Home Land

by Sam Lipsyte

  I wandered my rooms eating gherkin-and-butter sandwiches, drinking beer, radios going in every room. There was news about the war, news about the news. There was news about some dead celebrity’s head. It had been frozen for future news.

  I called Gary but he wouldn’t pick up. I pictured him with Mira in his peppermint panties. Catamounts, was that so wrong? Maybe if I concentrated long enough I’d sense when he’d spent himself, the way people sometimes feel the sudden death of a far-off friend shoot through them, suddenly.

  I FONDLED MYSELF to fruition eleven times in one day, matching a personal best I’d set in the ninth grade. Sex addiction? Boredom? Despair? They say there is nothing beyond language, and mostly they’re right, save the spunk-stiffened balls of paper towel beneath my bed.

  Old mark matched, I twitched for a time in semiwaking dream. The hero of my sleep was called the Kid, the best professional masturbator in the East. The Kid took the night train to Kansas City, checked into a grand hotel. He dropped his valise on the bed, snapped it open: jars of fancy pomade, a stack of elegantly monogrammed jerk-off towels. There was a knock at the door. A boy stood there, a neighborhood boy.

  “They said you was here.”

  “Here I am.”

  “Teach me,” said the boy. “My pa taught me some, but he’s dead. Teach me what you know.”

  “First you’ve got to put a picture in your head. And not your ma.”

  “Never knew her.”

  “Good then. Get a picture. You got a picture?”

  “Yes, sir, I do,” said the boy. “Now what?”

  “Never mind now what,” said the Kid, tossed the boy some coins. “Go get me some sandwiches. Come back with my change and I’ll show you the rest.”

  “Thanks, Mister!”

  The Kid lay back on the bed, loosened his belt.

  “So tired,” he whispered at the wall.

  Maybe it was time to settle down, buy that land by the river bend, woo Wilhelmina, the schoolteacher.

  How much whang could a man spank in this world?

  Meanwhile, on the other side of town, in a room above a barbershop, the Kid’s only rival, an enormous man named Buttercup, stropped a borrowed razor. His mother would be coming soon to shave him down.

  THE PHONE RANG, the showdown postponed.

  “Wakey, wakey, eggs and bakey.”

  “Who is this?”

  “My daddy used to get me up on Saturday mornings like that. Or else he’d say, ‘Drop your cocks and pick up your socks!’ Cocks plural, mind you. Guess you can take the man out of the barracks … anyway, I preferred the former.”

  “Fontana?”

  “How are you, Miner? Long time no update.”

  “You bastard,” I said. “Don’t Miner me. How could you print that trash with my name on it? If I knew anything about the legal system I’d sue your ass. I’d have your ass in some kind of judicial sling.”

  “Calm down, Lewis. You need to get out more.”

  “Or maybe buy a mule harness.”

  Fontana let that one settle.

  “Did you hear what I said?”

  “I heard you,” said Fontana. “Don’t think I didn’t see you boys out there, either. Thing is, I don’t give a damn. You were the one in the bushes. I was the one having fun. Remember that. There’s nothing they can do to me now, anyway. I’m calling you for two reasons. One is to let you know that I’ve resigned as editor of Catamount Notes.”

  “You’re kidding me.”

  “You can send your screeds to Stacy Ryson from now on.”

  “Stacy Ryson?

  “I think she’s going to throw it all up on the worldwide net or something.”

  “Well, maybe I’ll have better luck with her. New times, new blood. Fresh voices from the edges of experience. Of course, she’s sort of rearguard in her way, but maybe—”

  “Lewis.”

  “What?”

  “Do you have a job?”

  “If you’d ever read my updates you’d know the answer to that question.”

  “Fair enough. But really, man. This is an alumni bulletin we’re talking about.”

  “I know what we’re talking about. It’s the principle, principal.”

  “Fair enough.”

  “Stop saying fair enough.”

  “Stop writing updates. For your mental well-being.”

  “I’ll consider it. What was the other reason you called?”

  “I need to ask you something. Do you know Hollis Wofford?”

