Spanking Shakespeare (14 page)

His eyes open a bit wider at this. “Why do you suppose you did that?”

“I was kind of drunk.”

“It’s easy to use alcohol as an excuse. Did you want to kiss her?”

I look away. “I don’t know. I guess so.”

He waits until I look back at him. “How did she react?”

“She sort of turned away.”

He nods. “How did that make you feel?”

“I don’t know. Like an idiot, I guess.”

We are silent, and it seems like he is waiting for me to say more.

“Are you nervous about taking her to the prom?” he finally asks.

“I’m not really nervous. I just don’t know what’s going to happen. I can’t really tell if we’re going as friends, or if we’re going as a couple.”

“What do you think?”

“I don’t know,” I say. “She seemed happy that I asked her, but she kind of freaked out when I tried to kiss her.”

“Turning away doesn’t sound like freaking out. Maybe she was just surprised.”

“Maybe. It’s kind of weird having this conversation with you.”

He smiles in a way that seems intended to convey complete understanding. “Listen, Shakespeare,” he says gently. “This is my job, and you’re my patient. You should feel free to talk about anything you want.”

We sit there for a while, not saying anything.

“What are you thinking?” he asks.

“I always imagined making out with my prom date in the back of a limo.”

His eyes narrow a bit, and he presses his lips together.

I feel myself gaining momentum. “I mean, if you can’t get your date to make out with you at the prom, it sort of seems like a waste to go through all the trouble of renting a tux and a limo and paying all that money to go.”

“It sounds like you’re less interested in going to the prom than in finding a girl who will make out with you, as you put it.”

“That’s true,” I say.

He taps his pencil on his desk. “Do you think Jane is aware of how you feel?”

“What, I’m supposed to tell her?”

“It seems to me that you would want to make sure that you both feel the same way. Especially if just going is as much trouble as you say.”

“What, I’m just supposed to go to Jane and ask her if she’ll make out with me on prom night?” I laugh and roll my eyes. “I can’t do that.”

“What do you think you should do?”

“I don’t know. Maybe we just shouldn’t go.”

He raises his eyebrows but does not say anything.

“The whole thing just seems like such a hassle,” I say.

“Did you think about all this when you decided to ask her in the first place?” It seems there is a slight edge to his voice.

“I only asked her because my brother said she wanted to go with me.”

“You think this is your brother’s fault?”

“It’s true. I had a whole list of girls I was interested in. Jane was one of my safeties.”

His eyes open wide. “Your safeties?”

“Like with colleges. You apply to a few safety schools just in case you don’t get into any of the others.”

He considers this for a moment. “I see.” He looks at me, and I can tell he’s trying to make up his mind about something. “Shakespeare,” he says at last, “I’m going to talk to you for a minute, not as a therapist but as a father. I was happy when I heard you had asked Jane to the prom, because I saw that she was happy. But after this conversation, I have serious reservations about allowing her to go with you.”

“I understand,” I say a bit too quickly.

He holds up his hand. “Let me finish. I know that if I tell Jane she cannot go, I will also have to tell her why, and it would be devastating for her. I also know that if you try to back out, you will end up making things even worse. Since you’ve already asked her and she’s excited to go, you will take Jane to the prom, you will treat her with the respect and the dignity she deserves, and if I find out that you have hurt her in any way, I will exact a terrible vengeance, the likes of which you can only imagine.” He pauses and fixes me with his gaze. “Is all that clear enough for you?”

I work hard to avoid Jane in school after that, especially when I see from a distance that she and Eugene Gruber are indeed still a couple. I am furious with my brother for setting me up. I am furious with my parents for inviting the Blumebergs to our house in the first place. And I am furious with myself for getting so drunk and acting like a complete idiot.

Then again, getting drunk and acting like a complete idiot does run in the family. I know my parents both drank a lot before I was born, and some of the more disturbing stories they’ve told me about the origin of my name must have involved a considerable amount of alcohol consumption. They say they have cut back—which does make me wonder about the health of my father’s liver—but they still drink too much on occasion, and my father, in particular, has turned in a few staggering performances. I’m not saying that getting drunk and acting like a complete idiot is genetic, but I will say that my father has not always modeled appropriate behavior in my presence. And if I were to point to a single defining experience of questionable father-son bonding, it would have to be that summer night in Rome when I was sixteen.

THE TIME I SAW MY FATHER GET DRUNK AND ACT LIKE A COMPLETE IDIOT

I took a Valium and tried to relax. How my parents had gotten me on an airplane again was beyond me, but here I was, about to embark on a seven-hour flight thirty-five thousand feet above a shark-infested ocean.

My parents had insisted that I take the Valium and even suggested I take two. If they were going to be on an airplane with me, they wanted to make sure I was as relaxed as possible.

It was the summer after tenth grade, and we were on our way to Italy for a family vacation. Twenty years earlier my parents had spent their honeymoon in Venice, Florence, and Rome, and they were returning now for the first time to these cities that held such magical memories for them.

