Next to me on the kitchen table, set neatly on a plate to catch the blood, is my landlady’s head. As soon as the water on the stove comes to a boil I’m going to drop it into the pot and make soup. It’s not that I want to underscore some point about anarchy, or social injustice, or how the end doesn’t justify the means. All that’s been done before by writers whose names I’m quite sure you’d recognize and who I know you’d agree I could never equal. Besides, I’ve been warned that that kind of thinking beforehand only leads to dull and didactic expression. And it’s not that I’m hungry either, though I’ll admit there were times during the week I spent at the conference that I was forced to go a day or two, maybe longer, though it’s difficult to say for sure, given the conditions I was subjected to, without any food. Nevertheless, the sole reason I’m serving the head up so ceremoniously here is that I want you to read what I’ve written. And my teacher told me there’s no better way to begin a story. “The best stories always include decapitations,” I remember him insisting.
He’d been critiquing one of my workshop pieces, a story about a young man who seemed to have everything going for him—a full athletic scholarship to a good school, a beautiful and talented girlfriend, a place in his father’s business when he graduated from college—but who felt somehow that he wasn’t in control of his own destiny, that he was making the choices others expected him to, that his whole life had somehow been laid out from start to finish as neat and easy as the clothes he used to find folded on a chair next to his bed in the morning as a child. “This is lifeless, boring, stupid, mundane, thoroughly knee-jerk-thoughtless rubbish,” my mentor had told me, waving the story in front of my face. For a second I thought he might even slap me with the pages. “A real slice of whining post-adolescent shithole life. Why, oh why, do I even bother?” he asked. “Would somebody please fucking tell me?” Then he took another sip of beer, wiped his mouth on his sleeve and set the bottle back down on the table.
He rubbed his eyes and looked at me, as if for the first time. Then he smiled almost warmly and chuckled. “Ah, but that’s not to say there’s no potential in it,” he said. “Sometimes all that’s lacking is an emotional connection. A moment of honesty and clarity. An epiphany, if you will, though I’ve never really understood exactly what the hell that word means. At any rate, I recommend you give it some head. Really, trust me on this one, John: What’s a body without a head?”
It was the second day of the conference and he was drunk again. “It’s Roger,” I reminded him.
“Now don’t get defensive,” he told me, reading my face. “A writer’s got to have a tough hide, a thick skin, a coat of mail, a bullet-proof vest, a trick knee, a hard head, a numb skull, a fat lip, a glass jaw, a tin ear, a sharp eye, a mind of his own, a banana in his pocket, a long rope, and a rubber ass for all the times he gets kicked. More importantly, he’s got to be able to do whatever it takes to make things work. You understand what I’m getting at?” I nodded. “Okay, then get yourself another beer before you go back to your typewriter. You must know where they are by now. I’ve taught you that much.” I got up and opened the refrigerator. “And bring me one, too,” he mumbled.
The refrigerator was crammed full of bottles. I pulled out two more, opened them and set them down on the table. He lit another cigarette, ripped my story in half and laughed. “Just drop a head somewhere in this damn thing. Better still, put it at the beginning and start over. You’re going to find it’s terribly liberating.”
I took a tiny sip of beer and stared at the floor. It was ten o’clock in the morning and my head was already spinning. When I got up from the table to excuse myself I saw that the conference director’s head lay sideways on the table. His mouth dangled open. As I backed away he began to snore. I stumbled out the kitchen door and into the backyard, where I fell into a chaise lounge all but buried in the knee-high weeds. A rusted swing set towered in the near distance, next to a dilapidated wooden fence like some ominous torture wheel transplanted from a Bosch hellscape. I closed my eyes to shut out the blight and felt the sun burn into my eyelids, the sweat roll down my neck. Then I drifted into a restless, tortured sleep—the sleep of the lost, of the damned.
I’d first seen mention of George Body’s so-called conference in an ad I encountered in For Writers and Poets, a magazine I’d borrowed from my Creative Writing professor at the university. Not that I’m officially in the writing program or even an English major. Far from it. Actually, I’m a Business Administration major with a specialization in Accounting. But I’ve always imagined myself writing stories or maybe even a novel someday, so when I got the chance I signed up for a course in writing short fiction. At first my girlfriend thought I was crazy. “Where are you going to get the time for that?” she’d asked me. “You’re already so busy with your other classes and with Basketball practices and team travel that we hardly ever spend any time together as it is.”
But Tammy’s a great gal, a cheerleader and biology major to boot, and after she’d seen some of the stories I wrote she began to encourage me to write more. Once she even told my father over the phone that we couldn’t come to mom’s birthday dinner because she had to study for a big test when really it was me who didn’t want to go on account of the story I was in the middle of writing. And believe me, my dad’s not easy to handle, though Tammy knows how to wrap him around her finger.
And my professor thought the stories I wrote for the class were pretty good, too. I made copies for the workshop and, after Dr. Harder pointed out the realistic manner in which my characters seemed to communicate, just about everyone in the class complimented me on the skilful way I handled dialog. Actually, it was Dr. Harder who first planted the summer writing conference seed and then watered it, initially with his guarded enthusiasm and later with his tears, as it were. We’d talked about it once or twice when he’d gone over my stories at meetings in his office. But I have to admit, the whole idea kind of intimidated me. Most of the programs he showed me brochures from seemed so high-pressure and professional, not to mention expensive, with lots of best-selling or big-name writers in residence, that I secretly felt I’d stick out like a hammer-struck thumb.
So I was particularly pleased when I ran across the advertisement for The Suburban Writer’s Conference. I felt like I had discovered, purely by chance and completely on my own, a familiar and intimate environment in which I could feel comfortable building my skills as an apprentice fiction writer. Instead of being held at some prestigious east-coast university in Massachusetts or Connecticut, or some fancy retreat in the mountains of Vermont or New York, the ad for the SWC flatly stated that both the workshops and the dormitories were located in “a 1950’s vintage suburban housing tract half a block from tennis courts and the unremarkable campus of Carmen Miranda Junior College.” Compared to other programs, the fees seemed modest, the staff and number of visiting artists small and the student-writer to mentor ratio low, the latter guaranteed by extremely limited and selective enrollment. Before returning the issue of For Writers and Poets to Dr. Harder, I wrote a letter requesting more information about the conference.
The information packet, which included a brochure with a photograph of a nondescript little house with a flat roof, a short biography and photo of the writer and editor George Body, the conference’s founder and director, and a list of facilities and visiting writers who would be in attendance for the two-week summer session, arrived within the week. Looking at the photo of George Body made me want to study with him: though he was the author of a number of critically-acclaimed books as well as the editor of an independent literary journal called PapaDadaBlastFurnace, he seemed completely at ease, unlike so many of the faces, those portraits of pretension, I’d seen displayed by writers affiliated with other such programs. To me Body seemed loose—not happy, but relaxed—as though he’d just finished writing a novel and could finally stare off at nothing for a while. It was a calm I imagined only a writer could earn and then experience. Also included were an enrollment form and a request for a writing sample, plus details about how potential student participants were to be selected. The promotional materials all stressed that the program director was committed to accepting only student writers with “an as yet undeveloped but nevertheless remarkable gift.”
When I showed these materials to Dr. Harder and asked his opinion about which of my stories to submit as a sample of my writing he was strangely subdued, as though disappointed that I’d uncovered and chosen a program without his help. I thought he might be sulking because a number of his associates were scheduled to be visiting writers at various other programs around the country and his lover was the director of one of the lesser-known conferences in New England, a program he’d recommended to me highly on both of the previous occasions we’d discussed my attending a conference. “Well, I can’t say I’m familiar with the guest faculty,” he said, flipping through the promotional materials, “though I do know of PapaDadaBlastFurnace, though I’ve never read any of Body’s work. I’m surprised you don’t try to get into the conference at Sycamore. One of my more advanced students, Peter Stringer, has already been accepted there. I know you’d enjoy working with Arthur Bongo Beauchamp, who, for my money, anyway, is one of the most distinguished short-story writers of his generation as well as a close personal friend.” But I’d already decided to apply to the Suburban Writers Conference. I needed only to pick my sample.
