Chapter XXXXIII: Purple Rain
Chapter Forty-Three: Purple Rain
To my delight, Lacy was waiting for me at Piper's door wearing a white dress shirt and a pair of pinstripe jeans that hugged her delicious tail like a second denim skin.
“Lace! You're here for me,” I beamed. “Finally! Someone came to see me.”
I reached to hug her and she lamely put her arms around me.
“Where the fahk have you been, Oggy?”
Not the romance reception I’d looked forward to, but she cared enough to ask.
“I got lost. I'm freezing. Come here.”
“What the hell? I've had better hugs from a starfish. What did I do?”
“I wasted all my time waiting for you. Now I can only stay a few minutes, Oggy.”
We entered Piper's apartment and I turned on the heat.
“Usually I would still be in bed right now. I get my best work done at night. I'm like an owl.”
“You stink like an owl. Go take a shower. Look at you. I'll bet the neighbors are calling the police right now. Your clothes are falling off of you, your hair is all over the place, your chewing on your mustache. You look like a vagrant.”
“You say that like it's a bad thing.”
“It is a bad thing, Oggy. It is bad. Go wash yourself and put some of Piper's clothes on. Clean ones.”
“But...”
“Go or I'll leave.”
I explained that I had no interest in taking a shower.
“Oggy, you need a girlfriend to make you shower. You should wake up every morning and shower. It is no big deal. Go!”
“Come with me then. I get lonely in there. I'll wash your back and you wash mine. Please!”
It was worth a try.
“No. I'm not taking a shower with you. What's wrong with you? Weren't you just talking about how much of an obstacle I was to your purity?
“I'm not gonna split hairs with you, Lace. Fahk purity. You look foxy. Goddamn, Lace. You are just crazy sexy. Still smell like lilacs?”
I stepped closer to her and reached for her hair. She swatted my hand away.
“You would too if you showered more than once a year. Now go.”
“I'll take one later. After.”
“After what? After I leave? After I kick your ass? Five...four...three...”
“Fine. Shit. You're like Blair from Family Ties.”
“Facts of Life.”
My television trivia was slipping, a sure sign of an impending breakdown.
“Whatever. Could you see if this violin is broken while I shower. Listen.”
I scratched at the strings of my fiddle and moved my fingers around on the fingerboard. Lacy put her hands over her ears.
“See? It's broken. You said you played a little. Show me.”
“Ok, but only if you shower.”
Why couldn't I chase girls with short attention spans, like Vanna White?
I ran to the shower, my least favorite place to be, and washed my underarms with some toilet paper. I came out two minutes later as Lacy was tuning the violin.
“Oggy, you didn't wash your hair! You didn't even take your hat off.”
Take my hat off? Had she forgotten to take her psychotropic medicine this morning? Roger Clemens couldn't get me to take my hat off for the National Anthem. No girl was going to just snap her fingers and...
“Oggy! Go.”
“It wasn't dirty.”
“Like hell. My car's oil filter is cleaner. You haven't taken that hat off once since I met you. You probably haven't taken a shower since 1990.”
Close. 1986. October.
“Did you even get undressed?
“Silly question. What for?”
“Go back in and wash you hair, you can't take a shower without washing your hair. Who raised you? Pig Pen?”
I saw no reason to take a shower unless I had rubbed myself down with vegetable oil and humped my father's couch. I was just going to get dirty again. I decided against divulging this detail and said, “You know, Lace, if you let me nurse off of you for twenty months, then moved to Ecuador and changed your name, I could call you 'mom', but until then...”
“...Until then I'm just a friend who wants you to wash your hair.”
Lighting quick wit, this girl.
“There's a drought on and I heard over-washing hair was bad for it.
“Bye!”
“Alright. I'll go. Is that thing working?”
“Go!”
I ran back into the bathroom and placed my hat within easy reach of the tub, lest someone creep in and attempt to steal it. In order to shampoo my hair I had to read the directions on the bottle. One benefit of the shower was that I learned the stuff growing on my chest wasn't hair.
As I was drying my head I heard a strange sound, a high, legato melody, waltzing seamlessly from the other room. I recognized the melody from The Sound of Music, but couldn't name it. I sat on the toilet with the door slightly ajar and listened. The walls were so thin I could hear the guy two apartments away light his crack pipe. As I was about to go and take Lacy in my arms and ask her to marry me or at least sleep with me, Piper opened the door. Great. Leave it to the leading man to wreck the supporting actor's scene.
“Lacy K.! I always knew I'd come home and find you waiting for me.”
“Cans!”
Lacy's voice was jubilant, like Piper was her long lost son and she hadn't seen him in twenty years. The fahk! Her vulgar nickname for him was because he collected cans at the UCONN campus. There was no justice. He'd made a fortune and became a beloved campus character, while the Virginia police had sprayed me with mace for doing the exact same thing.
“Where's Oggy?”
“He's taking a shower. I made him.”
“No, you didn't. He's taking a shower? Did you define shower for him? In ninth grade he sprayed water on himself from a water fountain and called it a shower so he could pass gym class.”
“I told him to wash his hair.”
I heard Piper slap his forehead. For a better view I crawled to the corner of the door and looked through the crack at the edge of the frame. Piper was in his baggy jeans and his flannel shirt. His glasses and John Denver hair cut made him look like a dignified cowboy. Bastard! He was a cowboy and I was a fahking bootblack. Lacy was holding the violin and was all smiles. The only time I had seen her teeth was when she told me to fahk off but now she looked like a toothpaste commercial. Piper turned toward the bathroom and yelled for me. I decided I would just hide and listen to what these two chums had to say about me. Would they honor me or would they bust my shine box?
“Maybe he melted,” sniped Lacy.
“Maybe he likes it,” offered Piper before quickly adding, “No way.”
That didn't take long. Disloyal bastards! They both had a good laugh at the sharecropper's expense. Some states celebrate Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday, other states just sit around and bust my shine box. It's fun for them.
“I've got ten minutes to grab something to eat and get back to the greenhouse. You leaving today or tomorrow?”
“Leaving?”
“Oggy said you wanted to go to Mexico with him.”
I didn't expect these two to swap gossip so soon. I thought I had time to plan Lacy's liberation, but now I might have to take both of them to Mexico. Through the crack I could see Lacy's smile wilt.
“I wouldn't go food shopping with that freak, let alone to Mexico. When did he say this?”
“Yesterday. After he got back from your apartment. You two hook up?”
Lacy laughed as though he had just asked her to go to tonight's Culture Club concert. Hooking up with me was beyond impossible, it was unfathomable.
“Please. It's Oggy.”
Once again, simply my name was enough to imply both repulsiveness and a general reputation of a bootblack. Maybe if I went back to being called 'Ogden' things would change.
Piper walked out of sight and searched the refrigerator. Lacy put my violin down, forgetting my request that she tune it. But I was just a shoeshine boy, a filthy bootblack, after all. What more could I expect?
“Was he always this crazy? Did Oggy always live in some alternate universe where girls he'd known for a month would go to Mexico with him?”
“Probably. I only got to know him when he went to Alaska. He wrote all these letters to me about living in the forest, eating rabbit, hitchhiking. Then I saw him in Virginia.”
Piper whistled and I imagined him rolling his eyes to sum up my appearance in Virginia.
“What about when he was younger.”
“Through grade school he was just the Red Sox kid. Nameless. Anonymous. Sat alone at lunch. He'd lost his mind in our Sophomore year in high school. Never was the same.”
With a social resume like that it was no wonder I didn't get elected to the student council.
“He did perform in the lip-sync contest,” Piper added to my surprise. “He mimed 'Paradise By The Dashboard Light.' It was quite a marathon with a crazy cardboard car. His friend Sticky played the girl. Maybe they did it on a bet. It was a shit storm.”
A shit storm? And Piper's lackluster rendition of 'Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap' deserved an Emmy? Hardly. My performance had been done on no bet; it was my tribute to Meatloaf and to having sex in parked cars, an experience I'd been forbidden to enter.
