Backward-Facing Man

by Don Silver

  While Frederick was away, Chuck helped Lorraine with laundry or paperwork on the life insurance policies she’d written; other days, they’d go to teach-ins or rallies to distribute flyers. Lorraine made no effort to hide their relationship from Frederick. Several times, Frederick came home from a trip shortly after Lorraine and Chuck had been intimate and started one of his rants, oblivious to the messy bed and their flushed cheeks. “Revolution and baseball,” he would say. “The perfect combination.” And it was. The nexus of his two loves.

  One sweltering afternoon in July, Chuck let himself into the house in Brighton before Lorraine got home from work. Her bedroom was stuffy, the sheets on her bed damp with humidity. He opened a window. On a small desk were newly printed broadsides against the war and the guts of a black box Frederick was building that enabled a user to make free long-distance calls. Chuck laid a couple pinches of weed on one side of a double album and let the seeds roll into the center. He put a pillow against the wall, propped himself up on the bed, and lit a joint. Despite evidence of Frederick all around him, he felt lucky to be in Lorraine’s world. Shortly thereafter, she came home. “What are you doing?” she asked, irritated.

  “Waiting for you,” Chuck said.

  Lorraine tossed her bag on the floor and her keys on the bed and walked into the kitchen. “You just show up in someone’s house whenever you feel like it?”

  “I thought maybe you’d want some company after work,” he said, sitting up. “You know, with Frederick always running around…”

  Lorraine walked back in with a glass of water and sat down. “Listen, Charles,” she said. “Frederick’s working for something he believes in. He doesn’t have a cushy job with his daddy waiting for him.” Chuck watched her open a bottle of aspirin and shake a couple into her hand. “When it comes right down to it…” She held her tongue.

  “What?”

  “Nothing.”

  “What is it?”

  “You’ll never know what it’s like, Charles,” Lorraine said matter-of-factly, “to be out there on your own.”

  Chuck collected his stash from her desk and stood, his head bobbing up and down, his eyes filling up like they had when he was a kid and his brother would set him up to take his mother’s wrath. Lorraine slipped out of her shoes and her shirt without even looking at him.

  After winning the California primary, Robert Kennedy was shot at point-blank range in the kitchen pantry of the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles in June 1968, leaving liberals in a gloom. Two radical groups—Students for a Democratic Society and the Mobe, the National Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam—pushed for nonviolent demonstrations at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago. They filed petitions for permits that would allow freaks and demonstrators to sleep in the park, picket the convention hotels, and march in the rallies.

  The Weather Underground, the Panthers, and the Yippies, all groups with whom Frederick claimed high-level connections, wanted their efforts to be coordinated, confrontational, and flagrant. They envisioned a half million people occupying downtown Chicago, disrupting the proceedings, and drawing worldwide media coverage. In preparation, they planned marches through the commercial districts, all-night gatherings in Lincoln Park, and missions to spike the water supply with LSD, launch a flotilla of naked people in Lake Michigan, even send young radical girls dressed as prostitutes to seduce delegates. It was to be the culmination of years of civil disobedience and protest—the chance for young people to influence politics on the presidential level. Frederick said the antiwar movement was at a critical juncture and it was time for decisive action.

  But by early August, Mayor Daley denied the permits and told young people to stay away. He also told the Chicago police that if kids got unruly, they had his permission to shoot to kill. Naturally, this caused much consternation among radical leaders. Factions splintered off and formed new groups; intellectuals and leftists who’d supported civil disobedience started talking revolution.

  “You can’t just destroy things,” Lorraine argued one night. “You need a vision for what comes next.”

  “Fuck vision. Fuck values,” Frederick said. “It doesn’t matter what you believe, what you stand for. Either you do something to stop the war or you don’t. It’s time for action. The Vietcong attacked Hue, Saigon, Khe Sanh. American casualties are heavy. We’ve got to do something, now.” The three of them were in the Phoenix Room, two tables from where Chuck and Lorraine had first gotten drunk together months earlier. Once Frederick got started, it was impossible to get a word in edgewise. “The SDS manifesto and the Port Huron statement are too tame.” Frederick took a copy of Mao’s Little Red Book out of his knapsack and pounded it for emphasis. “The revolution is at hand!” Chuck pictured him in fatigues and a beret, standing on the table waving a machete. Sometimes, his enthusiasm was exciting and contagious, but just as often, it was too intense, toxic. Frederick had started using speed—black beauties and crystal meth, cooked up in makeshift labs outside of town—which had the effect of making him sound desperate, windmilling around topics, his voice scratchy and thin. “The Vietcong are fighting for their fucking lives. We should be, too.”

