I AM not well. They should have never given me this job, but this is my mission. I must sell vacuum cleaners door to door. Vacuum cleaners! It is ridiculous, there must be some mistake, I am still recuperating from my illness. I raised an objection to the manager, but he said I was a handsome, enterprising young man and I would do fine.
Then, on the way out, he pinched my ass. I farted.
This particular jobs program was never meant for one like me, just out of the nuthouse and hardly cured! They said I am all right now, they said I wouldn't hurt anyone.
But surely I am a victim of some clerical error, some blockhead of a bureaucrat was blundering carelessly through his boring day. The fools have sent me to sell vacuum cleaners and I'm still beset by terrible dreams, having visions, hearing voices, and behaving oddly. I find myself shouting things for no reason. I find myself making faces when people aren't looking right at me. I find myself writing so small that I couldn't read the words myself.
I'm not fit for this job.
I see water and I worry about drowning in it. I see birds and I think they might just fly down and pluck out my eyeballs with their beaks and gobble them up. When people talk to me sometimes, I often cannot understand what they are saying, like they are talking in a foreign language or their words are blurred and later, I can't remember what they have said.
Sometimes, I just stop and stare, transfixed, at a spot on the pavement, not knowing what it is or how it got there.
I fear my feet might fall off at any time.
As the members of our sales crew are dropped off at the various streets assigned them, I am pensive. And when they come to my street I have a loathsome, foreboding feeling. I get out of the car—I am alone now—I stand on the sidewalk, the car drives off, and I am alone with no one in sight for as far as the eye can see. I look around. I hear noise from open windows, radios, and TVs playing; blocks away a car goes across the street. I want to throw the vacuum cleaner down, smashing it on the pavement, but somehow I go on.
My first building, an old and worn apartment, is nothing special. Maybe there are two or three people here who will buy vacuum cleaners. Yes, I would love to show up at the end of the day with more sales than everyone else. During the training session over the last week, I said little and kept to myself. I think they had no idea I was a madman, at least most of them, and I chose to keep it that way.
These apartments were built after World War II, filled with fresh young optimistic couples just starting out, who went to the movies three nights a week and ate lots of pot roast. After twenty years the apartments were slums. Now the building is renovated and full of fresh young optimistic couples again.
In the last hours of the afternoon every apartment building hallway is like a hallway of the dead. Inside these sepulchers there are ghosts, the echoes of the people who are at work.
I feel the wallpaper as I walk along. I will start on the top floor and work my way down.
But on the top floor no one seems to be home, until the last door. A bright and cheerful woman answers. She has a clean face and friendly eyes.
Before she can say no, I am talking…
"Hello, how are you—and how are you today—isn't it a beautiful wonderful day—my name is Ron (not my real name of course), and I'm here to demonstrate our new Keeno-Kirby-Turbo Household Cleaner—perfectly free…"
Never minding her protests, I drone on endlessly with my monotonous ramble that never stops, no pause, no periods, no commas. She tries to say something: "I'm sorry, sir…"
"But, sir…"
"Excuse me, sir…"
Her cheerfulness soon fades to a blank face—what is it? Melancholy? Fear? Regret? I talk faster and faster. She backs up now with a look in her eyes; almost horrified. She puts her hand to her mouth. I have seen this look before. Something is not right. It makes me nervous when they do that; it means something, always bad, will happen…
I keep talking as I have been trained, flooding her with words. I have spent hours memorizing all this. My words are to answer her every objection before she asks it.
She backs up slowly as I move forward into the room. Around the room we go, she backing up, myself in close pursuit droning on.
Then she stumbles.
Her feet, tangled in the vacuum cord as we circled around the room…
Ah! She is falling out the window! Right in front of my eyes—my God—a big picture window—no screen—we are four floors up— Oh! She grabs a curtain—curtain ripping—her ass goes perfectly out the wide-open window—head bumps but clears window top—oh, no! It all happened so fast…
I feel panic! Fear! A bad, sick feeling. I put my hands up near my ears—yell, "No!"
