Chapter 13

XIII

That Goddamn Game

One Saturday morning, a few weeks after Rick’s party, I walked to work with a fire burning my stomach. My mouth was dry, but I lit a cigarette anyway. It was like sucking on a paper towel. Strangely, my head felt light, but my legs were iron pilings, drilling into the pavement as I increased speed. My heart was punching my chest from within, as if it were attempting to break free. I had downed four shots of whiskey before I left for work.

There is nothing like being drunk. You feel as though you’re flying, and yet you’re heavy. Your perception seems so clear, as if all before you is illuminated by high beams in a pitch black night, and yet you’re unfit to do the simplest tasks. As the sweat began to soak my armpits and clothing, as streams of saltwater rolled down my back and chest, my pace slowed, and I realized that I was walking in the wrong direction.

Skip work today. Go to Maria’s house. Make love to her. Those three sentences whirled around my mind. Those, and I love Maria, I love Maria. They didn’t simply repeat, they throbbed. I had to get to her house. Somehow, I had to get there. Yes, I thought, I’ll go to Maria, express my love, and prove it with passion. I’ll admit that I drank at Rick’s party—and she’ll forgive me. I don’t know if was the alcohol talking. Whatever it was, my mind was set: I wouldn’t—no, I couldn’t—keep a secret from her. Our love was strong enough to withstand all.

I sprinted back home and gunned my car’s engine. Racing toward Maria’s, I thought about what I’d say to her when she saw me. I wondered if she’d notice I’d been drinking, and whether or not she’d forgive me. I just wanted to get it over with—come clean and then feel us become one. I thought about rolling around the floor, embracing her naked body. I hungered to sleep that night with the scent of her skin on my own. I wanted to eat her mouth for dinner, and the rest for dessert. Drooling, buzzing, and panting like an animal, I parked my car and galloped down the block toward her house.

It was like a dream when Maria appeared at the door. Maria was naked although she was fully clothed.

Her jaw dropped. “What are you doing here?”

“Let’s go to your room,” I said, ranting that I’d explain everything once we were locked inside. We sat on the bed, my sweaty hand wetting hers, and I began to stutter. “M-M-M-Maria,” I said, “I want to make love to you today. I know this sounds awful, I know it. But—listen…I really love you, and I swear I would never leave you. I swear we’ll be together as long as you’d like. I swear.”

“Joel, my God…” She was flushed. “This is—my God—this is a surprise. My God, I don’t know what to say.”

“Just don’t say that you’ve never thought about making love to me. Please, don’t say that.”

“No, no. I mean, of course I have. I mean, I’ve considered it a lot.” She smiled, and touched here hair. “I really have. But…”

“Can we do it today?” I asked. “Can we make love right now? Please. I promise I’m serious.”

“Well, Joel, my parents won’t be home ‘til seven, so I guess, technically, we could.”

Ahhhhhhhhhh! I thought. She’s okay with it!

“Where did they go? Are they at work that late?”

She paused and looked down. “No, they’re at an AA meeting.”

“Really? Wow. That means I can stay for a while, huh?”

“Don’t you care that my father is finally getting some help? Why are you only thinking about sex?”

She was right. “Oh, God, I’m so sorry. I really am. When did your father decide to get help?”

“Just a few nights ago. I’m glad you dropped me off from that party early, because when I walked in my house, my mom and dad were sitting on the living room sofa in tears. That’s when they told me that my father had slipped outside while drunk, and fallen down the stairs, and almost killed himself. The stairs were slick from the drizzle and he fell down all eight steps, from the very top to the very bottom.

“He said he didn’t even realize he was drunk. He looked like a hobo,” she said, sniffling. “He was wearing his old brown leather Vietnam bomber jacket, one that looks like the jacket that you have. As he fell, the sleeve caught the railing, slowed his fall, and probably saved his life. The Air Force emblem was torn off and buttons scattered everywhere. Some neighbors heard his scream and came to help him get up. It was an awful scene. He was so embarrassed.”

I placed my face on her shoulder and sniffed her neck. Momentarily. I did this out of shame.

“I don’t know,” she continued, “I guess that’s what made him realize he needed help. Actually, he really wanted to go to AA for the longest time, but never had the guts to do it. Sometimes it takes a near tragedy to get the guts to do something scary.”

