Creamy Bullets (17 page)

Close Your Eyes

A
t night, she grabs a pair of binoculars and looks out her upstairs window. She sees a boy, not far away, taking his clothes off in a blue bedroom. She holds her breath and watches for a minute. When the boy pulls down on his underwear, she looks away. Then she puts on a worn-out leather jacket and goes for a walk around the neighborhood.

She walks by the boy’s house and wonders if she may see something that the boy owns or plays with. A ball or possibly a bike, (if he’s old enough maybe a car). She sees a toy gun and imagines him holding it. She is close enough to breathe on it. She can feel its presence in her field of vision. She puts her hands in her pockets and whistles. She is alarmed by how loud it sounds.

From here, she walks to the grocery store to buy something sweet (candy bars are cheap). She smiles at the clerk and thinks of the boy undressing in the window. When the clerk says “Thank you”, she says “Window”.

She goes back home and looks out the window again. She sees the boy’s feet at the foot of his bed and some dirty underwear nearby. Socks can also be seen; they look pink or red. She can tell that the boy has walked around the house for quite a while before taking them off. They are filthy. She closes her eyes and swallows her sweet treat. She keeps swallowing and breathing heavier.

Next, she has in her hand the top of a spray paint can. It is a red plastic lid. She wiggles it between her legs and manages to hold it tightly inside of her. The man who picks up her recyclable plastic on Monday morning is positioned over her. They struggle for a minute until he has his wide penis stuffed full inside the lid. She points to her mouth but doesn’t say a word. He stands up and quietly puts his pants on. Then, she wakes up.

She laughs at herself, and then goes about her day.

In the afternoon paper she reads a story about two missing women (thought dead in the snowy mountains) being discovered alive in a cave after seven days. There is a picture of them drinking juice on plastic chairs in a hospital somewhere. She wonders if they had sex with each other as they waited to die in the cave. It was two men who found the women. Their names are Joe and Larry; she doesn’t bother to picture what they look like. Wondering about women seems so much easier than wondering about men. “Men are predictable,” she says to herself. She talks to herself while reading the paper often.

She folds the newspaper up and takes a cup of tea out to the front porch. She sits and watches six teen-agers across the street playing basketball. She quickly notices that one of them is the boy she saw partially undress the night before. She watches only him, and after a few minutes pass, he seems to notice this and starts moving like someone who is self-conscious of being watched. She hears two of the boys talking but the one she watches does not say anything while they discuss a girl at school.

“How was Rachel last night? You get any?”

“Shit, boy. You know I did. I busted her last year when we were playing Truth-or-Dare at Jenny’s house.”

“Oh man, Jenny’s one I’d like to jump on. She’s got that big ass and stuff.”

“Those big lips have gotta be good for more than just playing flute.”

She sees the boy smile in a clumsy uncomfortable way because of this comment. Then she realizes that the boy is smiling at her. She averts her eyes and then looks back to see that the boy is looking at the roof of her house, as if trying to find the window.

That night she watches again as the boy walks around his blue room looking for something, or so it seems. He leaves her view for a few minutes and then returns to be seen in the window frame. He has a suitcase that he is packing.

She watches with the upstairs lights turned off and a bowl of salad at her side. The binoculars are around her neck and used only to see random details. She watches for so long on this night that she actually stops a few times to pull the phone nearby and call friends. The boy slowly packs the suitcase with all his clothes still on. She talks into the telephone about books, politics, and a brother who is a doctor.

The boy is staying up late. But around three o’ clock in the morning he finally begins to undress. She sees through the binoculars that his belly button sticks out like a balloon knot, but his chest is near perfect in a lifeguard kind of way. She guesses that he is sixteen and maybe started lifting weights at fifteen. He drinks milk, she notices. He does not remove his underwear tonight, but instead he again starts moving about as if he knows he is being watched. After fidgeting with a Velcro wallet and an alarm clock he gets in bed and the lights go out.

