Dolosse

stereotaxy

photo
At the campsite in strong, afternoon sunlight Benny’s arm is extended, in his outstretched hand he holds a piece of bagel. A buck, over-friendly from contact with generous campers, cranes his neck, raises his chin; looking with one wary eye into the camera, he grips a corner of the morsel with his lips.


We stood at the foot of the trail that led up to the campsite, a quarter mile, rocky and steep, a quick rise through scrub and over boulders. Tiny wildflowers, the size of a pinkie’s tip, stemmy and white with blues. Race you up to the top, said Benny. I tightened the straps on my pack. Sure, up to the top. Ready, I said. Set, he said. He lurched, started running uphill. We scrambled up the trail. Benny beat me there. At the top I finally stopped, bent at the waist and panting. I said, You cheated. You took off. Before Go. No, he said, I heard you say it right after I said Set. OK, I said. Fine. Fine by me. See if I race you again. Don’t pout, he said, it’s just a friendly race. You didn’t wait, I insisted, for Go.


The I Love Lucy episode where they’re all in Paris and she winds up in jail, but the only way they can communicate with the guard is to have Ricky speak Spanish to an Italian inmate (half-drunk), who speaks just enough German to pass a few words on to Fred, who knows only enough German and French to deepen the initial misunderstanding (is Lucy a thief or isn’t she?) and fill in the last ten minutes of the show. It was playing on a large black and white Philco in the corner of a double-wide-turned-motel-room on the edge of a reservation on the way back from Montana in early June with Benny on the bed staring at me as I watched the TV. We knew how it’d turn out.


photo
Benny at the tomb of Oscar Wilde, late afternoon winter light dapples through branches, slender shadows on stone. One hand on the tomb, he clenches a perfect calla lily between his teeth.


Two AM I called him up and said For god’s sake come and get me I can’t stay here he’s not just mad he’s mad and drunk. Stay the hell out of his way, Benny said, take a walk if you have to. In this neighborhood? At this time of night? He said, I’ll be there in twenty minutes. He was. This was what I meant by thanks.


I keep them in a manila envelope inside a green hanging file, bulge in the middle: letters and photos, postcards, notes passed in class, unflattering sketches of tedious professors. I don’t throw them out. I line them up on the grate in the fireplace and squat to light them. In the brass edge of the fireplace I see myself, hunched and small. I don’t burn them. I retrieve them, drop them into the folder.


On the way back we stopped in Butte, parked in front of a place called the M&M Club, got out, stretched and yawned, cracked our necks. Sunrise. Inside, a room split in thirds: on the left, a long bar; on the right, a diner, counter and stools with a grill behind them; in back, a makeshift casino, glittering, jingling. A solitary ting. We sat at the diner counter and ordered eggs, hash browns and coffee from an crone with a cigarette clamped between her lips. No music. I said, Was für ein gottverdammte Platz, What a godforsaken place. Still angry, he answered (in English), Aren’t they all.


Drink up, Benny said. He was tipping the whiskey bottle into my mug. Stars like pebbles in a riverbed, a shimmer over everything. I gulped, coughed. How’d you get it so cold? He said, Tied it to a rock and left it in that stream.


Benny:
Thanks for the transatlantic call, which did incidentally spur on a jealousy fit with you-know-who. This meant I had to explain to him that of course I seem to have plenty to talk to you about since I’ve known you for over ten years, whereas I‘ve only known him for half a year! Then I got to lie awake in bed for hours pondering the whole irritating notion of jealousy. A damned nuisance of an emotion.


