Probation (7 page)

“Good thing you’re cute, baby,” the taller one giggles, blowing me a kiss.

This is
not
what I want.

They disgust me, these preening mannequins, mocking everything I believe in. I made a mistake. I should have left with Little Gloria. I should give my old life another chance, if not with Alice, then with someone different, a new start, a fresh beginning. I don’t belong here…

…but a parking spot miraculously clears and I’m standing at the door of the club, looking for a member to approach to sign me in as his guest.

There he is. The boy I’ve waited for my whole life. The boy I dreamed of being. Broad shoulders, open and friendly face, floppy hair, a wrestler, an Eagle Scout. He’s Clark Kent, Wally Cleaver, and David Nelson all rolled into one.

“Sure,” he says. “No problem. What’s your name, in case they ask at the door?”

“Andy.”

“Great. I’m Sam.”

Sam. It’s perfect. I’m gonna buy him a drink when we get inside. I’m gonna fight the urge to light up a smoke. I’ll ask him to dance. Better yet, he’ll ask me. We’ll dance until they turn up the lights, then we’ll end up in bed, fucking until the sun comes up, unable to get enough of each other. I’ll even bottom if he wants. And I’ll cancel my flight tomorrow so we can spend the entire day together, watching the game. Knoxville and Charlotte aren’t that far. We can see each other every weekend. I can move.

A young fellow, lanky and good-looking, jogs toward us.

“Shit, dude, I had to park almost a mile away.”

“Andy, this is Jason, my boyfriend.”

“Hi,” he says, shaking my hand.

“Jason, you sure you wanna do this?” my Sam asks. “It’s getting really late and my parents are expecting us to tailgate with them tomorrow. I should just sign Andy in and we ought to go home.”

But I’m already halfway to my car. I can’t get away from them fast enough. I hate them, everything about them, if only for one brief and fleeting moment. I don’t want to be a bitter old son of a bitch, steeped in envy. I’m glad they’re happy. I really am. It’s not their fault that I’ll never know how it feels to tell the boy I’ve been waiting for my entire life to step up, shake a leg, get a move on, because my old man is checking his watch as he flips the dogs and burgers, telling everyone the party can’t start until we arrive.

“D
idn’t you tell me once you were admitted to the University of Chicago?”

My counselor can be a bit unpredictable. I’ve thrown him a bone, sharing my little Tennessee adventure, expecting we’ll spend our mandatory hour chewing on my rather promising attempts at insight. But instead, the motherfucker tosses me a curveball, a complete non sequitur.

“Yeah, so what? Don’t you want to talk about my huge breakthrough on the night of the Volunteers pep rally?”

“I’m just curious. I mean, Davidson’s a good school, but what made you give up such an amazing opportunity?”

“You’re a real fucking snob, you know that?”

“I suppose it sounds like I am. But what I’m actually thinking is that it doesn’t seem likely you’d be sitting here today if you’d made different choices.”

“What makes you think I had a choice?”

“Everything’s a choice.”

“Yeah, well, it doesn’t always feel that way.”

The old man put me to work the summer before I was to leave for the University of Chicago. He’d done all right for himself, a big dago who came south with only his tool bag and the certification by Pennco Tech, courtesy of the G.I. Bill, of his proficiency in resolving the mysteries of the brave new world of HVAC. He took a chance on a hunch that the oh-so-genteel, seersucker-and-magnolia folk of Dixie would pay through the nose for the chance to sprawl spread-eagled in their underwear enjoying the frigid air blasting from their ceiling ducts. He was true pioneer stock, one of the trailblazers who conquered blistering sunlight and sweltering heat to make the Sun Belt safe for telecommunications empires and multinational insurance conglomerates in search of affordable real estate and cheap labor.

It made him a rich man. More importantly, it made him a shirt-and-tie man even if the tie was a clip-on and fastened to a short-sleeved dress shirt with a Knights of Columbus tie clasp. His kingdom was 4,500 square feet of partitioned office space and he commanded a fleet of twelve vans and an army of ten repair technicians, assorted clerks for payables and receivables, dispatchers, purchasing agents, and a timid young Catholic girl, handpicked by my mother to be his secretary.

And he had a son. To everyone within earshot, he bitched about my hair, my clothes, my eating habits, my new cigarette habit, my music, my this, my that. But after years of tension, after I’d won a state championship in the breaststroke, after I was named a National Merit Scholar Finalist, he needed to have me close, within earshot, within reach. He insisted I drive to work with him, long sweaty hauls to and from the dispatch office because Mr. HVAC refused to use the air-conditioning in his new Chrysler New Yorker because it was hard on the engine. I’d fidget while he fiddled with the dial of the radio, searching for the one low wattage station that played Sinatra, “King” Cole, and Sassy Vaughan instead of “that fucking shit-kicker shit.” He filled the space between us with AM band static and his revelations about the crucifixion of Nixon, whom he’d loved, and the Democratic Party, which he hated for selling its soul for the endorsement of the goons and extortionists that called themselves organized labor. His world had changed forever the night Ed Sullivan,
Ed Sullivan,
kissed that Supreme girl right on her big fat lips, defiling the sanctity of our living room. That’s what he got for voting for Johnson in ’64. Ronald Reagan would lead the nation out of the wilderness, you better believe it! Sometimes I’d respond with something vaguely “radical” to get a rise out of him. But it usually took every ounce of energy I could summon just to stay awake.

