The Sinking of the Basil Hall

By James Street

A tragicomedy

Aristodemus was only half awake, and he did not hear the beginning of the discourse; the
chief thing which he remembered was Socrates compelling the other two to acknowledge
that the genius of comedy was the same with that of tragedy, and that the true artist in
tragedy was an artist in comedy also.

The Symposium by Plato

Chapter 1

Prithee, nuncle, keep a schoolmaster that can teach thy fool to lie. I would fain
learn to lie.

King Lear

The Queen is most anxious to enlist everyone who can speak or write to join in
checking this mad, wicked folly of Woman’s Rights, with all its attendant horrors, on which
her poor, feeble sex is bent, forgetting every sense of womanly feeling and propriety.

Queen Victoria

I was awakened at about ten in the morning by female voices. It was their Sunday
morning Consciousness Raising meeting. I’m not hostile to Women’s Liberation, but my
window was stuck open, and I was trying to sleep. I blocked them out with my new Koss
head phones the previous Sunday. I was working on an article for Playboy Magazine
entitled, “Mick Jagger and Wilhelm Reich,” and I was analyzing the Rolling Stones’ new
album, “His Satanic Majesty’s Request.”
Cab driving had given me a terrible case of constipation. Unfortunately, I was into
colonic irrigations and I thought, or felt like, I needed one.
With 25 women sitting Indian style in a great circle just outside my painted-open
window and with my bathroom on the same side of the house as they were, I thought, or
felt, that I shouldn’t take one. (The difference between thinking and feeling, at this level,
has never been clear to me.)
I lay on the mattress, listening to their ejaculations: one of them pronounced
marriage obsolete, and there was an objection from a woman who had a “beautiful
relationship.” Marriage is Obsolete said, “Yeah, but does he do the dishes?” Laughter. A
growling sound wound itself around the laughter and, at the laughter’s edge, transformed
itself into the words, “Men are defective women.” The voice was thin and strained. It
formulated another sentence that was a witches’ brew of sounds dancing tantalizingly close
to sense. It was chopped into by another voice. I made out the words, “Frustration that
women feel in being defined by men.”
A third voice shrieked into a pregnant silence, “I feel like you’re dumping a truckload of
shit on my head.” I looked out of the window and saw a young and beautiful, but
hauntingly sad face framed with long black, curly hair, streaked prematurely with gray.
She said, “This is all bullshit.” She had a slight foreign accent.
I got up and walked into the living room, wearing only my underpants. Pinson
stirred behind the Japanese folding screen that Penelope had placed in front of his bed. It
formed a door between our rooms: the original had been taken off.
I was hungry, but didn’t know what to eat. I wouldn’t allow myself to eat bacon
and eggs because of the cholesterol, the saturated fat and the salt, and I wouldn’t drink milk
because I thought I was allergic to it (I probably was.) I had read that Rilke had a passion
for Quaker Oats and I had discovered that oatmeal is an excellent food, but I was sick of it.
I thought about Cheerios but couldn’t stand the thought of eating them without milk. I put
some water on the stove for coffee, went back into the living room, sat on the floor and
stared at the wall.
Pinson stumbled groggily out of his room, wearing only pajama bottoms. Rubbing
the top of his rarely combed mop of honey-blond hair, he asked, “How was your night
dad?”
He was 22 years old. I was 25.
“Same as usual.” I said, truthfully.
His voiced boomed out in a morning basso, “Real boring huh?”
His California-tanned torso grew from powerful, bandy legs. The cross between
Spanish Basque aristocrat and Irish peasant produced a nobility of form and feature
combined with a hint of deformity, even decadence. He had a wandering left eye and a
massive, prognathous jaw that gave him a spiritual and yet animalistic appearance. He
looked to me at that moment like an issue of Socrates and Helen of Troy. From his athletic,
bronzed torso hung stocky, incongruous peasant-arms and he stood only 5’ 6”.
“No, not exactly boring.” I answered defensively.
“Oh, you don’t want to talk about it. All right, that’s fine,” he said with mock
serious hurt.
“No, it’s just too complicated, I’ll tell you some other time.” He went to the
refrigerator, peeled off three or four slices of bacon, placed them into a frying pan and
placed two waiting eggs on the counter. In a few minutes the air was redolent with the
smell of bacon and eggs. My stomach began to churn.
“Fuck it,” I thought.
“I’m going to have a bowl of Cheerios.”
But there was no milk. I decided to go jogging and pick up a quart of milk on the
way home.
Those were the days before jogging was a national obsession. I loved to run. But if
you ran down the sidewalk in your shorts you got the same reaction you would get today if
you walked down the street in your swimming suit. Jogging wasn’t in yet. But I didn’t
care. I got a quarter and a penny for the milk, put on my shorts and tennis shoes, and
sprinted on the balls of my feet all the way to Bushrod field three blocks away, on the other
side of Telegraph Avenue, and crossing Telegraph avenue smiled again in amazement at the
great, elevated Kentucky Fried Chicken bucket to my right. When I returned with my
quart of milk, the meeting was just breaking up.
Twenty women, pretty and ugly, intelligent-East-Coast-Jew and stupid waitress,
poured into the street, and twenty pairs of eyes looked at the ground with studied
indifference. What do you say to a naked man carrying a quart of milk, especially after
your consciousness has been elevated? Tilly walked down the stairs wearing her “hot
pants.” She had a voice that sounded like metal scraping concrete, but she had
extraordinary legs. I said “hi,” as I had for the past three months and she said “hi” back,
but that was as far as I ever got. The only other times I had talked to her were when she
was trimming the giant hedge between our houses. When she was cutting the hedge, she
seemed to have a maniacal, malicious grin on her face and she almost literally talked to me
through the shears. But she almost always wore shorts and she really had incredible legs.
In fact, I was so taken with her legs the first time I saw her, that I didn’t even notice that her
left hand had been amputated from the wrist down. She handled the shears so deftly that it
was easy to overlook. I never got anywhere with her in those conversations and I always
felt defeated somehow, and I would slink away with dry mouth and visions of her legs
dancing in my head. Neither of us seemed to know the extent to which one can, or cannot
build a relationship on legs.
I turned the corner into our driveway. An old pickup truck with homemade wood
side panels was blocking the driveway. It had large hand-painted lettering on the side,
“Moving and Hauling.” It looked like it came straight from the set of a 1950’s Amos ‘n
Andy television show. A very tall, thin black man named Rufus, about 35, was standing by
the front door of the truck. He was talking to a black high school student named Julian
who had silky, Hershey bar skin. Rufus grinned at me as I walked past and said with an
uncle Tom voice, and a revolutionary smirk that he pretended to hide, that he wasn’t going
to block the driveway for long. There were two houses on our lot and he and 5 year old
Rodney and Rodney’s mother and boyfriend lived in the front house.
I walked up the wooden steps and across the deck and through the front door that
we left open, night and day, even though we lived on 60th street, at the edge of the ghetto:
there was nothing of value in the house to steal. Pinson was watching the Super Bowl on
our five dollar television set. I mentioned, casually, that I had just said hello to Tilly.
I knew that I would get the same reaction as usual, in fact it was so predictable that
I hesitated before saying anything. “Oh those legs. If I could only get my hands on them.”
He stretched his hands out as if he were about to grab her tanned legs and massage them in
mid-air.
He spoke in a tiny voice that sounded like it was part of a dream and he rubbed his
hands together like some miser thinking of his money, and his eyes glowed with inner fire.
His girlfriend, Penelope, had very thin, milk-white legs. She also had very large
breasts that I saw every night when she walked through my room to the bathroom, after
sex.
I walked past the television set and into the kitchen, ignoring his ecstasy. I poured
milk into a large bowl of Cheerios, sliced a banana into it, put a gob of honey into the bowl,
and then returned to the living room.
“Are you working tonight?” I asked.
 “Huh? Yeah,” he answered without looking at me. I had decided the year before
that football was a waste of time but he was still a fanatic.
We watched the game in silence for a few minutes before I ventured further, “What
time do you have to be at work?”
He looked at me as if he wanted to study the look of rudeness and insensitivity
itself, and then, shaking off his amazement answered, “Three O’clock.” I was given to feel
that an answer, instead of silence, was magnanimity itself.
Pinson was descended from Irish peasants but his Basque grandfather had owned
all of Orinda before the 1929 stock market crash. His grandfather lost 10 million dollars in
the Crash and was forced to declare bankruptcy. Pinson said the court allowed his family
to keep the Hacienda after the bankruptcy but the family had fallen apart fighting over who
should have the right to live in it.
I debated whether I should go to my room without saying anything or say
something and risk being ignored or pierced with another incredulous look.
I ducked my head into the living room and said, “I’m going to read those books I
got from the library and work on the article.”
I knew he would think it was a gratuitous and pointless thing to say, that he would
think, “So what. Why are you telling me? Why don’t you watch the Super Bowl like
everybody else?”
Without waiting for a response, I added, “I hope it’s a good game,” and I went to
my room and began reading in the stack of books by my bed and jotted down the following
quotes, and interspersing them into my notes from two nights of cab driving:

“Toil on, dull crowd, in extacy,” he cries,

“For wealth or title, perishable prize
While I these transitory blessings scorn,
Secure of praise from nations yet unborn.”

Samuel Johnson

From Orville Prescott:

According to Prescott, Hemingway, Steinbeck, Faulkner, and Lewis are great writers
who have utterly failed. He doesn’t even mention F. Scott Fitzgerald, Dreiser,..... --
obviously, intentionally. For him, the greatest writers are: John Hersey for The Wall, Hope
Muntz for The Golden Warrior, and Leopold H. Myers for The Root and the Flower, and
Alan Patton.
“Most novels are read by women.”
“Joseph and his Brothers is stiff, pompous, and dull. Doctor Faustus, as a novel, is
clumsy, stilted and wholly tedious.”
For a novel to sell, the characters must seem, 1, believable, and 2, interesting, 3, must
have a story-- that is what happens next must be important- seem worth going after by a
reader.
 The Man without qualities by Robert Musil:

An antiroman of more than 2000 pages. Ten years in the writing -- the hero is an
antihero, no ambition, no goals, lives through passionate experience- negating the passion.
The hero pursuing fame, fortune, etc. is negated, hence the novel is negated. He escapes
from the mythology of adventure, of passion, of social and psychological analysis.
After Proust, the novel is no longer an attempt to see the world objectively.
The antihero has renounced job, function, vocation, he is 32 years old, a lieutenant, he
could have become a captain, a general, but he quits. Mathematician, he could have
become an engineer, a professor dans une faculte, but instead, he becomes a dilettante
without passion. The rest is “arrivism” for him, suris (reprieve).

Irving Babbit says of Renan (p.293) “The high quality of his charm is attested by the
very fact that it eludes all analysis. The highest art should be thus free from any trick or
mannerism that can be caught or imitated ... In short, Renan has accomplished the rare
feat of having a style without being a stylist. He tells us that he was always the least
literary of men: he was even ready to proscribe all systematic teaching of rhetoric and
composition as tending to instill into the young the dangerous heresy that expression has a
value independent of what is expressed.
He spent a whole year “toning down” the style of the “Vie de Jesus.”

Racine tells us that the audience was afraid at the first performance of his comedy, Les
Plaideurs, that “it had not laughed according to the rules.”
Babbit can scarcely conceive to what extent men once allowed their personal impressions
to be overawed and held in check by a body of outer prescriptions.

From Bernard De Voto, The World of Fiction:

Mark Twain hated revision... He abandoned as much of it as he could to William Dean

Howells or anyone else who would work out on his text. None of his principal books
received anything that can fairly be called a second draft.

I have said that I believe Thomas Wolfe a bad novelist and that there was probably no
help for him, he probably could never have written otherwise than he did.

It is terrifying to think of, but Tolstoy rewrote his colossal book [War and Peace]
seven times.

Leon Trotsky, Fourth International

 Both Turgenief and Tolstoy called Dostoevsky’s The House of the Dead his best work and
ranked it above The Brothers Karamazov and his other novels which repelled them.
Dostoevsky’s French translator said to Gide:

“with (Crime and Punishment) the talent of Dostoevsky stopped growing....(after it,
he would) continue to beat his wings but would turn in a great circle of fog, in a more and
more troubled sky... (The Possessed) is a confused book, badly constructed, often
ridiculous and burdened with apocalyptic theories... I won’t stop before the Brothers
Karamazov either, or the common admission that very few Russians have had the courage
to read this interminable story to its end.”

Gide, Dostoevsky

Flaubert is not a writer.

Le Figaro

I have been re-reading, or trying to re-read, Stendhal’s novels; frankly, they are
detestable.

Sainte-Beuve

Herman Melville ceased writing, almost entirely, for forty years, because there was not
one man in the whole of America to celebrate Moby Dick, Pierre, The Piazza Tales.

Edward Dahlberg

Chapter 2

My work consists of two parts: the one presented here plus all that I have not written.
And it is precisely this second part that is the important one.

Ludwig Wittgenstein

Jan. 30, 1969

I think the weirdness started last night when I picked up the drunk Indian. He took
me by surprise so I reacted badly. He said his name was Johnny Ross and that he was a
Fox warrior and he let out a war hoop and I don’t know why, but I asked him if he was any
relation to Betsy Ross. He let out a blood curdling scream and began hurling insults at me
and I tried to calm him down but he kept insulting me.
 These savages had left their country, and were endeavoring to gain the right bank
of the Mississippi, where they hoped to find an asylum which had been promised them by
the American Government. It was then the middle of the winter, and the cold was
unusually severe; the snow had frozen hard upon the ground, and the river was drifting
huge masses of ice.

He was pretty well crocked, but he was in a mood to fight and it looked like he
could sober up if he wanted to. He asked me, “What are you going to do if I give you just
one dollar?”
“What do you want me to do, call the Bureau of Indian Affairs for the rest?”

The Indians had their families with them; and they brought in their train the
wounded and the sick, with children newly born, and old men upon the verge of death.
They possessed neither tents nor wagons, but only their arms and some provisions. I saw
them embark to pass the mighty river, and never will that solemn spectacle fade from my
remembrances. No cry, no sob, was heard amongst the assembled crowd, all were silent.

Then I said, sort of backing down,

“I will have to call the police,” like I didn’t want to, trying to make it impersonal
like. I didn’t want to fight and I could see where he was at: he wanted to fight.

Their calamities were of ancient date, and they knew them to be irremediable. The
Indians had all stepped into the bark, which was to carry them across, but their dogs
remained upon the bank. As soon as these animals perceived that their masters were
finally leaving the shore, they set up a dismal howl, and, plunging altogether into the icy
waters of the Mississippi, swam after the boat.

It really got crazy because I first picked him up at the Pow Wow bar and took him
to the Old Homestead bar and then when we got into the Old Homestead ----- I’ve got to
describe the 52 year old beatnik first because she... well, before I picked up the Indian, I got
a call to Kibby’s bar. When I got there, no one wanted a cab. So I’m standing there
looking around and all of a sudden a very drunk Mexican turns around on his stool and
starts talking to me in half English and half Spanish.
I can’t understand him so I say “No comprendo.”
He asks, “You speak Spanish?”
I answer, “Sí, hablo un poco.”
He starts jabbering away, and I don’t understand a word. It sounds like another
language. He’s smashed anyway, so I turn around and go back to the cab. I’m writing No
Go on the waybill, when I hear a lady call out, “I’m coming.”
She gets into the front seat and says, “Let’s get out of here, this isn’t my element-
you speako Spanish?- ha ha- I’m better off with Beatniks in San Francisco. Ya wanna take
me over there? Come on let’s go... What’s a matter... you don’t wanna go?”
 We do not wish to say, or even imply, that San Francisco is the wickedest and most
immoral city in the world; that her men are all libertines and her women all fallen; that she
has no noble sons and pure daughters.

She’s wearing a man’s undershirt and it looks like she isn’t wearing a bra--- I can’t
tell for sure, but usually you can see the strap coming through a white tee shirt -- and her
breasts are sagging about where they should on a fifty-two year old woman. She’s wearing
blue jeans and her hair is straight and long.
“Did you ever meet a fifty-two year old Beatnik?”
She doesn’t expect an answer. She continues talking to herself. I break into her
monologue to find out where we are going. 2202 Foothill, about 4 blocks from the bar. We
drive past the house where Jack London grew up. It doesn’t even have a plaque on it.
Nothing. Some poor family that isn’t even related to him lives there. The meter doesn’t
click past 50 cents. As we drive towards her apartment, she mumbles a lot of sexy things
and stretches voluptuously, cat-like. We’re almost in front of her apartment and she begins
another conversation with herself, “I want it -- Who needs it? -- I do.”

I hear from the most unexceptionable authority that the ladies in California are not
in general very refined or delicate in their conversation, using gross expressions and
indulging in broad remarks which would make modest women blush.

I tell myself, there is no way I’m going to ball her.

But we would say to the parents of San Francisco to look closer to their daughters,
for they know not the many dangers to which they are exposed -- know their associates,
guard their virtue-- and to mildly counsel their sons, for when upon the streets of the gay
city they are wandering amid many temptations.

We are sitting in front of her place. She opens her purse and picks through it
slowly, looking for coins. She finds a few dimes and nickels and leans towards me and
presses thirty cents into my hand, holding it a little too long. Then she leans back to search
for more money, but gives a sort of quick, sidelong glance at my crotch, and falls on my
leg, and with her head resting on my thigh, stares at my fly.

Every man thought every woman in that day a beauty. Even I have had men come
forty miles over the mountains, just to look at me, and I never was called a handsome
woman, in my best days, even by my most ardent admirers.

Obviously I’m still thinking -- no way. But physiology is asserting itself. A few
seconds pass. She kisses my leg and then rises, slowly. She starts a new tack: “I’ve just
blown a joint and I’m really out of my head.”
“Not likely,” I think. She’s seems to be thinking of something to say or do.
Suddenly, again, she falls onto my leg, and rests her ear on my thigh. I don’t respond and
she gets up a little quicker and begins counting her money again.
I ask, “You have enough?”
“Yeah there’s enough.”
 Then she looks at the door. She wants me to get out and open the door and then she
can invite me up to her apartment. A lot of them use that one.
“How do I get out of here?”
As if they haven’t got out of cabs before. I reach over to get the door, and I pause at
her cunt, giving her a sort of thrill, then I open the door, saying, “Don’t burn me with that
cigarette,” as if that was the reason for the pause. Then I say, “Thank you,” loudly, sort of
conveying my proper tone, as if to say: “let’s stay on this business level, etc. and keep
away from those thoughts,” and she gets out but she suddenly changes her mind. She says
that she wants …. (The Jan 30, 1969 entry ends here.)

Chapter 3

I am not a literary man, I am a writer.

William Faulkner

Jan 31, 1969

A typical very dark, black woman. Sort of fat, twenty, thirty maybe forty pounds
overweight. About thirty to forty years old, hard to tell. Not gray, etc. Goes to 1242 E12th
St. As she is getting into the cab she gives me a look - sort of glittering darkness.

Flogging with rawhide or blacksnake whip was the usual method for punishing
slaves. Imprisonment lost the master their time, and short rations impaired their health.

When we get to her place, I get out of the cab and open the door for her. I decide to
test the look. To my surprise she responds, again with the glittering eyes. I ask, “what are
you doing living next to a church?”
“Oh me? I just live next to it that’s all.”

Ran away, a Negro girl called Mary. Has a small scar over her eye, a good many
teeth missing, the letter A is branded on her cheek and forehead.

Now I’m certain she wants me to come in and ball. But I honestly fear getting VD-
that trip. A cab driver from Luxury stops - I picture a black dude - her husband - she makes
a sound of recognition - I get a little scared - like caught in the act -

Ran away, a Negro man named Henry; his left eye out, some scars from a dirk on
and under his left arm, and much scarred with the whip.

- he rolls down the window and I see it’s this young white cat, wants to know where
the 440 Club is - I’m not sure but I think its at 440 12 St.
“No, I don’t think so,” the black chic says. She’s waiting while I talk to him even
though she’s already paid her fare. So he takes off and she is standing in the doorway.
 She’s still looking at me invitingly and I realize now that she wants me to come up
and that’s the first time I realize that a lot of black chicks would do anything, etc., for a
white cat - and that is their trip - that’s why they are so hostile to me sometimes because I
have been sort of indifferent to black women, and if there is anything a woman won’t
forgive you for - it’s not being attracted to her.
So I test it on the next fare - a young, beautiful mulatto chic - I am totally friendly -
and she responds completely - really overjoyed - she stumbles, almost, out of the cab - and
is obviously going to her parent’s house so there isn’t any chance for me to go with her, etc.

The beautiful octoroons of New Orleans, equal in their profession to the most
talented courtesans of old France, were bought and sold like field hands -- but at far
higher prices, and for a different purpose.

That is an opening up of an area. It was partly my fault - the trouble I have had
with black chicks - my own unresponsiveness. But I worry about VD - with almost any
woman that isn’t relatively virginal. Maybe that’s the basis of that mythical - “folklore” -
idea of men being attracted only to virgins, etc.
This black cat gets into my cab and he is really black, so I say it and tell him he’s
really going to have a hard time - like he’s going to have to make it big like Malcolm X,
etc., if he’s going to make it.
He says, “man, like you don’t sound prejudiced” - then pauses- “but I bet you are.”
Then I say, “no I’m not prejudiced, no more than you are.”
He says, “I’m not prejudiced at all.”
I go into a thing about people liking the people they’re around, etc. I’ve been
around black people etc. Then he gets this big leer on his face and says, “I’ll bet you could
really go for some black ass right about now.”
It sort of shocks me and I say, “man that’s not my thing, I mean I like black chicks
and all that,” and go into a thing, “you know - the blacker the better- you know what I
mean.”
“Yeah I know what you mean.”

Among other blessings which public opinion secures to the Negroes, is the common
practice of violently punching out their teeth. To make them wear iron collars by day and
night, and to worry them with dogs, are practices almost too ordinary to deserve mention.

Anyway, just a heavy rap with one more black man - the blacks are the best people
in the world - but you’ve got to get them on your side - not to cliché - but it is a cliché -
they are as good - etc., as any human being can be - they may very well be the hope of
humanity. Yet they reject black themselves something terrible - it is fully tragic - it is as if
they think of themselves as black white men -- and hate the very blackness that prevents
them from attaining their white dream ideal (?)
Then I go into the Baldwin Hotel to take a leak and when I come out, I see a cop
throwing a black dude, about forty five, into the back seat of his squad car. He jumps in
after him and shuts the door. He’s a great big, beefy blond dude. His partner watches from
the front seat while he beats the hell out of the guy, with his fists. By the time I get in my
cab and start out for the St. Mark Hotel, they are standing in front of the paddy wagon. The
black dude has blood on his face and he’s holding onto the sides of the paddy wagon so
they can’t get him in. The big cop grabs his feet and they both wheel him over, feet-over-
head, 360 degrees, backwards into the paddy wagon and slam the door. The big blond cop
slaps his hands together, like he’s just done a good day’s work, and laughs.

Chapter 4

If one seek love and go towards it directly as one may in the midst of the
perplexities of modern life, one is perhaps insane.

Sherwood Anderson

The new style in music quietly insinuates itself into manners and customs, and from
these it issues a greater force... goes on to attack laws and constitutions, displaying the
utmost impudence, until it ends by overturning everything, both in public and in private.

Plato

Pour retrouver la ferveur il faut faire les gestes de la ferveur. Allez à la messe,
faites des signes de croix, prenez de l’eau bénite. Parce qu’à force d’imiter l’extérieur de
la ferveur peut être cette imitation entrera à l’intérier de vous même.

Jacqueline Pascal

I thought that I wanted to be Don Juan. The truth is, that along with almost
everyone else, I had merely lost the courage to love. There had been plenty of
relationships, and there were even sensitive girls who had fallen in love with me. But when
I fell in love, my love always transformed itself into a plague of pestilence and disasters. I
was either in love with a beautiful fool or had a relationship with an intellectual woman
whom I thought I didn’t love because she wasn’t beautiful, and they all gave me either
moral, aesthetic, intellectual or emotional indigestion. And so I was sick of them. Like
most Americans, since the time of William James at least, I tried to cure my sickness by
pretending not to be sick. And so I became a disciple of Wilhelm Reich.
At about midnight, I put down the book on astronomy that I was reading and went
outside to my red 1962 Volkswagen to get a tin of marijuana that I had left in the glove
compartment. Before going back inside, I sat on the fender to meditate on the night sky:

Proxima Centauri, the star nearest to Earth, is 250,000 times farther from us than
the Sun. A space ship traveling at 100,000 miles per hour would take almost 20,000 years
to reach it. A black hole is about two miles across and has more than twice the mass of our
sun. “Gilles de Rais himself described how he loved to visit a dungeon where children
were suspended from hooks.” It sucks anything near it into itself without possibility of
escape. “He would pretend to be horrified and would immediately cut the child down and
put it on his lap.” If matter is sucked into the ring of singularity then it disappears forever
from our universe to be reborn into another one. “He would dry his tears and tell him that
he would soon be reunited with his mother.” If it misses the singularity and swerves off
into a wormhole then it reemerges into our own universe through a quasar, in a another
place and time. “As soon as he gained the child’s confidence he would slit its throat,
violating the pulsating, dying body.” White holes, or Quasars, exist at the edges of the
universe. They are several sizes larger than our solar system and contain the amount of
energy of an entire galaxy of 150 billion stars. It wasn’t until 1935 that the existence of
other galaxies was proved. Only ten years later, August 6, 1945, the first atomic bomb was
exploded. And we now have the technology to destroy all life on earth with one single,
small but dirty cobalt-neutron bomb. Just one neutron bomb would deposit enough
radioactive fallout into the atmosphere to make all life on earth impossible for millions of
years. No plants, trees, insects,.... “It is said that he murdered more than eight hundred
boys.”

My reverie was broken by a shrieking female voice coming from the house next
door: “Don’t you ever do that again.” There was an ominous silence and then, slightly
less hysterically, “If you ever do that again, you’ll be sorry that you were ever born.” It
sounded like Tilly’s voice. Then a whimpering, muffled female voice responded, “All
right, I won’t ever do it again.”
I thought possibly that the voice had a foreign accent, but I wasn’t sure. I stood
there in the darkness waiting but they were silent. Afraid that I might be discovered there
and thought to be a Peeping Tom, I went back to my room, very quietly.
The marijuana was already strained and cleaned of stems and seeds. I used to put
one pinch in my pipe, take one hit and hold it in my lungs as long as possible. It took effect
in almost exactly five minutes. Then I would take another hit. The high lasted for about an
hour and then I was about half as high for an hour after that. If I wanted to stay high I
would take another hit at the end of the hour. I had it down to a science, but sometimes I
would have a bummer, or a terrible anxiety attack that was like a waking nightmare.
Marijuana always has the effect of dilating time and two or three minutes can seem like
fifteen. And so they were agonizing experiences and I felt like I could be drawn into the
vortex of madness, that I might forget that I was awake and find myself flying out of a
window or staring down the point of a kitchen knife. And then, like the Prophets of old,
wailing and gnashing my teeth before a vengeful God, I would swear that if I got through
the experience I would never smoke marijuana again. And I would usually abstain for a
few weeks.
I never smoked marijuana for pleasure. Smoking it was a magical and mystical
rite: it brought feelings and insights that I couldn’t have without it. That night, I discovered
the sexual imagery of Mick Jagger’s Satanic Majesty’s Request and composed the
following material for possible inclusion in the Playboy article:

Feb. 22, 1969

Gomper

By the lake with lily flowers,

 while away the evening hours.
(Jagger’s alone, by a lake)
To an fro she’s gently gliding,
on the glassy lake she’s riding.
She swims to the side,
the sun sees her dried.
(She thinks she’s alone)
The birds hover high,
I stifle a cry.
(She begins to masturbate)
The birds hover high,
she moans with a sigh.

To the accompaniment of the music:

Quiet masturbation. Blood sounds. Superficial, titillating clitoral sounds. Drums

hint heart beats. Then flute-nature screams out, primitive, wild, beckoning. Followed by
rhythmic stroking, and the first vaginal sounds, cunt strumming, beating, stroking,
accompanied by the flute-- jungle sounds. Quiet vaginal masturbation calls the jungle but
no response, then the flute evokes the clitoris. Back and forth from clitoris to vagina,
impatient. Coquette nature demurs. An agonizing, longing vaginal wailing implores. Still
nothing. Vaginal finger fucking begins again, slowly, then frantic, then steady, empty,
constant. Nature flirts. Blood sounds-- a new unearthly flute sound evokes more frantic
finger fucking, then calm, rhythmic. Bacchus shows his cloven hoof for the first time. She
responds with her first real hint of ecstasy. Suddenly she’s after the orgasm and nothing
will stop her. She mounts to her final ecstasy but doesn’t know it. Her cunt and the jungle
merge. She slows down, almost calm but on that higher plane. Blood sounds, heart
pounding, vaginal finger fucking becomes almost melodious, and then her lonely surprised
voice breaks the calm with three calls, each stronger than the last: ah-oh... a-oi... AHOY,
like a ship passing another in the black night. Then the waves of blood course back slowly
to calm, even heart strokes, numbness, sleep...and far off, One Hundred Light Years From
Home, as if a new universe has just been born, after the orgasm, the new birth in
loneliness:

2000 Light Years From Home

(drums, explosion, birth)

sun turning round with graceful motion

we’re setting off with soft explosion
bound for a star fiery ocean,
its so very lonely
you’re a hundred light years from home

freezing red deserts turn to dark

energy here in every part
 it’s so very lonely
you’re six hundred light years from home
(she’s getting farther away)
it’s so very lonely,
you’re a 1000 light years from home
(farther)

bell flight --- or ?

see you on alpha -- ?
safe on the green desert sand
it’s so very lonely,
you’re 2000 light years from home
(after the orgasm, she’s very far away again.)

Far from being Don Juan, I had become a connoisseur of masturbation. Being a
(William) Jamesian, I saw no danger, but Van worried me. My former roommate, Van
Decker, was 32 years old and still a virgin. After ten years at Berkeley he had neither
received his Ph.D. in English nor lost his virginity. We didn’t know how he would be able
to complete his Ph.D. thesis while still a virgin because it’s tentative title was, “The
Moment of Ecstasy in English Literature,” and he said, frankly, that he couldn’t go on with
it in his present condition. I had moved out a few months earlier because I hadn’t met a
woman during the six months that I lived with him and I thought he might be infected with
the Sexual Plague: Wilhelm Reich had described a case exactly like his in his book,
Neurotic Character Armor. I thought he was a victim of Reich’s Sexual Plague because he
was the only man I had ever known whose shirt tail popped out in front instead of from
behind, and Reich had described his posture exactly in his book: in the case study, the man
held his arms back and his chest out and his neck forward. This, along with deep frown
lines between his eyes, corresponded exactly to Van. It was a classic case of Character
Armor.
But I liked him anyway, and I thought that a really good woman could turn him
around, and I wanted to help him. He was intelligent, well built, 6 feet tall and 180 pounds,
good looking, but abjectly poor. His father paid for his rent and tuition and sent him a huge
supply of Bronson’s vitamins every month, but that was all. He didn’t own a car and he
had only a few changes of clothes. He had one pair of nice shoes, but had put cardboard in
them instead of having them resoled.
He loved Wagner. He owned a small white table radio with one small speaker and
when an opera was broadcast he sat at the kitchen table with his chin on the table and his
ear pressed against the speaker. He kept the volume so low that the sound was barely
audible to anyone else, even in the kitchen. He listened to entire Wagnerian operas this
way. I first saw him in this posture one Sunday afternoon when I came back to the
apartment from an errand. He was sitting there at the table, ear pressed to the radio, his
face contorted into a painful wince at the noise of the front door, and his right hand raised
in the air like von Karajan’s, instructing me to I remain absolutely silent. I stood there for a
moment thinking that he was listening to an important pronouncement from the
Government: that another public figure had been assassinated and the radio was broken so
he was forced to press his ear against the speaker to hear. After many seconds, I ventured
an inquiry. He raised his hand again, the wince reappeared on his face and he gasped, “It’s
Wagner! ..... shut up!”
He said his greatest fear in life was growing old. One night he went into the
bathroom and brought out his Thomas Hair Treatment equipment. He told me that he
didn’t want me to discover it myself or see him treating his hair without knowing about it
first. He said he knew it looked ridiculously vain, but it was one of his only vanities: he
didn’t want to be bald.
He treated his hair for an hour every night. First he washed it with the special
shampoo, then he rinsed it and towel dried it. He then distributed little vials of the Thomas
Secret Formula all across his scalp. This took about twenty minutes. Then he wrapped his
head in a steaming towel for half an hour. The treatment center sold him a year’s supply of
the vials and shampoo for a thousand dollars a year because, as he put it, “of my reduced
financial situation.”

Chapter 5

Truth and folly are ever about to expire, so that we, like our beloved Sancho Panza,
kneeling at the deathbed of Don Quixote, must always be ready to go out to receive the
holy communion of cudgels and distaffs, for the rebirth of the Pulse.

Edward Dahlberg

I hadn’t talked to Van for three months. I felt guilty for leaving him in the
apartment on Telegraph Avenue and Dwight Way: He wasn’t able to find another roommate
and, because he couldn’t afford the rent, had to move into a garage on Colby Street that had
been converted into an apartment. His bed was in the “living room” and his kitchen was a
hot plate. I was ambivalent. On the one hand I thought he was a great American, a
defeated Walt Whitman, a Thoreau beaten into submission, and on the other hand I thought
he was Neurotic.
From the perspective of twenty years, I suppose that he could feel nothing but
contempt for me because he wasn’t Jesus Christ. But I tried anyway. I remembered his
birthday and so, a month before the event, I called to invite him out for dinner. I raised my
finger from his name in the address book, lifted the receiver from the hook and began
dialing. There was no ring. I heard his voice. He had called just as I was dialing and I
picked up the phone before it rang. I told him what happened and the poor man certainly
thought I was lying and trying to destroy his sanity. I swore to him that I was telling the
truth but it was another one of those occurrences that leads one to believe that the Greeks
were right: we are the playthings of the Gods. It was another proof that They exist.
“Are you still writing?” he asked, believing, for the moment at least, that I was an
inveterate fabulist.
“No, just taking a lot of notes. I have to devote a little time to cab driving. You
know...”
“Yesss...” he broke in with his high pitched laugh. I expected him to go on, but he
was silent. I said, “Well, I’m convinced that it is impossible to publish a serious
novel.” Pause. “I have to make a living. You know...” I waited for him to say something
but he didn’t. I continued: “They hung Jesus Christ on the cross for writing the most
successful novel of all time.”
There was a silence and then again the high pitched titter. He said: “Shirley
Jackson is said to have written ‘The Lottery’ in two hours. Maybe you could rip off a few
things in your spare time.”
His tone of voice told me that he thought I was without Genius. When a man thinks
he has been wounded deeply he begins to search out the soft underbelly of his adversary
which is usually his pride. He was a man who had been humiliated by the University of
California and lately by the Gods and his incapacity to trust me.
I answered, “I didn’t know that. That’s really far out.”
He had easily located my dearest illusion: “Toil on, dull crowd, in extacy,...” A
small fire spread from my solar plexus. I expected him to take the opportunity to sink the
bare bodkin into my guts, but he waited, not really wanting to hurt me, being instinctively
noble.
I continued, “Kerouac wrote ‘On The Road’ in ten days. Didn’t Stendhal dictate
‘The Charterhouse of Parma’ in forty days?”
Even while I discounted him as a Neurotic, and therefore, as essentially a Comic
figure, I wanted him for a Mentor. We are like that. He was silent.
“Van, I really want to continue our friendship.”
Occasionally honesty served me well.
“I do too.”
We concluded our conversation as we should have, I invited him to dinner for his
birthday and he accepted. But the Gods were laughing at us.
I was a horse, and when I felt strong emotions I wanted to run. And so I donned my
tennis shoes and shorts, scampered out into the pale sun, and feeling like God running
through a parking lot, I ran along 60th street towards Telegraph Avenue and Bushrod field.
I needed to run. In High School I could run the 50 yard dash in 5.4 seconds and the
100 in 10.0. For me, sprinting was either a kind of controlled panic, or an ecstatic
Dionysian pursuit. I had worked out the theory that without both sports and dance, a
civilization would tear itself apart with sexual crimes and acts of terrorism, or expire from
State terrorism and the crimes of the State. I thought that the quality of sport and dance,
and of the music, which must accompany dance, determines the quality of a civilization.
And I don’t think that I was wrong. But I never learned to dance.
I returned, drenched in sweat. I worked as hard as a man getting in shape for the
Olympics: hundred-yard wind sprints, starts, quarter-mile sprints. My pulse was never
below 180 beats per minute. When I walked through the door they were all there: the three
women from the house next door sitting on the floor, each with her back against a different
wall. Billy and Chris were sitting with their backs against the other wall and looked like
two besieged men. They all looked up at me. Tilly said, “We decided to come over and
introduce ourselves. It didn’t look like you were ever going to do it so we took matters into
our own hands.”
It seemed to me that the metaphor was consciously intended to break the tension we
all felt for her missing hand. When I remembered all of the aborted attempts at
conversation over the last three months, I was astonished and too tired to do anything but
attempt to imitate a smile with a twitching grimace.
 “So you’re the old man of the group,” she said, challenging my silence. I looked at
Chris and Billy to see how they were reacting to her toothy, manic attack. They were both
terrified underneath their faked sophisticated calm.
I said, “I’m 25,” pause, “how old are you?”
“27.” Her eyes glittered.
Mary flailed her arms in mock despair. “They’re babies. It’s hopeless.”
I stared at her, not wanting to ask her age.
“I’m old enough to be your mother,” she said after a short, slightly painful silence.
Florence looked at Mary with emotion. “All right, I’m 29,” Mary confessed, looking
down at the disintegrating rug, in leprous shame.
“I’m 24,” Florence said, hardly waiting for a pause, her voice a triumphant quaver.
I thought of Peter on the night of his betrayal. Sweat was streaming from my forehead and
its salt was stinging my eyes. My legs were weak and I was in a cold sweat. The image of
Christ carrying the Cross to Golgotha entered my mind and I stood there feeling like a
martyr. Mercifully, Billy said something to Florence, drawing attention away from me, and
a flood of images coaxed me into cold, beloved rationality: a long-legged blond gazelle-
bitch whom I once loved, slammed her front door in my face and told me never to come
back, a black whore asked me if I wanted some pussy, and a pretty little plum-faced Jewess
accused me, behind my back of course, of trying to rape her because I knocked on her
apartment door one evening, unannounced.
“I’m going to take a shower.” I gave a little wave and smile, catching all of their
eyes and, relieved, went to my room. I took off my tennis shoes and socks and sat on the
mattress that was lying on the floor. The walls were bare except for a reproduction of Paul
Klee’s Sinbad the Sailor and the room was empty except for a chest of drawers and my
guitar, which stood in the corner. I felt like Sinbad skimming over the waters of the
unconscious, looking for some unsuspected prey, my spear poised. I could hear their
voices in the living room, 30 feet away.
I took off my shirt and lay on my bed, listening to their conversation. I slipped out
of my trunks and lay naked, contemplating the object of their desire. The curtain billowed
out through the open window exposing a row of distant windows and I imagined a grateful
old lady with binoculars and then a preadolescent girl wetting her panties. I coaxed it out
of its torpor, stroking it with detached boredom, but it refused to solidify. Raucous laughter
from the living room threatened to send it into hibernation, so I retreated to the safety of the
shower. Mutual masturbation with an Italian waitress that I had been flirting with for a
couple of weeks, produced an orgasm that, as usual, surprised me with its intensity and left
me feeling like a relationship with a female cocker spaniel would be preferable.

There is another vice, a monster so hideous in mien, so disgusting in feature,

altogether so beastly and loathsome, that, in very shame and cowardice, it hides its head
by day, and vampyre-like, sucks the very life-blood from its victims by night; and it may
perhaps commit more direct ravages upon the strength and reason of those victims than
even intemperance; and that vice is:
SELF-ABUSE

It cannot be that such loathsome wrecks of humanity as men and women reduced to
driveling idiocy by this cause, should be permitted to float upon the tide of life, without
some useful purpose: and the only one we can conceive, is that of awful beacons to make
others avoid,-- as they would eschew moral pullution and death, - the course which leads
to such ruin.

I dawdled, massaged Vitalis into my scalp, cut my toenails, took infinite pains
selecting a shirt from my minuscule wardrobe - to go with my jeans, and finally returned to
the living room, 45 minutes later. Florence was still there, talking to Billy who was
evidently smitten or cunt struck, or both. She was standing near the open door, leaning
towards it as if she were waiting for the house to tilt so she might gracefully slide out.
“Oh, hi. Where’s everybody else?” I asked, using my surprise that she was still
there to pretend that I was surprised that they were gone.
“Chris and Tilly both had to go to work and Mary had to do something- I don’t
remember.” She looked at me with attentive, observant eyes.
Billy broke into the silence. He said to her, “So you’re planning on staying for
awhile.”
“Well, if you want me to go...” She gave me a playful smile.
He said, “In California!” His face reddened.
I asked, “Where are you from?”
She looked at me with too much self-confidence, but she was interested.
“Connecticut. Well, New York. It’s really the same.”
“From Hartford?”
“Everybody asks me that. No, from a little town that’s even closer to New York
City. A suburb of Hartford.”
“Does your father sell insurance?” I returned her malicious smile. Billy
disappeared into the kitchen.
“No, he’s the only man in Connecticut who doesn’t sell insurance.”
We just looked at each other, both of us overconfident and predatory.
“What do you do for a living?” I asked.
She looked startled and evasive. “I’m in between jobs.”
We observed a moment of silence for the unemployed.
“What do you do?”
“I drive a cab.”
I had found that middle class women detest cab drivers. I was testing her, attacking
her really. Her eyes lit up with emotion.
“Oh, THAT’S why you come in at all hours of the night!”
That seemed like a pretty good response. I smiled for an answer. There was a very
long silence. We looked at each other until I became uncomfortable. I broke the silence,
“So you don’t work?”
When things get unbearable I tend to go for the jugular. She just looked at me.
Cock stirred again after his brief rest. I looked into the kitchen and Billy was pretending to
be busy and not listening. She was thinking, weighing me, and I persisted against her
silence, “What do you do with yourself?”
The question lent itself to at least two interpretations.
“Well, that depends on the mood I’m in.”
She gave a little laugh. I knew I was in over my head. She waited. Suddenly I felt
like running. I looked at her legs and they seemed enormous and her upper body small and
thin. Yet at the same time her legs seemed useless, immobile, like artificial legs. Her face
seemed to hover somewhere in the center of the room and it seemed like her legs were in
no definite place at all. Just then I realized that she was very tall.
“How tall are you anyway?”
“Five nine and a half.”
“Your legs are really long.”
She looked ashamed. I noticed that I had changed the subject and that I was trying
to regain control of my emotions by attacking her.
“People say that.” Her voice quavered, but she didn’t move. We looked at each
other in silence.
“What do YOU do with yourself?” She asked. She gave a mischievous smile again
and it was obvious that she wouldn’t be put off.
“All kinds of things.”
I wasn’t sure what we were talking about. But my member strained against its
confinement.
Mary yelled into the living room from the driveway outside, “Flo! Telephone.”
“OK, I’m coming.”
We moved towards the door. She asked, “Can I drop by to see you again?”
I was surprised. I pretended to myself that I didn’t believe it was possible for
women to be that direct.
“Of course.”
“Bye.” She walked down the stairs towards Mary and Julian, the black high school
student. Again I noticed a strangeness in her legs. She said, “Hi Julian.”
He gave her a big smile. “Hi Flo.”
The knife of jealousy operated on my lumbar and spermatic plexuses and it
surprised me because I didn’t even like her legs.

Chapter 8

Sciatica he cured it, by boyling his buttock.

John Aubrey, The Life of Jonas Moore

“Eisenhower is dead.”
“I read about that,” Pinson answered with calculated terseness.
I persisted, “It looks like the fifties are officially over. Granddad has finally died.”
I waited for some kind of response to my self-consciously strained insistence. After
all, Ike was the symbol of an age. Pinson had an obligation to respond. But he just looked
irritated by the implicit moralizing of my insistence. So-fucking-what, he seemed to say
with a wary look. Then, after a respectable silence, maybe for the Old Man, he said,
“Vivienne invited me over for a drink.”
“Who?”
“Rodney’s mother.”
“Far out-- when?”
“Just a few minutes ago. When I was taking out the garbage.”
“No kidding.”
 He asked, “Why don’t you come with me?”
“Right now?”
“That’s right dad.”
I didn’t really feel like a drink, and I didn’t think she would appreciate me coming
along, but I was curious. And he obviously needed protection. I thought about it for a few
seconds, contemplating the butterflies dancing on my ribs. Reason gave them no
importance.
I said, “Why not?”
She opened the door into the little living room with nothing in it but an old couch
and a two folding chairs. She was very black, and somewhere in her twenties.
“I thought you weren’t gonna make it,” she drawled to Pinson.
“I wouldn’t miss it for the world.”
Rufus was standing by the couch with a tobacco can in his hand. His eyes gleamed
as he moved the can in little circles and looked into it with satisfaction.
“Come on in an set down,” she said in her best White English. The room was dark.
The windows had sheets hanging over them instead of curtains.
Another man whom I had seen but never met was sitting on the couch. Neither he
nor Rufus met our eyes as we entered the living room and sat on the chairs.
She asked, “What you gonna have to drink?”
I could see five-year-old Rodney peering out nervously from another room.
“A beer’s good enough for me,” Pinson said in a slightly condescending tone.
“Yeah, I’ll have a beer too.” I tried to sound cautious. She disappeared into the
kitchen and, as if on cue, the man on the couch took out a packet of cigarette paper and held
out his hand toward Rufus.
The man asked Rufus, “You gonna keep all that weed for yourself or you gonna
give me some?” Rufus smiled and put a couple of pinches in the man’s hand. He began the
ritual of rolling a joint.
Vivienne returned with the beer. She sat on the couch with the man, while he rolled
the joint; Chris and I sat facing them. Rufus looked at me benevolently and then got up
abruptly and went into the kitchen. The silence was broken with popping beer cans.
Vivienne asked Chris, “You a student?” Then her eyes moved towards me.
Chris said, “Yeah, this is my last year.”
I said, “I’m almost finished too.”
The man lit up the joint, took a hit and held it out to Chris. Chris took a hit and then
passed it to me. I held up my hand, and lied, “No thanks, I’ve got to go to work after
awhile.”
Rodney appeared behind the couch, rubbing his eyes, and not looking at either Chris
or me. I watched him standing behind the couch but I couldn’t catch his eyes.
Suddenly the man swung around and said, “Get back in that room boy.”
The boy wailed, “I can’t sleep!”
“You want me to WHUP you boy?”
“No.”
“Then get your black ass back in there.”
Rodney hung his head and trudged back into the room. The man turned off his
anger as quickly as he had turned it on and asked, “You drive a Yellow Cab?”
It was more of a statement than a question. A look of admiration was in his eyes.
 “Yeah, part-time. Two or three times a week. Whenever I want to,” I said in a self-
deprecating tone, trying to recover from the sudden change in his mood, still reacting to his
quick violence.
Vivienne crossed her legs and her mini skirt hiked up further on her thighs. Chris
was looking at me sitting to his left and couldn’t see her sitting on the couch to his right.
The man asked, boyishly, incredulously, “Are you working tonight?”
Vivienne uncrossed her legs, and letting her dress ride high on her hips, displayed
her bush. She looked at me with the calculating, mildly optimistic look of a
businesswoman.
I said, “Yeah, its going to be a big night. There are some ships coming into
Alameda. Lots of servicemen will be taking cabs.”
Chris looked back to Vivienne and I watched his eyes blink, but he looked
steadfastly into her eyes, pretending not to notice that her cunt was in full view. He took a
swig of beer, hiding behind the can, and then turned his head towards the man. Vivienne got
up and went into the kitchen. The man followed her. I looked at Chris. I thought it was
pretty amateurish. He wouldn’t meet my eyes but didn’t seem worried.
“I’m going to leave you here on your own Pinson.” I stood up, waiting for them to
return so I could make a decent exit.
Once outside I realized that my heart was beating too fast. But instead of running, I
decided to do Yoga. I went to my room, opened Mircea Eliade’s book, Yoga: Freedom and
Immortality, and I read over the parts that I had underlined in the first two chapters.
I didn’t usually drive cab on Friday. For some reason it wasn’t a good night. But
after an hour of breathing rhythmically, concentrating on a single point, and maintaining my
body absolutely still, I thought it would be interesting to see how it would affect my capacity
to relate with my fares. So I went.
I ran into Michael Turnbull at the barn, fellow unpublished writer, 25-year-old
tippler, ex-actor and supposedly heir to a half defunct, and probably mostly imaginary,
fortune. At the top of a long breath, from the perspective of God Consciousness, I offered:
“How about a drink after work?”
“You’re on, my liege.”
I let the air out slowly as we advanced together past the gas pumps and towards the
time cards. I spied the Indian from Calcutta who always wore the same rumpled brown suit,
and he gave my God Conscious glance an avuncular sneer.
“Who is that asshole Hindu anyway, Mike?” I grumbled under my breath. I realized
that I was in the middle of a long slow exhalation and so I watched myself knock the
thought away like a ping pong ball.
“What?” Turnbull had the habit of asking me to repeat myself if I didn’t speak
loudly and clearly, whether he understood me or not.
“Nothing Mike.” I heard myself being condescending and then let the insight
bounce away. “Hey Gonzales.” I saluted a Mexican with whom I had had many a lively
political discussion. He said to me, “Jack, I want to talk to you.”
He eyed Turnbull distrustfully. Mike obligingly walked straight ahead while I
veered off towards the lot with Gonzales.
“I want to try something out on you.”
I looked at him blankly. I drew a long breath.
“I want to get your opinion on something.”
 “Sure.”
I let the air out slowly.
“But you have to promise first not to discuss it with anyone, not even your mother.”
I drew another breath, and an odd image flickered into my consciousness: my first
girlfriend, seven year old Anna Avantis standing near a roasting pit, wearing a large hat and
eating a turkey sandwich. Almost before the image arose, I knocked it out of my mind.
When I looked back at him he was looking away at a hostile world, not waiting for any
response. Then he looked at me again, searchingly, seriously. I answered, “Yeah, I guess
so, why not.” I didn’t tell him that I didn’t share secrets with my mother anyway.
“Well, the Indian Council is thinking very seriously of occupying Alcatraz, and we
are doing a kind of informal poll to see how people will react, but it has to be totally secret
because if the FBI and CIA gets word of it, we could have big trouble.”
“I thought you were Mexican?!”
“I’m half Cheyenne.”
I had just finished a book about the Sand Creek massacre.
“Occupy Alcatraz. What do you mean?”
“We’re going to stake a claim. I mean a symbolic claim. We want to publicize the
fact that America was once ours and now we can’t even find decent housing.”
His voice sounded a little hollow and tremulous, like he was giving a prepared
speech, but the idea sounded excellent, one I hadn’t even imagined. I remembered Colonel
John M. Chivington, former minister, with his band of volunteers at Sand Creek.
“That really sounds far out. I mean yeah.”

They ambushed and murdered at least two hundred innocent Cheyenne, men, women and
children.

“You won’t actually get it of course.”

“No, we don’t expect to. We just want to draw attention to our cause.”

They raped the wounded squaws before they killed them and then, to get souvenirs, they cut
off their fingers and ears for their rings and earrings, and their arms and hands for
bracelets.

“You’ll have most of the people behind you. I’m sure they have an enormous guilt
complex. Especially now that there’s no danger that you’ll ever get your land back.”
We looked around to make sure no one was listening. Turnbull looked at his
waybill, ostentatiously unconcerned about not being preferred by Gonzales.
“We really don’t want this to leak out. You can’t tell anyone. Your girl friend. No
one.”

They bashed out the brains of little children against the ground and cut out the genitals of
both men and women and exhibited them in Denver. They scalped almost all of them.

“You can count on me. I won’t mention it to anyone. When is it going to take
place?”
“It won’t be long now. I can’t say for sure. But we’re ready.”
 He saluted me and moved away. I went over to get my time card.
Turnbull asked, “What was that all about?”
“Oh, nothing. Just a lot of political nonsense. Nothing really important.”
I stuck my timecard through the opening in the window and got a waybill with a cab
number on it.
“What number cab did you get?”
“132”
“Oh, shit. You’re lucky, I got 239. That fucking thing goes down the street
sideways like a goddammed... giant yellow crab.” He raised his arms over his head and
crossed his eyes and formed his hands into claws and crept sideways for a few feet. “That
bastard Graham is out to get me.”
“It’s just a lottery, Turnbull. Anyway, Graham has nothing to do with it. It won’t do
any good to get pissed at him.”
He stopped ten feet from me and glared at the old man behind the window. His face
was red and he looked like he wanted to go back and punch him out. Suddenly I
remembered that I was practicing Pranayama. I drew an unsteady breath and let it out
immediately. I drew another one.
He said, “Oh, fuck it. I’ve driven it before.” He gave a disgusted wave of his hand.
“I’m just in a fucking bad mood. Don’t mind me. I’ll get over it.” He walked dejectedly
towards the cab. He turned around and walking backwards, said, “I’ll see you tonight.
About midnight?”
I was on my third breath. I took a few seconds to complete the inhalation. “Yeah.
No later than midnight.” I let the breath out slowly.
“Are you all right man?” he asked, squinting at me.
“Yeah, I’m OK.” I pretended to be surprised by the question but I knew I looked
like an idiot. I didn’t want to explain what I was doing so I said, “It’s Friday night
Turnbull.”
“I noticed.”
“I’ll see you tonight.”
He raised his hand in a salute, turned and walked towards his cab.

The first call out of the barn was a NO GO. A little black girl leaned out of the
window and I thought she said that a white man ordered the cab but then left. I stayed
relatively relaxed but I lost control of my breath completely. Going back to town, I stopped
at 105 and began meditating again. Then I got a call to the bar around the corner and, as I
was pulling out, a bus scraped my fender. After the accident report was filled out I went
back to 105 and a guy about 60 got into the cab.
“You know where I can find any girls?”
I knew several whores personally. One, named Juanita, had already given me her
telephone number. Of course, I also knew the places where whores hung out, but he looked
like he could be an undercover cop and I didn’t want to take any chances.
“No, I can’t help you there.”
“What? A cab driver who doesn’t know any whores?”
“Well, I see them around. But I’m not a pimp. Where are you going?”
“Greyhound.”
 “San Francisco?” A trip to San Francisco was worth ten short trips in Oakland.
“No, Oakland.”
I left him at the Greyhound station and went in to use the bathroom. I stood waiting
in front of the bathroom door for 5 minutes. I couldn’t tell if someone was in there or if it
was locked. After having been constipated for more than a few days, I didn’t want to lose
the opportunity, so I took a chance and went into the women’s bathroom. As soon as I got
my pants down and was sitting on the toilet, I heard the guy leave the men’s bathroom and
then, just as I was finishing, a woman and her daughter came into the bathroom and the little
girl pulled on the toilet door. “I have to pipi mama,” she piped in a clear, high pitched
voice.
I said as politely as possible, “Just a minute. I’m sorry. The men’s side was being
used.”
They made a quick exit, and I followed, ostentatiously tipping my Yellow Cab hat.
The woman seemed to look at me sympathetically but her husband glared at me as if I were
a pervert. The little girl held her crotch and pranced up and down yelling, “I have to pipi
daddy, I have to pipi.”
Returning to my cab, I saw the man I had brought to the bus station. He was sitting
on a bench in the waiting room with his hat over his crotch and a leer on his face. When I
got to my cab another man was sitting in the back seat. I took him for a short ride and then
drove around Oakland for awhile with short fares and finally got a call to the Whitt’s End
bar.
A Mexican woman and a white man were standing in front of the bar. She yelled at
him: “You son of a bitch. You gonna loan me ten dollars. You stingy son of a bitch.”
I’m standing there holding the door open like an idiot. He is drunker than she is.
“You cock su’er. Who’re you callin a someabithch.” He can hardly get the words
out. They are both screaming at each other but they manage to get into the cab. Once
inside the cab she seems to sober up. She pleads with him, “I have to have my insulin
pills.”

