Benediction

by Arnold, Jim

  I thought I detected an eye roll as the otherwise blasé orderly, an enormous black woman, set aside clean towels, then emptied the garbage.

  I don’t know if it would ever be possible to explain a gay bathhouse to my straight father; regardless, this wasn’t to be the time, as just when the silence demanded an answer, the curtain parted, the orderly left and a short young woman walked in.

  Her eyes darted from me to Dad to Jackie and back. “I’m Dr. Gabino,” she said as she approached me and shook my hand. “I’m so glad to see you.”

  “He’s got an erection that won’t go away,” Jackie said.

  Dr. Gabino glared at Jackie. Her long, honey-colored curly hair obscured part of the jacket embroidery, which said “Urology.” Her name tag said “Melissa.”

  Ignoring my stepmother, she looked at me. “I’m the urologist on staff tonight, Mr. Schmidt. Looks like you’ve got quite a problem here.”

  “I was told that if they last longer than four or five hours—this is the best thing to do, I mean, hospital—”

  “Is he going to be all right?” Dad said.

  “He’ll be fine a lot sooner if you two could wait outside here,” Dr. Gabino said.

  22

  When they’d gone, Dr. Gabino sat at my side and asked me to tell her what happened.

  I told her I’d taken the “cadaverject” with me to the West Side Club. For a moment it looked like I was going to have to explain the bathhouse phenomenon to her as well.

  But then she said something more disturbing. “I’ve never treated priapism. I’m going to have to call my department head.”

  She left, armed with knowledge of what was wrong with my penis and the considerable extenuating circumstances, not the least of which was that I was currently undergoing cancer treatment.

  I’d given her Dr. Kim’s number in San Francisco, fearing his reaction—using the penis shot without his permission and instructions was like cheating during lunch hour at the Best Western out near the highway.

  As if cancer weren’t fucking bad enough.

  * * *

  Minutes later, though it seemed an eternity, a young Asian man entered the pod with a bunch of medical supplies cradled against his scrubs.

  “Mr. Schmidt—I’m Andy, on shift tonight. I have a few things to put here for the doctor.”

  “Where is she? Where’s my Dad?”

  He put a plastic trough, vials, syringes and tubing on a low cart next to the gurney.

  “Dr. Gabino’s conferring. She’ll be right in. I saw your parents waiting in the lobby—they’re fine.”

  Good to hear someone was fine. Andy lifted up the light blanket Dr.

  Gabino had placed over my groin and thighs. “Oh, man, that’s gotta hurt,” he said.

  “It’s not as much fun as they usually are.”

  Andy’s brow wrinkled. “I’m going to clean the area, OK?” he said, ripping open a disinfectant pack.

  The alcohol stung the engorged, reddened skin of my cock. I squeezed my eyes shut.

  “Sorry this is a little uncomfortable. Doctor’ll deaden the area before treatment.”

  Metal curtain hooks scraped against their ceiling track as Dr. Gabino returned. She and Andy whispered to each other; then he hurried out.

  She squeezed my forearm. “We’re going to do two things. First, I’ll inject epinephrine, which decreases the blood flow into the penis. Then, we’ll drain the blood that’s already in there.”

  My eyes widened.

  “Poor guy—I realize you don’t even live in New York. Last thing you were expecting today, right?”

  “I woke up this morning in Italy,” I said. “Buon giorno.”

  “I think it’s too late for giorno—try buona sera.”

  “Gabino. I should’ve figured.”

  “I grew up in Boston, but, you know—grandparents, a few words here and there.”

  She filled a syringe as Andy reappeared through the curtain.

  “This is a lidocaine block to numb your penis before we start,” she said.

  “Oh, God.”

  Andy took his place on my left side as her assistant. There was pinprick pain for a minisecond and slight pressure down there.

  Now my penis really was a separate entity—attached to me, yet an unfeeling curiosity attended to by others, others who wore protective gloves.

  Somewhat removed, I watched the second injection, the epinephrine. Then, a much larger needle, attached to a tube, was inserted directly into the swollen corpus cavernosum.

