Dog's Days

He falls back and the glue sniffers are all pale and they are wiping his blood off of their faces because they were standing behind him and they got sprayed.

Dog's Days

Thursday, September 15

My sister Jennifer just gave me this notebook. She said these are the best days of my life. She said I should write down stuff that happens because I'll want to remember it later and like laugh about it and stuff. She must be out of her mind. These days suck.

I'm in ninth grade. And maybe ninth grade days are the best days of your life if you're a girl, but it really sucks if you're a guy. The other day I came in late to P.E. with Chad Harris, he's my best friend. We were really running 'cause we were late and we ran into the locker room and Mr. Saintpierre was standing just inside the door and he grabbed both of us by our shirt collars and lifted us way up in the air, one of us in each hand, and slammed us into the lockers. The whole big locker room was empty and silent except for Mr. Saintpierre. He was holding us up there and glaring into our faces and I could see the veins in his neck all puffing out and red. It was gross. His breath was bad and Chad and I were tryin' to turn our heads away from his face so we wouldn't have to smell it.

And then he starts yelling, "You little shits! You know where both you little shits are going to go?" He waits for an answer but Chad and I are too scared to say anything (for once). And then he continues yelling, "Nowhere!" He yells it really loud right in our faces and we can see his gray nose hairs, his brown teeth and like how his skin seems so thick and dry but it's really greasy. "Nowhere! Nowhere!"

His grip is loosening on us and I'm sliding down the locker door a little and one of the combination lock things is digging into my back and I can't breathe too good because my t-shirt is, like, stretching all the way up to my throat. I say, "I can't breathe Mr. Saintpierre."

He puts us down. I look around and I'm really scared because he's still mad and there's no one around. Chad doesn't look scared, he probably is though, Chad's really good at acting tough.

Saintpierre puts his face down really close to ours, "Don't let me catch you running in here late again." And he pushes us toward our lockers, which luckily are together, because I would never want to go into the locker room without Chad. And this is funny, Chad mutters under his breath, "Okay, next time we'll walk."

"What, Harris?! Did you say something Harris?!" And Saintpierre is, like, storming across the locker room and I'm ready to shit my pants, but Chad is so cool he politely says, "I beg your pardon Mr. Saintpierre, I didn't say anything."

And Saintpierre is so mad but he's trying to control it and he says, "I know your type, Harris. You are a criminal. And do you know what happens to criminals? They get put in jail and they get held down and they get big dicks shoved up their tight little assholes. Is that what you want, Harris?"

And now Chad really does look a little scared, but mostly probably for the same reason I am. Here's this big old adult. A teacher. And he's saying all this stuff to us. I have never even thought of that. It's so disgusting!

He looks at me. "How about you, Mr. James? Is that what you want?"

I'm about ready to cry but I know I shouldn't, "No, Mr. Saintpierre."

"Mr. James, I don't think you should spend so much time with Mr. Harris. Mr. Harris is a criminal."

Neither of us say anything.

One good thing about all the time that pig was wasting meant that we didn't have to get dressed for P.E. and that was good.

Finally, after a long time, he just says, "Get out of here! Go sit on the gimp bench with the other losers."

The gimp bench is the place where people with like sprained ankles and broken arms sit. Or sometimes if you're really late you have to sit there.

So, I don't know how fucking great these days are or anything but if they are that wonderful I'll write about them in this book. Jennifer said I should think of this book as my first journal. She is really cool. She's in college and she's going to be a speech pathologist. Sometimes she'll stick her fingers in my mouth and ask me to say, "Hello." It comes out all funny and she says that she learns how to help people who talk like that.

Sunday, September 18

Yesterday was really fun. My parents went out and Chad came over. Nobody was home.

Chad and I are standing around wondering what to do. He notices how gross and messy the kitchen is and he says, "Hey, let's surprise your mom and clean everything up."

So, he grabs a broom and starts sweeping and says, "You wash all the dishes." I hate to say this, but this is the first time I have ever washed dishes in my life. It was really not that bad.

Chad notices the dishwasher, which we never use. He opens it up, looks inside and yells, "Hey, who in the hell washes vodka bottles?"

I start laughing. My mom hides Vodka bottles everywhere. Under the furniture. Sometimes between cushions in the sofa. In book cases. In the bathroom. I've never really thought about it.

Chad asks, "Do you have any orange juice?"

And I say, "Ooh, you wanna drink that shit?"

And he says, "Yeah, it'll get us all messed up."

We looked all over for orange juice and couldn't find any. But I found one of those big cans of pineapple juice in the cupboard, which is mostly full of Roast Beef Hash, which is like my Dad's favorite thing to cook. So we open up the pineapple juice and mix the vodka with ice and pineapple juice and it wasn't that bad.

We're drinking these big tall glasses of the stuff and still trying to clean the kitchen. We got really drunk. It was fun.

Chad and I cleaned the kitchen really good. It was spotless. He even showed me how to scrub and mop the floor with Lysol.

When my parents came home my Dad went straight to the bedroom to lie down, which is all he ever does, and my mom went to the kitchen. She didn't even notice that we had cleaned it. Luckily she didn't notice that her bottle of vodka was missing either.

Monday, September 19

Lori is a bitch! Aaaghh! Shit! (Excuse me, but since this is my very own fucking journal I think I should be able to cuss in here all the hell I want to!!!) I am pissed, if you can't fucking tell. Pissed!

Okay, here, let me calm down a little. Okay, so like, Saturday, while Chad and I were hanging out, I was supposed to call Lori. But Chad and I found that vodka and we got drunk and I forgot to call her. So what, right? Did she call me? Noooooooooooo.

Anyway, I was supposed to call her and she gets all pissed at me 'cause I didn't call her and she calls her PIG EX-boyfriend Mario Olivetti the pig-boy from hell! So today she's all snotty to me at Nutrition and she gives me this note all folded up and it's all about how... no, I'll just copy it in here so you can see with your own eyes what a bitch Lori Garnet is!!

Aaghhhhh! Is that bullshit, or what? That is total bullshit. I showed the letter to Chad and Chad wanted me to go and kick Mario's fucking ass. But I told him, it's not Mario's fault. It's hers'.

I hope Mario doesn't think he's gonna get some pussy off of her, 'cause he's not. Lori's really nice, actually, when she's not being a bitch. I really liked her. Two years ago, in the seventh grade, I went over to her house and we kissed. But not like the dumb little kid kisses. Little peck kisses. We kissed straight through ten songs on the radio. I figured at maybe three minutes per song that worked out to thirty minutes of straight kissing. I was in heaven. I didn't even try to touch anywhere on her body. I just kissed her and that was it and that was enough.

It was funny too, because after that, we were both so nervous and maybe embarrassed by what happened that I just said goodbye and split. I remember running all the way home. It was really funny.

That was a long time ago. We didn't kiss after that for a long time and then I asked her to be my girlfriend this summer after Christina Ferley broke up with me. (Christina is a whole other story, sheesh.) So, now Lori's not my girlfriend and so what?

 

Oh yeah, like I got so wrapped up in that Lori shit that I didn't even talk about what happened on Sunday. Chad came over real early and said that he had to show me this really cool place he found at Chatsworth Park.

Chatsworth Park is really, really far from where we live. It's so far. It's like ten miles or something. Definitely way too far to ride on our bikes.

"Are you a pussy?" he asks me.

"No, I just don't feel like riding ten miles on my bike. That's bullshit. I'll bet I can score us some more Vodka or something and we can go hang out in the wash." I say to him.

"Dude, this place is the coolest. I'm not kidding. You are going to be so happy we went there!"

Oh my god, ten miles is like so far I thought I was gonna die. But there's this 7-Eleven right before you go into Chatsworth Park and we each had enough money for a big damn Slurpee so that helped.

We locked up our bikes and rested underneath a tree in this big green field, sipping our Slurpees and actually feeling pretty good. A nice long bike ride isn't so bad after it's over. And Chatsworth has to be the best place in all the Valley. (The Valley really sucks, by the way.)

So then, while we're resting, Chad smiles, "Halfway there."

And I say, "What?!"

"Oh, come on, it's just over those rocks." And Chad points to these big old mountain rocks that surround Chatsworth park. They are huge. I didn't even think people could go there.

So we get up and start heading for these huge mountains. The rocks at the bottom are really easy to climb. It's actually really fun and so I was glad that I had come.

But then we got to these really steep cliffs.

"You have to be crazy," I tell him. "No way. I'm not going to climb that."

"Look," he jumps on the cliff face like it's nothing. "It's easy, just don't look down."

And the weird thing was, he was right. It was easy.

And so, to make a long story short, we climbed and we climbed and we climbed. And then we hiked through all these rocky fields of sage brush and tumbleweeds and stuff and suddenly I realize I have no idea where the hell I am or how the hell I got there or how the shit I'm going to get out of there. I begin to wonder if we're lost or something.

Luckily, Chad points to this set of big rocks and says, "Dude, right on!"

"What?" I ask.

And he says, "Man, I was getting really scared that I had gotten our asses lost. I was already picturing the buzzards circling. I didn't want to say anything to you about it, seeing how you're such a pussy and all."

So, I sock him in the shoulder and we laugh.

Chad leads me over to this big rock and we look inside and it's like this big cave.

And so we go in to this totally cool cave. The walls are smooth and kinda just flow into the roof like the inside of a dome, and the dirt floor is flat and even.

So, we're in there and then Chad says, "Is it cool, or what?"

Then he points to this big cardboard box on the floor and says, "Check this out." And he opens it up and it's all these really old Playboys and Penthouses and other really nasty magazines. The super nasty kind with dicks and dildos and all the girls are spreading themselves wide and sticking their fingers in and stuff.

But even before we could check out all the naked ladies in the magazines, something really weird and kinda scary happened. I pushed the box and noticed that the dirt under the cardboard box was like really loose and stuff.

And I say, "Chad, check this out."

We move the box and can see that there really has been some kind of hole dug there, and covered up.

"Dude, cool." Chad starts looking around. "Come on, lets find something to dig with."

So, we go outside and find these two big sticks and we start really tearing into the hole but then I stop, "No, I don't think we should dig here, man. What if it's a body or something really really gross?"

"Man, you are such a pussy. You might as well wear dresses." Fuckin' Chad!

"Okay, what do you think it is, then?" I ask him.

"I don't know what it is, but I'll bet you a million dollars it's not a dead body." Then he gets this really excited look on his face. "Dude, it could be money. Just fuckin' quit worrying and dig."

So then I get pretty excited too and start digging.

Finally, we find this big black army duffel bag. Inside of this big black army duffel bag is this big black plastic trash can bag and inside of this big black plastic trash can bag are all these guns.

I got really scared right then. Maybe I am a pussy.

Chad looks at them, his eyes grow wide and he says, "Cool." He starts grabbing for them and I just yell, "STOP. Do you fucking remember what happened to David Elster?"

And then he stops too.

David Elster was the asshole bully of the neighborhood who used to beat us up all the time when we were really small. One day David Elster and Derrick Taylor found this shotgun in David's garage and they were playing with it and Derrick shot David Elster right in the chest and neck and David Elster died and Derrick went to the funeral and cried and cried and screamed and screamed that he didn't know the gun was loaded until he had to be taken away. I mean, David Elster was a real asshole but he didn't need to die.

So Chad calms down and we look in the bag. Seven guns: two big long rifles. Two short rifles. Two really modern looking handguns and one cowboy looking gun. And all kinds of bullets and shit in this green metal box at the bottom.

We decide that because of what happened to David Elster, not to play with the guns. We just bury them back up. Pat down the dirt as hard as we could. Move the box back over the spot and get the fuck out of there.

Chad and I promised that we would not tell anyone about what we found, so now I'm gonna have to start hiding this book.

When I got home it was almost dark.

My damn mom was drunk and my dad yelled at me, "Where have you been all day you dirty rotten little son of a bitch!" And I wanted to yell right back into his face: FUCK YOU! but I didn't. And then he told me mom was drunk because I was gone all day. I hate them. (Now I really have to hide this book -- so what?) Tuesday, September 20 Nothing happened today.

Lori didn't talk to me at all. At Nutrition she hung out with Mario and his faggy glue-sniffer buddies. I've taken hits of pot and even gotten drunk, but I will never ever sniff glue. Idiots. One morning, in eighth grade, I was walking to school through the field next to Sepulveda, that's my school, and there is this big old tree in the center of this field. And the leaves and shit hang down all the way to the ground on the outside so you can't see under the tree from the outside. So, I'm walking by this tree and I hear some noise or something and I, like, push my head in and I see Mario Olivetti, and Sean Meechem and a bunch of other mindless idiots sitting on a goddamn SOFA. UNDER THE TREE. A SOFA! It's like this big dark room under this tree and there is a sofa on the dirt and they are sitting on it.

And they're all hanging out like they invented cool and they have these plastic baggies full of white-out and glue and paint and they're puttin' these baggies up to their mouths and noses and they're breathing.

This was before Mario and I hated one another and Sean and I were cool, too. They asked me if I wanted to do it. I said no. They thought I was such a fairy. Fools.

I hope that Lori doesn't start to do that shit.

It was a bummer that she was such a snotty bitch to me today. I don't care. Wednesday, September 21

This is the first time I'm writing in here early in the morning, but I have to. I had the coolest dream!

My sister Jennifer was in it and some other guy I met in San Diego when I visited her. I forget his name, he plays the drums.

It's hard to explain the dream. It was like a movie that you were seeing for the second time. And Jennifer and I were players, but there was no audience. Jennifer and I were walking (in the dream) toward her car, but somehow I knew what was going to happen. We opened the door and some guy falls out (the drummer, I forget his name). Jennifer jumps back in surprise but I was just kinda standing there smiling. So, we wake this guy up and he starts walking with us.

After a while we get to this hill or cliff like place where we start looking out at the planets. The planets were all in the sky, and they were all a little bigger than the moon so you could see them real good.

And in the dream we all knew that our dead went to these planets. We communicated with the dead by looking at the planets and thinking about the dead. And the dead would respond by making big fireworks around the planets.

We were standing there looking at all the fireworks around the planets of people communicating to their dead. As we start walking away, Jennifer says, "I wonder which planet Brent is on?" I notice right then that there is a planet with no fireworks at all but right after Jennifer says that, it becomes active. And I point at the planet and yell, "Look! Look!" And she looks at the planet and says softly, "Brent?" The planet becomes brighter. Then she happily yells "BRENT!" really loud. And the planet becomes even brighter. She says, "Goodbye Brent," and walks away happy.

But the funny thing about this dream is that Brent's not dead. He's her ex-boyfriend that she hasn't spoken to for years, and I really miss him. Later the same day.

Chad didn't come to school today. Lori was a bitch. This girl named Rhonda that I think is really pretty smiled and talked to me. Maybe she likes me. I can't tell. It was a crappy day. I'm not doing very good in school, I guess. I think I hate myself. Bye. Thursday, September 22

Chad comes running up to me today and he's like all excited, and he says, "Check these out." And he reaches into his pockets and pulls out all of these white pills. And I look at them and I say, "So? What are they?" And he says he snorted them yesterday and they made him really high.

So, Chad and I snuck off campus and went to that tree in the field. It's still there and so is the sofa but like a lot of the stuffing has been pulled out of the sofa and some rusty springs are showing and there are little burn marks all over it but you can still sit on it.

Chad hands me one of the pills and holds one in his hand. They're those kind of pills with like dissolvable plastic on the outside and powder on the inside. Chad pulls his apart and says, "Snort one half up one nostril, and the other half up the other nostril." And then he does it.

I know it was a pretty stupid thing to do, but I did it anyway. I didn't get high. I was just feelin' really woozy and like I wanted to throw up. I didn't say that to Chad though. Maybe it made him high. I don't know. I'll bet he wanted to throw up too.

But then guess what happens? Shit.

Goddamn Mario Olivetti shows up with like five glue sniffers. He walks through the leaves of the tree and steps into the dark little space in there and sees us and says, "What are you fuckers doing in our hang out?"

And Chad jumps up and I can tell he's ready to fight but he looks a little sick when he stands up and then I stand up and I know what he is feeling, 'cause I feel really sick and then I think, shit, I wish I hadn't snorted those stupid pills.

And Mario pushes Chad and normally Chad would swing wild right then but he just falls back into the sofa and so I get this great idea.

"Oh, hey Mario," I say, like he's my best buddy. "We're getting really stoned. Man, we're just trashed."

And I'm like weaving and acting stoned and Mario says, "That's bullshit. I don't smell any pot or anything."

And Chad and I smile at one another and Chad reaches into both his pockets and pulls out two fistfuls of the ill-making pills and he says, "Dude, you sniff this shit and you get really messed up."

And Chad and I are acting like it's the best high in the whole world. We're acting so high it's like we got flowers coming out of our assholes or something and the glue sniffers are all like, "What's it like? Is it really good? Can we have some?"

And Chad is like, yeah, and he's being really greedy and giving just one pill to each of the guys but then Mario Olivetti, who obviously thinks he is the king of the glue-sniffers says, "Fuck that shit!" And he pushes Chad back into the sofa and grabs all the pills away from him. Chad starts getting really pissed and two of the other glue sniffers hold Chad down from behind the sofa and they take all the pills.

I say, "Okay, just chill a bit. Christ! We're sharing our shit with you."

And Mario looks at me and says, "Lori says you're a really bad kisser."

I know he's just tryin' to piss me off, so I just smell my finger and say, "So what, I got what I wanted."

See, I know Lori and I know she really wants to wait until she's eighteen. She wouldn't even let me touch her pussy. She doesn't even think of her pussy. She doesn't know how gross guys are and that all they ever think about is pussy. But I do, and I know that she might kiss Mario, but Mario can't get near what he really wants.

So I'm standing there sniffing my finger trying to remember what it smelled like the only time I ever finger banged a girl, (which was this girl named Lisa over a year ago) and all of Mario's glue sniffing buddies are cracking up. And Eddie Thompson starts laughing, "Hah, Mario, Lori let him finger bang her and she won't let you!"

And so Mario says, "Bull shit. I finger banged her." And all Mario's friends stop laughing but everyone knew it was a lie, but they didn't know I was lying, so that was cool. "So what," says Mario. "I'll be screwing her, too. You'll see man. I'll be the first one to bone her."

This is making me a little sick because Lori and I have had a lots of talks about like how much she likes fairy tales and stars and little trolls and shit. Plus her whole family is totally Catholic and you're not even supposed to touch yourself in the shower and this guy is saying, "I'll bone her," and it makes me even a little sicker than the pills.

So I say, "Hey, why don't you guys give us some of those pills back and we'll just split, okay."

And Mario says, "Why don't you pussies just get out of here and we'll call it even."

And I can tell Chad is really feeling sick now but he's still trying to act high and he gets up and we're walking out of there, and Eddie Thompson says, "Hey, did you guys eat 'em, or snort 'em?" And we both say, "Snort 'em." And then he says, "How many." And I don't know what to say but Chad says, "As many as you want."

And I'm trying not to crack up.

So Chad and I climb the fence back onto school; they keep the gates locked to keep out drug dealers. It's Nutrition which means we missed first and second period getting sick. I'm starting to feel a little better after walking back to school and I say to Chad, "Did you really snort those pills yesterday and get high?"

And he says, "No. I just told you that so you'd do it with me."

"Fucking ass!" I yell at him. "Dude, best friends don't lie to each other like that!"

And so we promised not to ever lie to each other and then we were laughing about everything that happened and then the bell rang and I had to go to Science class and Chad had to go to History and the rest of the day totally sucked. Friday, September 23 Guess who came over to me at Nutrition today!? Lori, and she was being all nice to me but I didn't want to hear it. Chad was like getting behind her and sniffin' his finger and I'm all crackin' up and she's lookin' around but (luckily) she doesn't see him and I say in like a real whiny voice, "Where's Mario?"

She says, "He and his friends cut school yesterday and today."

I say, "Oh, so when he's not here you can come over and talk to me?"

"No," she says. "I just wanted to say hi."

And this is a little mean, but I said it anyway 'cause she was such a bitch to me, "Go say 'hi' to Stacy."

And Chad and I start walking off and Chad is all, "Cold. You're so cold."

It was really funny.

But I still miss Lori and sometimes I think of how we used to lie on her floor and look at the ceiling and listen to music and talk. We didn't even touch or kiss. We just hung out and that was nice.

Screw it! I guess that's over now!

Fuck this journal, too. And fuck you!

