Pages from a Cold Island (36 page)

“
Your real literary life,
”
I offered as my one piece of tendentiousness,
“
will begin the day you accept the conditions, apartness, confusion, loneliness, work, and work, and work—the conditions so many of your peers have already accepted and that Edmund Wilson and his stone house so vividly and hauntingly evoke.
”

I asked the student to accept this from me as a man who understood these things too late, when alcohol, fatuous dreams and disappointed life had all too dearly sapped the youthful ambitions. Wilson
’
s
stone house, I said, was a con
dition of the heart, a willingly imposed isolation from the
“
literary scene
”
or anything resembling that scene. If, like Mailer, I said, the student wanted to spend his idle hours running for president or hurling cruelties and spite at his peers or talking about
“
writing
”
with little Sir Richard Cavett on the boob tube; or
if, like Steinem, he were hand
some and striking enough to be introduced on the talk shows as a
“
writer
”
without, to my knowledge, having ever written anything, then he wanted something quite else from what I, with all my being, hoped for him. Do what I say, I said, and not what I
’
ve done, and I promised my student that, like Edmund Wilson, he would in the end hold up to America a mirrored triptych from which, no matter in which direction America turn, she would—to her dismay, horror, and hopefully even enligh
tenment—be helpless to free her
self from the uncompromising plague of her own image.

On settling into Iowa House my first order of business had been to write Jack McBride and remind him of his promise to leaven what in my mind had already assumed the proportions of an endless autumn by visiting me. His reply assured me that he fully intended to do so. He told me to send him
“
The Hawkeyes
”
—apparently the appellative hung on the university
’
s athletic teams—Big Ten football schedule and he would come on a game weekend, bringing with him a roast loin of pork or fresh ham from Peggie, out of which I could make
“
inch-thick cold pork sandwiches on onion rolls, with crisp cold lettuce, thinly sliced Bermuda onion, mayonnaise, and a shitload of salt and pepper.
”
For the
“
personals column
”
of the
Daily Iowan
, which didn
’
t, I don
’
t think, have one, he appended an
“
advertisement
”
that I was to run the week immediately heralding his arrival. It said that the friend of a campus
“
dabbler in words, well-known to five drunks and a pseudo-intellectual dwarf at The Lion
’
s Head in the Village
”
would be in town for the weekend of
“
the fucking Fighting Irish game, or what the fuck ever,
”
that Jack resembled
“
that incredibly handsome and gifted leading man of such tour-de-force flicks as
Shingle Mountain
”
but unlike him was
“
no fucking fag,
”
and that for the weekend Jack was seeking
“
a strenuous and not in the least academic female, preferably someone as rum-witted as an arts and crafts major
”
interested in that
“
pure companionship
”
which follows a few laughs, a few drinks, thence to that
“
nastily wholesome and animalistic carnal abandonment that comes with the immunizing knowledge that neither partner will see the other again. No whips.
”

Unhappily, Jack never came. Since I
’
ve come
“
home
”
I
’
ve been meaning to ask him why not, but I keep forgetting to do so, though I expect it
’
s as simple as that he got fired from or quit his job at the Beer Barrel and had to start looking for his new job as a machinist. For all that, though, from the autumn day I got his letter I began finding myself the
“
hero
”
of a recurring dream, that of a fucking sky jacker, and as the autumn progressed and the cold weather set in the dream began to take on an alarming vividness. I have no doubt that the dream
’
s high coloring grew in direct proportion to the complexity of my relationship with April and my need to escape that relationship. I
’
ll not burden the reader or strain his credulity by confessing that I came to love
April, or she me.
Suffi
ce it to say that the human animal, even in our desper
ate sexual musical-chairs society, does not continue fuckin
g the same partner without some
thing happening, for one mu
st desist from fucking and suck
ing, and come at length to lie exhausted with love in one another
’
s arms, whispering into one another
’
s ears. And that whispering involves language, the loftiest instrument of man, and that language reveals to one
’
s partner something of one
’
s childhood, one
’
s hopes and dreams, one
’
s fears and aspirations, so that try as one will this thing, this syrupy delectable fucking and sucking instrument lying in one
’
s arms, assumes a history, begins to seem after all a creature of sacrifice or of selfishness, capable of being done great hurt or of inflicting great hurt, becomes, as it were, human. Yes, immunize ourselves with
the hardest, most impenetrable
shell of which we are capable, trouble eventually begin
s.

The
trouble with April began this way. Having one day left her a note telling her I wanted her out of the room at four as I was expecting a
“
guest,
”
I unlocked my door at the designated time, my
“
guest
”
at my side, and, lo, there was April as she usually
was, freshly showered, naked ex
cept for her clean and iridescent bikini panties, seated at my desk studying from one of her texts. My guest beat an angrily embarrassed and hasty retreat. April was profusely apologetic, wept rather histrionically, swore she
’
d been ne
glecting to watch the clock, and we made it up in bed.

