The New and Improved Romie Futch Read online

  I e-mailed the essay to myself for posterity.

  • •

  At lunch I discovered that the rest of the BAIT crew had also spent the morning writing essays. Everybody but Al (who’d wanted to write about queer theory) had selected the same question I had, and had also erupted into angry passion over the ironic connections to our own pitiful states of subjectivity, with the exception of Irvin, who usually maintained an aura of Zen-like calm. We spent most of our lunch break rabidly discussing our essays, until Irvin rapped his plastic knife against his Coke can to silence us.

  “Why’s everybody ignoring the mastodon in the room?” he said. “Big hairy son of a bitch up on its hind legs roaring. They suddenly decide to forgo the usual download schedule and fake us out with an essay test the morning after Vernon’s brain blows a fuse and he checks out of Dodge, supposedly on his own volition? WTF? Do you copy?”

  “Roger,” said Al. “Let’s just wait and see what they do after lunch.”

  “And tomorrow’s Sunday,” said Skeeter. “A whole ’nother day download-free.”

  “No way Vernon had the competency to sign a release form,” I said.

  “He’s out on the street for all we know,” said Al.

  “Something’s rotten in the state of Denmark, dogs,” said Trippy, drawing a piece of sushi to his nostrils and taking a good whiff.

  • •

  Sure enough, our postlunch sessions involved nothing but multiple-choice tests, featuring such tedious brainteasers as the following:

  Women, LGBTQ people, people of color, people with disabilities, and ________________ are often defined in binary opposition to dominant groups.

  A) Other others

  B) othered others

  C) other Others

  D) each Other’s other

  E) each other’s Other

  On and on the idiotic questioning went, entrapping me in busywork for nearly three hours before I was released—brain numbed, fingers cramped, left foot prickling with pins and needles. I stumbled down the empty hallway to the pisser. There I ran into Trippy, and we strolled toward the Nano Lounge for a quick cup of preprandial Pep.

  • •

  It was Hawaiian night in the dining hall, 1950s exotica on the sound system, elderly cafeteria ladies wearing plastic leis and grass skirts as they dished out huli huli chicken and loco moco. The powers that be, who lacked imagination, tried to spice things up with predictable Saturday-night theme meals (like Disco Daze!), which most of us ignored. Over by the grub line, the head dietician stood grimly with an armful of plastic hibiscus garlands. Every now and then, she’d catch the eye of some ghoul-faced wretch and attempt to bedeck his neck with flowers. But most of the men steered clear of her, or else tossed their leis into the trash. They reviled the lame Muzak. They picked chunks of canned pineapple from their pre-grilled frozen chicken breasts and defiantly thumped them onto the floor.

  To our left, a table of compulsive gamblers discussed a recent cockroach race, their yet-to-be-cashed stipend checks already divvied up in an intricate array of IOUs. To our right, various druggies gathered around Big Eduardo, who supposedly had a line on some generic OC.

  “Despite the potency of our beloved Pep,” I said, “I wouldn’t mind a short jaunt to Ocean City—just a weekend in some swank time-share.”

  “Word.” Trippy sighed. “Except Big Eduardo’s punking their asses.”

  Al walked up, followed by Irvin and Skeeter. They sat down and started hacking at their leathery chicken breasts with plastic knives.

  “Hey, Trippy,” said Skeeter, “we still on for cocktails tonight?”

  “Sure thing. Got that cask of amontillado chilling in my wine cellar.”

  “Hey, anybody get Percival Everett yet?” said Trippy.

  “Erasure,” I said. “Holy fucking shit. Brilliant.”

  “You get Glyph too?”

  “Yep,” I said. “Kind of a philosophical echo of our particular situation, relationship with the power structure, I mean.”

  “Exactly,” said Trippy, “with the deconstructionist infant writing smack to his pedantic parents and all. You’d think that—”

  “My fellow carnivores,” said Al, “your chicken taste like jerky too?”

  “Frankenfood, bo,” said Skeeter. “Pretty damn depressing.”

  Al dropped his plastic knife. His hand crimped into a raptor claw from some kind of palsy. His eyes rolled back into their sockets demon-possession-style. He belched out a few guttural bullfrog croaks. But then he recovered, smiled politely, and dabbed at his lips with a paper napkin.

