Along these scientific lines I worked through my more virulent feelings about Glave Wilkerson, too. Pretentious mediocrity must have a place in this world, or why would Nature allow for it? Each of us walks to the beat of a different drummer. It’s just that some of these drummers suck.
I got off the bus near Venus Drive, walked the rest of the way to the Retractor Pad. Another dumbfuck in the sunshine: hope, dread,
trees. Kids encased in plastic chugged by on miniature mountain bikes. An older shapely woman swerved past on rollerblades. Bronzed, undulant in black Lycra, she clutched a pack of menthol cigarettes, danced on her wheels to something pumped through headphones. It was an admirable kind of ecstasy, hard-won. I wanted her for a lewd aunt.
I had to pound on Gary’s door for a while before he answered. He stood there with a beach towel around his waist, his shoulder fuzz damp, his eyes sticky. Love odors sieved out of him.
“Tea,” he said. “You should call first.”
“I just saw Stacy Ryson. We have some ground to cover.”
“I’m in the middle of something.”
“What something?”
“Nothing.”
“I think we’re done,” called a voice from the room.
Gary looked a little doglike, denied.
“I guess you’re done,” I said.
“Guess so.”
Mira sat on the carpet in her brassiere, scraped pot resin with a paper clip. An envelope dotted with the gunk lay near her knee.
“Teabag!” she said.
“Call him Lewis for now,” said Gary.
“I want to call him Teabag. He’s gawking at me, I can call him Teabag.”
“I’m not gawking,” I said.
“You’re burning holes in my tits, Teabag.”
“That’s the liquid smoke you’re smelling,” I said.
“Excuse me?”
“Nothing,” said Gary. “He’s just talking nonsense.”
“Liquid smoke?”
“You had to be there,” said Gary.
“I’m here,” said Mira.
You could tell Gary was getting tense. He has those mood veins near his hairline. I threw down for maximum throb.
“Gary likes to call you Liquid Smoke,” I said.
“You’re such a little faggot sometimes!” screamed Gary.
“Be nice,” said Mira. “He’s your friend.”
“Fuck that,” said Gary.
He stalked off to the kitchen, started banging things around in there. He came back sipping from a saucepan full of ice water.
“He’s not my friend,” said Gary. “He’s a fucking leech.”
Gary took his saucepan to the terrace curtains.
“Hot out? Looks hot.”
“You haven’t been outside yet?” I said.
Gary hacked into his cupped palm, regarded the loogie there. These types of moments test a man. Get a tissue? Wipe it on the curtain? Catamounts, what do you think Old Goony did? I’ll give you one hint: Gary doesn’t have any tissues.
“Earlier,” said Gary. “I was out earlier.”
“Was it hot then?”
“It seemed hot. Things were all glinty.”
“Glinty,” said Mira from the carpet.
“Sorry,” said Gary. “I didn’t mean that leech thing.”
“Dude, I always pay you back.”
“I wasn’t talking about fucking money, man. Forget it. I’m just a little wiggy today. So, Stacy Ryson.”
“She’s not a bad person. But she’s betrothed to evil.”
“Philly’s not evil.”
“No?”
“You need to refine your terms.”
“You think?”
“Fuck knows. Mira?”
Mira was down in her cleavage with the paper clip.
“Mira, what are you doing?”
“Dropped some.”
“We’ve got to have some girly insight.”
“I’m listening.”
“Would you ever even consider marrying some rich, sleazy, rageaholic normie?”
“Good-looking?”
“Yeah, so what?”
“I don’t know. Maybe.”
“Maybe?”
“Probably.”
“Christ, for real?”
“I’m twenty-three. I work in a coffee shop. I don’t know my fucking future. There might not even be the concept of marriage by the time I’m ready to tie the knot. And anyway, you two are morons together. Do you know that? What the fuck is a normie? Who are you to use a word like that? You’ve been going on all day about how most people are idiots. Well, you two are total idiots. So that makes you like most people.”
“Vicious,” said Gary.
“Airtight,” I said.
“Uncalled for,” said Gary. “All the resin she could scrape. No strings. That wasn’t even sex we had, Mira. I can get that sweaty and unhinged by myself.”
“Go ahead,” said Mira.
