Unfettered and Alive

by Anne Summers

  I felt immense frustration about being Australian. I was having my very essence reduced to a trashy novel, reminiscences from a war that had ended 33 years earlier or the desire to purchase what I considered to be an ugly and overrated gemstone. I thought I came from a lively and interesting place. I was well versed in A.A. Phillips’s concept of the cultural cringe5 and rejected the idea that we Australians had anything to apologise for. I thought the stereotyping that was at the heart of The Thornbirds was crass and embarrassing—as if we all lived in The Outback!—but when I tried to express this view, I received hostile stares, as if I was criticising them for having liked this book. In a way, of course, I was. I’d read about this feeling in the literature of Martin Boyd and Henry Handel Richardson, the state of mind that you can never communicate to the Other because they have already decided what an Australian is, and their view was a decidedly condescending one. But I’d thought while this kind of patronising was to be expected from the English, or even some Europeans, I did not expect it in America, the land that supposedly embraced everyone. I’d never experienced it before and I found it very dispiriting.

  In mid-November the group travelled to Chicago. I knew very little about what was known, for good reason, as ‘the windy city’—there actually were chains in the street for people to hold onto so they would not be blown over. I was stunned by its beauty, the river that ran through downtown and the Parisienne style bridges that crossed it every few blocks, and its skyscraper architecture could certainly give New York a run for its money. Soon, in our meetings with newspapers, with community organisations and with the legendary author and radio commentator Studs Terkel, we were learning that this was a town with a strong social conscience. Outside the group, I managed to hook up with Abe Peck and Marshall Rosenthal, two radicals from the 1960s. They had both been editors of Seed, Chicago’s alternative newspaper which ran from 1967 to 1974, but were now working as best they could within establishment media. Peck was with the Chicago Sun-Times and told us about the major abortion scandal exposé the paper had recently run. Among the journalistic techniques they had used was to have women take samples of men’s urine to dodgy clinics for pregnancy tests; they invariably came back positive. Abe arranged for the paper to publish my article about how Sydney feminists had started Control, an abortion clinic dedicated to ethical and women-friendly services. It was the second piece I had had published in the US. Maybe I could make it here, I mused. Abe also took Carlos Jones, my fellow WPIer from Uruguay, and me to O’Rourkes, a writers’ bar that was adorned with portraits and quotes of great Irish writers. Just the place to lose yourself in the bottom of a glass, but we were too impatient to sample all this great city had to offer and we sought Abe’s recommendation for a place to hear blues.

  ‘Theresa’s,’ he said. ‘You have to go to Theresa’s.’

  ‘You sure you want to go there?’ the cab driver asked when we gave him the address of Theresa’s Tavern.

  We knew about the South Side. It was rough, it was mostly black and it was not a place to hang out, especially if you were white, in those racially tense days. Although it had been ten years since the riots that raged in America’s large cities after the killing of Martin Luther King Jr, the anger still simmered. Black areas were neglected. I had been shocked in Washington DC to see that just a couple of blocks away from the White House, an entire neighbourhood that had been razed by fires started by rioters in 1968 was still in ruins. There was no investment in these areas. In fact, the infamous ‘redlining’—denying home loans and other financial services based on the racial composition of a neighbourhood—meant that exactly the opposite happened: the inner-city was increasingly being abandoned by white America to unemployment, rundown housing, poverty and its companions: crime and drugs. We would have this explained to us when we met with Jesse Jackson’s Operation PUSH the next day, and it was on the South Side of Chicago that a young Barack Obama would work as a community organiser before he embarked on his political odyssey, the road that would lead him to becoming the first African-American President of the United States in 2009.

  But we were just going to a bar, a legendary blues bar that had been recommended by a white guy. Surely we’d be okay. It was snowing heavily as we pulled up outside 4801 S. Indiana Avenue, giving the surrounding slums a benign, even beautiful, appearance. As we picked our way through the crunchy snow towards the basement entrance, murmurs came from the shadows:

  ‘Fuck off, honky.’

  The room was a narrow space with a long wooden bar along the right-hand wall and a small stage at the back. It was not crowded but we saw at a glance that there were no other white people there. All the looks we got were hostile. Maybe it wasn’t going to be so okay. Carlos wanted to leave.

  ‘How can we?’ I muttered. The cab had sped off the second we had got out.

  We breasted the bar, positioning ourselves near the corner closest to the stage and, using an exaggerated-Australian accent, I ordered some drinks. Was I imagining it or did the tension ease slightly? We sipped on our Scotches, trying to look relaxed.

  ‘When will the music start?’ I asked the woman behind the bar. I think now that she must have been Theresa McLaurin Needham, the woman who had opened this little tavern back in 1949. She did not want to talk.

  When they’re ready, was her terse response.

  Carlos and I murmured to each other that if the music did not start soon, we would just finish our drinks and call for a cab. While we were talking I became aware that a man was standing nearby, at the end of the bar, and he was looking right at us. He was tall and immaculately dressed, in a tailored grey coat, buttoned up, and a dark-coloured homburg hat. He made eye contact with me as he slid his hand into his coat—and pulled out a huge gun. I recognised it from the movies: it was a Magnum .37, the kind Clint Eastwood sported in the Dirty Harry films. The man pushed the weapon along the bar towards me.

