then, as always, my father would leap out of the house: “That’s all! Fight’s over. Finish. Kaput! Over!”
the boys were afraid of my father. they would all run away.
“You’re not much of a man, Henry. You got beat again!”
I didn’t answer.
“Mama, our boy let that Chuck Sloan beat him!”
“our boy?”
“yes, our boy.”
“shame!”
I guess my father finally recognized the Frozen Man in me, but he took full advantage of the situation for himself. “Children are to be seen but not heard,” he would exclaim. this was fine with me. I had nothing to say. I was not interested. I was Frozen. early, late, and forever.
I began drinking about 17 with older boys who roamed the streets and robbed gas stations and liquor stores. they thought my disgust with everything was a lack of fear, that my non-complaining was a soulful bravado. I was popular and I didn’t care whether I was popular or not. I was Frozen. they set great quantities of whiskey and beer and wine in front of me. I drank them down. nothing could get me drunk, really and finally drunk. the others would be falling to the floor, fighting, singing, swaggering, and I would sit quietly at the table draining another glass, feeling less and less with them, feeling lost, but not painfully so. just electric light and sound and bodies and little more.
but I was still living with my parents and it was depression times, 1937, impossible for a 17 year old to get a job. I’d come back off the streets as much out of habit as out of reality. and knock at the door.
one night my mother opened the little window in the door and screamed: “he’s drunk! he’s drunk again!”
and I heard the great voice back in the room: “he’s drunk AGAIN?”
my father came to the little window: “I won’t let you in. you are a disgrace to your mother and your country.”
“it’s cold out here. open the door or I’ll break it down. I walked here to get in. that’s all there is to it.”
“no, my son, you do not deserve my house. you are a disgrace to your mother and your …”
I went to the back of the porch, lowered my shoulder and charged. there was no anger in my act or my movement, only a kind of mathematic — that having arrived at a certain figure you continue to work with it. I smashed into the door. it didn’t open but a large crack appeared right down the center and the lock appeared to be half-broken. I went back to the end of the porch, lowered my shoulder again.
“all right, come in,” said my father.
I walked in, but then the looks upon those faces, sterile blank hideous nightmare cardboard face-looks made my stomach full of booze lurch, I became ill, I unloaded upon their fine rug which was decorated with The Tree of Life. I vomited, plenty.
“you know what we do with a dog who shits on the rug?” my father asked.
“no,” I said.
“well, we stick his NOSE in IT! so he won’t do it NO MORE!”
I didn’t answer. my father came up and put his hand behind my neck. “you are a dog,” he said.
I didn’t answer. my father came up and put his hand behind my neck. “you are a dog,” he said.
I didn’t answer.
“you know what we do to dogs, don’t you?”
he kept pressing my head down, down toward my lake of vomit upon The Tree of Life.
“we stick their noses in their shit so they don’t shit no more, ever.”
there my mother, fine German lady, stood in her nightgown, watching silently. I always got the idea that she wanted to be on my side but it was an entirely false idea gathered from sucking her nipples at one time. besides, I didn’t have a side.
“listen, father,” I said, “STOP”
“no, no, you know what we do to a DOG!”
“I’m asking you to stop.”
he kept pressing my head down, down, down, down. my nose was almost in the vomit. although I was the Frozen Man, Frozen Man also means Frozen and not melted. I simply could see no reason for my nose being pushed into my own vomit. if there had been a reason I would have pushed my nose there myself. it wasn’t a matter of CARING or HONOR or ANGER, it was a matter of being pushed out of my particular MATHEMATIC. I was, to use my favorite term, disgusted.
“stop,” I said, “I’m asking you, one last time, to stop!”
he pushed my nose almost against the vomit.
