Leonard Michaels: The Men's Club

I could have said, “I was just thinking about marriage,” but the coincidence was dull, a conversational dead end. I kept my mouth shut and waited. Terry looked for a response. He saw, in the bloated physiology of this hour, men too thick with sugars to want Deborah Zeller, a name of trills and thrusts. It hung in general density, then ceased when I heard the hum of a machine coming through the wall between dining room and kitchen. It was the refrigerator. Standing alone, raped, resonant with humiliation. Our ice mother. We’d seized her food.

A crime.

A crime for sure, but our very table — long pink heart of exotic wood — was also seized. A virtual tree ripped from the monkey jungles. Planed flat, sanded, oiled, rubbed until death yielded a mellow patina. The grain swirled like a river, forever moving and forever still. Aestheticized. As for our monkey kin, they stumbled on the ground. The jungle was gone. They were homeless, perishing; but the table was lovely and we were oblivious to any desperation. Brotherhood is exelusive, not universal. Freud says it’s based on murder. He goes too far. Any dope can see, when beings unite, other beings die. A pride of lions is bad for zebras. A herd of zebras means less grass for cows. “Kramer,” I said, “where did you get this table? I want one.”

Kramer stirred in his darkness. Black hair, black eyes, tattooed forearms were turning toward me. “I want one,” I said again, even as I lost interest in the thing.

“I bought it at Madera Shapes.” He rubbed the surface like a sensitive skin and I felt as if I’d praised his child. “I use tung oil on it.”

Berliner laughed. “You lick the table?”

“T-U-N-G. Tung oil. From a tree down South, from the nut.”

“Oh,” said Berliner, pinching the dregs of his marijuana, sucking it with sharply puckered lips. He took in the information about tung oil as he peered down the ridge of medial septum, his nostrils spreading, pulling with his eyes. Such difficulty and need. It suggested a woman’s groin, distended, hauling her lover inside. I turned to Terry. “You say this woman, Deborah Zeller, tasted your food?”

Berliner collapsed, expelling smoke as if punctured.

“Graduate student in anthropology. Perhaps you knew her?”

“I knew a woman who liked to wear my clothes. She’d also sit on the edge of the tub and watch me shave. I watched her, too, but not the same way. I didn’t want to be her.”

“Oh, come on,” said Berliner. “She put on your clothes and you put on hers. I like to wear my wife’s panties.” He laughed, coughing smoke. “It’s natural. My wife once tried on my jock.”

Paul said, “She must be fashion-conscious.”

“Right, the whole thing is about getting naked.” Berliner was thrilled by what he understood. The drug had mined his brain, delivering this truth to his mouth. He looked at us for acknowledgment.

Paul said, “Yeah.” He sounded hopeful, willing to understand. “What whole thing, man?”

“The fashion industry. It’s about getting naked.” He waited for Paul, nodding at him, urging him to find this brilliance in himself.

“Yeah, yeah, but why do you think so?”

“When we have an argument,” said Cavanaugh to nobody, “Sarah undresses in the bathroom.”

“That so?” said Terry. “Nicki dressed when we had an argument. She’d put on makeup, fix her hair. I could be making a major statement about our marriage when I notice she is digging in the dresser for stockings. Next she is going out the door, car keys in her hand, as if she has a date. Then varrrroom, she’s peeling rubber, taking off down the street.”

Cavanaugh sighed. “I didn’t mean Sarah undresses when we have an argument.”

“No?”

“No. I mean I don’t even know she’s mad until she starts undressing in the bathroom, the door shut.”

“I get it,” said Terry, grinning.

“One time we were in the bedroom undressing. An argument started. She was naked by then. She grabbed up the blanket and top sheet, flung it around herself, and stood there yelling at me. I was so touched I started loving her, middle of her yelling. I couldn’t hear the words. My dick was pointing at her like she’d been out of town for a month. I tried to concentrate on what she was saying. She said I made her feel like throwing up. Like I was my dick.”

Cavanaugh laughed. Faces became sharp, wolfish, laughing with him, as if we’d seized an unexpected permission.

Berliner said, “The best place for being naked is New York.”

“Yeah,” said Paul, “I know what you mean.” He was anxious to make up for his failure a moment ago. “So many people. You get naked just to know you exist. Right?”

“No, man. I mean the energy. You ever make it in Manhattan, around midtown?”

Paul snapped his fingers. “That’s where it’s at.”

“You made it there?”

“No.” He was smiling, shaking his head yes. “But it sounds right.” He shrugged, his smile feeble, helpless. Smallest man in the room. Bird neck. Finicky fingers. Feelings came quickly to his face. It seemed fragile, easy to hurt. To rescue him, I said, “Berliner, when I get home I’ll wake my wife and ask her to slip into my jock.”

The green eyes released Paul, fixed on me, clicked toward a grim conclusion. Somewhere in his electricity he had my number. “You promise?”

I didn’t know if I promised. I smiled at him. “Yes.”

“You’re an asshole. You want your wife to wear a jock.”

He was smirking; triumphant. I wished he’d look at someone else. Kramer then said, “Terry, what about Deborah Zeller?”

“I’m ashamed.” Terry was grinning. The word tickled him.

The word toppled Kramer into perplexity dark as himself. “This is the twentieth century,” he said, glancing around the table, seeking consensus. “You shouldn’t feel that way. In this club we tell everything. The whole point of being here.”

“True, but I’m ashamed.” He meant embarrassed, I supposed. He was being slightly coy.

“Have more wine,” said Cavanaugh, noble face way up there, comprehensive as the sky. It seemed to mean: Look how I am. I talked about my wife and dick and I’m all right. Then he glanced down, studied his wineglass, rocking it, the stem pressed into the crotch of his thumb. He narrowed within himself; a hard, interior focus. Looking up at Berliner, then Paul, he said, “Every time you guys light a marijuana, I think you don’t like your bodies. I always liked my body.”

“Sure,” said Berliner. “It made you a lot of money. I have an ulcer. You ever have trouble, Cavanaugh?”

“Yeah,” said Paul. “My body has cost me a lot of money. I had asthma when I was a kid. I had a back operation. Wherever I travel, I get the local disease. Viruses meet me at the airport. I went to visit my sister in Kentucky and came home with chiggers. For days I was scratching my legs. My union had a conference in Hawaii. Like a paid vacation. I took my wife. First night in the hotel, I get bitten by a scorpion. I think there’s about one scorpion in Hawaii. You ever have trouble like that, Cavanaugh? So I smoke a little grass. It rips off the top of my head. The less body the better, as far as I’m concerned.”

Cavanaugh listened with a flat, unfriendly expression, as if he’d been taken by an access of bad will. It was hard to understand. I knew he’d drunk more than the rest of us, but he was huge and Irish; he could drink all night without poisoning his soul. Maybe he could be mean, but I’d never seen that in him, only the great athlete and gentle giant, the man who wanted his kids not to look like him.

He spoke to Paul now and it became clear that his expression had nothing to do with Paul or Berliner.