Oreo

by Ross, Fran

  He made a stage swishy gesture. “I’m beginning to think the whole world is.” He then gave a list of movie stars, past and present, who were “that way”; it included everyone except Rin-Tin-Tin and John Wayne. “Even though the Duke’s real name is Marion and he has that funny walk, we’re pretty sure he’s straight, but we’re not all that definite about Rinty. Lassie, of course, is a drag queen from way back.”

  Waverley said that he had been very depressed since he and his last lover had split up. At first he had just sat around feeling sorry for himself, typing by day and jerking off by night.

  “Then I decided, the hell with that. I did something I’ve never done before. I went out cruising in all the bars. Did all the things I’ve always wanted to do. I felt justified because I was tired of living like a vegetable.”

  “You wanted to live like a piece of meat,” Oreo said.

  Waverley nodded appreciatively. “Oh, you are evil, e-vil! Anyway, I had all kinds of guys. In the third week, I had my first Oriental.”

  “Is it true what they say about Oriental men?”

  “What?”

  “That their balls are like this”—she placed one fist on top of the other—“instead of side by side?”

  Another nod, another “Evil, e-vil!” He said he would top that by starting a rumor that Castilian fags had a double lisp. Then he opened his wallet. “Let me show you some pictures.” He smiled as he looked at the first one. “These are two of my best friends, Phyllis and Billie.”

  Oreo nodded. “Phyllis looks like Ava Gardner.”

  “That’s Billie, with an i-e. Phyllis is the one who looks like a truck driver. But that just goes to show you looks are deceiving. Phyllis doesn’t drive trucks. She fixes them. My mother got hold of this one—she’s always popping in on me, snooping around, but that’s another story. Anyway, when she saw this, I had to tell her Phyll was Billie’s boyfriend. But if you look close, you can see her bra strap through the tee shirt. I showed it to Phyll’s ex-husband. I thought he would wet his drawers, he laughed so hard. He’s gay, too. A real swish, honey. He’s Filipino and they were going to send him back to the islands. He wanted to stay here and he and Phyll were good buddies, so she married him.” He shook his head, remembering. “You should have seen her at the wedding. She let her hair grow long and looked pretty good, for her. Joe, that’s the guy she married, had to buy her a girdle and stockings and show her how to walk in heels. When she walked, it was a complete panic.” He stood up and did a hoarse, deep-voiced cowhand on stilts. “‘By God, when I get out of these damn things, I’ll never put them on again.’ This was years ago, when girls used to wear dresses to work. But old Phyll would always wear her overalls. Of course, she was a mechanic. If her bosses knew she was a girl, they weren’t saying. She was a damn good mechanic.”

  ‘‘She looks tough,” said Oreo. “Does she give Billie a hard way to go?”

  Waverley looked genuinely shocked. “Of course not. Billie’s the butch. Phyll’s the sweetest girl you’d ever want to meet. She taught me how to knit. Gives cooking lessons to anyone who asks her. She didn’t have to marry Joe. And then there was the baby—”

  “The baby?”

  “Sure. Joe said he always wanted one, so Phyll said okay. She made the right decision too. Joe’s the best mother a baby could want. But that Billie—she’d break your balls as soon as look at you.”

  “Or twist your tits,” Oreo said.

  “What?”

  “Never mind—a failure of empathy.”

  Waverley went on with his adventures. All his talk of cocks he had known and loved reminded Oreo that she had forgotten to pack the gift she had for her father. It was a plaster of Paris mold of Jimmie C. ’s uncircumcised penis. Helen had refused to let the hospital take a hem in her son’s decoration, saying that she considered it mutilation and that when he was old enough, she would let him decide whether he wanted to have it done. He had not decided because Helen had not put the question to him. Helen had not brought it out in the open because she still did not consider Jimmie C. old enough to decide. Jimmie C. brought it out in the open only to go to the bathroom and to conform to Oreo’s special request—no, threat—for a mold. He conformed to her special request because he loved his sister and because she threatened to tell him one of the “suppose” lines that she had been saving up to make him faint. He, in turn, had a special request, which he sang with a hauntingly sweet melodic line: “Nevertheless and winnie-the-pooh, whatever you do, don’t paint it green.” For one fiendish moment, Oreo had contemplated doing just that, but she contented herself with deciding which of two questions she would put to Samuel when she gave him the mold: “How do you like that putz?” or “How do you like that, putz ?” She had been leaning toward the second, but now all that was moot, since she had forgotten the putz in question.