In Wyoming, just west of the state line at a campsite in the Black Hills Forest, Benny made breakfast: coffee and oatmeal over a propane stove. I hiked up a steep, wooded hillside. At the top, trees opened onto a long corridor, a trail along the backbone of a range of hills, steeper mountains in the west, morning clouds, cold, wet air, the tang of pines. I stubbed the toe of my boot against a black and greasy mound: bear scat. I stepped over it and spotted something a few yards off at the base of a tree. On a bed of pine needles I found a plastic jug of laundry detergent, florescent, orange-red. No cap.


photo
Me in front of a train station. Me leaning against the hood of a ‘58 Dodge pickup truck. On the deserted train platform I wear a blue baseball cap, corduroy Wrangler jacket, more layers under flannel shirt and jeans, black boots. My posture shows it’s cold: hands in pockets, shoulders low and forward. The lemon-yellow Dodge was parked on a steep hill, Butte spread out below and behind, a horizon of peaks. T-shirt and jeans, no cap, big grin under fresh beard. This is not the truck we travelled in.


Benny looks away, out the driver’s window. I take that back, he said. I was, once, but not for long. Back home by Turnbull’s place, there was this old split-rail cattle fence. It was late fall, windy. I drove past the fence and saw a post had come undone. I backed up to be sure the cows weren’t out, wandering across the road. There was a certain kind of light – low and thick – shining on the fallen wooden post. I don’t know why. It made me happy. Benny shrugged and raised a hand, thumb and index finger pressed together as if he were pinching a coin. It didn’t last, he said. He dropped his arm, his hand, the inexplicable moment.


Released, Lucy said Merci! Grazie! Danke schön! Oh – thank you!


My dad told me I had the right idea, said Benny. He paused to take another sip from his mug. You’re kidding, I said. I laughed, spilled whiskey on my wrist. It’s true, said Benny. After his second divorce and his latest layoff we were drinking in the bar on the square back home and he’d had too many and bitched about women and work for hours when he took another swig and said Son, sometimes I think you got the right idea – a buddy won’t turn on you and he won’t never leave you bleeding. God, I said, he never met Lee. Yeah, he said, I know, but I didn’t have the heart to tell him he was wrong about that, too.


We stepped into the apartment, nearly midnight. They set down their bags. I led them to the balcony and gestured broadly with one arm, showing off a view of the city, the bay with moonlight on it, houses and cars on hills, the bridge and beyond it Berkeley, Oakland, more hills and in the distance the dark, triangular shadow of Mt. Diablo. Wilkommen Sie sich, I said, zum meiner Hause. That’s nice, said Wim, but German is not Dutch.


Pulloverpulloverpullover, I shouted. North of the reservation, sun setting behind a range of fierce and craggy peaks, impossibly high and black. Benny lurched the pickup onto the shoulder of the road. I opened the door and stepped on a patch of pale, tough weeds. A few yards away a cattle fence ran up the slope of a hill. What? said Benny, what do you see? I know them, I said, I’ve seen them before. Sure you have, he said. They’re in the guide book. No, not like that. I dreamt them.


photo
Seated at a café table in Amsterdam – Benny from the waist up. Behind him, a canal filled with boats and ships, multicolored sails at rest, green-red-white-blue in loose folds, fluttering around masts and ropes, an overcast sky. A warm day, he wears the Ren & Stimpy t-shirt I gave him (red lettering: don’t touch that dial!), his hair is cropped close enough to see the shape of his skull, he wears a trim, brown, short, angular beard. He’s somewhat tanned, somewhat smiling. On the reverse he wrote, Serena, Admiring the Dutch Sailors at the Sail Festival.


map
A scrawl of orange highlight across two pages of a road atlas: out of Chicago, northbound on I94 through Illinois and lower Wisconsin, westbound to LaCrosse on I90 all the way through Minnesota, South Dakota, the northeast corner of Wyoming and into Montana (Billings, Butte, Missoula), north on route 93 to Kalispell, east on route 2 into Waterton-Glacier National Peace Park.


Not mad, he said, disappointed. The needle on the speedometer nudged toward eighty-five. The truck rattled. We came all this way for nothing.


In front of a large window in a laundromat on the edge of Kalispell, Benny and I sat in boxer shorts, no shoes no shirts or pants, watching crows peck at roadkill on the narrow state route. Even near the hot dryers, in full sunlight, it was chilly. A little girl stood beside an old woman at a folding table, turning t-shirts rightside out and matching socks. I dug a ball of pale lint from my navel. I said, He might be my only one good chance. If I can’t make it work there might not be somebody else. A truck sped past, scattering crows. Yeah, I know, said Benny. Some of us are still waiting on our first chance. The girl came over and stood next to us, said, Your dryer’s done. She scratched her neck and stared. You want help folding? The old woman called out to us, She’s a good folder. Crows settled back down onto the pulpy mass on the asphalt. Sure, we said.


