Everything changed. Jesus was now in jail baptized in a network of epileptic violence awaiting trial for possession. (He'd moved uptown into a foxy apartment on West Eighty-Second and had started dealing heavy shit. So the possession charge was good luck.) Mason thought about Jesus: fed up with the witty and giddy and pleas and fleas. Blessed are the poor, blessed are the pure; blessed are the persecuted. Lying on his big bed, Mason, Mason. Busted a week ago, Jesus wouldn't get more than, say, a year, maybe two, if he got a rotten judge. Maybe he'd be lucky enough to get a liberal. Edith, Edith: where could she've hidden herself—with all her loose ends still here in the city. She'd sold her lease and split. And Brad. Well, Mason knew his story: dude living it up big, high on the hog, in the fast lane, jamming, strutting, buying drinks for his dizzy bunch of new friends, trying to fingerbop-pop with the jaded and slick crowds at the Brass Rail, Eddie Condon's, Basin Street and Max's Kansas City, and all the padded bars from Waverly Place all the way up to East Fifty-Seventh. (The hit had yielded close to four hundred-thousand split four ways: and the last time Mason saw Edith she was driving a Mercedes . . . ) Mason looked at his new typewriter, a Selectric, on the table over by the window. A sheet was on the spool: the beginning of the vita he was typing for Moreparke at Cowie Speakers' Bureau. Miss Mufinsnat'd thought his first effort needed editing down. He'd reduce it from twenty-five pages to six: something she could send around . . . Moving on with the change. Would Painted Turtle return? You're full of catfish. You flap like a bee bee-shot bluejay. Click, click. A little hemp wouldn't be bad right now. Help? He got up, went to the typewriter, sat, but only gazed out the window: sky full of goldfish. No, look again: that's the building across the street. No, I tell you it's a red sunset.
He felt it too soon to crack the ice at the invisible empire, the Magnan-Rockford Foundation. Maybe just scared? What was this nonsense about needing a solid base first? Which base? More confidence? Step first into “his” old shoes, autograph a few books, speak to audiences from behind podiums? He'd been at Fifty-Two Gramercy Park North ten days before he broke down and bought himself a drink at the bar downstairs. It was in celebration of Moreparke's apparent trust and belief. Cool, but stay on your toes: bob like a buoy: because there's always the chance The Impostor might turn up, a-and, and what if Brad fucks up, Jesus squeals . . . The word is deep cool: swing low, sweetly. You got shoes, I got shoes. The Impostor could try a hoax. Mason sipped the White Horse hearing the rich click of ice against glass. He smoked a Camel. Hadn't it happened to Barthelme? Somebody published stories under his name. The real Barthelme got wind of it; asked the guy to stop; wrote a letter to The New York Times Book Review, denying authorship. And what about that guy who claimed to have collaborated with Howard Hughes on that autobiography? April fool! Simple Simon! Watch out for the trap-door! Pay attention: in a day or two, John Moreparke'd said, he might have a tentative tour outlined. They could discuss it. Moreparke felt the MRF grant'd given the writer enough recent publicity to make a domestic tour possible: people were interested in winners, in money. (“Are you with us Mister Mason?”) Two protein-fed guys who were participants at the annual convention of organic chemists working in the polymer field were talking shop two iron stools down. Mason'd seen the banner out in the lobby. A bespangled husband and wife with a purse the size of a canoe, farther along, were drinking gin in blue silence. All realistic. All over fifty. Mason finished his drink. Back upstairs in his large room, with sitting room and French shutters, he sat himself down again at the cold, infernal machine. This he called moving on. Time. From day one till this circlet of anxiety he'd felt the uncharitable end—which, though, he could now reason, was only a transition, was still an end. The jammed-up feeling of having to move on, to flail against the quickly located details . . . Everything continued to change: Moreparke's itinerary for Mason: unpromising programs at: University of Maryland; Howard University; Brooklyn College; Sarah Lawrence; University of Washington at Seattle; University of Colorado at Boulder. Miss Mufinsnat, a scarecrow with bug eyes, had neatly typed out the schedule, complete with names and numbers of hosts on twenty-five percent rag. Mason in jeans and sports jacket picked it up from John (it was John now “please”) who was, bless his gut, a water buffalo in a suit. In defiance of “man” Mason pushed his way through the crowd at Kennedy. He was doing the “Big Foot Jump.” With his new leather carry-on, he found twenty-eight C, Smoking. The gray-haired man next to him was reading In Defense of Man. The taxi out was smooth. That picture of the horsefaced