Viewmaster

by Ferdinand Stowell

The next morning I awoke and remained in bed thinking about the day to come and the revelation of that yesterday. I faced two potential disasters, a knot of garbage in my plumbing that threatened to ruin me financially and an unstable woman who by now was expecting me to please her to the best of my carnal knowledge. With Porky I must be firm and remindful of all I have done for him. With Celestine I must be at once friendly and discouraging.

  My sub-continental family of four came down later than I expected them to; somehow I’d imagined the father kept paramilitary hours and would have awoken the kids shortly after the crack of dawn for some marching or cool-aide drinking or something.

  When I came out to greet them, she was pouring orange juice for everyone at the table while her husband was straightening the children’s bibs.

  “Good morning,” I said.

  “Good morning,” the children said. “Good morning, good morning, good morning,” they kept repeating as they giggled.

  I cupped my ear as I said, “I think there’s an echo in here.” They repeated their good mornings again. “There, see, did you hear that? I’d better get these walls checked, or my ears or something.” The kids both looked at each other and stuck their tongues out, but not too far. Their father pinched his son’s cheeks, patted them both on the heads and told them to stop now.

  “Good morning,” the wife said to me as she smiled. “These flowers are lovely.” The way she said ‘flowers’ and how she smiled, like she loved doing it but didn’t get enough opportunities, touched me.

  “Picked them myself this morning,” I said and then for the benefit of the children I added, “I snuck into the neighbor’s yard early this morning to steal flowers but their huge dog with big teeth came running out and do you know what happened?”

  The boy’s eyes were getting bigger. He shook his head.

  “He didn’t eat you,” the girl said.

  “Right! He didn’t eat me up, he came running out and he helped me pick more flowers.” The children didn’t seem to hear me; they were now contemplating their food and, no doubt, how to put it into play.

  The little boy had his fork sticking straight up from a large wedge of cantaloupe; he was practically begging for discipline as he stared at his father to see what his reaction might be. His father stared at the fork and somehow I sensed that for the boy this was about his father, but for his father, this was about me. I think nothing would have pleased him more than to have his children cause such havoc with my home that all the timbers would torque and come crashing down upon my head minutes after they’d departed. The fork fell with a clanking noise onto the plate. The father said something to his wife in that language which was integral to his system of control. She spoke to her son and he fussed as she took his fork away.

  The husband and wife were talking in their other language but I heard him say distinctly in English, a word that brought their conversation to a halt, “Hebrews.”

  Pre-Judgment Days

  The husband’s behavior, brown skin and apparent anti-semitic dig brought my own father uncomfortably to mind. Hebrews – that’s what my father called Jewish people. Like the word Jew was too good for them. Why should they get to suffer more than anyone else? We were Irish after all – or were we?

  Our identity as a family was founded on all the things we weren’t. If we hadn’t had others to ridicule or disdain, we might never have known who we were. Growing up, I knew we weren’t Black, Jewish, Puerto Rican nor Asian and according to my father, good thing.

  We weren’t allowed to watch that television show about the cigar smoking, English mangling bigot, his squeaky, wheezy wife, stacked daughter and ethnic son-in-law because it was too dirty. They discussed sensitive issues that any decent television character would ignore and let fester off camera rather than expose to high Neilsen ratings. Given that the TV couple only had one child, my father suspected they used birth control. But I think the true reason we weren’t allowed to watch the program was that the father on the show stole my dad’s best material and it pissed him off that some actor was getting paid tons of money to sit in front of the cameras doing exactly what he did every day for free. Just one thing though, my dad didn’t smoke.

  You’ve heard of armchair warriors? My father was the same breed as that Lazy-boy racist on TV. Talk at dinnertime (my dad always sat at the head of the table in a Lazy-boy chair, one of four in our house – a totem of his arrival, his elevated if mostly horizontal social status) was peppered with reference to darkies, spicks, spooks, gooks, shylocks, fags and other demons that came pouring out of his heart of darkness. We white folks were harder working, more faithful, cleaner, more polite, smarter and our noses were normal.

  “God made white people to run earth correctly, not like when the Jews and the dark people ran things before Jesus came along.”

  By virtue of his Catholic upbringing, my father considered himself religious but he understood the Catholic Church as an institution only vaguely associated with the tenets of Christianity. He saw world history as a western where Jesus plays the mysterious new Aryan cowpoke in town who ends up killing all the bad guys with dark skin and prominent noses. Jesus had blue eyes and blow-dried hair (blonde, but not too long; my dad wanted Jesus to get a hair cut.) The pope played the role of the sheriff who, as Jesus rides off to points unknown, asks one of his sidekicks – Who was that masked man?

