RobertLevin219

(Continued from Part 1)

And then there's the "relationship" I spoke of, which was also the time I broke most all of my rules. We're going back a dozen years here, but there are still nights during which I'm abruptly awakened by the sound of my voice calling her name. When I'm not alone these outbursts cause my bedmates to awaken rather abruptly themselves, but I think at least a part of what they find disconcerting is that the name I call is "Roger"—her father wanted a boy and he hadn't taken no for an answer.

A sparrow of a girl, no more than four-foot-ten and alarmingly skinny, Roger had thick black hair that, falling over most of her face, also fell nearly to the floor. The first time I saw her, from the other end of a long and crowded bar, I thought she was a half-opened umbrella standing on its handle.

We were introduced later that evening by a casual acquaintance of mine she turned out to be with who knew nothing about me except my real name (and who was obviously trying to dump her). But when he said, and quite clearly I thought, "Roger, I'd like you to meet Pete Papadoupolous," her reply was: "Mr. HOFFMAN! What an honorary and spectaculated phenomination. This is PEERLESS even."

Now the thing was that when I saw what was happening normal procedure in this circumstance went out the window. I think I knew immediately that Roger was a keeper and at once recognizing how much she wanted me to be Hoffman and deathly afraid that she would turn away at the slightest hint that I wasn't (which would have been difficult to tell since her hair made it all but impossible to know in which direction she was facing), I went out of way to nourish and perpetuate the "misunderstanding."

What can I say? I was in love for the only time in my life, and when, in our initial embrace a couple of hours later I must have squeezed her too hard and she urinated all over my sneakers, I just—I guess it was the intimacy of it—went over the top. Indeed, before the sun came up I had invited her to live with me and she had accepted.

"I'm so excrutiated," she gushed. "I'm besides both sides of myself. And yours too!"

Yes, of course I knew there was no way it could work, that it had to end badly. But I couldn't help entertaining the fantasy that if I drew her in really tight before she discovered her error, we might achieve a depth of bonding that would make my true identity (or lack of one) irrelevant.

On the following morning, and amazed by the calming effect her simple presence was having on my flying roommates (who'd stopped fluttering around so much and were sleeping a lot), I was more than anxious to know everything about her.

She hadn't, I learned, had an easy time of it.

Her father, she said, had been a profligator of languigistics at a presticated universalment but had quit his tender position and dissipated— just, and poignantly, a day after Roger, then a toddler, had spoken her first paragraph.

No less heartbreaking, her mother, on whose insurance policy she'd been living for the last twenty years, had tragicastically electrified herself when she inexplaciously dropped a George Foreman grill into the bath she was taking—this on the evening of the day she'd come to Roger's first grade class to hear her recite "Mary Kept A Smallish Lamb."

But at this point (and apparently wrestling with her delusion—which was something I'd never known any of my women to do and which, I thought, said something about the quality of her character, though I'm not sure what exactly), she began to ask some questions of her own.

"How come you don't seem to have the majority of cash I respected?" she said. "How come you don't inhabituate in a nice place? How come you don't have a phone if Steven Spielberg and Sidney Pollack want to hand out some rings? How come your closet is only fulminating with jeans? Also, how come you don't keep your birds in cages?"

Considering that I wasn't used to such an interrogation—and that I was obliged to think on my feet—I came up with something that I thought wasn't bad.

"Honey," I said, "you've entered my life at the worst possible time and while I know that it's asking a lot, I can only hope you'll find it within yourself to bear with me. I'm afraid that I may be afflicted with what's called the 'J.D. Salinger Syndrome'. It's a condition of creative paralysis that sometimes develops in artists who have achieved a legendary stature. Owning the prospect of a fame that will survive their demise, they live in terror of losing that prospect by producing work that might be inferior to what they've already accomplished. Rather than risk tainting their image, they cease to function and, in the worst cases, to even appear in public where the possibility of a clumsy or mediocre utterance could alter and diminish the way they're perceived. What happens is that they effectively sacrifice the remainder of their lives to their immortality. I may or may not overcome this disease and I'll understand completely if its something you want no part of. All I can say is that I'm deliberately staying out of the public eye right now and that I've cut myself off from even my closest friends and associates who, meaning well but not understanding, would only make light of my problem and encourage me to work. This unfortunately includes my accountant who happens to be the only person with access to my bank accounts. As for the apartment, it's my hideout. It's perfect as a hideout because no one would ever think to look for me in such a crummy place. You're the only one who knows about it, the only person I've trusted enough to bring to it. But again, I'll understand if this isn't something you want to involve yourself with because it won't be a whole lot of fun and I don't know how it will end."

And it worked. Roger said nothing, but in addition to breaking out in a really hideous rash as I spoke, her chest swelled noticeably, almost expanding into something like a bosom. She must have felt five feet tall to be deemed worthy of sharing in my time of trial.

But her obvious uneasiness with the situation in which she found herself would periodically surface. A couple of days later she wanted to know why more people didn't notarize me on the street.

