by Robert Ward
Inside the dark theater, I see rats scamper into the wall. This is nothing new. In fact, we (Kirk, Walter and I, and how I hate to be reminded of them, knowing that they must certainly have squealed) always come here specifically to watch for them. Susan asks what that was (as a fat one crawls by) and I say squirrels. She makes another noise, this one less threatening. I place my hand on her shoulder. She sighs.
As soon as we sit down, I slip my arm around her, mentioning what pains I have from a lacrosse injury (actually my arm does hurt, from where the night watchman bit me). Susan does not curl up to me, but leans out of the seat in the opposite direction. I take this as a sign of her decency and character. I am proud she will not let me bully her into a sexual encounter. Suddenly, I have a very great urge to ask her to go steady with me. I picture myself slaving in the frozen food department of the Acme market, trying to save enough to take her on a blissful honeymoon to Acapulco. I have to piss badly.
When I cannot stand the pressure in my thighs any longer, I ask her if she would like to come to the back and wait for me while I go to the bathroom. Before she can react to that, I skillfully rephrase the question to would you like to come back and have a Coke while I go sit on the toilet. I feel that it is important she know I am not going back there to fool around.
After we get a Coke, I sit back and watch The Creature from the Black Lagoon. In a matter of seconds he has emerged from the slimy depths and is ravaging a swamp, killing animals, people, upsetting boats, terrifying Julia Adams, playing havoc with bland Richard Denning. I fall in love with his sad, primitive eyes, his lithe muscular body. I want to have his scales, want to take Susan, as he has taken pale Julia Adams, down down to my undersea … Wait wait—I suddenly understand what is being done to people. White men have made the Creature from their own projection of the blacks. Yes, there is no doubt. The Creature is Negro Man. Of course, yes, taking Julia Adams to his underwater ghetto. I am panicked. It’s a plot, a plot. I must warn Susan, I must tell her what hidden dangers exist, they are out to burn her beautiful brain. I grab her shoulders, turn her face to my own….
Bumjar Bumjar Bumjar Bumjar Bumjar Bumjar
Oh no. It’s not happening here. Oh yes, it is. That cold blue scream, coming from every corner of the theater. I turn, try to hide my head in her breasts. Here come Baba, Kirk, Walter and other screeching Aces up every aisle. No hope. None. They are pushing over the seats, coming at me, still screaming. I try to leap away, and fall into a little old man and his grandson, out to share this Saturday movie.
“Get offa my sonny,” says the little old man.
I run into the aisle, Susan’s needle shriek a terrifying counterpoint to the ravaged Ace voices. They swoop down on me, tackle my legs, twist my flailing arms. They are carrying me out the exit door, still yelling Bumjar Bumjar Bumjar. I am not screaming, not making one sound. I have quit resisting. This is my punishment. I shall take it like an Ace.
Now we are running down the street, fast, faster. Baba Looie has one leg, Kirk the other. Walter is holding my right arm, and an unknown Ace digs his fingernails into my bleeding wrist. Behind us I hear Susan wailing like an injured animal. I am surprised that Baba can move this fast, and I ask him what’s the hurry? I explain that I will readily submit to the punishment, that there is no need to carry me at top speed. Nobody answers. Then I see why. In front of us, less than twenty feet away, is a parking meter. They are opening my legs, heading directly at the post.
“Jesus God, oh no,” I shout.
Time is coming apart. Creature snagged by wiry net. Reels running backward. Whammmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm is not an adequate description of the sound. My balls hit the steel at ten miles per hour. The red VIOLATION sign is the last image.
XV.
