The Fuck Up (11 page)

“Well, I’m back from work,” I replied furiously. And putting a letter opener that might serve as a weapon in my pocket, I said, “Let’s go kick some ass.”

“We can’t.” There must have been too many of them.

“Then I’ll call the police.” I started dialing.

“Put it down—it was Angela,” he said and didn’t look at me. I didn’t know what to say. I wrapped some ice in a towel, brought it to him, and inspected his nose. Considering his nose was broken and a chunk of his precious collection had been mauled, he seemed to be taking it well. Perhaps he was just fatigued.

“Well, I suppose that ends that relationship,” I finally said, not knowing what else to say.

He looked to the ground and began whimpering that he didn’t know how to deal with this. He tried discussing it rationally, but she had kept pounding at him. When he pulled his shirt off, I saw welts and bruises zebraed along his lower chest, his ribs bruised, probably cracked.

“Exactly what happened?”

“Well,” he started, as his fingers ran across the lumps rising out of his scalp. “We were lying in bed this morning, just a couple hours ago, and she said that it was time for me to arise. I explained that there was no reason to get up, but she insisted that she wanted to go out for breakfast immediately. Maybe she’s hypoglycemic.”

“What happened next?”

“I said that I wanted to sleep for another hour.”

“What happened next?”

“That’s when she shoved me hard with her foot.”

“And how did you respond?”

“I told her violence was the language of animals.” I waited for him to tell me more, but he volunteered nothing. “What did you do next?”

“She laughed and made some weird reference to colleges and called me a wimp and that’s when I told her to stop laughing, and she slapped me.”

“Did you hit her back?” I yelled at him.

“Of course not. I told her that if she was angered over something it should be discussed.”

“And was it discussed?”

“No, I told her she was acting like a simpleton.”

“A simpleton, huh?”

“Yeah, that’s when she started tearing up the books, and when I tried to stop her, she hit me on the nose with an ashtray.” No wonder he didn’t want to volunteer anything; what a pathetic tale.

“Maybe you should go to a hospital; I think you’ve got a broken rib.”

“They don’t tape ribs anymore.”

“Your nose is bent to one side.”

“I never cared for symmetry,” he tried joking, “and it isn’t worth seven hours in a waiting room to look harmonious. Just help me into bed.”

I helped him into his room and laid him on his bed. Then silently I unknotted his shoes and helped him off with his clothes. He dropped the ice pack to the floor and laid quietly with his aches and pains.

“What happened to you?” He pointed to my shoulder from his supine position.

“Nothing, I’ll tell you when we’re awake,” I replied and pulled down the shade, concealing the morning light. He quickly drifted off. I kicked my shoes off and laid on the couch. As the sun rose high in the Brooklyn sky, I listened to Helmsley’s newly acquired snore, thanks to the newly angulared nose. I also thought of last night’s silly date and slowly slipped into asleep.

When I awoke, it was pitch black outside; it was seriously late. Helmsley was still soundly sleeping. I tiptoed into the bathroom, where I showered and carefully peeled off my arm bandage. I should have insisted on stitches, because the scar was crisp and permanent. I prepared a new bandage, dressed, and left. It was about midnight and Brooklyn, unlike Manhattan, still had that old duration of time labelled “late.” Places were closed and mass sleeping was in effect. People obeyed the sun’s ebb. But I was now too corrupted by the irregular cycles of Manhattan time; I was irrevocably awake.

I dressed and went to the F train and paced the empty station. I looked along the tracks covered with filth and followed them as far as I could up the dark tunnel. Looking in the other direction, I could see the sky. At this stop the elevated track poured its rails purgatorially into the ground.

Waiting for a train in New York requires more than just patience; it also demands a defensive outlook. During the early eighties, the city cordoned off “designated waiting areas.” They were encased in yellow overhead signs and usually they were within view of the token sellers, so if you were beaten to death within this section, your benefactors might have a good case at suing the city.

Despite the wolf-pack gangs and the doubtful worth of the overpriced token, I had nurtured a perverse pleasure in riding the subways. I would get a ninety-cent thrill out of pressing against the front unwashed window, leaning next to the conductor’s booth and straining into the near darkness as the
train whipped between the ribbed support beams through the enigmatic bowels of the great city. What subway riding in New York offers that far surpasses a train ride anywhere else is the wonderful relief upon arriving safely at your destination. I experienced this relief an hour later.

