Outer Banks Read online

  2

  1.

  Naomi Ruth languished alone among the gin-and-tonics afternoon after afternoon. Oh, she knew she was a card, but who was there to enjoy it? Besides, she never hit her stride till after three P.M. and her fourth gin-and-tonic, and by then everyone else was at court. Except, of course, for the servants, whose rapt attention had thankfully been guaranteed by their station.

  2.

  She told the slender, hard-muscled wine steward everything she could recall of her childhood—gazebos, cupolas, domesticated animals with names like Donkey, Fru-fru, Fluff, and Jingle, her friendly father’s ruddy face as he swung her over his white-haloed head, brushing her back against the cloudless sky, meadows strewn with dipping daisies, golden twilights, lemonade, Mamma, Dilsey, Bubber…

  —Jesus, Your Majesty, you’re a card! the steward laughed, wiping away tears.—I mean it, he said, suddenly serious.

  —Do you? Do you really? she queried intently.—I mean, do you really think that?

  —Yeah. You’re a right-on queen. Want another drink?

  —Why the hell not? she answered throatily.—Pour.

  3.

  Sprawled naked across the wine steward, her white body splayed like a fallen birch, she asked him, in a detached, impersonal way, as if she were asking herself—What if you were afraid that your husband was gay? Assuming you had a husband, of course. What would you do? What would you feel? she asked herself.

  —Well, the steward answered.—You just never know about these things. I mean, I once knew this rabbi who surprised everyone by going into his father’s business. A coat manufacturer. It’s like that.

  4.

  The wine steward, lighting both their cigarettes with a single match, to Naomi Ruth, the two of them lying on their backs on the llama skins that covered the floor,—Lots of men switch careers in mid-career, as it were. A lot depends on the man’s P-factor, the amount of pain he can endure, if you know what I mean. The important thing is that he discuss it with his family and loved ones, even though his decision ultimately may be autocratic. I mean, in the end, it’s how you present these things that counts. I say this, Your Highness, because I know you are capable of great forgiveness. For instance, I once knew a priest who became a psychiatrist. Turned out he was happy as a priest, when a priest, and he was happy as a psychiatrist, too, when a psychiatrist, if you know what I mean. So you really never know. Take me, for instance. I may be nothing but a wine steward now, and I’m happy being one, believe me, but I know, if my P-factor is high enough, that I could be happy as, for instance, court chamberlain, say. That doesn’t mean I’m not happy as a wine steward, however. No, ma’am, not at all. That’s the important part of my notion, but the other part’s important, too, of course…

  5.

  Naomi Ruth wasn’t very interested in the wine steward’s observations. She was interested in his sexual organ.—What do you think is the meaning of life? she demanded.

  He shrugged helplessly, as if to say, What can a poor wine steward know?

  The queen wept bitter, angry tears. She pounded the pillows with her tiny fists.

  He kept shrugging helplessly, trying to look stupid. What a drag, he thought. A fucking drag.

  6.

  Finally, the queen got the wine steward’s rather large and fortunately erect cock loosened and into her, and she rode him like a log, whooping and slapping him loudly on his hairy, white thighs. For most of the afternoon, they bumped and shoved each other wildly about the room, knocking over furniture, tipping bottles of liquor and perfume, spilling the contents onto the thickly carpeted floor, and sliding with slick rumps across magazines, satin sheets, candy boxes shaped like hearts, velvet-covered love-seats, taffeta gowns, crinolines, silk underwear, a closet floor cobbled with dancing slippers, Turkish towels, talcum, facial greases, squirts of urine, bits of feces, scents, daubs and smears until, eventually, she passed out and he, exhausted and fearful, slipped out and quickly away to the servants’ quarters.

  7.

  Naomi Ruth felt no guilt. Anger. Only anger. Mainly at the king, but also at the Loon, whoever that one was. Some kind of freak, she thought. Some kind of sicko freak. Her heart aching with loathing and revulsion, she broke her thumbs with a small instrument of torture.

  —Ai-yee! she cried.

  8.

  What the hell’s going on down there? she wondered, meaning the court.