"Really good actors," I said, "have the ability to be anonymous when they want to be, sometimes even invisible."

I remember that when I said this it made her giggle.

But even putting aside the considerable tensions caused by my charade (and the always frazzling necessity to invent places I was going to when I left the house for the car wash every day), living with Roger was nerve-racking all by itself—like being tuned to two radio stations at once in a room with the light bulb loose in its socket. Periods of incessant chatter, for instance, would suddenly be interrupted, often in mid-sentence, by a dead silence, as though her plug had been pulled from the wall. At such times she might become motionless as well. Although her eyes would remain open I couldn't be sure if she was actually conscious. In fact, on several occasions, I'd have been ready to believe she'd expired were it not for an odd clucking sound, the origin of which I was never able to locate, and something unattractive that she did with the muscles around her mouth.

Still, as enormous as the problems were, the moments of bliss I experienced in those first weeks more than compensated for them.

Spring was beginning and celebrating its arrival, we did the things new lovers do when spring is upon them. We went to a windswept beach where we romped and frolicked in the sand. Locked in an embrace we rolled over and over down a steep hill in Central Park. In the evenings I washed her hair and she gleefully folded my penis into woodland animal shapes.

I'd have to say that, all things considered, life was pretty good.

Then it went bad.

Roger read in a newspaper that Hoffman was going to shoot a film somewhere in the Midwest and that he'd be on location for two weeks.

"Why didn't you push my head up?" she said, showing me the article.

Even though I'd known all along that such a development was inevitable, I was nonetheless shaken by this news. It took no small effort to collect myself sufficiently to say: "I was going to tell you, but I thought I'd wait until the last minute because I wasn't sure the part would work out and because I knew how painful a separation now will be for us. I didn't want to make you sad before I had to."

But she was happy. Clapping her hands she said, "I'm so glad to know you lastly clambered over your jaded salanjastiker hippodrome."

"Well let's not get ahead of ourselves," I said. "It could be just a fleeting thing."

Needing a place to get lost for two weeks, and with nowhere else to go, it was left for me to seek accommodations at the car wash. And the night before I left Roger helped me pack my things. When we were done she went to the kitchen and brought back a bottle of cheap champagne she'd concealed in the back of the refrigerator.

"This is a time for jubilating," she said, pulling the cork herself. Then, touching my glass with hers, she said, "Breakfast with eggs, Duster!"

As you can imagine, the following days were pretty bad. Sleeping in various vehicles in a lot adjoining the wash, I showered and did my laundry standing behind cars on the conveyor belt. And missing her terribly, the fact that I couldn't reach her because the apartment had no phone was torture for me. I could only hope that she was okay.

Finally, mercifully, the two weeks were up and I went home.

Hearing my key in the lock, Roger came to the door with one of my "birds" perched on top of her head and holding another newspaper. Without a word, she shoved the paper at me before I'd even crossed the threshold. It was open to a story about Hoffman. Some kind of budget issue had arisen and production on his film had been suspended. During the hiatus Hoffman was staying in New York. The paper had been printed on the date he arrived.

He'd been here for a WEEK!

Putting the paper down I met her eyes and saw that they were red and swollen.

"Where were you?" she said. " A whole plus seven—and twenty-four as well."

When I had no quick answer she said, "You're having an exquisite triathlon, isn't it?"

You will appreciate that, as heart wrenching as her question was, my principle emotion at that moment was relief.

"Darling, Darling," I said, "No way. There's no way I would ever betray you like that. No, I'm not having an illicit liaison. How could you think such a thing? I'm playing an unhappy man and to stay in character I deprived myself of your company—for as long as I could bear it anyway. It's just a coincidence that it was exactly one week.

Roger stepped toward me and buried her face in my abdomen.

"I was scared," she said

She was trembling and so was I. We stood holding each other for a very long time.

Determined from then on to be more careful, I made a special effort to monitor what she might read, see or hear. But I couldn't cover everything. Just a few days later we were awakened by the radio alarm clock and immediately heard on a newscast that the budget problem had been resolved and that Hoffman was back on location. Fleeing to the kitchen to find something to kill myself with, I could feel Roger right behind me. I expected flying dishes. What I got was a juicy kiss.

"You didn't have to submit a misleader about being Dustin Hoffman," she said. "Why did you think you had to be duplicacious with me?"

I was stunned. Had my wildest dreams come true? Was it possible that Roger had come to love me for myself after all? I couldn't believe it. Nor could I believe the sex that was to follow.

I always knew Roger was hot when (it was her signal to me) she lay down on the bed on her stomach, raised her skirt and floated an air biscuit. But that morning's air biscuit resonates for me to this day. Indeed, it will be forever etched in my memory, not only for its remarkable housekeeping application (it worked to clear the apartment of all vermin for almost a month), but because it served to set the stage for the most incredible orgasm I've ever had.

