Ham On Rye

39

One Sunday Jimmy talked me into going to the beach with him. He wanted to go swimming. I didn't want to he seen wearing swimming trunks because my hack was covered with boils and scars. Outside of that, I had a good body. But nobody would notice that. I had a good chest and great legs but nobody would see that.

I here was nothing to do and I didn't have any money and the guys didn't play in the streets on Sunday. I decided that the beach belonged to everybody. I had a right, my scars and boils weren't against the law.

So we got on our bikes and started out. It was fifteen miles. That didn't bother me. I had the legs.

I breezed with Jimmy all the way to Culver City. Then I gradually began to pedal faster. Jimmy pumped, trying to keep up. I could see him getting winded. I pulled out a cigarette and lit it, held out the pack to him. "Want one, Jim?"

"No… thanks…"

"This beats shooting birds with a beebee gun," I told him. "We ought to do this more often!"

I began pumping harder. I still had plenty of reserve strength.

"This really gets it," I told him. "This beats whacking-off!"

"Hey, slow up a little!"

I looked back at him. "There's nothing like a good friend to go biking with. Come on, friend!"

Then I gave it all I had and pulled away. The wind was blowing in my face. It felt good.

"Hey, wait! WAIT, GOD DAMN IT!" yelled Jimmy. I started laughing and really opened up. Soon Jim was half-a- block back, a block, two blocks. Nobody knew how good I was, nobody knew what I could do. I was some kind of miracle. The sun tossed yellow everywhere and I cut through-it, a crazy knife on wheels. My father was a beggar in the streets of India but all the women in the world loved me…

I was traveling at full speed as I reached the signal. I shot through inside the row of waiting cars. Now even the cars were back there behind me. But not for long. A guy and his girl in a green coupe pulled up and drove alongside me.

"Hey, kid!"

"Yeah?" I looked at him. He was a big guy in his twenties with hairy arms and a tattoo.

"Where the fuck do you think you're going?" he asked me. He was trying to show off in front of his girl. She was a looker, her long blond hair blowing in the wind.

"Up yours, buddy!" I told him.

" What? "

"I said, 'Up yours! "

I gave him the finger. He kept driving along beside me.

"You gonna take shit off that kid, Nick?" I heard his girl ask him.

He kept driving along beside me.

"Hey, kid," he said, "I didn't quite hear what you said. Would you mind saying that again?"

"Yeah, say that again," said the looker, her long blond hair blowing in the wind. That pissed me. She pissed me.

I looked at him. "All right, you want trouble? Park it. I'm trouble."

He zoomed ahead of me about half a block, parked, and swung the door open. As he got out I swung wide around him almost into the path of a Chevy who gave me the horn. As I swung around into a side street I could hear the big guy laughing.

After the guy was gone I wheeled back onto Washington Boulevard, went a few blocks, got off the bike and waited for Jim on a bus stop bench. I could see him coming along. When he pulled up I pretended that I was asleep.

"Come on, Hank! Don't give me that shit!"

"Oh, hello, Jim. You here?"

I tried to get Jim to pick a spot on the beach where there weren't too many people. I felt normal standing there in my shirt but when I undressed I was exposed. I hated the other bathers for their unmarred bodies. I hated all the god-damned people who were sunbathing or in the water or eating or sleeping or talking or throwing beachballs. I hated their behinds and their faces and their elbows and their hair and their eyes and their bellybuttons and their bathing suits.

I stretched out on the sand thinking, I should have punched that fat son-of-a-bitch. What the hell did he know? Jim stretched out beside me.

"What the hell," he said, "let's go swimming."

"Not yet," I said.

The water was full of people. What was the fascination of the beach? Why did people like the beach? Didn't they have anything better to do? What chicken-brained fuckers they were.

"Just think," said Jim, "women go into the water and they piss in there."

"Yeah, and you swallow it."

'

There would never be a way for me to live comfortably with people. Maybe I'd become a monk. I'd pretend to believe in God and live in a cubicle, play an organ and stay drunk on wine. Nobody would fuck with me. I could go into a cell for months of meditation where I wouldn't have to look at anybody and they could just send in the wine. The trouble was, the black robes were pure wool. They were worse than R.O.T.C. uniforms. I couldn't wear them. I'd have to think of something else.

"Oh, oh," said Jim.

"What is it?"

"There are some girls down there looking at us."

"So what?"

"They're talking and laughing. They might come down here."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah. And if they start coming over I'll warn you. When I do, turn on your back."

My chest had only a few boils and scars.

"Don't forget," said Jim, "when I warn you, turn over on your back."

"I heard you."

I had my head down in my arms. I knew that Jim was looking at the girls and smiling. He had a way with them.

"Simple cunts," he said, "they're really stupid."

Why did I come here? I thought. Why is it always only a matter of choosing between something bad and something worse?

