The Snake's Eyelids

The night started strangely and only got stranger. Ricky was home on semester break from SF State. He'd brought with him a goody bag from the dorms.

"Purple ozzie", he called it. Ricky never got the names right.

His favorite scotch was "Cutty Shark." He always ordered "Cutty Shark and Coke" because the Beatles' publicist once told Tiger Beat Magazine that's how John drank it. Ricky adored John, generously ignoring the fact that the moptops were anglos jotos.

Ricky took a drink then spit it out.

Ricky was changing colors on me, his ugly brown, acne scarred face turned purplish and his zits disappeared in a hailstorm of bluish red pebbles. Ricky, the velvet bull, like the ones they sold you on the streets of TJ for a dollar.

We drove around for awhile, aimlessly. Finally, Ricky said he was hungry. Bob's Big Boy was packed on the first Friday night of Christmas vacation.

=How longs the wait?

=Forty five minutes. Name?

=Zappa.

=Number in your party?

=Four

Ricky chain smoked Kools while we waited in the parking lot. The night was clear-cold and we were hot wired but surprisingly mellow. Reality consisted mainly of lavender flashes against a starry sky inside the rearview mirror behind the snake's eyelids.

We always had this thing about Bob's on a crowded Friday night.

We gave our name as "Zappa", our party as "four" and we always skipped out on the check. Usually, Ricky would take it with him to the toilet and flush it, while I slithered out through the crowd.

On this particular night, we didn't actually eat that much. I ordered a banana split, piled it on the table and played with it. On this night, Ricky ignored his cheeseburger and popped the bill into his mouth, a purple velvet bull chewing his cud.

And snorting fire from both nostrils.

=Less go see mi primero, he's home from San Jose State.

Ricky's cousin lived right down the boulevard in the unincorporated area of Azusa.

Sheriffs' turf.

When we get there, this dude's little brother, some badass cholo banger all of fourteen, or what the fuck, is all up into my face, belligerently. if he has a reason to be I sure as fuck can't comeprehend one. He expands like a gas air balloon and something brushes against my cheek.

=Did you just punch me in the face, motherfucker?

I touch my face then look at my fingers to see if he drew blood. I see the white bark of a ficus branch attached to my wrist.

Ricky drinks beer and laughs as his cousin forces the punk into his bedroom and slams the door. The sound of that slammed door never stops.

We sit in a circle on the floor, drinking some beer and smoking some dirt weed.

"San Jose Sense", Ricky's cousin calls it.

=Sorry, Pete. I don't know whats up with that l'il vato anymore. He thinks all white people are the devil, man.

He shakes his head, sadly. Ricky snorts a white flame.

=They fucking are, man. Motherfucking gringo motherfuckers.

Ricky throws beer in my face.

I feel the liquid seep through my skin. My soul is soaking wet and my brain is blinkered.

I smash my beer bottle on top of his skull.

The weight of an irrestible force bowls me over backwards. I'm pinned against the wall as Ricky drives me with legs pumping like the pistons of a Chevy V8.

We collapse on the floor, pummeling each other.

Ricky laughing the whole time, snorting yellow flames out his hornbeeked purple nose.

=Still got the skill. Still got the skill.

He'd been a terrific linebacker, sure-thing all league his junior year, until the final week of preseason practice, when, out of nowhere one afternoon, he drilled our starting quarterback on a blind side blitz, ending a most promising year for the team before it even started by causing a separated throwing shoulder.

Ricky became a legend that day and earned the enmity of the entire school and city, simultaneously.

I'm still laughing my ass off about it in fond remembrance of Ricky Ricardo Joaquin some forty odd years later.

But pinned to the wall on this particular night, with his shoulder buried inside my breastbone, pushing me through the drywall, basically, and I'm starting to better understand the majoritarian viewpoint, albeit obliquely, while hallucinating bent, curving white surface patterns across the dark spotted space filled night....

=Party...Ricky. We...have...a...party....ooomf!

Ricky springs up and yanks me off the floor.

=Lets go!

When we see the cherries flashing up and down the block we decide to park a few streets over and walk in.

The yard's roped off and a cop stops us two doors down.

=What happened, officer?

The cop stares at me.

=You're that Richards kid, used to play second base for Gladstone, didn't you?

=No, sir, thats my brother.

=No, officer, thats him. Whats going on?

=Hold it right there, boys. Party's over. Time to get on home.

Next morning we would hear the news.

Omar'd played shortstop and batted lead off. I'd played second base and batted second. My role was to sacrifice myself to allow him to steal second and advance to third whenever he got on base.

