Generation X (8 page)

care of Buck, who had ceased being a novelty in the basement and had b e c o m e i n s t e a d , k i n d o f a g r u d g e —of the same caliber of grudge as, say, a pet dog that the children argue over whose turn it is to feed. And when Serena appeared at noon with lunch one day, all Buck could bring himself to say was, 'God, did
another
one of you Monroe girls get fired?

C a n ' t a n y o f y o u h o l d a j o b ? '

" T h i s j u s t b o u n c e d right off of Serena. 'They're just small jobs,'

she said. 'I'm learning how to paint and one of these days I'm going to become so good that Mr. Leo Castelli of the Leo Castelli art galleries of New York City is going to send a rescue party up to get me off of this God forsaken asteroid. Here,' she said, jabbing a plate of erudite celery a n d c a r r o t i n h i s c h e s t , ' e a t t h e s e c e l e r y s t i c k s a n d s h u t u p . Y o u l o o k like you need fiber.'

"Well. If Buck thought he had been in love before, he realized now that those were merely mirages and that Serena was indeed his real True Love. He spent his waking time for the next few weeks, savoring his half hours which he spent telling Serena of the views of the heavens as seen from outer space, and listening to Serena talk of how she would p a i n t t h e p l a n e t s i f o n l y s h e c o u l d s e e w h a t t h e y l o o k e d l i k e .

' 'I can show you the heavens, and I can help you leave Texlahoma,

t o o —if you're willing to come with me, Serena my love,' said Buck, w h o o u t l i n e d h i s e s c a p e p l a n s . A n d w h e n h e e xplained that Serena w o u l d h a v e t o d i e , s h e s i m p l y s a i d , ' I u n d e r s t a n d . '

"The next day at noon when Buck awoke, Serena lifted him out of t h e b e d a n d c a r r i e d h i m o u t o f t h e b a s e m e n t a n d u p t h e s t a i r s , w h e r e his feet knocked down framed family portraits take n y e a r s a n d y e a r s ago.

'Don't stop,' said Buck. 'Keep moving—we're running out of time.' "It was a cold gray afternoon outside as Serena carried Buck across the yellowed autumn lawn and into the spaceship. Once inside, they sat

d o w n , c l o s e d t h e d o o r s , a n d B u c k u s e d h i s l a s t e n e r g i e s t o t u r n t h e ignition and kiss Serena. True to his word, the love waves from her heart boosted the engine, and the ship took off, high into the sky and out of the gravitational field of Texlahoma. And before Serena passed out and t h e n d i e d f r o m a l a c k o f o x y g e n , t h e l a s t s i g h t s s h e g o t t o s e e w e r e Buck's face shedding its pale green Frankenstein skin in lizardy chunks onto the dashboard, thus revealing the dashing pink young astronaut beneath, and outside she saw the glistening pale blue marble of Earth against the black heavens that the stars had stained like spilled milk.

"Below on Texlahoma, Arleen and Darleen, meanwhile, were both

returning home from their jobs, from which they both been fired, just time to see the rocket fire o f f a n d t h e i r s i s t e r v a n i s h i n t o t h e s t r a t o -sphere in a long, colonic, and fading white line. They sat on the swing Bet, unable to go back into the house, thinking and staring at the point where the jet's trail became nothing, listening to the creak of cha i n s and the prairie wind.

" 'You realize,' said Arleen, 'that that whole business of Buck being

| able to bring us back to life was total horseshit.'

" 'Oh, I knew
t h a t , '
said Darleen. 'But it doesn't change the fact that I feel jealous.'

" ' N o , i t d o e s n 't , d o e s i t ? '

"And together the two sisters sat into the night, silhouetted by the luminescing earth, having a contest with each other to see who could swing their swing the highest."

