1994 - Barrel Fever Read online

  I took guitar lessons for two months from Mr. Chatam, an actual midget who teaches at Instrument City over at Northgate Plaza. Mr. Chatam sat perched on the edge of a footstool and wore outfits that a child might wear: checkered suits with clip-on ties and buckled shoes. The guitar was huge in his lap and I would almost feel sorry for him until he opened his wee mouth to say something stupid like ‘Here’s a little number those girlfriends of yours might enjoy hearing!’ and he’d force me to follow along as he played another tiresome ballad from something called The Young Person’s Contemporary Songbook.

  In my manuscript, Mr. Chatam is kept in an orphanage, completely nude, his head and body shaved bald, until he is adopted by a group of truckdriving studs for use as a sex baby. Unlike most babies, Mr. Chatam just loves getting spanked and once he starts bawling there’s only one way to pacify him!

  I never touched that damned guitar except during lessons, so last week my father told me I had to quit. Boohoo. I thought he might follow up by threatening to give my guitar to a deserving person who wouldn’t look down his nose at such an expensive gift, but no such luck. Instead he bought me a five-record instructional kit and wants me to teach myself. On the record, the guy plays ‘If I Had a Hammer’ and ‘Kumbaya’ and says things like ‘C’mon now, let’s everybody sing along!’ Life of the party.

  While he was growing up, my father lived under what he likes to describe as ‘harsh circumstances’ in a small, ugly apartment. By harsh circumstances my father means that they had a curtain instead of a bathroom door. He never had a bedroom and had to sleep on a back-breaking foldout sofa and go to work before and after school, shining shoes and selling newspapers. He has a point there, that’s harsh. Unfortunately, they never gave him a medal for it and as a result he brings it up time and time again.

  On the way home from my final guitar lesson my father started in once more, telling me how lucky I am. I was thinking that he should spend an hour playing ‘Up, Up, and Away’ while locked in a windowless room with a midget before he came to me talking about luck. What does he know? During the depression, both of my parents had relatives who would crawl out of the woodwork to stay with my grandparents. They were just freeloaders but, in their own way, they made an impression. Picking me up after my last lesson my father told me a story about the longest freeloader, a guy who was studying to become a Greek Orthodox priest. He wasn’t a blood relative, but whisper the word priest to my grandmother and she’ll fall to her knees and cross herself with a speed that betrays her years. So the priest student moved in and slept on the bone-crushing foldout sofa with my father. This is chock full of possibilities as far as I’m concerned. A freeloader can be just as hot as anyone else. I asked my father what the priest student looked like and he said it wasn’t important.

  One day, my dad said, he came home from school earlier than usual. Both his parents were at work and he came upon the priest lying upon my grandparent’s bed without any pants on. The student did not appear shocked or embarrassed. He told my father that he was just conducting a little experiment. Then he doubled over, held a lit match close to his ass, and farted so that the match flared out. He told my father to lie down beside him and give it a try but, knowing my dad, he didn’t. My father said that he couldn’t tell his parents, but he knew in that instant that this priest guy was a pogue, a queer. I don’t think that lighting farts with a match necessarily makes someone a queer but I went along with it and kept my mouth shut. The flame-thrower stayed on for another three months, during which time my father slept on the hard, cold floor. Hearing of some genuine blood relatives with more money and a spare bedroom, the priest moved on and they never heard from him again. My father told me all this while we were in the car. He usually doesn’t talk at all but he had this timed perfectly. He paused at the top of the driveway and turned to me asking, ‘Have you ever met anyone like that?’

  And I said, ‘What, a priest?’

  Goddamn her! Mrs. Peacock has been talking and my parents have decided to listen. This brings my mother and father down several more notches, which is not good, as they have been in the negative column for quite some time. Listening to Mrs. Peacock is like trying to decipher what a groundhog might mean when it clicks its tongue three times and paws at the earth with a hind foot. Mrs. Peacock’s thoughts and actions might be of interest to a group of behavioral scientists in search of the missing link, but other than that the woman is worthless and I rue the day she forcibly entered my life.

