Beautiful Losers Read online

  – I guess I owe you all an apology.

  43

  It is my impression that the above is apocalyptic. The word apocalyptic has interesting origins. It comes from the Greek apokalupsis, which means revelation. This derives from the Greek apokaluptein, meaning uncover or disclose. Apo is a Greek prefix meaning from, derived from. Kaluptein means to cover. This is cognate with kalube which is cabin, and kalumma which means woman’s veil. Therefore apocalyptic describes that which is revealed when the woman’s veil is lifted. What have I done, what have I not done, to lift your veil, to get under your blanket, Kateri Tekakwitha? I find no mention of this feast in any of the standard biographers. The two principal sources of her life are the Jesuit Fathers Pierre Cholenec and Claude Chauchetière. Both were her confessors at the mission Sault Saint-Louis to which Catherine Tekakwitha came in the autumn of 1677 (breaking her promise to Uncle). Of P. Cholenec we have Vie de Catherine Tegakouita, Premiere Vierge Irokoise, in manuscript. Another Vie, written in Latin, was sent to P. Général de la Compagnie de Jésus in 1715. Of P. Chauchetière we have La Vie de la B. Catherine Tekakouita, dite à présent la Saincte Sauvegesse, written in 1695, the manuscript of which is at present preserved in the archives of Collège Sainte-Marie. In those archives rests another important document written by Remy (Abbé, P.S.S.), entitled Certificat de M. Remy, curé de la Chine, des miracles faits en sa paroisse par I’intercession de la B. Cath. Tekakwita, written in 1696.1 love the Jesuits because they saw miracles. Homage to the Jesuit who has done so much to conquer the frontier between the natural and the supernatural. Under countless disguises, now as a Cabinet Minister, now as a Christian priest, now as a soldier, a Brahmin, an astrologer, now as the Confessor to a monarch, now as a mathematician, now as a Mandarin – by a thousand arts, luring, persuading, compelling men to acknowledge, under the weight of recorded miracles, that the earth is a province of Eternity. Homage to Ignatius Loyola, struck down by a French Protestant bullet in the breach of Pampeluna, for in his sick room, in the cave of Manresa, this proud soldier saw the Mysteries of heaven, and these visions brought forth the mighty Society of Jesus. This Society has made bold to assert that the marble face of Caesar is only a mask of God, and in the imperial appetite for worldly power the Jesuit has understood the divine thirst for souls. Homage to my teachers in the orphanage of downtown Montréal who smelled of semen and incense. Homage to the priests of crutch-filled rooms who have penetrated an illusion, who know that lameness is only an aspect of perfection, just as weeds are flowers which no one collects. Homage to the walls of crutches which are weed museums. Homage to the alchemical stench of burning wax which bespeaks an intimacy with ghouls. Homage to the vaulted halls where we knelt face to face with the shit-enhaloed Accuser of the World. Homage to those who prepared me for the freezing vigil tonight, the only material sardine in a can of ghosts. Homage to those old torturers who did not doubt the souls of their victims, and, like the Indians, allowed the power of the Enemy to nourish the strength of the community. Homage to those who believed in the Adversary and could therefore flourish in the manly style of the warrior. Homage to desks in our old classroom, that little brave armada which, year after year, attempts the Flood with a green crew. Homage to our soiled books which were municipal gifts, especially the Catechism which invited marginal obscenity and contributed to the maintenance of the lavatory as a thrilling temple of the Profane. Homage to the great slabs of marble with which the cubicles were constructed, to which no smear of shit could ever adhere. Here was enshrined the anti-Lutheran possibility of matter which succumbed easily to washing. Homage to marble in the Halls of Excrement, Maginot Line against the invasion of Papal Fallibility. Homage to the parables of the orphans’ lavatory, the yellow failure of the porcelain proving a single drop of water was as powerful as the Ice Age. Oh somewhere, let something remember us strong orphans lined up in single file to use one cake of soap for our finger warts on sixty hands in order to appease Inspection. Homage to the brave boy who bit off his warts who was my friend F. Homage to the one who couldn’t sink his teeth into himself who was the coward me, who was the author of this history, and who is frightened at this moment in his booth above the drifts of Canada, whose digit wart has been distorted by years of pencil erosion. May I get warm with homage? I have offended everyone, and I see that I am frozen by everyone’s automatic magic.

  – F.! Don’t eat your warts!

  – I will eat my warts in front of the whole world. You better too.

  – I’m waiting for mine to clear up.

  – What?

  – Waiting for them to clear up.

  – Clear up?

