Flatscreen

by Adam Wilson

  “Aw. So sweet.”

  “I’ve heard that before from you,” I said, because I still held a bit of a grudge.

  “Before?”

  “Remember at Jennifer’s party, when you broke my heart?”

  “Okay, no idea what you’re talking about. You’re the one who never called me after our thing or whatever.”

  “You never gave me your number.”

  “Touché,” she said. “Sorry, it was a weird time.”

  “You really don’t remember the conversation we had at Jennifer’s right around Thanksgiving?”

  “When I said weird time, I meant super blackout, fucked-up, angry, not in my right mind kind of time. I’m sorry if I said anything mean. I honestly don’t remember.”

  “That’s okay. I know the feeling. I’ve never been in my right mind when I’ve said anything.”

  “One of your better qualities.”

  “That and I’m funny.”

  Alison didn’t laugh.

  “Are we even now?” she said.

  “Not even close,” I said, though I was already imagining stuttering ILY on one knee with Grandma’s ring in a field of fresh daisies.

  “How about I buy you a coffee?” she said.

  “Sure,” I said, tossed my caramelized cup of bleh into the garbage, ready for a real drink now that luck had turned my way.

  Back in the booth, suddenly silent again, watched the freshman reunion like it was some kind of Platonic ideal (Plato’s Pleasure Palace, Omega Films, 1976), forever unattainable to us two fuckups.

  “Why didn’t we turn out like that?” Alison said.

  “I think we’re more interesting at least.”

  “You’re a romantic.”

  “That’s possible.”

  She grabbed my application, looked it over.

  “Wow. Really aiming high, huh?”

  I gave her a “You’re on thin ice” look.

  She countered with a look of “Sorry, but you walked right into that one, and besides, just because I’m supposed to be nice doesn’t mean I have to treat you with kid gloves.”

  Fair enough.

  “Guess I’m not that romantic.”

  “Did you really get shot?”

  Pulled up my pant leg, exposed the scar.

  “Gangsta-ish.”

  “Totally, right?”

  Out the window, leftover rain colored leftover snow shit-colored.

  “I hate winter,” Alison said. “I fucking hate it. I hate snow.”

  “Being inside’s not so bad.”

  “I’m sorry. You’re right. I’m being dramatic. And I’m sorry you got shot. No one should have shot you. It’s hard enough without people shooting you.”

  “Thanks,” I said, almost adding the word “babe” before remembering it wasn’t that kind of movie, or any kind of movie.

  A baby screamed at the next table, uncalmed by the rain-drums rattling middlebrow, middle-register world rhythms over the house speakers. His mother—constrained by societal values—didn’t smack him. She said, “There, there.”

  “Were you a happy child?” Alison asked.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I don’t really remember.”

  For some reason thought of this dream I’d been having where the only way to get out of the dream is to kill yourself, but you know it’s a dream so it’s okay, but what if it’s not a dream?

  She said, “It wasn’t until high school that I realized not everyone hated themselves.”

  Apartment was a mess. Alison didn’t seem embarrassed that I was embarrassed. Swept the clothes from the bed with a sweeping gesture I’d seen in movies.

  “Suave,” she said, hopped on the bed, removed her shoes, huddled clothed beneath comforter. Put on a Miles Davis CD Kahn had left me while I was in the hospital. Trumpet blew long, unhurried, not like the way people talk around here: Kahn, Benjy, Mom, Dan, all quick-spitters, words like bullets, more like Coltrane than Miles. The trumpet’s voice was like Alison’s: breathy, meandering, shaky but also sure.

  “Do you have a job?” I said.

  “Had one.”

  “What happened?”

  She sang, “Then I got high, then I got high, then I got…”

  “So what do you do now?”

  “Fuck strangers. For money, of course. Sometimes for drugs. Sometimes just for fun.”

  “Really?”

  “Just kidding, fat boy. I get money from my dad. I watch TV most of the time. Stupid shows. Soaps and stuff that I watch with my mom. Days of Our Lives, she loves it. Sometimes I just go for walks in Kapler Park. After it’s rained. I like it after it’s rained.”

