by J. R. Helton
Or he spoke of prison. “They got me for transporting dynamite across state lines. I went to a federal penitentiary after that one. I tell you, if you ever commit a crime, make sure it’s a federal offense. The fed is much better than state prison. I was in a state pen for years, and the thing that was so terrible about that is that state is full of a lot of incredibly stupid people who actually enjoyed being in prison in some weird way. They’re too fucking stupid to function outside in society. They need to have a roof over their heads, food served to them, somebody to tell them what to do and discipline them, just like Daddy did. There is no way I’ll ever go back to state, fuck that shit. Besides, I’m gonna kick ’done this year.”
I kept painting, rolling my wall. “Oh yeah?”
“Yeah, it’s just getting too fucking expensive. You know this piece-of-shit country is totally fucked. In England they just give the stuff to junkies for free. They have clinics, and the government just doles it out. It’s legal, it’s sane, and it’s humane. Nobody wakes up and says, ‘I want to be a fucking junkie.’ It just happens one day and you are and you need more and you can’t fucking find any and you have to drive down to San Antonio and I feel like I’m gonna die and I’m trying to wait in line and pay for this shit every fucking week down at the VA hospital. That new senator, Phil Gramm, that weasel was out on the Capitol steps the other day talking about some shit, and I went down there and I’m sorry, I apologize, but I just got pissed looking at that Capitol and all those politicians whose salaries are paid for by my payroll taxes and I started yelling, ‘Hey! What about the Vietnam vets and the methadone program, Senator Gramm?! What about the methadone program, you fucking bastards! You never do shit for a vet!’ And then just because I was yelling a little bullshit, these cops come running up and haul my ass away. You might notice at any event anywhere in this city, anywhere in this fucking country, there’s cops with guns to come haul you away. You watch, you just make a little noise, you just disagree with this government, never mind disobey them, and see how fast a cop sits on your back and throws you in jail just like the Soviet Union, the Gestapo, the police, police fucking storm troopers, coming into your home to haul you away in the middle of the night . . .”
When lunch finally came, Jesse and Tyler and I went down in the freight elevator and stepped out on Congress Avenue. We walked down the sidewalk in our paint-spattered whites, and I grabbed a burger at Wendy’s with the convicts. We rode the elevator back up, sat down on the hard concrete floor of 301 Congress and ate for our thirty minutes of freedom. Big Jim, our foreman, would often give me some little tidbit of wisdom. He was eating raw jalapeños and sausage.
“Say, you know how I got rid of my hemorrhoids, Jake? You know the best way to do it?”
I ate a French fry. “No.”
“I’ll tell you the best way: jalapeños.”
“Oh yeah?”
“No shit. Mine were really bleeding bad one day, right through my pants, so my old lady went out and bought all of these jalapeños and I just ate ’em, one after the other, until I was full. The next day I had the shits real bad, these burning green jalapeño shits, but somehow it just cauterized my asshole and that was it. I’ve never had my hemorrhoids bleed again.”
“That’s interesting, Jim.”
By five o clock I was thoroughly exhausted. I’d been wrong about painting being quiet. The sound of all the other trades, sawing steel, shooting charges to set walls into the concrete, table saws ripping wood, air compressors running, carpet men yakking, electricians yelling to one another, supervisors yelling at everybody, the incessant jabbering of my coworkers, plus the fumes from the paint all gave me severe heartburn, forcing me to pop Rolaids all day.
At around five-thirty or so I drove over to Riverside to pick up my wife.
Whenever I picked her up, she was very tense and worn out.
“That was nine hours of my life wasted.”
“Is it bad in there?”
“The supervisors are morons, and I have to sit there and not only listen to them, I have to do what they say. My boss is this idiotic frat boy who cannot even spell, I mean he can’t spell ‘Wednesday’ or—he just can’t spell. He tells my immediate supervisor what to do, and she tells me what to do.”
“How’s she?”
“I think she’s insane.”
“Really?”
