New Dark Ages Read online

  At the end of the hippie-era “sexual revolution,” some women correctly decided the whole thing had been a big con, a pretext for men to get women to have sex with them. The seventies, in which I was being held as a prisoner wholly against my will, hadn’t been much better. Whatever gender idealism had existed in the sixties gave way to no fucking idealism at all.

  Bimbo culture was being celebrated on Charlie’s Angels and lots of other places, like discos. Reproductive rights were still being denied. There was still wage discrimination. Women were still being under-represented in politics, media, certain professions, and whatnot. And surveys even showed that most educated men believed a woman’s place was in the home.

  It was bad, bad, bad, class. Really bad.

  Punk did what it could. Punks declared war on the disco era’s stupid fashion standards and the total sexualization of women that went with it. It pushed back hard on bigotry and prejudice with movements like Rock Against Racism. Punk grrrrls formed all-girl bands, like the Slits and the Punk Rock Virgins and Tit Sweat. And — let me emphasize this next point, class — punk didn’t just decide to sound and look different, it decided to approach human relationships differently, too.

  “Boy meets girl, boy marries girl, boy and girl have more boys and girls”: that whole thing our parents did, that whole “construct,” as X calls it, was and is bullshit. It’s a lie. Fifty-five percent of marriages end in divorce, anyway, like my parents’ did.

  The notion that there are “races”? When there’s been so much intermingling between people over the centuries, some people still believe there is “racial ­purity”? Seriously? It’s fucking idiotic, just like the notion that there are clear-cut genders or traditional gender roles. To punks, there are no races, there are no genders anymore.

  And traditional relationships? Traditional marriage? Traditional roles? Also gone. Blown up by clandestine punk rock terror cells. We are the snipers, picking off your June and Ward Cleavers, with extreme prejudice.

  That’s what most punks believe, anyway. That’s what I believe.

  Which leads us back to the little drama that erupted at the Horseshoe in Toronto, between X and Patti Upchuck and Tit Sweat’s lead singer, Nagamo.

  Patti, you see, was kind of taking a more traditional approach to relationships: she was in one with X, and she expected that to be respected. Monogamy and all that.

  Nagamo had a more modern, punk view of things: she was attracted to X, and she wanted to fuck his brains out. Simple.

  X, meanwhile? Well, I actually can’t tell you what my best friend was thinking. I can’t. No one, most of the time, knew what X was thinking about anything.

  And, on this occasion, it was getting him in a lot of trouble.

  CHAPTER 30

  Tommy and Pete Schenk finished their burgers, and Theresa Laverty ate as much of her salad as she was going to. They were back in Fanelli’s little room behind the curtain. Tourists streamed by the window outside.

  It was still the best burger in Lower Manhattan, Pete Schenk declared.

  Theresa Laverty agreed.

  Schenk then turned the discussion to Billy Klassen. “So, Laverty,” he said, “why in the name of Christ can’t we get a warrant to search that dry-cleaning front? And, more to the point, why doesn’t anyone seem to know where Billy Klassen is, seeing as how we apparently think he killed these three kids?”

  Laverty looked at Tommy, slightly annoyed that he’d almost-certainly blabbed to Pete Schenk. Tommy gazed back, saying nothing. He crossed his arms.

  “It’s complicated,” she said.

  Schenk was unmoved. “I bet it is. But I’m from Brooklyn, and I’m a little slow. Maybe you can fill me in? Feel free to use small words.”

  Tommy grinned slightly, a rare occurrence. Laverty knew that the old boxer didn’t trust many people, but — when Laverty returned from Burlington and Ottawa — he admitted to her that he’d grown to like Pete Schenk. And he let her know he shared Schenk’s frustration with the FBI’s hands-off approach to the Church of the Creator’s homicidal lunatics.

  Laverty grimaced. She trusted Schenk, too, but the Federal Bureau of Investigation generally regarded local police forces as farther down the evolutionary ladder. They were to be tolerated, but seldom trusted.

