Flatscreen Read online

  “I do love eating.”

  “So does Sheila. She loves to eat pussy. That’s why I’m in this pool house.”

  “They say you can’t compete with someone who has the same parts.”

  “Nothing to do with that,” Kahn said. “She just likes the smell.”

  Alison’s smell was still on me. Smelled like camping. Kahn pulled out a prescription bottle. OxyContin: hillbilly heroin. People were robbing pharmacies for the stuff. I’d seen a thing on PBS: kids stealing pills from their dying grandmothers, OD’ing, premature aging, death.

  Kahn crushed the pill, put half up his nose. I took the straw, did the other half. Moments later, fingers tingly, Mingus pumping that bass like it was inside my heart. Smell in the air: fall: embers and Alison mixed together in olfactory sweetness.

  eighteen

  Dreamed a Recipe for Love:

  • Grainy French mustard with horseradish

  • Egg cartons (with eggs in them) stacked to roughly twice your height (more if you’re short)

  • Flour

  • Panko (you’ll need a lot—breadcrumbs can be substituted)

  • Mountain of salt/MDMA mixture

  • Black pepper

  • 100 cloves grated garlic

  • Fresh parsley

  • 1 Moby Dick–style monster fish

  • Mexican beer

  • Dill

  • 1 gallon pig lard

  • Swimming goggles

  • Cashmere loincloth (terry cloth will suffice)

  • Jennifer Estes

  Prep:

  Gather the mothers, lovers, fathers, brothers of your fantasies. Arm them with Wüsthof knives, freshly sharpened. Mix mustard, eggs (beaten), flour, panko, salt/MDMA, pepper, grated garlic, parsley. Marinate monster fish in this mixture for 6 days. Rest. Fill the belly with Mexican beer, fresh dill, pig lard. Adorn yourself in swim goggles, loincloth. Kiss Jennifer wholly on the lips.

  To Cook:

  Hoist monster on a giant spit, fashioned from the QHS flagpole. Burn your possessions beneath the meal. Change your name to Jonah.

  nineteen

  Woken by a familiar hand.

  “Benjy? Whatup?”

  Saw Dad in Benjy’s face; a softer version of Dad, as he was when he was young.

  “Want to hug?” I said.

  “You look like shit.”

  “I feel fantastic. Relax, brother. Sit down.”

  “Oh, fuck.”

  “What’s wrong, Big Ben? Want a back rub?”

  “I’m supposed to invite you in for dinner.”

  “That sounds absolutely lovely.”

  Floors were varnished parquet. Small trees: ficus, bonsai, etc. Large Oriental tapestries. Beige paper lanterns tagged with black Japanese characters surrounded the table, casting soft light on the diners, who—in my present state—all appeared to be slightly effervescent. Sheila, in her white, Greek-goddess-style summer gown and strappy copper sandals, was especially glowy, serving heaping portions of fried tofu, asparagus, salad. Watched her hands, the way her fingers curled around the wooden spoon as if it were a long phallus and she the gentlest Aphrodite America ever knew (Mighty Aphrodite, Magnolia Pictures, 1995). Felt like the world had shrunk down until entirely contained in this house; that the hallways off-shooting the dining room led to mountains, rivers, live jungles animated by sweet-scented animal sex (Jumanji, TriStar, 1995).

  “That Feinberg is a butcher,” Mary said. “All mouth no hands. He doesn’t shut up the whole time, and you can see his hands wobbling.”

  “Probably a failed surgeon who went to dental school,” Sheila said.

  “His own teeth look like something out of Dracula. I don’t know why we still go there.”

  This was a family that made regular trips to the dentist. Teeth were all pearl, no stain (no gap).

  Benjy held Erin’s hand. Sheila and Mary exchanged private approving glances. Norman Rockwell for the new millennium: happy kind lesbians, black adopted daughter, couple cute college kids. Where did I fit in? I sat in the corner with an aquarium in my spine, lightning in my head, smiling giddily, scratching the shit out of my neck, hoping no one would talk to me.

  False hope.

  “What’s with him?” Natasha said, pointed at me with her fork.

  Her accusing eyes were a chestnut brown that matched her skin. Hair pulled back tightly into dual Afro puffs. Body petite, but her presence so large, secure, surely prepped to kick white-boy booty if necessary. Pushed the tofu around my plate, waited for Benjy to save me.

