Goldenrod Read online

  “Mr. Price,” I shouted, barely visible in the dense greenery of my yard. “You missed a spot by the pool.” I hoped he could see my bare buttocks as they disappeared into the house.

  I had a bath, not for the sake of cleanliness, but for the sake of erotic pleasure. The door was locked, the shower curtain pulled, and I lolled in the steamy hot water. My body was flaccid, but my penis was erect. “Before you can love anyone, you’ve got to be able to love yourself,” I said out loud, repeating one of my mother’s slogans. There’s a lot to say for masturbation. It was an opportunity to utilize my imagination. There was no fear of pregnancy or of the woman changing her mind at the last second. You didn’t have to worry about pleasing your partner or whether you were doing a good job or lasting long enough or whether you were big enough or hard enough. You just enjoyed yourself.

  The woman of my imagination fawned over me, muttered complimentary obscenities in my ear and orgasmed like an erupting volcano. Visions of the day’s prowling flashed through my mind, a mangled assortment of body parts. My senses reeled. I was submerged in a pool of legs, breasts, shoulders, bums. I added soap for lubrication. Sperm floated on the water. I made waves and sent it to the other end of the bathtub. I fell asleep, but only for a few minutes.

  Although my bike was made for a young kid and had high handle bars and a banana seat, it managed to get me to hockey practice before everyone else. Everyone, that is, except Winfield. Winfield was alone in the dressing room, reading the newspaper interview of me. He was reading the flattering lies I had made up about winning the game for the coach, and he was believing them. The article was taped to The Great Mirror and Winfield had probably been re-reading it for hours. He was red with embarrassment when I came in, as if I had thrown open the shower curtains and caught him abusing himself in the bathtub. He slunk out of the room. I read the article for the first time. My words had been accurately reproduced. Winfield and I were buddies again.

  I put a sign on the front of the dressing room door, “Homosexual Disco,” and turned the music up full blast. The music cracked and popped like an amplified bowl of Kellogg’s Corn Flakes. I danced along the benches in my jock strap as my teammates entered, stripped down, and joined the gathering numbers on the dance floor in the center of the room. Bruno was doing the two step with his hairy defensive partner. Someone was turning the lights on and off to produce a strobe effect. The song ended and news came on. We silently returned to our places and dressed for the practice.

  Winfield came in shyly, holding a shiny new hockey stick like a priest clutching a crucifix. He was coy. He wanted to make amends, in his awkward way, and show his humble appreciation for the crap I fed the reporter.

  “I bought a new stick for the practice,” he said to me. “It’s a good one. Cost $11.50. Would you like to feel the whip?”

  “Sure,” I said. Winfield hadn’t seemed to notice that everyone was watching us. At first I thought he was giving me the stick as a gift, but I realized that I was only supposed to lean on it, feel the bend, and pass it back like a peace pipe. “That’s a good stick,” I said.

  “Cost $11.50,” he repeated incredulously. The price tag was still on the stick.

  The pathetic bastard was losing his mind. He had slammed his head against the cement floor once too often. Winfield made his exit, leaving his precious stick by the door. I was struck by another of my ideas. Impulse was my master. The team owned a saw for altering the length of hockey sticks. I grabbed the saw and cut the blade of Winfield’s eleven dollar and fifty cent stick in half. This pointless act of mischief hit a funny bone on the team, primarily because of its pointlessness, and the room filled with lengthy undulations of laughter. I taped the blade back on and returned the stick to its original spot. It appeared to be a perfectly intact eleven dollar and fifty cent stick.

  Winfield’s practices were exercises in futility. The Russians had made their dramatic impact on the American hockey scene and suddenly everyone was an apostle of the scientific method. The slogan “get back to basics” was popularized. According to the Russian ideal, practices had to be scientifically planned and organized to maximize training in the basics: skating, passing, stick handling, checking. Winfield interpreted these ideas as meaning that practices must be boring. Practices couldn’t be boring enough. If the players weren’t going out of their minds with boredom, it simply wasn’t doing them any good. Winfield had a Presbyterian kind of practice, no fun and lots of suffering—suffering in the boring sense, not in the physical sense. We were instructed to line up and take turns leisurely carrying the puck to the other end of the rink and back. No one was allowed to pass the puck or shoot or do any checking. When you returned to the line, the next guy went. It was so easy and so boring that after a while you started making mistakes, tripping over your own feet and losing the puck. Winfield’s scientific method was slowly eroding our skills as hockey players.

