When in doubt: deflect.
“I got an A in my Frisbee class last term,” I brag. “It met five times a week at 8 a.m. and I showed up every day and I was never tardy. I can accomplish just about any Frisbee throw known to mankind. And I was voted MVP on my ultimate Frisbee team.”
Mom reaches across the table and touches my arm. “Honey, are you all right?”
I look at her hand and think about the question. “Yeah. Yes. I’m ok.” I reconsider the question. “I mean, I’m lonely, I guess. And I’m mad. Of course I’m mad. I was mad before they sent me back here. You know. Once you get to a certain point in your life, you can’t retool the circuitry, right?” I clear my throat. “It’s ok though. I’m ok. I mean, I’m sad, I’m dejected, I’m agitated, I’m rancorous, I’m resentful, I’m hateful, I’m unflappable, I’m hostile, I’m ridiculous, I’m blue, I’m pathological, I’m crepuscular, I’m tyrannical, I’m confused, I’m maleficent, I’m fanatical, I’m bushwhacked, I’m moravaginean, I’m non est hic, I’m. . I was going to say uxorious, but I’m not that. The kids are all right, though, I think.“ I pause. Nod. “Everything’s fine. I’m anti-oedipal and my muscles are very hard and big and vascular for a guy my age. That’s all that matters.”
My parents try to pay for the check. I say something like get the hell outta here and give the waitress my credit card. She takes the card and stares at the card and stares at me and stares at the card again and you just know she knows there’s no money on it. Still, she goes through the motions. In a few minutes she returns to the table and gives me back my card and blinks at me expectantly.
“There’s no money on it,” I explain.
As always, Mom cries when we part ways and Dad gives me a stiff handshake. I return the handshake, then lean in and give him a hug. It surprises him. But after awhile he de-stiffens and eventually he drapes an arm over me and hugs me back.
25
I quit my job. I don’t tell anybody. It’s too much work anyway and I have other things to do.
For years, I continue to receive a stipend as well as a partial tuition waiver.
It’s not enough.
I should have asked my parents for some money when they were here. Book sales are weak these days.
One of my publishers has stopped sending me royalties. I don’t remember receiving any royalties from them in the first place. I check my records. The records say I never received one royalty check from them, although they did give me a sizable advance.
That was eight years ago.
Even after I bully and extort my roommates and some other people living in my dorm and a few other dorms and faculty residences, I don’t have enough money.
Granted, money is relative. What seems like a little to me will doubtless be a lot to somebody else.
I have expensive tastes and was raised with bourgeois ethics notwithstanding my grasp of the concept of humility.
I call my wife.
I ask her to sell one of the kids and send me the cash.
She gets mad.
I tell her I’m just kidding. That’s the truth. But I want to see how she’ll react just the same.
She reacts.
I say, “I love you.”
She says something back and then we hang up.
26
Somebody parks a Ford Excursion on the lawn in front of the Union. Several writers have gathered around it. They study and comment on it as if they’ve never seen a car before. I don’t blame them. It’s big. Too big.
The writers see me coming and disperse like a pack of frightened rodents.
I press my nose against the driver’s side window of the Ford Excursion and look inside.
It’s dirty.
Empty soda cans. Cigarette butts and ash. Wrappers and old clothes and dirt and dust.
The driver’s in the car. Observing me.
“Get this thing outta here you fuckin’ dummy,” I say.
He tells me to go to hell or something.
I go inside the Union and get all of the janitors.
I round them up like so much livestock.
They’re reluctant to follow my lead but I promise them various IOUs and rewards and even raises that I of course lack the desire or the authority to deliver.
Standing on a table in the café, I give a kind of neomarxist motivational speech, gesticulating like Nietzsche after a bad meal. Then we go outside.
We lean against the Ford Excursion and start to push.
The driver goes crazy.
He yells and spits and swears and kicks and punches the window and the dash and the roof and the steering wheel as we push the Ford Excursion onto its flipside and then push it back onto its rightside.
We do it again.
Again.
Until the Ford Excursion idles in the street, upside-down, where it should be.
I say, “No parking on the lawn!”
The janitors clap. One of them cheers. The other janitors look at him as if he’s done something wrong. He has, in a way. Nobody else cheered. .
The janitor who cheered shoves his hands into his pockets and stares at his shoes. Like his sense of etiquette, they need polishing.
27
Christmas break!
I don’t want to go home.
I stay at the University.
Somebody sends me a check. I look at the box. I don’t look at the name or address of the sender.
I cash the check and get the money.
My clothes are getting old.
I go to the University bookstore to buy some shirts and pants and some textbooks for the upcoming semester.
All they sell are t-shirts and sweatshirts with the words HEY SHAWTY! on them.
The only pants available are sweatpants.
I buy a few pairs of sweatpants and some sequined HEY SHAWTY! t-shirts and sweatshirts.
I go back to my room.
I throw out my old clothes and put on the new ones.
28
Most of adult life is spent discovering the mystery of how very little you matter.
29
On the care of the body. .
I don’t like hair.
My hair.
The hair on my body.
I shed. Hence I shave.
From nose to toe.
I use grooming shears.
I don’t shave down to the skin. I like to maintain a veneer of fuzz so that I don’t resemble a shrew or an outpatient. This is important to me.
Many things are important to me.
My forearms are the hardest to trim because of the bones in my wrist and my elbow. I always make mistakes and cut the hair too close. If there are too many patches I shave my forearms to the skin with a straight razor.
Sometimes I throw out my grooming shears and get a new pair, thinking it’ll be easier.
It’s never easier.
Nothing’s ever easier, it seems.