Wake Up, Sir!: A Novel

by Jonathan Ames

  Upon arrival in Sharon Springs, I was both triumphant and exhausted. But not so tired that I couldn't appreciate my lovely surroundings—it was a hilly, rustic little town, nestled at the bottom of some manly, hairy-chested mountains.

  “It's beautiful here,” I exclaimed to Jeeves.

  “Quite, sir,” said Jeeves.

  “This is going to be our Magic Mountain, Jeeves … well, our Jewish Magic Mountain. It looks ideal for a cure.”

  “Very good, sir.”

  And just then, as we came into that pretty burg, in a display of remarkably good timing, we ran out of fuel. Both Jeeves and I had been grossly unaware of that important gauge, but lucky for us the Caprice had a tank of enormous battleship proportions, nearly twenty-four gallons, and so we had made it all the way to Sharon Springs before the thing gave out.

  We were able to coast down a hill to a filling station, which seemed deserted—no other cars were at the pumps. In fact, the whole town seemed deserted. I sensed an unnatural quiet and stillness. Had a plague descended on Sharon Springs? Was I existing momentarily in some kind of bestselling horror novel? Hadn't I seen something once on TV, a movie adapted from a novel by Stephen King, America's Dickens, though I've never read him, which showed a abandoned, murdered town just like this? The gas station we rolled into was situated on a brief main street, which also featured a deli, a bar-restaurant, and a church, but there were no people about. No people, no moving cars, no Hasidim. It was ghostly, but attractive. Jeeves and I were the only people in the world still alive.

  My fears of a plague were relieved, though, when I spotted a man with the gray, anguished face of a gargoyle. He was peering at me from the window of the small market, which was the financial center of the gas station. At some point in America's history gas stations metamorphosed into small grocery stores, specializing in foods—no doubt also made from petroleum—meant to destroy one's health.

  We gassed up the Caprice and then I went inside the market to pay for the petrol. I approached the cashier-gargoyle, who grimaced as he sucked the life out of a cigarette, and I gave him the necessary American currency, but required some change. While he fiddled with the register, I held my breath to avoid his air pollution, and as I did this, I spied a rack of phone cards behind the man and decided to check in with the aunt and uncle, to let them know that the prodigal nephew was prodigaling well.

  “How much for one of those twenty-dollar phone cards?” I asked, exhaling. Then I breathed through my mouth, hoping to lessen the effect of the man's exhaust, just as I had done earlier in the day with the fumes from Uncle Irwin's baby powder. Unfortunately, I was protecting my nose but sacrificing my mouth—there's no winning!

  “Twenty dollars,” snapped the cashier, while crushing his cigarette in an ashtray. One has to be thankful for small gifts—I could use my nostrils again. He handed me my change for the gasoline.

  “I mean how many minutes are on a twenty-minute card?” I said, correcting myself.

  “The card is twenty dollars, not twenty minutes,” he said with annoyance, and he eyed me curiously and angrily, appraising me as a subnormal, I feared, and then he started up a new cigarette. This was torture.

  But I had to give it one more go. My mind was strained from hours on the road and perhaps I had killed some brain cells while holding my breath, but certainly I could manage this inquiry.

  “How … many … minutes … are on a twenty-dollar card?” I asked, and by the end of my request my whole IQ seemed to be fully available.

  “I don't know,” said the Sharon Springian, and he swiveled on his stool and went to dislodge the card and brought down several of them to the floor.

  “Fuck,” he said quietly, and then with some exertion got off his perch, disappeared behind his counter, and resurfaced with the phone cards in one of his coarse-looking mitts. There was color now in his gray cheeks and he was out of breath. I hoped his lawyers were in contact with the tobacco companies. Just bending over had nearly killed him. “Four hundred minutes for twenty dollars,” he said finally.

  “That seems like a fair investment,” I said, and was tempted to tell him that smoking was dangerous, and that doing so in such close proximity to gas pumps was even more immediately lethal than cancer. But I knew it wasn't my place to counsel him. There are so few people one can help in life. “May I then have a twenty-dollar card?” I said, keeping our relationship purely commercial.

