by Chuck Kinder
Actually, that might not be a bad idea.
Hey, I’ll do it. I’ll do it. It’s as good as done. But, hey, I’ll have to wait in the car. You know me. I get edgy. Docs, they give me the willies, too.
Do you love your kids, old Ralph? If you could do it all over again, would you have kids?
Those criminal kids steal me blind, Ralph said. —I’ve got those kids dead to rights. I’ve caught them red-handed time and again.
But would you want kids, if you could go back and do it all over again?
Alice Ann was knocked up when we got married, Ralph said. —But you know that.
That doesn’t answer my question, Jim said. —This is important to me, old dog. Would you?
Well, I’ll tell you, then. You don’t know what helpless frustration is until you have kids. Frustration and unrelieved responsibility and permanent distraction that can make a grown man want to jump off a building. Does that answer your question?
Ralph, let me ask you this: When you jerk off like a monkey, who do you think about?
You are stoned, aren’t you?
Come on, Ralph, tell me. I told you about my lump, which is probably the most personal thing I’ve ever shared with anybody in my life. My wife doesn’t even know about my lump yet.
Oh, I don’t know, Ralph said. —I think about the usual sort of women, I guess. I’m just a regular guy. Marilyn Monroe. You know. I like Candy Bergen. Ann-Margret. Hanoi Jane. Sometimes Jackie O. Susan Sontag.
What about your lovely ladyfriend?
Sure, I think about her. I think about Lindsay. I think about her a lot.
Do you have a picture of your lovely lady in Montana, Ralph?
Sure.
Could I see it?
Well, I guess so. Sure, why not? Ralph said. He went to the door and looked up and down the hallway, then looked out the kitchen window into the driveway. He slipped his wallet out of his back pocket and then fumbled around opening flaps and folds. —I’ve got me a secret compartment, Ralph said, and chuckled. He glanced out the kitchen window once again, then slid out a snapshot and handed it to Jim.
Jim couldn’t believe his eyes. Ralph’s girlfriend was beautiful. The old Running Dog! This Lindsay person was an absolutely lovely woman, with smoky gray eyes set sort of far apart and long, dark, thick hair, and a wide mouth, full lips, full moist-looking lips. Jim permitted himself to picture her going down on old, rotten Running Dog Ralph like a submarine.
So, what do you think, old Jim? Ralph said, stepping around behind Jim, looking over his shoulder. —She’s something, huh?
Not bad, Jim said, and then he said, Ralph, I don’t really have a lump. I just told you that. Don’t ask me why.
Jesus, why would you tell me something like that?
I said don’t ask me why, Ralph. I’m not myself today.
You really had me going. You really did.
I’m sorry. There’s no excuse for it. I was being an asshole. I do have to go to the doc’s, though. That much is true. Routine stuff. And I don’t really need a ride. But thanks for offering.
You had me going, old Jim. I was rattled.
I owe you, buddy. Here, buddy, Jim said, and took a couple of joints from his shirt pocket and handed them to Ralph.
Well, thanks, old Jim. Hey, you hungry at all? Ralph said. He stepped over to the refrigerator and opened it and peered in. —I could go for a sandwich myself. I got a big load of deli stuff just last night. Ham. Cheese. You name it.
No. Thanks, though. I’ve got to make that doc appointment somehow.
Damn it to hell! Ralph exclaimed as he rummaged through the refrigerator. —Gone!
Everything is gone! Gone! Not a bite left. Not a sad morsel. There’s no end to it. Ever. I don’t believe those kids. Those criminal kids. There’s never anything left over for me. Never, Ralph said as he opened and closed drawers.
I need to hit your head, old Ralph. Before I take off. I feel a serious number two coming on, Jim said, and slipped the snapshot of Ralph’s girlfriend into his shirt pocket.
Help yourself, Ralph said. —You better take some newspaper with you. We’re out of toilet paper as usual.
Okeydokey, Jim said, picked up the little plastic sperm-sample jar, and rushed from the room.
