Naked (3 page)

“Hey, sport,” my father said, “if you’re trying to get a good look at the contents of your skull, I can tell you right now
that you’re wasting your time. There’s nothing there to look at, and these report cards prove it.”

He was right. I had my nose pressed to the door, the carpet, and the windshield but not, apparently, to the grindstone.

School held no interest whatsoever. I spent my days waiting to return to the dark bedroom of our new house, where I could
roll my eyes, listen to the radio, and rock in peace.

I took to violently shaking my head, startled by the feel of my brain slamming against the confines of my skull. It felt so
good and took so little time; just a few quick jerks and I was satisfied for up to forty-five seconds at a time.

“Have a seat and let me get you something cool to drink.” My mother would leave my fifth- and then my sixth-grade teachers
standing in the breakfast nook while she stepped into the kitchen to crack open a tray of ice. “I’m guessing you’re here about
the head-shaking, am I right?” she’d shout. “That’s my boy, all right, no flies on him.” She suggested my teachers interpret
my jerking head as a nod of agreement. “That’s what I do, and now I’ve got him washing the dishes for the next five years.
I ask, he yanks his head, and it’s settled. Do me a favor, though, and just don’t hold him after five o’clock. I need him
at home to straighten up and make the beds before his father gets home.”

This was part of my mother’s act. She played the ring-leader, blowing the whistle and charming the crowd with her jokes and
exaggerated stories. When company came, she often pretended to forget the names of her six children. “Hey, George, or Agnes,
whatever your name is, how about running into the bedroom and finding my cigarette lighter.” She noticed my tics and habits
but was never shamed or seriously bothered by any of them. Her observations would be collected and delivered as part of a
routine that bore little resemblance to our lives.

“It’s a real stretch, but I’m betting you’re here about the tiny voices,” she said, offering a glass of sherry to my visiting
seventh-grade teacher. “I’m thinking of either taking him to an exorcist or buying him a doll so he can bring home some money
as a ventriloquist.”

It had come out of nowhere, my desperate urge to summon high-pitched noises from the back of my throat. These were not words,
but sounds that satisfied an urge I’d never before realized. The sounds were delivered not in my voice but in that of a thimble-sized,
temperamental diva clinging to the base of my uvula. “Eeeeeeee — ummmmmmmmmm — ahhhh — ahhh — meeeeeeee.” I was a host to
these wailings but lacked the ability to control them. When I cried out in class, the teachers would turn from their black-boards
with increasingly troubled expressions. “Is someone rubbing a balloon? Who’s making that noise?”

I tried making up excuses, but everything sounded implausible. “There’s a bee living in my throat.” Or “If I don’t exercise
my vocal cords every three minutes, there’s a good chance I’ll never swallow again.” The noise-making didn’t replace any of
my earlier habits, it was just another addition to what had become a freakish collection of tics. Worse than the constant
yelps and twitchings was the fear that tomorrow might bring something even worse, that I would wake up with the urge to jerk
other people’s heads. I might go for days without rolling my eyes, but it would all come back the moment my father said, “See,
I knew you could quit if you just put your mind to it. Now, if you can just keep your head still and stop making those noises,
you’ll be set.”

Set for what?
I wondered. Often while rocking, I would imagine my career as a movie star. There I was attending the premiere beneath a floodlit
sky, a satin scarf tied just so around my throat. I understood that most actors probably didn’t interrupt a love scene to
press their noses against the camera or wail a quick “Eeeeeee — ahhhhhhh” during a dramatic monologue, but in my case the
world would be willing to make an exception. “This is a moving and touching film,” the papers would report. “An electrifying,
eye-popping performance that has audiences squealing and the critics nodding, ‘Oscar, Oscar, Oscar.’”