“Why bother? You have my number.”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“You have my number. I’ve given you my number. You have all my numbers and codes. I would sacrifice my life for you to have one decent enchilada the moment you craved it. That’s all. God knows this as much as He knows that I don’t believe in Him. I don’t believe in Him as a favor to Him. The way you should spare a parent too much of your affection at an awkward age.”
“You’re fucking ridiculous.”
“You don’t even know.”
Gary let his beach towel drop. He had on a pair of garish bikini briefs, some slashing design based on barber poles, peppermints.
“When did you start wearing those?” I said.
“It’s European, fool.”
The briefs bore stains, after-leaks of one sort or another. He put out his hands for some deep knee bends.
“Why did you cut off your thumb?” said Mira.
“Sawed it off,” said Gary, huffed into another squat.
“What for?”
“His mother wouldn’t let him watch the late show,” I said.
“Not true,” said the Retractor.
“That’s what you told me.”
“It’s what you needed to believe.”
“What, then?” said Mira.
“I wanted a phantom limb.”
“Is a thumb a limb?”
“When you give it to your mother on a napkin it is.”
“You really are a sad sick fuck,” said Mira. “How about we call your dealer.”
“He’s out of town. We could call my sponsor, see what he’s holding. It might set a bad precedent, though.”
“Do whatever you feel comfortable doing.”
“I feel comfortable destroying my world for you.”
“Then let’s do that,” said Mira. “Teabag? Plans?”
“Plans?” I said.
CATAMOUNTS, do you know that diner over near Van Meter Road? The Garland, it’s called. Big shiny morgue of an eatery. It was the Valley View under former ownership. I used to go there for the Sunday special, buckwheat pancakes with blueberries. Now it’s the Garland and what you want is the tuna melt deluxe. They do not serve it openfaced, the awful custom these parts. An open-faced sandwich is a culinary fib, a canard. The Garland knows this, and the secret of a good melt, too. The cheddar is hot. The tuna, room.
Savor it all with a pickle, coleslaw in a fluted cup. There is kindness and central air-conditioning in the Garland. Voices do not rise above the porcelain clamor. Murmurs are prized, nullity the civilized ideal.
I’d come here for my refuge. Newly infatuated couples are repellent. They can’t decide whether they want you to disappear or stand witness to their giddiness. They use you like a handball wall. Plus, they stink of nookie. I’d come to the Garland for the tuna melt deluxe and to flip through titles on the broken jukebox in my favorite booth. Odes to surf and sun, a token punk tribute to said odes, twangy pleas for liver transplants from deliquescing Nashville millionaires. The jukebox had some eighties headband anthems on it, too. These last summoned visions of Gary and me marauding around Eastern Valley in my father’s Dodge Dart, the cheap speakers hissing up synths, drum machines. That artificial music had authentic feeling if you went fast enough.
A few weeks ago I’d been here at the Garland when I’d noticed a woman in the booth behind me. It was Gary’s mother, Clara. Her face was worn, overrouged, but I knew her right off, asked to join her.
“Sure,” she said.
Colorful folders were fanned out beside her Cobb salad.
“Am I interrupting your work?”
“No, I need the break. This is pro bono anyway.”
“Gary mentioned you’d become an attorney-at-law.”
“That’s right. At law. How’s Gary doing?”
“He’d love it if you asked him that yourself.”
“I don’t foresee that event. He ruined our lives.”
“He ruined his, too. He’s your son.”
“I don’t dispute that. I have another one, though. Todd brings me great joy.”
“Gary was hypnotized. You can’t blame a guy when he’s hypnotized.”
“You’re a good friend, Lewis. But there’s too much baggage right now.”
“Gary will carry it. He wants to carry it.”
I pictured Gary some kind of emotional skycap, a special blazer, a shiny cart for the baggage.
“It’s just …” said Clara “It’s just too soon.”
“He needs his mommy back,” I said.
“Then he’d better find a wife.”
“That’s kind of cold, don’t you think?”
“Maybe,” said Clara. “Maybe I’ve always been kind of cold. I guess as long as I made sure the pantry was stocked and there was enough toilet paper, nobody cared much. I’m not cruel, or mean, or even distant. I’m just cold. I think my body temperature runs low. It’s a biochemical thing. I was born this way. The way people are born gay, maybe. After Gary was birthed they thought there was something wrong with him. They whisked him away. Maybe if they’d let me hold him sooner things would be different. Did you notice how I just said birthed?”
