Flatscreen (25 page)

Sat on the couch, flipped through an old
Sports Illustrated
. Kobe on the cover, draining a fade-away, making everyone forget he may or may not have raped a woman in Colorado. Closed my eyes. Ceiling light buzzed. Had a strange desire to ejaculate on everything in the room—firestorm of jizz, dick a goo-spouting garden hose. Watch the doc’s expression when she sees her waiting room, every nook of the couch bubbling with lacquered shine.

“Eli?”

“That’s me.”

“I’m Dr. Hoffman. Marni Hoffman.”

“Hi, Marni.”

“You can call me Dr. Hoffman. Come in.”

A nice office with lots of books, two matching brown leather recliners that faced each other.

“Sit,” she said.

“No couch?”

“That’s only for analysis.”

“Oh. I was hoping to lie down.”

She didn’t laugh.

“Go on.”

“That’s it. I’m out of material.”

“Do you often feel like you want to lie down?”

“No. Actually, these days I have a lot of energy. More than I used to. I feel totally restless, like I have all this energy that I can’t use in any way.”

“What does the energy feel like?”

“I don’t know. I mean, it’s not like a Gatorade commercial or anything. I don’t suddenly want to run around the B-ball court with well-built black men, or wear cool goggles and snowboard off cliffs. The feeling is more vague than that, like when you’re having a dream and someone’s chasing you and you can’t scream. That’s kind of what it feels like.”

“Is this feeling why you came in today?”

“I think it’s all related.”

“Related to what?”

Not sure what to say. Hoffman was youngish, forties, younger than my parents. Bit on the skinny side, curveless, nice legs, intelligent face—skinny lips, long neck. Or maybe I just thought so because she had so many books.

“I keep having these weird sex dreams. But they’re not erotic or anything, they just involve sex. Like sex is just a part of some circle-of-life bullshit where in these dreams I’m born and I die all in one brilliant act that leaves me waking shamed and sweaty with the strange feeling that I have been castrated. And then I have to reach down and check that my dick’s still there, only I realize that it’s still part of the dream, and the person who’s reaching down isn’t me but my mother. My mother just moved to Florida.”

“In real life or in the dream?”

“Real life.”

Hoffman crossed and uncrossed her legs. Noticed her noticing me noticing.

“I didn’t want to come here today, actually. I was forced to. Because I got shot and had lots of drugs in my system.”

“Do you want to talk about that?”

“It hurt.”

“Being forced to come here?”

“No. Getting shot. My leg got all fucked up.”

“Why did you bring it up?”

“Full disclosure.”

“Do you think you have a problem with drugs?”

“It seems to be the consensus.”

“What do
you
think?”

“I think I have a problem without drugs too.”

“So even though you were forced to come here, you think it might be a good idea?”

“I didn’t say that. I said that I have some problems. I have no idea if talking to you about them will help at all. In fact, I’m rather skeptical about the whole process.”

Hoffman didn’t say anything. I looked around the room. No pictures of her family, just books, framed degrees. Her entire life lay behind the wall, all her objects: stocked kitchen, couple flatscreens, dog, 2.8 kids, 1.2 husbands. But in here she had to listen to me. Couldn’t turn away, flick the tube, answer her cell. Had to listen to my pent-up pain, sexual retardation. Couldn’t laugh, spit, tell her friends, “He fucked Mrs. Sacks and ejaculated prematurely! He passed out on the football field with a boner and got a standing ovation and now he thinks he can get his shit together!” She had to sit there, nod, tell me she understood, I wasn’t that different, everything would be okay.

“But I am open to it,” I said.

“Well, that’s an important place to start.”

“I want to make some changes in my life.”

“Good,” she said.

Wanted to talk about Kahn, about yesterday with Alison, about Mom in Florida, and all these movie endings applied to my own life, how they all seemed either shitty or unrealistic or played-out or unfulfilling or all of the above, but were the only futures I could imagine because I didn’t know what people actually did once they became legit humans in the real world with successful relationships, jobs, sex, happiness, romance, etc., or if those things even existed or were just endings to different kinds of movies, bad movies that make people feel good then sad again when they leave the theater because their own lives can’t live up.