  Rigorous transaction completed, I repaired to a phone booth outside and connected myself to Montclair. My uncle Irwin answered.

  “Hello, relative!” I said into the instrument.

  “Are you broken down?”

  “No, I'm in Sharon Springs! Just as you recommended.”

  “When did you get there?”

  “Just now.”

  “Why'd it take so long? You got lost?”

  “No. I took back roads to make the trip more scenic and self-improving. But thank you for your directions.”

  “I'm glad you weren't arrested.”

  “I'm a good driver!” I protested.

  “Listen, you had a phone call. Somebody from a place called the Rose Colony. They want you to attend. They said they took you off a waiting list. What is it, another rehab? That will make your aunt happy.”

  “My God!” I shouted. “I can't believe the Rose Colony wants me! … And it's not a rehab. It's the most prestigious artist colony in the United States! It's a place for working on one's art.”

  “That's too bad it's not for drinking. You need to work on that more than your writing. I'm glad I didn't tell Florence and get her hopes up…. I'll give you the number. You're supposed to call before five, you have fifteen minutes.”

  He gave me the number and I went to write it on the first interior page of a weather-abused, dangling phone book, which was a common spot for jotting down numbers, as several other phone exchanges were scribbled there, accompanied by offers of homosexual copulation. Such things went on even in Sharon Springs! But I wasn't surprised. The human sex drive is relentless, especially the homosexual human sex drive. One finds it everywhere, it knows no dark corner—or, for that matter, dimly lit corner—where it cannot trespass. But it's not just homosexuality that is prevalent: old-fashioned heterosexuality is still the most popular form of sensuality between two people. Drive past any school yard—somebody is producing these children, though I understand that enrollments have been dropping. Homosexuality is perhaps then making headway in terms of overall subscription, while of course self-abuse remains the most popular form of sensuality overall, though not between two people, unless the two people are self-abusing in each other's company, which is often a happy compromise in both the homosexual and heterosexual communities.

  Anyway, I thought it was clever of these randy Sharon Springians to put their solicitations inside the phone book. It gave the numbers more credibility than the personal advertisements I had read in all the WCs on the way up to Sharon Springs. It was as if the phone company itself were endorsing these come-hither notes. I have to confess, though, that those washroom jottings, despite the lack of any official sanction, had piqued my interest. As Jeeves and I drove along the country roads of New York State, I had thought about what I read in those toilets. For example: “Meet me at 5pm for a good sucking.” Five P.M. when? All days of the week? Someone else had also wondered about this and written, “What day?” But there was no answer. And so this mystery plagued me.

  In another toilet: “I'm straight but I like to suck cock. Meet here at midnight on Fridays.” Had anyone shown up on a Friday? I would never know. Was the note left in this calendar year? These solicitations were incomplete narratives. I found it very frustrating.

  And who are these people? I had wondered, and I had a knee-jerk desire to give these strangers, these bathroom lotharios, a call, when they were good enough to leave their home phone number, which they often did. But why did I want to call? Part of it was morbid curiosity, to see what kind of people would leave their home n
umbers in a toilet, but also, like most human beings, I am not without some homosexual fantasies—in my case, usually with a prison cell as a backdrop after I have been convicted of a crime I didn't commit, which makes it a rather complicated fantasy.

  So there I was on the phone with Uncle Irwin and once again confronted with depraved notes. Rather striking was the competitive nature of some of the advertisements of these Sharon Springs inverts. One man, named Angelo, wrote, “Call me anytimes. I love to suck kock for hours. I am the best in the area.”

  And a man named Tim wrote, “Who knows better than a man how to suk dik? Don't call Angelo, call me.” These men were competing in a small marketplace, so it was smart, I imagine, to boast, and they clearly weren't ashamed of their sexuality or their spelling, though I wondered if they were purposely misspelling. Was this some sort of gay code? More mysteries! More frustration.

  Distracted by all this, I didn't get the number the first time Uncle Irwin gave it to me. “Can you run that past me again, please?” I asked.

