Johnny America

 

A Good Boy

by

Illustration of two Pee-Wee Hermans

Up un­til Hal­loween of 1989 I was a well-be­haved kid. I’d nev­er re­al­ly left my bed­room. That’s why I felt like it was time for a change when my cousin, Kim­ber­ly, booked The Grange in Smith­field, Rhode Is­land for what she called her “Big Hal­loween Bash.” I’d nev­er at­tend­ed a par­ty, nev­er mind a bash, in my life by that point. 

I lived with my moth­er and four sib­lings in a two-sto­ry house on a dead-end road. My sib­lings had tech­ni­cal­ly been moved out for a few years, but there were dai­ly vis­its since Mom nev­er locked the door. Like­wise, Aunt Ma­bel lived in the raised ranch di­rect­ly to the left of us (if you were fac­ing the house) and her six adult chil­dren were in and out. Be­side her house was an im­me­di­ate drop of an un­spec­i­fied dis­tance but more than ten feet to a pit of grav­el and garbage. We called it The Abyss. None of us dared go near it. One night I saw my broth­er Tom­my get in­to a fight with this kid Kei­th from a few roads over. Tom­my got a hold of his col­lar, dragged him to the edge of the drop, and shoved him. I nev­er saw Kei­th again. 

Hear­ing the se­quen­tial open­ing and clos­ing of the screen door and foot­steps heav­i­ly land­ing on the stairs, reach­ing a crescen­do, I felt a pres­ence in the door­way of my room. My back had faced the door with the way I arranged my desk. Hav­ing my­self po­si­tioned in a way that the front of me faced the door caused me to feel too vulnerable. 

“Hal­loween bash tonight,” 22-year-old Kim­ber­ly said. “My big Hal­loween bash.”

For a few long mo­ments, I ig­nored her. Slow­ly, I turned around to see that she was still in my door­way, ex­cit­ed as all hell. “In The Abyss?” I asked. 

“No. The Grange,” she said. With­out a word, I turned back around; I’d been in the mid­dle of The Ado­les­cent by Dos­toyevsky, be­cause as I said, I’d been a well-be­haved kid. “Are you com­ing or not?” Kim­ber­ly was still in my door­way. Cousin Kim­ber­ly lacked aware­ness; she was the type to stand in a door­way un­til you told her to leave. “Are you com­ing or not?” She asked again, more whiny than curious. 

I re­spond­ed with a hmph, and then, with­out turn­ing back around, “Why would I go? When have I ever done any­thing?”

Si­lence. There was still an en­ti­ty lin­ger­ing around me, so I knew she hadn’t left. “There’s go­ing to be a cos­tume contest.”

For the first time in twen­ty-three years, I had re­con­sid­ered my vol­un­tary con­fine­ment to my dis­mal bed­room. Cos­tume contest. 

“It’s at The Grange,” I said in­to the phone, lean­ing against a wall in the kitchen, twirling the phone cord with my fin­ger. I’d watched my moth­er talk to her girl­friends on the phone so of­ten that I adopt­ed her man­ner­ism. On the oth­er line was my girl­friend, Amy. Tech­ni­cal­ly, she wasn’t my girl­friend; at the same time, tech­ni­cal­ly, she was. Amy was the on­ly girl I re­al­ly spent time with who wasn’t one of my sis­ters or neigh­bor­ing cousins, and by spent time I mean she was the on­ly girl who’d sit in my room in dead si­lence while I read Russ­ian lit­er­a­ture. I wasn’t an emo­tion­al­ly avail­able sort of per­son, and we’d nev­er es­tab­lished that we were to­geth­er, and come to think of it we nev­er even kissed or any­thing, but there was some­thing un­spo­ken be­tween us that we were just… together. 

