Cannibals in Love

by Mike Roberts

  “Because his goat is his wife!” Louis said loudly, and the three of them snorted with laughter. Louis laughed the loudest, elbowing me. “You get it?”

  I didn’t say anything. I was staring out the windshield with the perfect sensation of landing through a cloud. Searching for the absent ground, and waiting for the wheels to touch. I looked up at Louis with the scenery coming back again. Christmas lights blinking madly; American flags frozen to their poles. Just like everywhere else.

  “That was stupid,” Cullen said. “And not funny. And offensive toward goats.” The cabdriver snorted again.

  “Why did you laugh, then?” Louis asked indignantly.

  “I was still laughing at Santa’s joke. It was like a little aftershock. I just got another part of it, ha-ha.”

  Louis glared at him, and I felt my ears begin to ring. I had the sudden need for this taxi ride to stop. And almost as suddenly, it did.

  * * *

  Outside the bar, I felt Louis’s hand on my shoulder. “Santa anagrams to Satan, dude. Think about that. I didn’t see any registration on the dashboard. Who was that guy?”

  “Be serious!” Cullen berated him loudly.

  “I’m just saying, I don’t feel so good. I think there was something bad in the pot.” Louis was licking his lips and staring at Cullen. “Don’t you think it tasted a little anthraxy?”

  Cullen didn’t say anything.

  “My mailman died of anthrax,” I said absently. Louis turned to me and squealed with laughter, like he couldn’t even help himself.

  “I’m serious. I haven’t picked up a single piece of mail in over three months.”

  “Jesus. Both of you, fuck off!” Cullen said tersely, as he opened the door to the bar and let it slam shut behind him.

  * * *

  The Summit Street Saloon was a wash of neon beer lights, and wood-paneled walls, and shiny linoleum floors. There were balding pool tables, and ripped leather stools, and water stains on the ceiling. Red and white Christmas lights hung heavy over every pipe and beam. They really overdid it, which you had to give them credit for.

  Highlights of the Sabres game were playing on the televisions, and everybody stopped to watch. Mesmerized; horrified. Laughing because they all really cared. I heard Cullen tell somebody that we should’ve won. And someone else said, “Yeah, but we didn’t.”

  * * *

  “The Baby Boomers have fucked us.”

  I said this out loud, at the dinner table on Christmas. In front of my Baby Boomer parents and their Baby Boomer friends.

  “How do you mean?” my Boomer uncle asked with a quizzical smile.

  “I mean in the corrosive, soul-sucking way … fucked.” This hung over the table like a bad smell, as people wiped their mouths and set their forks down. I took another sip of wine as my sister scowled at me.

  “That’s called righteous indignation,” she sneered.

  “And whose side are you on?”

  “The side of not being a rude, boorish asshole.”

  “All right, all right,” my mother said, but I didn’t care. This was the point. They were all talking about everything without really talking about any of it, and it was pissing me off.

  “I hardly think that the role of each generation is to decide what is and is not—” my father began, but I cut him off.

  “And George Bush is the president that you all deserve. I hate to say it, but he is your worst selves come home to roost. And none of you seem to give a good goddamn fuck about it.” I paused to look at my uncle again, with my own quizzical smile. “Fucked…” I said. “That’s how I mean it, totally fucked.”

  Throats were cleared and glasses tinked together, before my uncle broke the tension with a laugh. Wagging his finger at me, like he just got the joke.

  “You’ve been in the Big Apple too long, kid. Har-har-har.”

  Everyone chuckled and moved on happily. It wasn’t even worth correcting him. This had been happening all week. They all seemed to think I lived in New York City for some reason. Weren’t they paying any attention? Didn’t anyone care that a military target had been hit in Washington, D.C.? Didn’t that fucking mean anything?

  My mother frowned at me across the table in a sad way, and I did feel bad then. I’d been doing this a lot. I was finding it hard to just sit still and relax here. In three days, I’d argued with my brother that 9/11 proved Buffalo was in the Midwest. I’d ruined a perfectly nice dinner by explaining some revolting fact I’d read about turkey farms. And I cited widespread pederasty in the Catholic Church as the reason I would not attend Midnight Mass (or any church services) with the family.