  In a posh New England accent he said, “Do you ever feel the weight of sadness bearing down upon your meaningless existence?”

  “Wait ’til you’re my age, youngblood,” said Irvin.

  “Do you ever feel an overwhelming sense of hopeless despair, as though your flabby body contains no soul, as though your life is a tedious series of meaningless reps: eating processed food, shitting processed food, fucking on automatic pilot, shuffling data in an office cube? You may no longer enjoy activities that used to give you joy—like watching television, walking your dog, or playing Zombie Babe Attack on Xbox One. These are some symptoms of depression, my friends, a serious medical condition afflicting over twenty million Americans.”

  “What the hell?” said Skeeter.

  “Depression may be caused by an imbalance of natural chemicals between nerve cells of the brain,” Al continued. “And prescription Nepenthe works to correct this imbalance. Side effects may include urethral aplasia, sleep paralysis, hirsutism of the eye, and anal hemorrhaging. Nepenthe is not habit-forming. Call 1-800-N-E-P-E-N-T-H for more information. Get ready to strap on your parachute and jump back into life!”

  Al flashed a twitchy smile. His glasses were crooked. His buzz cut was looking a little bushy. His beard, usually fastidiously trimmed and groomed, was losing its shape. A convulsion shook his broad shoulders. He stared into space for a few seconds, his lower lip drooping. Then he snapped out of it. Swallowed. Shook his head and plucked a tater tot from his plate.

  We all smiled uneasily.

  “You all right, Al?” said Trippy. “That was, like, a parody, right?”

  “What you talkin’ ’bout, Willis?” said Al.

  Chewing a cube of processed potato product, Al glanced around at our flushed faces.

  “Seriously,” he said, “what?”

  He shrugged, then squirted another blob of Heinz 57 onto his plate.

  • •

  That night in the Nano Lounge, we were all dishing about our friend’s odd dinner theater, hoping his quirks were an intentional parody but fearing some delayed manifestation of Gulf War syndrome.

  “Some kind of biological warfare bugging,” said Trippy.

  “Maybe the biowarfare is a bad mix with the BAIT downloads,” I said, “like mixing liquor and beer.”

  “Y’all don’t think he’s joshing us?” said Skeeter.

  “Don’t know,” said Irvin. “Maybe.”

  Just then, Al came striding into the room sporting a plastic lei.

  “You got leid, bo?” Skeeter quipped, and we all groaned like Inquisition victims on the rack.

  “What?” Al blinked.

  “That garland of plastic orchids around your neck,” I said.

  “Orchid means testicle in Latin,” said Trippy. “You got plastic bollocks round your neck, dog.”

  “What you talkin’ ’bout, Willis?” said Al, whereupon Irvin rose from his chair to tug on Al’s floral wreath.

  “This thing right here is known as a lei,” Irvin said gently. “The Hawaiian word for garland.”

  Al removed his lei, bunched it up in his hands, studied the lilac plastic mass, and tossed it into the garbage. He sat down on the edge of the sectional.

  “How about a cup of Pep?” he said to Trippy.

  “Sure thing.” Trippy pulled out the sacred milk jug, gave it a brisk shake, and then sloshed a few inches of hooch into a Styrofoam c
up and handed it to Al.

  “I’ve been thinking about your theory, Irvin,” said Skeeter, charging into a new subject to clear the air.

  “Which one?” said Irvin.

  “About the different eras of porn and the ineluctable modality of the visual—”

  “Gentlemen,” interrupted Al, and then he rose from the couch, strolled to the center of the floor, and held his drink aloft like a chap with a crystal tumbler in a Chivas Regal ad.

  “Let’s be frank,” he said in a New England accent with a detectable midwestern undertow—vaguely academic, the television voice of scientific reason.

  “Every man worries about the size of his member.” Al winked. “So let’s be honest. Even if you’re John Holmes, you still feel inadequate, still want that extra inch of prowess, that erection of triple-alloyed tungsten that makes the ladies howl.”

  Al winked.

