My Amputations (Fiction collective ;) (9 page)

Every little hopeless bit helped and was a bird step: even orgasms in strangers who thought you were who you said you were. (Did he really look
that much
like the pictures?) Truth was nothing other than the establishment of trust, agreement—Mason. And here he was the next morning, back over in D.C., on the campus of Howard, that famous Negro university where Mason's grandfather—so he maintained—graduated in 1926. Feeling a hundred and eighty degrees off, he shook hands with Professor, no, no, at Howard it's
Doctor
—I forgot—Doctor Welton Parkson-Ogden, Junior. A dignified, tall, slender man, in a perfectly cut expensive British-made suit, Doctor Parkson-Ogden, flashed his gold tooth at Mason. “Found your way all right, I see. We'll have to run right along, I'm afraid: the turnout is good: the auditorium is full—and that's unusual in the middle of the day, around here.” As they walked along one of the crisscrossing paths toward the humanities building, Doctor Parkson-Ogden, Chairman of the English Department, chuckled. “Afterward, we'll take you out to lunch. That's the least we can do. We've reserved a table at a French restaurant down on Pennsylvania Avenue. There'll be twelve of us . . . ” The tall man laughed again. “You look, uh, different from the picture on, uh, uh—I forget the title—your book, uh . . . But, of course, very much like the one Cowie sent . . . ” Mason assured the professor the jacket picture was taken some years back. Understandable, understandable. The professor who introduced Mason to the packed auditorium had her hair in a Savannah Churchill-upsweep. She came on stage clad in a glittering gold and silver Medici gown. Her introduction had him born in Chicago, author of two novels, an
anthology
of Afro-American slang. Mason thanked her for it anyway. He told the audience he'd read from his most recent novel, but first he wanted to just talk to them. “I'm delighted to be here at Howard, in the Capital of the Home of the Brave, Land of Liberty, Zone of the President, and it gives me special pleasure to tell you that my agency booked me into Howard Johnson's over in College Park so I wouldn't get mugged by any of you mysterious dark people running around over here in D.C.” The laughter was sincere—
music: they loved him already: he was early Dick Gregory, late Richard Pryor. Mason had ’em in the sweat of his palm: “I wanna tell you my troubles. You know how it is. Not long ago I realized that this bitch I thought was my muse turned out to be part of myself. Now, don't go getting any funny ideas. Seriously, that's a heavy discovery. My real woman, at the time, an Indian lady—bulletproofed soul with spiritual ventilation—took off not long after. Made me wonder if I smelled bad or something. Had to check my breath. I don't know. Maybe I needed a deeper inspiration, one with a spirit full of cobwebs of the cave. Yet Celt responded to Beale Street Boogie with as much handclapping and footstomping as the best of any of us. She sure could outdance me. And could be into Mozart and Beethoven, too: with as much passion. You don't have to be Jewish to like Levi's. Every girl I brought home before Celt was looked upon with great suspicion, often with contempt. ‘Don't bring that little tramp in this house anymore!’ ‘What her father do?’ ‘Bring a nice girl home.’ I tell you, my mother could be merciless. Maybe Celt was all right ’cause, well hell, nobody could
see
or
hear
her. My mother always did believe silence was golden. Celt then was just the girl for me: the one I should play puppy love with till I got big. Celt was a very active muse: nothing stopped her, in the beginning: midwest bound boxcars full of secret lightning, lithographic surfaces of deep sea classifications, oceans filled with storms. The only problem was: I was dreaming godawful tight
fear
dreams rather than blooming
desire
dreams. Had I been smart I'd have been getting that pussy every night—with my folks right in the next bedroom totally unaware. But my innocence, paste of anxiety, high-minded plans, stood in the way. Celt got pissed. You can imagine: there I was turning her into an untouchable goddess. She wanted to kick my ass. I couldn't stop idolizing her and that was the start of my downfall, folks. ‘Before the Flowers of Friendship Faded Friendship Faded.’ But Celt didn't go away right away . . . ” and on Mason rambled, then read; then the questions from the audience: “How come your muse had an Irish name and not an African?” “Why was your real woman Indian and not Black?” “Who do you write for: black or
white people?” “I read somewhere that Black critics don't respect your work ’cause it ain't militant enough and white critics don't dare say anything about your books ’cause they might offend the Black critics. How you feel about this?” All Mason's answers were as awkward as the sound of a bugle suddenly blown in a quiet reading library. Answering was like trying to launder dirty money. Eh?

