The Origin of Waves (17 page)

The barman walks smiling from behind the safety of the bar, which he polishes with a cloth that is turning less white from the cleaning with each span of dabbing and wiping up of water on the counter and the wiping up of spilt drinks, and is now standing beside John and me. He is changing the ashtray yet another time, although it has not been used, in a gesture of service and dedication. He has the small round tray in his left hand, flat to his chest, and his right hand is deep into his right trousers pocket, jingling the change of his tips.

“Now, this is what I want you to do for me this time,” John is telling the barman, who listens as he runs the cloth across the silk of the water on our table. John’s
speech takes on a friendly slur. He is now drunk. The barman mistakes this for merriment. It is the season. “Now,” John says, and stops, as if this is the end of what he intends to say. Words are coming with greater difficulty, slothful and slow. “Now. If you don’t mind me saying so. If you don’t mind me saying so. And I don’t. Wish. And I don’t wish. To tell you how to do your job. To tell you how to do your job. ’Cause I been a waiter, a barman, myself. In some of the best bars in the Big Apple. You
know
the Big Apple! And I’ll be goddamned. Be goddamn mad. If some son of a bitch from off the street comes into my bar. And tells me how to do my job. If you see what I’m saying.” The words are coming easier now. “But this time, this time, I want to axe you to do me a little favour. A little favour is all I axe, if you see what I’m saying. This time, when you make the next two double martinis, pass the vermouth bottle,
unopen
, over the glass, and measure-off two drops, two drops of Chivas in each martini glass, and then pour-off the ice
and
the Chivas, and fill-er-up, Joe! Fill-er-up! Filler-up! I’m here talking to my ace-boon, this son of a bitch who I haven’t rested my two goddamn eyes on in forty, no,
fifty
years! Half a-goddamn-century! Not since me and him were small. Me and him born in Barbados, went-school at the same schools, done the same things, got-into the same goddamn trouble, was unseparated like two twins; he was flogged by my mother, him and I; and I got my backside tarred by
his
mother, me and him, if you see where I’m coming from. So, this son of a
bitch comes here, to reside; and I find myself travelling the
whirl!
We just met. Right here. On the street out there. Me and him. On Yonge Street. A minute ago. I’m ploughing through your goddamn snow, like a snow-removal, and into this goddamn son of a bitch, my ace-boon, I bounced. He. Him. Look at him! Rambling in the white-people thoroughfare, and nearly knocked me flat on my ass in all that snow outside. So, where you from, y’all? Where you from?”

“Sydney.”

“You’re from Australia?”

“Nova Scotia. Sydney, Nova Scotia.”

“Knew you had some Wessindian in you!”

“Grandmother.”

“Would you take one with us?”

“Don’t-mind-if-ah-do!”

“Pour yourself a goddamn drink, fella. Goddamn! Ain’t this something? We be taking-over North Amurca, if y’all not careful in this country.” And he glances at the three women nearby, chatting and giggling, as Buddy the barman agrees to follow the instructions for making the martinis; and as Buddy leaves, John glances at the three women again. “Look at those three fine foxes, will ya? Check-em-out, brother, ’cause there sure ain’t no harm in looking! I’m a legs-man, myself. What you is?”

“Breasts. Bubbies.”

“Goddamn! First indication you give me that you like women! Gimme the legs any time. Legs and avoirdupois.”

“I like the fingers, too. Fingers do some funny things to me, especially fingers with long fingernails that don’t have nail polish …”

“Come closer. Hold over, ’cause I don’t want those three chicks to hear. Check it out. The one. In the. Black stockings. Pantyhose. With the red shoes. It’s a good thing. They can’t. Read our minds. Isn’t she something? Isn’t she just something? I am a legs-man, any time.”

“There was a time when a woman’s fingers would do some funny things to me. Now, I concentrate on the breasts. Saying this for a woman to know, we could be charged with some kind of sexual assault. In this country, a man could be accused …”

“Goddamn! But I’ll be goddamned if any motherfucker gonna tell
me
I can’t admire a woman’s legs!”

