Myra Breckinridge

by Gore Vidal

  Myron and I met Dr. Montag some years ago at a lecture Myron gave on “The Uterine Vision in the Films of the Forties” (this lecture is the basis for the chapter on Betty Hutton and Martha Raye in his Parker Tyler book). Needless to say, the lecture was sparsely attended. Myron was a nervous lecturer and his voice had a tendency to become shrill if he sensed any serious disagreement, and of course there was—is—always disagreement about his work as there is bound to be controversy about the work of any entirely original thinker.

  On that famous night poor Myron was forced to shriek his way through the lecture in an effort to drown out the usual hecklers (this particular talk was given, like so many of his best performances, at the Blue Owl Grill on 132nd Street, a place where Happenings used to occur regularly before Happenings were known, and of course poets read). When the lecture was over and the booing had ceased, we were joined by a thickset man with blue jowls. “I am Randolph Spenser Montag,” the man said, taking Myron’s fragile hand into his own large one. “Dr. Montag,” the man added but without unction or pride, merely a simple statement, “and I want you to know that you have broken new ground along lines similar to my own.”

  They talked until morning. I had never before known Myron to be so excited, so energized, so exalted as he was at that moment when he found for the first time in his life a masculine mind complementary to his own. This is not the place to review their joint achievements (as you know better than anyone, Randolph, and it is essentially for you and to you that I write in this notebook, a most liberating activity as well as an excellent way for me to tell you how much I admire you without any of the uneasiness caused by our usual face-to-face encounters, particularly those official ones when I am on the patient’s couch and you are striding noisily about the room, wheezing and gasping from emphysema). That meeting in the Blue Owl was historic not only for the three of us but for the world, since many of the insights in Sexual Role as well as at least four chapters of Myron’s Parker Tyler book can be said to have had their genesis in our knowing one another.

  But now I am troubled by something in the letter just arrived. Referring to Myron with his usual fondness (do you deliberately want to set me off?), Dr. Montag remarked: “Myron’s polymorphism (quite exceptional even by contemporary standards) was coupled with a desire to surrender entirely to the feminine side of his nature, symbolized by you. Yet I cannot help but believe that his masculinity was of great intensity, as you knew best, while the sadomasochistic proportion was quite evenly balanced. That is to say, he was as apt to beat up trade as be beaten up.” This is not exactly correct. For all Dr. Montag’s extraordinary sensitivity, he remains at heart a dentist of the most conventional kind. Myron’s masculinity was, at times, intense, but the feminine aspects of his nature were the controlling ones, as I knew best. He wanted men to possess him rather than the other way around. He saw himself as a woman, made to suffer at the hands of some insensitive man. Needless to say, he found partners galore. When I think of the elaborate dinners he used to cook for merchant seamen with tattoos! The continual fussing about the house, so reminiscent of the female preparing to lay her egg! The humiliating position he would put himself in when some piece of trade spurned him because he was not able to lay on the requisite bread! Yet, paradoxically, Myron was physically quite strong despite the seeming fragility of his body and, properly aroused, he could beat up a man twice his size; unfortunately, he took no more pleasure in this than he did in the company of lovely girls. He was a tormented creature, similar to Hart Crane, except that while it was Crane’s kick to blow those sailors he encountered along the squalid waterfronts of that vivid never-to-be-recaptured prewar world, Myron invariably took it from behind. But though this was a source of great consolation to Myron, Dr. Montag always felt, in his somewhat naïve way, that Myron’s obsession involved a certain amount of gratuitous perversity, not to mention just plain waste because Myron’s own penis was exceptionally large and much admired (it can be seen briefly in the underground film Lysol). Dr. Montag never understood that Myron’s sexual integrity required him to withhold that splendid penis from those who most needed it, thus exerting power over them and what, finally, are human relations but the desire in each of us to exercise absolute power over others?