Hey, I'm a poet and I didn't even know it. Saturday, September 24

I just walked out to the kitchen this morning and there was broken glass and blood all over the floor. My mom cut her feet on the broken glass. And my mom was lying all over the floor, face down. Her dentures had fallen out of her mouth and a line of spittle and snot or something connected them to her mouth. She was sleeping heavy and her whole body moved as she inhaled really deeply and then exhaled. But exhaling was really raspy, like there was something in her throat. And then I saw there was puke, too. And the whole place stank. And there was blood and puke.

The bad thing is that I have seen that shit so many times that I just walked into my dad's room to see if he would take me out for breakfast. Sometimes he'll take me out if she's really messed up. But he wasn't there. I guess he never came home last night.

This is bullshit! Later same day I went over to Chad's after I couldn't get any breakfast, but his mom and dad were havin' this big fight in the garage. I could hear them from around the hedge. I peeked around and saw them standing next to Chad's dad's Harley. I just stopped and like crouched in these bushes.

His mom was yelling at his dad but the only words I could really hear was his dad yelling, "Bitch, you bitch." And then I just thought that all of this was really bullshit.

I walked over to the pay phone at Smiley's market and called Chad and I asked him to come on down to Smiley's and meet me. And he said cool.

We stole a big box of donuts from Smiley's and went to the park and ate them. Sunday, September 25

Today I went over to Chad's and neither of his parents were home and so we started doing crank phone calls on Lori and Jeannie. Jeannie is the girl Chad likes but he's afraid to talk to her and I don't think she likes him anyway.

So one time while we were doing these crank phone calls on Lori, she says, "Steve, I know it's you and Chad."

And Chad and I are laughing and snickering and Lori says, "Stacy Reese is over. Why don't you guys come over, too?"

Stacy is half Asian and half Mexican and all fox and so I said, "Sure. What about Mario?" And she says, "Why, are you afraid of him?" And I said, "No." Which is not exactly the truth but I might be able to kick his ass if I ever have to.

So Chad and I went over there.

Lori was acting really cold to me. We were kind of having a lame time down in her bedroom and then Chad says, "Well, we have to go now." And I didn't know where we had to go but I figured it was cool to go since we weren't having that much fun.

But then Stacy whispers to Lori (but I could hear it), "Aren't you going to kiss him?"

And Lori says, "No. I'll bet you five bucks you won't kiss him."

The bad thing is, they're talking about me. But then poor fucking Lori lost her five bucks because Stacy stepped right up to me and starts really kissing me good. And Chad and Lori are standing around looking goofy while Stacy and I are kissing and so I look at Chad while I'm kissing Stacy and then move my eyes toward Lori and then those two start kissing and that was really cool except for what happened next.

We all kind of slowly go down onto the floor and we're kissing. And I look over at Chad and Lori and I see that Chad has his hands down the front of Lori's pants and he's fingering her!

And I stop kissing Stacy and I look at Lori and I say, "You're such a slut!"

And she says, "What?"

And I say, "You never let me do that."

And she looks real confused like I'm a nut and says, "You never tried."

And I said, "I thought you wouldn't let me, I didn't know you were a slut!"

And then I was feeling really fucked up. Lori has this door that goes right up these steps out of her house and into the back yard. And so I split and walked out through the gate. And I'm walking home and I'm really feeling screwed up because I had thought Lori never thought about that shit and it was me who didn't think of it or something.

Chad comes running up behind me and says, "Dude, I didn't mean to piss you off."

And I say, "It's cool, I'm not pissed at you."

And he says, "It's just that I thought you said you had done that and so I figured I'd try it and she was really into it."

And I say, "I guess so. I didn't know."

What really pisses me off about it is that Mario had probably done it, too. I feel gross. Wednesday, September 28

Oh shit! I got arrested!

That's why I haven't written in here for a couple days. Why does all this bad shit keep happening? Oh shit. I might have to go to Juvenile hall and this is so fucked. This is the worst. Here's what happened.

Chad has this friend named Dean Mellon. I've never much liked Dean Mellon. He has blond hair and he's a little fat and so to me his head does kind of look like a melon, but I never say that. I should now! What an idiot. Hey, Mellon! Idiot!!!

It's not my fault, it was Mellon's idea. Oh shit!

So Chad and I are at school and we're wandering around before the first bell. Just hanging out and saying hi to the girls and stuff. And the lovely Rhonda even said hi to me and I was just about to go over and say hi to her when Goddamn Chad says, "Hey, there's Dean. Let's see if he has any pot." I don't know if I have ever mentioned this, but I don't even like pot that much. But don't worry, I don't get arrested because of pot -- it's worse.

So we get over to Dean, and we see that he's got all these cool car emblems all over the inside of his locker. He's got Firebirds, and Mercedes, and Cougars, and Lexis and Mustang horses and even a few chrome girl silhouette things. It was pretty cool. It was like a car museum inside his locker.

And Chad says, "Hey, wow. How did you get all that shit?"

And Dean shows us this box with all these screw drivers in it and explains that you just go up to a car. Jam the screwdriver under the emblem you want and pry it up until it comes off. That was pretty bad fucking advice!

So Chad says, "Hey, do you have any pot?"

And Dean says, "No."

And then Chad gets this great idea and says, "Hey, how about we ditch school and you can show us how to get those car things."

And Dean says, "Cool."

And to be honest, I thought it was pretty cool too except that I'm so bummed right now!

We had all the equipment needed to take anything off a damn car. Three screw drivers and pair of wire cutters. First we walked through the Orbach parking lot and I was the only one who tried anything there because it was so open. I tried a Volkswagen Karmen Gia. Easy.

After we walked through the Orbach parking lot we went through the parking lot behind the Hughes grocery store. Chad pointed out a Rolls Royce to me. I said, "I gotta get it." He told me I was dumb because of alarms and shit but I didn't listen to him. So I walked over there with the wire cutters and I lifted the bird to get a look at the wire that was holding it down and I couldn't believe what I saw! Shit, there was an inch thick steel rope! I'll never forget what it looked like (but in case I do), it was an inch in diameter and it had these two smaller strand woven around the outside. Hey, I just remembered the word for what it was, it was a Goddamn cable.

After that my head was messed up for about five minutes. Right after that I should have turned back, I think something in me said, "Go back, asshole." But I went on.

Next we went through the Panorama Mall parking lot. There is an L.A.P.D. sub station right there so we just walked straight through. Some cops saw us but luckily they didn't say anything to us. Cops are such MORONS!

The parking lot just south of Roscoe Blvd. was next. Chad found the first Trans-Am. He ran to one side and I ran to the other and we snaked both of the emblems. Dean got an old Cougar, which has pretty cool emblems. We messed around there for a while and kept moving south. When we hit Titus St. the shit really hit the fan. We went nuts! There were so many nice cars we freaked out. The three of us went west a block and just stripped three Trans Ams as we moved east back to where we started. Shit it was fun.

Then we moved to the parking lot just south of Titus St. We all split up. Dean attacked three cars and took off the names. I worked for like five minutes on this Alfa Romeo but the damn emblem would not come off. But I did a bunch of other cars. Well, to make a long part short, when we met back up we each had three pocketfuls of that shit.

But it didn't end there, we kept moving south. We went to this three story parking structure just south of where we had been. I was getting nervous. I almost died when I saw some security guard standing around fifty yards from us. So we all ducked down and we kinda left in a hurry.

As we snuck out of the parking lot and hit the sidewalk I saw a Mercedes. I grabbed the wire cutters and got the emblem.

When we hit Van Nuys Blvd. we headed North until Roscoe Blvd. and crossed Van Nuys and stopped behind Aaron Brother's art Mart because Chad wanted to count our loot. We all had a bunch of loot but stopping there was a big mistake.

After getting up from there we were walking west on Roscoe. As we're crossing at the light, Dean says, "We're being followed."

I say, "Shut the fuck up. It isn't funny."

And Chad says, "It's no joke. Look."

And I looked and what I saw scared the shit out of me. It's this black cop in a three piece suit. And he's walking very briskly toward us.

We were still walking away from him. Chad whispers, "Wait 'til we get around the corner of the Bob's Big Boy so he can't see us and then bolt like hell."

But like this cop is reading our minds he says, "Stop! Police!"

I had no intention of stopping and he knew it! I got confused and didn't know which way to run. I ran inside this Del Taco and slid under a table and I started dumping all the shit out of my pockets. It all fell onto the floor but so did my house keys.

I was calmly walking out of there when the police walked in and some pig just grabs me and lifts me up by the arm and pulls me out. They drag me over to a curb by Bob's Big Boy and Chad is sitting on the curb looking all pissed. Dean's looking for his loot in the bushes.

They sat me down and Chad starts whispering into my ear about how he had dived in the bushes was going to get away but that they nabbed Dean and then Dean ratted on Chad.

But I don't know. Maybe. Maybe not. Chad's a pretty big liar when it comes right down to it.

After all that crap the cops drag us back to the Titus St. Parking lot and point to the Alfa Romeo and tell us that the owner of that car saw me messing with it and that we were totally busted. That was SUPER FUCKED 'cause then it was like it was all my fault that we got busted but it wasn't!

We had to point out all the cars we assaulted and then I had to tell them where my loot was.

Then, after an hour in a hot police car, they took us to the station. While we were waiting to go to the place where they take your pictures and prints we all had itchy noses but our hands were cuffed so we used each other's shoulders and we were cracking up. It was pretty funny. Even though we knew we were busted, which was a bummer.

Then they took us to get our pictures and prints. There was all this ink on our fingers and they had this goo that helps you get it off with out any water. That was weird.

They put us in this little cell with glass and chicken wire and there was a black guy in there who had beat up his grandma and so we weren't joking or nothing. It was totally fucked. I felt like crying when he said what he did. And the way he said he was smacking her because she wouldn't give him any money.

The first parents that came were Dean's and so he got out of there.

Then my parents came and my Dad screamed at me all the way home, "Does that car give you a hard on, you little shit! How about that one. You got a hard on for it? You dirty little rotten son of a bitch!" And he was screaming and screaming and my mom was crying. It was nuts. Friday, September 30

Life totally sucks. I'm not allowed to see Chad any more. My dad suddenly thinks his name is "That Fucking Chad Harris." That's the way he says it every time, "If you hadn't been spending so much time with That Fucking Chad Harris , this wouldn't have happened." Well, I don't care. Fuck you, Dad!! How's that?!

But Chad's mom and dad probably think it was all my fault so that's pretty much bull-crap and I haven't even seen or heard from Chad in three days. I don't know whose fault it was, I guess it's like that bumper sticker: Shit Happens. I just don't know why it all keeps happening to me!

All I know is that from now on I'm going to try and stay out of trouble and do good in school.

Oh yeah, I forgot to tell you. Lori came up to me the other day and she says, "Mario and his friends are after you and Chad." And I'm like, "Oh yeah, why, did I steal their glue?!"

And she says, "No, Mario says you gave them a bunch of bad shit and they took it and got sick on it."

I figure that the best thing to do is say, "That's bullshit." So that's what I say. And it was bullshit. I didn't give them jack. They came and stole our stash and maybe I helped them believe that it was good stuff, but I never gave it to them.

But Lori says, "They're really gonna kick your asses."

And I ask her, "What did he say happened?"

And she says, "Mario says that you and Chad were partying under the tree and they came in and you said that these white pills were really hot and gave them some and told them to snort it. Then you guys split and they snorted it and started like getting really sick and throwing up all over."

"Oooh, that's gross."

"That's why you're dead."

Lori is such a bitch!! So I say, "Do you want them to kick my ass?"

And Lori doesn't say anything. So I say, "What did I ever do to you? And she says, "You're such a fool! Remember? You called me a slut! And all that crap!"

She is so fucked. So I said, "You are a slut!" and I just took off.

Is this totally screwed or what? Now Mario and his whole gang of glue sniffers are looking to kick my ass and Chad hasn't called or come to school all week and I'm gonna have to fight all these fuckers all by myself and they're definitely going to kill me and I'm gonna die. I don't know what to do. Help. Saturday, October 1

Today I'm not going anywhere. I still don't know what to do. I called Chad's and his mom answered the phone. I asked if Chad was there and she says, "Steve, Chad's not here and he won't be back for a while but that doesn't matter because he's not allowed to see you anymore. Do you understand?" And I felt horrible and I said, "Okay." Then she says, "So don't call here again." And I'm thinking, Duuuuuuuuuuuuhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh, no shit!!! So I just hung up.

Then I started looking for my nun chucks. I haven't practiced with my nun chucks since the middle of summer. Nun chucks are this martial arts weapon, two short oak sticks connected by a chain. And I was getting pretty good with them until this thing happened this summer.

I was practicing with them everyday. You move them around your body really fast and every so often you like strike out a blow at your imaginary enemies. My mom would get really pissed if she knew I had them, because they're illegal, so I hide them in my room and practice with them in my room with the door closed.

Anyway, this summer I was practicing with them in my room. I was moving them around really fast. Over the shoulders, behind the back, faster and faster and faster until, oh my god this is so embarrassing, WHACK! Big damn WHACK! Right on my head! First thing that happened is my knees got weak. My hand went up to my head and I felt all this blood. It was warm and wet. Then I looked at it in like slow motion. It was weird. Then I remember falling and that was it.

I knocked myself unconscious for four hours.

When I woke up I was lying on the floor. The nun chucks on the floor next to me. My hair was all matted with blood and my whole body ached. It was sick. So I quit playing with the nun chucks.

But now I don't know what to do. I have to carry them.

I might be able to take Mario by myself but I know as soon as I start winning, one of them is going to hit me in the back of the head, or wait for me to kick his ass and then they'll all kick my ass for beating up the glue sniffer king.

I'm going to go practice the chucks now. Hope I don't knock myself out again. Sunday, October 2nd

9:45 A.M. Wow, I had the coolest dream. It was about Rhonda. She is soooo beautiful. She has all this red hair. She is so much prettier than Lori it's scary. Anyway, we were standing together (in this dream) and she gives me the most luscious look. Then she starts kissing me. It was like the best softest most incredible kiss in the world. That was the cool part. Then she starts looking for a more comfortable place for us to kiss. So she climbs over this fence and then calls me to come over into the yard. The yard is in front of this nice big house and I don't know if I want to climb over the fence or not. It would be trespassing and I don't want to break the law. But I want to be with Rhonda so much it hurts. So I figure, what the hey, and I climb over the fence. So we're standing in this yard just kissing and kissing when all of a sudden this wild eyed man comes running out of the house with a shot gun. He was crazy. Rhonda and I just about leap over this big high fence to get away from this man who is yelling at us to "get out of my yard!" But then he runs up to the fence and climbs over it with his gun and he says he's calling the police. Well, this scares the hell out of me. Then he hands me this piece of paper that reminds me of my arrest. And then I remember that if I get arrested again I go straight to Juvenile Hall. So I ran away really fast. I just left Rhonda standing there.

Before I knew it I was at the park and then I was at home and then the dream ended and I woke up. Later the same day

Today while I was practicing the chucks in my room I started thinking about what I would really do with them if I get surrounded by the glue sniffers. I figured I'd start working them pretty good but what if one of them picks up some rocks or a big branch or something? All they have to do is distract me, then tackle me and then kill me. So I figured I'd be dead if I get caught. This is bullshit. So then I think, wow, what if I just don't go to school for a few days and wait for all them to cool off. Maybe they'll all remember that I didn't REALLY give them the pills. Or hell, maybe they'll forget the whole thing all together.

So, mom wasn't drunk for a few minutes and I asked her if I could go to San Diego and visit Jennifer. I told her that since Jennifer is in college that I would just spend the days in the college library reading books and stuff. So, after a lot of begging and pleading about how much I miss Jennifer, Mom said that I could go.

Then we called Jennifer and Jennifer said I could come and so now my Dad is going to drop me off at the train station so that I can take the train down to San Diego. Which is fun unless I have to sit next to a bum or something. Monday, October 3rd

Man I am lucky I brought this journal with me. Jennifer asked me if I had been writing in it and I showed it to her and she was TOTALLY BLOWN AWAY! I couldn't believe it. She said that when she was my age that she never wrote so much in so short a time. She said that she always kept a journal but she said that she never got into it so much. I didn't even know I was into it, shit, writing in here is better than watching TV and that's all there is to do at home anyway -- so, whatever. But that's not the reason I'm lucky I brought it, I'm lucky I brought it because I AM THE MOST FUCKING BORED PERSON IN THE WORLD!

Jennifer actually did take me to the library and she showed me how to find books on anything that I want to and then she went to class and said that she would meet me here in four hours.

FOUR HOURS!

So I fooled around in the library but then I got so bored I thought I was going to die. I guess getting bored to death is better than being slaughtered to death by the glue sniffers.

The train ride down here was really weird. I get on board and find myself a good comfortable window seat with an empty seat next to it. That was cool. So I put my overnight bag and my jacket on the empty seat so that people will know not to sit next to me. I hate people sitting next to me. It's always a bum or a man with too much aftershave or an old lady with too much sweet perfume.

But the train got more crowded and more crowded and right when I started feeling a little guilty about hogging up two whole seats this old man stops and looks at the seat with all my stuff on it. He just stands there looking at it and I'm just sitting there looking out the window, hoping he'll go away. But he just keeps standing there and I can see him out of the corner of my eye and he's old and his face is all scarred and he's wearing this really dark over coat. He looks scary and I definitely don't want him to sit down next to me.

Then he says, "Is this your stuff?"

And I turn to him like I'm surprised somebody's standing there and I say, "Yeah."

And he says, "Well move it. I'm sitting down here."

But I don't move it. I peek my head up over my seat to see if there are other empty seats: and there are! Seats next to people who don't care if someone sits down next to them.

"Well," he says. "You gonna move that shit?"

And he's scary so I grab my stuff and I put it at my feet and he sits down and he's smiling like he knows I didn't want him to sit down next to me.

So I'm looking out the window at all the other trains in the station and I say, "There were plenty of other seats."

And he says, "Yeah, but they were all next to people who didn't care if somebody sat next to them."

And so I look at him and I ask, "If you knew I didn't want to sit next to anyone, why choose to sit next to me?"

"Because I figured you wouldn't want to talk to me, that's why." Then he looks down the aisle at all the other people sitting in their seats. "Look at those people, kid. They're empty. They are praying for some sucker to sit down next to them so that they can bore the shit out of him with some story or other. But kid, I saw you, sitting here trying to take up two seats so that no one would sit down next to you and I thought, well that kid sure as shit isn't going to bore me to death or try to teach me how to live. And that's why I sat down here."

And then he leaned back into his seat and reached under his coat and pulled out a little bottle of booze and he takes a big long drink from it. "You ever try this stuff, kid?"

Well, I can't believe this, I mean, here's this old guy who doesn't like people and it seems like he's offering me a drink and I say, "Yeah."

"Here," he offers me the bottle.

And this is so cool. I wiped off the rim of the bottle just like in a movie and I take a big long hit. It's whisky. Rogelio Garza and I used to drink whisky that he stole from his dad and so I knew what it would taste like. And I just swallowed it and it burned the whole way down but it was great!

So I hand him back the bottle and we just sit there. Every so often he hands me the bottle back and we drank it until it was gone.

During the trip we didn't say anything to one another. And it was cool. He didn't bug me. I just kept looking out at the ocean. At one point he says, "What do you think of all that water out there?"

And it was gray and overcast and everything looked slow and heavy and I said the first thing that came into my head, "It's not that pretty." And we both leaned back and I'll bet he wasn't drunk but I was drunker than shit and so I just closed my eyes and went to sleep. He woke me up when we got into San Diego by poking me. He smiled, "You better learn how to hold your liquor, kid." And then he walked off. He was a weird but nice old man.

I went and bought some gum before I called Jennifer to pick me up at the San Diego train station. When she picked me up she couldn't tell that I'd been drinking. That was cool.

But now I'll just have to wait around for her until she gets out of class. She said maybe we could go across the boarder into Tijuana. That will be so cool! Tuesday, October 4th

Help! Today was so screwed up! I must be the unluckiest person in the world. BEST DAYS OF MY LIFE -- BULLSHIT!

Okay, sorry, let me just calm down.

This morning Jennifer tells me that she's got all this school work to do and that I'd have to hang out in the library again for umpteen million hours but later in the day, she tells me, we can go to a movie or something. Yeah, like after I'm already dead from boredom. So I ask if there's anyway that I can go into Tijuana by myself. She took me there last time I was down here so I know what to expect. And she says, okay and walks me to this little train stop near her house and told me to be back at her place by four this afternoon. She even made me wear her watch so I wouldn't lose track of the time.

