The Big Mystery Part II
The Big Mystery Part II
Remember in the Brady Bunch when there was always a problem that the family figured out by the end of the half hour? Either Marsha was too absorbed with her looks or Cindy had a lisp or Bobby got caught going through Alice's underwear...he didn't? Well, my life is like one long unresolved Brady Bunch episode. I have all the same problems but they never get figured out. And they never stop coming. I'm like Greg, driven to do the wrong thing at the wrong time. The current episode, number ten million, would be titled “Oggy either becomes an indentured servant or goes to Mexico to be a street violinist.” What are the chances it's going to get resolved in the next half-hour? I have the violin in my car. No I can't play it at all. It sounds like shit. I'll bring it in now. Ok later. Right. After I explain myself. Remind me. Did I tell you how pretty your eyes are? Right. The story.
Well, Erin is a old chum of mine. As loyal as a dog. We cut our teeth together in the alleys of Bone Harbor. Went camping together. His sister, Rose, was the first girl I kissed. So...Well, I don't have to tell you everything. Sure, she was pretty. No, you are far prettier. No, I have no pictures. I just kissed her. Yes, that was all. No. Nothing more. No...well maybe a little bit more. Do we have to talk about this? No, we never had sex. Look, I hate talking about this. Brady Bunch was rated G, remember? No. A little of this a little of that. No, I hated it, how do you think I liked it? Do I have to? I thought you wanted to hear about the mess in Bone Harbor. I don't think this is more interesting. We were just kids. We just made a mess and I thought it was the greatest thing in the world. I...Did I love her? Sure, yes. Why not? I loved her. Yeah, she said she loved me. She loved me like a stuffed animal you dress up and provide a personality for. Everyone loves a stuffed animal and everyone outgrows a stuffed animal. Everyone brings their stuffed animal to the thrift store where it sits on the shelf for three months being handled by kids with mullets and snot in their nose. And that stuffed animal always tries to get back together with its original owners, but the original owner has gone to college on a track scholarship and dates twenty-five year olds and the stuffed animal is just a piece of fabric filled with polyester fill and can't do anything right and doesn't even know who he is because his voice was a figment of the owner's imagination. So that stuffed animal cries out his little black button eyes because he will never get back together with his original owner. Then the stuffed animal realizes he can learn from the trashy kids as much as from a snobby brat, and in time learns he can develop a better personality on his own, one that he likes and is proud of rather than the fake piece of shit he was with the original owner who can rot in hell. But he also knows that he lost everything.
Satisfied? Yeah I saw her this Christmas. She made fun of me and got drunk and I ran away. Why should she be? I'm just a beaten stuffed animal she brought to the thrift store, but I won't go away, I just remind her of a misspent summer. Oh, I was a real piece of work in High School. You didn't miss a thing. You wanna to talk about problems? Bobby Brady didn't have half of my problems. Did Bobby Brady have a mental breakdown on the road because he realized every minute he had lived since he was seven had been a complete lie, a role he assumed to get him through dinner with his five siblings? I don't think so. Remember when Bobby called NASA because he thought he saw a UFO? Well, when I watched that episode I thought, shit, Bobby has got it so good.
It wasn't my fault. Of course Ray Knight was involved. It was his fault. I didn't think it would eventually stop me from staying here with you. How can I stay? I have to go to Mexico. We have to go. I just wanted to do something memorable with Erin so you would believe in me and admire me, something so we could be together, so I wouldn't be the old stuffed animal lying on a shelf waiting to be bought.
You want to know why I can't stay? I can't stay for the same reasons that Bobby Brady went back home after he ran away. His destiny chose him. The Brady house is the place I always return to. Except this time. I can't go back. I can't stay. Do you want to know why? OK. You asked for it.
Lacy was silent when wrapped up my latest version of why I was in flight. She watched the good life between Julie Andrews and the Baron Von Trapp. Why couldn't life be so simple for us? The Nazis were on the move and maybe she would realized all dramas have to have conflict like someone turning sixteen, an 0-2 RBI single, a deadly car accident, a broken engagement, a holocaust.
“You did a bad thing, Oggy.”
This wasn't the first time I'd been spoken to like the family pet. I gave her my best puppy-dog-who-wants-to-be-scratched-on-his-belly look; it had worked in my previous life as a Beagle.
“You're fahked now. Your whole life is ruined.”
My belly went unscratched.
“Where have you been?” I laughed. “My life was ruined six years ago when Schiraldi...”
“So that is why you are running to Mexico? You're a criminal?”
“I'm not going to split hairs with you, but that's what the pink slip called me. I'm innocent until proven guilty. Remember when Bobby Brady...”
“You just confessed! You just admitted to everything. Don't say that you're innocent.”
I put my hands up like she was pointing a pop gun at me.
“Technically you're right, but there is this thing called the Napoleonic code according to which...”
As tended to happen in these situations, once the ball started to roll, it just kept rolling. One of the Laws of Physics, right after the one about Inertia, there ought to be one that says, “When Oggy screws up, his problems multiply exponentially.
“And you can't stay?”
