In the dream, I had butt sex with a thousand bejeweled men at once. A ringtone woke me.
“Hi, Loren,” I answered.
“I can’t do this. Can you fetch me?”
I looked at my cell phone. “We just got home,” I said. Dawn had broken.
“I’ll kill myself, Noy, I swear.”
“OK, hold your horse face. I’ll come.”
I closed the phone; put it to rest with crumpled cash on the nightstand. Here was a framed picture of me, dour, in a Class-A uniform. Next to that, you could see a photo of me and my brother Philip—in robes and beads, our heads and brows shaved—as we held Dad’s portrait at his wake in the Buddhist temple in Stockton. You could also see a shot of me and some friends in tank-tops just before a night in the city, “I dream of boys” engraved on the gilt frame.
I stepped over a motherboard processor. Parts had been in my room for months. At no charge, I’d offered to build a computer for Philip’s office.
Today—was it really Wednesday?—I felt sick. The bangs of my black high-fade were blonde; my eyes rounder, nose more pug than people thought were Thai. In fact, given these features—and the big cheekbones and the tan skin—ignorant folks would sometimes confuse me for Spanish. Exotic.
Which made me think about old ways. Five years back, I had rented a place in the Tenderloin in San Francisco, powerlifting at 24-Hour Fitness for nights on end, kicking up sleep on the boulevard, snubbing some of the moths at Club Universe then doing them at home, hosting porn stars for lunch, taking the MUNI to work at Prudential with a Guess tweaker bag. Cocked head, pierced ear. Useful and bright to clients on the East Coast—I never screened calls—diva to friends on the West. A half-smile on a free gaze.
Now, in the spotted mirror in a master bath in Sacramento, I was nude, and tired; the pink jellybeans on my arms rubbed raw, the bags below my eyes maps of war. Atrophic scars haloed the socket on my right arm. My skin glowed.
In $80 jeans and a striped polo, I tapped on the bedroom door across from my own. In a flash, Philip appeared: straight as a gate, shirtless, tall. His abs gleamed. On the Chinese rug behind him, pillows and file boxes fell against a suit rack on wheels. Blocked by the door was a four-poster. Somebody’s stick legs moved the purple sheets.
“Loren’s threatening to kill himself again.”
Philip grunted.
“Hal said he might drop by and sign the deed.” I reached into my back pocket. “I can get lunch?”
“The pork bowl.”
“Siam King?” I asked.
“And beer.” Philip rubbed his cheek. $20 appeared. “Where you going.”
“I worked over last week, remember?”
“Boy.”
I looked away.
“This,” I said, “is not a living wage, Philip. You throw a couple bucks on the floor when it suits you. What about getting back on my feet? I’m entitled to half the realty, you know that.”
“I raised you.”
“What?”
“E hamen.”
“I raised myself. You maxed out the credit cards you opened in my name. When people say you’re evil, Philip, why am I always defending you? I could get you thrown into the slammer, man. One call to the IRS—”
He pinned me to the wall. The orange peel on the ceiling dimmed. Undoing his grip and returning to the room, his back had come to life. The tattoo there had been as liquid: a free-hanging lantern shining from an open thatch haus, the stream of light turning into notes of music and Sanskrit. Green and red, they flecked the Bodhi trees, the lily ponds with short walkways. Crags clouded.
The 20 was on the carpet. The day was hot—get up—and Loren waited. At least I owned that.
There was little to do now but leave. And hug the moon.
*
My dirty Lexus squealed all the way to Rio Linda, a trash-aggie hood just north of downtown Sacramento.
On a spacious lot, hedged in by weeds the color of hay and the size of corn, Loren’s grandmother Bo lived in a brick brown shoebox with a septic tank. She had boarded up the window on the dinette. Across the unpaved road, Aunt Bright and Uncle Frank stayed in a 1966 Northwest Coach with a horse trailer. They were outside, sunning and passing a bong in the baby air pool.
I rushed through Bo’s open front door. Whistling Betty Boop in a cord pantsuit, she was searching for a broom. On the couch, smiling, Loren ate Flaming Hot Cheetos. He waved a vial of Z at me. I took a shot, then showered for five minutes.
Through the side of the shower curtain, Loren stuck his fingers in, pretending to grab me.
“Doris wants to hang,” he said. Doris was Loren’s dealer.
“’k.”
I dressed, then we took off, popping breath-mints in the car. Ringing a desk bell, Aunt Bright cheered as we sped away. “Hey jail!”