So this is all working out fine. I get off the train at the boarder and I walk through the great big turnstile things like at some huge petting zoo, you know, those things that let you go in but don't let you come back.

And I'm walking along and then I start to notice this smell. I'm thinking, I don't remember it all smelling like this. And I don't really know what the smell was. It's kind of like corn mixed with pee and dirt. You have to climb these big concrete steps that go to this high roadway that takes you to all the shops and stuff. And as I'm climbing these concrete steps, it doesn't smell like corn and pee and dirt -- it just smells like pee and shit because people must pee and shit anywhere they want to. It's so disgusting.

But when I get on top of the roadway, there's this breeze and you can't smell the pee and shit so strongly. It's weird standing on that walkway, because you're so high. You can see a long long way. You can see these really tall sky scrapers in San Diego. And you can see really nice neighborhoods with trees and new cars shining and twinkling in the sun. And then if you turn your head just a little bit, you can see where the Mexicans live in these shacks going up these hills. And they really are shacks. They are like the forts I used to build with Brett Smeets when we were kids. Just taking wood from anywhere you can find it and nailing it onto another piece of wood and leaning up against another piece of wood. And that's just like what the Mexican's shacks look like, except sometimes they actually have metal from the hood of cars and stuff on their shacks.

Oh my gosh, no wonder there's all this pee and shit everywhere, those little places probably don't have toilets and stuff. Ooh, how fucked. Ooh, and no showers or bathtubs! That really sucks. But they must have some kind of bathroom somewhere. I don't know.

They sell stuff everywhere in Tijuana. On the roadway there was mostly cool dark paintings of tough looking Mexican guys with sombreros and cigarettes dangling out of their mouths. They also have cool piggy banks in the shape of skulls and old cars and stuff.

But I knew what stuff I wanted to see. Weapons. For some reason they don't sell the weapons on the high roadway. They sell them in all these little shops in these big crowded areas. Sort of like an open market, but covered and divided into all these little shops. I made it over there (and this was before any trouble started) and stuff is hanging from everywhere. Blankets and ponchos. Skateboards, radios. Little gay marionettes. And people are everywhere. You can hear all these different languages. Not just Spanish but German and Japanese and of course English. It's so crowded with people buying stuff and haggling over the prices.

That's what I like the most. Haggling over the price. I heard this one blond woman with a German accent haggling. She points to this chess set, they have tons of chess sets on sale down there for some reason, anyway, she points to this chess set and says, "How much?"

So the guy behind the counter, says "Twenty-five dollars."

And she says, "No, I'll give you six."

And the guy says, "You must think I'm stupid. No way. Maybe you can have it for Twenty two."

So then she says, "Well, seven is as high as I go."

So he says, "I maybe can sell it for twenty."

And this goes on until he's down to seventeen and she's up to ten but then she just puts the brakes on. She just stops at ten.

"Seventeen is way too high. Ten."

And he says, "It was twenty five. I'm going to let you have it for seventeen."

"No," she gets this real serious tone in her voice. "Ten."

And then he gets this real serious tone in his voice, "You're trying to steal from me. I have to support my family."

"Ten dollars and that's it."

So I'm starting to feel uncomfortable and I'm just looking at all the junky little toys, cup and ball and stuff carved from wood but I'm standing kinda close so I can hear all of this. I mean, it's getting intense and he says, "I can go no lower than fifteen or you are taking food out of the mouths of my children."

So right then I figure the lady is going to pay up the fifteen and get the chess set but you know what she does? She pulls out a ten dollar bill and holds it out in front of her and says, with her German accent, "Take it or leave it."

So he's staring at her like she is the biggest scum of the earth and I'm feeling even more uncomfortable. It was like she had this attitude that she was in total control and that this guy was a piece of shit. It was really gross. Holding that ten bucks out in front of her, it was as if she was saying to this guy, kiss my ass, I'm better than you. And I can just tell this Mexican guy behind the counter would just like to stab her. She's just standing there so brazenly.

So there they are, staring into one another's faces, it feels like she hates him and he hates her and I'm feeling like I don't know what's going to happen when all of a sudden the guy just rips the money out of her hand. She picks up the chess set and walks off into the rest of the crowded market.

Damn, that was weird. I couldn't tell if I had just seen a good lesson in haggling or a good lesson in ripping off some poor guy who has to feed his children. It was fucked. That guy might be one of those people who live in those shacks on the hill. He said he couldn't go lower than fifteen but then he took ten. Maybe he bought the thing for less than ten. Shit, I don't know.

Anyway, I haven't even gotten to the fucked up thing that happened (do I cuss too much in here? Shit, I hope I don't cuss this much in real life) anyway, I walked to another shop and began comparing prices on switchblades and nun chucks. I don't really need nun chucks because I have my own pair. Yuri Katlarevsky made them for me last year. Mine are better than the ones you can buy in Mexico because Yuri, my smart Russian friend, made them with swivels so that they move freely and don't get twisted up. Anyway, there I am, comparing prices on switchblades and nun chucks. But I soon learn that it doesn't matter in Tijuana what somebody says the price is. They will be willing to sell it for less. As a matter of fact if you just nod and start walking out, the price will suddenly become less, as if by magic. But I just saw this haggling thing and it got so ugly that I wasn't really in the mood for haggling. I just wanted to buy a couple cheap switchblades. So I go into this one store and instead of asking how much he wants to sell the switchblades for, I point to a switchblade that I know he'll say costs fifteen (because I've checked several other stores) and I say, "I'll give you seven for it."

So then he says, "Fifteen."

But then I point to another one and say, "Two for ten."

And I don't exactly know why that worked so fast, but he took the deal pretty quick and I was off with the two switchblades.

Jennifer told me not to eat or drink anything in Mexico. She said not to even drink a Coke because they might pour it over ice that has some nasty germ in it. So I said to her, "Sure, like I'm so stupid that I couldn't ask for it in a can!" And she said, "Okay, ask me for a can?" So I said, "May I have a can of Coke." And she said, "Uh uh." And I said, "What?" And she said, "No, you'll have to ask for it in Spanish." Then she also told me the word for "can" but I can't remember it. And after that, she told me about this friend of hers who ate this little salad in Tijuana and a month later all this blood starts pouring out of his asshole. Jennifer is like the only person in the world who can say asshole to me and I won't crack up. Anyway, that guy went to the hospital and they found out that a parasite had eaten through his rectal lining. Jennifer also uses words like parasite and rectal lining with me so it's totally cool that she also might say asshole.

So, the thing is, I started getting hungry and I was so scared of having a parasite eat through my rectal lining that I wanted to get the hell out of Mexico. So I start following all the signs that say U.S. Boarder Crossing This Way. Lucky those sign's are in English (I never study for my Spanish class). So anyway, I got to this big walkway that leads to the Boarder Crossing and I remembered it's illegal to carry switchblades across the boarder.

So, there I am, walking along, my two brand new switchblades itching holes in my pockets. One is the kind that the blade swings out and the other is the kind that the blade pops out straight. All I really want to do is take them out and play with them but then I realize all of a sudden that I have to hide them. I've passed through the boarder crossing before and had them ask me to empty out my pockets and I've seen people be asked to show what's in shopping bags and stuff. But I've never seen people be asked to take off their shoes. So this is how I got my GREAT idea to put the switchblades in my sneakers.

About two hundred feet from the Border Crossing Building, I stepped out of the flow of all the American tourists walking back into the U.S. and sat down on the sidewalk. I learned later that this was a big mistake. You see, I couldn't have cared less about all the other tourists. I didn't care what they were doing or why they were so fat and unhappy. I paid them no attention and I was assuming they were paying me no attention. I was wrong.

Just as I was putting the swinging style switchblade into my left shoe, this old drill sergeant type American tourist comes up to me and says, "Young man, I saw what you just did and I want you to know that I'm going to let the authorities at the border know about it." So this fucker reminds me totally of my asshole old man, except that my old man would have called me a "dirty little rotten son of a bitch."

I get so mad I say, "Hey, fuck you!"

And his wife, his little old lady wife, just gasps. Like she never heard that in the movies or read it in a book. Get serious.

But right then Mr. Drill Sergeant man grabs me by the arm and starts trying to drag me toward the Border Crossing. Well you never know when the karate class that your mom bought for you in the fourth grade to keep you out of the house is going to come in handy. But I must say right then, in that very moment, I knew it was time to stomp down on the arch of that old Drill Sergeant's foot with all my might. And that's what I do.

He screams and I start running like hell. I look back and he's hopping around on one foot just like in a goddamn cartoon. It was so funny.

Well, it wasn't really funny. I mean, I hope I didn't break his foot or anything but he had no right to touch me.

So I just jam across the street. All the cars are crawling along really slowly because each one gets stopped at the boarder. Then I just duck back into another crowded outdoor market and I knew there was no way in hell (or Mexico) that anybody was going to find me.

I just blended in but I got really paranoid. It was only noon. And I was getting hungry. That's why I was heading back to San Diego in the first place. But now I knew there was no way out except that one way.

So instead of wandering around paranoid and hungry I figured I'd go to a restaurant, have some lunch, just sit for a while and then I'd be able to cross the boarder with ease.

There are tons of restaurants in Tijuana. I only had about ten bucks left over from the twenty that my dad gave me when he dropped me off at the train station. I figured I'd just get some beans and rice and chips, and that would be pretty cheap. I saw this restaurant with a name that I could actually read: El Sol. Luckily, even without ever studying, I know what El Sol means.

I walk in and it's not that bad. They have these big padded booths along the walls and tables in the middle of the floor. But it's all pretty simple. Bright inside and I can see outside and look at all the cars billowing smoke on the crowded boulevard De La Revolucion -- shit I even know what De La Revolucion means.

So I'm sitting there figuring out if I can say, "Quiero un plato de arroz y frijoles" without feeling like a total moron, when the waiter walks over, hands me a menu and says, "Do you know already what you would like, Señor? Or do you need a few more moments to read the menu?"

Perfect. Now that language is no problem is ask, "How much would a plate of beans and rice and some chips and salsa be."

"Oh," he smiles really nicely. "Two dollars and fifty cents."

And I say, "Perfect. That's what I'll have please. No lettuce."

"Okay, Señor, you didn't ask for lettuce. I won't give you no lettuce, okay?" He seems really friendly and nice. "How about something to drink."

Now, I know I'm taking a big enough risk with just the beans and rice so I say, "No thanks."

"Not even a Cerveza, Señor." He smiles.

So I ask, "How much would it all be with a Cerveza, too."

"Cerveza is one dollar. So it will be three dollars and fifty cents."

"Okay," I'm feeling pretty good. "I'll have one, please."

"What kind?" he asks.

"What kind do you have?" I say.

So he rattles off a bunch of Spanish words really fast and I couldn't make them out until just one phrase sounded familiar.

"Did you say Noche Buena?" I ask him.

"Yes, would you like one?"

Noche Buena means Good Night, so I figure that means it gets you very drunk so I say, "Yes, I'll try a Noche Buena."

Then he surprises me and says, "You are eighteen, Señor?"

And I say, "Si, Señor."

He smiles and walks off toward the kitchen. In just a moment he brings back the beer, chips and two types of salsa. He carefully sets everything onto the table and then points to the two types of salsa, one light red and one dark red. They are in little stone bowls with three little stone legs under the bowls. They look really ancient, like that is the way the ancient Mexicans used to eat salsa. I feel special.

He points to the really light red one and he says, "This one is mild." And then he points to the dark red one, its so dark its almost brown. He says, "This one is very spicy. Be careful with it." Then, like I don't understand, he points to the "mild" one and says, "Americano," and then he points to the spicy one and says "Mexicano. Okay?"

I say, "Okay." I just want him to go away so that I can have a sip of the very first beer I was ever served in a restaurant. I know this is a momentous occasion that I should not forget. I wish for a moment that Chad were with me. Then I look deeply into the chilled bottle. Wipe a little of the condensation off of the red label and read, "Noche Buena." And I think, well, Good Night and I lift it to my lips.

It is the best beer I have ever tasted. My dad has been giving me big slugs of Mickey's Bigmouth beer since I was twelve. All sorts of beers, actually. And this beer is the best I have ever tasted.

But I'm acting casually. I figure I'll have some chips and dip. I go with the mild salsa first. It's very very mild. It's, like, not even salsa, it's so mild, just like tomatoes and onions with some weird tasting green stuff that's kinda like parsley but not parsley.

So, I figure that since I like this Mexican beer better than any American beer, I'll probably like that "Mexicano" salsa better than any "Americano" salsa. So I take a chip and get a big mound of the thick brown salsa and put it in my mouth and chew it up and

HOLY SHIT I THOUGHT I WAS GOING TO DIE.

Ahhhhhhhhhhgggggg. It hurt so bad that just remembering how bad it hurt hurts bad.

So I lift the beer to my mouth and take a big slug of beer and that just makes it worse.

Tears are coming out of my eyes. I'm sticking these thick cloth napkins into my mouth. The waiter saw what was happening and brought me a big glass of ice water.

I drank it all down without giving it a second thought. That's how hot it was.

He brought my food and said, "Maybe you mix a little of the hot salsa into the mild salsa, this time."

And now I'm thinking he's just being a smart ass and suddenly I hate everything about Mexico.

Except the food. Which was good. And I did mix the two types of salsa and that was good. Then I paid the bill and left.

Oh yeah, Noche Buena doesn't get you really drunk but it sure tastes good once your mouth recovers from the "Mexicano."

I wandered around until three o' clock with one switchblade in my left sneaker and one switchblade in my right sneaker. They actually stopped hurting my feet after a while. I figured that if the guy did tell the boarder guards about what happened, well, they would have quit looking for me by now.

But, just to be on the safe side, I bought four of these big happy dumb looking yellow and orange wire and paper flowers. They look so stupid. They only cost a quarter a piece. But I figured that if I'm walking along carrying those really happy dumb looking flowers, anybody who has heard the story about the monster kid who stomped the Drill Sergeant's foot is not going to think that he's me.

As I'm walking along in the flow of tourists returning to the U.S, I start talking to this family about how much fun they had in Tijuana. The family is a mom and a dad and five year old boy and a seven or eight year old girl. And they really had a great time. They're all telling me how they all had they're pictures taken with a donkey and how they took a tour in a bus and all kinds of stuff. But while I'm smiling at all the stuff they're telling me, I'm really thinking that the border guards are going to be looking for a kid by himself. Not a happy smiling big brother in a family of five. Oh, life is sometimes so sweet.

So we all get up to the counter inside the boarder crossing building. It's kind of like a big supermarket in there with no groceries, just check-out counters without cash registers. The Border Guard asks two questions: "Citizenship?" To which everyone says, "U.S." and then he asks, "Anything to declare?" to which everyone answers, "No."

Then he waves us through as one big happy family and I must confess that I felt pretty good for just a moment. I almost felt bad that I had broken the law by smuggling the two knives across the boarder. And this family liked me so much they were going to drive me back to my sister's house so I wouldn't have to take the train. They were really nice and I was starting to feel bad about stepping on that old man's foot.

And then I saw him.

He was sitting on a chair right at the exit of the Border Crossing Building. Holy Shit was my ass busted!

Luckily the place was still pretty crowded. And luckily I was walking with a family. I specifically look down at the five year old and ask him what he liked the most about Tijuana and this is the kind of five year old who can't stop talking, so that was perfect. I just kept looking down at him as we walked right past the angry scowl of the Drill Sergeant and out into the bright San Diego sun!

I'm thinking, "Freedom!" I was so happy.

We were about two hundred feet away from the building when the mom of the nice family says to her husband, "Oh, look honey. There's some kind of commotion back at the building."

I turn and see the old man standing in between the sliding glass doors. He's yelling and pointing toward us, "Hey, that's him. That's him!"

And that's when I bolt. I just jam like hell. The bulky shapes of the knives are killing me in my shoes and I am running faster than human beings can. I turn a corner and see this huge hedge and I just dive behind it. Then I am dead silent.

About thirty seconds later I see three sets of Border Guard Boots standing not four feet in front of me. I hear:

"Fast little fucker."

"Yeah, we lost him."

And the third voice, "You know, I don't even care. That old man is the biggest pain the ass I have ever met."

I'm thinking DON'T LAUGH. DON'T LAUGH.

Then I hear, "He probably deserved to have his foot stepped on."

DON'T LAUGH. DON'T LAUGH.

Then I see this big fucking spider on my arm as I'm all crouched in the dirt and now I'm thinking DON'T MOVE. DON'T MOVE.

After about a million heart beats in my throat, they took off back toward the building.

I stayed silent, watching the spider crawl around on my arm for about ten minutes, just in case.

I made it back to the train just in time to feel like I had to crap really bad. I mean really really bad. Suddenly all I could think of is shitting.

This is so embarrassing. I get on the train and sit down and the pain of holding in all this shit is killing me and I think I'm gonna die and then I can feel this moisture in my pants.

And suddenly there is this smell. It is kind of like corn mixed with pee and shit. And I know, its coming out of me.

Luckily for me, Jennifer only lives about five train stops from the boarder. Unlucky for all the other passengers. I could not slow the seepage into my pants of my liquid poop.

I knew what it was. My stomach was cramping. My asshole was burning. It was that damn water! That damn Mexican water.

I spent the rest of the day lying on the floor of Jennifer's bathroom, writing in this fucking book, and every so often getting up to sit on the toilet. Sometimes I couldn't get off the toilet, so, much of this was written WHILE I was sitting on the toilet. Isn't that gross? I'm still wearing Jennifer's watch. It's eleven p.m. Every so often Jennifer knocks on the bathroom door and asks my how I am. I tell her that I am shitting myself to death and she laughs and says, "I told you not to drink the water." I guess it is kind of funny. Friday, October 7th

Rhonda is so cool! I think I am totally in love.

I made it back to school yesterday and I couldn't find Chad so I started wandering around by myself. The glue sniffers are never on campus before the first bell so I didn't have to worry about them.

So I was just aimlessly wandering when I saw Rhonda and her three babe-a-licious cohorts, Barbara Ryder, Diane Kopy and the fully scrumptious Carmen Bridges. Rhonda is by far the most foxy, however.

Rhonda calls me over, "Hey Steve, c'mere."

I walk over and say, "Hi," to everybody and I feel like the king of the world to be talking to such righteous foxes. They are all passing this can of RC Cola back and forth and then Rhonda hands it to me and says, "Hey, you want some R.C. Cola."

"No thanks," I say.

The other girls giggle (I love girls) and Rhonda says, "Go ahead, just try it."

So I lift it to my nose and I can smell the booze. I smile at them and take a nice sip and casually give it back to Rhonda and say, "Nice RC Cola."

And Rhonda says, "R Seagrams Cola."

She is so cool. So cool. So cool. I love her, I love her, I love her.

Then the bell rang and my ears were warm as I walked into the Boys Locker Room and smiled at Saintpierre who stood at the door eyeing everyone. He says, "Where have you been for the last few days, Mr. James." All these guys are listening and I say, "I had diarrhea, Mr. Saintpierre." Everybody cracks up. He doesn't say anything and I go to my locker and mutter, "I saved some for you, prick." And all these guys are cracking up.

Saintpierre didn't hear. Saturday, October 8th 1:00 AM

Guess what just happened? I was up late reading when I heard this tapping at my window. Tap Tap Tap. I go and look out the window and I get the hell scared out of me: It's Chad!

So I open up my window and Chad climbs into my room and he tells me all the crap that's happened to him. His parents transferred him to Holmes Junior High, just so he wouldn't hang out with me and Dean. (Yeah, like I could even give a damn about Dean.) And they forbid him to see me. Like getting arrested was all MY fault. Oh well, that's cool. By sneaking out in the middle of the night and coming to visit me, Chad proved that parents are soooo stupid. I don't know why something so obvious needs to be proved but there it is.

Chad also told me that his parents are getting a divorce, which he said is cool because they're both assholes and all they ever do is fight.

Parents are so fucked. I wish mine had never even met.

After a while, I said, "I have something totally awesome for you."

Then I held out both switchblades and he thought they were so cool. So we played with them for a while and then I said, "Pick one." He picked the swinging blade style. I'm glad because I like the stiletto style better.

So then Chad had to take off and go back home in case his parent's checked on him. But we made a plan to meet at the corner of Plummer and Sepulveda tomorrow. Cool.

I suppose the only thing cool about being fourteen is that you really never know what the hell is gonna happen.

