Naked

  “Enough already,” Curly said, backing toward the door. “I didn’t want your life story, just a quick fuck.”

  I remained on the floor long after he had gone, wondering what my life might be like now that I had finally opened my heart. Cigarettes already tasted better, but they always do after a good cry. The refrigerator, the toaster, my appliances still looked exactly the same. I thought things might appear brighter if viewed with a cheerful Christian countenance, so I walked into the bathroom as if it were a clubhouse filled with faithful friends. “Hello, soap,” I said. “Hi there, toilet!”

  “Lookin’ good, bathmat.” I moved through the kitchen and living room — “You old lampshade, you” — and wound up in the bedroom, where I leafed through my address book, forcing myself to think kind thoughts about everyone whose name I had crossed out. It was late when I finally went to bed, and I lay there, unable to sleep, wondering if God were watching. It was an uncomfortable feeling, being watched. What if I were in the bathroom, would He watch me in there, too? I guessed He had access to anywhere people are suffering, which, thinking back on my Thanksgiving meal, surely included the bathroom. How then was it possible to stop Him from watching? I would make it a point to ask Jon the question first thing tomorrow morning. It was difficult to sleep, in part because I was so anxious to tell him my news. I was a Christian now, a Christian. Hopefully I could skip the phase of wearing large crosses and handing out pamphlets titled The Devil in Mr. Jones or Satan’s Slaughterhouse. Bypassing the hopelessly corny sing-alongs and church-basement potluck suppers, I intended to move straight into a position of judgment. People would pay me to tell them what they were doing wrong, and in criticizing their every move, I would aid all mankind. With any luck I could do this without having to read the Bible or eat anything containing marsh-mallows. I was imagining my audience with the Pope when I finally fell asleep to the sound of awakening birds.

  “Jesus, you look like shit,” Jon said as I settled into his car early that morning. I thought I had my speech memorized, but I’d overslept and hadn’t had time to make a pot of coffee. Groggy and thick-tongued, I started out by recounting my visit to Curly’s trailer. “So, he took me into his bedroom and it turned out…”

  “The guy was a homo, right?” Jon curled his lips in disgust. “That happened to me once back in the army. There’s a lot of sick people in this world. The guy asked if he could hold me, that’s what he said. ‘Can I hold you?’ I still had legs then and I used them to kick his ass. But you’re that way, too, aren’t you?”

  I nodded my head.

  “I knew it the first time I saw you operate a sander. I said, ‘That guy is sick.’ And you are, aren’t you? You’re sick.”

  He said it with concern, the way you might address a friend with tubes running from his nose. “You’re sick.” I attempted to re-create my crying jag, but it sounded false. “Boo-hoo-hoo. Aww-ha-ha-hu-hu-hu-hu.” There was no mucus, and I had to provoke my eyes with my fingers to produce tears. “A-he-he-hu-hu-hu.”

  “Don’t cry to me. Tell it to Jesus,” Jon said. “Reach out to him. Tell him you’re sorry. Crouch down there on the floor and pray, for God’s sake.”

  “Oh, God, hu-hu-hu, I’m so sorry I met that guy. He was so stupid.”

  “And tell Him you’re never going to do it again,” Jon shouted.

  “And I’ll never do it again,” I said. “No Curly, never again.”

  “With any man. Tell Him you’re never going to lay down with any other man. Tell Him you want to get married.”

  “Oh, please,” I said. “Please let me get married.”

  “To a woman,” Jon said. “Married to a woman.”

  “Toman,” I said, hoping that if the transcript were ever brought to heaven’s court, I could not be accused of making promises I didn’t keep. “Toman.” Somewhere along the line, I had forgotten this might be part of the deal. Couldn’t you be the type of Christian who judged people and slept with guys?

  “And tell Him you’re sorry for taking long lunches and being so clumsy.”

  “Uh-hu-hu-hu, I’m sorry for all the things I dropped. I’m really, really sorry.”

  “All right then,” Jon said. “You can sit back in your seat. That wasn’t so bad, was it? I knew you’d come along, you had the best teacher there is. I now present you with the official title, C.O.G. How does it feel? Feels pretty good, doesn’t it? And who do you have to thank?”