There is a stony silence. I say, “Maybe you ought to give it to her man.”
I can’t bear the thought of this poor woman being without her insulin pills. She
finally gets the money and then gets out of the cab. I drive him on to the Buffalo and the
dispatcher tells me to go into the Buffalo and get another fare. I go in and find two more
drunks, a man and woman, having a fight. She comes out with a bottle of beer in her hand.
They are both smashed. They have an argument over who should get into the cab first. She
tells him to get in first, so he accuses her of being a queer. She says, “Yeah, maybe I am.
But so are you.”
Then he looks at me and calls me a queer but in such a slurred voice that I don’t
figure out what he said until I’m sitting in the cab. When we get to their apartment she tries
to pay me with play money. After I get the dollar fifty and they are out of the cab, I plead
with the dispatcher, “I’ve had it man. Get me out of town.”
“What’s that 132?”
“Oakland’s a madhouse!”
“OK 132. Try Highland. Back Entrance.”
It’s the Highland hospital psychiatric ward.
“You son of a bitch.”
 “What’s that 132?”
I scream into the microphone: “I said Oakland’s a madhouse. I didn’t say I wanted
the Oakland MADHOUSE.”
“OH, oh, it sounds like 132 is mad!”
“Very funny,”
And then I put the microphone back on the hook and yell to myself, “That’s it you
fuckers. I’m deadheading to the airport you goddammed assholes. I’ll take Murphy one
more time and that’s it. I’m finished.”
After taking Mrs. Murphy and her crazy daughter home from the Highland
Psychiatric Emergency Clinic, I deadhead to the airport and I am almost there when the
dispatcher sends me half way back to town and the guy goes for a long ride almost back to
the airport.
“Well there’s justice in the world after all,” I say to the dispatcher as I check into
705.
“132, get Lucky supermarket.”
I don’t have the strength to scream at him: “There’s no justice but who gives a fuck.”
I load and unload the lady’s groceries for 60 cents and thank her, politely, for a ten cent tip
and then I drive around in East Oakland feeling like a martyr, snap some angry remarks at a
couple of teen age girls, let them out, and then dead head back to the airport. Finally, after
telling myself that it was a really bad night, I am sitting in front of the airport at stand 720,
the airport is very dead, and I remember that I am supposed to be meditating. So, for about
an hour I read The Tao De Ching, begin breathing rhythmically again, and just relax.
Then I get out of the cab because a plane has just landed. I woman motions me to
pick up her bag. She is blond, about thirty five and has the same crease between her eyes
that Van Decken has. She is a very neurotic lesbian and by the time I drop her off in
Richmond, I have forgotten that I was doing Yoga and I don’t remember until the next
morning.

Once back to Oakland, I checked into the Greyhound Station again and a young
black soldier got into the cab and I took him to the Oakland Army base. He said he was
going to Travis at 6 the next morning to be flown to Vietnam. A few yards from the gate of
the Army base, a very drunken seaman waved me down and I took him to Downtown
Oakland. He pulled out a very large wad of twenties and handed them to me. He asked me
to give him back the right change because he wasn’t wearing his glasses. I almost stole
twenty dollars from him because I knew he would wake up broke the next morning anyway,
but at the last minute I decided not to. Then, as I watched him stumble off into The First
Down bar, I felt stupid for not stealing the twenty dollars. I took a couple of drunks from
The First Down over to Cy’s and even though it was only 11:30, I went back to the barn.
The graveyard shift wasn’t there yet and the swing shift was still out. Only Curly and I were
standing in the cubicle adding up our fares.
Curly said, “You see that motherfucker?”
I saw a middle aged man disappearing into the shadows of the Oakland Ghetto
towards his parked car.
“I’m going to get that motherfucker.”
 Curly was a balding black man with a shaved head. He was just under 5’ 8”. He
worked out with weights three hours a day but he couldn’t pass the Oakland Police physical
because he was too short.
“He steals fares. If there’s ANYTHING that I can’t stand it’s a man who steals fares.
They’re the lowest scum in the universe.”
“Shit Curly. He doesn’t even speak English. He probably doesn’t even know what
he’s doing.”
“He knows all right. I’m going to get him.”
I didn’t say anything. He didn’t expect me to. The conversation was over. The
driver that he was going to get, was a middle age Scandinavian man who never talked to
anyone. The rumor was that he was running away from the Swedish police, and that he was
hiding out in America. He always wore the same suit and he was about 50.
A middle aged black cab driver came into the cubicle with his waybill, and ignoring
Curly, whom he didn’t like, asked, “How was your night?”
“Lousy.”
“One of them, huh.”
“Yeah, I had one really depressing fare. To Richmond.”
“Was he a nigger?”
I looked at him, too tired to reply intelligently.
“Tell me, I’ll bet he was a nigger. I won’t pick the motherfuckers up after dark.”
“No, no. It was a dike. Nothing really. Just a lot of depressing people.”
“I’ve had worse,” he answered, “whatever it was, I’ve had worse.”
Turnbull pulled into the garage and I thought that maybe they really were after the
poor bastard: he was right, the cab seemed to move into the lot sideways, like a giant yellow
crab. It shook and rattled as it idled in front of the gas pumps. I gave him a wave and
stuffed my waybill into the little semicircle. The Old Man, Bob Graham, was standing there
with his black woolen cap over his bald head. He said, “Jack, the RoadMan wants to see
you.”
“What?”
In over a year I hadn’t been in trouble for anything. I couldn’t believe it.
“Where is he?”
“He said to meet him at the Blue Dolphin.”
“The Blue Dolphin?”
I suddenly realized that my stomach was in a knot, I was tense all over, and I felt like
kicking someone.
“What is the problem?”
“There’s a police report on you.”
“What are you talking about?”
My voice was shrill with disbelief. I suddenly remembered that I had been roaring
back and forth to the airport, doing about 70 on Doolittle Drive, a 35 mph speed zone.
“OH shit.”
Graham’s eyes looked sympathetic. I questioned them for an explanation.
“I don’t know what it is Jack. They don’t tell me anything. I’ve only worked here
for 35 years.”
 I turned and saw Turnbull approaching from the shadows of the parking lot. He had
a scraggly, reddish beard and his dark brown hair almost touched his shoulders. A hundred
Yellow Cabs were parked behind him.
“What’s up.”
“Shit. The road man wants to see me.”
“That punch drunk asshole Gas duh polis? What does he want with you?”
“The police want to talk to me.”
“What did you do, punch someone out?” He gave an encouraging smile.
“No. I was driving too fast on Doolitle. I might have been doing 80.”
He blinked. I was exaggerating but we all drove at least 60 on Doolittle Drive. I
continued, almost talking to myself, trying to figure it out, “I can’t believe it. I was doing
Yoga all night. But I know I was really hauling ass part of the time, anyway. That’s
probably it. I just hope the fuckers don’t put me in jail.”
“Is he in there waiting for you?”
He motioned towards the office with his head.
“No, he’s waiting at the Blue Dolphin. I’m supposed to meet him there.”
He stared at me in disbelief for a moment and then broke into an irritatingly ecstatic
smile.
“Do you mind if I go with you?”
“No, I wish you would.”

Gazopoulous was an ex-pugilist that no one had ever heard of. He was in his early
fifties and had apparently fought around Oakland in the late thirties and early forties. His
ears were partially cauliflowered and his nose was bobbed. He had a reputation as a local
small time underworld figure.
He inspired fear, not for himself as he liked to think, but for the underworld
connections that you imagined that he had. Actually, I never saw him with any underworld
types, but there was no question that he projected that image. Sometimes I thought it came
from the dime novels he was always reading and hid whenever he thought anyone noticed.
He seemed to have a certain respect for me because I had injured my ear playing
basketball and it looked like I might have been a boxer. So I had told him that I had some
amateur fights but actually I had only spent one summer in the Oakland YMCA as an
occasional sparring partner for Hurricane Jackson. I was 19, and I was fast and strong, but I
actually had to pretend not to be as good as I was, and I spent the whole summer trying not
to get hurt making Hurricane look good. If I had decked him I had no doubt that they would
have beat the hell out of me in the parking lot. I carried away from that experience a very
healthy fear of the underworld and for the capacity that they have to really hurt you, and it
spilled over to him.
I affected an insouciant bravado around him but underneath I was terrified of what I
felt was a capacity to maim or kill without conscience. Let the rest of the world be advised:
the American underclass is by far the most violent and venal in the world. It has the soul of
the fiercest people on earth, the vanquished American Indian, and the manners of a people
that were systematically deprived of any culture, its former slaves, the American Negro.

He was sitting at a table with a group of people that I had never seen before. And
there was a uniformed cop sitting next to him. I couldn’t believe it. I wondered how fast
they had clocked me and I wondered if he would fire me right there. When I spotted him I
put on my Yellow cab hat. He was laughing about something and had a drink in his hand. I
told Mike to stay behind at the bar and I approached the table. He didn’t see me until I got
to the table and then he looked at me without recognition. Then he looked up at my Yellow
Cab hat.
“Yeah, Jack.” He took out a sheet of paper, unfolded it and then realizing that he
couldn’t read it, groped in his pockets for his reading glasses. Everyone at the table stopped
talking and looked at me.
“We’ve got a complaint here against you.”
I squared myself off for the coming blow.
“Were you at the Greyhound... let’s see... at 4:30 this afternoon?”
“Let’s see. Yeah I think so. Why?”
“A woman and her daughter... they say you were in the woman’s bathroom. What
do you say?”
They were all looking at me.
“I... Yeah.” Pause. “I really had to go. There was a guy in...”
Gazopoulous had an amused smile on his face and the rest of the table looked like
they were trying not to laugh. The cop interrupted me with mock seriousness. “We have
laws in Oakland and they have to be obeyed. When a citizen makes a complaint we have to
do something about it.”
He looked at me with an ambiguous smile, almost as if he were trying to apologize
to me but didn’t know how to do it and was tempted to hide his confusion behind his
uniform.
Blood was in my face and I was shaking a little. As I looked down at him, trying to
think of what to say, I noticed that his lips had become moist and the rims of his eyes had
reddened. His head turned slowly from the vertical and I thought that he looked like a father
who was struggling against an ancient need to hit his son with a belt. I said, “I just didn’t
think... I mean...”
I looked at the women sitting at the table for sympathy but they were looking at him.
“Don’t let it happen again. Do you understand me?”
He pretended not to be surprised at the bestial sound in his voice, and I thought he
fingered the edges of it and savored it as if he were discovering for the first time what it was
to be a cop. I answered dryly, “Yeah, sure.”
They were all looking at me again, but this time it seemed that their eyes were full of
disgust and their faces were hard and that they expected a show of remorse. A surge of
scornful mirth rose from my lowest chakra and I filled my lungs with their nicotine laden air
and felt like telling them all to fuck off. But in a moment of weakness, I thought that the
only way to get them off my back was to play the role that they had choreographed for me.
And so I smirked and said, “It won’t happen again.”
I completed the sentence to myself, “you fucking assholes,” and I gave them an
ironic smile that was immediately slashed by the peroxide blond. I consoled myself by
noticing that she looked like a whore but I felt like hitting her in the stomach anyway.
Gazopoulous said, “Jack, get out of here.”
He had a look of disgust in his face and instinctively, I stood my ground. I felt my
fists clench slightly and I looked at the other faces. They were looking at him with a
mixture of anxiety and mirth and after a tense silence he broke into a forced smile that made
him look like a grinning wolf.
Without saying anything, I turned around and walked towards Turnbull who was
sitting at the bar. He asked, “Would you like me to order you a beer?”
“No, let’s get out of here.”

We walked along the harbor, past the boats and over to Jack London’s Last Chance
Saloon where we ordered a pitcher of beer. I harangued him for a few minutes about the
impossibility of publishing anything serious while I watched a thunderous cloud of poison
construct itself just over his right jaw bone, causing the muscles there to vibrate slightly. I
tried to dissipate the tension with humor.
I asked, “Do you know who the Governor’s favorite author is, Mike?”
His eyes narrowed and he sat back in his chair and pulled in a long breath and raised
his shoulders as the poison migrated through successive muscle groups. The mandala of a
ram looking for a choice spot on his own butt seemed to symbolize his mood but I braced
myself anyway.
“Jack, I don’t write for INDIVIDUALS, I write for aspects of people.”
I imagined that he was haughty and supercilious and I felt like removing his jaw
bone and grinding it into bone meal. But I attacked Louis L’Amour’s readers instead.
He persisted, saying in a very soft, tired voice, “I don’t write for any particular
audience. I think that’s a drag. But I do write for certain aspects of people. I appeal to
those aspects.”
I poured another glass of beer and lied to myself because I knew that I was too
emotional to listen to reason: I pretended that it made sense. “For example?”
“Well, the desire to laugh deeply... to laugh your way past all sense of isolation
and…The feeling that true sorrow is one of the greatest luxuries ever bestowed on human
beings.”
His voice was sympathetic and soothing, but I couldn’t hear the meaning of the
words. In self-defense, he began, surreptitiously, to lecture the people sitting next to us.
“The aspects towards which I appeal are found in all sorts of people. Shits and saints,
squares and hips, straights and gays, artists and general managers...” He waved his hand in
the air and eyed me apprehensively. “All I’m saying is don’t be too picky about your
audience.”
My anger dissipated itself, not in what he said, but in the observation that he
resembled the picture of Walt Whitman that was hanging on his apartment wall. I noticed a
warming fire flickering in my stomach but I thanked the beer instead of him.
He asked, “By the way what are you writing anyway?”
“Oh, nothing creative at the moment. An article on intelligence and an article on
writers and, uh, something on Mick Jagger,... maybe.” I had difficulty getting the words out.
I thought about Florence, the girl with the long legs.
“Who is it anyway?” he asked.
“What?”
“Reagan’s favorite author.”
“Oh, it’s...”
“Don’t tell me. It’s probably Donald Duck.”
 That reminded me of something I had read in the San Francisco Chronicle that
morning. I said, “That reminds me. Did you know that Donald Duck’s works have been
translated into more languages than Lenin’s?”
He laughed. “No, I didn’t know that.”
“Yeah, I read that this morning in the Stink Sheet.”
I took a swig from my third glass. After a silence, I muttered, half to myself, “Well
anyway, it might as well be.”
He didn’t hear what I said and answered, “Yes, I suppose quacking is more
congenial to the human race than Lenin’s theory of imperialism.”
“No, I was still thinking about Reagan’s favorite author. I was going to say, it ought
to be Donald Duck. He’s probably more relevant to the American mind than Louis
L’Amour.”
After a short, transforming silence, we broke out laughing.
He lifted his glass, “Cheers.”

Chapter 7

... If the impossible so long yearned for

Tapped at the window, like a robin with a frozen
heart,
Who would get up to let it in?

O. V. L. Miloscz Symphonie de Septembre, Paris (n.d.)

Juanita asks, “How’s business?”

“Oh, its all right.”
She leers at me playfully, “What can I do for you?”
“I’ve got more women than I can handle, Juanita.”
“I wouldn’t charge you nothin. How about a little...” She makes a motion with her
hand, smiles again. Her teeth are rotten, but she is in her twenties, and pretty. She has thick
chestnut hair and a full, well-proportioned body. Her skin is white and soft.
Trying to change the subject, I say, “I’ll bet you could tell me a lot of stories.”
“I was going to ask you somethin.”
“What?”
She hesitated for a moment, sizing me up. “Well, I wonder if you would do any
baby sitting for me?”
I assume that she is insulting me: telling me that since I don’t do anything, maybe
I’m only good for baby-sitting. I get embarrassed. I say sarcastically, “Sure, I charge a
dollar an hour.”
“You don’t do nothin.”
 I don’t have the slightest idea what she really means. She seems to be very nice and
I’m thinking that she doesn’t have a mean bone in her body: she can’t even insult me with
feeling.
I try to let her know that I’m not a eunuch, “I do things.” Silence. I continue
awkwardly, “I’ll bet you do everything.”
No response.
“Do you ever get any women customers?”
She laughs. “That’s a funny story. I mean the first time. I thought she was checkin
out the room for her husband or boy friend or somethin. I kept saying, ‘Well where is he?’
She just said ‘let’s get started.’ And I kept waitin for him to show up. I couldn’t believe it.
She almost had to hit me over the head. I never did nothin like that before.” She paused and
coyly pursed her lips. “I was so nye-eeve.”
“What happened?”
Silence.
She asked, “Do you like shows?”
I get embarrassed again. I think she is insulting me again by changing the subject to
the movies. We arrive at the motel. A truck driver, who is standing by some bags, waves.
He yells, “I called a cab about a half an hour ago. I’ve got a truck waitin for me.
I’m in a real big hurry.”
I wave good-bye to Juanita and she walks towards her daughter who is standing in
front of an open motel door. The girl is about 8 or 9 years old and is staring at me like a
thirty year old whore.
I decide to take the truck driver, risking being accused of stealing a fare. Just for
conversation I say, “I hear you guys make a fortune.”
He looks at me out of the corner of his eye. “Yeah, we don’t do too bad but we’re
never home.”
Silence.
I ask, “Is it hard to get a job driving truck these days?”
“Stay away from it. Are you married?”
“No.”
“Well I used to be. I worked 80 hours a week. I made sixty, seventy thousand a year
sometimes. I bought her a beautiful house, a boat, a cabin. I sent her daughter through
college. I don’t even know my daughter. We’re strangers. I was never home.”
“Shit. It sounds bad.”
“I found out she was cheating on me all of those years. She divorced me and took
the house and the cabin.”
The fist is in my guts again. He gives me a large tip and tells me to stay away from
the trucking business.
Then I get three bars in a row. Two stumble bums and a raucous bitch who’s about
seventy, with bright, dyed, henna hair who wants to take my head off because I’m young,
good looking and don’t find her attractive.
I decide to deadhead to the airport. Stand 710, by the Edgewater West Hotel, is
empty. I check in on the radio and sit for twenty minutes. The radio is dead. Nothing, all
over the East Bay, silence. So I deadhead to stand 720, in the airport. There are no cabs but
there is a large crowd of people. Obviously a plane has just landed. I decide not to tell the
dispatcher. If I get an Edgewater I can come right back and try for a longer fare before the
people get wise and call the cab company.
I pull up in front of the main entrance, the only cab in a crowd of people. I turn
around and see a large man about fifty waving at me. It’s Ted Williams. I can’t believe it.
He is with a smaller, beefy blond man. They get in the cab.
“Edgewater West please.”
I want to say, “Yes sir, Ted, whatever you say,” but obviously that won’t do. So I
start off, trying to think of something more dignified to say. But it’s too late.
Ted says to the smaller man, “I never chased women when I was playing. Just led
the clean life. It pays in the end.”
I can see them in my rear view mirror. The smaller man is smiling like a
mischievous little kid being disciplined by his father: When he gets away he’s going to do it
all over again but he has to pretend to be listening while the old man talks.
“Some people said I was square. Hell, I hardly even left my hotel room. I used to
have hamburgers sent to my room. I never ate any of that fancy food.”
The smaller man is still smiling with a barely concealed smirk that says, “This guy
is really stupid, I mean this isn’t even believable.” He looks out of the window.
“I’m going to tell you one thing Denny. Don’t listen to those good-time guys. With
the drugs and the fast women.”
I can’t believe it. He’s talking to Denny McClain, the first pitcher to win more than
30 games since Dizzy Dean. I feel like saying, “Yeah Ted, you tell him Ted,” but I’m not
ten years old. There is a painful silence. It feels like I’m supposed to say something
appropriate. My mind is whirring. I’m thinking of something to say like, “The Senators
are really going Ted,” or, “Are you going to win thirty games again this year Denny?”
Everything I think of sounds inappropriately juvenile and intrusive. There is a heavy
silence. In the rear view mirror, I notice McClain looking longingly at a group of private
airplanes to our left. He says, “I’d rather be flying today Ted.”
Silence.
Ted says, “Flying airplanes interferes with baseball Denny. I didn’t let anything
interfere with baseball. Baseball has to be your whole life.”
McClain’s face is burning with suppressed rage. Clearly he wants to tell Williams to
stuff it but he’s holding himself back. He can’t wait to get out of the cab. We arrive at the
Edgewater West Hotel, and I still can’t think of anything to say. Williams gets out of the cab
and makes a large fist outside the window, motioning impatiently for me to roll it down. I
stretch across the front seat, roll down the window, and smile up at him. He glares
menacingly at my boyish smile and my face drops.
“Keep the change.”
A thirty-five cent tip from the greatest baseball player that ever lived.
McClain has already disappeared into the hotel and has obviously ditched him.

I went back to the airport and picked up a very angry-looking black man who had a
large Afro and was wearing a very expensive-looking beige suit. He had a large and heavy
suitcase and he stood by impatiently while I loaded it into the trunk and bashed my thumb
against the license plate. I took him to the Lakeside Hotel and decided not to go back to the
airport. I bought a National Inquirer for laughs, and ate my lunch, which consisted of a
smashed tuna fish sandwich and two large carrots.
 I’m sitting in the cab reading The National Inquirer.
“Man Wakes Up after Thirty Years sleep.” Turns out to be an article about L-dopa.
It is supposed to be a miracle cure for Parkinson’s disease. The article talks about the flu
epidemic of 1918. The flu virus caused some people to fall asleep and never wake up. L-
dopa supposedly cures them. After thirty years of sleeping they wake up into a world of the
future. The article says that after ten years the virus vanished as mysteriously as it appeared.
No one knows why. Killed more people than World War I. 50 million people!
Vietnam. I can’t believe that I applied for Conscientious Objector status. When I
was a kid, I wanted to fly a jet airplane more than anything else... but there’s no way I’m
going to Vietnam... The Gulf of Tonkin Incident a complete lie... even the sinking of the
Lusitania was a put-up job. Fifty years later it is admitted that it was a spy ship and the
whole incident was designed to get us into World War I. And Roosevelt knew about the
Japanese planes coming into Pearl Harbor. Turnbull says they were tracked in on radar and
they played music for them. The Gulf of Tonkin was just one more put up job. A
Vietnamese fisherman shot a pistol? at a battleship? It’s Johnson’s War. Congress has never
declared war.
It’s incredible... Johnson never would have been elected to the Senate and never
have been President if they hadn’t dug up 200 votes in Alice, Texas. It’s hard to believe that
Hugo Black and was in on it, and that even Truman was in on it. They wanted a Democratic
Senator from Texas and they didn’t want Republican Governor Stevenson... So Hugo Black
blocked the Supreme Court investigation... How did Lady Bird get control of that radio
station in Austin? Daley won the election for Kennedy the same way Johnson won the
election in Texas.
Kennedy. The Secret Service was worried about security because he stopped to
screw women he’d never seen before while the agents waited outside the door. His mistress
says she smoked marijuana with him in the White House and he wouldn’t smoke a third
joint because he was afraid Khrushchev might call on the Hot Line... Mary Meyer was her
name. Murdered a year after Kennedy’s assassination. The murderer never caught. Her
secret diary was turned over to the CIA and then it was burned. She spent two or three
nights a week in the White House during two years of his Presidency. And the Marilyn
Monroe thing was going on at the same time! Bobby was seen accompanying a doctor who
was carrying a black bag to her apartment on the night of her death. Turnbull says she was
carrying his baby and Bobby had her murdered. That’s got to be bullshit. How many times
did Kennedy try to kill Castro, was it... 15 times? Oswald probably didn’t have anything to
do with the assassination. It must have been Castro. Even Johnson thought so. I mean after
the Bay of Pigs invasion...I read somewhere that Johnson thought “Castro got Kennedy
before Kennedy got Castro.” Why did Oswald go to Alice, Texas the day before the
assassination? Probably just one more absurd coincidence... But it seems too much of a
coincidence. That guy, what was his name (?) has a ranch there...
Anyway, after August 15, I’ll be 26 and too old for the draft. And I have two more
appeals left. No problem. Too old! Too old and I can still run the hundred in maybe ten-
five. Well, for sure under eleven flat. And I can bench press close to 250 pounds. Too old!

“158 are you anywhere near 202 yet?”

“Yeah I’m as close as I’ll ever be.” I had been sitting on the stand for a half an hour.
 “Get room 13, motel Funk.”
“Very fun-ky. Where is motel Funk?”
“Sorry 158, that’s motel Lakeside.”

I had knocked on the motel door and I was about ready to go back to my cab when a
woman opened the door a crack and peered at me from the darkness of her room.
She said, “Get me a bottle of wine.”
A taffy colored face with the features of a fashion model, puffy eyes, very thick,
curly blond hair, no makeup, large, almost athletic body, stood in the doorway.
I asked, “With what?”
“I’ll pay you when you get back.”
Her eyes pleaded and commanded at the same time. She was a woman who was
used to getting men to do things for her. It cost her a great deal to show even hint of need.
She was about 35.
“What kind do you want?”
“Oh, it doesn’t matter. Something cheap.”
I thought Ripple, but didn’t say it. Then I thought about the rubber that I carried
with me in my wallet for so long that it made a ring on the outside of my wallet and when I
finally took it out of its wrapping, a rotten smelling fluid oozed out and the rubber
disintegrated in my hands.
She must have thought I was considering turning her down. Anyway, it seemed like
she was looking at me like I was a chump who didn’t know a good deal when it was staring
me in the face: a bottle of Ripple for a piece of ass.
“Sure, I’ll be back in a few minutes. But I’ll have to leave the meter running,”

Jack didn’t want her to think that he was making an exchange.

“Sure, anything. Just get the wine.” She shut the door in my face. I felt safe in my
thoughts about VD as I drove to the liquor store: if I got it myself it wouldn’t be so bad, I
reasoned, but I had a date to go out with Florence and I didn’t want to give it to her. That
would be too much. I couldn’t buy a rubber, there wasn’t a drugstore open in town. But my
ribcage vibrated in anticipation anyway. When I returned, she wouldn’t open the door.
“Goddammed bitch.” I didn’t say the words, but I banged on the door. “Well fuck a
duck.”
It was one of Turnbull’s expressions. For some reason, it seemed appropriate. A
voice came from inside, “Just a minute.”
By the time she answered, I had already been standing there for a minute. I was
relieved that I hadn’t been stiffed.
She opened the door and after a clumsy attempt to tie the cord of her housecoat, let
her hands drop to her sides, pretending not to notice that she hadn’t succeeded. It settled
slightly open, partially revealing magnificent bare legs and a sheer nightie. Her black bush
was visible through the lingerie, in the light from the street lamps.
“Come in.”
“Sure.” She shut the door behind me.
“Three dollars and thirty cents,” I said.
“I can’t pay right now.”
 Stiffed.
“They threw me out. I’ve been here for a week. I don’t have any money. I’m sick.
Feel my forehead.”
She grabbed my hand and put it on her forehead. It was very hot and clammy.
“You’ve got a temperature. Do you have a thermometer?”
“I don’t need no thermometer.”
“If your temperature gets over 105 you could die.”
“Don’t TALK about no dyin.”
She eyed the bottle of Ripple. I grabbed its neck, pulled the bag from around it, and
handed the bottle to her. She took it, and her eyes darkened. I noticed that her hands were
small and delicate and I thought she looked like a white woman trapped in an African body.
Her cantaloupe breasts were burgundy tipped, and her bush was just, well, “there.” It had
nothing secret or mysterious about it, it was simply there between her legs. Her hands and
shoulders and feet and face were almost white and her eyes seemed to say that they weren’t
hers; that they belonged more to me, a white man, than to her and I could have them and
take them with me if I wanted to; that she didn’t need them. But the hair was hers. It was
blond and thick and sweaty, and I wondered what it would be like to plunge my fingers into
it and nuzzle against it, just behind her ears.
She handed me a plastic cup and unscrewed the cap of the wine bottle. She started
to pour the wine and then said, petulantly, “No, you pour it for me,” and handed me the
bottle. She put the back of her hand to her forehead, like a southern belle, and lay back on
the bed. She allowed her housecoat to arrange itself so that I could see all, closed one eye
firmly, and peered slyly out of the very slightly opened one. When I noticed her looking, I
poured Ripple on my hand.
She said, “I’m sick, I feel so bad. You’ve got to help me.”
“Maybe you ought to go to the hospital.”
She pulled her housecoat together indignantly and sat up in bed and stared
malevolently at me. “I ain’t goin to no HOSPITAL.”
I thought, “Nigger talk again.”
“Don’t TAKE me to no hospital.”
I felt like an ambulance driver. “I’m not takin you anywhere. If you’re sick, you
ought to go to the hospital.”
She looked down, composed herself and answered in a soft, white voice, “I’m afraid
to go to the hospital. They’ll tell me I’m dyin and I don’t want to know.”
She sank down onto the bed, carefully covering her body. I could see sweat in her
hair and on her neck. She seemed resigned. Then she started in again. “You’ve got to help
me. They threw me out. I don’t care about HIM, but SHE is in on it. He’s fucking on her.
They threw me out two weeks ago. Out of my own house.” She moaned, pulled her knees
to her chest, and rocked her body back and forth.
“Who is SHE?”
“My daughter.”
“He’s your boyfriend?”
“Nooo.” She rocked back and forth again and moaned.
I heard myself ask, “He’s fucking on his own daughter?”
“I’m gonna kill myseff.”
I watched her thrash back and forth on the bed.
 “Why don’t you have a drink.” I handed her a glass of Ripple. She composed
herself as quickly as she had fallen apart, took the glass from my hand and drank it down in
one gulp. I poured her another one and poured one for myself.
“How old is she?”
“Fifteen. I knew he was fuckin on her. But now they done threw me out of my own
house. You got to help me.”
I didn’t know what she wanted. I went over to the bed and put my hand on her
forehead again. It was burning. I didn’t say anything. There were beads of sweat in her
hair, which was a perfumed fleece that covered her head and neck like wool.

Are you not the oasis where I dream, and the gourd
From which I draw in long draughts the wine of memory?

I patted her head and said, “I wish I could help you some way,” and smiled down
at her. A horrified look came over her face and her eyebrows tensed into a menacing frown.
“You one of them JESUS freaks?”
My face turned red. “No, of course not.” I said to myself, “Fucking hypocrite.
Since you’re afraid to fuck her you’ve decided to help her.”
“Get out of here,” she said in a tone of voice that didn’t really mean what it said.
I felt like a fool with a red face trying to look nonchalant. I looked at my plastic cup and
sloshed the wine around and probably said something to myself like, “What in the fuck
would Humphrey Bogart do in a situation like this?” I started to say, “Not until I finish my
drink,” but I knew that she wasn’t in a position to tell anybody anything.
She fell back on the bed and began moaning again. I knew that she wanted me to
fuck her now, but, as Mick Jagger would say, it was pointing straight to the floor. I had a
vision of Florence standing in the middle of my living room, her body was small and her
legs very long and fat. And I gazed at the body on the bed with algebraic desire.
She said, “I got to go to the bathroom.”
She got up and went into the bathroom. She moved her hand to close the bathroom
door, but then didn’t. She undid her nightie and slid down onto the toilet seat with a quick
glance to make sure that I was watching. Her breasts jiggled and her bush grew up into her
belly and I thought I could see the wine red lips of her vagina laughing at me, standing there
with my finger up my ass. I wanted to bury my face in her bush but my body swayed
towards the door. Her head fell and her breasts sagged and she pissed loudly into the bowl.

I was heading towards the barn, even though it was just a little past 11, when the
dispatcher asked, “158 are you anywhere around downtown?”
For no particular reason I answered truthfully, “Yeah, as a matter of fact, I am.”
“Why don’t we give you a better fare this time. He’ll be standing at the entrance to
the Tribune Building.”
I wondered how he knew the last fare was a lousy one. “This one better be good.”
“We try to please, 158”
“I noticed.”
The guy was dressed in a dark suit. “The image of Conservatism.” I thought.
“Can you take me to the San Francisco Airport?”
“No problem. Where’s your suitcase?”
 “Oh, it’s just me. No suitcase.”
“Sure, no problem, get in.”
He was probably in his early thirties but he looked younger. Just looking at him
made me weary of driving cab. I wished that I had been a straight arrow, had got a normal
job, and married the girl across the street, even though I knew for certain that I would have...
I killed the thought.
I asked, “What’s a guy like you doing going to the airport in the middle of the
night?”
“If I told you, you wouldn’t believe it.”
He sounded like a regular guy, open, uncomplicated. For some reason it seemed like
I could unburden myself and he would understand.
I said, “I could have been a straight arrow. I was one of the best students in my
high school. I was a really good athlete. But I had to be a rebel. A philosopher. I really
envy guys like you sometimes. You probably have a beautiful wife. A great job. Lot’s of
money.”
“Don’t count on it. If I’m so happy why do you think I’m in a cab in Oakland in the
middle of the night?”
I wasn’t expecting an answer like that.
He continued, “I do have a good job. Better than I ever thought I would.”
We were approaching the toll gate of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge.
“I work for the Executive branch of the government.”
He had an open face and sounded like one of the guys that I used to play football
with.
“Oh yeah? Do you ever get to see the President?”
“I see him every day.”
I was stunned but I didn’t want the tone of the conversation to change so I pretended
that I wasn’t.
I said, “They say Nixon is such a bastard. But he doesn’t really seem that bad to
me. I mean he seems like an intelligent man trying to do an impossible job.”
“Don’t believe it. He is the coldest son-of-a-bitch you’d ever want to meet.”
He let it sink in. The San Francisco skyline came into view on our right as we emerged
from the Treasure Island tunnel.
“I mean I see him every day almost, and he never says anything personal. He’s all
business. He’s the coldest son-of-a-bitch I’ve ever known in my life.”
“That’s too bad.” My voice was meek. Like a little kid who’s been told there’s no
Santa Claus. “I’m not going to argue with you, you ought to know.”
He continued, “Sometimes I wish I had a life like yours. Without complications. It
may have its drawbacks, but maybe it isn’t so bad being a philosopher. I wish I had time to
just sit back and think. Things happen so fast that I never have time to analyze anything.
I’m in the fast lane and I can’t get out. I have no choice.”
“I’m definitely in the slow lane. I get to do a lot of thinking but no one listens to
me.”
It seemed that we had defined ourselves and there was nothing more to say. The
enormity of his position was beginning to take effect; I felt us sliding into a tense silence. I
was practiced at doing that and he had probably ridden in almost as many different cabs as I
had. We rode in silence the rest of the way. When we got to the airport he gave me a very
generous tip and shook my hand.
“Good luck. I hope you figure it all out.”
“Thanks. Good luck to you. I hope you find some time for yourself- to figure
things out too.”
“So long.”
He turned and walked towards the airport.

Chapter 8

We are incredibly impervious to what befalls us when it is not in harmony with that innate
“character” which, in the final analysis, we are.

Ortega y Gasset

“Ted Williams got into my cab last night.”

Pinson was sitting on the couch watching the Mets game.
“No shit dad. I hope you said something intelligent to him.”
He grinned at me and put his hand on his big, faded, ocher Organic Chemistry book,
patting it affectionately. He carried it around with him but rarely opened it.
I took a swig from my third cup of coffee. I said, “Actually they just went to the
Edgewater Inn. I was listening to them talk mainly.”
“What? Did you take the whole team?”
“No. Denny McClain was with him.”
“Denny McClain! You really struck paydirt dad.”
“Well, he only tipped me a lousy thirty-five cents.”
“No shit. It’s really fucked when a really big cat like that’s ungenerous... It’s
probably because he knows he’s not going to win thirty games this year.”
“No, Williams paid. It was really ironic because I think I just didn’t stroke their egos
enough. I mean I was so overwhelmed by Williams especially that I was afraid to say
anything. I think he thought I was being hostile or something.”
“You didn’t ask for their autographs?”
“I couldn’t say anything to them. Every time I thought of something to say it
sounded juvenile. Like Gee whiz Ted...”
A Met hit a long ball high into the bleachers at Shea stadium and the crowd roared
and blew horns and waved pennants in the air. The Mets were still in second place behind
the Chicago Cubs. We paused to watch the ritual rounding of bases.
I said, “I guess I wanted to be a major league baseball player pretty bad when I was
a kid. I was really stupid enough to believe that I had a chance. And then it was taken away
from me by a lot of improbable occurrences and...”
 I left the sentence dangling. I had known for a long time that no one was interested
in my excuses for not playing baseball in the Major Leagues. He didn’t seem to hear the
words.
The sound of the crowd droned over the speaker. I said, pointing to his Chemistry
book, “Don’t you ever open that thing?”
“Huh? Yeah, I look at it when it’s time for an exam.” His face brightened up with a
good-natured smile that said it was too early in the morning to be aggressive.
I continued, “I used to love Chemistry. I scored third highest on the state
Chemistry exam at Oakland High School.”
He looked at me with an emotion that I couldn’t decipher and I thought maybe he
couldn’t either so I decided to continue, “I mean I was third out of about three hundred
students who took the test at Oakland high school, not third in the state.” I thought I was
trying to be modest.
“So what happened?” He sounded irritated.
“Well, I have a step-brother who moved into the house at about that time, when his
father and my mother got married. His father was an alcoholic. He was a General
Contractor and went bankrupt about three months after the marriage. He hadn’t paid
withholding tax for his employees, for about five years, and the Government threatened to
put him jail if he didn’t come up with $10,000. My mother had to pay it. There was a lot of
fighting and arguing and I blew it. My grades fell and I didn’t make it into Cal. I needed
ten approved subjects with A’s or B’s to get into Berkeley and I only got nine and a half
because I got all C’s in my senior year, the year they moved in. I mean in my senior year I
only needed to get one semester grade of B out of the ten semester classes that I took but I
got all C’s.”
He blinked.
I went on, “My step-brother was the most competitive human being I’ve ever
encountered in my life. He was so competitive that I can’t even describe it.

Question to Bobby Fischer:

Would you consider yourself the greatest player that ever lived, even better, say, than
Capablanca, Steinitz or Morphy?
Well, I don’t like to put things like that in print, it sounds so egotistical, but to
answer your question, Yes.

“I couldn’t deal with that kind of competition. I don’t know why, but I just quit
studying and I never did any homework all year.”

His absorption in chess, often so absolute that he would not hear when spoken to,
troubled his mother.

“My step-brother never did anything except study. When he went to Berkeley he got
all As his first semester, so he decided to take 21 units the next semester and he got all As
again. Then the third semester he took 27 units and he got all As again!”
 His attitudes progressively soured his relationship with other chess players and the
chess organizations too. He was fond of saying that he played chess because “I like to see
them squirm”, a phrase he later modified to “I like to watch their egos crumble!”

“He graduated in Engineering Physics with the highest grade point average recorded
at Berkeley in over fifty years. He would have got a 4.0 except he got a B in quantum
mechanics from Emio Segre, the Nobel Prize winner.”

Bobby Fischer is a chess phenomenon, it is true; but is also a social illiterate, a political
simpleton, a cultural ignoramus and an emotional baby. There are no vibrations of
humanity from him; when you look at him, his eyes are blank and staring, since he only has
eyes for chess. He is a machine... He does arouse the most tremendous hostility in people
surrounding him....

“He must be one smart son-of-a-bitch.”

“Do you want to know why he got a B?”
“I’m game. Shoot.”
“The professor, Emilio Segre, said that he, Emilio Segre didn’t understand quantum
mechanics. My step-brother raised his hand in class and said that HE understood quantum
mechanics.”
He said, “He must be one smart son-of-a-bitch.”
“He’s no smarter that you are Pinson. You work at the gas station forty hours a week
and you’re taking a full load at Cal. I’ve seen you studying Organic Chemistry about twice
since I’ve known you.”
He didn’t protest.
“The funny thing is, I scored higher than he did on the National Merit Scholarship
test. I scored in the 99th percentile on the Natural Science Reading section and on the
Social Science Reading section. He scored in the low nineties.”
I knew that my truth seemed to him like unbearable pride, debilitating self-
absorption and ridiculous self-aggrandizement, so I said, “Hell, you yourself scored higher
than he did on the Scholastic Aptitude Test.”
He looked uncomfortable, as if he hadn’t been truthful about his scores. I added,
“Jake scored 750 on the math aptitude but a little below 700 on the verbal. You scored
750 on both of them.” I didn’t look into his eyes.
He said, “Well, actually my combined score was less than 1500. It was about 1480
or something like that. I forget.”
“Well, that’s high enough. His English teacher actually devoted every Friday to
studying one of those books, you know the ones that are used to raise your score on the SAT.
In fact I bought it for myself and never looked at it. He used it for that class and beat my
score by a hundred points... and gloated over it. Like I said, I never even looked at it.”
We felt the tension that accompanies the telling of truths that are better left unspoken
or, at least, not spoken of without disguising them first.
He said, after a silence, “My old man was an alcoholic. That’s why my mom
divorced him.”
 I knew that he was trying to rescue me from my unseemly self-pity, and unresolved
anger at my fate. I didn’t know what to say. I said, stupidly, “Well, then you know what I
mean.”
He continued, “When I was going into junior high school they couldn’t deal with
me at all so they shipped me off to a military academy.”
I remembered that my mother regularly threatened me with military school when I
was in junior high school but I didn’t say anything.
“He was the president of the San Francisco Bar Association... He had everything
going for him and he just blew it. Couldn’t handle it at all... I didn’t even know there was
anything wrong with him until I got older. He used to take me to restaurants and then he
would point out some guy sitting at a table, and he would stare at him until the poor guy
would just feel like shit... One guy got up and came over to the table and almost punched
him out. I never forgot that... But most of those poor bastards would just get really
embarrassed, and either leave, or just sit there feeling like shit... I didn’t even know there
was anything wrong with him until I got older and started to think about it.”
We watched the Mets game in silence. I said, really just trying to break the silence,
“Well, at least Billy comes from a stable family.”
“No, he’s fucked up too. I’m not supposed to tell you this, but he was a big Eagle
Scout and he went hunting with a younger kid and he went through a barbed wire fence
without putting the rifle down, you know like they teach you to do?”
“Yeah.”
“He’ll tell you about it but don’t tell him that I told you first.”
“No problem.”
“Anyway, the gun went off. It killed the kid. He went to a psychiatrist for five years
to get his shit together. I first met him when he went to work in my uncle’s gas station. He
was still riding a motorcycle and wearing a black leather jacket. He really had to work hard
to get into Berkeley.”
“I noticed. He seems to study whenever he isn’t working.”
“He went to the Community College first. He had all D’s and F’s in High School.”
“How does he do at Cal?”
“Nothing spectacular. I think he gets mostly B’s and a few C’s. Berkeley has got a
lot easier in the last few years. It’s the Vietnam war. They say that professors are grading
easier because they know they’re sending their students to Vietnam if they flunk out. Most
of them are against the war. It’s their way of doing something patriotic I guess.”
We turned towards the television. The Mets had been the laughing stock of baseball
for seven years and now they were, inexplicably, in second place.
“Be sure not to say anything to Billy about it. Let him tell you himself if he wants
to. He will, sooner or later, because he doesn’t want to hide it from anyone. He doesn’t
want to feel guilty about it. It’s what his shrink tried to convince him of, that it was an
accident and it wasn’t his fault.”
“Does he have a girlfriend?” I asked, rather irrelevantly, thinking of my lunch date
with Florence.
He paused before answering. “No. He’s never had a girl friend as long as I’ve
known him. He’s not a homosexual or anything like that. I guess he just doesn’t have time
for women. Women take a lot of time.”
 We thought about that for a few seconds and then I said, “I’ve got a lunch date with
Florence today.”
“Congratulations. Give her my best.”
“I told her you like Tilly’s legs...” He looked surprised. I said, “Who knows,
maybe you’ll get lucky and get to stroke her legs.”
He grinned and said, “I can’t wait.”

Chapter 9

Calculus is a collection of ingenious fallacies.

Michel Rolle

We have to silence Gramsci’s brain for twenty years.

Mussolini

I know that I can’t possibly know what I was feeling then. I remember nervousness
accompanied by a constant effort to forget, to make light, to appear before myself that I
wasn’t nervous. Convincing myself that I was not thinking about her, I thought of nothing
else. Like the Puritan whose obsession with sex is masked by its opposite, I had a clear
conscience. Or maybe, thinking myself at the center of the Universe and Enlightened, I
stunk of Zen and was at the antipodes: I was still capable in those days of trying to convince
myself that I was going to get a free lunch and a piece of ass and that it wasn’t really
important. The only noble thing about me was the terror that I could never completely
suppress.
I looked up at her from the porch steps when she opened the front door. She smiled
and I noticed her nervousness. I thought she saw only the insouciance that I had been
assiduously cultivating because she seemed to be even more nervous than me, standing there
and smiling like a fool.
“Why don’t you come in,” she said, and I had the feeling that, upon seeing me, she
had considered turning me away, and then, in a whimsical instant, decided to relent and
invite me in. As I entered the house I looked sidelong at her face and it was flushed and
stony and her eyes were staring at some inner fire and I thought that she had decided that she
didn’t like me. So I cursed my fate and began again to try to live with women’s eternal
contempt, and I wanted to leave, hardly before I got into the living room.
“It’s dark in here,” I challenged, wanting to return to the light of the Spring day.
“We always leave the curtains closed. We spend most of our time in the kitchen.”
I was surprised. Somehow it seemed incredible that she would say that, even if it
was true. I knew that she was a radical feminist.
We stood there in the dark. She looked at the floor. The happy, friendly young
woman was not there. My stomach began to tighten again, and I wondered how I could get
out of eating lunch. Then I imagined that she wanted me to go, but she felt that she couldn’t
tell me to go because she had invited me to lunch. I was about to tell her that it didn’t
matter, that people made mistakes about each other, and that I would go if she wanted me to,
when she said, “Do you want to go into the kitchen?”
I didn’t want to stand there in the dark and I didn’t want to tell her that I wanted to
leave, so I said, “Yes, I guess that’s where people usually eat lunch.”
She smiled faintly and indicated with a movement of her head that I should go in
front of her. “I haven’t made anything yet,” she said apologetically.
“That’s all right. I’m not really very hungry.”
“You don’t want to eat lunch?”
“Well, uh. What were you thinking of making?” She laughed.
I looked around the kitchen. It occurred to me that it probably looked as if I were
looking for food.
She said, “If it isn’t good you won’t eat it, heh?” The humor had a hostile edge that
brought back the tension.
I smiled and after a silence I said, “No, I just didn’t want to put you out.” I tried to
match her tone. I felt certain that I was too tense to eat lunch.
“Well, I invited you for lunch, so I must have thought I would have to make it.”
“True.”
I began to prepare myself to go through with it. The kitchen table stood between us.
She stood with her hands resting on the plastic table cloth. It was faded, yellowish-white
with dull red roses all over it. The kitchen looked dingy and I noticed a cockroach feeding
on the counter behind her. We looked at each other in silence.
She asked, “How was work last night?”
“Oh, actually it was interesting. Ted Williams rode in my cab last night.”
“He’s a baseball player isn’t he?”
“Well, he’s retired now but he was probably the greatest player that ever played the
game.”
“Did he autograph your hat?”
That struck me as funny and I broke out with a good laugh.
“No, but that probably would have been a good way to break the silence. I wish I
had thought of that.”
“Maybe you should take me along with you. I could give you ideas like that.”
“Well, maybe I could arrange it.”
We smiled at each other and I suddenly remembered the reason that I thought I was
coming over for. I gave her a little appreciative look. She reciprocated. She looked at the
refrigerator. “I could make a salad.”
She waved her hand as if it she thought I didn’t really want anything.
“Sure,” I said without conviction. I looked at her again, I thought subtly, trying to
communicate my desire and not imagining that she would respond.
She asked, “Do you want to do it first?”
She spoke in a tiny voice that was almost a whisper. I wasn’t certain at first what
she meant and I said, “Yeah, sure,” almost in the same tone of voice that I might have used
to ask for the salad. I looked back into her eyes and suddenly it was obvious what she
meant, and so I said, “Where, right here?”
 She didn’t seem surprised but she said, “No, we could go upstairs to Tilly’s room.
Her bed is bigger and more comfortable than mine.”
I walked over to her and put my hand on her shoulder and looked into her eyes. She
lowered her glance and her face took on the same sad expression it had the day before. I
kissed her cheek as if she were a little girl and I was surprised by my perception that she was
in greater need than I was. Afterwards, I made the mistake of asking her if she had an
orgasm.
“I can’t believe that you would ask that.”
“What do you mean? Why shouldn’t I ask that?”
She looked at me with a kind of amazed superiority. “My orgasm is my own
responsibility.”
I had read various books that explained female sexuality precisely and I considered
myself something of an expert. I was so surprised that I couldn’t think of anything to say.
Finally I said, “What do you mean? You like to do it to yourself?”
She smiled. “You can do it to me if you want.”
After I had demonstrated my knowledge, she said, “You’re almost as good as my
ex-husband.”
“You didn’t tell me that you were married.”
“I wasn’t married very long. I mean technically I was married over two years but
about nine months after we got married we had an accident and he spent the rest of the time
in the hospital.”
“What happened?”
“We were making a left turn on his motorcycle and a truck didn’t see us and
smashed right into us. We both went flying.”
We were lying in each other’s arms. The room was warm and the covers were
pulled all the way back. I asked, “Was it the truck’s fault?”
“Oh, there was no question about it. But we had to take them to court and there was
no settlement until three years after the accident.”
“Did they pay for the time you had to spend in the hospital?”
“Yes, they paid for that.”
“You weren’t hurt?”
“Are you kidding? I broke both legs and there are scars all over them.” She showed
me scars running from her knees to her feet.
“I’m ashamed of them. They are so ugly that I haven’t worn shorts since the
accident.”
I thought her legs were too fat but the scars didn’t bother me. I hadn’t even noticed
them until she pointed them out. She was very thin, with small bones, but her legs carried
twenty pounds too much fat.
“How long were you in the hospital?”
“Six months. But he was there for almost two years. In fact he was still there when
I divorced him.”
I felt sorry for the guy. There was a silence.
“He must have been hurt pretty badly.”
“Not any worse than me. But he was older than me so it took him longer to heal.”
“How old was he?”
“45.”
 I was shocked again but didn’t say anything.
“It must have been really bad for your sex life.”
“No, on the contrary. We had the best sex of our lives in that hospital bed. They put
us side by side. We were quite a sight in our casts. I’m sure the nurses watched
sometimes.”
“How did you do it with casts on?”
“Well it wasn’t easy at first because one of his legs was in traction but I could move
around and then, after three months, they took my casts off.”
“What caused the divorce?”
“I can tell you one thing, it wasn’t the sex.”
I lay on the bed, with visions of two people in casts dancing in my head. Her head
was cradled in my arm. She raised her head from my arm to look at my profile and asked,
“Have you ever been married?”
I frowned and she snuggled her head back into my shoulder. I said, “No, I don’t
believe in marriage. I mean I think people should live together but they shouldn’t get the
government involved.” I glanced at her. She didn’t seem shocked or surprised. I continued,
“Almost half of all marriages end in divorce anyway.”
She said, “I was only nineteen. I was just trying to get away from my parents.” She
paused, looked at me cautiously and said, “I would never get married again.”
There was an awkward silence. I wasn’t used to women who agreed with me on that
subject. I said, “I lived in a commune for a year.”
She looked impressed.
“Yeah, last year in fact. It was a disaster actually. No one wanted to do the dishes.”
She laughed.
“Really. They wanted me to do them. After the first day there was a mountain of
dirty dishes and it took me two hours to wash them. I said “it’s someone else’s turn now.”
But no one else wanted to do them.”
“So you ate out of dirty dishes?”
“No, but whenever anyone ate anything they had to wash a dish to eat out of.”
“It sounds like a nightmare.”
“No, not totally. There were good things. But I learned that behind a lot of idealism
you just find hypocrisy.”
She asked, “Were you involved in politics?”
“Not really. A little bit. I followed Dick Gregory from a distance. Do you know
why the computers stopped working on election night?”
“No. Were they sabotaged?”
“The rumor is that Gregory had about 75 percent of the vote in Pennsylvania and so
they shut them down. George Wallace was a favorite there and supposedly the computers
were rigged to give all of the Gregory votes to Wallace but somebody screwed it up and got
it backwards so they shut down the computers.”
“I believe it.”
“Have you ever read his book, Write Me In! ?”
“No.”
“It’s just an expanded version of Gregory’s platform. I’ll loan it to you if you want
to read it.”
“I’ll look at it.”
 “Gregory’s really far out. He’s planning to open a national headquarters in
Washington DC called The Black House. For people who are frustrated with The White
House.”
“I can’t take him seriously. He seems like an Uncle Tom. Always joking to keep the
White Folks laughing.”
I didn’t think she wasn’t right about Gregory but I changed the subject back to her.
“You were involved in the Women’s Movement?”
“I was part of the original group that started in New York.”
“Original group?”
“Well, it all started in Becky Weston’s apartment.”
She explained who all the women were, and she was amazed that I hadn’t heard of
any of them.
“That really pisses me off. Everybody knows Kate Millet but she wasn’t even a part
of the early movement. She used to come to the meetings sometimes but she just hung
around in the background and never said anything. No one knew her and she didn’t
contribute at all. Now she is famous and the real workers in the Movement are unknown.”
I said, “Her book is really terrible. I hate that book.”
She didn’t say anything. I added, “Sexual Politics. As if politics can be sexual.”
“Actually I like the Title.”
My arm was getting sore but I wanted her to stay where she was. We wrangled for
awhile about the definition of politics. She asked, “Did you vote in the last election?”
“Yeah, I voted for Gregory and Mark Lane.”
“I voted the Communist ticket.”
I laughed, and said, jokingly, “I can’t go that far.”
She looked at me with serious eyes and said, “I’m a Communist.”
I was stunned. I thought immediately of Moscow. “You’re a member of the Party?”
She answered with a laugh, “No, I’m not a member of the Party. I would never be a
member of the Party. But I believe in Communism. I believe that people should be
absolutely equal in everything.”
I said, “I believe there is injustice and I think people are a lot more equal than most
people think... but I can’t go that far.”
She said, “The top one percent of the American population owns one third of all the
wealth in America and receives one quarter of all the INCOME of America. That means,
one quarter of all the money from salaries and stocks and bonds and interest. And the
bottom one QUARTER of the American population receives five percent of the income.
Half of all American families have less than 500 dollars in the bank and one out of every
five families has no money in the bank at all. Can you believe that. No savings at all.” She
paused for it to sink in. She said, “And what really gets me is that the government says a
family of four is NOT poor if both the husband and wife working TOGETHER make more
than 4000 dollars a year. NOT POOR. It’s incredible. Unbelievable.”
“I know that. I mean more or less. I find it hard to believe because I can make
almost four thousand dollars a year driving cab part-time. I’m not exactly a socialist
because... I mean let’s just say I’ve never seen Socialism anywhere except maybe at AT&T
or at IBM and they don’t impress me. I don’t think they have it in Russia or China or Cuba.
But I know there’s so much inequality and injustice in America that we’ve become a kind of
unwitting farce.”
 I had been struggling with the problem for seven or eight years and still hadn’t really
come to anything like a solution. I said, “We’ve inherited England’s position as the land of
hypocrisy and cant. The evasions are so blatant and the denials of truth are so absurdly
contorted that you either have to be a fool or a hypocrite to go along with them. I’ve never
been involved in politics for two reasons, really. The first is that I know that all of the
alternative parties are so infiltrated with FBI and CIA agents that being in them is just an
exercise in absurdity. And the second reason is that the kind of revolution we need to bring
real democracy and representative government to this country won’t happen until there is
another economic catastrophe like we had in the thirties. The sixties are mainly a protest
against the Vietnam war. Which is not bad, but it isn’t the revolution either.”
“You’re too pessimistic. You’ll never do anything if you think like that.”
I said, “I think it is basically a problem of authority. Americans worship authority
because they know instinctively that reason is useless. Think of all the fundamentalists: the
Mormons, the Seven Day Adventists, the Moonies, the followers of Jim Jones, Billy
Graham... Not to mention the Scientologists, Psychoanalysts... whatever... let’s face it, even
the Catholic Church. To most Americans, reason is hair-splitting and thinking is dangerous
because it leads them to question authority and to be ousted from the party or church or club
or, more to the point, from their JOBS. If you think and try to reason about things, they see
you as a crank or a fool or dangerous. That is, if you don’t have any money. And most
Americans don’t. I think it goes back to our long history under the authority of the Church,
but who knows.”

