Sputterpub's Blog

It was under the influence of that powder that Joel confided his secrets. There’s no telling if any of them were true. It was another mild evening, we were again in the Old City, and we’d been separated from our friends. I think they all just kept walking when Joel stopped and bounced off a wall. Being gymnastical and energetic he would do things like that – take a run at a wall and jump off it from two or three feet up – landing lightly, grinning, and then telling some story. I remember he went into a perfect squat and started describing the rigors he’d undergone in order to be adopted by the Apache tribe. I honestly can’t recall if it’s the details I’m supposed to guard or the scalplock, for that’s when he gave me this loop of brown suede thong, from which depend, on common cotton thread of gold and taupe, two nondescript feathers, a wooden ball, several short strands of colored glass beads, and another length of the brown suede thong (I’ve had the thing 30 years, and for the last decade it has hung exposed to air and sun in my study, and the only age it shows is the stiffening of the brown suede). According to Joel, he’ll lose his soul if I divulge his stories, or maybe it’s if I discard the scalplock. Luckily I can’t remember the stories so I can’t tell them, and I’m keeping the scalplock just in case. I don’t believe in that kind of soul-deal, but the subject’s so important that I won’t play around. I remember one time a woman walked into the Med on Telegraph Avenue in Berkeley, around 1968, and announced she’d just made some Faustian deal with the devil. I did not find that funny. That was affectation beyond the pale.

Anyway, the scalplock is kind of cute.

Joel also gave me a pendant, of pot metal or maybe pewter, in the shape of a tomahawk suspended over an open oval. It’s not unattractive, actually. I think he gave it to me as a symbol of his Apacheness, in which I didn’t believe, and of his love, in which I did.

(Isn’t it remarkable, how we baby boomers seem driven to preserve the stories of our own extremes? How many times have you heard of this golden age, between the invention of the Pill and the advent of AIDS, this era when civil and even rude disobedience worked? We’re like Vikings on Iceland, writing sagas to get it all down. We’re like Austen etching elegancies of estates and esquires while the fences encroach and the merchants usurp. We’re like any dying civilization, grasping at art to self-record…)

I can’t remember ever agreeing with Joel, and I didn’t agree to love him. I liked his energy, I loved his agility, but his jitteriness made me nervous, and I couldn’t disregard the feeling that his hyperactivity brought attention to us and bad luck upon us, and that the relief we achieved when we talked our way out of whatever hassle our conspicuousness brought us, didn’t compensate for the overall feeling of wasted time.

I thought we would come to a natural end when Laura, Mary and I left Jerusalem for the kibbutz. I thought the kitten episode would be the last story. But Joel surprised me with a visit a week later. He even brought Emmet, in the basket of his scooter.

(continued tomorrow)

Joel was from Indiana (you never know what motifs will fill your life – for some reason mine has been salted with Hoosiers). He said he’d studied several martial arts, which could have been true, but I doubted his claim to hold black belts in all of them. He told us he was in Jerusalem on a scholarship, but I later learned that no one outside New York had been awarded any money that year. On the other hand, Joel had irresistible energy in bed (behind me in the morning, around me all the night) and he knew the Old City better than anyone else I met.

His roommate was a very decent boring guy, Mark from Sacramento. In the next room were Vil and Larry, who evolved into the dorm leaders. Vil’s full name was Willem Vilna-Schärf and he said the “Vil” was from “Vilna” and not a Germanic pronunciation of his first syllable. He was red-haired, willowy, and Christlike in gentleness. He said he’d been raised by ultra-orthodox parents until he left home at 16 and ended up in the Village, kind of adopted by Allen Ginsberg. We were all attracted to him, and no one got further than extremely sensuous, under-the-influence hand-to-hand caresses.

Larry was a jovial big slob, a John Belushi type, and he became Laura’s lover. Through her, he shared my hairbrush and even my toothbrush. Through them, I got lice and gingivitis. The kibbutz treated Laura and me for the lice, so aggressively that I began to wear my hair short and then shorter, till I settled on the cut I have today. I took care of the gingivitis myself, with Tetracycline lifted from Mark’s shelf in the dorm bathroom.

