The Passenger: Chapter Four

My mother’s hair always made me laugh. She spent so long trying to make it look perfect that when the ends curled out in the opposite way- which they inevitably did every single day- it seemed almost satirical. Not to mention pointless.

Even so, every morning she would spend countless hours in the mirror listening to Stevie Nicks and dancing with the curling iron in her silk bath robe. I was always jealous because it looked like such fun, but my father said that because I was a boy I wasn’t allowed to wear makeup or play with my hair. Luckily for me, my mother didn’t approve of sexism and sometimes, after my father would go to work, she would let me play with her mascara.

At the age of five, I wasn’t exactly an expert at applying cosmetics, and so I would sit on her marble countertop trying my absolute damnest to get it just right. But somehow, with every attempt, it would always seem to clump up, or run, or I would stab myself in the eye and cry “Mommy! It poked me!” She thought it was hysterical, and she would tell me to hold still while she wiped the smudges off my face, which is something not easily done by a child still in the single digits. Then she would put it on for me and I would try ever so hard not to blink. Somehow, even after I always managed to do so, it would still come out impeccably. Then we would trade places and I would try to make her look even more beautiful, though she usually wound up looking like a cracked-out geisha and would later have to reapply it anyway. But afterwards we would sing and dance in our bathrobes pretending to be Stevie’s special-guest singers who would eventually bring Fleetwood Mac back together for a reunion tour.

Those were some of the best days of my life. Days when it was just me and my mother sitting on the bathroom counter making each other fabulous. And later, she would make breakfast, and if I was having a particularly bad day at the sandbox, she would make me her famous strawberry pancakes. I’m not kidding either, her pancakes were famous. Julia Child had once called them spectacular, which is definitely saying something about pancakes.

We would sit out on the porch, still in our robes, watching the traffic- Mom liked the bustle of city life- and drinking mimosas. Mine were just orange juice, but they were still in a fancy glass, and every time with a little pink umbrella. Mom liked blue. But we would sit there watching cars and the birds fly, and she would quiz me on which ones flew south during the winter, and which ones stayed. I never understood why any of them stayed. If I had wings I would have been long gone.

And I would have taken her with me.

Later those afternoons she would hurry me back inside before my brother and sister had come home from school to make me look a little more “presentable.” Devon wasn’t particularly nasty, but at that age Natalie would have eaten me alive if she’d even once seen me with an ounce of makeup on my face.

I remember one summer when I was six I had tried playing Barbies with her. She literally ripped one of the doll’s heads off just so that I wouldn’t use it.

“You’re a boooy.” She was such a bitch. Those three little words always made me so mad. I didn’t ask to be a boy. Not that I really minded, but I always hated the stipulations that came along with my penis. I wasn’t allowed to be pretty. I wasn’t allowed to play with dolls. I wasn’t allowed to like boys. All bullshit.

Maybe that’s why I made a habit out of breaking the rules. Not that my sexuality was a choice, but I had definitely found myself in rather unsavory circumstances in more than one instance. My whole childhood I was made to feel like shit for the things that I thought made me- well- me. That’s why I told my dad to go screw himself when I went to high school with eyeliner on my face and fishnets on my legs. I didn’t care about his standing with the outside world or about people for that matter, and their narrow-minded views of how I had to be just because I had an X and a Y-chromosome. And my mom always sat with her little smile of approval- her little head nod that told me, “It’s okay to be who you are” and I thanked her every single day of my life for it. She made me feel special, but even more than that, she made me feel normal.

And maybe that’s why it was so heart-breaking when she finally came out of her coma and nervously asked her attendant who the freak with the gender-confusion was. When he informed her that I was her son she didn’t even know what to say. She just sat there, completely flabbergasted. I mean, she didn’t even bother to ask who Natalie was and she actually looked like a Barbie doll at that point.

I remember wanting to die at that very moment, and I remember running out of her room and into the bathroom to shoot up another bag. It didn’t help much. The pain was too extreme, and it wasn’t because my mother had blatantly insulted me after I had waited two long months for her to wake up, or even the fact that she didn’t know who I was. But it was because shrouded beneath whatever pretense she had fashioned before her overdose, she was actually disgusted by me. She had lied straight to my face. All of those times she smiled at me, telling me that I was okay- that I was normal- it was all bullshit. In the end, she didn’t even want to acknowledge that I was her child. She didn’t even want to know who I was.

My own mother didn’t want to know who I was. Sometimes I wonder if that’s why I stopped trying find out for myself.

