Chapter II: His Domain
Early riser
At 6:15 the next morning, I awoke to the sound of tapping at the back of the house. I could see a smudged outline of someone behind the gauzy window panes of the door; my brain was barely functioning, but the equation Smudge = Porky got my attention. I got up to see what he wanted and there he was, vim to my vinegar.
“Porky, what on earth are you doing here?”
“I came to work on the plumbing.”
“Are you out of your mind?”
“What are you asking me that for? You’re a friend, you’ve got a bad situation, I’m here to help you out. Early. First Thing. Top Priority.”
This sudden prioritizing of my needs above all others was unprecedented.
“Well, that’s great, it’s just early; I haven’t even put breakfast out yet. Did you have breakfast?”
“Yeah.”
“Do you want anything else?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, come on in. You can have some coffee and a muffin when they’re ready.”
Porky began his work down in the basement. He came up for food around 7:00, fiddled a bit with the pipes under the sink, quickly returned to the basement and then began tripping back and forth between the various floors of the house so frequently that his aim soon became obvious: he was here to encounter Celestine, plumbing heal thyself.
In that he would be frustrated however, as would I, because Celestine had vanished. For a guest to get out of the house in the morning without my awareness, means one of two things, either they left while I had nodded off or they had made great effort to leave without my knowing it. The reason for this is the previously noted squawkiness of the house; you come in late, it waits up for you and gives you grief; you try to be discreet, it starts banging like the piano player at the whorehouse it used to be. The house in fact responds to one’s every move with some sound or another in it’s own primitive language, much like the clicking tongues of certain ancient, isolated tribes of Africa. Celestine is that rare guest with the grace of a large cat whose sinews move it silently to its destinations.
I noted that Porky’s interest in my plumbing plunged once he was made aware that Celestine was out for the day.
“I have to go now,” he said, after working the carpets of my floors more than the pipes he had come to disembowel. “I’ll call you later.”
I went back to the kitchen to take stock of my supplies, made out a shopping list and called Tip to tell him I’d be out shopping. I then boiled some water and washed the dishes, establishing a routine I imagined performing for the foreseeable future.
Sacred space
Half an hour later I lean into the parking lot of the supermarket with my car, a sensible Japanese auto made the same year I didn’t graduate from college for the second time, driving to a spot furthest from the store entrance. There were plenty of parking spaces closer, as I arrived during the late morning lull but I’ve been trying to get more exercise and I never mind having a little slack space in my life. As the door of the supermarket gives way magically before me, it occurs to me how much I really enjoy coming here, it’s like a humble temple where no one has chased out the money changers.
I apply a lot of grand thinking to the supermarket; lives are lived here, careers are made and broken and there are times when the supermarket reveals itself to be a nest of sexual intrigue. The product packaging exhibits a level of artistry belied by its ephemeral nature, though it’s easy to miss because of its ubiquity. I often hear people in line for the deli discussing important political issues and the store’s advertising raises thought-provoking questions.
Of course, I tend to interpret even the most prosaic of questions as though they are of metaphysical import. When the attractive clerk at the check-out stand asks me ‘Did you find everything you were looking for?, the only possible response to this question starts in childhood, any sooner than that and I feel like I’m leaving too much out. ‘No, I didn’t find everything I was looking for; my life hasn’t been that easy,’ I tell her. ‘I wanted better looking lovers, where were you then? I wanted a powder blue 1968 El Camino; I never got one.’ Usually the Cashiers will say ‘Did you find everything you were looking for today?’ Does this mean they seriously think I could find everything I was ever looking for in one day? Their aggressive friendliness is jarring - Do they think this makes up for all those years when employees at the supermarket were physically distant and emotionally unavailable?
Now that I no longer abuse substances, the employees at my local supermarket have begun serving the same function that bartenders once did when I used to spend a lot of time at a local pub. It was a classic pub in the sense that the patrons all loved and hated each other. It was kind of back burner hate early in the evening that progressively became love as we increased our consumption of alcohol and drank our way into the night. Those days are over; I’ve mastered the pyrotechnics of bridge burning and find that my extra hours spent at the supermarket are much more healing and healthy (all four food groups healthy!)
