Watch Your Mouth (21 page)

We settled down. I felt Archimedes hover over me again as the undressed dread (T.U.D) rolled over me like bathwater. With Archimedes it worked wonders: he watched the water dis- placed by his own nakedness and the way of the world hit him:
Eureka!
I waited for something like that to come to me, and it did:
Eureka
. Like a
noir
voiceover it came: “. . . and her father, who’s holed up in the Eureka woods somewhere . . .”

“Where’s Eureka?” I asked Lauren. “What?”

“Eureka. The town. I need to go there.”

“Way up north,” she said, and then, looking at me: “
Way, way
up north. Don’t bother.”

“I
have
to bother,” I said, trying to keep it light.

She tried, too. “Just because it’s the state motto doesn’t mean—”

“I’m not going,” I said, “for the state motto. I’m going for my own.”

She sighed, would have lit a cigarette if she smoked. “I guess

I can let you have a few days. Everybody’s already—forget about it. O.K., go. But let me help you plan what to pack.” She smiled. This was what she wanted: to be a professional organizer, some- one who comes in and makes lists for you. “How long do you want to go? The weekend? It’s
cold
up there, you know.”

“I’m leaving,” I said, “entirely.” She blinked. “What?”

“It’ll really be an organizing thing for you. A garage sale if you think anybody will buy anything. Otherwise I’ll drop it off at—”

“What?”

“I can’t stay here,” I said. “I have to go to Eureka, and find—” “Mr.
CRISIS,
” she said. “You can’t—don’t be—
please,
Joseph.

Don’t
do
this thing.”

“I can’t stay here,” I said.

“The police said you can’t
leave.
” “I—I
can’t stay here!”

“Because what?” “Because—because—”

“Because of a
monster
? Is that what?
Listen
to yourself, Jo-

seph.
Listen.
A
monster. Listen
to that.
Please, please
don’t go get lost in the woods with some crank. Some father who did who- knows-what. Stay
here,
Joseph. I’ll make sure you get help.”

“I can’t stay.”

“Running away won’t solve anything, Joseph. It never does.” “What if something’s chasing you?
Then
it solves something,

doesn’t it?”

“Listen to yourself.”

“I’m trying to, Lauren. I have to do this thing.”

“You don’t have to—you don’t
have
to do anything, Joseph. Say
no
to this. Haven’t you learned how to—don’t you know that? You have to say
no
to this. Can’t you say—”

“No,”
I said. I felt a smile marionette itself on me. She smiled, too, but it didn’t work; her face crumbled and cried. Her naked shoulders shook. I tried to hug her but she pulled away, cov- ering her face, her breasts.

“Don’t
do
this,” she said beneath her hands. “Don’t
do
this.” “Maybe if I do this—”

“Don’t.”

“—I can come back.” Even she knew this was a lie, even though, as she dressed and said she’d call me later, maybe she didn’t think so yet. Ben Glass says it best: “We think much less than what we know. We know much less than what we love. We love much less than what there is. And to this precise extent, we are much less than what we are.” Actually I have no idea what this means but I’m convinced he said it best, better than anything I said as Lauren picked up her purse from the table and opened the screen door. I saw her out, draped in a sheet from the unmade bed like a toga. Caesar thanking the Sooth- sayer for his time.

“I hope you
do
come back,” she said, “when you’ve—when

you’ve caught whatever you’re chasing, Joseph.” “It’s a golem,” I said, “and it’s chasing
me.
”

She blinked and the sunglasses went on. The car door slammed and I saw her pause before she started the engine. Was she going to come back and convince me? Outside the Morrison Lab caught the first few rays of the sunset in specific points Stephen probably could have mapped out on graph paper, three dots connected in some scientist way, like family secrets, or

bodies in a crime spree. Lauren’s hand was cupped to her mouth, crying maybe? Rehearsing one last word? But then she uncovered her face and I saw, even with the sun’s reflection in my eyes, what she was doing. Lighting a cigarette.