I’d like to think that some of my nervous habits faded during high school, but my class pictures tell a different story. “Draw
in the missing eyeballs and this one might not be so bad,” my mother would say. In group shots I was easily identified as
the blur in the back row. For a time I thought that if I accompanied my habits with an outlandish wardrobe, I might be viewed
as eccentric rather than just plain retarded. I was wrong. Only a confirmed idiot would wander the halls of my high school
dressed in a floor-length caftan; as for the countless medallions that hung from around my neck, I might as well have worn
a cowbell. They clanged and jangled with every jerk of my head, calling attention when without them I might have passed unnoticed.
My oversized glasses did nothing but provide a clearer view of my rolling, twitching eyes, and the clunky platform shoes left
lumps when used to discreetly tap my forehead. I was a mess.

I could be wrong, but according to my calculations, I got exactly fourteen minutes of sleep during my entire first year of
college. I’d always had my own bedroom, a meticulously clean and well-ordered place where I could practice my habits in private.
Now I would have a roommate, some complete stranger spoiling my routine with his God-given right to exist. The idea was mortifying,
and I arrived at the university in full tilt.

“The doctors tell me that if I knock it around hard enough, there’s a good chance the brain tumor will shrink to the point
where they won’t have to operate,” I said the first time my roommate caught me jerking my head. “Mean-while, these other specialists
have me doing these eye exercises to strengthen what they call the ‘corneal fibers,’ whatever that means. They’ve got me coming
and going, but what can you do, right? Anyway, you go ahead and settle in. I think I’ll just test this electrical socket with
a butter knife and re-arrange a few of the items on my dresser. Eeeee-sy does it. That’s what I always s-ahhhhhhh.”

It was hard enough coming up with excuses, but the real agony came when I was forced to give up rocking.

“Gift it a rest, Romeo,” my roommate moaned the first night he heard my bedsprings creak. He thought I was masturbating, and
while I wanted to set the record straight, something told me I wouldn’t score any points by telling him that I was simply
rocking in bed, just like any other eighteen-year-old college student. It was torture to lie there doing nothing. Even with
a portable radio and earphones, there was no point listening to music unless I could sway back and forth with my head on a
pillow. Rocking is basically dancing in a horizontal position, and it allowed me to practice in private what I detested in
public. With my jerking head, rolling eyes, and rapid stabbing gestures, I might have been a sensation if I’d left my bed
and put my tics to work on the dance floor. I should have told my roommate that I was an epileptic and left it at that. He
might have charged across the room every so often to ram a Popsicle stick down my throat, but so what? I was used to picking
splinters out of my tongue.
What,
I wondered,
was an average person expected to do while stretched out in a darkened room?
It felt pointless to lie there motionless and imagine a brighter life. Squinting across the cramped, cinder-block cell, I
realized that an entire lifetime of wishful thinking had gotten me no further than this. There would be no cheering crowds
or esteemed movie directors shouting into their bullhorns. I might have to take this harsh reality lying down, but while attempting
to do so, couldn’t I rock back and forth just a little bit?

Having memorized my roommate’s course schedule, I took to rushing back to the room between classes, rocking in fitful spurts
but never really enjoying it for fear he might return at any moment. Perhaps he might feel ill or decide to cut class at the
last minute. I’d hear his key in the door and jump up from my bed, mashing down my wadded hair and grabbing one of the textbooks
I kept on my prop table. “I’m just studying for that pottery test,” I’d say. “That’s all I’ve been up to, just sitting in
this chair reading about the history of jugs.” Hard as I tried, it always wound up sounding as if I were guilty of something
secretive or perverse.
He
never acted in the least bit embarrassed when caught listening to one of his many heavy-metal albums, a practice far more
shameful than anything I have yet to imagine. There was no other solution: I had to think of a way to get rid of this guy.

His biggest weakness appeared to be his girlfriend, whose photograph he had tacked in a place of honor above the stereo. They’d
been dating since tenth grade, and while he had gone off to college, she’d stayed behind to attend a two-year nursing school
in their hometown. A history of listening to Top 40 radio had left me with a ridiculous and clichéd notion of love. I had
never entertained the feeling myself but knew that it meant never having to say you’re sorry. It was a many-splendored thing.
Love was a rose
and
a hammer. Both blind and all-seeing, it made the world go round.

