The next day the aunties offered her congratulations over orange blossom water, loudly gossiping and laughing but no ululation because celebrating early would certainly put a hex on the budding relationship. Of course they didn’t sleep, my mother, exhilarated and exhausted, told her sisters, he paid for the entire night so they could conjoin, not rest. They made love a number of times and they talked when he needed a little time to recover, it was difficult without a common language, but he was interested in hearing her and she wanted to know him. He told her to apply for asylum in Sweden, and she decided to do just that, but first she had him explain what the word meant. In Stockholm, he told her, God wipes the tears off His children’s faces. Apparently, He did not do such a thing in Cairo. She told her sisters that she would live with him in Stockholm and she would cry no more. Asylum, she kept repeating the word over and over, asylum, in the salon she sat, on the jacaranda rocker, asylum, asylum, back and forth, she deserved asylum, had there ever been anyone in the history of mankind who was more persecuted than she, no, of course not.
In the upcoming days, she worked on her application. She donned her coat and trudged to the Swedish embassy fifteen streets and two alleys north, she filled out forms and more forms, she saw a picture of Ingrid Thulin in a magazine and pulled her hair back à la Ingrid. She tried and tried but was unable to get an interview, she was told someone from the embassy would get back to her, no one did. She whined and complained but no one could help her, not at the embassy or at the house. She did not give up, though. She told her sisters that as soon as the Swede returned, she would relate all her problems and he would explain to the embassy that she was special and deserved a visa. Her Swede was important enough to demand respect from the minions at the embassy, she was sure of that, he carried himself as if he was.
As it came to pass, our Swede returned to the whorehouse thirteen days after his first visit, walked into the salon as if he were in a western, with the shuffling gait of a cowboy. He acknowledged my mother with a nod before joining the other men for the pre-fuck amusements. She saw salvation, saw oodles and oodles of snow in her future and a log in a fireplace and even a dog, a Saint Bernard with a tiny barrel of cognac hanging from its collar. This time, though, when the Swede performed the role of a gentleman, he chose someone other than my mother. She watched him walk with the same intensity toward another auntie, with the same devotion and desire, she saw the look of momentary shock on her sister’s taut and pale face. To this day I remember my mother’s countenance when the choice was made, Doc, and that of the other auntie, how the chosen and the betrayed exchanged stealthy glances, and how my mother unclasped her hair, locks falling on her fragile shoulders. She couldn’t allow herself much time in shock, within minutes she’d regained her infantile charm. My mother retired to her room with a different man, an Englishman. That was the day when my mother gave up.
Home
Auntie Badeea would ask me to come home to Cairo at least once every couple of months, I would be happier, she’d say. Why did I have to live so far away? What could be worse than to dwell here, driven out from bliss, condemned in this abhorred deep to utter woe? But then, what matter where I was if I was the same? Every which way I fly is Hell, myself am Hell. Those lines were assigned to me, Satan said, stop plagiarizing, Milton was writing about me, not you.
Blond God
I know you’ll hate me for this, but I went astray after you died, really far afield astray, Pluto-far. Demons hover like moths at the closing doors of life, waiting patiently for the bereaved. He was both my death and my salvation, a brief, intense, motherfucking affair, he almost killed me and I would certainly have killed myself had he not come along to save me, this, this, his full name escapes me, this Viking demigod, but I called him Deke because that’s how he introduced himself the first time, I’m Deke, he said, short for Dickhead, and I laughed, of course I fell for him. I was Icarus, he was the sun that couldn’t even spell Icarus, of course I fell.