All night long I debated whether or not to go, and all night long I packed. The packing was easy—thanks to Lauren and Bindings, I knew how to make lists and check them. What To Bring: not much, clothes,
Breaking the SPELL,
paper and pens, a Jewish prayer book if I had one, which I didn’t. All my books were still in a box somewhere, being shipped, going off some- where where they probably weren’t wanted. What To Leave: my shabby furniture, the job, Santa and Lauren. The threats of stock-character policemen. These were easy inventories. But getting in the car and leaving was harder. In the morning the smog made everything look golemized, this perfect square uni- verse, and it seemed Hansel-and-Gretel foolhardy to leave for the forest.
Breaking the SPELL
says the two basic questions are “Who am I?” and “How do I do it?” but in the grime of depar- ture I had two other ones: “Would I be leading the monster?” and “Was I the monster?” Like everyone in recovery I didn’t know if I was the victor or the victim. Only when I threw away the last sack of trash did I know I was doing the right thing: amongst the condoms I wouldn’t need any more, the food I didn’t cook and couldn’t eat on the road, the J-O-S-E-P-space- H on the nametag, were my own lists, checked off each one: What To Leave, What To Bring. It was the fourth step, sneaking up on me like something in a dark alley:
I had made a searching and fearless inventory of myself.
I gassed up the car and headed north like it was just one more step away.

Step 5

Rather than following the highway through the sawdusty bulk of California’s desert I skipped over to Route 1, driving along the coast with pop songs fading in and out of radio range. The road was excrutiatingly Californian: homemade salsa at the diners, espresso machines even at the grungiest gas stations and a quarterly catalog of meditation workshops stacked in thought- ful piles near the recycling bins. Amethyst Therapy, How to Communicate with the Other Side, Self-Actualization, the Gos- pel of Relaxation, the Gospel of Fun, the Gospel of Power, of Enjoyment; Bi-Gospel, Tri-Gospel, Pan-Gospel, closer and closer to Eureka while the Pacific stayed to my immediate left, blue and wrinkled just beyond my side-view mirror. Sometimes I’d stop and stretch my legs, taking deep salty breaths and looking at the couples walking hand-in-hand on the shore like the figures on condom boxes. But all the wet sand made me nervous and I never stopped for long.
Breaking the SPELL
calls it “E-motion: energy in motion” and I kept the e-motor running with espresso and snacks, passing up on the salsa and throwing the catalogs in the back with the napkins, unused and unread until I pulled into town.

People call Eureka “good-sized,” but there’s so much defen- siveness in their voices you know before you take the exit that it’s not true. There’s nothing good about Eureka’s size: too small to hide in and too big to be found. At the motel, I asked the desk clerk how many woods there were around. He blinked, took out a small map and pointed to all the tiny green trees somebody had inked in all over the place. I blinked, took the key and went to throw my bag down on the bed where I knew I wouldn’t sleep a wink. I had dinner somewhere. I drove

around town looking at the limp glitter of Christmas decora- tions grapevined around traffic lights which just blinked after a certain hour, even on a Friday night. Back in the room the TV had the Static Network on every channel, the fault of some satellite up in the chilly, busy sky. I lay on the bed and dreamt about mud.

In the morning I took off my shoes and my clothes, showered and went back to bed, waking up when the housekeeper knocked. I showered again, rubbed myself dry and then to or- gasm with the skimpy towels. I sipped coffee and looked up “Glass, Ben” in a phone book caught in one of those beartraps, chained to a phone booth; there was one, but it was discon- nected. No other information was available. I drove down a random road and stopped when I saw trees by the side of the road, wandered in about ten feet and wondered,
What am I doing?

I pulled the car into a familiar-looking lot for a late lunch, realizing I’d left
SPELL
in the room so I’d have to read that catalog after all. I opened the menu and realized I was in the same place I’d been for dinner. I opened the catalog and saw that Ben Glass was leading a Creating a New Man Weekend Workshop at Campground 72, two exits up, take a left at the ramp, a right at the chain-link fence and look for the banner with the New Man logo, a fist rising out of starkly stencilled water, eighty dollars, space is limited.

I signalled for the check and then for the left-hand turn at the end of the ramp. The sunset was right in my eyes, making me miss the chain-link fence at first but even in the half-light there was no missing the banner: BEN GLASS: CREATING A NEW MAN WEEKEND WORKSHOP, strung up between two

trees like discarded clothing. I parked in a lot crammed with mid-life crisis cars, red and shiny and probably divorced. I’d thought I’d be nervous to walk underneath the banner but when I saw the enormous blue tent in the field, geometrically radiant and buzzing with loudspeaker talk, I strode between the trees like an admiral, like the battle was about to be wrapped up. I was energy in motion.

