by Lucy Ives
“Likewise,” Harry mutters.
Harry wonders exactly whose cum Beans is meant to be guzzling—is it, for example, the cum also contained in Harry’s “dumpster,” or is it more diversely sourced?—but decides he will reserve this question for a later juncture. He puts the poetry facedown on the floor under his seat, along with the mini-tape.
He and Loudermilk touch cans.
“By the way, so I went to the bank, dude?” Loudermilk takes out his wallet. “And I was thinking, after expenses, I give you like five hundred, first of the month? How’s that?”
Harry slowly nods.
Loudermilk extracts a roll of twenties. “God, did I mention I fucking love this fellowship? Jesus Christ!” Here Loudermilk cannot resist a brief imitation of Jim Carrey in 1994’s The Mask. “‘Somebody stop me!’ Anyway, don’t spend it all in one place, yo.” He peels a random portion off the roll and drops it in Harry’s lap.
Harry drags himself out of his chair and goes into his room and, without counting, hides all but two of the bills in a sock. “By the way,” he asks, returning, “do you know what vivisepulture means?”
“That’s an actual word?”
“Yup.”
“Amazing! He is a genius.”
Harry’s adolescence included an after-school program at a Catholic school. He knows some Latin. “Live burial,” he says.
Loudermilk employs an approximation of a British accent. “Burying alive, you say?”
Harry nods.
“He’s a nice young chap, the Beans!”
Harry doesn’t think this is particularly funny.
Loudermilk lets the accent drop. “So, tonight, right, I was thinking, if you’re not too busy, which, let me check, yeah, you’re probably not, we should head over to le bar.”
Harry doesn’t say anything.
“With the Seminars people. Show some face.”
Harry informs Loudermilk that from now on maybe he should be satisfied with his own face.
Loudermilk is like, “But, dude. I pretty much am?”
“You know what I mean.”
“I just happen to think, dearest Harrison, that we should maybe consider trying to, like, you know, mix a little, go with the flow? Like make you one of the gang? I think it will be good, at the very least, for yours truly’s poésie.”
This annoys Harry, who says that he hopes that he didn’t spend half the morning today listening to the reverberating labors of Loudermilk’s sphincter for nothing. He tells Loudermilk that in truth he’s pretty flowed.
“Dude,” Loudermilk intones with mock solemnity, “I’m so impressed you remembered. Did I not totally finesse that?”
Harry is helping himself to another beer. “I’m still traumatized.”
Loudermilk continues, “Anyway! You need to see what I’m—what we’re—up against. I don’t think it’s exactly gonna work, like, otherwise.”
Harry isn’t sure what Loudermilk is referring to.
“This! Everything! I need you to really feel it, live it, be it, eat it, drink it! OK?”
Harry gulps beer. Sometimes Loudermilk is insufferable.
Loudermilk grins. He indicates his own face and torso. “I mean this. This! This fucking hard body, dude. This face. This physical being! You have to write the poems that, like, emerge, no, explode from the pen of this beautiful man. The artists don’t make art, man—the art makes itself through us. I’m not the doer, you know? I’m just along for the ride. It’s like you always said about the power of literature, like you can just fall into a book. We’ve got to get into that, like, harness it for real. We really have to hone our act. You and I, we’re gonna take over poetry! My face, your brains. My ideas, your, um, spirit or whatever. If it’s just you hermitting out in here, sniffing your stale jizz rags and contemplating your fart crumbs, that’s not really gonna happen, if you catch my drift. Those are not the true immortal themes, bro! Plus, you, for once in your existence, need to have a social life. Let’s win the war on mediocre mashing at least one geek lust object at a time.”
There’s a weird logic.
“Have another beer and stop with the I’m-pining-away-for-my-dorm-at-clown-college look,” Loudermilk advises. “I’m actually trying to help you. By the way, I just remembered something.”
Harry would like to know what this something is.
“OK, so, maybe you can tell me. What’s the difference between a vitamin and a hormone?”
