by Tom Macher
* * *
WE WENT TO what would become the usual—Perks, Coffee Call, at each place approaching girls if we saw them. It didn’t matter if she had a guy with her already. We didn’t care. We can go outside if you want, we’d say, or you can sit dick in hand while I state my case. Do you live at home? Have a car? Are you in school? Of legal age? What’re your finances like? At Highland Grounds, a sexy redhead sat reading Catch-22. She greeted me warmly, setting her book down as if she’d been waiting for me. I knew she was the one. Where do you live? she asked. When I told her the name of the town, she shrieked in delight. Oh my God. She was from there, too. And oh, man. I bet you live in the House, she said. House boys are hot as fuck. She couldn’t help it. She liked bad boys and I seemed bad, real bad. Will you cum on my pillow, she asked, and then take all my money?
I might even steal your car, I said, winking at the Lebanesian. This was easier than finger-banging a Holstein.
She traced the inseams on my jeans, fingers crept uptown, disengaged, all fuck-eye and smiles. She wanted to work on trains, maybe be a train stewardess, whatever they’re called, or a conductor. Free travel, she said, I’m practically a gypsy, a real-life hippie and poet.
Gosh, I said. How interesting. What does someone like you do for work, anyway?
I’m a dancer, she said.
What kind? I asked. Modern? Jazz? Ballet?
The Lebanesian shoved me aside. What club?
Southern Kumfort, she said, touching my collar and buttons, grabbing hold of my shirt, twisting its fabric in her fingers. I’m headed to my friend’s for a fitting if you want to come.
We were so close I tasted her mouth. This breath of hers, wow. It warped my brain, turned my dick to stone. But the Lebanesian pushed in close as well. The three of us were nuzzling one another, almost. I looked into her eyes and my blood surged and then I saw his dull pharmaceutical stare and my blood waned.
Do you mind? I asked the Lebanesian.
Huh?
You know. Can you, like, fuck off for an hour or something? Is that—is it—am I asking too much?
He was none too pleased. I see how it is. I can’t even watch, huh?
Pick me up at eleven-thirty. Is that enough time? I asked the girl. Curfew was twelve-thirty.
Sure, she said. Whatever you need.
Dang. All I needed was thirty seconds. Mostly just to fidget with the condom. I was fixing to screw! Push out, I told the Lebanesian. I’m going to convince her to fall in love with me. We’re going places. Maybe Alaska or some other frontier. I’d settle for Pierre Port at this point, even Central. I don’t care.
Some are sicker than others, he said. I guess.
Just meet me at Louie’s Diner at eleven-thirty.
* * *
SHE PRANCED ABOUT in pasties and a G-string, tossing down Nembutals. On a coffee table was a handle of Old No. 7, a gram of cocaine.
Go on. She waved her hand. Help yourself.
But I didn’t need that stuff to love.
Please, she cooed, climbing on top of me, grinding my junk. Not even just one? She held a glass of wine to my lips. One line, a pill? If you drink this, she offered, you can fuck me in the asshole or whatever.
No, no, I said, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, well—turn around, I guess; better see this thing, at least.
She turned, bent, spread her cheeks, red-eye in my face. Wow, okay!
I stuffed my thumb inside, but she wiggled free. Not yet! Hold on! She had some Astroglide in her purse. NASA uses this, she said. In space. Go ahead, smear it all over your body if you want. Now, are we fixing to party or what?
My mind tumbled in a low heat and gentle cycle: Yes, no, yes, no, yes, no. Let me explain what’ll happen if I have just one.
We’ll fuck like mallards, she said.
Mallards rape, I said.
I know that, she told me. You think I don’t know that? I’m into that.
One equals two equals three, I said, and then I’ll be fucked up a long, long time.
I have until Tuesday, she said. That’s when I work. That long enough?
What about Alaska? What about the old Al-Can?
Have a drink, she said. Relax.
Oh, God. It was eleven-thirty. Hold on, I told her. Be right back.