  It is my view that the struggle to achieve power is the underlying theme to all of Myron’s work, even though he never formulated it clearly. Certainly, I was never able to do so until his death clarified so many things for me. At the time I wanted to die, too. But then I entered the next stage: mystical elation. I understood—or thought I understood—everything! Myron’s restless cruising of bars was the result of a desire to draw into himself, literally, that which men possess for quite another purpose. For him to be able to take from Woman her rightful pleasure—not to mention the race’s instrument of generation—became a means of exercising power over both sexes and, yes, even over life itself! That is why he was never drawn to homosexuals. In fact, once the man wished to penetrate him, Myron lost interest for then he himself would become the thing used, and so lose the power struggle. What excited him most was to find a heterosexual man down on his luck, preferably starving to death, and force him to commit an act repugnant to him but necessary if he was to be paid the money he needed for survival. At such moments, Myron confessed, he knew ecstasy: the forbidden was his! He had conquered Man, even though to the naïve observer it was Myron who seemed to be the one used. But he was almost always user, and that was his glory. Yet like all appetites, the one for power is insatiable. The more one obtains, the more one wants. In the end Myron could not, living, be what he wanted to be, an all-powerful user of men, and so he ended his life, leaving me to complete as best I can not only his masterpiece but the pattern he sought to make, with Dr. Montag’s reluctant help.

  Yet it is now plain to me that the good Doctor preferred Myron to me, and I cannot at times avoid a certain sense of hurt and rejection. Particularly when I realize that the only way the Doctor could be made happy would be if I were to marry and settle down. Dr. Montag still believes that each sex is intended to be half of a unit, like those monsters mentioned in Plato’s Symposium. This is the Doctor’s Mosaic side overwhelming common sense, not to mention the evidence of his senses. Admittedly some are best served when the struggle for power narrows to but one other person and the duel endures for a lifetime as mate attempts to destroy mate in that long wrangling for supremacy which is called marriage. Most human beings, however, prefer the short duet, lasting anywhere from five minutes with a stranger to five months with a lover. Certainly the supreme moments occur only in those brief exchanges when each party, absorbed by private fantasy, believes he is achieving mastery over the other. The sailor who stands against a wall, looking down at the bobbing head of the gobbling queen, regards himself as master of the situation; yet it is the queen (does not that derisive epithet suggest primacy and dominion?) who has won the day, extracting from the flesh of the sailor his posterity, the one element in every man which is eternal and (a scientific fact) cellularly resembles not at all the rest of the body. So to the queen goes the ultimate elixir of victory, that which was not meant for him but for the sailor’s wife or girl or simply Woman. Much of my interest in the capture of Rusty is the thought that he is so entirely involved with Mary-Ann. That gives value to what I mean to seize. If it were freely offered, I would reject it. Fortunately he hates me which excites me and so my triumph, when it comes, will be all the sweeter.

  BUCK LONER REPORTS—

  Recording Disc No. 736—

  22 February

  So decision has been made to present for the June jamboree a musical comedy based on the life story of Elvis Presley who will I am sure be present to see this show or better be since he isnt doing all that well box office wise and could use the publicity I dont know who can play the lead but we got a lot of boys capable of singing like Elvis except funnily enough I was surprised to see some objections raised from some of the kids on the ground that Elvis is old fa
shioned and another generation like Bing Crosby well this made me feel old but I said you got to have some traditional values and respect the show business greats even when they are over thirty years old the girl who will sing the girl lead will be Mary Ann Pringle then there will be two ninety minute closed circuit capital c color TV dramas from the old Playhouse 90 which again brings a lot of criticism down on my head from the hippies who have no respect for the classics of early television well they will learn better anyway we have a lot of speaking parts in both plays and the western lead will be Rusty Godowsky who is aimed for stardom if he stays out of the clink write the Governor another letter about the Ronald Reagan festival explaining it was no joke but a serious offer for him to M C the festival and gain good exposure period good news at last from the lawyers about one Myra Breckinridge who was never repeat never married to my nephew in any one of the fifty United States now Flagler and Flagler will fix her pretty wagon and out she goes on her ass the way she is making trouble around here is like some kind of God damned plague of Egypt telling everybody how lousy they are reminder to stop by Farmers Market and buy okra Bobbie is cooking gumbo tonight

  19

  Clem Masters grows on one. At that first party when I became hopelessly stoned and passed out in the bathtub, I thought him the creep of the world. But since then I have got to know him and of all the students, he is the only one with something resembling a brain. He comes, needless to say, from the East (Buffalo, New York), and wants to be a singer but will probably settle for a career as songwriter. This morning, after Empathy, I met him in the corridor and he said, “Come on, baby, and let me play you something I just wrote.”