woman on John's desk? Cowie Junior's daughter. And Miss Mufinsnat a cousin of the Cowie's. One of the top three of its kind, old grandpa Cowie, who started the business in 1895 had died in 1931 when Junior was twenty-five. Mason stroked his lapel at his curious good luck. Yet there were worries: what was left of the hundred thousand—most of it—was not in a safe place: (locked in the trunk of the VW bug he'd bought after the hit) but taking the chance was part of his so-called defiance. The beetle was itself in a garage two blocks north of the Gramercy, parked in a dark corner three stories below the sidewalk. They were ascending now. Now they were up. All was well. Now they landed at National. February cold: damp, freezing. The taxi to flat, bleak College Park was being driven by a brown-skinned man with weepy eyes and freckles. He kept watching Mason in the rear-viewer. What puzzlement. Looking out, Mason imagined he was in Africa, in a big industrial city: the faces along the sidewalks and at intersections waiting to cross were saffron nutmeg black ivory with an occasionally pink or ivory white. And government buildings with massive columns, clusters of shopping areas. Traffic was sluggish. A membrane lampglow over everything. Early evening drizzle. Miserable shit weather. The last time he'd been here was during Martin Luther King's famous March on Washington. He'd gotten sick from the spoiled mayonnaise on his salami sandwich. Now Mason (free of his guns) felt as “clean” and “respectable” as he had in those days: as credible. He certainly looked like a person of respect and position. In a way, this pigtail-jerker was flying “home.” Like Lionel Hampton, like Ellison's character in the short story. Home, surely was that profound and elusive. How could it be otherwise? It was not the heart of darkness: not completely: not color: not completely. Not place. He looked out again at his dark people along the sidewalk. My people? No confetti floated over the city as he arrived. As the cab inched its way, in bumper to bumper traffic, on the Belt, he looked over through the trees and saw what he imagined to be the lights of Georgetown. O spirit of Toomer, stay, give me comfort, direction, in this chaos! (That night Mason rigged up a branding “iron”—made of a metal E on a key-chain and an M on a tie-clasp. He branded himself with this emblem: M/E. Almost passed out. Later, in the mirror he thought the view of his chest impressive.)
The campus—he would later discover—was typical: young people with pink or white or gray or olive faces and soft hands, carrying strapped to their backs packs and wearing synthetic green or blue or brown jackets and blue jeans and black or brown scuffed boots. That's it. They walked carefully on dirty January icy and snow-packed sidewalks. Buildings: red, sturdy: cold brick, abstract: indifferent. One could imagine green in the Spring. A tree, perhaps a row of trees along certain campus roads. The deadness of winter now clamped the campus in its mouth like a man with a smokeless pipe clamped between his calm teeth. (Men with pipes in their mouths remind me of dogs fetching things.) His host met him where the taxi stopped—all prearranged. She was all smiles. She led him now to her office. They sat for a half hour. They kept attempting to break the silence at the same time. Embarrassed, Mason looked over his lecture notes. Then to the lecture hall. Students coming in. After the host introduced him, Mason stood in front of the podium. I'll spare you the whole bit but you've got to get the drift: “Thank you,” he said, “I come here with my life before you: I am a writer whose muse ran off. I'm just beginning to find myself on my own. I want to speak to you about my new effort to recreate myself . . . ” the most interesting reference he made was to something he described as “self betr
ayal.” Anyway, the “body” of his talk would make you hit the ceiling. And I like you too much for that. The questions were a curious set: “Did you write a book called Native Son?” “No? How about Invisible Man?” “Are you the author of Miss Jane Pittman?” “If you're so terrific how come I never heard of you?” “Do you know Toni Morrison? How about James Baldwin? What're they like?” “Do you make a lot of money?” “Why not?” Clear he wasn't getting the red carpet here: nobody's said the chairman was throwing a big reception. (Oh, even Mason—who'd never been inside a university building before—knew the routine.) After dinner with Edna Coddington, his host, at a two-star Italian restaurant, he and she were pretty smashed: ready to hang out the laundry. By the end of dinner it was clear she'd been the only one interested in having him there. She liked his work. In the little sputtering car, they tried to warm each other by kissing, rubbing each other's hands—giggling together. Cold but not a dry run. Then she got the engine going. She was driving him to Howard Johnson's Motel down the main drag when she told him her life story: she