And I felt heavier. I was, in fact, gaining weight. One night Marc came over with two Snicker bars, and he handed me one. He did this like we were partners in fat (and we were.)
I was beginning to gain weight but I was nowhere close to how big he was, and it wasn’t exactly fair because Marc was a muscular guy, and weight on him was still bulk-defined. I was looking lousy and felt shitty about myself.
I felt heavier than I actually was… But either way, I was changing.
I met Robert, Marc’s “famous” older brother, one Sunday afternoon, when I’d driven Marc to the grocery store to pick up some “apology” flowers for Sammi. I actually only met his brother for a very short time. He was coming out of the store when I first saw him. Marc, delighted, pointed him out. What a let down. I had a different picture of him in my head, not at all the way Marc had painted. He looked like an out of shape badger and, ironically, he had on workout sweats.
Robert was walking out of the store with a bag of something. Marc introduced me real quick, and they both bullshitted for a little while.
My side had hurt that day. I didn’t feel like hanging with Marc. I think Sean, David and Ed had gone somewhere, and I wished I were with them instead…
I’d expected a lot more from Robert. He had a six-pack of Pepsi in the bag (he tilted the bag, showing us) for some meeting he was headed to. I felt let down at the sight of this pooped legend but at the same time, I was kind of afraid.
He spoke loudly, like he never once in his life had to listen. He seemed like a pretty blunt, severe guy.
The image of him really stuck with me... I think, deep down, I felt sorry for Marc’s big brother. I don’t know why I just did. Something about the way his eyes didn’t care to notice things made me sad. He had more girls than I ever would, and was popular once and probably had had quite a life... But it was like he was blind with too much sight or something. Like he saw too much and could only center on one thing so not to go crazy... Like a predator caught in headlights. I don’t know. It’s funny how all that works. The people who frighten you the most you end up feeling really sorry for.
Around that time Sean and David had been hanging out together quite a lot, mostly during the day. Marc worked full daytime hours. Marc, just to me, said Sean and David were both “lucky assholes” because they didn’t have to work an eight shift like he did. They both had student hours and worked part time. I can tell it got Marc sore they had school and free afternoons in common.
Marc knew, at this point, that Sean and David were pretty close friends, and in the beginning of certain nights, hanging at Ed’s, when it was just Marc and myself, he’d sit around and sulk, gazing at the TV with empty eyes, and I could tell, deep inside, he felt pretty sore about Sean and David hanging out without him.
 |
| CHAPTER 15 |
Marc had been treating Cudd nicely, as if Cudd were one of his last true friends on earth. Marc was two people: with Sean, although whiny, he was an experienced drunken pirate of the night; and with Cudd he seemed like a cheery kid who’d heard the distant, raging sea in some misplaced sea shell, but remained dry and cozy along the soft, sandy shoreline.
Most of what Marc and Cudd had in common was food.
One night it was Marc, Cudd, and Sissy. That was a strange trio to observe. It was as if three different colored learning blocks had lined up to form the same letters: ZZZ. It was a drag; I was bored; sleep would have beaten watching these three. I’d have much rather been with Sean and David, but David had a lot of night classes going and would study at night, and I’m not sure what Sean was up to. So I sat around on the couch, a bored though observant ghost. The trio was making pasta for dinner.
Sissy had diet spaghetti. Half Italian, he moved his arms and hands expressively when he talked, dancing around the kitchen with grandiose expressions while “teaching” the boys his spaghetti making techniques. Cudd and Marc would listen, concentrative, nodding.
I was drinking a beer, on my second, just starting to feel the buzz, and I had to sit and watch Marc, who wasn’t drinking, once my wild, boozing mentor, acting like a moron with these two clowns; it was driving me nuts. I’d have preferred to watch hockey with Ed. Anything else. I’d have preferred death or torture - and torture I got. I placed my attention onto this horrific theater of the absurd: my friends making diet spaghetti, and worst of all, excited about it. To top it off it was a Friday night. Things were declining fast around the Cavern (yet for Sissy times were good).
But when the meal was done, I had my share, and I would usually, to make the drinking buzz persist, never mix beer with food. But I could foresee the buzz going nowhere without Marc drinking with me and, aborting the plan to get drunk, I gave in and joined the feast.
It pains me that I have to admit this but, the diet spaghetti tasted good, and all because of some eleventh hour seasoning Marc had dabbed in.
Marc Sandoval had won that night. Not only because I loved the food, but because of the aftermath. That seasoning was real spicy. It made the diet spaghetti taste so good you couldn’t tell it was diet and, knowing Marc, it probably made it just as fattening if not even more so, deleting any reason for it being low fat in the first place.
Later on that night when I got home I awoke out of bed with a deep, rotting pain in my stomach, like something had imploded inside me.
Time had landed the knockout punch:
My head spinning, I rose out of bed and ended up in the bathroom, kneeling down at the toilet, puking my motherfucking guts out.
All that week there was leftover spaghetti in the refrigerator. I saw it every time I’d open the fridge door and grab out a beer.
Soon enough Sean Dusk returned. When Sean came over Marc would, once again, pick on Cudd.
