A Penny a Kiss

by Judy McConnell

  The days hurl out in front of me and I meet them with eagerness.

  * * *

  “Abdul, look out! You’re passing too close!” I straightened up in the seat of the old Ford, darting glances at Abdul who sat next to me stiff and upright, hands gripping the wheel, head frozen straight ahead. “I could have shaken hands with the man in that car. Let’s get back in the right lane and stay there until you get the hang of this.”

  “No worry. You see I did not hit him. Everything is fine. I am practicing all week. This car and me, we are friends.”

  The University of California enrolled a large number of foreign students, and I sometimes visited the International Center to hear a lecture on international affairs or sample an exotic dinner served during foreign holidays. At a lecture on the cold war being waged by the two superpowers, I first encountered Abdul Alquirashi. We slipped into the last two adjoining seats in the front row at the same instant, causing me to turn and meet his brown eyes. After the presentation by a prominent journalist, we fell into a discussion of the actual causes of the war was in Korea that brought us to the front entrance and continued over dinner at a Lebanese restaurant. After that Abdul came calling, stayed for coffee, invited me for long walks or tacos. Since he didn’t own a car we rarely left campus.

  This was our first drive together. He had borrowed his friend Abdulla’s car so we could spend the evening at a highly touted Spanish restaurant on Santa Monica Boulevard. Now, flying along the freeway in the pale evening dusk, I watched with amusement his nervous con­centration as he negotiated the freeway.

  “Abdul, I hope you see that mammoth truck,” I said.

  “What? Of course I see it. I am not so blind!”

  The restaurant was dimly lit, and as our eyes adjusted we made out black and red upholstery, small marble tables, and flickering candles in iron sconces lining the walls. From one corner, classical guitar music and the crisp clacking of castanets drifted towards us. As we consumed plates of paella, Abdul listened to my lengthy philosophies about life and the state of the world. Then, in a gentle tone, he addressed what he considered my misconceptions.

  “Judy, the religion is called Islam, not Mohammedism. Mohamed was a prophet. And you must learn to call me by full name, Abdulaziz.”

  The 1956 Israeli invasion of Egypt was hot on his mind. When Abdul’s passion was roused his English picked up; he became almost fluent.

  “The aim of the takeover of the Suez Canal by Israel, along with Great Britain and France, was not to open up its use, as claimed,” he said in his calm manner. “It was about imperialism versus nationalism. The goal of the western powers was to topple Nasser, they considered him the force behind independence in Middle East. Countries like Sudan, Tunisia, Morocco, Algeria, and Jordan were joining together against continual Israeli threats to their territory. The claim that Nasser handled the canal badly or prevented Israeli ships from using the canal was a pretense. Israeli ships had been banned since 1948 and no protest from Great Britain. Outlawing enemy ships was common in a state of war, and war was going on for some time. The United States took the same stand in the Panama Canal when it prevented access for Red Chinese ships.

  “Ignoring the United Nations peace negotiations, Great Britain and France invaded the Suez Canal on the pretext of saving it,” he went on, resting his dark eyes on me earnestly. “They wanted to get rid of Nasser so they could control resources and keep their influence in the area.” All this was said with composure and a humility that belied his keen grasp of foreign affairs and his dark good looks.

  We often carried on such discussions. I loved to listen to him. Abdul and his Egyptian friends, Abdulla and Suhail, were enrolled, like him, in the U.S.C. business school. Occasionally the four of us sat in his apartment over mud-strong coffee dissecting our contrasting cultures. I was full of questions, and they claimed I was one American they could speak frankly with about their country. Abdul enjoyed arguing with me and teased that I was an incurable intellectual—a claim that was not backed up by my school grades, although I usually received A’s in literature.

  My relationship with Abdul remained impersonal. We didn’t exchange feelings or confessions of an intimate nature. On the occasion when he tried to fold an arm around me on the couch I slipped out of range. I’m not sure why. Maybe I needed to be bowled over, and fond as I was of him, I was not floating on a silver cloud.