“That was kind of cold.”
“This is what I mean.”
“Does Gary’s father feel the same way?”
“He really misses Gary. But I can’t think about it right now. I don’t want to think about it. Gary’s okay, right?”
“I guess.”
“Good. I’ve got to get back to work now, Lewis. Working lunch. Say hi to Gary for me. Or, actually, don’t. Say hi to him, but not from me.”
Clara bent back over her folders, her salad, picked at some bacon bits, a sliver of avocado.
Walking home from the Garland I knew I wouldn’t tell Gary about this conversation. What good would it do? Clara didn’t want him back in her life. That’s supposed to go against nature, I guess, a mother rejecting her son. Even serial killers get chocolate chip cookies, jelly cakes, sent from home. But there’s evidence in the other
direction, too. I’ve seen videos of mama pandas sitting on their newborns. They do it a good deal, I gather. The baby comes out looking like a pink minifrank and, depending on her mood, the mother suckles it, or sits on it, or flings it against the wall. That’s why pandas are so rare, I think.
HOME FROM THE GARLAND, I found the latest issue of
Catamount
Notes
in my mail slot, got myself nooked up on the sofa for a visit with my cougar kin. Some alums had acquired new coordinates of toil on the corporate slave grid. Others were celebrating the advent of poop-smeared approximations of themselves. I’d nearly tossed the issue aside in favor of a longish essay on the return of moral elegance I’d clipped from
MindStyle,
another one of my not-so-free free magazines, when I saw it, that lone boxed item beside the ad for Pittman’s Liquors (“Don’t even try to get up—we deliver!”). The headline read: “TEABAG SPEAKS.”
That bastard Fontana! This was worse than the blackball. He’d fiddled with my prose. Here, in its entirety, for those who missed it, is what some ghoulish version of me, concocted in the recesses of Fontana’s obscenity of a mind, supposedly wrote:
Hi, everybody! It’s Lewis Miner, class of ’89, and I’d just like to send a shout out to all you Catamounts and let you in on what’s been happening to the old Teabag. I’m doing real well working for a big soft drink company (free sodas on me, friends!) and I’ve got a nice spread out here in Eastern Valley. I still see some of you Catamounts around town, which is always a pleasure. Mostly I just want to say whassup to Principal Fontana, who got me through some rough spots back in the crazy old days. I’ll never forget you, Dr. F! Peace out, Teabag.
The “peace out” was an especially nice touch on the part of “Dr. F.” (How’s that dissertation coming, dickfart?) Damn near diabolical. He might have destroyed me in so many ways but he opted for the foolproof: wholesale update rape. Nice try, Fontana, you would-be plow mule, but I will not be broken. One cannot violate verity without consequence, pal.
The telephone jolted me out of my rage before I had time to invoke the Teabag Doctrine, which states that once I’ve decided to fantasize about hurting somebody I must try to imagine some really sick shit. It was Gwendolyn. She sounded far away, her voice tinied down, an ocean or prairie between us. It was how I knew she was near. That and the love roaring up in me.
“I’m at the airport. Come pick me up.”
“Of course, baby,” I said. “I’ll be right there. I’m so happy you—”
“Don’t rush. I want to be here for a little while. You know me.”
Transit lounges, Gwendolyn once confided, were the only places she’d ever experienced tranquility.
“To be not anywhere,” she’d said. “Self-contained. Nobody, not even Lenny, making demands.”
Lenny dead, maybe life from here on out was just one long skim latte by the gate.
“Yes, I know you,” I said now. “But I want to know you even more. I’m so fucking happy you’ve decided to give me—”
“See you in a while,” said Gwendolyn.
Gwendolyn had no idea I was in pedestrian exile these days. The airport, it was going to take more than a while. A few bus rides later—moral elegance, it turns out, never went away—I saw her across the terminal, looking morose in a tube top of festive suede.
“Gwend!” I said.
A national guardsman tracked me from his checkpoint. His cammies, with their neon flecks, appeared designed for casino combat. I wondered if the fucker was profiling my T-shirt. Would I have time to explain that Anal Jihad had been a reasonably bitching South Jersey hardcore band before this guy had me gagged, prone?