* * *
I WALKED TO LOUIE’S, but the Lebanesian’s car wasn’t in the parking lot, so I went inside and looked in the bathroom and kitchen. I asked a waitress, but she hadn’t seen anyone that looked like him. I walked up Perkins, peeked in the Varsity, asked the door guy, the coat-check girl. I walked down Chimes to Highland Grounds, the Library Bar—I looked everywhere. I walked back to Louie’s and waited. Then I asked that same waitress, but she just shook her head. I’m sorry, she said. I sat a long while outside Louie’s. It was well past midnight. I’d missed curfew. I began feeling sorry for myself. He’d left me. Like my dad and brothers, like when my mom kicked me out. I made a decision. I needed to stock up. I wanted enough booze to ride out whatever was fixing to happen, comfortably. Maybe four days’ or a week’s worth. I had twenty bucks and an all-or-nothing feeling, like when you’re hungry and someone offers you a cookie but you don’t want a cookie. You want the whole motherfucking bag. Across from Louie’s was a strip mall with an ATM. At one point, the strip mall had a grocery store, a record shop, and a Thai restaurant, but only the ATM and a bar called Chelsea’s remained. Everything else had been boarded and abandoned long ago. It was on the edge of campus where the blocks turned rough, and I thought some about the promise of a rough turn and roads like West. Maybe I’d keep wandering or wander this way later or wander come Tuesday when she had work. I didn’t care anymore. It was over for me.
I slid my card in the ATM, punched my code, and waited. I waited a long-ass time. The machine spat my card out. A message flashed on the ATM’s screen: insufficient funds. I put my card in and tried a smaller number, but the same thing happened again and so I put my card in again and tried once more, but the message kept appearing until it dawned on me. My account wasn’t the problem. It was the machine. It was empty.
* * *
ALLOW ME A DIGRESSION.
Captain Ron came from Panama via Ohio. He had 20/10 vision, blue eyes, a squat, confident build and square jaw, wavy blond hair. His family was all political, power brokers, governors, presidents, as far back as you could trace it, but his mother was merely a mistress, and it had long ago been explained to the Captain that he would never match up. He had wanted to be an air force pilot, and his attributes would have served the corps well. Athletic, driven, he held black belts in most mainstream martial arts. He wore sandals, colorful shirts, and torn jean shorts—what people used to call Daisy Dukes, ball or butt huggers—cut so high that Miss A used to keep him away from her children. From a standstill, he’d leap and kick our hands.
He worked at the Piggly Wiggly. He owned a collection of guayaberas in every color, every pastel, every guava, avocado, lilac, and strawberry, a collection so extensive that he gave brothers as many as we wanted, one two three four five shirts. He owned a ten-speed bike, a stereo—one of the last premium towers made—thousands of CDs. He owned an espresso maker.
He slept in the bed next to me most of that spring and early summer, him window, me wall, and we talked about our fathers, comparing his four visits with my own four or five encounters, or we held forth on what it had been like out there sleeping in cars smelling of mildew and rot whose floorboards had rusted through and whose windows didn’t work. He told me about Ohio, the gone factories and wheat, endless roads and countryside. We talked about being the bastard kids of known families, what it had been like to have an exotic last name in the land of football. I met his mother, a blonde turned ash gray, her once-flirtatious face turned stern, lips thin, high cheekbones and skin soft as an eighteen-year-old’s. He stocked our fridge with bulk-purchase pies, sold them a dollar or two a slice, a four-to-one markup, and poured espresso as a loss leader.
Intense, obsessed, neurotic, but als
o laid-back, relaxed: if you broke a rule in front of the Captain, he might wave a mockingly comical finger, but there’d be no group called, no record of your infraction. He was a don’t-worry-about-it brother, a just-forget-it type. He did not call people bitch, motherfucker, junkie, sicko, or any of our common nomenclature. You couldn’t drop a “bra” when addressing him directly. He wouldn’t have it. My friend, he’d say, I am no female undergarment. He was jocular, glib, and yet his clowning was all epidermis—he remained firmly rooted in a false vision from his past and knew it. He was twenty-six years old, and the longer he stayed sober, the more he had to face an awful truth: he wasn’t going to be a pilot, he wasn’t going to be a diplomat, he wouldn’t be in the Secret Service, even, and would never hold any kind of government office. And in those unspoken moments, after the laughter between us died, after the arguments over how high we might turn the AC waned, when the rains came, as they came most nights that spring, and we were quiet, I could hear in his tossing and turning all those familiar worries—the what now and how will I amount to.