  I’d turned away, as was my habit when they drew the tiny vials of blood for the annual physical, those tubes that in large part were responsible for the situation I was in now.

  I wasn’t about to watch the blood drain out of my cock into a reservoir tub.

  No doubt Dad and Jackie were hungry, as it was past dinnertime. I’d had a SoHo place in mind—we could even walk there—they’d be so impressed with my cosmopolitan knowledge of New York…

  “It’s working, Mr. Schmidt. You won’t feel this, but I’m going to help the blood drain out,” Dr. Gabino said.

  I raised my head just enough to see her grab my cock with her two tiny lady hands—they may have been a doctor’s hands, but they were little and soft—and she squeezed. She stood on tiptoes, forcing the blood out. Andy looked sick or bored, hard to tell which.

  All I felt was an odd, vague pressure below my waist. “There.” Dr. Gabino took her hands away. My cock was flaccid, almost normal looking except for the needle sticking out of its side.

  She pulled it out. “Tomorrow, make sure you masturbate. It’s important—crucial—that you work on your erections. I don’t have to tell you this wasn’t a fortunate occurrence for someone in your condition.”

  * * *

  Andy closed the curtain and left after Dr. Gabino, after everything was swabbed down and cleaned up and I’d put my pants back on and lay there.

  I was back in the cloud, listening to the sounds of St. Vincent’s, making up stories to fit them.

  He’d said to “stay until you feel ready to leave,” and that’s exactly what I was doing. More to the point, I had no idea what to say to my father and his wife.

  Perhaps this was an instance where denial might be put to one’s advantage.

  They were still sitting in the waiting room when I finally came out. Wearing their Florida clothes, they weren’t hard to spot. Jackie sipped on fizzy water in a blue bottle. Dad read the Times.

  “Well, finally that’s done,” I said. It could’ve been the laundry. “How do you feel?” Jackie said. She hugged me.

  “I’m so sorry about this,” I said. “I was really looking forward to dinner and all.”

  * * *

  Indeed we did walk down Sixth Avenue to that restaurant in SoHo, the Presque Marais on Spring Street. I’d discovered it on a previous New York trip when shopping in the neighborhood. I couldn’t afford anything in any of the stores, but I could charge a meal at Marais.

  The lights were turned low and all the tables had three little candles atop the tan linen, which was fortunate since I’d been awake forever. I could only imagine what my eyes looked like.

  “The audience sure loved the movie, Ben,” Dad said, again.

  “I heard the clapping, but, as you can imagine, I wasn’t really paying too much attention.” This, of course, was a lie. Even priapism wouldn’t have kept me from gauging every giggle, laugh, sigh, harrumph or other audible emotion the audience might emit.

  Every few seconds I lowered my hand to my crotch, squeezed, making sure it was still there.

  “Did you say you were almost finished with the cancer treatment?”

  “Just a few more radiation sessions. The doc gave me a reprieve to go to Turin.” My steak was so juicy and so red—the slide viewer flashed back to Andy’s reservoir tray. I put down my fork as the blood pooled in one corner of the plate.

  “You seem so…healthy,” Dad said.

  I floated over the table, as if t
he lower half of my body had dropped away entirely. I’d not be able to eat anything more, maybe ever.

  That first time I’d seen Jake, it was with the rising sun glinting off chest hair sprouting out of the V-necked T-shirt he wore in his garden. Or was it when he’d stood inches from me in that cold, empty hallway of the Douglass Street flat, smiled and softly said, “Sweet”?

  Meaning me.

  Dad and Jackie, or the waiter—who spoke French, and the occasional word of English, including “drink,”

  “toilet,” and “Sweet’N Low”—had said more to me, maybe lots more, but the only words that registered were Jackie’s.

  “Honey, what’s wrong? You’re crying.”

  Just the type of thing an evil stepmother would say. But she wasn’t evil, and she was right.

  * * *

  I called Karen from the plane. During our newfound détente, she’d agreed not only to have the Mercedes fixed but to come and get me at the airport.