The Teddy Bear Caper
I am down Ocean City, Maryland, with Randy. My mother has come with us, much to my disgust. It is no laughing matter to be thinking about “making out” (maybe even “getting tit” or “touching a box”) with the knowledge that Freda could pop up in her blazing red muumuu talking about what artistic vibrations she gets off the waves. What is more, I am not in the best mental shape. Since my abortive attempt to be a juvenile delinquent, I have suffered the trauma of not being high school fraternity stuff (along with Walter—we were both turned down for Phi Pi), and also a religious-sexual crisis (which will be explained later, because it means more later or maybe to give it the fullest possible dramatic effect). Therefore, I am not any too confident with girls. And I can expect no help from Randy, who stands helplessly by me, wearing his father’s green “Alligator” shirt (Dacron with a little alligator over the tit). The shirt has ugly ribbed stuff around the shoulders (the kind old old men wear, sweat white and smelly in the afternoon). Also he has on red chino bermudas, white socks with red and green rings around the top, and black shoes. Randy is even more out of it than the “young people” who come to Ocean City from Lancaster, Pennsylvania. Lancaster is known as the Chicken Capital of the East, and the boys and girls wear powder blue shirts with pictures of the Road Runner on them, or with white letters that spell “Olympic Drinking Champion” or “World’s Greatest Lover.” Yes, Randy and I have fallen so low that these people look at us and think we are weird.
Not that I am weird. I just feel that way. Weird and kind of bottomless, as if I might be a loser all my days. To fight this malaise, I march Randy and myself up to a fat man in front of a spinning wheel. The fat man looks horribly greasy, as if someone had dipped his skin in french fry oil, and for a second I fear that he will grab me and smother my cheeks with his own. When I pull away, I will have terrible facial gacks, and will be forever shunned by golden girls of the beach.
“I am going to whip this game,” I say to Randy.
“Boy I know you is. Boy oh boy I jes know it. You gonna beat thet thar game.”
“Silence,” I say, holding up my hand.
I then tell the fat man that I will place my twenty-five cents on nine in the red. He verifies what Randy said about me being a natural winner, but I am not fooled. It is quite apparent that he is trying to “suck me in,” something he could never do.
“Just roll ‘em,” I say.
And roll them he does, around and around, and though I would never admit it to Randy, I am very concerned with winning. It’s a matter of attitude, like Johnny Unitas says. If you win at one thing you will win at all others. But if you lose … and I know all about losing. As the wheel spins I imagine myself in a lonely truck stop, rouge on my face and long bony hands wrapped pathetically around a picture of my son, who has been killed in the Argonne forest.
“Look at you,” says Warren. “You are Bette Davis.”
“Shit too,” I say, praying that the wheel will reverse my fate.
And it does. It does. Marvelous, weird beauty … I am indeed a winner. It’s true, ah true.
“How ‘bout that,” says the greaser. “A winner on the first time. How ‘bout that? You kin have any doll in this row.”
He points to a line of teddy bears, green, blue and pink.
“Get thet ole pink bear,” says Randy.
“What the hell do I want with a pink bear?”
“You ken give it to Susan. She likes them stuffed animals.”
“All right,” I say.
The greaser gives me the bear and suggests that I place a lot of money on the numbers and try to win a bigger bear. I will not be bullied.
“No dice,” I say, instantly feeling lame. My voice is supposed to be commanding, full of fire, but once again I have only played the jester.
So I stand with Randy on the boardwalk in front of the giant, creaky Ferris wheel, a pink teddy bear in my hands, and every second I am feeling less like Errol Flynn. As I fall into a hot stupor, I see a small, well-built girl moving toward us. Next to her, miraculously enough, is a fat, woolly-headed friend.
This is it, I think.
Sure enough the girl walks up to us.
“Hi,” she says, tossing her he
ad back and forth.
I won’t come on too strong.
“Yeahhhhh … yeahhhhh sure … I … ah … see what you mean. Ah … hi.”
She stares at her girl friend and the fat girl points her chubby finger at her head and makes a circle. I understand that this means I am cracked.
“Hi there, hi ya,” says Randy.
I move in front of Randy and squint my eyes.
“What you up to?”
“What you up to?”
“Well … I won this bear.”
I want to kick myself until I bleed. What a horrible line. But she shows interest. “Say, he’s real neat,” she says.
As I hand her the bear, I hear Sam Cooke singing “You Send Me.” It’s an old record. Sam is already dead. I realize that the record is a bad omen. Then I know why. The girl doesn’t like me at all but is just using me to get to the teddy bear.
