Free I, Fatty by Jerry Stahl Page B

due—she was good at it.
    I loved my wife, but I hated myself when I was around her. Does any drunk like to be called an ogre by his glass widow before he knows how big a hangover he has to sweat through that morning, or what manner of shame he brought on himself and his loved ones the previous evening? I suppose I could blame the ground rhino horn they put in sake—I've downed tastier paint thinner—but it was my own fault that in Asia I became a belligerent dipso. Somewhere in Nanking Province, the entire troupe began to regard me with that worse-than-hateful, worse-than-angry look that every lush on the planet has had aimed in his or her direction. The look that says, "Before, your behavior was just disgusting — now it's making our lives a living hell." The words may as well be plastered on their foreheads: "You're an asshole and we wish you would just go away."
    Still, when Fatty was buying, Roscoe always had friends. Anything was better than the tension of being cooped up with Minta. My wife's mounting disappointment in me made it hard to breathe. I couldn't wait to head out with the boys at night and get roaring. Since women weren't allowed in drinking joints, Minta remained behind. Some nights I'd crash back into our room at some ungodly hour, screaming so loudly the entire company would get an earful. "I'm tired of having to carry the whole damn show on my back! What am I — a white sumo?"
    "Two sumoes!" someone shouted from down the hall. Or so Minta told me. I, of course, have no memory of Nanking Province whatsoever.
    Somehow, in my hooch-addled brain, it was Minta's fault that we were slaving away in Riceland instead of doing respectable theater and getting rich like that O'Neill fellow. The Count of Monte Cristo, every day of your life. And wouldn't that be heaven?
    If I really concentrate, I can squeeze out a cracked memory or two of the Mikado tour. The worst image is Minta cowering on a tatami mat—the fear in her eyes so damning it made me want to hurl somebody out the window. Probably myself. Did she really think I'd hit her? She must have, or she would not have looked so scared.
    I could tell the company was turning on me, so I picked up every tab. Bought everyone presents of shantung silk. Organized tea parties that started out pleasant and ended up with me sweaty-faced, doing the Black Bottom with nervous women I'd yank out of their chairs—often as not the wives of respectable businessmen too polite to kill me.
    The cast knew how much cash had gone to keeping me out of scrapes. They also knew how much it cut into the net profits. My assaholic behavior was taking money out of everybody's pockets.
    By the time we hit the Philippines, the strain and firewater caught up to me. My voice went. I got a fever of 104. For three weeks I soaked the sheets in Manila, stinking up a hotel room and shutting down the show—leaving the rest of the company unpaid and justifiably hateful.
    Living with In-Laws
Is Its Own Kind of Death
    All I wanted to do was crawl back to Los Angeles. Once we actually returned, though, it was back to Minta's parents' house, back to scraping around for work. It didn't take too many botched auditions before I had to admit I was never going to be a high-paid serious stage actor. With my body, I was not likely to be a serious anything. Who was I kidding? They were paying to see a dancing elephant, not a dramatic one.
    Minta grabbed some chorus work through a man her Dad met in his capacity as streetcar conductor. This gave me more time to hunker in the Durfees' easy chair and stew. Some days my big activity was lifting my ankles when Minta's Mom vacuumed around me.
    For hours, I sat in that chair, sneaking sips from a flask and pawing my tattered scrapbook to see what a big-time headliner I was in vaudeville. But sooner or later I'd have to raise my eyes and admit what I was in life: a dead broke, bone-tired 22-year-old who'd been hustling nonstop for 12 years, a young man who'd known