  Saw her walking through Kapler Park post-rain, exhaling smoke, enjoying the dampness in the air even though it frizzed her hair, made her sniffle; enjoyed it because the wet pavement smelled like life. For a second her sad-eyed loner lifestyle didn’t seem pathetic, but somehow triumphant, because she’d experienced grief, still managed to walk on a dewy morning, take in the scent of dead wet flowers crushed by the storm at the edge of the woods, watch the sun slowly emerge from between two clouds.

  “I watch TV too,” I said, kissed her.

  This time we faced each other. First I pulled off her panties, licked.

  “Do you know where the clit is?”

  “I’ve studied a few diagrams.”

  “Lick that.”

  Success. She rumbled like a Rumble Pak, vibrated like a broken fridge, said, “Eli,” “My feet are tingling,” “Right there.” I slurped love syrup until she grabbed my shoulders, pulled me up so I was looking in her eyes, kissed me again, touched her tongue to my teeth, then ears, stomach, sides, thighs, everywhere but … until, finally, grazing the underside with her chin, little licks, baby kisses into full-on sucking into “Can I sit on you?”

  Sex was slow. Mind too fast, analyzing every moan and minuscule movement. Was that an “AH!” or an “uh?” and why was her hand pulling my hand over the straps, under the chin, music too loud? whose leg was…

  Then Alison did a thing with her hips, kitten-clawed my handles, up-tempo-ed, kissed my neck, squeezed my nipple, bounced in 6/8 time to Tony Williams’s tat-ta-ta-tit-tat-ti. Tried to keep up, keep steady, keep the world outside because now I was inside, inside her, outside myself, conjoined like that dream only I didn’t want to separate, just stay this way forever, two-headed eel into infinity, squish-squash-egad-eel sounds, swapping air and hair, opposite of numb, fuzzy with feeling, noticing everything: idiosyncratic beauty, proof she was a single unit, not some representative F/21—tiny pink dots around her nipples, errant curly hair sticking awkwardly from her eyebrow, glassy film on the surface of her eye (contact lens?), fingernails like stained glass in the rainbow reflection of an upside-down DVD, belly-button blond hairs, butt shape indescribable, blinking in fuck-rhythm, hairspray hair loosed by sweat (mine?), small trickle down forehead, small trail of saliva, all muscles working at once, factory gears faithfully turning for mass pleasure production, outside body tied to internal city ever onward in our fuck palace.

  “I think I’m…”

  Alison held my hand, said, “You can if you want.”

  I let loose a load, didn’t feel any lighter, flopped heavy onto Alison. A good heavy, like sinking into earned sleep.

  “I like the weight of you on me,” she said.

  After, in the living room, Alison scraped candle wax off Mom’s old menorah with her fingernail, collected it in the palm of her other hand.

  “Tonight’s the first night.”

  “We should light the candles.”

  “I don’t know if we have candles. I think we just have the menorah.”

  “Oh.”

  “This is the first year we didn’t light them.”

  Wondered if Kahn had lit candles in our old house, if Erin was there singing prayers like a lullaby, as Kahn, who’d been drinking scotch all day, closed his eyes on the couch, put his feet on the chipped coffee table, pictured his old sperm swimming through
his ex-wife’s body—Sheila’s body, another aquarium—being swallowed and nourished by her body at the same time, growing into a person, into that voice singing songs from before the sperm, from a different time when people meant the words.

  “Me and Jeremy used to,” she said. “When he lived at Beth Shalom.”

  “Used to what?”

  “Go in there on the last night—the eighth night, right? We went late at night. Smoked a bowl and went up there, up on the stage. Spooky being in there so late with just those candles. We would lie down right under the candles. There was the big menorah and the little ones, like they were the big one’s children. We didn’t kiss or anything. He just unzipped and I pulled my skirt up to my waist.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  Alison brushed her bangs from her eyes. They fell right back down.

  “I don’t even believe in God,” she said.

  “Me neither.”

  She let her body fall sideways so her head was resting in my lap. I took a strand of her hair, wrapped it around my finger. Wanted us to be tied together, as if I was her mother, her hair the still-uncut umbilical cord. Closed my eyes, felt like I could fall asleep. Maybe I did fall asleep, or she did, but at some point must have both been looking at the Coke clock because she said, “It’s late,” left.

