Bucky F*cking Dent

by David Duchovny

  He became aware he was smiling. Ted was beginning to see even the weaknesses and faults of this woman in the light of her charm and vulnerability. She was human. This must be what love looks like from a distance, he thought. If my heart were a camera (if my heart were a camera?), I would constantly be looking for the best light to take her picture, but fuck, I don’t even know her, it can’t be love, even from a distance, and she thinks I’m fat and Mr. Peanut. In an instant, he realized he cared what she thought about him. That sucked. That opened up a mental space he was not comfortable with. A new self-consciousness on top of his quotidian self-consciousness. I don’t need this, he thought. He felt sick. She should go. She should go and never come back. He opened his mouth to say goodbye, but what came out was “Wait.”

  Mariana turned. “What, do I have schmoots on my back?”

  “I’ll do the yoga,” Ted lied.

  29.

  Ted and Mariana moved some furniture out of the way so they could have space in the middle of the floor to do yoga poses. It began simply enough with some sitting and chanting, and then some of what she called “sun salutations,” which Ted thought were pretty identical to “head—nose—tippy toes” stretches from kindergarten. But that’s okay, he was going along for the ride. Mariana had changed into her beige Capezio unitard. “Keep your eyes focused inward.” Fat chance, he thought, and what does that even mean? She assumed a pose she called Downward Dog and then Upward Dog, and then onto a series of increasingly difficult poses named after other animals. Ted was soon out of breath and quivering, his muscles already fatiguing.

  “My dad does this? My dad, who is dying, does this?”

  “Your father is quite the stud. You’re shaking.”

  Ted was looking for an excuse to take a break. He felt like he was going to pass out. Headstand? Shit. “My dad does this, too?”

  “I’m afraid so. Here, let’s slow down a bit. Let’s try lotus.”

  Mariana took Ted’s ankles in her hands and tried to twist them underneath each other like a Gumby doll. Ted thought his ankle might literally break off like a stale baguette, but he’d be damned if he was going to fail at what the old man did. She finally had him in a full lotus, snapped into place. He had no idea how to get out of this. He felt a panic start to rise as his ligaments howled, a yoga pain. A bead of sweat jumped off his forehead.

  “Thanks, I always need help with that one.”

  Trying to find anything to distract him from the white-hot pain in his legs, and the growing thought that he was doing permanent damage to himself, Ted focused on something on Mariana’s ankle—of all things, a Grateful Dead tattoo. Could this woman get any more attractive? The classic Dead image of a skull seen from above, neatly scalped to reveal a lightning bolt diagonally bisecting a circle, half red half blue, of brain. Ted’s voice was trapped in his own benumbed feet, but he managed to croak, “You like the Dead?”

  Mariana seemed taken aback for a moment, her eyes flashing mistrust and defense as Ted’s eyeline brought her gaze to her own ankle. “What do you mean?”

  “The band? The Grateful Dead? Your tattoo is one of their symbols.”

  Mariana relaxed. “Oh, I was messed up one night a while back, and saw this symbol in the window of a tattoo parlor, and thought it would be perfect for me. They’re a band, huh?”

  “One of the most famous bands in the world.”

  “Cool.”

  “‘Truckin’? ‘Casey Jones’? ‘Sugar Magnolia’?”

  “Nope. What are those, songs?”

  “Songs? They’re not songs. They’re hymns.”

  “What religion?”

  “Deadian. Deadianity. Deadiasm.”

  “Okay.”

  “And can I ask you”—when Ted wasn’t talking, the pain began shooting up the back of his legs to his spine, so he made an effort to keep speaking—“after you got the tattoo, did you find that white folks were a lot nicer to you? A lotta skinny guys in tie-dye shirts with hacky sacks start to ask you out?”

  Such an odd question, he could see Mariana initially thought he was kidding, but then reconsider and say, “Wow. Yeah. I thought it was ’cause I highlighted my hair.”

  “Well, your hair I’m sure was lovely, but those were fans of the Dead. Drawn by the symbol. Like a secret handshake.”

  “The ways and customs of you gringos can be confusing.”

  “We’re pretty fascinating. Us whiter folk.”

