by Noël Alumit
It seems you tease me. Sometimes you show up, most times not. I wait for you, look for you. I wander through parks and alleys; I peer into dark movie theaters where one must be of a certain age to get in; I have waited hours, days until you see fit to touch me again.
I am devoted to you.
Forever Faithful
Bob
I didn’t mean to tell. I really didn’t. Amada found out about me and Monty. I had to tell her.
—“Okay,” Amada said, “Who is this guy?”
“Huh?” I said.
“Oliver told me you’ve got a boyfriend. Who is it? Oliver said I know this mystery man. That explains a lot: Why you’re always out, why I don’t see you days at a time. Cough it up. Who is it? Is it the guy who lives downstairs?”
“No, it’s not him.” I was getting dressed to go to work. I was lucky enough to get the evening shift: good tips.
“Is he cute?”
“Yes.”
Then I did something I shouldn’t have: I took off my T-shirt, revealing the red marks on my back. The ones I gave to myself. Amada saw them, and said, “Oh my God. What happened?”
I threw on a sweater and said, “Nothing.”
“Did this boyfriend of yours do this to you?”
“Of course not. Monty would never do anything like that.” Once I mentioned his name, I couldn’t take it back.
“Monty? His name is Monty?”
“Yes.”
“Monty,” she said. She stared at the ceiling, thinking. “I don’t know a Monty. I thought it was somebody I knew.”
“You know of him.”
“The only Monty I know of is Montgomery Clift.”
“Exactly.”
“You’re dating Montgomery Clift?”
“Yes.”
“You mean you’re dating someone like Montgomery Clift. Someone who looks like him, acts like him. Right?”
I was giddy. I thought of Amada as naive. “No. I’m seeing him, we meet every once in a while. We dance, we hold hands, and…make love.” I blushed when I said Make Love.
She fell on her side laughing. I didn’t see what was so funny. I was letting her in on my relationship; she didn’t take it seriously. I was upset, disappointed really. My world with Monty was precious to me. If anyone would’ve understood, it was Amada. She kept laughing.
“You can’t be serious?” she said.
“I am serious. We meet, we talk, we do lots of things together. I know a lot of people wouldn’t understand, but I’m asking you to. I’m seeing Montgomery Clift. I’ve always seen him, here and there. But this time, I touch him also. You love Marilyn Monroe. Well, I love Monty. I know it’s kind of strange. But that’s the fact of the matter.” Amada was obviously perplexed, but she nodded her head like she understood. “Please don’t tell anyone, okay. Let’s keep it a secret. Not everyone would get it. Promise me you’ll keep it a secret.” She was quiet. “Promise me you’ll keep it a secret.”
“I promise,” she said meekly.
“I have to go. I’ll be late for work.”
Amada’s head was cocked to one side, her mouth wide open.
One thing I believed: the world was unfair. I had to grab what I could get. I had Monty. I believed Amada wouldn’t tell. I trusted her. Not everyone would have understood, they’d make fun. They wouldn’t know that kind of love. They would be quick to judge, quick to condemn. My little world with Monty now included Amada.
Sometimes I wonder what my life would have been like if she hadn’t told.
•
Amada cried when she saw me. “It’s all my fault,” she kept saying.
I was too tired to speak, too tired to tell her, No, it wasn’t. I tried to tell her No with my eyes, sending her psychic messages.
“I should never have let you go last night,” she said. The night we argued.
“You’re being a real shit!” she said.
“I don’t want to see your folks, not now, not ever.”
“You’d rather spend time with an imaginary boyfriend—”
“He’s not imaginary. He’s real. He’s the most real thing in my life.”
“You’re breaking my mother’s heart.”
“Fuck your mother!”
“Fuck your mother! Fuck your father, too! Where are they? These goddamn parents of yours. Where are they? They’re dead, aren’t they? Your father’s dead. You might as well face the fact that your mother is dead, too.”
“My mother is alive,” I said.
“Where is she? The Marcoses are no longer in power, why hasn’t she shown up? Meanwhile my parents are hurt that you don’t want to see them. They’re in a lot of pain.”
