A Matter of Love in da Bronx

by Paul Argentini

  --No!

  --No, it should be. The day I met you? He shook his head and looked away to cast the pain from his eyes. They never said a word. He looked hard directly into the sun to feel less the heartquake inside. He shrugged. My birthday.

  Sam snapped his legs up, jerked his hands from the pockets, cracked them together loudly, and rubbed them hard and fast together. A subterfuge to hide the embarrassment he felt at the thought he had conceded to weakness with a baldfaced plea for sympathy. --I'm sorry if I caused you any discomfit. I really believe I was trying to make a point, more to myself, about what has been going on in my world. I find I can't explain it away without condemning myself. It's as if I was talking to my own heart, but I was talking out loud, and you happened to hear. It has brought understanding. Understanding can sometimes bring tolerance. It can sometimes also bring vengeance.

  --So how do you feel now?

  --I don't know. ...I don't know. You'll have to ask me again when my feelings level out.

  --I won't forget. I want to know.

  --So do I. In the meantime, my folks are worried stiff about whether or not I'll abandon them. When I go out the door I feel my mother's eyes boring into my back, the question flashing in her mind: Will he return? Since my father told me of this, he's sheathed the stiletto of a tongue, and speaks a decibel or two lower. The attempt is to replace the cavity of my once ignorance with a filling of cower caramel.

  Oh! Lord! And when am I supposed to ask him about that? When it's too late? If there was little chance for us before, there is none now if I understand why this was revealed to him at this time. When a much-used chain has its links grow thin, it must be replaced to hold a captive still. --Sam? Why do you suppose after all these years your parents chose just this moment to tell you?

  --Your question is like a weather vane that points the wind without an arrow: there is direction behind it. Let me think about it for a sec. ... No. Like a plastic bag over my head, I'm suffocating from the closeness of this newfound knowledge. Tell me what you think?

  --Divine are answers we ourselves divine.

  He nodded rapidly understanding. There was wisdom at work, and... and... He would have to think on this later, too. --Enough of me, what is your reaction to this news? I read nothing on your face.

  She picked up a soothing swing. --Right as I read it now... I isolate myself from the fact, and say it had nothing to do with me. I must've been six-seven-eight when my father came home to the wheelchair. I had nothing to do with any of that. I graduated high school, and was most aware then that we lived pretty much on the margin economically because I naively asked my folks to send me to designer's school. They said work was my lot from that day hence to help support the house. Like you, I never questioned a thing. Where the money they got came from or what they did with the weekly paycheck I turned over to them. But, on the subject that you and your folks have supported my family: I can only think at this moment that it was the most honorable, self-sacrificing thing one friend could do for another. That it has continued for all these years is superhuman, of a saint. I feel badly that I didn't know. And if knew, what would I've done? It really makes no difference at this point, but something inside tells me I would've done something differently...something less expensive, something shorter than human sacrifice. I feel worse for what it has cost you. In this regard, I can only speculate; but in my wildest guesses I could hardly come close to what the price comes to. What must the feeling in you be like right now?

  --One day, I'm going to think about it. One day I'll be able to see the total picture; one day I'll have full understanding of its meaning in my life. Until then, it can be a very boring subject.

  --Sam...

  --Here comes Lou and Louisa...

  --...I'm really not sure, completely, about this, but there's something I'd like to discuss with you...it concerns the Scopias and the Dolorossos...something not quite on the order of the information you've revealed to me just now, but I believe something that's contributed to it.

  --Oh? Could it be she also knows about our mothers? What does one say? You know? Your old lady and my old lady have been making it together! Yeah! Crotch kissers. Dildo doers. Dykes. Homosexuals. Lesbians. AC-DC. Perverts.

  --Yes. Ordinarily it wouldn't be an easy subject to talk about, until one thinks of it as love. Euphemism or not, it makes this understandable. It has to do with your father.

  --My father!

  --Yes! Your father! Is he so perfect?

