“Taking care of Jonah is a whole lot easier than tossing crates in the hold of ship, I can guarantee you that. You can have a picnic if you want to. You can get out in the fucking sun and play. I can’t do that.”
“But at least you get to talk to some adults while you work. It’s pretty boring hanging out with a six-month-old kid. He doesn’t have a lot to say.”
“Then you should be happy with the quiet. I don’t get that either.”
“God, you’re impossible! Your problems are always worse than mine.”
“Damn straight!”
“Look, Tony, we’re gonna have to compromise here. We both need to get out at night. But tonight is important to me. If you give in on this one, I’ll give in the next time, okay?”
“All right! All fucking right. I’ll stay with Jonah. But don’t pull this sudden shit on me. I hate it.”
I heard a door slam, then footsteps approaching the front of the apartment. I knocked. Tony opened the door. He was naked, except for a towel wrapped around his waist, and his hair and beard were wet.
“Hey, man,” he said, smiling amiably, “come on in.”
“Good to see you again, Tony,” I said.
We clasped hands.
“Likewise,” he replied, closing the door behind me.
“I’m afraid the plans for tonight have changed. Claire’s having dinner with her sister, Katie. I guess Katie called this afternoon and said she had to talk to Claire about some goddamn thing. So, it’s you, me, and a homemade pizza, I guess. Jonah, too, of course, but with any luck he’ll be asleep most of the night.”
I was hurt Claire had invited me and was going off to do something else.
“Why don’t you get yourself a cold beer while I put some clothes on.”
I followed Tony into the kitchen, pulled a beer from the refrigerator, and sat down at the table to read the Milwaukee Journal, lying there next to a pack of Benson and Hedges 100’s. One front-page story caught my eye immediately. It said that a right-wing industrialist named Benjamin Grob in Grafton, just north of Milwaukee, had initiated a boycott against William F. Schanen Jr.’s Port Publications for printing Kaleidoscope, Milwaukee’s only alternative newspaper. The boycott had been kicked off the night before with a mudslinging speech by Grob at a rally held at Grafton High School.
By the time I finished reading the article, I was steaming. Kaleidoscope had first been published almost two years before, when I was a senior in high school. Its appearance at the Focal Point bookstore in Whitefish Bay had led to a violent argument with my mother, when she joined a group of suburban mothers trying to get it banned as pornographic. Kaleidoscope had eventually faced prosecution for obscenity by the county D.A.’s office, due to pressure from these mothers.
One night, when my mother returned from a meeting of her group, I unloaded on her, accusing her of being a narrow-minded book burner. She, in turn, accused me of being immoral. I’d recently started attacking the hypocrisy of the Catholic Church and had brought home “obscene” books such as Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and Herzog. She was convinced I was on the fast track to hell. Our encounter that night grew more and more heated, until she slapped me in the face. Not a smart thing to do to a teenager. I came close to slapping her back–which would not have been smart, either.
Ever since that night, Kaleidoscope’s right to exist had been a bone of contention between us. The trumped-up obscenity charges had been dismissed, of course, having no basis in reality, and the publicity ultimately helped the paper establish itself. But I knew Grob’s new boycott of Kaleidoscope’s printer would have the full support of my mother and her cronies. I half-expected to find the article pinned to my pillow when I went home that night, the opening volley in a new phase of our running battle.
Disgusted, I tossed the paper aside and pulled a cigarette from the pack on the table. I went to the stove and lit it on the gas burner, then returned to my chair, where I concentrated on my beer a few minutes. Claire came out of the bathroom wearing the same lacey white dress I’d first seen her in, two nights before. Again it struck me she looked both wraithlike and earthy, like an embodied angel.
“Hi, John. I guess Tony’s told you what’s happening tonight. Bummer, huh? My sister really needs to get away from her husband and kids and talk over some things. I couldn’t say no. I’m sorry.”
I raised my hand to indicate that no apology was necessary.
“I understand. No problem. It’s just … I’ll miss seeing you is all.”
“Will you stay over again? You’re welcome to.”
