“I don’t want a resume.”
“Pardon?”
“I want to know what you’re thinking.”
“About what?” I asked.
“Just about.” And he leaned back further in his swivel chair and set his thin arms on the rest of the chair and threw his head back.
“Well,” I said, leaning forward on the dented canister, “I’ll level with you. I’m in dire straits for a job, and I’m probably not qualified, but I am willing to put a lot of energy into learning, and I guess that’s really what I’m thinking about.”
“Well.” He grinned. “Let me first ease your tension. You’ve got the job. Now, I’d like you to feel unencumbered. Go ahead and shake out your arms and legs.”
He started shaking his arms and legs demonstrating how it was done. I followed him. “Now, tell me how you feel and what you’re aware of.”
This was all very weird. “I feel very happy.”
“Is that precisely how you feel, pleased as opposed to satisfied?”
I thought about it a moment and replied, “Well, I am exceptionally pleased, but as I adjust to the news of being hired—security, authority, responsibility—as this sets in, I taper off into satisfaction.”
“Good, very good. Okay, now I want you to close your eyes and think about this: I was only lying to you. I’m sorry, but you simply don’t have the qualifications. I simply can’t give you the job.” He then paused. I thought about this a moment: punch this guy in the fucking face and get out of here. But then I realized that to him this was one big controlled setting.
“I am unhappy.” This guy wanted me to do some kind of Isadora Duncan dance, symbolizing and acting out feelings. “I am shrouded in constant shade, waiting for liberation. I am a barnacle forever stuck to the bow of a ship.”
“Good, good.” He nodded approvingly. “Now you’ve got the job again and you know that you have it. But you’ve experienced the knowledge of not having it.”
I paused and didn’t know what to do next. “So?”
“So what does this knowledge offer you? How do you see yourself here?”
“I don’t understand.”
“I want to see not anticipation, but action. I want to see you working here tomorrow, right now.”
“You mean you want me to envision myself working here?” I looked over at him and he just watched me. “All right, I can do that.” I closed my eyes and tried to see myself walking through my theater. “Yep, there I am.”
“What are you doing?”
“I’m handling the many chores and duties that occur in the course of a given day.” Then opening my eyes, I asked him, “What kind of chores and duties occur in the course of a given day?”
“We’ll go into that later, right now I want you to explore your anxieties.”
“Huh?”
“Look, you don’t realize this, but you are on those dimensions simultaneously. Recollection is just calling forth those moments. Think about it. With any given situation there’s usually a predisposed action.”
“Yeah, so?”
“So when I ask you these questions you don’t have to think. Simply look and tell me what you see.”
“What was the question again?”
“We were talking about your sensations on this matter.”
I took a deep breath and closed my eyes and went under: “I feel an impediment, I’m not as well trained on this as you…. I feel a certain anxiety over what might happen.” I was running dangerously low on bullshit.
“Have you ever participated in EST?” he asked.
“No.”
“Do you chant?”
“No.”
“Crystals?”
“No.”
“All right, we’ll go into more of that later. You’re lucky we met, I see a lot of headway I could help you with.”
“I’m looking forward to that.” Closing my eyes I suddenly started groaning. “Oh, I’m registering something within.”
“Good, good, what is it?”
“It’s stifling…I see…money….” I was answering like someone hearing voices at a seance. “It’s the stifling question of wage.”
“Yes.” He leaned forward energetically. “Good, go with it.”
“I’m speculating about the whole power structure.”
“Okay, that’s Pentagon; you’re referring to Pentagon,” he explained. Who the hell had mentioned the Pentagon? But I got the picture. This was a West Coast hippie with short hair whose destiny as a Haight Ashbury health food cashier had somehow been derailed and instead he had wound up in this bizarre and forsaken spot. Wherever he is nowadays, a transchanneler and a crystal would certainly be nearby. I was getting sick of his shit: “To hell with the Pentagon!”
