Deep into Virginia that long-ago New Year’s Eve, the snow was still falling thickly. I remember staring through the steam-glazed windows at the white world, thinking that the storm would never end. For miles, I followed the traceries of telephone lines. And saw, off in the distance, snug houses behind screens of skeletal trees.
Those houses. In blue icy fields. Blinking with Christmas lights. Inside, men had women who held them tight, who talked to them about life and kids and music and the weather. They slept under thick blankets while the snow fell steadily, and when the moon played its light over the frozen world, they fucked. I wanted a woman who would hold me, too. Who would talk to me. Laugh at my jokes. Fuck me good as I fucked her. The boy I was then didn’t really want the houses. Out in the country, far from the cities of the world: that wasn’t my life. But I wanted the woman.
By noon, the heater had surrendered to the storm and it was very cold in the bus. And I remember saying to myself: Pensacola. Then again. Pensacola, Pensacola, Pensacola, like beads on a rosary. I had never even heard of the town until the Navy assigned me there in a thick packet of orders issued before Christmas leave. But when I got home, I looked up the town in Nelson’s Encyclopedia (worn red bindings, double columns of tiny type, bought a book at a time by my mother, clipping coupons from the New York Post) and tried to imagine the place from the volume’s few lines. Sitting in the living room, on the frayed couch beside the kerosene heater, I felt Pensacola come to me across 1,536 miles in bright pastel colors.
Pen-sa-co-la I whispered on the bus (and repeated it now, in the Datsun 280-ZX, following myself South). And saw rounded forms, brown and glowing from the sun, smooth, polished. Pensacola. Brown breasts and brown thighs and brown bellies, too. Women glistening with oil. Hot to the touch. For surely Pensacola was a woman’s name. Pensacola Brown. Yeah. The name was full of lazy hills and the Pensa seemed buttered to the cola, not locked hard and bolted tight, like Stuttgart or New York. It was a name very much like Florida. Hi, I’m Florida Brown and I want to fuck you … Except that Florida was green with drooping palms and the sounds of spring training on the radio and blue with the sea. And it was too short and smooth and familiar to be a woman’s name. Pensacola had hard little bumps in it, like tits.
I looked out at the blizzard and closed my eyes, and saw palm trees withering under the snow and a gigantic glacier shoving the beaches into the sea and heard the north wind howling, claiming victory over the sun. I opened my eyes in a moment of panic. There were a half dozen other passengers in the bus, most of them sleeping. I remember the driver’s back. He inhaled deeply, then exhaled in a weary way. And I closed my eyes again, and invented a world of heat — to help the driver, to defend Pensacola, to warm myself. I was on the beach at Coney Island, on Bay 22, under a hammering sun. I was on the rooftop of our house in Brooklyn, gazing at the Manhattan skyline in a sweltering August stupor. It was too hot to sleep, and down on the street old people sat in folding chairs, fanning themselves with the Daily News, drinking hot tea because they all believed that it cooled you off and its leaves cured sunburn. I thought of The Desert Song, the movie that made me volunteer in boot camp for the naval air station at Port Lyautey in Morocco. I was Dennis Morgan. The Red Shadow himself. Riding across the sun-baked desert. Leading the Riff against the hated French, singing:
“You’d better go, go, go,
Before you’ve bitten the sword …”
In my tent, a masked woman in silky pajamas. Deep black eyes. Huge golden earrings. Jeweled rings on her toes. Her toenails painted. She opened her arms and touched my face. “Michael,” she whispered in some exotic foreign accent. “You must do it to me now.…” Later, I fell asleep in her arms.
Ah, youth.
When I woke up, everything had changed. The snow was gone. Purple light spilled down valleys. I could not afford a watch, so I had no idea what time it was or how long I’d slept, but the land was black now, and there were few lights. The bus was fuller, too, although the seat beside me was empty. I heard a woman’s phlegmy snoring in the dark. And then smelled the thick fatty air of the bus, a mixture of farts, cigarette smoke, and engine fumes. I felt vaguely sick. Then addressed myself: You are Michael Devlin, USN 4640237. You are almost eighteen years old, not a child. You cannot get sick in a bus. And I didn’t.
But I could see Maureen again. I stared out at the dark forests, trying to get rid of her. But there she was, pale and beautiful, standing among the trees. She would not go away. I was far from Brooklyn, but I could see her (as I see her now) wearing a maroon coat and turning around, her back to me, snow melting in her hair. Oh, Momma, let me talk to you. I was calling her name as she walked quickly down the snow-packed path in Prospect Park. Her head lowered against the wind. Hands jammed in her pockets. Maureen, I called. But she chose not to hear me. Maureen. And once more: Maureen. My voice was muffled, but I knew she could hear me. And then at last she turned. I came closer, moving clumsily in the snow. And saw the fear in her eyes. Fear, for Christ’s sakes. Her face trembled. And then she started to run. Out of the park. Out of my life.
The Greyhound was moving with fresh power now, and I thought: That was only nine days ago and it seems like ancient history. I didn’t run after her. I couldn’t do that. Couldn’t beg. Not for her. Not for anybody. But I saw her again on crowded beaches, on the empty slopes of summer hills. She was on the subway with me, coming back from a movie in Manhattan, her head burrowed against my shoulder. “Maureen,” I whispered on the bus, and thought about her skin. And then, hundreds of miles from her and going farther away by the minute, she gave me what she had given me so many times in that long ripe crazy summer before I joined the Navy. Off to the side along my thigh, forced there by the tight crotch of the Navy blues. Once, when I was still an altar boy at Holy Name Church, I imagined God in possession of a hard-on counting machine. That was the beginning of the loss of faith. He was up there in heaven, seeing all, knowing all, and He would spot my hard-ons, logging them in His gigantic counting machine along with billions of other impure hard-ons all over the world. In His rage, He looked to see if I touched myself. Or far worse, whether I played with myself. And certainly He would need another, much larger counting machine to keep track of all the jacking off, one that would have to handle billions of entries in Brooklyn alone. And thinking about this (on the altar of the 8:30 Saturday Mass) I laughed. That was the way faith must always end. After all, if there was a God, why would He care about my hard-ons anyway? Was he nuts, or what? A grown man, counting hard-ons? But I was also still a Catholic, and naturally, after I laughed, I felt guilty. For about a minute. And then felt certain that I’d never stop burning in Purgatory and was already too far behind to ever get even with God, so I might as well enjoy sin. I was fourteen. The year my mother died.