Stanley Elkin - Boswell

My uncle was in bed alone, his body convulsed, his arms flung behind him on the headboard. He had smashed his watch crystal, and there was blood on his wrist. His left leg, arched, banged against his groin. Dreadfully, he had an erection. I leaned over his face.

“Can I help you? Uncle Myles. Can I help you?”

Below me my uncle’s body whipped and snapped. He might have been a dancer.

“Can I help you?”

“Sure,” he said. “Sing something.”

What did he want from me? What did he think a human being was, anyway?

“Come on, strong man,” my uncle said. “Pull my arms down.” Inside that turbulent body, his voice was steady, almost calm. “Hurry, hurry before my bones break.”

I reached out for his wrist, but was helpless to hold it. I tried again, and it twisted crazily out of my grip. “Both hands, Samson. Both hands.”

I took my uncle’s wrist in both my hands and pulled it toward the bed. The other hand, still free, punched the side of my head, but I wrestled his right arm down and kneeled on it. It continued to jerk, but finally my weight was too great for even those powerful convulsions. Then I tried to take his other arm, but it moved wildly away from me. Even after I managed to trap it I could not pull it down — I had no leverage. I had to straddle my uncle’s chest. Careful not to lose the arm I had already imprisoned, I pressed down on it with my knee. Then I reached toward his bleeding left wrist. It spun away from me, and for a moment I thought my uncle might be controlling it. (“There’s no telling what the body can do if it’s pushed” —Big Bob.) I took the arm at last and pulled at it as one pulls at an oar to turn a boat. The arm rattled and jerked, at one time taut and resisting, at another suddenly relaxed, pulling me off balance. Finally I mounted it with my knee as I had the other. I was now straddling my uncle’s chest, my knees dug into the hollow where the elbow bends. His face was white, wet. I looked down at him and he avoided my eyes. “The leg,” he said into the sheet. “Please, the leg.” His leg, out of control behind me, was like something loose.

“I’ll have to lie on you.”

I maneuvered the two arms, pinning them next to his body, and then slowly I reached around my uncle’s sides and locked my hands behind his back. Oh, the sad, sad uses of strength, I thought. I leaned down over him, my face sliding across his shoulder and into position against his turned head. My ear was next to his throat, and I could feel the heavy pulsings of his jugular. At my back his leg slapped against his groin. When the leg relaxed for a moment I thrust my legs between his, but instantly his legs contracted and crashed against me. I waited for the leg to go slack and then tried to slip one foot through his knee’s arch. I missed and kicked his calf, but the second time I managed to push my leg under his. His leg came up again and for a moment we rolled dreamily. Then I was able to hook his errant leg between mine, and by pushing backwards with all my strength force it down. I lay now entirely on top of him, hugging him. I could feel his erection against my stomach. We lay like lovers. He was sobbing.

“It’s all right,” I said. “It can’t be helped.”

His body stiffened and relaxed, stiffened and relaxed, but gradually his convulsions subsided. I continued to hold him. His sobs shuddered through his body, and then, slowly, they subsided too. I relaxed my grip but did not get off immediately. Then I rolled over and stood up.

My uncle could not look at me.

“I’m sorry,” he said finally. “Oh, James, I’m so sorry.”

“I thought you were with a woman,” I said.

“Damn a man’s body,” he said. “Damn it,” he said angrily.

“It’s all right,” I said. “Really. Please, Uncle Myles.”

“You’d better change,” he said. “Your pajamas are damp.”

“I will,” I said. “It’s all right.”

“Damn a man’s body,” he said.

“I guess I’ll go change.”

When I came back my uncle was sitting on the edge of my bed.

“I brought you some tea,” he said.

“Oh,” I said. “Thank you.”

“Let’s drink it in the living room.”

“All right.” I carried the cup into the living room and sat down on my uncle’s sofa.

He took a seat across the room from me. “It’s not cold, is it?” he asked.

“No,” I said, “it’s fine.”

“Lipton’s is an old house,” he said. He was trying to get back his composure, to win back whatever he thought he had lost to me. His body had just shown him what he was, what we all are, and now he had to forget it.

“An old house,” he said, snug in his faith in the established firm.

“Sure,” I said. “That’s why the tea’s hot.”

“What?” he said. “Oh. Yes, of course.”

I wished he would get another hard-on right there in front of me, that he would vomit in his Lipton’s. But all he did was sigh, extending his palms along the hard wooden arms of his chair. He crossed his legs and one pajamaed leg swung smartly out from beneath his silk robe. I could see his white heel where the slipper hung slackly.

“I think we’d better talk seriously,” he said.

He seemed to be studying me. What he said next surprised me. “How much do you weigh?” he asked.

“Two thirty.”

He shuddered.

“James, people are frightened of you. Do you know that?”

I stared down at my feet like a damned kid.

“It’s true. You are actually frightening to people. Can you blame them? Two hundred and thirty pounds and barely twenty years old. What are you trying to prove? Do you want people to look at a man and see a horse? I don’t understand it. Look at that hand. It’s as murderous as a butcher’s cleaver. Your legs are like trees. You’ve the chest of a draft horse. It’s disgusting. It’s not attractive. Do you think girls would find it attractive? People are frightened.”

“Are you frightened?”

“I’m your uncle.”

“Are you frightened?”

“I would be. I know what you’re like, however. I’m your uncle. I… Yes. I’m frightened. Yes, I’m very much frightened. I think of the strength in you and I’m terrified that you won’t always control it.”

“Aren’t you afraid I might lose a little control over it right now?”

“We’re civilized,” he said. Sure we are, I thought. He was himself again: my uncle. Back in the saddle. I told you we weren’t very different. All right, my horseness was outside, visible. He kept his in stables of his own devising. What was the difference? His blood was on my hip, for Christ’s sake. Right now my pajamas were stiffening in the sink.

“I mean to talk seriously to you and I will,” he said. “What do you intend to do with your life?”

“I’d like to lift elephants, Uncle Myles. Tear phone books.”

“A strong man,” my uncle snorted. “In a circus. A side show, not even a circus. Strength is humiliating to a man, do you know that?”

“Is it?”

“Physical strength is humiliating to a man,” my uncle shouted. “Listen, do you know what distinguishes human beings from animals? Love? Law? Reason? The ability to walk upright? None of those things. None of them. Any lioness loves its cub. Every herd has rules. A fox has cunning. A horse can rear. No. Only one thing distinguishes men from beasts: respectability. I’m not talking about self-respect. That’s just ego. A cat has that. Respectability is grander. Do you know what it is? Do you? Respectability is the decision of the private man that the powers of this world are right. The decision of the private man to be one with those powers. Decency is nothing more than the condition that what he considers valuable, you consider valuable, I consider valuable.