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inane annals
Stainbombing, pt.1
by Mark Suder Massey | 19 Nov 2007, 21:51

Maybe you also remember seventh grade as a time of ghosts, absences, and stainbombs. But if you remember it as a time of first kisses, good friends, and new freedoms, then we're not so different. We just arrived at the same city by different highways. And when I meet you on that street corner, tell me about your first kiss. Because I'm about to tell you about my ghost.

I stood in front of the bathroom mirror, door locked, lights off.

"Bloody Mary," I whispered.

"Bloody Mary." My voice started shaking.

"Bloody M—" But I was already reaching for the light switch.

*

As I held the phone I fingered my dad's note. "Kyle. I'm out with friends and will be home late. Eat leftovers and don't leave the house." Knowing what day it was, and knowing my dad's lack of imagination, I counted on him stumbling home at six in the morning reeking of beer and cigarettes.

That was too many hours of silence. First I walked around the house and flipped over all the pictures with my sister in them. Then I called TayTay.

"Sup," he said, exhaling.

"Hey, it's Kyle. What's up?"

TayTay paused, then exhaled again. "Me and Max are just chillin' and watching some porn. You?"

In the background I heard Max say, "stop bogarting that shit."

TayTay laughed nervously, then covered the phone. "Keep your voice down, yo." Then TayTay spoke back into the phone, "Sorry, the TV's kind of loud."

I knew TayTay and Max were smoking pot and I knew they were trying to hide it from me. But I was also desperate enough not to care.

"Hey, you guys want to come over?"

"Ah, I don't know," TayTay said. "We're kind of occupied over here. My aunt's asleep and we got some German lesbian porn going and, uh, yeah."

"If we go anywhere," Max said in the background, "we're hitting up Mickey D's first. I'm hell of hungry."

I switched ears with the phone. "My dad's out for the night and you can invite girls over at my place. And tell Max he can drink my dad's whiskey."

"Oh shit!" TayTay said, his voice high. "We'll be there in two seconds."

*

TayTay, Max, and I were sitting around the kitchen table. Overhead the chandelier was set to dim. They both reeked of marijuana and Big Macs but they'd made it to my house in record time.

"That's where you're so wrong," Max said. "The Ramones were just as seminal as the Sex Pistols, and were clearly responsible for winning over a larger American audience."

TayTay leaned back, resting on one elbow. "All I know is, I wish Irene would show me love. Like, sooner than soon." He grinned. "Think I should call her?"

I shrugged. "Invite her over, my dad's gonna be out late."

"For real?" TayTay said, springing forward.

Max was scowling. "I wouldn't, man. It's too soon. Wait another three or four days and she'll be all over you."

"You're right," TayTay said. "In the meantime, think I might hug up on some other girls. Get her a little jealous."

"Dude, Kyle." Max looked at me. "Do you know how lucky you are, your dad just leaving you alone on a Saturday night?"

"I don't know if I'd call going on a bender lucky," I said.

"Yo what's a binder?" TayTay said, eyes glinting. "That, like, a bagel?"

Max rolled his eyes, then looked at me. "Why'd you flip over all those pictures?"

"Cause this guy," I said, throwing a napkin at TayTay, "is such a horndog."

"What?" TayTay shrugged with his hands. "She's gonna be fine when she's older. Like, put a good word in for me?"

I was shaking my head. "Christ. She's six years old."

"Nahh!" TayTay exploded out of his seat, rubbing my hair and then standing behind my chair. "You know I'm just fucking with you."

"That's insane how your mom just ran off to Trinidad with your sister," Max said. "Somebody should write an angst-rock song about that."

I flicked TayTay's hand off my hair and said to Max, "I mean, she got custody. It's legal and all."

Leaning back in his seat, Max crossed his arms. "Anyway, TayTay, going on a bender is when you go out to get seriously drunk. Sometimes for days."

"Nuh-uh..." TayTay said, voice low. "For real?"

I looked down, blushing.

"Hey," Max said to me. "At least your dad knows how to have a good time, right? I mean, shit. My parents probably haven't been drunk since before I was born."

"Having a good time has nothing to do with it," I mumbled.

TayTay walked around to Max's chair and leaned forward, his mouth almost at Max's ear. "Dang. You think Irene would be all freaky if I got her drunk?"

Max arched forward. "Personal space? Heard of it?"

Laughing, TayTay leaned back about a foot and let go of Max's chair.

"Kyle," Max said. "What do you say we go raid your dad's record collection? I bet he's got all kinds of kickass esoteric pre-punk shit."

"No," I said, standing up and walking toward the laundry room. "I have something a little more destructive in mind."

*

To keep TayTay and Max in suspense, I pulled out all the household chemicals and laid them around me on the laundry room floor. Then I looked up.

"What the hell is a stainbomb?" Max said.

"Sounds freaky," TayTay said. "I like it already."

I smiled with my eyes. "It's like napalm. Only domestic."

"Napalm Only Domestic," Max muttered to himself. "That would be such a cool name for a band. I'm thinking Fugazi meets The Kinks."

TayTay pushed himself up onto the dryer. "I'm all about Irene meets The Kinks. Kinky stinky."

"All right," I said. "Imagine a cross between Irene's heaviest period and puke from a Fugazi after party."

