The Lucky Star

by William T. Vollmann

  I am not as good at doing nothing as I used to be. This remembering exercise, which purports to explain the lesbian, is one of my methods for avoiding my diminishing opportunities to, as Judy would say, make something of myself. I love the past. It reminds me of that room I used to have, a carpeted place where I did nothing.

  2

  When I remember my room I feel happy, not that the lesbian ever visited me there, but indeed it was my home when I knew her. I only moved to the Amity Hotel after Neva’s death, when the Y Bar began to fail me and certain petty authorities invited me to relocate my social triumphs.

  The first hotel I tried on that strangely warm foggy January afternoon after my eviction from the illegal basement apartment in Daly City was a multistorey old brick establishment; someone buzzed me in, and I pulled in the gratinged metal door behind me until it clicked shut. Up the stinking carpeted stairs I went, looking away from the wide-angled mirror in the landing. The old Indian lady at the desk merely said: No vacancy.—So I walked half a block west to the next hotel, whose doorbell had been shucked from its socket, then to three old hotels of varying griminess which were all residential only, no cash allowed. Finally I reached the Saint Brendan. It looked slightly less shabby than the others, and the front door swung in with a push, not an electric buzz, daunting me with regard to the potential price. The lobby did not stink, although every chair held an unshaven old man doing nothing—a reassuring touch. The price was $109, plus tax, which made $127, if only around six hundred per week (by the time they threw me out in 2016 it was nearly eight), and the clerk required a credit card.—I’ll pay a cash deposit, I said, but the clerk, whose business suit and lordliness proclaimed him in fact an assistant manager or better, explained: We have to have a credit card. We’re going to run the card and put a seven-day hold on the money even if you reverse the charges and pay cash when you check out.—Oh, I said (and here I sounded exactly like Judy). Okay.—The manager appeared very occupied with his wealth of unparalleled concerns, so I dragged out everything, insisting on a corner room and asking where was a good place to get coffee and breakfast, until he, practically biting his lip, beckoned another man, Latino, middle-aged, more simply dressed, and commanded: Miguel, take care of this. A walk-in, he added disgustedly.

  In my wallet I kept somebody’s silver plastic frequent flyer card from Aphrodite Airlines, which had somehow come into my possession in the course of three nights with a lady who had called herself Ukrainian; I now presented this to Miguel as my credit card. He slid it through the groove on the magnetic reader, but nothing happened.—Maybe damaged, he said.

  Well, do you want to go ahead and call them? I don’t mind, and—again just like Judy!—I even cocked my head and smiled.

  It’s for the customer to call.

  Then will you not rent me a room? Or can I pay a deposit?

  Miguel looked right and left. Just give me a deposit.

  Here’s a hundred dollars.

  Looking me gently up and down, he said: We can make it fifty. Here. I take your hundred, and now half for you, half for me.

  Thanks for your kindness, I said, knowing that he knew what I had done and excused it.

  I lived my life like that. Unmentioned deals were my meat.—Consider the bad husband who, meaning to make amends, asks his wife whether she would like to celebrate their twentieth anniversary, at which she reminds him that it is their twenty-second, not that he ever cared, so he points out that she has never cared, either, or at least has never brought it up, while he is the one bringing it up now, to which she bitterly repeats that he has never ever cared, so he corrects her: Aren’t I caring now?—No, he doesn’t care.—So he wants to know why she won’t listen, at which she gratingly informs him that he’s never cared; hence in rational self-defense he raises his voice; by the end of that dinner they agree not to celebrate their anniversary—all her fault!—I was accomplished at all that.—Among the saddest sensations is to be sad without knowing why. Praise the Goddess, I was unfailingly sad for good reason; I was an efficient blame machine.

  Miguel lasted for only eight months; he was always good to me. And I felt, if this makes sense to you, somehow taken care of in that room.

  3

  What if there were something worthwhile outside and beyond me? Judy’s ordeal on the island demonstrates how frightening that would be. We all thought we wanted to become greater and better, and maybe Neva could have made us that way instead of being our masturbatory echo; or maybe she was that way and we simply failed, as mortals will, to make wise and thankful use of what she gave us.—The one who truly aimed high, and got what he aimed at, was the straight man.

  4

  I have told you how as a boy he was haunted by what the cat caught, but he would never have told his autobiography that way. He might have once been longing for some other world, but by now his childish past had taken on the bleak vacuity of ancient ruins beneath the dirt. Nowadays when he drank even just half a bottle of Patriot Dry Lager his ears began ringing; sometimes the ringing woke him up at night. But Neva helped him forget what he had done to himself.

  By definition of the great suicide Dr. Wilhelm Stekel, he was a parapathic, having germinated so multibranched a fetishistic system that his pain howled safely lost within it, while he drank Patriot Dry Lager at his ease and solved universal questions; Stekel would have insisted that these fetishes allowed him to avoid the so-called responsibilities of life, including sexual intercourse, but I who control this tale categorically forbid the introduction of gloomy notions. (Were I anyone but me I would call for help—get me out of this ocean whose only two genders are drowners and mermaids!)—The straight man’s parapathy sometimes, but only sometimes, made him believe that Neva, who had given him everything by causing him to love her, never had nor would give him anything, let alone her unknown slit which he so miserably and gloriously desired, and lost whenever she got dressed.

