Faithless: Tales of Transgression Read online

  One truth I’ve learned in TV journalism, human beings have a limited capacity for solemnity and sympathy. A few intense minutes is it. Before EXPOSÉ! I was on the WNET-TV Nightly News for seven years. On camera we’d be all glum formality but as soon as the red light clicked on, meaning we were off, we’d grin and exchange wisecracks. The more solemnity, the more laughs. I have to confess, S. was one of the worst. I mean, one of the wittiest guys at the station. Witty is sexy, right? You know how hard it is to resist saying anything if you get a few laughs. So I’m not passing any highbrow moral judgment on other people; that’s not my nature.

  A while back, before my career ended, I happened to overhear my fifteen-year-old son K. boasting of me, sprawled on his bed watching TV with the phone receiver on his shoulder (this is how K. talks to his girlfriend for hours: he’s got his own phone line of course), “My dad’s OK. He’s cool. There’s no generation thing between us because we’re, like, the same generation, y’know?”

  Maybe I shouldn’t be, but I’m flattered by this.

  I’M A FORTY-SIX-YEAR-OLD Caucasian straight male.

  Even with my disabilities, I look much younger than my age. M., my wife, who’s at least forty-three (she’s kept her exact age ambiguous) looks like a girl in her mid-twenties.

  No one we know looks “his” or “her” age. It’s as if the concept “age” no longer applies.

  Impossible to guess “ages.” And type-casting people? It can’t be done.

  Take S., for instance. I have a B.A. in classics from Princeton and an M.A. in TV journalism from N.Y.U. But my mind is mostly empty; I’ve forgotten most of the Greek I knew and remember only the ominous, cloudy penumbra of tragedy. I’ve been married to M. for eighteen years. We have two children, K. and his sister C. who’s eleven, or maybe, now, twelve. M. is an executive at CitCorp Trust and I’m not sure what she does, but she does it capably. Through our investments we’ve accumulated somewhere beyond $2 million in property, assets, and savings. Which is about average for Deer Trail Villas, I think. One million dollars doesn’t mean what it meant in my parents’ generation; it’s more like what $100,000 was then.

  I don’t know my family very well. It isn’t something that upsets me, but it’s a fact. When I was S., a dashing TV personality, one of the EXPOSÉ! reporters sent out undercover to investigate secrets of “graft, corruption, dishonesty and immorality in the private and public sectors”—“EXPOSÉ! in the interests of American Democracy”—my kids were proud of me, yet I was never able to interest them in person the way my TV-self S. did. S. was a kind of twin-rival: enhanced by skillful camera work, giddy helicopter shots, and an edgy rock-music score that kept the atmosphere tense and percussive even when nothing much was happening. In real life, where most of us live, when nothing happens, which is most of the time, you’ve got no background music to suggest something is going to happen—soon! Both K. and C. used to ply me with questions about the more sensational exposés but they got restless if I spoke beyond five minutes. Any lapse into technical vocabulary made their eyes glaze over. Even M. with her appetite for insider information and scandal became visibly bored if I went on too long. I was hurt, but joked that as S. of EXPOSÉ! I had plenty of fans who sent me messages, gifts, marriage proposals, so why didn’t my own family love me more? M. laughed in that way that sounds like expensive silverware clattering and said, “Because we are your family, silly, you’re supposed to love us.”

  A reply that left me stunned, for it was both senseless and profound.

  In our six-bedroom fieldstone colonial at 9 Deer Trail Road, we see one another fleetingly. It’s as though each of us is surfing TV channels and the others are TV images flashing by. Sometimes you pause and watch for a few seconds, or minutes; most of the time you get restless and move on, looking for something more exciting. We eat meals at different times and in different parts of the house and most evenings we’re in different rooms watching TV or cruising the Internet, though the kids are supposed to be doing homework of course. My wife brings home CitCorp work but sometimes I hear TV voices in her bedroom, at least I assume they’re TV voices, as late as 2 A.M. I used to know every inch of my wife’s body and in the early mornings when we were young we’d make love tenderly and M. would tell me her dreams, which seemed to me the most intimate of all human gestures; but I haven’t been told a dream of M.’s in years, possibly because she’s stopped having them, or I’ve forgotten to ask. I do know that I haven’t seen M. unclothed in a long time and have a mild curiosity about what she looks like. She seems not to have gained an ounce. She’s so glamorous, energetic, and “young.” Like S., she’s experimented with her hair color, so there are no gray hairs on her head; but I can’t recall whether the glossy maroon highlights were always there amid the mahogany-brown, or whether they’ve been added recently. I would never ask M., of course.

