by Chamber Four
“Think the Spurs will make it to the playoffs next season?” he’d ask, casting out into the water.
And what was I to say except, “Yeah sure, I hope so.”
* * * *
Dear Mom,
Hi. How are you? Is Damien’s knee any better?
Dad and I are fine. We moved to this nudist colony a few weeks back, but it’s not so bad. We play a lot of Marco Polo in the lake, and they’re organizing a beach volleyball tournament for next week, which should be fun.
I’ve made a couple of friends, but mostly we just walk around and try not to look at the old people. I‘ve found myself staring off into the lake quite a bit lately, mainly because there aren’t any balls out there, only buoys.
Down the street from the room Dad and I share there’s a video rental store, but the selection’s pretty bad. I’ve now watched “Summer Rental” 17 times and it’s still just average.
It seems like The Great Outdoors has been checked out forever.
Also, if you ever make it down this way, feel free to drop by. I’d be happy to go with you.
For good.
I’ll keep my duffel packed, just in case.
I had a stamp, so I mailed it.
* * * *
The next day (like every day before), I woke to Mayor White’s voice booming from the loud speaker.
“Rise and shine, folks! Another bea-u-ti-ful day here in lovely Nature’s Bounty. We’re looking at a scorching 88 degrees so please be sure to rub sunscreen in every nook and cranny. And I mean every nook and cranny, people. Never can be too safe. If you don’t believe me, go take a look at Carl Danby’s backside. The man’s a lobster, folks. Full-fledged crustacean.”
Dad groaned, stumbling from his bed in full pajamas. He pulled off his shirt, his pants and started out the door.
“Come on, Frankie, rise and shine,” he called. “It’s time to get undressed...”
Most days Aimee, Vicki and I would shoot baskets beside the shuffleboard courts.
“So what? Is Damien Markus like your stepdad or something?” Aimee asked, taking a jumper. The ball thunked off the rim, shot to the left.
“I don’t know. I guess,” I shrugged, retrieving it. “I mean, I’m not sure if they’re married yet.”
“But if they are...then he’s your stepdad. I mean, that’s what it would mean,” Vicki clarified.
I nodded, going in for the lay-up.
The rim rejected me.
“Man,” Aimee joked. “Seeing as Damien Markus is your stepfather and all, I figured you’d be a better baller.”
“Yeah, well, you have to remember that guy is my biological father,” I explained, nodding to Dad off in the distance, waggling his erection at people like a divining rod.
“Maybe it’s some kind of abnormality,” Vicki suggested, eyeing it from afar. “Maybe he has too much...Viagra in his diet.”
“Nah,” Aimee shrugged. “They’re always like that at first, overly friendly. For the first month or so, my Dad was just constantly...it was just constant.”
I nodded.
“But I see you’re doing a pretty good job,” Vicki commented, nodding to my privates. “I mean, you seem to be keeping things under control for the most part. That’s really awesome.”
There were only so many ways to respond.
“Thanks,” I told her, placing the ball over my crotch, “for noticing.”
* * * *
One evening directly following calisthenics, a Land Rover screeched into the parking lot, sending the dust sprawling.
“Unexpected visitors,” Mayor White smiled, adjusting his cowboy hat.
They were more than a little unexpected.
Dad was sipping his iced tea and talking to Deborah outside the dining room when I spotted my mother and all six feet nine inches of Damien Markus emerging from the vehicle.
“So anyway, it’s all in the swing, really,” Dad informed Deborah, demonstrating the perfect golf drive. “You see, the trick is to really get your center of gravity low, really hunker down. And then...”
“Dad,” I whispered, tapping his shoulder.
“...but honestly, it’s all in the follow through anyway. Here, allow me to demonstrate,” he said, putting down his iced tea.
“Dad...”
“Yeah, Frankie?” he asked, turning.
“Mom’s here.”
“Pardon?” he asked, cupping his ear.
“Mom’s here. And Damien.”
He shielded his eyes from the blearing sun.
“Huh,” he shrugged, spotting them. “How do you like that?”
Then, he returned his attention to Deborah. “Now anyway, hon, about that follow through...”