  * * *

  Mary, Eunice, and I decided to pool our friends and throw a party. I was especially keen now that I had a spacious place to entertain. We labored for two days, deep-cleaning the apartment, mulling over recipes, traipsing to the grocery store, and chopping and mixing foods.

  On Saturday the dining room table was laid with blue-and-white edged dinner plates, bowls of hot cheddar pepper dip, artichoke hearts on crackers, meatballs pierced with colored toothpicks, deviled eggs, and crusty rice cups stuffed with guacamole. Purple hydrangeas flashed in the center, and at one end two crystal punch bowls held raspberry sherbet, ginger ale, and chipped ice—one alcohol free, the other laced with gin. Several wines and bottles of tequila and gin were lined up on the kitchen table.

  People took refreshments and grouped in clusters around the room drinks in hand, chatting while the rhythm of Ravel’s Bolero hummed in the background. Standing by the hall door I surveyed the room. None of the guests wore the Norwegian sweaters, blazers with crescents or plaid pleated skirts typical of the U.S.C. co-ed. Myrna Hartman, a fellow literature major, stood beside a floor lamp wearing a plain navy skirt and white collared blouse, her face hidden behind heavy horn-rimmed glasses and long bangs. Her hands flickered as she expounded on Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea. I noticed several guys from the cinema department. Chester was seated on the couch next to a blonde girl in a rose sweater. Dressed in his usual tweed jacket and tie, pipe in mouth and glass of gin in hand, he looked quite professorial. He was holding forth—he explained later—on his accomplishments as a film writer and novelist, sucking on his pipe between phrases while the girl in the rose sweater regarded him with interest. Chester claimed this approach never failed. Not far from him Joel listened with a close-lipped smile to Joan Aquino’s non-stop barrage.

  I mingled with a wide assortment of people I’d never met: An older man with a trimmed beard, wearing a neck scarf; a tall pink-cheeked woman in her late twenties, who turned out to be a nun in plain clothes; students in fresh cotton and dirndl, not overly concerned about style; and a man in a felt vest who seemed to know all there was to know about the life-span of the Mexican coati.

  Spying Abdul half-hidden among a throng of girls, I moved over to join them. Abdul certainly cut a striking figure. And in his shy way knew how to make himself agreeable.

  “I am completing advanced degree in business and marketing,” he was saying. “But no, I do not plan to return to Egypt soon—too many credits to finish. Here I work most of the time. If I return home I have to work all of the time.”

  The girls around him were regarding him with interest. One petite blonde with a square blue scarf looped around her neck looked at him pointedly. “I’m considering a business major myself.”

  “Very good choice,” he replied politely.

  I thought that for someone who claimed to be bashful around women Abdul was showing remarkable poise. At this point he turned his head towards me. “This is my friend Judy.”

  I moved closer.

  “So you are good friends?” the blonde girl asked suggestively.

  “I would say so,” I responded glancing at Abdul, who nodded. This was not a subject I wanted to clarify just then. I quickly went on, “Abdul is a fool for poker. He and his friends play constantly. If you’re ever looking for a game, here is the maestro.” I liked to tease Abdul about his constant poker playing, and now he laughed.

  “I admit it is weakness for me,” he said. “Whoever wants to be weak with me
is very welcome. I promise not to take too much your money.”

  “Do you play poker in Egypt?” asked the blonde.

  “Oh, no, that is not allowed,” he replied smiling. “But I am here to find out about American culture. So I am learning.”

  “So how do you entertain yourself in your country?” pursued the girl.

  “We go to the movies—American movies,” Abdul laughed, looking at me and taking a swallow of his non-alcoholic punch.

  As the night wore on I drifted out back and sat on the top step, coddling a gin and tonic in my lap. Most of the neighborhood lights had been extinguished, and in the sheen of the quarter moon the outlines of a dogwood tree and bougainvillea vines crawling along the edge of the house were etched in the shadows. It felt good to relax into a weary warmth. The sounds of the party faded as the last stragglers left and I fell into a comfortable reverie.

