Punkzilla by Adam Rapp Read Free Book Online Page A

back to HQ with the JV cross-country team plus I got kicked off the team. That same night I had a dream about Jesus of Nazareth. We were hanging out on this porch swing behind a 7-Eleven and smoking blunts and he was showing me some athlete’s foot fungus between his toes. “It’s blue” Jesus of Nazareth kept saying in his miracle voice. “It’s blue see there?” And then this other thing happened that I don’t understand which is he removed his ANKLE and gave it to me and asked me if he could have mine like he wanted to trade so we did we totally traded ankles and I felt like I became like some all-American Catholic hero all of the sudden.
    P I was nervous about the Major coming to Buckner I won’t lie. I knew he was going to wear his dress greens with all his ribbons and medals and those weird patent leather tuxedo shoes that weren’t even military issued and he was going to strut around with his hands behind his back while all the cadets and TAC officers saluted him and kissed his ass.
    A few days before I left home he knocked on my door and stood in the entrance to my room and just stared at me. I was listening to your iPod so I had to remove my earbud things. His shoulders were all sloped and I could barely make out his face because the light from the hall was on and he was mad shadowy. I thought he was going to bust me for smoking weed earlier that day or for forgetting to take the trash out or something but when I asked him what was wrong he said “You know anything about this Viagra stuff everyone’s talking about?” He was trying to be all quiet and secretive. I said I didn’t know anything about it. He said “Okay then” and went down the hall. I could hear him walking around the house for the rest of the night like he was taking a hike or something. I couldn’t sleep because I was pretty freaked out and I could just imagine Mom in their bedroom staring up at the ceiling or trying to read one of her romance novels like reading the same sentence over and over again and just laying there frozen like a cat in the middle of the street.
    There was this kid at Buckner named Tim Tiptree who was selling black market Viagra to cadets. He would sell them to Old Boys for fifty bucks a hit and to New Boys for a hundred. His dad was a pharmacist in Philadelphia so he had easy access and most of the cadets were rich so he made tons of money. If you were an Old Boy and you couldn’t get off campus and find a townie girl to split one with the thing to do was to get a New Boy to stand in front of your room while you jerked off. Have you ever split a Viagra with Jorge? I hear it makes sex way more intense like you feel like you grow fangs.
    By the way I don’t mean to change the subject so fast but when mom finds out about you being so sick she might send you some money or at least some care packages so that’ll be cool. That Christmas Eve when you came out of the closet she was the only one who didn’t totally freak out. I remember how she took your hand at the dinner table and how the Major told her not to comfort you but she kept squeezing your hand anyway. I thought the Major was going to kill you that night I swear I really thought that P. I couldn’t even sleep because I had this terrible feeling that he was going to sneak into your room and snap your neck.
    So anyway AWOL wasn’t even hard. You hear all these stories about cadets getting chased and Tasered and knocked in the back of the head with these huge flashlights that the on-duty guards carry.
    What’s weird is that there isn’t even a fence around the Buckner campus. Sometimes during Monday drill I would be marching with my platoon and I would get this feeling that I could just march away and start running but I couldn’t do it.
    That Friday night the TAC officer on duty was this old Vietnam vet called Sergeant Swift and he was sleeping in the HQ and I walked right past him and across the rotunda with all those paintings of the famous generals