Sommelier of Deformity

PROLOGUE

I’m not ashamed.

Should I envy him? I’ve never envied anybody or anything. Deny his beauty? I’ve got my delusions, same as anyone, but I always find myself out and feel doubly pathetic. I’m ugly. Terrance Johnson is handsome. If there is a God, he is an artist God, and he saves his careful chisel work for the rare few.

I’m like a Special Olympian. My event: lovemaking. My handicap: ugliness. My eyes are puckered inwards and darkly rimmed, so that gazing into them is like staring at a pair of twin anuses. My nose is a mashed toadstool, and my chin is a small, frightened thing, hiding in the cavern of my overbite. I’m short. Very short. Four feet nine. My spine is bent by scoliosis. Straightened out, I’d be five even, but the serpentine aspect of my skeletal structure knocks a good three inches off my height. In x-ray, you might mistake me for the missing link; in the flesh, for a human prototype that was deemed unworthy of production. My face belongs to the bullied schoolboy, to the overqualified middle manager who’s banged his head against the glass ceiling of good looks. I’m the speechwriter who stuffs fertile words into handsome mouths. I’m the board operator, hidden from the audience, casting spotlights on the costumed beauties. I look like something you’d peel off the bottom of your shoe.

Yet I am not without my gifts. Or maybe gift. Is a silver tongue a gift or a skill? If it is a gift, is it a mental or physical one? I’m a strict materialist, a lapsed dualist, so I try to avoid mind–body distinctions whenever possible. Anyway, I’ve got a silver tongue. My other gift, and possibly, my only one, presents no metaphysical questions.

I’ve got a magnificent penis.

Large? Of course. Sans size, sans girth, a penis can never be magnificent. But there’s more. My penis can do a thing that other penises cannot do. Read on. All will be revealed.

Mr. Lely, I desire you would use all your skill to paint my picture truly like me, and not flatter me at all; but remark all these roughnesses, pimples, warts and everything as you see me, otherwise, I will never pay a farthing for it.

Not my favorite historical dictator, Cromwell, but I dig the warts and all thing. I shall endeavor to adhere to that standard throughout.

I once made love to an ectrodactyl. A double ectrodactyl, in fact, as the deformity was present in both hands. The condition is also known as lobster-claw hand, but that’s antiquated, a slur, and if you ever find yourself chatting with an ectrodactyl—let alone cosseting one—I suggest steering clear of all crustacean references. Yet I cannot say she had hands. So, pincers. That’s what she had. Calling them hands would do my readers no service.

Her pincers weren’t sexy to me by default. I had to make them sexy. I had to choke down my revulsion and get past it so that I could get on to her beauty. Lo, there was beauty to be had! Her lips! They were full and pink, soft, forever moist, and nothing in her kiss was greedy or desperate. Her buttocks! Hers were the buttocks of an urban postal worker! Buttocks nonpareil. Buttocks that haunt your dreams, and all the more because they were yours for a time and are no longer. For a single shining night, every part of her was mine. She gifted herself to me, and I accepted, and the more she gave, the more I took, until the whole concept of giving and taking—what was hers, what was mine—blurred into irrelevance. It was ecstasy. All I had to do was get beyond her pincers. Rather than deny them—and let me tell you, there is no denying it when a lover has pincers for hands—I made them the star of the show. I begged her to masturbate me with those pincers. I made it sexy. Bodies were oiled. Breasts were tickled with feathers. We shifted posture. Her lordosis behavior demanded a response. "This game is over!" I cried, and then, after a thunderous smack on that magnificent rump, I impaled her. I thought she would implode. I thought she would implode into nothingness and take me with her, and at that moment I was glad to join her in the abyss.

Would you like to know how appreciative she was? She sent me an FTD TeddyGram bouquet. The very totem of appreciation! I still have that bear. It sits in a glass display case, alongside other treasures. Subsequent lovers have asked Is that your childhood Teddy? I say yes. Yes, it is. I’m not one for lies—even the little white ones—but there are times when the wheels of progress require the ol’ lubricating squirt. We call such circumstances diplomacy.

