Two tickets . . . ten dollars. A flat Coke and a box of stale Jujyfruits . . . four dollars. Spending an afternoon with your dad in a scuzzy porn theater . . . priceless.
I was jolted back to the present with the gentle touch of a manicured hand on the knee of my tattered jeans. “Andy . . . Andy . . . are you all right?” I glanced quickly at the screen to see a ripped and pumped Sylvester Stallone, who by all accounts seemed to have adapted well to the rigors of chain gang life. “Andy, are you all right,” Terri repeated, and her hand gently squeezed my knee in a gesture of concern. “Yeah, oh, uh, yeah,” I said, and at that very moment, with her hand upon my knee and all her attention directed right at me, the truth was, I had never been better. “I was just thinking.”
“And what, may I ask, were you thinking?” she said.
I opened my mouth, and my voice cracked. Honestly. A legitimate Peter Brady voice crack. Then, mustering all that was left of my pride, I opened up my mouth again and gave that talking thing another try. “Um, um, Terri, I was just thinking that maybe you would have liked another movie better at another theater.”
She smiled and her gentle clasp on my knee became the softest of caresses. Then she squinted in mock Clint Eastwood toughness, sneered a bit like early Mick Jagger, and said, “First of all, I love Rambo,” and then, with her voice losing its humor, continued, “and second, I don't care about the theater, I just like being with you.”
My Adam's apple suddenly turned into an Adam's watermelon, and I couldn't speak. Hell, I couldn't breathe. I think all my body functions stopped. All except my tear ducts, which produced enough water in the next few seconds to irrigate the Sahara. God, I tried not to let those tears fall, as, after all, crying isn't really crying unless the tears actually leave the eyes. My eyes had welled up many times over the years in Virginia, but it had been ten years since I'd actually let one fall. But try as I might, and believe me, I tried, that ten-year dry streak came to an end at the Lincoln Theater as Colonel Trautman sprang Rambo from the clink in order to aid his country in a double secret mission.
And what a tear it was too. A big fat solitary drop, which made a slow journey from the right corner of my eye down the side of my flushed face. Terri saw it, she had to have, but said nothing, until breaking the silence a good minute later with a simple but daunting request. “Andy, give me your hand.”
Oh no, not the hand. I had sat on her left-hand side, meaning that the hand in question, the hand in demand, the hand she wanted, was the dead one. I panicked, and for a moment thought that the single solitary tear might well be joined by a parade of his brothers, before calming down sufficiently to risk a daring strategy . . . the truth.
“Terri.”
“Yes.”
“Um, Terri.”
“Yes, Andy.”
“Um, my right hand, um, doesn't work.”
The declaration was met with silence, and surprise, but, turning my head, I was relieved to see, not with disgust.
I continued, “It was an accident when I was little.”
She smiled sadly and said, “The same accident as the ear?” I nodded in silence. She knew of my ear, or lack thereof, indeed it was the subject of my missing ear which had led to her laugh and our first mutual smile in Hanrahan's class. Hey, if she wasn't turned off by my stump of an ear, then maybe she wouldn't mind the dead hand, either.
“Andy?”
“Yeah.”
“How about the other hand?”
“What about it?”
“Does it work?”
“Yeah, it does.”
And with that she stood up, oblivious to the fact that Rambo was now in mortal danger, and, like Jesse Owens claiming Olympic gold in the high hurdles in Berlin in '36, deftly vaulted over my lap, pirouetted, and dropped into the seat to the left of me. She then lifted my curly locks and playfully, just a tad seductively, whispered into my good ear, “So how about it?”
I should have known what she was talking about, but I'll admit right now to being somewhat distracted by the pleasant tingling that her whisper had caused in my penile area. So I said the only thing I could think of. “How about what?”
“How about giving me that hand, big boy,” she said, and before I could reply, her hand was entwined with mine, in what was the most romantic moment of my young life, with all due respect to the two young men who tried to forcibly sodomize me during my stay at the Petersburg Home for Boys.