“Your parents don’t know shit about pain,” I said. “My father was beaten until he was black and blue. That’s pain. They hit him like this.” I punched myself; I took my fist and hit my chest. “They hit him again!” I smacked my face. I felt warm liquid drip out of my nose, landing on my shirt, leaving a clean red spot there. “They hit him again and again, for hours and hours.” I clawed at my arms, digging my nails into my skin, smacking myself, punching myself, grabbing my hair, falling onto the floor kicking away furniture, slamming against the ground.
Amada jumped on me holding onto my arms. “Stop it!” she yelled. “Why are you doing this to yourself? You give yourself bruises, don’t you? You’re doing it to yourself. Stop it stop it stop it stop it stop it stop it!” But I wouldn’t. Amada and I twisted into each other, I kept punishing myself. “They hit him everywhere,” I said. “They knew he was a writer, so they hit him on the hands. They stomped on his fingers. They did it over and over again. Until his joints were gone. They broke his hands! That’s what Mrs. Billaruz told me. They broke his hands so he couldn’t write anymore. His hands looked like old twisted branches. Then they tortured him again.” I threw Amada off of me and slammed my knuckles against the floor, slamming them until they were red, until my hands were weak and the skin was broken.
Amada cried, “Stop it, Bob. Stop it.”
I took off. Amada chased after me. “Don’t go, Bob. Come back.” She jumped on me, and we fell to the floor. She held me tight.
“I have to go, Amada, I have to go somewhere.”
“You don’t have to go anywhere. I’m sorry. Stay with me. I should have never talked about your mom and dad like that. Your mom is alive. She’s out there. Stay.”
“I can’t. I can’t.” I broke away from her, got on my bike and sped off. I found myself in a bar in Silverlake, throwing back shots of tequila. With every gulp, it was going away, my fight with Amada was going away, what I said about my dad was going away, everything that I was was going away.
Amada was right. Where was she? Where? A little voice came to me, clear as a bell, giving me the answer, but I had another shot of tequila, and the little voice went away, too.
“Last call,” the bartender said. “Suck ’em up. It’s last call.”
I got on my bike, cruised Franklin Boulevard, getting lost in the buzz of my bike echoing from the buildings around me. I hopped on the freeway and drove into Topanga Canyon, racing up and down the hills, thinking of the wire tied to him, shocking electricity.
I screamed into the night. I made a sharp turn, a little too sharp. My bike disappeared from under me. I went flying, flying away. I hit the sidewalk and skidded along the cement. I got up, and felt this warmth run down the side of my face. I saw my bike fifteen feet away. I heard a guy behind me say, “You OK?”
“Yeah, I’m all right, but my bike’s trashed. Shit.” I thought about the money I didn’t have to pay for it. I would have to work double shifts at the restaurant, take every extra gig possible to fix the damage on my bike. I turned around, and the face of this guy was wild and scared. His eyes were bugged out and his jaw dropped.
“What’s the matter?” I said.
“You better sit down,” he said.
“I’m all right.”
He took my arm and a searing pain went up my shoulder. H
e led me to the curb. We passed a parked car, and I saw my reflection in the car window. My leather jacket was torn up, my right shoulder busted open, the warmth on my face was blood, dripping down to my chest like thick red tears. The entire right side of my face was messed up, feeling like someone took a torch and lit it on fire. The right side of my face buzzed, a slow burn ravaged my temple, my cheek. My ear was bent, sort of hanging limp, twisted out of shape.
An ambulance zoomed in and a medic shot me up with painkillers. At the hospital, a cop ordered me to pee into a bottle. I passed out.
In the morning, Amada sat dressed in white, looking clean, antiseptic in a way. Mr. and Mrs. A were there, too, looking down at me with woeful eyes. Mrs. A handed me her compact mirror.
My face was swollen, the size of a basketball. Orange and wet. My face was lopsided, because my right side got most of the beating. There were gashes above and below my right eye. Both eyes were black because I broke my nose. Stitches kept my ear attached to my head. Dark purple lines crisscrossed my face, looking like someone slashed me this way and that.