No! I look down out the window. She is lying on the pavement, obviously dead, legs and head twisted at odd angles like a broken doll. A small stream of blood is starting. Damn, I feel bad now…
Oh, oh, what have I done, what have I done?
I gather my vacuum and things and head out.
There's some money and a shopping list on a shelving unit by the door. "I'm sure she won't be needing this now," I think and grab the money.
I close the door behind me. No one will know. Surely, if I just leave… But wait! What if she's still alive?
I rush down the stairs.
Below on the street, I am disoriented. Which side of the building am I on?
There she is. Oh, look at this. A stream of blood, her brains coming out. No… she's dead.
I notice now what a pretty woman she was, young and clean. Her golden locks are awry, her face is on its side, mouth open, eyes staring off.
At this moment I have a bad thought. It occurs to me to stick the vacuum-cleaner nozzle up her cunt. Just out of the blue, strange ideas hit me at dramatic or horrible moments like this.
No! I push the horrible thought out of my mind! I shudder in disgust at it! What an awful thing to do.
But then it occurs to me that if I commit cunnilingus on her— some people still feel and hear for minutes, even hours, after their death—that it shall soothe her last moments of life with pacific and benign bliss. Yes!
I hardly know her, yet I feel like I know her now. I set my vacuum down and go to it. It is a strange thing to do, but I feel so sorry for her. It never occurred to me that what I was doing was wrong. They say that's one of my problems: differentiation. It is sometimes hard for me to tell right from wrong. And what of her… If she is dead, totally dead, then what I'm doing right now is useless, in fact, quite ridiculous perhaps, but what if she is still alive? Is she really enjoying this last moment? Or is she thinking about a blouse she wanted to buy, or her young husband, or some more cleaning she had to do, perhaps a soap opera she will now miss?
Suddenly! A voice from above!
"Hey, you! What the hell are you doing down there?" A man in a window above yells down at me.
Panic!
Startled!
Running!
I run away! I never looked up, more than out of the side of my eye. I run and I run and I…
For quite a while I run. Up and down streets, sidewalks, alleys all over town.
My fleet young body carries me!
My feet fly!
Brummmm! I'm a jet!
Brmm! I'm flying, soaring.
After running for a long time, I am far away across areas and neighborhoods. I stop at a fence out of breath… I put my hand to my chest, feel my heart beating… I am in a suburb. I am in the little road or alleyway that runs down between the back of the houses in rows. The houses are clean 1940s and '50s bungalow types, not super big but well kept and mostly painted white. In front of me, a man working in his garden…
"Hey, sonny—you all right there?"
He's talking to me! His kindness almost makes me sob.
"Come on, you better sit down… Are you okay?"
IF I TELL HIM, "I-I just killed a woman"—he says, "What?" I say, "It was horrible—an accident, of course—but her… brains—I saw her brains on the sidewalk. …" He says "I've never seen brains, what color were they?" No, I shall not tell him that—instead I say, "Please could I have a glass of water…"
I followed him into the house. I told him my name was Randall.
The glass he gives me seems very small—not a proper glass of water at all.
I eye him suspiciously.
I drink the tiny glass of water.
"Could I have some more?"'
"Eh?"
"Oh, I'm sorry, could I please have a glass of water?" (Please and thank you are the magic words.)
He waits a minute, as if considering it. "No. I'm afraid that's all I will give you."
I get mad… This man looks like he was a woodpecker in another life. I feel persecuted and hurt at this dour turn of events. My head spins inside, not really thinking anything, just the feelings charging around, up and down, in and out.
Why does it always become this, this bullshit! Grrrr, I growl. Why can't anything ever be just nice and normal for me? I look at him, he looks back, cagey, sizing me up, rude man, shorter than me, that shrimp, his stupid face and this stupid kitchen!
We eye each other, saying nothing. I hear the wall clock ticking…
So stomp!—I step on his foot. "Ouch! Hey!" I run out of the house… slam the door.
Running…
Not far away, I remembered that I left my vacuum cleaner back there, there by the fence…
He is still in the garden. I creep on my belly like a commando… My new suit is getting soiled…
Kids coming down the alley on bikes. One of them runs over my leg and laughs, but I keep on silently, crawling…
Yes, I want to leap up and chase that kid, push him over into some bushes—the fantasy shoots through my head, I want to kill him—I look back at him that way. But I keep on. I am dedicated to the mission now.
