J. C. Frampton
The Losers
In the midst of the cocktail-wielding crowd, excited chatter, laughter and music, their eyes met and held for a moment, a long moment. The taller man, wearing a rumpled, dusty-looking tweed jacket and a mismatched blue-flowered tie, smiled broadly and extended his hand. The smaller man was slight of build and comparatively dapper in fresh-pressed slacks and a blue blazer. He stared unmoving and open-mouthed as though hardly believing who it was he saw.
"Hi, Fred," said the taller man. "Fred, it's me, Schuyler. Your old friend Schuyler. Schuyler who let you look across his desk during Trig tests when you didn't know a cosine from a stop sign, your rear end from a -- "
"Oh, God, Schuyler. It's so nice to see you." He took the extended hand in both of his and squeezed it warmly.
"Hey, that's a good-looking necktie," Schuyler said with an animated wink.
"Oh...this?" Fred gave the tie a dismissive flick.
"Red was always good for you."
"It's an old tie."
"But it's attractive on you," Schuyler said enthusiastically. "With an executive character. And that's a good-looking jacket too. You've spiffed up the wardrobe." Schuyler no longer possessed hair above his ears and had a heavy-jawed, long-nosed face that must have been slightly repellent to strangers all of his life. But he retained a boyishly frivolous air and an ingenuousness Fred had always found attractive. "And that's a sharp little tea-strainer you've sprouted on the upper lip there."
"Schuyler, it's been so long." Fred's vague blue eyes were slightly moist. He happily surveyed the other man, his Frankenstein-wide shoulders, his thrusting chin, his wide-set spaniel-gentle eyes, his clownishly high forehead, peppered with freckles, small dark warts and grayish sun-damage lesions. Schuyler was no beauty, for sure.
"This is the Fiftieth Reunion and that is precisely five years, a mere ten percent, since the Forty-Fifth when last I got to lay sore eyes on you," said Schuyler, giving Fred a delicate pat on the cheek.
"Not the best five years of my life."
"Not health, I hope, bud."
"You know I'm not talking about health." Fred lowered his eyes in embarrassment.
"Well. Here we are tonight and I've got a bourbon in my hand and that looks like a Budweiser in yours, the juke is playing Mr. Sexy -- Eddie Fisher -- 'I Need You Now,' from, what? Nineteen Fifty-Four -- God, can you believe that! -- our loving pals and classmates are here and you're the guy I most wanted to see of the whole lot."
"Cheers," Fred said, touching his glass gently to Schuyler's. "You look great, Schuyler. Nobody would believe you're sixty-eight."
"Sixty-nine. I was one of the old guys, remember. Got that late start due to rheumatic fever."
"You've still got that sparkle in those big brown eyes and it looks like life is treating you well."
"Well, I can't get used to the heat in Phoenix but at least there's AC everywhere."
"Do you see Cornelius over there talking with The Banger -- Stummelmann, you know? Jesus."
"Well...fifty years." Schuyler's tone made it sound matter-of-fact.
"The way Stummelmann used to bully us around -- you and me, Schuyler, and Cornelius Yap and D'Arnell Spinks and the kid had Muscular Dystrophy."
"Pasturczak."
"Yeah. Poor kid died at twenty-three."
"All the losers."
"Whadya mean?!" Fred's eyes flashed and he heisted his shoulders.
Schuyler cut his eyes coyly and gave a mock-cowering smile. "Just joking, Freddie -- that's what that ass Stummelmann thought."
Fred's frequent irritation with his friend had always been short-lived. "A consummate ass. I can never remember, is it CONsummate or conSUMmate. I think Howard Cosell used to say conSUMmate."
"He'd know, Freddie."
"Those plastic water tubes with the cork at one end and a hole at the other he used to empty down the back of our shirts . . . when he'd get drunk during lunch hour. The way he'd bring those two-bit babes of his over to us in the yard and they'd pretend they were really coming on to us. While Stummelmann's crowd was watching and cracking up. That one girl, Brenda Ann, even poked me in the genitals and asked me how long I was."
"The bitch!"
"Stummelmann knocked her up, you know." With one hand Fred self-consciously adjusted his low-parted comb-over, a weak solution of chestnut.
"I heard. Cornelius told me Stummelmann said she'd take on as many of his friends as he asked her. And then they'd just leave her there in a field or someplace to find her way home in the middle of the night."
"And still come back for more, I'll bet."
"A regular nympho! What makes them do -- ?"
"But she used to be a nice-looking girl. I mean back in seventh grade. Before she became one of Stummelmann's sluts."