  “Wrote?” I asked. “Or stole from the Beatles like that last little number you recorded for Pop Tune IV . . .”

  “You’re a gas, Myra.” He was not in the least distressed by my accusation of plagiarism. In fact, of all the students he alone seems not to fear me and since he interests me not at all sexually (he is weedy-looking with thick glasses and a black beard and never washes), I am able to enjoy his irreverence.

  Clem took me into one of the music rooms where he promptly fell upon the piano and rushed through several loud syncopated numbers, bellowing banal lyrics at the top of his voice. When at last he stopped, I said the truth, as always, “It’s just awful, Clem.”

  “You crazy mixed-up chick!” He laughed, he actually laughed at Myra Breckinridge! My first instinct was to slam shut the piano cover on his spidery fingers, breaking them all at once. But then I realized that his physical agony would do nothing for me, and so I laughed, too (a good sport like Carole Lombard), and said, “Why crazy? Why mixed-up?”

  “Because what you heard is music, popular music and I am going to sell the whole mother score, piece by piece, to the Four Skins.”

  “What score? What skins?”

  He looked at me pityingly. “The Four Skins are number four and number twenty-seven respectively in the January Billboard. So this score—which is for this mother life of Elvis Presley big Buck Loner has inflicted upon us—will make me some money.”

  “In that case, I think your songs are perfectly apt.”

  “I knew you had taste! Now listen, Myra, in some sick way you appeal to me. No, I really mean it. I dig you and I was thinking why don’t we . . .”

  “Clem.” I was firm yet—how can I deny it?—flattered. After all, I am a woman. “I enjoy your company, you know that. You’re the only student I can talk to but I could no more go to bed with you . . .”

  “Baby, baby, baby . . .” He interrupted me impatiently. “Not with me, baby. I don’t want to go to bed, the two of us. That’s square. I mean a party, like maybe twenty cats . . .”

  “Twenty men?” Not even my idlest daydreams of Myra Breckinridge, warrior queen, ever included a scene in which I was called upon to master twenty men at the same time. Might it not be too much, psychologically?

  “Ten men and ten girls, you nit, or maybe seven of one and thirteen of the other or nine of one and eleven of the other. I mean who’s counting? Want to make the scene?” Clem looked at me shrewdly through thick spectacles.

  I was at a loss for words. On the one hand, the idea was definitely attractive. Myron sometimes enjoyed the company of four or five men at the same time but he did not believe in mixing the sexes. I of course do. Yet what pleasure, I calculated swiftly, would I extract from such a tableau? My little quirks can only be fulfilled with one man at a time.

  I deliberately dithered, trying to make up my mind. “Oh, I don’t think I should. Certainly not with people I know, not with the students.”

  “Not students, baby. I never let those cats in on anything if I can help it. No, you’ll meet all five of the Four Skins and some crazy chicks . . . oh, it’s your scene, I can tell . . .”

  I knew that my hesitation had already betrayed my interest. “Perhaps I might just . . . watch, you know, and perhaps help out, in little ways . . .”

  “All or nothing. No tourists allowed.” He wrote an address on a slip of paper. “Tomorrow night. Ten O’clock.” He goosed me, which I detest, but before I could knee him, the door was flung open and Miss Cluff looked in and blushed, for no discernible reason, and said, “Welcome to the Music Department, Myra. We’ve all been looking for you.”

  “Clem was playing me his score,”

  “He’s so talented! Mr. Loner wants to see you right away, it’s urgent.”

  Buck was sitting with his feet on the desk and his Stetson over one eye. Since he made no move to sit up, much less stand up, when I entered the room, I was obliged to strike his feet a blow with my stout black leather handbag; they slid off the desk and onto the floor with a crash.

  “Stand up when a lady comes into the room, you son of a bitch,” I said but with a sweet tone not unlike Irene Dunne in The White Cliffs of Dover.