Secret Sons
So there Jim sat, wearing dark glasses and a raincoat and that beat- up old fedora he affected back in those days pulled low over his eyes on a lovely, clear California day, in a campus clinic at 2:46. Under the flap of his long coat Jim held a tightly wrapped paper sack which contained a small plastic jar that in turn held a single, tiny tear of sperm he had masturbated himself bloody to obtain in Ralph’s disaster of a bathroom, while gazing into the gray eyes of Ralph’s lovely girlfriend and kicking at cats. Jim stared helplessly at the large round clock on the wall above the desk of what was surely the world’s most beautiful nurse. How lovely her blond hair looked piled high like that under her cute white dove of a cap. Such a long, graceful neck. Such soft-looking, delicate breasts pressed into the cupped white starchness of that uniform. The speed of the second hand on the clock above her desk was insane. Jim rubbed his bloodshot eyes beneath his shades and remembered vividly watching another pretty blond nurse, who looked like the twin of that beautiful nurse behind the desk, walk slowly toward him carrying a syringe with a needle the approximate size of a harpoon, intent upon pumping his blood full of the raging hormones of a normal boy.
What Jim remembered then with a sudden and intense vividness was the darkening blue winter light of that Midwestern afternoon sky when he was nine and in Rochester, Minnesota, walking with his parents from their hotel three blocks away to the Mayo Clinic to be made as good as new. Jim was also going to get to meet some real interesting kids who had come from the four corners of the earth to be made as good as new, his folks had assured him. Dirty snow was piled beside the walks higher than his head. When he talked, his teeth hurt in the frigid wind blowing down the high, narrow alleys of dirty snow, but there were so many questions he needed to ask that day.
Will I get a shot today? Jim had asked his mom, and walked into the frozen cracked cloud of his own words. I don’t think you’ll be getting any shots today, Jim’s mom said. Jim said, If I do get a shot, will it be in my arm or in my behind? Will I have to pull my pants down in front of a nurse? How would I know a thing like that ahead of time? his mom said; then she said, Now, don’t go to worrying yourself sick, honey. Everyone here is going to be real nice to you. Nobody here wants to hurt you, not if they can help it. That’s right, soldier boy, Jim’s dad had piped up. That’s how come the nice doctor is getting paid a goddamn arm and a leg, to know what the hell he’s doing.
The three of them had sat for what seemed like hours in a huge, hot, stuffed, windowless waiting room, where other grimfaced parents sat silently with their own deformed children, everyone thinking about the same thing, thinking that any amount of pain, suffering, and humiliation was worth gimped kids being made good as new. Jim had stared helplessly at a girl with no face until his turn was called, and his dad had admonished him to be a brave soldier boy when that pretty blond nurse jabbed that enormous needle into his cold, shivery, bare, little boy butt, and even his supportive folks had laughed nervously out loud when his fart had exploded from the cave of his pain and embarrassment like the croak of some fabled, monstrous frog.
So years later Jim had sat in the campus clinic’s waiting room and watched the insanely speeding second hand of the large round clock on the wall above the desk of the world’s most beautiful blond nurse. The pudgy pervert with the long brown hair who had sat down beside Jim on the couch and the thin, effeminate black man wearing a single silver earring shaped like a tiny fish, who had sat down in the chair opposite, both obviously only half through some sort of sex change in one direction or the other, kept giving Jim looks, this big bozo wearing a fedora, shades, and raincoat on this hot, perfectly sunny California day and going in God only knows what direction. I’m here to stick u
p the sperm bank, you deformed fuckers, is what Jim screamed at them in his mind. The speed of the clock’s second hand was simply insane. Will it hurt? Will I have to pull my pants down in front of people? The brown paper bag hidden under Jim’s coat seemed to pulse in his sweaty palms.
