“Beer, wine, and whisky?”
He waves that off. “No, dude, the great Holy Trinity of the atomic vampires consists of the sex god, the money god, and the power god. The sex god pays tribute to the money god, and the money god pays tribute to the power god. The power god is what ruins it. The others would be okay on their own, but he’s an ass**le. He’s the one that sends out his minions to hypnotize us with the Next New Thing. But it’s not the miraculous. It’s just a substitute for the miraculous. It sucks. Now, I’m not saying I don’t want to have fun anymore. I just want to find something that sticks for a change.”
I pause to make sure he’s finished and then hold up my drink. “Amen, Brother Ricky! That was one helluva sermon.”
“Is it true or not?”
“Absolutely. We all want something that sticks.” I don’t mention that wanting it is a whole different thing from actually believing you can get it.
“Well.” He raises an imaginary glass in the air. “Give me another amen, Brother Sutter!”
“Amen, Brother Ricky, amen!”
“Hallelujah, brother, Hallelujah!”
We’re both laughing pretty hard now. I take a nice slug off my martini and say, “I’ll tell you what, after today, I’ll join in with you—no more drinking till the weekend. Then we’ll throw an extra big drunk.”
“I thought you were grounded.”
“That never stopped me before. I’ve got a window in my bedroom, you know.”
He doesn’t come back with anything right away, but finally he lets it out that he’s going to some concert with Bethany on Friday and having dinner with her and her parents on Saturday.
I’m like, “Dinner with her parents? Jesus, dude. You are getting the makeover treatment.”
He shrugs. “I just want to be with her, like you wanted to be with Cassidy.”
“Yeah, but I didn’t want to be with her the whole weekend every week.”
“Why don’t you ask out your paper route girl for Friday or Saturday? Aren’t you supposed to call her up sometime this afternoon anyway?”
“Hey, I told you—I’m not going to ask her out for a date. Let me repeat, she is not a girl I’m interested in having sex with. Not now or any time in the future. I will not have sex with her in a car. I will not have sex with her in a bar. I will not have sex with her in a tree. I will not have sex with her in a lavator-ee. I will not have sex with her in a chair. I will not have sex with her anywhere.”
“Oh right, I forgot. You’re out to save her soul. Give me a hallelujah for Brother Sutter and his messianic complex.”
“My what?”
“Messianic complex. That means you think you have to go around trying to save everybody.”
“Not everybody. Just this one girl.”
“Hallelujah, brother!”
Chapter 24
Sometimes I have trouble sleeping. It’s weird—I can feel exhausted but still, I just lie there wide awake, staring up into the dark with all sorts of ideas bombarding me like dead pelicans. Tonight, for example, I get to thinking about Geech’s stale military school proposition, wondering if maybe it’s not such a terrible idea after all.
Maybe I should’ve joined up when I was about fourteen or fifteen, worked hard for a year—marching ten miles a day, hustling through obstacle courses, scuttling under barbed wire with a wooden rifle cradled in my arms. Then come back home muscled up and spit-shined and tight as a snare drum on the inside. How else are you supposed to know when you’re not a kid anymore in this society?
I remember reading about these primitive initiation rituals in school. They had one where they take the kid way out into the wilderness and drop him off and he has to get back by himself without any weapons or tools. He’s just out there with his bare hands, digging up roots to eat, making fires with rocks and sticks or whatever. I mean, he could starve or a mountain lion could eat him or something, but that’s all part of the test. When he gets back, he’s a man. And not only that, he finds his Spirit Guide. Talk about embracing the weird.
But nowadays they don’t do anything but leave you at home by yourself with a kitchen full of potato chips and soft drinks. Then, in your bedroom, you’ve got your TV, video games, and the Internet. What do they expect you to get from that? A big fat case of I don’t give a shit?
These days, a kid has to go looking for his own initiation or make his own personal war to fight since the wars the atomic vampires throw are so hard to believe in. It’s like Ricky says—every time they trump one up, it gets worse.
If I was in charge, it’d be different. You wouldn’t have to go to military school or get dropped off in the wilderness or fight in a war. Instead, you’d head off for what I’d call the Teen Corps. It’d be like the Peace Corps, only for teenagers. You’d have to go around and, like, pile up sandbags for people when hurricanes blow in and replant trees in deforested areas and help get medical attention to hillbillies and so forth. You’d do it for a whole year, and then, when you got back, you’d get the right to vote and buy alcohol and everything else. You’d be grown.
I have most of the details of the plan worked out when sleep finally takes me.
Unfortunately, the next morning the excitement wears off. It’s too late for me anyway. If I were a dreamer like Bob Lewis, I’d wax on about becoming a politician and establishing the Teen Corps for the next generation or whatever, but like I say, I’m more of a right-now kind of guy. And right now I have my own miniature aid plan to work on—going to Aimee’s to get tutored.