  This time I got her number, told her I’d cook her a gourmet dinner next Friday.

  twenty-four

  Possible Ending #10 (American-Made Film About French People):

  Sex saves us all. Forget the pleasures of work, family. Lick raw egg from each other’s nipples, bathe in bloody bathwater, burn our bodies with candle wax, wax our bodies with waxing wax, stick candles in our etc. Otherwise we drink too much, recite poetry, read from crusty stolen books, ash into wine bottles, inhale asbestos, complain of chronic ailments like gout, tennis elbow, fuck each other’s friends, fight, break apart, reconcile, eventually die in black night, but not in the morning, which is really the afternoon. In the morning I dangle in morning light, eat grapefruit. She saunters in wearing my shirt, half-unbuttoned, hair hanging, unwashed, champagne in our OJ. The only meal ever is breakfast. Breakfast is birth.

  twenty-five

  Sat on the couch, flipped through an old Sports Illustrated. Kobe on the cover, draining a fade-away, making everyone forget he may or may not have raped a woman in Colorado. Closed my eyes. Ceiling light buzzed. Had a strange desire to ejaculate on everything in the room—firestorm of jizz, dick a goo-spouting garden hose. Watch the doc’s expression when she sees her waiting room, every nook of the couch bubbling with lacquered shine.

  “Eli?”

  “That’s me.”

  “I’m Dr. Hoffman. Marni Hoffman.”

  “Hi, Marni.”

  “You can call me Dr. Hoffman. Come in.”

  A nice office with lots of books, two matching brown leather recliners that faced each other.

  “Sit,” she said.

  “No couch?”

  “That’s only for analysis.”

  “Oh. I was hoping to lie down.”

  She didn’t laugh.

  “Go on.”

  “That’s it. I’m out of material.”

  “Do you often feel like you want to lie down?”

  “No. Actually, these days I have a lot of energy. More than I used to. I feel totally restless, like I have all this energy that I can’t use in any way.”

  “What does the energy feel like?”

  “I don’t know. I mean, it’s not like a Gatorade commercial or anything. I don’t suddenly want to run around the B-ball court with well-built black men, or wear cool goggles and snowboard off cliffs. The feeling is more vague than that, like when you’re having a dream and someone’s chasing you and you can’t scream. That’s kind of what it feels like.”

  “Is this feeling why you came in today?”

  “I think it’s all related.”

  “Related to what?”

  Not sure what to say. Hoffman was youngish, forties, younger than my parents. Bit on the skinny side, curveless, nice legs, intelligent face—skinny lips, long neck. Or maybe I just thought so because she had so many books.

  “I keep having these weird sex dreams. But they’re not erotic or anything, they just involve sex. Like sex is just a part of some circle-of-life bullshit where in these dreams I’m born and I die all in one brilliant act that leaves me waking shamed and sweaty with the strange feeling that I have been castrated. And then I have to reach down and check that my dick’s still there, only I realize that it’s still part of the dream, and the person who’s reaching down isn’t me but my mother. My mother just moved to Florida.”

  “In real life or in the dream?”

  “Real life.”

  Hoffman crossed and uncrossed her legs. Noticed her noticing me noticing.

  “I didn’t want to come here today, actually. I was forced to. Because I got shot and had lots of drugs in my system.”

  “Do you want to talk about that?”

  “It hurt.”

  “Being forced to come here?”

  “No. Getting shot. My leg got all fucked up.”

  “Why did you bring it up?”

  “Full disclosure.”

  “Do you think you have a problem with drugs?”

  “It seems to be the consensus.”

  “What do you think?”

  “I think I have a problem without drugs too.”

  “So even though you were forced to come here, you think it might be a good idea?”

  “I didn’t say that. I said that I have some problems. I have no idea if talking to you about them will help at all. In fact, I’m rather skeptical about the whole process.”

  Hoffman didn’t say anything. I looked around the room. No pictures of her family, just books, framed degrees. Her entire life lay behind the wall, all her objects: stocked kitchen, couple flatscreens, dog, 2.8 kids, 1.2 husbands. But in here she had to listen to me. Couldn’t turn away, flick the tube, answer her cell. Had to listen to my pent-up pain, sexual retardation. Couldn’t laugh, spit, tell her friends, “He fucked Mrs. Sacks and ejaculated prematurely! He passed out on the football field with a boner and got a standing ovation and now he thinks he can get his shit together!” She had to sit there, nod, tell me she understood, I wasn’t that different, everything would be okay.

