Chicken (9 page)

Somehow I've managed to transform the heartbreaking tragedy of the Franks into a showcase for my comedy stylings.

That moment turns me from an odd-duck newcomer into a dashing ladies' boy.

And I owe it all to Anne Frank, martyr and symbol of all that is good in human beings.

‘Wow, that sounds … far out.' I've never said ‘far out' before or since, but Rainbow eats it up like wavy gravy with a tie-dyed spoon.

She takes off her robe. She's the only sexwork customer I ever have who takes off her clothes while I still have mine on. And for
an old broad (again with the proviso that anyone over the age of twenty-five is old) she's got a rip-roaring body. Supple muscles firm lithe and graceful, breasts slung low, with big brown nipples in the middle. I make a mental note that as far as books go, don't judge them by their covers.

I now become aware that Rainbow's posing for me. Not vulgar or ostentatious. Subtle and proud. She seems to be one of those rare people who's actually comfortable with her own naked body.

‘You have a beautiful body …' I would've said it whether it was true or not, but in this case it is true, which does makes it easier.

She likes it. She's not desperate like Georgia or Franny, but she likes it.

‘Do you want me to take my clothes off?' Just trying to keep the customer satisfied.

‘Do whatever makes you happy,' says Rainbow.

Wow. Whatever makes me happy. No one says that to me in real life, never mind when I'm chickening.

Seems like if you're gonna learn to orgasm without ejaculating, you should be naked. So I take off my clothes. Rainbow sits opposite me cross-legged on that continent of a bed. I try, but I just can't get the cross-legged thing going. My grandfather's coalminer soccerplaying legs are just too unyielding. I'm tugging and pulling, cuz I'm trying to suck it up and play through the pain, but damn, this shit hurts.

‘Don't do it if it hurts. Don't do anything that hurts …' Rainbow flows. You gotta hand it to the hippies, when it comes to peace and love and all that business, they really know their shit.

Rainbow shows me how to deepbreathe, and we deep-breathe until we feel the life force flowing through us. I don't actually feel the life force flowing through me as such, but she does, and that's good enough for me. The crumpled bills in my pocket are filling me with the life force.

Rainbow and I
ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhmmmm
for about a fortnight. Eventually I do feel a little light-headed, like when I first smoked a
cigarette. But, hey, if she wants to pay me to breathe and say om, that's rolling off a log for a chicken.

Finally when Rainbow is om'd out, she takes my hand, places it on her breast, looks me in the eyes, and with a hypnotic smile shows me how to roll that mammoth mammarian poolcue tip between my thumb and forefinger, and it gets bigger and tighter, until it feels like it's ready to pop, while she makes airsuck sounds of pleasure.

I can smell her now, Rainbowing as she makes my hand the axis between her legs around which she gyrates, nestling my head into her neck and whispering, ‘Kiss me soft …'

I eat her neck like a fruitcake while she revs in growly moans, everything moving in rhythm like a well-oiled sex machine, the fur blanket softly soft as she guides me like an air-traffic controller. Then Rainbow replaces my hand with my mouth and she huffs and she puffs like she's gonna blow the house down, jimjamming and earthquakeshaking.

I smile inside. I'm getting a crash course in the fine art of a woman's orgasm, and I'm getting paid for it. America – what a country!

‘Now I'm right there,' she pants, ‘… if I let myself, I'd go right over the waterfall … but … I'm … not … I'm gonna stay … right here and let the … waves roll through me … there's one … slow down … Stop!' Rainbow squeezes, fists clenching and unclenching like a baby breastfeeding, ‘… now slow … there's another one … ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh … God …'

Rainbow lets rip with a top-of-the-lungs scream. A huge little death. When she collapses at the tip of my tongue, I understand for the first time what they're talking about, as time warps, Einstein smiling somewhere, eternity in a second, infinity in a grain of sand.

