House of God (28 page)

The most remarkable woman was Danish. Glittering white of tooth, blond of hair, blond of eyelash, which meant blond of pubic hair, pink of chill winter cheek, blue fjord of eye, she was dressed in a slinky gold wraparound which left one shoulder bare, two nipples poking. And a partridge in a pear tree. Her chief complaint: ‘crick in my neck, going around to my breast.' Delight delight. I joked, flirted, asked the history of this crick and this breast. I had to decide whether or not to have her undress for me. I hesitated. The tension rose. In the silence she looked at me quizzically. Now I'd really blown it. I blushed, but said, ‘I'd better have a better look. Would you mind changing into this hospital gown?'

She looked me in the eye, and paused, and I thought, Oh, no, big trouble, now I've done it, she's gonna report me to somebody, and I saw tomorrow's headline: NORWEGIAN SAILOR SLAYS TERN IN HOUSE OF GOD—
CRIME DE. PASSION
ALLEGED BY STATUESQUE DANE.

‘But of course,' she said, smiling a blue blond smile.

She knew and was going to play along! I went to the other side of the curtain, where there was another young woman, with a nurse, and I asked what the trouble was, and the nurse said, ‘Overdose of dog food.'

‘Oh?' I asked cockily. ‘And what's the usual dose of dog food?'

I started to examine the dog food, who presented a different erotic aspect: drowsy, stripped unashamedly to the waist, she was vomiting. As I put my stethoscope on her chest, something in the mirror between the curtains caught my eye: I could see into the other cubicle, where the Dane was undressing. Carefully, delicately, she unhooked her clinging gold dress and unwrapped it. She sat there on the stretcher, naked but for her gold panties, and then she stretched out her arms in a yawn. The pounding in my temporal arteries seemed to echo off the tile walls. She shivered in the chill, and hugged herself. Her nipples were tense brown buttons in the smooth silk flow of her breasts. Just before she reached for the House nightie, she looked down at her nipples, a child looking at two exciting toys, and with a feather-down touch gave each nipple a slow circular caress, the slow circular movement of a pelvis, of a thigh. Well, at that touch everything—her nipples, my
putz
, the House stethoscope—leaped up ensemble like hungry Jews at the last prayer of the fast of Yom Kippur. Suffused with a lover's anticipation, I prolonged the dog-food exam and then walked into the room containing the Dane and found myself ridiculously asking, ‘How are they?'

‘They?'

‘The pains in the neck?'

‘Oh, yes. The same.'

‘Let me undo this,' I said, untying her House nightie and dropping it to her waist. ‘Let me examine you.'

As I let myself enjoy her, my hands and head wandered. I felt the sexual attraction bubbling up around us, reflecting prismatic elastic soap bubbles of erotica floating around us, glistening and gliding, straining and popping, all in an act of love. My palm on her pink cheek, testing the pain when the
trapezius
contracts; her hand on my forearm, holding as I checked the rotator cuff, feeling the lovely soft hollow of the
deltoid
insertion, for bursitic pain. My fingers on her ribs, her breast, yes, even brushing those erect itching nipples, for how could I avoid? Was it ethical to pick her up? Norman, the Runt's roommate at BMS, had picked up a premarin widow named—what else—Suzie in some E.W. one spring and had come away with a season box at the ballpark.

‘Dr. Basch,' she said as I reluctantly finished, and watching her cover her breasts again, told her to take two aspirin and wanted to tell her to call me in the morning, ‘can I ask you something?'

ANYTHING. PERHAPS THAT NEAT YOUNG KIPPER IN MY PANTS.

‘Is it hard for you to see so much . . . disease all the time?'

‘Yes, it is,' I said, struggling with how to ask her out.

‘You're attracted to me, I can tell.'

WELL, YA FOUND ME OUT!

‘And I like you. You have good hands: gentle, but strong.'

IT'S FINALLY GONNA HAPPEN LIKE IN THE BOOKS.

‘What a shame I'm flying to Copenhagen tomorrow, yes?'

OWWWwww.

‘Wal, rump buddie, how'd ya like 'em, eh?' asked Gath, sitting down with me at the nursing station.

‘Incredible. What a run of luck, eh?'

