by David Guy
“Five. Four thirty if I want to eat. That won’t be necessary today.”
I’d been watching for any sign of a wobble while she walked, but she seemed fine. Might not have hit her yet.
“I’d still like to take that walk of ours,” I said.
“You are romantic. Jesus. Not raring to go?”
“I’m enjoying myself. If you have the time.”
“You like the younger woman thing. Being seen. You don’t think they take me for your daughter?”
“You don’t buy your daughter two Bloody Marys.”
“I’ll take your arm. I’ve got a buzz on. Probably look like I just fucked my brains out.”
“You look great.”
“That’s what I mean. Lead on, Jeeves. I’m floating.”
The streets down from Inman are nice too, as long as you stay away from Prospect, the sidewalks narrow and uneven, but that’s from all the big old trees. We were strolling, not much in the way of exercise. Jess held my arm tight, but seemed to do fine.
When we’d turned onto Harvard and were heading toward the square, I said, “Tell me about your mother.”
That made her stumble. She eased up on my arm.
“How do you mean?”
“What did she die of?”
“Breast cancer. Had it two years. The woman never smoked. Hardly drank. A glass of wine before dinner. She kept in shape. Kept her weight down. The last person you’d think would die.”
I touched her hand on my arm.
“You wouldn’t believe how god-awful it is to die of cancer,” she said.
“So tell me about her. What did she do?”
Forty years ago, when I was sixteen and my father died, people had no idea how to handle grief, at least not the people I knew. My family didn’t talk, went off alone with our grief, and those buried feelings poisoned my life for a long time.
I had one teacher, one wise man—I would never have picked him for wise, a science instructor and football coach—who came up to me in the gym, two days after the funeral, and said, “Tell me about your father,” in front of a bunch of my friends. If more people had done that, over and over, if I’d just kept repeating the story, I might have absorbed it, been able to go on. Might have drained the poison. Instead of waiting fifteen years to do it with a therapist, then years of staring at a wall.
I might still have needed the therapy and wall-staring—maybe everyone does—but it would have eased things up, if more people had made me talk.
Jess’s mother was a musician, a quiet woman named Paige with a beautiful alto voice, but her real love was the piano, which she played at near concert-level ability. Maybe she was concert level, Jess didn’t know, but she never gave concerts except for her friends at the house, and at the Unitarian church, and at a place in New Hampshire where they went for the summer. She also wrote her own compositions, which Jess thought beautiful but couldn’t describe—“How can you describe music?”—couldn’t classify as serious or popular. “I don’t know. They were like nothing I’ve ever heard.”
Her mother’s partner was a lawyer who made most of the money, though Paige gave piano lessons and sometimes taught in schools. Stacey was the only other parent Jess had ever known.
“I never liked her. She wasn’t warm and affectionate like Mother. She disapproved a lot when I got wild, never liked any of my boyfriends. Just didn’t like men. Drove me crazy.”
“She couldn’t help you now?”
“What?”
“Go to art school. Take a class. Get things started.”
“I don’t see her. Don’t want her money.”
We had walked to the heart of the square, stopped to watch the chess master. He was a fair-skinned guy with a scruffy beard, wore a straw hat in the sun, had been playing at the square since Josh was little. He was agitated during a game, his leg vibrating like crazy, but had great concentration. He sat reading chess books when nobody played. And I’d seen him give free lessons to kids, endlessly patient with them, teaching strategy.
I liked anyone who lived out an obsession.
We walked around the square for a while, headed back toward Prospect.
“One thing about my mother would have interested you,” Jess said.
“It all interests me.”
“But the thing you’d really like was that she got up every morning to do yoga and meditate. Took her nearly two hours. Never missed. Still made it to the breakfast table before I got there.”
“Where did she learn?”
“I don’t know. It was a part of her life as long as I knew her. Which is why, though I may seem like an airhead who pumps beer for a living, a morning drunk who is about to give you the best blowjob of your life”—she actually didn’t seem drunk; her cheeks were rosy, but her speech fine—“I really do want to come to that retreat. However much I can. I want to learn about it.”
“Jake’s a great teacher. You couldn’t do better.”
“I want to get my life in order. Something’s wrong.”
I knew the feeling.
We had made it back to Prospect by that time, turned down the little street Jess lived on. It was narrow and dead-ended into a playground, featured a bunch of tiny houses all alike, small stoops up to the door. Even then they were split up into duplexes, her place on the first floor.
“I live here with my girlfriend,” she said, “but she works at a coffee shop. Doesn’t get back till I’m about to go. The place is all ours.”
The door opened onto a living room that was on the squalid side, a small ragged couch on one wall, two beanbag chairs in front of a TV, a sound system on the side wall, ashtrays full of butts, some beer cans on the floor, CDs and magazines scattered around. On the walls were posters of a couple of rock bands, both of whom looked simultaneously fierce and utterly ridiculous. Had these people ever heard of smiling?
“This is kind of grungy,” Jess said. “But the bedroom’s nice. I promise.”
