Hyena Read Free

music, and get to filling that balloon.
    I start hitting it, Smashing Pumpkins is on; “1979,” that’s my shit. I’m breathing in ’n’ out on the balloon, in and out. I sound like Darth Vader. I’m thinking about my bosses and howthey’re all richer than me and how come? Do they deserve it? I’m thinking about the Jew Club of insiders and how they look out for each other and I’m like, Fuck them dudes. And the wah-wah-wahs are coming but I still just keep breathing it in and my head goes fuzzy and I’m dreaming and I’m playing out scenarios from the day in my head for what feels like hours and I keep sucking in that gas and there’s a thud.
    I come to. I hear Billy Corgan singing, “Weeee don’t even care, as restless as we are. . . .”
    I’m facedown on my JCPenney shag carpet and it hits me. I bet them Jewish motherfuckers aren’t facedown in the carpet, naked from the waist down, dick covered with olive oil, passed out from nitrous on a school night. My mouth tastes like metal, my stomach’s rotten. I get up, go to the bathroom, and puke.



squeaky clean
    I WAS DRIVING WITH MY dad in his Chevette when he decided to have the sex talk with me. On the way to my mom’s, we just drove past Old Perch Road when he turns down the radio, looks over at me, and says all solemn, “Jude.”
    I’m thinking I’m in trouble for something. I look at him back, I say, “Yeah?”
    “Do you know what cunnilingus is?”
    I didn’t want to have a sex talk. I already knew about sex from health class and from stealing dirty magazines from Merle, our downstairs neighbor. He was on welfare; he’d lie in his bed all day smoking weed and reading sci-fi novels. He had a long stick he used to change the channels from his bed. He’d poke at the TV with it when he wanted to see something different.
    When he’d run up to the gas station for smokes, I’d walk into his apartment and steal the Playboy s and Hustler s and take ’em back upstairs to beat off.
    I knew where the dick went, how babies were made. I was fourteen. This wasn’t the fifties when motherfuckers believed in storks.
    My dad’s doing this shit he does with his face when he tries to look sincere, this half frown with puppy-dog eyes.
    “Jude. Do you know what cunnilingus is?”
    “Naw, what’s cunnilingus?”
    He says, “When a man loves a woman very much, he takes her into the bedroom and puts his mouth on her vagina, and he licks it with his tongue.”
    I look at him disgusted. “Eating pussy? Hell naw! I’m not putting my face where some fucking bitch bleeds out of once a month! That’s fucking gross.”
    At the time I really felt like this. I had never even touched a pussy, so the idea of eating one seemed daunting. Plus, I grew up with black kids and eating pussy was some bitch shit.
    My dad keeps pressing, “No, Jude, listen to me. The ladies love when you go down on them. You lick their clitoris till they go fucking crazy and cum.” And he sticks out his tongue and he touches his nose. “See?” He used to do that a lot.
    I tell him, “I don’t care what the fuck they do, I ain’t eating no pussy.”
    He says, “You will.”
    I say, “I won’t.”
    He says, “Oh you’re gonna eat pussy. You’re gonna lick it clean.”
    “Look, Pop, I’m not eatin’ no motherfuckin’ pussy—chill out with that shit!”
    And he stares at me and I’m glaring back and he turns his head. We drive in silence for a while and I’m grateful.
    It was tight quarters in the Chevette. My shoulder touched his shoulder and both our shoulders touched the window. My pop’s a big-ass Italian from Leominster, Massachusetts. He says “cah” instead of “car” and “bah” instead of “bar” and he claims he knows people in the Mob. He was always telling stories about Porky Valeri getting his hand smashed to bits with a ball-peen hammer and how his buddies took some Puerto Rican into the mountains, shoved a funnel in his ass, poured battery acid in