THEN COMES THE night. The night. Ruth’s class and my class, twenty writers in all, decide to get together on a Saturday night and have a dinner at a restaurant three blocks from my house. When I corner Ruth, she swears she didn’t have a thing to do with the party. But I don’t believe her. It’s Ruth’s favorite restaurant. And it’s close to my house.
I, of course, don’t want to go. My days of drinking too much white wine, baked Vienna sausage hors d’oeuvres, talking about writing, and Chicken Kiev and wild rice for dinner, are over.
But I go.
It’s summer, almost, May, I think, and the evening is warm. Sunlight comes through the leaves of the maple in front of my house. Sunlight and the shadows of the leaves shake around on the faux Persian carpet on the living room floor. I’ve put on a clean white shirt and my khaki pants. The black belt I bought a dozen years ago on St. Mark’s, I’ve had to punch a new hole in to hold my pants up. Right there at the button on the top, my pants bunch together like khaki drapery folds. I slip on my black loafers. I decide to go sockless, like I always used to do. Back in the day, I’d roll my pants up and show off my tanned ankles and my beautiful feet. I step out the back door, though, and look down. My ankles are not tanned and they’re skinny and old. My beautiful feet are cold because of the neuropathy. Two of my ten toenails are ugly with fungus. I go back inside, pull on a pair of dark socks, load my pockets up with enough Xanax to kill a regular customer. That’s when the phone rings. It’s probably Ruth. Ruth is the only person who calls me.
That voice. I’ll never forget that voice.
“Hey, Gruney!”
Fuck me, I can’t believe it. Hank Christian.
Something in my heart, a sudden flame, a fire in my heart I didn’t even know was out.
“My God Hank,” I say. “Where are you? How are you? I’ve fucking missed you so much, man. Are you a doctor yet?”
“Tough times, Gruney Babe,” Hank says. “Real tough times.”
“Are you all right?”
“The big C, man,” Hank says. “Cancer.”
“What?!”
“I just got back from the doc today. They say it’s in remission. So I thought I’d come see you.”
“I got AIDS, Hank,” I say.
Three thousand miles of wire between us. I can hear every wire.
“Porca Miseria,” Hank says. “I heard.”
There are no right words so I just say something.
“Are you all right?” I say. “I mean in your heart.”
“Yeah, Darlin’,” Hank says. “Thanks for asking.”
Then: “Let’s talk about all this when I get there.”
THE RESTAURANT WHERE the writers are meeting is the same restaurant where a year later Ruth and Hank will have their wedding reception that I’ll not be invited to.
Walking the three blocks that evening, I’m thick and dead. I feel so shocked, the world outside pushed even further away. Fucking cancer, man. The evening air is charged with doom. Yet at the same time, I’m so fucking high. And in the doom like never before, there’s a hope. In August, the month that’s too hot to be in Florida, Hank Christian will come and stay with me. Really, I’m not walking, I’m floating down the street.
Just before I walk in the door of the restaurant I pop two Xanax. Open the door. Old grease smell from the kitchen only people who’ve worked in restaurants as long as I did can smell. The toilets right there at the entrance. The women’s door is propped open with a yellow cone. The smell of hair product and ammonia and something else. In the dining room proper, only three high windows, windows you can’t open. Bad art on the walls. Lots of bad art. Two more Xanax.
Ruth’s got everything prepared. Two tables of eight and a table of six in a special roped-off section of the dining room.
I’m early, of course. The bartender is a young man in a white shirt and black tie. He is so young and fresh-faced I want to cry. His collar is soiled and his black tie has a stain on it. But that’s all right. The restaurant is dark and soon the sun will be down. His smile makes up for it all. I ask for a large soda water with a little ice and no lime. He pours my soda water, sticks a straw in it. Puts a wedge of lime on the rim. I tip him a dollar anyway.
Above each place setting there’s a folded card with a name on it. I’m in the middle table. Ruth’s name is right next to mine. Buster Bangs’s folded name card is all the way across the room behind me. I sit down in my chair, prepare my strategy to get through the evening. Stay in my seat, don’t move around. If someone wants to talk they’ll have to come over to me. The person’s name on the card on the other side of me I don’t know. It’s a woman. Jan or Jane or Janet Something. Another Xanax, just the thought of talking to somebody I don’t know.
