Mirage

by Perry Brass

  "The Egg?"

  "Yes, my third ball."

  He did; and the rain came down outside, and his story ran through my head as if I were living it.

  It began at his birth, thirty-five years earlier in Windsor Heights, an upper-middle class village in prosperous Bergen County, New Jersey. I saw the large, two-story suburban house his parents owned . . . the tree-lined street where he grew up . . . the backyard that went on for half a block and ended at an alley.

  Larry, his successful father, owned a Chrysler franchise. His mother, Felicia, was always on the phone, a busy community club lady. Her father had been a businessman who cashed in on the advent of the electric light bulb, and Felicia joked, "You know those burnt-out light bulbs on Broadway, the ones that stand for a broken heart—well, they had made us rich." The Grubers had been Bergen County people for generations. Presbyterians. But Larry's father, a poor Hungarian immigrant who worked for a dry cleaner, instilled in him an unquenchable ambition. "You gotta show dese people you as good as dey are. Sometimes, better," he instructed Larry when his son was taunted as a kid.

  Larry wanted his own ambitions fulfilled in Robert.

  "You're okay, Robert," his pals told him. I was in his high school. He had everything. Clothes. Money. A new car—always new. His father insisted on this; he wouldn't let him drive an old one. His parents were attractive people; his mother had once been a striking beauty. Robert was generous, a soft touch. He wanted to be liked.

  "Your friends shouldn't like you because you have nice things," Larry said. "They should like you because of your accomplishments."

  "I don't know if I have any, Dad," Robert said humbly.

  "Then go out and get some. Try out for sports. Work hard. I know you can make it."

  His friends got him on the school's prestigious tennis team. He wasn't a natural player, but he threw himself into practice, mornings and every afternoon. At his second game, an intramural one, he did badly. It was like he couldn't make the ball do anything right. Larry was there, and on the drive back home through the broad, tree-lined streets of Windsor Heights, he shook his head. "It's too bad, Robert. You didn't play worth a damn; you just bought your way onto the team."

  Robert looked away, while his father drove. "I always fail you, Dad," I heard him say. "Even when I succeed, it's not enough."

  His father didn't reply. Then he said: "You haven't succeeded yet."

  He wasn't interested in school. It didn't interest him. But art did, especially design. He hid this from other kids. He didn't want to be known as an art sissy. His father thought art was a waste of time—so Robert told him he was interested in architecture. He sent him to Cornell. It was prestigious, with a good school of architecture. Robert pledged an expensive, exclusive fraternity; he dated girls, was popular, and gave his studies as much attention as he could and not seem nerdy. In his second year, he had to get through several tough art and design courses. His father asked, "Why do you have to take a bunch of sissy art courses just to build buildings?"

  Robert talked through me; in my mind, his voice became synchronized with my own:

  "My father always made me feel like I was getting something for nothing—like I didn't deserve what came to me—the nice home, the car, my clothes, my friends. But I didn't know what to do. I couldn't afford to pay for them on my own.

  "I might have done well in architecture. But I was always scared that this was my only chance to make it. If I screwed up, everything was over—people would see right through me.

  "When you're told all the time you've been given everything, failing becomes terrifying. I had to keep proving that I'd earned success, that I was worthwhile. I would do anything to keep that feeling of failure away. Succeeding became more and more difficult—I was never sure when I did it. Failure always looked like it was just around the corner from wherever I stood.

  "I dropped out of Cornell. The pressure was too much. My father never forgave me. I felt that I couldn't stand the test of being an architect. I was faking it. Even when I succeeded, it wasn't good enough. What made me drop out was a course in 3-D design that I took that second year."

  I visualized the story as Robert's voice told it.

  Jenkins, an opinionated prof who intimidated everyone, gave an assignment to make a model three-story house from construction paper.

  "You can only use a razor blade. No scissors. Get it? And no tape. I don't want to see a single piece of tape. If I do, you flunk. And—this is important—at the most I only want to see two separate pieces of paper. The thing must be completely joined together, except for those two seams. You have the weekend to do the assignment, and it's due Monday morning. So if you have any big plans for this weekend—football and all that—you might want to change them."

