On the upper level of Northwood's Mall
Renae arrives with David Best and Laura Lane
This is the first time David Best has hung out with us since we went to School Ties.
This is the first time David Best has hung out with us since we went to School Ties.
“Patrick I
can stand.” Renae says, as Hale struts inside the door wearing a Harley Davidson
Bikers cap that looks like something a police officer singing for the Village
people might Sport.
“He’s not
that bad.” I say to Renae, slightly elbowing her, reminding her that, in the
immortal sugar-coated words of Willy Wonka, a little non-sense now and then is
relished by the wisest men.
“Nobody
expects the Spanish Inquisition.” Renae says to me, her arms tightly braced
across her breast as if she is cold.
Hale
accosts us with his signature whoo-hoo, removing his cap as if tipping
it at a ballgame to show us his surprise.
“Wow,” I
say. Renae is still looking the opposite direction. Hale has completely sawed
off any shred of hair that once attired the to of his head.
“Dave,” I
say. “I’m impressed.” In a way Dave looks like a Pony League catcher who his
teammates would call Moose.
Come on, I
say to Renae, still wearing the Identification bracelet she got me. The
bracelet that took me two days to figure out how to undo the clasp and put it
on my wrist. I wear the Manual Jacket my mother made me, with the words 96
thickly stitched in the right hand corner in numbers the size of my splayed
palm.
Our hands
join. The last couple of times we have seen each other, our lips seemed simply
to connect in drilling our tongues deep into each others mouth. We walk, next
to each other, gripping each other’s hand. Hale and Patrick talk about going
down to KB Toys and scaring a bunch of little kids by firing fake guns at each
other.
I try making small talk. I ask how Kristie and Tim are
doing. I ask how Amy is. Renae says fine and then looks at Patrick and says that
someone with his number has been calling Amy's house and hanging up several times a night. We
are walking slowly. It is like we are underwater. It is like I want this to
last. It is like I don’t want to let go of Renae’s hand. Reane tells me that
her grandfather gave her 100 bill for Christmas and told her to go to the mall
and have some fun and that is just what she intends to do.
Renae Holiday’s hand drips into mine as we circle the heavily tiled contours of the mall. She continues to squint her lips into a prune, disgusted bitchy countenance, saying that Patrick she can stand, inferring simultaneously that David Hale does, on the other hand, drives her nuts. Her jeans are denim clad and fit her perfectly, accentuate her waist, granting her ass the appearance of a cloudless autumnal afternoon. We continue to walk. She blushes. Premier destination is Gloria Jeans where Hale, Patrick and myself each order a cappuccino, Patrick, plagiarizing Hudson Hawk, asking David in a smart-ass autodidactic Bruce Willis demeanor, why is it that you always have time to but a cappuccino but never seem to have time to drink one?
On Christmas eve at Christ Lutheran Church
“Would you
like something from Gloria Jeans, sweetie.” I know full well that Renae will
say no, commenting that she can’t stand our fascination with cappuccino.
Patrick will interject and say that before he seriously spills some hard-core
imaginary guts in the toy store, would his close friend and soon to be former
school mate mind treating him to a nice warm cappuccino, even though the boys
always drink it cold.
Hale gets a cappuccino he always takes two hearty swigs from it and then tells me to hold onto it for him, meaning finish the damn thing. I walk out with two giant cap’s in each hand. Dave Hale ordered some sort of Extra-large Holiday eggnog induced peppermint syrup
Renae
smiles, shooing the boys off so that we can have some time alone. Patrick and Hale adjourn to the arcade with Patrick making the ill-timed analogy that he is going to go feed token after token into Street Fighter II and try not think about Amy as he disembowels Bianca. We hold hands again. Three times I have
endeavored to staple her lips with my tongue and three times she has looked
back at me and verbally insinuated that she does not feel at all comfortable
making out with me while the two ogres Patrick and Hale are around, but Patrick
she can stand, mind you.
“Let’s go
in here.” Renae says, ogling the after holiday sale placards with giant percent
signs on them. I walk into one store with her where Renae tries three outfits
on. With a giant, extra-large cappuccino nursed in each hand (the holiday one,
the longer it sits, looks more and more like Reindeer poop) I am asked by the
store manager if this place looks like a food court. As I go outside the store to continue my hearty slurps, I can
hear Renae’s voice from the dressing room, asking me if I will hold her purse
for her. I accept, and, like a kiosk, stand in front of Dots, a large drink
cupped in both palm, a leather purse from Wilson Chicago
I nod my
head up and down. Reassure her that I’m happy because she’s happy honey, prancing my legs due to excessive caffeine intake.
“I’ll only
be another minute.” Renae says, kissing the side of my cheek again. A guy walks
past me and asks me if I just tied the knot, telling me that he used to be
whupped like that before he learned how to put his foot down. Now the bitch
knows who wears the pants in the family. I tell him that’s nice. He says that
he has tapes at home he can loan to me. I tell him I’m not interested.
