Рейчел Кушнер - The Mars Room

Johnny Cash was a cokehead, which was another thing he and Doc had in common. The singer had the creases in his face, that gaunt strained look of exertion like you see on a track athlete clearing the hurdle but it’s from freebasing all night.

Vic’s only addiction had been beating and raping little Doc. He was otherwise an insurance adjuster who smoked exactly six cigarettes per day and occasionally had a glass of Lancers. Vic maniacally policed his yard to be sure Doc raked every last leaf.

As a child Doc had seen Johnny Cash on television performing the famous concert in the cafeteria at Old Folsom, the very cafeteria where Doc later ate his meals when he had the courage to go to chow without fear of being stabbed. There was a riot in the cafeteria the second month Doc was at Old Folsom. Someone didn’t get a big enough slice of cake and two hundred sixty men exploded in rage. The guards rushed out of the cafeteria, outnumbered. Doc went under one of the spider tables and watched the floor as utensils, blood, and bits of food hit it. The metal meal trays were used as head-smashing instruments, practically made for that. The cops came back but on the perimeter, the narrow fenced outer lane, separated from the cafeteria by a shatterproof wall. They were suited up in riot gear. They threw a tear gas canister into the cafeteria. Someone, a prisoner, caught the tear gas canister and threw it back out. It started to spew, in that small lane populated by cops bulked up in riot gear, squeaking and pushing to get past one another and away from the gas that was choking them. The prisoners roared, even as the gas leaked over the wall back into the cafeteria and made them cry, too. Tear gas cry.

What Doc liked about the bartender at Las Brisas was a sense of radical acceptance she offered. Sometimes ejaculating all over someone is a way for that person to communicate to you that they take you completely and totally as you are.

And there was the old man who sat at the bar at Las Brisas, and winked at Doc as he exited the stockroom, and no he was not a pimp, he was just an old Mexican man with a baked sundial face who liked to sip his Tecate and wink at the men and his wink said, I’m happy to see what I see and know what I know.

Guy goes on a blind date. Doc had that one, the blind date joke.

Guy named Richard goes on a blind date with a woman named Linda. They set it up over the phone. This Linda says, “Meet me at the soda fountain.” The guy Richard goes to the soda fountain and waits.

A young woman walks up to him. “Are you Richard?” she asks.

He says yes.

She looks him over. Says, “I’m not Linda.”

Doc was once married to a girl from Bulgaria. A temporary arrangement was how he later thought of it. He could never really justify or understand why he’d married her. He would fuck her now, if he had the chance. He imagines lifting the Sears nightie he’d bought her long ago, and putting his dick into her and moving it around. Sex was so simple he didn’t understand why people had hang-ups about it. He liked to screw. He never had a problem with it. The girl from Bulgaria was deathly quiet while they had sex, which had creeped him out a little. She didn’t even breathe differently while he pounded into her, reaching his critical point, when he was going to explode and put his snow on her belly. Doc is thinking about that now, as his roommate shifts in his bunk below. He’s not thinking about why she was quiet. That does not concern him in the slightest. He’s recalling what it felt like to pound into her.

It’s very sad how normal it becomes to masturbate in broad daylight with your cellmate right there in the bunk underneath you, Doc almost does not need to tell you.

Sometimes, in the middle of the night, Doc thinks he can hear the entire cell block whacking off. A low chorus of wet rhythms. Gross, you are probably thinking. Doc would like to remind you these are human beings. Blood rushes into their penises whether or not they are incarcerated, and when a human penis is engorged and there’s no imminent possibility of sex, the male human will instinctively wrap his fist around his engorged member and pull on it in an up-and-down motion.

Which makes him think of that joke.

It’s the only joke he can ever completely remember. All the jokes that come and go—horse walks into a bar. How many cholos does it take to—To what? He can’t even remember the opening.

In all his years, only one joke ever lodged reliably in his mind.

Guy and his wife are having marital problems. They don’t screw is the problem. So they go to a what do you call it, a sex therapist. The therapist says it sounds like they aren’t good at communicating their needs. The man and his wife agree that it’s embarrassing to talk about sex. The therapist suggests they build a language of physical cues, a way to let the other person know when they’re in the mood. The wife says, “Okay, honey, how about this: if you’re feeling frisky, pat me on the stomach twice. And if you’re not in the mood,” she tells him, “pat me on the stomach once.” The husband says, “That sounds good, dear. One pat, I’m saying not tonight; two pats, let’s get this party started. And here’s the code for you: if you feel like fucking, rub my dick one time. If you’re not in the mood, rub it one hundred times.”

The guys at Rampart referred to the Bulgarian girl as Doc’s mail-order bride, but no one from the outside ever understands about two people and why they get together. He was twenty-three years old, a rookie just out of the Police Academy. She asked him for directions on the street. He liked her dimples and how she could barely speak English. He gave her a ride where she was going and got her phone number. She was like an orphan in a huge unknown country. Doc adopted her, for a while, and she was good at cooking and cleaning. But she sulked a lot, and he realized quiet people can control you just as effectively as loud ones. They do it differently is all. He got tired of the sulking and crying and ended it.

He was divorced at age twenty-seven and planned never to marry again. He enjoyed women and had quite a few. Didn’t love any of them. Had not loved the mail-order bride. Ten years after his divorce, he met Betty LaFrance and fell for her. Fell hard, for this woman who neither cooked nor cleaned and made a great deal of noise when he fucked her, although it might have been theater, and what was the difference? In what way would such a difference matter? The point was to get off.

In a twisted way he misses Betty, even if he would love to have her murdered. He’s tried, but it seems impossible. She’s on death row and there is no way to get at her because women are too stupid to commit inspired acts of prison violence. In a men’s joint you can put a hit on anybody. People will do it for cup of noodle. They’ll kill for payment in bars of Irish Fucking Spring (smells good, makes a good jerk lather). But the only women who can get to Betty are the other sad psychos on death row, who probably lie around whining and crying, while the men exhibit resourceful qualities like filing a locker hinge to a chest-immolating point, or embedding a razor in a toothbrush handle so they can tomahawk someone’s face off.

Betty, though, was a can-do broad, unlike most broads. In a way it was why he’d liked her. If he needed to put out a hit, Betty would be the one female who might be capable of such a thing, but since she was the target it wasn’t an option.

Betty used to nag him that his women issues were a mother issue. But what did Betty know about Doc’s mother? Doc himself knew little, since he’d only lived with his mother until age five. He remembered asking her what she did for her job because she was always bringing him to strange men’s homes and leaving him to sit on a couch by himself for what felt like small eternities. “Favors,” she’d told him. “I do favors.”