by David Amsden
“Action movies. Cartoons.”
“Action movies, eh?”
He grabbed a tape without looking and slid it in the VCR. It was Beta.
“Hey, feller,” Dad said. “Me and Floyd are just gonna be back in that room for a second. Okay? We’ll be right in there, so just holler if you need anything, okay?”
“Goddamn, I can’t get over it,” Floyd was saying. “He looks just like you.”
“Okay,” I said.
“Love ya, feller.”
“Love you too,” I said.
The tape hadn’t been rewound all the way, started up in the middle of a scene. The setting was obviously a jail. A cop was talking to a prison guard.
“I hear correctly the inmates are acting up?” the cop was asking.
“We do everything we can,” said the guard. “But they’re a feisty bunch.”
“Feisty? That so?” They both talked funny, all exaggerated but slow, like the words were difficult to pronounce. The cop was scratching his chin, but not like he was thinking hard. “What’s the warden say?”
“The warden doesn’t know.”
“Well, between you and me, the warden don’t need to know.”
“I’m not sure I’m understanding.”
“Heh heh. Oh, give it time, Charlie,” the cop said. “Give it some time. You just let me have a word with one of the inmates. Who’s the leader?”
The next scene was an interrogation room, a steel table, two chairs, gray cinderblock walls, very brightly lit. The cop was sitting by himself, cigarette in his mouth. There was a knock on the door.
“Come in,” the cop said.
I was surprised to see what the leader looked like. In every other action movie I’d seen, this was always some foreign guy, Russian or Mexican, with cratered skin, and some campy accessory like a python around his neck, a white rat with a leash attached to some diamond encrusted collar, brass knuckles made out of some rare crystal. But this leader, for one thing, was a woman, and very American-looking at that. She was tall, with long blond hair that didn’t even move when she walked, dark eyebrows so perfect they looked like two thin strips of hot tar.
“What the hell are you doing here?” she asked.
“Looks like I just can’t leave you alone,” he said.
“What are we going to do about it then?”
“My temper’s thinning with you lady,” he said.
“Oh is it now?” she said.
What’s funny is he didn’t seem so angry, was still all stunted and awkward, but suddenly, like someone hit a switch, the guy’s standing up, pounding his hands on the table. He kicked the chair into the wall. “Get over here!” he yelled, but he gave her no time, was already moving over to her. “Come here, you bitch!” he yelled. He grabbed her by the collar of her orange prison garb. “You fucking bitch!” he yelled again. “Do you realize what you’ve put me through?”
“Oh you know you like it,” she said.
“Shut up lady.”
He unzipped the front of her jumpsuit, a zipper that went all the way down to her waist. She wasn’t wearing a bra. Being six, the only woman’s breasts I’d ever seen were Mom’s, and they looked nothing like these. And I don’t just mean because Mom didn’t have that scorpion tattoo circling her nipple.
“I know what you want,” she said.
“You bitch!” the guy said, slamming his face into her breasts. They hardly moved. Then he was back up with his mouth right up against hers, their tongues spinning like colliding helicopter blades. Her lips looked like the wax candy I got every Halloween. You know, the kind given out by the neighborhood freaks who were somehow unaware of the fact that no one liked that stuff. No one ever knew what to do with it.
“Yeah,” she was saying. “Call me a bitch. I’m your bitch.”
“Fuck you,” he said. He slapped her face now, twice. “You whore bitch!”
“Oh yeah,” she said. “I like that. Do that again baby. Do that again.”
“Shut up,” he said, slapping her again.
He pushed her away, into the faraway wall, stepped back but still looking at her all hard. She was taking off her boots, then sliding the rest of her uniform down. She looked at him the whole time, like all angry, the same look girls in class gave you when you stole their My Little Pony barrettes. She wore bright red underwear, with a dragon stitched on the front. The back was too thin for anything.
“I know what you want,” she said. “I know what all you cops want.”
