Life of Jo-Jo

1:Life of Jo-Jo (Suburbs 1988)
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Cloudless skies, the haze off the blacktop. Man, what else? Wave and snap. Like five feet of latex tubing, and I’ll say we did it so many times I could see the tubes curl, ripple at the ends, the crack that sent those water balloons soaring above the tops of trees, out over the neighborhood for what could have been miles. Also those trees. About the fact of my childhood memory, always the same backdrop, that blurred wall of 20-foot pine. Drop-offs, right from the side of the road, deep into piles of ivy, trees with vines, with green fur that seemed to sweat all summer—and this is the suburbs, not like we live in a jungle. Virgil’s neighborhood was rolling slopes, blonde columns. Houses set back from the street. We were the fork, me and Virgil, we let Steve Branham do the balloon, because even back then, age nine, the guy was a linebacker, fucking monster, he’d ease it back until he was squatting on the ground, balloon between his legs, pulling, all three of us trembling, straining, sweating, and that’s gay as hell, I know, on three, until that whip, snap, me and Virgil, torque on the release, like throwing it, then right there in the street, mid-afternoon, laughing, crazy, falling over each other, and the magic was that it was open-ended. For all we knew that balloon smashed a window somewhere, or burst on the head of some asshole on a bible retreat. I’d imagine a picnic, or a carload of dudes we couldn’t stand, and if we could get three or four in the air right after the other, then it was a relentless Tokyo strafing run, death from the sky, a love letter for all those jerkoffs, with kids and their parents screaming, skidding through traffic, running aground on the shoulder, the whole neighborhood streaking for cover, and imagining it, just the fumes of that excitement was enough to get you through another week of dead, dull classes, long division in Mrs. Tarber’s class, of fifth grade, full effect . . .

The balloon launcher thing. Two, maybe three weeks, bounding around, of hysterical, baboon laughing, teachers glaring at us, then the table at lunch, interrupting each other to further go in on these wild balloon scenarios, also the golf ball, that one time, man, like a bullet, and think about that. This was the year where the big thing was running up behind girls, early bloomers, getting a good squeeze on their tits, out on the walkway between the gym and the arts building. And not that I hadn’t done it a couple of times. But it felt rapey, too savage. Also dodgeball, the new thing in gym class, which was a full-blown war. I was fast enough, but then it was the most I could do to keep from getting creamed. Those sadistic JV football team cats . . . School dances were a joke, one big cattle call, you always left feeling dejected. By then I played so much soccer year-round that my thighs, groin and ass muscles were always sore, which gave me a weird, limping walk that I tried to convert into a pimp sort of pigeon-toe thing, still kind of a bad look.

It was relative, that’s what I’d say. For me, it wasn’t rebellion. It wasn’t about much of anything. Maybe the other roles all seemed taken, the surface of everything paved over and sealed. Or smooth, footfalls on carpet, main hall, 5pm, the cafeteria. Late for soccer practice. That was me, with Virgil, Steve Branham, also the new Indian kid, he had the three empty gallon jugs, that doomped and bumped against his legs as we ran. We circled behind the columns while the janitors worked, to finally slip through, to get two of the little drums of table salt, then out, under the archway, shushing each other, running close to the wall, and in my mind this was the way the world worked, we were the middle-men, the strugglers, but also smoke jumpers, covered in soot, the kids in Oliver Twist. Because no matter what, something had to happen. So why wait for it?

