“Oh, go away,” she told me with disgust, throwing herself down again, this time rolling over to face the wall.
I looked at her there, all curled up, showing the bones of her spine. “Marcia, I don’t understand. What’s the matter? Honest to God, I don’t even know anymore if you’re—”
“Stop torturing me!” she cried, curling up even more.
I stood there, dressed now. I didn’t want to leave her like this, in a state, even a mostly cinematic one. But she was wearing me out. I sat on the edge of the bed, my back to her.
“Marcia?”
I waited.
“What,” she finally said.
“Want to go get something to eat?”
“It’s too late, John. Don’t you understand? It’s too late.”
“The Junction’s open till midnight.”
“I hate that place.”
“All right, fine,” I said, giving up. I told her goodnight and started to leave.
“Oh, for God sakes,” she said, rolling away from the wall. “If you’re gonna go pout …”
I waited while she got dressed.
EASY RIDER
“Okay, you know what?” Jeremy said, walking with me away from the Egyptian Theater. “That, without a doubt, was the most boring movie I have ever—no, I’ll go further—that was the most boring two hours I have ever spent in my entire fucking life.”
I had talked him into seeing it. I thought it might be good for him.
“You owe me two hours of my life, pal,” he said.
He was a very overweight marketing major in a camel’s hair coat and earmuffs, and I was a skinny hippie in a pony tail and pancho. We shared a little apartment in town. His ad for a roommate had stated flat-out, No longhairs, but the semester was starting by the time I came by and he was desperate.
“You shoulda got high first,” I told him as we walked along. “You shoulda smoked up.” I was always trying to get him to smoke a little pot, at least try it. I had this notion it would cure him of being a marketing major.
He asked me, “What’s that say about a movie, you have to be drugged to enjoy it, what’s that say?”
“I just think it woulda come across better, that’s all.”
“If I was fucked up?”
“In a more … expansive state.”
“Fucked up.”
We headed down a quiet side street.
“Wasn’t even a story, for Christ sake,” he muttered.
“It’s not that kind of movie,” I told him.
“What kinda movie doesn’t have a story?”
“It’s more like a … like a mythic journey,” I explained.
“Oh please. Two jag-offs riding around on motorcycles, that’s the whole fuckin’ movie.”
“What about Jack Nicholson,” I reminded him.
He nodded, agreeing.
“Pretty funny?” I said. “I will admit.”
“How ’bout where he’s riding on the back of—”
“Right, in his fuckin’ football helmet—”
“Grinning like an idiot—”
“Waving a rubber pork chop.”
We laughed.
“See?” I said.
“What.”
“You enjoyed it.”
“The Jack Nicholson part. Fifteen minutes.”
“It was more than fifteen—”
“Check it out,” he said quickly, a pretty girl approaching. When she got near enough he started telling me off: “Oh yeah? Is that right. Well, let me tell you something, you silly son of a bitch, and you listen good, you understand? You listen real, real good.”
She hurried by without glancing at either of us.
He turned around and walked backwards a few steps, speaking low: “Oh, yeah … oh, yeah.”
Jeremy didn’t have a girlfriend and in fact I had a pretty good hunch he’d never been laid.
Turning frontwards again he said, “Very choice. Very choice indeed.”
I wanted to get back to the movie. It bothered me that he thought it stank. “That was pretty awful, wasn’t it? Jack Nicholson getting killed like that? By those rednecks? In his sleeping bag?”
“That was shitty,” he agreed. “Mostly because now it was back to just Peter Fonda and what’s-his-face.”
“Dennis Hopper.”
“Now there’s a great actor: ‘Wow, man, that’s really weird, man, really far out, man.’” He looked at me. “You’re a fuckin’ English major, you call that good dialogue?”
During the movie it had in fact occurred to me that Dennis Hopper was using the word “man” a lot more than he probably needed to.
We turned down another side street, towards the apartment a couple blocks away. “What about the ending?” I asked. “Any thoughts on that?”
