Why I Don't Write Children's Literature (14 page)

MAN CAVE

My wife and I were invited to a tennis buddy's house for dinner, where we were greeted by smiles and kisses, all genuine. From the front door, we were escorted through the living room to a deck that faced the San Francisco Bay; on that day, it was bright as a nautical painting. My wife and I walked coolly to the railing and locked our eyes on the bay, pleased to know good people with a promontory upon which to reflect on life's brief candle, etc.

“Really nice,” Carolyn chimed after a minute of viewing. “And is that Alcatraz?”

It was Alcatraz, the former federal prison known as “The Rock,” now a touristy destination. In the haze, we could see a ferry leaving the island.

We settled ourselves into canvas chairs. The four of us — husbands and wives — soaked up the late afternoon sun, none of us whining about ailments or disappointments or children or the rot of getting old. We were in our sixties, yet without hearing aids the color of earwax, and with few troubles on the home front. From my chair, I absorbed the soft heat of the sun and enjoyed the mellow buzz of a second beer, along with the even nicer feeling of a rising stock market (I caught myself lifting my beer skyward). Next spring I could build my own deck and set pots of geraniums in all the corners.

Overhead, the planes of Southwest Airlines appeared and disappeared, flying in all directions but west — west would take them to Hawaii, not a route for them as yet. From the deck, my buddy pointed out his tomatoes, which were now small and green but in a month would swell, redden, and be ready for healthy salads. He also told me of his lemon tree, which was short and bushy, and divulged his anger at a resident gopher, that little buck-toothed sojourner.

Before dinner, my friend allowed me to view his man cave on the floor below. In fact, he said, “This is my man cave.” I had never heard the expression before. I eyed him slyly and, for a few dizzy seconds, he resembled a caveman — bearded, flat-nosed, big chomping teeth, slightly rolled shoulders. His eyebrows were bushy and his arms bristled with a blend of brown and black hairs. His legs, however, were not caveman squat, but longish. He had evolved somewhere along the line, possibly from the long strides necessary for running after woolly mammoths in the Valley of the Neander.

This was the spot where he watched sports, read his morning newspaper, did his
New York Times
crossword puzzle, scrolled through e-mails, drank his coffee, savored his brewskies (when not on the deck), and pried slivers from his fingers. He is, after all, a hobby craftsman who works with wood. He's also retired.

“I like your chair,” I remarked. His large recliner was black like mine, but had doilies set on the arms.

“It was my father's,” he answered. “He died last year — no, the year before.”

I knew enough not to ask about his father but, spying a thick book on a hassock, I did ask what he was reading. A biography on Jefferson, he said. The biography, I noted, was tagged with a slip of paper (parking ticket? two-for-one coupon?). I could imagine my buddy in his recliner with the book, dropping off to sleep in the late afternoon, the latch of his caveman jaw fallen open. That sort of sleep would be luxurious, like a good soak without water and the trouble of drying off.

We were called to a dinner of Portuguese stew, over which we talked about travels (they like South America and we like Europe). After dinner, we spooned a custard dessert in the living room. The night was over when I pounded my fifth beer bottle on the table, like a gavel. My wife narrowed her eyes at me; later, she would lecture me about self-control.

The next day, not unlike a museumgoer, I strayed through our own two-level house, stopping at several art pieces on the wall, particularly those by our favorite artist, DeLoss McGraw. What was I doing? Scrutinizing the place for a nook where I could build my own man cave. It couldn't be located in any of the three bedrooms, nor in the kitchen alcove — what kind of caveman faces a wall? That would be like getting sent to the principal's office, with my snout facing the wall.

I wandered into my wife's sewing room. She gazed up, the light glinting on her reading glasses, and asked, “What?” Apparently, I was trespassing on her girl cave. I exited and returned to the living room.

I paused ten feet from the recliner, which was positioned at an angle in the corner. Whenever I climbed into this plump recliner, I felt like I was sitting in Santa's lap. True, the L-shaped couch was the centerpiece of the living room, while the two tansu hutches made the space stylish. The wool rug featured a Shakespearian sonnet (“The darling buds of May”) and the Shinto shrine, once belonging to a rice farmer, also commanded attention. The picture window, however, was too filled with outside light. Man caves demanded darkness, the better to hide the beer cans, dust, and grime.