I think of busting my ass in the grease of HFC. I think of my father slaving away at the explosives plant. I think about my grandfather shoveling coal down the mine. I won't be getting
black lung disease from this. If having sex for money was always this good, I'd still be a hooker.

When I'm eleven, Alabama is ranked fiftieth in the nation in education. My mom becomes so desperate she decides to enroll me and my brother in the best school in Alabama. The oxymoronicality of this is lost on no one. The only rub is that we have to pass the extremely rigorous entrance exam. My folks promise that if we pass the test, we can have some cool thing of our choice. My brother wants a wide handlebar bananaseat Stingray, the coolest bike on the planet. I want a brand-new set of golf clubs. I like how shiny they look in the sporting-goods store.

Tense anticipation grips our house in the days leading up to The Test. Are we good enough to rub elbows with the crème de la crème of Hueytown, America?

The extremely rigorous test takes all day. It's rough terrain and grueling, but we've been trained well. Not just in facts and figures, but in succeeding American style, while failure breathes hot on your neck and those around you wither. It takes a week to get the results back. Longest week of my life.

We pass the test. There is much rejoicing.

Unfortunately, that summer my dad gets transferred, so we can't attend the best school in Alabama. But my mom and dad make good. They get my brother his cool wide-handlebarred Stingray with the big bananaseat, and they get me my shiny new golf clubs.

Rainbow gets out of the river and dries off on the sunny shore, while I stand next to her, nakedly rolling my big huge rock up my big huge mountain.

After a brief intermission, Act II begins. She pulls me into the river, takes me right to the edge of the waterfall, and then stops. The most important thing, she says, is to turn off your
mind, and feel your body. You can't think and swim at the same time.

Once a man plunges over the waterfall in his barrel, of course, it's all over for him. For a while at least. So you have to be very careful and really pay attention. I practice getting right on the edge and just sticking there. And it's good. When she does something particularly compelling, I feel the spray in my face and the pull of the fall, and by God, quivers do quiver me, then I quickly pull myself back.

Rainbow's my Seeing Eye sexdog.

‘Wow, that was groovy …' I say, when it's clear we're done.

Groovy? I can't believe that came out of my mouth, but as usual I've ceased to exist in my need to please.

I don't know what to do now. Should I hang out? Are we friends? I think for a minute. I still don't feel that creeping mudslide of depression I always get after I chicken. I'm just a little confused, that's all. But looking around, I can see myself moving right in here and being the sextoy for all of Rainbow's old greatbodied freakyhippie babies. Sounds like fun, I think, as I grab at another salvation flotation device.

‘I have something for you …' Rainbow's sweet as you please, slipping on an old soft tie-dyed robe. I follow at her heels like a naked chickenpuppy. She reaches in a drawer and I'm expecting a nice fat juicy tip. Twenty, maybe fifty. Instead Rainbow pulls out a feather.

A feather.

‘It's an earring,' says Rainbow.

I have to work hard not to show how totally disgusted I am as I take out the rhinestone in my ear and replace it with the feather. I look in the mirror. To my amazement, I actually like the way it looks. Kind of tribal. Even though I silently scoff when she presents it to me, I wear that feather for many years.

And whenever I do, I think of Rainbow.

She kisses me on both cheeks. She thanks me. I thank her. She doesn't say we should get together again soon, or that we should
stay in touch. I love that. I did what I came to do, we both got what we wanted, and that, as they say, is that.

Rainbow's the only trick I ever had who didn't use me as the trigger point for venting venom.

Motorcycling away from Rainbow, I'm high on sex and money, floating on my feather earring in the sweetness of the cool Laurel Canyon night.

Then this thought pops center stage on my brain:

‘Hey, this is a really cool way to make a living.'

And the instant that thought appears, the life starts to kill me.

 

T
HE BEGINNING
of the end comes innocently enough. Just a normal job on a normal day in the life of a normal seventeen-year-old boy hooker.