  “Eli just got up from a nap,” Benjy said. “He’s still a bit tired.”

  “Yeah,” I managed. “Sorry, I’m out of it.”

  Raised my eyebrows to appear more alert.

  Natasha moved on.

  “I’m sick of this vegan shit,” she said, stabbed a tofu cube. “My people are carnivores.”

  “Natasha, honey,” Sheila said. “We’ve been over this many times. Just because you’re of African descent does not mean you’re not part of this family.”

  “I’m not talking about the blacks,” Natasha said. “I’m talking about the Jews. Fuck this new age bullshit. I want some fucking brisket.”

  “When you’re out with your friends you can eat whatever you want, but this is a non-flesh-eating household,” Mary added.

  She smiled as she said it. Not condescendingly, more “Kids these days.” Sheila caught Mary’s eye, nodded. They would recap in bed tonight, laugh together at their daughter’s antics, whisper that they were raising strong, independent women. Good mothers, I could tell; they followed your mouth when you spoke.

  “Dad lets me eat burgers.”

  “Well, your father’s getting his own place soon, and when he does, you can go eat burgers there. But while you’re here, you’ll get your protein from peanut butter and tofu.”

  “I think it’s delicious,” I said, in defense of what I viewed as a personal attack on Sheila, my angel. A ridiculous comment, considering I hadn’t eaten a bite. But I liked how it looked on my plate, how it smelled in the dining room, the way Sheila spooned the tofu with the respect it deserved, careful not to mush the cubes during ladling.

  Natasha looked at me dismissively, returned her attention to the destruction of her food.

  “You guys just want me to be skinny like a white girl. Don’t you know I need some booty if any brothas gonna wanna take me out?”

  “Oh, yeah,” Erin said. “Like there are ‘brothas’ at your high school.”

  “They bus ’em in.”

  “I’m Benjy’s brother,” I said, trying to make a joke. “And I’d be happy to take you out.”

  “Fat boy, I wouldn’t let you fuck me with Denzel’s dick.”

  “Natasha!” Sheila said. “Eli is our guest.”

  “No, he’s not. He’s Seymour’s guest. Besides, he’s so whacked out from being in Seymour’s pool house, he won’t remember half this shit in the morning.”

  Sheila looked at me with tender eyes, like a caring, disappointed mother on a well-acted serial drama. Benjy’s eyes were not so caring, just disappointed.

  “I should go,” I said.

  “You don’t have to,” Sheila said, though I’d already turned my back to the table. Drifted out the door without noticing if anyone put up more of a protest. Stopped back at Kahn’s pool house. He was in the La-Z-Boy watching a midget hum-job a tranny on the flatscreen (Taint Misbehavin’ 7, Vivid, 2004).

  “This is what it’s come to,” Kahn said. “I take Viagra just to watch porn. It takes a half hour for it to kick in. First time in my life I’ve made it past the first fifteen minutes of one of these things. You know they have plots and everything?”

  “I know,” I said.

  The tranny was tall, blackly brown, built like a big-titted power forward. A dead man’s face inked on her arm. RIP Jon “J. Dooz” Dee, 1982–2003. She cupped her sucker’s head with an oversized hand. Gently stroked above the ear. Sucker spit, kept sucking, sank tra
nny-stiff wang down his regular-sized throat.

  Kahn turned toward me, reached up, placed his hand over my heart.

  “BPM slightly above average,” he said, slipped his hand down my breastplate, over my ribs, all the way to my pudgy left love handle.

  I dropped an eighth of weed in Kahn’s lap.

  “Can I have some more of those pills?”

  twenty

  Facts About Me:

  • Fucked up in school, fell asleep on too-small desks, facedown, nose smudged with wet ink.

  • Doodled in margins, outside margins, hid boners in boxer-short waistbands.

