How Do You Like Your Blue-Eyed Boy? (Phoenix Noir Book 1) Read online

  This time there were seven men and twenty-three women. I made them stand in a half-circle as I spoke to them. I asked each of them to introduce themselves to everyone else, giving their names and explaining why they’d come to the class and what they expected to get out of it. When they’d all taken their turn, I said, “Okay. As most of you probably know, my name’s Andy Saunders. I run this class, and I’m here to teach you how to defend yourselves. Has anyone here ever taken a self-defense class before?”

  A few hands went up.

  “Well, those are useless. They teach you to use the minimum necessary force to defend yourself. Kick your attacker in the shins, knee him in the balls...” I spat theatrically on the ground. “You do that, you’ll hurt him just enough to make him mad enough to want to hurt you even more than he already did.

  “I’m going to teach you effective methods of taking out people who’re trying to hurt you. In a life-threatening situation, the appropriate level of force is one which at least maims and preferably kills your opponent. Do any of you own guns?”

  About ten hands were raised, mostly male.

  “Well, I want all of you to get guns and learn how to use them. And, if anyone fucks with you, I want you to shoot them twice in the chest and once in the face. That, I assure you, will make them forget about trying to hurt you.”

  Some uneasy laughter.

  “But, starting tonight, I’m going to teach you to maim, kill and otherwise debilitate people using only your bodies and easily-obtained household implements. Let’s go.”

  When I first started the classes, the press made it seem like I was training a bunch of psychopathic vigilantes. One journalist called me up and asked me if it was true that I was giving lessons on how to gouge out eyes, crush throats, chew faces and fatally stab people with knives and sharpened knitting needles. I confirmed that it was true, and then I explained why I was doing it. My explanation didn’t appear in the article, but the details of my curriculum did, under the headline SCHOOL FOR KILLERS.

  The article did mention that a friend of mine had been killed. But what did that tell anyone about Mara? About the last time I saw her? My band was playing at Sutter’s Gold, and she came along. She hung out afterwards, and we talked. She was really into the idea of going on tour with us, her band and ours. She left the bar before I did, saying she had to get up for work in the morning. I said I’d call her in the next couple of days and we could talk about the tour.

  Not the next day, but the day after that, I heard that she was dead. She’d been pretty drunk when she left the bar, and my first thought was that she’d gotten in an accident. The details of what had happened to her were released by the cops slowly. They said they didn’t want those of us who knew her to discuss the fact that she was raped and strangled, because they thought that the killer might be someone who knew her, someone in our circle. They were telling the women not to discuss it, not to share information—like they were to wait until someone else got killed so the cops could catch the killer.

  I don’t think Mara was killed by anyone we hung out with, but I’ll never know. I don’t know how far the cops’ investigation went, but it just seemed to be dropped. Nothing happened, and after a while the murder seemed to be old news. The papers had talked about rumors that the killing was drug-related, but that was bullshit—Mara only did weed and acid, and she never dealt. There was also talk of how she was drunk that night, as if that meant it was somehow her fault. Even the language of the cops and papers denied the reality of what had happened to her. She wasn’t “raped and murdered.” “Rape and murder” are things you hear about on the news, things that happen to two-dimensional images on the TV screen. Mara was a person, not an image, so she wasn’t “raped and murdered”—she was dragged or otherwise forced into a car, taken somewhere and endured and unknown number of persons shoving things into her cunt, which would have remained dry and tight: at least one cock, and some unidentified metal and plastic objects. Before or after—or, conceivably, during—this, she was beaten so severely that her jawbone took on the consistency of something that has been put through a blender. Somehow she was still alive after that, because the autopsy found that she had died of asphyxiation, caused by the piece of shit who put his hands on her throat and strangled her. Then her body was thrown out of a car to lie on the curb like trash.

  For about a month after that, I thought I’d lost my grip. I hardly ate. I fucked up the simplest things at work, then stopped working completely. I couldn’t do anything. At one point I didn’t leave the apartment for fifteen days. Then I organized some community meetings—aimed mainly at women, but open to anyone—and pointed out the reality that none of us wanted to have to face—the cops weren’t going to protect us. We had to do it ourselves. And if we didn’t know how to do that, then it was up to us to learn. So I started the classes.