  “Curly?”

  “No, me, ya idiot.”

  Jon mentioned a few other concessions I’d need to make and then we reached the city of Portland, where the women walked the streets in tight jeans and close-fitting jackets. “Roll down your window and ask the blonde if there’s a Miss America pageant in town.”

  I asked and she crushed her cigarette, saying, “Beats the shit out of me.”

  “Someone needs to beat the shit out of her. Bitch. Hey, look at this one in the rabbit coat. Oh, God, sweet Jesus, look at that ass. You know there’s a God when you see a keister like that. Wouldn’t you just want to spend the rest of your life raising welts on that fine, fat ass? Don’t you just want to bury your face all up in there until it’s dark?”

  I tried looking at women as a Christian, which was odd, as I thought I always had. I appreciated the fact that they were around but found it impossible to pass judgment on their breasts or bottoms, which I viewed no differently than their ears and ankles. They were just features, some smaller or larger, but none more erotically charged than the trees and mailboxes that lined the road.

  “Hold on, Mamma, Daddy’s coming,” Jon said. “Roll down your window and ask if she applied those jeans with a brush or a roller.”

  He truly must believe in miracles if he thought I’d actually ask a complete stranger if she accepted deliveries in the rear.

  We pulled into the marketplace and I unloaded the station wagon while Jon leaned against his canes, gaping at the shapely potters and whistling at the macramé artists, their hair braided into thin, complex knots.

  “The flower pots are crapola, but I sure like her jugs. HA!”

  Flea market or crafts fair, the common assumption is that what interests the seller will surely captivate the public. “Are you looking at that panda? Well, it’s more than a crocheted bear, it’s also a blender cozy and a hand puppet!” I might appreciate the fact that someone has taken the time to craft wind chimes out of two dozen nickels, but no amount of talk is going to make me reach for my wallet. I’d rather be left in peace to make my own decisions.

  This was not an option for the citizens of Portland. “You’ve got to talk to these people,” Jon said. “Turn on the charm and make some money! Watch this: Excuse me, madam, do you happen to know what time it is?”

  The woman looked at her wrist and reported that it was 9:15.

  “Pardon me, sir, do you know what time it is? Well, I do, it’s time for you to buy a clock. That’s right, a clock! You’ll know your time is precious because this is no ordinary clock, it’s jade! That’s right, jade! It’s time for you to buy a jade clock shaped like Oregon, that’s exactly what time it is. If you show me a picture of your wife or girlfriend, I’ll give you a twenty-five percent discount. I want to see the face of the girl that’s going to unwrap this clock on Christmas morning. If she’s pretty, I’ll knock off an extra ten dollars and let you have one of these babies for a hundred bucks. What am I, nuts? That’s practically giving them away! I might be crazy, but that’s what I get for being an artist. Come on now, a hundred dollars, how about it?”

  I was not the only one mortified by his sales pitch. The shoppers recoiled, their faces blanched of color. Wheedled to within an inch of their lives, they fled toward the surrounding booths. “They’ll be back,” Jon said. “I planted a seed of interest, and it’ll sprout any minute now. Just give it some time.”

  A man and woman wearing matching fringed jackets approached our table and Jon began his spiel. “I might be cuckoo, but I think it’s time you two bought a clock.
”

  The man picked up one of my boxes and turned to the woman, saying, “Nathaniel uses a pipe, doesn’t he?”

  Sold. Because they were already stoned, it was fairly easy to smell my customers approaching. I had priced my boxes at twenty-five dollars each, and by noon all four of them had been bought.

  “Say, Goldilocks, you want a nice clock to go with that? I’m giving a thirty percent discount to anyone wearing paisley boots.”

  By late afternoon Jon had begun invading other people’s booths in search of customers. “Stained-glass tissue dispensers? What do you want with those? Let me show you something that’ll really knock your socks off.”

  The people of Portland winced. They shrugged and apologized, but not a single one consented to purchase a clock cut in the image of their fair state.

