Magnificent Vibration (26 page)

I sneak him into Heartbreak Hotel under the cover of darkness because we aren’t allowed to have pets in the apartments. Great, just
what every guy needs after a brutal divorce (and this place is truly
filled
with divorcés)—some frosty, impersonal, residential corporation telling us we can’t have a warm mutt to cuddle up with and ease our torment. I smuggle my fuzzy bro, wrapped in a blanket, through the Gestapo lights, barbed-wire, and roadblocks, holding him like a baby so if I run into the manager, Murray could perhaps be mistaken for an exceptionally ugly child with a severe case of hypertrichosis (werewolf’s disease). But we run the gauntlet with no hindrance and Mur-mur is soon ensconced in the Lonely Guys’ Villa with yours cynophilistically.

Now that I’m alone and hanging with Murray, things seem fairly normal again and I’m beginning to wonder if Lexington Vargas, the simmering would-be Christ-bride, and I have somehow gotten things a little muddled or been under some weird collective spell. Maybe we just didn’t get enough sleep over the three days we were together. I am having a “cold-light-of-dawn” reflection on it all, and it’s beginning to seem like a dream or an hallucination. Could all this have really happened? I am leaning toward being less and less committed to this nutty trip to Scotland. If it weren’t for the fact that it’s a paid vacation and the Loch Ness Monster from my childhood lives there, I’d probably bail right now.

The three of us have agreed not to contact one another unless we hear from Arthur or have a Merikh sighting. Another hard decision. Especially for me. The “no call” policy was Alice’s idea and we all consented, though why, I have no idea. I’d love to talk to her, damnit. I’m missing her more than I even thought I would. L.V. too, but although he is a charming fellow, not quite as much. Now that I’m not getting up at three o’clock in the morning to make the mind-numbing trek to Siberia—I mean, Valencia, where the “Frightfully Faulty Films
Dubbing Stages” are now located, I have had time to read more of my copy of
Magnificent Vibration.
I discover in it that my father died from colon cancer last year in Philadelphia (?), and I actually cry over this. Why didn’t he ever want to see me again? It’s another of the irreparable rents in the fabric of my life that has no restitution and no way back home. I know the phrase “Get over it,” and I try my best, but guilt and pain hang on me and screw with me like a bad girlfriend. There is so much I regret in my life, and I wish I could have a do-over. Was I that much of a disappointment as a son to him? Did he never even want me in the first place? Why didn’t he fall in love with me like a dad is supposed to? I have photos of me as a little kid, and even
I
think I was kind of adorable. What was missing for him? Why did he not connect with me? He was my dad. It’s a broken piece, now he’s gone, that I can never repair. As Arthur said: Shit happens.

My mother was a slightly different story, and even according to my book, we healed a few things before her passing. I stayed by her side until she died from emphysema. She was a lifelong smoker and hid it from us so well that even if I saw evidence of it as a kid, I never really got it. She was numbed up under a morphine blanket for the last few days, but I sat with her and told her I loved her and, of course, asked her to give my sweet girl a kiss when they met on the other side. I said over and over to her, “Josie is waiting for you, Mom.” I know in moments like these we revert to the basic, core beliefs and teachings of our youth, and I most certainly did. As Mother was dying there was, for me, most certainly a Heaven where we would all recognize one another and all be healed of our human illnesses, and failings, and sweet forgiveness would reign over us. We would actually be able to hug and kiss everyone who’d gone before us. Even my dad would hold me tightly and say he was sorry. We would be friends. Hmm.

Part of me still believes that, but I don’t know if it’s conditioning, blind hope, truth, or the whole there-are-no-atheists-on-a-crashing-plane syndrome.

My passport arrives finally with the “guy who has sex with goats” photo permanently embedded in its pages, as does the email with all our plane tickets to the Land of the Awesome Loch Ness Monster. My misgivings about this journey have grown. If someone were to relate back to me this whole scenario, I would force a smile, be kind of weirded out, and slowly back away to a safe blast-distance in case the bomb they had strapped around their chest went off.

Then Alice calls my cell phone, crying hysterically.

S
orry, but we are not done with the painful flashbacks quite yet.