“So they go, what, every night?”

“No. Every Tuesday and Saturday. They could go every night if they wanted to, though.”

“I’m frightened,” Maria said. I was about to speak, but she interjected: “It’s dangerous when someone has a problem and can’t admit it. You wind up hurting more than yourself.”

“Yeah,” she said, “but he’s finally getting help. Thank God.”

I felt bad for her. But honestly, I wasn’t thinking think about her father. And since I was too afraid to bring up making love, not another word was spoken about making love. We were thigh by thigh on the bed, staring at one another’s eyes. It was destined to happen within moments—just as soon as I examined and inspected the contour of the body I was about to shroud with mine. I would see her, all of her. And so much more. I couldn’t wait.

I touched her cheek with the back of my hand, as if I was checking a milk for a baby. So few sensations are as gentle and spine-tingling as the touch of a loved one’s skin.

I had all sorts of strange feelings. I wanted to violate Maria—kindly. I wanted her to do the same to me. Soon, I knew, her beige shorts would be off, and her silky panties would slide down her white hips, down her legs, to the floor. And then I would open her like an envelope, and embrace the smells and sights before me. The vagina, my friend Kyle once told me, is a holy place.

I sniffed Maria’s ear, and thought of flowers and grass and sunlight. I almost cried at that moment, as I stopped myself from planting the first kiss on her lips.

“Maria,” I said, hesitating, “there’s something I have to tell you first. Before we…” I trailed off; mere words couldn’t characterize what was about to happen.

“What is it?” She was calm.

“I—I dr—rank…at Rick’s party. I’m sorry. I’ll never do it again.” I let the air out of the bag inflated within my chest and stomach. I felt so relieved. I couldn’t touch her until she’d forgiven me.

She looked down at the floor, pondering something. Then her eyes returned to mine, and she smiled a tight, wrinkly smile, her eyes squinting, as if she was trying to decide whether to weep or laugh. I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t know what she was going to say, if anything at all. I was so happy that I’d told her the truth; I was so happy that we were about to make love that nothing could kill my bliss.

Maria smiled. “Joel, do you believe in fate?”

“Yes,” I said, “of course, I do. That’s what brought us together.”

“Well, I this is something we can share, because of fate. I was telling you the truth last week, about the drinking. And then I got so scared when you yelled at me. And I lied to you. I drank with my cousin when I went Upstate. I got drunk, too. It’s okay if you did. We both won’t do it again. I love you.”

She smiled again, titled her head, and leaned in to kiss me. She seemed proud of her revelation.

Everything stopped, right then and there.

***

Days went by before I spoke with Maria again. I’d call her, demand that she tell me why she drank, and hang up. I didn’t cry. Okay, I cried a little. But mostly, I just lay around my room, listening to The Beatles, simmering, hurt, and about to cry.

Soon, I just stopped calling her altogether. In my mind, we were broken up, and would never speak again.

A few days later, I received a call from a Major in the Air Force; he had received my request for more information, and was wondering if I wanted to visit Colorado Springs to visit the Academy.

I remember begging you to let me go, but you wouldn’t allow it at first. But, I begged and begged. Remember Mom? Even you smiled when I came home one day and showed you that 110 I got on my history paper. I remember.

I lobbied you, Dad, to let me go. And you said I could, as long you came with me. No problem!

We flew out there that weekend that the Indian Summer elapsed, and a bitter cold November blew in.

I loved saying it to people, Dad: “My father was a lieutenant-colonel in the Air Force during the Vietnam War.” I was so fucking proud of you. And I wanted to do all the same stuff you did. But you never let me get too starry-eyed. The whole plane ride to Colorado, as I asked about your career, you always redirected the conversation away from yourself, from your past.

“Listen, Joel, you keep asking about my career. You keep telling me about what you’re gonna do. But I want you to focus, Joel. Focus on doing whatever it takes to make you and your family happy at this very moment. Remember, Joel, there’s only one thing that matters in this world: Here and Now.”

Back then, I was in awe of you, but not smart enough to listen to your advice. We were like best friends. And sometimes you don’t listen to your best friends, and you pay for it.

I remember, you even let me have a beer on the plane. You seldom drank, but you toasted a Heineken to me that afternoon.

Every bite of that plane food was like surf and turf. I savored each taste because with each taste came another dose of encouragement, another glance of confidence—from you.

