Call Me Joe Read online

  “So,” I smiled, “I just get my ashes hauled and everything is nifty, right?”

  “This is not about sex, Dimbulb,” Dave sighed. “If it were just sex, maybe - in a weak moment - I might have been able to convince you that the garden gate does, indeed, swing both ways. Not too late, by the way. I know a tall, blonde physical therapist who would be perfect for you…well, give or take a penis, of course.”

  “You were the one selling the ‘moving on’ scenario, I believe,” I smiled.

  “Peasant,” Dave shrugged. “Anyway, this is not about sex.”

  Dave came out from behind the chair and stood in front of me.

  “Everybody says the platypus is proof that God has a sense of humor,” Dave said gently. “Well, look at me, Truman. I’m 51 years old, black, gay, a former interior lineman, and a fucking hairdresser, for God’s sake! I’m every synonym for ‘loser’, all rolled into one. I’m losing my hair, my knees are out of warranty, and I have so much hardware in me I set off the airport metal detectors from the parking garage. As if that weren’t enough, you can count the number of available black, financially-stable, 50-year-old gay men around Seattle on one hand and none of them is the least bit interested in me. I have a choice to make here, shortly: Keep my business, my clients, my friends, my house, and my hideaway in the San Juans - and accept being alone - or resign myself to the cliche. I move to San Francisco, buy some tiny little apartment in the Castro for $9 million, and settle into my people’s version of old New York Jews retiring to Miami Beach.”

  “You, on the other hand, are white, healthy, well-off, somewhat sane, and still marginally attractive to just the right deeply-disturbed woman. Your only problem is that you refuse to do what any six-year-old kid would do instinctively: find some new thing to be interested in.”

  “Jesus, David,” I groaned. “Okay, let’s say you’re right - which I’m not admitting. The reality is, I’m just too long out of service to suddenly become a bar-hoppin’ playboy. I never liked the bar scene, anyway, and, frankly, men my age who hang out in bars, hitting on twenty-something women, embarrass me so badly my prostate clenches up like a busted pocket watch. It’s just pathetic. And women my age don’t hang out in bars, anyway. I have no idea where, or even if, they ‘hang out’ at all.”

  “God Almighty,” Dave grinned, “You have been living in a jar all these years, haven’t you?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Truman,” he sputtered, “Even I know where all the 50-ish single foxes ‘hang out’ these days.”

  “Where?” I asked, thoroughly perplexed.

  “My dear boy,” Dave laughed, “on the internet, of course.”

  Two

  Joe loved to climb the crest of the ridge at sunset. Seated squarely in a large gap in the trees was a flat rock, facing due west, that had a perfect, shallow, bowl-like depression. It fit his backside as though carved out just for him.

  He’d bring a thermos of red zinger iced tea and his best binoculars and revel in the experience. In Washington, sunset can last 90 minutes or more and Joe drank in every last second.

  Lately, on the road, he found himself only marginally concerned with the money – which was always substantial – and preoccupied, instead, with the idea that wrapping up the job quickly would get him back to the woods, the cabin, and the spine-tingling, soul-healing twilights that much faster.

  More and more, at 54, Joe felt that his soul was in need of healing.

  Though he had never been concerned with such things, he now found himself spending a lot of time thinking of his life and the possible implications. He wasn’t a religious man; the whole subject of God, in fact, left him feeling mildly puzzled. It was like sitting next to a group of bird-watchers, listening to their animated conversation and insider lingo, and feeling excluded, even though you have no interest in watching birds.

  He did believe, though, in karma, something he had absorbed during his two tours in Viet Nam, Laos, and Cambodia. He had seen karma in action too many times to simply dismiss it; had, indeed – at least in the minds of his Asian comrades – been the instrument of much karmic readjustment. Though he’d never been much on the concept, Joe knew he had done things most people would see as “bad”. He didn’t worry about those people but he wondered about the universe. Would it find him bad, wrong, in need of karmic “readjustment”?

  The thoughts in his head felt like rocks in his shoes. Unlike a lot of guys in his line of work, Joe was neither world-weary nor filled with abiding self-loathing. He wouldn’t even have understood the concept of “joie de vivre” but he made a point of packaging each assignment with a side-trip to someplace he had never been, dressing like the natives, drinking their wines, eating the local foods. He loved to eat in small, nondescript cafes in which the only words of English were in his own head. He rented small rooms, like monk’s cells, in pensiones and rooming houses. He always learned basic phrases in the local language before going and shunned Americans at all costs.