  After a while Mary appeared and settled herself on the stoop beside me. We didn’t say much as we gazed into the purple shadows. This was my first time acting as host to a group of intriguing people, and I was relishing a pleasurable sense of responsibility. As I relaxed, chin cupped in my hands, the silence radiated the heat of a thousand summers. It occurred to me I liked it here tremendously. It was good to be back in the land of the living.

  As for my roommates, they seemed to appreciate the cooperative spirit that had developed between us, but they remained leery. My reserved created a distance and they still weren’t used to my tendency to do my own thing at all costs.

  * * *

  The party was deemed a great success. Mary and Eunice were pleased. After that they warmed up considerably, maybe because the drinks had loosened my reserve and they’d seen me outgoing and smiling for once. As for me, I was still trying to figure them out. Eunice, the science major, was down to earth, focused, and smart. Mary, on the other hand, was artistic. I admired her drive and talent and unending consideration for my point of view. She worked tirelessly on her graduate thesis, an analysis of Gertrude Stein’s cubistic writing and how the techniques Stein used to break down language mirrored the techniques of cubistic painting.

  Mary espoused the daring innovations of Robert Motherwell and Jean Cocteau, yet upheld her conservative standards with firm religious conviction. Did she believe in the self-denial and restraint demanded by the church, or did she follow the wild and daring as expressed in her paintings? She admired Alan Ginsberg’s Howl, but did not approve of his free-for-all lifestyle. How did this mesh? How could one be creative without a good dose of spontaneity and anarchy? At first I was unable to reconcile this seeming duality. I had to get used to appre­ciating an intelligent, creative person housed in a strict conservative mold. Maybe she had to get used to me and my tendency to drift along with the prevailing wind.

  After several months I found myself adjusting to the house meal schedule, bringing home special foods for dinner, and following through on household commitments. I experienced a new sense of stability. Peering out my bedroom window at the gleam of blue silk sky above the rooftops, it seemed that that life was good.

  * * *

  Unprecedented upheavals shook through the United States in 1955-1956. The fervor for political change was igniting. Graduate students at the university met in campus cafes or gathered in the student union lounge to deplore the Korean War and champion the Montgomery bus boycott against segregation. We watched scenes of Korean villages being burned to the ground and civilians massacred, and a fourteen-year-old Negro boy hung from a tree for speaking to a white woman in a grocery store in Mississippi. Sitting in deep chairs amid clouds of cigarette smoke, we discussed the latest government cover-up and denounced the lies from Washington and raged against the racial bigotry everywhere.

  A song by the Weavers buzzed in the air, “I’ll stand it no more, come what may . . .”

  Journal Entry

  Easter vacation drags. After turning down the family trip to a Texas dude ranch in order to complete a term paper on Thomas Mann’s The Magic Mountain, I’m having a hard time sticking to my schedule. Here I am alone in L.A. while Mary and Eunice and everyone else are off vacationing. The personal writing I’d intended to work on is dead in the stall. My short story is standing still. I haven’t written a line for two days. I keep thinking, what is all this worth? So what? I’d give anything to be able to plunge into a work that would be the primary drive and focus of my life. But can I?

  Maybe I am too attached to life. So many authors are unstable types, forced to create a world to live in because they don’t fit in the actual one. They press to exorcize their demons and try to form harmony out of the chaos of their world. Maybe it’s preferable to delve into life itself, to use one’s artistry to bring symmetry into one’s surroundings, to arrive at happiness directly. Do I really want the career of the tortured artist, constantly struggling? Wouldn’t it be better to fix up my life?

  Why is it so hard to knuckle down? I dream of sprawling in an open car in the warm evening air.

  Later. Today is the last day of Easter vacation. I am walking through the deserted campus, headed nowhere. I feel inexplicably depressed. The city is full of sunshine and the streets I walk along burst with light; the house gardens are overrun with flowers. All the allure passes over me, useless, a mocking contrast to the shadowland where I reside.

