Who, Me?

by Who, Me- A Memoir (retail) (epub)

  Maybe I’d go out to the play with Mimi earlier in the evening, then come home, she’d go to bed, I’d try to sleep, and when I couldn’t, up I’d get and drive back downtown, get home at 3:00 in the morning, have to get up 7:00 at least in order to get over to my eight o’clock classes.

  But somehow I did it; between classes I would lie down on the floor in my office and conk out for half an hour.

  Completely nuts, nicht wahr?

  And the craziest thing is that besides teaching my classes, somehow I got involved with doing a radio program for the FM station at Loyola: The Wonderful World of Fiction.

  With one of my students, Brian Avery.

  I know, you’ve never heard of him.

  He was an up-and-coming actor.

  Like remember The Graduate? Remember the blond guy at the end who gets the girl (Anne Bancroft)? Well, that’s Brian Avery.

  He had this girlfriend from England, Penelope Chandler. Another aspiring actor/actress. I’ve never known anyone who worked the way she did. Ballet, acting classes with Agnes Moorehead, in a play here, in a play there, studied drama at UCLA,

  One of my students, Pete Webster, introduced me to Henry Miller and the Beats, so I read all of Miller, Ginsberg, Kerouac, Ferlinghetti, whomever, and ended up giving a lecture (The Beatniks—Who, What, Why) at the Veterans’ Memorial Building in Culver City. With Penelope Chandler and Brian Avery reading selections from the Beats.

  Los Angeles was filled with little theaters. Plays all over the place. You know, actors who didn’t make it in Hollywood and still had to perform somewhere. So when I wasn’t going to Japanese films or concerts at Schönberg Hall at UCLA or at Cal Tech in Pasadena, I’d go to plays, plays, plays. Got so theatrical myself that I started writing my own plays, and one of my plays, The Wings of IT Cast Wide Dark Shadows, was put on at Loyola when they inaugurated the new communication arts building.

  I published it in a bi-lingual edition in Caracas, Venezuela, where I’d been a Fulbright Professor at the Catholic University and the Instituto Pedagogico between 1964 and 1966:

  Piece: (Crying, breaking down.) When are those damned stupid so-called science-saviors going to solve the brain-hemorrhage problem . . . damned stupid fools . . . letting people slip off into the IT . . . it’s horrible . . . why don’t they use . . . transplants?

  Instant Action: But then you wouldn’t be you any more; they change your brain and they change you; you are your

  brain . . .

  Piece (Twisted hope.) But you’d still be alive . . . even if you weren’t you . . . you’d still be alive . . .

  Letting people slip off into the It? Instead of Heaven or Hell? First performance at a Catholic university?

  I wrote a critical study of the novels of Henry James, and one day came across a copy of Charles Bukowski’s Crucifix in a Deathhand. I was totally astounded by the man’s facile use of everyday language to deal with huge, grand concepts, and wrote to the publishers down in New Orleans and they wrote back, “He’s right in L.A.., Foxy, look him up in the phone book.”

  So I did, called him up.

  “Hello, this is Professor Hugh Fox at Loyola University, I’ve just finished a book about Henry James and I’d like to write a book about you.”

  “OK, professor, why don’t you come over tonight and we’ll see what we can do.”

  Off I went to Hollywood, found the crumb-ball motel he was living in, he opened up, was happy about my wanting to do a book about him, although he never let the professor-bit go, always ironically referred to me as “professor,” which would have been fine without the irony.

  The first night he gave me copies of everything he’d ever written. Had to go into the closet and get suitcases out to put the stuff into, filled up the back seat and truck of my car.

  “Whenever you find duplicates, keep one . . .”

  Tons of stuff.

  Of course I read everything, it changed my whole approach to writing, from snobby, “educated” writing a la Aldous Huxley/Gilbert Keith Chesterton/Hilaire Belloc/Francois Mauriac/Sigrid Undset to something approximating the way they used to spill it out in the Chicago streets I grew up in.

  Wrote my book, found a publisher in Boston, Abyss publications.