CON

STRUCT

Claire and I never fell in love, even though we both tried hard. It happens. Anyhow, this is probably as good a point as any to tell some thing about myself. How shall I begin? Well, my name is Andrew Palmer, I'm almost thirty, I study languages (Japanese is my specialty), I come from a big family (more on that later), and I was born with an ectomorphic body, all skin and bones. However, after being inspired by a passage from the diaries of the Pop artist, Mr. Andy Warhol—a passage where h e e x p r e s s e s h i s s o r r o w

after learning in his mid-dle fifties that if he had

exercised, he could have

had a body (imagine not

h a v i n g a b o d y ! ) —I was

galvanized into action. I

began a dreary exercise

regimen that turned my

birdcage of a thorax into

a pigeon breast. Hence, I

now have a body—that's

o n e
problem out of the

way. But then, as men-tioned, I've never been in love, and
that's
a problem. I just seem to end u p a s
friends
with everyone, and I tell you, I really hate it. I want to fall in love. Or at least I think I do. I'm not sure. It looks so . . .

messy.
A11 right, all right, I
do
at least recognize the fact that I
don't
want to go through life alone, and to illustrate this, I'll tell you a secret s t o r y , a s t o r y I w o n ' t e v e n t e l l D a g a n d C l a i r e t o d a y o u t h e r e o n o u r d e s e r t p i c n i c . I t g o e s l i k e t h i s :

Once upon a time there was a young man named Edward who lived

by himself with a great amount of dignity. He had so much dignity that when he made his solitary evening meal every night at six thirty, he always made sure he garnished it with a jaunty little sprig of parsley.

BAMBIFICATION:
The

That's how he thought the parsley looked:
jaunty.
Jaunty and dignified.

mental conversion of flesh and

He also made sure that he promptly washed
and
dried his dishes after blood living creatures into

cartoon characters possessing

completing his solitary evening meal. Only
lonely
people didn't take bourgeois Judeo-Christian

pride in their dinners and in their washing up, and Edward held it as attitudes and morals.

a point of honor that while he had no need for people in his life, he was not going to be lonely. Life might not be much
fun,
mind you, but it
DISEASES FOR KISSES

(HYPERKARMA): A deeply

seemed to have fewer people in it to irritate him.

rooted belief that punishment

Then one day Edward stopped drying the dishes and had a beer

will somehow always be far

instead. Just for kicks. Just to relax. Then soon, the parsley disappeared greater than the crime: ozone

holes for littering.

from his dinners and another beer appeared. He made small excuses

for it. I forget what they were.

Before long, dinner became the lonely
klonk
of a frozen dinner on the microwave floor saluted by the tinkle of scotch and ice in a highball glass.

Poor Edward was getting fed up with cooking and eating by himself, and before long, Edward's dinner became whatever he could microwave from the local Circle Knuke 'n' serve boutique—a beef-and-bean bur-rito, s a y , w a s h e d d o w n w i t h P o l i s h c h e r r y b r a n d y , t h e t a s t e f o r w h i c h he acquired during a long, sleepy earnest summer job spent behind the

glum, patronless counter of the local Enver Hoxha Communist bookstore.

But even
then,
Edward found cooking and eating too much of a hassle, and dinner ended up becoming a glass of milk mixed in with whatever was in the discount bins at Liquor Barn. He began to forget what it felt like to pass firm stools and fantasized that he had diamonds in his eyes.

Again: poor Edward—his life seemed to be losing its
controlability.

One night, for instance, Edward was at a party in Canada but woke up the next morning in the United States, a two hour drive away, and he couldn't even remember driving home or crossing the border.

Now, here's what Edward thought: he thought that he was a very

smart guy in some ways. He had been to school, and he knew a great

number of words. He could tell you that a
veronica
was a filmy piece of gossamer used to wrap the face of Jesus, or that a
cade
was a lamb abandoned by its mother and raised by human beings. Words, words,

words.

Edward imagined that he was using these words to create his own

48

G E N E R A T I O N X

private world —a magic and handsome room that only
h e
c o u l d inhabit—a room in the proportion of a double cube, as defined by the British architect Adam. This room could only be entered through darkly stained doors that were padded with leather and horsehair that muffled the knocking of anyone who tried to enter and possibly disturb Edward's concentration.

In this room he had spent ten endless years. Large sections of its

walls were lined with oak bookshelves, overflowing with volumes; framed maps covered other sections of walls that were painted the sapphire color of deep deep swimming pools. Imperial blue oriental carpets layered all of the floor and were frosted with the shed ivory hairs of Edward's trusty and faithful spanieJ, Ludwig, who
followed Edward
everywhere.
Ludwig
would loyally listen to all Edward's piquant little observations on life, which he found himself not infrequently making while seated at his desk much of the day. At this desk he would also read and smoke a calabash pipe, while gazing out thro ugh leaded windows over a landscape that was forever a rainy fall afternoon in Scotland.

