The Collected Novels of Charles Wright

by Charles Wright

  And I sat in my room waiting, watching the sky turn dark, listening to radio rock, inhaling the Coney Island odors that wafted through the window from the nearby pizza parlors, hamburger luncheonettes. The night was a scorcher. Should I hit the streets? Visit air-conditioned friends/foes? Are you jiving, mothergrabber? What could they possibly do except accelerate the drift? So I showered again, opened the door, turned off the bed lamp. The Valencia is an anything-goes hotel.

  Finger-popping, dance-marching around the room, wanting desperately to get higher; become incoherent, hallucinate, vomit, pass out. But that never happens. Once again, I was stoned in the hall of mirrors. It’s brilliant, beautiful, but fear in the back of the mind bevels the edge. What am I frightened of? Death, aging, my fellow men, madness—frightened that one terrible morning or night I will no longer have the marvelous ability to drink, drink, knock it down, as they say: Yes! Mix it all up, pop a variety of pills, smoke grass and hashish—frightened of what might be my inability to love, although I am loving, generous, understanding with friends, strangers.

  Shirley. Memory is a bitch, I think, hitting the cheap white wine. Maggie’s latest perfumed note from Paris remains unopened. A difference in age. She had never been able to conceive and I had always wanted a son—

  Little Richard rhythmically falsettoing on rock radio. Damnit. Should have married Anna Maria. But it ended badly, since I was having an affair with her sister. Anna Maria! Stoned, a little uneasy on the first tier of loneliness, self-pity . . .

  “Oh, Mr. Wright, are you home?” Birdie Greene, the Valencia maid, asked. “Have you got a cig?”

  “Birdie . . . wait till I get my pants or a towel.”

  “All right.”

  “Kinda hot tonight.”

  “Yeah,” Birdie said in her Selma Diamond voice. “Damn machine broke again, and I just can’t go out in the street. You know what I mean. And those people in 55. Just because they see me, don’t mean I’m working.”

  “Take the whole pack,” I said. “I’ve got more.”

  “Thanks, Mr. Wright.” Birdie Greene smiled. “See you on Wednesday.”

  Midnight became the world’s most uptight jackhammer. Jesus. When would the son of a bitch conk out?

  “Hi,” the girl said warmly, standing in my doorway. “Have you seen Joe and Helen?”

  “Have I seen who?”

  “Joe and Helen.” The girl giggled. “They live down the hall, and I thought . . .”

  “No, baby. I’ve been looking for Charles Wright.”

  Blond (why are they always blond?), Levis, pop-art T-shirt, no bra, no shoes, coquette repainting tomboy exterior, clutching a dollar’s worth of white-yellow buttoned daisies. (On St. Marks Place with the peace, pot-smoking young, it’s a single rose. The deflowered, hip, zipping middle-class Americans, off target, ricocheting—back home.)

  “What’s happening?” the girl asked.

  “What the hell do you think is happening?”

  “Wow, man. How you come on.”

  “Wow, how you come on,” I said. “Must all of you say everything that I expect you to say?”

  “Aren’t the flowers lovely? Peace, flowers, and love, brother.”

  “Come on in.” I smiled and let it pass, flicking on the light. “Let’s share a stick of peace.”

  The girl executed a mock curtsy. In the light I could see her decadent infanta gaze. The infanta, concealing jeweled daggers under the crinolines, a girl-woman with small, hard, cold eyes, fixed on my penis.

  “Good grass, man,” the girl confided.

  “Yeah.”

  “Your eyes look funny. Glazed.”

  “A black devil.”

  The girl giggled again. “No, you’re cool, brother. We’ve got to put the flowers in water or else they’ll die.”

  “Well,” I said rising, “we can put some of them in the beer bottle.”

  “That’s cool,” the girl exclaimed.

  We arranged the daisies in the beer bottle. The girl bounced on the edge of the bed, keeping time with rock on the radio.

  “Do you think you can get me off?”

  Silence.

  “Come on, cookie. If you want some bread or a place to crash for the night, okay. But don’t play. I’m a superb gameplayer. I don’t like monkey games.”

  “Do you think you could love me?” the girl whimpered.

  “No,” I said, turning off the light. “But let’s ball.”

