A man sat in a hospital bed in Austin Texas. It was 10:00 o'clock in the morning. The man had cancer. He was dying. Six months, six weeks-- the doctor's didn't know. Hell, they never knew, really. The man was alone in his room. In Austin Texas. Outside, he heard the swoosh swoosh of a Negro (he was sure it was a Negro though he couldn't see out the window) sweeping the walkway. It was a pleasant sound, and for the moment made him forget his fate. It made him forget many things. And remember others.
Lots of thoughts tumbled through the dying man's brain, but the main thought that came to the man was of a box of photos sitting in a girl's apartment in Santa Barbara. The girl--who's apartment the man had been sitting in only a week earlier--had known the man during her youth. In high school they had been "almost lovers." But that is another story altogether. What's important is the photo in the girl's wicker basket that she had shown the man.
It was a photo of a woman sitting in a straight backed chair. The woman was extremely thin. Though she was sitting, one could tell she was tall. She wore all black--leotards of some sort. Her hair was cropped very short in a kind of Joan Of Arc style. The woman looked sexless--andrygynous is the word, I suppose. She was a woman. She was a man. Who knew? She was without sex. Yet there was something odd about this. Something in the way her eye looked--obviously the person who'd taken the photo had caught the woman's eye the shot was snapped. The photograph had captured this exact moment. The eye said something. That something was difficult if not impossible to say, but--despite the woman's apparent asexuality--it spoke of sex. Oh yes, it spoke of sex, and more than sex--it spoke of something deep and dark... like a black pool. In that pool was something absolutely un-namable....something beyond fear and hatred and even murder. The look--the eye that is--was so strong, so powerful--that as the man glanced at it, he actually had to look down. One couldn't look at it for too long because of the feeling it caused.
The man had sat clutching the photo. Meanwhile the girl was looking through her wicker basket full of pictures, tossing photos happily this way and that. She had a glass of wine in her other hand. She was having a fine time. "Who is this girl in the picture?" the man asked. He was trying to hide the feeling welling up inside him. Inside he was bursting. But he was trying to sound calm. He knew that there was a story here. The girl looked at the photo and then laughed, "Oh, that's Betty--Betty Beaumont!" She laughed again and took a sip of her wine. "It's the short hair...that's why you don't recognize her. Remember that long beautiful hair of hers? One day she just cut it all off. Personally, I think it was an act of sheer courage....."
But the man was already not listening. Betty Beaumont! Of course! He had known the strange woman with the story behind her eye--she had been in the same high school class that he and the girl (why did he insist on calling her a girl?) with the wine and the wicker basket were in. Taft High School. Class of summer, '63. Betty Beaumont! Of course, of course of course!
And now the man dared glance at the photo again. The thin body, the straight back, the elegant set of the head. Back in high school she had been a beauty--a strange beauty, but a beauty nonetheless. Betty Beaumont. What a name! So perfect. So proper. But--could this person in the photo with the dark eye in her head really and truly be Betty Beaumont? Was it possible? Because if it were (and he knew it was true) it would force him to confront many things anew. And in order to do that he had to go back.....
Outside the swoosh of the Negro sweeper stopped, and now the sounds of the hospital, the clatter and clank of glasses, of people speaking in too-loud voices, bells (ding a ling! ding a ling!) ringing--came back to the fore. But the man didn't hear them. He was lost in his thoughts of Betty Beaumont and by what strange fate she had become this poor, stark woman.
You see, in high school--even back then--the man had a particular quality. It was something he didn't even think of at the time, but which he would later use to his own advantage and even good fortune. It was a simple quality really. And that quality was that he was able to know--in great detail--many things about people simply by being near them. He didn't have to talk to them; he didn't have to hear their stories. In fact, their stories often got in the way. People told all they could ever need to about themselves by every movement of the face, the hand...the tilt of the head. All one had to do was be quiet and listen and boom!--the stories would come. The man loved this, he really did. Many times he would simply go to a strange part of town and sit on a bench, observing, and soon people would beging to tell him their stories. God, it was wonderful! The things he heard...the great intimacies they shared with him--all without saying a word! But back to Betty Beaumont, for it is she that had caused the man to forget the fact that he was in a hospital bed in Texas dying of cancer. Now Betty Beaumont and her straight back and black clothes and sexless face and her dark eye-hole had become everything. And so he remembered....
