Lost In Place

by Mark Salzman

  ACCLAIM FOR MARK SALZMAN’s

  LOST IN PLACE

  “Mark Salzman’s strange but wonderful addiction to kung fu makes Lost in Place come alive.”

  —The New York Times Book Review

  “Mark Salzman provides us with an entertaining memoir about growing up different in suburban Connecticut.… He has produced a surprisingly funny and warm-hearted book.”

  —Star Ledger (Newark, N.J.)

  “[Lost in Place] is funny and all of it is instructive, especially if you are a parent or a curious, idealistic teenager.”

  —Detroit Free Press

  “Salzman’s story is refreshing in depicting the small triumphs of middle-class life and how even a gifted guy had to struggle.”

  —People

  “This memoir … is funny and far off the beaten path.”

  —Ann Arbor News

  “Mark Salzman has written a memoir of his youth that is extraordinary in its details and evocation of adolescent emotions.”

  —Playboy

  FIRST VINTAGE BOOKS EDITION, JULY 1996

  Copyright © 1995 by Mark Salzman

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Vintage Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto. Originally published in hardcover by Random House, Inc., New York, in 1995.

  Grateful acknowledgment is made to Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., and Gower Publishing Limited for permission to reprint excerpts from Tao Te Ching by Lao Tsu, translated by Gia-fu Feng and Jane English. Copyright © 1972 by Gia-fu Feng and Jane English. Rights throughout the British Commonwealth are controlled by Gower Publishing Limited. Reprinted by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. and Gower Publishing Limited.

  The Library of Congress has cataloged the

  Random House edition as follows:

  Salzman, Mark.

  Lost in place / Mark Salzman.—1st ed.

  p. cm.

  1. Salzman, Mark—Childhood and youth.

  2. Authors, American—20th century—Biography.

  3. Ridgefield (Conn.: Town)—Social life and customs.

  I. Title.

  PS3569.A4627Z473 1995

  813′.54—dc20 95-7847

  eISBN: 978-0-307-81426-5

  Random House Web address: http://www.randomhouse.com/

  v3.1

  Although this is a work of nonfiction and represents the whole, unsullied, objective truth, I am advised of the slim chance that some of the people described in this book might remember things differently. To accommodate that absurd possibility, all of the names except for those of my immediate family have been changed.

  The world is a hell of a place, but the universe is a fine thing.

  —Edwin Arlington Robinson

  It has been asserted that we are destined to know the dark beyond the stars before we comprehend the nature of our own journey … but we also know that our inward destination lies somewhere a long way past the reef of the Sirens, who sang of knowledge but not of wisdom.

  —Loren Eiseley

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Epigraph

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Epilogue

  Dedication

  Other Books by This Author

  About the Author

  1

  When I was thirteen years old I saw my first kung fu movie, and before it ended I decided that the life of a wandering Zen monk was the life for me. I announced my willingness to leave East Ridge Junior High School immediately and give up all material things, but my parents did not share my enthusiasm. They made it clear that I was not to become a wandering Zen monk until I had finished high school. In the meantime I could practice kung fu and meditate down in the basement. So I immersed myself in the study of Chinese boxing and philosophy with the kind of dedication that is possible only when you don’t yet have to make a living, when you are too young to drive and when you don’t have a girlfriend.

  First I turned our basement into what I thought a Buddhist temple should look like. I shoved all the junk to one side, marked off boundaries with candles and set up a shrine on a coffee table. I outfitted the shrine with objects from a cookware shop, the only store in town that carried Oriental gifts: a bamboo placemat, a package of chopsticks, a sake cup, which I turned into an incense burner, and a plastic Chinese kitchen deity with the character for “tasty” painted on his stomach. Next to the shrine I placed my sacred texts: the World Book Encyclopedia volumes containing entries for China, Buddhism and Taoism and Bruce Tegner’s book Kung Fu & Tai Chi, seventh in a series of manuals by Mr. Tegner, a crew-cut ex-marine and our country’s most prolific authority on hand-to-hand combat.

