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This appears in a pre-2010 issue of Down in the Dirt magazine.
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Down in the Dirt v058

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Decrepit Remains
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Decrepit Remains, the 2008 Down in the Dirt collection book
When You are Young and Free

Timothy J. Willis

    Roethke has just returned, as of two months ago, from Japan, via New York–where he was to have settled a second, had not misfortune forced him homeward. He had been tutoring in Japan with Emily, his girlfriend: but, as his contract had expired, and as he had it not renewed, and as Emily’s was not nearing expiration, he loosed the restraints of their courtship (as land was about to lengthen it, anyway), and he set off for new adventures. And, a day outta last month, we met up at the library and, as much as I had no intention of carousing at all hours, we got to drinking in the Loop then on over towards Halsted, and Boy’s Town, where was near the residence of one of his schoolmates, now freshly out the closet and the only able one nice enough to put Roet up upon his return.
    “It’s all right, I don’t fucking care about that. I’d stay here forever if I felt welcomed.” His hand went instinctively to his cocktail, a potion that was rich yet miraculously underpriced. If there is a drunk ever tough-enough in his manhood, I would highly recommend gay clubs and bars to drink away in, for in the joints we had been in that night, in that neighborhood, anything asked in a glass was priced lower than anywhere I have ever been, excluding the barest cavern of all taverns. In a White place, such as we were, the drinks are almost always cheap, if sometimes more or less full-strength; and, in Black places, if the prices are not unlike any hetero bar, any mixed concoction will burn straight-up and have you wheeze for the first time in life for a li’l more juice sommore ice. And, while my retort was on whether my friend meant “forever” in that glass, “forever” in such pleasant establishments (but, for its lack of ladies), he meant with his host. It seems that, despite Roethke’s voiced lack of -phobia for homosexuality, his host is not very comfortable with this sudden company, not very welcoming of a roommate. “Anyway, I asked him for at least a month, or two, if he could swing it. Either I’ll find some work, somewhere, or move back to my mother’s, or geez! with my father–if he’ll let me–and his wife (she’ll love that).”
    “Hmf: I’d like to get a real gig my damned self. If I had known what I know, I woulda stayed recepting with the law firm.”
    “Yeah, it was rather dumb for you to leave that place.”
    “Ah, thank you, you’re too kind–kinda ugly, but”
    “What I mean, Tenn: you were there that long, and you picked up not one reliable contact. You could go back there, right now, if you weren’t so arrogant, and probably get something out of it; while I–my only option now is to stand out on Michigan, with a cardboard sign reading ‘WILL FUCK FOR NEPOTISM’, just to get my foot outside the door.”
    “Well, it’s easier in life if you start off like you may want to be, I dunno, average, or something–if ever you think mediocrity is okay. But, it isn’t for me (and, it isn’t for you), and it does seem a lotta the time that I’ve set out to make life even harder than it already is, but it’s okay, even though sometimes I do go on, unlike Dire Straits: I shoulda learned to be a pediatrician; I shoulda learned plumbing or auto repair.”
    Roethke laughed–over this low singing of mine–a spirally high-pitched laugh that drew our bartender’s attention a second. Eventually, we got way back to a much earlier discussion of his Japan jaunt. Although he was always wont to welcome my arrival, very charitable in his offer to put me up payless with no responsibility but to play TENNYSON CONNORS, SCRIBE, I never learned much, from his letters, about Japan: other than that it is rutted in the appearance of 1950s America; that there is nothing “mystical” about their form of capitalism, and their sun is not rising as rapidly as is their GNP; that Thailand and Korea, which he also visited, dismayed from equal unoriginality, dissimilar only in that their whores are forthright with their profession, whereas the Japanese force the euphemism “hostesses” upon theirs. But, despite all his good-natured barbs, he would stay, repeatedly renewing his contract to teach; and, finally, he did concede that, as there was never a splendid reason whatsoever for him to leave, “It was nice while it lasted.” Then, as a devilish aside delivered during drinking, “But, even nicer that it didn’t.”
