Me Three

Real men drink real milk, my mother told me. She said it makes your bones strong and your muscles big and your teeth healthy and white. Yeah. I drink a lot of milk. I drink it all the time. I like it cold as ice, colder than ice. Pour it in a tall, clear glass; look at it for awhile, then
chug-a-lug it down fast as I’m able.

Sometimes I get a cold milk headache after, and my brains feel like they’re gonna spill out of my ears. Explode, possibly. It makes me feel even more masculine. And I drink the real stuff, too; vitamin D super hydrogynized - rich and creamy. Not that skim junk my sister likes. One of my friends, his mother makes him drink that crap and he’s the weakest kid I know. It makes me want to not be friends with him anymore.

I drink so much cold milk that I sometimes think my pee should be white. That might be neat because I could make my own milk then. It wouldn’t be cold, though. I feel good when I drink it, although I haven’t got any muscles yet and some of my teeth are decayed. My mom also says real men brush their teeth or they get like Yuckmouth who never brushes, but I think that all the milk must be enough to keep me strong and healthy.

Speaking of pee, one time I went in my little sister’s cup. I told her it was lemonade. She was three or something and pretty dumb so she believed me. So she took a sip and started crying. She’s so spoiled. She was yapping, "You peed on me. Mommy, Mommy, he peed in my cup!" I kept saying, "Shut up, you little baby." Everyone started freaking out. It was great - until my dad began to warm up his hands. That’s code for he’s gonna whack my ass. I begged him not to, told him it wasn’t pee and that the lemons were just rotten. But then he asked "Where the hell did you get rotten lemons, bucko?!" He whacked my ass.

The first whack popped like somebody shot off a cap gun. And man, did it smart. I thought for a second maybe he shot me, maybe he shot me in the ass, but when he kept whacking me I knew those weren’t bullets. But it might have been cool if they were. If I could tell all the guys at school that my dad capped me in the butt, I’d be so friggin popular. Then again, I was glad he was only using his hand. It felt like my dad was hitting me with hot tamales or some fiery torch. I got panicky. I started to cry like my lame-o little sister who drank my pee. She could’a washed it down with some of those tears. She could’a taken a shower under all those tears that were shooting out of my eyes like the bullets my dad didn’t shoot into my butt.

While I was crying, I thought about my sister and about the pee. How would I like it if someone made me drink their pee? Not too much, I think. Not even if their pee was milk. Drinking pee of any kind is bad for you. And then I started to wonder what would happen to my sister. Would she get sick from the pee? Wasn’t it poisonous? What if she fell unconscious because of the poison? Jesus Lord, I’m going to have to go to my room for the rest of my life. And it’s pancake Sunday at church tomorrow, and I friggin love pancakes. But worst of all, I won’t have anyone to beat up on long car rides or to make wear my underpants on her head at our weekly Martian club meetings. My baby sister is gonna die I was thinking. I felt like the worst person. Now I was crying for my sister, not my ass. How could I make things right again? I wanted to shout out to my dad, "I’ll drink my own pee, I’ll drink her pee, I’ll drink your pee, just let her be OK!"

As I lifted up my head to say this, I caught sight of my little sister in the doorway. At first she looked like she was melting or had come out of the rain. Probably cause of all the tears. But I wiped my eyes dry and she looked alright. I looked at her, and even though my butt felt like fried eggs, I waived to her and smiled. She smiled back and I felt a whole lot better. Then, slowly, she stuck out her tongue, made a juicy, fart noise, turned and ran out of the room. All of the guilty feelings I felt disappeared then. I made an oath to myself that tomorrow I would staple her lips together.

* * *

I also used to chuck eggs at cars. It would make this great smacking noise and the driver would get out and try to chase us. Sometimes we chucked batteries. That was always pretty good fun. So was sneaking out of my buddy’s house late at night. We pretended to be asleep when his folks came into check on us. I have a really great fake snore. We completely tricked them every time. I'd say, "Let us pussyfoot" like the evil villain in the movie Babes in Toyland and we’d tiptoe all quiet out the front door and into the night.

Most times we didn’t have a plan or anything. We just wanted to be out there and do something. One time my buddy and I emptied all the garbage cans on his block and then made this really nifty junk barrier in the middle of the street. It was like the Great Wall of China, except he lived on Westview. But we’d pretend we were in China. After we’d go hide in the ivy and wait for a car to drive along.

Oh man, you should’a seen it. That car would stop right there in the middle of their trip. Some fat bastard would squeeze outta the front seat and slam the door behind him. He’d be cursing and stuff and looking around to see who did it. We just laid there in the ivy like a couple of secret Chinese spies and whispered "ching chang chung" while he had to move all that trash by himself. He’d be so sweaty and yelling, "Little fucking punk ass cock sucking shitheads," and we’d laugh so hard I swear I thought I would fall unconscious. That and the pee incident were my favorite moments.

