All My Friends Are Going to Be Strangers

  I wrote a page or two, but I didn’t really make much progress. In my mind I wasn’t writing at all—I was trying to think of a way to get Sally to tell me where she’d been without sounding paranoid about it. The two pages I wrote had no clarity and I knew even as I wrote them that I would write them over the next day. Sally kept tying knots.

  “I think you’re a frustrated boy scout,” I said. “Want a bacon sandwich?”

  She didn’t, so I made one for myself and came back and sat on the bed to eat it. “I came by early to apologize,” I said. “Where’d you go?”

  “I had a visitor,” she said. “Godwin’s in town. He took me to breakfast.”

  “What’d he want?”

  “Geoffrey’s left Austin,” she said. “Godwin’s got nobody to live with him. He looks like he’s going crazy. He said he’d buy me a motorcycle if I’d come back.”

  “I didn’t know owning a motorcycle was one of your ambitions,” I said.

  “I’ve wanted one for years,” she said, yawning. “He asked us to a party tonight, too. He knows a professor here who has a pool.”

  She turned on her side and went to sleep and I sat beside her for an hour and a half, rereading Great River and brooding about Godwin, Sally, babies, novels and other problems. I read and brooded until I slid into a stupor and fell asleep. After a while it got too hot to sleep and we both woke up and took off our sweaty clothes. We went to the kitchen and drank several glasses of ice water apiece. Both of us felt sort of sluggishly sexy—we fiddled around a little, standing by the icebox. The heat gave a kind of vegetable quality to everything. Sally and I leaned together like too heavy, slightly damp plants. I was sensate but torpid. When we grew tired of standing we sprinkled water on the hot sheets and spread out on the bed. We had a sense of sex but no great urge for movement. The damp, sexy torpor was pleasant in itself. I felt like I had suddenly been switched into slow motion. I kept feeling her and she kept feeling me and finally, after about half an hour, we evolved from our plantlike state back into agile animals. We fucked awhile, as Godwin would say. Or as Sally might say. Or Jenny. I don’t know what I would have said—I have some oddly decorous habits of speech.

  I had poured down too much ice water just before becoming an animal and it joggled in my stomach and slowed me down a little. Still, there’s nothing that can be done in the middle of the afternoon that quite competes with sex, ice water or no ice water, and whatever the nomenclature you adopt. As we were resting, all soaked and slushy, I had a fantasy of us doing it in an icebox—not ours but a great big icebox with no shelves in it, very white and cold. We could leave the door open. I thought about it awhile and decided I hadn’t had enough, even though we were on a sweat-soaked bed instead of in an icebox. Sally was just as happy to continue—she was really sort of unfinishable. We kept on screwing until I got sore, but somehow it didn’t get us to where I wanted us to be. I just wanted us to be finished so that we were close to each other and not excited, and I couldn’t make it happen. Sally could have six orgasms and still keep herself, somehow, whereas I couldn’t even kiss her and keep myself. She thought it was nice of me to make it possible for her to come a lot, but that was about all she felt. When I finally quit she got up and took a shower. I grew unhappy, lying in the messy bed. I felt as though nothing in my life would ever be complete, not even for five minutes. Sally came out of the shower with a towel in one hand, a beautiful five-foot-ten-and-a-half inches of girl. Water dripped down her long legs and onto the floor mats and she was as far away and as much on my mind as if I hadn’t just been screwing her off and on for an hour. All the screwing should have changed something, or made some fundamental difference. It shouldn’t have left things just the same.

  “Let’s go to the party,” Sally said. “I want to swim.”

  I wasn’t crazy about going someplace Godwin was going to be, but it was the only invitation on our calendar and if we didn’t go we’d just sit around the hot apartment all evening, not knowing what to do with each other. I would brood about one novel or the other, and Sally would tie a thousand knots in the venetian-blind cord.

  “Okay,” I said.

  “I can wear my red bikini,” she said. It was the only garment she owned that she really seemed to like.

  “It’ll drive Godwin wild with passion,” I said.

  Sally was drying her legs—she looked up for a moment and made an amused face. “He’s already wild,” she said.