  —Today’s the big day! the king had informed her that morning at breakfast.

  Sensing a significance in the remark, she put her coffee cup onto the saucer noisily and said,—Big day for what? What’s going on? Why am I being left out of things all the time? I never find out about anything until after it’s happened or been decided. What’s going on today? What’s the occasion? Who’s coming? Why don’t you tell me what happens down there before it has already happened? Do you think that I’m stupid or something? A child? Do you think that all I can do is ask questions? Is that why you leave me out of the only life around here that’s worth living? Is it? Is it? she asked.

  He looked up from his newspaper and grinned.—What was the question? he asked.

  —Bastid! she hissed to no one in particular. That was when she asked him whether or not he had ever performed a sex act with a man, or a boy.

  9.

  —Maybe I should try writing a novel, she suggested. A love story, like Cinderella or The Song of Solomon.

  10.

  In a cold room in the tower above her chambers she wrote, facing an oval mirror on the wall. Whenever she stopped writing, she looked up and stared at her own face and long, white neck and smooth shoulders, her panther-black hair tumbling down in cascades, her delicate, plum-shaped breasts, her meticulous, ivory-skinned hands, the single lily in the vase on her desk, the gold pen, vellum sheets of paper bound in brocade, her intelligence, passion, imagination, craft. She wondered what it was going to be like as a famous lady novelist. Then she would go back to her writing. Scratch, scratch, scratch.

  11.

  Naomi Ruth, like most normal persons, slept, and when she slept, she had a dream. It’s possible, therefore, that one would wonder about Naomi Ruth’s dream. What can be the dream of a queen? one would humbly, especially if one were a man, wonder.

  12.

  She rang for the wine steward, and rang, and rang, and rang.

  3

  1.

  While making his morning toilet, Egress the Hearty thought aloud (so as to better remember his thought): Reality unperceived is form without content … and thus the hedonist becomes metaphysician, the mere student of consciousness becomes epistemologist, whilst the phenomenologist ends divided against himself, a self-willed irrelevance for a state of mind…

  His broad face covered with a thin film of sweat, the king lapsed momentarily into a deep and intense silence. Then he finished his toilet, washed his hands carefully, and strolled downstairs to the veranda for breakfast with the queen.

  2.

  Egress the Hearty (sometimes the Bluff), Duke of Sunder: son of Donald the Flailer, son of Jack the Boor, son of Moran the Tick-minded, son of Orgone the Tree, son of Hannigan the Pus-filled, son of Bob the Boy-killer, son of Vlad the Sad, son of Roger the Lodger, son of Sigmund the Camera, son of Sabu the Dwarf, son of Egress the Obvious, son of Dread the Courteous, son of Norman the Shopper, son of Grendel the Theorist, son of Warren the Fist-faced, son of Arthur of the Direct Vision, son of Ray the Innovative, son of Ralph the Meatpacker, son of William the Roadbreaker, son of Harry the Hat … and so on … to the beginning, the word.

  3.

  In any Kingdom, the most important person is the king. Period. Everyone should know that, but if someone does not, it doesn’t matter. That’s how true it is.

  4.

  In a hurry, the king took a shortcut to the office, crossing the great yard to a cut stone walkway that bordered the head-high hedge that surrounded the queen’s own knot garden. The hedge had been shaped by gardeners, sculptors, actually, into the
form of a mountain range, and as he walked hurriedly along the side of the range, he suddenly stopped, for, from the far side of the mountains, he heard the queen weeping. He listened for a moment, and then he thought: The worst thing about being a king is that you’re still a man, goddamnit. And a man has feelings!

  He thumped himself on his broad and thick chest and walked swiftly on, and quoting to himself a poem by Robert Frost, he sang,—… and miles to go before I weep, miles to go before I weep… O!

  5.

  As soon as he reached the carpeted, air-conditioned privacy of his inner office, the king picked up his telephone and, bypassing his secretary, personally put through a call to the Loon.

  KING: Loon? This is Egress…

  LOON: Oh. What do you want? More?

  KING: No, no, no! I… I was just … thinking about you, and … just wanted to hear your voice, I guess. That’s all…

  LOON: Well … you’ve heard it.

