Richy: I first met Felix up by the Bunker Hill Monument, where he used to live before they chased him out. I used to help the milkman deliver milk in those glass jars door to door. It was my first job. I would love the way, in the right light, the milk would seem to glimmer and glow, and it was always so quiet that early in the morning, all those parallel dreams at work. One morning I came upon the bare-chested Felix gleaming in the morning sun, washing his Lincoln limo, pressing his pecs against the glass like the boobilacious Lucille in Cool Hand Luke (nobody can eat 50 eggs), all suds and sinfulness. He had wild blond hair (a classic Teuton bob) and blue eyes and his car, his ve-hi-cool, was so black. I yearned. He waved. We exchanged numbers.
JB: The first time I ever saw Felix was when he pulled up in front of the high school and you, Richy, powered down the window and said, Get in, and Felix got out of the car, looking at that time, as I recall, like Bruce Lee from The Green Hornet; and he opened the back door of the limo, and stood there smiling, you know, in an Oriental 'welcome' way that said, 'Here, have some dim sum, but don't you f*ck with me.' I said, Hi, and he said, Hiyeeee. School had just been let out for the day and students were teeming from the factory. And when they saw you and they saw Felix and they saw the limo, and me heading for it, they started in with the catcalls and japes, like a prison yard full of sharks and snakes. Richy Steele, someone yelled to jeers, we always knew you were a f*ggot. And look at BJ Crowe. And homo eructum in black. You guys a me'nage a trois? And then some mothers took note, alarmed, writing down his plate number, exchanging actionable glances, thumb texting madly like kalimbas de chora. And our classmates taunted us with salty chanson:
Chauffeur, the gofer with limousine
Buggering wiggly boys with Vaseline.
And I got into the car -- now I had to get away-and we drove off, and Cato looked at me in the rear view mirror and asked through designer shades, JB, have you ever been to Avalon?
Cindy: Actually, Richy, your memory fails you. I was in the back of the limo that day, watching Felix wash the car, saw you with the milk and the look of desire, but there was no exchange of eyebeams or numbers betwixt you. That was wishful thinking. But I determined that you should meet him; I could see a mutual attraction you might share. Right after you left, he got into the back of the limo with me, all wet and dripping black, like the Inkman Cometh. I pointed out the window and said, Look, the Monument looks like a giant white co*k. Yes, he laughed, the British probably dropped their muskets and ran for the harbor when they saw this new Master Narrative extended 200 feet into the clouds. I believe it's made of marble. Oh, he says, I guess I just took it for granite. And we sat in the 9 O'co*k shadow of the Master Narrative, me giving the master's narrative a handjob, while he read Monique Wittig's Les Gue'rillà �res in passionate French cadenzas, which I did not understand, although I was inspired by its strident musicality, the same way Brecht can get up your spine. As I ducked away from his bliss blast, I mentioned you, Richy, and how you should hook up, and he said I should bring you by the bus station, where he usually picked up boys, and so we set a date. Then he told me to get dressed and sent me on my way, handing me a Simone de Beauvoir tome to read, and saying, You mustn't f*ck and suck your way to the top. You must take a rock to that glass ceiling. And just then, I sh*t you not, the Rolling Stones' "Shattered" came on the radio. Trippy synchronicity. But I forgot my bra and my breasts did the mambo all day.
Felix: Well, I'm not 'there' to challenge or clarify, but because their separate accounts are not entirely accurate or reliable, I sit there in their minds, as all falsity must, in the form of self-doubt, a logical rather than moral itch. It is a fact that I did not meet Cindy until many years later. She had given up her university teaching position (literary studies) after radical feminists rose to power in the School and turned post-modernism studies into a misanthropy crusade. PMS has taken hold, she said. So, she started a literary magazine, or rather she re-vamped f*ck You magazine (calling it f*ck You II), a Sixties lit sheet full of collages and cubes and psilocybin-influenced polemics-in short, all the fun stuff she claimed was there in post-modernism before the feminists hijacquelined the engine. Yes, we did meet briefly in the back of my limo one time, where she interviewed me: Expound on new epistemologies and the tyranny of all texts, she said, and so I did. But no handjobs or advice or monuments (does she not realize the monuments came many years after the British stopped polishing each others' helmets and were rebuffed, not before?). And while it's true that I met Richy for the first time, not with Donne-like visual dialectics in the shadow of the stiffy obelisk, but at the Greyhound bus station, where he came on his own initiative, like all the boys, all the little hustlers looking to roll a f*g for his money or get a free blowjob. What JB says is largely true: I met him for the first time in front of his school, and my arrival was met with the jeers and derisions of guttersnipes forming gauntlets. Hiyeeee.