“Completely, irrevocably. Probably a schizophrenic.”
“And she’s your boss.”
“She’ll be running the major part of my life now, and God, the girl next to me—”
“What?”
“I think she mentioned her bowel movements at least ten times today. Everything’s diarrhea this and constipation that at eight o’clock in the morning. I can’t stand it. I gotta sit there all day on the phone taking classified ads. I think there’s maybe two normal people there. The nicest, smartest person seems to be my trainer for the main phone bank. Her name’s Norma, and she’s pretty cool, she doesn’t take the job too seriously. Everyone else is a brain-dead robot slave.”
“I’m sorry.”
“But Norma seems nice.”
“That’s good.”
“Yeah, I guess.”
* * *
If I was late from the paint shop, if I missed her, Susan had to walk home. When I reached El Madrid, I sometimes walked over to apartment 103 to get her. Dwayne Coleridge lived in 103. Dwayne was a forty-three-year-old film professor at UT. He was also an acting teacher, a writer, a painter, a musician, a playwright, and a poet. He’d befriended us one day out by the apartment pool, and now he and Susan were close buddies. I’d walk into 103 and find them sitting at the table doing the I Ching.
“Dwayne just did my numerology chart,” Susan said happily, puffing on a Winston Light. “Do you want us to do yours?”
“No, that’s all right.”
Dwayne stroked his handlebar mustache and lit a cigarette. “Can I get you a beer?”
“Sure, thanks.”
He stood up and brought me a Shiner. I opened the beer and drank, looking around the room. Dwayne had our same shitty shag carpeting, but his apartment was larger and much cleaner than our own, with nice comfortable chairs, a big new couch, new TV, fully filled bookshelves, and thick wooden tables with way too many candles in ornate holders and Hindu goddess sculptures, neatly arranged, on every surface. His walls were covered in oddly proportioned, pretentious paintings, mostly of one man with thick black curly hair and a big mustache (Dwayne) always with one noticeably different naked woman, both of them in nude silhouettes, staring up at multicolored triangles, circles, or half-moons and stars, Lucky Charms, whatever the hell it was they were throwing into the air.
I tipped my beer at the largest canvas above his couch. “Nice paintings, Dwayne.”
“You think so? I’m still experimenting, obviously.”
“Right.”
Susan fiddled with her numbers, astrology charts, the I Ching book.
“How was work?” she asked me, not looking up.
“Boring, mindless, terrible.”
Dwayne took a sip of coffee. He drank gallons of it. “Another good day?”
“Another great day. How was yours?” I asked Susan.
“It was all right. Norma’s getting promoted, so I’m going to move into her bigger gerbil box and work with her more, still taking calls but making some, too.”
“Well, that’s good news. I guess.”
“Yeah, I might even get a raise.”
“Great.”
“You sure you don’t want me to do your chart?” Dwayne asked.
“Nah, thanks. That’s okay.”
“This is really interesting,” Susan said. “You can learn things from this.”
“About your future?”
“Somewhat,” Dwayne said.
“Specifically?”
“Pretty close,” Dwayne said. “It all depends on how you go into it.”
“Right.”
We sat at the table.
Susan frantically wrote down and added numbers on her numerology charts. I saw a slight grind working in her jaw and knew she must have done a little crank again with Norma at work. She and Norma had started to do a couple of small bumps a day to get them through the long boring afternoons on the phones taking calls all day, wearing their little headsets in their cubicle. I pulled out a cigarette, and Dwayne lit it.
“So what did you do today?” I asked Dwayne.
“Well, I wrote a song.”
“Really?”
“You want to hear it?”
“Uh—”
“Sure,” Susan said.
Dwayne reached back and picked up a guitar off the floor. He strummed and sang a song I’ll never hear again, hopefully. We said we liked it and got up and left.
* * *
We were down in 103 one night with Dwayne. He was working on a movie at the time. “It’s a Western detective story,” he told me.
“What’s it like?” I asked.
“Well, if Ingmar Bergman made a Western this is what it would be like.”
