Violets & Vitriol

By Christiaan A. Pasquale

My third collection of poems and short stories, covering everything from my lurid and misspent youth, to my adventures as a young man, making his way in the City of Angels. Its temptations, its allure, its folly and its chaos. Stranger still, because it was all too real, and happened just as I told it here in this book. I've got nothing to hide, do you?

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Jun 1, 2016
• ISBN: 9781483572222

Book preview

eyes.

NADINE~

CHAPTER 1

We never fought. It’s funny but that is the first thing I always remember when I think of her. I guess because I’ve never been with another woman since then, whom I didn’t have at least one fight with.

Not that she was a woman, anymore than I was a man. We were neither. We were children, playing at being grown up. I guess we were just lucky the fact that people fight in relationships, hadn’t occurred to us. Then again, our parents fought. Maybe we were just lost in a world where people in love were simply that…in love. Fight about what? Lost in a world of alleyway kisses, late afternoons with the curtains drawn shut, the air conditioning humming on the windowsill. Parents at work, the palms dancing on the soft, faint, jasmine breeze of summer. A world of no bills, no jobs, no taxes to pay, no foresight for the future, because the future was too far off to care about. A world that we clung to for dear life, at the thought of ever having to lose it. Which we somehow knew we would one day.

I met her through her cousins, Dre and Dante Dupar. They moved into a house two doors down from us. I remember their father, Larry, and his brother Terry, as they loaded their furniture into their new house that first day. They were big black men with natural haircuts, small Afros. They were the first black family to live on our block I’m sure, since our tract was built in the late 40’s. They had huge heads and their bellies were big and hanging over their belts. They were cheerful and loud. So loud we could hear their every word from our driveway, where we watched them intently.

Larry was a chocolate color, around 6’ 2", I’d say, 250 pounds. Terry…. looked like a lion. He was light skinned; his hair was longer than Larry’s and wilder, and a bit red. His eyes were yellow. And though I know a lion’s eyes aren’t yellow…Terry’s were still the eyes of a lion.

Kevin was a friend of mine that lived down the block. He was a feral, wild animal of a kid. He was the only kid my age that lived on our block, so our hanging out was more a matter of convenience than anything else.

Lets call them niggers! barked Kevin in one of his many sugar induced psychoses, jumping up and down and snapping his teeth together click click click like some kind of mad dog. His eyes were small and brown and he was always shirtless and barefoot. His teeth were often stained red or purple from the candy that his mother was always carelessly giving him money to buy at the liquor store across the street. ’Anything to shut him up’ was probably her thinking.

That’s not cool man, I said. I didn’t have anything against them for being black. I liked black people. The few I knew at the time were cool and fun to be around. I hadn’t known too many at that age, as our neighborhood was comprised mostly of Whites, Hispanics and Asians.

Come on faggot! Let’s call them black niggers! screeched Kevin. His face was red and his teeth were clenched. He grabbed my arm and we ran over to a big tree in the neighbor’s yard next to their house and hid behind it. The trunk of the tree was actually twin trunks that grew in equal size from straight out of the ground and up at least thirty feet. I hid behind one trunk and Kevin behind the other. There was a big, yet well manicured hedge that separated the two yards that also hid us from Tom and Larry’s sight. I don’t know why I went along with it all. Out of a lack of security in myself mostly. I didn’t like feeling lonely as a kid and would go along with some seriously stupid shit in order to avoid being alone and bored.

Kevin started in first. Get out of here, niggers! he yelled in a cowardly, giggling voice.

I saw Larry look around with a puzzled look on his face. He glanced over his shoulder at Terry who was carrying in some boxes. Did you hear that shit, nigga? he said quietly to Terry, who stopped in his tracks and sat the boxes down. They looked around with their hands on their hips and shook their heads at each other as if to say ’Not this shit again’. They had been down this road before, evidently.

Kevin kicked me in the leg and told me to go next. I peaked out from behind the tree and yelled Fuckin’ niggers!

Kevin laughed out loud. Very loud in fact, blowing our cover as Larry glanced our direction and saw my head dipping quickly back behind the tree. I glanced out again quickly to see Terry and Larry starting over to us. We squatted down and got real quiet. Our faces were panicked, as we had nowhere to run without being spotted. Just as Tom and Larry got to right in front of the tree, Kevin shoved me from behind it and yelled, HE DID IT!

I fell to the grass with my face flush with embarrassment and Terry and Larry glaring down at me. Larry spoke first.

