It Feels So Good When I Stop Read online

  Jocelyn slammed her magazine shut. “I cannot fucking fathom why you’d go through with this. Just go get a job. People do it all the time.”

  “You mean like you?” She rolled her eyes. “What, you think I’m wrong?” She didn’t answer, so I gave her the other barrel. “I’m not the one who has the luxury of holding out for the coolest unpaid internship of my choice.”

  “Just because I have access to a little money doesn’t—”

  “Oh, right, a little money.”

  “It doesn’t mean I’m wrong.”

  “Well, you know what? I have no money.”

  “Then, please, I’m begging you, let me give it to you. It kills me to watch you waste your life.”

  “I don’t want your money.” I did want it. But taking ten or twelve grand was a lot different from letting her pay for our dates and the odd weekend away. “I’d feel like a fucking loser.”

  “Okay, then, borrow it from me.”

  “We both know I’d never be able to pay you back.”

  “Then don’t pay me back. I don’t care about the money.”

  “I do. I’m not taking your money.”

  She led me onto thin ice. “If we were married, you’d take it, right?”

  “Probably, but I’m not ready to get married.” I was hoping she’d forgotten about the hundreds of times I’d proposed to her. That was before the infatuation started losing some of its sheen.

  “Oh, I see.”

  I challenged her. “You see what?”

  “Just read your fucking Self-fucking-Reliance.”

  WHEN I WOKE the next morning it was raining like a motherfucker. Jocelyn was hugging me like I was a body pillow. Each time I tried to slip away, she tightened her grip.

  “Come on. Let me go.” I was this close to blowing off the exam, but I’d already paid the fee.

  “You’re making a big mistake. Grad students are the worst kind of people.”

  I ended up regally shitting the bed on the literature subject exam. I did pretty good on the math and verbal. All told, I thought my scores were high enough to get me back into UMass.

  I sent Sanbourne a letter at his sabbatical address in Caribou, Maine, letting him know my application package was in the system. The letter went unanswered. Even if he did flag my application, it didn’t do me a fuck of a lot of good. That morning in front of Bartlett Hall, he must have been talking to the fucker who smoked Newports.

  MOST OF THE FILMING WAS to take place in Sidney’s old room. Marie led me into the small, dark hallway that ended at his closed bedroom door. She was telling me about some performance artist who had kept the packaging to every scrap of food he’d eaten over the course of a year. Fuck, I’d had roommates who did better than that without even trying.

  “His whole thing is measuring intangibles against the refuse of what fuels it.”

  “Interesting,” I said. “Was he German?” It was my way of indirectly asking if the performance artist had saved his shit and piss for the year.

  “No, Japanese. Why? Have you heard of a German artist who has done something similar?” She seemed genuinely interested to know.

  “I might have, but my memory’s crap.”

  Marie had her hand on the doorknob. She went into deeper analysis of the Japanese dude’s art. I started picturing mountains of plastic wrap and plastic foam trays soaked with blood from red meat, and crusty-mouthed chocolate milk cartons, and knotted condoms as stiff as potato chips.

  She opened the door. “I wanted to do something in the spirit of that.”

  “Wow. That’s a lot of stuff.”

  Sidney’s room was an overflowing ten-by-ten purple box. It looked like someone had dumped the contents of a cargo net full of secondhand Save the Children relief.

  “I trashed or gave away more than that.” She sounded sorry that she hadn’t kept every item—food, diapers, or otherwise—that Sidney had consumed during his short life.

  Piles of entangled toys and clothes overran the floor like kudzu. There was hardly a place to stand. A white-barred crib was overpopulated with stuffed animals, like a pen used to turn calves into veal. More clothes and fleece baby blankets buried a toddler bed, like heavy snow on a car. Sunlight poured into the room through two sliding glass doors. A larger-than-life poster of a serious-looking Kermit the Frog watched over everything.

  “I called a few of my girlfriends and got some of it back.”

  “You tell them what it was for?”