∞

The white light reminded me of the sun at Cape Cod in July as it charred its way into my retinas. Johnny had once said that P-Town was highly overrated but that you really shouldn’t pass up the beach just because of a town that was gayer than Lady Gaga’s Monster Ball. Now I personally have no quarrel with Mother Monster, but let’s be real here- she rivals- if not surpasses- Margaret Cho on the fag-hag scale.

The air was stale and dry, much like the inside of my mouth, and for the first time in weeks I didn’t need Tina’s assistance in quelling my starvation. There were currently no sounds other than the constant irritation of a pen repeatedly clicking beneath a bony thumb, and the tragic buzzing of a fly trying to escape the confines of the plastic ceiling cover overhead. This was a rather disturbing parallel to my current condition.

The unfortunate man in front of me was not at all what I’d call attractive, though certainly not much worse than most of the other men I’d been with in the past eight months since Johnny left.

Clearly there was enough of me to make it this far.

The old fart had a sour look to his face that made him look a little like Alan Rickman but had a round bald spot atop his egg-shaped dome that resembled the summit of Mauna Loa. His lips were permanently fixed in a downward slant as though he had been sucking on lemons all day, and at first I just assumed he was trying to look unfriendly in order to get me to talk. But after three excruciating hours of endless, tormenting monotony I figured that maybe his face was just stuck that way.

It was a perfect fit for our surroundings that in themselves put a horrible taste in my mouth. The interrogation room looked more like my old Kindergarten classroom than the inside of a police station and I concluded that the person responsible for its paint-job must have either been colorblind or on ecstasy. There were, for perfectly understandable reasons, no windows or pictures but there was a single turquoise door that didn’t match anything I’d seen in the entire precinct other than the molding that surrounded the giant two-way mirror. The walls were a weird, uncomfortably warm beige and the floor tile was a hideous, almost Creamcicle-orange. My mother would have died. For real.

For a second I thought that maybe he had positioned me at just the right angle in the mirror so that I could blatantly see the reflection of the one strand of black hair sticking straight up in the back of my head like fucking Alfalfa, but couldn’t reach to smooth out. But no, I thought, nobody is that twisted. Then again, they had me stuck on top of Candy Mountain.

The man’s name was Detective Wiley. I had originally introduced myself as the Road Runner, but like most people, he just didn’t get my sense of humor. Or maybe another clever homo had used the line before me. Either way, at this point, I most certainly would have loved to flatten his head with an ACME iron.

I had first met Wiley’s associate Taz -and no, that wasn’t his actual name, it was an alias- quite a few months back at a club that Johnny used to take me to called Izzie’s. This is while I assume he was working undercover with the DEA in what I can also assume was an effort to hinder the drug trafficking in and out of Boston Harbor, which, I'm -admittedly- a little proud to say, was an entrepreneurship with which I had a lot of experience. It was also the main reason why I was now handcuffed to a chair.

And yes, I realize the terrible irony of the fact that Taz was working together with Wiley in the hopes of catching the Road Runner.

Taz’s actual name, as I found out the hard way, was Benjamin Tassimo- hence the “Taz,” I’m assuming. He was a young, smooth-talking guy who was far better-looking than his elder and had deep, piercing brown eyes and jet black hair that he slicked back with more grease than a Big Mac. He was a straight up Guido who reminded me of Pauly D from Jersey Shore. I never would have thought he was a Cuvvie because what upstanding citizen of the law actually tans that much? Taz was good at his job, I guess, because I usually have a knack for seeing past people’s bullshit. My problem is simply that I don’t care.

Regardless, after the initial repulsion the two of us had become “friends” I suppose, and that very misguided assessment was the reason why I was here. He had seen me and Johnny at Izzie’s on Halloween right before Johnny left. We went as Bonnie and Clyde which I thought was pretty hilarious. I put Faye Dunaway to shame. Taz had originally tried to pick the both of us up with some cheap-ass line about how my eyes resembled the stars or some shit. Johnny would have broken him in half if I didn’t intervene. He never let anyone else have a chance to play with his toys. Alright, maybe not never, but certainly not with some stuck-up orange prep like Taz. I didn’t even recognize him the without the eyeliner. He went as Dracula.

That should have been my first clue. Who the hell ever heard of a bronzed Dracula? I thought that one of the key points to being a vampire was that they couldn’t go out in the sunlight. Maybe he died of melanoma. Anyway, I never thought anything of it because, like I said, what kind of a stunted cop is that brazen and obvious? Or that lame?

