Punkzilla Read online

  I left Buckner in the middle of the night. At one point, I got a ride from this guy heading to Canada. His name was Carson Block and he owned a logging company in Vancouver. He picked me up in western Kansas and drove me all the way to Portland. He ate green Tic Tacs and listened to country-western music CDs nonstop which was some painful listening. He didn’t have no Clash or Ramones. He wouldn’t have had any punk in a million years.

  Before I gave Branson my iPod there were these two bands called Liars and Deerhoof that I couldn’t stop listening to. Have you heard of them P? They aren’t punk bands really just alternative ones but they have some punk in them. I like those two bands a lot. There’s also this guy called Daniel Johnston who is a schizophrenic and wrote all these songs in his brother’s garage with Fisher-Price instruments. His songs are pretty sad and weird. There’s this one called “Walking the Cow” about him walking a cow. I played it for Branson once and now he thinks I communicate with the dead. Branson said “That crazy nigga sounds like he dead. Like he a mummy” and I was like “He’s not a mummy he’s from West Virginia” which was true and then Branson told me I seemed like one of those people who have a thing with the dead and that’s exactly how he put it. I said “What kind of thing?” but he couldn’t really explain himself. We never talked about that again but maybe he’s right maybe I’m meant for the dead more than for the living? Do you think it’s possible that some people are on one side or the other even if they’re scientifically alive? Like swimmers or nonswimmers? Even though I’m in the world and I eat and sleep like everyone else maybe the world doesn’t really know I’m here but the dead know I’m here they like SEE me the way dogs can see squirrels in trees. Maybe I’m like that. I’m probably not making sense at all.

  In your letter you asked me what I want to do with my life which is a mad serious question P the kind of question that makes you want to lie down and take a nap. I could be in the middle of a busy street and get asked that and I’d fall asleep because of the pressure.

  When I was really little I used to think I wanted to be in the army like the Major but all that ended when I saw him freak out this one time when he was doing his morning workout. I was like seven and he didn’t know I could see him because I was coming up from the basement and the door was cracked and he was doing push-ups in the living room and in between sets he stared at himself in that mirror next to the bookshelf that Grandma Beauty gave Mom and he pointed at his reflection and said “You’re a warrior Major! A goddamn glory-filled warrior!” and then he kissed his right bicep. It almost made me vomit I swear P. In fact my stomach is turning right now just thinking about it! That’s when I promised myself I would stay away from the army for the rest of my life but of course I went ahead and got my stupid ass sent to Buckner. How’s that for luck? Don’t take me to go to the casino with you no way. You’ll lose all your money.

  One thing I know for sure is that someday I’m going to learn how to play the guitar and maybe start my own punk band. There will be like four of us and we’ll be really skinny and pale and thrash around with kitchen-cleanser hair and we’ll have some crazy drummer with skin infections and jet fuel breath and leopard eyes and we’ll have a seven-foot-tall bassist with safety pins in his face and we won’t even have lyrics. We’ll just shout a lot and play with daggers in our teeth like legit daggers with legit blades and we’ll cut our tongues and our mouths will fill with blood and we’ll scare the shit out of people and change the face of music in like a NEW old way. I definitely want to get a tattoo too. Maybe like a shark on my back. Sharks are cool because they never sleep and they’re so invincible with mystery.

  Regarding my future all I know is that I’m not going back to Cincinnati. I’m not going back to that house with the fake front lawn and the three ceramic does huddling near the mailbox and Mom’s Japanese serenity garden in the backyard with its bamboo walls and blue Indonesian stones. I know that garden helps her but it makes me sad and tense when I think about her always sneaking around back there just to get away from the Major so she can just sit in peace or like put her hand on a tree because that’s the best she gets.