  --It's not that, I just can't associate my father and the word love. He loved only one person once, and never again. My brother. All these years I thought he hated me because I was alive and my brother dead. My brother’s death killed his heart. When Luce was murdered, he never spoke of her. Ever. Like he flushed her being, her persona, her élan down the john. Just speaking of her stabs me in the heart. She had the sweetest, most angelic face. That was her undoing. She was irresistible. This should prove to be very interesting no matter what it is. So?

  --So it'll have to wait. They're here...

  Sam found himself lifting his face to the sun as he leaned his back against the chain link fence with Louisa next to him puffing heavily on one cigarette after another. He was compelled to listen less from politeness and more because the subject was his buddy, Lou. True, the choice for the conversation was not his. He would rather have remained with Mary who now was with Lou.

  --Sam, you gotta know this: No two people in the world fuck better than us: Lou and I are each made like the other half of a peach pit. We come together. He is me. We're just great like that. I don't know what to do. He's your friend. I don't want to kill him. Tell me what we should do. Tell me what I should do. The problem is me. He wants to marry me. And, that's all right. I coulda been married when I was fourteen, if I wanted...the guy was loaded, and handsome, and older. It was a summer affair. We met right here. When I told him I couldn't leave the park, know what he did? He went out and bought one of those fancy motor homes, and used to park it right over there, just by the trees at that end of the park. I would tell my mother I would come here to baby sit, then slip away to the motor home. It was gorgeous. Like living room furniture in it, a microwave, all sorts of electronic things, a shower, and a special big bed he had made. I would fuck his head off. He went crazy for my pussy. He would give me anything I wanted, but all I took from him was a dollar-fifty, something like that, just to give to my mother so she would believe me. We met almost every day that summer, all July and almost all of August, until he became desperate to marry me. I guess it was instinct, I don't know, it was something that told me to stay away from him. So, one day, when the sun was out like this, but real hot, I was walking toward the motor home, and I just turned around and ran home as fast as I could. I hid in my room, shaking; I think I was terrified. I felt like if I had gone to him, something terrible would've happened to me. I felt like he would've killed me. From that day, it--he--the motor home--never came around any more, I never saw him again. I used to think about him a lot. I phantasized about the things we did, and what he taught me. Three years later, in high school, I was working on a school project, and had to use the library and the newspapers on microfilm? Well, I got the idea just for the heck of it to go to the issues around that time, and looked back at the papers in August when we were seeing each other... He killed himself. He drove the motor home to his parking place, and blew his brains all over that huge bed. The same day I ran from him. Sam! Is Lou going to do that if I don't marry him? Is he? You know him, Sam...

  --Nobody knows anybody that good. Why the fuck don't you just get married! Sorry... Don't mean to be angry with you, it's just...it's just that some things should just be done without letting the rest of the world screw things up. I'm thinking maybe he might even ask me to be best man. I've never been a best man. I think it would be an honor. Look. I apologize. Because you need a pair of ears to talk into it doesn't make any of this my business except in one regard. Lou is my friend. I love him. I wouldn't s
tand by and let anyone make him out to be a sucker.

  --Would it surprise you if I told you I care for him very much? I love him, in my own way. When I was fourteen I didn't trust in my smarts like I do today. Today I'd go off with the fellow in the motor home. I don't want just love. First I want lots of money, and everything that comes with it. Mister, don't fool yourself, everything that comes with money is a lot. In fact, what's missing couldn't fill the dream in a bed of straw. I want the luxury of big money; I want the independence of big money; I want the power of big money. I'm not settling for anything less ever in my life: not for your buddy's magic cock; not for a world of love; not for hell and damnation.

  --What makes you think you're so special, so smart you can hook a guy with that much money?

  I know I can because I've still got the same kind of magic that made the motor homer flip. Once they taste my magic, they're mine. Just like your friend, Lou. I can have him do anything I want as long as it doesn't involve money, the poor slob. The magic? Mister, the magic is what women have been using for ages to get what they want. The magic in their cunts.

