Waylaid Read online

  When I was really young, I went to a kid’s birthday party. His mother looked at me funny as I walked into their house. She decided to move the party to the porch outside, even though the wooden-plank furniture was still a little wet from the rain the day before. She was so nice to me, I was getting more attention than the birthday boy. She walked me to and from the bathroom. It made me feel real strange, and after the party, I never talked to that kid again.

  Astronauts didn’t need friends or family, anyway. I liked to ride my Huffy around the hotel and pretend I was heading for deep space. A small stretch of asphalt connected the ends of the driveway near the highway on the inside of the U, completing an oval track. As I did lap after lap, I would try to run over every stray pebble, pretending they were asteroids I had to destroy. Clockwise and then counter-clockwise. Twenty-five laps one way, 25 the other. I would pedal faster and faster, trying to reach escape velocity so I could break out of the orbit of life at the hotel and into a better world. One with sex but with no BING! BING! BING! or Bennys or johns.

  Just one week before the end of school, I found a note on my chair that said, “FUCKIN CHINKS GO BACK TO CHINA!” I smiled and sat down. Three boys — Ray Millar, Chris Cohen, and Robbie Malone — grinned and nodded to each other.

  Ray was a bony kid with uneven sheaves of black hair. His frequent smiles showed filthy braces. Chris, who was called “Crispy” because of the fried, bubbly texture of his acne-ridden face, was on the fatter side of chubby and wore his hair in a crew cut because he thought bangs caused pimples. Robbie was skinny like Ray and looked meaner. Not in a menacing way, but like the underfed caged lab rat at the back of the classroom.

  I felt around inside my desk for my ruler, the one with the metal rim from my father’s workshop. I slipped it into the sleeve of my shirt. As we filed out for gym class, I cupped my right hand to keep the ruler up my sleeve. I saw that orange cones and hard rubber balls had been set up in the gym as we walked to the girls’ and boys’ locker rooms. Dodge ball again.

  I sat down on the scarred, splintered locker-room bench and watched Crispy. He was the biggest of the three. If I came at him, I knew Ray and Robbie would back off. I was right. As I came up to Crispy, hands at my sides, those skinny white boys slipped away like dogs at the sound of a newspaper rolling up. Crispy saw me but played it cool, working on his combination lock. He looked at me from the corner of his eye, spinning the dial to the right, six, seven, then eight times.

  “That was a nice note you left on my desk,” I said quietly. Crispy turned his head, keeping his hand on the lock.

  “What are you talking about?” he asked with a smile. I shook the ruler free from my sleeve and swung the metal edge down onto his hand. He screamed like a girl, delicately holding his limp, bleeding hand like a carefully arranged bouquet. I brought up my foot and planted my Puma into his stomach, aiming for lunch. When he dropped to his knees and puked, I saw that I’d hit breakfast, too.

  On the last day of school, my seventh-grade teacher Miss Creach called me up to the front of the class. I’d gotten the top report card. She gave me a hug and a t-shirt printed with a picture of a German Shepherd. “Top Dog” was written on the back. Miss Creach was young, about 25, and had a really pretty face, eyes, and hair, like Agent 99 on “Get Smart.” She was kinda skinny with nice legs that she liked to unveil with a tug on her skirt when she sat down. Her ass seemed to have the right plumpness, too. But her tits were too small. That was the only thing wrong with her. That wouldn’t stop some guys, though. There were a lot of letters in the magazines from fans of that.

  “And second place is Lee Anderson,” said Miss Creach. From my seat I stared at Lee Anderson’s ass as she went up to the front. She got a hug and a book of certificates for free French fries at McDonald’s.

  When she walked by to go back to her seat, I held up the t-shirt and said, “Lee, I’ll trade ya!”

  “No way!” she called back, smiling.

  As I turned back to the front I saw that Miss Creach was frowning at me.

  Now that summer vacation had arrived, the walkers lingered around the parking lot before going home. That let them hang out a little longer with the kids who had to wait for buses. Because of family vacations, a lot of friends wouldn’t see each other the entire summer.