1961. Betty Beaumont walking down the steps in the lunch area in a yellow checked dress with a white collar. It was kind of a cheap dress, but on her it looked elegant. She was beautiful, absolutely and definitely. It was a beauty that made no effort, and therefore it sat upon you like a heavy stone. It was so quiet, this beauty. So quiet and strong that it made you ache deep down inside. Betty Beaumont. Walking and laughing with the other girls. But she was somehow alone--even in the midst of them. Where was her dark eye back then? Oh, she had a pretty smile, but could the dark eye have been forming within her skull--that deep black pool into which so many unspeakable things would dive down to the bottom to haunt her dreams--could it have been alive and growing with her as she danced and laughed down the stairs of Taft High School, winter, 1961?
And then a flood of images. Betty--her smile, her skin--so smooth, kind of opaque, pinkish, ....soft, perfect skin . Betty--her wonderful dancer's body--flat chest, long legs, perfect not-too-big-not- too-little rump. Her voice--soft, intelligent--never couquettish pr artificial like so many of the other girls.
Had the man been in love with her, you wonder? Well...of course he had! Do you think he was a dummy? But it was not a possessive love, or a love that needed--or even ever expected to consummate itself. It was simply a love that existed because a creature as lovely as this walked the earth. She was a work of the Lord above, plain and simple, and as she walked--Betty in her yellow dress, carrying her books (each bound by a fresh new book cover), she made everything about her grow dim. The glow she cast drove away the ghosts and demons, the dark creatures lurking--even baack then, 1961!--in the background of everything. She simply walked and whoosh!--they vanished, in fear and awe of her pure, pristine, unselfish beauty.
But that eye! Where in God's name had it come from?! When did it first appear, to grow like a wound--like the man's very cancer--inside her head?
I should mention here that upon one occasion, the man had had an encounter with Betty Beaumont--well, actually on two occasions. Once, at one of the high school dances, he had actually dared to ask her to slow dance. And so, there on the darkened auditorium floor, they danced close to a song by the Penguins ("Earth Angel"). She was sweating a little bit underneath the armpits--and on her lower back (it was always so damn hot in those stupid auditoriums) and it was wonderful. She danced--as she did everything else--just perfectly. He held her, and she held him--not too close, not to far. Not to tightly, not to loose. He remembered she'd held him-- you might say--kindly. He could feel her small, flat breasts pressing against him and he moved his hands lower, just below the sweat line on her back, to the uppermost region of her buttox and held her there. She didn't mind.
And so they danced to a doo-wop song, and during the whole three minutes or so, they hadn't said a word. Then afterwards she said, "thank you....that was nice." And meant it! Then she turned and walked back to her girlfriends and that was it. And it was enough. It really was.
Then there was the second occasion, and though it wasn't quite so intimate as the other, it had left an even deeper impression upon the man's mind. And it was this second impression that disturbed him so greatly now as he thought of the tortured woman in the photograph.
It was summer and a lot of the kids in the neighborhood would come swimming at the man's pool (his parents were one of the first on the street to have one). Down the street lived a sweet freckled girl named Jenny and she was a pal and a bud-- kind of a tomboy with maybe a hillbilly accent or something, and she loved to come swimming. And so one summer day, Jenny had called and said, "Hey, hey--I'm comin' swimmin see? (that's how she talked) and I wanna bring my friend with me!"
OK, the man had said (hoping that the friend was a girl and not a guy) and hung up. He was already out in the yard working on his summer tan. A few minutes later he heard voices and laughter, then the gate clanked, and a moment later two girls came around the corner and it was Jenny and her friend...and lo and behold-- her friend was Betty Beaumont! Betty Beaumont, right there in his own backyard! Betty Beaumont, in a mint-green two piece bathing suit and her long brown hair and white teeth and perfect smile--was standing right there, alive and breathing!
"Hi!" she said. "Thanks for letting us come over.“ It's so hot!"
But Jenny was already diving into the cool blue water, making a big sploosh and then coming up for air, pushing her brown-red hair out of her eyes. "Come on in...the water's great!" she yelped. "C'mon, hurry up! "
And without another word, Betty Beaumont did a perfect swan dive into the pool, and then he was up and out of his chair and he dove in after. And so there they were, he and Jenny and Betty in his pool, and they did all the usual stuff you do on a hot summer afternoon. They played and jumped and cannonballed, and he ducked Jenny and Betty, and they ducked him, and Jenny jumped on his back and he tossed her into the deep end, and they played games and wrestled underwater and then they got out and put lotion on and let the sun burn them black. And when it got too hot they jumped back in the cool blue water and played some more and pretty soon, even though he was doing everything possible in his head to make things last as long as possible, it was four-thirty and Jenny said, "Oh gosh, mom's gonna be mad, we better get going!" And she and Betty, still wet, ran out the side gate and before she left, Betty turned and said "Thanks for the swim!" And out they went---poof, just like that.
