Who, Me?

by Who, Me- A Memoir (retail) (epub)

  “Not bad!” Lucia crowed as she munched into the hamburger, “Better than usual.”

  My usual “stew,” vegetables and a little chicken or steak in a frying pan with a tight lid on it, sitting on the stove on low for hours, more soup than “stew.”

  “And then afterwards, a little . . .”

  “A little what?”

  “Action.”

  “What kind of action?”

  “You know; come on . . .”

  “But you don’t know how to—”

  “I’ve just taken a mini-course,” pulling a jar of cold cream that I’d bought at the drug store on the way home out of my pocket.

  “But I’m not in the—”

  “Mood? I’ll take care of that.”

  I put on a tape of Germaine Taillefaire, piano, low, background music. Got her sex things out of her dresser: garter belt, black silk stockings, high step-into black suede heels, handed them to her, and she reluctantly went into the john. Came out all dressed for sex, even had done some minor miracles with her eyebrows, eyes.

  I stripped down, put on a robe, and we went into the bedroom.

  Started working on her clitoris like I was trying to bring a cardiac arrest case back to life, started sucking on her nipples, languorous, relaxed, gentle, as her hand reached over between my legs and she found me all ready to go. Never huge, never elephantine or bull-mooseish, but adequate.

  “Bist du fertig?” (Are you ready?) I asked after fifteen minutes.

  She didn’t seem really too ready, although what did I know about readiness?

  “Mais o menos . . .” (More or less.)

  Waited another five minutes, checking with the clock radio next to the bed. Mais cinco minutos. (Five minutes more).

  She began to get a little squirmy and wormy, boa-constricting around a bit, kind of belly-dancing around in the bed.

  It was time to drop the bomb.

  Hiroshima here I come.

  Greased up the labia majorum, went into the vagina itself, everything seeming open, ready, like a revolving door.

  Eins, zwei, drei.

  Got onto of her, managed to get it in.

  The Virgin had spread her mantle over me, the Holy Spirit was dovetailing it around the room, Jesus was on His throne eating matzahs and drinking kosher wine, God the Father, on still a larger throne, was up in the sky smiling, thinking to Himself The race shall not die out, all my tricks and gadgets are working at last, the Foxes shall continue on until the end of time.

  Eins, zwei, drei, vier . . . (One, two, three four.)

  Finished, an ejaculation that whispered “Beatific Vision” in my ear, feeling that this was the best it could ever get on this planet, this was the utmost pleasure I could ever feel before I died and floated up into Eternity.

  “Wonderful!!! Wunderbar!!!”

  “Y yo? Ainda no he conseguido . . .” (And me? I still haven’t . . .)

  “Still haven’t what?” I asked ignorantly/innocently.

  “Toca-me mas!” (Touch me more!)

  So I touched her more.

  The dead-fish smell still in the air. But I’d decided to ignore it. Even more: enjoy it. This was life, reproduction, the smells of procreation, not something to be ignored, but to be embraced.

  More clitoris, more vagina, massage, massage, massage . . .

  Suddenly she started squealing, “Oh, oh, oh,

  oh . . .”

  Was “oh, oh, oh, oh” Spanish or English or The Universal Language, Sanskrit beginning at the headwaters of language and filtering down into our humble bed?

  Then she was finished, both of us happy, in each other’s arms for a few moments. There wasn’t a lot of time spent in each other’s arms, she was finishing her course-work, I was doing my dissertation, always papers to grade, more to read, more to write.

  But for a moment, anyhow, we were like gente/ people.

  Nine months later, to the day, Hugh B. Fox III was born.

  The doctor over at the university hospital had given Little Mimi too much of something and she’d flipped out entirely.

  The doctor came out of the delivery room all sweaty and bothered, tortured.

  “Professor Fox. Your wife was a bit . . . overly agitated and I gave her something to settle her nerves, so to speak. Now she’s hysterical, screaming in Spanish, twisting all over the table. I’m afraid she might hurt herself. Do you speak Spanish?”

  “But of course—”

  “Well, I wonder if you could come in and calm the woman down . . .”

