Robby threaded the new tape onto the machine.
Robby and I smoked. The three of us were having a beautiful time in Eden. We laughed, and I drew pictures of Shann and Robby in their jumpsuits, dancing together.
I asked Robby to recite Dulce Et Decorum Est, and he did. It was beautiful. I wanted to watch Robby kiss Shann. I wanted Robby to kiss her the real way, like I would, but there was no way Robby would just do something like that.
The song that played was called Ventilator Blues.
Everybody walking ’round
Everybody trying to step on their Creator
SOMETHING ALWAYS HAPPENS WHILE SOMEONE ELSE DANCES
HERE IS WHAT happened while Shann and Robby danced together, and I fantasized about watching Robby put his tongue in Shann’s mouth:
Johnny McKeon stepped out into the alley at Grasshopper Jungle. Johnny carried a cardboard banana box someone had left behind in the garage of a foreclosed home in Ealing.
Johnny McKeon intended to toss the garbage into the same dumpster that Hungry Jack ate from at least once per week.
Hungry Jack’s real name was Charles R. Hoofard. Charles R. Hoofard was born in Indiana and had served in the United States Army in Vietnam, where he participated in the extermination of an entire village of women, children, and elderly people. Hungry Jack was now a claw-armed six-foot-tall praying mantis thing, and he was waiting in line to fuck Eileen Pope.
Eileen Pope had been breeding all day and she was near exhaustion. Eileen Pope was also a claw-armed six-foot-tall praying mantis that had just eaten her most recent sexual partner, the Hoover Boy named Devin Stoddard. Devin Stoddard kneed me in the balls on the previous Friday when he and his friends beat me and Robby Brees up for being queers.
I was pretty sure I was not exactly queer.
But I was not certain.
Devin Stoddard was born in Crete, Nebraska. He once got fired from a part-time job bagging groceries at the Hy-Vee for smoking marijuana in a parked car when he was supposed to be gathering shopping carts.
At that moment, Eileen Pope’s husband, Travis Pope, was inside The Pancake House, which looked as though it had been fire-hosed with blood and ground meat.
Travis Pope ate nine people inside The Pancake House.
It was a terrible mess.
Travis Pope had been very hungry after fucking Eileen all day long, ever since they had hatched out in the wreckage of Travis’s Nissan truck. Travis Pope also enjoyed the sugary taste of spilled imitation-maple-flavored syrup on raw human beings.
Travis Pope had never been a blueberry syrup man.
The imitation-maple-flavored syrup served by The Pancake House was made in New Jersey.
At the same time, Johnny McKeon opened the back door to From Attic to Seller Consignment Store, Eileen Pope clamped her four bristly upper arms into the woven fabric on the sofa in Grasshopper Jungle while Grant Wallace impregnated her over and over and over.
Hungry Jack and the two remaining Hoover Boys, who were also now claw-armed six-foot-tall praying mantises, postured and hissed with their toothy arms erect, sparring over who would get to deposit his semen inside Eileen Pope next.
Eileen Pope was nearly finished getting pregnant. She was as fertilized as a genetically modified cornfield in Kansas, and was getting ready to lay millions of squirming eggs. Eileen Pope was still hungry, too.
Eileen Pope decided she would eat Grant Wallace soon, and then she could go find a dark, protected place to build her foaming mass of eggs.
Johnny McKeon did not notice the breeding swarm of bugs as he walked out into Grasshopper Jungle carrying his box of refuse.
The box Johnny carried was full of VHS porno movies.
The movies were made in a place called the San Fernando Valley, which is near Los Angeles, California.
Johnny McKeon did not enjoy watching pornography anymore. He had grown out of that preoccupation. Johnny would have given the tapes to Ollie Jungfrau, but Ollie stayed home from work at Tipsy Cricket Liquors that day.
Ollie was lucky.
Ollie Jungfrau would have wanted those movies. Ollie was a connoisseur of porn, and he especially enjoyed sex films from the 1980s, which was when these particular ones had been made.
It was just past 8:00 on Thursday evening.
Ingrid was still sleeping beneath the desk in my bedroom.
