I lived with my mom and stepdad near the reservoir in a neighborhood called Waterwood where each house had the same worn-out, rotten-looking, gray-shingle exterior. When Suede first moved to Waterwood, the kids in junior high couldn\u2019t believe his weird name and called him Sweetie. That stuck until everyone got more creative, called him Blue Suede Shoes, Can\u2019t Get Laid Suede. Other than the name, he was forgettable.<\/p>\n
Then, the summer before high school blessed him. He\u2019d always had a large head, but he arrived in ninth-grade homeroom six-six and lean. Once he figured out he was bigger and stronger, he kicked Buck Simpson\u2019s ass for bullying him and got suspended. He returned to school, a new pecking order established overnight. Buck, until that point one of the populars, began to huddle and scowl with the skateboarders on the fringes of the soccer field.<\/p>\n
Suede and I bonded when I found his missing cat, Belch. I\u2019d recognized the tabby stripes from a hundred paces.<\/p>\n
He opened his front door and eyed me like it was a trap.<\/p>\n
\u201cYour cat\u2019s on the road,\u201d I said, with proper solemnity.<\/p>\n
We stepped through knee-high weeds to jump the ditch. Belch\u2019s orange collar had melted in the heat and stretched on the asphalt like chewing gum. We observed a moment of silence on the road shoulder as cars slowed to gawk.<\/p>\n
He turned, eyes quivering like he might hit me. He shook my hand.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m going to get a shovel,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
High school became the Suede show. On the junior-varsity basketball team, he could\u2019ve played forward, center, or point-guard\u2014didn\u2019t matter. Suede trounced the competition, assisting, faking, passing, alleyooping from hand to gargantuan hand for the slam. The rest of us were pivoting plywood boards to bounce the ball off before he scored, installed to provide the illusion of teamwork. We lined up afterward and chanted in the losers\u2019 faces, \u201cGood game, good game, good game,\u201d but they were never good games.<\/p>\n
In the beginning, he loved the adoration. He stayed an extra hour in grubby gymnasiums afterward just to jaw with old farts who waited to snap pictures with him. He got his face in the local paper with the headline: \u201cNew Star on the Horizon.\u201d As a forward on the soccer team, he jumped a foot higher than the other players and headed the ball into the netting. Each game was Suede\u2019s show and visiting teams were reluctant witnesses to his greatness.<\/p>\n
Winning always bent him philosophical. On the bus ride back from away games, he\u2019d sit on the half-seat with a sweaty cheerleader on his lap and proclaim, \u201cThe world is open. You\u2019ve got to take what\u2019s yours while you can. None of us are here for long at all.\u201d He\u2019d put a cigar in his mouth, fifteen-years-old. Nobody stopped him because he was bigger than the law.<\/p>\n
I\u2019d read my Homer and Ayn Rand. I wanted to be a warrior poet, a rich one.<\/p>\n
We, myself and Suede\u2019s teammates, always believed we were better than everyone else, and his dominance eliminated any doubt.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
At Suede\u2019s house, rows of curio cabinets displayed crystal and the grandfather clock chimed on the hours and half-pasts. Couch cushions bulged with stuffing. His father worked for a massive accounting firm in Jackson and his mother, Cindy Pickens, was a housewife who sewed buttons, wore an apron, cleaned his room, polished the silver. The off-white walls were free of scuffs even around the baseboards. We needed only mention a want in passing and it would appear on a TV tray wielded by Cindy, Queen of Waterwood, like she crouched around the corner, listening for her cue. She wore makeup and was shapely in the hips under the apron. I often pictured her riding a horse and wearing a wolf-pelt bikini.<\/p>\n
My own house\u2014my own life\u2014was empty and pedestrian. My mother worked as a receptionist at a doctor\u2019s office and wore housecoats and slippers whenever home. My stepfather was a salesman for General Mills who would sit around in his underwear, polishing his Browning rifles. They\u2019d invite me to watch HBO with them dressed like that. I\u2019d shake my head and retreat to my room, ashamed. Even as I hid, I wore my best polo shirt, thinking of the future, always the future, because the present depressed the hell out of me.<\/p>\n
At Suede\u2019s house, waiting for him to appear, I\u2019d make small talk with Cindy. She named him after her favorite fabric to touch, just loved the sound of it. Once I asked her what she was doing that Saturday afternoon. Her eyes lit with tiny fires.<\/p>\n
\u201cWell,\u201d she said, \u201cI\u2019ve got Suede\u2019s lunch at one o\u2019 clock, baseball practice at three, and dinner at six. Then a glass of wine and off to bed.\u201d<\/p>\n
