You Can Say You Knew Me When (37 page)

I wanted a gulp of whiskey—truly, a craving—but the first corner store I approached was hemmed in by a crowd of guys done up gangsta-style gesturing wildly in some kind of argument: “Where’s my fucking money?” “I told you, nigga, I gave it to your bitch.” “She ain’t my bitch, bitch.” I weaved off the sidewalk, crossed the street toward a sex parlor. The eyes of the big-titted woman on the faded poster had the grim detachment of a kidnap victim’s in a ransom video, assuring loved ones she’s been well treated,
just pay them the money
.

I found a store where I spent five of my fourteen bucks on crappy whiskey and chugged half the bottle in a doorway. It hit my brain in a warm, defenseless wash. I was sweating under my cap, chilled from the air hitting my face, but my shoulders relaxed just a bit. I could lift my head again, let my eye find something to appreciate. There: the beauty in a sputtering neon bar sign tracing a scarlet halo out of the fog. Beneath it, a rough-looking guy standing, staring, thumbs hooked in his jeans. He had salt-and-pepper hair; a wide, unshaven jaw; a bent nose once, twice broken. I felt a flicker in my guts as he locked frost-gray eyes on me, dissecting. A start-to-finish fantasy unrolled. In it he was my savior and punisher; in it I climbed behind him to a walk-up room, guzzled his backwash from the bottom of the forty-ounce I’d bought for him at the corner; in it I let him fuck me unsheathed and unlubed on a creaky cot.

He called out for a cigarette. I lit it for him, his gnarled hands cupping the flame. On one wrist a faded blue prison tattoo, in script:
Father
. My mouth went dry until I saw the other wrist, inked with a crudely rendered crucifix. Oh, right,
that
Father. I lingered to light my own smoke. His gaze again held me fast. He couldn’t have been more than ten years older than me, but I saw two lifetimes of stories in his eyes. I’m guessing he saw panic and curiosity in mine.

He went inside with the cigarette still lit. The door was so nondescript it seemed to defend a clubhouse you needed a membership to enter. Familiar music played—a song from the same Radiohead album Jed and I had listened to a few nights ago. I’d sold that CD today. I stepped inside. Momentarily blinded by the darkness. Afraid. The kind of fear that’s its own high, that means anything can happen.

Four people: a grizzled bartender with motorcycle hair; two old black men, one in a brimmed hat, the other in a baseball cap, sipping beer at the bar; and the guy with the tattooed wrists, sitting at a tall table to the side, hunched over a notebook, a pen in his hand. A lefty. I ordered a beer, a Bud, took a bar stool, swiveled to face him. I lit another cigarette. The snap of my lighter drew his attention. He registered my presence, but went back to his writing. What was he recording there? The incoherency of a madman? The poetry of an authentic experience? He might have been writing a to-do list, a complaint to the city, a promise to a girlfriend.

The beer went down cold and quick. It cost only $2.50. I could afford another and still have bus fare home. He looked in my direction, pen in hand, hand covering mouth, perhaps composing his next sentence. Perhaps considering me. My overcoat had fallen open. I adjusted myself in my pants. I nodded at him slow enough that he could make of it what he wanted.

That was the last look I got from him. I was ready to leave when I saw him go into the bathroom. I waited a moment, then followed.

The narrow room had the moldy-bread smell of dried urine. He stood at the trough, leaning forward, his pen marking the wall above, adding something to the mess of scrawls already there. I could hear his flow hit the porcelain. I stood next to him, pulled my cock out, bobbing like a rubber tube, too stiff to piss. I’d gotten this far but was now afraid to look at him or even at what he was scribbling. I heard a
clank,
a splash. Heard him grumble, “Fuck.”

I looked down into the wet trench, where his pen had fallen in the space between us. I looked at him. He was staring me up and down. His thick cock was getting thicker.

I reached into the trough. I grabbed his pen between my fingers. I flicked droplets from it. The corners of his mouth were turning up, even as he shook his head in disbelief. Holding his gaze, I wiped the pen dry on my pants. Now he laughed. Lines around his eyes. “How low can you go?” he asked.