Will Wallace was driving home from the Tally-Ho! in Waterloo. Will Wallace was drunk. He glanced at himself repeatedly in his rearview mirror, and he thought about the young man from Vinton, Iowa, who had been hitting on him during happy hour at the Tally-Ho!
The man who’d been hitting on Will Wallace was a paramedic. He was handsome and lonely. Will Wallace wondered what it would be like if he tried being queer. He had never experimented when he was a teenager, but he tried to imagine himself doing something sexual with the handsome young paramedic from Vinton. Will Wallace was drunk and excited by the thought. He was very horny by the time he got to Ealing. Will knew what he would do to his wife as soon as he got the chance.
Will Wallace had a vasectomy.
He thought about buying some condoms at Tipsy Cricket Liquors, just in case he ever got especially drunk and daring with anyone in Waterloo.
Will Wallace tried calling home on his cell phone, but there was no answer. Sometimes his wife got angry at him for coming home drunk after hanging out at Waterloo, Iowa’s one and only gay bar. Will assumed his wife was not answering her phone because she was mad at him. The actual reason she was not picking up her phone was that she had been eaten by Grant Wallace, who was at one time Will’s son.
Will Wallace decided to make amends for flirting with a gay man. He stopped off at Satan’s Pizza and ordered a surprise Stanpreme for his wife and children. For dessert, he thought his wife, whose name was Dorothy, would like something sweet and alcoholic. So Will Wallace drove across the street to Tipsy Cricket Liquors, where he planned to buy some condoms for himself, and coffee liqueur and vanilla ice cream for Dorothy Wallace.
It was not such a good idea.
Here is what happened at Grasshopper Jungle while I watched and dreamed about Shann and Robby dancing together:
Johnny McKeon dropped his box of VHS pornos at his feet. He said something like What the hey? or Ain’t that strange? when he saw the six-foot-tall bugs that buzzed and vibrated around the abandoned sofa in the alley.
Johnny McKeon never cussed.
Eileen Pope was crunching her way down through Grant Wallace’s triangular head. Grant was still pumping his semen into her oviduct and his pinchers clamped rigidly into Eileen’s thorax. One of Grant Wallace’s arms broke off and it flexed, opened and closed, opened and closed, wriggling in the stew of piss and insect semen on the asphalt of Grasshopper Jungle.
Tyler Jacobson, one of the other Hoover Boys who was now a six-foot-tall, tooth-armed monster, picked up Grant Wallace’s twitching arm and began eating it like a massive stalk of celery. Roger Baird, the remaining Hoover Boy bug, attempted to mount Eileen Pope and impregnate her as she ate Grant Wallace, who was also still joined with Eileen in the final act of making future clusters of little Grant Wallace larvae inside her.
Hungry Jack rotated his head toward the sound of the crashing box of porno tapes. His arms spiked high and his useless wings flared out from the carapace coverings along his backside. It was an impressive and threatening pose for a large male mantis. Then Hungry Jack came scuttling straight across the alley at Johnny McKeon.
Johnny probably said What the hey? again and fell back through the open door to From Attic to Seller Consignment Store.
Will Wallace was just pulling up to the front of Tipsy Cricket Liquors. He was horny and drunk, and the inside of his Volvo smelled like a Stanpreme. He did not even notice Travis Pope standing in front of The Pancake House. Will Wallace just took Travis Pope for someone having a
cigarette break, as opposed to someone who had been transformed by Contained MI Plague Strain 412E into a gigantic carnivorous bug that was more powerful than a wild tiger.
By the time Will Wallace’s eye caught hold of the unnatural form of Travis Pope, he was already within striking range of Travis’s lightning-fast barbed arms. Travis Pope wasn’t exactly hungry, but prey excited him as much as Eileen Pope’s oviduct did.
Travis fired his clawed arms at Will Wallace and crushed Will’s rib cage between them. Will Wallace did not even have time to gasp.
Travis carried Will Wallace, who thrashed and kicked uselessly, into The Pancake House. Travis Pope smeared Will Wallace’s hair through a puddle of imitation-maple-flavored syrup. Then Travis ate him like a piece of French toast.