The people cannot get their fill of seeing the tortures inflicted, on a high platform in
the middle of the market-place, on the magistrates suspected of treason. The unfortunates
are refused the death blow which they implore, that the people may feast again upon their
torments.

She said, “You must run around in some strange circles. Most of my friends
constantly question authority. I mean our whole society is a bunch of lawyers, always
arguing about everything... What do you call the protest against the Vietnam war if it isn’t a
questioning of authority?” She paused for her rhetorical question and then said, “I can’t
relate to what you’re saying at all.”
“Well, it seems like I’m just agreeing with what you said before. The rich have all
the power, not because they deserve it but because they inherited their money. They will do
anything to keep their power and so they hire the most intelligent lawyers, newspaper
editors, college professors, politicians, cops, whatever, to convince the people that socialism
is treason and a crime against humanity.”
“So we have to try to do something about it. Your solution is to sit around and do
nothing.”
I said, “I’m afraid of Communism because of the example of the Church in Western
History. Heresy was a crime for which no punishment was too cruel. Communists treat all
unbelievers like heretics.”

When Damien was executed in 1757, every available spot within eye-reach of the
scaffold was crowded with Parisian sightseers, who gloated over the doomed man’s
sufferings. After having his hand burned off and being subjected to the horrible torture of
boiling oil and melted lead, for hours, to the accompaniment of his piercing screams, the
whip-goaded horses dragged his limbs and body apart. Casanova, who was an eye-witness
to the scene, although compelled to turn his face away and to stop up his ears, noted that
the females around him “did not budge an inch.”

I asked her if she had heard of George Orwell and she called him a reactionary.

In the Congo Free State of King Leopold, who succeeded in reducing the population
from 20 million to 10 million in two decades, with Nazi-style atrocities, a native army of
20,000 men, given “a completely free hand to loot and rape,” was instrumental in
implementing the conversion of the country into a Belgian slave labor camp.

I said anyway, “I think I can influence people by devoting my life to learning and
writing, on the fringes of the establishment. I’ve either been lucky enough or unlucky
enough to have experiences that very few people have had, and I’ve learned things from
them that very few people know.

Emigrants introduced the torture of lashing an Indian to a wagon wheel to die a

lingering death as the vehicle bumped over the plain. The Indians retaliated by tying
settlers to the wheels of destroyed vehicles and leaving them mutilated and bleeding to die
under the burning sun.

“For example I know that I’m equal in intelligence to my step-brother Jacob, and he
was the Valedictorian of his class at Berkeley. The top student out of five thousand
graduating seniors. That’s an experience that not too many people have.”
I remembered my pessimism about being published and I thought she would
confront me with it. Instead, she wanted to know about Jacob and so I told her what I had
told Pinson.
“Just because I had problems when I was seventeen and eighteen, I lost my chance
to go to Berkeley and got stuck at California State College; you know, at Hayward.”
We meditated on Bad Luck for awhile. She asked, “Couldn’t you transfer to
Berkeley?”
“I was in the process of transferring to Berkeley when I got drafted. I was supposed
to report for induction on Jan. 1, 1965 at the Oakland Army Base. They were the first guys
that were sent to Vietnam. Anyway, I went to the draft board and they lied to me. They said
there was only one kind of deferment that I was eligible for and it would last only for six
months, until June. It was called a 1SC. They said that if I didn’t have my degree by then
the draft notice would automatically be sent out again and I would be drafted without
possibility of another deferment. They said if I got my degree within six months, and got
into graduate school, I could then apply for a 2S deferment.”

Between 1778 and 1871 the United States signed more than 370 treaties with the
Indians and broke all of them.

“I still don’t understand why you didn’t transfer to Berkeley.”

 “Berkeley has a rule that your entire senior year has to be at Berkeley. So you have
to stay there for a whole year to get a degree. The Draft Board said I had to have my degree
within six months or my draft notice would be mailed out again and then there would be no
possible deferment. It turned out that they were lying because I didn’t actually get my
degree at Cal State until the Summer quarter and I didn’t hear anything from them.”

No other nation on earth can boast of breaking so many treaties, solemnly executed
under oath. Not even Russia.

“Why didn’t you apply to the Berkeley graduate program?”

“Well, believe it or not, at that time, no one had ever been accepted from California
State College into Berkeley’s Mathematics graduate program. Even though a California
STATE College Undergraduate could transfer to the UNIVERSITY of California
Undergraduate program with a B average. Once you transfer and spend a year there and get
a degree then you can apply to the graduate school there. It is crazy. And once you have an
Undergraduate Degree from a STATE College, the UNIVERSITY won’t allow you to
transfer into their Undergraduate program, no matter what your grade point average is. So I
didn’t even bother to apply.”
“I didn’t know it was that fucked up.”
“It’s even worse than that. Listen to this one. My step-brother had a friend who was
married and had two kids. He was in his senior year at Berkeley, in fact in his last semester.
His wife had a nervous breakdown and disappeared, leaving him with two little kids. It was
right in the middle of the semester and his grades fell and they wouldn’t allow him to drop
the classes even when he told them his story. She just left and no one knew where she was,
for months. His grade point average actually fell to exactly 2.99! You need 3.0 to get into
the mathematics graduate program. They wouldn’t let him in! So he went to Cal State for a
Master’s Degree in mathematics, worked at a full time job at the same time, and still got all
A’s and a Master’s Degree ---- in only one year! He took the Graduate Record Exam in
Mathematics and the two aptitude tests and scored 99th percentile on all three of them, then
applied to Berkeley’s Mathematics Graduate Program and was rejected!”
“That sounds too horrible to be true.”

In all fairness, perhaps at least one piece of sculpture should be created which
depicts a trooper in the uniform of the United States Army shooting a child in the arms of its
Indian mother. It would be fitting in such a memorial to have a background composed of
pioneer settlers holding aloft the scalps and other anatomical parts which they have just
torn from the bodies of Indians they shot in the back.
The inscription at the base might be composed of the adage, so long popular with
Americans:
“The only good Indian is a dead Indian.”

“I know it sounds incredible. But that is exactly what happened. I can’t believe it
myself. He was really brilliant in mathematics. I thought he was smarter than both my step
brother Jake and me when we were kids. But Jake was in a rock band in those days and I
was a jock. Sampson was a scholar even back then.”
“Sampson?”
 “Hilary Sampson, Jake’s friend. He went to the same junior high school and high
school that Jake went to.”
“This Jake sounds like quite a character.”
“Well, he basically just studies all the time.”
“I used to be like that,” she said.
She looked at me as if she were revealing a great sordid secret, and as if I should
prepare myself for the painful details.
“I went to a private school. Horton. Very exclusive. I was the best student in the
class. I mean there was only one class for each level. But we all took four years of French,
three years of Latin, and Calculus in our senior year. There was an open ranking system and
everyone knew everyone else’s level in the class. I was the top student in the class every
year and I was stupid enough to be really proud of it. But in my junior year I suddenly
realized that no one cared about grades. The other girls were all from rich families and I
was a Day Student because the school was close enough to my home so I didn’t have to
board there. I always knew that they looked down on me for being a Day Student. But in
my junior year I realized that they just saw me as an ambitious grind. Status came from
looks or money or both. So I just gave up.”
“Did you flunk out?”
“Oh no. That came later. I ended up graduating second in the class. I was the
Salutatorian. I could have been first easily, but I stopped studying completely in my senior
year. A fat, ugly girl, Sara Dahl, was the Valedictorian and I was actually glad it wasn’t me.”
“You must have gotten into a good college.”
“Have you ever heard of Wellesley?”
“More or less. But I don’t know anything about it. Is it a good college?”
“It isn’t Smith or Vassar but it’s Ivy League. It didn’t matter. I spent most of my
time daydreaming and literally didn’t do any studying at all. I was obsessed with finding a
husband. To give you an idea of how far gone I was, once I stood up on a table in the
cafeteria in the middle of dinner just to get attention. I would do anything to be accepted. I
was a disgrace.”
“What did you major in?”
“Are you kidding? I know it sounds like a cliché but it was basically “husband
hunting.” I mean it isn’t like I was all that different from the other girls, except that I
virtually didn’t study at all and presumably they studied at least enough to get C’s.”
I said, “Well, I know what you mean because when I first went to college I didn’t
study either. But I educated myself. I read all the time. But I just didn’t get around to
reading the books that were assigned. I read the complete works of Freud when I should
have been studying Calculus.”
“I didn’t read anything. It was just a farce. The Dean had a nice conversation with
me and in a very roundabout way and very politely, he told me to quit before they threw me
out. At least he was nice about it. If I had been in his position I probably wouldn’t have
been nice.”
“It sounds bad.”
“Believe me it was worse than it sounds.”
She had been cradled in my arm for more than a half an hour and my shoulder was
so sore that I groaned when I tried to lift it from under her head.
“Do you want me to move?”
 “Yeah. Just for a minute.”
She sat up and I rubbed my shoulder with my other hand. It was partially numb. I
could barely move my elbow above the horizontal.
“Do you want me to massage it?”
“Sure.”
I had never been massaged by a naked woman. She began with my shoulder and
progressed into a full body massage. We ended up making love again. It was obvious that
she had learned something from being married to an older man in a body cast. We slept for
awhile under a sheet, and I awoke first. She was hot and slippery with sweat. I had her in a
tight headlock, and I remembered that, as a child, I used to wake up holding my teddy bear
that way. I had dreamt of Oakland City College: I couldn’t find the classroom or the
building and the final examination for the Calculus exam was being given.
“How are ya doin big fella?” She looked up at me with trusting eyes.
I asked, “Are you OK?”
“Sure. Why?”
“Well, I had you in a pretty tight head lock.”
“Oh, that’s all right. I didn’t notice anything.”
I said, “I was having a nightmare.”
“I give you nightmares.”
“No, I was dreaming about Oakland City College. I was going to tell you about it
before we... It was a real nightmare.”
“Do you want to tell me about it?”
She was being a sympathetic big sister.
“Well, it isn’t anything much. Just that I was selected to take a college course when
I was still in high school and...”
I proceeded to tell her more of my scholastic misadventures, more than anyone but a
lover could possibly find interesting.
“You dreamed all that?”
“No, I just dreamed that I couldn’t find the class and I was supposed to take the final
but I couldn’t find the classroom.”
“Well, I think you’re a genius.”
She looked up at me and smiled with the same little girl smile, but her irony was
implicit and I gave her a little kiss on the cheek.
“I think you are a genius too.”

Chapter 10

Incidentally, from the point of view of psychic economy, one would doubt whether
abstinence is healthier than venereal disease. The latter one can get rid of if one seeks the
proper therapeutic help. The pathological character changes however, can hardly ever be
completely eliminated.

Wilhelm Reich The Sexual Revolution

If we evolved a race of Isaac Newtons, that would not be progress. For the price
Newton had to pay for being a supreme intellect was that he was incapable of friendship,
love, fatherhood, and many other desirable things. As a man he was a failure; as a monster
he was superb.

Aldous Huxley

Billy and Chris were standing in the living room, both holding onto the Law School
Aptitude Examination preparation book, looking at a problem. It looked like they were
struggling to take the book away from each other.
“OK, that’s it,” Billy said, as if he had finally been convinced.
“Here comes the mathematician. Now we’re going to see how smart you are
Einstein.”
He shoved the book in my face.
“Look at number three.”
There were two geometrical figures and a third one off to the right, and five others
below those. I asked, “So what are you supposed to do?” I was buying time and I tried to
figure out which one of the five was related to the third one in the same way that the second
was related to the first. As he explained, I thought I saw the answer. I said, “C”
Billy said, “No, that’s not it.”
I said, “I can’t believe it. It looks obvious.”
Billy said, “Unless the book is wrong, its D.”
Pinson looked triumphant. My face colored and I was embarrassed at being
embarrassed. Billy continued, “I thought it was C as first. But look closely at the black
dot and where it travels from the first box to the second.”
I couldn’t see anything except an incomprehensible jumble of figures, and Chris
looking triumphant. I remembered, from the research that I had been doing, Einstein’s
repeated and insistent plea to the always fawning mob of reporters: “I have no special
talent,” and Gauss telling his lazy, undisciplined and foppish contemporaries: “if others
would but reflect on mathematical truths as deeply and as continuously as I have, they
would make my discoveries.” I pretended to see it, “Oh yeah. Obviously. The black
square moves the same way from the third box to the fourth. Hmmm... Let’s try the next
one.”
I stared at it for a few seconds. The blood rose to my temples and my heart began to
beat faster. Pinson looked over my shoulder. He said, “It’s E isn’t it?”
I said, “Let’s see.” I couldn’t see it. I acted nonchalant.
He grabbed the book from my hands and looked at the answer. He said, “E.”
Billy looked at me as if we were in the presence of a higher form of intelligence and
as if to say that my pride would have to yield to reality and he was there to watch the painful
process, one that he had been forced to go through and which gave him moral superiority
over those of the human race who were unable to accept their weakness and limitations. I
remembered my step-brother graduating first in a class of 5000 engineers at Berkeley. I
knew that Pinson was as smart as he was and that I was also, but that I had the immense
superiority of knowing it, whereas he didn’t.
In a kind of controlled rage, I took the book back. I said, “Let’s try number ten.” I
riveted my attention on the figures for ten seconds, fifteen, twenty. I said, “A.”
 Billy only wanted to see either one of us or both of us get it wrong. He said, “OK,
Pinson you’re on.”
Chris took the book with a slightly distracted air as if it were beneath him to even
bother to look at it. After a few seconds he said, “B.”
Billy looked up the answer. “It’s A,” he said in amazement. Einstein’s one up.
I said, “Let’s try another one.” Suddenly the funny but reassuring memory came to
me that I almost always beat my step-brother Jacob at Hopalong Cassidy Canasta when we
were kids. I looked at number 11 for about thirty seconds and then the answer seemed to
pop into my head. “D.”
Pinson looked worried. He stared at the figures. His face reddened. Billy looked at
me and gave a little irreverent giggle. After less time than I had taken, he Pinson said, “I
may be crazy, but I think it’s E.”
Billy looked up the answer again. “D.”
“You got me,” Pinson said.
I said, “One more.” I was trying to prove a point to myself. I needed to prove it,
much more than Pinson needed to be smarter than me.
Billy said, “Number nineteen,” and handed the book to me. I stared at it in silence.
It wasn’t easy. There were rotations and circles turned into triangles; filled figures became
empty and vice versa. But finally it seemed obvious. It must have taken forty seconds but it
was obvious. I said, “D again.”
Pinson had been trying to appear as if it didn’t matter at all, but he grabbed the book,
almost with a look of horror on his face. He stared at it and it seemed to me that he wasn’t
thinking, but just feeling, and saying to himself, hardly consciously, and unable to stop
himself, “I am just a stupid shit, a complete phony, Jack is obviously smarter than I am.” At
that moment, I was certain that every human ability was simply due to ambition and early
training. I blinded myself to idiots and the retarded, to people with photographic memories,
to natural mimics, to the criminally insane, the tone deaf and color blind: to the halt and
lame of the brain as well as those with exceptional ability. My ribs shook in triumph. I was
so emotional that I found myself going into the kitchen, pretending to get something to eat.
I found myself staring at the refrigerator. I wasn’t hungry. I opened it anyway. A six pack
of Olympia sat next to a carton of milk. I pulled a can of beer from its cardboard container,
hoping to calm my nerves. The seconds ticked as I opened the can.
I yelled nervously from the kitchen, “Got an answer yet?”
“Fuck, it’s impossible.”
I was elated. “Can I get you a beer?”
“No thanks.”
Billy said, “I’ll have one.” His tone of voice celebratory: the great Pinson was
going down to defeat.
I returned and handed Billy a beer. Finally, Pinson said, “Just to be different I’ll say
C.”
Billy sat down, put his beer on the table and ceremoniously looked up the answer.
“D,” he said almost reverently and looked up at me.
“Let’s try another one,” I said. I was really rubbing it in, paying Pinson back for
his arrogance.
He said, “No, I give up. You’re too smart for me.”
 “It’s just a knack,” I said, hiding my triumph with false humility. “That’s why they
have those books in the first place, so you can learn how to do the problems. Besides, I only
scored 690 on the math SAT and you scored 750.”
He didn’t seem convinced. In reality, I had only scored 650. I asked Pinson,
“Have you ever heard of Henri Poincare?”
He answered, “Yeah, somewhere.”
“He’s supposed to be one of the greatest French mathematicians of the twentieth
century. Anyway, he flunked the college mathematics entrance examination and they almost
didn’t let him into the university. He hated mathematics, never studied it and didn’t know
anything about it. He changed his mind, obviously. Most people know about Einstein. He
didn’t learn to talk until he was five years old.”
“What?” Billy looked at Pinson as if I were crazy.
“It’s true. His mother thought he was retarded. At the Swiss Polytechnic Institute,
he graduated in the bottom ten percent of his class and his professors said he would never
amount to anything. It’s true.”
They didn’t seem convinced.
“I’ll get the book if you don’t believe it. David Hilbert was considered to be an
average graduate student.” I knew that neither one of them had heard of David Hilbert.
Pinson asked, “You don’t believe that there are any differences in native
intelligence?” He asked the question gingerly, pretending that he thought I might be a
madman and that he was afraid of making me angry.
“I believe there are a lot of people who are stupid for one reason or another. The
brain is very delicate. It can be damaged very easily. Memory is one thing that seems to be
inherited, but I don’t think it is really as valuable as most people think. The Soviet
Psychologist, Luria, studied a man who had a photographic memory, for more than twenty
years. He wrote an entire book about him called The Mind of a Mnemonist. He had lunch
with him every day for many years. They sat there in front of a blackboard and Luria would
write things down on the board and make notes in his notebook about the clothes he was
wearing, what they talked about and anything else. The guy never made a mistake. For
twenty years! He remembered literally everything. He recited lines from the Divine
Comedy perfectly, in Italian, after they were read to him once fifteen years before. And he
didn’t know Italian and had never read the Divine Comedy. He had total recall. He was
actually unable to forget anything. He used elaborate methods to forget things but they
never worked. But there was one thing he couldn’t remember --- faces. He said they
changed so much from one day to the next that he could never remember them. But he
never studied science or any profession or anything serious. He made his living
demonstrating his memory and that was the only thing he ever did in his life.”
Pinson seemed impressed but Billy was bored and said with superiority, “I learned
very early that knowing my limitations was very important. If you hold too high an opinion
of yourself you will be afraid to do anything because you will be afraid of failure. I argued
for a long time with my shrink about that. He finally convinced me. I consider myself
lucky. I know what I’m capable of and what I want. Now I’m getting it. I have a plan and
I’m following it. My shrink called what you are saying “Narcissistic Withdrawal,” refusal
to compete because you can’t be number 1. It sounds like you are still fighting that battle
with your half-brother.”
 I said, “Step-brother. Well, maybe you’re right. But I think I recovered from that. I
mean I saw what he did by just working all the time. I mean he didn’t just study a lot, he
studied constantly. Weekends, holidays. It was almost comical. I learned the lesson that
what seems like genius can be just hard work. And then I read books about intelligence and
achievement. I found out that Newton did the same thing. Really. When they asked him
how he discovered his theory, he said, “by studying day and night for twenty years.” He
meant it.

“Newton was of the most fearful, cautious and suspicious temper that I ever knew,”
said Whiston, his successor in the Lucasian Chair.

Jack added “Why did Einstein go around saying: I have no special talent?”

“Einstein will never amount to anything,” said his mathematics teacher at the Swiss
Polytechnic Institute.

Billy said, “It’s obvious, you’re still trying to be a genius. Still competing with your
half-brother. So you won’t settle for anything less than being a genius like he is.”
Pinson said, “That’s a lot of shit Kidd,” and gave a little deprecating wave of his
hand. Pinson usually called Billy by his last name when he was pissed off or thought he was
full of shit. Pinson said to me, “Don’t listen to him Jack. Going to a shrink for five years
ruined him forever.”
Billy just laughed to himself, as if it was impossible to argue with Pinson and you
just had to put up with him.
Pinson said, “We don’t aim high enough Billy. We make people into heroes and
then everyone else is a goat. He’s right. We worship Movie Stars, Sports Heroes,
Geniuses.”
I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to continue my lecture, “That’s right. But I think
it is worse than that because we also worship mediocrity. The most mediocre people
become multimillionaires producing the worst imaginable movies and novels and hit
records. Businessmen get rich selling cigarettes and candy and food that destroys the body.
But they do all their selling with beautiful women and ball players, and that’s what keeps
everyone going after it. The women and ball players aren’t going to give up the easy bucks,
and we can’t look at anything less than a ten anyway...”
“You’re completely wrong Jack,” Billy said in a shrill voice that rose towards
hysteria, “You’re just describing yourself. You can’t look at anything less than a ten. You
can’t have a ten so you won’t look at anything.”
I said, “I thought you were the one who doesn’t have a girlfriend.”
“That’s got nothing to do with it.”
“Well, I don’t see how you can accuse me of not looking at anything less than a ten
when you don’t have a girlfriend yourself.”
“I have had many opportunities to have a girlfriend. Doesn’t it even occur to you
that I might not want a girlfriend?” He looked at me for a second, to let it sink in. “I’m not
ready for one. I have one goal right now and that is to get into law school. I don’t have time
for anything else. When the time comes then I will.”
Pinson said, “He always has everything figured out. It’s the psychiatrist’s fault.”
 Billy yelled, “That’s a cheap shot Pinson and you know it.”
I had never seen him that pissed. I wasn’t too worried. They had been friends for
more than two years. Pinson suddenly put the palms of his hands together in mock prayer
and chanted, “Domine, in nomine Patris et Filii et Spiritus sancti, qui vivit et regnat per
omnia secula seculorum, mea culpa, vultis etiam parodnos? .....Aaaamennnnn.”
Billy dissolved into appreciative laughter. I muttered my appreciation for his Latin
and took the opportunity to retire to my room to work on my essay on intelligence. I tried,
wholly without success, to arrange some of the material that I had underlined in the books
lying on the floor by my bed:

Jefferson said, it was the common belief, in 1776 that all men were created equal,
“whether expressed in conversation, in letters, printed essays, or the elementary books of
public right.”

On the account of the greater rarity of intellectual ability in women, they

have often played a large part in the world on the strength of achievements, which would
not have allowed a man to play a similarly large part. In one department, and one only,
women seem to be little, if at all, inferior to men in ability, that is in acting.

Havelock Ellis, A Study of British Genius, 1903

Borderline deficiency is very, very common among Spanish-Indian families of the

Southwest and also among Negroes. Their dullness seems to be racial, or at least inherent
in the family stocks from which they come... the whole question of racial differences in
mental traits will have to be taken up anew and by experimental methods. The writer
predicts that when this is done there will be discovered enormously significant racial
differences in general intelligence, differences which cannot be wiped out by any scheme of
mental culture... Children of this group should be segregated in special classes... They
cannot master abstractions, but they can often be make efficient workers... there is no
possibility at present (1916) of convincing society that they should not be allowed to
reproduce, although from a eugenic point of view they constitute a grave problem because
of their unusually prolific breeding.

…only recently have we begun to recognize how serious a menace (feeblemindedness) is to

the social, economic, and moral welfare of the state... It is responsible for the majority of
cases of chronic and semi-chronic pauperism.... the feeble-minded continue to multiply...
organized charities... often contribute to the survival of individuals who would not otherwise
be able to live and reproduce... If we would preserve our state for a class of people worthy
to possess it, we must prevent, as far as possible, the propagation of mental degenerates in
curtailing the increasing spawn of degeneracy.

Professor Lewis Madison Terman, Stanford University, The Menace of Feeble

Mindedness, 1916

From Domhoff’s book:

 Of the thirteen men who have been Secretary of Defense or Secretary of War since
1932, eight have been listed in the Social Register.
By controlling every major opinion molding institution in the country, members of
the upper class play a predominant role in determining the framework within which
decisions on important issues are reached.

Who Rules America, William Domhoff

Henri Poincare took Binet’s I.Q. test, AFTER he had become a world famous
mathematician and scored at the imbecile level! But I can’t find the passage. I think it was
in Cancro’s book: Intelligence, Genetic and Environmental Influences. No, that doesn’t
seem right. Apparently Binet didn’t consider intelligence to be mostly innate anyway. Why
is it called the “Stanford-Binet” I.Q. test?

Newton’s principle interest was Biblical Chronology. He even believed in astrology.

He said he regretted the tremendous labor he spent on the Principia because it took so much
time from his real interest, Biblical Chronology. He believed the world was created in 4004
BC (!)

As a child, Fischer’s play cannot be compared with that of Morphy, Capablanca or

Reshevsky at the same age. Fischer had to work hard to develop his skills. His need to win
at the game involved him in the most thorough and systematic study of tactics, and this,
comparatively slowly, began to produce results. At an age when Capablanca and Reshevsky
had reached master strength, Fischer started playing in YMCA. But, in a game against
Byrne, when he was still thirteen he was suddenly catapulted from total obscurity into world
fame with these encomiums:
“Black’s seventeenth move will be talked about for centuries to come. With this one
move and subsequent follow-up, Bobby Fischer established his place among the great chess
prodigies of all time.”
Even before his international career opened, his personality problems were causing
concern. His interest in the game had come to exclude almost everything else in life.

The Champions, Peter Fuller

Lafayette was so impressed with the American Revolution that he actually carried
enough American soil back to France to be buried in!

Athens, at its height, in the fourth and fifth century BC had a population of about
315,000 people according to Will Durant. Only about 43,000 were citizens. The rest were
women, slaves and serfs. He estimates that there were only about 250,000 citizens, each
generation, in all of Greece who were the source of the entire Greek achievement. A little
more than half the size of Oakland. Plato, Socrates, Aristotle, Euclid, Archimedes,
Pythagoras, Thales, Pindar, Solon, Euripides, Aeschylus, .... the entire foundation of
Western civilization from a population a little more than half the size of Oakland....
 For dinner, I ate beans out of the can and afterwards found myself looking out into
the twilight sky and wondering who the hell I was and what in the hell I was doing anyway.
I was enervated from sitting all afternoon staring at books, and probably from the chili con
carne. When you feel like a bag of semi-organized protoplasm, like a hairless-ape sitting
inside a twenty mile thick band of oxygen along with a billion species of insects and animals
(your relatives) crawling, creeping, running, climbing, killing, eating, pissing, sleeping,
fucking, foaming at the mouth and whatever... all floating in the void on the far edge of a
galaxy among billions of other galaxies, well, sometimes it all seems futile and irrelevant,
and suicide seems necessary. Not from depression or despair, but as an act of intelligent
reverence towards a cleaner form of death: why allow the band of apes who think the world
was created in 4004 BC, that sex before marriage is Evil and that Socialism is a creation of
the Devil, to hassle you? But you think of your Marlin Microgroove Automatic 22 caliber
rifle leaning up against the wall in your closet and realize immediately that there are at least
two or three people that you would like to take out first, and all thoughts of suicide
disappear.
Anyway, “IQ” seemed about as relevant as fame, glory, gloire, renown, and a gaggle
of groveling, fawning, hypocritical friends whose sole claim to fame was that they knew
you. I shuffled back into the gloomy house, bored, irrelevant and wishing that I had devoted
the last five years of my life to being a tennis bum. Faint images of white tennis outfits and
blond faceless people of both sexes seemed to fight with images of Vietnam and
commentary by Walter Cronkite. Then, for some reason I started to think of the ten
blackballed screenwriters of the McCarthy era and I was thinking that not one of them had
the talent of Melville or Whitman or Emily Dickinson and I was on that thought, thinking
that I would never publish anything, no matter how hard I worked on it, or if I did publish
anything, no one would read it. If Melville, Baudelaire, Nietzsche, Kafka and a thousand
other really great writers weren’t recognized in their lifetimes then why should I be? I
walked through the door to the living room, lost in my thoughts, and almost ran into Pinson.
His Popeye forearm was outstretched and he held out an Olie to me.
“Want a beer dad?”
“Yeah thanks Chris. I don’t mind if I do.”
“A penny for your thoughts.”
He had an original way of pronouncing cliches. My explanation for it was that he
was so original that he needed cliches as ballast when things seemed particularly crazy or
futile. I popped open the can and said, “Just thinking how fucked everything is.”
“Maybe a beer will help.”
I felt better already. I asked, “What’s the Kidd doing? Grinding away back there in
his room?”
We sat in the living room in the semidarkness.
“Yeah, he studies most of the time back there. Only his dog Muffy knows for sure.”
We sat in silence. He said, “That’s funny, I was thinking that everything is fucked,
just a little while ago, myself.”
He still looked at me with the amused look that comes to people who are used to
being smarter than everyone else. I said, “Well, I was thinking that we are basically just
bags of protoplasm and the world wasn’t really created in 4004 BC.”
“You should have gone to my church.”
 “Oh yeah. Catholic wasn’t it?”
“We hailed Mary every five minutes.”
I guzzled some mountain-water beer. Sometimes Ambrosia is necessary, even if it’s
only a placebo. I said, “I suppose you thought you wanted to be a priest.”
It was so far from the truth that I didn’t even bother to put irony in my voice. He
gave a hearty laugh. He said, “His name was father Polonsky. The man was sick. He
enjoyed giving pain.”
“It sounds like he believed in The Four Noble Truths.”
There was a silence and then he said, “All right, I’ll bite.”
“The Four Noble Truths of Buddhism: 1, All life is suffering, 2, all suffering is
caused by desire, 3, the cessation of suffering is brought about by the elimination of desire,
and 4, the elimination of desire is attained by following the eightfold noble path.”
“Run that by me again one more time.”
I did. I was afraid that it might not have anything to do with Polonsky. I took
another swig of beer. He asked, “What is the eightfold noble path?”
“A lot of Holy Water. You know, not stealing and cheating and all that stuff and then
finally meditation on one point and eliminating all thought and opposites, and then attaining
enlightenment.”
He asked, “Do you know the works of Alan Watts?”
“I’ve read all of his books. He was my guru.” I felt like saying that, at present,
Watts seemed to me to be mostly, full of shit. Or, at best, that he was a sturdy ladder that I
had thrown away a few years ago and, at worst, just one more rich, sexually obsessed sado-
masochist, who had lately added alcoholism to the list of his vices, but I didn’t. Maybe I
just didn’t have time because Muffy came running into the living room and smelled my
crotch and Billy waltzed past us into the kitchen to get a beer. We remained silent, waiting
for Kidd to come into the living room. He yelled from the kitchen, “Big things are being
discussed? What’s this I hear about Alan Watts?”
With jocular sarcasm, I answered, “Just a lot of Holy Water. Nothing to get excited
about. I was just chanting on the meaninglessness of life. You and Muffy are bags of
protoplasm. Your life isn’t real. All from the point of view of eternity, of course.”
He decided to be serious.
“What is real, Jack? You’re the philosopher. You tell us.”
I thought he was being TOO serious, but I knew that if I got angry, he would accuse
me of having no sense of humor. It seemed to me that his tone of voice said: “Don’t think
you are superior to us because you’ve read books about philosophy. We are absolutely equal
in our knowledge of eternity. Let’s go into hand-to-hand combat with the Absolute. But
remember, we all know exactly the same thing about it, nothing.”
I was convinced against all my theories that both Pinson and I were smarter than
him, fundamentally, and it probably showed. I said, turning back to a concrete example,
“Well, for example, Capitalism is supposed to be superior to Communism, but the truth is,
they’ll throw you in jail, or you won’t be able to get a job if you’re a Communist, so
everybody thinks they’re Capitalists, the way they want them to think, and so they aren’t
free. They just think they are.”
“Wait a minute!” Billy said, “Who’s “they?” Who is controlling my thought? I
want to hear this.”
 “Well, nobody. Just your fear of being different. They make examples out of a few
people at various times in history and that keeps everyone in line.”
Pinson jumped in, “You keep saying “they.” Who?”
“Well, the rich. The one half of one percent that owns most of the country. They
control the newspapers, television.”
Billy said, “Tell us about it Einstein.”
He was being obnoxious, and enjoying himself too much. But I didn’t really give a
fuck about him and I thought it might do me some good to talk to the wall, so I got serious
too, “Lady Bird for example. She bought that radio and television station in Austin and
now they have a monopoly down there and they got rich with it.”
The Kidd said, “So Lady Bird is running the country from Texas?”
He looked at Pinson and laughed triumphantly.
I said, “Fuck you Kidd.”
I could get away with telling him to fuck off. It was the price we paid for allowing
each other to say any goddammed thing we felt like saying.
We were sitting on the floor and I leaned back, hunched my legs to my chest and
without touching the floor with my hands, threw my legs out in front of my body and sprung
to my feet. It was something Billy did sometimes, pretending it was as normal as belching
after a can of beer. I asked, “Anyone want another beer?”
Pinson said, “I’ll have another one.”
From the kitchen, I could hear him laughing about something. I said from the
kitchen, “Sports is also like that,” I was self-consciously pontificating now, maybe to piss
off the Kidd, I don’t know. Anyway, I said as I handed Pinson a beer, “People watch games
because they think it is the thing to do. They don’t really give a shit about football but they
watch all the games anyway so they will have something to talk about with all the other
people who watch games for the same reason.”
Actually, I knew that Billy never watched sports on television but I suddenly
remembered that Pinson watched football and basketball and baseball on television. He
jumped on me, “Shit, I’ll bet a guy like you never played a sport in your life. You probably
did jumping jacks with your fingers in gym class.” They looked at me as if I were some kind
of wimp who sat around reading books all the time.
“That’s not true.” I could never get used to the idea that people didn’t see me as a
natural athlete. That was bad enough, but when they saw me as a “wimp,” “a guy like you,”
it was too much. My anger was stronger than I could admit, and therefore I couldn’t control
my pride. It wanted blood.
“Why do you think I never played?” The tension in my stomach returned.
Pinson’s face hung slack, and his bad eye wandered up to a spot on the wall just over
my head. He tilted his head back so that it seemed to him that he was looking down on me.
I looked to the Kidd for some sympathy, but only saw a jagged line of white teeth. I thought
hypocritical, aggressive smiles like his must have greeted the Jews at the Treblinken ovens.
I endured the pain with the thought that I hadn’t been despised by people who pretended to
be my friends since the fourth grade.
It seemed to me that Pinson and Kidd only thought that they were reducing me to the
level of humanity by distinguishing me from their heroes but in reality they were reducing
me to a subhuman level. And I savored that. I resolved to sit in the intestinal gas of these
two assholes until one of them couldn’t stand his own stench. Pinson was the first. He
coughed for no physical reason and then, in what seemed to be an access of terror, laughed
demoniacally. His large forearms looked larger than they were.
I said, “I’m six foot two. Maybe I could play basketball.”
Billy said, “You’re too skinny.”
The pain seemed to spread into my lower regions. I began to breath rhythmically.
Maybe it was something I ate, maybe it was just the beans. Suddenly they both seemed
slightly comical. I continued breathing regularly and then I noticed that Pinson looked like a
little kid who had never made any of the teams and I thought that, like many short men I had
known, he probably fantasized that if he had been over six feet tall, he would weigh 220
pounds.
I asked Pinson, very gently, “What sport did you play?”
“I played baseball.”
He looked at the wall showing his profile, closed his eyes. I asked Billy if he played
a sport also.
“I was a diver.”
Pinson jolted back to consciousness and said, “He would have made the State Finals
for sure but his grades were too low in his senior year.”
Billy looked like a shy girl with that false modesty that has become one of our
National character defects. They both looked like self-satisfied assholes. I felt like getting
out, leaving, pulling up stakes, running. I thought of Van Decken on Dwight Way. I had
already run away from him. Then I remembered Florence. She seemed a tiny ray of light, a
thesis that might lead to a new synthesis from this newest antithesis. But I knew I had to
face them, I wanted to face them. My stomach hurt quite badly and I thought again that
maybe they weren’t that uptight, maybe it was just the beans and the beer. But then again,
(and I thought of Norman Mailer) maybe I didn’t have any guts. I felt cornered. But it
occurred to me that when human beings feel cornered they often tell the truth. And, of
course, we tell the truth to our friends and we know our friends by the truths that they can
contain for us without finally using them against us. I said, “I played baseball too.”
Pinson asked, “Junior Varsity?”
I could have meditated for a half an hour on the tone of the condescension. After a
few precious seconds, I responded, “No, I played first string varsity for six years.”
I judged that, psychically, we were somewhere between the seventh and ninth
grades. Pinson blinked, stared into my eyes, and his world transformed itself into a
terrifying distortion that he rooted out by simply saying, after many tormented seconds, “I
don’t believe it.”
I seemed to me that he said it like a man denying to himself that he had a terminal
illness.
The Kidd thought I was joking: Sure you got a Nobel Prize for Physics at age
eleven.
I said, “I’m not lying. I mean I’m not joking either.” I felt like Jesus Christ at The
Last Supper and I was ready to parade my childhood and adolescent triumphs if necessary.
“I think he’s telling the truth Pinson.”
I said, “I played first string varsity in the fifth and sixth grades and seventh, eighth,
ninth and tenth grades. I never missed a game in six years.”
Obviously, I had missed at least five or ten games in all those years. I hated the look
of awe that came into their faces. An image of Melville’s unmarked grave flitted into my
mind’s eye, a gray, dirty stone on a grassy, lonely hill, and Johnson’s words were barely
legible on the imaginary tombstone, “Toil on, dull crowd, in extasy...” My stomach burned.
Pinson asked, “What position did you play?”
He was cross-examining me. He still hoped that he could prove I was lying.
“I played all positions. I pitched. Caught. Played the outfield. But third base was
my favorite position. I even played a year at first.”
As I talked, I, myself, felt like I was lying. I have noticed that when the truth about
oneself is out of character then one lies to make people think one is telling the truth, or one
tells the truth knowing that one will be thought a liar.
“I played football and basketball and ran track for six years also. I was first string on
the football and basketball teams also, for six years, and I ran the hundred in 10 flat.”
Pinson’s face was flushed.
Billy said, with the same aggressive smile, “Now you are just getting even with us.
You played baseball, but the rest is just your imagination. You’re putting us on.”
I said, “Kidd, I really can’t believe that you think I would sit here and make all this
up.”
And I couldn’t. If I were lying then I would be admitting myself to be a madman.
But still, we three knew that the desire to play, the desire to succeed among men and boys is
so great that it leads some to the edge of madness: to pathological lying, to cock sucking, to
murder itself. And so all that was left was a direct physical challenge.
I said, “Look, whenever you want, I’ll play catch with you or we can go over to
Bushrod and play basketball. Tomorrow if you want.”
Kidd looked at Pinson and with the terseness of a lawyer accepting a bad verdict
said, “He’s telling the truth Chris.”
Pinson suddenly turned on me again. He had started the whole thing and he
wouldn’t let it go, “I’ve never heard anyone brag so much in my life. I’ve never seen
anyone who lived so much in the past.”
“What are you talking about. I don’t live in the past.”
“No, you just spend fifteen minutes telling us of your success in junior high school.”
It seemed like he wanted to fight, but I knew that was impossible. “Look, you told
me you thought I was some kind of wimp.” I heard myself almost yelling. I tried to ignore
my stomach. I continued, “I am just telling you the truth. I’ve lived here for four months
and haven’t said anything about it. Now you’re telling me I’m living in the past.”
Kidd responded to my challenge, “You’d better be ready in the morning Jack.
We’re going to play catch with a football.” He had the menacing look of a man who needs
to look bigger than he is and I almost salivated at the chance to prove that he was a wimp.
But, as with all pleasures that one has felt a thousand times, the thought became boring.
I fired a good-natured challenge back at him, “Don’t worry. I’ll catch anything you
throw and I’ll guarantee you I’ll throw farther and harder than you can.” But I added with
realism and honest humility, “But you’ll have to give me a few weeks to get in shape. It’s
been awhile.”
He laughed in disbelief and I grinned back at him, but I didn’t look at Pinson.
Pinson wouldn’t allow his anger to be diverted that easily. He got up, motioned his hand
towards a spot about half way between Kidd and me, like he was pushing us away, and went
to bed. Billy got up too. He gave me a friendly shove on the shoulder and insulted me
again with his hypocritical grin.
 I hated feeling these adolescent feelings again, feelings I hadn’t felt since high
school. Even though it was the feeling of being the strongest animal around and having to
prove it, I hated it.
I became certain, then, that Kidd was incapable of friendship. Muffy followed him
into his room, with head down and tail between his legs.

I lay on my bed staring at the ceiling and realized that my stomach was more than
just tense. My urinary tract was painful too. I tried to forget it. I meditated for awhile and
then I got another beer and even took an antacid tablet but I couldn’t get rid of the pain. I
remembered that the Herrick Hospital drop-in clinic closed at midnight. It was 10:30. But
the pain wasn’t that bad. It seemed to outline two tubes that left my testicles and wound
towards my belly button and disappeared into my guts somewhere. It was dull and not like
the tense pain in my stomach that was gone now.
While, massaging my groin, I noticed that there was a discharge from my penis.
VD? From Florence? I couldn’t believe it. But I hadn’t had sex with another woman for
months and the discharge wasn’t imaginary. I didn’t know what to do. I had never had VD
before. Herrick emergency was the only place I could go that late at night, because there
was no way I was going to go to Highland Emergency again.
I remembered the last time I was at Highland: a guy was carried in on a stretcher
with a gunshot wound in his stomach, his girlfriend screaming at his side. I ended up
waiting for three hours, in the middle of the night.
I wondered if I should call Florence. It was embarrassing because I couldn’t
remember her phone number and I had bragged about how good my memory for numbers
was. But the pain wasn’t going away. I knew I wouldn’t be able to sleep. I lay on the bed,
thinking. I could see her house from my window. All the windows were dark. It was a
quarter to eleven. I reasoned that the longer I waited, the more difficult it would be to go
over there. Suddenly I remembered the look on her face when she said she wanted to be
able to call me any time without feeling like she was intruding or being aggressive. I had to
act fast. I knew I had to go over there before it got too late to go to Herrick. I found myself
standing in front of her front door, waiting, wondering if I should knock louder. Then I
heard noise from the other side of the door. The porch light went on. Mary appeared at the
open door in her faded blue housecoat, looking very sleepy.
“Is Florence up?”
“Come in.” It was a strange time to find Mary attractive, but I did.
“You know where her room is. Just go up the stairs.”
“OK.”
Florence appeared at the top of the steps. Mary and I walked up the stairs, with me
leading the way. We said good night and Mary went into her room.
Florence asked, “What’s up?”
“Well, I thought I should tell you. I ...”
She asked, in a loud whisper, “I don’t understand. What can’t wait until morning?”
We went into her small room through the curtain door. I didn’t know how to say it. We sat
on her bed.
I whispered, “Do you have anything?”
She looked at me as if I were crazy.
“I mean, you don’t have VD do you?”
 “Of course not.”
“Well, I have a discharge.” I felt ridiculous. The pain was faint but I exaggerated,
“It hurts quite a bit.”
Her eyes got wide. I tried to be truthful, “I mean it doesn’t hurt that much, but I can
feel it, and I got worried. I mean I thought it might get worse and since it is late I didn’t
know if I should go to drop-in or what.”
She seemed unable to say anything. Then, almost like a doctor, she asked, “How
bad is the discharge?”
“Not too much, but it’s there.”
“I really don’t see why you didn’t wait until tomorrow morning. It’s embarrassing.
I mean everybody has discharges.”
“I’ve never had a discharge in my life.” I wanted to add, “Even after the whore in
Tijuana and the ones in Nogales.”
She seemed to think I was lying. She said, after a very long silence, “I don’t know.
It just seems embarrassing.”
“You said you wanted to be able to call me any time and not feel embarrassed.”
“Well, this is different. It is in the middle of the night.”
“I don’t see why it’s different. I’ve never had VD before.”
“You don’t have VD! Everyone has discharges. It’s probably clamidia or something
like that.”
“I’ve never heard of clamidia. What’s clamidia?”
“It’s a yeast infection. Most women get it. I had it, but I thought it was cleared up.
That was more than six months ago. It was with that guy I told you about.” She lowered
her voice and said, “You know the one that didn’t work out.”
“How bad is it?”
She said, “I didn’t even know I had it.”
“I mean how bad is it if you have it?”
She laughed and said, “Well, obviously it isn’t very bad if you don’t even know you
have it. I mean when you have it.” Suddenly, she looked maternal. I was grateful. “You
can stay here if with me you want. I’ll take you to the Berkeley Free Clinic tomorrow
morning. This bed is kinda small but if you don’t mind cuddling.”
I didn’t mind. She fell asleep quickly but I just stared at the wall and tried not to
move too much. She snored loudly and I thought I owed it to her to let her continue. She
couldn’t roll over anyway, with me in the bed. The pain was a dull throbbing in tubes that I
didn’t know were there before that night.
After about an hour of meditation on the absurdity of my life, and of life in general, I
heard Tilly’s 1968, red Volkswagen pull up in front of the house. The front door of the
house opened and there was muffled talking as they came up the stairs. Florence was
snoring loudly again. I couldn’t recognize the other voice but it sounded male, and black.
They went into the bedroom without bothering to shut the door. I heard shoes fall onto the
floor and bedsprings squeak. Then, for about five minutes they gave the most amazing
imitation of pigs that I had heard until then. In a few minutes they too were snoring, and the
night was filled with three cacophonous, unsynchronized snores.
I tried to meditate again but I was worried that I would break out laughing. I felt like
yelling at the top of my lungs for everybody to turn over and stop snoring. Suddenly, I
noticed that Florence was sweating and seemed feverish. Then, over the snoring, I heard a
muffled cry from Mary’s room. At first, I thought it was a bad dream, but it was the
beginning of an orgasm. It lasted more than a minute.
The wheezing and snoring seemed like a string quartet accompanying her
performance. She was a violin and a cello and at one point, near the end, the slapping
sounded, at least to my ears, like timpani and cymbals.
After the orgasm, illogical as it seems, I was almost certain that she was waiting,
very silently, behind her partially open door, for me to come in and fuck her. She gave a
little cough and then there was no movement or any sound at all for several minutes, except
for the sound of three people snoring.
Then I heard her turn over in bed and move around for awhile and in a few minutes
she too was snoring. I stared at a ceiling for a few minutes and finally broke out laughing.
Florence continued to snore, but Tilly woke up, groaned a little, muttered something, and
then, after a few minutes, began snoring again.
I stared up at the darkened ceiling and I felt the rapturous smile on my face to be a
gift and not something to suppress. I breathed regularly, meditating on absurdity. I must
have fallen asleep very late because when I awoke it was after eleven and Florence was not
in bed with me.
I went downstairs. Florence was the only one in the house, waiting patiently for me
to come down stairs. She asked, “How do you feel?”
I was better. I said, “I thought you said Tilly didn’t have a boyfriend.”
“She doesn’t as far as I know.” She seemed evasive.
“I thought I heard someone with her last night.”
She didn’t say anything. I lied: “I’m not sure, but I’m pretty sure.”
She said, “That’s interesting. I didn’t even know she came home last night. She
must have left before I got up.”
“I’m sure someone was with her.”
“Look, it’s none of my business what she does.”
“I didn’t say it was. I just thought you said she didn’t have a boyfriend.”
“She may and she may not. I make it a point not to know what she does. It’s the
same with Mary. I know she has a boyfriend but I’ve never seen him.”
I thought she wasn’t telling the truth but it was our first night together and I didn’t
want to spoil it, so I let it drop.
We went to the Berkeley Free Clinic. I had never been there before. The doctor was
a guy who wasn’t much older than me. He was wearing blue jeans and a worker’s shirt, and
he had the John Lennon look, rimless glasses, a full, dark brown beard, and a ponytail.
It turned out that it was clamidia. He gave us both some pills and it cleared up in a
few days.

Chapter 11

Truly there is a madness that men dread and another that they love, for to dance,
laugh, love, and sing is a happy madness, but to sit mumbling and whining with one’s face
to the wall, or to rage with a drawn sword calling oneself Medea is, according to human
opinion, a dreadful fate.
 Dialogues in Limbo. George Santayana

We spent the rest of the week driving around in Florence’s new, yellow Volvo,
walking the streets of Oakland and Berkeley, and making love in the car, in various parks,
and in four different beds (when Tilly and Mary were at work.) The next Saturday though, I
had to go to work because I was running low on cash and the end of the month was coming
up. But there was a Black Panther Conference on Poverty that I had planned to attend.
I was really surprised when Florence declined my invitation. She said that she had
planned to go shopping and when I asked her why she couldn’t put it off until later, she said
that she would rather not talk about it. I decided that she must have had a bad experience
with them and let it drop.
I knew that Kidd wouldn’t go. He was pro Vietnam, but like Thomas Eagleton, unfit
because he had fallen into the clutches of the Capitalist Whore, American Psychiatry.
Pinson refused but wouldn’t give a reason. Turnbull grew apoplectic at the name, “Black
Panthers,” and Van Decken too, more or less hated everything that they stood for. So I went
alone.
There were only a few black faces in the very sparse crowd even though the meeting
was held in a large hall on 7th street in the heart of the Oakland Ghetto, and admission was
free. There was a panel of Black Panthers up on a kind of makeshift stage facing the
audience. I recognized one of the panel members. He was a guy that I played basketball
with at Oakland high school. He had been part of the Panther bodyguard at Oakland City
College in 1963 and 1964 when the Panthers were Separatist.
The Panthers had occasionally carried around loaded rifles in the halls of Oakland
City College in those days and even though they professed to be a political group and not a
terrorist organization, I was afraid of them.
A few years later, after he had attained world recognition, I had an opportunity to
talk to Newton. I stood fifteen feet from him. He was talking with a black man that I knew.
But I saw a black Ahab with bloodlust for the white whale-monster-man, the white killer-
shark-man, the destroyer of the Indians and Mexicans and the gentle African race. I saw a
maniacal bloodlust dripping from his eyes and from fifteen feet he looked inhuman and I
thought I could see Oakland police officer Tippet’s blood on his hands. I told myself that I
didn’t want to talk to him but in truth, I was incapable of talking to him. Later, I knew that I
had never been more terrified of a human being in my life.
But those were revolutionary times and Newton had the hurricane of history at his
back, as I did too, but his sails were full and mine were tied to their mast. My terror was a
kind of vertigo in the face of power in motion. I had no right to judge but like all of us, at all
times and in all circumstances I judged anyway, and I named my awe terror. But now he
was in prison, Cleaver had fled the country, and Bobby Seale was in charge.
A middle aged, hairy, graying, Berkeley-professor-type was standing on the stage,
having an argument with a kid in the audience who looked like he was about 20. They were
yelling at each other, and just about the time I got myself seated, a Panther shut the kid up
saying, “You wouldn’t recognize a worker if he came up and peed on your leg.” I started to
laugh, but stopped myself because the middle class audience was taking it completely
seriously.
 Another Panther grabbed the microphone and started talking about “Pussy Power.”
He said, “Power grows out of the lips of the pussy,” and to a group of women in the front
row, “If you’re laying with the problem then you’re part of the problem.”
It was obvious to me that they were mostly just having fun but the audience was
deadly serious. Some people were even taking notes. But most of the women looked
uneasy. I noticed a very pretty woman who was smiling but the rest looked nervous, or
angry.
The lecture went on for about 5 minutes and, I thought, got funnier. A guy in the
front row, who looked like a young Groucho Marx, with dark, kinky hair standing straight
out at the sides, was holding a microphone out like a large cigar, and, watching the crowd,
raised his eyebrows up and down with every Panther outrage and exaggeration.
The Professor got up again and started droning on about the classes uniting and a
young woman, who looked like an escapee from suburbia disguised in work clothes,
interrupted, complaining that she wasn’t getting a chance to speak, as had been promised. A
middle class black man, wearing a tie, under a very expensive looking black leather jacket,
told her, in a ridiculous imitation of a ghetto accent, “Shut-the-fuck-up pig.”
He accused her of being an agent, and said, with far too much pleasure, (and I
thought with a little embarrassment from the other Panthers on the stage,) “If you don’t
know how to act then we’re gonna have to put you in your place.” Then he indulged
himself with a lot of phony and embarrassing nigger-talk, until a very big and frankly fat
Panther, in the only BROWN leather jacket on stage, a jacket that looked like a small
condom stretched over a fifth of Jack Daniel’s, told him to shut up and sit down. His eyes
got very big, like a little kid who is scared and trying not to cry, and he sat down.
When the Professor started talking again, the group of women stopped listening and
began to talk among themselves. Suddenly, very dramatically, they got up in unison, about
twenty of them, and walked out with their noses in the air. The Professor droned on and the
Panthers smirked and tried to look like they didn’t care.
One quite fat and large woman, who looked like a dike, remained behind. It seemed
to me that the reason she didn’t leave with the rest of them was that she had her eye on the
fat Panther in the brown leather jacket.
Out of nowhere, a middle-aged Mexican who was obviously drunk, started yelling
that not enough Mexicans were on the panel like they said there would be. Actually, I didn’t
see any Mexicans on the stage. Someone yelled to him, “Talk to Bobby Seale about it.”
The Mexican said that he “couldn’t find the motherfucker.” He was so drunk that I was
surprised when he managed to hoist himself onto the stage. He was mumbling, mostly to
himself, but I heard him say again, very distinctly, “I can’t find the motherfucker.”
A very tiny black man in a black leather jacket that was quite a bit too large for him,
got very angry and said in a very loud, deep voice that could be heard all over the
auditorium, “who you callin a muhh fuck uh?” The entire panel got out of their chairs and
started shoving the Mexican around the stage, slapping him and telling him to stop calling
Bobby Seale a motherfucker. The guy could hardly stand up anyway and he kept falling
down and getting up again, saying over and over, “I know that, but I can’t find the
motherfucker.”
I couldn’t tell if he fell off the stage or someone pushed him but he landed in the
front row and took out about five or six chairs. He seemed to be all right and he weaved
through the chairs towards the back of the hall and went out the door muttering to himself,
“But I can’t FIND the motherfucker.” I don’t think he ever figured out why they were
yelling at him.
I didn’t want to leave in the middle of that incident because I didn’t want it to seem
that I was leaving in protest. But I decided that I had better leave and go to work because I
needed the money. I managed to slip out during the commotion so that no one noticed me.

