Authors: Benjamin Weissman
Every day I steal things and get in fistfights. I meet a lot of people this way. I join a gang called the Teddies and quickly become the head dude by kicking everyone’s ass. By 21 I am protecting and selling girls and being a stone cold cool guy with shades and a leather jacket, with the nickname of Noodles because I only eat ramen. One day I get jumped by 10 guys and have to lay low, drink sake, soak in a bubble bath, and heal my banged-up bones. A week later I’m having sex with one of my lady friends in the bubble bath and this guy walks in and tries to cut me with a rolling pizza cutter. Trombones blaring, swooshy cymbals crashing. I yell, hey dude, get the fuck out of here, who are you, but he keeps on swinging his arms, yelling, so I get out of the tub naked, with the exception of my underwear, and land a single roundhouse kick to his sweaty crooked face. I take the pizza cutter out of his hand and press a big snowflake pattern across his smooth back. Thin lines of bright red blood seep out of his skin like angel hair neon.
This particular incident lands me in jail, the first and only time in my life. I’m put in a cell with a man who never speaks: I call him Silent Man. We become friends by not looking at or speaking to each other. I enjoy our quiet times together. In jail I am reunited with many old enemies in a cell opposite mine. They start mouthing off so I say, are you my bitch, come paint my toenails you little cunt dog. They yell back that I am the cunt and I belong in a cunt kennel, so I spit a 10-foot lougie right onto the bars of their cell—a mucousy spit blob that dangles from the metal and reflects light as if it were a string of crystal—which flames their fury and only makes me happy inside, at peace with the world. The jailer gives me a green toothbrush for general hygiene which I melt down one end of with many matches, stick a razor blade into the softened end, wrap some wire around it to keep sturdy: Presto, I’m ready to cut someone in the face, which I do at the urinal the day before my release date when some guy gets aggressive with me for taking too long to pee.
When I get out of jail the world seems different. Girls in bell-bottoms. Go-go boots. Incense burning. Everyone wearing long hair. Pink sunglasses. In 24 hours I become a mod hip cat and return to my usual antics. I steal a leather jacket and walk straight to a bathhouse. The girl puts too much soap in the water. Bubbles hit the ceiling. We have sex with our underwear on. Both of us. Super kinky. That’s how I like to do it now. Don’t ask why.
So we’re wrestling in the bubble bath, splashing and going crazy, when all of a sudden this guy somehow sneaks into the room and starts watching us. I say what the hell fucker, I’m real mad and I’m going to get so much angrier you won’t believe it. He bows his head. It’s Silent Man from prison, so instead of killing him, I towel off, we say hello, shake hands, and I ask the girl in soapy panties, a student at the university, to read a book for a while, which she does without complaint. After his release from jail, Silent Man tells me, he suspected his wife of being disloyal so he flew into a jealous rage and slashed her in the face. Turns out Silent Man was wrong and he feels very badly right now. I pat him softly on the back. The gesture ignites further grief. He begins to cry. I get dressed and look out the window. Never console a weeping man with a gentle hand. Emotions explode through the tear duct.
Outside I see five guys ready to fight. Silent Man wipes away his tears, blows his nose louder than a fog horn, and says no way dude, no fighting for me, I run a noodle house, come visit. I say no sweat buddy and step outside. This big gorilla asks me for a cigarette. I pull out my pack, shake a butt loose, and offer it up. He grabs one and jams it into his mouth. I spark a flame from my lighter and hold it out for him. Just as he takes that first puff, I drill him in the jaw with an upper cut. Down he goes. That’s called a cigarette punch, works every time. Then I kick all their asses. So much fun. After the fight these guys, they are so crazy, they want to buy me drinks. I say okay dudes. So we go drinking and become good pals. We form our own gang with me as the leader. We call ourselves The Punks. We smoke a lot of cigarettes. Every night I get myself a girl. I am a cool bachelor.
One night I meet a girl who wears three pairs of Day-Glo panties. We wrestle in a bubble bath. Maybe we have sex. Hard to tell. I’m thinking yes. I feel her muscle around me but it might just be her thighs. She lies on her back and prods my BVDs with her bare feet. When will the eel return to the pink cave? For a split second I am happier than I’ve ever been in my life. Of course all of this belongs in my journal. Then she pulls a knife on me. From across the street a twangy banjo is plucked. She’s a country girl. She says I raped her once and sold her to a brothel. Hey, no way girl, I say, not me. I throw my clothes on and she chases me to an abandoned warehouse and calls me a bastard-prick. We fight off and on all day. Harmonica music pours through the room. Real saucy. We make up. She asks about my childhood, my mom. I think, no mind games for me, chick. I mash my mouth onto her lips. A big make-out session ensues. A brassy trashy tenor sax curls down from the rafters.
