by Sam Lipsyte
That’s how that works, right?
So, what’s the story?
What the hell is wrong with me?
Where the hell is my inner soul?
When it looked like our band was going to be the next great revolution in popular idiocy, I broke it off with Rosalie. A teenage industry groomsman took us out for transexuallyserved gnocchi and told us our time had come. The only thing we needed to do now was concoct some version of music. With all the speedballs and blowjobs coming my way, I figured there’d be little of me left over for some version of Rosalie.
Our double-album debut, Barbecue Pork Class Suicide, was snubbed by the mainstream and reviled by the underground. Or maybe it was the reverse. Either way, I can tell you it hurt. When the spiteful alcoholics you have always depended on for uplift turn their backs, it’s time to call it a nice post-college try.
Once in a while, though, in the elevator at work, someone will stop me, a man my age with a cell phone, a portfolio case. He will ask me if I am who I am, recall with wonder something I did on stage with safety razors, mayonnaise. Maybe it’s some dim gift I’ve given him, some phony idea that he’s reached into danger long enough for one life. Now he can make some calls, do some deals. But neither of us knows what danger is. Neither of us is sinking fast through lake weeds.
Tonight, Rosalie wants to have a drink after work. She sent me e-mail about it from a few desks away. She says she has an errand to run, that she will meet me at this new bar I keep walking past but avoiding, one of those places where they pay slinky women with nose gold to sip peanut-butter martinis and approximate feeling. The errand must be a ruse. Probably Rosalie doesn’t want the staff to see us leave together, which, after all the rumor I’ve spewed, is fine by me.
We sit in bean bags in a low bright room. This is one of those theme bars. Maybe the theme is childhood in suburbia. It doesn’t matter, the theme is always the same. The theme is we’re not black, after all. Everything is a variation on this theme.
Rosalie calls over the waitress and they talk for a while about somebody’s new art gallery. The waitress is famous for a piece where she served Bloody Marys mixed with her menstrual blood. Word had it she overdid the tabasco.
I wait for the moment when our waitress stops being a notorious trangressor of social mores and becomes our waitress again, look for it in her eyes, that sad blink, and order a beer.
“So,” says Rosalie, poking through a bowl of Swedish fish, “how are you?”
“Man, those shelves are really coming along. It’s a very exciting time.”
“You’re funny. But forget work. I don’t want to talk about work. That’s all I do now. Meetings. Meetings. Value triangles.”
“The pressure, the pressure.”
“No, really. I mean, it’s great, but what the hell happened? Who is this woman talking to you right now? Do you know this woman? Does she bear any resemblance to the little twit who used to follow you around, hang on your every word?”
“I miss that little twit.”
“I don’t,” says Rosalie. “And fuck you, you miss her. I don’t miss her at all.”
“What?”
“What what? Did you think I was going to spend my whole life trailing you around, soaking up your bullshit? Worshipping you? That was a dark time for me. I learned a lot though, I can say that.”
“And your pussy ran like a river,” I say.
“True,” says Rosalie. “How’s Glenda?” She sticks her tits out when she says this. This is what I’ve always loved about Rosalie. She makes the obvious subtle somehow. This is her art. Or maybe I’ve just always been smitten by her tits.
“Glenda’s in bad shape,” I say.
“Oh my God, what happened?”
“I don’t want to talk about it,” I say.
“I know, I know. I can’t talk about Kyle and it’s a year later.”
“So,” I say, “are we going to have a commiseration fuck, or what? I have shelves to build.”
I have no subtlety when it comes to Rosalie. It’s what I’ve always counted on her loving about me.
We do that thing of lying in bed and touching each other softly like we’re brother and sister on a naughty expedition. We do that thing of falling asleep feeling all sad and superior to fools who fuck. I’ve never been too keen on this particular activity, but it’s good to do once in a while, keeps you sharp for the day you may rejoin the human species. It’s a nice dense lull in the thin-seeming quick. The only thing is, Rosalie falls asleep before I do, and now I’m up on an elbow studying one of her tits, the way it slinks off and gathers at her top rib, the skin smoothed out on her chest bone. I pull on myself, wonder how I can get my teeth on her nip without violating this cuddle paradigm we’ve got going, and also without enacting that babyman suckle which would probably sicken us both, not to mention Shrike, the dog, who’s heaped near us, brooding on his usurpation. Rosalie turns over and I see those prayer-wheel spokes sticking out past her panties. The swirls have begun to fade.