  KING: Yes, I have. So, how are you, Loon? Well, I hope?

  LOON: Yes. I’m well.

  KING: Good, good, good. And … so’m I. Well.

  LOON: Oh.

  KING: I know I wasn’t going to call you anymore, but … as I said, I was thinking about you and just wanted to hear your voice. Actually, I had a very vivid dream last night, a dream in which you figured rather prominently … and you know how it is. I had this tremendous urge to hear your voice…

  LOON: Okay.

  KING: Yes. Well, good-bye, Lon. Loon.

  6.

  When a king is ashamed of his weakness, to whom can he speak of it? Any mention would precipitate a political crisis. Egress kept silent, except when he could be hearty. He was, before all else, a good and faithful ruler, in the Victorian mold.—That’s got to be worth something, he said to no one but himself.

  7.

  Full of melancholy, he left his office by a hidden door and strolled the parapet adjoining, walking along it to a watchtower at the far end, which he entered. Secreted there, he stood for some time peering into himself near a window that opened onto the great yard and quarters below, when he glanced up from himself and saw a figure he recognized as belonging to the wine steward, saw it exit somewhat furtively, though staggering, from the queen’s apartment, slip through her knot garden, cut through the hedge, and limp down the walkway to the servants’ quarters, where it ducked into the door that led to the PX.

  The king clapped the palm of his hand against his forehead.—Oh, Jesus! he groaned.—Oh, sweet Jesus, what now? I need an unfaithful wife like I need a wine steward!

  8.

  This story is not about what the king will tell the Robin Hood figure, the youth in the slick green suit. It’s about what happens while everyone waits for him to show up in court after the three days are up and face down that brassy bastard of a green-suited youth. So one needn’t worry, one is missing nothing, nothing important; for it’s all right here in black and white like a series of svelte bruises laid along a frail lady’s lovely arm.

  9.

  The king was reminded of his father, Donald the Flailer, who, for no apparent reasons, had beat his eldest son mercilessly, constantly, while never touching the boy’s five brothers, except to caress them affectionately. Once, after a particularly bad beating, Egress, then twelve years old, cried out,—Why, Papa? Why? Why?

  —What do you think should be done with a man who beats women and children? the then-king demanded.

  —He should get to a doctor, Egress blubbered.—He’s sick!

  —Wrong! the king screamed, flailing his son about the head and shoulders.—You’re going to be king, goddamnit, and a king has to know that a man like that must be killed! When you know that, I’ll stop beating you, he promised his son.

  10.

  Egress the Hearty loved his sons no less than his own father had loved his. It was a family tradition. So many things simply cannot be helped.

  11.

  —I want the wine steward killed immediately, the king said to the Sergeant of the Guard, who ran to the servants’ quarters as fast as he could and fragged the PX with a hand grenade, blowing the wine steward to pieces.

  12.

  The king reasoned with himself thusly: The meanings of most things lie in our descriptions of them… Explanations, the good ones, are always reenactments… The man with the greatest access to reality is the man possessing the most comprehensive mode of perception… And that man will end up not merely wise and useful, but also sated, glutted with meaning…

  He picked up the intercom and called to his secretary in the outer office.—Miss Phlegmming, come in here, will you? I have a few thoughts I want you to take down for posterity, for The Library.

  —Certainly, Your Majesty, she murmured slavishly.

  4

  1.

  There were three sons, and at this time the eldest of the three was Orgone (the Wrestler). He was the best athlete in the kingdom. Twenty-six years old, his supremacy had been recognized for a decade, and though there were a fair number of athletes whose skills in particular sports or events were greater than his, every athlete nonetheless honored Orgone as foremost among them. This was because no athlete was superior to him in two important areas of bodily endeavor: wrestling and copulation.

  2.

  For instance, once, three years ago, young Ralph Bunn foolishly beat Orgone (by two-tenths of a second) in the 100-meter run. Orgone immediately threw a double hammerlock on Ralph and fractured both his arms. Then he took Ralph’s wife, Pearl, for a walk under the grandstands, where he screwed her three quick times in a row, dog-fashion, while the excited fans in the bleachers peered down through the slats and, with a frightening ferocity, cheered.