  The girl, a knowledgeable child, sexually proficient, was kicked out at noon. “Do you love me?” she had asked.

  Still high, seeking solitude, yawning, I had turned toward the girl: “What? Get out of here. You’re out of your league. A lot of black dudes on St. Marks will buy that jazz. So you’d better get out and find one.”

  “I’ve got one,” the girl replied bitterly, “and thanks for nothing.”

  The heat had not diminished, and I went to the corner and bought ice, a half gallon of wine. Returned with my prime minister, The Drift. MJQ—the Modern Jazz Quartet was playing on the radio. It was a little after three in the afternoon, and I was knocking down white wine, chain-smoking. Then suddenly I knew what I was frightened of: the daisies in the beer bottle. Goddamn innocents, secretly smiling. Bastards knew I was frightened that something might happen, and I’d never be able to write the book I believed I was capable of writing.

  Malcolm, Malcolm. Malcolm Lowry. Has the volcano been sighted?

  Anyway, here’s a bunch of daisies for the dead dog in the ravine.

  AND ON THE FIFTH DAY, I left Manhattan, returned to the Catskills, my seasonal home away from home. I can always go to the Catskills and wash dishes. Real peasant wages, a peasant’s caldron. Here—where it’s green and serene—these flat, informal, manicured acres. The eye looks upward and sees dense treed mountains, a pearl-blue sky. Tall poplar trees ring the lakes and golf courses. Blacks and Jews may not share a passion for pork, but they do share a passion for Lincoln Continentals and Cadillacs. The Jews seem to prefer air-conditioned cars.

  Early afternoon. The pool and cabanas are crowded. A bearded black tyro who will not speak to the black hotel employees plays light George Shearing jazz, which soars in the high wind. Far off, a woman sits alone and knits. Children play volleyball. A well-known Hollywood character actor frolics by the pool. This scene is visible from my window in the former children’s dormitory. A pleasant vacation vista. The grind of Manhattan, Brooklyn, the Bronx is far away. Why move from the lounge chair? The entertainment director is trying to coax people to play games. The guests are indifferent. Perhaps they resent their vacation being regulated by a whistle. “And you’re always complaining because there’s nothing happening . . . Jesus,” the director says into the floor mike.

  The indifference flowers. A pleasant young man, a novice politician, makes a brief speech. He has recently returned from Israel. He is not soliciting funds; the young man works out of the Lower East Side, which is a memory (or a business) for the guests. The young man has a fine voice and, to use an old-fashioned, unfashionable word, is sincere, mentioning briefly the June war. Quotes from the Bible. Warns that peace is a long way off. Israel needs support.

  No one is listening, except to their companions; others promenade. The entertainment director is nervous. Finally, the young novice politician thanks his apathetic audience, adding that this might not be a proper place to talk but—

  By 5:30 that afternoon, most of the guests had left the pool. It had been a lazy afternoon. Israel was far away. The guests would go to their rooms, bathe, rest, and dress for dinner. They had time for an after-dinner walk in the clear mountain air. After all, they gave to the United Jewish Appeal, and they were in the land of the free.

  I was free until midnight, moonlight as lobby porter. No hassle, though. The quiet, secure middle classes have quiet, secure vacations, except for weekends. Occasionally something happens: like the man who had brought a shotgun. It was not the hunting season. Anyway, a houseman stole the shotgun. A kitc
hen man stole the shotgun from the houseman.

  “Fuck the hotel,” the kitchen man said. “What has it done for me? I’ve worked my ass off for nothing. I’m gonna drink wine for a couple of weeks and sleep in the grass.”

  Up here, wine is king and beggar. A gallon of cheap wine can destroy a $5,000 bar mitzvah. The hotel owners are aware of this—and, well. But it is profitable to them, regardless, if crisis follows crisis.

  Witness: The pot-and-pan man was alone and extremely well for five days. After a fifth of must-I-tell (muscatel) wine, he’s packed his California suitcase (a California suitcase is a brown paper bag, cardboard box, or shopping bag) and announces that he is quitting. Pissed because he had to wash walls, a dishwasher decides to quit also. The head dishwasher is on a drug safari.

