by Chris Fink
He shuts his laptop and goes to shower. His haircut is in half an hour. Camila is off somewhere in aerobic bliss, sculpting her derrière. He imagines her looking at him in the shower, his widening girth threatening to cast a shadow on his love. Look at yourself, she says. You’re disgusting.
Yes, but disgusting good, or disgusting bad? He can never tell with her. In the shower, he thinks that perhaps some material enhancement would be just the thing.
Graves towels off. He is enamored of his new idea. Perhaps, if he were better endowed, he wouldn’t need to write anymore at all and he could just live and be happy. After all, isn’t that what writing has been for him, a way to get a woman and feel more like a man? If he had a literal enlargement, he wouldn’t need the symbolic enlargement that writing has provided him. It was his writing, after all, that had most attracted Camila to him. Graves understood that Latin women had more respect for poetry than women from his own culture, so during their courtship he made sure always to be scribbling furiously and wadding up paper. English was her second language, so it wasn’t too difficult to impress her. But now he’s married her, this woman who dances all the time. He doesn’t need writing to keep her. He only needs to accomplish his chores. Too, Latin women are supposed to be more amorous than white women. Maybe a 50 percent success rate is on the low side for a Latina. And what about Latin men? Did they have an extra something that Graves didn’t have? Shizzam Jizzam’s rescue package certainly couldn’t hurt.
Brushing his teeth with his vibrating toothbrush, Graves remembers Hannah, the Swedish dental hygenist he dated before Camila. After they had been dating for a year, she went on a vacation with her girlfriends to sunny California and came back with fake breasts. They looked terrific and they were tremendous fun to handle during lovemaking. However, the silicone implants caused a lack of sensitivity in Hannah’s nipples. Before her implants, Graves could easily stimulate her by rubbing, licking, or suckling her nipples. Now, she claimed that she couldn’t feel a thing. That part of their foreplay was shot, but Graves kept paying attention to her nipples anyway because it seemed a requisite step. Too, he hoped the feeling might come back with use.
They’re numb, Hannah had said, exasperated. You may as well suck on my elbow. Their relationship then began its inevitable decline, and the elbow became a metaphor for all that was wrong. Before too long, Graves didn’t feel a thing either.
Never fear, says Shizzam Jizzam. It’s right in the contract. You’ll experience no abatement of sensitivity. Perhaps you’ll even experience an increase in sensitivity to accompany your increase in size and virility.
More sensitivity, Graves thinks wistfully, banging the spit off his vibrating toothbrush. That couldn’t hurt. He addresses the pile of clothes at his feet, the same clothes he had taken off before showering. He dresses, buttons his trousers, slips on his sandals, and turns to leave. There he is in the mirror, long hair obscuring his ears. A haircut will sure be nice.
Then Graves hears a noise. It’s just perceptible at first, one of the many daily noises that skip across the surface of one’s consciousness without causing a cascade of recognition. The little noise skips along harmlessly until suddenly it delivers to Graves a terrifying message—garbage truck—that wreck of short vowels and glottal stops that spells, for Graves, trouble. Then, out the window, he sees the deep-green signifier the noise had foreshadowed, idling. He remembers Camila’s mock syllogism from this morning. Today is Thursday. Every Thursday is garbage day. Therefore, take out the fucking garbage, you dope. Why can’t you ever remember that, hey Mr. Philosopher?
Graves hurries to grab the overfilled garbage bag from the can under the sink. In one fist he carries the garbage bag, and in the other fist he carries the recyclables. He bangs out the front door hollering, Hold on, just as the garbage man is pulling away. Graves has the vague feeling of déjà vu. He sees the yellow school bus pulling away, the silver train leaving the platform. Wait for me, Graves hollers. He’s late, perpetually, left standing alone while the object he desires leaves without him. Yet he exists here on the vacant platform just the same. He has, he tells Camila, negative capability, the capacity to live just fine without ever being quite ready when the time comes.
Nonsense, she says. You’re just lazy.
