Casey Jones is Still a Virgin

Author's Note to Younger Readers

This book talks about sex. If you don't know about sex, please wait until you find out about it to read this book. Or, read this book to find out.

for Kacie

Chapter One

Living at home was killing me. Big Sis Lilith and her boyfriend had just moved back in, and I had to hear the bed thumping down the hall and the shrieking. The dog’s red rocket would shoot out, and he’d ride the table leg and leave white streaks across the hardwood kitchen floor.

My name’s Casey. I’m half black. I like to dream I’m the female Barack Obama sometimes, but I’m really more like a female Urkel. Do you remember Family Ties? I’ve lived in this gray ranch prefab my whole life, on a long spiral street around a hill of wild trees, wending up into Queen Anne in Seattle, but it hasn’t been the same since Dad left.

Today was Saturday, so Mom sent me out with her credit card to buy groceries. Thirty-five dollar limit, she said. That’s all her worker’s comp could afford.

I rigged up my mountain bike with an extra-wide crossbar to dangle reusable grocery bags from, way out past the handlebars, so they wouldn’t snag. There was a bodega in walking distance, but Mom’s brands are all at the Safeway, so I got out to the garage, took the mesh bags from the peg, slung them over the crossbar and stuck the umbrella into the umbrella holder I welded to the side. Mom thinks I’m a lesbian, but I’m not.

Down the spiral hill, spiralling around with my feet out and my hands off the brakes, past the erosion wall that blocks off all the mansion people, underneath the bigger and bigger pine trees with waving dog-tail branches. March Seattle rainspatter rang against the pavement under the waves of green needles, just a soft sleepy ssss, the kind you don’t notice until you hit one of those invisible black puddles.

Peter was outside in his bondage pants and sweatshirt, all soaked, leaning on his elbows, sitting on the hood of his car. His girlfriend had probably forbidden him from going inside again. It was funny: No one had ever seen her, but he always had new rules to follow. I’ve wondered whether she was his Avenue Q girlfriend from Canada, but she was probably just a shut-in like Mom. Seattle’s the agoraphobia capital of the world. I waved. So did Peter.

Once you get down past the spiral, you have to cross the intersection of death, Breakneck Curve, the one where high school kids are always getting mowed down. Normally I ram through intersections and weave between the cars, Frogger-style, but not here. I squeezed the brake handles, slowwwed down, squeezed harder . . .

Something snapped. Bap. Like a football injury sound. A very small pistol going off in an Hercule Poirot movie. A bungee cord breaking. Bap. Right below me.

The bike twisted around. I squeezed harder, but I sped up. A pair of Ford Explorers were coming and they weren’t about to slow down. Not in Seattle. Every girl for herself. I turned hard and the wheel twisted on the curb and I flew into the street and the bike went straight under the Explorer, scraping and sparking. My foot tried to go part of the way with it.

Chapter Two

Methodist Barber had been a rotten punk when we were kids. One time she tricked me into eating a bug. Another time she gave me a magic rock that would make me fly and convinced me to eat it and jump off her roof. Yeah, the magic rock didn’t work.

So when I sat there with my broken ankle and no bike, plucking at the pineapple plants growing out of the curb, and might, just might have been crying, which I never do, because I knew I had left my cell phone in my underground fortress of solitude and none of the cars were stopping, because it’s every girl for herself in Seattle, the last thing I expected was a rescue from Methodist Barber.

She parked her Sable in the middle of the street and came over and sat beside me.

Is that your bike? She pointed to the pile of metal with the umbrella sticking out of it.

Yup. It was more of a gasp than a word.

Gnarly. Who hit you? she said.

I shook my head. Brakes exploded. Can you take me to the emergency room?

Someone honked. A line of cars started to swerve around Methodist’s car.

Yeah. Can you get to the car?

I pushed myself, then slid back and shook my head.

Methodist got her arms under my butt. She was strong, but I wasn’t any help, so we sort of did a Three Stooges routine over to the back seat. I grabbed the flippy door handle and tumbled into the Sable with my toe pointed like a ballerina.

We drove off. Methodist honked at a kid running out into the road. She pulled out a fly swatter from beside the gearstick and swung it around out the open window at the blonde bowl-cut kid.

Were we ever that tiny? she asked me.

I bent myself up to look out the back window at the toddler in the road. There were dead flies on the fuzzy shelf behind the headrests. The kid--

Waitwait. Stop. No, seriously, stop the car, I said.

There was a windowless van, pulled halfway off the road, tilting out over the abyss of the hill. As Methodist stopped in the middle of the street again, the back doors of the van opened and the kid toddled over to it. He disappeared inside. The doors shut and the van rumbled up onto the road and blasted past us.

Dude. The kid just got into that windowless van, I said.

Maybe it’s his parents, Methodist replied.

