Wrong Information Is Being Given Out at Princeton

by J. P. Donleavy

  “I beg your pardon.”

  “I don’t want to hurt your feelings, but I think you heard me, a handout.”

  “I wouldn’t put it that way, sir. I believe the expression is an honorarium or bestowment.”

  “Well, who do you think you are, other than being married to Sylvia, to be so deserving.”

  “I might not yet be a Wilhelm Richard Wagner perhaps, who was worthy of getting help from King Ludwig of Bavaria, to whom he accorded much heavenly rapture and ecstasy and whose Schloss residence—Neuschwanstein, to be specific—on the Rhine is the wonder of all of Europe. But I must admit I thought I’d be at least meriting some kind of sympathetic emolument in the form of a dowry in the manner of an appanage, as it were, to contribute to the continuation of my musical studies and be able to work variously on a symphony, a slow stately dance, waltz, a gavotte or minuet, and also of course to help keep Sylvia more in the manner to which she has been accustomed.”

  “Hey, you’re not a pinko, are you.”

  “What is that.”

  “Hey, come on, you know what it is. We’ve got a prominent senator broadcasting every day about it. A Red, a Commie. An enemy of our free country.”

  “I do not deny that I admire the principles of socialism, but I am not a Red or a Commie.”

  “Well then, Steve, I guess you’ve got the gift of the gab, but I don’t have to remind you we’re not in Europe now, where these old customs, if not liberal niceties, may prevail, but you can take some consolation in the fact that your charm and sincerity rates one hundred percent.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  “And I’m also impressed by your compassion, especially for the continuation of Sylvia’s welfare and maintenance of her living standards.”

  “My top priority, sir.”

  “Well, that’s swell, because I just stopped her allowance.”

  “You what.”

  “You heard me, Steve.”

  “Sir. I consider that very unfair.”

  “How is it unfair, when you’re her husband and you just said supporting her is your top priority.”

  “Well, priorities can have their way of being sequenrial, and stopping her allowance sir, does rather stultify the lifestyle we would wish to maintain.”

  “What, are you kidding. West Sixty-eighth Street was bad enough where you were living, but now Chinatown, down nearly on the Bowery with a bunch of alcoholic hoboes and derelicts all over the place.”

  “Well sir, yes, there may be these persons discarded by society but who were once, many of them, citizens trying to do their best. However that area has many historic buildings and people of noted distinction to boast of who previously lived there. As well as many examples of Chinese artifacts and culture. And where can be obtained ingredients beneficial to health, such as ginseng root, dried sea horse, deer’s horn, and preserved bear’s testicles.”

  “Hey don’t try to be funny with me, Steve.”

  “I’m not, sir. Merely demonstrating that the area of Pell Street is not an habituation of the down-and-outs. Plus, it carries the name of a most distinguished family, the Pells.”

  “Hey, what the hell are you. Some kind of social climber.”

  “I am a delver into all aspects of the historic matrix that has played a part in forming possibly the greatest metropolis the world has ever known.”

  “Well, okay. I’ll buy that bit of spiel. You seem to know quite a bit about this little old city of ours.”

  “Plus, sir, such knowledge as I have, if I may be so blunt as to mention, prompts me to think, sir, that you might want to avail of an opportunity for you to become a munificent patron of the arts.”

  “That’s more pedantic speak.”

  “But honestly spoken, sir.”

  “Well, I think if you take the trouble to look into as much as you have about the Pells, you’ll find my family name already well represented all over this island of Manhattan as a contributor to the arts. While your family seems to own just a couple of beer joints, a hangover from speakeasy days, in what some people might regard as the wrong part of town. I hear, however, they do okay business. But having had you personally checked out, your own financial status and prospects rate zero. Sit down. Don’t get alarmed. I would, in giving you a handout, only be giving you more financial quicksand to sink in.”

  “I’m not looking for a handout. And I’m not sinking.”

  “Well, I’ll admit that maybe you’re not, because with your kind of sales pitch you might get a job down Wall Street in a brokerage house speculating in Confederate bonds.”

  “Sir, I’m not giving anybody a sales pitch. And I regard your statement as an insult not only to me but to the southern gentlemen who gave their lives in the cause of the Confederacy.”