  Back in those pre–smoke alarm days I was able to burn as much incense as I wanted, and as far as I was concerned a kung fu temple wasn’t a kung fu temple if you could see more than five feet in front of you. Sadly, the only place in Ridgefield, Connecticut, where one could buy incense was a store called Ye Olde Head Shop, which specialized in black-light posters and rolling papers, and their incense display didn’t feature traditional Asian scents like sandalwood or frankincense. Ye Olde Head Shop carried Apricot, Watermelon, Passion Fruit and something called Black Love, which came packaged in a long cardboard pouch illustrated with the silhouette of a naked man and woman, both with huge Afro haircuts, having sex. I did not dare ask the brooding hippie behind the counter for a pack of Black Love or even the more temperate-sounding Passion Fruit, so I stuck with the sexually neutral varieties, which did remind one of apricot and watermelon when you sniffed the box but as soon as you lit the cones smelled like burning cardboard.

  There were other details. I needed an outfit for my training sessions, but the kung fu uniforms advertised in the martial arts magazines were too expensive. I settled on dyeing my green pajamas black, but the dye did not fix properly and my uniform came out an olive-purple. Tying it with my father’s red bathrobe sash, I looked like an eggplant wrapped for Christmas. Trickiest of all, however, was what to do about my hair. Real Zen masters shave their heads, as anyone who has watched the Kung Fu series on television knows. My father had never liked my long hair, and had often said that he wished he could shave it all off, so I went directly to him and asked if he’d like to have a wish come true. His response was to raise one eyebrow, which I understood from experience to be a no.

  As an alternative I ordered something called a Surprise Bald Head Wig from the back of a comic book. If, as advertised, it was good enough to surprise one’s friends, I figured it would be good enough for my basement training sessions. When the wig arrived by mail four long weeks later, it turned out to be a disappointment. It was floppy, dimpled and a sickly gray color. I modified it by painting the reverse side of it with pink and orange Magic Markers, then powdering it with something out of my mother’s cosmetics drawer. Eventually the wig did take on a fleshy appearance, but then I had to figure out what to do with all the hair my father had insisted on protecting, which stuck out from under the back and sides and hung down over my shoulders. My little brother, Erich, two years younger than I am, happened to wander into the bathroom before I had worked this problem out and declared that I looked more like Ebeneze
r Scrooge than “any of those bald guys on TV who wear dresses and kick people.” My sister, Rachel, two years younger than Erich, thought I looked like a giant fetus. Not everyone felt about kung fu the way I did.

  In the end I scrunched the extra hair up into a ball and stuffed it under the back of the wig. When I looked in the mirror I saw a determined young acolyte prepared to go through anything to achieve physical and spiritual mastery, but my parents, catching glimpses of me when I had to run upstairs to the bathroom, saw something else. The lumpy powdered head, the purple pajamas and the clouds of smoke that appeared behind me whenever I opened the basement door convinced them that I was headed for a career as a finger-cymbal player in airport lobbies.

  That first summer of kung fu, while our family was in western Ohio visiting my mother’s parents, Bruce Lee died. We were all having breakfast in the kitchen and my grandmother was calling my grandfather a “BB-brain” for having burned the toast yet again.

  “Hold on,” my father said, interrupting them and turning up the sound on their old black-and-white kitchen television set. It was on a tray with wheels so my grandmother could watch the news while she peeled potatoes, shucked corn, kneaded pie crust dough, washed the dishes or ironed clothes. “Look at this, Mark,” my father said.