The vacuum cleaner. I have it. So easy. I am responsible for this equipment.
Now I have it and there's nothing the old man can do about it! He is working in his garden again. Now I stand up and yell over the fence, "HEY!" right in that old man's face!
Startled, he does a double-take! Gloating, I brandish the vacuum cleaner and all its rattling hoses! The old man brandishes his hoe. In a flash I am gone and don't look back.
A few blocks down, I stop and catch my breath, my feet slapping the pavement as I slow down. I set down the vacuum cleaner, breathing hard, bent over, hands on knees… whewww!
The exhilaration courses through me. I haven't had so much fun all day! What a weird old man he was! Wouldn't give me any more water, but I feel lucky to get away, wow…
I see a 7-Eleven down at the corner, on a main drag that cordons off this subdivision. The man at the counter eyes me as I come in. Buy some cookies and chocolate milk and, for no reason, some baseball cards. When I was young, I had a shoe box full of baseball cards, and I remember one time, I was in a corner newsstand and there was this kid who had a twenty-dollar bill from his mother to buy baseball cards. It was his birthday, and he was buying pack after pack, twenty packs at a time for a dollar, opening them right there in the store, and he only had to get Ted Williams and Bob Friend and he had a complete set, and all the kids were gathering around at the spectacle and we all shared the excitement of the orgy of seeing him buying the cards and opening them, and I looked at his clothes and he was a rich kid and I saw the car out there a big one, clean and sparkling, and I remember thinking that that's what rich kids do on their birthdays…
Walking along with my vacuum cleaner, I stop and sit down on the curb. The cards I had just bought are in this heat-sealed, silvery plastic packaging, not anything like the old pressed wax paper I had as a kid. I opened the pack and—hey!—the ball players look different, they are rather normal-looking and like yuppies, kind of sterile. I remember how ugly and goofy they looked in 1963, and these new ones didn't look like them at all. I get this weird feeling come over me, like what was I doing here. I feel stupid and then real all alone. I look out at the traffic going by and tiny cars off in the distance, and some men were paving a pothole a few blocks that way and the sun was bright and…
And then I lifted the pack to my face and smelled the smell, that baseball card smell of pasteboard and printing and brittle bubble gum and… mmmmm. I came back down to the world again and everything was all right.
I lugged my vacuum cleaner across an empty lot to a big, shaded elm where I sat at the foot of the great trunk. I felt a breeze. I threw the chocolate milk carton away, then the baseball cards. I sailed them as far as I could, aiming at nothing in particular but just seeing how far I could go…
But then I do something on compulsion! I stand and go back into the neighborhood! First I hide the vacuum cleaner in some shrubbery. Soon I come upon the old man in his backyard. From a distance I watch him. Sneaking, I creep up on the fence. Without warning I pop out of the bushes and yell: "Hey!" as loud as I can, and run away laughing. He was startled and threw his hoe up in the air. I hide.
Ten minutes pass. From farther down the alley I pop up and yell, "Hey!" again. I feel an excitement, an exhilaration, and the poor man is confounded by this "guerilla warfare." After two more "Heys!" he goes in the house.
With stealth and cunning I sneak up on the side of the house. He is on the phone. "There's some son of a bitch guy in the neighborhood acting odd… I think he's mentally disturbed… Yes, please send someone…"
The police!
I'm gone.
But before I get out of the neighborhood, I am crossing a corner, and zap!—going the other way, on the next street over—a police cruiser! And they see me, I think. Evasive action!
A game of cat and mouse. Through backyards, bushes, carports, lying flat in a ditch, I elude them.
A few times they catch a glimpse of me, but I am fleet. A few times the police drive by while I am hiding, and on slowly. They are looking for me.
After a while the police leave.
Back at the 7-Eleven, with my vacuum cleaner retrieved, I look up the old man's name in the phone book (got it off his mailbox) and drop a quarter. The phone rings.
"Hello?"
"Hey!"
