"Welcome to the Club"

 

A hand-painted signifier on the lintel, faintly illuminated by a stained fixture in the wall above it, read

"The D.B. Club" 

"This isn't the right place," said Milford.

"Yes, but it's a place," said Addison.

"Any place is a place," said Milford.

"Your point is well taken," said Addison, taking out his Chesterfields, "but by 'place' I mean it's not the maze of dimly lit or completely dark corridors in which we have just been wandering these past thirty minutes."

"Let's go."

"Wait. Let's go in here, and maybe they can tell us how to get back to the Negro bar and to our lady friends."

"I don't know –"

"What do we have to lose?"

"Our sanity?"

"My dear chap," said Addison, "how can we lose something we do not possess?"

"Look how dirty this door is," said Milford.

It was true. The door was coated with cracked and peeling paint which might once have been a bright Kelly green, but was now reminiscent of nothing less than dried vomit.

"A lot of these venerable old establishments have unprepossessing exteriors."

"What's that little sign say?"

Milford referred to a small placard on the door, on which cursive words had been painted on a grey background. The words were barely legible in the dim light, but the two companions stepped closer to decipher them, which were

If you be the person all deride

as an example of idiocy,

and not without good reason,

turn the knob and come inside

to where douchebaggery

is always in season.

"Well," said Addison, having lighted a cigarette and tossed the match to the floor, "if that isn't an invitation I don't know what is."

There was knob on the door, and he turned it.

"Wait," said Milford.

"For what?" 

"Maybe we really should just keep walking, and look for that other place –"

"My dear Milford, what's the worst that can happen if we just go inside and inquire for directions?"

Milford in the space of three seconds thought of several possibilities, each worse than the one previous, but he left these misgivings unvoiced, and, sighing, for the twelve-thousandth and thirty-third time since he had last been unconscious, he said simply, "All right. Open the door."

Inside of course was a bar, another bar, another crowded smoky bar that seemed to extend to infinity, and blaring jukebox music and the humming and babble of voices enveloped our friends like a wave eternally crashing.

There was a man sitting at a podium to the right of the entrance.

"Hi there, fellas," said the man. His face was the color of an old potato sack, and he wore a faded brown suit and a dull garnet bowtie. His hair was thin and strangely black. He had horn-rimmed glasses that magnified his eyes, which looked like the eyes of a dead octopus. "First time here, huh?"

"Yes," said Addison.

"So you're interested in membership."

"Well, actually," said Addison, "we were –"

"You two young fellas look like just the sort of guys we're looking for. And just between you and me and the wall we could use some fresh blood in this joint, ha ha."

"Well, really," said Addison, "we just stopped in to ask –"

"Allow me if I may, as part of our screening process, to ask you two good gentlemen a few questions."

"Um, excuse me –" said Milford.

"You," said the potato-sack man, to Milford, "judging by your peacoat, your newsboy's cap, the round Trotskyite spectacles, the Hemingwayesque fisherman's sweater –" he leaned over the edge of the podium to take in the lower part of Milford's corporeal host, "the dungarees and the scuffed workman's brogans, I'm going to say you're a poet. Am I right?"

Milford hung his head, and said nothing.

"Ha ha, I'm right," said the man. "And you, sir," he said, addressing Addison, "the baggy colorless old suit and crumpled fedora that a maiden aunt probably bought for you when first you went off to an inglorious and disgracefully truncated college career, the general air of ill-fed dissipation, you, my good man, are obviously a novelist."

"Bingo," said Addison. "Now, as I was saying –"

"So far so good," said the man. "Now, the million dollar question. Have either of you published?"

He looked from Addison to Milford, and then back to Addison.

"Well, uh –" said Addison, "the thing is, I'm still rather in the beginning stages of working on my novel, which I envision as a true American epic in the tradition of  –"

"I thought so," said the man. "How about you, buddy?" he said, cocking his head at Milford. "Any poems in small fly-by-night literary quarterlies?" 

"Well, I haven't really submitted much yet thus far," said Milford.

"I'll take that as a no, then," said the man. "Okay, you're both accepted, provisionally, as members of 'the club'."

"Great," said Addison. "So, as I was saying –"

"That'll be a buck apiece. Oh, and I'll also need your names or at least your noms de plume for our official roster."

"Look," said Addison, "we appreciate it, I think I speak for my friend here, but we actually just just came in here to ask for directions."

