What We Do Is Secret Read Free Page A

when none had made any records yet and no one paid to see them, the Masque was free admission then, on top of the table it was just practice rooms for bands to rent, all these echo-y basement rooms with damp concrete walls and lead-lined closets filled with bomb shelter rations we’d skarf when we couldn’t close deals on day-old donuts at the Gold Cup.
    So the cops show, Brendan even plays “Watching the Detectives” over the PA in their honor, then the Skulls go onstage and they’ve got their song “Victims” they wrote about the Strangler, and Billy Bones the singer is screaming, “You’re a victim, baby, and you’re gonna die!” and the bullet boys push the manic panic button, thinking the band is some satanic punk cult in league with the killer.
    “How about I walk over to Citrus and we do the deed there?”
    “You’ll still need to get in the car.”
    “Why?”
    “To show me. I’m not comfortable with public displays.”
    And I’m all, What a coincidence, I’m not comfortable either, not with twenty bucks, make it twenty-five and meet me in the alley, bucket seat butt-plant guaranteed as long as I hold the keys, or stash them somewheres actually, I want cover-my-virgin-ass insurance in case he gets the urge to merge and tries to hijack me off to the Valley like that bottom-feeder in Reseda on
Liewitness News
who kept a fifteen-year-old in a box under his waterbed from the twelve days of Christmas to the dozen eggs of Easter.
    He mumble-grumbles but we five on it, and I cross Highland hot on the rat-tat-tat heels of a leather dyke in motor boots, no mistaking heavy-duty Hermans, Darby wore those, I hear those heel plates in my sleep sometimes, and I have excellent news for the world, she likes my look too, period, no mention of new wave.
    I say, “Thanks, man,” not thinking, then bite my lip, but she doesn’t punch me or anything so I guess she likes that too, same with Squid and Siouxsie, when I you-guys them they always dig it, you con those dots, these are libbed-out ladies who won’t touch a dildo with doubled rubber gloves on if it looks like a penis, they went all the way out to Silver Lake past the On Klub to find one camo’d like a dolphin.
    And I went too and faked a seizure in front of the register at Annie Fanny’s Pleasure Chest so they could lift a pair of Flipper specials. Then riding back on the RTD they were showing them off to these two Mexican kids who thought they were bathtub toys. And our little brown brothers craved so hard I talked Siouxsie into handing one over to their grandmacita, who had a five-alarm multiple then and there, and when we got out at Hollywood and Vine she shouted
“Gracias”
out the window in triplicate and thanked us thanked us thanked us, in the name of who else may I have the envelope please but the Blessed Holy Virgin.
    I turn off Highland at Homo Central and he’s parked down Lexington waiting at the Citrus corner. I tell him to roll on just past the Cinema Research loading dock. When I catch up I reach in palm up through his window for the key drop, and dangle them off the chain-link Dumpster shed across the alley. Then he calls even steven, my droogie walking stick stays out in the cold, I could brain him, what fuckin ever. And with all that windup I should have known, after I settle in the passenger seat he counts out the cash while I get one boot off and as soon as my sock plays follow the leader Brother Nature takes his course, guess who’s separated at birth from Ray Charles, he isn’t seeing what he wants to see.
    At least I’ve got a pocketful of cherry-choppin’ George. And at least he’s pulling out his wallet for an encore, but instead of a tip for my toil and trouble I end up palming a business card, he must be on call in case my feet do the Cinderella thing.
    Though wait.
    Another card, plastic.
    Slapped down in my hand just long enough for me to run a finger over the cutout line of a detachable key before he snatches it back,