THE S CLUB

“I think we should say ‘grace’” announced Chris gravely as we sat down at the dinner table.

Neil leaned back in his chair incredulously. “Listen Buddy, you keep this crap up and I’ll make this your ‘Last Supper.’” Saliva laced laugher rolled out of Neil and Farley rolled her eyes. I smiled. Boom fiddled.

“Must you,” said Chris with zealous eyes ready to bless the shrimp cocktail.

“Must I what?” said Neil gesturing like an Italian. “O.K. we will say ‘Grace’...‘Grace’.... O.K. let’s eat.”

“You are just so blasphemous,” retorted Chris.

“And you are just so sanctimonious. What are you going to do for an encore? Speak in tongues?”

“Well, you know, I can.”

“Please, we are adults here,” said Neil. “And I am telling you, I am not buying your present act. Your Preacher-Man Sideshow. I found you a much more honest person when you were sniveling strung-out drug dealer. When you were truly in your element, supplying the graduating class of Aspen Country Day.”

Chris closed his eyes and covered his ears in deep soulful humiliation.

“You know,” bellowed Neil, “we should have invited a shrink here to dinner to de-program and de-Jesus you. And then we will have Seth Roberts come for dessert to help you remember your past lives.”

“Please Neil,” said Boom,” not at the table.”

"“Well how about “Please Chris?”” spat back Neil. “I mean I am just trying to cut down the bullshit factor for just a minute. I mean, if you had any idea what this scum bag has done to people?”

“Done what?” said Boom.

“In his wake there have been over-doses, rip off’s, abortions, ruined marriages, his own included and his two imbecilic kids.”

Boom looked over at me; don’t tell anyone, she glowered.

“Now sad and bad marriages,” stated Neil, ’is a time-honored family tradition, but this religious stuff!” He cleared his throat and shook his head, “is just too much, don’t drag us into that too. The way have you dragged us into your other shit.” He stopped. ”Oh by the way, how about the seven grand you owe me?”

Chris stared at Neil and he turned his head. His eyes were red and sappy.

“Say something,” demanded Neil. ”Admit it is true what I said.”

Chris exhaled, “I ask Jesus everyday to absolve me.”

Neil had begun slicing his steak and with his mouth full, he replied to his brother. “It is going to take a lot more than Jesus.”

Silently Chris buried his face in his hands.

“Are you happy?” said Farley. “God knows what you must do to your wife and kids at the dinner table.”

“Shit dearie, Chris likes being humiliated because his good Lord was humiliated. And as your husband, the most eminent shrink, has observed some people crave being humiliated.” His grin was then a little too knowing then, ”and besides this was just appetizers. You keep it up, Sister, and you’ll be next.”

“Speaking of sisters,” said Boom all cheery and false. ”How is Madge? Now that is the most rambunctious youngster there ever was.”

“She has done quite well for herself,” I said. “I mean really well.” I said with a measured degree of family pride over a sibling’s rivalry.

“She married rich?” asked Boom full of vicarious hope.

“Oh no, not at all,” I said, ”She is programming vice-president for NBC.” I paused and let that sink in. ”She is one of the first women to have such a position.”

“You mean,” said Farley with a sly crack in her voice, ”one of the first dykes to have such a position.”

“Farley!” said Boom flabbergasted.

“Oh come on, Mommy,” said Farley. ”I have always known Madge was a dyke and I am glad that she has made it work for her and now she is an Execu-dyke.” Her eyebrow raised in supercilious-somewhat faggot fervor.

“Well,” I began, “my sweet little sister began in spot sales and she was quite good at it. Her coarse, comical and gruff manner is actually quite winning. Finally the guys had a girl who could her own in booze as well as profanity. And let us not forget her ability to assimilate which is, in a word, staggering.”

And distressing, I surmised. She is has a quick silver mind that she can stick to anything and get pulled in all directions. In a short time, she can be an expert and vigorously defend all directions (as bipolar as they may be). Yet, if you know her, you slowly begin to hear the specious timber in her voice and see the pose in her mannerisms. I thought, sipping the white wine, she has made a stupendous career out of doing just that.

I looked directly at Farley. “Well Madge realized early on, it was fuck or be fucked world. She started sleeping with her boss and eventually with a succession of bosses. Other wise, the poor thing would still be in spot sales today.”

“Well, then she is a bisexual,” concluded Farley.

“Now let me then get one thing straight,” I said, ”She had to be good at her job. A hard worker, she had to be in order to win the love, respect and sexual favors from her superiors. Once she had them in the sack, she worked even harder. Naturally she was cunning to keep all these affairs clandestine or at least discreet.”

“I can’t believe you are saying these things about Madge,” piped in Chris.

“Oh come on, you know, Madge, she is as foul mouthed as a sailor. She would start rating the performance of the executives she screwed like a Cosmopolitan article gone awry. After all, we were all S Club here.”

The S Club is something I hadn’t thought about in years. And here was years later, slipping out like all things dark and true out of my subconscious. Farley looked away. Neil clapped his hands and even Chris smiled. Boom looked perplexed, she had forgotten what it was.

I continued. “Madge is quite proud of who she fucked and used. If you think about it, she is much smarter than say, Mary Cummingham because she didn’t get caught.”

“Now, that is something,” said Neil knowing from which I speak.

“But once she got on the board of directors when she was guarantied a “Golden Parachute” and absolute power in her capacity, that is when the corporate heads started to turn.” I looked directly at Farley with her seesaw smile. “Her personal secretary who had worked closely with Madge for years and years. A sweet and lovely girl from Michigan with honey blond hair and lemon velvet skin, well, they came out of the corporate closet.”