An older guy appears out of nowhere and says he wants to join my gang. I say why not, lug-head. Every night I take a bubble bath and then go out and eat a steamy bowl of ramen. An older established gang called the 4-H Club shows up. This guy with a Fu Manchu wants to fight me. Don’t make me laugh, I say, while sipping the cloudy dregs of my miso broth. I reach down with my right hand and remove the wooden sandal from my left foot and smash the goon in the face. Both our gangs get into a big brawl to the accompaniment of bongos in a three-two beat. A kid on a skateboard films us while a little girl pulls him along by a string.
This is the beginning of a big turf war. I want to drink beer and bust up some places so that’s what we do and get real bloody fighting these new conservative 4-H guys in business suits, who are slow and fat and become humiliated super easily. We run and fight them some more under the same bridge I used to call home as a boy, which brought back many bad memories. A single deep note from a cello. A lone raven flies overhead and squawks. I kick one guy in the head and his face rips right off its hinges, like he was wearing a plastic mask. The 4-H guys ask us if we’ve seen the Punks. I say no stupid fuckers, we
are
the Punks, now fuck off and urinate in your pants.
Silent Man from noodle house materializes out of thin air and asks my gang to return to his place for sake. We drink for a while but then the 4-H guys raid the place with guns. I’m shot in my left arm, my leg, and stomach. My crew carries me home. I might die. A doctor dresses my wounds, pulls out a giant needle for a blood transfusion. My girlfriend laughs and says she’s Type O, like me, the universal blood type. During my recovery I fear the 4-H Club will try to kill me but instead Sir Big Ears, the head 4-H dude, comes peacefully and asks me and my gang to join his silly posse. He says that everyone in town wants me dead and without his protection I’m doomed. Sir Big Ears worships me because he likes the way I fight. I watch his eyes drift across the room like he’s concentrating on floating dust particles while I think about his crappy proposal. I remind him of what he was like when he was a young street fighter. I tell Sir Big Ears, no way man; I don’t belong to no one. I call my own shots. I give him the hang loose sign, laugh wild, then double over in pain. Noodles, he says, you are a stupid daredevil. You’ll be rubbed out five minutes after I leave the building. The Ambassadors want you dead and they control everything. I say okay I’ll join your gang, whatever. We do a smooth soulman handshake, bang knuckles.
I just like to fight and take baths with girls and fuck in my underwear. I laugh and then black out from the searing pain of my injuries. While I am unconscious Sir Big Ears continues to admire me and reminisce more about his youth. Down the street two choirboys sing in falsetto. They emphasize the words
killing
and
murder
with a trilling vibrato that displays an innate affinity to swing. Giving each word its due, their winged phrasing banishes sentimentality. Sir Big Ears has the gray skin tone of an elephant, with a huge flattened nose. His ears are purple-red, like eggplant.
When I’m well enough to walk I visit 4-H Club. Sir Big Ears performs the initiation rite to induct me and my boys into their dowdy gang. They use two carp as part of the ritual. Both fish lying down on a white platter, back to back. Not working together. Lonely, sad, weak. Both fish go hungry. Maybe kill each other. He flips the carp over. Fish, belly to belly, work together, eat well. Live longer. Now I’m in.
Lame ceremony. I do what I want.
Next day I’m gambling with lots of big bills fluttering from the sky like autumn leaves. Girls yelling and giggling everywhere. I have more sex in my underwear. One girl comes in and slowly takes off my cool shades. She says, don’t I know you? Oh shit man, my old girlfriend, Carla Balz. I accidentally insult her by calling her a bitch and a whore. She flies into a jealous rage and calls me a faggot bastard. She pulls out a knife and cuts my new triple-panty girlfriend in the face. Then she says sorry for the disturbance and leaves. Not cool. When I get home I pull the sheets down to get into bed—am I a sleepy man, or what?—and there she is, with her knife, lying naked under the covers, the blade between her teeth like a Ninja. Very cool. My room, extremely messy. She calls me a slob. Comments like that don’t really bother me. She says I have to pay to fuck her this time. No way, honey. She cuddles up with the knife and pretends to snore.
