"So, I’ll see you tomorrow, big man," Munky’s mother says to him as she adjusts his green shirt by tucking it into his pants.
"Mommy, where are you going?" he asks in a tiny voice. His mother’s dark eyes shine as she runs a hand through her son’s short black hair, still as silky as a baby’s.
"I’m going out with Daddy."
"Why?"
"Because it’s our anniversary," she says, just before a car horn bleeps outside. She’s wearing a short red dress, and Munky tugs on it before she leaves.
"Jimmy, I don’t have time for this—" she says, exasperated.
"Mommy, love you. What’s an ann—ee--versary?"
Her eyes melt. She brings him into her arms and hugs him again as her father watches with impatience from his Chevy. "Love you, too, baby. Mommy will be back soon, k?"
Jimmy watches them go, pull out of the driveway and roar down the street. They’re headed to the town bar, to have a drink and a little time away from their five year-old. Their marriage hasn’t gone too well since the arrival of the attention-craving little rugrat, but these little nights work wonders. They’re going to enjoy it, in the best sense of the word, although his mother has some misgivings about leaving him under someone else’s watch. What if Munky has an asthma attack? Hurts himself? Drowns in the little wading pool his father set up the other day…?
"You sure he’s gonna be okay?" she asks as she grips her little black purse nervously. There is something inside her working itself into a knot. Her parental instinct is on high; she can’t think about anything but her son. Mr. Shaffer places a hand on her slender leg, and rubs until even she forgets about her worries…
"I wanna go ou-side," Jimmy insists. He removes his shoes and his socks as soon as his parents are gone. They make him wear shoes, but he hates to. If everything would go this way, he would always be barefoot.
Mr. Hodgkins is a pudgy man, with white shocks of hair and a missing front tooth. Despite all that, he is a wonderful neighbor and friend. He befriended the Shaffers from the first day they moved to Bakersfield, a fledging couple with a new house and a bucketload of dreams. He had been commissioned by the lady of the house to fix the plumbing when the new husband proved incompetent. Naturally, the husband dislikes him, while the mother seems to relish his company.
Yes, Mr. Hodgkins is a special man. He is even beginning to consider running for mayor of the town next year.
"You don’t need to go outside. There’s plenty of fun stuff we can do in here," he says calmly, a nonchalant grin on his face.
"Like what?" Jimmy has spent the entire day looking forward to feeling the grass of his front yard beneath his toes.
"Well, you could show me all your toys. Are they in here? Or in your bedroom?"
At the mention of his toys, Munky’s dark eyes light up. He scampers haphazardly up the carpeted steps, pulling himself along with the guardrail as the neighbor follows behind. Munky has his toys scattered all over the light-blue carpet of his room by the time the old man walks into the door.
"Here’s my Tonka Truck—I have four—" he holds up four chubby fingers in a hurry. He has a lot of toys to list. He points to the different playthings as if they are museum exhibits, explaining each one and where he got it, how old he was when he got it, and why. His dark eyebrows furrow in concentration as he works to include this info as fast as he can. All the while Mr. Hodgkins watches him intently. He has a hand on his own upper leg. Jimmy doesn’t notice when he carefully unzips his khakis.
"And I got this Hulk Hogan little guy on my birthday because I was a good boy at the movies—Missur Hodkin, whatcha doin?" Jimmy asks as he looks at his baby-sitter. He’s kneeling before Munky, and a huge snake-like protrusion pokes nakedly from the crotch of his pants. He is touching it. The avid concentration on his face bewilders the young child, who is just old enough to understand that what the man is rubbing is something Munky has, too.
"Come here, Jimmy. We can have fun," he insists. The hand gripping the thing never falters. The other hand reaches out for the young boy. A little voice tells him to stop, to back away, but another—a stronger one, instilled in him by his father—tells him that he has to listen to adults. No matter what.
So he "has fun". And until his mother finds patches of blood and a sticky substance in his bed sheets does his mother begin to suspect. His father thinks nothing of it; says the boy is just growing up fast. And from then on, her mother can’t trust her son around the father until it finally gets so bad that they divorce, the mother wondering in the back of her head if she had married a rapist.
Mr. Hodgkins shows much remorse at the news. Whenever his mother goes out to the bar from then on for a man to fill her empty arms, he is the resident babysitter.
………………………..
"Brian, please, please…" Munky begged at 2:00 in the morning as he banged on the door. After about half a minute Head opened the door. He let Munky in, and Munky lost it. Head tried to comfort him, quiet him down, but he wouldn’t be touched. What was wrong with him? Munky ran to the bathroom and vomited. After, he sat in the corner, holding his pillow and rocking it against his chest. "What’s wrong, man? Huh? Why can’t you tell me…Was it Kaitlin? …Was it Jon?"
"No…" Munky said. They sat silently together, and Head got Munky a beer. After, he was drowsy enough to go to bed. Head turned off the light. Munky waited for groping hands in the dark, for someone to tug at the blankets, as he had for countless years in his childhood. No one did. Finally, he was so exhausted that he fell asleep, despite the fact that many other disturbing dreams would come before morning.
……………………………..