I swung from my heels, and I was down by my heels, I caught him with a full flowing and majestic uppercut, I caught him hard and full and very accurate upon the chin and he fell backwards heavily and clumsily, a whole brutal empire shot to shit, finally, and he fell into his sofa, bang, spread-armed, eyes like the eyes of a doped animal. animal? the dog had turned, I walked toward the couch, waiting for him to get up. he didn’t get up. he just kept staring up at me. he would not get up. for all his fury, my father had been a coward. I was not surprised. then I thought, since my father is a coward, I am probably a coward. but being a Frozen Man, there wasn’t any pain in this. it didn’t matter, even as my mother began clawing my face with her fingernails, screaming over and over again, “you hit your FATHER! you hit your FATHER! you hit your FATHER!”
it didn’t matter. and finally I turned my face full toward her and let her rip and scream, slashing with her fingernails, tearing the flesh from my face, the fucking blood dripping and jerking an sliding down my neck and my shirt, spotting the fucking Tree of Life with flecks and splashes and chunks of meat. I waited, no longer interested. “YOU HIT YOUR FATHER!” and then the slashes came lower. I waited. then they stopped. then started again, one or two, “you … hit … your … father … your father …”
“have you finished?” I asked. I think the first words I had spoken to her outside of “yes” and “no” in ten years.
“yes,” she said.
“you go to the bedroom,” my father said from the couch. “I’ll see you in the morning. I’ll talk to YOU in the morning!”
yet HE was the Frozen Man in the morning, but I imagine, not out of choice.
________
I have often let shackjobs and whores slash my face as my mother did, and this is a most bad habit; being frozen does not mean let the jackals take control, and, besides, children and old women, and some strong men, now wince, as they see my face. but, to continue, and I do believe these Frozen Man tales interest me more than they do you (interest: a mathematical manner of tabulation), and I will try to cut them short. Christ. I think a very funny one (humor: a mathematical manner of tabulation. and I am serious in these things.) was the time I was in Los Angeles High School, say 1938? 1937?, around there? 1936? I joined the ROTC without any interest in army doings in the least. I had these huge grapefruit boils, immense, slugging out all over me and a boy had one of two choices, at this time, either join the ROTC or take gym. well, really all the decent good guys were in gym. the shits and freaks and madmen, like me, the Frozen Men, what there were of them, were taking ROTC. war was not yet a humane thing. Hitler was just a gibberish Charlie Chaplin doing funny idiot things on RKO-Pathe News.
I went ROTC because in an army uniform they couldn’t see my boils; in a tracksuit they could, plenty. now, get me, it wasn’t my boils to ME that mattered, it was my BOILS toward THEM. it would upset their glands. with a man in a cave, a Frozen Man such as myself, boils don’t matter, what makes them matter are things that don’t count — like masses of common people. being Frozen does not mean being unrealistic; being Frozen means to remain Frozen; all else is madness.
be fucked with as little as possible so you may enter wherever you are meant to enter. so I didn’t want to be fucked with by the stares of the human eye upon my disjointed boils. so I clothed myself in military uniform to cut down the x-rays. but I didn’t want the ROTC. I was FROZEN.
so, here we are, one day, the whole god damned battalion or whatever you call it, and I am still a private and the whole school is in some type of manual of arms competition, the grandstands are packed with
fools and here we stand, going through the movements, and it’s hot and I’m FROZEN, man, I don’t care, and here we follow these orders, and soon only fifty per cent of us are left and soon only twenty-five per cent and soon only ten per cent, and I’m still standing there, these big red ugly boils on my face, no uniform for the face, and it’s hot hot, and I’m trying to get my mind to think, make a mistake make a mistake make a mistake, but I am automatically a master craftsman, there is nothing I can do badly even tho I don’t care, but I can’t force error and that TOO is because I am FROZEN! and soon there are only two people left, me and my buddy Jimmy. well, Jimmy is a shit and he NEEDS this thing, it will be nice for him. this is what I actually thought. but Jimmy fucked up. it was on the command, “Order Arms!” no, it went like this, “Order …” then, pause … “Arms!” I don’t any longer remember the proper maneuver to this order, being a lousy soldier. it had something to do with the jamming of the bolt into the breech. but Jimmy, who cared and was loved by many or at least liked, Jimmy fucked up with the bolt. and there I was standing alone, boils bulging out over my itchy olive drab woolen collar, boils leaping out all over my skull, even on the top of my head in the hair, and it was hot in the sun and there I stood, disinterested, neither happy or sad, nothing, just nothing. the beautiful girls moaned in the stands for their poor Jimmy and his mother and father put their heads down, not understanding how it could have happened. I too managed to think, poor Jimmy. but that was as far as I could think. the old man running the ROTC was somebody called Col. Muggett, a man who had spent his entire career in the Army. he came up to place the medal upon my itchy shirt, his face was very sad, very. he thought me a misfit, the kid with the empty head, and I thought of him as insane. he pinned the medal on me and then reached to shake my hand. I took his hand and smiled. a good soldier never smiles. the smile meant to tell him that I understood things had gone wrong and that it was beyond me. then I marched back to my company, my squad, my platoon, my whatever the hell. then the Lt. called us to attention. Jimmy’s last name was Hadford or something like that. and you ain’t gonna believe this but it happened. the Lt. said to the men:
“I wish to congratulate Private Hadford for coming so close in the manual of arms competition.”