“Did he go crazy about that baseball thing?”
That baseball thing'? Did 0-2 fastball down the middle ring a bell? Still, I was impressed the slattern remembered at all.
“The Sox. They lost and he flipped out. Maybe he was looking for an excuse to withdraw from society.”
OK, Dr. Freud, I wanted to shout. As if any high school student growing up with Ronald Reagan as President needed another excuse to withdraw from society. Idiot.
“But was he always so flaky? Such a space cadet?”
“He wasn't a good student. Even before the Sox lost he just played baseball and embarrassed himself around girls. He had no rap. He spoke gibberish when he got around girls. He only cared about baseball, but he wasn't very good.”
This was almost too much to bear. The sissy had played soccer and run Track. Track? He wore spandex like David Lee Roth yet had the nerve to say I wasn't very good at a man's sport? 'Look at me, my name is Piper Skinski and I run in circles and pass a vibrator to other men in spandex. Oooh. I'm a big sissy.' And Lacy was into this new fad called Aerobics, another sissy sport. I could strike out either one of them. I giggled silently at the image of Lacy swinging a baseball bat, but remained hidden. Better to listen to their complete conversation Maybe they'd have sex and I could watch.
“I'll bet you had a good rap,” said Lacy. “Those high school girls must've loved you.”
Oh, they did. I once watched Piper walk Chrissy Jenkins home from the Little League park when it was clearly my job. Why else had I attached myself to her book bag?
“I was just honest. I didn't try to outsmart girls in High School. Still don't. Oggy thought they were Rubik's Cubes and if you could solve the puzzle then you got laid.”
They weren't? You didn't?
“Why can't you tell him to be himself, shave, shower, go back to college? Why did he drop out?”
“He said that Bone Harbor needed him. He said our graduating class was dying. I can't say it made sense. He lived out in the woods for a summer, out by the town dump in this run-down shack he'd built. In High School he had a few parties and I guess he thought they shouldn't end. Maybe Fairbanks wasn't a party school.”
While Lacy agreed, I steamed behind the door. They thought my return to Bone Harbor was as simple as that? I just wanted to party at Ogden's Point? Fools. I was sacrificing my whole adult life for the good of my Youthtribe and they thought I wanted to party? I'd been searching for Mack Wynter's grave for seven years as a party? I praised Gordy Clutcher's Leary Field home run because Alaska wasn't a party school? Bah! A UAF party wasn't complete without smoking pot from the barrel of a loaded shotgun. After I puked on the girl's bathroom wall, I was taken into the snow, stripped naked, and beaten with frozen salmon. Not a party school? A subdued party at UAF was when only one room reconstructed a snow storm by throwing steaming water out the window into the negative 40 degree night. An average party was when an Eskimo student almost drowned in a tub of watermelon and grain alcohol. A crazy party ended with a gunfight on the second floor and a mortality. Not a party school? UAF janitors partied harder than UCONN freshman. Our cafeteria had a sign, “CHECK YOUR WEAPONS.” I had to navigate a ski jump to get to the Library!
Piper's ignorance was limitless, but once again I was just a bootblack who could do nothing right. Why not make fun of me, judge me, criticize me behind my back? It was fun for them.
“He needs a girlfriend,” said Lacy, the first sensible comment I'd heard all day. “He can't dress himself. Those pants he's wearing were fashionable in 1984.”
Excuse me? My Bugle Boy cargo pocket pants with the drawstring belt were fashionable well into the Tone Loc/ Taylor Dane era. They almost made it to Nirvana's mainstream debut. And I'd heard they were making a comeback.
“And that Red Sox sweatshirt looks like it would ignite if he got too close to an open flame.”
“Help him out. He likes you. Give him some advice.”
“He doesn't listen to me. I'm surprised he took a shower. He gets defensive. It's like when we were talking about the Gulf War in the dorm. He insisted that everyone had to stop driving or else we were killing Iraqis. Last I checked they invaded Kuwait. And they bomb Israel every month. I've got relatives in Israel.”
First she criticizes my fashion and now my political ideology? What the hell? Had peace gone out of style too?
“I found him in the library once,” Lacy went on. “He was copying down The War Prayer by Mark Twain. He wasn't using the copy machine. He was writing down every word in his journal.”
This was true. I meant to conserve paper and thought that in a time of war to use a copy machine to copy The War Prayer would've been beyond hypocritical. The idea was to boycott capitalism and crush militarism, not save myself ten minutes of hand cramps.
Piper was chewing something, leftover chili perhaps. He sat in a chair just on the edge of my limited field of vision.
“That's funny because only two weeks earlier I got a postcard saying I should drop out of college to sail around the Florida Keys. Oggy said he was going to Tobago or Trinidad to make hemp clothes. Maybe he's on medication. He changes his personality more than his underwear.”
They had a good laugh over this insult while I chewed on the door paneling. Curse them! A guy can't experiment with drugs, maybe put his shine box down for a month or two, without being judged a hypocrite and a psychotic? It must be nice to expose other people's flaws when they aren't around to defend themselves. It must be fun to sit on their velvet thrones and piss in my milk bowl.
“You saw how much pot he smoked. And he said he did acid and peyote too.”
I wouldn't say I smoked lots of pot, compared to say, Bob Marley, but the acid part was true...as far as I knew. I couldn't say for sure because after you do acid or peyote or eat too many crunchy tacos at Jack In The Box, you tend to question what is and is not reality. My one Peyote experience left me clinging to a tree stump so I wouldn't be carried away by a flock of butterflies. My one Acid experience at a Halloween party in the swamps near Melbourne was no different. One second I was allowing a man dressed as the Pope to put something in my mouth and the next second I was hiding in an orange grove yelling, “I'm lost. Can someone help me find my way back to the drum circle,” at the surreal shadows. In a random taste test, four out of five drug users prefer Peyote over the other leading psychedelic. Still, I had mixed feelings about drugs; while they had not expanded my consciousness, my experiences did give me something to talk about as we passed a bong in circles.
“See,” said Lacy. “I don't want to get mixed up with a drug addict.”
Addict? I wasn't sure if I should get mad or else thank her. I had smoked pot twice in the past twenty years, maybe three times if you count that rainy day when everyone was smoking in the port-o-potty and I couldn't help but get stoned. So, three times at the most, and that made me an addict? OK. By that reasoning I was also a workaholic based on the four hours I spent raking the lawn last fall. And since I got an A on a Geometry test in 1985, did that mean I was a mathematical genius? If it meant my father would stop giving me shit about working or going back to school, I could live with those titles.
“Maybe he'll change in Mexico,” offered Piper.
“Change what? His socks?”
Keep it up, I thought. Just have your fun. Have your laughs. Who'll be laughing when we're swimming in the Gulf of Mexico? Who'll be wearing socks then? Not this sharecropper.
“He has to grow up eventually. I should get back to work. Tell him I'll be back around five or six.”
Cans hugged Lacy and then walked out the door. I was sure Lacy watched his ass as he left. Maybe I was stuffing socks down the wrong side of my underwear. After Piper left Lacy picked the violin up again and tucked it under her chin. She then tuned the strings using just one hand, a procedure I later found physically impossible, and started to play the same melody as before.
I put Piper's clothes back on without drying my skin and ran into the living room. I tried not to reveal that I had been listening.
“So, you think I'm a space cadet? I'm a freak? I'll show you who's the freak.”
Lacy looked me up and down.
“You look like a rat who just crawled out of the sewer.”
“Pretty sexy?”
“Hardly. You were listening? You spied on us?”
Lacy was noticeably embarrassed and fiddled with the violin as a diversion.
“I couldn't help it! I'm a crazy drug addict. Addicts lose their mind sometimes. Look at me, I'm crazy.”