  “The ones I thought would understand.” She held up a tiny orange shirt with a purple dinosaur on it. “Some of the stuff, I’m not sure was ever ours.” She refolded the shirt and put it back on the heap. “It’s all here, though, because I can’t be sure.”

  I looked out through the sliding glass doors. The small backyard sloped down and butted against the pond-calm water of Opal Cove. Somehow I was sure Sidney had drowned right there.

  “So,” Marie sighed, “there is a method to this madness.” I was picturing Sidney running down the small hill to the water, unable to counter the deadly momentum that launched him out too deep. “I want to remove a little at a time until—by the end of the film—it will be just me sitting in this empty room.”

  I FELT PRETTY good when I woke up because it was exactly the kind of Saturday morning I loved as a kid: cold and gray. The first snow was still weeks away, but there was a sense that anything could happen. I turned on the TV and caught the tail end of a commercial for some acne scrub. Two pristine teenage couples were blasting around a California beach in a jeep, laughing at the fun niest fucking joke ever told. The backing musical track was a note-for-note rip-off of the guitar lead in R.E.M.’s “Flowers of Guatemala.” It started to piss me off, but then I watched some Looney Tunes. The new episodes—the ones without Mel Blanc doing the voices—were depressing, but they tossed in a vintage Bugs Bunny, the one set in ancient Rome. It lifted my spirits back up. I quoted Bugs Bunny while I showered.

  When James and Dogshit showed up out of the blue, I was sitting on the porch, reading some film notes Marie had put together for me. I folded up the pages and hid them in my back pocket before they’d crossed the lawn.

  “What’s that?” James asked. “Employee handbook?”

  “What’s what?”

  “I’m fucking with you.” He laughed. Dogshit laughed, too. “I don’t care if it is. I thought about it. I’m cool with you working.”

  “Thanks, Dad.”

  Dogshit laughed at that, too.

  James reached for the upper hand. “Even if you are going to pussy out and not tell anybody what exactly it is you’re doing.”

  “Yeah, why’s that?” Dogshit asked. “A job’s a job, no?”

  James gave wordless confirmation.

  Dogshit continued. “I mean, I emptied Porta-Johns. I worked at the dump. I drove around for the MDC picking up roadkill and shit. I cleaned the wading pool at—”

  James nudged me. “He found Sinn Fein dead on Twenty-eight,” like I was supposed to know who or what the fuck Sinn Fein was.

  “That was a harsh toke,” Dogshit said. He swallowed uncomfortably. “One side of his head was caved in, and his tongue was really long and green. I had to wash the blood off his collar before I gave it back to Finneran.”

  “Harsh,” James said. Harsh was the adjective of the moment for James and Dogshit. They used it without discretion. In a week or two, it would be fierce, insane, or deadly.

  “I never told Finneran that part about his dog’s head being mushed to a pulp.”

  “Why the fuck would you?”

  “I wouldn’t.” There was a pause. “So what the fuck?” Dogshit asked me. “Who you working for?”

  I told them.

  “Well, that settles one thing,” James said. “He’s definitely not babysitting.”

  “Oh, man, that’s harsh,” Dogshit said. They both laughed.

  “Seriously,” James said, “what are you doing for her?”

  “I’m helping her make a
movie.”

  “What the fuck kind of movie?”

  “You going to bone her?” Dogshit asked.

  “It’s a documentary. No, I don’t think so.”

  “A documentary about what?”

  “It’s about her kid.”

  James shook his head. “Man, you really do have a dark streak running through you.” He said it like he’d had more than one conversation behind my back on the subject.

  “It’s just a job,” I said.

  “No. What I have is just a job. Fixing boats is just a job.”

  “I don’t know,” Dogshit said. “Sounds kind of cool.” James looked at him. “In a fucked-up way.”

  JAMES AND DOG SHIT convinced me to go with them to the East Falmouth-Barnstable game. If Minnesota is “the Land of Ten Thousand Lakes,” then Cape Cod is “the Land of Ten Thousand Dunkin’ Donuts.” We hit one of them on our way to the game.

