by Peter Gault
“Your book is sick and perverted,” said one zealous defender of God. Henry was flattered by the comment. It was the type of comment that had been made about Shakespeare, D. H. Lawrence, and Salinger. Henry was in good company. He said, “Don’t blame me. I’m not responsible for what I write.”
“If you’re not, who is?” asked the attacker.
“It writes itself. It takes on a life of its own. I open a door and whatever comes out, comes out. I try not to interfere with the flow. When you go to sleep at night, you can’t be responsible for what you dream. It comes out of you, but you don’t necessarily understand it. It may even be sick and perverted. For me, it’s the same thing with writing. It’s not my fault what comes out of me. You say my book is sick and perverted. What you really mean is the world is sick and perverted. Which is not what I put in the book. You have to be sick and perverted to think my book is sick and perverted.”
Henry Kissing-Balls wasn’t a philosophy major for nothing.
“What’s the most frustrating aspect of your life as a writer?” asked a young woman during one of the many question periods after a reading.
“Spelling,” said Henry. “I keep forgetting how to spell. I’ll be able to spell everything for a few months. Then, for no reason, I can’t spell a thing. I have to look up every word. I don’t even get close enough to find the word in the dictionary. I have to phone someone to get the first three letters. I’ve spent hours combing through the ‘f’ section of the dictionary, only to remember that the word starts with ‘ph.’”
Someone in the crowd yelled scornfully, “You think you’re great.”
Henry piped up for himself, “I’m a turd, but my writing is great.”
There is another person who plays on my mind, perhaps more than anyone else, and that is Mrs. Baldwin. I’ve gradually developed an irrational hatred for Elizabeth’s mother. I haven’t seen the Baldwin family since the funeral. I haven’t heard a word of gossip about them, yet I find myself constantly lecturing Mrs. Baldwin. I work myself into a rage. I fantasize about meeting her on the street and stopping to talk. The conversation is friendly at first. She asks me what I’m doing. I know what she wants to hear. She’s status-conscious and wants to feel superior. She wants to hear that I’m lazy, and stupid, and unsuccessful. No matter what I tell her, that’s what she’ll hear. She’s always felt that way about me.
“What are you doing these days, Ken?” asks the imaginary Mrs. Baldwin.
“I’m an actor!”
“An actor? Ha. Ha. But how do you make a living; how do you eat?”
“I give blow jobs to fags on Rush Street for twenty bucks a shot.”
Elizabeth had some nice qualities, but a mind of her own wasn’t one of them. Mrs. Baldwin manipulated Elizabeth against me. She tried to push Elizabeth to be political, bargain with her sexuality to win a man with money and high social standing. She told Elizabeth to use her head, not her heart. Elizabeth’s head was spinning. When I think objectively about Mrs. Baldwin, I realize I should pity her. She lost her only daughter, whom she loved. But I imagine myself meeting Mrs. Baldwin on the street again and the same kind of conversation happens.
“You’re a petty, frustrated old bitch, Mrs. Ajax,” I say out loud. “You wouldn’t know greatness if you fell over it.”
It’s easier for me to feel sorry for the old man, Mr. Baldwin. He wasn’t much good for anything but loving his daughter. Although it’s more difficult for me to have a conversation with Mr. Baldwin than with anyone else in the world, in retrospect I like the man. He’s oblivious to almost everything. He had no idea what was going on with his wife and daughter. There’s something endearing about his boyish naivete. I’m sure the only thing he wants in life is to have his little baby back. I’m sure he gets drunk with his best friend Mr. Simmons and cries and admits that life means nothing without his baby girl. I wish I could help him. I wish I could resurrect Elizabeth. He’s a nice man and didn’t deserve to lose his baby.
“You’re not the only one who misses her, Mr. Baldwin,” I say to myself. “I miss her too, you know.”
A month after I graduated, Mother came to me in a panic. She began to stammer about the economy, unemployment, high interest rates, and the dismal future of America. It had finally occurred to her that I intended to be an actor. She emphasized job security. Computers are where the money is. The walls are closing in. Everyone is being laid off. Mother was worried for my survival. Unemployed workers are becoming violent. The news is full of protesters, protesting the government, protesting private industry, protesting the price of licorice cigars, protesting protesters. Newscasters use paranoia to sell the news. Face facts! A great depression hangs over the country. Join the protesters. Join the paranoid.
“Fuck the economy,” I said. “Don’t bore me with that shit.”
“You had fun at college. Now you have to work!” said Mother.
“Work!” I exclaimed indignantly. “I haven’t got time for work. I’ve got too many more important things to do.”
“You used to be such an ambitious young man,” she said. “What have they done to you at that university?”
“I still am ambitious, but I’ll never be a nine-to-fiver. I want nothing to do with rush hour. I live on the fringe, Mom. I’m part of the fringe.”
“But the economy,” she repeated. “The economy!”
“If the economy is so bad, why are there so many fat people?”