  I lobbied for a scrimmage. I wanted to simulate a game situation and let Winfield blow the whistle whenever someone did something stupid. I argued that hockey is a spontaneous game and that this exercise would not only develop spontaneity and cohesion among players, it would be interesting and fun. Winfield adamantly refused. What I wanted was too pleasurable. I was being a self-indulgent, hedonistic pervert. I was being both unscientific and un-American. Winfield was programmed to suffer. He was too numb between the ears to change.

  Winfield was teaching us one of his ludicrous drills. He took a slapshot and the end of his blade sailed clear across the rink, over the boards, and landed somewhere in the upper reaches of the bleachers. The look on his face haunts me. It wasn’t his usual obnoxious expression, but a look that was sadly resigned, passive, self-deprecating. He softly placed the remainder of his stick in the garbage can. I don’t know what that stick represented to Winfield, but it meant more than eleven dollars and fifty cents. It was a personal rejection. Perhaps he saw himself as sawed off and incomplete. Perhaps the useless stick was a reflection of his impotence. Winfield tried too hard at life and was consumed by the frustration of never seeming to get anywhere. For a brief moment he had lost even his frustration, which made him pathetic. I didn’t enjoy my role as the victor. I wasn’t an evil person, just an impulsive one that tended to get carried away.

  I skated with frantic enthusiasm. I wanted to draw the laughter away from Winfield, like trying to change the subject in a conversation, redirecting the center of attention. I asked him some meaningless questions as an excuse to call him Coach. His eyes glowed when he was called Coach.

  “Don’t forget,” said Winfield, almost pleasantly, as the team headed into the Homosexual Disco for a shower. “The game is Thursday night at eight o’clock.”

  Thursday! Thursday! Thursday! It finally occurred to me that I had graduation, an anniversary party, and a hockey game on the same night. Could I do all three? That was too much of a challenge for someone with my retarded organizational skills. I needed eight mothers and a girlfriend to organize me. I decided not to worry about it. I was capable of forgetting about anything. I would rely on my natural instincts and decide what direction to go at the last minute. I would handle things my way: spontaneously.

  I was in a sensitive mood that night because I was feeling guilty about sawing the blade off Winfield’s hockey stick. Elizabeth loved my gentle moods. She was thrilled whenever I was quiet or feeling a little vulnerable and soft. She felt needed and reveled in the attention I gave her. I’m capable of gentleness. Anyone who’s been brought up by eight women, a mother and seven sisters, is capable of gentleness. Although it made Elizabeth happy, I rarely behaved in a gentle way. I couldn’t sustain it. On Elizabeth’s birthday I planned this great magnanimous display of gentleness, but forgot after an hour and spent most of the evening barking at Shultz. My intentions were good, but my memory was lousy. At least Shultz enjoyed himself, although it wasn’t his birthday.

  “Hi Mrs. Ajax,” I said, as Elizabeth and I passed through the kitchen towards the basement s
tairs. Mrs. Baldwin was washing the refrigerator.

  “Don’t stay too late, Ken. It’s a week night,” said Mrs. Baldwin humorlessly. I knew she really meant to say, “Don’t screw my daughter in the basement.” The Baldwins made me feel as welcome as a herpes epidemic. I was a germ invading their household. I expected Mrs. Baldwin to attack me with the pail of Ajax.

  Normally, I would have had Elizabeth’s blouse off by the first landing, her pants off at the bottom of the stairs, and I would have ejaculated before reaching the couch. Tonight, I was in a gentle mood, I waited until we got the to couch before tearing into Elizabeth’s clothing. Talk about virility! A Dionysian frenzy in the morning, a two-mile run at record speed in the afternoon, a session of masturbation in the bathtub, the Homosexual Disco, an hour hockey practice, and I was still desperately in need of sexual satisfaction. Would it ever stop?

  Later, I climbed onto my banana seat and rode my bike home. I fidgeted in bed for what seemed an eternity; insomnia was an affliction that worsened with age. I masturbated twice before falling asleep.

