Fickle

by Peter Manus

  They go in, then she comes out immediately, this time with her coat and black high top sneaks on (come to be thinkin, those would be his black high top sneaks she’s wearing). I follow her out to Mass Ave, where she picks up a six of chilled Canadian piss for the little dude plus Kung Pao fried rice—I know this because I slip into the take-out hole and make like I’m filling out an order while she picks up. Close enough to hear her educated voice and her snooty snorty nerd girl giggle and to get an eyeload of her sweet ass-cheeks bumping around under her sweats.

  So who is this slacker-dude prodigal? Almost seems like the Killer Chick’s life is looking up now that she’s done what she’s done. Like the stars are on her side. Maybe the guy she tumbled had it coming, yeah, verily to wit, and God agrees she did us all a service.

  Amen, b’yitch. Maybe I can’t do you after all, cause I don’t got the nads to argue with God.

  I hang out, looking to maybe witness the slacker dude getting his bones tossed out of there if she goes to blow him and smells some fifteen-year-old clam on his skinny. Howevah, no such luck.

  3 a.m. I get borrrrrrrrd n take off. Gots ta shave before work tamarrah.

  TALK, NIHILIST DOGS

  garbo @ 01.30 06:21 pm

  You have something against underage girls, now?

  fullfrontal @ 01.30 06:56 pm

  Duh fark? Oh, I get you—you is j.b. Knew there was somethin funny goin on.

  garbo @ 01.30 07:12 pm

  well, I do look young, but you don’t have anything to worry about.

  fullfrontal @ 01.30 07:13 pm

  you a virgin?

  garbo @ 01.30 07:14 pm

  Sure am…I mean besides what my daddy did to me. Do you think that counts?

  fullfrontal @ 01.30 07:15 pm

  Oh even beddah, a little princess scag spreading crabs through her teen years. Shouldn’t you be talking some fat cigar-chewing sleezoid down the local muff shop into letting you pole-dance “just during the afternoon shift”?

  chootah @ 01.30 08:11 pm

  Hey man think you hurt her feelings.

  fullfrontal @ 01.30 08:21 pm

  Cry me a rivah.

  17

  January 30 @ 10:24 pm

  >COPS: DUMB…OR DUMBER???<

  Well, again taking hitman’s advice (note to new blog buddy—stop giving advice), I decided that Mr. Suicide’s diary was still worth a first-hand gander, and so I got in touch with Burly-Bear and made an appointment, this time OFF cop turf and so free from the “chance” of getting thrown together with Escroto. My suggestion was that Burly-Bear and I run out to Concord to lay the diary in front of “my writer friend,” aka the Colonel, who I assured le Burly had a whopping amount of sensitivity to diction and writing patterns from his half-century-plus in the novel-churning business, while also maintaining a brand of analytic detachment that only a true pukka sahib can sustain. Plus I’d be there, in all my wide-eyed vulnerability.

  Who could resist such an offer? Burly-Bear slides up to the curb outside my office in his seafoam-green driving machine just as the grandfather clock in our waiting area strikes six in all of its harpsichordic splendor. I’ve been peeking out the window in anticipation, and with a flick of my mouse I’m out of there before my computer can say hibernate.

  My second ride in Burly-Bear’s car, I find, is a lot sweeter than the first. There’s just something about sitting next to a big ol’ plainclothes cop who handles the wheel with that two-finger panache while his massive thighs strain against the material of his gabardines that you gotta live through once. Makes a girl feel…I want to say “graceful” but there’s more to it. When you sit next to a guy who is really one with his vehicle, and he’s driving you somewhere for your sake, and you know that on some level he’s angling in on you, you feel under his control, but in the best way possible. I wouldn’t say that the drive out of town that late afternoon was “sexual,” but calling it “sexy” would not be off by much. Sitting there, I find myself hoping that he is getting a whiff of me, whatever scent my perfume gives off when it mixes with my natural odors. After all, it seems only fair that I add to the moment we’re having.