  • Thought about dry-aged steaks, fresh-mowed grass, hip bones, indoor grown butternut/honeycomb, THC, MDMA, LSD, SATs, SAT IIs, TV, LCD, DVD, TII, TI-83, shaved gruyère, shaved bush, hairy bush, Busch Light, Bud Light, heavy metal, hardcore, hip-hop, new wave, no wave, post-punk, postcoital cuddling, J. Lo, JDate, sweet potato fries, Mom’s hands, function of the Internet, size of my penis, coffins, O. J. Simpson, body fat percentage, Brando at the end, Biggie, Biggie dead, 2Pac dead, Cobain dead, Courtney Love still alive, Jeremy Shaw hung from his own ceiling fan, falling carpet-ward, pulling the ceiling fan from its socket, screws loosed, everything angled and odd, slowly smelling; Uncle Ned in the ground, disintegrating, unthinking, unmoving, hardly remembered by anyone but me and maybe Mom though we didn’t keep his picture on the walls, didn’t say his name, didn’t stand at sunrise, didn’t sing the mourner’s Kaddish whose meaning was the melody, not the Aramaic words, which even when translated basically amount to nothing more than praising God, asking for his love.

  • Which is what all kids say when they fuck up—“I was too smart for my own good!”—so let’s try it another way, even if the first way’s partly true: sometimes existential despair + laziness brought on by pot smoking + distraction brought on by sexual frustration does = fuckup.

  • Once a teacher said, “Don’t sweat the small stuff.”

  • He said it to me, and I wasn’t sure if it meant “Don’t worry about the small stuff” or “Don’t ignore the small stuff.”

  • I did read the books, Google their authors, Wiki their Pedias.

  • F’s on unconventional if pseudo-poetic lab reports.

  • What I mean is I knew the facts or, at least, figured I would learn the facts, if I could only figure out the point of learning the facts.

  • When it came time to apply to college, Mom said she just didn’t want me to be disappointed.

  twenty-one

  On the way home, shamed, still made of rubber, enjoying the cool air, saw Dan’s maid struggle with two large plastic grocery bags, walking toward the bus stop. Something pretty about her face I’d never noticed before. Maybe the too-bright kitchen lights accented the flaws in her complexion, but outside beneath streetlamp there was grace in her slow stride, youth in her wind-kissed cheeks.

  “Can I help?” I said, pointed at the bags.

  She gave me a look that said, “I’m too tired to be proud.”

  Took the bags from her arms. They smelled good.

  “Food.”

  “Yeah, food. She was going to throw it away. They waste so much.”

  I’d never heard her speak before. Assumed an accent, but she spoke like an old Quinossetian.

  “I buy into all that green, recycle, reuse, sustainability stuff,” she said. “Gotta believe in something.”

  “I shop at Whole Foods, myself.”

  “Whole Foods, Schmole Foods, those people charge up the ass.”

  “It’s true.”

  “What we need are local farms. Co-ops. Make Wife Three pick turnips in the sun.”

  “Hmm…”

  Sniffed her bag. Weird, I know, but I was still high, getting hungry.

  “Cilantro?”

  “Yeah. They want guacamole fresh every day even though they don’t eat it. They think it’s a good thing to have in the fridge.”

  “I love cilantro. I’ve been making a lot of black beans recently.”

  She nodded.

  “Where are you from?”

  “Roadway C.”

  “Before. I mean, originally.”

  “I grew up outside of Santo Domingo. In the Dominican Republic.”

  “It must be beautiful there. Baseball in the streets.”

  “It’s very poor. Lots of crime. Mostly the same idiots as you have here.”

  “I like to make ropa vieja,” I said. “But I have trouble getting the meat tender enough. Is that racist of me to mention a Spanish dish just because you’re from a Spanish-speaking country?”

  “You’re funny.”

  “I’ve heard.”

  “Americans always try to rush. Cooking is mostly waiting. Low heat. It will get softer.”

  “I don’t do anything quickly.”

  “It means old clothes. In Spanish, ropa vieja, old clothes. A man was so poor he couldn’t afford food for his family. He took his old clothes and put them in a pot and added all the ingredients: tomatoes, pigeon peas, green olives, potato. He let it simmer for a long time. When it was done, the old clothes had turned to meat.”

  “I like that.”

  “It’s a dumb story,” she said. “But sometimes dumb stories have good advice in them.”

