A Strange Commonplace

by Sorrentino, Gilbert

  Brothers

  WARREN AND RAY, BROTHERS WHO HADN’T MUCH TO do with each other since their late adolescent years, had been carrying on, as they might say, with each other’s wives. The latter were women whom both men had known as girls since grammar school, and as young women through high school and on into the years immediately following, years of loud saloons, louder parties, stupendous hangovers, and night classes at various public colleges. In point of fact, although it might fairly be thought of as point of fact ordinary in the extreme, both brothers occasionally dated each other’s wives before, of course, they were each other’s wives. Dated is probably the wrong word: saw, went out with, ran around with were the euphemisms in vogue at the time of these somewhat diffident and unsatisfactory liaisons. How these brothers and their wives began, some twenty-five years later, to betray each other, is a story so common as to make one weep with sad ennui and need not be told, or, to be candid, will not be told here. But let me note, for those who must have background information, that the sexual possibilities inherent in the reawakened relationships among these four people flickered into life at two parties, which, it is obvious, both couples attended. At one, Ray sang “Prisoner of Love,” a song learned from his mother—their mother—and delivered in what he mistakenly thought of as Russ Columbo’s style. Perhaps the mediocrity of Ray’s performance made Warren’s wife feel tenderness for him, or perhaps she saw, in the paunchy, balding, half-drunk shipping-room supervisor who was wreaking meticulous havoc on the sweetly despairing old song, the boy who had been the first to touch her bare breasts, the first to bring her to orgasm with his fingers. Why did I marry Warren? she may have thought, although such thought seems rather coarsely literary. It may be of interest to note at this point that Warren’s wife, post-“Prisoner of Love,” managed to tempt or lure or inveigle—or simply ask—Ray up to the roof where, to his astonishment, she performed fellatio on him, and, perhaps, thought about the old days. Why, she may have thought again, did I marry Warren? a thought, I grant you, as crudely literary as it earlier was. Ray realized that he loved Warren’s wife, that he’d always loved her, although this realization was, you might agree, suspect. And their affair began. Why Ray’s wife, at the same time, decided to throw herself—her unspoken phrase—at Warren is not known, and there seems little point in inventing good reasons for the amour. Let us take for granted that Ray’s wife and Warren, at another party during the same febrile holiday season, had much the same experience as their spouses’: backyard or roof or basement or hallway or closet or bathroom as erotic locale; a limited repertory of sexual acts, dictated by the constraints of time, place, weather, clothing, and experience: however combined, such elements were triggers for the release of love, or love’s counterfeit, fascination, which, as the old song has it, implies a line between itself and love that is hard to find on an evening such as this, or, in this case, an evening such as that. So their affair began. The women, or so it seems, never found out about each other’s regularly occasioned adventures, but the brothers found out about everything after a few weeks. How it happened that the women remained ignorant—blissfully ignorant, I’m tempted to say—is beyond the means of this somewhat thin narrative, and it isn’t, after all, important. The brothers met on a rainy evening at Rockefeller Center for some reason or other, something to do with an insurance policy of their mother’s: a rare meeting, indeed. They walked in a drizzle over to a bar off Father Duffy Square and, inevitably, after some business of their meeting had been settled, talked about their mutual betrayals of each other as well as, of course, the mutual betrayals of and with their wives. After a few drinks and the most halfhearted denunciations of each other’s despicable practices, it became clear that they were not only not angry with each other, they were, on the contrary, content, even, perhaps, a little happy. Neither was so crude, or, perhaps, brave enough to say so, but it was obvious by hint and indirection, a smile, a glance, that their couplings with each other’s wives had made them feel, if tritely, young again; but, better than young, reckless, daring, thrillingly transgressive, in a word, immoral. As they were getting ready to leave, Ray reminded Warren of the time, so many slow years ago, when they had gone, for the first time, to hear Charlie Parker. It was at the Three Deuces, you remember, Warren? Ray said. Bird and Kenny Dorham, with Roy Haynes and Al Haig. But who was the bass? Slam Stewart? but he never, right? played with Bird? Tommy Potter! Warren said. Right, right, Ray said, Tommy Potter. They stood in the doorway, buttoning their coats, remembering themselves as inept boys in their cheap one-button lounge suits from Buddy Lee, hiding behind their hipster sunglasses. They looked at each other, deep in their luscious sins, knowing the secrets of each other’s wives, their yielding, lustful bodies. You want a Charms? Warren said, I use them to cut down on smoking. Cut down? Ray laughed. You smoke like a fucking chimney. Warren put a lozenge in his mouth and lit a cigarette. Well, my intentions are good, kid. The road to hell, Ray said, and smiled. Sure, he said, gimme one, and a smoke, too. Jesus, Charlie Parker, I still remember how I felt. And Bird wore a purple tie, too, remember? Purple. Those were the good old days, really. Not too bad now, either, brother mine, Warren said, and winked.

