The Origin of Waves (18 page)

“I can’t talk about these things, certainly not to any tom-dick-and-harry; and if you weren’t here, I probably wouldn’t be able to say it; and it would have
stuck
in my conscience and consciousness for years without being talked about. And even talking about it now, I feel that somebody, a woman, any of these three women nearby, is hearing what I am saying. That would bring back the embarrassment I was embarrassed with, when it first happened.”

“Legs! Gimme legs any day!”

“Breasts is my speed.”

“But didn’t you just said you can’t bear to see breasts, even in a swimming pool?”

“I like teeth, too.”

“Are you a dentist? To like teeth? Or a’ orthodonnist? For me, is pure legs. Legs, legs, and more legs. And the weight. That avoirdupois.”

“Now that I think about it, I think it was the colour,” I say. John becomes alert. “The colour, in a cultural sense, an ethnic sense. I am talking about the aesthetics of colour.”

“What the fuck you talking about, brother?” John says. “Colour have nothing to do with it. You don’t have anything ’gainst
white
women, do you?”

“I mean the colour of the shortie-nightie she wears after she goes into the bathroom, and comes back out and asks me, ‘Do you want to do it?’ I mean that. In my mind I want to hold her soft and touch her soft and say things to her that are soft, that I read in books. And even say some of the things I read in the sex-books she gave me to read. But I always feel funny, scared; as if somebody is listening to me, like the same man who wrote the sex-book. Embarrassed. Less than a man. It isn’t nothing against her colour as a person, is only against the colour she choose to wear, and then her sympathy which is a thing that a man like me can’t handle. ‘Don’t worry, darling, it happens.’ When she calls me ‘darling,’ that is when I change. I start feeling real cruel, and want to hit her, or ’buse her, or tell her hard things to make her stop calling me ‘darling,’ and
using other endearing terms. With my tom-pigeon not rising, I feel she is really laughing at me.”

“Is this the same woman who accused you of dozing-off whilst making love? The Chineewoman? Or is this a different woman? If you see what I’m saying, I am saying that the three women you are talking to me about might be
one and the same woman
. You see what I mean? But I am not here to analyze you, nor put you under therapy. I am here to visit a hospital, Sick Kids; and you and me are here to get drunk, blind-drunk on this reunion.” This is my chance to ask him more about his sudden appearance in Toronto. This is my chance to clear up his long stories of the life he has spent in Europe. This is my chance. But, after all, it was he who could swim. And I am the little boy who stood and watched him walk on his hands, like a crab.

So, all I say is “That is what I mean. Meeting you in this reunion is important. Because in forty-something years, as I told you already, I couldn’t find one person, certainly not a Canadian, man nor woman, regardless, that I could talk these things with, and not feel embarrassed. So, I agree that this is a reunion, a happy meeting. But it means more to me than that. It means being able to see the vacuum in my life, the lack o’ meaning in my life, the half-life I been living all the time while thinking that I was a successful person. I wonder if we are the only men in this bar with these problems? Are we the only men with these problems, just-because we are black men, of a certain age?”

“Well, I really don’t know. You may think that in my practice, un-licence as it is, that I would be in a position to answer all
your
questions. Most of the clients and people that I see are white people. White people have different problems to black people. As least, they come to me with different problems. Black men don’t come to a black therapist to discuss something which we all take for granted. So, it is the women who tell me about their husbands and men, tell me different things. And the woman who tell you about falling-off in a light sleep whilst you should-been
performing like a man
, she was only telling you the truth. Just the truth. It hurts. It hurts like hell, like shite. But you have to live with it, as you lived with it all these years, before you see me this afternoon. No
consolation
, but the truth, if you see what I am saying.”

“If I could ask you one final question. A personal question, a very personal question. Could I ask you if you went-through anything like what I was telling you?”

“Goddamn! You’re getting into my private business now! You want a’ answer from a professional? Or from a man?”

“
Your
experiences.”

