Sam Lipsyte - The Fun Parts

“Balls of nurturing?”

“Gentle now, guy.”

“What say we call it even,” says Mr. Gottwald. “What say you just leave and I don’t press charges.”

It’s hard to hear him because of Baby Gottwald, who hasn’t really stopped wailing since I woke him, but I think I get the gist. I get a better sense of it when Mr. Gottwald leaves the kitchen, comes back with a few throwing stars jutting from his fist.

“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves,” I say.

“You came highly recommended. That woman Fanny Hitchens sent us a fabulous letter.”

Thing is, I’m touched by this, because I wrote the letter, and I guess I really nailed it, even got Fanny’s signature right, which is famous and appears on the jacket of her book.

“Why don’t you put that ninja crap away,” I say. “Press what charges?”

“Endangering the life of a child, for starters.”

“A child who, by his very definition, is endangered,” I say.

“I’m sorry,” says Mr. Gottwald. “Excuse me?”

“This life,” I say, and my arm does this kind of grand sweepy thing I’m not quite able to control. “This thing we so blithely and with a detestable dearth of gravitas call life, it’s not all cuddles and fluff, you know. It’s also, methinks, a boat. And so we must ask ourselves, who’s got the helm? Where’s the skipper? Doth a proper pilot dwell upon this heap?”

“What the fuck are you—”

“Here comes the dock! Look out, man!”

I Frisbee the pizza box at Mr. Gottwald, bolt. Mr. Gottwald and a squealing Ezekiel scramble after me, but I’m already there at the corner rack, the nunchucks up in full, fearsome bolo over my head. I slide-step over to Mrs. Gottwald, who shrieks, shields the baby. Mr. Gottwald assumes a fighting stance, cocks a throwing star behind his ear.

“Barry, don’t!” cries Mrs. Gottwald. “You’ll hit Prague!”

“Prague?” I say.

“That’s the baby’s name.”

“Prague?”

“We love the city. Now step away from my wife.”

I lift Mrs. Gottwald’s swollen breast from her nightgown.

“This is going to hurt,” I say, “but we’ve got to clear those ducts.”

I lean down, suck hard. Mrs. Gottwald stiffens. My arm is going dead, and I begin to sense the nunchucks, our invincible cocoon of buzzing wood, slowing down, but in a moment it doesn’t matter, nothing matters, the milk is sweet, drips thick in my mouth as Mrs. Gottwald’s hind ducts open and all that deep cream starts to flow and I am suddenly every tiny helpless thing that ever wanted nothing but to survive another hour in this foolish, feckless universe. I am one particular tiny, helpless thing, too, namely Mitch, mewling newbie Mitchell Malley, latched onto his lovely and exhausted mother, the mother of his alternate reality dreams, the mother who will welcome wounded dugs, exult in throb and split, the mother who will spurn the antiseptic credos of the medical-Madonna complex, who will love her little Mitchell no matter what fate forces him to become, who will cherish his butter-colored teeth and ratty (vintage) buckskin jacket.

I guess it’s probably a good thing that my true, non — alternate reality mother’s not around to witness this. How could she, though? She’s in Montana with Vance and Tina. She’s on life support, if I heard my sister’s message right, though a part of me is still convincing the rest of me that I didn’t hear the message right.

Everybody thinks I hate my mother, that all of my so-called shenanigans can be traced back to some primal trauma. But though I’m not a rabid Vance fan, I love my mother. Like I said, she did the best she could. That’s what I’m trying to do, too, as I raise my lips from Mrs. Gottwald’s nipple and press Baby Gottwald’s mouth there. The hungry worm starts feeding and Mrs. Gottwald groans sweetly and I get to work on the other breast.

“Zekey,” whispers Mr. Gottwald, “nine one one.”

“Did it,” says the boy in a faraway voice.

When Fanny was dying in her apartment uptown, I sat with her most days and nights. I’d hold her birdlike hand, not that her hand looked like a bird, it looked more like a very old and sick hand, but I’d hold it as she whispered the Wisdom of the Doulas one last time.

“Mother the mother,” she said. “Mother the father. Mother the room.”

“Nurture,” she said. “Nurture, nurture, nurture. Plus nature.”

“And remember, don’t spring for the pizza.”

Okay, that last one was mine, but what I’m trying to say is all I ever wanted was to carry on Fanny’s legacy, be part of a loving continuum.

There’s a thud in the pillar near my head. An iron star quivers in the wood. Now comes the sound of many men in non-nurturing boots. I can see them from the corner of my eye, padded black turtlenecks, batons. One stomps over, jabbing at the air with a weird-looking gun. He seems very judgmental.

My story won’t end here. I’ll start my own foundation, certify myself. The American League got a late start, but don’t they win their share of all-star games? No more forged letters from Fanny, either. I’ll find the families that need me, appreciate my craft. I’ll start with my building, Paula the Crackhead down the hall. There’s no question she’s knocked up, and I’d wager she could stand for a little doulo-style tenderness.

Outside the window the evening is overly bright, and I wonder if the gods aren’t having a festival of capricious cruelty in the sky, which for some reason I picture including a hot buffet, maybe because I can almost smell one, and I notice some trucks parked down the block, big floodlights, reflectors, rigged for a night shoot. Men and women with walkie-talkies mill around a table heaped with pasta and fruit.

There but for the grace of God, and Fanny Hitchens, mill I.

Now the man with the weird-looking gun is shouting some official-sounding speech about the electrical nature of his weapon, which he vows to fire if I don’t drop the nunchucks.

I don’t drop the nunchucks. I whip them at his gun. They miss, skitter across the floor.

“Zap this fuck!” calls one of the turtlenecks, maybe the turtleneck leader.

The volts eel up my spine, out my arms and legs, and as I’m going down, I can see my fist pump in the air, pump once, twice, until it finally flops into a sweet caress of absolutely nothing.

I call it the Doulo Salute.

It’s mine, too.

Everybody waited for me to get skinny. My father said it could be any day. My mother said if I got skinny, it would improve my moods. She promised me a new wardrobe, one more congruent with my era, my region. My sister said if I got skinny, there would be the possibility of hand jobs from her friends in the Jazz Dancing Club. Blow jobs, even. All the jobs. It was only fair, she said. Her friends had brothers. She’d done her part.

No one ever told me to stop eating, or even to curb it.

There was the occasional mealtime glance. Somebody might say “Stop playing with your food,” which I could reckon only as code. Never in my life did I play with it.

Dinner was the least of it. Lunch was nothing. Breakfast was how I got to lunch.

Home from school, I’d stand at the refrigerator. Everything I needed in this life was there, cold, in plastic pouches, cylindrical tubs. I hated the word “snack.” It demeaned.

My mother liked to watch while I dipped nachos into the jelly jar.

“Are you losing weight?” she’d say.

* * *

Somebody on TV said sex could make you skinny. I knew I’d have to go it alone.

Unfortunately, a certain technique of mine had consequences. The hair on the parts of my arms that rubbed against the mattress rubbed off. It grew back patchy, stubbly. Somebody started a rumor that I shaved my arms.