Unable to actually say the word, I shook my head. I wanted to stay, but Ray Knight was on my trail and the Timewraiths guarded the path back to Bone Harbor. A long pause followed giving me the opportunity to explain the Napoleonic code, but I decided against it. Lacy looked genuinely angry. Girls were either horrified to see me or frustrated and angry. One of these days I would pay a hooker to sleep with me and she'll just nag me. What was I doing wrong?
“She didn't deserve that, you know. It could have been me, ya fak.”
“You wouldn't have done what she did. She tested me. She pushed me and Erin like we were shoeshine boys. I'm not a bootblack, Lace. I won't have my milk bowl pissed in. She didn't know Ray Knight.”
“Fahk Ray Knight. She didn't deserve it. She was innocent.”
“So was Andrew Ridgely, but George Michael just dumped him! Look at Van Halen, they forced David Lee Roth out on the street for no reason! And what about Willis and Arnold on Diff'rent Strokes? They were good kids, but their parents abandoned them. Life is hard, Lace.”
She was not visibly moved by my list of innocent though victimized individuals. Another long pause. The Sound Of Music continued in conflict. Nazis. Generals. Drama. Two-part harmony.
“Should I go?”
A pause. A sigh. The start of a new song. A slow smile. Hope.
“No, Oggy. You'll be gone soon enough. You can stay.”
“Can we hear “My favorite things” again?”
“Sure.”
I rewound the tape to a happier time and took my place back on the couch, where the ice had thawed somewhat. Lacy might give no quarter as far as causing the destruction of cars, but she put it in perspective. This would be an important skill to nurture on our way to Mexico.
“You look so far away, Lace. Way over there.”
She was about a foot away, but then Gedman had missed Stanley's pitch by only an inch or two. Like Einstein said, distance is relative to the sun.
“You mean you want to sit closer? You have to ask.”
“May I move closer, Lace?”
She shrugged as though I had given her a choice of sleeping on a bed of straw or a bed of hay. Nevertheless, I shuffled closer to her. She considered me as the bull considers the matador.
“That wasn't so hard was it?”
“My heart is beating fast and I'm dizzy. How are you?”
“Fine, what are you looking at?”
“Your face. Your lips especially.”
“What am I going to do with you, Oggy?”
I'd heard this question from nearly every friend I'd ever had. It usually came after I asked for their signature on a petition to recall a nuclear sub or asked them to support my three-part plan by hitchhiking to school or as I pulled out the 1986 Red Sox team photo and started my historical discourse on each player's contributions and shortcomings. Normally, I just let the jaw drop and plodded on with my request, but today I had an answer for Lacy.
“Why don't you come to Mexico?”
“Why don't you stay here?”
The volley was off. I shuffled even closer to her. Then I visualized myself kissing Lacy and heard my romantic words. In 1985, I had a baseball meditation tape that I listened to as I fell asleep. The tapes voice calmly told me to visualize myself on a warm afternoon, my body is loose, my mind is clear, my fears are gone. I swing and connect with the ball. It sails into the air. Everyone cheers. Over and over I listened to this tape in the hopes that it would help. I didn't see why it couldn't be used to visualize a successful assault on the Fair One. In the visualization I said, “Lace, you are precious to me and I will stay with you here and we will make adjustments to be together. You are the one I want to be with and I will redeem myself in your eyes.”
In real life I heard myself say , “I am going to kiss you, Lace, and you will love me and will come to Mexico with me. I'll support you, and you can paint and dance and sing like Maria Von Trapp while I play violin on the street and collect aluminum.”
This scenario seemed no more preposterous than sending men to the moon in a rocket ship, it would cost less, and I wasn't in competition with the Soviets.
“I'm not going to sing while you collect aluminum,” Lacy said predictably. “You think I'm someone else. You create some vision of me that isn't true. It isn't fair. Do I look like one of those girls in a white dress with pink satin sashes? Do I? Shit! It is a song. Words. I like sweatshirts. Say it with me, Oggy. Sweat-shirts”
I could feel the deal slipping away again and tried to rein it in.
“I just dream so much and you and Dewey and Mexico are in all my dreams. I can make myself believe you like to sing and paint and Dewey is happy because the Sox won the Series and I'm always clean and you are always so nicely dressed. Did I ever tell you about Ray Knight?”
“Why do you want to control me?”
This comment came out of the blue. Wasn't it clear I wanted to control her so I could dress her up like a doll and play house with her?
“Control? Talk to Bob Stanley about control. He threw a 2-1 pitch about ten feet inside.”
“He talks about baseball at a time like this,” Lacy explained to the lampshade. “Are you ever going to kiss me, ya fak? Are you even a man?”
This was another bottomless question. Men don't throw 0-2 fastballs over the middle of the plate. Men don't allow three runs with two outs in the bottom of the tenth inning. Men do something different, what I didn't know.
As I moved closer to her I felt the anxiety of closeness creep into me. I was Siddhartha and this was the decision between flesh and soul. One path led to enlightenment, the other led to late night trips to the supermarket to buy tampons and ice cream.
“You hair smells like the lilac bushes outside my old house in Maine, Lace. Spring country lilacs and kitten fur.”
“You're the one with all the fur, Oggy. Look at that beard. Jeez. Please shave. I can't even see your lips. How are you going to kiss me? It's like kissing a wolf. Oy!”
