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trickin’ kids around him, even ones who wouldn’t go with him, like Animal Cracker and me. And he would give us all money, at first anyways, enough for food and partying, so there was no reason to leave. But Darby wanted me to, he hated coming over, he didn’t like me living there at all, because of Tar. He couldn’t stand him. And Gerber thinks it was this mirror-mirror-on-the-wall thing, Darby couldn’t face looking at who he’d be himself someday, he was going for the exact same boys, he just wasn’t old enough to be a chickenhawk like Tar.
    Yet.
    But Darby wasn’t sick like Tar, buying all those mommy’s little monsters China White, getting them wasted on heroin and making movies of himself with them while they were nodded out, raping them, or shooting off in their mouths. He even made one with Rory Dolores, and Darby found out. That’s why Tar came after me. Darby wanted me to burn that tape and the only way to manage it was torching them all, two milk crates full in the Dumpster downstairs, but afterwards I couldn’t wash away that oily melted plastic smell, on my hands, in my hair, on my flannel, not with cold water, so as soon as Tar got close to me he conned the dots.
    And he was all, Payback time, and tried to get help tying me to a chair so he could light me on fire. And some kids ran off scared to the stairwell and some of the ones who stayed yelled, “Do it!” and some yelled, “Don’t!” but none of them did Bo Diddley pro or con, and Tar was squirting lighter fluid on me when Animal Cracker came running in and booted him between the legs then bopped him on the head with a white port bottle and I got away.
    I remember I found Darby that night, I found him with Blitzer at Tony the Hustler’s, and we made all these plans to posse after Tar, and torture him with tin snips and fire ants and rubber hoses.
    But we only slept.

8
    Hidden from Orange Avenue, on the wide shallow step by the Jell-O factory doors, I draw with the tips of my fingers on my face a mask.
    Because once upon a Franklin dime from the you guess mint, at the group home on Vermont, we all wore masks, to give us powers. Power to speak, if you were shy, to dance, if you were clumsy, power to see what you couldn’t, say what you wouldn’t, every day we wore these masks. And mine was Dogboy.
    Foam rubber hot on my face, sulfur-smelling.
    Bristle-brush whiskers, two hard teeth tapering.
    Canines.
    So here and now in the gutter and how I wedge the knuckles of my little fingers between my gums and upper lip on either side of my nose and my fingertips hang down nails out to make those teeth, the canines.
    Dogs see the world in black and white, color matters not at all, dogs sense movement, dogs smell fear, dogs know with their noses, whisker tips, tails, Dogboy knew a thousand things I only knew as Dogboy, Dogboy heard inside explaining voices, not just songs. I was Dogboy, shaggy Dogboy, long-haired Dogboy, then I wasn’t.
    I heard a band, my ear against the radio, under the blanket, late, I cut my hair, hacked it, slashed it, heard.
    We’re the poison in the human machine

We’re the future, your future.
    Radio on, mask off, once Dogboy, now Rocketman, what must it do, a rocket?
    Take off.
    No voice told me but my own. But the first voice after I walked, so surf boy blond and casual cool in sound but no no no in words not even, Cliff Hanger, flyering at LACC, his voice told me there’s a place, a little like heaven, a little like hell, but the main thing is: costs nothing, always open, how old you are, no matter, what’s wrong with you, no matter, how you dress, no matter, what you look like, no matter, the more fucked up you are, matters, the more the more the more the better better better.
    And could he lead me there, Pied Piper style?
    Yes.
    But did I trust him, then, just met?
    No.
    Then I asked, “What’s this place called?”
    “The Masque.”
    Too good to be true, too true to be good, a noose of charms around our necks.