Hyena (6 page)

I’m smiling the whole time. “Okay, whatever you say, I can’t understand you, just fucking leave.”

Now he’s making fun of my glasses and they’re laughing
and high-fiving each other. I smile and nod. “That’s right. I wear glasses, say it while you’re walking, bro. Say it while you’re walking.”

Wojciech shuts the door. I say, “Man, that coulda ended real rapey. I was thinking we was gonna have to fight them dudes.”

“Oh no, they’re just kids, it’s fine.”

“Yeah, okay, just kids. It’s all good till it’s not all good. I figured I was gonna end up having to get gut-stomped in the corner defending my sister’s honor.”

We’re laughing and there’s a knock at the door. It’s them again. Their car broke down and they need a push. Six of them and they need a push. Leonardo DiCaprio’s behind the door trying to sneak in. I block his way and then it happens. My asshole catches fire. The fucking German suppository finally melts. I’m clenching my butt cheeks trying to keep these dudes out and trying to keep my shit in.

I can’t make it. I look at Wojciech and say, “You deal wit ’em, bruh.”

He shuts the door on ’em.

I run to the bathroom, drop trou, and explode.

I’m still on the john when I hear another car pull up and then another car. They’re at the door pounding on it, hollering.

Boom boom boom! Boom boom boom! Boom boom!

Must’ve been fifteen of ’em out there kicking at the door. I’m in here shitting my brains out and I’m thinking, you dumb fuckin’ Polacks, that ain’t no way to get an American girl. You gotta do it with shitty art, hipster haircuts, and designer eyeglasses.

I GAVE UP SEX, SO
i started drinking again. I hadn’t drank in six years, so people were surprised by it.

I tell ’em, “I wanna be like
Mad Men
.”

They’re nodding politely. “Oh.”

“Plus I gave up sex, so I’ve taken up whiskey.”

Now I’m explaining myself and they’re looking around the room for someone else to talk to. “Fucking all these chicks adds up. I don’t know. . . . It’s just not where I wanna go in my life. And you can’t get a bottle of liquor pregnant. Lord knows I’ve tried.”

Bottoms up.

Andrea thinks I’m doing too many drugs.

Maybe I’ll try yoga.

I was tellin’ Z, “I wish pills weren’t so bad for you. I’d pop them instead.”

I used to chow down Vikes and do crossword puzzles. Itching.

I don’t even like the buzz of liquor. I like the act of drinking it. I post up at the bar, order my whiskey neat, and sip it. They’re selling a lifestyle and I’m buying.

I’m a cowboy.

I wake up with a headache and rotgut. Drink more water next time.

Andrea says maybe I’m depressed and I should take Zoloft.

Fuck that. I’ll stick with depression before I take a fucking pill. I’d rather do drugs to escape the weirdness in my head than take a pill to cure it.

Lately, I’ve been having nightmares. I woke up one night, my bed was shaking so hard I thought I was in an earthquake. Checked it on Google the next day, see what it measured. Nothing. Wasn’t no earthquake. That was just me, shaking.

I’ve been having sleep paralysis, too. I was tellin’ my friend Natasha about it. She says the Vietnamese call it “the ghost on your chest.” It feels like it.

Ain’t shit to do but go back to sleep.

I’ve been watching documentaries on ’Nam lately. When we were kids, we didn’t play cowboys and Indians, we played ’Nam. We’d run around the apartment complex with guns and sticks killing invisible soldiers. Maybe you shoot somebody or maybe you get shot. Maybe you die. I used to like dying. I found comfort in it. Just lie down in the grass with your eyes closed and die.

THERE’S NO YELLOW AS BRILLIANT
as vitamin piss. I got on some latex gloves, fishing out a busted glass lodged in the toilet. There’s shitty toilet paper in the glass but no shit in the bowl and I’m grateful.

The bar’s empty. I’m alone here in the john. I got a knot of ones in my pocket; they tip me when I give ’em a towel. I got Altoids, too, and I sell cigarettes for a buck a piece. The Arabs bitch about it but they still buy one; sometimes I’ll sell a whole pack for twenty.

