The Ferrari in the Bedroom (19 page)

This is the way my mind works some mornings when I’ve gotten up too early after having gotten to bed too late the night before, and the coffee tastes sourish and I feel Manhattan closing in. On the back page of the paper, I scanned a lush Pontiac ad that hinted that the buyer could achieve immortality, quite possibly live forever in a “totally controlled interior atmosphere” if he traded in his old, totally inadequate last year’s model which had only promised him Everlasting Youth, for this year’s dream machine. I took another pull at the lukewarm black coffee, trying gamely to pull my wits together. Drive-in confessionals, The Austin Seven crypt. Pontiac immortality. My mind quivered nervously, as it so often does these days, contemplating, indeed savoring, the blossoming role that the automobile has assumed. By God, there are beginning to appear distinct Religious overtones to the good old family sedan. As I shaved, and glared back at the soapy-faced stranger who peered out
of the mirror at me, I noticed he seemed to be playing a ramshackle version of Scrooge. Thinking of drive-in confessionals too early in the morning can do that to you.

On my way to midtown, cradled deep in the bosom of Mother IRT, after I had read all the subway ads for Clairol, Ronzoni Spaghetti Sauce, L&M cigarettes and several thousand scrawled fragments of graffiti, all variations on the “Screw Whitey” theme, my mind began to wander. I pictured the scene at the drive-in confessional thusly:

DRIVER:
(gunning his motor several times for reassurance) “Bless me, Father, for I have sinned.”

PRIEST:
“Yes, my son. And how have you sinned?” (He bends
over his steering wheel, adjusting the knobs on his stereo tape deck which is quietly playing an organ version of
Ave Maria.)

DRIVER:
(his voice shaky with contrition) “I have committed adultery, Father. With my buddy Howie’s wife.”

PRIEST:
“We are all too human. In these difficult times, such things cannot be avoided. That will be two Hail Marys and one Our Father.”

DRIVER:
“Thank you, Father. I will try not to do it again. But she is sure some dish!”

PRIEST:
“The will is stronger than the body, my son. One can only try.” (The line of cars behind the Lotus has lengthened mightily and a few impatient sinners have begun to toot their horns, calling for faster service.)

PRIEST:
“Is that all, my son?”

DRIVER:
“No, Father, I wish it were, but there’s more. I… well, I…thought several evil thoughts about a young lady in the Steno pool at the office, and Father…” (He trails off into an embarrassed silence.)

PRIEST:
“The Devil takes many forms, and he is always present. Try to think these thoughts no more, my son. Peace of mind will ensue.”

DRIVER:
“Thank you, Father. They fired her last week anyway, so I guess I’m safe. Father, I don’t know how to say this, but there is more, a lot more.”

PRIEST:
“One moment, son.” (He removes the cassette from the tapedeck and replaces it with another. The solemn tones of a Gregorian chant recorded in some vast cathedral fill the Fiat.)

PRIEST:
“You have had a busy week, if I may say so.”

DRIVER:
“I am sorry to admit that I have committed several Mortal sins.”

PRIEST:
“Several?”

DRIVER:
“Yes.” (Involuntarily he nervously guns the Lotus, sending up a billow of blue exhaust into the cockpit of the MGB behind him. The occupant, a thin bleached-blonde, protests coughingly amid the fumes. Several angry horns are heard again. Overhead, a 747 jet whistles by, carrying a crowd of merrymakers to Las Vegas. A Good Humor man, his bell ringing merrily, can be seen doing a brisk business with the waiting confessees in the line of cars.)

DRIVER:
“Father, I failed to change the oil in the Lotus again.”

PRIEST:
“What? Again? I thought we were going to turn over a new leaf.”

DRIVER:
“I tried. I really did. But it slipped my mind.”

PRIEST:
(sternly) “That is no excuse. That will be five Hail Marys and three Our Fathers.”

DRIVER:
“I’m no good.”

PRIEST:
“Every man can be saved. Remember, five Hail Marys and three Our Fathers. There is still hope.”

DRIVER:
“No, Father, there isn’t. All is lost!” (He begins to sob, his head dropping to the steering wheel, causing his horn to blow. He sobs on unheedingly.)

PRIEST:
“There, there, my son. I have heard worse through this very window. You are but one among many.” (He adjusts the Gregorian chants, which have become somewhat insistent.)

DRIVER:
“No, Father. I am not one among many. I haven’t told you the worst.”

PRIEST:
“What? There’s more? You have indeed strayed.”

DRIVER:
(sweating profusely, eyes rolling wildly) “Father, I…” (gasping) “…BURNT OUT THE BEARINGS!”

PRIEST:
(after hurriedly crossing himself, his face drawn and pale with horror) “Pray with me. Our Father who art in
Heaven, forgive your son who hath sinned, for he knoweth not what he does. Amen.”
(THE DRIVER
mutters the prayer incoherently.)

PRIEST:
“There is no absolution for a Mortal sin such as you have committed. We can only pray for God’s forgiveness. I can promise you nothing. However, we must try to make amends. That will be fifty Hail Marys and twenty-five Our Fathers, and I would suggest a sizeable donation to our Driveway Renewal Fund.”

DRIVER:
“I was afraid of excommunication. It won’t happen again.”

PRIEST:
“Your time is up. May I have your ticket, please.” (The driver hands him his ticket, which is punched by the priest and filed in his glove compartment. The driver puts the Lotus into gear and drives off, trailing a cloud of blue smoke. The MGB, its occupant sobbing, wheels into place.)

