Becker could explain why he continued to see Terri – lust. But lust alone couldn’t explain why he ended up with her in the lavatory at Coca-Cola. That had to do with environmental stress.
He knew he was dying. He knew that being an ocean away from Atlanta and the sparkle, in an alien distribution zone, was killing him. He’d read of cases. People died from being isolated from their intimates and people lost control that way.
Environmental isolation and stress put him in the lavatory with Terri that frosty Friday.
In the lavatory, Terri went down on him, he ducking his head below the three-quarter cubicle door so that anyone coming into the men’s wouldn’t see him – one foot braced against the marble wall, trousers around his knees. He feared that they’d see Terri and his feet – to do that someone would have to lie on the floor. That wouldn’t have surprised him. To him anything could happen.
She’d talked him into it.
She’d made horny gestures and typed a hot note.
He’d protested. God be his witness, he’d said, ‘No, Terri, please, Terri, no – leave me alone – not in the office, please. Discretion.’
But it hadn’t been there. The words had been spoken but were nothing more than a platoon of trembling cadets. His sense of discretion, a vague memory trace.
She’d gotten him to the lavatory by seduction, but that his will was shot to pieces was not lust but environmental stress.
He grunted from the stimulation of her mouth.
She rested.
‘Jesus, don’t stop now – go on – Jesus, go on.’
When the panting was all over Terri said, ‘Now are you glad you let yourself be seduced?’
Life had him in its undertow.
‘Let’s get out of here.’
In addition to the Southern Baptist Convention there are 29 other Baptist bodies in the US. They range from the tiny Independent Baptist Church of America, which has only 25 members, to the National Baptist Convention of the U.S.A. Inc. which has five point five million members and is the largest Negro church in the country. All told there are some 25 million Baptists in the U.S.
And now, Becker thought groaningly, the Baptists of the Lavatory Inc.
Back at his desk he looked at his crumpled suit and stains.
Becker, you’re a-dying.
Then Sam called for him.
‘Becker, a member of staff – you won’t believe this – no names no pack drill – has come to me and stated that he saw you in the gents with a girl – one of the relief typists.’ Sam tried to put the question humorously.
Oh, Sam.
‘Sam, you must be joking.’
‘I’m trying, Becker, I’m trying.’
Aw hell.
‘Aw hell, it’s God’s truth, Sam, it’s right – don’t ask me how.’ Becker raised both hands. ‘It happened I don’t know how – that’s the living truth.’
Pain, weariness, despair, disappointment, doom and gloom, packing in around Sam like crushed ice. ‘Becker, I’ve been with Coca-Cola thirty-one years. I’ve been in this country nearly six. I have never …’
Becker could list the twenty-eight steps which led him to his first trip and his first mixing with drugs of any kind – Old Crow bour bon excluded.
The first had been during High School when he’d learned to play piano from a coupon course mailed from the back of a comic book.
The second had been reading the poems of the Earl of Rochester at college.
The third had been carrying the poems of the Earl of Rochester in his head, after college.
The fourth had been a semester of Existentialism which led him to ponder destiny and life.
The fifth had been Course 231, Social Psychology, which had given him a soft-edged business approach.
The sixth had been seven hundred miserable Rotary lunches.
The seventh had been avarice – seeing the riches of the earth and over-seeking them. Cupidity.
The eighth had been his ever-present willingness to succumb to the harlot itch – to leap the fence of restraint.
The ninth had been turning his back on God’s Prophetic Clock which was ticking away.
The tenth had been his willingness to even consider coming to this forsaken country to advise the franchise men – too far from the action. He’d lost altitude.
The eleventh had been the heat of the forsaken summer of the forsaken country which overactivated his thirst and lust.
The twelfth had been the fibro towns and the cities that looked like they should be metropolises but underneath were towns. The Coca-Cola signs were a disguise.
The thirteenth had been dancing with a transvestite who had put a hex on him. It had been a mistake, he’d mistaken the transvestite for a girl.
The fourteenth had been lying to himself about mistaking the transvestite for a girl. He’d known all along.
The fifteenth had been weakening the stockade of his existence – the motel – by opening the window that day to allow Terri to swing her leg over it and climb in.
The sixteenth had been life’s gradual smudging of his sartorial standards.
The seventeenth had been taking off the sunglasses of his soul to anyone, least of all, Terri.
The eighteenth had been listening to Terri’s personal story with lust in his heart.
The nineteenth had been taking Terri, reeking of sex, barefoot to a business party.
The twentieth had been letting Terri out of his sight long enough for her to write ‘Becker Sucks Cocks’ on the wall of the bathroom.
The twenty-first had been forgiving her.
The twenty-second had been letting Terri get him into the lavatory at the office for a blow job.
The twenty-third had been the foolhardy incaution of being seen pushing Terri through the louvre window of the lavatory.
The twenty-fourth had been someone telling Sam. Firstly telling Sam about the message ‘Becker Sucks Cocks’ which he’d denied any knowledge of, and secondly, about the lavatory incident which he had not denied.
The twenty-fifth had been Sam’s abiding despair.
The twenty-sixth had been him leaving the office for ever with a glazed Sam gently stabbing the desk with a paper knife.
The twenty-seventh had been going to Terri’s flat that same afternoon full of bourbon and the release of absolute defeat – freed from the battle.