My corner space didn't offer the sort of privacy where I could nod off without embarrassment. Plus, there was no
TV
, no wicker basket for magazines, and no proper end table for my empties. Otherwise, the space might have made a good man cave, with a recliner and a beer, possibly a middling novel or biography — or, hell, a copy of
Playboy
that I could stash under the seat when the wife appeared.

A dog also could fit into the picture nicely, but not like the dog of another tennis friend. That pooch is named Peaches. Two or three times a day, Peaches scratches the front door and my buddy, sighing, gets off his couch to walk her around the block with a small plastic bag. Picking up the squishy dog business is mildly revolting, but he's additionally sickened when a passerby remarks, “Cute dog. What's its name?” No owner of a man cave should have to admit, “Peaches.”

This other buddy, the owner of Peaches, actually does have a dark den where he pounds back beers, watches sports on an overly bright
HDTV
, and looks at his cell phone every few minutes. If he farts, it's for his own pleasure. If he burps, the scent of pizza hangs in the air.

When you consider a friend's personal space, or man cave in this instance, you can see yourself there . . . I reel in my thoughts and consider my error. I should not hanker for what another man possesses. Why so? Because men, formerly cavemen, can recognize human smells. One man will bristle at another man's smell as a warning that something's not right. What is that caveman doing in
my
territory? My space? Hey, do I smell my cavewoman on your breath?

While I'm no anthropologist or psychologist, I will risk a caveman's analysis: thousands of years ago, just after the demise of the tail-swaggering dinosaurs and the discovery of fire, my brother cavemen employed their noses for reconnaissance. They sniffed wild strawberries —
good
, they thought via their limited gray matter — and ate them. They sniffed rivers and thought
more good
— and drank until their bellies were full. They sniffed each other (and here I explore the limits of my undergraduate education) like dogs. Not dogs like Peaches, but thick-necked, fanged beasts with claws like the sharpest cutlery.

In short, cavemen (and cavewomen) lived by their senses — most actively their sense of smell. When, for instance, a nosy caveman entered another caveman's abode, he would do so cautiously and on fat, earth-hardened tiptoes. The unannounced caveman would sniff immediately, inhale, and conclude in his ancient language,
funky
— well, funky might not be the right word, but perhaps some primordial utterance like, “Kafuchicrapit!”

The owner caveman, awakened in a far corner of his cave, would become angry upon the appearance of another caveman dude. In the dark, he would grind his teeth and clench his fists until veins popped to the surface of his hairy arms. Once the visitor caveman turned his back for another sniff, the owner caveman would step out from the dark and, in brisk defense of his smelly territory, shout “Gafukkada!” Or something likewise harsh and choppy which, in his day, meant
What the fuck!
Uttering screams loud enough to wake the dinosaurs, the rightful caveman would bong the curious caveman with a large and mighty club.

But perhaps I have not evolved far enough to think beyond this hypothetical situation. Again, I'm no anthropologist or psychologist, just a man like any other, a little hairy, a little bad-tempered when my space is invaded, and frightfully loud when a tattooed asshole cuts me off in traffic. Like the caveman, I need my space. When I sense something bad in the air — the Republican Party, for instance — I grind my teeth and clench my fists. I put my nostrils to work, trying to sniff out precisely what is wrong.

THE THINGS WE SAY

Neil LaBute's
reasons to be pretty
begins on the home front, with a live-in girlfriend of four years asking repeatedly, “What did you say? Huh, what did you say?” She hurls expletives so harsh that the boyfriend fends them off with his hands, instinctively raising his palms to cover his face. Like a robotic vacuum cleaner, the girlfriend hurries after him, ready to suck a laughing comment from him like dirt. She corners him by the bed, but he jumps onto it and bounces to the other side. She races around a chair but, with a matador's move, he eludes her. She grabs his sleeve. When he yanks away, her anger builds. What had he said to that loutish Kent, his stupid buddy at the warehouse? She knows but she wants
him
to say it. The boyfriend is frightened; no, he is ashamed; no, he doesn't know what he meant. He screams for her to
Please drop it!

This furious quest for an answer goes on longer than dramatically necessary. The girlfriend continues to yank the boy around and demand an answer.
What did he say?
She brings up his dead-end job and her dead-end job and the friends that have grown moldy. She belittles him and cusses like a sailor. Still, these hotly spewed words seem mild compared to her reaction when he finally confesses: “I said, I said . . . ‘You are regular.' ” Silence like the seconds after a door is slammed.
Is this how he sees me?
she broods, lowering her head and walking around the stage, arms wrapped around her chest. The hurt is like a paper cut, small but painful.

