How can one person trust another if he (or she!) knows that the other has the capacity to love?
Would you, dear readers, stake your life on the supposition that the love might be directed at you, only you, forever and ever?
No!
You would not!
You’re not insane!
So we can imagine now that Rico, being a somewhat bright and sensitive young man, was suspecting he would not, knowing that Rachil did indeed have the capacity to love, stake his own life on the supposition that she would somehow use this capacity to love him.
There at the Parkside Loco, ignoring the painful bites on his ankles and the sting in his penis hole and the tears in his eyes, he came to a conclusion: love itself was violent.
He was not.
He had learned this after he failed to take up arms against his friend when the sneaky rapist—and why not call him by that name?—stole Rico’s love away from him there at the church.
And so being nonviolent, perhaps it followed that Rico himself did not actually love?
Not in the way Rachil did, evidently.
He might, in the end, not have the capacity to love.
There, beside the shrimp buffet, under the twirling fans, he looked as if he thought he might feel this lack of capacity acutely, that it might portend some awful, lonely end to his life.
I could tell he had become fearful of the pain love caused.
Rachil was dangerous.
His feelings for Rachil even more so.
Love was dangerous.
So he was, because of Corn, reconsidering his life.
This is sad, dear readers, yes, but all was not lost.
A young woman strode by in a knit cotton dress that had been hastily pulled over a bathing suit; Rico and I both noticed the damp bikini’s outline.
This bikini held (loosely) a firm pair of buttocks.
I gave out a yip, a signal to Rico to let nature take its course, to allow himself to begin to think of other women, for other women would surely make Rachil jealous and draw her back to him.
Rico was not as unfamiliar with other young women as I then thought, I found out later when so many flocked to his defense.
Each of Rico’s previous girlfriends—three from high school and two from his first year at college—when asked what she saw in him, mentioned, if you can believe it, the allure of his always slightly milky and always slightly out of focus right eye.
Many other women who have not ended up girlfriends of Rico surely find it repulsive.
There is a little dark coloring in the iris and there is copious, unsentimental weeping from the corners.
But Rico had realized something that took me decades to learn: there is no use trying to please everyone.
In fact, the idea of individual taste can be used to one’s advantage.
A girl who wants to think of herself as an individual can be flattered into thinking she is via a deranged eyeball, or, in my case, a veritable cornucopia of physical oddities.
Who knew?
Rico!
Bravo, Rico!
If he did not love, Rico would, he most likely reasoned at this point, rather not be lonely.
The young woman in the wet bikini swanned into her seat, her smooth legs crossing like clouds.
The other fish in the sea swam up into Rico’s (and my) vision.
Ladies.
Gents.
We can now imagine Rico began here considering these other possibilities truly just as soon as the last drip of taupe paint dripped into the sink in the bathroom down below.
You see—I’ve only just now made this connection—language is action!
Rico expelled a demon from within his soul by deploying the totem word in taupe paint with his penis on the mirror there at the Parkside Loco.
These things work, dear readers, though I don’t fault you your skepticism.
Rico was entering a new phase, a secret time I’m sure even now Rachil knows little about, since she was off cavorting with the evil other, Corn, at the time of this transformation.
I’m confident you’ve experienced something akin to a certain feeling Rico felt during this secret time, and so you are well aware that there comes a time when the person you thought you were dies.
A time when you behave in such a way that has no relation to your conception of who you are.
“I would not do this,” you think, “I am not this kind of person,” and yet you are doing it, so the only conclusion is that you are not the person you thought you were.
This can be quite crushing.
It’s called in various circles “becoming an adult” and/or “growing up” and/or “having a psychotic episode.”
I admit I held this particular crisis at bay for longer than anyone could have reasonably expected, which may have been the reason it was so traumatic when it did arrive for me.
I’m not sure.
When I was old enough to know better, years after the Football Incident and the Parissa Disaster, I found myself still hanging around with this couple of fellow outcasts, Daniel and Emmett.
I mistakenly thought that my status as an outsider, as a reject from the wretched society of young yes-men and frigid debutantes, signaled some flaw in me, so I took up with whomever I could, an error I’ve made only rarely in the years hence.
These lonely hooligans—Emmett with his pathetic downy mustache and Daniel with his bog-like complexion—would lounge about Daniel’s mother’s home on afternoons while our peers were performing their afterschool athletic feats and self-servicing “civic” duties.
This dank duo had other plans.
They would concoct various schemes to amuse and challenge themselves while laying about Daniel’s den, then, as the sun went down, set out to spread their filth.
How so?
