Thrill-Bent (6 page)

Casey is enigmatic—sexually fervent but as profound as a baby. Silly me, I thought that offering a guy a month of free pussy with no strings attached was a proposition unlikely to be refused. The first week, he suggested that I never go home to New York. He thought there might be an opportunity for me right here in New Orleans: I could turn the Triangle into a burlesque club and call it “Jan’s Pink Triangle.” I thought “Jan’s Pink Wedge” sounded nastier, but he said, “Burlesque, not
porn.”
On our third date, he showed up at my gate clutching the Queen of Spades I’d left on his doorstep, one of those old Victoriana playing cards with a plump naked lady on the back, sloe-eyed and knock-kneed. I’d found this one in a shop in the French Quarter, in a basket filled with silver milagro charms of tiny hands and breasts. I was surprised to find the card genuinely erotic when I picked it up; there was something about the model’s stare, her tightly coupled thighs, her shy, crimped side-part. I placed a bleary lipsticked kiss on the back and left it on what I hoped was the right France Street doorstep.

“I don’t want to interrupt your writing,” Casey said. He laced his long fingers through the gate’s ornate ironwork and looked in at me sitting in bed with my laptop. Since that first day when he’d read aloud what was on my screen, he’d been very careful to respect my privacy. He held up the card. “I got your message.” He smiled his sheepish smile, half his mouth curling up and fading away like smoke.

“That’s okay.” I replied, hitting Save and shutting off the computer. “I’m about ready for a break.”

He invited me back to his place, a small shotgun shack about two blocks from me where he lived rent-free in exchange for doing construction work—specifically, constructing an actual floor for the place. The front door looked sturdy enough, but when he flipped the key and swung it open, there was only—where you might expect to see boot-scarred baseboards or a bongwater-stained carpet—a murky, scabrous pit. He charged right in and marched down and up the hilly terrain, like a stubborn cartoon character undeterred by obstacles. I followed him by skirting around the center ditch, teetering on remnants of concrete foundation that jutted up out of the mess at odd angles. The anteroom, a chamber behind the floorless main room, was more or less level, paved with a layer of old newspapers. This served as bedroom, kitchen, and art studio. Casey referred to it as “the birdcage.” As far as I could tell, the only effort Casey had made toward reflooring was about twenty penciled diagrams that were push-pinned to the walls like butterflies, still barely flapping their intricate, patterned wings. The drawings were lovely, lined up like little windows, though I couldn’t tell their purpose. Didn’t he have to pour cement or something? Shouldn’t there be iron rebar and dumptrucks involved? There were clothes neatly folded and stacked in milk crates, next to a twin futon mattress made up with Spider-Man sheets. Empty pizza boxes were tucked next to the stove, and beer bottles rolled on the kitchen counters. Casey grabbed two beers from the refrigerator, took my hand and led me through the screen door onto the porch.

We sat on the steps and gazed out at his small backyard. In the dim light, I could see down the block of backyards, a line of ten or twelve identical little sheds spaced about twenty feet apart. Casey’s shed held a potting wheel and a few assorted street finds, like a pair of black patent leather thigh-high boots that he hoped had belonged to a prostitute. I asked to see one of his pots, but he said he was just learning and had had to break all his creations to look inside and see what he’d done wrong.

Later, after he’d unbuttoned my shirt and played itsy bitsy spider on my belly, after I lay back on the cool porch in the dark and time stopped while he sculpted my breasts with his eager, rough fingers and kissed my nipples like they were made of whiskey, when he finally sprang up and announced, “Whew! Gotta piss,” I rifled through the pile of ripped-open mail on his kitchen counter and found out that his name wasn’t really Casey, it was Robert. I felt a flare when I saw that Lafayette Electric bill addressed to “Mr. Robert Hilliard Jr.”—an electric tingle ran through me fast and hot, a spark that entered through my eyes and flamed its way straight down to my groin. I’d been fingered by an imposter, whispering and moaning a lie. Casey had stolen his own name.

