- young punks should recognize yourselves in this. My standard sex-and-cussin' disclaimer applies.
My older sister's pissed. She came home from the nail place where she works and right away starts in on me. "Turn that punk shit off!" she says, kicking over the tape player already held together with loops of duct tape, "jesus christ look at you sitting there, probably stoned off your ass -- are you ditching again? I will tell Mom."
"School gets out at one for me," I remind her, throwing a piece of Honeycomb cereal at her. It sticks to her denim miniskirt, so short you can see her butt cheeks when she bends over. "What's up your ass this time."
"Fucking garbage brain didn't show up again and I had to take the stupid bus home --" She's got the phone in her hand. I enjoy watching her swell up when she's mad, particularly because her favorite game when I was in the crib was to pinch me until I got so mad I threw up. She doesn't think I remember. "Hi, is Albert there? OK -- OK -- tell him his GIRLFRIEND called and she's mad as hell!"
They've been going out since Valentine's Day when he revealed his crush with a pink daisy and a clumsy poem (she showed it to me, the bitch). He'd had a thing for her since junior high and it wasn't until they graduated did he feel up to handling her rejection. To everybody's surprise she took the bait. Some guys are masochists.
Mom's working late again, so my sister eats microwaved Budget Gourmet, and I make cinnamon toast and hot milk and take it to my closet. I had ditched school in fact, got a five-fingered discount on some colored pencils, and I had wanted some peace and loud music to work on some drawings. My sister doesn't even know I draw. Mom knows, but it means about as much to her as the fact that man once landed on the moon. My closet is a good place. It's big enough for me and the top off an old drafting table, a lamp, the tape player, my art box, a baggie full of weed and another full of doses, and myself. I keep all my clothes in piles on the bedroom floor.
I hear a tap on my window around midnight. I peek out of the closet. It's my sister's boyfriend, his giant soft eyes glistening in the light from my drawing lamp.
I open the window and he climbs inside. He works as a garbage man and no matter how much he washes he still smells a little bit like trash. Actually he usually smells like marijuana. He's got two 40s of Schlitz in his Zo bag. "Does my sister know you're here?" I whisper, shutting the window behind him.
"No, I wanted to say hi to you first."
He holds out a 40 like a peace offering. "You know Schlitz makes me puke," I say. I take the beer. "She's superfucking pissed."
"I'm sure," he says, eyes downcast. We go into the closet and shut the doors. He fits in there with me if we scrunch up. I don't mind his smell at all. To me it's just another bit of him, like his velvet-painting eyes and his thin blond hair and his gorgeously clear skin, another bit like the crooked baroque pearls his teeth and his underfed nijinsky torso. He picks up my drawing carefully by the edges. "This one's fresh," he approves.
"You like that one?" I'm all embarassed.
"It reminds me of being six years old, and we had a shitty red plastic swingset, and one day my brother pushed me so much that I actually did loop the loop. Every kid's wet dream." His finger describes a big circle in the air, his eyes getting wet like my mom's when you mention my dad. "Of course I fucking bailed and split my face open on the ground."
"That's so cool."
Instead of opening both 40s we suck off the same one. Usually when he's in the closet with me we talk about punk bands or about when we were little kids or about school or work, but tonight we don't talk about anything. We just pass the 40 back and forth, tooting on little pipehits, huddled up together, shaking. I put my arms around his Diff'rent Strokes T shirt with the glitter decal peeling off, and his soft cold nose burrows into the side of my neck.
"I ought to go apologize to your sister," he says slowly. "if you want to know the truth of it, my car broke down and I had to walk home 'cause I can't remember which bus goes by my house. I haven't slept. She isn't gonna forgive me, I know."
"She should cease to exist, right now." I want to say that, but I don't. He's in love with her. It would be mean to him. I nod or something and he gets up and leaves me with the extra bottle of Schlitz, which I'm sure Mom can find time to drink sometime.
When I was a kid I loved the mall because I was supposed to. When I was ten -- just before I became a punk -- I had some tomboy friends who had stopped being tomboys because it was better to be a girl, to have boyfriends, to have those tall bangs and wear tight blouses. We bought blue mascara and cheap earrings at Claire's, socks with the frill on the cuff, Keds. By the time fifth grade had started I had painted my nails black with Magic Markers, saved all my lawn-mowing money and bought a Dead Kennedys T-shirt by mail order from the back of Creem magazine. My sister was pretty cool back then. She used to spike my hair and we hung around the living room listening to a lot of Berlin and Romeo Void. When she turned fourteen and went to junior high, she stopped speaking to me.
My town sucks. The desert around it is kind of nice -- I too a lot of pictures of it before my sister broke my camera on a trip to the beach. I've tried to draw the desert, but I just end up tracing a lot of brown and grey lines that run off the edges and tear right through the paper.
