by Steve Bloom
But it isn’t all fun and s’mores. I still choke up when I recall the time we almost lost Little Billy to that bad mortadella that he couldn’t see was turning green along the edges. When all seems lost and it looks like there’s going to be a complete loss of kidney function, I volunteer to donate one of mine. It turns out not to be necessary, which is a good thing because our organs don’t match, but, by God, I was willing.
On my headsets, drums are crashing and electric organs pumping. I am on a monster roll, totally working it. For a precious paragraph or so—have to watch the ol’ word count—I toy around with killing off Little Billy with some obscure, gruesome medical complication or equally horrific subway accident that may or may not have been deliberate on his part. Between you and me, as Little Billy and I age together, I am finding his incessant whining and endless wants to be seriously eroding the old love life, even if it is just as imaginary as my present one. I mean, girls don’t exactly think it’s a turn-on at the movies when there’s a blind crippled kid constantly tugging at them, demanding to know what just happened. Of course, I don’t render Little Billy’s tragic demise so crudely. No, I am devastated, thoroughly grief-stricken—in fact so devastated, so thoroughly grief-stricken that, in a supremely benevolent gesture, I relent, do some major backspacing, and allow Little Billy to keep his wretched existence. Don’t want to end the Personal Journey on a Down Note. And I am so glad Little Billy survives and Battles the Odds to this day. For I am inspired and will no doubt continue to be inspired by Little Billy and the Incredible Challenges he faces and overcomes on a daily basis. Mostly, I’m so glad I’m not Little Billy. I don’t say that. But I do express the deeper message of my tale of someone else’s woe. It’s from the next-to-last Beatles song on Abbey Road, their last great album. Always good to sprinkle in Cultural References, don’t you know. How in the end, you basically Get What You Give. And, brother, ain’t it the truth.
That undeserved B+ in AP English that should have been an A– is inconsequential, I write with passion. My cup runneth over, compared to the crummy one Little Billy got served up. I’m blinking back tears as I shakily tap the last few finishing touches. Suffused with Love for All Humanity, but mostly with my own inherent goodness, I drift off into the untroubled sleep of the saintly or, in my particular case, the so-so trashed.
---
Needless to say, I am out like a light, dead to the planet until like two or three the next afternoon. Fortunately for me, it’s some sort of federal holiday and there’s no school. I groggily roll out of bed to take a mega-extended leak. For once, Charlie’s up before me, and he’s entertaining guests in his underwear when I stagger into the kitchen for rapid hydration of acute dry mouth. Two guys, wearing socks with sandals and sprouting tufts of hair in all the wrong places, huddle on either side of him at the counter.
“A Zap Plymell number twelve,” squeals Number One. “Somebody pinch me!”
“Only 953 were ever printed,” flutters Number Two. “I’ve actually got goose bumps!”
Comic-book geeks, what else. Middle-aged stoners whose mental development hit a wall at sixteen. Walking, wheezing cautionary tales. Just like Charlie, only unlike Charlie, they never went to Harvard or got to have a day in the sun. I’m semi-accustomed to their sporadic pilgrimages here. I’m not sure if I’ve mentioned it before or not, but Charlie’s apparently got some to-die-for comic book collection. Not that I care. Whatever Charlie’s into, I make it a point to be out of.
“Toldja it was worth the drive,” gloats One to Two.
“Can I touch it?” Two tentatively asks Charlie.
“Not a chance,” snaps Charlie, cradling the sacred artifact in white-gloved hands. “Bad enough you’re breathing your germs on it.”
The object of reverence is a primitive yellow-and-blue booklet encased in acid-free plastic. Charlie gingerly slides it back into its slot on custom-built shelves that fill an entire wall of our small living room.
“Do you have any conception what this would bring on eBay?” Two gushes.
“Last March, a Fair-condition Zap Plymell number twelve pulled down almost seven hundred,” responds Charlie, who spends endless hours online tracking fluctuations because he has nothing better to do with what passes for his life. “Granted, the market’s gone down considerably since then, but mine’s Very Good to Fine.”
“Possibly Gem!” pipes One.