One example: they would rummage through the trash of the town’s one illicit newsstand in hopes of finding discarded scraps of titillating images—a half breast here, a pudenda there—and then they would shove these scraps into the mail slots of priggish girls’ homes.
Also: they would order furniture C.O.D. to the science teacher’s house, stretch plastic wrap across a busy intersection or two to see what kind of chaos they could stir up, make prank phone calls to grunt obscene noises at elderly women.
That kind of thing.
These two had regaled me some history-class afternoon with tales of their derring-do, and I suppose I tried to impress them with an offering of my own.
“That’s nothing,” I said, idly sharpening a pencil with my pocketknife. “If you really want to do something fun . . .”
And then I told them of an idea I had nurtured since a late-night drive from my Meema’s home when I was a five-year-old.
The idea was this:
To cut a piece of cardboard into a rough approximation of a midsized mammal—a raccoon, a cat, a dog, or opossum.
Then, paint this approximation black on both sides.
Cut four almond-shaped eyes from a sheet of aluminum foil and affix these—two to a side—to the creature’s head.
Create some kind of stand for the creature so it will rest on its own, upright.
Then, after the sun has gone down, place this creature in the middle of a road, preferably a winding, dark road with a moderate amount of traffic—not so much, of course, that you would be spotted putting it out, but enough that you wouldn’t have to wait hours for a “victim.”
Finally, wait in the nearby bushes for the aluminum eyes to reflect the headlights of an oncoming vehicle.
The driver will have to then decide if he (or she) is prepared to take a life for his (or her) ease of transportation.
Genius!
Needless to say, Emmett and Daniel nearly burst at the seams in fits of spittley cackles at the plot.
I was once again accepted, though I admit I felt a tickle of shame in my seated region.
Why did I try to impress these buffoons?
Regardless, I was br
eathless for the bell, and, as soon as it rang, we sprinted to Daniel’s house.
Drunk on their acceptance, I tried to smile through the rest of the afternoon.
The den smelled of cabbage and crock-pot, feet and some peculiar boy rankness that I had only mild whiffs of at home.
Daniel’s older brother Frank lay half-dead in an armchair, shirt off, conspicuous hairs.
He seemed partially disabled, slumped behind us, watching TV with a dead face.
He sent a chill through my being.
I often think of him now as a kind of cautionary tale when I find myself descending into sloth, idly clicking through photos of young women.
When night fell—early in a country January: 4:45PM—we set out through the snow with our “cat.”
With no little difficulty, we established our craft in the center of the road, just before a patch of ice, and then we scurried into the ditch.
I watched the clouds of our breath expanding out into the night air at intervals.
No one spoke.
We tensed as one when we heard the high idle of some town car making its way up the hill, when, out of the darkness, its headlights crested the hill.
No breath.
Need I go on?
Must you torture me with this memory, you infernal sadists?
Sometimes I wonder, dear readers, if it might be possible for you to ease your demands on me.
It’s as if a plastic bag is around my face, and you are behind me, slowly twisting the handles in your grip until no air can get through.
Let me just say that the ruse worked better than I could have ever hoped.
Isn’t that enough to satisfy your morbidity?
Do you require that I detail the squalling tires, the flash of brake lights, the horrible metallic crunch that chased us through the underbrush, horrified at our power?
I didn’t know then what would happen.
How could I have known?
I wanted . . . well, I’m not sure what I wanted, but it’s over now. I am an adult.
No matter.
It’s in the past.
Why do I bring it up?
Because I know that a similar crisis doubtlessly occurred on a certain night for Rico.
The secret night.
Yes!
I will get to it soon enough, but we must, I realize, before then, talk about the other fish in the sea, namely Vita, that crafty minx!
We must also watch out for her in her comment-stream manifestations even to this day!
CHAPTER 14
(SAXAPHONE)
(HIGH HAT)
(MORE SAXAPHONE)
Rico—distraught, adrift—thought that perhaps he would go to Peru.
The “real” had suddenly become elusive.
Yes, he spent hours in a ripe gym and a few days a week “waiting tables,” time spent in the midst of sweat, saliva, and excrement, but I could see that it had all begun to feel no different from sitting at his desk with a Stone Age “rolodex” in some municipal office.
Clarity of purpose.
He had lost it.
Corn, on the other hand, knew exactly what he wanted.
He now spent all of his time at Rachil’s apartment doing unspeakable acts I still can’t quite muster the courage to imagine, so the church sat barren and empty most nights, with only Rico sadly tapping on a snare drum, or idly poking at a TV dinner.