I’m feeling kind of antsy. I go for a ride on the subway train and contemplate my life. Every day another gang tries to get a foothold. I open my journal and write,
new guys talk big.
A lonely cowboy sits across from me plucking a burpy bass guitar, singing about life on the plains. The toes of his pointy boots curl up like bent spoons.
Back at headquarters me and the boys relax, get drunk, and cruise around. We see the Ambassadors hogging the street with their expensive clothes and big limos, so we ram our car into their crowd, honk the horn, and get ready to fight. Their leader, Kimono Joe from the old country, comes waddling up in a black silk robe and says I should show some respect. That’s my cue to show him how fragrant my underwear is in its bubbly sex state and then kick some ass.
Word travels back to 4-H that we, the Punks, are moronic fuckers, and that we insulted the largest cheese in Asia. Leader of 4-H cuts off his pinkie finger to apologize for my bad behavior. Now we’re in really deep shit. I retreat into laughter. More thugs will be coming to mess with us. An airplane lands. A pile of mobsters cram into five limos. Through the rear window of each limo, on the shelf where a box of Kleenex usually sits, there are bunches of dried chili peppers that symbolize angry hot brain. Not a good sign. Fancy shoes clacking on the sidewalk. On the train tracks my gang attacks them with pipes and baseball bats. We run through a tittie bar. One of my boys is stabbed, bleeds to death. That night we get drunk and honor our lost comrade with silence and sorrow and then many lewd jokes. Question: How do you stop a dog from humping your leg? Answer: Suck his dick. I look at a photo of my dead friend. Light cigarette. Burn sad pictures. Pour whiskey on flame. Poof, just like lighter fluid. Man, this feels like the end. One of my boys wants to quit. No more fighting. Buddy don’t, I say. Wind blows in through a window. Flame goes out. A squeaky violin worms its way down the stairwell. Buddy leaves. Takes his share of the money. More hard feelings. I almost kick him in the face but I don’t.
Ambassadors and 4-H waiting outside, chase buddy down, run him over with their limo. Blood pours out of his head like syrup. I am so angry now. Totally out of control. You ain’t seen nothing. Another big fight at bathhouse. I pin a guy down on the ground with a picnic bench and choke him like helpless insect. Silence. Kimono Joe from Ambassadors lights a fat cigar. Load of guys in a huge hurry. Fifteen limo doors slam rapid. Sir Big Ears and Kimono both say surrender Noodles. My gang, very scared, almost crying. We must apologize quickly. Someone cut off a finger. Show Sir Big Ears that one of us has no finger like him and everything will be back to normal. Shiny pulls out a knife and says he’ll do it but he just sits there trembling with the blade resting against his skin. He hands the knife to Mushroom Head and asks him to do it. He says okay but then he gets the shakes and bursts out sobbing. Everyone too big a baby. So I cut off my finger, no sweat. Pinkie gone. I walk outside with my boys trailing me and show both bosses missing finger, bloody hand, but they don’t care now. Not good enough. Too late. They beat the crap out of us. Carla appears, tries to intervene, screams no, falls to ground. Now she’s super bloody. Big knife wound. Silence. I have weird flashback about everything I’ve ever eaten: leeks, tuna, rice cakes from boyhood, squishy tofu, and, as an adult, every style of ramen. No booze, just solid foods. Then I pull out my knife and go berserk. Fight 20 guys. I cut one guy in the jugular and blood gushes out of his neck like geyser. Everything happening in slow motion. I get shot many times in the torso. A pale milky voice begins to sing as a flurry of spindly notes is tapped out on an antique harpsichord. My knife … it is far away from me. The Ambassadors pile into their limos. The leader gives my bloody body another long look, shakes his head, and then rolls up his window. The limos drive off. My journal blows away page by page.
I close my eyes, stop breathing, die, and immediately drift off the ground in a translucent vapor. A dog approaches my vacated body and marks my shell with a yellow pee squirt. My throat is parched, my stomach in knots. Once again all I can think about is food but the only thing I see on the street are little animal droppings, so I swoop down and chew them up as quickly as possible. Greasy and full of ash. I want to write
terror is the facilitator
but my journal is gone, so I write it in mud with a stick. Hovering against the side wall of HQ I see two older men wading through a muddy pit. They are shirtless, their hair long and wavy, their bellies ballooning out as if pregnant, their throats no thicker than needles with tiny blue flames coming out of their mouths. If they were strong enough I’m sure they’d fight me for one of these droppings, but they don’t. It is important to realize how much excrement there is in the world and how good it tastes.