Birdy (26 page)

She leans back and I stare at them. There aren’t any freckles on them, at least not by the dash light.

It’s then I know I could do it. I not only could, I want to do it. I want to fuck Doris. At the same time, I start thinking of Perta. I
want to do it the first time with Perta. I want to do it the first time with my wife, not with Doris. Doris could never be a wife to me, all I’d be doing is fucking Doris’s tits, her tongue, her cunt.

Doris keeps trying but I’m finished. I go on kissing her and I hold her tits in my hands, and stroke them a bit. Doris breathes hard and cries but we don’t say anything. At last, she sits up, and tucks the tits back into her dress. It’s getting on to two o’clock. We’ve been kissing away for almost an hour.

We have one hell of a time turning that car around. I get out to direct her. There’s no room, and Doris isn’t much good at backing up. We get stuck twice before we get out. We drive up her driveway at two-thirty. Was that pale, gray man going to shoot me for almost fucking his daughter and keeping her out late? The car is probably all scratched up from brambles and branches, too.

We kiss an ordinary non-vampire good-night kiss before we get out of the car. Doris asks ‘if she’ll see me again’. I say, ‘Sure. I’ll see you at school.’ I see her every day there. We’re in the same geometry class.

She has a key and lets herself in. Her mother is still up and says she’ll drive me home. All the streetcars and buses are shut down. I tell her I don’t live far and I’ll walk home. She doesn’t insist too much. She wants to get all the details from Doris. I wonder how much Doris tells her. You never know with rich people like that.

I’m glad to have the four-mile walk. It gives me time to think. I hope I didn’t hurt Doris’s feelings, but I’m glad I didn’t fuck her. I want to get into my dream with Perta. I sneak up the back stairs without waking anybody. It’s four o’clock when I last look at the clock by my bed.

When I come into the dream, it’s late. The sun is setting. Perta is flying from one of the two middle perches to the other. I watch her a minute, then fly down to her.

‘I’ve been looking for you, Birdy. Where have you been? How is it you are here sometimes and sometimes you are not? I do not understand. Do you go outside the cage? Do you fly alone out there? Aren’t you afraid? Couldn’t you take me with you?’

‘No, Perta. I do not fly out there.’

I can’t answer the rest of her questions. She looks so beautiful to me. She’s against the light so I see the lovely curve of her breast and back. Inside myself, I can feel the restlessness arising.

I approach and Perta squats on the perch and starts
peep-peep-peep
ing to me. Her wings are fluttering in expectation. It’s time for me to feed her. I’m the same as Alfonso; I can’t do it. I want to, but I can’t bring food up into my mouth. I’ve always hated to vomit. The boy is getting in the way of the bird.

Perta stays there, patiently waiting to be fed. I try once more and it comes. The bird gains control and it’s as easy as flying or singing. I give her food and Perta is happy. She
peep-peep-peeps some more.
I give her more food. I sing and approach her. She squats down further. I’m not ready yet. I feed her again. Partly it’s wanting to make it last as long as possible. Perta doesn’t say anything and we fly together all the night long. I sing and feed her till the morning when I wake up.

The next day, I’m tired from being out so late. My mother keeps asking questions but I don’t tell her much. I’m cleaning the cages when Al comes over. I’ve put twelve more young birds in the other flight cage. I still haven’t lost any of the young ones. The breeding cages are in full swing. With the sound of babies hollering to be fed, and the males singing, it makes quite a racket. Perta is flying back and forth alone in the flight cage.

Al starts pumping me about how it was with Doris. I tell him I didn’t fuck her, but he won’t believe me. He says Doris is one of the hottest firecrackers in the whole school; she’d fuck a horse if she could get it to stand still. I tell him I believe it but she didn’t fuck me.

My father testifies to my mother that I danced every dance. My mother wants to know where we went after the dance. I tell her we went to Don’s in Yeadon; that’s a milk-shake bar, the kind of place my mother would like me to go after a dance. I tell her I had a good time. My mother goes over the tux and brushes it off. I pulled all the leaves and stickers out of it before I went to bed. She’d really flip if she found jit smeared along the inside of the pants.