‘Luck, hell. I was out theah triagin'—above the waist to you, below the waist to Elihu. All this greeny creamy twat cain't hurt his sex life none, can it? Hot damn! Would you look at that—Crazy Abe came back! Abie baby is back!'

He was. With that electric glint in his eye, Abe waved to us from just inside the automatic doors. Flash ran up and hugged him, and the spirits of the nurses lifted. What a wonderful night! When a lost old man finds his way out of the wilderness into the House of God, who could not be glad?

Before midnight, I was sitting with the policemen. Cohen joined us, filling out the data on a young schizophrenic who had come in comatose, having inhaled the contents of an aerosol can of Ban spray deodorant.

‘Hello, Dr. Jeffrey Cohen,' blared Gilheeny, and then, turning to me, said, ‘You will forgive us focusing on Cohen, but we must take advantage of his being on call only once per seven nights. A much more human schedule than yours, Dr. Basch, proving Dr. Cohen's wisdom in choosing psychiatry, and proving the maxim of Dr. Cohen's hometown: “You can take the boy out of South Philadelphia, but you can never take South Philadelphia out of the boy.”'

Stunned by the idea of being on call once in seven nights, I listened as Gilheeny asked Cohen, ‘What remarkable depth of the human mind have you plunged tonight? And what is your total idea about our young schizoid inhaling the Ban?'

‘Problems of closeness,' said Cohen, ‘define schizophrenia. All of us, as Freud noted, suffer egodystonic neurotic conflicts.'

‘As you have told us,' said Quick, ‘you never outgrow your need for neurosis.'

‘True,' said Cohen, ‘but the schizophrenic's struggles are much earlier, pregenital, centering around personal boundaries—how close to get to someone before being consumed. I gave him some Stelazine.'

‘And as for the suicidal motive for the Ban?' asked Gilheeny.

‘Easy,' said Cohen, ‘BAN TAKES THE WORRY OUT OF BEING CLOSE.'

‘It would not be a bad thing,' said Quick, ‘for the entire police force to come to you, Dr. Cohen, for a large group therapy.'

‘We've heard all about the police,' said Cohen, winking at me, ‘buncha queers.'

‘Oh, Dr. Cohen!' said Quick. ‘You can't generalize like that.'

‘The thing is,' said Gilheeny, ‘that we live in constant fear of our lives. It makes the blood pressure elevate like an Arabian geyser, and the tension headaches we get would knock the balls off a bull with the twist in the maxillary sinuses themselves.'

‘I have to confess,' said Quick, ‘that I have developed a strange passion for bendy, kinky plastic straws. And when my wife yelled at me the other night, I told her to “bite a fart.” What is wrong with me?'

‘See?' said Cohen, turning to me again, eyes twinkling. ‘Just like I told you: homosexuals, the lot.'

Eat My Dust Eddie arrived to relieve me. I'd had such a great time, I didn't want to go. In the waiting room I was met by Abe, who ventured out of his corner, in which was to be found, in addition to his shopping bag, the young man with the pink silk women's panties on his head, who was scanning me with suspicion.

‘Are you glad I came back?' asked Abe.

‘Yes, I am.'

‘So far you did good. I made a friend, over there in the corner. You know sometimes it can get lonely in this room on the slow nights but I don't like it too crowded neither. That guy's strange but he's a friend. Won't talk to anyone but me so he's my friend. My friend. Be careful driving it's slippery with snow good night.'

I was filled with hope. The sixteen hours had been the way it was supposed to, in the novels, in the texts. It had been a textbook. In itself.

Glitter and glide. Under the colored lights, the spangled couple swirled and sparked in patterns stored and practiced, and now effortlessly performed. Her costume was minuscule, the straps holding sequined breast cups and crotchpiece hidden by the darkness of the ice rink. Gliding on big strong legs around and around, in intricate figures to enhance the sexual ballet. And then, for the finale, he lifted her high up and carried her in a final glide around the ice-white, the spotlights slicing off her skate blades, man and woman motionless, a climax as smooth and as violent as the ice. As often happened, I was caught in a detail: his thumb, dimpling her gluteal fold, stretching sensitive nerve endings in the labia, the clit—

‘Ooohh! Isn't it fantastic, Roy?'

Reflexively, before I knew which woman it was, I said, ‘Yup.'

‘It's so—you know—exciting and neat and clean.'

It was Molly where werd we the Ice Follies.