He remembered he'd lain out in the yard by himself--dizzy and wonderfully delirious, until the sun was almost down. Everytime he'd go back in the water he would think--Betty Beaumont was actually here! In my pool! Her skin touched this very water that now is touching my skin. The actual molecules of her body touched this holy water that now touches me. Her spirit lives here, in my pool...in my water. The spirit of the living, breathing Betty Beaumont, of her almost naked body, of her actual skin and flesh and hair were--are, even at this very moment--co-mingling with my own flesh and blood and we are now one, married and bound in our very souls, eternally, for all time....
Such thoughts does a young man of 17 think on a hot summer day, when the most beautiful girl in high school magically appears in his back yard.
And yet, thirty years later, in a strange, desolate hospital bed, these thoughts lived in him anew. They were not even what you could call memories. Oh, my, no! For they lived and breathed once again. Once again, he could hear Betty's musical laughter, he could feel the water and the sun and her wet hair in his hands all over again. But the problem was, he now had to deal with the effect that the photo of the black clad, short haired, sexless Betty Beaumont (his friend had said she had never married!) had upon his memories. What did the dark eye in her head say of the years in between, of the things that had smashed her and scarred her? Or was it, perhaps, that the dark things had been in the genes, that they had come down from generations of proper New Englanders, gradually taking their effect upon her soul and body, until at the age of forty-something, she had become this strange beast of burden?
One often read now of the imprinting done between ages one and five --how we are formed, essentially, and perhaps even finally--before we even venture out into the world. And then there were the innumerable talk shows-- Geraldo, Oprah and the lot--with their constant parade of serial killers, satanists, ex-cult members, of breast-augmented, sex-changed, over-psycho analyzed, drug-rehabilitated casualties--of poor, sad human beings in all their pitiful glory. And on the shows, these grotesque creatures spoke tearfully (some while hiding behind ridiculous wigs and sunglasses) of their lives--of the beatings and the cheating and the swapping and the abuse and the molestations by fathers, or uncles, brothers or whomever. And while the grotesques talked and the audience chortled and asked stupid questions and the hosts looked "concerned" and the people and home ate pretzels and felt momentarily relieved that they weren't freaks --oh no-- and the psychologists and social workers wrote their books that noone ever read. And what the dying man wondered was, what would all these good people say if he were to pose to them the mystery of the the dark fish-eye in Betty Beaumont's head? Would they attribute it to some childhood trauma, would they say it was karma, genetics, or simply God's will?
The point is, that no matter what they said--these "experts"--not a single whit of it would help the mystery faced by the dying man in the hospital. You see this of course, don't you?
Oh, he had learned certain facts about Betty's actual after-highschool life...tidbits his friend had told him. Betty had become a highly successful artist whose work (largely "environmentally-oriented" pieces) had been shown all over the world. She traveled often and widely, showing her work at various galleries. Betty lived alone in a large loft near Greenwich Village, and--though she was largely a loner--she surrounded herself with a largely "intellectual, arty" crowd. Moreover, many of her works--his friend had told him--made use of huge objects--gigantic rocks, or massive pilons built up underwater, or huge twisted pieces of metal that had to be dragged into place by tractors.
To the dying man, the art-world was as foreign as the planet Mars, and he knew better than to try and acclimate his brain, which mainly thought in terms of words, sounds and smaller shapes--to attempting to understand it. Still and all, the idea of the gentle Betty, the soft young thing he'd held during the lunchtime dance and tussled with in his pool--the thought of this tender, young doe handling huge chunks of rock and metal--well, this thought was very disturbing. He just couldn't make sense of it! Or rather, at least not in the context of the notion he'd held in his mind during this past thirty years. Now he had to invent a new Betty Beaumont!
But it wasn't even the thought of the young, smooth girl pitting her frail bones against immovable chunks of stone and metal that got to him. No, it was the other thing. The thing at the bottom of the pool in her dark eye. There was something down there--something with an anger, a fury so pure and so powerful that it would split your skull open with just a quick shot. Something that--if turned on with its full force--would cause a host of demons to descend upon you and put their fingers through your flesh, greedily pulling out your innards, then afterwards, dance with glee around the shiny mass of entrails. Yes friends, there-- in Betty Beaumont's eye, lurked something that--dare he say it--might possible be the essence of pure evil.