She watches TV for an hour and tries to masturbate while watching a TV movie, but does not find it as easy as usual. She falls asleep on the couch at 4:20.

At 9:00 that morning she is awaken by the telephone.

“I don’t want you watching me anymore,” a man on the line says.

After a moment of shocked silence she says: “Who is this?”

“I’m running away. I’ve got other things I can do. Another place to live. I’m not just a freak all the time. You know that, don’t you?” The voice sounds younger as he talks. It starts to shake at the end of the sentences.

She sits up and turns the TV off. “Do you live on 17th street?” she asks.

“Right next to you. You watched us playing basketball yesterday.”

“I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have been doing that, in the window I mean.”

“I have to tell you something about those boys you saw me with. They don’t like you. I have to come over and tell you some things. Like, they’ve done stuff to me.” The boy’s voice is clipped and tough.

When she wakes up again, it is 11:45 and the boy has not come over to talk as he said he would. She wonders if it was really him on the phone. That day, she goes to a bagel shop and writes letters, then goes to a record store and allows herself to buy two cassettes. When she comes home at 7:00, there is no sign that the boy has been there. There is a notepad that she has taped to the front door but no messages have been left.

At 3:00 in the morning, she is awakened by the doorbell. It rings two times before she realizes she is not dreaming this. She gets up and is putting on clothes as the doorbell rings a third time, and then the sound of someone kicking the door. She goes downstairs and looks through the window by the front door but nobody is there. She goes to her kitchen and looks out the side window and sees the boy quietly climbing onto the roof of his house. She wants to say something to him but is still unsure if it was really him that called her the day before. She goes back upstairs preparing to say something to him through the window, but when she gets there he is already in his room.

His bedroom is lighted by one candle. He moves slowly and catlike around the room, stuffing some things into a backpack. She watches, as always, in the dark. He sheds the clothes from his small, tight body. This time he is wearing girls’ underwear. She does not look away. He pulls down on the elastic and his cock tumbles out, looking bigger than it should on his young body. She grabs her binoculars to see closer. His ass fills the magnified scope. His naked body turns twice as he looks for something in his room (his hands are opened in confused gesture). He leaves her view for a second before returning with a chair. He sits naked in the chair, and faces, as if staring, toward her with his legs crossed. She feels warm and sad inside, like a best friend is telling her a deep secret.

There is no movement between them for several minutes. He cannot see her until she reaches above her and pulls a string. Now she is lighted and he sees her wearing a loose t-shirt and boxer shorts, sitting on her wooden floor. He looks down and uncrosses his legs. His cock hangs down, long and half-hard. She focuses her binoculars on a small pinkish-blue vagina, also between his legs.

The light in his room flickers dimmer, and fades to nothing.

In the morning, a police car is parked in front of her house. A policewoman is talking to her neighbors, who appear to be distressed about something. When she steps outside to get the newspaper another policewoman asks her if she’s seen her neighbor, the young boy, who hasn’t been home since the previous morning, they say. She tells them no, but is nervous and goes back inside.

The window shades are closed and she sits in her rocking chair watching the silhouettes of the police and neighbors on the sidewalk. They motion toward the other boys’ houses across the street. They point at his bedroom window on the side of the house. Once they leave, she remains in the rocking chair, thinking about the boy, with the newspaper in her lap.

In the Metro section of the paper, she reads an article about a dog who was run over by its own master. There is a photograph of the car.

When the day turns to night, she looks out the window, the action now a habit. It is still dark. She decides to walk to the store. At the store she buys ketchup, a steak knife, and a cheap magazine with a picture of a comedian on it. The man at the cash register does not say Thank You.

Outside the store, a tall pimply boy from her street asks her to buy beer for him and his friends. She turns around and sees four boys sitting in a big car. She remembers watching them play basketball the other day. The pimply boy holds out a twenty dollar bill. He is sweating badly. She looks at the other boys. They, too, seem sweaty. One of them opens a car door. The sound is loud in the empty, litter-strewn parking lot. The pimply boy seems to pull his hand back and step toward her aggressively. She hears the sound of boots stepping onto pavement. She clutches her bag tightly, almost cutting her hand on the knife inside. “You can keep the change,” the pimply boy says quietly out of the side of his mouth. The twenty drops out of his fingers and onto the ground. She looks at the boys in the car. They are smiling now.

