Sorrow Floats (21 page)

Masturbation is more a symptom of depression than a function of horniness. I’d suspected this through the drab years of college and confirmed it three weeks after Dad’s funeral when I found myself masturbating constantly without even the semblance of a fantasy.

Paul Harvey—Yukon Jack—masturbation—sleep. Take care of Auburn through the evening, then network sitcom—Yukon Jack—masturbation—sleep. After many years of reading several hours a day, the habit came to a halt. I told myself it was because reading took hands I needed for clitoral manipulation, but I think now it was because reading took effort.

Little on Earth is as depressing as the mechanical orgasm. God knows I tried developing fantasies. I pretended Steve McQueen and Clint Eastwood had tongues of fire, but the emotional energy needed to respond even to an imaginary man was more than I could handle. Sam Callahan was like kissing my brother, Park made me too sad on top of the depression, and Paul Harvey gave me the willies, like sitting on the dick of a dead man. I settled for an actor whose name I didn’t know who played Meathead on
All in the Family
.

After a couple weeks of Meathead I gave up and went back to nothing, to fingers without feelings going round and round until release and relief. Alcohol plus masturbation plus too much sleep equals depression. Einstein said that.

What brings the subject up is Malvern, Arkansas. Let’s all recall that I was accustomed to daily, at the least, self-service and had been dry for two weeks come Sunday. Mother’s Day, when I should have been discussing the moistness of pound cake in Mom’s parlor, I climbed into the bathtub for one of those rushing water jobs that make you feel half acrobat, half drowned.

***

The sign read
Malvern, Arkansas—brick capital of the world
. I eased past the Oachita Oil Company gas station, right out of
Bonnie and Clyde
, and into a shady city park. You got your weedy creek, swing set with attached slide, permanently embedded croquet court, statue of a Confederate soldier waving a sword atop a horse with a massive barrel and no sexual identity, and a tire swing hanging from what Shane said was a sycamore.

Lloyd unloaded three cases of Coors and brought them to the picnic table, where all the gang but Shane had gathered. Shane stayed in Moby Dick on plumbing patrol. Since we’d lost Critter he’d gone back to changing himself solo. The thing bothering me was the upshot of having less than two dollars in my pocket and nothing in my creel.

“You plan on making me jump through ugly hoops every time I want a bottle?” I asked.

Lloyd looked at me for a moment. Our conversations were being reduced to questions followed by silence as the responder worked out what was really said.

“No.”

“Thanks.”

Shane’s head bobbed out of Moby Dick’s side door. “If she gets whiskey, I get Chips Ahoy!”

The three cases fit perfectly between Lloyd’s outstretched hands and his chin. When he moved his head, the Coors moved with him. “Anybody else want anything?”

“I either need a Laundromat or disposables,” Marcella said.

Owsley looked up from his pad. “I’d like a Coca-Cola if it’s okay.”

Andrew hung upside down in the tire swing with his head firmly in the dirt. “If the girl gets a Coke, I want one.”

“I’m no girl.”

“Of course you’re a girl.”

“Owsley’s a boy just like you,” Marcella said.

Andrew fell out of the swing, picked himself up, and came over to inspect Owsley. “Girls have hair, that’s why they’re girls.”

Owsley said, “You must have been raised in a barn.”

“Don’t make fun of my children. In Dumas boys have short hair, how’s he to know different?”

“Well, explain to him about the penis. It’s the wienie makes the boy, Andy, not the hair.”

“Don’t call me Andy, Owsley.”

“Don’t call me Owsley.”

The discussion scattered into several people speaking simultaneously about what to call them and what not to call the penis. Lloyd took his load to the gas station to play
Let’s Make a Deal
. It was one of those stations you can look at and know right off they have pink Peanut Platters and soda pops you’ve never heard of sunk in a metal box full of water. He would be trading with cousins named Gomer and Goober.

I could hear Shane singing “Secret Agent Man” to himself as he cleaned up his thing.

“Don’t touch my hair,” Owsley shouted at Andrew, who started crying, which made Hugo Jr. cry, which got Marcella all fussy.

I sat on the picnic bench next to Owsley. “You have beautiful hair. I’d give anything for hair like yours.”

“You can have it.”

He was drawing a large frog sitting in a wheelchair. The resemblance was amazing. I’d never much gone for boys with long hair, except Indians, but Owsley’s was special—texture of a Blackfoot and blond as a Swedish fashion model.

“I used to have long, beautiful hair like yours, only mine was brown. After Dad died I went crazy and cut it off. Now everyone treats me different.”

Owsley didn’t look up. “Kids at school spit in my hair and rub mud on it. Girls touch it.”

“Hell, if it’s such a pain in the ass, get rid of it.”

I don’t think the concept had ever occurred to him. He concentrated on shading the frog’s belly, but you could see his young brain trying out the idea. Marcella took her whimpering brood to the creek, where Andrew immediately fell in.

