It was like that. Like when a child in a playground swing reaches the highest point possible. It’s the point just before the chains begin to slack. It’s exhilarating. The stomach drops, and in that moment there is both a transfer of power and a loss of control. First there’s the initial push off the ground by the little boy’s mother. She stands in a small depression in the sandpit underneath the swing. The hot afternoon sun on her neck. She grabs the chains of the swing just above the seat where the leverage is in her favor. “Hold on tight!” she says with a smile that her son can hear in her voice. She takes a step back, pulling the boy and the swing with her. She gives a strong push, and releases. The swing soars to its uppermost point, pauses, and then reverses direction. Gravity and the child’s weight take over, and the downward acceleration begins. She has set the pendulum in motion.
It was like that when the heavy wooden bat reached the top of the backswing and began its crushing descent. An event had been set in motion, and it would end with a mortal blow to the skull. The killer held the bat with a grip that was filled with rage. He took a stance that gave him maximum leverage. “Hold on tight!” he said with a smile. His victim couldn’t see it, but he could hear that the smile contained no joy. The killer had played the long game, and he had played it well. There was no doubt about that. His eyes were cold and his expression resolute. He knew that he had won. He had revealed himself. His truth was finally known. If only for a moment, one living person would know his story. The story of a motherless son and a cunning hunter. Cunning, powerful, and baffling. That’s what they would say about him someday. And there was no doubt of what would happen next. The only surprise was that, in the split second before the impact, there would be sufficient time for so many flashes of life, love and memories in the eyes of his prey.
***
Three Days Earlier
Los Angeles, California
Jim
Faint whispers of an old Culture Club song make their way over the privacy hedge as the sun begins to set. Melodies carried by the breeze. A breeze in LA is rare unless you’re close to the beach. But five miles inland, and unless the Santa Anna’s are blowing, the air is usually still. I like the stillness. It slows down the spinning conversations in my mind. But chaos always follows stillness. Mighty rivers flow from still waters. There is water flowing underground. And the days go by…
I’m walking to the Ghetto Market-O. That’s what we call our local grocery store. Its real name is William's Food Market. It's kind of bland really. No particular spice at all. No, they don't sell homemade flour tortillas or fresh tamales. We call it the Ghetto Market-O because it's cheap. It's ghetto. We didn't derive the nickname from the ethnicity of the customers. In fact, the Ghetto Market-O doesn't have a single ethnic flavor. It has many. It's a hodgepodge. And that makes it a perfect microcosm of our neighborhood.
We live in a place caught in between two eras. Like the south side of Chicago in 1954, or the plains of Persia in some Allah-forsaken desert of long ago, my neighborhood in Los Angeles is transitioning in the year 2016. We call it turning. Kind of like when a lake turns over in the fall after a long summer in the warm sun. Warm waters mix with cold, carrying bits of life, death, and inanimate objects that seem foreign, even exotic to the old inhabitants of their new home in a different temperature stratum of the waters. Everything gets muddied up for a while as the waters churn. It takes some time to settle. It will be some time before the waters are clear again. I’m feeling that sensation of life settling down, of the waters clearing, after my crazy ass trip back home to Texas last week. Of course I know that the spinning mental images and the chaotic waters will churn up again soon.
As I said, our neighborhood here in LA is turning. It’s becoming a mixed salad of ethnicities, languages, cultures, incomes, races, religions, and generations. But now let’s throw the gays into the mix. That’s where I come in. Enter stage left. When the gays arrive, you know that the neighborhood is turning. Alan Turning comes to mind. Gay, out of place, and a pioneer. Was it Alan Turning? No, that’s not right. I think it was Turing. In any case, he was a genius mathematician, and code breaker. He was credited with the invention of the computer and turning the tide of World War II. Yet he committed suicide by poisoned apple. How very Snow White of him. Bit of a drama queen? But I must admit that I admire his flare. The apple was a nice touch. And, let’s be honest, we all have our flaws. We all have our own demons. We have our flawed heroes, our buried secrets, and our bat shit crazy families.
The old Culture Club song was, “Do You Really Want to Hurt Me”. An ’80s classic for everyone, but we love it more. Us gays, that is. Well, we used to love it way back before Boy George got fucked up on heroin, ruined his voice, and chained a Rentboy to the radiator in his basement. That took the luster off his star, so to speak. Of course his worst sin was fucking up his voice. I mean, the Rentboy was actually for rent, right? The terms of the contract were open to a certain amount of interpretation. They weren’t exactly spelled out in a detailed rental contract. The legal disclaimer on the internet site is intentionally vague. And Rentboys will be Rentboys, right? But his voice. That beautiful voice that Mr. George O’Dowd once had. That was a gift. That was not his to own. That was not even his to rent. And he fucked it up.
“That’s not how we do things—misbehave and then continue to do it, say I’m sorry and ’spect to go on, ’spect to do it again.” That’s what the mom clad in fluorescent striped leggings tells her little brat as he steps on my toes and bounces his germ-ridden plastic toy all over my grocery items. In my head I’m thinking of Maggie the Cat and what she called “no neck monsters”. Not politically correct in this context. Maggie was talking about her own flesh and blood. Not that it makes much of a difference for my story. Disdain is disdain, and we’re all human. Even Buffalo Bill was human, and dehumanizing at the same time, “It puts the lotion on its skin or it gets the hose”.