  “Okay,” I told my new students. “The most important thing I want you to remember is this: the person who wins a fight is not necessarily the person with the greatest physical strength, or the greatest fighting skill. A fight situation is a stress situation, often a panic situation, and the person who wins and comes out of it in one piece is the person who stays calm, thinks about what to do, and does it. For example, a guy twice your size who’s a lot stronger than you is holding you down. Don’t fight him off. Pull his face down toward yours, clamp your mouth over one of his eyes—and suck the eye right out of his head.”

  A few students made grossed-out faces. One of them, a guy, said, “Can you really do that? Suck it out with your mouth?”

  “It’s not the most pleasant procedure, but yes, you can. The eyes aren’t affixed to their sockets with superglue. They come out surprisingly easily. And—take it from a man who knows—your opponent will be surprised.”

  Laughter. Good. My arrogant teacher persona was working, and a rapport was building. Another student asked, “Have you ever done that to somebody?”

  “It’s not something I do socially, but yeah. I have.”

  It wasn’t something I’d been taught how to do. It had never even been suggested to me. It was something I’d discovered by accident.

  For more than a year, I’d stopped being human. I was just starting to be human again. This was about three months before I left the army. It was just after the Gulf War, and I was doing my best to convince everybody that I was gay and that I thought Saddam Hussein was the greatest man who’d ever lived. Neither was true, but it was the only way I could think of to get myself discharged.

  I had to be careful, though. The regulations were tricky. In time of war, or the threat of war, saying you were gay wouldn’t automatically get you out of the military. It’d get you out of active service, all right—but there was a good chance that they’d put you in a military prison as punishment for lying about your sexual orientation—claiming you were straight—in the first place. This wasn’t so much to penalize faggots as to scare straights out of claiming to be gay to avoid getting killed in some pointless war.

  So, instead of putting on a dress and making a pass at my commanding officer, I was more subtle. Supposedly in confidence, I told the guys with the biggest mouths on the base that I was having doubts about my sexuality. To anyone who would listen, I expressed the opinion that America was a corrupt and evil empire, and the only hope for our nation’s moral redemption lay in surrendering to Iraq.

  These sentiments failed to endear me to the neo-Nazis on the base. The military has never been a hotbed of liberalism, but only recently had it become acceptable to be openly Nazi. There was a white supremacist group on the base that had about twenty members. They were allowed to hang swastikas and other memorabilia on the walls, the authorities turning a blind eye to it. I never got close enough to their little party to figure out the group dynamic, but their leader seemed to be a guy named Ted Warner.

  He was about my age. He’d served in Desert Storm too, but I hadn’t met him. The first time he ever spoke to me was when I was singing the praises of Saddam
Hussein, and he interrupted me by saying, “Is it true you’re a fag?”

  “Give me a kiss and I’ll tell you,” I said.

  He gave me no warning, just threw the punch straight. He was good. But I still blocked it and smacked him in the face with a backfist. He staggered, but he stayed on his feet. “Okay, how about a blow job, then?” I said.

  He started to come after me again, but some of the other guys got in between us. They’d have relished seeing a fight, but he was wobbly from the punch I’d given him and they knew my next move would have been the end of it. Not all of the guys were Nazis—at least I hope they weren’t—but they didn’t want to see a regular guy like him beaten by a crazed unpatriotic fudge-packer like me.

  “You’re fucking dead,” Warner informed me.

  “Yeah? I don’t feel so bad.”

  “You will.”

  I wasn’t worried. I knew I had a reputation that frightened people. I knew Warner wouldn’t present much of a problem for me one-on-one, and I didn’t think he’d be able to find anybody willing to help him out.

  I’ve been wrong before.

  His revenge plan was shaped with the peculiar logic of the fascist—since he hated fags, he decided to demonstrate his homophobia and all-round manliness by rounding up the rest of his crew and getting them to help him rape me.