Lacy reluctantly shifted herself in her seat to a more reclining position. My hands were sweating and I wondered if I could pull this off. I chewed my mustache as one is apt to do when it curls between the teeth. So many questions had yet to be answered. Did I smell? What was Mookie Wilson's uniform number? What about the Napoleonic Code?
I scratched the seams on my jeans and tried to clear my head but the doubts remained. Lacy's face was passionless, not at all like I had imagined it at this moment. There was no heat or lust or latex undergarments. I reached out to her cheek and lightly brushed it with my fingertips. I gently cupped her face in my hand.
“I love having my face held, Oggy.”
Lacy sounded disappointed that I'd managed to do one thing right. Still, I ran my fingers around her cheek and chin. She closed her eyes and purred, her long lashes falling against her cheek.
Peace comes with purity. You know this but sacrifice it for a kiss. You don't want peace. You aren't strong enough to protect peace. Have your Kiss, Oggy. Have your kisses but bid farewell to peace.
“Is this OK, Lace.”
“Yes, Oggy”
“How rare is a woman's skin touched without reservation.”
She gazed into my eyes and said, “How do you come up with that bullshit?”
I moved closer to Lacy's face. In the background kids were singing about being sixteen. I could feel Lacy's warm breath and smell her hair. Her eyes were closed. Country spring lilacs. If Darcy had a younger brunette sister she would look like Lacy.
“Lace?”
“Please don't say something stupid. Please don't talk about Ray Knight.”
I quickly switched strategies.
“Lace, I want to take you away.”
“OK.”
“I want to take you away and hide you somewhere. I want to hold you so close that the world can't ever see or touch you again. The world doesn't deserve to touch you. I want to lock you away and keep you safe so you'll never have to see another two-out, two-strike RBI single. I'll put you where no one will hurt you and you will be mine and I will own you forever. It kills me that you are not in a box in my basement where Ray Knight will never go. It kills me that I can't own you and that the world has a chance to hurt you and spoil you. It kills me that you have to watch the Sox lose.”
“Ok, Oggy. I know.”
She was chewing bubble gum and had tucked it behind her teeth, but I could still taste the sugar on her tongue. To balance myself I leaned on her hip and felt under her shirt for the skin of her flat stomach. She was warm and soft and she never lifted her head from the pillow, never pushed me away, never pulled me closer. I was simply allowed to learn the lay of her lips and stroke her waist with my fingers and brush her neck.
“You feel like a brand new baseball,” I said, my voice trailing off like a Clemens split-fingered fast ball.
Lacy opened her eyes. “You waited all this time to use that line on me? Gee, I really must be special.”
“No. I mean it in a good way. I loved it.”
“No, you didn't. What's wrong, Oggy?”
Beside the fact that as I kissed her I saw Gary Carter embrace Ray Knight as Knight crossed the plate for the winning run, I was also having second thoughts about liberating Lacy. Let me just confess here that I am not one of those “Make a plan and stick to it” types of blokes. I tend to make progress in fits and starts. Hell, who am I kidding? When it comes down to it, I don't know what I'm doing. I admit it; if everyone had been like me in the Neolithic Period, we would probably still be in the Neolithic Period. But would that be so bad?
Then I swallowed and made two consecutive, inter-linked mistakes. The first was opening my mouth. The second was wagging my tongue.
“Well, I'm going on a pilgrimage and I don't think kissing is such a good way to start. I've made so many mistakes that what I need now is total purity. Siddhartha would agree with that. Gandhi would too. How else is Gedman gonna catch that pitch? How else is Schiraldi gonna strike out Knight? All that happened because I brought Rose to Fenway Park. Kissing you is kind of like a step backwards. How can I...”
Lacy sat up and made sure no part of me was touching her.
“You must really wanna get laid tonight, Oggy. You're not holding anything back, ya fak. Check my pulse if I pass out, OK? Do you know CPR?”
Lacy theatrically waved at her forehead. Where had this hostility come from? Had I accidentally pulled some of her hair out or somehow killed her pet mouse?
“I'm just saying that the Sox can't win without my full commitment. I need purity. And in Mexico there is this Napoleonic Code...”
“You're a real fahking Romeo, you know that? Now I'm getting pissed. You call kissing me an impurity? I'm a step backwards? The fahk are you to tell me I'm a step backwards? You are living in the Stone Age already, Oggy. Wake up! You go backwards any further and you'll be a lizard! Backwards my ass. Oy! If my mother could hear this conversation she'd adopt a grandkid rather than wait for me to give her one. Backwards?”
As Lacy mumbled something about my willingness to commit to the Red Sox but not to her, I ran my fingers through my hair and pulled out, of all things, a pencil.
“You don't understand. No one understands. Let me show you something that should clear it up. This is Dwight Evans. He...”
“Put your damn photo album away. I can't understand you? Why? Because I'm a girl? I can't understand your deep philosophizing bullshit? Is that it? You come here and grin at me and talk about marriage and get under my feet like a gerbil, and then we kiss for two seconds and you freak out and call me a step backwards. You talk about me like I'm some sort of obstacle to your sanity. Well, Fahk you, Oggy. Did they have doors in the Stone Age? Yeah? Good. Because you should know how to use that one right over there. Call me an obstacle? Ya fahk. You think I'm stupid just because I'm going to college and I'm not some deep thinker like you who eats with his fingers and doesn't use deodorant. You think I'm simple because I don't hitchhike everywhere and my name isn't painted on the side of my car?