  “The King of kung fu is dead at thirty-three!” the local newscaster announced. “Asia’s biggest movie star died under mysterious circumstances in an actress’s apartment in Hong Kong, on the eve of the release of his first American feature film. Here is a clip from one of his earlier movies.” It was the famous scene from The Chinese Connection where Bruce jumps straight up into the air and kicks a wooden sign to pieces. That sign, a version of which actually did hang at the entrance to a park in foreign-occupied Shanghai earlier this century, had warned, NO DOGS OR CHINESE ALLOWED. That one scene made Bruce Lee a symbol of Chinese national pride overnight. It didn’t matter that his character got executed by a firing squad at the end of the movie; the scene where he demolished the sign brought millions of ecstatic Chinese filmgoers to their feet and rocketed Bruce Lee to massive superstardom in Asia.

  I couldn’t believe he was dead. I went out to our car and sat in it all day, crying. My father felt so sorry for me he offered to take me all the way to Dayton to a drive-in movie theater that, by coincidence, was showing The Chinese Connection. We watched the movie together in the VW bus, my father trying to conceal his boredom while I burst into tears of joy and sorrow every time Bruce Lee started fighting. That night, after everyone else was asleep, I put on my wig and practiced in the dark living room, making silent but impassioned vows to my dead hero that I would never ever give up until I was an enlightened kung fu master myself.

  Tutorials in Asian mysticism were not offered at East Ridge Junior High so I had to design my own course of study. From my research in the World Book I learned that the Buddha, while meditating under a tree just before dawn, happened to look up and see Venus rising in the eastern sky. Somehow this vision of the shining planet helped him to achieve nirvana, a state of mind described as the emancipation from all suffering. I interpreted this literally and became convinced that Buddhism was all about becoming oblivious to pain. Building up an immunity to discomfort became my spiritual goal, and toward this end I made my Zen and kung fu practice as uncomfortable as I could. On sunny days I meditated in the crawl space; on rainy days I sat outdoors in the mud. I made sure that all of my stretching, punching and kicking exercises hurt, which any good athlete could have told me was a bad idea, but I hadn’t asked any athletes for their advice. Meditation for me involved trying to concentrate on “emptiness”—a squirmingly unpleasant challenge for any thirteen-year-old—while my crossed legs ached and my nose itched.

  I didn’t realize it at the time, but there was a fundamental difference between what I was doing and what most real Buddhists do. The Buddha himself abandoned a comfortable life because he could not stand the hypocrisy of being a chubby prince when there was so much suffering all around him. He made himself homeless and destitute first and then sought nirvana because he figured that it was worth seeking only if it was available to even the poorest person on earth. I, on the other hand, wanted to become a Zen master because I hoped perfect enlightenment would make me more popular—specifically, more datable. As the youngest and shortest boy in my class, I was convinced that I would go to my grave without having sex unless I did something extraordinary with my life. Although it may be true these days that you can’t throw a rock in America without hitting a psychic or a Tibetan lama or a yoga instructor, in 1973 becoming a Zen student in Ridgefield qualified as extraordinary. I hoped that if I became a living Buddha, I would never again have to hear the words “You’re just like a little brother to me” when I asked someone on a date.

  Then there was kung fu. From the movies and television programs I saw, I gathered that one of the key benefits of being a Buddhist monk was that you could beat the crap out of bad people without getting emotionally involved or physically tired. You were always on the moral high ground because you were a pacifist, but if someone was foolish enough to throw a punch at you anyway, surprise! Kung fu turned you into a cross between Sugar Ray Robinson, Mikhail Baryshnikov and Mahatma Gandhi. My hope was to impose this surprise on at least one of the eighth-grade assholes who used to pick on me for being tiny, polite to adults and a cellist in a youth orchestra.

  Last but not least, I wanted to become a Zen master because I thought it would impress my father. Like most boys, I wanted to prove myself by doing something my father couldn’t do, but also like most boys, I thought my dad could do anything. He could drive, paint, name the constellations, set up a tent and had been in the air force—what else was there? The answer came the first night I saw David Carradine, about to be ambushed by a gang of murderous cowboys, sit cross-legged on the ground and play his bamboo flute. I could hardly contain my excitement; this was definitely something my dad couldn’t do.