Like, maybe Rhonda will knock at my window next. That would be the best! Sunday, October 9th

This morning I poked around a little in the cushions of the sofa and found a FULL, never been opened pint of Vodka. I put it in my book bag along with four sandwiches, two egg salad and two peanut butter and jelly, my nun chucks and my switchblade.

I said good bye to my mom and she said, "What are you going to do?"

"I don't know, just ride around, I guess."

And she says, "You better not be going to visit that rotten Chad Harris."

I really think my mom is psychic sometimes.

"No, I won't."

"Okay, just stay out of trouble."

"I'll try."

Chad was already waiting for me at the corner of Plummer and Sepulveda. I told him about the booze. We couldn't think of a place to drink it for a while. Chad suggested that we go under the tree with the sofa. I told him I didn't want to risk running into the glue sniffers. And then I had to tell him all about how they're after us. He laughed and said he was glad he got transferred. Then, all of a sudden, at the very same moment, we both yell, "The Cave!"

So we pick up a big plastic bottle of Sprite and we're riding out to Chatsworth and the sky is clear and blue and you can see the mountains on all the sides of the Valley for once.

We lock up our bikes and start climbing the mountains. And this time, since I've already done it before, its totally easy and we're just havin' fun when all of a sudden Chad jumps onto this ledge and yells, "Steeeve."

We're at least fifty feet high and even though it's fun, I really am hanging on for dear life. I get all pissed and say, "What! I'm climbing here."

"I think I fucked up, dude." Chad sounds really scared and really sad.

I look up and I can see him standing on the ledge and looking down in front of him.

I start climbing toward the ledge and he whispers, "Don't come over here."

So I climb up and around the ledge and I look down. Chad is standing about four and half feet away from a big old coiled rattler. They have all these signs out here that say, Beware of Rattlesnakes and Mountain Lions but I never took them seriously for a second. And now Chad was totally standing in front of one.

"Dude," I whisper. "There's this big tree growing out of the mountain right next to you. You gotta jump to it."

"That's fuckin' ten feet out there. Why don't you get a stick and push it."

He's not looking at me so he can't tell that I am literally clinging to the sheer cliff face with all my might. "It's not even ten feet. It's about five. If I were you I'd get the fuck..."

And right then the Rattler starts screaming toward his feet. Chad just steps back. The drop is fifty feet. Chad pushes off and dives BACKWARDS into the tree and just clutches at its central branches. It was the coolest thing I have ever seen.

Except for what happened to the snake. The snake really thought he was gonna get out mouthful of ankle and he struck, but when he got there, there was no ankle to hit and he flew over the edge of the ledge. And he splayed out and coiled and recoiled in the air, he must have been six feet long. Then he was upside down and falling and falling and then SMACK. Right onto a rock, fifty feet below. He landed on his back. He just lay there, unmoving.

"Did you see that? Chad, did you fucking see that? That was the coolest thing I have ever seen. I just saw a six foot long rattle snake fall off of a mountain."

"Steve," he yells, "You're gonna see my ass fall off of a mountain if you don't get over her and help me."

I look over and I can see that the tree Chad is holding onto for dear life is pulling out at its roots.

I scramble over to the ledge and then scramble over to above where Chad is. The mountains around Chatsworth are made out of sandstone, which is really crumbly and I'm trying to move fast and these big flakes of rock and chunks of dirt are flying out from under my feet and are dropping right onto Chad's head and going into his eyes and shit and he's yelling, "You're blinding me, bitch."

But I get a good strong hold on the mountain and I drop my leg to him and I say, "Grab my leg."

"I really can't see it. I've got all this shit in my eyes."

So I stretch my leg down and tap him on the top of the head with my shoe and he grabs it and in about two seconds he has used my leg to pull himself back onto the cliff face.

Then we were standing back on the ledge, just panting.

"Steve, maybe my mom is right. You're no good." He smiles.

"That's right. I put that Goddamn snake there." I laugh.

"Did you see how big it was?" he says.

"It was huge man. I thought you were dead."

"When? When you were blinding me by kicking all that sand and shit in my eyes?"

"Dude," I say. "I didn't have to climb over there and save your ass."

"Save MY ass! I saved YOUR ass! If I hadn't found that snake first you would have gotten up here and gotten your ass bit."

We finally agreed that we both saved each other's ass and then I said, "But dude, I get the rattle."

"Fuck you, I was the one who killed it," he says.

And so both of us are racing down the fifty foot cliff face but about ten feet from the bottom, Chad just turns around and jumps. He just flew. It was very cool. Chad is either cooler than me or just plain stupid. I can't tell.

When I got all the way down, Chad had already whipped out is brand new trusty Mexican switchblade and was cutting off the snake's rattle. That was cool.

Then he points the head at me and says, "You want the head?"

So I say, "No. The head still has poison and crap."

"You are such a wimp." He starts cutting off the head. "If you don't want the head," he says, "I'll take it. It'll look so cool in the cave, when all the skin and flesh decay off of it."

By the time we got to the cave I was so hungry I opened up my book bag backpack and started tearing into one of the egg salad sandwiches. I hand the other to Chad and he's so hungry he hardly got it out the little plastic bag before it was completely gone.

The cave is so cool. And no one ever goes there. The box was in the exact same place, over the buried guns. I was hoping that Chad wouldn't mention pulling out the guns and checking them out and shit. That would be really stupid. I mean, I guess I do some stupid shit but everybody has to have their limits I guess.

Suddenly Chad starts going through my backpack. He pulls out the Sprite and the Vodka and says, "No cups. We forgot to get cups."

So we just start taking big hits off of the ugly vodka and chasing it down with slugs from the sweet Sprite. And Chad puts on this Russian accent and says, "Now, Comrade, we are drinking like our Russian countrymen."

Then we started looking at all the old porno magazines in the box. A lot of really old Hustlers and Playboys and magazines called Beaver Hunt or just plain Pussy. They were so great. Naked Ladies. And tons of them. Sometimes they were eating out each other's boxes with their mouths. Sometimes they're all spread out with guys putting their dicks up the ladies butts and stuff.

Okay, now this part might be weird but, shit. Chad sits on the cave floor and leans up against the box facing one wall and I lean up against the box facing the other wall. We can't see one another but we know what we were doing. We're looking at all the pictures of titties and pussies and wishing that we could be with those ladies and we're touching our dicks. Masturbating. But I'm like thinking there's nothing gay about it because we can't see one another, even though we know what the other one is doing.

Then Chad says, "What are you doing?"

And I'm like, "Duuhhh. What are you doing?"

"I'm jacking off but it doesn't sound like you're jacking off."

And I say, "What does jacking off sound like?"

Oh man, this is so weird but Chad kinda scoots around next to me with his dick out and in his hand and he shows me what jacking off is. His hand is all around his dick and he's rubbing it up and down and up and down and it does make a sound.

"Don't you do it like this?" he asks.

"No." And my dick is in my hand and I show him how I just sort of rub it and push it around and it feels good.

So he says, "How do you come?"

Oh, this is so lame, because I didn't know anything about this, I say, "Huh?"

And he starts laughing and he says, "You don't know how to jack off or anything?" And he keeps laughing and he says, "You've never made your self come?"

So I say, "No, I guess not. So what."

So he says, "Man, you just gotta try this." And he starts rubbing his dick like that. Up and down. Up and down.

So I say, "Shit, okay, I get it. Now get away from me. Go back over there."

"Oh yeah, sorry." And he goes back over to the other side of the box. "Just try it like that. You'll see. And when it starts to feel really weird, just keep doing it."

So I start doing it like that. Up and down. And I'm looking at the pictures. Flipping the pages. And I can hear Chad over there, whipping his pud and flipping the pages. But soon I stop looking at the pictures and just concentrate on the rubbing my dick. It starts feeling warm all over. Tingly. Tingly all over in my knees and spine and it feels so great in my dick.

Chad says, "Can you feel it?"

And I say, "Oh yeah, this is great."

And we both look at each other over our shoulders and we both kind of scoot around so that we can look in each others laps. And I know what he's feeling and he knows what I'm feeling. And we're just rubbing and rubbing and then I can feel what it's all about is just about to happen and I say, "Oh man, I think I'm gonna come."

And he says, "Me too."

And we're rubbing ourselves even faster and then we both just point our dicks out in front of ourselves and it just shoots out.

Both of us at the same time. These two parallel arcs of white shooting out in front of us and our eyes are wide open and I feel tingly all over my body.

I put my dick back in my pants. It feels so sensitive it almost hurts. Chad puts his ugly little thing away.

"That was wild," I say. "How did you learn how to do that?"

"My dad used to make me do that to him when I was a kid."

"Holy shit! Are you fucking with me."

"No," he says. "You think there's something wrong with it?"

Chad doesn't even think his Dad did something wrong and I say, "He doesn't still make you do it, does he?"

He laughs and he says, "No, he just made me do that to him a couple times when I was six or seven. He was probably drunk or high. You know my parents smoke a lot of pot?"

"Dude," I say. "You should steal some for us." Which would be totally cool.

"I can't ever find it. Plus I'd get even more busted."

Then we put the magazines away and climbed up on top of the cave rocks and sat in the sun and looked at the desert and it was a pretty fun day.

I was starving when I got home and my dad yelled at me for a half hour. He just screamed, "You dirty little rotten son of a bitch! You couldn't pour piss out of a boot with the instructions on the heel!" He screams it at the top of his lungs. He says that thing to me all the time. Same words. Same order. It took me a long time to really figure out what it meant. I mean I had to think about it. I pictured some fucking moron: me, finding a boot full of piss in the desert. If there are instructions on the heel you have to turn the boot over to read them and the piss would come out on it's own. But my dad says I'm so stupid that I couldn't even do that. Pour piss out of a boot with the instructions on the heel. I fucking hate him.

I hope I die and he finds this book. Hey, dad, if I die and you find this book: FUCK YOU!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Monday, October 10th

This morning was really cold and Rhonda was wearing her thick green down jacket but she was still cold. I was wearing my red down jacket and we were all standing there and she kept moving closer and closer to me. Even though all the other foxes were there, I think I am in love. She is so beautiful it hurts me to look at her. As a matter of fact I try not to look at her so much because I'm afraid that if I start looking at her I won't stop and then she'll think I'm weird.

At Nutrition Lori handed me a note and then walked off like she didn't want to talk to me. She is so weird. Here's what she wrote:

Dear Steve,

I'm sorry I broke up with you and got back together with Mario. He is such an ass. He doesn't treat me as nice as you did.

I'm going to call you tonight, okay?

Love,

Lori Okay, but do you want to know the weird thing? She did call tonight. I just got off the phone with her a while ago and she told me all about how she wanted to break up with Mario and how she wants to be my girlfriend again. So I ask, "Did you break up with Mario?"

"No," she says.

"But I thought he's treating you like an asshole."

"He is," she says.

"So why not break up with him?" I ask.

"I wanted to make sure that you would come back to me."

What kind of an idiot does she think I am? Totally lame.

So I say, "Well, I don't think so."

And guess what she does? Did you say, hang up? That's right. Bullshit. Tuesday, October 11th

This morning I'm walking through that field where the tree is. The one with the sofa under it. I usually pass by there on my way to school if I forget to go the alternate route. And so I'm passing by the tree and Eddie Thompson, one of Mario's glue sniffers, steps out and says, "Hey Steve."

And I'm thinking. Oh shit, I'm fucked.

Then four other glue sniffers, including Mario Olivetti step out of the tree and they all say, "Hey Steve."

I'm thinking about running right when Mario says, "Can you get us some more of those pills?"

So I act cool, "Maybe."

"Good. You know, at first we thought you guys were fucking with us because, because at first we got sick on them but now we snort 'em up and we just get high."

"Cool." I say. "Yeah, I'll talk to Chad about it."

Mario says, "Where is Chad, anyway."

And I say, "He got transferred."

And Mario says, "I heard you guys were ripping off cars and shit and that you got busted." And the glue sniffers are acting like that is the coolest thing in the world.

I nod and say, "Catch ya later."

And they're all like, "Yeah, later man."

They all think that I am the cool car stealing drug connection! That is so funny! I didn't even tell anyone about what happened. Stupid Dean probably talked about it. GEEK!

Those pills are probably rotting their hate filled little minds. I didn't give them to them anyway.

I would have been fucked if I they had wanted to kick my ass because I put my chucks in my locker a long time ago. I figure I'll just leave them there in case anything happens. Wednesday, October 12

I must tell Rhonda I love her.

This morning I'm standing next to Rhonda and Rhonda is standing next to me and we were having such a great time. I think I will write her a letter and tell her how I feel. Thursday, October 13

This morning I gave Rhonda a letter. I couldn't think of anything else for the whole day. I just wanted to hide. Friday, October 14

Rhonda didn't come to school today. Oh no, oh no. And I was hanging out with Diane Kopy and Carmen Bridges -- the total fox crew but I wasn't standing that close to them because I figure that Rhonda told them about the note. They said they didn't know why Rhonda didn't come to school. Saturday, October 15

This really weird thing happened today. Why does weird shit keep happening?

Lori called me this afternoon and said, "I met this weird guy. He's just like you. I bet you guys will like each other."

She didn't even mention that she hasn't spoken a word to me since the last time she called.

So I figured, well shit, Chad and I can't even call each other and I don't know how to get in touch with him to see if he wants to hang out today so what the heck?

I went over to Lori's and met this guy named Mike Ross. He was a pretty funny guy. We were both cracking each other up by making jokes. It was really funny. We started making a little fun of Lori and she kicked us out. That was really funny.

So he says he's got some pot that he stole from his parents at his house and asks if I'd like to go smoke it with him. Cool. And so we're walking over to his house, which was kinda far but that was cool.

He's a year older than me. He's in the tenth grade and goes to Monroe High. He was talking about all the girls he's had sex with. I haven't had sex yet, so it was cool to hear about having sex.

So we go into his bedroom and he pulls out this bag of pot and fills this pipe. It was incredible pot. I took just a couple hits and I was really high. He was really high, too. We were laughing at just nothing. Just laughing and laughing and he says, "Hey, you gotta see this."

And he pulls his habitrail from off the little table and puts it on the floor between us. And we're cracking up at these little gerbils he's got in there. And he says, "Watch this."

Then he turns one of the little habitrail rooms over so that the metal ventilation grid is on the bottom and there's a little gerbil right on the grid and his little pink gerbil toes are poking through the little holes in the ventilation grid.

So Mike flicks the lighter and then swipes it under the little gerbil's feet and the little guy jumps.

And I'm so stoned I actually think that's funny. And Mike was laughing really hard. I mean, now I don't think it's funny, I think it's sick. But what is worse is that Mike gives me the lighter and I swipe it under the little gebil. Except maybe he was too hot from the previous swipe or maybe I moved my hand to slowly but his poor little gerbil feet got melted right onto the metal grid. And Mike's just laughing and I'm trying not to laugh because the poor little gerbil is just shrieking little gerbil shrieks. And finally he pulls his melted foot free of the grid, except that most of his foot actually got stuck to the grid. And he goes to climb down the little habitrail tube but he doesn't have feet and he falls all the way down. Then he walks out into the saw dust on his little gerbil stumps. And then he just squeaks really loud, jumps up in the air, turns over, lands on his back and is dead. Just like that. Just like in a cartoon.

I killed the gerbil. I was so stoned that I killed a gerbil with fire. I feel awful about it but, I think because I was stoned, I feel more worse that I had killed one of Mike's pets than that I had killed a living thing, you know. I mean both Mike and I thought it was pretty awful but we couldn't stop laughing.

Then we walk into the bathroom together and drop it down the toilet and flush. It went round and round like a big piece of dookie before spinning all the way down out of sight. It was awful. Monday, October 17

Rhonda gave me a note today. She doesn't love me. She just wants to be friends. I'm pretty fucked up. I think I messed up. Maybe I shouldn't have given her a note. Maybe I shouldn't have done anything. She is so beautiful. She is the most beautiful girl in the world. Oh shit.

Now I definitely don't even have a chance for Diane Kopy or Carmen Bridges. What a thrash bummer. Tuesday, October 18

Now I don't have Chad to hang out with at school and I don't feel comfortable hanging out with Rhonda and them and my new friend Mike doesn't even go to my school. This is total bullshit.

I wish I could do my school work but I hate it. I hate school. I hate everything. I think I'll go steal some of my mom's Vodka! Later same day: bitch drank it all. I'll read a book. I'm reading Stephen King books. Sometimes it's really stupid but sometimes it scares the shit out of me. Better than homework or video games. Wednesday, October 19

Today I had the most fun in the entire world with three girls. Oh man it was fun. I haven't mentioned them in here before because I only sort of know them. They are really goody goodies, which means they don't drink or get high or anything. But what's cool is that even though I drink and smoke pot, people can't tell. I mean, I don't dress like the stoners, or especially the glue sniffers (MORONS). I just dress like I want to and people can't immediately tell what I'm into -- shit, I can't really tell what I'm into, except for Rhonda, and that dream is over.

Anyway, get this, these girls' names are Kathy, Kelly and Kristen. And they are all hyper foxes. Kelly and Kristen are twins (not identical and Kristen is maybe not so hyper foxy as Kelly). Kathy is their best friend. I guess all three of them are best friends because they've been hanging out together forever. First time I saw them was seventh grade. The talent show. Kathy plays the guitar, she's great now, but she was pretty good on it in the seventh grade, and all three of them stood up there and sang together.

But anyway, one of my classes this semester is drama. And everybody in drama gets a chance to try out for the talent show. So, I did this monologue by Edgar Allen Poe called the Tell Tale Heart and Miss Alder said I could be in the talent show. And Kathy, Kelly and Kristen are going to be singing for the talent show.

Well, today, instead of having class, everybody was allowed to go to Evans Hall (that's the big hall where the stage is) to practice for the talent show. But what was great was that all we did was fool around and hangout and I hung out with Kathy, Kelly and Kristen.

It was really great. I acted like a goody-goody. Mostly because they are such goody-goodies and because they are so good looking. We were just playing and rough housing and wrestling. Miss Alder didn't even care what we were doing. She was outside helping another group rehearse while she was having a cigarette. You gotta love our role models these days. No, I'm just kidding, I love Miss Alder. If it weren't for the few cool teachers like Miss Alder and Miss Lee, my history teacher, I would never even go to school.

Anyway, I made three new friends today, Kathy, Kelly and Kristen. They are going to sing an old WHO song called Squeeze Box for the talent show in December. They invited me to come over and hang out this weekend. Cool!!! Thursday, October 20th

Hey, that guy Mike Ross called today. He's not mad about the Gerbil. I feel kinda gross about it. Anyway, we were both getting bored talking on the phone so I told him to come on over.

So he gets here and we're just hanging around outside and he notices Laura Savage playing with her little sister Gemma down the street. But what's weird is he says, "Hey, who's the fox?" And I start laughing. Laura is TWELVE. I mean, I'm only fourteen, and he's sixteen, but I still think she's too young for both of us.

I've known Laura since I was ten and she was eight. We used to play hide and seek together. Roller skate around the block. All that sort of stuff. I remember when her little sister Gemma was scared because she was going into KINDERGARTEN. I was in the fourth grade at the time and I remember telling Gemma that there was nothing to be afraid of in going to Kindergarten and that she would have nothing but fun.

But, a couple years ago I stopped playing with Laura. I mean, we still say 'hi' to each other but I started going to another school and stuff. Laura goes to Sepulveda Jr. High now but she's a scrub, a seventh grader. A guy in the ninth grade can't even talk to a seventh grader. I mean, why would you want to?

But Mike is saying, "Hey, do you know her? Introduce me to her. I think she's hot."

"She's only twelve." I tell him.

And he says, "So, look at her."

And this is weird, for the first time ever I notice that she has BLOSSOMED. I never even noticed. WHAT A BODY! Large round breasts, hips, a wonderful ass. Her long brown hair is soft and wavy. Man, when I looked at her right then, I thought, WOW, she is totally hot.

So we walk on over and we're talking and joking and in almost no time at all Mike has kinda got his arm around her and she thinks that's great.

She is hot, but she's twelve. I don't know. After a while her mom called her in so we took off. Friday, October 21 Today at rehearsal for the talent show I did my monologue and I just kicked ass. It was great! Miss Alder really applauded and the other kids in Evans Hall, even though they've already heard it a million times, came up to me afterwards and told me that they got so into while I was doing it and that they we're really scared.

I felt so great. It felt wonderful and for like the first time in my life I felt like I could do something RIGHT.

I was so excited about it that when my dad got home I told him all about the talent show and asked him if he'd like to hear my monologue, and he grunted, "Yeah, all right."

