It doesn’t matter that I’m fifty and fat. Or that Denny Crall is fifty and fat. Or that some time over the past thirty years, pretty much everyone else we know in Newport Beach, California, decided they were too sophisticated to fight. This is the post–#MeToo era. Statutes of limitations will not apply, and Denny Crall has long, long, long had it coming.
So, I’m in the yard trying to get back in shape when my mom comes out with her walker. She’s got this deep Southern aristocratic accent like what’s-her-name who relies on the company of strangers, and she says, “Judson, why are you boxing my palm tree?” Then stands there all superior with her hips gone bad and her face pruned up and the little cupholder she’d made me mount to her walker so she could drink box Chablis at nine in the morning, and I start thinking, Blanche DuBois, maybe it was way better overall that you never got the chance to be a mom. And I say, “I’m not gonna hit the palm tree, Mom. It’s air boxing. A point of reference.”
And she says, “Point of reference for what?”
And I say, “Denny Crall.”
I’m back from teaching English in South Korea after thirty years because of COVID, and I can’t get a job because of COVID, and I’m living with my mom and her bad hips, and I don’t have anything to do except argue with her and drink Wild Turkey and get in touch with people from the old days. Girls, mostly. Women now, sure, but I knew them as girls.
Annalisa used to sit across from me in US history. She wore a torn, deep-cleave Nirvana T-shirt and had big, knowing eyes that she’d roll at stuff like the Bill of Rights. Sometimes we talked about bands we liked, but the deep cleave and big eyes made me nervous about where she might see me looking, so it was easier to keep my distance.
Then, sometime senior year, she dropped out of school to go on tour with the Grateful Dead, which, at the time, I thought was lame, because I was more into punk rock, but now I think anyone with a brain and taste likes them both.
Annalisa lives in Canada now and has a daughter, but the dad was a scumbag and left. So, one night about a week ago, I texted that my dad was a scumbag who left my mom, too, and look how great I turned out—which was sort of a joke and sort of not, but I’m pretty sure she got it.
Then we start texting about the lame stuff that comes along with the punk rock scene versus the lame stuff that comes along with the Dead scene. I texted that even though I really like the Dead, their scene was way lamer for the dancing alone, and she texted, Punk rock was ruined for me in high school.
And I texted, How come?
And she texted, Denny Crall.
And I texted, Me too! Hate that guy. Overdeveloped sense of entitlement.
Then a long pause with the pulsing dots. Really long, like she was thinking what to write and editing it a bunch, before she texted, He pretty much raped me.
And I texted, Pretty much?
And she texted, HE RAPED ME.
I texted, I’m SO sorry, and I tried some emoticons, but none of them seemed like enough. I thought I should call her but wimped out and sat there with my Wild Turkey in the same room I grew up in with pretty much all the same shit I had as a teenager—the Dungeons & Dragons books, The Clash posters, the weight set—and I just got overwhelmed with this sense of injustice. Thinking about my dad leaving my mom way back and how Mom’s hips are so fucked up she can barely walk but even still she’s going for the cosmetic surgery, and about the Korean movie star I’d dated, who kept it a secret because I was a White guy, then broke up with me, and how I overall just felt shitty and stuck.
Then I texted, I’m gonna kick his ass.
And she texted, You should.
And I texted, I will.
And she texted, You should.
I find out on Instagram that Denny Crall goes to the Newport soccer mom coffee shop in Lido Village before work. So, I start going to scope it out. I ride my bike and get a coffee and sometimes an apple strudel, and I sit on the curb because of COVID.
I go there almost every morning for a week, but I don’t see him. I watch the moms in their yoga pants and go through the stages of:
1. idealizing them and wanting them all to be my wife,
2. wondering which one I’d choose for a wife,
3. hating them all for the superficiality and mentally rejecting them as a group,
4. realizing they’re all way too young to be my wife anyway and every single one would reject me,
5. feeling like a creep, and
6. being pretty sure I look like a creep.
Then one day I see him. Denny Crall in a beige suit and Birkenstocks. White shirt. No tie. Open collar spread wide to display his hairy chest. No mask on his face to display his smug-beachy-professional-overdeveloped-sense-of-entitlement grin.
He’d started shaving his head even before I did, back when it was mostly a skinhead thing. You had to be careful how you did it. I had rainbow-flag patches on my backpack and was always extra friendly with Black people. And I don’t just mean the White-seeming Black people who wore architect glasses, but like some pretty scary-looking Black people just approaching me out of nowhere, but Denny never did anything like that. I’m pretty sure he didn’t identify as a skinhead, but more like he didn’t mind the rumor. Probably even kind of liked it.
But like I said—like I think I said—I’m nice. That’s my go-to. So even when I see Denny looking all cocky off to sell real estate, Nice Me takes over.