For drugs were involved. In addition to the Tetracycline and our plastic wheels of birth control pills, beyond the realm of Midol and aspirin and, in Laura’s case, diuretics, we mined veins of sticky Old City hash and we secured, from someone known to somebody, what was described as laboratory-pure PCP, from Tel Aviv.

Joel told me hash was legal for Arabs but not for anyone else. Israelis would get jailed and we could get deported. So it was risky business, buying hookah hits in the back rooms behind the heavy carpets. Our host could smoke with us and then collect a bounty for fingering us as we left. Even so, we sometimes indulged. Occasionally we chatted with one of the merchants and then joined him in the back room for mint tea or syrupy coffee. I never negotiated it but sometimes Joel or Larry would haggle and converse with the merchant, and that usually resulted in the entrance of a big, minaret-shaped pipe, and our shy greedy hits on hash. It slammed against the base of my throat and triggered a convulsive cough but I didn’t turn it down. We never came close to getting busted, but Joel always made it exciting with his jittery vigilance.

The PCP was a much deeper experience. I wonder what it really was. After I returned to the States I indulged in street PCP once, and it was a whole other drug than what I snorted in the Holy Land. In Ukiah it knocked me out of my head and nearly off my feet. I was there with the band, playing the high school senior prom of all places, and we all tooted it in the coach’s private bathroom, in the boys’ gym, which is where we were told to put our gear. I don’t know how the guys managed to make music on that stuff; when it hit me I had to go outside and hang by my fingers from the chainlink fence just to moor me to the planet.

The white powder in Israel was not the same drug. It was gentle, profound but sweet, a rolling ride like a canter to a wider view. Once Joel and I climbed to the top of the wall of the Old City and lay on our backs on the still-warm Jerusalem stone, gazing at the dotted velvet sky while we absorbed the thick mingled energies of all the people who had been there before us. The walls are cot-wide; our arms fell relaxed to our sides and our fingertips curled perfectly at the edges.

(continued next Tuesday)

(You mean I never told you about Joel? He was one of the most colorful characters of my youth! He’s the source of the scalplock. The scalplock … Oh! I guess I’ve done such a good job keeping you out of my study that you haven’t examined its ornaments. The scalplock is this thin collection of suede, thread, feathers, and beads; it’s been dangling from this shutter knob for years).

Joel was a short, cute, feisty rabbinical student I met and briefly loved, in Israel in 1971. I was traveling with my friends Mary and Laura after college, and Mary knew several students at the rabbinate, so we sojourned at their dormitory in Jerusalem between our arrival and our assignment to a kibbutz.

It was a reform rabbinate, which is a little strange in a country that only recognizes orthodoxy. But if you wanted to be a reform rabbi in the US, then your three-year graduate program began with an academic term in Jerusalem. If nothing else, you’d learn Hebrew.

It felt like a graduate program. To the extent the students discussed their course work with us, it seemed like home. We’d just gotten our bachelor’s degrees and were all considering grad school, so the guys we encountered there were around our age.

Joel was one of the first I met. In fact we collided within hours. We were in someone’s room on the second floor, we three and at least a dozen young men, and restless Joel was the one with whom I most disagreed. I remember noting that he was rather cute and completely wrong. He wasn’t tall – maybe 5’10” – and he was wiry like a gymnast, with brown wavy hair to his shoulders, round brown eyes, broad nose, sensuous lips. He was strong-jawed and vehemently incorrect in just about everything he said. But he had energy, and we were some of the last awake, and we found a way to agree enough to take a walk which, as I was to learn would be typical with Joel, led to peril and excitement.

