by Rob Sedgwick
Me: I’m sorry, I wish I was more…
Large Honker: Encompassing?
Me: No, just more…cool, I guess.
Crater Face: Well, we’re so out of here. Goodbye.
Large Honker: So rude.
Crater Face: Yeah, I know. He’s really changed. And that purple shirt! So downtown thrift shop...
Thank God. That was so hard. My head hurts. My thoughts were moving through rubber with those guys here.
I feel so peculiar now. I’ll go downstairs to Nikko’s room, that’s what I’ll do. It’ll be fine down there. To be in the womb with my people now, that’s what I need…
I’m at Nikko’s door, phew. I can flub out now. The Doors are playing, loud. “When the Music’s Over.”
Nikko, Milo, Linus, and the others are entranced, bowing and hallelujahing to some God I don’t see. Everyone has their shirt off, a pagan ritual in full swing, eyes shut, everyone swimming to the music, every nuance, every tinkle, every weird guitar strain.
Melted candles are everywhere, glowing as if from dead men’s skulls. The walls are covered in plush corduroy, downy soft, like Bellevue. Nikko beckons me in slow-motion, like he’s the head of some long-lost Buddhist colony or an obese old man. I can’t do this. I close the door.
Now what?
Lucy’s here! She’ll help!
“I’m having a hard time with the acid I took today. I feel really weird.”
“What do you expect when you take that shit?”
This isn’t helping. My guilty meter flashes hot. Where should I go? What should I do?
Oh my God, I have a paper due tomorrow for Mr. Engle in constitutional law! I don’t know anything about constitutional law and Mr. Engle knows it, and the paper is due tomorrow and I am fucked.
I go back to Nikko’s room and slowly open the door. Still the Doors: “The End.” They are climbing the walls and everything is dripping in slime.
Father?
Yes, son.
I want to kill you.
Mother...
I want to....
WWWWHHHAAA, come on, babehhh!!!
That’s a no-go.
I have no idea where to go. The acid is coming full on, and my brain sizzles. I open the door to the elevator. There’s a big mirror with a little bench that juts up next to it. I sit on the bench and stare at my face. My pupils are black marbles. There’s a ripple effect to my reflection, like some ghoul that can multiply itself on command. I look pale but red, otherworldly.
Oh my God, what have I done?
Like my father when he married his first wife.
He was twenty-two.
She put her hand on his knee in a Volkswagen as they were driving away from the ceremony. And she looked deeply into his eyes, and he thought, “Oh my God, what have I done?”
Should I sleep? I close my eyes, but the geometric patterns are too vivid and powerful and all is silence, but around my brain there is a frenzy of sound and it still sizzles. I continue to stare at my face in the mirror.
I’m in Ben Heller’s house, tripping way too high on LSD, fulfilling his prophecy of my eternal failure. Maybe he’s right. I am an idiot. I don’t measure up. I skim by in school and in life. I’m glib and insubstantial, not only at my core, but in my mind—in spirit. Just like my father, whose reflection I am now looking at in the mirror. And then his father, my grandfather. Then his father, then all the other Sedgwick fathers, their reflections in the mirror whipping around like a Rolodex. All of them not really big guys. Not bad guys, but not big guys. Not like Ben, who commands awe. Who, during the Rothko case in which he was the star witness against the Marlborough gallery, made the defense lawyer so unhinged (who up until that point had been ripping through people) that the judge said he had never seen a witness like Ben in all his years on the bench. His testimony tilted the case to the Rothko estate. Ben decimated Goliath.
When I speak at the dinner table, which is pretty much never, my words are peripheral, ambient babble. They make no point, so hardly the slightest attention is paid. Less than a side note.
Hit yourself. Why not?
Slap.
C’mon, that’s all you got? You deserve more than that.
SLap.
That’s a little better, but please, for who you are?
SLAp.
But you could do so much more.
SLAP SLAP SLAP.
