Mean Boy

by Lynn Coady

  The politics were very bad.

  Zeus, as sketched in the poem, was a complete banality and a pointlessly powerful buffoon. Zeus was a thug, we were meant to understand. A dangerous imbecile. So Zeus is lumbering around, happily raping nymphs and whatnot, and the noble but robin-sized Sisyphus endeavours to save a nymph or two. Zeus, “enraged child,” is having none of it and flicks Sisyphus down into Hades “like a fresh-picked snot.”

  “Rolling rock, rock and roll,” recited Jim. “Welcome to America.”

  The fact that Jim was making the poem up as he went along was growing steadily inescapable. It was nothing like what was in Blinding White, with its simple, resonant two-word lines, its three-line stanzas. This hurt to realize.

  “Abandon all hope, in the home of the free.”

  It was so terrible. He was doing a kind of beatnik thing in his recitation, drawing out his vowels, speaking in rhythms as though a bongo and bass were playing in the background.

  “Just roll that rock, and rock that rolllll.”

  Nearby, I could hear hissing. I looked over and saw it was Dekker, speaking under his breath.

  Finish, he was saying. Finish. He was hissing the word without moving his teeth.

  Dekker noticed me looking, returned my gaze and shook his head in a tight, futile sort of gesture. Beneath the scruff on his neck I could see his Adam’s apple bobbing away as if it was trying to escape.

  “Rolllllllll,” Jim was saying, pinwheeling his hands. He was adding hand gestures now.

  One time in class, someone brought in a poem in the shape of a tree. It consisted of nothing but the words rustlingleaves rustlingleaves rustlingleaves. We didn’t know who wrote it, because Jim blacked out the name before passing out copies, which was unusual. Also unusual was that he didn’t give us our standard opportunity to discuss it among ourselves before weighing in with his own opinion.

  Everybody? he said, after reading out loud every single instance of rustlingleaves written on the page. It took about two minutes.

  I’d like you all to pay very close attention to what I’m going to say with regard to what I just read. All right? It isn’t a poem. It doesn’t count. It is insulting.

  But actually, began Claude, the instinctive contrarian.

  No, Jim held up a stop-sign hand. We’re not discussing this, folks. I just want to be very clear, so it doesn’t happen in my class again. If you pass this sort of thing in to me in the future, it’s like not having passed in anything at all. Do we all understand?

  He smiled, scanning the room, face by face. We nodded. Even Claude.

  It’s serious, what we’re doing here, folks, said Jim. If you don’t think so, study business or engineering. Get a job. Get married. Be a productive member of society. Don’t read. Don’t dream. The only trick will be to keep as busy as you can until you die.

  Then Jim ran out of words. He had sort of petered out after repeating rolllll a few times—embellishing it with a variety of circular hand gestures—and now he paused to take stock of the audience. You could see him sort of coming back to himself as he looked around the room. A nasty awareness returned to his eyes and he straightened up and took a deep, restorative breath. This could only mean one thing: that he was going to continue.

  Dekker was beside him as Jim expelled the first word of the next of who-knew-how-many-more stanzas to come. The word was “sucking.” He exhaled it.

  “Sucking—!”

  Dekker’s hand descended on Jim’s shoulder. “Let’s all thank Jim—”

  “Sucking dirt-marrow from fossilized—”

  “For the honour of this evening’s—”

  “I am by no means finished.”

  “—reading … I’m sure we’re all thrilled to have sampled—”

  “I am by no means finished, ladies and gentlemen.”

  “—this excerpt from Jim Arsenault’s new work—”

  “And I do mean gentle men. For indeed I’ve never seen so many gentle men gathered in one place.”

  It was like watching a couple of old vaudevillians comically vying to drown the other performer out—spreading their arms in order to shove the other guy into the background. Dekker would take a step in front of Jim and Jim would duck underneath Dekker’s arm to get in his two cents and then Dekker would have to manoeuvre himself a second time to obliterate the crowd’s view of Jim and Jim would come poking out from over Dekker’s opposite shoulder. The crowd, fortunately, was entirely on Dekker’s side. They clapped with unfeigned enthusiasm the moment Dekker stood before them.

  “Everybody please enjoy the rest of the evening,” appealed Dekker.