“Well, basically...”
“I'm not simple! You are so self-absorbed in your little Stone Age fantasy or your pilgrimage that you can't understand me! New baseball, my ass! I know things too. I know that staying here with me would be better than sleeping in a Truck Stop parking lot and eating Taco Bell burritos out of the trash.”
Lacy stumbled through her speech. Her tone was like an angry girlfriend who had her boyfriend against a wall. I could tell she didn't like arguing in these abstract terms. She appeared to hate it, would have preferred to catch me leaving the toilet seat up or pissing on the Boston Fern, but whether she rose to the occasion to impress me or to get through to me, I can't say. I was slumped in my seat, where she had pushed me, thinking that this abuse was not worth a hand job. All kidding aside. Shiva could come down with all nine arms and give me a hand job that would leave my head spinning, but it still wasn't worth this aggravation. It just wasn't. But what else can I do? I'm a man and I follow the herd.
“Don't knock dumpster diving 'till you tried it, sister. They throw taco shells away that haven't even been used.”
The Baron was singing Edelweiss. Small and bright. Happy to greet you. Blossoms. Etc.
“That's you, Oggy. You are the Baron Von Trapp. You are mean to your kids because you think the world should follow all these rules of yours. But look what it gets you: Exiled.”
Napoleon had been exiled. Fred Lynn went to California. Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos were kicked out of the Philippines. Salamon Rushdie, a fellow artist, was forced into hiding. Even Molly Ringwald had to move to France after filming Strike it Rich in 1989. Exile had worked for others. Why not me? I would start with a new scorecard in Mexico, change my name to Miguel De la Riviera. From then on I would wear a serape, leather hurracha sandals, a pistol and would otherwise embrace a peasant reality. No more dreams about a slippery threesome between Darcy and Chrissy. No more waiting by the phone for the Red Sox GM to offer me a contract. I planned to paint Mexico's simple ranchers and bare-breasted mothers. I would draw the drama of the Alaska wilderness and the fires of Yosemite and the Jungles of the Ecuadorian rain forest, and the Prescott Park football field. If I could capture these memories, the bridge jumping, the hot dog afternoons, the ashen evenings, the firefly nights, then maybe the Timewraiths would be captured on the canvass like in Superman II when those three evil Krypton criminals were encased in that one-dimensional piece of glass and sent into space until Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative destroyed the prison and set them free. Crazier things had happened.
“Then be my Maria. Be my Julie Andrews. Please. Come to Switzerland. Or lets go to France like Molly Ringwald. I have this theory about Superman Two. Wanna hear it?”
“I'm not going to Switzerland or France or Mexico with you, Oggy. I've got school. I've got school because I'm not going to be a bum. I'm not going to live at home or in my car like you. I want a good life.”
I looked at her quizzically.
“That means not digging through trash for aluminum cans, ya fak.”
“But look. Maria is going with the Baron. Don't you want to live like a movie character?”
“No. Tell me about it one day. Write a song. Climb every mountain. Don't let me stop you.”
We watched in silence as the Von Trapp family escaped with the help of the nuns.
Lacy broke her silence during the scene at the cemetery and commented, “Every time I watch this I want that kid to be nice and not blow the whistle. Every time I think he'll turn away and let the family get away. Why does he want them caught? It makes me sad.”
“He's a Nazi and he probably died in a Russian snow field. Fahk him.”
We maintained radio silence for the rest of the movie until Lacy told me that she expected me not to tell anyone that I had kissed her for two seconds. After all, this was a big conquest for a fahk like me and Hollywood gossipiers were waiting with pens raised to write about my latest lay.
“Please, Lace. What's there to brag about? You kissed more of my mustache than my lips.”
“I mean it, Oggy, nobody can ever know about this. I wouldn't want it getting around that I tried to divert you from your sacred pilgrimage.”
“I didn't mean that it wasn't good before. I'm just trying to get all my stuffed animals back in one place. I can't have Mr. Snuffy over here and Blue Dog over there. It doesn't work. They all have to be right there in a row.”
Lacy walked me to the door as the Von Trapp family crossed the Alps to Switzerland.
“Just walk away, Oggy. Don't say Goodbye. Maybe I'll see you tomorrow. Maybe.”
“So long, farewell, avedisein, Goodnight!” I sang cheerfully. “Come by tomorrow. We can drink some tea. Talk about the Sox.”
Lacy shut the door quietly and turned off the porch light. I wouldn't have called the meeting an overwhelming success, but I'd gotten close enough to smell her and a wino in Dallas once told that a woman wants you if she lets you get close enough to smell her. I may be a fool but I'd be twice a fool if I didn't believe, and obey like the gospel, everything winos across the country had told me.
I turned down the path and readjusted my bulging erection so it wouldn't push my pants out like a hernia. My heart throbbed. I passed a dark grove of trees near a storage hut and decided I couldn't wait. I jumped into the shadows and dropped my pants into the pine duff, holding myself up with my left hand on a tree.
