I did try. I tried to move my arms. No go.
"Can't do it, Laura."
"Oh, Christ! I'm going to get Carla."
"Why don't you do that," I said. "Get Carla."
She returned a few minutes later.
"Carla won't come," she said.
"That's funny," I said. "She usually does for me. Did you try tickling her clit awhile?"
"Stroup, this is embarrassing."
"Not to me, it isn't."
"Dammit, have some pride!"
"Pride's all gone. Jumped into the bottle, drowned. Died happy."
Somebody started pounding on the door. I couldn't have that. It would give me a headache.
"HEY!" I said. "Don't you publishing people have any DECENCY? You got no COMPASSION? You're just gonna have to wait an hour or so till I sober up some, all right? Jesus! Meantime, you go on and have yourselves a good time. Drinks are on me. Me and Laura. Who I don't mind saying is the greatest little butt-fuck in the industry!"
I must have been pretty loud because the party sounds all stopped for a moment. I heard whispering and then a male voice at the door.
"Have you been sick, buddy?" he said.
"Not that I know of. I'll check my shoes when I can see them. But thanks for asking."
After that they gave up on me. Every now and then Laura would come back to see if I was ready yet but I never was ready so pretty soon they just let me alone in there. Plenty of beer and no toilet. It was going to be a short party. I felt like a letter-bomb, completely anonymous and tricky and devastating.
An army travels on its plumbing.
Soon I was able to move but that wasn't much fun so I got the bottle off the floor and drank till I was immobile again. Then, nice and quiet as could be, I fell asleep.
When I awoke there were no voices outside, no music. The party was over. Through a thick half-drunken headache I wondered what time it was. I pulled on my pants and opened the door. There was Laura Sally passed out on the couch, with a nasty pasty look on her face as though she'd had a hard night. I bent over and gave her a kiss on the forehead. Sweet dreams, bitch. I went back to my apartment.
There was plenty of aspirin.
I woke up smiling.
Finally Stroup wins the day. But only, it should be noted, because the woman he's involved with here's an even bigger prick than he is.
Do I really feel that way about the publishing industry?
Who, me?
It should be noted that this was the first time I was ever censored—the title was censored no less—and that it was done by a stroke magazine. That's got to be some kind of distinction.
FISH
Stroup was sitting in a bar. He was half lit, morose, and faltering.
He was after a woman but there was nothing there. So he talked awhile with the bartender and ordered scotch-and-waters and waited for things to change. It was looking to be a long night. All the good ones came in pairs and went right to the tables in the back. Stroup was never much good at the tables. At the bar he was different. Relaxed, easy. He could talk and pitch all night at the bar. At the tables he was just another rumdumb hoping for a pickup. He looked awkward and superfluous.
Besides tonight he had no confidence. He felt big and fat and ugly. That was bullshit he knew. He had little extra weight on him but that was all. He was ugly but that was nothing new and it never stopped the women before. Maybe the scotch would give him confidence. Dutch courage. He drank.
The problem wasn't his. The one with the problem was Carla. This time she'd practically pushed him out the door. Gave him no choice. Wouldn't screw him, nothing doing, just wasn't up to it she said. He didn't know why. They'd fought and he'd left. So you had to get it somewhere, didn't you? It was a pain in the ass because what was a woman for, what was the point to living with a woman besides putting an end to the chase and here he was again cruising. Cruising and drinking too damn much for his own good.
So he'd hurt her a little last time. Got a little rough. He didn't mean it. You'd think he meant it, you'd think he was really fucked up or something. There were times you just got carried away was all. And sometimes she seemed to like the rough stuff.
He didn't know what the hell she wanted. Never had. It made him feel bad. He wondered why he took all this crap. He'd never understand her. You go through life looking for god knows what from a woman but at least you want somebody to make you content to stay home nights and then when there is someone and you think, at last, hallelujah she goes all deadass on you, she'd rather read the paper. What was a guy to think about himself? Life could drop you like a steer. It was a six-gun world, a swamp-bottom universe.
