Wrong Information Is Being Given Out at Princeton

by J. P. Donleavy

  Stephen O’Kelly’O shuffling back along the hall. To the raised voices in the drawing room. And Sylvia shouting, “Don’t you fucking well tell me what to do. I know how to lead my own goddamn miserable life.” Now silence as I, Stephen O’Kelly’O, ever so gently with the hanging handle open one side of the mahogany doors. The ladies arise as I enter. Sporting my wet anciently unwashed socks. Sylvia’s and Drusilla’s faces flushed. And we all proceed to the domed front hall to get coats, with the pervading stink of my feet following. What a figure Dru has, and a fantastic ass watched from behind. And whoops, another wink from her as she holds my miserable piece of apparel up for me to put on as she asks, “Well, Stephen, what about the weeping sound in Puccini’s ‘Nessun Dorma.’”

  “Well, I am very much taken with the emotive content found in the singing voice telling a story.”

  “You know, Stephen, I should one day so very much like to hear you play. You must come and try our Steinway in the music room. What about I give you a tinkle.”

  As we three of us went by taxi to an Italian restaurant in a quiet street in the mid-Fifties, I thought, well, since you’ve already given me a hard-on, Drusilla, why not a tinkle. And it would be a little less embarrassing. It was one of those casual crosstown streets you walk along in New York, hardly noticing anything and noticing everything. And finding a couple or more of lifelong inhabitants still lurking behind the jumble of doorways and windows. And with nearly my last few dollars, I paid the fare. Not to suffocate us with the stink of my feet, I kept the taxi window a little open. But now, my God, if the proprietor, Jesepo, who is flapping his hands and uttering hosannas at Drusilla’s appearance, gets a whiff of me, I’ll be thrown out the door. Thank God waiters are scurrying around wielding their napkins to clear the air in front of us, ushered as we are to, as Jesepo said, her usual discreet table. Be just as well if my squelching feet continue to smell to high heaven. As we at last sat down, there is poured and placed before each of us a tulip glass of vintage Charles Heidsieck champagne. Poured from its bottle, taken from an elaborate bucket on its stand by the table. Jesepo, before putting his towel to the bottle, twirling the bottom rim on the edge of the bucket to rid it of excess drops of moisture. Drusilla raising her glass, proposing a toast.

  “To you two, or at least one of you. And Stephen, here’s to your minuet. I really know it’s going to be wonderful and have all the critics in town impressed.”

  “Thank you, Dru. And this is such marvelous champagne.”

  “I’m so glad you like it. You know, collecting napkin rings and ice buckets, I fear, are two of my real weaknesses. And Jesepo keeps this crested one for me. I’ve always felt the best champagnes deserve the best silversmith’s buckets to keep them chilled.”

  One waiter pouring the last of the bottle into the ladies’ glasses as another waiter opens another bottle of champagne. One’s mind floats free on the alcohol, back north to the Bronx, where, as a member of a large family who did not observe the democratic and American God-given principle of weekly pocket money, it was only occasionally that I could afford to ask a girlfriend out to the movies and for an ice cream soda afterward, especially as sodas had gone up to fifteen cents from a dime. And one bottle of this champagne tonight could buy a hundred sodas at the old price of sodas. If ever I get anywhere in life, I will leave a legacy in a few printed words of advice. Despite quaffing marvelous champagne, wet socks in one’s shoes makes one feel at a distinct disadvantage in elegant company. Only a little bit less worse than if one had a conspicuously fatal disease. And following the toast, one excused oneself to repair to the men’s rest room. For in my last hysteria taking a piss, I repressed much of my pee.

  “Ah, please do excuse me, if you will, ladies.”

  As I walked rearward in the restaurant, one lady in six rows of pearls and wristfuls of diamonds sniffed the air as I passed her table. And my God, what a nice new nightmare it was in the men’s room. Some son of a bitch in black tie, tassels on his black loafers and looking me up and down, and mostly down, was, as I reached for the bay rum, already reaching for it, and had the nerve to say as he grabbed the bottle, “Do you mind. I’m rather in a hurry to get out of the disagreeable fumes in here.”