The glass at the upper edge of the windshield is blue, a shade that gradually deepens to cobalt. This is the pickup truck that took us to Montana. I bought it from Benny’s mother after his exit, the end of thirty years of Benny trying to get away for good from a nothing town. Tar City, Illinois. Population, Benny said, twelve hundred cretinous bigots. I paid his mom two thousand for it. There’s nothing of Benny left in it, not in the glove box nor in the crack of the bench seat. In the lower right-hand corner of the windshield is a set of parking permits, one for a tennis club (275E), one for a high school (084).


He held me at the airport terminal. He spoke into my shoulder. I’ll call you, he said.


Benny:
I’ve attached a goodie that speaks for itself. From a rooftop café (the Dutch version of a Marshal Field’s coffee counter), a delectable little package of a product called Daddy Sugar. Is it made from Daddies (ground? minced?) or does it – one can only hope – attract them?


Near the Flathead reservation we bought whiskey in a liquor store. A woman stood behind a set of iron bars with rows of bottles along the wall behind her. Not a price tag in sight. How much for the red label, Benny asked. She named a sum. Geez, he said. He peeked into his wallet. Can you break a hundred? Yessir, she said, whistling through the gap in her teeth. You need a bag?


I said, Are you sure the air conditioner doesn’t work? Benny changed his answer. Yes, it does, but it makes the engine eat more gas. We’d spend twice as much getting back. I pulled off my t-shirt and stuck a bare foot out the window. I snapped on the radio: long and sweet and so-patient strings, Bach concerto playing in the overheated cab of the pickup, dry air rushing through the vents, speeding through miles and miles of next-to-nothing. He reached over and shut it off. Two violins in D minor, I said. You like Bach. No, he said. Not with you.


Benny:
And now you are even further away than ever before. Well, I’m further away, too. Nine time zones between us. In spite of this spatial difference I do not intend on letting any part of our friendship diminish.


How can you watch that, he snapped, it’s pathetic, most Americans still can’t speak a second language, it makes me sick to see how little things have changed. I sat up and shrugged. What do you care? You’re getting out soon enough. This country, said Benny, is one colossal, psycho, fucked-up Disneyland. On the Philco a commercial for laundry detergent began. The plastic container was gray. The lid (darker gray) contained an integrated spout which eliminated drip and mess. So unique, the voice explained, it’s patented.


Benny:
And I just bought our tickets to SF. We’ll be arriving late in the evening on Nov. 5 (a Sunday), 10:48 on flight #617 Amer. Trans Air. It was the only flight that day with ATA, which was offering the best price. And Wim got a few more days of vacation so we’ll now be returning here on Nov. 15, leaving SF in the morning.


Driving very late with unseen trees and hills off in the distance and my thinking high and wide like a hawk after a field mouse, Benny opened his eyes, looked over at me and said, How come you put up with his shit, anyway?


We slept in our clothes, old mattress under us and two quilts on top, feet towards tailgate, fiberglas shell above us. Benny said, I don’t get it – why would she fire you? It’s not me, I said, it’s her ex-business partner, she’s mad at him for leaving the store and since he and I are still friends it’s a quick way for her to hurt him. You should sue, he said. Sure – me and my millions – I’ll sue her for all she’s worth and maybe have enough left over for a slice of pie. You like pie, he said, then, Damn it’s cold in here, I had no idea it’d still be this cold here. So what do you do now? Something else, I said, I guess. That’s the beauty of it, there’s always one more shitty place to work. No, he said, you loved it there, the customers loved you, plenty said so. Maybe, I said, I’ll move with you this time. Oh, he said, I knew I shouldn’t have told you yet. You’re right, I said, it’s damned cold in here.


