Expendable Youth
The only place to be on a Friday night in Junior High was the YMCA dance. It ran from 7 to 10 p.m. and was advertised on bright fliers in morning homeroom, attracting 11-14 year olds for five dollars a head. Kids from both Beverly, Massachusetts Junior High Schools filled the parquet floor, mingling under dimmed, industrial sized lights.
One night in seventh grade, with The Village People rattling the warehouse’s long aluminum walls, my friend Jeff tugged on my winter jacket and signaled for me to follow him. Our boots were still wet from the blizzard outside and squeaked as we headed into the bathroom.
The boys’ room was a crammed, white cement cube containing a stall with its door torn off, and a urinal with bits of graffiti on the surrounding walls. Under the pale glow of one buzzing light, we stood next to a permanently scum-streaked mirror. Jeff wore a big Orlando Magic jacket with a matching black headband, and gold rings in each ear of his shaved head. His back was turned and he played with something in front of him as I looked on with rainbow colored lips from the Skittles I was eating. Jeff turned around and jerked his hand out from his black jacket, aimed a gun at my head, and pulled the trigger. The click sent a bolt of electricity from my skull to my feet, but there was no bullet in the chamber.
“It’s a .22,” he said. “I don’t got any bullets here but I got a full clip at my crib.” If Jeff had overlooked a bullet in the chamber, I would be dead and my friends would still be spelling out “Y-M-C-A” on beat with their arms.
He gripped the gun and popped out the empty clip.
Jeff lived in a low-income housing development called Apple Village, and like any Apple Village kid, he was a phenomenal dancer on roller skates. My mom would bring him home when we had to stay after school together, but she and I never hung around.
“Yo, you could pull this shit out on mad people,” he said. Jeff knew guns. Once, he told me his 17-year-old brother owned a few and used them a lot. “Shit’s for sale. Wanna buy it?” He held out the gun I saw it wasn’t any bigger than his 12-year old-hand. Chips of its maroon paint had banged off, but I stared as the gun blazed red in the bathroom’s yellow glow. I handed Jeff the Skittles and squeezed the gun. It was heavier than expected and like a machine that could start up at any moment, felt powerfully dense in my hand.
“Yo, cause if you wanted to, I could hook you up for like 12 bucks. The full clip, too,” he said.
“Does the clip make it heavier?” I asked.
“You can still wave it around when it’s loaded,” he said.
I laughed and waved the gun in front of me. Jeff shoved a handful of Skittles into his mouth. I played with the 35 cents in my pocket, left over from the candy.
“Nah,” I said.
We admired the gun a bit longer. He popped out the clip and pushed it back in again. I watched, chewing the last mouthful of Skittles.
“Shit’s pretty tight, though, right?” Jeff asked.
“Yeah,” I said. “It’s sweet.” My voice seemed to bellow back off the grimy white walls.
“Aight, let’s dip,” he said, putting the gun back in his jacket. I tossed the candy wrapper into the garbage and we walked out onto the dance floor with Ice Cube’s “Check Yourself” booming through the warehouse.
“Yo Mike,” Jeff said. “Don’t tell nobody.”
I nodded. We searched the dance floor and found our friends horsing around with the vending machines, next to the cashbox and the people selling blow pop suckers. On the other side of the warehouse, boys were taking turns trying to touch the basketball rim. Nearby, girls practiced dance routines. Next to me, another friend’s sleeve got tugged and I watched as he followed Jeff into the bathroom.
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