I’m a connoisseur of the unwanted, a sommelier of deformity, a coveter of the unloved. If I am a pervert, let it be said that my perversion is a golden Shangri-la, built upon the manly bedrock of my libido. I can be as soft as dandelion fluff or as hard as a boat anchor. I’ll pull hair. I’ll deliver an open-handed shot to the chops if that’s what she requires. At the other extreme: a lover once requested that I wear her brassiere and panties, as well as a set of costume fairy wings, and flitter about the bedchamber like a pixie princess. After some impish frolic (pan-flute playing, jig dancing, the telling of riddles), I tossed a handful of sparkles into the air and cast a sleeping spell upon her. She feigned a supernatural slumber and I mounted her like a lovehungry satyr. It was her fantasy, and I never broke character. It’s not that I’m an unselfish lover. I’m selfless. It’s not enough to be inside a woman. I want her to consume me like a chicken potpie: meat, potatoes, crust, and all. I want to satisfy her deepest hunger—to leave her with greasy lips and gravy on her chin. By day, I am forever chased by the shadow of my ugliness. In darkness, no shadow remains, and it’s all diamonds.

My Don Juan pretensions have no truck with long commitments; my Quasimodo physique ensures that such commitments are never requested. I’m incapable of being the answer to any woman’s dreams. Even for the most humble; even for those with the fewest prospects; I’m the fetid water they drink, not because they want to, but because they’re dying of thirst. From the minute they meet me, they’re hoping for better. They’re wrong to want that. They don’t deserve better, and neither do I. It’s for me, through intimacy and compassion, to make them aware of this fact. There’s no ideal. There’s only best we can get.

I grip tight to my limitations. Only once have I been tempted to stray beyond them. She was attractive. Physically, I’m saying. By any measure. Her deformity? There was none. My want for her is the only shame I maintain.

As for Terrance: if you think that I am the type who likes to brag on having a black friend, you are mistaken. Blacks—especially young black males—have frightened me all my life. I have suffered grave indignities at their hands, and my psyche bears the scars. I was not seeking Terrance Johnson’s friendship. On the contrary. I raged against it.

And so I begin my book. Let’s call it a novel. You could also call it a pseudo-memoir, because the events within are sculpted from the soft clay of my memories. The narrative and the characters who take part in it will be cartoon renderings of the truth. Life, like war, involves hours of boredom punctuated by moments of terror. Or embarrassment. Or lust. I’ll try to keep things brisk. Were it not for Homer, Odysseus would be nothing but dust and bones. I’m a repulsive little nobody, so I’ll have to be my own Homer. My name is Buddy Hayes. I hope that you’ll forgive me this indulgence.

March 27, 2006. A day like so many forgotten days; a day lived; a day of no consequence. So I claim it. A Monday. It is the blank canvas upon which I begin my masterwork.

- 1 -

A MORNING

Dangling. Like a side of beef in a butcher-shop window. It’s how my grandfather spent his days. He had six months to live, a year at most—the same timeline they’d been giving us for the better part of a decade. He was a fighter, they said. A miracle. Of a type few would wish to be.

Cancer had struck. Surgery followed. They took the left eye and a chunk of the jaw. Shortly after that, a series of strokes. Atrophy in the limbs. His left arm desiccated. His legs shriveled, sores developed, gangrene threatened. The left leg was amputated first, below the knee, and months later the right, at mid-thigh.

Puppa. Pronounced pup-uh, lest the spelling lead you to a conclusion of poop-uh, which is far too cutesy a nickname for a decorated WWII veteran. Puppa’s place is in the den. There is an elegant leather armchair there, and in healthier days he’d sit there for hours, reading, sipping coffee, smoking cigarettes. It was all the retirement he’d ever wanted. For a few years, he got it. Then the diagnosis. The decline was swift.

