Issue 22 - 1992

Coe Review • Issue 22
gonna hit you! - So,” she laughed, “I hit her, straight on. - And she
throws me off my bike! She fuckin’ throws me off my bike, an’ my
bike is goin’ that way; I’m goin’ this way, and I just got off and
punched her in the face!”
“All right!” yelled everyone, with enthusiasm as blue-white
and glowing as the most powerful cleansing powder. This
enthusiasm could have eaten holes in walls.
“Jesus! BAM!” screamed Marisa, so loudly that the dog
began to bark. “And I start screamin’, ‘Bitch, what in the fuck you
think you’re doing? Bitch! And she’s opening up her little purse, and
I’m just waitin’ on her. Bitch! Bitch! And she goes, ‘Well, you were
in the wrong! You were in the wrong!’ - and this black guy steps
between us and goes, ‘Come on, don’t get in a fight,’ and I go,
‘BITCH! YOU NIGGER-FUCKING WHORE!’ - and she turns
around and she goes, ‘You got that shit correct,’ and I go, ‘Of
course! You’re too fuckin’ fat for a white man to fuck your lousy
ass!”’
3
Marisa never liked me as well as I liked her, partly (I
suppose) because I wore glasses and did not know how to fight
hand-to-hand, in the knightly fashion of skinheads and other streetconquerors,
but partly also because my girlfriend was Korean. She
did like me enough to be polite to Jenny, it being one of the rules that
if somebody was your friend you did not fuck around with his lover,
as was demonstrated when Ken’s girl Laurie went up to Dickie at a
skinhead party and touched his shoulder to ask him for a cigarette,
and Bootwoman Dan-L appeared from nowhere and warned Laurie
to stay out of her territory unless she wanted to get beaten up. So
because Jenny was in my territory Marisa tolerated her. - After all,
Marisa did like me O.K. - This must have been why she sometimes
came over and cooked me breakfast: huge omelettes with
mushrooms and cheese and bacon and red onions, while in a
subordinate frying pan her home fries sizzled obediently, becoming
the golden-brown of Jenny’s skin, at precisely the moment when the
cheese melted and the mushrooms were done and the steam rose
from the titanic omelette like a chord from some cathedral organ,
and Marisa would start doing the dishes that had piled up in the sink
34