by Sam Lipsyte
“There’s no story,” said Philly now. “He’s just fucking Teabag.”
Yes, Catamounts, Philly seemed loath to relive the incident, especially maybe the part where Will Paulsen swooped in, peeled Philly from my face, threw him up against the wall. This would also be the part where Philly maybe pissed his pants. He may have been a football star, a real backfield beast, at that, but he was no Will Paulsen. Philly was bigger than Will, but that didn’t matter. Goliath never stood a chance, either. Too much mythology at stake.
Now Philly took Stacy by the wrist, tugged her toward a window full of wicker goods.
“Jazz Loretta whips Fontana,” I called out after them. “Gary loves Liquid Smoke. The pressure from my father was all in my head!”
“What the hell?” said Stacy.
“I’m giving you the news!” I said. “I’m bringing you up-to-date!”
“Don’t come back here!” Philly shouted past his shoulder.
It was a silly thing for him to say, Valley Cats. No man can tell another man to stay out of the mall. That’s not how America works. That’s not what the framers intended. Philly must have been flustered, all those dangerous old nut-dangle tingles, plus to meet someone with a legitimate sonic aesthetic. How can he defend a band whose hideous music is rivaled only by its insipid lyrics, a sample of which I’ve just downloaded from the Sporemonger home page?
I have no home and I’m alone
Too scared to even face me
I close my eyes, close my eyes
Pray to Jesus to erase me
I want to be a nothing man
Because I’m nothing, man
Nothing without you, girl
(words by Glave Wilkerson,
music by Spacklefinger)
Catamounts, I implore you to shield your young from this pernicious drivel. What happened to hating the state apparatus, or just wanting to be regional Antichrist? Sure, it all gets set to a car commercial in the end, but at least give it a shot. Bang some dope, for Pete’s sake, roll in broken glass. Don’t flee the melee in your heart. Don’t bitch to Jesus about it, either. If that Essene wild man was around today, and, say, headlining some monster summer tour, you can bet your ass Spacklefinger wouldn’t be allowed within five hundred miles of the stadium. There would be a tremendous wall of blood-colored lightning to keep those bastards at bay. That’s just my opinion, of course, but I’d also take any odds that if there’s one thing Jesus and the Devil agree upon, it’s that Glave Wilkerson is not punk. The man has the soul of a college boards coach.
Which reminds me, I’ve yet to comment on the latest issue of Catamount Notes, wherein it was announced my old flame Bethany Applebaum is making a mint helping the doltish progeny of the rich gain admittance to our nation’s leading universities. Bravo, Bethany! Tuck those little one percenters in all safe and cozy. Keep that ruling-class razor wire sharp and shiny!
Bethany, your father was head of the lathe workers local. Would he pop and lock in his grave knowing you’ve dedicated your life to helping these entitled cretins? You busted your hump to get to Cornell. All that panic and self-cutting, those blood-speckled scrunchies on your arm. Is this your way of giving back to the gatekeepers? Or is your cynicism a huge holy shimmering thing no mortal could view in its entirety at once?
Please write in and let us know!
I WALKED AROUND THE MALL for a while. I won’t talk about the mall, alums. You know about the mall, the scent of mallness that pervades it. It’s the scent of scents canceling each other out. Perfumes, pizza, leather, sweat. How do people proceed?
They had a scientist-type in one of my magazines talking about ants. Nobody tells ants what to do, he said. Ants just know what’s best for ants.
Moreover, they know what’s best by smell.
Maybe that’s what Daddy Miner was driving at about the flowers at the Moonbeam.
Plastic roses might confuse.
See what I mean?
Nor do I.
But I must be an ant-guy because I could smell where to go.
Slice of Life is a tiny shop near the River Mall entrance, or, I suppose, exit, depending on your worldview. Either way, it’s the only place in the whole joint that doesn’t smell like mall. I guess you could say it smells like home, if you grew up a long time ago and your mother baked soda bread all day while your father worked the beet fields, or smoked his pipe on the porch and lectured the Labrador on the merits of William Jennings Bryan.
We didn’t have that kind of home.
We had pouch dinners and Reagan and such.
Point is, the smell in Slice of Life, that hot bread smell, it will calm you, or at least it calmed me. You know how that squidlike placenta flops out of a woman after her baby is born, all purple and weird? Wouldn’t it be better if, instead of a mutilated infant octopus, a perfect round of sourdough bread slid out?
But perhaps I digress.
There was a big wait at the Slice of Life counter. I stood off near the door for a while, watched Roni’s mother work the bread machine. She was a fatter, prettier version of her daughter in a shower cap, the same wire poking down past her chin.
“Listen,” she was saying, “Use the tea towels. You’ve been using too many paper towels … I don’t care about the trees, Roni … I know, I know … but your law school fund is going in the trash with all those goddamn paper towels. Stop using them, Roni. What do you think people did before paper towels? They had lives, you know. They lived lives … I know they’re more … right, absorbent. Absorbent! That wasn’t even a word! They invented that word to sell paper towels to people like you … I told you, I could care less about the damn planet … what’s the planet without my Roni in law school? Okay, baby? Okay … you have to go, I know. See you later. And tell Mr. Miner to stop staring at you … yes, you can tell him straight out. He’s a dirty old letch. Okay, Mommy loves you.”
The line had thinned and Roni’s mother caught my eye across the counter.
“Can I help you?”
“Just sniffing,” I said.
“Where do I know you from? You look familiar.”
“I work over at the wicker store.”
“Oh, right. I haven’t been in there lately.”
“We’ve got a sale on picnic baskets,” I said. “Vintage design. You and your sweetheart can ride out to the countryside, eat cherries, read poetry before one of you goes off to die in the senseless slaughter.”
“The senseless slaughter?”
“The trenches. The Boche.”
“You don’t really work in the wicker store.”
“I should,” I said.
THE BUS RIDE gave me time to shake off my encounter with Stacy and that bastard Phil, not to mention Roni’s mother’s slander. Who was she to call my father a letch? A man sidles up to claim his Darwinian due and if he doesn’t fit the demo he’s an outcast, a pervert, a slimeball at best. Besides, she’d never caught Daddy Miner caressing her daughter’s ass near the basement boiler. She hadn’t earned the right to call him a letch.
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.