Beautiful Losers Read online

  26

  Somewhere in my research I learned about Tekakwitha’s Spring. It was a Jesuit speaking sweetly of it in a Schoolbook. Il y a longtemps que je t’aime. I must have paused in the library. Out of the dust I hummed the old running tune. I thought of icy streams and clear pools. Christ spoke through the priest for half a paragraph. He speaks about a spring called Tekakwitha’s Spring. The priest is our Edouard Lecompte, and because of this half paragraph I know he loved the girl. He died December 20, 1929, le 20 décembre 1929. You died, Father. This priest I take into my heart whom I did not like at the beginning because he seemed to write for the Church and not the Lily How It Grows. The spring refreshed me that night as did the snows of another. I felt its clear crystal. It brought the created world into my cubicle, the cold and radiant outlines of the things that be. Entre le village, he writes, Entre le village et le ruisseau Cayudetta, Between the village and the brook Cayudetta, au creux d’un bosquet solitaire, in the hollow of a lonely grove, sortant de dessous un vieux tronc d’arbre couvert de mousse, ensuing from beneath an old moss-covered tree trunk, chantait et chante encore de nos jours, sang and in our own day still sings, une petite source limpide, a small clear spring.… It was here the girl drew water, each day, for nine years. How much you must know, Katerine Tekakwitha. What a dream of sobriety, glorious sobriety, glorious as the shine of facts, feel of skin, what a hunger for sobriety assaults me here found among ripped firecracker carcasses, selfish burns, spilled personal multitudes. 3285 times you came to this old tree. Long live History for telling us. I want to know you as you knew the path. How tiny the path of your deer shoes. The fragrance of forests is in the world. It clings to our leather clothes wherever we go, even to the whip hidden in our wallet. I believe in Gregory’s sky, crowded with saints, yes, Unlettered Pope. The path is crowded with facts. The cold pine river is still there. Let the facts drag me out of the kitchen. Let them keep me from playing myself like a roulette wheel. How good to know something she did.

  27

  The twenty-seventh day since I began because of a promise to F. Nothing works. I keep sleeping the wrong times and missing movie schedules. Many more burns. Many less shit. Gone are all the 12-ball roman candles, most of the 64 sparklers, the fraudulent whistling bomb, the so-called cosmic fountains. Come is much dirty underwear, real and dirty underwear, which once, sealed in polyethylene packages, promised me such marble flanks. There is hair under my fingernails.

  28

  If Edith saw this room she would vomit. Why did you kill her for me, F.?

  29

  I will explain how F. got his extraordinary body. Once again I will explain it to myself. HOW JOE’S BODY BROUGHT HIM FAME INSTEAD OF SHAME: headline on the back of an American comic which we both read one afternoon when we were thirteen. We were sitting on some trunks in an unused solarium on the third floor of the orphanage, a glass-roofed room dark as any other because of the soot deposited by a badly placed chimney – we often hid here. JOE’S BODY was the concern of an ad for a muscle-building course. His triumph is traced in seven cartoon panels. Can I recall?

  1. Joe is skeletal. His legs are piteous sticks. His red bathing suit is the baggy boxer type. His voluptuous girl friend is with him. Her thighs are thicker than his. The calm sea beyond contrasts with Joe’s ordeal. A man with a grand physique is humiliating him. We cannot see the torturer’s face, but the girl informs Joe that the man is a well-known local nuisance.

  2. A tiny sail has appeared on the horizon. We see the bully’s face. We appreciate his beery chest. The girl friend has drawn up her knees and is wondering why she ever dated this no-assed weakling. Joe has been pulled to his feet by the bully and now must sustain a further insult.

  3. The sail is gone. Some minuscule figures play ball at the edge of the sea. Seagulls appear. An anguished Joe stands beside the girl he is losing. She has put on her white sunhat and has turned her tits from him. She answers him over her right shoulder. Her body is massive and maternal, low-breasted. Somehow we have an impression of stretched muscles in her abdomen.

  JOE: The big bully! I’ll get even some day.

  HER: Oh, don’t let it bother you, little boy!

  4. Joe’s room, or the remains of it. A cracked picture hangs askew on the green wall. A broken lamp is in motion. He is kicking a chair over. He wears a blue blazer, tie, white ducks. He clenches his fist, a clawlike articulation from a wrist thin as a bird leg. The girl friend lies in some panel of the imagination snuggling in the bully’s armpit, winking out a thousand shameful anecdotes about Joe’s body.

