by Barry Wolfe
We discover that after a reluctant start Izzy Brown is just getting warmed up. He goes into great and colorful detail about his parents’ history in Hopeville, the competitive strife among his siblings, the history of race relations in Southern Florida, how important tomatoes were to Broward County in the early 20th century, and his soporific coup de gra ce s , an extended description of every last detail of his youngest sister’s graduation ceremony from Spellman College. His monotonic monologue gets us to the North Carolina border at which point he has put himself and Len to sleep. I too am nodding off, but I fight it in order to keep Bobby company. His eyes never leave the road. He’s determined to make it to Florida in one day without going to sleep either behind the wheel or in a motel room. For the next hour or so, we carry on a conversation without his once looking at me. With his eyes fixed to the road, he begins to share intimate details of his relationship with his girlfriend, Judy. They have been entangled in an on-again, off-again relationship for the past two years. Judy is a smart, emotionally needy girl whose constantly fighting parents agree on only one thing—they both hate Bobby. During our senior year in high school, Judy had been forbidden to see Bobby even though it was their clear intention to go together to our senior prom. To facilitate their being together on this propitious night, I collude with them in an act of what Bobby referred to as “stunning friendship”. Bobby had hired a limousine and Judy had told her parents that I was her date for the senior prom. I put on Bobby’s tux and traveled in the limo to pick up Judy at her house. The limo then drove back to my house and I removed the tux, which Bobby then put back on. They drove off together to a prom that I did not attend. But that is a long and painful story for another time. I hadn’t lost sight of the fact that I was once again a decoy, a stand-in for another boy, as I was with Sophie and Sonny Henson a couple of disappointing New Years Eves ago. But this time it was of my own choosing. As we remind each other of that ludicrous tale, we laugh. But the story turns out to be a prelude to a long and sad tale that Bobby relates. With his eyes fixed on the road he tells of their painful, ecstatic sexual relationship. Because I’m a stranger to the act, I’m envious of the fact of their sexual relationship, amazed by the joy of it, charmed by the love that was in it, appalled by the pain of it, and saddened by its absence in my own life.
By the time we enter South Carolina, Izzy Brown and Len have awakened and desperately need to pee. In fact we all do. Before exiting the car, Izzy B puts on a battered old fedora. “What’s that for?” I ask. “You see those two buildings over there?” Izzy B points to a brick building on the left that looks like it has seen its best years about two decades ago. Then he points 20 yards to the right to a broken-down shack with nails popping out of the hastily assembled flat boards with vines growing over the roof. “The brick building is the bathroom for white people. The outhouse on the right is for Black people. From here all the way south to Scandia, that’s what you’ll see for bathroom accommodations for niggers. I ain’t no “nigger” and I ain’t going in that one. It’s disgusting and degrading. So this hat covers my nappy hair and I’m heading for the white bathroom. My advice is for you guys to hope for the best and prepare for the worst.” The three of us wail a collective “Oh Shit!” We watch Izzy for a moment as he heads for the white bathroom. Then I say to Len and Bobby in a conspiratorial whisper, “We’re not too conspicuous, are we, standing here together gawking at Izzy?” We walk quickly in three different directions and engage in our idiosyncratic ways of being inconspicuous. Bobby sticks his hands in his pockets, hunches his shoulders, and arranges his face in a rather off-putting scowl. Len pretends to read a map while continually adjusting and readjusting his glasses. And I begin to whistle as if I were walking past a graveyard. Izzy Brown seems to be taking a very long time to pee. The longer we wait, the more difficult it is to maintain our nonchalant poses. Beads of sweat begin to appear on each of our brows. A gas station attendant finally appears and asks Bobby, who is closest to him, “You want to fill er up?” The attendant is no taller than Bobby with a snout for a nose, a mean mouth and thin lips. He is straight out of central casting for the part of a paranoid redneck. Bobby says yes and asks the attendant if he would also wipe the windows. Bobby’s scowl seems to move itself to the attendant’s face, except the attendant’s scowl is real. He apparently does not like the sound of Bobby’s accent and begins to eye each of us suspiciously. His glare annihilates our nonchalant poses, and our faces simultaneously acquire a guilty look. “You boys from up north?” The gas station attendant asks icily. “Yy-yes,” we respond in unison. “Whereabouts y’all from?” His beady, bituminous eyes seek an answer from each of our faces in turn. The air seems to become extremely heavy.