“Freedom won’t let me cut it. When he was in prison he told my foster parents he would kill them if they touched my head.” His eyes did the unfocused review-of-life-in-a-foster-home. I’d seen the look before. Owsley’s voice was kicked-puppy. “They didn’t care. They just took me in for the state allowance.”

I reached toward his head. “May I touch it?”

He looked at me. “Do you have to, Mrs. Talbot?”

“I’d like to.” I slipped my hand behind his ear and ran my fingers all the way to where the last couple of inches rested on the picnic bench. It was like bathing in a waterfall.

I said, “Freedom’s gone now, I say if something makes you miserable, ditch it, no matter how beautiful it may be.”

Andrew threw a rock that almost hit Hugo Jr. Marcella and both kids went into high frenzy. Shane muttered to himself, “Take that, dirty Dick. Now I’ve got you.” A backhoe lumbered by on the highway.

Owsley said, “Cut it.”

***

First challenge was to talk Shane out of the scissors. “I’ll coif the lad’s hair. I’m a licensed barber in the state of New Jersey, you know.”

“You’re too short, Shane. The hair cutter has to stand higher than the head.”

“I hate to break the news, little lady, but your tits are too small.”

Then came the “Sit up straight, I can’t do this if you’re slouched over a drawing pad.”

“Have you ever cut hair before?” Owsley asked.

“Can’t be that hard, hairdressers aren’t famous for brains.”

Shane wheeled over to kibitz, and Marcella brought Hugo Jr. up from the creek. “Hey, Andrew,” she called. “Want to watch Maurey turn the hippy boy normal?”

“I’d rather barf up.”

I really got into the combing part. My fingers had never experienced anything so soft and smooth. It was like making snow angels naked, like riding Frostbite slow motion, like Sam Callahan licking between my legs.

Marcella let Hugo Jr. crawl across the picnic table. “Lonicera Mangleson had hair that long, and when she cut it a wig maker in Amarillo paid forty dollars for the leftovers.”

“You going to comb all day?” Shane asked.

The longer I combed, the more Owsley tensed up. “I’ve never had a haircut, not since the day I was born. It won’t hurt, will it?”

“I won’t hurt you.”

“I wish they weren’t looking at me.”

As I finished the comb-out, Lloyd came back for Moby Dick. “I got a tank of gas and some groceries, but I’ll need another six-pack. We’re out of Yukon Jack territory, Maurey. Southern Comfort’s almost the same stuff.”

“What time is it?” I asked.

“One, maybe one-thirty.”

“I missed Paul Harvey. My life is in shambles. I missed Paul Harvey and we’re trapped in a hell-hole where they don’t sell Yukon Jack.”

“I told you she’d fall apart in the South,” Shane said.

“Janis Joplin drank Southern Comfort. She was hard core and she died. Make mine tequila.”

Shane made a drooling snort sound. “If you drink tequila, you’ll be hard core and die, too.”

Lloyd hoisted himself into the driver’s seat. “What’re you doing to the boy?”

“Maurey’s playing Samson and Delilah,” Shane said.

Lloyd watched a few moments. “Don’t cut his ears off. He’ll bleed in the ambulance.”

Sam Callahan says the two times men invariably make cornball comments is when they’re watching someone get a haircut or watching someone change a tire. You ask me, there’s more than two cases.

***

I started by forming a ponytail with my left fist and cutting straight across. Was the first ponytail I ever saw long as a pony’s tail. Shane’s scissors were little dudes he used to cut tape for his urine system, so mine wasn’t an efficient beauty shop operation. My snips had the subtlety of a machete hack across Guatemala. But a weird thing happened as the scissors clipped their way through the ponytail. The world surrounding Owsley and me shut down, went blurry. Everything focused into one cone of light where my hands intersected his hair.

There’s a trance state that two beings can reach where the silly banter of nearby yahoos no longer exists. Time no longer exists. Nothing before, after, or around the immediate unity of the two matters. It’s neat.

Frostbite and I achieved the trance in an arena filled with several thousand people dressed in western wear. I pulled it off while nursing both my babies, and once an old sheepherder and I found it dancing “The Tennessee Waltz” at a Fourth of July street party in Tensleep.

The moment you’re supposed to transcend the reality of time and space is sex, but that’s one area where I’ve never come close. Sex is complex—Will my birth control kick in? Why won’t he slow down? Will he treat me like dogshit in the morning? The relationship works with horse and rider, mother and child, or two dancers who become one with the music and thus with each other. First time you start wondering who’ll finish on top, the deal is blown.

“Why didn’t you want Andrew to call you Owsley?”

“Freedom gave everyone stupid names, said a new identity would force a break from our hung-up pasts. He’s the one with the hung-up past.”

The hair between my fingers was clean mountain water; sunlight on the Tetons in winter; awakening at dawn and lying in bed listening to the birds.

“So where’d he come up with Owsley?”