She went on about Suede\u2019s future sports engagements. As I listened, I ogled her, tried to suck her through my pupils. Suede was truly master of his house. I took mental note of this for my future kingdom.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
My father was stationed in Hawaii. He sent beach postcards I tacked on the bulletin board over the aquarium where I sometimes found dry twisted fish bodies stuck to the carpet and covered with ants. He wrote on the cards in thick black ink: HANG LOOSE! SURF\u2019S UP!<\/p>\n
In the garage my mother and stepfather constructed the biggest model train set of all time. They wore engineer hats and blew tiny whistles. New boxes of train track, railroad crossing signs, plastic mountains and trees kept appearing on our doorstep. My stepfather wanted real smoke to come out of the locomotives, so the garage and kitchen always smelled like burnt vegetable oil.<\/p>\n
I\u2019d sit in the loft over the living room, make paper airplanes and toss them into the ceiling fan. On good days I could get one stuck on each blade. No matter how much paper I wasted or how many planes wound up behind the sofa and entertainment center, my mother never mentioned it. By bedtime, she\u2019d have the living room spic and span again, like none of us existed.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
A year went by with Suede carrying our teams. Then, out of the blue, Becky Myrtletree became Suede\u2019s eternal love. To him, she was a queen, a between-class, hall-walking dream. He worshipped her cheekbones and fanny curve. To me, she wasn\u2019t much. Why settle for a Dixie Cup when you could have The Grail? But by the third movie date, they\u2019d named their children: Penelope, Preston, Porgy, and Petunia.<\/p>\n
In a brief phone call, he told me he\u2019d met Becky\u2019s parents. Of course, they were smitten by the idea of an all-star son-in-law. But even in those halcyon days there was foreboding.<\/p>\n
As tenth grade wore on, I began to see less of Suede, which felt cruel and mean. But nothing would be ordinary again. The unexpected seemed the price of admission.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou know,\u201d he said one night on the phone, \u201cI told Cindy not to sign me up for any more extracurriculars so I could go out with Becky. You\u2019d have thought I\u2019d slapped her. She sat on the kitchen floor a good hour.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat was she wearing?\u201d I couldn\u2019t help myself. My hormones were half-banshee and wailing.<\/p>\n
\u201cSometimes,\u201d he said, \u201cyou\u2019re a total psycho.\u201d<\/p>\n
A couple days later, we were sitting on the bleachers in P.E. and practicing our hook-shots with wadded up notebook paper on the garbage can.<\/p>\n
He said, \u201cI told Cindy I was finished with basketball. She cried and begged me not to quit soccer, so I kept that one.\u201d<\/p>\n
Soccer was the lesser sport, but I didn\u2019t say so. Suede was lopping off pieces of himself. The lack of coaching could only lead to aimlessness. What good was all that power without discipline? I imagined him twiddling his thumbs, staring out windows into darkness. Immortality within reach, yet he turned away, like if Icarus nosedived on purpose before he could even melt.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat are you going to do with yourself?\u201d<\/p>\n
He hummed for a minute and said, \u201cWhatever hurts my folks the most.\u201d<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
I began cutting women out of magazines. The aprons, the lips, the violin shapes. I extracted images from my mother\u2019s Cosmopolitans<\/em> and People Magazines<\/em>. With an X-acto knife, paste, and poster board I assembled a shrine to Cindy Pickens. My mother barged in my room while I was culling from her magazines one day. I scrambled to hide the scraps, realized it was futile, and sat frozen. I\u2019d cut from some of my stepdad\u2019s forgotten Playboys and felt lucky I\u2019d tucked those between the pages of The Fountainhead<\/em> and Children of Dune<\/em>.<\/p>\n \u201cOh.\u201d She picked up some of the cutouts. \u201cVery nice.\u201d<\/p>\n We never laid hands on each other in our family, but she touched my hair, frightening me.<\/p>\n \u201cDo what you love, sweetheart,\u201d she said. \u201cDo what you love.\u201d<\/p>\n She left and went out to the garage, electric trains whining forlornly along the tracks, and closed the door.<\/p>\n The finished collage looked nothing like Cindy, but I worked until something about it stood my arm hairs on end. Then I put The Doors\u2019 \u201cL.A. Woman\u201d on repeat and sat for hours, stared at the poster-board shrine, dreamed of the future. Once I earned my fortune I could make her mine.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n One night when Suede was out with Becky, I went to see Cindy. She answered the door in her apron, lipstick freshly applied and glistening. I almost jumped her in the foyer, with Suede\u2019s dad watching TV in the living room, but pulled myself together.