I got off at Fourteenth Street and walked across it, past the many cheap storefronts that were all covered with metal pull-down gates at night. Past the old Luchow’s and the Palladium, I walked. From the corner of Third Avenue, I could see the Zeus Theater flag snapping in the wind. Why the theater had a proud flag, I wasn’t sure. The theater lights were still on and I had no particular place to go, so I decided to stop in and see Miguel. When I got to the corner of Thirteenth Street, I noticed the crowd out front. But then I remembered, the vanguardists Hans and Grett were premiering their film tonight. As I approached the NYU film students and punks flocking outside, I waited as gaggles of gays slowly filtered through and out, and then I pushed in. Hans, who was acting as a doorman, let me in. I walked rapidly through the theater.

“Hey!” the Cambodian porter Thi yelled.

Accidentally I had stepped into a pile of condoms, Kleenex and tiny squeezed out tubes of KY-Jel. Thi had marshalled the garbage together with the blowing machine, which was strapped to his back. Quickly he shovelled the pile into a black multi-plied garbage bag and sealed it. In the office I found Miguel chatting with a bunch of skinheads. He greeted me with a lapse of silence. I felt compelled to say something managerial, so I asked, “How’s business?”

He pointed thumbs down. “It must be the nice weather.”

I nodded and left the office; I didn’t mention that I had just seen enough gays exiting to start a gondolier’s union; he had to be stealing money. I decided to keep hushed and wait. Soon, Miguel left his office, the skinheads
scattered, and he joined me in the lobby. The crowd was now entering, and as the guests filed past the box office, Hans and Grett handed everyone a plastic cup filled with champagne.

“They sure must’ve put a lot of money into this,” I mumbled to Miguel.

“No,” Miguel confided, “a generic case of Astor Home Champagne on sale from the New Year’s Eve surplus. Anyway you got to be a little zonked in order to truly relate to the full cinematic reality.” He wasn’t smiling, so I guess he was serious.

After all had entered, I started mingling with the crowd. There were several cute intellectual-type girls flapping about, but to judge the semiology of their then-pop semiology books, I feared an insincere impregnability One girl, who came alone and also seemed to know nobody, seemed to be pretty prey. As I approached her, I noticed something that might give me some leverage; there was a green booger just above her nostril. I discreetly whispered this into her ear, feeling assured that she’d feel forever indebted for saving her much embarrassment.

“It’s a jade nose ring, asshole!” And she marched into the theater, out of my life forever.

Slowly after all the free champagne was gone, all gravitated into the theater where they assumed seats. Even though all were ready, certain crucial professors and daring small independent producers had not yet arrived, so the boys were still delaying the screening.

Not knowing anyone and sensing that most people preferred it that way, I retreated up to the projectionist booth. Miguel was up there explaining to our projectionist the few idiosyncrasies that this screening would require; at certain moments the volume had to be turned up all the way, and on three occasions she had to sneak into the theater and whack cymbals together. He then gave her an envelope of money, which she quickly counted. Since our
theater hours were what the projectionist union termed an “eleven hour” booth, and since Miguel didn’t want Ox to detect the undesignated overtime on the payroll, Hans and Grett had to bear the projectionist’s fee themselves. When all the details were ironed out, Miguel turned to me with a wide and mysterious grin asking, “So?”

“So what?”

“So how was it?”

“How was what?”

“I don’t want to violate your space,” he replied, “but last night you went home with one of the prize trophies off Muscle Beach.”

All of last night fell back into my lap and accordingly I snickered and said, “I don’t kiss and tell.”

“It’s not the kissing I want to hear about.”

“Let me put it this way. I didn’t get any sleep last night.” That much I could say on any polygraph machine.