  ‘Why don’t you mind my gun while I sing?’ he said.

  There seemed to be a collective intake of breath throughout the tavern as everyone watched to see what we would do. It was a test, of course, and one that we could not fail. I had never seen a gun before and I was scared shitless, but I knew this was not a time for showing one’s feelings.

  ‘Sure,’ I said. And turned back to Carlos and resumed talking.

  Theresa rushed up and grabbed the gun and put it under the bar. She yelled at the man, then made calming noises in our direction. The room relaxed; normal noise began again, but only for a few minutes because soon a deep raw sound began to envelop us. I turned around and there on the stage was the man who’d had the gun. He’d taken off his coat but not his hat, and he was grasping the microphone, looking straight at me—and, backed by a small band, he was singing a song that was deep and mournful, rich and sad.

  Afterwards he came over to the bar. He bought us drinks, wanted to know where we were from. He introduced himself: his name was Junior Wells. Later I would learn that he was one of the legendary Chicago bluesmen. In his memoir Life, the Rolling Stones’ Keith Richards describes almost reverentially how in the early 1960s, he and Mick Jagger had travelled to Manchester to hear Muddy Waters and Junior Wells perform. Wells had got his start in 1952, in Waters’ band during a recording session at Chicago’s iconic Chess Studios, a place that was on Richards’ must-visit list when he first went to Chicago. But that night in Theresa’s Tavern I knew none of this. I was just soaking up the best music I had ever heard. The hostility of the room had evaporated and now Carlos and I were laughing and relaxed; we were having a good time. We were no longer the unwelcome intruders; we were now treated with generosity and kindness. How long were we staying? Wells wanted to know. He would take us to places where we would hear the very best music Chicago had to offer. With him, he said, we could go anywhere. Sadly, we were leaving the very next night. Even sadder, it was now 2 a.m. and Theresa’s was closing. Although many bars in the US stayed open until 4 a.m., Theresa’s was not one of them. Carlos and I said our g
oodbyes and made for the door. Junior Wells stopped us.

  ‘Call these people a cab,’ he instructed Theresa.

  ‘It’s not safe,’ he said to us. ‘There’s some bad niggers out there.’

  When it arrived, Junior Wells escorted us to the cab and sent us safely on our way.

  A few weeks later the WPI group travelled to Atlanta where our itinerary included a meeting with Andrew Young, President Carter’s Ambassador to the UN, the first African-American to hold this position. But we had some free time so on Saturday night Carlos and I headed for the Agora Ballroom on Peachtree where, someone had told us, the music was good. There was a cover charge of $5.50 and all the beer you could drink. It was a big barn of a place. We grabbed our plastic cups of beer and settled ourselves up on the balcony, from where you had a good view of the stage, and waited to see how the evening would unfold.

  Soon a large man came on and settled in with his guitar and started to sing. It was classic Delta blues.

  ‘This is the real thing!’ I said excitedly to Carlos.

  The man seemed to be a bit drunk, slurring as he introduced songs and joked with the audience. He sang for an hour and then, before he left the stage, he introduced himself:

  ‘My name is Muddy “Mississippi River” Waters,’ he said. ‘And it has been my pleasure to sing for you.’

  I could not believe that we had just heard one of the greatest blues singers of all time. The sign out the front had simply said ‘Blues’. We had no clue that we were to sit in on such a legend. Then he came back. Muddy Waters was going to do a second set. He performed for another hour. He went through four harmonica players, imperiously dismissing each one. He was followed by an albino piano player who was billed as Piano Red, but who called himself Dr Feelgood.

  ‘You’ll feel good for three weeks after this,’ he said as he played. ‘I can cure cancer and heart attacks with my music.’

  He and Muddy Waters certainly cured my blues. I was agonising over Max Walsh’s job offer. I had to give him an answer soon. I knew it would be life-changing if I accepted. Living in Canberra, working in Parliament House, my whole life diverted into politics—what was I letting myself in for? I was glad to have stumbled on that place on Peachtree that night as I knew that I would most likely never again hear such performers, and certainly not by just walking off the street. But at least I would have a memory to cherish.

  In late November I returned to a very different New York. Max Suich, now editor of the Sun-Herald and apparently able to issue orders to our US bureau, had generously arranged for a limo to meet me at JFK and the driver had been instructed to take the scenic route. I could scarcely believe I was in the same city where just eighteen months earlier I’d bounced through Queens in a yellow cab. We drove through Central Park at dusk as the tiny white bulbs draped over the trees near the Tavern on the Green were just starting to twinkle and the lights were coming on in the grand old apartment buildings along Central Park West. Peering out the car window I could see formations of woods and stone bridges and curved roads that could have been from an illustrated children’s book. The smell of roasting chestnuts wafted through the haze. I saw a woman doing ballet practice; she raised her leg skywards, seemingly oblivious to the car that had crashed the night before into the fence she was using as a barre.

