A Matter of Love in da Bronx

by Paul Argentini

  There! Take it! Take it! Take it! My fucking cock is going to go right through the table! Say it! Jesus how I want her. Say it! Jesus how I wish we could make love! Say it! Jesus Christ! How I wish we could fuck! --How fantastic! I wouldn't believe it was us!

  I would never make you ever feel sorry you loved me because I would love you so wildly in every way. --I would make you come so madly...

  Every muscle in my body hurts; I've strained so... --In my madness I would make you come until you screamed...

  Now I can understand Louisa's level, even Gina's level, even without the element of love. Just on the plain, pure physical ecstasy of romance. --I would scream in ecstasy over and over again until I felt your hardness stretch me to the limits of this world. What could the bliss be like to have your most sacred, beautiful lover make sacred beautiful love?

  If I could only crawl into this phone, and come into your mouth. --Like I was kissing you all over your body all at once, sucking you deep inside me as you released your soul, bit by bit, drop by drop through your pearly wet sex...

  Sure, Father, tell me again how to practice restraint. No. Don't tell me how to do it; you tell me how you do it. Once you've mastered it, O Celibate Pontificus, you are something quite else; but one thing you're not is human. --I would strain to suck you dry, until I possessed all the juice of your love. Oh! Sweetheart! Do it now! For me! Kiss the palm of your hand, now let the tip of your tongue make circles, now, up and down, up and down' now, pull in your thumb, hard; hard! Suck it! Suck it! Are you doing it?

  I'd stick my elbow in my ear is you said. Crazy! A couple weeks ago, if anyone told you kissing your own hand would be sensual you would've told him poking his own eye out would be orgasmic! --Yes! ...Oh! Yes...

  I can't believe this! Standing in a phone booth preparing to have an orgasm! --I can feel it! I can feel it, like your lips and tongue and caressing my clitoris...Oh! God! I want you to make me come so badly. I want it...I need it! Sam! What are we going to do!

  This is getting just a little too weird. --Does it work better if I suck my big toe?

  Only someone rescued from the wasteland of being an old maid could appreciate such humor. --You would spoil it. Just as well, if I went back to work still high on that trip I'd melt right at the machine. Why couldn't we be like on television, like Krystal and Blake Carrington with all that money, big house, servants, jewels, furs, limousines...

  I can see myself, tycoon with the biggest upholstery shop on the East Coast! --That's all part of the mirage. That's what fascinates people. Why do you think it's so popular? It's a parasite that feeds on people's wishes. It's dishonest, total fiction...

  --I wouldn't miss a minute of it...

  --I'd watch, too, if they'd let Krystal and Blake do one thing...

  --Make love?

  --No. Fart.

  --You're awful.

  --It would make them human. It would make them real people. Like us. That would get my interest.

  --I've got to get ready to go back to work.

  --What have you got to do to get ready?

  --Things... Darling, I'll be thinking of you every second until I see you tonight.

  You can't delay another moment. You can't let her anticipate one thing for tonight, and get another. --Sweetheart, we won't be able to go to a motel or anything like that. That's what I had to talk to you about. I'm sorry I have to tell you like this...

  God! I told you! I told you to be careful! To go easy! He's going to break my heart even before we got started! --Sam, you don't love me and you don't want to see me anymore--you just have to say it! Just come right out and say it! We're grownup people! We can deal with hard truth easier than with lame hypocrisy! I've got to go! Really!

  Oh! You shithead! Why can't you express exactly what you mean! --Oh! No! No! I'm sorry...

  I can't believe this! --I bet you are! I really must go.

  Fuck! Don't do this to me! --I'll meet you tonight by Santini Moving as we planned...

  Click.

  Unheard.

  --...I'm sorry it came... Oh! Shit! She hung up. I'll try to call her back. Waste of time. What have I done? Stupid! Stupid! Christ! Does she have to be so fucking sensitive? Couldn't she have trusted me a little more? Just a bit and she would've heard: I'm sorry it came out like that, that you even got the slightest hint that it was anything like that! I apologize a million times, my darling! I love you with a passion that will last through the ages. Never doubt that. Never. I'm broke. That's all. My folks needed every cent I had, and there'll be no salary until Sol gets back. I'm just pocket broke, not soul broke. A little sick about it, but we'll manage. Maybe we can go to Lou's room. He lives alone in a furnished room, as you know. I think we might be okay there, if that's okay with you. Phone up.

