Naked (15 page)

The way
she
looked? Dinah’s mascara had smeared, causing her to resemble a ridiculously costumed panda, and here my mother was apologizing
for the way
she
looked? I took her aside for a moment.

“Whore,” I whispered. “That lady is a whore.” I’m not certain what reaction I was after, but shock would have done quite nicely.
Instead, my mother said, “Well, then, we should probably offer her a drink.” She left me standing in the dining room listening
as she presented the woman with a long list of options delivered in alphabetical order. “We’ve got beer, bourbon, gin, ouzo,
rum, scotch, vodka, whiskey, wine, and some thick yellow something or other in an unmarked bottle.”

When Dinah spilled her cocktail onto the clean holiday tablecloth, my mother apologized as though it had been her fault for
filling the glass too high. “I tend to do that sometimes. Here, let me get you another.”

Hearing a fresh, slurred voice in the house, my brother and sisters rushed from their rooms and gathered to examine Lisa’s
friend, who clearly cherished the attention. “Angels,” Dinah said. “You’re a pack of goddamned angels.” She was surrounded
by admirers, and her eyes brightened with each question or comment.

“Which do you like better,” my sister Amy asked, “spending the night with strange guys or working in a cafeteria? What were
the prison guards
really
like? Do you ever carry a weapon? How much do you charge if somebody just wants a spanking?”

“One at a time, one at a time,” my mother said. “Give her a second to answer.”

Tiffany tried on Dinah’s shoes while Gretchen modeled her jacket. Birthday cake was offered and candles were lit. My six-year-old
brother emptied ashtrays, blushing with pride when Dinah complimented him on his efficiency. “This one here ought to be working
down at the cafeteria,” she said. “He’s got the arms of a busboy and eyes like an assistant manager. Nothing slips by you,
does it, sweetheart? Let’s see if he can freshen up an old lady’s drink.”

Woken by the noise, my father wandered up from the basement, where he’d been sitting in his underwear, drowsing in front of
the television. His approach generally marked the end of the party. “What the hell are you doing in here at two o’clock in
the morning?” he’d shout. It was his habit to add anywhere from three to four hours to the actual time in order to strengthen
the charge of disorderly conduct. The sun could still be shining, and he’d claim it was midnight. Point to the clock and he’d
only throw up his hands to say, “Bullshit! Go to bed.”

This evening he was in a particularly foul mood and announced his arrival well before entering the room. “What are you, tap-dancing
up there? You want to put on a show, do you? Well, the theater’s closed for the night. Take your act on the road; it’s four
o’clock in the morning, goddamnit.”

We turned instinctively to our mother. “Don’t come into the kitchen,” she called. “We don’t want you to see your… Christmas
present.”

“My present? Really?” His voice softened to a mew. “Carry on, then.”

We listened to his footsteps as he padded down the hall-way to his room and then we covered our mouths, laughing until our
sight was watery. Swallows of cake revisited our throats, and our faces, reflected in the dark windows, were flushed and vibrant.

Every gathering has its moment. As an adult, I distract myself by trying to identify it, dreading the inevitable down-swing
that is sure to follow. The guests will repeat themselves one too many times, or you’ll run out of dope or liquor and realize
that it was all you ever had in common. At the time, though, I still believed that such a warm and heady feeling might last
forever and that in embracing it fully, I might approximate the same wistful feeling adults found in their second round of
drinks. I had hated Lisa, felt jealous of her secret life, and now, over my clotted mug of hot chocolate, I felt for her a
great pride. Up and down our street the houses were decorated with plywood angels and mangers framed in colored bulbs. Over
on Coronado someone had lashed speakers to his trees, broadcasting carols over the candy-cane forest he’d planted beside his
driveway. Our neighbors would rise early and visit the malls, snatching up gift-wrapped Dustbusters and the pom-pommed socks
used to protect the heads of golf clubs. Christmas would arrive and we, the people of this country, would gather around identical
trees, voicing our pleasure with worn clichés. Turkeys would roast to a hard, shellacked finish. Hams would be crosshatched
with x’s and glazed with fruit — and it was fine by me. Were I to receive a riding vacuum cleaner or even a wizened proboscis
monkey, it wouldn’t please me half as much as knowing we were the only family in the neighborhood with a prostitute in our
kitchen. From this moment on, the phrase “ho, ho, ho” would take on a whole different meaning; and I, along with the rest
of my family, could appreciate it in our own clannish way. It suddenly occurred to me. Just like that.

