Time to Go

by Stephen Dixon

  His father was a pharmacist and everyone called him Doc. Don had three best friends over the years whose fathers were pharmacists and all their acquaintances and customers called them Doc. Don’s father was the only one of the four who brought most of his pharmaceutical samples home, leaving very little closet space for anyone else in the apartment. After he died, Don’s mother asked Don to sort the good samples from the bad, but he just put them all into about a dozen big plastic garbage bags and threw them out.

  He met a woman in England when he was in college, corresponded with her during the school year and the following summer hitchhiked with her from her home in South Africa to Cairo. It took them four months. They were in love when they started out and hated each other by the time they reached the Sudan. He saw her off at the Cairo airport and her next to last words to him were “What did I ever see in you I wonder?” His last words to her were “If we’d time I’d remind you, but as for me I used to love the way you looked, acted and talked and that you answered and so intelligently and lengthily a letter of mine every other week and that you thought there was nothing better in life for you to do than become a hospital nurse and that you once sent me a nine by twelve inch photo of yourself in a skimpy swimsuit and that you hailed from Estcourt, Natal, and summered when I wintered and that when we lived in our native countries we never saw the same stars.” “Is that true about the stars I wonder?” and she went up the ramp to the plane. He was broke and the American embassy wouldn’t loan him money so he called his folks collect for the fare home.

  His sister was Gretel to his Hansel in a summer camp play. He wanted a girl closer in age to him to play the part but the drama counselor said their being brother and sister would make the play more realistic and endearing to the audience. The camp photographer took pictures of the performance and till his sister died his mother loved to bring them out and show them to the women friends he’d ask over for dinner or drinks.

  He was playing ring-a-levio one night on his block. A girl named Mary, who lived on the next block, was hiding in the same brownstone walkway with him. They were kneeling close together, their shoulders and arms touched. She had on a short skirt and when she looked over the walkway wall to see if the person who was “it” was anywhere near them, he looked up between her legs, hoping to see her vagina or maybe some hair if she had any there yet but only saw the ends of her buttocks sticking out of her panties. Later, as a prisoner, it seemed his underpants were wet. He felt down inside them, thinking he might have made. His penis and the pants around it were sticky. He got scared for a second, then remembered the dirty part of a book he’d recently read and something some boy had said, and thought Holy Christ, for the first time in my life I’ve spermed.

  “Touch me again and I’ll call the cops,” a woman friend said to him. She got dressed, left his apartment and he never spoke to her after that till he bumped into her in a museum garden a few years later. She said hello and smiled, then must have remembered what he did that night and walked past him into the museum. He started after her, wanted to ask what it was he did that night—he’d completely forgotten or had blocked it out—so he could apologize again or for the first time. “I don’t care how bad it was, I want to know,” he wanted to say, but the museum was crowded and he couldn’t find her. That evening he wanted to call her and apologize for whatever he’d done that time years ago, but her name wasn’t in the phonebook. He knew a couple of people who might know her or how to find her, but then thought it’s all right, you can have a few harmless enemies in this world and still sleep well and live through a normal day every day. In time you’ll straighten it out with her, if it was that important.

  For the last two months, when he brushed his hair on the right side, his head hurt. He went to a doctor, something he hadn’t done in about a dozen years, and pointed to the spot. The doctor felt it, looked into his eyes with a penlight, took his blood pressure and said “I know you must be worried it’s brain cancer or some form of brain damage or anything resembling those, but that you’re definitely on your way out of this beautiful world, but it’s not so. You’re healthier than you almost should be for your age; when you’re approaching fifty you should begin conducting yourself as if you are. You must have hit your head hard two months back and it hasn’t healed fully.” He was relieved when he left her office, didn’t feel any pain the next day when he brushed his hair or pressed down on that spot, but has felt the same pain and even worse every day since for the last two weeks. He was worried about it again but more worried what a neurologist might do to try to find the reason behind the pain, so for the time being he’d avoid brushing that part of his head and pretend to believe the pain would ultimately go away.

  His wife was playing with his penis when she said “Good God, you’ve blood coming out of the hole.” He went to a doctor, afraid he had something serious. His wife went with him, saying “Don’t get excited, it’s probably nothing. People always think they have the worst when they should think that nine times out of ten they have nothing, and if they do have something, it can usually be cured simply and quickly.” The doctor said it was a minor case of prostatitis and prescribed pills that would clear up the infection in two weeks. “Can I have sex during this time?” he asked and the doctor said “By all means—it’s good for the prostate gland. Only thing to stop you from it now is if your wife for the next few days minds a drop or two of your blood.”