That night I slept in the shrubbery in the industrial park where the vacuum cleaner offices were located…
As I walked there, I cross unfamiliar sectors of the city. I creep at night. The night is real. The night is the whir of bugs in the wood, the dew, the landscape—the whole landscape—the whole night—the whole civilization is covered with dew—and every leaf, every rock in the road, every roof and windowsill—and the cars— you can write on the cars, leave messages—strange cars going by—who's in them—what are they doing—where are they going— people wandering around in the middle of the night… It's all a mystery.
The next morning I feel renewed and chipper. Really ready to work.
Sure, I look a little bad after sleeping on cedar chips in the bushes and the damp from the dew, but that was no reason to fire me on the spot. My hair is mussed up, sticking up weird like anyone who's just woke up.
The crews were assigned, but I was left off. Mr. Bellows, the boss, the man I farted at before, would not look me in the eye. I couldn't catch his glance, and so I raised my hand.
"Mr. McFadden?"
"I don't have an assignment, Mr. Bellows…"
"I'll discuss this with you in a little bit, Mr. McFadden…"
"Am I fired? Are you—"
"I told you that we would discuss—"
"Shit! You can't fire me yet! I haven't had a chance!"
Maybe they know about the woman falling out of the window or the old man with the glass of water? No.
When I object further he accuses me of being drunk.
I told them I had buried the vacuum cleaner in a safe place and would tell them where it was all in good time. I am yelling and screaming and do not know what I say. It's coming out of my mouth before I even think about it. My vacuum cleaner sat over on the other side of the room bedecked with leaves and pine straw and cedar chips and fertilizer. Mr. Bellows stared at it, then I did, then we looked each other in the eye.
I threw their stupid lamp on the ground as I stormed out.
Outside, I stand in the parking lot, calming down. I walk. I look back. Everyone is looking at me out of the window.
For a while I wander aimlessly.
Office parks have a certain artificial ambiance, especially if you walk through them as a stranger, not knowing what is going on in any of these offices. It can give you the feeling of deadness, of nothing going anywhere, of nothing meaning anything and it can even be a little frightening.
I walk in to another office, across the office park. The receptionist greeted me with a cheery voice, only glancing up from her typing at me. "Can I help you sir… ?"
"Abbb…" The company's name on the wall is UTIMUM SYSTEMS, INC. in polished steel letters, and I have not the vaguest idea what they do here.
She looks up. I must look distressed. Her tone changes to one of concern. "Is there anything wrong… ?"
"Yes. Ummm… there's something wrong with my brain!" I sound panicked, troubled…
She looks at me with more fear than concern. Perhaps she now noticed my disheveled appearance, messed-up hair, and overall dampness from sleeping in the bushes and dew.
I turn and leave.
Returning to my apartment, I am cautious. Walk by once to scope it. I find nothing suspicious: no one is waiting for me, there is no note on the door from the landlord telling me to come down to his office—the authorities haven't been here yet.
Usually I can get away with three "acts or incidents" before they come looking for me. If I space the "incidents" apart far enough, it will be six times or even nine, but always they come on an increment of three. In the world of the fates, three is a common denominator of some sort. I read that computer systems work on a binary system that is two digits, and the fates have a "trinary" system as you look at it in perspective. Perhaps when our computers evolve to a three-digit system we will be on a better footing with fate and deal with it scientifically. We will someday master our fate.
I lay down on my bed.
The flimsy drapes blow in the wind.
Outside I hear the world going on: cars, brakes, buzz, horns… somewhere off in the distance a pile driver is pounding.
The world is going on without me, and I feel that now. The world is out there, going on without me. What a strange feeling.
If only I could master my fate! This "furnished" apartment will soon be costing me $250 a month when the state's allocation runs out. Cheap, but it's in a bad area and the furnishings, heh… a chair, a table, a squeaky, sunken bed, a dresser that the drawers are hard to get out and people have scratched and scrawled words and initials on. The air-conditioning unit in the window makes a noise when it runs, like a helicopter engine about to throw a rod.
I think back on the mental hospital. They did not cure me at that place. They sent me out too soon. Would they ever cure me? No. I've come to accept it.