  Walkers were kids who lived so close to school, they didn’t have to ride buses. My stop was one of the farthest from the school, so I was never a walker. I never had family vacations, either.

  Boys from the intermediate school across the street had come by to check up on the tit growth of my classmates. The burnouts smoked cigarettes and wore cut-off denim jackets with “Black Sabbath” or “Led Zeppelin” painted on the back. They were also on the hunt for fags. They’d taunted and punched the smaller boys all year, and today was their last chance until next year.

  Crispy huddled by me. He’d given me three hard-core magazines to not kick his ass anymore.

  “Regina Garrison is giving blow jobs under the bleachers by the soccer field,” he said.

  “Fucking bullshit,” I said.

  “She doesn’t care if people watch,” Crispy said.

  Suddenly there were five intermediate-school kids surrounding us.

  “There’s a fucking faggot right here!” yelled a tall, skinny burnout, pointing to Crispy. There were so many of them, I didn’t know what to do, so I stuck my hands in my pockets. Crispy dropped his bag and froze, then went limp in an act of self defense.

  “Your dad got my dad fired!” yelled one of the burnouts. “You’re so dead, little faggot!”

  They grabbed Crispy’s arms. In my head, I was yelling for him to kick them, but Crispy just tried to ball himself up.

  Now I understood how someone could just stand aside and watch their friend get beaten up. It wasn’t that we were outnumbered, but when you see someone give up and not even try to fight, you wonder why you should. Why stick up for someone who won’t even fight for himself?

  “You’re not even going to punch me, you little girl?” taunted the burnout. “I think it’s time to recycle you.” He got two other intermediate kids, and they picked Crispy up by the legs. Crispy wriggled and screamed. They opened the lid to the garbage can and pumped him down headfirst into the trash. I heard Crispy’s head banging on the sides of the can.

  Then they pulled him out and dumped him in a bush. I could hear Crispy crying. His face was cut and bleeding, though it didn’t look much worse than with the pimples alone.

  “Hey, over here!” yelled a burnout about my size. He was pointing at me. “C’mon, you slanted cunt!” he shouted.

  I pulled out a screwdriver from my back pocket.

  “Shit, are you fucking crazy?” he asked, backing up. I didn’t say anything. “Fucking psycho Bruce Lee. Go back to that fucking chinky hotel. You’re crazy!”

  After they left, I picked up Crispy’s bag and helped him up. Crispy was still crying. We walked to the buses, stepping over crushed cigarette butts littering the lawn. It reminded me of all the trash I swept up when the Bennys were back at the hotel in full force. I could tell that for all their posturing, the burnouts were still novices at smoking. The butts weren’t sucked down to the filter the way people at the hotel would do it.

  “What the hell are you kids doing!” yelled Mrs.

  Krackowski. Her bus was idling at the curb and she was standing at the top of the boarding steps with the door open. She was only about five feet tall, but she was as tough as cold biscuits. A huge pair of shades obscured most of her face.

  “They just beat him up!” I yelled back. Crispy kept crying and wiping his bloody face.

  “Just get him in here, and let’s go! You’re holding everybody up!” Mrs. Krackowski spat out. “This is one hell of a way to end your last day of school!”

  Renting out rooms to johns was just one part of the business. It was reliable income throughout the year, especially in the winter when there weren’t many real customers. It paid for the groceries. I kn
ew because it was me who went to the supermarket.

  Business peaked from Memorial Day through Labor Day, when the Bennys would come down and party. The johns hated it when the Bennys came in because the room prices went up to $50 a night, with no special fuckonly rates.

  The Bennys liked our hotel because it was near the beach. Rooms at that time of year were in pretty high demand, even with the increased rate. The Bennys made sure they got their money’s worth. They’d pack in all their friends and have maybe eight people staying in a room: two on each bed; one on the floor between the beds; two in the closet; and one in the bathroom.

  High-school girls really went for Benny men. The girls would be out of school for the summer and looking for something more exciting than fast food and surfing. Cheese fries and Space Invaders had nothing on drinking and screwing under the boardwalk after hours.