We tried to adapt. Books: easy to operate with two hands, a frustrating challenge otherwise. We got him a lap desk. His motor skills diminished further. He developed resting tremors in the functioning hand. We sat beside him and turned the pages. Then, out came the eye, the left, which had previously been his good one, the right was astigmatic, always had been, and the operation left him legally blind. From then on, Puppa took his books in audio format, with Mummy or me serving as reader.

The loss of the armchair. Of all the sad things his illness brought, this was the hardest to take. The chair had been his Florida condo; the thing he’d worked for all his life; that favorite place, that most satisfying spot, where he would spend his golden years. We couldn’t make it work. We tried. God knows we did. It was the leather! The leather, damn it, with all its oily richness! It was too slick against his flannel pajamas. He lost the strength to keep himself upright. We tried strapping him in. He hated the feel of it, and we hated seeing him tied down like a mental patient. Pads and pillows didn’t work. He’d be fine for a while, but sooner or later he would slip from the chair, like a frankfurter ejecting from a condiment-slathered bun. We’d hear a thud in the den and enter to find him in a heap on the floor, smarting and humiliated.

The Hoyer lift. Its inventor should win a humanitarian prize. At first, we used the device only as prescribed: to lift Puppa’s body; to transport him from bed to armchair, from armchair to commode, from commode to bathtub. Then a surprise. Puppa came to enjoy the harness. He’d fuss whenever we unstrapped him. No telling why. Perhaps it was the womblike clutch. A swaddling effect, in other words. A less Freudian possibility: old men possess a natural affection for rocking chairs and porch swings, and there were elements of both in the Hoyer lift. Consider also the adjustable height of the boom pole. At the top of its range, Puppa could hover at standing height, offering the illusion (from his perspective) that he was just as he had always been, with two healthy legs firmly beneath him. Whatever the case, he came to like dangling more than sitting, and dangling was certainly the safer alternative, so we left him in the lift throughout his waking hours.

Seven fifteen A.M. I stood in the center of the room facing my audience of one. Drops of spring rain struck the window, and the city brooded under a gunmetal sky. The city of Ilium. Upstate New York. Ours is a three-story brownstone. We live on a quiet, decaying street.

It is impossible to say how first the idea entered my brain … but once conceived, it haunted me day and night!

I performed the reading with great dramatic flair. Puppa wriggled in his harness, his little stumps dancing in the air, his groans mixed with laughter and phlegm. He was enjoying the show.

Object there was none. Passion there was none. I loved the old man. He had never wronged me. He had never given me insult.

I paused. Shot a theatrical look of menace into Puppa’s good eye. You may not have noticed, but you can only look a person in one eye at a time. You cannot focus on both at once, and this is for the best when you’re speaking to Puppa. One grows used to empty eye sockets, but one would never say that there is a kind of beauty to them, or that "he looks better without the eyeball." Most times we keep the orifice stuffed with gauze. Out of doors, we cover it with a fine leather eye patch. Sometimes—in the privacy of our home, and only at Puppa’s behest—we add a bit of whimsy and put in one of his custom ocular prostheses. He wore one then. The qualities of this false eye will take some explaining.

We used to keep a Ping-Pong table in the downstairs parlor. The table is long gone, and I’d assumed the same of the paddles and balls, but I’d been doing some spring cleaning a couple of years prior and ran across these recreational articles in the bottom of an old shoebox. Puppa was delighted by the find. Nostalgia sparked. I placed a paddle in his hand. We reenacted past duels. The old man zestfully batted at the imagined ball and I faux-volleyed back, reaching and diving, grunting like a pro, swinging at the empty air. Puppa’s potent bids provoked a swaying in his harness, side-to-side, suggestive of the lateral dance performed by authentic table tennis masters. It was good exercise for him. I wondered: might there be a way for us to play actual Ping-Pong? Our fantasy version offered some cardio benefits, but it lacked the thrill of actual competition and did little to stimulate Puppa’s motor skills. Propriety forbids the batting of Ping-Pong balls in lavishly appointed dens—that’s a given—but I was excited to explore the concept, so I asked Puppa Do you think you could catch a ball if I bounced it toward you? He indicated yes. I bounced a ball, slowly, with lots of arc, directly toward his hand. He missed badly. I retrieved, tried again, and again he missed.