Eventually, with Tammy’s help, I settled on my story “Bad Connection,” which is composed entirely of dialog between two people talking on the phone, one of whom has dialed the wrong number but because of heavy static on the line neither can hear clearly enough to realize it and once they do both continue the conversation because it’s too embarrassing not to, for the sample, though my first instinct had been to go with “The Party,” a sad piece about a divorced woman whose son keeps asking her embarrassing questions like “Why are your legs longer than the other kids’ moms?” and “How come when daddy left he put his fist through the wall?” and “How come you don’t have a job but wear so much pretty jewelry and lipstick?” and “How come men come over in the middle of the night and go into your bedroom, make gorilla noises then leave?” and “How come Tommy says ‘Nina and her friends are horse?’” because he’s bored, resentful and somehow suspicious that it’s her fault he wasn’t invited, along with all the other kids, to a neighbor kid’s birthday party.
Tammy had favored “Love Bites,” which has always been her favorite. It’s about a teen-aged girl who comes to realize that the hickeys her boyfriend wants to give her all over are slowly draining the blood out of her body. As she begins losing weight and eventually her strength as well, her parents worry that she’s suffering from an eating disorder and take her to a doctor who tells them that it’s nothing to worry about, that she’s probably just experiencing a late growth spurt. After they leave, the doctor turns to his nurse, a very thin and pale young woman, reaches his hand up under her skirt, and begins kissing her, then sucking on her neck. When he unbuttons her dress, there are dozens of hickeys covering her chest. “Gross!” Tammy yelled out loud the first time she read it.
Three weeks later I was delighted to receive a letter of acceptance to the conference, signed by none other than George Body himself. The letter stated that he wanted to thank me personally for my interest, and that my work displayed a fine awareness of how random events influence narrative. Best of all, though, he was looking forward to working with me closely during the duration of the conference. I was so excited I felt lightheaded for a moment. Then I ran from the mailbox up the stairs to my apartment, wrote out my check for half the tuition and called Tammy to tell her the news.
After the third ring a woman’s voice said “hello” and for a second I thought that Tammy must have been taking a nap. I started right in about how I’d been accepted into the conference and when I paused she said, “that’s wonderful, Johnny.” That’s when I realized that in my excitement I must have dialed the wrong number. “How’s your mother?” the voice asked.
“Mom’s fine,” I answered.
“And your sister?”
“Same as always,” I replied, though I don’t have a sister.
“Is she still living all alone with her little boy? What’s his name?”
“Roger.”
“Yes, little Roger. It’s such a shame about her.”
“A real crime.”
“She isn’t in any trouble is she? With the law, I mean? Oh, it’s so sad. Isn’t there something we could do . . . to help her?”
“We’ve tried. She won’t listen.”
“Oh, I know. It’s just that I feel so bad. And your poor mother. How she must feel about all this I can only imagine. You know, Johnny, I’ve never said this before because I never wanted to interfere. It’s none of my business, I know, but I’ve always felt that something strange happened with that doctor. You know, the one who was treating poor Nina for that rash—those terrible red marks—or hives that she had. She was never the same after that. Do you think he could have done something? You know . . .”
As I listened I’d been slowly reaching my hand around to find the phone jack. I grasped the little clip between my thumb and forefinger, said, “Listen, . . .” and yanked it suddenly out from the phone. Then I inserted it once more and called Tammy.
“That’s great,” she said when I read her the letter. “I told you those stories are killer. I can’t wait to tell everybody.”
“Look, Tammy, just don’t mention any of this to my folks. I still don’t think they’re ready to understand how serious I am about writing. Maybe in a few years when my novel’s been on the best seller list for a dozen weeks I’ll mention something about it to the old man. Until then, though, I’d rather keep the whole thing under wraps, if you know what I mean.”
“But what are you going to tell them? I mean you can’t just take off for weeks and not tell them where you’re going.”
“I’ll say I’m going to visit Yosemite. That they can find themselves. It’s on all the maps.”
I arrived in the city of San Sebastian on a mid-July afternoon after a two day bus ride, my backpack weighted down with dictionary, thesaurus, half a dozen spiral notebooks, a pair of high-top basketball shoes. The bus station was located in what passed for downtown—at an indeterminate point along the three mile commercial strip that bisected the surrounding housing developments. The sun was blazing ferociously and there were few people on the street. I went inside the station to inquire about a taxi. “Carmen Miranda College,” the man behind the counter repeated, “it’s not too far. I’ll call a taxi.”
A few minutes later a white Toyota with a dented side panel and a detachable plastic sign on the roof, the same kind pizza delivery people use but this one reading TAXI, pulled into the parking lot. The driver didn’t get out, so I opened the back door and threw the pack inside. Then I got into the front passenger seat. There was no meter. “What’s the fare to Miranda College?” I asked.
“Five bucks.”
“How about to Nerval Avenue, near the college?”
“Five and a quarter.”
We headed down the main street, passing several shopping centers along the way. While stopped at a red light, I saw a man walking along the sidewalk carrying a large wooden cross on his back.
“Nice town,” I said to the driver. “I just arrived, never been here before. I’m going to a writer’s conference.”
“Oh,” he said.
Ten minutes later we pulled to the front of the house pictured on the promotional brochure. It looked the same, except that the lawn had been neglected. I paid the driver six dollars and dragged my pack from the back seat, across the overgrown grass and up the front steps. There was no bell, so I knocked.
When no one answered, I knocked again. Tired, thirsty, my back wet with sweat, I gave the door a solid pounding. I was just about to give up and sit down on the stoop when a voice yelled from inside, “Just a minute. Hold your fucking pants on.” A minute later I heard the lock turn and the door opened. Before me stood George Body in a bathrobe.
“I’m sorry,” he said, “I was asleep.” He looked as if he’d risen not from a nap but from the dead. His face was gaunt and covered with a stubble of beard, his eyes were puffy and red, and his was hair tangled and dirty. The blue terrycloth robe he was wearing was missing its belt and beneath it he was visibly naked: his penis hung like an undersized fish from a stringer. He held out his hand. “You must be Roger. To tell you the truth, I wasn’t expecting you this early.”
We shook hands. “If you don’t know by now, I’m George Body. Welcome to the anti-Paris, Roger. Jesus, it’s hot out there. Come on inside and I’ll get us both a beer. Then we can sign you in and get you settled.” I followed him inside and stood in a living room overwhelmed with books. They lined the walls from floor to ceiling and spilled out in piles that grew like potted plants in the corners. Magazines and still more books covered the coffee table. “Have a seat, Roger,” Body said, handing me an ice-cold beer. “Relax.”
Signing in, it turned out, consisted of my handing over a check to cover the remaining half of the tuition. Getting settled meant throwing my pack in the spare bedroom, a tiny space with faded white walls, a single mattress on a metal frame, an old office chair and a student desk with a manual typewriter, six sharp pencils and a ream of white paper on its top and a plastic trash can underneath. “It’s a small house,” George called out from his bedroom as he was getting dressed, “but plenty big enough for guests.” He promised to search for a pillow and sheets just as soon as we’d sat down together and finished another beer.
We talked for a few minutes about my bus trip to San Sebastian and my general impressions of the town. I was just about to ask when the other conference attendees and guest writers would be arriving and where they’d be housed, when George suddenly jumped to his feet and excused himself. “Look, Roger, I’ve just remembered something important I must do. Please make yourself at home for an hour or so. I’ll be back in time for dinner.” Then he hurried out the door. A moment later I heard the sound of an engine coughing and sputtering, followed by a tremendously loud exhaust noise. I looked out the window to see an ancient green Volkswagen beetle with George Body behind the wheel, farting out the driveway in reverse, like some crazy wind-up toy. A moment later it was halfway down the street.
