Padgett Powell - Aliens of Affection - Stories

I was perfectly free to say, “Wayne, if she’s ugly, I’ll tell you what: I’ll pay your rent and bills here for a month and all I want is one week with her, if she’ll have me. Put the question to her.” I was perfectly free to do this. Of all the things I was afraid of, Wayne was not one of them.

At the time I would have seen such a proposition as a blessing, or at least an improvement, for the suffering Felicia. A week with me! All my teeth! Muscles! College! Now I see that she was lucky I never spoke.

Wayne may be roofing, but I am afraid.

VERY OFTEN, EVERY DAY, every so often, every day I go down to the quay. To the water. No quay. Don’t know what a quay is.

Every day I go down to the water. I would like to say this. Every day I go down to the water.

Lies abound: not every day, not go down, and what precisely does “to the water” purport to mean? To lap it, to look at it, to get in it, all the above, none, what? And “the water”—what water, and if it were determinable would it be the same water every day? I think not.

I and some water on a daily basis come face-to-face; that is ridiculous but not more inaccurate. I entertain some wetness before me. But it is not really the water itself one goes down to, whether going down or up, which you might do were the water a volcano lake, and mine might be, my water, which is not mine to possess except in figure of speech; it is not the water to which one “goes” but its garnish. I fancy crabs, spiders that can walk on the water, rings on it made by the lips of fish snapping at spiders, though I glean that fish avoid the arachnid; water lily, lily pad, other kelpishness and rot, mud beside the water and under the water, the abandoned appliance in the water and in the mud, orphaned tackle, predators dead and alive, trash in the water, turtles. It is not the water but that for which the water is a vehicle that we go, however often, down to, or up to, to do what we do at the water. A redheaded neighbor named McGillicuddy, who looks and acts exactly like Lucille Ball, and I possibly mean Lucille Ball playing a character named McGillicuddy, which I think she did, and I wonder at this set of connections, if that they are, but not much, because I do not have time: this very real Mrs. or Ms. or Miss M. is after me. Her boy has a blue trike. Him I like. She has chased me, palpably.

Obloquy — what the hell does that mean? Are we a little tired of a lack of education here? I submit that I am. Yam.

Of indigo ravens near the water I am fonder than a two-stroke for oil. And some Juicy Fruit to watch them by, my my my. Paper clouds the issue. For me. There is litter in the world, most of it paper, some of it technically trash and some of it merely finally trash after a full life of not-trash, your contracts and books and things. They, too, finally litter the busied head. As much as a worm box a lakeshore. My head is a mudbank. Do not depend on me for your logic. You can depend on me to bitch about litter and head litter and to run from Mrs. McGillicuddy until she catches me, and that probably she probably will. Do. Oops. Oopsie-Daisy. What if that — Oopsie-Daisy — were her first name?

I have reason to suspect that Oopsie-Daisy McGillicuddy does not wear underwear for profit. She is a not-for-profit corpus chasing me uptown and down. I like the odd red sky by the water. I like the green wrinkled pea. I toured France as a teenager and had the runs and felt the women smelled not good and the men puffed much too much when they spoke, if you could call it that, and you could, French is a language. Water harbors mosquitoes, sort of; that is obvious but not in altogether obvious ways, all the time. I don’t mind speaking the untruth when it can be had. That solid shit they hit down the fairway for centuries has been hit, and played, and now we all labor on divoted ground, ground under repair. Our heads still work, it’s the course. The course has got too many people on it, and it should not have been opened to the public. Casual water — a good one.

I defer.

I have not and will not go to war. I have not and will not make money. I have not and will not break ranks with bourgeois order. I have not and will not have much fun, or much pain, in this tour of duty we will be forced to call my life. Is it sad, this not having? It might be, if one could actually think about the situation in its entirety, but if one could do that he would likely be able to engage in escaping the bourgeois board game.

What have I done, will I do? I will pay the bills, cure the ills, put on weight, engage in non-reproductive copulations with a degree of ardor that suggests a compensating for all the other, larger not having. Then it will end and some paper in my name will be redeemed and there will be a pleasant bit of change for survivors and having not wept much they will not celebrate much. They will spend it and I am gone, paper and all. How nice an idea the funeral pyre. How nice an idea the rain tire. How nice an idea chartered bus. How nice an idea large red soda waters and bad teeth. You have this, these in life. People are essentially uninteresting to each other and yet finally alien to each other to a degree that should make us all compelling of the minutest attention we can pay. But alas, we sleep the days, sometime prowl the nights, but groggily and in fits of self-interest only.

The little boy Tod’s blue trike is in the bushes with me. Mrs. McGillicuddy is underwearless on her bed watching TV. She is slack and ope-legged and hairy and not ribald, and I do don’t want to make a noise. Sitting on the seat of the blue trike is a carton, one pint, of chocolate milk, the thick dark heavy commercial glop that can be so good once every year or so. I open it and gently maneuver the trike out and ride it down the quiet street drinking my milk. It is milk of this sort that made the darker races dark, in this country. In others, where Nestle, etc., has only so far purveyed baby formula, ivory in color, the sun or other natural forces have darkened the native. There is a cool breeze blowing across the fine sweat on my forehead as I relax into my crime and ride my stolen joyous wheels. The carton in its perdurable wax fortress will hold sufficient residue of chocolate and milk to lure in and somehow not let out a very large roach, who will die. But for now I am innocent, pedaling and waving at the imaginary crowd lining the parade route. Mrs. McGillicuddy, hirsute and hungry and pink-nightied, haunts me and gives my cheerful waves an abbreviated uncertainty and hesitation to let go the handlebars, where I’ve inadvertently, now the milk is done, gripped both hands for hard pedaling and speed.

When arrested I say only “California or bust” in answer to all questions and am held for psychiatric evaluation, which does not come to anything. I go every day down to the water. Every day to the water, down or up or over or across or proximate or nearly or mostly or delicately or boldly or trepidously or joyously or sadly or bummeduply or downtroddenly or upbeatly or stealthily or healthily or lamely or gamely, I go. I take my time.

I bide it. I tried it. I tried time out and did not like it. It’s not for me. It asks too much of you. There is the incarcerated meaning of it and of course the “free” version of it. Sapling, I mean sampling, them both in my time, I find the incarcerated a cinch to manipulate and the free a bitch. No. Impossible. Free time is like a grizzly bear of disorder, multiple weapons all on a scale of destruction so large you do not even properly, by which I mean rationally, have time — well, that is obvious, that is my point here — have the wherewithal to begin to cope or adjust or posture for its advent and its certain eating you alive, timelessly, in about no time at all — that’s free time. Just bide it. Ride hide slide it. Deride it. Chide it, elide it, take pride in it, decide within it you’ve got to abide it, confide in it, be beside yourself in it, collide with it, tempocide in it. Triking down the street on Tod McGillicuddy’s trike I should have been charged with tempocide but was charged with malicious mischief — same thing — instead.