Benny:
We have always complemented each other (fill in what the other has less of) in many ways. I have come to this realization in the last ten years. I know I never said anything about it – maybe because I’ve been moving so much and I never really expected you to follow me around.


He held me at the airport terminal. He spoke into my shoulder.


Benny:
I forgot to tell you I found La Coupola! Sat alone at a table, ordered martinis (naturally) and prayed to Jean Cocteau and Maria Casares. Remember her? In Orpheé she was Death, dispatching the living, moving through mirrors with those astonishing, over-sized, latex gloves. Genius.


Benny said, Are you sure it isn’t sleet? Does it matter, I shouted, we can’t stay here either way – the tent’s no good, the mosquitoes won’t quit and – was that lightning? We can’t go now, he said. We just got here two days ago. With the heel of my boot I kicked a sputtering log off the fire. Benny hopped sideways. He grabbed a raw potato and flung it across the spit. It hit my knee. I picked it up and threw it back. It grazed his shoulder.


Twenty days of temperatures above ninety degrees, fuses blown, air conditioner not working, midnight fights with Lee and then, a September morning, high, fast clouds, a sudden, chilly breeze, the end of a Chicago summer. Five AM that morning, Lee left on a long business trip. I loaded the last of my things into the pickup, slammed the tailgate shut, locked it. From around the corner the Irish landlord appeared. You sure that thing’ll take you where you’re going, he asked. Away, I said, it’ll get me away. We stood around the pickup in the alley. No room for the guitar, the vacuum, a tall, curved Italian floor-lamp. I left them leaning against the brick wall of the next building. He plucked the thickest string on the guitar. And when will your friend be getting back then? Two weeks, I said. Do you think he’ll be needing that vacuum, he asked. He will not, I said, it’s yours. He rolled the vacuum away, saying, Good luck to you sir.


Benny:
And let me be the first – or at least one of the first – to congratulate you on your long overdue escape from the tedious, the irritating, the unhealthy, the all-around wretched or, as some call it, the Midwest. Finally, we’ve both managed to escape the evil City of Right Angles. This is the year of great escapes: me to my refuge and you to yours. Welcome to your coast! May it bless you with fine food, culture and men!


I stood naked at the edge of the stream. Go ahead, said Benny, I’ll toss you the soap once you’re in. I stepped into the water. He’d seen me naked once before, at the end of a long and drunken tour of the sleazier bars in town. You’re thick, he’d said, my favorite. I said, This is a bad idea – I’ll suffer for it if Lee finds out. It took us a while. We were finally finished. It’s late, I said, let’s sleep, I really need some sleep. Sure, he’d said, laying down next to me, inching closer to my side. He’d whispered, It’s already done, you might as well hold me. From the riverbank he shouted, Catch! He tossed the white bar in a high arc. Up to my nuts in freezing mountain water, I fumbled. The soap fell into the stream, bobbed to the surface, was carried swiftly away.


It’s true, said Wim, the bridge has a soul, I felt it when we walked across it. The Golden Gate Bridge, I said, contains the bodies of seven men, all of whom perished during the construction of the main supports. Such a morbid observation, said Wim. To Benny he said, I’m going to take a shower – to wash off the automotive fumes.


The moonlight on Mt. Rushmore was thin and cool, not the dusky light from summer moons or fat harvest moons rising fast above the horizon with indigo sky behind them, but meager and pale, a stingy shade of green on Abe’s nose, Teddy’s mustache, George’s stern brow. Benny said, They want to put Ronnie up there. I grunted, let loose a curt fart. Exactly, said Benny.


sketch
From the neck down – giant lizard. Above – old spinster head, medusa hair, bug eyes, rows of teeth both fine and pointed, wavy cartoon stink lines emanating from her scalp: Professor Maxwell, German Instructor.


Benny:
I didn’t write or call you back because I was so angry. For the first time in my life I had someone to introduce, someone important for you to meet. And you ignored him.