By the time he returned I was reading one of his novels which I’d found on the bookshelf. Entitled Mermaids Singing, it was about an old man who plans an escape from the nursing home where he’s been sent to die. He’s loaded up with pain medications and can barely move. But in his mind he plays out all kinds of tender memories from his youth, memories of a woman he loves. Tears roll down his wrinkled face. Somehow he gets the idea that he must find her. He also has a craving for sardines in tomato sauce. For days he plans how to get out of bed and begins discarding his painkillers, stashing the pills in his pockets or under his bed, pouring the liquids into his bedpan. After a while the pain returns, slowly sharpens, begins to define his existence and give him the edge he needs. He senses that anything is possible, slides the covers off and pulls his legs over the side of the bed, touches the floor with his feet. He puts on a robe and slippers, then shuffles to the door. It’s very early in the morning, sometime between shifts of the nursing staff. A few women in white uniforms are standing together by a coffee maker, eating donuts and talking. Taking tiny steps, he stumbles down the hall to the lobby, passes the empty reception desk. It takes all the strength he can muster to push open the front door. Suddenly he’s standing in the sunlight.
For a few minutes he stands on the sidewalk in front of the building and watches the cars go by. He sees people pass by on their way to work. He wants to touch each of them, to take hold of their hands, to press his lips to their cheek. He wants to reassure them, to point out the color of the sky, to tell them their love, whatever they feel, is not in vain.
At the corner he sits down to rest on a bench. A bus pulls over, comes to a jerky stop. The automatic doors open. He climbs the stairs and grabs hold of the railing. As the bus pulls back into traffic, the driver asks for his fare. He reaches into the pocket of his robe, drops a couple of tranquilizers into the bin and sits down in the seat nearest the exit. The driver glances over his shoulder and glares at him. “What the fuck?” he says.
The old man looks into his eyes. “Sardines?” he asks.
“Hey, Pop, I think you’d better get off at the next stop,” the driver tells him.
“Yes,” he says. “Thank you, Johnny.”
When the bus pulls over he descends. He follows people into a huge building, which turns out to be a shopping mall. Somehow he ends up in the lingerie section of a department store . . .
Before I could read any more, Body came through the front door carrying two grocery sacks full of quart beer bottles. “You want to give me a hand unloading this stuff?” he asked. I put the book down, slipped my shoes back on and followed him out to the garage. The car was loaded with provisions: eight cases of beer, two half gallons of Jack Daniels, several cartons of generic cigarettes, a grocery bag full of hamburger, franks and various cuts of red meat, a sack of oranges, three two pound tins of coffee, and a case of pork and beans in the can. I suddenly realized he’d gone out to cash my check before the banks close.
“Now we’re all set,” Body said, as we stored the last of the beer in the refrigerator. “You hungry? I’ll make us some steak and beans.”
That night over beer and Jack Daniels on the rocks, the writer finally made me understand that there would be no other students. “You mean I’m the only one who applied?” I asked.
“Heavens no, there were others, lots of them in fact, but you’re the only one I accepted.”
“But why?”
“I can’t take money from people I can’t help.”
“And you think you can help me?”
“We’ll see. I think I can try, anyway.”
“So there’s no one else coming at all?”
“Well, I can’t say for sure. Usually one or two people tend to drop in. I expect this time won’t be different.”
“But no one else is enrolled.”
“That’s right, it’s just you and me, baby,” he said, slapping me on the back. “ ’Nother beer?” He brought two more to the table. Then he shook two cigarettes from his pack, put them both in his mouth and lit them. When he handed one to me, I tried to wave it off, to tell him I don’t smoke. “Look pal,” he said, “just hold the burning stick in your hand a minute, then tell me you don’t want it. There’ll be plenty of time for suffering in this life. Tonight we’re gonna enjoy a couple of quiet drinks and a good smoke. Tomorrow we start work.”
That night I slept in my clothes on a bare mattress with no pillow. I dreamed I’d had myself committed, had signed papers declaring myself to be mentally incompetent, had entered an institution, an asylum where I would be locked away, a place where I would, in effect, henceforth spend my days finger-painting alone in a white room as big as an airplane hanger. George Body was both my painting instructor and the chief psychiatrist. “Put your whole arm into the paint can.” He grabbed me by the wrist and forced my hand into a five-gallon tub of red paint. “Now have a Valium,” he said, popping a pill into his mouth like candy, then holding another out to me. “Relax.” Suddenly choral music began to fill the up the immense empty space. It grew louder and louder . . . I woke up to the sound of a typewriter accompanied by what I later learned was Fauré’s Requiem, one of the dozen pieces Body plays when he’s writing. I put on a light and searched for my watch. It was just after five in the morning.
I woke up the second time that day to the sound of my writing teacher singing in the shower. It was a painful sound, like an animal caught in the steel jaws of a trap. At first I thought he’d scalded himself, and I jerked myself upright in the chaise lounge. But as the howling continued, I collapsed back on the chair and wiped my brow against the shoulder of my T-shirt.
A fly buzzed on my sweaty neck and my mouth felt as though some sadistic dentist had packed it full of gauze and x-ray film. Lying coiled in the weeds I found a garden hose. I opened the spigot and let the water run. When the water had cooled a bit I rinsed my mouth, drank down several swallows and spit the rest. The warm water tasted of rubber and minerals. I held the hose above my head and let the liquid flow over my face and run down my back and chest. After shutting off the spigot, I opened the side gate and walked around to the front of the house, where I leaned against the garage in the shadow of the eaves.
Across the street was a nearly identical house with several cars parked on the lawn. A number of people—men with beards wearing muscle shirts, faded jeans and baseball caps, young girls with long skinny cigarettes in hand and droopy made-up eyes, barefoot kids in filthy t-shirts and diapers—were milling around. People walked in and out of the house. The front door remained open and loud music emanated from within. From time to time, one of the men would poke his head under the open hood of one of the cars while another sat in the driver’s seat and cranked the ignition. As I watched, another car pulled into the driveway and two more men got out. “Fuck you,” I heard one of them say, by way of a greeting.
By now, George Body had no doubt finished his shower and was wandering around the house in his blue robe. But I couldn’t face him. I felt certain that he’d either force me to drink another beer or sit down at the typewriter. Just the thought of him suggesting I “try another draft” was too much for me, so I turned up the street and headed for the tennis courts. A couple of kids were volleying against the wall. Suddenly I longed for nothing more than to get inside a gym and practice my jump shot.
I walked across the campus, heading for the largest building I could see. In the lobby of the gymnasium I paused to drink from the cooler by the entrance. Again, the water tasted strongly of minerals, though this time it was at least cold enough to drink. I swallowed enough to make my stomach ache, though my throat still felt parched. For a moment I thought I might faint, throw up, or both, so I crouched down by the trophy case and put my head between my legs. I wondered if I was suffering from heat stroke from sleeping face up in the midday sun. After several minutes I felt better, good enough at any rate to stand again and made my way through the double doors and into the gym.
Most of the floor had been covered with canvas tarps and a tall scaffolding on wheels had been pushed up against the bleachers on the wall nearest me. The whole building smelled of chemicals and the walls and part of the high ceiling were newly painted a fresh coat of white. I walked out a ways to look at the facility, stared up at the ceiling, and glanced around. Near the center of the room were several large drums of paint, some coiled orange electrical cords and what must have been a compressor. Just as I was about to turn back toward the exit, a man in painter’s coveralls entered through the locker room door at the opposite end of the gym, walked quickly toward the paint drums and thrust his arm into one of them. When he pulled it out again he was holding something shiny. “Forgot the tape measure,” he called out to me. Then he hurried back the way he’d come and disappeared again behind the doors.
