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Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780989360425 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Hawthorne Books & Literary Arts, Incorporated |
| Publication date: | 03/17/2014 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 468 |
| File size: | 678 KB |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
Book One: Hank & Ben
Part one: Got to go pal
1.
The Maroni
Like most love affairs, Hank and I didn’t start off so good. In
fact I hated his guts. Every time Jeske called on him, which was
every week, Hank read his sentences out loud to the class and it
never failed, Jeske always praised him as if Hank was the next
Nadine Gordimer, or Louise Glück, or Harold Brodkey. Jeske even
had a special name for Hank. Maroni. That’s what he called Hank.
You’ve really knocked the ball out of the park this time, Maroni! You
really nailed it on the head, pal! Just take a look at that, would you!
Columbia University, winter quarter, 1985. Twelve weeks
of a three-hour-long night class in a hot big bright amphitheater
room. Jeske down in front of us, trim, natty, silver hair, in some
kind of military hat. Skin that was flushed from too many cigarettes.
Something classy about him, one of those New England
guys who just stepped off his sailboat. Our eyes on him. Our
eyes never left him. You never knew what he was going to do next.
Every class he bragged how he went three hours without pissing.
Wednesdays six to nine. Thirty-six fucking hours and Jeske
never called on me. Not one time. Forty people in that class and
everybody got at least one chance, but not me. A couple others in
class Jeske liked besides Hank, but to my ears it was all Maroni!
Maroni! Maroni!
Then came that class. The last class of the semester. The
last part of the last hour. The last reader. Finally Thomas Jeske,
Commodore Fiction himself, called on me. Fuck. My body did
that separating thing where all of a sudden I’m way out there somewhere
looking down at me sitting in a bright room in an amphitheater
chair, the fake wood desk top flap out flat, my faraway
hands trying to hold my pages still. I’m trying to find my breath,
keep my asshole tight, trying to keep my chin from turning into
rubber bands. All the rules I didn’t know how to get right: Never
go beneath the surface. Speak with a burnt tongue. It’s not writing,
it’s making. Take the approach that rebukes your own nature. Never
explain. Never complain. Latinate Latinate Latinate.
I took the knife, put it to my chest, punched hard in, cut
down and around, pulled my throbbing heart out and laid it down
on the page. But I wasn’t bleeding enough. The words sounded
stupid. My voice in the fluorescent amphitheater did not project,
was too high, cracking like an adolescent whose balls had just
dropped. Fuck. There was no getting away from it. I sounded the
way I always sounded: a Catholic boy with a big apology. Then
the long pause. The long piece of silence after where all there was,
was my breath. A drop of sweat rolled down the inside of my arm.
Everything gets bright and hot and full.
The eleventh hour! Jeske cries out, Way to go, pal! Grunewald’s
pulled it out of his ass on the eleventh hour!
Looking back on that day now, I wonder. Maybe that was
the first time for Hank. That he really looked at me.
The first time I really looked at Hank, really stopped and
looked, was during one of Jeske’s classes. By then I knew who
Hank was, of course. How could you not know The Maroni? But
this one particular class I’m talking about, there was a moment
that everything went away and my eyes filled up with nothing
but Hank Christian.
In the middle of one of Jeske’s lectures, there was a loud
crash in the hall. You might think so what, a loud crash in the
hall – on most college campuses that doesn’t mean much. But
when it’s night and it’s Columbia University, the hallway outside
your classroom door is really a New York street. After the crash,
Jeske quit talking and we in the class all looked around at each
other. There was a way you could tell Jeske wanted to go to the
open door and check out the situation, but he hesitated. I saw him
do it. Hesitate. Something you don’t figure Commodore Fiction
to do. His thin body did a quick lean toward the door for a second,
then stopped because he thought better. Hank saw it too. Oh!
Commodore! My! Commodore! Hank saw the Commodore of the
mighty ship stall. He was up and out of his seat just like that.