My arms ache and my belly feels confused, as though I’ve been eating balloons. I’m dizzy but infused with oxygen, and I’m sure I am lighter than I was when I got on this swing. I slow down by dragging my heels in the dirt every time I hit the bottom of my arc, creating two slightly-darker-brown stripes in the sandy earth beneath me. The sky is lopsided, fully purple now in the east but still as orange as a bitten peach in the west. I hop off onto the soft dirt, wave good-bye to the girls who have been gaping at my spirited swinging style, and head for home.

A slight breeze brings up goosebumps on my bare forearms. As I pass by the court, I notice that the basketball game has dwindled to a few teenage die-hards who aren’t expected home for dinner: a strategic, fierce game of cutthroat. There are no shouts of camaraderie or encouragement now, just heavy breathing and the squeak of shoes across blacktop. I rub my arms and quicken my pace, and decide to take the route home that goes by Casey’s place. Walking up Dauphine until it hits France, I turn right at Lorenzo’s Pizza Parlor.

I spent an hour in Lorenzo’s last Monday night, when it felt too lonely and pathetic to be watching the Academy Awards alone in my tiny soundproof vault, where my running commentary on Debbie Allen’s jazz-hands choreography would evaporate into the indifferent concrete. Casey was at a hockey game, and I was sure my rancor would be lost on him anyway. I have made no other friends here, certainly no one I’d feel comfortable enough with to adopt a spot on their den sofa. Then I remembered that Lorenzo’s had a big-screen TV, broadcasting gay porn whenever I’d been in to pick up a pizza. While it may seem strange for a pizza parlor in a semi-remote working-class neighborhood of New Orleans to be staffed and patronized largely by leather queens, the more I’d looked around, the more this seemed to be the case—and who better to join in dissing Gwyneth Paltrow’s bad taste in designer gowns than a bunch of pizza-loving, smut-respecting, bearded, buttless-chap-wearing gay men? Unfortunately, the place was (inexplicably) kind of dead on Oscar night, but I drank two beers and shared an unbridled, extended giggling fit with the bartender during the Elton John/ Eminem duet before returning to my lonely abode.

Just past Lorenzo’s, I am thrown back a step by a sudden burst of stentorian barking from behind a tattered yellow house. A gargantuan black mastiff comes flying around the side yard and hurls himself at me. His heavily muscled body hits the wobbly chain link fence that separates us, and I am unable to move my limbs. He keeps jumping at me, launching himself again and again onto the swaying metal wall, snarling and roaring as his hard block of head showers drool in great arcs like a lawn sprinkler. I crouch on the sidewalk with my hands over my ears, paralyzed by the violence of the roar. I haul breaths from the deepest part of my lungs, and my whole torso heaves like a long-distance runner’s. I can’t believe I forgot to tiptoe by the yellow house so as not to awaken the wrath of the volatile beast. I want to get up and flee; I don’t know if the fence will hold; each time the heavy bulk of his black body advances, I think this time he will break it down, this time I will be invaded, overpowered by the rush of this animal’s desire. I can’t move. Looking up France Street, I long for some sign of Casey: the wheels of his bike displacing the dirt in the empty lot, or the thud of his basketball in the street. All I see are shadows and mirages. The mastiff’s eyes are trained on me, shining and wet in his head, twinkling like pilot lights.

And then something happens: suddenly, night falls. The streetlight on the corner of Dauphine flickers three times, sluggishly, and then stays on, illuminating my frozen huddle. The white skin on my arms is as puckered as a chicken’s. Glancing around, I pick myself up and slowly cross the street, pretending not to be humiliated and shaken. The artificial light has flummoxed the beast’s impulses. I don’t think anybody noticed.

Dear Chantelle,
I scribble in my head,
Can you stand as strong as a concrete tree in a hurricane? Survive a plunge down Niagara Falls in a ten gallon hat? Keep your cool when your wig collection catches fire and the whole house oxidizes the color of fresh meat?

I have started a collection of virtual RSVPs addressed to my dad’s fiancee, and composing them has become a compulsive habit, keeping me as busy as my roller coaster notes. For some reason, many of my RSVPs are in the form of questions.

Dear Chantelle, does anyone call you ‘Chanty’? Can you stand by your man when he can’t stand by himself? Can you stand him when he twirls you, when he breathes you, when he stands you on your head?