    In New York, however–and this town is what was most in his thoughts–Roethke befriended this saloon keeper who permitted him to drink free, to sleep in the bar–all if he would clean the place up a bit throughout the night. The owner had just married and, as he was still frantic and excited by said situation, would always be in a hurry for home, and thus had begun the neglect of his place. Well, he had met Roethke Hatcher, and from Roet one can tell instantly whether one will be done right by him or not (what it is is that effortless ‘I need to be taken care of’ Caucasoid face, while all I can manage is that handsome ‘I want to be taken care of’ Negroid face; and, while both are easily recognizable, it is another matter whether or not anyone is inclined to play benefactor). As Roet was on his last leg in New York, just a week or two from leaving, he accepted his duties, as if knighted by a king, and his daily habit became drinking and puking and sleeping and waking to breakfast brought in to him, in addition to a little cash to carry when he walked round town. He accepted all this as a personal experiment, to see how long he could do it, would want to do it–all the while, of course, always keeping an eye open for “another something to do”, for yet another opportunity he would provoke someone into asking him to undertake. All ended, however, with Roethke’s realization that the saloon keeper was just as interested in this experiment–almost as if this guy was the scientist and not the subject. So, with feelings of being used, like a toy for another’s amusement, Roet rebelled and, out an act of planned vengeance, after receiving funding from a relative for his midnight train to Chi-Town, he threw an after-hours open-bar party for all the sickly disturbing drunks and derelicts he could unearth. He says he simply “neglected” locking-up.
    “So, where’s this girl,” Roet asked, with a swallow, annoyed, as he sometimes gets with the protraction of a story he finds less interesting, “you met?”
    “Who?”
    “That always pisses me off when you say ‘who’, when you know full well who I’m talking about: Barbara, no, wait”
    “Oh, y’mean–”
    “Wait! I’ll get it,” and Roethke raised his hand to stifle my assistance. He likes to work his memory, he likes to find for himself the answers that are in any textbook he has steadying any wobbly table. Whether vitally important or not, if he has ever known it, he must remember it; if something new suddenly confounds him, he must work it through–no matter the time, the energy expended, the effervescent pointlessness of the entire mess. And, the times have been rare that he has given it up. (“You’re such a little pedant, sometimes,” so I have said to him. And, it was only on the first occasion that I broke his concentration: “You call me a ‘penis’?” “No, a pianist.”) So, there was he, paused and still, but for flicking imaginary ash into its tray, his brow furrowed, the thoughts collecting under the cranium like kid after kid bunching up under the covers of a small bed, every so often mumbling to himself or to me for affirmation, all this elliptical matter in the rotation of his equation. His deferments are merely strains for precise wording, for the full thought, for a clarity within himself to then share with any undeserving interlocutor.
    “How’s Beverly?”
    “Vamoosed,” I blurted, having waited so long, having sat there watching him think, hearing to my right these two effems criticizing the chosen apparel of a wanna-be transvestite friend of theirs, drinking my drink, smoking his smokes, and regarding the brushes against my back in this jammed joint as sometimes unalarming and sometimes rather curious.
    “You stopped seeing her?”
    “Well, I guess y’could say she ‘stopped seeing’ me; but, what I think really happened was she forgot I was there.”
    “Do you miss her?” and, unlike regular male bonding, Roethke discourses on dames like a Barbara Walters’ interview, like any overread yet underpaid and jaded psychoanalyst with a boring patient.
    “Naw–well, I did, for a minute. Y’know, you’re not thirsty until your canteen’s empty, then you’re bashing your head in over all the times ya coulda, shoulda, woulda–Pursue to do, I believe it’s called.”
    “So, you just miss the occasional fuck?”
    “Well, I did. But, there’s a new maniac on the horizon, now: Lindsey. Yeah, it has been quite an extraordinary year for me: I’ve felt quite a number of breasts, this year; Hell, last year, I don’t even think I kissed anybody. This one’s a good kid, though: she likes poetry, she likes me–did I mention she likes me? Nerve o’ the girl: she isn’t even interested in me ‘cause of the Myth–”
    “No, ‘she thinks’ you’re ‘a good catch’.”
    “I’ve used that line on you before?”
    “Fives of times.”