NINE O’CLOCK, THE evening and the dinner is in full swing. All the writers are a little tipsy, loud. So much laughter. But I’m not laughing. It’s one of the things I do these days, stay sober and watch other people get drunk. Really it’s like they’re taking stupid pills. But there’s another part of me. Slug down a shot of tequila is what he wants to do, and roll a Drum, and start getting real, getting down to the down low.
Ruth is wearing a new dress she bought at the Deseret. It’s a sleeveless mint green summer shift. She’s pulled her hair up with combs in the back. I’ve never seen her neck so long and graceful. She’s wearing her new contacts, tinted blue contacts that make her eyes unreal blue. That night, her face is flushed. Ruth’s never more than a one glass of wine girl. Tonight, though, she’s on her second. She’s touching my hand, my arm, she’s touching my leg a lot.
I am miserable. I mean there I am in a room full of people who love me, respect me, all of them a little drunk, happy, showing off, flirting, full of emotion. Such a lovely way to enjoy yourself being human. But it’s not for me. The being human part, enjoying it. Not yet. It will be three of four more years before I can be present enough to enjoy a moment again. Believe me, I’d tried.
And that night I tried too. Just fuck it, so what if it feels like there’s not enough air in the room, so what if Janet next to me wears too much Shalimar and has asked three times now, each time in a more particular way, why I never write in the third person. Ben sat at the table, perplexed, head reeling, wondering how he should answer the persistent Janet. So what if the salad with blue cheese, the knife and fork in my hands are so far away from my mouth. So what if the world wobbles every time the fucking table wobbles when somebody leans an elbow on it. So what if the room keeps tilting hard to the left. So what if the ringing in my ears sounds like a far off radio station. So what if my stomach feels that any minute it’s going to come blowing out my ass.
Just fucking relax. Remember to smile. Breathe.
Just as the dinners are being served – our choice of either meatless lasagna or braised chicken breast – the door opens. Cool air hits the back of my neck. It’s Buster and he’s high as a kite. Must be a speed freak the way he moves. His hair is full of gold glitter and so’s his beard. A red polka dot bow tie clipped onto the collar of his shiny green paisley shirt. A roar goes up from the women in Ruth’s class. Everyone else turns to see what the commotion is.
Buster Bangs, standing there, trying to stand there. A grin so big on his face, there’s no doubt about it, you definitely want to do whatever he’s been doing.
Buster tries to take a step but backs up two. The wall and the bad art on the wall is what’s holding him up. The roar and the laughter has stopped and everybody gets quiet. Ruth quick grabs the sleeve of my shirt then lets go.
When Buster sees where I’m sitting, he makes his way over. Funny, when he seems to know where he’s going he can go just fine. When he gets to me, he leans his face down. Just like that, Buster kisses me full on the mouth. I start to pull away, then don’t. Ruth grabs a hold of my hand, then as the kiss goes on, her hand disappears. Buster’s heavy marijuana smell, his garlic vegetarian breath. As we kiss, my chin goes up and up and Buster’s lips press hard.
In all the wo
rld all there is, is Buster’s scratchy mustache and beard, his soft lips, marijuana, garlic, his tongue, and his broken tooth, The kiss goes on forever. For me it does, anyway. Really, I don’t want the kiss to stop because of what will happen after.
When Buster pulls his lips away, gold glitter falls from is hair and beard. My lap, my arms, my hands, my shirt are covered in gold glitter. Buster kneels down on one knee. His blue eyes, I mean the right one, is looking deep into my eyes. His other eye looks like he’s looking at Ruth. When he speaks, his voice is low, raspy from too much pot, and fucking sexy.
“Hey, Gruney,” Buster says, “you should come with me.”
I start to say something. Some shit I don’t know. But Buster stops me.
“It’s really best for everybody,” Buster says.
