Every once in a while there’s a movie on Channel 2 at four-thirty in the morning with Fred Allen in it, and I wait up and watch it. It’s usually terrible, but Allen is fascinating to watch. You can see him acting out his dilemma, being a basically nice guy who doesn’t want to hurt anybody’s feelings but who thinks he and all the other people around him are involved in a piece of shit, which they are.
Which aren’t we all.
The movie I saw last night was called Point Blank, which could also be the title of my life, particularly if you reverse the order of the words, and it was about Lee Marvin being a gangster of some kind and the gangster syndicate owes him ninety-three thousand dollars and he wants it. The whole movie is about him trying to get his ninety-three thousand dollars. It was sort of spoiled for me because all the way through I kept thinking, Lee, what if you get the ninety-three thousand dollars? Do you think that’ll make you happy? It won’t. You’ll just spend it, and then next month you’ll need ninety-three thousand dollars more, and you’ll have to go through all this shit all over again, and after a while you’ll just give up and move to San Francisco and jump in the bay, because San Francisco has the highest suicide rate in the nation, and I know why. It’s because when people are desperate they move somewhere else, and because the sun goes from east to west so do people, and eventually they wind up in Los Angeles, where they either go crazy or to San Francisco. If they go crazy they can live in Los Angeles for the rest of their lives, but if they go to San Francisco there’s no place to go after that, the only thing westward is the ocean, so plunk they go. So forget the ninety-three thousand dollars, Lee, you and me and all of us we’re just rats in a maze, the only thing to do is stop the world I want to get off. Therefore, Lee, go to San Francisco, go directly to San Francisco, do not pass Go, do not collect ninety-three thousand dollars.
The movie left it open, at the end, whether or not he got the money, which was the truest thing about it. Anyway, after Betsy and I made up we thought it might be a good idea if we went out to a movie, take a break from work (no, she doesn’t know the truth, she thinks I have two chapters done) and come back to it refreshed and with a better attitude. I said fine, and this Point Blank was playing at the Floral in Floral Park so we drove over through the rain and saw it. We got Angie to baby-sit, and the girl in the movie with Lee Marvin was Angie Dickinson, which is one of those pointless concidences life is full of, and I don’t even know why I mention it.
Well, I suppose because I laid Angie. Her father drops her off here when she’s baby-sitting for us, but I drive her home, and a couple months ago we started in necking, me feeling her up and like that, and this new generation of kids doesn’t seem to mind doing its own grabbing. I mean, the first time I felt her fumbling around between my legs I about fell over. I’m not used to the girl being aggressive. She’s seventeen, she’s only eight years younger than me, but I feel ancient with her. She’s part of the hippie generation, which I just missed, and I miss having missed it, if you know what I mean. Anyway, the point is she gave me a blow job a couple weeks ago, and tonight I finally got it into her. What a nice little body. We were in the back seat of the Buick, all cramped up, and she still managed to be great. Smooth legs, nice tight ass, good muscles. I lasted, which is sometimes a problem, and she had a good loud come. I can hardly wait to have her baby-sit again.
In the meantime, Betsy and I had made up and the idea was we were going to put the icing on the cake in bed, so driving back from Angie’s place I was a little worried. Would I get it up twice in a row? But it was all right. It had been a couple weeks since we’d made it, so Betsy was kind of horny too, so the whole thing worked out just fine. Except, of course, I didn’t get back to work last night.
Today, frankly, I’m a little bitter about that, and it’s just as well she’s out of the house. She took Fred to see the parade, and I’ve got the house to myself for a few hours.
The parade, gang. It’s Thanksgiving, let’s count our blessings. Well, it’s raining, how’s that for a blessing? Raining all over the parade. And I really don’t think I’m going to make nine hundred dollars out of Dwayne and Liz, I don’t think I can write that book again.
It’s funny, but every once in a while when I’m making love to Betsy I smell Christmas trees, but seeing a Christmas tree doesn’t necessarily make me horny for Betsy.
I know why I smell Christmas trees, of course. It’s that truck of her brothers’, Birge and Johnny. Have I mentioned how Birge and Johnny make their living? They drive Christmas trees to New York.
Do I hear you say that this seems unlikely, that there’s maybe six weeks a year when there will be a call for Christmas trees to be driven to New York, and that Teamsters’ Union or no Teamsters’ Union a truck driver cannot possibly earn a year’s living in six weeks of driving Christmas trees to New York, is that what I hear you saying, partner? Then let me tell you the surprise. Inside every truck load of Christmas trees there are other things. Radios. Luggage. Television sets. Typewriters. All sorts of things like that, on their way to New York City for the Christmas season.
Stolen.
I don’t mean that Birge and Johnny steal things, because they don’t. But other people steal things, and when they do they take them to Birge and Johnny, who have a barn north of Monequois on the old Montreal road, not far from their father’s Esso station, which by the way is doing rotten business since the new Montreal highway was put in and old man Blake would love to sell the station if you’re interested. He lives at 216 Clinton Street, Monequois, New York. I don’t know the zip code. His first name is Chester.
Anyway, all year long that barn of Birge and Johnny’s fills up with stolen goods, and at Christmastime the stolen goods are packed in the truck with the Christmas trees, load after load, and all driven down to New York, and sold to some people there.
When I first heard about this I said, “Is nothing sacred?” and laughed and laughed, because I thought that was funny. Christmas being sacred, you see, but the Christmas tree actually being pagan and not part of the religious aspect, so when I said, “Is nothing sacred?” I meant it as a joke, and I myself thought the joke was very funny. Betsy didn’t. First she didn’t get it, and then when I explained it to her she didn’t think it was funny. Neither do I, looking back at it. I see the humor of what I was trying for, but I don’t think I made it.
How I got to this, I was remarking how sex with Betsy sometimes makes me smell Christmas trees, and that’s because that truck of Birge and Johnny’s, since it rarely carries anything but Christmas trees, smells like Christmas trees all year long. So the first time we had sex, in the back of her brothers’ truck on a warm May night in 1963, was with the smell of Christmas trees all around us.
Betsy was very cold-blooded in setting that up, now I come to think of it. Up to and including whispering to me, as we stretched out on the blanket in the back of the truck, “It’s okay. It’s safe.”
I didn’t know what she was talking about. “What’s safe?” I said.
“It’s a safe time of the month,” she said. “I can’t get pregnant.”
“Oh,” I said, and felt a chill finger of belated apprehension run up my back. Pregnant. I hadn’t even thought about it.