The Long Hard Road Out of Hell

when I held it up closer to the light, I noticed that it had legs—and they were moving. I screamed in shock and disgust. Then I smashed it into the sink, but it didn’t splatter like I thought it would. It crunched like a little shellfish. Not knowing any better, I brought it to my mother and asked her what it was.
    â€œOh, well, you’ve got lice,” she sighed good-naturedly. “You probably picked it up from the tanning bed.”
    As shameful as this is to admit, I was going for indoor tans regularly at the time. I had a terrible complexion—my face was literally swollen with acne—and the dermatologist told me there was a new type of tanning bed that would dry out my skin and help my social life.
    My mother was clearly in denial that her young son had been fucking girls and getting crabs. Even my father, who always promised that the day I got laid we were going to celebrate with a bottle of champagne he had tucked away while working at Kmart, didn’t really want to admit it. This was mainly because ever since I had discovered tits in junior high, he had been wanting to take me to a prostitute to lose my virginity. So I just played along with the tanning bed story.
    My mother bought me medicine for body lice, but in the privacy of my bathroom I shaved off all my pubic hair and took care of the crabs myself. (At the time, shaving off body hair was still unusual to me.)
    As far as I know, I’ve never had another venereal disease since then. And, to the best of my knowledge, my parents still think I’m a virgin.
CHARMING THE WORM
    John Crowell and I stood on top of the hill in front of his house, taking turns swigging out of a bottle of Mad Dog 20/20 that we had conned an older kid into buying for us. We had been there for at least an hour, getting wasted and gazing out at the sleepy farmland around us, at the sky bruised and swollen with the threat of rain, and at the occasional automobile passing by on its way to civilization. We had fallen into a tipsy, self-satisfied daze when suddenly there was an explosion of gravel.
    Engulfed in a cloud of dust, a green GTO veered recklessly into the driveway and skidded to a halt. The door slowly opened, and a black-booted foot struck the ground. A big head appeared above the door, with an enormous skull stretching the skin taut. His hair was curly and disheveled. The eyes sunken deep into his head blazed like pinpoints in the center of two dark circles. As he stepped away, I noticed that, like Richard Ramirez, the Night Stalker, his hands, feet and torso were oversized and elongated. He wore a denim jacket emblazoned on the back with the universal symbol of rebellion: a pot leaf.
    With his right hand, he pulled a gun out of the waistband of his pants. He raised his arm wildly into the air and squeezed out shot after shot, each kickback jerking his arm further in our direction. When the chamber was empty, he strode toward us. As I stood there stunned, he shoved me backward onto the ground, pushed John and grabbed the bottle of Mad Dog, draining it in seconds and throwing it into the grass. Wiping his mouth on a denim sleeve, he muttered something that sounded like lyrics from Ozzy Osbourne’s “Suicide Solution” and strode into the house.
    â€œThat’s my brother, dude,” John said, his face, pale with fear moments ago, now glowing proudly.
    We followed his brother upstairs and watched as he slammed shut his bedroom door and locked it. John wasn’t allowed to set foot in his brother’s room under penalty of serious pain. But he knew what went on in there: black magic, heavy metal, self-mutilation and conspicuous drug consumption. Like my grandfather’s basement, the room represented both my fears and my desires. And though I was frightened, I wanted nothing more than to see what was inside.
    In hopes that his brother would leave the house later that night, John and I walked outside to his barn—or at least the wooden skeleton of what had once been a barn—where we had stashed a bottle of Southern Comfort.
    â€œYou wanna see something really cool?” John asked.
    â€œSure,” I nodded. I was always up for anything cool, especially if John deemed it so.
    â€œBut you gotta fucking promise not to say a word to fucking anyone.”
    â€œI promise.”
    â€œPromises aren’t good enough,” John snapped. “I want you to swear on your fucking mother’s… No. I want