Adam Levin - Hot Pink

One of them had balloons tied to its grille with ribbon. We got stopped at a light facing it. Grand and Oakley. We were going south on Oakley. That light takes forever. Grand’s a main artery. It’s dominant. Grand vs. Oakley? Oakley gets stomped.

There were white balloons and blue ones and some yellows. I don’t know what color the ribbon was, but I knew it wasn’t string because it shined.

Nancy said, “Do you think it’s a desperate form of graffiti, Jack?”

Jack. I checked the rearview. Tina had her feet in Joe’s lap. Joe was pretending to look out his window, but what he was doing was looking at the window. It was tinted, and he was looking at Tina’s legs, reflected. Tina has good legs. You notice them. You feel elderly.

I said to Nancy, “It’s probably the driver had a baby.”

She said, “I think maybe some tagger got his markers and his spraycans taken, and he was sitting on the curb out front of his house, watching all the trucks making pickups and feeling worthless because he couldn’t do anything about it. He didn’t want to write ‘wash me’ with his finger in the dirt along the body since there’s nothing original about that, and he didn’t want to brick the windshield because he wasn’t someone who wanted to harm things, but still he found himself reaching down into the weeds of the alley to grasp something heavy. He needed to let the world know he existed, and without paint or markers, bricking a windshield was the only way he could think to do it. Except then, right then, right when he gets hold of the brick — and it’s the perfect brick, a cement quarter-cinderblock with gripping holes for his fingers, it fits right in his hand — he hears his little sister, inside the house. She’s singing through the open window of her bedroom, above him. She’s happy because yesterday was her birthday and she got all the toys she wanted, and it reminds the boy of the party they had for her, how he decorated the house all morning and his sister didn’t even care because all she really wanted was to unwrap her presents — the party meant nothing to her, not even the cake, much less the decorations — and so this boy races inside, to the hallway in his mom’s house, and tears a balloon-cluster from the banister he tied it to, then races back out front, decorates the grille of the garbage truck.”

Finally, the light turned green. If you’re Oakley, you get about seven seconds before Grand starts kicking your ass again.

I said, “It could be the driver got married.”

Nancy said, “And maybe it wasn’t even today. Maybe it was sometime last week. Maybe those balloons have been there for nine, ten days because the driver thinks it’s pretty. Because he understands what it means, you know? Or maybe because he doesn’t understand what it means, because it’s a conundrum, but it’s a nice conundrum, something he wants to figure out.”

“It could be his son,” I said. “It could be it was his son got married or had a baby,” I said.

Nancy said, “Oh.” And I knew I shouldn’t have said what I said. She was trying to start something with me and I kept ending it. She wanted me to tell her a fantasy story. I’m a meathead. A misinterpreter. Like hot pink? For years I thought it was regular pink that looked sexy on whoever was wearing it. And that Bob Marley song? I thought he was saying that as long as you stayed away from women, you wouldn’t cry. Even after I figured it out, it’s still the first thing I think when it comes on the radio. It’s like when I’m wrong for long enough, I can’t get right. I had a fantasy story in my head, but I didn’t say it. And why not?

We were merging onto the Eisenhower when this guy in a Miata blew by us on the ramp and I had to hit the brakes a little. Everyone cursed except Nancy, who was spaced out, or pretending to be. Then we got quiet and Joe said, “What kind of fag drives a Miata?”

And Tina said, “Don’t.” Tina goes to college at UIC. She was a junior, like I would have been. “Don’t say fag,” she said.

“Fag faggot fag,” Cojo said. “It’s just words. It’s got nothing to do with who anyone wants to fuck.” He took out a cigarette. He said, “This is a fag in England.” He lit the cigarette. He said, “I know fags who’ve screwed hundreds of women. I know fags who screw no one. Have a fag,” he said. He gave the cigarette to Tina and lit a second one for himself. He said, “That rapist Mike Tyson’s a fag. And my cousin Niles. He’s screwing his girlfriend even as we speak to each other here in this very car. There’s fags who like windmills and fags on skinny bicycles. I know fags who fix cars and fags who pour concrete. Regis Philbin’s a fag. Kurt Loder and that fag John Norris. Lots of TV and movie guys. Rock stars. Pretty much all of them. So what? It’s a word. It means asshole, but it’s quicker to say and more offensive cause it’s only fags who say asshole like it’s any kind of insult. Even jerk’s better than asshole. Asshole’s a fagged-out word, and fag’s offensive. And it should be offensive. I want it to be offensive. Someone calls me a Polack? I’m offended. But I’m a fucken Ukrainian, you know? I don’t give a shit about the Polish people. No offense, Krakow, but I don’t give a fuck for your people. Someone calls me Polack, though, I’ll tear his jaws off at the hinge. And cause why? Cause he’s saying I’m Polish? No. Cause he’s saying Polish people are lowlifes? No. He’s trying to offend me is why. When he’s calling me Polack, he’s calling me fag. He’s calling me asshole. So fine. You’re pretty. Okay. You smell good. You say smart things to me when you’re not telling me the right way to talk. Good news. I like you. I want to spend all my money on you. I want to take you on vacation to an island where there’s coconuts and diving. Miatas are for assholes if it makes you more comfortable. But the asshole in that Miata’s got fagged-out taste is what I’m telling you.”

Tina said, “You’ve thought about this a lot, Cojo.”

“I got a gay cousin,” he said. “A homosexual. Lenny. He fucks men, and that’s not right and it makes me sick, but that’s not why he’s a fag. He’s a fag because whenever someone calls him fag, it’s me who ends up in a fight, not him. He’s a fag because he won’t stand up for himself. Imagine: your own cousin a fag like that. That’s how it is to be me. Not just one but two fags in the family — Lenny the homofag and don’t forget about Niles the regular fag who all he does is chase girls — but I’m the only one can say it, right? About how my family’s got some fags in it, I mean. Don’t you ever bring it up to me. It’s like a big secret, and tell the truth it makes me uncomfortable to talk about, so let’s just stop talking about it, okay?”

Joe was always talking to girls about Lenny. Sometimes Lenny had cancer and sometimes he was a retard. In 1999, he was usually Albanian. But there wasn’t any Lenny. I know all Joe’s cousins. So do the Christamestas. Lenny was fiction. But I didn’t say. If he did have a cousin Lenny, and this Lenny was a gay, Cojo would defend his cousin Lenny against people who called Lenny fag. So Cojo was telling a certain kind of truth. And it never really mattered to Tina, anyway. She’d just wanted to know Joe cared what she thought of him, and the effort it took him to come up with that bullshit about fags and assholes — that made it obvious he cared. And Joe is definitely crazy for Tina. He discusses it with me. All the things he wants to buy her. Vacations on islands with sailboats and mangos, fucking her on a hammock. They’d still never fucked, but they mashed pretty often. So often it was comfortable. So comfortable they started in the backseat of the car, which was not comfortable for me, sitting next to Nancy, who’s staring at the carton of patties in her lap while the sister gets mauled. I hit as many potholes as I could. The Ike’s got thousands.