  “But I am open to it,” I said.

  “Well, that’s an important place to start.”

  “I want to make some changes in my life.”

  “Good,” she said.

  Wanted to talk about Kahn, about yesterday with Alison, about Mom in Florida, and all these movie endings applied to my own life, how they all seemed either shitty or unrealistic or played-out or unfulfilling or all of the above, but were the only futures I could imagine because I didn’t know what people actually did once they became legit humans in the real world with successful relationships, jobs, sex, happiness, romance, etc., or if those things even existed or were just endings to different kinds of movies, bad movies that make people feel good then sad again when they leave the theater because their own lives can’t live up.

  Instead blurted, “Earlier, when I was in your waiting room, for some reason I felt like I wanted to masturbate all over everything in the waiting room.”

  The doctor nodded.

  “I have a date for the first time ever and I don’t know what to do,” I said.

  “Just be yourself.”

  “That’s the worst advice I’ve ever heard. I just told you all this weird shit about wanting to masturbate on couches, and you tell me to be myself? I can’t be myself. Myself is someone who gets all fucked up and passes out on the football field with a boner because I took too much Viagra the night before. Myself is someone who takes too much Oxy and coke and breaks into houses. I mean, I want this girl to like me.”

  “Yourself can be other things too,” she said. “It doesn’t just have to be those things.”

  “She’s coming over for dinner an
d I don’t know what to make.”

  “What’s your best dish?”

  “Pheasant.”

  “What’s your second-best dish?”

  “Elk stew?”

  “Didn’t your mother teach you to make chicken?”

  “Does Slim Fast count as chicken?”

  “What are you really trying to say here, Eli?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Long pause. Looked at the ground, then at her, then at the window as if I were looking out it, even though the blinds were drawn.

  “I don’t know,” I said again.

  Felt like I could keep saying it, over and over, a mantra. Rhythm of the phrase was consistent grime, like the sound of the old Green Line trains. Said it one more time.

  “What don’t you know?”

  “Anything.”

  twenty-six

  Possible Ending #11 (The Kind of Movie Your Mom Likes Because It Gives Her Hope in Regards to You, and Because She Somehow Doesn’t See Herself in the Mother Character):

  Head-shrunk, happy-pilled, learn the valuable life lesson that all women aren’t my mother, won’t always abandon me, will occasionally run a finger through my hair, whisper, “I’m so proud,” unironically. Understand Mom’s/Dad’s pain is not my fault, vice versa. Finally a breakthrough, a revelation: this isn’t a story about Mom and Dad after all; it’s about learning to tell a story that’s not about Mom and Dad but about me and the world, etc., which I’m doing now, sitting in my easy chair, after work, telling Alison about my day, state of mind, inner feelings, what’s for dinner, funny thing that happened to Benjy, YouTube clip, new Top 40 song that’s bad but kind of catchy, what’s in the theater, what’s on the tube that night—stories people tell each other every day that keep them going, keep them healthy, keep them from harming themselves and others. Accept my parents’ divorce, see them for who they are: flawed human beings who, for reasons partly but not entirely their fault, can’t provide the kind of love and support I need. That’s okay. I get love and support from others, like my therapist (I have transference issues), Alison, Benjy, who actually does care about and need me too, even if we never tell each other because we’re men, embarrassed. Accept my lot in life, work at Starbucks, enjoy simple pleasures like braised short ribs, cold beer, the way Alison’s teeth chatter when she laughs (weird, but endearing). Alison is also flawed, as am I, often sad, sometimes a liar, possibly a cheater, still fond of drugs. Learn to live with each other, occasionally fighting, dealing with life’s difficulties—death, grief, sickness, sadness, frustration, aging, addiction, etc.—not easy, not so bad either. Visit my dad, Pam, Kahn, Sheila, Mary. Become role models for Natasha, do cooking projects, cry in front of each other, also burp, sing, dance, punch, smoke, sock-slide across fresh-waxed hardwood floors.