by Sam Lipsyte
Mira scoped the room, maybe for the starfish man.
“Real boats?” I said.
“Keep thinking, Teabag.”
Catamounts, I walked home from In Your Cups filled with visions of Mira’s hair sweeping across my skin, my lips buried in her sweaty golden rabbit butt. Shameful, sure, but just a vision. My loyalty lies with Captain Thorazine, and besides, Mira didn’t seem too keen on me. I chalked up my lust to Gwendolyn’s proximity. She still hadn’t called, and her hotel wouldn’t put me through.
I guess I’m not famous enough for standard operator service.
How Cowboys Could Be Sad
IT OCCURS TO ME, Catamounts, sitting here composing this latest update, that someday, if and when the collected works of Lewis Miner ever see the light of day, some futuristic editor-type might attempt to assemble these dispatches in a certain manner, to, for example, tell a story, or else effect some kind of thematic arrangement of interwoven leitmotifs: Work, Love, Masturbation, Gary.
This would be a grave mistake.
There are no themes, no leitmotifs. There is no story.
What’s all this storytelling stuff, anyway? Stories pour out of us daily, and most of them might not unfairly be lumped under the taxonomic heading: More Boring Than Your Neighbor’s Spork Collection. Ever notice how whenever anybody says, “Hey, have you got time for a story?” or “You simply must hear this story” or even, in that down-to-business style of today, “Quick story,” you find yourself wishing some wheezing and pustular people-snatcher would burst through the wall and carry you off to some dank cave to feast on your viscera?
There’s a reason you wish this.
Nobody likes a story, especially a good one.
Nobody likes a story, that is, unless he’s in it. Are you familiar with that searching twitch on people’s faces when you relate some tale to them?
Where am I in this? they are thinking. When is he going to get to me?
Maybe it wasn’t always this way. Maybe when the Cro-Mags sat around the cookfire scaring the crap out of each other with yarns about saber-toothed tigers, or even pustular people-snatchers roving the outer dark, those in the audience had the opposite in mind: Please, please, pantheon of local animistic deities, please don’t let me be anywhere near this story.
But it’s all very different now.
It must be the video games.
MY TROUBLE, Catamounts, is that I am very much in this, at least as far as Hollis Wofford is concerned. Last night, back from In Your Cups and my boozy, dreamy walk beneath the lights of the county road, I found the man waiting on my stoop. He seemed steeped in painful thought, wore mustard-colored driving gloves, rolled a bottle of mineral water between his palms. He’d parked up on the sidewalk, more statement, it seemed, or automotive jeer, than bad parallel job.
I wondered if he had his Ostrogoth war mace in the trunk tonight.
“Hollis. What are you doing here?”
“I’m sitting,” he said slowly. “I’m chilling. Maxing and relaxing. Cold-lamping, as the poet once said.”
“Did you want to see me about something?”
“Just checking on one of my properties.”
“I heard the news. Congratulations on your new business venture. How’s your old business venture going?”
“You’re very cheeky, Larry. Actually, I was just conferencing with your neighbors. Have you met them?”
“Briefly.”
“I’m trying to help them achieve a moment of clarity.”
“You’re selling them drugs.”
“Some people have to hit bottom before they can … well, hell, you know. Look at you. Look at your head.”
“There’s nothing wrong with my head.”
“Looks like a hippo’s hemorrhoid.”
“I’m a buck turtle.”
“Come again?”
“Does Gary know you’re here?” I said.
“What’s Gary got to do with it? I just figured as long as I was here I’d wait around, see if I could talk to you.”
“I didn’t even think you knew who I was.”
“I don’t. Not really. I know you’re Larry or Teaball or something. I know you talk to that fuck Fontana.”
“He was my high school principal.”
“My wife’s, too. You know my wife Loretta. She knows you. Sweet and dumb, she said about you. I think those were her words. But Gary tells me you’re some kind of writer. I always thought writers were smart.”
“Not the dumb ones.”
“I could tell you some stories. You could write them down, make a mint.”
“Sure that’s a good idea?”
