Hyena (7 page)

Ross had cosigned for a bullshit girl.

We turned Hardy Boys, Ross and I, trying to crack the case. But every lie we caught her in would turn into a bigger, more elaborate lie.

“Oh you’re gonna be here at six?”

Five o’clock she’s in a car wreck.

“Where?”

“Santa Monica.”

“The street or the city?”

“Both.”

“Where by?”

“Can’t remember, the brain cancer pills cloud the memory.”

“That’s awful. Which hospital you at? I’m coming to see you.”

“Just got out, heading home.”

“That’s even better, I’ll check on you there.”

“No you can’t, chemo in the morning.”

“Great, I’ll take you and hold your hand the whole time through. Okay?”

“Okay.”

Five in the morning, emergency brain surgery.

And so on.

Why would a normal person take time out of their busy life to entertain this obvious bullshit? Well, in Ross’s case he had a year’s worth of correspondence put into this and he wanted some answers. Me, I’m not normal, I’m abnormal, I’m a fucking nut. I do weird shit. I was mad I got duped, I felt my trust had been violated, and I just wanted to catch her in the act. Call her out, ask her why.

I wanted to be like, “Exhibit A, people do not get metal plates put in their head from brain cancer! Exhibit B, there were no said Karma Patels brought into any hospital in Los Angeles on said date! Exhibit C, the land deed to 662 Maryland
Drive is under the name of Bob Jones and not to any Patell!!! I got just one question for you, Karm. . . . Stop crying, Karm, it’s okay. I’m not mad, I’m just disappointed. Just answer me this. . . . Why’d ya do it, Karm? Why’d ya do it?”

I was playing that conversation out in my head as I drove over to 662 Maryland Drive, got out of the car, and entered the gated property. But while I was in the backyard, peering into the window of a sitting room completely abandoned save for a cardboard box (a light rain drizzling on my head), it dawned on me: Maybe I was taking this a bit far. Maybe there is no “why.” Maybe some people are just assholes. And maybe I was turning nutty once again.

Growing up, at least once every year, I’d just snap. I’d hold shit together all year long, then something would set me off and I’d get arrested or fight the police or fight my principal, or get expelled or have some nervous breakdown.

And as I was losing it, I’d know in my head I was doing something extremely dumb. But I’d just keep going, because I had to. I couldn’t help myself. I had to see it through.

As I’ve gotten older, I’ve learned coping mechanisms to deal with stress, like jogging and breathing and doing drugs and shit like that, and these episodes have since waned.

Standing there in this stranger’s backyard, on that fresh-laid sod, peeping into a window that wasn’t mine, it hit me. I was a cunt hair away from one of these episodes. I stopped. I looked around the backyard at the half-dug pool, at the shovels lying in the mud, at the rain-soaked plywood on the ground next to it.

I stopped and said out loud, “Jude, you’ve lost it again.”

I then walked away from that house, from out their backyard, out the gate, got in my car, and drove to the V Cut cigar lounge for a cup of tea. I blocked all her calls and never attempted to contact her again. I was back to normal.

Later that week, Ross told me he saw on Facebook that she died of brain cancer. I guess the emergency brain surgery couldn’t save her.

Rest in peace.

We didn’t really speak on her till months later, at the Tar Pit over whiskey.

Ross is smiling. He’s like, “Judo, I gotta tell you something.”

“Yeah? What?”

He goes into this whole story about Karma and how she got busted lying by some Canadian rapper; she pulled the same shit on him and he got a private investigator and Ross reached out to the dude. “. . . and then, they tracked her down to her house in Maine or Vermont somewhere. Peep this: turns out, she was just some little teenage girl named Lauren getting over on all these rappers. Case closed.”

I’m shaking my head. I say, “Hell naw. She was a teenager? That British accent had her sounding old as hell. She sounded like the BBC and shit.”

Ross is like, “Young as hell, Judo. A teen. A baby.”

I say, “I was on the phone with her a bunch. I phone-sexed her. I phone-sexed a fucking fifteen-year-old? Goddamn.”

He says, “Yup, probably, I don’t know how old she was. She was a teenager, that’s all I know.”

“Where she from again?”

“I don’t know, Vermont or something.”

I say, “A motherfuckin’ teenager.”

Ross is like, “Yeah . . . you phone-sexed a child, Judo.”

He’s laughin’.

I’m still shaking my head. “Goddamn. Now that I think of it, she did cuss a lot for going to Harvard.”