I look down at my glittery gold thumb. Big Ben moves my thumb to the glittery gold no-fear place. For some reason, I’m thinking about my kitchen. The refrigerator that’s full of food that Ruth has cooked. A roast chicken, sprouted wheat bread she’s baked, a big pot of kale because kale is good for you. Protein drinks without sugar. On the refrigerator, the magnetized words that Ruth bought that Ruth has constructed into strange sentences. He touched her implacably in the moist middle. My heart is a can of sweet grass honey. Cornucopia of green earth, your insidious armpits. Fluid, she makes of the day the milky way. The kitchen table that’s set with the turquoise cloth napkins that match the turquoise elephant in the pattern of the tablecloth that Ruth bought on sale at Pier 1 Imports.
In fact, there is nothing in my house that doesn’t have something of Ruth about it. The butcher knife and knife sharpener she bought because mine was shit. The salt and pepper shakers that looks like chickens. The hot pads that look like watermelons. The little dish that says non parlare, baciami on it on the stove top so you can lay down your dripping spoon. The big colorful Mexican plates. In the living room, the velvet faux-leopardskin throw on the couch. The camelskin lamp she bought because I’m Queen Lowlighta. The glass prism sculpture that reflects the light. Her Danskin leotard and her running shoes by the bedroom door. In the bathroom, the Lady Speed Stick and the toothbrush and the plate with her silver jewelry in it. The CDs from her car, and the feathers and the rocks and the sticks of wood on top of the refrigerator, on top of the coffee table, on the bedstand by the bed. Her computer on the dining room table.
And that night, there in the restaurant, my name Ben Grunewald on the name card, right next to Ruth Dearden.
A sudden rage. Big Ben rage. Ruth and I are suddenly married and Ruth is my wife the way Evie was my wife, that fucking weird heterosexual sick pairing of opposite sexes that means I can’t breathe or be myself, not a person anymore who can do as he feels, go where he wants, have autonomy. Married fucking married. Seven years married, spiritually dead is right there again, right in my face, ready to devour me again. No longer a line around me that says this is me, this is my space, and you have to acknowledge this space because it’s sacred and that line has to be there because it took my whole life to set up that line and without it I cannot exist.
And there I am sitting next to Ruth in her favorite restaurant with a grilled piece of stringy chicken breast covered au beurre noir. The mint green freshness of the summer shift against her skin. And I’m every man that I’ve ever hated that fucks over his woman. That I’m even in the position to fuck over my woman pisses me off. Since my wife Evie, since my sister, since my mother, I’ve been fucking diligent to keep my ass out of this crack.
And what a laugh to feel that my fucking sacred autonomy has been compromised. When you’re fucking sick to death and so alone, Christ, you’ll sell your soul for comfort.
Truth. I thought if I could keep telling the truth I’d be okay. You go along, talk about your feelings, trying to say the hard stuff, and you think it’s okay. But really you don’t have a clue. The real truth comes only years and years later, after therapy, after writing, and finally one day your body feels safe enough to feel it.
Either that or truth descends like the hand of an angry god and rips your heart out. Bam, there it is, truth, from out of nowhere, there you are one day getting a massage and then you’ve got his balls in your mouth and in a flash you’re hard and you’re coming and it is suddenly. Surprisingly. Brutally true.
Fucking truth, man.
There’s a price you pay when you help someone the way Ruth helped me. That deep life and death kind of help. Both of you have to pay. What the heroine expects from the man whose life she’s saved. Ruth thinks she’s loved you pure and simple and true, no strings attached until that moment that May night 1999 in her favorite restaurant in front of everybody when you get up from your chair and Buster Bangs leads you out of the restaurant. Finally, she finally realizes you won’t love her back the way she wants you to and no matter how honest and giving a person she is, no matter that she’s promised to love you no matter what, her indignation is righteous and overwhelming.
And Ruth has seen you weak, half-dead, trembling, afraid to come out from under the bed. You end up hating her because you’ve needed her so much.
Fucking resentment, man.
Ruth’s glorious red hair piled high. Her ultra-blue eyes looking into mine. How sad they are. How much she loves me. How long she’s suffered for her love. That lock of red hair hanging behind her ear. How did she get so beautiful. So skinny. Such a presence.
This movie ain’t My Fair Lady. This movie is All About Eve. This movie is Stephen King’s Misery.
Ruth.
Who I see is my mother. Who named me after the priest with soft hands. Me, her boyfriend she dressed in girl’s clothes and had tea with in the afternoon. I was her redemption, the one who would save her.