“I’m go­ing to be Pee-Wee Her­man,” I said to Amy. The slid­ing door be­hind me hissed as it opened, prompt­ing one of the four res­i­dent Maine Coons to slip out in­to the fenced back­yard. Tom­my stepped in from the cold sun­set wear­ing blue jeans, a white t‑shirt, and a leather jack­et. I al­ways thought he looked like a prick. He al­ways tried to look so tough. To be fair, he was ex­treme­ly tough, and I nev­er crossed him. As he passed me, he yanked the twirled cord out from be­tween my fin­gers. I was shocked that he didn’t call me gay or a bitch for twirling the cord, which in his cave­man brain was on­ly what women did be­cause Mom did it. 

Amy let out a shrill squeal of de­light, which was not on­ly ear-pierc­ing in per­son, but was like a dog whis­tle over the phone. “I’ll be Chair­ry!” She said. 

I pinched the bridge of my nose and sighed. “Don’t.” 

It smelled like it was go­ing to snow that night. There’s a cer­tain kind of weath­er in the North­east where the air is sharp and it brings about a sort of scent that you in­stinc­tive­ly as­so­ciate with snow. It prob­a­bly hap­pens else­where, but I’d nev­er been elsewhere. 

I pulled up on­to the lawn of The Grange in my wood­ie sta­tion wag­on with Amy be­side me. She wasn’t dressed as Chair­ry, but the girl from The Ex­or­cist, “pre-pos­ses­sion,” she said, which was just some girl in a night­gown. “I didn’t re­al­ly like all that shout­ing and lev­i­tat­ing and head ro­tat­ing,” she said, which was the whole movie.

When we got out of the wood­ie, I looked up at the deep, dark sky full of stars. From with­in The Grange I could hear var­i­ous one-hit won­ders pour­ing out of the juke­box. I tru­ly did find that the Eight­ies was the time for ob­scure groups to make a mil­lion dol­lars off of one song, then fall off the face of the earth. 

Amy pulled out a 35 mil­lime­ter Ko­dak cam­era from thin air. “This night­gown has pock­ets,” she said. “I didn’t even know when I got it! What a score!” She wound the film and looked through the viewfind­er at me. I had no time to process what was hap­pen­ing as the flash hit me like a dodge­ball. “So we’ll nev­er for­get this night,” Amy said enthusiastically. 

We head­ed for the front door and I scanned the dark­ness for a car that I could rec­og­nize. Just above the en­trance to The Grange was a ban­ner, poor­ly hang­ing. It said, “Big Hal­loween Bash In Cool Let­ters.” I imag­ined that Kim­ber­ly asked the ban­ner mak­ing peo­ple, “Can it say: Big Hal­loween Bash, in cool let­ters?” And the ban­ner mak­ing peo­ple did ex­act­ly that.

I had felt so con­fi­dent as Pee-Wee Her­man that I knew in my heart of hearts I’d win the cos­tume con­test. The ini­tial hype of Pee-Wee was over, I thought, and no­body would be dressed as him. It wouldn’t be the cos­tume that would get me to win the con­test, no; it would be my ad­mirable com­mit­ment to the char­ac­ter. I had an un­can­ny im­pres­sion of Pee-Wee Her­man un­der my belt, which had tak­en two years of de­vot­ed prac­tice to ful­ly master. 

“David!” I heard Kim­ber­ly ex­claim as my hand grasped the door han­dle of The Grange. Out of the cor­ner of my eye, a mo­tion de­tect­ing light flashed on. There was a strange fig­ure un­der it, and I felt it look­ing at me. When I glanced at Amy to my left, she was look­ing straight past me, gawk­ing at the fig­ure. Be­com­ing ter­ri­fied at the thought of what heinous beast was wait­ing for my shrieks of ter­ror, I turned to face my fate. Kim­ber­ly stood un­der the light, dressed as an in­fant. She had a white shirt on, a pink di­a­per, a bon­net, and a sash that said, “It’s A Girl!”. A paci­fi­er dan­gled on a string around her neck.