It’s true that I probably spend too much time at the supermarket but it doesn’t begin to approach the hours wasted at my previous haunt, that skuzzy old bar, which I now pass with disdain because it hasn’t changed and I have, because it still wallows in its filth and I’m clean and sober.
The supermarket on the other hand embraces change. They’ve given the store a beautiful make-over, which it sorely needed because it had been lingering too long in the seventies and our lifestyles have changed so much since then, at least that’s what the supermarket’s advertising says.
I think there must have been an awful lot of people everywhere in this country who made an awful lot of money these last few years because it now seems that everything is getting so fixed up and so nice. I could do without the prices. I thought the economy wasn’t doing so well, at least that’s what I keep hearing but you’d never know it the way people keep spending hand over fist on new houses and sport cars and botox and everything. These days the lord giveth and giveth and giveth, apparently and doesn’t see the need to taketh away. That must be nice for some people, for those that actually own the ownership society.
Get real estate
Uncle Arthur’s bequest had saved me from the humiliation of being an American without private property. I know that certain public assets, like national parks and the Smithsonian, are held in trust for me but I don’t think I’ll ever see a dime from my investment with the government and too many of my other investments were in liquid assets of the type that keep company mascots like Jack Daniels afloat. When you’re a forty year-old native-born American and you don’t own real estate or some large boat or car, then you have serious credibility issues.
Before I owned one of my own, houses stood out as a symbol of all that could go right in the world. If I just owned my own home, I could stop being ashamed of all the crummy apartments and communal houses I had always lived in; I could ask girls over and impress them instead of leaving them disappointed and hard to get a hold of on the telephone.
Yet I’m now learning first hand what is meant by the phrase ‘house poor’. I’m dragging a ball and chain with me now wherever I go and it has crumbling foundations and plumbing that will cry me a river. Worst of all, I’m finding it no easier to get laid. As if to remind me of the real costs of real estate, Tipton calls me on my cell phone.
“Where are you, Roy?” he asks with the concentrated intensity of a commando behind enemy lines.
“I’m at the supermarket.”
“You’re still at the supermarket?” he says, in a voice that prepares me for hysteria. Something heavy must be going down at headquarters.
“Relax, Tip. Have you got someone?”
“I’m negotiating now,” he states, with a gravitas that suggests he’s putting the finishing touches on the Treaty of Versailles. “I think I’ve got them, they’d be coming in about half an hour. I’ll call you
right back.”
Manic telephone calls from Tip puncture my days. Many people assume that when the house is empty I’m free to play but it doesn’t work that way. It may be counter-intuitive, but only when the house is full am I assured of my right to the pursuit of happiness, which these days means wandering through retail establishments hoping to get laid. When I’ve got a full house, all I need do is the chores in the morning and then my day is open. When the place isn’t filled to capacity, I’m chained to it because Tip is constantly trying to reel in some guests and I need to be there ready to show the empty rooms on short notice.
I go through my day knowing that at any minute I might be called back to the house to meet a guest. This can of course be highly annoying; dinner parties, heart to heart talks; the last home stretch of orgasm – all these things could be interrupted at any moment. To make this work, I often assign myself a role to play that heightens my sense of urgency. That day I was a world-renowned brain surgeon that has been called to perform emergency surgery for a third world dictator. It’s critical that the generalissimo gets back to his impoverished country in order to suppress the latest peasant uprising.
While waiting for Tip to call back, I wander over to the freezer section and start opening the doors, sticking my arm in to reach products that I quickly decide not to get. I enjoy the sensation of freezing air on my arm but I don’t think frozen food is a very good deal – you’re paying a premium for all that air conditioning. I like to leave the doors open for longer than I should and let the cold pour out into the aisle. Several minutes go by like this before Tip calls back.