then: “at ease!”
then: “fall out!” or “company dismissed!” or some god damned thing.
I saw the other boys talking to Jimmy. nobody said anything to me. then I saw Jimmy’s mother and father come out of the stands and put their arms around him. my parents were not there. I walked off the grounds and into the streets. I took the medal off and walked along holding it in my hand. then without rancor, fear, joy, without anger or direct reason, I threw the medal down a sewer drain outside a drugstore. Jimmy was some years later shot down over the English Channel. his bomber was badly hit and he ordered his men to bail out while he tried to nurse his plane back to England. he never made it. about that time I was living in Philadelphia as a 4-F and I screwed a 300-pound whore who looked like a giant pig and she broke all four legs of my bed, bouncing and sweating and farting during the action.
I might go on and on, giving incidents within The Frozen Man context. it is not quite true that I never CARE or that I never anger or that I never hate or that I never hope or that I never have joy. I do not mean to infer that I am ENTIRELY without passions or feelings or whatever; it is only strange to me that my feelings, my thoughts, my ways are so strangely different and opposite of my fellow man. I can seemingly never get WITH them, hence I am frozen out both by their choice and my way. please stay awake and let me finish this off with a letter, a letter from my poet friend in London who describes his experiences as a Frozen Man. he wrote me:
“… i’m in this fishbowl, you understand, a vast aquarium & my fins are not strong enough to get around in this big undersea city. i do what i can, tho the magic is surely gone. i just can’t seem as yet to pull myself together out of this cold turkey state & get the ‘inspiration,’ no writing, no fucking, no damn nothing. can’t drink, can’t eat, can’t turn on. just cold turkey. so the gloom, but nothing seems to work just now. it’s going to be a long period of hibernation, a long dark night. i’m used to the sun, to the mediterranean brightness & dazzle, to living on the damn edge of the volcano, as in greece, where at least there was light, there were people, was even what is called love. now, nothing. middle-aged faces. young faces that mean nothing, that pass, smile, say hello. oh, cold gray darkness. old poet stuck in the sticks. the styx. the stinks. from doctors to hospitals, with shit specimens, piss specimens, & always the same reports — liver tests & pancreas tests abnormal: but nobody knows what to do, only i know. there is nothing to do but to snap out of this jungle, & meet some mythical young beauty — some sweet domestic thing who will take care of me, make few demands, be warm & quiet, not say too much. where is she? i couldn’t damn well give her what she wants, or could i??? it’s just possible, of course, that this is all i need. but how, where to find it? i wish i were tough. i’d be able to sit down & begin all over again, from scratch, getting it down on paper, stronger, cleaner, sharper than ever. but something has gone out of me right now, and i’m temporizing, stalling for time. the sky is black & pink and flushed at 4:40 in the afternoon. the city roars outside. the wolves are pacing in the zoo. the tarantulas are squatting beside the scorpions. the queen bee is served by the drones. the mandril snarls viciously, hurling filthy bananas & apples from its crotch at the crazy kids who taunt it. if i’m going to die, i want to come out to california, below l.a., far down the coast, on the beach somewhere, near Mexico. but that’s a dream. i’d want to do that somehow. but all the letters I get from the states are from poets & writers who have been here, on this side of the Atlantic, & they tell me how rotten it is back home, what a nasty scene, etc. i don’t know, i could never swing it, financially, since my backers are here, and they’d abandon me if i returned, as they more or less like to keep in closer contact with me. yes, the body gives, but hang on, and forgive the deadly dullness of this letter. i can’t get inspired, i can’t get worked up. i just look at doctor’s bills, & other bills, & the black sky, the black sun. maybe something will change, soon … that’s the way it is. tra la la, let’s face it without tears. cheers, friend.” Signed “X” (A well-known poet … editor).