The guy next to him was drinking something pink and pretty, some awful shit. He wanted to talk.
"You ever read these men's magazines," he said.
"Never."
"I do. You know, once in awhile. Read this thing the other day. You wouldn't believe it."
"Probably not."
"You really wouldn't. About a guy gets turned on by fish. Fish! What do you think of that?"
"Fish, huh."
"That's right. Grew up in a fish store, his parents owned a fish store. Used to fantasize rubbing his mama's tits with filet of sole."
"That's disgusting."
"Lot of sick people out there, I tell you. Guy would take a mackerel into the bathroom with him and whack off over this dead fish, he'd tickle his ass with what do you call them? the dorsal fins. A painter this guy was. You know what he'd paint?
"What?"
"Naked broads and fish."
"Together?"
"That's right."
"Jesus Christ."
"What do you think of that?"
"I think it's nuts."
"Damned right it's nuts."
"Wonder what it would be like, though," Stroup said, "to smear a woman up with fish."
"Disgusting. That's what."
"Yeah. Stink like hell, wouldn't you."
"Like death itself."
"Yeah. What about lobster?"
Fucking people, thought Stroup, they're a bunch of lunatics. Here's this guy all dreamy-eyed over half a pound of flounder. He scowled. Nip that conversation in the bud, jesus! He didn't need it. He wished there were a way to go home and still save face. He wished Carla didn't make him feel so damn mad, so lousy all the time. Bars were places you went to looking for what you knew could not possibly be there. He knew about bars. You went to a bar hoping somebody would come along and rescue you. But nobody would show. Hell, they were all the same as you, losers losing and hardly worth a damn.
A woman sat down beside him. Stroup had a look at her. She was drunk, leaning low over the bar. Not much to look at but not so very bad either. A shame to see them down like that, he thought. It was always worse seeing the women.
This one wanted to talk too.
"I swear," she said, "that if I don't find a job within one week, as a waitress or something, I'm gonna kill myself."
"Huh?"
"If I'm not working as a waitress within one week then fuck it, I'm checking out."
"You must want to sling chili pretty bad."
"Something," she said. "Anything. Is that asking too much? Job as a waitress in some lousy place like this?"
"That's nothing."
"Damn right. But it's something to me. Hey, I'm not stupid you know. I just finished my dissertation as a matter of fact. I've been locked up in my apartment with a dissertation for three and a half weeks. This is my first night out. It's finished now and what do I do? First night out in over three weeks? I go out and get shitfaced. Yeah, I know. I know I'm shitfaced. Don't give me that goddamn look. But see, something's gotta happen for me now. I'm broke.
Tuition, books, all of it. I'm flat fucking broke. I give myself one week to get a job or I'm dead meat."
"What was the dissertation?"
"Melancholia."
Stroup ordered drinks. She said she was broke so he paid. What a mess she was. Hair all lon
g and tangled, skin the color of mushrooms, grey as death. It was too bad. She could be okay if she fixed herself up a little. She got up to take a piss. She walked with a drunken stoop. Waddled, bobbing her head like a chicken. She shuffled to the back of the room and Stroup drank a little and then she was back sitting heavily on the bar stool beside him. There was no light to speak of in the place but she squinted at him anyhow.
"What do you do?" she said.
"I'm a writer."
"And you got a girlfriend, don't you."
"Yes."
"Well I write myself. Here, look."
She pulled a pen and notepad out of her purse. Sat there composing a poem on the bar. She finished and showed it to him. It was the worst piece of shit he'd ever read. There was only one halfway decent line. Eros to me is the longing to remember I am lovable. That was almost okay. Almost.
"What do you think?"
"That's the worst piece of shit I've ever read."
"You should see my dissertation."
They laughed. Cheers she said and they both downed their drinks. Stroup ordered two more.