The boyfriend is ashamed. Head down, he bites his lower lips. He looks up with his own regular face at his soon-to-be ex-girlfriend.

I squirm in my chair and whisper through the hand covering my own face, “Buddy, you just messed up.” The boyfriend could've cheated on her; he could've had an offshore bank account; he could've been voting in favor of Republican issues after all their years together. Realistically, he even could've said that their sex was dry.

But not
regular.

The girlfriend's fury dies, not unlike a tornado doing one last spin, releasing the load of debris it has hauled for miles. What baggage had this couple carried in their relationship? Neither is accomplished and neither expects much, or so I assume from their sloppy dress, their blue-collar bleakness, the underwhelming décor of their apartment. This is what the play is about: that tipping point when one incident (or word) ends it all.

A dark cloud stalls behind the girlfriend's eyes before she casts her gaze to the floor. Admittedly, she fronts no face to launch a thousand ships. She isn't even pretty. She has the face of a grinning female Waldo. And the boyfriend is a Waldo himself. He mumbles a clumsy apology, then puffs himself up, insisting that he meant “regular” as a compliment. This only maddens her further, and once again he is berated with expletives.

The play ends in a drearier fashion than
Romeo and Juliet,
without the bitter taste of poison and a knife in the heart. Their relationship ends over a three-syllable word associated with the lowest grade of gasoline: regular.
So why
couldn't she at least be cute?

The audience leaves the theater, some paired off. As in husband and wife, boyfriend and girlfriend, boyfriend and boyfriend, girlfriend and girlfriend. A bachelor for the evening, I take my loneliness to a lively bar, where the faces are lit with laughter and purpose. The bartender is cute, and the two lassies with drinks, dainty as high heels, are also cute. The paper doily where I rest my beer is cute. Cute is
OK
, but beautiful is far better. Cute gets you a good job, and beautiful an even better job. If you're regular, then you get an apartment like the one onstage where the bed remains unmade after once-a-week lovemaking.

Oh, I'm getting drunk.

To keep my mind busy, I mull over my options for a new car — import or domestic? a sedan or a two-seater? I try to remember if there is ice cream in the fridge — and what flavor. I read the playbill again and promise myself to buy something from one of the sponsors. I examine my shoes and wonder how long the luster will last in a city scuttling with litter. I grow melancholy at the start of my second pint and my mind swims toward another shore. Poor is
OK
, but rich is better. Bravery, insight, and a spiritual path are all
OK
, but charisma opens doors. I'm not up on social media or current on how young people conduct themselves privately. Still, I understand how to make people stop liking you. When we assess that our partner in life is no more than regular . . . I lift a beer and shudder to think about it.

Buddy boy, you messed up.

I squint at myself in the mirror behind the bar, which reflects a whole room of mostly young people. They say that I once turned heads and that others wished that I were single — was this true? These days, I'm not certain where I fall on the spectrum of handsomeness. In the mirror, I survey patrons jollily lifting and putting down drinks, some slapping their thighs from laughter, others with heads pressed conspiratorially together. We're all here: some for a good time, others to weep a little. Not everything works in life, particularly work itself. When the din of conversation dies, I hear recipes for Italian casseroles being exchanged.

I have a face meant for my age. By this I mean a corrugated brow, a hairline that displays more scalp each year, and eyes that redden immediately after sleep — during which not much happens except for the occasional dream about a leaky faucet. What kind of symbol is that — the leaky faucet? No tiger chasing in my dreams, no rhino of a husband pounding at my door. And sharks? Sharks stay away. Just tame little dreams and one nightly trip to the toilet.

I sip my beer from a glass as tall and slender as a runway model. I've been affected by these pints, and by LaBute's play as well. I see a whole row of men and women at the bar, each of us a Waldo, with our little happy smiles, each of us thinking that cute is good but beautiful is better.

I drain my pint and watch the suds slowly descend inside the glass. I scoot off my stool, feeling a mild buzz. Standing in front of the mirror, I play with my hair for a few seconds. Cute is the bartender and the doily where my pint rested, and cute are the women who left shouldering their purses, no men at their sides. I'm happy at least to be regular.