“When will I see you?” Very calmly. At least she was calm.
“I don’t know. Soon as possible. I don’t know.”
“I never write letters,” she said, not letting up. All I could think was, Why do they always have to do this?
“Neither do I,” I said. Which was not completely true. I write them and never mail them. “But I’ll call.”
“Will you?” Pleased.
“Yeah, soon as my exams are over.”
“Tell me what day?” Still pleased.
“I don’t know what day. Soon.”
“Okay,” she said, subdued, and then they were announcing the final boarding call for my flight, and I hustled for the plane.
She said she’d watch my plane from the observation deck, but by the time I was buckled in at the window the sun was almost gone and I couldn’t see her at all.
2
Fattening Frogs for King Snakes
25
AT THE AIRPORT THE CROWDS of screaming fans were lined up to greet the sensational new rock sensation Lucifer Harkness and his greasy back-up group, The New Administration. Harkness stepped off the plane, resplendent in velvet bellbottoms and a black leather T-shirt; from behind thick purple shades he could see the crowd going wild. They broke through the cordons and fought off the cops and ran screaming for him.
He felt a thousand hands touching him, clutching at his clothes, tearing them off his back, covering him with kisses, biting his neck affectionately, pulling at his balls, and it was delirious and wonderful for several minutes before the cops came down on the kids and broke it up, and Reggie Thorpe, the manager, got the group together and into the waiting Rolls.
As the Rolls pulled away there were hundreds of screaming teenies all lined up on the road out of the airport. Some of them threw themselves in front of the car, stopping it, while others scratched at the glass and kissed it, screaming, “We want to ball Lucifer, we want to ball Lucifer.” And Lucifer was thinking to himself about what an unbelievably tedious chore it would be to crack all of those hundreds of green young cherrystones, when the guy sitting next to him jabbed him in the side.
“Hey, lookit dat, buddy. Nice pussy.”
I politely looked over a ham-sized forearm to see a thin, wasted-looking chick with a shaved twat lying guilelessly across the centerfold page of Suburban Jaybird.
“Nice,” I said. Nice, my ass. The chick was about as ugly as they come, especially without her hair. Hair was mystery, it was sex, it was funky and greasy and it got tangled when you made love.
“How’dja like to fuck her?” he said, holding up another picture.
I shrugged. The woman behind us on the MTA car was doing her best to let us know that she was faint with indignation. She was making small coughing sounds. Out the window, gray and rainy, was the Boston skyline.
“I like ’em with hair,” I said. Behind me I heard the sharp intake of breath from the woman.
My companion turned around and shot her a cold look, then turned back to his magazine. “Holy Jeez,” he said in a reverential tone. “Lookit, there’s one you’d like.”
“Yeah,” I said. “Now there’s a nice bush.”
“Christ, you’re not shittin’,” he said.
He got off at Park Street, leaving me alone with Mrs. Snorts behind me. She got off at Charles Street, the Beacon Hill exit. I took the subway all the way to the end of the line.
26
SHOOTING OUT INTO HARVARD SQUARE from the bowels of the MTA was about as much fun as having a tooth pulled without Novocain. I always felt that way when I got back from the Coast, but somehow I was never prepared for it. Because, as much of a drag as I knew it would be to return, I always figured that it would be nothing more than that—a return. And so the ensuing culture shock, the numbing of mind and body which was only later understood to be Boston’s charming way of saying Welcome Back, always caught me by surprise.
And what a surprise. A surprise wrapped in thick, heavy air, dimly opaque light, trimmed with an ineffable, oppressive sense of guilt. The air in the square reeked of guilt. Nobody was ever going to be naive enough to mention it, but it was there just the same, and readily assented to by all on the street.
The street. White pasty bodies and zitty faces shuffled past me, eyes on the ground, clutching cigarettes like drowning men, moving only when the sign commanded them to WALK. Old ladies sneered at passersby and cabbies looked hot and sullen. Three-pieced professors sneaked across the street, clutching their top-heavy wives like illicit Government secrets, and paranoid pristine fags marched poodles past shattered winos bumming dimes. Truck drivers whistled at towny cunts and sad, stooped teaching fellows picked their noses and read the Daily Flash in twenty-three languages.
I went across the street to Nini’s to get some cigarettes, and cut my way through the prepubescent mob outside. The guys slouched against the walls, sucking on toothpicks or nicotine sticks, scratching their crotches stealthily and yelling at the chicks. The chicks were all over the place, big flowsy broads topped by bleached, ironed hair, chewing the life out of huge wads of gum and swinging their pocketbooks at the more adventurous guys. All the time shrieking like cats in heat, shrieking and laughing and again swinging their pocketbooks. It was too much.
Inside Nini’s the adults-only version of the same movie was going on, featuring fat, powdered women, engrossed in multicolored tabloids (“I had a change-of-life baby by another man!”), and the usual mob of skinny, haunted men in the back of the store, tirelessly leafing through the skin mags. Jesus, what all these poor bastards needed was a good lay. And a good lay they’d never get—not in Boston, anyway.
I went down Dunster Street, past Holyoke Center, and over toward the Houses. It was quieter there, and there wasn’t any traffic, and the trees had tiny flecks of green at the tips. Spring was getting its foot in the door and it suddenly didn’t seem so bad.
Once in the House I stopped to talk to Jerry, who wanted to know all about my vacation. Jerry is the superintendent, a cheerful, sly Irishman who will talk your ear off, given half a chance, and is a stickler for rules, especially those concerning women in the rooms. But Jerry understands those who understand him, and so for a few hours of conversation a term, and a couple of bottles of rye on the Savior’s birthday, Jerry is the most amenable and considerate super in the college. Hello, Jerry.
Then up to E entry, and John’s room on the first floor. John has a sign on the door which reads:
John finds this amusing, since his chicks think he means The Truth, while he means the chicks. The door opened to reveal Sandra’s lovely form. “How’d it go?” she asked.
I was tempted to ask her the same thing, seeing as how she was decked out in one of John’s bathrobes. But all I said was “Fine,” and went in and sat down.
John called from the bedroom, “That you, Pete?”
“Yeah.”
“Just a minute.”
Sandra was looking very chic and wealthily whorish as she put a record on the turntable and sat down across from me. She crossed her legs in the extraordinary way she has of crossing her legs, languidly, with a lazy shot of the bush in the process. Nothing offered, of course, but if she knew you and liked you, she didn’t mind letting you know her snatch was all still there.