  Ralph, lying at the end of the 100-meter runway, unattended, writhing in pain, was full of praise for Orgone’s marvelous running ability.—I jumped the gun! he kept insisting.

  3.

  Because of his reputation, Orgone was desired even by women who had only heard of him. Naturally, this added to his reputation. Who is more respected as a copulator than the man desired by women who have never even seen him? One defines respect here, however, as a careful form of envy, which is not true respect. Thus it was that a survey taken four years ago revealed that no fewer than 36,312 young men were traveling about the kingdom saying they were Orgone the Wrestler. Shrewdly, Orgone publicized a claim which he hitherto had made only in private, that he could satisfy anyone, male or female, he fucked, and the number of false Orgones quickly fell off.

  4.

  Orgone thought well of his father, the king, and treated him with deference. His younger brothers, men perhaps a shade more complex than he, he treated with derisive tolerance. He loved to snap their naked buttocks with a wet towel. Crr-r-ack!—Gettin’ much pussy? he demanded.

  —Fuck off, they snarled in unison.

  —Hah! ‘Course you’re not gettin’ any! Little ol’ puds like yours, who’d want to get stuffed with weenies like those, when they could have a goddamn sequoia! he roared, thrusting his enormous organ out in front of him, letting the warm waters of the shower splash over it.

  5.

  Later, serious, he said to Dread,—I like to work out. It’s as simple as that. To work myself right out of the world. If I push myself hard enough, to extremities that can be reached only if one is already in superb shape and is physically gifted, the only noise I can hear is that of my breath and blood, I see nothing except through a film, I am aware only of my body—and of that I am totally, almost religiously, aware. The intensity is exquisite. The same thing happens when I’m fucking someone. I become the world. All of it. I probably could accomplish the same thing with yoga, but how would it look for a dauphin to be a yogi? It’s more politique for me to get off on sports and balling.

  6.

  —Yeah, Dread mumbled. He cracked open his Belgian 10-gauge and peered down the barrels at the twin circles of light at the end.—That’s one way to deal with death. But it seems a bit of an avoidance, wouldn’t you say
? I mean, why sublimate the inevitable?

  He jammed a wad of oil-soaked cotton into one barrel and ran it to the end with a long, steel rod, catching it with his tobacco-stained fingertips.

  7.

  The youngest of the three, Egress, who had been feigning sleep, rolled over in his bunk and faced the others.—It occurs to me, he announced in his usual, pontifical manner,—that you’re both in your own ways protecting yourselves against the proper and necessary expressions of yourselves as the typical sons of a typical king and queen in a typical, middle-sized kingdom.

  —And just exactly what “expression” would that be, Mister Wiseass? Orgone inquired.

  —Violence, Egress said, smiling warmly.—Talk about sublimation, he added.—You two might as well be alcoholics. Or why not drugs? Sports, sex, death—hah! You guys make me laugh. You two run your egos as if they were government agencies and you meek bureaucrats, he laughed, pitching a handful of eightpenny finish nails at them.

  8.

  —Hey, knock it off, Egress, or I’ll pound the shit out of you! Orgone yelled, ducking the nails. Egress turned back to face the simulated-log wall next to his bunk. Dread continued cleaning his shotgun, as if nothing had happened, and after a few moments, Orgone resumed reading his pornographic magazine, chuckling loudly at the cartoons, trying occasionally, but vainly, to interest his brothers in ogling the photographs of the young women’s bodies.—Son of a bitch! he would cry.—How’d you like to get into that! After a while, unable to share his excitement with them, he lapsed into a leering silence and flipped through the pages with one hand, rubbing his lumpy crotch with the other.

  9.

  When Orgone had finished looking at the magazine, he put it down on the floor beside his Morris chair and said,—Listen, guys, I’ve been meaning to ask you something. What did you think of that creep in the green suit who was at court yesterday, the one Twit told us about? You two move in funnier circles than I do, so what do you think? Is he some kind of suicidal fairy? I mean, is the guy political?