Empty Set

I once lived with Buzz. He rented a small 2-bed 1-bath house in south Austin and took people in for as long as they could stand him. Not that Buzz was a bad guy. He just had bad habits. Like sitting on the couch all day and watching tv. And chain smoking cigarettes. And getting constantly baked. A multi-addict. He could live like this because of the cheap rent and his dealing. Every few months he made a trip down to the border and came back with a garbage bag of pot. How he got it he never told. Connections. The bag sat in his closet and waited, like Buzz, for the customers to come by. These customers were the only friends he seemed to have. They dropped in for half an hour, twisted one up, veged out in front of the television set, and left. I had nothing against any of this and liked the place after moving in.

But the semester wore on like the tv on my nerves. I kept barging out of my room - next to the living room - and making Buzz turn it down. But an hour later it was always just as loud again. I didn’t blame Buzz though. I blamed his brain. It was semi-dead due to a decade of herb. And so were his emotions as far as I could tell. He never reacted when I made him turn down the set. Like an automaton he lifted his remote and toned it down a few notches without even looking at me. But it always went back up again. His brain needed a certain amount of volume for things to register.

One night got bad. I barged out of my room and grabbed one of the remotes (we had two since Buzz thought he lost the first one and bought another and then I found the first one in the cupboard above the oven) and clicked it off. Buzz sat there for a second, blew out a toke he'd been holding in, then turned it back on. I clicked it off again. Buzz turned it back on. Then I reached behind the set and grabbed the plug. I yanked it out of its socket. Try going one night, I told him. He looked at me : But I like that show. Just try it, I said. Buzz looked back at the set. Then he took another drag off his bong.

I went in my room and waited. But nothing happened. Just silence. Thirty minutes later I made a trip to the kitchen and passed through the living room. Buzz was sitting there staring at the empty set. He was in his usual stance - remote in one hand, bong in the other - except that he was staring at absolutely nothing. Watching nothingness.

That night was bad enough but the next was worse. I got back from class and Buzz was sitting there staring at the blank tv again. What are you doing? I said. He blew out a cloud of cigarette smoke. Nothing, he told me. I know, I said : But why? Buzz took another drag. He blew it out and told me : You said give it a try. I looked at him straight. He was in a cloud. Then I went in my room. An hour later one of his customers came by so I had to go out and look. I made a trip to the kitchen and saw the two of them smoking a doob and staring at the empty screen together. I gave the customer a look and he shrugged and grinned back.

I began not to like this situation very much. When I came back the next night from class and found Buzz sitting on the couch staring at the empty tv again I’d had it. Look man, I said, you’re really freaking me out. Buzz didn’t react. Just turn the thing back on, I told him, and go on living your life. I grabbed a remote and clicked on. Nothing happened. So I reached behind the tv and grabbed the cord but I couldn’t plug it in because the plug itself had been cut off. Like with a knife. What the fuck, I said. Buzz didn’t look at me. I pointed the cut-off cord at him. What’s this? He took a drag off his bong and blew it out. The stink filled the room. You know if you concentrate, he said, there’s a lot to watch on that screen. I dropped the cord and went in my room.

Next week the semester ended and I told Buzz to pocket my deposit since I wasn’t giving my two weeks notice. I packed my van and told him I was chasing a girl up to Madison. He didn’t look at me when I told him - he kept staring at that empty set. Then he blew out a toke and said: Don’t ever chase a chick anywhere. I left anyway.

Tits
I once liked Barbie. I met her in Austin through a friend of a friend but it was near the end of the semester. She graduated, I didn’t. I still had one semester to go. We got to the point though where we had sex for the first time the night before she went back to Madison. And I probably should have left it at that. But after I graduated I packed up my van and chased her north.

I got to Madison and one of Barbie’s friends had a spare room I could sublet for the summer. So I moved in. Her friend’s nickname was Slate. A geology major. He had rocks all over the apartment and whenever new people came over - like me my first time - he showed them around and explained what each rock was. Each room had a theme too. Like the kitchen was igneous. And the bathroom was sandstone. My bedroom was the meteorite room and had tiny meteorites hanging down on strings from the ceiling. They used to knock against my head in the dark. The place was great. I even got a job through one of Slate’s friends. She came over one night and said she valet parked cars at the university hospital. I said : Do they need more? Apply, she told me. I did and got a temporary position. So everything seemed to be falling into place.