"Oh, oh, Hank, here they come!"

I looked up. There were five of them. I rolled over on my back. They walked up giggling and stood there. One of them said,

"Hey, these guys are cute!"

"You girls live around here?" Jim asked.

"Oh yeah," one of them said, "we nest with the seagulls!"

They giggled.

"Well," said Jim, "we're eagles. I'm not sure we'd know what to do with five seagulls."

"How do birds do it anyhow?" one of them asked.

"Damned if I know," Jim said, "maybe we can find out."

"Why don't you guys come over to our blanket?" one of them asked.

"Sure," Jim said.

Three of the girls had spoken. The other two had just stood there pulling their bathing suits down over what they didn't want seen.

"Count me out," I said.

"What's wrong with your friend?" asked one of the girls who had been covering her ass. Jim said, "He's strange."

"What's wrong with him?" asked the last girl.

"He's just strange," said Jim.

He got up and walked off with the girls. I closed my eyes and listened to the waves. Thousands of fish out there, eating each other. Endless mouths and assholes swallowing and shifting. The whole earth was nothing but mouths and assholes swallowing and shifting, and fucking.

I rolled over and watched Jim with the five girls. He was standing up, sticking his chest out and showing off his balls. He didn't have my barrel chest and big legs. He was slim and neat, with that black hair and that little nasty mouth with perfect teeth, and his little round ears and his long neck. I didn't have a neck. Not much of one, anyway. My head seemed to sit on my shoulders. But I was strong, and mean. Not good enough, the ladies liked dandies. If it wasn't for the boils and scars, though. I'd be down there now showing them a thing or two. I'd flash my balls for them, bringing their dead air-headed minds to attention. Me, with my 50-cents-a-week life.

Then I saw the girls leap up and follow Jim into the water. I heard them giggling and screaming like mindless… what? No, they were nice. They weren't like grown-ups and parents. They laughed. Things were funny. They weren't afraid to care. There was no sense to life, to the structure of things. D, H. Lawrence had known that. You needed love, but not the kind of love most people used and were used up by. Old D, H. had known something. His buddy Huxley was just an intellectual fidget, but what a marvelous one. Better than G. B. Shaw with that hard keel of a mind always scraping bottom, his labored wit finally only a task, a burden on himself, preventing him from really feeling anything, his brilliant speech finally a bore, scraping the mind and the sensibilities. It was good to read them all though. It made you realize that thoughts and words could be fascinating, if finally useless.

Jim was splashing water on the girls. He was the Water God and they loved him. He was the possibility and the promise. He was great. He knew how to do it. I had read many books but he had read a book that I had never read. He was an artist with his little pair of bathing trunks and his balls and his wicked little look and his round ears. He was the best. I couldn't challenge him any more than I could have challenged that big son-of-a-bitch in the green coupe with the looker whose hair flowed in the wind. They both had got what they deserved. I was just a 50-cent turd floating around in the green ocean of life.

I watched them come out of the water, glistening, smooth- skinned and young, undefeated. I wanted them to want me. But never out of pity. Yet, despite their smooth untouched bodies and minds they still were missing something because they were as yet basically untested. When adversity finally arrived in their lives it might come too late or too hard. I was ready. Maybe.

I watched Jim toweling off, using one of their towels. As I watched, somebody's child, a boy of about four came along, picked up a handful of sand and threw it in my face. Then he just stood there, glowering, his sandy stupid little mouth puckered in some kind of victory. He was a daring darling little shit. I wiggled my finger for him to come closer, come, come. He stood there.

"Little boy," I said, "come here. I have a bag of candy-covered shit for you to eat."

The fucker looked, turned and ran off. He had a stupid ass. Two little pear-shaped buttocks wobbling, almost disjointed. But, another enemy gone.

Then Jim, the lady killer, was back. He stood there over me. Glowering also.

"They're gone," he said.

I looked down to where the five girls had been and sure enough they were gone.

"Where did they go?" I asked.

"Who gives a fuck? I've got the phone numbers of the two best ones."

"Best ones for what?"

"For fucking, you jerk!"

I stood up.

"I think I'll deck you, jerk!"

His face looked good in the sea wind. I could already see him, knocked down, squirming on the sand, kicking up his white- bottomed feet. Jim backed off.

"Take it easy. Hank. Look, you can have their phone numbers!"

"Keep them. I don't have your god-damned dumb ears!"

"O.K., O.K., we're friends, remember?"

We walked up the beach to the strand where we had our bicycles locked behind someone's beach house. And as we walked along we both knew whose day it had been, and knocking somebody on their ass could not have changed that, although it might have helped, but not enough. All the way home, on our bikes, I didn't try to show him up as I had earlier. I needed something more. Maybe I needed that blonde in the green coupe with her long hair blowing in the wind.