I arrive at my work a little late because of the scenic route taken, still no clearer on how this should be handled vis-à-vis me, Ned the Dickhead, and his bone-chilling boner photo on my wife’s computer. Seeing him will be like rubbing salt into the tiny pee-hole at the end of my todger that, I am told, has more nerve endings than any other part of the body. Of course it does. That’s why Woody continues to have such a hold over me. As luck would have it, Ned is late, too, and is just getting out of his Chevy truck that he thinks is so friggin’ macho. And honestly, it is. I am driving my
“Hey look everyone. I’m earning more money than you are,”
C-class Mercedes that I am struggling to make the lease payments on, and I feel totally phony and pretentious right at this moment. Ned gives me a wave. Is he saying “Good morning,” or “Thanks for the use of your wife’s vagina”? I don’t know. I can’t tell.

As he walks to the door into the Cambodian Cinema Underworld,
I call to him, “Ned, can I talk to you for a second?” He stops, and a look of concern or possibly irritation flits briefly across his face, because we never, ever talk, Ned and I. This, to me, just compounds his guilt, and I feel the anger rise in me like a great leopard seal breaching for the kill as a fat and juicy penguin swims heedlessly through the frigid waves above.

I suddenly lose all self-control and scream, like a man dishonored, outraged, and abused, across the parking lot and loud enough for the entire building to hear: “Get ready, asshole, because I am about to open up the biggest, most painful can of whoopass that you or anyone else has ever experienced. And if you ever touch my wife again or even so much as ‘Twit’ with her or send her another badly lit photo of your pudgy, aging, naked body, I will tear you a new ass-opening so substantial you’ll become the eighth
and
ninth wonders of the fucking world and people will drive their cars through you so their kids can gawk, take snapshots, and admire my handiwork!!!!!”

In my head I scream this. In reality I non-confrontationally waddle over and say: “I just found out that Charlotte, my wife, has been unfaithful. And I saw your photo on her laptop. I guess you’re one of the men she’s been seeing.”

That
is my best shot?
“I guess you’re one of the men she’s been seeing
????” Been SEEING??” As in, throwing her legs over your shoulders while you mercilessly pound her pee-hole, “been seeing”?? Jesus, next life bless me with balls, please.

“Oh man, sorry, dude. I don’t think I’m the only one, though,” is his reply, and he walks in to work as if this is all that needs to be said.

I think to myself, “That’s a fair response to my ball-less enquiry. I deserve no more, considering I broached the subject as though it were a minor complaint. A mere annoyance. Something bothersome but not really worth getting all tense and worked-up over.” You get what you give.

I then remember that I sent Ned’s photo to everyone else and everyone else’s photo to Ned. I guess he hasn’t checked his Twitter page yet. I suddenly feel like I’m the one who’s been the immoral cheating bastard. I avoid Ned from then on as though it’s
my
fault. We have no further conversation, Ned and I, and anytime we accidentally meet, it’s a quick embarrassed nod of recognition and we move on, eyes to the floor. Why am I such a weed? Where’s the Charles Bronson in me with his vigilante justice and the six-shot revolver that can kill twenty-seven bad guys without reloading? Where are truth and balance and fairness? Maybe that’s it. Life just isn’t fucking fair.

After this first, distressing day at work, I climb back into my pretentious “economy” Mercedes and drive myself to the dry cleaners. Obviously and unfortunately I am not done yet. I walk in and Freddy the wife-fucker says “Hello, Mr. Cotton. Your lady was in earlier and picked everything up.” I think he has a slightly nervous look about him that tells me she may have mentioned the bust or maybe he’s already logged on to his computer. It must be a bit disconcerting to suddenly find thirty-five anonymous photos of naked and emotionally/erotically charged men on your home page with quotes like, “Please, ma’am. I want some more?” and “I’m still jacking off to your ass, baby!!!!” or “I know you must have a million guys but that one night was INSANE!!!!!!!” And if they could add more exclamation points I would insist on disqualifying them from ever touching a keyboard again. I am having trouble focusing, of course, given the circumstances and the amount of hooch I have just consumed.

“So, Freddy,” I begin with an unpracticed and possibly misinterpreted leer. Unfortunately, to numb the pain I
have
stopped off at a local tavern on the way home from work and treated myself to several glasses of something severely alcoholic, so I am wearing a courage coat that normally is not mine. “You’ve been a-messin’ where you shouldn’t a-been
a-messin,’ ” I start out, quoting Nancy Sinatra. The lyrics are from her 1966 song “These Boots Are Made for Walkin’,” which is a pop quote so dumb and inappropriate, considering the very real and extremely painful circumstances I find myself in, that I will never, ever cop to it even if someone reads this back to me.