One piece didn’t fit though. Barbie. She had a problem I knew about in Austin but now in Madison it was worse. Anorexia nervosa. She smoked a pack and a half a day, drank several pots of coffee, ran the treadmill at the gym, rarely ate of course, and used suppositories on the sly to keep her bowels as squeaky clean as possible. She even started listening to the Carpenters. It wasn’t funny. “Top of the World” became the theme song for her bottoming out. Not a cloud in the sky got the sun in my eyes and I won’t be surprised if it’s a dream. And a dream it wasn’t. In Austin there was still some meat on her bones but in Madison it was like having sex with a mummy. Her breasts had even gone flat. But we acted like there was hope because of her therapy.

I don’t believe in therapy though. Barbie did, not that it helped her any. The next phase she got into was a pushing-everybody-out-of-my-life phase. It started with people who weren’t that close to her anyway. Like Slate. She stopped hanging out with him which meant that she stopped coming to my apartment. I had to go to hers form then on. And whenever I did she accused me of things like : You don’t like how much I smoke. Or: You don’t like how much coffee I drink. Or even : You don’t like how flat I am. All of which was true but I said no. It was a bad game and I knew I was eventually going to lose.

Barbie’s parents got involved and sent her down to a clinic in Florida for two weeks. Cost a small fortune. But when she came back she was the same as ever. She told me the change would be slow. I thought : Ten grand for that? Barbie knew what I thought and put me next on the push-away list. I realized this when she stopped having sex with me. I asked why and she said I made her feel like a slut - that I was just using her for sex. I said no no but then I started to think about it. Thinking is bad and I ended up believing she was right. I was just using her for sex and she was just a slut to me. So we stopped having sex and tried to be friends but there was no use.

The summer ended as did everything else. Barbie kept accusing me of things that were true and I kept saying no. She kept swirling down. Of course I wasn’t going to be the one that saved her. I didn’t know how and I was part of the problem anyway. So when my sublet ended I quit my job and moved down to New Orleans. I wrote both Barbie and Slate once I got there. Just Slate wrote back. He told me that Barbie had tried to OD on aspirin. How great, I thought. I knew it was just a cry for help - nobody really uses aspirin - but still it made me shiver. I was the guy that ran to her and made her feel like a slut and then ran away. She must have thought of that - along with a thousand other things - while she was downing those pills. So I wrote her another letter saying how sorry I was and blamed myself for everything. She sent me a postcard back with the picture of a fat-breasted girl in a tight wet t-shirt on the front. It said : YOU HAD NOTHING TO DO WITH WHAT I DID. DON’T FLATTER YOURSELF. She didn’t even sign it. I put the postcard on my wall, too, until I finally realized it was supposed to be an insult or a joke on me.

Mosquitos
I once owned a Volkswagon Vanagon. A Vanagon is like a mini-apartment on wheels the size of a walk-in closet. It’s got a fold-out bed, a small fridge, a two-burner stove, a sink, and a roof that pops up, but it still never feels like a real living space. That was the philosophy behind the Vanagon though : one part living space, one part transportation. When you became a Vanagon owner you became a member of a lifestyle group. A brotherhood. Other Vanagon owners honked and waved at you and you did the same thing back.

I drove it once from Madison to New Orleans. I kept on the road a few hours a day - since my Vanagon was old - before starting my search for a camper site. My third day down I started my search an hour before dusk but it took until after dusk to spot the first sign. I got off at the exit and followed it down a country road that led me away from the freeway. I found the next sign and turned down an even smaller road. It led me further and further into rural USA. Just farms and pick-ups and steeples. I didn’t like it but there I was. When I got to the camper site no one was at the office desk. I waited thirty minutes. Then a woman walked in surprised. I didn’t know you were here, she said. That’s alright, I told her : I need a spot for the night. Just one night? she said and gave a strange look. Yeah. She pointed across the pond and I paid her and drove over.

My spot was spaced between a mobile home and - as it turned out - another Vanagon. I pulled in, popped the roof up, connected the water and electricity, and sure enough the other Vanagon owner came over. One of the brotherhood. First thing he said was : That’s as old as they get. (Wasn’t true.) I told him I got my Vanagon off a friend real cheap. His parents lived in it for three years. The guy wasn’t listening. He pointed at my connections. Look at that rust, he said : They’re not gonna last. As long as it gets me to New Orleans, I told him. Then he twisted up his face : Is that gas? Yeah, I said, the tank’s rusted too. He shook his head at me. He was a short guy about ten years older - in his early thirties - and an obvious asshole. Not that I cared much. Next thing he did was stick out his hand and say : My name’s Chuck and I got a fridgeful of beer. I shook his hand. Why don’tcha stop by? I looked at him straight. He smirked. Don’t worry, he said : I’m not psycho. I doubted that but told him I’d be by once I got set.

