Bad Kid Read online

  Dedication

  For Teri, Leonard, Greg, Sylvia & Max

  You know who you are. I’m glad I do too.

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  Bigmouth Strikes Again

  I want to start by telling you that this is a work of nonfiction. I’ve written about these kids, clubs, fights and parties the way I’ve remembered them, to the best of my ability. But I also need to apologize for something.

  I’m sorry I did so many drugs. And when I say “drugs” I don’t mean little puffs of weed in college dormitories or occasional bumps of coke off a key in a nightclub bathroom. I mean huge, mind-altering, gobs of XTC. I’m talking about sheets . . . no, reams of acid.

  As a broke teenager I often had to work with a limited budget. I huffed gasoline, snorted poppers, inhaled Liquid Paper fumes, and ate heaps of over-the-counter speed sold to sleepy, long-haul truckers at gas stations. Sometimes I wonder if I didn’t do less drugs than I think I did. Then I realize that not remembering probably means I did a lot, which is part of the reason that some of the names, identities, hair colors, concert t-shirts, and piercing-types in this book have been changed. I’ve also done this in order to protect the anonymity of the bad kids I’ve known, most of whom have grown up to raise families, have successful careers, and join PTA groups, which is probably as shocking to them as is it to me.

  In some cases, composite characters have been created to further preserve privacy and decrease the number of black-clad kids in combat boots roaming the pages before you. I hope that if you crack the code and recognize yourself in this book, you feel that I’ve appropriately documented your bad behavior. I would hate to shame people for the wrong awful things. You shouldn’t have to feel embarrassed for running around a cemetery naked in a pig mask on uppers when you were actually the one on mushrooms who ate a bar of soap during a seance.

  Though the conversations in this book come from my keen recollection of them, I am not a robot. There is not a black box recorder installed in my belly. And if there were, the amount of LSD I ingested between the ages of sixteen and eighteen would probably have fried it. These exchanges in nightclubs, locker rooms, and tiny Texas apartments are not written as word-for-word documentation. But I hope I’ve retold them in a way that evokes the sidesplitting, crush-inducing, heartbreaking essence of the wonderfully colorful people I have known.

  Also, several time lines have been altered, mostly to protect privacy and maintain narrative flow. And also because I might not remember how we got from point A to point B, but I remember how we got from point C to point D and made a switch. Maybe we were friends in high school and you’re thinking, “Hey! I didn’t ride with you to Amarillo in the back of a taco truck with a drag queen. I drove you in my Miata to Waco on LSD! You got it mixed up.”

  I’m sorry for that, but I also want to congratulate you on your superior memory.

  I also need to apologize to my poor, belabored parents.

  I’m not sure how far you’ll make it through this book before chucking it in the garbage and joining a support group. Well, another support group. But as the substance abuse, occult activity, and raw sexual obsession detailed in these pages gets to be too much for you, it might help to tell yourselves that I wrote this simply for the money.

  In truth, I wrote Bad Kid because I’m a storyteller, and I want to touch people and make them feel understood. I hope this book can be entertaining as a personal narrative but also be universal enough to make readers feel connected to something larger than themselves, regardless of their background and upbringing.

  But if you’re a member of my family and find these tales psychologically distressing, just go with the “he did it for the money” angle. Remind yourselves that I have an absurd amount of student loans, and although Sallie Mae might sound like an innocent farm girl with pigtails, she’s actually a heartless bitch in shoulder-pads who’s been trying to ruin my life ever since I graduated. If it were up to her, I’d be rich and dead.

  So as you read these harrowing tales, rejoice in knowing that I’ll probably be able to buy my own plane ticket home for Christmas this year!

  I’m sorry about the wigs. Or lack thereof.

  This book is based on my solo show “Bad Kid.” We got one negative review from an older, gay writer who was perturbed with the lack of videos, costume changes, and . . . wigs.

  Yes. Seriously.

  Wigs.

  He was also upset that my experience of coming out was so “easy.” I found the wig comment so hilarious that I initially glossed over this statement. But then I thought more about it.