  “See what I mean. Gift of the gab. Next you’ll be telling me you grew up in Opelousas, Louisiana.”

  “As a matter of fact sir, I have ancestral kin there.”

  “Well, glad to hear that. But my word, let me look at my watch, and excuse me, I’m afraid I’ve got to rush. Just got time to get over to a backgammon match in exactly ten minutes. But stay where you are. Finish your beer. Oh, sorry, it’s tomato juice, isn’t it. Well, I’ve enjoyed our little informative chat. And it’s true what Sylvia says. You do look a little like Rudolph Valentino who, I believe, was also a little impecunious and did a bit of dish washing before he became a star. Pity acting is as tough to make a living at as composing. But good to meet you again, Steve. And if there is any way else I can help, outside the financial, that is, don’t hesitate to keep in touch. Good-bye.”

  As Jonathan Witherspoon Triumphington III departed out his club’s front door, Stephen O’Kelly’O was left standing, having as he came to his feet pushed over his chair in the solemn silent emptiness devolving upon this place, the sound seeming to echo out to Fifth Avenue. And then the overwhelming need to take a nervous pee. Relieving the bladder lessens the stress. Head to the gents. I should have hit him. A goddamn social upstart. The O’Kelly’O’s were kings in Ireland when that fucker’s ancestors, somewhere obscure in England, were wiping their asses with fig leaves. And this while the O’Kelly’O’s were from their own carved stone lavatory seats shitting from a height up in their tower houses, and pulling a bell rope to make musical warning to everyone below to get out of the way. Although being hit by an O’Kelly’O turd was considered good luck. Now move across this vast room, through all these empty tables. But holy cow, I was shot down in flames before I was even airborne. Had a good mind to tell him I got twice awarded a Purple Heart. The fucker, a lieutenant commander in the navy, having a good time in Washington, D.C., during the war, probably sailing up and down the Potomac drinking cocktails on a yacht that one of my sixteen-inch guns could have blown out of the water with one salvo. He has the nerve to shake my hand vigorously. Then smiling, leaves me to finish my tomato juice with a couple of pretzels while he goes to play backgammon at another snooty club. Clearly the sort of person starving the cultural life of the United States, and wouldn’t between his polo matches know George Frideric Handel from Albert Einstein.

  Stephen O’Kelly’O pushing open the door to the gentlemen’s rest room. The sweet smell of embrocations and the polished ceramic surfaces. A bottle of toilet water. Just of the sort one would expect a smooth socially registered fucker like Jonathan Witherspoon Triumphington III, with maybe fifty trust funds drenching him daily in dollars, to use. The son of a bitch is handing out worse blows than the blistering swats already landed across my ass from his adopted Sylvia. I’m sure its against a club’s rules to leave someone, a nonmember, unattended like me, a stranger who could then go start stealing books or magazines from the library or the toilet paper and bay rum from the gents. Where, Christ, right now I’m shaking in such rage that, holding my prick, I’ve already pissed all over my goddamn shoes.

  At the coat check, O’Kelly’O retrieving his soup-stained overcoat, a button missing. Struggling with it half on and half off. And the
sound of ripping echoing all over the vast room as another big tear splits the lining down the inside of the sleeve. The hatcheck gentleman, instead of calling the enforcement arm of the Social Register to have me apprehended, handcuffed and gagged, bowing a pleasant good-bye. All such thoughts a sure sign that my paranoia was going out of control. Miracle I have enough self-esteem left to hobble to and out of the front door. Time to reinvent myself. Famed linebacker on his prep school football team. Wartime naval hero slightly concussed, of noble Irish lineage, now foxhunting across the countryside of New Jersey. And soon to conduct his Fifth Symphony at Carnegie Hall.

  With the light turning green, Stephen O’Kelly’O, collar up, tweed cap pulled down tight on his head and hunched in his coat, crossing Fifth Avenue. Yellow stream of checkered taxicabs roaring by, splashing up slush. Don’t give a good goddamn what they do to pedestrians. A secondhand phonograph record and book seller freezing his balls off on the corner. At least there’s a sign of some cultural dedication and concern for those impecunious who can’t afford new books or classical records. But somehow one feels he’d do better with a begging bowl. My occasional momentary inferiorities are busting out all over the place. A big cold sore beginning to erupt on my lip before I even got down the three or four steps out of that club. Be a relief now to go mingle awhile amid the more sympathetic animals in the zoo. Whose pleasant roars and screams won’t be accusing me of social climbing or looking for a handout.