We giggled about his outfits, made fun of his jocular demeanor or the sheer number of possessions he’d brought with him, all of which he met with a dignified and blasé wave of his hand—it was over-the-top, junkie, but so what? He enjoyed music. He liked riding his bike. Who doesn’t want to wear a different guayabera every day of the month? Have a slice of pie, he’d say. Here’s a chocolate cream, on the house. Would you like an espresso?
He knew how this thing went: if you wanted sympathy, you were stupid; if you thought someone would yes-man you, you were insane; bitching, moaning, and whining were all met with shrieks—poor me! poor me! pour me another drink! A popular expression was: Don’t strangle yourself patting your own back. Put another way: what happened to us has not been pretty. We have OD’d or jumped out windows, off roofs. We have died from self-inflicted gunshot wounds, severed our heads with shotgun blasts, our hearts have exploded from self-imbibed hotshots, we’ve been riddled with holes on home invasions gone wrong, hanged ourselves in cellars, barns, from shower nozzles, and in strangers’ garages. Captain Ron, within a few months of this event, drove his motorcycle up Highway 30 to a four-way intersection where many eighteen-wheelers blew by on their way to the interstate. Each time a truck passed, he gunned his bike across the highway, narrowly avoiding getting hit until he finally timed it just right and was run over. No one viewed it as anything other than suicide. He is one of many. And long before he bought the bike, he knew he was done living. I knew it, too. We all knew it about him. But what could we say? What do you tell the condemned? Do you offer nothing but compassion and kindness? I wonder about it. Where does kind stop being kind, and with whom? How can I offer grace when often my grace only leads to further pain? When do you offer the pillow? When do you take that same pillow and wrap it around eyes and ears?
* * *
NO ONE WAS WITH ME at the ATM, so no one can say if it’s true that the machine lacked money. I didn’t drink. And I didn’t get laid. At some point, I found myself hurtling along Main, through downtown, past St. Theresa’s, the Western Auto, and the kidney bean cannery, at eighty-five miles an hour while the stripper alternated bumps of cocaine and Nembutal. She drove the kind of car you might expect a junkie gypsy to drive, and nothing on it worked. She dropped me off either near the House or where the Lebanesian lived: it didn’t matter to me where she dropped me off. I knew I wasn’t going home. I vaguely remember running through someone’s yard and a field and some woods and crouching around in the bushes. I planned, and had been planning for the last two hours, to break in through a window and strangle the Lebanesian while he slept. His face had become the face of all my failings and shame. By leaving me in Baton Rouge, he’d cost me the House. It wasn’t my behavior. But his. Of course, it is one thing, I understand, to murder someone out of anger or momentary lapse, you are jealous, you are enraged, something snaps, and your mind grows blank, but quite another to hold a murderous feeling for hours on end. By the time I found an unlocked window, I’d stopped thinking altogether. I pulled myself into his home and quietly entered his bedroom. But he wasn’t in bed. I tried the bathroom, dining room, kitchen, and living room, but found only Bill, half-asleep on the couch watching highlights from Vegas. Uncle Bill had been around a long time by now, so long he seemed much, much older than his nineteen years. He’d been Kitchen BBG when I got in the House, but was now just a guy who stocked shelves at Walmart. He was not surprised to see me. The Lebanesian’s at the House, he informed me, and then fell asleep. Uncle Bill was going to die soon. He was probably already using.
From the moment I woke Captain Ron, he began talking me down. Don’t worry about it. Say you forgot to sign in. No one’s looking at those logs. I’ll tear the log out. We’ll forge them. Seriously.
What about the Lebanesian? I asked.
Can’t be mad at crazy, he said.
I’ma kill that fucker.
No, no. How about this? I’ll get up. Sign you in myself. Meanwhile, have some pie. Have an espresso. I have decaf.
I don’t want to get you in trouble, I said, though in fact, by telling him, I already had.
He grinned at my shirt—an apricot long-sleeved guayabera. You old devil, he said. Get any? Good for you.
Ron.