The garbage truck stops and Graves trundles toward it, garbage bags banging against his thighs. Up close, he notices that this is a different garbage truck than the usual. It’s bigger. From around the driver’s side comes the garbage man, a new, bigger garbage man. Jesus. What’s going on? Graves stands mute before the new and improved amalgamation of garbage truck and garbage man. He holds the white garbage bags by their white necks. The outsized garbage man seems to know him.
There’s no need to separate the garbage anymore, Mr. Graves, the man says. We have a new system. We have a conveyor belt where people stand on each side and sort the wet garbage from the dry stuff, milk jugs, egg cartons, beer bottles, and so on. They call it the Slime Line. Don’t worry. They wear rubber suits and gloves and gas masks and . . . Mr. Graves? You seem confused. Don’t you remember me, Mr. Graves?
I have an inkling, Graves says. The garbage man is really just a big boy, flannel-clad despite the heat, with thick glasses. He smiles broadly.
You couldn’t forget me, Mr. Graves. Intro to Creative Writing? You gave me an A-. My best grade of the semester.
Oh, Graves says. Yes. Wilson. How are you doing? It’s been what, three years? Graves grips the white garbage bags in each hand, feels the tug in his shoulder joints. They hang like dead swans.
Wilson was more of a poet, without much of a knack for narrative. He doesn’t remember Wilson’s poems per se, but he remembers a poetics essay the boy wrote about poetry being like a dance and prose like a sullen walk. Poetry was an end in itself, and prose was merely a means to an end. The essay had its obvious flaws, and Graves thought he might have come across that analogy somewhere in graduate school, yet overall, Wilson was earnest if not completely convincing. A means to get somewhere else, sure. But where?
You had a big impact on me, Mr. Graves, Wilson says. Before your class I had no idea what creative writing was. Now I got my associate’s. You made me see my own life as an asset to my education. I never knew I was interesting before your class. I’m what you’d call a round character, Mr. Graves. Remember how you used to say, Give them warts? You couldn’t invent a character as good as me, the world’s first garbage-trucking poet.
Well, Graves says. Good for you, Wilson. It’s good for a poet to be gainfully employed. Wallace Stevens sold insurance, remember.
You still writing, Mr. Graves? Published anything yet? Three years ago you had a book ready to be published, remember? I’d love to read your books.
Another day, Wilson, Graves says. I have a haircut. He walks forward and heaves the bags over the low tail end of the garbage truck, onto the other bags, some white, some black, some with crimson ties.
These are all sorted out, anyway, Graves says. Two less bags for your guys on the slime line to paw through.
Fewer. Are you testing me, Mr. Graves? You mean fewer, right?
Yes, that’s right, Wilson. Two fewer bags.
I’ll see you, Mr. Graves. Keep writing, like you told us. I’ll be checking in on you every Thursday. From now on, I’m your regular garbage man.
You bet, Wilson. So long.
Wilson gets back into his garbage truck and motors away, honking as he turns the corner. Standing at the end of his driveway waving, Graves feels vaguely that Wilson is getting away with something, making off with some bounty. He feels the urge to run after the garbage truck and swing aboard the back platform where the garbage man’s partner would go.
Instead, he stands empty-handed in the drive. He looks at his watch. Nearly two o’clock. Hoo boy. He’ll never make his haircut. If he shows up late he’ll put his barber behind for the whole afternoon. The line of men waiting for haircuts will look at him hatefully, and the barber might gouge him out of spite. Bett
er to wait. Camila will be home soon. She’ll be sweaty and happy from her dancing, and she’ll want a shower. She’ll chide him about his long hair but congratulate him for taking out the trash. She’ll tease him about the strong, handsome men whom she taught to tango. And she’ll have a bag of healthy groceries for Graves to put away. In the shower she’ll sing something in Spanish. Then she’ll call out for him. Make yourself useful and bring me my towel, hey Mr. Philosopher?
Next to the driveway is the homely tin mailbox. Some teenager has taken a bat to it. Its little red flag is bent. Graves feels a throbbing somewhere near his groin and gropes his pocket for a nicotine chew. There’s one. Thank goodness. Yes, when she calls for him, he will bring her a towel.