  “Lady!” He snorted. I leapt upon him, handbag raised to strike again, but he managed with unexpected agility to get to his feet and put the desk once more between us. “You’re nothing but some con-girl pretending to be married to my nephew when I got proof he never married nobody. Here!” He thrust a legal document at me, which I ignored. I knew that I had been careless, and have been found out. My own fault.

  “No record of my marriage to Myron exists in any of the United States,” I said, “for the excellent reason,” I wadded up the document and threw it at him, “that we were married in Mexico.”

  “Whereabouts?”

  “My lawyers will tell your lawyers,” I said. “Meanwhile, if that settlement is not made by April first, I will take over the whole shooting match.” When in doubt, double the stakes, as James Cagney used to say.

  I departed regally, but I was—am—shaken by the interview. I immediately rang my lawyer to assure him that I will be able to produce the marriage license as soon as a new one is issued at Monterrey.

  Meanwhile—what a mess! Suddenly I feel terribly alone and afraid. My mood was hardly improved when I learned a few moments ago from a distraught Mary-Ann that Rusty has left town. When I pressed her as to why, she burst into tears and could not or would not say. I have never liked the month of February-even when the sun shines, as it does now, and it is warm.

  20

  My ground rules for the party were respected. I would wear bra and panties, unless otherwise inspired to remove them. Clem was forced to agree to this after I pointed out to him that in spite of his assurance to me no students would be present, Gloria Gordon was not only at the party but his hostess. My compromise was accepted. Give a little, get a little, as the saying goes.

  The party was held in a small house high in the Hollywood Hills. I was driven there by a stocky monosyllabic man who was once a waiter at Romanoff’s and could, if he chose, tell a thousand stories about the stars he waited on but instead spoke to me only of the weather and baseball. But then I think that he was probably stoned when he came to pick me up, and not at his conversational best.

  When we arrived at the house, the door was op
ened by Clem, who wore nothing but glasses and a large door key on a chain about his neck. He is extremely hairy, which I don’t like, and though he did not have an erection and so could not be fairly judged, his prick is small and rather dismal-looking as if too many people had chewed on it, and of course he is circumcised, which I find unattractive. Naturally, like so many physically underprivileged men, Clem regards himself as irresistible (no doubt some obscure psychological law of compensation is at work). He promptly took me in goatish arms, rammed his soft acorn against my pudendum, and bit my ear.

  I stepped hard on his bare toes, and was promptly freed.

  “Jesus, Myra!” He hopped on one foot, holding the other in his hand, a ludicrous sight that somewhat aroused me. I was even more aroused by Gloria who came to show me into the changing room. She, too, was nude with a body almost too beautiful for this world, slender and long, somewhat on the order of the early Jinx Falkenburg. As I undressed, it was all I could do not to take delicately in my hand one of those perfect rose-nippled breasts and simply hold it, worshipfully. Although I am not a Lesbian, I do share the normal human response to whatever is attractive physically in either sex. I say normal human response, realizing that our culture has resolutely resisted the idea of bisexuality. We insist that there is only one right way of having sex: man and woman joined together to make baby; all else is wrong. Worse, the neo-Freudian rabbis (of whom Dr. Montag is still one despite my efforts at conversion) believe that what they call heterosexuality is “healthy,” that homosexuality is unhealthy, and that bisexuality is a myth despite their master Freud’s stated conviction that all human beings are attracted to both sexes.

  Intellectually, Dr. Montag is aware of the variety of normal human sexual response but, emotionally, no dentist from the Grand Concourse can ever accept the idea that a woman could or should find quite as much pleasure with her own sex as she does with men. Yet many women lead perfectly contented lives switching back and forth from male to female with a minimum of nervous wear and tear. But in the great tradition of neo-Freudian analysis, Dr. Montag refuses to accept any evidence that does not entirely square with his preconceptions. For him it is either Moses or the Golden Calf. There is no middle range. Yet he is often persuasive, even luminous, and for a time Myron fell under his spell just as Dr. Montag has since fallen under mine. Nevertheless, for all his limitations, it must never be forgotten that it was Randolph Spenser Montag who convinced Myron that one ought to live in consistent accordance with one’s essential, nature. As a result, on the Staten Island ferry, Myron acted out a dream of the absolute and like a Venetian Doge married that symbol of woman the sea but with his life, not a ring, leaving me to change the world alone.