“Dear Chantelle,” I finally wrote yesterday on the stamped card that was enclosed with the invitation, “Thank you for inviting me to your wedding. As it turns out, I will be on the West Coast in April, and I’d love to attend. I’ll be bringing a date. We’d like the chicken and the prime rib, respectively.” I signed my name legibly, which took some steady concentration. I wanted her to be able to read my signature. I wasn’t sure how much my father had told her about me, or even if he’d ever mentioned me. It had been so long since we’d seen each other, and somehow I had the feeling that he was keeping me just beneath his surface, as he’d always done. But my “Richman” would call attention to itself. I was practically the only one left in the bloodline, besides my dad. I stamped it, and sent the card.

Almost at the end of the block on France Street, I see Casey’s denim-blue Dodge Swinger parked outside his house. He’s not out on the stoop, but the lights are on inside his place, sending a fuzzy yellow glow out into the darkening street. I walk up the steps to the front door and raise my fist to knock, when I hear voices inside, laughing. One voice sounds giddy and female, like a girl being squeezed around the middle. I casually drift to the left, attempting to glimpse something through the front window, but Casey has hung heavy butcher paper there, and all I can make out are distant shadows back in the birdcage. After looking around to make sure no one is watching me (the neighbors have retreated from their porches, and the few meandering pedestrians are far down the block), I decide to dart around to the side of the house and take a quick peek in the kitchen window. I know I shouldn’t, but now I am really intrigued. Does Casey have a girlfriend? Is that why he’s been acting so broody lately? Is that why he stood me up? I have a feeling that one glance will tell me what I need to know, and I can’t resist the temptation to further examine Casey’s secret life as Robert, to pick out the camouflage from the tangle of real jungle.

It’s easy to sidle down the narrow alleyway between houses without garnering any notice. It’s shadow-dark and filled with shrouded lumps of vaguely human-shaped junk—an old stove, a pile of tires, a rusted floor lamp in classic hangman pose. No obstreperous dogs erupt from hidden yards. I gingerly step around the detritus, dragging my fingertips along the house’s blistered paint. The kitchen window, a small grimy pane that’s been long-since painted shut, hovers above my head. I’d forgotten about the raised brick piers that make the ground floors of the houses a few feet higher, a staple in New Orleans architecture, built to withstand the constantly rising sea level. After tugging briefly and uselessly on the heavy stove, I traipse through the dirt, pulling three tires into what looks like a reasonably steady tower beneath the window. If I stand with one foot on either side of the top tire, distributing my weight equally, I should be able to brace myself on the window ledge and get a good look inside. I lift my right leg and place my foot in position, while leaning with my left hand on the opposite point on the tire. Once I’m balanced there, I can hop up heartily and hope my left foot lands in the correct spot. I take a breath, issue a silent drumroll, and blast off hard from the ground, reaching up to hug the side of the building. Just as my foot comes down a few inches wayward, I manage to grasp the end of the window ledge and hoist myself into equilibrium before my slipshod foundation topples.

And there, on the newspapered floor of the kitchen, is Casey. He’s wearing a pair of boxer shorts and a white T-shirt, lying with his knees raised and his arms splayed out to the sides, his long wheat-colored hair spilled on the floor like a wide dirt road. Crawling up and down his vibrating torso is a very small child in a Winnie-the-Pooh diaper. The kid scales the mountain of knees, then flings himself onto Casey’s plush belly, squealing in terrified glee as though he’s jumping out of an airplane. Then he runs back around and climbs Casey’s knees again, poised for re-launching. Casey is just lying there, giggling, with a beatific grin. I haven’t seen that look on Casey’s face before, maybe I’ve never seen that look on anyone’s face, such purblind, unadorned bliss. In that look, there is no world beyond the kitchen floor, no window, no sky, no France Street or night coming on. There is just that small body, rising and falling again and again, absolutely sure that it will be caught. I don’t know what exactly I expected to find here, but a cherubic boy using my lover’s body like a jump castle wasn’t even on the list. Through the grubby, rain-stained window I can see that the kid has wheat-colored hair, and that Casey’s arms, flung out on the makeshift floor, are ready to spring into action should that baby make one false move. I want that force field around me. That safety bar is a haven I remember from a dream. I smile in spite of myself, letting my farewell spill out silently like a rush of steam from a moving train.