It was a balmy night in September, and we’d wandered in a large circle for some time, managing to forge a (no doubt political) compromise. We’d just sat ourselves on a lawn and were leaning in for what would be our first kiss, when we were interrupted by an unmistakably militant challenge. It wasn’t in English. It didn’t sound like Hebrew. It was coming from some soldier in dark clothes, and he was pointing a serious-looking weapon at us.

Immediately Joel had his hands up and instructed me to raise mine, which did nothing to calm me. Worse, he began to make reassuring sounds toward the guard, in what I later learned was his attempt at Arabic, while he muttered unreassuring remarks to me about how this type of gun had a tendency to accidental discharge. I later learned we were on the prime minister’s grounds; that’s why the guard. Apparently the fellow was so flustered about our presence that he reverted to his native tongue and forgot his Hebrew, which is what made our interview so awkward.

We got away, both awash with adrenaline. We supported each other back to the dormitory and then there seemed nothing better to do than to crawl together into Joel’s narrow bed. Our comforting became quite heated. He was very limber and vigorous and inventive. By the next morning we were still arguing but we were a couple.

He was more into it than I was. It’s difficult to believe that his conversation could overcome the great sex, but that’s what happened. Partly it was that he got us into trouble too often; it always turned out to be harmless but it was tiresome after awhile, and it invited me to figure that either Joel had obnoxious karma or he was on some level just plain stupid. Neither quality was attractive. But mostly it was that Joel told lies.

I used to say “pathological liar” to describe him, but I’m not sure it rose all the way to pathology. Maybe just habitual. Incorrigible. Automatic. Unconscious.

(continued tomorrow)

Troy arrived before Karen. He was warmly greeted by Deborah (“Hello, Mr. Campbell! Welcome back. Would you like to be seated, or will you wait here for your guest?”) and he opted to sit in the lounge, where he had the best view of Karen approaching him. She wore a gray suit with a short skirt, and her legs made him want her more than food certainly, even more than his cocktail. Karen in turn was looking at Troy and wondering.

Deborah watched them discreetly from her standing desk. She thought they were a handsome couple: he with his silver hair and firm body and she with her streaky blonde beauty. It had gotten to where Deborah thought about sex often, fantasized about Jorge the dishwasher, speculated even about men she saw on the street. She was fascinated with the energy between Troy Campbell and his friend.

Jake was the only one of the four not thinking about sex. He was doing his job in the understaffed kitchen, too agitated to notice the cockroach that slid with the dressing onto the salad he was preparing for Mr. Campbell’s date. Mixed green for her: Caesar for him. Jake set the plates on the counter and turned to attend to the fish and chicken he had on the grill, whisper-yelling at his assistant to check the pizzas in the wood oven.

Dressing-dazzled, the roach evaded Karen’s every fork stab. It lay comatose on a bit of frisee, beneath a twisted leaf of arugula, near the far edge of her plate, and by the time she got there her desire for salad had been assuaged, at least enough to eschew frisee, which she didn’t particularly like anyway. She pushed her plate away and the roach rested unseen on its far edge; when Paco tried to clear the salad plates Troy stopped him, because he was annoyed at how long it was taking for their entrees to arrive, and he thought leaving the plate would emphasize the problem. So the roach had time to wake up. Instead of riding down the disposal with the greens and the grease, the cockroach was permitted the necessary minutes to test-breathe breathe move-a-bit okay move-more, move-the-lettuce.

Karen let Troy hold her hand after his shy proposition. She was looking sideways at him with a smile, so at first she didn’t see the lettuce wobble. It was Troy in fact, swinging his eyes away from her for a second to gauge if anyone would notice before he put his other hand in her lap, whose glance skimmed the salad plates and picked up the moving arugula.

“Oh for chrissakes…” he started with a disgusted tone. The hand that wanted to caress Karen’s inner thigh forked the lettuce aside instead, exposing the roused roach. Karen emitted a little shriek.

Deborah was there in a moment, and Jake wasn’t far behind. Of course they comped the meal, but that wasn’t enough for Jake. He insisted on writing out a certificate for a complementary dinner for two. He used the occasion to introduce himself to Mr. Campbell. He took a moment to explain that with an infusion of capital, Jake would be able to add staff, clean more, open every night for dinner instead of just weekends, pay a return on a man’s investment.