“You ain’t bust, though, did you?”

“Huh?”

“With the phone sex, you ain’t cum right?”

“Naw, naw, I faked that shit. I ain’t cum. I acted like I did; just trying to get her to bust so I could go to bed.”

He’s like, “You’re good then.”

We’re quiet for a second. I say, “I wonder if she faked cumming, too. She lied about everything else.” I look at Ross; he takes a drink. “She prolly faked that shit. That little lying motherfucker.” I take a drink. I say, “Ross if I couldn’t even get a fifteen-year-old off with my phone sex game, I just don’t know what I would do.”

I crack a smile. I’m just kidding . . . kind of.

THE ITEMS IN MY SHOPPING
cart are the following: one leek, one large carrot, a cucumber, one Chinese eggplant, condoms, lube, maxi-pads, toilet paper, and wet wipes. I impulse-buy some energy drinks at the checkout and head to the crib to wash up. I just finished yoga.

The porn chick on the show today is a little white girl with a big round ass and a large black following. We’re playing a game called “Guess What’s in Me.” I’m on the mike trying to be clever and put condoms and lube on the vegetables at the same time. It’s not easy. I shove the lubed-up veggies into her pussy one at a time and work them around for a bit. She’s blindfolded and has an industrial-strength vibrator on her clit.

She’s spot-on, she knows her veggies. I fuck her with the Chinese eggplant till she cums. Listeners love this shit, the phones are going crazy. I don’t even get hard. It’s just a job.

Porn’s ruined for me. Ignorance is bliss. Sometimes lies are better than the truth. When they listen, they’re thinking about
her cumming, I’m thinking about herpes. I’m thinking about big dicks pounding dry pussies and fake moans.

We sit in awkward silence and wait for the song to finish to go back on the air. Not much to say after you just threw some vegetables up a stranger. She tells me she used to watch me on
Jenny Jones
. I tell her that’s cool. She tells me her friends never heard of me. We take calls. I thank her. She’s sweet. Show’s over. I’m off to bus tables.

It’s what I do for fun. I’m Andy Kaufman. When people I meet find out I bus, they think I’m poor. “Radio doesn’t pay well? It’s tough to make ends meet, huh?”

I wish I could let it slide, but I tell ’em, “I do well, I’m just slumming it.”

It’s a joke. Some laugh; others don’t. They think I’m talking down. I came up doing this shit. My mom was the help, I’ll make those jokes.

My real job is to sit in a box by myself talking shit. It’s nice to be around people and move. I ain’t slumming it.

I know this chick, a Harvard lawyer who fucks Mexican busboys to feel part of the struggle. I hate that bitch. She’s slumming it. Yeah, I wanna fuck immigrants, too, but it’s more about the movement of their ass in them sweatpants walking down Vermont, pushing a stroller. Their willingness to let you cum in ’em speaks to the inner caveman in me. Fuck the struggle; they can keep their fucking struggle.

I’m driving to work down Pico checking out a Mexican chick walking, baby in hand, one in the stroller, a tamale away from being overweight, ass swinging. I’m listening to Willie
Nelson in the car, like my dad used to do. He’d bang around town in the maroon Chevette, smoking Kools, singing along with Willie,
You were always on my mind. You were always on my mind.
Take a drag, blow that shit out.

They put him in the loony bin around that time. Him and my mom are arguing, phone rings, it’s the guy she’s seeing, she takes the call. Pop goes bananas, he’s hollering, breaking shit. Cuts his hand open on a busted jar. It’s long and deep, he’s bleeding everywhere. Drives himself to the hospital for stitches and they admit him.

I’m on the porch sharpening Popsicle sticks, staring at my dad’s blood on the concrete as he rushes off.

Days go by. I ask my mom where my dad is.

“He’s sick. He’s not feeling well.”

We go to the hospital to see him. We’re outside in the visiting area by the pull-up bar with the wood chips. He’s sitting at the picnic table, somber. He looks like a man who just lost.

He told us about the rape years later, when I was ten or twelve. We were going to my Nonnie’s in the Buick and he laid it on us. Rachel and I were playing in the bathtub when it happened. They were still married but she wouldn’t fuck him anymore; she said she wanted to be faithful to Darryl. So he put a knife to her throat and raped her.

He said he did it for love, said the knife wasn’t that big, said he was drinking and drugging. Said he got crazy when she started seeing that other guy, his head just broke. He said he lost it.