“I don’t know. We’ll see. Thanks.”
She got a cigarette for herself and went to the stove. Before leaning over, she reached behind her head and gathered her long, straight hair in one hand, to keep it from the flame. Then she lit the cigarette and stood upright again.
“I’ve got to get going. I hope you’ll help Tony with Jonah. He’s not real happy being left with a baby tonight. I think he had a rough day at the docks.”
I assured her I would. She retrieved her purse from the bedroom, called goodbye to Tony, who grunted in return, and left.
Tony came out of the bedroom in what I was beginning to think was a uniform for him: a black t-shirt and black jeans. He got a beer from the refrigerator, opened it, and sat down at the table with me.
“You hungry?” he asked.
“I’m okay.”
“Good. I’d just like to sit and drink a couple of brews before we put the pizza together.”
“You pissed at Claire for taking off?”
“What? Naa. It’s no big deal. The kid’s asleep right now, anyway. He may not wake up until after we–”
At that moment, displaying the perverse timing of small children, Jonah let out a wail.
“Oh, shit,” said Tony.
I was up immediately.
“I’ll go to him. I’d like to.”
“You sure?”
“I’m sure.”
“Okay. That’s cool. Just try to calm him down and get him back to sleep. If that doesn’t work, bring him out to me.”
I went into Jonah’s tiny bedroom. The shade was pulled and the room felt cool and humid. I smelled baby powder and a pail of diapers soaking in detergent. Jonah was on his belly, crying like a lost soul. I wanted to pick him up, but decided that it made more sense to leave him where he was if I wanted him to get back to sleep. I felt his diaper, to make sure he wasn’t wet. Then I massaged his back through his thin white t-shirt, feeling each of his tiny vertebrae beneath my fingertips. What an astounding little creature he was. I envied Tony and Claire for having him, though I knew I wasn’t ready to take on such a responsibility.
The massage began to take effect. Gradually, Jonah’s cries became whimpers, then ceased entirely. He flopped his head back and forth a few times, his eyes still open, but glazed-looking. Then he was asleep. I pulled my hand away and he stayed still, breathing gently. I tiptoed out of the room.
Tony was on his second beer and had gotten another for me. It sat on the table, in a little pool of condensation.
“Thanks, man,” he said, raising his beer to me. “You handled that like a pro. Claire tells me you’ve had some experience with babies.”
“Some,” I said, sitting down. “Jonah seems like a real trip.”
Tony nodded. I drained the last couple swallows of my first beer, which was room temperature, then started in on the fresh, cold one. I noticed Tony had part of the newspaper spread out in front of him.
“You see that article about Port Publications?” I asked.
“It sucks, doesn’t it? I bet Grob is a real asshole.”
“No doubt. My mother will think he’s a hero, though.”
“No shit?”
“We’ve been arguing about Kaleidoscope for years, now, ever since they started selling it in ‘Whitefolks Bay.’”
“Hard to believe you’re from the Bay.”
“It’s not what you think. We’re not rich. My dad�
��s a bureaucrat with the county water department, and with seven kids—”
“Hey, my dad’s with the county, too! He works for the park commission. But he’s just a laborer.”
“Nothing wrong with that,” I said.
Tony’s eyes flashed.
“Hey, man, I don’t need you or anybody else to tell me there’s nothing wrong with it. Just because your dad wears a fucking white collar!”
I was taken aback. “I didn’t mean anything by it. Take it easy.”
He rose abruptly and slammed his empty bottle into the big white plastic wastebasket beside the stove. Then he took a deep breath to collect himself. “Sorry, man,” he said. “I used to take a lot of shit about my dad from guys in Mequon. They’d see him cutting the grass when they went golfing at Brown Deer Park or something and then razz me about his being a glorified janitor. I punched out a few of them.”
“Look, I don’t care what your dad does. One job’s as good as another. Besides, it’s you I want to be friends with, not him.”
Tony smiled, picked up his beer and held it toward me. “I’ll drink to that,” he said. “To the new generation. Fuck the old standards.”
We clinked bottles and drank.
