Philip Dick - Confessions of a Crap Artist

“Sure,” she said.

“You are,” I said. “Honest to god you are. What do I have to do to prove it to you? Do I have to get down on my knees and beg you to come back? Okay, if I have to I will. I beg you to come back and talk like an adult and stop acting like a child. What’s the matter with you two, are you adults, a married couple, on are you a pair of children?” Now I had raised my voice. “This whole thing is too much for me,” I called to her. “Why can’t we be friends? I’m just crazy about you and your husband. How did all this dissension get started?”

After a long time Gwen said, “Well, maybe we’re both too sensitive about looking so young.”

“God!” I said. “I wish I looked as young as you. I wish to heaven I looked so young. You’re both adorable; you’re like something from heaven. We never saw such a beautiful couple before. I’d like to hug both of you—I wish I could adopt you or something. Please come back. Look,” I said, driving as close to her bike as possible. “Let’s go pick up your husband, and I’ll drive you over to the Western and we’ll have a seafood dinner. Have you had dinner? Or we’ll go to the Drake’s Arms and have dinner there. Please. Let me take you out to dinner. As a favor to me.” I got my most wheedling tone.

Finally, she weakened. “You don’t have to take us out to dinner.”

“Have you ever been to the Drake’s Arms? We’ll play darts—I tell you what: I’ll challenge both of you, a dollar a game. I can beat anybody except Oko himself.”

In the end she gave in. I loaded her bike into the back of the car and her into the front seat beside me—she was steaming with perspiration from the exertion of biking—and picked up speed. Now I felt happy, really happy, for the first time in months. I felt that I had genuinely accomplished something, breaking down the barriers and getting to these fine, handsome people who were so shy, so sensitive, so easily hurt. In my mind I swore an oath that I’d be more careful and not insult them in my usual big-footed way. Now that I had humbled—in fact humiliated—myself to recapture their friendliness, I did not want to throw it away.

And you know how you are, Fay, I said to myself. You know how your witless tongue gets you into trouble; you always say anything that comes into your mind, without any thought for the conseqences.

“When you get to know me better,” I told her, “you’ll learn not to pay any attention to me. I’m a crude, vulgar person. I remember one day in the public library I said the word ‘fuck’ in front of a librarian. I could have died. I could have sunk through the floor. I never went back; I never could look at her again.”

Gwen laughed slightly, I thought a little uneasily.

“I pick up language like that from Charley,” I explained, and then I described his factory to her, how many men he employed, what he netted in a year. She seemed to be interested, to some extent at least.

The ride up to their house in Marin County made me carsick, due to the sharp turns through Samuel P. Taylor Park. On each turn I thought Charley was going to leave the road. Both he and Fay knew the road so well that they knew exactly how far up they could push the gas pedal on each turn. One mile an hour more and the car would have gone off into the creek. At one time he hit sixty miles an hour. Most drivers would have had to take it at twenty-five, especially those weekend drivers who putter along. And Charley used the whole road, not just his lane; he went all the way over to the shoulder on the far side. He seemed to know whether a can was coming on not, even though I could see nothing but trees. Fay did not show any signs of nervousness, beside him in the front seat; in fact she seemed to be half-asleep.

But around me all my goods slid and rocked. What an odd sensation it was, to have them with me in motion, not back at the room. For all intents and purposes I had given up my room; now I was going to live with my sister and her husband, at their house—I had no actual place of my own. It was like going back to childhood, and I felt depressed and uncomfortable. However, the scenery cheered me up. And I knew, from their description, what sort of a house it was; I knew that it was very swanky, with all the latest gadgets.

To keep my spirits up I thought of the animals. At one time during high school I had worked for a veterinarian, sweeping out, cleaning the cages, helping people bring their pets in from their cars, feeding the animals boarded there, getting rid of dead animals. I had enjoyed being around the animals. And long ago, when I was about eleven, I had spent a lot of time catching insects and making analyses of them. I had taken apart those giant yellow slugs. I used to catch flies and hang them from loops of thread… however the weight of the fly’s body was usually too slight to close the noose, so I had usually had to pull down on the fly. At that point the fly’s eyes would pop from his head and his head would come off.

When we arrived at the house Charley helped me carry my boxes of possessions indoors and to a room in the rear that they had decided to present me for my use. Evidently they had used it for storage; we had to carry out one armload after another of garden tools, children’s discarded games and toys, even a bed that the collie dog had spent time in.

Shutting myself in the room I began putting my clothes in the closet and setting out my things, trying to give this new room an air of familiarity. With scotch tape I put up various important facts on the walls. I inserted items from my rock collection into the corners. Last of all, for a time I put my head in the bag containing my collection of milk bottle tops and breathed in the rich, sour odor of the bottle tops, a smell that had been with me since the fourth grade. That raised my spirits and I looked out of the window for the first time.

Dinner that night made me conscious of the luxury in which my sister was now living. Outdoors on the patio she had Charley broiling t-bone steak in a charcoal pit, while inside she fixed hors d’oeuvres of minced clams and cream cheese baked on English muffins, martinis, avocado salad, baked potatoes, Italian beans from their freezer that they had originally grown themselves… and, for dessert, huckleberries that they had picked the summer before somewhere out near the Point. They had coffee; the two children and I had milk. And the children and I had whipped cream on our huckleberries.

After dinner I carried the children around on my back, while Fay and Charley sat in the living room having a second martini and listening to longhair music on the hi-fl. In the fireplace they had a fire of oak logs from the cord stacked up near the side of the house. I don’t think I have ever enjoyed such comfort, and I threw myself into playing with the girls, getting a great kick out of swinging them around, tossing them high up and recatching them, hiding from them and letting them find me. Their yells seemed to annoy Fay and all at once she got up to go put the dishes in the automatic dishwasher.

Later I helped put the children to bed. I read a story to them from the Oz book. It made me feel strange to be reading one of the stories that I knew so well… .books so much a part of my life, and these children had not even been born until the ‘fifties. They hadn’t even been alive during World War Two.

I realized that this was the first time I had ever had anything to do with children.

“You sure have nice kids,” I said to Fay, after we had left the children’s rooms.

Fay said, “Everybody says that, so it must be true. Personally I find them a lot of work. You enjoy playing with them, but after they’ve pestered you day in day out for years—wait’ll you’ve got up every morning at seven and fixed breakfast for them.”