  Burly-Bear speaks little as we drain out of Boston with the rest of the drones, and it’s not until we’re coasting between the low rock walls of the ritzy New England community, the sunset-tinged fields and naked trees just merging into the winter evening, that he glances my way and gently grunts for directions. We draw up to the Colonel’s graciously shabby villa and sit for a tic, like maybe one of us is about to say something, before Burly-Bear slings his arm over the back seat for the bag containing the original of the suicide diary. He moves suddenly and for some reason I flinch, which he notices but ignores. No idea what’s going on there, on either of our parts. Probably best left unanalyzed, as chinkigirl would say.

  We’re greeted at the door by a powder-white domestic who can’t possibly have enough life left in her to accomplish more than polishing one teaspoon a day between the occasional creeps down one or another of the long hallways to listen at a door or peep through a keyhole, her trusty back hump peering over her shoulder. She leaves us in the lounge (her word, not mine)—however, no secret passage to the conservatory is discernible.

  Waiting for the Colonel, I wander with my hands clasped behind my pleats, admiring the gaudy oil paintings—one relatively new one that I pause in front of depicts the Peacock decked out in her signature ice—while the Burly-Bear stands more or less “at ease” on the pink oriental. They have some overfed goldfish swimming around in a massive glass bowl behind the sofa—it’s all very bright and expensive and wonderfully nouveau, which for some reason gets me imagining what it would be like to have Burly-Bear push me down on the hearth rug and just take me. I give him a flirty glance or two over my cheekbone to see if he’s thinking what I’m thinking. He pretends not to be, but we both know better.

  Soon thereafter the Colonel marches in, full of self-effacing intellect and clearly impressed with Burly-Bear. Surprising myself but apparently not him, I flutter over and treat him to a light kiss on the cheek—something muddled going on in my mind about making sure that Burly-Bear sees that the Colonel and I are “intimate.” The thunderclap handshake he and Burly-Bear give one another, however, dispels any idea that the Colonel will be prejudiced in my favor.

  So we nix offers of coffee and sweets but nevertheless retire to the dining room to huddle around the sacred suicide text at the massive glass and iron table therein while the chandelier blazes down upon every neurotically inked nuance. At Burly’s request, the Colonel and he stretch-roll semiopaque rubber gloves up over their hands—a quip about “hand condoms” pops into my little head but I wisely keep it to myself—and then, well, then the Colonel reads.

  Here’s the passage Burly-Bear selected for him, which he grinds out aloud in a flat, Bogart-style cadence:

  I’ve been reminiscing again, E. You’d disapprove; “big effing whatever,” you’d sigh with your usual eye roll. And you’d be right. Big effing whatever. But, nevertheless…tonight I was reminiscing about our introduction. Pimped, I could call it—our mock-serendipitous encounter was about as innocent of intention as a high-heeled girl in hotpants leaning over to peer past the rim of an idling car’s descending window. Yes, we were “set up” by that most accommodating of lady friends, so famously mercenary herself, bedecked in her bedazzling bijoux that balmy spring evening, her warty toad in tow. Was she your friend or mine, or was she neither, but just a creature who plays with lives—that lazy lynx from Sleepy Hollow who called for iced cocktails between Beethoven and Béla Bartók???

  Enough with the flipping alliteration, you would say. Have to admit, I agree, luv, as I’ve always agreed. Agreeing is my M.O., as you knew from the start. You the artist and I the mere clay. Mais certes.

  In any event, I felt gratified and also flattered to find myself being set up with you by the rich pussy. After all, although both of you imagined yourselves to be using me for your separate reasons, I kne
w the truth, which was that you were being presented to me. You were to be my little toy to shred at will. And you certainly were yummy—I could have leaned forward and licked your coquettishly exposed chest right then and there, and, as it turned out, I had plenty more than a mouthful of you to gobble by midnight.