  He got a lot of looks askance, naturally, especially in the darker countries. In Sweden, for example, he could pass for a local and frequently did, since his father had been from Finland. In Lahore, it was a different story.

  Even so, no one had ever taken him for the wealthy man he surely was, or for the habitual recluse he had surely become. In these foreign settings, he felt he could let his guard down a bit; drink, dance, sing and even, on a couple of occasions, renew his acquaintance with a certain woman. For a guy in his mid-fifties, Joe had a very boyish curiosity about the world and reveled in every new experience.

  The novelty of his house, the ridge, the trees, though, never wore thin. There, the questioning voices in his head, too, seemed placated by the serenity of the wilderness. There, Joe could be someone as close to the real Joe as was possible for a man who had deliberately transformed his entire life so many times, so completely. He was never restless; a condition which could have been called his normal state of being for most of his 50+ years.

  The sunsets, the air, the way the light filtered through the mammoth pines, the smell of the moist earth…these all produced in Joe a strange feeling of peace. He sensed an order in the seeming chaos. He sometimes wondered if that’s what people meant when they talked about God. Maybe, he reasoned, “God” wasn’t an old man in a toga, bathed in golden light. Maybe people just sensed something…bigger than themselves, didn’t know what to call it, and wound up latching onto “God” as a convenient symbol.

  Joe had always sensed himself to be the largest, darkest presence wherever he went. His work carried enormous power and he had always handled it well and, he felt, responsibly.

  But here, in the unharnessed wilderness of the Cascades, Joe felt small and solid and…somehow part of this place. It was a feeling he had come to cherish.

  Sometimes, he wondered if it was like what people meant when they talked about love.

  

  “Of course he’s right!” Eddie laughed, “You’re the only one who’s clueless about this, ding-dong.”

  “Don’t let the fact that I’m buying you beers curb your tongue at all,” I sighed.

  “Want me to buy?” Eddie snorted. Eddie was legendary for never paying for drinks. He had a simple, elegant philosophy: If no one’s buying, he just doesn’t drink.

  “So it would be easier to call me things like ding-dong and clueless?” I grinned. “You seem to be doing just fine, already.”

  “Hey, thanks for the beers,” he said perfunctorily. “Now, back to you. It’s time, Tru. Hell, it’s like five years past time. Dave may swish a bit but he’s no idiot. You’re like…like some amputee who doesn’t realize he’s missing a leg.”

  “I mean, pardon me for saying so, but you’re one of the most shamelessly romantic people in the freakin’ world. You’ve seen ‘Four Weddings and a Funeral’ eleven times!”

  “Twelve,” I admitted. “Watched it again last night.”

  “Twelve times,” he smiled evilly. “Your favorit
e classical piece is…”

  “Vaughn-Williams’ ‘The Lark Ascending’,” I murmured.

  “And your favorite song of all time?”

  “‘He Stopped Loving Her Today’,” I sighed, “by George Jones.”

  “Prosecution rests, Bozo,” Eddie smiled serenely, hoisting his glass in salute. “You, Monkey Boy, are an incurable romantic.”

  “Is this…uh, like a familiar topic whenever you and Lee and Scott get together without me?” I asked.

  “Well,” Eddie mused, “setting aside for a moment the fact that your question displays a pathetic fixation on your sense of importance vis-a-vis your friends, I will admit that, yes, when we’re all in the same place and not burdened by your presence, we sometimes hash out your love life or lack thereof. And the consensus is that you, Cowpoke, need to get back in the saddle, pronto.”

  “God, you make it sound so easy,” I muttered.

  “It is for me,” Eddie grinned. “I’m 31 and gorgeous.”

  “And modest,” I nodded.

  “Damn straight,” he smiled.

  Eddie DiPietro is the only son of a black mother and an Italian father. He was born and raised in Brooklyn and sounds like it. He works as a programmer for PegasuSoft and is a minor legend among the computer geek/outlaw cognoscenti. He was a hacker all through high school and college and is rumored to have once run smack into John Law after he hacked the NSA mainframe. He doesn’t talk about it but no one puts it past either his skills or his chutzpah.