“Mr. Natural up two and a third,” I mutter, rattling off the titles of obscure underground comics that only gnomes like them would recognize, let alone appreciate, unable to suppress my scorn even in my fog. “Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers down half a point, Two-Fisted Zombies off one and an eighth . . .”
“Go ahead, scoff!” says Charlie, taking great umbrage. “But someday when you’re the recipient of a minor but still significant fortune, you’ll change your tune. Only I won’t be around for you to thank me.”
“Keep dreaming, Charlie,” I yawn, having heard it a gazillion times. I open the fridge.
“Only wish I had bought more as a kid,” Charlie reflects, daintily pulling off his gloves by the tips. “But Mom and Dad knew better. They said comics were a complete waste of time.”
I grab the carton of juice, which, besides ketchup, mustard, and a jar of moldy pickles, is just about the only thing inside, and instantly feel that it’s weightless, hollow, as in empty. So typical. So Charlie.
“Charlie, when we’re out of juice, please throw away the carton,” I say. “That way, I’ll know to add juice to the list.”
It burns me. With all the crucial shit I’ve got going on, it’s bad enough I have to do all the shopping for us. God forbid he could lift a finger to help now and again.
“Just goes to show,” he calls after me as I retreat back to my room with a cup of cold coffee. “Never ever listen to your parents!”
---
Caffeinated, I log on to admire last night’s masterpiece.
Know how when you get high you think you’re saying all sorts of super-important crap, crap so heavy and mind-blowing that it would forever change your life if only you could remember exactly what it is you said? And those few times you do remember to write the crap down, the next morning you either can’t understand what you wrote because your handwriting’s totally illegible or if you do understand what you wrote you can’t understand why you thought it was so incredible when you wrote it?
Well, rereading my latest and greatest Personal Essay is just like that, only stroke-inducing. Little Billy, the blind, crippled kid? Talk about lame—literally. What was I thinking? I taught the little fucker to swim? Yes, I actually used the word “fucker.” My Personal Essay, which is supposed to be a model of Mega Munificence and Supreme Tolerance is, instead, a screed of Monumental Insensitivity and Mind-Boggling Political Incorrectness. Food poisoning from bad mortadella? I can’t believe what a sadistic jerk I am. Volunteering a freakin’ kidney? Actually, that’s pretty good.
But, putting all that aside—I mean, I can always tone everything down, way down—there are always the legalities to consider. I mean, what if Columbia checks? You have to sign something that makes my offense prosecutable. On the other hand, Columbia gets tens of thousands of applications; Columbia can’t check them all. But, with my luck, Columbia will check mine. Little Billy? I mean, gimme a break.
And even if Columbia doesn’t check, my Personal Essay is one big fat lie. When it comes right down to it, submitting this Personal Essay is just plain wrong. In so many ways. On so many levels. Under the cold, bright glare of day, I can’t bring myself to do it.
Dejectedly I press Delete.
I sit, staring at a blank screen, a shattered husk. My application is due in like an hour, and I still don’t have a Personal Essay, the most essential part of it.
I am so fucked.
For my latest feat of futility, after months, after countless days and nights of sweating it out trying to write the Perfect Personal Essay, I am going to have to write the Hopefully Barely Good En
ough One in a matter of minutes. In yesterday’s underwear, while brain-dead, while hungover. In a panicked frenzy, I cut and paste a collage of earlier efforts. Frantically, I cobble together something somewhat coherent with previously cast-off sentences and sentiments. Your basic Character Building that comes from being abandoned by your mother combined with the Nobility of Having Nothing but with a healthy dollop of Undiminished Optimism and a dash of desire to Improve the World. In short, I concoct something that approximates a Thing, although I have no inkling what that Thing is. All in 750 words or less.
Crawling, I cross the finish line with just seconds to spare. Screw having my Personal Essay shock and awe. The best I can now hope for is to do no harm.
The Send button pulsates. Bleakly I stare at the sum total of my almost eighteen years of earthly existence reduced to numbers, letters, short paragraphs, and a rushed, imperfect Personal Essay. Where are the little boxes for years of slaving at subjects that don’t matter? I ask myself. Where’s the space for trying my level best with what I have, the numerical value for acting on faith, risking disappointment, daring to dream? I can’t help thinking there should be more, that there’s more I can do. But there is no more. Because this, my friends, is the end of the line. The buzzer’s sounded, the clock’s run out. Game over.