Below me,
in the center Court, Santa’s contract insists that he stay till New Years day.
There are kids cussing Santa out, claiming that they were too good this year,
asking why they didn’t get the latest Video game. One kid even moons the camera
when the obligatory contract oriented photograph is snapped. The Holiday tape is on a continual ninety-minute loop. I can
swear that I’ve heard the First Noel already two or three times. The chipmunk
song also reeks of squealed monotony. Renae exit Dot’s with three boxes she
exchanged to me for her purse, slightly planting a petal of moisture again on my
cheek.
Renae
grasps my arm and begins to tell me all about this charming delightful object
she just tried on. I nod my head and tell her that is nice. With my glasses
off, the customers continue to shoot in every direction. Eric Bushman walks
past me, with some girl from another school, a girl who is not as cute as Renae.
I nod my head in acknowledgement and he continues to walk, pretending he has
never seen me.
“Oh Look,”
Renae says, pointing to coliseum sign reading EXPRESS. I nod my head as if
agreeing with her at the name of the Store.
“Come on,”
She says. “I’ll only be a minute.”
I agree and
after thirty seconds I find myself being fiercely tapped on my shoulder by the
store manager. Apparently they have some kind of policy where all the boxes and
sac form other stores need to be X-rayed and checked. I say bosh to that and a
minute latter, I am holding Reane’s stacked parcels, still sipping on Hale’s
Santa Shittoccino. Renae comes back out, hooks her purse on my limb as if she
is benignly placing a bulb on a Christmas tree, informing me that. Once again,
she will only be a minute, claiming that they don’t call it Express for
nothing.
Laura is inside the dressing room which you can see bare legs stepping into articles of clothing form the door. I ask David best if he wants to stand outside with me. he is looking at the door where my current/his ex-girlfriend is taking off pieces of clothing.
He says he is fine.
I am standing outside holding bags containing attire which Renae will step into after her shower when she is naked and still wet.
I am standing outside all alone.
Laura is inside the dressing room which you can see bare legs stepping into articles of clothing form the door. I ask David best if he wants to stand outside with me. he is looking at the door where my current/his ex-girlfriend is taking off pieces of clothing.
He says he is fine.
I am standing outside holding bags containing attire which Renae will step into after her shower when she is naked and still wet.
I am standing outside all alone.
***
He has decimated the Midwest, turning the bucolic cul-de-sac's of suburbia into a juristic age-punctuating crater. He is out for more. He has taken out the Justice League. He has flattened military arsenal. He has injured the moxie and intergalactic prowess of Maxima and Guardian. Superman is gnashed. He is enervated. He is limp. The creature is en route to the zeppelin-siding of Metropolis, the city he is sworn to save.
He has nothing left in him yet he continues to claw and fight.
Nothing left in him at all.
***
“I thought about you New Years eve. At midnight I
really wanted to kiss you and then I went into the room and kissed my poster of
James Dean. I even left lip-prints on his nose.”
***
It is a new year. I am wearing my boots and the jacket
my mother made me. I am wearing my jacket. I am embarrassed that the reversible digits of 9 and 6 are so large. I don’t want strangers to know that I am to graduate in high school in four years.
David Best comes up to me talking in a high-pitched voice as if he just inhaled helium.
"That was really a bummer you couldn't make it to Renae's New year's eve party. She really wanted to see you."
"Yeah," I say, still unsure why I wasn't even to accumulate the gall just to attend.
I am squeezing Renae’s hand. I have already apologized for not making it to her New years eve party even though I was only a mile away at my aunts.
David Best comes up to me talking in a high-pitched voice as if he just inhaled helium.
"That was really a bummer you couldn't make it to Renae's New year's eve party. She really wanted to see you."
"Yeah," I say, still unsure why I wasn't even to accumulate the gall just to attend.
I am squeezing Renae’s hand. I have already apologized for not making it to her New years eve party even though I was only a mile away at my aunts.
Renae seems laughing more than usual at David Best’s
sappy jokes. I want to tell Best that I haven’t seen my girlfriend in almost two
weeks. I want to remind him that the number three only works when speaking about the Trinity. I clear my throat. I
offer out a verbal guffaw hinting that I need some time alone.
“I thought about you New Years eve. At midnight I
really wanted to kiss you and then I went into the room and kissed my poster of
James Dean. I even left lip-prints on his nose.”
“David Best interjects and says that he was going to
step in and kiss her but, you know. I am about ready to go Street Fighter II on
my best friend when Renae is laughing hysterically at his joke.
“Yeah, I kissed the picture I have of you too.” I say,
reminding my love again that the picture of her is always in my pocket.
Renae says yeah, along with that damn bible of yours
you tote around everywhere.