  As a thirty-nine-year-old man, shouldn’t my experience of coming out be different than that of a fifty-five-to-sixty-year-old person? That’s around a twenty-year gap. I can’t imagine the struggles of gay men in the sixties who had no one to talk to, men who were forced into heterosexual marriages by their terrified mothers and fathers, men with children whose lives were torn apart as their fathers drank, disappeared, or came out of the closet and were forced from their lives.

  The only experience I can truly know is my own. And that’s what I’ve written about. I will not justify it or defend its worth based on some generational scale of comparative sadness. It was hard for me and the people I called friends. Just as it was hard for kids forty years ago. And by no means is it over.

  It’s hard for teenagers now. But I’m happy that many of them live in a world where they can be out, find LGBT resources in their schools, and see gay and lesbian role models in their media. I’m happy that they can fall in love with someone they care about right out in the open and consider a legally recognized marriage. Thinking about all of this in relation to my own teen experience takes my breath away. I can’t believe I’m seeing this come to pass in my lifetime.

  Of course, there are people who would argue vehemently against this rosy-colored view of things. I can’t know what the life of a fifteen-year-old closeted lesbian in the heart of the Bible Belt is like, because that’s not part of my experience. And for her, at least for now, it’s still a difficult struggle.

  All I can know is my own story. And this is it.

  Sans wigs.

  The pickles.

  I’m so very sorry for the pickles. It’s too much to get into here. But believe me, when you hit that part of the book, you’ll certainly know you’re there. Mom. Dad. If you even make it to this part of the book, please remember that whole money-thing I mentioned earlier.

  See you at Christmas!

  I’m sorry to my friends who are gone. I’m sorry if I wasn’t there when you needed me. I’m sorry that we lost touch. I’m sorry if the world hurt you. I’m sorry if the people you loved abandoned you. I’m sorry if the drugs we took together in a spirit of youthful fun became something that damaged your life. I’m sorry for all the pain you never let me know about. But I’m not sorry about forgetting you. Because that will never happen.

  I miss you every day.

  And to all my dear friends who are still here, thanks for the amazing time. Hating the world would’ve been a lot less fun without you in it. Thanks for reminding me that shame is bad, fun is good, and that if we believe enough, every day can be like Halloween.

  Contents

  Dedication

  Author’s Note: Bigmouth Strikes Again

  Prologue: Superheroes

  Chapter 1: That Joke Isn’t Funny Anymore

  Chapter 2: Father Figure

  Chapter 3: Where the Boys Are

  Chapter 4: I Want to Wake Up

  Chapter 5: Alone in a Darkened Room

  Chapter 6: Black Celebration

  Chapter 7: Warm Leatherette

  Chapter 8: This Must Be the Place I Waited Years to Leave

  Chapter 9: I’ve Got to Get Through to a Good Friend

  C
hapter 10: Scary Monsters

  Chapter 11: Shaking While We’re Breaking

  Chapter 12: Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me

  Chapter 13: Under the Milky Way Tonight

  Chapter 14: Ask Me

  Chapter 15: Smash Every Tooth in Your Head

  Chapter 16: She’s in Parties

  Chapter 17: Boys Don’t Cry

  Chapter 18: Barbar(ian)ism Begins at Home

  Chapter 19: Left to My Own Devices

  Chapter 20: Taking a Ride with My Best Friend

  Chapter 21: Age of Consent

  Chapter 22: A New Life

  Chapter 23: I Like it Here—Can I Stay?

  Chapter 24: You’re Gonna Need Someone on Your Side

  Chapter 25: This Is Not a Love Song

  Chapter 26: This This Beautiful Creature Must Die

  Chapter 27: It All Gets Blown Away

  Chapter 28: Being Boring

  Chapter 29: Here’s Where the Story Ends

  Epilogue

  Thanks to:

  About the Author

  Credits

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  PROLOGUE

  Superheroes

  What in God’s name is that?” asked my grandma Oggy, tucking a used Kleenex into the cuff of her shirt. It was the summer before eighth grade and my dad had just taken us downtown for a birthday barbecue. At a red light in front of the Alamo she’d seen something shocking.

  “Well, I’ll be,” said my dad, turning down his Merle Haggard cassette as he peered through the windshield.

