CYNTHIA’S HOUSE WAS two miles up Laurel Canyon in the hills. On stilts. Wonderland Avenue. The back of the place, the garage, was against the road on the land side, and the front deck extended out over the canyon’s sheer wall. In L.A., the term for that is ‘cantilevered’. From inside, at an angle, when I looked out below, I could see the long poles that anchored the bottom of the place to the side of the hill. Then—a hundred foot drop—straight down. My mind reported to me that any minute the whole deal would give way and cascade my ass to the bottom of the gully. In the old days in Hollywood—the 40s and 50s—according to my father, Jonathan Dante, who worked as a contract screenwriter at Columbia and MGM during those years, Laurel Canyon was where all the brothels were located. Gambling and hookers. Many nights, rather than drive north on the Coast Highway to Malibu, Pop would shack up and play poker in Hollywood at The Garden of Allah Hotel at the mouth of the canyon on the L.A. side. Nat West. Scott Fitzgerald. A.I. Bizzarades. Bud Schulberg. Faulkner. Willie Saroyan—all came and went at The Garden of Allah.
There were two copies of my story ‘Compatibility’ on her piano. One was mine, and the other one was a Xerox duplicate Cynthia had made for herself on the copy machine in her den/office. She had all the gadgets an animator needs to work at home—an oversized computer, a printer, a fax machine, even a scanner.
Cin’s hearing aid was on, and we drank more tequila sunrises and sat outside reading my story to each other while Camus the cat lolled between us alternately demanding affection, then displaying fat indifference.
By the end, on page twenty-five, the place where the guy selling the dating service leaves and never comes back, Cin was drunk and had tears in her eyes. She put her hand on top of mine. ‘Wonderful,’ she whispered.
‘Thanks,’ said I.
‘You’re better than Raymond Carver.’
‘Raymond who?’
She handed me a pen. ‘Autograph it, please. Inscribe the following: “To Cynthia: In appreciation of our new and wonderful friendship.” Then sign it, “Your devoted, Bruno.”’
It was my first autograph of anything, to anybody. I dumped fat Camus off the couch and was about to write on the cover when Rick Dante’s voice began clanging in my head, louder now: (‘Hey pussy, wait! Write this: “I will do anything for a piece of ass.” Then sign it, “Love always, Approval-drooling Twatbrain.”’)
‘What’s wrong?’ Cin wanted to know, her thousand-year-old eyes watching my lips.
I handed the pen back. ‘It’s devoted,’ I said. ‘Devoted is excessive.’
‘One day The New Yorker or L. A. Magazine will publish this story. You’ll be famous, and all I’ll have are these scraps of paper.’
‘I’ll never be famous.’
‘I want to commemorate this afternoon. Is that so fucking excessive?’
Camus the cat was waddling toward a corduroy chair in the living room. I pointed at him. ‘That’s devoted,’ I said.
She handed me back the pen. I finished my drink then wrote, ‘For Cynthia, devoted best wishes. Bruno Dante.’
She read the inscription then grinned. ‘Splendid. Date it too.’
I did, then looked around in my head for Rick Dante. He was gone.
‘You’re the Shake-fuckin’-speare of West Hollywood,’ Cin slurred. ‘You’re Tennyson. John-fucking-Fowles.’
‘I’m Stan Laurel…Will you suck my dick?’
Cynthia laughed. ‘Absolutely.’
For thirty years I’d had the dream off and on. After Cin fell asleep I eventually dozed off and had it again that night: at Saint Monica’s Grammar School when I was eleven, mean-assed Sister Sirenus caught me and Paul Foley in the back of the room fooling around, having fun at the expense of weird Rudy Espinoza.
Sister had ordered Espinoza up front by the blackboard to give the answer to a history question. On his way up our row Paul chanted, ‘Rudy, Rudy why so fruity?’ Hearing it, I chimed in. The class laughed.
