Your Body is Changing (8 page)

“Hello? Hello?” he was saying. “Junior, is that you?”

I greeted him in the hallway.

My father is a portly man with a big, fine head of bushy gray hair. He is around sixty years of age or so, I believe.

“Where’s Mom?” I said.

“She’s at the hospital. Two men visited us tonight. They said you owed them fifteen thousand dollars. When we expressed our astonishment, they hit me in the breadbasket five times, knocking the wind out of me. They also twisted my arm behind my back, harshly. These same gentlemen gave your mother two black eyes and kicked her down the front steps. She has a concussion and perhaps some other problems, perhaps a broken back. She’s being kept overnight for observation.”

“Oh my goodness,” I said.

“I hate to think you’ve gotten mixed up with these kind of men,” said my father.

“Fifteen thousand dollars doesn’t sound right,” I said. “I think someone is trying to pull my leg.”

“Maybe it was fifteen hundred. They broke my false teeth,” said my father. “This is my spare set, and they don’t fit me right.”

“They should deduct two hundred dollars right off the top,” I said. “I never received my two hundred dollars. I’m going to make Mom a get-well card using PhotoShop. I’m getting pretty good at it.”

“That sounds thoughtful,” said my father.

“That means I’m going to be in your bedroom for awhile,” I said. “Undisturbed.”

“Be my guest. I can’t sleep anyway,” he said. “I’m too worked up.”

“Watch some TV,” I suggested.

“They urinated on the surge protector and now the TV doesn’t work anymore,” he replied.

I then left my father to his own devices. Once I had secured my parents’ bedroom door I looked up India’s MySpace page and masturbated to relieve myself of the stress. Afterward I sent an email to Laura Bush via the White House web site, briefly outlining the events of the day, which is a hobby of mine.

The Legacy of America’s Most radical Gum

CONRAD HATCHER, Project Manager:
Look. We all knew we had something awesome. The suits didn’t know. They were all like, “Whoa!” They were like, “Dude!” I didn’t care what they said. I was all up in Wayne Goodwin’s face. I was all like, “Dude, we’re going to make a gum that’s like, radical and everything?” And he was all like, “Whatever.”

WAYNE GOODWIN, VP—Marketing:
I suppose I had some misgivings of a practical nature. But I think you will find that overall there hasn’t been a more enthusiastic supporter of the gum, in terms of letting those guys explore, you know, and find their level. I sensed from the very beginning that we were on to something quite important here. The undiscovered country, if you will. Uncharted waters. Here there be monsters. Bracing, exciting stuff. Danger, Will Robinson! Wonderful stuff. Fearless.

BRAVO JONES, Logo Designer:
Conrad is a risk taker. I will give him that. We’ve had our differences, as is well documented. But I like to give credit where credit is due. It’s something I do naturally. I’m a truth teller. A lot of times that freaks people out. I always say, “Look, I’m just being honest.” You know, “You’re fat, you’re a pig,” or whatever. My attitude is, take it or leave it. But don’t put me down for telling it like it is. For example, at the first meeting with Conrad I say, “Hey, what’s the name of this gum?” Because at that time the gum had no name. I mean I can do a lot of things, and do them fantastically well, but I’m not a miracle worker! Am I? Maybe I am. Otherwise I honestly believe there would have been a gum in the stores with no name on it. And that would have blown people’s minds. Not in a good way.

CONRAD HATCHER:
It sounds funny, but it’s really not. I was, like, looking at the package and all of a sudden I was like, “Hey.” You know what I mean? I was like, “What’s in there?” I was trying to get inside the customer’s head or whatever. So I was like, “What’s in this package of gum, dude?” And then I was like, “I don’t know, but it better be gum.” Like I was answering my own self. Weird. Like I was having two parts of the same conversation, but there’s only like one of me there. So I was just like, It Better Be Gum.