  Suspended animation.

  CHAPTER 39

  PALY SHADOWS pursued each thought its refuge dissuading Sam from those easy rationalizations lovers knew were pure invention, but devised, nevertheless, to sustain the dulcificent wrenching that evoked beatific dividends. And he knew it! It was as if he were watching himself! Listening to another Sam think. And wonder. And speculate. As if he were high in a tennis judge's chair watching two opponents do battle for a point. Weird! But inherent to a heart's territory?

  --Was this the same with every lover?

  --You mean, with everyone in love--there is a distinction between the two, you know. Like you're in love, not a lover. A lover gets laid, which you do not. And to answer your question, no, it's not the same with everyone in love. Perhaps everyone in love for the first time.

  --A lover--to end this discussion--is anyone who loves, laid, unlaid, never laid. Mary forgot our date, right?

  --Jerk. Wrong.

  --Okay, so maybe she was entitled to get pissed at me because of the phone conversation.

  --You'd like to believe that, wouldn't you? Well, don't. She's not pissed at you.

  --She's not?

  --No, you fucking idiot, because all you are to her now is a non-entity. A shit. She doesn't want a damn thing more to do with you. Christ! The way you talk, the way you think who wants to be in eleventh gear going a zillion miles an hour all the time!

  --Make up your mind! Am I an idiot or a brain?

  --Oh! That's ones easy; just decide how you got into this mess.

  --That's easy. They don't give her enough lunch time to make a long enough phone call.

  --You oughta make a phone call and get Rent-A-Brain for the intellectually impaired instead of being here, sitting on Lou's doorstep mentally jerking off about Mary.

  That's where he was. Sitting on the porch where Lou Harness kept a furnished room. He hated the thought of going to the upholstery shop; a walk through Bronx Park would be a continuous question concerning his sexual preference mostly by cocksuckers of the evening; and the thought of going home not even in the running. So, Lou's. Besides, Sam needed a friend. He walked the Bronx until he was exhausted, a quick, lively pace as if he were going someplace important in a hurry, like home from work. Eventually, he plotzed himself down to wait for Lou who finally arrived near two in the morning.

  --Sam? Who died? Whenever I see you here, I always think first somebody died. So, who died?

  --Guess who died.

  --Sounds the name of a stage play. I gotta write that down. Guess Who Died. Can you imagine the answers? Ask a hundred people. --Guess who died? Can you believe the answers? Come on in. I got beer. Or do you want coffee? Let's go get a beer. If I let you in fucking landlady says I had sex, so I have to pay for double occupancy.

  --So show her your dick. After a night with Louisa it must be dead.

  --Oh! So nobody died. That's nice.

  --Lou--he buried his head in his arms--I died.

  --Oh! Shit! We'd better go in. You're going to cost me extra room rent, drink all my beer, and I'm not going to get any nooky. Why don't you be a real good friend and go home?

  Daylight came in six-packs, a container holding six bottles of beer
, four to a case. Lou's inventory was two cold six-packs, four warm. By the time Sam left Lou was out of beer, except for the one he kept in the toilet tank for emergencies to fight the hangover blues, which he would take warm with six aspirin and two Alka-Seltzer just before he left for work at eight o'clock, in about three hours.

  Daylight also came in pisses, about an equal number for each, or, as Lou estimated, a bottle a pee.

  There was, after all, besides Mary, substantive subjects considered.

  On death:

  Recipe: Fancy bronze casket, complete with springs, silk pillow, and a one-year battery operated vcr with the movie of your choice (also available with perpetual cable television programming); up three flower cars (realistic plastic blooms); super-black stretch limos; and a uniformed (no braids showing) motorcycle escort to assure at least a two-minute stoppage of traffic. A mausoleum, naturally, in the condominium motif with marbleized plastic walls with perpetual care, complete with a weekly change of the polyethylene bud vase and flowery contents, and an annual change of the wallpaper mural depicting any of several seascape, woodland, or mountain views.

  --Lou, if you don't wrap me up in a plastic bag, and put me out on the sidewalk for the Department of Sanitation you will be spitting on my memory and everything I stand for.

  --You got it! What about last rites

  --Don't patronize me, you son of a bitch. Put your hand over my heart. What do you feel?