  He grunted with annoyance, but came out with it, and this time I jotted down the Rose Colony's number, and I happened to put it right next to an exceedingly compelling note: “I love to have my pussy kissed, call Debbie, 222-4480.” Now this was unusual—extraordinary even. There were about a half dozen notes on this phone book page, but this was the only one from a woman, and in all the WCs I had visited that day, there had not been a single epistle from a female.

  I have to say I found the use of the word kiss to be unexpectedly seductive and charming, almost Victorian. I was quite tempted to maybe steal the page and consult it later. Who was this Debbie? But the notion of calling a stranger was ludicrous, and there were more important things to consider—the Rose Colony! So I told my uncle Irwin to give my aunt Florence my love and we hastily rang off so that I could call the colony before five.

  Six months before, in mid-January, I had applied to the Rose, which is located in Saratoga Springs, New York. I had read an article about the place in Poets & Writers magazine at the Montclair library, where I had gone one afternoon to take refuge from Uncle Irwin. Then a day or two later there was a mention of the colony in The New York Times.

  Well, you know how it is: something starts appearing in front of you repeatedly, and you take it as a sign—so after spotting these two articles about the colony, I sent in an application and in March they sent me back a letter informing me that I had been placed on the waiting list. I had been more pleased than disappointed. It was enough of a victory just to have been wait-listed. I had sent, as my writing sample, the first chapter of my novel, I Pity I. But now I was in! Off the waiting list! A real triumph!

  Wanting to share my good news before calling the colony, I beckoned to Jeeves to come over from the car. He conveyed himself across the asphalt.

  “Yes, sir?”

  “Jeeves, remember I was put on the waiting list at the Rose Colony?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Well, I just called Uncle Irwin and the Rose Colony had called the house, looking for me, and they want me! I'm to call them this moment. This could mean a change in our plans, Jeeves, but a good change, I think.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Aren't you happy for me, Jeeves?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  I think the fellow may have been a bit road-weary himself. The old vocab wasn't too diverse at the moment; he could have come up with something more enthusiastic than his standard “Yes, sir,” but I thought of my own road-weary verbal struggles in purchasing the phone card, so I forgave Jeeves for not spicing up his side of the master-valet discourse.

  I turned to the phone and performed the necessary manipulations.

  “This is the Rose Colony,” answered a woman's voice.

  “Hello,” I began, not very creatively, but the openings of phone conversations have their conventional limits. “I'm Alan Blair and I was informed that I've been removed from the waiting list?” I added an interrogative at the end of my speech to not seem too presumptuous and to display the proper humility.

  “Oh yes … There's been a cancellation, and if you can come, if you're free, we'd love to have you. I'm Doris, the director's assistant.”

  “Very nice to meet you … on the phone that is,” I said, clutching the instrument as if it were the woman's hand. “Well, my calendar is remarkably clear and I'd be happy to come to the Rose Colony. I'm about to take a cure in Sharon Springs, but will gladly flee Sharon Springs for Saratoga Springs. In effect, spring from these springs to your springs. When can I report for duty?”

  I immediately worried that I was overdoing it linguistically in an attempt to please and amuse and be obsequious, but Doris appreciated my efforts. “You're funny,” she said, and chuckled sweetly. “You can come up in two days, on Thursday—a room and a studio will be ready—and we can offer you a residency of six weeks, all the way to the end of August.”

  Six weeks. This was incredible. Even better than communing with Hasidim would be the chance to commune with fellow artists. Then it occurred to me that I had better tell her about Jeeves. There probably weren't too many artists who had their own valet, but I figured the place, being a nineteenth-century mansion, as reported in Poets & Writers, would have servants' quarters where Jeeves could bunk. “I should tell you,” I said, “that I'll be bringing my man, Jeeves.”

  “Your man, Jeeves. Not your man, Godfrey?” she said, again laughing pleasantly. “That's funny. We need a Jeeves around here. I'm a big Wodehouse fan!”