I was feeling deathly depressed and lethargic, spiraling downward, eddies of crappy water whirling down the drain, all of you dead, couldn’t force myself out of bed, under the covers I remained, you were no longer there to lift my spirit or the duvet with the pink oleander design, which I once found strikingly beautiful but no more. I found so little beautiful, as each one of you became sick, as you died, one by one, I could see nothing but black. Your physical absence was soul-crushing. I needed to return to work, back to my job, buried daily in the law firm’s cloister-like cubicles, needed the money, needed a bump, just a little one, ended up at Kawahi’s apartment on Sixth Street, which always frightened me enough that I considered quitting everything and becoming monastic just so I’d never have to revisit that den of drugs, but of course I didn’t, not then. The middle of Kawahi’s living room was overwhelmed by a coffin-sized safe, I kid you not, Doc, an airtight steel safe whose every inch of surface was covered with phosphorous graffiti, its contents a mystery, sawed cadavers probably, but Kawahi and his cabal used it as a bench, as a coffee table, to cut the speed down to salable portions. Three troops sat on the safe while I was there, one looking like a baby-faced Huggy Bear from Starsky and Hutch, the television series, not the movie, yes, believe it or not, Doc, they made a movie of that as well, and I wanted to tell him he was almost two decades too late but I was nervous and no one would have gotten my bad joke in any case. Deke stood in well-trod orange high tops next to the only other white boy in the room, tall he was, towered over his seated friend, his head almost reached the low ceiling of the basement room, and above him was a dropped beam on which Kawahi had written in blood or red lipstick, WATCH YOUR DUMB, but of course at my height I didn’t have to worry about hitting either my head or my dumb, whatever that meant. Deke’s flat, shaggy blond hair told me he’d skipped his shower that morning and probably the day before as well. His hands languidly parked in the pockets of gray mechanic’s overalls without a name on his left breast, which was why I asked him for it when I shook his hand, and you know that I don’t have a strong grip, you used to enjoy calling me Limp Wrist, but Deke made sure to squeeze so hard I almost felt my knuckles pop, and I gasped, and he knew, he knew right then, he looked straight into me and said, Buy me a baggie, and I did, of course, anything he wanted me to do I did without question, I did, I did. He grabbed the bag when I offered it, glanced at his friend sitting on a filthy fauteuil, fake Italian baroque, and smirked as if saying, See, this is how you do it, get your own boy. His friend looked puzzled, not comprehending, a smaller guy, nondescript, lost in the grandness of the fauteuil, which you’d think would have looked odd in such a room but not so, everything about the place was bizarre. The filth seemed arranged, like the graffiti safe, the red lettering, the idiosyncratic collection of glue guns on a corner table, an honest-to-goodness halberd leaning against the wall, no stench at all except for the vestiges of inexpensive jasmine deodorizer, and I could imagine that Kawahi’s name was probably Lawrence or Philip, and if there were rats they’d be bejeweled, that pretend downwardly mobile decor was what frightened me, the inauthenticity of everything, one committed the most heinous of crimes to defend the make-believe.
Deke, on the other hand, was all authentic. So fine, this blond god, hair wavy when washed, statuesque, skin the color of peonies in a Fantin-Latour painting, an ideal tone if you ignored the purple and yellow bruises that appeared once or twice a week out of the blue, blue eyes with lashes so long. He was all man, so he said, spermed a baby and everything, once beat his woman when she got out of line, she left when she got tired of his bullshit. He was no Sunday night master done up in black leather drag, he was no expert in the art of pain manipulation with a box of toys, he was the real thing, low-class grade-A trade, a little funky, a little nasty man whose every other word was fuck, fucking motherfucker, shit, or pussy. I liked the word pussy out of his mouth, I was that pussy, that was me, he didn’t fuck me, though, never, that would prove he wasn’t a man, unlike getting his dick sucked, prison pussy, a mo
uth is just a mouth, he said, and he never heard of Freud, or Gertrude Stein even though he was born and raised in Oakland.
When I left Kawahi’s room, he came with me, didn’t say anything, didn’t talk, just walked out with me, walked like a sated big cat surveying the savanna. Outside he seemed surprised that I didn’t have a car, disappointed, but he accompanied me to my apartment. I chatted nervously about this and that, probably even the San Francisco weather, and he didn’t listen or pretend to care. He followed me into our home, looked around, asked about your room but decided not to expropriate it because he didn’t appreciate ghosts, said all phantasms and demons hated him. He claimed my room instead and my sheets and flowery duvet, and he banished me to yours. I could suck his dick but being in the same bed with another man disturbed his sleep. We smoked my rocks, then the ones I bought for him, then we went to work, he to whichever garage employed him and I to the bowels of the law firm, where the slogan JUSTICE MAY BE BLIND BUT SHE SEES IT OUR WAY 90% OF THE TIME was embossed right above the entrance to the word-processing room. All infernos have a sign on their gates. When I returned home he was there, and he relied on me to feed him and take care of him and bathe him and massage his tired feet and trim his toenails and procure his happiness. He made me hungry for a little affection, so grateful for the little I received, you see, he was so fine, he was the prettiest man I’d ever been with, he was preening-peacock vain, how could I help myself, I did everything he asked. He used to take his two fingers and walk them through the air, let your fingers do the walking through the Yellow Pages, I bet you remember that, that was his signal for me to go get more, and I would, cursing him all the way, traveling in heavy rain or in mother-of-pearl light, peregrinations at dusk, I did what he asked, his laws were not to be questioned, just like those of gravity and the IRS, and the rocks had better not be too small or he’d be pissed off.
