Willard and His Bowling Trophies

by Richard Brautigan

  Those bowling alleys were as familiar to them as their mother’s baking. They all got shivers up and down their spines every time they touched a bowling ball, and the sound of crashing pins was music to their ears.

  They formed a junior high school bowling team that won the state championship with a team average of 152, which of course led them to winning the first of their many bowling trophies. They thought that the most beautiful thing they had ever seen was that trophy.

  You could say with a great deal of conviction that those boys had very little else except bowling on their minds.

  At home with the bowling trophies

  By the time the Logan brothers were in their middle twenties, they had accumulated over fifty bowling trophies. They continued living in their parents’ house and found various jobs in town and never went out with girls and devoted themselves like monks to bowling and like bankers to the gathering of trophies.

  They used to sit around the house at night when they weren’t out bowling and drink beer and stare affectionately at their bowling trophies.

  The trophies were housed in a magnificent oak cabinet that was polished to such a shine that it was like a form of wooden gold. The glass doors to the cabinet were breathtaking. It is very rare for the doors to a cabinet to take your breath away.

  The house was usually filled with the scent of something being baked in the kitchen and their father was always watching television after another day of fixing transmissions.

  The Logan brothers had a good life because they were doing exactly what they wanted to do and they had their bowling trophies to show how good they were at their life.

  Coming

  It was pleasure, frustration and hatred when he came inside of her. There was a mud-like oozing explosion of release. Then the feeling of sperm confined against the end of his penis, held prisoner in the rubber. Sometimes he almost got sick at his stomach or felt like crying.

  She had gotten so that she could come sometimes when he came. It was hard but sometimes she could do it. It always made her feel weird now when she came to his coming which was in the form of rubber. She felt as if she were making love to somebody who lived in another country.

  Before the venereal warts visited their lives, sex had been to them like having a beautiful picnic in a field of comets. But now he spread-eagled her on the bed, tying her arms and legs to the four posts of the bed or he tied her hands behind her back. She didn’t like to have her hands tied that way because it was very uncomfortable.

  She didn’t mind being spread-eagled if he didn’t stretch her arms and legs out too tight, but sometimes he did. She “preferred” to have her hands tied directly above her head, but that didn’t turn him on very often, so . . . actually, what she wanted was a long vacation from bondage and minor-league sadism. There was very little thrill to it anymore and she wished that he didn’t have the warts in his penis and he hadn’t changed sexually and they could go back to fucking like they used to. She was not a sexual prude but she did not like their whole sex life devoted to sadism.

  If only her novel had been a commercial success as well as a critical success and she hadn’t felt so depressed and insecure that she had one-night-standed with the lawyer, even though she loved Bob very much, and brought the venereal warts home with her. Also, because her novel had failed, she had to go back to modeling, which she hated. She felt that it degraded her but Bob couldn’t work anymore because he was too abstract and she had to support him.

  So now . . .

  “Constance Marlow’s novel After Class shows great promise and it is a privilege to welcome her to American letters.”

  — The New York Times Book Review

  she “preferred” to have her hands tied

  “Miss Marlow’s book is a delight to read in a very sad way.”

  — Saturday Review

  directly above her head

  “Hurray for Constance Marlow!”

  — Chicago Tribune

  but that didn’t turn him on . . . so

  “A brilliant young stylist goes to the head of her literary generation.”

  — Los Angeles Times

  so . . .

  Ritual

  It always happened this way: After he came his penis would slowly soften inside of her and their bodies would be very quiet together like two haunted houses staring across a weedy vacant lot at each other. Then always with a slight feeling of abstract disgust, he would pull out of her, get up and take the rubber off, carefully not looking at it, with his back to her and leave the room, and he would walk dream-like down the hall to the toilet. He hated the way the wet warm rubber occupied his hand like a dirty joke from outer space.

  Carefully looking away, he would drop the rubber into the toilet and flush it, feeling by now terrible as if he had been part of something very obscene.

  He would wash his penis very, very carefully, still not looking at it, and then dry it with a special towel that he wouldn’t allow Constance to use because he was afraid she might get the warts again and he couldn’t stand that.

  No, that would be too much.

  It would be the end of him.

  Then he would walk slowly, dream-like, back to where Constance lay, still bound and gagged, waiting for him to untie her, so they could go on with the rest of their life together.

  Events leading up to the

  One evening the entire Logan family, except for the daughters who were elsewhere again, went to a drive-in movie. Their mother brought along a giant sack of cookies. Going to a movie was a very rare thing for them to do. They thought the picture they were going to see was about bowling, but it turned out to be about playing pool and starred Paul Newman.

  The Logan brothers were very disappointed and could not figure out how they had made the mistake of thinking that the picture was about bowling when it was actually about playing pool.

  They tried to blame it on one another.

