The Book of Guys

by Garrison Keillor

  A single guy can walk around without explaining it to anyone. He can also go to New Orleans. This gives a man a dignified feeling, knowing that you could, if you wanted to, drive somewhere. Or drive nowhere, just cruise around with the top down soaking up rays and laying down rubber. Married guys can’t go nowhere. There always has to be a plan, a list of errands, a system, a destination. Alone, your life is intuitive, like poetry. With a woman, it’s a form of bookkeeping.

  “So—how long are you in town?” asked Figaro, trying to change the subject, but the Don had more to say.

  A home belongs to the oldest woman inhabitant, no matter what. Every day, a man has to get her permission to come in, to use the toilet, to draw oxygen from the air, to keep his things in the closet. The permission is always conditional, and some of her rules are never explained: some secret rules (No Loitering, No Unnecessary Conversation, No Putting Things There, No Whistling, No Guests, We Reserve the Right to Change the Terms of This Agreement) are kept for emergencies.

  And a married guy is responsible for everything, no matter what. Women, thanks to their having been oppressed all these years, are blameless, free as birds, and all the dirt they do is the result of premenstrual syndrome or postmenstrual stress or menopause or emotional disempowerment by their fathers or low expectations by their teachers or latent unspoken sexual harassment in the workplace, or some other airy excuse. The guy alone is responsible for every day of marriage that is less than marvelous and meaningful.

  “Why don’t we ever make love anymore?” That is the No. 2 all-time woman’s question in the world. No. 1 is: “Why don’t we ever talk to each other?” Now, there’s a great conversational opener. You’re ensconced on the couch, perusing the funny papers, sipping your hot toddy, feeling mellow and beloved, and she plops down full of anger and premenstrual uproar, and says, “Why don’t we ever talk to each other? Why do you treat me as if I don’t exist?”

  You take her hand. “What do you want to talk about, my beloved?”

  “You and your utter lack of interest in communicating with me, that’s what,” she snaps, yanking her hand back.

  “My love, light of my life, my interest in you is as vast as the Great Plains. Please. Share with me what is in your heart so that we may draw close in the great duet of matrimony.”

  But she didn’t want to converse, of course, she only meant to strike a blow. “Humph,” she says, standing up. “I know you. You are only saying that.”

  That is marriage, Figaro. A boy’s constant struggle to maintain his buoyancy.

  “Some of what you say, I suppose, is true,” said Figaro, “but a guy needs a wife, someone who cares if you’ve collapsed in the shower with your leg broken.”

  Well, your chances of collapsing in the shower are sharply improved by being married, the Don said. Helpless rage is a major cause of falls in the home.

  No, marriage is a disaster for a man, it cuts him up and broils his spirit piece by piece, until there is nothing left of him but the hair and the harness.

  An unhappy man with heavy eyelids appeared in the doorway to the Lounge, hands on hips, chewing a mouthful of peanuts. He appeared to be an owner or manager of some sort. “You on a break right now, Giovanni? Or is the piano busted?”

  The Don turned with the greatest disdain and said, “Oh. Cy. I thought it was you.”

  “I hired you as a piano player, Giovanni, not a philosopher. I’d like to hear less thinking and more tinkling. A word to the wise.” The man turned and disappeared.

  The Don looked down at the keyboard, plunked a couple notes, got up from the bench, and motioned to a table in the corner. “We can sit there,” he said.

  “A life without a woman is the lonesomest life I can imagine,” Figaro said with a sigh. “I would be miserable without Susanna.”

  Life is lonesome, said the Don, and lonesome isn’t bad, compared to desperate. But of course a man should not live without women. Luckily, marriage is not a requirement. Nobody needs monogamy except the unenterprising. Hungry women are everywhere! Lonely housewives who advertise on recipe cards pinned to a bulletin board in the Piggly-Wiggly—wistful ladies at the copier, putting flesh to glass, faxing themselves to faroff officedom—fervid women sending out E-mail invites—hearty gals working out on the weight machine who drop a note in your street shoes—cocktail joints along the freeway, wall-to-wall with women whose lights are on and motors are running!—Figaro, they’re out there! Free. No legal contract required. What could be better?