  This time, I was staying in the heart of Greenwich Village on Bleecker Street with Elisabeth Wynhausen, my old colleague from the National Times and her husband, Don Anderson, a lecturer in English at the University of Sydney. He had come to help her get set up for her planned writing career in New York and would soon be going back to Sydney. In the meantime, the three of us grabbed every experience the neighbourhood had to offer. There were bars, where the red wine was not kept in the refrigerator, as it invariably was in the Midwest, and restaurants where not every dish came with cheese. This New York was bright and crowded and noisy and with lots of—as New Yorkers liked to say—‘attitude’. Elisabeth showed me her favourite shops: the upscale deli Dean & DeLuca, if you were feeling flush; and Murray’s cheese shop on Bleecker, where if you did not mind a long wait you’d get great prices. And there was music, plenty of it. Alberta Hunter, the jazz singer, was playing at The Cookery on University Place and we went several times to hear this legendary performer. Hunter was now 85 and had just recently resumed her musical career after working as a nurse for twenty years. In 1923 she had written ‘Downhearted Blues’ for Bessie Smith and she used to reprise that each night at The Cookery, along with some of her other delightfully raunchy songs, which coming from the mouth of someone of her age gave her act a frisson of scandal and kept the place packed every night until her death in 1984.

  I was due in Canberra to start my new job at the Australian Financial Review in just a few weeks and I was still wondering if I had made the right decision. Was it too late to jump off the treadmill of ambition and ladder-climbing which, when I really analysed it, was what I was doing by taking this job? Did I deep down believe the only way to validate myself was to have others do it for me, via these public and socially approved ways? Just a year earlier, while still at the National Times, I had resolved to become my own person, to break free of the crowd—so why was I rushing back to the job title, the status and the male approval that underscored my new position? Did I have to admit that these were what I needed? Plus the ease and the certainties of the small pond? Or did I have the courage to stay in New York and try to make it as a writer? That, of course, presupposed that I had another book in me, one that would interest Americans. Damned Whores had opened doors for me in 1977. Susan Brownmiller, author of the brilliant global bestseller Against our Will—the book that changed our thinking about rape—had somehow got hold of a copy, liked it and taken the trouble to write to me. When I turned up in New York some months later she was generous and welcoming, introduced me to her feminist friends and had me over to the apartment on Jane Street she had been able to buy with the proceeds of the book. It had a much sought-after roof garden that gave her views of some of the city’s landmark buildings. Damned Whores had also been a great calling card when I’d jumped ship from the WPI for a few days in November to fly to San Francisco for a Women Against Pornography Conference. I was becoming intrigued by the way American feminists were preoccupied with—I would have said obsessed by—pornography. It seemed to me that this issue got people far more exercised than, say, equal pay or childcare (which did not seem to be on anyone’s radars) or even abortion rights. I hoped the conference might enlighten me. It only left me more confused, especially after we marched through a porn district denouncing the merchants for their exploitation of women, yet no one did any more than raise a fist. If this had been back in Sydney, I think we might have been more aggressive, but this wasn’t my march and it wasn’t for me to set the tone. But if you wanted to Smash Porn, why not start with smashing a few windows? I could not understand it, but at the same time I was grateful that simply identifying with the women’s movement opened every door. I could go to any meeting, introduce myself to anyone and be met with friendliness and a willingness to hear how we tackled issues in Australia. I was also able to meet writers, to share books and addresses, and to feel that I might be welcome in this world I so much sought to be part of. The writer Tillie Olsen, whose powerful 1978 book of essays Silences documented the ways women were held back from writing, and Adrienne Rich, the poet, both treated me like a friend, as did Diana Russell who in 1976 had co-edited the proceedings of a five-day international tribunal held in Brussels on crimes against women. This was another subject we were starting to understand: how pervasive violence against women was and how it kept women ‘in their place’. I’d got hold of Russell’s book with its introduction by Simone de Beauvoir, who although unable to attend herself had sent a stirring message. The time of trying to integrate women into male society was over, she said. ‘I salute this Tribunal as being the start of a radical decolonization of women.’6

  I also met a lot of women on my several visi
ts to New York. Ellen Moers, who had just published Literary Women, a pioneering work of feminist literary criticism, held a ‘literary lunch’ for me at the New York Racquet Club, while someone else held a dinner at her apartment on the Upper West Side where my shock at being served by a black maid was only somewhat mitigated by the terrific company. I met Midge Mackenzie, the London-based filmmaker who loved to wear Navaho jewellery, lots of it, and who had just produced Shoulder to Shoulder, a stirring history of the suffragettes for the BBC. She and I got on immediately, as I did with Paula Weideger, a tall interesting-looking woman with arresting grey eyes and a full head of black curly hair. She had just published Menstruation and Menopause, which explored the social and psychological history as well as current attitudes to two more subjects that no one yet was talking much about. I met up with Paula and Susan Brownmiller late one afternoon at the Allen Room, a space reserved for writers at the New York Public Library, where both of them were working on their next books. We went for a drink at the Algonquin with all its history of the New Yorker circle of writers, and then downtown to the Spring Street Café for dinner. I envied them their writers’ lives.