  When I was in Caracas I started a book called Caliban and Ariel: A Comparative Cultural History of North and South America, started getting individual chapters published here and there and everywhere. My bibliography began to grow: Southern Humanities Review, Western Humanities Review, University of Michigan Review, Northwestern Review, all the good places . . .

  I began to go to all sorts of parties out in the Hollywood Hills. Thanks to Brian Avery, mainly.

  And you never knew who you’d meet in L.A.

  Like I was at this piano recital over at Schönberg Hall at UCLA one night, intermission came, I went out into the lobby and sat down, turned to the guy next to me: the pianist Arthur Rubenstein was sitting there like some sort of gigantic porcupine.

  “Arthur Rubenstein! I’m Hugh Fox, the poet—”

  “But of course.”

  Of course he’d never heard of me.

  Or another day, at the L.A. airport, I’m getting off a plane from Peru and I see . . . no, it can’t be . . .

  “Kim Novak! How ya doin’? I’m Hugh Fox, the poet—”

  “Shhhhhhh! I’m in disguise, no one’s supposed to recognize me . . .”

  But she did shake hands.

  There was one bar I used to go to in Hollywood after plays. Funny place. You know all the guys who are in bars in all the old Humphrey Bogart films? Well, there was this one bar, you’d walk it and all the guys in the bars in films were there in this real-life bar.

  I felt like I was on the edge of triumph, like I was going to be an immortal like the rest of them.

  There was this one guy who worked at Loyola, Bill Blatty. Lebanese-American. Had written one book about his adventures in Lebanon. Had been in the foreign service.

  We became pals, and one day he told me, “Hey, Foxy, I’m going to go out and join the Hollywood Press Club, you wanna come and join with me?”

  “Bill,” I told him solemnly, kind of a papal enunciation, “I hate to say this but I’m a serious writer, too serious for the likes of the ‘Hollywood Press Club,’ you’re gonna have to let me out of this one . . .”

  So he went over and joined the Hollywood Press Club and the following year guess what happened? The Exorcist came out, and he was IN, IN, IN...

  Ray Bradbury (The Martian Chronicles) came over to Loyola for a lecture one time and I got talking to him, told him I’d like to interview him.

  “That’d be great.”

  So I read everything he’d written, went over to his office on Hollywood Boulevard and interviewed him, we became pals.....

  It was like I was surrounded by The Great.

  A literary luncheon over in Hollywood one day. Something to do with the Modern Language Association.

  I sat down next to this old, old woman.

  “Hi, I’m Hugh Fox.”

  “I’m Dorothy Parker.”

  It took a moment for it to sink in.

  “Not the Dorothy Parker of Gentlemen Prefer Blondes?”

  “The same.”

  My bibliography grew, but I was still Connie-Hugh, still Dracula-ish going out every night on the town, downtown to burlesque movie houses, a bunch of old bums asleep, and me masturbating.

  Horrible conflicts.

  The great sinner had stepped out of some deep cavern inside me and was taking over.

  Confession all the time.

  I found a confessor at the cathedral downtown in Los Angeles.

  “Father, I have some deep problems, I wonder if you could help me.”

  “No problem. Just identify yourself with ‘It’s me,’ and I can be your regular confessor, see what I can do to help you along. Me and the Holy Spirit, the Trinity, all the powers of the heavens above . . .”

  So I started going downtown to confession whenever I s
lipped.

  Kept reading Saint Augustine’s Confessions, his The City of God, read whole shelves of Buddhism, the Fathers of the Church . . . control the flesh, control the flesh, control the flesh....

  I’d go downtown to confession if I’d “fallen” again, couldn’t keep that hand above my belt, “It’s me. Bless me, father, for I have sinned . . .”

  “Ah, it’s you is it? More problems . . .”

  And I’d spill the beans. The truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. Even my growing interest in being/becoming Connie.

  When I was in Hermosillo, Mexico at the University of Sonora for a term in 1961, I’d come across a Spanish copy of Confidential magazine, and found an article about Cochinelle, this Parisian sex-change artist. Full of pictures.

  Wow! It was like a rain of fire coming down out of the sky all over me.

