The dryer was going. Big industrial one for all the piss-soaked bed-sheets and other assorted piss-soaked items. I knew that already, about them wanting to get married. Not only because Tom A. had a stack of old-time bridal magazines, worn out from looking at them, stacked in his room, but Tom B. and I had gotten into many discussions about marriage too. By this time, we were pretty good friends. Tom A. was more aloof, since he couldn’t talk, but Tom B. let you know he was proud of what he and Tom A. had accomplished: twenty-four years of staying together, and when Orient shut down and they were going to be moved out, he knew Tom and him would be in the same group home because, “It went alphabetic. So I knew. It was luck. It was God too. Tink about it, Anita. Tom A. and Tom B.”
It made sense, didn’t it? His face, as I was trying to do my paperwork, was sincere and stupid and scary and beautiful. You can’t say no to that. Well, maybe other people can, but people like me can’t.
By the way, Tom B. and me never did talk about me seeing them that first night I worked there, them doing the nasty, but I’m sure he would have just laughed it off like nothing. Raquel said they used to line people up at Orient in the shower room, forty at a time, and tell them to hold their noses, and spray them down with a gigantic fire hose, and then say, “Now soap up,” and forty men would soap up real quick, and then get sprayed again and some people, the people who worked there, would laugh as they sprayed them.
So Raquel said that night with the dryer going, “Let’s let them get married.”
She looked at me like we were both out of our minds. Even though she was a lifer, she was also pretty much timid and obedient, scared of Kate Anderson-Malloy and not just because she had two last names, but because Kate had sense to everything she said. Obviously it made a lot of sense to move them away from each other. Because they were getting worse. They weren’t going to workshop some mornings, clinging to each other nude in one bedroom or the other. Other times too, like they were losing their fear, like they were getting brave. Helping them to get married would only make them braver, wouldn’t it? And it definitely would not stop them from having to move away from each other.
But Raquel took a big gulp from her vodka and red pop and swallowed and said, “Maybe if they get married it won’t be so bad that they can’t live together. Like Dolly Parton and her husband.”
I smiled. That didn’t make any sense, but it seemed right.
Raquel is already at the group home when I pull up. She had already helped pudgy Tom A. into his suit. It’s a light blue leisure suit from when he got de-institutionalized and they gave them all new clothes, back in the late seventies. It barely fits, and he looks like some tourist guy having nerve problems on vacation. He and Raquel are sitting on the couch, and Damon and Sally and Larry the big mouth are all in the living room.
I step in. Eric is in the back with Tom B.
“He’s showing Tom how to shave good,” Raquel says.
Larry asks, “Are we going anywhere? We’re not going anywhere are we?” He’s got that totally freaked-out look on his face.
“No. Just me and Raquel and Tom A. and Tom B.,” I say.
“Thank the Lord. I am just so tired, Anita,” he says. He was raised by two aunts in a mansion, kept a secret there with them for years, and that’s his personality: old-lady stubbornness and laziness and gentility.
Sally comes over, spit dripping down onto her pink shirt. Her face has a sweet and scary emptiness to it. She is walking around without knowing anything but with her eyes wide open.
“Pop,” she whispers. “Pop, candy. Pop. Candy.”
She has gone into this repressed memory thing, where she is always thinking she’s brushed her teeth real good and now she deserves some pop and candy. That’s the way they used to get her to brush them.
“I don’t have any, honey,” I say.
Raquel, dressed in a long jean skirt and a beautiful orange blouse, her ratty hair pulled back into a bun, gets up and gets some Tic Tacs out of her purse. “Here.”
Sally seems happy, and sits on the arm of Damon’s lounger. He pushes her off, saying what he says: “Mona Lisa.”
Sally flops down and grunts and kind of laughs.
Then Tom B. comes out with Eric, a slump-shouldered high school dropout who wants to be a chef. He has one of those sad mustaches that is barely there. But Tom B. is perfectly clean shaven in a navy blue suit, black shoes. Handsome, I think.
Eric looks scared. “You guys, if anybody finds out.”
Larry comes in. “We ain’t going anywhere.”
