Wake Up, Sir!: A Novel

by Jonathan Ames

  Well, I made a drunken mental note to channel my desire for answers to the H. and J. Questions into my novel when I got to work at the Rose Colony. I would address my confusion through my writing, my art.

  I continued to watch the wrestling and I wondered, still ruminating on the H. Question, if seeing men embrace each other in a combative ring was somehow, for the American psyche, a safe expression of this form of sensuality. One of the wrestlers had pectoral muscles the size of serving trays, and at the climax of the choreographed battle he suffocated his opponent between his formidable breasts. This was the other fellow's scripted undoing, because shortly thereafter, he was on his belly, his leg was pulled back, he was ready for a good sodomizing, and the match was over.

  “I think wrestling is like pornography,” I said to the man with the distended belly whose sons liked wrestling, though I didn't mention to him the Greek angle. “It must be a formula. Porno and wrestling. In both cases, you have people with absurd bodies pretending to do something. In one they pretend to fight and in the other they pretend to be attracted to each other. There must be catharsis for both audiences in the exaggeration of it all. You know what I mean, sir?”

  The gentleman didn't respond, though, to my thesis on wrestling and pornography, and then the bartender screamed out, “Last call,” and eager to get one more beer in my system, I didn't pursue any more discussion on the meaning of simulated grappling.

  It was 2 A.M. when I got off my barstool, and all the alcohol I had been storing in my proverbial wooden leg shot to my head. It's always a revelation to sit and drink for hours and then stand up and find out that you're twice as intoxicated as you realized. That's why it's good to drink in bed, as I had done in Montclair. No sudden shocks.

  I thanked the bartender for an excellent evening, then staggered out of the Hen's Roost. The other patrons got into their trucks and station wagons and disappeared into the darkness. I had arrived at twilight and now black ink was spilled across the sky.

  I walked across the street to the gas station, which was still open. I thought I had better buy a bottle of water, hoping to fight off somewhat the next day's inevitable hangover, and as I approached the entrance to the filling station's commissary, I spotted the telephone I had used earlier in the day. I suddenly wished I had somebody to call. You know how it is when you're drunk—you're vulnerable to sentimentality and want nothing more than to talk to somebody on the phone and say, “I love you.”

  Unfortunately, I had no such person to call, certainly not Aunt Florence under the circumstances, but then in a moment of alcoholic genius, I remembered the phone book with all its solicitations.

  Next to where I had scribbled the Rose Colony's number—and I thought that I should probably cross it out before someone mistakenly called the Colony looking for an illicit encounter—I saw the message that had appealed to me earlier, though I find this all very embarrassing. It was the one from Debbie, where she stated what she liked to have done, but it's silly of me to beat around the bush, to pussyfoot around, to stall any further, so in case you don't remember, I'll reproduce the message: “I love to have my pussy kissed, call Debbie, 222-4480.” Again, it was the use of the word kissed which I found so beguiling.

  Removing my phone card, I gave her a ring, which was very selfish of me, considering the hour, but when one is drunk, one is notoriously prone to selfish behavior. But even drunk, what was I thinking? Well, I was terribly lonely, and, too, I had always wanted to try one of these numbers that people leave in toilets and in this case a phone book. But I needed my IQ to be reduced, to have the top of my brain sheared off by beer, before I was able to pursue this curiosity, which had been reinflamed by all the numbers I had seen scrawled in the restrooms between Montclair and Sharon Springs.

  “Hello,” answered a woman with a sleepy voice after about the sixth ring.

  “Is this Debbie?” I asked, and I was aware that my speech was slurred.

  “What?”

  “I'm calling for Debbie,” I said, trying to speak more coherently.

  “Who is this?” Her voice now wasn't at all sleepy.

  “I'm sorry to call so late … I read your message here at the gas station … My name is Alan. Would you like to come here? I'll buy you a wine cooler. Whatever you like. The bar is closed or I'd buy you a drink there. We can sit somewhere and talk. I'd love to talk to you …?”