Outside the building I retched into a plastic-lined metal trash can. As I straightened up again I noticed a pretty girl holding a camera. When I looked at her she turned away, and I thought she must have snapped a photo of me being sick. She was walking away from me and I started after her. I imagined catching up to her, grabbing her roughly by the arm, taking the camera from her and ripping the film out. She moved away quickly. “Hey,” I called out, but she ignored me and disappeared into the doorway of a building marked FINE ARTS in block letters.
Eventually I came to an area with outdoor tables and a phone. A few students sat together in groups of two or three, talking about their summer classes. Others sat alone reading books. I dug in my pocket for change and called Tammy. We talked until my money ran out, which wasn’t very long. After I hung up the phone I felt better, like I’d got something off my chest. I wiped my eyes and went into the cafeteria to buy something to eat. I don’t remember what I ordered, only that it tasted pretty much like the food I’d been used to eating at the university. Institutional cooking, I guess it’s called. But somehow, like hearing Tammy’s voice on the phone, it was familiar and it comforted me.
As I was eating, a cooling breeze blew up and shook the leaves on the trees. When I finished, I walked around the little campus some more, stopping to poke my head inside the library. After digesting my food I headed back toward the gym and then out onto the playing fields behind it, where I found a running track. As I was already wearing cross-training shoes, I decided to jog a few laps to help clear my head. After a mile or so, I felt good enough to pick up the pace. I ran the fifth mile hard and finished with a quarter-lap sprint. Then I headed back to the house on Nerval Avenue. Now that I’d recovered a bit, I wanted nothing better than to do what Tammy had suggested, to confront Body and get my money back, maybe even head out to Yosemite on a night bus if one was running. I strode along at a good clip, my hands clenched into fists, my arms swinging at my sides. I was pissed.
Body had told me when I first arrived that he never locked the door and that I should feel free to come and go as I pleased, so when I got back to the house I barged right inside. I found him sitting on the couch in the living room watching a television talk show. “Hey, Roger,” he said, turning to face me. “How’s that story coming along? Take a seat if you like and let’s talk about it.”
For a second I was taken back. The television surprised me. “What are you watching?” I asked.
“Tristen Meyers. It’s research for a novel I’m writing. But I’d be happy to turn the sound down while we discuss your work.”
“Listen, Mr. Body,” I began.
“Please, I told you to call me George. Or call me “asshole” if you prefer. But in any case drop the formality. It’s bad for my nerves.” He must have been reading my mind.
“Okay, George,” I said, trying to control my voice. But already I could feel my nerve slipping. “I’ve got a few questions.”
“Fine.” He smiled. “Sit down and I’ll do my best to answer them.” He gestured to the chair next to the couch and I slid into it. “What’s it like out there, anyway?”
I stared at him. “What’s it like? What do you mean, what’s it like? What in the hell are you talking about?” I could feel the emotion tightening my voice box like a fist squeezing a parakeet, could feel the blood rushing to my face.
George Body smiled again, and spoke gently. “The weather. What’s the weather like outside?”
I looked away. “Oh,” I said, lowering my voice. “The wind has come up. It’s getting cooler.”
“Good. Then it will be a fine night to work. But first let’s get back to your questions. Please.”
Suddenly my tongue swelled in my mouth, the way it had whenever I’d been called upon to answer a question the semester I’d taken a beginning French class to fulfill one of my general education requirements. I scrambled for words. “Well, first off,” I stammered, “I’d like to know . . . just where are these guest writers you advertised.”
“Oh they’re right here in the house,” he said. “You’ve already met them both.” I stared at him again. “My cats, Max Shocraft and Maureen O’Toole, two first-rate poets. Anyway, their essence, natural grace and savagery is far superior to most of the verse I see published these days.”
I shook my head and stared down at the floor. I was trying my best to seem disapproving.
“Listen, Roger, I admit that I can be both playful and threatening. But it’s always been my intention to suggest that a lot more goes into this process and product we call fiction than you’d previously imagined. That’s why I thought you wanted to come here, or at least that was why I selected you as my student. From the letter you wrote and the story you sent I suspected that you were a good deal less polished and hence potentially more open to the truth than the average Master of Freakish Attitude writing seminar type. But now I can see from what you’re saying, and certainly from what you’re repressing as well, that you’re wondering just what the hell you’ve got yourself into. No doubt you signed on with a completely different set of expectations for this whole experience and now that this one week out of your young life doesn’t seem to be on the exact course you thought you’d charted, you’re ready to mutiny, lock the captain in irons, and row away in the dinghy while he goes down with the scuttled ship. Not that I’d blame you, of course. If you demanded I give back what little remains unspent of your money and left here tonight in a fit of self-righteous indignation you wouldn’t be the first student of mine to have done so. Far from it. And if that’s what you plan to do, I can accept your decision and live with your misguided anger, knowing that it has nothing to do with me.”
He picked up his cigarettes from the coffee table, tapped one loose from the pack, then offered one to me. I shook my head no. I watched him strike a match, touch the flame to the tip of the paper and draw the smoke deeply into his lungs. “By the way,” he said, exhaling smoke through his nose, “have you eaten yet?” I told him I’d had dinner while I was out. “Well, then, there’s nothing left but to have a drink in the kitchen while I tell you how I wrote one of my best stories. Come on,” he said, waving me up and out of the chair.
I don’t know why I followed him into the kitchen. Maybe it was just easier to go along with it a while longer than to make a big fuss. I watched as the writer got two beers out of the refrigerator, opened them, handed one to me. “Thanks,” I said.
Body leaned against the kitchen counter and drank down several gulps of beer. Then he looked at me with his head cocked slightly to one side. “You know something, Roger. I get the feeling that you don’t trust your source material, that for some crazy reason you think you’ve got to spend all your time pulling situations out of your blessed imagination.” He laughed wildly and took another swallow. “I’ll tell you why that amuses me. It’s because that same imagination you place so much value on is largely made up of little bits and pieces of stories other people have been telling you. Stories about what it’s like to be a man, stories about the ideal society, stories about what you should expect, even stories about what it means to be a writer. Now the sooner you realize that your imagination isn’t really your own, the sooner you can discard those stories other people tell you every day and find some newer, more interesting ones to work with. And they’re not hard to find, because stories are in everything, Roger, everything.” He was talking faster now, and progressively louder, winding up for God-knows-what kind of Bolero-like finale. “There are voices locked inside the minds of people and the essence of things all around. You just have to listen. It’s that easy. Listen and you’ll hear them. Then you can write them down.”
I didn’t know what to say, so I nodded in response, then pulled on my own beer as he continued. “The subject matter is life and it’s everywhere, in everything. And that means dog shit, dirty dishes, and jock itch just as much as it does love, war and death. You’ve got to look at everything, every fucking thing. Do you understand?” Before I could answer, he grabbed an empty beer bottle from the counter and smashed it down against the edge of the sink so that it shattered into pieces. Then he dropped the bottleneck into the sink as well and walked over to me, holding his arm out in front of him.
“You see my wrist?” He wass almost yelling now. He brought the arm closer, waved it under my nose so that I could clearly see the raised white welt of scar. He paused a moment and looked so deeply into my eyes I feared he might locate and commit some unspeakable crime against my soul. “When my wife left me seven years ago I thought I was going to die,” he said, finally. He lowered the arm and turned back to stand near the sink full of broken glass.
“You see, I loved that woman . . . still do, and her walking out on me was the toughest damn thing I’ve ever had to come to terms with in my life. Christ, not that I blame her for leaving—no more than I’d blame you for packing it up and getting back on the first bus out of here. I wasn’t any easier to live with back then. If anything, I was worse: more distracted and detached, a lot angrier, scared to hell and back most of the time, uncertain, worried. You get the idea. And of course we didn’t have a pot to piss in either. I dragged her from one damned place to another. Sometimes I think we must have lived in half the cities in the world. She supported me for the most part, working in banks, doing secretarial jobs, whatever she could find. The woman believed in me, for God’s sake. And I had no idea what it meant to love the way she did.”