    One thing about Japan, there was Emily. I met her last year, when she returned temporarily to take care of some business as it pertained to her passport. The peculiar thing in our meeting was that Roet had not accompanied her but had encouraged her to contact me to go with for drinks, an evening out for conversation and company. And, as I was only too happy to do so, we made a night of it, sharing, for the most part, anecdotes on Roethke, while downing Martinis at the Drake, and eventually getting drunk to the point where she passed out and I had to carry her to cab, cupping my hands under her mouth as a way of shutting up “She isn’t going to throw up! don’t let her throw up on my seat!” from our concerned cabbie, all the way to her sister’s Wrigleyville apartment, coasting on all I could find in the girl’s purse. I thought, at the time of her phoning in this request, that maybe it was I who was a wee bit old-fashioned in this, but while another friend also thought vaguely of this act of Roet’s as unprecedented, it was one buddy in particular who put it most bluntly: “Hey, I don’t give a fuck who you are, how good or best a friend I think you are–I ain’t ever letting my girlfriend go out alone, witta guy, and for drinks? all night, and I ain’t even in town? and, witta guy who ain’t had none since–” “Okay, we get the picture! And, for argument, whether Roet knows or not, all my ungovernable lusts are strictly professional.” “–Aw, Hell, naw!” and, this bud thus began his summation: “And, I damn sure ain’t setting the shit up!”
    Yet, whether Roethke really considered the vulgar repercussions or thought himself all-that or thought Emily so much not my type, all he was suggesting was that, for Emily to reconstruct to an extent the world they shared away, she should phone me–for I am a drinker, as Roet is a drinker, as we have drunk and been drunken from the get-go of our own friendship and can puke in each other’s company and lay our heads on pillows of fluffy regurgitation and still look each other proudly in the eye; as the two of them have tutored their “good English speak” classes in between the times they have caroused for cocktails. These stories, that he would let loose about Japan, were the best: for Roet had gotten to be dissatisfied settling within a place so frequented that everybody knew his name; for he and Emily would move on, motorcycle beneath them, to place after place, each successor less fluent in speaking English or speaking to English-speakers. Within these stories, Roethke would defend his girl from the patriarchal misogyny of an old man who would push her out his way; Emily, in drunken jealousies, would attack the prettier patrons who would dare whisper suggestive bon mots in her beau’s direction; and, then, the two would swerve on down the lonely, provincial back roads, returning to their apartment, and again into their sterling responsibilities the next day of tutoring Japanese juveniles towards an understanding of English!
    The most interesting thing about these two is that they are so excruciatingly compatible! because none of it seems quite fair in the whole of its inequality. Roethke is the dispassionate and undisputed leader of his relationship, and not, I think, because he is the man, but because his will is incredible; not because he demands to be, but because it seems preordained, because his oratory is hypnotic, his faculty comes through as such as to subliminally suggest, upon his awed auditors any and all, his station as supreme kindergarten teacher. And, Emily is his adoring votary: gratefully elevated by him, not so much to act as second-in-command as to be a distinguished audience for his warm-up; left to lovingly acknowledge his wisdom and follow his guidance with faith unimagined; and, always there to alleviate his aches, sudden frustrations, and ever urge him on towards denying any potential personal doubts. He was her champion, her Petruchio! and she wouldst not have him fail. Aye, and she was finally his Katharina! and, if he please, she was about to do that brother some ease.
    He can concede, now, that he sometimes forgot Emily was this spotlit Love of His Life, “and not just another person”; that little, pretty Emily was to Roet a “sweet, tender responsibility” and, with one word, he could send her to sleep with a peaceful smile adorning her face or leave her totally shattered and wondering her worth to him, to his relationship with her, Hell! her usefulness to the universe. But, as Roet is that kinda pragmatist who values intelligence over sentiment–even over passion, and in spite of the fact that frank, sterilized observation can be misplaced and wounding to one knighted above being “just another person”–it seems, uncontrollably, to be all he can offer, all he ever asks in return. Really, it may be all that is easiest for him, instead of straining the limits of his faculties trying to understand the emotions he elicits out people–those senseless, erratic emotions confronting the absolute emotionless.
    “I just think that everything I had theretofore considered fine–‘fine’ as in there was nothing extraneous fucking anything up–to us, to us both, surprisingly, she thought of it, I think, as insufficient. But, I don’t know what was lacking: we didn’t have everything, but we didn’t have nothing. Really, I don’t know what she wanted, whether even she knew–I, after all, as far as I know, want nothing, nothing but to go on, and she was made aware of this from the very beginning–and, as she could never voice it for my total comprehension’s sake, it is this–in addition to her insane possessiveness, tantrums, a barrage of questions every time my pattern changed–that created our dissension. She was becoming annoyingly difficult to be around.”
    “Actin’ like your girlfriend, or somethin’, y’mean?”
    “That’s a thing, too. I would love to say it, I would–well, I don’t really know if I’d love to say it, maybe need to say it, but I never feel it necessary, just excessive–but if I were to say I loved her–love her–I always feared it would come off like a very bad movie.”