I dropped to my knees on the damp floor and opened my mouth. He squared his body to mine. One hand on his cock, one hand on the back of my head, he held my face against his nuts and told me to lick. The side of his hand knocked my forehead as he jerked himself. He stank, the way men stink down there. I bathed him with my tongue.

I gave myself over, let myself find the glory in this act. Time ceased to pass; this moment was all. I forgot where I was, literally couldn’t remember. This was somewhere in San Francisco. How did I get here? I couldn’t see past this scrim of skin and hair and dirty denim. I couldn’t see past his wrist that said
Father.
I couldn’t see past my father, who no longer existed. My life that no longer existed. My life that was entirely this: me kneeling on moist concrete in front of a gasping stranger, a stranger repeating, “Yeah, boy,” a stranger yanking on my hair, a stranger now filling my mouth with a pound of flesh. I could take it. I wanted to. Wanted to prove something I couldn’t name. I’d followed him out of some life I couldn’t remember into this dark closet of San Francisco where everything was sharp-edged as a silhouette. I could go this low. I could go lower. His calloused palms pressed my face. My mouth gave everything it could until the thick, bitter taste of him flooded my tongue.

I stood up, swallowing. He leaned back, shuddering, but quickly pulled himself together. A moment at the cold-water sink. “All right,” he said, as if we’d just agreed on something. He did not sound unkind. When he left, I looked up at the wall to see what he’d written, but it was indistinguishable from all the other marks left there.

He was no longer at his table. I stood unsteadily at the bar, catching my breath, ordering another beer. I left the bartender a two-dollar tip. He raised his eyebrows and said, “Drink up, Red.” I swished beer in my mouth, telling the alcohol to kill the germs.

One neighborhood ends and another convenes in the distance of a single block. The sidewalk rose toward the hotels on O’Farrell and Geary, the pre-war apartment buildings, a smattering of Asian restaurants. A rental-car garage, a drugstore, a theater with a revival of
Hamlet
.

I climbed up to Nob Hill, the crest of old-money San Francisco. There was Grace Cathedral, more mighty than it had been in 1960, when Teddy spent Christmas Eve watching Don bowed down in prayer. Teddy had sat here after mass, looking across the street at the church, getting angry with God, the ultimate punishing father. He’d sat here feeling loneliness set in. Missing Ray. Missing Danny. Confused by Don.
Not just independent but isolated.
Not just alone but lonely. That was it, wasn’t it? Missing Woody. Missing my father. Missing what I never had and now never would.

I climbed the sweeping cathedral steps; deep in my coat pocket the whiskey bottle sloshed. I stepped into a vast dimness framed by pillars thick as redwoods. My eye traveled up to the Gothic ceiling.
You look up into those pointy arches and then you think about your own puny life down here.
Music was playing, amplified harp and keyboard, as a man and a woman harmonized an unfamiliar, eerie chant, strangely New Age in this Protestant fortress. In the open area ahead, between me and the pews, a handful of people moved in an odd formation. When I got closer I saw that they stood on a circular carpet, maybe thirty feet in diameter, into which was stitched a maze, which each of them traversed at his or her own pace. It seemed an unlikely activity, a trick: you’re in a church, trapped in a maze.

Curious, dubious, my head hot with liquor, I went to the place on the carpet that marked the entry. I walked forward on a long straightaway, needing a couple of steps to secure my balance, then turned left and went straight again for a shorter distance. I wobbled at each turn, and it was all turns. Ahead of me on the path was a white-haired old man. He seemed to know what he was doing, probably wouldn’t make any wrong turns. I slowed to his pace. Slow was better for balance.

Step by step I saw the pattern click into place: there were no false turns or dead ends in this maze. It was one long, winding path, folded back and forth like an intestine, that took you all the way to the belly of this beast. No tricks, no dead ends.