“We’re all from Washington, DC, “ I finally answer. The attendant mumbles something to himself. I can’t be sure, but it sounds something like “Fucking Yankees”. Before we can inquire, the sound of footsteps draws everyone’s attention to Izzy B making his way back to the car. The attendant stares at Izzy as if he knew. He makes a final inspection of each of our faces and says, “Where y’all headed. “Fort Lauderdale,” Bobby answers. “Scandia!” Izzy B suddenly says. He sounds defiant and his tone stirs the attendant’s suspicions. He moves toward Izzy, and Bobby; Len, and I look at each other, and we each see the same fear that the others felt. The attendant addresses Izzy. “You from there?” “Yeah,” Izzy says, his own suspicions now stirred. The attendant’s expression suddenly softens and with a smile he says, “I got a cousin there named Delbert Throckmorton. Ya happen to know ‘im?” We could see Izzy relaxing his defensive stance. “As a matter a fact, I do. He runs the pharmacy in town.” “That’s right,” the attendant is now excited. “Well, how about that. I haven’t seen Delbert in at least 10 years. Say hello to him for me, will ya. Mah name is Macarthur Blade. Just tell ‘m Mac the Blade asks how’s it hangin’.” Izzy B works hard to suppress a guffaw and responds with feigned enthusiasm, “I sure will, Mac.” We wait until we get back on the highway before the four of us explode into uncontrollable peals of laughter. It’s as much a release of tension and fear as it is an appreciation of the absurdity of the moment. For us, it’s a true bonding moment.
Much of the rest of the drive involves the three of us sleeping off and on while our indefatigable driver, Bobby, remains wide awake the entire time. Whenever I look over at him, he seems lost in deep thought. Is he replaying in his mind his doomed relationship with Judy? Or is his trying to discern the reasons why it’s so difficult for him to let girls know the real Bobby Levine? I can’t tell. But I do know he is a skilled thespian with every girl he ever tried to get close to. I think it both ironic and an honor that he confides in me more than in any other human being on the planet. Yet, what he most desires and fears is to have an intimate relationship with a girl, a lover and confidant rolled up in one voluptuous and nurturing female. Bobby’s reverie triggers my own as a team of images of Desirie and me together step dance in my mind.
No one—not even-Bobby-- thinks we will reach Lauderdale in one day. With this certainty deeply planted in our minds, we made our motel reservations in Fort Lauderdale for the next day. When we reach the outskirts of our destined city at 9 pm, we know we will have to continue on in search of lodgings for the night. We drop Izzy B off in Scandia and make plans for where we would meet in a week to have him join us on the return trip. Afterwards, the three of us ponder where to go from there. Len pops up with the following suggestion: “Let’s go to Miami. I’ve never seen Miami.” With no objection forthcoming from Bobby or me, off to Miami we go. To our astonishment, we quickly get a room in a lovely little hotel on Collins Avenue that has its own private 20’ x 20’square of beach. Exhausted from the trip, we flop into bed early. We want to rise early in order to spend some time on the beach the next morning before we make our way back to Lauderdale. We have plenty of time since we can’t take possession of our room until 3 pm. By 10 a.m., we’re lying prone on our private beach with the sound of seagulls lulling us to
sleep.
Bobby and I know enough to come out of the intense Florida sun, but when we try to rouse Len, he resists. He promises that he would return to the room shortly. Back in the room, Bobby and I become lost in conversation and an hour goes by before we realize Len hasn’t returned from the beach. Fearing the worst, we run down to the beach. There we see Len, his back is lobster red from a deep sunburn, and his face is contorted in agony. In his attempts to rise from his blanket, he resembles nothing so much as a beached whale. Bobby grabs one of Len’s arms and I grab the other and we try to yank him from the blanket. He howls like a cat in heat. “Owwwwww,” he cries. It sounds like the penitent lamentation of the damned. His piercing cry of contrition continues all the way back to our room. When we finally let go of his arms, he bellyflops onto his bed with a shriek that eventually turns into a muffled moan. His pillow now covers his face. The moan then metamorphs into a snore as sleep overcomes his pain. Sleep, the balm of burned backs.