Tooling through a trendy treed Pacific Palisades neighborhood chockablock with brown migrating workers mowing green lawns, pink children throwing red balls, and white women driving overpriced foreign automobiles, I have that wonderful sense of déjà ‘vu all over again as I go from the seedy pit of Hollywood to the clean hightone America of my youth.

It's just before seven o'clock on Monday evening. This in itself is troubling. Who the hell orders a chicken at seven o'clock on Monday? It's always midnights or matinees. So I'm a tad suspicious to begin with, but what the hell, I'm a trained professional, and there's nothing in this luxurious Mediterranean four-bedroom two-and-a-half-bath extravaganza I can't handle. Dish it out. Bring it on.

Whatever.

I ring the bell. Split a second and that's how long it takes a postmodern June Cleaver to pull the door open too fast, say hello too hard, and lead me into her too-tastefully-decorated home.

She does look good for an old broad, except for all the cakey makeup. Brownish hair slicked back anorexic ballerina style, eyes drowning in pools of blue eye shadow, she's working a creamy calf-length sleeveless dress, plain white flats, and pearls. God love her, she put the pearls on for her chicken.

The kitchen's full of wallpaper choking on flowers. Linoleum rides the floor, Wedgwood watches from running boards, and a
desert island sits and with a butcher-block cutting board sinking in its middle.

It's like a movie set of a perfect American home, with a housewife played by an actress who looks right for the role but is just a little too stiff.

‘Did anyone see you come in?' There's a disturbing urgency in the lines fraying around the edges of her eyes and the veins popping on her neck.

Then she realizes how harsh she sounded and tries to pretend she's all casual and carefree. ‘Not that it really matters, but you know how people talk.'

This bundle of too-tightly-tied wires tries to smile. But there's no smile there. Then her pupils start darting back and forth like someone who's about to flunk a lie-detector test.

‘And if anyone asks, maybe you could say you're a high-school student who's here to help me organize my miniatures. I collect miniatures. Would you like to see them?'

My Spider senses are tingling, but my pokerface is firmly in place. Maybe she's just a little nervous. Family's out of town, looking for a little fun. Maybe she's never had sex with anyone besides her painintheassbastard husband. Maybe she just wants me to get nekked and tell her how hot she is.

Maybe.

This home movie's in the backyard, and you can practically hear the green of the grass and smell the birdies chirruping. I'm six, and my mom stands about twenty feet in front of me holding a baseball. My bat is in the cocked-and-ready position, and I'm pure intention, staring that ball down. When Mom lobs in the ball, my eyes get big and hungry, like a lion spotting a sick wildebeest.

I attack the ball with a vicious compact swing, and when my bat whacks it square on the sweet G spot, that ball flies like a human cannonball out of frame.

I drop the bat and my little legs churn me hard to first,
whip me around second, fly me by third, flushed and radiant. I slide.

I'm safe at home.

‘I mean, I'm sure people have better things to do than stare at my back door. But let's say they were walking the dog, people like to walk their dogs, well, I suppose they have to, but the point is they
could
see you, and if they did, I just want us to be on the same page, you see what I mean?'

I follow my seven o'clock Monday trick to the Miniature Room, and as she finishes her monologue she opens a door, revealing a room exploding with teeny-tiny miniatures: little geldings with no little balls; tiny Chinese potentates and French diplomats; gnomes, sprites, and fairies; a very small Dorothy Gale from Kansas with her itty-bitty ruby slippers and her wee dog Toto; diminutive Bob's Big Boy, the Michelin Man, and the Sta-Puf Marshmallow Man; minute Benjamin Franklin, Genghis Khan, and even a mini-Marilyn Monroe, trying to hold her skirt down while the wind threatens to expose her panties for all eternity.

My seven o'clock Monday trick tries to smile again. She comes a little closer this time but still hasn't hit it.

‘Wow … this is really … incredible.'