"He was a ladies man, I guess," Schuyler mused. "Some guys got it. But that was a long time ago, Fred. Stummelmann said hi to me and I said hi to him. But he went back to swapping dirty jokes with Burt McMahon and Oslivich, his favorite lieutenants, and Walt Hampstead, his consigliere. Hampstead is bald and speckled as a robin's egg and as close to being cracked, McMahon's dying of cancer, Oslivich looks like eighty and has had a kidney transplant, and Stummelmann's fat and getting Alzheimer's."
"I'm not crying. Bastard used to call me Peckerhead. Remember his line, 'Red on the head like a pecker on a poodle.' After a while everybody at St. Bart's High called me that, even little freshman brats. Even you, you stinker."
"Well I only did it in a...well, you know, a, well, good-natured way."
Fred gave him a forgiving tap on an arm. "Schuyler, I miss seeing you a lot since you moved. Nearly ten years ago. Ages."
"I can't stand this crummy town any more. Too many...well, you know, ethnic people. And the crime."
"I looked forward to your visits just like when my mother was still alive and would come over my apartment Sundays with a casserole."
"Well...we were getting a little old for that sort of thing, Fred."
"Whadya mean?!" Hearing that familiar high squeak of excitement, Fred made his lifelong regular resolution to speak more deliberately.
"You know what I mean. When we were younger -- "
"What's age got to do with it, Schuyler?" There -- he was satisfied with the calm tone in his voice.
"I don't know. Kids play around. I'll be honest, I hated to confess it. Now -- with the scandals and all, I mean -- I guess we can look at it a little differently." Schuyler glanced around to make sure they were not being overheard.
"I only said something like, 'I touched a friend in an inappropriate place.' I still go to old Father Meaney and I think he's usually asleep in the box most of the time, till the time comes for the absolution and the five Hail Marys and five Our Fathers for penance. Could prob'ly slip something like that by him if I change the subject quickly. Lord, I hope he never retires."
"I never got rid of the guilt back in those days." Schuyler stared into his highball glass and sucked in his rudely chiseled lips, flat and thin below, high-peaked and shrimp pink above.
"Schuyler," Fred importuned, calmness again abandoned. "Schuyler, you're the only man I've ever kissed...No -- nobody can hear me -- with that music blaring. That little marriage of mine was such a disaster. You know that. Can you stay in town for a few days, a week? There's room at my place."
"I got my dogs at home. Landlady said she'd take care of them for two days max."
"All right. I get it."
"Look, Fred. No, look at me. We decided to knock it off. Neither of us is gay or anything. God, I hate that word. We're bachelors by nature, that's all. Despite your brief thing with Dolores Pickwith when she left the convent. I mean, what could you expect there?"
"That was a big mistake. For both of us. I wanted to give it a try."
"No law you've got to be wild about women. I mean, Our Lord was a bachelor, right?"
"I never felt right with the stuff you and I did either. It was fun, sure. But I'd go back to my place and I'd have that queasy stomach, you know."
"But I think I've kind of gotten over those days now, that awful guilt I mean -- finally."
"Oh?"
"You know -- philosophically."
"Ideas are changing. About sex and all." Schuyler was nodding ruefully at Fred's insights. "Well, it's been a long time," Fred added. There were so many things to say to Schuy, but before long the program and the interminable Talent Contest would begin. "You're still a Communicant?"
"Absolutely. Too old to quit now, Freddie."
"Well, you've long ago gotten rid of all that sex business."
"Right."
"You have any...close friends in Phoenix, Schuy?"
"Not really. I take some evening Extension classes now and then and have coffee with the guys and gals in the class."
"What kind of classes?"
"I took a couple on the new whiz-bang accounting -- the, you know, Arthur Andersen Cha-Cha-Cha. Prob'ly land you in the pokey now. I took this one in Mexican cuisine; you know what a guacamole freak I am. And Tim and I took a terrific class in genealogy. He's also taking a course to do taxes for H&R Block. I help him with some of the accounting stuff."
"Tim?...Who's Tim?"
"Oh...he's a guy I met online. We both have ancestors from this same village in Wales."
"Genealogy? You're the last guy -- " Fred's brow was gathering.
"I've been into it since my mom died. Gives you a sense of, well, belonging. Tim got me onto rootsweb.com and familytreemaker.com. I've even found one of my men fighting for the South in the Civil War. Can you believe that?"
"You never mentioned genealogy to me, Schuyler. I'll bet I could have gotten real interested in it. Read an article in Parade on it. I even think we go back to William the Conqueror. But there are some lapses there."
"If you can get back to him you can go all the way back to Christ, you know."
"Tim's a friend?"