“What do you mean?” says flustered Freddy, his Asian features coloring slightly. To be honest, although he has the “rough boy” tattooed look about him that my wife seems to find so irresistible and humpable, he is a smallish guy, and given my state of inebriation I think I’d probably best him in an exchange of blows, mainly because I am feeling no pain and could probably absorb a punch to the nose and continue unabated. It doesn’t come to that, of course. Fights are actually difficult to start once you pass the age of twenty-five.

“You fucked my wife,” I uncharacteristically say.

Mrs. Chang, the owner of Chang’s Dry Cleaning Service, overhears my lewd comment to her employee and takes me to task.

“You no talk to my man like that. Not say bad words in here,” she admonishes me in a heavy Chinese accent.

“Your employee here has been having sexual relations with my significant other,” I counter. In my dizzy state, I think this is a fair and reasonable approach.

“I call police,” says Mrs. Chang, and she leaves in a huff.

“I’ve been coming to this dry cleaners for three years,” I yell after her, sure she will understand and concede my point.

I think she’s bluffing, so I continue my one-sided conversation with Freddy the Fornicating Fuck-Face. Powered by the mighty forces of firewater, I proceed to question and berate him. He is sweating lightly but saying nothing in return.

“How would you like it if I was cheating on you?” I try, making no
sense to anyone, as the alcohol I don’t usually consume begins to have a serious effect on the cognitive areas of my brain.

“My wife’s computer is full of guys. Naked guys. With lots of hair all over their bodies and with . . . with boners. I saw your
dick,
man! I now know you’re not circumcised!” I am actually embarrassing myself, such are the lack of a cohesive argument and the painful detail I am allowing myself to divulge.

“I trusted you with my clothes!” I plead. It’s pathetic. Someone shut me the hell up. People are entering the establishment, hearing me having a one-sided argument with dear Freddy, then turning around and walking right out, uncleaned clothes still in hand. I peripherally understand that my presence is not very good for Mrs. Chang’s dry-cleaning business. I arrive at that awful drunken point where I know I am off the rails but am powerless to do anything to correct the path of the crashing train I am on. If only I had a good friend with me right now to lead me outside, stick his fingers down my throat, and then take me home and put me to bed so I could sleep it off, no harm, no foul. But it only gets worse.

“I’ve probably worked on films that actors you admire are starring in,” I wail, monumentally confusing the Chinese with the Cambodians.

Eventually, and to my utter surprise, the police do arrive. And arrest me. And book me. Drunk in public. Me? Who doesn’t drink! I am caught so completely off-guard that I point at a mortified Freddy the Copulating Cleaner and start shouting stupid and highly arrest-worthy shit like, “You should be arresting
this
idiot. Don’t you people read your Bible? ‘Thou shalt not commit adultery!’ ” Oh my God, my mother is now spouting words out of my own mouth! And I am
one
of those guilty adulterers, let’s be honest. The police add “resisting arrest” to the charges and then, thankfully for my own dignity’s sake, handcuff me and shove me into the back of their black-and-white while shoppers gawk. I even tell the
two cops as they are driving me to the local lockup for the night that my wife has been screwing her way through my phone book. They have no sympathy or words of consolation for yours hammeredly. The universe sucks balls. I spend some time in a holding cell next-door to a guy who wants me to make a call to his wife for him and tell her to get rid of the “stuff” because the cops are on their way over. Since I am in for a lesser offense I get more access to the phone. He makes the “rocking a baby” motion to signify to me he has a little one at home. It’s a sympathy ploy that unfortunately wins me over, such is my current state, and I make the call for him. But the back office, or wherever, is monitoring all this and I am summarily pulled out of the holding cell and placed in a dark, isolated interior dungeon consisting of a locked door, no windows, and a stainless steel toilet without a seat. Welcome to the joint, MF! Okay, it’s not really “the joint.” It’s only the local jail, but I feel castrated, castigated, and completely at their mercy. Could I get raped in here? I’m beginning to think it’s a possibility. They could throw any crackhead in with me. I lie down on the rock-hard bench that has probably seen the likes of murderers, drug dealers, drunks who threw up everywhere, and homeless weirdos who peed all over the very place where I am currently laying my head and trying to cry myself to sleep. Jail is not for pansies like me.