  It was me. I was a potential transsexual—that was the essence of my problem: I was born the wrong sex. I didn’t want to change sexes or anything like that, but that was the Essence inside me that kept whispering “Buy those shoes, they’re you . . . buy that lace pantyhose, it’s you . . . buy that crazycat blonde wig, it’s you . . .”

  In love with my own legs, my own face, body.

  I’d confess it all, get absolved, then leave the cathedral, and I was downtown, wasn’t I, just a block away from Main (Sin) Street.

  “Come on, let’s go down and take a look at what’s new in the porn biz,” my voices would begin to urge me. And I would answer adamantly, with the force of the Rocky Mountains, “No sir-mam, no more crap for me, I am cleansed, cleansed, cleansed, in a state of beatific innocence again, leave me alone!” But the voices wouldn’t leave me in peace. “Come on, drippo, you have no choice, we are in charge . . . do, do, do or you die . . .”

  And lots of times I’d give in, walk down to Main Street and start looking at the mags, go into one of the video booths, put in my quarters, have a little fun.

  Transsexualism was beginning to appear prominently in the porn stores downtown, too. It wasn’t just Cochinelle now, but a whole army of transsexuals with their breast implants and sleek bodies, sometimes castrated, sometimes their penises turned into vaginas, so effectively, so artfully that you had to really “study” their organs to see the difference between them and the real thing.

  Who was I? What was I?

  There were transsexual clubs in Los Angeles, but I didn’t dare go into one of them dressed as Connie . . . although one night I did dress up as Connie and get in my little old DAF and go out on the highway, drove around, out to the Hollywood Hills, through downtown Hollywood, Connie alive and real in the real world . . .

  Then I started having coffee with this librarian who worked at the Loyola library, Carole Schwind.

  Always wore four inch heels. Always red shoes. Short skirts. Eyes like a lynx. Lots of cascading hair. A little moustache that (she told me) she had to shave daily.

  “Lots of androgyne. Gives me a lot of oomph....”

  She started telling me about all her affairs with Loyola students, how they’d buy her all kinds of leather outfits (“I’ve got a whole closetful of them at home,”) and hang her up the beams in their garages and beat her with leather whips.

  “You know, sometimes they get carried away, but I enjoy it anyhow. I heal well . . .”

  “Sick shit,” I told her, “what about love, affection?”

  “Oh, that’s for Señor and Señora Normal. Nothing to do with me.”

  Ha, ha, ha, ha.

  Coffee every afternoon.

  A couple of months.

  And then one day she put it to me straight.

  “Tomorrow, Saturday, how about meeting me at the beach? Down by Venice; what do you think? Isn’t it time?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe.”

  “Of course if you don’t want to . . .”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “At one in the afternoon?”

  “Whatever.”

  And she got up, walked away.

  Those legs. Thin as spears; and they cut right into my groin.

  I was there on Saturday at 12:30. Just in case.

  No explanation to Lucia. I went where I went, did what I did, although usually on Saturdays I’d take them downtown to a movie (three movies for the price of one) while Lucia would spent hours and hours looking at second-hand clothes for the kids at the Salvation Army, usually buying so much that she had to make two or three trips to the car to stuff it into the trunk.

  I just went.

  “See you about, I don’t know, five . . .”

  Down to Venice. Blanket out on the sand. A nice windy, warm day. Stretched out and waited. And at 12:45 there she was. Not that we were anxious or anything, right?

  I got up. She ran toward me, bathing suit under a long, heavy robe, sandals, sunglasses, that was it. Ran into my arms and we crashed down on the sand, starting kissing.

  Not a word, her hand going down to my groin, pulling my blanket over us so that we were stretched out on the sand, period. No importa/what’s the difference? Unzipped my pants and grabbed my corn cob, I reached down and tarantulaed under her swim-suit started playing drums on her fava bean clitoris. Corn and fava beans. The perfect diet.

  No one seemed to notice us.

  A bunch of oldsters up on hill overlooking the beach, like multiple Buddhas totally lost in the landscape, waves and clouds and wind.

  Some surfers, swimmers, but we seemed to be totally invisible.

