by A M Homes
The daughter continues to vomit, flushing the toilet again and again, until the father comes upstairs and stands outside the bathroom door.
“Is something broken?” he asks. “Are you breaking something in there? Plumbers get a hundred dollars an hour. You have no respect for machinery.”
“She’s throwing up,” the mother says, cracking open the door. “She must have eaten some chozzerai this afternoon that didn’t agree with her.”
“Oh,” the father says, backing off. “Hope it wasn’t something you cooked.” He stands in the hallway for a minute, listening to the waterfall, the whoosh and roar of the best American Standard. “Well, maybe she doesn’t have to flush so much, so violently. Could you just ask her to flush less?”
We are quite different, she and I. She is not who I thought she was, who I presented her to be, and so it goes for all of us, for all of this. Things are never quite what they seem. Her time with Matt was not what I had hoped. It was not the discovery of a drive, the awakening of an ambition, the development of a discerning palate for nature’s delicacies, the start of a brilliant career. Clearly, she is not a careerist. If she were, she would have been invigorated by this interlude, her appetite only whetted. She’d be ready, willing, rushing to begin again, to cultivate a fresh one. Instead, she wants out.
No, it’s apparent that I was wrong. This was a onetime thing, a rite of passage, a kind of bridging of the gap between childhood and adult life—however developmentally delayed. And despite her depression, her despondency, she is actually galloping right along, catching up, catching on. By the time school starts again, she’ll be ready to have an affair with either the melancholic professor of Russian literature or the lucky lady adviser living down the hall. I daren’t conjecture which way she’ll go—some things must remain a mystery. But she has been playing both ends against the middle, hoping to work something out. Is she there yet? She is en route.
Despite my best efforts, I am always the one who gets fucked. It won’t ever be any different, some things don’t change—I suppose I have to learn to enjoy it.
FOURTEEN
Prison. Morning. The tintinnabulation of the bells. I stand at the door, the gate to my cell. I hear the calling of the names. I hear the names, I know the crimes.
“Jerusalem Stole,” the sergeant calls.
“It’s a mistake, call me Jerry.”
“Frazier,” the sergeant says. “Frazier.”
“What do you want, blood?” Frazier bellows.
I stand ready. But when my name is called, I am strangely silent.
Again the sergeant calls. He presses against the bars of my cell, his keys jingle. He asks, “Everything all right?”
“What time is it?”
“Almost time.”
Prison. Morning. Breakfast doesn’t come.
Legi Rupa, breaker of the law.
I am calmer now, resting, readying myself for what comes next. I prepare, I pack.
You worry.
You worry because I act as if I’ve forgotten what happened—Clayton—as if it were nothing, no matter. You find my lack of commentary, my dulled demeanor, disconcerting as though I have too easily dismissed the day. The violence is not what counts. That’s expected of us. In fact I probably wouldn’t have even mentioned the scene with Clayton except that I knew you were waiting for it, wanting it, had been wanting it all along.
I aim to please.
Predetermined, predestined, fantasy cum reality. What kind of prison would it be if the men did not prey on each other? And is it really so different in here than it is out there with you? What value is there in dwelling on that sour moment when before us there is something more, something better? What’s done is done. Let’s put it behind us and move on.
“What do you want, blood?” Frazier screams unbidden down the hall and begins to blow his harmonica.
I am getting ready to go, done here. Finished. If I seem rushed, hurried, and harassed, it is because time is of the essence. Suddenly, after twenty-three years, another day is too much. I have received note and notice that momentarily I am to go before the committee.
When I leave, I will take with me only one thing, my archive.