Al looks the birds over but he doesn’t have much interest in canaries. What he does understand is that I’ve got a regular bird factory going. He asks me about feed costs and how many birds per nest and works out how much money I can make.

‘Jesus, Birdy, you’re going to be a fucking millionaire! King of the Canaries. You’ll be voted most likely to suck seed.’

Al thinks that’s funny. He manages to get it in the year-book under my picture. There’s nothing else there; no clubs, no honor rolls, no sports, no offices. It just says ‘Nickname Birdy’. ‘Voted most likely to suck seed.’

Al notices Perta flying all alone in the flight cage and asks about her. He wonders why I don’t put some of the young birds in there. I tell him she’s a special pet of mine. She’s a spare female.

‘Don’t tell me she’s like the pigeon witch we used to have.’

I tell him, ‘Yeah, she’s something like that, only she doesn’t bring back any fancy birds.’

‘Does she eat out of your mouth the way the freaky witch did?’

For a minute I have the feeling Al can see into the dream. If anybody could, it would be Al. Then I remember. I laugh and tell him that canaries are harder to train than pigeons.

We go out and throw the discus for a while, then Al goes home. I go to the aviary and watch Perta with my binoculars. I’m trying to decide how to tell her what I am. I’m trying to decide what I am, too.

That night, in the dream, I know I must tell Perta about myself. As boy, I’ve decided this and it’s come through to me as Birdy in the dream.

First, Perta and I fly together in a new dance. In the dance, we fly over each other, then drop on the other side, so the first flies over the one who has dropped. It’s beautiful, but hard to do in the small space of the cage. It would be so terrific if we could fly free.

When we’re finished, she squats and
peep-peep-peep
s to me and I feed her easily. It is time to mate with her and she’s waiting. I know the beginning egg is inside her waiting for my seed. I want to put my seed into her, to know it is buried warmly in her egg.

‘Birdy, what are you afraid of? Do you want to have a nest with me? I feel we could have such wonderful babies, that we would be together in them, that for the first time, my eggs would be filled with life; with our life. Why are you afraid?’

I look at her. I love her so. What she is saying is what I’ve been thinking, dreaming, singing. It is more than flying.

‘Perta, there are things I must tell you first.’

‘Do you have another female, another nest, somewhere?’

‘No. Nothing so simple as that, Perta.’

‘That is not so simple.’

‘Listen carefully, Perta. Listen to the way I tell this as much as to what I tell. I want you to know I speak the truth. I want you to know what I am, so we can truly be together.’

‘Say it, Birdy. Tell me.’

‘Perta, all this we have together is not real.’

Perta shifts from her left to her right eye but remains quiet.

‘In reality, I am the boy out there.’

I point to myself as boy in the aviary. I’m out there filling feed dishes, changing water.

‘This, here, that we have together, is just a dream. I dreamed you in my dream. I wanted you to be, so I dreamed you.’

I wait. Perta says nothing. She shifts eyes twice more; flips her wings once. Can she possibly understand?

‘Perta, I went out, as boy, in the real world and you were given to me. I carried you here to the cage.’

I wait for some sign that she is with me, that she understands. If I only understood it better myself, I could explain it better. Perta looks at me closely.

‘Go on, Birdy. I’m listening.’

‘You see, Perta, we are here together because of two things, the dream I dreamed in my dream and then the bird I carried back with me, who flies alone here in the cage during the day. You are the bird in my dream-dream and you are the bird I love as a boy but cannot know. You are here in the dream between those two. I am here in my dream because I want to be here. I want to be with you and so it is so.’

I stop. I can’t understand what I’m saying myself. I’m too much of a bird to understand. My boy brain makes up the ideas, the words, but my bird brain can’t understand them. I’m seeing Perta not as a bird but as another creature like myself with whom I’m in love. What I’m saying sounds like crazy talk. How can I expect Perta to understand, to believe, when I cannot do so myself? I stop.