BLONDE:
“Bless me Father, for I have sinned….”

I clung to the hanging strap of the swaying subway car, enjoying my little drama. The next step, I thought, of course would be drive-in Baptisms, drive-in marriages and who knows where it could lead; maybe deacons on Hondas, and the collection plate would be a toll house with an
EXACT CHANGE
lane. Once this kind of thinking gets hold of you, you can hardly stop. Out in California they’ve already got drivein mortuaries where the deceased is laid out in a glass case wearing his favorite costume from life, his surfers maybe or his tie-dyed jeans, and his friends come tooling up and pay their respects without ever having to get out of the Buick.

That’s one of the great things about subway life; it’s one of the few times when a guy really stares long and hard at his own navel. The one thing you better not do, ever, is catch
the eye of somebody else in the car, that is, if you value the health of your liver, since a casual glance can easily precipitate a major knife fight or worse. So the experienced twentieth century man-mole, the subway rider, becomes adept at an Urban form of Yoga mind-suspension. I realize it is not fair to spring it on you outlanders like this, but have you ever wondered why most of the earth-shaking plays, novels, poetry, graffiti, and other major art forms reach their fullest flower in New York? Hardly anybody ever writes a decent novel out of Goshen, Indiana, or Pebble Lake, Minnesota, and I submit it’s because they have no subways where a man is forced daily to deal with the raging fires of Evil and fantasy which lie in the guts of all of us. It’s just that people Out There where the sun shines and Simoniz still works can afford to ignore the nether regions and get away with it. It is during my strap-hanging sessions that I get some of my worst destructive, often cataclysmic visions, so I’m hanging there thinking about drive-in confessionals, the sinner in my fantasy Lotus, wondering what the blonde in the MGB pulled off that made her so nervous and whether or not the Father in the Fiat would eventually make Bishop and be awarded, maybe, an Alfa by the Vatican, when I catch sight of Miss Subways staring fixedly although somewhat blankly out of a subway ad directly in front of me.

Marcia appeared to be wearing a rubber wig in the photograph, which had been suitably mutilated by the roving
bands of Folk Artists who infest the Seventh Avenue line. “Motoring with her friends.” Golly Ned, I thought, I haven’t heard that expression since I gave up reading the
White Castle News,
which as any good hamburger hound knows is distributed along with sliced pickles and fried onions at all the White Castles of the Midwest.

A blast of ripe air swept through the straphanging mob as our car paused briefly at 34th Street where it disgorged a mob of Macy maniacs hurrying single-mindedly toward yet another White Sale. Briefly I pictured Marcia Bugleblast and her friends “motoring” through the Jersey junkyards in a grape-colored ’53 Ford Galaxie, the very picture of elegance and twentieth century leisure living. Suddenly I spotted a seat vacant. Not really a seat, but a small, unoccupied crevice between a large Puerto Rican lady festooned with so many kids they seemed to come in bunches like thousands of squalling, sticky grapes. On the other side of the crevice was a thin, parchment-skinned, wiry native wearing a straw hat that would have gotten him twenty-five bucks easy in any antique shop and reading a Gideon bible probably stolen from some wayside Howard Johnson Motor Inn, since he was using the celluloid DO NOT DISTURB sign for a bookmark. Darting forward like a sweaty eel I slithered into the tiny crack between my fellow human beings.

The car started to move, and again my mind jumped a cog and began to wander…Drive-In confessionals… Marcia Bugleblast motoring with her friends…John Aldershot and his Austin crypt… I wondered if… ?

The 500? The True Believers are in the Infield guzzling beer, playing pinochle and celebrating a unique Religious rite.

   “Fer Chrissake, Carl, don’t forget the goddamn bottle opener!”

My old man’s voice floated through the pre-dawn darkness. “You outa yer mind?” my Uncle Carl answered, his voice sharpedged with scorn.

It was a ridiculous statement. My Uncle Carl had never been without a bottle opener since he was nine, and he didn’t use the opener on Nehi Orange bottles either. The day, late in his eighth year, that he discovered beer was the day he discovered Life.

I lay in the blackness of my bedroom, listening to every golden word of the dialogue that was going on in the kitchen. Doors slammed; feet clumped up and down the back porch steps. Finally all was silent, except for the distinctive mutter and moan of a GM truck starter and an
occasional muffled curse as the son of a bitch flooded again. Across the room my kid brother slept on peacefully, clutching his pink and blue Easter bunny. At last the sound of a motor finally catching; a couple of quick, bellowing roars to clear the valves of accumulated glop, and then the sound of the panel truck backing out of the driveway, the reverse gear shuddering painfully, and then finally the low murmuring hum as the True Believers disappeared into the night, heading straight South down U.S. 41. I lay in the blackness, unable to sleep, knowing that they had joined a great migrating horde of co-religionists heading toward Mecca, which lay a couple of hundred miles away on the Indiana plains; as flat, as featureless as the top of a Brunswick Bulky Collander billiard table.

The traumatic and moving experiences of Childhood are never truly forgotten, nor outlived. By God, the child
is
the father of the man. You can bitch all you want about it, you can shake your fist at the lowering heavens, you can pretend, posture, whistle in the dark, write a bad novel, all proving that you are far superior, more enlightened than the previous generation. If you’ll excuse the expression—Bullshit! History, in spite of what Henry Ford said about it, will ultimately give you its inevitable kick in your egotistical ass.