Johnny McKeon managed to slam shut the thick, solid-core door that opened from his secondhand store onto the back alley at Grasshopper Jungle. Johnny had stumbled upon the scene of cannibalistic bugs as big as grizzly bears that fucked and ate at the same time, which were the two things that bugs like to do.
Hungry Jack was a mere half second too slow to catch Johnny McKeon. As Johnny bolted shut the door, Hungry Jack punched his spiked arms into the wood. The barbs on Hungry Jack’s arms bored two-thirds of the way through the door.
Bugs are not smart.
Hungry Jack could have easily hammered the door into toothpicks.
As soon as the door was shut, Hungry Jack forgot all about Johnny McKeon. Although he knew he was still hungry, Hungry Jack went back to wait on another turn with Eileen Pope.
Eileen Pope and the two surviving Hoover Boys were gone.
Hungry Jack sniffed and sniffed at the air, trying to smell her, but Eileen Pope was no longer emitting the powerful hormones that had attracted him and the other males in the first place.
Johnny McKeon was smart.
Since the break-in at Tipsy Cricket Liquors the previous Friday, Johnny had installed an alarm system that connected his businesses to the Iowa State Patrol.
Johnny McKeon activated his alarm.
The Iowa State Patrol, which operated from a substation in Waterloo, was alerted to an emergency at the Ealing Mall. A patrol car with a state trooper from Waterloo was on its way.
It was not a good idea.
At that moment, it was early morning in Germany. My brother, Eric Szerba, was lying on his back in a hospital bed. An intravenous needle pumped drugs and fluids into his arm, and other things had been taped to his body to tell whether or not Eric Szerba was still alive.
A thin plastic tube had been inserted into the opening of Eric Szerba’s penis so he could urinate.
The tube was manufactured in Ohio.
It was called a catheter, as opposed to a Nightingale.
Eric pushed numbers on the display of a cell phone. Eric Szerba was calling me, but I left my phone inside my house. Eric Szerba would not have known that cell phones do not work in Eden.
Eric Szerba was also crying.
Ingrid rolled herself out from her place at my desk. She went across the room and pulled a pair of my discarded blue Iowa plaid boxers out from under the bed. She sniffed the boxers and rested her damp nose in them. This is what Ingrid did sometimes when she was lonely, or when she needed to take her mind off shitting.
It was Ingrid’s silent way of kissing me.
Ah Wong Sing, who most people called Louis, kissed Connie Brees one last time before leaving the Del Vista Arms. Connie was in the shower. She was standing naked in the same grimy tub where I took a shower Tuesday before school. I had also vomited in that same bathroom.
Louis pulled the yellowed curtain back and looked at Connie Brees. He wanted to have sex again, but Connie told him no because her son would probably be home any minute now.
Connie Brees had to get ready for work.
She took two Xanax as soon as Ah Wong Sing left the apartment.
When the song finished playing, Shann kissed Robby and told him thank you for dancing.
It was not the kind of kiss I hoped to see. Shann kissed the side of Robby’s cheek. I stared at Robby’s perfect neck and jaw. Shann’s breasts looked especially full and heavy beneath the shimmer of her jumpsuit. Robby was a little embarrassed. He knew what I was thinking.
Robby always knew what I was thinking.
Robby Brees turned red when Shann kissed him.
I lit a cigarette.
LUCKY, IN POLISH BOY NAMES
GOOD BOOKS ARE about everything.
This is my history.
Andrzej Szczerba and Herman Weinbach became great friends.
Andrzej Szczerba was also my great-grandfather.
After they left the soup kitchen in Ames, Andrzej Szczerba and Herman Weinbach walked through the night. They tried to find a place where they could sleep and stay warm. They fed bread crumbs to Baby, who almost immediately began to impersonate Herman Weinbach.
Herman habitually used expressions like Ach! And Nu?
Baby began saying Ach and Nu, too. Andrzej thought it was funny.
The boys believed they were headed toward California, but the following day they took a ride from a family whose pickup truck had been loaded with all their household belongings, and Herman Weinbach and Andrzej Szczerba ended up at an abandoned farm outside of a place called Midvale, which was also in Iowa.