"Yeah, sure, that's what they all say," said the man. "Listen pal, don't try to bullshit a bullshitter. You know you're a douchebag and I know you're douchebag, and we both sure as hell know your little pal here is a douchebag, and that's why you're both here. Welcome to the Douchebag Club, and like I said, that'll be a buck apiece."

"Wait a minute," said Milford. "We don't want to join your club."

"You telling me you and your boyfriend here ain't douchebags?"

"I'm not saying anything of the sort, I'm only saying we don't want to join your club."

"Yes," added Addison, "and if you would have only had allowed me to finish a sentence –"

"Oh, wow," said the man.

"What do you mean, 'Wow,'" said Addison.

"I mean, 'Wow, you two really are a couple of douchebags, aren't you?' I mean, even by my standards, which, believe me, are quite liberal, that's how long I been working here, you two really are a pair of prime douchebags."

An enormous fat man came over, holding an enormous cigar.

"We got a problem here, Cerberus?"

"Just a couple of real prime douchebags," said the man at the podium.

The big fat man took a look at our two friends.

"They sure look like prime douchebags." He had an English accent, but it might have been an affected one. "So what's the trouble, fellows?"

"We only came in here to ask for directions," said Milford.

"Bullshit," said the man at the podium.

"Be cool, Cerberus," said the big fat man, and he took the measure again of the two friends.

"They call me Big Daddy," said the big man. "And I know a couple of fellow prime douchebags when I see 'em. What are your names, chums?"

"Well, they call me Addison," said Addison, "but my real name is –"

"Pleased to meet you, Addison," said the big man. "Put 'er there."

He extended his enormous fat hand, like the paw of a rhinoceros.

Addison was unable by constitution to refuse a handshake, and so he allowed his thin hand to be enveloped in the fat man's fat hand, which squeezed his own just up to the point of pain, but then allowed it to escape.

"And you," said the big man called Big Daddy to Milford. "What's your moniker, young fella?"

"Milford?" said Milford.

"You don't sound too sure."

"It's Milford."

"And may I take your lily-white hand in a firm grasp of potential friendship, Milford, if that is indeed your name?"

"Please don't crush it."

"I'll try not to."

Milford extended his small hand and in turn allowed it to be swallowed up in the man called Big Daddy's paw, and at the very verge of screaming in agony, his small hand was allowed to be pulled away.

"Follow me, gentlemen," said the big man called Big Daddy.

"But," said Addison.

"Yes, but," said Milford.

"We just want directions," said Addison.

"Yes," said Milford.

"I will give you directions," said the big man, "if that's what you want. I will give you very detailed directions. I'll give you directions to any place you want to go. I will even draw you a map. If that's what you want. Now come with me."

"They didn't pay their membership fees yet," said the man at the podium.

"Don't worry about that now," said the man called Big Daddy. 

"I'm sure they're good for it."

"Look, I think we're just going to leave," said Addison. "Thanks anyway."

"Yeah, thanks," said Milford, and he turned around, went to the door and turned the doorknob.

The door wouldn't open.

{Kindly go here to read the unexpurgated "adult comix" version in A Flophouse Is Not a Home, profusely illustrated by the illustrious Rhoda Penmarq…}

"A Tale of Two Tales"

 

"I wonder," said Addison, after they had walked without speaking through the darkness for a minute, "if I might tell you a little story."

"Yeah, sure, why not?" said Milford.

"It's a chapter from my past that I have never shared with anyone before."

"Okay."

"It's a sad story, and I suspect it will be at least somewhat unpleasant for me to relate, but, perhaps in the telling there will be some catharsis."

"Um," said Milford, if one can be said to "say" the vocalism "um".

"At the very least," continued Addison, "the tale might help to pass the time until we find our way back."

If we find our way back, thought Milford.

"I think I mentioned to you that I spent a couple of years during the war working in a parachute factory."

"Yes," said Milford, already thinking of something else, although of what exactly he would not have been able to say.

"It was in the town of Fayetteville, North Carolina. Have you ever been there?"

Milford said nothing, because he was thinking of something that he was in the process of forgetting about even while he thought it.

"I say have you ever been there, old chap," said Addison, who had assumed his full-blown George Sanders voice.

"Where's that?" said Milford.

"To Fayetteville, North Carolina."

"No," said Milford. "Why?"

"No reason, really, except that that town is the location of the sad tale I am about to tell."