Nobody’s going to know, Tommy; just walk on down there, sign in for twelve-thirty. You forgot. It happens. We all forget sometimes.
* * *
I HAD A FEW Negative Contracts now, though none seemed truly dangerous. At worst, it was all caught head, banged ass—pseudo-normal sexual shit filed under hard to avoid—nothing serious. No one was shooting dope in the group room john or smoking crack behind the dumpster. The pay phone had been removed; neither strawberries nor their pimps loitered in the parking lot. It was a different House, I had different goals. If you told me shit, I was ratting your ass out, more than likely, if it affected me.
And yet consider the first of many Hair-pie incidents: I’d gone inside my apartment one afternoon to shower and clean up for a meeting when I heard or felt an excitement bristling in the air. Perhaps it was just the whisking of a satin shirt against skin, a rustling of cotton, a shuffling of flesh. It was half-heard. I didn’t want to know. If Staff or some confrontational type had come busting through the door for Checks, we’d be fucked, whoever was in that back bedroom for doing whatever they were doing, and me via proxy. I was sure it was sexual, could tell by the air, how thick it felt, how paused. Sexual relations on Property were strictly prohibited, more so even than using, a bootable on-the-spot offense. The back bedroom door was cracked open. A dresser had been moved in front of it, blocking the view. This was too shady to ignore. The dresser alone gave me an NC if I didn’t report it. I figured I’d push the dresser back, shut the door, that’s all: I didn’t want to be involved, just wanted the scenario to unfold privately. But I accidentally looked up. Hair-pie was sitting on the back bed next to another brother. They sat close, like two lovers examining a photo album. This other brother was a young man of maybe seventeen who didn’t think he had a problem. I don’t remember his name. He was leaving soon, I forget why. Maybe his insurance had lapsed or his parents were calling him back or his ambivalence about recovery had gone too far and Staff had given him the boot. Anyway, he was leaving. And these two, in their own way, were saying goodbye. SOP demanded I confront and call group, get everything in the open, process, deal with, weed the bad seeds. We are part and parcel, we were taught, to what we ignore. But here’s the deal: I wanted to be liked. I didn’t want Hair-pie to get kicked out. I know I’m not responsible for anyone else’s actions, and yet I know, too, that if it weren’t for the brave honesty of many, I wouldn’t be here. It could be such a weird thing sometimes, the fine line that blurs right and wrong in this brotherhood of fucked-up men, where we’ll walk so far down a road with someone else, holding their hand, only to turn back when our stomach begins to twist up. At that age, stripped of everything, what else is there but un
questioned sexuality? Fighting your own thinking matters, fighting loneliness. We loved each other, and in that love, broad things emerged. I told myself I didn’t know what was going on between them, though before I looked up, I knew already.
I shut the door and walked away.
I regret this.
* * *
THERE WAS A MOMENT ON MAIN when the stripper nodded out at the wheel and the car lurched onto the curb. We rolled on the curb for a block until a parking meter knocked a mirror off. Sparks shot from the undercarriage. She came to, did a bump, and asked me through watering eyes if I wanted to die. I didn’t. I knew that then. Not yet. I’d made a huge mistake.
The House wasn’t much. The food was awful, beds small, ceilings low, rugs old, blankets institutionally thin. It was, in other words, poor, sad, forlorn, decrepit, a strip of weathered apartments on a run-down road, a place people went before they died. But it’s what I thought of when she asked me if I wanted to die. The basketball hoop, the dumpster next to the group room. Had the porch railing already come down?
I wandered down the front porch to sign in, a bootable offense, a huge NC between me and the Captain, peeking in living room windows. Halfway to the group room, I stopped. All of BBG had gathered about the TV in Room Four. Nob was bent over himself on the couch, tying a bootstrap. Hymen lay supine on the floor, arms and legs splayed, chin to the side. He was laughing about something. Through the window, he seemed tired yet happy. Pope on a Rope reclined in an easy chair, strumming a guitar. Hair-pie was in the kitchen, downstroking in its corner. And in the middle of them all, holding court and enjoying a slice of cold pizza, was none other than the Lebanesian. He looked up at me. Did he catch my eye? Was that surprise on his face? Did he know?