Baby Be-Bop Read Online Free PDF

into the writhing body mass. It was like surfing in a way, fighting to stay up above seething waters that wanted to consume you, part of you wanting to be consumed, to vanish into radiance.
    “The world’s a mess it’s in my kiss,” X sang.
    Dirk felt the bitterness and anguish making his lips tingle. He raged arms and legs akimbo into the fury. He was carried forward by the whirlpools of the crowd to the stage. On the stage. Blinded sweat tears lights. Howling. Panic. Pandemonium. Pan, hooved horned god. Flinging himself off into space. Waiting for the fall, the hard smack, unconsciousness.
    No. Buoyed up. Thrilling sweat-slick biceps. Cradled for a moment. Father. Father. Objects in flight around the room. Fragments of poetry. Lost eyes far away. Eyes like boats drifting farther and farther away.
    He was back on his feet again. The crowd had caught him. He had felt their respect and admiration. He wiped off sweat with the back of his hand and went to get another beer. As he walked through the crowd he felt some bodies move back to give him room, witness his strength, others brush against him to feel it. The lights caught zipper metal and raven hair. Sweat on tan skin like beer drops brown glass glisten.
    After the show Dirk gave Kaboodle some water andwalked him until he peed. A boy and girl with matching burgundy hair that stood straight up on their heads like flames smiled at them.
    “Mohawk dog,” the boy said. “You’re twins.” Dirk and Kaboodle smiled back.
    They got in the car and drove by Oki Dogs on Santa Monica Boulevard. Punks, kids with long greasy hair and junky-bulky veins in shriveled arms, tall men with big cars and sharp teeth, sat on the scarred benches under fluorescent lights that buzzed like flies or fat cooking. Dirk stopped the Pontiac and got out. The man at the counter shouted at him, “Okay okay,” so he just said, “Oki Dog and a Coke.” The Oki Dog was a giant hot dog smothered with cheese and beans and pastrami slices and wrapped in a tortilla. Dirk ate a few bites. It tasted salty greasy rich dark danger like the night. He was so hungry.
    Then he saw a shrink-wrap swastika earring. It was dangling from the ear of a girl with spikey hair. The girl was drinking a Coke and giggling with her friends. She could have been Tracey or Nancy with a punk haircut.
    “Do you know what that earring means?” Dirk said. He had never spoken out like this but suddenly his nerves felt huge, fluorescent, explosive. Maybe from the music still in his head. Maybe from the symbol.
    The girl giggled. “It’s a punk thing.”
    “Do you know who Hitler was?” Dirk asked.
    “Yeah sure.”
    “Really? You know about the concentration camps?”
    “Kind of. I guess. Why?”
    “Hitler massacred innocent people. I’m sure you heard about it sometime. That was his symbol. The swastika.”
    “I got it at Poseur. It’s cool.”
    “It is so uncool. You can’t even believe how uncool it is,” Dirk said.
    The girl lowered her eyes. She looked to her friends and back to Dirk.
    Dirk left Oki Dogs and got in his car. Kaboodle kissed his face and Dirk gave him the rest of the Oki Dog. As they drove away Dirk saw the girl pull the earring out of her ear and look at it.
    So maybe it wasn’t what he thought, this scene. But it was a wild enough animal safari that his own beastliness might go unnoticed.
    He drove over the city’s shoulders tattooed with wandering, hungry children and used car lots, drove past hanging traffic light earrings into beery breath mist, up and up above the city, trying to shed it like a skin. On the city’s shaved head was the crown of the Griffith Observatory. The viewing balcony was closed, but the star Dirk had come to see was the bronze bust of James Dean on its pedestal. He gazed into its light and would have exchanged his soul for that boy’s if he could.
    Because he couldn’t give his soul to James Dean, Dirk kept going out. Just keep going out, he told himself.
    The Vex was