The twenty-eighth had been Terri saying, ‘Come on, Becker, honey, come away with me, come away with me on a trip, on a trip, to an acid wonderland where we’ll find what sexuality is all about, and what God intended.’
As far as Becker could remember there were 28 signs which Jesus said to watch for.
Jesus, he should have watched for those signs. Oh boy – the distance he’d travelled, the many signs he’d passed, unheeded, to this.
On his trip he became a little boy at Terri’s munificent maternal breast.
He tasted once again the sweet sustaining milk, hitting his lips like electric glucose.
The flesh of her breasts and the all-yielding rubbery nipple gave a milk odour so reassuring that all fears and woes subsided.
Terri’s maternalism lifted him high and embraced and held him.
Her enveloping legs and the immense soft hairiness of her crutch swallowed him.
He was swallowed and locked in her groin.
He was washed by her pungent flooding.
His stomach and lower thighs were enveloped by the moist warm suction of her womb.
She drew his sperm from him in a long steady unpulsating stream, like a child peeing.
For a micro-second he rested.
After resting he grew, his penis a sapling, and he saw, for the first time, his muscles rippling.
Sap came through his body, in a rapid hurry.
His penis filled her to the point of pain, she opened and closed in moaning reception.
The fluid of her vagina was hot, lubricious.
He burst into her, pulsation after pulsation which lasted until he fell, drained, exhausted, crying on her hair, feeling that he had almost totally expelled himself into her, to the edge of disappearance.
He wept for his lies.
He wept for his knowledge.
He saw the fires of hell but they weren’t for him.
Not today, anyhow.
Later in a great silence and tiredness Terri and he lay in a bath.
Apart, points of their bodies touching.
Now and then his mind trembled through his body.
She said she’d had other private feelings at some times, away from him. But she’d been his mother at the time of the suckling and his woman at the end.
Well, Jesus, what now?
In a deck chair, Becker read the interview.
An American jazz pianist, Mr Beckar from Atlanta, Georgia, has been hired to play for a season of twelve weeks at the Silver Spade, Surfer’s Paradise.
(The manager had said, ‘If they like you, you stay – if they don’t, you’re out. We ain’t never had jazz before.’)
Mr Beckar, aged 35, was formerly a member of a group in Atlanta known as the Bourbon Hot Mother Blues and a member of Atlanta Dixieland Jazz Society.
(The Bourbon Hot Mother Blues had consisted of him, his piano, and a bottle of Old Crow.)
He also played at Ruby Red’s Warehouse, well-known as a jazz centre in Atlanta.
(You may not remember me, Ruby – but I did break down your piano one night after the band packed it in. So had most of the audience.)
He told our reporter that he had retired from business to be come a professional musician.
(‘Retired’ was their word – he’d left it vaguer than that.)
‘I learned to play the piano by mail order,’ he said. ‘I wrote for lessons by filling out a comic book coupon.’
(The Lone Ranger, to be precise.)
‘Piano jazz until recent years has had a doubtful reputation among some jazz people – but you have many great jazz pianists.’
He said that in his opinion the masters were Fats Waller, Pine Top Smith, Jimmy Yancey, and Cripple Clarence Lofton.
‘I play a lot of very traditional works,’ he told our reporter, ‘the usual twelve bar blues – using the left hand as walking bass – the right for rhythm – a lot of cross rhythm – very traditional.’
(No funky-hard bop for old Becker.)
Mr Beckar said he would like to pay homage to the music of Fats Waller.
‘He’s often criticised for being too commerical by people who don’t like popular music.
‘Fats managed to give an unaffected, bantering style, even poetry, to otherwise sentimental songs.
(Well, he guessed he’d said something like that.)
‘And anyhow what’s wrong with making money?’
Mr Beckar said that his own style owed much to the celebrated Fats Waller.
(Forgive me, Fats.)
Becker wears maroon bow tie, fancy arm bands, floral braces and drinks Old Crow while he plays.
His average weekly earnings are about eighty dollars with a free suite at the motel.
Becker often thinks that he would like to rest his head in the lap of authority – say, the lap of Billy Graham – but cannot surrender.
He finds that he still admires the organisation of the Southern Baptist Convention as a way for the world – no church congregation is bound by the Convention. Each goes its own way.
Apart from wanting nothing of it, he has no strong feelings about Vietnam. He is, however, part of a pipeline which looks after deserters from Vietnam. Thanks to Terri.
His mother and sister write. ‘What went wrong?’ ‘When are you coming home?’ ‘What about your position?’
He lies around a lot. He doesn’t exercise. He surfs reluctantly, unenthusiastically.
Terri waitresses at the motel. She has begun painting again. She is as unstable as jazz.
Terri says he is free now.
That is a joke. But Terri speaks like that. He has an inkling that stress and pollution are what the world is all about.
He sometimes misses stress and pollution. He sometimes misses Sam, Coca-Cola.
He has a scheme for manufacturing cassette programmes of unusual material which would be delivered with the milk on Sundays.
He is fond of saying, ‘If we are the last of the bourbon generation, let’s be good at it.’
He also likes to say that he is the best jazz pianist from Atlanta who has ever worked for Coca-Cola.
Becker wears maroon bow tie, fancy arm bands, floral braces and drinks Old Crow while he plays at the Silver Spade.