It started following an all-day
Planet of the Apes
marathon held at a budget theater a mile or so from my parents’ house. I had seen the original movie nine times, waiting always
for Zira to ask, “What do you think he’ll find in the Forbidden Zone, Dr. Zaius?” The area in question was a vast wasteland,
off-limits to the intelligent chimps and warmongering gorillas who inhabited this world turned upside down. As Bright Eyes,
the defiant astronaut stranded on this planet, Charlton Heston escapes his captors and rides into the Forbidden Zone accompanied
by the mute human supervixen he has chosen as his mate. Their horse trots over barren deserts and sandy beaches until they
come upon the half-buried remains of the Statue of Liberty. Suddenly realizing that he has been on his home planet throughout
the course of the entire two-hour movie, Charlton Heston dismounts his horse and kneels in the sand. “Damn you!” he cries,
shaking his fist at the blistering sun. “Damn you all to hell!”

I had entered the theater on a bright, humid morning but when I left, dazed and candy-bloated, it was dark and raining. I
thought of calling my mother for a ride, but she was off wrapping potatoes in tinfoil for my sister Amy’s Girl Scout troop.
That left only my father.

“I’ll be there in five minutes,” he said. In the background I heard mention of the term “three-eighths.” Not three-eighths
of an inch, but three-eighths of a point, which meant he was watching the financial report and had already taken off his pants
for the evening.

I called back an hour later and he answered saying, “I’m on my way out the door right this minute.” A studio audience laughed
and hooted from my father’s end of the phone. The situation comedies had started. This meant he’d been asleep in his chair.
He would sit there snoring until someone tried to change the channel. “What are you doing?” he’d yell. “I was watching that!”

It was even worse on weekend afternoons, when you’d call for a ride and hear nothing in the background. This meant he was
watching golf, hours of silence interrupted every so often by the commentator whispering, “It’s been bogey, bogey, double
bogey for Hogan, who’s nine over par coming into the fourth hole here at Oakland Hills.”

You could outgrow your clothing waiting for my father to pick you up. I called a third time and he answered groggy and confused.
“David who?” he asked. “What movie, where?”

I left the shopping center, walked across the road, and held out my thumb. It was just that easy. My father was always stopping
to pick up hitchhikers. We’d be packed into the station wagon, on our way to the pool or the grocery store, and he would pull
over, instructing us to make room for company. It was always exciting to have a stranger in the car, young men we could torment
with questions. Our father, his cock-tail tinkling between his legs, was outwardly gracious but also suspicious. He toyed
with our guests, acting as though their stories were just that, stories, something they made up as they went along.

“All right, ‘Rudy,’ I’ll be happy to take you to your ‘grandmother’s’ house so you can pick up your ‘laundry.’” He would shake
his head and chuckle. “Always happy to help out a fine young man such as yourself.”

“No, really,” our passenger would say. “She is my grandmother, I swear.”

“I know you swear,” my father would say. “Twenty bucks says you’ve got a mouth like an open sewer.”

As long as they were young, he was more than happy to pick them up; but the old ones — forget it. We would spot some stooped
and weathered granddad standing beside a beat-up suitcase and call out, “There’s one! Dad, stop.” Ignoring our request, our
father would drive past these men as if they were painted cutouts advertising a restaurant called Tramps or Hobos.

I held out my thumb, certain someone like my father would pick me up but instead, it was an elderly woman, her helmet of hair
protected by a plastic bonnet. She rolled down her window and shouted as if the two of us had some long-standing beef. “Goddamn
you, get your sorrowful butt into this car.”

She wore a pale blue uniform, the outfit issued to the cashiers of a local supermarket chain. “What are you, fourteen, fifteen
years old? I’ve got a grandson about your age, and if I ever caught him hitching a ride, I’d stick my foot so far up his ass
I’d lose my shoe. What the hell do you think you’re doing, taking rides from strangers? What if I was to have a pistol or
a switchblade knife? You couldn’t fight off a house cat, and don’t bother telling me otherwise, because I know your type,
Mr. Wisenheimer, I know your type only too well. What would your mother think about this foolishness? Where are your people?”