Third try. He missed again but got a hand on it. Fourth try, and he plucked the ball from the air. I cheered. Puppa raised the ball in triumph. Then, a devilish grin. He rolled the ball between his fingers. A flicker of lunacy danced across his face and then, in a flash, he mashed the ball into his open eye socket. The fit was nearly perfect. He removed his hand. The ball remained. I cried out in horror. It was ghastly! The bulbous, milky white ball transformed him into something inhuman. I begged him to remove it. He cackled demonically.

Ladies have their handbags and shoes. Gentlemen have their hats, their tiepins, their cufflinks. These small, changeable details are the brass tacks of fashion. Puppa started wedging the Ping-Pong ball into his face on a regular basis. Odd behavior, of course, I’m not claiming it wasn’t … but is it so different than a mink stole? Than an ascot? Fashion teaches us to accessorize around our less attractive features. Empty eye sockets are not common in the general population. If they were, there’d be decorative eyeball sections in every department store.

We tolerated it for a while. Puppa kept the ball in his breast pocket, and he’d wedge it into his cabbage whenever the spirit moved him. That spirit was usually a malevolent one. It frightened Mummy every time. I found it uncouth.

Puppa, if you insist on accessorizing in this way, can’t it be done with a bit more élan? A gentleman should not be seen with sporting goods lodged in his head.

What happens when ocular science meets arts and crafts? When a loving grandson, armed with the Internet and a Hobby Lobby rewards card, commits his labors to an ailing elder’s comfort and pleasure? Progress happens, reader. Prosthetic bijouterie happens.

The collection is up to fourteen. There’s The Mobius: ashwood, painted black, with a large sapphire set as the pupil. There’s The Marksman: mahogany, natural finish, with red crosshairs in the center. The Viper: tiger maple, wax polished, with an infinity symbol beveled into the face. I design and construct them. Take great care in doing so. Puppa receives a new eyeball every birthday, and another at Christmas as a stocking stuffer.

Back to the main thread. The morning. The dramatic reading. Puppa wore The Specter—a white painted number, no pupil, and sprinkled all over with silver glitter.

For his gold I had no desire. I think it was his eye! Yes, it was this! He had the eye of a vulture—a pale blue eye, with a film over it. Whenever it fell upon me, my blood ran cold; and so by degrees—very gradually—I made up my mind to take the life of the old man, and thus rid myself of the eye forever!

Puppa squealed. Intelligible speech was no longer an option, so he expressed his emotions in great bursts of pantomime. When saddened, he would blubber, and tears would flow from his functioning duct. If a song caught his fancy, he would bray along in indiscernible rendition. Here I had selected a tale of horror that spoke directly to his condition, as if Mr. Poe had penned it just for us. He was the old man; I, the killer. I’d even dressed the part. A tweed coat, a gentleman’s bow tie, a bowler hat. This brand of playacting was a regular part of our mornings.

"Breakfast … Mummy sang as she entered the den. She pushed our wooden butler’s cart in front of her. A breakfast spread was arrayed upon it: slices of pineapple, bowls of blueberry and cream, toast, and homemade peach marmalade. The Breakfast Surprise" was hidden under the lid of our silver serving platter. Steam kissed at the edges of the dome. Today’s surprise smelled delicious.

