by John Nichols
It wasn’t easy being a humanist!
* * *
JOE HAD JUST TURNED to leave when Jeff Orbison braked his dusty Trans-Am and called out the window: “Hey Joe, c’mere a sec.”
“What for?”
“I got a deal for you.”
Blindly, buffeted by the cruel winds of his crippled destiny, Joe staggered into the street. “I don’t want what you’re selling,” he groused. “Leave me alone.”
“Hear me out first, man. You’re in trouble, big, but maybe I can save your ass.”
“My ass is already grass.”
“No, listen. Dig this deal. I hear on the grapevine that you and that old man, Eloy whatshisname, are gonna rob the First State People’s Jug tomorrow.”
“Who told you that?”
“Who tells anybody anything in this town? I got ears. But here’s the scoop. If Tom Yard ain’t on your side, you don’t stand a chance. He’ll mow you down like spring wheat. But I can protect you so you won’t even get nicked.”
“I have no plans to rob the bank, Jeff.”
“Bullshit. Now listen: for a small cut of your take, I’ll buy Tom off. He won’t even quiver when you barrel in to do the job.”
“I’m serious, Jeff. I’m not gonna rob the bank tomorrow. Honest.”
“You better take my offer, man. If you don’t, Tom will go nuts protecting his vaults when you and that senile old geezer try to tip ’em over. All I’m asking is ten percent—five for me, five for Tom. Just say okay, and I’ll take your word—it’s a deal. Tom’s gun stays in its holster, and we all retire on easy street.”
“You’re crazy,” Joe blubbered. “I’m telling you, we have no plans to rob that bank.”
“Okay, bro. Don’t say I didn’t try. Good luck. And rest in peace.”
With a roar, he departed. Once more, Joe choked on the fumes.
“You didn’t try,” Joe squeaked inaudibly. And when nothing deadly—like a machete or a sledgehammer—clobbered him from behind, he felt—smugly—as if he had gotten away with murder.
But thirty yards down the plaza, Jeff hit the brakes, slammed it into reverse, and squealed back to a hair-raising stop inches from Joe’s toes.
“Hey,” he chided belligerently. “What’s in that tea box you’re carrying?”
“Five pounds of uncut cocaine.”
“That’s what I thought!”
And he evaporated.
“I don’t care,” Joe muttered forlornly. “They’ll be doing me a favor.”
CHAMISAVILLE PARIAH COMMITS BIZARRE SUICIDE! LOCATED IN GUTTER TORN TO SHREDS BY HUMAN JACKALS!
Give up? This turkey?
Behind the wheel of his dilapidated wheels, Joe pried at the carton flaps. White powder sparkled insolently. Dipping in a pinkie, he scooped up a tiny mound. You snorted it into your nose—at least that’s what he had always heard. Now, at last, he would learn what made this stuff so valuable. Lifting the laden pinkie to his right nostril, Joe hesitated for a last look around. The plaza shimmered uneventfully. A breeze had sprung up; tree leaves trembled soothingly. Good-bye, cruel world! Joe exhaled—waited a beat—pressed shut his left nostril, and gave a sharp toot. Tears sprang to his eyes.
And then the insides of his head went boiing!
* * *
OH GATSBY, OH GATSBY, wherefore art thou, Gatsby?
Colored floodlights shone brilliantly from the rooftops, the gables, and from hidden platforms in the spruce and weeping willow trees. Though specifically a Christmas tradition, rows of luminarias lined the adobe mansion’s firewall ramparts; breezes caused the candles resting in sand inside paper bags to flicker romantically. Linen-draped tables on the lawn were laden with the best booze money could buy. Eats abounded on barge-long counters: deviled eggs, Romanoff caviar, swiss cheese, exotic meats, salamis, kielbasas, chicken legs coated with lemon-colored aspic—oh what a riot of culinary delights! Cans of soda pop and beer crowded enormous ice-filled tubs. Diaphanous crepe-paper streamers decorated the portal. Mist curled off the heated swimming pool, wherein several nude bathers of both sexes lazily frolicked. From branches of every tree, from the corbels atop every portal post, attached to pieces of colored yarn, dangled little stuffed monkeys similar to the one Joe had seen at Nancy’s healing. And right in the middle of the yard, hanging from an improvised scaffold, was a wonderfully frilly, outrageous, comic, and lovable monkey piñata, no doubt full of bonbons.