Chuck (as I learned) spent his time traveling from event to event selling handwoven bracelets from Guatamala. He knew a family in that country and flew down there twice a year with some money and shoes and they loaded him up with the bracelets. Chuck sold them at Grateful Dead shows, other outdoor concerts, college-break locales, and any other place where people were drunk and drugged in public. This lifestyle fit Chuck since he was a wastoid himself. While we drank he did shots of JD between beers and toked on a joint between gulps. I stuck to the beer and listened to him talk.

Chuck said (red eyes glowing) : How can you go to New Orleans without knowing anyone or having anything lined up? I told him (like I was serious) that I’d use my degree. Your degree? he said. Your degree don’t add up to squat in this world. I’m a risk-taker, I told him (with straight face). His eyes got redder. You’re too young to be a risk-taker! All you are right now is a TROUBLE maker - for yourself. Next he started telling me about the trouble that was waiting for me down the road, and I unwrapped a sandwich I made in my Vanagon. Chuck burst. Don’t eat that crap in here! he said. NO MEAT-EATING IS ALLOWED. Then he went on a rant about how evil it was to eat meat - or “support the meat industry” as he put it - and how you shouldn’t even eat cheese since it’s made from milk and the milk industry was responsible for veal because they over-impregnate cows, and so on. I put the sandwich away and started planning my escape. But the ranting was so good. His wrath was educational. And the best came last. Chuck started raging against “niggers” - but with a nonracial twist. He raged against black niggers and brown niggers and white niggers and every kind of nigger and how the country was going to hell in a “nigger handbasket.” I kept a straight face. Then Chuck paused for a second, forgot what he was talking about, took a quick shot and toke and said : We need tunes! He put on live Grateful Dead and jammed it way too loud for the campground. I gave him a wave and slipped out.

I went to bed with the Dead in my ears and woke up later when I felt I was floating out of my bed. But it wasn’t my body that was floating. My body was tingly and numb. It was the rest of me. First thing I panicked. I grabbed onto something inside of me and tried to make it stop. But I kept floating up inch by inch. Then the panic switched into euphoria. I suddenly felt great. Like under anaesthesia about to pass out. I was tempted to let myself go and float up into whatever I was floating up into. But then another flash of panic set in. I held on tight. Then the floating stopped.

Before I left the campground I told Chuck what happened. He shook his head at me like that was the final proof what an idiot I was. You bonehead, he said : Good thing you didn’t let go. It’s those fumes in your van. You almost DIED. Of course I didn’t believe him. But then on the road I started thinking. I realized if that was death it was far too tempting for me. It felt too good. I made the pledge from that point on to sleep with all the windows in my Vanagon open, no matter how many mosquitos got in.

One Tiny Sec
I once knew a stripper named Wanda. That wasn’t her real name of course but I never found her real name out. She worked at Big Daddy’s on Bourbon Street in the heart of the French Quarter. I used to go to the Quarter after my shift ended at midnight. I’d buy a large cup of beer at a beer nook and walk up and down Bourbon looking at whatever was happening that night. And since these were weekday nights not much was happening. Just tourists and street vendors, cops and teenage runaways. I’d get a buzz and pass the plastic legs jutting in and out above Big Daddy’s door and have to go in. Never any cover and beers four bucks each.

First time I saw Wanda was at center stage. She was making love to herself for a handful of men. I saw her on the circular platform at the rear of the stage swirling in slow motion - on her knees, rubbing her palms over her body, covered in colored lights. She got on all fours and slid her palm down her back to the end of her spine and let her middle finger slide over the string of her thongs back and forth between her legs. Spinning in slow motion it was true erotic art.

After her act Wanda came up to me and asked to give me a dance. I said no. I liked being alone, getting into my beer buzz, watching the girls in the colored lights. But the next time I went there she plopped down in my lap before I could say anything. Know where I’m from? she said. I said no. Independence Missouri, she told me and undid the front of her bra and let her breasts spill out : the SHOW ME state! I laughed and gave in. For twenty bucks she danced in front of me for three songs and sat in my lap and talked with me for another three. She could do this weekday nights because of how dead it was.