  I phrased it as a question to make myself less intrusive, if that was at all possible.

  “You got my number from the gas station?” She sounded angry.

  “No, the phone book,” I said, and my intuition told me I should hang up right now, but some overriding drunk intuition told me not to. The overriding one said, “You're talking to a woman. Don't give up now. You never know what might happen.”

  “Where are you?” Debbie asked.

  “I'm at the gas station.”

  “And you want to buy me a wine cooler?” Her voice seemed to soften.

  “Anything you like. Or if you know of a bar that's open—the Hen's Roost just closed—I can get you a drink.”

  “All right. Stay there at the gas station. You're at the one across from the Hen's Roost?”

  “Yes.”

  “Stand outside. I'll be right there.” She hung up.

  The overriding intuition, who may have been as drunk as me, said, “See. You're going to meet a woman!” The other intuition, who had somehow stayed sober, said, “Start running to the Adler now. This is too good to be true, so it can't be true. Get the hell out of here.”

  Naturally, I didn't listen to this sober, milquetoast voice of reason, and I went in the store to buy some chewing gum. I didn't want Debbie to be too put off by the alcohol on my breath. Remarkably, the same fellow who had been working there earlier was still holding down the fort these many hours later. “You want another phone card?” he said.

  “Oh no, I have many minutes left. Thank you for asking. Just want some chewing gum.”

  He was probably on his eighth pack of cigarettes, the smoke in there was as thick as the bar's, which I hadn't minded while drinking. Under the influence, I don't notice cigarette smoke, except to be upset when I smell it on my sport coats the next day.

  I was tempted to share with the cashier my good news, but I thought this could be indiscreet: he might know Debbie, it was a small town.

  I went back outside to wait for her by the phone booth, and I tripped on some curbing and fell to the pavement. I righted myself and seemed to be in one piece, just my hands were a bit raw.

  “Pull yourself together, you have a woman coming to see you,” said the forceful intuitive voice, and to help pull myself together I chewed a piece of gum, and either from the taste of the gum or the booze or nerves or a combination of all three, I nearly vomited, but managed not to, though I spit out the gum. I was really falling apart moments before my date. My hands were scraped and my throat was scorched from the stomach bile which had risen like a flame and then sunk back down.

  “Don't blow this, Alan!” admonished the voice. The other voice, the sane one, was pouting, silent, beaten into submission.

  I leaned against the building, closed my eyes, pulled myself together, and waited for Debbie. It was a long shot, but maybe she really would be nice to me. I couldn't be the only lonely person in the world.

  CHAPTER 9

  I meet DebbieI search for the right wordsI meet a HillI do things I didn't know I was capable ofAn arduous journey

  I may have blacked out for a few minutes, because it felt as if I had lost some time, like I was waking from a dream. Then a large, elevated pickup truck pulled in, its high beams trained on me. For a moment, because of the blackout, I didn't know where I was. But then I remembered: I was in Sharon Springs, at the gas station, waiting for Debbie.

  The lights were blinding—they were at eye level because of the truck's unusual suspension and its impressive, swollen tires. Somebody came down from the passenger side of the truck; the figure seemed to be that of a
woman. Then the figure, now clearly a woman, was in front of the lights, and she stopped there, didn't come closer. I took a step away from the wall, but maintained a respectful, wobbly distance. It had to be Debbie.

  “Did you call me?” she asked, and I wouldn't characterize her tone as welcoming, but she had to be sure I wasn't just some idiot standing outside the market of the gas station. She had to be sure I was the idiot who had called her.

  “Yes,” I said. “I'm Alan.”

  She was a robust female specimen, not a classic beauty like the girl in my dream, but I was thrilled that she had come out in the middle of the night to meet me, to give me a chance. Her hair was dyed a limp blonde—the roots were dark. Her chest, in a halter top, was formidable and appealing, and her somewhat chubby face was extra-puffy, I could see, from being woken in the middle of the night. She looked to be in her late thirties. It would be nice to hold her. It had been a while since I'd held a woman, and so I was more than happy at the idea of snuggling up against this tough-looking gal.