This new State Medical System is for the birds. They just put me in there until I cooled down, until I fulfilled some sort of quota, and then they sent me out with this jobs-program thing.
Selling vacuum cleaners door to door, indeed! SMS is a disaster. They don't do anything for you, just pass you through the apparatus, stamp your form, and pass you on to someone else.
How could they ever imagine that the government bureaucracies could run the health care industry? People are getting stupid in this country. Sure, they go to school and memorize facts and figures, learn to enter data in computers and produce splendid reports, but common sense and simple logic is lacking.
Where once the masses looked to religion to save them, now they look to government and doctors. It's like since the "God is dead" thing in the sixties, medicine is a new religion and its magic wand will wave and everything will be all right. It will be years till they sort it all out. That Clinton guy got his. I read that he's out now and back in Arkansas. They have him driving a bookmobile for the community-service part of his sentence. Now, that would have been a perfect job for me, but I'm sure all the cushy bookmobile jobs have a waiting line a mile long after the last administration's debacle.
I think of what I've done today. Not proud of it. In my head I can see the woman with her brains, the old man with his glass of water, the look on Mr. Bellows's face. Maybe in another time we all would have been friends.
Sometimes these thoughts come into my head out of nowhere. Things I have done haunt me, and sometimes things I haven't even done! Embarrassing moments, tragedies, social errors. You try to push them away—No!
I shouldn't have said that!
I shouldn't have said that!
No, I shouldn't have done that!
Why did I say that—why, why did I do those terrible things— everyone is looking at me—the feeling that I am no longer one of them—suddenly the jig's up!
I was never one of them. Maybe once I was… a long, long time ago… but I can't remember it well now… almost like I was someone else then. What happened to me.
The things you have done, bad things, they scream into your ear… the torment of those thoughts scream around in my head! I scream them out of me—I think of something, relive it in my mind, all the details come back to me like a TV show, and I scream "Noooo!" and I push it away!
Sometimes, especially in public, you have to say something to get the thoughts out, cover them up! When they're too much, I just have to sing!
In the line at the grocery store: "Oh, what a beautiful morning! Oh, what a beautiful day!"
You are singing it altogether too loud, too weird…
People are staring at you, your mind is spinning…
Well, I'll just have to master my own fate! Cure myself! It's that simple! At least I'm not in that stupid mental hospital anymore. Just have to adapt now. Like I learned in the service, adapt to the environment around you, blend in…
Yes!
Yes! That's it! I can cure myself! Fuck those incompetents and nabobs! I will do a better job of curing me than them, with all their degrees and reference books and technical words. I'll come back and show them someday. I'll have a big car, a restored late-sixties muscle car, yess! A convertible and nice clothes, stylish and casual and a gorgeous honey on my arm and… Fuck even going to see them, they can see me on TV, "Hey! Wasn't that the guy who…"
I get a spoonful of peanut butter and eat it. When I'm hungry sometimes a spoonful or two can keep you going a few more hours without feeling hungry again.
I am happy for a moment! For a moment I feel good again. I will cure myself somehow, not to show them but for myself! I stand in front of the mirror. Look at myself. That is me. At least I am good-looking, dashing even.
Now I spring to life with new energy, jump up from the bed again. The room does not look so bleak; take a shower, wash the dishes in the sink, and clean the kitchenette, no time to clean the whole apartment…
I go to the closet and survey my clothes.
My shirts are nothing to write home about, but I have some wonderful pants. In my excitement I take out all my pants, take them off the hangers, and arrange them on the floor.
I stand back and enjoy the arrangement of my pants.
I glow with pride.
That night I had a special dinner party to go to. I do not remember exactly, but someone had invited me, or maybe somewhere I overheard someone talking and wrote it all down.
I did my best to improve my appearance, since the way I had slept the night before left something to be desired.
I do not want to miss the dinner. I am famished.
I have high hopes for this affair, hopes of meeting a better class of people, perhaps even a nice woman with good manners and a soft voice. I think of good things to converse about: weather, politics, polo… surely they play polo here. This is my chance. I want so much to better myself, and mix with the lofty and landed class of people.