  As the train approached the next stop, Waverley said, “Well, this is it. Today Newark, tomorrow Rahway. Could you stand such excitement?” They exchanged addresses, and he pulled his black case down from the overhead rack. “Ooo, do I have to pee—the first bar I come to gets the gold,” he said piss elegantly.

  “Any pot in the storm,” said Oreo. She had no shame. She watched Honor bound for a tearoom.

  8 Sinis

  Oreo in a phone booth at Penn Station

  She opened the Manhattan directory. There were twenty-six Samuel Schwartzes and twenty-two S. Schwartzes. She made a list of likely Schwartzes, leaving out businesses and other obvious wrong leads. She picked her first try at random.

  Oreo checked her backpack in a locker and bought a booklet of New York maps. The maps told her she should take the IRT subway, then switch to the number 5 bus.

  Oreo on the subway

  Oreo wondered about the relative funk quotient after three-quarters of play of the New York Jets as compared with the New York Knicks. Was football basically smellier than basketball? On the one hand, basketball uniforms did not have sleeves and the players therefore got a chance to air their pits during the game. Football players, on the other hand, were padded and wrapped. No chance for pit airing there. But—and it was a considerable but—they played outdoors. There were no proximate brick-and-mortar barriers to funk dissipation. Another consideration: although football involved intense periodic effort, it was so specialized that every mother’s son got a chance to rest between bits. Oreo doubted whether dedicated linebackers dared risk their concentration by taking time out to apply spray, cream, or roll-on deodorant during their rest periods. Basketball, with its continual stampede up and down the court—and with its big stars playing virtually the full forty-eight minutes—seemed to offer little chance for deodorant application, even in the face (or pit) of desire or necessity. And what of hockey? Did ice absorb funk? The parameters were tricky.

  Football: a subway reverie

  Picture this, sports fans. It is the Super Bowl. A woman in full football gear (custom-made) runs onto the field. (Some spectators at first think that the shoulder pads of a demented 120-pound lad have slipped to the front.) This poor woman loves football with a doomed and touching passion. Every man who has longed for the field as he sat rooted to the stands was at least informed with possibility, however faint. If he were but fifty pounds heavier, but five seconds fleeter . . . But this is a woman. Imagine what astrodomes of nature and nurture she has had to friedan in order to test that artificial turf. She has reached the line of scrimmage. She ducks under a ham-haunched center and scoops up the ball. She starts to run a down-and-out pattern. What happens next? This is the Super Bowl, folks. Bon appétit! They Eat Her. Yes, fans, one crackback block and opposing players join in the gorge. They tear that cheeky female apart, devour her, uniform and all. Watch as a tattered leftover (part of the lower dexter curve of the number 8, the hip of that most feminine number, the number she wore in all her fantasy games) escapes and skitters across the field toward the tumescence-red first-down marker, one of the many totems of the male klan that kuklux the field. (The marker i
s a circle with a center pee/sperm-hole bullet above a vertex-down isosceles triangle, representing the penis in cross section above a Lindau wedge, or vagina—the missionary position.) Back home at setside, male viewers lick their lips and burp. Nielsen women feel a frisson of fear, shame, and guilt. The President’s eyes glaze over. And the game resumes with a ferocity and joy unequaled in the history of sports. The next day, the newspapers insist that a high-school student (male) ran onto the field and was escorted off. Everyone, especially the players (who all have a touch of salmonella), agrees that that is what happened. The text of the President’s ecstatic telephone calls to both coaches and each and every player is released to the public. He has proclaimed football henceforth and forevermore the national sport (and diet).

  Oreo on the number 5 bus

  Within a few minutes after she got on, Oreo realized she was riding the famed crazy ladies’ bus. She had heard about it in Philadelphia. She was in luck. There were two meshuggenes aboard. One was tall, sharp-boned, and sharp-tongued. Her dark-blue dress with white polka dots snagged on her like a rag on a splinter, tail ends of sentences shredded from her mouth. “. . . away from me! . . . shit hell alone!” she raged as she pushed her way to the back, where she stood blocking the aisle. To Oreo, she looked like a Penelope.

