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It
Feels Worse PAGE 2
Now to me the genius of the men who chased us across Colorado has always been the use of the narrative device of withholding the piece of information that the buddy was Daddy. Did they actually plan this plot twist, while they were chasing us, blinded by rage, or was it a purely intuitive, uniquely American storytelling style? Here's where I weigh in: I have to think it took a conscious effort, each time, to say "this buddy of mine" instead of "my father." That it was a plot point intentionally withheld for dramatic effect. Kind of like the fact that Edith had never had an orgasm, and I was going back East determined to give her one. Yes. Edith. The long-suffering, ever faithful, painfully shy girlfriend, wasting away awaiting my return. We'd come so close my senior year, that was part of the frustration, she always thought she was on the precipice. Like a lost child looking for her house. "That's my house! That's my house!" None of them are your house, Edith. And if my twenty-two year-old bucking and thrusting from a whole host of angles wasn't enough to get her there, well then it's hard to imagine what was. Here was the plan. Mike and I had secured a house in East Hampton for Thanksgiving that belonged to a friend of my family's. Our best friends from college, including all the roommates Mike had failed out, were going to congregate there and rage. Like the Big Chill, except no one died and very little time had passed. Edith was a bit disappointed at having to share me with so many people, but Mike's girlfriend Julie would only come if it sounded like a party. Julie had to be cajoled into being in a relationship with Mike, and he would happily oblige, feeding the deer as he called it, looking away so she would feel safe to approach and eat from his hand. Julie was wildly orgasmic. But the closer we got to the East Coast, the more people started to drop out. They all pretty much said the same thing: "It's Thanksgiving." Yes, it was Thanksgiving, it was always going to be Thanksgiving, but our college friends were somehow taken by surprise, blindsided by family obligations, leaving me, Mike, Edith, and Julie. Until Julie found out it wasn't a party. Maybe Mike looked her in the eye when he told her, or moved a little too suddenly, but she got skittish and bolted into the woods. Mike took it well. But then Mike takes everything well. I've never known him to admit he's going through a hard time until at least six months after the fact. "I had a rocky September," he'll say, come June. Or "Summer was a bitch," but never until winter. "Julie won't be making it," he said, stoically, and we proceeded to East Hampton, where Thanksgiving awaited, and, for Edith, the orgasm of a lifetime. Edith and I got to work. I gave her one of Mike's pot brownies--you use whatever tools are at your disposal-put on a tape (this sex was going to be loud!), and began to buck and thrust from a whole host of angles. She was getting close, or so she thought. "That's my house, that's my house." It's not your house. I went down on her, which I'd do from time to time, more as a sign of good faith than anything else, but this was going to be different. Edith was going to see God. I was an instrument of God. And then, suddenly, coming down, as if from the heavens, there it was: "It begins in the spring, every spring, for a hundred springs. Hey Ma, the kids are playing baseball." Shit. The tape. Edith, long suffering, ever faithful, painfully shy, was also, needless to say, very finely calibrated. The moment was lost. We spent the rest of the weekend walking along the deserted beach, running out of things to say. Edith started a small collection of smooth black stones. That's all she would pick up. Smooth black stones. What was wrong with this woman? I'd never had the experience before of growing disenchanted with a girlfriend who I'd once been so crazy about. I'd never fallen out of love. It would be another year before I'd identified it, named it, catalogued it, and was ready to get the hell out. In the meantime, we had a lot of conversations where we assured each other that everything was fine. We just kept saying the words. It's hard to exit gracefully. Mike and I had left college like Lou Gehrig, with a hint of nobility, at the top of our game, safely in control of our own myth. But we'd gone back to the well one too many times, like an old broken down Babe Ruth. "You know how my voice sounds, well it feels worrrssse." I should have known when my grandmother took the hat in the eye. But when life serves you up a big dumb metaphor, and you look the other way, sometimes it gives you an even bigger dumber one. Life plays to the cheap seats. Our return from New York was delayed a day by the unveiling of my grandfather's tomb. Mike and I tried to weasel out of it, but without us there was no minion, so we went to the cemetery, watched them dump some dirt on my grandfather's grave, as my grandmother looked on gamely out of her one good eye, then set out for Los Angeles, straight from the grave, never to look back. The car broke down in Pennsylvania on the first day of hunting season. We checked into a motel, I went into the bathroom and cried for everything I'd lost. Six months later Mike told me it was the worst week of his life.
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