And I did the monologue again -- and it was even better than before. It was perfect. I got so into the character-- who is this really twisted bastard?-- that I almost forgot who I was. It was great!

BUT DO YOU WANT TO HEAR WHAT MY FUCKING DAD SAYS TO ME?!!!! He says, "Acting's for stupid shits that can't get a job!"

He didn't even say, "Good job," or "I liked that."

He says, "If you want to be poor all your life you just make sure to keep on acting."

That's all he said. I hate him. I hate him. I know one of the Ten Commandments is "Honor Thy Mother And Father" -- well it should be "Honor thy mother if she's not a stinking drunk and honor thy father if he's not a total asshole." It's not fair that I even have to live with them. It's not fair. I really feel like crying now. But I won't. He's not going to make me. Later: I quit writing right then and snuck out to the kitchen and my mom's so stupid, I found this big plastic GALLON jug of Vodka and I poured it in a tall glass, halfway up. Then I put the bottle back really fast. I was filling up the glass with some water from the Sparklets and my mom walks into the kitchen and says, "What are you up to?" And I say, "Nothing, mom. Just getting some water." Now I'm sipping my Vodka and water as I write in my journal but now I'm gonna quit writing in my journal so I can just sip on my Vodka and water. Saturday, October 22 Last night at about ten as I was calmly sipping on my Vodka and water, I heard a little rapping, as if someone gently tapping, tapping at my chamber glass (I've read The Raven by Poe, too and I know it almost by heart -- I hate my dad, he'll never fucking hear me do it.) And yes, so cool, it was Chad (not a Raven or Lenore). He climbed through the window and I brought him a big glass of Vodka and so we were hanging out. He was telling me how much he hates school and I was telling him how much I hate school. Then he was telling me about this fox that he's met that he thinks he can score with and I was telling him about the THREE new foxes that I may score with and we're listening to the radio and having a pretty cool time when... there was another rapping, as if another someone gently tapping, tapping at my chamber glass. So I go to the window and it's Mike! Totally cool. My two buds, together. So I introduced them to one another, snuck back out to the kitchen, scored another drink and we hung out for a long time.

Mike tells us that he's been hanging out with Laura. He says that he will soon be "initiating her into the ways of the world." What a crazy guy. I don't know if I'll ever have sex and this guy can count on it.

Oh yeah, this was funny, at one point my mom knocked on the door and those two had to scramble under the bed. That was really funny.

We didn't get caught.

Before Mike left, he told us to meet him at the Flagpole at Monroe High next Friday night because there was going to be a huge Halloween party that he and a bunch of his friends are going to up in Saugus. Sounds super fun. Chad says he'll be able to go too.

Today, it's only 11:00 in the morning right now, I'm going over to Kristen and Kelly's house. Kathy will be there, too. I am so psyched. I better put on my goody-goody face. They would not like to know that just last night I was hanging out with two guys, getting drunk on Vodka and talking about getting laid all night. Nope, I don't think so.

I wonder if girls have any idea about how guys think about girls.

I know I have no idea what girls think about guys.

Except Lori, who is still with Mario, even though she says she wants to be my girlfriend. What crap. I'm glad she's not my girlfriend. Same Day, much later, 10:00 PM

It was great. That's all I can say. Those three girls are incredible. Kathy, Kelly and Kristen. Almost as soon as I got there they broke out their guitars and sang. It was wonderful. I didn't know this before, but Kelly plays guitar, too. They sang all sorts of songs. They sang songs from every decade since the fifties. And they are great. They sang songs by The Beatles and The Who. New songs, old songs. It was fantastic.

Their folks have all these old videos and so we watched ALIEN. That was cool. All four of us cuddled under a blanket on the floor and ate popcorn out of a huge bowl. At the scary parts they all hugged me really tightly. It was wonderful.

I met these three girls that just love to hug! I can't believe it. If I have ever been luckier I do not know when.

When I went to put on my coat, Kristen and Kathy were in the kitchen and Kelly was standing right next to me. She was looking just lusciously into my eyes. I think she wanted to kiss. I felt something in my stomach and knees. I got really scared. She was just staring into my eyes. I think she likes me. In THAT way.

She's hot, but I think I like Kathy a little more.

They are both beautiful. Kathy is taller, my height. And thin. She is a dancer and has a strong, svelte body. Kelly is shorter but well formed and just as beautiful. And her eyes are intense. She was peering through me.

I didn't kiss her. I mean, now all three of them really like me and hug me and stuff. Why fuck that up?

So we're all hugging together when I was leaving and then Kathy kissed me on the cheek. Then the Kelly kissed me on the cheek. Then Kristen kissed me on the cheek. And, not being one to miss an opportunity, I kissed each of them on the cheek and then road off into the night on my bike. It was great.

When I got home my mom was passed out and my dad yelled at me for a half an hour. Sunday, October 23

Today Chad and I rode out to The Cave. We didn't have any alcohol, which wasn't really a bummer. Climbing down those cliffs when you've been buzzing for a while isn't super easy.

I don't know why I liked going out there so much before but today it was all in the climb. Today I just loved climbing. Every time we've been faced with the end of a trail going right up a cliff, I have always looked for the easiest climbs. But today I didn't. Today I actually went out of my way to try some hard ones.

I found this tiny space where two tall cliffs meet close together. There were almost no foot holds or hand holds but I found that if I pushed equally against both walls I could climb straight up with almost no hand holds. It was totally thrilling.

Chad, on the other hand, hiked and climbed a bit more carefully. In the really flat deserty places, he picked up a stick and smacked under rocks and bushes in front of him and he kept saying, "There are mean damn snakes up here." That was kind of funny.

We always love getting to The Cave and finding that nobody has been there. It is way far back but you'd think other hikers would find it sooner or later. But, pretty cool, no one has.

We walk in The Cave and Chad starts digging for one of the porno magazines he hasn't read. There must be several hundred porno magazines and so he soon finds one and is really getting into it. He likes to hold out the center folds on top of him and pretend the girl's on top of him.

I find a magazine, an old Playboy, and I'm looking at it but all I can think of is Kathy, Kelly and Kristen. We had so much fun yesterday. For a couple seconds I was thinking, shit, maybe I'd like to be with them. Then I think maybe I'll ask Chad if he would like to hang out with them so I say, "Hey, maybe next weekend or something, instead of coming out here, we could both go and hang out with Kathy, Kelly and Kristen."

But he says, "Didn't you say that they don't like to drink or get high or anything?"

"Yeah, but they're totally fun. We could listen to them play songs or just listen to the stereo or watch a movie or something."

He turns toward me and looks really serious and says, "And not get stoned?"

"We're not getting stoned now."

"Yeah, but I'll be able to score some pot this week so next weekend we'll have some."

And as into seeing those girls as I am, I would really like to get high and I say, "No way! You think you can get some pot for next weekend?"

"Yeah!"

And I say, "Cool. We'll have some pot for that Halloween Party that Mike's taking us too!"

Chad says, "Totally bitchin'. I hope it's as good as Mike saying it's gonna be."

"It will be. Mike's cool. Don't you think?"

"Yeah, he's fully cool."

So then we're leaning up against the box again. Facing away from each other. We got our things in one hand and a magazine in the other hand and we're rubbing away like crazy (and not at the magazine, if you know what I mean). And I'm looking at these girls and thinking about Kathy, Kelly and Kristen. But then there was this red head and I started thinking about Rhonda. I don't even know what to say to Rhonda. I started getting so sad that my hard on started to fade, so I turned the page and I was really getting into it and I can tell Chad's really getting into it and then he says, "Wouldn't it be funny if someone walked into the cave right now and saw us doing this."

And I'm laughing, "Don't even say that."

"Yeah, some eighteen year old fox, like," and he scoots over and hearing him scoot over, I scoot over, and he points to this blond ultra fox, "like her."

And I point to the fox that I'm looking at and say, "No, wouldn't it be great if she walked in the cave."

And he says, "What if both of them just walked right in."

And we're both rubbing ourselves, faster and faster. And I look at his penis and it looks different than mine. Thicker, but short, sort of. Mine's, longer but I little thinner and lighter colored even though we're both white. I'm thinking this is weird and then I say, "Do you think this is weird or anything?"

"What?" he says. "That we're jacking off together?"

"Yeah, I guess."

"No, do you think it's weird."

And I say, "No, but I don't want to be... you know..."

And then we both look at each other and say, "A fag!"

Then we both just stop and put our penises away. I mean, they're really hard but this is serious.

"You don't think we're fags, do you?" Chad says.

And I say, "I don't think so. But wouldn't fags do that?"

"Yeah," he says "but they wouldn't get all turned on by these kind of magazines."

"Yeah, that's right." I say.

"And like, even though we're sitting together, what were you thinking about?"

And I sort of swallow hard because I had been thinking about how our dicks were different but before that I had been wondering if Kathy Narote looked like this naked and I said, "I was wondering if Kathy looked like this, naked."

"Yeah, see. I was thinking about this little fox in my English class with these big fucking titties. And I was thinking I would just love to kiss one and then kiss the other one and go back to kissing the other and they are so big and soft and round and the little nipples are hard and then I'd put my hand down her pants and feel her little pussy and I was thinking she'd have her hand on my dick..."

And then Chad and I are really getting into again. We just pull our dicks out and start really whacking away and we're both thinking about girls and Chad looks over at me and says, "You're not doing it right. You have to do it like this." And he grabs my penis and starts to do it to me. And it feels so much better while he's doing it to me. And his penis is just standing there and so I reach over and start rubbing his, just the way he's rubbing mine. And I say, "Like this?" And he says, "Yeah."

And we're both sitting there facing the door of the cave. And for a second I think, "Oh man, if anybody walks by they'll see two guys jacking each other off. Our dicks will be pointed right at their faces!"

But I don't stop and I can feel that tingly sensation again. And I don't want Chad to stop and I can feel his penis getting harder and harder. Tensing up. And I can feel mine tensing up. And my balls and legs and knees and spine is tingling and tingling and then: WHAMMO!

Both of us, same time, again. And I pull my hand away so his stuff won't get on me.

And we're both out of breath and like gasping. And I say, "Ooh, I hope you didn't get any on me."

And we're laughing and he says, "Now we're gay."

And I say, "No way!"

We went and ate our sandwiches on the roof of the cave in the sun. You can see all the desert plants, sage bushes and yucca trees and all kinds of stuff. And you can see the mountains. It's really beautiful. I was thinking about taking Kathy, Kelly and Kristen out there.

"Are you sure that wasn't gay?" I ask.

"Steve, chill. Gay is how you feel inside. If you think about guys and you get a hard on, you're gay. If you think about girls and you get a hard on, you're not."

"Cool."

"It's really that simple. I'm not gay. Even so, if you tell anybody about that I'll be forced to kill you forever."

And I say, "Like wise."

And Chad says, "Hey, lets dig up those guns and just see if they really work."

"No way, dude. Forget it. Don't forget what happened to David Elster."

And then we were a little depressed for a second. David Elster was such a bastard to us. He was the first kid who ever kicked me in the balls. He was two years older than us. He used to knock Chad over on the way home from elementary school, rip off his sneakers, tie them together and then throw them way up on the high tension wires. Chad would be too embarrassed to tell his dad what happened and so he'd get a beating. David Elster would try to steal my sneakers too but I would run like hell whenever I saw him. Except one time he caught me in the wash, it's like this strip of desert that runs through the Valley and floods when it rains, and I was catching horny toads in the sand. I had three. Horny toads are these fat little round lizardy things with sharp spikes in their heads. They can swim down in the sand like toads do in water. They're pretty cool. Some times you can sneak up on them and grab them before they get too far down in the sand. Anyway, I had three of them in the white plastic bucket when I look up and see David Elster, Derrick Taylor, and Brett Smeets.

David Elster says, "What are you doing, pussy boy?"

I don't say anything.

David Elster says, "Pussy boy, pussy boy, couldn't you find any friends to play with, pussy boy?"

I was about ten when this happened and they were all twelve and thirteen. Much bigger than me.

I was just quiet.

David Elster grabs one of the horny toads and says, "Hey, look at pussy boy's new friends." And Derrick and Brett are laughing and they think this is so funny.

"All right, pussy boy. We're just going to take your horny toads and we'll let you go with out beating you up, but first you have to say, 'I'm a pussy boy.'"

I didn't say anything. I just stood there looking at them. They were all around me and taller than me. Each one.

David Elster takes one of the horny toads out of the plastic bucket. Then he jams the biggest and sharpest of the horns on the head into the back of my hand. "Say it," he yells, "Say 'I'm a pussy boy.'"

It hurt so bad. I didn't say anything.

He jammed it in harder. The horn ripped through my skin and blood was dripping down from my hand into the sand. "Say it, pussy boy. Say it."

I was just looking into his face. My hand hurt really bad but I knew I wouldn't ever say it.

David was getting really pissed. He jammed it in harder but it already hurt so much that it couldn't hurt any worse. His arm was getting red from all the pressure he was pushing down with. His face was getting read. No body was smiling. The blood kept dripping and suddenly we all heard this really loud, SNAP.

We looked down. The horny toad was totally mangled. David broke its spine and its guts were pouring out of its mouth and its tiny little butt-hole.

There were horny toad guts all over his hand. He punched me really hard in the chest and I fell back into the sand and he says, "So maybe pussy boy isn't a pussy boy after all."

And they walked off.

I hated David Elster worse right then. Even worse than when he kicked me in the balls and all the millions of other mean little things he did. But when I heard about him getting shot, I still felt bad for him. Part of me thought, wow, maybe he shouldn't have killed that poor fucking horny toad on my hand, maybe he'd still be alive. Part of me thought, maybe he deserved it. But then when I really thought about it, I always felt bad about what happened to him.

And I guess that's the way Chad feels, because today, when Chad asked if I wanted to check out the guns to see if they worked, all I had to do is bring up David Elster and Chad didn't want to check out the guns either.

Even though my dad is mostly an asshole now, he did tell me from as early as I can remember, "If a friend of yours ever wants to show you his daddy's gun, you say, no, and just come straight home." I think that's pretty good advice. And there was one time when Curtis Goggins wanted to show me his father's gun in the fourth grade and I said no and went straight home. Poor David Elster. He was mean as shit and now he's dead. Monday, October 24

I hung out with Rhonda today!

I think I'm getting over that she just wants to be friends. I still think she's super beautiful and everything. Today she handed me some R Seagrams Cola and it was so cool just to be sipping the can after her. I love Seagrams.

But it was a little weird to be standing with her because people can kinda tell from looking at her that she gets high and I didn't want Kathy, Kelly and Kristen to see me.

I never even really used to notice those girls but I had such fun with them the other day. Tuesday, October 25

Oh no. Today at lunch while I was choking down some disgusting cafeteria burrito (and that's the best thing you can buy) I saw Lori hanging out with her friends Stacy Reese and Lisa Russo. Lisa, Stacy and I have gone to the same schools, and been in many of the same classes since the third grade. We were all really good friends in the fourth and fifth grade, but they went crazy in sixth and seventh and thought I wasn't cool enough to be their friend, so now in the ninth we don't even talk much (except that I did kiss Stacy a while back and that was cool). So anyway, I walk on up to Lori and I see she's got this gnarly black eye and I say, "What happened?"

And she's looking at her feet and says, "My little brother and I were horsing around and I fell and hit the coffee table."

So I say, "You should wear some sun glasses or something. That thing looks horrible."

And Lori just starts to cry and walks off with her face in her palms. It was so fucked. I didn't even know I was being mean. I mean, damn, I didn't mean to be mean.

And Lisa Russo slapped my face.

Startled me so bad I dropped my ugly burrito.

She's probably wanted to slap my face since this time in the fourth grade when she said, "Steve James, you think you're so cool, well, nobody likes you." And I said, "Well, you're fat." We made up after that but she probably still really enjoyed slapping my face.

So I just stood there and touched my hand to my face and luckily my hands were a little cool and it made the burn in my face feel better and Lisa Russo's not finished and she says, "That was just shitty, Steve. Lori knows how bad her eye looks."

"I didn't mean to be mean. Honest. Lori used to be my girlfriend. I really like her. I didn't mean to hurt her feelings."

"Yeah, so why don't you go over there and give her a hug and tell her you're sorry?"

"Okay, I will." But then I think this other thought and I say, "Hey, why did that thing about hitting the coffee table sound like bullshit?"

"Because it was, geek."

Lisa and I don't really like one another that much.

"Well, what happened?" I ask.

"Mario is what happened."

"Mario did that shit?"

"Yes, Mario did that shit."

"He punched her in the face?!"

"Yes."

"Why?"

"Because he wanted to. I don't know why but you better not tell Lori I told you. Why don't you ask her what really happened but you better go over there and apologize for telling her that she's ugly."

"I didn't tell her that she's ugly, I reserve all of my ugly comments for you."

I was already out of arms length when the swing came.

So I walk over and Stacy is comforting Lori and I say really quietly, "Lori, I'm really sorry I said that. I didn't mean to hurt your feelings. Honest."

"Really?"

"Yeah, guys are just dumb sometimes. I mean, I am, I guess. I'm really sorry. You know how beautiful I think you are. Can I give you a hug please."

And she stops crying and turns toward me and we hug. It was really nice to hug her again. She uses Agree hair conditioner and I haven't smelled it for so long and I just hugged her into me firmly. I miss hugging her a lot. We used to hug all the time. For a second I was kinda wishing that we hadn't broken up. But I only wished that for a second because then she whispers in my ear. "Do you think, maybe, there's a chance we could get back together?"

And I didn't want to say, no, so I said, "I really am sorry I said that thing about your eye. Did you really get it falling on a coffee table."

And she stops hugging me and she looks me in the face with her black eye, and it's actually more purple then black, and she says, "No. Mario hit me."

"Did you break up with him?"

"No."

"Lori, why do you keep saying that you want to get back with me, while you won't even break up with Mario even though he hits you?"

"No, he just hit me that one time. He won't do it again."

"Do you love him?"

"Yes."

"Listen, I'm sorry I said that thing about your eye, okay, but I think this is really weird. You should tell your dad that he hit you. Or you should tell Miss Lee. Miss Lee will help you."

"I don't need any help, you asshole. I don't need any help. And you better not tell Miss Lee about this. Don't tell anybody. I can get Mario and his friends to kick your ass any time I say."

So I just walked off. There are many things that I just don't understand and that's one. How weird. Lori used to be so cool. Now she says she loves this guy that gave her a purple eye. And I was standing there thinking about how nice it was to hug her and the next second she's telling me she can get my ass kicked any time she wants. Why is life so complicated? Life sucks.

The weird thing about that interaction is that Lunch is right before Fifth Period and Fifth Period is History and Lori and I are in there together and Miss Lee is the teacher. Miss Lee is about the coolest teacher in the world. She's really young. One time she said to me, "Well, I'm finally out of adolescence." And I said, "A long time ago." And she said, "Nope, I just turned twenty five and that is the scientific cut off point for adolescence." And then she smiled and said, "But sometimes I still get a pimple." And we laughed. She is really cool. Last year I thought I was in love with her and I was hanging around her all the time and she finally had to have a "talk" with me. It was a little embarrassing, but I survived. Now we're still really good friends.

Anyway, during class today, she asked everybody to read pages 98 to 103 in our lame-ass history book, Discovering America, but then, when everybody was quiet and reading, she pointed her finger at Lori and then summoned Lori up to her desk by bending the finger back toward herself a few times. Lori and Miss Lee stayed up there whispering for a long time and then Lori started to cry and they quickly walked outside and then everybody was talking and whispering. Except me. Wednesday, October 26

This is one for the books. A very funny (much sarcasm) thing just happened.

So I'm in my bedroom reading The Stand by Stephen King and all of a sudden I get that familiar feeling in my lower abdominal region that tells me it is time to go and release solid excrement.

Making sure to take my book with me, I go into the bathroom, pull my pants down and sit on the toilet as people will do when they get this familiar sensation.

So I am sitting there reading and dropping my solid excrement into the water below my butt when I suddenly notice a peculiar sizzling noise. Then I become aware of some kind of chlorine gas rising up in front of my face. Suddenly it's hard to breathe and my asshole is stinging.

In a panic I jump up and look in the toilet and can see the sizzling bleach that my mother must have poured into the toilet today but forgot to flush. My asshole is stinging. I frantically throw the book on the floor and rip all of my clothes off and jump in the shower and wash out my anus most thoroughly.

As I write this my anus is still stinging. I hope I survive. Thursday, October 27

My anus is okay.

