Butterworth and Moses explored the gnawing whispers of what other “meaningless” affairs Jay had withheld. Moses found no portents in any other past affairs, hidden or not, that could imperil their future; that responsibility fell upon his insecurities.
During one afternoon session, Butterworth, in an uninterrupted and evidently prepared speech, dismantled Moses’s equivocations with unsentimental precision.
“Your parents’ abandonment, your mother’s death, Jay’s dalliance with Alchemy — all are fixed actions beyond your control. You possess the power to change your perceptions and therefore their effects. Knowledge is power, but there are times when knowledge is painful and counterproductive. Is this the right time for you to answer some hard questions? Would it have served you better to be raised by an unstable Salome and an emotionally ill-equipped father? Would you be better off never to have met Jay? Or screwed her and left her and been alone when you became ill? Would you feel more masculine if you’d balled those coeds? You’ve chosen not to initiate a meeting with either of your biological parents. You’ve chosen to stay with Jay. The manner in which one perceives the past can alter the way one exists and acts in the future. When you got sick, you acted. You saved yourself. You can do the same with your past and your future.
“It will take time. The unconscious, with its diabolical intricacies, is the greatest trickster of all. This will be no Pauline conversion. Shedding habitual, unhealthy behavioral patterns, letting go of both the trivial and large hurts we all suffer, the envy of what others have or have done, and thus reordering perceptions and gaining acceptance — this takes immense time and incalculable effort.”
Moses, shell-shocked by Butterworth’s barrage, could only nod along with a spate of “I knows” and “I sees.” In time, he accepted the challenges. Butterworth was right. It was not an epiphanic journey, more like a never-ending Escher maze with no destination in sight. But Butterworth’s methods appeared to be more than Band-Aids on open wounds. Rarely did a new daymare slip through the sluice that emptied unmasked fears into his conscious mind. Months passed without falling under the spell of previous daymares. He slept less fitfully most nights, when Butterworth didn’t call.
On a Sunday morning in October 2007, as he sat down at the kitchen table to eat his whole wheat bagel with light cream cheese, Moses picked up the Los Angeles Times. As was his habit, he read through the news section, then flipped to the Calendar section. His eyes immediately fell upon on a photograph of Alchemy and Salome, arm in arm in the Hammer Museum, under a headline that announced Salome’s upcoming retrospective.
The moment of reckoning had arrived. Moses began hyperventilating.
Too agitated to wait until Jay awoke, he marched into what they still called their bedroom and hovered beside their bed, like an impatient child waiting for his mother to make him breakfast, staring and shuffling the paper until she reluctantly opened her eyes.
“What?” she mumbled sleepily.
He read aloud the opening paragraph. “You knew, didn’t you?”
“I got a mailer with listings for upcoming shows last month. No idea about the article.”
Moses bit into his bottom lip with his front teeth; he wanted to lash out. He couldn’t. She’d heeded his wishes to keep mum about what she heard about the exhibit unless he inquired.
“Do you want to see her?” Jay asked as she put on her bathrobe and slippers.
“How can I not?”
“I have a plan.”
“A plan would be good.”
“If you want to wait until late January, the private opening is usually a few days before the public opening. Let’s go as Mr. and Mrs. Bernes, art collectors. You can meet her and then see what you want to do next.”
Moses’s anger wilted. “That sounds reasonable. I’m going to call my brother.”
While the Insatiables toured the world, Alchemy and Moses e-mailed often. They limited their correspondence to politics and culture, occasionally mental and physical states, but avoided intimate confessionals. As far as Moses knew, Salome and Nathaniel still resided in New York.
Now that the Insatiables had returned to L.A., Moses and Alchemy were planning to meet for dinner at a restaurant in Pasadena sometime before the Insatiables took off again in a few weeks. Moses didn’t want to wait. He called Alchemy. His ire palpable, Moses didn’t begin the conversation with preliminary niceties.
“Alchemy, I deserved a heads-up. You know I scour the papers.”
“I assumed you’d decided not to deal.”
“That’s bullshit. You should have told me.” In forming his new Livability Quotient, Moses had chosen to believe the show would never happen.
“Yeah, I’m sorry. I fucked up.”
“Yes, you sure did.”
“I can’t undo it. She’s gone but she’ll be back. You want to know when? Ruggles has retired, but he’s willing to come out here if you decide to meet her. But Mose, we, you and I, still need to meet before I take off.”
“Why?”
“ ’Cause I have some stuff to talk to you about that might be better said in person.”
“No, spill it now.”
He paused. “Mose, well, fuck it — the Enquirer is threatening to do a piece about my sex life and … Jay, shit … They claim they got proof. No idea what they call proof. Mose, I wish all of this could’ve gone another way.”
Moses simply said, “Me, too,” and hung up the phone.
37 MEMOIRS OF A USELESS GOOD-FOR-NUTHIN’
A Room of One’s Ownership, 1998 — 1999
It took a while for me and Absurda to stop doing the tiptoe two-step and become two dudes playin’ in the band, able to party like the messy breakup never happened — and for me to feel like I wasn’t gonna get tossed on my ass, outta the band and back in the deep end of the shitpool. Mostly them years was like one never-ending recording-touring session interrupted by some notorious incidents. We made five new records between ’93 and 2000 and played more than a thousand shows. Some critics who loved us at first dissed us later, saying we was lucky to make it before the music biz fragmented and we only popped so big as a reaction to the synth-mope blandness of the ’80s. Big yawn to them. Alchy was a constant geyser of songs, semen, and ideas. I used to think he must’ve been cranking up. Meth, ’roids, something. Nope. He’d often go three, four nights, gettin’ maybe two hours of sleep a night before his eyes were protruding like burnt popcorn kernels and you couldn’t mumble hello without him being disputatious. That’s when he’d pop some tranqs.
Alchy’s relaxation is sex games, and I can only partake after me and Absurda have uncoupled. I ain’t usually a group sex guy, and I’ve stayed away from the porniest details of his sexcapades, but after a show in Dallas, this “mom” who Alchemy sexed before and three very hot and very young cowgirls want to entertain me, Lux, and Alchemy. We check what we call the Miranda Wrights of the young ones. For you who won’t admit they watch cartoons, Miranda Wright was a female cop on Disney’s show Bonkers. We use that as code when we think a potential may be too young or just plain trouble. The mom swears for them. Marty delivers a couple of grams. We get high and then Alchy says to the mom, “Come hither,” so she strips and sits on the edge of the bed. He reaches into his suitcase and pulls out a rare Thomas Green beauty from the 1700s. For a lefty, Alchy sure loved his guns — for lots of uses. He points it at his head. “Savant roulette, anyone?” I freeze. Lux, who seen the sex stuff before, still gets twitchy. Alchy pulls the trigger. Zip. Mom slips the smooth barrel, which is like six inches long, into her mouth and starts gumming it. “ ’Happiness is a warm gun,” he croons. Mom falls back on the bed and grabs the gun. Alchy kneels down and his tongue goes into overdrive and she’s still suckin’ ’til she starts coming. Fuckin’ freaky.