There you go. A rhythm. Now you’re getting it.
SLAP, SLAP, SLAP, SLAP, rearing way back now, SLAP to the temple!
Good boy! Well done! That’s it! You’ve found your niche. We all need an occupation of some sort, and now you’ve found yours. How wonderful for you.
I’m balancing high in a circus tent, now, balancing on the handle of a broom. I shuffle to the front, it dips forward, I shuffle to the back, it…I am falling! Get to the middle! Try to keep it balanced! Keep it straight, desperate to keep it straight, don’t fall—knees bent, arms waving, trying to find that infinitesimal pocket of balance. This is impossible. I can’t continue forever. I’ll fall from a monumental height, and the entire way down I’ll know I’ll die a rushing, horrible, pulverizing death.
I’m losing my grip. I am…not stable. I will fall…
If I call Mom, maybe this will all stop. She’s in East Hampton. Force myself to the phone, force my fingers to poke the numbers on the dial pad, force my voice to say:
“Mom.”
This is the last thing I can imagine doing. If this fails, there is probably nothing else to keep me from losing my mind.
“Yes, sweetheart?”
“Um…can you?”
“What’s wrong?”
“I did something dumb. I…”
“What?”
“I don’t know how to say this…”
“What? Are you all right?”
“No, I’m not.”
“Are you high?”
“Yes.”
“What did you take?”
“I don’t—”
“Something you’ve never taken before?
“Yes.”
“What?”
“I feel so—”
“Did you take LSD?”
“Yes.”
“I’m leaving right now. Hold on. We’ll be there soon.”
I don’t feel like killing myself. I want to live. I just don’t want to go crazy. But if Mom doesn’t get here soon, I think I’ll lose it. I’m curled in a ball in her office. I’m waiting. Is that…no, that’s just another sound. I’m waiting…
“SWEETHEART! My God, are you still here?”
“Yes, Mom.”
“How do you feel? “
“I don’t know.”
“Here, rest your head in my lap. It’s going to be okay, it’s going to be okay, shushhh, it’s going to be okay. I love you, my angel. It’s going to be okay.”
—
Mom wants to take us to some stupid amusement park, but I don’t want to go. I’m a twelve-year-old grown-up and I’ve made my call. I want to stay here and watch football. She asks me so many times, and I say no! It’s like a dare, even though there is this teeny tiny part of me that wonders what it would be like to go to the amusement park on this glorious, snappy, autumn day. Maybe it might be fun? But then there is football. I am devoted to football and want to play for Harvard like my dad when I get older. I don’t know what to do and am so confused that I’m stuck, and because I’m stuck, I get angry, and with more confusion, more anger. Now there’s even more of me that wants to go to the amusement park, but it’s too late; I’ll look like a mouse. I’ve got to stick by my decision. She’s challenged me. I can’t give in; I’ve got to be strong, resolute. Shepherding Nikko and Kyra out of her huge bedroom with the big TV, she repeats in a singsongy voice, “You’ll be sorry, you’ll be sorry.” She’s cas
t her spell.
It’s the Giants and the Patriots around 1973, so the game really sucks and both teams are awful.
The ineptitude of the game, coupled with the glory of the day, sunshine flooding the bedroom, and me knowing everyone is having an incredible time without me, starts to build in my head.
I can’t look at the game because it’s so bad, but there is nothing else to do, so I rivet my eyes to the screen. This works for only seconds, so I pace the bedroom. It’s only the second quarter. Why didn’t I go with Mom? I’m so stupid. I could have been having the best time, and now I am stuck here in this estate-sized apartment, hemmed in by these haunting paintings by these geniuses who killed themselves.
I couldn’t give a flying fuck about this game, and so I go into the bathroom to stare at myself in the mirror and tell myself how stupid I am. Through the picture-frame window overlooking Central Park, I can see everyone having so much fun, even from ten stories up. I even hear happy bongo drums. The scene mocks my dumb, idiotic decision.