  Then silence, conversation replaced by growing rapport between the cilantro and the bakery-fresh sourdough. We reached the bus stop.

  twenty-two

  On Being Funny:

  • People told me I was funny in high school. It was good for a while, the attention, until I understood what it meant. It meant I wasn’t other things: sexy, interesting, smart, ambitious. It meant I was going to have trouble getting laid. It might have even meant I was fat.

  twenty-three

  Back home, eighty milligrams up the sniffer, jay-ski to the dome-ski, eyes dancing glassy in computer reflection, I searched the Internet for Alison. She wasn’t there, not in the usual places. Google gave me nothing. Facebook gave me five Alisons, from as far away as Western Oregon, none her. As if her actual physical existence (which I’d yet to shower off) nullified the need for a 2-D online surrogate.

  Instead I wrote to Jennifer Estes, who still wasn’t real. She was a set of identity-markers (hair: black; lips: glossed; favorite music: Beyoncé) I attached to an imagined angel of empathy.

  “J,” I wrote. “Can I call you J? You know, like J. Lo. J. Est? Does that work? In French est means something. To be. I remember that from French class. I want to be. I don’t know what I want to be. Just to be something. Were you in my French class? Do you know who I am? My name is Eli Schwartz, and I am a rich Jewish kid you smoked pot with once who’s put on a few pounds in the past couple years, but cleans up nicely. Actually, that’s not true. I’m not rich anymore. I used to be basically rich a few years ago before my dad left, but now we’re moving out of the house, and though I wouldn’t exactly say we’re poor (that would be patronizing to real poor people—not that I’m assuming you’re poor, or that there’s anything wrong with … okay, I’ll shut up), I would say we’re moving down a tax bracket or so, relegated from the grandiose upper upper middle class to the boring lower upper middle class. I’m not sure why I’m telling you this, other than the fact that I saw you at temple when you were parking the cars, and I thought you might have given me a look, though I wasn’t sure what it meant, and I wanted to come out, say hi, but then I got high with Kahn. You don’t know who Kahn is. He’s this handicapped guy who used to be famous. I’ll have to introduce you to him sometime. He’s really quite a character. But what am I talking about? We haven’t even hung out yet. Let’s just take things slow here. I just figured since we’re both still in town, and there aren’t many other people around, that maybe we should hang out or something. What do you think? I know this is out of the blue, but isn’t that how this thing’s supposed to work, getting in touch with people from the past? I’m pretty bored these days. I could cook you dinner. I’m a good cook. Great, even. I have so much love in me, and nowhere
to direct it. If you don’t write back just know that I don’t mean anything weird by this message. I’m a good soul who’s gone a bit off the deep end. My brother is a nerd, my mother is a drunk, my father is an asshole. I’m trying here, I’m really trying. Please write me back?”

  twenty-four

  To Be Clear:

  • I really did have sex with Alison. She is a real person. Not one of those stories where a guy goes crazy and imagines himself having sex with someone who doesn’t exist.

  twenty-five

  Woke to a text from Kahn:

  “Brattle Theatre, 2 pm.”

  Groggy on the Green Line, ducking Fenway-bound Bro Sox and their pink-appareled gal pals. All shades—from Saxonian pale to sunburnt—forced into bodily contact as the D train hopped the suburbs, inbound. Faint smells of lunch meat and feet-stink. Windows oppressively closed. I had a standing spot between two frat rats, each excessively sideburned, each with a goatee full of sausage crumbs, each tribal-tatted in the bulbous triceps region.

  “Hey, guy,” one said, as if the effort to recall the other’s name would be both painful and lame, a waste of Red Bull–enabled energy.

  “Ya, dude,” his friend replied.

  Tried to bend low, limbo-style, hover well under the bridge formed by their hands on the above subway rings. All I got was armpit, nose full of Axe. This was the world, the one I’d been avoiding. The truth of mankind apparent in blinding sun-swell as we climbed the Brookline hills toward the Citgo sign.

  “Ate these fuckin’ hot wings, dude,” Bro A returned. “Like Satan took a shit in ya mouth.”

  “Ya, dude,” said Bro B.

  “Dropped a bomb after. Fuckin’ neon orange. Just like the wings. Fuckin’ beautiful. Went into the other stall to wipe so I wouldn’t ruin it. Took a picture on my phone. Sent it to all my buddies.”

  “Fuckin’ sick,” Bro B said.

  “Hilarious, dude. You eva do that? You eva take a picture and send it to ya buddies?”