“I better not go back there,” I said.
Jess turned. She had been walking ahead.
“I was glad to help with the rent,” I said. “I wanted to. And I do like being seen with you. I liked our walk, and our talk. But as much as I’d like to, I can’t go back there. It’s not appropriate.”
“Not appropriate?”
In your deepest place, Jake always said, you know what is right for any given moment.
“Just not right. Not something I can do.”
Jess blushed all over. “Not appropriate is paying for two drinks at breakfast. Sitting there with a woman a third your age. Walking around with her on your arm. That’s not appropriate.”
“I liked all that.”
“But now the fucking door is shut. You’ve walked in the door of my place, where I’ve come with God knows how many guys, and if anybody’s watching, which I quite seriously doubt, if anybody’s been watching this whole thing, they saw you come in here. That’s the inappropriate part. But now that you’re here, now that you’ve done all the risky stuff, you’ve even fucking given me money, you’re not going to fuck me?”
“It’s not that I don’t want to.”
“Do you have any idea how insulting this is?”
I just had to look at her to know.
“I have a tongue stud I put in to go down on guys,” she said. “Wear it when I go on dates if I really like someone. Drives them fucking wild. You ever had that?”
“No.”
“I’m about to put it in. You’re not going to get past my mouth. Nobody does. We can do it right here.” She grabbed my belt.
“You don’t understand,” I said.
“I understand when some guy says he’s going to fuck me, pays my rent so he can do it, then when he gets here doesn’t even try. What is it with you old guys? Are your dicks limp or what? You just want to be seen? Go home and jerk off with that?”
It was hard to talk to her, the woman was so furious.
“There’s something in your life, right now, that you d
on’t like, right?” I said.
“Lots of things.”
“But there’s something you want to change, something wrong, you just told me.”
“Sure. I got a crummy job, fat guys with beer breath sitting there at the bar, looking at my ass with their tongues hanging out, while I give them beer to make them more drunk and more stupid. I live in this roach-infested fucking shithole where my bedroom is the one nice thing and you don’t even want to see it. I live with my best friend but don’t get to see her because we’re working our asses off for no money whatsoever. And oh, one more thing, my mother died. I watched her go through hell for two years and watched her die. Those are the things I’d like to change. Can you change them?”
I wanted to take her hand, but it seemed too dangerous. If I gave her my hand she’d snap it in half.
“I mean the way you live,” I said. “There’s something you want to change.”
“Maybe so. I haven’t thought about it.”
“Well for me, in my life, this was it. What I wanted to change.”
“Making it with young chicks?”
“Young, old, everything in between.”
“There’s nothing wrong with that.”
“It’s not that it’s wrong.”
“It’s a good thing to fuck. Everybody does it. It makes them happy.”
“I had no control. It controlled me. I had to do it.”
“Who cares?”
“It’s a lousy feeling. Ruins everything.”
“So you don’t have to. I’m not saying you have to. You really don’t have to. But you want to, don’t you? It’s fun.”
“It doesn’t matter how much fun it is. It’s a bad feeling, when you have to. I can’t go back to that.”
It was the thing I’d spent years sitting and watching.
“So you never fuck?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“You’ll never do it again? Jesus, I like you, Hank. I had a great time this morning.”
“I did too.”
“I might have done it without the rent money. Not that I would have spoken to you in the first place.”
“So have breakfast with me again.”
“You’re hungry again?”
“Not now. Meet me again. Tomorrow.”
“You want to date me?”
“I want to have breakfast with you. I’m paying.”
“Then maybe the third or fourth time we do it, I bring along the tongue stud.”
“Forget about sex. Leave that out of it. Have breakfast with me. Tomorrow. Ten o’clock.”
“Why?”
“Because it was fun. Remember? Just a little while ago?”
“You do go home and jerk off with it.”
“It’s called being friends. It’s a nice thing. People do it all the time.”
“They do?” She put her arms around my shoulders, bumped her forehead against mine. “You are a sweet guy. It’s hard to believe. Old enough to be my grandfather. I don’t know what we’re doing here, but I’ll try. What the hell.” She kissed my mouth lightly. “You sure you don’t want me to just suck it a little?”
“Tomorrow, Jess. Ten o’clock. Breakfast.”
9
JOSH AND I DID GO BACK to Mount Desert that second summer, stayed at the funky hotel. It was amazing how much he’d grown in the intervening year, not so much up—though he gained three or four inches—as out, his body finally catching up with his height. We rented bikes for the whole two weeks, hung around in town. I didn’t see Josh a whole lot, actually. If it hadn’t been for the movies, I might not have seen him at all.
He slept late, which gave me time to sit in the morning. I’d moved up from the fifteen minutes of the year before. We ate at the diner every morning, blueberry pancakes more often than not, sat at the counter behind the grill and tried to figure out their system, just two guys. They did the work of five.
After that I might not see Josh until dinner, or even the movie. He took his bike, but I didn’t have the feeling he was making long forays into nature. We took one ride together toward the end of our stay, and he took me up that hill that had been so hard the year before, pulled way ahead of me. I had trouble keeping up.
