44 Chapters About 4 Men: A Memoir Read online

  And do you know what I realized in my escapades to these imaginary dystopian societies and fictional underground fight rings? I realized that I know these men. I dated these men—the super intense skinhead turned US Marine turned motorcycle club outlaw, the ex-convict/underground hot-rod racer with the devil-may-care attitude, the sensitive guy liner–sporting heavy metal bassist…

  I had them all, Journal. How did I not see the parallels between my fantasy men and my ex-boyfriends before? And I call myself a psychologist!

  Take Knight for example…

  There Once Was a Man from Nantucket

  August 23

  When I was fifteen, a pale skinhead

  Handcuffed me to my ex-boyfriend’s bed.

  He doused me with honey—

  The noises were funny—

  And then ripped my poor hymen to shreds.

  Sorry, Journal. I just felt like the only way to soften the blow of that information was to deliver it within the inherent whimsy of a limerick. That poem pretty much exemplifies the confusion, oppression, and ultimate pain (both physical and emotional) that was my first serious relationship.

  Looking back on it, the time I spent being Knight’s girlfriend was not unlike being a kidnapping victim with Stockholm syndrome. At the time, my innocent fifteen-year-old brain didn’t know what the hell was going on, only that I had somehow become his, and resistance was futile.

  Knight was a skinhead. Correction: Knight was the skinhead—the only one in our sprawling suburban Atlanta tri-county area, to be exact. It was comical. He was so incredibly angry that none of the other angry-white-male subculture groups at Peach State High School would do. The jocks were a little too gregarious. The punks, although sufficiently violent and vandalous, had a bit too much fun. The goth kids were just pussies. No, Knight’s rage was so consuming that he had to choose the one subgroup whose image screamed, I will fucking curb-stomp you and then rip off your arm and beat you with it if you so much as breathe the same air as me. Knight was so successful in his mission to intimidate that he remained a subgroup of one throughout high school.

  I think his fury originated at birth when his dumbass disappointment of a mother named him Ronald McKnight. It was 1981, so knowing Candi, she was probably trying to impress the married stockbroker who had knocked her up by naming their lovechild after the only Republican she could think of. I guess—after years of being treated like a punching bag by Candi’s revolving door of abusive, alcoholic, probably married boyfriends; being treated like a burden by a woman who preferred the company of douche bags to her own son; and having to endure Ronald McDonald jokes every time he finally did get away—somewhere along the way, Ronald became Knight, and Knight became a holy fucking terror.

  Knight dressed like a neo-Nazi and looked like an Aryan poster child. He had the boyish good looks and perma-scowl of Eminem—translucently fair skin, a quarter-inch of buzzed platinum-blond hair, and practically clear eyebrows and eyelashes. Knight’s ghostly colorless appearance was violently punctuated, however, by two piercing arctic-blue eyes. If it weren’t for those shockingly azure eyes and a smattering of light-brown freckles, he could easily have passed as Marshall Mathers’s albino twin brother.

  Knight’s physique was scrawny but cut, like Bruce Lee. Like a street fighter. He took weight-training classes religiously (Seriously? Fucking public schools can’t find anything better to teach kids?), and once hustled three hundred dollars out of the football team by bench-pressing three hundred pounds. That was over twice his body weight at the time.

  Whenever Knight told the story, he would always muse, “It’s not the size of the dog in the fight. It’s the size of the fight in the dog.”

  Let me tell you, there was a whole lotta fight in Ronald McKnight—or as we liked to call him (never, ever to his face), Skeletor.

  What was even more interesting than Knight being the only skinhead in town was that he wasn’t even a racist. I never once heard him tout any Aryan pride bullshit or saw him sport any of the typical Nazi regalia. Swastikas and iron crosses were suspiciously absent from his personal effects.

  Ever the psychologist, even then, I became so fascinated by his lack of fascist iconography that I actually got up the nerve to ask him about it once.

  Instead of thrusting his right arm into the air and launching into a Sieg Heil, Knight quickly glanced up and down the hallway to make sure no one was listening. Then, he leaned in so close that I could feel his serpentine breath on my neck and whispered, “I’m not really a racist. I just hate everybody.”

