Wasted On the Living

[mallorys_camera]

Cup of strong coffee and an empty house. Gray sky with a sultry feel: purple bougainvillea in my front yard seem to have concentrated all the available color wavelengths in a monochrome universe.

The Santa Cruz Mystery Spot bumper sticker got them as far as Sacramento before one of the front tires developed an aneurysm -- so much for JiffyLube's road-worthy diagnostics. Ben's a good driver, noticed the wobble and pulled over before the tire blew out. Thank God for Triple A. They got as far as Winnemucca, camped in an RV lot outside the Golden Nugget. "Don't do any gambling," I warned Ben. "You don't sound lucky."

If they get to Salt Lake City without further disaster, they'll be fine. Right now I feel as though most of my consciousness is involved in blowing the protective bubble around them — like staring out the window of a plane and thinking: fuck those guys in the cockpit, it's me who's keeping the plane in the air with my uplifting thoughts.

My house smells like a California mission. In San Diego Abe took me to this Catholic-Christian religious supply store -- spookier by far than any East Harlem botanica -- and I loaded up on frankincense and myrrh. I'm giving my counter offer to Frank today. Then I'm going to pick up with Hatcher and voyeur.com in the parallel, fictive universe.
Meanwhile --

Okay. So Marybeth is a close friend though I've never had much use for Debbie. I liked Debbie's first husband Tony a great deal, and didn't like the way how after they separated, Debbie rattled on to anyone who would listen about how depressed Tony was all the time. Of course, Tony was depressed — he was coming off a ten year stint of taking care of Debbie while she put the gross national product of Bolivia up her nose, one eightball at a time. We're talking deviated nasal septums here, folks!

Debbie finally sobered up after enough of her friends began to show signs of irredeemable damage (including Jeff Adams' first wife Terry, Debbie's best friend.) And it was time to find a caretaker for this newer, healthier phase of her life. Enter Tom: stolid Vietnam vet, built like a beer barrel. This time round, Debbie changed her last name when she put on that gold ring.

Tom and Tony have a lot in common, actually. Both big guys, both taciturn. Tony is a lot smarter but Tom has a visual flair: he takes great photographs of people when they don't know they're being photographed — including one of me, shot from the back, showing my enormous butt and narrow shoulders, which he presented to me neatly framed as a Christmas gift one year. I thanked him effusively, then went home and threw out the pants I was wearing when he snuck up behind me. Threw the photo away too. Reused the frame.

In the year or so when we were both newly divorced, living near Lake Merritt , Tony and I would sometimes hang out. He would cook elaborate Italian meals, we'd discuss postmodern literature. I liked him a lot and was sad when he fell between the cracks.

Fast forward ten years and I am in the back seat of Debbie's car whence I've been relegated due to my imperviousness to car sickness. We are speeding away from Camp BigBash: XIX, Jeff and Susan's yearly retreat to the Mendocino woodlands. It used to be Camp Little BigBash, but somehow the years have dampened the diminutive. Debbie and Marybeth are gossiping about the various participants and I am feeling intensely alienated like I haven't felt in years. Never again am I going anywhere without my own getaway.


They sound like the snobby female elephants in Dumbo.

"There's just something about Eileen," Debbie muses. "I can't quite put my finger on it. Something not quite right."

"She flashes," says Marybeth cozily. "You'll be talking to her and all of a sudden she goes off on something. A lot of repressed anger there."

"And yet Susan and Jeff hang out with her. They're always going off on some trip together. I don't quite get it."

"Well, she has a very wealthy son. And a dream retreat somewhere up in Washington he bought for her."

"I don't understand it at all," says Debbie again. "Jeff had a real edge to him this time. Did you notice? He wasn't himself at all."

"Well, it's been a rough year for Jeff --"

And this is their cue for a fifteen minute recital of Jeff's various medical complaints, in those sotto voce ain't-it-awful tones. I swear if I'd had an AK47 handy along with its instruction manual, I'd have let it rip.