Right out of the barn, I got an old woman from West Oakland who went out to
Berkeley, almost to University Avenue. On the way, I got a radio call to 4412 6th street.
When I got there, I parked my cab in a driveway that led to a very large dirt lot with a
chopped 54 Chevy truck parked near the house. A rifle was hanging on a gun rack in the
back window of the truck.
The dispatcher said the people were in the house and I would just have to wait for
them to come down. He said another cab had left but I should wait because they really were
in there. So I banged on the door and waited. Someone yelled down to me and said they
would be right down. So I waited on the porch. I heard some bastard yelling and honking
his horn and gunning his motor. It sounded like it was coming from across the street. I
banged on the door again. The same voice yelled again, “Just a minute.” I heard the
honking and the engine whining and the yelling. I started to look to see where it was
coming from, when a wild-eyed man opened the door.
“Nobody ordered a cab.”
“Fine. The dispatcher told me someone in there wants a cab.” I was really just
talking to myself, asking myself why these things happen to me.
“I told you. No one wants a cab.”
Suddenly it became clear to me that he was holding someone in there against his or
her will.
“Great. It doesn’t matter to me one way or other. I’m just trying to do my job.”
“Yeah, well do it some fucking-where-else.”
I tipped my hat. “My pleasure.”
I walked towards my cab, cursing to myself. To my right a horn blasted and the
engine of the 54 Chevy truck roared. The noise I had heard had echoed off the large wall
across the street but it was coming from my side of the street. A man yelled, “Get that
fucking piece of yellow shit out of my driveway.”
“What in the fuck do you think I’m doing?” I stared at him malevolently. I was still
pissed off at the guy in the house. A leer came across his face. He got out of his truck
slowly. “What did you say?” He was about 6’4” and 250 pounds.
“I said, I was moving my cab.”
No response. I stood there looking at the bastard.
He said, “I can’t believe I heard you right.”
I continued walking towards the cab, opened the door and stood with one foot on the
ground and one foot in the cab. “Hey look. I didn’t know you were there. When I saw you
I came over to move the cab. What the fuck more do you want?”
He walked to within ten feet of me and stopped. He said, “Maybe I ought to teach
you a lesson.”
“Look, I don’t need to learn any lessons. I didn’t see you. When I saw you I walked
to my cab to move it.”
“Yeah, I really do. I think you need a lesson.”
 I looked up to the third story of the white wood frame house behind him. A man
about sixty, who looked exactly like Wallace Beery, peered out of the window. He had a
three day, white, Beery-stubble. He smiled at me menacingly.
I said, “I think you’re really arguing with someone else. I don’t have anything to do
with it. I was moving my cab. I really don’t see what the problem is.” I got into the cab.
He said, very softly, “I was sitting in that truck honking the horn for five minutes
and you want to know what the goddammed-fucking-problem is?”
“I told you I didn’t know where it was coming from... The noise must have been
echoing off that wall across the street. I’m just trying to do my job. I’ve been driving for
more than a year and I haven’t had any problems yet. I’m telling you I didn’t know that I
was blocking your truck.”
“I think you did know.” He walked over the front door of the cab, which was still
open.
I said, “Look, you think fighting someone who weighs a hundred pounds more than
me is going to teach me a lesson? A lot of cab drivers carry guns. Maybe I ought to get
one.”
I looked at my radio. Out of habit, I was going to call the dispatcher for the NOGO.
I looked back at him and his face had a look of horror on it and he was backing up.
“You’re trying to pull a gun on me?”
“No! .... I said maybe I ought to BUY a gun. If I can’t reason with people. They all
tell me I should buy one but I didn’t think it was necessary.”
I tried to make it clear that I didn’t have a gun. I looked at the shotgun hanging in
the back window of his truck and then back at him. Just behind his head, Wallace Beery,
who was framed in the window, raised a 45 automatic up to his nose, and looked at me
significantly. Then he looked over the top of the cab and slowly lowered it. The big guy
looked over the cab too. I hoped beyond reason that it was the cops. I turned around. A
Yellow Cab was stopped in the middle of the street, about thirty feet behind me. The driver
held up the microphone of his radio and motioned that he would call the police if I wanted
him to. I gambled that just the threat was enough.
“No man. No problem,” I said out loud so the big guy could hear me, and waived
him on. The driver looked surprised but drove on. The guy just stood there. I said, “Look,
I’m sorry but I really didn’t know it was you. It was stupid. The sound must have reflected
off the building. I thought it was coming from across the street.”
He was grateful that I hadn’t called the cops. It was enough. Now he just had to
save face.
“All right, but just don’t let it happen again.” He said it like a man who had just
flicked a spider off his sleeve with his finger. I didn’t say anything. He turned and walked
back to his truck. I drove off and meditated on Providence for awhile and the thought came
to me that if God talks to man, then he must sound something like that but I didn’t have time
to think much more because I had a succession of four or five harmless but obnoxious
drunks that took me on a wandering path back to Oakland.
I thought about deadheading to the airport but then I got a nice old lady who was a
retired elementary school teacher. We had a civilized conversation and she invited me up
for tea. I almost accepted but I hadn’t made much money and I couldn’t spare the time.
After dropping her off, I noticed Juanita sitting at a bus stop and I picked her up and
ended up taking her to dinner at the Doggy Diner on 40th street. She offered to pay for my
onion dog, but not very strenuously. She always offered herself for free, if discretely,
because as she put it, “A cab driver would be good to know.”
She looked quite fetching but when she gave me a smile that revealed her rotten
teeth, I just felt sorry for her again. She called me Goody Two Shoes after I pretended,
again, that I didn’t know what she wanted to do. I left her standing on the street, telling her
not to do anything I wouldn’t do. She didn’t laugh.
“I wouldn’t do nothin if that was the case.”
“Hey, you do too much already.” I was sorry I said it after watching the expression
on her face change.
It was almost dark and I called the dispatcher pretending that I was at the stand near
the airport, hoping that no one was already checked in there.
“188, get 1643 108 avenue.”
“Hey, that’s in San Leandro, isn’t it?”
“We DO service San Leandro, 188.”
It was about twenty minutes and ten miles away, but very close to the airport.
“Roger.”
“Get there real quick, 188.”
I was convinced that the dispatcher could judge my real distance to any stand, to
within a couple of miles anyway, simply by the tone of my voice.
It was a quiet residential neighborhood. I parked too far from the address and had to
walk up the hill. I heard a commotion. When I got to the house, a man about sixty, with
white hair, was lying on his back and a man of about thirty was sitting on him, bashing the
older man’s head onto the cement driveway.
I ran up to them and pried the young man off. A woman with chestnut hair and
white skin was standing in the doorway, in her housecoat. They started to go at it again and
I pushed the young guy away. It wasn’t difficult: they were both drunk. I held them apart
with outstretched arms. The young guy had obviously made his point and had the best of all
possible worlds: he had demonstrated to the white-haired man that he would have killed him
if I had let him and yet he wasn’t actually obliged to carry out the act.
After a few minutes of glaring at each other, while the woman pleaded with them to
go home, the young guy gave in, went to his car and drove away. Then the older guy got
into his car and drove off.
“I don’t know how I can thank you,” she said.
“You have real helpful neighbors,” I said, looking at the deserted street. I asked,
“Who called the cab?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t.”
I looked appreciatively at her legs. She said, “I don’t know how to thank you.”
I asked, “Who were they?”
She looked ashamed. “He’s my ex-husband. The older man is his father.”
“I thought the young guy was going to kill the older guy. I can’t believe it was his
father.”
“I’m so glad you came. I don’t know what I would have done. It happened so fast.
Can I invite you in for a drink?”
“I make it a rule not to drink when I’m driving.”
She looked at me without saying anything. Then she said again, “I wish there was
some way to thank you.”
 She was about thirty five, and pretty. I thought of Florence.
“I guess one beer wouldn’t hurt.”
A little boy peeked out from the hall. She said, gruffly, “Go to bed.” He ran back to
his bedroom. In a soft voice, she told me to sit down while she got the drinks. When she
returned from the kitchen, her housecoat hung more loosely about her body and I could see
magnificent thighs outlined against the blue material of her night gown.
“What were they arguing about?”
“My ex accused his father of sleeping with me.”
I didn’t say anything.
“Just because he lives here with me.”
She was sitting next to me on the couch and I looked at her lap and was surprised to
see the dark triangle through her nightgown. I thought that she looked like a woman who
wouldn’t resist a stiff prick very long and I didn’t believe her story about the old man.
“He said I was hiding his father here but he was just staying here until he could find
something else.”
She looked down and let her arms drop and I thought she looked guilty and that she
was feeling bad because she had seduced the old man. One of her breasts became visible
and the nipple slipped over the edge of her nightgown. She raised her head slowly and
looked into my eyes. I looked at her breast and thought, “I’ll bet the old man was a real
goat.” I looked back into her eyes.
She was waiting for me to make a move. I thought, “I’ll have to pay for not
accepting her offer, one way or another,” and took a swig of beer. She gave a disappointed
grimace that turned into a smirk and when I lowered the can and turned towards her again
she was straightening her housecoat.
She emptied her glass, got up, and went back to the kitchen. I took another swig of
beer. She didn’t come back. I was ready to get up and leave without waiting for her to
return but after almost a minute, she came out of the kitchen and said, “I really can’t thank
you enough. He could have killed Jack.”
“Don’t worry about it.” I got up.
I said, “You’d better make sure the old man doesn’t come back.” She didn’t say
anything. I moved towards the door. “Well, I shouldn’t finish this beer anyway. I almost
broke my rule. Thanks anyway.”
I drove to the airport and it was completely dead. Turnbull was the only cab ahead
of me and we sat together for over an hour waiting for a plane to land. We agreed to have a
beer after work. When a flight finally came in, I got a fare all the way back to North
Berkeley for about nine dollars. That brought me up to 34 dollars and I had a chance of
having a pretty good night. The telephone company orders were going out over the radio
and I checked into a stand in downtown Oakland from North Berkeley.
“All right 188, you be number 3.”
“Number 3,” I echoed.” I was on Shattuck avenue at about Dwight way and
decided to hit the Grove Shafter freeway at 51st street. It was about a minute and a half
before the hour and I could be a minute or two late and get away with it.
Once on the freeway, I accelerated to about 85 miles an hour, and then, with the 27th
street off ramp in sight I eased off the accelerator and coasted down the off ramp towards the
intersection doing about 60, seeing that I would make the green light at the intersection with
no problem.
 “188, where are you?”
“I’m sitting in front of the building.”
“Well, you’d better sit on your horn because I’m getting another call. They say
there aren’t any more cabs left.”
“I’ll go into the building and get them.”
I replaced the microphone on its hook just before entering the intersection. A car ran
the red light and passed in front of me. I just barely heard and felt a tick where my right
bumper grazed his rear bumper. My rear license plate flew off, screaming into the night sky
like a lopsided, living Frisbee. He was already past me when my foot lifted from the
floorboard to hit the brakes. I couldn’t even remember the color of the car. I braked from
sixty down to about twenty.
“Jesus H. Christ on a crutch.”
I drove the rest of the way to the telephone company at twenty miles an hour
wondering where the license plate had landed. It looked like it had flown up towards an old
apartment building and I wondered if I should go back there and see if it had caused any
damage. I was worried that it might have entered an open window and injured someone.
“188, the Telephone company is calling again.”
“I’m sitting right in front of the goddammed building man! Tell them to put on their
bleeping glasses.”
I pulled up to the building just as another cab was pulling away with a load of
telephone operators. I got out and went into the building but it was empty. I drove over to
stand 105, in front of the St. Mark Hotel and parked, but didn’t check in.
I went into the hotel and headed for the bathroom, walking towards a drunk who was
about 40. He was talking to the night clerk and a pretty blond girl, about 9, was hugging his
back. He turned around and pushing her away said, “Get away from me. I thought I told
you I’ve had enough.”
Her face was flushed. She looked hurt, but also looked as if she didn’t really believe
him.
“Get away from me. Go over there and sit on the couch.”
He pointed to four couches facing each other in a square in the lobby of the hotel. I
walked past him. He said, “Wait just a minute. I called a cab.”
“OK.” I knew there were no cabs in the area. They were all at the airport or talking
telephone operators home so I might as well take him.
He took my arm and pulled me over to a dark corner, put his face close to mine, and
whispered, “Do you see that girl?
I moved back from the smell of alcohol. The hotel clerk pretended not to notice us.
“Yeah, what about her.”
She was sitting on the couch. She looked away from us, demurely. She was
wearing a summer dress that showed her chunky thighs pressed against the couch.
“I can’t get rid of her man. You don’t know what it’s like.”
I thought that she might be his daughter and felt sorry for her.
“Who is she?”
“She’s my niece. I baby-sit her. But she’s too much. All night last night, and now
tonight, again. I can’t take it.” He looked desperate. “I can’t keep her off of me man. Do
you know what I mean?”
 I looked at her and saw a very pretty preadolescent girl staring back at us. Her eyes
caught me looking at her legs. It was late. I thought I would probably miss Turnbull
anyway and that I should just leave and go back to the barn.
He said, “You’ve got to take her off my hands.”
I didn’t know what to say.
He said, “I’m too drunk to drive. You’ve got to drive her to my sister’s house for
me.”
“Why don’t you call your sister and have her pick her up?”
“She ain’t home man. Anyway she don’t have no car.” He pulled his wallet out and
gave me five dollars.
“I want you to take her home. She lives in Alameda. Do you know where Doolittle
Drive is?”
“Do I know where Doolittle Drive is! Sure.” I thought, “airport.” There was one
last, late, flight. He stumbled over to her and said something to her and she got up.
Suddenly it was obvious that she had been drinking also. From across the lobby she gave
me a lascivious leer. They walked across the lobby to where I was waiting.
He said, “3212 Doolittle Drive, apartment E. Oh well, she knows where she lives.
You don’t need no address.” He laughed and then he threw his arms up again, looked at her
one last time, turned his back and disappeared into the elevator. He didn’t look back.
She got in the front seat of the cab. I could see that she was very pretty. She noticed
my appreciation and accepted it as if she were used to it. We started down Webster street
towards the Alameda tunnel. The cab moved slowly with the timed stop lights. I looked at
her knees and our eyes met. She looked away at the door to her right, and asked, “Does this
door lock?”
She turned her torso and stretched her left arm over her body, pretending to try to
lock it. Her dress rose up high onto her thighs.
I said, “Yeah, if you want to.”
She turned around quickly and looked up at me with a lascivious smile. It was
obvious that she had misinterpreted what I said. I suddenly understood what her uncle was
trying to say. I remembered Juanita’s daughter.
We entered the tunnel. I looked at her again. She stared back, boldly. She made a
circle with her mouth and licked the inside of her lips with a sweeping motion of her tongue.
I pretended that I hadn’t noticed. Out of sheer curiosity I looked at her again, this time with
a flicker of encouragement. She pulled her dress up quickly. She wasn’t wearing panties.
I said, “You shouldn’t do that.”
She lowered her dress.
I said, “It’s all right. I guess you’ve been drinking.”
She was silent.
“Haven’t you.”
“Yes.”
She looked like she was about nine years old. I felt ashamed of myself. We drove in
tense silence and when we got to her darkened house, I didn’t wait to see if she had got in
the door safely.
Two and a half beers into the pitcher I said to Turnbull, “A nine year old tried to
seduce me tonight.”
He stared at me.
 “I’m not kidding. She... it was incredible.”
He said dryly, “Let me tell you about it.” He looked at me warily, sizing me up and
reading my face to see what I was ready to hear. As a form of charity, I suppose, he usually
assumed that I lied as much as he did.
I call it “charity,” because Turnbull thought that no self-respecting soul, that is, no
self-respecting soul that was only a cab driver, could allow itself to actually live and
experience life except through literature and fantasy. If my adventures were true, and they
were always just barely and exasperatingly believable, because nothing truly outlandish ever
happened to me, then I was an inferior soul who contented itself with a B-movie life. If, on
the other hand, what I said was fantasy, well then I simply had an inferior imagination and
he could live with that.
I said, “I wish you would.”
“Well, first, tell me what happened to you.”
I related most of it, giving in to a little fantasy at the end, as my form of charity
towards him.
He said, “A little bitch like that can be incredibly seductive. As I started to say,
when I was a kid, I got my first piece of ass before I entered puberty. We were both ten at
the time. We were together for three years until her old man finally got transferred to
Georgia or some other fucking Army base, I forget. Anyway she was one of those girls who
mature late, and she never did have a hair on her twat, but good ol Turnbull had a six inch
prick at age 11.”
He took a swig of beer and laughed.
“So you were a fucking child molester at 11.”
“And 12 and 13. But it didn’t bother either one of us too much until I discovered
what a real cunt could do. But that’s another story.”
He cleared his throat rather too theatrically and I thought he was probably making it
all up.
“After that, it seemed like we spent all our afternoons looking through a magnifying
glass for the first hair.” He took another swig and cleared his throat again, “Well, I won’t
tell you about her mother’s friend. You probably wouldn’t believe me anyway.” He poured
his fourth glass and added, “Remind me to tell you about it sometime.”
“I will.”
“Anyway, what would probably interest you is that my next girl friend had a sister
and the little cunt begged me to fuck her, and I did, but she was another one of those 11 year
olds who resemble our national emblem, the bald eagle, in the place where it counts.” He
paused for my smirk.
“Well, to make a long story short, her mother found out, and called me a fucking
child molester. I mean I was fourteen years old man and she called me a child molester.
She threatened to call the police if I ever showed up again. You can imagine what that does
to your ego. And I was trying to do the little bitch a favor by fucking her.”
I said, unguardedly, “That’s really hard to believe.” I looked at him skeptically
through the glass of my upturned beer mug.
He said, “I swear to God, William, may the merciful father take me away and
trample upon my soul in the hot place if I’m not telling the truth. I mean it was a traumatic
experience. I mean really traumatic.” He took a long gulp of beer, like a man who wants to
get drunk quick.
 I remembered that I had promised Florence that I would be back before one thirty at
the latest. It was already one thirty.
I took my leave and fifteen minutes later, found myself walking up the carpeted
stairs, towards her room, slightly drunk and wanting to make love.
When I reached her room I heard loud snoring coming from her bed. I took off my
clothes and just before I lifted the covers I noticed that the hair on the pillow was dark
brown. Mary was sleeping in Florence’s bed.
I suddenly remembered that Mary had very graciously offered to change rooms with
Florence since her bed was so small. I picked up my clothes and tiptoed through the curtain
into the hall
I heard Florence’s whisper at the open door down the hall: “I thought you might
forget but I fell asleep. I didn’t even hear you come in house.”
We could hear Mary snoring loudly from behind the curtain. She shut the door
behind us and said, “Already thinking of two timing me heh?”
“Yeah, sure.”
“How was your night?”
“Oh, not too bad. Well, remind me to tell you about it tomorrow.”
We made love and it seemed like I had just dropped off to sleep when I heard a
scream coming through the wall. “There’s a man on my roof!”
Florence and I sat up in bed and looked at each other.
I said, “Oh shit.”
Florence said, “Maybe you ought to go out there and see if you can help.”
I put on my pants and opened the door just as Mary was emerging from the
cubbyhole that had been Florence’s room. She was naked from the waist up. Her pancake
breasts hung to her waist and she put her hands over them when she saw me. She didn’t
really cover them and it almost seemed to me that she was offering herself up for inspection:
“Take a look, they’re yours if you want them. They may sag, but they’re a lot bigger than
Florence’s.”
Tilly came out into the hall, wild-eyed. She screamed, “It’s Julian. He’s standing
on the roof. It’s not like him. He must be on something.”
“Yeah,” I thought, “Like the roof.” I asked, “Do you want me to go out there and
talk with him?”
Tilly yelled, “Oh, God no. That would just make it worse. Don’t let him see you.
Go back to your room.”
That didn’t seem like the right thing to do. “Maybe if he just sees my face, it will
scare him and he’ll go away.”
“No, please, go away. I’ll handle it. Oh, it’s my fault.” She ran back to her room
and talked to him through the open window. “Julian, get off the roof and go home. Please.
I’ll talk to you tomorrow morning. I promise.”
Florence was standing in the doorway of Mary’s room. I said to her, “He’s just a
high school kid. If I show my face it will scare him away. But Tilly’s hysterical. What
should I do?”
“Don’t do anything.”
The three of us stood in the hall while Tilly pleaded with Julian, “Please get down.”
A loud yell came from the roof.
 Tilly shrieked, “Oh my God, he’s going to break the window.” She came running
back into the hall and hid behind me.
“I’d better show myself now before it’s too late,” I muttered. I ducked my head into
her room. He saw me, a look of terror came over his face and he disappeared. I heard him
jump from the roof. We heard voices in the driveway below and then we heard an engine
start and a car driving away.
I said, “Well, it looks like he’s gone. We can either go down stairs and have a drink,
or go back to bed.”
The three women looked at me as if they would do whatever I said. I offered,
“Well, why don’t we just go back to sleep?”
I don’t know about them, but I slept like a baby.

Chapter 12

Fay ce que vouldras.

Rabelais

Pinson woke me out of a deep sleep up the next morning with a telephone call from
next door. He told me that my mother had just called and that she wanted me to call her
back right away, that it was an emergency. I called, and she insisted that I come to her house
and hear the news. She wouldn’t tell me over the telephone. When I got there she told me
that my stepbrother Jacob had been offered an associate Professorship at Harvard.
She talked without stopping, for about a half an hour and I just sat there, listening
and drinking coffee. What gradually emerged from her rambling discourse was that he had
declined the offer because the pay wasn’t enough, because he thought he would have to
work too hard to keep it and because his wife didn’t want to move to Boston.
I couldn’t believe that it wasn’t an assistant Professorship that he had been offered
but she had written it down on a stray piece of an envelop, to make sure that she got it right,
and she read it to me.
It was depressing. She harangued me about cab driving and she said that I should be
teaching at Harvard instead of him, and I said that the reason that I wasn’t teaching at
Harvard was that she had married his father who was a son of a bitch and a drunk and I
hated her for it. By the time I got back to Florence’s house, I was so angry that I refused to
talk to her about it.
Sitting there with Florence, in Mary’s bedroom, I told myself that I didn’t love her,
but that I liked her and maybe that was enough.
Now, after five years, I can see that I needed her and loved her. I needed her because
she was the opposite of my mother: she was calm and reasonable and intelligent, and she
never screamed at me. But for that very reason I felt that something was lacking in her and
therefore, that I didn’t love her, or even more, that I couldn’t possibly love her.
Rather than talk about my feelings, we talked politics. Somewhere in the middle of
it I said, “Look, I’ve had power. I mean even if it was only being captain of the football
team in junior high school. I know it sounds ridiculous. But listen, the coach sends in
Kerensky and Kerensky thinks it is his big opportunity. But the coach really just wants to
give him the thrill of being in a big game so he can lie to his kids and say he started in a
couple of high school games and feel good about himself.
What do I do but throw the ball to Smith. Smith drops the ball. Kerensky shoots me
a look of implacable hatred as he leaves the game, his last, his only chance. Why did I
throw to Smith instead of Kerensky? Because he is our star receiver, and we needed the
points. Sure, I knew Smith was tired, but he is the star, not Kerensky. Why didn’t I throw to
Kerensky? I don’t know. Maybe I suspect that he really is good, and that if I give him an
opportunity, he will finally be as good as I am and replace me. Maybe I know he isn’t any
good. I don’t know the answer. Anyway, I feel that he and his, his brothers and sons and
daughters, hate me and anyone who looks like me, and that we have become their
implacable enemies because we have destroyed their chances forever... You think I’m crazy
don’t you?”
She smiled ironically and then answered mechanically, “Yes, as a matter of fact, I
do. But I love you so it doesn’t matter.”
It was the way she had first declared her love and she was doing it again: in passing,
without a feeling of danger, of self-exposure, and accompanied by self-protective irony.
As she became more sure of me, her declarations of love became more direct, almost
challenging: as if I were somehow defective in my capacity to express love because I
refused to respond. I thought it was beneath comment and I hated it.
I said, “That isn’t like you.” I went back to a previous argument, “Look, I don’t
approve of Nixon. I don’t know what he’s doing. But I know he’s an intelligent man. I
know he isn’t Evil with a capital E. I know...”
She interrupted me. “Sometimes I don’t know how I put up with you at all.” The
words stung. They seemed to come out of nowhere. She continued, “You sound like a
fascist.”
It sounded so ridiculous that, again, I didn’t feel like responding. But I heard myself
say, almost reflexively, “Look, I’m not a fascist.”
But I was surprised by a hysterical note in my voice. And I wondered how I put up
with her. She stared at me. The silence was there again. I continued, “I’m trying to say
that... Look, maybe we can’t hero worship each other. Maybe we are all just basically the
same and ... Nixon is just a human being.” I stared at her. She gave a little wave of the hand
as if she was brushing me aside, not my thought, and accompanied the gesture with a
disgusted grunt.
I started to ask her a question, “Why do you need to...?” But I didn’t finish the
sentence.
I had started to ask her why she needed to see him as a monster, as the embodiment
of Evil. But I knew it was no use. The irony hit me. I was as helpless as Nixon himself in
China, in front of the forces of History. And like Nixon, poker-faced in front of Mao,
drawing to an inside straight, I changed the subject to Love.
I said, “Love is similar. We pretend to love when we are the blindest. We don’t
want to see the other. We idealize the loved one until he is forced to be a hypocrite and
imagine some gain of his own so that he can give in to our desire without a hopeless loss of
self-esteem. I hate the word love.”
We were surprised that I said it. I continued, aggressively, swept away with
emotion, “I’ve even heard women talk about falling in love with each other. I mean
pretending that they aren’t lesbians. But they fall into the same trap as men: subconsciously
idealizing some phony trait like a straight nose and large breasts. They fall for the same
thing they denounce in men because...”
“You don’t understand at all. It’s not like that.” Her eyes flashed and blood rose to
her face. The silence returned and her eyes were deep and watching and I felt superficial
and helpless.
I knew that if I wanted to learn anything from her I had to observe and listen. I
began to breath deeply and rhythmically and I stared into her eyes and tried to stop thinking.
I saw a woman looking at me malevolently but unaware of it. After fifteen or twenty
seconds I asked, “What are you thinking?”
She didn’t answer. I waited, breathing calmly, and I imagined that I could see her
ordering her thoughts. I admired her for her capacity to think silently while I watched and I
loved her for it without knowing it. Later, I thought that it was her proud revelation to me
that there is a depth and strength in American women that is shy and almost invisible.
I remember thinking that I could see a piece of the soul of the Native American in
her eyes, something deeply pagan, something that no other Civilization has.
After two or three minutes of silent waiting, she said, “I don’t know how to say it
because you are so wrong.”
I could see that there was no malice in that. “Try.”
She said, “My feeling is that everyone is trying to seduce me.”
I was silent, thinking, breathing regularly, allowing my thoughts to form, almost of
themselves. “You mean women and men?”
“Yes.”
I let it sink in, forcing myself to think before responding, respecting her rhythm. I
waited a few seconds longer than necessary and then asked, “Everyone?”
She gave a little laugh. “Well, more or less.” She thought for five, ten seconds and
then added, “Sometimes they aren’t aware of it.”
There was no irony in her voice. Again I was silent, almost waiting for a response to
form, of itself, without any conscious effort. I responded, “Well, it’s funny because,
actually, it seems to me like no one ever tries to seduce me, ever.”
Habit had conquered purpose. The reversal was too much. It was an exaggeration
to produce an effect. I added a slightly ironical smile.
She was silent for a long time. I meditated and tried not to think and tried not to
protest against her silence in any way. But my mind wandered.
I remembered that I had grabbed a handful of pumpkinseeds that morning and
noticed a small, rusty nail just before I threw them into my mouth. Was it the terrorism of a
disgruntled employee, an accident?
I also meditated on the “closeness of disaster,” on the license plate tracing a deadly
arc into the night sky like a screaming debbuk beckoning me to eternity.
I remembered a Pomo Indian who had worked alongside me at the cannery. As we
watched the tomato filled cans moving towards the lid machine he let out a war cry over the
roar of the cans and spit a large gob of snot into one of the cans just before the lid went on.
“Just adding salt,” he screamed over the din.
I tried to concentrate on her face. She wasn’t looking at me but seemed to be
meditating, quietly. I didn’t say anything or ask her what she was thinking. Five minutes
passed. I wondered if she had ever tried to seduce anyone. I wanted to ask her but I wanted
her to break the silence.
Finally, she said, “I feel like you don’t understand me.” And then, a little
apologetically, “Well, that you are out of touch with your feelings.”
I forced myself to think instead of just react and throw something back at her.
I thought of the five years of psychotherapy I had had and the ten years of reading
and studying. My psychotherapist, who had a Ph.D. from Berkeley, had readily admitted
and even insisted that I knew more than he did about psychotherapy.
Suddenly I wondered if she thought that Nixon was trying to seduce her. “No, that’s
Ridiculous,” I thought. I had told her about the fare who said that “Nixon is the coldest son-
of-a-bitch you’d ever want to meet.”
Did she hate her father because she fantasized that he was responsible for her
mother’s paralyzed legs? I wondered if she hated Nixon because she felt that he wasn’t
trying to seduce anyone. Did Nixon correspond to her cold, paralyzing father? It seemed
almost ridiculous, and certainly farfetched, but maybe it would add some humor.
I asked without a hint of irony or a smile, “Is Nixon trying to seduce you?”
She gave a little laugh. She thought for a few seconds and then said, seriously, “I
don’t know him personally.”
Again, the silence. It suddenly occurred to me that her legs were fat and immobile
and that only her upper body seemed to be truly alive. I had a vision of her mother sitting
paralyzed in her wheelchair. A body without feeling from the waist down. It suggested the
Freudian idea, that for her, the Woman’s Movement was, unconsciously, literally necessary:
she had to steal something from the father, the patriarch, so that she could move. Her
mother was only half of a human being.
Outside, the sky was a brilliant blue and I realized that there were only two things
that I felt like doing. One was to make love, again, and the other was to run.
She had refused to jog with me once before. It occurred to me that I too should try
to seduce her, but to seduce her into movement.
Suddenly, she seemed very far away. I got up, walked over to her and sat down next
to her. Sitting next her, her anger seemed like sadness. I kissed her cheek. I said, “Why
don’t we go outside. It’s such a beautiful day.”
I watched and waited for a response. I put my arm around her shoulder. She didn’t
resist.
“All right.” She smiled like a little kid who’s ready to make up after a stupid
argument.
But I wasn’t finished. “I want you to go jogging with me. Just a little jog-walk at
first. You’ll get used to it. It’s fun.”
“I’m afraid I won’t be able to keep up with you. I told you I’m ashamed of my
legs.”
“Look, you can walk fast. That’s a good way to get started. I know a place where
there aren’t any people. It’s a beautiful park. Have you ever heard of Joaquin Miller?”
“No.”
“He was a nineteenth century Oakland Poet, Joaquin Cincinnatus Heiner Miller. He
was a very bad poet, but famous, around here at least. That’s usually the way it is, right?
Anyway, they named the park after him because he had a little house up there. I’ve gone up
there all my life, since I was a little kid. It’s really pretty. Most people don’t know about it.
It’s usually empty.” I gave her a sidelong glance.
She said, “All right. But only for you.”
Suddenly it seemed to me that she wanted to tell me that she loved me, but only
because she wanted me to tell her that I loved her.
I kissed her on the cheek again and messed up her hair, “Come on Flo, let’s get out
of this dingy room and get some fresh air.”
There was a wedding reception at Joaquin Miller park, so I took her to Crow Canyon
instead, in the Oakland Hills, behind Skyline Boulevard. We walked along, in the thickest
part of the park, alone, talking.
She said, in a playful tone, “You mean you don’t believe in ability at all?”
“Sure I do. I mean it’s obvious when you look at people who don’t have ability. I
mean a lot of people don’t have much ability for anything. Music, drawing, whatever.”
We picked our way through the brush, winding along an almost nonexistent path
about ten feet from a well-traveled dirt road.
I said, “After reading the story of Paul Morphy, the chess player, I thought for a
while that maybe some people have a kind of unequalled natural ability for things like
mathematics and music. Have you heard of him?”
She hadn’t.
“Well, he was probably the greatest chess player who ever lived and he wasn’t a
fanatic like Bobby Fischer. His talent seemed to come naturally.”
“You found out that he was a fake?”
“No, of course not. I mean I’m probably not being clear. It isn’t that I think people
aren’t different from each other. I think we probably differ inside our bodies and brains
even more than we do outside. But my point is,...well, that discipline, concentration, and
desire are the most important things. Usually.”
“It sounds like you’re hedging your bets.”
“It’s true that I’ve never come to a really solid and definite conclusion about it all
but... well, basically, I wanted to say that Morphy not only didn’t accomplish anything in his
life but he ended up a mental case. He became a certified paranoiac. So it seems to me that
there was something in his mental constitution that allowed him to concentrate on minute
details and work out all of their implications and that he had a sort of obsessive
personality and that’s what allowed him to give so much passion to chess. Do you
understand what I mean?”
“Yeah, pretty much. I just don’t see why it is so important to you. It seems obvious
to me.”
I didn’t say anything but I didn’t think it was obvious.
She said, “I have a retarded brother. He is officially classified as dyslexic. He’s
been rehabilitated to almost normal, but he’ll never be anything more than a very competent
truck driver. In fact, that’s what he’s doing now. Actually, he makes a good salary.”
I said, “My mother isn’t intellectual at all. I mean she isn’t retarded, but she doesn’t
care much about philosophy or literature or politics. To say the least. She was very pretty
when she was young and I suppose my father married her for that.”
“So you don’t believe in talent at all but you are the only talented one in your
family.”
I wondered if she had a Kleenex. I could feel my fundament moving.
 I continued, “It sounds contradictory. It is. Once when I got high, you know,
smoking dope, marijuana, with one of my cousins -- a guy who the family maintains is
retarded -- I had a bad trip and he seemed more intelligent than me! It seemed to me that he
was so intelligent that he didn’t need to be intelligent in all the normal ways. That he had
long ago decided that it was a waste of time to learn how to fix anything or remember rules,
or do mathematics or science. I never really forgot that experience. Anyway, even if it was
only a kind of hallucination, it made me realize that compensation probably explains a lot
also. Theodore Roosevelt was a sickly, skinny kid but he spent all of his life compensating
for it.” I waved my arm, “In fact, these parks are a direct result of his love of nature. Did
you know that?”
She did. I was embarrassed for trying to impress her.
I said, “Anyway, when I was in high school, I didn’t know any of that. It took me a
few years for me to figure it out and by then I had already destroyed my grade point
average. I started out thinking that I would automatically rise to the top because I had so
much talent, but it became obvious to me that work was more important, especially when I
saw what Jacob did at Berkeley. He used to lie to his friends and tell them that he never
studied. Actually, I think it was his need to lie about it that got me interested in the literature
on genius and talent. Anyway, as I told you, he studied almost constantly, like a man
possessed. For sixteen hours a day, for days and weeks on end. He crushed my love of
mathematics and physics and chemistry with the ugliness and aggressiveness of his ambition
and drive for power. I don’t think he even liked mathematics and science. I’ll never know
why he didn’t become a stock broker or real estate agent. People like him will kill science
and mathematics someday in America.”
“What made you think you were so talented?”
“Well, I told you already. When I scored 99.5 percentile on the California State
aptitude tests as a high school senior, I was seduced. I thought the test really meant
something for me because I didn’t have time to study much at all when I was a kid. From
age ten to sixteen I played first string varsity basketball, baseball and football. Practice
lasted four hours a day, every day of the school year. After practice I was so tired that I
barely did any homework at all. Maybe an hour or so at most. So I thought I was a kind of
genius to score so high on the tests. I guess I bought the IQ myth, totally. I thought I must
have an IQ of about 160, or one out of ten thousand, because when I was ten... don’t laugh...
I scored “15 years and 11 months plus” on the reading test... That was as high as it was
possible to score then and that was before I started playing sports. So I thought it didn’t
matter where I went to college, that I would automatically get all A’s because I didn’t plan
on playing sports and I would have time to study. So I was a fool. What else is new?”
My bowels rumbled but before I could ask her if she had a Kleenex, she asked,
“Do you think you’re smarter than I am?”
The question startled me.
“No, of course not. I’m sure we’re probably equal. Maybe you’re smarter in some
ways than I am and vice versa.”
“You’re the first person that I’ve ever met who thinks he’s smarter than I am.”
I forgot about my bowels and asked, “Why do you say that?”
“It seems obvious that you think you’re smarter than me.”
I was surprised. “Well, maybe I do think of myself as a kind of genius. Maybe it
comes from being a sports hero. Being captain of the football team, even in junior high
school, has ruined better men than me. Or, maybe it’s because I used to beat Jacob in
Hopalong Cassidy Canasta when we were kids. I don’t know. What can I do?”
“You can realize that I am smarter than you.” She laughed.
I said, “Believe me, it is a great luxury to be with an intelligent woman. I appreciate
it.”
“You’d better.”
I said, “It is a paradox. My mother doesn’t feel stupid. She acts like she is a genius.
Like she is more intelligent than everyone else. But she obviously isn’t. I can’t explain it.
Sometimes when I leave her house I feel like committing suicide. I feel like she has
destroyed my life with her stupidity. And I hate her for it. But it is an impotent feeling.
When you feel like your own parent exploits you and treats you badly and dominates you
and...”
I was being incoherent and tragic, trying to deal with feelings that were too
complicated and too difficult to verbalize and organize. I needed more time. I was
surprised that I had passed up a particularly cozy looking bush. I couldn’t seem to forget the
disagreeable morning with my mother.
She said, “It sounds terrible.”
“It is.”
I was already sick of feeling sorry for myself and besides, nature kept asserting
itself. I said, “Well, everyone has problems. I shouldn’t pour all my bad feelings out on
you.”
I opened my mouth to ask her if she had a Kleenex, but she said, a little tragically
herself, “My mother had polio when I was just a small child.”
“You told me a little bit already. She was in a wheel chair wasn’t she?” I wondered
about her sex life.
“Yes. She ended up completely paralyzed from the waist down. She has been in a
wheel chair as long as I can remember.”
“I’m sorry. It must have been very bad for you and your family.”
“Oh no, they were a very loving family. I never felt deprived.”
For some reason, I indulged myself in self-pity again, I just couldn’t seem to get
away from it. “I guess love is the most important thing. I always felt like my step-father
hated me.”
She looked shocked.
“It’s true. The guy is such a bastard, its hard to describe. When my mother married
him I almost couldn’t believe her. The man came home drunk after work every night and
then went bankrupt about three months into the marriage. My mother gave herself a hernia
over it. Literally.”
I was really getting sick of being depressed. My bowels gave another one of their
famous, imperious signals. “Do you have a Kleenex?”
“No, I don’t think so.” She rummaged in her pockets and then said, “Uh Oh. I
guess you’ll just have to use a leaf. Why don’t I walk ahead while you do your business?”
“Fine. I’ll suffer alone.”
I found an unusually thick bush that opened almost into a private little cave and went
inside feeling very isolated and cozy. I even found a piece of old newspaper, which served
the purpose. As I was putting on the finishing touches, I heard a loud motorcycle chugging
along the dirt road. A Hell’s Angel and his girlfriend roared by in a cloud of dust and
stopped about twenty feet down the road. A stab of fear pierced all the way to my
fundament and I wondered if they had spotted Florence walking alone in the underbrush. I
was about to show myself, when I saw the woman walking towards me carrying a large wad
of toilet paper. I stayed put. She came to within three feet of where I was crouching, looked
around to make sure no one was looking and turned her back to me. She pulled down her
pants, squatted down, and displayed an extraordinarily white and well-formed ass. I could
have reached out and touched it. She let go of a turd about two feet long with a voluptuous
sigh and a finishing grunt and then pissed thunderously for about a minute. She wiped her
crotch for a tantalizingly long time but finally stood up, hitched her pants, surveyed her
apparently isolated location and strode back to the motorcycle. They roared off in a cloud of
dust.
I caught up with Florence and described the event.
“Did it get hard?”
“As a matter of fact, it started to, but the situation was a little awkward.”
“Yeah, I can imagine. What do you say to a white bum?”
“Yeah, and she didn’t even ask for a handout.”
I was astonished at my wit. She said, “Very good. Maybe you really are a genius!”
We had a good laugh. She tried another one: “Well, maybe she was a little
backward.”
I gave her a pat on the butt and said: “True, she wasn’t exactly in the missionary
position.”
She said, “Some people like it that way.”
“If the shit fits, wear it, is that it?”
“That one seemed a little strained.”
I said, “Not bad, not bad.”
We strolled along in silence, with arms around each other’s waists, slightly
awkwardly.
I broke the silence, “Nothing like a good shit to liberate the mind.”
She answered, “Sounds like a good idea. Do you want to watch me?”
“Right now? On command?”
“Why not?”
“Well, remember, there isn’t any Kleenex.”
We stopped and she gave me a salacious look. We kissed. She slipped from my
arms, “You’ll have to find me some leaves big fella.”
I handed her a wad of the softest leaves I could find and she pulled down her pants,
squatted, looked into my eyes, and grunted out a rather long, very soft, yellowish turd..
After wiping with the leaves, she said in a raspy voice, “Let’s do it.” I started to unbuckle
my pants when she added, “I want it in the ass.”
I pointed to the pile of baby shit and quipped, “All the leaves in Oakland couldn’t
get a mess like that off my prick.”
She looked a little chagrined and explained, “I didn’t bring my diaphragm.”
I stood looking up at the Oakland Hills and then back down to her blond head,
wondering why I wasn’t comfortable with another human being kneeling at my feet.
But I didn’t moralize. Instead, I produced a fantasy of a very white, fleshy
Elizabethan woman from Pilgrim times, holding her dress and petticoats up to her large
white breasts, sitting against a stump, exposing a very wet, black, and hairy vulva; and a
brown-skinned, naked Indian woman, kneeled in front of her, and moaning while she licked
her cunt with a subdued, mechanical and knowing tongue. I was the Elizabethan woman
and had an extraordinarily animalistic orgasm.

Chapter 13

... these events demonstrated that the United States remains dedicated to the rule of force,
that political elites agree and indeed insist that it must remain so, and that furthermore, the
commitment to violence and lawlessness frames their self-image as well, barely concealed
beneath deceptive rhetoric.

Noam Chomsky

It turned out that Florence was a Maoist. I didn’t know much about Mao’s
philosophy even though I had admired him from a distance and used to wear the Little Red
Button around sometimes, just for shock effect. (She was so impressed with the button that
I gave it to her.) I had read, in the Berkeley Barb, that there was going to be a lecture on
China. I asked her if she wanted to go.
“Well, I actually have to go shopping again. I know it’s not very considerate.”
“I can’t believe it.”
She was silent for a few seconds and then laughed awkwardly, involuntarily, to
herself. “I shop for women who need assistance. Once a month. It’s part of the Women’s
Movement.”
“You mean you buy food for them?”
“Well, that’s usually what people do when they go shopping.”
“You don’t even have a job. It must be a drain on your savings.”
“I manage.”
“Can’t you tell her you’ll go tomorrow?”
“No, you don’t understand. She’s expecting me. She’s very poor. She has a baby.
You got a haircut.”
“Yeah, like it?”
She said, “It’s kinda short.”
“I’ve never worn long hair.”
“I like it.”
I said, “Thanks. You didn’t forget that it’s Van’s birthday tonight did you?”
“Women don’t forget things like that. You’re going to that organic restaurant on
Telegraph Avenue. The one across the street from Cody’s bookstore. You’ve told me five
times.”
She looked very pretty in her brown and white cotton serape with the drawings of
prehistoric elks on it and I didn’t like the prospect of being separated from her for so many
hours.
She asked, “Why don’t you go shopping with me?”
 “Well, I actually want to learn something about China. A lecture is probably the
least painful method. Why don’t I go with you the next time?”
“All right. You can tell me all about the lecture tonight when you get back from
dinner.”
“OK. I’ll probably spend some time with Van after dinner, but I’ll be back before
eleven. How’s that?”
She looked more disappointed than I thought she should. I didn’t like
possessiveness but I was glad that she would miss me. She said, “Well, you have your key.
Wake me up if I’m sleeping.”
I drove to the address on Shattuck Avenue and parked in front of the building. I sat
there in my red Volkswagen, in front of the building, waiting for Mick Jagger to finish
singing Parachute Woman, on my Radio Shack tape deck. It was a lopsided, very small,
white building a couple of doors down from a bar called Uncle Harry’s. I didn’t bother to
put any money in the meter. Those were the days when I still gambled with the meter
maids, before I was hauled to jail in a paddy wagon for a long forgotten parking ticket.
I went into the whitewashed wooden building. There was a thirty-five-year old,
bespectacled, thirty-pounds-overweight, balding man with black hair, sitting by the door
behind a folding card table. If it hadn’t been for his John Lennon glasses, it would have
surprised me that he wasn’t sitting at home with a beer, watching the Sunday afternoon
football game.
“How much?”
“Oh, it’s free.”
“Sound’s like a good deal to me.”
“We’d like to get your name and address it we could.”
“Sure, I’m not afraid of the FBI.”
I looked over my shoulder at two women and a man. They were talking and
pretended not to hear what I had said.
I asked, “Do you think those three are socialists?” I printed my name and address,
too large and very legibly, on the blank page. He smiled and then snorted. He knew that it
was obvious, even to me that they were eastern seaboard, private school, rich kids playing
hippie in Berkeley and that even if they didn’t work for the FBI, they ought to.
I asked, “What about you?”
He looked at me like a riverboat gambler getting ready to draw to an inside straight,
paused, and said, “My father is a Communist. I grew up that way.”
His eyes held a conversation with me for a few seconds and I thought I understood
him to mean that he was going to play his hand for all it was worth.
I said, awkwardly, backing down from my arrogant insouciance, “Don’t worry
about it, I understand. Anyway, we need some Communists in America.”
I didn’t think I had said enough so I paid back his honesty with my own, “At least
you have a father. Mine was killed by a Kamikaze pilot in World War ll.”
He started to say something but then his glance turned inward, to look at some past
disaster maybe and he remained silent.
I turned around to see the undercover agents standing there, looking like girls at a
junior high school dance pretending that they didn’t want to dance with a Real Communist.
I left them standing there and went into the lecture room. A gaunt man, about
twenty, nervous and with a three day black stubble, was sitting in the back row in the far
right corner. Straight, black hair fell across his eyes, completely covering his right eye, and
falling over his nose onto his right cheek. I could barely see his dark, shining eyes darting
around the room, like a sewer rat looking for an exit.
Sitting dead center, a fat, Germanic-blond, rag picking woman in layers of colored
clothes ate greasy chicken out of a large brown shopping bag. She licked her fingers
occasionally, wiped them on her dress, and militantly ignored my eyes.
I sat down, left center, and waited for some more people to show up. The three
agents came in and sat down next to the nervous guy and the guy who was taking tickets at
the door came in after them and sat down in front of the agents, sitting very straight and high
on his chair, as if he was trying to block their view.
Suddenly, the lecturer came into the room from a back door that I hadn’t noticed.
He was accompanied by a woman whose face looked like an empty bottle of Mary Kay nail
polish remover. She was wearing blue jeans and a man’s sleeveless undershirt. You could
see large, pendulous breasts through the shirt, hanging waist level, and two thick, black
bushes growing from her armpits. She sat down in the front row, on the right side, and the
man strode to the podium.
He stood there shuffling papers and muttering to himself for about two minutes, not
looking at the audience. He paused and looked up. He looked at the agents, at the blond
woman in the center, at the nervous guy on the right, and then he turned around and looked
at the door and I thought he was going to leave. The room was completely silent and then
one of the agents coughed. The speaker turned back to face the audience again, cleared his
throat and looked at me.
We looked into each other’s eyes for about seven or eight seconds. The woman in
the front row turned around and gave me a dirty look but he raised his hand slowly and then
lowered it theatrically and just as slowly and began talking, to me, for about two hours.
It was one of the greatest lectures I’ve ever heard. We followed Mao all over China,
with a cast of hundreds. There were people and cities and entire countries that I’d never
heard of, a multitude of mercenary armies from countries all over the world and vignettes of
the power struggles of Madame Mao that were almost pornographic.
The lecture didn’t end, it just stopped, in mid-sentence. He looked at his watch, like
he’d forgotten an important meeting, turned around and walked through the back door with
the lady who snatched up her papers and following hastily behind him.
I turned around to see the blond woman looking for something in her bag, the thirty
five year old ticket taker, directly behind her, trying not to meet my eyes, and all three FBI
agents standing up, behind him, looking at me eagerly like we were long lost friends. The
sewer rat was already gone.
I thought, “Oh shit.” I hadn’t anticipated the lecture lasting more than two hours. I
was certain that I had got a parking ticket. I rushed out of the room and was happier than I
should have been when I saw that there was no ticket.
To kill time before dinner, I drove to Lake Merritt and sat on a wooden bench in
front of the duck pond and continued reading in a scurrilous book about the sex life of Jack
Kennedy.
After about an hour of reading and watching black women and their children feed
the ducks with little fish and bread crumbs, I looked up from the book to meet the eyes of a
high school girl who seemed transfixed. She had stopped right in the middle of the walk
and was standing still, about five feet from me, staring at me.
 I couldn’t believe me eyes. I knew that Kennedy would have taken her to a
penthouse furnished for the occasion, fucked her, got her phone number to make her feel
good, given her fifty bucks for a new dress, and forgotten her.
I, however, would engage her in conversation, find out that she was an idiot, ask her
anyway, against my better judgment, if we could go to her apartment and she would accuse
me of trying to rape her and...
She stood there for about forty seconds, pretending to watch something else, and I
ignored her with resolution, moralizing along with the amazed author of my book, feeling
false virtue for resisting a temptation that I shouldn’t have felt in the first place.
I went to Van’s apartment a half an hour early and he was glad to see me. We talked
about Wagner, Nietzsche, Ruskin and Carlyle and walked more than ten blocks to the
restaurant, hardly noticing the distance.
I was amazed when he gave ten cents to a bum on Telegraph avenue: the bum wasn’t
dressed much better than he was. It seemed like an act of bald self-deception.
As we walked into the restaurant, he commented on the ugliness of the architecture,
and said, “I guess you can’t expect that men will build suitable buildings for themselves
when they are so cut off from their true natures.”
I asked, “What is it that jumps out at you?”
“Well, everything. I mean what doesn’t jump out at you?”
I recognized the waitress as a woman whom I had met in the Food Mill a few
months before. We had had a very nice conversation and I had almost asked for her
telephone number. She was a long-legged twenty-two year old beauty with an agreeable
mix of Indian blood. She pretended that she didn’t recognize me and I thought she was
acting the role of an icy bitch. It put me in a guarded mood. I said, in an attempt to dispel a
foul spiritual gas that I imagined building in the tubules of my brain, “Well, there are too
many plants in here. I mean if you are a vegetarian restaurant, you shouldn’t hang your food
around your customer’s ears.”
“Yeess,” he hummed approvingly, in his inimitable and indescribable way.
We studied the menu in silence. The selection seemed truly abominable. It was
Mexican vegetarian food, something I hadn’t expected. It seemed a contraction in terms, a
logical conundrum that Abelard himself might starve to death trying to resolve. But when I
saw the words “Ovo-Lacto vegetarian,” I realized that it was just standard Mexican food
translated into Berkeley English. The only thing missing was carne asada and Dos Equis
beer.
“Son-of-a-bitch,” I groaned.
“What?” he asked.
“Mexican food without beer. I don’t think I can take it.”
“What’s this?” He pulled out the wine list from his menu.
I said, “Thank God.”
There were four or five kinds of beer listed at the bottom but there weren’t any
Mexican beers so I decided on a San Miguel, dark.
The menu was quaint: “Rolled eggs seasoned with Chile and jallapeno pepper sauce
with brown rice and beans.” or, “Homemade beans and onions stuffed in rolled, unleavened
bread seasoned with the spices of Northern Mexico.”
 The prices were reasonable; nothing was over a dollar fifty. But the San Miguel was
thirty five cents and there were bottles of wine that cost four dollars. But, I reasoned it was
his birthday.
I said, “Go ahead and order a bottle of wine. Pick any one you like.”
“I can’t drink that much Jack. Thanks. I’ll just have a bottle of beer.”
The waitress appeared and her face was contorted into the coldest, haughtiest look
that I had seen in at least two days. “Can I take your order?”
“Yeah, bring two San Miguel darks out here as fast as your ass can trot,” I thought,
but said, looking at Van for approval, “Two San Miguel darks, to get started, and I’ll have
Chile Relleno, or, what’s it called?”
After an appropriate, uncomprehending silence she asked, “Do you mean the eggs
rolled over chili pepper?”
“Yes, that’s it.”
Van ordered the taco dish but I didn’t know it until it arrived.
“How’s your novel coming?” he asked as we were waiting for our San Miguel’s.
“Actually, I didn’t tell you but I’m stopped writing if for now. I’m working on two
articles right now. I was writing three but I gave up on the Mick Jagger article.”
“Well, I don’t know if I should ask you about that one or about the other two.”
“Well, as you know, I was writing one about Mick Jagger’s relationship to the
psychology of Wilhelm Reich but I found out that Reich was, well, kind of crazy. He had
this thing called an orgone box and he thought that he could actually catch sexual energy in
the box, that orgone energy was a particle that emanated from matter.”
“You mean like from rocks and inanimate matter?”
“Yeah, I’m afraid so.”
“That sounds odd. I’m surprised that he wasn’t English.”
“Why’s that?”
“Well, the English are known for their sexual eccentricities.”
“They could take lessons from Reich.”
“How did you get interested in it in the first place?”
“Well, I read his book, Character Armor, and it made a lot of sense. He claimed that
Freud didn’t go far enough, that human beings could only be psychologically healthy if they
could experience full orgasms and that most people were inhibited and the reason that they
were neurotic was that they held their bodies in strange positions and tensed their muscles to
prevent themselves from feeling sexual feelings. I experimented with some of his ideas
myself, you know, while smoking marijuana.”
I looked at him cautiously. He was embarrassed. The waitress arrived with the
beers and almost bounced them on the table, leaning away from us as if she couldn’t stand
the possibility that she might touch either one of us.
He said, unexpectedly, “I’m probably neurotic by that definition.”
“Why’s that?”
“Well, I’m thirty two years old and still a virgin. I mean there’s supposed to be a
sexual revolution and I’ve lived in Berkeley for ten years, since 1959. I don’t know what he
would say about it.”
We had talked about it before. I asked, “What about that woman you were telling
me about?”
“You mean Rose?”
 “Yes. The one who’s teaching in that college. The one who has a Ph.D. from
Harvard.”
“Well, first of all, she only has a Master’s Degree, and second, she’s teaching in a
junior college.”
“Have you made any progress with her?”
“I’m not sure. As soon as I think we are getting closer she does something that
makes me think I’m wrong. And then there is her black boy friend.”
I said, “Oh, crap.”
He became agitated, “Oh, she has this thing about blacks. You can’t say anything
about them to her. She just gets completely irrational.”
He was starting to loosen up and he took a long swig of beer, showing me a profile
that I knew he thought looked like David Niven’s.
“Have you done anything yet?” I didn’t even try being discrete. Whenever I did, it
turned out badly. I knew it was better just to say whatever I was thinking.
He asked, “What do you mean? Something physical?!”
I gave him an assenting glint.
“Oh, heavens no.” And then, with a slightly dejected look, “I would never have the
courage to try anything physical.”
“Sometimes I think you just have to do something Van. You have to reach out and
break across the space. Women expect that. It’s kind of crude sometimes but ... well...
sometimes there is a kind of silence and the only thing you can feel is the space and it seems
impossible to bridge it. That is the time when you have to do something, to reach across
and...”
The longer I talked, the less sure of myself I felt. But I remembered his Ph.D. thesis
and his virginity and I felt that I had to say something. I asked, “By the way, how is your
thesis coming?”
“Well, you know. It’s stuck. I feel like a fraud. I mean, “The Moment of Ecstasy in
English Literature” is hardly the appropriate theme for someone who is still a virgin. It’s
scandalous.”
His candor disarmed me and I felt sorry for him.
“All the more reason that you’ve got to do something.”
“If all else fails,” I thought rather disingenuously, “you can fuck Florence.”
I asked, cautiously, “When is your next date?”
“She’s taking a trip back East. She said, we’ll talk about it when she comes back.”
“Why don’t you invite her to go to dinner with Florence and me? Maybe if I meet
her I can get a better idea of what you’re up against.”
He seemed slightly hesitant but agreed. The waitress loomed behind him like an
impregnable fortress of beauty, almost floating towards us, and shrouded in what I imagined
to be a poisonous miasma of Pochahantic revenge.
After she had left the table, my convictions were shaken and my body was rigid and
I was afraid to eat from the dish of food that she had placed in front of me because I
imagined that she had put poison in it.
When Van plunged into his taco as if it were his last meal, I looked into my plate
again with interest. The food looked appetizing: it was the first Chile Relleno I had ever
seen that was served with freshly baked beans and whole grain rice. I was hungry again.
I asked, getting up, “Care for another beer?”
 The waitress was walking towards the kitchen and I caught up with her, walking
quickly and silently until I was close enough to touch her. She sensed me there behind her
and turned to face me.
I drew a breath of air and prepared myself. She looked like a trapped doe, longing
and terrified and I paused for a delicious second before I said, in an intimate and sexy voice,
“Could we have two more San Miguels?”
“Of course. I’ll bring them right over.”
“Thank you.”
I went back to the table knowing that Van needed another approach to his girlfriend,
Rose, but I couldn’t think of anything.
I sat down, not knowing what to say. Even though he had told me about his early
religious experiences, many times, I asked him about them again, just to break the silence,
“You used to be religious when you were a kid.”
“My father was a Seven Day Adventist and didn’t believe in surgery. They waited
so long to have my appendix out that it almost killed me. The doctor... Oh God. That is
such a horrible story I don’t even want to talk about it... I’ll never forget that night driving
on those winding mountain roads to Los Angeles.”
We both remembered that he had already described the whole bloody mess to me in
detail. We probably thought we were “reestablishing intimacy” or some other nonsensical,
Age of Aquarius state of mind.
I said, “That’s funny because I grew up in the Advent Christian Church. They
weren’t as fanatical as the Seven Day Adventists, but they were Fundamentalists. I think a
lot of Americans have the same problem. I mean, we’ve thrown away Christianity but we
still have the early training. It’s still there... in our subconscious minds... You know the
Jesuits said, “give us a child until he is six years old and we’ll have him for life.” Nietzsche
was like that. The people of Turin called him “The Saint” when he was living there and
writing The Anti Christ in his room. You and I are like that Van.”
He gave a merry little cackle, “You mean we can’t give up our Puritanism even
though we are convinced that it is our moral duty to do it?”
“Well, you said it better than I could.”
I tried to catch the waitress’ eye but it was impossible. She thought I was trying to
flirt with her. I said, “Well, I suppose we ought to get out of here.”
He agreed and hailed the waitress with a quick and highly visible wave of his arm
and thanked me for the dinner. The total bill came to only $4.19 and I knew right away that
she had charged exactly one dollar too little. I left a tip of twenty cents and went to the cash
register with the bill. As I paid the bill I lied to the cashier, “This is really a nice restaurant
you have here. It was the best Mexican food I’ve ever eaten. And great service.”
He gave me a big smile and thanked me. I asked for four quarters in change. “This
is for you.” I gave him a quarter and walked back to the table where the waitress was
clearing off the table.
“Here is an extra quarter for you.”
She gave me a guarded smile. I walked towards the door where Van was standing
next to a waiter. I gave the waiter a quarter. As soon as the restaurant door closed, and we
were standing outside on the sidewalk, I flipped the last quarter high into the air and caught
it. I stretched out my hand to give it to him and laughed uproariously.
“What’s so funny?”
 “She shortchanged herself a dollar, and I gave it back to them in tips.”
He was silent. It was clear he wouldn’t take the quarter.
I said, “I kept a quarter for myself just for the hell of it.”
After a painful silence and scowl he said, “Well, it seems dishonest to me.”
I was in high spirits. “Comon Van, lighten up.”
“Well, you just stole a dollar from them. I don’t think that’s funny.”
“It was a joke. I stole a quarter from them. It’s worth the laughter.”
“I can’t see how stealing is a joke.”
His moralistic tone stunned me into silence.
He continued, “You can’t argue out of it. You should go back and explain what
happened and return the quarter.”
I suppressed my anger. I said, “Look, I stole a dollar from the restaurant but gave it
back to the employees. They’re all happier...” I stopped in mid-sentence thinking, “as we
would be too if you weren’t such a prig.”
He said through clenched teeth, “I still think you should go back in there and tell
them what happened and give them back the quarter.”
“I’m not going back in there.”
We walked towards Dwight Way in silence ignoring the same bum as we passed the
Cafe Med. The bum mumbled an obscenity after us. We crossed the street, putting The
Shakespeare Bookstore at our backs.
Trying to find a way to bridge the gap between us, I convinced myself that, at
bottom, it was my fault: I said to myself that in boyish high spirits I had forgotten his high
moral standards and I had lost control of my reasoning power.
“Look Van. I’m sorry. I know it wasn’t strictly moral. I was just having fun.”
He said, viciously, “I don’t mind the fun, but it is the fact that you refuse to admit
your error and go back in there and give them the quarter. That’s what I can’t tolerate.”
It was clear that he wouldn’t forgive me unless I went back to the restaurant and
gave them the quarter. In vain, I tried to be honest, “That seems impossible at this point
Van.”
It wasn’t impossible. But I didn’t see what purpose it would serve to humiliate
myself to make him feel that I was morally worthy of him. I don’t know how we managed
to get back to his place with any semblance of good feeling, but it happened.
I imagined, as I walked back to my car, that he was used to such moral impasses and
that he was, in fact, forced to cross over the abysses that he created for himself. We parted
amicably.
When I arrived at Florence’s house, all the lights were on and so I decided that I
should knock on the front door instead of using my key.
Mary opened the door and gave me a big smile and I could see that she wanted to
hug me but I wasn’t used to being hugged in doorways and so I pretended that I didn’t
notice and looked as uncomfortable as I could manage.
I opened Florence’s door at the top of the stairs and found what looked like another
woman asleep on her bed, with her back turned to me. Her head was almost shaved. She
awakened, turned and stretched. She smiled at me.
“Florence, what did you do to your hair?”
“I had it cut. Don’t you like it?”
“It looks like you’ve shaved your head.”
 She was hurt.
“I mean it doesn’t look bad but I’m not used to you ... in ... short hair... I mean I’ve
never liked ... crew cuts.”
It was the wrong thing to say. I said, “Well, it sort of looks cute actually.”
She smiled and said, “You got a short haircut so I did too.”
I said, stupidly, “When I was a kid we used to get real short haircuts in the summer.
We called them “slitzies.” I don’t know where the word came from.”
“I’ve got a lot of compliments on it already.”
I knew I should lie. But I said, instead, “My ears stuck out so much the first time I
got one that the kids razzed me. So I never got another crew cut.”
“I can tell you don’t like it.” She looked like she was going to cry.
“Well, no, I guess I don’t. I have to be honest.”
She burst into tears. I went over to her and put my arm around her. “Well, you still
look pretty. I just don’t like short hair.”
She laughed through her tears. I kissed her on her cheek and said, “It will grow out,
don’t worry.”
“I’m going to cut it again when it grows out.”
“Why?”
“If you wear short hair then I’m going to.”
“You mean every time I get a hair cut, you’re going to get yours cut?”
“Yes.”
I was silent.
“So if I let my hair grow then you will let your hair grow?”
“Well, I hadn’t thought of that, but if you put it that way, yes. I told you, I think men
and women should be equal in everything.”
I was charmed by her logic.
She asked, “How was your dinner?”
“Oh. We had an argument about money.”
I explained what happened. I added, “I don’t see how he can be so blind. I mean I
have decided to live a life of relative poverty so I can be a writer, and he accuses me of
trying to cheat the restaurant out of a quarter.”
“He sounds really rigid.”
“Well, in principle he may be right. But.. you know, I’ve told you... he is still a
virgin. Well, I mean,.. He just doesn’t seem to be able to... “
“Did you yell at him?”
“Me? No. I don’t yell at people.”
“Sometimes you get a little aggressive.”
“No, we managed a handshake when we parted, but I thought he was struggling
with... I mean he probably thinks I am a kind of neo-Nazi. It seems so ironic. I mean there
are times when I think that maybe I should just throw it all over and sell real estate. Why
should I live in poverty? .... Well, I suppose I shouldn’t talk to you about poverty. You’re
worse off than I am. You don’t even have a job.”
I looked at her with concern. I had been prodding her for quite awhile, subtly I
thought, to get a job.
She said, hesitantly, “I suppose I should tell you.”
I felt a stab of emotion.
 “Tell me what?”
I was ready for the worst.
“Well, remember the motorcycle accident?”
“Yeah.”
“I received a fifty thousand dollar settlement.”
“You paid half of it to your husband?”
“No. He got fifty thousand too and the lawyer got seventy five thousand.”
“Wow. Have you paid the taxes yet?”
“It was tax free.”
“That’s why you don’t work.”
She looked uncomfortable.
“So you’re living off the interest?”
I did a quick calculation. “About three hundred dollars a month? That’s almost as
much as I make every month driving cab three nights a week.” I smiled, enviously.
“No, actually, I keep it in a checking account.”
“You just got it?”
Her eyes got big and she looked right at me, “I don’t believe in receiving interest.
It’s capitalist exploitation.”
“I don’t understand. Couldn’t you just give the interest away to charity, or use it to
pay for groceries for the women...”
Her voice rose with emotion. “I told you I don’t believe in any kind of interest or
rent.”
I paused and said, very softly, “Engels helped support Marx from his inheritance.
He probably never would have written Das Kapital if...”
She interrupted me, “I know about that but I told you I am a Maoist. I believe that
all private property should be abolished.”
I felt like asking her why she didn’t just give the money away but I asked instead,
“You didn’t tell me about it because you thought I might be interested in you for your
money?”
She laughed. “Well, sort of, but I guess I knew almost right away that you didn’t
care about money. I mean it’s kinda obvious... If you want to know, really ... I could tell by
your car.”
We laughed. I joked, “I thought you fell for me because of my car. I’m
disappointed.”
She said, “Seriously I don’t want you to tell anyone else about it.”
“Do Tilly and Mary know?”
“Yes. I gave Tilly my Volkswagen as soon as I got the money and I bought the
Volvo for myself.”
“Did you give Mary anything?”
“No. Why?”
“Well, I thought maybe to be fair...”
“Tilly and I were buying the Volkswagen together. Actually we just shared the down
payment. It only amounted to about two hundred dollars.”
I thought about Engels again but I said, “Well, I can’t say there aren’t any idealistic
people left in the world.”
“I try.”
 “You could live for the rest of your life on fifty thousand, supplementing it with a
part time job. Maybe you ought to buy a house so you would always have someplace to
live. You would never have to worry about rent. You could buy a really nice house for
about thirty-five thousand.”
It was a stupid thing to say. Her tone of voice was sharp, “I don’t want to talk about
it anymore. I don’t want to talk about investing it. I don’t want to argue. I’m going to keep
it in the checking account.”
That night I awoke in the middle of the night. My arm was locked around her neck
in the same way I used to hold my teddy bear when I was a child. She was drenched in
sweat and her body was hot. I disentangled myself, gently, and asked her if she was all
right. She said “yes,” in a small and meek voice.
“You’re burning up Flor. It’s not normal.”
“I’ve told you, it’s normal for me, I’ve always had night sweats. It doesn’t mean
anything.”
We had talked about it before. I wouldn’t let it go this time. “I’m going to bring my
thermometer over. I mean you don’t even own a thermometer. I think you are out of touch
with your body.”
“You treat me so badly. You are so aggressive.”
I thought she was going to cry. “I’m not aggressive.” I added, “I mean if you are
sick you should go to a doctor. It’s love not aggression.”
“I told you that I’ve always been like this. Please let me sleep.”
Her voice was sharp with anger and I convinced myself that I might be wrong. I
thought it was possible that I was too possessive. It wasn’t the first time that I had
awakened in the middle of the night, clutching her neck in a headlock, as if I were mortally
afraid of losing her. She was the first woman that I had slept with for more than a few
nights and I was afraid that I didn’t know what a normal human being felt like.
“Look. I am concerned about you,” I said, trying to express my love.
“Then show how concerned you are by letting me sleep.”
She went back to sleep almost immediately but I stared into the darkness for hours
meditating on honesty before I finally fell asleep.