  Amazing how deeply one takes personally ridicule, insult and humiliation and starts blending them all together, and what you’ve got when you sum them all up is a chip on the shoulder the size of an Egyptian pyramid. I merely told the guy, “Well fella, anchors away. You better hurry like hell. A fart like you can really stink.” Holy Jesus, you’d think I’d insulted God, the way this guy reared up in outrage. His head looked ready to explode off the top of his neck. I thought my remark was a reasonably clever riposte to his own implied insult, although I suppose he wasn’t to know it was me with my wet rancid socks who was stinking and providing the disagreeable fumes. But what I had objected to most were those words—“Do you mind”—when the fucker grabbed the bay rum. Of course I fucking minded, you stupid supercilious bastard. If you had any sense of good breeding, you would have let go of the bottle and said, “After you,” and I would have said, “No, after you.” And for a few minutes, out of that stilted rejoinder, we could at least have left the bottle there untouched.

  Stephen O’Kelly’O exiting from the men’s room into the sound of voices, tinkling glass and laughter and aromatic enticingly appetizing smells, returns to the table. The menu produced in the glowering silence. And one could forget the men’s room for a minute. I was surprised at the prices, for there were none. Recalling Sylvia once saying that she did not grow up in the school of hard knocks. But then she went on to say it was much worse. That she got just one big knock, which smashed her psyche. To have found herself in adulthood misplaced among the sort of people who, all they have to be is who they are. And being who she was, she wasn’t one of them. Having gin and tonic before lunch and daiquiris before dinner. And over dinner, talk about horses, dogs and candlesticks and never, God forbid, should the human condition or a question that it wasn’t wonderful, ever intrude into the conversation.

  But then when I’d first returned to the table, what was absolutely stunningly amazing was to come out of the men’s room and find that the fucker was not already assembling other tassel-shoed confederates to assault me or at least to have a couple of dozen lawyers ready to serve me with a summons. And there he was, with five others. At a table not that far away, clearly contemplating revenge. And as he gloweringly watched me rejoin my table with Drusilla and Sylvia, he spoke to his friends, who cast glances in my direction, and these friends seemed to speak back to him all at once. And imperceptibly, his manner utterly changed, and when he next looked in my direction, he actually nodded at me and smiled. And I, being a charitable sort, nodded and vaguely smiled back. But which made me wonder why his sudden change of attitude. Perhaps with their three ladies sent home, the tassel-shoed gang of them would be waiting outside to wreak vengeance in the usual New York manner.

  Sylvia toyed with her food, leaving each course nearly untouched on her plate. Whereas I had an excellent appetite, scoffing down a really wonderful piece of fish in a magically delicious sauce and worthy of originating from the Fulton Fish Market. The vino was a superlative Sancerre. And we finished up with an exotic peach dessert with a Château d’Yquem which was beyond what one ever imagined wine could taste like. Or indeed could ever cost like, as whatever this was, I found later, maybe cost as much as twenty thousand ice cream sodas. Then outside, ready to enter a taxi Jesepo had called, we heard gunshots echoing in another street and then sirens of a dozen police squad cars converging on cross streets and screaming up and down the avenues. Sylvia taking it upon herself to refuse us both an invitation to return and have coffee and liqueurs back at Sutton Place.

  “Oh, no thanks, Drusilla. But thanks. Stephen and I have to be up so early.”

  Drusilla in her own ankle-length black tweed coat lined with chinchilla fur, climbing into the taxi and waving what I thought was a kiss as it pulled away. Someo
ne I just caught sight of in a window across the street, with a pair of binoculars, watching us. Another taxi coming around the corner approached and was flagged down to stop. Sylvia announcing she was going on her own way alone, downtown to Pell Street to get her suitcase, and that she and I were parting ways on this chill sidewalk. And then she was going somewhere where I didn’t need to know. I watched the flexing of her calf climbing into the cab and she stopped halfway in and turned around, stared a silent second, and began shouting.