Next thing there’s light in the room and Rosalie’s sitting up. I guess she dresses, but somehow I miss it. The dog is doing his big dumb click dance on the hardwood.
“See you at work,” she says.
“Wait,” I say, “did this happen or not happen?”
“Nothing happened,” she says. “So I don’t care if it happened or not.”
“We can talk about it later,” I say.
“Or not,” says Rosalie.
I suddenly have the feeling of wanting to confess all my sins, all that back-daggering, those terrible things I say when she steps out of the office for a coffee or a smoke. I want to tell her something she doesn’t know about me.
“Glenda’s dead,” I say.
“Who?” says Rosalie, and leaves.
I pop a Paxil from Rosalie’s medicine chest and go downstairs for some Cuban coffee.
I used to come here in the mornings when Rosalie and I were serious, work on my hangover, cool my head on all this anti-Castro Formica, wait for sentience to return like a mildly sadistic soccer coach. Then I’d call the band, hammer out the day’s futile itinerary, not much—a few hours of noise in our practice room, then off to the German’s where the Butcher of Ludlow Street poured stiff ones, or off to someone’s couch for the short-count foil packets and the same dumb saga about some band from Akron, or Toledo, that flamed out years ago but made one choice single somebody’s cousin owned. It’s a good life if you don’t die, or worse, start to believe in it.
The old Cuban and the young Cuban are still there behind the glass case with their pork and pickle sandwiches, still giving me that look. I’ve never quite known the meaning of it. There have been times, I must admit, it seemed almost accusatory, as though I were on some kind of jack-ass authenticity hunt. Mostly I took it as tender beseechment, a beckon porkward. Either way I’ve never given them anything to base a look on. I’ve never even said “Thank you.”
“Thank you,” I say, today.
“You’re welcome,” says the young Cuban.
“Thank you,” I say again.
If I believed in brief moments of cosmic alignment, I would have to say things feel fairly aligned right now. Better than aligned. I’m one up on universal niceties.
Then I realize I’m still in love with Rosalie, or Rosalie’s tit, or Rosalie’s tattoo. This must be why they call them brief moments.
I sit there until I’m good and tardy.
It’s almost lunch by the time I get to work. This used to be somewhat allowable, but Rosalie has made an effort of late to make us quiet and punctual and professional-seeming in our one big room, all on account of the corporate types who have been dropping by to inspect their acquisition. I’m sure they want us to stay “funky,” but it’s not as though we turn a profit, and our salaries and overhead are siphoned from their graver silicon concerns. Our parent company makes simulations of hypothetical amphibious invasions for the Navy, and also some kind of spree-killer game for the kids. Rosa
lie gets pretty jumpy when the men in tasseled loafers pop by.
This one, though, he’s got on suede sneakers with his suit. The new breed. He’s a smarm engine, torquing himself over Rosalie’s work module. He talks in a hush and Rosalie offers up her specialty, low moans and conversational coos floating up from the seat of her lust like observation balloons. Everyone else is locked into monitor glow, code jockeys with their Linux books open on their laps, producers scanning the latest posts from Cyberbitch5.
“I’ve always been partial to low-hanging fruit,” I hear the company man say.
Rosalie waves me over.
“This is Gene,” Rosalie tells me. “Gene knew Kyle.”
“And I know you!” says Gene.
“I don’t think so,” I say.
“I doubt you remember, except that we once French kissed. Think back, Chicago, ninety-two, ninety-three. You guys opened for somebody. I can’t remember. I can’t remember because you were so fucking awesome. You blew my mind. I mean blew it open. I was up front, just a little high school shit. I’d never seen anything like it. Oh my God, Rosalie, you should have seen it.”
“Oh, I’ve seen it,” says Rosalie.