I waved my arms over my head in a crazy manner. Lacy wasn't impressed so I told her that it must be nice to sit in her velvet throne and judge me.
“Judge you? We're trying to help you figure out your life, ya fak.”
“Yeah? Well save your help for the blind lady who needs to cross the street or the kitten in a tree. I'm doing fine. I couldn't be better. I'm a winner.”
I walked into the kitchen. My wet feet slipped on the tile and I collapsed near the stove.
“Look what you did!” I screamed.
When Lacy had stopped laughing she started to play again.
“You actually play the violin,” I said as I gingerly used the refrigerator door to pull myself from the kitchen floor. A piece of chili was on my shoulder blade.
“I took lessons. You can't learn on your own. It's too hard.”
“Does anyone at the dorms know you can play.”
“I have secrets too.”
“What song is that? Teach it to me. Give me a lesson.”
Lacy gracefully brought the bow to the strings, as if that too were part of the music. The long notes emerged from her hands and her eyes and her fingers. It was impossible to tell where the source of the music was. It was a song of arriving and a song of going, a song of sacrifice and selfishness.
“'Edelweiss',” I announced when I remembered the title. “It's from the final concert when the Von Trapps have to leave Austria. Teach it to me.”
“You need a lot of lessons. Years of lessons. Do you have a book?”
“No. Just give me one lesson. It's all I need. I fixed my brakes without any help at all.”
“You fixed the brakes on you car?”
“It's a long story. What about the violin?”
“Do you know how to tune it?”
I hadn't a clue.
“Play the biggest string with your finger.”
Lacy handed the instrument to me and showed me how to hold it. I plucked the big string.
“That is a G note. Say G”
“G.”
“The next string below it is the D string. Say D”
“D.”
“The musical alphabet...Oggy, your hair is dripping on the violin.”
“Is that bad?”
“Yes.”
“I told you I shouldn't have washed my hair.”
“Sit down,” she said.
I sat in the chair in the middle of the room, cradling the violin. She took the towel that I was using to cover my flabby belly and, with a sigh, started to dry my hair. Showering suddenly had appeal.
“The last time I was this happy Hendu had just tattooed the Newsday sign at Shea Stadium.”
“Don't get used to it, ya fak.”
“If you dried my hair every time I showered I would shower every twenty minutes. I'd be the Kevin Bacon of showering. If there was a shower, I'd be in it.”
“The musical alphabet,” she continued, “is A through G. Then it repeats itself. Say A through G.”
I was lost in the feeling of having my hair dried like a ten dollar Korean massage.
“Oggy?”
I sighed. “Maybe I will stay. Fahk Mexico. Fahk Ray Knight.”
“A through G. Say it.”
“A through G.”
“There are five notes from G and D. Right? G, A, B, C, and D. Those two notes are a perfect fifth apart. Say a perfect fifth apart.”
“Fifth,” I mumbled without any comprehension. I was falling asleep. Five hours of consecutive consciousness was my limit. I forgave Lacy and Piper for everything but the Cargo Pants comment. Cargo pockets could be very practical when collection aluminum or shoplifting.
“Perfect. A little to the left.”
“A perfect fifth is an interval. Are you listening? Interval. This interval happens to be the first two notes of 'Fools Rush In' by Elvis. Do you know that song?”
“Lace, I am the fool in that song. I can't help...”
“Shush. Not that part of the song. Play the G and the D strings one at a time.”
Lacy continued to dry my hair though it didn't feel wet anymore. I forgave the Cargo Pocket comment. People make mistakes.
“The G and the D strings sound like the first two notes of the Elvis song. See? Wise. G. Men. D.”
“A perfect Fifth. G and D. Got it. What about the other strings.”
“The same. All the strings should be the same...remember what the word is?”
“Fifth?”
“That's the size of this term.”
“Perfect?”
“That's the quality of this term. There's only one word left, Oggy. Come on.”
“I'm not in college you know. Interval?”
“Good. The next string is five letters up from D. What is five letters up from D?”
“H?”
“No, the musical alphabet wraps around at G.:
I started at D and found my way to A. Edelweiss couldn't be this hard to learn.
“Right. The D and the A are a fifth apart. The last string is what?”
“E. A fifth up from A. This is simple. I'm a regular Beethoven.”
“OK, Ludwig. All these strings need to sound a Perfect fifth above the next lower string. Then it is in tune. And you can play. Do you want to see how the notes line up on the fingerboard?”
I put the violin on the floor and looked back at Lacy. I touched her hand.
“No, Lace. I don't want to see how the notes line up on the fingerboard. Come here.”
“Don't be queer, Oggy. This isn't an afternoon special. I can't stay long,” she whispered as she walked in front of me and looked down at my hair, combing it with her fingers.
“Thanks for drying my hair, Lace.”
“You need help, Oggy. You look nice now. If you shaved and showered regularly you wouldn't look too bad. You looked better when you got back from Florida. Your face had color and you weren't so thin.”
Lacy stood over my right leg, close enough to smell. She tried again to style my hair with her fingers, combing it back and to the side but it was too long and kept falling over my eyes.
“You aren't staying, Oggy. I know. I can see it in your eyes. You never stay. My dad never stays either. Men are all the same.”
I slid my hands up her legs to her hips. Her shirt was not tucked into her jeans so I slid my hands under the shirt on both sides and felt her waist. I could almost touch my fingers together.
“What's wrong, Oggy?”
“Its just sad, Lace. I want us to happen.”
“You won't stay in one place long enough to let it happen.”
“I love you.”
“How are you sure?”
“Because I think about you all the time. I thought about you in Bone Harbor. I thought about you on the drive here. I think about you all the time, like Ray Knight except in a good way.”
“So what?”
“Well, that is love.”
“No, Oggy. It means you're treating me like, I don't know, like one of those brainteasers, those mind puzzles you like. I'm not a puzzle, Oggy. There is no solution.”
“I know.”
“So don't sit around trying to figure me out. You'll never figure me out. You'll never get it all right. I'm not that simple.”
“That's fair.”
“I've got secrets too, Oggy. I feel things too. Maybe I don't sit around and try to figure out the world but I can think too.”
“You're right. I know.”
“What's wrong, Oggy?”
“Nothing. I'm fine.”
“No you're not. You're sad. I've never seen you so sad. You'll never be satisfied. One second you want purity and the next second your hands are up my shirt. Which is it gonna be, Oggy?”
Continuing to feel her waist, I nodded. What would Dewey do?
“You're right, I'm sad. But I'm going to leave and I have no idea where I'm going except south and you might be the last stable person I talk to. The road has no love, Lace. You have to pack it all with you. I have to carry everything. Clothes and equipment are nothing. It's the hate and the love and pain and regret that weigh me down. I carry it all. I think I bring suffering with me so I remember I can feel at all. It shouldn't be this complicated. Just come to Mexico with me. No debate. Get in Poncho and come to Mexico.”
“You are so messed up.”
“This means so much to me, Lace. It is like the Gods looked down and...”
“I can't hear you talk anymore, Oggy.”
Lacy was short enough that she just had to lean over a little to kiss my mouth and shut me up. Without unbuttoning her shirt I touched her neck gently. I placed one of her hands on my chest where it softly brushed my skin. It was the kind of scene that takes place in a PG-13 movie, the kind that is supposed to mean, “These two people really love each other, it isn't just about sex”
Of course I wanted to undress Lacy and turn the movie into at least an R rated love scene where intercourse is insinuated by hands clutching the sheets tightly or fingers grasping at a naked back or a rocket blasting off, but I knew it wasn't going to happen, so I got as close as possible by feeling the inside of Lacy's leg, slowly, up and down but never all the way up, and hooking my fingers inside her jeans but never pulling them all the way down. My heart was beating fast enough to power a small city.
“Lace, I'm so turned on I'm going to have a stroke.”
“What do you want to do?”
“Ha!”
I pulled her closer and pushed my head into her belly. The button of her jeans was close enough to bite. I licked it secretly. Though I knew it didn't matter, I whined, “Please.”