Catamounts, I don’t have the clothes for the new conditions.
“Gwendolyn,” I said. “Over here.”
We found some tables near the express food counter. It offered the same food as the regular food counter, just slightly undercooked.
“Look,” I said, pointed past the sliding doors. “See? Business travelers. They look so defeated. Good thing I’m out of that grind.”
“What grind? You’ve never been on a business trip, Lewis. You’ve never been called away on business.”
“It could happen, though. That’s all I’m saying. Let’s get out of here. I feel like I’m being watched.”
“You probably are with that stupid shirt.”
“They had some good songs.”
“Who?”
“Nobody. How are you?”
“How do you think I am? Lenny’s dead, Lewis. I can’t believe it.”
“It’s kind of unbelievable,” I said. “It’s horrible. Look, I know I’ve already said this but—”
“I’ve been wandering around here for hours. It’s not the same. I don’t love airports anymore.”
“People change.”
“Flying in I was next to this monk. He looked kind of like Lenny, but with a beard. He was one of those young monks. He had the robe,
the rope belt. He smelled very clean. I don’t mean soap clean. Like inside. Like instead of blood he had celery juice or something running through him. Wheatgrass juice, maybe, but not that harsh. More like celery juice. I kept waiting for him to take out special monk food, but he ate the meal, the plane meal. Can you imagine that? A monk? I was mad at him for it. I thought it would muddy up his celery blood. He was writing furiously in a spiral notebook, too, some kind of letter.”
“Why do people always write ‘furiously’?”
“Shut up, Lewis. You are so fucking insensitive. Just listen to me.”
“I’m sorry. I’m listening.”
“So the monk was writing this letter, not furiously, just writing. Happy? Anyhow, I kept peeking over to read it but his arm was in the way. I caught one part, though. It said, ‘Brother Michael should stick to brewing ale. He’s a fucking clown.’ I swear to God it said that. Don’t you think that’s a mean thing for a monk to write? I wanted to ask him what it was all about but he seemed so pissed off. I thought maybe I could tell him about Lenny being dead and maybe he could get some perspective on his rage. I mean, poor Brother Michael. What did he do to deserve this?”
“Do you think the man was really a monk?” I said.
“He had the fucking robe on!”
“No, I just mean—”
“How the hell should I know? Stop interrogating me. I don’t want to talk about it.”
“We don’t have to. Whatever you want to do.”
“I want to get the fuck out of this airport.”
We took a taxi up the turnpike. Gwendolyn rummaged through her canvas shoulder bag, churned up a bright heap of things: cell phone, cigarettes, magazines, candy wrappers, a tank top, a pair of socks, a thin stack of crisp fifties. The money fanned out against her forearm. A few bills stuck to her skin.
“Look at me,” said Gwendolyn. “Sweating like a pig. Do my armpits stink?”
I leaned in for a deep whiff.
“I like it.”
“Of course you do, Lewis. Here.”
Gwendolyn peeled some bills from her arm, rubbed them in her armpit, tossed them into my lap.
“What’s that for?”
“Car fare. Palimony. Whatever you like. I could do some with my ass, too.”
“Please.”
“Actually, I’m a little low on cash.”
“Do you want to stay with me? Until you know what you’re going to do?”
“No, I’m booked at a hotel in the city. We’ll go there first. Then you can take this cab home. I just wanted to see you for a minute. And I already know what I’m going to do. I’m going to call up the Board of Monks and report that guy. If he’s not a monk they should know about it. If he is a monk they should still know. Either way, he’s impersonating an emissary of Christ’s love and that’s totally fucked up.”
“Somebody has to do something,” I said.
GWENDOLYN HAD A ROOM at one of those hotels downtown where the movie stars stay. Porters in tracksuits and headsets charged out the smoked glass doors. Come moonfall these men were DJs, but for now they were here for the luggage, the baggage.
“You want me to come up?” I said.
“That’s sweet, but no. I have friends meeting me here.”
“Anyone I know?”
“Maybe read about.”
“I see.”
“I don’t mean that in a harsh way, Lewis. You know how it is. These people aren’t comfortable around strangers. They feel threatened by the average citizen.”
“Now I feel better.”
“I’ll call you soon. Enjoy the ride back to Jersey.”