  “Where'd you get my number?”

  “From the phone book … I've been drinking … I know it's crazy, and I'm sorry it's so late, but—”

  “You looked up my number in the book?”

  “No, the note you left …”

  What could I say? She was wary of me. I searched for the right romantic words, but before I could come up with something seductive and charming about the unusual circumstances of our rendezvous, she tapped the hood of the truck and the driver's-side door swung open nastily.

  It hadn't occurred to me when she came from the passenger side that she was perhaps not alone, that someone else had to be driving, but there's only so much one can consider in these highly charged situations which involve calling women who leave notes in phone books, especially when one's blood-alcohol content drops the old IQ to a figure lower than one's body temperature.

  Hence, a large, mean ball of a man stepped out of the truck and gave me a rather nasty stare, which he seemed to have been rehearsing for some time, perhaps the last forty years of his life. He could have matched iced-oyster glances with Uncle Irwin. He was in a blue T-shirt and jeans, his head was a large globe with bristles, and his belly was distended, which seemed to be the vogue in Sharon Springs. He was a few inches short of six feet, but he made up the difference in his width. He looked like a small hill.

  This hill soaked in the Blair dimensions—I'm about six feet, 160 pounds, most of it in my leather wing tips, I'm afraid—and then he advanced toward me with a single, historically unfriendly salutation: “Motherfucker!”

  Seeing a hill move stunned me. It was not unlike that time a rat crawled up my leg. I froze. Then this human landmass was right in front of me. He said, “Why'd you call her?”

  “I'm sorry—” I began, but then he coldcocked me, which is to say he struck me without warning, though I think it would have been highly unusual for him to have verbally alerted me.

  The nature of his coldcock was that his fist, the size of a small toaster, smashed me right on the nose. There was a high-pitched crack—the sound of a pencil violently snapping comes to mind—and the pain was cruel, disgusting, like I had been hit with a hammer.

  I didn't fall, but there was some kind of eclipse, even though it was already night, because all light in the world was extinguished. I saw only the blackest blackness, and in this sightless world I reached up to my nose, feeling for it like someone reading braille. My nose, I discovered, had moved over to the right side of my face, finding that it was no longer wanted in the middle. I heard someone scream, “Oh, God!”

  That someone, I realized, was me. But that's all right. Agnostics are allowed to pray under these circumstances; it's one of the benefits of our position.

  Then some of the lights came back on just in time for me to see the Hill's fist enter my blue linen sport coat in the area of my stomach. This brought the bile and puke, which I had swallowed earlier, back up to my mouth, and I fell to the ground, but heroically I didn't vomit.

  I couldn't breathe very well, though, and I couldn't see much. It felt like I was looking through the tube of a drinking straw. I saw one of my hands on the sidewalk. That was all my field of vision could take in. My poor hand, I thought.

  I was vaguely aware of being scared and sad that this was happening to me. But there was a curious detachment. I could sense the Hill just standing there. He seemed to be resting. Perhaps I had been punished sufficiently. I deserved what was happening. I had made a terribly selfish mistake with that phone call, so my beating was justified, but maybe enough was enough. Blood was now pouring out of my nose onto the ground as I knelt there, hunched over, trying to breathe.

  I wasn't really drunk anymore. I was something else. Not drunk. Not sober. Beaten. Noises were far away, muted. I made out the Hill saying, “Fucking call my girlfriend,” and Debbie saying, “Fuck that pervert up.” And through the drinking straw that was my field of vision I saw a work boot speeding toward me, right for the eye that was looking through the straw, and I rolled and caught the boot on the shoulder. That hardly hurt at all compared with the crumpling of my nose and the devastation of my stomach, and I was so emboldened by this lesser pain and avoiding a kick to the eye that I tried to crawl away.