Minutes later, we had parked in front of a second-story studio apartment. It was really a Victorian attic. Leaping down the stairs outside, Loren shook his head; I started the engine.
A white Cutlass Supreme pulled up behind us—spangled rims—tinted glass. Doris, real name Horace.
Tall, sporting a shoulder-length weave, skinny jeans, and a sweat-stained wife-beater, Doris exited the Cutlass and bounced over to us.
Loren and I got out.
Surveying the street, Doris fist-bumped Loren then ran to the apartment and back.
This time Doris had a garbage bag and, opening the trunk on the Cutlass, shooed us inside his car. Loren fussed.
“I’ll drive,” Doris said. “Hold your horse face.”
“You hold your horse face,” Loren said.
I entered the backseat from the other side (Red Bulls were on the seat curbside). I zipped my fly. Mama bad habit. Better trap it.
“Hold this, dear.” Doris was the last inside the car.
In the front passenger seat, Loren peered into the bag. He chirped.
Going I knew not where, Doris ran several red lights before I saw the emergency blinker flash.
“There’s a station nearby.” Doris banged his head to the Steppenwolf song on the radio. The next song was Nilsson’s “Daybreak.”
“Not fuel,” I said. “The blinker.”
“Oh.” Doris covered his mouth to laugh. His teeth brambled. “Ha-ha. You got any batteries?”
“Nope,” Loren said.
We parked in front of Strawberry Manor, a South Sac apartment complex. Doris was the last to exit.
He opened the trunk, moved blankets around. There was a police officer there: hands and legs cuffed, wearing lipstick for eyeliner, his mouth taped. As Doris shut the trunk, the cop arched his back and winked at me. Clipping the fanny pack in which he had put the cop’s Glock 22, Doris struck a Vogue pose.
“Hot mess,” he said.
“A sundae on a Saturday afternoon?” Loren asked.
“Ha-ha. Def.”
“It’s not even Saturday,” I said.
By the iron-grill gate to the building, Doris poked a number on the call box.
“I hope it’s you, freak,” a voice on the intercom said.
“I got my goodies,” Doris said, wigging out.
When the gate groaned to let us in, I froze. On the corner opposite, a kid with a green Mohawk glared at me—white tee, serrated slacks, Asian. From the handles of his bike, milk jugs swung.
“Sketchy Jeff is cool,” Doris said. “Too cool.”
“Ma’am sir?” Loren held the gate for me. “After you.”
Three stories high, the Manor was a brown dog, a ‘60s walk-up with a pool court. Management had chained chairs to the aluminum fence. The pool stank of fluorine. Each floor ran in a square and the only way up or down was to use concrete stairs that joined the corners of the building. The units themselves lacked private entrances.
Climbing to the top landing, I heard parrots. An Impala jagged the street. From where I stood, I could see a girl in the backseat scream for help.
Doris rapped the door to apartment number nine. A teenager, a Latino waif, opened it.
Aside from the pinewood kitchen, the place was off-white—carpets, walls, closed curtains. The occupants had kept the place simple: a glass table, a bald nude mannequin, a leather recliner, and an HDTV entertainment center that played muted porn to Steely Dan’s Gaucho. The boy who had greeted us sat on another boy’s lap. Glued there, neither of them spoke. They were as twins, hearing only the man in the kitchen. The man clucked: a pedicured, red-bearded stick of gum in wraparound shades and a UPS driver’s outfit.
“Don’t worry,” he said. “They’ve had their tongues taken out.”
Doris gave Loren the fanny pack. They were in the kitchen. “Jeff, say hello to Loren, and what’s your name?”
“Ted,” I said, mere feet from the door. “Nice to meet you, Jeff.”
“Pleasure’s mine,” he said. “Well, you can wear your shoes in the house. I don’t mind.”
I inched closer to the younglings and sat cross-legged on the carpet.
“As for you”—Jeff faux-hugged Doris—“stop acting like you’ve been my goddamned Santa Claus for the last two and a half fucking years.”
He jabbed Doris in the windpipe.
“This,” Jeff said, “this is good.”
Cupping his neck, Doris wheezed from the floor.
“I got you,” he said.
The boys on the recliner perked.
“No, homie,” Jeff said, “you don’t get me. Last night was rat shit.”
Wiping his jeans, Doris stood.
“See, I know when you slag off,” Jeff said. “I know when you fart in the house. I know all about you. The guys who empty my trash? They’re pissed. Their handlers are mad. Why’d you want to spoil that? We do each other nice.”
