Noble McCloud - A Novel
Chapter 2

Copyright© 2018 by Harvey Havel

He awoke the next morning in the throes of a dream. He fell from a precipice into a rocky valley. His heart lunged as he leaped from this height, and as usual with dreams of this sort he awoke before hitting the ground. He hadn’t dreamt of falling for many years. He awoke in a sweat and wondered what the dream meant. Perhaps he was losing control, that the pink cloud of sobriety had dissipated amidst the whirlwind of Alexandra. It left him in a distasteful frame of mind. This is an understatement. He awoke urging for a drink.

The interior of the car didn’t help matters. His muscles were sore, and his neck ached with a crick. This was no way to live. He never knew he could sink so low, yet he believed his homeless situation would lead to better times, as though suffering were a rite de passage of any great artist. Why one had to suffer flew beyond his comprehension, but he reasoned that every entity must suffer in order to change or grow. He no longer thought in terms of the insect, for he didn’t have a job anyway. He thought the pursuit of this lofty aim, this vague ideal called ‘art,’ transformed the insect into the true human being, and yet he saw no evidence of this. If anything, he became more of an insect, caged with his guitar, as though the instrument were his only connection with humanity, and through this instrument, he could one day do what? Yes, he knew exactly what it would lead to, that one word which motivated him beyond any perfunctory conversation at a roadside bar: Women, the point he reaches when he attends a party and all the women know his name and engage in reverse obsessions. Some may claim that for all women to obsess over Noble McCloud would lead to infinite complications. Probably this smashing young bachelor would be emasculated in his sleep. Noble’s quaint rumination, however, was pure bliss and pleasure. His desperation was that strong, and he hoped Alexandra would fall for him. But how?

She’s the type of woman every man wants. Again, Noble exaggerated and generalized. Men have many tastes. They look for different attributes. Some want blondes, others brunettes. But let’s consider the conception of beauty in Waspachick. The conception was so narrow that when a beautiful woman passed, there wasn’t a man on the strip who did not turn his head, hang his mouth, wander up her supple legs and into her heart-shaped, well, Noble was getting carried away, but the point proved enough. Traditional beauty outweighed avant-garde beauty. When a woman who is beautiful knows she’s beautiful, ceteris paribus, she will appear beautiful, because she wants to appear beautiful. Sure, she will claim an adherence to pseudo-feminist ideologies, but she reinforces her beauty by looking so good. Certainly she refuses to appear ugly. Waspachick women of acceptable standard flaunt what they have and claim the opposite. Noble thought he understood this pattern well, as the real feminists, who Noble found aesthetically ugly, were far away on their own Amazonian planet. That’s not to say that Waspachick women didn’t use their minds. They did, but only to appear beautiful. This was the extent of their misplaced, misdirected capacities. The ultimate woman on the Amazonian planet understands her subjugation to the male gaze. This made an ugly woman infinitely more beautiful. But remember, this was Waspachick, and such an ultimate beauty, he decided, would never be found here. It’s as though Waspachick had not evolved beyond its original zygotic ineptitude. He was forced to comply with the high standard of beauty which made a few women beautiful and the rest, well, ugly. Alexandra, then, was more a concept than a woman. She represented this narrow conception, the ninety-ninth percentile of beauty, and many may think him guilty of placing a woman up high on the proverbial pedestal, but this woman, to a man so inexperienced in the ways of the opposite sex, can never avoid this deification. The moment when a concept supplants the reality of menopause, ovulation, water retention, premenstrual syndrome, the ethic of care, wrinkles, breast cancer, osteoporosis, even pregnancy, the more deviant the subjugation; the more pressure on the woman to comply with the Waspachick standard. As a result, the woman in Waspachick-reality gets breast implants, lyposuction, electrolysis, nose jobs, permanents and hair-weaves, until there is nothing left of her but the concept and her failure to live up to it. So much for Neo-Platonism.

This put Noble in a tough spot. Was his obsession based upon a concept? He mulled over these inanities and came to no definite conclusions- only that he wanted Alexandra, and he would do anything to get her. It was obvious that she knew of her own beauty which made his situation even more hopeless, and he hated everything about the town, its snobbery, its haughtiness, and perhaps its women? No, he could not hate women, but a few bad apples ruin the bunch. In the stuffy Oldsmobile, he fought against this hatred. There was no way he would succumb to the misogynist impulse. It was morally uncouth, sinister, and regressive. Of all the influences women fueled his art. He believed a woman, somewhere (or ‘nowhere’), waited for him, and he wouldn’t be satisfied unless and until this woman revealed herself. Somewhere down the line, a good woman waited, and for now he would endure this child-like obsession. Perhaps obsession is too strong a word, but he couldn’t call it anything but an obsession. That’s what it felt like- a sweet misery, a pain and anesthetic simultaneously.