I am looking at my confirmation ring. I am trying to
tell Renae that it is a commitment having Jesus Christ as my Lord and
savior. I look down at my confirmation
ring and think about the billowy wedding veil like cloak I wore last spring
when I was confirmed. I want to tell her
that is struggle on a nightly basis with an animalistic lust. That all I want
to do right now is yank Renae by her wrist and find some secluded corner of the
mall perhaps near the locker and bend her over unbuckle her belt, lower the
tight as shit jeans she is wearing around the dome of her ankles and fuck every
part of her.
David Best goes to my church. I almost expect him
to interject on my behalf.
I want to tell Renae that I just don’t have it in me
to fail the Young Columbus contest a third time in a row. That after failing
cross-country season I simply don’t have it in me anymore to put the energy
into a project and watch me founder once again.
I want to tell Renae that I keep the bible in my
pocket all time to curtail me from the temptation of lust and how it just
hasn’t been working. How the anatomical gender-christening pipe located below
my torso keeps magnetically elevating every time I think about the syllables of
her name.
I want to tell Renae how somehow, my bearded variation
of a Deity loves me so much that he sent his only son and that somehow, he
loves bargains, he loves when I give things up in order to follow him and to spiritually
grow..
I want to tell her that there’s no way in Hell a fair
yet jealous and inexplicably at time unjust God will allow me to go to England
if I am horny as fuck all the time.
“You have to admit Dave, you are somewhat like a
Jehovah Witness always with that bible in your pocket.
Best states that he thought it was a packet of
condoms.
Renae laughs again.
Renae has not laughed at anything I have said all day.
We go into Hardees and sit in the smoking section even though the only one who smokes is Patrick. Hale walks up and gets some sort of Holiday shake takes two swigs and then hands me the rest like a scepter. My arm is around Renae. I feel that we have had absolutely no time together to be alone today. I almost want to suggest that maybe I could call home and tell mom to pick us up at Westlake in three hours so we could go to a movie and just make-out the entire time.
When I come back with a tray of tightly foil wrapped sandwiches and pop David is seated directly next to Renae. Laura is on the window side. I sit on the opposite end of the booth next to Hale and Pat. Patrick has apparently asked Renae if he thinks Amy would mind if he just so happened to show up outside her house one night with a ukulele and serenade her a la John Cuzak in Say Anything. Renae says that Amy would probably call the police and her dad would come out on the porch with shotgun. Part of me wants to bring up the Young Columbus. Part of me wants to convey to my friends now all attending the high school I would kill to attend that I have a shot to traverse across the scalp of the globe and see the planet. That if I win I’ll be ushered into New York for a day and meet high school kids from all across the united states and herded into an aluminum vessel, blasted four miles above the crust of the earth for ten hours before arriving in the pages of a fairytale.
“That’s a shame. You looked pretty sexy in that uniform.” I say.
***
***
David Best is mentioning something about jazz band
and Renae is hinting that she honestly thinks this is her last year with band.
“That’s a shame. You looked pretty sexy in that uniform.” I say.
Renae tells me that she hates that uniform. Best
tell her that she seems pretty qualifies at grappling the phallic contours of
her clarinet. He says it like Grover Renae is laughing hysterically again. It
is like we are not even together. David Best keeps making hi-pitched sounds imitating Grover from
Sesame street. Renae is laughing when in
the past she always considered his witticisms to be puerile at best. It is
almost impossible for David Hale to imbibe anything requiring a straw without
unapologetically making slurping sounds which coerce Renae to bat her eye and
shudder and pretend she doesn’t know the opposite side of the table.
I am irked.
Renae is my girlfriend. We haven’t kissed in a month.
David is making a joke again. Renae is laughing
hysterically. Patrick shoots me a look
with his eyebrows insinuating what’s up with Ol’ Boy Best always macking on
your girl?
Nonchalantly I try to float my arm around Renae’s
shoulder. Nonchalantly she moves forward at the same time.
David Best is doing an imitation of Grover playing
the French horn. Both Renae and Laura are falling down into stitches. I try to
make a comment about how if this were either track or cross country season I
wouldn’t be got dead sitting in the smoking section yet no one is paying attention. Everyone on my side of the table is laughing
at david Best caricatured of Sesame Street drones. Hale continues to slurp.
“We got to get going. My parents are going to be
arriving pretty soon.”
Renae has never met my parents. I am anxious to
think what my father will think about Renae.
I am wondering if he will think we are a couple or
if she is somehow dating David Best.
***
The fight somehow is his alone. They have toppled
one by one. Each blow seems to generate heralded waves of seismic activity
throughout the city. Skyscrapers swaying
back and forth as if Antennae. Glass triangles everywhere. Skyscrapers swaying
back and forth as if waving goodbye.
Superman is bleeding on the inside.