“Ok, they’re going into Jefferson for three nights, $85 per night. They’re really sweet, English couple, I think you’ll really like them. They’ll be there in about an hour or so.”
“Alright, then I’m going to zip over to the co-op real fast before they….”
“Don’t go to the food co-op!” Tipton shouts. He’s a gay republican, of the Lincoln-Log cabin sort and he doesn’t like the lefty politics of the place. In his mind I’d go there and become indoctrinated in the checkout line, abandoning my guests for some smarmy Sandanistas. “Get home now just in case they’re early. You’ve still got a mortgage you know!”
That was unkind.
Confined Anarchists
I’ve started going to the food co-op again since they moved into a large, open industrial building. I’d stopped going because when they were located in that tiny little space near the housing project, all the help used to be so rude – anarchists don’t do well in confined spaces – but they must have all been sent to re-education camp or something during the move (Tip swears they have replaced all the former employees and that none have been heard from since) because they’re pretty nice now and genuinely helpful. Yes, one may laugh at the general air of self-righteousness. But where else would I find bulk chestnut flour? Who even knew someone spent the time pounding chestnuts to make flour? That can’t be easy and who but the Marxists at the co-op would appreciate such difficult labor?
But the supermarket is by far the greater influence in my life. Last year I had briefly contemplated growing out my fingernails in the style of Buddhist ascetics but was dissuaded when watching the troubled check-out clerk as she clickety-clacked my purchases on the cash register keys with the glossy lime-green, rhinestone-studded bayonets on the ends of her fingers. She’s a full-figured Latina whom I wouldn’t mind sleeping with, whom I would in fact love to sleep with. She has flirted with me, we flash each other coded messages with our eyes but her ardor cools noticeably once we’ve left the confines of the supermarket interior. I feel a bond with her because she seems to find smiling difficult too, at least she does when she’s behind the cash register.
I’ve seen her several times hanging out in the parking lot after her shift with a younger, less handsome version of the kind of guy I once wanted to be. I realize with self-reproach that I’ve never been the type of guy that hangs out in parking lots, a defining habitat of American teenagers since the 1920’s. It takes a particular kind of boy to patrol the asphalt, one with the ability to stop traffic, like a cop but with more obscene hand gestures and less formal dress – Marlon Brando. I got the smoking and the drinking down all right, but not the posturing, that animal presence.
After depositing the groceries into my car, I push the cart back up twenty parking spaces, feeling morally superior for having made the journey to return the cart to its proper resting place, the carriage corral where I expect to find others of the genus grazing. Most people are lazy and abandon their shopping carts haphazardly as though they’re just stalled bumper cars and the ride’s over.
I look unkindly upon the elderly woman who is also pushing her empty cart across an unreasonable distance of the parking lot. She seems bent on matching my every altruistic gesture. Earlier, in the store, she’d been behind me offering tearful thanks because I had thoughtfully placed the little bar that distinguishes one shopper’s purchases from another’s on the conveyer belt at the check-out stand. I sometimes wonder about people who are overly thankful for trifles; what sort of Hell-hole of incivility did they live in during their formative years that makes them so damn ingratiating?
As I drive from my parking space out of the lot she too approaches the exit and I surprise her by surging ahead, cutting her off in a reckless manner. I can see her look of dismay in the rear-view mirror as the colorful trinkets I have hanging from it sway with the violence of my maneuver and I realize I may be triggering her nervous breakdown.
There will always be an excuse for England
The English couple arrives a bit late. “Sorry,” they say in cute-as-buttons British accents. They’re the sort of travelers who wear their T shirts like heraldic blazons, each new city or theme park is another quartering, another mark of distinction and belonging. Judging from their casual attire, they had visited Carlsbad Caverns and a theme park in Florida where I’d once thrown-up all over several retired cartoon characters. She was freckled and bony with a big, lumpy bottom, as though she was an overly hugged toy whose stuffing had all been squeezed downward. He appeared less loved, with all his stuffing intact. I invited them in but they would only go so far before they needed prodding, thus our relationship became established early.