My roommate thought that he and his girlfriend were strong enough to make it through the month without seeing each other,
but I wasn’t so sure. “I don’t know that I’d trust her around all those doctors,” I said. “Love fades when left untended,
especially in a hospital environment. Absence might make the heart grow fonder, but love is a two-way street. Think about
it.”

When my roommate went out of town, I would spend the entire weekend rocking in bed and fantasizing about his tragic car accident.
I envisioned him wrapped tight as a mummy, his arms and legs suspended by pulleys. “Time is a great healer,” his mother would
say, packing the last of his albums into a milk crate. “Two years of bed rest and he’ll be as good as new. Once he gets out
of the hospital, I figure I’ll set him up in the living room. He likes it there.”

Sometimes I would allow him to leave in one piece, imagining his joining the army or marrying his girlfriend and moving someplace
warm and sunny, like Peru or Ethiopia. The important thing was that he leave this room and never come back. I’d get rid of
him and then move on to the next person, and the one after that, until it was just me, rocking and jerking in private.

Two months into the semester, my roommate broke up with his girlfriend. “And I’m going to spend every day and night sitting
right here in this room until I figure out where I went wrong.” He dabbed his moist eyes with the sleeve of his flannel shirt.
“You and me, little buddy. It’s just you and me and Jethro Tull from here on out. Say, what’s with your head? The old tumor
acting up again?”

“College is the best thing that can ever happen to you,” my father used to say, and he was right, for it was there that I
discovered drugs, drinking, and smoking. I’m unsure of the scientific aspects, but for some reason, my nervous habits faded
about the same time I took up with cigarettes. Maybe it was coincidental or perhaps the tics retreated in the face of an adversary
that, despite its health risks, is much more socially acceptable than crying out in tiny voices. Were I not smoking, I’d probably
be on some sort of medication that would cost the same amount of money but deny me the accoutrements: the lighters I can thoughtlessly
open and close, the ashtrays that provide me with a legitimate reason to leave my chair, and the cigarettes that calm me down
while giving me something to do with my hands and mouth. It’s as if I had been born to smoke, and until I realized it, my
limbs were left to search for some alternative. Everything’s fine as long as I know there’s a cigarette in my immediate future.
The people who ask me not to smoke in their cars have no idea what they’re in for.

“Remember when you used to roll your eyes?” my sisters ask. “Remember the time you shook your head so hard, your glasses fell
into the barbeque pit?”

At their mention I sometimes attempt to revisit my former tics and habits. Returning to my apartment late at night, I’ll dare
myself to press my nose against the doorknob or roll my eyes to achieve that once-satisfying ache. Maybe I’ll start counting
the napkins sandwiched in their plastic holder, but the exercise lacks its old urgency and I soon lose interest. I would no
sooner rock in bed than play “Up, Up, and Away” sixty times straight on my record player. I could easily listen to something
else an equal number of times while seated in a rocking chair, but the earlier, bedridden method fails to comfort me, as I’ve
forgotten the code, the twitching trick needed to decipher the lyrics to that particular song. I remember only that at one
time the story involved the citizens of Raleigh, North Carolina, being herded into a test balloon of my own design and making.
It was rigged to explode once it reached the city limits, but the passengers were unaware of that fact. The sun shone on their
faces as they lifted their heads toward the bright blue sky, giddy with excitement.

“Beautiful balloon!” they all said, gripping the handrails and climbing the staircase to their fiery destiny. “Wouldn’t you
like to ride?”

“Sorry, folks,” I’d say, pressing my nose against the surface of my ticket booth. “But I’ve got other duties.”

It was for many years my family’s habit to drive from North Carolina to western New York State to visit the relatives we had
left behind. After spending ten days with my mother’s family in Binghamton, we would drive the half hour to Cortland and spend
an afternoon with my father’s mother, the woman we adressed as Ya Ya.

Ya Ya owned a newsstand/candy store, a long narrow room fitted with magazine racks and the high, wall-mounted chairs the townspeople
occupied while receiving their shoe-shines. She lived above the store in the apartment my father had grown up in.

“A shithole,” my mother said, and even at the age of seven, I thought,
Yes, she’s right. This is a shithole.