  JOE: Darn it! I’m sick and tired of being a scarecrow! Charles Axis says he can give me a REAL body. All right! I’ll gamble a stamp and get his FREE book.

  5. LATER. Could this be Joe? He flexes a whole map of jigsaw muscles before his dresser mirror.

  JOE: Boy! It didn’t take Axis long to do this for me! What MUSCLES! That bully won’t shove me around again!

  Is this the same red bathing suit?

  6. The beach. The girl has come back. She is having a good time. Her body is relaxed and hips have appeared. Her left hand is raised in a gesture of surprised delight as her vision of Joe undergoes a radical transformation. Joe has just thrown a punch which lands in an electrical blaze on the bully’s chin, knocking him off balance, knitting his eyebrows with amazed pain. Beyond we have the same white strand, the same calm sea.

  JOE: What! You here again? Here’s something I owe you!

  7. The girl touches Joe’s memorable biceps with her right hand. Her left shoulder and left arm are obscured by Joe’s massive chest but we know that she has shoved it down the back of his tight red bathing suit and is working with his testicles.

  HER: Oh, Joe! You ARE a real man after all!

  AN ATTRACTIVE GIRL SITTING ON THE SAND NEARBY: GOSH! What a build!

  THE ENVIOUS MAN BESIDE HER: He’s already famous for it!

  Joe stands there in silence, thumbs hooked in the front of his bathing suit, looking at his girl, who leans lasciviously against him. Four thick black words appear in the sky and they radiate spears of light. None of the characters in the panel seems aware of the celestial manifestation exploding in terrific silence above the old marine landscape. HERO OF THE BEACH is the sky’s announcement.

  F. studied the ad for a long time. I wanted to get on with what we had come for, the scuffling, the dusty caresses, the comparison of hair, the beauty of facing a friend and binding two cocks in my hand, one familiar and hungry, one warm and strange, the flash along the whole length. But F.’s eyes were wet, his lips trembling as he whispered:

  – Those words are always in the sky. Sometimes you can see them, like a daytime moon.

  The afternoon darkened over the soot-layered glass roof. I waited silently for F.’s mood to change and I suppose I fell asleep, for I started at the sound of scissors.

  – What are you clipping out there, F.?

  – Charles Axis thing.

  – You going to send away?

  – Bet your fucking life.

  – But it’s for thin guys. We’re fat.

  – Shut your fucking face.

  – We’re fat, F.

  – Smack! Wham! Pow!

  – Fat.

  – Socko! Sok! Bash!

  – Fat fat fat fat fat fat fat!

  I lit a stolen match and we both huddled over the comic which had fallen to the floor. At the right-hand side of the ad there is an actual photo of the man who holds the title “The World’s Most Flawlessly Formed Man.” Oh! I remember! In a flawless bathing suit he stands on the clip-away coupon.

  – But look at him, F., the guy’s got no hair.

  – But I have hair. I have hair.

  His hands are fists, his smile is Florida, he does not look serious, he doesn’t really care about us, maybe he is even a little fat.

  – Just inspect this photo, F. The guy is soft in the gut.

  – He’s fat, all right.

  – But–

  He’s f
at. He understands the fat. Use your eyes! Look at his face. Now look at Plastic Man’s face. Charles Axis wants to be our uncle. He is one of us slobs who dwells pages behind Plastic Man. But can’t you see that he has made his peace with Plastic Man? With Blue Beetle? With Captain Marvel? Can’t you see that he believes in the super-world?

  – F., I don’t like it when your eyes get shiny like that.

  – The Fat! The Fat! He’s one of us! Charles Axis is on our side! He’s with us against Blue Beetle and Ibis and Wonder Woman!

  – F., you’re talking funny again.

  – Charles Axis has an address in New York, look, 405 West 34th St., New York I! Don’t you think he knows about Krypton? Don’t you see him suffering on the outer limits of the Bat Cave? Has anyone ever lived so close to fantastic imaginary muscles?

  – F.!

  – Charles Axis is all compassion, he’s our sacrifice! He calls the thin but he means both the fat and the thin; he calls the thin because it is worse to be fat than thin; he calls the thin so that the fat can hear and come and not be named!

  – Get away from that window!

  – Charles! Charles! Charlie! I’m coming, I’m coming to be with you at the sad edge of the spirit world!

  – F.! Uppercut! Sok! Thud!

  – Puff! *##! Sob! Thank you, my friend, I guess you kinda saved my life.