“You could change my name,” said Hollis, tucked his shades into the collar of his collarless shirt. “I could be Wallace. Wallace Hofford. Does that sound too Jewish?”
“I don’t need your stories. I don’t even like stories.”
“Screw you, then. I’ll get a pro. Loretta always said I had good stories.”
“Aren’t you under court order not to see her?”
“Justice is fallible,” said Hollis.
He peered into the water bottle as though proof of his belief were in it. Or maybe he was just enjoying the bubbles.
“I should really go inside,” I said.
“That would be your personal choice.”
“Was there some message you wanted me to relay?”
“A message? Relay? How does that work?”
“Do you want me to tell Fontana anything?”
“Tell him to stay away from my wife,” said Hollis, and for a moment I thought of Lenny, how he’d never been able to sell a line like that. Poor dead Lenny.
“Ex-wife,” I said.
“Only in a legal sense. I still fuck her sometimes. I still know what to say to make her cry and hate me but need me more than ever. Doesn’t that make her my wife?”
“That’s sick.”
“Sick? You ever been married?”
“Almost.”
Hollis cackled, stood.
“I will, for real, kill the fuck,” he said. “If it comes to that.”
He started down the stoop, clipped me with his elbow on the way to the curb. School yard stuff. Bullies grow up, too. Grow old, stay bullies. Buy cars, car insurance. Borrow tools, have biopsies.
Ensconced in his machine, Hollis lowered the passenger window, saluted, a sort of wistful sig heil, gunned into speed.
I knocked on Kyle and Jared’s door. Jared answered, shirtless, jittery.
“We’ll turn it down,” he said.
“Turn what down?”
“The music.”
“You’re not playing any music.”
“Oh,” he said.
“I was just checking in. Hollis was hanging out with you, right?”
“Hollis. Yes, Hollis. Six letters.”
Jared stuck his hands in his armpits, gibbered under his breath.
“Are you okay?” I said.
“Me? I don’t know, man. How can I know if I’m okay? How can I make that judgment objectively? I’ll tell you what I do know. That meteor, the one that took out the dinosaurs? Kyle and I were just talking about it. A rock from space. A piece of masonry, right? A piece of free masonry. Are you following? Stop me if this is obvious to you. Corn comes from the Andes. Andy Griffith was the sheriff of Mayberry. Omar Sharif was in Lawrence of Arabia. Mayberry. A-berry. Arabia. Coincidence? This is shit nobody’s looking at right now. This is shit they’d kill us if they knew we knew.”
“I won’t tell anybody,” I said.
“I haven’t even told you yet.”
THERE WAS A MESSAGE from Gwendolyn on my answering machine. Alums familiar with my feelings for this woman will not be surprised to learn I fell to my knees and kissed the perforations of the speaker as her frayed voice squeezed through them, ran my tongue along the rims of those tiny holes. I’m a man of great emotion, and I’m not afraid to show it, especially when I’m alone.
“Lewis,” she said. “Oh, Lewis. I’m here at
the hotel. And you’re there, aren’t you, Lewis? Oh, you must despise me. I despise me. But not like you must despise me. I’ve treated you so bad.”
“Badly!” I shouted at the machine.
“I should have just left you alone. But part of me still wants to be with you. But that’s the part of me I don’t want to be part of anymore. Talking in circles, I guess. Sorry. Or, no, these are more like parallelograms. Or those things, what are those things? That overlap? That are somehow separate but overlap? It’s something from geometry. Oh, I don’t know. I’m so tired. I just want to curl up in my room tonight. My room is three fourteen. Isn’t that bizarre? Lenny’s birthday was four thirteen. Nothing happens by chance. This room is my haven. I’m so damn tired, Lewis. I’ve been going out every night. Lenny’s old friends. I miss you, kind of. I still want you in my life. Or, I still want to think of you as somebody who’s in my life. Do you remember when we met? Toronto? The aphorism slam? I want to say we were so innocent then, but we weren’t, were we? We knew what we wanted. You wanted to fuck me. I wanted to win the aphorism slam. I love aphorisms. They’re so terse. Is terse the word? But here I am yammering. Shows what I know about terse, right? Oh, fuck it, I did love you, Lewis. I wanted the little things with you. I was scared of the world. But now I know I like the big things better. I learned that from Lenny. He knew how to reach up for the brass balls, the big ring. And now that he’s dead, I have to honor Lenny. I have to carry on his legacy. Does that sound crazy? Maybe it’s crazy but it’s the way it is and I’m—”
The machine cut her off. The beep blasted my ear.