  “Take my penis, for example. The pitiful appendage used to be about two inches long, a Napoleonic cocktail weenie that was downright cherubic—until I started using Priapus. Priapus is a state-of-the-art gene-therapy program bioengineered by scientists from MIT. In a revolutionary new process, nanobots deliver gene therapy through the patient’s bloodstream, using RNA interference to block growth inhibitors. As microscopic polymer robots reprogram penile building blocks on a subatomic level, stem cells recalibrate to pubertal levels that lead to rapid genital growth in less than thirty days! Guaranteed! Or your money back. Call 1-866-P-R-I-A-P-U-S, and you’ll be a ballin’ lothario in no time!”

  And then, as though nothing had happened, Al returned to his chair and took a slurp of Pep.

  “You feel okay, man?” said Skeeter. “You joshing, right?”

  Al frowned, glanced from face to face.

  “I get it.” Trippy flashed a fake smile. “Pop-up-like random commercials, a postmodern parody of spam, yeah?”

  “What are you talking about, Willis?” Al tried to smile, but a tremor overtook him, crumpling his face. He dropped his cup, clutched his head, and groaned.

  “What’s the matter, man?” said Irvin.

  “Headache,” growled Al. “Motherfucking übermigraine.” Al whimpered and rubbed his temples.

  Skeeter stood up, his enormous eyes swimming with sympathy, and patted him on the back. “Want to go to the infirmary, bo?” he said.

  “Uggrh,” said Al.

  Then he straightened himself, blinked at us. “It’s gone,” he said. “Just like that. Poof.”

  SEVEN

  Later in my room I fell into a strange half sleep as traffic from the interstate beeped and droned outside the sliding glass door. Needle was still gone, but I kept sensing him there, looming over me with his invisible samurai sword.

  I flicked on the light, glanced around.

  Nothing.

  It must be the Pep, I thought.

  I got out of bed, walked to the window, and looked out at the corporate landscaping: fountain, Bradford pear trees, sickle moon hanging over the parking lot. I had a headache. I took two Advils and lay down again.

  First thing next morning I’d ask them point-blank what the hell was going on. I’d tell them we knew about Vernon’s suspicious release. Ask them what the deal was with Al. I’d refuse any more downloads until they gave me a satisfying answer. I’d even go home if I had to—screw the six thousand dollars I so desperately needed. I’d called my dad a few times since arriving to stave off suspicion but otherwise hadn’t communicated with anybody. I’d sent out a volley of cryptic e-mails predeparture, hinting at a retreat to some remote detox facility, telling people not to worry about my incommunicado state, and now I wondered if I ought to tell someone exactly where I was just in case I needed an emergency escape plan. I pictured my little vinyl-sided house, ninety-eight percent of it owned by Bank of America after my ruinous postdivorce refinance. I could see Helen cutting zinnias out in the yard, waving at me, eager to give me a second chance. Ten years ago we were happy, though I didn’t know it then: happy enough to be ingrates about our happiness, happy enough to spend long Saturdays working in the yard together, planting a vegetable garden, working our bodies until felled by delicious fatigue. We’d collapse into lawn chairs as the sun sank, buzzed but not drunk, discussing heirloom tomatoes. One summer Helen was trying to track down this species her grandfather used to plant, the perfect tomato, according to her: not too big, not too little, not too firm, not too squishy, somewhere on the spectrum between Cherokee Purple and Black Prince. She wanted to plant a “Goth garden,” all deep purple and dusky blooms, and she pulled me into her obsession, made me her coconspirator.

  “Black Lace elderberry,” she said one evening, licking her lovely lips, passing the sweat-crimped catalog from her lap to mine. “Black Lightning iris and eggplant calla lilies. And you could do some kind of wacked-out garden sculpture, Romie, just to freak the neighbors out.”

  With this peaceful domestic vision, I drifted off again, into a dream.

  I was playing an instrument—a trumpet, I think, which I’ve never picked up in my life. In a high school band room, surrounded by white and black dorks, most of them dressed in ornate polyester ’70s shirts and bell-bottom jeans, I blasted away with mad skill. Under the direction of a spastic, clammy honky, we rocked that room. We filled it with glorious tunes, pumped it with the heady musk of adolescence—twenty sweaty bodies of different shapes, sizes, hues, and genders, creating a synesthetic miasma of hormones and noise.