When we begin our drive to Fort Lauderdale, Len stretches out in the back seat and alternates between snoring and moaning for the entire trip. An hour later, we’re at our hotel. We store Len on a couch in the lobby where he immediately proceeds to curl up in the fetal position while Bobby and I register. When we enter our room, we help a staggering Len to a bed where he resumes his concert of snores and moans. We leave Len to his dreams and go to explore the grounds of the hotel. We soon happen upon a courtyard where at least 20 college students have already begun their vacation. Several couples are already seeking Nirvana through intertwined lips and tongue. One gentleman is meticulously stacking beer cans on top of one another. The rest, who already seem well plied with alcohol, are listening to a one-man hootenanny. A rather rotund smooth-voiced fellow is enthusiastically singing “Dr Freud”, a hilarious satire on Freud’s line of work. At this point in my college career, I know little about Freud, but I have convinced myself that I’ll appear sophisticated if I express great joy over the cleverness and sentiments expressed in the song. I proceed to do so. “Oh excellent,” I chirp in a British accent. “How devilishly clever,” I continue. Bobby follows my lead with “Quite so. Quite so.” Observing our anglophile antics are three butterball beings sitting to our right. At first, I think they’re triplets. They all have blond flat top haircuts and beer bellies of identical proportions. Their identical tee shirts display Fordham University in huge white letters against a solid maroon background. The butter being in the middle says in an overly loud, aggressive voice, “You guys are from Harvard, aren’t cha. I can tell from your accents. Continuing my imitation of an Oxonian accent, I correct, “Not Harvard…. Howard!” The three Fordham butter beings look at each other and begin to smile. The smile soon turns into a chortle and then into a cackle. The three cackling butter beings keep this up for a couple of minutes. Bobby and I respond with a pretended yawn as if we’re totally bored by such adolescent foolishness. Finally, the middle butter being says through his laughter, “Howard; ain’t that the nigger school in DC.”
“Many Negroes go there,” I pompously concede. This response elevates their cackling to the level of guffaws. “What the fuck are you guys doing at Howard?” queries the butter being on the right. The face of the middle Fordham flattop assumes the expression of someone who has just had an epiphany. “I got it! You’re liberals. I heard that Howard’s filled with liberals. And liberals like big government. And that means you’re really socialists. And socialists really are no different than communists. That’s it. You guys’re communists and that’s why you go to Howard.” After contemplating the meaning of this razor sharp parsing of the political landscape for a few minutes, Bobby and I look at each other in total incomprehension. Bobby asks, “What are you guys talking about? We’re not even political.”
“So why are you going to that school?” Without hesitating, I reply, “Because the price is right. What’s it cost you to go to Fordham?” The butter being on the right answers, “I don’t know, maybe about $1,000 a year.” “Well it costs a little over $200 a year,” I say triumphantly. Middle Butter Being responds just as triumphantly, “Well, we don’t have to go to school with niggers and we got academic scholarships.” Bobby and I give each other wide-eyed bemused looks because we have no way of understanding this oxymoronic statement. “See ya around,” Bobby and I respond in unison to our peers from Fordham. The atmosphere seems to us to be heavy and claustrophobic, and we beat a hasty retreat from the hotel courtyard. We walk the two blocks to Highway A1A that we have to cross to get to the beach. An endless caravan of cars is making its way slowly in both directions. The drivers are carrying on a running conversation with the onlookers standing on both sides of the highway gawking at the train of autos. In a red Ford convertible a very short young man is standing up in the back surveying the scene for appropriate-sized females. Spotting a diminutive but shapely female in short shorts walking in the opposite direction of his car, he yells, ”Hey baby, where ya been all of my life.” Accepting the compliment, she smiles sweetly, but walks on in silence. People on both sides of the highway applaud the short man’s bravado, sharp eye, and philosophy of “faint heart never fair maiden won.” The caravan moves so slowly that some intrepid occupants leap out of their cars and ply virtually any female in their line of sight with various pick-up lines. Once they’re rejected, they climb back into their cars that have traveled only a few yards. They repeat the process two minutes later and 20 yards further down the road. At one intersection a policeman stands on top of a flat-roofed motel directing traffic through a bullhorn. He manages to convey the laws of the land with a great deal of goofy humor. The entire spectacle is suddenly interrupted by the crack of thunder. Lightning stabs the sky. These are auras of an ensuing cloudburst. As the furious sheets of rain pour down on all our heads, what a moment ago has been a charmed audience of a leisurely display of auto-transported narcissism now turns into a frantic exodus of people from the beach and the scattering of the shelter-seeking sidewalk audience. With no audience to admire their wonderfulness, the caravan of cars close their windows, zip up their convertible tops and zip off. Bobby and I run as fast as we can to get under a building’s awning or overhang. Upon our return to our hotel room, we find Len still snoring and moaning. We sense that Len will likely remain in his painful sleep until morning. Bobby and I collapse onto our beds thinking that all three of us will be fine going to bed without our suppers.
The next day we’re on the beach early and so are 30,000 other college students. By 10 a.m. the air is redolent with the fragrance of suntan lotion. The sun is already dazzling and intense. The blare of thousands of transistor radios drowns out all other sounds, and the erotic lure of brightly colored bikinis dapples the entire beach. I can’t take it all in. The smells, sights, and sounds overwhelm my ability to make sense of it all. In such situations, I zone out and begin a simple reverie of the hungry search for love. “Izzy? Izzy?” The faint voice calling my name finally reaches audibility, and I can make out that Bobby is trying to get my attention. “What?” I ask as I slowly come out of my altered state of consciousness. “Back in your dream world, Izzy?”
