“Hey, bartender,” Coach shouted. People turned and looked. “Hey, bartender. Who do you have to fuck to get a drink around here?” Coach held his glass up over his head, kept holding it up until she stood in front of him. People were watching. She reached up for the glass, but he pulled it away.
“You can make me a drink, but first you have to fulfill this old cocksucker’s final wish. He wants you to dance with him, before he heads for the happy fucking hunting grounds, don’t you, you old fuck. He promises not to put his hands on you, don’t you, shithead.” Coach looked around again for the cowboy, who had vanished. “He just wants to feel your warm tits against him, just wants a little gentle grinding, before he makes for The Exit, don’t you, Old Wise One?” He handed BB the glass. She was holding back the tears. “I’ll play that slow Vince Gill song you like, okay babydoll?” The tears were streaming down. She turned and walked away.
Coach could feel the heat radiating from his body, a rising nausea boiling inside. He heard no sound in the room, saw only the shrinking image of his wife.
“It was a good thing my wife worked for a doctor,” the old man muttered, his eyes looking down into his hands. “She was sick all the time, allergic to everything.”
The old man’s lips were moving, but Coach wasn’t hearing him now. BB disappeared into the stockroom behind the door.
“You know every time I smell fresh cookies I think of her. I go for walks in the mall, and I’m thinking of nothing until I smell cookies.
If Coach hurried now, while she was in the stockroom, there might still be a chance.
“One night, I called and she didn’t answer. Called again. No answer. Then again. I can’t tell you what I was prepared to do to her when I left the plant that night. When I pulled into the drive, I saw that all the lights in the house were on. I was sure she wasn’t there, that she’d left early, her not thinking that she wouldn’t be home in time to turn them off before I got home. She’d made that mistake in her dancing days.”
BB walked out of the stockroom hunched over a case of beer. Her face was hard. She bent over the cooler loading beer down into it. Men stood with their money, waiting. She didn’t answer when they called for a drink.
“When I put the key in the door that night, I can’t tell you what I was thinking. But when I opened it, the whole house smelled of oatmeal cookies. She’d left them on the table. I sat there eating cookies, wondering where my wife was, what she was doing, what was going to happen when she got home. By the time I come back to my senses, I hear the radio or what sounds like voices in our bedroom. I go back to shut it off. I don’t expect to see anybody in our bed. And when I go to her, I stand there and look down at her. Folks say she was already dead.”
Coach reached for his drink. Last call would be coming soon. He waited for the old man to finish his story. BB refused to look at him. He’d listen to what the old guy had to say now. Listen and not think. He looked over at his wife who only looked down into the dark cooler as she loaded in the beer. The old man didn’t speak. He looked again at his wife, whose shoulders stooped over the cash drawer as she counted change. His eyes fell on the stack of business cards on top of the cash register. The old man didn’t say anything.
Coach reached for his bourbon, hesitated. He laid the palm of his hand over the glass. He looked down at his drink and then at the hand that covered it. His pupils widened. And in the dim, recessed light, the scar seemed to rise from the knuckle—like a brand, or a blessing.
Rehab
Joshua Severance and William W. Mims
When you fall in love, nobody asks any questions. When you fall out, everybody wants to know why. Nobody needs any help with the former. Industries are built on the latter. We fall. We blindly stagger around. We rejoice in our terrified hearts. We wait and hope for better times, for the chance, if we are lucky, to fall again.
Falling out of love is a mystery. Or at least that is what I believe, what I keep saying. It is what I tell myself over and over when other feelings try to bully their way into my heart. I say over and over, I've done my damage, done my time. I pray. I believe.
What I know is that for people who have been married to addicts of one sort or another, liquor, or dope, or gambling, or food, or sex, or money, the answer to the failed relationship can roll off the tongue like “Amazing Grace.” Don't get me wrong. They've lived through hell. But at least they have a word for it.
“I just couldn't live with that,” they say. And it is true. As true as true can be. Addiction is a mysterious, unbearable thing. But then there are more mysterious than not mysterious things, I say. At least that is my experience. Addiction, the word I mean, has such an appealing sound, such a swing to it. Sound it out, if you're not an addict. Feel it form and spin out in your own voice—addiction. And it sounds so final, too, such authority in it, so complete, as words are sometimes. It needs no further explanation. If you find the word, you no longer need look for the thing itself. Because you've got the word.
There are some mysteries, like falling out of love, that we don't have words for, no matter which side of the fall you land on. A guy doesn't have to be a drunk for his wife to fall out of love with him, I tell myself. It's not the liquor she walks out on. But most people want you to explain everything to them. I understand that. And when you say there are no words, they look at you as if they've been hoodwinked. They don't like that. It is the horse that shits in their parade. You are hiding something, they think. Which means to them that you are what went wrong. Even if it was your wife who fell out of love with you.
But try turning the situation around and you'll see how stupid their thinking is. Try this: Go out some lovely spring day to your neighborhood park. Find two people who are obviously in love, walk up to them and say, What went right here? They'll look at you like you are crazy. It will piss them off.