From my father—those words, I thought, described me so well. I was from my father. I was all that you made me. All the good, at least. My intelligence, my sense of humor, my good will—each matched yours. And, that day, I realized how much of you I could be. If only I had listened to your words.

Maria never came up when I spoke to you. In fact, I never spoke to either of you about my girlfriends. As far as you knew, Maria was just some girl that I was dating, a friend you’d seen at the house a few times, nothing more.

Dad, I remember wanting to tell you how pissed off I was at her, how she’d let me down. I knew I needed your advice. But, I don’t know, for some reason I couldn’t ask you.

I remember nodding off after my second beer. When the plane landed, the Rocky mountain peaks were radiating in the distance. It was a bit chilly outside, but I was warm within. I have a good feeling about this trip, I thought. This is the only school I need to see.

Surrounded by snow-capped mountains in the distance, we strolled through the windy acreage of the United States Air Force Academy. The United States Air Force Academy—now there was a name I could get used to. There were no hoods there, no guidos. I was fearless amidst the Rockies. The mountains protected me from all that I hated back in New York. Planes zipped overhead. I saw so many planes in the air that I thought I’d been transported to the future, where cars are non-existent, and everyone commutes like birds.

I thought of that day at Rockaway beach with Maria. That day, I remembered, was when I looked up at the sky, her body cradled in my arms, stretching my neck to the heavens, aching for something meaningful in the distance.

In Colorado I found out what I was searching for: the Rockies. And there they were before me. I was in awe. Dad, I remember seeing my reflection in your glossy, tired eyes; I was wearing the a cadet uniform, smiling, worry-free. I wanted so badly to make that reflection real, for me and for you. I vowed right then and there to work the hardest I could that upcoming school year to become a member of the United States Air Force Academy’s class of 1997.

Man, was that a beautiful campus. I loved it all, but my favorite place was the Cadet Chapel. When I first walked down the center aisles, I felt like the inside was caving in on me. But I looked up at the succession of massive, diamond-shaped steel panels, I felt reassured. Bathed in multi-colored sunlight beaming through stained-glass windows, I felt warm, and trusted the unseen strength of the chapel.

Outside, seventeen aluminum spires towered one hundred and fifty feet into the air. That weekend, those spires were begging me to believe in something. Not necessarily a god, but something. I imagined myself kneeling before the altar in that chapel, praying to…to…to I don’t know what…to whatever sent me to the Academy. The proof of its existence would be found in the sky above that chapel, where I’d soar like a bird through the clouds, kissing terrestrial misery goodbye.

But, I thought, for the moment, I’m on the ground. Standing beneath the high Colorado sun, fixated on the chapel, my optimism dissipated, and I felt emptiness beneath my ribcage. It was as if my heart had vanished. I don’t how to describe it, exactly. I was hoping for answers…someday. But I was conscious of my actual life. Or, rather, something that was missing from my life. But I didn’t know just what. I thought: Something’s just not right. I feared that even the Academy would not fill this unexplained void. It’s difficult to explain the feeling I had, but it remained with me the whole weekend, cutting through my happiness like a hot knife through butter. Just when I thought it was going away—WHAM!—it struck me again.

Each time I was smacked by a wave of sorrow, and something mysterious pulled me down. Even before that great chapel, my feet were flat on the grassy knoll but I felt as if I was being sucked into a sinkhole. Each time I felt the urge to cry, but I forced it back with all my might.

I didn’t want to cry in front of you, Dad. But I probably should have. I should have told you about this strange new feeling, but I was scared. And besides, you were so happy that weekend that I just couldn’t bear to ruin it for you.

“That’s where you’re going to eat lunch and dinner and breakfast,” you’d say, beaming like the sun behind your head, pointing to the commissary. I remember you looked over at the beautiful Olympic-size track and said, “That’s where you’ll run—for hours. And boy will they make you run until you drop!” You were so proud of me, even though I hadn’t done anything yet.

The thing is, I felt like I let him down already. Stressed from training that hadn’t even begun, I thought maybe it wasn’t even worth applying to the Academy. It seemed overwhelming. I mean, there are over four thousand students at the Academy. Each one graduates with a BS and the rank of second lieutenant. Each one is authorized to fly. Each is an adult. A man.