  --Nothing...! Barely beating!

  --My eyes?

  --Pupils dilated!

  --Skin?

  --Morbid. Twenty-nine degrees... Celsius! I pronounce you dead.

  --Thank you. Spoken like a true friend. I hereby appoint you as my Executor with complete authority as to the disposition of my mortal remains, and legatee of all my worldly goods, chattels, whatever and wherever situate. As far as I know, as of this moment, these consist of the clothes on my back, a few tools in the shop, my book of poetry, and my diary. Do with them as you wish. I bequeath them to you. As for burial expenses, take me at my word and rest easy with the choice of pauper's field. Then, I'd like it if you were to go atop a mountain--Hell! Stand atop a bench in Bronx Park--and read for me to all ethereal things my poem which starts: --A slight and gentle rain... Do everything as quickly as you can. To think I have taken so much time, space, energy on this planet, to have returned so little is an embarrassment. Here, I will put this all in writing, on the back of this empty six-pack carton. Do you have any objection, or reservations?

  --Could you arrange things so it won't take up a weekend?

  On love:

  Feelings are a rather recent human investment. Consideration of another's feelings the achievement of developing civilization. The commerce of interaction narrow-walled and rigid. The reason for this elemental: The seriousness attached to survival. In business, to succeed continuously, one must crush the skull and cut the jugular with equanimity. Mercy is not to be offered even to the condemned, it could be habit forming, and stupid. Stolidity was case hardened by eons of combat against Nature, unforgiving to all and any who would miscalculate; against Time, irretrievable in the extreme; against Man, carnal, brutal pitiability. Flying in the face of all of this, the ingrained human belligerence against all restraints of any form, manner, ideology. For the same reason Man has freed himself from Earth to explore the Universe by conquering the limitations imposed by space--distance--on travel and communications; he subverts the ignorant arrogance of the subjugation of individual Will by prehistoric politics today called communism, fascism, socialism; and he bursts the constraints of living only for oneself by embracing the fears of his ancestors who spelled life only as lust which allowed the discovery of the ecstasy of sharing called Love. Make no mistake, so far, in this Twentieth Century, love isn't even a close second in importance to sex, and not quite fifth to money. But one can die from it, or lack of it, goodness knows.

  --Why, Lou? How can something so marvelous also be so devastating? Why is there no middle ground? We're either indifferent, or passionately consumed. No question, it's a force of unknown origin and depth that manifests itself in a series of tentative detonations--such as puppy love, crushes--until the crescendo reaches the wild and full explosion of a mature love affair. It happens only once, I understand, of that maximum magnitude. Requited or otherwise, it's this experience with love that remains with a person forever as the personification of the romantic ideal to which all other love will be compared, and, naturally, found lacking. A gift is to love again as much. How come, Lou?

  --Because every living thing in the world is made from the same pattern that fits the same cycle, and that machinery is programmed to peak real hot just once. Humans only think we're special because we don't fuck just once, we do it all of our lives and whenever we please, inlike the lower orders that do it only once in a lifetime--like the bee that wins the race that screws the queen then gets stung in return--or once a year like the rutters, and so on. That's why I stay away from love, and stick to the humping.

  --You're a cynic.

  --So? Where'd love get you? Heartsick and dead. Or is it all part of the love game, the highs the lows, the laughs the tears, the dreams the dreams Ah! The dreams! You can have it. No fool I...just fooling.

  On suicide:

  Suicide is more appealing in concept than in reality. Replacing one mode with another alters the state found to be unacceptable, unbearable or worthless. What one hopes to leave behind is a critical factor, generally taking leave with a sense of smug satisfaction that there are raised lots of sympathy, or revenge, or misery. No one ever left a note behind saying they were glad to leave the happiness and joy of living. Lou, how do you commit suicide?

  --The most peaceful, painless, satisfying way?

  --Yah.

  --They say you're closest to death when one is coming so pray for a fantastic orgasm with the answer plainly: jerking off.

  On jerking off:

  --Lou?

  --Go watch the monkeys in the zoo.