  Robert slaved over the building model. His handsome frat brothers in Delta Tau Sigma ribbed him. (Robert referred to them—privately—as We Got Tough Smegma.) They had dates for the weekend. The game with Yale, an archrival, was that Saturday, but Robert stayed in and worked.

  Monday, he was the only person to bring in the assignment. He completed it beautifully. The whole thing was tabbed, and the roof came off. But instead of praising Robert, Jenkins turned his back on him and berated the rest of the students. "What a bunch of duds. This is going against my grain, but I tell you what, I can't flunk all of you. I know the game took up your weekend, so you'll get the rest of the week to complete the assignment. The truth is, I know you're all not as smart as Hetzak. But just this once, we'll allow a little play and not all work." Finally, he turned back to Robert: "Hetzak, I congratulate you. You did a good job, but I've got to give the rest of the class time to catch up with you."

  At the end of the week, most of the class brought in the assignment. Few of them did it better than Robert, but he felt that nothing he did would be of any importance. He felt alone and hurt. Cornell's beautiful campus seemed empty to him.

  Larry was furious when Robert left Cornell. He cut him off financially. Robert went to Manhattan and found a job working as a window dresser for Bloomingdale's. He was good at it. Everyone in the department was gay and open about it. It was a real change from school. He'd had furtive sex in a men's room at the Library at Cornell, but there was no way he could be open and stay in his fraternity. If word got out about homosexual activity, you were expelled. New York was so open: anything seemed possible. He took to the City like a fish to fresh water. His father was angry, his mother disappointed—she never understood why he stopped dating—but he was having the time of his life. Sex. Drugs. And lots of Rock-n-Roll.

  Maybe too much. He started going around with a faster and faster crowd of men. A lot of them had money, and didn't have to work. They spent summers on Fire Island and winters in Key West. Robert tried to do it all and still keep his job. He started arriving late, or missing days. He was very good. He could read architectural plans, and had a great sense of color and design. But he felt that just being good was not enough in the Display Department. It was who he got along with, and that upset him.

  "It was like my father was telling me again I'd never be successful. No matter what. If I worked hard enough—it wasn't good enough. And when it was good enough, people just expected it of you."

  He was fired from Bloomingdale's, and started working for a string of big gay bars and discos. By the mid-'70s, they were all over the place. Wild. Showy. Opulent. You went there to get loaded, get laid, have a great time, and forget about the world outside. Everything in them became like window dressing, including the guys who danced all night on a carpet of drugs and dreams. It was a world that Robert fitted into easily. He didn't have to think or be bothered by feelings. It was a time of trading one mask for another; a straight mask for a gay one.

  But Robert liked this setting. The bars; his friends. He wasn't just the faggot window decorator anymore. He could do things on his own and be judged for them, and not by other people. He liked the view from the top of the ladder; it was nice up there—he started out run
ning up and down one, stapling skinny bolts of silver Mylar a fabulous twelve feet above a dance floor, and ended up "Director of Special Events" for a group of bars. The title fit him well. People came to him like he was the director of a real movie or a Broadway play. He had a crew working for him. White Parties. Black Parties. Feather Parties. Fatigue Parties. Valentine's. New Years. Buck Naked Parties—private, closed-door orgies where the waiters wore only sequined jockstraps and served hot hors d' oeuvres and punch, spiked with the type of alphabet drugs that splintered reality, and sometimes never brought it back together.

  "It was the days of drugs and roses," he said. "And I lived it all, in the thousand reflected mirrors of a large disco ball. Swimming out to those magic yachts in the bright waters of Biscayne Bay, or Key West or Fire Island. Then non-stop sex aboard. And losing myself completely with so many men. Parties that began at 2 A.M., and not thinking, even wondering about success—or failing—just drifting on a merry-go-round of mirrors and sensations—from which I couldn't catch one single reflection; from which I was always slightly disconnected. Until everything came to a crashing halt one summer on Fire Island when I realized that half the men I knew from the year before were now dead."