“So I fucked it all up, flushed myself and my life right down the john.” He paused and took a tiny sip. Then he licked his lips and set the bottle carefully down on the sideboard, just out of arm reach. “I was getting pretty desperate and started hitting the sauce,” he said. “I’d been writing for twelve years, been married for six, and hadn’t published much of anything. A few stories in magazines that didn’t pay, an appearance in an anthology, and one little prize of five hundred dollars was all I had to show for my work. Editors in New York didn’t know me from Santa Claus, I didn’t have an agent, and I wasn’t even fit for janitorial work. So I started feeling sorry for myself. I went from writing during the day and drinking at night to drinking all the time and complaining. I started hanging around bars and talking too much. I stopped listening completely. When my wife needed a new dress to wear to work, I bitched about it. I bitched about everything, took out my frustrations on the people around me. Pretty soon friends stopped calling. Christ, some writers I’d corresponded with for years even stopped answering my letters. Then I crashed the car, got my sorry ass thrown in jail. And still I wasn’t done.”
He lowered his head and closed his eyes for a moment. “I’m afraid this old, sad story makes me very tired,” he said. He was speaking slowly now, almost softly. “One day Janet came home from work to find me dead drunk, burning my manuscripts on the floor of the living room in the apartment we were renting. Fortunately, I’d put a big pot, the one we used to make spaghetti, on the carpet, or I’d have probably killed myself and burned down the whole building. Anyway, I’d spent the worse part of the afternoon drinking gin and methodically igniting each sheet of several unpublished novels with a cigarette lighter, then dropping the flaming papers into the pot. I can still remember thinking it was great fun. Several had fallen astray, so there were burn marks and ashes all over the carpet from where I’d had to stomp them out with my feet. And that’s the gay and magical little world into which my wife entered, simply by turning a doorknob. She left me that same night.
“I remember laughing, laughing, for crap’s sake, as she packed her things. I was hysterical, completely berserk. I laughed her right out of the apartment and threw the gin bottle at the door after her as she closed it. It was that funny. Then I went back to burning what was left of my manuscripts. A week later I was still drunk. Nothing mattered or made the least bit of sense to me. Eventually, though, I ran out of money, which meant that I couldn’t buy any more booze. That’s when I realized just how serious things had turned. Not only was I thirsty in a big way, but there was nothing much left to eat, all my clothes were dirty and the apartment was completely trashed.
“For a while longer, a couple of days, I’d guess, I just sat around and stared at the walls. I smoked cigarettes and took long naps. Finally, I managed to take a shower and shave. Then I called up perhaps the only friend I had left and asked him to send me enough money to get me through the month. I started reading the want ads in the newspaper each morning and eventually I found a job as a night watchman, which allowed me to pay the rent, wash my clothes, and eat. But all during that time I was missing Janet so bad it was like someone had stuck a hot poker down my throat and another up my ass. I couldn’t move without hurting. And I knew there was no way she was ever coming back.
“One day about six months later, I’d just started washing the dishes and was reaching my hands in beneath all the suds to find the scouring pad when suddenly the whole sink started turning red, even the soap on top. I must have been careless loading the dishes in the sink, for a glass had broken and I’d slashed my wrist pretty deeply when I’d plunged my hand into the warm water. The funny thing is I didn’t feel a thing. In fact, I stared at the sink for several seconds before I realized why the water was red.
“When I pulled my hand from the water I saw that the blood was oozing steadily, in waves almost, from a nasty-looking lip of skin. Though I was scared shitless, I managed to wrap a clean dishtowel around my wrist and put pressure on it with my other arm. But it was still bleeding, so I took myself to the hospital. After they’d stopped the bleeding and taped the wound, the people in the emergency room wanted to know exactly how the accident had happened. When I told the nurse, I remember she looked at me very closely, then asked me some other, seemingly unrelated questions. Finally she told me I’d have to wait to speak with another doctor before I could leave. It was only at that point, as I waited for the resident psychologist to arrive, that I realized I wasn’t entirely sure I hadn’t cut my wrist intentionally. I also realized I had to write the whole thing down.
“As soon as they released me, I went straight home, called in sick to my job and wrote it all out on a yellow pad with my left hand. That was the first story I ever sold to a paying market. It’s called ‘Glass.’ A year later I sold my first novel and a story collection. With the advance I made the down payment on this place and started the magazine. And I’ve been struggling hap-hap-happily along ever since.”
George Body reached for his beer and took a long drink. “Well, I realize that’s not exactly an answer to your unasked question, but somehow I figured you wanted to know just what in the hell gives me the cheek to call myself a writer. So now you’ve got my story. Now all that remains is for you to give me yours.” Body smiled one of his aggravating and enigmatic smiles. Then he proposed we each adjourn to our separate studios and begin work in preparation for the following day’s session. We were just leaving the kitchen when he turned to face me. “Oh, yeah, one more thing,” he smiled, “while you were out this afternoon, a friend of yours, Samuel Harder, phoned. One of your professors, he said. It seems he’s now in San Francisco guesting at some writing event or another and asked if he could stop by for a visit on his way to L.A. He said we should expect him sometime around noon tomorrow.”
I followed Body down the dark hallway, entered my room and shut the door behind me. Slowly, as if in a trance, I slipped a sheet of paper into the typewriter and sat down at the desk. A minute later Carmina Burana erupted on the stereo in the adjacent room. Then I heard a staccato sound, loud and fast, like a weapon being fired on full automatic, bang through the walls as keys slapped the platen of Body’s typewriter. I sat perfectly erect in my chair and listened for a long time to the music and the sound of typing. And though I dutifully stared at the empty sheet before me, I couldn’t write a word.
I was lying in bed with my eyes wide open when the phone rang the next morning. “It’s for you,” Body called out, tapping softly on the door. I got out of bed, pulled my pants on, and went into the kitchen. The receiver was lying speaker end up on the tabletop. “Hello?” I said. It was Tammy.
“Are you all right?” she asked.
“I’m fine,” I told her. “How are you?”
“How am I?” she half laughed, half screamed.
“Yeah. How are things going?” I said, hoping to calm her down. One thing about Tammy, she’d always tended toward irrational emotional outbursts. Sometimes, for example, she burst out crying for no apparent reason whatsoever.
“Look, Roger, have you flipped out completely? Pull yourself together. I’m here at the airport.”
“Airport? What airport? What are you talking about?”
“San Sebastian airport. I just arrived. Should I take a taxi or can you arrange to pick me up?”
“San Sebastian?” I repeated. “But what are you doing here?”
“What do you mean, what am I doing here?” she huffed into the phone. “When you called yesterday you were on the verge of a nervous breakdown. You all but begged me to come rescue you from this maniac cult figure who’s holding you captive, drugging and brainwashing you. So I dropped everything and called your parents, who, by the way, are really worried, too. Your dad was just about to leave on a business trip to Los Angeles, but he’s got a really important meeting there today he can’t miss, so he bought me a ticket to San Sebastian and said he’d rent a car in L.A. and drive up here as soon as he gets out of his meeting.”
“Christ, Tammy, you’ve got to be kidding. Isn’t everyone overreacting a bit?”
“Hardly, Roger. If anyone was overreacting, it was you yesterday on the phone. You were crying almost the whole time, blubbering, in fact, weeping and carrying on so hysterically that I could hardly understand half of what you said.”
I sat down in one of the dinette chairs. “You’d better take a taxi,” I told her. She said she’d be there in fifteen minutes and hung up so quickly the dial tone hummed in my ear.
“Everything okay?” Body asked, as I carefully replaced the phone in its cradle on the wall. He was wearing the terrycloth robe again. I tried not to stare.
“My girlfriend happens to be in the area and might stop by sometime today as well,” I said, “if that’s okay with you.”