Slipping her arm through his, Iréné welcomed Joe to the blast. “Have you ever seen anything so bizarre?”
“It’s beautiful. Just like a fairy tale. What a crazy town this is!”
“You know what they spent on this little shindig?”
“Who wants to hear? Don’t talk about money.”
“Two and a half fat ones.”
$250 or $2,500? Joe asked for no clarification. Right now he had suspended all his critical faculties. Maybe for once in his life he could enjoy himself. Let the party be decadent without his pathetically undisciplined Marxism-Leninism creeping around on the fringes, casting portentous glances of disapprobation at all the revel-makers. Fie on all his personal guilt hang-ups. At dawn he would lead his self-righteous saviors of humankind against the mansion, set fire to the building with pine-pitch torches, and banish its occupants to Cleveland, Ohio, or Detroit. But right now his advice to himself was: Keep a low profile, don’t blow your cover, cast a lean and critical eye, observing (and even partaking in) these ghoulish remnants of capitalist decadence, learning about the system from the inside in order to fight it better later on.
Beautiful people everywhere were getting blasted, smoking dope. In lieu of a band, Jeff Orbison handled a microphone and an enormous stereo console beside the spacious outdoor dance floor, doing a disco trip, introducing platters in a jargon-riddled patter almost incomprehensible. On the dance floor, Chamisavillains, whom Joe knew and yet hardly recognized, engaged in wild psychedelic antics. Joe had mothballed his rocker’s gyrations somewhere back around the Mashed Potatoes and the Hully-Gully. These days, everybody resembled John Travolta. Men wore hot-crotch double knits and maricón boots; women wore snakeskin-tight nipple-revealers or transparent chiffon, and erotic high heels. It was another world, another century, another class of people. Joe gaped, and kept his mouth shut. Like Alice, he had landed in a Wonderland.
He wandered, sipping on a vodka and tonic, nodding hello to Mimi McAllister, Tad Hooten and Meridel Carter, Wilkerson Busbee and Jane Zuckerman. Cuddled against him all the way, Iréné chattered.
“About last night, Joseph: I’m truly sorry.” He hated it when people called him Joseph. “I don’t know what got into me. It’s so stupid to push all that frenetic macho crap, especially on the first try. Honestly, Joseph dear”—dear?—“when I awoke this morning I felt truly ashamed. It was so sad not to have you in my arms. I’ll never forgive myself for driving you off into the night.”
Moths had gathered around the floodlights: bats flickered ghostily, hunting them. Occasionally a winged thing dipped into a luminaria and emerged on fire. Joe watched the tiny frantic meteors spin dizzily above the crowd, falling like spent fireworks to earth, totally consumed by flames long before they hit. A moth torch, headed kamikaze-like toward Joe, burnt out quickly and arrived as a tiny spattering of warm ashes against the tip of his nose.
Over a dozen revelers cavorted in the swimming pool. Some tapped a large balloon with one hand while expertly guarding a drink in the other hand. Several women and two guys playfully wrestled in shallow water, cudgeling each other’s privates. Ralph Kapansky sat on the poolside tiles, dangling his dungareed legs in the water. One hand held a quaking Rimpoche, who was terrified of the party. At his other side a naked lady—Sahdreeni—giggled every time he made a popeyed lascivious face and, his hands flopping spastically in the air, leaned over like a foaming rabid dog to make comically menacing tongue-flapping, tooth-clacking, drool-inducing gestures just millimeters away from her preposterous tits.
Used to the uproar, S
iamese cats sauntered through the turbulence hunting tidbits of Virginia ham. A miniature poodle and a bloodhound vacuumed the lawn for similar goodies. Joe refurbished his drink, downed it, and poured another as he continued to circulate with Iréné on his arm.
“I think I acted abominably last night because I was nervous. Lord knows why, I’ve been with oodles of men, but sometimes, for no apparent reason, I become terribly ill at ease. I lose all my confidence. Then I find myself behaving atrociously, like last night.”
Ray Verboten matriculated, offering a toke they couldn’t refuse. His heavy-lidded expressionless eyes not even aimed at Joe, Ray removed a small automatic pistol from an armpit holster and shoved the snout under Joe’s nose. Smiling cruelly, he said, “I want you to smell my gun.”
Joe sniffed, grinning impishly.
“I’m not gonna kill you here, Joe. Too many people. I don’t want to wreck Natalie’s blast.”