“Well, lemme tell you something, kid. And lemme tell it to you in the form of a few questions. But before I do, lemme order another martini, and this gonna-be my last. What about you? I gotta get back to Sick Kids. I think this is my last, as I have some things to do when I get back to that hospital, and before I go back to the hotel.”

Now, once more, is my chance. But I do not take it, and ask him why. Why is he here? Time, in this bar, which has brought us close, after all these years, has also washed us in two different directions. I no longer see him as my best friend. Time has washed away that closeness. I feel he is my therapist. But I know that I still have to ask why he is here.

Buddy catches sight of our waving hands, nods his head, smiles, takes the cigarette from his lips, and comes over. John is lighting a cigar. As Buddy passes beside the table with the three women, one of them says something to him. It is the one wearing the silver pantyhose. He takes our order, and just before he moves away, John offers a round of drinks to the table with the three beautiful women. They are quieter now, talking in low voices; and sometimes their faces take on a serious manner, as if they are discussing children or jobs; and they do not laugh as often as we do, or as often as they were doing earlier when the evening was hilarious and the light from the fake Tiffany lamps spread its soft fingers through their hair and on the rich, deeply coloured material in their dresses and their woollen sweaters which hold the colours of late autumn in a richness close to Christmas.

“Which one you think sent us the drinks?” the woman in the silver hose asks her friends. I hear her whisper.

“The one with the cigar.”

“I think it’s the other one,” the third one says.

“We’ll order them a round, too.”

“Not yet. Too soon. Would make it look as if we are …”

“Well, we’ll do it just as we are ready to leave.”

“That’s better!”

I do not know if they have exchanged more remarks then these, for I have only heard the beginning, and we do not pay any more attention to them. They have reknitted their own circle of conversation and talk, and are like three islands close in a sea of blue warm water, lapping at the shore and leaving smiling waves as their teeth show, as their laughter ebbs like the retreating waves amongst them.

“Lemme tell you something,” John says, striking the third match to light his cigar, “as I was about to. And tell it to you in the form of questions.” He sips his new powerful martini, rests his cigar in the ashtray, and raises a thumb of approval in Buddy’s direction. “When you are with a woman, does she always come?”

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t know? Don’t you ask her? Doesn’t she tell you? Don’t you listen to her breathing? You don’t look into her eyes?”

“I do it with my eyes closed.”

“You don’t feel her body collapse? You don’t
know?
You does-be sleeping whilst your’re fooping? But for you to say you
don’t know …
”

“Me and sex was never happily married. To me, it is something like a need.”

“But call it what you like,” John says, trying once
more with his cigar, “I can’t say that every-time that my woman puts that weight on me, that when she rolls off, she is the most
satisfied
woman
in the whirl. So, you and me are the same. But if you see what I’m saying, you may not be the only man in this bar this evening that have that kind o’ problem. What about the way you does-do it? In the dark? Or with lights on? Do you light candles? Drink wine? Put on soft music? Rub your tongue over her toes? How you does-do it? Are you a bang-bang man? After you tell me, I going-tell you how I operates.”

“
That
is what I am talking about. There is something that frightens me about sex. I don’t know what is the right time to begin; and sometimes I think she is not ready to begin, and I have to wait for the right moment. I am cat-spraddled beginning-wise and sex-wise, and my tom-pigeon can’t make a move. Sometimes the bare idea of having sex scares me. And I feel nervous and start to tremble. And to get it over and conquer my feeling of fright, I want to rush up to her, strip-off all her clothes, muzzle her mouth against any rejection or complaint, and jump-on, and
bang-bang!
Jump off; wash-off myself, put-back-on my clothes, light a cigarette, and slip through the door.”

“Goddamn!”

“Sometimes, I hate sex. Really hate sex and find it dirty, physically dirty. Not only from what the Bible says about fornication and covetousness, but normal sex.”

“Goddamn!”

“And as we are sitting down here this evening, passing through my mind is all the women, nice women, beautiful women, bright women, intelligent women, women that I have loved, but never told them that I love them. Most of them are dead and I still love them. As I sit down here, drinking with you, I can see each one of them. They all slipped through my fingers. Lost occasions and lost opportunity. And I am left with the feeling of
loss
. Of death. Of loss. Loss.”