  A pantry man decides to hit the road with his buddies. Last night, the nightclub porter pissed in the sink and got fired. Two housemen went into town and never returned. Another has been stoned in the dormitory for two days. The salad man swaggers in with a fifth of Scotch and is escorted out of the kitchen. A middle-aged kitchen man, a professional, chases the smart-aleck second cook with a meat cleaver. The baker, a former marine, is stoned as usual. Between offering bear hugs, he throws wads of dough. A day behind the scenes in a Catskill hotel; you take it as long as you have to, or split. The working and living conditions are terrible. No unions or overtime, which is why hotels fail to secure stable employees. You work long enough to get wine money or “talking back” money and move on. But—Monticello, the mountain Las Vegas, beckons; the police wait; and it is ten and ten: a ten-dollar fine or ten days in jail, or both. Now you are no longer required to see a judge, go to jail. You give the policeman ten dollars, and he drives you to another hotel, regardless of whether or not you want to work. Labor Day is near; the hotels are desperate. This year, the Bowery men are not making their annual Catskill expedition. A man might as well panhandle, eat at the Municipal Lodging House on East Third Street, and sleep in a doorway. Why should they work twelve hours and get paid for seven? And may I wish the Bowery men a happy holiday.

  At this particular hotel, the only happy people are the guests and the young black men from Alabama who will work the summer season and hope to return home with $500 or $300. Like the Puerto Ricans, they work hard, save their money, and stick together. A natural-born citizen of the world’s most prosperous country, I tremble to think of what life back home is like. But that’s another story. A chapter of the story is in the beautiful, legendary Catskill Mountains, in the great and small hotels, bungalow colonies, where once Jewish workers came to relax from Manhattan sweatshops, gangsters came to play and kill. Now, small towns and cities bear ancient Indian names, and progress and builders have raped the wilderness, and money, anxiety, anger, greed dance through the clean mountain air like a chariot filled with lovers.

  Indifferent, unchanging world—that’s it in the final analysis, I remember thinking one night. There was a full moon. With coffee and cigarettes for company, I went down to the lake. I thought of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Dr. Dick Diver. Yes. Tender is the night. I became frightened and left the following morning.

  * * *

  Back home. Back in the summertime city, laying sevens against the nitty-gritty. Manhattan and the good life. The pace, the anonymity. A challenging, wondrous city. But do I want to stay here? In fact, do I want to stay in the United States of America? I have never felt at home here. Ah, memories of the old days! Obscured by green cornfields, I wanted to play seek and ye shall find. But the mothergrabbers felt more like a crude game of croquet; their mallets tried to split open my head with a golden eagle’s beak. Pressing Onward in 1972, I fail to dip into that fondue of phrases, Right On, Brother or Right On, America, although the masses are ever so Aware and Hip, blessed with the technical realities of the space age. I’ve got dt’s in the rectum. “This world ain’t my home,” grandfather used to say. Ah yes! I’m coming from the edge of despair. Booze and pills fail to ax despair. I always get stoned on that frightening, cold level where everything is crystal clear. It’s like looking at yourself too closely in a magnifying mirror.

  Weighed down with my medals of merit from Catskill labors, a wailing Lourdes platoon tap-dancing in the center of my brain, I checked into the Valencia Hotel.

  The pale blue room was immaculate. Surprise! No cockroach welcome. The parquet-patterned linoleum gleamed. But the floor was slightly uneven, and the linoleum squeaked like a man snoring. After showering, poured a stiff vodka, moved a straight-backed chair over to the window. In the middle of the afternoon, you could feel the heat rising around the sad, stunted trees of Third Avenue, dwarfed by the soot-caked, red-brick façade of Cooper Union. Traffic was a daisy chain of giant drunken crickets. Dressed in colorful summer finery, the teeming crowd, shuttling east and west, seemed exhausted, as if they were being manipulated by sadistic puppet masters. Was the pollution count unhealthy?

  “Fair weather, fair weather,” I said aloud, and began to doze.

  What time was it? Where was I? In a post-sleeping-pill daze, the room was familiar. But I took another shower and recovered. It was five in the morning—that blessed hour. The streets were deserted, and with my quart of vodka, I walked under a starless, subtle electric-blue sky to the Chinese Garden. A solitary man slept on a cardboard mattress; half a loaf of Wonder Bread lay at his feet. The new lane of the Manhattan Bridge hadn’t opened. Through the line of trees, I saw a squad car park on the lane. Two exhausted or goldbricking policemen sacked out. An old story. I had been coming here for a very long time.