  I would never spy on M. She knows she’s perfectly safe singing to herself in her steamy bathroom after a shower, or undressing in her bedroom adjacent to my own. She knows I would never “accidentally” push open her door. She knows I would never “sleepwalk” into her bed.

  After ∗COPLAND∗ I’m not going to sleepwalk into anybody’s bed for a long, long time.

  It’s true, like most media people S. had a fast pulse. I’d been sexually active, sometimes a little compulsive, but rarely with a WNET colleague or anyone “serious” and much of the time with professionals, about whom I’d have no more feeling than I have for the dental assistant girl who so avidly cleans the tartar off my teeth every six months. So there’d never been any question of personal involvement or what you’d call, strictly speaking, “marital infidelity.” All my male, married friends at the station feel exactly the same way: what you do with a pro is a cash deal and nothing more, and no one’s business but your own. In any case, M. assures me she prefers me “in a neutral state.” That is, neuter. In the days when we visited friends’ houses, after she’d had a few glasses of wine, I’d overhear her confiding she could go without sex for the rest of her life—“As long as I have my warm cuddly companion in bed.”

  M. means our dachshund Chop-Chop. But as long as she leaves this ambiguous, I haven’t felt hurt or challenged.

  MAYBE MY MISTAKE WAS, preparing for our investigation of New Jersey police, I had my brown hair bleached platinum-blond, trimmed up the back of my head and styled into long, wavy wings with a center part. Even my eyebrows and lashes—bleached, too. My left earlobe was pierced and inserted with several gold studs. At a local tanning salon I acquired a smooth roasted-almond look. (Cops are notoriously homophobic, right?) The effect was spectacular.

  Young women who’d been seeming not to “see” me in recent years, and men who’d never given me a second glance, now gave me that second glance, and a third. My bosses at WNET, including even the billionaire owner Mister G-d (as he was fondly known), stared after me searchingly. An over-forty straight Caucasian male?—married, with two kids? Hard to believe.

  I learned that sexual power is generated through the eye of the beholder. If you charge someone up, whether it’s a her or a him, you can’t help charging yourself up, too.

  Not that I strayed across the gender line, even so. Though I had opportunities.

  When M. first saw my new look, she was alarmed, even a little frightened. “My God, what have you done to yourself? Is this you?” She actually touched my face with her cool fingers, like a blind woman. I told her she could cut her hair, too, bleach it, get a tan—“Join me.” Quickly she said, trying not to show the disdain she felt, “Oh no. I’d lose the respect of my colleagues. I’ve got a serious job.”

  As if my EXPOSÉ! job wasn’t serious.

  As if American democracy doesn’t depend upon a continuous exposure of truth.

  AND NOW I’m on disability leave, “convalescing.”

  “Did you take Chop-Chop out, at least?”—so M. asks when she returns home, never earlier than 7 P.M. weekdays, from CitCorp. Implying I can’t imagine what the hell y
ou do all day long but I’m not going to say a word. So I tell her yes, even if I haven’t taken Chop-Chop farther than the rear of the garage, where the little dog’s turds are accumulating as rapidly as the populations of third world countries.

  K. is embarrassed of his dad hobbling around on crutches, whimpering on the toilet straining to produce a few rabbit-pellets every two or three days. My hair’s no longer blond of course but shock-white. And thinning. My sky-blue eyes women seemed to adore are now a grubby blue like stained pebbles. My contact lenses don’t fit the way they used to but irritate my eyes so that it looks as if I have a perpetual allergy, or I’ve been crying. (Have I been crying? The other evening I overheard C. ask her mother, “Why is Dad so sad now? Why does he cry?” and M. said gently, “Your father isn’t sad, honey, and he isn’t crying. Men rarely display their emotions. He has allergies.”)

  It depresses me to think that I might have as many as four decades remaining. If I stay out of the way of vengeful ∗COPS∗.