  The sun a red cold ball in the sky, sinking down somewhere over Nebraska. The light fading over the zoo. The sudden strange beauty of this city alerts you to its majesticness. Until some kid is screaming he’s lost his balloon floating away up over the hippopotamus house to disappear into the pink chill of the New York heavens. Once saw an eagle soaring up there over the apartment rooftops of Fifth Avenue just north of maybe Eighty-first Street. Still free in nature. And down here on earth in the zoo, the squawking, squealing seals knocking their way around the ice floes in their pond. An aqueous furore as the keeper arrives with a bucket of fish to toss in. Walk over to where the big outcropping of rocks are and see how the polar bear is psychologically coping pacing back and forth, claws clattering on the cement. Or maybe is content that he can luxuriate in the chill weather. Make a day of it here uptown before I go home downtown and face any more ignominy. Go check on the monkeys, who in their own rent-free hot house can go ad-lib amusing themselves scratching their asses, and shoving pricks into holes that take their fancy and then grinning obscenely out their window at the miserable spectators.

  Darkness falling. Heralds danger in this city. Walk over through the winding little paths of the park. Have fists clenched, ready to bust the first marauder in the chops who’s at large trying to mug you, get your money, stick a gun in your ribs or a knife in your guts. The skyscrapers looming out of the cold mist along Central Park South. Lights on yellow and warm in the windows. Snow beginning to fall. Sweeps and whorls down out of a leaden sky. To whitely annoint the shoulders of the lonely. Strauss waltz comes through the air from the skating rink. A voice on a loudspeaker announcing to clear the ice. Sylvia said she went there to skate when the rink at Rockefeller Center was closed.

  “George the chauffeur, until he fell madly in love with me, would bring me. My figure skating always drew a watching crowd.”

  Talk about the privileged rich. With nothing better for the soul to do than to go shopping, get facials, and have their hair done. On the Triumphington’s estate a dozen different designed bathrooms all over the monstrous house. And way out on their miles of lawns, they have a couple of handkerchief trees, specially shipped all the way from China. Blooms like a bunch of snow white handkerchiefs. All just so you could get excited at the full moon, seeing the white fluttering going on during a windy night. And maybe be reminded to blow your nose. Just the value of one of his Arab horses or couple of polo ponies would have been more than enough to see me through to the completion of my first concerto for flute and harpsichord and full orchestra.

  O’Kelly’O emerging from the park. Crossing the street to walk under the marquee lights of the hotels. The little groups of strangers in town. From way out west. Texans in ten-gallon hats and cowboy boots. Their wives in fur coats. Waiting for taxis to take them to Broadway musicals. Doorman holding open doors and spinning those revolving. Saluting from the peaks of their caps as they are handed folding-money tips. At least it all looks bonhomie. And Sylvia said why didn’t I go see a very rich lady and noted patron of the arts who lives at the top of the Hampshire House on this Central Park South and is dedicated in her love of music and was known rarely to ever refuse a worthy cause, and might contribute to mine since she knew her. And here I am venturing to the doorway to look into the guarded lobby and have already got cold feet at the intimidation. Because like one of the rats living in their millions in this city I’ve already gone back down into the subway and some son of a bitch is glaring at me until I glare right back and make a goddamn fist in his face. He gets off at the next stop. If he didn’t, I would have killed him. No wonder there is murder, with people not minding their own business. To allow the citizens of this city to have some dignity in public and to otherwise ply their lives in the decent pursuit of peace and contentment, which doesn’t look like the case in a picture in the evening newspaper the guy’s reading across the aisle. A man committing suicide jumping out the window on the twentieth floor of a hotel and landing on top of a passing car, kills the driver and the car, out of control, kills two pedestrians. And just as you might expect as I reach what I now call home in Pell Street, some guy just finished pissing in the doorway invites me to join him in genital stimulation. Shake a fist in another face. And the masturbating desecrator goes mumbling off. Then up in the apartment just as I remove my overcoat and take the rest of the whole goddamn lining out of the sleeve, Sylvia in her leotards, who had worked up a sweat while exercising with her weights, laughs and thinks it is a big goddamn joke that my clothes are coming to pieces. Then when I tell her a little of what happened at her father’s club, it doesn’t take her long to embellish the embarrassment further.