I'm not sure why I do these things. I guess I do a lot of bad things. But I do a lot of good things, too. Like after I peed in my sister’s cup, I never stapled her lips together. Honest. The truth is I even apologized, both for the pee and the thoughts about the staples. Next, I made her favorite snack - open faced Best Food mayonnaise sandwiches. That’s the snack we always eat together during Saturday morning cartoons. And I didn’t spit in them or anything. My dad came upstairs in the middle of our mayonnaise sandwich party to tell me how badly he felt about spanking me and that it "hurt him more than it hurt me" but I that I "left him with no other options." I offered him a sandwich. We ate ours together and he put his arm around me and told me he just couldn’t understand how the sweetest son in the whole world could turn into such a little devil at times. I thought he had a good point; I even told him that. Meanwhile, my sister had fallen asleep on top of her half-eaten sandwich. She was smiling, her cheek resting on a pillow of smushed bread, covered in Best Foods creaminess.

I’m a pretty nice person when I’m not mean. "Satanic," I hear my mom say on the phone to her sister in Cincinnati. No wonder that whenever I visit her my aunt won’t let me eat sweets or drink Cokes. She tells me its because I’m a hypermaniac and she’s so worried I’m gonna blow up her house. I try to tell her how I’m too young to buy fireworks or bombs or any kinds of explosives, but she just says "there, there" and makes me drink grapefruit juice and watch the Lawrence Welk show with her.

I don’t know what makes me happy. Sometimes I just feel great. I could sing a song or do a dance or make some cake for everyone. I don’t know if that would make them feel happy, but I would like it. Other times I feel low. That I don’t understand too well either. Those days I just wanna kick the dirt or maybe just sit there and think about how bad I feel. Times like that I could really use a hug or a kiss from my mom. Or go get some Quarterback Crunch ice cream double scooped with Gold Medal Ribbon with my dad at 31 Flavors. Or both.

But whenever my mom actually does try to give me a kiss I want to run away and hide in the ivy. I wanna tell her to take a hike, Jack, like that guy told my dad when we went to Canada that one summer. I don’t ever say that, but I act as if I want her to go hiking. And that makes me feel even lower, because I see her become sad and confused and think that I don’t love her. But I love her very much, because she’s my mother. Plus, she’s a nice lady.

The other reason I don’t like her to give me kisses is because of the girls who live up the block. One time they forced me to play Truth or Dare with them. I picked dare. What a stupid move. My dare was to French kiss one of them. I had never heard of that and didn’t know what that was until she jabbed her tongue into my mouth. It was slimy and cold like a wet lizard and tasted terrible. Even worse, she kept it in there for fifteen Mississippis. I thought I was gonna puke. On the way home, I kept spitting and spitting to get the taste out of my mouth. I ate three containers of tapioca pudding when I got there just to make sure.

Later that same day, my mom asked her precious little sweetheart for a little kiss. When I went over to her, though, I got afraid again. After she put her lips on mine, I got really afraid because I wanted to smooch with her and what if I put my tongue in her mouth? She would slap me silly, I know, because you can’t do that. It’s just not right to french kiss with your mom. She would think I was a dirty scumbag, which I already felt like I was, or a sex fiend which I was afraid I was gonna become. So I pulled away quick and pretended I had to sneeze. But I still felt really horrible and guilty about my tongue. So that’s another and probably even bigger reason why I don’t let my mom kiss me now.

Now I bet my mom thinks I’m rotten kid and ungrateful and don’t love her or her kisses, but that’s just not true. I’ve just got things on my mind and fears about my tongue that have nothing to do with her. And then my dad thinks I’m a psycho angel-devil who only thinks about pee. My aunt believes I’m a dangerous terrorist. And my sister, who probably can’t understand her own thoughts yet, surely doesn't feel anything positive toward me. That leaves me, and I don’t know what to think about myself.

Am I a good person or a bad person? When I look around at everybody else for an answer to this question, I never find one. Everywhere I go - school, church, little league, anyplace - it seems like all those people don’t know about themselves any better. Like one day my baseball coach is telling me how great a player I am, but after we lose the next day how much I stink. He’s nice, but he’s also evil. Which one is my real coach?

Another person was my teacher. The first day of classes he brought us amazing superhero name tags, and I got Aquaman who everyone knows is the best one. As a matter of fact, he even called me AquaKid sometimes and I was glad for that. Later on, though, he stopped calling me AquaKid because he thought I talked too much and that my new nickname would be Chatty Cathy. I hate the name Cathy the most. My mom has a friend named Cathy who smokes cigarettes and drinks Sanka and she talks with her scratchy voice right in your face. She gives me a headache. She’s always wondering why I’m so shy and never say anything but the real reason is that I’m holding my breath. So you can see why I wouldn’t like to be called Cathy, especially a chatty one. Him doing that hurt my feelings. So which one was my real teacher, the one with the name tags or the one with the insults?

One last guy was a guy at my church. Everybody loved him cause he was friendly and helped black people and Mexicans from El Salvador. I liked him because he let me come over and watch baseball games, look at his Playboys and drink pink, fruity champagne. But one day he asked me if I wanted a blow job. I didn’t even know what that was so I said no thanks, that’s OK. When I found out later, I felt kind of sick: I didn’t want my dong in that guy’s mouth. Have you seen his teeth? Just thinking about it gave me the creeps. Then it made me feel crummy. Was that guy my friend or was he some pervert? Or was he both?

These kinds of things are mysteries to me. It’s like your beliefs about a person and their actions are two separate things. But then other times they seem to be the same. It’s even like that with myself. I’m a mystery to me, too. I suppose the best way to deal with this is just go out and play baseball, even if my coach believes I suck ass.

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Tommy Schrider is an actor living in New York City. He received his M.F.A. from New York University.