  I woke up. The rain was pounding down outside, and Robert still had my ball in his mouth. The air smelled rank. There were poppers in the room. His cum was all over the sheets. I made him stop.

  "How did they all die?" I asked.

  "What are you talking about? Where have you been? You look like some kid in an Exorcist movie."

  "How did they all die, I want to know? You told me that one summer on Fire Island, you realized half the men you knew from the year before were dead."

  "I wasn't even talking to you. I was playing with your balls. Especially that strange third one. It moves in your mouth like a gyroscope."

  "You were talking through it," I said. "I had a vision in which I was you. I saw everything you did."

  "Oh, no! What kind of strange head trip are you pulling on me?"

  "I just want to know how they died."

  "They died the way I'm going to. Now, is that enough?"

  I closed my eyes. During the whole time we'd been having sex—and that certainly was what it was—I had not had a single sexual feeling—only these images of Robert, of his life. I had become him, and had dissolved into him, but I hadn't given him any of the cum from my third Egg. I knew I was afraid to. Afraid Wright might find out; afraid to give seed to Robert before he'd been prepared for it. Now I had to let him know something. "You don't have to die," I told him.

  "What are you, some kind of faith healer? I know I'm going to die, and it's not going to be sooner or later."

  "I can keep you alive," I said.

  "Stop the shit, please. I've seen so many guys die in so many cities. That's why I ended up in Washington. I got tired of burying my friends in New York, Miami, New Orleans. I got tired of being scared and depressed. Gene and I broke up. Then I heard there was a waiter job left in a gay restaurant in Washington, and I took it. But when I got sick, they fired me. They said it was bad for business. Can you believe that?"

  "I can believe a lot of things. The question is, what can you believe?"

  The rain slacked up for a minute, then there was more lightning.

  Robert looked away from me, then turned his head towards me. "Have I been doing too much poppers?" he asked me.

  I told him he shouldn't be doing any.

  "Cut the crap again," he ordered. He paused for a second, then added: "I thought I felt the bed move."

  "The bed??"

  "It's either the bed or the floor. Something is doing something in this house," he said. "We'd better get the hell out. Suppose Wright's back? I don't think he'd cotton to the idea of me sucking on your third anything—Sir!"

  We got out of bed—it was actually the mattress Wright and I slept on. Robert was still officially on the couch—Reggy had never come through with more furniture. We threw our clothes back on. In my bare feet, I walked through the hall, into the kitchen, and then down the stairs. Robert cautiously followed me. I called out Wright's name, as if it was perfectly acceptable that he should pop up in the middle of a Washington evening rain shower. Wright wasn't in the house at all, but even I could tell something else was.

  I heard—and felt—a movement under the floor in the back, downstairs. Like pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop. Then whooo, whooo, whooo, whooo, whooo, whooo, whooo.

  Then another noise. Like someone gasping for air.

  It was coming from the basement.

  "What's in the basement?" Robert asked me. I told him I didn't know. I had never been down there. "Maybe you should go down and investigate."

  "Why me?"

  "Because if it is Wright, and he's just pulling something, I'm scared of what he might do to me. I think he's on to us. That's why he's been away so much. He wants to catch us red-handed. I remember what he did to those punks. See, he saved my life and took me in, so what do I do? I start making it with his boyfriend."

  I told him it wasn't like that. I was the one who'd come on to him.

  "Sure, but I wanted it—I wanted it a lot. Jesus, I can't even succeed at dying without having somebody kill me."

  "Would you go down there with me?" I asked.

  "Hell no." He was trembling.

  The noise got deeper. It sounded like a cross between a yawn and a retching sound. It came in cycles of five or six repetitions, then it died down and came back. Every time it came back, Robert got more frightened. "I think I'd better leave," he said. "I can still get a cab back to the Capital Palace."

  "Stay," I told him. Still in my bare feet, I approached the basement door. It was held in place by an unlocked dead bolt. I unfastened the bolt, and the door creaked open.