Chapter 14

Reddite quoe sunt Caesaris Casari et quoee sunt Dei Deo. Ibi jacet lepus.
Janotus de Bragmardo

Billy Kidd was so impressed with my rusty football skills that he asked me to
substitute for his absent partner, as a playing coach, in their business, The Piedmont Sports
Club.
Piedmont is a town of about forty thousand people. It is comfortably lodged in the
Oakland hills and is completely surrounded by Oakland. Its large estates look down on
Oakland, commanding the best views of the Bay Area, and its wealthy residents rarely enter
Oakland except to shop for groceries in the exclusive Oakland-Montclair district or to pass
over the Oakland flatlands on the MacArthur freeway, the freeway that leads to the Yacht
Club in Oakland’s Jack London Square.
 The founding partner of the Sports Club, who received sixty percent of the revenues
against Kidd’s forty percent, was visiting Medical Schools on the East Coast and would
soon be leaving the Sports Club to attend Medical School. He said he would be gone for
almost a month and might not return at all.
Billy offered me his own position. He became took over the senior partner position
and paid himself sixty percent. There were about forty boys who attended regularly and the
parents paid four dollars per meeting. The juniors, who were from six to nine years old,
played soccer from three to four in the afternoon and the seniors, who were from ten to
twelve years old, attended from four to five and played football.
Since we had virtually no expenses, except for their daily refreshments of Cool Aid
and potato chips, it worked out to about sixty dollars a day for me. The income was tax free
because they had reached an agreement with the parents not to report the four dollars on
their income tax returns. Sixty dollars a day was almost twice what I was clearing for an
average night of cab driving. Since the club met three days a week it amounted to a hundred
and eighty dollars a week for six hours work. He said the job would be available for certain
in the fall and that I could start right away and work for at least a month. Naturally, I
accepted.
We got to Hampton field early and after warming up and then catching and throwing
a few long passes, Billy showed off his kicking ability. I watched him preen and strut after
kicking the football a hundred and fifty feet into the air. I hadn’t kicked a football for nine
years, and I had almost forgotten how. I contented myself with a few twenty-yard plops to
start the process of reconditioning. I said that I used to kick sixty yards with either foot and
naturally, he answered with a hostile grin. I hated him and the human race for worshipping
football players. His wolf-grin said we could be friends if I could play football and I knew
that he didn’t know what friendship was but, like most good Americans, I ignored the
implications of his misunderstanding for the money he offered me.
The kids began to show up. They came in a wave of Mercedes Benzes, old vans,
BMWs, beat up sports cars, Jeeps and station wagons. A Rolls Royce pulled over to the
curb and a chauffeur got out and opened the door for a fat little blond boy. After the Rolls
disappeared, a Lamborghini appeared, followed closely by a DeLorean. I had seen
DeLoreans on TV but it was the first one I had seen on the street. I tried not to look
impressed. The DeLorean was followed by a red Corvette convertible, which was followed
by a boy on a moped who delivered a younger boy.
The boys were dumped off by mothers who were fat, thin, tall, short, pretty, ugly,
matronly, cow-like, skag-like, got-rocks-like, sensitive looking, prettier-than-Bess-Myerson-
at-twenty, uglier than sin, matronly, bull-dikish, whorish. One looked like a saint delivering
a carload of devils and a couple of them looked like whores dumping their little bastards off
for a few hours, so they could grind out a few bucks in peace and solitude. But none of
them looked really needy.
The men looked like fugitives from the business world or playboys getting rid of
their girlfriend’s kids for an hour. There were a handful of colored servants who drove cars
that looked like mine and Kidd’s, which were parked too conspicuously, I thought, in front
of the field.
The boys streamed onto the field and ran in large circles kicking up dirt like ponies
on an Andalusian plane. It was clear that soccer was their game and that it was our job to
form them into an ordered herd, a choreographed charge that would bring order to chaos.
Afterwards they would drink Cool Aid and stuff their faces with potato chips and be shuttled
back to their mansions.
We chose teams as a prelude to an act of faith in the ordered herd. In the middle of
choosing sides, seven year old Samuel Merritt IV stomped to the sidelines and screamed, “I
absolutely refuse to play if Jimmy La Rue is going to be on my team.”
He folded his arms and stuck out his chest like an impervious umpire and turned his
back on us. Billy followed him like an outraged manager. Order was being destroyed. I
remembered that his father was worth a hundred million dollars.
One of the bigger kids called out, “Don’t worry Sammy, he never plays anyways.
He just always goes up on the hill and picks grass.”
Jimmy La Rue agreed, and there was melancholy concern in his voice, “Yeah that’s
all I do anyway.”
Sammy yelled back, “I don’t care. He has to agree to be on the other team
anyway.”
The other team captain yelled, “Alllll right. We’ll take him if you’re going to be
like that. But we don’t want him.”
Jimmy added, without self-pity or anger, almost scientifically, as a sociologist might,
“Nobody does.”
I asked him, “What’s so interesting about the grass?”
He seemed to be thinking, trying to find a way to use my interest in him to his
advantage. A little blond kid, whose arms were covered with woolly, white hair said with a
jaunty smile, and philosophic resignation, “He just likes it.”
No one laughed or even snickered. They were detached, as if they were
contemplating an a priori truth. Sammy trudged back to the field with Billy at his side.
Billy yelled, “OK, next pick.”
Randy said, “It’s got to be our pick then.”
Sammy screamed, “No way Jose!! That wasn’t part of the deal.”
His back arched like an angry monkey’s and it was obvious that he was getting ready
to kick seven-year-old-ass or head for the sidelines again. One of the kids said, “Give it to
him Randy. It’s the only way were going to get any PEACE.”
The word “PEACE” rose from ancient depths and echoed around us until I could see
his father sitting in his easy chair at home, trying to read the newspaper and glaring at his
son.
Randy whined, “Awwwwww right. But just this one more time and that’s final.”
One of the kids was trying to hide behind Billy. Sammy said, with a grin on his face
and pretending not to see the kid who was hiding behind Billy, “Ok, we pick Bobby
Carpentier.”
Bobby came out from behind Billy and gave his brother Randy a horrified look.
Randy wailed, “Oh God!! You CAN’T pick Bobby. He’s my brother. I mean what next??”
Randy looked around for sympathy. Billy said, sharply, “I told you that’s got
nothing to do with it Randy.”
“Yeah,” Sammy agreed and echoed, “that’s got nothin’ to do with it. What is this
anyway?”
Randy yelled, “It’s not fair, that’s what it IS.”
Sammy brayed back, “Oh Gawwwwww.”
 “Gawl Darn,” Randy answered, his voice breaking, and wheeled around and began
muttering to himself as he marched off to a safe distance where we couldn’t hear the words
clearly but we knew that he was muttering, “fuck,” “shit,” “piss,” “asshole...” He kicked the
dirt and began to circle back towards the group and his face was red and it looked like he
might start to cry. His father was worth a couple million dollars but that was chicken feed in
Piedmont and somehow the boys already knew it.
Sammy pretended to conceal a diabolical grin. I said, “Hey, what’s going on here?
Comon’ Randy. You guys can beat the pants off Sammy’s team. Don’t worry about it.”
I was the new guy. Sammy glared at me malevolently and Randy allowed himself to
look slightly relieved. A few kids found the courage to look at Sammy with scorn.
Randy answered me, “Well, he’s got my brother.”
I said, “So what. Your brother will probably try to help your team anyway. So who
cares.”
They all laughed. They weren’t used to that. Kidd was a hypocrite like their other
servants. Randy looked at Kidd for a cue. But Kidd just bared his wolf-teeth in a defensive
grin and the kids turned to me.
“Let’s play ball,” I yelled and finished the sentence to myself, “you little bastards.”
“We haven’t finished choosing up sides yet,” Randy said with a malicious smile.
“Oh, that’s right,” I answered but thought, “What difference does it make?”

Chapter 15

What’s the matter you dissentious rogues

That rubbing the poor itch of your opinion,
Make yourselves scabs?

Cariolanus

“They got out the tape measure and stopped the game.”
Florence was lying on the bed in Mary’s old room, trying to look interested even
though she didn’t know anything about baseball. She said, “I don’t understand. How could
they find a tape measure that long?”
“Well, it was a string about thirty feet long and the coaches just kept handing it back
and forth to each other, you know, while the other one stood still.”
“OK, I gotcha.” Her crew cut was growing out but she still looked like a boy. “Did
they carry you on their shoulders?”
“Oh, no, it wasn’t anything like that. The game wasn’t even over. They just wanted
to see how far I hit it. I was only in the seventh grade and they measured it to be three
hundred and eighty five feet. They almost forgot about me. I mean I felt like I was being
discussed by the adults as a kind of phenomenon. We just sat around waiting for them to
finish and I was embarrassed. The other kids looked at me in a funny way that I never
forgot.”
“They were probably jealous.”
“I don’t think so. I mean, most of them just saw baseball as a game and I think they
thought the coaches were acting like fools. They didn’t really care. But hitting a ball that
far made them look at me with a look that I had never seen in their faces before. It was a
kind of a fear but it definitely wasn’t envy.”
She looked up at me and said, “Do you think they were afraid of being hit by the
ball?”
I was so surprised by her question that I couldn’t think of anything to say.
She said, “You told me you were a pitcher. Maybe they thought you might hit them
with the ball like you said you did sometimes.”
I laughed.
She said, defensively, “Well, you said that you used to hit them sometimes and you
were a wild pitcher.”
“No, I wasn’t a wild pitcher. I said I used to throw wild pitches sometimes. That
just means that you throw it over the catcher’s head. He’s squatting down so it isn’t as hard
as it seems.”
“I thought you said you threw it over the backstop sometimes.”
“Well, it’s true, I did, once! But we had a very low backstop. It’s true some of the
kids were afraid of my pitching because I didn’t have very good control, but nobody does in
the seventh grade. That wasn’t it. I mean they weren’t afraid of me in that way. They just
had a kind of awe in their faces like they thought I might really make it to the Big Leagues
someday.”
“Well, I really don’t know anything about baseball. I’ve never even been to a
game.” She sized me up and said, “Before I met you I didn’t think I would ever go to one.
But I guess I’ll have to get used to it.”
“No. I don’t go to the games anymore myself. I resent baseball in a way. I mean I
really enjoy watching it because I ... I mean because it always brings back the memories,
the good feelings. But I have so many bad memories also.”
“Bad memories?”
“Well...” I didn’t think it would be easy to explain.
“Is it because you hit so many kids with the ball?” She cringed a little after she
asked the question. I had told her that some of the smaller kids’ knees shook when I pitched,
and I could tell that it really impressed her.
“No. Nothing like that. They said I was good enough to make the Majors. But you
know how that is. Let’s just say that I was good enough to have a shot at it. That’s all
anyone can hope for anyway. But being a three hundred hitter, or hitting fifty home runs a
year is just something that...”
I stopped talking and looked at her. She seemed to be thinking of something else.
She said, “I don’t want to interrupt you, but do you still want to go shopping with
me this afternoon? Like you said?”
“What? Oh. Yeah. You mean for the woman and her baby. What’s her name?”
“Sally. I didn’t want to forget to ask.”
“Sure.”
“Great. I’ll call her and tell her I’m coming. After you’re finished... I didn’t mean
to imply that what you were saying wasn’t important.”
“Oh. That’s all right. It isn’t really. I mean it’s just a game.”
“Well, most men take it so seriously. I was afraid you were one of them. I’m really
glad you’re not. I don’t think I could take sitting around on Saturday afternoons watching
baseball games.”
 “Well, don’t worry. I couldn’t either.”
She seemed preoccupied. I said, “You seem a little ... I don’t know...”
“What do you mean?”
“I don’t know. Kind of distracted.”
She wouldn’t meet my eyes. We were silent for a few seconds. Then she said,
“Well, maybe there IS something.” She looked as if she wanted to tell me something but
didn’t know if she should.
I said, “You can tell me about it.” In truth, I was a little worried.
She said, “Well, I’d like to do it now.”
“What? ... IT? Right now?”
She said, “I like to do it anytime. You know like we did when we first met.”
I said, “Of course, so do I...” I was curious. “What made you think about it now?”
“I don’t know,” she stretched voluptuously on the bed, “maybe it was all the
baseball talk.”
Afterwards, I went next door and got my thermometer and made her take her
temperature. “It’s a hundred and three Flor.”
“I told you, I have a naturally high temperature.”
“Nobody has a naturally high temperature of one hundred and three.”
I looked into her eyes. She was cradled in my arm, on the bed. She didn’t meet my
eyes. “You feel hot... I think you should go to the doctor.” We had talked about it before.
“Just to find out. It can’t hurt anything.”
“There’s nothing wrong with me. I never go to the doctor unless I have to.”
“But it’s obvious to me that you have to.”
She was silent. We were both dressed, lying on her bed. Judy Chicago looked down
at us from a large poster on the wall, a gift from Mary. The silence grew.
Later, I calculated that, just about exactly at that time, in Paris, President Charles De
Gaul was announcing his resignation as Prime Minister of France.
I had gotten used to her silences by then. I used the time to study Judy’s wry smile
and the tufts of black hair under her arms.
“Well?” I asked after at least two minutes of silence.
She answered, “I’m thinking.”
Another long silence followed. We had just made love but Mick Jagger’s words and
music played in my mind, “I can’t get no, I can’t get no, I can’t get no, no, no, no, I can’t
get no satisfaction, but I try, and I try, and I try and I try, I can’t get no, ... girlie action.”
Judy Chicago seemed happy about it. I felt like throwing one of her famous plates
in her face. While Florence thought on, in silence, I saw myself in a Chinese restaurant,
piling Chow Mien onto one of Judy’s plates. Just as I was about to launch the plate into the
air, Florence spoke, and it seemed as if there had been five minutes of silence. She said,
“You are so incredibly aggressive.”
“What?” I looked up at Judy again. Her face said, “That’s right jack, you heard
her.” I thought, “Fuck you bitch.” I yelped like a wounded animal, “I’m not aggressive.”
She said, “Look, I’m not taking this,” and tore her head away from my arm, like a
kid getting up from a slide after he’s been tagged too hard at home plate. She glared at me
menacingly and said, again, “I’m not going to put up with it.”
 “Put up with what?” I asked. I heard my voice rising in disbelief and I thought it
was my only pride that told me that it was my moral obligation to tell her the truth about her
temperature.
I remembered Van’s self-righteous indignation in front of the restaurant. Maybe I
was being aggressive. Maybe, without knowing it, I was behaving like him. Maybe some
people could have temperatures of a hundred and three and be normal. No. I knew that was
wrong and I wondered if some of the men who confessed to fictitious crimes in front of
Stalin’s tribunals really believed that they were guilty of those crimes.
She said, “If you don’t know then you’re hopeless.”
Somehow I imagined that her tone of voice was conciliatory, in spite of what she
said, probably because reason told me that conciliation was best. I took the time that she
always gave herself to respond, and thought about what I should say. After at least a minute
I said, “Well, at least you have to hear that I am trying to help you.”
She was silent, as usual, and for the first time it occurred to me that long silences in
conversation might be common in New England and that she might have learned it from her
parents. After another minute, she said, “Why don’t we just drop the conversation?”
I said, without a pause, “Sound’s good to me.” But I was left with the feeling of
hypocrisy and cowardliness. I felt that I should ask her about her temperature again, but
reason intervened again and I said, “Why don’t you call me when you are ready to go
shopping?”
“OK. I’ll be back in about an hour. I have to do some errands.”
“Fine.”

I went back to my room next door, put on my running shorts, got a can of beer from
the refrigerator, went outside into the back yard, stretched out in the chaise longue in the
Oakland sun, and opened Nietzsche’s Beyond Good and Evil.
A shrill voice came from over the fence, “Get away from me you little Greek
bitch!”
Silence. Another, younger voice responded, “You’re not supposed to say that to
me.”
The girls were standing on the stairs of the apartment building behind our house. A
fat, 11 year old had her hands on her hips and was glaring at a pretty, blond, five year old.
The bigger girl said, “I don’t care. I’m telling you anyway. Get away from me and
don’t ever come back. I don’t want you around here.”
The five year old whimpered, “I don’t have anywhere else to go.”
“Can’t you understand? I don’t care. Just stop following me around!”
The eleven year old stomped down the stairs, and the little girl began to sob pitifully.
I got up from my chaise longue and peered over the fence. “What’s going on over there?”
The eleven year old froze in her tracks and looked at me without saying anything. I
said, “You shouldn’t treat her like that.”
The five year old peered down at me through her tears. The eleven year old stood,
frozen, like a startled doe. I asked her, “Who is she?”
“My cousin.”
“Well that’s even worse. Anyway, what’s wrong with being Greek?”
She paused for a few seconds and then blurted out, “My mother says it’s bad.”
“Why?”
 “Because my father was Greek and he dumped us.”
“He divorced your mother?”
“Yeah and he didn’t give us any alley money.”
I smiled and said, “Well, that’s too bad.”
She looked at my smile like any kid would who is being had by an adult but doesn’t
know why.
I said, “Well, the Greeks are the greatest people who ever lived.” I looked up at the
little girl. She wiped a tear from her cheek with an elegant finger and started down the
stairs. I said, “Without the Greeks the modern world wouldn’t even be possible.”
The bigger girl stared at the ground. I asked her, “What nationality are you?”
She looked ashamed, and throwing her head back and wrinkling her nose in disgust
said, “I’m half Greek.”
“You’re ashamed of it?”
She stared at the ground for a few seconds before answering. “Yes.”
“What is your other half?”
“My mother is half Sioux and half Jewish.”
“My God!,” I couldn’t think of anything to say. I stammered, “What a... fantastic...
mixture. I can’t imagine anything more...” I wanted to say “romantic,” but held my tongue.
She looked into my eyes intently, as if she were studying my face for a sign of duplicity.
The little girl had finally descended the stairs and walked towards us. I said, boldly, “Half
Greek, a quarter Jewish and a quarter Indian. I can’t believe it. And you are ashamed of
your ancestry?”
It seemed as if no one had ever talked to her like that. I looked at the little girl. “Are
you a hundred percent Greek?”
She looked up at me with innocent eyes and said, very proudly, “I’m Greek.”
“No you’re not, stupid. You’re only half Greek.” The little girl shrank back. The
big girl closed her eyes and said, “Her father’s Irish.”
I couldn’t restrain myself and I said sharply, “Look. I don’t like the way you talk to
this beautiful little girl.”
The little girl looked up at me with adoring eyes. I continued in the same tone,
“You should be proud of yourself. You have one of the best... mixtures that anyone could
ever wish for. But you don’t feel good about yourself so you take it out on her.”
The big girl stared at her shoes, but listened attentively. Just then, I remembered
hearing her mother scream at her and remembered that her name was Melissa.
A car drove into the driveway. Melissa’s mother was driving and another woman
was in the passenger seat. They waved. The girls waved and then I waved. The car
disappeared around the corner and went into an open garage. I asked the little girl, “What’s
your name?”
“Cindy.”
I turned to Melissa. She wouldn’t look up from the ground. I said, “Melissa.”
She didn’t seem surprised that I knew her name. “Yes.”
“I don’t ever want to hear you talk to Cindy like that again.”
There was nothing angry or threatening in my voice. I was more like a gentle
question. She was silent. I said, “Do you understand?”
“Yes.” Her answer was perfunctory.
 “Look. She is just a little girl. You can’t be expected to want to play with her, but
you don’t have to treat her badly. Remember what I told you about the Greeks and Jews and
Indians. You come from a...” I couldn’t find words that she would understand. I said,
“Don’t ever forget what I said. And try to make an effort to learn about your ancestors.”
She looked up at me with glittering, almond eyes. I looked over her head and saw
her mother and the other woman getting out of the car. I said, “Feel good about yourself
and treat her well too.”
I looked down at her fat arms and thought that what I had said was useless and I
imagined that she hated me for being a self-righteous, pretentious, moralizing, bastard. I
was surprised when she said, with feeling, “All right.”
The women walked towards us and we waited for them to reach us. Her mother
wouldn’t meet my eyes, but looked at the ground trying to formulate a question but without
success. She said, “What’s...?” Her voice was cheerful, curious. We had talked over the
fence a few times already. I remembered that her name was Adrienne.
“We’re just having a little conversation. Your daughter tells me you’re Greek?”
She said, “Don’t pin that label on me. She’s Greek.”
She nodded towards the other woman who said, “I’m the Greek in the crowd.”
Cindy said, “I’m Greek too.”
Her mother interjected, “You’re only half Greek. See this black hair?” She grabbed
her own hair and held it out. She pointed to Cindy’s blond hair, “You call yourself Greek
with hair like that?”
Cindy looked disappointed. I had seen the woman before. From a distance, I
thought she was pretty but standing three feet away from me, she was far more than pretty.
She ran her fingers through her daughter’s blond hair while I meditated on raven hair set off
against olive skin. Cindy noticed my fascination with a surreptitious, approving smile. I
glanced at the woman’s wedding finger. No ring.
I said, self-mockingly, “Actually I was lecturing them on the Greatness of the
Greeks.”
“Oh no, not another one of those,” she said to Adrienne and moved backwards. “The
last time I dated one of those it ended in a disaster.”
I laughed with delight at the unanticipated prospect and said, “Well, I guess I don’t
have a chance then.”
She eyed me cautiously. Adrienne looked disappointed.
“I’ve only seen you a few times,” I said clumsily. I didn’t want to lose the
opportunity. “My name is Jack.”
Adrienne said, “Oh, I’m sorry. I should have introduced you. Helen .. Jack.”
Helen pointed to Melissa. She said, “Her father is my cousin. Melissa baby sits for
me sometimes.”
Melissa colored slightly. Helen noticed with a slight, uncomprehending grimace.
Cindy looked up at her with large, glistening eyes but didn’t say anything. The three of us
shared our secret in silence.
Adrienne said, “Tell me what is so great about the Greeks. No, on second thought,
don’t. I don’t think I could stand it.”
Helen’s eyes met mine and with our eyes fixed together, I said, “The Greek
civilization was the greatest civilization that ever existed. Everything that we have today
comes from the Greeks. Everything.”
 Demurely, Helen averted her eyes. I looked at Adrienne. “Your daughter tells me
you’re half Jewish.”
She looked askance at Melissa. I said, “The Jews are the other pillar of Western
civilization.”
Helen said derisively, “In that case Melissa ought to be a genius.”
Melissa scowled at the mocking irony and said, “I get A’s and B’s in school.”
Adrienne said, “She’s gonna be a doctor, aren’t’ you pumpkin.”
“A surgeon.” She closed her eyes and puffed herself up with pride.
Helen said to Cindy, “Comon weener, I’ve got to get you home.”
I tried not to look disappointed and her daughter noticed. We smiled knowingly at
each other.

Florence and I sat in her Yellow Volvo in front of Sally’s house.

She said, “Maybe you ought to wait outside.”
“Why?”
“Well, she’s not used to you. You might intimidate her.”
I was surprised because she had insisted that I come along. “Well, if you really think
I would ... make her uncomfortable.” There was a silence. I said, “I help a lot of women do
their shopping when I drive cab. Well, not really. I mean... well... almost every afternoon I
help women bring in their groceries into their apartments. Sometimes I even help them put
away the food.”
Actually I hated doing it because it took far too much time and the women were
always poor and I never made more than fifty cents doing it.
She began a long silence but interrupted it brusquely, “Oh, it won’t hurt her.”
Sally’s room was in a very large wood frame house in the old Brooklyn Heights area
of Oakland, one of the mansions that wealthy San Franciscans had built there, in the 1870s
and 80s, to escape the unhealthy climate of San Francisco. During the Great Depression,
these same people had moved to Piedmont, Hillsborough, and other Bay Area fiefdoms and,
in Oakland, some of the mansions had been converted into boarding houses and apartment
units.
White paint was peeling from the large front wall and the yard was completely
overgrown. We walked up wooden stairs that were patched and creaking and dangerously
close to collapse. Sally opened the door and didn’t see me standing there off to the side. We
followed her from a distance, down a long, dark corridor towards the door to her kitchen.
She gave Florence an appreciative look as she walked past her into the kitchen but when she
saw me, her mouth dropped open.
“Oh. This is my boyfriend, Jack. Jack, this is Susan Cora.”
The woman didn’t say anything. She peered up at me and her face was flushed and
her large breasts strained against her white sweat shirt. She was about five foot two and her
breasts looked enormous in contrast with her small body. The baby started to cry. Florence
went over to the high chair, cooing, “Oooo. Whatsa matter little baby...”
He let out a violent scream.
The woman screamed, “Get away from him!” She rushed over to him and said,
“he’s scared of strangers.” She picked him up and walked around the kitchen with him. He
calmed down a little but continued to whimper. His eyes never left Florence. He hadn’t
noticed me yet.
 Florence walked toward me with a hurt look that she tried to conceal. While
Florence’s back was to her, Susan caught my eye again. Venomous hatred emanated from
her eyes and I could see the sinking feeling of loss in her face, as she watched the back of
Florences’s blond head move towards me.
I smirked and couldn’t help looking at her crotch in disdain. Florence turned to face
her, and standing at my side, looked into her eyes masochistically. She asked, in a wavering
voice, “Do you have your list?”
The woman leered at me and then looked at Florence’s crotch for two or three
lascivious seconds before she turned away imperiously and said, “It’s over here on the
table.” She walked to the table, whisked the piece of paper off it without stopping, walked
around the table and back towards us, holding the list in her outstretched hand. “Here it is.”
“It’s kinda small,” Florence said, in the same wavering voice. The woman was
silent. Florence asked, in a low, almost fearful voice, “If I think of anything when I’m in
the store, can I get it?”
The woman looked embarrassed but her eyes didn’t look away from Florence’s.
“Yeah, sure,... whatever.”
Florence’s eyes dropped to read the list. The woman’s eyebrows knitted together,
almost involuntarily, in uncomprehending anger. She looked at my body out of the corner of
her eye and her emotion turned inward and transformed itself into a kind of directionless
agitation and her face became even more flushed.
The baby had been looking at Florence with serious, studying eyes but when he
became aware of the strength of his mother’s agitation he stood up in his chair and
screamed. My eyes met Susan’s and we shared an instant of terror.
She wheeled around and walked back towards the table. She screamed, “Shut up!
Stop it. You’re driving me crazy!” With a violent push, she stuffed him down into his chair
and he stopped crying immediately, giving all of his attention to his legs so that they
wouldn’t be smashed against the chair. When he was seated, he looked across at Florence,
and his mother’s terror was in his face.
Florence said to me, in a low voice, “We’d better go, I think you’re scaring the
baby. He’s not used to men.”
We trundled down the hall, noisily and self-consciously. Walking towards the Volvo,
I was surprised that I had descended the stairs as if trying to break them, impelled by my
anger for this cunt-eating bitch with her fatherless baby, to demolish the entrance to her
home.
In the car, Florence hissed, “I knew I shouldn’t have let you come in.”
“What did I do?”
“What did you DO? Didn’t you hear that baby?”
“What did that have to do with me?” She was silent. I said, “I mean, I didn’t even
look at it.”
“Well. Something was different.”
We drove to the Safeway grocery store in silence. I asked, “Do you think she is a
lesbian?”
“Well, she has a BABY doesn’t she?”
That didn’t seem relevant to me so I didn’t answer.
She said, “Well, she’s never made a pass at me.”
 “Oh. I don’t know. She seemed a little... Uh...” I looked over to see if she had
caught my meaning. She hadn’t. I asked, “Didn’t you think she looked at you kinda funny
a couple of times?”
“No. Not really.” She began a long, silent thought process and I didn’t interrupt her.
From the car window I could see the Lakeside Hotel. It faced the Oakland City Jail.
Huey Newton was there and I wondered how he was doing. I looked at one of its distant
windows and wondered if the face that I could barely make out peering through the bars was
his. Just as I said to myself, “that’s absurd,” she said, “Well, you remember what I said
about people seducing me?” and gave a little laugh. She hadn’t spoken a word for almost
five minutes.
“Huh? Oh. Yeah! You mean that everybody is trying to seduce you.”
“That isn’t exactly it really. But it’s close enough.”
Everything seemed absurd again and Reason seemed a tarnished jewel in a crown
thrown into the gutter. I saw myself reaching to pick it up. I said, “Well, why don’t we
drop it.” and I broke into a giggle at the clash of images.
“What’s so funny?”
“Nothing really. It would be too hard to explain.”
We drove on in silence. After a while I said, uncomfortable with the silence and just
trying to make conversation, “You know how the Black Panthers are always saying ‘Right
On’?”
She answered ironically, as if I were talking down to her, “Yeah, I think I’ve heard
the expression somewhere.”
“Well, I know you’ve heard the expression but I was going to ask you if you knew
where it comes from.”
“They probably made it up.”
“Well, you won’t believe this, but I think they took it from Shakespeare. I’ve seen it
in several places in Shakespeare and I’ll bet Newton got it from Shakespeare.”
“I doubt it. He isn’t that smart.”
“Not true. He’s very smart, he just isn’t trained academically.”
“Comon Jack. He’s a gangland thug. He doesn’t read Shakespeare.”
“OK then, how about the expression, ‘Do your own thing’? Do you think Newton
could have made that up?”
She was cautious this time and said, “That’s more his style. I’m sure he made that
up. It sound’s pretty stupid.”
I jumped all over her, “Aha! I got you. It was Emerson who said it.”
“You’re still angry aren’t you?”
“No, not really,” I said it with little conviction.
“Once you get into an argument, you just never let it end. I’ve never seen anything
like it.”
“Well, maybe I AM angry.” I didn’t really think I was angry, but I thought it would
be a good idea to continue talking about the woman. “It looked like that woman was really
after you.” I paused to look at her and then continued, “Would you like it if you thought I
was a homosexual?”
“No, but it’s only because you’re with me. If we weren’t together and you fell in
love with either a woman or a man, it wouldn’t make any difference to me.”
“Oh sure.”
 Her answer took me by surprise. She said, “I told you that I think there is no
difference between men and women.”
“Well, I still think that’s crazy.”
“You’re a male chauvinist.”
“I am not a male chauvinist.”
She steered the Volvo into the Safeway parking lot. Her face was flushed. She said,
“Ugggh.”
I thought, “Fuck it.” I said, “Look, I’m tired of arguing.”
She said, “You are the one who’s doing all of the arguing. Stop arguing.”
“All right. But I want to get to the bottom of your ideas on sex and homosexuality. I
don’t like to be silent about things like this. It will just poison our relationship.”
She yelled, “I’d like to get to the bottom of your ideas on homosexuality.”
We got out of the car. I yelled back, “I can’t stand the idea of shopping for that pint
sized whore.” She glared at me. I said, “Look, I need some stuff for myself. Do you mind
if I shop by myself?”
“Be my guest.”
“I’ll meet you back at the car.”
She stomped off.
I bought a very juicy filet mignon steak that cost $2.35, and I felt guilty. I justified
the exorbitant price by telling myself that it would serve for two dinners. Then I
remembered that it was stupid to feel guilty about food and I bought a Maine lobster tail, a
sweet smelling Crenshaw melon, a jar of caviar, a six pack of San Miguel light, a couple of
fifty cent cigars, a Scientific American magazine, a pack of fresh shrimp, a large tomato and
a head of lettuce. The bill came to almost twenty dollars but I didn’t give a damn. I knew
that Florence was going to a party that night anyway and she wanted to go alone. I would
need to make my own dinner.
I sat in the car waiting for her to finish shopping, thinking that our relationship was
probably ending anyway and that I was just reconciling myself to it with my feast. But
when she came out of the store, pushing the cart towards the car, I could see the sad look in
her face from forty feet away and I knew that she wanted to make up. I was far more
relieved than I thought I should be. I got out of the car to help her.
She said, with difficulty, “I’m sorry. I’ve been acting like an idiot all day.” She
didn’t look at me.
I said, “It’s all right. I’ve been pretty bad myself.” I didn’t believe it, but I said it
anyway. I was evasive when she asked what I had bought. “Oh, nothing. Salad, a steak.
Some fish. The usual stuff. I’ll be making my own dinner tonight.”
“Well, I was going to ask you if you wanted to come with me to the party tonight.”
I contemplated the feast in the bag. If I went to the party, it would be a day old when
I ate it. She said, “The party is being thrown in honor of a woman who is so far out,
so fantastic that I think you will really be glad for a chance to meet her.”
“I thought the party was going to be all women?”
She didn’t say anything. I knew she was only trying to make up and that men
weren’t supposed to come to the party. I said, “Don’t worry about it. I mean I won’t be
jealous or anything. I didn’t plan on going. I know it’s going to be all women.”
 “Well, when I was in the store, I decided that it’s wrong to exclude men. I thought
about it for a long time.” She looked up at me solemnly. “I think you should be able to
come if you want to.”
“Oh, well.. They would all resent me and probably be mad at you and blame you for
letting me come.”
“I don’t care.”
I reached over and put my hand on her shoulder. I said, “Hey. I forgive you. I still
love you.”
She laughed and we hugged each other awkwardly in the car.
“I really do want you to meet her. You have to meet her. She’s beautiful, intelligent
and the nicest and most sensitive person I have ever met.”
“Well, I don’t see how I can refuse that.”

Chapter 16

Man can perceive three million different hues but there are only sixteen to twenty
different names for colors.

A.R. Luria, The Making of Mind

I said, “He was an idealist, a child of the French Revolution. He created Group
Theory when he was only nineteen years old and solved a problem that had baffled the
greatest minds since Descartes. All by himself.”
Florence asked, “What is Group Theory?”
“Well, it is easy to describe but difficult to explain. I mean, you have a set of
elements, a binary operation that produces elements... it’s associative and maybe
commutative, has an identity and an inverse, ... anyway, it would take awhile to explain...
But what gets me is that he wasn’t even allowed into the University because he flunked the
mathematics entrance exam! And he created this marvelously beautiful and complicated
branch of mathematics all by himself, in his room. His intellect was surely the equal of any
that ever appeared on earth. He was the equal of any ancient Greek or disciple of
Confucius. And they killed him.”
“For creating Group Theory?” She looked at me quizzically, ironically.
“No, because he was a revolutionary. He should have been the hero of Stendhal’s
Chronicle of 1830... he was Julian. Anyway, they framed him and then shot him: he fell in
love with a very beautiful woman who was a secret agent for the Monarchy and her
supposed lover, who was also a secret agent, pretended to be jealous and challenged him to
a duel. Naturally the whole thing was a setup and Galois didn’t have a chance. The man
was a professional, a James Bond type. Galois knew it was a death sentence, but he faced
his death like a hero. He had no honorable way out.”
“I don’t understand. If he discovered Group Theory, why didn’t someone try to
save him?”
“He sent his papers to Cauchy, the leading French mathematician of the day, and
Cauchy threw them into the waste basket. He said they were unreadable. No one took the
time to study his work while he was still alive. The night before the duel, he instructed his
sister, in a letter, to try to get it published because he knew its value. But no one recognized
his genius while he was alive, and yet he was among the most intelligent men who ever
lived.”
“Are you going to put that into your paper on intelligence?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know what it proves. I assume that it means that genius is
simply passion raised to heroic pitch. The fact that it wasn’t recognized by the greatest
mathematicians proves that genius has no other distinguishing characteristic other than the
enormous passion...”
“Maybe it only proves that vanity and envy rule the world and that no one was
generous enough to admit he was a genius.” She often surprised me with the lapidary
concision of her intelligence. She added, “I have to confess that I don’t see how anyone
can get worked up over mathematics anyway... not to mention getting passionate over it.”
“Well, I don’t mean to be condescending, but I think it’s just because the human
race is in such a low state. I mean not that you are, but...”
She laughed, too condescendingly, and said, with a playful glint, “So if human
beings were in a higher state, they would all get passionate over mathematics.”
“They already do. Have you ever considered sports as a kind of applied
mathematics? The ball as a perfect mathematical entity, a sphere, and the playing field as a
perfectly symmetric, idealized world?”
“It sounds far fetched. But I told you I don’t know anything about sports.”
“Well, at least you’re honest. Most Americans consider it unpatriotic not to know
anything about sports and will never admit they don’t know anything, even though most of
them know almost nothing because they never played. I mean really played: with referees
and well-trained and well-conditioned teammates. Sports is like mathematics in that way
too. My teachers always used to say that mathematics isn’t a spectator sport. It is a skill
that must be mastered by actually doing mathematics. And sports aren’t spectator sports
either, really.”
She asked, “Is that why you never go to games?”
“Well, I go occasionally. I suppose I’m exaggerating all this, but it’s true that most
people go to games because it’s something to do, because it’s a social event. They could
care less about the sport. Take college baseball for example. At UC Berkeley, they play at
a level just below the Major Leagues but hardly anyone goes to the games. They didn’t
even charge admission the last time I went. But nobody goes. There are hardly a few
hundred at the games. But the football games! You might as well stay away from the
campus on a Saturday when they are having a football game. There is so much traffic, you
can’t get near the campus.”
She asked, “Can’t sports be like music? I mean in the sense that you don’t have to
actually play a musical instrument to appreciate music.”
“I think sports are more like mathematics than like music in the sense that sports are
open ended. A game is like an attempt to prove a bunch of theorems that all together lead
to a big result, --a victory. A musical performance is always done in more or less the same
way, it is a kind of performance whose only virtue is that it is done well or badly. The
outcome is already known.”
“Indian music isn’t like that. It is more like what you are describing. And jazz
too.”
 “True. But think about basketball, for instance. There are rules of play that are
based on “axioms” which are the physical dimensions of the court. They are like Euclid’s
“point,” “straight line,” etc. The basket must be exactly ten feet off the ground and the
hoop must be a certain diameter, eighteen inches I think. Did you know that you can’t
block a basketball if it is coming down from the highest point of its arc?”
She didn’t know what I was talking about.
“Anyway, it’s called goal tending and it’s illegal. Those are like the rules of
Algebra, or rules of Differentiation or Integration.”
“I’m lost.”
“Well, I’m pushing it, but I think there is a certain validity to what I am saying and I
think maybe people are fascinated by just watching it, maybe the way they are fascinated
by chess for example. But I can tell you that playing it is infinitely better than watching.
There is simply no comparison.”
She stared at me uncomprehendingly. I asked, “What do you make of the fact that
people don’t go to college baseball games?”
She thought for a few seconds. “I don’t know. Maybe it is at the end of the year
and they are tired of going to so many games.”
I asked, “Could I interest you in going to a game?”
“You mean really interest me?”
“You see, you are an illustration of what I’m talking about! Why is it that you don’t
like sports anyway?”
“I don’t know. I suppose because it just seems pointless. A bunch of grown men
kicking a ball around and acting like children. I suppose because I think of it as an
exclusively male activity that excludes women on purpose... It is basically a male
chauvinist activity and I detest it.”
She looked at me warily and self-consciously. She hadn’t meant to be so honest but
wasn’t unhappy that she had been.
I looked at her legs and then looked into the mirror and noticed that my hair was
longer than it had ever been. She had kept her promise and her hair was growing back. I
suggested that we get out of the house. We drove to lake Merritt.