  Figaro shook his head. “The life of a libertine ends badly,” he said. “You get old, your teeth turn yellow, you smell like a mutt, and you have to pay women to look at you. Much better to marry, to be faithful, to build a deeper partnership that will hold together through the terrible storms of old age.”

  My dear Figaro, seduction is an art, to be learned, practiced, adapted, and improvised according to the situation, and, like other arts, it will not desert you late in life.

  “Seduction is a lie, and as we get older, we get tired of lies,” said Figaro. “We know them all and they’re not amusing anymore.”

  Seduction is a sweet story, and if the listener wants so much to hear it, then it is no lie. Seduction is a mutual endeavor in which I conspire with a woman to give her an opening to do what she wants to do without reminding her that this goes against her principles. A woman’s principles and her desires are constantly at war, and if there were no one to seduce a woman, she would have to figure out how to do it herself. Her principles call for her to remain aloof and uninterested until she meets a man who makes her faint. Her desires are otherwise. She wants to say, “That man, there. Unwrap him and send him over here so he can love me.” She cannot say this. So I try to help her. I say, Zerlina, I would like to hold your hand for two minutes and then you can shoot me and I will die a happy man.

  She laughs, but she does not turn away. She rolls her eyes. She says, “Oh, phoo.” She gives me her hand.

  I say: The greatest tragedy is to be cut off from intimacy, from touch, which is the most human of languages, Zerlina, and the most honest. There is no lie in a touch, a caress, never. The language of the body is a language of the purest truth.

  She is amused. I put my other hand on her shoulder. She turns and leans against me. “You’re something,” she says.

  Zerlina, I say, there’s a bottle of champagne waiting on ice at the Olympia Hotel, and a couple dozen oysters. When we get there, we’ll order up a big salad in a wooden bowl, with basil and spinach and fennel and cilantro and radicchio, and we’ll have it with olive oil and vinegar and pepper and garlic. Then a steak tartare, with chopped onions and an egg yolk. And then we’ll undress quickly without shame, as adults, and jump into the big bed and amuse each other as only adults can do. And afterward, we’ll eat an omelet. And then do it again.

  Her hand twitches in mine, and I guess that I have touched a chord—“This is the best time of year for oysters,” I say in a low voice, “and one should never eat them without erotic plans for later.”

  She tells me to be real, but even so, she is reaching for her purse, putting on her coat, checking her lipstick. “You’re outrageous,” she says, and now we are almost to the hotel, and then in the room, she says, “I can’t believe I’m actually doing this.” But she is. She is. A wonderful occasion, Figaro. The sort of evening that someday, as you lie dying, you will remember and it will bring a smile to your lips.

  “You slept with her? Zerlina? But she is married to Maseppo,” said Figaro. “I can’t believe this!”

  I may have slept with her, I may not have slept with her, I only mention her as an example. Zerlina, Marilyn, Marlene—what’s the difference? A woman.

  “Having an affair is not the same as marital happiness,” said Figaro.

  You are right. Marital happiness is briefer and it has a sword hanging over its head. The happiness in marriage is fitful, occasional. It is the pleasure one gets from the absence of the pain of not conforming exactly to the wi
shes of your wife. A married man walks into the room and his wife looks up and smiles—he is dressed and groomed exactly as she has trained him, his gait is perfect, his personality is champion quality, and he is prepared to converse on topics of her liking, a neat trick it took her years to teach him—and for the duration of her smile, he is happy. But her smile is brief. She spots the flaw: the spiritual emptiness in his eye. She has warned him against emptiness, but there it is. “Why are you looking at me like that?” she hisses. “You look as dim as a dodo.” And his happiness is now over for a while. He must think of a way to fill up his spirit.

  The man with the heavy eyelids reappeared in the door, an envelope in his hand. “Time to go, Giovanni,” he said, setting his big hand on the table. “Yer outta here. You broke the deal. Yer history. The job’s over. Move it.”

  The Don sneered. What a relief to get out of this mausoleum, he said. I am, he said, the greatest romantic pianist of all time. But a romantic pianist in Fargo is like an All-Star shortstop in Paris. Not a priority item.

  “Go to hell,” said the man, and he stamped his foot on the floor. Figaro looked down. The man had hooves instead of shoes.

  The Don stood up. Gladly, he said, it would be better than looking at your ugly face.