"Oh, okay," said Milford.

"If I may continue then."

"Sure," said Milford.

And Addison went on, in his George Sanders voice, which became more his Ronald Colman voice, something about this factory he had worked in, and a bar the factory workers and the soldiers in the nearby army camp drank at, it all sounded very tedious, and Addison's narration didn't make it any less tedious to hear about, even if it was in his Ronald Colman voice, and so Milford thought about many other things, remembered many things, rehashed many things, and eventually he and Addison came to another intersection of corridors in the darkness, which they had become more used to now, and once again there was the question of which way to go, straight ahead, or to the right or left. There seemed to be a faint glimmer of illumination to the left, and so Milford spoke up.

"Should we turn left?" he said. 

"What?" said Addison, who had been in the middle of a long sentence with numerous parenthetical asides and digressions.

"I think I see light to the left down there, so maybe we should go that way."

"Oh, yes, of course. So, as I was saying –" and Addison went on as they turned down the corridor to the left.

Milford's Husky Boy had burnt down to a stub, and so he tossed it to the floor, and stopped to grind it out with the sole of his stout workman's brogan. Addison had continued on, still telling his story, and Milford hitch-stepped quickly to catch up. Now it was Addison's turn to toss his Chesterfield butt away, but so absorbed was he in the telling of his tale that he didn't bother to grind it out with his shoe. Milford thought briefly of retreating and stepping on the butt, but he let it go, then felt guilty after a few more paces and went back and ground out the butt. Addison didn't even notice, but kept on walking and talking as Milford hurried to catch up.

They came to another turning, and this time the corridor to the right was dimly lit by what looked like a bare lightbulb fifty-some feet ahead, and so without discussing the matter they went that way.

"And so," said Addison finally, after they had turned down yet another dim corridor, "there you have it. I've never told that story to anyone else, but, well, I like to think of you as my friend, Milford."

"Pardon?" said Milford, aroused by the mention of his name.

"Yes," said Addison. "I hope you don't think it presumptuous of me."

"Um, no," said Milford, because it was easier to say than to say he had no idea what Addison was on about.

"I'm so glad. And I hope you don't feel ill of me now."

"No," said Milford.

"I am afraid that others would not be so open-minded after hearing such a sordid tale."

"Oh, I like to think I'm open-minded," said Milford, wondering if he possibly had missed something slightly interesting by ignoring nearly every word Addison had uttered for the past fifteen minutes.

"And I should like to say also," said Addison, still speaking in his full-on Ronald Colman voice, "that if there is ever anything you wish to get off your chest, well, feel free, my friend."

"Oh, why bother," said Milford, "I've shared so much of my pathetic personal history at Alcoholics Anonymous that even I'm sick of hearing my boring stories."

Addison was glad to hear this, as he had only made the offer out of politeness, and rather doubted that Milford had any interesting stories to tell anyway.

"But there is one story, though," said Milford. "And it's so humiliating that I not only never shared it at AA, but I never even told it to that horrible psychiatrist my mother sent me to. Would you like to hear it?"

"I should love to."

"Okay. Well, it was when I was at Andover, in my first year there, and, boy, how I hated that place –"

And as Milford went on, Addison drifted off, still thinking of the story he had just told, which in fact he had told quite a few times over the years, embellishing often, and adding or subtracting details and dialogue and philosophical asides as his creative genius might urge him. 

Some ten minutes later, Milford was saying, "So you see, I think it might have been that incident which set the course for the whole rest of my miserable life, a turning point which –"

"Excuse me," said Addison, "I don't mean to interrupt, but I see a door up ahead."

"A door?"

And now Milford saw it, down at the end of this current dim corridor, a door, with a light above it.

"A door," said Addison. "And where there is a door, there must be something behind it."

"Oh, thank God," said Milford. "Not that I believe in God."

"Of course not," said Addison. "Oh, but do continue with your story."

"I've finished it," said Milford. "I hope I didn't bore you."

"Oh, not at all," said Addison.

"As I said, I've never told it to anyone."

"Well, I assure you, I will never repeat it to anyone," said Addison, which was true, because he hadn't been listening.

Now further bonded by the confessions neither had heard, the two friends quickened their steps toward the unknown door.

{Kindly go here to read the unexpurgated "adult comix" version in A Flophouse Is Not a Home,  profusely illustrated by the illustrious Rhoda Penmarq…}