He was naked now. He had also been taking his clothes off. His pants were tight, gave him some trouble. The guy had to hop on one foot, but his face didn’t change. This man was dead serious.
“You whore bitch slut!” he called her, smashing himself against her. He ripped her underwear right off, Incredible Hulk style. “You have no idea what I’m about to do to you.”
She put her leg on the chair now—somehow it was right there again—and the two of them started shaking, convulsing. They sounded pretty much exactly like joggers. It was this spastic movement, him grabbing a fistful of her hair, saying she wasn’t just nothing, but less than nothing, nothing but a jailbird, a little whore bitch jailbird slut. But he was wasting his time telling her these things, because all she ever said was that she knew, knew exactly who she was. Her words came out all shaky. She sounded like she was on a roller coaster.
“Don’t you stop,” she was now saying.
He sort of grunted.
“Don’t you dare stop you bastard.”
And now he was telling her he wouldn’t ever stop. “Beg bitch and I won’t even hear,” is how he put it. They were both shiny now. She deserved punishment, he said. More punishment than she even knew. “You have no clue,” he was saying. “You don’t have a clue.”
He backed away—I sure didn’t ever look like that. She moved over to the table, supporting herself on her elbows. “Look at that,” he said, in a way that you knew he was about to come up with one of his wordy descriptions of her. “Look at that, just like a poodle. Scared as a puppy. Just a little puppy poodle jailbird slut.”
He came up behind her. The camera zoomed up into his face. God, he looked so serious, just like the guys on the news. This guy was Dan Rather on the bench press. When the camera zoomed out he was slapping her butt, leaving a patch of red. “And I’m just getting started,” he said. “So much punishment you don’t even know.”
“Yeah,” she said. “Just like that. Just like that.”
Mom had done this to me before, given me a spanking. It’s funny though: I never wanted her to keep doing it. She only did it a few times, only when I really acted up, which I guess I was sort of constantly doing. It always came in the kitchen, the announcement, the fear, the smack, then me running right into my bedroom, propelled by the pain, scorched tears all out of my eyes, down my cheeks, burning my skin like they were some kind of acid. Only one time did Dad spank me and it was about the funniest thing. He apologized right afterward, came into my bedroom and wouldn’t shut up about how sorry he was. I was pretty used to it by then, so I had already stopped crying, but now he was the one crying, saying he’s sorry, so sorry, please, please forgive me feller, all that. I sat on the bottom bunk of my bed, telling him not to worry. I was the one who had to tell Dad that everything would be okay.
“Hey, feller,” Dad was yelling from that back room. “Ya all right out there, feller?”
“Yeah,” I yelled back.
“How’s the movie?”
“Oh come on baby,” the woman was saying now. “You can do better than that, can’t you baby?”
“It’s pretty good,” I said.
“Or are you just like the rest of them here, a pussy like the guards?”
“We’ll be out soon,” Dad said.
“Shut up you fucking bitch whore!”
“Just give us a sec.”
“I’ll kill you if you don’t shut up,” the cop was saying. “I swear to God I’ll kill you.”