  “Wouldn’t it be cheaper if we all pitched in and bought a dozen instead? ” Dogshit asked.

  “Now you’re thinking.” James canceled his order.

  The doughnut girl sighed. She tried to locate the void register key in a mug stuffed with pens, highlighters, and rubber bands. “Goddamnit.” She emptied the mug onto the counter. A pen rolled onto the floor. I picked it up and placed it near the mug.

  “How long till kickoff?” James asked.

  “T minus five minutes,” Dogshit said.

  “Christ almighty. You want to just skip this shit and get something there?”

  “Lines will be insane.”

  The girl hollered in the direction of the back room. “Who isn’t putting the friggin’ register key back where it goes?”

  James looked at his watch. “This is pointless.”

  “Look,” the girl snapped, “would you give me half a fucking second, please?”

  James said something under his breath.

  “What was that?” she asked. I looked at Dogshit, and he raised his eyebrows.

  “I said, ‘Take your time.’ ”

  THE LOT at East Falmouth High School was full, and cars were backed up along Plymouth Street and its tributaries. We parked in Dogshit’s cousin’s driveway.

  “What’s his name?” I asked. “Apeshit?”

  James laughed.

  “Okay,” Dogshit said, “I see how things are here. I was going easy on you because you’re all fucked up, but no more.” He challenged me to a slap boxing match. I wouldn’t put up my dukes. He danced around me, then tapped me, unchallenged, on the cheek. “Down goes Frazier!” he said like Howard Cosell. “Down goes Frazier!” He put his arms up in victory and made crowd noises.

  A real cheer erupted from inside Colonel James J. Sweeney Memorial Field.

  “Come on, you homos. We just missed something.”

  The bleachers on both sides of the field were full, and fans stood three people-deep along the sidelines and behind the end zones. I assumed East Falmouth was the team in green and gold, since James and Dogshit instinctively moved to that side.

  A man with an elfin voice yelled, “Hey, Jimbo!”

  James was literally head and shoulders above most people standing. He scanned the crowd until he located the person attached to the voice. “Swainer! ” James yelled. “You haven’t been up this early since you were in high school.”

  People laughed.

  “What do you mean ‘up’?” Swainer said. “I ain’t been to frickin’ bed yet.”

  More laughs.

  “Outstanding!” James said.

  Another disembodied voice cheered for Swainer.

  “Beers at the Nail after we KICK BARNSTABLE’S ASS!” Swainer yelled.

  A cheer rose.

  “We’ll see, buddy,” James said. “Now get a job.” He gave Swainer a wide-handed wave. We worked our way close to the bleachers. Two kids standing on a scaffolding flipped the numbers on the scoreboard. We had missed most of the first quarter. East Falmouth was up, eight-zip. I couldn’t give a fuck.

  “How’d we score? ” James asked a guy in front of us.

  “Whitman, who else? Took it in from the eighteen. Then he got the conversion.”

  “Outstanding. Kid’s on his way.”

  “If he can stay healthy,” the guy said.

  “And out of jail,” someone else said.

  “Harsh.”

  “Very harsh.”

  NEAR THE END of the second quarter I had to take a leak.

  “I told you you should have used the can at Dunkin’s. The Porta-Johns are horrible.”

  “Don’t listen to him,” Dogshit said. “They’re fine.”

  “If I’m not back in a week . . .”

  “Shit,” James said. “I might as well go now and avoid the rush.”

  We walked under the bleachers. Kids were having a three-on-three touch football game.

  “Someone’s going to get mangled on all this glass,” I said.

  “That shit never happens.”

  As we passed the kids, James hijacked the play in motion by blocking the pass intended for a kid who was wide open.

  “Down over!” the offended kid yelled. The two pip-squeak teams started arguing over whether or not the play counted.

  “Fair’s fair,” James told them. “The play stands.”

  The kids screamed. People in the bleachers looked down to see what was up. Women closed their legs.

  “Hey, it’s Pay Phone.” Ricky’s upside-down head was looking at me from between his legs. So was Tommy the cop’s.

  “Couldn’t stay away, could you? ” Tommy asked.