The next day Munky didn’t even think about his dreams as he ventured to take over the world. There was a press conference, an autograph signing, and a concert. By the time he was done he was exhausted. There would be no first-class suite tonight; they were staying on the tour bus. He had no qualms about the small coffin-like space that was his cubby…it had become a familiar place over the years. For the few hours that Head and Munky hung out together after the show on the tour bus, everything was back to sweet old normal. The after-show routine was painfully predictable: they all watched porn until Fieldy and Jon left to wack off in their cubbies. David would stay for a while and then leave to talk to a roadie about his never-ending problems.
And soon it was only two counterparts, Head and Munky. Usually they sat in the TV Room, reading the articles in Playboy Magazines or just having a good old smoke. After that, when they all went their separate ways, Head would savor a six-pack of Bud Light in the tiny stand-up shower. He liked them there, where he was all alone and did who the hell knew what. Munky would go back to his cubby, stare at the ceiling…and take a call from Kaitlin on his cell phone. It had all become a habit. Such a habit. There had been many little fights, and obviously that night there would be no call. But it had been a week since his confession. He wondered where she was. What she was doing. If they were so in love, wouldn’t she fucking forgive him?
If they were so in love, would he have given in?
"What’cha thinking about?" Head asked casually as he noticed the intense look of concentration on Munky’s face.
"Just about the dream I had last night."
"Yeah? What was that all about?" Head moved from his chair to sit on the couch next to him. He leaned in really close, so close that Munky felt his hot breath against his ear and couldn’t hide a shiver. Head noticed and backed away. "Was it about Jon?"
"No."
Head didn’t even seem to hear him. "…there was this one time when me and David were sleeping in the same bed. Jon had just joined the band, and he insisted that he had stabbed his bed and he couldn’t sleep in his own cum, so we let him sleep with us. We had a pretty good laugh about it all—you know how it is—but when he got into bed he started touching me, like, my—ass, you know? So I’m like ‘What the fuck, man?’" Head said this a little too loudly, and so he waited for a minute before he started again.
"So, like, we all finally fall asleep. When I woke up in the middle of the night, he was like, touching me again, and he had this huge boner, right? Like, pressing into me—"
"Aww, guh-ross—" Munky almost told Head to stop, that he was a sick bastard. But when he saw the vulnerable softness in Head’s eyes, he let him go on. "—and he was…you know. Right there. I almost died, but I didn’t do a thing because he was such a good singer and I knew he was the only chance we had for our band. David woke up in the middle of it. I told him to not make a sound. He didn’t. We just kept it to ourselves because we were afraid that if you or Fieldy found out you would kick him out. And you know that if we had we wouldn’t be here today. We made the right choice, but—I can never look at him the same way again."
Head lifted his eyebrows and shrugged after the confession. There. It was out. Head would think about it again that night, as he always did, with his pack of Bud Light in the shower, although the thought was more painful whenever he was changing in and out of his outfit. Jon’s special room was his room; Head would rather change onstage in front of his fans than to have Jon watch him again, as he had.
"Well, the dream wasn’t about Jon. It was kind of a memory, but not really—"
"What do you mean?"
"Head, there’s something I—that I never told you. I never though it was a real big deal. I mean, I’m handling it better than Jon, I guess…it’s really—just—when I was a kid, I was—I have more in common with Jon than you think."
The two read each other’s minds with the deadly accuracy of friends who knew almost too much about each other. "No," Head whispered as Munky’s eyes watered. Good. A word hadn’t come out. He hadn’t had to say a thing. In his eyes Head saw it all; no wonder Munky had been the first to cry while Jon sang "Daddy". He had grumbled "That motherfucker," when Jon left the sound booth, and, as the others looked away from Jon’s teary face, paralyzed with shock at Jon’s outbursts, Munky had taken Jon into a tight embrace and rocked him back and forth.
No fucking wonder.
"When did it happen? More than once? Who did it? Christ."
"From the time I was five, until I was, like, twelve."
Seven years.
"And you never even fucking talked to anyone about it? Not even a shrink, or nothing? You just kept it all inside?"
Munky nodded. "My mom was the only one to notice it, but of course she never asked me about it. She thought my dad was doing it. I never told her otherwise, either; I just let her keep on believing it—" He looked away as his eyebrows upturned in grief, at the awful memory. "In my dream, I wasn’t being raped. I was raping someone, a young girl. And I mean, that may seem like just some fucked-up fantasy, but it’s really not when you’ve been on the receiving end of that kind of thing. And then I had another dream. The memories of the first time it happened to me—it was so real." Munky ceased his ramblings to read Head’s expression, only to find that tears trickled down his long face. "Who was it?" he inquired once again.
"Mr. Hodgkins."
"Mr. Hodgkins?! As in Mayor Hodgkins?" Jimmy’s mother had posted up signs all over her front yard, advertising him throughout his campaign. Before his mother married again Mr. Hodgkins was a surrogate father.
"Yeah."
There was a silence for a while, and afterwards Head got up. He said, "You know what we both need? We both need to get fucking drunk and crash. Sound good to you?" This was Head’s way of saying ‘I’m sorry man, that’s fucked up…wanna just get drunk with me and break stuff?’
Munky was up to that. They drank themselves silly. They fell asleep in the TV room, in their clothes. Their shoes had been kicked off, and Munky lay his head on Head’s torso. Head held Munky and played with his dreadlocks in silence, in the dark.
Munky slept like a baby that night.