At the party, the guests eyed me oddly and I kept to myself. Everyone was dressed better than I was. One whispered to another that the sleeves of my shirt had no cuff links and were kept together with Scotch tape—and the pants had no hem, as if they had been worn right out of the store they were bought in (which they were).
During dinner no one talked to me. At one point a piece of conversation reminded me of a joke I had heard.
As I told my joke, people listened to me at first, then gradually they started in their own conversations like they didn't care about my tale…
Soon everyone was back talking off in their own little worlds… I was mortified.
Before I even got to the punch line I fell silent!
No one cared.
I look at my soup.
I was depressed. This whole thing was not going well. I grew petulant, brooding, and began to feel myself under the table…
I'll show them. I spill my bowl of soup.
"Oooops!"
"Hey!"
Everyone stares. They're all looking at me. Now I feel how much I do not know these people. I do not like these people, the way they are looking at me, staring…
The hostess must have had an eye on me all along. The others look shocked, but she looks angry, eyeballing me like Ben Turpin. She evidently saw me spill the soup on purpose, and then it begins! She is screaming, yelling at me. She saw me do it and knew it wasn't a mistake. Then, like always, I couldn't understand what she was saying, my mind shut off in some way.
Now she's standing, face red, she is pointing at the door. She saw me spill the soup on purpose! She knows!
So there it is, now! I am to be humiliated. Kicked out in front of everyone. The sinking feeling. I look down at the lines of soup as it runs across the clean white tablecloth.
I throw my salad plate against the wall and leave.
As I pass through the other room on my way out, people who were not eating and had not seen what happened, but heard the commotion, stared at me like I was some wild animal in a cage— some kind of two-headed beast—I hated that.
Outside I stood and looked back out of the side of my eye. I could feel them talking inside—"who was that man?" "who invited him?"—
I would show them a thing or two.
One hour later, I return with a special outfit. I have on my Indian outfit: loincloth, bandanna with two or three feathers in it, face paint, a bow and arrows, moccasins. First I peeked in the windows, spying on them. They are having fun, after-dinner banter—no one seems sad I left. They're all so happy!
A bedroom window upstairs is open. I shoot an arrow in. No one was in there, for I heard nothing but the clatter of the arrow as it falls to the floor. Will I sneak in through that window? I try to climb the brick walls, but it's no good. Next, I write things on the house. Using my face paint tube, I write things like "Down with the pedantic assholes who do not care." "Assholes live here." "The hypocrites are taking over everything."
Being almost naked made me feel savage, crazy, and aroused. When I had an erection I strode in to the party, through the front door, with a certain pompous, regal flair, like a noble chieftain of the ancient Indian Nations.
There I was, standing in the middle of the party for what seemed like the longest few seconds.
I wanted some punch.
There were gasps and some giggles when various women saw my huge boner lifting up the front flap of my loincloth. A gradual hush fell. With the stern face of a savage brute, in silent, solemn Indian stance I lift the cup of punch to my lips. Then the hostess recognized me and began yelling and screaming again!
I whirled—drawing an arrow—
And shot wildly—
All mayhem ensued!
Rapidly, I began discharging my arrows!
A woman standing next to the hostess was hit in the eye and screamed like a chicken! Ahh, my friends, it was a wild, wilderness scene that broke loose in this great lodge of snobby coots, I say! The arrows flew and found their mark. There was screaming and disorder as the curs panicked and stumbled over each other to flee my wrath.
When my arrows were spent, I had my knife. Brandishing now! Indian yell! Out through the kitchen, where people stood moments before, chatting, I made my escape out the back door. With grace and agility I cleared hedges and a brick wall. I remember the flash of a neighbor's face in a window of a house I went past. My moccasins flew across the perfectly manicured lawns like the wind, for I was the last wild Indian in the world and this was the noble savages' last great victory, a massacre, at the Brentwood Estates, April 14, in the year of our lord, 1996…
Members of the party give chase in their cars… I hear the telltale sound of a big luxury Detroit monster, bottoming out as it bounces at the end of a driveway and glides in pursuit. They're after me! By now I'm in the hedges and brush, running low at a squat. The cars are in the distance, across the lawns. They scour the area, meet at the crossroads and in far-off, serious voices yell from car to car.