  “Guess not,” I said.

  “Where you sitting? ”

  I threw a thumb back over my shoulder.

  “There’s room up here,” Ricky said.

  “Squeeze down,” Tommy told the people on the other side of Ricky.

  “No, that’s cool,” I said. “I’m with some people.”

  “How many? ” Tommy asked.

  “Two.”

  “Gotcha,” he said, like me giving my companions the slip and joining him was what I really wanted to do. “Next time we’ll plan it out better.” He saluted me and got back into the game. Ricky waved. James and I found the end of the shortest Porta-John line.

  “How do you know that fuckwad? ”

  I knew he meant Tommy because James wouldn’t make jokes about retarded people—mildly or otherwise. The story was sketchy, but someone in his family—a first or second cousin—had Down’s syndrome. “Why’s he a fuckwad? ”

  “Because I went to high school with his older brother. And that guy was a complete fuckwad.”

  “ I CAN’T UNDERSTAND why you’re friends with him,” Jocelyn said. “Never mind live with him. That brings it to a whole other level of perplexing.” She removed a cookie pan from the oven. On it were two small brown bowls of onion soup. A scab of mozzarella covered each.

  “I could give you shit about some of your friends, but I don’t because I don’t let them bother me.”

  “You do give me shit about my friends.”

  “Like who? ”

  “Like Stephanie.”

  “Because she’s a pain in the ass.”

  “Stephanie’s nice.”

  “I can’t fucking stand being around her.”

  “Because she’s too New Agey for you. But she’s a good person.”

  “I hate nurturers.”

  “She’s helped me through a lot of stuff.” Jocelyn made a face like it should be understood by both of us that I was to blame for a good deal of that “a lot of stuff ” Stephanie had helped her through.

  I mocked the look. “And Richie’s helped me through a lot.”

  “You don’t like Stephanie because she thinks crystals are magical. I don’t like Richie because he’s a dick.” Jocelyn popped the tab on her can of diet Sprite. “Stephanie’s a little out there. I’ll give you that. She’s not hurting anyone, though.”

  “Richie can be a very good guy.”

  “I’m sure. Ev
en Hitler loved his dog.”

  “You’re putting Richie and Hitler in the same group? ”

  She didn’t answer.

  “Give me a fucking break,” I said. “You’ll never like him because of Josie.”

  She swallowed her soda. “This is true. But I wouldn’t have liked him anyway.”

  “You might if you got to know him.” I peeled the cheese off the top of my soup. “If you saw his good side.”

  “You know what I can’t fucking stand? That whole ‘Such-and-such treats people like shit, but he’s always been a good guy to me’ mentality. It’s fucking bullshit.”

  “God, you’re really hard on people.”

  “I have to be. I’m sick of letting crap drift into my life.”

  “He likes you.”

  “Richie? ”

  “Yes.”

  “That’s because I’m a good person.”

  “I mean he likes you.”

  “God help us.”

  MARIE FIXED A Fisher-Price pixel movie camera to a tripod in the middle of the bedroom. “I bought four of these right as they stopped making them.”

  “Is that a toy? ”

  “It was meant to be, but filmmakers discovered them.”

  “That’s what you’re going to film with? ”

  “Record with, technically.” She opened the camera’s cartridge bay, and slipped in a new Maxell audiocassette. “Pretty cool, huh? ”

  “How’s it look? ”

  “Scrappy and beautiful.”

  “Color? ”

  “Better. Infinite analog shades of gray.”

  I did some quick math in my head: a case of cassette tapes, a toy camera, maybe some batteries. “So this is a big-budget picture.”

  She laughed. “Colossal. Actually, you’re by far my biggest expense.”

  MY JOB WAS to interview Marie, asking her questions from a script she’d written. She wanted me to be positioned right behind the camera the whole time. She said she hated it when she watched a documentary and the person on screen wasn’t looking her in the eyes. She said that happened all the time. I’d never really noticed.

  “How great would it be to have one of those contraptions Ross McElwee used in his films? ” she asked.