*
Where I live, in a one square mile tract of land, in the shadow of the Tobin Bridge, along the Mystic River, we are ruled by the parochial and small. Where I live, Catholic self-righteousness marries hypocrisy and engenders vigilantism. Where I live, young men jump into the Oily to prove their manhood. Where I live, 'f*ggots' and 'niggers' and 'uppity bitches' are not tolerated. Where I live, we dream of doing violence to our heteroglossic neighbours. Where I live, we make sh*t up and then the Other disappears. Where I live, we teach our children to jeer and hate at an early age and turn them into lifelong moral retards. Where I live, we hurl red bricks at yellow buses full of black kids, then wave green shamrocks. Where I live, love is tied to control and submission. Where I live, people mistake democracy for liberty and slander for free speech. Where they live, chauffeurs who pick up kids with long black limousines are paedophiles needing to be whacked like on the Sopranos. [All together, in the style of Brecht]: Where we live, we die early and live long late lives of longevity.
*
Scene: [A toilet stall in the Greyhound bus station. Richy has arranged to meet the chauffeur here, after his sister's urging, and sits with pants down to his ankles waiting for a signal that the chauffeur has arrived.] I'm sitting there thinking that someone should do a graphological study of public toilet postings. All those telephone numbers and promises; all the political invective and personal libel; the various sketches of circumcised penises and clammy vaginas circumscribing the walls of the tiny cubicle; the fonts and colors and symbols; all the degrees and kinds of urgency expressed; and when I saw "Nietzsche is peachy" crossed out and replaced with "Nietzsche is Lychee" and "the little poet opens the shutters of his hairy heart"-well, I knew some crafty post-modernist had been here positing (was the lack of toilet paper indicative?). When you closed the door to a public toilet cubicle you were locking yourself into an interactive fart gallery. I pondered contributing my own aphorism, my bum puffing up like Satchmo's cheeks before the trumpet blast (I remember my Grandpa would fart, then say: 'but don't quote me'), when I heard tapping and tapping and looked down and could see a black patent leather shoe next door going up and down in time. The shoe might have been tapping out the Ninth's "Ode to Joy" or it could have been "Rock the Casbah," but before I could figure it out a voice said, Are you ready, my little hustler?And I said back, My sister said you'd take me there. Meet me out front in 5, the black limo, and then he flushes and leaves, and I pull up, praying I've caught no germs, note a caricature co*k shooting pinyin hyperbole, flush and follow, self-conscious, pre-ashamed, the loudspeaker calling out departures, Chicago Gate 5, everyone looking at me leave, thinking, I'm sure, the little perv. But don't quote me.
Scene: [Inside the chauffeur's Lincoln limo. The driver sits with Richy in the back of the limo, seated beside him, legs spread wide, hands across his crotch, rap gangster style. But it's clear he's just being ironic.]Do you always wear shades in the privacy of your own car? The better to see you with. Nevertheless, I'd like to see your eyes, gaze into them, and maybe get a sense. [Felixremoves his cap and sun glasses to reveal a long mane of honey hair and lapis lazuli eyes] My god, I'm startled cream. You are so beautiful to look at: Adonis, McConaughey, Brad Pitt as Achilles, but more than all that, you're David Bowie singing "Blue Jeans" or all-so-soulful in The Man Who Fell to Earth, oh-h-h. How much will you pay me to have your way? That depends.[Richy swoons] Where is the there you'll take me to? Why Avalon, of course. Can we bring my friend JB? He likes adventures. Sure, but the woods are dark and deep.I promise to keep it to myself, don't worry. [Felixputs his shades and cap back on, exits back of limo, moments later his face shows up in the rear view mirror, eyes two Rayban abymes ] Now which high school was that? I'll plug the coordinates into my trusty GPS.
Scene: [Out front of Charlestown High as school is getting out for the day. Out of the streams of anarchy and noise Richy spots his friend, JB, powers down his tinted window and calls out. ] Yo, JB! Come for a ride. Don't look so surprised. Hop in. Don't mind those jeers. Pass through that gauntlet and come. See, the chauffeur opens the door for you. Come for a ride. [JB climbs into the limo, as the window powers up and shuts out someone shouting, "Get on, you fags. Bring your me'nage trois somewhere else." The chauffeur addresses the boys through the rear view mirror.] So you are JB. Richy's told me so little about you. Right, and you must be The Chauffeur: the whole community's told me about you. You're a-JB, have you ever been in the woods, lost?The snowy evening ones or the Red Riding ones? Oh, I do like the way you think. Well, JB, that's for you to decide. Are you ready?Where are we going? He's to take us to Avalon? Avalon?Why then we're off!
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