The Empty Chair Read Free Page A

like I was heading for the gallows. I never looked down, only straight ahead, at the ass of whoever was in front of me, yet couldn’t help but see from the corner of my eye the sliders
whooshing
past, the joyful
screaming
, the chute wide as a highway, like some monstrously tilted bowling lane waiting patiently to strike me out. To avoid the paralysis of vertigo, when I finally reached the top I gave my full attention to the spreading out of my smelly burlap sack, the threadbare magic carpet that would carry me to Hell. You couldn’t take
too
much time with preparations because a cackling crowd was endlessly summiting behind you, anxious to fling themselves down that bizarre man-made mountain. So you’d plunk yourself on that useless mat and—Geronimo!—off you’d go, hoping to catch up with your stomach at slide’s end. All the while knowing I’d have to immediately begin the climb again, or be called a fag, and be publicly ostracized—
    I know, I’m off-track. It’s just the butterflies . . .
    We’re not in a
huge
hurry, are we?
    I just need to work up to it. I’m finding my way. Promise.
    All right, and do forgive: the Kipling/Twain rendezvous in New York. As it turns out, the two shared a common passion: copyrights. Ha! According to historical reports, Samuel Clemens had
lots
to say about this particular issue. Copyrights! Mania of the Titans!
    Kipling was an absolutely superb reporter, even referred to himself as a newspaperman. (Jack London had his own view of the papers. Called them “man-killing machines.”) Kipling was known as a human tape recorder, capable of flawlessly transcribing from memory. Capote used to say the same thing, but Capote was more full of shit than a sewer pipe. Lord Rudy quoted Twain, a little speech I spottily committed to memory, as it touches on a topic mentioned earlier and which I am certain we will soon explore, which acted as a balm at the time—
    A conscience, like a child, is a nuisance. If you play with it and give it everything it wants—spoil it—it’ll be sure to intrude on all your amusements and most of your griefs. Just treat it as you would anything else. When it’s rebellious, spank it. Be stern! Don’t let it come out to play with you at all hours. That way you’ll end up with a
good
conscience, one that’s properly trained. But a spoiled one destroys all pleasure in life! I’ve done an excellent job in training my own; at least, I haven’t heard from it for some time. Perhaps I killed it from being too severe. It is wrong to kill a child . . . though in spite of all I’ve said, a conscience does differ from a child in many ways.
    Perhaps it’s better off dead.
    Wonderful, isn’t it?
    Sometimes satire is the only thing that does the job. All right . . .
    Enough nonsense.
    I began by disclosing that while I prefer men to women on the sexual front, I’ve had meaningful relationships with both. I told you I was married but separated, and that I
—we
—have—
had
—a child. A son
.
We had a son.
    His name is Ryder.
    (I won’t say “was” because it still is.)
    My wife’s name is Kelly.
    I haven’t seen her for seven or eight years. She lives in Canada with her sister. On her sister’s property anyway. I send money every month. The occasional postcard or email. She writes back now and then. Her sister worries, endlessly. “She’s thin as a bone!” My frontal lobe seems to have taken that information and run with it, because whenever I think of Kelly I picture a haunted scarecrow piercing me with haunted, pleading eyes.
    We were living together but hadn’t been physically intimate for a long time when Kelly said she wanted a child. She was 35 or 36—I was 29—she’d had four abortions. Also had PCOS, polycystic ovary syndrome, so the doctors said the odds were slim. We were