“What?” I shouted. “What are you?”
I found the number on my Caller ID, dialed it back, told the desk Gwendolyn’s room number. The clerk put me right through.
“Hello?”
“What the fuck was that?” I said.
“Oh, hi, Lewis.”
“Nice speech.”
“Sorry. I guess I got a little carried away. What did I say?”
“Come over, you can listen to it. I’ve got it on tape.”
“Jesus, you have that on tape? You wouldn’t do anything with that, would you?”
“Gwendolyn,” I said. “You are not famous. Nobody cares. Nobody even remembers Lenny. He was a blip.”
“He was not a blip, Lewis.”
“Yes, a blip.”
“He was my brother.”
“The radar man doesn’t care, Gwendolyn.”
“Radar man?”
“The fucking blip tracker!”
“What? Oh, Christ. It’s okay, Lewis. I forgive you. It’s good for you to air your grievances. It’s good for you to clear the air of your …”
“Grievances?”
“No, fuck, I can’t think of the word. I smoked too much pot. Trying to come down off the—”
“I still love you,” I said.
“Oh, Lewis.”
“No, wait.”
“Wait, what?”
“Scratch that.”
“What do you mean?”
“Something just clicked. When you said, ‘Oh, Lewis.’ I felt this seismic shift.”
“I thought it was a click.”
“I don’t still love you. I don’t still love you at all.”
“Really?”
“Really.”
“Say it again.”
“I don’t love you, Gwendolyn.”
“I can’t believe it. I’m shocked.”
“I advise you to get over your shock.”
“Lewis?”
“Yes?”
“Come to the city tonight.”
CATAMOUNTS, I wish I could say that was the end of that, but I guess I was still dreaming of our future together, our basil, our mint. Maybe I was my mother’s son, living in the fog of tomorrows, shutting my eyes for the retinal burn of snapshots never snapped. Why couldn’t Gwendolyn just settle for me? Don’t we all settle, Valley Cats? Haven’t you all settled, weighed the trade-offs, shaved down your desires for what was there, what worked, what wasn’t actively bent on your destruction? Resigned yourselves to the ear hair, the nipple hair, the watery farts, the fat behind the knees? The shoes in the doorway, the dishes in the sink? Isn’t that what love is all about? Don’t the experts tell us so? Don’t the people on the street concur? Don’t we all settle, barter our fevers for a partner, a mutual fondler, a talking animal companion? Catamounts, why couldn’t she settle for me?
Because she’s a dumb selfish cunt, I thought. Because she’s a sick, sad, broken thing who can only love what won’t love her back.
I caught the last bus to the city.
GWENDOLYN’S ROOM was mostly bed, beige. Wall art on the walls. Sea scenes, Aegean. A cactus on a shelf. Soft rock drifted from the clock radio on the bedside table. Thick candles flickered, lilac, chemical. Gwendolyn led me to the bed, laid me down, undressed me, herself, straddled me, raised a slender glass pipe to her lips.
“What are you doing?”
“Smoking crack. They call this the glass dick.”
I knocked the dick from her mouth. It bounced off the bed.
“Smoke crack on your own time,” I said. “Not when we’re having break-up sex.”
“Sorry.”
I took her in my arms and we rocked softly to the soft rock for a while. Gwendolyn licked my neck. I bit her hair, her breasts, slid down and nibbled, swirled, easy with the teeth, hard with the tongue. I hadn’t eaten pussy in a while. It’s like falling off a bicycle. You never forget.
“Lewis,” she said. “Oh, Lewis.”
“Does that feel good?”
My tongue was strong, Valley Kitties, a suave, darting thing. Gwendolyn began to buck and shudder.
“Oh, Lewis, yeah, Lewis.”
“You like that?”
“Oh, Lewis! Lewis!”
