Grasshopper Jungle (17 page)

Americans like big things to piss on.

In those days, guys didn't feel the need for seclusion or personal space when they pissed. American men and boys lined up shoulder to shoulder and unashamedly pissed like a choreographed army on everything in front of them.

That was our day.

Krzys Szczerba's urinals were big enough so a dozen or more guys could all piss on the same wall together, all at the same time.

We had a similarly designed group urinal at Curtis Crane Lutheran Academy. It was the one with images of disembodied praying hands hanging above it at eye level to remind us boys not to get any
experimental
ideas with our hands while they were holding our penises.

But the urinal at Curtis Crane Lutheran Academy was stainless steel and shaped like a knee-high watering trough for livestock. The urinal chimed a musical song whenever boys would piss down onto its flat metal bottom. And only four boys at a time could use it. More than that, and there would be some uneasy trespassing into your neighbor's personal space.

We kept our eyes on the praying hands.

Besides freezing shit and making it food, pissing on things was something American boys have always been real dynamos at.

Krzys Szczerba called his urinals Nightingales, after his wife, Eva Nightingale, who, like the urinals Krzys made, was big, accommodating, and perfectly white.

There were birds with ribbons streaming from their happy beaks etched along the top rail of Krzys Szczerba's Nightingale urinals.

It was a good name for a urinal, I thought.

Krzys Szczerba's urinal factory went out of business during the Great Depression.

During the Great Depression, I think American boys pretty much pissed wherever they wanted to.

There was also a stainless steel trough urinal at
Satan's Pizza
, but it was only wide enough for two guys to use at once. It was extremely awkward, being paired up with a complete stranger like that at a pizza place.

It was like being on a blind date.

Worse yet would be if I was standing there peeing, and then one other guy would come into the men's room and stand beside me, unzip, and when I glanced over, it would be Louis, the cook from
The Pancake House
, or maybe Ollie Jungfrau or Pastor Roland Duff.

I always tried to hold my pee whenever I ate at
Satan's Pizza
.

Sometimes, a guy just can't, though.

There were old color photographs of Italy that hung behind glass-faced frames above the urinal at
Satan's Pizza
. One of them showed the Coliseum in Rome, and the other showed Michelangelo's statue of David.

You know what I mean.

What guy doesn't like to think about Italy and civilization and shit like that when he is holding his penis and pissing into a steel trough?

I am the great-great-grandson of Krzys Szczerba, a man who made things for other guys to piss on.

My brother, Eric Christopher Szerba, got pissed on, too.

In a way, Krzys Szczerba made me and my brother. When you think about it, Krzys Szczerba's factory was still in full operation, and we were his modern-day Nightingales.

Everyone at Curtis Crane Lutheran Academy heard about what happened to Mr. Szerba's son, Eric Szerba, who was in Afghanistan.

Robby did not go to school that day, either.

There was something wrong with both of us, but it was not something like what was happening to those Hoover Boys, although there was equally little Robby Brees or I could do about it.

JOHNNY MCKEON CAME
over to my house that afternoon. He said he wanted to check on me and see if I needed anything. There were lots of things I needed, but Johnny couldn't give any of them to me.

I certainly couldn't talk to Johnny McKeon about my confusion, or about what was happening between me and Robby; and between me and Shann.

“I came to see if you needed anything,” Johnny said when I opened the front door. He added, “You know, if I could do anything for you, Austin.”

I was still in my boxers. I had not gotten out of bed all day. Ingrid squeezed between my legs and wriggled past Johnny out into the yard. The poor dog was about to explode.

I combed my fingers through my messed-up hair. I said, “Thanks, Johnny. I think I'm okay. I could use a cigarette, I think.”

“I brought some for you.” Johnny said, “They're in my car. Hang on.”

“Watch out for dog shit, Johnny,” I said. “And, thank you.”

“If your mom or dad says anything about this, I'm telling them you stole them.”

Johnny always said that.