  They waited for me in the gym. I stepped through the doorway, and they jumped me before I could turn the light on. My legs were kicked from under me, and they threw themselves on top of me as I went down. I hit the floor under the weight of three men.

  The light came on, but I couldn’t see much; my face was being pushed into the floor by someone’s boot. Then I heard Warner’s voice. “Ease up. I don’t want him to pass out. I want him to feel it. But for chrissakes hold him. You let him get so much as a hand loose, he’s liable to kill you with it.”

  They hoisted me to my feet. There was nothing I could do about it. There was a strong man assigned to each of my arms and legs. All I could move was my head.

  I was wearing a T-shirt and sweatpants. Someone pulled the pants down and shoved KY jelly between my clenched asscheeks. Warner was telling me that I was about to learn what happens to fags who don’t respect their superiors.

  I felt my stomach go into spasms, and I felt like crying. Then, as always when I was this scared, I didn’t feel anything. “I guess your mother wasn’t available,” I said.

  “Oh, you’re gonna learn to love me,” said Warner. His men laughed. Then I felt his hard cock rubbing against me.

  I pulled to my right, and the guy holding my left arm pulled me back. When I felt him pull, I pushed, going toward him, aiming to head-butt him in the face. The guy who had my right arm kept me from getting enough force behind it to do any damage, so instead I lunged like an attack dog, trying to grab the guy’s face with my teeth. I was aiming for his nose, but he moved and my jaws closed on his eyebrow. I moved down, covering his eye with my mouth, biting, sucking.

  Then his eye was in my mouth, a string of bloody nerves dangling from my lips. I couldn’t believe how easily it came out. Even the feel and taste of it wouldn’t have convinced me if I hadn’t been looking straight into his fountaining red socket as I listened to him scream.

  As soon as he let go of me, I swung the heel of my free hand into the ear of the guy holding my right arm, and he went down hard, starting to hyperventilate. I turned at the waist and with both hands I grabbed Warner by the hair. I drove the top of my head into his face four times, and felt the target get softer and wetter with each impact. The guys who’d been holding my legs let go and ran for the door, accompanied by a couple of onlookers. I let Warner fall. I spat out the eye. The guy I’d taken it from was on his knees, still screaming. I kicked him in the head and he shut up. The other guy, the one with the newly shattered eardrum, was running toward the door. I went after him, but my legs were weak and shaky and I didn’t catch him. My hair was soaked in Warner’s blood, and it was running down my face and neck.

  I walked carefully back to Warner, and I stomped him until he lay in a pool of red piss. Then I sat down on a bench and began to shake so violently I could hear my teeth chatter.

  After the class, we all went inside the house. I helped Laurie make coffee and tea. I chatted with the students for a while. Their reactions to the class seemed varied—some were shocked by what I’d taught them, others couldn’t wait to go and suck somebody’s eye out.

  When the last of the students had left, Laurie and I sat in meditation for a half-hour. Then I left, saying I’d come to the gig she was playing the following night. I drove along Rural until it became Scottsdale Road. Some people I knew were playing at Sutter’s Gold that night. I pulled into the parking lot, turned off the engine and lights. But I didn’t get out of the car. I sat there for a minute or two, trying to decide whether to go in or not. I started the engine again, pulled out of the lot.

  I took the long way home, following Scottsdale to Camelback, then Camelback to Seventh and Seventh to Bethany Home, where I lived. There was a dim, flickering light coming from the window of my apartment. I unlocked the door and went in. Janine was lying on the couch, watching TV in the dark. She wore shorts and a tank top and was barefoot.

  She used the remote to shut off the volume on the TV. “Hey,” she said.

  “Hey.”

  “How’re you doing?”

  “Wiped out,” I said. “How about you?”

  “I’m okay.” She turned off the TV. Then she stood up. She put her arms around me. “God, you stink.”

  “I’ll bet.”

  “You’d better take a shower.”

  “I think I’ll take a bath.”

  “I’ll cook something while you’re doing it.”