I
say
incredible like it's a good thing, whereas I
mean
incredible like it's a very scary thing. Everything's all lined up too perfectly, there's too much of it, and it's way too small. The whole thing makes me want to run, not walk, as fast as I can away from this woman.

But I don't. I can't.

‘Thank you very much, it's taken a long time to collect, as you can imagine, and I'm …'

Her mouth is open, but nothing's coming out of this pearly woman standing in front of her collection of three-inch animals, movie characters, and famous historical figures.

My father was a superb English footballer and cricketer, with an excellent googly ball and a real nose for goal. But my dad took up a whole new game he knew nothing about, just so he could play baseball with his American son.

The rhythm of playing catch is so soothing, the leathery smell, the hard of the ball, the red raised stitches, the pounding into the mitt, throwing to a perfect point, learning to make it dip, spin, and curve.

Baseball's the only language my dad can speak with me, but he speaks it well.

The better I play, the more he seems to love me, so I practice, trying to be the lovable boy.

‘I love Marilyn … she was a real movie star,' I say.

So we're back to Marilyn.

My pearly trick stares at me, a plaster-of-paris mask of a normal person fixed on her face. I don't know what to do. I gotta do something. Try to start the sex? I'm afraid if I touch her she'll shatter into a million pieces. And where's my stinking money? This is getting ridiculous. I'm gonna have to talk to Mr Hartley about this shit, cuz I need my money in plain sight when I walk in the door, no questions asked.

‘And she's so …
small
…' I say, trying desperately to fill in the Silence.

As soon as she hears the word ‘small,' my pearly trick comes back to life, like some perfect robot replica of a human that gets activated by flipping a switch on the back of her head.

‘Yes, they're so small, aren't they? I love how small they all are. I'll show you my favorite,' she says.

I still don't know her name, or what the hell she wants, and I still DO NOT HAVE MY MONEY UP FRONT, but at least she's not acting like the walking dead anymore. She picks up a miniature
with a rose complexion and dark hair, dressed very Civil War. Vaguely resembles Scarlett O'Hara.

‘It's Scarlett O'Hara. Don't you just love her?' She stares rapturously at the lifeless Scarlett O'Hara doll like it's a three-inch lover.

‘Yeah, I loved how she made that dress out of the curtains …' Having noticed that the mini-Scarlett's wearing the curtaindress, I feel this might help move us along.

‘Oh, gosh,' she says, ‘I love that scene where Mammy sews the dress, and she grumbles the whole time. Oh, that Mammy, she's such a character … and Scarlet puts on the dress, and of course she looks fabulous, and she goes to see Rhett in prison, and pretends like everything's okay, but he sees right through her. Oh, that Rhett, he's such a scalawag … and does he give her a tongue-lashing. See, the thing people don't realize is that they were always madly in love with each other, but never at the same time …'

And with that, she clicks into some other time zone, where crazed assassins lurk in every church tower, puts the little Scarlett carefully back in its place between President Abraham Lincoln and General Robert E. Lee, and ushers me out posthaste.

Suddenly the forecast has gone from mostly sunny to severe storm warnings. Her skeletal structure visibly stiffens, skin tightening and lips constricting. For a second I think it's me. I see her on the phone with Mr. Hartley, who cals Sunny, who chucks me back in the Dumpster.

I need my money.

I need my money.

I need my money.

So I become a boywonder baseball player. In all my team photos, with those rows of hopeful, glum, big-eared, goofy, shy, uncertain, beaming-with-confidence lads, I'm always on the bottom row, kneeling, smiling peacefully, like a little ballplaying boy Buddha.

I play on All-Star teams with all the best players. The All-Star pictures are different from the average, everyday team photos. The All-Stars are cocksure, aggressive, and cunning, while the regular teams are more about being fat or uncomfortable or not quite sure what you're there for.