  Benny women were on the prowl for potential long-term boyfriend/husband material, but they were lucky if they had the same guy two nights in a row. I had to call taxis to take girls to the train stop after they got ditched at our hotel.

  Business was fast and furious in the summer, and when it got to be two or three in the morning and there were no rooms left, people would get really desperate. The last thing they wanted was a drive back to the city without even getting a chance to score. They would beg for a room, a dirty room, or even a room with other people in it. People wanted to sleep in the office. Others were willing to pay twice the room rate and sometimes offered more than just cash.

  Because of the Bennys, summers were no vacation for me. I had more work to do than when I was in school. More rooms to clean. More cigarettes, crushed cans, and broken glass to pick up around the hotel while avoiding the bees that had been attracted by the smell of alcohol. More drunk assholes to step around. I’d find used condoms and hotel blankets under the picnic tables all the time. Sometimes people would still be asleep, wrapped in the blankets.

  They’d also mess up the pool, which was surrounded by an unraveling stretch of green plastic-coated chain link fence that had buckled and warped from Bennys pushing each other against it or running their car fenders into it. If a supporting rod popped out of its joint, the fence would pucker and come apart. Sharp, rusted tips of cross-hatched wire stuck out from the plastic coating, looking like tire-shredders embedded in asphalt behind a “DO NOT ENTER” sign. One of my duties was to go around with a pair of pliers and thick wire and try to mend the fence, pulling it taut and tying it up.

  Cracked concrete framed the swimming pool, which was close to the highway, between the tips of the U. You had to put your towel over the weather-beaten wooden pool furniture before you sat down, otherwise you’d get splinters. Most people used the bath towels from the hotel, and in the mornings, I would take the pole hook and pull out towels that had sunk to the bottom of the deep end and clogged up the drain. Sometimes I pulled out shorts and bikinis, too.

  Bennys would often hop the fence and fuck in the shallow end at night. It was like joining the mile-high club or something. The Jacques Cousteau club, I guess. The water would still be warm because it retains heat in the evening better than the land. I learned that from my soft-cover science workbook. Water also made sex more buoyant and fluid. I learned that from letters to Club International.

  In the hot sun, I got hard watching women lying on their chests, bikini tops untied and straps hanging off the sides like bright, multicolored shoelaces. Would their tits be pressed flat permanently if they stayed like that too long? Would there be lines across their nipples from the wood planks?

  I went around the pool deck, sweeping up cigarette butts and thin pieces of broken brown and green glass from Budweiser and Heineken bottles. I saw a crushed, empty box of Marlboros under the recliner of a woman asleep with her top untied. I got down on my knees and reached for the box, turning my head up to try to peek at her tits.

  “Hey, what are you doing, kid?” someone yelled. I stuck my head up. It was Vincent, smiling and standing by the garden hose that was coiled up near the shallow end. The hose was for people to wash sand off their feet and only carried cold water. Very cold water. The nozzle was in Vincent’s hand.

  “This is how you do it!” he yelled, turning the faucet on full blast and pointing it at the woman. The nozzle wasn’t focused, so he sprayed about 10 people with freezing pellets that smacked against the skin and hurt because they were so cold. Everyone screamed and jumped up, including two women who forgot that their tops were untied. They scampered for cover on the deck near the deep end, hands cupping their tits.

  “You fucking asshole sonovabitch! Motherfucker! Cocksucker! ’Talian faggot piece of shit!” they screeched. One was a blonde, the other was a redhead. Vincent was doubled over with laughter, but he didn’t turn the hose off. He held the nozzle between his legs and jerked it around, like he was pissing on everyone.

  I searched for the two missing bikini tops but only found one, tangled up with a pair of sunglasses. Looking at the pattern, I was glad to see it was the blonde’s. I stretched it out and felt at the insides of each cup, as if I could squeeze the nipples that were once there. I went up to her and handed it back. If it were a Penthouse letter, she would have given me a deep French kiss and led me back to her room for a blow job and a hard fuck.

