Authors: Dale Herd
Empty Pockets (9 page)
“And what's she say? Tells me to fuck off. Thinks I want him or something like that.
“Not that I'd mind, but the real thing is he doesn't like himself. 'Cause he's real light, right, all the darker blacks pick on him. So where does he fit in? You see what I mean? There's no way he can like himself. And if she likes him then what good is she? The only reason he wants her is because she makes him look good, but since he knows he's no good how can she be any good? That's why he's all the time pushing at her, all the time accusing her of coming on with these different guys she's out with, guys he sets her up with! Isn't that nuts? See what I mean?
“We've gotta work it so you can see them when they're out partying together, when she's not working. I mean, you won't believe it. Right at his side every second. Always looking up at him. Always nodding at everything he says. And does he watch her? She's locked! If she's got to pee she's got to ask! And he won't say a thing. Just keeps her waiting. I've seen him keep her as long as a couple of minutes, her sitting there all pinched-up looking with that little pinched-up smile on her face.
“It's just incredible! I'm just glad he doesn't like himself. He'd be just terrible if he did. You know how good-looking he is. He is really good-looking. He could get away with anything if he weren't such an asshole. I mean anything! I don't know anyone as good-looking as he is . . .”
S
he fucked this spade dude, him saying, You know you need it, you know you do, you know you haven't been getting it right; a professional dancer and photographer from New York who said, Wow, who are you, I can't believe there's someone like you in a place like this; this big guy, a bearded cocaine dealer who wore Big Mac coveralls and drove a vw van, trying three times with him before deciding he was both a chauvinist and impotent; a younger guy from France, an architectural student at
USC
who lived in a terraced house in Topanga Canyon and who drove a Mercedes-Benz.
“We went camping and watched the sunset and, well, I've sort of gotten involved.”
“That's nice,” he said, a weak sick feeling starting to leak out into his voice. “I think that's good.”
“It's not serious or anything, don't get the wrong idea, but I don't think I'm ready yet.”
“Sure,” he said.
“I think we should try this a while longer.”
“All right,” he said.
There was a silence.
“You'll call?”
“Sure,” he said.
“Okay, I'm glad you called.”
“All right,” he said.
“I don't want you to take this too seriously. You won't, will you?”
“No,” he said, “of course not.”
“It isn't serious.”
“All right,” he said.
There was another silence.
“Well, I've got to go now,” he said.
“All right. You call me now.”
“I will,” he said.
“You know I couldn't sleep at night after you left. I tried to be there. I did try.”
“I know,” he said.
“I tried my best.”
“All right,” he said. “G'bye.”
“Bye.”
He hung up the phone. The change kicked down and vibrated inside the box.
“What she have to tell me all that shit for?”
I
n the eighth grade sixty-five boys tried out for the basketball team. John Beck, one of the shortest boys, survived Coach Wooten's first cut. That gave John hope.
Each night after practice for the next two weeks he walked home in the cold and dark, praying the same prayer:
Dear God, he prayed, please may I make the first fifteen; dear God, please may I make the first fifteen; dear, dear God, please may I make the first fifteen. He always stopped after the fifteenth repetition.
John made it through the second cut, and after practice on the day of the final cut, he was called into Coach Wooten's office.
“Beck,” Coach Wooten said, “what am I going to do with you? You aren't tall and you aren't fast. I don't even know if you can shoot.”
“I don't know, Coach,” John said. “Does that mean I'm cut?”
“No,” Coach Wooten said, “I'll tell you what. I'll let you stick it out on the practice squad. Maybe you can work your way into a few road games.”
So John was on the squad as the seventeenth man. Twice Coach Wooten let him suit up for trips to other schools. He never let him suit up for a home game. John didn't log enough playing time for the felt letter he could wear on his athletic jacket.
That spring John decided he liked a pretty girl named Susan. He thought she was classy. The first time he walked her home he felt she wanted a kiss. He almost did, then he didn't. They had a date to go to a
Y
teen dance on Saturday. He thought he could kiss her then. When he went to her house on Saturday she wasn't ready to go. Her mother said she would be ready in a minute and went in the bedroom to talk to her. John could hear Susan crying in the bedroom. He didn't know why. A few minutes passed and Susan came out as if she hadn't been crying
and they went to the dance. John had a good time at the dance and thought Susan did too. He didn't get a chance to kiss her but asked her out for the next Saturday. She said she couldn't. Later that week he asked her out again and she said to please not ask her.
Two years later, while a sophomore in high school, John began dating a girl named Karen, even though she wasn't one of the popular girls.
Five years later, one sunny spring day, John read
African Genesis.
He was now a sophomore in college and beginning to read on his own.
“The social order of the jackdaw,” he read, “an extremely intelligent bird, indicates that a social animal does not only seek to dominate his fellows but the degree to which he succeeds obtains for him in the eyes of others his social ranking.
“Further,” he read, “once established this ranking remains permanent throughout one's lifetime regardless of how early it was established in one's lifetime.”
John couldn't believe what he had read. For three days, refusing all talk to leave his room, he lay in bed listening to rock 'n' roll on his radio.