  As Mariana shifted her weight, another tattoo revealed itself on her left ankle. Ted could make out the word Christ.

  “And what’s the story with that one. The Christ one? You drank too much communion wine at a church near Forty Deuce?” Even before it was out of his mouth, Ted knew that “Forty Deuce” sounded ridiculous and was trying way too hard to be “street.” Ted had been on many streets, some of them even dangerous, but he was not “street” and would never be. Mariana pulled her leggings down to cover the tat self-consciously.

  “Oh,” she said, “that’s a nunyo.”

  “A nunyo?”

  “Yeah.”

  “That Spanish?”

  “Yeah, it’s Spanish for nunyo business,” she said with a smile. “I gotta run. Namaste.”

  “Now you’re gonna stay? Thought you had to run.”

  “No, ‘namaste’—it’s Sanskrit for peace, it’s the yoga ‘later, alligator, over and out.’”

  “I knew that.” Ted didn’t know shit. “I was joshin’.”

  “You want a hand?”

  Ted could not even move to take her hand if he wanted to. He was locked up from neck to toe.

  “No, I’m not done. I’m gonna grab another hour or two. Once I get going, I can’t get enough of the yoga.” Mariana threw her things together.

  “Okay, do five minutes of shavasana at the end, corpse pose.”

  “I think I can manage that.”

  “And chant ‘om shanti shanti’ when you’re done, okay?”

  “Copy that. I mean, nama, you know, nama, nama, rama-lama-ding-dong…”

  Mariana smiled. “Namaste.”

  “That.”

  Ted flashed a smile that was a grimace in drag. As soon as he heard the door slam behind Mariana, Ted howled in pain and rolled on his side, his ankles still locked one under the other. He looked liked a turtle on its back. He grabbed his ankles and pulled, but could not free himself from the clutches of the lotus. Marty, alerted by Ted’s animal yowl of distress, came shuffling into view. He looked at Ted, narrowing his eyes. “You stoned again?”

  “Dad, gimme a hand.”

  “You should take better care of your lungs.”

  “Help me.”

  “How?”

  “Kick me.”

  “Where?”

  “In the ass.”

  “You want me to kick you in the ass?”

  “Please.”

  “Thought you’d never ask.”

  Marty came up behind Ted and kicked him in the rear, finally freeing Ted’s legs. But the torture was not yet over. Ted’s legs were so stiff from being immobile for twenty minutes, he was unable to straighten them, and each time he tried to stand up, his lower back went into spasm and sent him back down to the floor again. He was hunched over like Tricky Dick Nixon and looked much like Quasimodo unsuccessfully learning to roller-skate.

  “This is quite amusing,” said Marty. “You have a flair for physical comedy.”

  Ted finally straightened and tried to walk but he was stiff-legged, like the Mummy, arms blocked straight out for Marty’s chair, like Boris Karloff’s Frankenstein, hoping to steady himself. Marty moved back a few inches out of reach. “That’s a little over the top now. You went from Peter Sellers to Jerry Lewis. You making fun of me, Ted?”

  “No.”

  But Marty didn’t believe him, thought he was imitating his disability, his old-man walk. Marty shuffled away to the next room. “Asshole,” he said in parting, just as Ted’s legs shot out from under him as if they had a mind of their own.
Ted landed hard, shaking all the furniture in the house. Marty, thinking he was still being mocked, yelled from another room.

  “Very funny, asshole. Wait till you get old.”

  Ted thought it best to just lie on the ground and wait for the spasms to pass. He gingerly rolled onto his back like a dying cockroach, limbs twitching, thought fleetingly of Kafka’s Metamorphosis, and chanted as the rigor mortis came and went in electric waves, “Om shanti shanti … om shanti … shit.”

  30.

  The next morning, Ted woke up early, his tendons in sharp recoil, with one thought in his mind: I’m gonna shave this fucking beard. It was slow going, though; the beard was wild and thick, and he’d had it for maybe five years. Took some hacking at it with poultry scissors before he could even attempt a razor. When he finally could, all he had was Marty’s old single-edge razor, a lethal weapon. Ted was just lucky he didn’t hit a vein, and before he was halfway done, his face was dotted with toilet paper to stanch the bleeding. Marty appeared behind him in the mirror like a ghost in a horror film. All of a sudden, Ted saw this vision over his shoulder—his father with a red rubber Boston Red Sox swim cap tight on his head like a second skin.