But that lack of wit was actually a part of his charm and fortunately, for him, I had a weakness for morons. A few weeks later, Johnny was gone, and I was sitting alone at the bar, and guess-who comes walking up? I sold him a gram of Blow for almost double what it was worth just because he wouldn’t stop pestering me. Yet again, I make a trend out of wasting the city’s hard-earned tax dollars. I suppose it’s a gift. After that, Taz became one of my regulars- for a few things, actually.

It didn’t really matter now that I was here. Taz was a liar and a traitor. No, I was just gullible. And broken.

And now that Snape was here, casting blame at me out of his flaring nostrils, I should have just considered myself caught. But I don’t like playing possum, and most certainly not when I’m holding all the cards, or at least a few of them. This interrogation was going nowhere fast, and I’m pretty sure that I’d gotten more out of Wiley about his cheating bitch of a wife than he was ever going to get out of me.

No one was going to make me talk about Johnny.

“Samuel,” Wiley’s nasally voice began. He even sounded like Alan Rickman.

I blew him a sly kiss. “Call me hon.”

He was not entertained. “We have enough to charge you with six counts of Possession of Narcotics with the Intent to Sell. You’re already going to prison for at least ten years. I don’t want to have to add Conspiracy to Commit Homicide or, quite simply, just plain Homicide to your list of charges, but goddamit the one word is a lot easier to write down!”

That made me giggle. "You know Wiley, I had no idea that simply forgetting my turn signal could amount to all of this nonsense."

"Turn signal my ass!" He pulled at his necktie and continued, barely maintaining his grim stature. “We have you on all sorts of shit Mr. DiLaurio. Start cooperating with us and we’ll do everything in our power to reduce your sentence.”

I laughed, egging him on while trying to sound like an English bloke. “My good sir, this so-called list of charges you speak of is, in all actuality, just six counts of the same charge.” I cackled. "Unless you're counting the turn signal of course. I'd love to see that argument hold up in court. The defendant is not only accused of six counts of felony possession your honor, but he is undoubtedly guilty of a minor driving infraction." I widened my eyes, stifling the urge to explode. "DUN DUN DUNNN!"

His eyes slanted almost perpendicular to the shape of his mouth. "I could have added Solicitation to your list of charges, but I’m trying to help you out here.”

Well, he had me there on proof. He could have busted me for solicitation, seeing as how his comrade had literally caught me with my pants down.

More than once.

“Tell me where John Sadie is or give me the name of a person who might know his whereabouts and I’ll try and let you off easy.”

My blood began to boil. Easy? Is that what a decade in prison is: easy? I may have been a hooker and a drug-dealer- a bad driver even- but I most definitely was not a murderer. Wiley knew that. So did Taz for that matter. Besides, I really didn’t know where Johnny was at the moment. Currently, as far as I cared it was good riddance.

“Tell me Wiley,” the poison spewed out of my lips, “is Karen fucking your boss because you’re too busy trying to tap this ass?” It was a poor grasp at control over the situation and yet somehow it seemed to be working marvelously. Wiley’s fist slammed down on the fold-out table in front of me, causing it to clack against the floor of the Care-Bear castle. He’d never make me talk. “Aw, c’mon sugar. You’ve already got me in handcuffs.” I’d rather go to prison than talk about what Johnny did… even if he really did wind up killing somebody which, in all honesty, wasn’t a thing too hard to imagine. Even so, I had nothing to do with it.

Wiley was getting sick of my bullshitting, but I couldn’t help myself. He was making this way too easy for me. He clenched his sweaty palms and sprung up from the metal chair, again slamming down against the fragile folding table. Then he stomped away like a toddler, and stormed out the ugly turquoise door.

“Goddamn crack-whore!” I had finally broken him. Poor Wiley tried to slam the door, but failed due to the stop-hinges that prevented it from being slammed. After a brief delay, it delicately latched closed behind him as an added mockery to further bruise the old man’s ego. Even the very building was on my side, though it didn’t do a whole lot to ease my nerves. Still, the fact that there was some sort of holiness in my corner made things slightly less daunting.

But here I was, alone in this sickly cheerful room with nothing but the bittersweet mirror and the pigs gawking at me from behind it. I stuck my tongue out, flicking it back and forth like a snake, trying to instill a bit of my own fear in them.

I didn’t want them to see me for what really I was.

I watched as my unfamiliar reflection smiled a twisted and horrifying grin, revealing the demon inside that played me like a sock puppet. They thought they had me beaten. Sorry to disappoint you boys, but you’ve met your match on this one. I wasn’t going down that easily. The only real adversary I had in here was the mirror.

And that stupid hair that wouldn’t lie flat.