________
well, my friend from London says it much better than I, but how well, how very well I know of what he speaks. and a worldful of energetic hustlers with their minds shaken awry with the pace would only condemn us for sloth or a kind of disgraceful laziness or self-pity. but it isn’t any of these things. only the man frozen in the cage can know it. but we’ll damn well have to go out of our way and wait. and wait for what? so, cheers, friends. even a dwarf can get a hard-on, and I am Mataeo Platch and Nichlos Combatz at the same time, and only Marina, my small girlchild, can bring light at the highest noon, for the sun will not speak. and up in the plaza between the terminal annex and the union station the old men sit in a circle and watch the pigeons, sit in a circle for hours and watch the pigeons and watch nothing. frozen, but I could cry. and at night we will sweat through senseless dreams. there’s only one place to go. tra la la la. la la. la.
________
I met her in a bookstore. she was wearing a very short tight skirt, enormous highheels, and her breasts were quite evident even under the loose-fitting blue sweater. her face was very pointed, austere, no make-up, with a lower lip that didn’t seem to hang quite right. but with a body like that you could forgive quite a number of things. but it was very odd that she didn’t have some great protective bull looming about. then I saw her eyes — christ, they seemed to have no pupils — just this deep deep flash of darkness. I stood there watching her bend over again and again. reaching down for books, or stretching up. the short skirt lifting to show me fat and magic thighs. she was running through books on mysticism. I put down my How To Beat the Horses book and walked over. “pardon me,” I said, “I am drawn as if my magnet. I fear it
is your eyes.” I lied.
“fate is God,” she said.
“you are God, You are my Fate,” I answered. “can I buy you a drink?”
“sure.”
we went to the bar next door and stayed there until closing time. I talked her kind of talk, figuring it was the only way. it was. I got her to my place and she was a beautiful lay. our courtship lasted about 3 weeks. when I asked her to marry me she looked at me a long time. she looked at me for so long that I thought she had forgotten the question.
finally she spoke: “well, all right. but I don’t love you. I only feel that I must … marry you. if it were only love, I would refuse love, only. for you see … it … wouldn’t turn out very well, yet, what must be must be.”
“o.k., sweetums,” I said.
after we got married all the short skirts and highheels vanished and she went about in this long red corduroy gown down to her ankles. it was not a very clean gown. and she wore torn blue slippers with it. she’d go out in the street this way, to the movies, everywhere. and especially during breakfast she’d like to dangle the arms of the gown into her buttered toast.
“hey!” I’d say, “you’re getting butter all over yourself!”
she wouldn’t answer. she’d look out the window and say: “OOOOOOOH! a bird! a bird there in the tree! did you SEE the bird?”
“yeh.”
or: “OOOOOOOH! a SPIDER! look at the dear God’s creature! I just love spiders! I can’t understand people who hate spiders! do you hate spiders, Hank?”
“I really don’t think much about them.”
there were spiders all over the place, and bugs, and flies and roaches. God’s creatures. she was a terrible housekeeper. she said housekeeping didn’t matter. I thought that she was simply lazy. and, I was beginning to think, a bit goofy. I had to hire a fulltime maid, Felica. my wife’s name was Yevonna.
one night I came home and I found them both smearing some kind of ointment on the backs of mirrors, waving their hands over them and saying strange words. they both leaped up with their mirrors, screamed, ran off and hid them.
Notes of a Dirty Old Man Page 20