But on that night, at the dilapidated Lincoln Theater, those two young men, attempted sodomy, and the first seventeen years of my troubled life were a distant memory. Because on that night, the world was right. John Rambo was making the world safe for democracy, and Terri Johnson was holding my hand, her head leaning on my shoulder, with just the slightest hint of a beautiful, wonderful breast touching my arm.
And then I saw it. The mere sight of it repulsed me. It was terrible. The lump in my jeans. No, not that lump, which if detected might prove slightly embarrassing, but not necessarily repulsive or terrible. And truth be told, that lump was not all that prominent. It wasn't the quarters in my right pocket that concerned me either. No, the lump that terrified me was in the left front pocket of my jeans, and if detected, it would certainly spell the end of my one-hour-old romance with Terri. How could I have forgotten to have thrown it out, after my dad had handed it to me? I literally prayed that her hand wouldn't move one inch and a half up and two inches to the right. Terri, I'm sure, could have forgiven me for having a first-date boner while she held my hand at the Lincoln Theater. Forgiveness would not be so easy, or even borderline conceivable, if she discovered that I had brought three rubbers with me on my first date.
Over the years, there have been times I have doubted God's existence, and there have been times I have cursed his very name, but the night of October 23, 1985, I had no doubt that he was smiling down on me, willing Terri's hand not to touch the foil three-pack that housed my dad's Trojans with their helpful reservoir tips and spermicidal jelly for added protection. Yes, God was with me, and not only did he provide protection from my protection being detected, but he seemed to bestow upon me the ability to not be a total bone-head when we got into the Fairmont and headed for home.
Indeed, the conversation flowed inside that crappy car, and I was not only comfortable, but I was funny as well. Actually, I'd always had a decent sense of humor, but I usually brandished it almost as a defense, as if a self-deprecating wit could smooth over the fact that most of my life had pretty much sucked. But on this night, my humor was different. It was irreverent, it was topical, and it elicited genuine laughs from Terri. Big, wonderful laughs.
I wished that ride, like the night itself, could have lasted forever, for besides loving Terri's company, I loved the unique feeling of liking myself. So when I pulled that Fairmont into the Johnson driveway that led to her estate-like home surrounded by her huge manicured lawn, the vehicle seemed to be filled with love. “I had a great time tonight, Terri,” I said, and I stuck out my hand. As in the customary good-night handshake.
She stared at me for what seemed like minutes, with a flabbergasted look, then regained her composure, and accepted my hand in the gesture of respect and friendship that it symbolized. And a fine handshake it was at that. “I had a great time too, Andy,” she said, while I shook that hand as if I'd just sold her an insurance policy. “I'd like to do it again.”
“Me too,” I said.
Then the handshake ended and she got out of the car. It didn't dawn on me to open the car door, or to walk her to her house, maybe because dating etiquette hadn't been covered all that well at the Northern Virginia Juvenile Detention Center.
“Good night, Andy.”
“Good night.”
“I'll see you on Monday, okay?”
“Okay.”
And then she was gone, at least momentarily, for as I put the Fairmont in reverse, she reemerged in a flash and headed for my window, which I was kind enough to open. In a blur of auburn hair, she moved her face within inches of mine, to the point where she was actually leaning into the car. Her breathing was a little labored, as if she'd just run a lap around the track instead of hopping down two steps and walking ten yards.
“Andy,” she said, so close that I could almost taste the sweetness of her breath.
“Yeah.”
“I just wanted to make sure that you didn't get lost on your way home. Do you know the way?”
“Yeah, sure,” I said with a shrug, “I live off this same road. I'll be okay.”
“You sure?”
“Yeah, I'm sure, but thanks for checking on me.” And to show her my appreciation, I stuck that left hand out the window and we shared another good shake. She paused momentarily, and I gave her a wink, and then she turned and walked back to her house. And as I watched her go, I couldn't help but wonder, Why would I need directions? Then she turned, waved, opened the door, and disappeared.
Strange indeed. I mean, I couldn't possibly get lost. Sure it was a back road, and sure there was that one fork with the red light to contend with, but it was still the same road. I shrugged my shoulders and headed out, and somewhere between a sixteenth and an eighth of a mile from the Johnson house, I suddenly figured it all out. Oh my goodness. She had wanted me to kiss her!
