Triumph of the Spider Monkey Read online

  I wrote a hundred songs, two hundred, a thousand!… People here don’t believe me, they hate me. But pals of mine back in the East or out here, and Inside, they would not lie…would not try to cheat me…they would vouch for me! That song on the back of the Survivors’ hit single, a few months ago, the one they called “Learning to Love”—that’s my song—you check out the record and see, it’s my name down there, Bobbie Gotteson right there in the credits.…But the bastards cheated me. They cheated me like everybody else cheated me. They took my song and changed the title to that shitty title—my song was called “Unlearning to Live” and was a beautiful song—and those bastards, always screwing around and zonked out of their heads half the time, millionaire-bastards, my own age!—they bought my song from me for twelve lousy hundred dollars and changed the title and the words and— Melva’s son, the bastard is younger than I am!—the bastard heard me singing at Lucky Pierre’s, that’s on the Strip, and hung around and told me how good I was, and—

  Then they got an injunction with the police. They tried to defraud me. They tried to curtail my rights as a citizen. I was born in this country like everyone else! I am an American through and through! And they got a Jew lawyer to defraud me of my rights, got the Los Angeles Police Department to come move me out of that house—where I was an invited guest—where I was made to understand I could live as long as I wanted to—and my guitar was smashed, a cop smashed it in with his foot, right while I stood there crying and trying to explain to them—“I’m a song-writer,” I yelled. “I’m a musician!” The place was all wrecked by them, mattresses lying around and garbage all over, the dead ocelot I had to kill—had to smash its brains in with a lead lamp-stand, when it went crazy one night— the ocelot had started to rot—and I wasn’t feeling well, staggering around and trying to wake up, and the bastard cops break the door down and arrest me— “Who are you threatening?” they asked me. “Is your name ‘Bobbie Gotteson’? You’re under arrest—you’re being charged with extortion and felonious assault and trespassing and refusal to vacate the premises of a private establishment—”

  I put up my usual fight. I’m a good fighter. I learned in prison to…to not give in…not to snitch, and not to give in… But they worked me over and when we got to the station I puked all over the stairs going in, and they gave me hell for that, and there was so much vomit and blood I couldn’t talk over the telephone…trying like crazy to get through to somebody, to get a lawyer, to get a call through to somebody for help.…But my mind caved in. So when they said, Hey boy, you greasy hairy little spic, hey, you going to threaten any more white ladies?—I got it confused in my mind with being ten or eleven years old, a skinny little freaked-out runt back in New Jersey, with my drunk old lady yelling at me one day in the hall outside where we lived—and—uh—it all got collapsed into itself, the different times, and I was saying to her that I could fire her up and the whole building if I wanted to, if she would just stop screaming, stop screaming!—but that was when she ran for the police, my own mother, and came back with a cop from two blocks away, that was directing traffic out in the middle of a street, and madder than hell, a big, bull-sized Irish bastard, and my mother yelling for everybody in the building to hear, “Arrest him! Arrest him! He threatened my life!”

  …So the cop said, “Boy, did you threaten this lady’s life?”

  So I said, “No.”

  She slapped me and said, “He tried to kill me—he’s a born killer!”

  The policeman slapped me when I tried to get away. “You tried to kill her? You tried to kill her?”

  She was breathing so hard it turned into sobbing; then she staggered and pressed her hands against her stomach. The cop knocked me back against the stairway railing. “Got a knife, kid?—huh? You got a weapon? Where is it? Where is your weapon?” He squeezed me. Squeezed my legs up and down. Yanked at my shirt—tore it across one shoulder. His face was red. “Trying to kill people, huh? Off to a good start in life, huh? Little wop!”