  For a year his uncle showed him a lot of attention. He took him to professional baseball and hockey games every other week, took him to first-run movies or Broadway plays at night, let him stay with him an entire summer month at his beach house, gave him a hundred dollars on his birthday and told him to buy what he liked with it. They were never close before then, and after the year his uncle stopped calling or coming by. He’d call his uncle and his uncle would say “I’m busy this weekend, kid. I’ll see you next Saturday or Sunday,” and the next weekend he wouldn’t call or show up either. Finally Don’s mother told him “I think my brother’s going through some change-of-life crisis—don’t feel it’s your fault he doesn’t act the way he used to with you.” Ten years later his mother called and said “Uncle Nat died in Miami last night—a heart attack. I’m flying down with Dad—can you look after my plants?” He said “I’d like to come too,” and she said “What for?—you two were never close.”

  His wife said “Let’s renew our marriage vows, just together, Carole can stay with my mother. We’ll write the ceremony ourselves, be our own witnesses and judge, go on the Caribbean honeymoon we never took, not tell anyone what we’ve done and only my mother where we’re going—it’ll be our one secret we’ll keep from everyone for life.” “Let me think about it,” he said, and that was the last they spoke of it.

  He was thumbing through the phone directory looking for the zip code page when his wife said “Excuse me, I don’t mean to bother you if you’re doing anything important, but would you like to go to bed for fifteen minutes?” “I just want to find this,” he said and she said “What are you looking for? A zip code; for Christ sakes. Forget my proposal,” and he said “No no, I have it now just let me mark it down,” and she said “Next time I should try to catch you when you’re reading page five of the Post, because I’m not asking too much, am I?” and he said “No, I can always do it; just it might take a little more time.”

  His wife said “Please don’t take it—it can’t be good for you. The others here are all heads and know how to handle the stuff,” and he said “I always wanted to take a trip—now’s my chance, and I swear I’ll be okay,” and swallowed the LSD tab. First they were all gods and goddesses on Mount Olympus and his wife, who hadn’t taken any, said “If this is all it’s going to be, maybe it wasn’t so bad after all,” and he said “Drop another grape in my mouth and then come kiss me, you lovely beast—oh God, I love you,” But soon after that he became a famous black gospel singer and sang gospels in her voice and then he went outdoors to embrace all of nature and crawled l
ow in the snow because he thought one of the other LSD takers was trying to kill him with a rifle and then he was in a circle with three other naked people in a dungeon, all with their heads yoked between the thighs of the person in front of them and turning a horizontal wheel for what would be an eternity and then he was a bug on the dungeon floor and human feet were trying to smash him. He was given a strong tranquilizer and while he was coming down he told his wife he had gone mad and nothing would ever make him sane again and he’d be completely dependent on her or in a squalid institution for life, “so listen, your friend with the gun before, get him to put it to my head and shoot perfectly.” Then he fell asleep and the next morning his wife said to him “I know how you hate I told-you-so’s but I wish you’d listen to me on things like this,” and he said “You’re right, no need to hedge around it, but I’ve seen the darkest I can become and nothing so much before has made me appreciate sanity and day-to-day sameness and simple sleep and just sitting here with you, for instance, and admitting any of this.”

  “You’re being hired for your musculature and height, not your potential to teach,” the assistant principal said to him, and an hour later, after he introduced himself to the class as the new permanent sub and asked the students to one by one tell him their names, a boy stood up, the first student to ever respond to him in his own class, and said “I’m not taking orders from any white man,” and left the room. “Come back,” he said, “you come back.”

  He was in college, dating a girl from New Jersey. He took the bus from Port Authority and was walking in the rain along the street to her house when she jumped out from behind a tree just to the side of him and said “Boo,” He looked at her from about ten feet away, sheepish grin on her face, body still partly hidden by the tree trunk. That was the single happiest moment of his life. Other than that he was in love with her and had looked forward to seeing her that day, he can’t really explain it beyond that. He went over to her, they hugged and kissed, but the most rhapsodic part of the experience was over for him.

  He finished The Idiot, thought it the best book he read and wanted to talk to someone about it. No one he knew had read it, not even his brothers and mother who among them seemed to have read everything. A couple of high school friends said if the book was that great they’d start reading it right away, but he said by the time they finished he’d probably have forgotten most of it. “I need someone to talk about it with now. Maybe someone in your family,” and one friend reported back that his father had started it in college but couldn’t get past the first fifty pages.

  He sent away ten cents and a box top and every Saturday after that waited for the mail in the building’s vestibule or on weekdays rushed home around lunchtime when the mail was often delivered. His mother said “It takes time,” but he said “Maybe this company just wanted to steal my dime.” Two months later the mailman said “I think this is for you. I could’ve left it by your letter box yesterday hut I knew the contents were especially precious to you,” and he gave him the small package. He opened it in his room, put the ring on his finger, adjusted the band, blew the ring’s whistle, peered into its sight, learned where north and south were in the room, held the ring under a light and then went into a dark closet, shut the door and brought the ring up close to his face and was able to make out the ring and the knuckle of his ring finger.

