Thoughts Without Cigarettes (32 page)

During that time, the strangeness of my life—of feeling that something had been torn out from inside of me, like a kidney, curiously enough, in my mind shaped like the island of Cuba, that I was as empty as air—gnawed at me every day. The same questions I had about myself kept repeating: Who and what am I? Why is it that I hate seeing what I see when I look in a mirror? Why is it that every now and then I suddenly turn around because of a voice saying, “Cuba, Cuba . . .”? And why is it that I always swear, as I begin to look behind me or turn a corner, that, in a moment, I will come upon all that I do not have—a world, perhaps Cuban, perhaps familial, that for so many reasons seems to have been taken from me?

I tried to be a hippie for a while, but even that did not really afford me a refuge: I'm sorry to say I wasn't very good at it. One summer, I had gone upstate, north of Saratoga Springs, to perform with a pianist friend in a makeshift band at a guitar player's wedding; I knew the bridegroom from jam sessions around Columbia, and, two-timing my own band, for a while I moonlighted with him in a group we put together, the Ravens. He dressed entirely in black, wore dark glasses every hour of the day, had dark hair down to his shoulders, and, altogether, cultivated a look that present-day kids would call Goth. His “old lady,” a waitress at the Gold Rail, was all of twenty-two or so at the time and a long-legged auburn-haired fox and a half, as they'd say in my neighborhood. Their marriage, held on the shores of an upstate lake, went off with flower-child aplomb, and the party afterward, with folks coming from nearby communes as well as the city, became one of those all-day affairs, with musicians setting up their amps on a makeshift stage in a field and people lying out on blankets or wading naked in the water, partaking liberally of the booze and marijuana and other relaxants that were in plentiful supply, along with tables of food (of a typical American variety, with some healthfully boring grain and oat dishes).

I'd played guitar with that impromptu troupe of musicians for a few hours, until the mosquitoes and black flies and the heat began to get to me, and, figuring that I'd paid my dues, left to check out the shoreside scene, what with a large number of lovely young women cavorting about in the flesh, along with something else of great interest just then taking place: On a small island some fifty yards into the lake, a couple were going at it with abandon—a woman, her shapely back to us, long hair trailing down her shoulders, straddling some lucky fellow, grinding her hips over him, and most juicily so. A lot of people were watching, among them the bridegroom himself, my friend, whom I sat beside and joined in a smoke (just a cigarette).

Passing some jug wine between us, we took in their lovemaking, watched the woman, her bottom rising and falling, her head turning from side to side, while we said things like “Man, oh man” and “Where'd she come from?” our interest further heightening when, dismounting him, she rolled over and let the fellow go down on her, the two of us shaking our heads in wonderment and blowing out smoke rings, while she not long afterward turned her mouth into a ring and started blowing him, oh, that lucky fellow: It would have remained one of those capricious things that (I supposed) happened at hippie weddings, what with “free love” in the air, an afternoon's drug-induced sexual reverie, if not for the fact, as we soon discovered, that the woman in question, having had her fill of that fellow's masculinity and wading back to shore, wobblingly so, turned out to be my friend's bride.

His response? Shook his head, sucked his cigarette deeply, and, with considerable understatement, told me, “Aw, man, what a drag.” Somehow, he had it in him to forgive her—his bride of only a few hours had gotten so drunk that she soon passed out and, in any case, wouldn't remember a thing about what happened, while the lucky fellow, who, I'm happy to report, was a good-looking Latino—and yes, I was a little envious of his swarthy, well-muscled handsomeness—swaggered about with his plump, recently-worked-to-death dick hanging out for all to see, until he learned just who the lady happened to be and, putting on a pair of trousers, duly apologized to the bridegroom. He was so humble as to be likable, and that paid off when later, even more enviously, I watched him going off with another woman. I ended up passing the night, rather uncomfortably, inside a low-hanging tent pitched in a field, swatting away at mosquitoes and unable to sleep, not just because of the heat but because I often had those awful dreams.

That same summer, I was at home one August evening trying to watch television, while my mother, sitting on the couch behind me, went on and on in Spanish about the fact that my life would end up a useless mess. It didn't matter to me. By then I did whatever I pleased in front of her. Smoking openly, I dropped my ashes into the same standing tray that my father used to (“You'll kill yourself with those cigarettes, like your father!” she'd scream), and now and then I'd stretch out in his green recliner, having oddly pleasant memories of him—like when I was little and he'd make a muscle and let me feel it, or my pop, in from the wintry day, setting his snow-dappled black-brimmed hat on the kitchen table and rubbing his hands happily to warm them up and patting me on the head, and how he used to somehow have a calming effect on babies, who always stopped their bawling around him. Such nice memories kept coming to me until, in that reclining position, I'd remember him stretched out in his coffin, and whatever nostalgia I may have been feeling for those earlier times turned into a kind of muted despair, which, of course, I had gotten used to by then.

On that night, I was watching an episode of
Bewitched
or perhaps
I Dream of Jeannie
, a cheery sitcom in any case, when the telephone rang. My mother answered it, called me over: “
Es pa tí
,” she said. It was Mr. Mascetti calling from his bar.

“Hey, Oscah,” he said. “Can ya do me a favor?”

“What sort of favor?” I asked him.

“Well, it seems that my son Butch has got it into his head that he wants to take a morning flight out of Kennedy to Denver.”

“Yeah, so?”

“The thing is that he's—how can I put it to ya—he's been kind of high as a kite lately, if you know what I mean. He's been dropping a lot of something on the strong side—you following me?”

“Uh-huh.”