I said, “Well, it looks like our social life is improving. Van and his girl friend
tomorrow night and your party tonight.”
We sat there on the wooden bench by the duck pond at lake Merritt and watched a
couple of storks staring into the void. It was May 29, and the image of a Vietnamese
Buddhist monk, burning himself alive on national television, entered my mind and then a
flood of images from a documentary on the Jewish death camps. I saw a beautiful young
Jewess, dead, lying on her back, naked, on a pile of naked corpses. Her angelic face,
shrouded with thick dark hair, and her voluptuous body were eerily beautiful against the
hideous pile of arms and legs and breasts and genitals and faces of freshly killed Jewish
women. She looked almost coquettish there, on her back, with marble white flesh,
Rubenesque thighs, and a neat black tuft of hair almost hidden in the flesh between her
legs.
She said, “I’ll go to a game it you want me to.”
I said, “What? .... Oh, I know you will,” and I thought, “to please me.” I said, “I
don’t really care much about baseball anymore, but it’s odd ... this year, it’s different. The
Chicago Cubs are leading the league by about eight games and they’ve always been in last
place, ever since I was a kid. And this team called the New York Mets...” I looked at her
questioningly.
She said, “My ex used to talk about them sometimes. Didn’t they lose 100 games
in one season or something?”
I was surprised that she knew. “That’s right. In 1962, the expansion year. It was
their first year as a baseball team and they broke the record for the most games lost in one
season. 120. Anyway they actually have a chance for second place. They’re real close to
the Cardinals.”
She had that uncomprehending but intense look that most women have when
listening to sports talk. It is as if they are remembering their mothers telling them that they
should always look interested when men talk about sports. It seemed to me like empty
reverence combined with intense condescension.
“Last year was the last year I took football seriously and I thought I was finished
with baseball too. I carried the Raiders all the way to the Super Bowl last year and I’ve
been getting this strange feeling that I’m going to have to carry the Mets to the World
Series this year. I’ve actually been depressed this week because the Mets have lost five in a
row even though it has helped the Cubs. I don’t understand it because Ernie Banks was
one of my childhood heroes... He’s the star short stop for the Cubs... well actually, he’s
playing first now but...”
Her face was flushed and she looked like a woman carrying a twenty five pound
basketball on her back.
I said, “Anyway, I find myself turning to the Green Page like I did when I was a
kid.”
She asked, “What’s the Green Page?”
“Oh, I forgot, you’re a foreigner. That’s the Sports page of the San Francisco
Chronicle.”
She said, “If the truth were to be known, I figured it out as I was asking the
question.” The expression, “If the truth were to be known,” was one of her favorite
expressions and she always used it ironically. But she looked like a kid ashamed to be
ignorant of an obscure detail of our National Pastime.
I didn’t try to share my feelings with her because I thought they were infantile and
narcissistic. I thought that if I did, she would think of me as a pathologically infantile.
I had an irrational happiness for Ernie Banks, one of my childhood heroes and all-
star shortstop for the Chicago Cubs because the Cubs were finally in first place. He was a
childhood hero because he was built almost exactly like me, tall and skinny but he was still
a power hitter like me. I didn’t tell her that when I was a kid, I used the Louisville Slugger
Ernie Banks bat whenever I could, only occasionally cheating for a period with an Eddie
Matthews or now and then with a Mickey Mantle, Ted Williams or even with a fat handled
bat like a Ted Kluszewski or Jackie Robinson.
Possibly as penance for my infantilism, I remembered the article that I had read that
morning on the second page of the Chronicle. It said that Dick Gregory was back in Cook
County jail, for five months, and fasting again, for kicking and beating a cop. Which, of
course couldn’t possibly be true. I couldn’t believe they would do that to Gregory after he
had run for President and I hated Nixon after that, assuming that somehow he must be
behind it even though Watergate was still in the future. I knew that Gregory would get
even with Nixon for it, somehow, and of course, he did. It was called My Lai.
She looked uneasy. I said, “Well, don’t worry. I’m finished with baseball.”
I didn’t know that five years later I would be playing baseball for the Paris
University Club team and that I would hit a three run home run in the bottom of the ninth to
beat Marseilles, 8 to 5, for the championship of France. It was as sweet as any home run
that I’ve ever hit, even though they were the only two official European baseball teams in
France.
We ate a very light dinner and went to the party at about eight. The house was a
large, brown shingled Maybeck with a Tilden Park front yard. Tear gas lingered in the air
from the People’s Park demonstration that day.
We entered a living room filled with women. I was the only man there. The room
was lighted by a globe of turning colored lights and a tall blond woman was dancing in the
middle of a group of women.
They noticed us out of the corner of their collective eye but otherwise we got no
formal greeting.
The music was so loud that I didn’t try to talk to Florence. She yelled into my ear
that the woman in the center was the fantastic woman that she had told me about, Diana.
Diana was taller than the others. I thought, “Farrah Fawcett-Majors with a dike
haircut... no, her skin is too pasty. Well, maybe it’s the light.” She turned in circles and a
long, diaphanous scarf billowed around her.
Florence advanced into the room ahead of me, transfixed. I went into the kitchen,
got an Olie from the refrigerator, went to a table laden with food and began loading a paper
plate with potato chips, little sandwiches with tooth picks holding them together, a bunch of
green and black olives, a hunk of pâté and a piece of French bread, a large piece of ripe brie
cheese and a vegetable salad with raw cauliflower in it.
I was picking the cauliflower from my plate and throwing it into the wastebasket,
when I heard a voice, “How are you doin?” Florence was standing in the doorway of the
kitchen, watching me.
“Me? I’m all right. As long as I can find some food and something to drink I’m
all right at any party.”
“Are you sure?”
I hated the gaggle of lesbians in the living room but, by that time at least, I had
learned when not to say it.
I said, “Don’t worry about me. If you want to dance, go ahead. I see some books
over there. Maybe I’ll settle down for awhile and read... while I’m eating.”
“Don’t be too unsociable.”
“I don’t think they’ll miss me.” She didn’t choose to hear the sarcasm in my voice.
I said, “I’ll come in there and check out the dancing after awhile.”
“OK.”
I walked down the hall and while I was browsing through the books in a small
bookcase I noticed a television set in a room at the other end of the hall. In the room, a
couple of women were having a tête-à-tête near the door. When I entered the room, they
glared at me and walked into the living room.
I turned on the set. The Mets were playing the Padres! I had forgotten! Jerry
Koosman was pitching a one hitter. I couldn’t believe it. Koosman was a good pitcher, but
he gave up hits. Lots of hits. I watched as he struck out the sides. Yogi Berra was slowly
pacing up and down in the Mets dugout and Gil Hodges, the manager, was peering out at
Koosman.
During the beer commercial I went into the living room to see how Florence was
doing but I didn’t see her. In a dark corner, the same two women who had glared at me
were standing close together with arms around each other’s waists.
I went back to watch the game. I thought, “Fuck them all, I don’t care, I’m going
to watch the game,” and I sat there watching as players were stranded on base, grounded
into double plays or hit long outs that sent outfielders onto the warning path.
“Who’s winning?” The voice had a lilting foreign accent, one that I didn’t
recognize. I turned around to see a woman with thick black eyebrows and a mass of curly
black hair pulled austerely back over her ears into a pony tail. She was standing just behind
me.
“Nobody. It’s a tie game.”
There was a kind of strange tenseness about the game that riveted me to the screen.
It seemed somehow that the destiny of the Mets and maybe of baseball itself hung on the
outcome of the game. She said, “The uniforms are beautiful.”
Jerry Koosman was standing on the mound shaking off signals. She asked, “Why
is he shaking his head like that?”
“The catcher is telling him to throw a pitch that he doesn’t want to throw.”
“Why doesn’t he simply throw the kind of pitch that he wants to throw and not ask
the catcher?”
He threw a fast ball over the lower outside corner for a strike. I answered, “Well, if
the catcher doesn’t know what he’s going to throw he’ll have a hard time catching the ball.
Most people don’t know that. A catcher doesn’t usually tell a pitcher what to throw, he
asks the pitcher if he thinks it’s a good idea to throw a certain kind of pitch. Since the
catcher plays every game and the pitcher only pitches every four or five games, the pitcher
knows that the catcher might have some pretty good ideas about the hitters. Usually
pitchers go along with a veteran catcher like Yogi Berra but sometimes they shake off even
a veteran catcher.”
I looked up at her to see if she had understood anything that I had said. She had
moved closer, by my side, and was looking intently at the screen. She said, “Do you think
the Mets can beat the Cubs this season?”
“Well, the way they’ve been playing this week, I don’t think so.”
She said, “I think Gary Gentry will help them a lot.”
“You follow baseball.”
“Yes. Well, my uncle does. He’s always taking everybody to games and watching
them on TV. So I guess it’s by osmosis or something. I really don’t know that much.”
She looked self-conscious, as if she wasn’t sure if she’d used the word “osmosis”
correctly.
I said, “Well, if you know about Gentry, you know a lot. He struck out more
batters than any other pitcher in college baseball history.” I smiled at her.
She said, “Yes. And his father wanted him to get his college education first, before
he would let him play. He was underage and his father had to sign a paper. But he
relented. Do you think he made a wise decision?”
 She looked back at the screen and waited confidently for an answer. Her nose was
long, with a bump on it and her forehead was very low. Her hair was thick and curly and
black. Her eyes were close together. Tiny ears peeked out from behind the tangled black
bush of hair and her breasts seemed almost non-existent.
I said, too melodramatically, I guessed, “Sometimes you have to go against your
deepest convictions. Occasionally life presents chances for greatness and they have to be
seized in spite of everything.”
A Padre hit a line shot that was going to fall into left center, and the runner went for
third base. Tommy Agee came out of nowhere and badly misjudged his chance to catch the
ball. He should have played it safe and held the runner to third but he lunged through the
air like an overweight trapeze artist with the void behind him. With arms outstretched, he
bounced on the grass, skidded and then rolled. Still on the ground, he raised his glove with
the ball lodged in the tip of the web, about a third of it hanging out. His face beamed with
a toothy grin and Shea Stadium broke into madness.
The runner was almost at third base, holding his head with both hands, kicking the
dirt, and making no attempt to get back to first base. Sitting on his butt, Agee tossed the
ball to Cleon Jones who fired a line shot to first for the easy double play.
I asked, “What country are you from?”
She paused, long and beautifully, as if she needed to learn something from my eyes,
as if she didn’t want to break the charm of the moment with a few ill chosen words. “I’m
half Persian.”
The sound of kazoos, horns and bells competed with the screams of peasants who
originated from every region on earth.
She added, and her eyes were wild and dancing, “My mother’s an Oglala Sioux.”
We looked into each other’s faces again, in silence. It seemed to me that we were
both looking for reasons not to care about each other. The crowd didn’t stop their
celebration. She said, “They’re happy.”
“It was a good catch. Some people don’t need much.”
I wanted to ask her something, anything, but I indulged myself in her beauty
instead.
She asked, “Are you a student at Berkeley?”
“It’s a long story. Are you?”
“Yes.”
“What are you majoring in?”
“Mathematics.”
My eyes brightened. She looked down, self-deprecatingly and said, “I’m thinking
of changing my major.”
A Padre hit a line shot right at Koosman. Our eyes moved back to the screen. He
fell to his left, as if he were trying to get out of the way of the ball, and rolled onto the
ground. But he, too, got up with the ball in the web of his glove and a sheepish grin on his
face that said he couldn’t believe that he had caught the ball.
The television camera scanned the bleachers. The fans were dancing in the stands,
hugging each other and toasting the sky with paper cups of beer. As the Mets went back to
the dugout they threw bags of peanuts, pop corn, cushions, scorecards, cups of beer, and
anything they could get their hands on, onto the field. The screaming wouldn’t stop. The
police in the stands looked uneasy.
 She asked, “What happened?”
“A miracle.”
“I missed it.”
“Well, we miss miracles sometimes.”
She smiled. I looked at her hair telling her with my eyes that I would like to run my
fingers through it, and then I looked at her mouth telling her that I would like to kiss it. She
looked back at the television set, very seriously, and without saying anything, took off her
jacket. She was wearing a pink blouse, and I could see that she wasn’t wearing anything
under it.
She asked, still watching the screen, “Do you believe in miracles?” She looked
back at me and at my shoulders, which felt enormous next to hers. Her eyes were trusting
and she seemed to snuggle up into me like a little girl.
I said, “I used to believe in Santa Claus when I was a little boy.”
“But you don’t anymore?”
“Well... Now I believe that people are miracles.”
I looked at her body and strong legs and the curve of her bare arms. I had folded
my arms and my left hand was under my right biceps causing it to bulge. She looked at it
and then her eyes dropped lower and she looked away coquettishly.
Remembering the philosophy of Wilhelm Reich, and not wanting to mistake the
feeling for love, I made note of the fact that I wanted to fuck her and studied her features
coldly. I convinced myself that she wasn’t pretty, and in fact, that she was almost ugly. But
her skin was luminous and her body seemed to contain a perfectly controlled energy. The
tangled mass of black hair made her look like a wild animal.
She said, “I’ll be right back.”
She got up quickly, and disappeared. I turned back to the game, alone with my
feelings. Her face and hair and movement, dominated everything. I wanted her in an
uncontrolled, impossible way, and I hated her for the power that it gave her. I didn’t even
know her name.
I thought, “Well, she won’t come back. Women like that never do.” I repeated an
idea that I had worked out the night before. “They act and feel first. For them, words only
justify action but action always comes first and follows feeling.” I noticed that she had left
her jacket.
I watched the game in silence. The Mets went down ignominiously and quickly.
Baseball can be like that. Cleon Jones grounded out on the first pitch. Kranepool took one
quick strike and then popped out to Colbert at first, and Swaboda hit a line shot to Pena at
third. Koosman walked back to the mound.
She hadn’t returned yet. I thought, “Fuck her, I could care less. I’m going to get
something to eat.”
I got up and went back into the kitchen. “Lo and behold,” I thought. “In flagrante
delicto.” Diana’s butt was sticking out from the refrigerator door.
I asked, rather falling over myself at the opportunity, “Any beer left?” She didn’t
look up. I got another paper plate and started loading it with food. Snubbed.
She turned around with a beer in both hands. “We’ve got two kinds.”
I answered, “Well, that’s service.”
Her smile darkened into an offended frown. I said, “I like Olympia. I guess it’s
the water.”
 “I can’t stand beer.” She looked past me, at the wall, and added, “I don’t drink.”
She handed me the beer, still looking at the wall to our left, and then, with her arm
still outstretched and holding another beer can, wheeled past me, theatrically, and walked
through the door, back into the living room.
I thought, “Fucking weirdo lesbian,” and went back to the television set. It was
turned off. I turned it back on, muttering to myself, “People who don’t like baseball are
un-American and weird on top of it,” and popped open the beer can as noisily as possible.
I looked up to see her dark eyes in the doorway. She seemed to hover above the
ground for an instant and then glided towards me and I found myself watching her feet and
legs and observing attentively as she sat down in the chair next to me. She seemed almost
too self-consciously graceful.
Once seated, she ignored my attention and asked, “How are the Mets doing?”
She seemed genuinely concerned and looked into the screen with the same
seriousness as before. I noticed that she wasn’t wearing any makeup or jewelry. She
seemed innocent of coquetry and I felt ashamed of myself.
I said, “I won’t tell you until you tell me your name.”
“You tell me yours first.”
“Guess.”
“Nooo.” She laughed in a way that I had never heard or seen anyone laugh before.
It was a manic and yet self-contained laugh, as if an extraordinary amount of energy flowed
through her face and it was therefore necessary to contain it through an act of truncation. I
thought that it was possible that she had never shown that expression to anyone else but me
and I knew that it was a crazy, impossible thought.
Later, I decided that because she was an Iranian woman she had grown up
experiencing intense feelings behind the veil and therefore her face was capable of
registering far more intensity, before a stranger, than a Western woman could possibly
allow herself. And yet, her mother was Oglala Sioux.
I said, “Let me guess your name.”
She said, “It’s Vida.”
“Life. That means life.”
She looked troubled.
“Hasn’t anyone ever told you that?”
She hesitated. “.... No.”
She looked into my eyes and I wondered why she lied to me.
I asked, “Why are you lying to me?”
Her eyebrows knitted together and her intensity seemed to flow into them, “I’m not
lying.” The expression on her face seemed as fierce as that of Darius whipping the sea
because a storm had sunk some of his ships.
“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that.”
“Don’t be sorry. Don’t ever be sorry for anything you say.”
I said, “I like you.”
She looked at me with the same Mona Lisa smile that caused me to think she was a
coquette a few minutes earlier. After she allowed me to search the terrain of her face for
whatever it was that I thought was beautiful, and after I had concluded again that there was
nothing extraordinary in her features, she said, “You haven’t told me your name.”
“It’s Jack.”
 She looked away and seemed enormously pleased, as if I had told her a great secret.
I asked, “What are you doing at a party like this?”
“I didn’t know it would be like this. I came with a friend.”
“You’re not a lesbian?”
Her shoulders hunched together as if she were stifling a laugh and she looked
around self-consciously. “Noooo.”
Tilly strode into the room, displaying an aggressive row of teeth. “Are you two
getting to know each other?”
Vida and I looked at each other, surprised.
Tilly said, “Vida is a friend. She’s interested in the Women’s Movement so I
brought her to the party. By the way, Florence is looking for you Jack. Did she ever find
you?”
“No. But I’ve been in here for the last half hour. No one else has been here with
me except Vida.” I glanced at Vida. I said, “You can tell her that I’m in safe hands.”
“I’ll tell her I saw you watching the baseball game with another woman.”
I looked at Vida but she wouldn’t meet my eyes.
Tilly said, “Well, I’ll leave you two alone.”
Vida’s arm went up. She said, “I should be going home. It’s getting late. I…”
Tilly said, “All right, but I have to go back upstairs for awhile. It’s an important
meeting. All right?”
I said, “I’ll take good care of her.”
Tilly stared at me icily, turned her back and walked out of the room. I turned back
towards the screen. We watched the game in silence. Koosman was shaking off signals
again.
I said, “Well, I guess he’s having trouble with the catcher again.”
“He should do what he wants.”
After a few seconds, I looked into her eyes. She was staring at the screen and
wouldn’t meet my eyes. Suddenly she asked, sharply, “Why are you looking at me?” She
glanced at me quickly and then back at Koosman.
I thought for a few seconds. I gambled with the truth, “I like to look at you.”
She paused, as if trying too carefully to find words for her feelings.
“Who is Florence?” She stared at the rug, waiting for an answer.
“A friend.”
She looked up hopefully. We made love with our eyes. I looked away.
She asked, “How long have you known her?”
“About five months.”
Her eyes were steady like a woman who is used to pain and loss. But a blackness
appeared in them and there was a silence that gave birth to an enormous distance and I said,
reaching across it, “Look, I like you. Can you understand that?”
She looked into my eyes again and I asked, “Can I see you again?” She looked
away and then looked back, questioningly. I said, “Look...”
I broke off in mid-sentence and looked back to the screen. It was the bottom of the
tenth inning and McGraw was warming up on the mound. I couldn’t believe it.
I looked back at her. She said, “I’ll see you at Tilly’s house.”
My eyebrows shot up.
She asked, “Do you live next door to Tilly?”
 Another lie. Why hadn’t she told me that she knew I lived next door?
I watched McGraw throw a looping curve ball that slashed the outside corner of the
plate for a strike.
I looked back at her and she was looking into herself again, smiling gently.
Pena hit the second pitch about four hundred feet, a foul ball into the left field
bleachers.
She made a move to get her jacket and then we both looked up to see Florence
standing in the doorway.
Vida said, “It was almost a homer.”
I said, “The game would have been over.”
She looked at me questioningly but I was looking at Florence. Florence walked
towards us. She said, “I thought you said that you were through with baseball.” She was
smiling.
“I may be through with it, but I still love it.” I noticed that Florence’s cheeks were
flushed. I said, “Vida, this is Florence.”
Florence put her hand out and Vida took it too warmly, with both hands. She
remained sitting.
Cleon Jones opened the bottom of the eleventh inning with a chopping ground ball
over second base and the shortstop bobbled the ball. Jones was safe at first. Shea stadium
raised itself about a quarter of an inch off the ground and the Statue of Liberty waved her
torch.
I jumped out of my chair. “Jesus Christ.”
I looked up at Florence. Her mouth was open and she was looking at me as if she
had never seen me before. We all looked at the screen as Kranepool came to bat. He
squared off for the sacrifice bunt and completely missed a curve ball. The crowd groaned
and grumbled. When McCool delivered the second pitch, and Kranepool squared off again
and missed again, the crowd was silent, as if stunned. A shrill female voice broke the
silence, “Swing away Cesspool,” and laughter crackled around the bleachers like a grass
fire on a dry California hill.
I looked at Florence and asked, “Did you hear that?”
She had a blank look on her face.
Vida answered, “I heard it. What does “cesspool” mean?”
Kranepool squared away again, lunging at the third pitch. I jumped up again. “Son
of a... I can’t believe it… This is not baseball. This can’t be happening.” I put my hands
to my head while Florence defined cesspool for Vida.
Kranepool went back to the bench and he was pelted with invective. People were
hanging on the railings, pretending to puke, and throwing things onto the field, and I felt
sorry for him.
Vida said, “He got his tip on the ball. Doesn’t he get another hit?”
“No, when you try to bunt on the third strike that rule doesn’t apply.”
Florence said, “I’m completely lost.”
I said, “It’s a big game for the Mets. They’ve done better this year than ever before
but if they lose this one it’ll be six in a row and I have a feeling that the fans will tear down
the stadium. The Mets will be finished.”
Florence said, “All for a baseball game,” and gave a little smirk. Reberger was
warning up on the mound.
 Florence asked, “I don’t understand. The first pitcher just made the batter go back
to the dugout. So why are they using a new pitcher?”
I answered, “I don’t know.”
Vida said, “He’s right handed. Maybe the next batter is right handed too.”
I said, “That’s obviously it. Swaboda is right handed. They don’t want to take a
chance.”
Florence’s voice was shrill, “What could that possibly have to do with it? Being
left handed or right handed?”
Vida said, in a small questioning voice, “It’s easier for a right hander to hit against
a left hander pitcher?”
I answered, “Yes, that’s it.”
Florence said, “I don’t believe it. It’s probably just a superstition. I mean it’s well
known that baseball players are superstitious.”
I said, “No, it’s been backed up by statistics.”
She didn’t look convinced. Swaboda swung at a fastball and missed. The same
screeching female voice came from the stands again, “Comon Swabbieeeee... keep your
eye on the ball for me.......... your MOTHERRRRRR.” Laugher spread from the backstop
throughout the lower stands.
The next pitch was a fastball and Swaboda swung again and missed.
Florence said, triumphantly, sarcastically, “I thought you said he could hit against a
right hand thrower.”
Reberger threw another fast ball. Swaboda was protecting the plate this time and
caught the ball perfectly, sending a blooper into center field for a single. For some reason,
Jones was running on the pitch and went to third standing up.
I got up from my chair again. Vida was smiling but Florence scowled. Shea
stadium fell apart again. The noise wouldn’t die down as they walked Jerry Grote
intentionally to load the bases.
Florence asked, “I feel hopelessly stupid about baseball, but why would they walk
the batter intentionally if it makes the bases loaded?”
Vida looked at me as if she wanted to tell her but didn’t want to make her feel any
worse.
I said, “Well, they’re looking for the force out at home plate. If the runners are
forced to run then the catcher just has to tag home plate with his foot for the out.”
Florence answered, “Well, I know that much about baseball. To make an out a
player can either tag the runner with the ball or touch the base with his foot.”
I felt a twinge of embarrassment for her and said, gently, “Well, yes, when its...” I
didn’t finish the sentence. I waved my hand not knowing how to finish it.
Harrelson took the first pitch for a strike.
Florence said, “I guess I don’t understand anything then.”
Vida said, “You have to watch it. Then it becomes easy. I’ve been watching it at
my uncle’s house for almost four years, since I’ve been in America.”
“Where are you from?”
“Persia.”
Florence asked, “Do you live with you uncle?”
“No, I live at the I house. Do you know where it is?”
“Yes, the International House. It’s on Bancroft isn’t it?”
 Herrelson hit a foul ball to bring the count to 0 and 2.
I said, “Why don’t we take her home for Tilly. She’s upstairs in an meeting. She
can’t get away.”
“Meeting? Did she say that?”
The crowd roared. None of us had seen what happened but Cleon Jones was
jumping up and down as he headed for home plate and the fans mobbed the field. Florence
looked bewildered. “Doesn’t the other team get a chance in the next inning?”
Vida explained the home team rule as we turned off the television set and walked
through the living room towards her yellow Volvo. Outside, we could smell the tear gas
again, from the People’s Park demonstration.

Chapter 17

Thus the vagina of many women is a simple, more or less insensitive hole.

Marie Bonaparte

“Look, masturbation is the preferred method of orgasm in women.” She paused and
then added, “And I know that I’ll never convince you, but cunnilingus is the preferred form
of masturbation.”
“But that isn’t even masturbation.” I contemplated a lifetime of cunnilingus in
silence. That is, in silence, I contemplated a lifetime of cunnilingus.
She said, “I’ve told you that the vaginal orgasm is a myth. The vagina exists only
for the stimulation of the penis. There are almost no nerve endings in it.”
I said, “An orgasm is a whole body experience. It’s a spiritual experience that
shakes the foundations of your existence.”
“Have you been reading Norman Mailer again?”
“No, of course not. I mean, yes. I read Mailer sometimes, but he’s got nothing to do
with it. Remember, I’m a Reichean.”
“You’re a phallocrat... It’s incredible. It’s straight out of Norman Mailer.” She
shook her head in disgust and added, “I really wonder sometimes how I put up with you.”
Our dinner with Van loomed five hours hence and for an hors-d’oeuvre, I ate the
rage of my wounded pride and withdrew into my thoughts. Naturally, it was a retreat that
she allowed and even expected. We sat there in silence.
In a Freudian mood, I asked myself if Marie Bonaparte would agree with Florence
and call my obsession with the vaginal orgasm, “primary narcissism that arose from
castration anxiety, which extracted the price of phallic pride for reassuring my fragile ego
that my penis was still there.”
I remembered Freud’s early obsession with Hannibal and wondered if he had taken
Marie Bonaparte as a disciple simply because she was a direct descendant of Napoleon. I
wondered if, in Freud’s Unconscious, her membership in his inner circle corresponded to a
victory over Napoleon. Possibly, Bonaparte’s insistence on the vaginal orgasm was simply a
tribute that Freud had exacted from her, and that Bonaparte had, in fact, never experienced a
vaginal orgasm herself.
 Again, I wondered if Florence’s fixation on oral sex was caused by the paralysis of
her mother: that it might be possible that as a small child she had fantasized that her mother
had been injured and paralyzed by the penis, and that she, Florence, was forced by her
unconscious fear, to eat the penis, over and over again, to neutralize its force, thereby
protecting herself from the same fate.
There was a loud thump on the wall. Florence looked at me with wide eyes and
asked, as if I had privileged knowledge, “What was that?”
I looked out the window. A couple of black kids, about ten years old, were running
away. “Nothing. Just some kids, playing.”
She said, “I’m going back to Connecticut for two weeks.”
“What? What brought that on?”
“It’s nothing that you did. I’ve been meaning to tell you. It just kept slipping my
mind.”
“When are you going?”
“In a few weeks.”
I was sad that she was going, but, paradoxically, happy too. I couldn’t remember
feeling so happy and so sad at the same time.
She added, as she was rummaging through her purse, “I’m going for my mother’s
birthday. Also, I haven’t been back there since Christmas and I have some unfinished
business. But I think it’ll be good for us to be separated for awhile. I mean we’ve been
together almost every day for more than four months.”
“Sure. You’re probably right. I guess you can afford it, so it’s no problem.”
“True.” She found her ticket. She read from it, “The flight leaves Oakland Airport
at 11 A.M., June 14.”
“Well...I should be able to take you to the airport...”
“You can take care of my Volvo for me when I’m gone.”
I got up. I said, “I think I’ll go back to my place for awhile. Suppose I come back
at about five and then we go pick up Van?”
“Fine.”
Pinson was sunning himself in the backyard. He was wearing his swim suit and
lying on a sun-faded, yellow, plastic-cushioned chaise longue. From the kitchen window, I
could see him holding a green can of Rainier Ale and smiling to himself, almost laughing
about something. I got a beer from the refrigerator and joined him.
He asked, “How’s it going dad?”
“Not too bad.”
He said, “I just talked to Adrienne. You know the woman who lives in 10?”
He pointed to a door that looked down at us through a second story railing.
I said, “Yeah. I’ve talked to her a few times.”
“We’re invited to play cribbage.”
“Cribbage? When?”
“She didn’t set a date.”
“Sounds far out.”
“How’s Florence?”
“She’s OK. She’s going back to Connecticut for a couple of weeks. I’ll be on the
loose again for awhile.”
 He took a swig of beer. He said, nodding to 10 with his head, “Have you seen that
friend of hers? The one with the black hair?”
“Yeah. I met her the other day. Her name’s Helen.”
“No shit. Like Helen of Troy.”
I said, “That reminds me. How’s Penelope?”
“You know. It’s on again, off again. It’s not gonna work but she doesn’t know it.”
We were silent for a few seconds. I asked, “Her legs are too skinny?”
He laughed. I asked, “Did the Mets win again today?”
“Yeah, they beat the Giants 4 to 3. Taylor saved it for Seaver in the ninth.”
He said, “Two in a row. How many games out are they now? Still six?”
“I’m not sure. It’s either six or seven. I just heard it on the radio but I was thinking
of something else. I didn’t catch it for sure.”
I asked, “Where’s Billy?”
“He went to the store to get some supplies for the Sports Club.”
“What’s this about being invited to play Cribbage?”
“I was just talking to her. About fifteen minutes ago. She was standing right there.”
He pointed to the fence. “She said they play cribbage. She and, what’s her name? Helen.
They invited us to play sometime.”
“You talked to Helen?”
“No. Adrienne said ‘We thought you might like to play cribbage with us sometime.’
“
I asked, “What do you think of Helen?”
He stretched out his hands and made an hour glass in the air, “She looks like a
bombshell. From thirty feet, anyway.”
“She looks pretty good close up too.”
He smiled and said, “Florence might get jealous.”
I asked, “What do you think of Adrienne?”
“How old do you think she is? About thirty?”
“Maybe a little older. Melissa’s eleven.”
“Her daughter?”
“Yeah.”
He said, “I like older women.” He made a hole with his left hand and put a finger
from his right hand into it. He said, “What counts is...” He rubbed his finger back and forth
in the hole.
I said, “You don’t care about their minds.”
“I wouldn’t go that far. But if I have to decide between their minds and this, I know
what to choose.”
Muffy ran down the back stairs, ran over to the chaise longue and put his nose into
Pinson’s crotch. Pinson pushed him away, yelling, “Get out of here you grungy mutt. Go
sniff your master’s trunks.” He broke out laughing.
Billy came to the top of the stairs carrying two shopping bags full of soft drinks and
potato chips. He yelled down, good naturally, “Taking out your aggressions on my dog
again Pinson?”
“If you could only train him to keep his nose out of my swim suit, I could learn to
live with him.”
 The phone rang. Billy answered it. It was Turnbull. He was three sheets to the
wind. His voice boomed over the telephone, theatrically, “William. How’s it goin?”
“What’s up Mike?”
“Well, old bean, we’re having this party on the boat, and I was wondering if you
could come?”
“When is it?”
“Oh. What time is it anyway. Hmmmmmm. I mean what day of the week is it?
Sorry about that. Anyway. Yeah...” He gave a date that was a few weeks into the future.
“Fine. I mean yeah. It sounds great.”
“You can bring what’s her face... uh, Florrie? Isn’t it?”
“Florence. Seven O’clock?”
“Yeah.”
For some reason, he hated Florence. I said, “Oh shit. I just remembered. She’s got
rehearsals for the big play she’s been working on...” Pause. “You’re an ex-actor Turnbull.
You can understand that.”
“Sure old bean, I can understand that... And I am an ex- actor... Oh my God yes, I’m
an ex-actor...Well... bring yourself then! I mean unless it’s dress rehearsal or opening night
or... WHATEVER... Hell, bring the whole crew.”
“I never go to those things Martin. I don’t even know the whole crew. Actually, I
don’t know any of them. I can’t stand actors...” I paused, theatrically, “... they’re a bunch of
pretentious fags.” I enjoyed saying outrageous things to him, especially when he was drunk.
He broke out laughing. I added, filling the silence, “Especially unemployed actors.”
“Yes indeed. But don’t let me get started on that. PLEASE.”
“We’ll talk about it at the party.”
“All right then. I’ll see you at seven.”
“Seven O’clock.”
He said, “And don’t bring any actors.”
“Count on it.”
I went back downstairs, carrying three beers with me. Billy was already holding
one. I threw one to Chris.
Billy asked Chris, “So you’ve decided for sure?”
“I haven’t decided anything for sure.”
He sounded irritated. I handed him one of the beers and opened another one for
myself. I looked at him questioningly. He said, “I’m thinking about joining the Coast
Guard Reserve. It’s my best option.”
I asked, “Six months in and then six years of inactive duty?”
He said, “Beats Canada.”
I said, “I got a letter from the draft board saying they’ve postponed my appeal
hearing. It means I’m finished with them. I’ll be 26 on the 15th of August.”
“So you’re officially a Conscientious Objector?”
“Oh no. They’ve consistently turned me down on that. I’m just exhausting all of
my legally allowed appeals. They’ve got so many people appealing it takes months, years
to schedule them all.”
Chris said, “I wish my feet were a little flatter,” and looked at Billy who was 4F
because of his five years of “psychotherapy.”
Billy asked me, grinning, “Did Playboy decide to publish your article?”
 “No, ... they sent a rejection slip. Said it was too scholarly and... what else...” I
couldn’t remember the last adjective. I didn’t know, at that time, that a personal rejection
slip from Playboy was considered to be an honor.
Chris asked, “Are you going to send it anywhere else?”
“Yeah, I’ve got about ten magazines lined up. I wanted to give Playboy first shot.”
He asked, “What do they pay?”
“Five hundred bucks.”
Pinson said, “Shit, you guys are pulling down more than that every month in the
Sports club aren’t you? For a couple hours a day, four days a week for playing with little
boys. How many members do you have now anyway?”
Billy said, “Sixty four. But only about thirty five show up at one time.”
I said, “I made just a shade under six hundred last month. Kidd made about a
grand.”
Billy grinned in self-satisfaction.
Chris said, “Give up writing Jack. There’s no money in it.”
I took the letter out of my pocket and read, “Pointless, ... too scholarly, somewhat
chaotic … and…. no central point.” They didn’t say anything. I said, “Anyway, before I
give up writing I’ve got to finish my next article. You know, the one that proves that it’s
impossible to publish anything.”
Neither one of them laughed. Billy said, probably to the Reader, (because, after all,
even though he had read only one novel, even he believed in literature and the reader.)
“Jack still thinks he’s an unappreciated genius. Smarter than his half-brother. So he’s going
to brood in his room for the rest of his life reading Nietzsche when he could go to Law
School with me and make something out of his life.”
Chris got up. He said, “I’m going to leave you two jocks to your own devices. I’ve
got to go to work.”
Billy said, winking at me, “You call that work? Parking cars for a bunch of rich
drunks.”
The aggressive grin was on his face. Pinson crumpled his empty beer can and threw
it at Billy’s head. Kidd ducked and it banged against the fence.
Pinson laughed and said, “Why didn’t you catch that? You overgrown ape.”
Billy broke out laughing. “Pinson’s mad!! Watch out!!”
 Chris trudged up the stairs and a horrified look came over Billy’s face. He
said, “Shit. I just remembered. I forgot to get CORN CHIPS.”
It was my turn to shop for the Sports Club so I followed Chris up the stairs
and walked to my Volkswagen.
Heading up Telegraph Avenue to the Berkeley Co-op on Ashby, I
remembered that I had planned to look for a used edition of Stendhal’s On Love, at
Moe’s bookstore. I hung a right on Ashby and drove all the way to College Avenue
so that I could avoid the usual mob near the University.
I gambled and parked on Haste, about four blocks above Telegraph. There
was a large crowd around People’s Park, and inside the fence about thirty hippies
were dancing. Four or five of them were completely naked and many of the women
were bare-breasted. A couple of the women had babies on their hips and a bluish
cloud marijuana smoke, or incense, or something, hung over the dancing crowd.
I picked up a pamphlet from the sidewalk and pushed my way through the
crowd towards Moe’s.
I couldn’t find a copy of On Love but I bought a badly damaged copy Abel
Bonnard’s The Love Life of Stendhal, for twenty-five cents. I went across the street
to the Cafe Med for an expresso and a chance to read for awhile, before picking up
the Corn Chips and getting ready for dinner with Van and his girlfriend. I sat down
with my expresso, opened the pamphlet I had found on the street and read:

We will make Telegraph Avenue and the South Campus a

strategic free territory for the revolution... We will create our
revolutionary culture everywhere... We will turn the schools into
training grounds of liberation...students must destroy the senile
dictatorship of adult teachers and bureaucrats. Grading, tests,
tracking, demotions, retentions, and expulsions must be abolished.
We will destroy the university unless it serves the people...
Our battles will be conducted in the classrooms and in the
streets...We will struggle for the full liberation of women as a
necessary part of the liberation process. We will expand and protect
our drug culture... we intend to establish a drug distribution center
and a marijuana cooperative.
We will break the power of the landlords and provide
beautiful housing for everyone... through rent strikes, direct seizures
of property and other resistance campaigns... we shall force them to
transfer housing control to the community.
We will define ourselves against law and order. The people of
Berkeley must arm themselves and learn the basic skills and tactics
of self-defense and street fighting ... We shall make Berkeley a
sanctuary for rebels, outcasts and revolutionary fugitives.
We will create a soulful Socialism in Berkeley. We will unite
with other movements throughout the world to destroy this
motherfucking, racist capitalistic imperialist system... We will create
an International Liberation School in Berkeley as a training ground
for Revolutionaries.
 I put the pamphlet down, took a sip of expresso and opened Bonnard’s book.

Mérimée said of Stendhal that he was always in love, or

thought he was.
He left the drama of his cares for the opera of his loves.
Stendhal is a hero of pleasure.
Every really noble sensitivity wants one to discover it.
He takes the failure of his work with complete insouciance,
he jokes about it and, having given his epoch this marvelous book,
finds it completely natural that it fails to provide him with the
slightest sign that it has received the gift. The poor reception of his
works affects him so little that it doesn’t even prevent him from
writing others and to write them just as freely.
In the last analysis, he wants to love; or rather, he must love
because it is the only escape offered to his imprisoned sensibility.
He lies occasionally, but the essential thing is that he never
lies to himself.

From my table in the café Med, I could see a crowd of people streaming down
Telegraph avenue, heading towards Dwight Way, away from People’s Park. They were
making a lot of noise and some of them were running.
A dark-haired woman, sitting at a table to my left and in front of me, but with her
back to me, looked up from a pile of papers. She had been writing on one of the papers but
now she sat motionless and seemed to be looking for a word. I could see that her face was
drawn and pale. She began scribbling again, furiously, and then stopped, held the paper up
to the light, crumpled it and threw it into a large leather briefcase in front of her. Her white
jacket was hanging on the back of her chair.
I found myself studying its texture, and it seemed to live in my memory, as a musty
smell that I couldn’t place. Over the back of Bonnard’s book, I studied her partially visible
profile. Her hair was thick and black, and it hung loosely, falling onto her shoulders. It was
streaked with gray. She was wearing a long-sleeved pink blouse.
As I was trying to make out the pattern on the blouse, the noise of a loud crash filled
the room. The crowd had pushed a man against the closed front door of the café and the
noise was enormous.
The woman turned around and her eyes were wide with fear. It was Vida! I waited
for her to recognize me.
Another group of people moved past the windows but this time they moved in the
other direction and there was a club-wielding Berkeley Policeman among them.
She recognized me with a mixture of relief and terror. She gathered up her papers
and stuffed them into her briefcase, and without closing it, carried it to my table. She said,
“I thought it was over.”
“What?”
“The riot.”
“Riot?”
 “Last night. Didn’t you hear about it?”
She placed a chair directly in front of me, with her back to the windows, as if she
wanted me to be her eyes.
I said, “I heard about it. I mean it’s been going on all year. But...”
“Remember the tear gas we smelled last night, after the party?”
Her eyes danced with visible energy, energy that surpassed the energy on the street
and made me forget everything but her eyes and the shape of her face and its energy.
She continued, “It was from the police. There were twenty thousand people there
yesterday.”
She was staring at me and I realized that she was waiting for a response.
I said, “Twenty thousand people! In People’s Park!? How could twenty thousand
people fit into People’s Park?”
She shrugged her shoulders and stared into my eyes. I imagined that I could see
little circles of bluish energy in her eyes and on her cheeks.
I asked, “Why didn’t you say anything about it last night?”
“I was out of town. We came right to the party. We didn’t even get out of the car
before. We didn’t know.”
She turned her entire torso around, slowly, without moving her legs, and looked out
of the window behind her.
I said, “Why don’t we get out of here?”
She said, “I’m afraid to go outside.”
The street and both sidewalks were choked with moving bodies.
I said, “God, I didn’t know anything about it either. I mean I knew that the National
Guard was still in town but I thought the demonstrations were over. I mean I’m used to the
tear gas... Anyway...” I paused, “Anyway... I was fighting with Florence all day in
Oakland and I wasn’t thinking about the news.”
She looked down at the table. Her hands were lying flat on the table, palms down,
and she looked as if she didn’t know what to do with them. She took them off the table and
placed them on her lap and looked into my eyes again. I looked into her eyes without saying
anything. Finally I said, “I see a gray hair.”
She looked at my hair. I smiled and said, “I’m prematurely gray and getting bald
too.”
She looked back at the table and said, “I don’t see it.”
I moved my head closer. “It’s there. Can’t you see it?”
Her eyes didn’t leave mine. “I don’t see it.”
I said, “Don’t worry about the crowd. I’m sure...” I didn’t finish the sentence.
The crowd began a deafening chant, just outside the large plate glass window:
“Power to the people, People’s Park to the people,” and then, thunderously, “DOWN WITH
THE FENCE, DOWN WITH THE FENCE, DOWN WITH THE FENCE, DOWN WITH
THE FENCE...”
She looked up into my eyes, pleading with me to do something.
I said, “Close your briefcase and let’s try to get through the crowd.” The people
were still moving towards People’s Park. I said, “We’ll have to move against the crowd,
towards Dwight Way and see if we can get to my car that way.”
We got up.
I said, “Wait. Let me put my book in your briefcase. I’ll carry the briefcase.”
 We moved through the doors into the crowd as if we were diving into a surf. I yelled
to her, “We’ll have to move up the street towards Haste instead and try to go down Haste.
Take my hand so we don’t get separated.”
The crowd had stopped moving and we pushed our way up Telegraph Avenue, but
we couldn’t get across the street. The crowd surged forward again and we found ourselves
stuck against the front door of the same Mexican Restaurant that I had taken Van to for his
birthday, across the street from Cody’s,
She looked up at me and her face was white with fear. A tear streamed from the
corner of her eye, across to her ear and mascara streaked onto her cheek. Standing in the
doorway, I put my hands on her shoulders and squeezed them, trying to reassure her. The
crowd started to move again, back towards Dwight Way.
I yelled into her ear, “Hang onto me whatever happens. Don’t allow yourself to be
separated from me.”
I grabbed her hand and we moved into the crowd. We were pushed forward in a
wild surge of bodies, and a woman in front of us held her baby high in the air and screamed.
I moved Vida in front of me. To guide her, I put my hand on her neck through her hair. We
stopped, crushed together against an immobile mass of bodies. The same woman screamed
again. A voice said, through a megaphone, “Don’t panic. Everyone keep moving DOWN
Telegraph. DOWN TELEGRAPH.”
The crowd started to move again and the chanting started again. It was a wild,
thunderous and deafening noise. They chanted over and over: “DOWN WITH THE
FENCE, DOWN WITH THE FENCE, power to the people, power to the people...”
The shattering sound of a huge plate-glass window breaking transformed the chant
into an outraged scream of surprise and fear.
Vida looked back at me and we could see that a plate glass window at the cafe Med
had shattered. Glass was lying on the tables. I could see her white jacket, still hanging on
the back of a chair near a table that was covered with broken glass.
Another surge from the crowd pushed us, violently, towards Dwight Way, and as we
turned around to head in the same direction, a small army of Berkeley Police, in riot gear,
came into view at the corner of Dwight Way and Telegraph Avenue, marching up Dwight
Way towards Telegraph. They were being pelted with rocks, bottles, food... They held their
shields over their heads and their clubs high.
Suddenly the front rank of police charged into the crowd, clubs swinging. Everyone
around us fell, or were pushed onto the ground, as people began running in all directions,
away from the police.
Within seconds the police were standing above about twenty of us, swinging their
clubs and screaming at us. I fell on top of Vida and I raised her briefcase to intercept a
vicious blow from a cop whose crimson face was twisted into a sneer, as he sunk his club
into the briefcase. Two more cops rushed over to us and I thought we were finished.
Someone behind us yelled, “Fucking PIGS.”
A couple of longhaired, bearded men appeared a few feet to our right. One of them,
with reddish hair and beard, and with a red and white bandanna around his forehead, was
holding a large piece of wood about the size of a two by four. He raised it above his head
and screamed again, “Fucking PIGS,” and the three cops turned their backs to us, and faced
them.
 I grabbed Vida by the shoulders and rolling onto my back, catapulted her into the air,
grabbed her briefcase, sprung to my feet and yelled, “Run,” and we broke free. We sprinted
up Dwight Way and turned right onto Regent street. I was holding her briefcase against my
chest, like a football and she was running alongside me.
Somebody yelled, “Do you know who that FUCKING was?” I looked back but
didn’t see anyone. The voice yelled, “THAT was Jerry RUBIN.”
We sprinted for three blocks, all the way to Derby street and then turned right
towards Telegraph. Catching my breath, I said, “We can walk back to my place or catch a
bus if they are still running.” We were both breathing hard. I reached out, awkwardly, and
put my hand on her shoulder. “How are you doing?”
My hand felt like an enormous weight and intrusion and it seemed that unless she
acknowledged its right to be there, I would have violated something in her. I let it remain
there, heavy and disembodied. I was afraid that she wouldn’t look up and meet my eyes and
I thought of Florence, on that first day, sitting on her bed, and the experiences of our four
months together were there, in my mind. Finally she looked into my eyes and smiled.
We looked at each other’s hands and they moved with their own wills and joined,
and we walked hand in hand towards Telegraph Avenue and I felt a profoundly primitive
feeling of ownership.
At Telegraph, we peered around the corner towards the Campus. Tear gas canisters
were exploding, rocks were flying and the chanting sounded like yells at a football game.
I noticed that we were standing under a columned portico and that if we moved just
a few feet into the doorway, no one would be able to see us. We moved into the shadows
and stood there staring into each other’s eyes, savoring the moment of our first kiss.
Locked in a very long kiss, I stroked her hair with my right hand while she leaned
back and swooned into my left arm which held her firmly. Suddenly her body jolted, as if
she were possessed of a wild impulse to run and then she swooned towards me and we
kissed for more than a minute, until a kind of moan welled up from her and her mouth
flowed with saliva and she shuddered for quite a few seconds.
Our mouths parted and we held each other, lost in the remembrance of a perfect kiss
and then I looked down at her, calmly and curiously, and she looked back, surprised, with a
smile playing at her lips.
She looked over my shoulder, down Telegraph towards Ashby, and her eyes filled
with terror. She dug her fingernails into my sides and I grabbed her shoulders, thrust her
from me and wheeled around to see a contingent of about a thousand Oakland Police
Officers marching towards us, in a perfectly ordered phalanx. They were dressed in full riot
gear, with plastic masks and shields, and were marching in step like an Army battalion,
about two hundred yards from us.
A voice same over a megaphone, “Telegraph Avenue is closed from Ashby. Get off
if you don’t want to get arrested.”
She looked up at me. I said, “We can go back up Derby. It runs into College
Avenue. No problem. Let’s get out of here.”
We turned and walked back towards College Avenue. We stopped for awhile and
listened to the marching feet of the police and the chanting of the crowd. But the silence
that arose between us soon dominated us, and I felt that I could only dispel it with an
apology. I felt as if I had violated her in a moment of fear and weakness.
 We were under a tree, near Willard Park and I stopped, grabbed her by the shoulders
and wheeled around in front of her, “I shouldn’t have kissed you.”
She laughed. “I’ve been kissed before.”
The surprised look came back into her face. I looked away first, over her head, into
the distance, and she said, “You’re thinking of Florence.”
“Yeah, I guess so.”
We began walking towards College Avenue again. She asked, “Are you going to
marry her?”
“Neither one of us believes in marriage.”
We walked on in silence. She asked, “But you believe in living together?”
“That’s right.”
College Avenue came into sight. People were streaming away from the campus, in
all directions.
“We’ve been arguing a lot. She’s going to go back to Connecticut for awhile.”
“Is she coming back?”
“Well...” I wanted to lie and tell her that she wasn’t sure.
She asked, “She doesn’t know?”
“Oh, she’ll probably come back. It isn’t that.”
We were nearing College Avenue. I was carrying her briefcase. At the intersection,
I set it on the ground. I asked, “Are you going to try to go back to the I house?”
“Do you think I should?”
“I’ll walk you up there. I think it’s all right.”
It was almost five O’clock. She said, “If you think it would be all right for me to go
by myself...”
“Well, no. I’ll walk you up there, but it looks like there won’t be any problem. You
can stay...”
She interrupted me. “I’ll call my uncle from the I house and go to his house.” She
pointed to a telephone booth across the street and said, “I could call him from there.”
There was a heavy silence.
I said, “Hey. I...”
But I couldn’t finish the sentence. I wanted to tell her that I loved her.
She knew it and said, “I would have been hurt if you hadn’t come... I might have
been killed. My jacket is still there... I’ll never forget what happened.”
I said, “You’re one hell of a runner. I mean most women can’t run across the
street.”
She smiled, “I was a sprinter in Iran.”
“Where?”
“Persia. Women’s sports were just starting there. I was one of the fastest.
Remember, I’m half Sioux.” She smiled. We looked into each other’s eyes for a long time,
not saying anything. Then her eyes dropped and her face became hard and cold. She looked
at her briefcase.
I said, “You don’t like me.”
She looked up at me again with her intense eyes, shaking her head slightly from side
to side and I thought that she was about to burst into tears.
Like a chess player, I said, “I can tell, you don’t like me.”
“I LIKE you.”
 I had been holding my breath, and I let the out of my lungs slowly, and asked,
without emotion, again, like a chess player, “Can I see you again?”
She said, “At Tilly’s.”
“Can’t I have your phone number?”
“You know the number of the I House.” She said it as if there was nothing she could
do about it.
I noticed the gray hair again and I realized that she had colored it the night before for
the party but she had washed it out again. I wondered how old she was. She looked at the
phone booth.
I said, “You’re getting gray.”
She looked down. “I’m old... older than I look.” She paused. “I’m thirty two.”
“Oh. Thank God. I thought you were going to say 48 or something like that.”
She laughed and said, “Yes, Thank God.” She looked at me again as if she wanted
to say something about God, but then looked away into a place that was foreign, and private.
I said, “The Mets won today. They beat the Giants 4 to 3.”
She smiled and motioned to the phone booth with her hand. “I’ve got to go.” She
started to cross the street.
I said, “I’ll call you.”
She raised her hand to wave good-bye. She wasn’t watching the street and a car was
coming towards her. She began to walk into it.
“Watch out!” I grabbed her by the shoulders and pulled her back. I held her tightly,
while the car passed, and then she slipped from my arms and glided across the street, like a
dancer. I yelled after her, “You could have been killed!”
“Thank you for saving my life again.” Her eyes were dark and serious. She waved
again, turned her back and walked towards the telephone booth.
I yelled back, adding a month to my age, “I’m 26.”
She turned and smiled.
I said, “I like older women.”
She waved good-bye again and I turned and began to run and jog, all the way to
sixtieth street, a distance of about two miles. Just as Florence came into view, standing on
the porch, I remembered that Bonnard’s book was still in her briefcase.
I described the riot, and most of my encounter with Vida. I didn’t tell her about the
kiss.
She said, “I was beginning to get worried. It isn’t like you to be late. Oh well,
we’ve got plenty of time. It’s only five thirty.”
“Shit, I forgot to get the Corn Chips.”
She laughed. “It’s no wonder... We can get some when we pick up Van.”
I nudged her and said, “Let’s go inside... Is anybody home?”
“No.”
Afterwards, we fell asleep and had to hurry to get dressed and to pick up Van on
time.
He was standing there waiting for us, in front of the garage, which had been
converted into a room. He was wearing his suit and the wing tipped shoes with the
cardboard inside. He seemed very self-contained and for the first time since I had met him,
I felt that he was more sophisticated than me and that that he knew it, and felt superior to
me. The resemblance to David Niven seemed more pronounced, and something in him
seemed to be genuinely puzzled that he was being called, by fate, to share an evening with
“people like us.” I attributed my feelings to his suit and tried to forget them.
But his girlfriend really surprised me and I don’t think I ever really recovered from
my first impression of her. To begin with, she was about five foot ten, and a hundred and
eighty pounds. And she wasn’t fat. Her face was quite pretty and her skin was beautiful. It
was a satiny-brown color.
My first coherent thought was, that a very intelligent professional football player
would find her a very delectable morsel indeed, but then reason intervened, reminding me
that there has never been a professional football player capable of resisting Dolly Parton,
and the scowl on her face reminded me of that fact.
I imagined that she looked at my shoulders with affection but the flicker of affection
sputtered into a crooked, black line of smoke when I noticed that her face looked like
Norman Mailer’s, and at that instant I broke out in a high pitched, nervous titter whose
metallic, Maharishi quality surprised even me.
It seemed clear, even certain, that she hated me for the laugh. But no one, really, has
privileged knowledge about things like that, and I certainly didn’t have privileged
knowledge either.
She sat near the wall, next to Van and across from Florence, as far away from me, it
seemed, as possible. After a none too respectable silence, she looked at the wall behind me,
arched her eyebrows and out of the proverbial clear blue sky, asked, “Where did you
graduate from?”
I looked at Van. He hid his face in the menu. I mused on the fact that I couldn’t
possibly put such an improbable and yet certainly true event in a novel. It simply wouldn’t
ring true that a Harvard graduate would ask such a question like that so aggressively.
I answered, mechanically, “Cal State. At Hayward.”
“Oh.” It was the perennial, disappointed exhalation. It reached my ears as a quick
jab, or pop to the solar plexus intended, clearly, as payment, in kind, for the laugh. I
deflected the pain with the observation that only an incredible boor would dare ask a
question like that in such an insulting and self-vaunting tone without introduction or
apparent provocation.
She looked back at the menu and tilted her nose into the air. I looked at Van and
Florence with an amazed smile on my face but they pretended that nothing unusual had
occurred. I drew a deep breath and asked, really, jumping at the opportunity to savor the
tone of her response, “Where did you graduate from?”
“Harvard.”
Balzac might not have shrunk from describing the incredible mid-Atlantic, twangy,
plucking sound of the a’s, or the leathery texture in the whip-like crack of the consonants as
they scampered across her lips. I, however, am forced to excrete ridiculous adjectives and
(really) beg the reader’s forgiveness.
She studied the menu for awhile and then turned to Van and asked, “What are you
going to have?”
He said, “I haven’t decided yet.” And I thought he should have added, “Dear.”
I said, “I hear you teach at a community college.” I intended the intonation to be,
“Fuck you, Norma Mailer.”
She said, “Yeah.” She paused, and without looking at me, said, “I don’t feel like
talking about it.” She hadn’t looked me in the eye since the laugh.
 Florence asked me, “What are you going to have?”
I answered with irritation, “I haven’t decided yet.”
Rose looked across the table, at Florence, and with exaggerated concern asked,
“Where did you graduate from?”
“I didn’t graduate... I went to Wellesley.”
“Oh, yes. Wellesley has a good English department. I went with a guy from
Wellesley. His name was Truman. A real puke.”
I asked, “Why was he a puke?”
She looked at the menu. No response. Van coughed and then looked at me,
warningly.
I said to him, and really, not to her, because I wanted to know why he was looking at
me that way, “Well?”
Her voice broke slightly, “I suppose I’m not being fair to him.” She seemed
ashamed of something. She added, “It wouldn’t be fair to talk about it here.” She looked at
me for the first time since the laugh.
Van said, sharply, “She doesn’t want to talk about it Jack.”
I said, “Fine.” I raised my hands in mock submission. The waitress came over.
Rose said, as if there were no doubt who was in charge, “We’re not ready to order
yet.”
The pock-marked face of Richard Speck appeared in my mind’s eye. It stared out at
me from the pit of memory. He had killed thirteen nurses and given himself up without a
struggle. The first day in jail, he received more than ten thousand love letters. TEN
THOUSAND. He said, simply, without elaboration, when asked why he killed the women,
“Women are too easy. They fall in bed with you for no reason. They never offer any
resistance. They wouldn’t even allow me to send roses. I couldn’t stand it. That’s why I
killed them.”
TEN THOUSAND love letters. I had an irresistible urge to blow this woman out of
the water: I imagined a giant white whale called Moby Cunt, and I imagined a small nuclear
device dropping on Her/It.
I grew slightly antic with the mixed metaphors of my imagination and thought,
“I’ve got to pop the hippopotamus, for Van’s sake.” I said, “I hear you teach mainly
blacks.”
Silence.
I said, “I hear you are battling the administration because they don’t want you to use
Franz Fanon’s Wretched of the Earth.”
Van’s head seemed to glow in the darkness of the Mexican restaurant. The light
fixture behind my head was reflected in his David Niven eyes and I saw the great actor and
bon vivant reincarnated in the line of his jaw and the cleft in his chin and the hint of circles
under his eyes.
She said, “I’m using it in an English composition class.”
His eyes softened and his mouth dropped slightly open. I thought that it was the
slight lilt in her voice that startled him. And, still influenced by Yoga and Mailer and Reich,
it seemed certain, somehow, that the tremulous quality in her voice came from the electricity
of her vegas nerve imparting electricity to her cunt which in turn sent the message to her
brain to befuddle her rationality.
 I cursed Norman Mailer and the Subtle Body of Yoga but I wouldn’t let the
opportunity slip away. I said, “I don’t see how you think you can get away with using a
book like that in an English composition class.”
I let the sting settle into her central Chakra, and then waited for it to spread out into
her body. After a suitable pause I asked, irrelevantly, free associating, “It’s a translation
from French isn’t it?”
She looked at me with more submission that I had anticipated. But suddenly her lip
curled, involuntarily, into a sarcastic and challenging line that I returned with a cold stare.
She said, “That’s got nothing to do with it.”
Van’s face softened and I counted it a small victory. I wanted to ask him if he had
ever thought about growing a mustache like Niven’s but, naturally, I couldn’t ask him then.
Suddenly Florence asked Rose an innocuous question, in a reedy, shaky voice that
spoke paragraphs. “Are your students mostly black?”
But the sound of her voice and the manner in which she leaned forward, cutting a
line into the table between them and Van and me, told me that they both needed to learn to
submit to the will of their bodies, but that they would use all of the force of their combined
intellects to assure that only a man whom they imagined, in their deepest subconscious
minds, to be some form of nigger, savage, red skin, coolie, step-n-fetch-it, slave, bum … my
imagination failed … would ever be allowed near that possibility. The insight, however,
didn’t help. I was a twenty-five year old god who was blind and like Odysseus thrived on
hopelessness.
Rose answered, “Yes. They are all from the ghetto. There are a few Chicanos. But
they’re all poor.”
Florence said, “Then the book is perfect for them.”
It was the beginning of a new intimacy and I imagined that nothing less than a
psychic bomb would bring them back to us. Van’s eyes had already warned me against that.
But I was trying to help him. And so, in my uniquely innocent and feckless way, I sacrificed
myself for him.
I said, “I know it isn’t true, but what if blacks really were inferior intellectually. I
mean certainly it is a possibility. Slaves weren’t exactly bred for their intellectual
capacities.”
Rose stared fixedly at me, as if there might be something that she hadn’t understood,
something that she ought to allow to penetrate deeper. Suddenly, her face snapped towards
Florence who said, curtly, as if she had the right to say it, “Don’t bring that up again Jack.”
Van straightened his tie and said, with a less than David Niven giggle, “It isn’t
exactly nice dinner conversation.”
Rose was silent and looked steadfastly at Florence, as if she were embarrassed for
her. I forged ahead, “Look, I don’t necessarily believe it, but if we can’t even examine the
possibility, then we can’t really deal with the problem intelligently. I mean what would we
do if they were inferior? What would we do?”
I had reached back into the place where I wanted to be but I knew they would offer
no avenue of return.
Rose said, looking away from me into some voluptuous scene, (and I felt that in the
luxury and ambiance of absolute righteousness she allowed the image of her gleaming black
lover to dominate her consciousness,) “That’s easy. Nothing, because it isn’t true.”
 She looked back at Florence, triumphantly, and Florence seemed to cringe and fawn,
I thought, as she had at the Horton School for girls, before she had become “enlightened” as
she put it.
I asked, but my voice had weakened, and there was the hint of the boy who has been
disciplined by his mother, “But why can’t you even talk about it?”
Like a Harvard student answering an easy question on an exam, she smashed me.
“We aren’t in the habit of talking about fantasies.”
I answered reflexively, without hostility or irony, “I thought you were an English
major.”
They were all silent and for the first time that night, energy seemed trapped in my
body and I knew that I had been checkmated. My mouth was dry and I noticed that I was
sweating under the arms.
The waitress appeared and, with an angry scowl, asked us if we were ready to order.
They began to order and I knew that I needed to get in one last hit, before I
capitulated. I was the last to order and I said, humorously, but obnoxiously too, in my best
Oakland Nigger accent, “I think I’ll have chitlins.”
Rose’s eyes flashed again and I savored my last Pyrrhic victory. The passionate
brown eyes stared from the regular face. The honey blond hair fell onto her jacket in ringlets
and her face wore an expression that Renoir would have cherished.
She seemed curious and even grateful. But after I had recovered from my ridiculous
joke and ordered the only thing I ever order in a Mexican restaurant, a Chile Relleno, her
eyes had turned inward, and I knew that she had barred me forever from the domain that she
seemed so arrogantly to despise and yet in truth mortally feared. She didn’t look at me
again that night and Van threw my attempts at conversation into an ocean of contempt.

Chapter 18

Bernard is right; the pathogen is nothing, the terrain is everything.