Tonight this Chaldean fucker tried to steal a pack of gum from me, when he was in there with his boys. They were wearing Armani and silver chains. They had nice watches and stank of cologne. They own party stores and sell cell phones.

They make their money in bombed-out neighborhoods, behind bulletproof Plexiglas in a cage. Detroit doesn’t scare them, cuz where they’re from, there’s tanks and land mines and Molotov cocktails.

Now they’re in my bathroom trying to fast-talk me, trying to haggle. The one with the arched eyebrows is gonna steal my gum. It’s not about money; he’s got money. He just wants to take a piece of me and chew on it, chew on my gum.

He can’t have it. I work in the john; how much lower does he wanna see me? Should I know my place? Or does he hate the way I pop my paper towels to people? I tell myself a man’s job doesn’t define him. I try to prove it.

I see him put the pack of Big Red in his pocket. I sell it a buck a stick, I tell him he owes me five dollars. He plays dumb, there’s a confrontation. I won’t back down. His boys don’t want trouble; they push him out but they don’t pay me.

I’m heated, I tell the bouncers. They don’t do a fucking thing, cuz last week the Albanians beat their ass and this shit is giving ’em flashbacks. I start packing my shit.

“Fuck that! If I gotta worry about some A-rab motherfucker coming here, stealing my gum and y’all not doing a fuckin’ thing, I quit.”

So they kick ’em out. Now I’m happy.

I don’t know what I hate worse: Saturdays with the Jews and Arabs or Fridays with the fags. Saturdays they wanna fight me and Fridays they wanna fuck me, whipping their dicks out or trying to shove a five down my pants. I don’t let ’em, but you can’t let ’em know if you’re gay or straight cuz if they find out you like pussy, money’s gone.

I been here a year now; I’m pee shy and got gaydar. I leave the door open to let the smell out. I smoke Black & Milds, drink bottles of water, and bullshit with the regulars.

Sometimes a girl will walk by the john and recognize me.

“Aren’t you Rude Jude from
The Jenny Jones Show
?”

“Yeah, that’s right, how you doin’?”

“Why are you working in the bathroom?”

It’s a good question. I wonder it myself. I gotta pay rent somehow. The
Jenny
gig pays shit and ain’t steady enough to support me. I wanna save up to move to Cali cuz I got dreams to make happen. I’m gonna be in the movies.

When I tell people this, they doubt me. Chasing dreams is scary. And what do you do when you catch ’em? So now I keep my dreams to myself and I tell ’em rent and child support.

I gotta pay child support cuz Assia’s damn near five and I haven’t been around enough. Her mama says I ain’t shit. She’s right. I try not to think about it. I send in money and that’s it. But it haunts me. I dream about Assia sometimes, about her being old and not recognizing me. When I wake up my heart hurts.

On those days, I try not to look in the mirror. And maybe I get up and fry an egg and smoke on the porch and watch the cars drive by. I’ll call up my boys and go to the mall and forget about her.

I stay away for months. I feel so much shame, it’s hard to face her. When I finally man up and come by, no one wants me there. Assia ignores me and plays on the computer. I’m stuck talking to her mom. Even when we were fucking, we didn’t talk.

She was a booty call. We used to fuck at work, in the basement of McDonald’s. I’d wipe my dick off with a grill towel,
then I’d go flip some more burgers and not say another word to her.

I hadn’t even seen her for six months before I found out she was pregnant. She left a voice mail on my pager.

“Jude, this is Tameka. I’m pregnant, call me.”

I’m in bed with my girlfriend Maria, and Maria is pregnant, too. We end up killing the baby and breaking up. And now she hates me.

I’m talking to my baby’s mama, and she’s giving me one-and two-word answers.

“So what’s up? How you been?”

“Fine.”

“All right, what you been up to?”

“Nothing much.”

“How’s the job goin’?”

“Fine.”

I make up an excuse to leave and kiss Assia goodbye. I drive to work feeling worse.

Now I’m in the bathroom trying to explain to some coked-out JAP why a man on TV is giving out mints for tips.

She’s still confused. She asks me, “So do you shine shoes, too?”

I force a smile and shake my head.