“I’ll take the bear,” I say gruffly.
I reach out to get it, but she playfully holds it away from me. “Lemme have it,” she says.
“If you don’t hand over that bear,” I say, “I’ll punch you in the tit.”
“Big mannnnnnnnnnn,” she says, sticking out her tongue.
I am flooded with misery and know that I am a very sick child. Randy is astonished, and I panic again, thinking that perhaps this exhibition will mean that I lose my power over him. There is nothing to do but go on with it.
“It’s the bear or your tit,” I say. “All the same to me.”
The girl looks at fatso, who does the loony-bird sign again. Then she drops the bear at my feet and runs away, shaking her head.
I look at Randy for signs of rebellion, but in his eyes is unquestioning obedience.
“I guess I told her,” I say.
“Yeah, you sure did. Boy you tole her good.”
Feeling exhausted and ridiculous, I walk next to Randy down the boardwalk, two robots fried by the sun.
XVI.
Let’s Hear It for the Mayor
“Why do I suffer so?” I ask Warren as we begin to march down the long aisles toward the podium. It’s high school graduation night at the Fifth Regiment Armory. Somewhere in front of me are Walter and Kirk, dressed like me, in tuxedos. Out in the audience are Glenn and Freda. Right before we left home they had a huge argument about who had sacrificed the most to send me through school. It ended with Glenn screaming that Freda had kept him from being an artist, and Freda screaming that she was going to hire a private detective to follow him day and night. Glenn answered that by suggesting she go to Africa to find Ronald Hogan. Freda threw her hands over her face and Glenn retired to the bathroom to dab creams on his acne and read I Lived Through Auschwitz.
But now we are moving steadily, slowly, like some great exhausted snake, through the smoky gloom of the armory. It’s the largest graduating class in the history of the school, and we have sat through unbelievable speeches by the heads of state. On the stage, far away, is a red-faced man in a gray suit. He is the mayor and his hands must be getting tired.
But no tireder than myself. What next? College? I have a choice between the University of Maryland and Towson State Teachers College. Naturally my parents are divided on the schools. To spite them, I imagine myself going around the world, traveling to foreign ports, marrying the daughter of a sultan. I will come back in a few years and with me will be a whole horde of Nubian slaves. But the fantasy does me little good. As we ooze toward the stage and our diplomas, I enter the Town to see what’s happening. Warren is dressed like a buccaneer and is on the town green practicing swordsmanship.
“Warren,” I say again, “why do I suffer so much?”
“You?” He makes a few passes at the air and sits on a log. I cannot see his face well, but I think it’s a composite.
“You? What about Glenn and Freda’s suffering? You think they don’t suffer a thousand times worse than you?”
“But I can’t help their suffering. What can I do to end my own?”
“You need solidarity. You must give up your childish violence and kiddie anarchism, and marry Susan.”
The idea snaps me back into the armory. I am a hundred yards from the stage, and the mayor is hazy in the lights, smiling, bending over to pick up yet another pink-ribboned scroll. At this moment I feel strange, airy. I’m having a religious conversion.
“Susan,” I mumble to myself. “Yes. That’s it.”
An idiot grin cracks my face, and I nod my head as I ramble.
“Yes. It’s clear what I need to do. Give up trying to be one of the boys. Give up absurd, childish dreams. I will find salvation through the love of a good woman. Through sacrifice. No more will I give in to infantile gratification. No, it’s through devotion to duty. Just like Albert Schweitzer, whom Susan loves so much. No more absurdity. No more idiocy. I will get a job, any job, and have Susan home waiting for me, smiling at the blinds. I will make meaning for myself. When I stumble in the door she will hand me a drink. I will drop my hat on the couch and hand her roses. We will dance to the music of Broadway and flitter like butterflies across chairs, tables, studio couches.”
Though I have never worn a hat, and despise Broadway show tunes, I instantly convince myself that marriage and devotion is my one chance for salvation. By the time I walk across the stage to accept my diploma, I am beaming and puffing my chest out.