My mother is not an attractive woman. Inside, in the heart of her, she is the most beautiful woman in God’s creation. On the existence of a supernatural God, I am dubious, but Mummy, in all her sweetness and benevolence, could serve as proof of the divine. Maybe she’s an angel. She’s certainly a saint. She’s performed no miracles that I’m aware of, and I doubt that anyone will deign to paint her on a chapel ceiling; but if she is ever so honored, I will demand to oversee the work. Paint the soul, not the woman! I would instruct. Put some roses in her cheeks! Slim her hips! Tighten her hindquarters! And please, I beg you, take note of the sparkle in her eye and try with all your skill to capture it.

Inner beauty is of small account in this vulgar world, and Mummy does little to improve her outward appearance. She has the fashion sense of a sixty-year-old biddy, and a body to match. Her chin is a soft roll of flesh, and there are more than a few whiskers there. A harelip scar runs vertically from mouth to right nostril, just a bit off-center, and serves as a visual indicator of her mood. When she’s tranquil, the scar blends in with the surrounding flesh. When she’s agitated, the defect goes to pink; when further agitated, to red; when enraged, to blood red, and the scar looks like a live wound, open, glistening, and it’s clear to all that Mummy has pulled on her war face.

She wears her hair in a style that I call grandma puff. She calls it fuss-free. She has the figure of a tree stump and short little arms that shoot forward from where her breasts should be. She’s a chimera of sorts: a T. rex in miniature with an old lady’s head. That morning her hair was done up in pink curlers, and she wore her blue terry robe, decorated all over with little rubber duckies. She is forty-two years old.

I’ll tell you my age now. I’m twenty-eight. Do the math. As you might imagine, my entry into this world was a bit of a fiasco. It is one of the many reasons why I love Puppa so much. Without him, Mummy and I would have devolved into white trash monstrosities. We’d be living in public housing now, surviving on beans and Vienna sausages.

What are you reading? asked Mummy.

Puppa’s favorite, I said.

The butler’s cart had folding leaves on either side. When locked into place, the cart became a small, round table.

You’re wearing the hat, she said, setting the leaves. And Puppa is wearing The Specter. I should have known.

"They’re the perfect accessories. The eyeball is Puppa’s most ghoulish, and the closest match to the ‘vulture eye’ described in the tale. As for the hat—it instantly transforms me into dandy boulevardier. The rest is in the performance."

I shot Mummy a stiletto look.

Oh my! she cried. If looks could kill!

I doffed the bowler and set it gently on Puppa’s bald head. The hat had been his. He’d picked it up years ago, in a thrift shop, during one of his book hunts. It was no costume piece. The hat was old, English-made, and fine. Puppa’s face rent into a mangled simulation of a smile.

Now you look like a gentleman, I said, clapping the book shut. "We’ll finish later, okay? You simply must know what happens to the old man. I patted his shoulder. As if you didn’t know already, you old feather-duster!"

He smiled like a toothless baby. Spit bubbled at his lips.

That certainly got your energy up, Mummy said to the elder. Just like last Wednesday, when Terrance came over and sang. Puppa was like a Mexican jumping bean.

Urgh! bellowed Puppa in the affirmative.

It was some of the loveliest music I ever heard, she continued.

Urghhh! A small bola of mucus spun from his mouth and landed on the cart, barely missing a wedge of grapefruit.

I heard faint whispers of that ‘music’ from my chambers, I scoffed.

Wasn’t it grand?

"As I said, it was faint, and I was otherwise engaged. ‘The Wheels of Commerce’ and all that. What I did hear, I found … disconcerting."

She demanded elucidation.

The thought of that big chocolate-covered marshmallow, strumming away on his banjo and singing like Ricky Nelson, I said. "It sounded unnatural. Like someone trying to prove something."

Oh please! What on Earth would he have to prove?

If you listened to contemporary Afro-American music, you’d know. It’s all about ‘sampling.’ ‘Mix mastering,’ they call it. I call it theft! Those few strains that found their way to my ear reeked of plagiarism—as if my musical heritage were a plaything for his amusement.