“Aw fuck,” was all I could think of to say.
•
I had this dream: my father came to visit me in the hospital. He didn’t look like himself. He wasn’t the man I remembered. He used to be young, his body erect, his head too high for his shoulders. He used to be strong, all guts and fury.
In my dream, he was small, too small to care about. He was frail and could barely stand. His hair was wild, tangled like barbed wire. His skin had lost its firmness, sagging like ill-fitting clothes.
Was this my father?
“Why haven’t you cried for me?” he said. His voice was grainy. He walked around my bed, a slow walk. With each step, he seemed to vibrate, rattle. With each step, he resembled a small earthquake, enough to shake some buildings, but not strong enough to do any real damage, enough to make glass fall from shelves, but not enough to make the shelves themselves tumble.
This was my father.
He wore a dress shirt with an intricate design: blooming flowers: daisies, petunias, birds-of-paradise, and roses. Especially roses. More roses bloomed around his neck like a choker caked with rubies. Petals opened. He looked like a majestic garden.
He circled my bed, and I watched the flowers of his body blur, becoming liquid. The bright colors of the garden dripped from his body, leaving green marks, yellow marks, red marks on the floor, forming grotesque ponds.
The roses around his neck kept blooming, growing larger and fuller until his neck was completely red, forming a serrated line between his chin and his shoulders. His head shook, swaying this way and that. It tilted to the left, then to the right, then to the left again, eventually falling off, hitting the shoulder on its way down to the ground.
His headless body walked around my room. His arms were outstretched feeling his way.
I heard a croak, a small peep coming from below my bed. It was my father’s head trying to speak. Saliva dribbled down the corners of his mouth. His lips moved up and down trying to form words, but only gagging sounds came out.
Then in a raspy voice, he asked, “Why haven’t you cried for me?”
I didn’t have an answer.
•
Amada told. She told people that I hurt myself. She told people about me and Monty. She told people at the hospital.
“So you don’t hurt yourself?” Brainwasher asked.
“No.”
“Then you didn’t make those bruises on your body.”
“No.”
“Where did they come from?”
“From the accident.”
“Those bruises don’t match the bruises you got from the accident. The bruises you sustained from the accident were on your upper right side: the shoulder, the face. How did you get the bruises on your back? Your arms? Your legs?” He studied me. “As a matter of fact, I wonder if you caused the accident yourself.”
“That’s crazy. Why would I want to do that to myself? Why would I fuck up my face?”
“You tell me. Are you trying to kill yourself?”
“No. I swear I don’t want to kill myself.”
“Then why?”
“I’m clumsy. I bump into things.”
“Are you always clumsy?”
“Yes.”
“Are you clumsy around your boyfriend?”
Then Monty appeared. He couldn’t have come at a better time. He filled the drab office with sunlight. Brainwasher’s office was a shit-colored brown with furniture left over from the seventies: geometrical prints hung on his wall and a velour couch off to the side. Brainwasher sat behind a gray metal desk and I sat on a wooden chair.
“Are you clumsy around your boyfriend?” he repeated.
“No. I’m never clumsy around him. I always know what to do when I’m with him.”
Brainwasher smiled. He was a round, pink man with red hair.
In the hospital, I woke up one morning and Brainwasher was standing over me. He didn’t look like the other doctors who were taking care of me. He didn’t wear a white coat or anything. He wore a plaid shirt. “I’d like to talk to you,” he said.
“About what?”
“Your accident.” I had been talking about my accident for almost two weeks. I didn’t want to talk about it anymore. “Your family asked me to come here,” he said. “Especially Amada.”
“They’re not my family.”
“Amada told me you hurt yourself. Is that true?” Brainwasher spoke with a calm, soothing voice. On any other occasion, I probably would have liked to talk to him, but this was not one of those occasions. He wore a nameplate pinned to his front shirt pocket. It read: Abraham Butterworth, Dept. of Psychiatry, St. Joan’s Hospital. “Amada also told me you date a dead 1950’s movie star.” He couldn’t help but smile. “Is that true, too?”