“Well, it seems more pleasant there.” Bobby is shocked. “Are you crazy? With all these gorgeous half-naked women to look at and pursue.”
“But that’s just it. I don’t see the point of the pursuit.” Bobby looks at me like I’m an inpatient out on a weekend pass from the local loony bin. “The point is, Izzy, that you get laid,” Bobby opines. Len, having roused himself at the sound of “half-naked women” adds for emphasis, “Laid, Izzy, Laid.” The enthusiasm in his voice communicates that there is no greater quest and no great achievement.
“And then what?” I ask in all seriousness.
“And then you put another notch on your gun,” Bobby answers.
“And then you can brag to your buddies what a great cocksman you are,” he adds with increased annoyance. “And then you don’t have to suffer horniness for at least the next 24 hours,” Len chimes in. The thr
ee of us laugh at the invocation of this well-known state of adolescent malaise. “You know, guys, I was reading the other day that many psychologists believe that all human motivation can be traced to drive reduction.” “Drive reduction! What’s that?” Bobby interrupts.
“The idea is that humans are born with a number of drives that have to be satisfied. And our behavior is motivated by the search for whatever activity will reduce the tensions in our body caused by these instinctual drives. For example, the hunger drive is satisfied by food consumption, the sex drive, by sex.” “I get it,” Len says excitedly. “Fucking reduces the horniness drive.” “You best believe it,” Bobby says, grinning from ear to ear. Our prolonged cackling is interrupted by the sound of a siren. “It sounds like an air raid warning,” Bobby guesses. With a look of horror on his face, Len cries out, “The Russians are coming to bomb us!” There are no school desks to climb under. In the wide- open setting of a crowded beach, we are all seized by the heebie-jeebies. We look around the beach to see how other students are reacting to the siren. Just as we expect, hundred of students are running off the beach as fast as they can. “Oh my God,” I shout, “We’re gonna die. Len picks up my hysteria and wails, “I’m too young to die.” Bobby yells, “Stop crying and keep running.” We follow the crowd into one of the bars on the boardwalk. But instead of diving under furniture, everyone is yelling out an order to the bartender for his or her favorite alcoholic beverage. “What the hell?” Len grouses. “We’re about to die and everybody’s gonna get drunk?” “Well, there are worse responses to our pending demise,” I suggest. “The hell with demise, we’re dying Izzy,” Len says with panic written all over his face. He starts yelling at the crowd. “Why aren’t you people doing something more constructive than drinking. We’re about to be bombed. Didn’t you hear the air raid siren?” This provokes peals of laughter from everyone within earshot. A voice already well lubricated with alcohol proclaims, “We’re all gonna get bombed, but not by the Russians.” More peals of laughter. A golden Adonis with bleached blonde hair says, “That was no air raid siren. That was the signal that the bars are now open.” Len looked at his watch and asks incredulously, “At 11 am?” Adonis replied, “Welcome to Spring Break in Fort Lauderdale.” As we begin to calm down, we finally hear rock n’ roll music filtering through the din. After about 20 minutes, many of the bar’s occupants are at least two sheets to the wind. A chorus of slurring baritone voices begins to sing “Bring on the tee-shirts! Bring on the tee-shirts!” The drunken heralds’ serenade is successful. As if on cue, several muscle-bound beachcombers hoist four more-than-willing college women on top of four separate tables. They’re attired in cut-off shorts and white tee shirts. Another group of males are pouring carafes of water down the girls’ chests. The resulting translucence makes it perfectly clear that they were braless and well endowed. With each liquid baptism, the crowd cheers. The girls start modeling and posing. One bends over putting her hands on her knees and thrusting her tuchas out behind her. Unfortunately, I’m in the line of fire and her cheeks meet mine at nose height sending me reeling into the crowd. Bobby and Len can’t stop laughing. “Enjoy it, Izzy,” Bobby cracks, “That may be the only ass you get on this trip.” The likely accuracy of Bobby’s prognostication turns me crimson, and I just glower at him. The crowd is instructed to vote with a vocal cheer for the winning wet tee shirt-clad woman. The winner, as determined by a deafening cacophony of growls, whistles, and lust-filled yells, is a tall blonde whose chesty charms is a work of art. She begins to imitate a prototypical winner of a Miss America Pageant by cupping her hands over her mouth in disbelief, shedding copious tears, and hugging each of her three competitors.