Remember in the Brady Bunch when there was always a problem that the family figured out by the end of the half hour? Either Marsha was too absorbed with her looks or Cindy had a lisp or Bobby got caught going through Alice's underwear...he didn't? Well, my life is like one long unresolved Brady Bunch episode. I have all the same problems but they never get figured out. And they never stop coming. I'm like Greg, driven to do the wrong thing at the wrong time. The current episode, number ten million, would be titled “Oggy either becomes an indentured servant or goes to Mexico to be a street violinist.” What are the chances it's going to get resolved in the next half-hour? I have the violin in my car. No I can't play it at all. It sounds like shit. I'll bring it in now. Ok later. Right. After I explain myself. Remind me. Did I tell you how pretty your eyes are? Right. The story.
Well, Erin is a old chum of mine. As loyal as a dog. We cut our teeth together in the alleys of Bone Harbor. Went camping together. His sister, Rose, was the first girl I kissed. So...Well, I don't have to tell you everything. Sure, she was pretty. No, you are far prettier. No, I have no pictures. I just kissed her. Yes, that was all. No. Nothing more. No...well maybe a little bit more. Do we have to talk about this? No, we never had sex. Look, I hate talking about this. Brady Bunch was rated G, remember? No. A little of this a little of that. No, I hated it, how do you think I liked it? Do I have to? I thought you wanted to hear about the mess in Bone Harbor. I don't think this is more interesting. We were just kids. We just made a mess and I thought it was the greatest thing in the world. I...Did I love her? Sure, yes. Why not? I loved her. Yeah, she said she loved me. She loved me like a stuffed animal you dress up and provide a personality for. Everyone loves a stuffed animal and everyone outgrows a stuffed animal. Everyone brings their stuffed animal to the thrift store where it sits on the shelf for three months being handled by kids with mullets and snot in their nose. And that stuffed animal always tries to get back together with its original owners, but the original owner has gone to college on a track scholarship and dates twenty-five year olds and the stuffed animal is just a piece of fabric filled with polyester fill and can't do anything right and doesn't even know who he is because his voice was a figment of the owner's imagination. So that stuffed animal cries out his little black button eyes because he will never get back together with his original owner. Then the stuffed animal realizes he can learn from the trashy kids as much as from a snobby brat, and in time learns he can develop a better personality on his own, one that he likes and is proud of rather than the fake piece of shit he was with the original owner who can rot in hell. But he also knows that he lost everything.
Satisfied? Yeah I saw her this Christmas. She made fun of me and got drunk and I ran away. Why should she be? I'm just a beaten stuffed animal she brought to the thrift store, but I won't go away, I just remind her of a misspent summer. Oh, I was a real piece of work in High School. You didn't miss a thing. You wanna to talk about problems? Bobby Brady didn't have half of my problems. Did Bobby Brady have a mental breakdown on the road because he realized every minute he had lived since he was seven had been a complete lie, a role he assumed to get him through dinner with his five siblings? I don't think so. Remember when Bobby called NASA because he thought he saw a UFO? Well, when I watched that episode I thought, shit, Bobby has got it so good.
It wasn't my fault. Of course Ray Knight was involved. It was his fault. I didn't think it would eventually stop me from staying here with you. How can I stay? I have to go to Mexico. We have to go. I just wanted to do something memorable with Erin so you would believe in me and admire me, something so we could be together, so I wouldn't be the old stuffed animal lying on a shelf waiting to be bought.
You want to know why I can't stay? I can't stay for the same reasons that Bobby Brady went back home after he ran away. His destiny chose him. The Brady house is the place I always return to. Except this time. I can't go back. I can't stay. Do you want to know why? OK. You asked for it.
Lacy was silent when wrapped up my latest version of why I was in flight. She watched the good life between Julie Andrews and the Baron Von Trapp. Why couldn't life be so simple for us? The Nazis were on the move and maybe she would realized all dramas have to have conflict like someone turning sixteen, an 0-2 RBI single, a deadly car accident, a broken engagement, a holocaust.
“You did a bad thing, Oggy.”
This wasn't the first time I'd been spoken to like the family pet. I gave her my best puppy-dog-who-wants-to-be-scratched-on-his-belly look; it had worked in my previous life as a Beagle.
“You're fahked now. Your whole life is ruined.”
My belly went unscratched.
“Where have you been?” I laughed. “My life was ruined six years ago when Schiraldi...”
“So that is why you are running to Mexico? You're a criminal?”
“I'm not going to split hairs with you, but that's what the pink slip called me. I'm innocent until proven guilty. Remember when Bobby Brady...”
“You just confessed! You just admitted to everything. Don't say that you're innocent.”
I put my hands up like she was pointing a pop gun at me.
“Technically you're right, but there is this thing called the Napoleonic code according to which...”
As tended to happen in these situations, once the ball started to roll, it just kept rolling. One of the Laws of Physics, right after the one about Inertia, there ought to be one that says, “When Oggy screws up, his problems multiply exponentially.
“And you can't stay?”