“I liked the ending very much. Know why?”
“Because it was over?”
“There ya go.”
“You’re telling me you didn’t feel bad, at all?”
“About those two bozos?”
“I found it very disturbing.”
“You’re fucking very disturbing.”
“I don’t mean about just them,” I said.
“Oh, right, let me guess, it symbolized something, right? The end of the whole entire—”
“Remember where Peter Fonda says, ‘We blew it’? Near the end of the movie? Remember? They’re passing a joint back and forth—”
“Yeah, that narrows it down.”
“And he says to Dennis Hopper, ‘We blew it.’ He doesn’t explain. He just says, ‘We blew it.’ Remember?”
“Right, he’s talking about the movie. He’s saying we tried to make a good movie but we fuckin’ blew it.”
“What he’s saying,” I explained, “he’s saying we lost our way. All of us. We didn’t make it to the top of the mountain. We got pretty far, it was a real good try, a noble try, but somehow, somewhere, we lost our way. We blew it.”
We were quiet for a few steps.
Then he said, in the Tin Man’s sappy voice, “‘Now I know I’ve got a heart, because it’s breaking.’”
“Fuck you, Jeremy.”
He just smiled at me, sadly, shaking his big head. “You dumb shit. God you’re dumb. It’s the end of the fuckin’ road all right, know why? Wanna know why?”
“Listening.”
“Because the minute they start making movies out of something, forget it, it’s over. Next thing? We move in.”
I looked at him. “How do you mean?”
“Listen, if I was with somebody now? Say like Pepsi? Know what I’d be doing? Hippie ads. Rock music, strobe lights, flower children sucking down our product like they’re getting stoned on it.” He took an imaginary swig, with glugging sounds, then gave a long blissful sigh: “Wow, man,” he drawled. “Pepsi, man.” Then, in my face: “Gets me hiiiigh.”
I stopped walking.
He laughed, spread his arms and went circling down the sidewalk, gazing up at the starry sky, chanting, “Pepsicola … Pepsicola …”
I stood there hating him.
THE SPIRIT OF THE BEEHIVE
After college I was living in Chicago on the near northside in a little studio apartment with mice in the walls. At night I could hear them scurrying around in there, trying to find a way in.
I wrote a poem about them but it stank. Back then I was writing poems about everything and they all stank and I knew it but I kept trying anyway. I don’t know why.
My sister Nan used to come by on Saturday mornings, with a plant or a basket of potpourri, something to cheer the place up a little. I was usually still in my pajamas, empty beer cans and overloaded ashtrays and crumpled papers and dirty socks lying around, which would have been appropriate if the poems were any good, but they weren’t, so it wasn’t a poet’s hovel, it was just a messy, depressing little apartment.
Nevertheless I would often go ahead and show poor Nan my latest poem. She would sit on the edge of the unmade bed, still in her coat, and read
it carefully. Then she would look up at me, nodding, nodding: “This is really good.”
“Yeah, right.”
“No, really.”
I’d snatch it back.
“You should send it somewhere,” she would tell me.
I’d crumple it up and send it across the room.
“I like it, John.”
“Let’s get outa here.”
We’d take a bus to the Loop and go wandering around, yakking away, laughing a lot. Nancy has always been able to make me laugh, no matter how miserable I’ve made up my mind to be.
Sometimes we would go somewhere, a donut shop or a gallery. I remember one time it started raining and we went into the furniture department at Marshall Fields and continued our conversation from a pair of comfortable matching lounge chairs. Some guy in a tie eventually came over and told us we had to leave. I jumped up and spread my arms. “Why? What are we doing? Can you tell me? We’re just sitting here.” Nan got me out of there. It wasn’t raining anymore and we headed down to the lake to look at the therapeutic waves, the gulls, a tanker out on the horizon.