“I know, Larry. Calm down,” Eric says. He starts to whisper, “I told Tom that he can’t say nothing, and he agreed, right, Tom?”
Tom B. nods. “Right. I won’t.” He shakes his head real hard, and goes over to Tom A. He gives his hand to Tom A. and Tom A. looks dumbfounded for a sec. He is realizing they are actually going somewhere to get married. It doesn’t make sense to him, but still, it’s exciting.
“Come on,” Tom B. says. “Come on, Tommy.”
They’re two boys going to church. Two kids, it seems like. True love does that to you.
Raquel opens the door. They walk out. I look at Eric, who’s still worried.
“God, if anybody finds out,” he says.
I just go on out.
Raquel’s car is bigger, so we go in hers, both Toms in back, holding hands. It’s dark and chilly and the headlights shine on piles of silver gravel. I need a cigarette. I think about Archie’s voice on the phone. Pathetic but rich with feeling, and I think about the way he would look coming out of the shower, naked, and anybody naked looks like they did when they were kids, even with hair and flab and all the years added on. Something about being dripping wet and shivering and clean: that’s what a kid is. I remember loving Archie when he was wet and naked. Pretending not to see him, but he was showing off, even with his rotten body. Coming over to me while I was trying to read course descriptions.
“Baby,” he said.
“You’re getting water all over the fucking floor.”
He laughed. It was all I could do not to laugh with him. Maybe he was on crack right then, for all I know, because he kept all that hidden from me. In fact, maybe the crack was buried when he saw me. Put away in the chest of drawers in his head, and this was love, without crack and without any lies and without his petty-assed, trashy ways.
Maybe, maybe not.
I see them back there in the rearview. Tom A. and Tom B. Looking straight ahead.
“Tanks, you guys,” Tom B. says.
Dad awaits. So do Raquel’s two friends, drag queens who go to her AA meetings. They are dressed conservatively, like ladies who go out to lunch but who also might have some mental health issues. Big, big hair, and they sit on my dad’s couch, my dad offering them punch or something stronger.
“Punch. That sounds so innocent and sweet,” one drag queen says. Right when we came in, Raquel introduced us. This one is Mimi. The other’s name is Salsa.
“This whole thing is sweet,” Salsa says.
I smile, and Dad goes to get the punch, and on his way he stops by and pats both Toms on the back. They are standing near a little table of gifts. As Dad pats them, though, his face goes white as a sheet. He almost falls down and has to go over to a dinette chair, panting real bad. The Toms and Raquel all look scared, but I focus on my dad, as Mimi and Salsa march over, Mimi saying she used to work in a hospital and knows CPR.
But Dad is not having a heart attack, I don’t think. His face is pale but not pained.
“Wow,” he whispers to me.
“What?”
“When I touched those two,” he says.
“Tom and Tom?”
“Yeah.” He laughs. People are leaning into us, and I kind of nicely push them back.
“What?” I say.
“I saw this airplane hangar. You know. Great big corrugated metal, big as hell, and it had this red, well, this pink and red light. And I was at one end of it,” Dad says, and he sits up,
and I back away and all the others stand, listening. It’s suddenly quiet as hell.
“I was in this hangar, at one end, it was empty, and just that pink and red light. Like you know there was a fire somewhere. Then I heard this stampede coming from the other side. I swear to God. That was strong, people. Wow.” He laughs some more, and Mimi goes, “You psychic, honey?”
“Yes, I am,” Dad says. He looks up proudly, his bottom lip shaking like he might start crying. He’s always been emotional.
“He’s got a license,” I say, to back him up.
“Wow,” Mimi says, looking over at Raquel, like thank you for bringing us here. “Well, kiss my hand and tell me what I want for Christmas!” Mimi and Salsa laugh real loud, but Dad just stands up and walks over to the podium.
“Bring them over now. It’s time,” he tells Raquel, and Raquel brings Tom and Tom over in front of the podium. I run over to the lights and flick switches to make it more intimate, turn on low music.