  When my brother was born I told my parents that, while I was very happy for them, I would not, under any circumstances, share my room. I have always had my own room and I plan to keep it that way. My mother is always barging in to say, ‘Why don’t you brighten things up in here, put up a few posters and add a little life?’ My mother would not care for any of the posters I might enjoy and it is a constant battle to keep my room clear of anything she might refer to as ‘a little life.’ I have a small bed, a lamp, a dresser, and a desk. The only thing I lack is a typewriter. I keep my room very clean and always have. I have been making my bed since I was able to walk and am perfectly capable of washing and ironing my own clothes. I can take care of myself and would appreciate the opportunity to do so in an apartment or small house, even a trailer. While they mean well, I have no use for my parents or Mrs. Peacock, the maid hired shortly after my brother was born. She says she’s a housekeeper and not a maid, the difference being that a housekeeper is white, while a maid is colored. She quibbles over words. If, as she says, a housekeeper earns more money than a maid, does a whore earn more money than a slut?

  I have not liked or trusted Mrs. Peacock from the moment she entered our home. She looks like she just crawled out of a cave — absolutely wild. She is an animal and no white uniform can disguise it. Every now and then she’ll be playing around with my brother, wasting time, and she’ll get up close to his face and say, ‘I’m gonna eat you! Yes, I am, I’m gonna eat you up,’ which scares the life out of him because it seems entirely possible.

  On her second day of work Mrs. Peacock barged into my room uninvited and ripped the covers off the bed, which I was currently, happily, occupying. Fortunately I was wearing pajama bottoms, but how was she to know that? She does the same thing to my sisters, but they don’t seem to mind as they are willing to suffer any indignity in order to have someone make their beds.

  I put a neatly lettered sign upon my bedroom door reading, ‘If you can read this message you are already too close. Go away. Iron, sweep the driveway, polish the car, or empty the dishwasher, but leave this room alone.’ My sign did no good, probably because she can’t even read. I should have set steel-jawed leg traps or rigged a bucket of battery acid over the door, seeing as nothing but brute force will keep this hunting-and-gathering primate out of my private domain. The first time Mrs. Peacock violated my privacy she rifled through my dresser drawers and came away with an old summer camp T-shirt I use for…testing ideas for my manuscript. I refer to it, in print, as my fantasy rag. I came home from school and she had the nerve to confront me with it. She held it in her dimpled hands as far away from her bloated body as her arms could reach.

  ‘What’s this?’ she says to me, waving the stiff T-shirt before my eyes. I took issue with this and told her that she knows damned well what it is, anyone with five children should know semen when they see it. She goes, ‘I never…‘ as if her children were not made by human contact but found beneath one of the tires lying in her yard. I took my property out of her hands and told her that if I ever catch her in my bedroom again I will sue her for unlawful entry and then, just for the fun of it, I will hunt her down and crush her empty skull. She slapped me. I couldn’t believe it. She caught me when my guard was down and it still hurts to sleep on the left side of my face. ‘Nobody has ever talked to me like that,’ she said.

  Nobody? In my book, all the sensible women have gone off to live in Europe and Mrs. Peacock is the only female left in the United States of America. This initially excites her be
cause she is a nymphomaniac slut who looks forward to fucking and sucking her way from Maine to California. Unfortunately for her, though, her dreams will not be realized. Left with no alternative but her, each and every man in America becomes an insatiable homosexual whom I alone can control to do my bidding. They are slaves to their own desire and to me. I order two dozen of my nude and muscular workers to carry Mrs. Peacock off to The Chad Holt (that is my name in the book) Museum of Natural History, where she is put on permanent display as an odd and ugly specimen, reflecting a brutal, bygone world that no longer exists.

  I thought about including my mother in the display but decided on sending her to Europe with the rest of her tribe. In her own way she tries, but again and again her mouth gets in the way.