“Good, excellent, get rid of all that hostility, but then let’s get back to the issue. Specifically, I’d like to hear what you thought when you saw me for the first time.”
This was going to be easy. He wanted to be flattered. “Well, I felt…an energy, you know, like a compass needle pointing north.” I then paused a moment and looked enlightened and blurted, “Of course, it all makes sense now.”
“What does?”
“Well, for the past few days, all these auspicious and portentous things kept happening.”
“Really?” he replied eagerly. “Like what?”
“Well, I felt this kind of Buddhistic suspension, as if nothing and everything mattered.”
“Really?”
“I broke up with my old lover.”
“What a sacrifice.”
“And moved out of my old house.”
“Holy Tao!”
“And I was drawn here randomly by an overheard conversation on a subway.”
“What karma!” he hollered, leaping out of his chair and giving me a hug. I softly pushed him back into his chair.
“Well,” I resumed calmness. “When would you like me to begin?”
Taking a deep sigh, he wiped the sweat off his brow. “How would you feel about starting your training tonight, right up until closing?”
I didn’t want to spend the night in this sleazy theater. “Well, I’m feeling a fear, a panic, my heart is palpitating, panting deeply, quickly. But I’m willing…” I faltered as I put my hand over my heart. “I’m willing to give it…a stab.”
“Maybe tonight is a bad idea. In fact, you better get some rest. You know, what you need is some miso and rest.”
He walked me to the door and concluded, “Give me a call tomorrow and we’ll arrange a time.”
“Thank you,” I said, breathing more easily. When he closed the door, the significance hit me. The replaced esteem, especially considering the long decline into hopelessness that had been averted by this eleventh-hour reprieve, the full impact hit me as I dashed excitedly through the dim, nefarious halls head on into some small guy, knocking him flat to the ground.
“I’m so sorry,” I said as I reached down, unintentionally grabbing him around the chest to help him back to homo erectus.
“Hey!” I heard a high-pitched squawk. “Get off, sleazebag!”
I realized that through the shirt I was juggling a set of boobs. Quickly I let go and she fell back to the ground.
“You’re a girl!”
“I’m a woman, manboy!”
“What are you doing here?”
“I’m the projectionist,” she replied. “What’s your problem?”
“Oh, sorry,” I replied, flustered. Not knowing what else to say, I nervously said, “How do you do? I’m straight.” And then I bolted out.
FOUR
I retreated back across Twelfth and down Broadway intending to return to Helmsley’s with the heartening news. But as I passed by the NYU dormitories, specifically the one that housed Eunice, I thought about that olive man in the white suit. Instant anger and hurt eclipsed the jubilation of the new job. I realized that this was something that had to be resolved. I wondered if they’d be together now.
It was still the
lighter side of twilight, so I decided to try to find her. A guard insisted on announcing me, so she was on guard when I got to her door. When the elevator stopped on her floor and the doors slid open, she was standing there, leaning against her door holding a can of Tab, which she was sucking through a straw. We entered the room.
How could she do that to me? I stood still and stared at that milky, silky soft skin, her shadowless face. At first, I tried to remember and then I tried to forget his filthy hands fumbling over her and then I tried not to imagine what might’ve followed.
“Aren’t you going to say anything?” she asked after a patient interval.
“You probably heard I was fired.”
“I heard, but I couldn’t believe it….” She rambled on about what a shit Pepe was, and gave me some cinema updates. It sounded all so innocent; she didn’t realize that I saw her being felt up at the Ritz.
“I missed you dearly,” she soon concluded.
“How much?” I mumbled. I took a single step toward her and she took a couple of steps backwards until she was up against the small pullout sofa.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean I know you didn’t go out West to visit the folks.”
“What do you mean?”
“I saw you at the Ritz the other night with that old guy, letting him kiss you and feel you up.”
“I don’t see how what I do is any business of yours.”
“It is when I spend two months dating you in the cold until I lose sensation in my fingers, and my girlfriend and job.”
