Crush (3 page)

From the moment I am able to put words together, I realize people like me. They can’t help themselves. People like pretty kids, and I’m pretty. I’m told often too, even when I get older. Oh, theydon’t
use
the word prettyfor me. Somehow to call a man pretty is a huge no-no. Everyone thinks men squirm when they’re described in that word. Not me. I know I’m a pretty boy. I’m a masculine version of my Mom. I have thick black hair and eyebrows and bluish-green eyes. The girls love my lips. Killer smile too.

Long as I can remember, I’ve believed myself photogenic enough to have a career in the spotlight---a movie star, a music star on MTV, or better still, a famous news anchor on CNN orABC or something. I love to watch the news, even as a verysmall child. Myheroes are Peter Jennings, Tom Brokaw, Wolf Blitzer. I also get to see the last few years of Cronkite’s heroic reign.

In the third grade, I have several friends from church and school: Ray Battle, a big stocky boy a year older than me, Stacy Pendleton, a girl who’s in kindergarten, and BennyFeldman, a tall, lanky fifth grader. After school and on Sunday afternoons, we chuck our clean clothes and dig forts out in Benny’s backyard. Later, we make videos of ourselves doing commercials and newscasts. It’s great practice. I’m always the leader, and I love the attention I get from Stacy, and from Ray’s sister Yvette.

I spend childhood practicing my smile, the one Uncle Price likes so much. When he and Aunt Sharon come to visit, he steals me away and we go to the movies or ball games, or to see the ocean. He even takes me to Marriott’s Great America a couple of times, just us two.

I’m luckyto have him. Mom’s worked in the meat department at Lucky’s for manyyears, but she’s had to take a year off because of carpal tunnel in her hands from wrapping meat eight hours a day. She gets disability now, and can never afford to take me places anymore. What little she gets has to go for bills and the payment on our bluish-gray wood paneled house on Truckee Street that we’ve lived in since she bought it after myfirst birthday. It’s a smallish three bedroom house, built in the thirties or so. The front lawn is really small, not even two yards, separated in the center by a red cement walk that doesn’t match the three wooden stairs that go up to the smooth, glossy white concrete porch. The front porch is cooled all year round bythe shade of an ancient live oak. Around each window, deep pink camellias bloom, and Mom parks her feisty old Ford Granada in the unpaved driveway to the right of the house.

We’re not as close as we used to be. She used to take me somewhere almost every weekend. Or, if we stayed home, we’d watch funny old shows together, like
I Love Lucy
,
The Three Stooges
, or
Bugs Bunny
cartoons. Now she’s in pain all the time, both arms in braces. We live on frozen waffles. I butter for both of us and pour her coffee. I look after her quite a bit during this year. I don’t get to play with my friends as often as I used to because Mom needs me around to help. It’s a lonely life, and I blame her. She’s always popping pain pills, so she’s always drowsy and out of it. I have no one to talk to.

I’m thrilled when Uncle and Aunt move up from Stockton so we can see each other more. He’s glad to have a nephew, he always says. Aunt Sharon can’t seem to get pregnant so they can have a beautiful boy of their own, he tells me, so he’s awful glad I’m here. I’m happytheycan’t have kids. I have him all for me, and he tells me, all the time, that he loves me. His attention makes me feel special. He asks me to do things with him, but I’m afraid and sayno. He just says, “Okay,” and holds me close to him while we watch
Scooby-Doo
or
Tom and Jerry
. He’s a good-looking guy, about six years older than my Mom, tall, shares our almost-black hair and dark green eyes. He’s not as cute as Christopher Reeve in
Superman
, but he’s close.

I tell him I want to be special, famous, loved the world over. “You
are
special, Tammy…you’re beautiful, smart…you’ve got it all…don’t forget that.”

He takes pictures of me in all kinds of costumes…a football hero in big shoulder pads, a pirate with an eye patch and a sword, and an armysoldier all painted with green and black camouflage. He tells me that when I’m a man I’m going to be a knockout, a lady killer. When he tucks me into bed he kisses me with his tongue in mymouth. I’m scared, but I like it too.

As I grow into the years just before teenhood, he lets me watch porn with him. Sometimes he holds me and makes me make out with him while people have sexon his TV. He unzips his fly. “Wanna touch?” he asks, and suddenly, yes, I do! I do everything he asks, and I love it. I love
him
.