But I elude them easily.
Later…
My room! What a mess—what a terrible mess! I am depressed and the prospect of cleaning up the rest of the place leaves me cold.
I see my pants on the floor, as I arranged them, and feel good. I am reminded that this place is mine. It now has my own personal design despite its basic run-of-the-mill qualities. I survey the kitchen, sparkling clean. A messy house, but a dream kitchen, yes!
At first I am disturbed at the contrast—then a twinge of despair—a feeling of upset—embarrassed—then my eyes go bright—what a beautiful mess!
Everything is perfectly a mess, perfect random—strewn…
I couldn't stage it this good, the random way things have fallen: the jeans half inside-out on the floor—the sock coming out of one leg—the underwear still partially in the seat—the sneakers in different directions, one on its side—the pile of papers and magazines by the bed, totally disheveled, leaning over, precariously ready to fall.
I love this mess—I embrace it with all my soul—I plummet down on the bed, into the middle of it, the perfect picture of mess—and I am the centerpiece!
I muss up my hair—laugh—turn on a stupid TV station I never watch—I let drool run out of the side of my mouth—I'm enjoying my mess now…
Later, late that night, at the Waffle House I made a new friend. Donny was a person I had met or knew vaguely from somewhere, over the last two weeks since I'd been out and on the loose. I recognized him sitting there at the counter, recalled his name, and called him over. If I had not remembered his name, the whole course of the night would have been changed and thus my life and his too. We sat and talked. He didn't like the job he had either, working in a graveyard, and when he heard that I quit my job that day, he agreed to quit his too. I think he may be retarded. At the very least, he is a slow learner, but he is honest and tells the truth to anyone who asks. He is that sort of quiet person, prone to keeping to himself, and I doubt anyone much ever even talks to him. He probably hasn't had a proper conversation in months.
Donny is a short fellow who wears overalls, a plaid shirt, and sneakers that don't match. His gimme cap (baseball cap) is worn low over his eyes, giving Donny at first a sinister appearance, then the appearance of being just stupid. He talks slow and almost unsure of himself, like Michael J. Pollard, and if ever someone was to do the life of Donny on the silver screen, Michael J. Pollard would be perfect for the role.
I related to him, in confidence, the things that had happened to me that day. He loved the stories. He had never dreamed of dressing up in a wild Indian outfit but he thought it was probably a good idea, as long as you only did it now and then. He said he often became aroused whenever he saw a pizza or, to some extent, anything round—that he fought it all the time! He says there's a white spot on his heart, but the doctors don't know what it is. He thinks he won't live long, but then again he might.
It is very late in the night, everything's closed now, but we decide to go to a whorehouse Donny knows of that's open all night. A whorehouse, what a wonderful idea. From the description, it is in a real crummy area of town but, sure, I would go. I would even let him borrow my Indian outfit. I still have it with me in my coat pocket. It's a great disguise, as it takes up so little room and you can hide it anywhere.
On the way to the brothel, Donny stops at a Dumpster behind a flower shop and gets some discarded flowers to give the girls… He pulls the dead petals off as we walk.
He says he can't fix his car 'cause he goes to the whorehouse too much. Poor fellow. His need for the most basic form of love, a momentary love, has left him in hardship.
The brothel is in an old building on the side of a hill, with a couple of mobile home additions jammed onto it, a real architectural disaster. The old manager woman (the madame, I guess) eyed Donny suspiciously, and then me. They knew Donny from before. Donny chose a girl he had had before. She gave him a special rate because she was so ugly, and he would put a brown paper grocery bag over her head. She let him do that.
One woman eyed me, smiling. She had a tooth missing, and when she burped I smelled beer… No, not her.
I chose a girl who is rather pretty, but who talked too much and proceeds to tell me everything she had done in her life. I had to tell her to stop talking for a while. We went to her private room, which had teddy bears, roaches from joints, empty pop cans, and posters of rock stars I'd never heard of. The whole room smelled like shampoo and glue. What we did then is a private matter, and I will not relate such details at this time.
