Coffee, Tea or Me? (17 page)

Rachel was quick to display her ignorance of such beauty. “That’s all these movies ever do? Nothing moves? Nothing?”

“Of course nothing moves.” He was scornful. “If the building moved it would blow the whole thing. It’s like you take a guy and sit him on a chair and let the camera roll. No movement. Just maybe a twitch in his eye. And he can blink. Or maybe you do it with a cat who’s asleep. That’s been done already. A whole hour of this sleeping cat. Wow!”

“Did a bird fly across his face?” Rachel was kidding, but maybe she wasn’t.

“You’re putting me on, right? How could a bird fly across his face? I mean, like, he’s asleep in his bed. Dig? A bird . . . his face. Oh, man, am I gonna have to hip you.”

“I’m afraid so, Lucius. It’ll take a lot of hipping, too.”

“Beautiful. Tell you what. I’m running two happenings next week. Classics. You’ll understand better when you see them. One is called
Miscegenation.
It’s like one guy and a watermelon. There’ll be a lot of social significance with this happening. Wait and see. The other happening is called
Meat Meet.
You’ll absolutely die with this one.”

Rachel accepted his offer, despite his advance billing of the events, and met him at a small Spanish restaurant in the Village the night of the happenings. He was wearing exactly the same unwashed clothing, his hair was one week longer, and no soap company could boast of increased profits on his account.

He remained silent and morose throughout the meal, so much so that Rachel asked, “Are you having a happening now?”

Lucius just shook his head back and forth and never took his eyes from the tabletop. “No, baby, no. But dig this tablecloth.”

Rachel looked down. It was a red and white check, and contained large, permanent grease stains.

“Are you going to make a movie of the tablecloth, Lucius?”

“Oh stop talking, baby, stop talking. Like, things were happening on that cloth. Did you see that fly? I mean you didn’t even see the fly, did you?” Lucius flailed his arms around in the air. “Oh man, that fly was making it right into the scene. Right into it.”

Rachel was sorry she’d interrupted such a monumental event. “Maybe the grease on the tablecloth attracted him. Maybe he’ll come back.”

“Ah, screw the fly,” Lucius said with great authority. He motioned for the check.

They walked many blocks until Lucius turned off into the dark doorway of a loft building. Rachel scurried in after him and followed him up pitch-black stairs until they reached a large, metal door that admitted a shaft of light underneath from inside. Lucius pushed it open and she followed him in.

Rachel described the happening scene two days later. It went this way:

“Trudy, you wouldn’t believe it . . . never in a million years . . . It looked like a big warehouse and there were all these weird people sprawled out on the floor . . . One guy was actually making love in the corner with a girl . . . and there were guys holding hands with guys and . . . oh, my . . . Well, the only light was from some purple bulbs hanging from the ceiling . . . They were like floodlights . . . Lucius told me they were ultraviolet lights and they’re important to a happening . . . (I evidently shook my head at this point) . . . You don’t know why either, huh? . . . Anyway, in the middle of the floor was a big blanket . . . He told somebody to change the direction of the lights . . . He told the couple in the corner to stop it . . . They did stop . . . Pretty soon music started playing . . . It was Southern music . . . Like
Dixie
and
Stars Fell on Alabama
. . . Out came this skinny fella with a loincloth around him . . . It really didn’t cover him at all, especially when he sat down on the blanket like an Indian . . . You could see everything . . . This same boy was painted black all the way down one side and white all the way down the other side . . . Split right in half . . . A girl in a mink coat and nude underneath carried out a whole half a watermelon and patted the skinny guy with the loincloth on the head and laid the watermelon down in front of him . . . He picked it up and started chomping away . . . He chomped and he chomped and that couple started making love in the corner again and Lucius was making little groaning sounds and everyone watched this nut eating watermelon with the juice and seeds all over him . . . Trudy, he ate that damn watermelon for forty-five minutes . . . I kid you not . . . forty-five minutes . . . The couple in the corner just kept going at it . . . Everyone else seemed to be getting their kicks from the watermelon man . . . Finally, he got up, rubbed the juice and seeds all over himself, hugged himself tight, rubbed some black makeup on the white side and white makeup on the black side and then do you know what he did? . . . He cried . . . He bawled and ran out of there . . . Everyone was cheering and applauding . . . It was awful . . . awful . . .”

Rachel was too tired to go into detail about the second happening,
Meat Meet.
It consisted of five men and five women, each wearing only a loincloth, getting on the blanket and rolling all over each other. It was a great big tangle of arms and legs and other things. Lucius was one of them. Pretty soon the spectators started getting up from the floor, dipping paintbrushes in cans of paint, and dabbing the colors on everyone on the blanket.

The bodies on the blanket were in a constant state of motion while Muddy Waters’ records played in the background. Soon, everyone was covered with the multicolors of the paint. Then, out came the nude girl in the mink coat carrying a big bucket full of ketchup. She dumped it on the mass of bodies. They spent a half hour rubbing it into each other. Finally, the happening was over.

The bodies then disappeared into corners where they wiped each other off with burlap bags. Lucius came back to where Rachel was sitting on the floor and plopped down beside her. He was still covered with paint and ketchup. All around were couples—men with women, men with men, women with women.

“Oh, you were really in luck tonight, Rachel baby,” Lucius informed her proudly. “Things really happened, didn’t they?”

“It was . . . wonderful, Lucius. Just great.” She felt horribly uncomfortable in her woolen dress and heels.

With those words of encouragement, Lucius grabbed Rachel, pushed her onto her back, and climbed on top of her. He kissed her and ran his hand up her leg.