He visited Shylock at the coffee shop, which was a mere block away. He dodged the mid-morning cars. Several customers quietly read their newspapers, and he could see through the wide window that Shylock was busy at the espresso machine. Nevertheless, he needed an ear, and Shylock was the perfect candidate.

“Hey, it’s Noble, Noble McCloud,” sang Shylock, “where have you been all my life?”

“Hullo, Shy.”

“Why so glum?” as he banged espresso grounds.

“Shy, we have to talk.”

“Uh oh. Can this wait ‘til later?”

“Not really.”

Shylock removed his kelly apron, and they took a seat at their familiar table.

“Shy, I need a woman.”

“Tell me something I don’t know.”

“No, I mean this one woman I saw last night at the meeting.”

“How old are you?”

“I’ve got the emotional maturity of a five year-old,” he said resignedly, “but stop patronizing me.”

“I’m sorry. Obviously this is serious, but then again, it’s always serious with you.”

“I know,” said Noble, unable to shake his glumness.

“Well, why don’t you ask her out?”

“It’s not that simple. A) She’s beautiful. B) She’s surrounded by men all the time. C) In AA hooking up before a year is not advised. D) She has a boyfriend already. E)...”

“Okay, you needn’t go any further.”

Noble’s spirit soared when Shylock conspired.

Shylock continued: “I’ve never seen you like this, because you’re not drunk, and it seems like this woman has been...”

“ ... making me miserable?”

“Exactly. It’s time for action.”

“I agree. I’m sick of being the one who always gets looked over.”

“That’s the attitude. Be angry, really angry.”

“I’m angry all right. She’ll be at the evening meeting, I know she will. She’ll be talking to the popular gang.”

“Noble, let me put it plainly. You’ve always taken rejection too hard. You’ve always been too shy around women. That’s your nature, and it’s hard to say if a young boy can overcome these natural defects. And I mean ‘young boy.’ You take rejection too hard. That’s the young boy in you. But inevitably the young boy must become a man. Do you get what I’m saying?”

“Not really, but continue.”

“Noble, this is not a perfect world. Sometimes our intentions are pure, but the actions we take are impure.”

“This world is in no way perfect,” said Noble in call-and-response.

“No way is this a perfect world, and a boy can never accept the consequences a man must accept and face. You have always been the ‘nice guy,’ the quiet passive, peace-loving, friendly type, and only a boy can get away with that in this world. You let people walk all over you. I’m not being curt, I’m simply stating facts we both know. You get embarrassed easily. It’s gotten to the point where you’re afraid of women, because somehow you take it so personally when they look at you funny.”

“Yes. Certainly. Absolutely...”

“And one day, Noble, you’ve got to literally take those blows, because the gain at the end of the bout is extraordinary. You may get laid for once in how many years?”

“I can’t even remember, it’s been so long, but go on.”

“It’s time for a radical change in attitude. You can’t be so sensitive when it comes to women. The way you’re headed, you’ll probably turn gay, or you’ll marry the bottom of the barrel. If you want this woman, and obviously you do, there has to be a change.”

“I’m ready.”

“No. You’re not. Noble, what do you think about when you ask a woman out, and she says no?”

“I feel terrible, horrible.”

“See, you have an inferiority complex. You think every woman who rejects you is superior than you, when the opposite is the case. The only way you feel superior is when you exercise control over those few people, normally me, who have some emotional attachment to you. In other words, you are superior to your close friends and inferior to the strangers who look superior. But this is another matter. The point is that you need to reverse this trend. You must be superior to strangers and equal in your treatment of your friends.”

“I’m not sure I follow you.”

“In other words, you must exercise your superiority over the woman of your choice and the men who try to get into her pants. This nice-guy, beautiful-loser mentality will never work. Sure, you’re broke and all that, but you’re, you’re, you’re...”

“An artist?”

“Precisely. You’re a talented musician who has snubbed the rest of the world to play rock ‘n roll, if that’s what you play, and everyone else is beneath you.”

“Like little rodents and insects?”