Instead blurted, “Earlier, when I was in your waiting room, for some reason I felt like I wanted to masturbate all over everything in the waiting room.”

The doctor nodded.

“I have a date for the first time ever and I don’t know what to do,” I said.

“Just be yourself.”

“That’s the worst advice I’ve ever heard. I just told you all this weird shit about wanting to masturbate on couches, and you tell me to be myself? I can’t be myself. Myself is someone who gets all fucked up and passes out on the football field with a boner because I took too much Viagra the night before. Myself is someone who takes too much Oxy and coke and breaks into houses. I mean, I want this girl to like me.”

“Yourself can be other things too,” she said. “It doesn’t just have to be those things.”

“She’s coming over for dinner and I don’t know what to make.”

“What’s your best dish?”

“Pheasant.”

“What’s your second-best dish?”

“Elk stew?”

“Didn’t your mother teach you to make chicken?”

“Does Slim Fast count as chicken?”

“What are you really trying to say here, Eli?”

“I don’t know.”

Long pause. Looked at the ground, then at her, then at the window as if I were looking out it, even though the blinds were drawn.

“I don’t know,” I said again.

Felt like I could keep saying it, over and over, a mantra. Rhythm of the phrase was consistent grime, like the sound of the old Green Line trains. Said it one more time.

“What don’t you know?”

“Anything.”

Possible Ending #11 (The Kind of Movie Your Mom Likes Because It Gives Her Hope in Regards to You, and Because She Somehow Doesn’t See Herself in the Mother Character):

Head-shrunk, happy-pilled, learn the valuable life lesson that all women aren’t my mother, won’t always abandon me, will occasionally run a finger through my hair, whisper, “I’m so proud,” unironically. Understand Mom’s/Dad’s pain is not my fault, vice versa. Finally a breakthrough, a revelation: this isn’t a story about Mom and Dad after all; it’s about learning to tell a story that’s not about Mom and Dad but about me and the world, etc., which I’m doing now, sitting in my easy chair, after work, telling Alison about my day, state of mind, inner feelings, what’s for dinner, funny thing that happened to Benjy, YouTube clip, new Top 40 song that’s bad but kind of catchy, what’s in the theater, what’s on the tube that night—stories people tell each other every day that keep them going, keep them healthy, keep them from harming themselves and others. Accept my parents’ divorce, see them for who they are: flawed human beings
who, for reasons partly but not entirely their fault, can’t provide the kind of love and support I need. That’s okay. I get love and support from others, like my therapist (I have transference issues), Alison, Benjy, who actually does care about and need me too, even if we never tell each other because we’re men, embarrassed. Accept my lot in life, work at Starbucks, enjoy simple pleasures like braised short ribs, cold beer, the way Alison’s teeth chatter when she laughs (weird, but endearing). Alison is also flawed, as am I, often sad, sometimes a liar, possibly a cheater, still fond of drugs. Learn to live with each other, occasionally fighting, dealing with life’s difficulties—death, grief, sickness, sadness, frustration, aging, addiction, etc.—not easy, not so bad either. Visit my dad, Pam, Kahn, Sheila, Mary. Become role models for Natasha, do cooking projects, cry in front of each other, also burp, sing, dance, punch, smoke, sock-slide across fresh-waxed hardwood floors.

A loud bang came from the backyard. Dropped my bike on the front lawn, walked around the house, past the gutter pipes. Another bang. Kahn sat in his wheelchair wearing a blue terry-cloth bathrobe, slippers. Shooting empty liquor bottles lined up on top of the fence.

Beth Cahill stood next to him, fully clothed this time in ski jacket, jeans. She held a cardboard box, wore large headphones. Mostly empty vodka bottle at her feet. Other guests too: young woman with plastic-looking hair, shirtless man with pierced nipples, bull-style nose ring, ski goggles. Both smoked cigs, sat in metal chairs (my smoking chair!), not paying attention to the makeshift artillery range directly to their right.

