Charles Bock - Beautiful Children

The look she gave caught Newell. Stopped him, even.

He had lived the great majority of his life instinctively, every movement reactive, following whatever whim captured him, saying the funniest thing that popped into his mind. Even now he had a good one ready: You know your shoelaces are untied, right?

“We just asked if you wanted a ride,” he said. “Jesus. It's not like we're going to hurt you or nothing. Chill out. God.”

He felt Kenny's hand pressing down onto his shoulder and jerked away. Newell heard his name being called and the word meant nothing. The girl's eyes were squarely on him now, staring at him in a way that showed her to be a wounded and cornered beast, combative, gathering strength. The way she was looking at Newell let him know that she saw through his lie, and probed deeper, reaching toward a bedrock place inside him. I see what you are. I know exactly what you are.

Newell was marginally aware of his name being called again, Kenny's hand jerking on the tail of his sleeve, jostling his arm. But it was as if these actions were being filtered through a gauze, happening to an entirely different person.

A run-down store on Industrial: Asaaf and Kunjib continued stacking the latest amateur audition duplicates. A Red Roof Inn off I-405 in the San Fernando Valley; Rod Erectile wearily strapped on the knee pads and asked if the syringe was ready. A mongrel dog whimpering, its nose pressed to the desert highway, trying to pick up its owner's scent.

Tonight Newell had already sprayed one woman with fire extinguisher foam. Tonight he had lied to his parents and broken his curfew. Newell had won money on a nickel slot machine that he was not legally allowed to play, while trespassing inside a casino that he was still a good seven years away from being legally allowed inside. Shoplifting. Vandalizing. Broken laws. Challenged commandments. None of it had caused him more than a second thought. Right and wrong had had nothing to do with whether he could get away with an act, how much trouble he might get in. But this was different. The way the girl was looking at Newell clearly let him know she understood that she would not escape, he would succeed in whatever he was about to do. Watching the girl physically brace herself, Newell felt a surge of power, and basked in her helplessness. Until he recognized that he was the source of the pain she was about to feel.

Was it possible for a good friend to make what he said was a massive mistake and still be your friend — if he said he was sorry, did that erase what he did? Was that the same as the way your parents do things that are unfair, but because they say they love you, that was supposed to make everything better? Like, because they said they knew better and said it was for your own good, it was fine they were fucking you over? And all the times when teachers and adults are right and you are wrong and this only makes you feel worse. Hassling you. Stealing from you. Mother-fuckers laughing at you, doing you wrong, hurting you in deep and meaningful ways, giving you whatever reasons, whatever excuses, and you are left with shit, you are left sucking shit with a straw.

But if he unleashed the fire extinguisher on this injured girl, how was that different from any of them?

He wasn't. He wasn't any different.

Newell's hand was clammy with sweat and his grip around the extinguisher loosened just a bit and now he had the strangest sensation, a disconnect — as if all this was happening inside his head. He could feel the sweat on his hand in his head.

Could he really go through with this, he wondered. Is this what people really do to one another?

And now the girl's body language seemed to change, almost imperceptibly, she seemed to soften in a way that was victorious, defiant even, her face opening with a sickly grin. The shoelaces slipped through her fingertips.

Even when you didn't feel life was moving forward for you, there it was, happening. And if only Kenny could have reached out, if he could have grabbed this last second and held it in place, then everything would have been okay. From the driver's seat it seemed within his grasp, right there in front of him: Newell jerking, making this terrible whelping sound, as if the air had been knocked out of him; the extinguisher canister releasing, falling and hitting the Reliant's floor; the cough of white smoke weakly releasing up and out through the car. Kenny watched, uncertain, confused. He couldn't decipher exactly what was unfolding. His eyes were tearing. He coughed and coughed again. By this time the boy had pushed open the passenger door.

Eventually the face of Newell's cellular phone would be discovered in a scrap yard just outside Sedona, lying inside the trashed and stripped husk of that ice cream truck. In the time it took Kenny to get out of the car and run around the front of the Reliant, night was engulfing the boy. The sounds of Newell running through some sort of brush were still near enough, there remained a chance at catching him.

Parental neglect. Sexual abuse. Teenage girls sold from Asian farming villages. The girl with the shaved head was trying to rise from her rock, her head turning in the direction Newell had run; Kenny was close enough to see that her clothes were covered in crud. Her legs seemed to buckle, and though she did not fall, it was obvious to him that she also needed help.

And this is where it all unraveled, with Kenny on the edge of the desert, the girl with the shaved head struggling to stand, and the slight sounds of the fleeing boy growing more distant, giving way to an all but deafening gloom. The junky old car idled by the side of the road, purring and coughing up phlegm. Secular fundamentalists. Religious consumers. Commercial-free satellite radio. Noninvasive dental surgeries. The world was a pair of successfully removed breast implants and an ambitious former stripper working to rebuild her life alone. The world was an overweight artist swearing off sugar. A mother forced to deal with her grief, fighting to get beyond her anger, still waiting for the phone to ring, the door to swing open. A father exhausted by the wreckage of his marriage. The world was wandering and dirty and lost; a boy discovering a ripped concert T-shirt and, although he could not make out the name of the band, slipping the warm fabric over his head.

Each and every one of us moves toward fates we cannot possibly know. Each of us struggles against the pain of the world, even as we are doomed to join it. And for a moment Kenny wavered in his struggle. Slowing, twisting in place, he threw his hands up into the air. To no one in particular, he let out the choked, half-whispered plea that would remain at the forefront of his thoughts for years: “What am I supposed to do?” he asked. “Just what am I supposed to do now?”

This novel took a long time to write, and there's no way I could have completed it without a lot of support. From the bottom of my heart, thanks and praise to:

Buckethead. Norma Bock. Gene Santoro. Gary Libman. Slim Smith. William Kittredge. Alden Jones. Jaime Clarke. Peter Hausler. Tara Ison. Gary Giddins. Anthony Bock. Yale Bock. Slash. W. Axl Rose. John Wei-gund, for graciously offering me the use of his cabin for a month. William and Allison Woolston for two of the greatest summers known to man, and the most perfect place to get married that a person could ask for. Pumpkin and Hippolyte. T. J. Kenneally. Carmen Monteblanca, for shooting me full of all those drugs. Michael Neill, for the sarcasm and the cynicism and so much more. Anna Schuleit. Sue Barker. Messy Stench drew the awesomest flyer in the history of papyrus (her website, craptabulous.com, rules, go visit it).

Certain people in the world of adult entertainment were kind enough to take me into their clubs and onto their sets. You know who you are: a heartfelt thanks for letting me into your lives. Loving thanks to all the street kids I talked to, and all the ones that I didn't get a chance to talk to, and all the ones who haven't yet run: may there be nothing but peace in your futures.