“But still. The things we’re saying in private and in secret, if they were known by any of those three women …”

“I love to see a woman with
well-form
teeth. Strange, how men have these little likes and dislikes that they can’t express in the open. You know how
obsess
I am with legs and feet and teeth, and
weight
 … And Jesus Christ, all that avoirdupois! Now, I am not a jeans-person, attracted to tight-fitting latex pants that cycliss wear. For a woman to turn up at my place, dressed in tight shiny spandex pants, my mind turns off, and my desire disappears. Dissipates. If you see where I am coming from.”

“I wonder if women talk about men the way we are observing these three chicks, two old men, sitting down in this bar, undressing these three women. Come close. Listen.
Once
. A woman. She was. About thirty-nine. Or forty …”

“Look-look-look! Don’t look too obvious. But the one on your left. In the white, shiny hose, the colour of silver. See her? My God! The
parlez-vous
woman, my Hyacinthe, was just like her! If she wasn’t in France, I woulda
swear
it is my first-wife sitting at that table! Goddamn!”

“…  about forty. She would cook dinner, and we would sit down at the table with white linen tablecloth, or a cloth like damask, with white watermarks in the pattern. What do you call that kind of tablecloth? Lace? Anyhow, she always had candles, white candles like those big, fat white ones we used to light in the chancel of the Cathedral Church, you remember? And she always served white wine. She knew a lot about wines. Dinner usually was steak fried, with all the blood running out of it, with onions and broccoli and always with mashed potatoes. She liked mashed potatoes. While I am eating, I am feeling peckish, and not only for her food. After we eat the steak with the blood running out of it, she would serve dessert topped with brandy. I am drinking my brandy, and I am still feeling
peckish
. I have never told this to anybody before. Anyhow. After we eat, she would go into the bathroom, and come back out in a kind o’ shortie-pyjamas made out of white silk, and
then we would have some more white wine, and then she would say to me, just plain so, with no foreplay or play or touching, “Do you want to do it?” And sudden-so, the urge would leave me. Rubbing me, kissing me, massaging me, sticking me with her fingernails,
nothing
, not a damn thing would make me have the urge as I first had the urge of peckishness. This went on happening for more than six months. ‘Don’t worry,’ she would tell me, ‘it happens.’ It happens perhaps; but it never happened to me before, and the more …”

“Didn’t you see a doctor?”

“A doctor? I wasn’t sick!”

“Didn’t you see your family doctor?”

“I don’t have a family. All the years in Toronto, I never had a doctor. Even if I had-had a doctor, I couldn’t as a man go to a doctor and tell him that I can’t have an erection! Are you out of your fucking mind? What would he think of me, a big black man like me?”

“Another trick she coulda used woulda been to wrap the steak round your tom-pigeon.”

“On my tom-pigeon? The steak with the blood running out?”

“On your penis. Steak, but preferably cold, is the best cure for sterility, by putting it on your tom-pigeon.”

“I just couldn’t go to a doctor. Not to a white doctor. Imagine what that doctor would say about a man like me!”

“A black doctor, then. They have any black doctors in Canada?”

“A black doctor? That’s worse, man! A
black
doctor? Can you imagine a man like me, in Toronto’s small black community, going to a black doctor, and telling that black doctor that I can’t get it up? A
black
doctor? I would be the laughing-stock of the whole black community! This doctor may talk. Everybody in his club and his church would hear about my ailment and affliction. No patient-doctor privilege would save my arse, man!” John is laughing. “It really bothered me, not knowing what to do, to cure this thing. For more than six months, she went on holding me like if I was a baby, saying, ‘Don’t worry, it happens’; and all the time making me kiss her breasts with her brassieres on, through the lace, and she rubbing the various parts of my body with oils from the Body Shop. My tom-pigeon still won’t stannup, for nothing. I started reading books.
The Joy of Sex, The Joy of an Orgasm, The New Joy of Sex, Sex and the Male Organ
, and
Orgasms Galore!
She lent me
Sex as You Want It
and still I couldn’t do nothing. But the worst part was that I feel-sure she told her girl friends about me. A black man who can’t handle the situation. I know she did. Her girl friends started looking at me, and giggling. You know the way a woman can look at a man and start giggling? Has this ever happened to you? And I am only asking you because you and me grew up together. I could never ever ask a Canadian about this. This ever happened to you?”

“Goddamn!”