“Sure thing, Roger, the more the merrier,” Body said, cheerfully. He seemed to be enjoying himself and his smile was beginning to irritate me. When he turned his back, I thought of putting my hands around his neck, throwing him to the floor and choking him. But I realized that would only provide him with another story. He turned back toward me and set a cup of coffee down before me on the table. “You want a piece of toast?” he asked. I shook my head no and asked for a towel instead.
“I should take a shower before she gets here,” I explained. He looked me over and nodded.
“A shower can change the course of a person’s life,” he said, gravely. Behind him two pieces of bread popped out of the toaster and into the air.
I’d just finished shaving and had taken a seat in the living room when I saw the white Toyota with the dented side panel pull up in front of the house. I watched as Tammy, dressed in jeans, a university sweatshirt and sunglasses, pulled a suitcase from the back seat and dragged it across the lawn. Then I got up and went to open the door.
I met her on the stoop. Though she set her luggage down, we didn’t kiss, hug or even shake hands. Her lips seemed thin and I couldn’t see her eyes. “Hello,” I said, but she didn’t answer. Instead she stood staring at me through her dark lenses, her arms crossed over her chest. I was wondering which one of us would be the first to burst into tears when Body threw open the door and broke the silence.
“Hi there,” he said to Tammy, extending his hand. Fortunately, he’d put on a pair of corduroy pants and a work shirt. A cigarette dangled from his mouth. “I’m George Body, and your name is?” He looked over at me.
“I’m sorry,” I mumbled, “George, this is Tammy Shackman. Tammy, my writing teacher George Body.” They shook hands and George turned to me.
“Sorry to interrupt, Roger, but you’ve got another phone call. Your father, I think he said it was.”
I left the two of them on the doorstep and headed straight for the kitchen. As I walked, I realized that the closer I got to the phone, the faster and shallower my breathing was becoming. I steadied myself against the wall and picked the receiver up off the table. “Hello,” I said.
“Roger, is that you?”
“Yes, dad.”
“Listen, son, sounds like you’ve got yourself into a bit of a mess up there.”
“I suppose,” I said.
“Did Tammy get there okay?”
“She’s here now.”
“Good. I’ve got to go into a meeting in five minutes and a lot is riding on our presentation here, but I’ll be up as soon as I can.”
“Dad, I really don’t think . . .”
“Listen, Roger, just stay put and don’t do anything stupid. I’ll straighten everything out when I get there this evening. Now could you put Tammy on the line?”
“Sure thing,” I said, and set the receiver back down on the table. I opened the refrigerator, got two beers out, and opened them, then carried them outside to where George was showing Tammy God-knows-what kind of weed that was growing in the planter in front of the house. “Tammy, my dad wants to talk to you,” I said. I handed George one of the bottles and put the other to my lips. I’d never been so thirsty.
“Another visitor?” George asked. I nodded. We sipped our beers in silence. After a while George excused himself and went back into the house. “We’ll talk later,” he said. When I’d finished drinking my beer, I tossed the bottle into the weeds and walked to the corner, where I sat down on a concrete and wood bench. Several minutes later a bus stopped and I boarded it, fishing in my pocket for change. I got off at a shopping mall a couple of miles up the road.
Inside, I spent a long time wandering around the department stores. I went to the men’s clothing section of one and tried on a dress shirt, tie and sports coat. I sought out a store that specialized in luggage and asked to see several briefcases, browsed the classical section of a music store, sat down to eat a hotdog and drank a coke. For dessert I bummed a cigarette. For a long time I simply sat and listened to the conversations of people sitting close by. On the next bench a little boy was having lunch with his mother. They were eating hamburgers and the kid wanted to throw the beef patty away and eat just the bun. Though his mother pleaded with him, he refused to eat the hamburger. For a few minutes the kid stared off into the distance, holding the burger in his lap. When his mother tried to touch him on the shoulder, he shook away from her hand. Then she grabbed the burger from him, threw it into the trashcan and pulled him roughly up by the arm. They left with her tugging him toward the nearest exit.
I got up and went into a stationary store, where I bought a lined yellow pad of paper and a ballpoint pen. Then I sat back down and began writing a story called “Meat Dreams” about a seven-year-old kid who keeps waking up screaming in the middle of the night. He tells his parents that he’s been dreaming about raw meat—in the dream his bed is full of cold steaks and chickens cut into pieces, his pillow turned to ground round that presses against his cheek. It’s a recurring nightmare, one he’s had every night for the past week. His parents take him to a child psychologist who asks both the mother and the father, each in turn, privately, a number of embarrassing and personal questions about their sex life. At one point the mother breaks down and cries. “It’s so awful, so disgusting,” she says.
But the story went nowhere and after a few pages I gave up and went into a bookstore to ask if they had any books by George Body. None of the clerks had ever heard of him before, so I asked to speak to the manager, who pushed at her glasses and told me that to her knowledge there were no writers living in San Sebastian. She even laughed at the idea. I demanded she look up the name in Books in Print and when she found six titles listed, I got out my wallet and told her I wanted to special order them all. “We don’t do that here,” she said. “You’ll have to go to a full-service bookstore.”
I took off wandering again and somehow ended up in the lingerie section of another big department store. Two sales clerks there were standing with their hands on their hips and talking in high, excited voices. From time to time they looked down the aisle with creased faces. When I followed their gaze, I saw an old man waltzing in a corner with a mannequin dressed in a white corset adorned with tiny red bows. I watched as two young security officers arrived and gently dragged him away. As they passed by me I saw that he was crying.
As I left the mall, the sky was already darkening, the sun slipping over the mountains in the distance. I started walking. Along the way I threw the pad with “Meat Dreams” into a trash can someone had left on the curb.
By the time I got back to the house there were two rental cars parked on the street in front. When I opened the door I was surprised to find Tammy, Dr. Harder, my father, and George Body all sitting together in the living room. They were drinking beer and listening closely as Dr. Harder, who was sitting on one of the dinette chairs that had been moved to form a circle with the couch and armchair, read aloud from a sheaf of manuscript pages. George sat in the armchair, his beer between his legs, a stack of papers at his feet. My father and Tammy were sitting together on the couch and there was a pink school notebook and a laptop computer on the coffee table before them. I couldn’t help from remarking that Dad had slipped his arm around Tammy’s shoulder. As I stood in the foyer and took in the scene, I slowly realized that Body had persuaded them all to participate in the writer’s conference and they had started the session without me.
The four of them were so engrossed by what they were doing that they hardly paused to acknowledge my presence. For a second Harder stopped reading, as George moved another dinette chair in from the kitchen and asked me to sit down. Then the reading continued. I learned later that the piece Harder was reading was entitled “Sardines.” He’d written it especially to present to student writers at the Norwich Avenue Fiction Writers Symposium in San Francisco. I listened carefully as the professor continued:
“Then one day he thought to himself that he’d like nothing better than to fuck his neighbor’s wife. And who could blame him? She was young, fresh, attractive, friendly, intelligent, sexy, maternal, coquettish, straightforward, innocent and worldly. She was also a marvelous cook. Moreover, she was almost dizzyingly voluptuous and had a habit of hanging black lace bras with huge cup sizes on the clothesline in her backyard. So he sat down and wrote out the whole seduction, making it clear to any reader, including potential judges and jurors, that the affair had been initiated by Sylvia, who had come to his house to borrow a cup of sugar, followed him into his kitchen, and wrapped her arms, and not much later her legs as well, around him. By the time he stood up from his word processor, he had reached several orgasms, including one via a procedure new to him, though imagined often. It had been, he admitted to himself, the most significant sexual experience of his life. He sighed and sat back down at the keyboard to write about smoking a cigarette.
“After such impassioned loving he soon felt his appetite building. Specifically, he craved sardines in tomato sauce, which he described in loving detail, from the shiny tin with the silver, red and black label, to the sound of the tin creaking open as the key turned, to the heady smell of the fish themselves, to the distinct flavor of saltfish, oil, and tangy tomatoes, to the crunchy popping of the spines between his teeth. He savored every word.