  I didn't let on to Jeeves, who was floating off to my left like one of those squiggly things on the surface of the eye, what the Rose Colony woman had said. Wanted to spare his feelings, if I could. This Wodehouse business was upsetting to him, though he'd never brought it up after our first interview, but I could tell that it rankled. After all, he wanted to be his own man, his own Jeeves, which was perfectly understandable. “Well,” she said merrily, continuing, “you'll have two rooms, a studio and a bedroom, and in the studio there's a cot, so you can put your Jeeves there. But I want to borrow him!”

  “Yes, well, I'm glad that's all fine with you,” I said into the phone, with some severity, having no intention of sharing Jeeves, he wasn't chattel. I kept the steel in my voice and said, “So he'll take his meals with the staff in the kitchen, if that's all right … And I come up in two days, correct?”

  “I haven't read Wodehouse in years, I have to read him again,” she said, giggling, and still pursuing that annoying theme, poor Jeeves, but then she rallied her forces of concentration and said, “Yes, come up in two days.” And before we rang off, she provided me with directions, which I memorized, they were so simple. Saratoga Springs was only ninety minutes away from Sharon Springs! New York State was clearly loaded with springs—I could probably swim to the Rose Colony through subterranean channels if I set my mind to it.

  CHAPTER 7

  Driving to the Hotel AdlerI lecture Jeeves on the nature of tormented Jewish sexualityThe Hotel Adler is on a sloping hill and looks about to topple overI use my charm on the ancient innkeeperDreary thoughts about my parents

  The next step, naturally, was to secure a room at the Adler. I went back into the market and solicited the advice of the cashier as to how to find the hotel, and he generously directed me, pointing out the window: “It's about two miles down that street over there, on the right.” But then he added, “I don't think the place is open.”

  I chose to ignore this remark. I didn't want it to spoil my Rose Colony news, and I didn't tell Jeeves what the cashier had said when I joined him in the Caprice. No reason to alarm everyone on board. And the cashier was probably wrong. Addled, most likely. His mind shrunk from pulling too hard on cigarettes, which force the temples to squeeze the brain.

  I can be single-minded, you see. I had come all this way, seven hours of driving, and to think that I might not stay at the Adler would be debilitating. I lacked the inner resources to get back on the road and find a motel. So if I believed the
Adler was open, it would be open. I'm an advocate of positive thinking, even if it's irrational positive thinking.

  We drove down a hilly, tree-lined street. I was proceeding at about ten miles per hour, not wanting to somehow miss the hotel. We passed beautiful old houses with lovely porches, but still there were no people, until at last I spotted a single male Hasid—age indeterminate since after a certain point all male Hasidim seem to be about sixty—standing on a porch, looking to the sky. He was fiddling with the fringes poking out of the bottom of his shirt and he was probably making a brucha.

  “There's a Hasid, Jeeves!”

  “Yes, sir. His garb would certainly indicate this.”

  It occurred to me, as we drove past him, that the Hasid may have been having an impure thought instead of making a blessing. The Hasidim, in my experience, are quite sexually tormented, though probably not more than any other type of people, if I really think about it, and certainly not any more than the average Jew, who is almost universally sexually tormented.

  “Jeeves, why do you think that we Jews are almost universally sexually tormented?”

  “I had not considered that Jews were afflicted in this way, sir.”

  “Oh yes, Jeeves. We Jews are completely out of control when it comes to sex. I think, as I do about many things, that it may be Darwinism.”

  “Really, sir?”

  “Oh yes. Wild Jewish sexuality must be an inherited trait, an evolutionary adjustment to shortened life spans due to pogroms, genocide, bad colons, and general dislike. We may not live long, but we're so libidinous we manage to procreate before we're killed. But this sexuality, Jeeves, which saves us, also gets us in trouble, causing more shortened life spans. We Jews are always making headlines for having affairs or doing something perverted, and non-Jews don't like this. Either they find it distasteful or they're annoyed that they're not getting any action. So it's some kind of mad, insane cycle that only we Jews could find ourselves in: we fornicate a lot to keep our race alive, but all this fornicating causes more resentment and hatred, which results in more inquisitions, pogroms, and genocides, not to mention quotas at Harvard.”