You don’t have a ‘musical heritage.’

Yes, I do. So do you.

There is no musical talent in this family.

"Defeatist! Musically, I am an untapped fountain. The throb of primal rhythms beats in my DNA. But when I say ‘heritage,’ I’m speaking culturally. Country-inspired music. I hate that cornpone junk, but as a Caucasian-American it’s mine to take or leave. I say, leave it!"

Nonsense. If you had come out of your room …

… my chambers.

"Your chambers, then you would have seen and heard something marvelous. Terrance has real gifts. Did you know that he used to perform on Broadway? As an actor, a singer, and a dancer? They call that a ‘triple threat.’ Isn’t that wonderful!?"

If he were so wonderful, he’d still be singing for his supper, and not peddling compassion like a TV evangelist.

He’s a nurse!

His family must be proud.

A Visiting Nurse.

"And a singing nurse, and a banjo nurse. He’s a good fit for a traveling circus. What’s his level of certification?"

LPN.

LPN!?

Trade certification is a sure marker of cognitive ability among the working classes. I’m always saying the trades are the surest path out of poverty, and I believe it (my darling Puppa is proof!), and accreditation in anything counts for something, no doubt about it, but to stop at the basement level—to stick there, like a clam half-buried in sand—well, it told me everything I needed to know. Terrance was a good enough guy. A speck. The world is covered in them. Little flakes of dandruff, riding on the shoulders of civilized society. Nothing worked for, nothing gained, and so nothing to offer. I could have bounced these bricks off of Mummy’s noggin, but the indicator warned against it. Her harelip scar had lost its cool pallor. It was up to pink. Best to let the engines cool.

I’d prefer not to discuss it over breakfast, I said.

We need help.

And now we have it—be it ever so humble.

We need help more than once a week. I want to try the home health care aides.

My stars! I agreed to the whole ‘visiting nurse’ business, and yes, I can see the utility of it, but I’m not going to have our home turned into some kind of—

I cut myself off. I was going to say nursing home, but that was #1 on our list of banned terms. We’d never consider it. We refused to acknowledge the existence of such places. Mummy and I were in total agreement on this point.

Terrance speaks very highly of them, Mummy said.

Of whom?

The aides!

I’m sure he does. And who speaks for him?

Everyone! His references were impeccable.

Fake references are a cottage industry.

Not when they come from the head of the VNA. We were lucky to get him at all. He’s the best. A ‘giving soul.’ That’s what the director said about him.

‘No man giveth but with intention of good to himself.’ Your helper is paid for what he does. I’m sure that he spends the greater portion of his paycheck on brandy and cheap cigars. His flexible schedule allows him to drink said brandy until the wee hours and to sleep until noon the following day.

He’s here at 8:30 in the morning.

Hung over, no doubt. Stinking of brandy.

You say these things just to rile me, Mummy spat. I don’t like it. Get the chairs.

I moved to the den closet and retrieved the two folding chairs that are part of our daily breakfast arrangement. Mummy carefully rolled Puppa toward the cart and lowered his harness to an appropriate dining height. The hydraulic piston hissed as Puppa descended into place. I set the two folding chairs, and we took our places.

I don’t mean to upset you, I said. "I’m just not used to having strange men in our home. I may be a self-taught black belt, but he’s a formidable specimen. And he’s Afro-American. Did that fact occur to you?"

The scar pulsed.

I’ve noticed, and I have no idea what difference it makes at all.

You’ll admit that Afro-Americans, as a race, possess more fast-twitch muscle than we? Well, it doesn’t matter if you admit it or not because it’s scientifically proven. I’m not sure that a Tiger Strike to the temple would even faze him. I would have to assume Creeping Lotus and work his legs, but you know that Creeping Lotus is not one of my better stances. He might punt me through the uprights!