What Jim could imagine then was the tiny sour-cream- colored tear of sperm pressing against the clear plastic sides of the jar as though it were trying to push its way through to freedom. That tiny tear wanted to escape; it wanted to make a clean getaway, which was a sentiment Jim could understand. What Jim could imagine vividly was a faint smudge of flesh, of scales, of wet fur, and of infinitely tiny feathers against the clear plastic. What Jim could imagine were absolutely lusterless eyes bulging from a tiny fish face, and wildly fluttering flipper feet, and tiny stunted hands, webbed and with little pearly pinpoint fingernails, gripping the plastic sides, opening and shutting, the swimming shape of their grasp and release a pure movement in membrane, pulling finally through the plastic as though it were the most transparent of tissue and landing on the floor at Jim’s feet like a goldfish flipping out of its bowl: Jim’s own boy, his own little tadpole of a secret son.
And then Jim had entertained a horrific thought. What exacdy would he say to the world’s most beautiful blond nurse when his time was up in exactly six minutes and nine seconds and he had to hand her the mysterious brown paper bag warm now to the touch? Here, this is for you. Here, you were expecting this, I believe. Here, you dropped this in the parking lot. Here, you forgot your lunch.Judy had returned to town the following evening, and she had been unusually quiet during dinner, and lucky for Jim, she had not even asked question one about how things had gone at the clinic the day before. Lucky for Jim, because he had no good story for his shameful getaway. How could he ever explain anything, or even describe the startled look on the face of the world’s most beautiful blond nurse when only seconds before his scheduled appointment Jim had simply jumped up and torn out of that place like a bat out of hell, his raincoat flapping behind him like crazy wings?
Judy had simply told Jim she was bushed when at last he asked her why she was so quiet. The buying trip had been busy and she had ironing piled up to do after dinner. No, she told Jim, of course the Cotes du Pore Charcutiere that he had slaved over all afternoon didn’t suck. She just wasn’t hungry, and why did Jim have to make World War III out of it? Jim had scraped her virtually untouched Cotes du Pore Charcutiere into the garbage and piled the dishes in the sink. She didn’t feel so hot either, Judy told Jim as she set up the ironing board. Maybe she was getting her period early, she speculated, for she was all sore and swollen in her privates, and she was feeling as moody as a sore-tail cat. And then when Judy turned the kitchen-counter TV on, she asked why the screen was all sticky. Did you have all your drunken lout buddies over here while I was gone? Did you all go and spray the TV with beer again? Well, Jim and his drunken lout buddies had, but he told her huffily, No way, Jose, and pretended to sulk at the sink while he did the dishes, and Judy hadn’t made an issue of it. Somehow Jim felt that he was off the hook about the clinic, about the sticky TV, about everything. Somehow Jim even felt that he had the upper hand for the moment, a rare occurrence, but he didn’t know why, and that is what gave him a sudden case of the willies.
Judy started to iron and Jim did the dishes while they silently watched an old I Love Lucy rerun. The half tab of acid Jim had popped just before dinner on a defiant impulse started to kick in quicker and more exciting than he had anticipated, and when he began to giggle uncontrollably at that scene where Lucy and Ethel, who have taken jobs in a candy factory, go bonkers trying to keep up with a conveyor belt run amok, Judy fired up a cigarette and, regarding Jim through the rising smoke with squinted eyes, asked him if he was on controlled substances at that point in time. Jim turned around from the sink flabbergasted and took Judy by her little hand and, although he was slobbering and rubbery-faced with laughter by then, proclaimed his innocence. You’ve gone and fried your brain again, haven’t you? Judy said, and jerked her hand away. She put a blue blouse she had just ironed on a hanger and hung it with some others on the handle of the kitchen door. God how Jim had always loved the starched, outdoorsy smell of freshly ironed clothes when his brain was fried!
We better have us a real long talk, Judy said with a sigh, and she turned off the iron and sat down at the kitchen table. I’m sorry, honey, Judy said to Jim out of the blue, as she flipped ashes into an ashtray and regarded him with those squinty eyes that always made Jim extremely nervous. She was sorry, Jim thought. She was sorry? At first Jim was absolutely elated at this turn of the tables, but utterly clueless, and then Jim began to get really scared.