“Congratulations,” says the mayor.
I stare into his puffy red eyes, but do not see greed. I see, rather, a man of substance, a man of the community. I see a man, like myself, who recognizes the need for duty, fatherhood and all of civilization. God, I love the mayor. I love all the decent little people who sacrifice their own desires to keep the wheels turning.
“Mayor,” I say, my voice cracking, “how can I tell you what this moment means to me?”
He looks surprised, clears his throat.
“I am happy for you, son,” he says, handing me the diploma with his left hand and crossing over his right to shake mine.
“You are?” I gasp. I am dumbfounded, flooded with love. The mayor loves me. The mayor cares. I drop open my mouth, spread my tender arms.
“Mayor,” I scream, “you are mine.”
“Agh,” he yells as I pounce on him.
“Agh, agh,” he says. But it’s no use. I love him. I really love the mayor. I’m hugging him. Kissing him. Licking his well-powdered ear. I am out of my mind with happiness. God love us all. God love our civil servants. From the audience I can hear a loud roar, a kind of tumult reserved only for Johnny Unitas when he has launched another touchdown pass. I know that this time the applause is for me, for my new love of the world, and most of all for that greatest of all good men, the mayor.
“You have showed me the way, Mayor,” I scream as some officials pull at me and start to drag me off the stage.
“Thank you, thank you,” I say, blowing kisses as they carry me down the aisle toward Glenn and Freda. At last, at last, I’m on the true path.
XVII.
Those Wedding Bells
We are married in the Methodist Church. Kirk is the best man. Much crying and my parents slap me on the back. As we leave the church door, Freda kisses my head and starts to tell me about her own wedding, and how she wished it had been the missionary. I tell her that she should see the light like I did. I have completely convinced myself that society is good, that Susan, with her Albert Schweitzer and her knitting, is the answer to my prayers. We have no honeymoon because I am determined to be practical. Our marriage night is spent fixing up our little apartment. It’s in a development called McBoyce Manor. The area used to be a garbage dump but is now a filled-in lot with many weeds and few trees. Up the street is another development. Its name is Dutch City and all the apartments look like little windmills. Susan wanted to move in there but I said no, we must be like the mayor, hardworking and practical. She sighs. The sigh continues for a week. It’s a small sigh, but steady. When we go to bed the sigh continues but increases in volume. I try to ignore it.
I get a job managing a record store, and take night courses in business administration at Towson State. Susan stays home and pretties up the apartment. But she keeps sighing.
“Susan,” I say one night, “what about this perpetual sigh of yours? Do you think there is anything you could do for it?”
“Ah-ennhhhhhhh,” she says.
“O.K., Susan,” I say, kissing her forehead. “You sigh all you want.”
Things go on like this for a year. The faces on the record jackets keep changing. First it’s folk singers with angelic looks. Then it’s folk singers with mean looks. I play one of these. It’s a bluegrass record which tells how wonderful it is to bum around the country. I wonder if the mayor ever bummed around. I ask Susan. She sighs. The sigh is very long, more like a yawn. I listen to these new sounds in the morning as she fixes my breakfast, and in the afternoon when I come home for lunch.
“Well, Susan,” I say, smiling, “what’s for lunch?”
“Ennnnhhhhhhhhhhhhhaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhh,” she says. It’s like an airplane going into a nose dive.
“Susan,” I say, “you realize your sighs have evolved into yawns.”
At the record store I ask for a raise. The boss yawns. I wonder if he has been seeing Susan. Perhaps there is an epidemic of sighing-yawning going around. I shake my head and stare at the happy faces of the people on the record albums.
In the second year, things take a turn for the worse.
Susan combines the sigh with the yawn.
“Susan,” I say, “let’s quit our jobs and bum around the country like the people who make records.”
Her answer? “Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhh-ennnnnnhhhhhhh-ahhhhhhhh-ennnnhhhhh.”
“Hmmmmmmm,” I say. Then I get scared. I have been saying a lot of things like hmmmmmmm lately. Could I be getting the virus? I run off to the record store and play a bunch of albums.