Troy didn’t buy the investment concept, but he did note that Karen’s eyes sparkled at him during the conversation. He thought it might be convenient to have a bistro where he could get a meal any time. Where they could. He agreed to become a partner in the place.

Jake brought the salad plates into the kitchen. Before handing them over to Jorge, he opened the back door and shook a clump of frisee and arugula onto the stoop. Emerging from its soggy shelter, the cockroach slowly skittered off the concrete and into the brown garden dirt.

As usual, Deborah slept well and Jake didn’t. She argued that he’d rest better if he exercised like she did every night, but Jake insisted that he worked out enough while he worked. She spent half an hour on a stationary bike after their light dinner every evening, and sometimes she danced to an aerobics tape. Jake sipped Jack Daniels and stewed about their business problems. They retired together by nine, and they never made love any more because they never took the time off from work to travel, to stay in a hotel, to play.

Jake woke an hour before the alarm, and he worried. He stayed in bed but he didn’t return to sleep. He surveyed his body instead and found pain in his neck, on his brow, around his lower back. He thought about the bistro and admitted that they couldn’t keep pouring money into it; they couldn’t go more than another three months unless something changed. He resented Deborah’s peaceful rest, telling himself he’d be more comfortable without her leg diagonally across the bed, growing sticky where they touched. He tried a little roughly to nudge her away. She stirred and returned to quiet sleep. He thought about fucking her and wished he could get interested.

When his alarm beeped at five Troy Campbell had already been up for half an hour. He didn’t need much sleep: eleven to four or midnight to five did it for him. He usually spent his first hour thinking about business while exercising, but lately he had returned to lust.

He used to be a womanizer. From fourteen to fifty, he did as many women as he could. He had fans among his friends who kept count; most figured he’d bedded more than a hundred. He hounded women when he was single, and he fooled around as much as he could when he was married. Most of his conquests had been one-night stands, but nine women had been real affairs lasting eight to eighteen months. He’d been married six times.

He settled down when he was fifty. That was ten years ago. Married pretty happily to Sara, he decided to try fidelity. His chronic restlessness seemed to pass around then; he found it easier to stay home. And he and Sara had a decent sex life, at least for the first eight years. Then he grew bored with her. Then he became aware of all the prostate problems his friends were having, and he got to thinking that the life of his penis might be coming to an end. He started masturbating more. He tried some novelty with Sara but she resisted. He left home certain evenings and started catting around. But he no longer wanted bimbettes. He sought good sex with good company. He found Karen.

She was a junior partner at the law firm he’d used for twenty years. At first they met almost incidentally; then he noticed her and began requesting that she be assigned to his cases. They spent enough time together to take each other’s measure and like what they found.

Troy knew a sexual relationship would be totally inappropriate. He was married, twenty years older than she, and a client. He found the idea erotic, especially when they faced each other across the mahogany conference table with her senior partners. And he knew she did too; he saw the way her eyes found him, the way she blushed through those transparent cheeks. Their flirtation had grown obvious to them both. He thought he’d try to talk to her at the lunch they had scheduled for that noon.

The roach remained stun-still even after Jake took the lid off the vinaigrette at ten o’clock. It began slow stuttering movements thirty seconds later, but by then Jake had added his secret ingredient to the dressing, and he looked away from the vat while stirring the roach in with that splash of rice vinegar. The brown bug struggled in the eddy of sour liquid at first, then closed in on itself, mindless immobile, and became like a seed pod, like a big coffee bean, in the maelstrom the whisk made. Down at first, then spun into the sides of the empty tornado, riding up the outward-sloping walls of vinaigrette. As Jake removed the whisk the roach bobbed to the surface, put its legs out like catamaran runners, and scrabbled to the edge of the vat. It sheltered under the ladle that Jake left in place of the whisk.