2:
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Here’s what I’d been waiting for. There were now two Indian kids in our grade, and my main relief was with Bav that seemed to kill off the pressure, the jokes and whatnot, steering me in the direction of Reena Patel. I mean, I was the only black kid, and yeah, she was close, colorwise, I got that part, but she also had a weird, bloated upper body, skinny legs, also that curry-type smell to her, and what, was I supposed to marry that chick? That’s Bav, not Bob, Roja.  To the point where we were saying it too, like that, Bav, not Bob, Bav not Bob, because evidently it’d been a thing wherever he’d transferred from; India, or Warner Robbins and it was how he introduced himself, pitch perfect, without fail . . . All of a sudden Bav’s following us around, and you know, that’s the way. At recess, chopping it up, we’re talking, some new plan and there he is, a few steps back, staring at the ground. At the lunch table. Math class, sitting two seats over. At gym, and Steve Brahnam’s with the fifth graders, different period, so it’s me and Virgil, in line, there’s Bav sidling around beside us, and with things like that Virgil’s not interested, he doesn’t care, so it’s up to me to decide how to play it, tricky logic, because in my own mind I’m like a living legend, but then, like Bav, I’m also rail thin with glasses, big head, wardrobe slightly out of touch. And Bav, thin mustache, his polos pressed, always tucked in, always the tight-ass, acid-washed Levis, little guy, but that big-man, bowlegged walk I think is funny, that I guess I like for obvious reasons. Also to bend it back, for instance, the countless times Virgil must have fired that slingshot by himself in the driveway, holding the tubes, stamping the pouch part down and shooting it off with his own foot. First the one he got from Playland Toys, which was nothing, but messing around, taking that apart, to then build the real one with surgical tubing, plastic handles from the hardware store; this is Virgil, C-student, with things like this though, a ringer, a kind of unstoppable, sweaty Copernicus. Meanwhile by comparison, my own ideas felt lame, childish. Fragile’s a better word. Also different factors, the map of things you never mention, you don’t bring up, standing and smirking, unlikely as it might seem for two guys like me and Virgil, you’re there, you’re trapped after all, it’s either this or be swallowed up, and then, you’re pals, just don’t think too much about it.

Or forget topography! Or maybe not rich, not rich-rich, only that our North-side, upper-middle, semi-rich neighborhoods all seemed connected, across the river I can’t recall even a glimpse of, but rolling, descending and ascending, in station wagons, zooming, in Steve Branham’s dad’s suburban, curling over and through landscaped hills. Or better yet, the abandoned development in the cul-de-sac behind Steve Branham’s house. Like some ruined, unfinished, ancient site. Slab concrete. Thousands of square feet, crumbling, sunk into the hill, sectioned off with staves of rebar and surrounded by a maze of trenches we assumed were for pipes. I thought about that chapter from our history books on the Chinese Qin dynasty, those clay men, rows and rows, sculpted, buried there, posed and marching, like I remembered Mike Shaker, racing his bike off a plywood ramp, leaping to the ground as it went up, out, then down crashing into those pits. Most of the time though, you’d be skirting the edge, top of the dirt wall, fast as you could ride without falling. Or dueling in that maze, sticks for guns, Double Impact, diving sideways, or like idiots, running, throwing dirt clods, and not just me and Steve Branham, Shakes, also Waddell, Lee James, that crew, Matt Lawson, those guys were wack but they were there, they’d show up in cleats and practice jerseys—this was before, and way up on that hill, through the clearing, from the neighborhood over, every day, that darkskinned kid watching us through the fence. And yeah, that must have been Bav.

3:
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Or I’ll tell you about Bav’s room. The too-tight, tightly made bed. The colors, all grays and beige. Mechanical pencils, desk pad with the calendar, and everything flat, not oppressed, not quite, but checked and counted. Vacuum-sealed, like the dried nectarines he always had for lunch . . . Bav’s Star Wars collection, still boxed, locked in the outside closet. I couldn’t say why, but I was obsessed, it meant something, and again to those terracotta Chinamen, marching to nowhere. The idea was that even in the afterlife people would still need to be ruled over, subjectified, right? So here was this ridiculous, perfect system, as described in our book, a necropolis, preserved under a dome, generals taller than the soldiers, soldiers taller than farmers and so forth, and when they switched off the lights what I imagined were thousands of eyes, from carved, empty sockets, in the dark, glowing.

I said it was relative, sliding scales, and that Friday, the usual, Steve Branham’s dad dropping us off, back of the mall parking lot, like, tell-em’ tight, go-squadron, down, over the hill, and through steam, walking, the four of us, but I can already tell bringing Bav was a mistake.

Blake McCarey. For instance. Blue eyes, he’s got blonde hair, the cute perm, but fat in the mid-section and face. Then he goes steady with a seventh-grader, Emily Ogburn, for like a week, not even, just those few days, and automatically the guy’s a legend. That’s what I was about.