  “Well, what did you expect in bringing up a subject like that. You’re lucky he didn’t have you to drink at his other club, where he was going, which is even snootier and would have made you really feel like something the cat dragged in. And where if they let you get that far, someone might jump up from a backgammon table and say your more than slight deshabille was a distraction to their game and want you pretty quick dragged out again.”

  “Well, by the way in bringing up subjects, he stopped your allowance.”

  As a reminder of all the thousands of lonely miles across America, you could hear louder than usual traffic chugging by on its way to and from the Manhattan Bridge. The next day, Sylvia beat it uptown over to Sutton Place. And as the snow kept falling, the chill days went by getting chillier. To play the piano while composing, I wore gloves with the fingers cut off. Sylvia said that among other confidential reasons I couldn’t come to see her and luxuriate on Sutton Place was that her parents had important guests staying. This news cheered me up a lot. But at least with Sylvia gone, I could do something serious in cutting down on groceries. Walking down the Bowery to buy cheap vegetables and over to South Street, able to get fish from the Fulton Fish Market, whose motto was exactly suited to folk like me.

  TO SUPPLY THE COMMON PEOPLE

  WITH THE NECESSITIES OF LIFE

  AT A REASONABLE PRICE

  And until the rent had to be paid, one was surviving, just. Then one suddenly unseasonably sunny, balmy afternoon dawned. I was on my way back to Pell Street, faintly smelling of fish from the market because the Italian grocer where I had just bought a loaf of his delicious bread said he could always tell by the piscatory perfume when someone had been down on Fulton Street. He’d customarily give me a few free olives to taste and sing a few bars of Vincenzo Bellini’s opera Beatrice di Tenda. He had a beautiful voice, which astonished in the setting of vegetables, w
ine, and salami and always left a broad smile on my face. Which I was still smiling as I came around the corner of Pell Street and the Bowery. And there approaching me was a tall and sinewy lady in a red hat and green coat with a silver fox-fur collar, who came to a full stop directly in front of me. Both stopped in our tracks as we stared at each other. Her skin shone the silkiest shiniest black. I smiled an even bigger smile. And she uttered her first pleasantly unforgettable words.

  “Hey, you know, I ain’t never seen such a beautiful smile on anyone’s face before. You, honey, I want to fuck.”

  On such a cheerful note and not wanting to appear unfriendly, one naturally invited her for coffee back in the apartment so conveniently close by. Suddenly it was looking better than Sutton Place, and in the hall and up the stairs she had her clothes off the moment she stepped inside the apartment’s front door. As I followed her into the bedroom, I could now think of a thousand more confidential reasons why I wouldn’t be visiting Sutton Place. And glad the telephone wouldn’t ring because it wouldn’t be installed till tomorrow. Her name was Aspasia. She said it meant “welcome.” Out of the Deep South, she’d sung in a gospel choir. Her father was a preacher. She’d studied at the Art Students League up on Fifty-seventh Street, in the Fine Arts Building designed by Hardenbergh. She even knew her architecture. When she found I wrote music, it seemed like we had a lot to talk about, but instead, in a bout of savage fucking we broke the bed and it fell apart on the floor. Teeth marks all over me. And as I realized I had desecrated my marriage, I hear Aspasia’s words.

  “Hey, composer man, that was a true honey fuck and you done justified my desire. Nothing good is ever going to come to you by itself. You have to go out and forget that’s what you’re looking for.”

  Aspasia was both a jazz and opera singer. She could go through four octaves like Yma Sumac. Dressed, as she was about to leave, we started kissing again in the doorway, got undressed again and went back to the bedroom. She wouldn’t tell me where she lived but said I was going to be a burning ember in her life and that if I got a message to the Art Students League, she’d leave a message for me about when and where we could meet again.