In the smallest of storage spaces my treasure is buried, hidden in the hollowed-out shell of my foam pillow. Years ago I plucked out the spongy stuffing and little by little flushed it down the toilet mixed with my daily droppings. I constructed for myself a sort of safe-deposit box, a container for the bits and pieces, slivers of society. I carefully packed them in and restitched the ticking’s edge. Were I ever to be found out, to have the contents confiscated, a second set, a more complete compilation—including early versions of my own letters, letters I’ve sent—is kept under similar circumstances in a slit in my mattress. The items stored in this second safe are of slightly less value, the feather bed at my age seeming a more precarious repository—there always being the possibility that I might lose myself in the night, might wake to find myself swimming in something other than a wet dream, a flood, an incontinent’s nightmare. Piss-stained pages, paper tinged yellow shimmering with the mineral crystals, the crustation of evaporated excrete—a conservator’s conundrum, not the kind of compilation collectors would kvell over. In such condition a collection would surely suffer a serious drop in value, making it less than salable at Christie’s despite the interest of both serious collectors and that damned new museum—therefore it is my policy not to take liquids after 8 P.M.
I cannot give you the details of my archival activity; such specificity would leave me a target for theft and blackest mail. But let me drop you a few hints. I have your letters, all of them, the ones you wrote and should never have sent. Along with those, I possess the ruminations of a noted novelist, a man of strong opinions who for quite some time considered me his confidant, until I said something sharp about his wife and abruptly he broke off. In my file is the record of a series of exchanges between a prominent—pompous—film director and myself, the declaration of his desire to adapt my life to the silver screen. I indicated interest, specifying of course I would have to write the screenplay. Hasty letters hurried back and forth from coast to coast. I saw it as a love story, he as a horror flick. Sadly, there was a parting of the ways. C’est la vie. I have the detailed plans of psychiatrists who wished to take my case, not to cure me, but to pursue the publication of my musings on morality and criminality, notes on the nature of the beast, rounded out by forewords and afterwords, crude critical commentaries they would fashion themselves. I refused. Intellectus insanus. Fuck off, I said.
I have all that and more. I am the keeper of man’s mind, the chronicler of his fate, I make maps of the things he thinks but doesn’t dare admit. I carry confessions, stories of fathers who pass little girls walking to school and feel compelled to tackle one, mothers who purposely make their children cry, only to be called on to comfort them. I have the details, the pathetic outpourings of those who open their coats and flash that fang of flesh at whatever eye they can catch and then feel flush, thrilled—more fulfilled and productive at the office.
I have my files, a compendium of all persuasion and perversion. A literal library of man’s fate, every derivation, deviation, and despicable desire I keep squirreled away, stitched into my headrest—it’s no wonder I don’t sleep nights.
Kleinman passes my door. “No mail today.”
“Holiday?”
“Gaff. Just thought you should know. I’ve written a letter of complaint, but even it won’t go out until Wednesday.” He walks on. “No mail today,” he tells Frazier.
“What do you want, blood?” Frazier screams again, the phrase now stuck in his head.
Today’s the day. The clock is ticking. I have been summoned to speak. I go before the committee with a chance to exonerate myself, to extricate, or at least explain the debacle that has become my life.
A statement, a simple speech, a song and dance that will set them straight, an incandescent incantation, a charming presentat
ion, a show of sorts, the show of shows, it’s the only chance I’ve got. My appeal must be appealing, not entirely revealing, tucking in the tendency to be argumentative, artfully augmenting my audacity with the acuity of my observation and the alarming accuracy of my action. What can I possibly say or do? Act normal.
Everything is different from what it was before—before summer, before she arrived. I am alive again, unfettered in the head. Captivity is killing me, stifling even my sentences, my speech, confining my consciousness to this crappy cell. I’m coming undone. Enough is enough. I am chomping at the bit, dying to be released, but I cannot let them know that. My anxious arousal would only exacerbate their aggravation, their elaborate argument that I am not fit for society. Dispassion is the name of the game; flat as a pancake, dull as a board.
And before I go on, while we’re having this moment of privacy, there’s something I need to talk to you about, something that needs settling between you and me. Direct address: I’m talking to you, Herr Reader, realizing that it’s not the usual thing, knowing I’m not supposed to disassemble the invisible scrim that separates us. My apologies for suddenly aggressing. But it’s time we had it out, the two of us, alone, without interference. Concentrate, pay close attention, this is the last flash of lightning lucidity, before my rigor turns to rigor mortis.
