“You’ll feel it in your neck in the morning.”
“Okay.”
“If you need a break, you just tuck the dick under your hair and up behind your ear. Rub it against your jawline. You are in charge. This is an exchange and you are in charge of the exchange.”
“I am in charge.”
“Regardless of depth, pacing, and tongue placement, this is the most important part. You are in charge.”
“I am in charge.”
“Don’t worry.”
“You know that’s hard for me,” Lana said.
And then stoned, so stoned, Pony Ali, Le Pony Ali of the Superior Existence, I said, “This might be my one natural talent.”
“You are so lucky, Pony.”
The small voice. The large darkness. It opened up between us. And I was suddenly no longer stoned. I was so unstoned. So unlucky. Pony of the Inferior Existence.
Of course that July night I had been thinking about the scene I left at home. It was Free Day. The day after my mother totaled the truck. My mother, a fresh cut above her left eyebrow where she hit the windshield, almost invisible under her black bedcovers, our dog the only one allowed in there with her, and one floor below, my father building a room, which, let’s admit, is not for my mother but for him. His alternate jeans and his outerwear folded in a neat stack on the ground. While other territory men drag razors across their scalps and weep into black towels, my father wets his hair and combs it off his face with his fingers. He leans over our kitchen garbage and trims his beard. He is the only man in the territory with hair, and this is because of his scars, because before Debra Marie and Traps, my father’s tragedy was what the territory called its worst tragedy. And right now, my father is sleeping on a hooded chair. A chair he built for my mother after she said—and we could see she had been crying—“If only this chair had a hood.” A chair to keep her coming downstairs. To keep her sitting with us. Our people are a sitting people. When the women of the territory aren’t drawing blood at the Banquet Hall, they are sitting across from each other and starting with “You good?”
My father called it the Easiest Chair. Not the easier chair. Not the less difficult chair. But the Easiest Chair. My father, The Heavy. My father, the heaviest.
The sun was rising, and with it, I could read the graffiti on the ceiling of the founders’ bus, and it was all about love, which seems to be all about addition, about surplus.
person + person
person + person
person + person
Where were the minus signs?
THE PIT PARTY. The boys have set what they can on fire, and the girls are sitting in a loose circle, leaning on headstones, leaning on each other, flames as high as their bungalows. Perfect circles are for other people, people who don’t have the dead in their way. Lana and I add our bicycles to the pile. I hand Lana her three pills. “Ready?”
“Amped.”
I put mine on my tongue. Yellow, pink, blue. We swallow them together.
“Sit on my face, Pony Darlene!” one boy yells. He pronounces face like fay-uhssss. He has small bleeds on his jaw from shaving. He jogs around the bonfire holding a can of butane in the air. He has drawings up and down his bare arms. Fangs, knives and tires, guitars, bikinis and telephones, the Death Man, an IV drip, and words cap-lettered—BLOOD, JUSTICE, LADIESMAN. He pounds his chest and says, “What do we have left to burn?” He pronounces burn like bee-yurnnnn. The pills kick in.
Neon Pony.
Welcome.
Bienvenue.
“I’m the Secret Service!” yells another boy. He is looking at the girls and needing the girls to look back at him. They won’t. The girls, who have all had sex encounters, have their names on their necklaces. They glint by the fire. Their hair falls far down their backs and is picked up by the black wind. It takes on a new form with every gust. Touch it. Touch me. I am the softest thing going. “Nature wants girls and kills boys,” one girl says. She is wearing an eye patch, and I know it’s because she needs it. “I tried to make alcohol from potatoes,” one skinny boy says, “and my father duct-taped me to a chair for two days.” The other boys hold themselves and laugh, “Two days!” And the skinny boy laughs though I can see he is sore, and was after love.
The girls pass a bottle, drinking through a straw to quicken the effect. The ones who did their bloodwork this morning are seeing spots. They fall back and take in the sky. “This sky is so dull! Do something, sky! Do a meteor shower or something! Feel me up! Make it summer!” The girls grin until they show their gums. They untuck their shirts and knot them under their breasts. They fold the waistbands of their pants down so the edges of their hipbones come up. My hipbones. You like them? They’re new. Softness bracketed by hardness. Copyrighting this look, the girls think, copyrighting this whole look, my best look, and when the girls sit up, “Head rush,” they stare down at the ground to settle it. Their blood multiplies itself, racing to occupy the spaces that need occupying. They train their eyes on the incline, the one Supes might walk over any minute. Love and a cough cannot be concealed. Even a small cough. Even a small love. Someone said this once.
One night, almost two years ago, Lana and I snuck into her father’s truck. We wanted to steal his cigarettes, his small change. Whatever we could find. He had just married Denis. “She brought a belt to the marriage,” Lana said. “Seriously. She showed up with a belt. That was it. A belt.” We wanted to steal her father’s truck.
“I can drive,” I said.
“Not well enough,” Lana said.
Like every matte black truck in the territory, Lana’s father’s had a CB. We dialed through the frequencies, getting mostly static. “Come in, come in,” I said. We were both in our nightdresses, had badly crimped hair and whatever press-on nails we could press on. “Come in, come in.” And then a girl’s voice came through, “I read you.” Lana grabbed the microphone. “Go ahead,” the girl said. “I’m pregnant,” Lana said, lying. My mouth dropped open. “I need help,” Lana said, not lying. The girl began her instruction. It was Pallas. Before she got together with Neon Dean. Before she got tanned and cruel, and tried to pierce her tongue. After her fourteenth birthday. When she got pregnant with the Delivery Man’s baby.
“Okay, girl. Listen close. You have to starve yourself, but make it look like you are suddenly eating like that woman on that show. The one who can’t leave her house except by a crane. Then, hard as this is, you have to wear baggier clothes. Like a widow. Never let anyone see you naked. You can use duct tape and girdles to pretty convincing effect. Ask Rochelle. Or Lorraine. Or even Tristan. Tina had skills with the whole weight-lifter belt, shrink-wrap thing, and Tiffany with those junior-size pants. You can only stop a pregnancy from happening on night soaps. Or, and this is a last fucking resort, you do the Mother Trick. You break down and tell your mom, and when she is done hitting your pretty face, she gets her owl feathers and her foam and hides them under her bed, and starts stuffing herself to the appropriate measurements. Inches versus time. Watch your inches. Watch your time. Parallel baby. And she suffers with it. The nausea lays her right out. No one can touch her. No one can see her. And when you start to feel the hellishness coming on, you wait as long as you can, and then your mom drives you out to the forest with some cough syrup or whatever you can get your hands on at Drugs and More Drugs. We all know the forest is for the babies. It grows for the babies. To have them, to hide them if you have to. And you get that thing out of your body and against hers. Make sure your father doesn’t figure it out. Make sure he doesn’t catch on. Seriously. That’s on your mom. And you. Fathers hate to be tricked. Remember Stephanie. But seriously, if you can pull this off, you will make both your parents so happy. Your mom will seem young to your dad, and your dad will seem young to our men. You handed your youth over to them. They should be giving thanks inside. But seriously, you have to be ready. Something