  “Cheap sons of bitches,” Jon said. “Hey, Lord, why didn’t you tell me these creeps would be such tightwads?”

  When the other craftspeople began packing up, Jon told me to stay put. “This way, the latecomers will have less of a selection. They stuck us all the way out in the back where nobody can find us, that’s the problem. By the time the customers get here, they’ve already spent all their money. Now’s our chance, boy. Our day is just beginning.”

  Vans and trucks were summoned, and I watched as our neighbors loaded up their folding tables and portable wall units, congratulating one another on their recordbreaking sales. It was after dark when Jon finally allowed me to pack up the station wagon.

  We rode in silence past the city limits and onto the highway, the clocks ticking the words choke, choke, choke. It had been a while since I’d spent any time in a city, and several times during the course of the day, I’d looked up thinking that this or that backpacked stranger was someone I knew. It was a heady, joyous feeling. “Oh, look, it’s Veronica; it’s Gretchen.”

  It was implausible, but that never stopped me from drawing a quick breath and bolting up from my folding chair. The disappointment that followed was crushing and only served to remind me just how much I missed the people I’d left behind. I watched shoppers buying Christmas gifts and pictured myself spending the holiday alone in my trailer, waiting for well-meaning Christians to deliver a ham or casserole to my doorstep. And these people were good. They were kind and thoughtful, but their grace was wasted on me because, regardless of my circumstances, I would never genuinely accept it. Perhaps that didn’t matter to them, but it meant something to me. A chicken, a cardboard box, a jade clock: these things were much more forgiving than I could ever hope to be. I was a smart-ass, born and raised. This had been my curse and would continue to be so. Instructing me in religious faith was like trying to teach a goat to cook a fine meal — it just wasn’t going to happen. I was too greedy and inattentive, and the ultimate reward meant nothing to me. I didn’t want to quit my job. Quitting involved a certain degree of responsibility I didn’t want to assume. Rather, I hoped that Jon might remove that burden and dismiss me as soon as possible. I had felt contempt for him, even occasional hatred, and now I was fighting the urge to feel sorry for him. He must have known it, and clearing his throat, he proceeded to cut me off at the pass.

  “Let me tell you a little something,” he said finally. “I don’t appreciate being used. I’m not talking here about all the free coffee and rides I’ve given you. I mean used in here.” He meant to point at his heart but, swerving to pass another car, wound up gesturing toward his lap instead. “You’re a user, kid. You used my tools and my patience and now you want me to pat you on the head and tell you what a good little boy you are. But you know what? You’re not a good boy. You’re not even a good girl.”

  More, I thought. More, more.

  “You swish into town, expecting everyone to bend over backward and roll out the red carpet, and, oh, some of them did it. You ate their stuffing and came back for seconds, but this is it, Piglet, the cupboard is bare. I taught you a skill, and now you can pay your own way for a change. That’s right, let’s turn the tables. Why not? It’s only fair! For starters, you owe me a hundred dollars for that booth rental. Why should I pay? You’re the one who reaped the benefits, not me. All I did was break my back teaching you a skill and listening to you blubber like a baby every time you skinned your delicate little knuckles. You wear me out with your sob stories and then expect me to dust you off and tell you Daddy’s going to make everything all right. But you know something, kid? I’m not your daddy and I’m tired of being used like one.”

  He pulled off to the side of the highway. “I’m not your daddy or your chauffeur or your goddamned Santa Claus.”

  I handed him the money I’d made and stepped out of the station wagon.

  “The God part I’m not charging you for,” he shouted. “Him, you can have for free.”

  I watched him pull back onto the highway and, having selected a good-sized stone, I blessed the back of his car. It wasn’t terribly far back to Odell, no more than ten miles. I walked for a ways and then held out my thumb, eager to get back to the trailer, where, if I hurried, I could clean the place up and get my things together in time to catch the morning bus home.

  something for everyone

  The day after graduating from college, I found fifty dollars in the foyer of my Chicago apartment building. The single bill had been folded into eighths and was packed with cocaine. It occurred to me then that if I played my cards right, I might never have to find a job. People lost things all the time. They left class rings on the sinks of public bathrooms and dropped gem-studded earrings at the doors of the opera house. My job was to keep my eyes open and find these things. I didn’t want to become one of those coots who combed the beaches of Lake Michigan with a metal detector, but if I paid attention and used my head, I might never have to work again.

