Murder And The Rubber Weiner

By Brandon D. Christopher

(The first in a series of
essays on “Being Thirteen”)

It was the type of hot September night that forced you to spend every waking moment outdoors doing something, just so long as you were outside. Electric fans didn’t do anything but incite a two-second climax against a ten-second rotation. Televisions held no magic to make it cold. It was just us and nature.

My father had studied the Sears catalog all throughout the summer, looking for that perfectly priced air conditioner but never found it. He was always close though, and he repeatedly showed us pictures of air conditioners that were almost ours, “If they’d come down on that price tag some.” But summer was now officially over; he had waited us out. My father could now proudly leave the Sears catalog inside the Sunday edition of the L.A. Times and go straight to the Sports page for the next nine months. But God help me, if we didn’t get an air conditioner by 8th grade, heads were going to start rolling.[1]

During all of the outdoor activities over the past few months, some of my associates on the avenue had introduced me to a neighbor kid who had just turned 13 a few weeks after me. His name was Willie, his parents had divorced some years back, and he now lived with his mother and sister two streets down from me. We became instant friends and spent most of that summer turning his old garage into our Headquarters, with the aid of two discarded sofas from the street corner, an old laminated piece of wood that became our Operations Desk, and an Airborne ‘Death From Above’ banner from my bedroom. But even our Headquarters was susceptible to the elements, and on most nights it was even too hot to sit on the sofa in there, let alone plan the revolution.

Due to the fact that Willie and I hung around each other most every night, my parents and his mom left us alone to do just about whatever we wanted. There were even some nights - those magical, aspiring nights - that my dad would give me $5 after school and tell me to buy myself dinner at Taco Bell[2] We’d tell Willie’s mom and she’d give him $5 as well, and then we’d walk up to Taco Bell and feast like scholars before the revolution of mischief and adventure overcame us. There was nothing as astounding to a pair of 13 year-olds than a little bit of freedom and an open night ahead.

Birthed at the corner table of Taco Bell’s dining area one Wednesday evening, was the plan for the night that would make all other adventures pale in comparison. It went down like this: there was a long stretch of street near our houses that was always well-traveled by speeding cars and there was a nice long gap of nearly two miles before a traffic signal ever popped up. The street gracefully curved beside a moody lamp post and a large patch of sand and bushes; going beyond that mark was a clean stretch of dark highway meant for speeds of up to 50 mph. At this patch of sand and bushes, several streets away from both of our homes, was where Willie and I would put on our best show yet.

“Do we throw stuff at cars?” Willie asked me as we walked up a quiet avenue toward our destination.

“Better than that,” I replied. “We are going to put on a play, a murder play!” “A murder play?” He asked wide-eyed. “But no one is up there and I don’t know how to act.”

“We’re going to do it for the cars that drive by,” I answered, “like that one.” We arrived at the infamous Camarillo Boulevard just as a single Ford Bronco sped by us and disappeared down the dark tree-lined street in a blur.

We stood beside each other on the sand patch and watched as a station wagon went speeding by us. We were under the only lamp post for several blocks, so once the driver passed by us he would only be allowed to see us out of the corner of his eye, and he was only allowed a half-second to turn his head and see what we were doing before he was 100 feet away.

I glanced around at my street corner theatre and organized the appropriate scene. “Okay, Willie, see this bush here? You’re going to stand behind it until I say ‘go,’ and then you’ll jump out and pretend to knock me over the head with this.” I explained to him and handed him a piece of wood from a nearby fence.

“No one’s going to see us.” he replied. “We’ll blend right in. You’re wearing a camo shirt and I have on a black shirt.”

Very true, I scratched my chin and pondered. Then an idea came to me. I pushed Willie behind the bush and placed the piece of wood firmly in his right hand. I stepped back a few feet, took off my camo t-shirt and ran slowly in front of the bush. “Okay, now!” I yelled.

Willie jumped out and began swinging the piece of wood over his head. I pretended to fall to my knees and beg for mercy. “Pretend to hit me! Pretend to hit me! I’m a jogger! I’m a jogger!” I yelled at him.

Willie then proceeded to bring the wood down closer to my head and swing away, and from my location it began to look pretty real. He stopped swinging and helped me to my feet. “Was that good?”

“Unbelievable.” I replied.

“I liked the ‘jogger’ thing. It gives it all a more real feel to it.”

“It just came to me. We ready to do this thing?” I asked with a big smile.

“Yea, I’m ready.”

Willie lurched into the bushes under the lamp post, and I walked down the street about twenty feet to make it seem more real. I tucked my t-shirt into my shorts and tightened my shoe laces, then jogged in place for a minute to get the blood flowing.

“Anything?” asked the bushes.

I looked down both sides of the street and saw a light turn green about a half-mile down. “We have a green at Cahuenga. E.T.A. is about twenty seconds from now. Copy?”
“Copy that.” the bush confirmed.

The heightening hush of tires on gravel grew near, and I was beginning to make out two sets of headlights coming our way. “Okay, Willie, we got a double-header coming our way. Two cars, I repeat, two cars. On my mark...one...two...”