“And this guy, he goes down to all the men in the room and starts trying to kiss them. I mean kiss them with these real gentle kisses. Unbelievable. I mean, it was Chicago, okay? Shaking it all up, this guy. I was so turbo’d. A whole new thing. A whole new idea. No rock bullshit. You know? I mean, sure, it had been done before. I mean, maybe you guys were pretty derivative. But still. Like little butterfly kisses. And the music, man, if it even was music, if it even needed to fall under the rubric of music. Shaking it up. Changing the terms. The terms of the experience. Not just sexually, either. Not just with the microphone in your ass. And what was that stuff you said about the corporate police state? You know, that we had a choice, that we had to choose between a police state or a police state? That really stuck with me. I admired it, man. Truly. All of it. Really. It altered me. Somehow. I don’t know how, but I wouldn’t be me if I hadn’t seen it. You know? Look, I’m scaring him. He’s like, Back off, man. Hey, it’s cool. But I’ve got to tell you, I was so psyched when Rosalie told me you were on our team. It all fell together for me when I heard. Rosalie was like, You probably never heard of him, but I hired this guy…Never heard of him! Shit. It all fell together. Here’s a guy, I’ve seen musical equipment in his ass, I’ve seen him literally crying and shitting and bleeding because the rest of us were too scared to, and here’s me, right, always thinking to myself, I saw that, that moved me, so how come I wind up here, doing this? You know, like am I a sell-out? Because I wondered about that. But now you’re here. You’re here where I am and we’re doing this thing together. So, now I’m like, oh, right, this is what we should be doing. You know? The next step. It all falls together now.”
“It really, really makes sense,” says Rosalie.
“Total,” says Gene.
“So what’s the deal with you?” says Gene. “Are you still playing music?”
“No,” I say.
“No? Well, I’m going to sign you up for the company talent show. We do it every year at this great club. It’s for real, I mean it’s not bullshit. There’s a programmer at our San Francisco office who does poetry slams.”
“You’ve got to be fucking kidding,” I say.
“No,” says Gene. “It’s going to be awesome.”
There’s another e-mail from Rosalie asking me to meet her later in the stairwell. It’s our unofficial conference room, though there are plans for expanding into the suite next door. I diddle around on the web for a while, do my umpteenth search on the name of my old band. It’s pathetic, I guess, but it beats the heartbreak of a scrapbook. It’s always the same hits, too. Some kid in Bremen selling bootlegs, a girl in Wisconsin who posted a review of our last ever show. “They sucked,” she wrote, “and in sucking proved their point about American consumerism. We won’t see the likes of this band again.” I used to have a fantasy about flying out to Green Bay to sweep her off her feet, but I tended to sabotage the dream by playing out the scenario to the finish. Little girl grows up and sees through me, puts an end to her dark time.
I hear Shrike’s barks long before I see Rosalie. She’s down on one knee with the big boy in a tender headlock. He’s got a wet biscuit in his mouth, jerks his snout around, lays into me with a sloppy eyeball as though he knows something I don’t.
“Did you hear that,” I say, “Gene worships me. I forever altered his consciousness. Think I have a shot at V.P.?”
“We need to talk,” says Rosalie.
“Last night,” I say.
“That, too,” says Rosalie.
We talk there in the stairwell. Much is noted about my underutilization in the company structure, even more about my eclectic skill-set going to menial waste. Rosalie doesn’t really fire me. I don’t really quit. Somehow, though, it seems I’m out of a job.
“Does Gene know about this?” I say. I picture him hearing of my departure, looking up from the Full Amphibious Scenarios: Weehauken demo running on his desktop, stunned, worried about the talent show.
“Gene supports the idea,” says Rosalie. “But it’s up to you.”
“What about us?” I say.
“I think we need to move on in all aspects of our lives. You’re not happy here.”
“How do you know?”
“If you were happy, you wouldn’t be so busy denouncing my style of bowel evacuation to the staff.”
“I’m sorry,” I say, and probably mean it.
“It’s okay,” says Rosalie.
“Fine,” I say. “But I want you to know I love you.”
“I love you, too,” she says. Fraught. Considered. Her delivery makes my declaration sound cheap.
“I’ll clear out my things,” I say.
“No rush,” says Rosalie, and starts to push the dog down the stairs.
“Wait,” I say.
“What?”