  “Rehearsing in the Russian manner, are you. You’re looking for a certain perfection of tonal combination and perfect pitch to be performed by a big-time vituoso, are you. You’ve got a deadline, have you. Well, you’re a bullshitter. Who the fuck has ever heard of you. Nobody. Nobody. And nobody is ever going to hear of you.”

  Drawing her mink tighter around her, I thought I could see tears in her eyes. And better than the daggers that I thought were there. And just as she nearly had the taxi door closed, she said something to the taxi driver and opened it again and said her final parting words.

  “Well, whoever it was, in the Russian manner you were fucking, you were pumping your personal genes into her. Well go ahead, pump some more. All she’ll beget is a fucking nonentity like you, who’s so prurient he gets a hard-on over a horny old hag like my adoptive mother. And don’t you ever think you’re ever going to get a penny of my money that you married me for. You Irish bastards always think you’re the cat’s meow. Good-bye. And meow, meow.”

  Left standing there, the harshness of her words ringing in my ears I watched her taxi disappear around the corner onto Fifth Avenue. And found myself saying to myself, Hey gee, kiddo, you poor goddamn fortune hunter, you need a fucking break. I walked the few blocks up and over to Fifty-seventh Street to the Art Students League. Looking up at its darkened windows, the building seemed closed. It sure didn’t start with Butterfield 8, but I scribbled my less revered, newly installed telephone number in a note to Aspasia to call me in the morning, and found a place to put it in the door. At the nearby late-night grocery store I bought a tub of walnut ice cream. Walking down Seventh Avenue my feet now feeling frozen cold, I stopped and looked into the windows of the crowded Stage Delicatessen, remembering and reminded of the sharp smell of sauerkraut on the air in the zoo, as two figures came out, talking.

  “You know, Sidney, always remember I’m ready to show the way. You’re an upper-echelon-type person. But I wouldn’t want your perfect sense of culture to be like an obstacle and slow you down in commerce. Otherwise, I’m convinced you’re outstanding.”

  “I’m glad you said that, Arnold, because you’re sincerely the kind of person in whose direction I’d like to travel.”

  Listen and you can hear sensible words spoken by these people who could be composers, playwrights, or actors. Scoffing back over a beer their massive thick corned beef sandwiches swabbed with mustard and dipping their forks into mouthfuls of coleslaw. Ticket brokers to the big Broadway musicals. Stagehands who shift the sets backstage. On their momentous salaries replenishing their energy to be able to go sit with the newspaper and study their investments on Wall Street. Some pretentious fucker just the other side of the steamed-up window, shooting his cuffs with gold links the size of mountain boulders and a big round diamond ring on his pinky finger. Showbiz habitués. Cigars in their mouths. Shiny fabrics on their backs, fancy shoes on their feet, and shirts pleated down their chests. Who keep the serious composer down. Before I shake a fist through the window at the inmates and leave before they call the police, I stop to wonder. And remember that just tonight I overheard Sylvia shouting at her adoptive mother, as she now calls her, back at Sutton Place and she was shouting, “Don’t you tell me what the fuck to do.” It was in reply to Drusilla’s quieter words, spoken first.

  “Is there any way you can think of to treat him well. He might then be your liege man.”

  “Why. Are you going to treat him well.”

  “If you don’t Sylvia maybe somebody else will.”