Instead of drawing specific stuff I just draw whatever. I read a lot of art books in the school library at lunchtime and I go to my art class, but I'm flunking almost everything else. I used to have straight A-plusses all the time, but now I never go, I avoid the damn place as much as possible. My sister's threat yesterday was comedy. Mom knows better than to threaten me with shit. If she grounds me I sneak out; if she tries that house arrest crap, I wait till she's asleep, then I steal all the money out of her wallet and go hide out at Corrine's house on the other side of town until Mom apologizes. It's cheaper just to let me do what I want. I don't see that it concerns her if I get kicked out of school. We're all just biding our time until it all gets taken away.
All the same I'm lying awake in bed, masturbating while thinking about my sister's boyfriend. I guess that means I'm fantasizing about him. I hate that word -- fantasizing. It sounds so sarcastic eighth-grade, as in "you're off in your own little world fantasizing". Fuck no. I'm just thinking about the guy. He's no Brat Pack pop star, he's no captain of the football team. He's a smelly punk loser. Me too.
All the sex I've ever had rushes up into my head -- a party last October with a bunch of kids from the other school, this skater named James dry-humped me while kissing me with Jagermeister on his breath. Later on he hurled on the family photo albums. I tried to call him the next week, still vibrating with teenage lust, and he told me to fuck off. Last summer I had a boyfriend for a week -- his name was Spider, he was some skinhead, he was OK, we screwed four times a day for a week, then his girlfriend fought me and won in front of everybody. I spent the night in the emergency room with blood gushing from my forehead from the bitch's steel-toed boots. She was pretty cool, too. I take my hand off my meat and touch the scar on my forehead.
It seems natural that I'd like some other bitch's man, especially when that bitch is my sister. I guess they're going to break up any minute. I heard her scream at him for like an hour the other night and then he went out the back door cussing softly to himself. I don't understand why they got together in the first place -- I guess my sister's pretty hot in a grody normal way, she's got big boobs, perfect nails of course, and she stinks of perfume. Her boyfriend is beautiful and fragile and sweet, just another fucked-up kid who wished Electric Company was still on TV.
I forget to finish jacking off and fall asleep.
"We're going to see Agent Orange," he tells me.
"You and who?"
"Your sister and me."
I struggle up, not much room in the closet, and stare at him. "What? She's going to Agent Orange?"
"She said she wanted to go," he says, sounding unsure now. He is very stoned and he keeps looking round him, slightly befuddled, like something from a nature show. "I dunno. You going?"
"Well, yeah, of course."
"I guess I'll see you there," he says.
It's a big deal, and I don't let my sister ruin it. I go to Corrine's to get ready -- she has all the rad stuff to get dressed in, lots of ripped shirts and black lace bras and dog collars and everything. I'm glad she's my size and she doesn't think I'm a dork. Corinne's eighteen, and she's already out of school. She works at a movie theater serving popcorn, and she makes sure she snarls at everybody who wants butter flavoring. We take a whole bunch of doses out of my Special Bag and then drink some schnapps. Her aunt is half dead already, she's so old, and she likes everything we do. "Oh, don't you girls look cute! Have a good time at the concert!" she says in her rad old lady voice.
I snicker as we go out, weaving slightly down the sidewalk. "Don't you look cute, dearie!" Corrine snatches the schnapps back and pushes me so that I nearly fall down in the street. I push her back. "I wish I was a fuckin' orphan."
"Me too," she said. "My dad's in Washington D.C. this week. He sent me a fuckin' postcard. His new wife's a cunt."
"Jesus, I think I took too much acid."
"No such thing as too much acid, little girl. Don't worry, I'm lookin' out for ya."
The show -- an insane corral of sweaty shirtless boys and girls with black eye shadow dripping off their faces as they laugh. Corrine and I jump into the pit and thrash around for hours and hours. Corrine gets her lip split by some skin chick and they have this amazing fight right in the center of the pit. The skin chick finally gets shoved away and the fun continues. Corrine dabs some blood off her lip and paints what feels like a cross on my forehead.
Towards the end of the night I hang back near the doors, gulping in the intermittent breaths of fresh air. Corrine is nowhere. I feel a lot better though, the acid seems to have been sweated out of me onto other people, like Corrine's blood performed an exorcism. I feel all right. It's been a good show.
But there's my sister, and there's her boyfriend, looking like someone's just shot him or something, and my sister is yelling at him so hard her face looks like a boiled beet. She looks like an idiot with her mall hair and her little black dress, trying to be punk or something, but still wearing frosted pink lipstick and sheer stockings. I almost feel sorry for her, she's all smeared and humilated in front of all these sniggering heartless punks, but then she hits her boyfriend, scratching him across the face with her acrylic tips. I could kill her. He doesn't try to defend himself -- he just crumples, hands to his cheeks, his thin white arms not shielding him. My sister turns and marches out the open door, tossing some unheard insults at a couple of girls hanging out sniffing amyls and giggling. They don't hear her.
I run up to my sister's boyfriend and touch his arm. He's not crying or anything, but the scratches smear his face like war paint, and he looks empty and exhausted. I put my arms around him and hug him as hard as I can. He leans back a bit, touches the crust of blood on my forehead, and a wee little smile comes over him. I have done good. I have done something unselfish.