M
y father’s virtuoso performances took place when no one was awake to see them, at five-fifteen in the morning before the first rays of sunlight turned somnolent Hackensack, New Jersey, into the cranking machinery of a city in motion. The residential streets were still dark when my father began his paper route, but the purple sky was ragged with a royal blue diagonal stripe in the east, evidence of brighter hues to come. The boy on his bike throwing papers was the bugle that tacitly sounded, marking the dividing line between deep sleep and morning bustle, between dugout dark and blistering light. His bike’s shy squeak rasped its repeated syllable as he pumped through the empty streets with his canvas pouch slung over his shoulders.

My father had inherited the southeast Hackensack route from his brother the May he turned nine, graduating from an entry-level route that encompassed no more than thirty houses in one block and a cul-de-sac (the same circuit along which their mother had taken them trick-or-treating when they were toddlers). The southeast route started six blocks from their house, swung around the edge of the riverside along the row of newer, upscale homes with front yards the size of national forests, and then back down into the midtown grid whose blue-collar lawns had a postage-stamp uniformity that was heaven to a paper boy’s sense of aesthetics. When he set off from the house, after he carefully unlatched the shed and silently wheeled his bike out so as not to wake his parents, his pouch was stuffed full of freshly bound newspapers, folded in perfect thirds so that just the
New
of
The Newark Star
was visible on top, underlined emphatically by the wide beige rubber band.

The stack of papers, unassembled, would always be fanned on the stoop by the kitchen door when he stepped out barefoot in the dark pre-dawn to fetch them. Sometimes he tried to stay awake after midnight in order to catch a glimpse of the courier he’d never seen but had often imagined as a leather-faced Jimmy Cagney with a limp or maybe a glass eye, some pirate-like impediment contracted in the line of duty that added to his tough swagger and salty demeanor, who delivered stealthily to all the paper boys in town in the wee hours when the ink was barely dry. The
Newark Star
night visitor was a wily and ephemeral patron, much touted but never actually seen, and he was the closest thing to Santa Claus my father had known (his parents had broken it to their sons early that the man in the red suit was a figment of the collective goy consciousness). My father accepted his tutelary newsprint gifts with a shrug, dragging the great stack into the kitchen and, after pouring himself a glass of orange juice, collating the bunches. He pressed the sports sections into the front sections, dropping those onto the floor where the local scene and classifieds lay. He’d crawl around on the cool tile, tamping, folding, and tightly binding each island, sliding the rubber band down off his wrist and over his splayed hand until it was flat and perpendicular, marking the middle of the parcel. After he’d finished, his pouch resembled an open can of vienna sausages, machine-packed in tight rows. It was awkward to carry that many papers slung over your chest and still be expected to pedal successfully, but my father flew the initial six blocks to the starting gate of his route with only one or two shuddering delays when he’d grip the handlebars with one hand and the mouth of his pouch with the other, and slow way down, weaving in and out of the dotted line in the center of the deserted street like a drunken skier slaloming his way down a bunny hill. Once he hit Fig Street, and he could begin tossing some of his ballast, he was able to maintain a constant high speed, incorporating his shivers and dips into the rhythm of his driveway swerves and nickel-curve pitches.

When my father felt a froth coming on, and his tongue began to swell in his mouth as though it wanted to break out of that cramped cage, he would grab a paper from his pouch, bring it to his chest, and narrow his eyes. He found that if he was in a position to concentrate on his throw when the maelstrom hit, if he could focus only on his form and his aim, then the jarring disruption of his body ceased to be jarring or disruptive, it became merely a complementary element in a compound plan. He would pick a spot on the front lawn or porch in question, fixing on his site by locating it within a radius, thirty degrees north of the oak tree, ten feet due east of the mailbox. Of course, he had to select his target quickly, and he usually just placed home plate twenty feet or so in front of the front door, so pitching a strike would mean the paper would sail past the plate and lob to a perfectly placed landing. Sometimes there were complications: bushes, trees, lawn ornaments, swingsets; one Riverside home even had a koi pond with a mini-waterfall and lily pads, and he was often tempted to try to skip the paper like a stone over the pond to land damply on the front stoop.