  The man strode to the back door by the piano and opened it, and Figaro saw the orange glow of flames in the basement, fingers of flame licking the doorsill.

  “Stop!” he cried. “No! Giovanni! Repent!” He took the Don by the arm. “It’s not too late. Repent!”

  The Don put a hand on Figaro’s shoulder. “Believe me,” he said, “it’s easier simply to go. And compared to marriage, it isn’t that bad. Farewell, mon ami.” And he took off his great silver jacket and gave it to Figaro and walked to the stairs, put his hands on the door frame, and then, with a mighty cry, plunged down into the fiery abyss.

  “Your hair smells of smoke,” Susanna said to Figaro when he arrived home. “Where were you? In a bar? You stopped in a bar on your way home? I thought you had outgrown that, darling. And what are you going to do with that hideous jacket? My gosh. You can put it in the garage. It reeks of shellfish. I don’t want it in the house. Go on. Take it out of here.”

  So he did. He put the silver jacket on a hanger and hung it on a nail next to the rakes and shovels, and it stayed there for years. Twice she threw it in the trash and twice he retrieved it.

  ROY BRADLEY, BOY BROADCASTER

  t’s your broken heart that qualifies a man for broadcasting, but of course Roy Bradley couldn’t know that, growing up in Piscacatawamaquoddymoggin, a scallop-fishing village on the rock-swept coast of Maine. He had aimed toward a radio-broadcasting career ever since he won the Maine Pronouncing Bee in 1952, when he was ten. Radio seemed to be in the cards for him all right. He was pleasant and kind and even hard words like “sagacious” and “hermaphrymnotic” tumbled off his tongue like drops from a faucet. Clear enunciation was a skill prized by most Piscacatawamaquoddymogginites, who considered themselves the finest speakers of English on the Eastern Seaboard. “People in Bangor talk like they were choking on potatoes,” said Roy’s mother, a schoolteacher.

  When he was thirteen, Roy joined the Boys’ Broadcasting Club, Box 1421, New York City, and quickly rose to the rank of Golden Tone. The registration form was on the back of every jar of Pebble Beach Brand Peach Preserves, but only boys who had “demonstrated a superior aptitude for effective, correct, and pleasant speech, distinguished by correct pronunciation and natural inflection” qualified for advancement, and Roy wore his gold medallion with the BBC emblazoned above the silver lightning stroke proudly.

  The BBC Handbook contained The Boy Broadcaster Oath (“I swear to be of service to others, to prefer that which is wholesome and pure, and to speak the truth at all times, except when it might compromise national security”) and The Boy Broadcaster Law—“A Broadcaster is always punctual, well prepared, friendly, in control of his emotions, attentive to women and children, alert, law-abiding, loyal, helpful, obedient, clean and neat of dress, and adept at radio sign language.” And there was a “Reflection on Radio” by the BBC Chaplain W. Ranston Leed:

  Always live your life as if each moment were being broadcast to a large unseen audience of your family and friends. When you speak, imagine that your mom is listening—invisible to your companions but known to you. Imagine that your grandma and grandpa are sitting and watching your every deed.

  That is what we mean when we say, “Broadcasting Is the Key to the Good Life.”

  It was the mid-fifties and radio shows were dying every week: Jack Benny, Bob Hope, Fibber McGee&Molly, Amos&Andy, George&Gracie—all fled to television, leaving nothing on Roy’s big Atwater-Kling receiver except the afternoon serials on WBE, Bangor, such as Dean Davis, Teen Investigator, and Florence Beebe, Chow Pilot, sponsored by Johnson Frosted Chocolate Cherries, the story of a brave aviatrix who flies the uncharted Yukon territory, bringing wholesome well-balanced meals to lonely trappers, and Roy’s favorite show, Avis Burnham, Frontier Librarian, sponsored by Thompson Tooth Tinsel for brighter, more festive teeth, and by Drexel, makers of Durite.

  Avis was a woman who brought learning and beauty to the lawless towns on the Kansas frontier: she was beautiful, indomitable, physically fearless, standing up to the cowhands and sheepherders who tried to break the strict code of library borrowing. Avis was Roy’s ideal. The men on the Kansas frontier were surly, often violent, inarticulate, liable to fall to pieces, but she was a gem, that Avis, wisecracking, tough, and yet with a heart of gold. Roy knew that if he ever met Avis, they would be friends.