  8

  An Unfilmed Love Scene

  The drill bounced against my tooth. An upper back tooth. Everything narrowed to it, it was a little island of crazy bright whining pain, but I sat very straight in the chair with my hands gripping the armrests and my feet flat on the platform, so I wouldn’t go crazy and start kicking, but the thing in my mouth…it was a hooked plastic thing that caught onto my lower lip and teeth to drain the spit away…the thing didn’t work right and got crooked, and water dribbled down my chin, and more water with a metallic taste began to form in a puddle at the back of my mouth, so I began to choke and the dentist said, “Hold still or I’ll drill right through your cheek—” and there it went again, the whining pain like fire right up into my jaw, screaming like a jet, right up past my jaw and into my head—

  “Hold still! Hold still!” cried the dentist. I could smell how he was sweating. He was a fat, angry man, out here at the prison on Wednesdays, with a lot of work to do, and his stomach pressing against my forearm, my forearm was bare, my sleeve was worked up to my elbow somehow with all the tension and pain, and when he paused with the drill I opened my eyes to get some reality, some contact, but the pain dizzied me so I could only see the wavering wiggling lines of pain, out there, in the air. A thing had been yanked down in front of me, with a light shining out of it, right into my eyes. The dentist was muttering to his assistant, a plump soft-looking plain little girl with a pony-tail, “Go get me some…hand me that thing…what’s slowing you down?…I’ve got six more of these to do this afternoon, hurry up!…his breath is so foul I may lose my lunch.…You’re going to have some real trouble, my friend,” he said to me, angrily, making the drill buzz against a piece of metal, “just wait till that rot hits your nerve canals!…you never brush your teeth, of course not, which is why your teeth are green and your blood stream polluted with decay and your gums…Jesus Christ, your gums would make a display in a special issue of Dental News!—” Here he began drilling again. It was a different drill now, a low rumbling whirring one, very strange, coarse, like a slowed-down saw, and his voice got mixed up with the whirring— “All rot! Rot! Rot! They expect us to drill out the rot and get the hole clean and fill it in again with silver, do they, eh?—and all this standing on our feet for eight hours a day five goddam days a week and half a day on Saturday—and who is it for?—it’s for criminals, rapists, murderers, and potential sadists, like you, what’s-your-name, cringing in the chair—lucky for you this isn’t an electric chair, eh?— or maybe it is?—eh?—they say the electric chair gets it over quick, too quick for some of the disgusting bastards who get strapped in it, in my opinion, and in the opinion of a lot of others, frankly, but this is one chair where you don’t get it over with quickly, is it, my boy? Is it? Hold still! This doesn’t hurt and you know it. You’re a coward. The last man in here, he fell asleep under the drill—fell asleep—because he trusted me, he didn’t flinch against me, he didn’t set himself in opposition to me the way you are— Betty, hand me that towel. What the hell?—where is this blood coming from? Betty! All right now, sit still, it slipped a little but who’s to blame, eh?—with you wiggling all around in the chair like a little weasel—lucky for you my schedule is packed or we’d have to do something about that wisdom tooth on its way down, it looks crooked to me, if the X-ray machine was working we’d get the low-down on that little number!—now this might hurt a little, because the hole is exposed now to the air and—”

  I began screaming.

  When the screaming stopped I could hear it echoing. The dentist was backing away. “I’m through!” he said. “Call the guard and get the little bastard out of here! I don’t have to put up with torture in the line of professional duty—this is going too far—this is an outrage— And my stomach hasn’t been right since he came into the room, his breath is an outrage—”

  The side of my head by the tooth, the right side, on up and through the back of my skull it rang with pain, all pounding and fizzing with pain, and inside it someone was
yelling at me: “—could puke, the creatures I have to treat! —could keel over and puke—and now he’s got an exposed root and it serves him right, let him feel some human pain for a change, instead of stinking up the place with his pyorrhea and his armpits—the little ape!—if the tax-payers of this state could peek in the door here and see just what their money is being poured into, the kind of rat-hole their money is being poured into—”