Harry says nothing.
“Dude, as in, you can’t hear a vitamin?”
Thirteen
This Is a Pipe
Loudermilk and Harry wander over to a place called the Common Lot, one block off the main boulevard dedicated to the inculcation of a new generation with the time-honored practice of alcoholism. Happy hour in the college town is in full effect. Girls stagger around in nothing but underwear: satin strings and miniature triangles. Males are wearing shirts that read CO-ED NAKED PANTIES ’03. They are falling down and dragging females with them.
Loudermilk is appreciative, but mainly he just steps stiffly around bodies. He seems preoccupied, keeping his eyes fixed in front of him. A team of three young women in tasseled pasties surround Loudermilk, but he brushes them off. Harry is wasted from the five beers he shot-gunned before they left.
They enter the Common Lot. Most of what is inside the bar is painted black, and it is a long, narrow establishment. Adding character of a kind is a female mannequin wrapped in dusty ACE bandages to resemble a mummy. She is propped in a corner behind the bar. There is a HELLO MY NAME IS sticker affixed to her left breast; the sticker has been completed with LUSCIOUS, in cramped Sharpie. The only other decorative accent is a television screen above Luscious showing the evening news: a farmer in a local field whose comb-over a breeze lazily perturbs as he speaks into a microphone. The name MONSANTO appears in the upper right-hand corner of the screen. Harry wonders if he should look this up later.
They score a booth and Loudermilk orders lagers. “Something gentle,” he comments.
The drinks come. Harry sips. Harry’s head spins.
Harry knows what to expect of himself in situations like this. He knows that the sugar from the beer will make him hyper. He knows he will want to speak. He knows he may or may not be able to stop himself from speaking to strangers when the impulse strikes. He knows that if he does speak, he’ll have to drink harder to forget what just happened. He knows that the harder he drinks to forget what just happened, the more he’ll want to say stuff and the worse it’s going to sound. So it is going to be bad tonight, probably very.
Loudermilk is asking Harry if Harry wants another.
Harry nods. Harry swills lager.
Additional people climb into the booth. These must be Loudermilk’s classmates. Harry has been given a sidecar containing Jäger and currently the shot glass is empty.
Harry squints at the unfamiliar faces of Loudermilk’s cohort. These are two females and a male. One of the females has glasses and the other a T-shirt advertising the doubtful sobriquet WEAPON OF MASS AFFECTION. The one with glasses will not stop talking, which is OK by Harry, totally fucking great. Let her take care of things for the moment! There is also this guy, who is sitting opposite Loudermilk, and the guy has his legs sticking out the side of the booth, straight out, and people keep almost tripping or having to walk around the guy’s legs and it’s obviously not a good idea, but the guy does not ever move the legs. The guy is bald, bearded, and weirdly he resembles, like, a giant baby? Harry is having difficulty understanding this. It seems like the guy can’t decide whether to stare at Harry or at Loudermilk. The guy keeps going back and forth. Harry suddenly really wants to help this poor guy out.
The glasses person is saying something now about how she and her boyfriend enjoy driving around the state. She says they enjoy looking at things that are authentic.
“You,” Harry suddenly starts to say, “you just want to look at him, right?” The words come out, if Harry himself can be any judge,
pretty slurred and battered.
The glasses person ends her disquisition.
Harry is so drunk he can’t remember what he’s just said. Anyway, has he just said something? Probably not. He decides it’s crucial to point at the bald guy’s fetal face to ensure his overture is properly received. “You like him?”
“What?” The infant frowns. The infant is sipping something clear with ice in it that is probably water.
“Ha ha ha! I’m saying”—Harry bobs his head sympathetically—“you know and whatever and stuff? He’s interesting guy?”
It’s not evident where Loudermilk is in all this.
Harry converts the pointing hand to an open palm. He keeps this palm bobbing in the air. For some reason he says, not without a certain optimism, “Yeah?”
“What?” This is the baby man again.
