Killing the Cross Read online

  It may be assumed that if you quit a perfectly good job for no apparent reason, other than the fact that everyone began to make fun of you, that you must be insane. You lose. And so it goes. If you respond from the beginning, then you must be prepared to have your comments perceived as hostile, and therefore aggressive, although they have merely been offered as defenses on your own behalf. Then you fall prey to even harsher ridicule than before because you committed to fighting, and it is a losing social battle. You become the asshole, and your boss fires you. Catch-22.

  But always, if you fight the good fight and you are obedient to God, then He will defend you, even though you suffer, and he will vanquish your enemies before your patient eyes. One by one, although you long for your colleagues’ sudden and horrible deaths, they cling on day after day. There are the little things, however, like the nasty infections, the extended “medical leaves,” the sudden deaths of relatives. These are the little things that you can relish, although you beg God to forgive you for taking even a smidgeon of joy in your enemies’ misfortunes, that feeling in the back of your mind gives you comfort as bad things continue to befall your tormentors. All the while, I wish that I could just walk up to them and say forthrightly, “God does not like it when people pick on me.” Would that just make me a zealot in their minds? Would I lose all credibility? Where is that line, when people die and it is their coworkers’ turn to say, “Everyone respected him,” even though no one says, “Everyone liked him?” When do we cross that line of no return, when we have pissed off or alienated everyone around us so badly that they would refrain from saying ANYTHING about us to the media if interviewed? Can you answer that one, cocksucker?

  Love,

  Foley

  Dear Dad,

  Goddam, King’s Cross is a blast. We started staying at a hostel right in the middle of Sydney, and of course, it is run by Dutch people. But that is all right, these seem like young rich kids from Amsterdam or something that just decided to go all in together and buy a hostel. The place is all painted funky colors and has a funky odor from all the hashish and smelly shoes. I shudder to think what is growing in the showers, but I really do not care at this point. The rooms are really cheap, and Ingrid and I went ahead and ponied up for a couple’s room for the long term. I think we paid for a couple of months or something. I asked her why we had to go all the way to Australia for me to get religion when I am already saved, and she said that I had to experience this place first to see what the opposite of spiritual purity is.

  The place is nice. It has three floors, and a roof, like Cairo, and the Australian sun beats down all day while the breeze blows nice and clean. People just sit around and talk and smoke hashish all day long and occasionally walk down to the liquor store to get a bottle of beer. That walk is something else, let me tell you. First thing you walk out the door you are in an alley with about ten different little cafes with food from all over the world. First, there is Indian food, which I like to get right in the evening just after the sun has gone down and the crowds of young backpacker chicks start dragging ass back from a long day and the lights start to flicker up and down the street. The heat starts to lift off the pavement and it meets the heat that is settling in my belly from that Tandoori stuff that they put in that Indian stew. Man, it will hit you like a bowling ball on fire way down in the bottom of your gut, and then you wash it down with an icy-cold Coca-cola and you are set for another big bowl full. A big afterglow comes up all over you and you start to feel the sultry shine of horny tourists and backpackers all around you.

  This place is throbbing with sex. Another café is right next door, and I like to eat at that one right at lunch time because all the little stewardesses from Air Thailand are down there with their shopping bags all set to run back from a day down at Town Center and jump on their planes back to Bangkok. I have to be careful, though, because it is right outside the front door of the hostel, and Ingrid took up the day shift at the front desk. I don’t want to pick up on one of these little brown bunnies right in front of her, even if she says she doesn’t mind who I screw, that just isn’t good form. I don’t want Ingrid to think that she and the Fennies have turned me into some kind of sexual Frankenstein. I will get lucky soon enough. I will let you know as soon as I find out what is further down the street.

  Oh, by the way, check it out Dad. I have decided to start my novel here since it is such a relaxing, Bohemian atmosphere. Ingrid works during the day and most of the night, so I thought that I would go ahead and use this time productively.

  Here is a snapshot of Sydney so far in my own literary style:

  “Sydney throbs. Darlinghurst Road snakes its way through a sweaty drizzle that sizzles as it sprays the yellow bulbs pulsating on the sex shop walls across the street and hisses beneath the wet tires of slowly passing cars. Taxis slide by the alley entrance from where I see the slippery black current of cross-walkers and cross-dressers soaking in the sultry mist. Orange-pulp sensuality permeates the thick air on this corner of the city, seeping through my open purple and yellow upstairs hostel window. The silent, steady stream of onlookers accentuates the strobing glimmers dancing in the shiny, wet underbelly of the wandering show. It is a constant festival, without horns, squirming incessantly with a feeling between Rio in Carnivale and New Year’s in Hong Kong.”