Mother pulled me into her car, squealed out of the parking lot, and raced to Stockton. While on the highway, the speedometer never dipped below eighty-five miles per hour. It was a miracle we didn’t get stopped by the police. Mother stormed into the Drama department. I was trailing behind her, jogging to keep up, asking her what she intended to do, and pleading with her to turn around. She marched past the secretaries, not giving them an opportunity to budge, and kicked open the door of the department head. We stood in his office. He recognized me, but he was shocked by the intrusion and unable to speak.
“What the fuck have you done to my son?” she demanded.
“Pardon?” he said.
“You’ve ruined him with your goddamn ideas.”
He looked at me, hoping I could shed some light on the situation.
“Excuse me, Sir,” I said. “I’d like you to meet my mother.”
Mother may be a nuisance when she doesn’t understand something, but when she does understand and agrees, there is no stronger support system. She’s like a team of bulldozers. She’s the source of everything inside me, everything that’s confident, positive, and courageous. She’s what spinach is to Popeye, the raw material of a conqueror. She has come to believe in me as an actor, nothing else is good enough for Ken Harrison. Mother is always there, always behind me no matter how many miles away she is. She’s there to inspire my enthusiasm, destroy my enemies, celebrate my accomplishments. Her love never wavers. On top of that, she’s pretty. She feeds me energy like a hydro-generating plant, and she’s pretty too.
I told her what I wanted life to be. She thought about it and said, “Fuck the economy!”
“Fuck the economy!” I shouted joyfully and kissed her on the cheek.
Mother got so excited she drove back to the city and quit her job. She sold the house, gave Tanka to my sister May, and bought a sailboat with her boyfriend. I haven’t seen her since, but she mails me a letter from somewhere in the Caribbean every other week. They live off the sea and give rides to tourists for extra cash. Mother wrote a successful cookbook for sailors. Her boyfriend plays the piano, has a custom-built, portable piano which he bolts to the front deck when they’re in port. He takes an occasional job playing piano in nightclubs. I’m thrilled when I get news from Mother. When I open up her letters, a twenty dollar bill falls out of the envelope.
If it was possible to harness my mother’s sexual energy, by sticking a tube in her vagina and playing with her nipples, you could keep the lights on in Los Angeles for years. I know what she’s doing with that poo
r man of hers down south. She’s putting impossible sexual demands on him. She did the same thing to my father. There’s no use holding this against Mother. She can’t help it. Nymphomania runs in her family. Who am I to criticize her? I’m not exactly celibate. I look at her from the perspective of a son. She’s given more to me than any other person in the world. It’s foolish to think I could ever repay her. You can’t even say something as trite as “Thank you.” You can only take the bounty and walk away.
“You’re a slut, Mom, but I love you anyway,” I say to my reflection.
When Mother sailed south, Father flew north. Father quit his job when Sara forced him out of the condominium. The change in Sara was a mystery to Father. She started out madly in love with him, became silently disapproving, then openly hostile, and finally hysterical and violent. The cycle was all too familiar. Sara threw a fork at him once. Another time she attacked him with a huge lead candlestick holder which was heavy enough to club an elephant to death. It got to the point where he couldn’t feel safe in his own home. He slept with one eye open. Father claims to understand nothing about relationships. He’s not lying. He really doesn’t. Father’s friendly, easygoing nature frustrates and enrages women.
Although elevators will remain a central part of his life, Father has taken an interest in a new career. He wants to go back to school and train to be a brain surgeon. I don’t know how he got the idea in his head, but I’m sure he’ll make a good brain surgeon. He’s good at everything; that’s his problem. I’m glad I’m retarded at most things. It forces me to channel my energy into specific interests. I agree with Father that doctors perform a wonderful function in society, healing people. My father wants to heal people. He doesn’t want to preach, moralize, or crush the opposition party in a political debate. He wants to heal people, and he’s spending a bundle to do it. He lost a fortune in Florida. He’s broke, but has noble intentions, my father.
“I can only afford the necessities, like booze and drugs and prostitutes,” joked my father.
“That’s an original line, Dad. I like that one.”
Father and I belong to the legion of lost and lonely men scouring the city for true love, or not-so-true love, or any kind of love at all. Father goes to bars, drinks, meets women, fat ones, skinny ones, stupid ones, witty ones, sad ones, bitter ones. Sometimes he goes home alone. Sometimes he has company. Sometimes, when he has company, he wishes he was alone. He goes back and looks some more. It’s not so bad. Every night is different. He thinks of going out and feels tired. He goes out anyway. Once he’s at a bar, he’s glad he didn’t stay home. He decides that the next night, he’ll try a new drinking establishment, new faces.
Father shares my loneliness.
Barb lives with her boyfriend. They are on the fringe of society like myself, going through part-time jobs like a sprinter jumping hurdles: mopping floors, secretarial work, stacking empties in a beer store. It’s demeaning, but it’s no more than twenty hours a week of being demeaned, instead of the usual forty. It’s a creative lifestyle, bohemian. There’s no billboard image of youth and success to lean on and not much to boast about in coffee shops. Part-timers have no rights. Only full-timers have rights. Fringe people spend their time thinking, talking, screwing, pursuing an interest in the arts. They plan excursions. Fringe people are world travelers.