“I—”
“It’s time to play spot the loony,” Jeff said in a high cockney voice. He searched our faces. “Drink? No drink?
“Well,” he said, “help yourself to what’s in the fridge. Rum’s in the freezer.” He opened it for Loren and Doris. “Let’s you and your friend go into the master. I have some baseball cards I want to show you. Topps.”
“Wait,” Doris said, “my phone’s in the car.”
He split.
I stared at the front door.
Behind the kitchen, Jeff and Loren retired to the bedroom, closing the door after them.
Cheek to cheek, the boys on the recliner watched me.
I jumped to the fridge: a box of Girl Scout thin mints, a quart of OJ. In the freezer was a bottle of Captain Morgan and a chocolate Elvis head.
Firing a gun with skinned feet, Loren ran backwards from the bedroom.
In seconds flat, the boys drop-kicked him.
From beneath the sink, I took a can of WD-40 and crawled for a visual of the living room.
On all fours, the lad who had let us in earlier grabbed my hair.
In the eye, up one nostril, I sprayed him with the WD-40.
Standing, having kneed Loren in the balls, the other boy cocked the Glock at me.
With a one-arm push-up, I hurled the can at his face. The child collapsed.
Loren and I stood. We looked at each other.
We used Doris’s trash bag to wipe the gun and the knob on the bedroom door. I also used the bag to wipe our prints in the kitchen.
“Get the head from the freezer.”
“The Elvis head?” I asked.
“C’mon.” Loren snapped his fingers.
Bagging my hand, I opened the freezer. I put the chocolate head in the bag, gave it to Loren. Holding it from the bottom, he bagged his hand. He opened the front door.
I kicked the WD-40 past the railing into the pool.
In front of the complex, we saw that Doris’s car was gone.
For eight blocks we ran, cleaving to trees when short of breath, slowing for the odd person.
At a pair of train tracks hid by oleanders, we stopped. Through the bushes, on the other side of the tracks, a 7-Eleven chimed. We waited.
“It’s going to melt,” Loren said.
“And what’s so important about it?”
“Just calm the fuck down,” he said. “You won’t even believe what we got away with.”
We waited.
“OK, we,” Loren said, thumbing toward the 7-11, “are going to the store to get some ice and an ice chest. Can Matt pick us up?”
“Yeah,” I said. A committed bachelor with a taste for twinks, Matt taught U.S. History at Folsom High. Usually, he could bail me out in a jiffy. “I’ll call him now.”
“OK. Let’s go.”
Holding the bag with the head in it, Loren shopped.
In front of the store, I dialed my sister. The call went straight to voicemail.
I looked through the reflecting storefront. Loren’s eyes met mine.
Behind me, pinching his nose, was the cop from Doris’s trunk. He thrust a revolver against my back. “In you go.”
Raising my hands, I got into the back of his black and white cruiser.
He drove us to an empty industrial parking lot.
Shutting the vehicle off, he opened the trunk, then the backseat. He drew a slit-nosed hood over my face and knotted the neck. Hand to elbow, he walked me to the trunk and cuffed me. His revolver tickled my spine.
A minute later, the cruiser tore through North Natomas. In the trunk, my ears burned with the drumming of the wheels. I had sweat through the hood on my face.
The cruiser stopped. An electric garage door clanked. The cop killed the motor.
Someone wrenched me from the trunk. Pushed on, rounding, and stumbling into walls, I heard the dog of the house. A Doberman? It didn’t like me.
In a perfumed space, a hand pressed me down by the scruff of my neck. The hood came off.
Lit by a single bulb, the cop and I were in a closed walk-in closet lined with police uniforms. Plush gremlins, teddy bears, and unicorns decked the upper shelf. The cop proffered his cock.
“Babe?” It was a female voice, just outside the closet. Wifey?
Tugging the light-chain, the police officer vaulted. He half-closed the closet. “Why are you home so early? I didn’t expect you until about seven or eight.” “I forgot my checkbook. Today’s the last day of the fundraiser.” Voices dimmed. The couple moved to the next room.
I raced from the closet. A sliding glass door sealed the backyard from the bedroom. Flipping the lock, I felt the heat of the dog’s breath on my back. Outside, I hit the recycling bin, whirling to the side of the house. If not for the Doberman on my leg, I would have fled unseen. Towing the dog and lifting the latch on the wooden gate, I ran into the cop’s wife.
“D.O.G.!” she said.