  Remember that time when the Major punished her because she hadn’t been going to Bally Fitness? How he told her she had sausage thighs? How he pointed to her legs and was like “Sausages Deb. They’re turning into godforsaken sausages” and then how Mom got really still and started staring off and how she wouldn’t blink even after you said “Mom blink. Please blink!” and how the Major told her he was putting her on the clock how he pulled out his digital stopwatch and told her if she didn’t stop pouting in three hundred seconds he was going to go spend the night at the Officer’s Club and how she stopped not blinking in exactly ninety-seven seconds and how we all knew it was exactly ninety-seven because the Major was counting them out in his command voice and how later that night we heard her crying in her Japanese serenity garden? How she waited till the Major went for his nightly drive in the Olds? And how you went out there and talked to her and sat next to her on the bamboo bench and took her hand and how she put her head on your shoulder and kept crying? What I always wanted to know was what you said to her P. Sometimes I think she wishes she married you instead of the Major even though I know that’s both scientifically and religiously impossible. Plus you’re gay. You would have been better to her that’s for sure.

  I thought it sucked how she started going to Bally Fitness the next morning and wound up losing seventeen pounds in less than two weeks. I mean I was glad that she got back into shape or became more fit or whatever but part of me wished she would’ve gotten fatter just to spite that fucker. Like what if she started eating mad doughnuts every morning and maybe some waffles with ice cream and gained fifty pounds just to piss him off? Remember how he was posting her weight on the refrigerator? That’s some psycho control freak army-type shit P.

  Before I got sent to Buckner I found a thing of Wellbutrin in Mom’s underwear drawer. I Googled Wellbutrin on Edward’s laptop and it said it’s a depression pill. It seems like everyone’s on drugs now like every American alive. There were so many guys at Buckner who had ADD like me and others who had depression and this one kid even had a problem where he would mutilate his ear till it bled. The meds line at the infirmary was almost as long as the Friday allowance line. It has to make you wonder about how long you can go without getting some kind of a prescription P. Sometimes I worry that I’ll prick my finger and antifreeze will ooze out. Antifreeze or like Clorox or something. I have to admit that I stopped taking my Ritalin back in November because I only had a few extras from the Buckner infirmary. At first going off it made me feel really hyper and scattered but after a few weeks I think I got back to normal whatever normal is. I still feel like putting my head through a window every once in a while like all the way through so the jagged pieces tear my neck apart but enough of that insanity right?

  Man my stomach is making crazy noises. I’m finally starting to feel like the meth is leaving my system. The last thing I ate was a cheeseburger at the Roxy for my going away party. Fat Larkin paid for it which was cool. He even put his arm around me and told me he was going to miss me. Buck Tooth Jenny showed up wearing some sort of dress that looked like a shower curtain and she hugged me like fifty times.

  Don’t worry P I don’t plan on doing any more meth because it makes your hair fall out and puts sores in your mouth. . . .

  You asked me about going AWOL so I guess I should tell you about that.

  I went AWOL on the last Friday in October which was the Friday before Parents Weekend. It was my first time and I really couldn’t risk getting caught based on how things were going for me at Buckner. I would have probably gotten kicked out and who knows WHAT the Major would have done to me then.

  Mom the Major and E were on their way down from Cincinnati and I know they were disappointed with me because the guidance counselor Master Sergeant Mastaglio called Mom and told her how I had failed a biology vocab test and blew off a pop quiz on the first fifty
pages of Of Mice and Men and got two demerits at a command reveille for the shitty job I did shining my low-quarters and how my ratings in Monday drill sucked and how my cadet morale was generally shitty. As a New Boy you can get between one and five stars at Monday drill and you have to get at least three stars for three consecutive weeks to qualify for your stripes at semester. My best Monday drill rating was two stars and I only got that once. I was the last New Boy in Echo Company who hadn’t gotten three and there were twelve of us so they started calling me Dumbest of the Dozen.

  At breakfast formation this tall skinny pale racist fucker from Cicero Illinois David Voyce would yell “Dumbest of the Dozen what’s four plus four?” Voyce was my squad leader and hated me so much I think he got off on it like maybe he jerked off at night about how much he could humiliate me. There weren’t any black guys in my platoon to harass because Torris Stone was in second platoon so I became Voyce’s whipping boy. Apparently there’s this place in Cicero called Marquette Park that has all these crazy race riots. Like thousands of hockey fans get together and scream “Out with the niggers!” and stuff like that. I overheard Voyce on the Old Boy phone one day asking someone how things in the park were going. It was creepy P.