“Breasts have, however, remained my weakness. I only have to see a woman’s brassieres, not even the bare breasts, especially when she is under the shower. And when you talk about a woman in the sea or in a swimming pool, and the water soaks her bathing-suit, and the nipples start to show-through the bra, or a woman athlete running a race, Jesus Christ! The moment I see the nipples …”

“Goddamn! You need help, brother, if you see what I’m saying. You seriously need help. Not that I am criticizing you. I am merely saying you’s a man in need of help, sexuality-wise!”

“I suffered through those long six months with that woman, never mentioning it to anybody, and wouldn’t, in case people start laughing at me. People usually laugh at these things when you can’t perform. I know men who tell me that they could go with a woman for five hours.
Five hours. Five hours?
Jesus Christ, man, not even a horse could do that! That is almost a whole working-day! But even though I feel that a normal man can’t
do-it
for five hours, still I can’t say anything against that man. While I was seeing that woman’s breasts while eating the steak, everything was fine. But the moment she goes into the bathroom, and comes back-out wearing a shortie-nightgown, my tom-pigeon falls. Flat.”

“I don’t mean to emasculate you further, or come on strong in the way of criticizing you,” John says. His voice and his manner have changed. It is like waves rushing in and onto the beach in a wild surge, and
then falling back into the sea, slowly and in a clear, sober run to the sea. He is looking straight at me, with clear, focused eyes. “I am acquainted with the myth that men like me and you have to live under. We’s
suppose
to be kingpins in bed. And if you see what I’m saying, then you will understann that it is even written-about in books, about men like me and you. But you should have-seen a goddamn doctor. Having said that, I know that men like me and you don’t go to doctors to seek
that
kind o’ help and assistance. It
don’t
look good. We is he-men, regardless o’ age. And we have to behave like he-men. The things we’re saying is things that nobody should ever hear-about; things that we have to hide from certain people; things that would, if they are known, make us look small, like small men. Is the same thing about going in a men’s washroom with a lotta white boys peeing, and hiding their instruments and tom-pigeons, and looking at you outta the sides of their eyes while they are peeing, and measuring you with their glances, to see if the myth and the fear of the myth is justified, and …”

“That’s why when I go in a men’s room, I always use a cubicle, with a door that closes, and locks, as if I am using the toilet, and not going just to pee.”

“Goddamn!”

“Just in case a white boy sees my tom-pigeon, and it doesn’t measure-up in the eyes of
his
myths. It is a hard thing. Is a hard thing that men like me and you have to bear all this myth and fear, as you say. But getting back
to the woman who used to invite me to candlelight dinners of rare steak. It made me
very ashamed
to know I couldn’t
perform
under those romantic circumstances. And this woman was the most sexy-looking woman I ever known! Do you think that women talk about these things, measuring men, comparing men, sex-wise, and size-wise, as you would say? Women
couldn’t
talk about these things! Jesus Christ, have a heart!”

“Women, far’s my knowledge goes, not only talk about these things, comparison-wise, but they give other women your measurements. And your performance-quotients. And your complete statistics. And your frequencies, as if they are putting those other women on guard against you. Believe me, brother. There is nothing that a woman don’t talk about about a man, to other women. Don’t look now! Look when it is safe. Look-look-look. The one with the black stockings. You see those legs? Let me tell you something about legs, and about love and making love to a woman who have lovely legs. First you take a deep breath to control yourself. And when you get on top of a woman with nice legs, try to think of
anything
, but what you happen to be doing. Anything in the whirl, but take your full mind offa making love. You got to learn how to control yourself, brother. You gotta control yourself.
Control
is the word. You see them legs? If you do not control yourself, your body and your mind and your thoughts, you will make the mistake of coming before the woman is ready to come, if you see where I’m coming from.
You mentioned the Chinese woman. But you mentioned her once, and you never mentioned her again. Did you ever … you know what I mean … with the Chinese?” I refuse to answer him. I hope he has forgotten the story I told him hours ago. He ignores me, and says, “Chinese women are masters of the art of control. Control. The more you are able to take your mind off the present predicament, the more control you have, and the more longer you are going to last, through thought-association. But not association with the project at hand. Because women prefers the passion and emotion of the whole thing, whilst a man have a tendency to jump-on,
bang-bang!
, have a cigarette, put on his clothes, done-with-that, and leave. On the other hand, a woman need tenderness and something-else that cause that lingering experience to last, if you see what I’m saying. Men have been
horned
for this negligence.”