But then, I flash too.

See, that's the thing about Marybeth. For all that she's sunk into this burgher consciousness, this bourgeois complacency born of a million dollar inheritance and a lifetime of making the proper choices at exactly the right moment, she's still connected to the source. A little bit earlier, she'd been talking about her mother's death -- "It's like losing a part of yourself you didn't even know was there, like losing your shadow" -- and that was just such a brilliant, perfect observation.

Debbie, though. Like one of those little blue-haired, marcel-waved old ladies I used to see on my bus rides to school. Someone who coasted through the first forty years on her looks and who middle age frightened into a kind of opinionated boorishness. Don't like Debbie, and even though we were both on our very best behavior after we left Marybeth off in her Sonoma bed and breakfast, it is very clear that Debbie doesn't particularly like me. Maybe it's a chemical thing. Naturally the first thing I did as soon as I got home was to write her a gushing and completely insincere thank you note.

Dying and disease were very much the weekend's subtexts. Also birth and continuity -- three well-behaved, chubby cheeked babies at hand among the ninety or so guests, as well as a healthy sprinkling of walking, talking children who promptly went Lord of the Flies the minute they hit the redwoods, all except Ruby. Ruby's hero is the socialite philanthropist Brook Astor. "We read about her in a newspaper article," said Dorothy, Ruby's mother. "Ruby was just fascinated. She thought figuring out ways to give away millions of dollars was just about the most fun thing you could do when you grew up."


Ruby was recycling the Brook Astor outfit left over from last Halloween for the evening's festivities. The theme of the evening was France, and in her chick navy blue suit, pillbox hat, white shoes and pearls, she looked like a miniature Coco Chanel. Her mother had sewn it for her -- all except the shoes and the pearls.

Dorothy is a crack seamstress with her own business: she creates and manufactures S&M fetish wear, mostly corsets, boned and padded busks and laces, designed to turn Hilary Clinton into a Gibson girl version of Monica Lewinsky. Dorothy started out as a costume designer for Broadway shows but quickly grew bored and branched out into her own cottage industry. Quiet woman with short red hair, large green eyes and a husband, Mark, who is so far over the top that you can't help wondering about their domestic life together. Possibly they don't have one — she designs and manufactures the clothes, he goes on the road to sell them. When she mentioned Mark had only been home five days out of the last month, she laughed. She didn't sound sad.

Mark's costume this evening was bondage French poodle -- bare chest, Afro wig, tight black pants, a rhinestone choker and a pink leatherette leash for Ruby to lead him around with. Occasionally she would let Daddy off his leash and he would go bother other people. One of those people was Debbie who'd decided to go the Glinda the Good Witch costume route in a vintage peach satin slip, blue silk jacket, and a gold necklace chain from which a gilt bumble bee dangled.

We were eating dinner. The asparagus course.

"Perhaps you would like Fifi to sniff your crotch?" Mark asked Debbie. "Fifi is the queen of crotch sniffing."

"Thanks, but no thanks," said Debbie, smiling. Across the table Jeff Adams, her old buddy, howled with laughter.

"Perhaps you prefer if I hump your leg? I give good hump. Nobody humps like Fifi."

"I'll pass, thanks. Shouldn't you be eating your kibble?"

"Kibble! Ohhhh. Foul stuff. I'd rather be humping your leg." He leered. "But not if you eat those --" Pointing at the asparagus.

Jeff kept laughing.

"Don't you have a speech you have to give?" Debbie asked him.

"Fuck it," said Jeff.

Susan stopped smiling. Twisted her mouth. "We were going to ask for a moment of silence for Jerry. But I don't know. I'm just not --" She shook her head.

"Fifi does not like the way asparagus make peepee smell. Fifi peepees a lot, you know, marking territory and such. So Fifi is something of an expert here. Would you like to watch while I mark someone?"

"No, thank you," Debbie said. Edge to her voice.