  When Voyce would ask me what four plus four was I would have to answer “Sir Cadet Dumbest of the Dozen reports that four plus four equals eight sir!” and then he would yell “Then drop and give me eight Dummy!” and I’d have to drop and snap off eight push-ups.

  And the failure only gets uglier from there because I quit the junior varsity cross-country team too. One day we had to do fartlicks which is this exercise where you run a long road of telephone poles and you have to sprint between every other pole. After the fourth fartlick I had to stop and go to a knee on the side of the road probably because I had been smoking a lot in my room and I had burned out my endurance. The junior varsity coach stood over me and jogged in place while screaming at the top of his lungs that I had a vagina. “Vadge!” he screamed “Nothing but vadge!” and then he ran off and joined the others. I was tempted to go AWOL right then and there no shit P but I had nothing but a pair of shorts and my cross-country T-shirt and my running shoes so I turned around and headed back to campus. What’s weird is I still have the running shoes. In fact they’re the only pair of shoes I own. They’re New Balance and they’re so beat-up I had to fix one of the bottoms with Elmer’s glue and duct tape.

  I wound up getting three hours of Guard Path for not reporting back to HQ with the JV cross-country team plus I got kicked off the team. That same night I had a dream about Jesus of Nazareth. We were hanging out on this porch swing behind a 7-Eleven and smoking blunts and he was showing me some athlete’s foot fungus between his toes. “It’s blue” Jesus of Nazareth kept saying in his miracle voice. “It’s blue see there?” And then this other thing happened that I don’t understand which is he removed his ANKLE and gave it to me and asked me if he could have mine like he wanted to trade so we did we totally traded ankles and I felt like I became like some all-American Catholic hero all of the sudden.

  P I was nervous about the Major coming to Buckner I won’t lie. I knew he was going to wear his dress greens with all his ribbons and medals and those weird patent leather tuxedo shoes that weren’t even military issued and he was going to strut around with his hands behind his back while all the cadets and TAC officers saluted him and kissed his ass.

  A few days before I left home he knocked on my door and stood in the entrance to my room and just stared at me. I was listening to your iPod so I had to remove my earbud things. His shoulders were all sloped and I could barely make out his face because the light from the hall was on and he was mad shadowy. I thought he was going to bust me for smoking weed earlier that day or for forgetting to take the trash out or something but when I asked him what was wrong he said “You know anything about this Viagra stuff everyone’s talking about?” He was trying to be all quiet and secretive. I said I didn’t know anything about it. He said “Okay then” and went down the hall. I could hear him walking around the house for the rest of the night like he was taking a hike or something. I couldn’t sleep because I was pretty freaked out and I could just imagine Mom in their bedroom staring up at the ceiling or trying to read one of her romance novels like reading the same sentence over and over again and just laying there frozen like a cat in the middle of the street.

  There was this kid at Buckner named Tim Tiptree who was selling black market Viagra to cadets. He would sell them to Old Boys for fifty bucks a hit and to New Boys for a hundred. His dad was a pharmacist in Philadelphia so he had easy access and most of the cadets were rich so he made tons of money. If you were an Old Boy and you couldn’t get off campus and find a townie girl to split one with the thing to do was to get a New Boy to stand in front of your room while you jerked off. Have you ever split a Viagra with Jorge? I hear it makes sex way more intense like you feel like you grow fangs.

  By the way I don’t mean to change the subject so fast but when mom finds out about you being so sick she might send you some money or at least some care packages so that’ll be cool. That Christmas Eve when you came out of the closet she was the only one who didn’t totally freak out. I remember how she took your hand at the dinner table and how the Major told her not to comfort you but she kept squeezing your hand anyway. I thought the Major was going to kill you that night I swear I really thought that P. I couldn’t even sleep because I had this terrible feeling that he was going to sneak into your room and snap your neck.