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m worried about him,\u201d I said.<\/p>\n Her lashes moistened with tears. She grabbed my hand\u2014the touch burned into the crotch of my heart\u2014and led me to the den.<\/p>\n \u201cHe won\u2019t be my Suede anymore!\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s like he\u2019s lost!\u201d I said.<\/p>\n \u201cHe\u2019s wasting his life on\u2026on\u2026that bitch!\u201d<\/p>\n The venom in her voice stopped my blood. Her face twisted around the word, and for a moment I didn\u2019t recognize her. She composed herself, apologized for swearing, and went on.<\/p>\n \u201cFighting with me. Locking his bedroom door. Not letting me wash his clothes anymore. He told me he doesn\u2019t want to go to college. He just wants to roam the country, work whatever job there is.\u201d She brought a handkerchief out of her apron pocket and cried into it. \u201cThat\u2019s not our plan!\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThere, there,\u201d I said, patting her luscious knee. I had no idea what there, there meant but actors comforting actresses sure did. She leaned against me and cried. I tried to cover my erection with my shirttail.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s like,\u201d she said, \u201che\u2019s been replaced by someone I don\u2019t love.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s going to be all right. I\u2019ll keep an eye on him.\u201d<\/p>\n We sat together like that until we heard the TV turn off. Mrs. Pickens rose quickly and trotted out of the room. She stood in the entry, smiled at me through smudgy eyes, and I stared for a silent moment at my muse. I poked out my chest and aimed my chin at her with a new sense of purpose as she opened the door for me. I tipped my imaginary hat and left.<\/p>\n Out in the night air I felt like a man of experience. I needed only take what I wanted, anything and everything.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n A month later Suede called at ten till midnight. Calls after nine-thirty made my stepdad spitting mad. I begged him to take his two cents and get off the phone.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat is it?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cVagina,\u201d Suede whispered.<\/p>\n The bewilderedness in his voice was proof enough. He was so many light-years ahead of us then. Until very recently, for the bulk of my short life, I\u2019d assumed the female netherworld was U-shaped.<\/p>\n \u201cSo how do you feel?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cPickled,\u201d Suede said.<\/p>\n \u201cIs that good?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI think so.\u201d<\/p>\n I sat back aghast in my beanbag, astounded he could speak after such an event. How could he go on with life so upended?<\/p>\n What was left to conquer? What was left to destroy?<\/p>\n <\/p>\n In a dream I conjured Cindy Pickens in a field of fire and lilies. She wore her apron and a frilly blouse before her clothes popped off like bubbles. Naked, she was Shannon Tweed, Queen of Cinemax. Her skin frothed and spat with heat. She touched me and I woke up seething, convulsing. I gasped at the darkness above my bed while her burning image floated close, her net of auburn hair enmeshing us.<\/p>\n The next morning my mother caught me cramming my sheets into the washing machine. I wrestled them away from her. Finally, she saw the horror in my eyes and understood.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m sorry,\u201d she said. \u201cI forget how grown up you are now.\u201d<\/p>\n Mortified, I kept turning the knob on the machine. CLICK, CLICK, SWOOSH.\u00a0 CLICK, CLICK, SWOOSH. Shame made me insane and stupid. My hands were like paddles.<\/p>\n \u201cYou\u2019re growing up so fast,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n She calmly turned the dial to the correct setting and tried to touch my cheek\u2014I batted her hand away. Her eyes filled with hurt.<\/p>\n The tail of her housecoat followed her out of the laundry room. The machine hummed, twisted, and vibrated. I couldn\u2019t wait to escape that house of guilt and mediocrity. I made sure Mother couldn\u2019t hear me crying in there.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Junior year, Suede\u2019s last soccer game became infamous. His events were always well attended, but even his father was in the stands for this, with Walkman headphones and a new John Deere baseball cap. Cindy, in her full glory, never appeared to look at anything other than Suede.<\/p>\n I rode the bench for much of the game because some of the guys had dared me to stuff the coach\u2019s filing cabinet with inflated condoms. Becky Myrtletree sat in the stands, far from Suede\u2019s parents. She was with her own flock of disciples, a fantastic bevy of ebullience. Before the game Suede had said he didn\u2019t care who won.