Jericho Read online

  Don’t miscomprehend me. This is not self-pity speaking. There’s nothing scientific about self-pitying behaviour, and we must bring at least some science to the job of assessing ourselves. I’m just looking at the facts. I’m staring at them without expression.

  Sometimes, in rare cases, a person’s coming-out is actually more of a going-in. It’s a liberation from having to pretend, yes, but also liberation from having to try—try to look like the people in media photographs, try to sound just the same as everyone else, try as hard as you can to make other people like you by being socially artificial and unnecessarily cheerful. I stopped buying into this fallacy when I was a teenager. My school uniform was never actually uniform with everybody else’s. My shoes were scuffed, one knee sock was almost falling downwards from elastic fatigue, my tunic never hung right. The other girls looked alike, which is to say they looked more girlish, and they didn’t have hair like old straw. They all spoke exactly alike too. They zeroed in on my mastery of language as the evident symbol of all the ways in which I was set apart at a distance from them. Often I sought out silence as my response to these cruelties on their part. They couldn’t ignore me if they couldn’t see me, so I cleverly turned myself invisible. But this only made me even more conspicuous—the only invisible person in the crowd. What I’m describing is pretty much the pattern on which life has been lived by me. This is how it is.

  Which brings me to the matter of desire. I experience desire, you know, just like other people. Lesbian desire, my own at any rate, is like that of straight persons as I understand it from the culture they continually bombard me with. You meet someone, either without expecting to or in some venue intended for that purpose, and there is something about her that you find attractive that you have never seen or noticed in anyone else before or, conversely, something that reminds you, though usually not consciously, of a quality you have admired in others in the past. You are reluctant to approach for fear that experience will rear its ugly face and you will be rejected. You don’t know how to proceed. This is especially difficult when you’re dealing with people who have so-called “good personalities” (the term has no scientific validity whatsoever—it’s a mass-media concept). They simply go around being polite to people all the time, completely without any discrimination, hoping to ingratiate themselves, living a constant lie. Thus you never know what they’re really thinking behind their smokescreen of—would you call it affability? I call it hypocrisy.

  Beth was nice that first day when she came into the office, but I don’t mean that in a negative way. I didn’t get the impression she was being nice because she wanted my help, though of course that’s exactly what she wanted, or needed. Sure, she has the type of body I find attractive. She isn’t heavy but she has a broad back. Also, her legs looked a little stronger than most; I immediately guessed to myself that her calves were strong, possibly from growing up someplace where there are a lot of hills. But it was not merely her physicality that made me want to get to know her, important though this is. Helping people with my knowledge is how I have gradually come to respond to the world’s awfulness towards me that I constantly experience, and I sensed that she could use a wise friend. Possibly being a couple one day, weaning her off the self-limiting narrow-mindedness of exclusively straight experience, of course occurred to me the moment she appeared in my doorway like a golden retriever or some other type of dog with similar emanations of questioning vulnerability. After all, I’m talking here about desire, which though it must never be misshaped by abstract emotion is not totally a logical thing by any means—we all accept that. Or such was my thinking at the time. More recent events have caused me to reconsider some of my initial responses, which I always seem to do only in the middle of the night when I should be getting back to sleep.

  I can tell that she too is a victim of desire, though not towards me, but towards that devious phony she keeps talking about. I know just by looking that he is the type of individual with a police file that has his name on it. She, coming from a different sort of background, cannot recognize him for what he is. Such is my fear. When we meet I hear in her voice a clear indication of what she believes to be his long-term bed-appeal. Or if it didn’t start out that way, such seems to be the way it is heading. I can only hope that her interest recedes. Beyond telling her what I think and know, giving her the benefit of my understanding of such things, I cannot exactly tell her what to do. I cannot actually say: “If you have to have a straight man, almost any other one would be better than him.” Nor can I actually say, as my mother used to say to me, “Now you listen to me, young lady.” That would send a message that I am competing for her against him. As she is fragile and he is insane, such a signal might be reacted to in ways not foreseeable by me. Look at it this way: I have an investment in her, not of money but of desire, and I have to protect my investment. What else am I to do? I ask myself this query but cannot come up with a worthwhile response, not even at 3:21 in the morning, which is what I observe it to be.

  Talking to myself, not intruded on by other people’s sounds, has long been my most productive means of inner-conflict resolution. That plus, in recent years, my notebook of clinical observations, mostly in the field, which I hope one day will be transformed into something of even greater substance. I should get up right now and do what I do best. I could fill pages with the psychology of this dilemma with which I have been burdened. How do I make her transcend “nice” and respond to me in the affectional dimension I seek (or that in any case I certainly would not reject if offered)? For one thing, I must keep her from being damaged by this warped and careless non-thinker. How can I prevent this if I am not present on-site? This is the dilemma that was forced on me when she invited me to have a coffee with the two of them.