Then in walks this fine piece of ass and Stroup forgot all about her.
He was lucky. The guy to the other side of him had just got up and headed for the door and that left Stroup sitting beside the only empty stool at the bar. The girl sat down. She smelled fine and Stroup could glance out of the corner of his eye down the loose blouse cut low over her breasts. He did that a number of times.
He started talking to her and they hit it off. Well well.
Stroup was rolling strong when somebody took his arm and leaned in close so he could smell too many cigarettes and bourbon instead of the high musky perfume. It was the drunk, the poetess.
"Will you take care of me tonight?" she said.
"Will I what?"
"I'm drunk, much too fucking drunk. I'm sorry to interrupt your conversation. But would you take care of me?"
The other girl had turned away and he got the feeling she didn't like hearing this.
"Hey listen," said Stroup, "You seem like a nice enough lady and all but..."
"I just don't want to be alone right now. Ever get that way? So that it's important?"
"Sure, I guess so, but..."
"Can we get out of here? Will you take me somewhere?"
"Where you want to go?"
"Take me home."
"Aw, jesus."
She just looked at him.
"Lemme think about it, okay?"
It's crazy. You do some things and there's no reason why. At least Stroup couldn't figure it. Maybe he'd lost the will to hustle for a while. He didn't know. Whatever. But he waited for the girl beside him, the new girl, the beauty with the low-cut blouse, to get up and take her piss and then he took the drunken poetess out of there. Figured why not walk her home. Tell the other girl when he got back this that one was his cousin, had to get her on a train or some damn thing, she was too drunk to get there herself. No big deal. Make sure she didn't get her ass mugged along the way. Do something nice for a change. Why the hell not.
"It's a damn shame," she was saying, "I can't seem to connect with anybody. You're the first one. You seem like a nice guy."
"Yeah. Well sometimes. Maybe."
Nice guy was not a phrase Stroup was generally speaking comfortable with. He wasn't now. He basically equated it with sucker.
"I think it's the dissertation's made me crazy. What a subject to lock up with for two and a half months, huh? Melancholia."
"I guess somebody has to."
"Do you know that dissertations break up a lot of marriages? They do. It's very common. A lot of marriages. You'd be surprised."
"You'll be okay."
"I will. You're right. Anyhow, I see my psychologist tomorrow night. Seven o'clock. All I gotta do is hold out till then, that's all."
"It's that bad?"
"This is it," she said.
It was a basement apartment. She had some trouble with the doors. Stroup stood on the top step watching her. Finally she was inside and both doors were open and she turned to him. She seemed almost sober for a moment.
"Of course it's that bad for chrissake. You think I like begging you to leave when there's another woman on your arm? And another woman you probably live with? When I'm all fucked up and you're doing this just to humor me? Nobody likes to beg. Asshole!"
Stroup just stood there. Finally she shook her head.
"I'm sorry. Jesus. Can't you just come in and sit with me awhile?"
She looked at him but he said nothing and then she shrugged. "I'm loaded and probably disgusting. Do what you want. You coming in or not?"
"I'm coming in," he said.
The apartment was clean but small and stale with the odor of cat piss. She had a cat and a mongrel dog. They each made their overtures. There were photos of animals, posters, on all the walls. No people. It was a lonely room. In the middle of the room there was a desk with a typewriter and a cigarette tray filled with butts. Beside the desk a big pile of books. No television, no stereo, no radio. Just animals and a place to work.
She made instant coffee. Stroup sat down beneath a portrait of a Pomeranian. She told him her name was Dee Dee and he asked what name she was born with and she said Diana. He said he was calling her Diana then. Dee Dee was one of those bullshit names some asshole gives you when you're a kid and it was ridiculous, her weaving around stone drunk looking like a beat chicken and wearing a name like Dee Dee. He asked if she'd meant it saying she'd kill herself if she didn't get a job. She said she did at the time. She needed the money and she'd done all this work, this dissertation, without getting paid a cent for it. Hell she'd had to pay them for the privilege of working herself half to death. It was unfair, she said. Now all she was after was a decent day's pay for a decent day's work.