<\/p>\n \u201cHow much winning do we have to do?\u201d<\/p>\n I nodded without comprehension. If I could relive that moment, I\u2019d tell him what I learned from our many victories: you go on winning until there\u2019s no one left who can touch you.<\/p>\n In the first half, he scored two quick goals. Since most of the visiting team was guarding him, he kicked the ball to Chuck, another forward. Everyone on or around the field, including Chuck, gasped. It was such a risk when the crowd wanted a sure thing. Chuck was so shocked he kicked it back to our goalie, who was so surprised he tripped on his feet and the visitors scored.<\/p>\n In the second half Suede refused to play offense. He only played spectacular defense and passed the ball to our teammates, who were catching on to the whole teamwork aspect of the game. But the crowd had had enough. They booed and threw breath-mints. Coach called time-out and gave Suede a talking to.<\/p>\n \u201cYou\u2019ve got to score!\u201d Coach frothed, his hands twisted into claws.<\/p>\n The referee blew his whistle. The ball came to Suede and he rushed down the field and booted it over the opposing goal and the red dirt hill behind. Coach took him out and put me in. No argument from Suede, but his father shouted and cursed his cheeks full of blood. Every time I looked at Suede, he was watching us, enjoying himself.<\/p>\n We won, but Suede\u2019s fans booed anyway. They didn\u2019t care what had changed in him. They didn\u2019t understand what I\u2019d tried to grasp, the philosophy and poetry of Suede. They wanted another massacre.<\/p>\n Afterward, his parents shooed him into the back of their Yukon. I saw the look on Cindy\u2019s face before she climbed in the passenger side. It was like her son had dropped dead on that field.<\/p>\n The next day the school smeared us with gossip. Suede went crazy, they said. Crystal meth, cocaine, and acid. He\u2019d whipped it into a cocktail and shot it in the vein. We heard that his folks sent him to one of those teen rehab facilities. They told Becky not to contact him anymore.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n When he returned he was not our Suede. He slouched and smoked cigarettes in the parking lot with the Iron Maiden-shirt-wearers. In the neighborhood he ignored me, never looked my way. It felt like exile. I stared out my bedroom window at the highway roaring past Waterwood, the dandelion meadow where we\u2019d buried Belch.<\/p>\n He grew his hair long and started a band that played primitive music in soiled garages: Suede and The Swedes. I saw the flyers and heard tongues wagging but cared only for Cindy.<\/p>\n Becky Myrtletree had begun dating Buck Simpson in Suede\u2019s absence. The entire school anticipated a rematch, but the calendar pages flipped without bloodshed. Simpson, back in the ascendancy, made threats, but only after he was sure he was in the clear. By the start of senior year, Suede had quit school and moved out of Waterwood to work at a gas station in Richland, a squalid backwater to our south.<\/p>\n One night not long after he moved, I knocked on Mrs. Pickens\u2019 door, hoping to catch a glimpse of the apron, the knee, the red lips or wringing hands. There was no answer. I knocked again, harder. The lights upstairs went out.<\/p>\n I wanted to tell her about my future rising like the morning star, the future I tasted like it sat on my tongue. I\u2019d go to school and more school, learn the art of making money and turning women\u2019s heads. I\u2019d grow my lip fuzz into a mustache. I\u2019d have my own castle and cars, curio cabinets and grandfather clocks. If she had answered the door, I would\u2019ve told her, \u201cFor you, I\u2019ll remake the world. I\u2019ll build happiness from nothing.\u201d<\/p>\n I stood on that lawn and stared up at the black windows until the sprinkler system engaged and wet me to the knees. I wasn\u2019t special. For every Suede, there were billions like me making do with what floated in the wake.<\/p>\n I scuttled back home.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n A few weeks before graduation, Suede and The Swedes played The Black Wall, an old train depot converted into an all-ages venue. I climbed through a cloud of smokers to pay the door charge, got my hand stamped with a smiley face. There he was, Spawn of Cindy, onstage and shouting into a microphone while sweaty degenerates down front mashed against each other.<\/p>\n I stood in back to watch him prowl and loom over the crowd like an acrobatic Svengali. When the audience teetered on the edge of riot, he\u2019d grab the nearest girl\u2019s hand and croon to her while the band downshifted from rock to roll. If the audience got bored, he\u2019d scream and berate them until the band whipped back up full blast. He threw melted beer bucket water and the crowd cooed and licked. Everything he ever did on the field, the way he commanded attention and made us feel, he did it onstage for the rabble.