Unable to actually say the word, I shook my head. I wanted to stay, but Ray Knight was on my trail and the Timewraiths guarded the path back to Bone Harbor. A long pause followed giving me the opportunity to explain the Napoleonic code, but I decided against it. Lacy looked genuinely angry. Girls were either horrified to see me or frustrated and angry. One of these days I would pay a hooker to sleep with me and she'll just nag me. What was I doing wrong?
“She didn't deserve that, you know. It could have been me, ya fak.”
“You wouldn't have done what she did. She tested me. She pushed me and Erin like we were shoeshine boys. I'm not a bootblack, Lace. I won't have my milk bowl pissed in. She didn't know Ray Knight.”
“Fahk Ray Knight. She didn't deserve it. She was innocent.”
“So was Andrew Ridgely, but George Michael just dumped him! Look at Van Halen, they forced David Lee Roth out on the street for no reason! And what about Willis and Arnold on Diff'rent Strokes? They were good kids, but their parents abandoned them. Life is hard, Lace.”
She was not visibly moved by my list of innocent though victimized individuals. Another long pause. The Sound Of Music continued in conflict. Nazis. Generals. Drama. Two-part harmony.
“Should I go?”
A pause. A sigh. The start of a new song. A slow smile. Hope.
“No, Oggy. You'll be gone soon enough. You can stay.”
“Can we hear “My favorite things” again?”
“Sure.”
I rewound the tape to a happier time and took my place back on the couch, where the ice had thawed somewhat. Lacy might give no quarter as far as causing the destruction of cars, but she put it in perspective. This would be an important skill to nurture on our way to Mexico.
“You look so far away, Lace. Way over there.”
She was about a foot away, but then Gedman had missed Stanley's pitch by only an inch or two. Like Einstein said, distance is relative to the sun.
“You mean you want to sit closer? You have to ask.”
“May I move closer, Lace?”
She shrugged as though I had given her a choice of sleeping on a bed of straw or a bed of hay. Nevertheless, I shuffled closer to her. She considered me as the bull considers the matador.
“That wasn't so hard was it?”
“My heart is beating fast and I'm dizzy. How are you?”
“Fine, what are you looking at?”
“Your face. Your lips especially.”
“What am I going to do with you, Oggy?”
I'd heard this question from nearly every friend I'd ever had. It usually came after I asked for their signature on a petition to recall a nuclear sub or asked them to support my three-part plan by hitchhiking to school or as I pulled out the 1986 Red Sox team photo and started my historical discourse on each player's contributions and shortcomings. Normally, I just let the jaw drop and plodded on with my request, but today I had an answer for Lacy.
“Why don't you come to Mexico?”
“Why don't you stay here?”
The volley was off. I shuffled even closer to her. Then I visualized myself kissing Lacy and heard my romantic words. In 1985, I had a baseball meditation tape that I listened to as I fell asleep. The tapes voice calmly told me to visualize myself on a warm afternoon, my body is loose, my mind is clear, my fears are gone. I swing and connect with the ball. It sails into the air. Everyone cheers. Over and over I listened to this tape in the hopes that it would help. I didn't see why it couldn't be used to visualize a successful assault on the Fair One. In the visualization I said, “Lace, you are precious to me and I will stay with you here and we will make adjustments to be together. You are the one I want to be with and I will redeem myself in your eyes.”
In real life I heard myself say , “I am going to kiss you, Lace, and you will love me and will come to Mexico with me. I'll support you, and you can paint and dance and sing like Maria Von Trapp while I play violin on the street and collect aluminum.”
This scenario seemed no more preposterous than sending men to the moon in a rocket ship, it would cost less, and I wasn't in competition with the Soviets.
“I'm not going to sing while you collect aluminum,” Lacy said predictably. “You think I'm someone else. You create some vision of me that isn't true. It isn't fair. Do I look like one of those girls in a white dress with pink satin sashes? Do I? Shit! It is a song. Words. I like sweatshirts. Say it with me, Oggy. Sweat-shirts”
I could feel the deal slipping away again and tried to rein it in.
“I just dream so much and you and Dewey and Mexico are in all my dreams. I can make myself believe you like to sing and paint and Dewey is happy because the Sox won the Series and I'm always clean and you are always so nicely dressed. Did I ever tell you about Ray Knight?”
“Why do you want to control me?”
This comment came out of the blue. Wasn't it clear I wanted to control her so I could dress her up like a doll and play house with her?
“Control? Talk to Bob Stanley about control. He threw a 2-1 pitch about ten feet inside.”
“He talks about baseball at a time like this,” Lacy explained to the lampshade. “Are you ever going to kiss me, ya fak? Are you even a man?”
This was another bottomless question. Men don't throw 0-2 fastballs over the middle of the plate. Men don't allow three runs with two outs in the bottom of the tenth inning. Men do something different, what I didn't know.
As I moved closer to her I felt the anxiety of closeness creep into me. I was Siddhartha and this was the decision between flesh and soul. One path led to enlightenment, the other led to late night trips to the supermarket to buy tampons and ice cream.
“You hair smells like the lilac bushes outside my old house in Maine, Lace. Spring country lilacs and kitten fur.”
“You're the one with all the fur, Oggy. Look at that beard. Jeez. Please shave. I can't even see your lips. How are you going to kiss me? It's like kissing a wolf. Oy!”