“The thing is, I don't want him going alone with his mind so wacked—
capiche
?—and I was wondering if you could do me the very big favor of looking out for him, for me. There's two bills in it for your trouble.”

“You mean you want me to go with him to Colorado?”

“Yessir—I'm only asking because I trust you. Just make sure he doesn't do anything crazy, that's all.”

“Okay, I'll do it,” I finally told him, not having much else going on.

The next morning, Mr. Mascetti drove us to JFK in his Cadillac, got us there around nine A.M., paid for our tickets at the counter, and then, wishing me well with a slap to my back, took off for Manhattan. We had to wait about an hour before boarding, a very long hour. Having been high all night, on speed and LSD perhaps—who knew—Butch Mascetti had signed on for the duration. Somewhere in outer space, Butch kept pointing his finger at me and laughing wildly, going on about how the interior of the terminal had begun to glow like gold before melting like ice all around him; he'd make whooshing noises with his mouth and scoot around in circles, his hands held out like Superman's, flying, babbling incoherently about the cosmic winds in that place. Not wanting any hassles, I kept bringing him back to his seat; “Be cool,” I'd say, only to watch him get up again. The airline staff, mostly young female flight attendants, must have noticed his strange behavior, but I think they were either inured to such doings or simply didn't care enough to boot us off that flight. Finally, we started boarding: I thanked God for that, because he seemed to quiet down.

I took it in stride; when I'd left the house that morning, my mother had been confounded: I had been stupid enough to tell her where and with whom I was going. Her last words to me as I left were “Are you crazy?” for even she knew about Butch's reputation for liking the wild side of things. Well, I was doing it for the two hundred dollars, and because Larry and Butch were my friends, in that order. (Unlike his two lovely sisters, Butch always had a smugness about him, and, as kids, our fights always started out with his making some blunt remark about how I dressed in cheap clothes, or how my “moms” couldn't speak English too well, or how he never liked to go into my apartment because it “smelled funny.” The thing is no matter how friendly I tried to be with him, he hadn't changed one bit.) But even if I looked at it as a job, I still couldn't understand how anyone would take a huge dose of LSD and decide to get on a jet plane the next day. (Eventually, of course, I'd find out why. Butch had already dropped the drug at the bar when, out of some idiocy, he decided to call up his on-and-off girlfriend, a girl named Ellie, in Colorado Springs, where he attended college. She had apparently dumped him that very night—hence his sudden decision to fly there, though I couldn't imagine anyone, high or not, going through the trouble just because of a telephone call.)

Once the plane had become airborne, however, Butch seemed to become more contemplative, hardly saying a word, coming down from his high, which was fine with me. To calm my own nerves, I ordered a few glasses of vodka and orange juice from a stewardess, which I sipped slowly, until I began to doze off; then I had a very strange dream. First the wispy threads I always saw inside the rims of my eyes—“floaters”—seemed to become extravagantly beautiful, curling into arabesque flows of script that implied, without using any language, something awfully profound and mystical; and then after feeling completely fascinated by some melodies that I had started to make up in my head, it all hit me: Lurching forward, I opened my eyes to a cabin that had begun bursting with florid colors and seemed padded with an expanding, nearly breathing, foam. Looking my way gleefully and pointing his index finger at me, Butch could not contain himself, laughing, “Got you, sport!”

A general note: I would not recommend flying anywhere with someone who, out of a controlling motive, would slip into your drink a drug like LSD; I can also assure you that a jet plane—reeking of fuel, carpet-cleaning chemicals, recycled oxygen, bodily gases, perfumes and colognes, airplane food, and, in those days of yore, cigarette smoke, which even for a smoker on that drug smells and tastes exactly like all its ghastly chemical components (from benzene to formaldehyde)—is about the least pleasant place on earth to be. And it hits you that you are locked inside an unimaginably heavy metallic projectile flying through the air, somehow held up in the sky. In that contained, inescapable, and claustrophobic space, I got the jitters so badly that I made it a ritual to go to the toilet about every ten minutes (or however much time) to wash my face and urinate, though at a certain point, with Butch really getting on my nerves, I locked myself inside for so long the flight attendants began knocking on the door to make sure I was all right. (I wasn't and they knew it—from our blabbering and distorted expressions and strange reactions to simple questions, as when a flight attendant would offer a meal, and I'd answer incredulously, “Why?” Later, when we'd finally landed, one of them, a chirpy southern sort, remarked, “It's not every day we get passengers like you.”

I suppose this all leads to a certain moment: sitting out in a field in Colorado Springs, perhaps that same evening of the day of our arrival and still feeling the effects of that drug, watching the Pleiades meteor showers with Butch's ex-paramour, Ellie, by my side. I am not sure if that wonderful evening really took place a few days after we arrived, but she, who, as it happens, had also been sick as a child (a very bad heart) warmed to me almost immediately. (I am not sure which Hijuelos showed up, or to which side of me she was attracted, but we spent our nights for the next few weeks together, much to Butch's exasperation—he and I were never the same sort of friends after that again.) What I do remember about her is this: She had long hair; wore wire-rim glasses; had a plain Danish milkmaid's face; had a thin, not full, body; had a father who ran Rocky Mountain Bell; had some poetic aspirations; and had a former boyfriend who had taken his own life after she had rejected him (think she cried in my arms after telling me that tale). Her favorite musical was
Camelot
, her favorite group (unfortunately) the Eagles, and whatever she once had with Butch had lasted only for a few days, if that (and even then I don't know if they ever “made” it—he had the kind of personality that was very hard to get next to). No startling beauty, she had a way of being that really touched me and left me aching over the notion of having to leave her. (I had after all, re-upped for school in the fall: Lehman College at night.)