  3. Happy Anniversary

  Thursday afternoon I was involved in a game of Brick Soccer. Brick Soccer was like any other type of soccer, except you kick a brick instead of a ball and play in the teachers’ parking lot. About forty years ago, when the school was nothing more than a hut in the wilderness, someone chased a ball across the street and almost got hit by a horse and buggy. As a safety precaution, the principal made the rule that no balls were allowed in the parking lot, so students began to play with a brick. No one seemed to think that a brick could be more hazardous than a soccer ball. The ancient rule was never disputed. Thus, the evolution of Brick Soccer, a tradition peculiar to my school, unconsciously passed down through generations of pubescent suburbanites. The sport had a history of casualties, from broken toes and bleeding thighs, to dislocated kneecaps and multiple fractures. There were also a number of smashed headlights and dented fenders. These injuries and accidents were tolerated, but not soccer balls. Soccer balls were dangerous.

  Brick Soccer was my favorite sport. I secretly preferred it over ice hockey. There was an atmosphere of warmth and camaraderie among the players, not merely among members of the same team, but between both teams. There were no scorekeepers, no winners or losers, just performers and survivors. It was the show, the style, and finesse of the performance that was important, not beating the other team. Nothing in life was more meaningful than Brick Soccer.

  “Life is a game of Brick Soccer,” I said to myself philosophically. “It doesn’t matter who wins or loses, as long as you do it with style.”

  As is customary in real soccer, the opposition’s goal-tender got the brick and heaved it into the air. School was over for the day, but it was still early. There was plenty of light and plenty of time to clear out of the way of the flying brick. I ran under it and stood transfixed, studied it in the air, watching it rise and arch, and when it came down I headed it, as though it was a real soccer ball. I knew it was a brick, but I headed it anyway. I headed it for absolutely no reason, impulse again, like the desire to jump when staring at the ground from the top balcony of an apartment building. I succumbed to this self-destructive reflex because deep down I didn’t believe it would hurt me. I believed it would bounce off my head like a beach ball. I believed it could only hurt other people, weaker people, mere mortals, not a mythical god like myself.

  I can’t remember much between getting hurt and arriving at the hospital. I was in a delirium. My brain was short-circuiting, mixing up its signals, flashing a confused stream of images at me, numbers, sparks, colors, Winfield’s head thudding against the cement floor. The thing that I remembered most vividly was what I thought to be a smell, but what was probably the sensation of nausea. The smell was unpleasantly familiar, like a disagreeable memory, like guilt, like the snapshot recall of a nightmare. My reaction to the smell was fear, fear of an intangible enemy.

  Dear, faithful, reliable Phil stood beside my bed, the symbol of sanity. It was Phil whom my teammates had sought out when I dropped to the cement bleeding. It was Phil who drove me to the hospital. I thought my disorientation must have lasted for weeks, but it couldn’t have been more than half an hour because the digital clock in the emergency ward read 5 p.m. The doctor, smiling jovially, told me that I had an inordinately hard head and that it wasn’t serious. I was skeptical. As far as I was concerned, getting hit in the head with a brick was serious. He gave me fourteen stitches across the forehead, pain killers, and lots of patronizing advice on how heading a brick was not a sensible thing to do. I tried to explain that we used a brick because soccer balls were dangerous.

  “Phil,” I said cheerfully. “Phone Winfield. Tell him I got hit by a brick and won’t be at the game tonight.”

  “I already did. He was angry. He’ll hate you forever.”

  “I knew he would have nothing but concern for my well-being.”

  “I also phoned Elizabeth,” said Phil. “She was upset and wanted to come to the hospital. I told her not to bother. I explained that it was a scratch on your forehead and you are as handsome as ever.”

  “That’s no scratch. That’s a gaping cavern.” I sat up in order to look at myself in the mirror. I expected my face to be totally mutilated and disfigured, but, to my amazement, it was only a little swollen around the stitches.

  “You’re right! I’m as handsome as ever.”

  “Do you want me to call your mother?” asked Phil.

  “No,” I pronounced emphatically. “There’s no need to.”