  Her superiors in Fort Myers had been clear. The Church of the Creator investigation — and the possibly related murders of the three counterculture kids — was to be handled with “Q clearance,” which was the most restricted. For one thing, Laverty had been told, the COTC had been recognized as a legitimate church by the idiots at the IRS. The bureau did not want a massive lawsuit for violating Bernhardt Klassen’s constitutional rights.

  And, for another thing, Laverty had been told, the Church of the Creator’s founder was not without ­connections to some powerful people. He’d been a ­politician himself, in Florida’s legislature, and he knew his way around Republican Washington.

  Laverty looked at Schenk, pondering how — and whether — to proceed. Screw it, she concluded. She’d tell him what she could. “You cannot tell anyone anything at the precinct,” she said.

  “Agreed.”

  “And you cannot do anything with the information I am about to give to you.”

  “Agreed.”

  She paused. “All right … Bernhardt Klassen is a very, very powerful man … and he’s busily working to try to set off an actual civil war, a race war you might say. And he may just do it.”

  CHAPTER 31

  Click. Ring ring ring.

  “Hey.”

  “Hey, man. How are you?”

  “Good. You good?”

  “As good as I can be, I guess. It’s fucked up.”

  “It’s getting worse?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I’ve been thinking about all this …”

  “Don’t try and talk me out of it again. It’s the only way.”

  “It’s you, brother. I’m worried about you.”

  “Don’t be, man. Don’t be. I’m good. I know what I have to do.”

  Downside: I was bored.

  So, when I got tired of the high school drama still unfolding at the Horseshoe, I just left and walked back to my room at the Rex. When I got there, I found a baby-blue pamphlet tucked under the door. It was from Narcotics Anonymous.

  “Really?” I said out loud, even though no one was around. I glared up and down the Rex’s empty hallway and raised my voice. “REALLY? SERIOUSLY? We’re going to leave antidrug pamphlets around, LIKE OUR FUCKING PARENTS WOULD?”

  I slammed the door, hard.

  I crumpled up the pamphlet and threw it on the floor, then tossed my biker jacket at the TV set. I missed. Sitting on the bed, I pulled off my Docs and threw them in the farthest corner of the room. Narcotics Anonymous? Seriously? What self-respecting punk would actually slide that under the door?

  I fumed a bit. I looked up. I looked down. Then I looked at my arms. On my right bicep, there were two letters tattooed: JC. For Jimmy Cleary. Our friend, killed last year. I promised myself that I would get his initials tattooed on my arm, and — just before the tour started — I did. I wanted everyone who came to our shows to see those letters and ask me what they stood for.

  Some thought they referred to Jesus Christ, of course. But, if they asked, I’d tell them: “Our friend Jimmy Cleary. My friend.”

  I sniffed a bit. I looked at the tattoo, still fuming. Then I examined my arms. Both of them. I was skinny, a lot skinnier than I’d ever been. I’d lost a lot of weight, as Sister Betty had said to me when we were waiting to cross the border into Quebec, and when I’d had that bag-of-speed-dumped-down-the-toilet episode.

  Getting more speed to replace it in Montreal had been really easy. I just quietly mentioned something to one of the bartenders at Foufounes, and I was in receipt of a shiny new baggie full in no time at all. Montreal was awesome!

  But, you know: my arms. They were skinny. My legs, too. All of me, in fact.

  I looked up at the lo
ng mirror that was screwed to the back of the door. Same fetching bleached-blond spiky head of hair, same captivating blue eyes. But the rest of me? Well, there was indeed less of me than there used to be. I wasn’t wasting away or anything like that, but there was decidedly less Kurt Blank walking the earth than there had been, say, a year earlier.

  I pondered. I sniffed. I was not an addict. I was not a speed freak. Speed, as I have previously advised y’all, is pretty hard to get addicted to. It doesn’t really work on the brain in that way. Dependent on it? Sure. That’s possible. Addicted? No way. Fuck you, man.

  I looked down at the crumpled NA pamphlet and started to get mad again. “Fuck you, whoever you are,” I said. I reached down and picked it up. “Fuck you,” I repeated.

  I stalked into the puny bathroom, lifted up the toilet tank cover, and reached inside. There, in the most clichéd of hiding places — but a pretty good hiding place just the same! — was a fistful of speed, sealed in three baggies, floating on the surface of the toilet water. Dry as a bone and as inviting as home.