Suddenly the intercom buzzed. Grett announced that cinema history could no longer be delayed. The lights dimmed, the projector was started, and Miguel and I took seats among Han’s and Grett’s alumni. After the credits, which were thunderously applauded, a muddle of images and colors flooded the poor screen. Racing down the sound track came metallic screeches and oblong howls, and then an interjection of urgent radio news broadcast started crackling out of a wall of static, which was overlaid with quasi-images of the tumultuous and the tranquil. It was all carefully disjointed and painfully abstract. It ushered in a host of whispered yet supportive clichés, of which I could hear a couple behind me whispering: “Post-expressionistic…prehensile…atonal…”

Peeking about, I noticed Miguel was nowhere to be seen. Discreetly I abandoned my seat and slipped off to the office; maybe there’d be something painless on TV.

Opening the door, I saw Miguel seated at the desk, talking with two older guys. The air was thick with smoke. A cup that was torn into a makeshift ashtray was filled with Gitanes cigarette stubs.

“No, I don’t think it’s fair,” said the more dashingly dressed NYU student. “You charged Hans a fraction of what you’re charging me.”

Miguel threw me a quick glance, and putting down the pizza he was eating, he replied, “Look, me and my partner simply don’t feel that staying here for that length of time is profitable for any less than a hundred a piece.” I was an instant partner in some leery deal.

“Well”—the young filmmaker arose—“I have only a hundred dollars budgeted to this screening. Beyond that I’ll just have to look elsewhere.”

Before he left, Miguel replied, “When you find that it gets no cheaper, swallow your pride and come back.”

The young director left the office, and his sidekick closed the door behind him.

“Hungry?” Miguel took an angle of pizza from a cardboard box that was sitting on canisters behind him. “It has a whole wheat crust.”

“What’s going on?” I asked, and then bit into the slice.

“I’m supplementing our income a bit, is all.”

“Well,” I said as I gorged myself, “I don’t want to play the devil’s advocate, but can’t you settle for a hundred less? I mean, a poor student like that can’t have much more to spare.”

“Trust me when I say that I know what I’m doing. I’m a sweetheart. In fact, I didn’t charge Hans and Grett a cent. I just said that so I could get money out of this guy.”

“What’ve you got against this kid? His film has got to be better than that…cinematic havoc now on the screen.”

“Did you ever hear of the Owensfield Complex?” It sounded at first like a Freudian term, but I remembered reading about it. The Owensfield Complex
was a glamorous group of midtown co-ops that had been in the news recently because they had remarkably reinterpreted certain building codes and zoning laws.

“Who is that guy?”

“Nigel Owensfield, grand-nephew to the tycoon-founder Clarel.”

“The guy that just left here?” I inquired.

“Yep. Do you know the
Harrington Quarterly!”

“I’ve heard about it.” Helmsley had gotten stuff accepted there.

“What did you hear?”

“That it recently gained a lot of prestige, if that’s what you’re getting at.”

“Prestige came with a cost. The only thing that separates mainstream culture from subculture is a budget. Owensfield bought an editor position and at the same time pulled the quarterly from the level of the
Sleazoid Express
and put it on rank with
The Hudson Review.”

“How do you know all this?”

“I heard,” Miguel replied, lighting up another cigarette. “In short, he could spare another hundred bucks.”

“Am I really your partner?”

“Oh, sure. I’ve been meaning to talk to you about it. I have a lot of connections and I need your help.”

“Fifty-fifty split?”

“Well, sure,” he replied benevolently, only to add, “but half of nothing is nothing, isn’t it?”

“What exactly does Owensfield do at this magazine?”

“Part owner and some kind of editor. Why?”

“Just curious. You wouldn’t mind if I talk to him alone, would you?”

“What are you going to say to him?”

“I’m not sure, but I promise I won’t ask for a cent less than you want.”
Miguel smiled and jumped out of his chair. He dashed through the theater, hunting for the heir-editor. I sat in the swivel chair and in another moment the heir was sitting alone with me in the office.

“I think I can deliver this place to you at the fee you want, but there are two provisos.”

“Continue.”

“Before I continue, I don’t think we’ve been properly introduced.” I told him my name and explained that I was an obscure visionary poet from the East Village.

“Another obscure visionary poet,” he muttered bored.

“Not another,” I corrected, “one that has control of a theater you need, and frankly I’m hoping to be less obscure.”

“That would leave just the visionary.”