Sliding, fixed fall, rails of an abacus. My secret life. My own room. My drawing table, giant pencils for legs. All that drawing, dead of night, bored, but also probing. Marching, I guess, also thinking, that word, Necropolis. We could be cooler, bigger, if I could somehow map it all out.          Down the hallway, Bav’s family’s apartment. The strange, Hindu knicknacks and baubles on shelves. Carpeted. The smell of curry, spiced food on the stove. Nobody mentions it but since he’s barefoot, I’m also padding around, shoes in my hand. We’re in his room, which is cleaner, bigger than mine, but with the too-quiet, walled-up feel of a holding cell. Some karate trophies, no dust, polished to shine. He’s got a Metroid ripoff character he draws called, Metrocop. Some pretty weak stuff. If anything, I’m more interested in those pencils, the way he draws everything on graph paper, which looks cool, which I’ve never tried, but he snaps shut the notebook, he goes to the shelf for the Star Wars speeder bike toy and the two figures. He takes down each thing, reverently, almost, but then it’s also as if he’s holding back. And a weird spot for me, I mean we’re all twelve or close enough, we all still have toys but you can feel it, that part’s almost over. Not only that but the Star Wars thing’s been played out for a while, and these all look brand new. He’s putting them on the desk in poses. I come in to pick up the speeder, and he’s nervous, I feel his eyes as I take the thing gliding, dipping, digging in because I can see he’s afraid, some reason, around the room, lamp in the corner, over the bed, and I’m doing the noise, but real serious, sputtering, buzzing.

Don’t get me wrong. If it was a Varnet T-shirt, getting my hair permed, I would’ve done that. I can even admit I’m sweet on Kate Simmons, but who isn’t. Nothing on McCarey, but that guy’s a tool, so I’m not deluded, there’s gotta be a way to play it.

Friday at the mall I want to call time out, pull Bav aside, but it’s a lost cause. He’s all over the place, trying to skip coins in the fountain. Or he’s by the yogurt stand in some type of Karate stance. Kate Simmons is there in the food court, alive, full-bloom, with like half the cheerleading squad. Meanwhile Virgil still wont say two words to Bav, instead he’s talking my ear off, whatever, the Coke machine thing, while Steve Branham’s hysterical, laughing, and it’s a fog, I barely notice because I’m trudging, eyes to the ground, gritting my teeth.

4: (Necropolitan Jump)
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Like my dad, Bav’s parents were both doctors. So I could imagine him pouring over workbooks, long division, some science maybe, but all summer, no TV, at the desk, or Karate, punching air, his dad thinking it was like basketball or soccer, or like the rest of us jumping around in those trenches, which it wasn’t, or riding his bike, and I’m guessing it was the yard, the back, the whole driveway, but never, never, not even a millimeter outside the fence, and that’s why at the mall Bav was an uncaged, wild moron and why to him girls like Kate Simmons still didn’t really exist . . . What my father wasn’t, was about five-four with a comb over. Wooden face. Hard. Those glasses that dark down in the sunlight. Stiff, polyester shirt. Here was the villian, if anything, to my dad’s Bruce Wayne and yet he’s clapping Bav’s dad on the back, easy charm, the usual, bowing, almost, to meet Bav’s mother, in fact compared to mine, Bav’s parents are both skeletal and tiny, my dad’s diplomatic mission, another dinner, and we’ve been to houses of most of the doctors in town. By this time though, me and Bav aren’t even friends. Nothing really, more like a fade out, so we’re just there, sunk into the couch, laughter drizzling all around, then later, his room, staring at nothing, then eventually, over and over, listening to the cassette maxi-single, Party All the Time, one of my favorites too. But I’m distracted. I’ve still got the cry-baby burn in my cheeks, and before I cleaned up to come to Bav’s house, I’d been on my ass, down in that trench. The beginning was cool. We’d found a burst soccer ball, plastic one, with the yellow insulation stuff inside and it was waterlogged, swollen up, we were punting it back and forth, and because I played soccer I was going for it, elbowing through, I remember I snatched it from Heath Lenington’s hands, and I was booming that shit, higher than anybody, we were shoving, chasing it, and out of nowhere, there’s Matt Lawson, he grabs me, throws me across the maze, up against the wall. Matt Lawson, he was only the muscle, but then—right—fucking Pink Persons, thin-lipped, white goblin, taking his time, and smiling, as always, picking his way, sliding down into the trench . . . Holding the star wars toy, going over and around Bav’s room, this is me in my head, replaying the details, and it’s like getting my ass kicked all over again. Bav with his storm trooper figure, moving the legs, it occurs to me, though I’m not gonna ask, how much of it he saw, if anything, from his spot up by the fence, but as I’m trying to gauge it the door swings wide, his dad, smirking, and by the sway in his shoulders, clearly drunk. Bav leaps up at attention. I’ve still got the speeder bike, and from there it’s these weird pauses, a surprise for us, big surprise, and he’s not gonna look my way, only at Bav, smiling, a ring of keys, like some kind of miniaturized pain device, we’re padding down the hallway and as I start to wonder if I should be getting scared, there’s a closet, he opens the padlock and it’s Cloud City, Ewok village, still boxed, brand new, Death Star playset with the carbonite freeze chamber, and vehicles, the B-wing, Millenium Falcon, the AT-AT walker, and stacks and stacks of figures on the shelves, and that’s just what I see over his shoulder. The Jawa crawler, I didn’t know they even made that thing. I can hear my father laughing from the living room. Bav’s dad, drunkenly scanning the shelves, he’s thinking, and it could be the fight from before because I’m dazed, one of those hanging, endless moments, me and Bav, and I’m guessing, his first time seeing it as well, or this much of it, floor to ceiling, card-packs, boxes, and inside, white plastic ships; just the big, Necropolitan idea of all that stuff with light waterfalling, hitting those windows and turrets, splashing around like the inside of a chandelier.