  I began knocking down drinks. When I looked up, a tall woman was coming toward me, moving with a slow, back-country woman’s stride. Close-cropped gray hair, print cotton dress, and red-leather house shoes. She was like a curio, a ghost from Hell’s Kitchen, a bit player from a Clifford Odets revival.

  “Has a man passed through here?” the woman asked, her voice hoarse, hesitant, like a record played at the wrong speed.

  “No. I’ve been here about an hour. I haven’t seen anyone.”

  “I wonder where he went to. Some colored fellow has been following me all up and down the Bowery.”

  Jesus. One of them. Gritting my teeth, curling my toenails, I smilingly said, “Is that so?”

  The tall woman nodded. She did not look at me. My vodka held her interest. “That’s right. He just kept on following me and saying things. Every once in a while, he’d do something dirty.”

  “That’s terrible. Why didn’t you call the police?”

  “What good are they?”

  Chuckling, I offered the woman a drink.

  She read the vodka label carefully. “This ain’t wine.”

  “No,” I sighed, “but it gets to you. One hundred proof.”

  When the woman finally released the bottle, she was panting. “Too strong. Wine’s all right. Just like drinking soda pop, and you can get drunk, too.”

  “Cigarette?”

  “You think I’ll kiss it. But I won’t.”

  “What?”

  “You’ve got your goddamn hands between your legs.”

  “I’ve also got a cigarette in my hand. I have no intention of burning Junior.”

  “You can’t make me do it,” the tall woman said.

  “Lady, have another drink and beat it. I’m getting a peaceful high, and I don’t want you to zonk it.”

  Frowning, the woman reached for the vodka. “I won’t do it. You Spanish and colored men are always following me, trying to make me do things.”

  “Well,” I began slowly, “I am a man of color, but there isn’t a goddamn thing you can do for me.” The woman shuddered. “Have I made myself clear, bitch?”

  “I’ll have another cigarette, then I’ll go,” she said quietly.

  Now it was light, but the sun was still behind the tenements on the Lower East Side. It was a lovely dawn, quiet and cool. Early Saturday morning, and there was almost no traffic on the bridge. A few trucks going to and from Manhattan
.

  I forgot about the woman until she said, “That wasn’t a nice way to talk to me.”

  “And it wasn’t very nice of you to disturb me. Do I have to wear a goddamn sign that says I want to be alone?” I jumped down from the ledge and lunged at the woman. “Move, bitch!”

  “All right,” the woman said, starting off. “I ain’t gonna ask you for another drink.”

  “Good-bye.”

  “I never said I wouldn’t kiss it.”

  “Get out of here,” I shouted.

  The woman turned, hesitated, then came toward me. “Can I have another cigarette? That’ll hold me till the bars open. That’s all I want. One or two cigarettes. I ain’t begging. You can’t make me do it for no cheap-ass drink.”

  “Lady, take a couple of cigarettes and make it. I want to be alone. Can’t you fucks understand that?”

  The woman looked up at me with a hard, angry gaze and accepted four cigarettes. “You’re a smart aleck. Well, I don’t have to be bothered with your kind.”

  “You wanna kiss it?” I joked.

  “You can’t make me do it.”

  “Hell. Doesn’t anyone fuck anymore?”

  “Rotten bastard.”

  “Come here,” I said.

  “Oh, no, you don’t,” the woman screamed.

  Forcing a Great Depression smile, I grabbed the woman’s arm.

  “You can’t make me do it.”

  The woman didn’t try to break from my grasp. I released my hold. “Well, mama?”

  The tall woman with the back-country stride did not move. I looked at her tired, middle-aged face, reddened from wine, the cold gray eyes, watery like tarnished silver. It would have been impossible to kiss the thin, pale lips, and her chest was almost as flat as mine. The idea of dogging this woman, who was descended from thin-skinned rednecks, didn’t appeal to me. Unlike many American black men—I have never had a super-charged, hard-on for white women. All I saw was a masochistic woman who wanted to serve Head.