Of course, visitors were forbidden in this magic room, and only a Mrs.

York was allowed in to bring him
his rations
—
a bun-headed and
betweeded grandmother. Handcarverd
by central casting, who would de-
l i v e r
to Edward his daily (what else) cherry brandy, or, as time wore on, a forty-ounce bottle of Jack Daniels and a glass of milk.

Yes, Edward's was a sophisticated room, sometimes
so
sophisticated t h a t i t was only allowed to exist in black and white, reminiscent of an old drawing room comedy. How's
that
for elegance? S o . W h a t h a p p e n e d ?

O n e d a y E d w a r d w a s u p o n h i s w h e e l e d b o o k s h e l f l a d d e r a n d reaching for an old book he wanted to reread, in an attempt to take his mind off his concern that Mrs. York was late with his day's drink. But when he stepped down from the ladder, his feet went smack into a mound of Ludwig's Jog mess and he got
very
angry. He walked toward the satin
chaise longue
behind which Ludwig was napping. "Ludwig," he shouted,

"You
b a d
d o g , y o u . . . . "

But Edward didn't get far, for behind the sofa Ludwig had magically and (believe me) unexpectedly turned from a spunky, affectionate little

, funmoppet with an optimistically jittery little stub of tail into a flaring, black-gummed sepia gloss rottweiler that pounced at Edward's throat, missing the jugular vein by a hair as Edward recoiled in horror. The new Ludwig-cum-Cerberus then went for Edward's shins with foaming

fangs and the desperate wrenched offal howl of a dozen dogs being run over by trucks on the freeway.

Edward hopped epileptically onto the ladder and hollered for Mrs. York who, as fate would have it, he noticed just then out the window. She was wearing a blond wig and a terry cloth robe and hopping i n t o the little red sports car of a tennis pro, abandoning Edward's service

forever. She looked quite smashing—dramatically lit under a harsh new s k y t h a t w a s s c o r c h i n g a n d o z o n e l e s s —
c e r t a i n l y
not at all an autumn sky in Scotland. Well.

Poor Edward.

He was trapped in the room, able only to roll back and forth across the bookshelves on the heights of his wheeled ladder. Life in his once charmed room had become profoundly dreadful. The thermostat was out of reach and the air became muggy, fetid and Calcuttan. And of course, with Mrs. York gone, so were the cocktails to make this situation bear-able.

Meanwhile, millipedes and earwigs, long asleep behind obscure

top-shelf books, were awakened by Edward as he grimly reached for

volumes to throw at Ludwig in an attempt to keep the monster at bay—from continually lunging at his pale trembling toes. These insects would crawl over Edward's hands. And books thrown at Ludwig would bounce

insouciantly off his back, with the resulting pepper-colored shimmy of bugs that sprinkled onto the carpet being lapped up by Ludwig with his long pink tongue.

Edward's situation was indeed dire.

T h e r e w a s o n l y o n e o p t i o n o f c o u r s e , a n d t h a t w a s t o l e a v e t h e room, and so, to the enraged thwarted howls of Ludwig who charged at Edward from across the room, Edward breathlessly opened his heavy

oak doors, his tongue galvanized with the ferric taste of adrenalin, and frantic but sad, left his once magic room for the first time in what seemed ever.

Ever
was actually about ten years, and the sight Edward found
SPECTACULARISM. A

outside those doors really amazed him. In all the time he had been

fascination with extreme

sequestering himself, being piquant in his little room, the
rest
of hu-situations.

manity had been busy building something els e —a vast city, built not of words but of relationships. A shimmering, endless New York, shaped of lipsticks, artillery shells, wedding cakes, and folded shirt cardboards; a city built of iron, papier-mache and playing cards; an ugly/lovely world surfaced with carbon and icicles and bougainvillea vines. Its boulevards were patternless, helter-skelter, and cuckoo. Everywhere there were booby traps of mousetraps, Triffids, and black holes. And yet in spite of this city's transfixing madness, Edward noticed that its multitude of inhabitants moved about with ease, unconcerned that around any corner there might lurk a clown-tossed marshmallow cream pie, a
Brigada Rosa
kneecapping, or a kiss from the lovely film star Sophia Loren. And