  Rain

  THE FATHERS:

  and their lost children on gray and hopeless Saturdays: after the puppet shows and the botanical gardens, the parks, the zoos and rowboats; after the ice-cream sodas and hamburgers, the hot fudge sundaes and roller coasters, the Yoo-hoos and Shirley Temples; after the loose change pressed into the dirty, sticky little hands, the dollar bills; after the museums and museums and museums and pony rides, the Cracker Jacks and new sneakers and toy fire engines and dolls and hair ribbons and plastic barrettes; after the thin fake smiles and the small talk with the wives’ understanding and kind and reliable new boyfriends, the sharp words about meager child support and clothes for school; after ruining their shoes in the rain, after their sodden overcoats, the dark bars where nobody knows them but where the children get their 7-Ups on the house; after the introductions to Graces or Mollies or Annes or Elaines or Lindas or Charlottes or Anybodies dressed so as to look serious, so as to look like Moms, to look like Somebodies who could be Moms, who were just like Moms, just as good as Moms; after the long nights later over whiskey and beer and worries about how nothing had gone right; after the movies, the ice-cream parlors, the diners, the melted cheese sandwiches, the pizzas, the aimless walks; after the friends who say how big the children are getting, how pretty, how smart; after the long trips back to the wives’ little apartments in Bensonhurst or Washington Heights or Bay Ridge or Marine Park or Park Slope or the Lower East Side or Sunset Park or Brighton Beach, Ozone Park, Kew Gardens, anywhere; after the buses and the penny arcades, the boardwalks and amusement parks, the hot dogs and lost gloves and scarves and hats; after the boredom and tears and silences and bewilderment, the cheap souvenirs; after Snow White and Dumbo, Pinocchio and Tarzan and Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck; after the Neccos and Charms and Nibs and Black Crows and Baby Ruths and Milky Ways and Mounds; after the quarrels in hateful whispers because they were back too late or too early or because the children were too tired or over-excited or spoiled again, as usual; after the rages over who had been at fault, who had stopped caring about anything; after the old accusations of adultery and gambling, drunkenness and abandonment, withdrawal and frigidity and contempt, nights with phony friends, days with venomous bitches, yes! on the phone; after the discoveries of other men’s clothes in the closets, shoes, razors and after shave in the bathroom; after the nights watching television, playing records suddenly disliked, held in contempt, hated; after coming across old gifts given them by once-young, once-passionate, once-loving, once funny and warm and caring women who had been, was it possible? their wives; after shouting and cursing and blaming and suffering; after meandering affairs with secretaries and office assistants and receptionists, widowed or divorced neighbors, waitresses and God knows how many faceless unhappy women met at bars and parties and weddings and, Je
sus, wakes; after the unbearable old photographs with their images of contentment and joy and love and now-harrowing smiles of optimism and hope and endless and wonderfully stupid youth; after all this, after walking from the subway in the rain, it seemed always in the fucking rain; after all this, the doomed, the hated Saturdays, again and again, the fathers remembered, in a dazzle of candor, the specific moments when the last tenuous links between them and their restless and distracted children began to dissolve, disintegrate, remembered their children in the act of fading away from them, fading into their actual lives: to which the fathers had no access, of which the fathers knew nothing at all and never would.

  The fathers would sit with their beer and their whiskey, their Camels or Luckies or Chesterfields, their crossword puzzles and sour jingo political columns and imbecile horoscopes and righteous editorials and think about the time when they were not expected to be anything but simply alive. Alive and waiting for the glittering future: of beautiful wives and happy children and perfect lakes and summers and long vacations and bright beaches. And the absurd, wholly impossible bliss that awaited them, a thing of beauty.