I’m like, “Hey, Denny!” with a big old wave.
And I mean, I’ve got this bushy beard and a Gandalf-looking hiker hat to protect my bald head from the sun, and I’ve been out of the country for thirty years and only visited once in a while, so maybe he doesn’t recognize me, but even still. All he gives me back is a half-cocked nod. Like he’s someone used to other people knowing who he is even when he doesn’t know them back, some kind of celebrity in disguise. And he scoots along the sidewalk with his whatever-the-fuck fancy latte like he’s got places to go.
I’ve only been exercising for maybe two weeks. And not even seven days a week. More like five or four days a week, and I’ve been trying to eat better, except that goddamn apple strudel. But there’s something about the entitled-rock-star nod that just infuriates me, and I might have had a little too much Wild Turkey in my coffee, so now I’m following him, hanging about ten feet back, but following.
My dad was a Green Beret in the Korean War—which is ironic, I guess, but anyway. When I was in fourth grade and got in trouble for fighting, he sat me down for this big conversation about how, when you fight, when you’re in the fight or just before it, everything gets simple and focused, and you’re right there in the moment with no doubts about who’s right or what’s what. Then I thought he was going to work his way around to some boring grown-up moral, how fighting is fun but not worth it, but he never did. And I appreciated it.
When I was in fourth grade, he moved to Iceland.
I didn’t hear from him much, but one time, when he was seventy-two, three thugs cornered him in an alley. And these were probably the only thugs in all of Iceland, but anyway, they tried to rob him and he KICKED THE SHIT OUT OF ALL OF THEM. It was in all the papers and stuff. I’m so proud of that. Probably shouldn’t be, but I am.
He died a few years later. I spent most of that time between when he left and now thinking he was an asshole. But now, living with my mom, I don’t know. Anyway, I don’t want to talk about my dad.
Denny walks past an abandoned shopping cart, probably from the grocery store a couple blocks away. Maybe some kids took it and were joyriding around, and fuck, how fun was that? Being a kid and finding a shopping cart. You’re having races. Pushing each other. I grab the cart and put my strudel in the little cart shelf that’s for delicate stuff like cartons of eggs, and I wheel it behind him, making that clanking grinding sound. I’m getting closer, and he’s speeding up, like vaguely nervous but not going to show it, so then I speed up, too, clanking after him. And maybe it’s something about the wheels going around that reminds me I didn’t lock up my bike, and it’s just leaning up against a streetlight.
A couple days ago, I went with my mom to tour some cosmetic surgery clinics for her new face. We went to five different hospitals, and she was uppity at every one, like someone going out to dinner and being super rude to the waitress. She was like, “Private room, if you please. I cannot abiiiiide a roommate.”
When she asked if the tomato sauce came from real tomatoes or a can, I was like, “Mom, it’s a hospital.”
And she was like, “Judson. This is a clinic.” Then started trying to flirt with the thirty-year-old doctor, quoting Oscar Wilde: “A man’s face is his autobiography. A woman’s face is her work of fiction.”
And the whole thing made me indignant, but also, I guess, sad. She used to be fun. When I was a kid, we used to do all the grocery shopping together and plan out the meals, and we’d take turns, so if one person picked what we ate, the other person got to pick what we watched while we ate it, and I’d be patient with like tilapia or Clark Gable, and she’d be patient with pizza pockets or Robotech.
When she was examining the medical equipment like she knew what the fuck any of it actually did, the doctor pulled me aside, and said real quiet, “We won’t refuse treatment. We can’t, legally, refuse treatment, but I need you to know the risks with anesthesia. At her age, with her heart, I need you to know the risks.”
Later that day, I tried to talk to her about it. There on the couch with her box Chablis. And I’m like, “You’re eighty. Why do you need cosmetic surgery on your face? You should get your hips fixed. Or, fuck, y’know, go to a physical therapist.”
She was sitting there on the couch under this tiny Picasso sketch of Don Quixote that she said was an original but totally wasn’t and she had it in a golden frame like six inches thick. She was quiet for a minute, listening, which was really unlike her. So I talked about what a racket the whole beauty thing was anyway and I knew how insidious it could be and all that.
And I could see a sadness go through her. Not crying, really, but something like that. One of those sad-quiet moments when you confront your own mortality.
Then she said, “A man’s face is his autobiography. A woman’s face is her work of fiction,” like it had just then occurred to her and she hadn’t just used the same phrase two hours before to try to flirt with the doctor, and I don’t want to talk about my mom.
Denny Crall breaks into a run. And I know I can’t catch him, at least not with the shopping cart, plus I’m getting nervous about my bike, so I just stop and yell, “Denny! It’s Judson.”