Whenever we can, we sneak away, saying we’re going to a show or to get pizza or to a ball game. We go to the Motel 6 off of freeway80 in Sacramento. He never puts it in me, he just lets me touch it. Then he sucks mine. I think it’s silly, him wanting to suck me. He looks ridiculous down there. I laugh sometimes, but he doesn’t seem to notice. He asks me to put mymouth on him, and I’m scared. He keeps asking, and eventually, I do what he wants. I don’t want to keep hurting his feelings. I want him to know how important he is to me. I don’t want him to ever leave me.

Even after Mom is back to work and can afford to take me places again, I prefer the company of my Uncle. Mom’s glad he’s part of mylife.

I’m not special to my Dad. I don’t know him. He didn’t leave his wife when he slept with Mom. He’s never even sent money to Mom after he got her pregnant. He doesn’t acknowledge me, not even when he sees me in church. That’s where he and my Mom met. He’s the Reverend Mark Sellers, pastor of the Southern Baptist church of Sommerville.

Mom feels an increased need to attend church because of her “illicit” affair with a married man, a “man of God” to boot. She’s the onlyone who’s ever given the slightest hint that she feels badly about what happened, and the onlyone for sure who’s had to deal with the result of the relationship, that being me.

Though she never calls me a “bastard,” I feel like it’s the correct term for me. She tells me not to approach him, not to bother him, that he’s a man of God, and that it wasn’t his fault, it was hers. He’s a prick to allow her to shoulder all the blame, and she’s an idiot, blaming herself, while he just goes on with his life and his wife, pretending I don’t exist, treating me like the invisible boy, because I’m the product of his adulterous urges. Leave it to Pastor Asshole to put himself before his own son, ignore my presence, never give a clue that would tarnish his “fine, upstanding Christian reputation.”

The “thing” with Uncle Price lasts a year or so. When I’m almost eleven, he tells me Aunt Sharon is preg, and I know things are going to be different. I tryto lure him to me bygroping him and whispering in his ear. I tell him I love him and that I need a Dad, that I want him to be my Dad, not just my Uncle. But he’s so preoccupied with that stupid baby on the way that he pushes my hands awayand says, “We can’t do that anymore, Tam.” I demand to know why, but he never explains. It’s never occurred to me that what we’ve been doing is
wrong.
Uncle never says, “It’s wrong,” or “It’s dirty.” He just says, “We can’t. I’m going to have a baby.”