“Oh my god,” I said in a tone of dis­gust, ac­ci­den­tal but com­plete­ly gen­uine. There was nev­er re­al­ly a line I had drawn for some­one to step over in or­der for me to lose all re­spect for them un­til that mo­ment. See­ing my adult cousin dressed as an in­fant tru­ly crossed the line that nev­er ex­ist­ed be­fore that. 

“I didn’t think you were go­ing to show up,” Kim­ber­ly said, pleas­ant­ly sur­prised. “Food, drinks, and the juke­box is in­side. The re­al par­ty is out un­der the canopy, though,” she said in a mis­chie­vous tone, and gave me a wink that in­volved scrunch­ing half of her face. It was more of a bizarre spasm. Amy, Kim­ber­ly, and I stood in our re­spec­tive spots, frozen in place. Kim­ber­ly stared at us, and we stared back. So much time had passed, that the mo­tion de­tec­tion light turned off. When it turned back on, Kim­ber­ly was gone. 

The Grange served as a com­mu­ni­ty cen­ter and con­sist­ed of one long room with a small stage at the far end. There were fold-out ta­bles and chairs avail­able in the mi­nus­cule kitchen to the right of the stage. Due to his­toric preser­va­tion and a ques­tion­able town bud­get, the wood­en floor was splin­tery and most def­i­nite­ly rot­ting away. With the amount of peo­ple stand­ing around it was amaz­ing the floor didn’t cave in that very night.

Fi­nal­ly I be­gan to rec­og­nize peo­ple. “David!” They ex­claimed, like I was a cryp­tic leg­end and was spot­ted on a rare oc­ca­sion. This was par­tial­ly true; I wasn’t a leg­end, mere­ly the vil­lage cryp­tic. Usu­al­ly sport­ing a worn out, raggedy flan­nel with cor­duroy pants and de­te­ri­o­rat­ed con­verse, my peers were pleased to see me so put to­geth­er, even if it was to repli­cate Pee-Wee Her­man. That Hal­loween was the clean­est I’d ever looked. 

For a few min­utes I stood in the cen­ter of a few ac­quain­tances and strangers, do­ing my killer im­pres­sion of Pee-Wee that brought the house down every time. They laughed and ap­plaud­ed, and I felt not on­ly like a god, but that I would eas­i­ly win the cos­tume contest. 

“So, what are you, the sexy Ore­gon Trail?” This guy, Jared, asked Amy. He was smug and drunk, sway­ing back and forth, not in cos­tume at all. I saw a scar be­low his right eye. He must’ve crossed Tommy. 

“First­ly, the Ore­gon Trail was an era, not one per­son,” Amy said, “and I’m Re­gan from The Ex­or­cist. Pre-pos­ses­sion.”

“So you’re just a girl in a night­gown,” some­one dressed as the Phan­tom from The Phan­tom of the Opera said. I liked him for shar­ing my sen­ti­ment re­gard­ing Amy’s non-cos­tume, but I hat­ed him for hav­ing a cos­tume that could to­tal­ly take first place in the con­test. Every­one loves a phantom. 

Amy seemed ac­tu­al­ly both­ered by the Phantom’s ob­ser­va­tion, and she was my kind-of-girl­friend af­ter all, so I felt ob­lig­at­ed to de­fend her. “I know you are, but what am I?” I asked in Pee-Wee’s voice. The peo­ple around me hollered and laughed in the Phantom’s face. Once again, I had the high­er ground. 

“I didn’t say you were a girl in a night­gown,” the Phan­tom said, not un­der­stand­ing my shtick, but my at­ten­tion had gone to some­one else across the room. I rec­og­nized the slicked black hair, gray suit, and white loafers any­where. It’s an­oth­er god­damned Pee-Wee Herman. 

Tun­nel-vi­sioned, I marched through the crowd I’d cre­at­ed, head­ing straight to my brand new en­e­my. I ex­tend­ed my arm, firm­ly gripped Pee-Wee Two’s shoul­der, and spun him around. 