It was a sad scene, so it’s no surprise that a neighbor, perhaps that rabble-rouser Tater, somehow convinced Rico to have a party, and though he clearly was in no mood for it, one Friday I saw the church gussied up with “Christmas” lights, a keg. I heard some kind of musical travesty warming up inside.
A party.
Outside, “neighborhood” folks milled about with the sniveling undergrads.
At first, I feared my cover would be blown as I made my way up the drive, but I greeted Tater and Nanez (I believe we had become friends), handed off my “spare” bottle of gin, and then stood sentinel at the keg (the “tap man,” coveted position!).
I soon spied poor Rico slumped down on a rusted white aluminum bench the size of a small car that had been delivered from God knows where into the yard.
Jagged pieces of perforated metal hung ragged from the seat, and Rico began running his fingers along the edge.
Slowly.
While men in bandannas and overalls waved tea sticks in the air and heckled one another, Rico clenched his teeth in what seemed to be anticipation of his skin catching a stray piece of bench.
I imagined it would be a triangular piece that would catch his skin, pulling the layers one by one until they loosed a stream of blood, but as his fingers came to the bench edge the disturbed metal settled back into the intended form of the seat, for there was no blood, no tearing.
His hand was intact.
Does a broken chair still contain the essential elements of chairness?
Once a person can no longer sit in it or on it, does it become something else?
It would be called a “broken chair,” of course, gaining a modifier and thus complications.
Heart.
Broken heart.
Man.
Married man.
Cuckolded man.
Bereft sad sack.
Is torn skin still skin?
Rico settled back onto the bench, quite upright but not apparently uncomfortably so, and crossed his right leg over his left (what I like to call the French fashion).
His foot bounced along to the rhythm of the band tuning up inside.
In front of him on the gravel drive: a sunburned man with a sunburned child on his shoulders bobbed in time to the beat pouring out from the church.
Where did this man and his child come from?
Who brings a child to a keg party?
This neighborhood continued to baffle me.
“Do you like dancing, buddy?” the man said, eyes turned up to the child.
The child, arms sunk by his sides, on the man’s shoulders but with no sense of elation, said nothing.
“Do you like dancing, buddy?” the dad asked again, bobbing faster.
“Everybody dances,” the child related glumly, shooting a petulant look, a monumental frown, at Rico, who—finally!—smiled.
The myth of childhood.
Rico surely had begun to know its folly.
This sad little not-dancing child confirmed it.
Wordsworth was an idiot.
Rico took out a cigarette and rolled it between his fingers.
The sun had come down completely, and the cicadas had just begun to pulse.
The mosquitoes.
Maybe, Rico seemed to be thinking, he should just let life take him.
Give in and let whatever would come to him come.
During an argument over which resident had dish duty one night at the church, Corn had patronizingly told Rico that he had no talent for idleness.
“Not a flaw!” Rico had said (true).
Since he was little, Rico said, he woke up every morning with the word “Go” rising steadily out of his consciousness until at last he opened his eyes with it at full volume: “GO!”
But it seemed he had now begun to ask, “Go where?” He could not quite formulate the proper answer, and so here he sat on an aluminum bench trying to mutilate his hands.
Perhaps it was time.
I started to make my way over to him, taking a nip of gin for courage.
His foot jogged at the end of his crossed legs, his fingers tapped at the back of the bench, and anyone watching closely would see that he was licking his lips—one pass over the top with his tongue, then bottom lip over the top, top over the bottom—every few seconds.
The crisis was happening.
But then a voice: “Ugh, it’s unpleasant out here. Are you getting eaten alive? Move over.”
It was not time!
A slightly plump young woman, a beer in her hand, plopped down on the bench next to Rico, swept her hair up from her n
eck, and set the floppy mass on top of her head with a sigh.
I paused, swerved back behind the keg, hid.
I took up the tap again but kept an eye on Rico and this plump one, Vita.
I appeared to be at my post only to administer the beer to the growing throng of undergrads trickling in through the weeds, but I was, in fact, taking note.
I saw Rico’s eyes flick down and spot the armpit stubble and white clumps of deodorant just above the edge of this woman’s bra.
Women were always threatening to burst their self-imposed bonds with hair and sweat and blood!
The potential energy surely thrilled him, just as it did me.
“Why am I even at this lame thing?” she said.
She tilted her head back and stuck a fat tongue out of the side of her mouth, then wrinkled her nose in an attempt to right her listing cat’s-eye glasses.
“Oh right,” she sighed, “I have a job.”
The More You Ignore Me Page 12