Lacy reluctantly shifted herself in her seat to a more reclining position. My hands were sweating and I wondered if I could pull this off. I chewed my mustache as one is apt to do when it curls between the teeth. So many questions had yet to be answered. Did I smell? What was Mookie Wilson's uniform number? What about the Napoleonic Code?
I scratched the seams on my jeans and tried to clear my head but the doubts remained. Lacy's face was passionless, not at all like I had imagined it at this moment. There was no heat or lust or latex undergarments. I reached out to her cheek and lightly brushed it with my fingertips. I gently cupped her face in my hand.
“I love having my face held, Oggy.”
Lacy sounded disappointed that I'd managed to do one thing right. Still, I ran my fingers around her cheek and chin. She closed her eyes and purred, her long lashes falling against her cheek.
Peace comes with purity. You know this but sacrifice it for a kiss. You don't want peace. You aren't strong enough to protect peace. Have your Kiss, Oggy. Have your kisses but bid farewell to peace.
“Is this OK, Lace.”
“Yes, Oggy”
“How rare is a woman's skin touched without reservation.”
She gazed into my eyes and said, “How do you come up with that bullshit?”
I moved closer to Lacy's face. In the background kids were singing about being sixteen. I could feel Lacy's warm breath and smell her hair. Her eyes were closed. Country spring lilacs. If Darcy had a younger brunette sister she would look like Lacy.
“Lace?”
“Please don't say something stupid. Please don't talk about Ray Knight.”
I quickly switched strategies.
“Lace, I want to take you away.”
“OK.”
“I want to take you away and hide you somewhere. I want to hold you so close that the world can't ever see or touch you again. The world doesn't deserve to touch you. I want to lock you away and keep you safe so you'll never have to see another two-out, two-strike RBI single. I'll put you where no one will hurt you and you will be mine and I will own you forever. It kills me that you are not in a box in my basement where Ray Knight will never go. It kills me that I can't own you and that the world has a chance to hurt you and spoil you. It kills me that you have to watch the Sox lose.”
“Ok, Oggy. I know.”
She was chewing bubble gum and had tucked it behind her teeth, but I could still taste the sugar on her tongue. To balance myself I leaned on her hip and felt under her shirt for the skin of her flat stomach. She was warm and soft and she never lifted her head from the pillow, never pushed me away, never pulled me closer. I was simply allowed to learn the lay of her lips and stroke her waist with my fingers and brush her neck.
“You feel like a brand new baseball,” I said, my voice trailing off like a Clemens split-fingered fast ball.
Lacy opened her eyes. “You waited all this time to use that line on me? Gee, I really must be special.”
“No. I mean it in a good way. I loved it.”
“No, you didn't. What's wrong, Oggy?”
Beside the fact that as I kissed her I saw Gary Carter embrace Ray Knight as Knight crossed the plate for the winning run, I was also having second thoughts about liberating Lacy. Let me just confess here that I am not one of those “Make a plan and stick to it” types of blokes. I tend to make progress in fits and starts. Hell, who am I kidding? When it comes down to it, I don't know what I'm doing. I admit it; if everyone had been like me in the Neolithic Period, we would probably still be in the Neolithic Period. But would that be so bad?
Then I swallowed and made two consecutive, inter-linked mistakes. The first was opening my mouth. The second was wagging my tongue.
“Well, I'm going on a pilgrimage and I don't think kissing is such a good way to start. I've made so many mistakes that what I need now is total purity. Siddhartha would agree with that. Gandhi would too. How else is Gedman gonna catch that pitch? How else is Schiraldi gonna strike out Knight? All that happened because I brought Rose to Fenway Park. Kissing you is kind of like a step backwards. How can I...”
Lacy sat up and made sure no part of me was touching her.
“You must really wanna get laid tonight, Oggy. You're not holding anything back, ya fak. Check my pulse if I pass out, OK? Do you know CPR?”
Lacy theatrically waved at her forehead. Where had this hostility come from? Had I accidentally pulled some of her hair out or somehow killed her pet mouse?
“I'm just saying that the Sox can't win without my full commitment. I need purity. And in Mexico there is this Napoleonic Code...”
“You're a real fahking Romeo, you know that? Now I'm getting pissed. You call kissing me an impurity? I'm a step backwards? The fahk are you to tell me I'm a step backwards? You are living in the Stone Age already, Oggy. Wake up! You go backwards any further and you'll be a lizard! Backwards my ass. Oy! If my mother could hear this conversation she'd adopt a grandkid rather than wait for me to give her one. Backwards?”
As Lacy mumbled something about my willingness to commit to the Red Sox but not to her, I ran my fingers through my hair and pulled out, of all things, a pencil.
“You don't understand. No one understands. Let me show you something that should clear it up. This is Dwight Evans. He...”
“Put your damn photo album away. I can't understand you? Why? Because I'm a girl? I can't understand your deep philosophizing bullshit? Is that it? You come here and grin at me and talk about marriage and get under my feet like a gerbil, and then we kiss for two seconds and you freak out and call me a step backwards. You talk about me like I'm some sort of obstacle to your sanity. Well, Fahk you, Oggy. Did they have doors in the Stone Age? Yeah? Good. Because you should know how to use that one right over there. Call me an obstacle? Ya fahk. You think I'm stupid just because I'm going to college and I'm not some deep thinker like you who eats with his fingers and doesn't use deodorant. You think I'm simple because I don't hitchhike everywhere and my name isn't painted on the side of my car?