“You want to go drink with us?” asks the boy wearing boots. Someone in the car is laughing. She grabs the money off the ground and gives it back to the pimply boy, who seems to be standing too close to her.

“I don’t have my license with me,” she says, “otherwise I would.” The booted boy begins to kick the side of the car.

“We’ll give you a drive home so you can get your license,” says the boy in the driver’s seat. She notices that he is wearing sunglasses. The boy in the passenger seat also has dark glasses and a stocking cap pulled tight over his head.

“I have to go,” she says, but the sound of three car doors opening overtake her words. She runs around the corner of the building and flees down a wide alley. Dogs begin to bark when she knocks over a garbage can full of glass. The palm of her hand bleeds. She hides behind someone’s wooden fence, in a dark backyard. The boys can be heard, calling out to her from the alley’s edge. One of them is throwing rocks, hitting cars. She waits for silence, and then starts back down the alley in the direction of her house.

The moon is half-full and casts a pale glow at the end of the alley. As she gets closer she sees a wooden chair by her fence. It is empty; but also nearby is a package of some sort. When she gets closer she sees that it is a sleeping bag. It is zipped up, and there is something inside it. She kicks it lightly with her foot. Then, bending down, she starts to unzip it.

When she sees the head seemingly lunge toward her, she almost screams. It is the neighbor boy inside the bag. She pulls back the flap and sees that the body is twitching and the boy’s mouth is searching for air, opening and closing like teeth chattering. “What—” she says quietly, but stops short, too scared to make a sound. His arms grab weakly, blindly, at her arms. She starts to pull him up, out of the sleeping bag, but drops him suddenly. Her legs are like liquid, now that she sees the blood between his legs. He has been cut and she notices dark blue pieces of skin where his penis had been. The vagina is more red and swollen than when she saw it before.

She falls to her knees and holds the boy close. She hears his breathing. Or maybe it’s the night breeze playing with her ear. His touch is cold and still. Her face is against his. Their lips, tongues, teeth. Their blood.

“Close your eyes,” she says. She closes his eyes. “Just go,” she says. Her fingers in his mouth. “Don’t—”…She looks at his house and up at his window, all of it dark. Music is heard all of a sudden, slowly increasing in volume. She looks down the alley, but it’s still dark. His mouth falls open and his tongue stretches out of it. She presses her mouth against the tongue, sucks it between her teeth. She bites on the tough outer skin. She feels her teeth meet, the boy’s tongue filling her mouth. Then it all comes loose.

Dirtclod Season

–
ON ENEMIES
–

“I’ll make your life hell! Now give me $75!”

I obviously had no choice, so I gave Dee the $75. She was leaving me for someone else and had decided to hate my guts. She knew where I lived and knew I had a reputation for being considerate.

“If you don’t give me $75, I won’t give back the keys to your apartment,” she demanded. I pulled out my wallet.

“I don’t want to see you again,” she said, shaking the money in my face. “I don’t need you anymore.”

For the next week I stayed in bed and cried. I stared at the ceiling and let the tears roll down into my ears. I wept so much I got an ear infection.

–
ON AMAZON WOMEN
–

I was going out with a girl who was three inches taller than me. The week before I started dating her, I stood behind her at a rock concert. She was wearing a camisole and a short lacy skirt and I stared at her exquisite brown shoulders all night, wanting to grab her and bite her like a vampire. Later that night she pinned me against a cigarette machine and gave me her phone number. Her name was Montana.

Our first date was at her work. She worked the graveyard shift alone at a video dubbing company. She told me about her impulsive freewheeling life style and her alternative rock band that played at Jewish weddings, bar mitzvahs and benefits for local politicians.