  Now left friendless on the street this could be my life. Heaped upon one the burden of someone who thinks you are a failure. Sneering and running off to better things. Away from a nobody. Well who the fuck isn’t a nobody. When you finally end up at best a name on a stone in a cemetery. She asked me to marry her and then turns around to tell me I married her for her money. What was I supposed to do, throw a tantrum, say I can’t marry you because she was rich. But all that’s happened is I’ve got poorer. She didn’t like it when I said that in the glow of glory the igniting spark of disaster always lurks. Boy did that little aphorism stop her to think for a few seconds. Hard now to recall that we had in the earlier days of our association done impromptu things like to actually go for an ice cream soda. One day I even prevailed on her to take the subway. Because she didn’t take subways. Because the Witherspoon Triumphingtons didn’t take subways. And had never been on one in her life. So I blurted out. Holy Christ millions do it every day. Let’s go to Coney Island. Which sports its slogan as the sand bar that became the world’s largest playground. She was both suspicious and amazed. And stunned silent on the subway train one could see she was wondering which way to go and what to do to get out. Any second I thought she might jump up from her wicker seat and run for it. And finally we got out at Stillwell Avenue, Coney Island. We went munching hot dogs along the boardwalk and on the hard sand washed by the gray green ocean. I showed her the shell of a horseshoe crab thrown up on the shore and hoping to make an impression said it was one of nature’s most ancient creatures. From the top of the Ferris wheel we could see for miles to the horizon and the distant ships at sea. And turned upside down in the Cyclone, we could see the ground. Then on the roller coaster they called the Gravity Road she was as cool as ice in the front car and grinning as it plunged on its tracks like a stone and seemed headed into oblivion and it scared the living shit out of me. On firm land again, I yawked up my frankfurter and sauerkraut while she tried not to be seen to laugh. We visited the freak shows, the penny arcades and went on the carousel, the folksy music of the organ throbbing away. Screaming squirming children and every nationality passing by. It turned out to be both the happiest and most miserable day I ever spent with her. Sylvia saying, “Holy gee wizz, hey, has all this been here all this time way out here beyond Canarsie. It’s real humanity in all its forms, flavors and colors.”

  Coming back on the train between the Eighteenth Avenue and Ditmas Avenue stations, we were assailed by some kids in an empty car. I was standing looking at the map, reading the subway stops and without making too much of a nightmare of it I was trying to work out how to take the free transfer on the Culver shuttle to the Fourth Avenue line in order to get off the subway at a stop near Pell Street without a nightmare of taking the wrong train and ending up in Canarsie. I felt a poke in my back, and as I turned around, a long-bladed hunting knife was pointed at my heart. His associates grinning behind him, a spokesman kid in a black leather jacket adorned with a skull and crossbones now pointed the weapon lower, at my crotch.

  “Hey daddyo I’ll cut your balls off if you don’t give us all your money. And the lady’s money, too.”

  “Hey kid, hold it a second, let’s talk.”

  “You don’t talk, daddyo. I talk. I give the orders.”

  “Kid, why you wasting your time. You could be running a big business with your gang there behind you.”

  “I said shut up, daddyo and give us your money fast, or I’ll cut you.”

  “If you so much as move a muscle, kid, I’ll knock your head off.”

  The kid moved a muscle. Jabbed out the knife. Caught me in the shoulder padding of my jacket as I sidestepped and grabbed his wrist. The knife blade cut through my sleeve. But my fist landed on his jaw so hard, it sent him on a fly halfway down the train. His brave jeering associates retreating just as we were pulling into the Ditmas Avenue station. The knife wielder minus his knife, scrambling up off his back, his face spouting blood as he ran, following his confeder
ates out the train door. Nearly knocked over a woman getting on the train, who screamed. As the train pulled out I could see the gang through the window, racing toward the exit on the platform. One of them had enough theatrical flair to stop, and his thumb stuck in his teeth, made a Mafia curse sign at me. Then the darkness again of the tunnel as the train continued on its long way toward its final destination in the northern Bronx. And I missed the free transfer on the Culver shuttle. Sylvia sat silent all the way back to Manhattan and Delancey Street, where we got a free transfer back downtown to Canal. I thought she’d been left in shock. But it slowly became evident she was on the side of the marauding gang. And showing that, despite wanting to avoid rubbing shoulders with New York’s subway millions somewhere buried in her psyche there was a strong streak of sympathy for the criminally minded downtrodden.

  “You should go to jail for hitting that young kid.”