Moorpark Palms - 1. Chapter 1

Dirty Doug was sitting in his grey lump of a chair, watching football with the sound off, the headset from his huge, silent stereo looped around his neck, a cheap beer in one hand, and a bag of Ralphs’ Best Chips in the other. He might have been sitting that way for three weeks. He might have been dead. He was just as I’d left him when I’d flown east for Christmas.
He wore a grey sweatshirt – the color of the chair – missing sleeves and its chest logo through overuse or malice. His worn cut-offs ended in the same fray as the sweatshirt’s arms, and floppy rubber sandals hung off his hard-bitten toes. He trimmed his toenails with his teeth. I know. I’d watched.
“Got to get out of here,” I thought.
But I’d promised him a year. He’d had two rotten roommates in four months: one stuck him with a bedroom full of furniture too gross even for Doug to sell; the other scammed checks and food stamps – all but stood at freeway ramps scraping for change. Before that, his roommate had lasted for nine years.
“Friend of yours?” I’d asked, while first being interviewed by Doug.
“Nah.”
“But you must’ve become friends. After all that time.”
His narrow shoulders kind of jerked up to his tiny ears, as though in self-defense. “I didn’t really know the guy,” he said. He was just someone who rented a room.”
After six months, I knew more about Doug than maybe he did, though he was as simple as mattress dust. For example, I knew it took longer for me to throw up than it took for him to execute what passed for making love.
That’s pretty personal, but I had proof – I’d done something especially stupid one night. I love cashews and can eat them by the can. We’d gotten a gift basket for some forgettable celebration at work, and I’d decided not to share my pound of nuts – there was plenty of more-desirable San Francisco chocolate. That night, I took a chunk of good cheese from my half of the ghettoized refrigerator and a glass of tolerable wine. I pushed Maltese Falcon into the VCR and settled on my bed. By the time Mary Astor lost her last trick, the nuts, cheese, and wine were gone, and I was comfortably asleep. I’d seen the movie plenty before. It was neat, but nothing to defer golden dreams. ‘Round about one, I was up again – with something that felt like a heart attack. Except fit guys in their late-twenties don’t get heart attacks from things they do alone, in bed, with all their clothes on.
The pain was amazing. I’d smashed fingers before, twisted ankles, flipped over the handlebars of my bike. This was Mars exploding. “Damn,” I thought. “If I can’t eat everything I want at twenty-eight, what’s gonna happen when I’m old?”
I cramped to the john. It was in the hallway just outside my door. Opposite my bathroom was the narrow arch to the living room and through this opening, I could see Doug and his girlfriend watching TV. Further down the hall was Doug’s bedroom and private bath.
I bent over the toilet, traditional style, knees to the floor, the posture quickly remembered from late nights in early college. I tried to heave. Nothing. I downed water by the cup then hit the floor again. Nope. My strongest drugs were aspirin and hay fever pills. Not even a caked bottle of Pepto Bismol. I’d been in the apartment for less than five months, and my medicine chest was almost as empty as my bank account. Before this, I’d never needed antacids. Part of my reputation lived on being able to eat anything, anytime, in any amount.
“Where does it all go?” friends would ask, knowing I was too straight for dietary addictions.
“I’m always on my feet,” I said.
Except when I was on my knees.
I drank more water, knowing I’d soon need the john one way or another, all the time wondering what in the apartment might exorcize the pain. I hated clumping through the living room spazzing like The Thing, but I had to reach the kitchen. That’s where the stuff of all good home remedies lay. Fortunately, by the time I desperately lunged in that direction, Doug and Kitten – she’s Persian, and chose the name as the American equivalent of her real one – had vanished.
My choice with concoctions lay between trying to sooth my stomach or trying to deflate it. I’d have taken the former – I’m fairly easy-going and avoid pain the way most brokers slip responsibility – but the mix wasn’t right. Doug didn’t cook so much as defrost, and I ate a lot of salads. It left us lacking in the of “tongue of toad” department. Instead, I sloshed together a somewhat-limited Hell-night cocktail, chugged it, then slunk back to the john.