Hank’s a big guy. Big arms, big chest. Twenty-seven to my
thirty-seven years.
Thirty-seven years old. Columbia University. I’ve always
been a late bloomer.
That day, as Hank made his way through the seats and down
to the doorway, Hank was holding his body that way he does.
He pushes out and raises up his chest, pulls his chin down, his
shoulders down, and flexes his biceps. I’ve seen Hank do that
a lot. Usually he does that when he’s trying to express something
inside him that’s big – as if his body is literally trying to push the
thought or the feeling that’s inside him out, but that day in class
Hank was puffing up for another reason. He was on a mission.
I’ve never seen Hank do anything so perfect, so true to
who he was. Hank stood himself in the doorway, at the portal, at
attention, elbows out touching each side of the door. Our linebacker,
our protector, our bodyguard, our hero.
Immediately I was embarrassed for him. Such an obvious
show of macho. I mean, what was Maroni trying to prove? That he
could save our sinking ship from the big, bad pirates in the hallway?
Yet maybe there were pirates in the hallway! Maybe the
loud crash was a street gang, or some crazy motherfucker. Maybe
with a gun. Then what was Maroni going to do? Stop the bullet?
Saint Hank Christian, Guardian of the Doorway. At that
moment, I had no idea what a friend, a lover, what a hero, Hank
would be to me. All I could know was what I saw. His darkbrown
hair down to his shoulders. Lots of hair back then, the
eighties, plus a mustache too. Almost as big as mine. Beneath his
deep-set eyes – eyes with his complexion you’d figure would
be blue, but weren’t, were dark, almost black, under the efficient
line of Roman nose, above the square jaw a bit of cleft, straight
teeth, Hank’s sweet smiling lips that one day no matter what I was
going to kiss.
Sure made Jeske proud. Pretty soon, a bunch of other guys,
but not me, were up at the door standing with Hank.
Some months later , when I didn’t hate Hank anymore, when
I was getting to know Hank, I asked Hank what Maroni meant.
He said something about how Maroni was Italian for how guys
talk to one another. Like dude maybe, or buddy, or pal. I never did
get it exactly what Maroni meant. But that was just Hank. He
always played his cards close to his chest, especially at the beginning.
It wasn’t that he had something to conceal. Hank liked
to say he was a ghost. A warrior ghost. He touched the world and
when he was done he left no trace. What was left of him was his
sentences on the page.
No wonder I fell in love with him. Seduce the laconic
straight guy. Not necessarily to fuck him, but to bring him out.
And not out like coming out, but out in the sense of inner workings
revealed. If I could understand my father, if my father could
actually be someone I could know, by knowing him, I could gauge
myself against him, and discover how I was and how I was not
like him.
Those first four or five weeks, though, Hank was fucking
Maroni, Jeske’s private ass kisser. Then it was Saint Hank Christian
Guardian of the Doorway, but when it really happened big
time was the night at Ursula Crohn’s apartment. The first time
Hank actually put his body next to me. As soon as he spoke, out
of Hank’s sweet lips the blow, some kind of frenzy in my heart.
Somebody who does that. Reveals you to yourself. You can’t
help but love.
Book Two:Ben & Ruth
16. The promise
Ruth’s nickname for me is Queen Lowlighta because of all
the small atmosphere lamps and lava lamps with soft glows I’ve
got all around my room. The night she called me that we were
both a little surprised. After all, I was her teacher and she was my
student and there she was calling me Queen.
Fucking Ruth Dearden, man.