The other walkers, more women than men, were mostly middle-aged, almost all white and plainly dressed. A few stood apart: a pretty, hippie-ish girl in a peasant skirt; a gawky, Eurasian teenage boy, who led the way for his white mother; a smartly dressed Latina, who prayed with her hands apart, palms up. I guess I was supposed to be praying.
Hail Mary full of grace,
can’t remember the rest of it.
Our Father who art in Heaven,
I don’t believe, I don’t believe. What’s the one they say in AA?
God grant me the courage to change the things I cannot accept—
something heady like that. There were only three basic prayers, anyway.
Dear God: (A) Thank you. (B) I’m sorry. (C) Please help me.
Extra words only obscured the truth of pure need.

I caught on that the faster walkers were simply stepping around the slowpokes, and also around the people on their way out, who came up at intervals head-on. I lunged past the white-haired guy and then stayed the course, back and forth, until I got to the middle, a clover-shaped rest area. The Latina was on her feet, eyes closed, palms cupped. The hippie chick kneeled next to her, skirt tufting out. The boy and his mother were cross-legged, holding hands, her gaze faraway and his moving through the air as if following a butterfly. There was room for me next to them. I sat and saw telltale damp spots on my knees. I felt elephantine, carrying into this holy enclave the stench of booze, tobacco, semen—though I also thought it wouldn’t be a bad time to break out the whiskey and pass it around, make some new friends.

I must have chuckled at this idea because the boy jerked his head. “Oh, it’s nothing,” I mumbled. I saw his mother’s fingers tighten on his thigh. Protective, instructive. I didn’t belong here, but I was tired of walking, tired of my disguise, of my fantasies and my fears. If I kept my sarcastic giggles to myself and kept the bottle in my pocket, no one would ask me to leave. I could probably stay here for hours, my life on pause, like that woman with her outstretched hands, waiting for heaven to rain down answers. I could sit here until I came up with a prayer that made sense to me. I could meditate: I’d picked up enough secondhand Buddhism from my reading, all I needed to do was keep my spine straight, count my breaths and try to do that thing they called
not being attached.
But attachment was probably what I needed. Wasn’t I already drifting away from everything, like the balloon the child has let go, growing smaller in the distance?

When I closed my eyes I wondered if I might throw up.

I sat until the others had left. All but one, that old man I’d followed at the beginning. He was standing to my side. Poor guy probably couldn’t kneel. I stood up, and he smiled. I could see right away he was a queen. I said hello.

“It’s very peaceful,” he said.

“Also kinda spooky.”

Silence followed, and I thought I should fill it, though I suppose silence in a church is expected.

He put his hand out, an attempt to touch my arm, which he fell just short of. He said, “Every time I’m here I know what to do next.”

“You do?”

“You just have to walk back out.” He stretched his hand to close the distance, his fingers landing on my wrist, light as a moth. “And I already know the way.”

I watched over my shoulder as he began the slow shuffle of his return voyage, like a minimalist dancer whose performance consists of a single walk across the stage. I was relieved to see him go. White-haired strangers dispensing wisdom have always freaked me out.

Nausea bubbled in my esophagus, threatening to erupt. I rushed across the carpet, negating the bounds of the labyrinth—which, after all, was just a suggestion woven into a rug. I fled the service, the music, the church. Traded the dark interior for the darkening air outside. Sat on a bench until I felt stable enough to make my way home.

The light was on in my kitchen when I returned, the air blue with the haze of a recent cigarette. I called out Jed’s name. No response.

On the table,
Desolation Angels
lay face down. I flipped it over to reveal the chapter called “Passing Through Mexico.” Beneath it lay a handwritten note:

Darth Vader lay toppled and empty. The only evidence of the contraband stowed inside was a Ziploc baggie on the coffee table half stuffed with the dry shake. The baggie rested next to an unopened pack of cigarettes, a stronger blend of the brand I smoked. A gift. Another note beneath it:
Don’t be mad, OK?

I wasn’t mad, but I wasn’t not mad; I was too wiped out to declare an emotion. From the pay phone at the Roast I paged him, though it was nearly nine o’clock, the café’s closing time, and I got kicked out before I heard back from him. I put in one last call, telling the story to Ian’s voice mail, asking, “Does it sound to you like he’s coming back? Should I care?”