Fifteen
Petra and I were sitting on her bed saying nice things to each other. Things that people say to each other when they first meet and are having a very care-free good time. We were not serious. There was nothing serious about us. Soon I would be leaving. There was no reason for us to care about each other in any deep or meaningful way. We were nothing to each other. Two genitals that had showed up to fuck each other. Our relationship was like a roller coaster. We got on, we rode. We had fun; we got off. We were never going to be in-love. We were never going to get married and have children. I was never going to learn the most embarrassing moments of her childhood. She was never going to learn what hospital I was born in. We were never going to meet each other's parents. We would never drive across country together or visit Rome, standing together looking upon The Coliseum. We would never sit at a Waffle House, her eating a breakfast burrito, me a waffle and grits talking about the day's activities. Petra was from the south, but her Waffle House and grits days were over. She ate a lot of seaweed and rice. If she came to Youngstown, she would view the people that surrounded me as sociological animals one looked down upon; I viewed them as sociological animals too. But they were my friends and enemies. An educated white collar person couldn't hate poor people, for they were screwed and disenfranchised and that's why they acted like that. They could do that because they didn't have to be around them. They could leave and go back to their suburban neighborhood and white-collar job. I couldn't afford those feelings. I was surrounded by them, I worked with them; I was one of them. My private life was that of literature and philosophy. In the privacy of my own home I would read and write things. But my public life was that of a stumblebum working at cheap labor jobs swearing and not shaving every morning like everyone else.
When I got my first book published six years ago before sitting with Petra people thought I would eventually pick up and go to New York City and try to become a writer. I had thought that myself. I had traveled out west; I had lived in several different states before the age of 23, states as far away from Ohio as Oregon and California. New York City was only six hours away from Youngstown. When looking back on it, perhaps I should have left to New York City. I would have been surrounded by writers. I would have been doing readings and making connections. It was logical if I wanted to become a writer. I was scared though: scared of not being smart enough, of not being good enough. I was just a little boy from Ohio; I wasn't a rich kid who had been to an Ivy League college. I was no one. I was a butcher's son, a factory worker's son. I was a child of the Rust Belt. Came from blue collar lands. I was so full of dreams when I was young, I was going to go to New York City and shock everyone. I was going to make them believe that blue collar people could think and write. I didn't though. I never had the courage. I didn't go to college for years. Instead of preparing to get that intelligent and aware of my world, I sat in in my house and read Wittgenstein alone.
When people in New York City or online would tell me what good college they went to or what their parents did. I felt little. I felt out of place. It was not my world. I felt like I didn't have a right to be there talking to them. I didn't belong. It was not my world, it was theirs. I was merely a guest. In Ohio I felt like a person, a participant in events. I was of Youngstown, I could say with pride, “My mother worked for GM.” I could say my name was Baradat, and I was related to the people who owned Baradat's Market and they would say they used to shop there and they loved their pigs in the blanket. I had a link to the land. I was anchored; I was a citizen in Youngstown. In New York City I was a subject. I received privileges from the white collar literary world, not rights.
Petra's cell phone rang, she picked it up and looked at the number and said, “It's John Walters. It's for you.” She handed me the phone.
I pressed down on the little rubber bottom and said, “Hello, John.”
“Benny.”
“Yes.”
“The shoot is tonight at Hu's apartment in Bushwick.”
“How long is it?”
“Three hours.”
“That's a long time,” I said.
“It's only fucking three hours. You can do it.”
“I don't know if I can do anything,” I said.
“I'm sure you'll survive.”
“Okay, what time is it?”
“6 p.m.”
“Okay.”
“We have to do an interview after. There's going to be two people with cameras, and then we are supposed to meet someone after to do the interview.”
“Okay, that sounds good.”
“All right, can you handle that?”
“I can handle it.”
“Let me talk to Petra for a minute.”
I handed the cell phone to Petra.
John Walters was a young man, around 19 or 20 from Philadelphia. He was of working class background too. He had spent his high school years reading Lydia Davis and Lorrie Moore and I assume feeling terrible in his bedroom. He had a lot of emotion and a complete disdain for anything serious. He worked as a dog walker and a personal assistant to a woman from Kansas who had a trust fund. The woman from Kansas did nothing all day but write silly articles for lame magazines and talk out her ass. He would get her coffee and sushi for a high price. The woman acted like it was a privilege to serve her. John Walters didn't go to college. He didn't go because nothing really mattered to him. Suicide seemed for him so imminent; no one even suggested that he attend. Everyone was waiting for him to kill himself. He wore outfits from the thrift store. The outfits were all appalling. He was overall a very appalling individual. On his blog there were many photos of Fran Drescher looking sexy. Unintelligent vulgar people assume movies with cannibals eating people, or adults having sex with minors, were shocking. But John Walters knew what shocking really was, it was things like Fran Drescher. That American society had allowed people like her and Tom Cruise to ever become famous for they wouldn't have become famous, major influences, on our society if there wasn't something heinous about the culture itself. He enjoyed showing people how truly sick they were. How they worshiped the sexiness of Fran Drescher. The question that John Walters posed to everyone he met was, “Why do anything if the apex of human development is Fran Drescher?” There was something godless and conquering about John Walters. He was not going to sit with you and quietly discuss the Supreme Court decisions leading up to Roe v. Wade or Talcott Parsons but he would make an impression. He was the living embodiment of America. His family had been for years and they were real Americans. Hu Chin was a first generation immigrant, I was a third, Petra was a first, but John Walter's history goes deep into the history of America. His family had come over in the 1700s. They were Protestants from England. His ancestors had fought in the Revolutionary War, the War of 1812; they fought the Indians. They fought in the Civil War, World War 1 and 2 and lived through The Great Depression. He was a product of 300 years of American sociology. He was loud and conquering.
Sixteen
Petra and I screwed all that day. We went to Rockefeller Center and looked at the ice skaters. It cost too much to ice skate so we just took pictures. We went to a bakery and the post office. We made jokes, laughed and touched each other. We didn't grope. We were too professional and well-ordered for public displays of affection.
Night came and snow started to fall on New York City. It was pretty. I liked coming out of the subway into Brooklyn to see snow falling. New York City was always better in the winter. Everyone had their nice coats and hats on. People had expensive gloves on. Everyone looked normal and okay. In the summer New York City looks like hell. There is something horrible about seeing a lot of rich people sweat.