* * * *
Apparently there was a surplus of Spurs fans at Nature’s Bounty, though you’d never know it—there are only so many ways to support the team when your apparel is limited to skin.
“Damien,” whispered the star struck Vicki, walking up to him, nipples hardening. “Think I could get an autograph?”
Damien glanced behind him for paparazzi, then put his hands in the air and took a few steps back, just in case.
“How ‘bout I mail you one?” he offered.
“Frankie!” Mom called, running toward me. Her face dropped upon viewing me from a full frontal perspective.
“Oh, boy,” she said, focusing on the ground. “Think you could throw some pants on, sweetie?”
My face reddened—the color was beginning to grow on me—and I reached for Dad’s iced-tea and held it over my privates, a temporary solution.
“I just got your letter,” she whispered, coming hesitantly closer. “I’m so sorry, Frankie, I would have come sooner but...”
“You know, hon,” Dad cut in, strutting toward her. “It’s great you’re here and all, but...no gawkers allowed. Sort of a rule. We find it ‘builds barriers,’ he explained, flashing quotation marks in the air. “You got to strip down to stick around. That’s what we always say.”
Dad glanced Damien for the first time.
“Oh, look! What a pleasant surprise!” Dad exclaimed. “Ted Jacobson,” he introduced himself, offering a hand. “I’m Maggie’s husband.”
“Ex-husband,” Mom corrected.
“Already?” Dad asked, surprised. “Has the paperwork gone through?”
He didn’t wait for an answer.
“So listen, can I get either of you an iced tea or something?” Dad asked. “Got one right here,” he said, reaching for the one covering my crotch. I leapt beyond his reach, splashing everywhere.
“We’re here for Frankie,” Mom cut in. “That’s all. We received his letter about how you’ve been holding him hostage so...”
Dad shot me a look.
“I never actually used the word hostage,” I explained. “I was just telling her about Summer Rental and then the next thing I knew...”
“Let’s not make this any harder than it has to be,” Mom interrupted. “I don’t want to have to bring in the police.”
“Police?” Dad laughed. “What for?”
She waved her hand around.
“Well...clearly, this is some form of neglect...”
“Neglect?” Dad asked, his penis pointing accusatorily at her. “But you’re the one who left us.”
She quieted, then whispered, “Frankie, grab your things. We’ll meet you in the Land Rover.”
She turned to stalk off, though she didn’t get far.
A few hundred naturalists had gathered to observe the commotion. Some of the older men were eating ice-cream cones, dripping all over their hairy stomachs while leaning on shuffleboard poles.
“Oh, no,” Dad said, noticing his audience. “You are not taking my son away that easily. I’ll...fight for him.”
He puffed his chest out at Damien.
Damien gave my mother a, “Do I really have to kill your ex-husband?” look, but she refused to meet his stare.
“One-on-one,” Dad continued, jabbi
ng a finger to Damien’s chest. “First to 21. Ones and twos.”
Damien shot my mother another look, and shrugging, removed his warm-up jacket.
“Mayor White,” Dad called, motioning him over. “You mind leading me in a few calisthenics?”
The mayor beamed, so proud, in fact, that his ball pouch nearly leapt into his stomach.
“It would be an honor,” he whispered, placing his hands on Dad’s shoulders. “Let’s start’er out with a couple of windmills.”
* * * *
My father lost 21-2, sinking a lucky two-pointer from the edge of the court in the final seconds.
His eyes were closed.
I think he even landed in some shrubbery.
Nevertheless, the crowd went wild, genetalia jiggling, breasts wavering like synchronized swimmers.
Dad didn’t have much in the way of offense, but his defense proved virtually unstoppable. His penis functioned like some kind of full court press, and when fully extended, cut off quite a few drives to the basket. Damien had a real problem being tightly guarded by a 220-pound naked man, so he didn’t get a lot of great shots off, regardless. The game dragged on far longer than it should have; Dad calling fouls for things like “anal interference” and “testicle tugs” and bending over to tie his shoe every chance he got. Still, Damien managed to string together the necessary points to win me back my freedom.
Meanwhile, the citizens of Nature’s Bounty could hardly believe their good fortune. A performance by Damien Watson in their colony! Just wait until the other colonies heard!