When Da
d and Floyd finally came out, sneezing and sniffing like they went off and caught colds, the entire cast of the film was in the mess hall. They were all naked, about ten men, ten women. The men were all calling the women bitches and whores and the women were telling the men how much they liked it. I think Floyd laughed, made some comment about the merits of independent film, show-offy, and got no response out of me or Dad. Sometimes the camera would cut to a slow motion shot, a crippled-looking man’s face, a woman looking bored to death. In the middle of it all was this old man, looked about seventy, with these bushy white eyebrows igniting right out of his forehead. He was wearing those big thick sunglasses that blind men and retired people wear. He was also a midget. I’ve always been good at finding the subtle things in movies, and figured he was the warden—they had kept talking about how he was small, how he couldn’t really see. The plan had been for the women to break out. They were conspiring with the guards and the cops, that was the movie’s point, but things like this kept happening. It was frustrating to watch. These people had no focus. You bitch ass whore slut. Yeah, that’s what I am, that’s exactly what I am. And you’re my daddy, that’s what you are. Shut up. Shut up. My daddy, you know you are, you’re my daddy—
But what’s so funny, what I really want to tell you about, is that a few years later, in middle school, this kid Dan invites me to sleep over at his house. His parents go off to bed, and he goes into some closet, fishes out a movie. And I’m not even kidding when I tell you it was the same goddamn tape. So the movie’s playing, but I’m not really paying attention. I’m just hearing Dad coming up to me that day at Floyd’s, practically feeling his moustache brushing up against my ear, hearing him saying it’s time to go. He’s asking me to please not tell Mom about the movie, and right there at Dan’s it hits me that she still didn’t know about that day. And then I realized that maybe Dan was gay or something, because all he ever told me was how strong I looked, and with the movie on now all he kept talking about was how you could see the microphone dangling at the top of the screen, like it was some big, hysterical deal. He was obsessed, couldn’t be quiet about it. He was laughing so hard he wasn’t even making sounds. Look at that! Look at that! It’s so cheap! It’s so cheap, it’s funny!
SATURDAY AFTERNOON COMEDY HOUR
I liked the place because it had one of these glossed-up bars lined with padded chipped-vinyl piping, the kind of place you’re likely to come across today only at a Howard Johnson’s motel in the middle of some place you’d rather not be. Not that I liked the bar for any reasons related to sentimentality, irony, or kitsch. I was seven years old, skinny, short for my age. So I could rest my chin up on it, hook it right there, stare at my own reflection in the petrified sheen, let my whole body go slack and not worry for a second about falling.
“Getchu another Coke?” the bartender was asking me.
I looked up at Dad. He sort of half looked at me and shrugged, looked real tired. I guess he was always half looking at you all sleepy and shrugging, when I really think about it—either that, or he was excited as hell. He was smoking a Vantage. His hair, jet black streaked with white, was greasy as always, like someone was slipping cooking oil into his shampoo bottle when he left the house.
I told the bartender yes, another Coke please.
This was one of my favorite aspects of Saturday afternoons with Dad: Anywhere we went, which pretty much was only this place, I could drink as much Coke as I wanted. I can’t remember the bar’s name, only that it was in some part of Rockville that’s now a fancy mall. The bartenders all knew me, served me in the pint glasses, more for the money. I used two straws, sucked until my cheeks went numb, downing one after another. That’s how it was: Dad right there, and me getting all sorts of jittery and so wide awake my eyes felt like someone had torn the lids right off.
“Wanna race?” I asked Dad.
We played this game that I could never get enough of, and was lucky in that Dad was equally obsessed. With Dad a lot of things ended up being turned into games—it’s one of his best qualities, from a seven-year-old’s perspective anyway. The rules were simple: we each got two straws, me the long white ones, Dad the teeny kind the olives came on. Count to three, and then we’d both suck hard as we could, seeing who’d finish his drink first.
“If you don’t mind losing,” Dad said.
“You mean if you don’t mind losing,” I said back, wishing I could’ve come up with something a little better.
“Whatever ya say, partner,” he said, taking the olives off the straw. “Hey,” Dad said to the bartender, “gotta sec?”
I want to tell you that the bartender was this hulking, jocular guy, with chapped lips, a squinty mouth, reddish cheeks—a clean shaven Santa Claus for all practical purposes. But because of my chin-on-the-bar frame, I’d be lying if I said I remember more than a disembodied head and a hearty paunch, always in a starched-and-stained white button-down. And an apron—he always had on a white apron. He knew the game well. That’s why right now he was saying—
“I see we’ve gotta rematch. Who won the last one again?”
“I did.”
“Barely,” Dad said. “Only ’cause I letcha.”
“Did not.”
“Okay, okay. Enough you two,” the bartender said. “Let’s try to act like professionals here.”
“He started it,” Dad said.