  And I believed him. That motherfucker hated everybody.

  Or so I thought.

  There were five billion people on the planet in 1996. Ronald “Knight” McKnight hated four billion nine hundred ninety-nine million nine hundred ninety-nine thousand nine hundred ninety-nine of them. He hated his parents. He loathed his friends. He intentionally intimidated strangers. But, for some clandestine reason, Knight decided that he liked me. And being the only human the scariest boy in the universe liked was a heady thing.

  When I first met Ronald McKnight I was a waifish, doe-eyed, freckle-faced freshman with a shoulder-length mop of wavy reddish-blonde hair and a devastating crush on the King of the Punks, Lance Hightower. I’d been cutting my hair shorter and shorter, adding more and more safety pins to my hoodie and backpack, and inching my way closer and closer to Lance at the elite punk-goth-druggie lunch table, which he’d presided over since the first day of school. (As it turned out, Lance was completely and hopelessly homosexual, something I wish I had known before shaving most of my hair off and getting multiple body piercings in my increasingly self-injurious effort to get him to make out with me.)

  Knight, who was a sophomore at the time, had landed at the punk table by default. With no other skinheads to hang out with, the punks kind of adopted him as their rabid, mangy, evil pet rattlesnake. Day after day, he would sit at Lance’s table with his brow furrowed and his head down, gripping his fork hard enough to bend the metal and muttering the occasional, “Go fuck yourself,” whenever anyone would address him.

  Well, one balmy day in late September, I happened to overhear some upperclassman at our lunch table say to her spiky-haired pierced boyfriend that it was Skeletor’s birthday. (I don’t know how anyone would have known unless Knight had just thrown it out as proof that his life had somehow gotten even worse. I imagine it would have sounded something like, “I can’t fucking believe my fucking whore mom stole all my cigarettes and went out of town with her faggot husband on my fucking birthday. Hey, what the fuck are you looking at, asshole?”) So, naturally, I bought him a chicken sandwich while I was going through the lunch line.

  Bouncing over to our table and sporting a big grin (I should explain that I have always been disgustingly hyper and enthusiastic, and I would have made an excellent cheerleader if I weren’t so anti-establishment and clumsy) I thrust it into Knight’s face and chirped, “Happy birthday!”

  In return, Knight lifted his ever-scowling head and pinned me with what felt like two searing blue laser scopes. I stood, in a breathless state of suspended animation, realizing a moment too late that I might have just poked the rattlesnake.

  As I braced myself for a barrage of expletives, I watched Knight’s perma-scowl melt and slide off right before my eyes instead.

  His brow, which had been tightly furrowed, smoothed and lifted in surprise. His glacial eyes widened, and his lips parted in a soul-bearing silent gasp. It was a heartbreaking expression of gratitude and disbelief. It was as if the boy we called Skeletor had never received a gift in his life. I could almost hear his armor clatter to the floor as I peered into the face of someone vulnerable, aching, and alone.

  I couldn’t speak. Couldn’t remember how air worked. Once my lungs began to burn, I finally tore my eyes away from his broken soul and sucked in a deep breath, pretending to admire my new white Dr. Martens (yet another purchase made in the name of seducing punk rock icon Lance Hightower), but it was too late. In those few seconds I had seen it all. Seen too much. A lifetime of pain, a longing for significance, and a tidal wave of love waiting to crash down on the first person brave enough, or stupid enough, to wade in.

  I’d expected him to recover his armor and return to his brooding—after all, it was just a dumb sandwich—but much to my surprise (and horrifying embarrassment) Knight stood up, pointed directly at me, and shouted to everyone at our table, “This is why BB is the only fucking person on this planet that I can fucking stand! None of you motherfuckers gave me shit for my birthday!” Making sure to give each and every terrified zit-faced misfit a personalized predatory glare, he finally finished, “I fucking hate all of you!”

  Evidently, Skeletor had a flare for the dramatic.

  Too stunned to react, I watched helplessly as he slunk back into his seat with the smug, lazy grace of a just-fed lion, obviously satisfied with the scene he’d just caused and the shocked silence that had fallen over the cafeteria. I was the only one standing, and all eyes were now on me, including Knight’s, which were regarding me with a broad, rapacious Cheshire Cat kind of grin.