“Kei­th! You’re alive!”

The mid­night air bit at me as I stepped out of The Grange’s back door to the canopy. It was this idle, wood­en roof that was held up by beams, and un­der it was a drab con­crete rec­tan­gle with two un­kempt pic­nic ta­bles. Elec­tric­i­ty ran to it, so there were Christ­mas lights that dan­gled from un­der the roof. In­deed, it was more busy un­der the canopy, a strange mass of peo­ple hud­dled to­geth­er, clouds of smoke ris­ing up oc­ca­sion­al­ly like a nat­ur­al hot spring. 

Tom­my and his Girl­friend of the Day, What’sHerFace, came out of the back door and head­ed for the canopy. He was dressed as a nin­ja, and his girl­friend was a witch with bare­ly any clothes on. 

“That’s dis­re­spect­ful to the ac­tu­al women who were per­se­cut­ed dur­ing that era,” Amy said. Tom­my gave me the fin­ger even though I wasn’t the one who said it. He prob­a­bly knew that I was think­ing it.

The cloud of smoke trav­eled up and down, left and right with­in the crowd. Kim­ber­ly squeezed out of the crowd, her long-term boyfriend Reg­gie trail­ing be­hind her. The two of them stood in front of me and Amy in their in­fant cos­tumes. Reg­gie was Kimberly’s coun­ter­part, with a blue di­a­per, bon­net, and sash that said, “It’s A Boy!”. I al­ways thought Reg­gie was a douche, but this made all of his oth­er dis­ap­point­ing traits seem respectable. 

“Why…?” I be­gan but trailed off as Reg­gie ex­tend­ed some­thing to­wards my face. It was a mar­i­jua­na cig­a­rette. The source of the trav­el­ing smoke. 

“This is the good stuff,” said Reg­gie. He dragged out gooood and stu­u­uffff, nod­ding at the same pace as his words, eyes glossy and red. Kim­ber­ly slapped him on the shoulder.

“You know David doesn’t smoke. He’s a good boy; look at him.” 

The term good boy both­ered me for some rea­son. I felt like a crys­tal glass shat­ter­ing due to a high fre­quen­cy. In­vol­un­tar­i­ly I cringed at Kimberly’s per­spec­tive of me, es­pe­cial­ly re­al­iz­ing that this was what every­one thought. Here I was, twen­ty-three years old, Dos­toyevsky read­er, mas­ter of the hacky sack and Pee-Wee Her­man im­pres­sion, who’s nev­er even smoked a cig­a­rette. Of course I was a good boy. Every­one in earshot heard Kim­ber­ly, and at that point she was ges­tur­ing to me, so a good amount of peo­ple were star­ing. I felt like a tool. 

“Aren’t we lack­ing good boys in this so­ci­ety?” Amy of­fered in re­sponse. In no way did she sound con­fi­dent of this rhetoric. 

The mar­i­jua­na cig­a­rette was still ex­tend­ed to­wards my face, and Reg­gie was get­ting im­pa­tient. “Dude, are you tak­ing a hit or not?”

All eyes on me, sure­ly los­ing the ma­jor­i­ty vote for the con­test, I had to get the peo­ple back on my side. Plus, I was be­com­ing sus­cep­ti­ble to so­ci­etal pres­sure, and didn’t want to be viewed as a los­er for not smok­ing weed. 

“Put ‘er there,” I lame­ly said, hold­ing out my hand to ac­cept the reefer. Those who were spec­tat­ing gasped and clapped, hav­ing known me for most of our lives, and it be­ing com­mon knowl­edge that I was the epit­o­me of straight edge. Act­ing like I was aware of what I was do­ing, I slow­ly brought the joint to my mouth, and in­haled for longer than recommended. 

“Yeah,” Reg­gie said, “you don’t say put ‘er there when you want a hit of the J.” 