  “They’re being attacked,” Lorraine said. “They have no alternative.”

  “Yeah, it’s kill or be killed,” Chuck said, siding with Frederick.

  “Killing is wrong,” Lorraine said.

  “Right and wrong is subjective,” Frederick said. “Even a sniper acts consistent with his values.”

  “So assassination’s okay?”

  “Like floods and plague,” he said, shrugging. “Part of the plan.”

  “What plan?” Chuck asked.

  “What plan?” Frederick repeated, sending bursts of cigarette smoke toward the ceiling. A television in the background blared. “In all your time together, Lorraine hasn’t explained the plan to you?” Chuck looked at Lorraine, who looked down at her hands. “How is it you talk about everybody’s destiny except his?” Frederick said, sneering at Chuck.

  “Frederick…” Lorraine said, pressing his arm.

  “How we live in service to it or we run away,” Frederick continued, his eyes glowing behind his glasses. It seemed to Chuck that Frederick was referring to something specific. Frederick lit a cigarette with the stub of an old one. “Of course, we all know my destiny,” Frederick said. “Leading the revolution!” He raised his beer.

  “And Lorraine here, she wants to be around for the great spiritual awakening, right, Lorraine?” She was shaking her head. “So what about you, my friend?” Frederick said. Chuck kept looking at Lorraine, who was looking at the television. Frederick’s face was within inches of Chuck’s. “Seems to me you came to college to avoid the draft. And you deal dope because you have the capital.”

  “Frederick…” Lorraine said.

  He lifted his beer as though he was going to sip from it again. “There’s nothing wrong with that,” he said. “Somebody’s got to keep us high. What I want to know is what you’re hanging around us for?”

  “Frederick!” Lorraine had both hands on the table. Frederick shrugged his shoulders.

  “Be cool, Lorrie,” Frederick said, staring hard at Chuck. “Are you in search of your destiny?” Frederick twirled the base of the beer in circles, his fingernails blackened, the areas under his eyes gray and wrinkled from lack of sleep. “You looking to get your hip card punched?”

  Chuck drained his beer, stood up, walked out of the bar, and lit a cigarette. The moon was midway up the sky, clearing the apartment buildings across the street, casting a bluish pall over Commonwealth Avenue. A trolley car rumbled toward him from up the hill, its steel hull shaking like a nocturnal beast. Above, a streetlight flickered, but failed to ignite. Chuck leaned against the stucco, trying to decide whether to leave when he heard her. “Chuck,” she said, touching his shoulder and back, sending shivers through his entire body.

  “C’mon, buddy,” Frederick said, softer now. “Let’s go hear some music.”
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br />   With Frederick and Lorraine on either side of him, Chuck headed down the hill, past a clothing store with a mannequin wearing bell-bottom jeans and paisley shirts. On Harvard Avenue, beneath a rotating sign in a second-floor real estate office, they wandered into a smoky bar that advertised twenty-five-cent beers and R&B covers.

  Frederick was magnificent that night. He introduced himself to a gaggle of girls from a nearby secretarial school and struck up a conversation with a table of electric company techs still wearing their tool belts. He ordered a round of shots for the band—Jose Cuervo—and persuaded Chuck to open a stick of gooey black primo hashish he’d been saving. As the two of them huddled together in a stall in the men’s room, smoking, Frederick insisted they share some crusty yellow powder from a little vial. When they returned to the bar, their hearts pounding, the keyboard player was articulating the opening figure in The Doors’ “Light My Fire.” By then, the club was filled with BU students chasing shots of Jack Daniel’s with cheap drafts. Before long, everyone was on the dance floor, a tangle of arms moving up and down, hair plastered with sweat, eyes glazed over.