“This big hangar building,” Dad says, from the podium. Tom and Tom are right there in front of him. “Pink light, like exploding roses. The red-light district. Ha ha. No. A stampede. You gotta hear it. A thousand-plus feet. I am on the other side and I look up and all these shaved-headed people are running right at me in the red light. It’s like they just got freed, you know? Like the concentration camp just opened its doors and they got out and they’re running. They don’t know where they’re going or nothing. They’re coming right at me. And I want that to happen. I want them to run me over.”
My dad is smiling with glassy eyes.
“I want them to run me over,” he says, looking right at Tom A. and Tom B. “And they do. They stomp all over me. They gotta get somewhere, don’t they?”
He’s asking the Toms, and Tom B. goes, “Yes.”
“They gotta get somewhere,” my dad says, and he closes his eyes. Then he opens them real quick.
“That’s love,” he says.
After taking a sip from her punch, which she had to go get herself, Mimi says, “Amen, brother.”
It goes easier after that.
“Do you, Tom, take Tom here to be your husband?”
Tom A. nods his head, silent-movie sincere.
“What about you, Tom?”
“Yes, I do.” He kind of knows this is a joke, doesn’t he? Tom B.’s pretty smart. He knows that life is filled with little jokes you have to take serious so that something means something.
“Well, okay then.”
My dad’s face is plush and full of pride. I can see all those people coming at him, then at me. That big airport hangar or whatever, the red light. In my version, they are all smiling the way Tom A. does during a blow-job session. The light is blossoming from all of that, that red light is blood light. Love light. Lava-lamp light. Archie has a lava lamp in his bedroom, or used to. He would turn it on in the dark while we made love. “Real cheesy,” he would say. “Just call me your lava-lamp porn stud.” The ceiling would get translucent blisters, like jellyfish were splattering into themselves.
When they kiss, Tom and Tom in my dad’s living room, it’s embarrassing, sure. They kiss long and hard, two retarded guys kissing really wet. Dad just has to look away.
“That is so sweet,” Mimi says.
Salsa says, “Look at those two go at it.”
Raquel gets up, goes over and whispers to the two Toms, and they stop, both out of breath, standing back.
“I now pronounce them Tom and Tom,” Dad says.
Raquel comes over.
“I called Motel 6. They have adjoining rooms. I was gonna take them over and stay in the next room,” Raquel says. “But Mimi wants me to go with her. She’s in some drag show. You think you could stay with them till I get done?”
Mimi’s right next to her, begging me in high style, both long-nailed hands pressed together.
“Sure,” I say.
Raquel comes over to me then and hugs me tight, “We are so silly,” she whispers. “Ain’t we?”
I look at her as we pull apart. She’s in her forties but looks about sixty. Her hair is dyed. She’s about to go bald. Those eyes though. I see us at some bar next week laughing about all this.
“We are,” I say.
Mimi and Salsa and Raquel go. Dad comes over, holding his head. “Migraine,” he whispers. “Tell both Toms goodbye for me. I can’t. I’m gonna go to bed.”
“ ’Night,” I say.
I don’t know what else to do but tell them to get into the car. I drive them over to the Motel 6.
Tom B. looks at me in the mirror as I drive.
“We didn’t have rings, Anita,” he says, like he’s just realizing it.
“You know, you’re right. We’ll have to get you rings tomorrow. We can go over to Kmart and get rings.” I try to smile.
They start kissing deep again in the backseat.
As soon as I pull into the Motel 6 lot, I tell them to break it up. I check us in. Our rooms are ready. It’s doomed, I know, Tom and Tom. Or maybe Tom B. will escape and go and rescue Tom A. from the other group home. Maybe they’ll walk across America and find themselves in paradise.
Tonight is paradise, isn’t it? The Motel 6’s rooms are beige with orange bedspreads. Yellow carpet. They march into their room, and Tom A., in his leisure suit, sits down and grins. Tom B. closes the door to the adjoining room, smiling.
I sit down on my bed and right then is when I see him, standing in the window. Out on the patio.
He starts tapping on the glass.