“When I’d finished reading the story, I knew Jeremy was onto something, but I wasn’t sure I liked it. He’d always been one for taking chance with his writing, but somehow I felt this time he was going too far.
“The last time I saw Jeremy he was pale and terribly thin. He hadn’t left his apartment for months and some of us were getting worried and had stopped by to see for ourselves just how bad things had turned. ‘I’m feeling great,’ Jeremy told us, ‘Been lifting weights, running marathons, eating three-plus squares a day, making love to the most beautiful women in the world, sailing yachts, breaking out of prison, racing cars, fighting bare-knuckle bouts for big prize money, gunning down crooked politicians, winning wars, shooting elephants, climbing trees, exploring rivers, catching fish, smoking cigars and eating lots of sardines. I got nothing to complain about.’ When he smiled, I could see how few teeth were left hanging loose in his mouth.
“They buried my friend Jeremy last week, while I was still abroad. I read about his passing in the international edition of the Herald Tribune. ‘One of the most promising writers of his generation,’ the obituary had read. When I got back home I pulled his last collection of stories from the shelf and reread ‘Sardines.’ When I was done I turned back to the beginning and read through it again. And then again. I gorged myself on ‘Sardines’ until the words rose in my throat and spewed forth into the toilet.”
After Dr. Harder finished reading, the room remained quiet for a moment as he shuffled the papers and busied himself, tapping them square against his knee. Finally George Body cleared his throat and began talking. “Hey, Sam, that’s an interesting piece—a real guy-going-to-extremes bit. It reminds me a little of “The Hunger Artist.” But I enjoyed it nonetheless. I do have a couple of suggestions, though. First, take yourself out of the narrative. I can do without the moralistic frame, and as a reader I really don’t much care about that first-person narrator, as he sounds like a snob, a toady and an all-around bore. It’s Jeremy that we want to hear about. His mind creates and the other guy pukes. Second, I’m wondering why there are no decapitations in the piece. Keep in mind that fiction is itself disembodied. Anyway, nice job, Sam. Keep writing. Next let’s hear from Tammy.” George opened his palm and pointed toward her by way of an introduction.
Tammy picked up her pink-covered notebook and opened it to a page she’d marked with a pen near the center. “For the past couple of months I’ve been writing stories,” she said in a quiet voice. She glanced up at me and then returned her gaze quickly to her notebook. “I started after reading some of what Roger was writing. I don’t know, I just figured I could do better. You know what I mean?” She shrugged her shoulders. “Anyway, I haven’t told anybody I was doing it or let anyone read my stories before, so I’m kind of nervous. But here goes. This is my latest. It’s called ‘The Tomboy’.”
“Maria Wolcroft had been raised as the youngest child among five older brothers. So it was only natural that she spent much of her childhood imitating her siblings. Throughout her early years she dressed in the same overalls, jeans and t-shirts as her brothers. According to season, she played basketball, hockey, football or baseball. She shot BB guns and slingshots, fired cap guns, shot arrows with bows. She climbed trees, sawed and hammered, helped built forts and tunnels. She blew the lids off of metal trashcans with cherry bombs, hunted for lizards and snakes. And she cried whenever her mother brushed out her hair and made her wear a dress.
“All the mothers in the neighborhood would shake their heads and call her ‘Tomboy,’ and the other little girls would stay away from her if they could. ‘She’s too rough,’ they’d complain when she broke their dolls or got dirt on their white dresses. Once a new girl at school made the mistake of teasing Maria about playing kickball with the boys during recess and Maria made her pay with a bloody nose. The school principal made it clear to Maria’s mother that her daughter was far from ladylike. ‘It’s not the kind of behavior we’ve come to expect from our girls,’ he said.
“For a month Maria was forced to stay indoors and help with chores around the house. Her mother ushered her from one activity to the next, guiding her carefully through a series of sewing lessons and teaching her how to knit a muffler. She even helped her experiment with cosmetics. Maria baked cookies, read books about nurses and clever girl detectives, practiced kicking field goals with a Barbi Doll. It was the worst month of her life.
“By the time Maria’s breasts began to sprout and her menstrual cycle commenced, she’d become adept at wearing the disguise of womanhood. Though she still scrimmaged with her brothers and their companions on the playing fields, she also found friends among the girls, and spent equal time standing around in their giggling groups at school. She went to slumber parties and talked about boys. Unlike the other girls, she knew the coarse feel of masculine hands against her body. Her friends laughed and blushed as she described how they’d tackled her from behind and pushed themselves on top of her before rolling off on the football field.
“In high school Maria blossomed into a lovely princess. Her breasts swelled up large and round, jiggling high on her chest, and her hips and buttocks widened in her jeans. When she walked across the campus she could see the boys following her with their eyes. A star athlete on the girls basketball, softball and track teams, Maria was also elected homecoming queen. But now the boys she’d played with only a few years earlier avoided her, lowering their eyes when she came into a room, stumbling over their words when she joked with them in the cafeteria at lunch.
“On her first date an older boy from the senior class took her to a drive-in movie, where he slid his arm around her and leaned over to give her a kiss. After a couple of minutes he placed his hand on her breast. By then he was shaking so violently she thought he might have a seizure. ‘What’s wrong?’ she asked.
“‘You’re so beautiful,’ he said, ‘it’s driving me crazy.’
“Maria felt a bit tingly and breathless herself. ‘We’d better watch the movie,’ she said, finally.
“After the boy had dropped her off at home, Maria asked her brothers why her date had started shaking. They laughed and said the poor guy was just horny. ‘He’s got the bluest balls in the county right now,’ one of them told her and they all laughed again. ‘He probably jerked off in his car as soon as you left,’ piped in another brother. Then one of them made a back and forth motion with his fist and the four of them doubled over in laughter.
“That night in bed Maria began thinking about penises. Her family had never been particularly shy about nudity, so she’d seen her brothers’ sexual organs dozens of times over the years as they got into or out of the shower or dressed for the beach, and she knew technically from her Health class what they were used for. Still, she’d never given much thought to the fact that they were centers of pleasurable sensation. She thought of the jerky fist her brother had made and imagined wrapping her hand around a turgid column of sensitive flesh.
“Her mind full of thoughts about erect male organs, she slowly let her hand drift up under her nightshirt until she felt a warm wetness between her legs. She raised her knees and spread her legs wide, then moved her hand in a circular motion until her fingers were wet and sliding around the labia of her vagina. She started breathing faster and her pulse rate increased. She let her fingers travel upward and gasped out loud as she touched the inch-long stem of her erect clitoris. She made a tight circle with her forefinger and thumb and massaged the bulb, jerking her hand roughly with the same motion her brother had made. Giddy with pleasure, she rolled onto her stomach and pressed her erection against the palm of her hand, rocking her hips until she shuddered in waves, screaming into her pillow.
“Maria kept her virginity until her second year of college, where, now a cheerleader herself, she met a young man, a team-mate of one of her brothers on the basketball squad, who melted her heart with his good looks and awesome ball-handling skills. They made love for the first time in the dark, after a victory celebration for the win over State, and she thought she’d die from the pleasure of the rhythmic pounding of his muscular pelvis and stomach against her own tiny penis. But he’d been so excited that he’d only lasted a few quick strokes, and as he rolled off her, she lay in bed with her own erection still throbbing.
“‘Baby, I need to come,’ she told him, and reached over to switch on the light. Then she spread her legs and guided his head between them. ‘Suck my cock,’ she said to him. It was the greatest thing that ever happened to her.”
Tammy sighed, then closed the notebook and set it back down on the coffee table before her.
“Oh for Christ’s sake, Tammy,” I blurted out, “that’s absurd. What would drive you to write such a pile of pornographic garbage?”
“I think it’s really very good,” my father said, patting Tammy on the knee. I noticed he didn’t remove his hand when he’d finished the patting and that Tammy moved to cover it with her own.