There'd been a confrontation with some 14 year olds. Omar never stood down from anybody. He was fast as the wind on the bases and fearless in every situation. He was home on Christmas leave, an Army medic attached to special forces operating inside the DMZ. We'd lost touch after he graduated. I had no idea that he was back in town.

The viewing was scheduled for Monday, the funeral set for Tuesday.

II

She washed herself, then me, then got dressed and put on her make up in front of the mirror.

She wore a lot of dark eye shadow. I liked watching her put it on.

She was nineteen and worked the receptionist desk.

She'd managed to become quite the chatty Kathy with my wife during the course of the several weeks-long process where she allowed me to seduce her at work.

She had a boyfriend but they'd had a fight.

One day, as I wasted time pretending to make a fuss over the message slips in the carousel tray, she suddenly asked me over to her apartment for lunch.

=Nothin fancy. Tuna fish. I hope you like a lot of mayonnaise.

I hated mayonnaise but said nothing.

I stopped on the way for a sixpack of Bud.

Tallboys.

She laughed mirthfully when I asked her where to put the beer. She came in close to me and put her hands on my hips. Her breath tickled. I noticed a pair of men's gray running shoes piled next to the front door.

=He ain't comin back, don't you worry about that. Here, you stand here.

She guided me to the center of the small living room.

Then she knelt down before me.

=Could I have one of those?

I popped her a top before letting the rest of the six-pack fall to the floor. She took a long drink, then let out a loud cracking burp, wiped her mouth with the back of her hand and started to laugh.

=Why are you here, Mr. Richards?

I started to answer with whatever frothing gibberish my shuttered brain could excrete under the circumstances, but she stopped me by placing her open hand against my chest.

She kept laughing at me, full and throaty, as the room spun around and round. Her merriment seemed to tease and mock me, until it stopped suddenly and she began to do the thing that she did.

III

The night air tasted sweetly of auto exhaust. Thin white linen curtains on wooden rings billowed away from the open window.

Gracie Joaquin sat next me, laughing and drinking a bottle of beer, always refusing the joint as it wended it's way back around. She passed it on to me and watched curiously while I took a long toke before handing it off.

Our knees touched insistently. I'd graduated from high school earlier that evening. A mellow certitude washed over me with the sense of something momentous but quiet and whole.

Janis. Twelve people siting on the floor together in a relaxed, lazy weave on the first day of the endless summer. Janis.

You don't know what it's like....

They glided through the screen door discretely as an onshore breeze. They walked up to Rudy Gonzales and handed him a piece of paper.

I tossed the joint under the table and leaned back to wait.

The breeze slowed and the curtains fell back lifelessly against the wall.

****

My parents bowled in the Las Vegas League on Sunday nights. I bided the minutes in silence until I heard the Buick fire up, followed by the familiar squeeking of the springs as Dad backed her down the driveway.

I sat in my garage-turned-into-a-bedroom with a shoebox cover in my lap, sifting seeds and sticks. I'd gone straight to White Front the day after and bought the album. The revelation of Janis on the first day of the rest of my life and then it had been prematurely snuffed out, extinguished like a flame in a jar. I needed to hear the whole album.

****

I'd walked all the way home in the early morning. My mom was sitting at the dinner table smoking her last cigarette before she left for work.

=How was Disneyland?

=I didn't go.

=Where were you all night?

A deep breath.

=Nowhere. A party and then just walking around. Thinking about the future, I guess.

****

The scraping of cardboard on cardboard. Three passes and scoop the provender onto the paper. Twist. Lick. Twist shut.

A car pulled up. I heard the crunch of boots on the gravel outside between the houses.

=I was sent here to kick your ass. Just so you know.

=What?

=She's 15 years old, dude. The old man's not very happy about it.

Ricky's dad was a welder at the concrete pipe factory, a glum and silent alcoholic until after he'd had a few beers, which he did like clockwork every day before dinner.

Budweiser. Tallboys.

He was capable of lighting up like a fire cracker and exploding into somebody's face about something or nothing. Usually, to his wife about Ricky. Ricky's mom would listen, nervous and fidgety, emitting a few hmmms and peeps but saying nada.

Then, he would run out of words and return to sit in front of the TV, drinking in his cups for the rest of the evening.

=I didn't take her to the party. We met there. She came with her friends...Brenda and Mona.

=I'm just telling you. Don't come by my house for awhile...like until the day after he croaks...

Ricky laughed.

I lit the joint and handed it to him. He took a humongoloid hit but couldn't hold it. Instead, he snorted it out through his nostrils in short bursts of harsh glee.

IV

The massive apartment complex squatted alongside the San Bernardino Freeway like a familial herd of giant, pink elephants. Pink wasn't it exactly, more of an indeterminate grog of blandoid, a mixed palette of baby shit beige, auto exhaust grime and male dog piss.