“Is that right . . .” I lit a cigarette.
“It’s got everything, though, violence, sex scenes.”
Susan looked up from her chart. “Sex scenes?”
“Nothing very explicit,” Dwayne said. “I’m not going to show them actually doing it, the two main characters.”
“Why not?” I asked.
“It’ll give the movie an X rating, for one thing.”
“So?”
“It could be a problem with distribution, but, uh, I personally don’t have a problem with it.”
We smoked and had a few beers. Dwayne played his guitar and then turned on the TV. He had cable, fourteen channels, and switched the little box to the Playboy Channel. There were two people fucking, but it wasn’t hard core.
“See, it’s something like this,” Dwayne said, “except even less. Probably not as much ass or titty. There is a scene in my film though, where a guy sniffs his wife’s panties to see if she’s been cheating.”
“Oh?”
“Did you know Dwayne went to the Iowa Writers’ Workshop?” Susan asked me.
“Oh yeah?”
“I’m afraid so,” Dwayne said.
“Did you like it?”
“It was great. You can talk to a bunch of other writers and get a feel for each other, learn from each other. There were also some great teachers there. Nelson Algren and Kurt Vonnegut.”
“Really? Kurt Vonnegut?”
“We had quite a few of the big postmodernists there. Donald Barthelme, John Barth. I started writing my film there.”
Dwayne stood up, excused himself, and went into the other room. Susan, pencil to paper, worked on another cryptogram. That was her and Dwayne’s main pastime: cryptograms, cigarettes, and coffee. What else were they doing down there? I didn’t know, but Dwayne didn’t seem to have a chance with his handlebar mustache and guitar.
“Let’s go home.”
Susan looked up. “Why?”
“I don’t know,” I whispered. “I think we’re about to hear all about Dwayne’s little movie.”
“I’ve already heard it,” Susan whispered.
“Is it going to be good?”
“It sounds terrible.”
“Uh-oh.”
“He said we could work on it. Carrying equipment around or something on the set. Be part of the crew.”
“No thanks.”
“You really don’t want to?”
“How much are they paying?”
“Uh, nothing. I think you get a part of the profit if it’s a big hit.”
“Yeah, right.”
“Okay, I’ll tell him no. He wants me to go with him tomorrow night to see the Baba’s daughter though.”
“Who’s that?”
“She’s a holy woman from India. The successor to Baba, and she’s coming to Austin. I think she’s very intelligent. Norma and my mother are going. Do you want to come? My mom wants you to go with us.”
“Betty Sue said that?”
“She thinks it’ll be good for your stomach, your heartburn.”
“Do I have to take off my shoes and sit on the floor?”
“You’re not coming.”
“Okay.”
We sat silently for a minute. I looked at the TV and at Susan.
“Guess what else?” Susan asked.
“There’s more?”
“Dwayne’s giving me acting lessons for my birthday.”
“Is it your birthday?”
“They’re worth about three hundred dollars.”
“Who told you that?”
“I think I’m going to take them.”
“For how long?”
“Four weeks. He gave me the course outline and description. It’s up in our apartment.”
“Well, that’s really sweet of him.”
“It is,” she whispered. “He’s a genuinely nice, gentle person, so don’t be a jerk.”
“I’m not being a jerk.”
“Just don’t make fun of my acting classes please.”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t know you were so sensitive about it. I didn’t even know you still wanted to be an actress.”
“I don’t. Or maybe I do. I don’t know. It just sounds like fun, all right? I just want to do something, and it’s free and no big deal, okay?”
“Sure, have fun.”
Dwayne came back into the room and handed me a stack of papers. “This is a short story I wrote when I was at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. Go ahead and take it with you and read it.”
I gave Susan a look and said, “Oh, thanks, Dwayne.”
“We’re going to go up now,” Susan said quickly.
“Okay, no problem. Let me know what you think of that story, Jake.”
“Sure. And listen, uh, thanks for giving Susan those acting lessons as a present. That’s nice of you.”