After two weeks of this torture, I accepted a job lifeguarding the rest of the summer. I told my father I was embarrassed, taking his money for doing nothing, that the guys drew lots every morning, loser gets the old man’s kid. I thought he’d have a stroke. He told me it was his fucking money and he’d spend it any fucking way he wanted and they were nothing but a bunch of fucking jealous bastards. And he was certain they were. But I knew they had never heard of the University of Chicago, couldn’t even consider the possibility such a place actually existed since it never had and never would appear in a bowl game or at the Final Four. And yet the old man bragged on, oblivious to the fact that they might have a hard time finding Chicago on a map if they were ever inclined to try, which they weren’t since they only feigned interest, and a mild one at that, when the boss backed them into a corner at the vending machines and lectured them about my future as a world-famous brain surgeon who would probably win the Nobel Prize. All they saw when they looked at me was a wiry kid with pimples on his chin.

Starting that day, he doubled my wages and told the dispatcher that, from here on in, I was assigned to Randy T. Olsson, no ifs, ands, or buts. The dispatcher called over to Randy T and, reaching out to shake his hand, I was conscious of every crack in my voice, aware of my gangly arms, absolutely certain I was going to humiliate myself before the Great One. Someone more clever with words than I might have called my reaction a swoon. And, just like when he was a senior and I was a lowly sophomore, Randy T’s eyes skimmed right over me, looking over the day’s orders, barely registering my existence.

Randy T was one of the old man’s trophies. Still famous throughout Gastonia, the Big Man on Campus, in fact, had never been that big. He was graceful and agile as they come, had an arm like a rocket, and was an inspiration for an avalanche of four-syllable adjectives and inspirational inanities from sentimental sportswriters as far away as Wilmington. His perfectly proportioned frame was a canvas of solid muscle. He had a face that, decades after graduation, would still bring a sigh when middle-aged women stumbled upon a high school yearbook packed in a box in the attic. He was a god descended from Olympus—all five feet seven inches of him.

Randy T had never made it beyond the first semester at the state teacher’s college in the northwest corner of the state, the only place that had recruited him. The old man plucked him up and dropped him into an apprenticeship. The fact Randy T had real aptitude for the work was a bonus. The other technicians had to wear navy cotton duck Nocera Heat and Air work uniforms. Randy T had the old man’s blessing to hit the trucks in a white wifebeater and jeans.

Randy T was into being mellow that summer. Maybe it was a reaction to the profound humiliation he’d suffered when he came home early one afternoon to find his bride of seven weeks buck naked in bed with his best man. More likely it was the prodigious amounts of marijuana he smoked. When the old man told Randy T to look after me, he shrugged his shoulders and said cool. He offered me one of his unfiltered Old Golds and said let’s hit the road, coffee and bear claws five miles ahead.

Much to my surprise, on our third day together, Randy T asked if I wanted to hang out after work. He wanted me to hear the killer new Cheap Trick album; we could order in a pizza or maybe Mexican. I thought Randy T must have the life. Buddies to laugh at his stories, to roll his joints, to toss him another beer, to worship him. But long after midnight, when we were ripped on his homegrown pot and staring at some stupid shit on the television, I realized his phone hadn’t rung all night. Randy T must have been lonely, nothing but his two toaster ovens, a coffee percolator, and a huge Mediterranean television/hi-fi console—his share of the wedding booty—to keep him company. Randy T was off chicks for the time being; he didn’t even want to talk about them. He still loved his wife and wouldn’t file for divorce. He was saving to buy a leather sofa to lure her back home.

Randy T and I stayed stoned the entire summer, watching television with the sound off and the stereo cranked, sharing his bong, falling asleep on his floor. I’d show up at home every few days to drop off my laundry and raid the kitchen for leftover lasagna and chocolate cake to take back to Randy T’s. My mother fretted a bit about my random comings and goings, but the old man was thrilled I’d been taken under the wing of his young protégé and encouraged my newfound independence. He didn’t care if I was out all night as long as Randy T delivered my sorry ass to work by eight o’clock every morning.

Randy T lived for rock and roll and hit the big arena shows when he could, but the closest big city was Charlotte and, back then, it was still just a puckered asshole on the South Carolina border. So every few months Randy T would head north to the university towns in the Triangle or to Richmond or, for the right band, all the way to D.C. itself. Which is where RFK Stadium was and where the Stones were playing the second week of August. But I was only eighteen, and as much as my father loved Randy T, hanging with him in Gastonia was one thing, the District of Columbia another. Randy T and I dug that the old man might not trust him to chaperon me in a city that was ninety percent colored to stand around with a bunch of drug addicts to watch a bunch of drug addicts. It’s cool, Randy T said, we would leave Friday night after work, crash in Silver Spring with his brother who did something with drinking water for the government, get fucked up, pass out, wake up, get fucked up, catch the band, drive straight home, stayed fucked up all day Sunday, and roll into work Monday morning as if we hadn’t done anything all weekend except take the truck out to fill the tank.