  5

  Here is how he would have told it:

  Certain natures are more fitted for the pursuits of Mars than the adoration of Venus; never mind the atheists who would have been burned alive in the old times; in my century those latter sorts improved Russian Orthodox cathedrals by means of explosives. In other words, while I admittedly fell for the lesbian, to the retired policeman she never became anything more than the fraudster Karen Strand. (Around that time he—strange for him—actually dreamed and remembered his dream of how the real Karen Strand might, must or at least should be: a haunted old lesbian sitting alone and nearly broken at her tiny kitchen table, which was covered with a simple white cloth, as all the colors around her withdrew into plum and mauve.) As for the straight man, well, like any true drinker, he was a scientist. Retesting and extending his hypotheses about what might be best for him, he ordered his Patriot Dry Lager, verified its consistency, evaluated its effects and through daily experiments worked out whether arithmetical increases in his blood alcohol concentration amplified his inner man according to a linear or a nonlinear curve. I did the same with my poison, but I was an outright devotee; I sought specifically to maximize my happiness and minimize my cirrhosis, while the straight man appears to have been after understanding. Like the rationalist who finds himself bemused by the rapturous séances of Pentecostals, or the diligent old husband who takes his Erectalis pill at dawn, solely in order to satisfy the wife after breakfast, he observed what Neva was doing to us, and, wishing to sum up rather than experience that phenomenon, set out to elucidate it. Here I could quote the old saw that Venus is not mocked; but isn’t she, daily and nightly, without repercussions? Besides, since one cannot love too much—as the transwoman’s case proves—why should over-inquisitiveness be dangerous? My provisional answer is that true love, being intimate, may terminate tidily in carnage or marriage; whereas curiosity, being more neutrally active, propels the seeker toward increasingly inhuman situations, which might prove poisonous, airless or worse.

&nb
sp; I admit that like many Martians he had once been Venusian, thanks first to a long involvement with his wife, in whose cruel, fairskinned ovoid face he once almost perceived divinity, or at least otherness. She had dark hair, and her hands glittered with rings. He first saw her when she was almost twenty-one, running barefoot along the dark grey arcs of wet sand which fronted each inlet, waves swerving and whitening in the arch-holes of jagged red rocks, then bursting into blasts of foam. When he kissed her, her small eyes partly closed; then she flickered her surprisingly green gaze at him to see if he might be watching. Concurrently and subsequently came Sandra, who finally told me: I was so naive. I kept dreaming and hoping that we would be together someday; I used to plan out which songs we would dance to at our wedding, and now I know that it will never happen, at least not until I’m fifty or even older and then what’s the use? Oh, I’m sorry I’m so emotional! I broke up with Louis, and he sent me a long e-mail about how maybe we’ll still end up happily ever after.

  I’m sorry, said I, while Francine mixed me another rum and sodapop.

  But I am getting ahead of myself. To break up with the straight man (who impressed the retired policeman nearly as much as had the Navy deserter who kicked a five-year-old boy in the eye with intent to maim), Sandra first needed to be with him, so let me now report about that part, when his wife snarled out something about when you went to San Francisco.

  Knowing that he could not let that pass, he said: What are you talking about?

  I know what you’re up to. It must be difficult living a double life, said his wife wearily.

  But I went to see the new client.

  Yeah, right. If you’re going to San Francisco, you should just say you’re going to San Francisco, she said, forgetting that she had threatened to divorce him if he ever went back there to visit his mistress.

  So a week later, off he went to San Francisco, where Sandra waited at the Y Bar. Topic Number One was his wife, about whom she said: The way she treated you is so wrong! I really despise her. I feel such tenderness for you, and also jealousy of how devoted you’ve been to her.

  And did you have a nice time with your other boyfriend? he asked.

  Oh, yes, well, we went to a very beautiful beach, although it was quite windy, and we watched people fishing, and the weather was really really beautiful . . .—as if she and this other man had simply met for an afternoon and not even held hands, and there had been no motel with a double bed for her to lie in with her legs open while he ejaculated inside her and smeared himself all over her lips, hair and breasts; that was what most hurt the straight man; had she calmly, cheerfully related all their sex acts, reporting all the promises the other man had whispered, and describing what she felt while he was breathing his breath on her and gluing himself to her with sweat, then the straight man would have felt better, so he convinced himself; it was the fact of his being closed out that tortured him.

  She tried to be kind; without acting guilty or defensive (for what was there to be guilty about?). In short, she pivoted around that topic, asking how he was, then describing what she needed to accomplish today and what her pets were just then doing.

  And have you been with Neva?

  Oh, you know, she said.

  (He did.)

  She asked: Do you feel close to me right now or distant?

  He felt very distant. He said: Oh, everything’s good . . . We’ll see what happens when we’re together . . .