“I’m really hungry all of a sudden,” I said. “Let’s down these beers and make us a pizza.”
“I’ll drink to that, too,” said Tony. “Last one to the bottom of the bottle has to cut up the onions!” He tipped his head back and started guzzling.
“Hey, no fair! I’ve got a lot more beer left than you do!”
He ignored me and drained the bottle.
“Sorry, man. You lose. The onions are in the bottom of that cupboard and the knives are in the drawer above it. It’s your party, so you can cry if you want to …”
“You bastard.”
“Uh-uhhh! Don’t let your mother hear you say that! I’ll go put on some sounds. How about Joe Cocker?”
“Perfect.”
“I thought I’d start out with ‘Cry Me a River,’” he said dryly.
I snatched up a folded section of the newspaper and threw it at him as he scurried out of the room.
We spent the next half-hour constructing a magnificent pizza, drinking more beer and growling along with Joe Cocker. Tony rolled out the pre-made crust Claire had bought from Glorioso’s, down the street. I cut up the onions, as well as black olives, green peppers, and mushrooms. Tony found pepperoni in the refrigerator and grated mozzarella and parmesan cheese. When we put it all together on a cookie sheet, the thing must have weighed three pounds, and we were ready to eat every ounce of it. We put it in the oven, and Tony went in to flip over the Cocker album.
We sat back down at the table and made small talk, and by the time the flip side of Cocker was over, the pizza was done. We cut it up, carried it into the living room, along with fresh beers, and put on Joni Mitchell’s latest album. Then we settled onto the floor, our backs against the couch.
“Now, this,” said Tony, rubbing his hand together, “is the life. Eat hearty.”
The alcohol had made us ravenous, so, for a while, we just ate pizza and listened to Joni croon.
“Hey,” I finally said, between slices, “I went to the draft counselor at UWM today. Nice guy. He says it’s true about no higher numbers being called this year. He told if I drop my 2S I’ll be home free, come the end of the year.”
“You lucky bastard. I wish I didn’t have such a low goddamn number. It pisses me off.”
“You ever do anything to protest the war?”
“I’ve been to a few demonstrations. You?”
“A few. Usually on the fringes, though. I’d like to do more. This draft counselor runs something called the Social Action Center on Brady and Farwell. I’d like to stop in and see what’s happening there.”
“Count me in, if you do. I’m surprised I’ve never noticed the place, if it’s that close by.”
“I walked by today and saw a big peace symbol in a second floor window. I assume that’s it.”
In short order, we’d eaten the entire pizza. Joni was done singing and the evening traffic sounds were beginning to pick up on Brady Street.
“God, I’m stuffed,” said Tony. “How about a ‘j’ to smooth things out?”
He retrieved the rosewood box from the mantel and pulled out a baggie of cleaned grass and some yellow wheat straw papers.
“Hey,” I asked, “does that fireplace work?”
“Hell, no. The landlord would probably double the rent if it did. It would be nice in the wintertime, though, wouldn’t it? This place gets cold.”
Tony deftly rolled a joint for each of us, using the top of the little box as a platform. Then he took out some matches and set the box aside. He handed me a joint, lit it for me, then lit the other one for himself. We leaned back, savoring them quietly for a few minutes.
Eventually, Tony got up and, without a word, put on a Moody Blues album. Truly stoned music. We closed our eyes, drew on our joints and let our minds travel with the music. Soon, I was out among the stars. To paraphrase the Byrds, “I could see for miles and miles and miles.” Unfortunately, my pizza-filled gut kept reminding me that, in reality, I was still earthbound.
After what seemed like hours, the music ended. The apartment was dead quiet. Even the street was quiet. The silence was deafening. I had to break it.
“Wow,” I said.
“Far out,” said Tony. “Don’t you think that if everybody could hear those sounds stoned, they’d see the world a lot more clearly?”
“Definitely.”
“I mean, who’d want to kill people if they knew they could experience something like that?”
“Nobody.”
“Damn straight.”
We were quiet again, listening to the mild whoosh of cars passing by, below the window.