  Mary came to a head early-on. Sam started to repeat, quite remorsefully, every single detail concerning the rendezvous and its potential effect as the cause of the stand-up, by Lou cut him short. There was to be no speculation, a stupid exercise at best. If Sam was there because Mary told him to go fuck himself, that was one thing. Sam would get his support, loyalty and friendship to help pull his through. But on the mere chance that it was a slip-up, a mistake? No dice. He wouldn't listen. Such wailings were too embarrassing, not so much then, but the next day when they proved to be for naught. --You want to talk to me about Mary? You tell me about her erogenous zones. That she makes you come for ten minutes at a time. I don't want to hear about heartbreak, and treating you like shit, and committing suicide. I can't stand that nonsense unless we're talking about the real thing...

  --...but she knew I was waiting for her there, and she wouldn't so much as half turn towards me! Like she knew! She knew! It would kill me!

  --You stupid fuck; I'm not going to speculate! I'm not going to play that game! I told you that!

  --Just this once, Lou. One time, why wouldn't she look at me! She knew I was there!

  --Okay. This once. Sure she knew you were there. Now, let's suppose she's going with the guy--whatever his name is--against her will. Suppose if she looked and saw you it got to her so badly she started crying, he sees this, and knows something's up. So, she's sad enough, she doesn't want to be sadder and see you standing there waiting, knowing one second later you're going to be confused and angry at her, and then at yourself, so she doesn't want to see that. I wouldn't look either.

  --But...

  --Ba va f'in cuolo! I don't want to play that game! I told you. Guys in love make me sick. When are you going to wise up? You know divorce is a woman's invention for upward mobility, a form of revenge for being considered a mere possession. A guy picks a woman like he does a car: it looks appealing, provides a lot of comfort and performs like crazy. She's something that suits his image of himself,
wants to be seen with, and something he does better with than without. Really, she does the choosing--I take him, or him, or him. She does that not with knowledge or experience; but with a wish, a guess and a prayer. She hopes the son of a bitch doesn't turn out to be a dud.

  --Yo! Lou? You sound like a guy that's been burned in a love affair.

  --...and it hurts still.

  It came to Sam when he stopped talking and thinking about his own immediate concerns, after his mind turned easy under Lou's ministrations, that he noticed his friend, for the first time, literally, in a strange light. Sam rubbed his eyes, attributing the vision to the late hour. Or, it had to be the beer. For the third time that day, he had to do battles with his perceptions of people he really and truly cared about. In each case, the truth was as obvious as his attempts to hide it. Each time he chased his thoughts into and out of cul-de-sacs until he accepted it for what he really knew it to be.

  He wondered how long it had been there, and why he hadn't noticed it before, or earlier. Lou had an aura. Loaded with autumn browns, accompanied by Grieg.

  Jesus Christ! Lou! What are you doing to me? Is it contagious? Did I bring it to you?

  CHAPTER 40

  THE ENTRANCEMENT began at the steps leading up to the room, the room in the bar, the room Sam thought they shouldn't use a week? God! Ages! Ago! Beyond Sam's already beleaguered sensations of tentative knowing--unlike nailed-to-the-wall knowing--which he felt even before he met Mary that evening, was the rush he got as he took the first step following the two women. He knew now somewhat the feeling Lou described that came with snuffling powdered cocaine. To Sam, it felt like every nerve in his body was suddenly assaulted with rutilantian explosions. In his throat, an umbrella boomed open then flicked closed with each step. The door seemed so far away. Leading was the woman with the thin cigarette stuck smack in the middle of her lips who tended the bar, and who still had the bluish aura about her. The woman was absolutely noncommittal in mean or manner, though a hint of Da Vinci's brushwork misted her face. In fact, it stirred the macho in Sam. Just ahead of him was Mary. Mary! Mary! Mary! Look at us! The ascent to Paradise! Lord! Should this be a dream, take me! But, once the ostiary left them in the room, her hand guiding the door to the click of the close, to Sam the sound acted as an incendiary reinflagrating every sensation, every phantasy, every tingling nerve in his body as Mary stopped, turned, then rushed into his outstretched arms. --My darling! My darling! He barely had time to utter the words as their lips melded together. He wasn't aware he'd stopped breathing. His mind split to a different level. He knew only that he had Mary in his arms, with the taste of her, sweet, precipitating, blossoming throughout his being. Rapidfirestarbursts in his brainpan as she hardsucked his tongue out of his mouth, deep into her soul. The magic was theirs. They were about to slit the black veil of ignorance, losing their innocence, burst into the brilliant wonderment of full and true love. The moment was theirs.