Nobody even knew the boys had moved themselves into the place.
They lived there together, with Baby, a talking European starling, for nearly a year. On their third night in the abandoned farmhouse, Andrzej Szczerba and Herman Weinbach slept together.
Herman Weinbach was homosexual.
At first, Andrzej found the situation to be awkward and frustrating.
What Herman Weinbach and Andrzej Szczerba did together evolved into something substantially more than an experiment. So Andrzej was confused, very much like his great-grandson, who would also be named Andrzej. But Andrzej Szczerba also enjoyed the closeness of sleeping with Herman Weinbach.
Andrzej had never kissed any person other than his mother, Eva Nightingale, and his father, Krzys Szczerba, in his entire life. Young Andrzej enjoyed kissing Herman Weinbach very much. Herman Weinbach was experienced, and Andrzej felt tremendous pleasure and satisfaction in sharing the sex the two of them enjoyed together.
Nobody knew anything about Andrzej and Herman.
They fell as deeply in love with each other as anyone in the entire history of mankind.
That is the truth.
Andrzej loved Herman, but he told him he would never become a Communist.
Herman Weinbach laughed about that.
Baby imitated everything the boys said to each other.
Baby said, Ach! Being a Communist homosexual Jew in Iowa is like being a bird that speaks Polish. And Baby also said, I believe I am in love with you, Herman Weinbach and I love you with all of my heart, Andrzej Szczerba.
The boys hunted and scrounged, sometimes begging for food to stay alive. They were very happy together in Midvale. Nobody bothered them at all. Baby flew around the house with them, and every night Andrzej and Herman slept together in their lovers’ bed. They had found the bed in the home’s attic on the morning after their initial experiment. They had pulled the bed down to the home’s living room so they could sleep beside the fireplace, where they burned furniture and sometimes even the doors from kitchen cupboards to stay warm.
They loved each other.
In January of 1934, Herman Weinbach became ill with pneumonia. He died while Andrzej held him in bed.
Andrzej Szczerba was completely lost without Herman.
Andrzej asked the bird, What am I going to do, Baby?
Andrzej cried for days and days without leaving the house. Finally, Andrzej Szczerba wrapped Herman Weinbach’s gray body in their bedclothes and he carried his friend out into the frozen w
inter.
Baby flitted around Andrzej Szczerba and lit on his collar or atop his head as the boy toiled at digging Herman Weinbach’s grave.
All the while the bird sang out about how much Herman loved Andrzej, and vice versa. Baby said things that were sexual and suggestive, too—things the boys sometimes said to each other openly in the solitude of their squatter’s home.
Andrzej Szczerba was like me in many ways. He was confused and troubled by things, and he loved his friend as much as it was possible to love anyone. But there were those things that set Andrzej Szerba apart from me, too.
This is what happened:
Andrzej knew he had to leave Midvale after he buried Herman Weinbach on the old farm. Maybe it was that he was crazy with grief. I believe that is the truth. Andrzej knew he could not keep Baby with him any longer. Baby said too many things that could make problems for a young man in Iowa in 1934. Andrzej Szczerba was eighteen years old in 1934.
Andrzej Szczerba killed his bird and left the farmhouse in Midvale, Iowa, on the same evening he buried Herman Weinbach’s body in a ruined cornfield.
That spring, Andrzej Szczerba found himself in Iowa City. He was still greatly tormented over the things he had done with Herman Weinbach, and about losing everything he had ever loved.
Andrzej Szczerba needed to prove something to himself.
In this way, he was very much like me.
He found a job cleaning up at a butcher’s shop. There, Andrzej met a young woman named Phoebe Hildebrandt. Phoebe Hildebrandt was plain and uninteresting at seventeen years of age. Her father was the butcher who had hired Andrzej to clean.
They knew my great-grandfather as Andrew Szerba.
Phoebe Hildebrandt and her father, whose name was Edmund, both took pity on Andrew because of his age, the softness of his features, and how quiet and sad the boy was. They never knew anything about Andrew’s love for a boy named Herman Weinbach.
Andrew Szerba, whose Polish name was my name, Andrzej, also had bags under his eyes.