  A few days ago I received an emergency page at school, a yellow slip. A yellow slip usually means either death or destruction. I am not terribly attached to anyone in my family, and my parents are heavily insured, so on the way to the office I tried to look on the bright side. It was my mother on the phone calling to say that Mrs. Peacock had found some blood in my underpants. I can’t believe that. Those underpants were in a paper bag at the very bottom of the garbage can. I thought they would be safely destroyed, but Mrs. Peacock must have gone through the trash before the garbage studs came to take it away. She goes through everything. ‘You’re not going to throw this away, are you?’ she says, and she’ll be talking about the grains of rice in the bottom of the salt shaker. ‘No, Mrs. Peacock, by all means, you take them. They’ll come in handy when your son gets out of prison and marries your niece.’ She doesn’t want these things, not really. Her trick is to act like she’s happy with any little scrap. She does it to make us look bad and so that my parents will feel sorry for her. I can’t believe she made such a big deal out of those underpants.

  On the phone I told my mother that some guys at school had been horsing around, putting raw chicken livers in the seats of the brightest students and that I had sat on one. It sounded like a logical story to me. Those assholes in the eighth grade are capable of anything stupid and petty. In my manuscript, though, I have made them capable of anything period! I could just kick myself for not burning those underpants, and isn’t it a shame that it’s come to that, having to burn things? It started bleeding back there a few weeks ago, but I have it under control now.

  While the imagination certainly has its place, I feel that it is important for a writer to back certain chapters with a little experience, so a few months ago I started hanging out in the rest room of JCPenney in hopes of getting just that — a little experience.

  I stood at the urinal for almost two hours before someone finally took the bait and gave me a signal that he was there to play hardball. Meeting his eyes I understood that I could use him as my research stud, fodder for my manuscript a little footnote who would drive my future biographers wild and leave my readers breathless and hungry for more. Research Stud and I skipped over all of the bullshit that everyone else goes through: the formal introductions, the phone calls, the dates we just got to the exclamation point right there in the stall! Afterwards, he sort of ruined everything by telling me that he is a political science major at N.C. state and his name is Julian. I hate that name. In my manuscript he is named Dirk. I’ve made him about three inches taller and have then him a good, thick ten and one-half inches between his legs. Julian and I met in the rest room a few more times before we were interrupted by a store detective who, I am convinced, was interested in arranging a three-way. After that, we started doing it in Julian’s car. He’d drive us out into the country and park behind an abandoned house set on a dirt road.

  Julian was all right, but nothing at all like the hard-driving top man I’ve made him out to be in my manuscript. He was actually very stiff and uptight. We’d be doing it and I would whisper, ‘Talk to me, talk to me,’ and he’d start telling me about his summer job as a page at the state legislature building. That was not the kind of talk I was after. I asked him if he had any friends he could invite along the next time. I wanted a good mental picture of what it might be like with three or four studs at one time, ramming away and taking it all. When Julian backed off, I went to the bathroom at the Trailways station and found some real men who could help me.

  Research Studs numbers five and six were absolute horses. I’m not changing anything about them. My readers are going to get the unbridled truth as far as those cocksmen are concerned. I just wasn’t prepared for the bleeding back there. Not buckets of blood but a slow and steady flow that lasted about five days, during which time I considered asking one of my sisters for a tampon.

  When my father brought up the priest I had a sinking feeling that something was up, that he knew more than he was letting on. It is confusing when a stupid man plays dumb.

  I’ll go out later tonight with a flashlight and check to see if my manuscript is still there, out behind the shed, where I keep it buried.

  FIRESTONE

  AS a favor to my pastor, Carlton Manning has hired me to work at his service station even though I am unable to drive. You might say that this is like having a baldheaded barber or a toothless dentist bending over your body with advice. You might say, ‘What does he know?’ I will bet that he knows more than you think. I bet that he has a great deal of respect and admiration for the teeth you take for granted. Listen to him. He has inside information.

  Sometimes I walk to work but usually I take the bus. Many people ride the bus because their own cars are broken or unreliable. These people see me in my uniform and they think Lord knows what, but they act like there is a doctor in the house.