Westbound, almost through with North Dakota, we stopped off in Sturgis. We stepped into a diner called Ruby’s. She poured coffee for old ranchers, hired hands, passing-through bikers. Good morning, I beamed. No answer. Benny’s hair was too long, mine too short, they were distracted by the earrings, too. Benny’s t-shirt read, IN A DREAM YOU SAW A WAY TO SURVIVE AND YOU WERE FULL OF JOY. Ruby sighed, one hand on her hip, the other gripping the coffeepot. Well sit down then, menus’re on the tables. From a three-inch speaker in a radio by the cash register, the Carter Family belted out How sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me. We sat next to three bikers. My grandad used to play this, I told Benny, on a fiddle he made for himself. Mine made clocks, said Benny, entirely from wood. The largest biker cleared his throat, wiped his mustache with the back of his hand and said, My great-great-great grandaddy drove spikes on the western half of the Transcontinental Railroad. You win, I said. He had an easy laugh, broad and deep.


It’s really not much of a party, Benny always said, until someone gets hurt.


The monument of the Battle at Little Big Horn was surrounded by a chain-link fence, shoulder-high. Inside – manicured grass and tombstones. Oversized children in shorts and t-shirts ran around the perimeter, squealing. One ran over Benny’s foot and kept going. Parents read the plaque out loud, took pictures, ignored their offspring. What’s with the fence, Benny said, loudly. Keeps the dead from running off, I said. Keeps them from getting away from these monsters, said Benny. With a slight movement of his left foot he tripped the boy, sent him sprawling face-first on the ground. A wailing. Hoopsie, said Benny.


Benny:
I’d better finish this before my gummi-cola-bottle-sugar-high finally bottoms out. Big hug and plenty smooches from the ‘other Amsterdam’. And Wim says hullo!


During the ten-day visit I found myself alone with Benny for five minutes only once. He doesn’t want us alone together. Benny shrugged. He hardly speaks to me. From the bathroom, Wim called out Benny and a long stretch of Dutch. He turned and left the room.


The commercial ended. Very soon, thanks to confusion and polyglotism, Lucy would be saved. We were laying on the bed. Benny shoved me with a foot, kept shoving until I was on my side on the edge of the mattress. Thanks, I said, meaning something else. He gave one final push that sent me to the floor.


Through the blue glass I saw the mountain range, fierce and black, the black gone purple from the windshield’s edge and something perfect on the tape deck, sweet and slow and steady with singing not in English. Brazilian music, songs by Gilberto, I think. We were speaking German, a language we learned together that Benny wasn’t yet ashamed of. I said, Verstaunlich, astonishing, isn’t it the most astonishing thing you’ve ever seen? Sicherlich, he answered, Surely, definitely.


postcard
On the front, mock headline in Dutch, Vampirehound Slays 52! A tiny, white-haired, confused chihuahua, plastic fangs affixed to its own teeth, sits, staring. On the back, Benny wrote, I peeled this off the bathroom wall in a nearby sex club. Filthy! Filthy! FILTHY! And the pretzels were stale.


In the gas station restroom outside of Bozeman, Benny leaned over the grimy sink and studied his face in the mirror, pulled at his hair and said, I’m sick of this, I knew I should’ve cut it short before we left. Dark brown, nearly three inches long. It’s fine, I said. He rolled his eyes at me. Remember Medusa’s, I asked. He reached over to the soap dispenser, squeezed a dime-sized dollop onto his palm, rubbed it between his fingers and worked it into his hair. It was a trick from our club days, a substitute for the gel we’d sweat out of our hair after dancing for hours. It smelled like cherry gum. I stuck an index finger up my nose. You smell purdy, I said. Benny showed the mirror his profile. Don’t I know it.


He held me at the airport terminal.


On cable, he’d seen a certain kind of operation once, they mapped the skull and laid a grid on its surface using a device with probes of varying lengths and angles to ensure the most exact surgery possible. He said, When they opened the skull you could see the thing – the color of plain putty and some blood around the entry point. In the fading light of an ochre sunset, we stood at a cliff’s edge, looking down at the Badlands. Nodding at the folds and wrinkles in the land below us, Benny said, “It looked like this.”