Two days later Mason was back in the city then soon up in Bronxville on the campus of Sarah Lawrence. His audience in the big dining room of an old mansion: three shy boys and fifty brash smart sincere cocky innocent girls, the sons and daughters of New England gentility—the children who'd turned their backs on law, medicine and business. Standing before them Mason felt like da Vinci's Last Supper: peeling, water-stained, “conscious” of his own death, badly faded: like the tunnels in Italy: his last stand. Again: he wanted to talk first, read later. “I want to talk with you about the differences between fiction and reality,
real
characters and
fake
people—not because it's cute or literary but because my life
depends
on it. (For me the most important aspects of a work of fiction are: quality of imagination, uniqueness of the
angle
of the author's vision, and the degree to which he/she pushes the language for all it's worth.) You see, I'm in the process of inventing myself—in self-defense, of course. Think of me as a character in a book. I have to win my way,
prove
myself, keep The Narrator on his toes, off my back—treat ’im like a camp dog. No matter how
bad
, morally, I might be I gotta earn your
interest:
if not your sympathy and treasured understanding. My quest is
not
to be Mister Parabola. I needn't tell you I'm not the Invisible Man: yet race—or its absence—remains part of my identity: I am concerned with an encamped deeper sense of who I am, this character that is me. Senghor said: ‘We must move
beyond Negritude without disowning it.’ Soyinka reminded us that ‘a tiger does not shout about its tigertude, he jumps.’ So I will jump like a tiger. I am approaching this in a binocular sense. My two eyes see two different things; levels of different things. Along with giving up my illusions and losses I denounce (and make public) any interest in the Cyclopian view of reality. The primary responsibility of literature involves creating truth. The text is not just a pretext. I stand before you. I am not the object of the text . . . ” Well, he'd lost his audience, but soon moved on to the reading anyway:

“ . . . he was still. Hamburger and flies on the formica counter. Big Trailways mobile-tomb out under tree. Restless folks stretching their cramped limbs. Florence Soukhanov ordered onion rings—only, oh, and a Coke. She was now gazing at the flies. Where were his
fries?
Oh, never . . . That pile of mashed cars back on the highway: a forced connection there. He picked up the glass salt shaker and sprinkled the white crystals on the grill-fried pattie while holding the top part of the bun—like a coffin-lid—up. Others at the counter focused on their own. Mister Lascar-face with his wife, Mrs. Goby. And two biddies down at the end. And Miss Willow Goose there eating her cottage cheese off the top of her Diet Spree. Vinegar Joe, on the other side of Florence, dumping stale truck-stop mustard on his hot dog. The Oomph Girl; Aze Simmons—with football shoulders; Max Schmeling with the short-order ribs (sucking the bones); Tan Thunderbolt eating a double-burger; Uncle Joe chomping on Heinz Tomato Ketchup-covered fried chops; Dum-Dora and Chollie-my-Boy in a booth facing two bowls of strawberry and chocolate ice cream covered with pecans, walnuts, whipcream and hot fudge. And, pray-tell, who was that old woman back there at the jukebox, with the electric guitar hung
from her shoulder? Fishy situation? To refocus, he peeped Florence. She didn't look like, uh, a little hard-back thing with four short legs and a tiny head jutting out. The hamburger was one of Uncle Billy's old boots from his days as a brigadier general in the Civil War. Fake mustard didn't help. He knew he shoulda been a wheelchair racer—life would've been simpler. (Had they reached Pennsylvania yet?
Ohio?
or could this truck-stop be on some highway up north of, say, Wisconsin?) Florence crunched on her onion rings. He tasted one: making a forced connection between the crispness of the crust and the mushiness of the lily-cute ring ripped from its bulb. Tasted the lard too.