  My own father, whom I’ve been said to resemble, though I’ve never seen it, is still alive “and kicking”—as he says—well into his eighties. He’s delusional, yet not much more than he’d been in the prime of life.

  The other day I read in the New York Times a startling statistic: as many as one-fifth of Caucasian males of my generation and older are “disabled” and drawing benefits. Physical, mental, vocational disabilities. We millions constitute a “potentially powerful political force” if anyone could be motivated to organize us, but who’d volunteer for such a task? Most of us don’t get out of bed until after our wives leave for work and our children, if we still have children living at home, leave for their schools, and it can take as long as two hours for us to prepare and eat breakfast (in my case sugared cornflakes, skim milk, cups of Sanka, and half a pack of forbidden cigarettes) and to watch morning TV news or read the paper (in my case, the Times with its proliferating sections: first the obituaries, the best-written prose in the paper, then the A section which is mainly international news, then the dreary “metro” section and local New Jersey news which is petty politics and sordid crimes, then the sports section, then the business section, then the arts which is mostly movie ads and movie PR, then special sections like science, house and home, dining in and dining out, and computer news—whew!). By the time I’ve finished breakfast and the pages of the Times are scattered around me on the floor it’s nearing noon, I haven’t shaved or dressed yet and I feel like the melted watch in that painting of Salvator Dalí, with the black ants crawling over it.

  Still, most days I force myself to go into my study and turn on this tape recorder and speak into it. Because my therapist Dr. A. has urged me to record what happened to me back in March, to alter my life forever; or, to be precise, what I believe happened to me. (Does Dr. A. believe me? At our second meeting, seeing the look of incredulity and repugnance in his face, I asked him point-blank if he believed me, and Dr. A. quickly said yes he believes that I experienced something, and it was “genuinely traumatic.” Yes, Doctor, I said, but do you believe it happened as it did, and that it was real?—and Dr. A. repeated in his phlegmy voice that, yes, he believes I experienced something, and it was “genuinely traumatic.” I walked out of the bastard’s office and stayed away for two weeks, then decided to swallow my pride and return because my disability pension covers therapy, and antidepressant drugs, and seeing Dr. A. twice a week gives focus to my life the way my work once did.) On a wall in Dr. A’s office is the command attributed to Socrates—Know yourself. It’s a challenge, I figure.

  So I speak into this tape recorder. I get dizzy watching the cassettes spin. Sometimes I hear my voice like a TV voice become urgent, even anxious, as I circle the trauma of my beating on March 29. It was police who did it! Our police! Whose uniforms, firearms, and billy clubs we buy for them! Then I’ll be overcome by a fit of yawning. I rest my heavy head on the tape recorder and I wake an hour later, sharp pains in my neck and spine. Sometimes, overcome by fatigue, I stumble to the nearest sofa, where I sleep until early afternoon when hunger pains wake me as if I were an infant ravenous for the breast. When I get up for the second time, I avoid the tape recorder except to quickly switch it off.

  I’ll fix myself a late lunch. Cottage cheese spooned out of the container, sprinkled with wheat germ. I’m hoping to replenish some of my lost calcium. More Sanka, more cigarettes. I’m too restless to sit down. I wander the house. In each room I enter I switch on the TV so I’m not too lonely. I don’t want to start talking to myself like a “tragic” figure. That old bore Oedipus at Colonus. An outcast. In a strange land. Wrapped in rags—disgusting! Filth of years on his withered body, skin wasting away, and the flesh on his ribs. And his face, the blind sockets of his eyes. And the scraps he eats to fill his shrunken belly.

  Rainy days I stay inside. Sunny days are too bright for my eyes, even with dark glasses. I don’t want to obsess about being watched. Being videotaped. Deer Trail Villas is a private residential community patrolled by security guards and obviously these rent-a-cops aren’t just guarding homeowners like me but spying on some of us, too. Security guards licensed to carry firearms like ours are connected with the police; probably most of them are ex-cops in fact. Whenever I take Chop-Chop out, even if it’s only to the rear of the garage and back, I experience a hallucinatory vision of such clarity!—myself seen through a rifle scope. My thin, haggard figure intersected by the killer × of the scope. I can “feel” the faceless assassin’s finger on the trigger. Had S. the integrity of those tragic old Greeks, he’d turn calmly to confront death. Wouldn’t grovel for mercy as I’d done in ∗COPLAND∗. Instead, I’m overcome by animal panic. “No! Please don’t shoot!”—I’m scrambling to get back inside the house, and poor Chop-Chop is in a panic too and nearly trips me, and my crutches, and we collapse in a whimpering heap just inside the door.

