Perverted Proverbs

by Marsh Cassady

  Robert and Richard both grabbed for it.

  "Let me," Robert said.

  "But no, I insist," Richard answered.

  "The accident was entirely my fault," Robert said.

  "Oh, but, of course, it was mine," Richard countered. "I wasn't watching where I was going."

  "Neither was I," Robert said.

  They seemed to be at an impasse. What were they going to do? Robert didn't want to alienate Richard. Richard didn't want to alienate Robert. Exactly the opposite.

  Since breaking up with his lover, Robert had felt somehow incomplete.

  Richard, on the other hand, had always been a loner. His married friends like Peter and William insisted this wasn't natural. Richard pooh-poohed their arguments, contending that one didn't need another to be fulfilled. Now he was rapidly changing his mind. And he wondered why. Certainly, he'd been attracted to other men. But nothing like this. He thought of vine-covered cottages, Jacuzzis for two.

  Both men had drifted into a reverie, each thinking about the other, each dreaming naughty dreams, involving warm bodies and tangled sheets.

  Finally, Richard glanced at his watch. He simply had to get the cheesecake or Teddy would pout all evening. "I must insist," he told Robert, "that you let me pay the bill."

  "Well, then," Robert said, "if we meet again, which I'd certainly like to do, maybe for cocktails, maybe for candlelight dinner, you must let me treat you."

  "I'd love that, Robert, except I do insist that I treat you."

  Robert felt that Richard was the most gorgeous hunk he'd ever met, bar none. At the same time Richard simply couldn't believe his good luck in literally running into someone as divine as Robert. Neither had ever been so infatuated with another, even counting Joey Something-or-other in geometry class, and Mr. So-and-so who directed the senior class play.

  They exchanged names and phone numbers, found out they worked not far from each other. Robert was part-owner in a software company in Clifton, while Richard was president of his own advertising agency in Upper Montclair. Both were highly successful young men.

  Neither had believed in love at first sight. How quickly the parking lot incident changed their minds. Yes, they were in love, and at the moment little else mattered. Maybe they would have had second thoughts, though it's highly unlikely, if they realized how rough the road ahead was going to be.

  Why would the road be rough? Simply because each was used to having his own way; each was used to making decisions. Each wanted to woo the other, to take the initiative in the relationship.

  When they went out to dinner—which they did often, after that first meeting—Robert felt he should pick up the tab. No, Richard disagreed, he should be the one.

  On several occasions, because of these disagreements, they almost abandoned their relationship before it was really started. Yet, each recognized that he simply couldn't live without the other. They were deeply, madly in love.

  They attended Broadway openings, and Richard insisted on buying the tickets. At Carnegie Hall or Lincoln Center, Robert whipped out a string of credit cards. They argued; they bickered over who'd pick up the tab. Often half the evening would vanish before they calmed down enough to enjoy their outing.

  Robert tried to talk to his ex about it, and was told he was being silly. "Hey, man, if the guy wants to pay," Sam said, "Why not let him?"

  Richard talked to his business partner Stephen. "I don't see why it's such a big deal," Stephen told him. "If someone wanted to buy things for me, I'd sure enough let him."

  "But don't you see?" Robert told Sam. "But don't you see?" Richard told Stephen. "He means so much to me," they each said, using the exact same words, "that I want to do everything for him."

  "But is that fair?" Sam asked. "Is that the right thing to do?" Stephen queried.

  Despite the arguments advanced by Sam and Stephen, Robert and Richard simply couldn't or wouldn't give in. And the disagreements continued. They tried ways to outwit each other. Robert would call for tickets to an opening, and Richard would get there an hour early to pick them up. Richard would make reservations at an exclusive restaurant, and Robert would take off work to make arrangements so Robert would never see the bill.

  Their entire relationship was being ruined. One day, at the ticket booth of the Helen Hayes Theatre, right in front of a line of customers, their worst argument occurred.

  "Why do you always insist you pay?" Richard said.