I was singing along with Barry when I pulled into my own drive, which led to a much less illustrious house, surrounded by a much less manicured lawn. “Now, now, now, and hold on fastâcould this be the magic AT LAST!” So I'd screwed up. I didn't kiss her. It was a big screwup, but one that I felt confident I could redeem. Hands down, there had not been a better night in the history of my life, and there was only one way to celebrate it. A half gallon of vanilla ice cream and the scratchy old Nat King Cole Christmas album that still carried my mother's maiden name on it. Kathy Collins. It was the only thing, memories included, that I had of her to call my own.
Nothing could have ruined that night for me, but the next moment came pretty close. For in that moment, I saw my father's silhouette in our living room window, moving up and down, up and down, doing a steady stream of deep knee bends. My father was “doing the deck,” which could only mean one thing.
“Hey Andy,” my father's voice called out as the front door opened to herald my return from the world of first dates. “Just a sec, kid, I want to talk to you.” Then, with his body continuing its up-and-down motion, he called out the last repetitions of the card he'd drawn. “Fourteen. Fifteen.”
With that my father picked up his Genesee Light Beer, to be known hereafter as a “Genny,” took a gargantuan swig, and set it down. “Hold on, Andy, sit down, I'm almost through my second deck.”
He turned another card, a joker, and let out a loud sigh. “Oh man, they're killing me,” he said with a snort, and then commenced to drop down to the ground and reel off twenty-five textbook push-ups, followed by the cracking open of what looked to be about his tenth Genny, which he proceeded to not so much drink as inhale.
“How was the big date, kid . . . any action?” he said, but before I could answer he turned another card, a king, reeled off another fifteen deep knee bends, and just about polished off another Genny.
“No, no action, Dad, but we had a reallyâ”
“Hold on there, Andy, I've only got two cards left to go, and then I want you to tell your dad all about it.” He turned up a card. “Three, well damn, that's no challenge.” He dropped down, did three push-ups, with a casual clap in between each one, rose up, took a small sip on the Genny, and turned over the last card. A queen.
I watched my dad rise up and down, up and down, as he concluded his solitary ritual. For many years he'd been doing this routine, shuffling his deck of cards and then turning them one by one, alternating between push-ups and what he called Hindu squats, with the numbers on the cards dictating the number of repetitions he performed. I never did the math, but completing a deck meant doing hundreds of repetitions of both exercises. I tried it on my own one day and barely made it through half a deck before my legs betrayed me, turning to jelly during the twenty-five Hindus the joker required of me.
My dad's legs never betrayed him, however, seeming instead to get stronger with each turn of the card, and with each drink of the Genny. With only one huge exception, doing the deck was the only time I saw my dad drink.
Looking at him in action, my dad seemed not so much human as machinelike in function, his sinewy muscles popping through his lean frame like steel cords. The kind of guy who looked almost wimpy in a baggy sweatshirt and jeans, but whose muscles stood out like a relief map of the human anatomy when in the nude. And I should know, for whenever he was “in the deck” Tietam Brown was in the nude. Yeah, maybe I should have mentioned that earlier, because it does tend to alter the perception of his exercise regimen just a bit.
You see, for Tietam Brown, doing the deck wasn't just about exercise. It was about a whole lot more. Exercise, sure. Beer drinking, yeah. But for my father doing the deck was primarily about sex.
Doing the deck was a sure sign that intermission was under way. That the second act of a long passion play was about to commence. “The first one's for them, Andy,” he'd told me once, “but the second one is all about ol' Tietam, even though by the sound of things they seem to have a pretty good time too.”
I'll say they did. As the inhabitant of the room next door to his, I would say that was an understatement.
Usually the commencement of his ritual would send my dad bounding up the stairs to begin act two immediately, a very sweaty, very drunk, very physically fit, and very horny man. But this night was special. His son had just had his first date and he wanted to spend some quality time right there in the Brown living room, surrounded by the odd potpourri of sweat, beer, and sex.