Espinoza was a simple kid, a fact that was common knowledge to all including Sister Sirenus who liked to use him when she felt the need to illustrate how stupid American students were as compared to the more precocious Catholic-educated kids in the Ireland school system where she grew up.
As usual, Rudy had been daydreaming and blew the history answer and was given five demerits. Everybody laughed. Once again SS had demonstrated how stupid and miserably feebleminded us American kids were.
He marched back past me to his desk.
It was then that I made the mistake of getting caught making a jerk-off gesture—pounding my doubled fist against the crotch of my school-blue slacks. More class laughter. SS saw me do it, and then saw Paul Foley imitating my hand movement.
She squelched the room’s sniggering by loudly slapping her pointer against the top of her desk. She had not traveled seven thousand miles to be saddled with a room full of hypnotized, drooling buffoons—dim-witted, mannerless hooligans. She slapped the desk again and again with her ruler. Our fifth grade class had just born witness to the commission of mortal sin. Full stop. This was no laughing matter.
Justice was swift for me and Foley. Our lesson was humility. The room was deadly silent as he was ordered up front and given six whacks across his open palms—three on each hand. Zing, zing, zing!!…Zing, zing, zing!! And twenty-five demerits; the most any of us could remember one kid getting, all at one time.
I got twelve whacks—six on each hand. Then Sister let the class know that she was reserving the full measure of my penance until after school. She needed time to confer with her Lord and Savior.
At five exactly, I waited alone, scared shitless, in the cold classroom for Sister Sirenus. It was getting dark, and the ticking of the wall’s ancient clock continued to remind me that I was missing the last bus back up the Coast Highway to Malibu.
Sister Sirenus shuffled in in her black Zorro getup half an hour later. I kept my eyes on the linoleum, but I could sense the fury of saved-up convent rage. Did I know precisely what I had done?
I nodded.
Was I aware of the seriousness, the evil, of the hand gesture I had used in her classroom that day? Did I know what that hand gesture really meant?
I nodded again.
I could feel SS’s face getting redder. Did I know that every time a boy like me committed the sin of masturbation, it was the same as murdering one baby. God saw everything. God was watching me right now. Did I know that me and every other boy who masturbated was no different than Adolph Hitler? Did I know what abortion was?
I shook my head. I wasn’t sure what abortion was.
Sister wrote it on the blackboard in big capital letters; ‘ABORTION’, then snapped her chalk, drawing a thick line beneath the word.
Masturbation was a form of abortion. Murdering the unborn was called abortion. The corpses of the babies I had murdered would gnaw the flesh from my skin for all eternity in the fires of damnation. Sister wanted a note from my mother verifying that I had told her precisely what I’d done. Sister wanted it on her desk by the following morning. I was to go to confession on Saturday, inform Father Burbage of my sin, using the word ‘masturbation’ in a complete sentence, and ask for his and God’s forgiveness.
It was over thirty years later. Satan and I had become old buddies, but I still hated the fucking dream.
In the morning, she was gone while I stayed in bed. Off to submit a portfolio full of sketches for a walking toothpaste tube to some guy at Paramount TV. A big, sad woman with wonderful fat tits. So needy. Wanting somebody to replace the vanished husband and fill the hole in her heart that she could not fill herself. Her paintings and sketches were full of it; the house was full of it. Emptiness.
There was no tequila left in the kitchen, so I switched to scotch with my coffee and ate microwaved English tea cakes in bed. An hour later, I realized I had overdone the scotch when I started making phone calls to Jimmi’s sister’s number. Hitting the re-dial button again and again. Hanging up when her machine came on.
My room at the Prince Carlos was paid for the next five days and I had plenty of money in my pants, so, feeling good about what Cynthia said about my story, I decided to try some more writing.
On my way back to the motel, still drunk on the Australian girl’s scotch, I pulled into a big liquor store deal on Robertson Boulevard to stock up. Benny J.’s Wine & Spirit Mart.