  “It’s your fault,” one of the Logan brothers accused another Logan brother.

  “You’re full of shit!” was the reply.

  “Don’t talk that way in front of your mother,” was their father’s immediate response to that remark. He had been listening to a transmission in one of the cars in the movie before his son started talking dirty.

  “I’m sorry, Mom,” was the apology.

  “You’re forgiven, son,” was the acceptance.

  “How could we have been so stupid to think that the movie was about bowling,” one of the other brothers said, voicing extreme disappointment.

  “Let’s forget it. It’s done,” the Logan father said. “Have another cookie.”

  He was a Libra.

  Theft of the bowling trophies

  The disappointment of not seeing a bowling picture at the drive-in made the trip back home a very quiet one for the Logan brothers. They felt betrayed, especially because they knew that Paul Newman could make a hell-of-a-bowling movie if he wanted to.

  When they walked into the house the bowling trophies were gone. It was that simple. The cabinet was cleaned out. It was completely void of bowling trophies. The cabinet looked like the toothless gums of an old man.

  The Logan family stood in a half-circle around the cabinet not believing their eyes. They were silent miniature Mount Rushmores.

  “SOMEBODY STOLE OUR BOWLING TROPHIES!!!” finally broke the silence like a locomotive leaping its tracks and crashing into an ice-covered lake to sink instantly out of sight, leaving a giant steaming hole in its wake.

  Bringing her back to this world

  Bob took the gag out of Constance’s mouth. He took it out very carefully, so as not to hurt her. She thought this was considerate.

  Her green eyes staring up at him.

  The gag was so wet from her spit that it was almost like some kind of phantasmagorical cement. He worked it gently out of all the crevices of her mouth. Her tongue had been made completely useless by the pressure of the gag and she c
ouldn’t help him, so she just lay there, letting him do it all.

  The gag almost made a sound like a plop or a sigh as he pulled the last of it out of her mouth. It was all matted, pushed together, firm, pulpy, very wet, almost foul, and he put it down on the bed because he didn’t want to touch it any more.

  A little shiver passed down his spine as he let go of the gag. After the act of sex was over, the whole bondage thing and its equipment disgusted him. He didn’t want to have anything to do with it . . . until the next time.

  She slowly closed her mouth as if she were performing a pleasure like eating a chocolate. Then her tongue came slowly out. It was delicate, pink, and it slowly licked her lips awkwardly as if it had never been used before.

  She closed her eyes.

  He untied her hands and she awkwardly withdrew them from behind her back and rested them on her hips. Her wrists were red and white with rape impressions. She lay there without moving. Her eyes were still-closed. She licked her lips again.

  Then her eyes opened slowly to see him staring at her.

  “Come here, baby,” she said.

  Thirst

  They lay cuddled around each other in bed, feeling very sad. They always felt sad after making love, but they felt sad most of the time, anyway, so it really didn’t make that much difference, except that they were now warm and touching each other without any clothes on and passion, in its own particular way, had just crossed their bodies like a flight of strange birds or one dark bird flying.

  They didn’t say anything for a long time.

  Constance, while she listened to the night-time traffic like the ticking of a clock, thought about Bob and how much she loved him and wondered how much longer she could take things as they were now and why couldn’t he get rid of the warts and why had two doctors failed in treating him.

  She knew that everything had to have an ending.

  Then she thought about a glass of water.

  Bob was of course thinking about the Greek Anthology.

  “ ‘Thou art exceedingly afraid,’ ” he quoted in his mind.

  “I’m thirsty,” Constance said.

  Locomotive bubble

  “OH, GOD! THE BOWLING TROPHIES ARE GONE!”

  More on the Greek Anthology

  “Do you want to hear some more from the Greek Anthology?” Bob asked Constance. He was holding the book in his hands. It was a 1928 Putnam edition, a part of The Loeb Classical Library, with gold lettering on a dark cover. He had all three volumes of the Greek Anthology, but he could never find more than one book at a time. They kept disappearing and reappearing like mysteries in the house.

  The pages of the book had been stained yellowish by time and the book had that dusty smell to it that can make some people feel sad for no apparent reason. Tattered window shades in old abandoned houses can have the same effect on certain people.

  “Yes,” she said. “That would be nice,” but she really didn’t give a shit about the Greek Anthology. All she wanted was a glass of water.

  “Let me go get a glass of water,” she said. “I’m thirsty.” She started to get out of bed.

  “No, let me,” Bob said. “Stay where you are.”

  He put the book down and got up from the bed and left the room. She had wanted to get the glass of water herself but before she could say anything he was gone. She was really thirsty and didn’t want to trust it to his ineptness.

  She wondered how long it would take him to get the glass of water, that is, if he could remember what he had gone to the kitchen for after he got there.

  Constance was right.

  Ten minutes passed before he came back.