  And he led me into the dress-up/wash-up room, instructed me to wash my hands, and put on a white gown plus a mask. I was going to complain that so much preparation was a bit exaggerated, but went along with it, felt like Dr. Fox myself when I came into the delivery room.

  There she was stretched out on the delivery table with her feet up in these stirrups, her legs spread apart, everything ready for our first little monkey to emerge into the light of life. Twisting around crazily in spite of being strapped down on the table. Screaming “No lo hicieron asi la primera vez . . . no lo hicieron asi la primera vez . . .”

  “Do you understand her?”

  “But of course.”

  “What is she saying?”

  “She’s saying ‘This isn’t the way they did it the first time.’”

  “The first time? I thought this was her—your—first baby.”

  “Well, so did I.”

  I stood next to the table, stroked her forehead, “Calmate, hija . . . queda tranquila. Recuerda el Buddha: tranquilidad . . . calma, calma, calma . . .” (Calm down, my daughter . . . stay tranquil. Remember Budda: tranquility . . . calm, calm, calm . . .)

  A minute, two minutes . . . within five minutes she’d stopped twisting around, eyes up on the ceiling, probably seeing Buddha up there looking down on her with saintly calm.

  Within fifteen minutes more, Hugh B. Fox III was born, a big bloody strapping boy with a voice like a flock of screaming crows.

  Only what was all that about, that business about them not having done it the same way the first time. What first time?

  She’d been at Washington University in St. Louis for her M.A. before she’d come to the University of Illinois, had been engaged, that much she had confessed. But another child? Had she had a baby down there? Did she know how to fuck but was just playing La Innocente?

  The baby did fine, I forgot about other possible babies. And then the following summer, after classes were over, we made a trip down to Lima and a bit more of the truth came out.

  We stayed with Mimi’s brother, Manuel, the architect in an old termite-ridden house, which I thought was a bit ironic, him being an architect and all.

  A nice guy though, all this abundance of black hair and beard. His wife, Zoila, a real beauty; a perfect mixture of Indian (mother) and Italian (father).

  Mimi’s maternal grandmother was dying, and one day we went over to her Uncle Mario’s house to seeing the dying woman.

  Uncle Mario was very Indian-looking, short, dark and very much in the bucks (or soles, the official Peruvian currency...sol as in “sun”). His wife, Sarah, reminded me of my mother a little, all beauty-parlored hair and cute little shoes, opulent earrings, clicky-click, clackity-clack.

  “Hugo, que bueno verte.” (Hugo, how good to see you.)

  Always feeling welcomed by everyone like a hero coming home from the (successful) wars.

  Ushered into the room where the grandmother was lying in her deathbed.

  In this huge bed, a long white comforter reaching up to her chin, her hands like claws clutching around the top of the comforter, her face dark, eyes black, a little white cap tied under her chin. She looked like something right out of the Arabian Nights, like an ancient Arabian witch who had finally reached the end of the line.

  When I came in, escorted by Uncle Mario, her little rat eyes got very alert.

  “Pero quien es?” (But who’s that?)

  “El marido de Mimi,” (Mimi’s husband,) U
ncle Mario volunteered.

  “El americano?” (The American?) frantically motioning for me to approach her, and when I was next to the bed getting all intense, incandescent, “Quiero decirte una cosa muy importante. Cuando Mimi fue a San Luis, creció, creció,creció . . .” (When Lucia went to Saint Louis, she grew, grew, grew..) holding her hands out over her covers, over her stomach.

  I didn’t get it, turned to Uncle Mario.

  “No entiendo . . . creció, creció, creció . . .?” (I don’t understand . . . grew, grew, grew . . .?)

  Uncle Mario suddenly getting wild himself, pissed like I never saw anyone else get pissed, grabbing me by the arm and pulling me out of the room.

  “diabólica! (Diabolical old crazy!) Olvida todo . . . ni estabamos aqui, nunca!” (Forget everything . . . we weren’t even here ever!)

  We weren’t even here? Ever?

  Mimi went to Saint Louis and grew and grew and grew?

  Suddenly it hit me. “This wasn’t the way they did it the first time?” she went to Saint Louis and her belly grew. Of course, she’d gotten pregnant in Saint Louis, had a baby.