  He could hardly bear to remain next to her. He felt sick. He did not hate her, but those unspoken other things that she had done and would go on doing made him feel as if she were gently smiling and lovingly murmuring while razoring off random pieces of his flesh. Closing his eyes, he tried to imagine the sea, and on the kelp-strands a dense black beadwork of tiny mussel shells. He saw nothing; he heard something like static. As soon as he could, he returned home and lied to his wife.

  6

  The next time he saw Sandra she said: I have to tell you. That girl I kissed last time, I slept beside her two or three times, and we kissed some more. Do I have to tell you everything? Yes, I had one orgasm. But we didn’t do the things that you and I do. Well, we did some of them. She’s called Neva. But I still love you; don’t think I don’t. Are you angry at me? I wish you were angry. You’re not like other men . . .

  It was the ordinary tragedy of an old man and a young woman. She used to promise him that she would be faithful and he could keep having other women. He always said: I won’t hold you to that because it’s not fair.—And she would say: But I want to.

  He had never wished to have a baby with her, until she finally gave up; she told him that she had lost hope; she spoke of all the things she used to want for them, and instead of feeling relieved he was sad. He had told her: I’ll do it for you, but we have to keep it secret, and I need to know how you’ll feel when the baby’s sick and crying and you’ve gotten no sleep and I’m not there.—She had said: I think I’d hate you.—So it was all for the best that there would be no baby. After he bought his airplane ticket to California, in order to come and see her, he dialled her up and said that they could talk about the baby again if she wanted to; maybe there was some way to please all parties, including the unborn child, and he sincerely longed to explain how exciting the idea of their baby sometimes was; he also asked if she would buy some contraceptive jelly for the first night, so that they could be spontaneous and passionate without having to decide that question when they would be tired—for of course she had gone off the pill; the fertility clinic was tracking her cycle, and anytime she wished she could drive up there for her progesterone shot and then open her legs there in the clean white room while someone wearing rubber gloves slid a long tube up her and then inseminated her with the sperm of either the Mexican-German boy with the blue-green eyes or else the blond Russian boy who wrote poetry; for five hundred dollars additional they had allowed her to read their writing samples. She had said: Does it make you feel sad when I talk about this? Would you rather not know?—No, he said bravely; I’m happy for you.—When he arrived she was waiting to drive him to the motel, where it turned out that she had not bought the contraceptive jelly, because she was tired and not in the mood, so he held her and they fell asleep. The next day they went to the pharmacy and bought the jelly. He felt sad and frustrated when they used it; he licked her pussy until she climaxed, after which instead of rushing inside her as he always used to do, he had to help her prepare the jelly, which came with a different kind of applicator than the one he used to know; so the business took awhile, and they both worried that maybe she had not squirted enough of it up herself, but they completed the act and then lay there. The next day they did it again. Then she told him about the other boy whom she had kissed. She said that not long ago she and this other boy (whose name she would not say, so to move the conversation along he began to call him Manfred) had slept in the same bed for two nights, but they had not done any of the things that she and the straight man did together; he had not touched her in that way, although she had had one climax, whose story she preferred not to describe; in fact, although the straight man was not to worry or ever believe that she did not love him best, and although she and Manfred were not serious at all (they were actually about to end things, in part because Manfred was also married), it made her feel anxious to discuss Manfred, who would therefore now be a closed topic between her and the straight man. Moreover, for some reason she did not seem to be feeling very sensual right now. Maybe it would be better if they stopped making love. So the straight man tried to live with that. Since she used to ask his advice on things, he would now as they drove around (once even as far as Half Moon Bay) sometimes inquire into how her boss was treating her or whether she had decided to keep her apartment; but for some reason she seemed to resent whatever he asked. So he was feeling pretty sad by then. It got so that he could barely force himself to say anything. He stared straight ahead, and she cried out: You loo
k as if you hate me!

  The next morning she asked what he wanted to do that day, and he said: Let’s separate for a few hours.

  That was fine with her; she missed her pets anyway.

  He wrote her a letter to explain how he felt.

  And on Ninth by Harrison, almost across from the Civic Center Motor Inn, he stared into an empty plate glass window at a blue carpet whose dust bore a double line of bootprints; these merged into the reflection of the alley behind him, then entered barren garagelike darknesses. When she came back they sat in a park while she read the letter. He said: I’m not angry at you, which he thought was true. He said: These are my feelings.

  What made him feel worst was the new rule that now and forever Manfred would not be his business. He told her that from now on his other women would not be her business, either. She looked a little sad. She used to ask him about them all the time. Sometimes what she asked made him sad or uncomfortable, but he had always answered. She looked at him steadily. She said: I didn’t expect this, but, all right.

  He said: I believe in symmetry. If you close off part of your heart to me, then I need to do the same to you or I’ll feel rejected.

  I know that’s how you are, she said.

  So they agreed on that. Now he was on track to become as completely what he was as the deacon who stole everything of value from the Baptist church.

  She said that if it were so important to him she would try to be as she called it open and sexual with him, and he would be her only boy while the trip lasted. After that, things might possibly change. Since she was trying, he agreed, although he somehow felt sadder than ever.