Well, that cleared things up. That’s why Mom showed up
to Nonnie’s that day trying to take us from him. That’s why Grandpa slapped him in the face. That’s why she wouldn’t let him in the house anymore and he’d always try to come in anyway.

Knife wasn’t that big, he said; it was more symbolic.

The very next breath, he’d say, “Look at this, we’re alone, she did this to us! She broke up our family. Ya all I got left; all we got is each otha! We gotta be good to each otha.”

And he’d clutch the steering wheel, sobbing, and we’d nod and comfort him.

And when I was in the car with my mom, I’d say, “Mom, why’d you break up our family? Why’d you do this to us?” She’d never say anything bad about my dad and I’d just stay on her till I saw tears fall from her eyes and something in me liked that.

He joined AA to get her back, said it was the alcohol that made him act that way. Didn’t work. He ended up just fucking the rehab chicks. No one was buying it anyway; it takes commitment to be a drunk and he lacks that. He’s no drunk, he’s just crazy.

He’d get mad when my ma’s people wouldn’t invite him to Christmas. Every year it was the same thing. “Oh, that broke dick Darryl is invited and not me? He’s not even family! Ya own fatha isn’t welcome? That’s bullshit, that really hurts. You gonna let them do this to ya own fatha? Ya not gonna stick up for me?”

Till years later, finally we were like, “Well, goddamn, of course Darryl is invited, he didn’t rape Mom.”

His eyes’d well up and he’d start mumbling shit and then he’d bring it up again the next year.

I’m in my car now, thinking about Julie, all our fights, all the times I spazzed out and punched the walls, how I scared her. How I’m my father’s son. Thinking about how I could’ve done things better. Singing along with Willie,
You were always on my mind. You were always on my mind.

JINX USED TO FUCK AROUND
on Shae all the time. We’d be coming from some chick’s house and Shae would beep him and we’d have to go get her a corned beef sandwich from the Coney.

She loved those sandwiches. He’d show up with a corned beef smelling like some other bitch and she ain’t never say shit.

Jinx and Dont got caught fucking some hood rats. Turns out one of the chicks was Shae’s cousin. He never met that one, lived in the same city and everything. Bad luck, I guess. Jinx blamed Dont, said he set it up and talked him into doing it.

I don’t think Shae believed him, but she made herself. She wouldn’t let Jinx and Dont hang out no more. Dont was real hurt off that.

We’re talking about it years later. I tell him, “What you expect? He was in damage control, that motherfucker got a kid wit her. That’s his wife. You think he’s gonna sacrifice all that to stay boys wit you? Shit, man, come on.”

Dont would plead, “Yeah, but that was out cold, he cut me off. He just cut me off. We was boys, Jude, we was all boys. You don’t do that to your boy.”

Yeah, we was boys, but Jinx was Jinx. He was the same motherfucker that’d try to put his dope up under my seat when we’d drive around town.

I’d be like, “Jinx, get that shit from out under my seat, man, or I ain’t getting in the car.”

“I ain’t finna put it under my seat, what if we get pulled over? They gonna blame me. I’m black.”

“They gonna blame you cuz it’s
yours.
”

I’d remind Dont, and he’d be like, “Man, I miss that dude anyway.”

Growing up, we used to bang chicks for shoes, shirts, their car, money, anything. See who’d get the most.

I did all right with the rich black girls. I’d get some Perry Ellis or Nautica cologne. Jinx’d pull the hood rats and maybe get some Jordans out of them. But Jinx’s half brother Myron was the best at it because he got the white girls. He’d tie a bandanna around his head backward and they’d say he looked just like Tupac.

That motherfucker ain’t look shit like Pac; he just looked like a black dude with a bandanna around his head. But the white girls from Clarkston loved it, and they were the cash cows with the redneck dads. So he’d be Pac. He’d get their money and they’d get to piss off their family, ruin Thanksgiving, and see about a black dude’s dick size.

Jinx’d say Myron didn’t have the game for black chicks.
Myron’d say that Jinx’s mama poked holes in the condom and that’s how she had Jinx.

So Jinx finally got his hooks into this white chick, but she was broke and she was ugly and stayed in Pontiac.

He was like, “Come on, we finna fall through to Bethany’s house. She got a cousin—you wanna roll wit me?”

I was like, “The one Jamaal used to fuck? With the glasses?”

He said, “Yeah.”

I say, “What for? That bitch is ugly as hell.”