  Only what was the big secret?

  Father O’Rouke was 100% right: if she’s so deftly lied about her age, you couldn’t trust anything she said about anything.

  And I’d broken up with Mary Joan because she’d confessed a little summer affair on Cape Cod before she’d gotten engaged to me. She was just the soul of honesty . . . and here I was, married to the soul of deception.

  Uncle Mario took me into the living room, went off with Aunt Sarah into the bedroom, Mimi’s brother Manuel (Mañuco) going with them, lots of mumbling; secret stuff.

  I sat down with Mimi.

  “What happened?” she asked.

  “Nothing. I don’t know. Your grandmother said something that got Mario mad . . . I don’t know . . .”

  Sitting back in a plush leather chair.

  Nice living room. All sorts of colonial and Indian things all over the walls, masks, ceramic flutes, all the furniture very antiqueish looking. We were back in Peru on the edge of the Conquest when Indian and Spanish merged into a whole new syncretic style. Very nice.

  I could be sneaky myself. Why ruin my whole trip? I played innocente, like I didn’t have a hint as to what was going on, and Mario came back into the living room all reconciliatory smiles, and out we went to the best Chinese restaurant I’d ever gone to, a Chifa, Miraflores.

  Stuffed shrimp like I’d never eaten before.

  “Mañana tenemos que ir a un lugar donde todo la gente lucha para comer el maximo de pollo frito que pueden comer. Es como una guerra para ver quien come mas . . .” (Tomorrow we have to go to a place where everyone fights to eat the most chicken they can eat. It’s like a war to see who eats the most . . .)

  So I had dumped Mary Joan in Chicago because she was confessionally honest, and married the biggest liar in the world.

  Years later, things would still pop up, even after I’d finished my Ph.D. and gotten a job at Loyola University (now Loyola-Marymount) in Los Angeles, taught there for ten years and then got a job at Michigan State University in East Lansing, Michigan (where I taught for 34 years), little truths about Mimi’s past would pop up.

  Like the day in East Lansing when I went and got the mail before she did (she usually got it first, made a point of getting it first) and discovered a letter from Detroit addressed to her . . . from a Rolando Espinosa.

  Rolando Espinosa? Detroit?

  I went upstairs where she was working on a paper on Sor Juana de la Cruz on her little electric typewriter.

  “What’s this about? Who’s Rolando Espinosa in Detroit?”

  I knew all of her relatives everywhere, had been going down to Peru for more than a decade now, at least once a year, knew everyone in the family.

  She took the envelope, glanced at it disdainfully, and put it into the top drawer of her desk.

  “Que te importa?” (What’s it to you?)

  “It’s plenty to me, man. What am I married, to I Love a Mystery? Who’s Rolando Espinosa.”

  “Olvidalo, estoy trabajando.” (Forget it, I’m working.)

  “‘Forget it, I’m working,’ my ass.”

  Going down to the kitchen and coming back with a gigantic carving knife, the one I used every night to carve the ham or beef that I’d always cook simmered in a wonderland of broccoli, red cabbage, red peppers, parsley, celery.

  Put it against her neck.

  “You want to leave this room alive then tell me who Rolando Espinosa is!”

  “Tu eres un ‘chicken,’ no puedes matar a ninguen.” (You’re a chicken, you can’t kill anyone.)

  I put the edge of the knife on her throat, just on the edge of cutting into the skin.

  “That’s what you think, asshole.”

  My voice solemn, deadly, funereal.

  It worked.

  “OK, I’ll tell you . . . Rolando is my brother.”

  “Brother? I know all your brothers.”

  “Not Rolando. My father didn’t live in Lima with my mother for years and years before he died. He lived up in the mountains near Cuzco with this Indian woman, a whole other family I barely knew. Now one of them lives in Detroit.”

  So that was why, when her father had a ruptured gallbladder and died just before our marriage, he hadn’t been saved. Nobody died from ruptured gallbladders anymore, not since antibiotics. But up in Cuzco, up in the Andes, that was another matter, wasn’t it?

  I took the knife away from her throat. A little wound on her neck. No blood. Just a little line where the knife had touched the skin.