The thing about my parents is that neither of them can remember anything. My father speaks about the past with great conviction and authority, but according to my mother, everything he says is a fiction he has invented over the years that bears little semblance to what actually happened.

“Wait till you see Venice,” he said. “Your mother and I got so lost there on our honeymoon, we ended up walking around the city all night.”

I looked at my mother, and she shook her head.

“Your mother doesn’t remember anything,” my dad said.

I had mixed feelings about this trip. On the one hand, I was excited to see Italy and to stay in Italian hotels and to eat at Italian restaurants and to stare at Italian women. On the other hand, I was dreading spending two weeks alone with my family. My father would be taking us on forced marches through each city, my mother would be worrying all the time that we looked like tourists, and I would have to share a room with Gandhi, which would mean no privacy to masturbate, except in the bathroom.

For the most part the trip ended up being about what I expected. Without going into all the lurid details, here are some of the highlights:

1. We ordered calves’ liver our first night in Venice because my mother forgot her dictionary and was too embarrassed to ask for an English menu.

2. A pigeon shat on me in Piazza San Marco.

3. We stood in the pouring rain outside a museum in Florence to see Michelangelo’s David, which is a statue of a naked man with an uncircumcised penis.

4. My father nearly got us killed driving on the Autostrada between Florence and Rome because he kept looking at the map, even though all he had to do was stay on the same highway the whole time.

5. My brother put on a yarmulke as we walked through the Vatican, and asked our guide whether the Pope had any Jewish friends.

6. My parents spent a lot of time reminiscing about their honeymoon and showed up at breakfast each morning with smiles on their faces.

7. I became constipated.

What really makes this story worth telling, though, is the night we spent with Robert in Rome.

Robert Sweeney had been a classmate of my father’s in graduate school. According to my mother, he was the kind of friend you are supposed to outgrow by the time you are ready to settle down and have a family. Both he and my father liked to drink, and when the two of them got together, they always managed to achieve staggering levels of intoxication. I had only met Robert a couple of times; after I was born, my mother had pushed my father to reform some of his ways, and that meant much less contact with his old friend.

We ran into Robert, quite by chance, the day before we were supposed to return to the States. I remember walking down the street and suddenly hearing a booming voice that made everyone around stop and stare.

“SHAPIRO!”

We all turned and saw a small, round man who looked like a troll.

“Sweeney, you old rascal,” my father said, smiling broadly.

“Oh shit,” I heard my mother mutter.

Robert was living in Rome for the year, on sabbatical. He and his third wife had recently been divorced, and he had decided that a change of scenery would be good for him.

“We’ll all have dinner together,” he said. “My treat. Are you boys drinking?”

My father laughed. “Don’t corrupt them yet.”

“Remember we’re leaving early tomorrow,” my mother said, and I detected a note of despair in her voice.

“Don’t worry,” Robert said. “I’ll make sure he behaves.”

My father and Robert made the arrangements, and we met later that night at a large, popular restaurant, which was still relatively empty at 8:00.

“A toast,” Robert said as we all held up our drinks—Cokes for Gandhi and me, a glass of wine for my mother, and scotch for the two men. “To many more happy reunions.”

I had watched my dad drink my entire life, so at first I paid little attention to the amount of alcohol he was consuming. It was only toward the end of the meal, when he began banging on his water glass with his spoon, that I realized he was more drunk than usual.

“Hey, boys,” Robert said. “Try this.” He stuck the prongs of his fork up his nostrils.

I smiled and thought to myself what an idiot this guy was.

“Cool,” Gandhi said, and imitated Robert.

“Stop it,” my mother said. “You’re making a scene.”

In fact, nobody was paying us the least bit of attention. It was after 10:00 by this point, and the restaurant had become crowded and boisterous. This was a good thing because my father and Robert were just getting warmed up.

“A toast,” my father sang out, pouring what must have been his tenth glass of wine.

“To fucking Italy.”

“Fucking Italy,” Robert said, and they smashed their glasses together, shattering both of them.

Robert pulled his chair to the table next to ours and looked around, wild-eyed. “Does anybody have an extra glass? All I need is one glass. Two glasses, I need. Hey, are you using your glass? What’s the matter, you don’t speak English? Glass. The thing you drink out of.”

“Don’t you think you’ve had enough?” my mother hissed at my father.

My father brandished his spoon. “Never!” he yelled.

I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry, but when the restaurant manager came over and asked if there was a problem, I wanted to hide under the table.

“They’re just drunk,” my brother said. Why wasn’t he as embarrassed as I was?

“DRUNK?” Robert shouted, wheeling back to our table. “WHO’S DRUNK?”

“Il conto, per favore,” my mother said, miming writing a check to the manager. “I’m so sorry.”

“What are you sorry about?” my father slurred. “You don’t have to apologize for me. I’m going to take a leak. Come on, Robert.”

The two of them staggered away, and my mother said she was sorry we had to see this.

“It’s funny,” my brother said.

I shook my head. “No, it’s not. It’s sad.”

“Well,” my mother said. “If I divorce your father, you’ll understand why.”