“No . . . I don’t.”

ME AND MY OLD ROOMMATE
chris are at some hot new BBQ joint in Williamsburg with Punk Rock Rusty. At first I was skeptical, ready to hate it. Everybody eating there had extreme beards and asymmetrical haircuts. I breathed through it. Hating these trendy motherfuckers is too easy; it’s like punching Munchkins. The bottom line is hipsters are people, too, just dumb people. And I gotta tell ya, I got the ribs and brisket, and the meat fell off the fucking bone.

I saw a girl there in a pink jumper getting a jug of beer from the bar. I fell in love. I do this every now and again. I’m like that James Blunt song where he sees a chick on the subway and writes about loving her, then she bails.

This one was pretty—not a knockout, but it wasn’t her features that got me. She got me with her smile. It was warm and kind and her eyes lit up when she spoke to people.

She smiled like she’d been loved as a child.

I wanted her to be my girlfriend. I wanted her to smile at
me like that. I wanted her to wake up with me every morning and give me that smile in bed, and kiss me with her hair all messy before she brushed her teeth, before she hopped up to make tea and start her day.

And when I was being grumpy and difficult, I wanted her to smile and say, “Oh Jude, you’re being ridiculous.”

And melt my heart.

I wanted her to have my kids. I wanted to get her pregnant. She looked like she’d be a good mom with her kind eyes. But what do I know. I just finish my ribs and drink my whiskey like a cowboy.

She was in the doorway when we left. I had to speak.

I said, “Excuse me, miss. Don’t take this the wrong way, I’m not hitting on you, I don’t want nothing from you, I don’t even live out here. But lemme tell you, you are the most beautiful woman in this place. Just take that for what it’s worth.”

She looked taken aback at first and then she smiled at me, with her mouth and with her eyes. And it felt as good as I thought it would. I walked away wishing I would’ve said something more. Something clever, something heartfelt, maybe ask to call her. But I didn’t. I said what I said and now it’s off to see Brad in Bushwick. It’s the new Williamsburg.

The bar was on Knickerbocker and Troutman. The block reminded me of seventies New York in the movies, with the people on the stoops and the girls in their little shorts popping bubble gum talking to the guys hanging out the window.

Cars drove by with their Puerto Rican flags and loud music. They had Puerto Rican flags everywhere, on the
porches, on the roofs, all over. I saw a motherfucker walking down the street with a flag tied around his neck like a cape, on a Wednesday.

I’m laughing with Chris, saying they might as well have been white flags, it’s over for ’em. Cuz if I’m in your neighborhood coming for specialty cocktails and a twenty-dollar burger, you might as well give up.

The white people are coming, and where we go, death and destruction follow. Death, destruction, and carrot-apple-ginger juice. I give ’em five or ten more years and then it’s a wrap for Bushwick as we know it.

After a few hours we head home, the gypsy cab drops Chris off and I go up to Midtown for a couple more drinks.

It’s damn near three, I’m heading back to Chris’s. The streets are empty, just me and the garbage trucks. I see couples staggering out of the bars together, hand in hand. All these couples out here, what do they got that I don’t got?

The cabbie’s gunning it down 5th Ave. We pass the whore house I used to go to when I lived out here. I feel that ping in my chest. I almost tell him to stop, let me out, but I don’t. We drive on by.

I tell myself, I don’t need that in my life. The cramped room, fucking some Korean whore laid out on a towel. She’s fake moaning her way through it, stinking up the joint with her kimchi breath – trying to get me to cum fast. Don’t worry sweetheart, I will. I don’t last long with hookers, and when I’m cumming, I look in their eyes and hope they smile. They never do.

I WAS WITH ROSS THE
other day. He tells me it turns out Karma Patel, the billionaire heiress, Harvard grad, cancer patient he hooked me up with a few months back, ended up being a little teenager named Lauren.

I figured as much. I knew she was lying the minute Ross told me that in the year knowing her through Facebook, he had never actually met her. And when I pressed her to meet, something always came up.

But I figured all of this out days—and many phone conversations—after our first introduction. I had been speaking to her like she was a dear friend of one of my oldest friends, honestly and candidly.