  “Great. Thanks.”

  I expected her to let go of me then, but she didn’t. She kissed my mouth, and I realized what she wanted, realized that she’d been waiting for me to come home. She kept kissing me as she pulled down my shorts. I was so tired I just stood there, both of us together in the light that trickled between the blinds.

  Our tongues touched delicately as she took my cock in her hand. She ran her tongue from my mouth to my ear. Her breathing was excited and heavy, though I knew she might be exaggerating it for my benefit. She stroked my cock, pulling the foreskin up and down, until I said, “If I don’t lie down I’m going to fall down.”

  She pushed me toward the couch, and I sat on it. She knelt on the floor between my legs and took hold of my cock again. I looked at her, the blonde curls falling everywhere, her long limbs and muscles. I saw her in silhouette, but I knew enough to fill in the blanks and I sighed as I came in her hand.

  I reached for her shorts, but she stopped me by taking my hands. “Later,” she said. “You’re tired and you need to eat. Let’s feed you first.”

  She stood up and turned on a lamp. I closed my eyes against the sudden glare of light. I got up and hurried to the bathroom before my come could dribble off my stomach. I grabbed a piece of toilet paper and wiped my stomach and the head of my cock.

  I pulled my shorts up and went to the kitchenette. Janine was chopping avocados in half. “Stuffed avocados okay?” she said.

  “Yeah. I’ll help you.”

  “No need.”

  “It’s okay. I feel like it. If I sit down while I wait to eat, I’ll just fall asleep.”

  Miles Davis played on the stereo. I chopped garlic and cheese, scooped the avocados out of their skins and mashed them while Janine scrambled salad in a bowl. I put the puréed avocados back in their skins, mixed with the garlic and cheese. Then I put them in the oven.

  I got a bottle of water from the fridge. “Pour me some,” said Janine. I did. Then we sat on the couch and I drank the rest of the bottle and she nudged me anytime I started to doze off. When the avocados were ready, we ate them with the salad. We didn’t say much. Comfortable silence. She sat with my legs in her lap.

  I took a bath, then we went to bed. I had just about enough en
ergy left to finger her until she came. Then I slept.

  TWO

  Janine was a trust fund baby. I was a trailer park kid, and in the months before we met I didn’t even have a trailer. I was living out of my car. After getting out of uniform, I’d lived in the complex at Park Lee, but within a few months I’d run out of money and I still had no job. I couldn’t make rent on the place, so I got evicted.

  I’d bought the car the week after I’d come back to Phoenix. I couldn’t really afford it, but if you live in Phoenix you need a car. It was a 1976 Oldsmobile Cutlass that belonged to one of my neighbors. It looked like a wreck and it guzzled gas like you wouldn’t believe, but its engine was in surprisingly good shape and it ran pretty well. My neighbor sold it to me for eight hundred, which was a little bit more than it was worth, but he needed the money and couldn’t sell it for less, and I was tired of asking people for rides.

  Living in the car wasn’t much weirder for me than living in the apartment. I’d spent nearly fifteen years in the army and didn’t know anything about civilian life. I’d joined the army as a kid because I didn’t know what else to do. That was my reason for joining, but not for staying for almost a decade. I stayed because I liked being a soldier, and still consider it an honorable profession. Pacifism is a beautiful ideal, but if you say no to fighting then you say yes to concentration camps, torture, oppression. You say yes to Auschwitz and Dachau. You can’t go up to an Adolf Hitler or Idi Amin and say, “Look, this isn’t very nice. Why don’t you knock it off?” You’re going to need guns to shoot them with and bombs to drop on them if you’re going to stop what they’re doing.

  But to be a soldier with any dignity, you have to believe in the things for which you’re risking your life and taking away other people’s lives. And I didn’t anymore. I didn’t feel like a warrior defending my country—I felt like a member of a uniformed gang, hired to further the interests of a bunch of besuited racketeers. In the Gulf, many of us learned that you don’t feel heroic killing or being maimed in a petty, manufactured war. You feel like a murderer or a fool.