I feel the need to reassure you—don’t respond, don’t answer, just listen, do with it what you will, and I promise not to mention this again.
I am fully aware of what you’ve been doing while you’ve been reading this—these are my pages you’re staining with your spunky splash. Your arousal, the woody in your woods, tickle in your twitty-twat, the fact that as you’ve read my mental monologue you fished out the familiar friend, rubbed it raw, stroked yourself, hello, pussy, sweet kitty cat—let the tiny tongue between your legs lick your fingers, giving them a sticky bath—and despite the depths to which it disturbed, you were released.
To is a preposition. Come is a verb. See Lenny Bruce for the rest of this routine.
To cum and then be disgusted, wholly horrified, is nothing to worry about—it happens to me all the time. That my speech makes your Suzie go silly and slick, your Walter whine, doesn’t mean you will turn into something as twisted as me—we all have our fantasies. But if I’ve struck a deeper cord and caused your randy raper to be reborn, to twitch and tingle, I would advise that as much as possible you avoid stress. And should great upheaval visit your life—it is in those moments a man might react and unwittingly take his daughter onto his lap—I suggest that to diffuse your imprudent impulses, you discuss as much as possible with your wife, and perhaps when you sleep, leave on the light.
Just be sure when settling down to go to bed that you leave the book open to these pages and let the ghostly air of eve draw the moisture from the paper magically, taking what’s damp and smutty and making it fresh, clean, and crispy for when we pick up again.
Some might believe that I blither just to shock, but what is shock if not some ancient identification, meaning that I have touched a sore spot, hit a nerve—think on it, will you—and some might believe that I blither to get a rise, and admittedly I’ve done that, too, but it is hardly my goal. True, I get trapped in my tirade, but would assume, would trust, that you—being who you are, where you are, out there and not in here—have sense enough not to get caught up in it. I would assume that you are bright enough not to buy the surface of my grotesque but know how to push it aside in order to see what’s really there. Me. I am here. Buried beneath these unspeakable things. A boy, a man, a person quite like yourself. Even if that makes it worse, even if it makes it harder, don’t forget: I am no better or worse than you. A conspiracy, a social construct supported by judge, jury, and tattletales, has put me away because I threaten them. I implore you not to be such a scaredy-cat.
You see me like this, so desperate—how do you think I feel, so permanently undressed?
Prison. Bells. Commotion in the corridor. I think they’re coming for me, but instead it’s an emergency house call for my neighbor. Frazier has attempted to kill himself. He has swallowed his harmonica. The doctor is with him now, working on it. It’s stuck, lodged in his throat. When he inhales, he blows a note, a sharp, squawky E. Exhaling, it’s flat B.
Prison, here, now, this is the moment I’ve been waiting for. After things have moved so slowly for so long, they happen quick, quickly now. Beside myself with joy, I bounce up and down on my bed, accidentally knocking my head against the wall. Momentarily I will be released. How will it go? What will be the protocol?
Am I to be taken to the door and unceremoniously turned out? Or perhaps they’ll want me to stick around and sign some autographs? My stomach gurgles and growls. Asparagus. The first thing I’ll eat will be asparagus. I haven’t had any in years.
Henry, my private pharmacist, has left me a few tablets, something he made himself, hand-pressed. I take two, hoping they’ll head off a soon-to-be headache.
I begin to prepare, ripping open my pillow, pulling out the archive. Same with the mattress, I take it entirely apart. The room is strewn with material debris, the aged tick, ticking of my bedding, cotton pad turned to cotton balls. Suddenly, my cell, my cage, is every bit the chicken coop, feathers flying.
My archive, my autobiography, is in hand.