That wasn’t a momvan. That was a van-van. And, like, what are they doing letting their kid waddle out in the street?

Being bad parents? said M. If that wasn’t his parents, then what was he doing there?

He was too fat to be an orphan, I said. I like orphans. Look, tail them and gimme your cell phone so I can call the police.

Doesn’t your leg hurt? she asked.

"Dude, there’s a toddler in need out there. Somebody out there needs us." Like in American Graffiti. Gimme your phone.

A smartphone bumped down onto the vault-horse between the back seats. I dialed. I hate touching screens. So greasy.

Hello, this is nine-one-one. What’s the nature of your emergency? The lady’s voice was sweet, like a kindergarten teacher’s voice.

Uh, yeah, hi, I said. So I don’t know if this is really an emergency, but I think me and my friend just witnessed an abduction.

That certainly sounds like an emergency to me. Where are you?

I gave her the address and my name and number. The car swerved to follow the white van up a hill. The bottom of the car (is it the carburetor? The muffler? I don’t know) scraped as we went up the cross-street.

The van, an Econoline-and-I-couldn’t-catch-the-plates, stopped and backed up a steep driveway, doing a three-point, hit an ornamental tree and jammed back down the hill in the opposite direction.

Shhpit, Methodist said. The kidnappers know we’re following them.

Methodist revved up the engine and knuckled back around Breakneck Curve, blasting through the red light.

Miss Jones, please advise the driver that the police will take care of things from here. I don’t want you girls chasing criminals around the city. Now, do you know the license? I grabbed the headrest and pulled myself up to look. The van was swerving crazily now.

Doesn’t have one. A white Econoline.

Okay, Miss Jones. Chase is over. Nine-one-one will take over now. It’s okay for you to hang up.

I pressed the smartphone screen. They said we can stop following now.

And miss the show? No way, she replied.

Methodist. Broken ankle. I could feel it swelling up now, and it was changing from cold to hot, but it still didn’t actually hurt at all. I couldn’t help feeling like that was bad.

"You’ve got no sense of adventure." She changed course and took me to a stripmall walk-in clinic, which was sort of hilarious since I had to hop.

There were, like, ten million people in the clinic. Half of them wore swine flu masks from a pile on the counter. This was back during one of those epidemic outbreak rumors. I gave the lady my photocopy of Mom’s worker’s comp health card, and she photo-photocopied it. I signed in with a flower pen and commandeered two saggy, adjacent fat people seats to prop my leg up on. The swelling all drained away, and I felt dizzy, but not falling-over dizzy. Methodist squeezed into a seat across from me.

Wow, you’re staying, I said.

I haven’t seen you since graduation, she replied. Remember journalism class? We took the class together.

Remember how the school newspaper got cancelled senior year? I said.

Huh? No, I wasn’t paying attention, Methodist answered. I mean, yeah, I guess they didn’t hand them out that year.

Yeah. That new assistant principal? I said.

Mr. Jenner? He was an ass, said Methodist.

Uh huh. A total neo-Nazi--

He made me do push-ups, she said.

I thought you were good in school, I said.

"Yeah, it was after school that was the problem."

What did you do? I whispered, leaning in.

She surreptitiously scanned the room. Smoked in the woods. Broke some windows.

"It was you." All throughout senior year, someone kept throwing rocks through the plate glass windows on the ground floor, after the teachers left in the afternoon. They’d had to put security cameras up in the weirdest places.

Methodist nodded, smiling a little.

But didn’t you go to Catholic school for a few years? I said. As if that automatically made you a good person.

It wasn’t Catholic, it was Christian, she said, really fast and loud.

I blinked. Whatever it was. Why are there different kinds of Christianity, anyways?

I don’t want to talk about it, said Methodist. I really don’t. Anyway, tell me about Mr. Jenner.

Right. I looked over at her. She had gone kooky at the mention of Christian school. She was running a mouse over her hands and shrinking back into the seat and shaking and darting her eyes. You okay? I asked.

Yeah, she said, like it was obvious. Her knee bounced up and down. Then she said yeah, again.

‘kay. So Lasko-- I went on.

I love Lasko! She was the best. Mrs. Lasko had been our journalism teacher. She was one of those crisp sassy older women, something out of Fried Green Tomatoes.

"Mr. Jenner said he wanted to veto articles in the Lincoln Debate before they got published. And Lasko was like, forget it. Journalistic integrity, y’know? So Jenner just shut the paper down. I was like, what? I would have been president of the paper, too."

That sucks.

Yeah.

A baby threw up all over my outstretched leg. Just out of his bibbed mouth like a popped pimple. Methodist dug a couple of snotty Kleenex out of her C-is-for-fake-Coach bag and dangled them at me with two fingers, like she was holding a cigarette in a Marlene Dietrich movie. I kinda backed away. Other people’s snot, y’know? S’not very pleasant. Ha. She shrugged and put them away.