Today was another prep day for the Talent Show and so Kathy, Kelly, Kristen and I hung out all through 4th period. It was so great. They helped me with my monologue and I was lucky enough to have them do their songs just for me. We were all back stage in Evans Hall. Everybody else was fooling around on the stage or in the audience area. It felt like we were completely alone and it was wonderful. At one point Kathy put down her guitar and the three of us just sat on these steps back there, in the dim light, with the thick folds of the stage curtains all around us and we all held each other. This was more than a hug. This was incredible holding. Their lips were near my lips in moments and I could smell their sweet breath but we did not kiss. We just closed our eyes and our bodies were warm together and our breathing was in sink and we held each other like that until the bell.

That was perhaps the most relaxing moment I have ever felt in that cesspool called Sepulveda Jr. High.

What if I am in love with all three? I have never hung out with them alone, I mean with just one of them at a time, except for those few seconds that Kelly looked through me. Maybe they can all be my girlfriend.

I hope I am not hiding anything from them. I mean, with other friends I talk about getting drunk and getting high but with them I just talk about old bands that we love. And we talk about how to make the world a better place sometimes. Shit that I never talk about with Mike or Chad.

Oooh! That reminds me, the bitchin' Halloween party is tomorrow. I'm going as a ZOMBIE! I've got this cool flaking off skin and all these ripped clothes and fake blood. I'm going to be so totally COOL. Friday, October 28

The weirdest thing happened. This morning I walk on over to Rhonda, and Carmen Bridges and Barbara Ryder (she wins the best boobs prize on campus, I am sure) and Diane Kopy and they are hanging out.

Rhonda says, "Steeeve," you know, sorta whiny, "Why don't you hang out with us so much any more?"

And then I thought for a second and I hadn't even noticed that I've kinda just been going to first period (SCIENCE -- big fat Mrs. Doyle) and I haven't been hanging out with them and drinking and shit.

"Oh, I don't know." But I did know. It's that I don't want Kathy, Kelly and Kristen to walk on campus and see me with them and think that I'm flirting with other girls. I want them to think that I am theirs alone. That's the way they make me feel. I don't know how to explain it. I kinda like being a nerd with them. And then I say, "Hey, what are you drinking."

And Rhonda says, "We got something better this morning. Come on with us."

And then Rhonda PUT HER ARM AROUND ME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I couldn't believe it. It was wonderful. It was scary. I still love her; even though I love Kathy, Kelly and Kristen I definitely still love Rhonda! And even though she says she just wants to be friends. But I'm thinking, you know, be cool, let's just chill and be cool.

So I put my arm around her and we all walk off campus. And then we hit the field with the tree and I'm thinking -- oh man, I'm getting high with the super foxes. It doesn't get any better than this. But then I was thinking about how this is the sort of thing the glue sniffers are into and how gross it is. But then I was thinking about Rhonda and all of her red hair and it was right next to me and maybe we would take a couple hits of pot and start making out and that was the coolest thought and so I was really into it. I wished Chad was here. I wouldn't even mind if he was with Carmen Bridges or the round-chested Barbara Ryder as long as I was with the stunning Rhonda.

So we get to the tree and we all go in and it's like a big party in there with no music. There's two pipes and two joints being passed around. The couch has about six people on it and about six more people are sitting in a semi-circle in front of it.

And guess who all these people are! Right. Glue sniffer heaven.

Mario Olivetti, Eddie Thompson, Sean Meechem, and the rest of them. But guess who's sitting right next to Mario Olivetti, with a black eye. Lori. Weird.

And so we walk in and everybody is saying hi because the total fox crew has just arrived and I am like a saint among mortals because I have arrived with them, and we sit down and start taking long drags off of sizzling joints and it was so cool.

I started getting really high, really fast.

At this one point, Rhonda, who is sitting next to me, has this pipe in her hand, and I have this joint in my hand and we're just looking into each other's eyes, like we are both thinking the same thing. At the same moment we take these big drags off of our respective stonable devices. We hand them off to the people next to us, but we are holding in our breath and just staring each other in the face. It's like we're in a contest to see who can hold their breath the longest. But then I start letting the smoke out very slowly and gently into her face, and she starts letting the smoke out very slowly and gently into my face. And I'm so high I have no idea how long we've even been looking at one another. And the smoke is all over the place. Everybody is talking to one another but Rhonda and I are just staring into each others eyes, and our faces slowly come together. Our lips touch and we are kissing.

I can feel her lips so clearly. They are soft and smooth and her tongue is slow and gentle and I picture it in my mind, and I am so stoned that it looks clear, transparent, like both our tongues are these transparent little universes with stars floating around in them. All I can think of is the way she feels. The way her arms are moving around me, so slowly, so gently.

We are kissing forever. The best kiss in the world. I am completely lost in this kiss. I hear the ten-minute warning bell that means you have ten minutes to get to class. And we kiss right through it. Then I hear the bell for first class and we are still kissing and then the tardy bell comes and some part of me knows that time is passing but we are outside of time. We are the kiss, now and forever. That is how it feels. It feels as if we have always been this kiss, as if everything in our lives has been leading us to this moment.

Slowly, we stop kissing. And when we stop kissing everyone is silent. No one says anything until Eddie Thompson just says, "Oh man, that was the longest kiss in history."

Even Carmen Bridges is smiling and says to Rhonda, "Gosh, Rhonda. What? Is he a good kisser or something?" And then everybody is laughing. They tell us that we kissed for at least a half an hour. And I believe them because when we stopped kissing I wanted another hit of pot and all the pot was gone.

That's cool though. I'd trade a ton of pot for just one kiss like that with Rhonda. Rhonda was even more beautiful after that kiss.

Weirder is that I hung out with all the glue sniffers (luckily they weren't huffing or anything) and it was kind of an okay time, I guess. Even Mario and I didn't start getting a bad attitude toward one another. Lori was kissing Mario and he was really getting into it but I know she was just trying to get me jealous. Not even possible.

We all sat there hanging out through first and second period and then at Nutrition we all got up and walked back to school. Everybody was talking about who had the worst case of The Munchies. It was really cool. Fifteen or sixteen kids all scaling the fence at the same time, like a wave. Rhonda was walking really close to me but I was feeling a little weird now. I told her that I had to go get something at my locker. I didn't want to be seen hanging around with a flock of stoners.

When I got to my locker I ripped into the PBn'J that I brought and ate all of it in about one bite, I was so munchied. I couldn't open my mouth. My mouth was totally dry.

I had to order a milk from one of those little plastic hair netted ladies in the cafeteria but I couldn't say it. It kept coming out, "Mrrr Prrr." And that sounded exactly like, "Milk Please," to me but it didn't sound like anything to her. Finally I ripped a pen out of my pants and wrote MILK PLEASE! on my palm.

She gave it to me and everything turned out to be okay.

Well, now I must go and ZOMBIE up my face. Luckily my mom's sober and awake. One good thing about her is that she always helps me with costumes and shit. It's weird, sometimes I just hate her because she's drunk all the time but when she's not drunk we never ever talk about it. It's fucking weird. Saturday, October 29

Last night was a total trip!

I get to the flagpole in front of James Monroe High at seven thirty pm. And nobody's there. So I lock up my bike and I'm just hanging. I look like the totally cool ZOMBIE. I have this bloody and ripped t-shirt, and my jeans are all ripped and bloody and I've got all this fake skin dangling off of my face. Totally cool.

And then Chad comes riding up and I see him and he sees me and we both just bust out laughing: he is the totally cool ZOMBIE too! But he has painted his eyes really black and he's wearing black and he looks really dirty like he just crawled up out of a grave.

He locks up his bike, comes up behind me and I hear the FLICK of his Mexico knife and I don't move and he holds the blade to my neck and he says, "Ready to party mother fucker!!"

And I slowly move his hand away from my neck and I say, "More ready than you've ever been."

And he says, "Did you bring your knife?"

And I pull it out of my pocket and flick the blade out and we're having a pretend knife fight but a car slows down as it's driving by so we put our knives away and chill.

I thought Mike had told us to be there at 7:30 pm.

Chad and I waited for a long time. We were about to bag the whole idea when, AT NINE O CLOCK, this pick-up truck with a camper shell on the back slows down at the curb. The door of the camper shell flips up and Mike sticks his head out and yells, "You guys coming or what?"

So we both just dive into the back of the pick up and our legs are still poking out the back and the truck just takes off and we're almost falling out the back. Suddenly arms are all over us, guy arms and girl arms and they are pulling us in and finally we just flop into the center of all these people. There were at least ten people in the back of the truck, all sitting cross legged in a big circle, and three in the cab.

Chad and I didn't know anyone except Mike. So we kind of started heading over to his part of the circle when this incredibly beautiful, straight brown haired girl makes a little space in the circle for me. So I scoot in there and it is snug. This blond girl on the other side of me makes space for Chad and so on one side I have the straight brown hair girl, who is dressed like a foxy Pocahontas, I guess, and Chad.

Mike says, "This is Steve and Chad. They go to Sepulveda but they're cool."

And that was all the introduction that was needed. He didn't go around the truck telling us everybody's name. I wouldn't have remembered anyway.

On the long drive out to Saugus I did learn one name, Christine. My sweet and foxy little Pocahontas. The drive was long and she was telling me about high school and stuff. She got tired during the drive and she put her head on my shoulder. It was heavenly.

Across the truck from me was this really tall guy dressed up as some kind of demon worshipper. He had on this really long brown robe with a hood and he had made his face perfectly white except for around his eyes, which he had painted coal black. It was a very eerie costume.

Christine explained to me that he had just eaten some psychedelic mushrooms before they came to pick up Chad and I. She told me that at some point he would start acting funny and that we'd all be cool and not make fun or anything if he started to say some crazy shit.

And he DID start to say some crazy shit. He started saying, "Look at the light posts. Look at the light posts. Look at all the rainbows." He must of jabbered on about light posts for half an hour. I was thinking, what a great drug, it emphasizes light posts. Duh.

So finally, after this huge long drive out into the country, we get to this place with all these cars just parked along the side of the road for miles. I mean it. Miles of cars. And thousands of young adults, all drunk and stoned out of their minds. Costumes and laughing and craziness. I couldn't wait to find a damn parking space and get out and get into that huge throng of people.

We finally found a parking space out in the toolies. And people were coming and going in all directions and we would ask them, "So what's the party like?" And they all reported the same stuff: 50 kegs. Two bands. Five dollars at the gate. And we would ask, "Where's the gate." But nobody could or would tell us. One person would say, just keep going that way. Another would say, go back that other way.

It was a mess. I had no idea where we were even. Just people and people and people. And it was way colder out here than it had been in the Valley. But luckily, the lovely Christine didn't have a jacket either and so we were walking very close, often with our arms around one another.

So we are all walking along and Mike comes up to us and holds out a handful of pills and says, "Check this shit out." And I look and the pills look like these little blue houses and I say, "What the hell are those?" And Mike says, "Downs, dude." And I say, "So?" And he says, "Do ya want some?" And I say, "Two words man: fifty kegs. I'm drinkin' all the beer in the world tonight." And he says, "So, have some downs, too." And I say, "I don't want to mix my central nervous system depressants." And Christine says, "Wow, big words." And I was thinking, well, that's what you get when you hang out with your sister who is in college and her college friends. Jennifer has some crazy friends and when I'm down there they talk to me just like they would talk to anyone, pretty cool. They even let me have beers with them.

Anyway, Mike says, "Hey, I've heard about that. Yeah, you're not supposed to mix drugs and booze."

And Christine says, "Yeah, that's how Janis Joplin died."

And I say, "Who is Janis Joplin?"

Christine almost jumps, "You don't know who Janis Joplin is?"

And I say, "No."

And we have all been walking in this crowd for a long time and right then the driver just says, "Let's bag this. Too many people. Lets go pick up some cases of beer and go over to Bill Smith's."

So guess what! We didn't even get inside the huge party. That was totally lame.

We all pile back into the car and luckily Christine and I are still sitting next to one another. The demon guy is still talking about the lights and we are driving out of the country. Then the demon guy really starts talking about lights and he's saying, "Oh man, oh man. I think I'm tripping out. I can see all this light around the car."

BUT HE WASN'T TRIPPING OUT! I could see it. Everyone could see it. The truck was being bathed in some very strong light beam coming down in a cone from up above. It was just like Close Encounters. And so we're all tripping out. And we start yelling to the driver, "PULL OVER. PULL OVER." But the driver is freaking out and it's like he doesn't know what to do.

Then we hear this harsh voice from this really loud speaker above, "Pull the vehicle over to the side of the road. Wait for the police cruiser. Pull the vehicle over to the side of the road. Wait for the police cruiser."

Suddenly everybody is digging into their pockets and pulling out all of their dope. Somebody whispers really loud, because of the noise from the helicopter right above the truck, "They're gonna search us, we gotta get rid of all our shit." And little baggies are coming out from everywhere. Somebody opens up one of the lift back doors and all of these little baggies just start flying out the window.

Mike has all his pills in his hands. Somebody's saying, "Toss 'em." Mike says, "No. Let's eat 'em." But nobody wants to. So he just swallows all of them.

Chad says, "Dude, we gotta chuck our knives before the pigs get here."

This was so awful. We flung 'em as far as we could. They flew fifty or sixty feet into some bushes. The beam of light momentarily left us as it tried to follow the knives. Asshole pigs up there probably couldn't even tell what they were.

After fifteen minutes the cruiser finally showed up. "Everyone," the cop shouts, "keep your hands where we can see them and get out of the car slow and easy."

They put us all up against the truck and frisked each one of us. They dug in our pockets and looked through the truck. They made us hand over our I.D.s. Another cop went around and picked up all the little baggies of dope.

He puts them in his hand and comes over to us and says, "Any body know to whom all this shit belongs?"

"No, officer." We are all super polite. So he empties all the dope out right in front of our eyes and it makes a decent sized little pile on the ground and he steps on it and rubs it all into the dirt. Just wipes and wipes with his foot until all of it is obliterated. "You should thank me for doing that." And we all nod.

"We're not going to arrest you. Now drive safely and go the hell straight home. You get stopped once more tonight you'll be going to jail."

So we all climb back in the truck, really slowly and drive off and then everybody talked about the whole thing for the whole drive home. The demon guy tripping on mushrooms was saying, "I couldn't say anything. I didn't say anything." And we were all really happy about that.

Everybody figured that we didn't get busted because no body was drunk and stinking of booze, especially the driver. In a funny way, it turned out lucky that we didn't get into the party.

So we went and picked up a few cases of beer at this store one of the dudes knows that never cards. Then we went over to this Bill-guy's place. Somewhere in Northridge. His parents were away for the weekend. We hung out. After a while Bill brings out this plate of Magic Mushrooms. The same stuff that the demon guy was tripping on.

He hands me a couple. I say, "Thanks." Chad says, "Thanks." Chad gobbles his right down. And then he looks at me and says, "You eat them, dude." And I really don't want to take them. But I also don't want to be thought of as a wussy. So I say, "You see that fox Suzy, over there?" And he says, "Yeah, she is so fuckin' hot." Suzy was dressed in this belly dancing outfit and every time she moved she ching-ed and chang-ed and it made you just want to climb on top of her and see how much noise you could make. "I'm going to give mine to her and she if she'll give a little bit of her to me." Chad thought that was cool, "Right on."

So I went over to her. We had been in the truck together so we knew each other and I looked in her eyes and smiled and slowly brought my mushrooms up to her lips. She saw them and was happy. She kissed my fingers and she took them into her mouth.

I went back over to where Chad was.

He asks, "Get any?"

I say, "No, but she kissed my hand."

And he starts laughing. And then I say, "Hey, where's Mike?"

And suddenly, we realize we haven't seen Mike for a long time. We start asking people, "Have you seen Mike?" And nobody remembers seeing him. Some people who had been with him all night didn't even know who he was.

So Chad and I start looking for him outside. There were a bunch of rowdy football player types out there and they kept asking us if we wanted to get our asses kicked. Morons. I said, "No," to one of the guys and he just punches me as hard as he can in the stomach. I double over and I can't believe it hurts this bad. I haven't been punched that hard in the stomach since that fight with Norman Hearns in the seventh grade.

This was one time when Chad didn't want to fight. We were badly outnumbered by a bunch of drunken tanks. Then, can you believe this, the guy says, "I'm sorry." And I say, "Sure." And he says, "No really. I was just fucking around. I didn't mean to hurt you like that." And so I believed him after a while and said, "Cool. Later."

After a couple minutes the pain went away and we were starting to think that Mike may have bailed on us. But the driver of the truck was still around and he hadn't seen Mike either. We just started wandering through the house checking the bedrooms. We found Mike crumpled in a corner of Bill's bedroom. It was like he had been talking and hanging out with people but had just fallen asleep right where he was.

He's alone and he looks really weird and Chad and I both say at the same time, "The Downs!"

And I start shaking Mike and I'm saying, "Mike, Mike!" But he's not waking up.

His breathing was really faint.

I start slapping him, you know, gently, on the face. "Wake up, Man! Wake the fuck up!"

Chad says, "What should we do?"

And I said, "Once, I heard this interview with Pete Townshend and he was talking about how he blamed himself for Keith Moon's death because he could have walked him around the room like he had done so many many times."

"Should we pick him up and walk him around?" And Chad is almost in a panic.

"Yeah." And so we're walking him around in circles but he won't wake up.

And Chad starts saying, "What if he dies? What if he dies? What if he dies?"

And I say, "He's not gonna die. Chill."

And Chad says, "I can't chill. I think it's the 'shrooms."

"Just try to chill."

"Should we make him puke?" Chad asks.

"Shit," I say. "Why not? If we can't wake him up we have to call 911 and then we all get busted."

So we walk him into the bathroom. It is a white bathroom. Bright white tile and chrome everywhere. It is so bright we almost have to squint.

I put his head over the toilet, it nearly falls all the way in and touches the water.

I open up his mouth and stick my finger down his throat. "What if he can't breath while we're doing this?" I say.

Chad says, "I don't fucking know."

So, I tickle his little throw-up thing and he starts to gag. Then I let him breathe. Then I gag him again. Chad fills up this cup with water and just splashes it in his face. And he freaks out.

Mike socked me in the mouth so hard I felt it in my feet! "What the hell are you fuckers doing to me?"

He cut my lip and blood is all over my chin. I'm looking in the mirror. Mike drops the lid on the toilet and flops down like a sleepy drunk. "What the hell were you doing?"

"How about saving your fucking life, asshole." I'm washing the blood off my chin.

Chad says, "Dude, you were a goner. We tried waking you up for ten minutes. We figured you overdosed and so we came in here to make you throw up and then I threw some water in your face and that did it."

"I was just sleeping, you assholes. That's all."

I walked out of there and went and put some ice on my lip.

Chad came out and said, "Hey, let's grab a couple beers each and walk over to Monroe and pick up our bikes and go home." And that seemed like the best thing to do. This whole party night turned out to be one hell a flop. One punch in the stomach. One in the face. I helped save Mike's life and he didn't even say sorry.

Mike was back in Bill's bedroom and lying down when we went to say goodbye.

"Hey, if I were you, I wouldn't go to sleep until those pills wear off." I say.

Chad says, "Unless you WANT to die."

He didn't say anything.

"Well, we're taking off. Thanks for taking us to the great party." I say.

"Later." He says.

So Chad and I walk to our bikes. He only tripped on the 'shrooms for a while. We said goodbye and went to our houses.

When I got home my parents were asleep. I told them I wouldn't be home till real late anyway.

Okay, so get this. All that happened last night. Today, I get a phone call from Mike and he was talking about how much fun we had at that party and everything and did I want to go to another "blaster party" tonight.

I said, "No."

What an asshole. It was stupid. I mean it was fun in one way, hanging out with Christine but then when we got back to the house it was crap. I got socked in the stomach.

And Mike never apologized for socking me in the mouth. He's cool and he makes me laugh and stuff but there is something a little weird about that guy. Sunday, October 30 This morning I jumped onto my bike as early as possible. I didn't even go out to the kitchen to see if my mom was passed out on the floor. I know she was drinking last night because I heard her screaming and breaking plates: "YOU FUCKED THE JAP!!" SMASH! Apparently if there is one thing you should never do, it's FUCK THE JAP! This whole Jap fucking thing happened before I was born. I can never really get a clear story on it because if I ask my mom about it while she is drunk she will beat me with anything she can find, a shoe, a frying pan, a vodka bottle and if I ask her about it while she is sober she just gets real dignified and says, "I don't know what you are talking about." But then I will walk away and she will sob. And I know it's my fault. And then she will start drinking sooner maybe than if I hadn't asked. Sometimes it seems like she will get drunk to punish me.