It was this thing, this quality, that had caused Betty Beaumont to become hard inside, that caused her to give vent to her anger by pitting her muscles against things that dwarfed her in mass and form. It was this thing that had caused her sex to fuse with itself to form this strange androgynous being with the too-straight back and the tight biceps and the shaved head and the gaunt, frightening starkness of her form.
Questions, questions and more questions.
Had she swum underwater in deep dark pools? Maybe in Greece or the Galapagos? Had she been tied to a bed, tied, shackled and bound, while some strange man had taken his pleasure with her? Or had she perhaps tied him, wrapping her strong biceps around his throat and pulling his hair back until he begged for mercy? Did she secretly want to break his neck, or cut his throat? The blood would look good on her white sheets, wouldn't it? Red blood, white sheets, black curtains--a nice combination, n'est ce pas?
Oh damn, there were so many questions. What was her note? Was it B flat? What chord did she emit? Was it minor or major, dominant or dissonant? Did it have a Negro quality to it--the same kind of dark anger that makes blues and gospel so powerful? Yes, yes--it was like this. Probably B flat ninth or thirteenth. Somewhere in there.
Did she walk the streets alone at night? Stop and have a coffee in that place across the street from the gay bar? How did her face look then--at 3:00 a.m. in the half light, in that place just off Bleeker Street? Did she ever think of the old days--even just for a moment? Or did she think of the bottoms of deep, dark pools of black water? Of all the things buried down there? Something about her avoided light, or at least didn't want direct light upon her. No, no, it would burn her fair skin. It would expose her. Ah, that's it. She didn't want to be exposed.
The man tried to do his trick. He tried to be very very quiet inside, so that no thoughts existed. It was only in that state that he could really "hear." It was only then that he received the stories that were told him. Now he needed to be so quiet and still that Betty Beaumont could tell him her story. He was quite sure if he were quiet enough, that although--at that very moment in time she sat somewhere in New York, and he sat in a hospital bed in Austin, Texas--he was sure that she would indeed tell him the things he needed to know. She couldn't help but tell him.
But alas, all the man could hear were odd sounds---sounds that didn't make any sense. Sounds like the grating of bones upon one another, scratching sounds, or sounds like a bad instrument that's hopelessly out of tune. And behind this he heard the sounds around him....of the nurses chatter echoing in the hallway, and of the old Jewish man groaning in the next bed. Damn! Damn! Damn! Try as he might, he couldn't enter into the stream.
Now the man in the bed across from him had begun to cry. The moment was shattered.
"What's the matter?" he asked.
"Ach! I shit in the damn bed," the man said. "Could you ring the nurse for me please. Ach...God, I'm sorry."
A horrible smell wafted through the room. The man rung the bell for the nurse.
Two hours later it was dark and the old man was snoring. Johnny and Ed McMahon were yukking it up on the TV above his bed. As he usually did, the dying man had the sound turned off. People's talking just got in the way. Now it was silent in the grey, Texas hospital. Just a bit of snoring was all. Well, he thought to himself, I'm dying. This is it. Oddly, the thought didn't bother him, in any visceral sort of way. What bothered him was that he knew he couldn't finish many things. In fact, he knew that most things went unfinished. He knew he could never tell many people he was sorry that he'd hurt them. He knew that he'd never understand why he'd been married to the three women who had been his wives. He knew he'd never understand why everything was so sad. Was it really meant to be this way? Just plain old sad? Kind of crummy and sad? Could this really be it?
Outside a cricket chirped in the night. The old man in the bed next to the dying man groaned and emitted a long, lonely fart.
Two thousand miles away, in New York, it was 3:00 a.m. Betty Beaumont lay under a single sheet in her bed wearing only a thin white t-shirt. For just a moment, her hand went underneath the shirt and stroked one small, flat breast. The nipple was hard. Betty stared out her window at the moon, wondering, in her own strange way. Inside her, deep in her stomach, something like a small, sad child was crying. Betty wanted to comfort the child, but she did not know how. Pretty soon she turned on her side, wrapped her arms around herself --pulling her knees up to her chest--and curled into a tight, hard little ball.
From a certain vantage point, she almost looked like a smooth, white rock, glowing there in the moonlight.
©Zero Tolerance Productions, Inc.