Would you ever have a kid? she asked abruptly. We both looked down at my wet leg.

Gimme the Kleenex, I replied.

I took them and dabbed my leg, and whoa boy. It’s funny how human beings don’t have any words to describe amounts of pain. How do I describe what it feels like when you rub a broken ankle? Hm. Try this: Imagine getting a papercut . . . on your soul. Soul, not sole. Now imagine that your entire papercutted soul is inside your ankle. The whole thing. Now imagine that everyone in the waiting room, everyone from the two prob’ly-gay Asian guys in business suits holding hands, to the bunch of boys with their moms, all avoiding one another, to the fat gossiping curly-haired menopause ladies, all turn around and look at you, because you have just screamed like a bitch.

Go ahead. Imagine it.

Chapter Three

Casey? We’re going to take you across the street to the hospital, the calling-out-names nurse lady said.

They brought a rolly metal thing, I can’t remember the word for it, so I’m going to call it a wedding cake roller. A couple of dudes in scrubs (one of them was sort of nice-looking, like that tiny Euro guy from Dancing With the Stars) got under my armpits and we hiked over to the wedding cake roller. They hopped me up and laid me out like an apprehensive corpse.

There we go, Miss Casey Jones. Just lay back and relax and keep your leg right where it is, said the Euro-looking guy, who turned out to be the flamingest queen. I love gay guys.

Also, let me explain something. I am not Miss Casey Jones. I hate my last name especially, and oh look, I also hate my first name especially. Nobody named Casey ever turned out well or accomplished anything important. Can you imagine a President Casey Jones? Nope. You can’t.

I mean, look at Casey from Casey at the Bat: what a loser. A big doughy smug white guy (and what kind of baseball player is white these days, anyway?) like Babe Ruth, not swinging at a fastball on the inside. Nobody on the Mariners would dream of not swinging at the first pitch, not since my man Ken Griffey Jr. got old. Man, Casey at the friggin’ Bat. If I had owned the Mudville team, I would have traded him. Just thinking about him makes me mad. Strike one for my name.

And then how about Casey Jones, the Ninja Turtle frenemy? Obsessed with vigilante justice, just like Batman, right? Ought to be a cinch. Except look at his costume and weapon of choice. A hockey mask and stick. Clearly he’s Canadian. Clearly Canadian, ha. Now, imagine, if you will, a Batman who fights crime not in Gotham City, but Quebec City. Excusez-moi, arrete-vous, something something cheesez-friez avec le beaver pelt. Throwing the Moosarang at his enemies from the Moosecopter. Moose shark repellant. I hate Vancouverites with their stupid placid expressions, William Gibson excepted, and I hate Canadians generally, because I watch South Park and also because I used to work at a movie theater where we weren’t allowed to take any Canadian money, because they clog up the change machines. So anyway: Casey Jones, Canadian turtle vigilante? Strike two.

Then there’s Casey Jones, the coal man on the runaway train. There’s two great songs in favor of him, and you’d think they’d crowd out the two songs against him, but they don’t. I went through a white people folk song phase when Alanis and Ani and that Bitch Lilith Fair lady were big, and I listened to all the songs about the coal man with my name.

There’s the original one about the six-eight wheeler, where he saves the passengers and dies and he’s a hero. The first time I heard it, I thought, wow, my name doesn’t suck. First time ever. And Willie Nelson wrote a song about him where he’s a mighty man, riding his train across the land, whoo-whoo, doing the railroad boogie. And that was great. It’s the other two songs about Casey Jones that’re the problem.

There’s the Grateful Dead song, which is all about how he drove his train while he was snorting cocaine, which, if it isn’t true, is an ultra-weird factoid for Jerry and Bob Hunter to make up. So: Casey Jones, making bad decisions on cocaine. Then there’s the ultimate weird-factoid-to-make-up-if-it-wasn’t-true: the union song, Casey Jones, Scabbin’ Up in Heaven. The lyrics go that Casey Jones was a money-grubbing union buster making a quick buck by scabbing for the railroad company. Then he dies, and he keeps on scabbing against the angels, who are on strike. If you’ve read anything about the Occupy Wall Street people, you know that unions are pretty rad, fighting The Man and everything. So Casey Jones was a real jerk, even if he saved lives.

Strike three. My name sucks.

Now back to your regularly scheduled story.

They got me across the street to the hospital on the cake roller. Methodist was still following the wedding cake that is me.

As we entered the building, the security guard at the hospital’s big red emergency entrance awning raised his eyebrows like an elderly New York doorman (do they still have those?) and smiled at me. Methodist went to wait in the waiting room, which was out of sight, in a big atrium somewhere nearby. The nurses wheeled me into a dark hallway and left me there.

So there I lay . . .