Stroup told her lots of luck with that.
He drank his coffee and thought how strange it was that he was sitting there. Drunk the way she was she was unattractive to him yet he was listening to her. He liked listening, he was interested.
And maybe in a way she wasn't so unattractive. It was never much fun making it with a drunk, he didn't think he'd want to make it with her. But he wasn't exactly thinking of her as just a drunk. Maybe it was because she'd asked him for something that was simple and easy for him to hand to her. A walk home, a little company. Things weren't that way with Carla. They were never that easy and straightforward. Stroup never knew what the hell to give Carla, never knew what the hell she wanted. And she pretty much never said. Not outright anyway. He had to intuit everything. As far as intuition went he had shit for brains.
It had been awhile since he'd felt this...useful. He could hang around until she fell asleep, couldn't he? Sure he could. In her condition she couldn't hold out long anyway and there was nothing so damned important waiting for him out there. A girl in a low-neck blouse, maybe. And maybe he'd get real lucky and she'd still be there when he returned.
"You go on and get some sleep," he said. "I'll just sit awhile and read a magazine till I know you're off. No problem."
He looked around for a magazine. Cat Fancier. Dog's Life. Cat and Caboodle. Ah, here we go. Natural History.
"You really are nice, Stroup."
"Yeah. I'm nice. Tell it to my old lady."
She got out of her clothes. He flipped the pages.
"Don't you want me?" she said. She stood there naked. Swaying.
He looked at her. Her body was surprisingly good. It was tempting.
"Nothing personal. But no, not really. I don't think so."
"What if I want you?"
He had to think about it. Did that change things any or didn't it? He was being asked to perform for her, right? Or was he?
Perform. Wasn't that the kind of thinking Carla would come up with? Something out of Ms. or Cosmo? He played with the word. Something felt wrong about it. Perform just didn't sound right in this instance. Maybe he was being asked something else, then. It was just as easy
to lie with a woman as to sit up with her all night long. And maybe now he had a handle on something.
Nobody likes to beg, she'd said.
"Whatever you want, Diana."
He climbed into bed with her and drunk or not she was good. Really very good in fact, her body yielding and gripping, slowly somehow gaining purchase of the night, he thought. So that perhaps it would gain purchase of the following night as well. Stroup could hope so. And asking him to sit there with her had been just a fraud, a hoax, a way of wooing him. Fine. Afterwards they wisecracked about her tactics and found them agreeable. Then they fell asleep.
In the morning Stroup was first awake and sat over instant coffee watching her. She was still not lovely and the place smelled of sour booze and cigarettes and cat piss but it pleased him to sit and watch. She woke up and they talked awhile while she fed the cat and dog and poured herself some coffee. She was going to shower and get ready and go out and hunt for a job and then in the evening there was her shrink. When she opened the door for him they saw it was raining so she gave him a newspaper to hold over his head and gave him a peck on the cheek goodbye. Two friends who would probably not see one another ever again.
He walked home in the rain. He had money for a cab but it was a warm morning so there wasn't much point and besides he wanted to walk. Gave him time to think. Carla'd be at work by now. He'd write awhile and then call her later, say something nice to her. They'd make it up and when she came home they'd fuck like wildcats. That was how it was with them. Maybe it would change one day and maybe not.
Soon the newspaper was soaked through limp over his head and no use to him at all. He held onto it anyway and let the rain pelt him all the way back to his apartment.
Hard to take, isn't it? Almost unbelievable. Stroup finally does something nice for somebody. A woman, no less. Evidently the editors I sent the story to, most of whom knew Stroup well by then, thought it was hard to take too, because though most of them seemed to like it I kept getting the same responses. It's too sad, "too much of a downer."
I guess getting pissed on while you're screwing struck them as a whole lot merrier.