So Johnny McKeon stayed there with me on my front porch while I smoked a cigarette and talked to him. I'd forgotten all about my plan to look for the missing invisible McKeon silo with Shann. Everything had been such a nightmarish blur since Robby Brees and I had gotten beaten up for being queers by those four assholes in the alley at Grasshopper Jungle.

It was like swimming through a big bowl of alphabet soup, where all the letters are alive and flash little dancing horror shows for you: grimacing lemurs, two-headed baby boys, accidental eruptions at the Waterloo
Cinezaar
, little blue kayaks, enormous green praying mantises, praying hands, the
Tally-Ho!
, my pissed-on brother, Eric Christopher Szerba, and my best friend, Robert Brees Jr., whom I loved very much and felt a terrible sadness for at the same time.

“You're a good dog, Ingrid,” I said.

Ingrid lay beneath my bare feet and I sat on a wicker chair in my boxers and smoked a cigarette with Johnny McKeon in front of my house.

At that moment, my parents were on an airplane flying over Scotland.

“Why don't you put some clothes on and I'll take you and Shann out and get you pizza or something?” Johnny McKeon asked.

“You mean you don't want to just take me to dinner in my underwear, Johnny?” I said.

Johnny shook his head gravely. For someone who was always in a good mood, Johnny McKeon never really knew when people were joking around with him.

“No, kid,” he said. “Put some trousers and a shirt on or I ain't taking you anywhere.”

I waggled my Saint Kazimierz medal at Johnny and told him thanks, but I hoped he wasn't planning on sitting in the middle, considering he was going to be chauffeuring his stepdaughter and me out on another date.

He didn't get
that
, either.

Johnny said, “I'll drop you two off, and come pick you up. But in Ealing, not Waterloo. Now go put some britches on, Austin.”

I found some 501s that weren't too dirty. They were lying on my bedroom floor. I slipped into Robby's Spam T-shirt. He'd left it there at my house the day we went up on the roof of the Ealing Mall. It still had a few faded bloodstains and it smelled like Robby, which kind of made me a little sad. I didn't bother putting on any socks. I got the Adidas I'd loaned to Robby a few days earlier and slipped them on.

It made me feel lonely to wear Robby's shirt.

I went to pee in the men's room at
Satan's Pizza
before our
Stanpreme
arrived at the table. It was taking a chance because the pizza place was unusually busy for a Wednesday evening.

Nobody came in to share the trough with me and the photos of Rome and naked David.

I sat beside Shann and we looked out the window, across Kimber Drive to Grasshopper Jungle, the Ealing Mall.

We talked.

At first it was almost as uncomfortable as standing next to Ollie Jungfrau at the little trough urinal in the back of
Satan's Pizza
. I kept thinking about Robby. I felt so guilty about the things we did.

I do not lie, but I did not want to tell Shann about Robby, and I did not want to tell Robby about Shann, either.

So I sat there and thought about how I was ripping my own heart in half, ghettoizing it like Warsaw during the Second World War—
this area for Shann; the other area for queer kids only—
and wondering how it was possible to be sexually attracted and in love with my best friend, a boy,
and
my other best friend, a girl—two completely different people, at the same time.

I was so confused.

There had to be something wrong with me. I envied Shann and Robby both so much for being confident in who they were and what they felt, and for knowing what part of my ghettoized heart they lived in.

Eventually, Shann worked up the courage to talk to me about Eric.

We were eating our pizza by that time, and I had pushed all those thoughts about my brother into a dark place in my head. The pissed-on Polish boys' ghetto. Now a light shined on them.

So I told her this:

Eric Christopher Szerba and I got pissed on. I could not remember any image of my brother where we were not boys together. Eric Christopher Szerba was still a boy. Eric Christopher Szerba was my big brother. Now he was ruined, destroyed. He would be somebody else the next time we talked. It would be awkward, like peeing next to a stranger. We got pissed on, Eric and me. Everyone did. Nobody was better off anywhere. Nobody learned a lesson. Nobody got saved.

I could not eat any more pizza after that.

I think I might have been crying.