  F. struck his forehead and ran from cubicle to cubicle like a man waking up a village, opening each door and addressing each squatting machine.

  – Come out, come out, F. shouted. He’s waiting for them to clear up. Come and see the poor fish who’s waiting for them to clear up.

  Stumbling over their lowered ankle-chain trousers my classmates poured out of the cubicles, shuffling awkwardly in the rubberless loci of their underwear. Out they rushed, some in the midst of masturbation, comics sliding from their kneecaps, romantic information scratched in the varnished door half-read. They closed around us in a circle, pressing in to see F.’s freak. F. swung my hand into the air like a boxing gesture, and I dangled beneath his grip, my whole body withering like a sheaf of tobacco to be auctioned off by the Liggett and Myers midget bellboy.

  – Don’t humiliate me, F., I pleaded.

  – Step right up, folks. Look at the man who can wait. Look at the man who has a thousand years on his hands.

  They shook their clustered faces in disbelief.

  – I wouldn’t have missed this for anything, one of them said.

  – Ha ha ha.

  F. flung down my hand without letting go and I fell in a heap at his feet. He placed his Charity Shoe heel on my thumb with just enough pressure to make me give up any notion of escape.

  – Under my foot is the hand that will merely wave good-by to a number of warts.

  – Ho ho.

  – That’s rich.

  O Reader, do you know that a man is writing this? A man like you who longed for a hero’s heart. In arctic isolation a man is writing this, a man who hates his memory and remembers everything, who was once as proud as you, who loved society as only an orphan can, who loved it as a spy in the milk and honey. A man like you writes this most daring passage, who dreamed like you of leadership and gratitude. No no please, not the cramps, not the cramps. Take away the cramps and I promise never to interrupt, I swear, O you Gods and Goddesses of the Pure Event.

  – Ho ho.

  – Priceless.

  Early morning as this takes place. There wasn’t much sun behind the barred opaque windows of the lavatory but we weren’t allowed to use the lights in the morning except during winter. Dirty aquarium light in which things supposed to sparkle only gleam like a half-dollar hidden in a small jar of petroleum jelly. Each white sink, every spike on the walls between the cubicles (so you couldn’t climb) had its jar of Vaseline. Shiniest of all were the bare kneecaps of my scornful audience, whitest of all were the slum-white shins of the older pituitary boys who were beginning to hair. With an intake of breath F. hushed their derision. I tried to catch his eye so I could beg him. I lay waiting for punishment on the Vaseline-colored marble tiles. He began his harangue in an objective tone, but I knew what was to follow.

  – Some believe that the wart will clear up. Some are of the opinion that the wart will vanish with time. Some are reluctant to consider the wart at all. There are even those who deny the existence of warts. There are those who claim that the wart is beautiful and encourage it wherever it occurs. Some argue that warts are useful, are susceptible to education, and can learn to speak. Experts have arisen on this question. Theories developed concerning techniques. At first the methods were brutal. A school arose around the idea that the wart should not be coerced. A radical wing believes that the wart c
an master only languages of the Sinotic group. A lunatic fringe holds it error to force any human language on the wart since there is a unique wart tongue which the instructors themselves must first comprehend. A very few certifiable individuals insist that the wart is already voluble, has been so forever, and we have only to learn the way to listen.

  – Get to the point, F.

  – So what?

  – How long before the torture?

  Having bored them with great daring, F. now launched the dramatic phase of the credo. He drove down on his heel to get a shriek from me. Suddenly it was used Vaseline, and the light was like the holes in dead floating minnows, and one had a sensation that all the toilets were blocked and the teachers would have to come now and learn too much about us.

  – I do not believe that the wart will “clear up.” To me the wart is ugly. I’m a simple man. There’s enough talking as it is, far as I see. To me a wart is a secret I don’t want to keep. When I see wart I think scalpel.

  – Ahhh!

  As he said his last word he had shot his hand out in a salute. The salute ended in a penknife, just as a bayonet illumines unmistakenly the use of a rifle. The orphans gasped.

  – When I see wart I think Speedy Removal. I think Before and After. I think Miracle Drugs. I think In Just Ten Days.

  – Go. Go.

  – I think Yours For Only. I think Try This SCIENTIFIC HOME Method. I think RUSH ME MY FREE. Grab him, men!

  They swarmed over me and pulled me to my feet. My arm was seized and stretched out straight. They lined up along my arm like sailors hauling a rope. Their backs were in the way and I could not see my hand. Someone flattened my palm against the porcelain and spread my fingers.

  – Yes, F. cried above the clamor, I think Act Now. I think Don’t Delay. I think This Offer Expires.