  “Oh, Jesus, yes, enjoy yourselves if nothing else,” Jim taunted, resigned now, and leaning against Dekker’s back as though it was a bar. “Eat, drink, and be merry, as the saying goes.”

  The partygoers were backing away like animals toward the kitchen and into the hallway.

  “Car wreck,” someone muttered, brushing past me.

  I still had the parka. I still had Sherrie’s fingers embedded in my arm. I was fantastically hot. “I’ve got to put this stupid parka somewhere,” I said to Sherrie.

  Over by the tree, Jim was waving and calling things to people as they retreated. Dekker had turned to him again and was speaking low. He had his hand clamped onto one of Jim’s arms just as Sherrie had clamped onto mine.

  Sherrie didn’t answer me. Just as I turned to look at her, she moved closer, her head down like Dekker’s, so that I couldn’t see her face. I was about to say something else—I don’t know what, exactly—What do we do now? or Thank God that’s over. But Sherrie was doing something that stopped me from talking. She was pressing her forehead into my shoulder. She had choked up on my arm and now her fingers were digging into my bicep, no longer cushioned by the parka. The muscle wobbled under her grip. It was still stiff from chopping wood.

  This is a rather intimate gesture, a bland, remote sector of my brain observed. It was the part of my brain that understood girls. The knowledge it stored was scarce. Therefore, it operated slowly, mechanistically. Gears grinding with disuse. Perhaps you should say something, it ventured. Perhaps you should say something like, Sherrie, are you all right?

  Meanwhile, stupider parts of my brain were roused by Sherrie’s gesture and clamouring for their say. They sounded a bit like the guys from my high school, or like Chuck Slaughter. These parts of my brain weren’t creaky or cautious at all—they would never let a little thing like a lack of hard data get in the way of their self-expression. They had been yelling at me about stuff since I was twelve years old. They were all mindless enthusiasm and boundless imagination.

  SHE WANTS YOU, MAN.

  She doesn’t “want” you. Girls don’t grab your arm and shove their foreheads into your shoulder when they “want” you. They do something else, I think. Not that.

  But that part of my brain had nowhere near the certainty of the dog-dumb, clamouring parts. It’s exasperating to realize the inside of my head is so similar to the outside world in this respect. That is, the stupid ones make all the noise, get all the attention. The smarter ones are never as sure of themselves, would never presume to make such blanket assertions as SHE WANTS YOU AND NOW IS THE TIME TO MAKE YOUR MOVE; to make such audacious demands as PUT YOUR ARM AROUND HER PUT YOUR ARM AROUND HER PUT YOUR ARM AROUND HER NOW, YOU PUSSY.

  But I couldn’t put my arm around her, because Sherrie had it in a kung fu grip.

  SO PUT YOUR OTHER ARM AROUND HER, PUSSY.

  But if I put my other arm around her—well, that would be pretty bold, wouldn’t it? I’d basically be enveloping Sherrie with my body if I did that. We’d be pressed against one another. Her head would be underneath my chin. Her curly hairs would go up my nose. I might sneeze into her head.

  Sherrie’s grip was loosening. Against my shoulder, she sniffed. It was a huge, wet sniff.

  DO IT DO IT DO IT NOW.

  I inclined my head toward Sherrie’s. My neck cracked as I did. I raised my other
arm, brought it around, placed it on Sherrie’s shoulder, which was warm beneath the scratchy green sweater she had probably put on to be Christmasy.

  THAT’S NOT PUTTING YOUR ARM AROUND HER.

  I patted Sherrie’s shoulder a few times like I was trying to knock a burp out of her. Instead, she sniffed again.

  “Sherrie?” I said. And she backed away, pressed her hands against her eyes and went upstairs.

  GO AFTER HER! the dogs barked, but my head asserted itself. My head said to leave her alone. Sherrie had been crying—she hadn’t been pawing at me in lust. She was crying. For some reason, she was crying.

  I should ask her what is wrong.

  There was something missing from the thought, however. It lacked conviction.

  When she comes downstairs, I’ll ask her what is wrong.

  But no. I was lying—the desire wasn’t there. It was inescapable: I didn’t want to know. I didn’t want to talk about it any more than Sherrie did.