One Saturday night in March, I’ve asked Ruth to rent Last
Tango In Paris. Upbeat it’s not. But I’m ready for some art. Big
Ben shows up and says I need some art. Ruth’s never seen the
movie so when the movie’s over it’s just Ruth and me in my little
space in the lean-to that used to be my office that’s now my
Queen Lowlighta bedroom fixed the way Cancers can make little
homes out of nothing. It’s close to midnight. Outside it’s raining
buckets. I’m lying in my bed under a blanket and Ruth is lying
on top of the blanket next to me. Really, we’re so under the spell
of the movie, we aren’t at all uncomfortable lying close the way
we are. Besides I’m under the blanket and she’s on top. That
evening I’ve showered and shaved and I’m in fresh pajamas. So
I don’t smell the way I think I usually smell. Ruth’s in jeans and
her Peruvian sweater. Her shoes are off. Long slender white feet.
All of a sudden, Little Ben is trying hard to say something
to Ruth about how much I appreciate her and all she’s done and
how close I feel to her and how thankful I am for her generosity
of spirit. It’s all coming out awkward and full of clichés. Horribly
fucking wrong, really stupid, and so I kiss her. On the lips,
soft. Like Saint Bernadette would kiss you. The way Hank and I
used to kiss. A kiss full of love and appreciation and respect and
agape. That kind of kiss.
Ruth doesn’t kiss back. I mean her lips just stay flat and let
my puckered lips touch hers. Something happens in the room.
But it’s not in the room, it’s in Ruth. Ruth’s up off the bed and
has her socks on, and her shoes and she’s out the door. As she
leaves the room, she calls back:
“Thank you, Ben,” she says, “Goodnight.”
It’s two weeks before I see Ruth again. There are dinners
frozen that I can eat and groceries that show up on my doorstep
but no Ruth. I think I’ve lost my friend for good. How is it that
when I get close to a woman I always fuck it up?
***
“Ruth,” I say.
My lips are doing that strange rubbery thing. I’m glad it’s
dark. But then I realize my face has got moon on it and Ruth can
see my face. Where is Big Ben when you really need him?
“I don’t know if I love you the way you want me to love you,”
I say, “But you gotta know what pleasure and solace you give me.
Really I owe you my life. Plus the way you fucking make me
laugh, man.”
Ruth’s hand reaches up, touches my forehead.
“I’m a gay man,” I say, “ With some long-ago exceptions.
And the only way it’s possible that you and I could work is if we’re
completely honest. I can’t promise you anything except that I’ll
be honest.”
Ruth’s fingers along my cheek, down to my chin. Somewhere
in there I realize she’s tracing the shadows on my face,
the moonlight.
“I don’t want you any other way,” Ruth says, “I love you,
Ben, and I’ll always love you no matter what.”
“I promise,” Ruth says.
The way Ruth is earnest, fervent. Such abandon in her voice.
So much hope. Moments of intimacy and passion how easy it
is to promise. I remember smiling to myself. So many times I’ve
gone back to that moment when Ruth said I love you Ben I promise
and I remember smiling. At her innocence. At how much I
needed to hear I wasn’t alone, that someone was there. Ruth was
there, was promising love.
Book Three: Hank & Ruth
20. Stink Eye
Ruth has finished the edits on the last chapter
of my novel so that next morning Hank and I drive to Ruth’s house.
That’s what I told myself for a long time. That the reason
I introduced Hank to Ruth was because he just happened to be
there the day I picked up the final edits.
Final edits. I know you’ve got it by now the relationship
between Ruth and me was complicated. She saved my life and
she was a pain in my ass and every fucking possible nuanced
psychological aspect in between.
There’s one specific part of our relationship, though, that I
haven’t really stepped up to talk about.
As a writer, your editor is the only person in the world you
allow in. Where what is invisible through your breath becomes
structured. Where you exist the best and are the most vulnerable.
The only place that is holy. Where you tell your truth from. How
the words rise up out of you, in there in between your soul and its
utterance. Your ecstasy.
Your editor. Your fucking editor, man.
Ruth Dearden is your editor.
That afternoon, Hank puts his sunglasses on before we
go out. The glass is so dark it’s black.
“Never leave the house without them in the daylight,”
Hank says.
It’s two in the afternoon and it’s already getting dark.
“ You call this daylight?”