Upon my return he barely held out his hand, opened it like a corolla, and kept it steady until he got what he wanted. He lay back on my couch, his gaze, the look of a tiger holding its prey, this epitome of masculine languor, he lit the pipe, and I crawled between his legs, pulled down the zipper with a deep sigh, and as each of the teeth separated, I breathed in the mistral and the sirocco, his flesh recoiled at first, then yielded, and I licked my way down, from the golden hairs of his chest to the treasures of his crotch, and then he would lift my head, let me have my turn at the pipe, and I would fly, float with the winds, he knew just how and when to get me up in the diaphanous air, so high.
I quickly had to learn to hold in the smoke while getting hit, because if I inhaled too much, took in more than what he thought I deserved, and it happened every time, every day, he slapped me so hard my brain rocked in its skull. I would crawl and fly, crawl and fly, cry and fly, until I crashed. He never held me, didn’t touch me, even though he knew I wanted him to, just a touch, gently run his hand across my back was all I wanted.
If you saw us in the mornings, you’d think we were lovers. I’d make breakfast and we’d share the Sunday paper over coffee. Except for the bruises we looked normal. I wallowed in all the beating and begging and humiliation and sanguinolent whipping, cared about little, danced with Gog, frolicked with Magog. But he was so fine, this maleficent, pretty white boy, my Charon, he had no compassion but why should he be the only one in the world who did? He’d brought me back home. Then one day he too went out and left me, I don’t know why, just disappeared. I thought it was love. I searched the city and all her numbered stars, I looked for him in her bottomless pits and her abhorred deeps, over and over, for days and nights, with fading vigor, I peered into the nooks of Hades and did not find my love. I grieved and cried and keened and mourned, wailed for all the lost possibilities. I wept, howled, then left my kennel and went back to work.
The Bouncing Nun
The pills came in threes, the trinity, Father the Haldol light green pill, Mother the mellow blue Stelazine, and Child the small white aspirin, the last because they were afraid I might drop dead of a heart attack. Put out your tongue, said the big black orderly, blacker than me with hair like gnarled wool, and above his head, on the eggshell-white wall, floated a pinkish cloud-shaped stain that locked my gaze, Look at me, the cloud whispered, look at me. The orderly placed the pills on my tongue and they disappeared like the host during Mass, I transmuted the body of my savior, and you whipped him, stoned and flogged him, and on a cross you hung Christ around your white necks.
When I finally met my father in Beirut he took me to church to cleanse my soul of desert sand and Muslim sin, I was baptized at ten, had water and oil mix with my third eye, and then I had to go on my knees, waiting with my mouth open for the host, for the priest with his dulcet tongue singing Aramaic to come at me with his wafer. I was so overwhelmed being in my father’s and His Father’s presence that I barely uttered a word, I didn’t tell him that I’d arrived in Beirut from Cairo, not some desert, no sand there, that I grew up in a house of sin but it certainly wasn’t the Muslim kind, the only religion going on was men worshipping holy pussy. Oh, but I worshipped my father, and if that meant I had to let the Word of Christ dwell in my heart or suck Jesus’s cross then of course I would. Muslim, Christian, I would be what you wanted me to be, I lived to serve, you know I did.
So, Doc, you’re thinking you know how this is going to end, don’t you? You’re thinking a priest and me and only one possible conclusion, but you’re wrong, you’re an American, limited imagination. That priest and his coterie of nuns and priestlets took responsibility for my well-being or lack thereof; dumped in their reeducation camp, that house of torture of a boarding school, with no one to ask about me or inquire after my health, I, the boy with the broken halo, was never sexually abused by that priest, not that one, but there was a nun, Sœur Marie-Claire, who offered her benevolent attention, her gift.