One of these long dull Sunday afternoons grows and grows until there seems to be no other sort of time. My sister's at the mall working and Mom is catching up on her sleep with the help of not a few Valium. I am on the couch in the front room with the threadbare velvet curtains closed against the sun. No drawing, no TV, just my Pogues tape playing very quietly.
When I go to my room to get a pillow I see my sister's boyfriend tapping at the window. I let him in.
We smoke a couple of bowls of pot and sit on the couch in the front room. He must have washed and then skated over because he smells like cheap soap and and sweat more than garbage. We sprawl. I like the couch -- it's long enough to stretch out on, upholstered in the same puke-gold velvet the curtains are made of. I've sprawled on it, alone, with Mom, with my sister, with my old cat who died, with Spider, once. The couch has a groove worn into it from my body.
He's got his knee between my legs, on top of me. I am moving my bone against it as if I was born to. My mammalian brain is going away, and my lizard brain is taking control, yet I feel kind of spiritual the way i never did with Spider. The instinctive part becomes the pure part. There was nothing before this smell, before the lazy silk of his hair, before the stiff thing hidden in the basket of his grass-stained corduroys.
Our mouths suck at each other. He helps me with my shirt, with the white sterile bandage of my bra, his hands shaking. We always shake when we're alone together. He trembles as if he's cold and I am a warmth that he can draw upon. He pinches my nipples too hard with dirty fingernails and then apologizes.
I stick my hand into the corduroy and grab his dick. It is a small live creature, spiky, thirsty, more like his mouth than anything else. He has his hand in my pants too. We move together like we're fucking.
He comes in my hand. It spills all over. He takes off his pants and shirt and uses his sock to wipe up the spooge. I kiss him all over and he holds out his arms, a dirty undernourished icon. His dick tastes OK. I never tasted one before and I had assumed they'd be gross. He isn't gross. It's just weird. He's pulling down my pants and getting at my pussy, there, his fingers reaching through the folds and into me. He reaches for my secrets and I slick them all over him.
He gets hard and puts it inside me and we are fucking now, in time to the clapping of the tape being done and neither of us caring because our lizard brains and hearts and secrets are all together now. His head falls back and he moans out loud, like girls do but guys don't. I bite his nipple until he screams into the pillow. Our hips are working a steady pulse now. He tells me he wants me to come all over. He tells me like even if it woul kill him, he has to tell me. We are dripping like milk.
His lizardous body comes again: I can feel the wretched thudding of his chest. I wish he would never stop fucking himself into me, but already it's over, and I want to cry and kill him and me and everybody. I love you, you make me sick, I say to him. He buries his head in my neck and piches my nipples again, rolling them in his calluses till my whole body seems like one hungry vulva, damp, aching like hell. I try to hit him, to move away or something, but he grabs me and rubs my pussy with one hand, kissing my girl's body, my baby tits, my stomach, my shoulders, neck, nipples, rubbing and kissing roughly and swiftly. When I draw this way I make good drawings, and I come. I come pouring honey girl sweetness all over his hands and his bony boy pelvis, where his dick twitches like it's curious. So odd. I come all over. Just everywhere, everywhere in the world.
When my sister comes home we are sitting together watching TV. We flipped the couch cushions. Mom is putting frozen pizza in the over, yawning and rubbing her eyes. "Leah, is that you?" she calls to my sister. My sister sees us together and goes apeshit. She throws such a fit that he puts on his shoes and grabs his board and leaves. Then she yells at me. "You fucking whore! You fucked him, I know you did!"
"Eat shit."
"I'll strangle that rat's ass piece of shit -- do have a clue at all? You're fifteen, Jody!"
"So I'm told."
She grabs me up and belts me a good one, breaking off her thumbnail. I hit back, but not too well, because I'm crying. Mom drags us off one another. Mysister nearly hits her too. "This is all your fault, you drunken slob! Why can't you control her? Look at her! She looks like a sewer rat! She fucking stinks like a bitch in heat and where were you? Passed out as usual!"
"You lay off my Mom," I say.
"Hey, why don't you just calm down right now, Little Miss Self-Righteous?" Mom yells.
"I'm moving out! I can't take this shit anymore. I'm going to live with Daddy. I don't need this crap."
"What makes you think Daddy would even take you?" I say. I get up and start walking off. "You dumb bitch."
"Where do you think you're going, Jody?"
"Far away."
I close the door behind me. I look up and down the street for my sister's boyfriend, but he isn't anywhere; he's gone. He's disappeared on his skateboard, back to his brother's pace where he sleeps on the couch. He invited me over once, but when I told my sister she shat bricks, so we called it off. I don't even know where it is or how to get there. I start walking toward the bus to go to Corrine's.
I've decided I won't tell Corrine or anybody about seeing the world, all of it, all of myself dissolved in the world like sugar in a glass of milk, diffuse is the word I think. I can't fix my mind on it too good myself.
BUY ANEURYSM! only two bucks!
Expressway, the sequel