  – Help!

  – Stuff his mouth.

  – Mmmmmm. Mmmmmmm.

  – Now! Slice! R-i-i-i-p!

  I tried to imagine that I was just one of those backs tugging at the arm, just one of the sailors, and that a long way off they were carving butter.

  44

  The story of Catherine Tekakwitha’s feast is apocalyptic, as I started to say. In fact, it was my wife Edith who told me the story. I remember the evening perfectly. I had just returned from a weekend in Ottawa, where F. had arranged for me to have access to the Archives. The three of us were using the sunlamp in our basement apartment. F. said that I was the only one who could lie naked because both he and Edith had already seen my prick, but they had not seen each other’s parts (a lie). F.’s logic was infallible but still I felt queer about taking down my pants in front of them, and it was true I would never have let Edith get nude or let F. strut around.

  – But I’d rather not, I said weakly.

  – Nonsense, darling.

  – At least one of us should get a proper tan.

  They stared at me as I rolled them down over my knees, worried that I had wiped myself imperfectly maybe and there was tell-tale. Truth was, I felt that F. was using me like an advertisement for his own body. I was the tattered billboard for his reality. His expression seemed to say to Edith: If a thing like that can breathe and get up every morning, think of the fuck you can get off of me.

  – Lie between us.

  – Uncross your legs.

  – Take your hands away.

  And when Edith rubbed on the Sun and Ski I didn’t know whether to get an erection. On Sunday nights, such as this was, Edith and F. used to inject themselves with a little heroin, which is harmless and safer than alcohol. I was still of the old school in those days and considered it a killer drug, so I always passed up their offers to include me. That night it struck me that they were extremely ritualistic while preparing the hypodermic syringe and “toasting” the “horse.”

  – Why are you both so solemn?

  – Oh, nothing.

  Edith rushed over to me and hugged tight, and then F. joined her, and I felt like some Maidenform dream in an airport for Kamikaze pilots saying farewell.

  – Get off! You don’t have to suck up to me. I won’t squeal.

  – Good-by, my darling.

  – Good-by, old friend.

  – Oh, get on with it, both of you. Go on, you degenerates, fly off to your crutch-supported Paradise.

  – Good-by, Edith said sadly once more, and I should have known that this was not an ordinary Sunday night.

  They rustled among their veins for one that still carried blood, tapped the needles under the flesh, waited for the red signal of a “hit,” and then squirted the solution into circulation. Withdrawing the needles abruptly, they fell back onto the couch. After minutes of stupor Edith said:

  – Darling?

  – What is it?

  – Don’t answer so quickly.

  – Yes, F. added. Do us a favor.

  – I can’t watch this, my wife and my friend.

  Angrily I stalked into the bedroom, slamming the door. I suppose they saw my buttocks in a blur as I left. One of the reasons I had left was because watching them use the needles always gives me a hard-on and, since I had chosen not to get one when the Sun and Ski was rubbed, I considered that getting one now would put me in an abnormal light. Secondly I wanted to sneak in Edith’s drawers which I did every Sunday night while they were senseless in their narcotic world, and this illegal inspection, because of many failures which this chronicle has made clear, had become my chief amusement. But this was not your usual Sunday night. I loved her cosmetic drawer best of all, because it was bright and fragrant, and little bottles fell over when you pulled it out, and a solitary white-root woman’s whisker might still adhere to the tweezers, or her thumbprint on an oily pancake cap – it was strange, but with this evidence I somehow got closer to her beauty, just as a thousand pilgrims cherish a relic, a formaldehyde organ of a saint few of them would have acclaimed in the flesh. I pulled the drawer knob, anticipating the lovely tinkle, when! There was nothing in the drawer but smashed glass, two cheap-looking rosaries, several ampules of colorless liquid, and some scraps of paper. The wooden bottom of the drawer was wet. Carefully I extracted one of the scraps of paper which turned out to be a coupon.

  But Edith’s legs were beautiful! And here was another:

  What was going on here? What could Edith want with these pathetic invitations? What went on at 134 East 92nd Street? Was it an amputated-leg pool? In a corner of the drawer, half-soaked, was the beginning of the explanation. I can still see it. I can still reproduce it in my brain, word for word.

  The paper in my fist, I ran from the bedroom. Edith and F. were asleep on the couch, respectably apart. On the coffee table were strewn the gruesome appliances of their habit, the needles, the eyedroppers, the belt, and – a dozen empty Perpetual Lourdes Water Ampules. I shook them both by their clothes.

  – How long has this been going on?