Hey little man, we don’t play that nigger shit! His face was stern but not completely serious. He had a sort of tongue in cheek expression to him. He had a lively gleam in his eye and a slight smirk.

We cool people if you get a chance to know us. We got young sons about your age and they real nice kids, okay?

Okay, I’m sorry, I said. Kevin just bounced around the three of us standing there, giggling and baring his pointed, candy stained teeth. Terry and Larry looked at him with an expression of wonder and disgust.

Well, Dre and Dante will be coming tomorrow if you want stop in and meet em’,

Okay, that sounds cool, I said, still red faced and feeling ashamed. They seemed like such nice people and they didn’t have to be. They had every right to wring our little white necks. Kevin just bounced and taunted them as they walked back to their yard to finish their move. They simply ignored him and got back to the task at hand.

CHAPTER 2

The next day I saw a couple kids riding their bikes in front of our house on the street. Dre was the younger of the two. His hair was slicked back straight on top and long and bunched up at the back of his neck in a bushel of curls. Dante was the older of them and was tall and gangly and awkward. The dirt bike he was riding was far too small for him. He had a tuft of curls that sat right on top of his head, while the sides and back were all but shaved off. He had a look of dullness in his eyes, kind of like someone who had undergone a lobotomy but with a bright and smiling face. A smile that seemed permanently fixed there, at least in my memories of him.

I grabbed my skateboard out of the garage and started down the driveway into the street. Dre was riding his dirt bike toward me. I saw him extend his hand out to his side and say Hi-five, cool skate board! I rode toward him and raised my hand up to smack his. PAT! It was a good loud one! He rode down to the end of the block and turned around and rode fast toward me and pulled a wheelie. He rode a good thirty or forty yards on his back wheel and spun by me again for another Hi-five, which I enthusiastically delivered. Dante rolled up and introduced himself.

Our dad is building a tree house in our back yard. You want to join our club and hang out in it with us?

Oh yeah I do! That sounds great! I had never been in a tree house. We had a giant palm tree in our back yard, not the best species for building tree houses in, however many times I may have begged my uncles to try.

The brothers explained that their mother was Mexican, which I could almost tell by their wavy hair and light mocha colored skin and Indian looking noses. They hailed from Denver and had never come to California before. Dre had an AC/DC shirt on and raved and about heavy metal all the time. He told me he had gone to a Judas Priest concert in Denver and said they beheaded a midget with a guillotine on stage. He assured me that it was very real. I was right up in the front row and I looked right into his midget eyes as his head rolled right over to where we were standing! he told me with an expression of glee and horror.

Dante liked Ska and had a Madness poster in his room. He would play their tape all the time and would skank to One Step Beyond in heavy and regular rotation. We would ride our bikes through the big alley behind our house and jump our skateboards off the loading ramps behind the grocery store. Dre would sometimes steel the roaches out of his parents’ ashtrays and we would hide in the alley while he and Dre would puff away at the resin soaked embers, often using a safety pin to hold them up to their lips, as you would burn your fingers were you to try and hold them. I was too scared to smoke with them. My Catholic grandmother and teachers at school scared me into believing that you could overdose or even go permanently mad from a single puff of the wrong batch of weed.

Come on, you fuckin’ pussy! Smoke this shit! said Dre, with his best menacing, heavy metal face. It feels like a demon is chewing on your brain man…. HAHAHAHAHAAA!! I failed to see why that would be desirable. So in spite of their prodding, I refrained.

Our favorite cartoon was the anime classic G-FORCE. We would pretend to be the bird like, wing cloaked, costumed galaxy defenders. We would ride our bikes to the back wall that lined the alley way behind our house and would come bounding over it, climbing on top of a shiny black oil drum to make our way to the top, screaming G-FORCE! as we threw our legs over and into the yard. Those years, (the 5th grade) clinging to the imaginary world. The world of, maybe there is a Santa (but probably not) Maybe we can build a spaceship (but probably not) Maybe our G.I. Joes came to life in our toy boxes at night…but no, not really. It was leaving us. The lie of all that. Those lies that our parents told to hide us from the real terror of life. The lies that they probably wanted to believe themselves, if only they could.

What was seeping in to take its place was the prospects of the big yard at school, where small tits blossomed under pink t-shirts and thighs that were growing strong and thick. Hair that grew in new places. Full pouting lips and smells, oh the smells. New sweat, and make up and hairspray. The new smell of prepubescent lust, and danger, adult danger. Fist fights and broken teeth and fractured ankles. Bigger boys could do bigger damage. We had to be ready. We had to learn our bodies and get our style down. It was the horizon of a bigger and harsher and at the very least, a very exciting new world. And the moon that shone above it was a red one, as red as blood.