The only way to tell if a thing is just or true is to administer the test of opposites.
For example, let me tell you this true story. My friend Walt, who taught at the college where Rene used to teach, was my jogging partner after I quit drinking. Five years ago his wife left him, or they left each other. Anyway, she moved out. I don't mean to make value judgments, but I don't think they were ever happy. Afterwards, Walt was seen at parties with two or three divorcees who live here in town, nice women all, and then he fell for Joanne. They were together for almost two years. One day when we were jogging he told me that she had begun seeing another man. That was the end. The next year rumor had it that Walt was going out with one of his former Philosophy students, a woman less than half his age.
He didn't mention it. But one day, after I’d fallen off the wagon, he invited me over to his apartment for a drink. Her name was Leslie, and I could see why he would go for her, although they had nothing I could see in common. They had moved in together, and he was happier than I had ever seen him. Then the next I knew she had moved out. For a couple of days, he didn’t show up at the park where we jog. When I was sure he was refusing to answer his phone, I called the resident manager at the apartments, a guy Walt played bridge with, and asked him to check on Walt, to make sure he was at least eating. The guy, his name was Mickey, called me back that evening and said Walt had blown his brains out. People pondered Walt's death. He didn't leave a note. They wanted to know why. They wanted an explanation. They wanted words. What they settled on was that he just could never find himself. That he couldn't accept things as they are, whatever the hell that means.
But this is my point about the test of opposites.
Forget about Walt for a second and replace him with Terri, his former wife, and apply the test of opposites. Make everything the same, just switch Terri for Walt. You have a middle-aged woman whose husband moves out. She falls in love with a man, spends two years with him only to discover that he is seeing another woman. Poor thing, people say. Then she falls for a guy half her age. Poor, poor thing people say. Then he moves out. Poor pathetic thing, people say. Then when they hear that she h
as killed herself with sleeping pills or something, they say, that former husband of hers is the reason for this.
Administer the test of opposites. If you don't like the results, make your own test. Just make it true. That's the hard part. That's what I'm working for.
Tell me if I am wrong. Before things happen, I have the Golden Rule. After things happen, I have the test of opposites to keep me on track, to help me make sense of things. Try it sometime. Tell me if you find that people and ideas and theories keep colliding with themselves.
You'll see how flimsy words can be.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m all for love. It's no addiction, but it is as deep a craving as a person can feel, and to have had it and to then go without it is worse than anything. There are no twelve-steps or stick-on patches or injectable substitutes to relieve the need for love or the effects of having to live without it. I'm more in favor of it than probably anybody you know. When I pray, I pray for love, for someone to love, for someone to love me. I've seen the time I'd die for it. Really. And I hope I see that day again. I've not given up on it. And if I ever find that person again, I would say to her, I’ll prove it to you. Somehow I'll prove it to you. And if that meant putting a bullet through my brain, I would do it. I swear to God I would do it for that kind of love.
When I was in the hospital once drying out, I read a book about John Lennon. A nurse named Megan, who was about my age, gave it to me. I was thankful. The book was junk reading, but it helped take my mind off things for a while. It was called Loving John. One part of the book described Lennon's life while he lived in Los Angeles, while he was working on the Rock 'n' Roll album with Phil Spector.
I don't believe an awful lot of what I read in that sort of book. You know, the writer writes dialogue as if he was there and remembers it verbatim, and tries to get into the person’s head. But the writer does make reference to what I believe is a true quotation, true in meaning anyway. It is attributed to Harry Nilsson, another songwriter and Lennon's drinking pal. He said, “Everything's the opposite of what it is.” And if you will take some time to hold that thought in your mind as you look around at things, I think you'll find that too often it is true.
In a world where people demand visible scars or words to explain what can't be explained, it makes a hell of a lot of painful sense. So when people ask you why it didn't work out, you just say, “There's never a reason why.” You tell them that. And if they look at you and say, “Why's that?” You just remember Harry and say, “Because everything is the opposite of what it is.”
***
My friend Billy Mims—who was also introduced to me by my fu- ture former-wife, Rene—and I are converts to the Nilsson philosophy. We have our reasons. We are true believers.
The other night we were watching the Francis Ford Coppola film Apocalypse Now on VCR. Billy is teaching Heart of Darkness as a part of his film appreciation course. When the video ended, he changed the channel and we witnessed live the landing of Marines in Somalia. There were lights and camera crews and satellite dishes everywhere, and the Marines were responding admirably. We looked at one another and in one voice said, “Everything's the opposite of what it is.”
Like me, Billy loves music. He prides himself on his knowledge of music trivia. He has all kinds of theories about the evolution of popular music. So that's what we talk about mostly. The only things he asked for in his divorce were the stereo and his music collection. And that's all he's going to get, according to what he says.