  I caught the eye of a pretty girl with glinting specs, her demure Afro as perfectly round as a vinyl LP. She raised her eyebrows while tootling her flute, traipsed through a delicate solo that left me weak-kneed. Next it was my turn to cut a figure in phallic brass. I darted with ease like a metallic dragonfly. I glittered and soared, the instrument fused to my respiratory system. And then it was over. I pulled the horn from my mouth, felt the pull of a slobber strand. Wiping drool from my lips, I noted the deep chestnut tone of my arm. I was a black dude in the final stretches of a crazy growth spurt, shedding the last of my baby fat. I liked to slouch in corners and watch the world’s ado with an air of contrived nonchalance. I could see the reflection of my Afro in the golden luster of my horn, my face too distorted to recognize.

  “One more time,” said the band director, his wet mustache gleaming like a centipede.

  And we went at it again, played until the bell rang. Then we slapped our instruments into their coffin-like cases and pressed out into the hall. The flautist strode in front of me, a slender reed of a girl decked in autumnal plaid, gold hoops in her delicate earlobes. When she smiled at me, I noted braces on her teeth—thought rich girl. But I had to ask her something.

  I could feel the question burning in my chest.

  “Hey, Linda,” I coughed. She spun around, smirked like my zipper was down. I checked it. Shit was cool.

  I said, with affected huskiness, “You want to hit that cheesy dance together?”

  I was talking about some Halloween carnival, some hell-themed disco inferno that was going down in the school gym that Friday night.

  “That would be nice,” she said. “I’m in the phone book,” she said. “Check ya later,” she said, before flouncing off toward the chemistry lab.

  My heart pattered fast as a jackrabbit’s. I needed a smoke. So I slipped into the bathroom and lit up, regarding my face in the mirror as my nostrils tusked smoke, noting something familiar about my eyebrows, the way they flared in surprise. And then the dream shifted, and I was outside my body, looking down at Irvin—for it was Irvin—half rake, half nerd, sixteen years old, perfecting his exhalation before the mirror.

  • •

  Touched by weird dreams, I slept on and off past noon, then scrambled into my pants to catch lunch. The BAIT crew, all assembled save for Al and Vernon, looked pretty zombified. Must be the Pep, I thought as we ate in sulky silence, wondering where the hell Al was, fearing that he, too, had been forced to sign a release form and now wandered the streets in a robotic daze.

>   “Anybody seen Al today?” I asked.

  “Saw him in the Nano Lounge,” said Irvin. “Greeted me rather formally but otherwise seemed okay.”

  “That’s a relief,” said Trippy. “Need to keep an eye on the man.”

  Skeeter glanced up from his pizza and said, “Romie, bo, I had a weird dream about you last night.”

  “Yeah?”

  “I dreamt I was you, man—like, total immersion in your identity.”

  “And what happened, exactly?”

  “Well, you were with your daddy in his taxidermy shop, and he was teaching you how to mount a boar’s head. Made you do the work while he leaned over you in coach mode, talking into your left ear, so close I could smell the pickles on his breath. I could smell formaldehyde and rancid carcass. Plus, the Speed Stick you’d just started smearing your hairless pits with, even though you didn’t need it. And I could hear the radio whining out mellow ’70s tunes your father dug, songs you deemed too pussified for your burgeoning badassery.”

  At this point the whole crew had stopped stuffing their faces, each man swallowing a last mouthful with an uncomfortable gulp and leaning forward on tensed forearms.

  “Lord Tusky the Second,” I whispered.

  “Who?” said Skeeter.

  Lord Tusky the Second was the wild boar I helped my daddy stuff in 1984, the year I first fell for Helen at Concrete Pond, the year Reagan trumped Mondale, that year of Orwellian foreboding when the new wave crested and some psychopath opened fire in a McDonald’s, slaughtering twenty-one innocent fast-food consumers—a banner year for DNA fingerprinting, Macintosh computers, and the AIDS virus.

  “That really happened,” I said. “That’s an actual memory, Skeeter. What the fuck?”

  As I told them about my dream, Irvin shook his head, creased his forehead in puzzlement, and worked his feral eyebrows up and down.