  My bare feet held tightly to each of the dark stairs. I switched on a light six steps down, and a sharp series of overhead beams dissolved the gray concrete walls into a blinding yellow. My eyes hurt from it. I had to close them to adjust. When I opened them, I walked to the end of the wooden stairs, and examined as much of the basement as I could.

  The cold, moist floors were grooved with gutters that connected to two drains at corners in the walls. There were two large slabs made of concrete, with zinc tops, in the center of the room. The slabs were adjacent to a long sink. Behind the slabs were four large cupboards that began at waist level and went up almost to the ceiling. I saw nothing out of the ordinary—at least anything that might be making noise.

  Out of a curiosity that got the most of my fright, I opened the first cupboard. It was empty except for several old glass beakers, stiff rubber tubes, and porcelain dishes. I had no idea what they'd been used for, and I wasn't especially interested in finding out. I quickly closed the first cupboard, and opened the second.

  A dark head fell right out into my hands. I thought I was going to pass out. The head crashed to the floor. I looked down, and was able to open my eyes long enough to see that it was made of Styrofoam. It was simply a wig form. I looked deeper into the cupboard, and saw a dozen more of them, all black wigs, in various styles—Afro; curly; elaborately dressed and permed. On one of the wig forms, I saw a small label: “DIXIE'S. The South's Best Mortician's Supplies For The Negro Community."

  Well, that made a lot of sense. After all, what had this place been except that?

  My nerves started to piece themselves back together. My breathing calmed down. I was ready to abandon any further explorations of the basement, when the hinges on the door to the third cupboard shook. Weakly, the door vibrated open. A small, naked, mummyish body—like a human pupa—edged forward. The head turned towards me; the eyes cracked open.

  They belonged to Woosh.

  Chapter Twenty

  "Get me out of here, will you?" he asked. He extended a monkey-like hand to me. I took it and drew him out. His body expanded as it came out of the cupboard, although he was certainly an old man and not that big.

  "I thought I was never going to ge
t out of there," he said. "Do you have anything for me to wear. I feel so," he paused, "naked."

  "What you are doing here?" I asked. "You scared the hell out of me."

  "You didn't exactly make me feel great either. I wasn't even sure I'd know what you looked like. Or how I'd find the place. It wasn't pure intuition, I can tell you that. You know, you have a very strong thought beam. I don't think I've ever experienced anything like it." He jumped up on one of the slabs and crossed his knobby old knees, quite demurely, in front of him. "You could probably get back by yourself if you had to. Maybe I shouldn't tell you that. Anyway, you're never going to listen to an old man like me, right?"

  "Woosh, would you cut the crap? What are you doing here?" Suddenly, something hit me—"Wait a second," I said. "What do you mean you weren't sure you could recognize me. You've already appeared to me. I spoke with you the first night I spent here on earth. I was with Zachariah."

  "Oh, that renegade. His name on Ki—well, I won't tell you. You don't need to know that. The truth is, Enkidu, I can't see you on Ki except as yourself—as you appear on Ki. I couldn't understand a word you said, unless it's in our language. Right now, you're talking to me in that language, although I can see you're somebody else. Not bad looking, either. You picked a very attractive host to inhabit. I think that's a good enough word for it. What's his name?"

  "Alan Kostenbaum. He—I mean, I—he's Jewish. Smart, kind of nervous guy. I'm now falling in love with someone. It's dreadful."

  "Well, young man, that's what happens when you travel. Are you sure there's nothing for me to wear down here. Oh, the Goddess Herself! This place gives me the creeps! What is it?"

  "It was a mortuary."

  "A what? What is that?"

  "A place where they put dead people."

  "Interesting. I guess Greeland picked it out. Tell me, what is he like here?"

  "He's beautiful. Very attractive. I've had the hots for him ever since I got here. Unfortunately, Alan Kostenbaum doesn't. It's been some conflict between us. Greeland—I mean he's now called Wright—is a hunk. A real looker. Unfortunately, a bit arrogant. Too arrogant. And not very feeling."