  The other was a short, gray-haired woman sitting near the front of the bus. She showed one broken middle tooth when she smiled (a curable smile). There was an unremitting smell of aluminum chlorhydroxide about her. Oreo guessed that the woman always washed and dressed as if she were going for a thorough physical after which she would be run over by a car and strangers would see her underwear. If true, she was as normal as the rest of the people on the bus, and there was no hope—except, of course, for the smile. She wore a crisp dress of green, white, and blue stripes and had elastic bands on her wrists. Her shoes were white, with a small bas-relief floral design in pale green and pink on the toe. A Sophie, perhaps? The conversation piece of her outfit was her shopping bag. It was kraft with five thin red wave-design lines across the top. On it floated a message printed neatly in red crayon, beginning on the top wave:

  WHO IS USING ME AS SOME KIND OF A SCREEN AND EVERYONE THAT IS OPPRESSED I HAVE TO LOOK AT BECAUSE PEOPLE WANT THEIR AILMENTS ON THE SCREEN. I CAN’T TALK TO ANYONE BUT IT’S HEARD. MY ONLY BROTHER IS 71 YEARS OF AGE AND VERY SICK AND IF I VISIT AND TALK ON THE PHONE THE CONVERSATION IS HEARD. ISN’T THAT INFRINGING ON MY PRIVACY??? I’M NEAR 64 YEARS OF AGE AND IT’S VERY NERVE RACKING. NO ONE EVER EXPLAINED TO ME WHAT IT IS.

  She seemed generally in good spirits, but occasionally she would clutch her wrists and cry, “Ow, ow,” or look as if she were about to weep. But the cry of pain, the mask of sorrow were momentary. An instant later, she was smiling again. She had a well-developed social consciousness. She talked to the air space in front of her about poor people, Vietnam, and unemployment.

  Between Sophie and Penelope the bus passengers did not know where not to look. Some tried surreptitious eyeball rolls from side to side, most stared straight ahead and pretended the two women were not there. Penelope was too involved with extending her sovereignty to be aware of the effect she was having on the socially conscious Sophie, who was amused by Penelope’s preoccupation with manifest destiny, particularly whenever Pen delivered herself of a choice piece of verbal territorial incursion. Sophie had obviously diagnosed Penelope’s trouble as fallen arches. Several times Sophie obliquely addressed her with the same words. “I didn’t work today,” she would say to the air space. “I just rode around the city. You can have my seat.”

  “. . . out of here!” said Penelope. “. . . off me!”

  At which, Sophie would cut short a giggle to renew her comments on society’s unfortunates. “The hoi polloi,” she said. (Oh, Oreo thought, sympathetically noting the repetition of the article, she just stammered in two languages.) “All that education, and what good is it? Now they can’t find jobs.” She clucked in sympathy. “I don’t give to churches, but if I have a spare dollar, I give to veterans’ organizations.” She read aloud a headline across the aisle about a bank robbery, then said, “They weren’t educated, but they had their omens and their voodoo. They had the right answers. They knew, they knew. Tea leaves. Believe me, I hit four seventy-eight for a couple hundred dollars. They knew, they knew. Ben Franklin said, ‘Early to bed, early to rise.’ They don’t even know how to say that today.”

  As the bus passed Sixty-second and Broadway, someone said approvingly, “Look at that. The Jewish Guild for the Blind doesn’t have to wash its windows—nobody has to see out.”

  The man to Oreo’s left was reading the front page of the Daily News. When he flipped the paper to scan the back sports page, Sophie read the front-page banner headline aloud. Oreo remembered that the headline had been set up like this:

  Porno Panel:

  END ALL BANS

  ON ADULT SMUT

  To Oreo, this headline was a comment on itself. Sophie seemed reluctant to add anything to her reading of the banner head. It was not one of her subjects. More to her taste was the headline over a story about two starved, skull-fractured children whose mother was under observation at Bellevue:

  FIND BODIES

  OF 2 TOTS:

  TEST MOM

  Oreo had read this story over the shoulder of the woman to her right. Porno panel or no porno panel, Oreo considered the use of “Tots” and “Mom,” in the circumstances, particularly obscene, the space limitations of tabloids notwithstanding.