Pink as my ass.

I'd modified strategy for graduation night. I'd downed some reds and I'd chosen to spend the evening at a party with Graciela Joaquin instead of her brother Ricky, who had gone to the graduation night festivities at Disneyland.

Clarity sacrificed for eros.

Before the ceremony, Ricky and I had stopped at Carole Nash's house, which was down the block from school. Dennis Tyler greeted me warmly when we entered the house.

=Congratulations! The big day has finally arrived!

Clearly, Dennis was enjoying himself, an elder statesman and Vietnam veteran of twenty-two, a college man studying criminal justice at Cal State LA, supporting himself by dealing lids as a public service to high school retards such as myself. Oh, and did I mention that he was also my better in the competition for the affections of Carole Nash, who would not herself be taking part in the graduation ceremony?

She'd come back from Woodstock the previous summer with Dennis and decided to make eleventh grade the pinnacle of her scholastic achievement. Woodstock, apparently, had taught her everything she would ever need to know.

=So, where you going to college, Pete?

=I don't know. I thought maybe take a year off to "find myself."

Dennis laughed.

=You need that deferment, man. Take some classes at Mount Sac if nothing else.

=You know Dennis, that's a great idea! I never thought about Mount Sac. Thing is, I don't think my fucking car will make it up that fucking hill day after day.

=There's some apartments right across the street.

The "Mount Sac Apartments" were a legendary, local landmark of youth subculture, hosting what amounted to an open house acid test every Friday and Saturday night during the school year. The thought of life in the midst of nine months' of psychedelic insanity held much promise, but I rejected the idea entirely on functional grounds. Attending classes was out of the question, so what would be the point of living inside the parallel universe across the street?

The graduation ceremony went off without a hitch. Instead of holding me back 'incomplete,' the administration had allowed me to graduate with C's after I took and passed the final exam for each required course, after having attended zero classes for the entire semester.

I had sacrificed my final year of eligibility to play baseball and my title as 'editor' of the school newspaper. I'd spent most of my senior year down the street in bed with Carole Nash, and then, lost her too as the school year came to a close.

I was a loser.

Fuck it, who cares?

****

We followed the hoarse shouting of Janis up to the second floor. The door and the windows were thrown open, beckoning to whatever rode in on the cool night air. Gracie Joaquin was as tall, thin and lithe as her brother was stout and coiled. She exuded social ease and seemed comfortable in any situation, an attitude that I admired. Gracie wore her black hair long and used a lot of white makeup to pale her skin tone. Her large lips were painted a color that could best be described as 'apartment house pink.'

I'd known her since the day she was born and had fallen for her before she left the hospital with her joyous parents and a sullen, jealous Li'l Ricky in tow.

=Let me hold her.

I'd ridden in the backseat with the newborn Graciela Angelina Joaquin on my lap and I never took my eyes off her once on the ride home.

****

Rudy Gonzalez greeted us at the door. He waved his arm expansively across the living room, which contained several small groups of people entwined in separate conversations.

=Welcome to the rest of your life.

The crowd seemed mellow. Janis with horns was a revelation. I basked in the glow of a familiar chemical warmth after we squatted on an empty patch of green carpet.

My knee touched Gracie's and my other foot rubbed Ramona's ankle. Ramona had an exotic face which wasn't entirely ruined by the speckle of acne scars on each high cheek bone.

She'd been my first girlfriend a long, long time ago in second grade, only to cruelly dump me for my best friend, who had issued a challenge to leap off the roof of her parents' house one day after school. When I blanched on the precipice, I had lost her love forever.

But we were still friends, heldover for all these years by tradition if not actual warmth. Manys the night she waited patiently, wherever it was, until I would finally shut my blaring yap, just so she could drive my drunken ass safely home in the wee hours. Mona never asked for anything in return except for our friendship to continue, even as we hurtled toward the coming divide between those who would stay and those who would feel compelled to go, now that school was out forever.

Grace shifted her knee away from mine and grabbed my hand.

=I can't believe it! And Ricky is going to college!

She gave me a furtive glance.

=No doubt, he had some help along the way.

='And I was very well paid on both occasions.'

='But the winning side would've paid you much better.'

The two of us and Ricky had watched Casablanca together a million times.

We looked at each other and laughed. I pulled her close and kissed her with feeling. Time stopped for one shining moment.

=Pete? C'mon, man, that's not fair...you're my big brother. You can't french kiss me!

Grace laughed uproariously and pushed me with a sharp little punch to the chest. More of a light shove, really. Ramona looked away, pretending to be taken in by the discussion of the group on her right.

I rubbed my chest and played along. Gracie's warmth somehow carried me off into the vicinity of optimism, for the night remained young.