I helped her load 200 machines full of videotapes and by that time we were ready for intimacy. She showed me a spacious control room with nice carpet where we laid down together. “We have 38 minutes before this tape is done,” she warned me.

During oral sex, it became apparent to me that she was very hard to please. She was very specific on where to position my mouth and it usually took a good 20 minutes of steady rhythm to bring her to climax. My jaw often felt sore or broken the next morning.

–
ON BEING PAID TO DRINK
–

I visited Montana many nights when she worked. Some nights we spent time in the darkened control room and other nights we went to a bar down the street where we watched the minutes tick by and drank bottles of beer. When we played pool I could see the competitiveness and pride pulsing through her body. She’d walk with a toughened stride.

All the men in the bar would look at her and feel her presence in the room. She was too beautiful, too loud, too tall. I wondered how many people shook their dizzy heads whenever I would slap her ass playfully. We’d plug the jukebox full of 80’s hits and leave the bar whenever it was time to go back to change video tapes.

At first I was worried that she would get caught taking these little beer breaks but she told me, “Don’t worry about it. Everybody else is sleeping.”

–
ON MEMORY
–

I often told myself: I could really use that $75 right now. I knew that Dee was seeing someone else and that she probably hustled him for money too. I thought about all the times she swindled money from my wallet, mostly for drugs or Taco Bell. She had a thing for junk, in all its various guises.

The fact that I left a rewarding 5-year relationship with my previous girlfriend to pursue something with Dee makes the memories even more baffling. My penis had sabotaged my life.

Easily the most inconsiderate girlfriend I ever had, I felt the repercussions of Dee even after I began seeing Montana. I realized that she had even infected my brain with evil thoughts and unneeded images of her past, which she candidly and brutally told me about. Unspeakable things about various diseases that she had carried and her sexual escapades with gutter punks.

At the height of my despair, just before I went to the doctor for my ear infection, I ran into a busy street and rolled over the top of a new Lexus. Somehow I managed to walk away from that incident with a scrape on my right hand and my emotional state more dead than ever. Some times I lashed out at Montana for no good reason and I couldn’t understand why. Then she’d get pissed at me and go down to the bar without me.

The worst thing that Dee ever said to me was: “I don’t really care what you do or think.”

–
ON MY REASONS
–

I thought it was important for Montana to know about the short turbulent relationship I shared with Dee. It was always hard for me to tell the story without making it sound like I was bitter or like Dee was a spoiled unreasonable bitch. I was, and she was. Some times Montana had a hard time believing some of my stories about Dee. She’d look angry, shocked, or jealous. I’d want to throw up my hands and just say, “Everyone’s guilty.”

“It sounds like a soap opera,” she’d say, chewing on nachos and slurping beer.

–
ON FIGHTING
–

I’ve been in one fight during my lifetime. It was when I was in fifth grade and the only thing I remember was my sister whispering in my ear to “get him in the nuts” or something to that effect. The fight was soon over and we walked home.

I don’t remember my sister ever getting in a fight, but if she did I wouldn’t know what to tell her, seeing as her opponent would probably be lacking “nuts.”

Girl fights in general, however, are often much more exciting than guy fights. With guys it’s like their limbs are all wound up and when they start wailing away it’s like a cartoon or something; just a cloud of dust and Bam! and Pow! Girls usually move a little slower so the action is easier to analyze. Whoever coined the term “cat fight” is not being realistic. Cats are also like cartoons, rolling around in a ball of hyper slashes and hisses. Girls fight more like elk, locking horns and swaying, rarely falling to the ground. You’ll see an occasional swing but those are often thrown in an apish windmill style that is easy to see coming.

–
ON IDEAS OF REVENGE
–

One night while I was out with Montana, in the midst of my forced smiles, stiff drinks and sloppy pool shooting I came up with a brilliant idea. An idea that would make new memories; ones that would replace the ugly ones; ones that would make me sleep easier at night knowing that I was with the right person and I deserved to be happy.