  A Wake

  HE IS PROPELLED SLOWLY AND SMOOTHLY ACROSS THE floor of one of the smaller viewing rooms in the Thomas DeRosa Funeral Home, and in a strange yet quite understandable way, he is touching and not touching the carpet. He has on black-and-gray Argyle socks, but no shoes, a dark gray suit, white shirt, and a navy blue tie with a small, dubious heraldic device on its apron. He is wearing shoes, gleaming black bluchers. These articles of apparel, as the newspapers called them, are not his, but they are familiar to him. He is at the casket, which sits on a small catafalque covered with a deep-red velveteen spread of some sort; at the head of the casket is a floral spray of white roses, and the satin band that graces the flowers reads REST AND RELAX. He smiles and looks into the casket, and there he lies, dressed in the same articles of apparel, as the newspapers called them, as he is dressed in. Or he is dressed in the same articles of apparel, as the newspapers called them, as he, the corpse, is. This is a cliché, such a cliché, the man in the casket says: “the man in the casket is the same man as the man at the casket, God!” He says this to his ex-wife, who is standing next to him, the man at the casket. She is still attractive, quite attractive. In my attractive articles of apparel, she says. Especially the black dress I’m wearing—I bought it for your mother’s funeral, remember? He looks her up and down. Her legs are as good as they ever were. Nice legs, right? you old fuck, yum-yum, some moron with a ponytail and a badly fitting suit says. Not for you any more, you old fuck. The young man slowly kneels in front of his ex-wife and pushes his face into her crotch. “So this is the boy genius who was fucking you while I was working eleven-hour days,” he says from the casket, without opening his eyes or mouth. He floats to the back of the room, and stops next to a woman who looks familiar, save for her clothes. My attractive articles of apparel, the woman says, and they both laugh. Especially my purple velvet dress. Who wears purple velvet dresses any more, he asks, you? That bitch wears them, his ex-wife says from the casket, where she is lying on top of his corpse. Her boyfriend is on top of her, both of them pretending sexual intercourse, the boyfriend’s ponytail flopping, somewhat obscenely, back and forth on his thick neck. That’s the kind of sex she likes, the woman in the purple dress says, dead and fake. By the way, you don’t remember me, do you? I’m Anna. Anna? Anna is his ex-wife’s name, he’s pretty certain. Anna is my ex-wife’s name, he says, I’m pretty certain. You can hear her scream and sob, rather theatrically, I’m afraid, as the lunk of a boyfriend pretends to stick it in her. “Imagine pretending to fuck on a corpse, on me—or you,” he says from the casket. Anna? Anna? his ex–wife says, I’m Irene! That whore is wearing my old dress, the one that used to get you all hot and bothered when you could still give it to me every year or so! I had a massive heart attack, he says to Anna, a myocardial infection, just like the one I had when I was a young man at Budd Lake, my bad thumb was the cause. Myocardial events, as the newspapers called them, are very serious and few recover from them, despite elegant articles of apparel worn with panache. What of the intercession of skilled medical personnel, Anna says, in, of course, timely fashion? Oh! oh! oh! oh! oh! ohhh! Irene screams, wow! This young fellow, an attractive and virile greengrocer, can ball that jack and make my jelly roll sing and sizzle, uhhh! Anna notes that he didn’t really have to die and that death might well have been prevented by following the advice tendered in certain wise columns on nutrition and exercise found in numerous newspapers and magazines. Old Glory, if wrapped around one’s genital area, is also of immense help, but few know how to employ the sacred banner properly—particularly in the rain or after dark. He, Anna remarks to the few mourners in the viewing room, he always liked the way I gave him head, or as the promiscuous Irene probably says, blew him. So few women take the time to learn this basic sexual skill properly! In California it’s called oral copulation, Irene says, climbing out of the casket. Whatever it’s called, I like it an awful lot, the boyfriend says, and if you don’t believe me, you can ask my mother. Speaking of mothers, you’re not bad, he says to Anna, even though you’re old enough to be my mother. It must be the dress. And so am I, Irene says, putting on fresh lipstick and smoothing her skirt, and that’s all part of the forbidden thrill! He is at the casket again, looking in at himself, still wondering about the articles of apparel that they wear in common. “Exactly alike,” he says. Exactly, he replies, but how come? Maybe you know, Anna? he says, and turns to ask her to share her sartorial expertise, which is considerable, he knows or remembers. Or he may ask Thomas DeRosa himself, for he is—What are you, sir? he asks. An official spokesman for the dead, Mr. DeRosa says, few of whom can speak for themselves. Yet of articles of apparel I know little or nothing—my wife, Rosa, always dresses me, from the skin out. Mr. DeRosa inches out of the room, herding the mourners before him. This little black dress is a knockout, isn’t it? he says. Rosa’s taste is impeccable! Note its simple lines and the perfect skirt length, ideal for concealing my bony knees. He looks around and sees that he is alone with himself in the casket. From behind a sofa come sighs, grunts, gasps, shouts, yells, laughter, and frantic obscenities, issuing from the idiot boyfriend, his ex-wife, Irene, and his pleasant friend, Anna—or from the idiot boyfriend, his ex–wife, Anna, and his pleasant friend, Irene. You women look so much alike! he says, give me a break! He is almost uncontrollably aroused. Like Moon Mullins or Dagwood in the dirty books, he says aloud. In my mind’s eye, he says, I can see, with poisonous clarity, the frenzied sexual perversions that the three flawed, yes, but essentially decent—like the President!—human beings are salaciously delighting in. He stands in the center of the room, longing to join them in their erotic play, along with, of course, his buddy in the casket. He wants, even more than he wants to be alive again, to be dead with them, but he is dead with himself alone.

  COLOPHON

  A Strange Commonplace was designed at Coffee House Press in the historic warehouse district of downtown Minneapolis. The text is set in Garamond. The display font is Birch.

  FUNDER ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  COFFEE HOUSE PRESS is an independent nonprofit literary publisher. Our books are made possible through the generous support of grants and gifts from many foundations, corporate giving programs, individuals, and through state and federal support. This book received special project support from the National Endowment for the Arts, a federal agency. Coffee House Press receives general operating support from the Minnesota State Arts Board, through an appropriation by the Minnesota State Legislature and from the National Endowment for the Arts. Coffee House receives major funding from the McKnight Foundation, and from Target. Coffee House also receives significant support from: an anonymous donor; the Buuck Family Foundation; the Bush Foundation; the Patrick and Aimee Butler Family Foundation; the Foundation for Contemporary Arts; Stephen and Isabel Keating; the Outagamie Foundation; the Pacific Foundation; the law firm of Schwegman,
Lundberg, Woessner & Kluth, P.A.; the James R. Thorpe Foundation; Archie D. and Bertha H. Walker Foundation; West Group; the Woessner Freeman Family Foundation; and many other generous individual donors.