  My mother said she was afraid I was losing my sense of humor.

  We tried to do simple things together, as a family. My parents wanted us to go to the movies, but we couldn’t agree on anything to see. My sister accused me of trying to make them watch “cerebral movies,” which made me laugh, because it was true. I knew exactly what an insufferable ass I was being, and I didn’t care. I wanted to have a real fight with somebody about something, but no one would engage me in any way. Everyone just sort of shrugged and put up with me, and it was making me crazy.

  * * *

  I looked out over the bar at all these disappointing and disrespectful children, and I felt myself slipping into inebriation. Everyone was still talking about the Sabres, and I couldn’t blame them. I’d watched the game, too. I saw the same thing. Up two goals in the third period. Bad teams lose those games.

  Right on cue, the clip started over on the televisions, and we all stopped our conversations to watch these last three goals play out like deaths in a Greek tragedy. People groaned and heckled. Someone asked if this was what we paid them for.

  I heard Louis tell somebody that it was un-American not to grow up in a dump, and I turned back around to face him.

  “Are you talking about here?” I asked.

  “Sure. Here, there, everywhere, man. God Bless America.”

  I sort of liked this cracked sentiment. I couldn’t deny that I did feel safer in Lockport somehow. After all, this was the place where clouds came to die.

  We ended up sitting down at a table in the back, where we could all stop talking, finally. I noticed Cullen staring at a girl near the bar, and I understood immediately that he was going to ditch us.

  “Uh-oh.” Louis smiled. “Looks like somebody’s about to get a dick suck.”

  “Are you fisting me?” Cullen scowled. “Cut the fucking shit, already.”

  “What?” Louis said, pretending not to understand.

  Cullen turned away again, and succeeded in inviting this girl to join us at our table, in some nonverbal way. I nodded hello, trying not to smile at what Louis had said. I’d never heard it put quite that way before.

  “Which one of us do you think will die first?”

  Louis asked this, obviously. His face was blank, and I wasn’t sure I’d heard him right, until I looked at Cullen. Louis turned more generally to the girl and me.

  “Because I think there’s a better than even chance that it might be Cullen. Cullen could die really young. Really, really young.”

  “I said, fuck off, idiot.” Cullen pushed out his chair and took the girl by the hand, disappearing for real. Apparently Cullen was even more afraid of death than I was. Or, at least, I was glad that Louis thought so.

  Louis sank into his chair and brooded. There would be no consolations in this bar for us tonight, and certainly not sex. I slunk back, too, and watched in disbelief as the Sabres game started over on the televisions. This was the late-night replay, and I smiled, remembering how we got an early one somewhere. I looked around the bar and saw others thinking the same thing. Here comes a goal.

  * * *

  I’d watched infinite amounts of television in the last week. I’d forgotten how much time we spent shut up indoors here. Sitting on the couch with my brother and sister. There were all these new shows on the food channels about eating as a kind of masochism. All the shows
were like this now, and we were surprised, and slightly embarrassed, to admit how much we liked them. They were short and colorful and took great pains to disguise themselves as travelogues and situation comedies. They were careful to never explain what was really going on, or why our faithful host was always doing this to himself.

  “Bad economy,” my sister said, and we laughed.

  “Violent narcissism,” I added.

  There was a strange bonding happening as we watched the fat man flagellate himself with food. We marveled as he showed up in each new town with his sweaty arms around the locals. A prelude to the gluttony. Short-order cooks fixed him novelty plates and troughs. Let’s add a dozen eggs; let’s add a hundred peppers; now let’s melt the cheese. His face choked and his arteries bulged as his pancake makeup began to drip. He suffered as he told us how delicious it was. Mooning and mugging as he kept on eating. Every half hour brought him closer to the brink of vomiting and heart attack and death. He was laughing and making a joke of death. Always laughing.

