The Convulsion Factory

“What am I doing?” he whispers. “What am I doing?”

He gathers what he can, whatever he hasn’t overlooked because it’s too little or too far-flung, and he carries the whole jumble back to the work table and lets it clatter into a heap. And there he sits, while Alex stares, Dad, looking sorrowfully at all the broken pieces.

“I need more glue,” he says at last and gives a decisive nod of a chin that used to seem a lot firmer and a lot stronger to Alex’s eyes. “That’s it. I need more glue.”

Without another word, he rises and walks past his son and a minute later comes the sound of the BMW starting up and then Dad is gone.

Alex rises too, wanders over to the worktable and delicately fingers the broken plastic. Last remnants of a mismatched squadron, sleek on the outside and hollow on the inside.

In the last few years, Alex has been astounded at how little he weighs. At least it seems that he should weigh more, that there should be more mass to him since he’s flesh and blood and bone. Now, though, he’s not so sure. And he wonders if maybe he’s hollow too, because now it feels that over all these years, these fifteen years, he was just another model. Dad’s big project from 1982.

Is he real? Does he exist? He wonders like he’s never wondered about anything. Just one word from Dad would clarify matters. Just one word might work wonders. Just one word.

Alex goes to the garage and brings in the ladder and sets it up in the rec room. He looks at all the tiny wires hanging down and frees up the few that still have bits of plastic attached. Dozen and dozens of tiny cables. And their hooks.

Maybe it will hold and maybe it won’t. At least he knows he’s certain to get a good distribution of weight.

He positions himself at the apex of the ladder and lies out flat, balancing precariously, and now he’s parallel to the ceiling and looking at all the eye-screws Dad has imbedded up there to hold his treasures.

Alex takes each cable and meticulously hooks them into the safety pins.

And when he pushes away the ladder he feels important at long last, and thinks that whenever Dad makes it back home, he’s bound to take notice this time.

Androgyny

The afterglow fades, always.

The quicker it happens, the more compulsively you’re left to wonder about the night’s beginnings. Even if the object of earlier affections is still lying beside you, cuddled in the crook of your arm, it doesn’t matter. The afterglow fades, and the questions turn cruel and demanding:

How did this happen? What twist of fate and chemistry turned us from strangers into lovers in a few hours?

Gary knew it would happen all over again the moment he saw her. Some bar on Basin Street, past the French Quarter’s upper boundary. Fewer than a dozen drinkers, most of them hardcore, beyond redemption. Lights were low, smoke was thick, exotically resilient bacteria grew on the floor.

Look at her clothes and you wouldn’t think she belonged. Look in her eyes and you reconsidered. Slumming, like Gary, for the fun of whatever waited to be found.

It took twenty minutes of flirtatious eye contact through the smokebank before she came his way, taking the stool next to him. This he took as a good omen: She was no hooker. No hooker with her looks would work this stretch, and even if she did, she wouldn’t have wasted twenty minutes. Gary may have been new to New Orleans, but knew that some games were universal.

“What are you?” was the first thing she said.

“Career? Astrologically? How do you mean?”

She smiled, traced a lacquered fingernail around the rim of her glass, some fruity concoction, sweet contrast to his whiskey sour. “You’re not a tourist, I can tell that right off. No tourist ever comes around here unless it’s some conventioneer drunk out of his mind. But you’re not a native, either. Are you.”

“Long-term transient,” Gary said, and clinked his glass to hers. “But not all who wander are lost.”

One eyebrow ticked upward as she appraised and approved, or pretended to. “You’re literate enough to read bumper stickers, at least.”

Talk progressed, easy and loose and non-binding. They traded names, Gary for Lana, and libidos simmered during the seductive ballet. He liked best these encounters where roles were blurred. Who was predator, and who the prey? A tossup, one answer as valid as the other. In the end, he supposed it didn’t matter, as long as the orgasms were mutual.

Six years of high-ticket vagrancy had shuffled him through a succession of primary, secondary, and graduate schools of one-night stands and short-term loves. Money was no problem; an umbilical credit card kept him linked to the New England bank account. He never had to stick around when it no longer seemed wise. He didn’t want to leave behind a legacy of pain any more than he wanted to lug one around inside.

“You like riddles?” she asked after four rounds of drinks had worked their magic.

“Usually. Let’s hear it.”

“It’s not easy.” Lana smiled mischievously. “But. Do you know what the worst part of being me is?”

“The worst thing, let’s see.” He studied her a moment, the fine-boned face, the tall straight posture, the so- black hair, shoulder length. She didn’t appear to have lived too harsh a life thus far. Her eyes knew pain, though, and her soul was evidently as on display as her small cleavage. “You don’t know how to love.”

A coy shake of her head. “Wrong. So wrong.”

“You’ve never been in love.”

Another shake. She was enjoying this immensely. Sometimes this was the most fun game of all, opening yourself like a maze and escorting strangers into blind alleys.

“You don’t think,” he tried slowly, “you’ll ever find the right one to love.”

Lana tapped her chin, half conciliatory. “You’re still off, but you’re getting warmer.”

He offered a few more stabs at it, then gave up. Lifted his drink and swirled it, watched it in near-hypnosis. “I can think straighter later.”

“Love and friendship,” Lana mused, obliquely avoiding the answer to her challenge. “They’re opposites, in a way, you know.”

He professed skepticism.

“Really. Joseph Roux, in Meditations of a Parish Priest, said, ‘What is love? Two souls and one flesh. Friendship? Two bodies and one soul.’” Lana nodded. “I believe that, with all my heart.” She dropped her hand to his thigh — that thrilling rush of first contact. “How ‘bout you? Do you believe it?”

“It could work on me, give it time.”

And what would it soon be for them, he wondered. Love, or friendship? Two bodies, or one?

Snap judgments were risky, but he thought he’d be amenable to either. Something about her eyes, her manner, her tip-of-the-iceberg hints that, for the right person, she was much more than someone who merely wanted compatible flesh to sustain her until morning light. A needle-in-the-haystack find among French Quarter sin — someone worth sticking around for.

“Well, if you can believe that,” she said, leaning in close to whisper, “then I have so many secrets to share with you.”

Gary watched, listened, through dual filters: The Romantic longed to believe her, while the Cynic thought it mere puffery. Or worse yet, sweet bait so she could lure him to a partner in hiding and they would mug him.

He would bite. He would swallow. Have a little faith.

Soon they danced, pressed close as they leaned together and slow-shuffled about the floor, glowing with neon bleedthrough from the street. They were watched by the dismal eyes of other drinkers, weary survivors clinging to rafts of Jim Beam and Gilbey’s. The jukebox scratched out the mournful, gin-soaked laments of Tom