“Wait a second. You can’t dump all that on me.”
“You knew what I wanted.”
“And you knew what I wanted.”
“Yeah, to make yourself feel pretty at someone else’s agony. Fuck you.” I slammed the door behind me and left.
When I arrived back at Helmsley’s, I told him that I had the job.
“Good, this can be a double celebration. What are you doing tonight?”
“Nothing, why?”
“Because there’s someone very special I want you to meet tonight.”
“I’d be honored, but to be honest I’m tired, starving, filthy, and broke. Tonight might not be the night of nights.” It was only around six. He suggested that I nap an hour or two, take a shower, and then maybe we would go out, his treat. “It’s important that you meet her tonight.”
Three hours later we were at a local restaurant where Helmsley ordered the most expensive dish in the pasta category.
“A fine meal can alter one’s entire perspective,” Helmsley quipped as I gobbled deeper and deeper into the high-sided plate. I felt like Godzilla as I tore through the many pasta roofs and cheese floors. To do any real damage to that tomato and garlic structure was a gluttonous task. All Helmsley did the entire time was pour from a select bottle of vino and snicker. Eventually, though, he attempted to start a sentence, an opening to something he didn’t seem to know how to close.
Finally, when I was full, I asked him what was going on.
“Well,” he replied, “it’s a little hard for me to say.”
“Is it concerning that special friend that you mentioned earlier?”
“Yes, in fact.” He smiled a bit. “I’m trying to give you an idea of what to expect.”
I could easily imagine her, a fair-skinned cutie who had probably graduated from an Ivy League and developed a shapely resume. “I’ve been in love, Helmsley. I know, you want to tell me that she’s different from any other girl you’ve ever met…”
“Yes, but there’s more…”
“There’s always more. You’re nervous, that’s all, just calm yourself.”
Helmsley, as far as love went, was just entering puberty. In this area I felt a bit like an older brother and was about to mention how beguiling love is and the disappointment that inevitably follows, but I caught myself. I wiped the oil and sauces off my face, he paid the bill, and we left.
We went to the nearby bar where the fateful rendezvous was set to occur. A sign outside said it was an American Legion Post. Once inside, I noticed a cool tension that I learned was due to the two types of patrons: the recently arrived yuppies, who’d found that quaint Cobble Hill was only minutes away from their beloved Wall Street, and the third generation Italians who resented the young professionals, probably for jacking up the neighborhood’s cost of living. Helmsley quickly brought two bottles and mugs over to a booth by the door. Once seated, I could feel poor Helmsley’s anxiety multiply.
“Calm down.”
“It’s just that, well, you know, I don’t have many women friends and I feel very different about this one …” He then launched into a poetic preamble about man’s profound and incurable loneliness and how the soul itself is a piston-shaped apparatus that creates a series of vast obliterating implosions which are the true motivations of all man’s actions. Nothing was simple. After the earlier session with Miguel, I couldn’t stomach any more.
I grabbed the beer mug, shoved it to his lips, and turned it bottoms up. He started guzzling as he struggled for the handle. When he finished it, he put the mug down and apologized.
The door suddenly whipped open with such a bang that Helmsley’s empty bottle fell over. A gang of young locals stormed in. The last of them broke from the rest and shoved into our booth. Pushing up against Helmsley was an older lady. She took Helmsley’s hair in her hands and gave him a hard unexpurgated kiss on the mouth. I couldn’t believe it.
Angela was a small, butchy mama who couldn’t have been any younger than forty-five. Her dark wrinkled skin sagged loosely away from all bones, and as she banded her arms around Helmsley, I battled a grin.
“So whatchu boys talkin’ ’bout?” All I could do was hold back that grin and look at him—so this was his salvation from ruin, the melter of his stalagmite.
“We were just waiting for you, dear,” Helmsley replied tenderly.
“Ain’t talkin’ dutty, eh?” The she-wolf grinned.