  That was the last time I ever equaled F. in a physical contest. He gave Charles Axis fifteen minutes a day in the privacy of his room. Fat fell away or turned to muscle, he increased his chest measurement, he was not ashamed to strip for sports. Once on the beach a huge man in a very white bathing suit kicked sand in his face as we sat sunbathing on a small towel. F. merely smiled. The huge man stood there, hands on hips, then he performed a little hop and jump, like a soccer kickoff, and kicked sand in his face once again.

  – Hey! I cried: Quit kicking that sand in our faces! F., I whispered: That man is the worst nuisance on the beach.

  The bully ignored me completely. He seized F.’s thick hard wrist in his own massive fist and yanked F. to a standing position.

  – Listen here, he snarled, I’d smash your face … only you’re so skinny you might dry up and blow away.

  – Why did you let him shove you around?

  F. sat down meekly as the man strode away.

  – That was Charles Axis.

  – But that man is the worst nuisance on the beach.

  30

  A note! At the bottom of the box of firecrackers I find a note.

  Dear Friend

  Turn on the radio

  your dear dead friend

  F.

  At the bottom. How well he knew me. I held the message (written on a telegraph form) against my cheek. Oh, F., help me, for a grave divides me from all that I love.

  RADIO: .… to Mrs. T. R. Voubouski, 56784 Clanranald, to the three nurses in the Barclay dormitory from you-know-who, a real climbing disk by Gavin Gate and the Goddesses – and don’t forget, during this hour of the Early Morning Record Gal you can phone your dedications in –

  DRUMS SHUFFLING: SHNN shnn shnn SHNN shnn

  ELECTRIC INSTRUMENTS: Zunga zunga zunga (a promise of incessant regular sex pumping)

  GAVIN GATE: I could have left zunga zunga zunga (he’s got all the time in the world – he’s traveled a long path to tell this cruel story)

  and said (electric pulse breathing)

  I told you so

  GODDESSES: told you so (a battalion of black girls, his officers

  recruited from bombed gospel altars, they

  ambush me with unspecific hatred and white

  teeth)

  GAVIN GATE: I could have told

  the whole wide world

  he leave you sad and blue

  GODDESSES: sad and blue

  GAVIN GATE: Shaid I coov ran

  GODDESSES: Ahhhhhhhh

  and said ahhhhhhhh

  it good for you ahhhhhhhh

  to geh now ahhhhhhhh (STOP!)

  GAVIN GATE: But I know when it hurt you

  DRUM: Smack!

  GAVIN GATE: don’t you know it hurt me too?

  GODDESSES: hurt me too (they had soared away into universal love suffering but now they are back in uniform, more precise now, as if they had vowed to guard themselves against a fatal emotional excess, chop/chop/chop/)

  DRUMS CLIMB FIVE STEPS. GAVIN GATE WHEELS OUT OF HIS CORNER FOR THE SECOND ROUND. THIS WILL BE TO THE DEATH. THE GODDESSES ARE READY TO SUCK-MURDER THE VICTOR.

  GAVIN GATE: I could have said

  that you had

  it coming to you (Who are you Gavin Gate? You have a strange command. I think you have been through some ordeal and have learned too much. You are the king of some slum block and you have handed down Laws)

  GODDESSES: coming to you (they take off their luminous bras and drive to fearful heart like a squadron of kamikaze)

  GAVIN GATE: When you walked out

  and turned

  your back on me

  GODDESSES: back on me

  GAVIN GATE: I pleaded Baby (his strength is established, his troops are in razor order, now he can weep over us)

  Ohh No!

  Please Plea Please!

  GODDESSES: Ahhhhhhhhhhh

  Baby don’t go!

  Cause I knew he would hurt you (back to superior narrative style)

  DIDACTIC DRUM THUMP

  Don’t you know it hurt me too?

  GODDESSES: hurt me too

  Ah

  Ah

  Ah (step down the marble stairs to lift his head)

  GAVIN GATE: He said he had you

  dancing on a string (in some sad locker-room where all male lovers recreate, Gavin has heard the details of the lay)

  GODDESSES: Ahhhhhhhh (Revenge! revenge! but don’t we still bleed, Sisters?)

  GAVIN GATE: As far as love goes

  you were

  GODDESSES: Hah! (they purge their hatred with this exclamation)

  GAVIN GATE: just another fling

  Oh I oh oh oh

  may be a fool (but we know you’re not, nor am I, for we deal with sacred material. Oh, God! All states of love give power!) to love you the way I do