The door to my room opened. Amada, Mr. A and Mrs. A entered. Amada’s face was to the floor. Mr. and Mrs. A stood beside her. Mrs. A’s hands were on Amada’s shoulders. There was something beautiful about the way they looked. It could have been a photograph, a real Kodak moment. It would have been perfect, except that I wanted to throttle Amada. I almost did.
I lunged from my bed, screaming, “What did you tell them, Amada? You promised you wouldn’t tell anyone!” I almost had Amada in my grasp, but Brainwasher caught me and shoved me back. He was strong for a pudgy guy. He sat on me to keep me down. I wanted to rip Amada to shreds.
“Nurse!” Brainwasher said. A woman entered wearing a blue uniform. He yelled the fancy name of a drug then she disappeared. “Calm down, Bob,” he said. “No one is going to hurt you.”
“Fuck you.” I couldn’t reach for Amada, but my fingers tingled. My hands were out of control, they wanted to destroy something. I grabbed my face, and ripped the bandages and stitches away, feeling the sutures gripping my skin, eventually tearing away, stinging me.
Mr. A grabbed my arms and held them down. Amada watched with horror. Mrs. A flung her arms around, whispering something, praying maybe.
The nurse appeared and put a needle into my arm.
“Fuck you,” I kept saying. I wondered if my dad was treated this way. All of my muscles weakened, my eyelids became heavy.
I awoke. My hands were cuffed to the bed. I was no longer in my hospital room. I was somewhere else. I was “under observation.”
Brainwasher wanted to talk to me. The first thing I said was, “Amada is a back-stabbing lying motherfucking bitch.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
Electricity
Dear Monty, January 3, 1991
I have a room of my own, a blue room, with one lamp by my bed. The lamp is tomato colored with a white lampshade. I’ve been committed to this room.
I live here now.
Dear Monty, March 1, 1991
You come to me when I most need you. Like yesterday afternoon, during American Movie Classics on cable. There is a common room where all patients can read or play board games or watch TV. When I enter the
room, most of the patients leave, because I have this fucked up face; they’re scared of me. I love having the common room all to myself. I can flip through channels and find you. I have watched your movies through the years. I must have seen The Search fifteen times, The Misfits maybe eight times, A Place in the Sun nine times, From Here to Eternity eleven times. But I’d only seen Freud once.
Freud came on today. You were the great psychotherapist Sigmund Freud. You helped the mentally ill. All of your colleagues despised you, because of your revolutionary theories in mental illness. You were chastised because you believed that we are all deeply affected by our childhoods, stemming from strong impressions and attachments to our parents.
Please visit me soon.
Dear Monty, June 4, 1991
They came again, like they did last week and the week before. The Arangan family. I stayed in my room with you. I don’t need them. I don’t.
I hadn’t touched Montgomery Clift in a long time, kissed him, held him. It had been months. I thought I would die. I saw Monty in my room, sitting with me when I nodded off, standing by the window when I woke. Seeing him was one thing, being unable to touch was unbearable.
A male nurse was sleeping on the couch in the common room, dead to the world. His feet were on the armrest, and his arms crossed over his belly. I knelt by the male nurse, a thick-necked guy with hairy arms. I thought of Monty, wishing him near me. Then Mr. Clift appeared, slowly covering the nurse with his cinematic glow, until it was Monty—not the nurse—lying there.
I touched his hand, caressing his knuckles. His nails were perfectly manicured, crescent moons at the cuticles. I lifted his hand, inspecting the palm, admiring the long lines that ran there. I brought his hand to my face feeling his dry warmth against my skin. I kissed his hand, licking his fingers.
I undid his belt, slowly and rhythmically. I unhinged the leather strap from the silver buckle, and unzipped his pants.
I nuzzled my face into his groin, tasting his cotton boxers, slipping my tongue through the slit of his underwear. His pubic hair smelled of sweat and darkness.