  I told Fontana I didn’t know any Wofford, but Hollis was a name I’d heard. It was the same Hollis, Catamounts, Gary’s sponsor, the coke-dealer phrenologist and Friend of Bill who still maintained loose ties with Satan. Now that Fontana has resigned his editorship, I figure it’s your job, Stacy, to worry whether the truth I’m about to divulge—that it was Hollis who jumped Fontana the night he staggered into Brenda Bruno’s—belongs in Catamount Notes. The beatdown wasn’t a matter of cash or powder, either. It was a love deal gone sour. Triangular, or Mexican, with Jazz Loretta at the hinge.

  “Christ, I love her,” said Fontana, and I was beginning to feel my old affinities for the man, his respect for the heart’s ordeal.

  “I don’t blame you,” I said

  “What the hell does that mean?”

  “It means we’re talking about Loretta,” I said.

  Dearests Jasmine, Brie, no offense, but Loretta was always the kindest and most radiant Jazz Lovely. Her leg warmers were handknit, too. Gathered in the gym for your recitals, we Catamounts always knew that in Loretta we had the female equivalent of Mikey Saladin, somebody better than us, sent down maybe to guide us, or else to teach us not to wish past our gifts.

  Fontana swore he’d never touched her in her school days. He hadn’t seen her for years, forgotten all about her. Then one morning a vision of pure light in a denim dress waltzed out of the Sprout Master with fresh carrot juice, and though this fantasia seemed oddly familiar, he rolled up curbside in his Datsun, announced he was new to town, asked for the way to the Nearmont driving range.

  “Jeez, Principal Fontana,” Loretta said. “That’s a killer line. No wonder you have such a reputation.”

  “What reputation is that?”

  “Melancholy, kind of tragic. Failed poetlike.”

  “That’s just my act. I’m really a drunk. And all poets are failed poets. Get in.”

  “Why would I want to do that?”

  “So you can tell your friends about your weird day. Creepy old Fontana gave you a ride.”

  “I don’t think you’re old.”

  “Prove it.

  They drove laps around the block while Jazz Loretta sipped her juice. It was one of those exquisite May mornings, Fontana said, azaleas in the plaza blooming, the sky nearly Caribbean. Fontana was a prince of suburbia in his lime green jeans. They drove and talked and Fontana soon discovered that Jazz Loretta was not pure light, after all, just pure person. She had a real estate license, a kid. The bad marriage was behind her. Hollis had beaten her during and between his binges. Now he was clean and eerie and court-restrained. Loretta had a new life, a gym membership, a book club. She still liked to dance, do other stuff Fontana probably wouldn’t know about.

  “Try me.”

  “Horseplay.”

  “Roughhousing? Like what I used to have to break up in the cafeteria?”

  “No, I mean bridles, saddles. You know.”

  “What do I know? I’m fifty-five years old.”

  “Oh.”

  “Well, maybe I do,” said Fontana. “I’ve often wanted to pull a plow. Be a beast of burden. A water buffalo, something like that.”

  “We should start a farm,” said Jazz Loretta, sucked up the last of her carrot juice. Or maybe she slurped it. Or maybe she’d already drained the damn thing. Fontana never specified.

  Fontana did admit he’d been seeing Loretta off and on for a few years since that day. Now Hollis looked to be wedging himself in again. He’d calle
d Loretta, said he had money for the kid, told her to swing by Brenda Bruno’s, where he was closing a sale. She knew that meant he was working the bar with his little packets. Loretta was wary and Fontana volunteered for the pickup. Soon as he climbed out of his car, Catamounts, Hollis fell upon him with his war mace, his Ostrogoth Express. The blow would have caved Fontana’s head had he not ducked, some vestigial shirk from a stint mentoring manboys in the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont. Still, the mace grazed Fontana enough to drop him on the blacktop in a heap of throb and blood.

  “You think I’d give that bitch another red cent?” Hollis shrieked. “You’re more of a fucking idiot than I figured. You’re also a raging alcoholic. A fucking active. I hate actives. Look at your head, you old pickled twat!”

  There was more but Fontana missed it from the roaring in his ears. Hollis blazed off in his huge tinted car. Fontana stood somehow, stumbled into the club. That’s when Gary and I had steered him out again.