During a Christmas holiday right after I had sprouted a pubic hair or two, I ended up alone in the room, the other three boys went home for the break, and Sœur Marie-Claire woke me up every day of those two and a half weeks. Before the sun rose, my nun played with my erection, she climbed on the bed, lifted her tunic, and fell on her sword. She was fully attired, the whole drag except the underwear, I presume, I don’t believe I ever saw anything past the habit. Always speaking of herself in the third person, she would say, You make Sœur Marie-Claire feel good and Sœur Marie-Claire will make her petit nègre feel even better. Though technically I wasn’t, she called me her petit nègre because I was the darkest boy at l’orphelinat de la Nativité by quite a margin, and she was right because at the end I always felt good. I didn’t do much, I just lay there and she would touch me, her hand going under my pajama bottoms, and I woke up and she straddled me, smiling and staring at me with eyes so pale they seemed to be all alabaster, she bounced up and down, jiggled, must have been jelly ‘cause jam don’t shake like that, so yes, she was the aggressor and I was not consenting, let alone an adult.
When I looked into her eyes, which I always did at orgasm because I wanted to see, she wouldn’t be smiling, or I should say that the smile would have twisted into a strange grimace, as if she wasn’t happy anymore, and more often than not, saliva would drool down the left flank of her chin, not sure why that was so, and when I was done, she would just stop. No more bouncing nun. She wiped the drool off her lips and chin, looked left toward the door, climbed off my softening erection, adjusted her habit, Don’t be late to breakfast, mon petit nègre, she would say, her back to me, leaving me, leaving me in bed, and after the New Year she didn’t approach me ever again, I guess I wanted her to, I was the refrigerator abandoned on the pavement, I was the Haldol spreading within my cranium and I remembered, I remembered so much.
The Caryatids
I have to say your mother was the evil of evils, Doc, ordained in untempered malice in that dark unbottomed infinite abyss called California. The best thing I can say about her is that she left me alone to dispose of your body, which one might think isn’t much, but after
what Chris’s family did, what with stealing the corpse and forbidding us to attend his funeral—well, you were there then, you hadn’t yet died, so you know. I wish your mother had stolen your body, cremating you cost so much, they charged me extra because you didn’t burn on the first try, and I couldn’t give you a memorial since there were so few left to mourn you. She left you because she didn’t care about your death, it was your life she desired, and mine, that queen of vampires, her heart distended with my loss, her veins swelled with my blood.
She stayed away while you were dying, you kept telling me she had a delicate constitution, she couldn’t deal with you wasting away. No mother should have to suffer an offspring’s death, no, she shouldn’t have to ache, you said, being around an unhealthy you would have a deleterious effect on her health. Damn her and her health. I went behind your back and called her. I had no one else, you were the fifth, Lou, Chris, Pinto, Greg had died, and Jim was too sick, followed you within four weeks. I was an exhausted stretcher-bearer, I needed help and I told her you were dying, she said she’d warned me many times never to call, followed by the usual Jesus was going to send me to Hell for corrupting you, for taking you away from her, as if I weren’t there already—just one cliché after another, that was your mother, you should be proud. So many times I asked you to stand up for me, to tell her that I didn’t corrupt you, that no one did. You should have told her you chose me. This thing of darkness I acknowledge mine.
She knew when your heart stopped, she must have had a spy, I spy with my little eye something that starts with the letter D, yes, he’s dead. Your family waited until the morticians zipped you up in the black bag before descending like a pitchy cloud of locusts—no, that’s a Yemeni simile, I should use one of yours—like a herd of buffalo, only less attractive. I’d rushed to Jim’s as soon as you were out the door and your mother rushed right in. She convinced one of the landladies downstairs to let her in, she was your mother, she was suffering. Your family arrived with a truck, Doc, with a goddamn truck, she’d been waiting for you to die. She cleaned us out. The landlady described the truck as a moderately sized Dodge, which was probably why Her Maleficence couldn’t make off with the beds or the sofas.
The Angel of History Page 6