602
PARTISAN REVIEW
Callie, sipping her amber-colored drink, smiled warmly at me. I
shrugged, not fully understanding the meaning.
(He, Aaron, was beginning to
understand, though, that the ground rules here were hotly different from those
in Schulte's, or from those he had lived by, like labor, merit, purposefulness,
reward.)
The room darkened even more, my throat went dry and my stomach
tingled some.
As
I found myself drinking all the 7-Up, I wondered if a real
drink would settle me down somewhat.
The wall became the same flickering screen as I had viewed from the
knotty peephole. The reel began, flashing the countdown numbers in reverse,
while Callie, casually it seemed, laid her hand on my leg.
In another minute, as the first figures appeared on the screen, Jackson
came by offering "fill-ups" to everyone. To his surprise, and mine, I asked
now for a touch of Seagram's in my 7-Up.
"Watch him ladies," he cautioned, handing me the drink, "he may be
getting bad now."
"How old are you?" murmured Gennifer.
"Eighteen," I pronounced emphatically.
The pornographic film progressed, a man visiting a female doctor and
her nurse assistant, and I sipped my drink, trying to keep my temperature
down, my thinking steady, my lines of reality clear. At least that's how I
reasoned to myself, as the dark mysterious hand roamed my leg, gently
squeezing here and there. The eight-millimeter wheezed on, the nurse and
doctor began to undress and examine the male patient, and I found it hard to
believe that I was but six feet away from Americana, six feet away from
my regular station of duty and respectability. For here it was worlds away,
like being in a different latitude. I was thoroughly dazed by the strong aro–
mas of smoke and perfume, teased by Callie's hand murmurings. Did you
have to go to Aden in Africa or Harar in Absynnia like Rimbaud to feel
zones apart, strange, on your own, in foreign territory?
For comfort I think, I glanced at Gen, who gave me that same half–
smile of shy appeal, and so I patted her knee, for her comfort.
(You see, he
was beginning to act like someone else, a fictional shadow self?)
To my sur–
prise, she clasped down on my hand with firmness, edging my thumb up her
thigh. Oh, I was getting hooked good and deep now, doubly hooked say, and
it was confusing, teeming, scary-pleasing.
The movie reeled on, the screen actor and actresses played their porno
parts, and soon, the real boy and two women played theirs. First the boy
noted that his drink was half-empty, and that the room itself had taken on a
gauzy impression, like strips of sticky paper laid over everything. Oh he
sensed what was happening all right, sensed for example that he was slipping