  “Shavin’ for his lady,” Marty said.

  “What? Where did you get this razor, Dad, the village smithy? How old is this fucking thing?”

  “An hour of yoga and the Splinter’s a trout on a hook.”

  “Don’t call me ‘Splinter.’”

  “That’s your namesake. Ted Williams, also known as the Splendid Splinter. You are just the Splinter, no Splendid.”

  “I know. It’s a weird nickname.”

  “It’s affectionate. I’m being affectionate. ‘The Splinter shavin’ for his lady.’ That’s affection.”

  “Do you know the difference between affection and affliction?”

  “There’s a difference?”

  “Stop. I’m not shavin’ for any ‘lady,’ I was getting tired of it.” Ted pointed to a significant amount of gray in the shorn hair on the floor. “Can you believe how much blond I have in my beard?”

  But Marty wouldn’t be thrown off the scent. He was just smiling and nodding. “If the Splinter cuts that stupid hippie hair as well, then I know the Splinter’s a goner. I remember when the Splinter didn’t even have hair under the Splinter’s arms.”

  “Stop with the third person.”

  “You seen my bathing cap?”

  “It’s on your head.”

  “Fuck me, you’re right. I’ve been looking for it for an hour.”

  “What’s with the lid, Captain, you going lugeing or something?”

  “When the Sox hit a skid, I go get a swim at the Y. Wash away their sins. Does the Splinter want to come with?”

  “Does the Splinter have a choice?”

  “The Splinter does not. The Splinter must drive his father.”

  “Ah, but the Splinter doesn’t have a bathing costume.”

  “I’ll lend you an old Speedo of mine.”

  “Sweet. The Splinter is fucked.”

  31.

  The old Y was like a time machine. When you stepped through its doors, you were transported to the late ’50s/early ’60s. That’s how long everybody had worked there, and that’s the last time they ever got any new equipment. The same huge old woman, Pearl, checked IDs. She had been there since Ted was a boy. She looked to be about four feet eleven, 250, like Aunt Bee from Mayberry gone bad, but Ted had actually never seen her standing. It was like she was a sedentary centaur, half old Jewish lady, half chair. She smelled like nothing and no one else. A tainted musk, a head-spinning force field of airless nylon crotch, cabbage, pierogi, and coffee—like perfume spritzed above the place where perfume went to die. When Ted and his friends had gotten older, they called her “Pearl the Earl,” in honor of the great basketball player Earl the Pearl Monroe, aka Black Jesus. Ted had never even seen the lesser Pearl move, let alone spin and shake like her namesake, nor had he ever seen anyone sneak by her. She was the original immovable object. She was fierce. A bemoled Medusa, a Hebraic Cerberus in a muumuu with a schtetl accent, checking membership status.

  “Pearl the Earl, what’s shakin’, mama?” Ted whispered respectfully as he passed.

  “Card,” she demanded.

  “Get down with your bad self,” Ted said admiringly, and produced Marty’s card.

  Things were no different in the locker room or the gym. Ted passed the ancient sauna where his father used to take him as he sat and kibitzed with the other men, naked in the dry heat. Ted remembered being awed by the size and low hang of the old men’s balls as they sat with their towels open, and he sat with his towel closed, trying not to pass out from the heat. How are mine gonna get like that and do I want them to? he remembered thinking.

  They also still had those “exercise” machines that worked on the principle of attacking the fat parts of the body only. There was the “vibrating belt” with the seat-belt type of apparatus that went around your waist and, when turned on, held you in a spastic embrace, forcing you to do a speeded-up twist, supposedly shaking the pounds off your waistline. And there was the wooden fat roller thing that spun like a rotisserie, with swiveling thick wooden dowels you sat on, that was supposed to badger and knead your ass fat into nothingness. Like Joe Weider and Rube Goldberg had a baby. Jack LaLanne must have had a good sense of humor.