Yet somehow I still can’t bring myself to click. But click I must. Clamping my eyes, I murmur a silent prayer to a higher power I don’t believe in.
Click. There, I did it. The die is cast, the deed done. There’s no Undo.
On some level, despite it all, I should be relieved, but I’m not, far from it. I’ve been gearing up to this moment, this goal, since almost before I can remember being any other way. Instantly what I’m feeling is aimless, at loose ends, utterly without direction or purpose in life. It is the mother of all letdowns.
But I’ve got a gig coming up in Tenafly, so I troop into town to the dry cleaner. It’s wet, cold, and gray out, which matches my mood. I check my suit pockets before I drop off.
“Hey, Brooks,” Sanjay greets me from behind the counter. “The usual?”
I nod. Before my new vocation, I had never stepped inside the cluttered establishment even though it’s been here forever. Now I’ve become a regular, and not only are me and Sanjay on a first-name basis, but we also speak shorthand. Go figure.
As I slosh back to the Beast, I have the sudden urge to celebrate my achievement, to commemorate the occasion, inconsequential as it is to everyone but me. But commemorate it with whom? Who, besides moi, gives a shit about moi? That’s when I spot The Murf across the street in the front window of The Gun, waving my way.
---
“Seven-twenty Verbal, baby!” I proudly report, chest puffed out like I should get a gold star. I haven’t seen The Murf since I got the semi-spectacular news. In fact, with my juggling act to complete my application, keep up in school, plus the late weekend hours working the various high school social circuits, it feels like I haven’t seen him in eons. “I’m kinda sorta within official range.”
“That’s awesome, Brooks,” The Murf says, vigorously spraying and wiping a table. He glances up at me. “You’re on your way out of Pritchard.”
“I wish,” I say, noting for the first time that the place is quite a bit busier than usual. Why, there’s even a small wait at the counter, where two new employees in Gun garb, kids I faintly recognize from Pritchard High, swiftly operate the sub assembly line.
“Pickles, then the peppers!” The Murf barks at them. “Idiots! They give me idiots!”
I also observe that all the tables are cleared, the floors shine, the trash cans are emptied, the napkin dispensers remarkably full. It’s trippy; everything’s too perfect. Like I’m in a parallel dimension or a bad episode of The X-Files.
“Murf, what’s going on?” I inquire, more than slightly weirded out.
“I got promoted, that’s what’s wrong!” he groans as he rapidly straightens chairs. “You’re looking at the new Night Manager of the Submachine Gun! And it’s all your fault!”
“What happened to Pat?”
“They caught the asswipe stealing from the tip jar on closed circuit. With you gone, there was nobody else so they had to pick me!”
I’m sorry but I can’t help laughing. The Murf as management. It’s too much.
“You think this is funny?” The Murf says, now furiously sweeping a spotless floor with a broom.
“So quit,” I advise.
“And give up the Opportunity of a Lifetime? What if The Gun does go National? I could be in on the Ground Floor.”
I do a double take. Is this The Murf or some evil clone? Whoever or whatever he is, he’s sipped the Kool-Aid if he thinks The Gun is going anywhere but down the toilet. But I don’t say that.
“Shit-for-brains! Mustard, then the mayonnaise!” The Murf commands his flunkies, then turns back to me, grinning maniacally. “All this power is getting to me! And you know what, man? I fucking dig it!”
I edge away from him. It is an evil clone. Then, for an instant, the imposter’s focused eyes glaze over and go dull and The Real Murf resurfaces.
“Oh my God,” The Real Murf gasps. “Who am I? What am I saying?”
“We need to get wrecked,” I prescribe.
“When?” he asks eagerly.
I whip out the iPhone, summon the calendar app. “Let’s see. I have an opening Thursday.”
“No can do,” says The Murf. “Thursdays are our busiest nights. But Saturdays are slow. How’s Saturday work for you?”
“For the indefinite future, Saturdays are out for me.”
To my surprise, The Murf whips out his own smartphone and brings up his own calendar app. We consult our respective schedules.
