Women (29 page)

“All right.”

“And if you get lost again, phone me.”

“I’m sorry, you see, I have no sense of direction. I’ve always had nightmares about getting lost. I believe I belong on another planet.”

“It’s all right. Just follow my new instructions.”

I got back in the car, and this time it was easy. Soon I was on the

Pacific Coast Highway looking for the turn-off. I found it. It led me into a snob shopping district near the ocean. I drove slowly and spotted it: Drop On Inn, a large hand-painted sign. There were photos and small cards pasted in the window. An honest-to-god health food place, Jesus Christ. I didn’t want to go in. I drove around the block and past the Drop On Inn slowly. I took a right, then another right. I saw a bar, Crab Haven. I parked outside and went in.

It was 3:45 in the afternoon and every seat was taken. Most of the clients were well on the way. I stood and ordered a vodka-7. I took it to the telephone and phoned Sara. “O.K., it’s Henry. I’m here.”

“I saw you drive past twice. Don’t be afraid. Where are you?”

“Crab Haven. I’m having a drink. I’ll be there soon.”

“All right. Don’t have too many.”

I had that one and another. I found a small empty booth and sat there. I really didn’t want to go. I hardly remembered what Sara looked like.

I finished the drink and drove to her place. I got out, opened the screen door and walked in. Sara was behind the counter. She saw me. “Hi, Henry!” she said, “I’ll be with you in a minute.” She was preparing something. Four or five guys sat or stood around. Some sat on a couch. Others sat on the floor. They were all in their mid-twenties, they were all the same, they were dressed in little walking shorts, and they just sat. Now and then one of them would cross his legs or cough. Sara was a fairly handsome woman, lean, and she moved around briskly. Class. Her hair was red-blond. It looked very good.

“We’ll take care of you,” she told me.

“All right,” I said.

There was a bookcase. Three or four of my books were in it. I found some Lorca and sat down and pretended to read. That way I wouldn’t have to see the guys in their walking shorts. They looked as if nothing had ever touched them—all well-mothered, protected, with a soft sheen of contentment. None of them had ever been in jail, or worked hard with their hands, or even gotten a traffic ticket. Skimmed-milk jollies, the whole bunch.

Sara brought me a health food sandwich. “Here, try this.”

I ate the sandwich as the guys lolled about. Soon one got up and

walked out. Then another. Sara was cleaning up. There was only one left. He was about 22 and he sat on the floor. He was gangly, his back bent like a bow. He had on glasses with heavy black rims. He seemed more lonely and daft than the others. “Hey, Sara,” he said, “let’s go out and have some beers tonight.”

“Not tonight, Mike. How about tomorrow night?”

“All right, Sara.”

He stood up and walked to the counter. He put a coin down and picked up a health food cookie. He stood at the counter eating the health food cookie. When he finished it he turned and walked out.

“Did you like the sandwich?” Sara asked.

“Yes, it wasn’t bad.”

“Could you bring in the table and the chairs from the sidewalk?”

I brought in the table and the chairs.

“What do you want to do?” she asked.

“Well, I don’t like bars. The air is bad. Let’s get something to drink and go to your place.”

“All right. Help me carry the garbage out.”

I helped her carry the garbage out. Then she locked up.

“Follow my van. I know a store that stocks good wine. Then you can follow me to my place.”

She had a Volks van and I followed her. There was a poster of a man in the back window of her van. “Smile and rejoice,” he advised me, and at the bottom of the poster was his name, Drayer Baba.

We opened a bottle of wine and sat on the couch in her house. I 'iked the way her house was furnished. She had built all her furniture herself, including the bed. Photos of Drayer Baba were everywhere. He was from India and had died in 1971, claiming to be God.

While Sara and I sat there drinking the first bottle of wine the door opened and a young man with snaggled teeth, long hair and a very long beard walked in. “This is Ron, my roommate,” said Sara.

“Hello, Ron. Want a wine?”

Ron had a wine with us. Then a fat girl and a thin man with a shaved head walked in. They were Pearl and Jack. They sat down. Then another young man walked in. His name was Jean John. Jean John sat down. Then Pat walked in. Pat had a black beard and long hair. He sat down on the floor at my feet.

“I’m a poet,” he said.

I took a swallow of wine.

“How do you go about getting published?” he asked me.

