Chapter 34 #3
“Goldberg,” he says. “Don’t even try with bullshit feminism. Maybe it’s ’cause you didn’t go to college…” Where guys learn to be dicks and girls learn to obsess over dicks. “But girls want it too, the bullshit. And one of these days, Vail will…Gimme a bump.”
I give him a bump. The phone rings. It is the Beanery. He is missed.
“The funny thing is, Goldberg…You don’t even like Vail. You like the chase.”
“Bullshit.”
“It’s true, kid. You’re using her. She’s using you. That’s the game. So yeah…Save the feminism for another night. If you cared about women, you’d let me talk to my fucking mom.”
“Who would disown you for good if she saw all these chats on your computer.”
“Are you shitting me? She’s my mom! First one to say that all these New York City girls are nowhere near good enough for her boy.”
It’s what Miranda said at the baby shower about the boy whose mommy told him he’s perfect. Mr. Mooney blames my mother for my “issues,” but is it ever on us?
“All right, Dick. If you don’t want Vail, why did you go to India with us?”
“Huh?”
He doesn’t remember and my God, to be a dick. “India. The first time we all hung out. Vail and I had plans, and you say you’re going to get Indian food and we go with you. Why?”
“I was hungry.” He laughs. “Goldberg, come on. You can’t still be into that chick…
Her face is all right, but the body…She needs to go to the gym, even if it’s Curves.
And she’s so…in her head. You call that sex?
She lays there like she’s only doing it to tell Cynthia.
And she thinks we’re all so stupid, the whole ‘I never show anyone my janky toe’ act and ‘the last guy I dated’ bit…
Don’t you get it, G? She’s not capable of anything real.
Maybe in ten years but who cares…Those tits aren’t the kind that hold up, kid. ”
I never talked about women in the locker room in school, and I won’t do it now. I am losing my grip on him and his phone rings again. You. And somehow he just knows.
“That’s another thing. The calls…the babbling. She can never just chill. And India. Picture it from my end. She’s in my shop every day and I’m about to file a restraining order and then you walk in with your stinky flannel and your heart on your sleeves….”
“Sleeve. Singular.”
He rolls his eyes. “Dude, she didn’t even put you on the Evite for her birthday, let alone let you fucking hang with her.”
There was an Evite? “You don’t know anything about us.”
“Meanwhile she’s harping on me about the party, calling me nonstop, all ‘I didn’t see your RSVP, are you coming?’…Girls. I told you, Joe. If she was into you, she would’ve wanted to eat cake with you, not me and fifty other fucking douchebags.”
Memory Lane is too rough for me right now. I can’t help it. I break. “You could’ve mentioned that to me, maybe told her you’re not interested, maybe cut the fucking cord and come clean about…I’m a person. I’m a…”
I want to say more, but my voice is cracking, his phone is ringing. A 212 landline.
Cops?
“Your monkeys, your circus, Goldilocks. And you were right, what you said about girls…They are fucking hamsters…” I hate that I am the hamster who got a pellet, approval from Dr. Dick.
“Not at first, though. You hit the bar and girls are wild. They’re out on the town, bendy li’l monkeys with legs for days, grabbing at your banana.
You take that monkey home but next thing you know…
Meta-fucking-morphosis. That wild monkey… It turned on you and it’s…a hamster.”
“Bullshit.”
“I know! Because what fucking kid wants a hamster? Hamsters aren’t fun.
They’re just work. They don’t play with you.
They just shit in that cage waiting for you to come back and come on…
We’re supposed to respect that fucking hamster?
That’s what I meant, kid. This shit you pulled with me…
I been through worse. It’s nothing compared to the shit they pull on us. ”
I give him a bump and I guess I am a little hypocritical. Or maybe I’m just afraid of jail.
“We are guilty of nothing, Goldberg. We hook up with monkeys and then they hamster up on us. So no, I don’t worry about Vail or any fucking girl…Not my monkeys, not my…Did you know I had a dog?”
I didn’t. “We’re getting off track.”
“Roscoe was the best….” Is he playing me?
Are the cops on the way? “Roscoe was my boy and he loved me. Hamsters don’t love you.
They don’t jump when you come home. Not like Roscoe.
Roscoe was the bomb and I tell you this, Goldberg.
I would sacrifice all the NYC ‘hamsters’ for one more hour with my good boy…
You know what my mom said when she saw Vail?
She said I’d be better off back home with a girl who’s not stuck on a hamster wheel.
I think she meant the rat race, but you get the gist.”
I do get it. And that’s when I do it: I knock his fucking lights out. One clean hit.
My hand is raw. Not bleeding badly but bleeding. I blow out the candle and I tape the stupid sock back in his mouth. Am I fucked? No. I’m not a criminal. He’s the bad guy, I’m the good guy and you’re…I picture you and Dick IMing a week from now.
Dick: So then I spout off all this bullshit about hamsters and monkeys and the kid believes it. I’m coked out of my mind and this kid is listening
You: OMG our poor boy lol you knew how to play him you saved your own life I mean WOW DICK WOW and I still can’t believe he compared me to a hamster. Asshole much?
Dick: I told you he was off. I mean you do understand why I had to call the cops on him. Dude is deranged enough to do that to me, imagine what he could do to a girl.
You: I’m just so happy you’re alive, baby. What a long strange trip. I mean I’m happy we BOTH survived that crazy lil boy.
Dick: Me too. So. Wanna get married?
Stop it, Joe, stop it. You’re not getting hitched and the shiva wasn’t a total bust. I know what we’re up against now.
An acid tongue. A carnival jackass charlatan who waves his dog tags to distract you while he steals your pride, your soul, your heart.
I was wrong. He really is fucking evil and he’s just gonna keep going, isn’t he?
Let’s say I drag his veteran-disrespecting ass out of here.
We laugh it off as a coke bender gone sideways.
Where does that leave us? You and me. We’re back to square one.
You’re plagued with guilt about pulling the Dick-stained wool over my eyes and you think you don’t deserve a guy like me.
You run around with him behind my back, casually breaking my heart as his acid piss rain corrodes our greens of summers in-fucking-definitely.
But if he died…
Gently, Joseph.