Rachel is no lightweight, and she pushed him off. “Stop that, Lucius. Don’t touch me again.” She looked down at herself and gasped when she saw the paint and ketchup smeared on her dress.

“Look what you’ve done to my clothes,” she shrieked. “Just look, you . . . you . . . you happening director.”

“Shhhhh, baby. No scene. Don’t sweat the color. And don’t ruin the total happening. Oh, don’t do that. I mean, the happening’s happened, and now’s the time for the big impact. We’ve got to fulfill the magnetic cosmos of two forms, two human elements, two sweaty, salty bodies. You and me. Now!”

“You’re nuts,” Rachel yelled. Everyone was watching.

“Beautiful,” one tall, slender Negro parted from underneath his white companion. “Beautiful happening.”

A girl whistled her approval. “Oh yes, girl-girl. That’s the way it is. Tell it that way. Make it happen.”

Rachel fled the room to a thunderous ovation.

“It was the best happening they’d ever seen,” she told me as she finished her tale.

“I’ll bet Betty Big Boobs would have been a better happening,” I teased.

“I was going to say she was there but didn’t think you’d believe me.”

“Or Cynthia,” I further suggested.

“You know, Trudy, that’s what that damned stewardess school needs. A happening. A Lucius Dumbarton happening. Let’s put it in the suggestion box.”

We didn’t, of course. But visions of Big Momma, the meat man, Cynthia, Betty, and the faggy hairstylist being painted as they rolled together on a blanket provided a whole day of inner grins.

Yes, we’ve had them all on board—wealthy men, poor men, imaginative men, dull men, men who offer jobs, men who give lavish gifts just for the fun of it, and men who give little gifts with many strings attached. Yes, we meet interesting men. And good or bad, meeting men is the name of the stewardess game.

As we’ve mentioned, captains rate highest on the list of stewardess dangers. Second on that list are married male passengers.

We have, out of necessity, developed an inner radar system that is part of the game we play among ourselves. To keep long flights from becoming boring, we use the radar to guess the marital status of each male passenger, his nationality and profession, on the basis of the kind of approach he makes to us. The nationality and profession portions of the game are described in Chapter XIX. This chapter deals only with the “Is he married?” sequence.

As the men come aboard, we make snap judgments as to their state of freedom. Then, as the flight progresses, we have the opportunity to verify our initial opinions. The most obvious tip-off is that common and widely used banner of matrimony: the wedding band. Not that we accept credit for correctly identifying a married man who’s wearing one. Men who wear a wedding band are automatically disqualified from competition.

We’re referring to the man who removes his wedding band just prior to boarding the airplane. He’s kissed his wife good-bye in the departure lounge and, as he walks up the loading ramp, he slips his ring off and places it in his pocket. He boards the airplane secure that he’s removed all traces of his spouse and the restrictions she places on him.

But he underestimates the ingenuity of his stewardess. We’ve trained our eyes to detect the slightest trace of pale flesh on his ring finger. And in 99 percent of cases, that ring in his pocket has left just such a pale mark. Of course, the more he’s out in the sun, the more pronounced the mark is likely to be. But even men who only see the sun on their walk to the train will fall victim to this giveaway.

I suppose he doffs the ring when his mind begins to reflect back on all those stewardess stories he’s heard. He remembers hearing from Joe, a guy in his office, how he made a stewardess in the backseat of the airplane on his last business trip. He recalls the office boy telling how he is pulled into strange stewardesses’ apartments and raped nightly. He pictures the stewardesses who will be working his flight as busy, lusty, quivering mounds of flesh just waiting for him to come aboard so the bacchanal can begin. He figures he’ll have a better chance if these sexpots of the sky don’t know about his wife and seven kids. So, off comes the ring, exposing maybe a year of lily-white skin. He might as well wear a sign.

When he comes on with a big wave of the hand, we automatically check him off as married, on the make, and devious to boot. But let’s give him credit for being imaginative. Let’s assume he’s gone so far as to carry a small tube of flesh-colored makeup. Or maybe he wears gloves all the way. Or never takes his hands out of his pockets.

That brings into action our second method of determination. We ask a simple question when he’s off guard.

“Do you live right in Manhattan, sir?”

“No, I live in Smithtown. Out on the island.”

That’s it right there. A bachelor will generally live in the city. Only a married man with grass-loving kids would live so far out and put up with the rigors of commuting. Sure there are exceptions. And many times this married man from Smithtown, realizing he’s come up with the wrong answer to our question, will try to make himself one of those exceptions.

“Yes, I decided to leave the city and all its dirt and noise. I love nature and the outdoors, the horses I keep, the dogs, the tranquillity. I love the country.”

But we don’t buy that rationalization. He’s had it as far as we’re concerned, unless we’re looking for a married man to date.

Now let’s assume we’ve still not been able to make a positive classification of this unidentified flying object—the male passenger with the leer in his eye.

Go to stage number three. How does he make his approach? Is he aggressive or cool? Does he force the issue or make it casual?

Married men don’t have a great deal of time to wine and dine a girl they’re after. They can’t afford to pursue her casually over a long period of time. They want her
now.
And their approach reflects this pressure of time.

But a single guy will take his time. He’ll make it sound interesting, fun, and exert little or no pressure. There’s an amazing difference between these two species of men, and the differences are quite pronounced.

Now, we’ve ascertained their marital state. Or maybe they’ve freely admitted they’re married, and even owned up to a couple of children. At this point they begin their talk campaign, hoping to win us over to their side. Some of their conversation goes as follows.

—“My wife just doesn’t understand me.” (This ancient line is only used by very out-of-touch men.)