“You submit it to the editors.”

“But I’m unknown.”

“Everybody starts out unknown.”

“I give readings 3 nights a week. And I’m an actor so I read very well. I figure if I read my stuff enough somebody might want to publish it.”

“It’s not impossible.”

“The problem is that when I read nobody shows up.”

“I don’t know what to tell you.”

“I’m going to print my own book.”

“Whitman did.”

“Will you read some of your poems?”

“Christ, no.”

“Why not?”

“I just want to drink.”

“You talk about drinking a lot in your books. Do you think drinking has helped your writing?”

“No. I’m just an alcoholic who became a writer so that I would be able to stay in bed until noon.”

I turned to Sara. “I didn’t know you had so many friends.”

“This is unusual. It’s hardly ever like this.”

“I’m glad we’ve got plenty of wine.”

“I’m sure they’ll be leaving soon,” she said.

The others were talking. The conversation drifted and I stopped listening. Sara looked good to me. When she spoke it was with wit and incisjveness. She had a good mind. Pearl and Jack left first. Then Jean John. Then Pat the poet. Ron sat on one side of Sara and I sat on the other. Just the 3 of us. Ron poured himself a glass of wine. I couldn’t blame him, he was her roommate. I had no hope of outwait-ing him. He was already there. I poured Sara a wine and then one for myself. After I finished drinking it I said to Sara and Ron, “Well, I guess I’ll be going.”

“Oh no,” said Sara, “not so soon. I haven’t had a chance to talk

to you. I’d like to talk to you.”

She looked at Ron. “You understand, don’t you, Ron?”

“Sure.”

He got up and walked to the back of the house.

“Hey,” I said, “I don’t want to start any shit.”

“What shit?”

“Between you and your roommate.”

“Oh, there’s nothing between us. No sex, nothing. He rents the room in the back of the house.”

“Oh.”

I heard the sound of a guitar. Then loud singing.

“That’s Ron,” said Sara.

He just bellowed and called the hogs. His voice was so bad that no comment was needed.

Ron sang on for an hour. Sara and I drank some more wine. She lit some candles. “Here, have a beedie.”

I tried one. A beedie is a small brown cigarette from India. It had a good tart taste. I turned to Sara and we had our first kiss. She kissed well. The evening was looking up.

The screen door swung open and a young man walked into the room.

“Barry,” said Sara, “I’m not having any more visitors.”

The screen door banged and Barry was gone. I foresaw future problems: as a recluse I couldn’t bear traffic. It had nothing to do with jealousy, I simply disliked people, crowds, anywhere, except at my readings. People diminished me, they sucked me dry.

“Humanity, you never had it from the beginning.” That was my motto.

Sara and I kissed again. We both had drunk too much. Sara opened another bottle. She held her wine well. I have no idea what we talked about. The best thing about Sara was that she made very few references to my writing. When the last bottle was empty I told Sara that I was too drunk to drive home.

“Oh, you can sleep in my bed, but no sex.”

“Why?”

“One doesn’t have sex without marriage.”

“One doesn’t?”

“Drayer Baba doesn’t believe in it.”

“Sometimes God can be mistaken.”

“Never.”

“All right, let’s go to bed.”

We kissed in the dark. I was a kiss freak anyway, and Sara was one of the best kissers I had ever met. I’d have to go all the way back to Lydia to find anyone comparable. Yet each woman was different, each kissed in her own way. Lydia was probably kissing some son of a bitch right now, or worse, kissing his parts. Katherine was asleep in Austin.

Sara had my cock in her hand, petting it, rubbing it. Then she pressed it against her cunt. She rubbed it up and down, up and down against her cunt. She was obeying her God, Drayer Baba. I didn’t play with her cunt because I felt that would offend Drayer. We just kissed and she kept rubbing my cock against her cunt, or maybe against the clit, I didn’t know. I waited for her to put my cock in her cunt. But she just kept rubbing. The hairs began to burn my cock. I pulled away.

“Good night, baby,” I said. And then I turned, rolled over and put my back up against her. Drayer Baby, I thought, you’ve got one helluva believer in this bed.

In the morning we began the rubbing bit again with the same end result. I decided, to hell with it, I don’t need this kind of non-action.

“You want to take a bath?” Sara asked.

“Sure.”