He's still pretty bitter sometimes. I feel sorry for both of them. I like them both. Lana, his second wife, wanted a reason why he didn't love her, he says. But he couldn't give her one, at least not one good enough for her or her friends. She loved him, she said, which was all she or anybody else could do, all that he could ever ask for. He couldn't argue with that. If she were an awful person, she could understand that, she said. If there were another woman she could understand that, she said. But he had to tell her, she said. He couldn't just leave her like that, without a word, just leave her like a suicide without a note. She would understand, she said, but she had to have something to understand. He had to say it. Which of course he couldn't do because there aren't words for all things. So this went on for a year. The year of the conversation, Billy calls it.
Not everything is final yet. Like I said, he's still a little bitter. So I try to keep him talking music and off marriage.
Billy says some pretty wild things sometimes, which is allowable under the Nilsson system. But sometimes he’s out there on his own planet. A few days ago, we stopped at a bar called The Paradise Lounge. There was a time I knew everybody there by first name. George Miles was the bartender then. Now the drinks are cheaper, but I don't drink any more. I’m hoping to get my pharmaceutical sales job back. I'll have a club soda occasionally.
When I go to The Paradise with Billy, I see all sorts of things that I never saw when I used to practically live there. I mean I slept there, woke up there. And now I see things I never saw, people and things that have always been there. I don't know anybody there now, and nobody knows me.
Anyway, we were sitting at the bar I used to know so well.
“There was a time when it was okay for us to talk about women's issues,” Billy said. I didn't know where he was going with this, but without thinking I laid my palm in the center of the stool beside me and leaned away from him. “Don't you want to hear this?”
“Just saving a seat for Nilsson,” I said.
“If it weren't for men like me and you, Josh, men who acknowledged the wrongs done women in the past, who, when we were in college, stood up for them, they never would have made the gains they've made.”
“You know that Lennon song, 'Woman is the Nigger of the World?'” I thought that might steer him into music talk.
“Sometime in New York City album.” He thought for a second to confirm the album title, then continued. “That’s just what I'm talking about. That came out in '70.”
“You told me that was the best song on the album,” I said.
Billy gave me a You-are-such-a-dumb-shit look. “BB,” he called to the pretty new bartender, “bring this moron another club soda. Help me sober him up.” He lit a cigarette. “My point,” he said leaning in, “is that in a democracy, ours anyway, you can only really change things from the inside out. Vietnam taught us that. You and I, men of our generation, we learned that. Men like you and me wanted to make things right. We really did. We really did want to make things right. For everybody.”
“That's true,” I said. “But go back and watch Woodstock. Then remember that about 70,000 of those 100,000 hippies voted for Reagan. Twice.”
“You're right,” Billy said. “And I just sat through an English De- partment meeting in which Karen said, ‘Won't a woman run for this committee; I want to vote for a woman’. And Andrea said, ‘I won’t speak against my gender, so—’ and nobody bats a goddamn eye.”
“Everything is the opposite of what it is,” I said, hoping to put an end to it.
“There is only one answer for women if they want to truly break the chains that bind them.” He waited for me to ask the question.
“Probably not a good idea to tell women what they need,” I said.
“You're right, only a woman can know. Forgive me,” he said, reaching for his drink.
I really didn't want to go on with this. He lit another cigarette.
“Did I tell you that Lana and I went to Chicago on our honeymoon?”
“No, you never told me that. Let me buy the next round.” I signaled BB.
“Yeah, Chicago is a great honeymoon town, shopping, hotels, greatest blues in the North, great entertainment, the best. Did I tell you we went to the Oprah Winfrey show?”
I didn't say anything.
“You know,” he whispered, “they divide the audience in half. Outside the entrance to the studio there are signs that designate which side you're to sit on. You didn’t know that, did you? On one side the sign says, 'We don
't need men.' The other side says, 'Why can't men meet our needs?'”
“I never miss Oprah,” I said. “I am a great lover of spectacle of every sort. But I don't ever remember seeing you in the audience.”
“Maybe you missed it.”
“Impossible. I know them all by heart, the way some people know every line of dialogue in every Andy Griffith Show.”
“Well you ought to remember this one, then. It was all about PMS.”
“Give it a rest,” I said.
“Okay, but I know what can bridge the gender gap, can free women from the oppression of ages, what would make me adored by women if only I were a woman.” He finished off his drink, then picked up the fresh one when BB slid it before him. “Did I ever tell you I'm a lesbian trapped in a man's body?”
“What's the answer, Billy,” I said.
He stopped, held his drink suspended before him, and looked at me for a second. Slowly, he set his drink on the bar.
“Ask any child expert, and they'll tell you that the essential social characteristics of a person are shaped by the time they are five years old.” He was leaning in now, confidential and serious.
“Yeah,” I say.
“So it's not men who tell them to keep their skirts down, who tell them they have to hide and save what's under there, who teach them sayings like, 'A man's not going to buy the cow when he's getting the milk for free.' Imagine. It's not the father who insists on dressing his daughter in frilly slips or who enrolls her in tap class. Fathers don't make their daughters into bimbo cheerleaders.”
“Would you repeat the question?”
“Women,” he said, “have to teach young girls to kill their mothers. It's the only answer.”
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