I stare into the mirror. I am the stupidest person on the face of the Earth.
I hit myself in the head.
Again. Again. Again.
There is a ringing in my head.
I go back to the game.
I pace. The panic is not dead.
I go back to the mirror.
At least I know this is a monumental undertaking of some kind. At least I am engaged. I claw my fingers. I raise them to my cheeks and begin to scratch.
Hard.
Harder.
The flesh is curling under my nails.
It is a release of some sort.
I am bleeding and out of breath.
It’s not pretty, but I’m almost relaxed. I zone out to watch the rest of the game, but I have no idea what’s going on, flickering images that have no consequence or impact.
32
I smelled of booze most of the time now. It even disgusted me. I figured if I got sent away to prison, at least I would have to stop for a while. And that would be a good thing. I started chewing parsley in the morning to hide it, the way I used to in high school. It didn’t really work then, and it wasn’t working now. In the makeup room, Sylvia talked about how Darren in the TV show Bewitched was an alcoholic. She said this directly to me from the other side of the large makeup room, for everyone else’s benefit as well as mine. I prayed that she got cancer soon and died.
I inhaled when I spoke to people, or I surreptitiously turned my head to one side, hoping they wouldn’t smell anything. Anthony, the actor who played my boss on the show, pulled me aside and told me I reeked. We went for a walk around the block, and I told him my whole situation: the bust, how much time I was looking at, how every day was frightening to me, and how the simplest things made me jump. He couldn’t have been more understanding or compassionate. He was the type of guy you wanted to have at your wedding. I got through the day. It was pretty rocky, but no one seemed to notice. And rocky or not, I found out they were giving me a wife on the show, so it didn’t look like they were going to fire me anytime soon.
At the end of the day, I called Tom to go to the Korean hooker place and take a load off. I was desperate for any kind of distraction, and sex and the anticipation of having it blanked out everything else. At least this wasn’t getting looped by myself and passing out with a lit cigarette in my hand. We tried to make out the catch of the day to the best of our drunken abilities.
I chose Anna.
“What’s with these names?” I asked Tom. “Aren’t these chicks Asian?”
“Yes, Bob, but they’ve Americanized their names for drunk idiots like us, so we’re not any more confused than we already are or need to be.”
I entered the little room with Anna, a sharp, thinly muscled Asian beauty. We moved to the bed. Immediately she took my cock in her hand and started pumping it like a piston she disliked with ferocious intensity.
“Ow!”
She continued to punish my offending dong. “Why you not ge HAR? Why you not ge HAR?”
“Maybe if you were a little more gentle”—her forearm moved in rapid circles, as if she were hitting a speed bag in preparation for a title fight—“I would get har.”
No use: my bohack hung limp and inconsequential.
For some reason, Anna felt the session had gone well. As Tom and I were leaving, I heard Anna giggling to Tom’s girl. “Hee hee, ouchy ouchy.”
Two hundred dollars down the shitter.
Things went from bad to embarrassing: blackout phone calls, missed appointments, held breath. I was so jumpy that I could anticipate things rolling off tables and catch them. During sporting events, I yelled so loudly at the TV that the neighbors would gently knock on my door to please keep it down. I would shout “Fuck off!” from my ancient La-Z-Boy sprouting tufts of yellow, crumbling foam, then hear footsteps running away.
My command center chair had a table next to it. On that table was the TV clicker and a Mason jar filled with Gordon’s vodka mixed with organic apple juice and a straw sticking out. The ashtray was overstuffed. In blackout mode, I would eat chicken on that table and somehow the bones would get strewn to the nether reaches of the apartment. I knew this because, months later, I would sometimes find them by accident.
At the gym, whenever I hit the heavy bag, I had to be careful not to slip and break my neck because there was so much booze sweat all over the place.
My sister and I had lunch. She knew what was going on, but she tried to keep it to herself. “So, did Kevin tell you to drop the Lurch thing?”
