Fake House (5 page)

But then I thought,
Hmm, maybe these strands will grow so thick they’ll hide my penis!
I waited a month for this to happen.

A big letdown: The hairs grew but were so sparse they hid nothing.

But then I had a brilliant idea.

I had had in my possession a Thomas Eakins black-and-white photograph of a female nude in which the crotch area was shadowy, almost black. Whenever I looked at this fudgy, smudgy area of the photograph, I would get an erection. On the other hand,
more explicit photographs, those in colors and featuring exposed genitals, had always repulsed me.

I stood naked ten feet away from a full-length mirror. The curtains were drawn and the lights had been turned off. I had rubbed black shoe polish on my penis and testicles and all around my pubic area. In the mirror there was nothing but shadow between my legs.

But then something unexpected happened. My rising black erection rose above this shadow area.

You may not believe this, but I NEVER masturbated as a teenager. I did not know what masturbation was. I did not know that you’re supposed to stroke up and down.

Game #1:
Retract both arms from armholes of T-shirt. Keep elbows close to sides. Place fists in front of chest.
Voilà!
Now you have a beautiful pair of breasts.

Game #2:
Imagine that many people are watching you as you are peeling T-shirt over head, and that,
voilà!
you have a beautiful pair of breasts.

Pull underwear down. Place hands on buttocks. Voilà! Now you have a beautiful pair of breasts.

I was recovering from a bad breakup when the letters arrived. (My live-in boyfriend of two years had suddenly decided, after coming back from a five-day vacation in London, which he took by himself, that he must move to England. “I can’t take this fascist country anymore,” he declared, and left.)

The letters were pathetic and earnest. I had no idea who was sending them. I was amused, disgusted, and flattered. They were sent to the Roxy movie theater, where I was working as a ticket girl. The first one:

Then:

Then:

Then:

I did lose two joints of my right ring finger in a minor car accident when I was eleven.

Then:

He gave me his name, in large block letters traced over several times:

There was also a pencil drawing enclosed. “Nude and Skyhook” was scrawled in an ornate, tilted script across the bottom. Tucked into the top right corner was a spiderweb-like basketball net, its rim pointed downward. Running from bottom right corner to top left corner was a long drainpipe arm holding a marble-size basketball between its middle finger and thumb. The basketball
had hair, eyelashes, growing on its circumference. The rest of the page was covered with a swirly pattern. There was no nude.

Because people tend to go to the movies in pairs, there are no more than ten loners at each showing. I assumed I was looking out for a single man, between twenty and forty. To make light of a bizarre situation, I kept saying, over and over,
Bulletproof glass, bulletproof glass
.

It was a Friday and I had a date with a girl I had just met. Her name was Patricia Potemkin. We were supposed to go the movies at eight o’clock. But I was sick that day and threw up several times during the afternoon. At five o’clock I took a nap and never woke up.

The Federal Water Conservation Act of 1978 mandated that newly installed toilets release no more than one and a half gallons per flush, 40 percent less than before. Many consumers complained that this only necessitated an additional flush.

Trish, however, applauded this new law. Why waste water? She was also keen on conserving electricity.

In 1979 a three-year-old Val ran into a darkened bathroom to pee, and saw, lying at the bottom of the toilet, a one-inch-long gold specimen, half broken up, diffused. “It’s a ring,” he thought. “What are you doing?” his mother said, startling him from behind. She was standing in the shower. Behind the translucent plastic curtain she looked like a pink octopus.

Trish was also keen on conserving gas. That’s why the house was always ten degrees too cold and meals were routinely under-cooked. Chewy spaghetti, bleeding chicken, and rice that tasted like pebbles. Once, after Trish had placed a plate of warm baked beans with cold hot dogs in front of a by-now five-year-old Valentino, he said, “This tastes like shit, Mom.”

“Just eat it.”

“I can’t, Mom.”

“Just eat it!”

All through puberty I was afraid I would eat shit. Any day now, I thought, I would bend down over the toilet, pick some shit up, and eat it. What would I be if I ate shit? I would be lower than the lowest animal, you might as well shoot me. My two fears growing up were (1) I was going to stab myself with the bread knife while washing dishes, and (2) I was going to eat shit.

There is a word for this:
coprophagous
, meaning “feeding on dung” (dung beetle, etc.), from the Greek
kopros
(“dung”), derived from the Sanskrit
sakrt
(“dung”).
Kopros
in Greek means “dung,” as in
acropolis:
“house of dung.”

The only thing clean about a human being is his skin. Inside, he’s filth. No, no, let’s start all over: The only thing clean about a human being is his clothing. No! No! No! No! No! No! No! Because his pants and shirt are not clean. The only thing clean about a human being is his hat. And that, only on the outside. Everyone walks around with a load of shit.

I dribble between my legs, behind my back, do a spin move, take off with da rock in one hand, pump twice in midair, and jam it down Michael Jordan’s throat. “Fuck you, Mike! Fuck you!” His tongue is hanging out.

Four single men came to the eight o’clock showing of
Sense and Sensibility
that Friday:

• A short, red-haired man, in his mid-forties, with an unkempt mustache, tobacco-stained teeth, wearing a jean jacket.