Add This to the List of Things That You Are
After she has utterly denuded it by removing all her furniture and every trace of her, move from the lovely cabin you shared together. The lovely cabin in the Santa Cruz Mountains with views out over the redwoods to the sea is now haunted, and you can’t stay there. Understand that the rules you lived by are no longer true. The former first principle, time alone in the woods cures all distress, is now a falsehood. Understand that to survive this loss you’ll need new rules.
Create Rule Number One: Any beautiful body can be replaced with any other beautiful body.
Create Rule Number Two: Beautiful or not, always keep a body close by.
In the meantime, learn to beg. Send begging letters. Call all of her relatives to beg them to beg her to come back. Please, you beg.
Get back in touch with your self-destructive side. Drink heavily. Start smoking again. Drive recklessly on dangerous roads.
Create Rule Number Three: Buy now, pay later.
Refer to Rule Number One: Call all the women you know who might possibly sleep with you. Of all the women you know who might possibly sleep with you, choose the married one. Stipulate in your oral contract that this relationship will solely concern sexual gratification.
Be surprised when the married one agrees to your terms.
Now, add home wrecker to the list of things that you are.
Add Rule Number Four: When you do the right thing, you will pay for it.
And Rule Number Five: When you do the wrong thing, you will pay for it.
Armed with these new rules, quit your job. Get back in touch with your pathetic side. Move across country from California to Wisconsin to be in the vicinity of your mother. Put everything you own in a 10×10 storage locker, the sight of which, lined with all the other 10×10 storage lockers, makes you sink down to the asphalt so that cars must avoid you.
Now, go to a foreign country. Don’t pick the country arbitrarily. Choose a country where you don’t speak the language, the country where you are most likely to be beaten for the perpetual scowl on your face. Choose Russia.
Make the mistake of choosing to travel to Russia via Finland. The one for whom you created these Rules is from Finland.
But of course you don’t find her there. So, in Finland, have an affair with a Swiss woman and pay for it later.
In Russia have an affair with a Russian woman and pay for it later.
Keeping always in touch with your self-destructive side, create the situation where one of your bones is broken just to see if that helps. Decide the broken bone hurts, but it helps. Medicine has advanced. You now have your choice of colorful fiberglass casts. Choose black.
You are smart enough to understand that there is some pattern here, but not smart enough—and this, you think, might be the tragic part—to understand the pattern itself.
So. Urge the woman whose home you wrecked to visit you in Russia and pay for it later. By now she has fallen in love with you and asks you difficult questions that violate your original contract. When you fuck her, she asks, do you imagine the other one?
Don’t ever speak the truth. Don’t ever say, Only then do you not. For now, give thanks for this time of abundance.
On the way back through Finland, prolong the Swiss affair by urging the Swiss woman to meet you there. You will pay for that later also.
Return to your own country. Learn that the Russian has been cheating. Her lover sends you a ranting email in broken English telling you he is the one that you fucked too.
Deny all offers of love. Understand for the first time this term that women use: emotionally unavailable. Tell all the women that you didn’t mean what you said.
In your own country adhere to your failed rules for another year just to see. Be surprised when another year turns into three. Continue to deny all offers of love. Realize just how long this is going to last.
Finally, empty your 10×10 storage unit. But decide to keep the unit. Locked. Empty. Indefinitely. Let the fines for unpaid debt accrue.
Admit you have become one of those who keeps a locked room he can never enter.
Add this to the list of things that you are.
Barrel Riders
I
Timothy’s new landlord, Fred, has put a wren house out, and the annoying creatures have moved in with a vengeance. It’s as if they followed him from Blue River. His mother always had a wren house out too. The wrens chatter every few seconds, incessantly, no variation. It doesn’t even sound like birdsong, more insectile, like the unholy coupling of a locust and a cockroach. It’s 8 a.m. and they’ve been at it since before dawn. It’s impossible to sleep. Why invite such pestilence to your doorstep?