"I guess so. Tim has a little money, not a lot. One of those trust-fund things. He has a condo, you know, and, well, he offered me a room if I'd help him with his tax studies. He's been out of work for some time."
"You live together?"
"Well, separate bedrooms, Fred, if that's what you mean..."
"Then that was a lie...about your landlady and the dogs?" Hurt grappled with anger and, as always, Fred knew his emotions were impossible to hide.
"Fred -- "
"How old is this Tim?"
"Fred...relax a second. Yeesh. After all, you're, well, you know, prying? I haven't seen you since the Forty-Fifth. And that was only a half-hour conversation, with a, well, a little argument at the end."
"An older fellow?"
"Tim's in his forties. But he looks younger."
"Okay."
"Fred, come on. I haven't seen you in five years. I don't want another fight. How are things at the library?"
"It's okay, Schuyler. I knew when you left town, that was it. We'd been running around together off and on since high school, except for that stint you had with Aramco. Forty-some years. Enough. Lord, I got wrinkles all over my face, a neck like a turkey, hands look like chocolate-chip cookies. I pee by the drop and it takes me fifteen minutes to wipe my rear end with the loose bowels and the hemorrhoids."
"And you've barely got a gray hair on your head!" Schuyler said, deeply remorseful at the quickening pain he saw in his friend's eyes. "Fred, you've forgotten what happened. You and Dolores got married. Same as you I'd known Dolly since high school. She did a novena for me at the convent when my dad was in intensive care. The Little Flower of Belmont Villas. It seemed like a marriage made in Heaven." Spoken by Schuyler, the cliché regained its meaning. "Especially since you were both so religious and you'd even taken her to Senior Prom."
"I tried to kiss her in the back seat of your dad's car that night and she fainted. She honest-to-God fainted."
"Such powers you have, Freddie. No, I mean that. I didn't realize things had gone sour in your marriage. Until I heard, I mean...But, hey, what could you expect? You guys were damn near sixty and you'd never neither of you had any straight sex? Whadya expect? I had to stay away. Dolores suspected us. Then that horrible thing!"
"She never should have left the sisters. But her faith began disintegrating one day in the convent garden, first little pieces and then later big hunks. She turned to me for help. So devout. So fragile. Everything finally got too much for her. God Almighty, Schuyler. I found her in our bathtub!"
"I blamed us."
"No, no, no, Schuyler. When she found out about us she was already distraught. She had lost sight of God and there was nothing else. She had even stopped going to Mass."
"And a daily Communicant since, what, thirteen?"
"Oh, it was twelve, Schuyler."
"Didn't help when she read those naughty emails I sent you. I have a conscience, Fred. I figured the Lord had spoken vis-à-vis Schuyler and Fred."
"I can understand, Schuyler."
"But we were special, Peckerhead. Special. Come on, gimme a smile."
"From one triangle to another, I guess."
"That's putting it a little strong."
Approaching them ebulliently was a burly, swaggering old man wearing a "Saints" baseball cap and smoking a cigar.
"Schuyler...hush, here comes that shit Stummelmann."
"How are my two favorite guys getting along tonight?" He clasped Fred around the shoulders, splashing beer on his freshly pressed blazer. "That tie looks like a hemorrhage, Phil."
"It's Fred, Banger." Fred grimaced and put down his beer glass. He removed a handkerchief and daubed at the black spots.
"Fred, right," said an oblivious Stummelmann. "Boy, these chicks sure have aged, huh? Gawd, a bunch of fuckin' grannies. But I can tell a couple of studs when I see them. You guys always were the ass hounds. Just ribbin'. You know the Banger. I always knew, walk in the fuckin' library and there'd be Peckerhead and B.O. lost in the racks. You guys helped me out a lot when I'd bring in somethin' a month late. I 'member once, Schuyler -- "
"I remember once you leaving my arm black and blue when I told you smoking wasn't allowed in the libe. It wasn't allowed anywhere!" Schuyler sternly resisted the urge to cough as Stummelmann expelled a thick cloud of Havana through a half-mocking smile.