  "Why do I?" Robert said. "What about you?"

  "You think, just because you're part-owner—"

  "You think, just because you're president—"

  The argument rose in pitch.

  Suddenly, Richard realized that this isn't how he wanted it. Suddenly, Robert took time to look at Richard's face and see the hurt. Quietly, the pair stepped out of line, walked to a nearby cafe and ordered coffee.

  "I'm sorry, Richard," Robert said. "Can I bare my soul?"

  Richard nodded.

  "I've never said this before to another man. What I mean is I really love you. I'd do anything for you. I wanted to sweep you off your feet." He sniffed. "It wasn't fair. I had no right."

  "Of course, you did," Richard said. "I'm the one who's to blame. But with all good motives. I felt the same about you. I wanted to win you, have you, hold you. Forever and ever. And is that so wrong? What each of us felt?"

  "Of course not," Robert answered.

  "We both wanted the same thing, I guess," Richard said.

  "To use an old-fashioned term, all we wanted was the chance to woo each other," Robert said. "So what are we going to do?"

  "For a start, how about if something's your idea, you can pay for it."

  "And if it's yours, you will." Robert finished the thought.

  They two men shook hands.

  "But ..." Robert said.

  "But what?" Richard asked.

  Robert laughed. "I was going to say: `Who pays for the coffee?' We just kind of wandered in."

  "I will," Richard said.

  "No, I will," Robert answered.

  "Okay."

  "What!"

  "I said okay," Richard repeated.

  And so began a new life. They fell, if possible, even more deeply in love, each now taking turns in wooing the other, a courtship that lasted the rest of their lives. And since this arrangement was so fitting, and since Robert and Richard were so surely made for each other, they lived happily ever after.

  Moral: If the woo fits, share it.

  HOW WRITE BECAME WRONG

  Once upon a time there were two struggling writers, Don and Kerry, who lived in a loft in Greenwich Village. They were so poor that they often had to rely on the kindness of strangers to provide for their daily needs.

  But that was all right. They were hard at work on the Great Gay American Novel, which once published, would bring them riches beyond compare. The trouble was they'd been working on it now for five years, struggling to keep enough food in their bellies to feed their bodies and fertile minds.

  The book would be a masterpiece, combining all the best of old and new, experimental and traditional, history and technology.

  One evening Kerry stood on the street corner, begging, having to fight off two older guys who thought he was hustling, which he'd never do because he and Don had vowed eternal love. But life was a bitch, and he couldn't help being discouraged.

  He climbed the long flights of stairs to the loft where the two of them worked and threw himself down on the futon.

  "You know, Don," he said, "maybe we've got it all wrong. Maybe we should just get jobs. You could go back to the corporate world, and I could go back to the Ivy-covered halls of learning, to teach those young eager minds."

  Don looked up from the manuscript, Chapter 97, now completed. "We're so near the end, we can't give up now." According to their plot outline there were only two chapters to go.

  "So near the end is right," Kerry replied. "I'm at the absolute end; I don't think I can go on much longer."

&nb
sp; Don rose from the rickety table with the old Dell computer and came toward his lover. Gently, he took Kerry's face in his hands. "Just a little longer," he pleaded. "We have to last just a little longer."

  Kerry sighed. "I suppose so," he said.

  "A few more months at most," Don said.

  Kerry thought of those ivied halls, the young minds, the regular paychecks. "All right," he agreed, then reached into the pocket of his raggedy, grey flannel slacks and pulled out two limp dollar bills, and a handful of coins. "This is it," he said, "after four hours of begging, standing in the icy wind, feeling the snow blow down my back."

  "It's rough, I know," Don answered. "But it will soon pay off."

  "I'm hungry, Don. I'm terribly hungry."

  "So am I. But we have no choice now. We've been at this so long that we couldn't get other jobs even if we tried."

  "That's true," Kerry said, though he hadn't wanted to face it. "Our clothes are frayed; our resumes outdated...