I have to be honest. This is history. I
was
crying while I sat there at
Satan's Pizza
, looking out the window at Grasshopper Jungle. I was crying, and it wasn't only for Eric Christopher Szerba. It was for Robby Brees, my mother, my father, Robby's mother, Krzys Szczerba, and for Saint Kazimierz, too.

Shann was crying. She put her face against my neck.

Shann said, “I've always been in love with you for how you say things, Austin. Ever since that day in eighth grade when we sat together and had Cokes and talked about
The Chocolate War
. Do you remember that?”

“Yes,” I said. “It's that book about the peacock who shits gumballs and Sugar Babies out of its ass, right?”

Shann laughed a little and we kissed.

And I told her: “Shann, sometimes I do really dumb things and I don't think about the people I might be hurting. I want you to know that I love you, no matter how dumb I am. No matter what I do.”

I was trying to tell her the truth—my abbreviated truth—about me and Robby. Shann thought I was talking about the day before, at school, when I attempted to start a conversation involving the use of condoms.

Shann said, “You are not dumb, Austin. I love you very much. I was thinking about what you said, about . . . Um. You know. If you used a condom.”

I nearly fell off the bench at
Satan's Pizza
when she said that.

I said, “You mean you
would
?”

I tried to devise a means of getting Shann Collins over to my empty house
that night
.

“Maybe we could try to do that sometime. When the time is right,” Shann said.

I thought the time was right.

Hearing her say the words
do that
made me very horny.

Shann tried changing the subject. She placed her purse on the table beside the remains of our
Stanpreme
. When she opened the purse, I hoped she was going to show me how she'd brought along a pack of condoms or shit like that. Not that I needed any. I had dozens of condoms from cleaning out the furniture for Johnny McKeon at
From Attic to Seller Consignment Store.

I fought with myself.

There was rioting in the ghetto.

That is the truth.

I was being such an asshole to my two best friends.

I decided to shut up. Like Shann told me, she'd let me know when the time was right to
try to do that
, and that was much closer to a
yes
than a
no
.

Eden Five needed me.

Maybe I could prove something to myself, eventually, and watch how everything might fall perfectly into place for me.

Shann pulled a small black-and-white photograph out from her purse. It was the picture she'd gotten from the
Ealing Registry of Historic Homes.

And, yes, I was disappointed, and very horny, too.

Here, our history looks at four photographs:

1. THIS IS THE MCKEON SILO.

In grainy black and white it looks like a galvanized steel penis with Saturn booster rockets, sitting on a launch pad a quarter mile behind Shann's historic home, preparing to blast off for Eden Five.

“I found it,” Shann said.

 

2. THIS IS A PHOTOGRAPH OF ME AND MY BROTHER,
ERIC
Christopher Szerba. The picture was taken when Eric was twelve years old. That would make me about five or six. In the picture, we are standing on the shore of Lake Minnewonka, in Canada. The sun is setting into our eyes. Our mother, Connie Szerba, was morbidly obsessed with having the sun shine in our white Polish faces whenever we posed for pictures.

In the photograph, my hair is messy, sticking up unevenly. It is also much lighter in color than my hair is now. I am wearing Velcro-laced
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
sneakers. They had lights along their soles and flashed when I walked. I loved those shoes.

Eric is tall and skinny. He wears a red plaid shirt, untucked, an Iowa boy after all. Eric also has on brand-new cuffed Levis. I can almost feel their stiffness in the photograph. His legs are like matchsticks in them. The jeans have not been washed yet. Eric Christopher Szerba has his arm around my shoulder, but the way he is standing is not the uncomfortable posture of a boy about to turn teenager who is coerced into hugging his little brother to falsely freeze a peaceful moment for a family snapshot while on vacation.

Both of us have those Polish Boy bags under our eyes.

Eric is very handsome. His hair is the color of maple syrup and he has a spray of freckles on his cheeks. The way he smiles, you can see his two big front teeth. His lips are wet. The shadow of my father stretches all the way past our ankles. You can see, in silhouette on the ground, how my father's elbows point out like wings on a nightingale where he holds the camera up to his eyes.