  “You were calling for Loretta,” I said. “But you’d come alone.”

  “What is this, kiddy detective hour? I got creamed in the head. I didn’t know what I was saying.”

  “Where’d you go, though? You just took off.”

  “I’m not sure. I woke up on my sofa covered in mud.”

  “Nice.”

  “Look, I’m sorry about the ‘Teabag Speaks’ thing.”

  “Whatever.”

  “No, really. It was wrong. I do stupid things like that. It’s sad. It’s just me trying to prove I’m appropriate. They’ve relieved me of my duties, they’ve got an acting principal in there, and still I want to prove to the school board that I’m appropriate. I want everything difficult to just go away. But it’s me. I’m the fucking difficulty.”

  “It’s okay.”

  “Listen, will you keep an eye on Hollis for me? Just give me a heads up if he starts doing war dances. I have a feeling he regrets not finishing me off.”

  “I guess so.”

  “You’re a good kid, Miner. I always liked you. I know I’ve been erratic. It’s this Loretta situation. I just have to calm down. I’ll see you at Don Berlin’s Party Garden.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “The reunion. Five years of classes. Didn’t you get the mailing?”

  “No.”

  “Oh, right. I scratched you off the list in a moment of spite. Your buddy Gary, too. I’ll tell Stacy to send some out to you guys.”

  “Don’t bother.”

  “Why not?”

  “I’d never go.”

  “Come on.”

  “Fuck that.”

  “I’m the MC.”

  “Have a blast, dude.”

  “Dude. I don’t cotton to dude. I’m still your principal. I’ll always be your principal, no matter how chummy we may get.”

  “Copy that.”

  THERE WAS MUCH to ponder here, Catamounts, and there still is as I type this update. I’m worried Stacy Ryson may prove an even worse prude than Fontana, Notes-wise. Also, I’m not so certain I want in on this Hollis mess. The man has an Ostrogoth war mace and a severe beef with Byzantium, so to speak. News of this impending reunion bothers me, too. Updates, the occasional run-in with an ex-classmate, that’s one thing, or, if you must get technical, two things. A full-on Catamount clusterfuck is a possibility I’d rather not even consider. The only thing worse would be a class party at the Moonbeam. Thank God for Don Berlin, his entrepreneurial mastery over Daddy Miner.

  Better not to panic until I finish the next batch of FakeFacts. Penny Bettis has been riding me hard for new material. I delivered her some a few weeks ago with a note apologizing for my comment regarding the size and holiness of her organ, received this curt reply: “Send more FunFacts, but also please go to Hell.”

  The new batch includes some corkers: Charles Manson kicks back with a freezer-cooled bottle after a Spahn Ranch orgy, composes a song on his acoustic guitar called “The Pigs are Alright.” Senator Joseph McCarthy pours some cherry-flavored over ice and notes a troublesome reddish tinge. Former Councilman Glen Menninger sips nervously from a liter of New Diet the night he plots his embezzlement of nearly 2.3 million dollars in Eastern Valley development funds.

  This last bit may not fly with Penny Bettis. Glen Menninger is not what they call in the ad world a life-form, nor is he, as far as I know, a thief. But he is a politician, so you’ve got to figure he’s done something horrific. That’s my theory, anyway. Besides, when Glen was editor of the school paper he killed an expose I wrote accusing Superintendent Murnighan of torching the field house for the insurance payout. Glen wanted proof, like we were real journalists or something. It was just the damn school paper, for God’s sake. Fuck Glen Menninger. That’s a theory of mine, too.

  Anyway, Catamounts, it’s late now and your faithful updater is getting sleepy. I’ll send my FakeFacts off to Penny in the morning. Sometimes I wonder if she knows I make them up. Sometimes I wonder if she cares. It makes me sick in a way, because I do believe in the truth, in historical accuracy, the light it can shine on our shadowy puppet play of an existence and all that. Our nation wallows in the dark too much, eating cheese puffs, touching ourselves. We think we’re not fat and that we’re a nation. It’s sad, and I know fools like me are partly to blame. But I console myself with the thought that Fizz is an in-house newsletter. It’s not as though kids see it. What kids do see is that copy of Catamount Notes you’ve left beside the toilet in that wicker magazine rack, the one you maybe bought on sale at the River Mall. These young malleables make their little number twos and pore over all your Catamount lies about what enchantments await a faceless node on the global motherboard, what comforts are guaranteed to those who gleam with this belief: that we are all of us blessed with talents, skill sets, and if we just stay the course, apply a little elbow grease, ride out the bumps and grinds of decreasing economic indicators, life will shine like our new “professional” kitchens.