And if I ask my dad about it, he just screams, "It's none of your damn business you rotten son of a bitch." I hate him. He doesn't even have to have a reason to call me names. He just does. "You dirty little rotten son of a bitch, you couldn't pour piss out of a boot with the instructions on the heel." He comes from a little town called Stockton, Kansas. Boots must have been very important there because he talks of pouring piss out of them constantly. (Hey dad, if you find this: FUCK YOU!!!!!!!!!!!)

So this morning I didn't even check to see if my dad had come home last night. I just grabbed the whole twenty five bucks I've been saving forever and split.

Jammed on over to hang out with Kathy, Kelly and Kristen. They were waiting for me outside. Kelly and Kristen, normally don't wear matching clothes because I think they are really tired of the twin thing, but today they had on these matching denim jackets and jeans and they were totally cute. Kathy, who is taller and has the more womanly physique (she's fine!), was wearing this tight fitting black body suit thing with a black sweater.

I leapt off of my bike and they all just hugged me. I love hanging out with them.

We toss my bike in Kathy's backyard and head for the bus stop.

A while ago they were talking about how they hang out on Hollywood Boulevard sometimes and they asked me if I liked it over there and I told them that I hadn't ever been there.

"What? You've never seen the Walk of Fame?"

And I said, "Is that all those stars on the sidewalk?" And they just cracked up and told me that "we had to go there together." And so that's what we decided to do for today. Chad called me last night and I told him I couldn't hang out with him because I was getting with some chicks. And he said "The goody goodies?" And I said, "Yeah." And he said, "Later." I think he was pissed, but what the hell?

So this big black cloud shooting bus is like pulling up as we are a half block away and suddenly we are all running for it and Kathy can run super fast. She just kicks our asses.

We're all out of breath when we take over the whole last row of the bus.

"How did you learn to run so fast?" I ask Kathy.

"I'm gonna be a dancer. So I run."

"What do you mean, you're gonna be a dancer?"

"I mean that's what I want to do when I grow up. I want to dance. I take classes in North Hollywood."

I am so blown away. I've never thought about saying what I want to do when I grow up. I've never thought about growing up. Fuck. I can't plan from one morning to the night because things might be okay in the morning but in the night my mom could be screaming and pulling my dad's hair out.

All I can say is, "Wow."

Kelly says, "I'm gonna be a studio guitarist."

And now I'm thinking, oh shit, they've all thought about this.

"What's a studio guitarist?"

"Well, most guitarists can't make money playing guitar because they're all thinking, 'I'm gonna be a big rock star.' But my dad told me that there are tons of guitarists who make oodles of money playing for all these different musicians whenever they need an extra guitarist."

"That's a job?" I can't believe it.

"Yeah, a cool job. That's what I'm gonna do." Kelly says.

"What about you, do you know what you're gonna do, too?" I ask Kristen.

"Oh yeah, I've been there." Kristen says.

"Oh my god, this is all she ever talks about." says Kelly.

"Last summer my dad and my mom took us all for a week in Santa Barbara and on one day we visited the Oceanographic Institute at this University up there and we got to visit it and..."

Kathy and Kelly cut in and say the words with Kristen, "I got to touch a dolphin."

They are all laughing. "I touched the dolphin too and it's not the only thing I ever think about." says Kelly.

"So." And she turns back to me, "Anyway, I asked these people who study dolphins how they get to study dolphins and they asked me if I wanted to study dolphins and I said I love dolphins and so they told me that it was easy at U.C. Santa Barbara and all I had to do was study biology in college and even before I graduate, if I study really hard, I can work with dolphins probably before I'm twenty one."

"So what do you want to do when you grow up?" Kathy asks me.

Shit, I don't know, I want to say. Suddenly I just want to say: I'm lying. I'm not good. I don't know any of this shit. I can't pour piss out of a boot with the instructions on the heel. What the shit do I know about what I'm gonna do? My dad's always screaming at me about how I'm gonna be a ditch digger. I don't know!

So finally I just say, "I don't know. I've never really thought about it."

Kristen says, "I think you'll be a great actor."

Hell, I think I already am.

"Yeah, you'd be great. You ever think of acting when you grow up?"

And then I hear in my head what my dad said: "If you want to be poor for your whole life just make sure you keep on acting." "Yeah, well, I don't know." And I changed the subject to something else.

After a long time the bus stopped at this really gross, grungy area and the three of them are all excited and they say, "We're here!"

And I step off the bus and right at the bus stop there is this bum in tatters. He wasn't even really old. He was like in his twenties and he had this long scraggly blond hair and he stank like pee and his face was crusted with dirt and as we step off the bus he sort of leers at Kathy, Kelly and Kris and you can see that one of his front teeth has been punched out.

They scream and start running and I follow.

"Ooh, that was disgusting," Kelly says.

"Why does somebody do that to themselves?" asks Kathy.

Kristen says, "That's what happens when you take drugs."

I could just about cry. Now I know they're gonna think I'm total scum if they find out that I get high all the time.

"Yeah, drugs suck," I say.

So we're walking along and looking down at the various names of the stars on the sidewalk and I don't even know who most of these dead people are. Then I think, what bullshit it is to be a star. One day a bunch of people put your name on a star in the fucking sparkly sidewalk and the next thing you know, you're dead and some punk kid is spitting on your name or wiping some dog shit off his shoe on it. Big fucking stardom whoopie. And you're in some crypt somewhere looking more like a rotten apple than anything else.

I follow the three of them into this little store that has all sorts of crap in it. Posters, and jewelry, and under this glass counter there are all these weapons. All kinds of knives. Even shirikin. Shirikin are these throwing stars that ninjas use to kill people. Mike's got a bunch of them and he's pretty good at throwing them, too.

I want to stand and look at all the weapons and stuff but I don't want the girls to think I'm into that kind of stuff. It's like I am a completely different person when I am with them. I know they wouldn't like me if they know that I'm into knives and nun chucks and all that other stuff I'm into.

So I just hung out with them for a long time and we had some fun and then we took the bus back to the Valley. And then I get home and Mike calls and tells me he came over today but I wasn't here and so he went over to Laura Savage's and they went to the park together and they climbed this tree in the park and made out and he was fingering her. I know what tree he's talking about. Everybody goes up there.

And I thought that was cool and everything but when I'm with Kathy, Kelly and Kristen, I don't even think that way. I don't think "wonder if I can get some pussy off them." It's not like that. I have never felt this way before. It is very weird.

And I can't tell Mike or Chad about it because they'll just think I'm a moron and I can't tell the girls about it because they don't know what a horrible person I really am.

Oh shit. Now I'm really worried they'll find out that I'm a stoner and all that shit. Monday, October 31

This morning I went over to Rhonda and them and asked them what they did this weekend. And Rhonda says, "We went to the most bitchin' party. There were fifty kegs and two bands! It was so hot."

And Barbara says, "Tell him how drunk you got."

And then they're all laughing and Diane Kopy starts pretending like she's puking.

So I say to Rhonda, "You got so drunk you puked?"

And she says, "Yeah."

So I told them that I had almost gone to the same party. We hung out 'till the bell rang.

Right after fifth period, Miss Lee grabbed my t-shirt and whispered to me, "Would you please wait here for a second?"

And so we stood there as the classroom drained of students until she and I were alone and she says, "Do you know what's going on with Lori?"

And I said, "What do you mean?"

And she looked right at me, "How did she get the black eye?"

"Didn't she tell you?"

"No."

So I didn't know what to do, so I said, "I think she was fooling around with her little brother or something and they fell."

I don't think she believed me. Tuesday, November 1

Today at P.E. all the classes got put together so that they could test how fast everybody could sprint a hundred yards. Normally all the classes are separated but today everybody was together and I happened to have to stand next to Mario Olivetti while we were waiting in line.

What a moron. He's saying, "So, you gonna try to bone Rhonda? I think she's into you."

And I'm not really paying him much attention but suddenly he says, "Hey, watch this." And then he shoves Mark Lableson in the back so that he falls forward on his face.

Mark's kind of a geek and people have always picked on him since the seventh grade. He's tall but super skinny and he just doesn't fit in. He hangs out by himself or with the dweebs.

Mark gets up and says, "Hey, what was that for?"

"What you gonna do about it, you puss' ?" Mario says.

And suddenly I'm thinking all about David Elster and how he used to call me pussy-boy and so I say, "Hey, just cool it, Mario." And then, after I did that, everybody else in line is like, "Yeah, Mario. Chill."

And Mario was actually embarrassed.

So he's just standing there in front of me in the line, not saying anything now and then he whispers, "You fucking dork. If I were you, I'd just watch out."

So I say, "What do you mean, Mario?"

"Your little butt-boy friend Chad isn't around to save your ass anymore, that's what I mean."

"Mario, you just start something and we're gonna see just who needs his fucking ass saved by his little butt-boys. I'm not like a girl, I hit back."

Now we're almost up to the front of the line and the teachers are standing around with their pens and clipboards and they're checking everybody off and Mario whispers to me, "Your ass is dead, Steve."

"I doubt it."

So, we run our races and everybody starts heading toward the locker room to change back into our clothes.

Mario bends over and picks up a ballpoint pen that one of the teachers must have dropped and he says, "Hey, Mark. You want a pen?"

Mark's about ten feet in front of Mario and Mark says, "No."

"Well," Mario says. "You can have it anyway." And then he just whips it straight through the air at Marks head and it STICKS.

Mark is screaming and this pen is sticking straight out of his head. The front tip of it must have just penetrated his scalp because the pen is flopping around and all these kids are laughing. I mean, in a way it was kinda funny.

But then Saintpierre comes storming over and he sees the pen that Mark ISN'T taking out of his head and he grabs the pen out of it and he screams at the big crowd of boys, "Which one of you little shits did this?"

Everybody is terrified of Mr. Saintpierre. And so everybody just starts stepping away from Mario Olivetti. And after a few seconds Mario Olivetti is standing all by himself and Saintpierre's eyes are just drilling into him and he says, "Mark, did Mr. Olivetti throw this pen at your head?"

And Mark's face is all red and he's still crying a little and he says, "Yes."

Then Saintpierre says, "Mr. Olivetti, did you throw this pen at Mark's head."

And Mario's standing there all tough and he doesn't say anything.

Saintpierre says, "Did anybody here see Mr. Olivetti throw this pen into Mark's head?"

And everybody says, "Yes."

And Saintpierre is so mad he grabs Mario by the arm and starts marching him off toward the office and I can hear him saying, "Mr. Olivetti, do you know where you are going: nowhere! Nowhere, that's where you're headed."

And he yelled at him until we couldn't hear them anymore.

Then everybody was really cool to Mark, and asking him if he was okay and stuff. It was the first time I've ever seen anybody be cool to Mark. Wednesday, November 2nd

Hah! Guess whose ass is suspended for TWO WHOLE WEEKS. Mario's! Hah, hah, hah!

I'm really fucking up in school. Last week we got our five week grade reports and I'm gonna get C's, D's and an F in Science. Fat, stupid Mrs. Doyle! I hate school. If I could stay awake in there I probably wouldn't be doing so bad.

Kathy, Kelly and Kristen were showing off their really good grades to one another. They asked to see mine, I told them that I'd already taken it home. I hope they forget about it. I don't know what to do. They asked if I wanted to hang out on next Sunday. I say, "What'll we do?"

Kathy says, "Just hang out. Watch a movie. We could even do some homework together or something."

So I say, "Okay."

And I'm walking out of there thinking, "Do some homework?!!"

But I can't explain why I like them so much. I mostly like to get high and they are totally NOT into getting high. They haven't noticed but I never hang out with them at lunch. The reason is that I'm afraid one of the stoners or glue sniffers will come over and say "hi" and ask if we want to go under the tree and get messed up. They would freak out. They'd probably tell. But even so, I still like them. Thursday, November 3rd

Tengo un examen en mi classe de espanol manana. Manzanas. Bocadillos. Jaun y Maria van a la playa.

Ahhhhhhhh! I hate Spanish. I hate everything. Today, when I got home, instead of calling Mike or somebody to find out what they are up to, I actually OPENED up my Spanish book. I have a test tomorrow. Manzanas are apples. Bocadillos are edible armadillos, sandwiches. Okay, time to study! Later same day: This is funny. Right after I wrote down "time to study" and was just opening up my Hola Jaun Me Llammo Maria, a knock came on my window. It was Mike. He likes to come to my window because he says my mom treats him weird when he comes to the front door.

I am mostly surprised if and when she can get to the front door.

Anyway, right as I'm getting down to studying for the first time EVER, Mike comes over and I have to go out.

We walk over to Laura's. The screen door is closed but the inner door is open and we can see into the living room. Laura, her little sister Gemma, and their mom, who is like so fat she takes up three spaces on the couch, are watching T.V. There's also this weird looking bearded man sitting at the other end of the couch. He's kinda leaning away from everybody but still watching T.V.

Mike knocks on the screen door and all the heads in the room turn toward us and Laura's face lights up and she leaps up and says to her Mom, "I'm going go out front and hang out with Mike for a while."

Laura pops out and says, "Hey, Steve." And then we all walk around to the side of the house and when Laura is absolutely certain that her mom can't see her, she gives Mike this huge kiss.

They are definitely boyfriend and girlfriend. She's crazy about him, thinks he's pretty cool.

I saw the guy almost overdose on downers. I didn't mention it.

After they finish kissing I ask, "So, who's that guy in there on the sofa?"

And Laura kind of frowns and says, "That's my uncle Larry." Then she whispers, "He was in a mental institution and he just got let out and now he lives here."

Mike is just standing there with his arm around her like he's won some big kind of prize and, in a way, I guess he has. Laura is really beautiful now. Long curly brown hair. Big brown eyes.

"What happened to him," I whisper back. "I mean, you know, why was he in the mental institution?"

So, she leans in close and all three of our heads are really close and she whispers, "He was working as this cook in this really fancy restaurant. I mean like really fancy. It was so fancy we couldn't even go there. I heard my mom telling this to somebody on the phone, so I'm not really sure what happened but I think it got really busy this one night and he got behind on all these dinners and the manager came back to him and told him to hurry up and there was like a pan with hot oil in it and he just threw it all over this guy's face. And some other assistant cook tried to grab him and he just freaked out and started smashing stuff and then he grabbed this knife and tried to stab himself in the neck and then the police came and took him away."

Mike and I say the same thing, "Holy shit."

"Yeah," and Laura tells us, "he didn't speak a word to anyone in the institution for one year."

Mike and I are totally surprised. I say, "He didn't talk for one whole year!"

"Shhh," she says. "We're not supposed to talk about him with anyone."

"Oh, sorry." And then I whisper. "Really, one year?"

"Yeah, and then they let him out about six months after he started talking again. He has to take all these little yellow pills now to stay normal."

So after that Mike and Laura start kissing again and I'm feeling a little weird and I'm just about to split when this crazy Uncle Larry who Laura was just talking about comes running around the corner with fire in his eyes. He sees Mike and Laura with their lips stuck together like a double stick popsicle and puts one hand on Laura's shoulder and one hand on Mike's shoulder and rips them apart so that their tongues are still kind of sticking out in the air a little.

Now that I can see him in the daylight he looks even weirder than when I saw him through the screen. He has thick long black hair that hasn't been combed in weeks and his beard has never been trimmed so that it looks like some kind of scraggly black mammal clamped onto his face.

He's wearing light blue pajamas with little white buttons down the front. No shoes. No socks.

Laura starts screaming as Uncle Larry slams Mike up against the wall at the side of the house.

He puts his face right up to Mike's. I can see Mike cringing as Larry's spittle covers his cheeks. "Don't you ever let me catch you around her again!"

Laura runs into the house yelling, "I'm calling 911!"

Larry begins to slam Mike into the wall. "Do you understand me? Do you?!"

I notice that Larry's legs are spread just enough. I stand behind him and kick up and in between his legs as hard as I can.

He crumples to the ground like a baby. I remember the last time I was kicked in the balls that hard. David Elster caught Chad and I coming home from the park. David started a fight with me and stepped back and kicked my groin so hard I thought I was gonna die. This is what Larry must be feeling.

Mike steps over to me, trying not to cry but trembling really bad.

"You are fucking crazy! Man!" Mike is screaming at him. "I know how fucking crazy you are, you fucking nut case."

All Uncle Larry can do is kind of roll around and moan.

Laura comes running out. "The police are coming!" Then she notices Uncle Larry all curled up on the side walk like a dog that's been run over. "What happened?"

Mike says, "Steve kicked him in the balls. He was gonna kill me."

And then Laura's big fat Mamma is there. She comes lumbering around the corner like some fat pig I saw in the Guinness Book of World Records. She jiggles. She's out of breath and she's only come from the living room to out here.

I feel so exhilarated to have knocked down Uncle Larry that I just want to push her over and stomp her fat face in. She doesn't have a neck. It is like this huge puff of fat between where a normal person's shoulders would be and her head. I want to stomp on that big fat maybe-neck. I want to see if her big fat belly would bounce me up like a trampoline.

She turns to Mike and me, "The police are coming and you're both going to get arrested for beating him up! You hear me?"

Laura walks over to Mike and puts her arms around Mike and screams, "He was trying to kill Mike. Mom, he's crazy."

Laura's mother waddles over to Laura and slaps her face, "Don't you dare talk about your Uncle that way."

Laura starts to cry but she just says, "Fuck you!" And I can't believe it. She steps away from her mom because she knows fatty can't catch her. "He deserves to be locked up. He sits around in his pajama's all day and plays with himself."

Laura's mom's face has turned red as beet juice and she is grabbing her chest. She falls to the ground like a rolly-polly right as this police car screeches up in front of the house. Laura starts screaming at her, "You're not going to have a heart attack! You always pretend to have a heart attack but it never happens! I hate you!"

"Calm down, Miss," the cop says to Laura. "Can anyone tell me what's going on here?"

And the next thing I know, I'm crying. I don't really know why I'm crying but I just am. After I got arrested for stealing all those emblem things, they told me I was going to go straight to Juvy if I ever got arrested again and I'm trying to figure out if I did anything wrong. And I don't think I did but no one's gonna believe me. No one ever believes me. It's like I don't exist. I can already hear my dad screaming at me and calling me a dirty little rotten son of a bitch who can't pour piss out of a boot with the instructions on the heel.

Laura is calm enough to talk. "We were standing out here and I was kissing my boyfriend." She puts her arm around Mike. "And my crazy Uncle Larry comes running around the corner and starts to beat him up."

The cop looks at Uncle Larry who is only just now able to kind of sit up a little. "And what happened to him?"

I'm too afraid to say anything and Mike and Laura don't want to get me in trouble so they don't say anything. There was silence for a moment.

And then Laura's mom, who was not having a heart attack, says, "They beat him up. What does it look like?"

The cops speaks to Larry, "Is that true sir? Did these two boys beat you up?"

And now I'm about to cry even harder.

"This young man over here," Larry points to me. "He was just protecting his friend who I had pushed up against the wall in anger."

I'm totally blown away. He could fully get me busted.

Larry continues, "He didn't do anything wrong." Then he points to Mike, "But this one. He was French kissing my twelve year old niece, and when I saw that, I lost my temper."

The cop looks at Laura, "How old are you?"

"Fifteen." Laura says proudly.

Her mom, who is still sitting on the ground like Jaba the Hut says, "She's twelve."

The cop looks at Mike, "And how old are you?"

"Sixteen."

The cop looks at Laura. "Has he ever done anything more than kiss you?"

"No officer, I swear."

Shit, even I don't know if she was telling the truth or not. So there was a lot more talking and asking questions and they asked the fat mama if she needed an ambulance and Larry finally was able to stand up. The cops said they had to arrest him for violence against a minor. And he was really calm. He was totally cool and explained that he does sometimes lose his temper. They put the cuffs on him and I said, "Larry?"

"Yeah."

"I'm sorry."

"No problem, man. You did good. It was my fault."

And then I wanted to cry again because he was nice.

The police just told me to run along like I wasn't even involved. They stayed there talking to Mike and Laura and Laura's mom after they put Uncle Larry in the back seat of the cruiser.

Now that I really think about it, I don't think he's that crazy after all. Friday, November 4th

After I finished writing in here yesterday, I actually opened up my Hola Juan Me Llamo Maria and started to study a little. I read the vocabulary and tried to memorize it. That's all. And guess what? I've been getting Ds on all my tests in Spanish but today I got a B. I wish I were happier about it but all I can feel is a big fucking whoop-de-doo.