I've never been able to faithfully describe that orgasm. If I report that before it I'd had no idea how much sheer joy there was to feel in sex, that never in my life have I known so pure an ecstasy, I don't begin to do it justice or to convey how, in the throes of it, I felt myself transported to a place beyond time and that, floating free as something like total spirit, I was privy for an instant to the deepest secrets and most puzzling mysteries of creation. (In that apocalyptic moment I actually understood, for example, why Chuck Norris was on the planet.)

And I can say this notwithstanding the fact that the orgasm was somewhat premature—I was still standing over the bed and fully clothed when it happened.

Anyway, when it was done and I lay down next to her, happily exhausted, basking in the afterglow, I was ready to drop my guard and reveal my true self to her in all its emptiness. Brushing away her hair to find her face, which took a awhile, I was about to speak when she said:

"You'll never assume the crush I had with you."

"?"

"I saw 'Our Picnics in Needles Park' six times and 'Bobby Dearest' eleven times. God, Alfredo, how I wanted to sit on your head!"

If, only minutes earlier, I'd discovered what it must feel like to win the lottery, now I knew the depths of despair. Even to think about commencing a new deception was beyond my strength.

I didn't know what to do.

The very next day, and too weary at this point to bother checking the TV listings, the matter was taken from my hands. Pacino suddenly turned up on a live talk show we were watching. When he came on, Roger looked at me, then back at the screen and then at me again.

"How are you doing that?" she said.

When I could only throw up my hands she bolted from the room and was gone for twenty minutes. She must have lapsed into her semiconscious thing because I could hear that strange clucking sound (which was a lot louder than usual). When she returned she stood directly in front of me with her arms akimbo. (I could tell her arms were akimbo because her elbows were sticking out of her hair at precisely the same angle.)

This time she WAS pissed.

"You're haven't been Al Pacino either," she said.

"No, Honey, I haven't."

Where once Roger had contemplated me with an unabashed reverence, as though an aureole surrounded my face, now she looked at me as though I was the lowest form of nature's creepy crawly creations.

"I've known it," she said. "You're a pathoprecocious person. You're a hypothetical liar. Well, don't bother to make up something improved because it'll be too little and without much else."

"Sweetheart..."

"I mean it," she said. "I recognize the person you really are now. I expected it for days."

Yes, I was ready to say ruefully, I'm Fred the Fraud. I'm Sid the Shit. I'm Deforest the Deceiver.

"You're EMILIO ESTEVEZ," she said. "You're Emilio Estevez and you're ashamed of yourself. WHY? WHY, Emilio? I know you aren't a word that people keep inside the house, but yesterday when my suspicionings aroused me and I said to myself, 'Roger, you're a chimp, this can't be broccoli you're smelling', I went to a laberarium and found you in a book. It said you were a 'third-belated thespassian who sometimes didn't smell the place up'. Wouldn't I co-habituate with Emilio Estevez? Am I so stuffed-up, or what the fuck is this?"

"Rog..."

"If only you'd had the encouragement to level yourself for me. But now.... Oh, Emilio, I could never stay with a man who has so weenie an esteement for his moral fibers. Nor I myself."

I pleaded with her not to go. I had no way to pull it off, of course, but I promised to take her backstage to meet the cast of "Cats". I know she agonized over the proposition, but this lady was not without principles. Indeed, she looked at me then as though it was a few years after Watergate and I was Richard Nixon wondering aloud to Republican Party officials if they might, you know, consider nominating me again.

A few months later Roger took up with a guy she's been with ever since. I think she thinks he's Danny DeVito and I've often wondered, since they have a phone, how he handles it when Jack Nicholson and Michael Douglas never call.

And while I'm on a sour note anyway I might as well tell you of a period in which the celebrity connection women make for me actually worked to my detriment. It was when Pacino's "Revolution" was released—and on its heels the video. Amounting to a devastating left jab, right cross combination, these unfortunate events threatened to end my career as well as Pacino's. In fact, it got so bad for a while that even women who thought I was Gabriel Byrne would suddenly back off and decide to take a pass. It really wasn't until "Sea of Love" revived Pacino's popularity that I returned to full stride.

When I look back, however, it's clear to me that even during that difficult interval I was better off than I would otherwise have been and I know that I have nothing to complain about. Although I may not have put up Wilt Chamberlain-type numbers, neither has my life been bereft of carnal experiences.

Moreover, I got a woman to actually live with me and though it was very brief, that union produced a son. (Unbeknownst to us at the time, Roger was pregnant when she left me.) I haven't mentioned my son because frankly he embarrasses even me. To say it as gently as I can, most people, when they've seen him or tried to engage him in conversation, take for granted that his parents were first cousins. But Eileen (Roger wanted a girl and she wouldn't take no for an answer) is almost a teenager now and I've noticed lately, when he comes to visit and we're out on the street, that he's begun to turn the head of more than an occasional young lady.

Here's wishing whoever they want him to be a very long run.

Copyright 2004 Robert Levin