  My first big mistake was accepting the invitation, the second was not speaking up when it was obvious that the slow-witted malcontent was being allowed to choose the restaurant. He preferred places frequented by other characters like himself, where he had protective coloration. That’s how we ended up in a decrepit diner, as I guess you would term it, with a few dirty chrome stools upholstered in red vinyl and a couple of Formica-topped booths, of which we occupied one. There was a sign that said CUSTOMERS ONLY WASHROOM. The owner or manager, in any case the presiding authority figure, was a white-haired man with Chinese-Canadian ethnicity. He was reading to himself.

  The psychopath began this way: “My preparations for the great transition are officially underway.” He was clean, but he looked as though he hadn’t shaved his face that morning and I noticed tiny grey hairs growing on his ears.

  I stayed calm. That’s the best way to treat these people. “I’m not sure I understand the meaning of that,” I said in such a tone that neither provoked nor reassured him unreasonably.

  “I’m blowing this dump.” At first I thought he meant he was leaving the restaurant. False hope. “Leaving this burg, getting out of town while the gettin is good, blowing the Org as they say in Scientology, retiring to my country residence.”

  “He has this place up north,” Beth said.

  “Where?” I asked him.

  He answered looking at her, not me. “At an undisclosed location. You’ll find out when you see it through the windshield.” He sounded like he was going to make one of those disgusting little throat noises that I became familiar with later on.

  “You’re going with him?” I was incredulous that she was running off with this loon. (Forgive my layperson’s language, but that’s what he is.)

  Beth answered with her eyebrows and a bit-lip smile.

  “What about finding your father?”

  “I’ve decided I have to put that on hold until I figure out how to go about it in a way that makes more sense. Getting away for a while might help. We both need time to think, so we’re going together.”

  I’m not sure I believed in such a simple answer.

  Then she said: “You wanna come?”

  I was boycotting eye contact with the pat
ient but noticed that he stayed silent for once.

  “What are the two of you going to do up there? How are you going to make a living? What are you planning to eat?”

  He piped up. “I’ve got a place that’s all fitted out. It has everything we’d ever need.”

  “Like a farm?”

  “No.” He raised his voice. “It’s more like a seed-place. A seed op.” He laughed at his cleverness, which only he saw. “It’s the seed of something that’s going to grow. I’ve planted an idea in the fertile ground.”

  I couldn’t help myself. “What exactly are you talking about?”

  He was quiet for a few seconds, thinking what to say. You could always tell when he was thinking because the process was so slow and laboured.

  “I can’t give you any details,” he said. “Except that something important is going to rise up.” He used the conspiratorial tone of voice you often find in such individuals.

  I suppose I must have been letting a small trace of impatience show, though I was trying not to do so.

  “You know the Bible, right?” Oh God, he was going to quote the Bible. “‘And there shall be a new heaven and a new earth.’” Beth looked impassive but still interested. “‘And there shall be brought forth something something—and a New Jerusalem.’”

  “Now you’re mixing the New Testament with the Old,” I said. He obviously knew nothing whatever about what he was talking about. A graduate of the Gideon theological seminary, that was my guess.

  “Well, that’s the gist of it. But I say the gist ain’t enough. Mark my words: There shall be made to rise up upon the land a new Fertile Crescent kind of place, a fresh start, a new hope. Screw New Jerusalem! There shall be a New Sodom and a New Gomorrah!” He paused to see our reaction. “That’s all I’m saying.”

  But of course it wasn’t all he was saying. He charged on, going back into his madman routine, as though he thought a person like myself couldn’t tell the difference. Looking at Beth, though, I wasn’t sure that she knew where the disturbed individual left off and the bad actor began. But then I wasn’t certain just what she thought about anything at that moment. Did she have, as they say, real feelings for him? I find that hard to believe. I think perhaps she hadn’t been laid in a long while for whatever reason and was experiencing unsatisfied lustfulness towards him, momentarily—which was no reason for her to give up the life she had now and run off with him to I don’t know where. I could see what he was getting out of it, a warm body and a member of the audience. To find out about her I’d have to get her alone and engage her in a serious conversation.

  I asked them when they were leaving.

  “I’m getting ready to initiate the protocols right now.”

  “What does that mean exactly?”

  He didn’t like it when anyone asked him to translate.

  “My plans are firming up,” he said.

  I thought: What if she is entering erotic fantasies about him in a diary? I couldn’t stand it. I said to myself: When they have sex she probably lights scented candles and he spouts made-up Scripture at all the crucial moments. Good Lord. Maybe if I got to know him I would like him more? That definitely didn’t seem likely or desirable. Maybe if I could get to know her better I would have my lust nullified or diluted by what I learned? I’d probably discover she’s one of those persons absolutely everybody likes every moment of their existence. (The unremitting tyranny of the cheerful.) Mostly I thought she might be in danger, physical or otherwise, and that I had a responsibility to her and also to my own sexual thoughts to ensure that nothing unpleasantly harmful happened to her. I should have asked myself by what right I had suddenly allowed such sisterly concern to influence my judgment.