“Ultraviolet,” Hank says, “Is my enemy.”
In my driveway, my green Volkswagen was covered with a
canvas and at least two years of leaves. I hadn’t driven that car
in months. No idea if it would start. In fact, it didn’t. Had to push
it out from the driveway and get it pointed down the hill. Hank
and I pushed then I jumped in and popped the clutch. Never
fails on a Volkswagen. Unless the generator’s bad. Hank didn’t ask
me no questions about my expired driver’s license. He just got
in the car, slammed the door. Drizzling rain. Crazy fucking windshield
wipers moving like paraplegics. Cigarette butts in the
ashtray from years back. No heat. The exhaust backfiring. The
driver’s door won’t stay shut and I have to hold it closed with my
armpit. Hank and I driving up Hawthorne Blvd., Hawthorne to
SE 60th, then onto Pine. Thank God they̱re both left turns or I’d
have lost the door completely. Plus I’d forgotten. The horn honks
whenever you make a right turn and more times than not, the
horn got stuck.
Quite an adventure getting to Ruth’s house. To meet our
destiny.
Ruth’s brick house is on a hill and it’s just as I pull up in
front and pull the emergency brake that I realize I’ve never
driven myself to Ruth’s house before. It’s always been in Ruth’s
Honda Civic, Ruth who drove.
So the only time I drive to Ruth’s house is the only time I
have Hank with me.
Years later, now of course, I can see what I couldn’t see
then. I dusted off my old Volkswagen, pushed it down the hill,
jumpstarted it, then drove across town illegally, in the rain, the
windshield wipers not working, the windshield covered in
steam, holding the door closed with my armpit because of some
pages Ruth could have sent me in the mail? And this from a guy
who was still afraid to leave his house.
The truth is I wanted Hank and Ruth to meet. For a bunch
of reasons I didn’t have a clue about. I mean really, no doubt
about it, Ruth and I had gone through the wringer. Over two years
of trying to make sense of what was going on between us, we’d
fucked each other up pretty good. And by that time we were only
speaking when we had to talk about the edits. Still, no matter
what I say about her, I have to admit it. Ruth was the one who
went through the wars with me. Day by day, man. Nobody else,
family or friends, had made that kind of commitment. Yeah,
there was Ephraim, but he was seven hundred miles away.
So I guess I wanted Hank to meet the only other person
who was still alive I had a strong connection with. Even if that
strong connection was full of shit and resentment.
Then too I knew how much Ruth wanted to meet Hank.
Like with all my students, the way I’d talked up Hank Christian
over the years, Hank was a literary John Lennon to her. The
truth is, I wanted to be there, in the moment, when I presented
my hero, my beloved, to Ruth, in the flesh. It was a way of proving
that it wasn’t all talk, that I really knew the famous Hank
Christian, and here he is and ain’t I cool.
And something else that was more difficult to see. Took me
years. Ruth’s care for me had been a mother’s care. Most men
with women get past the mother thing and miraculously somehow
turn it around and then want to fuck the mother. I’ll never
understand how they do it, but that’s how it goes.
The truth is, deep down, the way Hank was suffering, some
part of me wanted to introduce him to a woman he could trust,
a woman with the healing powers of a mother, Ruth Dearden, the
woman who had saved my life.
And Ruth: the man I couldn’t be for her, had just arrived in
the flesh.
Table of Contents
Book One: Hank & BenPart one: Got to go pal
1. The Maroni
2. First date
3. The bullies
4. The West Side Y
5. The women
6. Pennsylvania ghosts
7. The Spike
Part two: Idaho
8. The most miserable of all
9. Sweat lodge
10. Sister
11. No hay palabras
Book Two:Ben & Ruth
12. The real world
13. Portlandia, 1995
14. Father
15. Misery
16. The promise
17. The way it is
18. Hope
Book Three: Hank & Ruth
19. The spider web
20. Stink eye
21. The end, my friend
22. The More Loving One