  Roy’s only true friend in Piscacatawamaquoddymoggin was his girlfriend, Royell Dobbs. They had been pals since first grade, and when he and she were sixteen, they became secretly engaged and exchanged rings, a big relief to Roy, who was afraid he would grow up to be old and eccentric like Bobo Doodad, a scallopman who lived in a run-down bungalow with his sad wife, Sandy, and walked around town talking to himself. Royell was small and beaky, with limp black hair, a tiny torso, and big-mama hips, and some boys called her “Squeaky” for her tiny piercing voice. Nevertheless, it was good to have these things settled. He would marry her, and save himself trouble. When you go into radio, you have to devote yourself, you can’t be messing around with women. And Royell’s cousin was in radio, Brad Beale, the Voice of the Bangor Buffaloes, on WBE. So she understood the uncertainties of the profession.

  Roy’s dad was dead set against him going into radio. Doc Bradley had been a successful radio playwright, then a serious and unsuccessful one, and he had come to see that ambition is but vanity. Anyone could be happy if they simply put on hip waders and stood in the crash and tremor of the sea, breathing the raw salt air, and cast into the surf for bluefish and lived a simple commonsense life, doing what needs to be done, including making yourself happy, he believed. The Bradleys’ ramshackle house stood on a sandy bluff above a vast curve of stony beach. Doc lived off his annuities, lived a low-maintenance life, fished whenever the temperature was above freezing, and every Friday night he fried up a mess of fresh scallops and opened a bucket of Old Marblehead beer and got down his ukulele and sang:

  There is a place where I’m longing to be,

  Back in the state of Maine.

  Where the wind and clouds seem to beckon me

  Through the driving rain.

  When I’m tired of downtown noise

  I stand up and tell the boys:

  “Let’s grab our hats and use our noggin

  And go back to Piscacatawamaquoddymoggin.”

  Doc Bradley told Roy, “You’re no more cut out for radio than I am to do brain surgery. Ambition is not conducive to happiness, son. To be successful in radio, a man has to live in the city and learn to cheat and lie. We Bradleys are not New Yorkers. We don’t think that way. Here in Piscacatawamaquoddymoggin, a Bradley can breathe fresh air—in New York, you inhale and get air that’s been breathed and exhaled by three other people and gone through a diesel engine
and in and out of a Greek restaurant and through a taxi with a whore in it smoking a cigarette and wearing a turgid cologne and through a fleabag hotel where old shoe salesmen lie around in pee-stained shorts and cut some ripe ones and then you get to breathe it for a while, and when you’re so far down on the air chain, it makes you as crazy as a rat in a coffee can. You lie and cheat so you can get out. Well—you’re out already. You were born in the place New Yorkers would kill to be from. You’re here! You’ve reached your goal without knowing it!

  “You’ll never be happy anywhere but here, Roy.”

  That sentence rang in Roy’s head as he plowed through the grades at Piscacatawamaquoddymoggin High and was elected president of the Audio-Visual Club, and was chosen to operate the public-address system at all school events. His mother encouraged him to aim for a radio career. “I would be so disappointed if you stayed in this town and became a bum like your father,” she told him.

  Roy graduated in 1960, winner of the Ruth W. Clarion Memorial Enunciation Scholarship (thirty-five dollars), and spent the summer operating a roadside fresh-bait stand. Doc lent him money to get started and to purchase a large leghorn hen trained to shell a peanut in two seconds. Roy put up a sign on the road, “See the Chicken Shell a Peanut—500 yds. Bait for Sale,” and he was amazed at the number of cars that pulled over and paid a nickel to see a chicken do that. Most of them also bought bait, although they didn’t appear to be fishermen. They appeared to be city slickers out for a drive. They wanted to see the chicken but they didn’t want to appear interested only in the chicken. So they strolled in and bought bait and then glanced at the chicken and said, “Oh, is that the chicken who shells peanuts?” Yes, said Roy, want to see him do it? And the people shrugged and said, “Well, as long as we’re here, I suppose we may as well.” And the chicken shelled the peanut, the people drove off, and down the road a ways, they heaved the bait out of the window.