Today in History class, while we're all supposed to be reading, Lori starts to hand me this note and like I didn't even think to look where Miss Lee was and I just reach over to grab it and right as my hand is about to touch it, BAM, Miss Lee grabs my wrist and takes the note. It was all folded up in that tiny weird girl way that Lori's been doing ever since seventh grade.

Miss Lee looks really disappointed at us. She was our teacher in seventh grade too and so she knows us really well and suddenly I'm feeling all bad about passing notes and I didn't even pass the note. Then she looks at Lori and says, "Hey, when are you going to teach me how to fold these things like this?" And then we're thinking, WHEW, off the hook, and then she says, "Hey, how about after class?" And then I snicker and look back at my book. And she says to me, "You too." And so I say, "But I don't even know how to fold them." And she just stares at me.

When the bell rang and all the kids split, Lori and I just stay in our seats and Miss Lee comes over and says to Lori, "Should I read this?"

And Lori's all pissed and she says, "I don't care."

So Miss Lee opens the letter and reads it and then she looks at me and she totally surprises me, "Steve, it looks like you are going to get your blanking ass kicked by Mario. Are you aware of this?"

And Lori and I both start laughing because she says this in such a funny way and so Miss Lee asks Lori, "So, why does Mario want to kick Steve's blanking ass."

"I don't know."

"Do you know why?" she asks me.

"Yeah, because the other day on the P.E. field he pushed Mark Lableson down and I told him to chill out and then he said he was gonna kick my ass and I told him he better watch out because I'm not a girl and that I hit back."

And I said all that really fast without really thinking but then Lori just gave me the most dirty look and I knew that I really screwed up.

"Lori, does Mario ever hit you?"

And Lori fully just starts crying and she looks at me and says, "Asshole."

Miss Lee reaches over to give Lori a hug and she nods her head for me to go and so I do.

I felt awful about what happened until lunch-time when Lori was hanging out with Stacy Reese (who will probably never kiss me again) and Lisa Russo (bitch queen of Sepulveda). I looked over and saw that Lori was really happy and I walked up and I said, "Hey, what did Miss Lee say?"

And Lori starts talking about how Miss Lee explained all this shit about self esteem and crap and how people shouldn't treat people like that and so Lori decided to break up with Mario. Which was like, DUH, not such a hard thing to do considering he got suspended from school for so long, and considering he's such an asshole anyway. Whatever. Saturday, November 8 I just wrote Saturday up there but it's sometime around midnight so it might be Sunday but who cares and I'm too sick to even try to figure out what time it is, so screw it. I got totally sick today and it's my own damn fault. I mean, at the beginning it felt really good but now I'm just sick.

See, Chad and I got together at Seven Eleven today and we cruised out to the cave and Chad kept telling me the whole way that he had this surprise for me. So we're cruising on our bikes through traffic down Chatsworth Blvd and jumping off the curbs and barely missing old ladies with grocery bags and hot chicks walking their dogs and dorks who think they're all cool on skateboards and old men waiting at bus stops and shit and I'm asking him, "What surprise?" And Chad would totally just pedal faster.

We already had our lunches packed into our back packs, which is the only way that I ever go out to the cave these days, because it's so far and if you get thirsty or something you are totally fucked. So we hike all the way back there and we turn into the cave and we are both totally shocked. We both look at each other and say:

"Somebody cleaned up!" And we are totally freaked out because somebody had been in there. But they totally stacked up all the porn magazines into neat piles in the box and they had thrown out some trash and shit that Chad and I had left there before. We didn't mean to mess the place up but we just never thought to get rid of the plastic bags and coke cans and shit we'd brought out there. But somebody had fully gone through the place and cleaned it up.

"Dude, do you think we ought to split?" I say.

"Why?"

"Look at this," I say. "Somebody really cares about this place."

Chad says, "So?"

"Who ever it is that really cares about this place also buried his guns out here and might even carry a gun and might not really want two people fucking around with all of his magazines and shit."

Chad is digging through the box of magazines, "Look, just because some fucking clean freak comes out here doesn't mean we're gonna get killed or anything... holy shit." And Chad like falls back and looks a little pale.

"What?"

"They're in order." He points to the box of magazines. "So?"

"Maybe you're right. I mean cleaning this whole place up is one thing but going through each and every magazine and ordering them by months and years is totally something else."

So I start looking through the box and they're all in order by magazine and date, the newest magazines on top, the oldest ones toward the bottom. This is kind of lame because I like the really old ones the best, with the advertisements for totally lame clothes and shit. "Dude, why would somebody do this?" I say.

"Oh shit, did you ever take one?"

"No."

"Good, don't. Who ever did this was probably checking to see if any were missing. I think some real psycho comes out here. Fuck, he could totally be hiding out there and like he watched us come in now he's..."

Chad and I just charge out through the cave opening and scramble on top of the rock. From the top of the rock you can see a long ways in each direction and we couldn't see anyone. Just the desert and the tumbleweeds and the blue sky and the day and the way everything out there smells like sage brush and we were totally quiet just listening for anything but all we heard was the breeze.

After a long time of thinking I was gonna get killed I said, "We should split."

"Wussy. You are such a total wuss."

"So what do you want to do?"

"Well, we still have my surprise." Chad smiles and he reaches into his back pack and he pulls out what looks like this silver gleaming little cube, like one inch on each side. I scoot over and look at it really closely and Chad is unwrapping. It's tin-foil and it looks like it's a cube of dirt or solid mud or something.

"What is that shit?"

His eyes get really wide, "Hash."

Now this is one of those hard moments for me with Chad. Because sometimes it seems like Chad has done everything before me and done everything better than me and I know I've heard of hash but I've never seen it and I don't really know what the hell it is or what you're supposed to do with it and so I just say, "Wow, cool. Where'd you get it?"

So Chad tells me this story about how his Dad was getting stoned with his friends and they had like a dozen of these cubes on the coffee table but they got all stoned and some big fat guy knocked one onto the carpet and it rolled under the sofa and the guy was too fat and too stoned to look for it and so when all these guys went out to the garage to check out Chad's dad's Harley, Chad just reached over and grabbed the cube that had fallen under the couch. Something like that.

Anyway, Chad pulls out his favorite little green pipe and stuffs that mud shit in there and really it's a little more crumbly than mud but it still looks like mud except that it smells kinda sweet and he says, "You ever smoked this shit?"

So I knew I better just tell the truth and I say, "No."

And he says, "Me neither. But I know it gets you really fucked up because my dad and his friends smoked it and mostly they just sat there grinning."

I have never asked Chad what it's like to have parents that smoke pot and stuff. Mine don't. All mine ever do is scream at me and scream at each other. My dad is a lawyer and he's never home and my mom is always drunk. And when she's not drunk she's on the phone. As a matter of fact, she's on the phone when she's drunk too. Whatever.

So Chad packs the pipe and lights it and takes a big deep hit and then hands me the pipe and the lighter and croaks out really slow because he's trying to hold his breath, "It won't stay lit, hold the fire over it."

And so I do this and this is where things go downhill. I have never been so fucked up before in my life. I will never do this again.

I don't remember how many times Chad refilled the bowl. I don't remember how many times I hit the pipe. All I remember is the feeling of the sun all tingly all over my body. It was so warm. And I closed my eyes and saw these geometric figures spinning all over. And I felt so good but I could feel something pulling me down. I kept having to open my eyes to see what it was and Chad looked at me and said something and I remember seeing his lips move but nothing came out and he looked like he asked the question again but I couldn't hear it again and he just threw his head back and started laughing and I could read his lips when he said, "You're fucking stoned." And even though I couldn't hear him, I laughed too. But I couldn't talk. I couldn't hear and I couldn't talk. It was like I could only feel. And I closed my eyes and the geometric patterns were there like broken shards of crystal floating in oil, they moved so slowly. And it was like the universe or something with a big red dot on the middle and the sun was warm on my face and all I could feel was that force pulling me down like there were hands all over my body, pulling me down, pulling me down, the next thing I know Chad is gently slapping me in the face and saying, "Hey, hey, quit fighting it." And I could hear him and I said, "What the fuck's wrong with you?" And he says, "You're twitching. You keep like falling back and then jerking yourself up and you're freaking me out, don't fight it."

And once again Chad amazed the hell out of me because I had been fighting it and I closed my eyes again and watched the patterns and felt this force pulling me down and then I realized it was gravity. And I felt it, like for the first time ever I could feel gravity. I mean, you know how gravity keeps everything down and shit? I mean, it's always there. You never notice it but right then, I could feel its hands on me and I let it pull me down to the rock and I lay there and as soon as I was laying there, I couldn't feel gravity anymore. Like gravity just slipped away when there was no further to go.

I don't know what Chad was doing during this entire time because my eyes were closed. And I was just laying there feeling the hot sun and then suddenly I noticed this sound. It was like a slurping sound. But there wasn't any wet to the sound. It was like the sound of a mouth that was too dry, trying to make itself get more spit or something. And I'm listening to this noise and suddenly I realize that it's coming from my mouth. And then suddenly I realize my mouth is as dry as the desert. It's drier than the desert. It feels like fifty rats have died and dried up in my mouth and suddenly I'm sitting up and I don't know what to do. And I can't talk again. I'm just sitting up, sticking my fingers in my mouth hoping that this will somehow make my mouth wet. The next thing I know, I'm crying. I'm so thirsty and my mouth is so dry it hurts and I don't know what to do. It's like I can't make any connections. I can't move. I can't talk. It's like the entire universe is how dry my mouth is and nothing else matters.

So I'm sitting there with my fingers sticking into my mouth, whimpering, tears coming down my cheeks and I'm licking them as soon as they get near my mouth and Chad sits up from lying down and takes one look at me and stands up and yells at me. And I look at him and I see his mouth moving and I know he's yelling but I can't hear a fucking thing.

He kicks me and yells again, "You fucking moron! You've got two can's of coke in your bag! Drink something you idiot." And it was like him kicking me made my ears work again or something and suddenly my hands are out of my mouth and I'm digging through my bag and I'm digging through my bag and I'm digging through my bag and I know there was something really important I was supposed to get out of my bag but I can't remember what it was. All I know is that it is very important that I get something out of my bag and the tears are coming out of my eyes again and this time I'm really sobbing like some idiot because I have no idea what the fuck I'm looking through my bag for and suddenly the bag is ripped out of my hands and I look up and Chad has the bag in his hands and he pulls out a red can of Coke and I'm thinking I don't remember Coke cans looking so red and he says something but I can't hear him again and he cracks it open and takes a hit and hands it to me and I lift it to my mouth and I drink it and I drink it and it was like I could feel each little sugar molecule washing over my tongue and everything is sweet and I am swallowing but I can feel a lot of it going over my shirt but I don't care because everything feels so damn good and then I'm just holding the can above my head. And I stand up, as if this is going to make more liquid come out of the can, and I'm living for each and every last drop that comes out of the can suddenly Chad is next to me and he knocks the can out of my hands and he says, "You are too fucking stoned. You're totally acting crazy. Quit giving in to it and start fighting it again."

When I heard that, I came back to my senses a little bit. It was as if everything had been overloaded and I could only feel or think about one thing at a time. It was really weird.

I drank my other can of Coke and then I walked over to the edge of the boulder to piss off into the piss spot and I was holding my penis out there and it suddenly had this mind of it's own and it got totally hard and I had to pee but I couldn't pee and so I'm standing there with this hard on and Chad's sitting somewhere behind me and I'm feeling really embarrassed and so I stop trying to pee and I shove it back into my pants even though this hurts and I say, "Hey, I'm gonna go take a walk." I didn't tell him that I was getting the massive head ache because I didn't want him to make fun of me again.

So Chad says, "Cool."

And so I go wander around and to the other side of this big rock and take a piss and when I get back to the boulder Chad's gone. So I jump back off the boulder and go in the cave and Chad is in there looking at the magazines and he says, "Hey, you wanna check these out?"

And I kind of do but my head was really starting to hurt and I just wanted to go home and lie down. And so I said, "No, I think I want to split."

And he says, "Cool. Just hang out on top for a few."

I go on up there and I can hear him whacking and I'm hoping he doesn't spooge the pages. And when he finishes he comes back up and I say, "Hey, did you put them back in order?" And he says, "Shit, yes. Whoever those belong to is not somebody that we should piss off." And I totally know what he's talking about because any freak who keeps his collection way out here must be dangerous.

And so we started walking through the shrub brush all the way back to our bikes. I was still a little stoned so parts of climbing down were pretty scary.

It was only like five in the afternoon when I got home and nobody was there and so I just went to my room and fell asleep but my headache never went away and when I woke up I was totally nauseous. Hash is fully screwy shit! Sunday November 9th

Today something really strange happened.

This morning Mike Ross calls me. He didn't get in trouble about all that shit with Uncle Larry. And Uncle Larry would have had to go back to the mental hospital if Mike's parents had wanted to press charges, but they didn't. But they did tell Mike to stay the hell away from Uncle Larry and Laura.

Mike tells me to meet him over at Chase and Van Nuys and we're supposed to go hang out and stuff. He tells me to be there at 10 in the morning so I go on over there. I was supposed to go hang with Kathy, Kelly and Kristen but I really didn't feel like it. I felt like being bad and there is nobody better to be bad with than Mike. Except for Chad.

I get to the corner before 10 and I wait and I wait and I wait. And then I call his house and his mom tells me that he split a long time ago with some of his friends from high school. That dick didn't even come by to tell me he was blowing me off. Whatever.

I start walking back to my house and I'm walking through the Robinson-May parking lot and way, way up in front of me I see this beautiful feminine form, some chick walking with what might be her little brother. She has beautiful tits, and hips and long red hair and I'm thinking, she must be a fox. Ever notice how you think chicks are always so fucking great looking from a distance? But sometimes when you get close it's like, bark bark bark? So I just sort of veer my course so that my path will intersect with her path, but not super obvious, just so I'll see what she looks like. So anyway, as I'm moving in I can see her red hair flowing and her light skin and then all of a sudden my heart is like pounding in my throat and I know who it is and I just want to run. And I don't know why I want to run.

It's Rhonda and she totally looks different. No stoner clothes. Nothing. She totally looks like she's on her way home from Sunday school or church or something. And her little brother is like ten years old and his hair is perfectly combed, flat across his head and you just know his mom's spit is still clinging to it in there somewhere.

And Rhonda is wearing a dress! A light blue dress with some lacy thing around the collar and I'm thinking I ought to just run. I mean, she always wears Levi's. I don't think I've ever seen her in anything but Levi's and maybe Pendletons and sometimes she wears a hell of a lot of black, but that's it. And I never even thought about how she normally looks until I saw her in this light blue dress and wearing white girl shoes. She always wears sneakers. Usually really tattered and beat up. But today she looks so... straight. So absolutely normal.

I'm getting closer and I can't laugh or anything or ask her why she looks so different because her brother is there and she definitely is not a stoner around her brother so, while I'm still pretty far away I say, "Hey, Rhonda."

And this is so great! She yells, "Hey, Steve." And she runs over to me and gives me a really big hug. I mean, we've hugged before. At school. And we had that kiss. That big wonderful kiss, but after that there was nothing. We never even talked about it. But here she was hugging me and I could feel that something was different. I didn't know what it was. But something was very different.

And while she was hugging me I could hardly breathe. I could breathe just enough to tell how good she smelled. Like cedar chips.

And then it was over and she said, "Hey, you've never met Matt. He's my little brother. He's a great little brother." And she kind of hugs him and he's very shy and he smiles and lowers his head.

"Hey, Matt."

But Matt doesn't say anything and Rhonda says, "We got to go now." And then she steps up to me and hugs me again whispers into my ear, "I gotta take Matt home but if you want, I could meet you at Sepulveda Park in about a half an hour. What do you think?" And so I whisper, "Yeah." And that was that and she and her little brother were kind of skipping off across the parking lot.

I walked off really cool but inside I felt like exploding. Rhonda has always seemed so distant. I mean, even though she stands near me and seems to like me and stuff I've never really felt like I fit in with her and her friends and the glue sniffers and all that crap. But when she hugged me. I don't know, I can't explain it. Something.

And so, when she turned the corner and couldn't see me any more I just started running. I ran so fast. I just ran straight to Sepulveda Park. I don't think I've ever been happier.

And she actually came there. She changed out of the blue dress but she still wasn't in her stoner clothes. She looked really nice. White pants and a button down blouse. Not exactly like a teacher but kind of close.

And she ran up to me. Also at school she never runs. She was like a totally different person. At school she is so cold but today she was so nice. And she hugs me again and this time it wasn't as long a hug as the first one but it still felt so special and she stopped and she said, "It is so good to see you."

And I'm thinking, I saw you at school just the other day but I didn't say that. I said, "It's good to see you too."

And we found this tree, actually it's the same tree that Mike climbed up in with Laura a while ago. It's this tree that you can kind of just walk up because it leans over so far and when you get up to the top so many people have sat in it up there that it's really smooth and it's like it was made for sitting in or something.

And so we go up there and Rhonda says, "You ever think about sap?" And she's looking at this place where someone cut a hole in the tree with a knife and I look at it and all I can think about is the knife and the hole and like how there are some little bugs trapped in the sap, but she is really into the sap and she sticks her finger into it and it's smooth and soft and I say, "No, not really."

"It's cool stuff, I mean think about it. This tree has these roots that go hundreds and hundreds of feet down into the ground and it needs them because if it didn't have them, it's so heavy it would just fall over, you know? Anyway, the sap in the roots carries all the food in the soil up to these pines."

And she pulls one of the pines out of the tree and she smells it and her eyes get wide and she says, "MMmm. Smell this. Smell this."

I smell the pine needle and she's smiling and I'm a little confused but it's so great to be around her that I figure, shit, I'll smell it.

"What's that smell?" she asks.

"Pine tree."

"Nope."

"Pine needle?"

"Nope." And she is smiling and smelling one herself.

"What then?"

And she says, "Earth. That's what that smell is."

And in a way I had no idea what she was talking about but in another way I did and I said, "You mean because the sap brings some of the earth up to the pine needles, that this is the smell of the earth?"

And she hugged me. She just hugged me. We're sitting up there and not talking or moving and she just hugged me for a long time and I was thinking, what the hell is going on? But I didn't say that because it felt so good for her to be hugging me that all I wanted was for it to just go on longer and longer and we were so still that this huge black crow didn't see us or something and just flew right down and sat right across from us and started digging his head under his wing.

He's so damn big and scary I almost want to say he was a raven but I don't even know if we have such things out here. He was just big and black and had piercing, beady eyes.

We both turn our heads really slowly toward the bird. And he pulls his head out from under his wing, his black feathers shimmering, and he's looking at us and we're looking at him. Rhonda squeezes closer to me and I've never felt so close to anyone in my entire life before.

It was like what it felt like when we were kissing but it was a thousand times better. And we weren't even kissing.

And the bird is looking at us and Rhonda is smiling and I've thought she was beautiful in the past but now she is more beautiful than anyone I have ever seen.

Rhonda whispers, "Isn't he beautiful?"

And really I think he's scary. Crows freak me out with their sharp beaks and the way they're always picking at some dried up dirt-squirrel or cat in the road. I can't believe the way his black eye is just locked on us, his head cocked one way and then another. "Yeah," I say. "He is."

And then we're hugging again and I want to kiss her but she seems to just want to hug and I don't get it. I just close my eyes and hold her close to my chest, move my head into her neck. She snuggles even closer to me. We were like that for a long, long time. Her hands on my back, pulling me in.

When I open my eyes the bird is gone. Rhonda stops huggin' me and she says, "Steve, I've always liked you."

And I say, "Yeah, I know. I've always liked you too. I thought you knew I liked you when we kissed for so long."

She says, "No, anybody can kiss for a long time. But it takes a really special friend to hug for a long time. I think you and I could be really special friends."

And inside, I'm dying. I want to kiss her so bad I'm wishing a meteor would fall out of the sky and smash in my brain. I mean, here she is, the most beautiful girl in the world, sitting up in this tree with me and a crow came and I could kiss her so easily and now she's telling me that I would be less close to her if I do kiss her. I'm totally confused.

I say, "Yeah, I think we could be really special friends, too."

"But not at school. Is that cool?"

"What do you mean?"

"I mean, don't tell anybody that we hugged up here. Let's just keep this our secret."

"Why?"

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