The Tragic Age (11 page)

The others are in the kitchen.

Everything in the fridge and most of what was in cupboards and drawers is now on the counter. Deliza is cooking. Twom and Ephraim are at a table. Twom is drinking red wine from a bottle while Ephraim eats yet more ice cream. They are engaged in heated conversation.

“He's a psycho,” says Ephraim.

“He's the Dark Knight!” says Twom.

“What are they talking about?” I say to Deliza.

Deliza goes “tsk” which, unlike “mmm,” is a way of implying something negative like annoyance, impatience, or disgust. “
Comic
books,” she says. She shakes her head as if to say she can't believe males are even remotely related to human beings.

“Superman would destroy Batman!” says Ephraim.

“In what?” says Twom. “That blue and red leotard? What's he gonna do, blow Batman to death? Maybe squeeze his dick off when he takes it up the ass?”

Twom is clearly enjoying himself. Ephraim, who each summer spends every waking minute at Comic-Con dressed as a Jedi knight, is on the verge of going drool-sputtering ballistic.

“Superman is invulnerable! He can fly, he has heat vision, he can do anything!”

“He's a pussy,” says Twom.

“I didn't know you cooked,” I say to Deliza.

It's not just bacon. She's made scrambled eggs with cheese, sautéed onion, and mushrooms. She's wearing an apron she's found and her dark hair is pulled back in a ponytail. Her makeup has wiped off during her sack diving with Twom and she's suddenly pretty as opposed to outright sexy.

“I cook if I feel like it,” Deliza says. “I just don't clean.” She hands me a plate and silverware.

Plate in hand, I turn from the stove, walk over to the table and sit just in time to hear Ephraim seal the deal.

“Superman really exists,” he says.

Twom almost spits wine on the table.

“You are so full of it, dude.”

“In 1931,” says Ephraim, “a spaceship crashed in Idaho. A trapper saw it go down. When he got there, he found a little boy.”

Deliza puts plates down on the table and sits. We all begin eating.

“He took the boy to his cabin,” says Ephraim. “He tried to talk to him but the boy didn't speak any language the trapper had ever heard of.”

“He's a trapper,” says Twom. “What languages
would
he have heard of?”

“Shshh,” says Deliza. She puts her hand on Twom's. “What happened to him?” She's not teasing, she's curious now.

“Soldiers arrived. The boy tried to fight. He was strong beyond belief. But there were too many of them. He was taken away. The crash site was cleared. No one would know it was ever there. One year later, Jerome Siegel and Joe Schuster came out with the first Superman comic. It was commissioned by the government, part of a plot to throw people off. It almost succeeded.”

Ephraim's voice is quiet and very serious. It's easy to believe this story of a child, caged and studied by adults who don't know what else to do with him.

“He's aged slowly. He's a young man now. They keep him behind steel walls. They know how strong he is. They know he's angry. They know one day he's gonna break out. And that's the day he'll have his revenge. On
everyone.
”

Ephraim eats a hugely satisfied spoonful of ice cream. His eggs sit, untouched. “Superman,” he says, “is not a pussy.”

 

29

When Mom and Gretchen see one another, they both call out each other's name, rush forward, fall into each other's arms and begin to cry.

“Oh, Gretchen!” cries Mom.

“Oh, Mrs. Kinsey!” says Gretchen.

It's a Saturday afternoon, Dad has taken his bicycles to the desert to practice getting injured, and at Mom's suggestion, I've invited Gretchen over so she can say hi.

“You're all grown-up,” says Mom.

“I've missed you so much,” says Gretchen.

“You're so
beautiful,
” says Mom.

But now, somewhere in the middle of all the female gushing and cooing, Mom's happy tears turn into something else. She tries to smile as she strokes Gretchen's hair. She sort of hums in her throat as she stares into Gretchen's eyes. And then she puts her hand over her mouth and she begins to cry.
Really
cry. She clutches Gretchen and lets it all go, not loud but choking, deep and guttural. Somehow Gretchen seems to know exactly what to do. She holds Mom. She caresses her cheek. It's like she's the parent and Mom's the child.

“It's all right,” Gretchen says. “I know,” she says. “I know.”