His organs are failing. He is walking around as if
he is drunk. He is stumbling. It is an
all out brawl.
His finance
is floating above in a clipping chariot. She is overhead wearing sexy European sunglasses
reporting. All the while his closest male friend is chronicling the demise in a
fusillade of snaps.
She does not realize that she is saying goodbye.
***
Patrick and Hale will be picked up by Mama Hale
later on. I am waiting for my ride. My parents will be picking us up.It is myself Best Laura and Renae outside of Hardees near the Montgomery-Ward entrance. I place Reae's bags I have been carrying down on the bench Laura is seated on.
It has been too long.
Without thinking I lift Renae up and begin to swing
her around.
The moment I enter her lips I am falling back,
swallowed, yanked inside. I am being masticated by her minty breath, Her eyes have already closed even when I am
lunar landing on her chin. I am
swallowed, The subtle pinch of her
tongue inside the welcome mat of my lips yanking me backward, I am skydiving
inside her flesh, inside of her, moonwalking down the interior of her neck, behind
her visible bra strap, somehow I moonwalking past every solitary moment I have
spent with Renae. We are inside Hammers
where I am surreptitiously endeavoring to squeeze her hand, we are
making out all over Westlake center, we cannot refrain from clanging into each
other, from pawing at each other’s flesh,
I am in her body and like her bedroom described to
me from incessant late-night phone conversation everything is pink and adorned
with Pesters of James Dean, Beverly Hills 90210, Black Crowes. She has
swallowed everything inside of me and I am watching myself ricocheting past the
calendar squares, running backwards, naked, around Madison park, holding her
late at night, my lower hemisphere of my torso shaped like an inverted Big Ben,
I want to hold her, I don’t want this to end.
We are pressed together, I am hearing her shout the
word Paddidle. I am seeing my reflection
days before Music Man when I am still enamored with Anastacia Blake and we are
in the pavilion of Glen Oak park that looks like a new age space craft and
Renae is wearing impenetrable thick sunglasses and Best keeps on mentioning her
bottom, I am seeing myself at the onset of just one semester ago floating, her
tongue reeling back, the fold of her eyes, like a letter waiting to be sent in
an envelope at the end of time.
Midway through our embrace I pick her up, I am twirling her
around. Somehow between the oscillated smudges I can see Superman fighting his
last battle. I see the chalky countenance of Doomsday, a villain with
absolutely no persona or emotions or reason to be vindictive towards to man of steel
thrashing his cement block hands into superman’s visage. Somehow I can see
Metropolis falling, buildings ablaze, SuperGirl transitioning into a listless
wad of stale scraped desk bottom gum, I
am twirling her like a siren and Superman is dying, he is losing everything
that is inside of him. He is toppling a part. He is giving himself up for
something greater. Occasionally he picks Doomsday up and pile drives him. He
has met the entity who matches him stroke for stoke.
Lois Lane is reporting. Even though she is a print
Journalist there are helicopters and there are news camera near. Jimmy Olson is
snapping pictures as if he is sexually excited with every click of the
camera. I am holding Renae. As I set her down I see Metropolis in ruins. I see a Olympic podium and Kim Zmeskal is on the top, bowing her head like the bald York runners receiving their medals last November after running in Detweiller park receiving the medal she earned but never received.
I hold Renae’s hand.
It is our last kiss. It is not hardcore make-out
session. There is no groping. There is little tongue.
Renae is all smiles.
She is beaming.
I tell Reane that I love her. Very very quickly. The
words I love you sound like an unpronounceable spelling word.
It sounds like a sneeze.
It is a New Year.
***
***
***
As I set Renae down David is looking the opposite
direction. He has both hands in his pocket. Laura is looking at her watch as I she
is calling out mile-split.
I go to kiss Reane again when Best points.
It is our ’86 mercury station wagon.
“Dave, I think your folks are here.”
***
It is beginning to snow. It is wet snow. Sugar snow.
Windshield-wiper forming a pair of albino rainbows like eyebrows on the front
glass of every vehicle snow.
It is a week and two days after Christmas. It gets
lights out dark at 4:30.
Mom inquires if us kids had a good time.
We have just kissed. It has not been a mad hatter
make-out session like it was the last time.
But we have just kissed.
Renae is polite. She calls my parents Mr and Mrs.
Von Behren. My Dad is not saying anything. David Best seems to be monopolizing the conversation with my parents much in the same fashion he was monopolizing the conversation with Debbie don’t-call-me-Miss Holiday when we first saw School Ties
We go down
Laramie almost to Trywyn park before taking a right. We drop Dave off and then wend our way into Bartonville.
I squeeze her hand. I am not letting go.
"It was nice meeting you Mr. and Mrs. Von Behren.”
"My mom can’t smile at Renae without tilting her
head. My father is acting like he is experiencing his first grade school crush."
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