“Goddamn! And you never sought help?”

“I was never able to talk these things to a woman, and say, ‘Darling, I confess that I can’t come, and make you happy. So, darling, you could help me to come? Darling, I am a man who can’t foop. It is only in my mind, this fooping-thing.’ You really expect a man like me to low-rate myself, fall on my two knees in prostration before a woman, and admit my weakness in bed to the
same
woman?”

“Goddamn! Therapy can’t help you, brother! Sex-therapy can’t move you from your position! You’re gone, brother,
gone
! A goner for those ideas you just expressed. And you was going-through these things, these afflictions, all these years, and never had anybody, till I came along, to talk-them-over with? Goddamn!”

“You asked me questions about legs and breasts; about feet, teeth, hips, dress, weight, sex and having-sex, colours in a woman’s dress and her body, about lingeries and things. It’s like holding a book in my hand and reading it. I can’t face the pages. I know that this
book has-in things I should know. But this book remains
unopened
. Shut tight. Like Klein. I can’t open this book at all. Can’t dare. Can’t get the courage. I am a lo
st
case. Lost cause. I feel lost. I am a
lost
case.
Cause
. And I only hope that you would never repeat these things to anybody … I wonder, if I had-remained back home, if I would be facing these sex-things, and if these sex-problems are caused by immigrating to Toronto? You have any therapy-books on the subject? But I would only go home to relax and to dead …”

The shadows cast by the Tiffany lamps are like kisses on the faces of the men and the women in the bar; and the odour of alcohol and the almost acrid smell of cigarettes, the pungency of John’s cigars, sear the eye; and with the film that gathers over the eyes, the light renders the picture of the bar like a painting drawn with watercolours of snow and cloud, mist and vapour. John’s cigars come from Cuba. They are illegal in America.

And unknown to us, for we are not paying attention, melodies are being played by a machine that is out of sight, in a corner, perhaps hidden in the lights in the ceiling, or under the carpet under our feet; and this music that has a different character from the one we knew back in those Hit Parade days, seems nevertheless right and proper, in this ticking by of talk and time; and it wraps us, John and me, in a comfort thick as our blood, and we feel we are warm again in the sea water we used to sit in, up to our waists, measuring our
safety from the waves that could trick us into deeper adventure, and throw us back again upon the sand, bloated like my uncle’s body.

John is talking again. “I miss my thrildren. I miss them real bad, especially at a time like this. The first nine of my ten thrildren I never really seen growing up. But this last one, that’s here with me, I intend to be with him
every
day of my goddamn life. I promise him that much.” He stops talking and just stares into his glass. Then he says, “You know something? I can go for a year, twelve months, without missing them, and then,
wham!
, at this time, near Christmas, I miss them like hell. I don’t miss their mothers. But I do miss my thrildren. Hommany did I tell you I have?”

“Two in France, and three in Italy, and …”

“I said I have ten. Nine, plus this one, Rashid, my last, the apple of my old age. I gave him a real African name, purposely. Rashid! I don’t really know what it means. But he is Rashid. Every Christmas, wherever they are, they must get in touch with me, and their mothers, too. And every three years it’s our reunion-time, when we get together and sit in the backyard round this big picnic table and eat like hogs. My thrildren take after me, food-wise, both the boys and the girls. That’s one sure way I know they’re all mine, and that their mothers didn’t play a … didn’t
horn
me. From their appetites. And you know something. I always said I prefer to
clothe
them than feed them! But I am glad I have the means to afford these reunions,
and to take care of all those thrildren. Did I tell you I have three in France and two in Italy?”

“You said two in France, and three in Italy,” I say. There have been so many children mentioned in this long afternoon. “Two in France.”

“Your memory is better than mine. I said ten, didn’t I?”

“Ten.”

“Ten of the best! Nine, plus one.”

“But why ten? Why not eight, or nine?”

“Just ten? I wasn’t counting whilst I was fooping to have them, if you see what I’m saying.”