WAYNE GOODWIN:
What we were doing with It Better Be Gum was throwing caution to the wind. I mean, why not? It seems easy in retrospect, but at the time it was a truly courageous vision. There’s a lot of talk right now about courage and whatnot, but whenever I’m pressed for a definition I just say, take a look at It Better Be Gum. Try to place yourself in what was really a gum vacuum at that time, and imagine It Better Be Gum bursting forth like some sort of courageous blast of dynamite. That’s courage. To create something out of nothing. Which is what we do every day in this business. And I fully credit Conrad with that. He was the one with the forethought to say, “Who cares if it’s a chewing gum or a bubble gum?” You know. “We’re not going to tell people. We’re not going to give them that crutch. Let them decide for themselves whether to chew it or blow it. And hey, maybe we can make it where they can swallow it.” Because before that, you know, no one was allowed to swallow gum. That’s a discredited way of thinking now, and yes, I suppose Conrad is principally responsible for that, for what I would call a sea change in the way Americans engage with gum as a recreational snack.

STANLEY BOUNCE, Gum Aficionado:
They test marketed It Better Be Gum in Texarkana. I don’t know where else. All I know is, me and my friends were the only people putting it in our mouths. Like, “I dare you to put this in your mouth!” Because after you spit it out there was still like this greasy feeling and this weird bitter taste. And when I went number two it burned! But I didn’t associate that with It Better Be Gum. I just thought there was something wrong with me. Then my friend Glen was in the bathroom for like, forever, and I was like, “What’s up?” And he was like, “Every time I chew this gum I get like, the runs.” And I was like, cool.

SARA SPOONER, The “It Better Be Gum Girl”:
The gorilla in the commercial was super sweet! He would sit in the corner and go “Uh, uh, uh!” I think he was trying to talk to me! That was super sweet. There wasn’t a mouth on the mask where the gorilla could talk out of, so it just sounded like “Uh, uh, uh!” to me. But he acted super sweet. He waved to me and everything. Like, “How are you?” Or, “Good morning, Sara!” But he didn’t use words to express it. Just “Uh, uh, uh!” It made me feel bright and cheerful. That was sad when he died.

CONRAD HATCHER:
When the monkey man died I was like, “Whoa!” I was like, “Heavy, dude.” I was like, “What the fuck?” I was like, “Who’s going to be the monkey man now?”

STANLEY BOUNCE:
I’ll never forget the first It Better Be Gum commercial. I had all my homies with me because you know, this was a gum that only we knew about. So we just crouched around the television, there was about fifteen of us and my Mom made fudge. Plus we were all chewing It Better Be Gum. It was kind of a bummer because everybody in the whole world was going to know about our secret thing. But there was like a definite party atmosphere. And when that monkey came out and started dancing his ass off, that sealed the deal, bro! That was the funniest damn monkey I ever saw. He was going [demonstrates monkey movements]. It was like the monkey was saying, “Back off, parents! You can’t understand this gum!” And the sexy girl was like, “That’s right!” But they said it through their motions of dancing. Glen literally went in his pants he was laughing so hard. He couldn’t get in the bathroom either because somebody else was in there with the runs. That was the greatest night of my life.

WAYNE GOODWIN:
I really felt that Chunkafella, the It Better Be Gum Monkey, was an almost holy character, like a Hindu god or something. And when that guy died, the guy who usually put on the gorilla suit, the whole weltzschmertz changed. It was like the spiritual center had just crumbled somehow. You could feel it. Of course, it was impossible to tell him apart from the next guy who put on the gorilla suit—impossible on a literal level, because, you know, it’s some guy in a gorilla suit—but on a subliminal level it broke my heart.

CONRAD HATCHER:
They kept making me think there would be Choco-Grape It Better Be Gum with Super Flavor Bombs and everything, and I was like, stoked. And then it would be like, “Sorry, Dude, I changed my mind. The juice runoff from your gum totally eats people’s stomach lining for some reason.” Whatever. At first I was all, “Whoa.” Now I’m like, “Whatever.” I guess America’s not ready for something that’s going to eat their precious stomach lining. You know, okay, that’s your problem, not mine. I’m glad I had the experience. It made me think about my thoughts as a human being or some shit. Anyway I got a lot of other stuff I’m doing right now. Like this gum called Project Blue. It’s going to totally turn your mouth and teeth and everything blue and the stain won’t ever come out. America is going to be like, “Dude!” And I’m going to be like, “Whatever, America.”

A
man like a big egg sat down and dunked a tea bag.

“This is my tea bag,” he said. “This is a tea bag I brought from home. You think the water’s free? Oh sure, the water’s free. The water’s free but the cup’ll cost you. That’s some scam they have going. The guy tells me the water’s free but if I want a cup to put it in, that’s another story.”