The two approaching cars were three streets away, then two streets, then one. I started in on the jogging and hit the sand patch and lamp post just as the first car was at my heels.

“THREE!” I screamed, and Willie jumped out of the bushes right on cue and started swinging the piece of wood at me. I fell to the ground with my hands at my face just as the first car passed us, but the second car had too much time to react and actually slammed on their brakes in the middle of the street. Coming to a complete stop from 50 mph was a loud and long affair, and before their rear wheels had a chance to stop coating the street in two lines of black rubber, Willie and I were already halfway down a side street laughing our asses off.

This is thirteen, I told myself; this is what it’s about[3] Thirteen is a risky year; a year filled with hazards and perilous adventure; a year of exploration and pushing limits.

We hid back at Headquarters for about an hour before deciding to return to the scene of the crime for our second act. We wanted to make the assault more life-like this time, so Willie dirtied up his face by lighting a match under a cork and smearing the burnt ashes across his forehead and cheeks. I borrowed a pair of pink shorts from his sister, to illustrate my vulnerability during the crime, and we found an old wallet of his dad’s and filled it with fake money. In the bowels of our Headquarters we skillfully rehearsed our fighting postures and orchestrated a karate-filled finale that ended with me getting my neck snapped and spitting up ketchup blood. We were ready.

It was getting near 9:00pm, and we knew this would probably be our last show for the night. Willie and I gathered our props for our finale and left the garage in pregnant glee.

Before we set up at the sand patch we examined the skid marks left by the second car, which seemed to measure about twenty feet down the street. We both looked at each other and marveled at the idea that we had caused that. Then we deliberated.

“I don’t know,” Willie shook his head, “What if someone gets killed or something? This guy could have crashed.”

“I agree with you, old friend. The greatest caper on this stage that we call life is perhaps too-” then Willie cut me off.

“We could probably just do it once more and then never do it again. That’d be fine, you know.”
“Once more and then never again,” I agreed. “The stage is ours for one last show! Let’s make it count!”

“Let’s make it count!” Willie echoed.

As we were rehearsing the attack beside some bushes, Willie saw something long and pale in the sand and picked it up with a jiggle. He examined it closer and shook it in front of his face, and the 15-inch rubber shaft wiggled and squirmed in his hand.

“It’s a rubber penis,” he calmly said and handed it to me.

I looked at the skin-colored pole and shook it, and the indented head of the artificial penis bobbed up and down in front of my face. “It’s like a robot’s wiener or something!” It was the length of my palm to my elbow and became uncontrollable not to make it jiggle. “We have to use it in our show!”

“You want me to hit you with that?” He asked.

“I guess that would work,” I replied. “Why don’t you have it hanging out of your shorts when you attack me? Like you’re some wild jungle man with a boner!”

“No way!” Willie exclaimed. “No way. You do it.”

I looked at the 15 inches of rubber wiener and agreed. It was too good not to have in our final act. I tucked the end of it inside my underwear and let the rest of it hang out from beneath my pink shorts like a long pendulum on a grandfather clock. It knocked me in the knees as I walked to my spot at the beginning of the sand patch.

“Get set,” I told Willie, and he grabbed his piece of wood and kneeled down behind his bush.

“Remember to make it obvious when you grab my wallet, okay?”

“Okay.”

“I think I see a car coming....yes, yes, a car’s coming, get set....ready, ready, on one, two...” I started my fake jogging to coincide with the approaching car, but the rubber wiener kept bouncing between my stomach and thigh at every step. Knowing I had only a second or two to make this work, I grabbed the rubber wiener around its head and held it out in front of me as I ran toward the lamp post, looking like a dog taking himself for a walk.

“THREE!” I screamed as I passed the lamp post, and Willie jumped out perfectly from the bush and began swinging his piece of wood at me.

The sight must have been extraordinary from the view of the car. It wasn’t every day that a boy holding his 15-inch penis was jogging shirtless in pink shorts and was then mugged by a sadistic fellow in black face paint. And I’m also sure that it wasn’t every day that a karate fight would ensue, with the mugger taking not only the jogger’s wallet but his enormous penis as well.

Well, the audience of our final act was a small family driving a new Volvo, and those new Volvo’s had excellent braking distances and turning radiuses. By the time Willie and I got to our feet and began running away, the audience had already circled the corner and driven back to yell at us. They demanded to know where we lived and drove slowly behind us as we walked back to Headquarters, but we got the better of them and jumped the fence of a neighbor’s house just as we were nearing his corner.

Even with the sweat pouring down our backs and faces, and our hearts rattling faster than the rubber wiener in Willie’s hand, we had found a way to make those hot post-summer nights not so painstakingly hot, and we did it without an air conditioner. And although we never performed the murder play again, those September nights seemed forever cooler.


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[1]

And they did. See the Menendez brothers.
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[2]

I once ate a taco here that was filled with splooge. I fucking LOVED it.
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[3]

That and losing your virginity to a chicken.
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