“Come on, come inside,” I said to them.
“Sorry,” they said again, as an apology for crossing my path.
“That’s it, go over there,” I said as I pointed toward the living room.
I seated them on the couch, and thinking to make a joke, I jovially blurted out, “So, what’s so great about Great Britain?” They appeared puzzled and then gave quick reflexive smiles that looked like part of some exercise regimen I might want to consider.
I gave them a pen and their registration card to fill out. She handed me a major credit card and I took down the number. He tried to hand me back the pen I’d given them but dropped it onto the floor.
“Sorry,” he said.
I handed them their key and showed them how to operate the lock. She gave me a questioning look.
“Sorry,” she said, “but does that mean we can come and go as we like or is there a curfew?”
“Sorry,” I replied, “but I’m not that much of a nanny; you’ll be on your own to do as you like, except for eating in your rooms and leaving the toilet seat up.”
The English substitute the word sorry for more appropriate phrases like ‘excuse me’, ‘not now’ or ‘piss off you fat cow’. But I wonder, with their promiscuous use of the word ‘sorry’, what happens when a situation arises where they must truly apologize for an egregious wrong? What could one plausibly say, I’m really, really, really sorry, honestly and deeply sorry? The English are an apologetic race; one can only assume they have much to apologize for.
I showed them to their room and then went downstairs. It was dark by then and I wondered where Celestine was. Tip calls to make sure that the English folks are happy.
&
nbsp; “Did they show?”
“They’re here, all show and no tell. Talking to them is like pulling teeth out of snails.”
“Just be your usual charming self and remember how much richer they’ve made you - $255, for you it’s practically a leap to the next tax bracket.”
“Speaking of taxes, Tip, how are mine coming?”
“I’m still working on them,” he says with agitation. “I told you I’d have them and I will, don’t worry about it.”
“Ok, I’m just asking.”
Bad Cop/Badder cop
I give him the credit card number so he can charge it. With guests I pretend that Tip is just one of many anonymous agents busy in their cubicles hunting down the best prices for deserving travelers like themselves. Tip pretends that he actually is all those many agents working at Go-Go Travel, PO Box 1635, San Francisco, CA 19053. He’s Tipton the efficient and friendly civic booster, but also Clemente, the flaming Latino who “sthpeeksth like deesth with an Andalusthian leesthp” and Violet, the bitch who lies and responds to teary guests with stone silence and angry little questions like “So, you think I’m supposed to do what?”
Although the guests think we’re autonomous professionals who barely know each other, the truth is Tipton couldn’t be more intimately ensnarled in Golden Rules. He and Uncle Arthur had worked out a business model that had as its foundation the Good Cop/Bad Cop system employed so effectively by police detectives while shaking down suspects on TV.
It works something like this: A tourist talks to ‘Violet’ in the morning, she tells him about a fabulous B&B in North Beach and quotes him a price of $95 a night if he books for three nights, otherwise it’s $150 per. The tourist arrives later that evening at my house as a guest who then proceeds to tell me he and his wife will be staying only one night and that he spoke with Violet the travel agent and she said he could have the room for $85 for the night. I act really nice and say,
“HHmm, that’s not what Violet told me, but she may be mistaken, let me call her so we can straighten out the mix-up.”
The guest suddenly looks like he’s about to come down with Montezuma’s Revenge. He hadn’t figured on my being able to get a hold of Violet at 7pm.
“Hi, Violet? Ok…..Hello, Violet. Yeah, it’s Roy at Golden Rules. Good. Listen, there’s a guest here who is taking my double for one night and he says you quoted him eighty-fi – uh, huh….uh, huh….right. Ok, why don’t you talk to him.” I pass the phone to the guest, whose expression sours. He barely gets a word in because Violet’s feeling pretty mouthy and his face colors as it nods up and down. His whole body is rocking as he hangs up the phone. I act very sympathetic and say something like,
“Sorry for the mix-up, Violet’s pretty hard nose about that kind of thing. Believe me, if it were up to me, I wouldn’t have had a problem with it. But we have to stick to our agreements with these travel agents, and it’s pretty much their call.”