  Canton says that they are looking for free advice. Since I have no knowledge of the automobile, either foreign or domesticated, I reshape their questions into a way that will allow me to fellowship, to make friends out of strangers.

  I have made several fine friends on the bus. Friends in need: In need of a dollar or two, in need of a comb, in need of my transistor radio. Last week I gave a woman my sneakers after hearing that vandals had slashed and shredded the seat of her son’s motorcycle. Having nothing upon which to sit, her son is forced to walk back and forth between his home and the church where he takes his meals.

  ‘What can I do to help?’ I asked myself. ‘I have no tailoring skills with which to repair a torn motorcycle seat. What can I do?’

  ‘What can you do? Give her your shoes,’ came the reply from somewhere deep inside my heart.

  So I did. I gave her my shoes.

  ‘What do I want with these?’ the woman asked.

  ‘That will be revealed in time,’ I responded.

  Now every time I see this woman I ask, ‘Has it been revealed yet?’ She tells me it hasn’t but when it is I will be the first to know.

  Friends! Every day the bus driver offers me the steering wheel and every day I am forced to turn him down. While I would enjoy nothing more than to shepherd these passengers to their destination I am forced by state and federal law to decline his kind invitation.

  I can’t drive because of my eyes, which grow weaker by the day. In the future I will be rendered blind by the hand of fate. My poor sight is genital in nature, passed down to me from my, mother. I have turned my back against any number of ‘operations’ because I cannot be so presumptuous as to force the hand of God in another direction. I will travel willingly along the path He has designed for me. Whether I walk or stumble or crawl, it is up to Him, not me. Carlton has trouble understanding my position. He says that, in a year or two, he will be in the market for a new liver. He always asks pretty girls if they have one they can spare. Carlton says that he will ask for their livers and steal their hearts while he’s at it.

  On the radio I hear about men whose time has come, yet they deny the truth and attempt to live off plastic hearts installed in their cut-open chests. But what kind of a life is that, to push your heart’s battery over the rugged terrain of this earth? God looks down upon these men who try to wheedle Him out of His plan and I believe He ch
uckles. He lets them have their minute in the sun and then He calls them up for a consultation. The Lord gives these men just enough rope to hang themselves but in a gentle and crafty way that nobody can imitate or ignore.

  Being a very quick learner I took only a few weeks to master my position as a service station attendant. The first hardship was finding the gas tanks, which are designed by hotshots to blend into the surface of the automobile.

  Why?

  I cannot answer that question. I can only speculate. Perhaps these hotshots would like to convince you that an automobile runs of its own accord, like an animal charging from place to place. You might look at, say, a dog running alongside the road and ask yourself why it runs. Rarely would you ask how the dog runs. You never think of the dog’s gas tank, a bowl of food and water set beside his cushion. These hotshots would like to confuse the natural and the mechanical world.

  Can they fool the public at large?

  Perhaps.

  Can they fool me?

  No.

  Once I located the tanks I found it difficult to read the meter and administer gasoline at the same time.

  ‘Give me seven bucks’ worth, unleaded,’ a customer might say.

  ‘What does that feel like?’ I would ask myself. Seven dollars’ worth of unleaded gasoline passes quickly. It is a brief period of time compared to the seven dollars’ worth one might get from a movie or the time it might take to enjoy a meal at your favorite restaurant. Think about it!

  Though my sight is poor I could clearly see that many of the station’s visitors were in need of more than gasoline. It was difficult to converse from my position at the rear of the car but where there’s a will there is a way. During the chilly weeks of April I found myself hoarse by noon, raising my voice over the sounds of traffic and of life itself. I would minister to all my customers and found the greatest challenge in certain young people who seemed to believe that Hell is nothing more than a hot day at the beach. I would have been more than happy to counsel these people, one on one. If it were to take me the rest of my life I would have accepted the challenge. Sadly, the majority of them refused my offer of guidance.