Then he stops, too. Turns around, and, I mean, he was just running for his life, but he’s not going to show it. He goes, “Hey, man! Hey, Judson. Fuck. Dude. Where you been?”
And I go, “South Korea.”
And he goes, “Oh. Yeah . . . South Korean girls. I heard about South Korean girls.”
For a second, I almost tell him about the movie star. How we dated for like six weeks, but it was the best six weeks of my life. How we had to sneak around to those private-movie-room places where the teenagers go to make out, but we’d watch Band of Brothers, and we’d never make out during that, because she was so into it, which was the best. But I notice him eying me, like roving over the Gandalf hat and the shopping cart, and I’m like wait a second, this guy’s being a total asshole. This guy’s objectifying. There aren’t a lot of people around. But some. It’s this whole pedestrian area. So then I say, “Girls? What’s that supposed to mean, you fucking rapist?”
Girls.
Girls. Girls.
Girls, girls, girls.
I know it’s what the bad guys say. The thing in neon at a strip club.
But for me, it means something else. Something perfect and rock-show holy. It’s grade school and high school and Annalisa rolling her eyes at the Bill of Rights and love before love gets complicated, and I just want to defend it.
Denny’s eyes are really far back in his head, and his forehead protrudes forward, so he has this Neanderthal look. It’s something he’s always used for intimidation, like right now when he says, “The fuck you say to me?”
And he gets in this stance with his front Birkenstock foot pointed forward but all the weight on the back foot. I went through a phase where I used to watch a lot of MMA. So I recognize the Muay Thai stance, and I know I’m fucked.
But there are some people around. Milling around with their coffees and bagels and apple strudels and feeling generally good to be living life rich and White in sunny SoCal on a Tuesday morning at ten, so I say real loud to everyone there, “This guy’s a rapist! He raped Analissa . . . ,” but then I can’t remember her last name. I mean, I know it, but in the moment, I blank. So I’m like, “You raped cool Analissa. You made her go on tour with the Grateful Dead.” And then on instinct or something, I look down and see I’m wearing a Grateful Dead T-shirt, and I realize I look like some self-hating Grateful Dead fan or something, but I mean, I’m all in now.
I’d been texting Annalisa the night before about what she’d been through and all her worries for her daughter. At some point, she was like, I could really use a hug right now.
And I was like, I’m there giving you a hug.
And she was like, I feel you here close to me.
And I was like, What do you feel?
And she was like, What do you want me to feel?
And I was like, I want you to feel whatever you want to feel.
And she was like, SO hot!
Which, okay, I know she was making fun of me. But still probably charmed.
The cart is between me and Denny. So I push it against him really hard. He falls over, buckles against it and scrapes his knee, so blood’s like blooming out onto the knee of the suit. But I’m still so mad. Like still so fucking mad at everything—Denny Crall and rich people and my mom and my dad and Brett Kavanaugh and COVID and the movie star and I’m just knocking it into him again and again, making this sound, like, “Gnaa! Gnaa! Gnaa!” and then the strudel pops out of the cart and lands on the ground, and I yell, “My strudel!” Which is fucking lame and I know it’s fucking lame and I look like this crazy homeless guy with a shopping cart, and I kind of am this crazy homeless guy with a shopping cart, but I’ve got all this to deal with, so I slam him one more time with the cart, then run like hell for my bike.
It isn’t far to go. I hear Denny panting behind me while he gets up, cause he’s an old man, too. But I can make it, I’m pretty sure except something’s wrong. I don’t see my bike up against the streetlight. I stop for just a second just to get a sense of what the fuck is going on, like maybe I’m looking at the wrong streetlight, and I say something, sort of like cry out, “My bike!” Then Denny gets a hold of me, gets me down in a double collar tie and starts slamming his knee into my gut again, and the wind’s gone out of me and he’s banging into my kidneys.
Then he stops. Just all of a sudden stops and it gets real still and we’re hanging together almost like we’re hugging, when he says, “Bro. Hey bro. Girl just stole your bike.”
It’s true. Jeans and a ripped Clash T-shirt. She’s maybe sixteen, a beautiful, sneering girl with a coffee cup in one hand, bike handle in the other, hair cut ragged just above her shoulders like she’s done it with a knife. This girl. Probably, she’d been just about to steal it, then heard the commotion with Denny and me and wheeled it our way to watch. But she’s on it now, and she rides, she glides right past us. Almost close enough to touch. 
Adam Prince’s fiction has appeared in The Missouri Review, The Southern Review, Narrative Magazine, and The Sewanee Review, among others. His short story collection, The Beautiful Wishes of Ugly Men, is available from Black Lawrence Press.
Illustration: Josh Simmons