The infinitesimal sobering that has gone on during the course of Harry’s outburst allows one corner of Harry’s brain to function. Realization dawns. He wants to destroy himself.
Now Loudermilk is here, dragging Harry out of the booth. Loudermilk is like, “That’s such a good story, Maya!”
Maya, the glasses person, is saying something about how Loudermilk should really come with them on one of their jaunts sometime. It sounds a little like she is saying that Loudermilk should really come on her face sometime, but Harry is too preoccupied by his own catastrophic flaws to pay much attention.
Loudermilk is hustling Harry out. “That was hilarious!”
Harry is abruptly, dramatically sober.
“You’re a comedic genius, dude.” Loudermilk is slightly out of breath. Screams of inebriated college students can be heard a block over. “You know who that was?”
Harry doesn’t care.
“Fucking vivisepulture? Dude is a new breed of fuck.”
Harry doesn’t say anything.
“When are you going to get over yourself? Trust me, it was fine. You can say whatever you want to these summa cum laude nerf herders. Life to them is one eternal underwater tea party. Anyways, I’m starving. Let’s get a slice.”
Harry says maybe he would prefer home. He doesn’t feel so good.
Loudermilk surveys the bacchanal that surrounds them. “Harry, when are you going to realize nobody fucking feels good?”
Fourteen
This Is Not a Pipe
But it doesn’t end.
The reason it doesn’t end is that there is, outside the Common Lot, on one of Crete’s municipal benches, a person sitting cross-legged smoking a cigarette. This person raises one of her bare arms and begins to wave. “Hey-ey!” she yells.
The person gets up and jogs over. “It’s me!” the person announces. She comes to a standstill before Loudermilk.
Harry looks Lizzie over. Tonight she is only subtly goth, veering toward neo-hippie.
“Hiya,” says Loudermilk.
“At least you’re willing to say hello.”
“Been a long day,” Loudermilk says.
“Where ya goin’?”
“Somewhere.”
“Where’s that?”
“Have you ever heard,” Loudermilk airily brings about, “of something called a hint?”
“You’re totally welcome and it’s so not a problem! I’d love to hang out.” Lizzie releases a perfect smoke ring.
“Sorry, we’re indisposed.”
“Come on, please? You guys seem cool! I like you!”
“Lots of people like us.”
Lizzie smiles. “Are you sure?”
“Does the pope shit in the woods?”
“Hi, Harry,” Lizzie says.
Harry nods.
“Don’t encourage her!” Loudermilk snaps.
Harry recalls the agitation with which Loudermilk had informed him that Lizzie was the spawn of his poetry teacher. Of course this had been earlier, in the afternoon, previous to Harry’s complete and utter divestment of self-respect while inside the Common Lot.
“Listen, guess what and surprise! You’re in my dad’s poetry class! A, sorry I didn’t mention that, and B, he already talked about you.”
“I’m not surprised,” Loudermilk tells her.
“Will you please just listen to me for one half a second? I’m trying to tell you he was telling my mom you have some kind of crazy oversized ego and they fucked up the funding again. You really must have done something to piss him off!”
“What? That’s insane.”
“Um, it’s really not.”
It occurs to Harry that he may in fact like this Lizzie person, in spite of her extremely sensuous mouth. Though somehow it’s someone else who’s seeing this mouth. He should write this down, he reflects.
“Hello, he’s the director? He can take your funding away if he wants to. You know that, right?”
“We signed a contract. That’s impossible.”
“We? Who is ‘we’?”
“I, OK, I signed a contract! They can’t just take the money away.”
“Not this year, they can’t.” Lizzie takes out a fresh cigarette. She taps it contemplatively against the top of the pack. “But you weren’t at orientation, were you, Loudermilk, so, like, I guess you would have missed out on that little fact of life. Like, it’s pretty lucky for you we’re having this chat now? Too bad you’re not interested.”
“Did I say that?” Loudermilk is gearing himself up for contrition. He has rearranged his face.
“My dad hates to reward jackasses, by the way. Totally his pet peeve.”