    He paused all, as if awaiting some revelation outta me, requested of the barkeep a drier coaster for his cocktail, then resumed: “So, I left her. I left her before she could leave me–or, should I say, threaten to leave me; I didn’t want to go through that type of bullshit.” Roethke never shared with me the (“bullshit”) scene of separation he did go through. All he would say, before turning such a subject over, onto something easier, was, “I imagine, if this is all meant to be, we’ll migrate back together, some day.” At his most emotional, and still that is saying very little for him, he has uttered such nonsensical matter as “What were we–really!–doing? going? That Emily’s a woman and that I am a man was the only thing keeping us together; and, at any given time could a door-to-door cosmetics woman or a fucking plumber trade places with either of us.”
    Anyway, we returned to his first days of New York, and he has met a few people, mostly after-work crowds unwinding in nice neighborhood bars and not his preferred bad ‘hood bars, where you meet the “more interesting people”; but, he did what he did, on this occasion, for connections, and one such landed him a decent job interview. He never got to go on it, though. The night before, while out, he came across someone half-homeless and part-prostitute. She was attractive, if still slightly ordinary, and deceptively youngish. “Do you know the woman who played on the television program Seinfeld?”
    “Elaine: Julia Louis-Dreyfus.”
    “Yeah, I guess.” Roethke had been passing out one bar for another when this chick had asked him for the time and he gave it. She had not propositioned him, and this irritated him, for he was not looking any worse off than anyone else out at that hour. Still, at this point, he was not certain of her vocation, only that she was fairly chatty with strangers for a lady alone; all he knew was, there is a lady standing out on a bitterly cool midnight, just standing full-weight leaning one leg after another, not hailing a cab from against the wall of some closed-up storefront, a man’s large suit jacket on her over a spry granny dress with patent-leather shoes on her naked feet. Even in the dark, when she would cross a foot over, you could glimpse a great ankle, inviolately pale and perfect. Anyway, under the active features of her face, she replied to his casual question of “What’re you doing out here?” just as casually: “Just standing.” She then asked, as Roethke was taking her in, what better thing was there to do “when you’re young and free?”
    “My plan was to sit down in an air-conditioned place, have a drink, a smoke, and listen to whatever music is played. I wouldn’t mind sharing.”
    That was, roughly, it. They shared it all, with Roet flipping the tab, and Elaine repaying it all with her life’s saga. This is all Roethke wants, ever asks for–to experience life through his own vivacity, or vicariously. Plain or stupid-fine they may be and they may come, but Roethke is the only guy I know who does not clap-on under the fragrance of femininity; is not moved to mount immediately by the light laughs, the flighty and adorable topics chicks find important; does not care about their silky hairs, that luxuriously inscrutable gaze, a busty brush against the body; will not ask for her “Sure” with an eloquent entreaty for intercourse under a summer’s night air.
    So, what, in addition to this girl’s life saga, did he get? he got screwed (figuratively, full-bodied and full-contact). They drank a better part of the night away, returned to his hotel, where he had her sleep safely in the bed while he took the couch. When he awoke, finally, the next morning, head throbbing from something other than all alcohol, Elaine had gone, having absconded with all Roet’s worldly possessions, which was one single suitcase and ostrich wallet (within which was the address and phone number of his potential interview). But, was Roethke pissed? No. He was not mad, there was no feeling of violation–and if there had been such a feeling, it would be accompanied by the appreciation for such a surge of emotion.
    “Uh huh. So, you’re hanging out with harlots and I refuse to conform even slightly and getta job. Yeah, whadda we do with such jacked-up lives?”
    “Live them.”
    “Spoken like the last line of any classic lit.”
    There was a titter out either of us, then that nada that is left over from dried talk of recent pasts, such pasts not easily escaped by simply tossing away a napkin with a number on it. Being with Roethke, though, this is supremely okay, monumentally all right. I simply pretend, throughout this night, that I am like him: living a little for the now–that is, for the immediate money, no matter how much or mulch, but mostly for the fun one can find with whatever funds, and within the company of whoever is nice or interesting and down for the adventures presented, overlooking sometimes personal safety or complemental aesthetics and mental mutualities. Yet, while I naggingly realize that such will not suffice twenty years down the line, onward goes Roethke, wandering in and out of every day–savoring it, exulting throughout it, and perhaps never conceiving middle America’s criticism that he may have wasted his life.



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