I told Montana that the whole idea relied on her participation. “Let’s go over to Dee’s house so you can kick her ass in her front yard,” I said.

Montana looked at me over her drink and said, “That’s a good idea.” We had another drink for luck before driving over to Dee’s. We drove in silence for a moment before Montana asked how we were going to start it.

“I thought you would just call her out and tell her who you are. I’m sure you won’t need my help.” I had thought of this beforehand and realized it was a pretty even match, both girls being psychotic and hyper. Two separate incidents helped me foresee the outcome: Dee had once been kicked out of a bar for taking her shirt off and dancing on a pool table. Montana had once been kicked out of the same place for standing on the bar and kicking a guy’s beer across the room.

“What’s in this for me?” she asked as we pulled over in front of the house.

“A never-ending legend, street credibility, a fearful sense of respect from others, renewed faith in your fists, and possibly $75.”

Her eyes lit up a little at the $75 part and then she began muttering, “Spoiled brat bitch, stripper slut coke whore…”

–
ON ACTIONS, REACTIONS, OUTCOMES
–

We got out of the car and the porch light came on. It was one o’clock in the morning and the only sound in the neighborhood was the clicking of several sprinklers. I never understood how Dee and her older sister could afford rent on a house in a nice neighborhood.

Before we got to the door, it creaked open and Dee stepped out in pajama bottoms and a t-shirt. She looked at Montana and then saw me standing by the car. Montana stepped forward and hit her in the face with a hard fist. Dee stumbled back before catching herself on the doorknob. Montana grabbed her other arm and tried swinging her into the front yard. Dee reached up and grabbed a handful of Montana’s hair, but since Montana was a good six inches taller than her she quickly jabbed Dee in the ribs and loosened her grasp. Montana stepped back and flung her fist again, but this time only connected with Dee’s shoulder and neck.

As Montana was rearing back to deliver a kick, her older sister came out on the porch and told us that she had called the police. Montana backed away and came back over to the car.

We sped away and drove a few blocks before the car started sputtering and broke down. We parked it in a hospital parking lot and decided to walk the remaining couple of miles. I felt like shouting loudly but Montana still seemed kind of tense. I picked various flowers for her along the sidewalk and began making a bouquet. “It seems like you hate both of us,” she finally said. “Why would you make me do that?”

“I don’t know,” I said, stopping to think. “I guess love makes you do crazy things.”

She shook her head. “You don’t love me,” she said.

“You’re right,” I said. “But who knows.” I handed her the makeshift flower arrangement.

“You don’t know. You don’t know shit,” she said. “Somebody else loved you and then hurt you and now you’ll always want revenge. At least until you decide to deal with it another way.” She looked at the flowers, an effortless gift, stolen sentiment. She dropped them and walked ahead of me.

I knew then that this relationship was all but over. I had plenty of things to think about and fix with myself. I tried to think of things that would give my life balance, a clear clean vision. I knew I couldn’t dwell on the past and create enemies out of assumptions. I saw a row of tall sunflowers and I leaned over the fence to pull one out of the ground. I saw Montana walking away and I wanted to tell her that I was sorry, that I admired her for what she did.

I ran to catch up and stopped a good distance from her. “Hey Montana,” I called to her. She turned around and I pitched the flower toward her like a softball. She took a step toward me, not seeing clearly in the dark. That is when the roots and the clump of dirt clustered to them flew into her surprised face.

“Why did you do that?” she asked. I stood there like an idiot. My enthusiasm was being turned on and off all night. I was worn out. “WHY DID YOU DO THAT!” she yelled. A few porch lights came on and I could sense that people were watching us through their windows, angry and sleepy. “Why did you—” She stopped herself and began quickly walking away from me. I turned around and decided to go back to my car, broken down in the hospital lot. I would sleep in the backseat until something woke me up.

All the porch lights switched back off. I looked for the moon but couldn’t find it. I was in the dark, alone.