“What, Oggy?”
Lacy did not even look excited. She was as composed as though we were at the intermission of a bad opera. I, however, was on the verge of tears, as the wolf in my pants was slowly winning a war against the Monk in my head. Siddhartha hadn't encountered temptations like Lacy. Flesh and soul, Purity and impurity, War and Peace, Tastes Great, Less Filling. So many choices. I held onto the waistline of her jeans like a life preserver.
“Please come to bed with me. I'll do anything.”
“You'll not go to Mexico?”
I sagged as the wolf took a hard blow to the nose. I weighed my options again, but the freedom that Mexico promised was just too attractive. IT was life away from the Red Sox and away from Bonigan and Ray Knight and the court case. The wolf shrank into his den. I looked into Lacy's dark eyes. Life was so unfair. Everyone in America was getting a hand job but me.
“Lace, I would do almost anything to sleep with you, but I have to leave. I can't be a prisoner. It was like Custer's last stand in Bone Harbor. Arrows were thick in the sky, I swear. I am a wanted criminal now.”
Lacy took my hands gently out of the top of her jeans and placed them in my lap. Then she backed up.
“Then I guess you had better go.”
I collapsed onto the floor and moaned, clawing at the rug.
“I'll come back for you. I swear.”
“Sure. And I'll be waiting by the phone. I swear.”
“It could be so good, Lace.”
This was an absurd suggestion. If I slept with Lacy, I'd either shoot my bullets in nine seconds or go into shock. Either way, my chamber would be empty and I'd be asleep before Lacy was done untying her shoe laces.
“You don't even know what making love means.”
“You're the virgin!”
I was on my knees with my arms outstretched. It was rotten to bring up her virginity, I know, but it was like Bob Stanley preaching about pitching control.
“Alright, so what would you do, Oggy? You've slept with one person. What have you learned? How to put a rubber on, I hope.”
I thought back to Nancy in Ecuador and winced. What had I learned? That sex was like wrestling except there were no illegal holds. That the moments leading up to sex were terrifying and the moments after sex were funereal. That advanced trigonometry was easier than finding the clitoris. That farting was not considered foreplay. That the word 'Anti-contraceptivo' translates into, “That which will fail to provide contraception” But was there anything Lacy would want to hear?
“More than that, Lace. Plenty more than that. I'm like the Ted Williams of love.”
Lacy rolled her eyes.
“See, Oggy. You think it is some kind of magical kiss that turns the toad into a princess. Is that it Oggy? Is that what it would be like?”
“Yes. It would be magic. We would live happily ever after. Give me a chance.”
“Fine then tell me how it would be. Let's have phone sex.”
This was a suggestion I heard about as much as 'Have you been working out?'
“But we aren't on the phone. The whole idea is being anonymous, so I've heard.”
“Use your imagination, Don Juan.”
My interest perking up. While other kids were memorizing the periodic table, I'd been memorizing “Pillow talk” I let sling with some pretty juicy stuff.
If I transcribed my speech exactly, I’d have to change the rating of the book, so I’ll let you imagine what I said. I included the usual kinky instruments in our fantasy affair, a bicycle chain, a Dwight Evans baseball card, a fuzzy stuffed bear from Homestead, and a Whiffle ball to turn Lacy on. She responded with obvious passion, but what really made her candle flicker was how I closed.
“I'd kiss you until you could feel me kissing you forever,” I said as her eyebrows raised, “until your lips became my lips and you kissed yourself. Then I would kiss down your throat to your chest, and while I held you in my hands I would kiss you until no memory remained of a time I hadn't kissed you, until you only knew what it felt like to be kissed by me, until there was no me or you, until your mind took over and you would be kissing yourself with my lips, until your mind multiplied my lips and sent them across your soft skin to every curve and plain, until your skin was alive with my love, touching you and you could not remember life any other way, until all you had ever known and all you would ever know was my touch, until our bodies merged and our memories merged and the only substance left was purity.”
Lacy closed her mouth and smoothed out her shirt from where I had wrinkled it.
“I'm going to call my mother to see if it's snowing there,” she said before walking to the phone and tripping on the carpet.
“I could go on, Lace. I haven’t even told you what I would do with the 1986 Red Sox team photo.”
She held up a finger and spoke into the phone, “Hi ma! I'm in lips, I mean Storrs. No, not yet. Yeah, he's here. He's fine. We're just talking...”
I sat back down and relaxed. If I were a smoker I would have had a cigarette. It was almost as good as a hand job.
Lacy hung up the phone and brushed her shirt flat again.
“It's going to start snowing soon. I should go.”
“I'm not done.”
“I am. We all have somewhere to go, Oggy.”
“You'll be safe here.”
“That isn't what I'm worried about. Maybe it's a good thing you're going to Mexico. You go have fun being a farmer. Go have kids and live in a mud hut. Have a good time in the Stone Age.”
Where did she get this Stone Age idea. I was living in 1986, like, twenty thousand years after the Stone Age.
“I want you to come with me. You can teach me to play violin.”
“Have a good time Oggy,” she said and picked up her coat.
“Have I told you how beautiful you are Lace?”
“You've done more than that.”
“But it didn't help, did it?”
Lacy paused before she walked out the door.
“Do you want me to say I'll dream about you tonight and hold my pillow to my chest and imagine it's you? Do you want me to say I'll kiss my arms and imagine your lips are doing it, until I don't remember a time when I wasn't kissed by you? Do you want me to tell you that I'll lie awake at night and dream of making love to you, of being your wife, of living with you?”
“Well, yes. Of course. I'd pay good money to hear that. Will five bucks cover it?”
“Stop making jokes, Oggy! I'm going to go home and take a nap and bake some bread with my mother. I'm going to pet my dogs and talk to my parrots and my hamsters. Then I'll listen to some music and call my friend in Hartford. Then I'll go to sleep and dream about a time I never had to worry if your brakes were going to fail in the middle of Mexico and cause you to crash or if you're going to starve to death in a rest stop. That is what I'm going to dream about. I don't want to have to worry about you, Oggy, but you make it so hard.”
It's hard to know how to act in these situations. Her eyes said, 'Take me.' While her words said, 'I hate you.' Some books would recommend I take her in my arms and stare into her eyes until she wilted. Other books would advocate a more casual, nonchalant approach. I took the path of the bootblack and said I was sorry.
“That doesn't help, Oggy. You'll still leave!” Lace ran a hand up the buttons of her blouse to make sure I hadn't managed to unbutton one. “I don't want to feel like this, ya fak. This is the worst!”
I wanted to ask her to come with me to Mexico again but just nodded and put my head down. Lacy opened the door. I was silent.
“Bye!” she said again a little louder. She stood by the open door looking at me, maybe giving me one more chance to do something right. I looked at her and tried to make my eyes say, “I love you, but it is better if I leave.” Her eyes said, “Ya fak! Why did you ever come to UCONN in the first place?” I walked over to her and held her close, smelling her lilac hair.
“No one can know about this, Oggy.”
I could still taste the sweet bubble gum on my lips as I stood in the middle of the porch in the cold wind. A few small flakes of snow had begun to fall around my bare feet. Lacy turned and walked down the porch toward the parking lot.
“Hey, Lace. If the phone doesn't ring, it's my court-appointed lawyer calling to say I miss you.”
Lacy probably made a face as she kept walking. She turned around at the top of the stairs and looked back at me. I wanted to think she was admiring me, but she was probably making sure I wasn't following her. I bowed deeply and when I came up she was gone.
Snowflakes fell on the leaves. The snow made a sound on the dry leaves that was like television static. Snow would fall in Bone Harbor tonight. I could not remember a time when it hadn't been snowing. A car door slammed and a car engine started up, some gears shifted and the sound moved into the distance. Then it was silent for good. Before the screen door had closed, I was already unzipping my pants and heading for the bathroom.