“Hey, do you remember that time two seconds ago when I said ‘enough’?” the bartender said. “When we were gonna be a couple of pros here? Okay then. You two ready?”
I had switched positions, was now kneeling up on the stool. This was always risky because back then all I ever wore was sweatpants, which slid around like crazy because the stools were vinyl, they swiveled, too, and I only weighed slightly more than a true anorexic. But like I said, I was short for my age so this was the only way I could get the right angle. And look, I’d been serious about winning the game, and I may have won the last one, that’s true, but it’s not like Dad was some rookie.
“Take your marks,” the bartender was now saying.
Me and Dad put the straws in our mouths. I could feel him looking at me through the corner of his eye, trying to throw me off. You know, making some stupid face I’d laugh at anyway. But I wasn’t looking. I wasn’t about to give him the satisfaction.
The bartender was counting down—
“…and…two…and…three! Let’s see it!”
Through the corner of my eye I monitored Dad’s triangular glass, watched the clear liquid get lower and lower, this inverted pyramid being sucked into its own apex. He had less to drink than I did, no ice to worry about. I always argued this was unfair. But all he ever told me was that there was literally gasoline in that glass, and, if he drank it too fast, he’d go blind.
But right now he was going faster than usual, like really working it—his whole drink gone in two sips before I even crossed the halfway mark. My cheeks hurt from sucking so hard, they felt sour. I tried to ignore the fact that he’d just won by continuing to go at my Coke. You know, like the match was still in heated progress.
But then I heard Dad and his yelling—
“Ah-ha! Gotcha, feller!”
“I believe we have a new champ,” the bartender was saying.
“Ah-ha!”
Dad’s a pale guy, like that farm he’s from is in some hick part of Maine where normal levels of pigment are against the law. I swear, he uses SPF 2000 on a cloudy day and still gets a sunburn. But right now it didn’t look like the sun had got him, but something else.
He just looked so awake, all of a sudden, and his entire face—nose, cheeks, chin, forehead—was exploding in these raw flashes, bright red, same with the whites of his eyes. His moustache was dripping. And his mouth was all wet-looking, like a baby’s. You know, the way a baby’s face gets when it’s eating. Red and all wet-looking and somewhere right between miserable and excited.
That’s Dad right now after winning. The guy didn’t look tired at all. He was still
yelling—
“Yee-hee!”
“Stop it,” I said.
“Whoo-wee!”
—like some sort of lunatic Indian. He looked at me, saw my face all sandblasted with sadness, pissed off at losing. It didn’t seem to bother him at all.
“Oh there’s always the rematch, feller,” he said. “Besides, seven’s my lucky number. That was my seventh martini. How many Cokes’ve you had?”
“I don’t know. Thirty maybe.”
“See there, makes sense then,” he said. “Ya follow? You’re seven years old and the last time you beat me it was probably your seventh Coke. See?”
Dad’s always been a genius at finding this kind of logic. At seven, it was too confusing for me to bother disagreeing with. I mean, can you figure it out now?
So I just looked at him. He was still kind of laughing and crying. It didn’t feel like he was right next to me anymore, if that makes any sense. I just wondered about that wetness all over his face. And then, because I was mad at him for winning, I wondered what would happen if I took a bunch of cocktail napkins, tied them together, and stuffed them in his mouth. You know, like a fuse. And if I lit it—that’s what I really wanted to know. I didn’t care about him going blind. If I lit it, would Dad catch on fire and blow up and stop laughing like that?
With Jerry’s gone, Dad worked two jobs now, at Yummy Yogurt and Super Sandwich. Both were in the food court at Montgomery Mall. This was way before the mall turned all yuppie with fake gold and marble and orange-skinned people who walked around like melting wax sculptures convinced the fake furniture at Crate & Barrel was classy stuff. That’s when the old food court was gutted out, stripped raw, then replaced, strangely, with all the same places as before. Except this time around all the places had different names, foreign sounding, adhering to the great American law that if you want to seem real smart and sophisticated, just start using foreign expressions that no one really understands.