‘Phew! Good!’
Florence spoke: “I'm still curious about, well, your
past:
tell me more: confession is good for . . . she laughed; shook her noble head. ‘How far—back?’ ‘First thing you remember?’ ‘ . . . first thing so deep now, like fruit on my mother's table: or the certain way chickens stand on one leg. The shock of seeing the dead chicken about to go into the pot. Death, too, in sparrows. Remember their closed eyes. Hardness of the body: death provides us with life. Playing cowboy, too: death there: guns: defined by grandmother as evil! movies, too, were evil. I remember moments, things, The Impostor and that other guy [meaning
me
] can't touch: a tall neat sky full of sliding birds, for example; I was not exactly a May son, see. I
was
out of breath, thought. The city stank. I wanted to crash at Roosevelt Road and change my identity: go to Paris, start another life. But I was stuck in wet, dark afternoons full of gas fumes and forced connections. Early on they told me: Don't lose any important papers: gave me a social security card, a draft card. If they couldn't trace you to papers, well . . . Officials discovered not only did I not have the proper papers, I had no arms, no head, no legs. Soldiers waiting to corner black kids dancing in the streets as rioters, laughed at the holes in my Broncusi-head. I was a weird example of Art. Didn't matter. I'd learned that
so much depends
on four butterflies waiting quietly on a stem, waving their wings slowly. I wanted wings. Sunlight in those days was hazy and if you wanted to feel good you had to make a
forced
connection between fair
weather and the unfair climate, between traffic, sky, birds in formation. I was leery of old men in suspenders: they smoked cigars and listened to Lawrence Welk. I wanted
my
wings. Wings of dead chickens didn't cut the mustard! I was also impressed by
good
writing. I learned from it, imitated poets, wrote things like: forgive me dear, I ate the five women you left at the kitchen table. Their clothes were bright. I knew . . . but they were so cool and tasty. Place had no specific meaning. We'd
always
moved. Nomads, we were. You name the place and we lived there: at least briefly. It was nothing to see somebody shot down in the park and the Peter Pan green grass turning Santa Claus red. Mostly I was running; and reading. Wingless, though I had my muse in my corner, I moved as a plumed serpent—though not accepting Lawrence's snake-definition of dark people—across a landscape of hardhats, hobby-horse-riders, serious writers, sluggish traffic,
forced
—. They compared me to
Trout Fishing in America
and
Invisible Man:
running, wingless, not flying. Nobody knew what would happen next. The white fence was the border between the ghetto and the rest of the world. A broken red wheelbarrow rested against it. I watched a movie of a woman taking a shower: one arm raised above her head: she washed under the raised one. Such big hands she had. No figleaf covered her pubic V. I
liked
her. She was not one of those dainty ladies in flimsy dresses coming down Robert Penn Warren-steps. They tended to come down too gracefully, heads erect, wearing flat white hats with tiny knots of flowers stuck to their sides. Or am I thinking of Alan Tate or, gosh, James Agee . . . ?
Save
me! The space behind those ladies was always filled with January blankness. Was it always necessary to make a connection between sky and horizon? On the other hand, scrubwomen wore red headrags and waited in line to vote—sometimes they dropped dead in line: the wait was so long.’ He chuckled. Looked at her elegant face. ‘ . . . Enough?
You
asked—’ And she shot him a long, clever glance. Then said: ‘You still haven't eaten your hamburger, my onion rings are cold, Miss Goose is in the toilet, Vinegar Joe is back on the bus ready to go, Dum-Dora . . . ’ They went outside under the piss-yellow humid
sky. Bus was half loaded. Florence and he were two-dimensional figures against a permanent surface. Be careful in the open. Birds. Space behind them was filled. Clouds: women on bidets cleaning their assholes; guys standing at urinals; Studs Lonigan pulling on his cheap suspenders; Mason himself with drill braced against rubber apron, drilling a hole through connected steel—with shavings spinning out, curling . . . Back on the road: his head contained a sky as clear and blue as a hangover: trees, in there, shook: thin yellow fingers froze in wind. Florence? Light beat his body. They held hands.”

