ANGEL AND SCRAWNY
Angel came on the scene that summer with Josh. Everyone called Josh Scrawny. They were in town from Chicago, and everyone wondered why they'd come to Detroit from Chicago. "Because we wanted to," Angel always said. Scrawny just nodded. He didn't say much to anyone but Angel, who did most of the talking for them.
Angel and Scrawny were popular because they came to Detroit with an ass-load of PCP, and they gave a lot of it away and sold the rest really cheap. "Sheeba-Sheeba," Angel called it. "You dip your cigarette in it and smoke it with your friends. If you get too high, you just drink milk, and you come down." Angel sold a lot of PCP with that promise.
Scrawny and Angel were boyfriends. They'd been together for three months. They had an open relationship and had a lot of sex with other people. They spotted Mandy one night at Madhouse, this Goth club that had opened the summer of Zodiac 13's comeback. Mandy was a virgin and had turned down the opportunity to sleep with a lot of people, but when Scrawny and Angel approached him, Mandy couldn't say no.
"What's up?" Angel asked, circling Mandy from behind. Mandy was drinking at the bar and bobbing his head to the music. Scrawny came up behind Angel. "I said, ‘What's up'?" Angel repeated. Mandy opened his eyes and looked up. Angel was staring at him with a big smile.
Mandy, who never smiled in clubs, nodded his head and replied, "Hey."
"Hey," Angel replied, "This is Scrawny. What's your name?" Scrawny stepped up right next to Angel. Mandy nodded.
"I'm Mandy," he said, trying to look as disinterested as possible.
"Cool," Angel said. They stood there a moment like that, not talking and not moving. "You wanna smoke some PCP with us and fool around?"
"What do you mean?" Mandy asked.
"You know," Angel said, "You wanna get high and fuck?"
"Sure," Mandy replied.
"Cool. C'mon." Angel took Scrawny and walked towards the exit of the club. He turned around to see if Mandy was following, but Mandy was still at the bar. Some girl had come over and they were talking. Angel stopped. He leaned into Scrawny and said, "I think this is gonna be a good one." Scrawny nodded his head.
Mandy left Heather at the bar and found Angel. "Sorry," he said, "I had to say bye to my ride."
"It's cool," Angel said, and took his hand and left.
Bill Berry says, "I was born in Detroit, Michigan and live on Cape Cod. I am a college professor who teaches writing and language. Presently, I am busy with my dissertation on identity and writing. My creative work is inherently transgressive. I want people to feel challenged; my fiction reflects this."