Beth watched Kahn, who sat motionless, staring at the bottle he’d been aiming for, maybe wondering if his bullet had traveled into the Mitchells’ home; if their eight-year-old son or their cocker spaniel, Moses, now lay dead on the floor.

She opened the box, handed Kahn a single bullet. With methodical movement, like a young private under observation by his commanding officer
(Daughter of the Desert
,
Focus Features, 2004), Kahn inserted the bullet into the rifle. Slid forward the bolt, squinted through the scope. Face was method-acting-intense, maybe because he wasn’t actually acting, or because he was. Beth kept her eyes on him, on his hands that weren’t shaky but surprisingly steady. Behind them, the others laughed, sipped from plastic cups.

Kahn shot. Chair rolled backward. Beth reached out a hand to slow the movement, causing Kahn’s chair to swivel so that he now faced me head-on. The bullet hit the fence.

“Land of the dead,” Kahn said. “How was it?”

“You tell me.”

Nip Ring laughed high-pitched, repeated, “Land of the dead,” in campy alto. Girl laughed too. Beth removed her headphones to see what was funny. Waved but didn’t smile.

“I don’t know,” Kahn said. “I’ve never returned. I have nothing to compare it to.”

He picked up the vodka bottle, finished it in one long gulp, chucked it end-over-end like a boomerang in front of him, toward me. Aimed his gun at the bottle.

“Bang,” Kahn said, drawing more squeals from the toasted peanut gallery. I didn’t flinch. Looked at the gun, tried to remember it aimed at me that night, to imagine the trajectory of its bullet that went through my leg, was now lodged in the living room wall for eternity, or at least until the house is demolished, earth reharvested, large trees to cover empty indoor-space, though probably someone will replace the thing with a cloud-scraping McMansion, be done with it.

“Want a turn?” Kahn said.

Walked to where he was standing, took the gun, stroked its wood stock. Kahn stuck his finger in his own chest.

“Right here. Then we’ll be even. An eye for an eye.”

“You shot me in the leg,” I said. “Not the heart.”

“I don’t have legs,” Kahn said.

“Not technically true,” I said, pointed the gun at him, said, “Bang,” handed Kahn the gun.

Wind blew through the yard, opened Kahn’s untied robe. Shirtless beneath it. Chest looked like a piece of stale fiber-bread, nipples and moles for seeds and grains.

“You must be freezing,” I said.

“Inside,” Kahn shouted. “Bring me inside.”

Beth grabbed the back handles of his chair. I grabbed the wheels from the front. Carried him up onto the porch, through the screen door, into the kitchen. I walked backward, face to face with Kahn. He looked intensely at my face as if Alzheimered, attempting to remember someone who seems familiar, but whose specifics can’t be accessed by memory.

From the kitchen, Kahn led the way to the living room, to our old chipped coffee table. Lingered for a moment in the kitchen, trying to remember my greatest meals, that feeling of being alone in the world, late night, house asleep, town asleep, backyard darkness through the sliding doors.

They passed a crack pipe, or something that looked like a crack pipe, might have been a meth pipe. Nip Ring crushed pills with a credit card. The girl kissed his neck, rubbed his shoulders. Beth hit the pipe, removed her jacket.

Kahn flipped the pages of a large book.

“Join us,” he said, patted the empty couch seat next to him.

Beth put the pipe in Kahn’s mouth, lit it. As he inhaled he moved his face toward the open book. Beth’s hands moved in conjunction. A cookbook. Photos on the open page were tightly shot so everything was visible, each fleck of salt unique in its shape and tint. Basil greener than real
life. Peppers peeling off the page. Kahn leaned into a bowl of sauce-soaked spaghetti, salivated.

Beth took the pipe from Kahn’s mouth. Kahn pulled the book right up to his face until it sequestered his entire line of vision. For a moment I thought his head would be swallowed by the book, that his slim body would disappear within the pages.