  Fueled by meth and booze, Chuck pressed against Lorraine, while Frederick worked the crowd—disappearing for a while with one of the secretaries or a couple of locals resentful that out-of-town students with money were wandering back into Boston, changing the vibe from loose and summery to uptight fall. The band worked its way through “Whiter Shade of Pale” and, drunk and fucked-up on meth and hash, Chuck forgot all about being challenged in the Phoenix Room. He imagined himself, too, a warrior in the great revolutionary struggle and felt sublime pleasure being near Lorraine and Frederick. At that moment, he felt he had a right to his naïveté and plenty of time to develop political views and a sense of his own purpose in life. On some level, he forgave Frederick for the line of questioning and understood how his innocence could be an irritant to someone as world weary and wise as Frederick. Sweaty, dancing, and feeling surges of energy flooding through his veins, it didn’t matter that Chuck wasn’t Lorraine’s main man. He was grateful to have a place—any place—in their near-perfect lives. As the set ended, the lead singer announced last call.

  The three of them made their way, singing and laughing, up Comm Avenue toward Lorraine’s. Frederick suggested they smoke some more hash, but Chuck couldn’t find the pipe. When they got to the house in Brighton, Lorraine put her hands out to each of them, leading them up the steps, stumbling in, past the bare furnishings in the living room, until they collapsed in a heap on Lorraine’s bed, a tangle of legs and limbs, clothing and hair.

  Chuck’s senses softened and then blazed. Every sound, every movement, every smell, was magnified. He felt a limb move under his leg and tried to orient himself on the bed, to visualize his own body in relation to the others. He smelled booze and hair—thick, moist, and smoky. The room swirled. Sometime later, Chuck became conscious of the quiet, the rhythm of his own breathing, and the two of them—Frederick and Lorraine—nearby. He tried focusing on the clock ticking above his head. He played a little game, anticipating sounds, using them to try to sober himself up by calibrating his mind to his surroundings and the passage of time, but the ticking seemed to surge and then fade away, speeding up and then slowing down. Someone belched and Chuck smelled beer, which nauseated him. He felt his own consciousness drift to the very top back portion of his head. There was a thicket of rustling, and all their weight shifted. Whoever was nearest the wall rolled toward him so that their mouth was close to his ear and their body was pressed up against his. A hand moved against his thigh. He felt hot breath on his neck, sour, relaxed. The hand on his leg moved higher, up across his stomach and then underneath his shirt, touching the tuft below his navel. He inhaled and held still. It flattened and then pressed itself, a rough palm against his skin. He reminded himself to breathe.

  Minutes passed this way, and Chuck alternated between trying to figure out who was where and what exactly was happening. The body that was pressed against his side held still, the breath on his neck became steady, the flattened palm on his abdomen was motionless. Then it moved. He timed his own breaths to every third or fourth tick of the clock. After what seemed like a long time, he felt his belt unbuckling, a wave of excitement, and then fear. There was an exquisite pause in which he felt the bed dropping out from underneath him as the hand slid down, down, down.

  Chuck woke sweating, the sun beating down on the bed. There was a clattering in the kitchen, and when he opened his eyes and focused, he saw Lorraine, stretching, her back to him. He pushed the covers away and watched her extend her arms toward the ceiling, exposing the sides of her breasts, her shoulders and neck, the smooth line of skin that ended at her panties. Chuck watched her step into a white Danskin leotard and a short black skirt before leaving the room. His own shirt and pants were balled up at the bottom of the bed, and his underwear was sticky. In the bathroom, he splashed water on his face and rummaged through the medicine cabinet for some aspirin. He could hear Frederick talking in the kitchen, though he couldn’t make out what he was saying. A teapot screamed and then subsided, and Chuck pictured them drinking instant coffee. He made his way through the living room and onto the porch. Outside, the sun rose over the brownstones, beating down on the asphalt, making the air over the street ripple. He lit a cigarette. After a little while, Lorraine came outside with her little portfolio and purse and kissed him on the cheek before heading off to work. A few minutes later, Frederick came out and sat down beside him. “Some evil shit we smoked,” he said, opening a beer.