  But aside from the weird feeling of being set up for sex, and aside from the giddiness of discovering ourselves to be the rutting creatures we’d never imagined ourselves—aside from all this, that “first” encounter was very much NOT the same experience for me that it was for you. Because, of course, I was already obsessed with you! Why, ever since I’d discovered you on the street where I live those months earlier and followed you back to that diner to get a better look, make sure you were you, I’d been living my life with your image in front of me!!! And so there is no describing the jolt of “meeting” you. You! I was being set up with YOU! My fantasy—my ONLY fantasy fuck since perhaps the age of fifteen when for about six months I suffered a craving for a certain 22-year-old junior varsity soccer coach who’d been energetic enough to suit up, work out, and—sigh—shower with the team (all platonic “bonding” between coach and athletes, or so it came off at the time). I was only the team manager, of course, but I had ways of scoring peeks into the shower room. That was my first encounter with a truly adult body—that odd merging of a civilized face and the creature living beneath its clothes. So, so forbidden, my first crush felt, and not solely because it was “gay.” You were my second, all these years later. And oh you were to be exciting, I swore to myself.

  Did our panderer know, when she brought us together? Does she know our secrets, now that you’ve tired of me? Do you whine to her good-naturedly, now that you are sick of me, sick of getting me together with your other “friend” and having us boys go at it so you may watch us sin?

  But who cares what you tell the pussy. She’s not to blame for our descent from the self-approbation of lust to the treachery of the “strained relationship.” What is to blame, then? What would you claim it to be, if I were to lean over the rail and call out my question as you sit below me, pattering on that toy of yours? Would you pause to sigh and resume typing without a word? Would you smack the table with your palm, twist around to aim that glare of yours up at me, and have it out? Or would you slip soundlessly from where you sit at this moment and leave, only the click of the latch announcing that you are off? And if I were to throw on coat and boots and steal after you, would you go, again, to HIS place? The beautiful he-slut. From the fat to the fire—but I get ahead of myself. At least, you don’t seem to have caught on to him yet. Me, I think you’ve pegged, at least subconsciously.

  In any event, I won’t upset you tonight. I sit, I write. Soon I will pretend to sleep. You will ascend only when you are sure that I am beyond waking and you will slip into bed, making sure not to touch me—shuddering at the prospect of our two skins touching. My E. You will pay penance until I say it’s over. Anything else would offend your sense of…propriety, shall we call it? I’ve got you by your rectitude, one might say. The irony appeals to me very much.

  When the Colonel finishes reading we all kind of blink, not quite meeting eyes. Even though I’ve read it, I need a moment to recover. When I do, I try to come up with some clever summation, just to break the ice, but nothing comes to me. Burly-Bear raises his head and trains his eye on the Colonel, immobile, a dog waiting for the kill command. The Colonel leafs around in the entry, reviewing what he’s read, then lays it flat.

  Colonel: Nasty little viper. But then that’s intentional. The whole thing is very theatrical, as if he wanted E to find it.

  Burly-Bear: (stirring thoughtfully, and giving off the vibe that he is going to strive to get but not give information—is that because I’m present?) Sounds genuinely angry, though, don’t he, sir?

  Colonel: Oh, it’s not a healthy relationship these two have going on; that’s for sure. There’s some sort of showdown on the horizon. Whether it’s suicide or…hell, if I’d written it in a novel there’d be a murder brewing. (He laughs—one short bark.) Why in the world can’t people just accept when something’s over? Why do we need our endings to be so cruel?

  Burly-Bear: (shifting in tone) I been wondering, sir: how would you describe the writer here? I mean, as a writer yourself, could you make a list of his (he circles a hand).

  Me: Salient characteristics? (I’m not even sure if I’m supposed to talk, this being a conversation in some form about whether the diary contains any indications that I could not have been Mr. Suicide’s lover. But neither of them seem put off by my interjection.)

  Burly-Bear: Correct you are.

  Colonel: (raising his eyebrows, interested) The easiest place to begin is with direct descriptors, and I have to say that we’re given very little of those to latch onto.

  Burly-Bear: You think he did that on purpose?

  Colonel: Seems more likely that the avoidance of detail is simply a product of the fact that the writer has no need to explain the obvious to himself.

  Burly-Bear: (doggedly) So how do we get anywhere?