A ceiling fan went lazily around, people wandered past, and there was this other woman ahead of me who was crying under a sheet. Some people asked her questions and were wheeling her away when some serious hip-hop started laying down a flow in my pocket. I don’t really know hip-hop, which, you’d think I would, but I think it was Chamillionaire. I’m more of an R&B girl.

Methodist’s phone, obviously. I pressed the screen.

Hello? I figured it was the police.

Don’t you hello me, you dumb whore. Why the hell didn’t you text me last night?

Uh, whoa, not my phone. I leaned in closer to the phone. Are you Methodist’s boyfriend? I whispered.

Who the hell am I talking to? The voice was way too familiar, but I couldn’t place it right away.

Um, I went to high school with her. With Methodist. Is this Jerritt Brown? I asked. He was a squirrelly scrub, one of those thin forgettable back-of-the-class kids.

Casey? Holy crap. Why’ve you got Meth’s phone?

Ugh. Yucky nickname. She was born, like, eighteen years ago, back when they didn’t have the same drugs. But yuck.

Ha, so, funny story. Not really. I broke my ankle, and she drove me to the hospital. If you want, I can shout for her. She’s in the waiting room.

An orderly said, Miss Jones? I pointed to the phone, and she gave me a whatever-you-want shrug.

No, listen, said Jerritt in his husky scrub voice. Since I got you, can I talk to you?

He sounded like he needed someone to confide in, and I love it when people confide in me. It’s so trusting. Yyyeah. Sure. Sure, Jerritt. What’s up?

When did you get nice? was the first thing he said.

I frowned sideways at the phone. I’ve always been plenty nice, you stupid jerkface.

He took a moment. The doctor-nurse gave me another impatient look. I frowned at her and waited.

You’re going to hate me for saying this, said Jerritt. "I know Meth’s your friend and all, but she is kind of a whore. But she’s the kind of whore that I worry about, right? He was talking really fast. I never know where she is, I only talk to her a couple of times a day, and, like, I’m pretty sure she’s shacked up with other guys. All the time. He paused. I need to protect her from herself. He smacked his lips. How do I do that?"

Are you ready to be triaged, Miss Jones?

I put my hand over the mouth. Shh! Then: Jerritt, when did you get creepy? Look. Start by not telling your girlfriend that she’s a whore. All right? That would be a good start. I’m sorry, but trying to control your girlfriend? Being invasive, like an Asian carp or something? Getting all up in her business? Not such an attractive trait in a guy.

Whoa, he said.

Have to go. I hung up. If you think about it, why do we still say hang up with cell phones? There’s nothing to hang anywhere. You should say I unbuttoned the phone, or something.

The impatient lady asked me about insurance, about the accident, about why I didn’t call nine-one-one, and I told them I did, but not about the accident, and they took me into the Stanley Kubrick chamber and gave me a big heavy Red Lobster bib and took an x-ray.

I broke my arm once when I was little, and my evil sister Lilith told me it hurt to get an x-ray, the same way she told me it hurt to get a haircut. I got so scared of the x-ray machine that I kept running out of the room crying, and they had to drag me back and hold the door shut, like Sean Young in Decker’s apartment in Bladerunner. But that experience wasn’t half as bad as my first MRI, though. I’m not claustrophobic, I just really really hate staying still when machines are shouting at me. I don’t like getting shouted at by anyone, but especially not by machines. MRIs in the 90s were, like, a combination haunted house and electrical storm.

While the x-ray printed (why don’t they use digital cameras instead of film for x-rays? Is it so they can stick the big white light boxes behind them?) they wheeled me behind a chamfered curtain room, had me attempt to put a paper johnny on, and one of those unenthusiologists with the trundly arm-sticker vampire IVs came in. She was a chatty Jewish lady named Dr. Black, and as she plugged me into the arm machine she told me all about how her husband would rather read Talmud than have sex with her. I’m nineteen, but I’m still not comfortable when strangers start openly talking about their sex life with me. I’m with Edward Norton in Fight Club on this: big rubbery one. That is a fart joke, right? Right? So I listened to Dr. Black’s weird life as I got jabbed and floated off to sleepysleep.

Chapter Four

When you wake up from being under, it’s not like waking up. It’s like being born. Total re-entry to a fresh and new space, like an astronaut or a deep-sea diver. No dreams and no memories.

Imagine being born peeing. In a tube. In front of your big sister, two policewomen, and a blonde toddler in a Seattle Police Department hat. Really. The only thing that could possibly be worse is the idea of getting squirted out of your own mother’s jayjay in front of your dad and a bunch of doctors.

Welcome back, Miss Jones.

A blonde--

Wait, what?

Did Methodist get her phone back? was the first thing I said.

I guess, said my big sister Lilith in her bored punk-chick voice.

I should talk about Lilith. My sister is frequently awesome. Imagine that