Punk Like Me (10 page)

Just before we walked in, I spotted a bucketful of unusual ß owers—

sunß owers with pink petals and raspberry red centers. I called Kerry’s attention to them. “Hey, Kerr, check that out—that’s different—pretty too, huh?” I made my way to the entrance.

She stopped and looked. “Yeah, that is different. It’s cool.” She took the time to light a cigarette, just as I put my hand on the door.

“Shit, I just lit this. Here,” she dug into her jeans, “pick up a pack for me? I don’t want to put this out yet,” and she held out a green bill.

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PUNK LIKE ME

“Get yours, too.”

I reached out uncertainly. “You sure? I’ve got it.” She tucked the bill into my hand and folded my Þ ngers over it with her own. “Yeah, I’m sure. You would’ve got us off at the door, and I’ve been smoking yours, anyway.” She took a step back and waved at me. “Go on, shoo!” She smiled, so into the store I went.

As I made my way to the counter toward the left of the entrance, a low shelf to my right was Þ lled with even more ß owers, and here I found sunß owers with deep purple petals and velvety black centers.

Purple was Kerry’s favorite color, so I didn’t think twice. I grabbed a cellophane-wrapped bunch and took them to the counter. “Two packs of Marlboro and these.” I shoved the ß owers over to the difÞ dent clerk.

“You want paper for those?” He pointed to the ß owers.

“Yeah, sure. Thanks,” I responded. I realized then that I was actually going to give these ß owers to a girl, and not just any girl, but Kerry. My head started to feel a little tight, and I glanced through the glass of the door to see where Kerry was. I saw a ß ash of her leather-jacketed arm as she dragged on her cigarette. She seemed to be in conversation with someone, and from the expression on her face, she seemed a little frustrated. Maybe someone was hassling her about her hair or something.

I must have drifted off, because the clerk was annoyed with me.

“You pay cash now?” he was asking in an annoyed voice, and I shook myself out of my, well, I guess it was a daze.

I smiled ruefully to myself, I’d just caught myself acting like a loon, then looked at the clerk. “Yeah, man. Here,” and I pocketed Kerry’s money and handed him my own.

He slid the cigarettes and ß owers back over to me, and as I put the packs in an outside pocket of my coat, I wondered how I’d give Kerry the ß owers.

Now, a quick word about my coat. It was an oversized, single-breasted, wool men’s coat that I’d picked up for a whole two bucks at the Antique Boutique (on Broadway, not too far from Canal Jean—and two bucks, my friends, yo! Good deal!), and it had a pattern of teeny-tiny black and hunter green squares all over. A small rip had opened on one side, under the outside pocket, so I patched it up with a bright red ß annel square. Since in my high school, regulations required us to wear either a black or navy blue overcoat, I wore my coat openly and notoriously with pride and not a little touch of deÞ ance. I loved that

• 69 •

coat; it Þ t great, it looked cool, it had a million inside pockets, and it was very warm. It also, for some reason, pissed the gr’ups (grownups, that is) off—I don’t know why. I think my mom threw it out when I was really sick and stuck in bed for a few weeks, but that’s another story for another time.

I took the paper-wrapped bunch of ß owers in hand and a deep breath, squared my shoulders, and walked to the door. I couldn’t see Kerry through the glass as I tried to work out in my head what I’d say, and how I’d say it. Would I just hand the ß owers over to her with a shrug, like “no big deal,” or would I try to hide ’em behind my back and do some courtly type little ß ourish? Yeesh. That sounded really stupid.

No, wait, maybe that was sweet. Wait, no, hell no, that was fucking corny as all hell, forget that.

How to do this and still be cool, not cross too many lines, not lose face and still make it look good, still be sincere—that’s what I had to Þ gure out. I slid those purple ß owers into an inside pocket of that best buddy of a coat.

I made it to the door and swung it open. My eyes found Kerry leaning against the lamppost, one leg on the ground, one on the base, one hand jammed into a pocket of her leather, the other dangling on her thigh, cig hanging out of her mouth at that perfect angle. She’d taken her glasses off and put them away somewhere, and she watched me with wide, glowing eyes.