  WHOEVER IT IS, hasn’t yet fired a shot. Even as a prank.

  I’m wondering which of us will prevail: him, or me.

  IT’S A FACT, yet a fact we couldn’t seem to demonstrate visually on EXPOSÉ!, that New Jersey cops are larger than normal human beings. You see them in squad cars larger than normal-sized cars, more like tanks, and they hardly fit inside these vehicles. You see them patrolling the streets on foot; it’s like an optical illusion. When they get close, they’re only just “tall”—maybe six feet three or four. But at a short distance, they’ve grown to seven feet at least. At a farther distance, they’re giants. They must weigh up to three hundred pounds. Some of the bulk is fat, but most of it is hard muscle, the way a rhinoceros is hard muscle. They tend to look alike, fair- or brown-haired, with buzz cuts. Their ages are anywhere between twenty-nine and forty-nine. Their flushed faces are broad as shovels. They’ve been trained to smile with their mouths and to use such expressions as “sir,” “ma’am,” “excuse me, please” deadpan. It’s a chilling experience to see a New Jersey cop stretching his mouth in a smile while his eyes are fixed on you like icepicks. Quite a few cops have dimpled cheeks. They give the impression of being husky, overgrown boys who would not utter profanities, let alone obscenities, in the presence of women. Their hands are enormous, the size of a normal man’s feet. Their arms are the size of a normal man’s thighs. Their necks are the size of a normal man’s waist. Their heads are round and heavy as bowling balls and their bodies are built like fire hydrants. Yet they can be startlingly quick on their feet, as killer rhinos and elephants are quick on their feet. They take pride in their blue-gray uniforms, their polished leather boots, visored caps, and chunky belts which contain billy clubs, a holstered revolver, and a small two-way radio. Often they wear dark-tinted mirror-glasses. We citizens have become fearful of our cops, but we admire them, too. Even those of us who are middle-aged—and older—wish to think that cops are Authority, our respected elders. We think that, if we admire them sufficiently, and make public our admiration, they will look kindly upon us. They won’t harass us, or injure us. They won’t force our cars o
ff the Turnpike during their one-hundred-mile-per-hour pursuits of teenage car thieves from Newark and they won’t riddle our bodies with bullets in “cross fire.” If we’re polite with them, smiling and cowering. If we know the right words. If we’re the right people. If we’re the right color, neither black nor brown, not “light-skinned” anything.

  Of course, the most dangerous cops aren’t in uniform. They’re “plain-clothes.” They look like anyone!—except larger.

  These cops, uniformed and plainclothes, have many fans among the populace. One of their most vocal fans is the governor of New Jersey, who makes it a point to be seen on TV at least weekly “extolling” cops for their courage and good deeds in fighting crime. Our mayors of cities and suburbs alike “extol” their cops. Caucasian juries routinely acquit cops charged with brutal racist acts, including murder; mostly, Caucasian grand juries refuse to indict them. Necessary force is the reason. Politicians are terrified of getting on the wrong side of the cops. All know how devastating a police strike could be, how their administrations would be revealed as powerless, like quadriplegics dumped out of their wheelchairs by high-spirited boys. A police strike would probably be the most disastrous civil upset that could happen to us, more terrifying in its consequences than strikes by firefighters, doctors, hospital workers. It isn’t just that an army of cops might go on strike, which is a passive act; they might strike out at us—they have the weapons, the armored vehicles, and the expertise. They have the zest for hurt, uncultivated in the rest of us.

  When a cop is killed, which happens frequently (drug wars? organized crime hits? feuds within the Department?) there are lavish outdoor funerals, a parade of mounted police and stately processions ending with burials presided over by top prelates. The governor, mayors, dignitaries attend. There’s an atmosphere of angry sorrow. There’s a quickening of the pulse, as the ceremony ends, and an appetite for revenge is aroused. Even on TV news clips, this appetite is powerfully evoked.