“My parents?” I hesitated a moment, realizing there was no reason I had to tell this woman the truth. Chances are, she’d never
see me again; and if she did, who’s to say she’d recognize me? I told her my father was attending a peace conference in Stockholm,
Germany, and that my mother was a long-haul truck driver on a run to the West Coast with a loadful of… panty hose.

“Right,” the woman said, tamping her cigarette into the smoldering ashtray, “and I breast-feed baby camels in my backyard
just for the freaking fun of it. Just tell me where you live, Pinocchio, and save the baloney for lunch.”

She pulled up in front of my parents’ house just as my father was leaving to pick me up. “Truck driver, my pretty pink ass,”
she said. “Now I want you to get into that fancy house of yours and stay there before somebody carves his initials into your
skull. You were lucky this time, but if I ever catch you out there again, I’ll run you down just to spare you the misery.”

I started hitchhiking on a regular basis. Aside from the convenience, I enjoyed spending time with people who knew nothing
about me. I was free to re-invent myself, trying on whichever personality happened to suit my mood. I was a Broadway actor
studying the regional accent for an upcoming show or maybe a California high-school student, here to track down the father
I’d never known. “Word has it he goes by the name T-Bone, but that’s all I have to go on.”

Some people pulled over almost as if they’d been expecting me, while others slowed down, studying me before coming to a complete
stop. They were black ministers and retired locksmiths, lifeguards, dance instructors, and floor sanders, and usually they
were alone. Raleigh wasn’t that big a town, and most people didn’t mind going a mile or two out of their way for a stranger.
“You should spend some time here, Maurice,” they’d say. “It’s a friendly city with plenty of opportunities for a talented
concert pianist like you.”

I never hitchhiked farther than the city limits until I went off to college and fell in with a girl named Veronica, whose
life resembled one of the stories I’d invented. Her mother had died while confined to an iron lung parked in the family’s
dining room. Veronica was fourteen at the time and received the news while experiencing her first acid trip. “You want to
ruin a perfectly good high, that’s the way to do it,” she said. Her father had remarried twice over the past four years, dragging
her through two sets of stepfamilies. The experience had taught her to fend for herself. She was adventurous and independent
in a way I’d never known, well instructed in the arts of camping, cigarette rolling, and sneaking out of second-story windows.
Our college campus was isolated in the mountains of western North Carolina, far from the region’s celebrated tourist attractions.
We started off by taking day trips, first to Gatlinburg to see the fake Indians and then to Cherokee to see the real thing.

She was a take-charge kind of person, and together we crossed state lines, hitchhiking as far away as Nashville and Washington,
D.C. At the end of the school year, I transferred to Kent State and Veronica packed off to San Francisco, where her brother
set her up with a job in a movie theater. Her letters made my life sound hopelessly dull and predictable. “I could set you
up just like that!” she’d write. “All the popcorn and hard candies you can eat, and it won’t cost you a nickel. Free movies,
a clean place to shit — you’ll have it made!”

I lasted a year before deciding to join her, making the trip with a fellow named Randolph Feathers, a second-year college
student I’d met at a party. Randolph was creating his own major in Beat literature, a subject that warranted no further attention
as far as I was concerned. His collection of stained, first-edition paperbacks reflected his belief that this was to be a
spiritual journey, presided over by the ghosts of his bongo-playing heroes. In order to prepare himself, he had grown a goatee
and bought an Australian bush hat that he’d decorated with pins and buttons espousing the numerous political causes close
to his heart. Veronica had taught me that in the hopes of squeezing out a few extra miles, it was wise never to debate or
rile a driver. If they believed in, say, the enforced sterilization of redheads, it was best just to say, “Hmm, I never thought
about it, but maybe you’re onto something.” Randolph’s hat guaranteed we wouldn’t be riding in any air-conditioned Cadillacs.
To make matters worse, he decided to bring along a guitar. We hadn’t even gotten our first ride before he pulled it out and
began composing one of his mournful ballads. “Standin’ on the highway, thumb up in the air/People passin’ by, pretendin’ not
to care.”