  Because?

  Because there is something going on between Sherrie and Jim.

  No.

  Yep.

  No.

  It was about then that Jim began to throttle the Dekkers’ tree. Trimmings flew. Elves and Santas clattered to the floor. Breakables tinkled—the sound was almost merry. The noise filled my head, crowding out everything else, and for that I was almost grateful. Jim wore a Grinch’s tiny-hearted smile and two eyes made out of coal.

  “What about that?” he was inquiring of Dekker over the din. “Whaddabout that, now, Bryant? Holly jolly! Holly jolly!”

  It was quick, like earthquakes are. A riotous handful of seconds and the world comes crumbling down. Dekker hadn’t moved, but I had. In fact, I moved so fast I stopped Jim. I stopped him by pressing the parka into his arms, heard myself saying, Here y’go. Here y’go, Jim. Like we were still standing genially around the foyer with Schofield, handing out coats and saying our goodbyes. And Jim’s autopilot kicked in. It noticed something being offered and instructed Jim’s hands to unwind themselves from the trunk of the Dekkers’ tree and accept the offering.

  “Thanks, kid.” Jim swept the parka across his shoulders like a cape. He turned to Dekker as if expecting praise.

  “Jim,” said Dekker, in the faint voice of someone punched. “You cunt.”

  Jim and I looked at Dekker in amazement. He looked back at us in amazement. We stood like that—in the amazed and wordless void of the moment. It felt like a kind of temporal hinge, the limbo between spinning a wheel of fortune and watching it tick-tick-tick to a halt.

  But the moment was punctured by laughter. Ruth stood in the doorway to the dining room, laughing the ugliest laugh I’ve ever heard come out of a woman. Horsey and jagged. Mannish, like her hands. At least Chuck Slaughter’s grating laughter the night of Schofield’s reading had been genuine. At least it had the virtue of actual mirth. All we could do was cringe at Ruth’s and wait for it to stop. She didn’t laugh long. Ruth’s was a utilitarian variety of laughter, and not meant to be sustained for a great length of time. It was meant to be used like a whip—in sharp, corrective bursts.

  Jim had taken a couple of steps forward and was standing with his chest puffed like a threatened rooster. Ruth didn’t even look at him. She looked to her husband—grinned with every tooth in that colossal Slavic jaw.

  “So, Bryant?” she called like one child teasing another across a playground. “This is your genius?”

  She flicked her eyes at Jim before returning to the guests in the dining room. Most of the professors and their wives were no doubt from Britain or the States, but they behaved like good Canadian guests, politely averting their gazes.

  “You can clean it up, Obed,” Ruth added as she turned.

  I looked to Dekker instinctively. What was Obed?

  Whatever it was, it turned him red. Dekker whipped his head around, as if looking for something to break. For a second I thought he might go after the tree himself. The last thing I expected him to do was collapse onto the couch, which is what he eventually did. He stretched his arms across the back of it as if relaxing, and looked at the ceiling. I watched his Adam’s apple struggling away.

  “Please take him home, Lawrence.”

  Jim sniffed. “Fuck that,” he rumbled, lurching toward me.

  And once again I found myself lodged in the inferno of Jim’s armpit, being propelled toward the door by the burning force of his weight, and will.

  Then Janet informs us she’s not pregnant, that she’s never been pregnant at all, by point of fact. And so a cheery little Yuletide hell breaks loose, my second of the season.

  22.

  AT FIRST I HAD BEEN MILDLY THRILLED with the situation. Dubious, considering Jim’s behaviour, but still pretty pleased with myself. Todd wasn’t around, Claude wasn’t around. Like Slaughter, neither of them had been willing or able to scuttle their Christmas plans to hang around Timperly for Jim’s reading, and I figured this made me, by default, Loyal Buddy #1 in Jim’s eyes. To whom, after all, had he turned for comfort immediately after his fallout with Dekker? Who else was there but steadfast young Lawrence?

  Jim basically said as much on our walk to the bootleggers to buy more rum.

  “You’re always there, kid. That’s one thing I really love about you. I turn around, and there you are.”