  In their first forays into friendship, Chuck felt a self-conscious mixture of pride and shame; he was cuckolding someone famous, whose attention both flattered and intimidated him. Uncertain, and often hesitant to speak, Chuck alternated between feeling as if they were developing a legitimate friendship and feeling that Frederick was all coiled up and ready to spring at the slightest provocation. Gradually, instead of haranguing him with revolutionary ideology or heated discourse, Frederick was becoming conspiratorial, even gracious. On the Fourth of July, the three of them drove to Worcester, where Frederick and a few of his high school buddies launched Hail Marys, Fat Boys, cherry bombs, and thumpers to the accompaniment of Jimi Hendrix, blasting from speakers mounted on the back of a van. As the fireworks exploded, Frederick leaned back and smiled, invoking combat noises from war movies or giggling like a kid. A week later, when Robert McNamara, President Johnson’s secretary of defense, arrived in Harvard Square, a dozen radicals, including Frederick, were arrested for surrounding and rocking his limo. The next day, after his mother posted bail, Frederick rushed into Lorraine’s apartment, waving a copy of the Boston Globe, hardly even noticing Lorraine, saying to Chuck, “We did it, man! We made the news!”

  By late July, Chuck’s relationship with Lorraine had changed. For one thing, he no longer skulked around her house, pining for her exclusive affections. He and Lorraine had a routine, which seemed acceptable to everyone. When Frederick was involved in revolutionary actions, Chuck and Lorraine were a couple. When Frederick returned, Chuck kept busy on his own or became Frederick’s confidant, sidekick, and friend. Some nights, after Lorraine fell asleep, Chuck and Frederick went out listening to music, getting stoned, and talking about the revolution. It was in this context late one night that Frederick asked Chuck where he got his dope.

  It took a few weeks to arrange, There were logistical issues. The band was playing an outdoor concert—a wedding in Vermont—and Augie Pearson, the percussionist who’d cultivated Chuck as a Boston distributor, didn’t call him back for nearly a week. The family, as they called themselves, would be partying in the mountains until late July. Chuck had misgivings about introducing Frederick to his dealers, a premonition that these two forces in his life—his passion or at least his proxy for passion and his bread and butter—should not come too close in contact, but it wasn’t strong enough to cancel the trip.

  Frederick showed up at Chuck’s apartment early one Saturday morning, his hands
chapped, his nails bitten down, and the pores of his skin unusually dilated, causing his freckles to stand out like moles. He was chain-smoking Marlboros and talking nonstop about nothing and everything. Together they rode Frederick’s bike out the Mass Pike to East Windsor, a little suburb of Connecticut, with maple saplings and sidewalks with hopscotch grids, little kids’ tricycles, and mailboxes with names like “The Martins” and “The Howes” stenciled on them.

  The house that served as worldwide headquarters for the Inter Galactic Messengers was a fading split-level in need of paint and landscaping. In the driveway, a half dozen black shiny orbs with grills featuring a lightning bolt logo and the words “Audio Adventures Inc.” emblazoned across them were sitting side by side. The orbs, Chuck explained to Frederick, were gigantic fiberglass speakers.

  They let themselves in the yard and entered through the back door. A stereo played live rock music—badly mixed audiotapes of the band—and the house smelled like cigarettes, stale beer, bong juice, and body odor. A couple lay sleeping on a beat-up couch. Chuck led Frederick through the dining room, past a couple of guys wearing black leather, and into the kitchen, where a small man with curly hair—the band’s manager—sat on a stool sorting through receipts. Three or four sleepy-looking young women in flowing skirts and skimpy T-shirts sat around him staring at a pile of burnt French toast. Chuck said hello to everyone and told Frederick to wait there while he went looking for Augie.

  In one of the bedrooms, two guys were splayed on the floor holding guitars. In another, boxes of microphones and light fixtures and a huge mixing console were stacked almost to the ceiling. Circles of black cable lay coiled on the floor. The third bedroom was pitch-black. Augie wasn’t around, despite his promises to be there. Chuck was thinking he and Frederick might go somewhere for breakfast, but when he walked back into the kitchen, Frederick and the band manager were having a serious conversation.