Max and TayTay exchanged a look, silent.

Max titled his head to one side. "You have a sick imagination, Kyle."

"But yo," TayTay said, swinging off the dryer and slapping my shoulder. "I like this side of you."

Keeping my face straight, I said, "The whole point of a stainbomb is to be nasty and stinky and hard to clean up."

Max tapped the vinegar bottle with his shoe. "You use all these chemicals?"

"Just one or two," I said. "Anything else and you don't know how they'll react."

TayTay grinned, his mouth open. "Where's the stinky come in to it?"

"Only one possible way," I said. "Food. The more perishable, the better."

*

Basking in front of the open fridge, we considered the food.

"Mmm," TayTay said, staring at the dairy section. "Chocolate milk. Nice and smooth like Irene's skin."

Max reached for the eggs. "These have anarchy written all over them."

"Both wise choices." I nodded, opening the freezer. "But for pure gross-out come tomorrow morning, it's hard to beat raw hamburger."

*

We were in the garage, building supplies and tools on all sides of us.

"Right the fuck on!" Max said, holding the can of epoxy up to the light. "Epoxy is punk like London in 1977."

TayTay pulled the stopper out of the superglue, watching it drip like molasses back into the jar. "When I get jizzy with Irene it's gonna be just like this."

I grunted, craning the lid off a paint can. "Gentlemen, have you see what red paint does to BMWs?"

*

Back in the kitchen we opened every pantry and drawer.

TayTay stretched a balloon back and forth. "When this is full it's gonna be like a big firm biddy, has a nipple and everything."

"In the spirit of subversion," Max said, reaching in the recycle bin. "I'm using a beer bottle. Molotov style."

"Yeah, those both work fine." I opened a drawer and pulled out a Ziploc bag. "It's just, I like to see exactly what I'm working with."

*

Twenty minutes later we were out in the night, giddy, a stainbomb in each hand. It was about ten o'clock at night and the suburban street was still. Five or six blocks from home we stopped.

"Let's give these bourgeoisies what's coming to them," Max whispered, shaking a beer bottle.

TayTay squeezed both of his plump balloons. "First time a player gets his hands on a D-Cup and already he's gotta say goodbye."

I looked down the street, listened, waited for my breath to steady. "All right," I said. "I think we're far enough from my house. Let's throw them at the same time. And just one—we'll save one for a more meaningful victim."

Max mouthed one, two, three.

"Class war!" Max screamed, hurling his bottle at a driveway.

TayTay lobbed his balloon at a front door, yelling, "My biddy!"

Laughing, I tried to chuck my Ziploc bag at a Lexus but only hit its rear tire.

And then we were sprinting through the night, Max in the lead and TayTay in the rear, following an unplanned escape route. We covered three blocks in three minutes. Doubled over, gasping, we arrived at an unfinished housing development. TayTay slapped Max and I on the back, then plopped down on a cement bag. After a while we'd each caught our breath.

"I'll admit it," Max said. "At first I thought stainbombing was a lame idea, but this—this is fun as fuck!"

TayTay rubbed my hair. "For real, Kyle. You been holding out on us, man."

I shrugged. "I don't do it all that often. It's just, tonight I really needed to get out of that house."

Max wrinkled his eyebrows. "Why, dude?"

"Just too much empty space in that house and too much on my mind, you know?"

"Hell yeah," TayTay said, eyes glinting. "It's like that when my aunt's gone all day. Lonely and shit. 'Cept then, I just grab the Vaseline from under her sink and get my jollies to Skinemax."

Max scowled. "Jesus, TayTay. Too much information." Then, softening his voice, Max looked at me. "When I get depressed I throw on some real hardcore shit like Operation Ivy and punch the walls. Get that aggression out."

I smiled faintly. "It's not that I feel alone or depressed, not really. I just think too much. About things I can't change."

"You miss your mom, huh?" TayTay nudged me with his elbow, then looked down at this hands. "I miss mine too. Gonna see her in June. It's funny though. Now that I been to third base I'm convinced she'll be able to tell just looking at me."

I nodded. "I do miss my mom, but, I mean, she's not who..."

"Are you telling me you stress about grades?" Max said, raising his eyebrows. "Fuck that thought control, Kyle. I'd rather stare at the wall and drool than do homework."

"Homework sucks, yeah, but that's not what..." I stood up, shaking my head. "Let's go chuck some more stainbombs. At something that really deserves it, this time."

TayTay hopped up. "How about Safeway?"

"That's kind of far..." I said. "I was thinking the law firms on Ross Road."

Max walked several feet and stood with his back to us. "Now I'm not saying any of us are pussies," he said, crossing his arms. "But a lot of kids still believe that Arollo Vista is haunted. I say we go there and stainbomb the shit out of that school."

"Oh shit!" TayTay's voice was low and airy. "I'd forgot about that. Some kind of blackbeard tuxedo-wearing ghost, huh?"

"Precisely." Max spun around. "Every time a kid from our suburb disappeared the rumor was he'd been taken by the ghost of Arollo Vista."

I spit on the ground, trying to sound bored. "But they're just rumors."

"Keep telling yourself that," Max said. "I just hope you're not afraid of ghosts."

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