“It’s all the same to me, Ray. Do your worst. Give me sixty Gs and you can have it. But I don’t honestly care anymore.”
“You could save your life by handing over the white stuff, kid. That septic-tank riff didn’t check out.”
“Up yours, mister.”
Ray holstered his piece. “If you live until the unveiling tomorrow, you better not try any fast steps with your psycho buddies in the helicopter.”
“Not me,” Joe giggled stupidly. “From here on in, I’m just a happy little onlooker.”
Somebody else proffered a joint—Joe inhaled off it. His heart did a drum-roll, flip-flopped disconcertingly, palpitated in hand-jive rhythm, then settled into a slightly accelerated, but still comfortable beat. The bush, mingling with the coke, gave a weird rush. Again he giggled, mystified and enthralled by existence.
“It’s okay, really,” Joe said repeatedly, not in the least irritated by Iréné’s endless apologetic harangue. They drifted indoors, nodding to Pancho Nordica and Tim Eberhardt, Gil Forrester and Cobey Dallas. Angel Guts slunk toward them, surlier than ever. Lackadaisically, Joe checked his pocket to make sure Diana’s pistol was still there. Yet Angel Guts merely grinned a gap-toothed grin, clicked his heels, gave the Nazi salute, and said “Sieg heil!” Joe fashioned a Communist fist. Rugs beneath his feet undulated like waterbeds. People had pulled the little monkeys off the trees and now had them tucked underneath their arms, or dangling from their wrists. One couple laughed uproariously while putting their stuffed simians through copulating motions. A few kibitzers laughed so hard they were in pain, rolling on the floor. Joe soon lost control himself; he gasped for air. My God those monkeys were hilarious!
“Let’s retire someplace, Joseph, all right? I’m going to make it up to you tonight, you’ll see. God, I feel almost faint from wanting you.”
“I like all these people,” Joe said happily. “I like watching everybody. It’s crazy. I never went to a party like this. I never actually saw anybody inhale a line of coke except in a movie.”
He felt like a beautiful and pampered butterfly imprisoned in a genteel cocoon of conspicuous consumption. The Playboy mansion West; the hedonistic black Naugahyde innards of the Big Bunny. He delighted in the trip like a little kid in Disneyland. What next? What iridescent farout concoction of sex, indolence, and Xanadu would dance around the corner, giving him the Big Eye? It was such fun. “Look this way!” Rama Unfug called. “I’m making your movie.” “Not my movie,” Joe replied. “Whatever I do belongs to all of us,” Rama insisted, “because we all belong to God.” Iréné laughed, and they kissed, tonguing hungrily. Everybody had such shiny boots. Their costumes were estupendously original. Jewelry, purple velour, midnight velveteen. And oh them crazy bodices! Half the people Joe didn’t know. He suspected they hailed from Los Angeles and Aspen. Their flagrant garments shone like hummingbirds, wood ducks, peacocks. Some men had shirts with ruffly, scalloped jabots—they also wore cowboy hats and turquoise necklaces. And oh those fancy foxy women with their diaphanous drapery: tits galore! A babel of breasts! Their slinky cigarettes resided in black ebony holders. Provocative skirts derived from a forties style. And platform heels. Others wore pants so tight at the buttocks their gluteals twitched even while standing still.
Iréné’s voice throbbed. “Joseph, I don’t know how much longer I can hold out. You’re such a devil. You’re making me suffer. You’re an ogre, but such a beautiful ogre. Christ, feel those biceps. I get goosebumps. Oh God, excuse me, but I think I’m falling in love.”
When she leaned very close to him, her breasts flanked his upper arm. She whispered: “I’m positively sopping wet almost down to my knees.”
He smiled benevolently. His eyes emoted tenderness and compassion that surpassethed all understanding. Wilting under his beatific gaze, she tugged on his hand. “Please, Joe, let’s go.”
“S’plenny of time.…” Joe could travel from here to over there by a mere flick of his wings. Fresh from the swimming pool, wrapped in a rich crimson towel, Paula Husky balleted past them, chased by a bear. Joe tipped an imaginary Stetson in greeting. Dr. Phil Horney, a red-lipped grinning imbecile, tagged after a woman, not Gretchen: she had a gardenia in her jet-black hair, an artificial beauty-mole just above her upper lip. Scott Harrison clinked glasses, said “Prosit” and “You’re a goddam arrogant fool!,” and aroused no animosity in Joe. Cobey Dallas yelled and went after somebody. Jeff Orbison played a heartrending lament Joe loved, although he couldn’t remember if it was sung by Emmylou Harris or Linda Ronstadt. A bunch of children gallivanted through the bacchanal waving sparklers.