“Well, basically...”
“I'm not simple! You are so self-absorbed in your little Stone Age fantasy or your pilgrimage that you can't understand me! New baseball, my ass! I know things too. I know that staying here with me would be better than sleeping in a Truck Stop parking lot and eating Taco Bell burritos out of the trash.”
Lacy stumbled through her speech. Her tone was like an angry girlfriend who had her boyfriend against a wall. I could tell she didn't like arguing in these abstract terms. She appeared to hate it, would have preferred to catch me leaving the toilet seat up or pissing on the Boston Fern, but whether she rose to the occasion to impress me or to get through to me, I can't say. I was slumped in my seat, where she had pushed me, thinking that this abuse was not worth a hand job. All kidding aside. Shiva could come down with all nine arms and give me a hand job that would leave my head spinning, but it still wasn't worth this aggravation. It just wasn't. But what else can I do? I'm a man and I follow the herd.
“Don't knock dumpster diving 'till you tried it, sister. They throw taco shells away that haven't even been used.”
The Baron was singing Edelweiss. Small and bright. Happy to greet you. Blossoms. Etc.
“That's you, Oggy. You are the Baron Von Trapp. You are mean to your kids because you think the world should follow all these rules of yours. But look what it gets you: Exiled.”
Napoleon had been exiled. Fred Lynn went to California. Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos were kicked out of the Philippines. Salamon Rushdie, a fellow artist, was forced into hiding. Even Molly Ringwald had to move to France after filming Strike it Rich in 1989. Exile had worked for others. Why not me? I would start with a new scorecard in Mexico, change my name to Miguel De la Riviera. From then on I would wear a serape, leather hurracha sandals, a pistol and would otherwise embrace a peasant reality. No more dreams about a slippery threesome between Darcy and Chrissy. No more waiting by the phone for the Red Sox GM to offer me a contract. I planned to paint Mexico's simple ranchers and bare-breasted mothers. I would draw the drama of the Alaska wilderness and the fires of Yosemite and the Jungles of the Ecuadorian rain forest, and the Prescott Park football field. If I could capture these memories, the bridge jumping, the hot dog afternoons, the ashen evenings, the firefly nights, then maybe the Timewraiths would be captured on the canvass like in Superman II when those three evil Krypton criminals were encased in that one-dimensional piece of glass and sent into space until Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative destroyed the prison and set them free. Crazier things had happened.
“Then be my Maria. Be my Julie Andrews. Please. Come to Switzerland. Or lets go to France like Molly Ringwald. I have this theory about Superman Two. Wanna hear it?”
“I'm not going to Switzerland or France or Mexico with you, Oggy. I've got school. I've got school because I'm not going to be a bum. I'm not going to live at home or in my car like you. I want a good life.”
I looked at her quizzically.
“That means not digging through trash for aluminum cans, ya fak.”
“But look. Maria is going with the Baron. Don't you want to live like a movie character?”
“No. Tell me about it one day. Write a song. Climb every mountain. Don't let me stop you.”
We watched in silence as the Von Trapp family escaped with the help of the nuns.
Lacy broke her silence during the scene at the cemetery and commented, “Every time I watch this I want that kid to be nice and not blow the whistle. Every time I think he'll turn away and let the family get away. Why does he want them caught? It makes me sad.”
“He's a Nazi and he probably died in a Russian snow field. Fahk him.”
We maintained radio silence for the rest of the movie until Lacy told me that she expected me not to tell anyone that I had kissed her for two seconds. After all, this was a big conquest for a fahk like me and Hollywood gossipiers were waiting with pens raised to write about my latest lay.
“Please, Lace. What's there to brag about? You kissed more of my mustache than my lips.”
“I mean it, Oggy, nobody can ever know about this. I wouldn't want it getting around that I tried to divert you from your sacred pilgrimage.”
“I didn't mean that it wasn't good before. I'm just trying to get all my stuffed animals back in one place. I can't have Mr. Snuffy over here and Blue Dog over there. It doesn't work. They all have to be right there in a row.”
Lacy walked me to the door as the Von Trapp family crossed the Alps to Switzerland.
“Just walk away, Oggy. Don't say Goodbye. Maybe I'll see you tomorrow. Maybe.”
“So long, farewell, avedisein, Goodnight!” I sang cheerfully. “Come by tomorrow. We can drink some tea. Talk about the Sox.”
Lacy shut the door quietly and turned off the porch light. I wouldn't have called the meeting an overwhelming success, but I'd gotten close enough to smell her and a wino in Dallas once told that a woman wants you if she lets you get close enough to smell her. I may be a fool but I'd be twice a fool if I didn't believe, and obey like the gospel, everything winos across the country had told me.
I turned down the path and readjusted my bulging erection so it wouldn't push my pants out like a hernia. My heart throbbed. I passed a dark grove of trees near a storage hut and decided I couldn't wait. I jumped into the shadows and dropped my pants into the pine duff, holding myself up with my left hand on a tree.
posted by Oggy Bleacher | 8:23 PM
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