Generation X (24 page)

He says this, of course, fully confident that all of these types (and more) are present. Only the disenfranchised can party with abandon—the young, the genuinely rich elderly, the freakishly beautiful, the kinked, the outlawed. . . . Hence, the soiree is pleasingly devoid of yuppies, an observation I pass on to Bunny on his nineteenth round of vodka tonics. "You might as well invite
trees
to a party as invite yup-plings, Dear," he says. "Oh, look—there's the hot air balloon!" He disappears.

Dag is in his element tonight, with bartending a mere aside to his own personal agenda of cocktail consumption (he has lousy bartender's ethics)

and intense chats and fevered arguments with guests. Most of the time
OBSCURISM:
The practice

he's not even at the bar and is off roaming the house and the starkly lit of peppering daily life with

obscure references [forgotten

cactus garden grounds, coming back only intermittently with reports.

films, dead TV stars, unpopular

" A n d y —I j u s t h a d t h e
b e s t
time. I was helping the Filipino guy books, defunct countries, etc.]

toss deboned chicken carcasses to the rottweilers. They've been caged as a subliminal means of

showcasing both one's

for the evening. And that Swedish lady with the bionic -looking nylon education and one's wish to

leg splint was getting it all on 16mm. Says she fell into an excavation disassociate from the world of

site in Lesotho that almost turned her legs into
osso buco."

mass culture.

" T h a t ' s g r e a t , D a g . N o w c o u l d y o u p a s s m e t w o b o t t l e s o f r e d please."

" S u r e . " H e p a s s e s m e t h e w i n e , t h e n l i g h t s u p a c i g a r e t t e —n o t even the most cursory gesture toward tending bar. "I was talking to that Van Klijk lady, too—the super-old one with the muumuu and the fox

pelts who owns half the newspapers in the west. She told me that her brother Cliff seduced her in Monterey at the beginning of World War II, and then somehow got himself drowned in a submarine off of Hel-goland. Ever since then she can only live in a hot, dry climate—the opposite of doomed and crippled submarines. But the way she told the s t o r y , I t h i n k s h e t e l l s i t t o e v e r y o n e . "

How does Dag extract these things from strangers? Way over by the

main extrance, where some seventeen-year-old girls from the Valley

with detexturized mermaid hair are frugging with a record producer, I s e e s o m e p o l i c e o f f i c e r s e n t e r . S u c h i s t h e p a r t y that I'm not sure if they're simply more "types" carted in by Bunny to boost the atmosphere. Bunny is talking and laughing with the officers, none of whom Dag sees. Bunny toddles over.

"Herr
Bellinghausen
—If I'd known you were a desperate criminal, I would have given you an
invitation
instead of employment. The forces of respectability are asking for you at the door. I don't know what they want, Dear, but if you make a scene, do a favor and be
visual."

Bunny again flits off, and Dag's face blanches. He grimaces at me

and then walks through an open set of glass doors, away from the police, and down toward the end of the yard.

"Pietro," I say, "can you cover for me a moment? I have to go do something. Ten minutes."

"Bring me a sample," says Pietro, assuming that I'm off to the p a r k i n g l o t t o c h e c k o u t t h e s u b s t a n c e s c e n e . B u t o f c o u r s e , I g o t o follow Dag.

* * * * *

"I've been wondering what this moment would feel like for a long time,"

says Dag—"this moment of finally getting caught. I actually feel relieved.

Like I've just quit a job. Did I ever tell you the story about the guy from the suburbs who was terrified of getting VD?" Dag is drunk enough to be revealing, but not drunk enough to be stupid. His legs are dangling off the end of a cement flash-flood pipe in the wash next to Bunny's house where I find him.

"Ten years he spent pestering his doctor for blood samples and Wassermann tests, until finally (after doing
what
I'm not sure) he actually
did
end up getting a dose. So then he says to his doctor, 'Oh—well I'd better get some penicillin then.' He took his treatment and he never thought about the disease ever again. He just wanted to get caught.

That's all."

I can't conceive of a less wise place to be sitting at the moment.

Flash floods really are
flash
floods. One moment everything's hunky-dory, the next there's this foaming white broth of sagebrush, abandoned sofas, and drowned coyotes.

Standing below the pipe, I can only see his legs. Such are the

acoustics that his voice is resonating and baritone. I climb up and sit next to him. There's moonlight but no moon visible and a single point of light comes from the tip of his cigarette. He throws a rock out into the dark.

"You'd better go back up to the party, Dag. I mean, before the cops start pistol-whipping Bunny's guests, making them reveal your

hiding spot, or something."

"Soon enough. Give me a moment—looks like the days of Dag the

Vandal are over, Andy. Cigarette?" "Not right now."

"Tell you what. I'm a little bit freaked out at the moment. Why don't you tell me a short story—anything will do—and then I'll go up."