When I sep­a­rat­ed from the joint, I held my breath, then ex­haled. Sud­den­ly, a cough­ing fit of which the likes I’d nev­er ex­pe­ri­enced washed over me — or rather, hit me like a train. It was like who­ev­er was liv­ing in my lungs had closed the door and nailed it shut. I’m say­ing that I couldn’t breathe. While I was keeled over, try­ing to not die then and there, wheez­ing and hack­ing, I didn’t no­tice the silent dis­per­sal of my peers. I did, how­ev­er, from the cor­ner of my eye, ac­knowl­edge the head­lights shin­ing di­rect­ly on me. 

“What’s go­ing on, bud?” A man­ly man’s voice asked me. He was try­ing to be friend­ly, but when I glanced up and squint­ed, my eyes ad­just­ing to the sil­hou­ette in front of the lights, two cops were star­ing down at me. One of them shone a flash­light in­to my face like the high beams weren’t enough. “We got a noise com­plaint from some­one in the neigh­bor­hood. What d’ya got there?” The flash­light cop asked, nod­ding to the joint. Ob­vi­ous­ly he knew it was a joint. 

“Cig­a­rette,” I said, and by said I mean that I emit­ted it so weak­ly out of my mouth that I sound­ed like a dy­ing tea kettle. 

The two cops ex­changed know­ing glances. 

“It looks an aw­ful lot like a reefer,” the oth­er cop said. He was prob­a­bly in his thir­ties and had avi­a­tor sun­glass­es on de­spite it be­ing the mid­dle of the night. 

I stood up straight and flat­tened out my gray blaz­er, re­mem­ber­ing that I was still in Pee-Wee Her­man garb. “My moth­er hand rolls cig­a­rettes,” I said. If any­thing, they couldn’t blame me for trying.

Avi­a­tor Cop stepped for­ward and snatched the joint from me like it was some se­cret weapon and he was a su­pervil­lain. With my own eyes I watched him care­ful­ly in­spect the joint, bring it to his mouth, and take an elon­gat­ed drag. I turned to glance at The Grange to see every­one peer­ing out of the win­dows or stand­ing just out­side, watch­ing. No­body could be­lieve the sight be­fore us.

Avi­a­tor Cop ex­haled. “It’s mar­i­jua­na,” he said. 

Flash­light Cop nod­ded and held on­to his belt like a cow­boy. “Uh-huh. You know that smok­ing mar­i­jua­na is against the law, right?” 

“He just did it,” I said, point­ing to Avi­a­tor Cop.

“To de­ter­mine if it was drugs!” Flash­light Cop shout­ed. He stepped to­wards me and got all in my face. “You are aware that you’re a crim­i­nal now, right? How does that make you feel?” 

I’d nev­er had a stan­dard of what was man­ly and what wasn’t, and I had nev­er tried very hard to be a man, what­ev­er it meant, but this was a se­vere­ly emas­cu­lat­ing ex­pe­ri­ence. Here I was, hav­ing done noth­ing wrong in my life, now dressed ful­ly as Pee-Wee Her­man, get­ting the busi­ness from a cop in front of every­one I’ve ever known. 

“You’re in deep shit, kid! You un­der­stand?” He yelled. 

Sud­den­ly, Kim­ber­ly stormed past me and got in Flash­light Cop’s face. Mean­while, Avi­a­tor Cop ar­rest­ed me. “Don’t yell at my cousin, you freak!” She said. I won­dered what her de­f­i­n­i­tion of a freak was, and if it in­volved dress­ing as an adult in­fant. Avi­a­tor Cop shoved me in­to the back of the pad­dy wag­on, and Kim­ber­ly con­tin­ued rep­ri­mand­ing Flash­light Cop. “You can’t just go around ar­rest­ing peo­ple willy-nil­ly!” Here was my cousin Kim­ber­ly, in a di­a­per and bon­net, try­ing to tell a cop how to do his job. Yet, I felt like the jackass. 