  After all, the Turin prize I brought back was as much hers as it was mine.

  Thankfully, Italy was our main topic of conversation, and we didn’t address the New York screening much. I told her it was a great success, that my father had seen it and liked it, that I’d stayed at the Archer on the company dime.

  All of which was true.

  The dinner with Dad and Jackie finished on a positive note, and I agreed to make a visit down to Coral Gables once the nastiness was over. They caught a taxi uptown to the Milford Plaza, which had run a spring “senior show special” in the Miami Herald.

  Dad hugged me before he got in the cab. “Behave yourself, son. We’re worried about you.”

  “I’ll be fine—you just caught me on a really bad day.”

  “It didn’t seem all that unusual to you, and that’s what concerns me,” he said.

  “Well—”

  “Call anytime. We’ve got a phone in every room and one out by the pool.”

  Jackie turned and waved out the back window as they sped up Sixth.

  They hadn’t really come to New York to see any shows—they’d come to see me.

  * * *

  Karen not only had the car fixed; she’d paid for it. Still anticipating the imminent windfall from the divorce with Dennis, she’d charged it on her American Express.

  “We’ll call it a production expense,” she said on the way out to the parking lot.

  “Congratulations, producer,” I said, fishing out the Turin prize and handing it to her.

  Karen blushed like she’d been flashed. She read the Italian inscription—and for all I know understood every word. Then she wrapped it back up in the tissue I’d had it in and positioned it carefully in the backseat like it was our baby. Which, in a sense, it was.

  There wasn’t much point in evading the issue, and I really didn’t want the conversation to go to Italy or, heaven forbid, New York. Instead, I asked about the elephant on top of the car.

  “Have you seen Jake lately?”

  She swerved the car onto the freeway, heading into the City. After what seemed like a significant pause, she said, “I think he’s been really busy with one freelance design project or another, a coffee place on Sixteenth Street that liked his Sloane & Bradford stuff.”

  “What?”

  So—he’d branched out, didn’t even tell me, now he had this whole thing going with…coffeehouses? Did Greg Graham have an appropriate connection?

  Karen probably thought it strange that I hadn’t mentioned Davis. I didn’t want to go there, either.

  “You’ll be happy to know there haven’t been any mice,” she said.

  “Is he still seeing Greg Graham?”

  There. She’d have to deal with it; she was trapped.

  Karen might’ve hit me had her hands not been occupied with the steering wheel.

  “You want me to tell you I hear them coming down the back stairs in the morning on their way to work? Or that I see them making out in the garden during the evening watering?”

  Up ahead the road curved out toward Candlestick Park, now empty in spring and summer with the new baseball stadium finished downtown. “No,” I said. “I don’t want to hear that.”

  The gray water in the bay was choppy with the occasional tiny white-cap. About halfway out, an enormous black tanker sat at anchor. The drizzle turned into rain and Karen switched on the wipers, their metronomic sounds lulling me to sleep.

  * * *

  Davis had left a message. The light blinked red under a printed page of my Turin itinerary.

  Before listening to the machine, I moved aside the mirror that still leaned up against the wall bulge in my bedroom. I could see into the crack now. The ancient plaster looked wet.

  “Ben—you should be back from Europe now,” Davis said, his voice cracking on the speaker. “Calling from the clinic. You’re in for treatment in the morning. I’ll be here. We should talk.”

  On the floor, directly below the bulge crack, was some plaster dust, and close by, in the corner, was what looked like mouse shit.

  “Karen?” I called out into the hall. “Check the kitchen traps. I think the mice are back.”

  The answering machine clicked, indicating another message.

  “Honey, just wanted to say hi.” It was Jackie. “Making sure you got back OK and feel better. Call me—or your dad—anytime.”

  From the pantry, Karen shrieked.

  * * *

  There’d been a mouse corpse in the trap behind the garbage pail. No telling how long it had been there, since Karen, preferring denial (at least in this case), didn’t check them every day like I did.

  Before heading out to Mount Whore the next morning, I left a message for Tommy, conjuring up as much irritation as possible.