The old gray-haired man in line behind me shoots the shit with the neighbor he’s probably known for 40 years. The oil stains and frayed hems of his well-worn overalls give him away. The callouses on his hands and his stooped posture are the unmistakable scars of decades of hard labor. He talks about the new folks moving into the neighborhood, and laughs about the pretentious “No More MacMansions” yard signs that have sprung up in front of houses in what's become known as Wilshire Village. “Shoot, I'll take a MacMansion any day,” he chuckles to his friend.
Like I said, it’s a neighborhood that’s transitioning. Turning. Yeah, the old man is black and so are the mom and her little no neck monster in front of me. And I’m gay. And there it is. We all belong, and don’t belong at the same time. Best of times, worst of times and all that shit. That's what makes the ghetto Market-O ghetto. Gay ghetto, black ghetto, poor ghetto, Asian ghetto, Latino ghetto; we all have one thing in common. We all live in a ghetto. We all live, love, laugh and cry in a ghetto. Just like that old Elvis song. Something about a child dying and a mother crying in the ghetto. That's us. Well, not exactly. I think that song was about a ghetto without hope. Sure, we all live in a ghetto, but there's hope. Fortunes are turning.
Anyway, as I leave the Ghetto Market-O I catch a glimpse of myself in the window of the “Deluxe Fashions $4.99” clothing store that stands in silent, cheap solidarity with the grocery store that I just left. The reflection that I see in the glass is comforting. Time has been kind to me. Sure, I lost my hair at 22, but I've got a nicely shaped noggin. And a pretty face. Maybe there's a bit of a Sleestak crest at the top of my skull, but it’s barely noticeable. I shaved my head at age 24 and never looked back. I think it's sexy. I've always been stocky, and that helped with the bald-Daddy role I've been playing for the past two decades. The twinks fall for it every time, and that’s what really matters, right? Muscles, blue eyes, and my Italian ancestor’s 5-o'clock shadow make a nice combination, if I do say so myself.
As I turn away from my reflection in the glass I'm confronted with more evidence that my neighborhood is turning. Right in front of me is a hipster walking hand in hand with his raggedy ass punk girlfriend. The hipster dude is bad enough. Of course there’s the scraggly beard that he'll be embarrassed of next year. He’ll try to scrub the internet of pictures of himself sporting that beard and his stupid man bun. Good luck with that. What happens on the internet stays on the internet. But worse than the hipster dude is the girlfriend. In the most generous terms you might call her a past-her-prime wannabe. But let's call a spade a spade. She's just a washed out old goth with black hose, 70 lbs. on the wrong side of decent looking, out in 90 degree weather carrying a purple bag and a Chihuahua. Carry on, my friend. Carry on.
On the way back to my front door I pass the gaybors’ hedge again. Get it, gay-neighbors? This time it’s an old, half-forgotten Debbie Gibson song that drifts over the hedge, “Out of the Blue”. Some queen is reliving his high school years and his love of bubblegum pop that probably got his ass kicked daily. That Debbie Gibson song will hopefully drift up, over, away, and finally down into the dustbin of history. But at least it wasn’t a modern tune by that fucking Taylor Swift. That girl’s a nightmare dressed like, uh…well, a nightmare. OK so you’ve probably guessed that I’m a self-righteous prick and kinda judgmental. I prefer to call it snappish. Something just shy of witty with a modicum of meanness. A brand of, let’s call it humor, that comes so easily to the gays.
I stopped dead in my tracks. The wretched Debbie Gibson song reached its chorus. Memories flooded back and washed over me like a tidal wave. I haven't thought about that night in 30 years. Something about the familiar chords and Debbie’s squeaky voice transported be back to a small-town high school party in the fall of 1990. I saw faces that I thought were permanently erased from my mind’s eye. I saw my friend, Christi, who died in the spring of our senior year. I remembered how she and I giggled together in the school gym earlier in the day before the party. We had a plan. Christi was fun. I liked her. She was kinda mean. Maybe that's why we got along. She was also beautiful, and that made her the envy of the entire school. Most importantly for me, she had the popular boys wrapped around her little finger. My friendship with her was more than friendship. It was protection. The queer-hating, sheep-fucking, dim-witted ass holes never touched me because they knew I was the gate keeper to their adolescent fantasies. Too bad for the farm animals that Christi wasn't friends with them.
The whole senior class was going to be at the party. I knew I'd have to drink beer out of red plastic cups and pretend to be friends with the three football players who'd been following Christi around like little puppies. Out of the three tough guys, Shane was the one that I hated the most. He was the glorious quarterback, and he was so goddamn full of himself. Of course he was gorgeous, but there was something about the way he looked at me. All I could see in his face was the unmistakable ugliness inside. Anyway, it was his little brother, Alex who was the sexy one in the family. As I found out later in life, Alex and I had much more in common than I knew at the time. Maybe that's why his older brother always looked at me with hate and suspicion in his eyes. Project much? There's a another faggot much closer to home, ass hole. And then of course there was Dean. All American good looks, but creepy. At least I didn't have to worry about him giving me the death glare in the halls at school. Anything with a penis was pretty much invisible to Dean. In fact, even most of the high school girls were invisible to him too. He preferred the company of the junior high girls. Like I said, creepy. The last of the three was Ricky. At least that's what everyone else called him. In my mind I referred to him as Ricardo. There was something sad about him, and something grown up about him too. That's why I always imagined he was more of a Ricardo. I could never quite put my finger on what it was about him, but I liked him. Christi and I shouldn't have included him in our little prank.
What we planned wasn't really clever. And it was innocent enough. We never meant for anyone to get hurt. And, in fact, no one got hurt that night. At least not physically. But somehow I still blame myself for what happened to Christi the following spring. No, I blame those three guys. No, actually I blame the whole goddamn town.