CHAPTER 3

One day we were in the tree house looking at a porno magazine we found sticking out from underneath the dumpster behind Sav-On. It was crumpled and many of the pages were stuck together. The women had full breasts and hairy pussies. They posed next to rock formations and water falls. Their smiles were warm and inviting. They seemed so happily naked and comfortable. There was no shame or embarrassment and something about that state of mind, seemed to me, to be a bigger turn on then just the nudity in and of itself. We silently pored over the pages in the shadows of our tree fort.

The boys’ mother came out into the backyard. She yelled out Boys…ya’ll better get your asses in gear! Your cousin Naynay is on her way and Uncle Tom and Samson and Delilah too!

WOOOHOOO YEAHHH! They screamed with glee. I couldn’t figure out what all the fuss was over. I covered my ears, they yelled so loud.

Who the hell is Naynay? I asked quietly under their screams.

That’s our cousin Nadine nigga, you don’t know shit about no Naynay nigga! said Dre as he scurried down the tree house ladder after his brother. They disappeared into their backdoor and into their rooms to prepare themselves for the arrival of the mysterious Nadine. What, I thought, could all the hubbub be about? I walked out into the alley thinking that I might stop in later that day to find out.

A couple of hours later, I walked back down the street to the boy’s house. I could smell a barbecue wafting in the air as I approached and heard music glaring from the backyard. It was Kool and the Gang. There was a black van parked at the curb in front of their house. It had mag rims and a lowered front end. There was a Playboy sticker on the lower left hand corner of the windshield. The seats had beaded covers on them.

Dante and Dre came out of the front door. They had barbecue sauce on the sides of their mouths. Dre was carrying a rib in his right hand as he ran up. He had a kind of gloating look on his face.

Mmmmmmm….this shit is so fuckin’ good man. You ain’t never had no barbecue before, punk ass!

Yes I have. We barbecue sometimes, I couldn’t understand why he thought I had never tasted a rib before, like it was an exclusive privilege reserved only for black and Mexican people. But his gloating, over-lording demeanor ran deep in his eyes and through his barbecue stained lips. An expression on his face seemed to say ’I have something, know something that you can never have or never know’. The prize he coveted wasn’t really the barbecue…it was his cousin. It was Nadine.

Some kids from school rode up on their bikes. They had not met Dante or Dre before. Todd was one of my oldest friends. In fact, his aunt and my mother went through grade school together. I started Kindergarten the same day as him and we had known each other even before then. Most of the kids in our neighborhood had lived there most of their lives, as did their parents before us. A woman would get out of high school and marry the first jackass she met with a fast car and a nice bulge. The marriage would go to shit of course, after having a kid or two, a crisis or two, a domestic battery charge or two, and she would be forced to move back in with her parents. As most of my friends were in the same boat, we all lived in our grandparents’ houses with our single mothers and the grandparents (usually a grandmother as they too were either divorced or widowed), which worked nicely to tell you the truth. I think were I to be raised with my father in the house, there would have been bloodshed, or worse…much worse.

Todd and some other kids sat on their bikes in the street, in front of Dre and Dante’s house and sneered and stared and loomed with a standoffish demeanor.

Hanging out with niggers these days Chris? HAHAHA! The other kids laughed along. They didn’t know if they were really racist or not. They merely imitated and mimicked what they heard their parents say and do.

Fuck off Todd. These guys are really cool. You don’t even know them you piece of shit,

Whatever dude. How come you never hang out at Chapman Park anymore? We got drunk there last night with my brother and his friends,

I don’t know, I will I guess, one of these days,

Just then Todd looked past me and said Holy Shit! His beady eyes were bulging out of his head. I turned around and saw her. Dre and Dante stood close to her, glaring at us there in the street, like a pair of gargoyles protecting a sacred statue. She was a foot taller than all of us. Her breasts were full and large; her waist was thin and wrapped in a bullet belt that draped over her very short, leopard print mini skirt. She had long shapely legs and combat boots with chains and a bandanna wrapped around them. Her hair was dyed bright, blood red and cut into a thick, wide Mohawk. She reminded me of Annabella Lwin, the lead singer of Bow Wow Wow. Light skinned beautiful face of a girl of mixed race. Her eyes were glowing and almond shaped. She looked at me with them and asked, What’s your name? I was speechless. Dre answered for