  So anyway AWOL wasn’t even hard. You hear all these stories about cadets getting chased and Tasered and knocked in the back of the head with these huge flashlights that the on-duty guards carry.

  What’s weird is that there isn’t even a fence around the Buckner campus. Sometimes during Monday drill I would be marching with my platoon and I would get this feeling that I could just march away and start running but I couldn’t do it.

  That Friday night the TAC officer on duty was this old Vietnam vet called Sergeant Swift and he was sleeping in the HQ and I walked right past him and across the rotunda with all those paintings of the famous generals staring at me and then I was through the front doors of DeRosa Hall and I was walking under the Academy Archway and I just kept going down Cemetery Road till this townie picked me up in a Dodge Dart. He had long hair and he was a chronic insomniac. His name was Steve and he said he worked at an all-night doughnut shop just to pass the time. He knew I was a Buckner cadet because of my haircut and he also knew I was AWOL but he helped me anyway. I had heard how townies could be pretty hateful so I was lucky.

  The first thing he asked me was if they beat me at Buckner. He was like “They beat you at that school?” and I told him that sometimes they did and then he asked if I hit them back and I lied and said yes and looked at my fist like there was a piece of glass in it.

  Steve the insomniac doughnut maker drove me all the way to Pittsburg Kansas where I spent the night under this bell tower thing on the campus of Pittsburg State University. I pretty much froze my ass off and woke up face-to-face with a squirrel whose eyes were black and jittery.

  That day I managed to eat for free in their cafeteria. What I did was I found this math book in a garbage can and sat down at a table and pretended like I was reading it. A few minutes later this pale girl with little baby teeth sat down across from me and asked me if I was the provost’s son. I had no idea what the provost was but I was like an actor P I really was. I was totally playing it cool. She was wearing this huge orange and red sweatshirt that said “Go Gorillas” on the front. Eventually I told her that yes I was his son and I thought I had her fooled but she smiled all conceited and said “Dr. Yarworth is a she.”

  I said “Oh” because I couldn’t say much else. When you get caught lying I’ve learned that Oh is about the safest response. Then she asked me if I was actually reading the math book and she was still smiling at me with her weird little teeth. I said I was and then she said she was impressed because it
was an advanced calc book so I flipped a page and made a face like knowledge is boring. Then she asked me my name and I gave her yours.

  She said “Like the Rabbit?” and I went “Exactly” and then she started scratching her skinny pale arms.

  I asked her her name and she said it was Margaret so I told her Margaret was a pretty name and she said thank you and got all quiet and bashful and started looking down at her lap. She had a lot of peach fuzz on her cheeks and I wondered if her hormones were messed up like maybe she burped a lot or could grow a circus beard. Then she told me how all her friends called her Mags and I tried imagining her friends and they were all pale and skinny and wore sweatshirts with gorillas on them. She told me how she was studying to be a special-ed teacher which made me remember this special-ed cadet at Buckner Floyd Bausheck who had a face like a catfish and always walked around with his mouth open because he was so congested. I told Mags she seemed like she would be a good teacher and she must have liked that because she stopped scratching her arms and offered me the rest of her chili. While I was eating it I could feel her staring at me but not like in a sexual way. It was more like I had survived a car crash.

  Then out of nowhere she asked me if I was a premature baby. She said “Were you a premature baby?” and then she told me how premature babies grow up to be near-perfect human specimens. That’s what she said P near-perfect human specimens I shit you not!

  She told me I had a lovely face and that I possessed an androgynous beauty and how I must be appealing to both sexes. What a weird thing to say to someone right? I felt like stabbing her with her fork like I got mad homicidal feelings because of her comment. There was this huge clock in the cafeteria and I felt like it was watching me too like it knew my thoughts like it was somehow connected to Buckner and would let them know about any sudden movements I might make.

  When I finished her chili I asked her if I could borrow five bucks and I told her I was good for it but she gave it to me and said I didn’t have to pay her back. I think that as a general rule lonely people give other lonely people money a lot.