  Instead, she snatched her bikini top away and slapped me hard as she yelled, “Fucking little chink pervert!” She had rings on her fingers. I ran my tongue through my mouth to make sure all my teeth were still there. The mark on my face stung and my cheek was slick with a suntan lotion smear.

  Afterwards, I was looking forward to sitting back on the office couch and playing Atari, but when I went into the office, I found my father already lying there. He was wearing jeans, a thin t-shirt, and socks. His eyes were closed.

  “What’s going on here?” I asked.

  “Back hurt,” he said, not opening his eyes. His arms were folded across his stomach.

  “Shouldn’t you go see a doctor? This keeps happening.”

  “No, don’t need doctor. No big deal.”

  “Do you want more aspirin?”

  “No, doesn’t do anything. Just have to lie down more.”

  “Why don’t you lie down on the living-room couch?”

  “That couch broken and hurt my back. And too hot there. Nicer here.”

  “You’re too cheap to turn on our air conditioner.”

  “You spend most of your time in office. I’m downstair in the basement with cool air. Mommy is out cleaning rooms. Why should I turn on air conditioner?”

  I heaved a sigh and set up the Atari. In about a minute, I was sitting on the office floor, playing

  Superman.

  “Is that video game?” asked my father from the couch.

  “Yeah,” I said without turning around to look at him.

  “What game is that?”

  “Superman.”

  I heard him shift on the couch and clear his throat.

  “Can you get me some water?” he asked.

  After dinner, when most of the Bennys had left the pool for the bars, I jumped in and held myself underwater just to see what drowning was like.

  It was dark, quiet, and nice for about 15 seconds. Then the urge to breathe began to pound in my head and chest like knocks against Death’s chamber. Drowning had to be the worst way to go because you couldn’t scream and your thoughts bounced around as your head was being squeezed by water pressure. I could imagine the ache you would feel tearing away at your insides until you died.

  I came up for a breath and went down again.

  I sat in the office, playing Adventure on the Atari. I’d finished the game a zillion times before, but I was sick of Superman, and all the other cartridges required two players to be any fun.

  A Benny walked in, a six-pack of bottles of beer in one hand and a cooler the size of a doghouse swaying in the other.

  “The ice machine is between Room 2 and Room 4,” I said, pointing to the left.

  “I�
�m not looking for the ice machine,” he said. “I need a bottle opener. Ya got one, pal?” He showed a fresh cut on his thumb. “I thought they were twist-offs,” he said, mushing the tiny flap of skin against the second knuckle of his index finger.

  I looked under the office desk and pawed through the lost and found. Some of my best stuff had been left by customers. A thick leather shaving bag that I kept foreign coins in. Two Billy Idol tapes. A fountain pen. Strings of studded or ribbed Venus beads that you were supposed to feed into a girl’s pussy or asshole, or even your own ass-hole, according to the hard-core magazines. A cock ring.

  I found a bottle opener with a white plastic handle that was melted by the heat coils of a hotplate. The metal ends were spotted with rust, although I could still make out the words “STAINLESS STEEL TAIWAN.” I handed it over the counter to the man.

  “Can I have this?” he asked.

  “Yeah, someone’s left it here since last winter,” I said.

  “Thanks, pal, thanks. Hey, wait a sec, you know who John Belushi is?”

  “Yeah, I know who he is,” I said. I watched “Saturday Night Live” every week.

  “You wanna meet him? He came down for a few hours to hang out.”

  “Where is he?” I asked. The Benny walked to the office door and pointed through the glass pane. In the distance, I could see frantic splashing in the swimming pool.

  “There, the guy in yellow trunks.” A blur of yellow sprung off the diving board into a mass of limbs and glittery reflections of sunlight. “That’s him! Come on, I’ll introduce ya.”

  John Belushi swimming at my hotel pool. Cheebugger, Cheebugger, Cheebugger! No Coke — Pepsi! And the Samurai!

  Now if it were any other non-guest swimming in my pool, I would have told him to leave. Our insurance didn’t cover them. And anyway, the beach was just a mile away. Who wanted to swim in a pool when the ocean was so close?