“Thanks, Dick,” she said, and smiled at him. “I’m sorry you don’t appreciate it, Roger,” she spat back at me, her voice sharp as broken glass.
I rolled my eyes and looked at Dr. Harder, who was smiling hugely, his legs crossed. He winked back at me.
“At least she got the head in there,” said George.
Next my father read a story off his laptop computer. “It’s a little parable I wrote on the plane. I was going to print it out and give it to Roger,” he explained, putting on his reading glasses. “I’ve entitled it ‘The Senator from Rome.’ ” He leaned forward to squint at the backlit crystal screen and began reading:
“In ancient Rome there lived a man named Marcus Aurelius Industrius, a man who had, through life’s standard misfortune, been born a slave and spent his youth in the salt mines of Sardinia. Through his strength, his intelligence, and his great cunning and undeniable capability he won promotion after promotion until he’d been appointed foreman by the owner of the mine. One day while the owner and his slave foreman were touring one of the new tunnels one of the support beams gave out, trapping them underground. The owner, a flabby nobleman who’d never done a day’s work in his life, immediately collapsed on the ground and began renting his clothes. ’The gods have forsaken us,’ he cried out. But Marcus did not despair. Instead, he began digging with his bare hands. He dug until his fingers were bleeding, laughing to himself at the cowardly sobs of the nobleman. After a great effort he succeeded in digging through the rubble of the collapsed tunnel, thus rescuing the owner, who promptly rewarded him with his freedom.
“‘From this day forth, you are no longer a slave, but my son,’ said the owner. He took him to his villa and gave him a purple toga. In time the owner died from some combination of overeating and venereal disease brought on by deviant sexual practices, leaving Marcus ownership of the mine, several choice olive groves and a very pleasant country estate. But our hero was not content to live out his life as a gentleman of independent means. Taking stock of his holdings, he immediately began a program of shrewd yet cautious investments, supplying not only salt, but iron spear tips for the conquering legions of Rome.
“In time he married a local but solid woman of noble stock and began a family. A son was born unto him and he offered sacrifice in honor of the gods. This son, whom he named Athleticus, grew to be a wrestler of great promise. Throughout the land he was honored for his strength and natural gifts, so much so, in fact, that his father agreed to favor him with his financial support whilst he ventured to Rome, where he would train with the great athletic masters and compete for the honor of his family name. And so it was that young Athleticus kissed his mother, embraced his father firmly around the shoulders, and left to seek his fortune.
“Soon after, Marcus Aurelius Industrius himself was called to Rome, for he’d been honored for his achievements and leadership abilities with election to the Senate. There he heard reports of his son’s activities that disturbed him. It seems Athleticus had fallen under the influence of a wicked Greek rhymester, a poet of little repute who, concerned only for his own personal gain, had persuaded Athleticus to pay him for instruction in the art of versification. This Greek, who went by the name of Sophisiticus, was a thoroughly decadent and unclean fellow, the kind of human scum that gums up the works of society with his chicken-shit liberal socialism, his twisted sentiment, and his artistic pretensions. And alas, poor Marcus Aurelius was despondent to find how thoroughly Athleticus had been duped.
“After making the usual inquiries, he learned that his son had been neglecting his coach’s instructions, missing practice sessions at the gymnasium, and deporting himself in a most ignoble manner whilst carousing with the Greek and his poetic associates. They’d been seen together declaiming verse in the public baths and in the company of unworthy women of the lowest social order, women who rented their favors for a place at the table. All of this was unsettling, nay, unbearable, to the new senator. His son had shamed him, disgraced his good name, and made a mockery of the values he represented.
“The senator sought out his unworthy son and found him lying in a shadowy hovel, in neglect of his training, and suffering from the unhealthful abuses of bad living. He appeared to him as a mere shadow of his former self. ‘Son, all this poetry is fine and good, providing one has a sponsor. Art is, after all, mere entertainment, a pleasant enough diversion for the affluent. But you who have no other means of support . . . Surely you don’t mean to sell yourself as the means by which to prop up the vanity of some petty merchant who wishes his life celebrated in verse?’ But though the father employed every argument of logic and reason and ended in a heartfelt plea for his son to mend his ways, to give up once and for all his unworthy ambition, Athleticus, drunk on unwatered wine and seduced by the sound of the lyre, refused to listen, insisting that his verses would find favor and win him, in time, immortality.
“Marcus Aurelius wandered back to his chambers in an advanced state of anger and grief. All around him the streets of Rome teemed with scenes of decadence and unspeakable filth. It seemed to him the values he’d struggled so hard to preserve were crumbling around him. The once-proud and strong Roman soul had succumbed to the illusion of an easy life, a life of pleasure and frivolity. And while excesses of the orgy rooms and vomitoriums threatened the very fabric of society, here was his own flesh and blood, a young man with much promise, a future leader, off penning verses about love. ‘It’s my fault,’ he said to himself, ‘I’ve been too easy on him, too indulgent. That’s not the Roman way.’
“There seemed but one course of action open to him. When he arrived at the senate, he called forth a centurion and gave him orders to arrest his son. ‘A couple years in the salt mines will do him good,’ he said to one of his colleagues. But by that time it was too late. The Goths, Vandals, Visigoths, Huns, and Japanese were already storming the city, killing, plundering, and raping as they advanced. ‘The glory days are over,’ said the Senator, as he plunged downward onto his sword.”
I was too angry at the time to remember much about the specific responses to my father’s story, except that Tammy had cried out, “Oh Dick, that’s wonderful,” and threw her arms around his neck. I recall that I simply sat in silence with my back perfectly straight in the chair and looked out the window, as the others commented, one after the next. At some point my eyes focused on a man across the street who appeared to be slapping around a young woman. During this time I believe Dr. Harder made some general comments about the decline of respect for institutions, then launched into a lecture on the quality of students and educational standards currently as compared to twenty years previous when he was a student. A bowl of pretzels circulated around the room and I grabbed a handful and chewed them mechanically, as the voices and laughter around me turned into a dull hum. Across the street the police arrived in force. I watched as one set of officers handcuffed the man and pushed him headfirst into the back seat of a squad car while another interviewed the victim.
Suddenly I became aware of someone calling my name. I looked around at the faces staring at me. When George asked if I had anything to read to the group, I lowered my head and said no. “Well, then, I guess this little charade is over,” my father said. He pulled an airline ticket from his shirt pocket and waved it in the air. “Get your stuff together and let’s get the hell out of here. Tammy’s suitcase is already in the trunk.”
“I’m not going anywhere until I’ve written something,” I told him. “I’ll take the bus back when I’m done.” My father threw his hands up in the air.
“Oh, for Christ’s sake, grow up,” he snorted. He blew a loud puff of disgust through his mouth as he snapped his portable computer case shut. The party was over. Everyone got up to leave.
“Rotten luck,” said Dr. Harder.
My father shook his head sadly. “I think you’re going to regret this, son,” he said, walking toward the door. Tammy followed behind him, taking her sunglasses from her purse. As they moved across the lawn toward the rental car, she slipped her arm around my father’s waist. “Goodbye, Roger,” she called back over her shoulder. I stood in the doorway and watched them drive away, Harder in his red sports car and my father and girlfriend in a rented Cadillac. No one bothered to wave. When I came back into the kitchen George was brewing coffee.
“Don’t worry, kid, conferences can be like that.”
“Like what?” I wanted to say, but the words were stuck somewhere in my throat.
“You’ve just had your head filled up with other people’s stories again,” he said. I pointed my chin toward my room and he nodded.
For the next couple of days I worked steadily, pounding at the keys of the typewriter, pausing only to use the bathroom, to walk around the block, to sleep, and to eat and drink whatever leftovers I found in the refrigerator. Instead of making something up, I wrote a story about what had just happened. When I was done I gathered up the sheets of paper and laid them, like a head on a plate, on the kitchen table.
I looked for George, but of course he was long gone.