To my delight, Lacy was waiting for me at Piper's door wearing a white dress shirt and a pair of pinstripe jeans that hugged her delicious tail like a second denim skin.
“Lace! You're here for me,” I beamed. “Finally! Someone came to see me.”
I reached to hug her and she lamely put her arms around me.
“Where the fahk have you been, Oggy?”
Not the romance reception I’d looked forward to, but she cared enough to ask.
“I got lost. I'm freezing. Come here.”
“What the hell? I've had better hugs from a starfish. What did I do?”
“I wasted all my time waiting for you. Now I can only stay a few minutes, Oggy.”
We entered Piper's apartment and I turned on the heat.
“Usually I would still be in bed right now. I get my best work done at night. I'm like an owl.”
“You stink like an owl. Go take a shower. Look at you. I'll bet the neighbors are calling the police right now. Your clothes are falling off of you, your hair is all over the place, your chewing on your mustache. You look like a vagrant.”
“You say that like it's a bad thing.”
“It is a bad thing, Oggy. It is bad. Go wash yourself and put some of Piper's clothes on. Clean ones.”
“But...”
“Go or I'll leave.”
I explained that I had no interest in taking a shower.
“Oggy, you need a girlfriend to make you shower. You should wake up every morning and shower. It is no big deal. Go!”
“Come with me then. I get lonely in there. I'll wash your back and you wash mine. Please!”
It was worth a try.
“No. I'm not taking a shower with you. What's wrong with you? Weren't you just talking about how much of an obstacle I was to your purity?
“I'm not gonna split hairs with you, Lace. Fahk purity. You look foxy. Goddamn, Lace. You are just crazy sexy. Still smell like lilacs?”
I stepped closer to her and reached for her hair. She swatted my hand away.
“You would too if you showered more than once a year. Now go.”
“I'll take one later. After.”
“After what? After I leave? After I kick your ass? Five...four...three...”
“Fine. Shit. You're like Blair from Family Ties.”
“Facts of Life.”
My television trivia was slipping, a sure sign of an impending breakdown.
“Whatever. Could you see if this violin is broken while I shower. Listen.”
I scratched at the strings of my fiddle and moved my fingers around on the fingerboard. Lacy put her hands over her ears.
“See? It's broken. You said you played a little. Show me.”
“Ok, but only if you shower.”
Why couldn't I chase girls with short attention spans, like Vanna White?
I ran to the shower, my least favorite place to be, and washed my underarms with some toilet paper. I came out two minutes later as Lacy was tuning the violin.
“Oggy, you didn't wash your hair! You didn't even take your hat off.”
Take my hat off? Had she forgotten to take her psychotropic medicine this morning? Roger Clemens couldn't get me to take my hat off for the National Anthem. No girl was going to just snap her fingers and...
“Oggy! Go.”
“It wasn't dirty.”
“Like hell. My car's oil filter is cleaner. You haven't taken that hat off once since I met you. You probably haven't taken a shower since 1990.”
Close. 1986. October.
“Did you even get undressed?
“Silly question. What for?”
“Go back in and wash you hair, you can't take a shower without washing your hair. Who raised you? Pig Pen?”
I saw no reason to take a shower unless I had rubbed myself down with vegetable oil and humped my father's couch. I was just going to get dirty again. I decided against divulging this detail and said, “You know, Lace, if you let me nurse off of you for twenty months, then moved to Ecuador and changed your name, I could call you 'mom', but until then...”
“...Until then I'm just a friend who wants you to wash your hair.”
Lighting quick wit, this girl.
“There's a drought on and I heard over-washing hair was bad for it.
“Bye!”
“Alright. I'll go. Is that thing working?”
“Go!”
I ran back into the bathroom and placed my hat within easy reach of the tub, lest someone creep in and attempt to steal it. In order to shampoo my hair I had to read the directions on the bottle. One benefit of the shower was that I learned the stuff growing on my chest wasn't hair.
As I was drying my head I heard a strange sound, a high, legato melody, waltzing seamlessly from the other room. I recognized the melody from The Sound of Music, but couldn't name it. I sat on the toilet with the door slightly ajar and listened. The walls were so thin I could hear the guy two apartments away light his crack pipe. As I was about to go and take Lacy in my arms and ask her to marry me or at least sleep with me, Piper opened the door. Great. Leave it to the leading man to wreck the supporting actor's scene.
“Lacy K.! I always knew I'd come home and find you waiting for me.”
“Cans!”
Lacy's voice was jubilant, like Piper was her long lost son and she hadn't seen him in twenty years. The fahk! Her vulgar nickname for him was because he collected cans at the UCONN campus. There was no justice. He'd made a fortune and became a beloved campus character, while the Virginia police had sprayed me with mace for doing the exact same thing.
“Where's Oggy?”
“He's taking a shower. I made him.”
“No, you didn't. He's taking a shower? Did you define shower for him? In ninth grade he sprayed water on himself from a water fountain and called it a shower so he could pass gym class.”
“I told him to wash his hair.”
I heard Piper slap his forehead. For a better view I crawled to the corner of the door and looked through the crack at the edge of the frame. Piper was in his baggy jeans and his flannel shirt. His glasses and John Denver hair cut made him look like a dignified cowboy. Bastard! He was a cowboy and I was a fahking bootblack. Lacy was holding the violin and was all smiles. The only time I had seen her teeth was when she told me to fahk off but now she looked like a toothpaste commercial. Piper turned toward the bathroom and yelled for me. I decided I would just hide and listen to what these two chums had to say about me. Would they honor me or would they bust my shine box?
“Maybe he melted,” sniped Lacy.
“Maybe he likes it,” offered Piper before quickly adding, “No way.”
That didn't take long. Disloyal bastards! They both had a good laugh at the sharecropper's expense. Some states celebrate Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday, other states just sit around and bust my shine box. It's fun for them.
“I've got ten minutes to grab something to eat and get back to the greenhouse. You leaving today or tomorrow?”
“Leaving?”
“Oggy said you wanted to go to Mexico with him.”
I didn't expect these two to swap gossip so soon. I thought I had time to plan Lacy's liberation, but now I might have to take both of them to Mexico. Through the crack I could see Lacy's smile wilt.
“I wouldn't go food shopping with that freak, let alone to Mexico. When did he say this?”
“Yesterday. After he got back from your apartment. You two hook up?”
Lacy laughed as though he had just asked her to go to tonight's Culture Club concert. Hooking up with me was beyond impossible, it was unfathomable.
“Please. It's Oggy.”
Once again, simply my name was enough to imply both repulsiveness and a general reputation of a bootblack. Maybe if I went back to being called 'Ogden' things would change.
Piper walked out of sight and searched the refrigerator. Lacy put my violin down, forgetting my request that she tune it. But I was just a shoeshine boy, a filthy bootblack, after all. What more could I expect?
“Was he always this crazy? Did Oggy always live in some alternate universe where girls he'd known for a month would go to Mexico with him?”
“Probably. I only got to know him when he went to Alaska. He wrote all these letters to me about living in the forest, eating rabbit, hitchhiking. Then I saw him in Virginia.”
Piper whistled and I imagined him rolling his eyes to sum up my appearance in Virginia.
“What about when he was younger.”
“Through grade school he was just the Red Sox kid. Nameless. Anonymous. Sat alone at lunch. He'd lost his mind in our Sophomore year in high school. Never was the same.”
With a social resume like that it was no wonder I didn't get elected to the student council.
“He did perform in the lip-sync contest,” Piper added to my surprise. “He mimed 'Paradise By The Dashboard Light.' It was quite a marathon with a crazy cardboard car. His friend Sticky played the girl. Maybe they did it on a bet. It was a shit storm.”
A shit storm? And Piper's lackluster rendition of 'Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap' deserved an Emmy? Hardly. My performance had been done on no bet; it was my tribute to Meatloaf and to having sex in parked cars, an experience I'd been forbidden to enter.