"Dag, this really isn't the time . . . " "Just
one
story, Andy, and yes, it
is
the time." I'm on the spot, but curiously, a small story comes to mind. "Fair enough. Here goes. When I was in Japan years ago—on a student exchange program—I was once living with this family and they had a daughter, maybe four years old. Cute little thing.

"So anyway, after I moved in (I was there for maybe a half year), she refused to acknowledge my presence within the household. Things I said to her at the dinner table were ignored. She'd walk right by me in the hall.

I mean I did not exist
at all
in her universe. This was, of course, very insulting; everyone likes to think of themselves as the sort of charmed human being whom animals and small children instinctively adore.

"The situation was also annoying, but then there was nothing really to be done about it; no efforts on my part could get her to say my name o r r e s p o n d t o m y p r e s e n c e .

"So then one day I came home to find that papers in my room had been cut up into bits —letters and drawings I had been working on for some time—cut and drawn on with obvious small child malicious finesse.

I was furious. And as she sauntered by my room shortly thereafter, I couldn't help myself and began to scold her rather loudly for what she h a d d o n e , i n b o t h E n g l i s h a n d J a p a n e s e .

"Of course, I felt bad right away. She walked away and I wondered if I had gone too far. But a few minutes later she brought me her pet beetle in its little cage (a popular Asian children's amusement), grabbed me by t h e a r m , a n d l e d m e o u t i n t o t h e g a r d e n . T h e r e , s h e b e g a n t o tell stories of her insect's secret life. The point was that she had to get punished for something before she could open communication. She must be twelve years old now. I got a postcard from her about a month ago."

I don't think Dag was listening. He should have been. But he just w a n t e d to hear a voice. We throw more rocks. Then, out of the blue, Dag asks me if I know how I'm going to die.

"Bellinghausen, don't get morbid on me, okay. Just go up there and deal with the police. They've probably only got questions. That's all."

"Fermez la bouche,
Andy. It was rhetorical. Let me tell you how I think
I'm
going to die. It's like this. I ' l l b e s e v e n t y a n d b e s i t t i n g o u t h e r e i n t h e d e s e r t , n o d e n t u r e s —all of my own teeth—wearing gray tweed. I'll be planting flowers—thin, fragile flowers that are lost causes in a desert—like those little cartoon flowers that clowns wear on top of their hea d s —in little clown's hat pots. There'll be no sound save for the hum of heat, and my body will cast no shadow, hunched over with a spade clinking against the stony soil. The sun will be right overhead and behind me there'll be this terrific flapping of wings—-louder than the flapping any bird can make.

"Turning slowly around, I will almost be blinded as I see that an angel has landed, gold and unclothed, taller than me by a head. I will put down the small flowerpot I'm holding—somehow it seems sort of

embarrassing. And I will take one more breath, my last.

"From there, the angel will reach under my flimsy bones and take me into its arms, and from there it is only a matter of time before I am carried, soundlessly and with absolute affection, directly into the sun."

Dag tosses his cigarette and refocuses his hearing to the sounds of the party, faint over the gully. "Well, Andy. Wish me luck," he says, hopping down off of the cement pipe, then taking a few steps, stopping, turning around then saying to me, "Here, bend over to me a second."

I comply, whereupon he kisses me, triggering films in my mind of

liquefied supermarket ceilings cascading upward toward heaven. "There.

I've always wanted to do that."

He returns to the big shiny party.

New Years Day HI can already smell the methane of Mexico, a stone's throw away, while I bake in a Calexico, California traffic jam, waiting to cross the border while embroiled in wavering emphysemic mirages of diesel spew. My car rests on a braiding and decomposing six-lane cor ridor lit by a tired winter sunset. Inching along with me in this linear space is a true gift-sampler of humanity and its vehicles: three-abreast tattooed farm workers in pickup trucks, enthusiastically showcasing a v a r i e t y o f c o u n t r y a n d

w e s t e r n t u n es; mirror-windowed sedan loads of

chilled and Ray-Banned

yuppies (a faint misting

of Handel and Philip

Glass); local
hausfraus
in

hair curlers, off to get

cheaper Mexicali grocer-ies while inhaling
S o a p

Opera Digest
within cheer-fully stickered Hyundais;

retired look-alike Cana-dian couples bicker-ing over maps falling apart from having been folded and unfolded so m a n y t i m e s . T o t h e s i d e , p e s o b r o k e r s w i t h J a p a n e s e n a m e s i n h a b i t booths painted the bright colors of sugar candies. I hear dogs. And if I want a spurious fast food hamburger or Mexican car insurance papers, any number of nearby merchants will all too easily cater to this whim.

Under the hood of the Volkswagen are two dozen bottles of Evian water and a flask of Immodium antidiarrheal—certain bourgeois habits die

hard.

Last night I got in at five, exhausted from closing down the bar myself.

Pietro and the other bartender split early to go trolling for babes at the Pompeii night club; Dag left with the police to go do somethin g down at the station. When I got home, all of the lights were out in the bungalows and I went right to bed—news of Dag's brush with the law and a welcome home for Claire would have to wait.