  I carried the bundle over to the bed like it was a newborn, carefully opened up the three meticulously sealed packages, and extracted a heaping helping of my powdery white friend. Call it what you will — crank, glass, chalk, spoosh, scootie — whatever it is, I expertly dumped it onto the NA pamphlet and got ready for blastoff.

  “What better act of defiance than to ingest a ton of speed off your stupid pamphlet, Narcotics Anonymous?” I said to the not-present Narcotics Anonymous folks.

  I then commenced snorting away, and — in no time at all — was engaged in what the doctors would later call “a pathological overactivation of the mesolimbic pathway,” but that I usually called “getting wired.” It happened fast.

  Then, just as quickly, I was convulsing on the filthy carpet at the Rex, heading toward a coma, and being handcuffed to a bed in a shared room at Toronto’s St. Michael’s Hospital.

  Upside: Canadians don’t ask you to pay for health care!

  CHAPTER 32

  The Turner campaign had alighted, yet again, in Dover, New Hampshire. Danny O’Heran had been there so many times he could practically maneuver through Dover’s quaint streets with his eyes shut. Because it was an early primary state — like Iowa, like Nevada, like South Carolina — Earl Turner and his Republican opponents needed to spend a lot of time there. Momentum in New Hampshire could mean victory later on.

  The campaign office, at 83 Main Street, resembled every other campaign office Danny had visited in the past few months: receptionists at the front (to welcome new supporters and answer the phones) and a small army of volunteers at the back (to assemble lawn signs, send off fundraising and thank-you letters, or put together the propaganda that canvassers would hand out door-to-door). In offices like the one in Dover, there usually weren’t any campaign bigwigs — just one or two paid full-time or part-time staff to oversee the place. Nothing super important happened in these Turner campaign offices that were now found, more and more, across white America. No big deals were conducted in regional campaign offices. But they were spreading across the country like a virus.

  Earl Turner’s arrival in town — him, personally, in the flesh — was a pretty big deal, however. For one thing, since he’d last been in town, he had become The Great White Hope. The media called him that, thinking they were insulting him, but Earl Turner wasn’t insulted in the least. “Literally — I’m the white man’s great hope!” Turner had said in the Jeep one day. Danny said nothing, as usual. But he knew that there was a lot of excitement among Republicans about this outsider who just might possibly become the president of the United States.

  There was another reason why Turner’s arrival in Dover was a bit of big deal: Dover was a longtime Democratic town. It had a vibrant union movement and a long line of Democratic mayors, and it prided itself on being progressive. But, as Danny pulled the Jeep into the parking lot on Main Street, a crowd of maybe two hundred people were already there, whooping and hollering, hoisting TURNER FOR PRESIDENT signs into the air.

  Without a word to Danny, Turner leapt out of the Jeep and into the adoring crowd. He’d barely waited for the Jeep to come to a stop. “See you later, Danny,” Daisy Something said, as she clambered out of the back seat, all legs and boobs and hair. Danny knew he wouldn’t be needed for a couple of hours, so he decided to go get an early lunch at the Cross Roads.

  He waited a bit, watching Turner wade into the crowd of supporters. He then did a U-turn and pointed the Jeep toward Central Avenue. The Cross Roads Diner, he knew, had the best fried seafood around.

  Ten minutes later, after a quick pay phone call home, Danny sat on a stool at the counter. He was eyeing the menu when he felt a presence beside him and glanced to his right. There, perched on the nearest stool, was a really odd-looking, overweight guy, sweating and stuffed into a cheap suit. The guy had thick eyeglasses, a thick mane of black curls, and a big smile. He seemed to be delighted that Danny had noticed him.

  “Danny?” the guy said loudly, pretending that it was a chance encounter, for the benefit of the few patrons scattered around the Cross Roads, Danny assumed. “Danny O’Heran? I’ve been looking for you!”

  Danny said nothing. He looked for a notepad or a tape recorder. There were neither. If the guy was a reporter — and not a few reporters had approached Danny over the preceding months — he wasn’t acting like one. Danny waited, unsure whether he should forget about ordering and bolt.