  --You mean, fucking is piece work, dreaming is full time. Yet, I'd cut off my balls for Mary, and she weaves a magic that doesn't come from between her legs. The truth: I never so much as had a taste of her magic of which you speak, and I wouldn't care if I ever did so long as I could be close to her.

  --Really? She said it with an inflection that came from the British Isles, and emphatically, too. Really? Listen, Mister. I can understand very easily about a lot of money. No where in my world is any comprehension whatsoever of the love of which you speak...

  --Extraordinary! He's just an extraordinary fellow, Mary. I've taken Sam so much into my heart. I would do that just on his ingenuousness. Not a deceptive fragment in his body. He is what we see. You know, I think so much of Sam, not just because of what he has to put up with at home--and that's shit enough for all the barns in the world--but because he's the personification of everything that's good in the world: put in the pot all the saints that ever were; put in all the flowers; all the gentle rains that ever fell; put in that beautiful sun up there that shines on us all; and you might begin to get an idea of the wonder of that man. I love him. I think I almost love him as much as I can love myself. Maybe more. The mystery is how is it you are the first love who has ever found him? And, if he loves you, as you say he does, you are luckier than anyone with a license to steal; or one who owns a tollboth to sunshine; or the only one with a franchise in the universe for love. Mary...

  --I thought you wanted to talk about Louisa...?

  --Oh! Not really.

  --How come?

  --Because I think I got her number.

  --And what might that be?

  She thinks she's got a magic cunt.

  CHAPTER 27

  Sunday evening

  Mary, Treasure Of My Heart:

  Lovely. You are lovely. I find you lovelier with each pulse of my heart. It's not because loveliness pleases sight and soul that we wish it to us, for that it does truly; it's not because loveliness animates the deadstone in our hearts that we wish it to us, for that it does too truly; it's not because loveliness seduces our loneliness that we wish it to us, for that it does, too, truly; but we wish it to us because it's the apotheosis for the enravishment of love. Thus do I find the beam transducing life's core to the benevolent embodiment of our tenderest feelings, you for me, me for you. This comes to me in a way special: by having your beauty be more by more by each beguiling instant more.

  Not because I see less.

  Because I see more.

  This concept is not some newfound knowledge. I have known of it from the moment I understood my mind was the repository of thought, of reason, of perception. This may not be so for anyone else on earth. For me, who thrives on the sensual first and intellectual next, I can't tell you how many times I've listened to the Brahms Violin Concerto before I began to hear the true passion in the piece. It is such a work of beauty that each time I put my ear to it; I'm overwhelmed by a new magnificence of discovery. The genius has always been there; it's the listener who must aspire to its heights. Thus similarly as I do to what you bring to me.

  Can you understand this?

  Yours is the love that inspires.