“Did he go crazy about that baseball thing?”
That baseball thing'? Did 0-2 fastball down the middle ring a bell? Still, I was impressed the slattern remembered at all.
“The Sox. They lost and he flipped out. Maybe he was looking for an excuse to withdraw from society.”
OK, Dr. Freud, I wanted to shout. As if any high school student growing up with Ronald Reagan as President needed another excuse to withdraw from society. Idiot.
“But was he always so flaky? Such a space cadet?”
“He wasn't a good student. Even before the Sox lost he just played baseball and embarrassed himself around girls. He had no rap. He spoke gibberish when he got around girls. He only cared about baseball, but he wasn't very good.”
This was almost too much to bear. The sissy had played soccer and run Track. Track? He wore spandex like David Lee Roth yet had the nerve to say I wasn't very good at a man's sport? 'Look at me, my name is Piper Skinski and I run in circles and pass a vibrator to other men in spandex. Oooh. I'm a big sissy.' And Lacy was into this new fad called Aerobics, another sissy sport. I could strike out either one of them. I giggled silently at the image of Lacy swinging a baseball bat, but remained hidden. Better to listen to their complete conversation Maybe they'd have sex and I could watch.
“I'll bet you had a good rap,” said Lacy. “Those high school girls must've loved you.”
Oh, they did. I once watched Piper walk Chrissy Jenkins home from the Little League park when it was clearly my job. Why else had I attached myself to her book bag?
“I was just honest. I didn't try to outsmart girls in High School. Still don't. Oggy thought they were Rubik's Cubes and if you could solve the puzzle then you got laid.”
They weren't? You didn't?
“Why can't you tell him to be himself, shave, shower, go back to college? Why did he drop out?”
“He said that Bone Harbor needed him. He said our graduating class was dying. I can't say it made sense. He lived out in the woods for a summer, out by the town dump in this run-down shack he'd built. In High School he had a few parties and I guess he thought they shouldn't end. Maybe Fairbanks wasn't a party school.”
While Lacy agreed, I steamed behind the door. They thought my return to Bone Harbor was as simple as that? I just wanted to party at Ogden's Point? Fools. I was sacrificing my whole adult life for the good of my Youthtribe and they thought I wanted to party? I'd been searching for Mack Wynter's grave for seven years as a party? I praised Gordy Clutcher's Leary Field home run because Alaska wasn't a party school? Bah! A UAF party wasn't complete without smoking pot from the barrel of a loaded shotgun. After I puked on the girl's bathroom wall, I was taken into the snow, stripped naked, and beaten with frozen salmon. Not a party school? A subdued party at UAF was when only one room reconstructed a snow storm by throwing steaming water out the window into the negative 40 degree night. An average party was when an Eskimo student almost drowned in a tub of watermelon and grain alcohol. A crazy party ended with a gunfight on the second floor and a mortality. Not a party school? UAF janitors partied harder than UCONN freshman. Our cafeteria had a sign, “CHECK YOUR WEAPONS.” I had to navigate a ski jump to get to the Library!
Piper's ignorance was limitless, but once again I was just a bootblack who could do nothing right. Why not make fun of me, judge me, criticize me behind my back? It was fun for them.
“He needs a girlfriend,” said Lacy, the first sensible comment I'd heard all day. “He can't dress himself. Those pants he's wearing were fashionable in 1984.”
Excuse me? My Bugle Boy cargo pocket pants with the drawstring belt were fashionable well into the Tone Loc/ Taylor Dane era. They almost made it to Nirvana's mainstream debut. And I'd heard they were making a comeback.
“And that Red Sox sweatshirt looks like it would ignite if he got too close to an open flame.”
“Help him out. He likes you. Give him some advice.”
“He doesn't listen to me. I'm surprised he took a shower. He gets defensive. It's like when we were talking about the Gulf War in the dorm. He insisted that everyone had to stop driving or else we were killing Iraqis. Last I checked they invaded Kuwait. And they bomb Israel every month. I've got relatives in Israel.”
First she criticizes my fashion and now my political ideology? What the hell? Had peace gone out of style too?
“I found him in the library once,” Lacy went on. “He was copying down The War Prayer by Mark Twain. He wasn't using the copy machine. He was writing down every word in his journal.”
This was true. I meant to conserve paper and thought that in a time of war to use a copy machine to copy The War Prayer would've been beyond hypocritical. The idea was to boycott capitalism and crush militarism, not save myself ten minutes of hand cramps.
Piper was chewing something, leftover chili perhaps. He sat in a chair just on the edge of my limited field of vision.
“That's funny because only two weeks earlier I got a postcard saying I should drop out of college to sail around the Florida Keys. Oggy said he was going to Tobago or Trinidad to make hemp clothes. Maybe he's on medication. He changes his personality more than his underwear.”
They had a good laugh over this insult while I chewed on the door paneling. Curse them! A guy can't experiment with drugs, maybe put his shine box down for a month or two, without being judged a hypocrite and a psychotic? It must be nice to expose other people's flaws when they aren't around to defend themselves. It must be fun to sit on their velvet thrones and piss in my milk bowl.
“You saw how much pot he smoked. And he said he did acid and peyote too.”
I wouldn't say I smoked lots of pot, compared to say, Bob Marley, but the acid part was true...as far as I knew. I couldn't say for sure because after you do acid or peyote or eat too many crunchy tacos at Jack In The Box, you tend to question what is and is not reality. My one Peyote experience left me clinging to a tree stump so I wouldn't be carried away by a flock of butterflies. My one Acid experience at a Halloween party in the swamps near Melbourne was no different. One second I was allowing a man dressed as the Pope to put something in my mouth and the next second I was hiding in an orange grove yelling, “I'm lost. Can someone help me find my way back to the drum circle,” at the surreal shadows. In a random taste test, four out of five drug users prefer Peyote over the other leading psychedelic. Still, I had mixed feelings about drugs; while they had not expanded my consciousness, my experiences did give me something to talk about as we passed a bong in circles.
“See,” said Lacy. “I don't want to get mixed up with a drug addict.”
Addict? I wasn't sure if I should get mad or else thank her. I had smoked pot twice in the past twenty years, maybe three times if you count that rainy day when everyone was smoking in the port-o-potty and I couldn't help but get stoned. So, three times at the most, and that made me an addict? OK. By that reasoning I was also a workaholic based on the four hours I spent raking the lawn last fall. And since I got an A on a Geometry test in 1985, did that mean I was a mathematical genius? If it meant my father would stop giving me shit about working or going back to school, I could live with those titles.
“Maybe he'll change in Mexico,” offered Piper.
“Change what? His socks?”
Keep it up, I thought. Just have your fun. Have your laughs. Who'll be laughing when we're swimming in the Gulf of Mexico? Who'll be wearing socks then? Not this sharecropper.
“He has to grow up eventually. I should get back to work. Tell him I'll be back around five or six.”
Cans hugged Lacy and then walked out the door. I was sure Lacy watched his ass as he left. Maybe I was stuffing socks down the wrong side of my underwear. After Piper left Lacy picked the violin up again and tucked it under her chin. She then tuned the strings using just one hand, a procedure I later found physically impossible, and started to play the same melody as before.
I put Piper's clothes back on without drying my skin and ran into the living room. I tried not to reveal that I had been listening.
“So, you think I'm a space cadet? I'm a freak? I'll show you who's the freak.”
Lacy looked me up and down.
“You look like a rat who just crawled out of the sewer.”
“Pretty sexy?”
“Hardly. You were listening? You spied on us?”
Lacy was noticeably embarrassed and fiddled with the violin as a diversion.
“I couldn't help it! I'm a crazy drug addict. Addicts lose their mind sometimes. Look at me, I'm crazy.”
I waved my arms over my head in a crazy manner. Lacy wasn't impressed so I told her that it must be nice to sit in her velvet throne and judge me.
