We'd visit Sincerely often during the six or eight months while August served out his sentence, sit in the yard sipping iced tea she'd poured with clay-stained hands, and in that time I very simply—and articulately, to myself—fell in love. I was still pre-sexual enough to isolate my feelings for Sincerely as romantic and pure. In stories like this one children are supposed to get mixed up, and to imagine that adults will stop and wait for them to grow up, but I wasn't confused for a moment. I understood that my love for Sincerely pertained to the idea of what kind of woman I meant to love in my future life as a man. I promised myself she would be exactly like Sincerely, and that when I met her I would love her perfectly and resolutely, that I would be better to her than I have in fact ever been to anyone—than anyone's ever been to anyone else.
So my love wasn't damaged by August's return from jail (he'd never gone upstate, instead served his whole time in the Brooklyn House of Detention, on Atlantic Avenue). I didn't even bother to resent his possession of Sincerely, which I saw as intrinsically flawed by grown-up sex and diffidence. August wasn't a worthy rival, and so I just went on secretly loving Sincerely with my childish idealism. The moron-genius of my young self felt it knew better than any adult how to love, felt certain it wouldn't blow the chance if it were given one. Not one day I've lived since has satisfied that standard. Of course, it is strange and sad for me now to see a shade of future triangulation in that emotional arrangement—I'd cast August as an early stand-in for R, a man I would pretend was irrelevant even as I fitted myself into his place in life.
What I'd promised to hold on to then, M, is the same thing I'd raged against losing when you began to grow away from me, when I failed the test presented by your sultry new self that senior year. How ashamed that promiser would be to learn—had some malicious time traveler drifted back to whisper it in his ear—about the pointless ruin of my years with A. Those promises we make to ourselves when we are younger, about how we mean to conduct our adult lives, can it be true we break every last one of them? All except for one, I suppose: the promise to judge ourselves by those standards, the promise to remember the child who would be so appalled by compromise, the child who would find jadedness wicked.
Yes, my childish self would read this letter and think me poisoned with knowledge, but the truth is that what I flung against A so recklessly was my innocence, preserved in a useless form. The revving heart of my hopefulness, kicked into gear anew, is the most precious thing about me, I refuse to vilify it. I hope I fall in love again. But it's a crude innocence that fails to make the distinctions that might have protected me from A, and A from me. For by imagining I could save her from her marriage, by that blustery optimism by which I concealed from myself my own despair at the cul-de-sac lust had led us into, I forced her to compensate by playing the jaded one on both our behalves. What I mean to say is that I forced her to play me that song, M, by grinning at her like a loon. Like the way I grinned at Bess Hersh. I gave A no choice but to be the dark lady, by being the moron-child who thought love could repair what love had wrecked. A motorcycle that's gone off a cliff isn't repaired by another motorcycle.
Well, I've failed. This whole letter is about A, I see that now. You wonder whether you can stand never to know the touch of a fresh hand, the trembling flavor of a new kiss, and I'm desperately trying to keep from telling you the little I know: it's sweeter than anything, for a moment. For just a moment, there's nothing else. As to all you're weighing it against, your wife and child, I know less than nothing. The wisdom of your ambivalence, the whimsical, faux-jaded wit you share in your letter, as you contemplate the beauties around you, all that poise will be shattered if you act—I can promise you that much. You're more innocent than you know. I speak to you from the dark end of the street, but it's a less informed place than you'd think. All I can do for you is frame the question I've framed for myself: Where to steer the speeding motorcycle of one's own innocence? How to make it a gift instead of a curse?
I think we need a new national anthem.
I'm ending this letter without saying anything about your incredible tale of the salaryman masturbating on the subway. Well, there, I've mentioned it. I'm also grateful to know that Godzilla's not what he's cracked up to be, that he's just another mediocre slugger with a good agent and a memorable nickname. What a joy it would be to see the Yankees really take a pratfall on that move. Bad enough when they pillage the other American teams, but that the world is their oyster too has become unbearable. Of course, the Mets go on signing haggard veterans and I think there's no hope at all, but you can be certain Giuseppe and I will be out at Shea having our hearts broken this May, as always. In our hearts it's always spring, or 1969, or something like that. I only wish we had some outfielders who could catch the ball.
Yours,
E
Also by Jonathan Lethem
The Fortress of Solitude
This Shape We're In
Motherless Brooklyn
Girl in Landscape
As She Climbed Across the Table
The Wall of the Sky, the Wall
of the Eye (Stories)
Amnesia Moon
Gun, with Occasional Music
With Carter Scholz
Kafka Americana
As Editor
The Vintage Book of Amnesia
The Year's Best Music Writing 2002
PUBLISHED BY DOUBLEDAY
a division of Random House, Inc.
DOUBLEDAY and the portrayal of an anchor with a dolphin are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Versions of some of these stories first appeared elsewhere. “The Vision” (the opening paragraph of which shares several sentences with The Fortress of Solitude, a novel) was published in Tin House and reprinted in Bestial Noise: The Tin House Fiction Reader. “Access Fantasy” first appeared in Starlight 2 and was reprinted in Histories of the Future. “The Spray” was published in Fetish. “Planet Big Zero” was published in Lit and reprinted in The KGB Bar Reader. “The Glasses” was published in the Voice Literary Supplement. “The Dystopianist, Thinking of His Rival, Is Interrupted by a Knock on the Door” was published in Conjunctions and reprinted in Pushcart Prize Stories XXVIII. “Super Goat Man” was published in The New Yorker. “The National Anthem” was published in Black Clock and was reprinted in Lit Riffs.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Lethem, Jonathan.
Men and cartoons : stories / Jonathan Lethem.—1st ed.
p. cm.
Contents: The vision—Access fantasy—The spray—Vivian Relf—Planet big zero—The glasses—The dystopianist, thinking of his rival, is interrupted by a knock on the door—Super goat man—The national anthem.
I. Title.
PS3562.E8544M46 2004
813'.54—dc22
2004050039
Copyright © 2004 by Jonathan Lethem
All Rights Reserved
eISBN: 978-0-307-27696-4
v3.0
Men and Cartoons Page 11