And I hate that baby. From the moment I first hear of her existence and far beyond the dayshe plops out of Aunt.
I hate the wayshe looks just like Uncle Price.
I hate that she has a Dad and I don’t.
I think of ways I can kill her and make it look like an accident or nature. One day I am
this
close to pinching her tiny nose shut, but then Aunt comes in and I pretend to be pinching her stupid fat pink cheeks. I smile and tell them how adorable Natalie is. Uncle says he’s busier since the baby, and has no time to come visit us like he used to.
I hate her.
Early on I begin expressing my anger by being cruel to innocent bystanders. It will become a habit, blaming those who are blameless. I don’t tell anyone what Uncle has done to me. Around town, I begin to notice him with his arm around other boys, boys who are around the age I was when I fell in love with him. Why does he have time to hang around with them if he’s so fucking busy?! The jealousy in me burns and festers. How could he discard me and what we had together? He barely speaks to me when he andAunt visit. The hatred born of his rejection begins to ooze foul green pus. I love him, I hate him, I want to
kill
him.
He told me he loved me!
MyMom is a good, sweet, kind person, but she tries too hard with me. She has no idea how mad (in all known ways) I am. The more she tries…to get me to talk to her, spend time with her, like I used to…to get me to be a good boy…to get me to be more interested in church…to get me to accept Jesus, be baptized and become a Christian…the more I rebel, fueled by the rage Uncle Price left behind.
And the rage at my father, that sanctimonious prick who stands at the pulpit, Sunday after Sunday, preaching hellfire and damnation to “kids who don’t live bythe Word of God,” all the while disregarding me like a piece of garbage on the side of a highway.
I start to hate Mom too. I blame her for having to work and not being around enough. I blame her for being dumb enough to screw a married man. I blame her because he doesn’t want to be myDad.
When she is home, she tries to establish a rapport with me. “Please talk to me, honey,” she pleads. “We used to talk. What’s bothering you? Please tell me.” My side of the conversation is in single word sentences, one syllable replies.
In an attempt to show her love, she gets me a puppy. He’s small, white and furry, part pom and part Chihuahua, and I name him Cotton. I abuse him whenever Mom’s at work, holding him down and grinding my elbow into his paw until he emits highpitched screams of misery. The frightened look in his round black eyes makes me hate him
more
, so I beat him. He lays down and cowers whenever I go to pick him up, trying to prepare himself for mymeanness.
I stick my fingers up his rear end like I’ve seen Uncle Price doing to Natalie not long after her first birthday. I don’t think it, I don’t plan it. I just do it. I feel like I’m in some kind of a trance…I’m not truly aware that I’m doing it, or that someone is watching me, until I hear Mom’s voice, miraculously composed, “Tammy, don’t do that.”
I’m relieved when she gives Cotton away.
Mom begins to avoid me around the house. Seeing me doing revolting things to my dog has caused her to raise a wall around herself. I’m left lonely, alienated, misunderstood. I hate how she’s afraid of me.
And I hate her more than ever before.
Having long since grown apart from the kids I did the newscasts with, I hang out with boys whose names I scarcely remember. The class clowns, we smart off to the teachers and disrupt class any way we can, always seeking to make people laugh. The principal has had several conferences with Mom before seventh grade is half over. She grounds me, makes me get up on Saturday mornings to do yard work, drags me to service everySunday.
But nothing works. After school, my friends and I sneak behind old buildings and smoke pot. We go to Chris’s house to play video games until his mom comes home. Todd’s dad likes guns, and though most of the good ones are locked in his safe, we have access to the BB guns, and we begin shooting at birds and cats. One dayI shoot a robin and knock him off his feet, then I aim the BB directly at his chest. It doesn’t even occur to me that what I’m doing is cruel, since the other kids do no different. I only know that it balms the sore inside of me.
I want to talk, reallytalk to these friends, about the disturbing things in my head, but they’re not interested in discussing anything except movies, music, video games, sports, weed, chicks and porn. I’m nowhere near as close to them as I was to Ray, Stacyand Benny.
I tryto cry. I sit with myeyes wide open until theybegin to dry, and hope tears will come to moisturize them. Nothing happens. I have to find other ways to grieve the loss of Uncle’s love, the absence of myDad’s.
During my thirteenth year, I start going to the library to check out books about famous killers like Charles Manson, Ted Bundy, the Boston Strangler, etc. When the librarian asks whya boybarely into his teens is so interested in serial killers, I tell them it’s research, and half of me is telling the truth. It’s preparation for my great future as a top newsman, perhaps a famous expose reporter, a true-crime authoritylike Bill Kurtis.
The other half of me reads the grisly books with a keen absorption that spooks me. I begin to scribble my dark thoughts into “marble” pads, fantasies about doing away with Natalie, who is now going on three years old. A girly-girl already, she has a huge collection of Barbies, Kens, Skippers, and P.J.s.
My stories morph into a serial about a serial killer who murders young girls and chops up their bodies. The girls are of different hair and eye color, all shapes and sizes, all pretty. Later, my victims are older men. The lurid particulars of my writings repulse me, but not enough to stop. I’m an angry boy. I steal Natalie’s dolls and beat them and scalp them, slash them open, tear their plastic limbs off, and burythem in the backyard.
Mom is always working, and I’m a latchkey kid, so I go untreated.
Until Mom, upset by my refusal to relate to her, but still too traumatized by what she witnessed with Cotton to try to relate to me, urges Pastor Asshole to “talk to me.” I go to his office at the church, believing he’s called this meeting to inform me that he’s finally going to acknowledge that I’m his offspring, that he’s going to be the Dad I so badly want and need. I give him my hope-filled attention, searching his sternly handsome countenance for any signs of myself in that coffee brown hair, or those narrow, somewhat severe brown eyes. I perk my ears, keen to hear his plan to involve me in his life straight away.
Nope. He proceeds to chastise me about my choice of friends, my“dabblings with dope” (I have onlysmoked two or three joints thus far, and beer isn’t a drug!), and the shameful matter of what happened with Cotton. He tells me about the evils of bestialitywhile I sit, shifting from annoyance to anger to shame to nausea. By the time Pastor has finished his sermon, I feel as tall as a microbe. After our little get-together in his office, he goes back to barelyspeaking to me.
The shame pierces me deeply, and I hate my Mom all the more. Thinking Pastor’s fixed everything all hunkydory, she tries to make small talk with me, tries to invite me out to movies on her days off.
I ignore her.
I pray to a God whose existence I question,
Please don’t let me be evil…please don’t let me hurt any more dogs…or cats…or birds…or any other animals…and please don’t let me hurt any people…please make me a good person. I don’t want Mom to be afraid of me…please make me good…please…