  I visited each of them with a close-up of the ad.

  – How long have you been putting this into your bodies?

  – Tell him, Edith, F. whispered.

  – This is the first time we’ve used it.

  – Tell him everything, Edith.

  – Yes, I demand to know everything.

  – We made a mixture.

  – We mixed two different types of water.

  – I’m listening.

  – Well, some of the water was from the Lourdes Ampules and some of it was from –

  – Yes?

  – Tell him, Edith.

  – Was from Tekakwitha’s Spring.

  – So you’re not drug addicts any more?

  – Is that all you want to ask? F. said wearily.

  – Leave him alone, F. Come sit between us.

  – I don’t like sitting between you naked.

  – We won’t look.

  – All right.

  I checked their eyes with a match, I threw punches that didn’t land, and when I was sure they weren’t peeking I sat down.

  – Well, what
does it do?

  – We don’t know.

  – Tell him the truth, Edith.

  – We do know.

  And, as if she were about to begin an explanation with an anecdote, Edith fumbled for my hand and told me the story of Catherine Tekakwitha’s Feast long ago in Québec. F. took my other hand as she spoke. I think they were both weeping, for there was mucus in her voice, and F. seemed to tremble like someone falling off to sleep. That night in the bedroom Edith did whatever I wanted. I used not one radio command for her busy mouth. A week later she was under the elevator, a “suicide.”

  45

  I’m freezing to death in this damn treehouse. I thought Nature would be better than my little semen basement kitchen. I thought the noise of bird would be more sweet than the noise of elevator. Experts with tape recorders say that what we hear as a single bird note is really ten or twelve tones with which the animal weaves many various beautiful liquid harmonies. This he proves by slowing down his tape. I demand National Health! I demand an operation! I want a slow transistor machine sewn in my head. Otherwise let Science keep its insights out of the newspapers. The Canadian summer passed like a Halloween mask, now the cold countryside day after day. Is this all the candies we get? Where is the science-fiction world of tomorrow they promised us today? I demand a change of climate. What bravado impelled me to come here without my radio? Three months without my radio, humming the obsolete Top Ten, my Top Ten removed so abruptly from history, cut off from the dynamic changes of jukebox stock market, my poor Top Ten that no thirteen-year-olds energize by slippery necking on the carpet beside the hi-fi, my over-serious Top Ten goose-stepping through my head like the generals of a junta who do not know the coup d’état has been staged the very night of the formal ball, my dear old Top Ten like a battalion of gold-sleeved tramway conductors patiently steering for seniority and retirement while the subway has been decreed in a board room and all the streetcars are in museums, my awkward Top Ten of electric echoes and longing puberty voices crying down my heart like a squad of bare-thighed cheer-leaderettes turning cartwheels before the empty benches, their delicate bra-straps bunching the skin ever so sweetly, their shiny fluorescent underwear flashing out of little upside-down pleated skirts as they pivot on their friendship fingers, their school-spirit satin-clad gym-trained firm little rah-rah bums describing unutterably lovely and brief rainbow-shaped streaks of mauve and orange, the round metal mouthpieces of their megaphones warm with Alma Maters and smelling of white lipstick, and for whom these moist Technicolor acrobatics? for whom these inflammatory arcs of unskirted exhibition panties gleaming through the cheers like so many expertly peeled fresh figs, yes, a million seedy secrets in each sealed purse, wheeling down the damp sidelines into the stumpy mouth of time? for whom do you sail, little bums of the Top Ten? The Leader of the Pack lies mangled under his Honda in a wreck of job prospects, the ghostly Negro fullback floats down the wintry gridiron into Law School prizes, and the lucky football you autographed takes pictures of the moon. Oh, my poor Top Ten, longing to perish in popularity, I have forgotten my radio, so you languish with the other zombies in my memory, you whose only honor is hara-kiri with the blunt edge of returned identification bracelets, my weary Top Ten hoping to be forgotten like escaped balloons and kites, like theater stubs, like dry ball pens, like old batteries, like coiled sardine keys, like bent aluminum partitioned eaten tv dinner plates – I hoard you like the stuff of my chronic disease, I sentence you to National Anthem hard labor, I deny you martyrdom in tomorrow’s Hit Parade, I turn you into boomerangs, my little Kamikazes, you long to be the Lost Tribes but I burn arm numbers, I pour miracle drugs in the Death House, from bridges I hang suicide nets. Saints and friends, help me out of History and Constipation. Make the birds sing slower, make me listen faster. Remove yourself from this treehouse, Pain, you tree-climbing frog, large as industry.