  I peeked around the driver’s seat and saw them in the crosswalk: three teenagers wearing layers of black clothes and heavy eyeliner. My grandmother fluffed up her snow-white perm with a hair-pick and leaned forward. “Look at the mop on that poor girl’s head!” she said, chomping on a piece of Juicy Fruit. “Looks like she stuck a fork in a light socket.”

  There’s really nothing sadder than goth kids in a warm-weather climate. The day’s record-breaking heat made them look like smeared watercolors, a moist wad of painted pleather rolling in slow motion across the pavement. It was the Abbey Road cover that time ignored, the one Edvard Munch would have painted.

  The girl leading the group wore a heavy velveteen gown marked with sweat circles around her neck and armpits. The hem of it dragged against the cement, collecting bits of garbage and cigarette butts as she morosely Swiffered her way across the street. Manic Panic hair dye dripped from her hairline, turning her forehead violet.

  The little guy behind her had a Mohawk that collapsed over the front of his face, making him look like a depressed rooster. His floor-length cape blew out like a sail as it caught a gust of hot wind, lightly noosing him with its drawstring.

  In the back of the group was a tall, ghost-white boy with bleached bangs, wearing a purple sateen jacket. He walked regally in blue eye shadow and wore a single shell earring. He was a neon dream in matte finish with shiny peach lips.

  My dad lowered his sunglasses, his eyes dancing with wonder. “Well, I’ll be,” he sighed. “They look like superheroes going to a funeral.”

  “I guess the circus is in town,” drawled my grandma, peering at them suspiciously as she locked the car door. “Hide your children.”

  I watched them from the back window as we pulled away, black and purple dots getting smaller and smaller against the bright, beige South Texas terrain. As they floated into a sea of cowboy hats and tamale vendors, I felt like I’d seen something exotic and rare, like a unicorn—an extremely sad, very sexy, fishnet-bound unicorn.

  They were the most amazing creatures I’d ever seen.

  A good boy

  CHAPTER 1

  That Joke Isn’t Funny Anymore

  Towards the end of middle school I had what you might call a very “Christian missionary” fashion sense; pressed khaki slacks, a starched blue button-down, and lightly moussed hair parted on the side. I looked like a tiny, chubby cheeked, lesbian employee of Blockbuster Video. This was how I dressed during the last few months of eighth grade, after “the incident.” Before “the incident” you would’ve seen me in a pastel Hypercolor shirt and Vision Street Wear high-tops. I’d be wearing neon-green, knee-length shorts, and my long, Sun-In’d bangs would hang down to the top of my Panama Jack sunglasses.

  That all changed one day near the end of eighth grade. I was spending my lunch the usual way, French braiding my girlfriend Amber’s hair. I’d been Amber’s boyfriend for almost a month and loved spending lunches with her and the other girls from our theater arts class. Amber had beautiful strawberry-blond hair and smelled like SweeTARTS. She loved Taylor Dayne almost as much as I did and made me mixtapes adorned with hearts and stars drawn in hot-pink, watermelon-scented marker. Best of all, when we’d slow-danced at the chaperoned spring dance, she hadn’t gotten handsy with me. Amber took it slow, and I appreciated that. What wasn’t to love?

  “Perfect,” I said, tying a small pink ribbon to the end of Amber’s hair.

  “How is it?” she asked, flopping the ginger braid over her shoulder as she turned to me.

  “You look so pretty,” I gushed.

  “You’re the one who braided it,” she beamed, popping a cherry jelly bean into my mouth.

  “What about my hair?” I grinned.

  “It looks so cool,” she answered, reaching up to touch my newly bleached bangs. “Like those guys who skate in the parking lot after school.”

  “Thanks! My mom let me get it done in the mall last weekend. I think they’re—”

  “Chris Wolfe,” she interrupted, grimacing at something over my head. “Don’t you even think about it.”

  I turned to look at Chris, the tall, blond football player who gave me the same funny feeling I got watching Patrick Swayze in Dirty Dancing. But before I could lay my eyes on his tall, broad frame, my skull reverberated with a booming thud. Chris’s deep voice was the last thing I heard before I blacked out.