  “White people are better at just about anything.”

  “Are you using us as an example of white supremacy?” I timidly asked one time. My father wasn’t really familiar with high-minded concepts like white supremacy; his reaction was due more to the insurrectional tone he detected in my voice. His lips pressed together tightly as the mouths of my siblings sank into frowns. He worked his facial muscles into his ‘I smell something really bad’ face, a grimace he could wear without cessation for hours on end, much longer than that damned sitcom actor.

  I ventured further, “Because my research shows that black people and Irish immigrants often co-mingled in the urban centers of mid-19th century America. There are more than a few black people with ‘Mcs’ in front of their names, and they didn’t all get them down on the plantation. There are Irish people walking around with brown sugar in their cream.”

  “Let me tell you something,” my father bellowed, “Irish people came here ‘cause we wanted to be here. We like it here. Blacks, they just came here to hang out, they don’t do nuthin’ ‘cause they don’t like it here. And another thing, any nigger with an Irish name is just being pretendish. They just stick ‘Mc’ in front of their names and think it makes ‘em fit in. Never gonna happen.”

  I have a wet dream

  I heard my arch-nemesis the husband say something. His wife asked, “Could we have more milk for the coffee, please?”

  “Sure, I’ll be right back.”

  The husband had it all over me; he had command of a beautiful woman, the undying love of two adorable children, and he wasn’t waiting hand and foot on me. I hated him.

  I wonder sometimes what it would be like to be a man in one of those countries where it’s still considered shocking and provocative for a woman to show her hair or mouth or legs, where a man’s control of the women in his life is complete, taken care of by societal norm.

  Here’s my fantasy: I’m married to a beautiful woman and we have a picture book marriage, we start procreating, then tending our family for whom I’m an excellent provider. We live in a wonderful community with good schools and huge lawns and a down town which is small but lively with a nice café outside of which we sit and read the Sunday paper while acquaintances stop to chat. But just below the surface of this Anytown, USA darker veins of desire flow, for all the wives who live on our street are magnetically drawn to me.

  Every spring I have to spar and parry with the challenging husbands, though I always win my right to continue my dominance over them and their wives, just like the walruses I once saw on a nature show on government subsid
ized television. I run two or three blocks of our street as a Visigoth chieftain his tribe or a sultan his harem.

  My fantasy branches out to encompass some of my favorite feminine types: the uptight, preppy ubërmom who needs to get fucked before she’s done the housework so she can forget for those brief moments of ecstasy that everything always has to be just so; the neglectful mom who loves getting screwed while her children are whining in the locked basement; the fun mom who giggles at everything except my erect penis (but flaccid, it’s fair game.)

  I imagine there’ s a family just up the block that challenges my authority by denying me my proper respects. One evening I burst in on them through the front door as they are seated at dinner. The husband rises and stares hard at me; I stare even harder back at him. We begin a deadly dance, matching each other move for move. He looks away only for a moment but in that moment his fate is sealed. I deal him a blow and he starts quietly gathering the children together. I hear the engine of their sedan fire up and the crumbling of the pea gravel as they back out into the street. I am alone with his woman. I throw aside a chair as I smell the fumes of her fear and desire. I take her hard right on the dining room table. She is pushed violently again and again by my every thrust. Afterwards, she clings to me with all four of her limbs and won’t let me go, frustrated she can’t fold herself into me like newborn young into the marsupium. “I’ll call for you,” I tell her, “when I need you.”

  Despite such fantasies, what I really need, I tell myself, is a strong woman. I don’t think it would be much fun to live in a country where village justice deems the rape of a woman necessary to assuage family honor. Shame! Honor! – in some countries they’re shows that run daily, standing room (men) only. The only real taste of their world that we get here is ‘Going Out of Business Sale: Carpets Slashed 60%!’

  What is it with people from the Mediterranean and the Middle East beyond? Why are they so tough? Why are rug merchants always going out of business? Why do they take you into their homes and feed and fawn over you like you were the golden calf but the minute you walk into their stores, they try to rip you off?

  As I came around the corner bringing more milk for the husband’s coffee, I stared first at his right temple where his skin darkened in a small concavity near his brow. His features were cut sharp like a core piece of obsidian from which had been flaked off the blades of his spite. I then stared at his wife, her head downcast towards her plate. I set the milk down on the sideboard. She thanked me. He would soon go back to the cabal of bullies he socializes with, she would return to her veil and voluminous silks.