I walked into the bathroom and let the water run. Sometime during the night I had mentioned to Sara that one of my insanities was to take 3 or 4 steaming hot baths a day. The old water therapy.

Sara’s tub held more water than mine and the water was hotter. I was five feet, eleven and 3/4 inches and yet I could stretch out in the tub. In the old days they made bathtubs for emperors, not for 5 foot bank clerks.

I got into the tub and stretched. It was great. Then I stood up and looked at my poor raw cunt-hair-rubbed cock. Rough time, old boy, but close, I guess is better than nothing? I sat back down in the tub and stretched out again. The phone rang. There was a pause.

Then Sara knocked.

“Come in!”

“Hank, it’s Debra.”

“Debra? How’d she know I was here?”

“She’s been calling everywhere. Should I tell her to phone back?”

“No, tell her to wait.”

I found a large towel and wrapped it about my waist. I walked into the other room. Sara was talking to Debra on the phone.

“Oh, here he is. . . .”

Sara handed me the phone. “Hello, Debra?”

“Hank, where have you been?”

“In the bathtub.”

“The bathtub?”

“Yes.”

“You just got out?”

“Yes.”

“What are you wearing?”

“I have a towel around my middle.”

“How can you keep the towel around your middle and talk on the phone?”

“I’m doing it.”

“Did anything happen?”

“No.”

“Why?”

“Why what?”

“I mean, why didn’t you fuck her?”

“Look, do you think I go around doing things like that? Do you think that’s all there is to me?”

“Then nothing happened?”

“Yes.”

“What?”

“Yes, nothing.”

“Where are you going after you leave there?”

“My place.”

“Come here.”

“What about your legal business?”

“We’re almost caught up. Tessie can handle it.”

“All right.”

I hung up.

“What are you going to do?” Sara asked.

“I’m going to Debra’s. I said I’d be there in 45 minutes.”

“But I thought we’d have lunch together. I know this Mexican place.”

“Look, she’s concerned. How can we sit around and chat over lunch?”

“I have my mind set on lunch with you.”

“Hell, when do you feed your people?”

“I open at eleven. It’s only ten now.”

“All right, let’s go eat. ...”

It was a Mexican place in a snide hippie district of Hermosa Beach. Bland, indifferent types. Death on the shore. Just phase out, breathe in, wear sandals and pretend it’s a fine world.

While we were waiting for our order Sara reached out and dipped her finger into a bowl of hot sauce, and then sucked her finger. Then she dipped again. She bent her head over the bowl. Strands of her straight hair poked at me. She kept sticking her finger into the bowl and sucking.

“Look,” I told her, “other people want to use that sauce. You’re making me sick! Stop it.”

“No, they refill it each time.”

I hoped they did refill it each time. Then the food arrived and Sara bent and attacked it like an animal, just as Lydia used to do. We finished eating and then we went out and she got into her van and drove to her health food place, and I got in my Volks and started out toward Playa del Rey. I had been given careful directions. The directions were confusing, but I followed them and had no trouble. It was almost disappointing because it seemed when stress and madness were eliminated from my daily life there wasn’t much left you could depend on.

I drove into Debra’s yard. I saw a movement behind the blinds. She’d been watching for me. I got out of the Volks and made sure that both doors were locked since my auto insurance had expired.

I walked up and bing-bonged Debra’s bell. She opened the door and seemed glad to see me. That was all right, but it was things like that which kept a writer from getting his work done.

92

I didn’t do much the rest of the week. The Oaktree meet was on. I went to the track 2 or 3 times, broke even. I wrote a dirty story for a sex mag, wrote 10 or 12 poems, masturbated, and phoned Sara and Debra each night. One night I phoned Cassie and a man answered. Goodbye, Cassie.

I thought about breakups, how difficult they were, but then usually it was only after you broke up with one woman that you met another. I had to taste women in order to really know them, to get inside of them. I could invent men in my mind because I was one, but women, for me, were almost impossible to fictionalize without first knowing them. So I explored them as best I could and I found human beings inside. The writing would be forgotten. The writing would become much less than the episode itself until the episode ended. The writing was only the residue. A man didn’t have to have a woman in order to feel as real as he could feel, but it was good if he knew a few. Then when the affair went wrong he’d feel what it was like to be truly lonely and crazed, and thus know what he must face, finally, when his own end came.