  Days passed by, then weeks, and the two of them struggled on, starving in their garret.

  And finally their efforts paid off. It was a bright day indeed that the mailman slipped an acceptance letter through their mail slot. Along with the letter was a contract; their book was going to be published.

  They wanted to celebrate, but they had no money. And almost no food. And no advance; it was a small publisher. But they vowed they'd somehow hang on.

  Finally, they were down to a can of condensed milk, an ancient egg or two and a handful of tapioca. It was at this time that the galley proofs arrived, those wonderful professionally printed sheets of paper. All they had to do was go through them to check for errors and typos. They were near the end of their struggles.

  The publisher gave them only a week, for he found the book such a brilliant work that he wanted to bring it out immediately.

  As a result of the good news, Kerry and Don decided to splurge and use all their food at once—the eggs, the tapioca, the condensed milk and some half-used packets of sweetener Don had sneaked out of a restaurant before the waitress had a chance to clear the table.

  It was Don's turn to cook, and as he stirred the mixture in a battered aluminum pot on the old hot plate he perused the galleys, stirring and reading, reading and stirring.

  Alas, as he stirred, he became so engrossed in the reading that he failed to pay attention to his cooking. His stirring hand came in contact with the pot and he was burned. He leaped back and raced to the half-clogged kitchen sink to run cold water over his burn.

  "What happened, Don!" Kerry called, returning home from begging and alarmed at the expletives issuing from his lover's mouth.

  "I burned my— Oh, no!" The latter came out as a terrible wail.

  "What is it?" Kerry raced toward him. "What happened?"

  "I dropped the galleys into the pot of tapioca."

  "Oh, God," Kerry said, racing to the hotplate. He picked up a giant fork and tried to pull out the papers. All he found was a disintegrated pulpy mess.

  He sank to his knees and slowly to the floor. The heart attack was fatal. Don stood at the sink, now filled with water that poured out over the cracked enamel and ran in divergent rivers across the torn linoleum.

  So that was how it ended, he thought, with complete, utter defeat. He lowered his head into the water of the overflowing sink and inhaled.

  Moral: The proofs were in the pudding.

  GET REAL

  Once upon a time there lived a handsome young man with emerald eyes and a fair skin. Well, actually, Roger, for that was his name, could have been handsome, except that he was a little too pudgy, padded in the wrong places, his body soft and unused to exercise.

  His mom and dad had always sheltered him—given him food and clothing and a Cadillac for high school graduation. He'd rather have had a BMW or even a Porsche, but what the hell, it was better than nothing. At any rate he knew little about the real world.

  One morning as he and his parents sat at the dining room table, his mother declared: "For eighteen years I've slaved over frozen dinners in the microwave till I'm sick, sick, sick!"

  Roger knew this to be true, at least the last part. His mother's therapist had diagnosed her condition as acute paranoiac schizophrenia. For years she'd believed Roger wanted to poison her water and steal her jewelry. Well, Roger had never considered poisoning her, but he had often sat in front of her dresser, trying on earrings and necklaces.

  His father spoke. "I'm tired," he said, "tired, tired, tired. I didn't get a Harvard MBA simply to earn more and more money for you to waste on candlelight dinners with the boys." The gist of the discussion was that Roger was being kicked out.

  "From now on, all you can expect from your mother and me," his father said, "is $5000 a month pin money. And that's final." His father sat at one end of the long table, his mother at the other, their looks as cold as the marble floor.

  "I want you packed and out of this house by the time I get home from work," his father said.

  Roger leaped up, ran to his room and immediately called his friend, Ebert.

  "It's horrible, Ebbie," he said. "Can you imagine anything so ghastly?"

  "How uncivilized. But I'm certain that once your father reconsiders—"

  Ebbie didn't understand. Roger slammed down the phone and pulled his set of alligator luggage from the closet. He piled his clothing and personal belongings inside—his Judy Garland dress, his Bette Davis poster, his hair tint and mascara, his case of gold chains and his box of rings. Exhausted, he sat on his bed and sobbed.