“Who’s Lewis?” I said, leapt into a squat. “My name’s Lenny! I’m your dead brother, Lenny! I’m dead but I can still suck pussy like a pussy king!”
“What the fuck!”
“Lenny! Lenny!”
I stroked up my load, fired it point blank into her eyes. The act startled both of us, I think. She blinked the spunk away, rolled over. The bed bobbed. I stayed in my squat, studied the mole on her back.
“Uh, oh,” I said.
Gwendolyn pressed her face into the pillow.
“Go,” she said.
“Baby, I’m sorry. I took it too far.”
“You stupid bastard. Took what too far? You’re insane.”
“The parade!”
“The parade? Just get the hell out of here. Before I hurt you.”
“Baby, we’ve hurt each other too much already.”
“I don’t mean that way. Baby. I mean so you bleed.”
I dressed, crossed the room to the door with the slow mournful swagger I’d practiced for this day. Pride and heartache. How cowboys could be sad. Two-bit cowboys full of bone-hard sorrow. For because of what people do to each other. For because of all the loneliness in the world. Now a sudden sob thrashed through me, some moist beast flippering up through my chest. It doubled me up and I sank to my knees, inched back over to the bed. Gwendolyn stared up at the TV bolted to the wall. Her cheek still bore a sticky sheen. I shoved my head in her lap.
“There, there,” she said.
“Oh, fuck …”
“It’s okay.”
Huge slabs of me, my whole gelatinous baby Tea being, flobbed out on the counterpane.
“Cry it out, Lewis.”
“You cry,” I cried. “Why do I have to cry?”
“I’m all cried out. I’ve been crying for months.”
“Fuck you.”
“You tried that already.”
I could hardly breathe for the tears, the snot. I tried to flush the burn from my eyes, glanced up at Gwendolyn, the delicate swoop of her jaw, her plump lips, her nose, her beautiful nose, Hazel’s nose, really, my mother’s nose, more flared. I’d noticed the resemblance before, of course, but in the throes o
f new love you drive such thoughts from your mind. Probably now I’d convince myself I’d only ever loved her for her nose. This absurdity would vanish, too.
The man on the TV talked feverishly. The picture switched to a shelled village somewhere. Corpses lay in heaps near a stone well.
“I guess that puts things in perspective,” I said.
“You’d think it would. But it never does.”
“I go now,” I said.
“Be good to yourself,” said Gwendolyn.
It was an odd thing for a person about to smoke crack alone in a hotel room to say, but I believe she meant it.
I RODE THE ELEVATOR DOWN with a famous white rapper in a black mink bodysuit.
“I’m Teabag,” I told him.
“’Sup Teabag.”
“Got the name in school. It was kind of random. I wasn’t even the weakest kid. Vinnie Lazlo had no hands.”
“Happens, yo.”
“That’s exactly it,” I said. “It’s no big thing. It’s just what happened. You have to be able to say what happened.”
“Word.”
“Dig this,” I said. “We delude ourselves to get through the day. Like, I might say to myself, ‘Lewis’—because that’s my real name, Lewis—I might say, ‘you got this life deal under control. Your ship be rollin’ in, kid.’ Or, like, you might say, ‘I’m real, I’m hard. I just happen to be white.’”
“Say what? You know who you’re talking to? I’m hard, yo. Hillbilly hard.”
“Okay, bad example. But you get my point. We delude ourselves. But one day the delusion doesn’t work. It’s like a Chevy that won’t turn over. It’s a cold-ass day and your ride will not turn over.”
“I was with you until the Chevy, Teabag.”
“It doesn’t have to be a Chevy.”
“You best pull your shit together, Teabag.”
The door slid open and the rapper stepped out to greet his retinue. He wove through the room, juking and kissing, bumping bejeweled fists, running his hands on the women, pinching up morsels of satin, skin. When he reached the door he turned and caught my eye, lowered his diamond-encrusted shades. I thought he was going to call to me across the lobby, say something gritty, uplifting, some brotherly admonition to stay strong, or rock steady, or even just stay in school. But he was pointing at me, whispering to his bodyguard.