The young man didn’t know what to say.

“I know what,” the egg man said. “I should bring my own cup next time. I ought to make a note of that.”

He whipped out a pad.

“Bring…own…cup.”

He snapped it shut.

“I’m a travel writer,” he said. “I have two weekly columns in ________.” (He named a certain city.) “A lot of these guys have been doing it fifteen, twenty years and they can’t get a column. I have two.”

“Man.”

“I’m just lucky, I guess. I try to give the reader an image, you know? Anybody can say, go here, this restaurant has good food. I try to be a little more enticing. Last week I was in [another city] at this place called The Coachman’s Inn, and the girl gets wind I’m a travel writer so she asks me if I’m going to mention the place. I tell her, ‘I’m not just going to mention it, I’m going to make people want to come here.’ So what do I write? The soup’s good? The Coachman’s Inn has a nice selection of desserts? No, it’s ‘a spicy vegetable soup with a flavor that can only be described as more, more, more. And don’t leave without trying the blackberry cobbler, served in a rich, creamery sauce.’ See?”

The young man said he saw. The travel writer seemed to feel a warm connection, perhaps something to do with the great book the boy was holding. Men of literature! Men who appreciated things! Men of the world. But he didn’t say it outright. He just talked some more about how great he was and how great it was to be a travel writer. He talked and talked and finally he paused long enough for the boy to excuse himself.

The boy stood in the restroom, smelling the soiled cake of air freshener and shaking with the train. He put gray water on his face and looked in the mirror. You can imagine what he saw.

When the boy came back, the travel writer had gone. The boy had failed him somehow. He sat down and looked out the window again.

The things going by stung his heart. A stop sign. Deep orange weeds, golden as oranges. Murky, opaline water in ditches. Cherrycolored and pink and turquoise clothes blowing on a line.

Where had he gotten opaline? Probably from the supposedly great book she had given him and commanded him to read.

Cherry-colored? Try plain old red. Some sad red rags and an old woman’s enormous yellowed bra.

Litter. Burned trees. Graveyards. Appliance stores. An abandoned gas station. A rusted washing machine.

How about the time a moth had flown into her cleavage? That was the day they met.

He remembered picking beans in his good shoes and pants. She filled an old fishing hat full of water and pressed it down on his head.

He remembered riding on the back of her motorcycle, French bread in a grocery bag flapping against his leg.

A baseball game on the radio.

Each thing that had happened was a little thing. It was normal life. But everything had taken on special properties, like objects through the window of a train. The combination of little normal things had turned into a large unnameable thing and made him fall in love.

It was dinnertime and the lounge car had begun to empty. He looked out the window.

More things went by. Power poles. Flowers. Cows in a field. The sky turned lemony at the bottom and a painful watercolor blue at the top. Pretty soon it was dark, and between the lit cities it was very dark.

E
verybody smokes cigars now. Famous people. There are magazines about it. Women smoke cigars. It doesn’t matter. Meg won’t let me have one in the house.

It was a Sunday afternoon before Christmas, unseasonably warm. I had just settled into the porch swing and lit up when I saw my next-door neighbor Roger Hill standing in his yard like a statue, staring across the street. His fists were clenched by his sides.

I knew what he was looking at: the nasty army-barracks green of the house opposite his. It was a black eye for the whole neighborhood but especially bothered Roger, who had to confront it every day from his breakfast table.

I must tell you that we live in an exceptionally fine neighborhood. Halfway down the street it turns into a place where blacks live in horrible conditions, I won’t mince words. What people don’t understand is that they don’t want to come over here any more than we want to go over there. We get along just fine thank you and nobody’s complaining.

Of course a lot of the money has moved west to the suburbs but those people are just chicken to live near the blacks—incredible in this day and age!—and there is a nucleus of the younger set who prefer, like Meg and myself, to stay close to downtown and work toward gentrification rather than cowering in the shadow of those damn shopping malls.

We’re like pioneers. The homes in which we live were built a hundred years ago or more, when the city was a rich and bejeweled center of enlightenment, and a couple are even older, from when cotton was still king. There is a monthly award for the most attractive yard, and some of the homes are open for tours during a long weekend every spring.