Next, Brooklyn College: he was speaking in a sterile room in Whitehall. His host, a woman with red hair, had given him a modest, friendly introduction. There was wine and cheese for the students at the back of the room. They were sprawled in comfortable plush chairs and on puffy armless couches in a chaotic pattern before him. His “lecture” was about “a hypothetical situation—call it a sketch for the novel of my life” and the relation of “theme” to “form.” (He'd taken the BMT over here to Flatbush and written the talk on the subway.) Then, as was his pattern, he ended by reading from published works—this time, poetry, since his host'd told him these students were mostly interested in poetry. At the end one student wanted to know his position on liberation movements in South America, Africa, the Middle East, on “American aggression” in the world, on capitalism generally, on the rights of women. Before Mason could answer another student stood and confronted the string of questions. Would you ask Kinnell or Ashbery
those
questions?” The audience then broke into factions: about half of them on the side of the first questioner, the rest took the other side. And Mason was sort of left standing speechless before them for a moment. Then he ended the squabble by saying: “Listen: no one
has
the
answer.” One of the two Black students in the room stood. “You notice there're no Black students—except Trixie and myself. It's because The Black Student Union here is staging a protest. We have a long list of objections to the way this university is run. Many Italian and Jewish students have also signed our petitions. We sent word to you last week asking you to join us by
not
speaking here. But I see you chose—” (Mason hadn't received the message). A thin Jewish girl leaped to her feet. She shook a finger at the black boy—who had a face as innocent as a frog's. “Just
wait
a minute!” the girl screamed, “I'm
sick
and tired of this! This man came here
as a poet
to read his poetry . . . ” and so it went. Finally, the host stopped them, and whispered to Mason, “Thank you for being patient . . . ” Trixie came up and introduced herself. Creamy tan with big dark brown-hazel eyes. “Need a lift back to Manhattan?” Yes and he was grateful. The host thanked her too. In the Renault beside the jean-clad girl, thin as a starving youth in a village in some remote part of India, he asked her if she'd like to stop at a bar he knew on Sheridan Square and have a drink with him. “Just like your generation.” Her tone was one of amused cynicism. She was lighting a joint while waiting for a light to change. Something in his marrow-bones jerked. She dragged then passed it to him. He pulled at it: his head was yanked through a knothole. Grass had never done much for him. She parked on Waverly Place and they walked to the Red Lion. She was tough: had a tomboy walk. On the back of her worn leather jacket this: Bed-Sty Hell Cats. When she saw Mason looking she laughed. “Oh, I've had this jacket since high school.” After the scotches they went over to Perry where her sister had an apartment. Trixie let herself in with her own key. “I stay here sometimes when I'm not getting along with my boyfriend. Right now he's a pain.” The place smelled of catshit. It was dark, even with all the lights on. They undressed without ceremony and got between the crisp greenblue sheets. She stroked his cock to an erection. “I thought you'd have a small one. Is your wife white?” “I'm not married.” She had a noble face, the yellow haze of her right eye was nice contrast to the cynical
curve of her thin, smooth lips, the hard clean throat. She made him feel deeply uneasy: something was wrong. Why were they
here
like this? Inexpertly she sucked him awhile then straddled him, inserting his cock up into her dry, small quim. His vision improved. He decided to call all bets off: just surrender. Yet . . . ? She rode his bone-hard penis with the kicking and yelping of a vaudeville queen in a cheap obscenario. She kept groaning and hissing, “ . . . you like my pussy?” and when they exchanged positions—with him balanced on the balls of his feet, between the fork-spread of her slender thighs, he threw her long, smooth strokes, spiced, vulgar, smutty, sincere ones too. She grinned up at him with that toughness around the eyes and mouth. “Get that pussy, man!” When they finished she, yes, lighted a classic cigarette and turned toward him, resting on one elbow. He looked at her looking at him. He wanted to do the handsome thing. Be a hundred percent. Bed-Sty Hell Cats? Trixie said, “By the way, man, I peeped your act right away: you're an imposter.” She was grinning. “You see,
I know
because I fucked the real dude once: his cock is
bigger.
”