Thus I come out of the fracas unsullied and I actually pick up extra points as the nice (by comparison with nasty Violet,) innkeeper who has the best interests of his guests at heart.
Jesus Christ Super-Size
After dinner a few hours later, I pondered how best to spend my evening; I had bills to pay, calls to return, books that remained unread and various abandoned projects of a somewhat artistic nature.
Instead, I turned on the television and found religion.
God is everywhere it seems, and I wish the F.C.C. would do something about it. I can’t flip over those religious channels on Cable fast enough; they pass by in a blur of three thousand-dollar suits, mascara and tonsils at the back of big open mouths. People who send money to those tele-evangelists are dumb as dirt. And when they ask ‘What would Jesus do?’ the answer is immediately clear: change the channel!
And yet I didn’t. No, I sat and watched and was amazed at the size of all those Born Again Christians. They ran the gamut from pudgy to monstrously obese. I’d hate to be in the deep end of the baptismal font when they all dive in. The television Catholics, by contrast seemed half-starved, even when they were overweight.
It can’t be mere coincidence that Americans are getting fatter and more Christian at the same time. Every year we have to keep cutting a few more holes on the Bible Belt because the number of Americans who profess to have found Christ seems to be increasing right in sync with their expanding waistlines. Soon the numbers of the devout will be greater than the actual population, a seeming impossibility that would only go to show that His ways are truly miraculous.
Have you noticed that Jesus, like more and more of the characters on TV sitcoms and advertising has been putting on weight? Now that the consumer is King of Kings, we will gradually remake Jesus in our image until he has a hard time getting into a 42” waist God frock. Jesus Christ Super-size or Fat Jesus for the politically incorrect.
The fact that the geographical spread of conservative religious fatties and godless gym-toned liberals aligns closely with those of slave and free states before the Civil War doesn’t bode well for the future of the country. One can only let out the Mason-Dixon line so far before it starts ripping at the seams.
What happens when the Slaves-to-the-Second-Helping States declare war on the Gluten-Cruelty-Sugar-Free-Range States? The array of opposing armies would present an interesting picture of politically charged body types. People all over the East and West coasts are hitting the gym more frequently than the down home fatties in Southern and Mid-Western rural areas, who these days aren’t living off the fat of the land, they are the fat of the land. Bibles aren’t the only things they’ll be thumping – engrossed body parts will be bumping and grinding against one another in a mad, exhausting push for the front lines. Can you imagine the nightmare of trying to provide enough carbohydrates to an army of those roly-poly rebs? And those obsessive gluttons for punishment in the north would be falling all over each other to get into Andersonville.
Gone into the fashion dump of history are the blue and the grey. The South would model their uniforms on those provided to workers at one of our most successful fast-food chains and the North would wear tight sweats and tube socks and those chic little electronic devices that store more music than one could possibly listen to in one lifetime. Of course these days the south definitely has the industrial edge.
Tuck inn
After turning the TV off at ten, I made one more patrol around the house. Upstairs, the English couple were in their room doing something that required much zipping and unzipping. Celestine’s room was dark and the door was open, which made me worry just a bit. I emptied the trash from the shared bathroom and took it downstairs to the kitchen – Where was she? Do women of her age stay out this late? Should I be worried? I was worried, but should I be? I contemplated possible outcomes of Celestine’s day, concocting several grim scenes of violence and then morphing these into pornographic fantasies involving Celestine and the hot Latina at the supermarket.
Soon after, as I drifted off to sleep, I heard footfalls on the front stoop, the turning of a key in the front door lock and the creaking of the stairs as Celestine climbed them. For a few moments I became more alert and then suddenly fell asleep.
Chapter III: Lives Touched by Tragedy
Viewmaster Page 4