“Oh, hey, no problem. It’s my pleasure. The more students the better. In fact, I’d be glad to have you in the class too, Jake. Frankly, I think you might have some potential as an actor.”
“I think I’ll stick to watching TV and painting houses.”
“The offer’s open any time.”
“Thanks.”
“I’ll see you kids later.”
Susan gave him a peck on the cheek. “Bye, Dwayne.”
We walked upstairs, smoked a joint, and lay down on the floor on a blanket with pillows in front of the TV. I read Dwayne’s story. Susan watched Flashdance on cable. I pointed to the young actress, Jennifer Beals, who was dancing on a chair.
“Maybe you could be like her someday.”
“Someday.”
“You really think Dwayne can teach you anything about acting?”
“Sure, and it’ll be fun. The class is mostly made up of young girls—”
“Of course.”
“So I could make some friends, maybe. How’s that short story?”
“It’s all right. You wanna read it?”
“No. What’s it about?”
“Um, a guy who sounds suspiciously like Dwayne goes to Hollywood and ends up sucking some producer’s dick and then the producer sucks his dick and then the producer dies, and this Dwayne-like person with curly hair and a handlebar mustache who is not Dwayne, though, realizes at the producer’s funeral that Hollywood sucks, literally.”
“Is it bad?”
“Actually it’s pretty good. If I were him, I’d give up the Western detective movies and terrible love songs and write short stories.”
“Well, I like him. I’m going to the classes.”
“Don’t let me stop you.”
“I won’t.”
* * *
Susan went to her acting classes and was gone about three hours a night every week, making new friends, jumping around on a stage, pretending. I was getting bored sitting on the ratty couch watching videos, masturbating, smoking, drinking, and staring at CNN. It was 1984, and while she was out one n
ight, I sat there and watched Ronald Reagan get reelected. I had voted after a full day of work, painting the exterior of a large home in West Austin. It had been a huge pain in the ass, that vote, since they didn’t really want you to vote anyway or otherwise they’d make it a holiday, or at least set it up on the weekends. By the time I got to the small church in Travis Heights where we voted, it was getting dark and I had to stand in a long line for hours before I voted for Mondale.
By the time I got home and turned on the big Sony TV, NBC was already calling the whole election for Reagan even though the polls were still open out in California. All the anchormen were falling all over themselves with Reagan’s landslide victory, going on and on about the “positive mandate” he now had to fuck up the country even more than he had already with his deregulation and bullshit, piss-down, trickle-down economics, where he slashed taxes for the richest people in America promising that the rich 1 percent would pass down the millions they made on their money to the rest of us rather than buy another new yacht or stash their cash in Switzerland and a post-office box in the Bahamas. Worse, what really pissed me off, was that he was canceling out all those hours I had just waited in line to vote for the other guy after nine hours of work in the hot Texas sun.
I couldn’t watch any more of the Reagan coronation. I turned off the TV, smoked another joint, had a few beers, and went driving around. Who knew when Susan would be home, or what she was doing. I found a massage parlor in central Austin called Body Works and parked the car. It was a small wooden house atop a hill at the end of Twenty-Fourth Street where it met Lamar, across from Pease Park. There was one neon sign above the front door that flashed on and off in letters of blue light: “Body Works. . . . Body Works. . . .” I walked up to the little brown house and knocked on the door. An old Asian woman answered.
“Can I help you?” she asked.
“Yes, I’d like to get a massage.”
“Come in.”
I walked inside. Three Asian girls were sitting on a couch. They wore leotards and were watching Dynasty on a big color TV. The ugliest one stood up and walked over to me. She had on a light green gown over her black leotards. She had large breasts, but her face looked like it had been stepped on, and her eyes were crossed.
“No, no,” I said. “I’m sorry. I want her.” I pointed to a young girl sitting on the middle of the couch. She stood up, and I saw she was very short, maybe four feet eleven. Her hair was shoulder length, black, her body was perfect, and she had a pretty face.