  No Strings

  About half an hour after the family had gone, Celestine descended. She looked worn and smiled oddly – Miss Havisham in sweatshirt and shorts. The hairs on my neck rose.

  “Good morning, Celestine,” I said.

  “Good morning,” she yawned, “am I too late for breakfast?”

  “I was just putting it away, but I’d be happy to leave some for you. Did you have a good sleep?”

  “Delightful,” she answered.

  “What are your plans today?” My questions were clipped and demanded like responses.

  “Well, it’s my last day and I thought I should do something special. I have a coupon for some spa in South San Francisco but I’m not sure I want to go all the way down there. What do you think?”

  “It can’t be that nice of a spa if it’s in South San Francisco; it’s kind of poor and drab down there.”

  “Why is it that the southern part of cities is always poor? London, Los Angeles, …uh, Chicago, Boston, and San Francisco of course – they’re all the same.”

  “You’re right, I’ve never thought of it that way before. Must be some Feng Shui thing.”

  “So, I wonder if in the Southern Hemisphere, where toilet water flows in the opposite direction, the bad neighborhoods are in the north?”

  I laughed, noting that whatever ailed Celestine, it didn’t seem to prevent one from having a sense of irony. She then took advantage of my sudden openness to press her sexual agenda.

  “What would you suggest I do in order to make my last day in San Francisco extra special?”

  She looked me in the eye; her intent was unmistakable.

  “Well, let’s see. Let me get some brochures.” I stumbled out of the dining room and ducked into my private apartment. I began concocting an itinerary that would keep her far from the vicinity of my house until well after dark. I grabbed a map of the city and with a magic marker quickly inked in her banishment to some of the city’s farthest-flung neighborhoods. I returned to her with the map and a pot of fresh coffee.

  “Ok, I’ve figured it all out for you. You are going to love your last day! First you’re going to go out to the Outer Richmond, San Francisco’s real Chinatown for real Chinese people, not just tourists like Old Chinatown. This is where you’ll find a thriving Asian community and tons of Russians, too. This is where they go to shop and eat – real authentic – off the beaten track. You’ll have lunch there and grab some pastries and strong coffee at a Russian café. Check out the Russian language bookstores and video parlors. Great places to shop for Asian ceramics and hardware items. You can do your banking and laundry there, too. Then you’ll take the Geary bus all the way to the end and work your way over to Sutro Park to watch the sun set. This is my favorite place to do that. There’s always somebody up there with a guitar, it’s like you’re being serenaded as you overlook the most breathtaking view of the Pacific. You’ll love it and I’m sure the fog will blow off by then. You’ll get back on the Geary bus just before dark and take it to the Fillmore where you’ll have dinner at a jazz club while you listen to some fantastic music. Then you pop back here for a very good night’s sleep. What do you think?”

  She stared at me for a moment with her mouth drooping and slightly open. “I think you’ve really made my day,” she said as her face colored; it was clear I had only succeeded in making her feel foolish.

  I called Tip after Celestine left the house.

  “She’s gone out, hopefully for the whole day. I’m worried about her.”

  “Don’t get so emotionally invested in the lives of your guests,” he counseled. “You have to remember that you’re sort of like a nurse or a doctor, you can’t get too attached because it will compromise your job performance and eventually destroy you.”

  “I don’t get that attached to my guests,” I said; I guess I was a little indignant.

  “Oh, no? What about that family that was staying with us because their son was in the hospital for chemo? You bought them flowers and food and all those little gifts. You barely broke even.”

  “That poor little guy, he was so sick, I just wanted to do something for them; I felt so bad.”

  “I know, they were all so sweet and honestly, I cried buckets over that little boy, but you have to be careful. You’re a soap opera and you can’t be afraid to kill off characters. Just remember there will always be hordes of actors out there hungry for parts.”

  “I suppose,” I said. Tip does say things that make me pause to think, though that’s not to say that any of it has merit, or that it makes much sense. I had another piece of urgent business with him.

  “So, Tip, my taxes are ready, right?”

  Since Tip fervently believes he has a way with figures and can twist the tax code around his little finger, I gladly handed over the job to him, convinced more by my dread at the thought of income taxes than by his bragged-about abilities. But saying I used him to do my taxes is like Nixon saying he used a tape recorder to add to the historical record; I couldn’t help thinking Tip was the instrument of my undoing.

  “It’s practically done, as we speak I’m finishing it up.”

  “So I can pick it up when, noon? One, Two?”

  “Not sure, hit a snag, just waiting for a friend to call back with info.”

  I didn’t like the way Tip was dropping himsel
f, the subject, from his sentences. It seemed like the sort of defense mechanism employed by small children recalling unspeakable catastrophes.