“Judge you? We're trying to help you figure out your life, ya fak.”
“Yeah? Well save your help for the blind lady who needs to cross the street or the kitten in a tree. I'm doing fine. I couldn't be better. I'm a winner.”
I walked into the kitchen. My wet feet slipped on the tile and I collapsed near the stove.
“Look what you did!” I screamed.
When Lacy had stopped laughing she started to play again.
“You actually play the violin,” I said as I gingerly used the refrigerator door to pull myself from the kitchen floor. A piece of chili was on my shoulder blade.
“I took lessons. You can't learn on your own. It's too hard.”
“Does anyone at the dorms know you can play.”
“I have secrets too.”
“What song is that? Teach it to me. Give me a lesson.”
Lacy gracefully brought the bow to the strings, as if that too were part of the music. The long notes emerged from her hands and her eyes and her fingers. It was impossible to tell where the source of the music was. It was a song of arriving and a song of going, a song of sacrifice and selfishness.
“'Edelweiss',” I announced when I remembered the title. “It's from the final concert when the Von Trapps have to leave Austria. Teach it to me.”
“You need a lot of lessons. Years of lessons. Do you have a book?”
“No. Just give me one lesson. It's all I need. I fixed my brakes without any help at all.”
“You fixed the brakes on you car?”
“It's a long story. What about the violin?”
“Do you know how to tune it?”
I hadn't a clue.
“Play the biggest string with your finger.”
Lacy handed the instrument to me and showed me how to hold it. I plucked the big string.
“That is a G note. Say G”
“G.”
“The next string below it is the D string. Say D”
“D.”
“The musical alphabet...Oggy, your hair is dripping on the violin.”
“Is that bad?”
“Yes.”
“I told you I shouldn't have washed my hair.”
“Sit down,” she said.
I sat in the chair in the middle of the room, cradling the violin. She took the towel that I was using to cover my flabby belly and, with a sigh, started to dry my hair. Showering suddenly had appeal.
“The last time I was this happy Hendu had just tattooed the Newsday sign at Shea Stadium.”
“Don't get used to it, ya fak.”
“If you dried my hair every time I showered I would shower every twenty minutes. I'd be the Kevin Bacon of showering. If there was a shower, I'd be in it.”
“The musical alphabet,” she continued, “is A through G. Then it repeats itself. Say A through G.”
I was lost in the feeling of having my hair dried like a ten dollar Korean massage.
“Oggy?”
I sighed. “Maybe I will stay. Fahk Mexico. Fahk Ray Knight.”
“A through G. Say it.”
“A through G.”
“There are five notes from G and D. Right? G, A, B, C, and D. Those two notes are a perfect fifth apart. Say a perfect fifth apart.”
“Fifth,” I mumbled without any comprehension. I was falling asleep. Five hours of consecutive consciousness was my limit. I forgave Lacy and Piper for everything but the Cargo Pants comment. Cargo pockets could be very practical when collection aluminum or shoplifting.
“Perfect. A little to the left.”
“A perfect fifth is an interval. Are you listening? Interval. This interval happens to be the first two notes of 'Fools Rush In' by Elvis. Do you know that song?”
“Lace, I am the fool in that song. I can't help...”
“Shush. Not that part of the song. Play the G and the D strings one at a time.”
Lacy continued to dry my hair though it didn't feel wet anymore. I forgave the Cargo Pocket comment. People make mistakes.
“The G and the D strings sound like the first two notes of the Elvis song. See? Wise. G. Men. D.”
“A perfect Fifth. G and D. Got it. What about the other strings.”
“The same. All the strings should be the same...remember what the word is?”
“Fifth?”
“That's the size of this term.”
“Perfect?”
“That's the quality of this term. There's only one word left, Oggy. Come on.”
“I'm not in college you know. Interval?”
“Good. The next string is five letters up from D. What is five letters up from D?”
“H?”
“No, the musical alphabet wraps around at G.:
I started at D and found my way to A. Edelweiss couldn't be this hard to learn.
“Right. The D and the A are a fifth apart. The last string is what?”
“E. A fifth up from A. This is simple. I'm a regular Beethoven.”
“OK, Ludwig. All these strings need to sound a Perfect fifth above the next lower string. Then it is in tune. And you can play. Do you want to see how the notes line up on the fingerboard?”
I put the violin on the floor and looked back at Lacy. I touched her hand.
“No, Lace. I don't want to see how the notes line up on the fingerboard. Come here.”
“Don't be queer, Oggy. This isn't an afternoon special. I can't stay long,” she whispered as she walked in front of me and looked down at my hair, combing it with her fingers.
“Thanks for drying my hair, Lace.”
“You need help, Oggy. You look nice now. If you shaved and showered regularly you wouldn't look too bad. You looked better when you got back from Florida. Your face had color and you weren't so thin.”
Lacy stood over my right leg, close enough to smell. She tried again to style my hair with her fingers, combing it back and to the side but it was too long and kept falling over my eyes.
“You aren't staying, Oggy. I know. I can see it in your eyes. You never stay. My dad never stays either. Men are all the same.”
I slid my hands up her legs to her hips. Her shirt was not tucked into her jeans so I slid my hands under the shirt on both sides and felt her waist. I could almost touch my fingers together.
“What's wrong, Oggy?”
“Its just sad, Lace. I want us to happen.”
“You won't stay in one place long enough to let it happen.”
“I love you.”
“How are you sure?”
“Because I think about you all the time. I thought about you in Bone Harbor. I thought about you on the drive here. I think about you all the time, like Ray Knight except in a good way.”
“So what?”
“Well, that is love.”
“No, Oggy. It means you're treating me like, I don't know, like one of those brainteasers, those mind puzzles you like. I'm not a puzzle, Oggy. There is no solution.”
“I know.”
“So don't sit around trying to figure me out. You'll never figure me out. You'll never get it all right. I'm not that simple.”
“That's fair.”
“I've got secrets too, Oggy. I feel things too. Maybe I don't sit around and try to figure out the world but I can think too.”
“You're right. I know.”
“What's wrong, Oggy?”
“Nothing. I'm fine.”
“No you're not. You're sad. I've never seen you so sad. You'll never be satisfied. One second you want purity and the next second your hands are up my shirt. Which is it gonna be, Oggy?”
Continuing to feel her waist, I nodded. What would Dewey do?
“You're right, I'm sad. But I'm going to leave and I have no idea where I'm going except south and you might be the last stable person I talk to. The road has no love, Lace. You have to pack it all with you. I have to carry everything. Clothes and equipment are nothing. It's the hate and the love and pain and regret that weigh me down. I carry it all. I think I bring suffering with me so I remember I can feel at all. It shouldn't be this complicated. Just come to Mexico with me. No debate. Get in Poncho and come to Mexico.”
“You are so messed up.”
“This means so much to me, Lace. It is like the Gods looked down and...”
“I can't hear you talk anymore, Oggy.”
Lacy was short enough that she just had to lean over a little to kiss my mouth and shut me up. Without unbuttoning her shirt I touched her neck gently. I placed one of her hands on my chest where it softly brushed my skin. It was the kind of scene that takes place in a PG-13 movie, the kind that is supposed to mean, “These two people really love each other, it isn't just about sex”
Of course I wanted to undress Lacy and turn the movie into at least an R rated love scene where intercourse is insinuated by hands clutching the sheets tightly or fingers grasping at a naked back or a rocket blasting off, but I knew it wasn't going to happen, so I got as close as possible by feeling the inside of Lacy's leg, slowly, up and down but never all the way up, and hooking my fingers inside her jeans but never pulling them all the way down. My heart was beating fast enough to power a small city.
“Lace, I'm so turned on I'm going to have a stroke.”
“What do you want to do?”
“Ha!”
I pulled her closer and pushed my head into her belly. The button of her jeans was close enough to bite. I licked it secretly. Though I knew it didn't matter, I whined, “Please.”