  L.A., you know, after Gable and Bergman and

  MM . . .

  Three hours later, ya basta/enough, we got up and both of us were burned in patches (where the blanket didn’t do its job) on our right legs, necks, faces.

  “So it begins . . .” she said, one last kiss.

  “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was—”

  I started to recite St. John’s Gospel, but her hand came up to my lips, sealed them.

  “Don’t be sacrilegious. Au revoir . . .”

  Very nicely pronounced, ov-wa.

  And she was gone.

  I went home and Lucia was sitting out in our backyard where I’d made a little patio out of bamboo and bricks, while the kids played in a huge sand pile that had been there when we moved in.

  “What happened to you?”

  “Fell asleep on the beach at Venice.”

  Which Cecilia picked up on.

  “I want to go to the beach!”

  “Me too!”

  Marcella, our youngest, our little blonde miracle.

  “Me too, I guess....”

  Hughie, Hugh B. Fox III, kind of a scrawny little pipsqueak to be carrying around so much name.

  “OK, so I’ll lie on the other side this time around,” I said and went into the house and slapped suntan lotion on all the burned areas.

  I would have gone to Hell if anyone had asked me to, after three hours and fifteen minutes of pure Heaven.

  Lucia had never, never, never/jamas, jamas, jamas, been so intensely passionate, so starved, wildly aggressive. She was like a hole in a watermelon that you just put it in and did it. No hunger at all. Hunger or ecstasy.

  So off to the beach we went and played normal family, and I began my nightly sessions with Carole.

  She never worried about when. I could go over to her apartment at 3:00 in the morning or she could come over to my little bedroom out in our garage where, most of the time, she’d find Connie, which she loved: “Variety, and you’re coming half way toward me sexually, none of that male-female moat between us.” It could be at dawn, sometimes she would come to my office, a couple of times we almost did it in the library elevator, in the stacks in the basement of the library where the Forbidden Books were kept.

  Only I still hadn’t put it in her.

  Why worry about details. The main thing was intensity, real hunger, thirst, need . . .

  Then one night I decided it had to go in, just playing around with hands wasn’t enough; it had to be the “real
thing.”

  So I took her to a motel, had some coconut oil cream in a little woven Peruvian Indian bag over my shoulder, a condom, just in case.

  She was the incarnation of Ms. Whoredom, black Lycra tights with the crotch cut out, a bra with the nipples cut out, all hair and wild-woman vampire eyes.

  “I should warn you/tell you . . . this is my first time . . . I mean inside.”

  “OK, OK . . .”

  A little hard to believe her, after years of fucking around with Loyola students, all those stories about sadomasochistically being hung up on garage beams all dressed in black leather, getting the shit beat out of her with leather whips, all her suckings and jackings off, no one ever put it in her? Amazing!

  I turned off the lights, except for a little light on a table over in the corner. I had black tights on myself, with the crotch cut out, something she’d gotten used to and seemed to really enjoy.

  Coconut-oiled myself all up, stuck on the condom, the voices inside me shouting at her GET READY, BABY, IT’S COMING NOW, GET READY FOR YOUR BIG INITIATION.

  I got big. As big as I was ever likely to get, given my polio as a kid and all.

  Tried to put it in her. Only it was like my honeymoon with Lucia: it simply wouldn’t go in.

  Tried to open up her labia. No go. It was miniature, tiny, underdeveloped, no Carlsbad Cavern to get lost in, but like a box of salt with one of those little metal pouring-spouts that you struggle to open.

  I tried for half an hour, but never managed to get it in, we masturbated each other, and that was it.

  I had applied for a Fulbright professorship for the Instituto Pedagogico (Teacher’s College) and Catholic University in Caracs, Venezuela, and about a week after my unsuccessful attempt to get into Carole, I got an acceptance letter.

  Which I showed her.

  “But you can’t just leave!!!! We’re going to get married. You’ll be able to get it in. We can go to a doctor. I can have surgery, take a course, whatever . . .”

  “No, no, no, I got the professorship, I’m going.”

  “You’ll pay . . .”