Joey Goes Down

(A perverse "Stardom" spin-off.)

Dan Dorfsman

     "There are always people to screw with you mind, run with your money, and fuck you over." These are the words with which my father left me six years ago. He always said shit like that. "Learn to jerk off son, yer gonna need it," he would advise, or even "Don't you dare sit up straight, you'll always be an ape kid." I wouldn't blink after awhile. I'd just stare through his head, the best I could, pretending he wasn't there. Those six years ago, he ruffled the fur of my skull and grunted as he picked up the suitcase containing shit I could never understand, papers and such. My father was never an object of affection, for anyone. Instead, people just listened, smile and nod, smile and nod. I was eight at the time. He left me home alone, and drove off into the sunset, as they say. I smiled, I nodded, and I sat and watched my favorite show, "Don't Just Sit There." My mother who didn't come home till hours later, after her graveyard shift at the soy place. We ate lots of soy, I hate soy.
       At this particular moment, I woke under the arm of my closest friend Taylor. It was warm and my ear rested on his bicep, his hand on my belly. My eyes opened on the checkerboard of scars on his wrist. The lines writhed with his movement.
     I imagined myself waking in a coffin, I was a zombie. The snot in my nose was crusted from underground earth dust, my mouth's sticky dry feeling allowed me to taste the blood that would poor out of my mouth when an unsuspecting heroine would open the door of the box, disturbing the slumber of the dead. I rose straight up, bending forward at the waist, ignoring my arms and legs. I couldn't carry on the charade as I struggled to stand, this required more effort than I would have liked. I felt like shit as I always do after sleep. I felt like death. Now standing, I looked around, taking in the scene. I looked at Taylor through my warped visions, then at the TV. Some show about aliens.
      "You know," I said mostly to make sure I was still capable of speech. "We do that shit too."
     "What?"
     "We do that, put tracking devices on things." The TV displayed the light bulb head of an alien sticking metal up some hick's nose. "We put'em on turtles and manatees and shit to track their progress. We're a turtle's fucking alien encounter."
     Taylor smiled. I picked up the remote and the TV clicked off with a fizz, as if disintegrated by a laser, like in one of those Bugs Bunny cartoons, with the little green alien, you know?
     "Let's do something," I said.

      We drove. The purple setting moon looked sick and wilting. Like a dribbling yolk from a broken eggshell. We pulled into the parking lot of The Mirage, a local diner. People from school always hang out there, people that I knew, but hated. Still due to my never-ending need to fuck with people I hate, I took a pill and waited for the orgasmic rush as I entered.
    People's eyes darted in fear as they always do when me and Tay enter someplace. The side of my mouth twisted wryly into a smile. "Heh," I hiccuped. Tay sat across from me at the table, we ordered our usual plate of fries and mozzarella sticks, which we would drown in mayonnaise, again to fuck with people. Some chick made a gagging sound and pumped her finger back and forth into her mouth. Her friends chuckled and rolled their eyes. I smiled again.
    "You know," Taylor said finally. "These people think I'm gay."
    "You're not?" I joked. I was the one to drive Tay and his girl to the clinic that gave free abortions.
    "Shit man. It's cause I chill with you, but I love you, not that sorta way, but you're my friend and you take care of me."
    This could not have been more true. Taylor currently resided in my house because of his shit-ass home life; drunken mother, abusive family, that sort of stuff, TV movie type stuff, ya know? For the past two years or so Tay has been in and out of various homes and institutes and rehab places that did more damage than anything. It didn't matter if he was home or in an institute, every once in awhile he would be carted to some hospital with bleeding wrists and a stomach full of chemicals which were pumped out through a vacuum or something, I don't know, never cared. Just as long as he was okay.
    So Tay was living with me and I would remind him constantly that if he did anything like drugs or whatever, he'd be sent to a home. He was also being tutored. Sometimes I wondered what would happen if I caught him drunk or high, if I would turn him in or not. Both were dangerous. I remember reading Catcher in the Rye and Holden Caufield watching his kid sister on a merry-go-round reaching for the gold ring and he was all afraid she would fall off but he didn't say anything. All he thought was "you have to let them do it and not say anything. If they fall off, they fall off, but it's bad if you say anything." The trouble with Taylor was if he fell, he'd hit the ground harder than anyone.

     "So what about all those times you beg me to give it to you up the ass. Then I do and you love it," I said.
     "Yeah, but it's not like that, it'd be different if you were a girl, I just like it cause a girl wouldn't be able to give it to me like that. It's different."
    "Understood," I said.
    I watched Taylor's brow furl. He looked confused, which is Tay's way of looking sneaky. His hand went down under the table. I knew what he was doing. I watched the bicep that I woke on contracting as his shoulder joint twisted.
    "Oh," he said. "Notice something."
    "Dropped my napkin," I said, loud enough for the prissy girl to hear. I figured if our mayonnaise already nauseated her, we should be kind and send her over the top. She'd feel better.
    With that, I slid uncomfortably under table number seven and came face to face, or rather head, of Tay's prick which throbbed against the zipper of his new black chincos. I wanted to rip that button off with my teeth, but showing some restraint, I opened them with my fingers and unzipped the metal teeth of his zipper. "Zzzzzoop," said the teeth. From between the slit in his boxer's, Tay's pulsing member arose like a zombie from his grave, instead of blood, a white dribble hung from the head. It reminded me of the beating heart from "Indiana Jones," the first one.
    I stuck my tongue out between my teeth and hissed like the snakes from that same movie and encompassed his prick in my mouth. "Anything to make him happy," I thought not that I cared really, I was happy to oblige.
    I sucked with the rhythm of the Tricky song in my head. "She makes me wanna die," the girl's voice sang in my neurons. "Change my stride."
    I saw the feet of our waitress return to the table and ask Tay if he wanted anything else.
    "Um, , no, er, heh, um, no we're, we're okay, thanks, giggle."
    "Yeah, how bout your friend."
    "He's, er, not thirsty." She left; her heals clicked against the floor in coincidental rhythm.
Tay came hard, I gagged on his juices, but I didn't swallow, not yet, more fun. I rose from the under the table and slithered back into my seat. The prissy girl stared at us, knowing full well what had happened. She was as red as Tay's prick. I smiled at her, opened my mouth and slid my tongue around, revealing the milky white that was not my own. My mouth closed around the straw of my Dr. Pepper and I swallowed hard, leaving a pearl on the tip of the straw. The girl as I expected left the table and headed towards the bathroom. Tay just lay back, sweat running from his body and pooling on the floor.
    "You're god," he said.
    I smiled. "There are always people to screw with your mind, run with your money, and fuck you over," I said. "That's my Motto."