Now the kid's ears ache with the cold. He feels dizzy and hyperventilated. His little stool-pigeon chest is all dimpled chicken skin. His nipples are pinched up by the cold into hard red pimples, and the little ejaculate tells himself: For real, I deserve this.
And the Mommy says, "Try to at least stand up straight."
The kid rolls his shoulders back and imagines the headlights are a firing squad. He deserves pneumonia. He deserves tuberculosis.
See also: Hypothermia.
See also: Typhoid fever.
And the Mommy says, "After tonight, I'm not going to be around to nag you."
The bus motor idles, putting out a long tornado of blue smoke.
And the Mommy says, "So hold still, and don't make me spank you."
And sure as hell, this little brat deserved to get spanked. He deserved whatever he got. This is the deluded little rube who really thought the future would be any better. If you just worked hard enough. If you just learned enough. Ran fast enough. Everything would turn out right, and your life would amount to something.
The wind gusts and dry grains of snow scatter down from the trees, each flake stinging against his ears and cheeks. More snow melts between the laces of his shoes.
"You'll see," the Mommy says. "This will be worth a little suffering."
This would be a story he could tell his own son. Someday.
The ancient girl, the Mommy tells him, she never saw her lover ever again.
And the kid is stupid enough to think a picture or a sculpture or a story could somehow replace anybody you love.
And the Mommy says, "You have so much to look forward to."
It's hard to swallow, but this is the stupid, lazy, ridiculous little kid who just stood shaking, squinting into the glare and the roar, and who thought the future would be so bright. Picture anybody growing up so stupid he didn't know that hope is just another phase you'll grow out of. Who thought you could make something, anything, that would last forever.
It feels stupid even to remember this stuff. It's a wonder he's lived this long.
So, again, if you're going to read this, don't.
This isn't about somebody brave and kind and dedicated. He isn't anybody you're going to fall in love with.
Just so you know, what you're reading is the complete and relentless story of an addict. Because in most twelve-step recovery programs, the fourth step makes you take inventory of your life. Every lame, suck-ass moment of your life, you have to get a note- book and write it down. A complete inventory of your crimes. That way, every sin is right at your fingertips. Then you have to fix it all. This goes for alcoholics, drug abusers, and overeaters, as well as sex addicts.
This way you can go back and review the worst of your life any time you want.
Because supposedly, those who forget the past are condemned to repeat it.
So if you're reading this, to tell the truth, it's really none of your business.
That stupid little boy, that cold night, all of this will just become more of the stupid shit to think about during sex, to keep from shooting your load. If you're a guy.
This is the weak little suck-ass whose mommy said, "Just hold on a little while longer, just try a little harder and everything will be all right."
Hah.
The Mommy who said, "Someday, this will be worth all our effort, I promise."
And this little dickwad, this stupid stupid little sucker, he stood there this whole time shaking, half naked in the snow, and really believed somebody could even promise something so impossible.
So if you think this is going to save you ...
If you think anything is going to save you ...
Please consider this your final warning.
Chapter 2
IT'S DARK AND STARTING TO RAIN when I get to the church, and Nico's waiting for somebody to unlock the side door, hugging herself in the cold.
"Hold on to these for me," she says and hands me a warm fistful of silk.
"Just for a couple hours," she says. "I don't have any pockets." She's wearing a jacket made of some fake orange suede with a bright orange fur collar. The skirt of her flower- print dress shows hanging out. No pantyhose. She climbs up the steps to the church door, her feet careful and turned sideways in black spike heels.
What she hands me is warm and damp.
It's her panties. And she smiles.
Inside the glass doors, a woman pushes a mop around. Nico knocks on the glass, then points at her wristwatch. The woman dunks the mop back in a bucket. She lifts the mop and squeezes it. She leans the mop handle near the doorway and then fishes a ring of keys out of her smock pocket. While she's unlocking the door, the woman shouts through the glass.
"You people are in Room 234 tonight," the woman says. "The Sunday school room."
By now, more people are in the parking lot. People walk up the steps, saying hi, and I stash Nico's panties in my pocket. Behind me, other people hustle the last few steps to catch the door before it swings shut. Believe it or not, you know everybody here.
These people are legends. Every single one of these men and women you've heard about for years.
In the 1950s a leading vacuum cleaner tried a little design improvement. It added a spinning propeller, a razor-sharp blade mounted a few inches inside the end of the vacuum hose. Inrushing air would spin the blade, and the blade would chop up any lint or string or pet hair that might clog the hose.
At least that was the plan.
What happened is a lot of these men raced to the hospital emergency room with their dicks mangled.
At least that's the myth.
That old urban legend about the surprise party for the pretty housewife, how all her friends and family hid in one room, and when they burst out and yelled "Happy birthday" they found her stretched out on the sofa with the family dog licking peanut butter from between her legs ...
Well, she's real.
The legendary woman who gives head to guys who are driving, only the guy loses control of his car and hits the brakes so hard the woman bites him in half, I know them.
Those men and women, they're all here.
These people are the reason every emergency room has a diamond-tipped drill. For tapping a hole through the thick bottoms of champagne and soda bottles. To relieve the suction.
These are the people who come waddling in from the night, saying they tripped and fell on the zucchini, the lightbulb, the Barbie doll, the billiard balls, the struggling gerbil.
See also: The pool cue.
See also: The teddy bear hamster.
They slipped in the shower and fell, bull's-eye, on a greased shampoo bottle. They're always being attacked by a person or persons unknown and assaulted with candles, with baseballs, with hard-boiled eggs, flashlights, and screwdrivers that now need removing. Here are the guys who get stuck in the water inlet port of their whirlpool hot tub.
Halfway down the hallway to Room 234, Nico pulls me against the wall. She waits until some people have walked past us and says, "I know a place we can go."
Everybody else is going into the pastel Sunday school room, and Nico smiles after them. She twirls one finger next to her ear, the international sign language for crazy, and she says, "Losers." She pulls me the other way, toward a sign that says Women.
Among the folks in Room 234 is the bogus county health official who calls to quiz fourteen-year-old girls about the appearance of their vagina.
Here's the cheerleader who gets her stomach pumped and they find a pound of sperm. Her name is Lou Ann.
The guy in the movie theater with his dick stuck through the bottom of a box of popcorn, you can call him Steve, and tonight his sorry ass is sitting around a paint-stained table, squeezed into a child's plastic Sunday school chair.