“Owsley’s the guy in California who makes LSD. Freedom wanted me to become a chemist. He said nobody gets high on art.”

The scissors were a silver canoe gliding through a golden lake. All these metaphors made my clitoris throb.

“Do you have a real name?”

“You’ll laugh.”

“Why would I laugh?”

“Brad.”

“Brad?”

“I knew you would laugh.”

“I’m not laughing. Do you hear laughing?” What he heard was me gasping for air. “Okay. Owsley is dead. Out of the fallen hair will arise Brad. The normal boy.”

“Will cutting my hair and saying I’m normal make me normal, Mrs. Talbot?”

“Sure. While we’re taking new identities, call me Miss Pierce from now on. I’m done with Talbot.”

“We’ll be Brad and Miss Pierce.”

By God if I didn’t have an orgasm. Not your everyday gee-that’s-nice orgasm, either. There’s “I got off, dear. You can stop now,” and then there’s or
gas
m. Or
gas
m is when your eyes and ears ring. Or
gas
m is when you can still feel it hours later in the back of your knees.

“Are you done, Miss Pierce?”

“Yeah, let’s find a mirror.”

Marcella changed Hugo Jr. down by the creek where she could watch Andrew wade up and down promoting leaf races in the slow current. Owsley, now Brad, found a Safeway sack in the trash can for his shorn hair. I asked him what he planned to do with it.

“I might stuff it in a box and mail it to Freedom.”

“You think he would understand the symbolism?”

Shane peeled off a toenail, put it in his mouth, then spit it on the ground. “In 1964, my hair was long as Brad’s, before you chopped it off. That’s when I was on the bus with Ken Kesey.”

I went off to the park ladies’ room to pee and wipe my upper leg—not all that stuff you feel afterward is boy goo. I didn’t think Shane had noticed my Big O during the haircut. He wasn’t the type to witness an orgasm and not comment on it.

The women’s outhouse shared a wall with the men’s outhouse, and some nitwit had drilled quarter-size peepholes the women stuffed with wads of toilet paper. I imagined an ongoing battle of unplugging and plugging. This game must be an Arkansas thing; Wyoming men have the class and style of a McDonald’s burger, but at least they don’t cop their thrills watching women piss.

The graffiti read
Marilyn Monroe had a Mastectomy
. You tell me what that’s supposed to mean.

When I returned, Shane was waving his wicked little toenail knife like a conductor on a baton. “Due to an outbreak of lice in the trenches, burr haircuts were ordered for all soldiers in World War One. One French division mutinied and marched en masse to the bordellos of Marseilles.”

Brad interrupted the lecture. “Is your name really Shane?”

“Of course my name is Shane. Shane is an ancient, venerated praenomen of my forebears, on the matrilineal side. There were Shanes among the earliest Rinesfoos in thirteenth-century Belgium.”

I thought about pointing out his matrilineal side would hardly have been named Rinesfoos but skipped it. He’d have claimed twenty-six generations of virgin birth. “Five or six Shanes live around Jackson Hole, but none of them are older than the movie. I think you stole the name from Alan Ladd.”

“As a matter of fact, princess, the man who wrote
Shane
took the name from me. We had adjoining lockers on the UCLA football team.”

“Let’s ask Marcella. I’ll bet cash your name is Percival or Mordecai, something wimpy and embarrassing.”

Shane’s head bobbed up and down, with his chins floating slightly after the action. He raised up on his hands and took on the radish tinge.

“Go ahead,” he said. “Ask her.”

That’s when Andrew screamed, which was nothing new, only his scream was followed by one from Marcella.
“Snake!”

Lord knows what I thought I was doing, but I grabbed the scissors and ran down to the creek. Marcella, with Hugo Jr. clutched to her chest, pointed at the snake between us and Andrew. Long sucker with black bands and yellow spots. Slit tongue zipping in and out. Slithery movements. Andrew stood in shin-deep water, pooping his pants.

With a yell, I jumped on the snake and got his neck in a death grip, just like the guy on
Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom
. The snake twisted and jerked, fighting to sink his fangs in my skin. Screaming the Blackfoot war cry, I straddled him and held his head at crotch level while his body writhed between my legs. Then I squeezed him with my left hand, plunged the scissors into his neck, and started cutting.

Yellow gunk flowed, then muscles popped out the slit—actually went faster than Brad’s hair. After I cut through the spine I tore his head off and with one last shriek threw it as far as I could.

The only sound was Andrew whimpering in front of me. I turned back to find Marcella, Brad, and Shane staring like I was the mad serial killer of Tasmania.

“It was just a harmless king snake,” Shane said.

Marcella ran over and pulled Andrew from the creek. She swatted him once on the rear, then hugged him until he recovered enough to burst into violent tears.

Brad was in awe. “You ripped his head right off.”

I stared down at the snake’s body, still writhing on the ground beneath my feet. Then I looked up and made eye contact with Shane. I said, “He looked like a big dick. I always wanted to tear the head off a big dick.”