  The girl helped me out into another room. I staggered, I couldn’t see right. My eyes were filled with tears. Another prisoner on his way in gaped at me and said, “Jesus Christ…” and whimpered, and the girl let me sit down for a minute because my knees felt wobbly. She said something to me but I couldn’t hear. I was hunched over, both hands pressed against my jaw. The girl was standing over me, wringing her hands the way one of my mothers did. She was saying, “Aw heck, hey, don’t cry—hey—hey, your name is Bobbie, ain’t it?—Bobbie?” She came around to face me, squatting down. She stared up into my face where my eyes were out of focus. Her thighs stretched the white material of her dress; the skin of her throat and her face was so soft, so soft-looking, one touch would mar it, one poke of a finger would destroy it, her lips were pink with lipstick and were murmuring words I should be hearing.…“That wasn’t fair of him, I saw what he did, he didn’t freeze your gum and that was a dirty trick…just to save a few minutes, so he can get out of here faster.…And that wasn’t true, what he said about some guy falling asleep in the chair, well, that was a lie, it happened back in town with his own practice and the guy never fell asleep but had a heart attack or a stroke or something and had to be carried out feet first.…I don’t know why he tells such lies, right in front of me! I hate him! I should report him for drilling you without Novocain, on purpose to torture you, then see how he likes it!” She shook her head angrily. Tears came loose in her eyes. A tear rolled down her cheek. She was my age, sixteen or seventeen.

  But I hated women. On principle.

  * * *

  One of the exhibits is the Defendant’s notebook of “obscene drawings.” They are mainly circles meant to represent the female body. The circular parts are drawn lightly and sloppily, the other parts—the holes and slashes—are filled in brutally, angrily, blackly, and it is obvious that the Defendant broke the point of his pencil sometimes while drawing these things—When the notebook is shown to the jury, all the jurors gasp and look away, men and women both. It is shocking, and saddening, to see the graphic workings of a sick mind.

  * * *

  My Old Man up at that prison taught me how to hate them. Hate hate hate hate hate hate hate hate them Bobbie. Baby Bobbie. “Baby Bobbie Gotteson” was one of my names. My Old Man’s name was Danny Minx also known as Danny Blecher and he warned me, he whispered in my ear in his meaty hot-breath warning, just a friendly warning, “If you even think about them, Baby Bobbie, I’ll cut off your balls. How’s that?”

  9

  Unfilmed Love Scene

  In the Back Seat of Melva’s Rolls-Royce

  “You hate me, don’t you? You hate women, don’t you? Oh you think you can trick me, squirming and writhing and groaning like that, you’re all alike, you all share a filthy little secret! Bobbie! Stop or I’ll roll down the window and scream for help! Bobbie, this is not the place—this isn’t the place—”

  “Yes. Yes. Yes. It’s the place,” I said, from the back of my mouth, where the darkest sourest spit was gathering, and I scrambled all over her and thrust my knuckles in her mouth to quiet her because it was what came next; my head was just open and receiving that day, and all that remained of Bobbie Gotteson was the black poison at the back of my mouth that I had to swallow so I wouldn’t spit it into her face, Bobbie in a dark red monkey-outfit with gold buttons and braid, selected from a Novelty & Costume Shop on Sunset Boulevard, by Melva herself, just the right uniform for a five-foot-seven-and-a-half-inch chauffeur with black curly wiry hair and black curly wiry chest hair (showing at the top of his coat, where the first three buttons are unbuttoned) who has been waiting for two and a half hours for his mistress to appear. Melva then did appear, making her way through the shoppers and tourists on the street, her hair now bone-white and not puffed out any longer but arranged in stacks like a wedding cake, little curls all around her forehead and hiding her ears, and in spite of the two and a half hours she’d spent in the beauty parlor I knew it was necessary for me to scramble over the seat and cover her with love-pecks, pouting puffed-up motions of my mouth, so that passers-by had something to see, even if this wasn’t being filmed. Melva screamed. The car windows were up, the air-conditioning on, no one could hear her or if they could hear it wouldn’t matter, I had the impression out of the corner of my eye that someone was even taking a snapshot of us—though I might have been mistaken—though Melva had the idea those days that one of her sons was following us around, jealously, and had put a staple into the front left wheel of the car so that the air dribbled out of it slowly and left it flat, for us to discover when we emerged from our bungalow at San Luis Obispo one morning. Bobbie, my precious Bobbie, my brutal little Bobbie-glutton, wait till you get in show business—how proud I’ll be, how the public will devour you!—just wait! Melva teased me with the promise of a screen-test and a recording session, she whispered that she had a contact in Vanbrugh’s studios, she knew all the executives there, then she whispered one night that she knew Vanbrugh himself, and in fact was an “ex-associate” of Vanbrugh’s, she called him Vannie, and snuggled against me murmuring Vannie, Vannie, all of you are alike, sweet Bobbie-Vannie, you could be a son of his, you could be one of my own darling boys…maybe I’ll adopt you, tuck you under my wing and into my will!—maybe maybe maybe maybe—

  I wanted to rip the eyelids off her. First the left. Then the right. Frosted-silver eyelids.