  “I don’t understand you. Why not just always tell the truth? Your age. Your baby in Saint Louis. Whatever your father did or didn’t do in relation to your mother: why lie, lie, lie?”

  “Get out! I told you what you had to know. Now get out. Out! Out! Out! Or I’m calling the police.”

  So I got out, went downstairs, took the dog out for a walk through our almost plush, certainly fancy neighborhood. All little brick bungalows, arts and craftsy, half-timbered Tudors, even a few neo-colonials with their big white Doric columns.

  We’d had three kids, Hughie, born at the University of Illinois, then Cecilia, who I made a point of getting born in Hollywood so she could always say all her life, “I was born in Hollywood,” and then Marcella, the strangest of all: totally blonde, blue eyes, an exact replica of me.

  Even the doctor had been surprised.

  Mimi, after all, looked like the Last of the Incas.

  But the story was that she had a little Hungarian in her background, a teaspoon’s worth of Hungarian in there mixed with all the pots full of Amerindian and Hispanic stock.

  But when Marcella was born she said “That’s it. No more for me.”

  “No more what?”

  “No more kids, no more sex.”

  “But you can take pills.”

  “No pills for me. There’s plenty of sex out there on the street.”

  Plenty of sex out there on the street?

  I began to get very strange.

  Here I was at this Catholic university, Jesuits all over the place in their black robes, all kinds of nuns for students (especially for summer school), I’d gone to Mass and Communion most of my life, considered myself a kind of later day St. Augustine, San Juan de la Cruz . . . but now, all of a sudden the doors to sexual fulfillment were closed; what next?

  We had this house right next to the Los Angeles International Airport. Planes all night and all day.

  Small house. So I converted the garage into a bedroom. Not much of a “conversion.” Painted the walls, nailed the doors shut and put some boards around the edges, got a nice big bed and little dresser, a little table next to the bed for a piss pot.

  Only I couldn’t sleep.

  Strange things began to rise up inside me.

  There was another ME inside who wanted out.

  Legs. My legs wanted tights. Remembrances of ballet-days . . .

&nb
sp; My head wanted wigs.

  Nightmares about my mother’s closets and dresser drawers: bras and garter belts, all her high heels and black silk stockings . . .

  I remember the day I was over in Inglewood, the next little area next to Westchester where I lived, I was walking around without anything in particular in mind, when I saw this FINAL LIQUIDATION sign in a woman’s shoe store, went in to look around. I saw a pair of black suede shoes on one of the racks. Size ten. OK. The kind of shoes that Dolores Volini used to wear. Classy-sexy, not cheap whore.

  60% off.

  OK.

  Why not?

  It was almost like I was in a trance, following the dictates of my Id rather than my Superego; all impulse, no reasoning, nothing rational . . .

  Bought the shoes, then a pair of stockings, the largest that they had.

  Then, instead of going home with my strangely illicit, “sinful,” insane stuff, I went over to my office at the university, closed the door, closed the blinds, took off my pants, pulled on the stockings, then the shoes, and felt oddly at home, more myself than I had ever felt before.

  Too much hair on my legs, but I took care of that that night. Bought a big long mirror and put it in my garage bedroom, and slowly bought bras, pantyhose, tights, dresses. Out on Hollywood Boulevard one night, long blonde wig, then makeup, pancake base, eye pencils, lipstick, started put it all together.

  Not bad, this tall, thin blonde suddenly appearing in my mirror.

  Always a bit auto-erotic anyhow. Only child, right? That’s what happens to you when it’s just you, you, you fulltime . . .

  I used to go downtown to the movies with the kids a lot, did all my shopping at the central market downtown, and discovered that Main Street in downtown Los Angeles was a sin street, porn places, strip bars, these porn places you’d walk into and go into a booth, put money into a slot and turn on a porn video and masturbate.

  At nights, when I couldn’t sleep, I began to get up and go downtown, began to wear my tights and bras and black lace panties under my pants, always dressed totally in black, black suede boots, black corduroy pants, black shirt and jacket, always wore sunglasses, no one bothered me even when I’d park on streets down in the warehouse district.