Who I see is my sister Margaret. The sister who used tell me jump and I’d say how high. The sister, like my mother, who I danced with, cheered up, made myself into the one someone in the world she could love so the world could be a place that she could live in. The photo of Margaret and me on the cement steps. She’s holding me and saying, he’s mine. I’m holding her and saying, I’m all she has. The ugly sister. Not Marilyn Monroe but the clown.
Fuck. The Cockless Man at the Bottom of Hell I thought I was rid of is back again. The Most Miserable Clown of All. A new version of my own fucking self-hatred for the twenty-first century. He’s looking back at me through the eyes of Ruth. Ruth herself, I couldn’t see.
It’s weird. With Hank, with Tony Escobar, the more I loved them, the more I was myself. I guess I thought I could do that with Ruth as well. But Ruth wasn’t a guy. Ruth was a girl and that meant Ruth was my mother, my sister.
My mother, my sister. My mother, my sister.
Fuck me, Dr. Freud.
And with all her loving soulful touch, Ruth could not open the door to my ecstasy.
But a garlic-soaked, rusty-haired hippy could.
Because he was a man.
It’s fucked. I know. Totally fucked. But that’s just the way it is.
18.
Hope
RUTH WASN’T THE ONLY ONE WHO NEEDED TO GET fucked. It had been so long I thought it wasn’t possible anymore. But Praise the Lord, Buster Bangs fucked me good.
As soon as he comes, though, Buster passes out. For a while it feels as if maybe I’m going to return to the world. I lie on his futon, my lungs full of fresh breath, my hand around Buster’s foot. But it doesn’t take long and things are back to being fucked up. Dizzy. Plus Buster’s snoring away.
There’s no way I’m going to spend the night in a strange house with a bull moose who eats garlic for breakfast on a lumpy hard hippy futon.
I’m out of there. Thirty blocks maybe to my house. It’s cool out, so I borrow Buster Bangs’s red wool sweater. My ass is sore, but it feels good to walk.
The moment I unlock my back door I can tell things are different. I turn on the overhead light in the kitchen. It takes my eyes a while to see what it is. All of Ruth’s things are gone. I mean everything, the rocks and sticks
and feathers, the tablecloth and the matching napkins, the salt and pepper shakers, the hot pads, the magnetic words on the refrigerator, the big colorful Mexican plates.
In the bathroom, I turn the overhead light on. Her Lady Speed Stick is gone and her soaps and the dish with her silver jewelry. Her shampoo and soft brush in the shower. Her running shoes and leotard by the bedroom door. In the bedroom, I turn the overhead light on. On the nightstand, her sticks and rocks and feathers are gone. Her fancy Indian bedspread, her foam rubber pillow, the green and blue sheets with the high thread count. Gone. In the dining room, I turn the overhead light on. Her computer gone from the dining room table. In the living room, I turn the overhead light on. The faux-leopardskin throw, the camelskin lamp, gone. In the whole house. Everything. Right down to the roast chicken and the bowl of kale in the refrigerator, gone.
Damn, in that moment there’s so much to feel I don’t think I can feel it all. Such a strange sensation. In that space between the crack my arms make with my chest and just above my nipples, where I might have wings, the spirit in me starts to rise up and out, and when I lift my arms that spirit soars up high to the heavens. For a moment, there’s a heaven above. It’s so clear there’s a heaven above, because what’s coming out from under my armpits is connected to it.
My tired old body jumps up and I kick my heels and I yell out a loud Whoop! Find my Paul Simon CD.
Get out of the pen, Ben.
Just get loony, Gruney.
And get yourself free.
I dance and I twirl and kick up and shake my ass, a full-on dance marathon through the bright rooms. Dance and dance and don’t stop dancing. I fall down more than sit onto the kitchen chair. Turn off the boombox. I’m breathing hard and I lean my elbows on the bare wood of the table.
It’s in that silence I begin to feel something else. In the dish rack by the sink, one blue plate, one fork, the glass with the yellow balloons, the thick white cup with Otis Café on it. My house looks like somebody’s house who doesn’t really live in it.
I Loved You More Page 34