  If my dad knew he was about to be ambushed by murderous cowboys, first he would shake his head with disgust and say that he knew all along that something like this would happen to him. Then he would pace back and forth for a while, muttering curse words and wondering aloud at the foolishness of people who romanticize the Wild West. Finally he would resign himself to the inevitable, consoling himself with the thought that his murderers, like everyone else in the world, would die soon enough, the sun would eventually grow cold and all of this madness would be mercifully consigned to oblivion. It was not difficult for me to imagine this scenario; my dad played out a version of it whenever a faucet leaked, the furnace made a strange sound or an odd smell came out of the engine compartment of our car. You could almost see the first ugly thought when it appeared—“We’re going to have to buy a whole new sink/heating system/car now”—as if it were scrawled onto the muscles of his jaw, and then you watched it spread until his whole body was covered with despairing graffiti. My father experienced serene detachment only when he was asleep and not having nightmares about the plumbing, the car or being in college again.

  I knew that if I became an unflappable sage my father would be both proud and envious of me, and he would have to admit that the baldhead wig and pajamas had been good ideas after all. So while most of my junior high classmates began asserting themselves through academics, sports or troublemaking, I decided to follow in the footsteps of the ancient masters, whose knowledge was described in the fifth century B.C. classic Tao Te Ching as:

  … unfathomable.

  Because it is unfathomable,

  All we can do is describe their appearance.

  Watchful, like men crossing a winter stream.

  Alert, like men aware of danger.

  Courteous, like visiting guests.

  Yielding, like ice about to melt.

  Simple, like uncarved blocks of wood.

  Hollow, like caves.

  Opaque, like muddy pools.

  When I read this passage aloud to my father to acquaint him with my new
philosophy, he didn’t respond immediately. He pushed his coffee cup across the kitchen table, first to the left, then to the right, then tried to center it in front of him. When he did this it usually meant he was about to deliver a sobering lecture. I steeled myself for his gentle but devastatingly rational critique of the unfathomable knowledge of old, but it never came. He found a satisfactory place for the cup, nodded in a way that I knew meant he wasn’t enthusiastic but wasn’t going to rain on my parade either, then said, “My son, the block of wood. Let me know if it works.”

  My dad always saw things a bit too clearly for his own good. His gift for imagining all that could go wrong in any situation earned him the nickname Little Old Joe by the time he was five. One of his older brothers told me that my father did not seem to experience childhood so much as to bear it; his face seemed to have been frozen at birth into an expression of weary stoicism. He enhanced this reputation for seeming older than his years by spending evenings gazing out his bedroom window at the night sky, memorizing the constellations and watching for northern lights displays. He exhausted the library’s collection of books about the stars and planets, and subscribed to Sky and Telescope magazine before entering high school. This interest in astronomy mystified his parents, who were both decidedly earthbound characters. My grandmother once described herself to me as a nice girl from Texas whose job was to raise four boys, and my grandfather was a no-nonsense contractor who paved the first McDonald’s restaurant parking lot.

  Unlike many prodigies whose gifts fade at an early age, my father never lost his talent for seeing things in a stark light. Fortunately he discovered painting, through which he managed to express himself with great success. Unfortunately, that same gift made him too disparaging of his bleak paintings to promote them, so rather than starve in a loft he became a social worker. He reasoned that if he couldn’t do what he enjoyed for a living, he could at least do something beyond reproach, and in any case psychology had been the subject in college that interested him most. Not surprisingly, given his personality, he turned out to be a sympathetic listener and was highly regarded throughout his career, but if you asked him about his work, he would tell you only that social services were fighting a losing battle. He was often depressed himself in spite of all he knew about psychology and the mind, although he would say it was because of all he knew about psychology and the mind. Every morning he left the house looking as if someone had tied a hundred-pound sandbag across his shoulders, and every evening he came back looking as if the sand had gotten wet. He never mentioned his work unless he was asked about it, and we kids knew better than to ask.