“Exactly. But even more beneath you is this woman. See, no one says it, and if these women were asked, they would deny it, but women want to be led and controlled, I shit you not. They want that masculine machismo, bravado, Old-Hemingway survivor’s instinct. You fight for a woman. That’s the only way you win her, and if she eludes you, you take her by force. It’s the only way.”

“Shylock, I think you’re overreacting.”

“Am I? Let’s look at the facts. I got laid the other night. I’ve slept with dozens of women in that last few months. And am I that good looking? Not really. It’s all attitude. Let’s look at you. You don’t have a job, you live in your father’s old car, and you don’t have a woman. You haven’t had a woman for several years. I’m telling you man, you need to change.”

“But can a man rise above his boyish defects?”

“You mean can a boy rise to the level of a man?”

“Yes.”

“For you, it will take practice. I mean, imagine yourself at the age of forty. Nice guys do finish last, Noble. I can’t understand why you don’t see this. Change, Noble, it’s all about change. You’re too sensitive.”

Shylock gave him a cup of coffee on the house. Noble thought these things over and knew he must submit to Shylock’s definition of a man in order to get the woman of his choice. Shylock had proven his success, and his advice was heeded. This is not a perfect world. A kind, gentle man has no place within it, and if he must fight, he will fight. He could no longer avoid conflict and confrontation. He went to the noon meeting buoyed by this new outlook. If he were to get Alexandra, he must not merely persist annoyingly, but simply take what was his, like a settler fighting over territory.

He did share at the noon meeting about his urges in the late morning, and he concluded that he drank to escape the pains of becoming a man. Harry wasn’t there, surprisingly. Noble could have used his perspective on the woman situation, but he instantly recalled what Harry had always said on these matters: “Under every skirt, there’s a slip.”

Noble mentally prepared for the evening meeting. He planned every step. He must get Alexandra while she stood alone in the church kitchen. If she were talking with the in-crowd he must infiltrate their ranks.

After the noon-er, he did go to the diner with Ivan and Milo. They rode in the black Japanese sports car which reaked of gasoline. “It’s probably someone else’s car,” said Ivan en route, clearly in denial. His car was on its last wheels, and Noble could sense Milo’s unease. Ivan’s constant smoking could have caused an explosion. The East Waspachick diner was nearly empty, and Milo’s unease, which was his general mood since he suffered from both anxiety and depression, loosened a bit. The kids from the high school who usually swarmed the diner were noticeably absent. This eased Milo’s anxiety. He ordered a large plate of cheese fries with gravy. Ivan ordered potato skins. Noble ordered coffee. For all the garrulousness that had once occupied these mid-afternoon excursions, they were quiet, almost bored with themselves, until Ivan, who loved to ‘stoke the fires’ of conversation, mentioned Alexandra Van Deusen.

“New meat for the sharks,” said Ivan.

“Definitely,” said Milo.

“You guys think she’s good looking?” asked Noble, feigning ignorance.

“See, my strategy is to let the women come to me,” said Milo,” and more often than not, they do come.”

“She’s so unattainable,” said Ivan. “Watch how people start thirteenth stepping her. My guess: she’ll be taken by the meeting tonight.”

“I thought she has a boyfriend though?”

“Yeah,” said Ivan, “but her boyfriend drinks, or at least that’s what she said. Even Phinaeus was looking at her funny, and when Phinaeus looks at a woman, you know something’s not right. She’s the kind of woman who turns a gay man straight, or a straight woman a lesbian.”

After the diner, Noble isolated in his car which sat stationary along the town park. He rolled down all the windows as the heat hung motionless in the interior. He was determined to complete his fifth instrumental. He worked vigorously, despite the many distractions of the town park, especially a couple necking on the lawn. He had Alexandra in mind, and the instrumental reflected, not the opportunity of capturing her, but an articulation of his despair after being rejected by her. A tender adagio, his fingers along the neck slurring the notes, almost graceful in its execution. Yet a fire lies beneath this tranquil surface, as his fingers soon pluck briskly, a furious arpeggio, and then another tranquil dolente, accenting each note with a haunting sadness. At anytime the instrumental would erupt from its frustration into an agitated rant of tremolo picking, but Noble exercised patience. He did not give his anger away, until the listener, whomever she may be, understood the full meaning of his desire, as though it were a fire spanning the length of human history, spanning the length of the neck, the strings vibrating, the note trilling, but patience. Yes, patience is required. The listener must be suckered by the pianissimo and then jolted by the truth of a crescendo so unbearably loud and chaotic that it leaves her stunned and gasping for more. He repeated the tranquil refrain, a heavy and ponderous succession of chords, and when the initial mood was spent, he plucked faster and louder, muffling the strings, sweat dripping from his face, a furious and sustained jam which bespoke of his intense anger, the idea that the gentle-hearted could never last within a world of egotism, a world of self-interest, but he did not continue this tempo for too long. One must come to a conclusion, that the only result involved the acceptance of tragedy, as though someone close to him died for no apparent reason.