  The minutes passed slowly because she was very thirsty. She had been gagged for a long time that evening.

  Constance looked at the book on the bed. She started to pick up the book but withdrew her hand just before it reached the book. She hated the Greek Anthology because it was a major part of the unhappiness that surrounded them. To her this book of ancient poetry was a symptom of the warts.

  She had a sudden compulsion to throw the book out the window, watching it land down below in the evening traffic, but then she changed her mind instantly, while the book was still falling through the air in her mind.

  She returned her thoughts to wondering what was keeping him in the kitchen. Normally, a glass of water was a simple matter. She felt sad again.

  Ten minutes passed.

  Constance started to get out of bed, then she heard Bob coming down the hall, so she stayed where she was and finished out the last seconds of the waiting.

  “Here you are,” Bob said, smiling. He had a sandwich in his hand. “A nice peanut butter sandwich with strawberry jam. This should take care of your hunger.”

  Bob handed Constance the sandwich.

  She stared at it.

  The Logan brothers take their vows

  A thunder and lightning storm came up out of nowhere on the night of the stolen bowling trophies. The Logan brothers stared at the empty cabinet with disbelieving eyes while above them the crack of bowling pin thunder and lightning, like a mad bowling ball, startled the sky.

  The storm was a perfect 300 game.

  Hatred took possession of the Logan brothers’ blood as they stared at the empty cabinet. Whoever took the trophies did not even have the courtesy to leave one behind. What bastards they were!!! and now they had placed themselves outside the laws of man.

  The Logan brothers swore vengeance.

  Their mother held the family Bible in her hands as the Logan brothers grimly vowed to find the stolen bowling trophies and return them, no matter how long it took and what privations they suffered, to their rightful place: the oak cabinet in their parents’ house.

  The storm shook the house.

  Their mother was crying as she held the Bible.

  Their father stared down at the floor, wishing that he was working on a transmission.

  The Logan sisters were of course elsewhere doing again together what they had done seven times before. If there were a category in the Guinness Book of World Records for what they were doing, they would have held the record.

  Their father wished that life was as simple as transmissions.

  Too bad.

  A typical California room during the decline of the West

  Fifty or so bowling trophies and a large papier-mâché bird can lake up a lot of space in a room and that’s what they did standing together in the front room of an apartment somewhere in San Francisco.

  There were also two chairs and a couch, a phonograph and a television set that didn’t work in the room, but Willard and his bowling trophies made them seem almost invisible as if the room were void of everything except Willard and the trophies.

  You talk about personality.

  Strangers would come into the room and say, “My God, what’s that?” pointing at Willard and his bowling trophies.

  “That’s Willard and his bowling trophies,” was always the reply.

  “Willard and his what?”

  “Bowling trophies.”

  “You mean bowling trophies?”

  “Yeah, bowling trophies.”

  “What’s he doing with them?”

  “Why not?”

  ‘I know the tunes of all the birds’

  While Constance ate her peanut butter and strawberry jam sandwich, Bob read some more to her from the Greek Anthology, not knowing that she couldn’t stand it, no matter how beautiful, poignant or wise the poetry was. To her it was only a shadow of the warts.

  “ ‘I know the tunes of all the birds,’ ” he quoted, holding the book in his hands as they lay there naked upon the bed. They still hadn’t put any clothes on yet. They both had handsome bodies.

  “Isn’t that beautiful?” he said. “That’s all that’s left of a poem. I wonder what happened to the rest of it. So many things can happen in two thousand years. Wars and, you know, all sorts of stuff like that. Plagues a
nd countries and whole civilizations passing away. It must have been a beautiful poem.”

  Constance took a bite of her sandwich. She still hadn’t had anything to drink yet and was just as thirsty as she had been before and here she was eating a peanut butter and strawberry jam sandwich.

  She didn’t know why she was eating the sandwich. Ever since he had brought her the sandwich instead of a glass of water, nothing seemed to make much difference.

  “Do you like your sandwich?” Bob asked.

  Constance nodded her head.

  Telephone answering practice

  The Logan brothers continued to wait in their little hotel room for the telephone to ring, the 3,000-dollar call that would tell them where the trophies were.

  The comic-book-reading Logan had just finished with his book. He didn’t know what else to do, so he just stared at the wallpaper for a while. He wished the telephone would ring. Then he got bored staring at the wallpaper and he went back to looking at the ads in the comic book. He paused again at the salve ad. It intrigued him.

  The beer-drinking Logan brother had finished his beer. It was his last one and he wished that he had another one. He had become quite a beer drinker since the bowling trophies had been stolen. He wanted to go out for another beer but he didn’t say anything about it. His brothers did not approve of him drinking beer all the time and he had been lucky to have the beer that he had just finished. They wanted him clearheaded when the telephone rang because they had some very serious business to do that evening.