A flap opened like a fly and I walked into a tent which looked even bigger on the inside. A row of rented tables, stacked with paper plates and the tinny gurgle of brewing coffee, was along one of the walls, and inside everyone was dead: rows of bodies, bunched in twos and threes, covered the bulk of the floor. I made myself look again: they were sleeping bags, emptied of the participants who were gathered together at the far end, about thirty men sitting on the floor around a podium and a primitive sound system. The New Man was holding court.

“I’m talking,” he boomed, “about Man-Making.” As everyone nodded I tiptoed around the body bags. “Now, a lot of people say, ‘Man-Making? I thought men already
had
it made.’ ” Nods and murmurs. You could feel earnestness billowing the tent like a powerful gas. “Most people in the world think that men are always perpetrators and never victims. A lot of experts say this. But it’s my belief that
everyone’s
an expert, so let me ask you— are you all perpetrators, or are you all victims?”

“Victims!”
Some of them clapped.

“That’s right, my brothers. My brothers in suffering and cour- age, you are
right. Victims.
And why? I’ll tell you why. On the surface it might appear that we live in a system where men benefit and women are oppressed. But the reality is that nobody benefits from a sexist structure. When the world puts limits on

individual diversity, everyone loses. Setting arbitrary distinc- tions—whether it’s between the sexes, between the races, be- tween the professions—inhibits the development of expression of individual talents. Then everyone loses. It’s true for both sexes, men as well as women. Everyone falls victim to the ar- bitrary rigidities—could you sit down, please? Could everyone please remain in their seats? I need everybody sitting down, thank you.” I squatted between two beards. One glared at me; the other did a “thumbs-up” sign. “Everyone, to continue, falls victim to the arbitrary rigidities which we have set up. But did you hear what I said? Which
we
have set up.
We
set them up, and we can bring them back down. We can change the stereo- types of the tough guy and the wimp. We can create instead a new man. I think we’ve done some remarkable work towards that goal today, and we’ll continue to do that kind of work tomorrow. So let’s eat, and talk, and share and we’ll start up again in the morning.” Some scattered applause dribbled into chatting. Ben smiled, and then clapped his hands into the mi- crophone. It sounded like he was hitting somebody.

“Folks? Could we sit down again? There’s one more thing I wanted to say. I vowed that I’d close tonight’s lecture with this, and one of the traits of a New Man, I think, is that he should keep his word.” Some clapping again. “I vowed that this would be the last sentence in my speech tonight: ‘And this goes for all the women, too.’ ”

It was difficult to tell whether he got a standing ovation or if the men just stood up. Ben waved like it was an ovation anyway, and led the way out of the tent. He didn’t meet my eyes when he passed me. Outside some invisible staff people had set up large grills and were throwing on big slabs of salmon. Two

meek-looking men in glasses were removing plastic wrap from mixing bowls full of salad. The air filled with the sounds of crickets and pull-tabs. Ben graciously accepted the first salmon steak and sat down on a big log where a handful of the most beholden were waiting. I took a bottle of what I assumed was beer and turned out to be cider, and joined them.

“I don’t remember this,” a grey-haired man was saying as he tucked a napkin into his camouflage gear, “but I have been told that when I was four years old I drank detergent. Now I’m re- alizing that it was a suicide attempt.”

Ben nodded gravely. “From early on, men don’t get the care and the love they need. And what does that say about our world? From where I look, it’s all the same thing. Either we care about things or we don’t. This salmon is delicious, by the way. Who did the marinade?”

“I did,” said the detergent-drinker, blushing.

“Great job,” Ben said, clapping him on the shoulder and look- ing him in the eye. “You matter, Hal. You
matter.
”

“Al.”

“
Al. All. All
of you matter. You know, I’m glad we’re holding this workshop in a field, because we’re standing at the edge of a whole new field, understand? A whole new field. A whole new
horizon.
Perfect for creating a New Man.”