Farley was ecstatic. She bounced up and down in her chair. “I was right. I knew I was right!”

“Farley please,” boomed Boom.

“This sort of explains it all, doesn’t it? ” said Farley in a calmer, in fact, sisterly kind of tone. “No wonder she never fell in love with any of the men, she fucked. How perfect!”

“I think she is ruthless,” said Boom disgusted, “I am very disappointed in her.”

“Oh pish and toss,” said Neil, “she just did what you did without getting married and having kids.”

Boom looked as if Neil struck her.

To deter their attention, I billowed, “You should see her office on the fortieth floor at Rockefeller Center. A view of the skating rink. A wall of awards on one side flanked by a wall of televisions on the other. She drafts memos, smokes one Vantage after another, swigs Tab after Tab and struts around like a little bantam. It is really kind of cute. And to think she doesn’t have to fuck any more men, now that is really making it.”

Boom’s eyes leveled directly at Neil. “Just what exactly did you mean by that remark.”

“What remark?” replied Neil feigning ignorance.

“The remark comparing me to Edmund’s dykey little sister,” she steamed in which she then countered to me. “No offense to you or your sister.” She then shot back to Neil to complete her statement, “except that I married and had kids.”

“Oh yes,” said Neil drawing it out. “That statement. I think I said that after you said Madge was a ruthless social climbing cunt or something to that extent.”

“Right.”

“Well,” he said, “what do you think I meant?”

“That is why I am asking you. You ungrateful Son of a Bitch,” she yelped.

“You said it,” Neil said.

“Said what?” said Boom again perplexed.

“You called me a ‘Son of a Bitch’ and that makes you a bitch, you Bitch,” replied Neil.

“You bastard,” exclaimed Boom, “You make me so god damn mad you make me say anything.”

There was a round of laughter. A true family communion celebrating Mommy making a fool out of herself (again) permeated the dinner table and thankfully derailed the train of thought.

“Oh God,” reminisced Farley,” remember the time you and Jack (one of her beaus) and you were, let’s say pleasantly toasted and you found a hair in your three-D burger? ”

“Where was this?” said Boom in a tone that implied Farley was making the whole thing up.

“Howard Johnson’s” said Chris remembering it too.

“And what did I do?” asked Boom with her face squinted up.

“You raised unmitigated hell,” said Farley.

“As I should,” said Boom.

“You said, “continued Farley, “that the cook should wear a hairnet on his arm pits.”

“I said that?” she said.

“Yes,” said Chris devoid of embarrassment.

“Oh, then, Mommy, got very very grand,” said Farley with the incident teeming and vivid in her eyes, “you said you were a very close friend of the family.”

“What family?” said a confused Boom.

“The Howard Johnson family,” said Farley. “And then you went on saying you were going to call him up in the morning and say,” she then stopped and cradled an imaginary phone, ”And you can quote me; “Howard, how the fuck do you expect to make any money when your customers keep finding pubic hair in their goddamn Three D Burgers for Christ fucking sake!!”

“Remember Mom?” said Chris.

“Vaguely,” she said, “but I don’t even know Howard Johnson. Now who did I say this to?”

“Oh the cashier and the manager. Everyone was watching you,” said Neil.

“What did they say?”

“Something like “Fuck Off, Lady” said Farley

“Oh,” said Boom.

“And then you really let them have it,” said Farley, ”You told them to go stick all twenty six flavors...”

“Now,” exclaimed Boom, “Now I do remember...how could I forget that why we never went to Howard Johnson’s again.”

There was a pause. We were drunk and it was just about to take the turn, in which, we would soon be talking more to ourselves than to each other.

“I wonder where we were coming from?” mused Boom over her fillet of sole. She still gleaned for happy times.

“Maybe Jones Beach,” said Farley.

“No, it couldn’t have been Jones’s,” replied Chris like he was a child.

“It is Jones Beach,” corrected Farley, “not Jones’s.”

“Anyway, it wasn’t that because the thing at Ho Jo’s happened at night.”

“Jones Beach,” said Boom like the words were magic. “What a great beach,” she sighed, “Boy did we ever make a day of it. Get there early like nine-thirty and leave around three, so we would miss the traffic in both directions.”

“Jones Beach,” she sighed like a response to a litany.

I remembered Jones Beach as well. The ocean and the sky. I remember looking south one day in July. The sun was at its apex and together with the reflection of the sand and the sea and the curvature of the sky; a searing white arc spanned high over the beach. It was half mirage-half truth. I was twelve and I was positive I must be holy to see something like that.

At twelve I probably was holy. I was asexual, unspoiled and I didn’t need to drink then.

And so for that moment in my life, I was holy. I too was like Christ or like Chris. I was a bad, if not obtuse poet who thought he was seeing things. I was young and the Christ-seed -the mustard seed-had not yet matured into the Christ like yearn for destruction. To crucify yourself, to give your life that edge, that ledge to fall with a Promethean grin; that hanging agony, the pain numbing other pain, the marrow of marrow, your snide pithy self that sits atop your psychological cyclotron. We string ourselves on the rack for our pathos, passion, and redemption in pain for all poetic, if not obtuse reasons.

And those reasons are the same reasons that gives you the impetus, to untie ourselves from the rack and rise from the dead, day in and day out, year after year. Amen.

“You know,” said Boom, “I was back at Jones Beach a few years ago and in all honesty it has gone down hill. The sand was trashy and the waves were nothing to what they used to be.”