It takes a lot of deep breaths and starts and restarts but Mom finally pulls it back together and they beam at one another. Mom looks totally spent, like she's had some kind of monster emotional orgasm and Gretchen looks like she's been happy and honored to help.

“Come in the kitchen and tell me all about you,” says Mom.

“I want to,” says Gretchen.

Nobody asks me to, but I tag along.

“So are you two a couple?” Mom and Gretchen have been going for what seems like an hour now—there have been tuna sandwiches, there has been iced tea—and Mom says this like she suspects or hopes we are. And I guess after you've sobbed your guts out and shared tuna and tea with people, you feel like there should be no secrets, but still, it's embarrassing as all get out.

“We're just friends,” I say, uncomfortable.

“We're just catching up,” says Gretchen, semimortified.

“Being friends is a good place to start,” says Mom, acting all wise and mysterious on us. You can tell that in her mind she's already picking out bed linens and silver patterns for us, and all of a sudden Gretchen and I can't get out of the kitchen fast enough.

We go outside. It's one of those brilliant late fall afternoons that only a Mediterranean climate, global warming, and ever-rising ocean levels can create. It is mid-seventies and sunny and the sky is an impossible blinding blue.

“I'm really glad you're here,” I tell Gretchen. And I am. Since the incident in the school hallway, PDAs—public displays of affection or, in my case, public displays of
attention
—have been seriously avoided. I haven't known
what
to do. It's great to see her.

We've decided to take a swim. Gretchen has gone into the poolhouse and when she comes out she's wearing a bright yellow string bikini. She's slim, with small, high breasts. Her pale skin is dusted with freckles. Her ass is perfect.

This is how it works.

Visual stimuli produce neurotransmitters that race through the body's parasympathetic nervous system. Nitric oxide triggers arterial dilatation. Blood rushes into expanding spongy cells, where it's trapped and held by the subtunical venular plexuses.

Translation? I have wood.

I stand there frozen, not sure if I'm supposed to be proud or mortified that my dick is pushing at the waistband of my board shorts. If Gretchen notices, she doesn't let on. Turning away, she puts her towel down on a lounge chair. She reaches for suntan lotion. The thought of her rubbing it on makes it a good moment to dive into the water, and unnerved, I land in a graceless, jarring belly flop.

“How's the water?” Gretchen says. The water is freezing. My wood has reversed direction and, along with my nuts, taken refuge somewhere deep in my stomach cavity.

“Great,” I say. “Come on in.”

The entire afternoon becomes imbued with an intense aura of sex. I feel as if there's a giant magnifying glass overhead, turning the sun's rays into a focused laser beam that's aimed directly at my gonads. Anything even vaguely oblong—a water bottle, a cement pestle on the adjacent wall, a small cactus in the garden—reminds me of an erect penis. Anything furrowed or with a hole—a pool ring, a flower, the sight of glistening water cradled in Gretchen's belly button, even the crease I see when I hold my thumb and forefinger together—makes me think of Gretchen's shielded crotch. Time and time again, I drop into the freezing pool. I tread water until my balls ache. It's finally all too much, and excusing myself, I go running into the poolhouse where, with hardly half a dozen strokes, I whack off into the sink. The first ejaculation actually hits the mirror and when I look at it, I see with some fascination that the hemangioma on my cheek and the knob of my dick are the exact same flushed, purple color.

There's not enough Kleenex in the world.

Coming back out and across the deck, I suddenly worry Gretchen will smell the Clorox fragrance of cum on my hand and so once again, without thinking, I jump into the icy pool.

“Who wants homemade lemonade?” Mom calls from the upper terrace. The afternoon now is officially Ozzie and Harriet with a freezing, half-flaccid, Grendel hard-on.

Historical footnote.

The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet
was the longest-running sitcom in U.S. television history until it was overtaken by
The Simpsons
in 2004. Unlike
The Simpsons,
which is about a normal, dysfunctional, modern-day family, it presented an idealized family in the 1950s where fathers solved problems, mothers were nurturing, and children were high achievers. The show can be accessed on the online video service Hulu, under “parody.”