Being an All-Star Little Leaguer is excellent chicken training: the same performing adrenaline rush, the same illusion that attention equals love. Reminds me of Sunny's team of chickens. Only those players end up arrested, addicted, or dead, instead of on the cover of a Wheaties box.

My pearly trick mutters underbreath as I pad down the hall after her. The only words I can make out are ‘ashamed,' ‘irresponsible,' and ‘neglect.' I'm sure I'm not supposed to respond. In fact, I'm sure she's not even aware she's vocalizing at this almost intelligible level.

She stops, turns suddenly, and tried to smile again. Again she fails. She looks down, regroups, and looks toward me, but not at me.

‘My husband is not … with us …'

Euphemism for ‘dead,' I'm assuming, although for all I know he could be away on a golf junket.

‘I thought you should know. I mean, I didn't want you to think …'

Who the hell cares what I think? I'm the whore houseboy, remember? And she doesn't want me to think what? That she's immoral? Unfaithful? Or just out of her mind?

‘He took his own life. After our son died…'

‘Oh … I'm really … sorry.' I put on a sad but understanding face.

‘We had a wonderful marriage. He was very handsome and attentive. My therapist said I should date again, that it would help me… get over the whole thing.'

I doubt this is the kind of date he had in mind.

‘Everyone says I should sell the house, but I don't want to sell the house. I love this house … Would
you
sell the house?'

Now she's asking the boy hooker for real-estate advice. ‘No, I think it's a great house. I thought that when I came in – I thought, “This is a
great
house.”'

‘It is, isn't it? That's what I'm gonna tell people. I'll just say, “It's a great house …” My husband loved this house. He took his own life, did I tell you that?'

Yes, you did mention that.

‘You'll have to forgive me, I've been very … forgetful lately. The fact is, he really never got over Braddy's passing. Braddy was our son … our only child. It was a terrible tragedy … his friend had been drinking … Braddy wasn't drinking, the coroner confirmed that. He had no alcohol in his system, or very little alcohol. They ran head-on into a bus … just like that … alive one second, dead the next. Makes you think, doesn't it?'

Yes, it certainly does.

‘Yes, it certainly does,' I say.

She looks at me like she's coming out of a coma, and for the first time I see who she was before all this shit happened: a beautiful wifemommy living large with the handsome husband, the cute kid, and the great house. Like my mom. Only this one didn't leave her life and make a new one; she had hers yanked out from under her, and she has no idea what to do about it.

‘You'll have to excuse me … I, uh, haven't been myself lately …'

I feel for her. Dead son. Husband offs himself. I want to take her in my arms, rock the sad right out of her, and tell her everything's gonna be okay.

But I don't. I can't.

A sincere ‘I'm sorry' is all I can manage.

What a couple of funked-up ducks we are, this ex-mom slash ex-wife and I, trying to get some love in the worst way.

‘Thanks,' she says.

She tries to smile again and this time it actually works. And
when the smile finally does arrive it's very sweet, and drenched in sorrow, like cherries jubilee just about to be lit on fire.

I have a Little League game tonight. When I'm ten I love playing, love being an All-Star. But as much as I love baseball games, I love night games best of all, because I get to play under the lights. Makes me feel like I'm half a step from Yankee Stadium, playing with Yogi, Mick, and the Moose.

But the afternoon sky looks like an old bruise, and a bull-whip wind whips into the flesh of the earth. I keep sneaking peeks outside, and every time I do, my little heart sinks like a grape in warm Jell-O.

Still, I slip on my white sanitary socks, slide my little blue stirrups over them, then my gray flannel pantaloons with blue pipes up the side, my blue-sleeved undershirt, gray uniform top with blue
PIRATES
on the front, then pull on my blue cap with
P
in the middle, and yank on my black cleats.

I rub mink oil lovingly into my glove, leather scratch-and-sniffing all over me, the glove molding further into the shape of my hand.

At six o'clock my mom asks my dad if maybe he shouldn't take me to the game, what with the storm and all.