  Isn’t that a trip, Dad? I have never been to Rio or Hong Kong, and here I am writing about them in my novel. That is the power and freedom of writing, I guess. I can unleash my mind. My first novel! Hey, I just thought about something I could go for the Nobel Peace Prize in Literature. In fact, my character can mention that in the novel. I wonder if anyone has ever actually talked about the Prize in a novel and then won it? I suppose that you would have to have some really lofty social purpose for the book or get across some really heavy message if you were going to stand a chance of doing that. What do you think, cocksucker?

  Love,

  Foley

  Dear Foley,

  Too many adjectives and participles, in your novel that is. You are not going to get anywhere writing like that. Your style is just way too cumbersome. You don’t have the natural talent to write, I can tell already. You have to have a natural talent, or you are just wasting your time. What heavy purpose are you trying to prove? That you can run away from all of your responsibilities, as always, and traipse around the world with your little tramp wasting your time and money? Oh, yeah, I forgot, it is not your money. I keep forgetting how good you are at spending other peoples’ money. What a disappointment you have become. I tell Marlene what you are doing and she just laughs. But she really thinks that you are sad. She tells me that it must be hard having a son like you who brings shame on the family. But you are a man, now, Foley. Why don’t you act like one? And that poor girl: Being stuck with a project like you. That’s what you are right, just her little project? Because no self-respecting woman would hang out with you just for the fun of it.

  Anyway my point is , you are no writer, rest assured of that. Don’t come begging for money when your luck runs out and little miss pharmacy company leaves your ass high and dry in some bar down under somewhere and they come and drag you off to deport you. And it doesn’t hurt my feelings when you call me names, son. Remember, I’m not even sure if I am your real father, and besides, your grandfather had some real doozies that he called me long before you came along. So try and hurt me all you want. You won’t win the Nobel Prize either, don’t worry. You’ve already won the prize for biggest schmuck in my book.

  Dad

  Dear Dad,

  Sorry to hear your reaction to my first words as a novelist. I guess technically, though, I cannot call myself a novelist until I am published, right? Until then, I am just a writer. Can a writer write without experiencing anything first? I am writing today to let you know my experiences so far in Sydney. I don’t know if the rest of Sydney is like King’s Cross, but God have mercy on it if it is. I have walked the street down from the hostel to the end of the Cross on both s
ides of the block now at least a hundred times, and although I have done all the things there are to do in all different ways and order of events, I will tell you the highlights and the places in the order that they occur from the hostel.

  Ingrid doesn’t work the front desk anymore. She got a job as a professional stripper just down the street. As soon as you walk out of the alley where the cafes are and onto the street, the old drunk Aborigines stand there around the circle with the tree and the pigeons on the sidewalk outside the Burger King. They call it Hungry Jack’s here. American fast food, it seems, has invaded Australia and taken root pretty well. Just in time for the Olympics this summer, which is really Winter down here, but you would never know it anyway. Just past the circle is the Bank, and then the liquor shop, the tobacco shop, and then the first whorehouse. Come day or night, one of only about three different ones is out there in her short skirt and long black boots and a skimpy blouse, and she stands there with her butt up against the wall but she is right out on the walk so close that you could reach out and touch her as she smiles that far away little junky smile. I joke to myself that she’s been stuck so many times in so many ways and places, that smile is permanently stuck on her face. It is not funny, though. Kinda sad. But I’ve got to hand it to her, she is out there day and night. Come night, the place lights up like Times Square. Or the State Fair. I feel like Pinnochio when his buddies dragged him off to the carnival.

  All the lights dance around on the front of the buildings and the awnings, forming a low halo of light that makes you forget whether you are walking along two-story shops or towering skyscrapers. Your eyes are grounded to the spectacle at street level, with the scent of corn dogs and cinnamon buns coming out of the snack bars between the brothels. Then there is the sex theatre. I tried this one on an odd day, just to see what was going on. I paid the twenty bucks just for the day pass to the pushy girl at the window, and then made my way down the dark stairs going below street level and then turned the corner into the auditorium. It was a bunch of older couples and families on vacation from all over the world, with dads in Hawaiian shirts and moms with big poofy hairdos, and they were all sitting there in the old wooden cinema chairs in the dark with their eyes glued to the naked couple up on stage engaged in all kinds of carnal acts. That one freaked me out, I have to admit. I did not want to try the popcorn in there. Don’t see how anyone could spend the day in that cramped little underground theatre. I was happy to give up my twenty dollars for some fresh air.

  Next door down out on the street was the first drinking pub, the Goldfish Bowl. Just a normal place to enjoy a few pints and watch some sports on the telly. I am really getting a taste for the European sports: Formula One, Rugby, Soccer, and my favorite so far, Australian rules football, or “footy” as they call it down here. Absolutely nutty to watch.