When I was done, I waited for Donny in the sitting room. After a while I thought about walking home by myself, but got to reading the magazines.
Eventually, I must have dozed off. I remember waking up to a commotion. It is many hours later, the wee hours of dawn, and I had fallen asleep with a copy of Gorgeous Gash in my lap…
There was screaming and yelling down the hall, and I went to see. It was Donny. He had done something and the whore was angry and flailing! She was hitting Donny with his hat.
"Look at my tit! Look what you did to it. You rat bastard! Look at it! Look at it!" The woman shrieked up at the top of her lungs.
Her left breast was wizened, suckled, and hanging oddly. It was sucked out like a prune and flopped there as I stared in horror at it. Poor Donny was in a spot and looking quite ridiculous in the wild Indian outfit. The feathers were bent from her hitting him, and the paint was smeared on his face. He stood there dumbly, like Stan Laurel, getting hit. The paint from his face was also smeared on her tit and made it look even more gruesome and sucked out. A big, burly guy I took to be the bouncer came up fast. She yelled, pleading and outraged, at the bouncer: "Look at my tit! Look at my tit! This bastard fell asleep with my tit in his mouth and sucked on it all night long! It's all sucked out!"
Other people from the whorehouse came up in the hall. Donny just stood there, sheepish, groggy, and stumbling, hardly awake, but knowing that he had again done something wrong. He stood there dumbly, getting hit with his own hat!
"Perhaps it was an accident…" I ventured.
The bouncer looked at me like he would kill me! I stopped talking and looked away!
I slipped off. I must find something.
I went back down the hallway. Coming out of one room, a thin, dark little man with wavy, perfect black hair and a sheet wrapped around his waist stopped me in the hall and asked, "What is it? Is it a raid? Is someone dead? Will the police come?" By his voice I could tell he was from India… and then our eyes met… I saw it in his eyes… he saw it in mine…
He was like me—quite out of his head…
There is a communion of the insane. This communion of insanity is sacred. We are friends and brothers instantly, like two masons or two undercover agents in a foreign land.
His eyes tell me this.
"Listen, I need to create a diversion or something…"
"You are in trouble, sir?"
"My friend, he—"
"Oh my, yes! I will help you now. Please wait, please!"
He disappeared back into the room, then came out, hastily dressed and more prepared for an emergency.
And in his hand…
… a hand grenade!
He strode down the hall to the center of the commotion and faced the scene, holding the hand grenade up like an Olympic torch. I was stunned. No one else seemed to noticed him till he started talking, and I watched speechless.
"Please, everyone! It is my great misfortune to inform you that I have a bomb here! Please do not accost that little man any longer!" He holds the grenade aloft and has pulled the pin and it is sizzling.
Everyone runs. The bouncer, the whore with the floppy, wizened breast, a few more whores and customers who have joined in the scene, everyone, including Donny!
"Donny!" I shout angrily! He turns and sees my face. "This way!" I yell at him.
Donny joins me and my new confederate as we race down the hallway. The Indian man stops, goes back a few steps, and throws the frizzling grenade into a room piled high and full of laundry.
Outside, we duck as a window explodes above our heads, and blasted feather pillows, burning sheets, towels, and underwear fly across the parking lot. Quick, into the Indian guy's car.
"Gentlemen, let me introduce myself. I am Professor Agar Boshnaravata!"
"Please to meet you, Professor! I'm Carl and this is Donny!" I always use different names, my driver's license says Ulysses McFadden, but I am amongst friends now, and Carl is really my name.
Donny says "Hi…"
"I see, Donny, that you are an Indian also!" Agar says.
"Huh?" replies Donny.
"It's a joke, Donny… er, it's a joke…" I say.
We drove off into the bright day on the road to new adventure! Suddenly, after weeks of having no friends, now I have two.
But are we really on the road to wild, high adventure or on the highway straight to hell… ? I neither know nor care now. I just roll my hand out the window and feel the air going by in the morning light, see the pavement blurring by, see a young child off in the distance by a swing set…