Tossing the bitch at the woman, I dodged a bullet that blew her ear off. Bleeding, she wrestled D.O.G. in a flowerbed on the front lawn.
I sprinted for what felt like a mile. As near as I could tell, the cop did not pursue me.
Behind Wal-Mart, I called Loren. He would come, he said. The head was on ice—and Matt was our ride.
*
I drew the shades in my room. From the nightstand I took a vial of Z, brought it to my nose, sniffed. Next to me, Noy 2, my ghost twin, lay naked. I could see myself, through and through. Glory eyes: all the Thai blues in the world, which I carried: boy after boy, shiny disco balls… Would I give up? Never.
“There are two of me.” I offered the drug to myself.
“There have always been two of us.”
“You’ve got a nice—”
*
The Bag O’Nails was a video lounge in downtown Sacramento. Smoke curled from the tube-lit bar, lighting part of my face. Loren and Matt were on the back patio. In the mirror behind the bar, my hair looked wet.
Eyes closed. The air was thick with gentle men. They took a wand to the jukebox, a soda fount, changed them as tap beer and TVs on the wall, the floor.
I loved it.
Men were boys: a track jacket, a navy crop, a collar upturned. There was a handlebar mustache. There was a pearled cue stick. Behind the skip outside, by the railroad, thugs hugged.
No one cared. Some guys had the bear cape, the Navajo wild. My hair grayed in seconds; eyes cut a hole in the barkeep’s loin the size of a dime.
Look out.
I stumbled to the john. As I left, an old sot by the door raised his shirt and bit the air. His nipples were pacifiers.
I moved to the patio.
The club went black and white, more colorful still. In quick succession, I downed three rounds of Wild Turkey, a purple monster, and a shot of Z. The Munich beat boomed. I felt sick.
Private words, random ones, I heard:
“He wore leg-warmers the whole time.”
“He looks at me, he says, ‘Let’s not stick each other’s dicks out. Let’s just hold each other.’”
“He stood over me, then he shot his load. Then he stole my wallet.”
“Mikey, leave Ricardo.”
“I was taking a shit, and he clocked me with the remote.”
Lime statues of Buddha fell. Some feet on, mirrored walls became a dark space. It was an art déco lift. Noy 2 got in. Up top, a red light pointed south. The lift closed in a spring.
Helicopter blades neared. Loren and Matt were still on the patio, taken with talk. Cary—a soccer coach, a dwarf—waved at me: “Well, if it isn’t my Bel Ami boy.”
Patrons cleared before me. As I got in the elevator, I froze. The door slid shut.
Five beats—
Three—
Two—
The gears stopped grinding. Forget that I wanted out—I was in a womb, a brown box.
Time slipped. I listened. Sirens thinned. The helicopters faded.
Please bless.
I heard a faint drip, fat chords from a pipe organ. The rig came to a halt. A dark hall slid into view. Checkered tile spread at my feet.
Baby blue was a doorway on the right. The room was strobe-lit. Feathers flew; a chalice fell to the floor. Flesh winked here—and with that, the light in the room died.
I backed out.
Baby blue was a doorway on the left. In this room, the skirting lit Victorian waxworks—Dandy with a saucer. As the room darkened, the figure bobbed.
I walked down the hall. Black balloons and smoke flickered from a red doorway on the right.
Inside, a still life took shape. Black parallel lines ran the sum of the room; I stood twenty-five steps up. In the far-left corner, boys in clown rub stared at me. They waited for someone, or something, to wind them up. Planed by a perfect void, with similar height, face, and build, they leered at me. Backs bent, chins raised, they moved just a hair.
Noy 2 clasped me in a bear hug. I kissed my ear and whispered something to myself. There was a rustling, an oceanic thump.
And I was gone.
*
I came to in the backseat of Matt’s Saab. With the radio blinking and the windows down, he drove like stone. Loren slept on the passenger side. So that I could see the road ahead, I moved to the middle of the backseat. We were well over the speed limit; the highway jumped. I thought of the painted face at the club, but not too much. The world outside and I had tired. Interstate 80 at 3 A.M.—the glazed math of metal and glass—would have to do, but something did not jibe. As gravity fell, the motion slowed.
We came to a tunnel. Here, overhead and on either side of us, blue beams excused white tile. The air was thin and mild. We seemed to move without moving. You could drive, I mused, and never get lost; getting lost was fun, but only if you wanted to belong. At last, I thought, you paced like crazy, and that was your lot. It broke you and it stole you, and the rhythms of the road dialed in, way past need, and long over self.