  “Poor woman,” began Sophie. But before she was well into her desultory views on battered children, mental illness, and exorbitant hospital rates, she had to break off to watch Penelope spear her way through the crowd and get off by the back door.

  “. . . out of here! . . . off me!” said Penelope. Oreo watched as she posted herself in front of the post office (Ansonia station), then abandoned her post just in time to board a bus that had been tailgating the number 5 for several blocks.

  The people at the back of the bus were noticeably relieved at Penelope’s departure. They talked among themselves, survivors after rescue. The people at the front of the bus stared enviously toward the rear. They still had Sophie. But with Penelope gone, Sophie quieted down. She stopped reading headlines and was content with clutching her wrists several times for a few modulated “Ow’s” and tapping lightly on her shopping bag.

  As the bus skirted a park—which Oreo’s booklet told her was Riverside—Sophie got up to leave. She went to the back door, and with a sedate “Out, please,” she was gone.

  All was quiet for a few more blocks. Then an elderly gentleman with one bad eye got up to leave. Oreo was sure it was Mr. Sammler. Her hunch was confirmed when he was followed off the bus by a dapper young man in a camel’s hair coat.

  A few blocks later, Oreo herself got off the bus. She walked to West End Avenue, found the address she had written down, and told the doorman she wanted to see Schwartz.

  “Schwartz? In four-B?” asked the doorman.

  “Is that the only Schwartz in the building?”

  “Yeah.”

  Then, of course, dummy, thought Oreo. “Say Christine is on her way up.”

  The doorman buzzed 4-B and gave his message.

  “Send her up,” said a deep voice over the intercom as Oreo got into the elevator.

  A few minutes later, Oreo was back downstairs. The Schwartz in 4-B was too young to be her father. Besides, she was Chinese.

  Oreo on Broadway

  She stopped when she came to a bar. She went in, walked straight to the back, went to the ladies’ room, peed, and walked out. She was always disconcerted when she had to do this—walk into a place where she was considered a minor. Fortunately, because of her constant bullshit, she was often disguised as an adult. On the occasions when she was challenged and had to admit that she was a minor, Oreo was deeply embarrassed. She did not scruple going into a bar and not ordering anything. She drank only fine wines and Pepsi on the rocks. What is more, s
he was basically tight. She did not mind relieving herself when all around her knew that that was all she was going to do. Any pot in the storm—the chestnut she had trotted out for Waverley—was her motto for these occasions. She had other, even worse puns for other occasions. But to call Oreo a minor was, slowly and caerphilly, to drive a shaft into the pits of her cheeseparing soul. She did not consider herself a minor at or of or in anything.

  Oreo on Broadway again

  She was hungry. Now she was sorry that she had given Louise’s fine food to a bunch of pig-eyed strangers. And Waverley Honor had eaten like a mother, the faggot. Oreo was getting testy. She had a lot of money with her, but she did not want to spend it if she could help it. Cheap. Hunger finally forced her to buy a Blimpie, a vicious imitation of a hoagie. Her refined palate, trained and coddled chez Louise, still had blotches and patches that brooked nothing but junk foods. Thus she could within hours savor her grandmother’s thrifty, piping haggis and the rotten potato salad from Murray’s delicatessen; Louise’s holey, many-tongued fondue and the galosh pizza from Rosa’s Trattoria; a blanc de blancs champagne and a blankety-blank Pepsi, which she now washed the Blimpie down with. Her testiness was disappearing.

  Oreo goes to the park

  She decided to take a walk through the park the bus had passed and make up her mind about what she was going to do next. She used her walking stick as a piton for climbing rocks and hillocks in the park. It was not necessary, considering the modesty of Riverside’s ups and downs, but it made Oreo feel more like an adventurer.

  When she stopped to rest, she looked up the addresses on her list in her book of maps. There were several S. or Samuel Schwartzes in the immediate neighborhood. She could make a few quick runs to check them out, using the park as an R and R base.