Pasteur, on his death bed

Everything seemed to be going badly: Florence returned from the East Coast with a
bad cold, we argued about her temperature and she told me not to come over to see her again
until she got better.
Van hadn’t called since the dinner and I hadn’t called him. Mike threw a party on
The Basil Hall but hardly anyone came. Vida moved out of the I House and didn’t leave a
telephone number. I couldn’t bring myself to ask Tilly for it. I didn’t even get the chance to
call anyway because her car was gone during the entire time that Florence was in
Connecticut.
I sat in a miasma of tiredness. I was sitting at the kitchen table, drinking coffee with
Chris and Billy. It was late-morning. We hadn’t sat at the kitchen table together for months.
Chris said, “Twenty per cent of the population shifts its household every year.” He
was quoting from the San Francisco Chronicle. He continued reading from the paper,
“Shit! 482 families own about 42 percent of all fixed, nonresidential private capital in the
United States.”
His face was hidden behind the paper. Suddenly, he stretched the paper out at arm’s
length, and then folded it, in mid air, so that he could hold it with one hand and drink coffee
with the other. “More than HALF of all families in the United States have either NO assets
or owe more than they own.”
I said, “I’ve got a copy of Domhoff’s Who Rules America and Lundenberg’s The
Rich and The Super Rich in my bedroom. Whenever I want to get depressed I read a few
pages.”
Billy said, “He’s going to the Hacienda Orinda this morning. To park their cars.
He’s just getting ready. The Chron wakes him up better than coffee.”
Chris stared, wide-eyed, at the paper. He quoted the article again, this time in a high
pitched voice, as if his credulity were finally strained to the breaking point, “The official
poverty level income, get this, POVERTY LEVEL income for a FAMILY OF FOUR,
FOUR... is under $3000 per year and THIRTY PERCENT of all families earn less than
that.”
He threw the paper on the floor.
Billy said, “That’s why you should go to law school with me and be a lawyer so you
can earn some bucks.”
“So I can be a Corporation Lawyer like my father and be an errand boy for the
rich?”
Kidd said, “It beats parking cars.”
“If you could have seen how my father sucked up to those Ivy League prep school
bastards...” He got up and walked towards his room.
Billy said, “Yeah and he made a hundred thousand dollars a year doing it.”
Chris answered without turning around, “And ended up a fucking alcoholic crying
in his beer.”
“You’re smart enough not to do that and...”
Chris wheeled around, “I’ve told you Kidd, I had to go to school with them. That
was enough.”
Clearly, it was a conversation they’d had before. Pinson disappeared into his room.
Billy looked at me. I put my hands up, defensively, “You’ll never convince me to
be a lawyer.”
His voice was shrill, challenging, “Why not?” I was silent. “You could do a great
thing for yourself Jack.” He paused theatrically, “We could go into practice together.”
We looked into each other’s eyes. I noticed little red streaks in his eyes and looked
away.
He said, “Look, you’ll never make any money as a writer.”
“Well, I know that already. I’m even writing an article about it.”
He was standing up, looking down at me. “O.K., it’s settled, you’re going to be a
lawyer.” He grinned at me with satisfaction.
“Tell him to get fucked,” Pinson yelled from the other room.
Billy waved his hand in good-natured disgust and went to his room. Muffy followed
him, with his tail between his legs and doleful eyes.
I went to the sink, put a couple of teaspoons of instant coffee into a cup, poured hot
tap water over it, and called Florence on the telephone. Her voice was husky. I said, “I’m
sorry for disturbing you.” There was a tense silence. “Look, I’m worried about you. Your
voice sounds terrible.”
She croaked a response, and I could barely hear her, “I feel pretty bad, actually.”
“Can I come over?”
“If you promise not to make me feel worse.”
I didn’t know what to say. I said, “I’m worried about you.”
“Can you come over now?”
“Yeah.”
I put the thermometer in my pocket and ran next door. She was propped up against a
couple of pillows. I hadn’t seen her for four days, since the argument. Her face was
flushed. She managed a smile. Her temples were wet with perspiration.
“Your voice sounded terrible over the phone.”
“I’ve been feeling worse.” Her voice was a raspy, low squeak. We stared into each
other’s eyes.
She said, “I’ve called Maya. She said she’d come out to California to take care of
me.”
“I don’t see why you don’t trust me to take care of you.”
“I just talked to her on the phone. She’s already left for La Guardia.” Her voice was
almost gone. It was obviously a strain for her to talk.
I asked, “Are you paying for her ticket?”
She whispered, “Yes. She’s going to stay here with me. She’s going to sleep here
in the room with me.”
I was furious because I knew Maya was a lesbian. I walked over to the bed and
knelt down and stroked her forehead. “You’re burning up Flor. You should see a doctor.”
She squeaked again, “Maya works in a health food store. She’s into herbs and non-
traditional medicine...”
I imagined for a moment that she was delirious: I hadn’t even been able to get her
to think about taking vitamins. I asked, “Did you see her again when you visited your
mother?”
She was silent. Then she whispered, “Yes.”
“Did you do anything?”
There was a long silence.
She asked, “Do you really want to know?”
“Of course.”
“What do you want to know?”
She seemed more curious about what I wanted to know than I was about what she
did.
I asked, “Well. I don’t know... What did you do?”
“Do you want all the gory details?”
“Of course.”
I prepared myself for the worst but naturally I already knew what two women can do
to each other, and I suspected that I was only indulging my voyeurism.
She said, in a rasping whisper, “We did it.” I was silent. She looked at me
sympathetically. “It really isn’t such a big thing. We did it once before. I already told you.”
I was angry. I snapped, “What did you do? I mean what?”
 She looked at me with curious eyes. Then she said, looking away. “She did me.
And then afterwards I did her. That was all.”
I was stunned and silent. Then I was angry. “What do you mean, “did you?”
She didn’t answer or look at me. I asked, “Cunnilingus?”
She looked embarrassed but answered in a matter of fact whisper, as if she were
talking to her gynecologist, “Yes.”
“What about me?” I asked aggressively. She gave a helpless little grin, as if she
thought that I wanted her to do me too. I didn’t acknowledge it. I could see that she was
very sick. I said, very gently, “I brought my thermometer.” I took it out of my pocket and
she looked at it defensively. “Let’s take your temperature.”
It was a question and it contained the possibility that she might say “no.”
“All right.”
I put the thermometer into her mouth and she closed her eyes and lay back. Judy
Chicago stared down from the wall. We were in Tilly’s old room, and an 8x10 inch color
photograph of Tilly, standing next to an old boyfriend, stood on the chest of drawers. Her
stump was hidden behind her body. Florence lay back with her eyes closed and I became
angry at the woman whom I thought had seduced her while she was sick and defenseless. I
took the thermometer out of her mouth and she opened her eyes.
“It’s 105. That’s bad Flor. You’ve got to go to the hospital.” I looked at my watch.
It was 11 A.M. “Temperatures always rise at night. You’ve got to go.”
“I’m not going to the hospital. I don’t even have medical insurance anyway. Where
would I go?”
“You could go anywhere. Kaiser. The Berkeley Free Clinic. Someone will take
you.”
She was silent and then the angry, assessing look came into her eyes. I knew that
anything I said would make it worse but I said, “Look, I know you think I’m making you
feel bad, but I’m trying to help. I know about these things. My mother was a medical
secretary.”
She was silent. Then she said, “Just leave me alone.” She stared at me and her eyes
were sunken and serious. I stared back, not believing what I had heard. She said, “You
promised that you wouldn’t make me feel worse.” Her voice croaked pathetically.
I said, “Calm down. I don’t want you to get upset.”
She was silent.
I said, “I just think you should know that you could die if your temperature gets
over 106.”
She started to cry. I looked up at the wall into Judy’s eyes. Her arms were crossed
and her back was up against the wall. I remembered that Maya was coming.
I said, “I’m sorry. Stop crying. I didn’t mean to scare you.” I went over to the side
of the bed and put my arm around her. It was difficult and awkward, with her propped up
against the pillows the way she was. I knew she wouldn’t listen to me and that she wanted
me out of the way. I asked, “When will Maya get here?”
She stopped crying and the expression on her face became serious. She stared at me
for a moment. “At about six. Tonight.”
“Around dinner time?” I wanted to be sure.
“Yes.”
“Will you promise to call me if anything happens? I mean if you get worse?”
 “Yes.”
I kissed her on the cheek. We held hands for a few seconds. Judy was staring at me.
I got up too abruptly, turned and left.
I had a horrendous night driving cab.
It was the night that Turnbull got locked in the trunk of his cab. I heard the
dispatcher screaming “May Day,” on the radio at about 7:30 and I knew it was him because
I remembered his cab number: it was 239 again, the worst cab in the lot.
I deadheaded to East Oakland, all the way from Berkeley, and by the time I got
there, he was standing next to the trunk of the cab talking to the police. He had been locked
in the trunk for two hours before someone heard him screaming and called the Company.
Three drivers had already been killed the first year we’d been working for Yellow,
and I was scared. I was glad to see him standing there on Edes Street, across from the white,
wood-framed Pentecostal Church, gesticulating to the cops and the RoadMan and probably
making up some ridiculous story to explain how he got locked in the trunk.
At first I suspected that he had fabricated the whole incident just to get a little
attention. But after the succession of whores, pimps, drunks and general all-around assholes
that I had picked up that night, I knew that my judgment was worthless and I decided to
believe his story, whatever it was.
Also, I had decided to call it quits for the night. As I walked over to his cab, I
realized that I had been so harassed that night that I hadn’t thought about Florence for hours.
Naturally, against my will, as it were, while I was standing there listening to
Turnbull’s story, I imagined her eating pussy in some dingy little New York apartment.
Maya was sitting on a stool with her legs spread, and her middle-aged landlady was looking
through the keyhole, panties down to her ankles, a summer dress with a flower pattern,
pulled up over her thighs, finger-fucking herself furiously, and moaning.
Just as they all started to come together, I heard Turnbull saying, “They pointed the
gun to my balls and told me to get in or they would shoot my balls into my asshole.” He
paused and cleared his throat. “I got in.” He allowed a pregnant silence to develop and
added, “without further ado.” He cleared his throat again, and waited for the younger cop to
finish writing it down.
When we got to Jack London’s Last Chance Bar, Turnbull declared that he wanted
to get drunk, so we ordered two pitchers of beer instead of one.
After about five glasses, he confessed, “they were really only a couple of teenage
punks and one of them had a knife, not a gun.” He said he was so ashamed of himself for
being such a pussy, as he put it, that he wanted to put a bullet in his head.
He said he was reading Van Wyck Brooks’ book, The Ordeal of Mark Twain, and he
said that it was clear that Twain was nothing but a big pussy also, and that he, Turnbull was
no better.
Then he vowed to get even with all the Cunts who had destroyed American
literature. In the middle of his seventh beer, he stood up and yelled, “For all to hear, I’M
NOTHING BUT A BIG FUCKING PUSSY. I’M DRUNK, YES. BUT IT’S TRUE... by
God it’s true.”
I pulled him back into his seat but he yelled from the chair, “BUT I’M IN GOOD
FUCKING GODDAMNED COMPANY I AM. THAT’S RIGHT. MARK TWAIN WAS A
MONEY GRUBBING PUSSY TOO... but Jack London, BY GOD, Jack London... now
THERE was a writer...”
 He paused and his butt slid forward slightly in his chair. His hands stretched out
towards the beer mug, as if its reason for existing was to keep him from sliding off the chair.
Holding onto his mug, he stared at the half-full pitcher, and seemed to be forming his
thoughts. Finally, he finished his sentence, “and a man too...” He looked up at me, “I’m
sorry Jack, I’m drunk again.”
“That is the reason we’re here M. Findley Turnbull. Remember?”
I drove him home and when I dropped him off he mumbled something under his
breath about someone sharing his bed to keep him warm but I pretended that I didn’t hear
anything.
As I drove towards 60th street, I saw her in my mind’s eye, in bed, hot and sweating,
and I couldn’t imagine them doing anything while she was in that condition. It wasn’t much
past 1 A.M. but when I got there, the lights were out and it looked like no one was home.
Pinson and Kidd were in bed, and I went straight into my room and fell onto the bed
without even taking off my shoes. I woke up at about 9:30 the next morning and the first
thing I thought about was her and Maya.
But I had a terrible hangover and my right sinus was blocked and there was a
tremendous pain over my right eye. All I could think about was black coffee. I drank four
cups and turned on the Mets game.
From the window, I could see Tilly’s Volkswagen parked in front of the house. I
knew that I had to go over there. It was just a question of when. I opened one of my library
books, a thin paperback book with a glossy red and blue cover. It was called, A World
without Jews and it was written by Karl Marx. I reread the first lines of the introduction,

It is with some reluctance that I have agreed to write these introductory lines to Karl
Marx’s embittered review of the Jewish problem.

Jack hadn’t found the book in the least embittered. A little boring perhaps, but
embittered? Marx thought that all religions were ridiculous and oppressive illusions: that
was obvious, Jack thought. He said to himself, “How could the Jews expect to become
liberated until they were liberated from their own superstitions? Why shouldn’t Christians
persecute them? What was more eminently reasonable than two irrational and infantile
belief systems attacking each other?” He opened the book to the middle and read a few
lines that were in heavy bold print,

Let us look at the real Jew of our time; not the Jew of the Sabbath, whom Bauer
considers, but the Jew of everyday life. What is the Jew’s foundation in our world?
Material necessity, private advantage.
What is the subject of the Jew’s worship in this world? Usury. What is his worldly
god? Money
Very well then; emancipation from usury and money, that is, from practical, real
Judaism, would constitute the emancipation of our time.

Jack thought: “Now that is a little more radical sounding. But, in Marx’s time they
probably were more money grubbing than the Gentiles. But certainly not in America. Who
could be more money grubbing than Americans? And what could be a more congenial
home to Jews than America? Why on earth do they need Israel?” Obviously, Jack new
little about Jews.

I picked up C.L.R. James’ book, The Future in the Present. I read a passage that I
had underlined a few days before.

According to Melville, many a gifted writer can create dozens of interesting,

sprightly, clever, intriguing characters. But original characters? No. A writer is
very lucky if in his lifetime he creates one.
Where does a writer find such characters? And here Melville is categorical.
He finds them in the world around him, in the world outside. They do not originate
in his head... if something new in personality has really come into the world, if the
writer observes closely enough and his creative power is great enough, then future
generations will be able actually to see and recognize the type in a manner the
author himself was not able to do.

Jack thought, “I didn’t think I was a gambling man but I really want to write a
novel...Why? Like Stendhal, I will gamble with posterity. And condemn myself to a life of
poverty and obscurity, and place all of the small joys of security and a little success beyond
me, ... And I’ll probably be like Melville, staring at a chimney while his wife grouses about
the house, or like Stendhal, scratching out the initials of the few women he’s loved, in the
sand in front of his park bench. But my number won’t come up. Not even after I’m dead.
So what?”
He put the book down and picked up Mumford’s The Golden Day.

“If we do not get our sleepers and forge rails and devote long days and nights to
work,” he observed ironically, “but go tinkering with our lives to improve them, who
will build the railroads?” Thoreau was not a penurious fanatic, who sought to
practice bare living merely as a moral exercise: he wanted to obey Emerson’s
dictum to save on the low levels and spend on the high ones. It is this that
distinguishes him from the tedious people whose whole existence is absorbed in the
practice of living on beans, or breathing deeply, or wearing clothes of a vegetable
origin: simplification did not lead in Thoreau to the cult of simplicity: it led to a
higher civilization.

But Jack was in a sour mood and feared the loss of that little success on the low
level, and like Peter before the cock crowed, denied his destiny a third and last time by
thinking again of the 8 units he needed for his Master’s Degree which he considered, at that
time, to be a little success.
He put the book down and eyed Herstein’s Topics in Algebra.
Then he looked at the cover of Somerset Maugham’s book, The Summing Up.
Maugham’s stern, proper British face, staring at him from the cover, convinced him that he
wouldn’t be able to stomach the pious platitudes inside. Jack couldn’t stand the writings of
homosexuals anyway. Oh yes, in person they were usually charming people, but he thought
that all their books were full of bitterness and absurd maxims and they always pretended to
have impeccable taste and to be right about everything that mattered. Especially if they
were English. (He hadn’t read Oscar Wilde’s De Profundus yet, or even heard of it.)
He turned the television set off. The Mets were winning by a lopsided score, and the
game wasn’t interesting. He was in a black mood.

When I got over there, Vida was there and two women I’d never seen before. Tilly
and Mary were there too. They were sitting in the living room. They looked at me
ominously without saying anything, as if something terrible had happened.
I asked, “Where’s Florence?”
“She’s upstairs,” Mary answered. Vida stared at me with her Middle Eastern eyes.

Jack felt love but couldn’t admit it, and so he had no patience with her. His
eyebrows knit themselves into an angry line and he wheeled around and ran upstairs.
He thought that he hated them all, and felt pleasure in the thought that they knew it.
He imagined that, for the briefest of moments, they felt like shooting themselves, before
they recovered their correct political attitudes, at which time, they felt like shooting him.
Jack was full of the craziest illusions.

I went through the open door and saw her there in bed, in the same position as I left
her, looking like a ghost. She was pale and her skin was pasty looking. She managed a
smile. She said, “I feel better.”
“Where’s Maya?”
She looked past me towards the door. She said, “Maya, this is Jack.”
Maya was sitting on the floor, behind me, leaning against the wall and meditating.
She stared ahead and her face was frozen into a smile and she didn’t say anything.
I became aware of the smell of incense, and, instinctively, I looked around until I
found the little billowing cloud of smoke. I looked back at Maya’s face, a face that was
frozen into a grotesque smile. I looked at her for a few seconds to see if she would
acknowledge me in some way or change her expression. She didn’t. I said, finally, “Glad
to meet you.”
She nodded her body slightly, almost imperceptibly, but didn’t meet my eyes or
change her expression. I looked back at Florence. She whispered, “She’s leaving tonight.
There’s an important meeting in New York. Everybody’s going.”
“What about you?”
“I guess I’m too sick.” She sounded disappointed and looked at Maya whose body
swayed slightly forwards and backwards as if she were using it to nod “yes.” She didn’t
look at either of us.
“How’s your temperature?”
“A little lower.”
“Good. What is it?”
“I don’t know. I...” She spoke with a horrible croak. Her voice stopped in mid
sentence, and she looked at Maya.
Maya said, in a hollow, otherworldly voice, almost chanting, “It’s fine, it’s fine.”
She rocked back and forth again and I guessed by the smile and inward gaze that she was on
LSD.
 I said, almost pleading, “Remember what I said about your temperature. It could be
dangerous.”
She stared past me, at Maya. Her eyes brightened, slightly, but she looked weak,
and seemed almost delirious.
I asked, “Do you remember what I said about the hospital?”
She dropped her eyes. After a few seconds of silence, she looked up at me. “I
remember.”
“Can I see you tomorrow morning?”
She looked into my eyes without answering. She looked terribly sick. I noticed the
sweat in her hair again.
She looked at Maya and a terrified looked came into her eyes. She looked back at
me. She whispered, “Of course you can come over. Did I ever say you couldn’t come
over?”
Her face was tense and the cords of her neck stood out, but there was no force in her
voice. She stared at me like a wild woman. I went over to her, knelt down and put my arms
around her. She seemed even hotter than before. Suddenly, I became aware of Maya, and I
stood up.
I said, “I’ll see you tomorrow then.” I stood at the door. We looked into each
other’s eyes. We were both scared. I raised my hand and waved good-bye. She did the
same. I turned to go and looked down at Maya. Her expression hadn’t changed. She
continued to stare straight ahead.
When I got to the front door, none of the women came to meet me. There was an
unnatural silence in the house. I couldn’t be certain that they were there but I hadn’t heard
them leave and their cars were still parked outside so I thought they must be there, hiding
somewhere in the still darkness of the living room.
Coming out of the Barn, I picked up Juanita. I saw her out of the corner of my eye,
waving to me as I was driving down West Grand. I pretended that I didn’t see her and I
drove a block or so before deciding to go back and get her. Then I stopped and backed the
cab up until I saw her again in the rear view mirror. She looked more pathetic than usual.
And she had a black and blue mark over her right eye.
She opened up the door and peered in. She said, “I thought you didn’t see me.”
“I wasn’t sure it was you.”
She got in, and I pulled the cab over to the curb and turned off the engine.
I asked, “What happened to your eye?”
“A trick got mad.”
“It wasn’t your pimp?”
“I already told you. I ain’t got no pimp.”
I pressed her bruise with my finger. She lurched back. “Hey, that hurts!”
She was wearing a low cut, sleeveless blouse and no bra. It was made from a thin,
synthetic material, and through the pattern I could see her large, beautiful breasts. They
jiggled when she pulled back, in pain, from my probing finger.
“It looks terrible.”
“It ain’t so bad. Anyways, not like the other one.”
I thought she looked like a wounded animal. I said, half to myself, “Man, you need
some protection.”
 Her eyes brightened and she looked at me lovingly. She wasn’t wearing stockings,
and her mini skirt was as high on her thighs as it could be, without exposing her cunt.
I suddenly realized that she was almost naked and that she had an extraordinarily
healthy body, and that I wanted to fuck her. She knew it immediately. I allowed myself to
feast on the beauty of her milk white arms and her long, aristocratic hands with their long
and sensitive fingers. I wanted to ask her again why she was a prostitute but I knew better.
I snapped, “Why do you walk around town almost naked? I mean it’s dangerous.”
The little, pleased smile dropped from her face, and she seemed hurt. I thought of
Florence, lying in what could be her death bed. I put my hand on her head and then, when
she offered no resistance, I put my hands on her bare shoulders, pulled her gently towards
me and looking into her eyes, I said, “I would like to make love to you Juanita... but I have
a girlfriend. I’ve told you...”
Her eyes dropped, “I won’t tell no one.”
I kissed her cheek. When I looked into her face again, her eyes were closed. I
thought, “I love you,” and then I laughed.
“What’s so funny?”
“Nothing.”
She smiled and exposed her rotten teeth but I wanted to kiss her anyway. I imagined
that her teeth were proof that no one loved her, that no one cared enough to make her fix
them, that she really needed me. I stroked her hair again, carefully avoiding her wound and
said, smiling, “I’ve got to go to work baby.”
She turned her head away from me, looking out of the window to her right. “I
know.”
I looked down at her breasts. I said, “Will you do me a favor?”
She remained still and didn’t say anything. Then she turned back, slowly, and
looked at me. “Sure, what is it?”
“Stay out of the way of their fists.”
Her eyebrows arched in surprise and her mouth dropped open. She snapped, “Don’t
you think I try?”
She glided across the seat, towards the door, opened it and jumped out onto the
sidewalk. She stuck her head through the window, blew me a kiss and waived good-bye.
From the rear view mirror, I saw her walking down the street, in high spirits and swinging
her purse.

Jack picked up his battered copy of Herstein’s Topics in Algebra. The cover was
faded black, with a coffee cup ring on the cover, almost dead center. He opened it to the
table of contents, turning the pages until he reached section 6 in chapter 5, entitled The
Elements of Galois Theory. One hundred and ninety five pages. The theorems were dense
and the proofs even denser.
As long as they followed this wonderful book, he thought, he would have no
problem. He had already cut through the first chapter like a piece of cake and had solved
almost all of the problems. Two quarters, Eight units. Four hours of studying per night for
six months. What else could they possibly want? He put the book down, wheeled his cab
back onto West Grand and headed for stand 105.
Chapter 19

Why they (remarkable, unexpected and inexplicable resolutions) should happen, and
what indeed is happening, are questions which are not yet in our power to answer; for
health goes deeper than any disease.

Oliver Sacks, Awakenings

The next morning, after drinking the usual four or five cups of coffee, I went next
door to see her. A piece of lined notebook paper was tacked to the front door. Her
handwriting was difficult to read because the ink skipped in places where it left a groove in
the paper:
“Went to Merritt Hospital. 8 P.M. Wednesday. Love, Florence.”
I ran back home, and called the hospital. Waiting for someone to answer the phone,
I saw Kidd, in his room, hunched over his desk, studying. A woman answered the
telephone. I said, “I’m trying to locate Florence Anderson.”
There was a silence.
“Are you a relative, sir?”
“I’m her boyfriend.” Jack hated the juvenile sound of that word.
“Oh.”
There was another ponderous silence that lasted for more than a few seconds.
“All right,” her voice lowered, almost to a whisper, “she’s in room 335 on the third
floor in intensive care.”
“When can I see her?”
“She isn’t allowed any visitors. She’s under intensive care.”
The words were medical, final sounding, and death portending.
“Intensive care?”
“It means she isn’t allow to see anyone. Look I’ve already told you more than I’m
supposed to.”
There was another silence. I asked, “Is she sleeping?”
“Visiting hours are from six to eight. You will have to schedule an appointment.”
“When will she be able to have visitors?” Jack’s voice was just barely under control.
“That’s up to her doctor. Let’s see it’s doctor... Ordoñez.”
“Look, I have to see her. I... I have a right to. I’m... her boyfriend.” The juvenile
word again.
“It isn’t my decision sir.”
“What can I do?” I thought, “At least she’s dropped the formal tone.”
“Well, you could come during the regular visiting hours and they would probably let
you see her.”
“Couldn’t I come over right now and see if they would let me?”
“They don’t usually sir. Not... Especially if...”
“Well, it couldn’t hurt to try.”
Silence. After a pause, I hung up. I paced around the house for a while, watching
the fear of death fingering the edges of sanity. I knew that I wouldn’t be able to wait until 6
P.M. Kidd’s chair squeaked loudly from his room. I decided to drive to the hospital, to get
the lay of the land.
It was warm, and I drove straight down Telegraph Avenue with both windows open.
My hair had grown quite long by then, and it blew wildly in the warm, morning air. I hung a
left at the Grant Miller Mortuary, drove up 30th Street and past the front entrance of the
Hospital, looking for a place to park. There were about twenty women walking in circles,
holding signs, picketing the hospital.

Jack waited for a late model, blue Mercedes Coupe to pull out of a parking place
near the front entrance to the Hospital. It seemed to him that the silver-haired driver and his
fashion-model passenger sneered ever so slightly at his beat up, red Volkswagen. He
imagined them to be a doctor and his secretary rushing off to get a quick, lunch time piece
of ass. His depression over the thought was sharp but brief and he had already recovered
from it, and forgotten them, by the time he was on the sidewalk, walking towards the
picketers.
They were all young women, dressed in a variety of styles and colors and they were
in high spirits. He could see that to enter the lobby, he would have to cross the picket line.
He did, and he countered their hostile stares and pointed comments by waiving his hands
above his head in a helpless manner, trying to convey emergency, sickness, disaster...
Although he imagined that they were satisfied, he was afraid to look into their eyes to find
out.

To my surprise, the front reception desk was empty. As I looked around for the
receptionist, I noticed that the door leading to the stairs was open. I seized the opportunity.
Walking up the stairs, I rehearsed what I would say to a doctor if I ran into him ... or her.
The stairs opened into a long, dark hallway lined with doors. On each door was a
window, at about eye level, approximately the size of a large, hardcover, twentieth century
Romance Novel. The doors were numbered, and I peered through the window of door 335.
I saw her lying on her back on a propped up bed, with the bed covers neatly folded
and pulled up over her breasts. Her eyes were closed and she was under an oxygen tent.
She was hooked up to three tubes. Two IVs and a tube that went into her nose.
I tried the door handle and it moved. I looked down both sides of the hall and then
opened the door and slipped silently into the room. There were two other beds, but they
were empty. She looked angelic. The sweat was gone from her forehead and hair. The
bottles were suspended a few feet above the bed. I was afraid to wake her so I called out in
a soft whisper, “Flo.”
Her head moved a little. I whispered again, “It’s me.”
She opened her eyes. She looked at me for a few unconscious moments, and then
her mouth formed a crooked smile. She whispered, almost inaudibly, and I found myself
reading her lips. She whispered, “You were right.” Then she spoke a little louder and her
voice cracked, “It was walking pneumonia.”
We stared at each other. Tears began to form in my eyes. I said, “You broke the
picket line.”
“Oh. Yeah. I really hated to do that. I felt like such a fraud.” Her voice sounded
very far away and there wasn’t a hint of irony in it.
 “No, you shouldn’t worry about that. I was joking. They aren’t trying to hurt the
patients. They’re just trying to dramatize their case. They don’t care.”
We looked at each other, in silence. A lump formed in my throat. “It scares me to
see you in there.”
“Oh, I’m all right. I feel great.” She smiled again.
“I don’t like it.” I was surprised by my tears.
“Really, I feel great.” The huskiness in her voice wasn’t as pronounced but she
spoke very softly and I could hardly hear her. She seemed touched by my tears but didn’t
say anything.
I said, “Well...” I couldn’t finish the sentence.
I looked around the bare room. The window to the outside had a view onto the wall
of the building next door.
I changed the subject, “I wasn’t authorized to come in here. I just came through the
lobby and walked up the stairs and opened the door and... Well... Here I am.”
“Just like you, heh?” Her voice was humorous and she seemed relaxed.
I asked, “Are you in any danger?”
“Are you kidding? ...... really, I’m not... The doctor said there’s absolutely nothing
to worry about. I’m responding well to the antibiotics.”
Jack imagined that he could hear her doctor’s incantatory tone echoing in her words
and he reasoned that the reassurance that it conveyed was certainly a real part of the cure
and so he shouldn’t contest it. She blinked and it seemed to him that her soul was separated
from him, resting in the arms of science. He looked up at the tubes sticking in her arms.
“Do they hurt?”
She smiled, a little maliciously, he thought, possibly at the irony that it was she who
was reassuring him instead of him reassuring her.
“No, you get used to it. I can hardly feel them. Well, when I don’t think about it.
It’s intravenous penicillin and a tranquilizer. It might be valium... It probably is... he
wouldn’t tell me. I think it’s why I’m so tired. They’re feeding me intravenously too.
Through the nose.” She paused and an impish look came into her eyes. “The food stinks.”
She smiled at my laugher.
I said, “Maybe you shouldn’t talk so much.”
She shrugged her shoulders. We stared at each other.
“How’s your temperature?”
“I don’t know.”
I wanted to hug her. I said, “I don’t like the oxygen tent.”
“I don’t mind it.”
“Maybe it’s because of my father. I was only three but my mother used to take me
up to see him in the Veteran’s Hospital when he was dying of Melanoma. She said that he
pretended that he liked being in the oxygen tent so that I wouldn’t cry. I wanted to go in
there and sit on his lap but they wouldn’t let me. My mother says that I was too young to
remember but I remember. His eyes, especially. I didn’t know he was dying but did know.
You can’t hide things like that from children. He knew he’d never get out of the oxygen tent
and probably never hug me again. There was a terror in his eyes that I didn’t understand.”
She tried to cheer me up and said with a little smile, “I really do like it in here.
Honest. It’s very comfortable... and cool.”
 I smiled again at the irony, that it was she who was cheering me up instead of the
other way around. I tried to change the subject, “You really do look better Flor.”
“Oh so you think I looked that bad before huh?” The aggressive glint was in her
eyes again. I remembered the first time she invited me to her room, “to see her etchings,” as
she put it. But she looked very tired.
I asked, “Why do you think it’s Valium?”
“I had a girlfriend who was on it. It feels like the way she described it.”
I said, “It looks like you’re high on something.”
“I feel great, but... it’s costing a fortune.”
I thought she was referring to the valium. Then I remembered that a Merritt
Hospital room cost more than $200 a day.
She looked dejected. She said, “I feel like such a fraud.”
“What do you mean?”
“I’m supposed to be a Maoist, and ... well..”
I made a crooked smile. “Yeah. You broke the picket line too. But I won’t put it in
my novel. It lacks verisimilitude.”
She smiled and said, “Since it’ll never be published anyway, it won’t matter.”
“True. I’ll put it in.”
She said, “I promise to buy a copy. I might even believe the part about me crossing
the picket line. Who knows? I probably won’t, but you never know.”
I said, “You look a lot better baby. You really do. Your color is coming back...”
She looked pleased.
“I’d like to jump into the tent and fuck your IV s off... but I don’t think the doctor
would approve.”
“You might break the bed and wake up all the patients.”
Maya’s face swam into my mind, but I refused to let it break the spell. I said, “I’ll
have to leave you to your own devices today, young lady.”
“I’m too tired to lift a finger.” She made an abortive, convulsive movement with her
free arm. She made it shake, and then let it fall helplessly back onto the bed. I was afraid
that we were enjoying ourselves too much.
“I probably should get out of here and let you sleep. I’m not even supposed to be in
here. If they caught me, I don’t know what they would do.”
“Maybe they would let you sleep in the other bed. I’m probably paying for it
anyway.”
“I suppose you are since you can afford it. Late 20th century, decadent capitalism
and all that... Maybe we should get your money’s worth...”
I eyed the bed and then got up from the chair and went over to the door. I opened it
slowly and peered down the hall. It was still empty. I said, “Some surveillance system
they’ve got here. It doesn’t look like they’ll be putting the CIA out of business anytime
soon.”
“It’s probably the strike. There aren’t any nurses around.”
I said, “Gee we could plan the execution of General Westmoreland from in here.”
“Yeah. We could put LSD in his rubber.”
“That wouldn’t work. His men try on the rubbers first to make sure they aren’t
booby trapped.”
 She smiled. I said, “You’d better get some sleep baby. Otherwise I’m going to tear
the tent off, jump in there and fuck your IVs off, like I said. Take your choice.”
“For your sake, I choose sleep.”
“I’ll come back to see you tomorrow at ... about six?”
“Come at seven. Martha is coming at six and Marsha is coming at eight.”
I was jealous. I wondered they found out so fast that Florence was in the hospital.
“OK.”

Jack felt like a burden to Florence and he felt like a baby himself, mainly because
she had cheered him up instead of the other way around.
Walking down the hall, he was afraid that the receptionist would be back at her
desk in the front lobby. He saw no other way out of the hospital except through the lobby
and so he tried to think of a way to explain why he was coming from the stairwell.
When he peered around the partially opened door, he saw that the lobby was still
empty. He thought, “Crime is so much easier than people think. It is banal, almost
trivial. It’s only a bad conscience that makes a criminal.”
He felt guilty, even for walking through the picket line. However, he felt good
about Florence. He felt closer to her and was more in love with her than ever. But he
didn’t know it and, in fact, the word “love” didn’t enter his mind: he thought it was just
concern for her health.
Vida’s passionate kiss and tangled black hair and dark eyes still filled his
consciousness and he thought of her even before he reached his car. He even thought for
a moment that he wanted her more than he wanted Florence.

Chapter 20

Are you a believer in ghosts my friend? There are other ghosts than the Cock Lane
one, and far deeper men than Doctor Johnson who believe in them.

Herman Melville, Moby Dick

The cribbage game was scheduled for Friday night but Pinson couldn’t go. His
family had called a meeting to discuss the sale of the family house in Orinda. He suggested
that Billy come in his place.
I had completely forgotten about the game. I tried to remember Helen’s face but I
could only recall the jet-black hair against olive skin and the magnificent line of her nose.
Then I remembered the proud and menacing look in her eyes and the tension that is
the desperation of a cornered animal, an animal that doesn’t know if it will hold its ground
and fight or turn and flee. And I was afraid that it was her passion that had cornered her and
her love for me that had caused her desperation.
Melissa and Cindy were waiting up for us, barefoot and wearing pajamas. Eleven-
year-old Melissa wore striped plaid pants and shirt and Cindy, who looked like a fairy
goddess next to Melissa, wore a sheer nightgown with pink and white daisies splashed over
it.
 They were instructed to kiss us good night and Cindy kissed both of us on the cheek,
and held her hand over her mouth afterwards to hide her giggling. Melissa refused to kiss
us, even though Adrienne glared at her menacingly.
It was apparent from the look on Melissa’s face that she would extract payment from
Cindy later for the sudden look of pleasure that appeared on Cindy’s face after kissing us. I
said Melissa didn’t have to kiss me and Billy nodded in agreement and they went off to bed.
The apartment was clean and neat. A large white couch faced an imitation Keene
which hung on an otherwise bare, sequin-stippled, stucco wall. From a mahogany floor
stereo, a disk jockey identified his radio station’s call letters, KFRC.
Helen motioned us to the kitchen where the cribbage board was set up and as I
walked past her, I glanced at her down-turned olive colored face, the face that memory had
not been able to reconstruct.
We sat down at the table and it was clear, immediately, that they were serious about
the game. I was surprised. I said, “My father played cribbage.”
Adrienne looked at me with questioning eyes.
I said, “I’ve played several times but I always forget the rules.”
She asked, “Didn’t he teach you how to play?”
“He died when I was three and a half years old.”
There was an awkward silence.
I said, “My grandfather, his father, owned a gambling house in Abilene Texas. They
played everything. Poker. Cribbage.”
They were wearing worn jeans and plaid shirts and it occurred to me that they
thought we were hippies and they were trying to please us. Adrienne was even wearing
cowboy boots.
I found myself staring at Helen. She pretended not to notice. I turned to Adrienne
and saw a woman whose heart was scorched earth and whose love had been caste among
swine. She had said that she wanted to be rich, above anything else, but it seemed obvious
that she had merely lost the courage to love.
Helen asked, “What’s that song Jack?”
“Huh?”
It was coming from the stereo in the living room.
“What song?”
“The one you’re listening to.”
I listened to the song for a few seconds. “I don’t keep up with popular music much
any more Helen.” I knew the music of the Rolling Stones, the Beatles and Bob Dylan.
That was about it.
Adrienne said, “It’s the number one song.”
Billy laughed. He said, “You’ve embarrassed him long enough. Tell him what it
is.”
Adrienne said, “You tell him Billy.”
Billy turned red and laughed again. “She’s got us Jack.”
Adrienne muttered, “I Can’t Get Next to You.”
Helen said, “You’d better tell him it’s by the Temptations, or he might get the wrong
idea.”
The game went on and to my amazement, I was far ahead of everyone else.
Helen remarked, “Not bad for someone who can’t remember how to play.”
 I asked her, “How did you get interested in cribbage?”
“Adrienne liked the name.”
I asked, “What do you mean?”
“She liked the way it sounds.”
Adrienne said, “We learned it on our own. We like it.”
Helen said, “It grows on you.”
Cindy came into the kitchen rubbing her eyes. She looked at Helen and said,
“Melissa’s being mean.”
Helen’s scream startled me, “Get to bed!” Cindy started to cry.
Helen said in a rasping, menacing tone, “What did I tell you?”
Adrienne got up. She walked quickly, past Cindy, towards the bedroom, and
muttered as she left the room, “That little...” Cindy’s face brightened.
I asked Cindy, “What happened?”
Cindy looked at her mother, questioningly. Helen looked at me. Cindy answered,
holding back the tears, “She says there’s a ghost in the room.”
I said, “Well, is there?”
“No.”
I laughed too raucously. I said, “Well, what’s the problem then?”
A loud shriek came from the other room and the slapping sound of a hand hitting
bare flesh. Cindy tried to hide a gleeful smile.
Helen said, “It looks like you have a way with children. Cindy’s fallen in love with
you already. I can tell.”
I said, “She’s pretty. Prettier than you are.”
Helen’s face fell. I said, “But she’s too young to propose marriage to. Maybe in a
couple of years.”
“Believe me, she’s ready now.”
I said, “She’s a very nice little girl. You’re a very lucky mother.”
Adrienne returned to the kitchen. She said, “I wish I could say the same for mine.”
I said, “She seems to be ashamed of her .. uh .. background.”
Adrienne said, “She ought to be. Her father’s a real bastard. .... I’m sorry
Helen...”
“Don’t worry. He’s a bastard, even if he is my cousin. He’s a bastard. I’m ashamed
of him.”
I asked, “Is he Greek?”
Helen said, “Hundred percent.”
I turned to Adrienne. “You’re half Jewish and half Sioux?”
“I grew up on a reservation. He left. I never knew him.”
“How do you know you’re half Jewish?”
“I know.”
I said, “So Melissa’s half Greek, a quarter Jewish and a quarter Sioux.” And I
gambled, “I can’t think of a racial mixture to be more proud of.” An embarrassing silence
followed.
Billy said, “You’ll have to excuse him. He reads too many books.” He laughed and
raised his hands in self-defense as if he had just jabbed me with the prongs of a fork and I
was going to get up and hit him.
Helen said, “Anyone who would be proud of my cousin... “
 I said, “Really. You have to realize. The Greeks started it all. And the Jews. God.
The Jews. The Jews INVENTED God. I mean ... “
Helen said to Adrienne, “Remember that guy who loved the Greeks so much? It
didn’t work out. He lasted about two months.”
Adrienne said, “He wasn’t such a bad guy. You should have kept him.”
“Sure. We could just sit around the apartment all day and read books.”
“He was good with Cindy.”
“Oh Cindy. She loved him. He read books to her too. Just show him a book and he
went bananas. He read everything. Newspapers, candy wrappers. Children’s books...”
I said, “Melissa feels bad about herself. That’s why she’s mean to Cindy. But she
should be proud.”
Adrienne said, “Proud of what?”
I said, “You shouldn’t talk like that.”
Adrienne said, “You can talk. You’re rich.”
“What?”
She said, “Money is the only thing to be proud of.” Her voice was bitter.
I said, “I’m not rich. Anyway, money isn’t anything.”
Helen said, “Listen to him.”
Adrienne said, “Now I KNOW he’s crazy.”
It hurt. Billy said, “Money can’t make you happy. You have to be happy inside.
YOU can make you happy.”
Adrienne grunted. Helen said, wistfully, “I wouldn’t know. I haven’t ever had any.
My ex husband had money but he was stingy. So stingy. I can’t begin to tell you.”
Adrienne said, “He gave you this apartment.”
“He only pays half the rent.”
“Has he ever missed a payment?”
“He loves his daughter, not me.”
“Then he’s not stingy.”
I asked, “What does he do for a living?”
“He’s a carpenter.”
I said, “My stepfather was a General Contractor.”
Adrienne said, “See, I told you.”
I said, “He went bankrupt. Billy’s rich, not me.” They turned to Billy. I said,
“He’s going to be a big-time lawyer.” Silence.
Partly to get Billy off the hook, I said, “Pinson’s really the rich one. His father was
the President of the San Francisco Bar Association. In fact, Pinson’s in Orinda right now,
hassling with his relatives over the family mansion.”
I paused, then dropped the truth on them, “His grandfather owned the entire city of
Orinda.”
Adrienne looked at me as if I’d slipped a cog.
I continued, “His grandfather had one of the original Spanish land grants. The
Ygnacio grant. All they own now is a gas station in Orinda and the original Ygnacio
Hacienda. The old man lost ten million dollars in the 1929 stock market crash. Billy used
to work at the gas station. That’s where he met Chris.”
Billy said, “Deal.”
 Rage and scorn was in Helen’s face and she looked at Billy and said, “I don’t like
lawyers.”
He was silent. I was surprised to see fear in Adrienne’s eyes. He waited for his
card, not looking up.
Helen dealt a card and our eyes met. Her sudden passionate hatred for Kidd turned
into a torrent of desire for me. Adrienne pretended not to notice.
Helen looked over my shoulder, shocked by what she saw. Cindy was standing at
the door again.
Adrienne bolted out of her chair and her face was swollen with rage. She ran
through the door with Cindy running after her. Helen tried to stop Cindy but they both
disappeared through the door.
We heard the high pitched sound of Melissa’s screams and the sound of a belt
snapping and cracking over the music from the stereo. Adrienne screamed, “This one is for
your god-damned father...” There was a loud smack. “The two timing son-of-a-bitch.”
There was a bang that sounded like Melissa falling to the floor. Melissa begged her
mother to stop but the belt slapped on, cracking in rhythm to the music.
We sat at the table in silence, mechanically dealing cards and moving the pieces.
Finally, it stopped. Silent and grim, Adrienne returned to the kitchen. Helen and I didn’t
allow our eyes meet again that night.

Chapter 21

So in dreams, have I seen majestic Satan thrusting forth his tormented colossal claw from
the flame Baltic of Hell.

Herman Melville, Moby Dick

I went to see Florence in the hospital again, the night after the cribbage game. She
looked stronger but was still hooked up to penicillin. She said the doctor wanted her to stay
in the hospital for at least three days. I held her hand under the oxygen tent. It was cool and
I knew that she was getting well and that it was only a matter of time before she would be
out of the hospital.
I was more than a half-hour late. She said that Marsha would be there to visit her in
a few minutes, and that I should go before she got there. She asked me if I would get a
telephone number for her, in her address book on her chest of drawers in the house on 60th
Street, and bring it to her the following night.
On the way out of the hospital, I ran into Marsha and her husband in the lobby.
Marsha excused herself and went upstairs leaving me there with her husband. He was an
ex-football player.
I asked, “How’s everything?”
He shrugged his shoulders.
“How’s Marsha?”
“Same.”
“Uh huh.”
 Florence had said, “try to bring him out. He’s a “nice guy. He needs a friend.” So I
said, “Florence doesn’t seem to get together with Marsha very much anymore,”
“I wouldn’t say that.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, they kick me out when they get together in the afternoons.”
“Oh. I didn’t know. I mean she didn’t say anything about it.”
“What?”
“I mean I didn’t know that they saw each other so much.”
“Oh it’s no more than two or three times a week.” There was no irony in his voice.
I asked, “Did you see the Mets game?”
“Yeah.”
He didn’t seem interested in the Mets. I changed the subject back to his wife,
abruptly, “I suppose your wife stays up there half the night.”
He said, “She doesn’t spend as much time with me, as she does with that...” He
didn’t finish.
I asked, flat-footed, “Do you think they are doing anything?”
He didn’t say anything.
I persisted, “Well?”
“I’m sworn to silence, man. My lips are sealed.
I lied, “I know they’re lesbians. I mean bisexual.” He remained silent and after a
long and uncomfortable pause, I mumbled, “Well, take it easy.” I turned my back on him
and walked through the automatic glass doors of the hospital, and ran into a nurse who was
picketing outside. Her protest sign catapulted into a hedge. We both landed on our butts on
the sidewalk, unhurt. She apologized profusely and I accepted her apology, even though I
was certain that it was my fault. I felt better.

Helen and Tilly were in New York attending the Women’s Caucus on Phallocracy
and the house was empty and dark.
Jack came in through the back door, silently, stealthily, feeling like a thief. He came
in at exactly twenty minutes to eight, he knew, because the first thing he saw was the huge
clock over the refrigerator, and he noticed it, right off.
The house was gloomy and there were a lot of dishes in the kitchen sink. The radio
was playing upstairs. Two wine glasses and a half empty jug of Almaden sat on the table.
He reasoned that Helen and Tilly had left them there just before they had gone to visit
Florence in the hospital the previous night and that they had gone directly from the hospital
to the airport.
He knew that whenever they left the house empty, they double-locked the front door
and left the radio on, because they had been robbed seven times in three years. He thought it
would be pleasant for a thief to drink a glass of wine in the kitchen, listening to the music
from the radio upstairs to get relaxed before robbing the joint.
It was Sitar music. Probably Ravi Shankar. A wailing, moaning chorus of Indian
(female) voices wove themselves into the thumping music.

I got an old jelly jar down from the cupboard, causing cockroaches to scurry to
safety, sat down in the shadows and poured wine into it. I sat there drinking in the dark.
The wine, the music and the singing sent a flame into my belly. The silence of the kitchen
seemed to distill a feminine essence from the walls, the pictures, the furniture.
Little muscles in my rib cage began to vibrate and waves of sexual energy spread
into my pelvis and thighs. But the energy dissipated upwards into my neck and face, and
downwards into my calves, and a tiny knot began to form in my stomach.
I got up and walked to the foot of the staircase. As I went up the stairs to Florence’s
room, balancing a second jelly jar full of Almaden in front of my face, I noticed that I was
walking on tiptoes, like a thief.
When I reached her room, a rush of blood went to my head and the little address
book, sitting demurely on the dresser, seemed like a precious document.
I emptied the jelly jar, stopped, closed my eyes, and for many delicious seconds,
listened to the frenzied singing of the women. Then I picked up the little book and began to
glance at the names.
Her ex-husband’s name was there. And Tilly’s name: Ann Tillotson Hutchinson. I
placed the empty jar on the dresser and put the book in my jacket pocket.
The hall was dark, but the summer twilight streamed through the skylight and filled
Tilly’s room with an unnatural golden-red light.
A squawking sound sent an explosion of electricity into my solar plexus. It came
from Tilly’s room. It sounded like a window opening. I was petrified. I squared my body,
getting ready to intercept a thief coming through the window. But the only sounds were
music and the women.
The large mirror on the dresser in Tilly’s room reflected red from twilight clouds
back onto the brass bed and into my eyes. The light was dazzling and I studied the room in
the mirror five or ten seconds before I saw them.
Tilly’s naked back was facing the mirror and Vida’s chin was resting on her
shoulder. I almost cried out loud with surprise. Vida’s eyes were closed and her head was
moving from side to side. She had a stupid looking smile on her face.
In the mirror, I followed Tilly’s long, slim arm to where it disappeared into Vida’s
black bush. The bush was illuminated by a bright patch of light, while the rest of her body
was bathed in twilight. I could see the pink vulva clearly, as it strained against the thrusting
stump that rhythmically disappeared almost to the elbow and then reappeared. The handless
arm popped out, and like a giant penis, massaged the lips and clitoris.
The music was loud and I was hidden in total darkness. They kissed passionately.
Vida fell back on the bed and they began to French kiss. Tilly grabbed her black, bushy
pony tail with her left hand and guided her stiff, eternally erect penis under Vida’s buttocks.
The pink vulva was in full view in the large splash of light from the mirror, and the clitoris
was a long, wet line that looked like a Judy Chicago plate design.
The gleaming stump found the anus and there was a dull grunt as she slipped it into
the hole and began a steady, rhythmic, in and out motion. She disengaged her mouth from
Vida’s and went down, never stopping the gentle, rhythmic movement of her stump.
I could see her profile facing the cunt, licking, nose fucking, and all the while
thrusting her arm in and out of the anus and twisting it from side to side as it went in and
out.
Vida’s shaking orgasm took everyone by surprise and I suddenly I realized that I had
to get out of there without being detected. They moved into 69 position and very quickly,
Vida began to mount to another orgasm. I watched another frightening display of feminine
bestiality.
Tilly sat up and they licked her stump and then each other’s faces and then locked
themselves together again, face-to-cunt.
I wanted to start back down stairs, but my feet were glued to the carpet and I
watched them for a full five minutes, as they seemed to tear each other apart. Then,
suddenly, Vida disengaged herself, arched her back and face to the ceiling, and began a
whining, begging chant: “Do me. Do it. Do me.”
The same gleam came into Tilly’s eyes that I had seen when I first saw her cutting
the hedge. She raised her wet stump, until it was in front of her face, all wet and red at the
tip, sucked it, and then went down again, resting her forehead on Vida’s stomach, while she
massaged her vulva with her stump.
The red tip moved slowly, down into the black triangle of hair, insinuated itself into
the pink folds in a twisting movement, and disappeared again, almost to the elbow. Vida
collapsed like a rag doll onto her back across the bed, and swung her legs onto Tilly’s
shoulders.
Tilly got down onto her knees, on the floor. Her blood-engorged, maniacally
grinning face appeared between Vida’s thighs and the fucking became truly furious.
The needle came to the end of the long playing LP and the arm returned
automatically to its cradle. The room filled with subdued shrieking noises.
I was afraid that my stifled gasping for breath would start the walls rattling, and that
I would be discovered by them, there, with my pants down around my ankles, so to speak, in
the darkened corridor.
But Vida was beginning another orgasm and they couldn’t hear anything. “Oh” and
“Don’t Stop” and “There.”
Suddenly she put a pillow over her face to muffle her screams.
I was walking backwards, very slowly, and couldn’t see them anymore. The brass
bed squeaked on the floor and, from under the pillow, Vida began to grunt and squeal like a
pig and an image entered my mind: a bunch of squealing baby pigs that I had seen a couple
of weeks before, on a Gunsmoke episode, where Matt Dillon and Kitty chased piglets
around the saloon, through the swinging doors, and outside onto the boardwalk. They fell
into the mud in the street below, laughing uproariously at one another.
The squealing broke into a melodramatic, muffled shriek that cracked at the top of
Vida’s throat and lasted for about twenty or thirty seconds.
During the shriek, I walked backwards, quite fast, down the stairs holding firmly to
the railing because the wine had gone to my head. I tested the sureness of each backward
step before letting go of the railing. Then, at the bottom of the stairs, while the shriek was
ending, I lost my balance and fell into a floor lamp. I caught the stem, just before the lamp
hit the ground.
I became perfectly silent, listening for a sign that they had heard me, but the fucking
sounds and the moaning had started again. I heard the bed moving again on the hardwood
floor above me, and what I imagined to be more stump fucking, as I walked through the
kitchen, towards the back door.
On the gravel driveway, the cool Bay Area night fog and the darkening sky seemed
like a personal gift from the Gods to my crimson, hot face.
 In the car, driving down Telegraph Avenue, I said to myself, out loud, almost dryly,
not yelling, “Fucking son of a bitch.”
I looked out of the rear view mirror and saw the Kentucky Fried Chicken can
disappearing into the gloomy dusk behind me as I drove towards West Oakland. Vida’s stiff,
white legs suddenly reminded me of drumsticks and I roared with laughter. “You fucking
hypocrite. You fucking bitch-of-a-son. Well, I’ll be a sonning-fuck-of-a-bitch.”

Jack yelled nonsensical obscenities to himself until he was halfway to the Yellow
Cab Barn and then he realized that he wasn’t supposed to work that night, and that he had
never had any intention of working that night and that he was supposed to be going back to
where he had just come from, next door, where he lived.
He let out another roar of laughter and he stopped at the first pay phone he saw to
give Turnbull a call. Turnbull wasn’t home and it was probably just as well because he
needed to think.
He drove up the driveway making as much noise as possible and cleared his throat
loudly as he got out of the car. He swore to himself that he could hear them lying in bed,
silently listening to him.
Once in his little room with the stuck-open window, he got out his notebook and
wrote a description of what had happened and it seemed to purge him of his Romanticism,
although, of course, it didn’t.
He heard their window open and the low murmur of their conversation and then,
about twenty minutes later, both of their cars starting and leaving, “the scene of the crime”
as he thought of it, all while he was writing the description.
He stopped thinking about Vida after that night, completely. He just expelled her
from his thoughts and for many years after that night he expended much energy fighting
homosexuality in the most subterranean and subtle ways but never obviously, never openly.
He didn’t really seem to be aware of the reason for it. He certainly never coupled
that night with his opinions, and even more certainly not with the Iranian woman. Much
later, years after the incident, the only trace of the incident was a kind of snicker that came
involuntarily to his face when Iran and Iranians were mentioned in his presence. And even
the memory of... Well, I’m getting ahead of my story and will leave the description of that
until a later chapter...
He even wrote about half of a very hostile book on the subject of homosexuality.
But it was never published, and he probably didn’t intend that it should be. It was a very
good book too, with long quotations from all of the major authorities (it wasn’t, however,
original.)
It had the effect of clarifying his own thoughts and of organizing his feelings, and
when that was accomplished, he abandoned the book, rather selfishly, and confined himself
to subtle and gentle persuasions of his friends and acquaintances, and to the most reasonable
arguments that he could mount.
This went on for the rest of his short life and it was said that he was quite effective
and not obsessed, but as far as I know, no one was ever converted either to or from
homosexuality, by his arguments.
Chapter 22

Each time I wrote that Albertine was pretty, I crossed the words out, and wrote
instead that I had felt a desire to kiss Albertine.