After a few weeks on the southeast Hackensack route, my father was familiar enough with the particular design of each subscriber’s yard to have internalized his point-range strategy. He no longer had to slow down to think about placement; he would simply draw a paper, tuck it to his chest, narrow his eyes, and fire, all while pedaling smooth and fast. Draw, tuck, narrow, fire, shit damn, goddamn shit!
Draw, tuck, narrow, fire, scum-sucking gonad schmuck, Jesus Christ afterbirth!
His liturgies held themselves back until the throwing sequence had been completed, and he gleefully pedaled from house to house cursing and twitching, often jumping up and down on his wide leather saddle and flapping his arms like Icarus on a bender. The closer he came to the end of his route, the lighter his pouch became, and the lighter his pouch became, the jauntier his pitches were. When he was weighed down, his technique had to be old-school and specific. When he had a narrow leverage, the threat of toppling if he got too wild was as palpable as the strap digging into his shoulders and rib cage, rubbing the skin over the regular throb of his heart. But without the disciplinary heaviness of the full pouch, he felt more freedom to cut loose and experiment, to grab the paper with both hands and wind up like a witch stirring a cauldron (he trued his spokes every other night, just to make sure his back wheel was perfectly aligned for no-hands riding). He tried fastballs and fireballs, sinkers and submarines, faders and jug-handle curves. He threw with his eyes closed and with his head turned in the other direction. He tossed a few behind his back just to keep in practice with the small-fry tricks of the trade. It had taken him a while on the route to realize that absolutely no one was watching him; at first he’d tried to keep the flamboyant pitches and flapping episodes to a minimum, tearing one off only when he couldn’t resist the urge. He was so used to being mimicked and mocked, his every move noted and analyzed, that the notion of roaming completely alone in the world, unseen, seemed too good to be true. Even in the bedroom he shared with his brother, who did not inspect or judge him, who in fact did not even seem to notice or care that he was different from other, calmer, kids, he never felt totally at ease. He was always aware that his lack of control over his motor functions marked him as defective. But between five and six every morning, when he was out of radar range of his loved ones and the only spectator was a bewildered family dog who’d been relegated to the yard all night for excessive whining, he began to forget his disgrace. He did not feel out of control. He was not attempting to resist or desist or modify his behavior. In fact, it was in that germinal hour that my father felt most in control of his life, his body, and his environment. There were one or two variables (weather, dogs, special editions) but mostly he knew what to expect and he was prepared. He was the master of his territory, the king of his mile-long castle. Indeed, when it was time to actually knock on the various doors he’d come to know so well in the sleepy deserted dawn, the tips my father received were more ample than any other boy’s, including the legendary Ray Golden, now a seventh-grade cigar-smoking lightbulb entrepreneur. “Good aim,” my father would say when kids asked him how he made so much money on a lousy paper route, “and perfect rubber band placement.”

“Are you familiar with this type of bird, a peacock?” asked Dr. Berger in his thick Eastern European accent, as he swiveled back and forth in his office chair and gazed at my father with a half-smile below his baggy, red-rimmed eyes.

“A peacock? Sure, I’ve seen ’em at the Bronx zoo. With the huge purple tailfeathers.” My father liked being able to answer a question with as little ambiguity as possible. He had been urged by his father not to mouth off to Dr. Berger, to answer each question correctly and politely.

“Yes, that’s right. But the peacock doesn’t always show his fan of fancy feathers, does he?”

My father gazed at the doctor uncomprehendingly. He flattened his wad of pink bubble gum onto his lower lip and bit down on it several times with his top teeth, making a texture like seagrass. “He doesn’t?” he asked.

“No, most of the time he tucks those feathers up into his tail and hides them. Do you know what makes a peacock show to the world his swirly blue feathers? Can you guess?”

“On his birthday?” My father could tell by the doctor’s gentle, pained squint that he missed the joke. He felt heat rising up to his face, and quickly added, “Maybe it’s when he’s hungry, to show the guy who feeds him that he’s ready for his dish to be filled.”