  Suddenly, I wanted my money back.

  You see, Journal, all I’d thought I was buying was a chicken sandwich and maybe, if I were lucky, a spot on the good side of the guy voted Most Likely to Kill Us All with a Two-by-Four Full of Rusty Nails. That’s it.

  I did not like Knight. I did not want to be friends with Knight, if that were even possible. He was scary and angry, and all I’d wanted was for him to like me enough not to scream at or murder me. Who knew that a stupid dollar fifty would also buy me the singular obsessive, undying devotion of the town’s only skinhead?

  As I stood there, cryogenic—my big dumb green eyes caught in the crosshairs of Knight’s savage blue stare—it became clear that he was going to make me his whether I liked it or not.

  And in the beginning, I definitely liked it not.

  Frenemies

  August 24

  Knight was one tenacious bastard, Journal, but too bad for him I was (A) not attracted to him in the slightest and (B) equally obsessed with someone else.

  Throughout my freshman year, Knight pursued me while I bobbed and weaved, jockeying for position next to Lance (or under Lance or astride Lance in a reverse cowgirl).

  Eventually, as a way to pass the time while I continued to try to figure out what Lance’s type was, I started hanging out with Brian. Brian was every bit as tall, dark, and gorgeous as Lance, but he would let me make out with him. Sweet guy.

  Brian might have looked intimidating with his miles of studded pleather accessories and manly physique, but he was a gentle, kindhearted, animal-loving vegan pacifist who only wore “cruelty-free” combat boots made from recycled potato sacks or some shit. Because he was such a sweetheart, Brian accidentally became Knight’s best friend—meaning Brian was nice enough to let him come over, and Knight would show his appreciation by insulting and physically assaulting him.

  During the summer after my freshman year I spent a lot of time at Brian’s house. My mom would drop me off after lunch in her Band-Aid–colored Taurus station wagon, and Brian, who was a year older than me and already had his driver’s license, would bring me home before dinner. It was pretty glorious. We’d lounge on Brian’s twin-size bed—watching The Jerry Springer Show and making out whenever his little brother, August, left the room—and then head down to his crumbling neighborhood pool for a swim.

  Every day at two fifteen sharp, while Brian and I splashed each other and practiced our diving tricks, Knight never failed to lurch his ancient, dented, tin can of a Ford F-150 into the pool parking lot as soon as he had been dismissed from summer school. Like clockwork—stomp, stomp, stomp—he and his perma-scowl would burst through the gate, pin us both with a murderous glare, and then slowly drag a pool chair across the concrete to where we were frolicking. The sound of the metal legs scraping the concrete always gave me a super creepy Freddy-Krueger-raking-his-nails-down-your-spine kind of vibe. Once we were sufficiently intimidated, Knight would straddle the chair backward, as if he were Slater from Saved by the Bell, and spend the rest of the afternoon trying to impress me by verbally and physically demeaning Brian and flicking lit cigarette butts at him.

  No matter how hot and sticky it was outside (“Hot and sticky” is what Southerners like to call the thick putrid lava air that our bodies have to extract oxygen from in order to survive living here from May through September.), Knight never got in the pool. He never even broke a sweat. But he would occasionally hiss to Brian whenever he thought I was out of earshot, “I’m gonna fuck your girlfriend before you do.”

  I tried to dismiss his threat—to tell myself that he and Brian were just having some kind of pissing contest—but deep down I knew that Knight meant what he said. And Knight always made good on his threats.

  Brian and I never went further than first base. Summer came and went, and we just kind of went back to being friends who didn’t make out. I don’t really know what happened, but I’m guessing Knight had something to do with it.

  I’m just happy that the ex-boyfriend’s bed I referred to in my limerick wasn’t his. It was actually Colton’s.

  Colton was the only boy I’d kissed before Brian. He was a devilishly handsome spiky-haired little bad boy I dated in eighth grade. And by dated, I mean that we talked on the phone, held hands at school, toilet-papered a house together, and made out once. Colton reminded me of a male fairy—not like in a gay way, but in a pointy-eared, wild-haired, wicked gleam in his eye kind of way.