I can’t help it. If he had a crack pipe I would let him stick it in my mouth, but instead I just let him into the room. He’s shivering, he’s jailhouse thin. He is in a long cowboy coat and jeans and a cowboy shirt. His eyes look hurt and happy and they seem to glow. My heart feels like all those shaved-headed freaks are marching over it. Love has to happen at the end of every night or you don’t know yourself.
“I’m working,” Archie tells me, standing in front of the TV.
I nod my head. “You are, huh?”
“Who the hell are they anyway?” Archie asks, and he comes over and sits down on the bed next to me. “Are they those retarded people you work with? Why’d you bring them here?”
“I just did,” I say. “For the hell of it.”
Archie laughs. It’s wheezy and warm. I want to crawl into his laugh like an orphaned baby onto a luxury liner. Go across the ocean to Europe where some kind lady wants me.
“I love you so much,” Archie says. “I should have told you and you could have helped me get off the stuff, but I was just ashamed. I’m sorry for what I did. I lied so much. I was sick, babe. It was like the drug took over, you know?”
I want to tell him to shut up. Want to kick his ass out. That’s the next instinct, right after being overjoyed at seeing him, happy at being stalked. I remember when I first met him. It was at a bar in Hamilton, skanky redneck place me and a girlfriend used to go to shoot darts and get drunk. He was standing by the dartboard drinking and smoking, still in his work clothes, and I threw a dart and it almost got him. But he wasn’t pissed.
“Cupid’s arrow,” he said.
Then Archie and me hear them. Screaming. Silly crazy sex music. There’s bumps and thumps against the thin walls. There’s laughter.
“Good God,” says Archie.
But he isn’t disgusted. He isn’t even perturbed. He doesn’t understand, but he’s here with me, and that’s next door.
“Are they having a good time or what?” he asks. He smells of cigarettes and beer and Brut and old pizza and sweat and love.
I guess I love him. I kiss him. That’s all I can do.
Perverts.com
BY LAURIE STONE
WHEN YOU GO on the Internet and check out the pervert sites, it refreshes your respect for range. It’s a rainbow world out there, and depending on where you stand on the pervert spectrum, it can make you feel small-time or pretty pleased with yourself. Take Aboveaveragedicks.com. It’s modestly named. The di
cks are substantially above average. The dicks of my acquaintance that are anatomically attached to people do not look like the cocks of stud racing horses or the limbs of 300-year-old trees. The “above average dicks” do. One was photographed from a worm’s-eye view and curled up toward its host’s ripped abs like an elephant’s trunk. I wouldn’t be surprised if it could pick up peanuts. Recently, my friend Bruce offered to show me a video of a guy pissing into his own mouth. I was eating dinner at the time and asked if I could take a rain check. Mr. Elephant Dick could certainly accomplish that feat.
The sites endeavor to protect the young. “Leave now if it is illegal for you to see naked women,” they entreat grade-schoolers who may not have boned up on the law. Even if they have, they’re free to view pictures of naked men employing their orifices in imaginative ways. There is no evangelizing, unless, of course, you’re into that. It is a come as you are environment. Although many of the menu choices strike me as ingenious, they are presented as if you, yourself, have already thought them up. Fuckmeharder.com and oneblondefingeringanother.com are unlikely to surprise as options, but I was impressed by the novelty of pregnantandlactatingsluts.com and sodatbitchruinedyourlife.com. Domain names can be a mouthful.
Exxxtremegermanmovies.com doesn’t offer Nazi porn, as might be expected, but rather hetero couples blasély performing vanilla sex while speaking German. It’s a spin on tongue perversion. Some people just want you to talk German to them. Clitcritic.com is an orgasm-friendly site, with a soupçon of gynecological-exam perversion. Facials.com is for those who enjoy watching semen ejaculated on women’s faces and for women who like to use jism for pore-reducing masks. Puckerup.com heralds the joys of anal penetration with objects attached to strings. And the homepage of spanking.com sports a businessman in shirt and tie with a naked woman across his lap, her butt high and her face near the floor. As his hand beats a regular tattoo, her rump turns bright pink.
Full Frontal Fiction Page 9