“He was real nice about it.”
“You’re such a great actor, you don’t have to do that.”
The concern on her face was endless. It was about drinking, jail, and whether I was going to live past the next couple of years. She was covering as best as she could because she didn’t want me to take it the wrong way, but I knew it was there.
“So how’s it all going with you?”
“Oh, it’s fine, you know. The show’s going okay and I have this audition for Twelfth Night coming up.”
“Shakespeare. That’s great.”
“Yeah, so I’m just trying to put one foot in front of the other and keep my nose clean.”
“How do you feel?”
“Fucking terrified. I wake up every day and it’s the first thing I think of. It sucks.”
“Oh, Rob—”
“I wish I could just do the time now, get it over with. I mean, when Jordan and I were inside—I mean, you’re ready, you’re prepared, because you’re there. But this waiting and not knowing is enough to drive anyone fucking crazy.”
“Oh God. It must be horrible. I’m so sorry.”
“It’s all the time. Frankly, I’d rather be inside. And on top of that, a fucking baby coming into the world that I’ll never know. There’s a part of me that wants to get in touch with Julie now, but to say what? ‘Hey, it’s me. I was wondering if you’d have me back because I might be going away soon and want these horrible feelings of guilt to vanish so I can feel better about myself and maybe even sleep once in a while?’”
“I know.”
“I mean how could I do a baby now, in this state, in this situation? My God, I feel so guilty about it. It doesn’t go away.”
My head itched like crazy, dehydration from the booze. I’d been scratching extra hard because I deserved the pain. My skin was flaking off all over the place.
“What’s up with the scratching?” Kyra said. “Don’t hurt yourself like that.”
“Sorry. Must be dandruff. My hygiene has been less than it should be. Better start getting Head and Shoulders.”
“I’m so sorry, Rob.”
“It’s embarrassing. Especially when I wear black.”
“No, I mean…”
There was nothing to say, and the conversation just dr
ifted away.
After that, I tried to see her after I worked out so I was a little more together. I couldn’t stand seeing my sister in so much pain over me.
I went back to the apartment on Eighty-Fifth. Moss happened to be in the lobby, acting all bouncy. Then he said, “Robbie, I was just on Eighty-Sixth Street, and Julie is in a van there with a baby.”
I turned to sprint the two blocks. As I pivoted, Moss barked over my shoulder, “She said his name is Jose, or Pablo or something like that…”
I made Eighty-Sixth in maybe thirty seconds. There was a van that looked like our van and a woman who must have been Julie in the driver’s seat with a baby strapped to her body, papoose-like, that must have been my baby, and even though I had no rights to say anything, I stuck my head into the car and said, “You shouldn’t drive like that, the baby needs a car seat or something. That’s too dangerous.”
She just looked at me with a profound sense of betrayal and God knows what else. Mixed in was probably hatred, sarcasm, and the directive to “go jump in the lake.” It was a silent gaze, violently creepy, or at least that was my interpretation, deeply accusatory and piercing enough to send shudders down the backs of lizards. And she was right—starkly, bleakly right—about my wrong. My deep wrong. I didn’t have a leg to stand on. I remembered Linus saying something about gay culture and how it was so much more carefree than heterosexual culture due largely to the fact that the having and raising of children, that deepest and most profound of responsibilities, was, for the majority of homosexuals, off the table. He said, “You can fuck whoever you want and there is very little chance of getting pregnant via the ass.”
I couldn’t manage anything except “I’m sorry,” which obviously fell so short.
The only appropriate thing would have been to throw myself at her feet and try to explain how incompetent I would be as a father, especially now.
“I’m sorry?” she said.
“No. I’m sorry,” I said.
“No…I’m sorry. I don’t know you. This isn’t your baby. There’s been some mistake. This is my husband’s baby and mine. You’re mistaking me for someone else.”
I stuck my head deeper into the car for a closer look, and she was right. It wasn’t Julie. It wasn’t my baby.