  What I hadn’t bargained for was Jim’s second wind, which hit as soon as we left the bootleggers’. I’d been considering calling a cab, because for the past hour Jim had been staggering and slurring and I was starting to worry he wouldn’t be equal to the walk around the corner to my apartment. But the moment we stepped out into the snow he straightened up, inhaled a dose of winter air, and commenced an immediate rant against Bryant Dekker as if we’d only just left the party. The arm I’d helped him sling around my shoulders just moments ago went from the dead weight of an anaesthetized snake to a muscular, crazily swinging appendage on a wakeful and perversely lucid man.

  “This guy, this guy,” Jim ranted. “True enough, he may be the only man at Westcock worth sitting down and having a drink with. But Jesus Christ, he’s a constant disappointment to me. A constant disappointment, Larry! Claiming to care about poetry. Avowing his desire to forge a new aesthetic, to set the present structure on its ear. It’s horseshit. When push to comes to shove, it’s a pile of shit! Bryant’s a good guy, yes, but if the best you can say of a man is he’s a ‘good guy,’ then, I’m sorry, but that’s no man at all, Larry.”

  I was left with nothing to respond, since the protest I’d been about to make, that Dekker was “not that bad a guy,” now struck me as a bit flaccid. Plus, I was struck dumb at Jim’s vigour. He wasn’t even slurring anymore.

  “Here is a man who has betrayed himself, his country, his background—who has left it all behind, and for what? Tenure?” Jim practically threw up the word. “At Westcock? A dull, unremarkable, medium-sized fish in an insignificant swamp of a pond like this? Little house on Duffrin Street? A pretentious cold fish of a wife? This is what has the guy paralyzed? These are the sumptuous rewards that keep him in his place, that muzzle him in the face of authority, of bourgeois morality? Christmas trees? Christmas trees? Oh yes, a man must have his Christmas trees. Above all else. Before art, before truth, before anything pure. For the love of God, don’t take away my Christmas tree. Don’t dare topple one of those expertly hung adornments. Don’t dare disrupt the facile joke of perfection you see before you …”

  Weirdly, I could see Jim’s side of it. Even in the face of his irrational rage and the fact that I knew he had done Dekker wrong. Christmas trees were pretty insipid—Christmas itself was like that. And Dekker was kind of a wimp, he did have that air of fear and paralysis about him. And even though I understood and sympathized with it—and knew it existed in me as well—it seemed to me that the fact that I was young made it more excusable. I still had time to excavate it, to make myself more like Jim—more fearless, more willing to sacrifice for what Jim called art, truth, anything pure. But Dekker
was middle-aged. He was tenured, he was married, he probably wrote the kind of poetry no one ever knew about. Dekker was locked in. He had locked himself in—that’s what Jim found so contemptible.

  I found I didn’t disagree with him.

  Yet I defended Dekker to a point. I reminded Jim how Dekker had gotten behind him during the tenure dispute, written letters. You stuck your neck out, Bryant. As far as I knew, he was the only faculty member who did.

  “Ah, Larry,” Jim sighed, flopping on my couch. We were in my apartment now, and Jim hadn’t even paused to look around, to comment on the surroundings, in which I took a kind of monastic pride. I’d shoved my typewriter aside and was using the desk for a bar—had set up a glass with ice for Jim and was opening the forty-ouncer we’d procured from the bootleggers. I had been kind of hoping Jim might comment on the typewriter. Its obvious centrality, its place of privilege in the window. But Jim was still going on about Dekker.

  “Yes, he wrote letters, and that’s a huge deal for someone like Bryant, admittedly—going on the record. Which is why I appreciate it so much. But goddamnit, Larry, you can’t have it both ways. You can’t be on both sides of the fence at once, and that’s what Bryant’s always striving for, that’s his goal—the middle, the lukewarm, unremarkable, morally ambiguous middle—and that’s what I can’t help but disrespect. You cannot have it both ways. Pick a side, for fuck’s sake. Pick a side and fight for it.”

  I handed Jim his drink and ducked my head to glance at the kitchen clock. “So,” I said. “You want the couch or the bed? You’re welcome to either.”

  Jim became still and scrutinized me. It was as if he had abruptly sucked in all the rage he’d been flinging around the room a moment before and focused it on me in a single unnerving beam of intensity.

  “Where’s your drink?” he wanted to know.