  Colonel: We start with the premise, verified by some handwriting expert at your department’s disposal, I presume, that this diary was written by our dead friend from the subway. So I ask myself: does it ring true as the ventings of a middle-aged man whose young lover is in the process of moving along? I’d say that’s very possible. Middle-aged people can be damned needy, and that’s one element here that comes through as real as real can be—the bitterly hurt references to the lover’s roving eye, the desperate desire to return things to the way they were—that’s all consistent with the lonely middle-aged lover, and all of that’s very raw, in spite of the author’s attempts at sarcasm. On the other hand, what do we do with these bits about how some female friend introduced the twosome?

  Burly-Bear: The middle-aged man’s got a female friend—a client, maybe, or the wife of a client. (He glances at me involuntarily—and, oh, you’d better believe that I latch right onto the fact that our Mr. Suicide was in some profession where he’d have clients.) So this rich woman friend sets him up with someone young she knows—personal trainer, hairdresser, dog walker—could be a hundred setups like that.

  Colonel: But why was it surprising and flattering and even remarkable to our diarist that the young lover was being presented to him as a sex object? Wouldn’t that be the usual way—the older male being the friend of this middle-aged lady, the young bit of flesh served up as a treat?

  Burly-Bear: So what does that signify to you?

  Colonel: (musingly) Must have been something special about the young thing. Something to offset the age difference.

  Burly-Bear: Such as?

  Colonel: (He sits up a bit straighter, if such a thing is possible.) Well, say the younger one is from an important family…an old Boston family…

  Burly-Bear: Which could also explain why he only calls the girl “E” and writes the whole thing in a way that clouds her identity.

  Colonel: Girl? (He barks a laugh.) Friend, I don’t think there’s a girl anywhere within a mile of this thing. Whole setup is queer as a three-dollar bill.

  Burly-Bear: Sir, could you point me at some of the details that substantiate that?

  Colonel: Hell, it permeates the thing. (He stabs a finger at a passage.) Here, here: he refers to the other one—this E fellow—running off to bed down with another man—a male slut, he calls him. And early on the writer makes a reference to having spotted E on the street with another man. All male, the way I count it up. Simple arithmetic.

  Me: But E could, conceivably, be a woman who went off to bed down with this “other” male, yes? “Other” could be a reference to the “male slut” being some man other than the diary’s writer. Similarly, it could have been a woman the writer saw on the street with “another man”—a man other than the writer, that is.

  Colonel: (shutting me down with a condescending shake of his head) Man talks about watching a soccer coach in the shower, for crying o
ut loud.

  Me: But he presents that as a youthful aberration.

  Burly-Bear: (utterly ignoring me) So it’s a gay love affair gone sour, huh?

  Me: (feeling pretty decisively dismissed) Unless, of course, he was bi.

  (The two of them stare at me. I know that heterosexual men have difficulty believing there is any such thing as bisexuality, or at least male bisexuality. However, the way Burly-Bear is studying me makes me think that this isn’t what’s troubling him. I stir uneasily.)

  Me: Well, he writes about the crush on his coach as if it’s an anomaly. He puts the word “gay” in quotation marks. Why would he, if he actually considers himself gay? A lot of people’s first crush is strange—same sex or even incestuous, the way I understand it.

  Burly-Bear: But there’s these mentions of some other man that both of them, the writer and E, have gotten together with for sex.

  Me: Every heterosexual man I’ve met salivates over the idea of being with two women. If that makes sense, wouldn’t it make equal sense that a bisexual male would want to bring together another man and a woman?

  Colonel: (coloring as if he’s discovering me to be a more distasteful young lady than he’d realized) Don’t know about any of that multiple-partner shenanigans. One thing I do know, though. The reference to Bartók. I know when that concert took place. The wife and I have season tickets to the Berklee. I missed that program last spring. No Beethoven that evening, as I recall it, but perhaps they altered the program, or maybe that’s just our writer’s penchant for alliteration. Wife went without me. I believe our lawyer accompanied her…(here he pauses to chuckle) he’s an officious fellow, quite useful in such situations. April 11, it was. Don’t know if that’s helpful, but I notice that this diary entry isn’t dated. That would make this relationship with E falling apart about nine months ago.