  His main claim to fame here in Seattle, though, is his guitar playing and singing with the local power trio, White Trash.

  “White Trash” plays off the fact that not one of the three is white. Eddie, with his hybrid parentage, mocha complexion, and startling green eyes, compromises the joke a bit but the drummer, Ish Nakata, is Japanese, while the bassist, Mooney Joseph, is pure Native American.

  All three are what my niece Lindsey would call “delish”, and their music betrays so many influences it’s almost whiplash-inducing: Merle Haggard, Cream, Django Reinhardt, Doc Watson, Hendrix, The Sex Pistols, Darius Milhaud, Miles, Ornette Coleman, The Police, Terje Rypdal, Focus, The Beatles, and, most of all, Frank Zappa; all coarse-chopped and rearranged around a sort of Marx Brothers aesthetic. And all at teeth-rattling volumes.

  I met Eddie in the late, lamented Cafe Sabika, shortly after arrival in Sea-Patch, back in the early summer of ‘92. He was at the next table, eating alone like me, with headphones on, a stack of Zappa CD’s on the table. He was making happy noises around a mouthful of Chef Rios’ Basque Snapper and occasionally drumming along with his fork. Several of the other patrons were looking annoyed but I smiled and nodded and asked about the Zappa discs. That conversation lasted two and half hours and two bottles of Tinto Pesquera. We’ve been pals ever since.

  “This heartbroke, world-weary loner pose is wearing a bit thin,” Eddie opined, fingering a moustache so underdeveloped it could have applied for foreign aid.

  “It’s not a pose,” I replied, “I really am a heartbroken, world-weary loner.”

  “Like shit,” Eddie snorted. “You’re one of the most gregarious bastards in this city, once you get going. So, how come you can’t just…do that with a woman around? This riff you do all the time about ‘understanding’ women conveniently ignores the fact that nobody understands women - even other women. You don’t have to understand them. Just accept them.”

  “Besides,” he cackled, “you don’t understand anybody. Gender has nothing to do with it.”

  “I understand you,” I replied. “You’re a putz.”

  “Stipulated,” he shrugged. “But I’m not a lonely putz in total denial. That would be you.”

  We sipped meditatively for a moment.

  “I don’t know if I’m ready,” I mused.

  “What the hell does that mean, exactly?” Eddie groaned. “‘Oh, I’m not ready’…like romance is the SATs or something. Nobody’s ready, okay? Your life experience is your preparation. You offer a bit of yourself to the other person - generic info, at first - and they do the same. You both digest these and offer more. If you both like the flava, you keep going.”

  “Uh-huh,” I nodded, “And you give yourself away and then it all falls apart with no warning.”

  “But the stuff you give, you still got!” Eddie sputtered. “Jesus, that’s like a woman saying she ‘gave herself away’ when she sleeps with some guy. Like a vagina is a potted plant he gets to keep on an end table. Like your heart wound up under Carolyn’s bed in a box. Here’s what I say to both of you: Check your pants, honey, and you check your pulse. You still got it.”

  “Gee, thanks, Mr. Romance,” I chuckled, “I feel all better now.”

  “I’m as romantic as the next guy,” Eddie shot back. “I’m just not wearing blinders.”

  He leaned forward and turned palms up, just the way I had seen his father do a dozen times.

  “Look,” he continued. “Love…love is a freakin’ crapshoot, anyway. Finding ‘Ms. Right’? Total chance. Impossible to engineer it. I know if I’m going to meet the one woman who’s perfect for me, that the logical - hell, the only - way to do it is to meet women. Maybe a lot of women. I’m enough of a die-hard romantic to believe that it’ll happen. If I don’t cave in every time one doesn’t work out. The perfect woman could have stood eyeing you at a crosswalk, anytime during the past eight+ years. And you ignored her.”

  “I’ve always believed that if it’s meant to happen, it’ll happen no matter what I do,” I replied.

  “Man, how old are you?” Eddie fumed. “You get that one out of a Hallmark card? Your mommy tell you that?”

  “As a matter of fact,” I smiled, “she did.”

  Eddie squirmed a little and sighed noisily.