Later, against all protocol, but desperate for something that might budge my brains from my scrotum back up into my cranium, I take Gretchen down to the drum room. And as I lead her through the door, for the first time ever, I realize it is an airless compartment that reeks of mildew, sweat, and lug oil. No one but me has been in here for at least a year.

“Wow,” Gretchen murmurs. I can't tell if she's impressed or appalled by all the gear. “You must be good.”

“Not really,” I say.

“I don't believe you,” she says. She gives me a look that says she knows I'm being all modest because I'm really hot stuff. And even if I wasn't, I feel like I am now.

“Give it a try,” I say. She sits. She picks up two sticks. Giggling, she wraps a cymbal. She whomps the bass drum a few times and does a slow ragged roll on the snare. She giggles again. She begins to bang the shit out of everything at once. She squints her eyes, opens her mouth wide, and shakes her head around, her hair flying, as if she's some wild-ass rock drummer. It's pretty amusing actually.

“Now you,” she says, and before I can remember my vow never to play in front of people, I'm sitting down. I pick up some tympani mallets. I want a more muted sound. I do a fast, soft roll across the rack toms, high to low, then continue down to the floor toms. I reverse it, low to high, finishing with a quick riff on each cymbal bell.

“That was
unbelievable
!” says Gretchen.

I am now serious putty to be molded by her hands.

I begin to move around the set, changing the patterns, using the bass drums for accents and fills. I stop. I start again. Cannibal sounds. Human flesh as food. Blood as ambrosia. And as I begin to change the tempo, I realize it's all come back to sex again, that the beat of the bass drum is the body, that the crash of the cymbal is the breath, and that the rhythmic patterns that make up the world around are all about desire.

It's a beautiful day.

 

30

Perhaps it's Ephraim's story of Superman but Twom starts having flying dreams.

Flying dreams fall under the category of lucid dreams, which means you are aware that you're dreaming. To fly in a dream symbolizes the desire to break free of restrictions and limitations.

In Twom's dreams, the sun is shining and the sky is vast and blue. He can see waves breaking and the ground moving swiftly by down below. He can see the tops of houses and cars creeping along like bugs.

He feels ecstasy.

Twom tells us that one night he's joined in his dreams by me, Deliza, and then Ephraim. We fly together as if in formation, Twom leading us, all of us soaring as one. In the dream, Twom says, we finally turn like a flock of birds and fly away. Toward light. Toward Neverland. A place where you never age. You never grow up. Never return from.

My dreams continue to be more grounded. I'm on a road. It is a desolate road. It is a cold, bleak day. There is no sign of life. No animals. No birds. No people. The trees are without leaves. I'm standing at a bus stop. I'm confused. I'm not sure why I'm here. And then across the road, I see her. She's appeared from nowhere. Dorie wears pink pajamas beneath a light blue hospital robe. Her feet are bare. Her eyes are enormous in her hairless head. I wave. Dorie smiles but doesn't move. And then she's lost from view as, all of a sudden, a big silver bus pulls in front of her. When the bus pulls away, Dorie is gone. I stand there. On a empty road. Alone. No idea where I am. No way home.

“Billy?”

Startled, I jerk my eyes open. I'm in a chair in the family room. Mom is in front of me. She picks up the remote and turns off the television. She's wearing an expensive-looking light blue dress. Her hair is up and her makeup is done.

“You should get ready,” she says. She looks like she wants to say more but she doesn't. She turns and walks away.

You will never cease to be a presence in our lives. Rather than an ache, your voice will hover like the faintest beating of wings over our heads, to remind us how much we loved you. And do now.

A year after Dorie's death, Mom got the idea that we should celebrate her life. And so every year since then, on Dorie's birthday, that's what we do. We dress up. We go to the cemetery where Dorie's ashes are buried. Mom invites people and everyone who comes—relatives, neighbors, family friends—brings flowers. Really, you could sneeze to death.

It's nice that Gretchen's here this year.

Nobody says much of anything. We stare at the headstone. It reads “Dorothy Kinsey” and tells you the year Dorie was born and the year she died. If you didn't take the time to do the math there's nothing there to tell you she was only eleven years old. Some minister Mom has found says a prayer. Every year it seems like it's a different guy but they always say the same, stupid prayer.