I was pretty drunk that night. We were listening to the Pharcyde. I was drinking much more than he was. I sat in the one chair by the desk and he sat on the bed.
A bubble came up from my stomach and burned my throat. It came out rank and when I swallowed it tasted like acid.
Just then, I dont know why, I said, Oh, crap, A.J., fuck you. I laughed and my esophagus was burning.
A.J. looked up from his deep thoughts on the bed.
Dont say that shit, bitch, he said, and he was not laughing.
What shit? I said.
Fuck you, Teddy. Dont be sitting over there like a grinning baboon sayin shit. Ill fuck you up. He wasnt really looking at me.
Okay, I said, and drank some more from the bottle. It was a great bottle, really smooth. Smirnoff. I took a sip of tap water from a little orange plastic cup.
Then A.J. was up and pacing around the room. Three big steps in one direction, three steps back, over and over again. He was hunched over in a white T-shirt that was grayed from washing, and his wiry forearms were flexing and unflexing.
He had moved to Palo Alto from LA the year before, so he thought he had a reputation to maintain. He was just a skinny little guy with a bowling ball head, but he arrived talking big. For a while he got a bit of respect because he wrote good graffiti and claimed that he liked big black asses. His tag was Icer for some reason, and then he changed it to Ajay because it was like his name but spelled differently. He always drank a lot of pineapple juice to make his come taste good. Like cocoa butter, he said.
Three months after his arrival, he was a joke. Everyone saw he was actually psycho. As soon as he got drunk he would do stupid things like put cigarettes out on his arms or ride his scooter into a wall. And he would talk even bigger when he was drunk. Hed say, Nigger. One night he said the wrong thing to some of the black guys and got beat up. He wasnt so tough after that. He was alone a lot. Thats when he started doing weird things even when he wasnt drunk, like doing the cigarette burns at school. He really had no friends. Except me. He was a little bald weirdo, with burns up his forearm like leopard spots.
It was ten oclock and I was staring at the tape turning in the boom box. Little gears rotating. The Geto Boys were talking about dick sucking, and licking scrotums and assholes. A.J. was back on the low bed with the ratty blue blanket and he was making a call.
Yo, shut up for a minute, Im calling April, he said. Turn that shit down.
but cool.
I unscrewed the red cap and tilted the bottle to my lips. The stuff went down and I pictured the clear liquid with a magical pink inner glow.
Save some of that shit, A.J. said. A few cars passed but not the girls. I drank from the bottle again and it was a scary plunge because I always wanted to take too much. It hurt, but it was also impressive, like being in the hands of a bigger force. And because of that, a relief. A.J. still wasnt looking at me so I took another sip and my throat burned sharp and my brain swam in cold water.
A long silver-blue Cadillac passed, going very slowly. How we must look to adults: shitty teenagers in brown jackets, hanging around the school yard in the dark.
I thought again about the Tar Baby from Uncle Remus. The Tar Baby and the briar patch and Brer Rabbit and Brer Bear and Brer Fox. I could probably get A.J. to fuck the Tar Baby if I made it look like a girl. Get his dick stuck in the tar. A.J. was so lonely and angry, and all his feelings got computed in strange ways. He said he had had a girlfriend in LA, a black girl. She must have hated herself. April was white, but A.J. really liked her.
After thirty minutes April and the girls werent there. It was just us, cold in the cold.
A.J. had walked out of the tanbark onto the blacktop, and I was alone with the vodka for a while, but then he came back and started yelling.
Save that shit for the girls, motherfuck! he said, grabbing the bottle. He saw how much was left and yelled some more. I just sat there. He said, You faggot ass, you shit-kissing motherfucker, you dumb fucking nigger, you shitfaced faggot, I oughtta kill you. . . . Other stuff poured out, like he was talking to himself.
Some teenage girls walked by. They didnt go to our high school. There was a big-boned girl with short curly hair to her ears and a skinny witchy girl with longer black hair. They stood in the gateway.
What are you yelling at? said the big-boned girl. She said it like she was older than she was. She must have been lonely if she was bothering with us.
A.J. answered her like he had been expecting them. This faggot doesnt know how to get any pussy, and drinks all my shit.
The girls laughed a little.
Really? He doesnt know how to get any pussy? said the big-boned girl.
What an asshole, said the witchy one. She was talking about A.J.
Then I spoke up. It was the first chance Id had after the yelling.
Youre the one who doesnt know how to get girls, I said to A.J.s back. My words came out damp and wobbly.