  Nearing the corner, there is the big club dance hall. This is a favorite among tourists. It sits right at the corner before you turn and make the big steep descent into downtown. The big Coca-Cola sign towers above everything, and this is really what is considered to be the entrance to the Cross. Inside the dance hall, it goes twenty-four hours per day, non-stop techno dancing. In case you didn’t know, techno is 16-time as opposed to 4-4-time like American rock. So just imagine moving your feet four times as fast when you dance. It’s like aerobics, really. Now imagine doing aerobics for 12 hours straight. Now imagine doing aerobics for 12 hours straight and drinking nice cold beer and smoking cigarettes one after the other. Oops, you caught me. Yes, I have started drinking and smoking more and more. It was something about Ingrid becoming a stripper that kind of put me over the edge. Well, that is only partly true, because she told me that she wanted me to explore my darker side while we are here. “To become as morally reprehensible as possible” is how she put it. She wants me to become as debauched and depraved as I can, so that I have some moral zero to mark my improvement by. I asked her about what improvement, and she says it will all come later.

  She tells me that, and then I have to watch big drunk guys rub their faces in her little pink titties and shove dirty money into her panties right before she takes them off and shows her blond muff. Yes, the carpet matches the drapes, that’s why I keep that bitch. That, and her little 5 foot 6 frame and a 38C bra size with a 22 inch waist. Sometimes, I’ve been home and asleep in the room for hours when she comes home smelling like beer and cigarettes and climbs in beside me and starts to cuddle. All I can say is it is well worth the wait. I can’t tell you about the whole of Kings Cross in one letter. Besides, they just dimmed the lights up here on the roof. I don’t write so well after a few hits of hash and a beer. I gotta go to work tomorrow anyway. Did I tell you I got a job moving furniture for rich people? Did I tell you that my boss is a junky? I’ll tell you later.

  Foley

  Dear Dad,

  So my days are pretty much the same now. I wake up early, put on my shower shoes to keep from getting some funky backpacker foot fungus, and traipse on down the hall past the hand-painted, multi-colored doors of the hostel to the men’s bathroom. I take a shower, make small talk with the guys who are up and actually have a job, and get ready for the arduous day ahead in the Sydney heat.

  I don’t actually have to work, but I find that it keeps me busy. Going out and moving furniture for the people of this town has been an eye-opening experience. There is no better way to get to know a town or its people than to drive around all day and move peoples’ junk. After my shit, shower, and shave routine, I throw on my t-shirt, jeans, and tennis shoes and go down to the square where the Aborigine drunks are all up early and panhandling and milling around rambling at the tourists. There is always a preacher there trying to save them. I can’t help but listen to him, because of course I want to make sure that he is saying the right thing. Not that I am any model of Christianity these days, quite the opposite, but I want to see what his take on the Bible is. He talks about salvation, and walking the path of righteousness, and not sinning, and all the usual good stuff, but there is one thing that he says at the end of each sermon that really gets me.

  He says, “All you have to do is give salvation a try. Walk in the path of righteousness with the Lord at your side. If it is not all that I say it is, then you are always welcome to have your old life back.” I like that. Straight and simple just like a salesman or something. The Proposition Method to Salvation. Well, I guess I have made my choice. I am going to keep my old life. And then I am going to go a little further off of the path of righteousness. As you know, I have already gone pretty far afoot. At night, when I get back from sweating and breaking my back moving pianos and couches for the millionaires of Sydney, I cool down with a beer up at my boss’ apartment, where he calmly shoots up his daily dose with his young wife in front of their little two-year old. That’s right, his evening cocktail is a speedball, Dad. He is a functional junky. He doesn’t stoop over, or pass out, he just gets real mellow and starts cooking dinner and turns on the telly and watches the evening news like a regular guy with his family. It kind of reminds me of when you used to yell at me when I would say something about your lighting up a joint first thing when you would come home and you would scream, “This is my Martini, you little fuck. Why don’t you go hang out with some of your friends’ dads and see what they are like when they come home from work and get drunk and beat up their wives and their kids!”

  That used to make me feel good that you were doing the right thing by smoking pot and even letting me have some too, because who else than the coolest dad in the world would let his third-grade son smoke pot on a school night? Or did you make me wait until the weekends? I can’t remember. But my boss, J.J., as we call him, hasn’t started letting his two-year old shoot up yet. I wonder when he will start.

  After chilling out with J.J., I wander back through the twilight a few blocks back to the hostel. I stop on the way at the liquor shop and get my bottle of beer, and then I get up on the roof where the people are lively and the conversation is happening, and t
he hash smoke is sweet. Stories about going up to the Blue Mountains, and going up the Gold Coast to Surfers Paradise, and going to the Sydney Zoo. Young couples hooking up for the first time from all over the world. Sometimes they talk about the upcoming Olympics. People are pretty excited about that. All I can think about is Ingrid being down at the strip club, her muff hair glowing under the ultraviolet strobe lights. I also think about the fact that the world did not come to an end back on December 31st, 1999.