  Maybe he wasn't the kind of son his parents wanted, but could he help that? Of course not. No more than a dog could help barking or a tree from sprouting leaves. He couldn't change what he was, could he? Sometimes he wished ...

  Later, after his father left for work and his mother for her daily session with the therapist, Roger carried out his luggage, twenty-two pieces. He'd travel light. He'd show them. He'd get along with almost nothing.

  By the time he came back inside and called all his friends to tell them of his plight it was early evening, a typical Southern California day, fog rolling in from the ocean.

  He left La Jolla just at dusk when the world seems unreal. Very unreal! Since the further he went, the stranger the landscape looked. It was as if he'd entered an eerie sort of universe, separate from anything he'd previously experienced.

  The longer he drove, the more things changed. Palm trees became beech and maple. Pampas grass and ice plants gave way to sumac and mountain laurel. The highway filled with bumps and potholes, becoming narrower and narrower.

  Roger himself began to change. In the eerie half-light, his body looked browner and leaner. Perhaps a trick of the golden moon, he thought. Golden! Shouldn't the moon be silver?

  He began to feel frightened. How could these things be happening? Was he going completely gaga, just like Mama?

  Even his car had changed colors, from blue to white to— A horse! Instead of riding in a car, he now sat astride an ivory-colored steed. He glanced behind him; his luggage had disappeared, replaced by a large canvas bag.

  He grabbed for the bag, opened it, and saw a strange assortment of clothing and articles. A wooden comb, rough-textured pants, coarse woolen shirts. It was enough to make him faint. But no, that was different too. He didn't feel like fainting, as he might have hours earlier. He felt strong, virile, ready for anything.

  "But all this just can't be," he said. "It's like I'm right in the middle of a fantasy story, transplanted back in time or perhaps inside another universe."

  "Or maybe all three," a voice said.

  "Who speaks?" he demanded and wondered why he said it that way, and why he was only curious now rather than frightened.

  "It is I," the voice answered as someone rode up on a horse as black as holes in space.

  The rider was a young man about Roger's age, his brown hair hanging to the collar of a coarse linen shirt. "Who art thou?" Roger asked.

  "Some call me Enemy, thou can
st call me Friend. For I fight against inequity. I rescue fair damsels from dragons—fair lads too, if that be your choice. Thou canst call me Paul."

  "I don't understand."

  "You feel you've plopped right down in the middle of an aberration, right? A fairy tale come true."

  "Yes, yes, exactly," Roger said.

  "Think about your past life," the young man continued. "Did you like it?"

  "Why, yes, I guess. I had everything I needed or wanted."

  "But were you happy? With life? With yourself?"

  "Certainly, I—" Roger stopped and stared at the other man. "Now that I think of it, no, I wasn't. I thought I was. But I felt useless, pampered. And if the truth be known, I really didn't like myself very much."

  "And you like this better? What the world has become? What you've become or are becoming?"

  Amazed, Roger knew he did like it better. "But it's all unreal," he said.

  "Nay, it is not."

  "What do you mean?"

  "You're right; it is a fairy tale, a different universe, a time outside of time."

  "I'm dreaming, that's it. I must have gone back to my room, upset at being kicked out, and then ... fallen asleep. Is that it?"

  "If you think so. If that's what thou desirest."

  "I don't understand," Roger said. As the two of them talked, the horses trotted on down the road, which was little more than a trail now, no longer paved, filled with ruts and clumps of grass.

  "If you want it to be a dream, all you have to do is wake up. You'll be back in thine own home, the home from which you've been kicked out, and thou can get on with your life there. Of course, your parents still won't take you back."

  "You talk as if I have a choice."

  "But, of course, you do. You can stay here. That's what I did."

  "What!"

  "I came from a home much like yours; a very similar environment. But I'm much happier here."