Whenever I went to Big Daddy’s after that I got a dance from Wanda if she was there. I had no reason not to. I was new to New Orleans and had no friends and certainly had no girlfriend. I had nothing. And things happened to click between Wanda and me. Personality-wise. Wanda was always on edge and bubbly (quick trips to the changing room to snort things) and I was excited about the discovery of my pro-geisha feelings. I loved having this unknown girl giggling and jiggling in my lap without any emotional ties. It felt so - natural.

But of course I wanted more. I wanted - or felt like I needed - to “have” her. On my buzz it was my duty as a red-blooded American male. So I gave Wanda my number one night and she told me it was against the rules for her to go out with the customers. A polite way to say no. So it shocked me when she actually called. It was a Saturday night and I picked up the phone and heard music and voices in the background. Guess who? she said. I said Wanda. She said : Right! Now why aren’t you down here tonight? I told her I never went down on weekend nights. Too crazy. Then she told me, with a dead stop at the end : I get off at two. I didn’t say anything. I had no idea why she had chosen me. Hellooo, she said : I said I get off at two. Then she made some groans like she was really “getting off.” I told her I’d be there and hung up.

Getting what you want is scary so I drank heavily until one then drove my van down to the Quarter and parked on the Esplanade side. I walked into Big Daddy’s and saw Wanda sitting on some guy’s lap with her top off laughing. Good for her, I thought. I got a seat at stage number two and watched the girl there. She had a nipple ring that flashed in the red and violet lights. Then a pair of arms wrapped around me : Wanna dance? I turned my chair and Wanda danced for three songs. But she didn’t sit in my lap after that. She leaned in and took my twenty and said : They can’t see me leave with you - meet me at Bourbon and Canal. Bourbon and Esplanade, I told her.

When she got there I showed her my Vanagon. Her eyes lit up. I never been in one, she said. Get in, I told her. I took her up Esplanade to Mid City and pulled into a cemetery and parked within an aisle of mausoleums. I had it all planned. I popped up the roof and pulled a couple of beers out of the fridge. In five minutes the back seat was folded out into a bed and we were on top of it. I never do this with customers, Wanda said. I doubted that. When I got to her bra she stood up and did a striptease. This time it was different though because the thongs came off. Wanda turned around and pulled them down then turned back and I saw how she was shaved clean between her legs. I’d never seen anything look so white before. It shocked the hell out of me.

She tugged down my jeans and used her hand and I rolled a condom on and got on top of her and sank inside - and blew my load immediately.

Wanda froze. You’re done? she said. Maybe, I told her. I started going limp inside her. Don’t, she said : You’ll spill. I pulled out and rolled onto my back and lay there, like one of the corpses nearby. First time jitters, I told her. She doubted that. Just one teeny second, she said : One teeny-weeny second! With my last girlfriend, I told her, it was always one teeny-weeny hour. She doubted that even more. Lucky girlfriend, she said.

I dropped Wanda off at the nearest place where she could call a cab and never saw her again. I never went back to Big Daddy’s. I stuck to cabarets where there was a cover charge and the girls (mostly augmented) never talked with me. I could sit there alone and get intense on my beer and watch the girls in the colored lights. But one night I got a little too intense and got forcibly removed. I figured then I’d had enough of New Orleans. I moved to Ann Arbor in the summer and was able to lay off the strip joints for a while since there weren’t any there.

Cheeze Whiz
I once liked Rosa. She was sixteen and I was twenty-three. But she wasn’t a high school student. She was a freshman at the University of Michigan. A “bridge” student from Puerto Rico, whatever that meant. It meant her parents had money at least but now they didn’t have their control. Rosa was out of their house for the first time and bent on experimenting with her new freedom. She knew that she was hot (she was very hot) and she had an instinct for what do with this hotness. This instinct and that hotness - mixed with her age and a country where people go for it if they can (America) - really was a bad combination. For me. I was the first guy she met in Ann Arbor so I was the first guy she got involved with in the States.