“I would have expected nothing less from a towering giant of the poetry world.”
Lizzie ignores him. “You want to go someplace or not?”
Loudermilk looks at Harry. Harry just stares right back.
“I’m saying, it’s so gross around here? So plebeian? Let’s go to the park. Harry’s invited, of course.”
“Whatever.” Loudermilk sighs.
They start walking.
Lizzie is persistent. “Like a few days ago you were so nice? What happened?”
“Is it that you have no friends? Is that what it is?”
“Omigod, I’m just curious, so sue me! Like, for example, you’re at the mall, and there’s this, like, underage girl, right, and she comes up to you, all sweet and innocent, right, starts talking, and you just let her into your car, just like that! So crazy! But it turns out you’re really nice guys, not molesters or anything.”
“That’s a great story,” Loudermilk says, “but you’re leaving out the part where this fetching young skank asks two strange males for a ride. What about that?”
“Oh, that’s easy. I read the files on all the new students. I knew exactly who you were before I even talked to you. It’s not like I have a death wish.”
Loudermilk makes it known he’d appreciate being let in on what “exactly” Lizzie knows.
“Like, what do I know? Well, I’m so sorry but I know that you nearly flunked out of college but at least three of your professors were willing to swear up and down that you were the best student they ever had. That was kind of intriguing. And you’re a Gemini, emotionally unavailable but always ready for fun. And you write really good poems. Also, you’re totally photogenic but way hotter in person.”
“Thank you,” Loudermilk says. “It’s funny how that’s true.”
They come to a small park, the scene of the introductory BBQ.
“It’s weird, though,” Lizzie is saying, “when I read your file I kind of wanted to, like, get to know you? But you’re actually so different from how I thought you’d be. Anyway!” Lizzie lowers herself onto a swing with a blue plastic seat. She kicks dirt.
“Your parents know you do that?” Loudermilk selects a swing.
“Do what?”
“Read files, sniff out persons of interest, humiliate yourself publicly?”
“Ew! I never humiliated myself! Harry, is he always this rude?”
Harry shrugs.
Lizzie says, “Loudermilk, I know you’re not always this rude! But
since you ask, they could probably care less what I do.”
“Pray they care less,” advises Loudermilk.
Harry selects a spot on a nearby jungle gym. He leans back and observes the stars.
“Your folks always lived here?” Loudermilk wants to know.
“Us?” Lizzie asks. “I have, mostly. I was born here. My dad actually was married before, when he, um, started teaching? He has two other kids. We’re not really that close—I mean, to his other family. My mom’s sixteen years younger. She was his student.”
“But now your mom teaches?”
“She sure does.” It’s hard to see Lizzie in the dark, though it sounds like she is frowning. “I mean, you probably already knew that.” She laughs.
Loudermilk sits up a little straighter. “I just meant, I didn’t know about the whole story, you know?”
“Oh, right, you mean about their marriage and everything! Because I was about to say.”
“Totally.”
“I know! I mean, my dad is kind of famous, but my mom is, like, so famous.” She laughs again. “Everyone’s always so curious about that! I mean, actually, I was just thinking how it would be really funny if someone got into the program but they didn’t even know who she was!”
“Wow,” says Loudermilk. “That would be very funny.”
“It would, wouldn’t it? It would be so hysterical!”
Harry knows that Loudermilk has done it. He put way too much shit on that last one. Harry awaits the descent of the other shoe.
Lizzie is like, “Hey, hey, hey, so by the way, I was wondering, which of my mom’s books do you like the best? Because I know that can get really contentious among the first-years!”
“Gosh,” Loudermilk says, “it’s so hard to choose.”
“I bet!” Lizzie is swinging. She puts her back into it. The set whistles and caws.
Loudermilk doesn’t say anything.
“I’m waiting!” Lizzie yells.
“Don’t know if I have a favorite!”
“OK!” Lizzie pumps higher and higher. Her words are choppy: “So here’s—question—mom’s—name?”