<\/p>\n He leaned on a table afterward as kids mumbled up to shake his hand. The Swedes pushed around equipment and laughed at inside jokes. I waited my turn. Suede smirked at me.<\/p>\n \u201cHey,\u201d he said, \u201chow\u2019s my mom doing?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI went by a while back but she wouldn\u2019t see me.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cYeah, I know the feeling.\u201d He took a long swig from a water bottle. He looked ruddy and handsome under the lights, at home in the world in a way I\u2019d never be. I finally realized I hated him.<\/p>\n \u201cListen,\u201d he said, \u201ca few of us are going over to my buddy\u2019s place. It\u2019s an apartment on Old Canton Road. BYOB.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI can\u2019t.\u201d I bit my cheeks. \u201cHomework.\u201d<\/p>\n He nodded and cocked his head in a new way, like he recognized me from somewhere other than school and Waterwood. Like he knew each cell of me already and had lost interest. \u201cThat\u2019s a shame. Maybe next time.\u201d<\/p>\n We shook hands.<\/p>\n In the parking lot some thirteen-year-olds were shotgunning Colt 45 and smashing empty cans on their foreheads. One of them said, \u201cHey, you know Suede?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cYeah. Why?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cBecause he fucking sucks,\u201d the kid said. He high-fived his laughing friends.<\/p>\n I kicked that kid in the nuts.<\/p>\n The rest scattered into the bushes while I grabbed him, blacked out for a few seconds, and came to, snarling, \u201cYou don\u2019t know him! You don\u2019t know shit!\u201d and pressing his face into the hood of a Datsun. When I let him go, the bum launched into the night, reappearing under the farther streetlights.<\/p>\n My arms and chest flexed. My mind was bleached with rage.<\/p>\n I felt ten feet tall.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n I learned things in college about finance and women. After two years, I had a mustache and a few conquests under my belt, though I still thought of that night with Cindy on the couch, her naked knee.<\/p>\n On Christmas break, I went to Northpark, the shiniest mall in the land, to buy my mother a scented candle. I wandered out swinging the bag where the broad corridors intersected and dullards sat on uncomfortable benches spackling their faces with sugar. That\u2019s where I saw Cindy Pickens shuffle out of a shoe store. She wore a shabby dress, years out of style. I\u2019d never noticed her dim sense of fashion, not to mention how the years were hanging on her neck skin.<\/p>\n Standing on the gleaming marble tiles, in the midst of seasonal commerce and all of humanity streaming past, I was transfixed. My heart had been so drunk, it made me question all my judgments about Cindy and Suede. The last I\u2019d heard, Suede and the Swedes had made an album and gone touring in an ancient station wagon. In my mind, he was still years ahead of me, but what if he\u2019d fled someplace I never wanted to be, like prison or New Jersey? I steeled myself to ask about him as she approached. When she saw me, I imagined she\u2019d grasp my hand, grateful and chatty. We could catch up by the fountain of lucky pennies. Perhaps she\u2019d say, \u201cI\u2019m divorced,\u201d and offer a breathless, \u201cI\u2019ve been thinking of you.\u201d<\/p>\n She stared through me instead, no recognition, with a look of befuddled desperation, like the newly blind groping for the light switch. A chill of December air conditioning blew out of the jewelry store as she rounded the corner.<\/p>\n It was just as well. I vowed, right then and there, to never again let anyone get so close.<\/p>\n Farewell, my grail.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In a dream I conjured Cindy Pickens in a field of fire and lilies. She wore her apron and a frilly blouse before her clothes popped off like bubbles. Naked, she was Shannon Tweed, Queen of Cinemax. Her skin frothed and spat with heat. I woke up seething, convulsing. I gasped at the darkness above my bed while her burning image floated close.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":18773,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18722","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-fiction","writer-max-hipp"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18722","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18722"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18722\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18794,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18722\/revisions\/18794"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18773"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18722"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18722"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18722"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}