  “Whatever you did didn’t work,” I’d said. “There’s this new crack in the wall—that’s where they get in!”

  The situation was absurd. I used the anger to pump extra energy from my thighs to the bike pedals while climbing the hills on the way. Mostly, I kept my ass off the seat, as my cock was still sore from the priapism episode.

  I had to get off the bike now and push the last couple of blocks up to Alamo Square. At the top, empty benches lined the park. I checked my watch—there was still a bit of time before my slot—so I sat down, squinting into the rising sun, just long enough to catch my breath.

  It was depressing that I couldn’t make it up the hill on my bike. I’d always told myself it wouldn’t get to this point, that I’d be able to make it to radiation on my own power, in my own way, or—what?

  You could take the bus. For Pete’s sake; you have a car. Just drive there.

  A few early birds were around. One lady in particular, her head covered in a pink and blue print scarf, walked one of the biggest whitest poodles I’d ever seen. She’d already passed me once. The dog acted like it owned the place.

  I stood to retrieve the bike, which leaned against the back of the park bench. Out of nowhere, the dog lunged at me, struggling so much against its lead that Scarf Lady had to pull on it with both hands while leaning downhill for the gravity assist.

  “Ralph! What is the problem with you?” she said, as the dog, looking anything but sweet, bared its teeth and growled.

  “Can’t you control your dog?”

  “Sorry, I don’t know what’s gotten into him,” she said, pulling Ralph back onto the sidewalk away from me. I didn’t dare move. As she dragged him farther toward the corner, his eyes never left me and his growling continued.

  There was another presence off to my left. Before turning, I felt dizzy and had to grab the bench. A few feet away, at the base of a eucalyptus tree in a lone shaft of light, sat Connie.

  “You!” I pushed my bike in her direction. “You nearly got me eaten alive!”

  I expected she’d run away, like all the other times, but she stayed right where she was, wagging her little tail.

  “Never did like poodles. You expect them to be so gay or sweet or something, but they always tur
n out to be vicious.”

  I jumped. It was Mark, sitting on the bench I’d just vacated.

  “I can see right through you,” I said. “Maybe you should get out of the sun.”

  “No one sees me but you, so don’t get all twisted.”

  Connie appeared to love hearing his voice. Her little tail wagged faster, I could swear, flattening the dew-laden grass behind her. Or maybe it was my voice she loved.

  “It’s quite a view from here, don’t you think, Ben?”

  Dead or not, I wanted to pet my dog. “I have to get to radiation. Did you know that? Do you have that kind of ‘big overview’ where you are?” I stepped toward Connie.

  Panting, she looked up at me with those big brown eyes, more luminous now than I remembered. “How else would I find you? Of course I knew where you were going,” Mark said, gazing out toward the bay.

  I reached down close to Connie. She started to lick me—but I couldn’t feel it. I could see it, but my hand stayed oddly dry.

  “Hey, this dog’s licking me but my hand’s not wet.” I turned to Mark. He cocked his head, like he always did when he played with me.

  “What dog would that be?”

  When I looked back, Connie was gone.

  “Why the fuck does she keep showing up if she doesn’t want to be with me?”

  “She’ll stay when you’re good and ready.”

  Benediction It was ten after; now I was officially late. “I’m just imagining all this, right?”

  Mark laughed. The occasional other person walked by, the going-to-work brigade, oblivious to one more insane person in the park.

  “There’s no dog; you’re not really here, either. Or those other guys I’ve ‘seen,’ Wayne, Bernard—”

  “Wish you wouldn’t compare me to them.”

  That shut me up, but only for a second. “I don’t have much else to go on. Maybe it’s just a side effect of the therapy.”

  “You don’t really believe that, so I won’t waste my time responding.”

  I swung my leg over the bike, ready to take off for the final leg to Mount Whore. “Then why are you here?”

  “Cause you’re not fighting hard enough.”

  Mark wasn’t smiling. It was the first time since I’d seen his ghost that he looked like what a dead person should look like: slightly green, a little bloated, unhappily decaying.