As I reached the hallway, the light under Doug’s door flashed out, and inner frivolity no doubt commenced. I could hear music – actual, tactile sex was something Doug didn’t sift through earphones. Minutes later, my voodoo egg-cream did its job, and I quietly gargled hot water – no point letting cheap walls disrupt passion. Then I headed back to bed. But by then the hallway was slasher movie quiet, and the music had stopped. In the nearby bedroom, the lovers slept.
Now sex to Doug was hard-won. He wasn’t bad-looking, but his robot charm undermined him. I once caught him looking almost endearingly at Kitten, then realized he’d simply whacked his elbow, and the near-tears came from borderline pain. They’d known each other for seven years but weren’t even close to even being engaged. And Doug admitted he had no intention of getting married.
“Ever?” I asked.
He jerked his defensive shrug.
“What’s Kitten think?”
“I gave her a refrigerator last Christmas. I’m nice to her mother.”
I thought this was building somewhere, but he went right back to watching TV. Doug’s the kind who husbands his words.
Still, sex was his big thing – that holy instant of it he seemed to enjoy each week. Thursday night, after ritual cable sports, he watched porn. Not feature-length films. “They have plots,” he’d critique – many thumbs down. He watched Previews – things I didn’t know existed. Though I’m a porn-novice: I’ve seen a few classics – you can’t grow pubic hair without ‘em. But when it came to making love, I believed in genuine participation.
Doug ran two or three tapes every Thursday night. Each was the “good parts” of maybe a dozen other movies.
“Don’t they overlap?” I asked. “How many porn flicks are there?”
“I’ve never seen the same one twice,” he mumbled, his unblinking eyes never leaving the screen. “Except if they’re real nasty.”
Thursday, he revved. Friday, he came home from work and napped – actually, he napped every night and then stayed up till three, watching mimed sports.
“Don’t you miss what they’re saying?” I’d ask.
“I like my music better,” he’d say, which made sense. It was his business. During the day, he shipped CDs for a living.
Friday, after napping, he’d shower and then pick up Kitten. She didn’t have her own car. They’d go to dinner and sometimes stop by the apartment. But she never stayed on Friday nights. Maybe Doug felt that was promising too much. After he dropped her off, he’d be home by twelve, skip sports, and cut straight to the naked babes. Three tapes, and he was set for unrated dreams.
Saturday, he’d get Kitten at six, and they’d again go out to dinner – mostly to places just a hair more expensive than Denny’s. Then they’d see a movie, and by ten they were home watching music videos. At one, it was off to bed.
Until the night of a thousand cashews, I figured sex with Kitten consumed Doug till dawn. Why else would he “save” himself all week? I also assumed he was good at it. When you crave something that fiercely, it should last longer than a sigh. Sadly, Doug, seemed to lack a certain eye-hand coordination. What made him salivate didn’t track to the waterbed.
And what did Kitten get – besides the refrigerator and some cheap dinners? Sunday mornings, while Doug slept off his midnight ardor, I sometimes talked with her. She was a legal secretary, maybe a bit formal speaking English but seemingly born to type it. She lived with her mother, who wasn’t yet fifty. Kitten was twenty-six and Doug a few years older. But he was happy living in an apartment, and Kitten and her mom dreamed of owning a house. Not fancy, she told me, but with more space for a vegetable garden than the plastic-pot-filled balcony they currently planted. I was scared to ask if she loved Doug, knowing what I did of his lack of plans. I was sometimes hesitant to talk at all, worried I’d suddenly blurt out, “Why don’t you leave the little (non) fuck?”
And why didn’t I?
As I stood in the doorway after my trip east for Christmas, suitcase still in one hand, keys in the other, Doug finally noticed I was back. He didn’t really smile or speak. His head, bobbing to unheard music, hesitated slightly, then his chin lifted sharply in greeting, dropping as quickly as his eyes refocused on the TV. Slowly, he downed his beer.
Damn my promise of a year. I’d be out of there by morning.