  Ted changed into his father’s old Speedo. The elastic was nearly all gone, little holes where the chlorine had eaten at it like chemical moths gave it an almost fishnet allure, and only the string, the original replaced by an old shoelace, kept Ted from exposing himself to all the septuagenarians.

  Things were no more present day in the water. Marty went in the lane designated “slow,” but “slow” was aspirational. The eighty-year-olds in that lane appeared stationary, moving with the tide from side to side, like human jellyfish. The “medium” lane was “slow” by any standards, and oddly the “fast” lane was slower than the “medium.” Ted chose the fast lane, because it was probably the first and only time in his life he could. He thought, I should move into an old-age community right now, ’cause I would dominate athletically. I would rule.

  As the sign said NO SWIMMING WITHOUT A BATHING CAP, Ted wore a Red Sox cap that Marty had lent him. He looked like an angry sperm. He dipped his toes in the water. Fucking freezing. He remembered that his great-grandmother Baccha had been a “polar bear” at Coney Island, one of those old-country Eastern Europeans who joined together in the new world to swim in the frigid Atlantic during Brooklyn’s dead of winter. She’d go out there off the boardwalk with a bunch of other hearty Poles and Russians, and wade into water barely above freezing. “You get used to it,” they’d say. And they might as well have been talking about the pain of life itself—you get used to it. These were tough people. And possibly collectively insane. Now Ted respected Baccha’s fearlessness in the face of frostbite, but as a child, when told that she was a polar bear, Ted had of course thought she was an actual big, white, quite dangerous bear, and that the four-foot-ten shrunken crone that slipped a dollar bill into his palm every time he saw her was some sort of shape-shifter. It was something he told only close friends when he was in third grade.

  “My father’s mother’s mother is a polar bear,” he would say. “Don’t tell anyone.”

  Maybe some of those old-country, cold-defying genes had been passed down to Ted, because after a lap or two, he found himself getting “used to it.” Ted was by fifty years the youngest person in his lane, probably the lightest person in his lane, and the only male as far as he could tell, though he didn’t feel like looking too closely. He did the unfortunately named breaststroke. When his head dipped under the water, and he looked forward to see if he could pass, the huge limbs of the yentas propelling them forward reminded him of the scene in Fantasia where the hippos dance in tutus. Was that it? Hippos in tutus? Fantasia—the acid trip that Uncle Walt, America’s kingpin dealer of dangerous saccharine fantasy, bequeathed to the
world’s children like a gateway drug. The sweet tasty hash brownie that is Mickey mousse. How many pierogis were ingested to make this scene possible? He laughed at the image, inhaling some water chlorinated a touch below actual bleach. The fumes off the water pricked at his lungs as he ducked in and out of his lane to pass like a race car driver, like the slowest race car driver in the universe. He found himself constantly trapped behind someone’s fluttering feet, in the middle of this underwater stampede, taking a few plump white toes in the face now and then.

  Much was unpleasant. He stopped at one end of the pool, and looked under the water again at the swimming hippos, oddly hypnotized by their weightless bulk. Bless them, he thought, bless the hippos. There was a tap on his shoulder, and he came up for air. It was one of the Hippowitzes staring him down. He remembered reading somewhere that in Africa, the hippos were the ones to look out for, more dangerous to man and meaner than lions. Ted smiled at this one.

  “Pervert,” she said with a mixture of disgust and vanity that was truly unique, and pushed off, displacing as much water as a small boat.

  Ted showered until the feeling came tingling back to his fingers and toes. When he padded out to the lockers, Marty was already there, naked, toweling off, with his back to him. Ted was amazed at the number of moles and age spots on his father’s back, like the stars of a dying galaxy. Ted took that moment to pull down his Speedo with a modicum of privacy, but just as he did, Marty turned, so Ted pulled his suit back up.

  “Good swim?” Marty asked.

  “Yeah,” answered Ted. “You?”

  “Not bad. Not bad.”

  Marty turned his back again, Ted pulled down his suit, Marty turned back to Ted, Ted pulled up his suit.

  “You all right there?” Marty asked.

  “Yeah,” Ted answered.

  This little dance happened a few more times, Ted not getting enough time to pull his suit off before Marty turned around again, until Marty finally said, “You gonna get dressed?”