She kissed me on the nose, dipped herself out to the curb. I noticed a new tattoo on her calf, a likeness of Lenny, wreathed in daggers and roses. A tiny pod of bile cruised up my gullet, scout ship for a puke armada. I felt sick, guilty for it. Just as Gwendolyn reached the doors I stuck my head out the cab window.
“Cunt!”
Gwendolyn wheeled.
“Did you hear that?” she said.
“Homeless,” I said, tilted my head up the block.
Gwendolyn shrugged, darted into the darkness of the lobby.
“Man, you lucked out,” said the driver.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I heard what you called her.”
“You heard nothing,” I said, folded a fifty into the plastic tray. When I saw the driver hadn’t noticed, I snatched it back.
I WALKED AROUND in the swelter, the stink, stood stunned at an intersection where a crowd had gathered around a baby in a baby stroller. Citizens debated a course of action. A young woman walked out of a nearby deli with a bottle of Belgian water.
“That’s my kid,” said the woman.
She sounded kind of Swedish. A big burn wrapped her up in his arms.
“What are you doing?” she cried.
“You’re going to jail,” said an old lady. “You can’t leave your baby out here. This is America. We could have killed it.”
“That’s right!” somebody shouted.
“A baby is not a bicycle!”
“I don’t understand!”
The mob pressed in on the woman, her baby. I thought they might kill them both. A radio car pulled up to the curb.
“Keep moving,” said the cop inside.
I kept moving, Catamounts.
A TEABAG SIGHTING in the big city is a rare occurrence these days. My last extended sojourn was over a year ago, when I took the bus in from Eastern Valley to hear the writer Bob Price read. I’d been a fan of Bob ever since his first book. It’s hard to find anything good to read and I told him as much in a letter to which he never replied. I didn’t mind. I wasn’t looking for a pen pal. I just wanted to tell the guy he’d done a good job.
The reading was at this downtown bar filled with Nazi memorabilia—flags, armbands, broadsides, identity cards—which the bartender assured me was kitsch.
“Heads up,” I said.
Bob looked sharp in his leathers, read from his story collection
Vegas, Baby
, brought the house down with his prizewinner, “Good Hands,” the tale of a pregnant teen who dreams of softball greatness even as her world falls apart and she’s forced to shoot her emotionally abusive father, then wheel him around in a wheelchair for the rest of his life, or at least for the rest of the story.
When the reading was over Bob stood at the bar. We all lined up to buy him beer.
“Mr. Price,” I said.
“Bob,” said Bob.
“My name is Lewis Miner. I wrote you a letter a while back.”
“Oh, yeah. You’re the guy with the snake.”
“No, that wasn’t me.”
“That was a really cool letter. It meant a lot to me. Sorry I didn’t write back.”
“You must be busy.”
“I wouldn’t say that.”
“Anyway, I just wanted to say you were great tonight. I’m glad
you read ‘Good Hands.’ I always thought that story was one of your—”
“You got any cash?”
I’d been working for my father at the Moonbeam that week. I flashed Bob my take-home wad.
“Beautiful,” said Bob. “You’re with me, buddy.”
We took a cab across the river to a place Bob knew, this Dominican dive that served domestic beer, international cocaine. Bob led the way, nodded us past the door goons. He took my money, scooted into line at the DJ booth. I stood off near a dingy red curtain, watched Bob chat with a stringy-haired Eurasian-looking guy behind him. Bob pointed me out for the fellow. They both laughed.
The curtain slid open behind me. A woman stepped out. She had some kind of gypsy look going with her loose skirts, her beret. Past her was a dim alcove, like a voting booth without the levers. The snorting chamber. This wasn’t Sodom, after all. You couldn’t just huff rails at the bar. The woman had a nice smile but all I could see were the coke stars in her eyes. The pain of her pathetic life took several hundred million years to reach me. I had my own terrible light to emit.
“I look at you,” said the woman, “and I see a jealous man. A strict man.”
“Not me. You’ve got the wrong guy.”
I began to imagine how I’d call Gwendolyn in Hollywood, tell her I’d fallen in love. Maybe Gwendolyn would see the error of her ways, catch the red-eye home. She’d find me in bed with this woman. We’d all get high, have a three-way. No needles, though. That would be the rule.