  We were sickened and exhilarated by these new shows. We couldn’t stop watching them. We said we wanted the host to stop, but that was a lie. We wanted to see him get the thing he had coming. We wanted to see him buckle and hit the floor unexpectedly. Would they show that on television if it happened? Would that be going too far? Was that too real? Was anything on TV real anymore?

  “Jesus Christ,” my brother said with a kind of awe. “The terrorists’ heads must explode when they watch this shit.”

  * * *

  I looked back over the bar at all these bleary kids I went to high school with. Bodies reduced to frosted tips, and upturned collars, and terrifying eye makeup. They were a sea of leather jackets and boot-cut jeans. I was definitely drunk tonight, I thought. Time had gotten away from me, or they were closing the bar down early. Either way, it was last call and everyone was being hustled out the doors.

  But Louis and I continued to sit at our table, watching the Sabres play on. We were winning now, and besides, there was nowhere else to go. But they weren’t really going to let us watch the whole game over again. And eventually the bartender came over with two unopened cans of Genny and told us to hit the bricks.

  * * *

  In a weird way I sympathized with the Baby Boomers. They grew up thinking that the Soviet Union was going to drop the Big One on them at any moment. They went to sleep at night dreaming of atom bombs and radioactive cities. And not without good reason. This was a penance for the bombs of their fathers. So who could really blame them for buying Walkmans and doing cocaine and fetishizing Wall Street? They had cable TV and porno on VHS tapes, so what if they were raping the planet? Maybe they really did think these were End Times.

  My uncle put his hand on my shoulder before he left to drive home drunk on Christmas night. “Don’t kill yourself worrying so much, kid. You just need to get laid more.” He winked, and I nodded solemnly because I thought that he was right.

  * * *

  Outside the bar, people stood around in huddles. Someone asked us if we wanted a ride and Louis spoke up to say no. We were staring at an empty car left idling with its lights on. Louis said that we could ghost-ride it into the canal. I smiled and told him we could drive ourselves home instead. But Louis said that it was a long way, and we had better start walking.

  We opened our beers and packed through the dead field behind the bar, under a dull scrim of snow. I realized for the first time that Louis wasn’t wearing a jacket. He said he’d left it in the bar and it didn’t matter anyway. I asked if he was cold and he said no. I asked again after a hundred yards, and he said yes, but he didn’t care. I thought Louis might have taken some pills or something inside the bar, but I didn’t ask. I just kept my feet moving in front of me: feeling the cold, and watching it billow out as my breath.

  I felt like I was sleepwalking now. I used to do that when I was young. Waking up in the shower, or out in the yard, even. Feeling startled and embarrassed, even though I was alone. I could still remember the way the dark trees looked just like a stage set to me. Tacked up against the unmoving sky. I would blink until I really saw them there, jarring in their three dimensions. It struck me then that this was not like TV, where something is always happening. This was real life, where you could stop and freeze endless stretches of nothing at all. Everything in its right place, and all of it made real.

  I would go back inside the house and never speak a word of it. Lying down in bed, with my wet hair, and counting up the sleep I’d lost.

  Louis bent down and picked up a horseshoe, and I could tell how much it pleased him. He kept swinging the thing in his hand, back and forth, back and forth, while we walked. It was so rusty and old, but it was beautiful just the same. It must have been so cold in his hand that it felt like fire. Louis finally let the horseshoe go and we watched it sail away into the darkness.

  I laughed and threw my beer can out into the night after it, and we sleepwalked on. It was easy to enjoy the way that impossible things always happened in a dream to move the plot along. Like walking home with Louis, and waiting on the first light of day. Watching the scenery come wheeling off the stage. Hearing the invisible snow machines humming in the rafters. Blinking my eyes on the red numbers of the clock. Waiting to fall out of bed, onto the floor, out of the dream. Just waiting.