“Oh Joe, don’t make me suffer so.”
“Okay,” he murmured thickly, wondering idly if he would pass out. “Let’s go.”
Yet it made him forlorn to leave the crowd. He had really enjoyed spectating that scene. The Prado and the Louvre had wonderful fourteenth-century paintings that reminded him of this night. Meandering among all the ribald molecules had been fun. It had also been incredibly hollow. Yet all the pain and beauty in the faces and the costumes and the dope and sex and alcoholic antics of his friends and sophisticated strangers had seeded in Joe a benevolent ache of gigantic and satisfying proportions. They were like butterflies on the brink of winter. (Let’s hear it for clichés!) Of course, he knew it wasn’t glamorous. Cavalier and arrogant—maybe; scornful and vapid—yes; lush and ludicrous—true; criminal and scatological—you bet … garnets and rhinestones galore.
Sounds receded. Joe heard ice cubes clinking, but not voices. He felt tears on his cheeks. Splashes carried from the pool, but not laughter. Briefly, he panicked; all that noise and animation had kept him buoyed, strong, invulnerable. Now, as she opened a door, he suffered a wave of jitters—call it stage fright.
“Stage fright,” Joe whispered drunkenly, and giggled. Brother, was he ever ripped!
Gloom. “This is Natalie’s holler haven.” Iréné was panting. “She’s into Primal Screaming, you know.” He couldn’t see a thing. His heart raced uncomfortably. The evening had traveled so fast. Her hands reconnoitered his body like professional spiders, unbuttoning, unbuckling, unzipping.
“God, Joey, I’m wet. It’s like a swamp between my legs!”
She dropped to her knees; her lips rolled over him like a combine harvesting a wheat field. Joe teetered but balanced himself by digging fingers into her hair. The pitch-black darkness unnerved him. He wanted something, if only starlight, defining her skin. The blackness was suffocating and airless, like the devil’s womb. Joe wavered slightly, listening to her crude sounds. Alcohol, cocaine, and marijuana had numbed him to the point where he wondered if he had a hard-on or not. He looked down, up, all around—but could see nothing. Darkness had even occupied the spaces between his teeth, making him wish for a toothpick. He kept his mouth shut, praying this feral blackness wouldn’t surge down his throat, drowning him in thick velvet. It was stark and surreal. Joe said, “I can’t see you.”
“You don’t need to see me.” She gasped for air, then attached herself again, suckling to beat the band.
After a while he realized she was saying, “Give it to me … give it to me.…”
But did he have it to give? Joe had no sensation down there. With his hand he touched her nose, her cheeks, her lips … yoiks! he was erect! He mixed his fingers in her foamy mouth and she moaned … fiddled with his balls … teased his anus … and mumbled her refrain again.
Then her voice was coming through loud and clear: “Joe, take me in the helicopter with you tomorrow.”
“What?”
“Take me in the helicopter,” she hissed, softly twisting his balls.
“I’m not going in a helicopter.” He fumbled for her face, seeking to guide his penis back into her mouth.
She sucked him briefly, then tried again:
“I know all about it—don’t worry. You can trust me. Give me a ride, and I’ll tell you their plans.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he whimpered. “Let’s make love.”
“Oh yes … please … give me your pud.…” She sucked him in, all the way down her throat, gagged, but held him there.
Spooked by the dark, Joe floated earthward, needing more tactile reference points. She gave a protesting cry as he pulled clear of her mouth. Abruptly, he got his bearings, moved smoothly, thrust into her. Her lips slapped his face. Her mouth was as large as that of those strange, depth-dwelling fish they occasionally pulled from the ocean. Her body, in his grasp, under his weight, squirming against the midnight rug, seemed terribly fragile. Bursts of tortured sound escaping her throat made him feel sorry for her, for them both. “Oh love me!” she cried. “Fuck me to death. Don’t ever stop! You can scream if you want, nobody can hear us! Don’t ever leave me! I love you! Murder me with it! Fuck out my heart! Cripple me! Tomorrow we’ll do it together in your helicopter! Shove it up my ass and pull the trigger!”