  The blow to my shoulder woke me up a little and my vision was now functioning almost normally. As I crawled away, humiliated, I looked back and saw the bottom portion of the Hill advancing with menace. I observed what appeared to be a knee, and I don't know where I got such a smart idea, but just as the Hill was on top of me, I kicked out my leg with great force—months of yoga did have their benefit—such that the flat sole of my leather wing tip met the Hill's knee and it was a brief skirmish but my shoe won.

  The knee went backward, which is not how knees are designed to operate, as I'm sure you know, and it was rather grotesque to see a knee buckle like that, even a malevolent knee connected to a dangerous human Hill.

  I couldn't believe it. I had directed my leg as if it were something I had practiced, like a serve in tennis, and the Hill shrieked and then all of him collapsed and he was on the asphalt with me, looking pained and vulnerable and human. Even cruel Hills have an attachment to the proper function of their knee joints, and I was horrified to have so injured someone and tried to convey with my eyes—I don't think I was capable of speech—my regret. But I did think that maybe it was a fair exchange, almost biblical—a knee for a nose.

  I then rose up, thinking it was all over, but the Hill got to his good knee and went to punch me in the groin, but it glanced off my sturdy hip bone. I was stupidly shocked. Hadn't he seen my apologies in my eyes?

  Then he quickly took another swing and punched my left knee, tried to do to me what I had done to him, but mine didn't buckle, thank God, he caught me on the side of the knee. And before I knew it, I intuitively sent my right foot, my thick leather shoe, back into action, into an opening, which happened to be his mouth. The Hill let out another cry and his lips were painted with blood. It's amazing how quickly the mouth produces blood, but I shouldn't have been surprised, since when I floss my teeth there's so much blood that I think of running to the Red Cross and making a donation.

  When my shoe was out of his mouth, the Hill and I, in a moment of closeness—fighting is quite intimate, actually—locked eyes again. We were both in disbelief that I was getting the better of him, and our eyes communicated this. Then he spit out two crimson-colored teeth.

  But it still wasn't over. The Hill was a worthy opponent. He tried to stand up, made it about halfway, and took a wild swing at me and missed. I then swung my right fist—the size of a good paperback dictionary, no toaster, but not insubstantial—into the side of his head, into an ear, which felt soft and fleshy, though the skull underneath was hard. A terrible pain went through my hand and wrist, and I think a terrible pain went through his ear and head, because he crumpled to the sidewalk, holding his ear with one hand and covering his face with the other, like a child who doesn't want to be
hit any more.

  Then I was convulsed with incredible terror—the old, procrastinated reaction to something traumatic—and I started to shriek and run, I had to get out of there, but a fierce monster in a halter top—Debbie!—flashed claws at me, but I was able to brush her out of the way with a sweep of my arm, like a running back, and I saw her stumble but she wasn't injured—it's one thing to dismantle Hills, another to strike a woman—and then the cashier stepped out, holding a baseball bat. “What the hell's going on?” he asked, but I ran by him, screaming like someone deranged, and fueled by adrenaline which hadn't been tapped in years, I was off on a crazed sprint for the Adler, with blood still coming out of the thing that had once been my nose.

  Fearful that the Hill was going to pursue me as soon as he got up, I raced down the dark street, then jogged, and then with my adrenaline petering out, I hid, exhausted and frightened, under some bushes by a house, near where I had seen the Hasidic children riding bicycles. I lay on the ground, disbelieving of what had happened to me. I gingerly put dirt on my nose, thinking madly that the soil could heal me.

  I lay there a few minutes, but scared to be discovered, I forced myself to get up, walked some more on the dark road, some stars and a wedge of moon lighting the way, and I made it to the ruined bathhouse and hid in there. I thought of spending the night, maybe in one of the tubs; there was just enough moonlight to make out their shape, but being in there was too frightening. I couldn't take it.

  So I got out of the bathhouse and started walking and jogging; it was endless, two miles seemed like a hundred, and I kept expecting the Hill to come after me, perhaps with a gang of friends to finish me off. Or maybe the Hill couldn't get up and Debbie had called the police and a cruiser was going to find me and arrest me for assault, not to mention battery, not to mention inappropriate phone calls.