‘Go on, Birdy. Tell me more.’

‘That’s the most of it, Perta. As a boy out there, in reality, when the dream is over, I own all the birds. I bought Birdie, Alfonso. I raised all of them in my bedroom in another place. I built this cage where we fly now. I go places when I am a boy that you cannot see from here. I live with other beings like myself, as a boy. I am but a young creature in that world, not capable of taking care of myself. I have a mother and father with whom I live. My house is out there, out of the cage. If I do not come here, take care, feed all the birds, this whole life would stop, it would all end. Do you understand?’

‘Of course not, Birdy. You know I cannot. I am a bird; those things mean nothing to me.’

‘But do you believe me, Perta? Do you think I lie when I tell all this?’

‘No, Birdy. You are telling me your truth.’

‘Can’t it be your truth, too, Perta? I want it to be your truth. I want you to know me truly.’

Perta looks at me straight on, very unbirdlike.

‘No, Birdy. I am a bird. Your truth cannot be mine.’

I don’t know why I want her to know. Is it because I think that if she knows, believes, then the dream will be more real. But how can a dream be more real? It is like making a zero more zero by writing zero ten thousand times in a line. It is still zero.

‘Perta, do you realize that what I am saying is that you do not exist at all; that you are only a part of my dream?’

‘What is a dream, Birdy?’

I’m stopped. I hadn’t thought of that. If birds do not dream, there’s no way. Still, this is my dream. I can have birds dream or not in my dream, as I want. I can make it to fit my dream.

‘Perta, when you sleep, do you not have thoughts, images, visions, feelings that are not true, that come from inside you, that you only imagine?’

‘No. When I sleep I am giving myself strength. I give myself force to fly, to have babies. It is the great unbeing. It is when we build our feathers, harden our beaks, unbecome.’

This is beyond me. I cannot make birds dream, even in my own dream. I know then that the boy does not really want Perta to know. I must live my bird life as a bird only. I must surrender myself. It is a relief, a wonderful feeling to know this.

A great peace comes into me. I feel my strength as a bird spreading through me. The blood is circulated in warmth out to the tips of my feathers, to the ends of my toenails.

Perta is watching me. She is telling me that I am a bird; that I am to forget all this nonsense of the boy. She wants me as her mate. These things I have been telling her are only the ravings of a maniac, a fever. It is clear to her I am a bird. If I can see myself with her eyes, then I am a bird in her world. I let go. I settle deeply into the life I’ve always wanted. I become, rebecome, a bird in this world of the dream.

I start to sing. Perta is alive to me. There is a transfer of feeling, knowing, one to the other from us that I have never known, never dreamed of dreaming. Perta starts to fly in a complex dance. I fly after her, singing. She flies, dances to my song and I sing, dance, to her dance. It’s not a chase but mutual following. We speak in language beyond words. Our every movement magnifies the tension of our merging identity. Then, Perta stops, waits for me. I approach, in deepest passion, maximum awareness, to her. She waits, cups herself to receive me. I hover, then lower myself into her. My penetration is engulfed by her whole being. For just that moment I am not alone, not separate. I pass through the illusion of identity into a depth of shared reality.

When I wake that morning, I’ve done it again. I’m covered with jit, my sheets, my pajamas. I wash everything so my mother won’t find out. I’ve got to do something.

I go down to Cobb’s Creek with a long stick. They’re floating by in that creek all the time. There must be toilets flushing into the creek, there just couldn’t be that many lovers along the banks. I get one in good shape, wash it out in the creek first, then take it home and wash it again. I turn it inside out. I slip it on and when it’s on, I can hardly feel it. After that, I sleep with that condom on. I fill it almost every night during those first mad weeks when Perta and I are so deeply involved with each other, when all the dreams are devoted to passionate flight, singing, dancing, and overwhelming culminations.