"Oh, come on, B.O.," he bellowed in that long-remembered bull-like onslaught. He only owned an off-brand filling station and there were M.D.s, Ph.D.s and two software plutocrats in the class, but he evidently still saw himself atop the pecking order. "A couple friendly punches -- so sensitive! But didn't I fix you up with Brenda Kranicher to show it wasn't serious or, no, that was Cassidy or Grizzo, the guy with the blackheads and the uncircumcised dick, Brenda said it was the best she'd had and I swatted her once or twice for insubordination, but you guys used to just stand around like a bunch of fuckin' wussies with that funny kid in the wheelchair with the chicken-claw hands with these important looks on your pusses while talkin' this dippy shit about some half-assed book Brother Ray had shown you in library and what you thought you'd give up for Lent this year I tried to give you some fuckin' clue as to what fun was all about and shit what credit do I get. Hey, that's all ancient history and we're all classmates and Saints and I want you guys . . . whatever. I park my goddam car now and then I can't find the fucker. I gotta check my phone number in my wallet before I call home. Had to have one nut and one lung removed and I ain't had a good night's sleep in half-a-dozen years, not to mention the poontang department. You got my permission to feel superior. Shit, you always did, right? Kick ass, you guys. And have some fuckin' fun, y'hear me for chrissake." And off he rambled to the next circle, leaving a rancid wake of consumed leaf.
Fred momentarily shuddered, then rejoiced to see the threat pass. It was easier now with the Banger, thank God.
"Take care, Banger..." Schuyler tossed after him, half-disappointed to lose the attention of a bona fide class celebrity. "Whew, what an asshole."
"An understatement. But Schuyler -- I'm thinking -- you know, he's a little right."
"Stummelmann? Right about what?"
"About having fun."
"Heck, we have fun -- don't we?"
"Schuyler, I want you to come back to town." Fred looked intently into Schuyler's wide eyes. "Schuyler, listen to me. My prostate is really bad. I'm afraid to take another PSA exam. I get these palpitations. But I hate to call paramedics and then it be another false alarm. I want you to come back. Dolores is long gone. We can live together like you wanted before. We'll just be roommates as far as the world is concerned. I mean we can still go on in the Church. I mean if all these religious can get away with it."
Schuyler made a weak moue and drew in his breath through his teeth. "I gotta think about it, Fred. I still got a couple accounting clients in Phoenix."
"I'll move to Phoenix. I've got Social Security and a little bit more."
"Well, hold it. Let me think about it."
"Is it this Tim?"
"Well, no. It's just -- "
"Okay."
"Fred."
"Okay."
"Don't give me that look of yours, Fred. Gosh."
"I've got a life, for goodness sake. My coin collection, well, I get invites now to show it at crafts fairs at parishes around town. Two nights a week I play canasta with a group at the Bixby Park Center. And I'm still part-time at the Lakewood library. I'm the only one has a clue how things are done at Main Storage."
"Fred, you're my best friend. Since ninth grade -- you invited me over to your rec room to play Ouija -- and then had the board make all these passes at me. Then we hung out together because nobody else would give us the time of day. Your high voice and this nose of mine, I guess. No, it's true, Fred. I'm proud of it. We did it our way and fuck all of them. Who else had any values in our class, among the guys anyway? I only took that job in the school library because of you."
"You told me Brother Raymond begged you."
"You were the reason, Fred."
Fred grasped his friend's arms. "Schuyler, I love you...Goddam it...I love you."
"Oh, Fred. Fred!" Schuyler's big face was an agon mask of joyful release. "Oh, for Christ's sake...Let's go out on the balcony or something."
"Yeah, I see the Wembley twins heading our way. Those fairies!"
"Preston Wembley can only talk about his goddam world travels."
"Good, this door is unlocked."
The cavalcade of Fifties hits was now muted. Only stars and the lights of yachts in the harbor illumined the hotel's unoccupied rear terrace.
"Fred, buddy, you can't imagine how much it means to hear you say that."
"I said it because I've wanted to say it for, what, fifty-four years."
"You're the only person I ever really enjoyed sex with, Fred. I mean, really enjoy."
"I know you had some when you used to go down to Tijuana to get your heart medicine. I mean, I suspected it when you came back and would be stand-offish for a while."
"A few times. Only a few. I can take it or leave it that way. It's never...well, you know, it's never really any fun with a woman."
"I know."
"But we . . . I mean we had fun, Fredski." His arms went about Fred, who rested his head on Schuyler's chest.
"Oh, brother! You'd get so wild. I couldn't believe it." He could feel Schuyler's heart beating.
"You can be so goddam sexy, you old fart. And those costumes!"
"Oh God, it's good to hold you again, Schuy."
"I don't have a pot to piss in, as my sainted old man used to say. I still owe twelve thousand on the Isuzu."
Fred reached up and cupped Schuyler's beaming face in his hands. "I'll starve with you. Till we're emaciated wrecks. But even weaker from love-making. Wasted from love-making."
"Can we go to your place now? There's a stairway right here."
"Oh, Schuyler. Oh, Schuyler. I've even got a bottle of Pinot like you like in the cupboard."
"I'm aching for you, Fred."
"God, let's hurry."
©2006 by J. C. Frampton