That evening, Dad became the town hero—not for winning valiantly against great odds, but for luring Damien Markus to Nature’s Bounty in the first place.
“How do you know him again?” all the old men asked, pulling the wax from their ears. “Second cousins, ya say? Once removed?”
Dad didn’t bother getting into the hairy details.
Mayor White insisted we take an “all colony photo” to commemorate the event, and before they could stop it, Mom and Damien found themselves surrounded by 300 breasts, 150 wieners.
“Everybody smi-iiiiile!” White cried, centering us in the viewfinder.
We did. Everybody did.
Everybody but Mom and Dad.
* * * *
As dusk approached, the three of us took a walk around the lake while Mayor White tossed an arm around Damien, insisting on giving him “the grand tour.”
“It’ll be fun,” he chuckled, adjusting his cowboy hat. “We’ll show you every last nook and cranny.”
The colony swarmed just a few feet behind them, making escape virtually impossible, even for a professional athlete.
“Frankie,” Mom began, staring off into the water, “you’re certain you want to stay here?”
It’s hard to say what won me over; the courtside seats just no longer seemed all that important.
“I mean, just for the summer,” I explained.
I’d slipped on a pair of boxer briefs, which slightly lessened the awkwardness.
“I’m in that beach volleyball tournament and all. Vicki and Aimee are counting on me...”
“Who are Vicki and Aimee?” she asked.
“His girlfrieeeends...” Dad sang.
I shook my head no, which seemed to calm her.
“You know, we’d love to have you around, too,” Dad hinted. “I could use a girlfriend myself. Just take off your clothes, stay awhile, all the shuffleboard you can shake a stick at.”
“No. Thanks,” Mom rolled her eyes. “I’ll leave you to your nudists.”
“Naturalists,” he corrected, draping an arm around her. “We’re naturalists, hon. But close.”
“You call this natural?” she asked, freeing herself from him, pointing to the naked crowd hovering around her superstar fiancé in the distance.
“Well, at least it’s honest,” he countered. “No one’s hiding anything here.”
Mom shook her head and Dad gripped her still-clothed shoulders.
“Hey, Mags, listen to me. That two-pointer I sunk, it was for you. For our family.”
“Oh, the one you made with your eyes closed?”
Dad shrugged.
“Call it fate.”
Mom refused to call it anything.
“Ted, you lost 21-2,” Mom reminded, biting back her grin.
“Well, it’s not my fault Damien got called for penis perusal on six different occasions,” he said, raising his arms in the air. “I mean, come on! It was flagrant! You saw that!”
I laughed.
My father the comedian.
My father the naturalist.
“See? Even Frankie thinks it’s funny!” Dad laughed, clapping his hands. “Even Frankie knows a flagrant penis perusal when he sees one.”
Ignoring him, Mom peered down, sweeping the sand back and forth over her feet.
“So, what do you say?” Dad asked quietly. “Take off your clothes, stay awhile...”
She didn’t answer.
He attempted a smile, though it came out all wrong.
Still, I knew he meant it.
I could tell by the humble look on his face, his erection at full salute.
The Affliction
by C. Dale Young
from Guernica
No one would have believed Ricardo Blanco if he had tried to explain that Javier Castillo could disappear. What was the point in trying to explain it to someone, explain how he had seen it himself, how he had watched as Javier Castillo stared deeply as if he were concentrating, and then, slowly, disappeared? Ricardo always began the explanation in the same way, by stating that it wasn’t a sudden thing, that no, no, it was a gradual thing that took sometimes almost as long as three minutes.
Ricardo was an odd man. He wanted to believe Javier Castillo was a god of some kind. But Ricardo did not believe in gods. He did not even believe in Christmas, angels, or miracles. He even found it difficult to believe in kindness. And yet, he had left his wife and family to follow this man, this Javier Castillo, a man he knew little about. What he did know about Javier Castillo was that he possessed an “affliction.” This is the word Javier Castillo used to describe his ability to disappear. An affliction. Ricardo wanted to believe that, but he could not find it in himself to believe. What he felt for Javier Castillo was a kind of envy. And maybe, somewhere inside his messed-up head, Ricardo believed that the longer he was around Javier Castillo the more likely he, too, would gain the ability to disappear.