‘You know,' she said, slipping her hand under my sweater, briefly rubbing upward toward my chest and then unhesitatingly diving down, deep deep down to where I was lumpily grumpily half-chubbing along, ‘this really turns me on. Like Angel says to the Runt: “It makes me hot to trot.” I got you a Christmas present. It's at my apartment. Let's go.'

It was definitely Molly and the Follies. The skating couple finished their particular ice folly with a spin and a sudden stop, slashing the ice, the woman ending up spread-eagled, her glittering sequined genitalia winking at me. As we left, I thought of the gynecology room of the E.W., of all those women's legs wishboned apart, of the gray-drab perineum of the gomeres. Molly led me out through the slushstorm that coated the city from November through March, and back to her house, where she couldn't undo my pants fast enough; and when some snow dropped from her hat onto my inflating
glans
and I yelped and shivered all over, she laughed and said, Oh, Oscar needs to be warmed up, doesn't he? and did just that with her mouth—where did these nurses get these gymnastic hungry mouths? I began to get more wild, and with my thoughts crumbling around me I asked about my penis having just been christened Oscar and she said, It's cute—I named my breasts, from when I first got them. Look. Taking off her sweater and unhooking her bra, she marched them out and pointed out that the one on the right, slightly larger, was named Toni, and the one on the left, slightly pinker, was named Sue. Well, that did it. I twirled Toni and I sucked Sue and the visions of the gray gomere twats and the diseased white and black and native American and under- and over-privileged twats were replaced by fuzzy blond Danish twats and a neat little cut writhing in those spangled gluteal folds. Hot, we did trot.

The Follies had been a matinee, and I had to go directly from Molly to the E.W. for an eight-to-eight night shift. I tickled Toni and slobbered Sue until Molly awoke, and as she saw me leaving she said, ‘Oh, Roy, wait, I forgot to give you your Christmas present,' and she leaped up, hanging Toni lower than Sue, and bounced over to her dresser, and as I marveled at the genius of creation to make such a warm, pick-tittied, and soft-twatted thing as woman, she handed me a little box wrapped up in little-kid wrapping. I opened it, and there, to my astonishment, was a tiepin, in silver, which said:

‘I got the letters and soldered them myself,' said Molly. ‘You really are the * * * MVI * * *, to me. You know, I think you're the smartest person I ever met—a genius. You must think I'm awfully dumb. I don't care, though, I just appreciate the time we're together.'

The perfect gift. Strong feelings clashed in my head, from my grandfather asking me about another woman, to how much I did care about Molly, and I asked her, ‘Don't you think I'm a real bastard for having Berry and seeing you?'

‘Nope. I really don't, Roy.'

‘It's incredible,' I said, ‘you're so beautiful and so sexy and so much . . . fun and so free it's just hard to believe. I didn't know someone like you could really exist. I care about you a whole lot.'

‘Well, I kinda love you, Roy, even if you do see me as some dumb nurse and that's all.'

‘You're not some dumb nurse.'

‘Nope, I'm not. I'm just a fed-up Catholic who's had it up the kazootie with the nuns, and I'm making up for lost time. And now I'm gonna play.'

‘I'm not a bastard to you?'

‘Oh, Roy boy, stop it. You and I are just going to have fun, OK?'

Well, sure it was OK, I guessed, and I gathered her up into my arms and kissed her and Toni and Sue and that hot moist and hairy thing whose name I hadn't caught who could squeeze Oscar as only twenty percent of vaginal vaults can, and she kissed me and we kissed everybody, and with warmth and kisses and the tiepin and everything getting aroused all over again and saying good-bye, it was a miracle that I and big Oscar could walk at all, much less walk out, into the slushstorm and down to the House of good old God.

And wasn't it on just such a night that my great-great-uncle Thaler, denied the chance to be a sculptor, had snuck into the barn, stolen the best horse, and ridden away, never to be seen or heard from again?

13

But that was it. That night shift was the fulcrum of my stay in the E.W. The fun was over. The abuse had begun.

It started when I walked through the waiting room and saw Abe rocking in his corner, alone, a pair of silk women's panties on his head. He was abusing those waiting, and they were beginning to abuse him back. When he saw me he stopped, looked at me as if he didn't know me, and demanded:

‘Are you a Jew?'