  “Jesus, don’t tell her I said that, okay?” he muttered. “I’m still in the crapper for the Thanksgiving sausage fiasco.”

  “You couldn’t have known,” I shrugged, “my family is Southern. When we ask for sausage, we mean pork breakfast sausage - patties, not links - and definitely not Italian sausage.”

  “So I heard,” Eddie winced, “I figure she can be forgiven a few misconceptions in the romance department, seeing as she carries the immense burden of being related to you.”

  “But,” he continued, “that doesn’t change the fact that - forgive me, Peggy - the ‘No Matter What I Do’ strategy is a load of crap. You think you’re shy and clueless? Think how intimidated a woman would be, faced with a 6′4″, 240 pound, dark’n’scruffy stranger wearing a reflexive scowl. Would you strike up a conversation with you?”

  “No,” I admitted, “but she could. I’m not gonna bite her. Not at first.”

  “She doesn’t know that!” Eddie yelped. “Dude, you look how you look. Nothin’ you can do about that. But you can change your manner. I know - and people who already know you know - that you’re a good guy and, in fact, the biggest marshmallow on the planet. But she doesn’t. Tell me this: Why are we friends at all?”

  “Umm…because we have a lot of stuff in common?” I ventured.

  “That’s part of why we remain friends,” he shot back. “We became friends because you started a conversation with me.”

  “Well,” I shrugged, “you were six feet away and had a bunch of Zappa CDs.”

  “Yeah, but I wasn’t about to start a conversation with you,” he grinned.

  “Why the hell not?” I asked indignantly.

  “Because you’re this big spooky white m’fucker!” Eddie laughed. “Ain’t no brotha chattin’ you up, fool!”

  Eddie chuckled and leaned back in his chair.

  “Now, I feel that way,” he smiled, “Just think how a woman’s gonna feel.”

  “Yikes,” I sighed.

  

  I was walking along the waterfront, later that evening, trying to assimilate what Eddie and Dave had said.

  The sunset was another of those splashy extravaganzas for which Seattle is famous. Peaches and pale lemons, j
ust above the Olympic Mountains, grudgingly surrendered to dusty reds, hot pinks, and purple the color of a fresh bruise. All around downtown, the fading sky wore a deep satiny shade of lavender.

  I never watched sunsets before I came to Seattle. In North Carolina, Scrotes and I used to sit in rocking chairs of an evening and talk, over a few fingers of bourbon. Gorgeous as the sunsets were, it was mostly about the conversation and genteel company, not the lovely skies. Hell, we were young. What did we know?

  “Little” stuff like sunsets take on a poignancy as you get older, I’ve noticed. Maybe it’s the days, the strong suspicion that they’re numbered…and the certainty that we don’t know the number. In any case, my days tend to power down about the time the western sky lights up. It’s the time when I do some of my best thinking.

  Then, and when I’m in the can, of course.

  I was pondering the subject of solitary middle-aged males, an old puzzle, and its effect on those closest to me, a brand new topic.

  It never occurred to me that bachelorhood - a condition I’ve wallowed in since my tempestuous divorce at age 29 - might be anything other than a source of mild amusement to my family and friends. Well, check that. My Mom and Dad were concerned and said so in practically every conversation, but I had always written that off as parental reflex. The realization that it may be prompted by real distress was chilling. If true, I’m a bad son and nobody who has good parents likes to think that.

  More shocking was the idea that my friends might be genuinely…worried.

  Was I, in fact, a self-involved, oblivious jerk whose bitterness and fear slopped over onto everyone he cared about?

  In purely self-involved-jerk terms, was it actually a bit eccentric - even perverse - to have taken this monk-like vow of isolation and chastity without benefit of the Cloth? That was too large a question for my tiny brain. All I know is it felt right when I started it and for a long time afterward.

  One simple fact overrode everything else: The only area of life in which I hadn’t succeeded after putting my mind to it was relationships. After seven serious attempts, I was batting .000. It seemed glaringly obvious that only a fool would look back on that dismal showing and say that it was always the other person’s fault. I was the only common factor in all the disasters; therefore, I was the likely culprit. It seemed evident, too, that the solution was to step back, learn who I am, and pinpoint my mistakes if, in fact, I ever plan to try it again.