was living with another young professor—a dope addict who was trying to screw all his female students and who was also busy trying to screw and claw his way to the top and into tenure. They had an uneasy, off and on relationship. Shared a big house in Chevy Chase. She had a daughter in high school who lived with them. The girl was really smart and would grow up to be a writer of genius. Roger? Roger. This was contact, thought Mason. Edna was up: she wanted out but Roger was violent. She was afraid. He might try to harm her. Women in her women's group told her constantly she should leave him. He was a loser. Yet her best friend told her to hang in there ’cause he helped with the house payments plus she could see other men when she wanted to anyway. And that's the way she felt now. Her analyst hadn't given any sign of disapproval. Then she had a bright idea. If he weren't anxious to turn in, they could drop by her “best friend's” place. When he said sure she reached over and squeezed his cock and balls together in one big grip of her slender hand with its long white fingers. She turned at the next light. She'd gotten her doctorate from Harvard which gave her a certain status but she felt she wasn't getting anywhere. She'd collaborated with another professor on a book called Milton's Madness: a success in academic circles. But royalties weren't coming. Her lawyer was looking into the wrong done her. She had to come up for tenure next year but there seemed little support among the old guys who ruled the department: her feminism, she said. Already she was sort of planning to leap in another direction: maybe work as an editor. Easier said then done? Or going into business (what?) for herself. Her best friend, this woman called Beth, they were going to see, had her own business: interior decorating. Gaining a name as a designer, nobody'd ground her soon. A go-getter, Beth had a birdman's-eye view of men and no man was ever going to ever again put his foot on her neck. Edna wished she could be as assertive . . . Beth and Jake were really wonderful: true people of the postmodern world! they didn't believe in sexual loyalty. What'd it have to do with love anyway. They loved each other and wasn't that enough? Edna's voice got higher, more defensive. She went through a red light, nearly killing a man with a dog on his shoulder. Oh, Jake was a little gloomy, kinda plastic. But he would like Beth—she was so together . . . Beth's and Jake's apartment building was your typical highrise in the flatlands. Typical that is till Edna and Mason got into the elevator and it started moving up. “This doesn't seem to be the same elevator. They must've put a new one in.” Mason looked at the buttons: Up. Down. Alarm. All seemed normal till he looked closer: Love. Death. Apple. Q. T. Apple? Q. T.? Underneath Q. T. was this: (“Quiet Tilt.”) Halfway between three and four the elevator groaned and stopped. The Love and Death buttons turned red. Disco music came over the intercom. A gloom shook the space: lights dimmed. Then, as though nothing unusual had happened Love and Death went out and the goddamned thing went on to four and stopped like nobody's business. Mason noticed the name plate by the door: J. and B. Marsse. Professor Coddington rang. No response. Mason felt a rising sense of frustration, uncertainty and mistrust. He blinked: a rear-end view . . . ? Juicy . . . ? Twisting. What was, yikes, this, t-this . . . ? Then the door opened and they stepped inside. Nobody was there. Only a giant TV set in the center of the floor. Professor Coddington closed the door behind them. She spoke to the TV set: “Oh, Beth, oh, Jake, forgive me for stopping by like this without calling . . . Had I known you guys'd gone to bed so early . . . I—uh . . . What?” Edna Coddington blushed. “Are you serious, Jake?” She turned to Mason. “He says he's serious.” Edna noticed Mason's bewilderment. Mason looked like a stranger in a foreign country trying to avoid speaking to anybody because he doesn't know the language. It was giving him a headache. Stiff legs. He could hardly move. Why was his heart racing so? The professor went to the remote control and turned on the set. Immediately there were fuzzy projections of two human beings: a naked man and a naked woman. Pink, slender, handsome couple. Projected directly from the screen onto the flat surface of the floor. They were on a bed. The image had combat fatigue. Mason rubbed his eyes. They focused. Edna smiled at him. “They want us to play with them. Are you up to an orgy, my good fellow?” Bring on the sodium pentothal? Tenderness perhaps? Pity? He couldn't figure out how to react. Beth looked very appealing but, well, she was all-surface, shimmering pink film . . . Moments later when Mason climbed atop Beth he felt only the vibrations from the disco music which, he suddenly realized, had followed them into the apartment. When he got his cock into her, it felt as though it were pressed against the seat of a park bench.