One Saturday we ended up seeing a very strange beautiful movie at the Art Institute, called The Spirit of the Beehive. It was from Spain, with subtitles, about a little girl named Isabella. That’s all I remember about it now, except that Isabella had large dark eyes, her father kept bees, and at one point she stood on her tiptoes to look down a very deep well.
I also remember the movie left a powerful impression on both of us, and afterwards we hurried across Michigan Avenue and sat in a booth in The Gallery restaurant over coffee trying to put it all together. We had trouble. We considered the title. True, her father kept bees, but so what?
We decided the movie was basically about life being indeed a mystery, a deep dark mystery.
“Like that well she looks down,” I said.
Nan pointed at me, nodding: “Right.”
Good enough. We ordered some pie.
Afterwards we split the check and went out into the slanting, late-afternoon light, people hurrying by, north and south. We stood out of the way, deciding which direction. Not that it mattered. Life was a mystery. We headed north. As we walked along, I felt another poem coming.
WUTHERING HEIGHTS
Uncle Doug called me up one Sunday afternoon out of the blue wanting to know if I’d ever seen a movie called Withering Heights. He meant “wuthering,” but it was Uncle Doug, so I didn’t correct him. I told him yes I’d seen it, more than once in fact.
“So you like the movie. That what you’re saying?”
“Well … how do you feel about it?” I asked.
“Never mind that. I’m asking you. Your aunt Ro and I just watched it on TV and she thinks it’s a great movie, she thinks it’s absolutely fantastic, and I know you like a lot of that English stuff, so we wanted your opinion. So: great movie or not?”
I was pretty certain “not” was the right answer, but here was timid Aunt Ro apparently standing up to him for once and I wanted to be supportive, as far as I could.
“It’s a very well-made movie,” I said to him. “It’s definitely very well made.”
“All right. I’ll give you that. What else? Anything else?”
“Got some great performances.”
“Laurence Olivier, all that, sure, you bet. But here’s the question, John. All things being equal, putting all that aside, is it a great movie? In your opinion? Yes or no.”
“Is that the word she used? ‘Great’?”
“Hang on.” He spoke to Aunt Ro: “You’re saying it’s a great movie, right? That’s the word you want? ‘Great’? She’s nodding her head. She’s sitting there nodding her head with this stubborn look on her face.”
I heard in the background, “I don’t think I’m being—”
“Do you mind? I’m trying to talk to my nephew. Go ahead,” he told me.
“He’s my nephew too,” I heard.
“I’m tryna talk here, will ya? Jesus.”
“Uncle Doug …”
“Yeah, go ahead, John. Sorry about that.”
“I don’t think …” I hesitated.
“What. You don’t think what.”
I went ahead: “I don’t think you should yell at her like that.”
He was quiet for a moment. Then he said, “John doesn’t think I should yell at you like that.”
“Thank you, John,” she called out.
“Did you hear that?”
“Tell her she’s welcome.”
“He says you’re welcome. You oughta see her, John. She’s sitting there with a little smirk on her face now, thanks to you.”
“Huh.”
“No, I’ll tell you something, she’s a remarkable woman, your aunt Ro. She’s quite a remarkable—”
“Oh, stop it,” I heard her say.
“I’m talking to John!” he yelled. “I’m telling John, do you mind?”
I didn’t hear a reply.
“Telling me to stop,” he muttered. “Go ahead, John. You were saying.”
“I don’t … think I was, was I?”
“I don’t know. I’m all confused now. See?” he said to her. “How you got me? Are you happy now?”
“No,” I heard her say.
“Anyway, here’s my point, John. It’s a great movie for women—your aunt Ro’s the proof, you shoulda seen the tears, buckets, I’m not kidding—but see, being a great movie for women doesn’t make it a great movie, not by a long shot. That’s all I was trying to tell her, but she wouldn’t listen. ‘Call your nephew John,’ she says. ‘I’ll bet he thinks it’s a great movie.’ And I said to her, ‘The hell he will.’ You know why? You know what I was thinking about, don’t you? All those war movies you and I used to watch. Remember?”