“Shut the fuck up, Kim­ber­ly! Just shut up!” Said Tom­my. He and Kim­ber­ly hur­ried over to my win­dow as the two of­fi­cers got in. 

“We’ll get you out, David. I promise,” Kim­ber­ly said. 

“This is what you get for twirling the phone cord,” Tom­my said. “Are you gay or something?” 

That was the last thing I heard be­fore the po­lice­men drove me to the station. 

I hung on the bars of the hold­ing cell, star­ing at the door, wait­ing for Flash­light or Avi­a­tor to come in and tell me that I’m free to go be­cause I’m such a good boy. Be­hind me were oth­er week­end crim­i­nals. All of them looked much tougher than me. Prob­a­bly be­cause they didn’t get ar­rest­ed while dressed as a beloved tele­vi­sion character. 

Abrupt­ly, Amy came bar­rel­ing in, and the delin­quent men who were oth­er­wise bored on this Hal­loween night were sud­den­ly very in­ter­est­ed in my maybe girl­friend. They stood up or at least looked more alert, look­ing her up and down. 

I gri­maced at them. “She’s dressed as the girl from The Ex­or­cist, pre-pos­ses­sion.” Every last one of them avert­ed their eyes.

“I got here as soon as I could,” Amy said.

“It’s been two hours,” I said.

“Well, I had to stay for the cos­tume con­test. And your broth­er Paul had bail for me to get.”

I ig­nored the lat­ter half. “The cos­tume con­test? You were there for the re­sults?” She nod­ded. “Who won?”

“Tom­my,” she said. 

“What?” I ex­claimed, per­plexed. “He was a ninja!”

“Well, it was the most mys­te­ri­ous costume.”

Like a con­fused dog, I tilt­ed my head. “What oth­er cat­e­gories were there?”

Amy shrugged. “It was just a con­test for the most mys­te­ri­ous costume.” 

It felt like it took hours for my brain to process the in­for­ma­tion. “The con­test was themed? How the hell was I ever go­ing to win as Pee-Wee Her­man when the ob­jec­tive was to be the most mys­te­ri­ous?” I couldn’t be­lieve it. Then, some­thing struck me that made me even more per­plexed. “So why was Kim­ber­ly dressed as a baby?!” 

She shrugged, “Maybe she thinks that ba­bies are mys­te­ri­ous. I think they are. They speak gib­ber­ish, but you can tell that they mean it, and it makes me think that they have cru­cial in­for­ma­tion we don’t know about but ought to know. Like which god we’re sup­posed to be worshipping.”

I sulked. I wish I’d re­mained a good boy and didn’t give in­to peer pres­sure. I felt like I was in an af­ter school spe­cial. Amy stood there, star­ing at me. 

“If you take a pic­ture, it’ll last longer,” I said.

Silent­ly, Amy pulled her Ko­dak from her night­gown pock­et, held it up to her eye, and snapped a pho­to, the flash briefly blind­ing me again. “I should’ve been ar­rest­ed right along with you,” she said with arm­chair sym­pa­thy. And some­thing hit me: if I’d on­ly made a run for it in­to The Grange, those cops could’ve ar­rest­ed that ass­hole Kei­th, al­so dressed as Pee-Wee Her­man. I would’ve re­al­ly been a leg­end amongst my peers if I dodged Week­end Jail. I wished Kei­th had died in The Abyss af­ter all. 

“You said Paul had bail mon­ey?” I asked her. She nod­ded be­tween the specs of lin­ger­ing light in my eyes. “Do you have it?”

She pat­ted her pock­ets and slapped her fore­head. “Gosh, I for­got to stop at Paul’s house!”

De­feat­ed, I sat on the cold, wood­en bench be­side a nor­mal­ly dressed de­gen­er­ate. The de­gen­er­ate looked me up and down. “What are you in for? Be­ing a tool?” The oth­er in­sub­or­di­nates laughed. I could on­ly nod be­cause he was ex­act­ly right. 

Filed under Fiction on October 11th, 2024

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