McCorn

The last time I’d seen Corn was when he told me about the Grains of Rice Theatre Company. A whole year had passed. In fact, I hadn’t seen any of my old friends. The friends who I grew up with in the Valley. On sidewalks. On driveways. In garages. In air conditioned tract housing. The guys who I played video games with for hours on end. Who I smoked cigarettes with, smoked weed with, drank forties with. The guys who helped me through my parents divorce.

Not to say this whole story is about my parents divorce. Because it isn’t. It’s just that, through a lot of drugs, alcohol, video-games, anime, comic books, and Dungeons and Dragons, they helped me cope with it. And my parent’s divorce definitely didn’t have anything to do with me dropping out of high school, never applying myself in community college, nor did it have anything to do with me running off to join a theatre company or inevitably avoiding typical jobs like a waiter or concessionaire at a movie theatre and instead getting a job at a strip club, which is what this story is really about.

No. Really. My parents divorce had nothing to do with any of that.

But after my conversation with Tom about hamburgers, or whatever the fuck it was about, I needed a little bit of familiarity. But after a year of purposely avoiding the Valley, the only person I could talk to without having to explain what I’d been doing was Corn. My old friend Corn. The ever-lovable, never-judgmental, always-home-because-he-didn’t-have-a-car-or-a-girlfriend-to-hang-out-with, Corn.

“Xavier?” He opened his door, surprised. “Whoa! It’s been a long time!”

“How’s it going, Corn On The Cob?” I walked in, the spice in the air attacked my nose, automatically bringing me back to the good old days. His mom was a cook at a restaurant in Chinatown. And she was cooking up a storm. “Damn. That’s strong!”

“Yeah…” Corn said embarrassed. “My mom’s cooking dinner.”

I walked to his room. Looked around. Nothing had changed in a whole year. Same half naked posters of Anime girls. Same shelves with the same Sci-Fi / Fantasy novels I’d read before. Same TV, same desk, same chair, same clothes hung in the same way. Same everything. Same old same old. Nothing changed. Same old Corn. In the same old Valley.

Corn followed me, unconsciously scratching his armpit. “So what you been up to, Xavier?”

“I joined that theatre company you told me about.” I said, sitting in his chair, kicked up my feet on his desk, and picked up a porno mag he had laying around.

He blushed badly, purple. “Oh..uh…that’s…uh…that’s my brothers!” He stammered.

“That’s cool.” I said. “So what’s been going on with everyone?”

“Oh. Well, uh, Jack’s been working. Got promoted at his company. I hardly see him anymore.” Corn said, sighing.

“Man. I should give him a call sometime.” I said, flipping the page. “I need to borrow some money.”

“Actually, I haven’t really seen anyone in a while.” Corn said. “Long has been hanging with a new crowd. Some hoods. They steal stuff and then sell them off to people.”

“That sounds like him.” I said, flipping the page again. “This girl has big tits.”

“Yeah. That’s Marylin Fokuda. She’s this 1997′s breakout star.” Corn said. Then quickly changed the subject back. “Anyway, Oliver got it bad. He started doing crystal meth. Then he started making it and selling it. He’s got real skinny…”

“Damn, really?” I said, putting down the magazine, concerned. “That’s fucked up…”

“Yeah…no one really talks to him anymore.” Corn said, quietly. “no one except Jim.”

“Jim, huh. He was always the go to guy.” I said. “What’s he up to?”

“He got a job at The Glass Stiletto.” Corn said.

“Really? The strip club?” I said, nearly shocked.

“Yeah!” Corn said, explosively, as if he finally revealed a deep dark secret. “The strip club!”

“No shit!” I said completely flabbergasted. And I don’t even know what flabbergasted meant. “He works there?!?!”

“Hell yeah!” Corn yelled.

“That shit is crazy!” I screamed. “Fucking shit, that’s crazy!”

“I know!”

Every day when I was going to Coldwater College, the community college all of us went to, we passed The Glass Stiletto. It was closed because we’d drive during the morning, but we always wondered about it. What it was like, what kinds of people frequented it. I mean, we’d seen pornos and always figured there must’ve been some sordid, seedy, shit like that would go down in there. But we never really knew. And I always thought we never would.

“Shit, man,” I continued gushing with wonderment. “How’d he get the job. Don’t you need to be Russian Mafia?”

“I guess not.” Corn said. “He got it because he knew the manager. Some guy he knew from LA.”

“Man. That’s some crazy shit.” I said. Picked up the magazine. And flipped.

That was what I needed. A little bit of a shake up. In my old little world of same old same old. compared to that bit of information, hamburgers were nothing.