It comes as no surprise that I haven’t got a carrying case, no nice leather luggage for my loot. I empty my shelves, my wanna-be drawers, wrapping everything in a sheet. On top of it all I carefully place the last of her six Schmitt boxes— the butterflies I have so carefully saved to preserve a piece of history, no small memory.
I ponder my parts, asking myself, How should I go? What should they see?
My costume, classic criminal couturier. For my exit, I will wear the very outfit I entered in: the white shirt and mouse gray suit that has been lying in wait all of these years, permanently pressed under the weight of my library books, awaiting my triumphant return to society. Dry with disuse, the shirt cracks as I unfold it, comes apart at the seams—it’s not what you wear, but the way you wear it, I tell myself. All too easily, I can justify anything. Though it is early, the temperature is up. A layer of sweat coats my skin, making me a little greasy. When was the last time I bathed? The pants, winter wool, are too tight—the jacket, I remember, was traded away years ago for an extra blanket. A thin roll of flesh seeps over the waistband, I try to suck it in, it doesn’t respond.
Underwear or not? I try it both ways. With, it bunches up, looking like a diaper. Without, everything is obvious, perfectly clear. I go without. The anxiety of anticipation.
Before I zip, I piss a bit—a single squirt—into my hands and run my fingers through my hair, slicking back what few threads I’ve still got. The high mineral content of first morning urine gives this homemade hairspray extra hold. Inhaling the sweet stink of my own perfume, I comb everything into place, including the pubes.
My shoes are impossibly tight and with broken, knotted laces.
Checking myself in the mirror, I am dapper if dilapidated, the effects of time are evident.
There’s something else; another thing I’ve not said—for days I’ve had an erection, or part of an erection. I’ve been pulling at myself, whacking and waxing it with spittle, with Chap Stick, with anything I can find. I’ve not been able to get it to go off or just go away. Permanently demanding and yet will only get a little stiff. And now it hurts, actually aches, is rubbed raw as though I’ve taken it back and forth over a cheese grater. Regardless of the level of my injury, I cannot let it alone. I take to leaving it out. The last three buttons of my fly are undone. I fish it out, balls and all, and let it sit, plumped and promising in the air.
I want only that it should rise again and shoot off once more. I cannot leave myself like this; tail between my legs, hangdog, limp dick. My mind goes everywhere trying to find something that would appeal. Butter. I squeeze the pats of the oleo they brought me with my supper and stroke myself, creaming my corn, making the mig
hty man into a lightly salted sweet thing. I butter up and still it hangs only at half, a greased and shiny rod, looking as if it’s already been dipped, pulled fresh from the hole, and is now settling down, going back to sleep. Again, I try and imagine the graciousness of a girl, her spacious slit, the womanly wound that can swallow me whole. How odd it must be to have at your center a great gap, a poisonous pit.
Nothing works. It lies limp. No longer fascinated.
Henry arrives on his morning rounds. “I have your shot,” he whispers through the slot in the door. The metal door frame acts like a microphone and amplifies his voice. “It’s cooked and ready to go. Open up.”
The door is locked. I am in prison, in jail, and my door is locked! Panic upon panic. Ordinarily we are unlocked from 8 A.M. until 9 P.M.; unlocked and encouraged to circulate.
“Open the door,” Henry says.
I have fast developed a voracious appetite for Henry’s potions, although I’ve no idea what exactly the elements of his elixirs are. Regardless, the poison is perfect. Not surprisingly now, I need that shot more than anything.
“Open the door,” Henry says.
My heart beats fast. It is frightening to feel you can’t get out. “It’s locked,” I say breathlessly. All morning. I didn’t know it until now—how could I have been such a fool? It never occurred to me. “It’s locked,” I scream, suddenly scared out of my wits. What are they planning for me?
“Calm down,” Henry says. “We can work with it. I’m a professional, don’t forget. I know whereof I speak. I know what to do. Put your mouth on the hole,” Henry says, referring to the slot in the door. “I’ll shoot you through the hole.”