“You know, something, Tony,” I said, “I like you. You’re an easy guy to be with. I like a guy I can be quiet with.”
“Thanks. You, too, man.”
“Remember what Louis says to Rick at the end of Casablanca?”
We said the line in unison.
“‘This could be the beginning of a beautiful friendship.’”
When we realized what we’d done, we started laughing. And once we’d started, it was hard to stop. Every time we looked at one another, we’d crack up again. Tony ended up flat on his back, howling at the ceiling. It reminded me of when we lay on the beach together, earlier in the week, laughing together over the Water Tower Park incident.
Once we’d recovered, Tony put on WTOS, Milwaukee’s progressive rock station. Jonah woke up, and Tony made him a bottle and brought him out to the living room to feed him. We started talking about ourselves, then, one of those new friend raps where you cover your whole life in a few hours. I noticed that Tony stuck pretty much to the facts, not revealing much about his deeper feelings. That made me wary, so I followed his lead. We had a lot in common, though. We were both proletarians who hated the greed and injustice in our culture. But we were also sensualists who wanted to enjoy some of the good things in life. We were determined to have a career we enjoyed, but also one that helped people. We both thought being committed to a woman was important, but wondered if traditional marriage was too restrictive. In short, we looked at life in pretty much the same way.
After Tony had fed Jonah, he put him on the floor on a blanket. We both stared at him for a long time, totally focused on him in that intense way that weed focuses you. It was so hard to believe he was there, alive, a tiny version of Tony created from his body and Claire’s. It was awesome.
During our talk, the only place Tony and I seriously differed was over spirituality. We’d both been raised Catholic and we’d both left the Church, but I admitted I was always looking for something to fill the spiritual void that had left. For me, even experimenting with drugs had a spiritual purpose. Tony felt no such need. He was glad to be quit of the Church, and he used drugs only to deepen his enjoyment of things.
“
Life as it is—that’s enough for me,” he said. “I like things I can see and touch and taste and smell. Looking for something more behind it is bullshit. You’re born, you live, you die, and then you’re gone. That’s all there is to it.”
I disagreed, but at that point in my life it was difficult to articulate what else I thought there was, so I only tried half-heartedly—and unconvincingly, I’m sure. I tried to explain I wasn’t looking for something beyond life as it is, but something deeper that is part of life as it is, something we don’t usually take into account as we go about earning our daily bread. Tony couldn’t see it, but I even enjoyed disagreeing with him. Though he didn’t understand my point of view, he really listened to what I had to say.
Tony and I were feeling so tight with one another by the time Claire returned that I was almost disappointed to see her. It had been too long since I’d had a good male friend, and I didn’t want anything to break the spell. Jonah had fallen asleep on his blanket.
“You two look pretty mellow,” she said, standing over us. “So does Jonah.”
“I’d say we’re pretty mellow, wouldn’t you, John?”
“Pretty mellow just about sums it up.”
“We gave Jonah a few hits, too,” said Tony, smiling impishly, “so he’s mellow, too.”
“Yeah, sure,” said Claire.
“How’s Katie?” asked Tony.
Claire tossed her keys and purse onto the sofa and sat down on the floor, across from me. Her dress rode up onto her lap as she positioned herself, giving me a glimpse of her pale thighs and light-blue panties before she pressed the material down between her legs. Suddenly, I was not so unhappy that she had returned. Blushing, I looked down at my own lap.
“Katie’s not so good,” she said. “Al’s been slapping her around again— in front of the kids, too, the bastard.”
“Does he actually beat her up?” I asked incredulously.
“No, not really. He doesn’t hurt her badly. He just humiliates her.”
“Just,” said Tony. “She should have left that asshole years ago.”
“He’s not always that way, Tony—you know that. You like him yourself, most of the time.”
She addressed me. “Most of the time Al’s really generous and warm, but he has these moods. Mostly when he drinks. I don’t know. She loves him. And I think he loves her, too. What can I say …? I’m gonna put Jonah to bed and get myself a beer. Either of you want to have one with me?”
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