Whereupon Judy had informed Jim that she had been with a man. Just like that, out of left field. Say what? Jim inquired. With? Jim inquired. You know, Judy said, and wiggled her eyebrows suggestively, with. I’m sorry, she said, it just happened. It? Jim inquired. It, Judy affirmed. —It did. When? Jim was curious to know. On the buying trip, Judy said. Oh, Jim said, on the buying trip. Yes, on the buying trip, Judy said. —It just happened. Who? Jim was curious to know. You don’t know him, Judy assured Jim. —He’s a new buyer at the store. Well, what exactly fucken happened? Jim was curious to know. If you don’t fucken mind telling me. Well, Judy said, and tapped her cigarette out slowly in the seashell-shaped ashtray Jim had given her for their third anniversary, and then she immediately lit another, we happened to be staying at the same hotel and we just went to dinner together after a hard day. Then we danced a few times. He walked me back to my room. So I said, Why don’t you come in for a nightcap. He’d been so nice and all. Of course, all I had in the room was a warm can of Pepsi. We laughed about that. We had had a few toddies earlier, I’ll have to admit. So, I don’t know, nature just took its course, I guess. So he kissed me. Then things just got lovey-dovey.
So just which of the three nights you were gone did it, you know, happen? Jim was curious to know. It happened on the first night, Judy informed Jim. What about the other two nights? Jim inquired. Well, to tell you the truth, it happened on those nights, too, Judy informed Jim. Every single night? Jim said, and then Jim said, You fucked him every single fucken night? So, Jim said, just how many times did you fuck him in three nights, if you don’t mind my asking? Whereupon Judy said, Who knows? Who can remember something like that. What difference does it make, anyway? she said. Jim said, What fucken difference does it make? Jesus-fucken-Christ. Okay. Okay. So, Jim said, what happens if you get knocked up, did you even think about that little possibility? Judy said, I won’t. The first night, she explained, her friend had practiced withdrawal every time. Then the next day he went right out and bought a box of Trojans. Please, Judy said, honey, honey, please, she said as Jim jumped up and attempted to deck the kitchen door with a swinging back kick.
I was so happy to see you tonight when you came home, Jim told Judy as he collapsed back down at the table and put his head in his hands. —I’ve been thinking hard about things while you’ve been gone this time. I thought about how we could make a fresh start. And I didn’t just loaf around with my lout buddies and drink beer while you were gone. I slaved over fiction is what I did. My time in the sun is just around the corner, and you better believe it. And I hardly had a drink while you were gone, and I lifted weights and I lost six or seven pounds, and I’m beginning to feel like my old self. And I went to that clinic like you told me
to do, and they said we can probably get you pregnant real easy. Sure my sperm count is a little low, they said, but hey, they’ve sure seen lower sperm counts, they said. Hey, why are you telling me this shit, anyway? You never told me about your last loverboy. I had to figure that shameful business out for myself. You kept your last loverboy a dark, sordid secret. You lied to me about him until I confronted you with the undeniable evidence in hand. And here I am tonight half deranged from drugs and you expect me to deal with this shit about your new boyfriend.
See, I knew it, Judy said, and stabbed out h
er cigarette. —I just knew you were on controlled substances. I can always tell by your eyes, Jim. They get wide as saucers and sort of runny. I’m telling you because my conscience is guilty, I guess. I guess I just don’t want to sneak around.
Are you trying to tell me you and this guy are going to be an item in the romance department? Jim said, as he attempted to surreptitiously check out his eyes in a windowpane.
I want to see him again. And I don’t want to sneak around.
Is he single or what?
Melvin is married, but he and his wife have been talking about a separation.
Melvin! My wife is fucking some clown named Melvin! And a married Melvin to boot! Too much, I say. So the bottom line is you want to keep sleeping with this Melvin clown, is that it?
