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he died. Or did he die? Could he still be alive, so poor that he sells off
parts of himself, the way I've heard of pretty girls doing with a well-
shaped breast or ear?
"Did you make friends with girls easily, Rob?"
"I do now, all right."
"Not now, Rob. I think you said you didn't make friends easily as a child."
"Does anyone?"
"If I understand that question, Robbie, you are asking if anyone remembers
childhood as a perfectly happy and easy experience, and of course the answer
is 'no.' But some people seem to carry the effects of it over into their lives
more than others."
"Yeah. I guess, thinking back, that I was a little afraid of my peer group --
sorry about that, Sigfrid! I mean the other kids. They all seemed to know each
other. They had things to say to each other all the time. Secrets. Shared
experiences. Interests. I was a loner."
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"You were an only child, Robbie?"
"You know I was. Yeah. Maybe that was it. Both my parents worked. And they
didn't like me playing near the mines. Dangerous. Well, it really was
dangerous for kids. You can get hurt around those machines, or even if there's
a slide in the tailings or an outgassing. I stayed at home a lot, watching
shows, playing cassettes. Eating. I was a fat kid, Sigfrid. I loved all the
starchy, sugary
----------------------------------------
Maybe maturity is wanting what you want, instead of what somebody else tells
you you should want.
Maybe, Sigfrid, dear old tin god, but what it feels like is mature is dead.
----------------------------------------
stuff with all the calories. They spoiled me, buying me more food than I
needed."
I still like to be spoiled. Now I get a higher class of diet, not as
fattening, about a thousand times as expensive. I've had real caviar. Often.
It gets flown in from the aquarium at
Galveston. I have real champagne, and butter. . . . "I remember lying in bed,"
I say, "I guess I
was very small, maybe about three. I had a teddytalker. I took it to bed with
me, and it told me little stories, and I stuck pencils into it and tried to
pull its ears off. I loved that thing, Sigfrid."
I stop, and Sigfrid picks up immediately. "Why are you crying, Robbie?"
"I don't know!" I bawl, tears running down my face, and I look at my watch,
the skipping green numerals rippling through the tears. "Oh," I say, very
conversationally, and sit up, the tears still rolling down my face but the
fountain turned off, "I've really got to go now, Sigfrid.
I've got a date. Her name's Tania. Beautiful girl. The Houston Symphony. She
loves Mendelssohn and roses, and I want to see if I can pick up some of those
dark-blue hybrids that will go with her eyes."
"Rob, we've got nearly ten minutes left."
"I'll make it up another time." I know he can't do that, so I add quickly,
"May I use your bathroom? I need to."
"Are you going to excrete your feelings, Rob?"
"Oh, don't be smart. I know what you're saying. I know this looks like a
typical displacement mechanism--"
"Rob."
"--all right, I mean, it looks like I'm copping out. But I honestly do have to
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go. To the bathroom, I mean. And to the florist's, too. Tani is pretty
special. She's a fine person. I'm not talking about sex, but that's great,
too. She can g-- She can--"
"Rob? What are you trying to say?"
I take a breath and manage to say: "She's great at oral sex, Sigfrid."
"Rob?"
I recognize that tone. Sigfrid's repertory of vocal modes is quite large, but
parts of it
I have learned to identify. He thinks he is on the track of something.
"What?"
"Rob, what do you call it when a woman gives you oral sex?"
"Oh, Christ, Sigfrid, what kind of dumb game is this one?"
"What do you call it, Rob?"
"Ah! You know as well as I do."
"Please tell me what you call it, Rob."
"They say, like, 'She eats me.'"
"What other expression, Rob?"
"Lots of them! 'Giving head,' that's one. I guess I've heard a thousand terms
for it."
"What other, Rob?"
I have been building up to rage and pain and it suddenly boils over. "Don't
play these fucking games with me, Sigfrid!" My gut aches, and I am afraid I am
going to mess my pants; it is lIke being a baby again. "Jesus, Sigfrid! When I
was a little kid I used to talk to my teddy. Now
I'm forty-five and I'm still talking to a stupid machine as if it was alive!"
"But there is another term, isn't there, Rob?"
"There are thousands of them! Which one do you want?"
"I want the expression you were going to use and didn't, Rob. Please try to
say it. That term means something special to you, so that you can't say the
words without trouble."
I crumple over onto the mat, and now I'm really crying.
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"Please say it, Rob. What's the term?"
"Damn you, Sigfrid! Going down! That's it. Going down, going down, going
down!"
8
"Good morning," said somebody, speaking right into the middle of a dream about
getting stuck in a sort of quicksand in the middle of the Orion Nebula. "I
have brought you some tea."
I opened an eye. I looked over the edge of the hammock into a nearby pair of
coalsack-
black eyes set into a sand-colored face. I was fully dressed and hung over;
something smelled very bad, and I realized it was me.
"My name," said the person with the tea, "is Shikitei Baldu. Please drink this
tea. It will help rehydrate your tissues."
I looked a little further and saw that he ended at the waist; he was the
legless man with the strap-on wings whom I had seen in the tunnel the day
before. "Uh," I said, and tried a little harder and got as far as, "Good
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