Chris Offutt: The Same River Twice: A Memoir

“That was great, Jahi!”

“Yeah, you’re a natural.”

She gave me a postgame pep talk on how to talk dirty in bed. I nodded and thanked her and she sent me out for pizza, her scent covering me like infield dust. I relived the game in my mind, conjuring instant replays of the best parts.

During the next few weeks, Jahi commandeered my urban safari to Coney Island, Times Square, Radio City, and a hundred bars in between. On the Staten Island Ferry she climbed over the railing to dangle by her arms. The murky water whirlpooled below, filled with plastic tampon tubes and toxic fish, Jahi grinned at me and kicked the side of the boat.

“Don’t jump,” she yelled. “Hang on, Chris. Hang on!”

After the crew hauled her up, she began hurling life preservers overboard. “I can’t swim,” she explained. “I have to save myself.”

The angry captain assigned us a guard, whom Jahi charmed through subtle exposure of her chest. He leaned to the port for a glimpse down her shirt. The boat rocked in the wake of a tug and he stumbled, face red, and banned her from the ferry.

“Starting when?” she said.

“Now.”

“Stop the boat!” she yelled. “Take me back.” She slapped him across the face. “That nutball grabbed my ass. Help, help!”

Passengers turned away in a slack-eyed city manner, but a couple of burly men advanced. Jahi grabbed them by their belt buckles, one in each tiny hand.

“He’s the one,” she said, her voice sliding into the plaintive tone of a child. “He’s the one who touched me down there.”

One of her saviors had two tears tattooed below his right eye. At the base of his hairline were the letters H.A.N.Y.C. The taller one had a subway token embedded in his ear hole, the flesh grown around it like a board nailed to a tree.

“Which one,” the tall guy said.

“Don’t know,” Jahi said. “Can’t remember.”

“Stomp both,” said the other one.

“It was him.” The boat guard pointed at me. “He’s the freak.”

“Rat knows its own hole,” the tall one said.

“Yeah,” I said. “Smeller’s the feller.”

The hard guys looked at me and I realized that I’d pulled their focus from the uniform.

“You two are big bullies,” Jahi said.

She spread her legs and arched her back, tipping her head to look up at them. Her voice came hard and mean.

“Nervous without your hogs. I’d half-and-half you on the spot if you took a shower. Don’t dime me on this fucking tub, boys. Here’s the front. The citizen’s with me but he’s cherry for a mule. The boat heat’s a cowboy looking for a notch. You clippers cross the wise and it’s a hard down, with no help from your brothers. They took their taste last night in the Alphabet.”

The bikers stiffened beneath her onslaught, eyes turning reptile-flat. The tall one eased backwards, disappearing among the passengers, his friend following. The boat guard tracked them at a coward’s distance. Jahi wiped a sheen of sweat from each temple.

“What was all that?” I asked. “I didn’t understand a word you said.”

“They did.” She brushed her knuckles against my crotch. “You understand this, right?”

I nodded and when the ferry docked across the bay, we crawled into one of the emergency rowboats lashed to the side and frolicked in the bow.

The following Saturday she took me to the nude area of Rock-away Beach, where fat voyeurs trailed ugly women. Men with perfect hair trooped naked in pairs. I remembered my grandmother’s opinion of a Playgirl magazine my sister showed her one Christmas. “They’re just like on the farm,” Grandmaw had said. “All those old-fashioned pumps with the handles hanging down.”

Jahi chose a few square yards of dirty sand amid condoms and cigarette butts. I’ve always hated the beach except in winter. The sun’s too hot, the sea’s too cold, and the presence of humanity spoils any natural beauty still lurking in the sand. Jahi refused to disrobe on the grounds that she was brown enough. We’d never discussed her heritage and I didn’t want to embarrass myself with the stupidity of asking if she tanned. She insisted that I undress. Since I would not lie on my stomach and proffer myself to the steady parade of men, I lay on my back. The sun scorched my testicles within five minutes.

Jahi teased me for days. In the subway she cocked her head, voice loud to draw attention.

“Are your balls still sunburnt, Chris? They must itch like fire.” She addressed the nearest stranger. “Burnt to cinders at the beach. If he’s not bragging, he’s complaining.”

Our public time was a constant duel designed to make me angry, jealous, or embarrassed. As she ran low on ammo against my nonchalance, her improvisations became more outrageous. While waiting for a train, she asked a stranger’s opinion of my eyes. Soon she had him leaning close to inspect my face. He agreed that my eyes were slightly crossed, especially the left one. “Yes,” she said. “That one has got to go. Do you have a knife? You take it out. You, you, you!”

We rode the subway for hours per day, Jahi’s method of rehearsing for her stage career with myriad strangers as her audience. She considered her antics a necessary corrective to my rural background. In the middle of mischief, she’d grin my way, eager for approval. She once stole a ream of paper and opened the bundle on a windy sidewalk. “Oh my God!” she shrieked. “My manuscript!” We watched twelve Samaritans chase blank pages down the avenue. At a topless bar she removed her shirt to bus tables, piling empty glasses on the lap of a drunk who’d been pawing the dancers. A bouncer with shoulders like a picnic table came our way. I stayed in my chair, aware that standing would get my head thumped, trusting Jahi to avert trouble.

“Hey, sugar,” the bouncer said to her. “You need a job? We could use your kind of spunk.”

“I got a job,” she said, pointing to me. “I watch out for him. He’s a famous actor.”

The bouncer helped Jahi with her coat, then turned to me. “You’re a lucky man, my friend.”

That evening we lounged in her apartment while twilight pollution streaked orange across the sky. Construction noise had ceased at the nearby condo site where future dwellers would pay extra for the fetid river breeze. Jahi had spent the day trying unsuccessfully to make me jealous on the street. Angry at herself, she told me my acting career was a joke. I spent too much time merely watching, writing in my journal.

I’d never told her about my single audition, crammed into a hot room with sixty guys, each of whom clutched a satchel of résumés. Everyone seemed to know each other, like members of a club. They sparred and parried in dirty verbal fighting until a slow response brought on a death jab. The winner smiled and wished the loser luck.

When my name was called, I stepped through a door and crossed the dark stage to an oval swatch of light. Someone thrust a typed page into my hand. A nasal voice whined from the darkness: “Start at the red arrow.”

Twenty seconds later the same voice interrupted to thank me. Confused, I nodded and continued reading.

“I said thank you,” the voice said. “Can someone please…”

A hand took my arm while another retrieved the script. They led me away like an entry at the county fair, a recalcitrant steer who’d balked before the judging stand. I decided to become a movie actor, and skip fooling around with the legitimate theater.

Jahi had surreptitiously removed her underwear from beneath her dress. The thin cloth dangled from her foot. She kicked and her panties arched neatly onto my head.

“Do you write about me?” she said.

“Maybe.”

“You should.”

“Why?”