  Wait. Shit. I might be thinking of Peter Pan.

  Yes, Colton totally reminded me of Peter Pan, in a sexy, mischievous King of the Lost Boys kind of way.

  Colton lived, off and on, with his bedraggled sad single mom, Peggy, who worked, like, four jobs. Peg was the quintessential poor white trash. Skinny as a rail with scraggly long dishwater-blonde hair, she could still fit into her entire skintight, high-waisted stonewashed wardrobe from 1983. Her long shaking fingers were never without an equally long Virginia Slim between them, and her voice was so hoarse that it sounded as if she’d probably gone for days at a time without speaking to anyone.

  I suspect Colton’s dad was one of the founding members of Whitesnake. Peggy had former eighties hair-band groupie written all over her. Whoever his dad was, his place in Las Vegas had to be a hell of a lot better than Peggy’s shithole. That’s probably why Colton never stuck around for more than a few months at a time.

  During Colton’s last stint at Peggy’s place, he and his mom kind of adopted Knight—in part because they felt bad about how shitty his home life was, but also, I suspected, because Knight had a car.

  Then, per his usual, Colton up and boarded a Greyhound back to Las Vegas just two months into our sophomore year, leaving Peggy all alone again. Since she needed a son and Knight needed a new mom, he just kept going over there every day after school, as if Colton had never left. He’d let Peggy’s geriatric German shepherd out and patch up all the rotten, mildewed concave places on the house while she was off working one of her forty-seven part-time jobs. And in order to do all that, Knight needed a key to the house.

  It was badass—not the house, obviously. The house was a dilapidated piece of shit. But Knight had the place all to himself and would actually let us hang out there after school. Peg would keep the fridge stocked with Pabst Blue Ribbon, we could smoke inside, and she had cable. It was a teenage utopia.

  Every afternoon, we—being the entire punk-rock lunch table crew—would head over to Peggy’s, cram ourselves into her itchy shapeless 1970s couches (me vying for a spot next to Lance), crack open some beers, and scream at the top of our lungs at whatever legless transsexual or little-person biker gang or kung fu hillbilly pimp happened to be on Jerry Springer that afternoon. All the while flicking Camel butts at the already overflowing ashtrays.

  Knight usually spent the first hour or so letting the dog out and patching the place up, which gave me just enough time to get a good buzz on and work up a nice little flirt with the owner of the lap I was sitting on—not that it mattered. As soon as Knight finished his rounds, he’d flop into Peggy’s tobacco-colored steel-wool upholstered recliner with a PBR in hand and pin whichever poor fucker I was talking to with a glare so murderous that he’d be out the door before my bony ass even hit the ground.

  This routine continued for weeks until, one day, I realized that it was just Knight and me. I knew the crowd had been dwindling, but I hadn’t realized just how much. I always rode with Knight to Peggy’s house because (A) I was fifteen and had no car, and (B) whenever anyone else had offered me a ride, Knight would immediately twist their arm behind their back and smash their face into the hood of the nearest car, T.J. Hooker–style, until they took it back.

  I couldn’t even ride the bus home because I technically didn’t live in that school district.

  By November of my sophomore year, Knight had single-handedly made himself my only means of after-school transportation without me even knowing it.

  Every day after the final bell, whether I liked it or not, I would be sucked into the crowd of eager teenagers fleeing the building, twirled and tossed along like a spindly leaf in a stream, and deposited onto the front lawn, right at Knight’s feet. Leaning against the flagpole with his arms crossed, he looked like something out of the skinhead version of The Outsiders—tight white T-shirt, classic Levi’s 501s held up with a pair of thin red braces (skinny suspenders), black steel-toed combat boots, and a felonious gleam in his eye. The only things missing were a pack of cigarettes rolled up in his sleeve and hair.

  Even though there was something unmistakably sexy about his iconic style, potent self-confidence, and potential for violence, I still wasn’t attracted to Knight—mostly due to my subconscious awareness that he might possibly kill me—but I had to admit, I liked the attention. Knowing that the entire school saw this modern-day Brando waiting for me, day in and day out, made me feel like I was a little bit of a badass, too.