“What, Oggy?”
Lacy did not even look excited. She was as composed as though we were at the intermission of a bad opera. I, however, was on the verge of tears, as the wolf in my pants was slowly winning a war against the Monk in my head. Siddhartha hadn't encountered temptations like Lacy. Flesh and soul, Purity and impurity, War and Peace, Tastes Great, Less Filling. So many choices. I held onto the waistline of her jeans like a life preserver.
“Please come to bed with me. I'll do anything.”
“You'll not go to Mexico?”
I sagged as the wolf took a hard blow to the nose. I weighed my options again, but the freedom that Mexico promised was just too attractive. IT was life away from the Red Sox and away from Bonigan and Ray Knight and the court case. The wolf shrank into his den. I looked into Lacy's dark eyes. Life was so unfair. Everyone in America was getting a hand job but me.
“Lace, I would do almost anything to sleep with you, but I have to leave. I can't be a prisoner. It was like Custer's last stand in Bone Harbor. Arrows were thick in the sky, I swear. I am a wanted criminal now.”
Lacy took my hands gently out of the top of her jeans and placed them in my lap. Then she backed up.
“Then I guess you had better go.”
I collapsed onto the floor and moaned, clawing at the rug.
“I'll come back for you. I swear.”
“Sure. And I'll be waiting by the phone. I swear.”
“It could be so good, Lace.”
This was an absurd suggestion. If I slept with Lacy, I'd either shoot my bullets in nine seconds or go into shock. Either way, my chamber would be empty and I'd be asleep before Lacy was done untying her shoe laces.
“You don't even know what making love means.”
“You're the virgin!”
I was on my knees with my arms outstretched. It was rotten to bring up her virginity, I know, but it was like Bob Stanley preaching about pitching control.
“Alright, so what would you do, Oggy? You've slept with one person. What have you learned? How to put a rubber on, I hope.”
I thought back to Nancy in Ecuador and winced. What had I learned? That sex was like wrestling except there were no illegal holds. That the moments leading up to sex were terrifying and the moments after sex were funereal. That advanced trigonometry was easier than finding the clitoris. That farting was not considered foreplay. That the word 'Anti-contraceptivo' translates into, “That which will fail to provide contraception” But was there anything Lacy would want to hear?
“More than that, Lace. Plenty more than that. I'm like the Ted Williams of love.”
Lacy rolled her eyes.
“See, Oggy. You think it is some kind of magical kiss that turns the toad into a princess. Is that it Oggy? Is that what it would be like?”
“Yes. It would be magic. We would live happily ever after. Give me a chance.”
“Fine then tell me how it would be. Let's have phone sex.”
This was a suggestion I heard about as much as 'Have you been working out?'
“But we aren't on the phone. The whole idea is being anonymous, so I've heard.”
“Use your imagination, Don Juan.”
My interest perking up. While other kids were memorizing the periodic table, I'd been memorizing “Pillow talk” I let sling with some pretty juicy stuff.
If I transcribed my speech exactly, I’d have to change the rating of the book, so I’ll let you imagine what I said. I included the usual kinky instruments in our fantasy affair, a bicycle chain, a Dwight Evans baseball card, a fuzzy stuffed bear from Homestead, and a Whiffle ball to turn Lacy on. She responded with obvious passion, but what really made her candle flicker was how I closed.
“I'd kiss you until you could feel me kissing you forever,” I said as her eyebrows raised, “until your lips became my lips and you kissed yourself. Then I would kiss down your throat to your chest, and while I held you in my hands I would kiss you until no memory remained of a time I hadn't kissed you, until you only knew what it felt like to be kissed by me, until there was no me or you, until your mind took over and you would be kissing yourself with my lips, until your mind multiplied my lips and sent them across your soft skin to every curve and plain, until your skin was alive with my love, touching you and you could not remember life any other way, until all you had ever known and all you would ever know was my touch, until our bodies merged and our memories merged and the only substance left was purity.”
Lacy closed her mouth and smoothed out her shirt from where I had wrinkled it.
“I'm going to call my mother to see if it's snowing there,” she said before walking to the phone and tripping on the carpet.
“I could go on, Lace. I haven’t even told you what I would do with the 1986 Red Sox team photo.”
She held up a finger and spoke into the phone, “Hi ma! I'm in lips, I mean Storrs. No, not yet. Yeah, he's here. He's fine. We're just talking...”
I sat back down and relaxed. If I were a smoker I would have had a cigarette. It was almost as good as a hand job.
Lacy hung up the phone and brushed her shirt flat again.
“It's going to start snowing soon. I should go.”
“I'm not done.”
“I am. We all have somewhere to go, Oggy.”
“You'll be safe here.”
“That isn't what I'm worried about. Maybe it's a good thing you're going to Mexico. You go have fun being a farmer. Go have kids and live in a mud hut. Have a good time in the Stone Age.”
Where did she get this Stone Age idea. I was living in 1986, like, twenty thousand years after the Stone Age.
“I want you to come with me. You can teach me to play violin.”
“Have a good time Oggy,” she said and picked up her coat.
“Have I told you how beautiful you are Lace?”
“You've done more than that.”
“But it didn't help, did it?”
Lacy paused before she walked out the door.
“Do you want me to say I'll dream about you tonight and hold my pillow to my chest and imagine it's you? Do you want me to say I'll kiss my arms and imagine your lips are doing it, until I don't remember a time when I wasn't kissed by you? Do you want me to tell you that I'll lie awake at night and dream of making love to you, of being your wife, of living with you?”
“Well, yes. Of course. I'd pay good money to hear that. Will five bucks cover it?”
“Stop making jokes, Oggy! I'm going to go home and take a nap and bake some bread with my mother. I'm going to pet my dogs and talk to my parrots and my hamsters. Then I'll listen to some music and call my friend in Hartford. Then I'll go to sleep and dream about a time I never had to worry if your brakes were going to fail in the middle of Mexico and cause you to crash or if you're going to starve to death in a rest stop. That is what I'm going to dream about. I don't want to have to worry about you, Oggy, but you make it so hard.”
It's hard to know how to act in these situations. Her eyes said, 'Take me.' While her words said, 'I hate you.' Some books would recommend I take her in my arms and stare into her eyes until she wilted. Other books would advocate a more casual, nonchalant approach. I took the path of the bootblack and said I was sorry.
“That doesn't help, Oggy. You'll still leave!” Lace ran a hand up the buttons of her blouse to make sure I hadn't managed to unbutton one. “I don't want to feel like this, ya fak. This is the worst!”
I wanted to ask her to come with me to Mexico again but just nodded and put my head down. Lacy opened the door. I was silent.
“Bye!” she said again a little louder. She stood by the open door looking at me, maybe giving me one more chance to do something right. I looked at her and tried to make my eyes say, “I love you, but it is better if I leave.” Her eyes said, “Ya fak! Why did you ever come to UCONN in the first place?” I walked over to her and held her close, smelling her lilac hair.
“No one can know about this, Oggy.”
I could still taste the sweet bubble gum on my lips as I stood in the middle of the porch in the cold wind. A few small flakes of snow had begun to fall around my bare feet. Lacy turned and walked down the porch toward the parking lot.
“Hey, Lace. If the phone doesn't ring, it's my court-appointed lawyer calling to say I miss you.”
Lacy probably made a face as she kept walking. She turned around at the top of the stairs and looked back at me. I wanted to think she was admiring me, but she was probably making sure I wasn't following her. I bowed deeply and when I came up she was gone.
Snowflakes fell on the leaves. The snow made a sound on the dry leaves that was like television static. Snow would fall in Bone Harbor tonight. I could not remember a time when it hadn't been snowing. A car door slammed and a car engine started up, some gears shifted and the sound moved into the distance. Then it was silent for good. Before the screen door had closed, I was already unzipping my pants and heading for the bathroom.
posted by Oggy Bleacher | 8:26 PM
<< Home