  5

  THE ABRUPTNESS with which major changes can occur in life was something I had never really experienced until I met Sally. I went through three years of college and no changes of significance occurred at all. I read books and wrote my novel and got drunk frequently. That was about all that happened. Existence really held no wild surprises—or wild surmises, either. Sally was my first wild surmise. I woke up on Godwin’s floor and looked at her and almost immediately my life began to veer crazily one way and then another, like a car being driven by W. C. Fields. Around any corner might be a drawbridge, a vegetable cart, or a brick wall—and I wasn’t driving. I was being zoomed. If I had been alert I wouldn’t have gotten in the car in the first place, but I hadn’t been alert and it was too late to jump out.

  Not asking where the party was before I agreed to go is a perfect example of my general lack of alertness. Once I had agreed to go there was no way I could back out. Sally was looking forward to wearing her red bikini. The professor who was giving the party was named Razzy Hutton—Razzy was short for Erasmus. He was English, like Godwin, and was what he called a lineal descendant of Erasmus Darwin. His specialty was protozoa and he wore white trousers the year round. Of course in Houston it’s summer most of the year round, so the wearing of white trousers didn’t really class him as a great eccentric. It was just one of the many little things I held against him.

  All he had to hold against me was the suspected theft of an octopus. One had disappeared from the zoology lab while I was taking Razzy’s course in protozoa. I did steal the octopus, actually, but Razzy had no way of knowing that. His case against me was built entirely on prejudice, just like my case against him. We brought out all each other’s instinctive prejudices. He was tall, thin, and blond and should have worn a monocle. If he had worn a monocle I would have hated him even more.

  Razzy was quite social, and a darling of the Houston rich. Three of Houston’s more prominent Lesbians were sitting by his pool when we walked in. They were drinking vodka and orange juice and baiting Godwin, who looked pale and slightly crazed. I guess the Lesbians were scaring him. The three of them glanced at me as if I were some kind of unattractive dog, but when Sally came out in her red bikini they all but slavered. I expected steam to come out from under their skirts. None of them was attractive enough to show herself in a bathing suit.

  “She’s precious,” the fattest one said hungrily. Her girl friend took offense at the remark and went off to get more vodka, watching Sally over her shoulder. Sally dove in and got wet. The Lesbians began to drink faster and I started drinking from scratch, meaning to catch up if I could. Godwin was pacing back and forth near the diving board. Finally he came over and shook my hand.

  “You’re looking bloody well,” he said.

  “The patina of success,” Razzy said. “He rather glows with it.” He was drinking extremely dry martinis, and his tone carried the perfect degree of chill, like his martini glass.

  “Ah yes,” Godwin said. “You sold your book. Now you have a license to steal any bloody thing you happen to want.”

  “Hopefully he’ll start with a change of linen,” Razzy said. “Do swim as soon as possible, will you? You have a body odor.”

  I drank my glass of vodka and orange juice in about three swallows. It had just hit me what a mistake it had been to come. Sally was floating on her back, her bosom and belly shining with water. The three Lesbians were watching her. Godwin seemed almost friendly, but Razzy Hutton exuded a rare quality of nastiness. He obviously meant to insult me in every way po
ssible.

  “We’re all corporeal beings,” he said, “but very few of us allow ourselves to smell. Very few of us gulp our drinks, either. If you propose to walk among us as an equal you must begin to cultivate one or two of the more basic of the civilized graces.”

  “That’s fucking nonsense,” Godwin said. “The boy’s a frontier genius, don’t you know? The fact that he farts in public is part of his appeal.”

  “I don’t fart all that often,” I said defensively.

  “Come, don’t apologize,” Godwin said. “Genius need never apologize for itself. I didn’t even fart in private until I was thirty years old.” He said it sadly, as if it were something he had often regretted.

  “Really?” Razzy said. “What a titillating detail.”

  “Those three women you invited scare me fucking green,” Godwin said. “I think I’ll go in with Sally.”

  He went in to get his bathing suit. The three Lesbians got up and came over and Razzy introduced me to them. He managed to do it without moving his lips. I felt like I was in the middle of a school of piranha fish, and I tried to look humble and unappetizing.

  “You write, or something?” one asked. Her name was Sybil. She had red hair, protruding teeth, and two large jewels.

  “Yes ma’am,” I said.