Standing in that universal tuff rebel slouch, in the gathering twilight under the glow of the streetlight, with the light catching and throwing shadows on and around her, she was the very picture of everything I thought cool and tuff and sweetly vulnerable could and should be, and I knew the way I should play this, while those cat green eyes of hers pulled me in. She tossed the butt she was smoking to the ground with negligent ease.

“Yo, Maggie!” I called out as I walked over, caught in that pull and taking one of the cigarette packs out of my pocket. I felt that familiar wiseass grin ease along my face and attitude come up and envelop me like a safe and warm cloak. “Catch!” and I tossed the cigarettes toward her.

The hand left her pocket to reach up and neatly pluck the box out of the air as I closed the distance between us. “Hey, Hopey, thanks.” She waved the pack at me, then slid them and her hand back into her pocket.

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PUNK LIKE ME

“
No problema
, girl,” I answered, and reached into my coat. “These looked like they were yours, so I couldn’t just leave them, could I?” and I grinned, holding the ß owers before me.

Kerry gasped softly as she looked at them and just as softly put her hand over mine, Þ ngertips warm from having been in her pocket and barely touching the back of my hand.

“They’re beautiful. Thanks, Hopey,” she barely whispered. “Um, I’ve got something for you, too,” and she slid her free hand behind her back, where she’d been carefully hiding and balancing a bunch of the pink and raspberry ß owers I’d admired when we Þ rst got here.

We smiled at each other, surprise, shyness, warmth, and wonder all mixed in our expressions, and as we stood there, under the streetlight, we leaned in toward one another until our foreheads touched, and we gave each other a one-armed hug. I closed my eyes and enjoyed the warmth of our bodies together and the texture of her skin against mine on my face. She felt so small against me and yet so solid and strong.

Why hadn’t I noticed that before?

After some unknown amount of time, I opened my eyes and found Kerry had opened hers, too. It was too close to maintain focus, though we tried for a moment or two. Then we burst out laughing and separated a bit, an arm still around one another’s waist, but no longer hugging.

“Oh, wait a sec…” I said, digging into my coat pocket with my free hand, “this is yours, too,” and I slid my arm around her again and put her money in her back pocket.

“Dude, is that the money I gave you?” She reached over to check. “Man, Hopey, what the fuck? Just let me do something nice, ya know?”

“Hey, it wasn’t much, ya know?” I replied, “but if you really, really want to, you can get pizza when we get back to town, ’kay?”

“Fine,” she huffed at me, and turned away to put her nose in the air, but she didn’t really mean it and turned around to smile at me again.

“You really are something, you know?” She squeezed my waist tightly and tucked her head into my shoulder.

“Yeah.” I squeezed back. “That’s what my mom keeps telling me.”

“Oh my God! Your mom!” she exclaimed. “We’ve got to go now!

We’re gonna be late!”

Holy shit! She was right. No wonder it was so dark out; it was four fucking thirty, and almost no way we would make it to the boat

• 71 •

on time.

“C’mon, this way,” and when Kerry grabbed my hand, we started running to the train station, one of the letter trains (the A, the C
,
there’s a whole slew of the them, not including the N and R, which are just different lines altogether and ones I was already very familiar with), and to this day, I don’t know where we were or what train we took, but we managed to get one just before it pulled out of the station.

This time, instead of sitting across from each other and talking, we sat next to one another, and we nodded off, her head on my shoulder, my head cushioned on her hair. An announcement came over what passes for the public address system on the subway, a system that manages to take any language and make it sound like it was spoken by a stroke victim, and woke us up. We couldn’t make out too much except that the train wouldn’t be making any stops below Fulton Street, which was a bit far from where we had to go. If we made the boat, it would be by the skin of our teeth.

“Okay, I know where we are—we get off at the next stop,” Kerry announced with conÞ dence, “and then I know a bit of a shortcut.”

“Lead on, MacDuff,” I responded, and we stood up to stretch out the kinks and get ready to go. Kerry picked my ß owers up off the seat.

“For you, madam.” She presented and bowed with a little ß ourish, and I returned the favor with hers. “And these are for you, m’lady.” We shared a smile. Then I put the ß owers into a huge inside pocket, and she slipped hers into her jacket, and with that, our stop came up.

As we walked up the steps and came out of the station, I looked up at the street signs and realized where we were. Then I noticed a couple of shady-looking guys wearing scruffy jackets and attitudes loitering around the entrance. Two of them had bicycles, and they all wore bike chains crossed over their chests and shoulders like bandoliers, but we ignored them and just kept talking and joking.