Marcel Proust

Her face was fine and her legs were long and thin, and she had a new crafty look,
like a fox, and her hand was cool to the touch.
We climbed the stone stairs in Joaquin Miller Park, almost all the way to
Woodminster Theater, and she was hardly winded. We had just come from a morning of
love making but there in the morning shadows, for the first time since she had left the
hospital, I saw the old look come into her eyes again and I knew that she wanted to fuck
again, right there in Joaquin Miller Park, out in the open.
But I felt something deeper too. It seemed that she contained a new desire or
longing that she didn’t yet know how to express and that I didn’t know how feel, so I stalled
for time, waiting superstitiously for clues, hoping for some suggestion or hint.
While I was waiting, the far away look came into her eyes and finally, like a bird
finding a stray branch, the sadness came. I knew enough by then not to say anything. I
even pretended not to notice. She broke a very long silence, “I’m so frightfully thin.”
I waited. It seemed like a minute had gone by but it hadn’t. I said, “I’ve never seen
you more beautiful.”
She wouldn’t let me say that usually and I didn’t know why; she wouldn’t let me
feel as if it were right to say it.
“I’ve got to gain twenty pounds.”
We were sitting on the steps, overlooking the waterfall, and I kissed her cheek and
massaged her leg. Twenty feet below was the Lilly pond. We were surrounded by
Redwood trees and Eucalyptus trees and bird cries were the only sounds that rose above the
sound of the waterfall.
I said, “Please stay the way you are.” She was silent. I smiled encouragingly. “You
look like Twiggy...”
She pulled away from me, stood up and launched into a diatribe about bulimia. I
waited patiently for an opening. She stopped almost as quickly as she had started and she
seemed almost ashamed of herself.
I said, “Do it for me Flo.” Neither of us had heard me speak in that tone of voice
before. I took her in my arms again and kissed her cheek. I said, “Remember the way you
made me grow my hair?”
“I didn’t make you grow your hair. It was your decision.”
“It was because you said you’d cut yours if I cut mine.”
She pulled away from me and climbed three steep steps that were made of rough
hewn rocks. She turned around and staring down at me asked, “Do you know how much I
weigh?”
“I don’t care. I like you the way you are.”
 “I’m almost 5’10” and I weigh less than 105 pounds. Marsha, everyone else, says I
look frightful. They’re all planning ways to put weight on me.”
I persisted, humorously, “I’ll lose twenty pounds too Flo. We can be skeletons
together.” I stood up and danced around in a circle with my hands over my head, wiggling
my fingers and brushing them against the low hanging branch of a Redwood tree. I pulled
off a small cone and threw it at her.
I said, “Let’s go to Lake Tahoe and rent a cabin. We can celebrate your recovery. In
a real forest. I know a place near Meek’s Bay where we can rent a cabin. You can bring
your new super 8mm camera along and we can take some movies.”
Her eyes brightened. She said, a little timidly, “The camera’s in the car.”
“Great. I’ve got about twenty dollars on me. That should be enough.”
She said, “I’ve got my check book for insurance.”
Hidden among the shadows of the park she seemed like a young doe. I said, “I still
love you... even if you do look like a skeleton.”
She smiled down at me, shyly, and said, “I brought something special for you, from
my mother’s house. I’ll show it too you when we get to Lake Tahoe. Let’s go pack.”
We raced down the stairs, hand in hand, and ran across Perry Field towards the
Yellow Volvo. We jumped in, rolled down all of the windows and, just for the hell of it, I
coasted about a half-mile down Joaquin Miller Road to the stop sign.
On the freeway, I held down the gas pedal until we reached 105 miles an hour and
she yelled at me to slow down.
Winding along Tunnel Road, she tickled me until we got to the Claremont Hotel
where I hung a left onto Claremont Avenue and pulled over to the curb to stop laughing and
make her stop.
We sang Yellow Submarine all the way to Forest Street where I hung a right, and we
sang while I drove around in circles trying to find 60th Street.
I finally ran into Channing street and then 60th street and pulled up the driveway, at
450a.
Once back on the freeway, we laughed and giggled and yakked all the way to
Sacramento.
She took pictures with her new 8mm camera and with the 35 mm Canon that I had
bought for $70 at a pawnshop.
For old time’s sake, I insisted on eating lunch at the Foster Freeze on the outskirts of
Sacramento, where we used to stop when I was a kid. She took a movie of me eating a
Foster Freeze in front of the blue and white Foster Freeze Man. I had a chocolate covered
Foster Freeze and the chocolate cracked and a large gob of ice cream fell onto the ground,
which started a very messy ice-cream fight. She managed to get part of it on film with her
new camera.
Back in the car, she began taking movies of me driving.
“I don’t think they’ll turn out Flo.”
“You don’t know how great it looks.”
“What?”
She was full of little boy enthusiasm. She was about thirteen. “You don’t know
how great you look. I can’t get over it. You look so great and you don’t even know it.”
“What look’s so great?”
 “Your pony tail. You don’t know how great you look. I know you don’t.” She
made a little squealing noise. She couldn’t contain her excitement. She started the camera
again, directing it at the back of my head.
“This’ll be a lousy picture, Flo, there’s no light in here.”
“It’ll turn out, don’t worry. I’ve got to get your pony tail.” She had tied it up with a
rubber band, while we were washing up after the ice-cream fight at the Foster Freeze. She
brought the camera right up to my face. “I love ya big fella. And you’re on Candid Camera.
What do you say?”
I started singing to the tune of Porgy, “Ah loves you Twiggy, yes ah do, ah loves yo
legs, o yes ah does.” I reached over and squeezed one of them.
She said, “Let’s do it.”
“Do what? Here? Now?”
She said, “Hey, these are silent movies, no one’s gonna know the difference.”
“Oh, so you’re gonna film it. For Candid Camera. I knew it.”
She grabbed my zipper. The camera was rolling, filming the windshield. I jumped.
“I want to save it for tonight.”
“You can do it twice. Remember? We’ve did it five times once, just to prove you
could.” She was in the habit of teasing me for that.
“OK, six times if you want, but not in the car, not on Candid Camera.” I thumbed
my nose at the camera.
The car swerved and a passing truck driver blasted us with his horn. She craned her
neck and looked up at him through the windshield. A fat face looked down at us from
behind dark glasses and a cowboy hat. It smiled and he waved. We waved back. She lifted
her tie dye tee shirt, exposing her breasts and we could hear his cowboy scream over the
roar of his truck as he gained speed and rolled past us down the hill. We were happy again
and I couldn’t resist going for the big one.
“I want to you keep the weight off Flo. If you really love me you’ll do it.”
“I’m not going to weigh 105 pounds. I look like I’ve come out of a concentration
camp.”
“You look so great. Didn’t you see the look on that truck driver’s face?”
“He’s just a truck driver. They all do that.”
“I can’t tell you how great you look.”
“You’re the only one that thinks so.”
I said, “Take your pants off.”
She kicked her tennis shoes off and took off everything except her tee shirt and her
wristwatch.
“They look great. I mean beautiful.”
She looked at the road ahead of us in silence. We could hear the mufflers of the
truck as it shifted gears for the grade. “I’m going to put on weight Jack. I have to.”
I refused to change the subject even though I knew I should. “Well, you look great
right now at least. I’m going to enjoy it while it lasts.” I put my arm on her shoulder and
she moved closer, to the edge of the bucket seat. I said, “I really hate these bucket seats.”
“What do you want me to do?” The sadness was in her voice. We rode along in
silence for awhile.
I said, “I just love being here with you.”
 She snuggled up to me and began to masturbate. I drove slowly so that the truck
stayed ahead of us. We were starting up another hill, and he was losing speed.
I said, “I wish you could take off your tee shirt but...”
She slipped out of it before I could protest. A car was passing us on the left and a
middle-aged woman looked into the car and frowned. The woman thrust her nose into the
air as their car passed us.
Florence bent over onto my lap and unzipped my pants. I said, “Your legs are
gorgeous.”
She sucked my cock while I massaged her leg, but she was uncomfortable against
the brake. She got up and said, “It’s impossible. I’ll end up with a hernia.”
“God I hate these bucket seats.”
She sat up and began to masturbate again. It wasn’t possible to remain behind the
truck any longer. “I’m going to pass him Flo.”
She said, “Let’s give him a thrill.”
I pushed the gas pedal to the floor while she masturbated us both. He saw us in his
side mirror and laid on his horn as we passed.
A station wagon full of teenage girls and a weekend father passed us on the left. The
girls leered at us. Flo disappeared from their view and went down to suck my cock again.
I tried to stay between the truck and the station wagon but when I came, the girls
were only about fifty feet ahead of us and I imagined that they put their hands to their
mouths and giggled.
I said, “The girls are enjoying themselves.”
“What?”
“There’s a carload of giggling girls about fifty feet in front of us.”
She raised herself slowly, spotted them and not taking her eyes from them, kissed me
on the cheek. I sped up and passed them and she waved. She said, “Why don’t you slow
down and let the truck driver catch up so we can give him another thrill?”
“Fuck him. Let him get his own thrills. We don’t owe him anything.”
She lay back in her seat, without any clothes on, and finished herself off. When she
came, she didn’t hold back. She made so much noise that I thought I heard the truck driver
yelling in his cab from 400 feet behind us.
She brought a wet finger up to my face. “Want some?”
She claimed that she had never met a woman who didn’t like the taste of her own
cunt.
She pushed her crumpled jeans over the brake, to make a seat, and snuggled up to
me. I made her put her tee shirt back on and we drove all the way to Tahoe City like that.
We got there at around seven. She put her pants on and went into a Supermarket to
get some food. She brought back swimming suits for both of us.
We drove along Lakeshore road until we found a nice view of the lake. It was a
warm evening and we put on our suits in the car.
I watched her walking in front of me in her bikini. She was captivated by the lake,
which she was seeing for the first time. From behind, she looked like a Parisian fashion
model. I noticed a couple of high school boys admiring her from the steps of a cabin.
I said, “I dare you to jump in.”
The night was warm.
“Are there any sharks?”
 “How would I know?”
She walked in up to her ankles. She announced, “It’s freezing.”
“I know.”
“You dare me?”
I remembered the IVs sticking into her arms. “You might get a relapse.”
She began balancing her way through the pebbles until her knees were under water.
“Flo. Get back here...”
She did a belly flop and disappeared under the water. About twenty seconds later
her head appeared next to a motorboat that was tied to the pier. She screamed, “Why didn’t
you tell me it was so cold?”
I followed her into the water. I swam to where she was hanging onto a plastic chord
that held the motorboat to the peer. Our teeth chattered in the 55 degree water. We kissed.
Her face and body were freezing.
A voice yelled from the cabin. “Private property. No swimming.”
When we got out of the water we were both shivering. We dried ourselves and I
turned on the heater in the Volvo, full blast, and drove for about 15 minutes to Meek’s bay.
The cabins were still there as I remembered them. By the time we got dressed, paid
for two nights, signed the registration book as and Mr. and Mrs. George Washington and
chatted with the landlady, it was dark.
We went out for a moonlit walk along the beach at Meek’s Bay and she asked if I
thought there would be a place where we could make love outside in the moonlight. There
were tents in the campground behind us and cabins all around. Music was coming from a
dance hall and there was a couple holding hands at the end of the peer and another couple
kissing in the shadows of the beach. There were lights along the beach in both directions as
far as we could see.
I said, “Not unless you want to see what the Lake Tahoe jail looks like, from the
inside.”
“It might be worth it.”
“What, a prison term?”
“No, your tail for the Lake Tahoe jail.”
“I’ll beat you to the cabin.” I danced backwards about twenty feet and crouched,
with my arms outstretched like a basketball player daring a point guard to come in for a lay-
up. I yelled, “Go for it. I dare you.”
She charged. I turned around and sprinted towards the park where the tents were.
She chased me around the driveway. I ran backwards and sideways and she couldn’t catch
me. I jumped over the barrier into the campground and she followed me. A murmuring roar
emanated from about twenty tents, simultaneously, like a small grass fire. Nobody yelled or
even said anything intelligible but we got the idea.
I said, in a low voice, “Shit.”
She said, “Let’s get out of here. They’re trying to sleep.”
I tiptoed out of the campground and she followed. Once over the barrier, we jogged
towards the cabin and then I sprinted ahead, holding the key, high over my head. “I’ve got
the key.” I waved it over my head. “I’ve got the car keys too.”
She shook her fist at me. I ran slowly and reached the cabin just before she did. I
pretended not to have enough time to get the door shut. She struggled to push the door
open. I held tight and then let it go and she flew through the door and landed on the bed.
She screamed and then pretended to be dead.
“I’ve killed her.”
She opened one eye.
“No, she’s only half dead.”
She closed her eye and opened the other one.
I said, “Hmm. This is a very interesting case.”
She was breathing hard. I put my hand near the snap on her jeans and said, “I
wonder if her cunt’s dead,” and grabbed for the snap. She screamed and we began to
wrestle and she managed to get on top of me and she started tickling me. She knew that she
could always win at that, because she was ticklish in only one very tiny spot that was very
difficult to reach: in the pits of her knees.
I began laughing uncontrollably and begged her to stop. Finally, I held her slender
wrists tightly and we began making love.
She stopped me. “Wait. I have a surprise.” She got up and went over to her
suitcase. “Put these on first.” She threw a pair of striped pajamas over my head.
I took them from my head and looked at them. “What. I haven’t worn pajamas
since I was a kid.”
“It’s a surprise.”
“Surprise?”
“Wait.” She looked around. “There. The lamp on the chest of drawers.” She
plugged it into a wall outlet and turned out the overhead light bulb. She said, “That’s more
like it. I little romance. I’ll be right back. Get ready.”
“Get ready?”
She had her hand on the door knob. “Trust me.”
“What do you want me to do to get ready?”
“Just put the pajamas on and get into bed.”
“Oh.”
Her eyes flashed maliciously.
“Sure.”
She went to the car. She was gone for what seemed like a long time. When she
returned, she was wearing her robe and carrying my camera.
I asked, “What were you doing out there?”
“Nothing.”
She put the camera on the dresser and then took off her robe. She stood there in a
black nightgown and looked down at me. In the dim light, her eyes were black and intense.
I didn’t know what to say.
I said, “I don’t understand. You’ve never worn pajamas before.”
She laughed. “These aren’t pajamas.”
“What are they?”
“It’s lingerie.”
“Well?”
“Do you like it.”
“Yeah, sure. I mean. It’s nice.” I tried to sound convincing.
“It’s the same one my mother wore on her wedding night.”
I was moved to silence.
 She said, “I want you to take a picture of me.”
She turned the overhead light on and I took a picture.
“I suppose these are...”
“Yes. They are the pajamas my father wore.”
She turned the light out and we got back into bed. It was a twin bed but it was a
little narrow. She pulled the covers back and lifted her lingerie up over her stomach. I
pulled the pajamas down to my knees and we made love like missionaries.
Within two or three minutes she began a deep moaning and the walls of her vagina
gushed and ballooned out and then suddenly, her vagina gripped the shaft of my cock and
began undulating spasmodically. It seemed to pull and vibrate knowingly as I came. It must
have vibrated for thirty seconds. Almost before it was over I said, “You had a vaginal
orgasm!”
She was silent.
I said, “It must have been the lingerie.” We lay together in silence. Finally, I said,
“Did you feel it?”
“What?
“The vibrations.”
“What vibrations?”
“Your cunt. It was vibrating and gripping my cock. It’s never done that before.”
She didn’t say anything.
“That’s the first time you had an orgasm without me masturbating you afterwards.”
She remained silent.
I asked, “Why aren’t you saying anything?”
“I didn’t feel anything different.”
“What? Didn’t you have an orgasm?”
“Yes.”
“Well.”
“It didn’t feel different.”
“It must have been the lingerie.”
“Nonsense.”
“Nonsense? You were the one who brought it along!”
“I didn’t have a vaginal orgasm.”
“Well it sure did a lot of vibrating.”
Silence.
I asked, “Didn’t you feel it?”
The long silence started. I began breathing slowly. I waited for one, two, three
minutes.
Finally, she said, “The vaginal orgasm is a myth. It is just a device that men use to
subjugate women.”
I meditated on that. Let it sink in, and tried to adhere to my rule of waiting for at
least thirty seconds and maybe a minute to respond to serious statements like that. I tried to
allow thoughts to compose themselves but nothing came. It was about nine thirty.
I asked, “Do you want to go for a walk?”
She didn’t answer right away.
“Yeah.”
 We dressed quickly and walked back to the campground and went out onto the peer.
We could see the bright lights of South Shore and the lights beyond in the mountains,
climbing to the sky and turning into stars.
I had decided not to talk about her weight or the orgasm.
We held hands but I felt distant. Finally, the darkness and the strangeness of the
Lake Tahoe night brought us together again. We made plans for the future and drew
beautiful pictures in the black waters, with our legs hanging from the peer and expensive
speedboats bobbing around us.
She said, “Let’s travel around the world Jack. I’ve got the money. I want to spend
it.”
I was silent, feeling our smallness, sitting on the shore of the huge lake, surrounded
by mountains, on a small planet way out at the far edge of our galaxy.
“I’ve still got forty five thousand dollars. We could travel for six months. As long
as we want. We could live on a desert island if we want.”
I held her hand. “You know I wouldn’t let you do that. And I have to pay my own
way. Besides. You have a lot of things to do with that money. You can’t throw it away.”
She was silent. I felt that I was growing smaller, physically. It seemed like
madness. And I felt awkward again, as if I were in the presence of a Princess. Her legs, the
money, the sex, it all seemed absurd, irrelevant. I didn’t know what to say. I squeezed her
hand and she squeezed back.
I found myself holding back tears. She couldn’t see my face in the darkness, and a
lump had formed in my throat and I knew that if I tried to talk she would know I was about
to cry.
I felt betrayed by God and the Universe. I wanted to run but I knew that the edge
was all around and there was no where to go.
Her silence began to envelop us. Suddenly, all of her causes seemed worthless and I
wanted her to invest the money for herself and to forget them. But I couldn’t say anything
about that either. I was plunged deeper into anger and sadness and isolation. I’ve always
been a gambler but the odds were just too bad and I didn’t say anything.
She asked, “A penny for your thoughts.”
“They aren’t worth that much.”
“I’ll pay. They’re worth it to me.”
I said, “I was thinking that if we owned that boat, it wouldn’t make us any happier.”
She pointed to the one across from us. “This one?”
“Well, any of them.”
She said, “I’ve never liked boats.”
“Me either. I hate sailing.”
“I get sea sick.”
I said, “Human beings are such intolerable snobs.”
She thought in silence. I added, trying to sound light, even funny, “Why don’t we
kill ourselves? You can kill me first. I’ll take your word for it. I won’t check up on you.
I’ll trust you to kill yourself afterwards.”
“That’s not funny.”
“I trust you.”
She said, “Sometimes you make me feel like killing myself.”
“I’ll buy a gun. You can keep it loaded and...”
 “Don’t talk like that, it scares me. I don’t like guns. It’s sick humor.”
Her voice was tinged with anger and my sadness came back. The lump formed in
my throat again and I couldn’t talk.
After another silence she said, “Let’s go back.” She got up. We walked down the
peer, to the shore, in silence. She walked ahead of me, a few feet.
Under the night lights, I could see that her body was stiff and that she seemed to be
indulging herself with anger as she strode ahead of me but when we left the lights, her body
slackened and she walked cautiously towards a field of tall grass. I followed. She entered
the grassy field. The cabin was barely visible in the darkness and I could feel her fear as we
were enveloped in the blackness of the forest night. I caught up with her and put my arm
around her.
I said, “I still love you baby.”
She gave a little laugh and put her arm around my waste. She asked, “Are there any
snakes?”
“I don’t think so. The altitude’s too high. Well.. Maybe we ought to go the long
way, on the road, just to be sure.”
I steered her back to the driveway and we walked arm in arm over the bridge and
onto the highway. We walked down the lonely road that was lined with tall pine trees and
turned into the next driveway that led to the cabins. It was a long walk and her anger
disappeared into the darkness and the danger of the night forest.
We slept that night in the safety of each other’s arms but we had no future.
Therefore, like all lovers, we plunged even more deeply into the present: the next day we
rode horseback and I was nearly killed by my horse but we only laughed. I tried to teach her
to water ski and she nearly drowned and we laughed again. We took twelve rolls of film and
made love so much that by nightfall, we couldn’t decide if we were sore from riding
horseback or from fucking. We didn’t care.
We made love into the night, and all the next morning until a dour Girl Scout leader
knocked on our door. She asked us, with a meaningful glint in her eye, if we were planning
to stay for another night. We looked at each other and broke out laughing. She turned her
back and walked away telling us over her shoulder that she would report us to the authorities
if we “carried on again like that another night.” We shut the door behind us and laughed so
hard that tears came to our eyes.
But Florence was dry bones dancing on the tomb of our love and I was a condemned
man eating his last meal.
She said she had to return to the East Coast for about a month, to see her parents
again. She assured me it wasn’t my fault, that she had promised them. She said she would
try to be back in time for Mike’s party.

Chapter 23

Ah! Would to Heaven the good ship Argo ne’er sped its course to the Colchian land.

Euripides, Medea
 I was, alone and depressed as hell, lying on the chaise longue in the backyard. I was
sunning myself in the bathing suit that Florence had picked out at Lake Tahoe. I was
wearing my straw cowboy hat, drinking a beer and trying to read Jack Kerouac’s The
Subterraneans.
And there she was, standing at the top of the stairs. I didn’t think I would even be
able to talk to her. I didn’t think I had the right or the will. I found myself raising my can of
beer as a toast.
She said, “Hi cowboy.”
“Hi beautiful.”
She walked down the stairs and I put the book down, carefully and superstitiously
hiding the title. I got up and walked towards the fence. She drawled like a cowgirl and her
voice was low, almost husky, “You look pretty good there in your shorts.”
“Thanks. I needed that.”
“Adrienne said you had great legs, but this is too much. I don’t know if I can stand
it.” She couldn’t see my legs through the fence, but she looked down appreciatively at the
place where she would have seen them if the fence had been made out of glass.

Jack felt himself grinning like an idiot. So he said, honestly, “Thanks for the
compliment. Nobody’s ever told me I had pretty legs.”

“Listen to him,” she said to her imaginary person in the sky, showing me her profile.
“Nobody’s ever told him he has nice legs.”
I didn’t want to tell her that her face was beautiful, that her pale olive skin and
aquiline nose was ... and I searched for the right words, words that I wouldn’t allow myself
to say out loud.
She filled the silence with a question, “What are you reading?”
“Oh ... nothing. Something by Jack Kerouac.”
I showed her the cover.
She said, “He just died.”
“What?”
“I heard it on the radio just a few minutes ago.”
I was stunned.
She said, “I might be wrong but ... it just came over the news, on KFRC. Kerouac.
They said he was a beatnik. Actually, I’ve never heard of him. But that name ... I wouldn’t
forget a name like that.”
“Well, I guess he finally drank himself to death.” There was bitterness in my voice.
She asked in a small, respectful voice, “Are you a beatnik?”
“No.” I laughed. “I just. I like his books. On the Road ... Don’t worry about it.
Anyway, I’m not a beatnik.”
“I’m sorry.”
I said, “No, don’t be sorry. There’s nothing to be sorry about.”
She stood on her tiptoes and leaned over the top of the fence to see my legs. She
said, “Well, if it will make you feel any better, I like your legs.”
“Thanks.”
She asked, playfully, “What do you do with them anyway?”
I answered with a smile.
 She said, “I shouldn’t have asked that.” She looked embarrassed.
“Well, I like to dance if that’s what you mean.”
“Don’t talk to me about dancing.”
“Why not?”
“I’m too old to dance.”
“How old are you?”
She looked at her imaginary friend again and said, “Listen to him. Now he’s asking
me how old I am.” She turned back to me and asked, “How old do you think I am?”
“How would I know?” She didn’t seem to be at an age where she could be insulted
if I guessed high but I guessed low anyway, “23?”
“I’m 26. Can’t you see the crow’s feet? I’m over the hill.” She showed me her
profile again, pointing to the sides of her eyes. I studied her face. It was all vitality and
motion and I couldn’t see any wrinkles.
I gambled again, “If you’re over the hill, then I’m in luck.”
She looked into my eyes, fixedly. There was a savage, desperate look in her face. It
had an effect that I didn’t think she had calculated.
She asked, “What do you mean by that?”
I waited for a moment, divining what she would allow me say and what she wanted
me to say. I said, conservatively, stupidly, “I would be proud to have a beautiful girlfriend
like you.”
“What about Florence?”
I was startled that she knew her name.
“She’s in New York. Visiting her parents.”
She was silent.
I asked, “Do you like to dance?”
“Discotheques make me feel old.”
“Old?”
“All the men look at the younger women.”
“I can’t believe you. You don’t look older than 26, maybe younger.”
“Maybe younger!”
“26 is young.”
“The men look at the 22 year olds. Believe me.”
“22 year olds?”
She looked dejected. I tried to cheer her up. I asked, “Have you ever been to the
Greek Taverna Athena?”
“Are you kidding?” She broke out laughing and her imaginary friend looked at her
in disbelief. “The Taverna Athena. He want’s to know if I’ve ever been to the Taverna
Athena.”
I asked, “Well, you are Greek aren’t you?”
She turned back to me and measuring me with Medean eyes, answered in a soft
voice, “One hundred percent.”
I said, “Well, I’ve never been there. I’ve always thought it would be nice ... “
She interrupted me. Her voice was tense, “I can’t go there anymore.”
I tried to decipher her feelings. I ventured, “Why not?”
“Well, it’s hard to say.”
I said, hastily, “That’s all right, you don’t have to talk about it.”
 “I had an affair with the owner.”
“With the owner?”
“He was very jealous and ... I’m not going to tell you the details but he told me
never to come back and I never have. I’ll never set foot in that place again as long as I live.”
“I see.”
There was an awkward silence and I didn’t know where we were going.
She said, “Maybe I shouldn’t say this.”
She didn’t need much encouragement from my eyes.
“A few months ago, Adrienne said there was this really good looking guy sunbathing
in the back yard. She said, “You’ve gotta take a look,” and I kept saying: “he isn’t much.”
She paused and looked at me out of the corner or her eye. The playful smile was on
her face again.
“She said, she didn’t see how I couldn’t be impressed. So I said all right, maybe I
was in a bad mood. I’ll look again.”
A savage look came into her face.
I said, “I remember seeing you walk down the stairs while I was reading out here in
the backyard.”
She said, “I told Adrienne: “I’ve seen better legs.” Adrienne said she’d never seen
better legs.”
I was surprised that Adrienne was so impressed with my legs.
She continued, “So I said, I’ll look again. You don’t remember that day?”
I thought she was setting me up and getting ready to insult me and so I said, too
emphatically, ironically, “Hey, after the first time I saw you I couldn’t stop thinking about
your nose.” I paused and added, smiling, “Don’t put me down.”
She made a movement to hit my head lightly with her open hand. My hand went up
fast, reflexively, and stopped within inches of hers. She was surprised by my quickness. We
looked at each other, curiously, warily, studying each other’s faces.
Her face darkened with emotion. “I’m not putting you down.”
I said, “Maybe I’m in love with your nose.”
Her gaze turned inward and she bowed her head toward the ground, arching her
eyebrows and pretending to be hurt. She said, “Don’t insult my nose.”
“I love your nose.”
“Are you going to let me finish my story?”
“I thought you were finished? You weren’t impressed with my legs.”
“I wasn’t. Adrienne said, “that wasn’t him stupid. That was Billy.” And then I saw
you. And I was convinced. You have the most beautiful legs I’ve ever seen.”
I smiled at her stupidly.
She added, “She was right. I was convinced.”
It seemed like we were silent for five minutes, just staring into each other’s eyes. I
thought, “Maybe it’s Flo’s influence.”
She broke the silence, “Why else do you think I walked up and down those steps so
often? I didn’t have to carry Cindy down the stairs. Before I saw your legs, I used to roll
down the window and yell at her and she ran to the car. Don’t you remember?”
“Well, now that you mention it.”
I knew it was coming, like a tropical rainstorm, and I waited. I looked into her eyes
and waited. But it didn’t come. She remained silent and only her eyes told me that she
loved me. I said, “Look, I know it sounds like a line, but honestly, I feel ... I mean, I
haven’t seen your legs yet but...”
She smiled and said, “I’ve got to go.” She turned and began to walk away.
I said, to her back, “I want your phone number.”
She turned around and walked back towards me, digging into her purse for a pen.
I asked, “When can I call you?”
“Whenever you want.”
“Tonight?”
“Yes.”
I wrote her telephone number on the inside cover of The Subterraneans. She invited
me to come to her apartment that same night.
It was late and Cindy had already gone to bed. The only light in the living room was
a dimmed light from the kitchen, which caused the sequins in the stucco wall to dance
kaleidoscopically behind her as she stood there before me in the darkness.
The floor stereo was playing Muzak from radio station KABL. I asked her if I could
change the station and she motioned towards it with an open, upturned palm. I changed it to
KDFC, the classical music station, and turned down the volume.
She was standing near the couch, defenseless and without guile. I walked over to
her and we looked into each other’s eyes for a few moments, as if we wanted to study the
first movements of desire as it passed over the threshold of hope towards love. And then,
like all lovers, we collapsed into each other’s arms with a kiss. We edged towards the soft,
white couch, afraid to let go. We were like two dancers on a high wire stretched over the
abyss. We sank down into the couch, kissing hungrily and without speaking, devouring
each other. Then we stopped and sat sunken in the white couch, in the still darkness,
holding each other.
After a long silence I said, “It’s hopeless you know.”
She was silent.
I kissed her cheek. “Maybe you and Billy ought to get together.”
She pulled away from me and looked at me incredulously, “I can’t believe you said
that.”
“Why?”
“I mean about another man. Why would you want me to go with another man?”
“Out of love for him I guess.” I knew that was a false and ridiculous. I didn’t even
like him.
She said, humorously, graciously, “Now I know I don’t understand you.”
I said, “You two are more alike than we are. You even look alike.” They both had
black hair but they didn’t look alike.
I said, “I mean, I would like to do something good for both of you. He’s going to
be a lawyer. He’ll make a lot of money. He probably needs someone like you.”
“Probably?”
I couldn’t believe that I had said it. I knew that Billy would kill everything human in
her and she knew it too. I stroked her hair and then kissed her cheek again. I said, “I hate
to lose you. It is the most painful thing that has happened to me in a long time.”
I wanted to say, “the most painful thing that has ever happened to me,” but I thought
it would sound corny and that she would think it was just another line.
 She said, as if she had thought long and deeply about it, “He’s too much like my ex-
husband. We’d never get along.”
I wanted to tell her that I loved her but I was afraid that it was just the extraordinary
beauty that I loved, and that saying it would be a desecration of my love for Florence, even
though I knew we were finished.
Sitting there in the darkness, I tried to convince myself that she wasn’t a
conventional beauty but reason rejected every argument, making it all too clear to me that I
was simply desperate to love something other than my vanity.
Her eyes were closed and I stroked her arm with my fingertips, lightly, from her
naked shoulder to her forearm and down to her hand and fingers. A light goose-flesh
appeared on her arm, causing fear to invade my spirit, and I painted twisted images in the
dark that told me that I gave her the creeps... that our love was absurd... that she too was
collecting me for the sake of her vanity .... “for my legs” ... because ..... I stopped thinking.
It was absurd.
She kept her eyes closed and I studied her face as if she were the most beautiful
woman on earth, and as if I would never be close to a face like hers again and never have the
opportunity to touch and kiss such a face again.
Tears came to my eyes and I was grateful that she had turned out the kitchen light
and that her eyes were closed. Finally, after long effort, I savored in her face what seemed
to be ugliness itself and a raucous, harsh, working class woman came between us. But the
beauty remained untouched. It began to seem superhuman, mocking every rule of order and
consistency. I felt that I had to kiss her mouth, to plunge my tongue into it, to glue my
mouth to hers, as if in that way I could effect a magical transformation, a merging of souls,
and so I did, but it was a hopeless prayer to an absent god. I circled her in mute, humble,
terrified adoration. And I remembered the lines of Apollinaire,
For one kiss the kings of earth would die, the well-known poor sell their shadow
souls.
The word “love” seemed small and intrusive and I vowed not to use it again.
We preserved silence for hours as we lay in each other’s arms on the couch. She
pretended to sleep but I knew that she was waiting for the touch of my fingers on her face
and arms and for my kiss on her cheek and forehead and mouth. And so, for hours, I stroked
and kissed her in an access of impotent longing, trying, without hope of success, to
memorize her face. I knew that no man should sanely hope for anything more from life than
the love of such a woman and yet I knew that the gods had condemned me.
It was after 5 A.M. and the sky outside was gray and the streets were empty. I sat up
on the couch., I said, forgetting my vow, “Look, I love you.”
Her rigid body slackened and she turned her head and looked into my eyes and I saw
sadness for the first time.
I said, “I hope I haven’t hurt you.”
“You can’t hurt me,” she said quickly, reflexively, but the genius of the Greek nation
was in her voice, the nation that had created Love itself.
I said, “I don’t want to leave you tonight without kissing you.”
I felt her rage strain against my leaving, and looking at her clenched jaw and
Medean stare, I knew that, soon, I would be forced to choose between staying forever or
leaving forever. I reached across the paradox of space and time, and with a reasoned kiss
asked for understanding and forgiveness. But my bones knew the grief of Medea and her
longing.

Chapter 24

The light which puts out our eyes is darkness to us. Only that day dawns to us to
which we are awake.

Walden.

I walked along the gangway towards the light and entered the forecastle, navigating
the steep and narrow stairwell that led down into the large room where the party was.
A funky little band was playing at the far end of the room. It was hot as hell in there.
The band wore red shirts with ridiculous looking sequins.
I instinctively and disdainfully looked away from her passionate eyes, and when I
looked back, in curiosity, she was staring at the floor with the same flashing, wild, dark eyes.
Her face was pale and her long black hair, streaked with gray, was the only thing about her
that I still liked.
I had barely thought about her since I stumbled onto the two of them, together, in
bed that night. I was curious and felt the urge to talk, but I was certain that it was unhealthy
curiosity and so I avoided her eyes.
Florence’s friend, Marsha, was sitting next to her and I was grateful that she
pretended not to see me.
Turnbull was standing with his back to me and he was talking to Tex, one of those
Texans who never leaves Texas, in appearance, accent and even first name, but rarely goes
back. I had met him once before and we had made small talk about my birthplace, Lubbock.
He recognized me and nodded.
I walked towards them, apprehensively, because Turnbull still owed me an ounce of
marijuana and he had promised to have it, but he had promised twice before. However, Tex
was his supplier and I was optimistic.
A voice came from nowhere, “Hey Jack.”
Pinson was sitting in the corner, to my right, behind me, with Tilly. I was surprised
to hear his voice. I turned around and waved. He motioned me over. He asked, “Flo
couldn’t make it?”
Tilly knew that Florence and I were probably finished. She looked at me as if we
were sharing a secret.
I said, “She’s in Connecticut ... or maybe New York, I don’t know.”
Tilly said, “She called this afternoon and said she wouldn’t be able to make it in
time for the party.”
I was hurt because she had telephoned Tilly and not me. Chris reached for Tilly’s
hand and instead of offering it to him, she put her arm around his shoulder, jauntily, like a
comrade. I was surprised at their new intimacy.
I asked, “Where’s Billy?”
She said, “He’s with Vida.”
 I said, “I don’t see him.” I turned to where I had just seen Vida. With her back to
Vida, Marsha was talking to a young Filipino woman whom I’d never seen before. Vida
looked agitated and pretended not to notice us. Suddenly, she looked up and caught my eye.
I smiled in recognition, gave a little wave and looked away.
I said, “She’s sitting over there alone.”
“They were together a few minutes ago.”
The galley door swung open and a man fell through it, backwards onto the floor.
The band stopped playing, momentarily, and a large, bearded man stuck his head through
the door, pointed his finger at the man on the floor, and told him not to mess with his
woman. The man didn’t get up and the door banged shut.
The band started up again. Turnbull and Tex helped the man to his feet and then
held him up by the arms. They had to hold him back from going into the galley but it wasn’t
difficult because he was drunk. He argued with them for a few minutes and then,
precipitously, he sunk into himself and gave up.
Arm in arm, they escorted him towards the stairs. When they got near I produced a
small waive, at about belt level. When they passed us and on their way to the stairs,
Turnbull made the motion of taking a hit from a joint. He leaned his head towards mine, put
his hand near his mouth and said in a low voice, “It’s in my cabin. But we’ve got to get
Benny home first.”
Benny decided, again, that he didn’t want to go home and there were more words.
While they were dragging him towards the stairs Turnbull turned and yelled to me over the
music, “I should be back in about a half an hour.”
I said, “No problem.”
They struggled up the stairs and disappeared through the door.
Jack couldn’t stand the tension of making small talk, the Iranian woman’s sensual
eyes, the loss of Florence, Marsha’s lesbian aggressiveness, the red-sequined shirts of the
band members or the lousy music.
Helen couldn’t get a baby sitter and therefore couldn’t come to the party but she had
invited him to her apartment after the party. He decided to go to her apartment and return to
the boat, later, for the marijuana.

People had either gone home or they were sprawled out on the deck of the ship or
they were sleeping in the various rooms below.
Turnbull went to his cabin and discovered the Iranian woman there, drunk, sleeping
on the bottom bunk. A bottle of gin had emptied its contents onto the sheets and the cabin
reeked of it. The bottle was open, next to an outstretched hand and it was obvious that she
had drunk herself unconscious.
She was wearing a miniskirt, which exposed her thighs all the way to her panties.
He sat on the bed and asked her, in a quiet voice, what she was doing in his cabin. To his
surprise she answered but with an unintelligible moan.
He caressed her legs and she made no effort to resist him. He raised her miniskirt
and without much ceremony took from her, in her semiconscious state, what his girlfriend
hadn’t given him at the party: anal sex.
During the act that was devoid of passion or even interest, her bowels loosened and
an enormous amount of shit exploded onto his thighs and pants. He cursed and roared and
finally, realizing the impossibility of cleaning himself or the cabin, left her there and took an
impromptu swim in the Alameda estuary. He climbed down the ladder into the cold water
with all of his clothes on, at 2:30 in the morning. When he emerged from his swim, he took
off his pants and shoes, went into the kitchen, drank another quart of Rainier Ale and fell
asleep next to the refrigerator.

Jack arrived back at the Basil Hall at 3:47 A.M., by the luminous hands of his
father’s Elgin, World War II, flight watch. Bodies were sprawled all over the boat, sleeping.
It was one of the hottest October twenty first’s on record.
He sat in a deck chair, in the tropical warmth, and lit up his last joint. If the estuary
wasn’t beautiful, then the marijuana made it seem so. He smoked it slowly, listening to the
snoring, the slow, rhythmic creaking of the boat and the other sounds of night.
He got up suddenly, feeling the sad sweetness of the loss of Florence. He descended
the stairs, into the forecastle, and into the gloom where more bodies were sprawled in the
warm summer night. All of the windows were open and the air of the Alameda estuary
filled the forecastle.
While coming down the staircase, the first person he saw was Marsha, sleeping in
the arms of the Filipino woman. He threaded his way through the bodies, heading for
Turnbull’s cabin, looking for the Marijuana.
When he got to Turnbull’s cabin he discovered Vida lying in the lower bunk, snoring
quietly. She was curled up, knees to chest, with her back to him. Her dress was pulled up
over her hips and she wasn’t wearing panties. The tangle of her thick, curly, gray-black hair
fell onto the bunk below.
He was relieved that Turnbull wasn’t there. He couldn’t find the light switch so he
lit the small kerosene lamp with the multicolored glass and began looking for the marijuana.
He found a large coffee can of cleaned marijuana and put about half of it in his
jacket pocket. It was what Turnbull owed him.
The odor of gin and shit suddenly filled his nostrils and he made a movement to
leave the fetid air of the cabin when he stepped on a small bag of rocks and slipped. He fell
against the bunk and his shirt and pants were splashed with shit. He picked up the gray
colored balloon on the floor. It was tied together with a tight knot. He could feel small,
regular stones through the surgical rubber.
He started to gag. He put the bag in his pocket, rushed out into the open air, leaned
over the banister and threw up into the estuary below.

In his car, about half way home, at a stop light, Jack feels a big shake. At least a 6.0
on the Richter Scale, he thinks. The streets are deserted. Waiting at the stoplight of 14th
Street and East 12th, he can almost make out the house that Jack London grew up in to the
left and down the hill from him. It is unknown by the Oakland public and unmarked.
Across the street, and to the left, off Northumberland Street, he sees the Jamestown
Harbor Bar, with its unlighted red neon sign shaking in the dark. There are voices in the
night, screams, babies crying...
When he pulls into the driveway at 60th street, he can hear sirens wailing, faintly, in
the distance. He takes his clothes off and puts them in the bathtub, steps into the tub and
takes a shower, letting the water rinse the shit out of the clothes at his feet. He rings them
out and rinses them twice, fills the bathtub with water and leaves them to soak.
 Twenty seven uncut diamonds. He doesn’t know the value of diamonds but he
knows they are big, and that they are worth a lot of money. Very carefully, he washes them
over a sieve in the bathroom sink.
Superstitiously, he dresses, gets into his Volkswagen and takes them to a place where
no one could possibly find them, returns, and falls onto his mattress on the floor. He falls
asleep almost immediately.
Pinson and Tilly wake him up. They are standing at the foot of the bed. Pinson has
his arm around her.

The morning was gray and the room damp. The sun had come up but was still
hanging out somewhere east of Mount Diablo and the Bay Area fog had moved in through
his open window.
Jack didn’t know where he was. He could make out Pinson, crouching over the
mattress, leaning towards him, and feel his outstretched hand, shaking his shoulder. Tilly
was standing behind him, with a blue US Air Force overcoat draped over her shoulders. She
was four inches taller than Pinson, but the coat was so long that it almost touched the floor.
She was still wearing her red velvet hot pants and her bare legs made his member stir,
reflexively.
Pinson said, “Big news dad. Wake up.”
Jack stayed way back in delta for awhile, hallucinating them, the overcoat, the velvet
hot pants, the legs. Pinson straightened up and stood next to Tilly.
Suddenly, Jack remembered: Vida, the diamonds. He pushed himself up onto his
elbows.
“What’s up?”
“The Basil Hall burned down dad. Sunk.”
“Holy Shit.”
They stood there, staring down at him. Jack smiled up at them, and said, offering
them the truth of his feelings,
“Good. I suppose Turnbull did it to collect the insurance money. It was nothing but
a pile of rotten planks anyway.”
They weren’t amused. Jack asked, “Was anyone hurt?”
Tilly drew close to Pinson and he put his arm around her waist. She said, “Just the
Iranian woman.”
“How badly?”
Pinson said, “She was burned to death, dad.”
Jack’s body lost any feeling of connection. Adrenaline poured into every muscle but
there was no where to run, except up, through the gray-white ceiling,
“Shit, Fuck...” He rolled from the mattress onto the floor, and banged one of his
fists helplessly on the floor.
Pinson sprung to the floor and grabbed his shoulders, “Take it easy man.”
Jack offered no resistance. He said, “She didn’t deserve that.”
Pinson said, “They just pulled her out of the Estuary, about an hour ago. We were
worried about you Jack. Man, is it good to see you!”
“Me?” Two lines of tears had spurted down onto his cheeks, from the outside
corners of his eyes, across his sideburns. “Why me?”
“She talked about you last night. We thought you were with her in the cabin.”
 “Well...” He let his voice trail off.
Pinson continued, “She was drunk, and she talked about you and the Mets.”
“The Mets?”
Jack swung himself from the floor, back onto the mattress and lay on his back,
holding his head with his hands, eyes closed.
Pinson said, “She talked about Tommy Agee and Gerry Gentry. And Kranepool.
She wanted to know if you had watched the game.”
Tilly said, “She really had the hots for you Jack.”
Jack spat the words, “She hated my guts man. She had the hots for...” He looked
into the middle of her face, with all of his feeling.
Tilly said, “She was drunk on gin. She wanted to come to the party but nobody
could figure out why. Maybe it was to see you. She talked crazy all night. Even Turnbull
took pity on her.”
Jack wasn’t able to say anything. She looked at him out of the corner of her eye,
maybe just to make sure that he was still there, and then went on talking, like a morning rain
squall, “I told her Florence wasn’t coming back. That you two were finished. And she
wanted to come to the party but I told her not to come. She wouldn’t listen. She talked
Billy into bringing her. And she wouldn’t stop talking about Baseball. Everyone thought she
had lost her mind...”
She stared at Jack defensively. Suddenly she looked at the ceiling in exasperation
and spit out the word, “baseball!” Then she looked at Pinson, waiting for him to say
something.
Pinson said, “She said some stuff Jack. I can’t remember exactly, but she kept
saying that no one had ever kissed her like you had.”
Jack exploded, “Cut the shit Pinson. Stop lying... Get to the point. What are you
driving at?”
“Calm down. I’m serious man. That’s what she said.” Pinson fixed Jack with his,
Basque-peasant eyes and then continued in a very soft voice, “She kept talking about
Agee’s catch.”
He paused to make sure Jack had really heard what he said. “I’m not shitting you
man. Tommy Agee’s catch. The first one, she said, not the second one. She said, “Make
sure you tell him it was the first catch.” She made me promise to tell you it was the first
catch. I just about got down on my knees and swore to her that I would tell you that. But I
didn’t know what she was talking about until this morning. The Dick told me just a couple
of hours ago. Did you see the game?”
“I saw it.” Jack said it slowly, like a man waiting for an execution, his own maybe
or someone else’s.
Pinson said, “He must have made one hell of a catch.”
“He did.”
Tilly looked up at the ceiling with exasperated contempt.
Jack said, “There was no way I was going to miss that World Series. No way.”
Jack refused to waste his reasons on them. So he just said, “Agee is probably the
best baseball player on the planet. Last night, yesterday, this morning. I mean, alive,
playing baseball now, today. It was just... I mean... surreal… But...” He couldn’t finish his
sentence, couldn’t compose his thoughts.
“Get ready for this one dad. Hold onto the bed.”
 Jack tried to get ready.
“She said the catch was like your kiss. She must have said it ten times. Maybe
twenty. It was embarrassing. I’m sorry. I thought she was just drunk and...” He paused to
let it sink in. “Well, maybe she was just drunk. But that’s what she said. The catch was like
your kiss.”

I must have been visibly stunned, shaken. Because Pinson said, “I wouldn’t make
up something like that man.” His voice softened. “She said the first catch was like the time
you kissed her in Berkeley, but that the second one was nothing, like sex with someone you
don’t love. We all felt sorry for her because she wouldn’t say it once quietly and shut up,
she had to make sure that everyone on the boat heard it five times. Nobody had seen the
game so we didn’t know what she was talking about. We thought she was making it all up.
All of it.”
I couldn’t form any words, I couldn’t say anything.
Tilly said, “She was slobbering drunk. It was embarrassing. She couldn’t stand up.
We tried to make her go to bed, but she got hysterical. It was disgusting....”
Pinson said, “She told me that she wanted to keep her eye on us to make sure we
didn’t do anything.”
Tilly frowned at him. She said sharply, “She ruined the party.”
Pinson said, his voice rising, defending himself, “That is exactly what she said!”
Tilly yelled, “She was blubbering drunk Chris! She didn’t know what she was
saying.”
My mouth must have fallen open in disbelief, I can’t remember exactly how I was
feeling.
Pinson said, “It’s true dad, she was really crying in her beer...”
Tilly said, “It’s too bad that she died. But somebody has to say it. She was crazy.
Nobody liked her. I told her to stop calling me. She called other people too. I couldn’t get
her off my back.”
Pinson tried to break the curtain of my frozen grief, grief for everything, grief that
was piled up, on top of and around the dead Iranian-Sioux woman. He said, “Man, it’s
good to see you alive. Do you realize that they are still dragging the Alameda Estuary for
your body! You didn’t answer the phone dad! I was trying to figure out what to say to your
mother.”
“Thank God you didn’t call my mother. She would have died of a heart attack.” I
turned to Tilly, “You must be pretty ... shocked?”
“Me?”
“I...”
Tilly said, “I just told you. I hardly knew her name. The last time I saw her was at
that party when you met her for the first time. When you two were watching TV and you
made Florence so jealous.”
I looked at Pinson in disbelief. Pinson motioned to the living room with his head
and said, “You’d better call the police and tell them you’re alive.”
Tilly scratched her nose with her stump. I noticed that her legs were, undeniably,
magnificent. I hated her, but I couldn’t deny that. I felt happy for Pinson. Obviously, he
was finally going to get some. I said, “Tilly, you should have been a sprinter.”
The line that was her mouth pulled like a bow.
 Pinson said, “I was there when they found the body. They wanted me to try to
identify it. She was charred down to the bone but I knew it was her by the bracelet that she
was wearing. She showed it to me last night. She said the writing on it was a verse from
Hafiz. She showed me his name in Persian script, under the line of verse. I couldn’t make
out the name, but I remembered it. The guy from Homicide said that the Coroner’s Office
will probably wait for the dental records to make a positive identification. But it’s just
routine.”
Tilly said, “They think the fire started in Turnbull’s cabin. That she must have been
sleeping in there and was overcome by the smoke.”
Pinson said, “She was carrying an almost full bottle of Gin when I last saw her.
And she was already dead drunk.”
Tilly said, “She didn’t know how to drink either. I never saw her drink more than a
couple of glasses of wine before. She must’ve gone into Turnbull’s cabin and passed out.
They said the fire started in his cabin. It was caused by an electrical short that was caused
by the earthquake.”
She looked out of the window and added, “I thought the earthquake was a large boat
passing us, and went back to sleep. The boat went up so fast, that no one had time to do
anything except get off. In five minutes it was a blazing inferno.”
She suppressed a giggle and looked out the window again.
Pinson said, “It took less than a half hour for it to sink.”
Tilly shuddered.
I remembered the kerosene lamp. The phone rang. Pinson got it. Tilly and I were
left alone in my bedroom. I asked her, “Where was Billy in all of this? I thought he took
her to the party?”
She said, “Maybe she just used him as a way to get to the party. I don’t know. She
started drinking almost immediately after they arrived. He went home to his folks’ place in
Orinda at about eleven.” She paused. “It might be the reason she was so disappointed. I
mean, I don’t think it was just you Jack.”
We were silent for a moment. I was in a black hole and I could barely hear her
voice.
She continued, “She told me that she wanted to go to the party because she wanted
to get laid, but then he left...” She paused for a moment. “I think Billy was afraid of her.
Iranians are different from us. They’re more... animalistic.”
Pinson came back into the bedroom. He said, “It was the police. I told them you’re
alive.”
“Thanks. It feels good.”
Pinson said, “Why don’t you shut this goddammed window?”
“What window? ... Oh... that one.......... Why?”
“It’s colder than a witch’s tit in here, that’s why.”
“I’ve tried. It’s stuck.”
Tilly said, “Why don’t we all three try shutting it together?” She let her overcoat
slide off her shoulders, pirouetted like a dancer, caught it in mid-air, falling, and placed in on
the bed at my feet.
Without asking permission, Pinson used my brass water pipe to pound the paint
loose from the edges. Then, with three of us hanging on it, and hitting it with our palms, it
went down with a bang.
 I said, “Well, fuck a duck.” I went back to the mattress on the floor, and sat down. I
said, “I still can’t believe she’s dead.”
Tilly said, “She asked me why you left the party.”
I asked, “What did you tell her?”
“I said I didn’t know.”
I couldn’t hold it back any more. I said, “Somehow I thought you two were...”
“Were what?”
Silence. Pinson looked at her questioningly.
I said, sharply, looking into the center of her antic face, “You know what I mean...”
She looked back at Pinson defensively. “I’m not a lesbian. Besides, even if I were I
wouldn’t go for a woman like that. I mean... I have my pride... anyway she’s not my type.
I barely knew her... You have to believe me.”
She looked at me with panicky eyes. My silence became her prosecuting attorney.
She took the stand, “I don’t know how to say this because its sounds so horrible, but
basically... I didn’t respect her... at all. She was... She lied about everything. She was
capable of anything. She was just basically... low-life. An Iranian, a...”
My mouth must have been hanging open.
She continued, in an intimate tone, “They’re all like that Jack. They’re different
from us. That’s why we all thought she was lying. Making it all up.”
All I could say was, “She was beautiful. She was...”
She looked away in disgust. She said, “Shit. I feel sorry for you if you think that.”
I said, “There was something special about her. But I didn’t know how to...
Whatever I did wasn’t... enough... that’s for sure... it was bad. She ran away. That’s why I
can’t believe what she said... I know that... but...” I slipped into incoherence.
Pinson said, “It’s not your fault she’s dead, dad. Forget it.” He walked towards the
bathroom.
I said, “I’m a worthless son of a bitch, Chris, a worthless son of a bitch.”
They stared down at me.
I said, “I don’t understand women. Some of them want you to... and some of
them... I should have told her that she was as pretty as that clothesline double. The one that
Agee hit that night. It turned the Mets around. One hit, man. We both thought the Mets
were finished before that hit. Maybe she’d still be alive...”
Tilly’s cold eyes stopped me. She shook her head in disgust. I said to her, “I guess
I can’t understand what was going on between you two either.” She sneered at me. I
thought, “You cunt-slashing Narcissistic bitch.”
Pinson yelled from the bathroom, over the noise of his thundering waterfall of piss,
“What’s this mess in the bathtub?”
“Nothing. I was trying to wash... the shit...”
Tilly’s eyes blazed back at me. I fell back onto the bed, onto my back. Her insolent,
magnificent legs were all over me. I mumbled, almost in self-defense, “Hate the shit
Tillotson, hate the shit.”
Her mouth tensed into the crooked, smirking line again. I narrowed my eyes,
pretending to close them. Pinson flushed the toilet and came up behind her and put his hand
on her neck and bent way over behind her back, looking appreciatively at her from behind.
The sun was up, and the room was getting warm.
 I said, feeling like Poncho Villa and narrowing my eyes like a Mexican
Revolutionary, “I want to eeet yore fokking legks Teely. I want to eeet yore legks.”
Pinson said, “It’s been a night man. For all of us. Let’s get some shut-eye.” He
stepped behind her again and his eyes flashed in panic, as he moved his right index finger in
and out of a hole that he formed with his left hand.
I said to Pinson, “Watch out for the stub, dad. She’ll butt-fuck you if you turn your
back on her.”
Her good fist formed into a claw and she looked like she was getting ready to jump
on me. She hissed, “He’s as crazy as that goddammed Iranian bitch. Let’s get out of here.”
Pinson slapped her hard on the leg. There was a frozen silence, her eyes blazed and
she disappeared from the room, like an enraged dancer.
“Bitch,” I growled behind her.
Pinson said, “Don’t blow it for me dad. You didn’t even know that Iranian woman.
Anyway she’s dead. You can’t bring her back.”
“Don’t mind me. I’m just... well, I’m meditating on... a diamond... or two... or even
three. Or...”
“For all of your lost ladies?”
“Maybe I’m thinking about some lost baseball diamonds. I don’t know. Some of
the baseball diamonds I’ve known.”
“Well, she’s heading next door with the juiciest cunt attached to the best legs this
side of the Mississippi. And I’m going to follow her over there and get some.” He laughed,
and added, softly, “Eat your heart out.”
I replied, and it sounded more ominous than I had intended, “I should warn you,
Chris.”
“I’ll get a shot after I’m finished, dad. Don’t worry.” His eyes were laughing.
“I caught the two of them eating pussy. That’s all. No big deal. They didn’t see me.
Over there.” I nodded in the direction of the house next door. Pinson raised his arm as if he
were a lawyer in court waving away an irrelevant and stupid objection.
I said, “The Iranian woman. You should have seen them, it was really awesome.
My come is still on the rug.”
He laughed, silently, with his eyes. He said, “So that’s what you’re so exercised
about. Don’t worry Jack, I won’t let a cunt come between us, if that’s what you mean.
Maybe for a few weeks but... a man can only eat so much pussy.”
That got a crooked smile out of me and I said, “Just don’t turn your back on her.”
“I wasn’t planning to.” He added, “That reminds me, Turnbull wanted me to tell
you that he got an offer for his novel. Big bucks. They’re even talking about movie rights.”
“No shit. Well, I hope it doesn’t turn him into an asshole.”
“It won’t, he already is an asshole.”
I smiled and waved him on, “Go get her while she’s still hot, Christian. But leave
your name at the door.”
He exited with a subdued smile.
I yelled, “Hey Pinson,” He ducked his head through the doorway.
“If I was a cave man, I’d wrestle you, out in front, to see who gets to fuck her.”
“I’m glad you’re a civilized man.”
“I am a civilized man, but I do think the slap on her leg did her some good.”
 Pinson’s grin broadened and he turned around abruptly, and went next door. For a
few seconds, I couldn’t remember where I hid the diamonds. It gave me quite a scare.