Within the next month April repeated the scene two more times. On the third occasion I grew furious, slapped her face, and tried to get my room key from her. April threatened that if I took it from her she
’
d never leave me alone. She said she
’
d call me every hour on the hour until my life was such hell I
’
d wish I
’
d never been born, until they ran my
“
old ass out of Iowa City on a rail!
”
April said I was fat. She said I waddled when I walked. She accused me of living in the shower and said my penchant for cleanliness bordered on the pathological,
“
utterly Freudian,
”
and was obviously a result of the guilt and disgust I must feel at degrading young and innocent girls.

“
Like you?
”
I cried, a great smile forming on my face.
“
You horny little cocksucker of the cornstalks!
”
April spat a great glob of saliva into my face and hysterically shouted,
“
You filthy, dirty, evil old man!
”
I slapped her again, she spat again, I threw her onto the bed, and we made it up once more.

Now there came the weekend April didn
’
t go to Ames. She said her sort of
fiancé’s
grandmother had died in San Francisco and he had had to go out there
“
to plant her.
”
April could stay with me the whole weekend—oh, joy!—as her roommates, her
“
wombies,
”
would believe her in Ames. Two weeks later her sort of
fiancé
was off someplace else, digging for gold in El Dorado no doubt, and by then April had decided that for
“
an old fart
”
I didn
’
t look
all that old
(here she twisted up her nose with mock distaste) and that if I put Vitalis in my hair, which considerably darkened the gray, she wouldn
’
t mind my taking her out to dinner. April said I took everybody else out.
“
I
’
ve seen you with cunts I know aren
’
t any older than me.
”
I said no, emphatically no, we had a bargain,
her
bargain, and we
’
d goddam well stick to it. One late afternoon in early December I awoke to find April weeping terribly in my arms.

When I said,
“
What is it? What is it?
”
April, between the most heartrending sobs, said,
“
Why do you have to be
so old?”

And listen to this, dear reader: without thinking, and absolutely sincerely, I said,
“
Yeah, why the fuck do I
?
”

In the next two days
I told my classes that an emer
gency had arisen at home and that I was canceling my final week of seminars to flee home and attend to it. From that moment on my dream became alarmingly vivid.

I am on this completely jammed airplane in midflight, with fat Eugene, voraciously munching Mars Bars and lap ping his thick fingers, in the seat next to mine; and his mom, her mouth still going like a whippoorwill
’
s ass and mouth
ing indignities I can
’
t comprehend, seated at the window seat. In every respect but the Mars Bars it seems to be the same flight as that other one, save that it can
’
t be as I
’
m about to skyjack this flight, order it
“
back to where I belong,
”
and I am only biding my time until the stewardess haughtily informs me that seven a.m. is too early for a double vodka, as she invariably does in my dream but didn
’
t do, though she certainly thought of it, in
“
reality.
”
And I am nervous as can b
e. sweating profusely, and down
right dizzy with anxiety.

Now with the stewardess, who on close inspection turns out incredibly to be my darling April, I place my order for two miniature red-label Smirnoffs, and the abruptly nasty April adamantly refuses, telling me I
’
m a dirty old drunk and a degenerate prick besides! This, kind reader, is my fucking moment1. Trying to act as suave as a British cabinet minister caught in a bawdyhouse, I e
ver so drama
tically unzip my yellow London Fog jacket, reach slowly into it, furiously whip out my pistol (it is Yogi
’
s .22 Magnum!), shove it between the startle-eyed April
’
s tits, and snarlingly demand to be taken to the flight deck, in the process suavely patting April on her cute little bum and sophisticatedly remarking that
“
were I an anal man I
’
d have me some of that.
”
At the flight deck I direct the captain to reroute to Jacksonville to refuel and to get me a parachute.
“
How much dough you want waitin
’
?
”
the captain asks, quaking.

I laugh insanely.
“
None at all, buster.
”

Whereas other skyjackers are all asweat with crackpot and wild-eyed revolutionary visions of Utopian Cubas and Algerias, to the pilot
’
s consternation I order him, on refueling, getting me into my par
achute and taking off from Jack
sonville, to follow the east Florida coastline southward, losing altitude as he goes. Oh, I am crazy all right, crazier than a shithouse rat, which does not go unremarked by the pilot, the navigator, the engineer, and especially by my sweet child April who keeps telling me that I can, after all, have my Smirnoff and asking me if I don
’
t have
“
loved ones
”
who will be shamed by what I
’
m doing. All are huddled together on the flight deck, wringing their hands, fear fully wetting their lips, mad with alarm, and begging me to give them my
“
destination.
”