At the end of the two weeks he told me he’d had a calzone for lunch every day, sampled every filling, and really wanted to get into the Dead. He’d been talking to the owners, and they’d played some stuff for him.
I spent much of the time alone. I took long bike rides, found a pool to swim in, spent hours reading. I also stopped in most days to talk to Jake (as did Josh, at different times). He was giving me books to read, and I attended the Thursday evening group, where we sat for a while and had a discussion. After trying on my own that whole year, it was a huge relief to talk to somebody who knew the practice, meet other people who did it.
At the end of our stay—the last two weeks in June, as it had been the year before—I stopped in one last time to see Jake.
“Josh is going off for six weeks with his mother,” I said. “Soon after the fourth of July. Her family has a place in Canada, and they’re all suddenly closer.”
“I hope they have girls in Canada,” Jake said.
“I don’t know. The place is pretty remote.”
“Josh is rocking.”
Apparently he had reasons for visiting Jake alone.
“I’d like to come back here,” I said.
“Oh?”
“The motel will give me a six-week rate. I like the island. And I want to study with you. If that’s all right.”
“Summers are tough. I’m busy in here. But we can get together in the evenings, now that you won’t go to every movie. You can do a lot on your own. We don’t have to spend hours. Checking in is helpful.”
It had certainly been helpful for those two weeks.
“I want to pay for this.”
“Either way. It’s not important.”
“This is what you really do. Not fixing bikes.”
“I fix bikes so the teaching won’t get mixed up with money. This place is my job. The rest is just life.”
I hadn’t had any idea I’d want to do such a thing when I arrived that summer. It was a sudden impulse, but I couldn’t get it out of my mind. It was as if I’d been starving for something all my life and had finally found it. I couldn’t give it a name. But I knew it was feeding me.
I thought we might meet formally—I’d heard of Zen teachers and students sitting head to head—but Jake preferred long strolls, around town or up in the park. He also loved simple social occasions, going out for a meal or for coffee. He thought them as sacred as anything in life.
He looked largely the same in those days, already bald and shaving his head, big chested and slightly rotund, slightly heavier if anything. But he was a vigorous man, exuded energy, a physical person who loved the outdoors. Sitting for him was first and foremost a physical act. Buddhism was something you did, with your body.
“The thing I’ve been wondering,” I said on the first evening after I’d come back, “is whether it’s appropriate to work on something in sitting, the way you might in therapy. Pick something out.”
“I’m not sure ‘work’ is the word,” Jake said. “You don’t want to be too active, or too intentional. If it’s important, it comes up.”
“It comes up.”
“What is it?”
“Women.”
Jake couldn’t suppress a smile. “The fruit falls close to the tree.”
“It doesn’t seem the same with Josh. I was nothing like that. Wish I could have been.”
“Don’t glorify it too much. He has his problems.”
Everybody came to Jake for help.
“This is what broke up my marriage,” I said. “If I had to pick one thing.”
“Other women.”
“Yes.”
“But you’re free now. How long’s it been?”
“A year and a half.”
“Have you tried being really free? Ju
st letting it rip?”
“I have.”
“And?”
“I have three women, I want four. Four, I want five. It gets more and more tangled. I’m ready to become a monk.”
“Because monks are happy?”
“Aren’t they?”
“Some are and some aren’t. About like the rest of us.”
We just walked for a while, down a street of shops that gave way finally to a street of houses, small cottages. Jake walked with his hands behind his back, his little tummy sticking out.
“What do you do about this?” I asked.
“Women?”
“Yes. Were you ever married?”
“When I was younger. Before I went to Japan, and started practice. Then I knew some women in Japan. I’ve been with a few since I’ve been back. The problem has never been sex for me. I can take that or leave it.”
That was a totally incomprehensible statement to me.
“The problem for me is finding someone who understands what I do. Women aren’t beating down the doors to get with a guy who works in a bike shop.”
“That’s not what you do.”
“But practicing Zen. Having a handful of students. It’s not much of a career.”
Maybe not. But it was extraordinarily valuable.
“The whole way I live. Turning in early. Getting up in what seems like the middle of the night. This devotion to practice. Women might go along with it for a while. Even want to do it with me. But they don’t finally understand that it’s the first thing in my life. They get in competition with it. Want me to compromise.”
“Your students understand.”
“That’s tricky. Some of them are interested. But they think I’m some saint. Turns out I fart and scratch my balls like all the other guys.”
Even I idealized him. It was hard not to.
“The thing about sex,” he said. “This thing you’re bringing up. Becoming a monk, whatever, wouldn’t end the problem.”
“I wasn’t entirely serious.”
“Priests in Japan aren’t celibate. They’re allowed to marry. But they refrain while they’re training. Still, the young guys I knew at my first temple were jumping each other all the time. Going to whores if they could scrape up the money. Jerking off like crazy. It was like boys’ boarding school.”