  “Do you write with a pencil or a fountain pen?” the fat one asked, handing Razzy her glass.

  “On a typewriter.”

  “Oh, like a journalist,” she said, reaching for the fresh drink Razzy had instantly provided.

  “I’ve read one or two of Daniel’s effusions,” Razzy said. “He’s far from being a master of English syntax.”

  “I can’t read the young,” the fat one said. Her name was Lorena.

  “Why not?” I asked. I was feeling a great dislike of them all. Beyond us, Godwin tiptoed out in a blue bathing suit and snuck into the pool. He went right under water, like a frogman in some kind of spy movie.

  “Oh, there’s such a crudity of sentiment in the young,” Lorena said. “They’ve known no heartbreak.”

  “Precisely,” Razzy said.

  The skinniest of the Lesbians maintained a total and very sinister silence. She had straight black hair.

  “You look like a workman,” Sybil said. “Are you salaried?” “I’m just a student,” I said. “I work on weekends for a termite exterminator. It’s simple work.”

  “Do you like Lawrence?” Lorena asked. “I knew Lawrence. I know Frieda. I knew Mabel Dodge Luhan. Dorothy Brett is a good friend of mine.”

  “I like him a lot,” I said.

  “He was a silly ass,” Razzy said. “He’s the best argument I know against educating the working classes. He should have been kept in the mines.”

  Lorena was drunker than she looked. “I once measured the penis of Tony Luhan’s brother,” she said.

  We all looked blasé. So far as I could tell, Godwin had never come up. I was vaguely worried about him.

  “I can’t remember how long it was,” Lorena said. “It was at a party in Taos. We measured the penises of all the men. His was much the longest. I remember that much.”

  Godwin finally surfaced, in the vicinity of where Sally was floating, and all three women turned and went to the edge of the pool. I don’t know what they had against him. They stared at him. Sally swam over to the edge of the pool and got out and began to sun herself in what little was left of the sun. Godwin looked forlorn, treading water all by himself. I was through with my second drink. I got a third and sat down by the pool. Godwin had begun to swim laps. He was not in very good shape. Once he paused near where I was sitting. “In my youth I trained to swim the Channel,” he said.

  Soon he swam away. I didn’t feel like swimming. I became drunk. Razzy put a Fats Domino record on the phonograph. He must have asked Sally to dance, because I noticed them dancing. The Lesbians were chain-smoking as they watched. No one else had come to the party. Godwin looked waterlogged, but he kept swimming, doggedly. Sally danced in her red bikini. It grew dark as I drank, as Godwin swam, as Sally danced. Razzy Hutton was apparently only jointed at the hips. He never bent his arms or legs. When I was drunk I decided that if he insulted me once more I would hit him. I never wanted to be at a place where he was again, even if it meant leaving Rice with no degree. He kept playing Fats Domino records. I went over and stood by the phonograph. After a while he came over to change the record.

  “An extraordinary nigger,” Razzy said. “A primitive genius.”

  “I don’t ever want to be a master of English syntax, Dr. Hutton,” I said.

  “Well, you bloody well aren’t,” he said. “You don’t hold liquor well, either. Watch you don’t bump the phonograph.”

  “I’d rather you didn’t dance with my wife,” I said.

  Razzy looked amused. He walked back to Sally and I followed him.

  “You’re a beautiful child,” Sybil was saying.

  Sally shrugged and walked over to watch Godwin swim. It was hard to tell whether he was swimming or drowning. I could tell that Sally was bored with things. “You have interesting parties, Razzy,” Lorena said thickly. She was as drunk as I was.

  “Someone ought to propose a toast,” Sybil said. “We’ve had no toasts tonight.”

  I felt giddy and strange. Razzy was insulting me silently, somehow. I had a sense of fat being in the fire, of bridges about to be burned. Sally was trying to drag Godwin out of the swimming pool.

  “I think our young author should propose one,” Razzy said, deftly putting me on the spot.

  But I felt reckless, the way I had when I shot the squirrel out of Jenny Salomea’s tree.

  “To the penis of Tony Luhan,” I said. “However long it was. Or was it his brother’s?” I added, remembering the story better.