“A
classic case, my doctor said, that's what he said I was. I stayed around my mother. My father was stern and distant, prone to violence. I spent all my time making female decisions. Doesn't that sound about right? They put me to work in the family business. A dead end. I couldn't be competitive with other males. Walking down the street I would imagine myself with breasts and hips, that I had a vagina, trying to confront it directly, telling my head to leave me alone, telling it to let me live. The more I fought it the worse it got. I started hearing whispers, from within and from without. Something had to be done. I couldn't go on. I had to be that which I was really to be. If I wasn't the one, I had to be the other. If all women were destructive, then why not take it up with guys? Become a screaming limp-wristed nelly queen. Certainly no more wife and Brentwood Country Club, house, furniture, and car. So I did. Quit. Walked out. Broke loose. Started the new life. Total disappointment! That wasn't me at all. Just another country club scene again but flopped over. The same games but in reverse. Even my doctor didn't know what to say. So on my own I started dropping those little psychic A-bombs in me, phoosss! Reprogramming the program. Fantastic! I remember it so clearly! The first time I dropped, just phoosss! You know. All the pain I thought was going to kill me, the revelations of self that would destroy me, were revealed as just my pain, pain from the inside, not the outside, that if I just rode with it I would live, nothing more than that pain was going to happen! I mean, I learned! Just accept your thoughts. Don't direct them. Don't take them into anything that is painful, don't take them into anything that is not. Your mind can take care of itself. It's a fantastic machine, and already knows everything it needs to know if you just let it alone. I mean that was beyond belief. I'd always been so damn
busy worrying about what I should do, and the whole thing was just revelation, gospel, instant church. I must of dropped eight or nine times with nothing but good experiences, nothing in my head scaring me. So good-bye to Hollywood. That was the end of those scenes. I moved back over here. Got this job. Started building back up. Up from my instincts. Following the true me talking to myself. What you do is listen to yourself. You listen to yourself and get it surrounded with logic and take it out in the world.
BAM
! It gets blown to hell! Another lesson learned! Another defense changed! What's that change? Nothing! Nothing at all! You just take it from there. You're still you. I'm still me. I just charge right out into things now and see what happens. And that's me. I'm back. I've planted myself. When I was little I used to plant a garden. I loved to watch it grow. Now I've planted myself. It's tremendous. Like the other day I was talking with this woman who works with me and realized I was using the same kind of trip on her that I used to use to come on to guys with! Isn't that fantastic! I couldn't believe it!”
T
he first thing to do, he said, was never to get down on yourself, to always make things easy on yourself. If he became unhappy, he said, he always told himself to find out the cause, and then he changed it, no matter what the circumstances, it was always wrong to worry about the consequences.
Working at
IBM
taught him this. Right after Korea he had gone to work for
IBM
as a management trainee. His wife said if you hate it so much why don't you quit? He had been afraid to quit, but finally did, even though there wasn't another job to go to. To make ends meet he took work as a laborer hanging drywall. It turned out he liked this better, and it even paid more money. That was the first step, he said, but he still wasn't happy. Then he decided it wasn't what kind of job, it was having a boss. He decided to work for himself. He kept on drywalling but banked half of each paycheck. When the money was there he bought a new pickup and the tools and bid his first job, a subcontract to drywall six tract houses in West Covina. He won the bid, quit his job, and started his own business.
That was ten years ago.
It had been a tremendous step.
Right now his business was so good he was going into another business. The new business was so obvious a step it was hard to believe it hadn't been done, but it hadn't.
Metal-studding, he said, mass-produced wall-studding made of metal compounds. No more hammer and nails, no more wooden two-by-fours, no more slivers and splinters and mashed thumbs. All that would be needed would be an electric stapling gun and the studs. Houses would spring up in two days' time. First day, pour the foundation, slap in the studs. Second day, staple up the drywall and presto, instant house. Well, let the foundation cure first, so by second week, instant house. Two weeks tops.
As far as he knew, he said, he and his partner, a Malibu Colony psychiatrist, were the only men in the country working on it. They already had the patents secured, were building the first production machine. They had a building in La Puente where they would begin manufacturing, production to commence in the fall.
Right now they were testing different metals.
The studs would be made in various sizes from an amazing number of different compounds.
Their overall plan was franchise packaging.
By 1977 there would be metal-stud plants everywhere across the nation.
He wasn't rich now but by '77 he would be. By '77 metal studs would revolutionize the entire building industry, all benefits accruing back to him, and to his partner, of course.
And then it was on to Oregon.
By '77 he would be able to live anyplace he wanted and Oregon was the place. A man could live anywhere there and still go hunting and fishing. Or over in Idaho, the Snake River country, that was good country, live in a small town where everyone knew everybody.
Because that's what he wanted for his kids, he said, a nice small town. As a kid he had lived in a small town, which had made the difference. He hadn't had an old man. His old man had run off. There hadn't been any guidance and he got pretty wild. He would have gone to jail but his mother knew the judge and that got him off. He had a choice between the army or jail. Just having a choice made the difference.
People in a small town pull together, he said, you can't deny it.
If my two boys ever need it, he said, I want them to get the same kind of break I got, although, he said, he was doing everything in his power to make them feel wanted, not feeling wanted being the cause of most of the trouble in the world.
And that was the other advantage to living in a small town, because that was his other rule, that a man keep his own self-respect.
A man had to do that, he said. If he didn't, he was lost, and there wasn't a faster way to lose it than to have some woman cut you down.