His free-style approach proved more enjoyable, simply because it was carefree and pleasant, a toying with the instrument, and he tried to have fun but noticed a recurring trend. Most of his instrumentals seemed too explosive, perhaps melodramatic and exaggerated, or the same point pounded into the ear of the listener. And in many instances he believed he had listeners, like Harry for example. Parenthetically, If Harry had access to his thoughts, then shouldn’t he understand his melodramatic tendencies? Possibly. Anyway, his instrumentals were never happy. Why couldn’t he stop this petulance and simply get over the old Noble McCloud, the young boy who saw his mother eyes open and lifeless in a pool of blood? That was the past, and this was the present. One day at a time, and here Noble borrowed from the program. He should live in the present. For some reason, though, the intense visual and histrionic images of past events, negative and destructive, would never leave him alone. It’s as though these thoughts were involuntary thoughts, like involuntary heartbeats or respiratory breathing, images and sounds which wouldn’t go away.

Memory is such that we never perceive the event as we first experienced it. The memory grows into a bathtub full of blood, his mother limp and blue, her veins popping through her skin, her weak blue eyes, the ends of her hair dipping into the maroon pool, her breasts sagging just above the bloodline. It’s one thing if Noble deliberately recalled this image to evoke a cathartic pity, but this was not the case. Ever since the event, he had fought to purge the image and sound of his mother, her entire history, and with his father gone, he could finally bury the sounds, especially, the racket in the living room, the crying, and the shouting. But his parents wouldn’t stay six feet under. The deceased composed a horrific symphony, this never-ending dirge calling him to do nothing but, finally, grow up, to stop torturing himself for the sake of providence, and get on with what the scroll ordained, the sentence for which no crime is committed, this sentence for being human.

It was a mood. That’s all it was, and he needed a walk to suck in the afternoon air and expel the mood, the melodrama, the passionate misery which no listener would buy. Feedback and distortion without structure would work in some towns but never in Waspachick.

The strip teemed with bored housewives, baby strollers, African-American nannies, sport utility vehicles, the police cruiser stationed at the intersection, the dizziness of instant summer and its promise of fewer clothes, beach vacations, and pedophiles on the lookout for middle-schoolers in heat. Where was Phinaeus anyway?

He wandered the strip like a transient. He stuck out like the town bum whom actually smiled to him as he passed the park benches, as though the weathered, avuncular bum knew something Noble did not know. Soon the disability crew from the apartments above Shylock’s coffee house loitered the park benches. He was about to call Harry from a pay phone, but gave up. A man is really alone unto himself, and a boy even more so. Aside from this epiphany (and epiphanies, contrary to popular belief, are not always pleasant), he formulated what he termed ‘The Alexandra Plan.’

This comprehensive plan took all factors into account. But no matter how intricate the plan, the bottom line remained: the courage to walk up to her and take her from Smilin’ Willy, simply grab her mid-sentence and pull her to his motorcycle behind the church and rumble to unknown frontiers and emerge victorious from the barren plains, as the mutual ride seals an everlasting bond between the two, a secret only the two of them share, not the gradualism and turbulence which defines popular romance, but an understanding between them, like being trapped in a room together for one full year, chained to each other, stuck together until they have little choice but to love. Or maybe the popular romance. She walks along the Waspachick strip oblivious to the sharp, angular sedan which darts through a stop sign, and Noble pushes her out of the way only to injure himself, a light contusion, nothing more, and Alexandra is so grateful that she instantly falls for him. Or she is bothered by a stalker and calls upon Dick McCloud, private investigator, and at the moment when the stalker lunges at her, Noble barges through the door, wrestles the one-eyed man to the floor, and thus wins her undying affection. Or perhaps a whimsy which struck a chord closer. Noble plays his instrumentals along the street corner. It’s raining, the sustained drizzle accompanied by periodic sneezing and coughing. The strip is deserted, only he sees in the distance a European sports car taxiing towards him. It’s the only car on the road. It stops, and the windows hum down, and it’s Smilin’ Willy in the driver’s seat, and Alexandra on the passenger’s side.

 
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