  * * *

  Mary and I strode down the path eagerly. The crowd was swarming around the stage, faces flushed and expectant in the open air. Most were on the young side, students or graduates or drifters dressed in sport shirts, halters, or checked blouses, some in striped serapes and sandals, some with long hair drooped around their faces. They scrunched on blankets shoulder to shoulder and sat in rows of metal chairs lined up in front of the platform. On a nearby hill a handful of children scurried among the rocks. The grass sparkled in the spring air and the odor of fresh grain and moss drifted from under the trees. Behind the distant rooftops, ribbons of vermillion and orange trailed a sinking ball of sun.

  The excitement in the air was palpable. A hum escaped from the crowd as a fifth-wheeler pulled up, growing louder as several men jumped from the back. A crew flew about adjusting lights and monitors, positioning backdrop screens, checking mics and stage lines. The audience straightened, every eye turned to catch a glimpse of the performer, in a pitch of feverish enthusiasm.

  Finally the stage cleared, and with an agile leap a figure gained the stage and strode up to the microphone. He was dressed simply in casual slacks, with rolled up shirt sleeves and a banjo slung over one shoulder, looking like an Eagle Scout. Cheers and wild applause rang out over the field. After warming up with “Good Night Irene,” “Kisses Sweeter than Wine,” and other of his popular folk songs, Seeger sang out “If I had a Hammer,” and “This Land Is Your Land.” The crowd was eager for a message and his lyrics resonating through the evening air said everything they were waiting to hear. They clamored for more, hollering, clapping, until Pete raised an arm, poised his banjo, and in the quick silence launched into his latest hit, “Where Have All the Flowers Gone? / Long Time Passing / Where Have all the Young Men Gone? / Long Time Ago . . .” His face reflected every word that left his mouth, and his voiced, full-throated and sincere, carried over the fields and into our hearts. I felt my throat tighten. I wanted to do something, to rise up, to yell, to protest. I glanced at Mary. She had the same fervent look on her face. Our eyes met and in that instant I knew that somewhere in the fabric of our beings a thread of humanity bound us, forging a bond as tight as the strings on Pete Seeger’s quivering banjo.

  On the bus home we discussed the burgeoning number of youth groups who defied authority and questioned American leader­ship. There was growing alarm about the war in Korea that was des­troying a country and killing its citizens for a questionable American cause. Mary and I were in total accord. We were convinced the aim of the military was not to protect our land but to protec
t our foreign interests, largely economic. I was overjoyed to hear Mary speak so heatedly, breaking out of her usual orthodox reserve.

  “Judy,” she turned her serious face from the window, “Pete Seeger is the voice of justice, seeking to make the world a better place. He didn’t crumble under the assault on him at the House Un-American Activities Committee hearings.” We recalled his words at the time: “I resent very much and very deeply the implication of being called before this committee that in some way because my opinions may be different from yours, or yours, Mr. Willis, or yours, Mr. Scherer, that I am any less of an American than anybody else.’”

  She quoted Elliot’s The Waste Land, “Here is no water but only rock . . . dry sterile thunder without rain.”

  As the bus nosed towards the streets of south Los Angles, the discussion turned to the Lost Generation writers. We admired the American expatriates who settled in Paris after World War I to break from the materialism and conformity they could no longer tolerate in the United States.

  “The Parisian writers, Gertrude Stein, Hemingway, and Dos Passos, and the like showed resistance by questioning the rigidity of American society. They were the first.” Slipping a mint drop into her mouth, Mary curled her hands in her royal blue skirt.

  “Then twenty years later Jack Kerouac and William Burroughs come along and turn American culture upside down with their Beat anything-goes preaching and lifestyle,” I said. “They remained in America and lived the destruction they preached.”

  “Yes,” exclaimed Mary, “I remember the words of Kerouac: ‘The only ones for me are the mad ones . . . mad to life, mad total.’” Her admiration for these cultural rebels appeared to have no bounds. Abruptly she turned to look at me. “What do you think of their heavy use of psychedelic drugs and attempts to legalize LSD?”