“With John Wayne,” I said, “yeah.”
“That’s it. There you go. You still like those? Now that you been to college and all that? You still appreciate those?”
“Absolutely,” I told him.
“Attaboy.” Then, to Aunt Ro: “He says he prefers John Wayne movies.”
“Uncle Doug?” I said.
“Yeah?”
“I didn’t say I prefer—”
“But here’s my point, John, if you’ll let me finish.”
“Sorry.”
“There’s movies for women and there’s movies for men, that’s all I’m saying. There’s movies like Back to Bataan, or Pork Chop Hill, or—”
“Sands of Iwo Jima,” I threw in.
“There you go. Exactly. You get my point. There’s movies like that and then there’s, you know, shit like this.”
“It’s not shit, Uncle Doug,” I said to him. “I don’t think it’s shit.”
“Hey, watch the mouth.”
“Sorry.”
“So you’re taking her side? Is that it?”
“I’m not taking anybody’s—”
“John says he agrees with you,” he told her. “He says it’s one of his all-time favorite movies. Every time he sees it he breaks down weeping—sobbing, he says.”
“Good for you, John!” she called out.
“Well, you just made your aunt Ro a very happy woman. You oughta see her face. She’s got this glow coming out. Can you picture it?”
“A glow, right.”
“Tell you something, she’s one hell of a gal.”
“She definitely is,” I said.
“You think I don’t know that? After seven years?”
“No, I think you do.”
“You’re goddam right I do. But let me ask you something. You didn’t really cry, did you?”
“What, at the movie? At Wuthering Heights you mean?”
“Did you really break down weeping?”
I thought of that scene near the end, which always got to me, Heathcliff standing over Catherine’s deathbed, telling her corpse to haunt him for the rest of his life, crying out from the depths of his soul, Torment me! Drive me mad! Only, do not leave me in this dark alone, w
here I cannot find you! I gave a laugh. “Yeah, right, Uncle Doug. Buckets,” I said.
“He’s laughing,” he told Aunt Ro. “That tickled him.” Then, to me: “You’re all right, John. You know that, don’t you?”
“Thanks, Uncle Doug,” I said, a little glow of my own going now.
“Okay, well, listen, I gotta go,” he told me. “Got some work to do. Know what I’m doing? Take a guess.”
“Building shelves?”
“Putting in a garden.”
“Really? A garden? That’s really … something.”
“Out in the back. Just a little patch. Know what I’m growing there? Take a guess. Go ahead.”
“Well …”
“You’ll never guess. But go ahead.”
“Daffodils?”
There was this silence. Then he said quietly, “What’re ya, trying to be a smartass now?”
“No. I just … you said I’d never guess so I was trying to think of something I would never … you know … guess.”
“Carrots,” he said.
“You’re kidding. Really? That’s a great vegetable. In fact that’s probably one of my favorite—”
“All right, John. I’m hanging up now.”
“I love carrots, Uncle Doug.”
He hung up.
LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, MR. LEONARD COHEN
Out walking around one evening in early spring trying to clear my head, I came to a little movie house off Clark Street and stood there staring at the marquee:
8:00: Ladies and Gentlemen, Mr. Leonard Cohen, a documentary
It was only about seven, so I went walking around some more, at a snappier pace now. I was excited. A movie about Leonard Cohen!
I thought about the first time I’d ever heard him, or even heard of him. It was in a modern poetry class, taught by Dr. Ledbetter, who was young and wore turtleneck sweaters. One morning he played a tape for us, something by a Canadian poet-singer-songwriter Leonard Cohen, a song called “Suzanne.” First you heard a pensive guitar for a few notes, and then this nasal droning voice began singing quietly:
Suzanne takes you down to her place near the river …
The voice went on, in its intimate way, about tea and oranges from China, Jesus in his lonely wooden tower, the sun pouring down like honey, while Suzanne in rags and feathers held the mirror …
Crying at Movies Page 5