I met Rosa because of her sister. Not that I new her sister but she happened to live next door to me. I was subletting a friend’s apartment for the summer - and canvassing for Green Peace to pay my bills - and one night in early July Rosa walked out onto her sister’s porch while I was out on mine. I said hi. She gave me a strange look and walked back inside. I went on smoking my cigarette and looking at whatever was passing by. Ten minutes later she came back out and asked me if she could have a smoke. I said sure and tossed her one. Of course we started talking. She told me she just arrived from Puerto Rico that day. I said wow. Then she told me she was staying with her sister till her dorm room opened in the fall. I gave a nod. By the time her cigarette finished I knew what I had. I asked her to go with me to “Top of the Park” where they showed free movies on the side of a parking structure. She said yes. We went and after it was over we drank beer and talked until four in the morning at my apartment.

It was my fault for thinking that Rosa liked me so quickly because of my personal qualities and not because she liked guys quickly in general. That said, our relationship started the next night. After some cheap wine and a massage I went down on her at my apartment. I had never done that to such a young girl before and was surprised at how fresh and sweet it DIDN’T taste. I wanted a bouquet of flowers but got the usual instead. We didn’t go any further that night because Rosa told me she was a virgin. I doubted that - especially by the way she enjoyed what I did to her - but of course I didn’t say anything. I let her keep up the act and we stuck to the oral stuff our first week together.

Ann Arbor is best during the summer because the dorms are closed and the frats are dead. One night our second week together Rosa and I walked around some of the dorms and the sports field next to them. We rolled on the grass and Rosa straddled me. She leaned back and looked up at whatever was in the sky. Then she said without thinking : I feel so … She didn’t have to finish. I felt it too. That night we went back to my apartment and had sex for the first time. I sank into her so easily though I knew that she had lied. But of course I didn’t say anything.

That night Rosa and I peaked and after that we had nowhere to go except down. I started coming back from canvassing - from terrorizing suburban neighborhoods with demands for money - not knowing where Rosa was. Her sister never knew either and then Rosa would come back and tell me about all the new people (guys) she met that day. She met new guys at the library, at the computer lab, in the summer classes, or just walking through campus. Guy after guy kept popped up in her life. She said they were just friends but I saw it differently. They were stationed on the sidelines. So I got angry. To prove they were just friends she introduced me to a guy she called “Diag Dave.” She met him in the diag - the diagonal crisscross at the center of campus - where he played guitar all day. He had a ponytail and a “cool” personality. The three of us smoked pot and went to “Top of the Park.” I didn’t enjoy it at all.

My sublet ended at the end of August and my friend didn’t move back in. New guys did. Rosa moved into a single on a coed hall on north campus and let me stay with her till I found someplace new. That was when I found out about the phone calls she got. Guy after guy after guy. One night a guy she had met that same day called from the dorm lobby. Rosa told me she had to go down and talk to him since he had some personal problems she was “helping” him with. I got mad and told her go ahead and left the room. I bought a large bottle of schnapps and guzzled it down in the woods in back of the dorm. Then I came back inside and tried to get into Rosa’s room. Locked and no reply. So I burst. I went down to security and told them to let me in so I could get my stuff and get out but they said no. I went back up and pounded on the door. The RA came out and told me to get lost. I went back into the woods - which were spinning around me - and made a cushion out of tree droppings and passed out on top of it. In the morning I felt poisoned and my clothes were muddy. I tried Rosa’s again. Still no answer. I spent the entire day going back and forth between her dorm room and the woods.

At six I tried again and the door opened a crack with a guy I didn’t know staring back at me. Come back at seven, he said. I put my foot in the door and pushed him back. Then I saw two interesting things. Rosa sitting on her bed glaring at me, and a shopping cart full of my stuff next to her. My stereo, records, books, clothes, and my food were piled up inside. I didn’t say anything. I grabbed the cart and pulled it out of the room. Then I started pushing it down the hall. Every other doorway was open with a freshman gawking at me. And every third or fourth doorway I heard a : Nice day for shopping, isn’t it? Or a : Didja get me my cheeze whiz boy? Or a : Check this guy out! It was a GAUNTLET OF HUMILIATION.

My van was parked on central campus. That meant I had to push the shopping cart a mile. And with my unwashed hair and poisoned face and muddy clothes I looked and felt like a homeless person. My world was in my cart and I was pushing it - where? I stopped along the bridge over the Huron River and sat on the edge and smoked. It was too enjoyable because of the lack of anything else there was to enjoy. Then I flicked the butt into the river and watched it flow and pushed the cart the rest of the way and got in my van and went back home to Detroit.