But Javier Castillo... Yes, the really surprising thing about Javier Castillo was not the disappearing act. Anyone can disappear. What was remarkable about the disappearances was the fact that Javier Castillo had control over where he reappeared. I cannot be certain when he first demonstrated to Ricardo his “affliction,” but I can piece together that it must have been early, some time within a few days of their first meeting. Did he demonstrate it? Or did Ricardo simply catch him in the act? I’ll never really know. What I know is that Javier Castillo had explained to Ricardo that as a child he had moved from Mexico City to Los Angeles, how one night, as he lay in bed, he wanted to be back in Mexico City so badly he closed his eyes and tried to imagine being there. He thought, for a minute, that he could actually see the City, the Old Square. And when he opened his eyes, he was lying on a ledge. He was lying on the lip of the fountain in the center of the Old Square, the fountain cascading over the flowering tree of sculpted concrete down into the shallow pool next to him. He thought the warm night was a dream. He thought he was having a spectacular dream. But he was not dreaming. He was there in the Old Square, the old men strolling around smoking and talking slowly, others leaning against walls beside doorframes like awkward flamingos, one leg firmly planted on the ground, the other leg bent at the knee so that the bottom of the shoe was affixed to the wall behind them. And when he sat up, when Javier Castillo sat up, nothing changed. It wasn’t a dream at all. It was anything but a dream.
Ricardo recounted how when he first hear
d this story he had closed his own eyes trying to imagine another town. But all Ricardo saw when he closed his eyes was the bluish white glow of the light bulb he had been staring at before he closed his eyes. There was the ring or impression of the bulb on the inside of his eyelids, but nothing more. He could see no other place. The round bluish-white mark on the inside of his eyelids was not even perfectly round. It was hazy and indistinct. It seemed to be disappearing. The light bulb was disappearing, but nothing else was. Ricardo had never been outside of the Los Angeles area. He had never gone anywhere except to work at the body shop and to work at LAX and, eventually, to the town in the Valley where Javier Castillo had been living. He could not picture any other place at all.
The recollection of the first time Javier Castillo disappeared stayed with Ricardo. How could it not? He returned to that story over and over. He couldn’t help it. He could hear Javier Castillo describing what had happened to him; hear his voice in his head. He replayed the situation over and over of opening one’s eyes and seeing not one’s bedroom but a square in Mexico City. But it was not because of the oddity of what had happened—the disappearance, the reappearance—but because Javier Castillo had not been afraid. Ricardo knew that if such a thing had happened to him as a young boy, he would have been terrified. He knew that he would have sat in the Old Square crying and wondering how he would ever find his way back to his family in Los Angeles. He knew he was not the kind of man that Javier Castillo was, that he was afraid of being alone. And being in another city surrounded by people you didn’t know was essentially being alone. Ricardo needed people, and he needed to know things. And, apparently, this was not something Javier Castillo cared about, not even remotely. Even then, thirty years after his first disappearance, Javier Castillo had no understanding of his affliction. He could not explain how it happened. He simply knew he could do it. And this knowledge was enough for him. It was, after all, his affliction, and he knew he had no other choice than to live with it.
Ricardo had married the girl next door, or so he liked to tell people. His parents had him marry the daughter of their best friends. She was beautiful, but she was not gorgeous. There was no better way of describing her. To describe her black hair or the color of her skin would be pointless. To describe the softness of her voice and compare it to water was pointless. What was important was that she was a beautiful woman, and he had walked out on her. On some days, Ricardo wondered what she was doing, wondered if his two sons were being good for their mother. He felt certain they were not being good. They were boys, and he knew boys at their age were trouble or about to be trouble. They couldn’t help it. It was not as if they chose to cause trouble; they just did. And his wife—she wanted those boys to be good, which in her eyes meant good in school, good at sports, good at something. But they would never be good in school. They would never understand why school was important. They would never be good at most things. They wanted to be old enough to drive a truck, to be able to drive to the edge of town and get high. Ricardo understood this. He had been a boy like them. He knew what it was like to get stoned and curse the sky because it was getting dark too quickly. He knew what it was like to smoke until the dryness in the desert became the dryness in your throat. He was no Javier Castillo, and neither were his sons.