  The following afternoon, hung over from cocaine, I found twelve cents and an unopened tin of breath mints. Figuring in my previous fifty dollars, that amounted to an average of twenty-five dollars and six cents per day, which was still a decent wage.

  The next morning I discovered two pennies and a comb matted with short curly hairs. The day after that I found a peanut. It was then that I started to worry.

  ***

  I have known people who can quit one job and find another in less time than it takes to quarter a fryer. Regardless of their experience, these people exude charm and confidence. The charm is something they were either born with or had beaten into them at an early age, but what gives them their confidence is the knowledge that someone like me has also filed an application. Mine is a history of almosts. I can type, but only with one finger, and have never touched a computer except to clean it. I never learned to drive, which eliminates delivery work and narrows my prospects to jobs located on or near the bus line. I can sort of hammer things together but have an ingrained fear of electric saws, riding lawn mowers, and any motorized equipment louder or more violent than a vacuum cleaner. Yes, I have experience in sales, but it is limited to marijuana, a product that sells itself. I lack the size and bulk to be a guard, and the aggression necessary for store detectives, crossing guards, and elementary schoolteachers. Years ago I had waited on tables, but it was the sort of restaurant where customers considered the phrase “Have a good day” to be an acceptable tip. On more than one occasion I had found it necessary to physically scrape the cook off the floor and scramble the eggs myself, but this hardly qualified me as a chef.

  It wouldn’t have worked to include the job on my résumé and list it as a reference, as the manager never answered the telephone, fearful that it might be someone phoning in a take-out order. The waiters in Chicago tended to apply with a modeling portfolio in one hand and a gym bag in the other, and it seemed useless to compete. If my shirt was pressed, it was more or less guaranteed that my fly was down.

  When luck was with me I tended to stumble into jobs, none of which were the type to hand out tax statements at the end of the year. People gave me money and I spent it. As a result, I seemed to have fallen through so
me sort of crack.

  You needed certain things to secure a real job, and the longer you went without them, the harder it was to convince people of your worth. Why can’t you work a cash register or operate a forklift? How is it you’ve reached the age of thirty and still have no verifiable employment record? Why are you sweating so, and what force compels you to obsessively activate your cigarette lighter throughout the course of this interview? These questions were never spoken but rather were implied every time a manager turned my application face down on his desk.

  I leafed through the Art Institute’s outdated employment notebook, and page by page it mocked my newly acquired diploma. Most of the listings called for someone who could paint a mural or enamel a map of Normandy onto a medal-lion the size of a quarter. I had no business applying for any of these jobs or even attending the Art Institute in the first place, but that’s the beauty of an art school: as long as you can pay the tuition, they will never, even in the gentlest way, suggest that you have no talent. I was ready to pack it in when I came across the number of a woman who wanted her apartment painted. Bingo. I had plenty of experience there. If anything, I was considered too meticulous a painter. As long as she supplied the ladder and I could carry the paint on the bus, I figured I was set.

  The woman began by telling me she had always painted the apartment herself. “But I’m old now. It hurts my hands to massage my husband’s feet, let alone lift a heavy brush over my head. Yes, sir, I’m old. Withered and weak as a kitten. I’m an old, old woman.” She spoke as if this were something that had come upon her with no prior notice. “All the sudden my back gives out, I’m short of breath, and some days I can’t see more than two feet in front of my face.”

  This was sounding better all the time. I’d learned to be wary of people forced to pay others for a job they used to do themselves. As a rule they tended to be hypercritical, but with her, I didn’t think there would be any problem. It sounded as if she couldn’t see anything well enough to complain about it. I could probably just open the paint can, broadcast the fumes, and call it a day. We made arrangements for me to visit her home the following morning, and I hung up the phone cheering.