  “Tip, I gave you all my information two months ago. You said you’d have it for me early.”

  “Yeah, well, things have changed, a lot’s been happening.”

  “Yeah, well, you should have told me you were having trouble.”

  “Did I say that?”

  “Oh, man, Tip,” I was getting angry, “this is the last day, get it? That has to be postmarked by midnight, that means I need it in my hands by 10 o’clock so I can drive down south to the only postal station open that late and wait in that fricking line with millions of other lame-oes like I did last year. Jesus Christ!”

  “Speaking of whom, ask yourself “What would Jesus do right now? Would Jesus get pissy with his friend who’s just trying his best to help him render unto Caesar a little bit less of what is Caesar’s, or would he take pity on the poor tax consultant?” Tip sometimes tries to defuse anger be making funny in the middle of an argument.

  “Jesus wouldn’t have made the mistake of hiring you, number one. Number two…”

  “Yeah, well, Jesus would have presented his self-sacrificing accountant with a little bit more of a paper trail to back up his dubious deduction claims – you might want to think of that next time.”

  “I want my tax return here at 10 o’clock tonight.”

  I slammed the phone down. It rang twice before I picked it up again.

  “Hello,” I said, like my lips were blue with frostbite.

  “Ok, ok, I’ll bring it over, don’t worry,” Tip said.

  I hung up the phone. I cowered most of the day and evening in my room watching TV.

  Tip did indeed bring the completed form at the designated time. And I did in fact wait in the Hell-ish line. Caesar got most of what was coming to him and I slipped gratefully into bed just past midnight.

  There is no future in England creaming

  Sometime around 3am I was dreaming and conscious of it and I tried opening my eyes but they wouldn’t budge. I squinted and the right lid popped open. I looked at the clock and closed my eye and then became aware of a strange knocking at the door, an eerie sound like the ghost of Phillip Marlowe, oh, wait that’s the detective, I thought, hmm, I wondered, who was that ghost? Well, whoever, the ghost (Jacob Marley – it came to me the next day – the name, not the ghost), clanging on that fateful night in the life of that literary character who was an even bigger cheapskate than me. I looked at the clock again and heard the ever more insistent knocking and clanging. Jefferson! I thought suddenly, come to exact his revenge on Whitey and he’s starting with me. I went to the door.

  “Who’s there?” I asked. I heard a muffled man’s voice that sounded very suspicious. Then a woman said, “It’s the couple in Jefferson, the Parkhams. Please let us in.”

  I opened the door and that’s when my nightmare really began. It was indeed my two sorry English folk. She was at the door as I opened it, chains dangling from the manacles around her wrists, but the first thing I saw was his ass looking like something gelatinous and runny in the back door light. I turned from it in horror as she said, “Sorry, we’ve forgotten our key.”

  They were in a Sado-Masochistic state of undress. He was a few feet behind her facing the street but he turned back towards the door when he heard the word ‘sorry’, almost as though his name had been called. He was dressed in leather halter and chaps and had what looked like bite marks running up and down his arms and a rubber hood with no holes save those for the nostrils with a zipper running back from the forehead down to the nape of his neck. He tried to speak.

  “I can’t understand what he’s saying,” I told her. I was then able to make out two syllables that sounded like ‘suh-ree’. “Could you ask him to take the mask off?” I winced as I talked to her.

  “Sorry, well, that’s a bit of a problem, you see. The zipper is stuck. We can’t get it off.”

  I then examined the mask more closely. There was a large pad crossed with a pattern of reinforcing stitches where the mouth should have been.

  “Is there something in his mouth?” I asked, with more disgust than I would have shown under normal circumstances during normal business hours.

  “Yes, there’s a rubbery thing, like a teething ring or a pacifier, or, or, a long nipple.”

  “Well, he’s not getting into bed like that – he’ll soil the pillow cases.”

  “No, no, of course not. We’ll get it off as soon as we’re settled back in our room. We’re quite cold, could we come in?”

  “Why don’t you go around to the front door and I’ll let you in. It’s a little messy back here, umm, I don’t want you to trip.” I soon opened the front door for them, too groggy still to be either amused or angry.

  “Thank you so much,” she said. “It’s been such a long night – terrible mix-up with our clothes. You don’t know how glad we are to see you.” That made me a little nervous – I didn’t want to know how glad!

  I bade them good night as they worked themselves upstairs. I heard him bang into the wall a couple of times and then their door closing. I hoped they would cold shower.

  Chapter VII: Love is the Drug