My father liked Dr. Berger, though he couldn’t say exactly why. He didn’t understand half of what the doctor said, between his accent and his
American Journal of Psychiatry
vocabulary. He sensed that beyond the doctor’s eagerness to succeed in making him well, there lay a tragic and complicated past. On the walls of Dr. Berger’s office were photographs of Sigmund Freud and Emma Goldman, figures that were associated with vague distressing circumstances in my father’s mind. The doctor was what my father’s father would call a “real character,” straddling the line between the old world and the new world, a distinction my father was learning to make with more and more agility. Many older people in this part of New Jersey were immigrants, mostly from Eastern Europe. Most had accents of one stripe or another, and some could barely wish you Good Day, though they littered their conversations with all the current American slang. Some, like Dr. Berger, dressed in rodent-gray woolen suits—even in summer—and carried pocket watches. Others, like my grandfather, wore cotton guayabera shirts from Cuba and sandals from Woolworth’s that buckled at the ankle. Hairstyles were an easy clue, as were smoking habits (pipe or cigarettes? hand-rolled or machine-bought?). Generally, those who conformed to the rules of modern American culture and made an attempt to break with stifling European traditions (except for kugel; kugel was not up for negotiation) were considered admirable by my father’s parents. Those who still clung to the ways of life steeped in oppression and ignorance were regarded with a mix of scorn and amusement. But Dr. Berger was spoken of by my grandparents with hushed respect—he was an
intellectual
who studied in
Vienna,
a practicioner of the newest science, and he had promised to cure their son.

The doctor shifted in his chair, which emitted a high squeak like a balloon being rubbed. “You have stumbled upon a very important aspect of this little riddle,” he said. “A peacock brings out his feathers when he wants to
show
somebody something. It is, in fact, a kind of show when the peacock struts, like the Folies Bergere.” The doctor grinned at his own analogy, then frowned, seeming to realize that this ten-year-old boy might never have heard of the Folies Bergere, and may have missed the connection. He leaned in closer as if to detect any glimmer of puzzlement.

My father tried to imagine why a peacock would put on a show, prancing around the aviary in his lavish getup, doing can-cans up and down the birdwalk on his skinny bird legs. Do birds have knees? The image made my father laugh. The laugh turned to a shiver, then his torso was yanked from side to side as though by invisible forces arguing over the viability of his soul.

“Oh, Jesus,” he muttered. “Oh, peacock jism! Peacock shit!” He pounded his fists into his small lap, his giggle getting louder, each syllable a distinct bark.

The doctor narrowed his eyes and wrote something down in his notebook. He did not seem ruffled by my father’s outburst. “We laugh, Mr. Richman, when we have become uncomfortable. The idea of showing off to impress the opposite sex causes you to feel helpless, and in turn you become angry, firing on me with your rat-a-tat-tat laughter.” The doctor smiled widely, obviously enjoying himself, revealing an immaculate mouthful of false teeth.

Knock it off. Drop it. Pack it in. Lay off it. Put a lid on it. Hang it up. Call it a day.
These were some of the pearls of advice given to my father by experts in Hackensack when he was a kid. “It” was his twitching and jerking, his cursing and stabbing the air. “It” was his pounding at his groin repeatedly, his facial grimacing followed by nasty comments, the storm of flutters and stutters that came over him at the most inappropriate moments. He was using “it” to call attention to himself, to steal the limelight, to establish a niche in the world that would be better carved by hard work and assiduous social skills—and his little trick had worked. Now he had been singled out to take two trains into New York with his mother once a week, to sit on a smelly leather divan in a dark-wood office full of stale cigarette smoke, and to field intensely personal questions fired at him by an Austrian titan in a worsted suit. Was he happy now? Did he feel vindicated and victorious for being the class-clown show-off? Is this what he wanted?

At first my father’s parents did not want to send him off to expensive professionals. They thought they could handle “it” at home. They had taught both their sons to loathe any kind of infirmity or illness, to eschew behavior that was out of the scope of normal activity. Deviations from the norm should be compensated for by creative problem solving. My grandfather, an extremely short man, made up for his lack in height with an impressive assortment of lofty hats, a collection that earned him the nickname “The Hat,” as in: “Did you see The Hat driving down Hackensack Avenue today?” (From a distance, all you could detect of my grandfather behind the wheel was his enormous topper, creating the optical illusion that the hat itself was driving the car.) To be sick was to show weakness; to give in to a genetic flaw was to opt out of the game.