  His mother took his sister and him to see Macy’s Santa Claus.

  Santa’s helper ran the specially decorated elevator, other helpers led them down and around a dark corridor that looked like a funhouse’s and at the end of it gave them each a brown paper bag of Christmas candy. When his turn came, Santa sat him on his lap, called him “a skinny lad” and asked what he wanted for Christmas. “An electric train set and the right to change my name to Toby Tyler.”

  His father was drafted. For a while Don slept in the same bed with his mother because she was afraid to sleep alone. But he kicked too much and occasionally wet himself, so she put him back in the boys’ room. Years later he mentioned this and she denied he’d ever slept in the same bed with her even when he was sick, so he stopped talking about it or even bringing up that time when his father was in the service.

  His parents were on their double bed. He crawled into the room, stood up by holding the bedspread, wondered how they got into the bed. They must use a ladder and he imagined a ladder against the side of the bed and his parents climbing up it. He raised his arms and shook them and his father lifted him up and dropped him between them.

  He was sitting at his favorite bar drinking a beer. A man sat next to him, said “Beer is it? Another beer for this young man and a daiquiri for me,” and then said to Don “So what are your credentials or would you like me to first give mine?” and put his hand on Dan’s knee and rubbed it. Don said “Excuse me, take your hand off, I don’t swing that way,” but must have said it louder than he intended to, for the man saw some other drinkers staring at him, got up, though the drinks he’d ordered were just now set down, and headed for the door. “What am I to do with your drinks, you goddamn fag?” the bartender said, but the man was outside. “You attract the wrong types,” the bartender said to Don. “Gain some weight.”

  It was around 4 p.m., a school day, he went with about eight of his friends and one of them yelled from the street “Herminia, Herminia, it’s Jack,” and when she opened the window on the third floor, he said “Can we come upstairs?” “Too many of you,” she said. “Not so many,” Jack said, “and we all pay.” “Okay, come up.” They went up the smelly stairs, all sat in the living room with her brother, she said, while her mother and daughter stayed in the bathroom. “You have to pee,” Herminia said to the boys, “go outside someplace.” Jack went into her room first. There was cat feces in the middle of the room and her brother took out a knife and threw it at it but always missed, maybe intentionally, though the blade always stuck in the floor. Jack came out, said to the rest of them “Have your two bucks ready and do what she says, not what you want.” One boy said he was too far back in line and went downstairs. Don was fifth or sixth. He gave her the money, she put it in a cigar box, took off her bathrobe, told him to get undressed quick, got on the bed, spit into her hand and wiped it between her legs and said “Now please, mister, fast.” It was his first time. After he was done he said he was leaking, did she have a tissue or something, and she threw him a soiled dishrag. He zippered up without using it. “Again, nice, but alone or with no more than two next time,” she said to him just before he left the room, “and five dollars, five, this time only special favor for Jack.” He waited with the others till the next two were done and then they all went downstairs. “How was it?” Jack asked him outside and he said “Awful, but I’m glad I did it already,” and for a month after that thought he had a venereal disease.

  A friend knew of a prostitute on 85th Street. They went right to her door, she said through it “Come back in fifteen minutes,” they came back and she said “Who goes first?” “Only he wants it tonight,” his friend said when he saw she was pregnant and Don said to him “I do very much—I don’t care.” He went to bed with her, she charged five dollars, and after it was over she asked for a two dollar tip “because I did a little extra for you and, stomach and all, you can’t say it was bad.” He was already dressed, she was putting on her clothes, and he reached over to the dresser to put two dollars on it but grabbed his five off it and ran for the door. She yelled “Stop, that’s mine now,” and grabbed his shirt and pulled his hair. He turned around, pulled her hands off him and pushed her in the chest and she fell to the floor. “Oh Jesus,” she said, holding her stomach, and sucked in some air, blew it out, opened her eyes on him again and started to get up and he ran out the door. “Help, a man robbed me,” she yelled into the hallway and two men came out of the door next to hers and chased him down the three flights of stairs, one waving a bottle it seemed. His friend was waiting on the stoop. “Get going,” Don said, running past him and they ran down the block, looked back, didn
’t see anyone chasing them and got a cab. His friend said “What happened? The time I went to her she was nothing but sweet,” “She wanted another five after and I just didn’t think that was fair,” “Next time give it to her or you’ll get us both killed. I’m crossing her off my list, even for six months from now,” and he took out his address book and crossed out her name and number.