  “You crude little beast,” the sinister black-haired one said. Lorena slapped me and almost knocked me down. I wasn’t standing very steadily. Sally started laughing, I think at Godwin—he was beached like a small dying whale on the poolside. Razzy stood before me ramrod straight. All he needed was a monocle.

  “We might excuse your odor,” he said, “but your conduct is quite unforgivable. Leave this company at once!”

  I punched him in the stomach. He took three steps backward, gasping. His mouth was open—I think it was the first time he’d opened it wide enough for me to see his teeth. It wasn’t as hard a punch as I meant it to be. I don’t know how to punch. I think it was the insult that left him breathless.

  “You’ll never—” he croaked. “You’ll never—”

  “You’ll never get your octopus back, either!” I yelled. “It’s a wonderful pet. I confess my theft!”

  “He’s always stealing,” Godwin said, staggering into our midst. “Who’s he stealing now? What’s wrong Razzy? You look like you swallowed an ice cube.”

  “I hit him,” I said. “I also stole his octopus. A specialist in protozoa doesn’t need an octopus. We play sex games with it. It’s our bed toy.”

  Sally walked past us and went in to get dressed. She didn’t take the scene seriously. The Lesbians decided to mother Razzy. While they were fanning him back to health Godwin took me aside.

  “I’m leaving with you,” he said. “You came under my auspices. They’ll all blame me for your behavior. I admire you. I’ve wanted to hit that fucker for years. I’ll buy you and your lovely wife the best dinner in Houston. My wedding gift to the two of you.”

  “Maybe in a minute,” I said. I expected Razzy to attack me as soon as he recovered himself. I was wrong, however. He strode into his apartment without saying a word. Perhaps he had decided not to soil his hands with me. Or perhaps he had gone to look for the sword-cane I imagined him having. He might emerge and run me through. Godwin went in to dress. Recklessly I walked over to the Lesbians. They looked sullen. We stared at one another. It was another war of nerves.

  “Who do you read?” I asked, addressing myself to Lorena.

  “You’re looking to get slugged again, kiddo,
” she said.

  “No ma’am,” I said. “I just wondered who you read.”

  “The masters,” she said huskily. “Gide. Mann. Colette.”

  “I was just curious,” I said.

  The sinister one stepped forward, her hot little eyes shining with hatred.

  “I have powers,” she said. “I now put a curse upon you. Your keys will no longer fit in locks. No door you really wish to enter will open for you again. From now on you will be thirsty. Water will stop running from your faucets. No one will give you presents. People will not like your clothes. Your stomach will be unsettled and you will belch all day. There will be sand in your beds. You will be constipated often. Those whom you remember will not remember you. You will have a rash between your legs.”

  The hairs on the back of my neck were standing up. I had never had a curse put on me before. She was matter-of-fact about it, and very convincing.

  “Soon a pane of glass will drop between you and your wife,” she said. “You will be able to see her, you will be able to hear her, you will be able to want her, but the pane of glass will always separate you. You will not be able to touch her. The pane of glass will enclose you like a cylinder, separating you from all women. You will want many women, but nothing will ever shatter the pane of glass.”

  She stopped talking and stepped back to light a cigarette. No wonder Godwin was afraid of them. I turned and went right in to find Sally. She was letting Razzy Hutton help her zip her dress. I don’t know why she needed help. It upset me badly.

  Godwin came out of the bathroom with his shirt unbuttoned. He had a coat and tie in his hand. “Danny and Sally are dining with me,” he said to Razzy. “You must make our apologies to the company.”

  Razzy merely smiled. He had become inscrutable. I was thinking of hitting him again, but Godwin gave me no chance. He whisked us out and half an hour later we were drinking champagne at an intimidating French restaurant. It didn’t intimidate Godwin, of course. He spoke French fluently, and probably well. After the champagne we had a rack of lamb and three bottles of a wonderful red wine. I was far too drunk to talk. Even Sally was drunk—the color in her cheeks was almost as deep as the color of the wine. I remembered, in my drunkenness, that a bridge had been burned. I didn’t want to stay at Rice. I wanted to leave Houston, and the sooner the better. I didn’t want dawn to find me in the city. The one thing I knew clearly was that life had changed, and we were leaving as soon as we finished dinner.