So, this is Milwaukee. This is June. Lilacs shroud the dooryard, crabapples sprout in the cracks of the alleyway, and Timothy’s not the only charity case at Rooms for Men. So, Timothy’s escape from Blue River has landed him here. He had imagined a further escape. California somewhere. But for a bargain hunter, Milwaukee is turning out to be a fair deal.
What brings you to Milwaukee? Fred had asked, the day he signed the lease.
It’s as far as I could get from where I’m from, Timothy had said. And that was close to the truth. There was more to the equation: his new teaching job, starting in August. But it came down to trading in simple binaries. Urban for rural. Strange for familiar. He likes to tell the story this way: At the farm, Timothy had been bucked off. Rather than get back on, he moved out.
Timothy’s landlord, he realizes in his first week of residence, is what’s called a payee. Several of the local derelicts in the other boardinghouses on Marshall Street receive Social Security Income—SSI. But they can’t get their government checks delivered directly to them or they’ll squander their money, so a payee doles out their monthly check in weekly increments. Enter Fred. Timothy didn’t know this when he signed the lease, but otherwise he can’t complain about the place, or the cheap rent.
Also, there was no deposit, no first and last, and Timothy’s lease is month to month. He knows what else he can get in the city for this price. He’s made the rounds. On the west side, five hundred dollars gets you a basement room with bars on the window overlooking the expressway. In River West five hundred dollars buys you the same basement room, but this room in a house full of live-action role-players who leave their swords and chain mail scattered about the living-room battlefield.
Last place I looked at was a room in this old guy’s house in River West, Timothy tells Fred. As he recounts the story, Fred’s showing him the features of his upstairs studio. It’s old, that’s for sure, but it’s got character. Fireplace encased in marble used to burn coal and an old brass chandelier still goes on gas. The high ceiling and the ornate fixtures give the studio a grandiose air, but there’s still just the one room. Timothy can see everything from where he’s standing. Nice big windows look out to Marshall Street. Little sink in the corner to brush his teeth, or if he has to get up to pee. Bathroom is down the hall, shared with the three other tenants. Cute white enamel appliances look like they belong in a dollhouse.
Timothy continues his story. Old guy’s a cripple, a veteran, so he’s offering a deal if you can help out with house chores. Phone interview is going fine. Asks me how big I am. I tell him not so b
ig, but I’ve done farm work around Blue River. Says farm work is a definite plus. Asks me how old, I tell him twenty-five. I figure he wants to know if I can handle the work. Says he needs a hand getting in and out of the tub, and I say that’s cool.
Fred’s stepping on a piece of the subfloor as Timothy talks, a section that’s got a little wave to it. He says he’ll finish the floor tiles in a day or two, then Timothy can move in if the place suits him. He’s wearing a red-plaid flannel and blue jeans. Bifocals. Black work shoes. Like he just walked off the factory floor. Except he’s too old, of course. Retired clock puncher, Timothy would bet on it.
So, I’m thinking this is going to be great, five hundred dollars a month, and I just have to haul in groceries and lift a guy in and out of the tub. Of course, then comes the catch. Old guy asks what I do for a living and I say, Schoolteacher. Then he asks me if I like men. I say, Excuse me? He repeats the question. Do I like men? What a question, right? I figure out he’s asking me if I’m gay and I say, No. No way. He says, That’s too bad. I was sort of looking for someone who liked getting head.
Even then, retelling the story, Timothy feels a surge of anger similar to what he felt when it happened. He notices then for the first time how retelling a story allows you to re-create the emotion of the experience. Caught so unaware, and somehow violated. Yes. His trust and friendly instincts violated.
Timothy stops to measure Fred’s reaction. But this old man seems more interested in his remodel job than Timothy’s theatrics. He’s gotten some spackling on the marble fireplace he’s scraping off with his thumbnail.
Can you believe it? Timothy says.
That’s too bad, says Fred. I’m sorry to hear that happened to you.
Tell you what, Timothy says. He’s lucky we were on the phone. I don’t know what I would have done to him in person. Sort of shocked me, I guess, because I wasn’t expecting nothing, anything, like that.