“No, hon, I was just mentioning you, in fact.”
“You tease,” she replied while yanking Helmsley downward so that his head was resting across her lap the same way Sarahs head had laid across that chunky punk’s lap in the teen-bar a couple of weeks before. As he struggled to rise, she splat her lips on his and the two of them tumbled underneath the table.
In time a hand reached up from under the table, and feeling around the table top it snatched my half-finished bottle of beer and disappeared with it back under the table. In a gulp’s time, an empty bottle was replaced on the table top. I looked around the bar uncomfortably. The table started rumbling and up popped her head. Extending her hand over the table, she hollered, “Heimslock told me a lot aboucha.”
“Dat’s swell,” I replied. When we shook hands, she squeezed my knuckles into a painful bundle. She laughed when I retrieved my injured hand and asked, “What’s a matter, not man enough?”
Helmsley slowly reappeared from under the table. His hair was tousled and he blushed as he straightened it with his fingers. Silently he rebuttoned his shirt.
“So yer friend ’ere ain’t man enough for a little handshake.”
“No,” I retorted. “I gots ta idmit it, Helmslock, the little lady’s gots da man’s grip.”
Helmsley replied with a swift kick from under the table. Out of respect for my friend, I took the back seat and watched as Angela ruled the evening with filthy remarks and vulgar jokes. He was almost as attractive as she was ugly. When Helmsley’s glasses were off, if his old pants and hair-style were updated, he could resemble a manly Mel Gibson. He was muscular and had dark, deep-set eyes. His appearance was as remarkable and singular as his character. Unfortunately one fork in this road to gorgeous was that while his intellect was unremitting, he usually froze when dealing with people whom he hadn’t known for a while. Subsequently he had no luck with small talk and usually came off as a nerd.
While stuck there soaring to new heights of boredom, I speculated on possible motives for Hel
msley’s interest in her. Lately he had been involved in the study of early man. Perhaps he was immersing himself in a Neanderthal woman. Or perhaps this was the first girl he had ever met who just reached down into his pants and plucked out what she wanted; fuck the small talk. I could see how this normally crass feature would appear charming to a guy who had always been too shy to present himself.
But still, she seemed hideous at the time. Could love bridge the intellectual and cultural abyss between them? Could love amputate the fifteen or so years that tossed her ahead of him? Could love repair so much? If so, then for the first time in my life, sitting there, I realized how love was truly great. It had always been easy for me to fall head over heels for some bouncing blonde from Texarkana, Texas, to sip her like a dry martini and smash the crystal in the fireplace of fate. But it was only Budweiser that my dear pal Helmsley was guzzling, as he nestled his head into the folds of her belly and looked into her cavernous nostrils.
For different reasons, we had all downed what would have measured out to at least a half-keg of beer. Angela, who had drunk twice as much as Helmsley, was no drunker. Suddenly Angela jumped to her feet and, yanking Helmsley up, decided it was time to go. Before departing, though, she cut a profound fart. I was too drunk to mind, though; I knew I wouldn’t make it even as far as the door. I sat there and ordered another beer.
Alcohol corrodes one’s dexterity and sense of proportion, but it also heightens one’s emotions. Smelling that fart, I thought of Helmsley in love. Had I spent my whole life confusing love with a series of erections? Love to Helmsley must have been an utter necessity, whereas for me it was always just a luxurious distraction. I wished that I had the need to lust after some goiter-necked, tooth-decayed, leg-blistered old bag. If I could love like that it would be a pyramid of emotions, an Arc de Triomphe of affection.
When the time arrived for the bar to close, I had to be helped out. No sooner did I plop myself down on a neighboring stoop than my stomach reared up. Staring down at the pool of vomit that had fountained out of me, I made out the expensive Italian meal I had eaten earlier that evening. The regurgitated pasta and cheese were little islands in a vast sea of beer. I recall feeling through that drunken stupor a deep loss; it had been a magnificent meal.
The Fuck Up Page 5