We crossed the street and stopped brieß y to look at the time. What a break. We had Þ fteen minutes to make the boat, and it was only a ten-minute walk, maybe less, since there were no people downtown.

The area was completely abandoned because this was the heart of the business district and the stock market wasn’t in session.

“Hey, dyke!” one of the guys from across the street yelled. Kerry and I looked at each other, like “who the fuck is he talking to?” and kept walking.

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PUNK LIKE ME

“Yo, bo dagger! I mean you!” the voice continued. I stopped and turned around with a raised eyebrow. What the fuck was this guy talking about? Who the fuck did he think he was talking to?

He was starting to make his way across the street, and the guys he’d been with had grouped together to watch him and us. “Not you, gorgeous.” The creep nodded at me with his chin. “I mean her,” and he pointed at Kerry. He started to hurry his steps. “We’ll Þ x her so she’s Þ t to be a friend for a pretty girl,” he continued, and waved his friends over. He picked up his pace, and his friends started jogging across.

Kerry was frozen in shock and fear, but I whirled and grabbed her hand. “Run, Kerry! Come on!” And I dragged her with me, hardly feeling a thing as we went ß ying down a side street to Nassau Street.

I could hear the feet pounding behind us and the sounds of chains slamming into light poles as they chased us. At one point, I heard the sound of smashing glass. I didn’t look back to see if it was one of the rare parked cars or a storefront. Now that I really knew where I was, I ducked up past the Federal Reserve Building (it’s a landmark—

you’ll Þ nd that on most maps), and then I cut across a building plaza.

Still leading Kerry by the hand, I zipped down an alley and up another side street to Broadway, only two blocks away from the ferry.

I don’t know when exactly we stopped hearing the pounding, the yelling, and the chains behind us, but honestly, between the fear and the fact that I ran on the varsity cross-country team (and I was on the swim team, and I smoke, so there), I wasn’t too surprised that we’d been able to lose them.

We stopped to catch our breath, and Kerry pulled out her new cigarette pack, took one for herself, then handed it to me. “Take one,” she panted at me, so I did, and lit it.

We each took a deep drag of our respective butts, looked at each other, then stared at the ferry terminal. I suspect for all the cool that Kerry could be, she was no less relieved than I was to see it.

“I’m gonna get us some dogs and some Cokes, ’kay?” Kerry asked as we walked toward the vendor by the ferry entrance.

I slowly exhaled my cigarette and nodded a bit absently in agreement. “That’d be great, thanks.”

She got the hot dogs, two each, and made sure I had one plain and one with mustard and sauerkraut, and a bottle of Coke to share.

• 73 •

We sat down on the curb where the cars load and unload from the boat, not saying much to one another, just eating our hot dogs and gathering our wits, I guess. It wasn’t long before the boat arrived, and we ambled on with the other dozen or so passengers that had also been waiting outside. In no time at all, we found a bench to share and quickly claimed our territory, stretching our legs out on the bench across from us. As we settled in, Kerry cracked open the cap on the plastic soda bottle, took a long pull on the neck, and mutely held it out to me in invitation.

Now here’s a funny thing. Neither Kerry nor I ever shared drinks with anyone (well, I shared with my siblings or parents, but that’s different), not even with each other, really. It seemed everyone in our neighborhood we’d ever known had had it pounded into our collective consciousness about germs and the backwash thing.

Backwash, you ask? Whatinthehell is backwash?

Backwash is gross. It’s when you release the suction on your drink and it ß ows back down, taking some saliva with it. By the time you get to the very end of a drink, unless you’re a one-gulper, a “woofer” (you

“woof” the drink down—usually milk or chocolate milk) or a “chugger” (“chug” beer—and end up like Yack), it’s pretty much a Þ fty-Þ fty drink and saliva mix down there at the bottom.

This is totally beyond yuck when you think about it. This is what was taught in every single junior high school health class on Staten Island, along with very vague venereal disease warnings (something to do with the teacher’s dog when she was in heat—I didn’t get it) and different classiÞ cations of neurosis/psychosis (I love you, I hate you, I want to be you, I am you, you are me—what’s my name again?).