  He didn’t shave the week after his father died. His mother said on the third day of their mourning period “You look dirty—stop grieving so hard. Shave for me,” He said “I can’t seem to raise the razor to my face,” and she said “Go to a barber,” “I can get hepatitis from one and besides, for some reason I don’t think it’s right to go to a barber right now or even to go outside,” “I’ll shave you, or one of your brothers,” and he said “Right now I’m feeling a little disturbed so I’d trust someone else’s hand even less than my own, even with an electric razor in it. It might give me a shock or explode. But don’t worry. I’m not planning to grow a beard and as long as I don’t slash my clothes and throw things, everyone should be able to respect me for the time being.”

  He got his draft notice and went to the army center for the physical. He passed all the physical tests, though he tried his best not to, and then intentionally answered the psychological test wrong in several places and was sent in to see the psychiatrist. The psychiatrist said “You checked here you have nightmares, then crossed it off and checked you don’t—which is it, and if you do have them, how bad are they?” “I do have them, but didn’t want to give you any excuse for keeping me out the army, but it’s okay, because they come and go, nothing serious, and one of these days, not that I’m claiming I know when, I know they’ll all be gone and I’ll sleep completely peacefully again,” “Do you have many male friends?” and he said “Some, but not for very long any more, and certainly not as many as when I was younger—three, four years ago, but okay, people change, I do, you do, we all have to, right? We go through certain things, not that what I went through was so bad—in fact it wasn’t when you compare yourself to the rest of the world. It’s just that my friends got to be different than me, in interests and things, so they didn’t understand me anymore or didn’t try to and I just didn’t like what they were doing with their lives and told them so, that’s all. I speak my mind, sometimes without anyone asking and when I know what I say might hurt, but so do a lot of people, so is that so bad?” “What about women—do you go out with them much?” and he said “Very much, or at least I want to, and I used to go out much more too—in high school and when I was a dancer. But it’s either they’re not attracted to me as they used to be or I just don’t find that many to my liking in many ways—intellectually, spiritually, and that they’re always pampering themselves so much, which I used to appreciate when I was in the ballet, more really for professional reasons, but now find it a little too self-centered and stupid. I do have one good woman friend though, but just to talk to,” “What do you talk about with her?” and he said “Things we don’t like—our problems, but not mental ones. Just what we think about various people and daily life. And she in a way is like me, which is probably why we get along so well and can speak so freely to one another. She also had plenty of girl friends and went out a lot with men and now she doesn’t and for many of the same reasons as me. Anyway, it’s easier to talk to her than to anyone else, including, right now, my family,” “But you get along with your family—you checked a yes for that here,” and he said “Oh yes, we’re a very close bunch and always have been, just at the moment everyone’s gone off some place and my sister, who’s really too immature for me to speak to deeply, well we don’t get along that well.” “Why do you want to be in the army?” and he said “Because of everything I talked about so far—why else? To make new friends and maybe to get away from college and home for a while and because if I’m not let in—not that you saw me volunteering, you know—my brothers will think something’s wrong with me, since the two oldest served honorably and my father was in World War Two, though he only ran a pharmacy at an Arizona base.” “How would you describe your relationship with your father other than what you checked off on the test?” and he said “Close, or somewhat, though he was much older than most fathers of boys my age when I was growing up, which might explain some things, But I really didn’t know how close I was to him till after he died. Don’t misunderstand me. What I mean is I didn’t know how much I loved and missed him till after he died, Before that, like I suppose most boys and young men to their fathers, you just take the relationship and his presence for granted and never think he’s going to die.” “What would you say if I told you that I think for the present time you and the army are incompatible?” and he said “No we’re not. If you think we are, then you’re dead wrong and you should send me to someone else here to examine me—anyone you want, I don’t care—because I’m just nervous now in front of you, that’s the way I always get with tests and then when I try to explain why I didn’t do well on them.” “No, perhaps in a year from now the army will send you another draft notice; but for now you’ll have to be temporarily deferred,” and he said “My family’s not going to like it, I don’t like it, and I insist you let me see another psychiatrist, because I don’t see how anyone person by himself can make such an important and maybe career threatening decision on someone else.” His brothers all said he was wrong to pretend he was disturbed and he said “I just didn’t want to clean out any stove grease with my bare hands, which I hear some country sergeant always makes the city boy do, or train with live bullets over my head or even hold a loaded gun,” and they said he could have avoided the training and sadistic sergeant and guns by using the same intelligence and cunning he used to get out of the army and he said “Maybe, but at the time it seemed the only solution and now it’s too late. Maybe I’ll be called up in a year as the doctor said,” but he never was.