  Ah! If I were blessed with the gift to create: a poet, painter, composer, whatever! How easy you would make it for me my art for yours is the love that inspires. I'm a simple man who now conceives of complex, and vast and innumerable considerations of such lush and fruit and beauty where before I sowed only sand. Ah! If I were capitalized with a dynamotor in my brainpan how simple you would make my pedagogical considerations of philosophy, ecclesiastics, physics, chemistry, mathematics for yours is the love that inspires. And how I would need all of these resources, and more! Because unlike the facets and facility of fantastic music there is no inspiration that can prepare my heart, my soul, my thought to consider in its entirety you, your loveliness, your love. How beyond the scope of any mortal that be. Except! In one way: In my immortal love for you. May I tell you how I know of that? And, of that, how I can be so sure? It takes no great perception to understand the simple things of life, and of these I know to have a thing is not to possess it; and to keep of these is to loose them to fly; then to glory of them forever is to dart the moment brightly. No? You think? Then consider how well you remember your most cherished moment, and more. Why? That is exactly what it is for me and the holding of you in my heart. What more exalted position than first and last and everything in between? Or, in my terms for you and my love for you. I have never had one to love before; I shall never have another again; here is uniqueness: you, my only-only ever-ever love. And, if there is so much to hear and know in a piece of music, what of such a love? I see ours now as the first audacious snowdrop boring through snow and ice to announce emphatically the promise of a spring long before crocus, long-long before daphne, so much longer before hepatica; and how much longer from then to the last of the mums, and bittersweet, and Indian corn? To what ecstasies am I to wait until I just begin to know of your love? What a sublime sensation courses through me when I think that perhaps you love me as I love you, exactly; then, I perhaps might be of some slight inspiration to you which heightens the grandeur passed on to me, and to what infinite ecstasis may we aspire? In infinitatem omnem. And don't you feel, too, the splendor of this beginning? Newness brings its own harmony of joy. But, with you and me, there is a particularity that transcends the movement of the universe confirming our beginning to a beginning eon when we may have been a starting star assigned betwain, did prove our way and place to track the heavens, and had our destiny reaffirmed with our rejoining under kindred star and mystery. Familiarity brings its own security. But, with us, it’s born without its otherwise inherent casualness, assumptiveness, contemptuousness. It is an assuredness that comes from the strength of our love. And, like the Brahms, how anxious I am to explore for the true passion of our love. What is the transport? What signals must we learn to read? Are there proscriptions? Are there more questions than answers? Not for me. I proceed rather emphatically by sensation. Is there a better way? Ah! I beseech whatever powers there be to allow me to cull the possibilities. All right! You wish to be more...sensible? Then let us be on guard. What is the antisymetrious disparator? The highestmost? Would you care to hear?

  Here's one:

  Is it that I could love you too much?

  If I asked you, what would you say? We may start with 'What nonsense!' and continue to that highest degree. So would I. There are no qualifiers in any possible estimation of my adoration of you. Our love is the star which will shine past being. We do not speak, therefore, of capacity. We do speak of Being. Existing. The fact: It is. Our love is. Its limitlessness is exceeded only to the extent of our feeling or understanding. It is more magnificent than anything in our universe. Simple.

  Here's another:

  Is it that I could love you too little?

  Consummate
absurdity! I first said.

  Then, I thought. My response could be shy of the royal essence you command in being pretty, in being charming, in being reserved, in being so many things in being you. True, you bedazzle this plebeian, but may I not have courtly thoughts, and wonders and doings? Certainly. First, 'too little' implies a matter of degree of which there is none in my love for you. And next, even if it were decreed that there might be too little, I would welcome that! Indeed! ...only so I may love you more! In either case, how could so much fortune be mine?

  Here's another:

  Is it that I could love you not at all?

  Not at all. Our bedazzlement comes through predestination. There is no appeal from so great a power.

  Amen.

  One thing we talked about today that I've thought about concerns the demands put on me by my family to meet what they considered was their responsibility. I could've done and become any number of personages: doctor, lawyer, soldier, upholsterer, cook... One thing I'm absolutely certain I would've done is to have met you, and the one thing I'm not certain about is whether or not I would've been as prepared, as ready, as needful meeting you then as I was now. This is what was left up to us. We met. Impeccable was our timing.

  And so was Louisa's mother!

  Summarily she summoned you both denying us not a stolen moment more!

  Kiss! Not a kiss today! What nefarious schemer escaped hell conceiving such torture? That we should have been so close and kept so far apart this morning deserves a Dies Irae; that we were under the sun's ciborium this afternoon without a caress, a kiss may seem holy to the gods, but fiendish to me! There is a purpose in this, though. To be sure. It has precipitated in me a desire that will be perfected the next time I see you, or you will come see where I cold lie. To kiss you. No. Not just to kiss you. But, to kiss you: To start in the Battery and take us to Bronx Park! And from hours early to daylight dark. I will get to know all there is for this lover to know about your whole and entire kiss, enough to fill volumes, to deliver dissertations--at least! For as much as there is to say about this one day's kiss!