5:
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Hadley Davis. For what it’s worth, I can imagine that chick, hours on the phone, lounging on throw pillows in a wall-to-wall room papered in leopard print. She’s a cheerleader too, and it’s funny to watch her and Kate struggling, talking and laughing, trying to relate. They’re always sitting in front, so Blake McCarey’s up there too, soft-serving jokes, shooting in their direction . . . We’d only had the two things of salt, three gallon jugs so it maybe hadn’t been enough. Also we hadn’t mixed it too well, so there was that. The three coke machines in the cafeteria. To get that whole jug down the coin slot, like pumping gas, you had to stand there, listening for footsteps, sweating it out; me, Virgil, Steve Branham, Bav had been the lookout, so I’m waving, telling him, relax, but I’m also losing it a little, laughing, water splashing my feet, but that was weeks ago, and now Mrs. Luker’s yelling at everyone to sit down, she’s getting up to check, opening the door, the hallway buzzing with teachers, custodians, and Sursley, and Blake and John Boston perched up in their desks, craning their necks. Across the room Virgil’s nodding, grinning, his idea, because we’d almost even forgotten about it, and there’s the bell, lunchtime, we explode through the door, teachers trying to herd us in line, and not just me and Virgil, it’s Hadley and Kate Simmons, it’s Meg Lyle and Jenny, and David and Mark H. and Mark V., and Jim Terry, it’s the whole middle school, buzzing, peering around corners. That’s Mr. Lingley on the intercom, crackling, talking around it, but by now we all already know, we don’t have to see it, about the machines in the cafeteria going nuts, one of them dead, the other two coughing up drinks; that’s cans on the floor, free cokes, spinning, rolling around, those JV dudes falling into a dog pile, and that’s better than a snow day, or a bomb going off in math class, that’s all those terracotta soldiers climbing out of the trenches and stumbling around. That’s Hadley and Blake McCarey asking Virgil what happened. That’s me in a pack of cheerleaders laughing my head off, they’re sure Mr. Lingley’s gonna suspend everyone who took free cokes, and yeah, no doubt, I’m sure too, or whatever, and even though there’s no way for anyone to know, I still feel like I’m strutting around under a spotlight. Over with Mr. Neelin’s class. There’s Bav and his new pack of friends, all wearing their black coats. They seem to hang on his every word, which is funny but also, thinking about it, that’s kind of a twist. He’s got the collar on the coat flipped up. It takes a second but he sees me, and now it’s an easy, slow smile and I’m nodding, yeah man, but then again this is sixth grade, after all, week-to-week, so meanwhile there were already other mysteries . . .

Pinkney Henry Persons. Like the weight of those trees, settling, going to night. He gets a running start, shoves me back into the mud, scrambling, I’m soaked. He picks up the ball, spikes me with it, I’m biting down on my lip. Because the last thing I need is to start crying. That time in the trench and who knows, he could’ve killed me or something, if Steve Branham hadn’t jumped down behind me. Steve Branham, who’s a monster, who nobody fucks with, us against Pink and his douchebag team, they’re laughing, we’re faggots and so forth, but they’re not gonna make a move, so it’s a stand off, my first time seeing him up close, and for weeks after it’s his big, smirking head in my nightmares. Something else about that guy, but I can’t exactly say. It’s October, he’s still wearing shorts. Like some stilt-legged, silky bird, and wait, this guy plays football? Pink Persons. Like the two figures Bav’s dad gave us. Mine was that guy from the cantina scene with the tumor things in his mouth. Weird villains. Alien creeps. You can fight, that’s one way. Or you can try to just move through them, like levels.