The place had everything: a toy aisle, greeting cards, even a vitamin section. I bought a carton of Lucky cigarettes, three quarts of vodka, cranberry juice, orange juice, and cold cuts and mayonnaise for my motel room’s little fridge, beer, several jars of cashews for breaks and watching TV, a jigsaw puzzle, and a pack of 100-sheet, 20-lb erasable typing bond. The excursion took an hour. Up and down the lanes, pushing a red plastic cart.
When it came my turn in the check-out line, the clerk eyed me and made a face. He seemed to disapprove of the slow way I was unloading my purchases on to his conveyor belt. A gay kid, college age, impatient. American Philippine, with a ring through his pierced eyebrow and dyed white blond hair and barbed-wire tattoos around each wrist. His name tag read, ‘Todd—Assistant Manager’. I grabbed two tabloids off a rack and tossed them on the moving counter.
‘Will that be all?’
I nodded ‘yes’ but threw on two king-size Snickers bars from a candy display.
‘Sir, will that be all?’
‘Yes Todd, that will be all.’ Then I changed my mind and tossed on an additional pack of Life Savers and a pouch of Red Man chewing tobacco. Impulse purchases.
‘Cash or charge, sir?’
I peeled off a hundred and put it on top of the rolling twelve-pack of beer. ‘Cash, Todd.’
As he was feeding my stuff through the register’s scanner he hesitated while swiping the peanut jars. ‘Sir, the sale is on the beer nuts only. The Benny’s Beer Nuts.’
‘I don’t eat beer nuts. I don’t like the skins.’
Todd huffed and rolled his eyes. ‘Okayyyy—sooo…which jars of nuts do you want, sir?’
They all looked the same to me. ‘The cashews,’ I said. ‘I only eat cashews. I don’t care about the sale.’
‘Sooo, no Benny’s Beer Nuts?’
‘Correct. No Benny’s Beer Nuts.’
‘What about the Benny’s Mixed Nuts, sir?’
‘What about ‘em?’
‘You have two jars of Benny’s Mixed Nuts here. I assume you can read, sir?’
‘A selection error. I don’t eat Benny’s Mixed Nuts.’
Todd snorted, shook his head, and made a conspiratorial ‘what-an-asshole’ face to the guy behind me in line. A construction guy with two cases of beer in his cart, wearing a sweaty ‘Nobody Knows I’m Elvis’ T-shirt. ‘Great sir,’ sneered Todd, making a dramatic deal out of sweeping the extra peanut jars aside.
Behind me Elvis snickered. The woman behind him with fleshy arms shook her head. This was Todd’s turf. Making customers eat shit was a skill he’d refined. ‘Sooo then,’ he hissed, ‘you don’t want the Benny’s Mixed Nuts and the Benny’s Beer Nuts even though you are the one who put them in your shopping cart?’
More chuckles and snickers.
Me and Todd were face to face separated by the moving conveyor belt. ‘For the last time, Todd, I only eat Benny’s-fucking-Cashews.’
‘Sir, I just asked a question. A simple question.’
‘Can I ask you a question, Todd?’
‘What is it, sir? I’m waiting. And, as you can see, everybody behind you in line is waiting too. Our store is extremely busy this afternoon, but you have a question. What is your question, sir?’
I could feel myself losing control. I leaned across the counter. ‘Are you a cocksucker, Todd?’
‘Excuse me?’
‘It’s just a question! I’ll ask it again: Are you a motherfucking faggot cocksucker?’
Todd stepped back, and so did the other customers. This was L.A. A 9mm automatic pistol might accompany my outburst.
But I was done. I grabbed my money off the register, then tore the tab up and away from one of the cans of Benny’s Mixed Nuts, emptying the container on the counter on top of the jigsaw puzzle and the other shit.
Out in the parking lot, after I got in my Chrysler and put the key into the ignition, I noticed something strange: I had an erection.