  A pool gathered at the back of my mouth. Poison leaking out of my gums, maybe. Greenish-black martini-sour liquid. On the pillowcases in the morning there were black streaks —but it was Melva’s mascara, not my spittle.

  “Oh you tried to kill me. You tried to strangle me,” Melva sighed.

  “Why not?”

  “Oh you’re getting like all of them, they go downhill one step at a time…nastier, filthier…more demanding.…I hardly know my own sons any longer,” Melva yawned. She shook her head and smiled vaguely at me. The drug was taking effect. Her marred face, her sagging throat. “But I don’t mind. I’m tolerant of different personality types. You wouldn’t believe it…but back in the ’30’s I was a member of…of…of the Communist Party out here, and I learned to tolerate everything. But don’t ever tell Mr. Vanbrugh on me,” she whispered. “If he found out he’d disown me.”

  I pretended to sleep. It was easier.

  “I don’t want to be disowned by anyone,” Melva yawned. The violence of her yawn ran through both of us. She lay curled against me, her arms around my head so that my face was loosely pressed against her throat, and we were somewhere near the surf, the pounding of the great ocean I had crossed this continent to see, or maybe we were huddled together in the back of the Rolls, parked there on the Boulevard amid the rocking thudding thumping rattling noise of cars and buses and strangers who gawked in at us. They too had crossed the great continent. To see. To stare. To take pictures of people like me. Half a block away was a famous restaurant humped like a hat, a brown hat, and if I raised myself on one stiff elbow I might be able to see if one of her boys was hanging out there, by the doorman who was supposed to be—how did I know this?— one of Melva’s ex-lovers. The boys took turns spying on us.

  10

  How the Maniac Gotteson Travelled West

  I wasn’t a maniac then. But it took me 21 months to get here.

  When they let me out I took a job with a construction company in South Amboy, to wait for my Old Man to get free. He was up for parole in a few months. He said to keep out of trouble, Bobbie, or else—!—and sent word to a contact of his on the Outside to watch me, and to report back to him if I got in trouble; so be
tween the contact who was invisible and my parole officer I knew it was wisest to keep out of trouble. But I couldn’t tell them apart! My Old Man Danny Minx floated everywhere, invisible, and in jail he’d taught me the powers of the mind and how he sent himself out of his body at will, to roam the streets of the city and be back in time for wake-up at seven, to slip into his body and fool everyone. I don’t know. Danny took me under his wing and protected me, so if he was lying or crazy or putting me on I didn’t ask questions not even silently, for fear he could read minds. The link between us was very strong, but it ran from him to me and not the other way. I could get messages from him, but couldn’t send any. One day hauling lumber at work I got a crisp startling message from Danny to pursue my musical career.

  So I took guitar and singing lessons from a Spaniard who ran a music shop in downtown Amboy. $1 a lesson and I tried to get in for two lessons a week, to surprise Danny when he got out.

  I hummed songs out of the air. I could “receive” words if I hit upon the right tunes. I asked the Spaniard, a little nervous guy, if that was how genius worked—he said it sure was—it sure was. One Saturday afternoon, he had me play the guitar for people browsing around the store, like a wandering minstrel, I strummed the chords I knew and wasn’t too scared and sang whatever came into my head—

  o you’re eatable

  non-repeatable!

  —and one silvery-haired man in his thirties or forties asked me for my autograph and to have coffee with him, but he looked so anxious I knew it was more than just coffee he wanted, so I said no. My Old Man would kill me. He had already fucked me in front of two other guys to punish me. At such times he said he was from the “F.B.I.” and would “take no sass!”