  TOMBOYS

  One summer I started falling madly in love with all the Tomboys in the city. These rough, noisy girls with their square jaws and their angular haircuts. They had tattoos and chipped fingernails. They had tight jeans and loose shirts. The Tomboys liked to ride bikes and drink beers, and go out into the night looking for trouble. They had bruises on their knees and cuts at their elbows. They had dirty jokes and tremendous cascading laughs. The Tomboys had health and sex and danger. These girls knew something you didn’t know, and it was the reason they could indulge in being simply and purely young.

  Once I knew all these girls were out there in the city, I started seeing them everywhere. At a grocery store; outside a post office; passing through a crosswalk. They intimidated me with the ease with which they did these simple things. All these beautiful Tomboys that I walked right past and never said a word to.

  Until, one night, I was leaving the bar when Lauren and Cokie walked in. I felt myself hesitate at the door. I was a little drunk, but not enough to know how to begin. I walked back into the room and I turned my back to their table. I suddenly started to stretch, folding myself in half and touching my toes. I didn’t actually think that they were watching me, and I was only vaguely aware that I might be making a scene.

  “What are you doing?” one of them asked.

  “Nothing,” I said, arching my back as I turned to face them.

  “Stop showing off,” Lauren said, not unkindly.

  “In a minute,” I said, putting my leg up on a chair. “I’m almost done.”

  “Don’t you think those jeans are a little tight for stretching?” Cokie smirked. “I mean, I’d hate to see you rip them right here in the bar, in front of everybody.”

  Both girls snickered and I came a little closer.

  “Oh, don’t worry about the jeans,” I said. “I have a very pompous ass.”

  Lauren practically went into a fit of squealing, but Cokie frowned. “I’m pretty sure you’re misusing that word, dude.”

  “No, I don’t think so. Look at it.” I turned and stuck my ass out, smiling with my teeth. “Go ahead. I’m not shy about it. Look.”

  Lauren laughed and grabbed my back pocket, guiding me down into the empty chair. “Shut up and sit down already,” she said. And that was that.

  * * *

  The night ended with a suitably awkward goodbye as we unlocked our bikes outside the bar. “You have poison ivy,” I said, pointing at Lauren’s arm, surprised I hadn’t noticed it earlier.

  “Yeah. You better hope it’s not catching.”

  She smiled wickedly and touched her forearm to my neck. It surprised her, I think, that I didn’t pull away
. I liked the damp smell of sweat, and the sticky feeling of Lauren’s skin touching mine. This was a test, I thought. A strangely intimate gesture of initiation. I would take Lauren’s poison ivy now if this was how it passed.

  “We should all have it,” I said, as I pressed the girls’ arms together. “Blood brothers.”

  This was how I became one of the Tomboys.

  * * *

  I was not trying to sleep with Lauren and Cokie, really. I just wanted to be there in the moment with them. They were always together, and I wanted to be together, too. We were supposed to find each other, we said. We were supposed to laugh and break each other’s backs and make trouble, because we were more fun than fun. Lauren and Cokie opened up the city and made it feel new. They took me around to the places they liked to eat, the places they liked to drink. They introduced me to kids who had never heard my boring stories and jokes before. And, all at once, I stopped waiting on death and started having real fun again.

  We would meet up after work and sit out on our porches drinking tall cans of beer, laughing and talking shit. Our friendship was a flirtation, of course. We would stay out late, dancing at bars or an apartment that belonged to friends of friends. There was something loose and joyful in it that we didn’t need to question. Something unselfconscious that was beyond sex. Because sex could come from somewhere else, and it should, I thought. And we could even share that, too. All our little trysts and hookups laid bare.

  And yet, Lauren and Cokie could be cruel about the girls I talked to at the bars, which was confusing. In small ways we were all becoming possessive of the group. There was power in the moments we were together, and it could feel strange if I was left alone with one or the other too long. Especially with Lauren. There was something charged about the way that she would smirk and snarl at me, and it made me guilty because I knew I had picked a favorite. Lauren, whose flirtations were so alien and wonderful to me. She was always reaching out to grab hold, touching my head or my neck. Taking my hand too long and squeezing as she released me. Lauren would smile wickedly, sometimes for no reason at all.