For crying out loud, I was just seventeen. I was still waiting for the day when I woke up and felt like an adult. I longed for that demarcation. I didn’t think it would ever come for me, whether I became a pilot or not. I did not think I would ever become a MAN.

I was so scared. It was like that feeling I get when I climb the stairs in my house—like someone was trailing me. Except that feeling only comes late at night, amidst the shadows of the stairwell. Suddenly, the same feeling was following me around that Academy, sure as my shadow was.

I was caught between two possibilities: either the Academy would cure me, or it would not alter the dreadful, childish inertia of my life.

Walking with you, Dad, it was almost as if you knew what was going on, but just didn’t say anything. But then you’d glance at me and smile a really proud smile, one that I never saw in Queens, and I’d feel thankful for your sake that you didn’t have a clue.

We strolled into the Academy gift shop and were surrounded by a countless typical college mementos: shot glasses, bumper stickers, banners, and, suspended from the ceiling above the store’s entrance, the Air Force flag.

So beautiful, I thought. It was royal blue with gold fringes. In the center was large eagle, wings extended, surrounded by thirteen white stars. While touring the campus, I’d seen in gracefully whipping in the wind on a pole opposite the Stars and Stripes. I didn’t realize I could buy one.

“Can we get one?” I asked, pointing at the velvety flag above us.

“Sure,” my you said. “Anything you want.”

Back in Queens, the flag and the photo of my you, dad, would forge a shrine to the Air Force right in my own little bedroom. They would inspire me each morning to work hard, to get into the Academy.

“Put it right on your wall,” you said, smiling. “I’ll even help you hang it up.”

And you did. We placed to the right of my V-J Day poster and to the left of my picture of you. I was glad I had the kind of dad to help me with stuff like that. I could’ve murdered a man, and been completely guilty. But still, you would stand right next to me as I was being sentenced, pleading with the judge to set me free. That’s just the type of man you were—and still are. He was everything Maria’s father was not. There’d never been so striking a contrast until those few days in Colorado.

In Colorado, I thought about Maria’s dad, and about Maria. For a while, I thought the feeling I had, the vacuum in my stomach, was just my conscience telling me to call her. Once I even ran to a pay phone while my dad was in the bathroom, and thought about giving her a call. But as the dial tone hummed in my ear, it became apparent that a simple phone call couldn’t eradicate whatever it was that was bothering me. Besides, I had no idea what to say to her. I was still so angry at Maria. But the void didn’t come from her. It was something else.

Seeing all those jets made me think of arcade games I played when I was a kid. Do you remember, mom, how you used to let me go to the candy store on my skateboard? I remember going there after school hundreds of times.

I used to play Gauntlet and Double Dragon. Sometimes I’d play alone, but often against the other kids. We’d place our quarters in a row on the top of the machine, the next quarter representing the next person who got to play the game. It was a rudimentary yet remarkably fair system. So easy and innocent.

My favorite game was called1945—about a secret World War II mission to Japan. You were a pilot, flying what looked like a Bell X-1. It probably wasn’t a Bell X-1, though, because those weren’t used in World War II. That was the first plane to fly at the speed of sound, Mach 1, on October 14, 1947. Anyway, the stupid kids at the arcade thought they were flying an F-16 when they played 1945. But I knew better than them. I knew that F-16s hadn’t even been invented yet.

It was a cool game, because you could blow shit up with rapid-fire machine guns and bomb the hell out of miniature buildings and cars below. I still remember the day that I beat that game. It took me sixteen quarters and 45 minutes, but I did it. I was the hero of the arcade the day I beat the game. And I was only ten or eleven years old when I did it.

That day in Colorado, I wished that I could be ten years old again. What a life I had back then, a life filled with candy store arcade games. No worries about Maria and her past. No knowledge of the past at all, or the future for that matter. Just the present.

Maybe that was the feeling that was bothering me, the feeling that I hadn’t played a video game in years, and that now I was going to have to do all this stuff for real. I didn’t have any qualms about shooting an enemy plane down; and it wasn’t like most of the Academy graduates ever got to actually be in combat, anyway. I don’t know. Now I was aware of the past and the future, and could always contrast and compare them to the present. And I thought about how hard it was to get into the Air Force Academy, and how hard being a good person was, in general, and wished it all was as easy as beating that goddamn game.