“Let me ask you something. In the motel. When we went to see your brother.”
“Yeah?”
“What was my secret?”
“Are you testing me?”
“No.”
“That’s sad. You don’t remember? That’s really sad.”
“I know. I can’t remember my secret. What the hell was my secret? I must have had something I was running from. What the hell is wrong with me?”
“Nothing’s wrong with you,” says Rosalie. “You peaked a little early. It happens sometimes.”
“Rosalie, tell me my goddamn secret,” I say.
“I’ve got to go.”
“The show’s over, bitch,” I call, but too softly, as though my throat knows to close it off.
I clear out quietly. I don’t really have any things.
I go over to the bean-bag bar. The door is locked and I look through the window. There are no bean bags there. There are some stacked boxes and a broom. Maybe it’s a new theme.
Somewhere in this city somebody is probably peaking right now, getting high on a couch and talking about a bootleg he bought from a kid in Bremen. I should locate this fool, tell him what a lout he is, but he’s all I’ve got.
Too bad I sold the Merc. I could sail it off the Verrazano. I’d be a footnote to a footnote, food for carp.
Maybe I’ll fly out to Wisconsin, instead. Or take some slow hearse of a bus. They have movies on the good lines now, so you don’t get so bitter about the landscape, big windows that open with manual levers in case of bad aquatic luck.
Torquemada
The crazy thing is I’m not even Jewish. But when I showed up at Dana’s house with that beanie on my head, her dad didn’t even blink an eye. Maybe that’s because he doesn’t have any. Well, he does, but I think he pops them out at night before he goes to bed. Dunks them in a water glass. Actually, I’m not sure if that’s true. I know he can’t see. At least he can’t see me.
Dana got mad and told me to take the beanie off.
She called it the harmonica. “Take it off, you idiot,” she said.
“Take what off,” I said.
“That fucking harmonica,” she said.
“Why,” I said, “Is this Spain?”
Dana didn’t know what I was talking about because she’s not in World Studies. She’s in all these college-track classes. But they don’t teach her shit.
Dana gets mad at me all the time.
Like when I try to squeeze her sno-balls behind the maintenance shed fifth period.
“Get your fucking hands off me,” she says. “We’re in school, you idiot. You’ll get us expelled.”
“Nobody ever gets expelled,” I tell her.
It’s true.
Except for the time Steve Redillia stuck a knife in John Preston’s ear. Other than that, no one gets kicked out. And no one in the history of Nearmont Regional High School East ever got the boot for copping an honest feel—off his own girlfriend no less.
Hey, we live on a chunk of dirt called America.
We have a little piece of paper.
It’s called the fucking Constitution.
But Dana is a terminal Jervis, and she’s always getting pretty pissed. Like if I spark a bone in her car, or make her blow off a stop-sign, or make her pull over so I can tag that sign (because I’m a tagger, and a legend in this town), or all three in whatever order, Dana gets pissed.
“You’re going to get us busted,” she says.
“Nobody ever gets busted,” I tell her.
Which is not truly true. Chief Howie arrests me all the time. He’s some kind of uncle of mine, from the alcoholic semi-retarded branch of the family (like there are others) and he arrests me whenever he feels like it. For whatever. Sometimes just to talk.
Like tonight when I’m tagging the dumpster behind Dave’s Good Spirits Wine and Liquor all bent out because of Dana and the beanie incident, with her thinking I was goofing on her religion when I’d just been thinking about the whole Torquemada thing because of this report I gave for Ms. Fredericks’s class and felt bad for Dana because they would have fucked with her in Spain and just wanting to show my solidarity and finding in my closet this beanie from when my neighbor Todd Feld had that party at the Jewish temple and they gave out free beanies at the door with his name on it so I’m standing in her living room with the Todd Feld Autograph Beanie on my head and Dana’s being a total cunt and then I hear her dad shuffling around at the top of the stairs going “Dana, Dana,” like he’s going to ask her where he put his eyes because they’re not in the glass and since weirdness always increases exponentially I throw the beanie down on the rug and bolt, saying “I’ll be back,” but of course it comes out more squirmdog than superheroic, and now I’m here alone behind Dave’s when Chief Howie pulls up in his cruiser.