  Dream on, worm bait.

  No Closer to Resolving the Mays Debate, or, Why I Even Bother

  A MAN SO OLD he’s got his baby teeth again stood behind me in the supermarket today. He clutched a sack of potatoes, wore a baseball cap that read: “Ask About Our BJs.”

  Catamounts, I note this merely as precaution.

  Objects too close may be a mirror.

  “Nice hat,” I told the man.

  “Is it a ball team?” he said. “Found the thing lying around the house. One of my grandkids must have left it on the last visit. Odd name for a ball team, though. The BJs.”

  “They’re good this year.”

  “Expansion team? I never heard of them. I only follow the National League. They have what’s his name, Saladin, with the steroids.”

  “Silly rumor,” I said.

  “Don’t care either way,” said the man. “It’s the heroin what worries me. What are the kids going to think when a junkie jacks a hundred dingers?”

  “Good point.”

  “I watch a lot of sports. I’m a veteran, too. I was at Normandy.”

  “The greatest generation.”

  “The what? Oh, that’s a load of crap. We weren’t so great. Most of us were morons like you or me. We got lucky. Hitler beat himself. Bet you don’t even know who Hitler was.”

  “Which Hitler do you mean?”

  “You’re a funny young man. What’s your name?”

  “Lewis.”

  “I’m Auggie. Auggie Tabor.”

  “Any relation to Judy Tabor? The teacher?”

  “That’s my daughter.”

  “I had her in high school. How is she?”

  “She’s fine. She’s living down in Jacksonville, Florida. Right there on the beach. Married a rich fellow, a developer. Looks nineteen with her tan and her new tomatoes.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Augmentation of the ta-tas.”

  “Jeez, I can’t imagine that. She was always so serious. She’s the one who taught me about the absurdity of existence.”


  “Little Judy’s much happier now. I never liked her reading all those depressing books, those Frenchies and such. She’s frolicsome by nature.”

  “Well, say hello for me.”

  “Going down there in a few months. Her stepson is teaching me to surf.”

  “Okay, then, guess I’ll see you around, Auggie.”

  “A pleasure. And by the way, I lied.”

  “What’s that?”

  “I know what a goddamn BJ is. I was at Normandy, for Christ’s sake.”

  BAD NEWS on the deadbeat front: My landlord’s clan held a council, voted Pete meek. Shamed, undone, he’s fashioned a new persona: bagman, baby tough.

  He banged on my door this morning in a dark silk shirt.

  “Pete,” I said.

  “Pay up,” said Pete.

  “You know I will,” I said. “What’s gotten into you?”

  “Nothing’s gotten into me. You owe, you pay. I forgive you for taking advantage of me when I was a rookie, but I’m stepping up now. I’m owning my ownership. I’m a landlord. From a long line of landlords. I have ways of settling this situation. I’m hooked up. Hooked up with interesting people. Hollis Wofford, for example.

  “I know Hollis Wofford,” I said.

  “So he tells me. Hollis is a partner of my family now. We’ve joined economic forces. That makes him, by extension, your landlord, too.”

  “You should steer clear of that guy,” I said. “There are some who consider him an evolutionary cul-de-sac.”

  “Thanks,” said Pete. “But I don’t take advice from renters.”

  “I can’t believe this new attitude, Pete. I’m a little shocked.”

  “I advise you to get over your shock.”

  “Look,” I said. “I want to pay you. I always do pay you, eventually. But you can’t threaten me. Ever hear of tenants’ rights?”

  “You need a lease for that.”

  “I have a lease.”

  “Ran out last month.”

  “I thought we had an agreement. An understanding.”

  “A nod and a handshake won’t cut it these days. Do I refer to my SUV as a horseless carriage?”