  “You’re thinking about what to do,” the guy said quietly, nodding vigorously. “I understand that. I support that. Some weird fat guy comes up to you in a diner in the middle of nowhere in New Hampshire and pretends to know you, and starts talking to you. And you don’t want to talk to him, because you have a reputation for not talking to anyone. I understand that.”

  Danny inched a bit off the stool. The smiling guy noticed. He touched Danny’s arms with one plump digit. “Hear me out, Danny,” the guy said. “Hear me out, and then you can go. You don’t have to say a word, okay? Not a word.”

  Danny watched the guy out of the corner of his eye, waiting. Whatever was about to happen, he figured, wasn’t going to be good.

  The Cross Roads was filling up with the lunchtime crowd, and getting busier and noisier, so the guy leaned a bit closer. “Good, good,” the guy said, his fake smile blazing ever brighter. “Thank you. I appreciate you staying on that stool. Good decision.” He paused, seemingly savoring the moment. “Now, you can call me Ezra, if you want, but that’s not my real name.”

  Danny grimaced, but said nothing.

  “I know who you work for, of course. I don’t intend to say his name out loud, however, because I don’t want to attract any undue attention, but mainly because I don’t want you to feel uncomfortable and get back in your Jeep and rush back to the rally at the campaign office on Main Street, okay?”

  Danny watched “Ezra,” knowing that he should have left a few minutes ago, but also curious about what was coming. He stayed put, and Ezra smiled even more. He did not take his bright little pig eyes off Danny.

  “So, look, Danny, I want to talk to you about something serious, okay? It’s something good for your guy, so don’t worry,” Ezra said. “It’s good. And it’s in your interest to listen, okay? It is. You have a nice family — all those brothers and sisters, and your mom, Edith and your dad, Bob. A nice family.”

  Danny stiffened.

  Ezra lowered his voice. “Danny, we will kill Edith and Bob, and all of your siblings, if you call the cops or speak to anyone other than Earl Turner, do you understand me? Your family will all be tucked in Bob’s nice new Cadillac after eleven o’clock Mass at the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception, and then they will be blown to fucking bits when your dad turns the ignition, do you understand me, Danny?” Ezra kept smiling, watching Danny. “They will be scraping bits of your little brothers and sisters off the big stained-glass window for a week, do you understand?”

  The room started to move. Danny f
elt faint. He felt like he was going to be sick. Ezra pointed at the glass of water the waitress had left for him at the counter. “Drink it, Danny. You look really pale.”

  Danny gulped down the water and stared at the bottom of the glass. He waited.

  “So, better?”

  Danny nodded.

  “Good,” Ezra said, sounding legitimately pleased. “So, Danny, this is what you are going to tell Earl Turner. You are going to tell him you were approached by a guy who you have never seen before, but who threatened to kill your entire family if you spoke to anyone but him. You are going to tell him you believe the guy. Next, you are going to tell your candidate that this guy knew every fucking thing about him — like, how he really wasn’t a war hero in Vietnam, and how he really wasn’t much of a farmer when he was in Farmington. And then you are going to tell him that he wasn’t a fisherman in Eastport, at all, at all.” Ezra smiled, clearly enjoying himself. He watched Danny for his reaction.

  “He wasn’t a fisherman, Danny, and that’s what you will tell him. He was, in fact, really short on money, and he was letting lonely old queers suck his cock in motels outside Eastport to make a bit of extra dough. And you are going to tell him that when he was passed out on a motel room floor one night, one of these old faggots snapped a Polaroid of himself with Earl Turner’s cock in his mouth. And that you can clearly see Earl Turner’s handsome face and everything. And you are going to tell him that your new acquaintance Ezra has the photo, do you understand?”

  At that point, Ezra slowly reached down and unbuttoned his too-small jacket. He extracted a photocopy of a Polaroid. Danny only saw it for an instant, but it was enough. The photo showed a naked and much younger Earl Turner sprawled out on a carpet, eyes closed, with his limp dick in the mouth of some old guy with a mustache. The old guy looked pretty pleased with himself.