Leonard Michaels: The Men's Club

A blond man wearing a pastel-blue sweater strained forward in his chair, saying, almost shouting, “I saw that movie. On the Late Show, right? Isn’t that right?” He looked youthful and exceptionally clean. He wore cherry-red jogging shoes, creamy linen slacks, and clear-plastic-framed glasses.

All the faces became still. He retreated. “Maybe it was another movie.”

Berliner’s face swelled with astonishment, then tightened into eerie screeing, tortured noises: “Oh, man, what is your name?” He pointed at the blond. Kramer, hugging himself, contained his laughter. The blond said, “Harold,” stiffening, recovering dignity. Tears like bits of glass formed in his eyes.

“Oh, Harold,” said Berliner, “that’s the story of my life. My mother used to say, ‘Solly Berliner, why can’t you be like Harold?’ Harold Himmel was the smartest, nicest kid in Brooklyn.”

“My name is Harold Canterbury.”

“Right, man. Forgive me. A minute ago when you were talking, I had a weird thought. I thought — forgive me, man — you had a withered hand.”

Harold raised his hands for everyone to see.

Kramer said, “Don’t listen to that jackass, Harold. Nothing wrong with your hands. I’m getting more beer.”

As he walked toward the kitchen, Cavanaugh followed, saying, “I don’t know what this life-story business is about.”

“I’ll show you,” said Kramer. “You get the beers.”

Cavanaugh returned with the beers and Kramer with a metal footlocker, dragging it into our circle. A padlock knocked against the front. Kramer, squatting, tried to fit a key into the lock. His hands began shaking. Cavanaugh bent beside him. “You need a little help?” Kramer handed him the key, saying, “Do it.” Cavanaugh inserted the key. The lock snapped open as if shocked by love.

Kramer heaved back the lid of the footlocker and withdrew to his pillow, lighting a cigarette, hands still shaking. “This is it, my life story.” His voice labored against emotion. “You guys can see my junk, my trinkets. Photos, diaries, papers of every kind.”

Had Kramer left the room it would have been easier to look, but he remained on his pillow staring at the open footlocker, his life. Paul suddenly scrambled toward it on hands and knees, looked, plucked out a handful of snapshots, and fanned them across the rug. Each of them bore an inscription. Paul read aloud: “Coney Island, 1953, Tina. Party at Josephine’s, New Year’s, 1965. Holiday Inn, New Orleans, 1975, Gwen.” He looked from the photos to Kramer, smiling. “All these pictures in your box are women?”

Kramer, in the difficult voice, answered, “I have many photos. I have my navy discharge papers, my high-school diploma, my first driver’s license. I have all my elementary-school notebooks, even spelling exams from the third grade. I have maybe twenty-five fountain pens. All my old passports. Everything is in that box.”

Paul nodded, still smiling. “But these photos, Kramer. Are all these photos women?”

“I have had six hundred and twenty-two women.”

“Right on,” shouted Berliner, his soul projecting toward Kramer through big green eyes, doglike, waiting for a signal. Paul took out more photos and dropped them among the others. Over a hundred now, women in bathing suits, in winter coats, in fifties styles, sixties styles, seventies styles. Spirits of the decades. If men make history, women wear its look in their faces and figures. Fat during the Depression era; slender when times are good. But to me Kramer’s women looked fundamentally the same. One poor sweetie between twenty and thirty years old forever. On a beach, leaning against a railing, a tree, a brick wall, with sun in her eyes, squinting at the camera. A hundred fragments, each complete if you cared to scrutinize. A whole person who could say her name. Maybe love Kramer. That she squinted touched me.

Kramer, with his meticulously sculpted hair, cigarette trembling in his fingers, waited. Nobody spoke, not even Berliner. Looking at the pictures, I was reminded of flashers. See this. It is my entire crotch.

Then Berliner blurted, “Great. Great. Let’s do it. Let’s all talk about our sexual experience.” His face jerked in every direction, seeking encouragement.

As if he’d heard nothing, Kramer said, “I was born in Trenton, New Jersey. My father was a union organizer. In those days it was dangerous work. He was a communist, he lived for an idea. My mother believed in everything he said, but she was always depressed. She sat in the bedroom, in her robe, smoking cigarettes. She never cleaned the house. When I was six years old I was shopping and cooking, like my mother’s mother. I cannot remember one minute which I can call my childhood. I was my mother’s mother. I had a life with no beginning, no childhood.”

“Right,” said Berliner. “You had your childhood later. Six hundred and twenty-two mothers. Right?”

“The women are women. Eventually, I will have another six hundred. I don’t know where my father is, but when I hear the word ‘workers’ or the word ‘struggle,’ I think of him. If I see a hardhat carrying a lunch pail, I think he is struggling. My mother now lives in New York. Twice a year I phone New York and get migraine headaches. Blindness. Nausea. Just say the area code 212 and I feel pain in my eyes.”

I’d been looking at Kramer almost continuously, but now I noticed that his eyes didn’t focus steadily. His right eye was slightly askew. He blinked and brought it into line with the other eye. After a while it drifted away again. He’d let it go for a moment, then blink, bringing it back. His voice was trancelike, compulsive, as if trying to tell us something before he was overwhelmed by doubt and confusion.

Cavanaugh said, “What about Nancy?”

“What about her?” Kramer sounded unsure who Nancy might be.

“Nancy Kramer. She lives here, doesn’t she? These are her plants, aren’t they?” Cavanaugh was looking at the photos on the rug, not the plants.

“You mean the women? What does Nancy think about my women?”

“That’s right.”

“We have a good understanding. Nancy goes out, too. It’s cool. The plants are mine.”

“Yours?” I said.

“Yes. I love them. I’ve got them on my tape recorder. I could play you the fig tree in the corner.” Kramer said this with a sly, dopey look, trying to change the mood, trying to make a joke.

“Too much. Too much, Kramer,” said Berliner. “My wife and me are exactly the same. I mean we also have an understanding.”

I said, “Let Kramer talk.”

Kramer shook his head and bent toward Berliner. “That’s all right. Do you want to say more, Solly?”

Berliner looked at his knees like a guilty kid. “You go on. I’m sorry I interrupted.”

Cavanaugh, imitating Kramer, bent toward Berliner. “Solly, aren’t you jealous when your wife is making it with another guy?”

“Jealous?”

“Yeah, jealous.”

“No, man. I’m liberated.”

“What the hell does that mean?” I said.

Berliner said, as if it were obvious, “I don’t feel anything.”

“Liberated means you don’t feel anything?”

“Yeah. I’m liberated.”

Canterbury, with a huge stare of delight, began repeating, “You don’t feel anything. You don’t feel anything.” Blond and lean, light blue eyes. He strained forward again to speak, then straightened quickly, as if he’d gone too far.

Berliner shrugged. “Once, I felt something.”

Crossing and uncrossing his legs, seeming to writhe in his creamy slacks, Canterbury said, “Tell us about that, please. Tell us about the time you felt something.”

“Does everyone want to hear?” said Berliner, looking at me.

I said, “Yes.”