“I’m not a Freudian.”
“Well, then aren’t we supposed to be talking about my unhappy childhood?”
“Do you want to talk about that?”
“No.”
“What do you want to talk about?”
“Let’s talk about work.”
“Do you like selling?”
“No.”
“Why? Don’t you like talking?”
“No.”
“What do you like?”
“I like listening. You and I should exchange seats. You talk and I listen.”
“Doesn’t work that way.”
“Figures. Too bad. I’m a good listener. I measure and they talk to fill up the space.”
“What do they talk about?”
“Nothing interesting. Sales are down, wholesale costs are up, rent is up, shoplifting is up, help is impossible, my husband hasn’t fucked me in three months…”
“That isn’t interesting?”
“Nope. You ought to see them. Dry skin and Hostess Ho Ho asses.”
“You sound angry.”
“Why would I be angry?”
“I don’t know. Do you have anything to be angry about?”
“No.”
No, I think, nothing at all. It’s a wonderful life. Here I sit on a Friday night, straight from the airport, Johnny Walker Black on my breath, sticky armpits and stinky socks, itchy scrotum (please, not crabs again!), facing a weekend of transcribing measurements onto order forms. I’ll wake up tomorrow just before noon, dreading the Saturday phone call from the Vice President for National Sales who’s a born-again Christian and spouts Praise the Lord when I give him the weekly sales total. He’ll say a little prayer that next week’s totals are even better and remind me he’s signed me up for a motivational forum at the Greensboro Holiday Inn next month. Oh, by the way, he reminds me just before signing off with heartfelt God Bless, there won’t be a deposit to my checking account until the checks I’ve collected clear. Come Sunday, I’ll hide in bed as long as I can and then it will start all over again on Monday. I’ll leave my mother’s house before dawn because Shelton/Murray Shelving and Display doesn’t reimburse for parking and the long-term lot is halfway to South Carolina. I’ll take a bite of a dry apple Danish and stare into a paper cup of coffee not hot enough to dissolve the non-dairy creamer, pacing the boarding area because the flight has been delayed again… Hey, it’s a wonderful life!
“Isn’t the travel interesting?”
“Flying to Beaumont, Texas, or Lansing, Michigan, isn’t what I’d call travel.”
“Well, what would you call it?”
“Geographic displacement.”
“Come on. Where are you coming from tonight?”
“ Memphis.”
“Tell me about it. Beale Street. Graceland. The Peabody Hotel. You must have seen something interesting.”
“Am I allowed to smoke?”
“Tell me something interesting you saw and then you can smoke.”
“Hmm. I saw an old lady at the airport tonight. She looked pretty brittle, with one of those old-lady humps on her back, but she was dressed pretty hip. Elvis T-shirt, sweats, black sneakers, Velcro wallet dangling from a string around her neck. Her husband helped her settle into the seat. Then he tucked a paper napkin under her chin and handed her an ice cream cone. She licked it and offered him a bite. Nope, he said, it’s all for you.”
“How did that make you feel?”
“Don’t get old!” I laugh.
He hands me a silver cigarette case and offers me an unfiltered French cigarette. These priests sure know how to live.
“Is that really how you felt?”
“He’s going to die soon. I saw it in his eyes. He knows he’s gonna die and she’ll be shipped off to a nursing home. He knows she’s gonna spend the rest of her life waiting for him to walk through the door. And he’s never gonna come.”
What I don’t tell him is that I locked myself in a toilet stall and cried.
The doorbell is ringing. “Shit,” he says, “excuse me for a minute.” I hear him talking in the hallway and then the screen door swings shut. I smell hot grease and tomatoes, oil, and pepperoni.
“I ordered this hours ago and it’s just getting here. You eaten yet?”
He disappears, returning with napkins and two bottles of Coca-Cola.
“This is one occasion when it isn’t bad manners to talk with your mouth full.”
He eats like a bear, folding a slice in half and shoveling it into his mouth. He nods at me, his cheeks bulging with pizza dough. He washes it down and grabs a second. A pepperoni ring flips into his lap. He swallows a mouthful and says, “Tell me a story.”
“About what?”
“About you.”
“I don’t know any stories.”
“Why are you here?”
“You know why I’m here.”
“Tell me about it anyway.”
“I got caught sucking a cock at a rest stop on the interstate.”
“Start at the beginning.”
“I was lying on the couch, drinking scotch, staring at the television, watching a meaningless ball game on the West Coast. American League. I hate the American League. My wife had gone up to bed around eleven and I went outside for a smoke. I saw a light go on next door. My neighbor’s son was home from college for the summer. He started to undress for bed. He pulled off his shirt and sniffed his pits. He yanked down his pants, then his shorts. His pecker was already at half-mast. I saw him take one stroke before he turned off the light.”
My best efforts to make him blush or wince are wasted. He just stares at me, chewing on a slice of pizza.
“I waited a few minutes before I went back in. The room was so close I couldn’t breathe. I was suffocating in my clothes. I turned off all the lights and stripped, lying on my back on the sofa. I tried to concentrate on the game, as if I gave a damn about the Oakland Athletics. All I could think about was that kid, sound asleep in his bed, snoring, smile smeared across his lips, dreaming of big tits and pink nipples. At two o’clock, I knew I was never going to fall asleep so I jumped up and pulled on my pants. If Alice woke up while I was gone I’d say I’d run out for cigarettes.”
He licks the grease from his fingers and carefully dries them with the napkin.
“Why don’t you start at the very beginning?”
I don’t know how to respond.
“I take it that wasn’t the first time you’d done something like that?”
I laugh. “Well, I knew exactly where to go, didn’t I?”
“Then tell me about the first time you did something like that.”
I hesitate. “Time’s almost up, isn’t it.”
“We’ve got a few minutes.”
“Well, why is it important?”
“I don’t know that it is.”
“Then why do you want to hear about it?”
“Because you want to tell me about it.”
Funny thing. He’s right. The state of North Carolina can call it therapy. He and I know it’s confession.
“There’s a fine line between the two…” he says.
But I didn’t say anything… God, these fucking priests, reading your mind…
“No. I’m not a mind reader. Just been doing this a long time. Go on, then.”
“Okay. I was eighteen. Grown. At least I thought I was. Jesus, I thought I was hot shit. Hair parted down the middle; long enough that it broke across my shoulders. Drove the old man crazy. He bitched about it a lot but never threatened to banish me from his room and board. Maybe he was afraid I’d take him up on it.”
“Why do you think he didn’t do that?”
“Actually, I think he had started to like me. You see, he’d kept his distance since I was young, really young, like maybe five.”
“That’s a common pattern among homosexual men.”
His words are a punch in the gut. He assesses my reaction. It is the first time in my adult life I have ever been referred to as a homosexual man, at least to my face.
“Some believe that the male parent, by some instinct, begins to sense an otherness about the son at around that age. And he begins to withdraw, physically, emotionally. The father doesn’t understand his discomfort with the child; the son doesn’t understand why he is being abandoned. If you believe this theory…But now our time is really up.”