She must have seen the stricken look on my face. “I’m just kidding,” she said. “Listen, if your father insists on staying out with his friend, I want you to go with them. If you’re along, at least they won’t try to pick up women.”

“Why don’t you go?” I asked.

My mother shuddered. “I can’t stand the two of them together. Besides, I need to go back to the hotel and finish packing.”

“I don’t want to go out with them,” I said. “We’ll probably end up in jail.”

“I’ll go,” my brother said.

My mother shook her head. “You’re coming back to the hotel with me. You’d probably just encourage them.”

And that was how I came to spend my last night in Italy in the company of two extremely drunk grown men.

My biggest concern was that they would lose me. I had no desire to be deserted in a foreign country in the middle of the night. I shouldn’t have worried. My father and Robert were so loud I was sure I would be able to hear them even if we got separated.

“How old are you, Shakespeare?” Robert asked as we wandered the narrow alleys of Campo de’ Fiori.

“Sixteen.”

He burped loudly. “When I was sixteen, I was a real asshole.”

You’re still an asshole, I thought.

“Do you have a girlfriend?”

I felt myself blush. “Nah.” I shook my head.

“Good. Girls are nothing but trouble. You know, your father used to be a real womanizer.”

I did not want to hear this.

“Before he met your mother, he used to—”

“Robert,” my father slurred. “There are children present.”

Robert looked at me and smiled, then began to gyrate back and forth. “Bang, bang, bang, bang, bang.”

Please, Lord, I thought. Just take me now.

“You know what we should do?” Robert said.

A feeling of dread enveloped me. “What?”

“Get some more drinks, then go jump in the Trevi Fountain.”

“That’s nowhere near here,” I said.

“So? Have you got someplace you need to be?”

As far away from you as possible, IF thought.

My father seemed indecisive.

“You’re leaving tomorrow,” Robert said.

“This is your last night.”

“It is my last night,” my father said, and I could feel him gaining momentum. “What do you think?” he said, looking at me and smiling.

What did I think? I thought my father should act like someone his age and not go running around Rome all night like a drunken teenager. I thought we should say good night to Robert and go back to the hotel before anything worse could happen. I looked at my father and could see that he wanted to go, and the only thing holding him back was at winge of fatherly concern for my well-being. Why wasn’t my brother here instead of me? He would have been happy to go with them, and I could be back at the hotel in bed, watching television. I realized suddenly how pathetic that was. My brother, two years younger, would be reveling in a night like this, and all I was doing was complaining. Here I had an opportunity to be out all night in Rome, and I wanted to be in bed, watching television. No wonder my brother had so many friends and so many girls who seemed to like him. He knew how to embrace life instead of shying away from it. I was sixteen already, and what did I have to show for it?

“I think I need a drink,” I said.

“That’s my boy,” Robert said, clapping me on the shoulder.

“What the hell?” my dad said. “There’s no drinking age here anyway.”

We sat outdoors at a café on the Piazza Navona, and Robert ordered a bottle of wine. By the second bottle, my father and Robert had moved from a hyperactive state to a philosophical one, and as we sat outside, sipping wine and looking at the Fountain of the Four Rivers, the conversation became downright comical.

“You know what’s bullshit?” Robert said.

My father drained his glass. “What?”

“The Bible.”

“The Bible’s total bullshit,” my father agreed.

“Why’s the Bible bullshit?” I asked.

Robert turned his attention to me. “Take any story and analyze it. Go ahead, pick a story.”

I said the first thing that came to mind. “Noah’s ark.”

Robert gave a triumphant laugh. “That’s about the most obvious piece of bullshit in the whole damn book.”

“Two of every species,” my father said.

“How did Noah keep the lions from eating the zebras when they were on the ark?”

I smiled and took a sip of wine. “Well, what about Abraham?”

“Abraham!” Robert roared. “The guy who knocked his wife up when she was ninety?”

“What about Methuselah?” my dad chimed in. “The Bible says he lived to be nine hundred and sixty-nine.”

“Bullshit,” Robert said. “All of it.”

“You know what else is bullshit?” my father said, pouring himself another glass.

“What?” I asked.

“Water.”

“Water?” I said. “What are you talking about?”

My father swirled the wine in his glass and sniffed it. “It’s bullshit. I don’t drink things that have no taste.”

“I’ll tell you what’s bullshit,” I said.

My father looked amused. “What?”

“Everything that’s coming out of both of your mouths.”

“The boy’s on to us,” Robert said. “What should we do?”

My father made a slashing motion across his neck. “Kill him and get rid of the body.”

I laughed, and my father put his arm around me. “You’re a good kid,” he slurred.

We finished the wine and began to walk without purpose or direction. I was feeling a bit light-headed, but I was certainly in better shape than either of the adults. We rambled down moonlit streets and alleys, through piazzas that suddenly opened up before us, across a bridge, and then across another.

It was close to 3:00 a.m., and though there were still people out, the city felt like it was winding down and going to sleep.

“Where the hell are we?” my father asked as we walked past yet another church.

Robert looked around. “Beats me. Everything here looks the same.”