“Next Monday?” I propose.
“Can’t. Have back-to-back meetings with potential new meat suppliers,” The Murf says. “I mean, have you seen what they’ve been passing off as prosciutto?”
Once more, I can’t believe what I’m hearing.
“Tuesday?” I offer.
“I don’t know, man. Tuesdays are tough. We’re launching a new Chicken Parm promotion.”
“A week from Friday?” I persist. “The Pixies are playing that night in the Bowery.”
“The Pixies?” The Real Murf emerges again. The Pixies are way up in The Murf pantheon.
“You think the Night Manager could manage to give himself the night off?”
The Pixies—but amazingly, The Murf still equivocates. “This place would fall apart without me,” he says. Pride of ownership. Responsibility. Actual initiative. It’s truly like some sort of alien consciousness has taken possession of The Murf’s brain. “C’mon, just you and me,” I implore. “Being stupid. Hanging out. Like old times.”
“Like old times.” He looks at me, himself again. We both sense something dark and foreboding. It can’t be possible, not for the two of us. But it is. The Murf and me are losing touch.
“Okay, buddy,” The Murf relents. “The Pixies. You’re on.”
Bumping knuckles, we seal the deal.
---
Bruce cranked to the max, I drive aimlessly, pondering the vicissitudes of life. And although I have tons of homework, I resolve to take the day off, something I haven’t done for so long that I am at a loss as to what to do. Maybe I’ll pay a surprise visit to the gym and shoot a few jumpers with my homeboys or hit a really bad movie or just cruise by more rich people’s houses. Sleep is always an attractive option. Then I hear the familiar refrain:
“HEY HO, LET’S GO!!”
I switch off the tunes, click on speaker without looking, and assume my most professional voice.
“Rattigan and Associates. How may I direct your call?”
“Brooks, Harvey Lieberman.”
Harvey Lieberman? Just the word Lieberman causes a spike in my blood pressure. This is a most unwelcome intrusion.
“I realize it’s kind of last minute,” he says. “But Celia’s been invited to a dinner-dance at the
Green Meadow Country Club this coming Saturday.”
I can hear Gayle right beside him. “First, an after-party!” she squeals. “Now a restricted country club!”
I picture her brandishing some fancy engraved invitation, doing a gleeful jig in those awful shoes of hers around all that disturbing primitive art. Not a pleasant image.
“No way, Dr. Lieberman. No chance,” I reply firmly. “Forget it.”
“Why not?” Then he actually says: “You two kids had such a blast last time!”
Just the memory of last time gives me the chills. The prospect of there ever being another time with Celia Lieberman is beyond consideration.
“Repeat business is strictly against company policy,” I inform him, although there is no such policy or any company policy, for that matter. “Sorry, no exceptions.”
“Harvey, give me the phone! You’re doing it all wrong!” I hear grunting and bumping as Gayle wrestles her smaller, weaker mate for possession of the receiver. “Let me talk to him!”
“You bit me!” he yelps. “You broke the skin!”
Again, the sheer scale of the Lieberman insanity sweeps over me. Although it means a black mark on the brand name, I’m going to hang up on them. I must, for the sake of self-preservation.
“It’s the eighteenth birthday party for a classmate of Celia’s!” Gayle, the victor as usual in these struggles, shouts into my ear. “Maybe you know her!”
So long forever, Liebermans. Parting is such sweet sorrow. Not. My finger lowers on the red hang-up button.
“Shelby Pace!”
I’m not going to lie to you. In the past week or so, I’ve had one or two thoughts of Shelby Pace, mostly late at night with the door double-locked. Some mornings and afternoons too. Often in the shower or waiting in drive-throughs. Okay, pretty much all the time, everywhere. Although we’d exchanged but one fleeting kiss, it had been exchanged with the hottest babe in existence in a string bikini in her mansion with a real Picasso. Any one of these factors is stupendous. Together they are mind-numbing. And soul-depleting. For I’d resigned myself to the grim fact that the all-too-brief, incredibly wondrous experience will just haunt me for all of eternity. Because those stars will never realign and there’ll be no return engagements to Green Meadow. And yet here, suddenly, they have.