Cudd had thick calves. One night Marc asked Cudd if he, when exercising, centered solely on his calves; Sean laughed. The way Sean would laugh, I could tell, instigated Marc. Sean had a particular instigating laughter: it sounded like pepper on an empty plate, and if food was placed there it would be seasoned, but from beneath.
After Marc said that comment Cudd flipped him off, perturbed, and sauntered to his bedroom.
They must have made a whole lot of spaghetti. Ed would make himself continuous platefuls, it seemed. He’d been working days so he was around at night. Once he put two gobs of butter atop the pasta. Ed could do that shit with food and never gain a pound. He was built like a coat hanger, wire shoulders holding up a gaunt frame. I envied that he could eat a lot without gaining weight, but wouldn’t want to resemble a coat hanger, so I didn’t envy Ed Marshall entirely.
Sissy usually came home around midnight; he’d fix a plate for himself. It was like there was endless spaghetti in the refrigerator; would it ever run out?
And Cudd, to top it off, had made a Spaghetti sandwich: with two pieces of buttered toast, a plethora of mayonnaise, and three slices of American cheese.
Strangest of all was Marc - for some reason he didn’t eat any of the spaghetti after that first night.
After Cudd had gone into his room, Dusk, who’d stopped laughing, replied: “That guy’s a fucking idiot.”
I really didn’t understand why he said that. Cudd was pretty boring at times, sure, but he wasn’t a bad guy, in fact the only thing anyone had on Cudd was that he was himself and didn’t care what anybody thought. To be honest, I liked having him around.
“Do you think he’s pissed?” Marc asked in a slightly worried tone.
“Who cares?” Sean replied plainly.
As the night grew into early morning, Sean left; Marc hadn’t fallen sleep.
The moment after Dusk was gone, right after the door closed, Marc got up from the couch, walked into the kitchen, and hand washed all of the dirty plates.
I’ve never been to jail but a friend of mine, Gregory Den (you’ll meet him later), recently went for a DUI-weekend. Upon my visit in the Yard he said the worst thing about incarceration is that it’s extremely boring and time stands perfectly still. He told me about an instance in the Yard when a few of the convicts spotted a single dice sitting in the dirt, outside the fence, and pretty soon all the inmates outside were standing there staring at it.
Well it was beginning to feel like jail in the Cavern and the single dice was Marc. He’d play little jokes on everybody except for Sean.
One of these pranks, which happened over half a dozen times, was when Ed would take a piss while we all sat around, watching TV. Marc would get up, go into Ed’s bedroom and grab a T-shirt out from his closet. When Ed returned his shirt would be covering the TV set. It was a lame prank but seeing Ed’s dull yet miffed reactions was pretty funny.
This other time Marc made a Cudd-like spaghetti sandwich. It wasn’t the endless spaghetti, which had run out, but rather the hard stuff out of the package, which he put in-between two slices of bread on a plate, and next to the sandwich on the plate was a jar of mayonnaise. Then he wrote something on a piece of paper, which he taped to the plate rim, and set the plate on the bar counter. The paper read: CUDD’S DINNER: 30,000 CALORIES A BITE – CALVES WELCOME – STAY CLEAR OF ROAMING CATTLE!!!
Sean liked that one. When Cudd eventually saw it he pretended to ignore the joke but his silence was too deep; breaking from the silence he merely replied: “You wasted all the spaghetti, Marc. I paid for that.”
But nonetheless, through the pranks I was beginning to get tired of the Cavern. Perhaps it was that David wasn’t around to keep us sanctified.
But there was a subtle catch:
When I stayed home I’d start missing the place and wonder, with a pang of curious, envy itching in my bones, what kind of small, stupid mischief Marc was pulling on somebody.
I’m at the diner one night when I’d left the Cavern early: there was this family a few booths down from me, laughing, with their attention on the youngest child: there were two older girls, a mother and a young boy: they’d all greatly enjoyed what he’d just said. I don’t know why but it bugged me. I don’t know what she said or did to make them laugh but I bet it was more endearing than it was funny.
I was very alone that night at the diner. I sat in the lonely booth and for some reason I couldn’t get my mind off a certain experience I had in the fourth grade…
I was in a fenced-in sand covered play area and there were these three girls in there. I’d been on the swing because I didn’t feel like playing kickball out on the cement where most of the kids were having a loud game of it.
Of these three girls inside the fence one of them was very cute and popular, the other two downright ugly. I’d just gotten off the swing near the jungle gym and I called one of the ugly girls “Salmon”, which I’d just deemed her, because (in my opinion) she resembled a fish.
I remember the popular girl “commanded” the two ugly ones to drag me out of the playground, by my feet, which they did; man those girls were strong. And it wasn’t a joke for the popular girl. She hated my guts and wanted me out!
So soon enough I was outside the fence, my sandy back on the graveled cement, eyes faced up at the sunny blue sky. But I guess, in a way, I was inside-of-outside. It kind of depends how you look at it.
To be perfectly honest, I get pretty wary sometimes to even get near that fenced-in playground…
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