  I woke up on the tiled cafeteria floor with a pounding headache. As my vision cleared, I could make out Amber and the choir teacher, Ms. Mason, a heavyset woman with a tight black perm wearing a chili-pepper necklace and matching earrings. The room was slowly tilting and I couldn’t get the sound of ringing out of my ears. I stood up with the help of my theater arts lunch-mates, a dozen teenage Florence Nightingales with glittering fingernails.

  “Oh my gawd!” they cried, immediately swept up in the drama of it all.

  “Chris Wolfe bashed your head between two big encyclopedias!” Amber sobbed as we walked to the office with Ms. Mason. “I couldn’t stop him in time!” she continued, hugging her hot-pink Trapper Keeper, which bore the image of Pegasus leaping through a crystal heart. The theater arts girls surrounded Amber in a vanilla-scented cloud as she cried. The drama was suddenly all about her. “Chris called you . . . He called you a . . . a . . .”

  Amber leaned in and whispered the name of the thing I’d been trying to convince myself I wasn’t. For most of eighth grade I’d been telling myself that the warm fuzzies I felt watching Silver Spoons were simply about Ricky Schroder’s awesome clothes. When Kirk Cameron made a funny joke on Growing Pains and my pants suddenly tightened in the crotch, I told myself that it wasn’t about kissing him. I just wanted to hug him really, really hard. But as I left Amber and walked into the school office, my doubts were stronger than ever.

  After getting an aspirin from the nurse, I sat outside the school reception area, waiting to be picked up by my mom. Directly across from me sat Chris Wolfe. He stared at the floor, his body trembling so rapidly that the movement was almost indiscernible, like a flickering fluorescent tube light right before it burns out. He was also waiting to go home, but presumably not to be pampered by his mother with cocoa while watching a four-hour marathon of Saved by the Bell like I was.

  “Leonard Crabb?” called the boy working office duty.

  I’d forgotten my dad was in town. I assumed my mom had called him, unable to leave her job. My small, stocky
father charged to the front desk, moving with the force and purpose of a linebacker. He was wearing tight Wrangler jeans, snakeskin cowboy boots, and a trucker hat. Passing by, he noticed me, and all that anger switched to sadness and concern. He didn’t say a word, but his eyes said it all.

  Are you okay?

  Does it hurt?

  I love you son.

  Now show me where that little fucker is.

  I wanted to point across the room and say, There he is, Dad. He’s the one. Go nuts.

  But he would have. And as pleasing as it would have been to watch him eviscerate Chris Wolfe, I preferred visiting with my father at Mexican restaurants, not prisons. As my father’s gaze slipped away from me, his face hardened. He leaned on the counter and slammed down his wallet, like a gunslinger saying, “Let’s go hand-to-hand, you son of a bitch.”

  “Who would you like to see, sir?” asked the nervous student attendant.

  In a slow, measured baritone, my father growled, “Whoever’s in charge.”

  “Um. Yes, sir,” the boy’s voice cracked. “Um . . . I’ll get you the assistant principal.”

  “You go ahead and do that.”

  I was happy to have a protective dad, but I felt bad for the administrators who were about to deal with his wrath. I’d seen that face on other occasions: when a bad report card came in, when I forgot to weed-whack the yard, and many times during my regrettable two-month stint playing right field. It wasn’t pleasant.

  I looked at the bully across from me and hoped he knew how lucky he was that my dad hadn’t realized who he was. But as I watched Chris apprehensively wringing his hands, I felt strangely sympathetic toward him. He was right in assuming I was “different,” which somehow made him seem less guilty. A part of me wanted to tell him it was okay, that he was just perceptive to my flaws and defects. If I could understand exactly how Chris perceived me, maybe I could change all my suspect behaviors.

  “Chris?” I said.

  When Chris lifted his head, I saw that he wasn’t scared at all. He was angry. I could hear the rhythmic jingling of change in his pocket as his Reebok sneaker maniacally tapped the linoleum tiles. He popped the knuckles of one hand and slid it into a fist in the other. As he stared at me, his lips made the silent shape of that word I’d been emotionally dodging.