We came to the end of the tunnel. Flow took hold; sign followed sign. Speed gave brightness and speed to the center divider, and the sound of the radio kept us warm. We drifted and slid back over the years. The highway stood. It would always stand.
My fake twin was the roof of the car.
*
“Boy.”
In a suit and tie, Philip sat on the couch. Sweat soaked the cushion beneath my head. I smiled.
“I’m going to Save Mart. Need anything?”
“Chips.” What I didn’t say, though: “Wait. Around most people, I’m guarded. With you, though, I feel I’m free to be a child.”
“OK,” Philip said. “I’ll be a bit.”
I sipped from a vial of Z. In my mind’s eye, I saw Philip.
At the market, he was buying guava juice, pancake batter, and a bag of sour cream chips. He then checked the receipt. $12.71 saved.
From the parking lot, he turned left to come home. Mid-turn, he toggled his MP3 device to play a Blondie song. The sun—purple blush on a blue dish—held the east. Going 50 mph, a Cutlass Supreme clipped him.
Twice, Philip’s Mercedes Benz barreled over. The steering wheel seared his legs; glass blew in his face. The image I have of him at that moment is of a boy in a melted black and white photograph. The same one to which our mother had prayed, years before, once she had gone senile.
Hours later, though, well after the cops had telephoned me to say he’d passed, I was strumming an acoustic guitar in my room.
Bm, Am, Fmaj7. For an hour, I toyed with the melody, a pretty, irresolvable tune.
“What a shame,” I sang, “you’re always in my head.”
I felt ridiculous. I played a bad guitar.
From the window, I considered a palm tree, the way it rocked the moonlight. Watching time, the long summer nights held back. Near-winters here felt that way, too.
Clicking my laptop to life, I thought about plans.
In the internet browser, I opened a new window. Though I’d blocked myself from using the Adam4Adam website, I typed the URL anyway.
No. Chat rooms dragged me.
I opened the Google search engine.
I, I typed.
I stared at the screen.
am lost.
I deleted that line.
Help.
I deleted this, too.
The shadow of the palm tree tipped the other shadows in the room. Closing the laptop, I went to bed. The digital clock on the nightstand flashed. I went to sleep.
In the dream, cross-legged on a soundstage of multi-hued lights, a hairless figure in a robe hummed. Our heads were close together. His hands dangled on his knees.
Please bless.
Of rainbow effect, symmetrical war paint cracked the man’s skin. Sweat fell from his brow. His eyes were white. His smile merged with his jaw.
*
The digital clock flashed 6:12 P.M. How long had I slept?
According to my cell phone, I had three missed calls: Matt, my sister, and a withheld number. There was a voice message of white static.
I woke the laptop. When I opened the browser, Google News (my default page) appeared. California’s deadliest earthquake since 1906 had struck the Santa Barbara coast, causing a tsunami that swept seven miles inland, decimating entire neighborhoods. Twenty-five miles north of Pismo Beach, in the city of Morro Bay, officials were cleaning up the bodies.
I called my sister. Her outgoing message played. Since moving to Morro Bay from L.A. (she’d buried Mom and Dad at Forest Lawn), she’d been without a landline.
In the living room, I turned the TV on. The Big One. All stations carried the news.
Again, I tried my sister’s number.
“You’ve reached 8053294—” I hung up.
Not real.
I texted Philip, but remembered he was dead. I called Matt.
He didn’t pick up.
“I have to drive down there,” I said. Flying in and driving out of LAX would have blown my schedule.
Shuttling from shower to closet, I packed—quick, precise, pausing occasionally to collect myself. In a dresser drawer, I found a sealed vial of Z. I threw it into a rolling suitcase.
There was no time to clean, nor to make funeral plans. None of that mattered now. When the dice hit the floor, you moved. In such bursts of adrenaline—in that detachment—you saw yourself, clearly.
I was alive. Knowing this, of course, clinched it.
The morning was crisp and clear. Heaving the suitcase and a backpack, I loaded the Lexus. Last, I grabbed my acoustic guitar case from the bedroom. I took a mental snapshot of the room, then the house.
Wait.
The Elvis head, in the freezer. A Sphinx-like symbol that pinned me; that riddled and might be redeemable for some time to come.
I grabbed it, smothered it with ice cubes in the ice chest Loren had left.
It was almost eight in the morning. I would stop at the nearest fuel station for gas—and ice.
I was ready. At last, I thought. I was ready.
END