But on the big Friday afternoon, Randy T took sick. So sick that the lady at the last job of the day got worried and called the dispatcher. The old man drove out to the customer’s house, panicking when he arrived to find Randy T mumbling incoherently, his forehead scorched and his glazed eyes dead. We raced to the emergency room and the staff took custody of Randy T, throwing him on a gurney and whisking him behind the curtains. The old man was rattled. He wanted me home, safe, but I stood my ground and insisted he drop me off at Randy T’s apartment. I was stranded, no wheels of my own, completely baffled by the four-on-the-floor of Randy T’s pickup. A few hits on the bong gave me courage. It was Kerouac time. Time for my own Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test. I stuffed the tickets, a pair of clean BVDs, a toothbrush and toothpaste, and a bar of Palmolive into a backpack and slipped a few joints into my socks. I cadged a ride in the parking lot from a lady I knew from the pool who was heading to the Publix out near the interstate. By three in the morning, I was north of Raleigh, shivering and cotton-mouthed.

The yellow eyes of a northbound tractor trailer emerged from the thick summer mist. The driver downshifted and the air brakes brought the big cat to rest. The engine purred, idling as the door to the cab swung open, welcoming me. A voice told me to toss up the backpack; a hand reached down to steady me as I mounted the cab.

He looked like Jimmy Dean, the country singer, not the actor, with big friendly blue eyes and a long, clean-shaven jaw. Cold for August, huh? he said. Where you heading? D.C., I told him, and he laughed and asked if I had an appointment at the White House. He offered me a bag of trail mix and a warm can of Pepsi-Cola. Stones concert, I said, trying to sound worldly and jaded, as if it were something I did every week. Cool, he said, the Stones are cool enough, but he preferred the real thing. He flipped the top of a cassette case filled with white boy blues—Michael Bloomfield, the Paul Butterfield Blues Band, John Mayall and the Bluesbreakers.

By the Virginia border, I knew he was a native of St. Louis which, according to him, was where the blues were born. He’d done seven semesters at Washington University, but dropped out because it was all bullshit, not real, not like this, barreling through the guts of America saddled to forty tons of steel and rubbing shoulders with the “real people,” the tractor-trailer jockeys and mechanics and hash-house waitresses who held the answers to the mysteries of life. Once he had a little nest egg, he was going to Nashville to give Kristofferson and Waylon Jennings a run for their money.

I tried to embellish myself, trying on attitudes and experiences to make me seem worldly, experienced, someone who might interest him. I was surprised when he clucked with disapproval when I told him about Randy T and his stash of bongs and pipes. That shit will fry your brain, he said. Then he smiled and asked if it made me horny. Yeah, I said, sometimes it feels like I’m carrying a lead pipe down there. You oughta get Randy T to help you out, he laughed. Yeah, I said, distracted and exhausted by the chills riffing through my body.

He cranked up the heat to stop my teeth from chattering. He reached over and felt my shirt. You’re drenched, he said. Then he put the back of his hand to my forehead and pointed to the bunk behind us. You’re burning up. Hustle back there and get outta those wet clothes. Wrap yourself in the blanket and sweat it out before you get pneumonia.

I crawled into the bunk and peeled the clothes from my skin. He told me to retrieve the Band-Aid box tucked into one of his boots. I found a couple of joints and we passed one back and forth. He switched on the overhead light and asked what I thought of the artwork. He’d pinned a gallery of nudies to the walls of the bunk. Not airbrushed
Playboy
girls-next-door, but old, hard-looking babes with peroxided hair and black eyebrows. They had puffy tongues and long, dangling tits with tips like rotten pears. A girl in a double-page centerfold had dumped a can of beef stew between her spread legs. Stoned, I counted the little pieces of peas and corn in her pussy hairs. I was flat on my back and the Pepsi sloshed in my stomach. Go on, relax, do what you want, he said. Shoot anywhere, don’t worry about it. I turned my head to tell him I was just going to crash and saw him pumping his long red snake.

I came as soon as I touched myself. Yeah, yeah, he said. He stared at me wild-eyed in the rearview mirror. Come up here and suck me off, he begged. I want to feel my cock in your mouth. His voice was harsh, threatening. I wanted to be home, in my own bedroom, safe. My head started throbbing and, trapped, with nowhere to run, I rolled over and escaped into a dream. I was floating in the surf. My neck was stiff; I couldn’t turn my face away from the midday sun. I threw my arms across my eyes, trying to hide from the blinding white light. I heard a voice, then felt the heat of a body between my legs. He rubbed his cheek against mine, then licked my scorched face with his tongue, trying to cool me down. He found my mouth and tried to force it open and, when I resisted, he bit my neck, an affectionate little nip. I felt him lifting my legs and his cock searching for my ass.