“One, please.”

“Uh, Val?”

“Just one, please.”

• A very large, at least 230 pounds, black man, in his late twenties, wearing a Temple sweatshirt and a Phillies cap.

“One ticket, please.”

“Valentino?”

“Huh?”

• A man in his sixties, in an old suit. Wisps of hair were sticking out of his ears.

• A dreadlocked, nose-ringed white man, in his early twenties, obviously drunk.

“One for
Sense and Sensibility.”

“Valentino?”

“Sense! Incense! Sissibilities!”

What I said about the movie date was a lie. I did not know this girl. I had seen her just three times. She was a ticket girl at the Roxy movie theater on Sansom Street. I had written her a series of letters. I was in love. On that Friday I was supposed to show up to introduce myself.

The first time I saw her, I noticed, as she gave me my ticket, that the ring finger on her right hand was missing two joints! Blood rushed to my face.
It’s providence
, I thought.

This fatal encounter triggered major chemical mayhem in me. I couldn’t concentrate throughout the movie. All I could think of was this forlorn, brazen stump between her middle finger and her pinkie.

At home I would replay this scene over and over and imagine that my hand had actually brushed against her little stump. My life mission, from that point on, I knew, was to possess that stump.

A week later I went back to the Roxy. Although it was not very cold, I wore a ski mask. I saw her stump—again it made me shudder—and her name tag: Patricia Potemkin.

The third time I saw her, I was about to introduce myself, but I could not, I could not do it. I was too frightened to be confronted with destiny.

That’s when I decided the best way to ingratiate myself into Patricia’s life was through a clean medium. Through letters: words without breath, clean, dry, firm, minus the intangibles of a live body, with its corporeal garbage of seduction and repulsion.

But why was I so afraid of Patricia Potemkin?

Faced with an inevitable choice, a command dictated by fate, a man reserves the right to waver, to reject, even, what could be his ultimate happiness. Choice is dearer to him than bliss.

You will concur with me that primitive people, people with low self-esteem, South Philly girls, for example, are the ones who pay the most attention to their hair. They like to braid, curl, conk, tease, weave, and dye their hair a hundred different colors. Those with a spiritual life, on the other hand, do not need to do this. They either pay no attention to their hair or go without hair altogether.

Starting from puberty, I had always been clean shaven: face, chest, armpits, crotch, everything. I even plucked my eyebrows and eyelashes. I would squat over a mirror and cut the hair sticking out of my ass.

It came as a complete surprise to me, then, that, during the weeks after my failure to appear at the Roxy for my so-called date, I had an irresistible urge to grow a beard.

A man wearing a ski mask approached the ticket window of the Roxy movie theater on Samson Street.

“Yes, can I help you?”

It took me forever to corner Val into bed. No hints were too obvious. I’d lean over to pick up something in front of him
wearing a loosefitting blouse with no bra underneath. I’d say, as we were sitting on his couch, “It’s a little bit late, Val, I think I’ve missed my last train.” Once I even gave him a tab of acid, his very first, but all he did was curled up in the fetal position in the bathtub and sob for three hours.

We did kiss, but his kisses were frantic, angry. He would pull my hair while he kissed me.

Finally I said, “Listen, Val, I’m not going home tonight. I’m not going home tonight.”

We slept together for a week, he fully clothed and I naked. But he would not look at my body in the morning. Then one night, before bed, I got him to agree to strip to his underwear. I mounted him that night. “It’s okay, it’s okay,” I hissed as I rode him up and down as he murmured.
From this point on
, I thought,
we will behave like a man and a woman
.

But why was I being so persistent?

It wasn’t because I loved this man. I simply wanted to solve him. I wanted to give our relationship a definite shape before I walked away.

But still he was useless. You see, he couldn’t maintain an erection inside my vagina. He could stay stiff for a long time as long as he didn’t have to enter me.

And as long as he wasn’t fellating my stump. Before, when we were just kissing, I noticed he had a habit of clutching my maimed hand, really squeezing it, and I had caught him staring at it few times, but now, now that he had lost his inhibition, it was all he wanted to do: give my stump a blow job. And after a couple minutes of that, nibble, nibble, nibble, he would pop and lose his erection.

I had had lovers who would make a point of acknowledging my stump during sex to show that they were not freaked out
by it—true, some did seem to like it a little bit too much—but I had never met one who was this fascinated by it.

I realized the rest of me didn’t exist as far as Val was concerned when I’d wake up, night after night, to find him fellating my stump.

Like I said, maybe I shouldn’t have named my son Valentino. But doesn’t Valentino come from the Latin
valentia
, meaning “strength and valor”? Valentino = Valor = Valiant = Voluptuous = Vatic = Vast = Varied. It’s strange how one word can determine the course of an entire life.

But it would be disingenuous of me if I didn’t tell you about my index finger. It may have some relevance. I’m no shrink, of course, I’ll just give you the facts:

I joined the National Guard in 1966. In 1968 I was called up to go to Vietnam. Now, the reason you joined the National Guard was to avoid going to Vietnam—so what was this bullshit? I was twenty-three, in love, and about to take over the family business—Buskin Hardware in Walla Walla. Why would I want to go to Vietnam?