This went on for fifteen minutes or so. Then it was time for the talent show. Another Bash tradition. Mark the French poodle made a frenzied Emcee. A sweet four year old did a lounge act with his mother. Some two year olds sang "Pop Goes the Weasel." I remembered a few years back to a time I'd brought Max, and Pat Dugan and I sang backup while he crooned "Under the Boardwalk." I miss the kid. He made being here seem like fun.

Being here now was no fun at all.

Halfway through the talent show, Al Mart grabbed the stage.
"As one who's looked death in the face twice this past year, I just want to say one thing." He grabbed the microphone tighter and swayed slightly. "Never blink. Enjoy every moment you're alive. Every fucking moment. 'Cause guess what? You ain't getting them back."

Right. I'd heard that Al Mart was having health problems. Non-Hodgkins lymphoma, I think. Chemo and radiation helped beat it back. Then he had a relapse. He's presently on his second remission.

Very poor five year survival rate, non-Hodgkin's lymphoma.

But just because he was probably going to die soon didn't mean Al Mart wasn't an asshole.

Now he was droning on about the time he and Nef and their infant daughter lived in Brittany. They were very poor. "We didn't have a pot to piss in," Al told the audience. "We couldn't even afford butter. We bought bacon fat for a couple of pennies, mixed it with herbes de Provance. Know what? That stuff was good! And so was life!"

From the sidelines a few feet away, his wife Nef watched adoringly. Never could understand why Nef stuck it out with Al all those years. After they got back from their travels around the world, Nef put herself through law school. Now she makes pretty good money as an ambulance chaser. The bargains people make, the bargains they keep. Maybe he was the only guy who ever found her G-spot.

"Life is a gift that's wasted on the living," Al ranted. "Wasted on you." He reached for his glass, took a drink. "Just a flash in the pan."

From the corner of my eye, I saw Ruth Shorer leave the room.

Jerry, who died earlier this year, had been Ruth's husband. Lung cancer. He wasn't a smoker, and never worked with asbestos so God knows how he got it. He'd been an artist, didn't have much in the way of health benefits, and the Big Bash group had come through for him -- he'd sent out an upbeat APB to the mailing list, I sent him a few hundred dollars, others sent more. Last year they organized a benefit for him at Rick Raffanti's restaurant. It pulled in close to seven grand.

He died anyway.

And this year, nobody had as so much as mentioned his name.

Ruth and I have never been particularly close. Still I couldn't bear to see her leave the room like that, and apparently I was the only one who'd noticed she had left.

Found her in the kitchen weeping hysterically. Put my arms around her, held her for a couple of moments. Led her outside.
Among the improvements at this year's camp were thicker mattress pads, two industrial strength coffee makers and a kind of portable fire pit for the front of the main lodge. There were burning logs in it now, comforting flames. The sky was black and clear, the stars were bright. Through the thick redwoods, I could sense rather than see the presence of the full moon.

I parked her in a chair, grabbed the seat next to her. We weren't the only ones out there. Dorothy was there too, staring into the flames, her elegant daughter asleep on her lap.

"You don't know what it's like," said Ruth. "I never had an easy life. And I knew there was something about me that put people off. I never thought I'd meet someone who could love me completely. And then I did. And now he's dead."

It's true. Before Jerry, Ruth was something of a social pariah with this set. She spit when she talked, and she talked a lot. She had the funny Jew intensity thing going. She laughed too much, trying to cover it up.

"You and Jerry met at Camp, didn't you?" I asked.

She shook her head. "No, we met at a cocktail party. We were standing in a group. I made a stupid joke, something tactless, politically incorrect. I was always making jokes that were politically incorrect. And everyone got really quiet except for Jerry. He started to laugh. He got the joke. He always got the joke."

"You're very brave to be here," I said.

"I don't know what I was thinking," said Ruth. "I lied to myself. I told myself he'd be here too."

Whatever Dorothy was thinking, she kept it to herself.