It’s the private realm that matters to the fringe people, not public images. They want a rich inner life and are willing to make sacrifices. There are many ways to attain subsistence, and a creative approach can make a little go a long way. It’s an alternative to selling your body and mind for job security and a gold watch after twenty-five years’ service. It’s an attempt to make your life your own. It may or may not work. It’s just an alternative. Like everyone else, Barb wants more, but she’s young and willing to wait for the right direction, the right opportunity. Penny, Barb’s friend, is full of surprises. She’s not the same woman. She lives with us on the fringe.
“I can be a miserable bitch,” said Penny.
“I can be a miserable prick,” I said.
We ate grapes and made love. Life on the fringe agrees with Penny. There’s not the kind of pressure that makes a person old. She’s even become more physically attractive. The sexual aspect of our relationship stopped when Penny moved in with a man, but the friendship has remained.
Sex is here to stay. My life revolves around sex like the planets revolve around the sun. Sex is the nucleus of my being, forever on the forefront of my mind. Sex is immortal and omnipresent. I can’t look at a woman, on the subway, walking down the street, in a hamburger place, at a bar, without wondering what it would be like to make love to her. I can’t help glaring at women, often with my mouth open and my tongue thick and salivating. I identify body parts, nipples through a blouse, curves of a buttock, lips, the dimple of a crotch, legs, fingers. These are the things that obsess my mind. I wake up with an erection and go to sleep with an erection. Throughout the day, I get an erection every fifteen minutes with clockwork regularity. I get an erection as often as some people smoke cigarettes. I’m a chain smoker when it comes to erections. The genital area of my jeans is worn white from adjusting my hardons.
This physiological condition is not exploitive or sexist. You can respect women as equals and still have a healthy sex appetite. The liberation of women has nothing to do with abstinence or impotence. I wish everyone enjoyed sex as much as me. I meet the odd woman who actually seems to enjoy sex more than me. New Age women, for example, can never get enough sex. I dated a New Ager for a short time. She scratched me so badly during sex that after a week my back was covered with scabs. I like to be scratched a little, but I don’t want permanent scars. It got to the point that I made her put on oven mitts before we got into bed. The sex was fun, but I felt like the loneliest man on earth when she talked about politics. I didn’t want to take a stand and debate. I wanted to exchange secrets. She called me apathetic. I pulled my erection out of my pants. There’s nothing apathetic about my penis.
“I look good tonight,” I muse to myself. “It’s a shame no one is around to see me.”
When will I find a woman I can love? When will I find the woman I long for? I want her more than anything else in the world. My heart is crying for her, screaming for her. There are beautiful, creative things inside me I can share with her. She’s out there somewhere looking for me. She’s more important than the economy. I smell her, taste her, hear her voice, but I haven’t found her yet. I look for clues and pursue possibilities. She doesn’t have to be flawless. She doesn’t need a magnificently contracting vagina. I consider a good lay to be someone I enjoy having breakfast with the next morning. She just has to have that pervasive quality, that aura of love. I’ll recognize the glow inside me and around me. Everyone seems to have a girlfriend but me. I hate to see couples holding hands. I figure they’re in love and going home to screw. It’s not fair that I have to go home alone.
“Fuck! Elizabeth,” I say to my reflection, “what did you have to go and die for? That was a dumb move!”
I want the courage to be absolutely nobody. There’s power in anonymity. There’s power in little people. There’s power in The Barren Room. There is something in the center of everyone that’s as frightening as death. It’s where nightmares come from. I live in reverence of this power. It lifts me up and throws me down. It’s bigger than me. Simple-minded people call it God, as if it’s a person. I think of it as a landscape.
“The Barren Room is a nice place to visit,” I say to myself, “but I wouldn’t want to live there.”
I study my naked reflection in the mirror. I yawn. I prepare myself to sleep alone. I walk around the room collecting items: a squash racket, flowers out of a vase, my favorite album, three paperback novels, a suitcase full of Christmas decorations from the closet. My arms are bulging. I drop one of the novels and have to bend over and pick it up. I get into bed and push the pillow between my legs. I carefully place everything around me and in my arms. I sn
eeze. I let the candle burn.
I masturbate twice before falling asleep.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
First and foremost, I’d like to thank Cinda, for her camaraderie and muscle power. I’d like to thank Joe, for his passion & energy & visual genius; Gary, for his patient hospitality and the use of his desk; Alonzo, for his shining enthusiasm and for using his credit card to get me drunk when things were at their bleakest; Margaret, for bringing me into the world and making me believe that anything is possible (anything isn’t possible, but I’m glad she made me believe the opposite). I’d also like to thank the New York contingent: especially Dick, especially Kathy, especially Marty & Judy.
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 1988 by Peter Gault
ISBN: 978-1-5040-2406-8
The Permanent Press