Thomas McGuane - Panama

“I want some god damn solace from you, Chet.”

“I’ll give you solace. The marine biologist is blind in the eye he looks into the microscope with and it’s your fault because you demand testimonials.”

She shrieked, “You’re making me crazy! Can’t you help?”

“Buggery.”

“What?”

“Buggery.”

“Oh my God.”

“I’ll put tongs on your temples you screaming testimonial-seeking harridan.”

Catherine hit me in the side of the head with a lamp and yelled, “Couldn’t you have left me alone you sonofabitch. Couldn’t you have left it clean like I did instead of running me down until I was nuts!”

I was crawling in the glass. The blow in the head had done something and I was seeing double and my hands were bleeding. Catherine sobbed, her face into the concrete wall, and I was dazed and my teeth were lying on the bloody tile floor. I ran my thumb over the bridge of gum where they fitted to see if there was any broken glass there before I put them back. I couldn’t see how you could hire an orchestra and have this on the same day.

I went to Catherine and touched her and my hand made a bloody print on her back. She turned to me, her eyes nearly closed and only white showing in the openings, making her seem quite thoroughly insane.

Catherine needed to lie down so I put her in the mildewed bedroom and tucked her in. I hunted for something to read to her but could only find Fenimore Cooper’s The Prairie; and not in an ideal edition. It was a Classic Comic. When I got to the end of it, having removed my teeth to recite all the Indian parts, I read the peroration: “ Abiram was led away to receive the cruel justice of the desert law. The others made their way back to the settlements under the protection of Hard Heart and his Gallant Band. The Aged Trapper was content to remain and pass the few remaining years allotted him in the great reaches of the open prairie.”

Catherine was asleep. I could see the ocean from the window and I let it blot into my vision. I felt all the emptiness I call home.

THIS YEAR the visitors from New York are a bit more homogenous than I had recalled. They wear their hair short and have clipped, British-military mustaches. They look orderly and reliable. Of an evening, they bump their bottoms frenetically to the music of sleepy or angry colored people; one song I hear all the way from Duval Street goes “Don’t do me no damn favor, I don’t know karate but I know the razor!” promising a bloodbath to the bottom bumpers on the patio, with timed James Brown grunts and “Hep me now” and “Good God!” coming out of the quadraphonics to five hundred screaming clones in dripping batik, coiffed like leftenants out of Goodbye to All That.

* * *

Thinking of moving again. Problems. Have to learn a new zip code. Still, I’m listless, too tired to work on my tan. And I’m wondering if I’m getting herpes simplex again. This morning I stared at my cock through a stamp collector’s glass, looking for the little blisters on the pink distortion. I started to drift off as I stared through the glass. The little craters made me think I was on the moon. I reflected upon our country’s space program. For some reason, scarcely anything seems to bespeak my era so much as herpes simplex. Oddly, it appears as — what? — a teensy blister. Then a sore, not much, goes away, a little irritant. It’s infectious. When your girl gets it, from you, it is not at all the same thing. For instance, she screams when she pisses. She won’t put out. She demands to know, “Where did you get this one?” The answer is: From the age.

I don’t want to move any more; and maybe failure will bring some humanity to this situation. They no longer have my house on the tour; though Tennessee Williams’s still is. The garden club brochure said the furniture was Cuban Victorian and Miz Somebody Or Other said See it! It idn’t gonna be on the tooah next yeah! Cousin Donald Singer at the Greyhound freight office said Cuban Victorian was anything the termites wouldn’t eat.

Also, I like being in a place where many of the people speak a language I don’t understand. Then you begin to enrich your life by imagining what people are saying. Years of touring has given me this predilection. For instance, I perceived in the Russian tongue the history of the manufacture of galoshes. In the Spanish language I perceived the history of a lack of rain. I perceived in the French tongue the history of no underpants and an excess of utensils, both shaving and cooking. Who knows what’s in American; farting, whistling Dixie, I don’t know.

I went out for what seemed like a last-minute meal, a restaurant on the boulevard. Last minute before what I don’t know. A heavy wind, screaming in palms that were stretched out over the highway. Inside I was alone except for two yachting couples dining together. Since they ruined my appetite, I will record their conversation:

“Can I have the buffet?” One of the women. She saw me and winked.

“Honey—” The husband caught the wink.

“Can I go to the buffet?” She studiously did not look at me.

“Honey—”

“G’outa my way. I’m gna buffay.” She arises for me.

“Take it easy.” He snatches her into her chair.

“I’m gonna have a roll and butter.”

“Wait till they bring the baron of beef for Christ’s sake. ”

“Oh, you—”

“Okay, honey.” The husband glared at me in challenge. He looked like a very stupid elk in Yellowstone National Park.

“I’m gona the bar, you.”

“Stay where you are.”

“I’m gna the bar.”

“Like hell you are.”

“You…”

The waitress came. I tipped her but refused to order.

“I’m a woman.”

“Right, honey,” said the husband, rolling his eyes only very slightly.

“I’m a lady and you’ll never get another one.”

“Sure—” He bounces his fork tines very precisely against the table.

“And we’re having a great time.”

“This we know.” He rolls his eyes for me. Now we are in cahoots. We agree his wife is a drunken slob.

“And I’m a wom— auhbrappp —woman.”

“Exactly.”

“So lay off.”

“Okay.” A sigh.

“And I love the sea…”

I went ahead and ordered a drink, big belt of Beam’s Choice, and listened. The first thing I heard the woman say was “Nnnnnrrughp!”

“Oh boy.”

Then a long silence while they waited for someone to bag their dinners.

“Gawd, I love us!”

“You better believe it!” One of the men.

“I honestly really love all of us.”

“Right…”

“I’m a woman and I love the sea. Which is good.”

“ Thin … slices of beef … English style. In a bag. It doesn’t seem right.”

“The main thing about me NNNGRUUGPH! ” Everyone but the wife jumped away from the table, holding napkins at the ready. “Miss … oh … miss, uh I’ve made a mess. God I’m so sorry. Jese what a pig I am.”

I left. Shitsuckers.

* * *

There is something to be said for lining up a few cheap thrills ahead of time. As I grow older the cheapness is easier to come by; but the thrill is always the same twitching of half-shot nerves. My father is dead and he wasn’t any help to me anyway; but he was the only one I had and so at night I walk around and think I’m talking to him because he came from some place and was born in a certain year and he was my old man and he died in a certain year, as always, while there were still things to be said. And really, all I wanted to say was, So long, Pappy, I know it’s a lot of shit too. And whatever I might say about you as a father, you’re the only one I got. Still, you didn’t treat me like you should have.