Every little hopeless bit helped and was a bird step: even orgasms in strangers who thought you were who you said you were. (Did he really look that much like the pictures?) Truth was nothing other than the establishment of trust, agreement—Mason. And here he was the next morning, back over in D.C., on the campus of Howard, that famous Negro university where Mason's grandfather—so he maintained—graduated in 1926. Feeling a hundred and eighty degrees off, he shook hands with Professor, no, no, at Howard it's Doctor—I forgot—Doctor Welton Parkson-Ogden, Junior. A dignified, tall, slender man, in a perfectly cut expensive British-made suit, Doctor Parkson-Ogden, flashed his gold tooth at Mason. “Found your way all right, I see. We'll have to run right along, I'm afraid: the turnout is good: the auditorium is full—and that's unusual in the middle of the day, around here.” As they walked along one of the crisscrossing paths toward the humanities building, Doctor Parkson-Ogden, Chairman of the English Department, chuckled. “Afterward, we'll take you out to lunch. That's the least we can do. We've reserved a table at a French restaurant down on Pennsylvania Avenue. There'll be twelve of us . . . ” The tall man laughed again. “You look, uh, different from the picture on, uh, uh—I forget the title—your book, uh . . . But, of course, very much like the one Cowie sent . . . ” Mason assured the professor the jacket picture was taken some years back. Understandable, understandable. The professor who introduced Mason to the packed auditorium had her hair in a Savannah Churchill-upsweep. She came on stage clad in a glittering gold and silver Medici gown. Her introduction had him born in Chicago, author of two novels, an anthology of Afro-American slang. Mason thanked her for it anyway. He told the audience he'd read from his most recent novel, but first he wanted to just talk to them. “I'm delighted to be here at Howard, in the Capital of the Home of the Brave, Land of Liberty, Zone of the President, and it gives me special pleasure to tell you that my agency booked me into Howard Johnson's over in College Park so I wouldn't get mugged by any of you mysterious dark people running around over here in D.C.” The laughter was sincere— music: they loved him already: he was early Dick Gregory, late Richard Pryor. Mason had ’em in the sweat of his palm: “I wanna tell you my troubles. You know how it is. Not long ago I realized that this bitch I thought was my muse turned out to be part of myself. Now, don't go getting any funny ideas. Seriously, that's a heavy discovery. My real woman, at the time, an Indian lady—bulletproofed soul with spiritual ventilation—took off not long after
. Made me wonder if I smelled bad or something. Had to check my breath. I don't know. Maybe I needed a deeper inspiration, one with a spirit full of cobwebs of the cave. Yet Celt responded to Beale Street Boogie with as much handclapping and footstomping as the best of any of us. She sure could outdance me. And could be into Mozart and Beethoven, too: with as much passion. You don't have to be Jewish to like Levi's. Every girl I brought home before Celt was looked upon with great suspicion, often with contempt. ‘Don't bring that little tramp in this house anymore!’ ‘What her father do?’ ‘Bring a nice girl home.’ I tell you, my mother could be merciless. Maybe Celt was all right ’cause, well hell, nobody could see or hear her. My mother always did believe silence was golden. Celt then was just the girl for me: the one I should play puppy love with till I got big. Celt was a very active muse: nothing stopped her, in the beginning: midwest bound boxcars full of secret lightning, lithographic surfaces of deep sea classifications, oceans filled with storms. The only problem was: I was dreaming godawful tight fear dreams rather than blooming desire dreams. Had I been smart I'd have been getting that pussy every night—with my folks right in the next bedroom totally unaware. But my innocence, paste of anxiety, high-minded plans, stood in the way. Celt got pissed. You can imagine: there I was turning her into an untouchable goddess. She wanted to kick my ass. I couldn't stop idolizing her and that was the start of my downfall, folks. ‘Before the Flowers of Friendship Faded Friendship Faded.’ But Celt didn't go away right away . . . ” and on Mason rambled, then read; then the questions from the audience: “How come your muse had an Irish name and not an African?” “Why was your real woman Indian and not Black?” “Who do you write for: black or white people?” “I read somewhere that Black critics don't respect your work ’cause it ain't militant enough and white critics don't dare say anything about your books ’cause they might offend the Black critics. How you feel about this?” All Mason's answers were as awkward as the sound of a bugle suddenly blown in a quiet reading library. Answering was like trying to launder dirty money. Eh?
My Amputations (Fiction collective ;) Page 8