  Mother tended to overreact when she perceived her children to be in peril. Her battered Camaro would squeal into the hospital parking lot with five cop cars tailing it. She would storm past the front desk, bully the interns, tyrannize the nurses, and hurl the most outrageous threats imaginable at the doctors, castration, for example. She always threatened castration. She used the same threat on my father. I don’t know any man who is not unnerved by the threat of castration. It took one glance at my mother’s face to realize that she was, in fact, capable of such a primitive act of agression. Once, I caught a high hockey stick on my upper lip and needed three stitches. Mother clutched a scalpel blade and said firmly to the doctor, “That boy’s face is perfect. If you leave a scar, I’ll come back here and cut your balls off.” You don’t reason with Mother. You do what you’re told. I should mention, however, that the stitching job on my lip was excellent.

  My problems were solved. Thursday night was mine. I had freed myself of responsibility, organized my life, and I had done it my way, spontaneously. My head was already feeling lighter. I was proud of myself. Phil drove me back to his house without the car stereo on and got his grandmother to cook us dinner.

  Phil’s parents were dead. He was the protector of the household, living alone with an ailing grandmother and an eleven-year-old sister. This family background had prematurely aged Phil, spurred his paternalistic leaning, and formulated his attitude towards women. If the instinct to protect me, a man, was strong, it was even stronger to protect a woman. Chivalry was not dead with Phil. I loved the opposite sex, but I was as rude and as disgusting in the company of women as I was with men. I was used to women who were completely capable of looking after themselves. There was nothing helpless about my mother. Phil had to look after a little girl and a frail old lady and he thought all women were that way.

  Phil had a date for the graduation. He paid for the tickets, bought a corsage, put a full tank of gas in the car, rented a tuxedo. He told the girl exactly what time he would pick her up, promised to be prompt, and fully expected to talk to her parents for a few minutes before going out. Phil did everything right, and parents thought he was wonderful. I would pull into the girl’s driveway, radio blasting, and honk my horn. If she didn’t come out, I’d keep honking. I was indomitably cheerful, and, in my indomitably cheerful way, I’d get her to contribute a couple of dollars for gas and split the cost of the evening’s entertainment. Despite my lack of dating etiq
uette, the girls were full of smiles and laughter and always came back for more.

  Phil adorned himself in the appropriate garb, sprinkled on romantic smells, and assured me of getting a reimbursement for my graduation tickets. Phil left for his date, dropping me off at my place on his way. I was in a strangely morose mood as I climbed onto my banana seat and rode my bike to Elizabeth’s house. I had gone from lightheaded and free to heavy-hearted and claustrophobic in a matter of minutes. I wanted to indulge in scorn, wallow in cynicism, harbor black thoughts about society and mankind. It may have been a result of the bump on the head or of the prospect of spending an evening at the Baldwins’ anniversary party. My options had been spontaneously reduced to one. Fate was leading me to the anniversary party.

  “Suburbia! Blah! It’s destroying my mind,” I said to myself, riding through a stop sign without even slowing down. I spat, and the wind sprayed it back into my face.

  There was something wrong, something that bothered me about the Baldwins. I didn’t believe them, not that they were telling me anything, but I didn’t believe them anyway. It was their way of looking at the world I didn’t like, a mentality that Elizabeth was committed to, brainwashed by, and wanted to honor and obey for the rest of her life. It was this mentality that was my rival, that competed for Elizabeth’s affection, that created a distance between Elizabeth and me. I couldn’t define it. I wasn’t against materialism, or the unequal distribution of wealth in America, or the wasteful life-style of the bourgeoisie or anything to do with politics. It was something else.

  The Baldwins were weird. They were so normal they were weird. What do you call a man who goes to Sears Automotive Center for a good time, who spends every waking moment either in a Sears store or playing with an automobile appliance or gadget? You call that man Normal, with a capital “N.” You call that man Mr. Baldwin! Mr. Baldwin got up early on Saturday mornings and stood at the door of the Sears Automotive Center, waiting until it opened, freezing his ass off in a lineup of other normal Americans. Fortunately for Mr. Baldwin, there were three Sears stores within driving distance, a suburbanite’s vision of Utopia. He knew everyone at these stores, employees and customers. I didn’t trust anyone who spent that much time in an Automotive Center.