  The laying off of bets in Snaketown was like the laying on of hands in the Bible. Somebody always had a mitt out of his pocket for one reason or another and then somebody else got theirs out too, and the first guy ended getting appointed or anointed. (Ha! That’s not bad.) So it came to pass that the elders of Snaketown seemed to be calling to me, saying unto me to appoint and anoint this Beth as my acolyte slash intern slash moll. I could tell she was going warm and rigid for me. I could see how she looked at me when I didn’t use the words she was expecting. Of course, she’d probably never known anybody who really understands how to talk and make an art of it. She’d likely only met people who could talk about the weather and the price of grain. I mean she was straight: rural straight, and there’s no straighter. But instinct and the elders’ voices told me there was more to her than that.

  It took quite a lot of slow, patient work. I remember sitting in the White Spot telling her about getting back to the true ancient roots of Civ as it first came down from the mountain, you might say. I was pretty wired that night, and of course all that coffee, one after another, didn’t even me out. I think I must have been in top racing form. When I told her I was leaving town her eyes went wide like she was completely surprised. Finally, over the next couple days, we got to the point where she was quitting her job to come with me. This made me happy, of course. It’s better to take the supplies you need with you cause you don’t know if you’ll be able to live off the land. But it put the spook into me too. I guess I was conflicted but maybe not.

  I told him I’d never done anything like this before and he told me not to worry. I felt more excited than scared, at least until it was over. I couldn’t figure out what he was feeling. He was calm but incredibly focused. Me, I couldn’t stop talking, or I’m sure that’s the way it sounded. I noticed he was wearing gloves inside the car. He told me not to touch anything.

  We drove along in silence for a few minutes.

  “Nobody’s ever robbed one before.”

  I didn’t understand what he meant by that.

  “Nobody’s ever stuck up a video store. Have you ever seen a news report about a video store being hit?”

  I admitted that I hadn’t, but then I didn’t read the papers or watch much television. Still, I thought there was a reason why what he said was true. “Maybe it’s because they don’t get robbed?”

  “Exactly.”

  He was squinting through the windshield, negotiating late evening traffic but not doing it like a pro exactly.

  “Maybe that’s because there’s not very much money at a video store?”

  He seemed to take this remark as a challenge. “Nonsense!” he said. “On a Friday night, are you kidding? You’ve seen how busy that place gets. And they don’t take credit cards. So they’ve got to start out with a pretty good float and by about now I bet they’ve done their peak weekend business. So I’m not stupid, right? Right now there’ll be the maximum of cash in the register and the woman there gets so stoned at night she won’t be able to identify us if she tried, which she won’t. It’s a target-rich environment. Now’s the moment to strike.”

  Just then the light changed at the intersection and the engine stalled. I think it was probably Bishop’s fault and not the engine’s. He looked like he was going to flood it. I wanted to take over the wheel and show him a trick I’d learned driving Mr. Steenrod’s coaches. You can’t go stalling a funeral procession, tying up traffic. But of course I kept my mouth shut except to say, “I didn’t know you drove. How long have you had this car?”

  “About half an hour,” he said.

  We pulled up in the lane behind Cult Video. He rehearsed our roles again. I’d go in first and act like a customer and browse and see how many people were in the store. If I didn’t come out again in fifteen minutes, it meant the coast was pretty clear. I’d keep browsing and he’d swing in. I’d block anybody new from coming in while he stuck the place up. He’d run out with the money. I’d give it a minute or two and then, in the confusion, we’d take off together.

  The manager was dressed all in black except for her fuchsia hair, which was the texture of cotton candy. She was wearing what I was pretty sure I recognized as mortuary makeup. There was a TV blaring up on a high shelf in one corner, like in a beverage room. A radio b
lared too. The place itself seemed to be half dead. Only one other potential customer, who was all studded leather between his shaved head and his Nazi-booted toes. Across both cheeks and the bridge of his nose he had painted a broad red stripe. His chains rattled a bit every time he moved. The manager wasn’t paying any attention to either of us. I started browsing, beginning on the wall closest to the exit, in the upper left corner, with the A’s.

  Alfie!, Algiers, Alice Cooper The Nightmare Returns, All That Jazz, Amadeus, Amazon Women of the Moon, American Graffiti, American Ninja, An American in Paris, An American Werewolf in London …

  I silently read off the titles while watching both the street and the counter. Not an easy thing to do if you don’t want to look shifty while you’re doing it. Bishop had warned me about looking shifty (his word).

  And God Created Woman, Andy Warhol’s Dracula, Angels Over Broadway, Anne of Green Gables, Anne of Green Gables The Sequel, Annie Hall, Annie Oakley, Apocalypse Now, Attack of the 50-Foot Woman, Attack of the Killer Tomatoes, Attack of the Swamp Creature…

  I thought to myself: Why am I doing this? I don’t own a TV.

  Au Revoir les Enfants, Away All Boats, Baby Boomers, Baby Doll, Baby Love, Back Street, Back to School, Back to the Future II, The Bad and the Beautiful, Bad Company, Bad Dreams, Band Aid, The Band Reunion…