Laura Meets Jeffrey
Page 31
10. Avoid the instant karma of insulting a warrior with condescension. We were in the ring boxing two three-minute rounds on the day before his fifty-ninth birthday—January 31, 1982. I was thinking about cutting him a little slack when he delivered a right that smashed me back two feet, a left jab and another punishing right cross. I growled a silent “TO HELL WITH YOU OLD MAN” and went to work. I had broken two rules of combat and deserved the beating: never insult a warrior with condescension, and when you fight, don’t think.
* * *
I visited Norman in the hospital in New York City near the end but he slept the whole time. His sister Barbara was there and said it was OK to wake him but I couldn’t do it.
I came back a week later. He was awake but couldn’t talk with all the tubes down his throat. I didn’t know what to do so I held his hand and said hello, then told him I needed the men’s room. I called his wife, Norris, for guidance. She said, “He’s interested in your adventures so tell him what’s going on in your life. And ask him yes or no questions he can answer with a nod.”
I told him about my new horse, Pilgrim. I had him for a year but that morning was the first time I ever told him I loved him. My previous horse, Genius, the horse love of my life, had died suddenly about a year and a half before and it took me a while to fall in love with Pilgrim.
I admitted I was more promiscuous with my emotions with women than I was with horses. I’d told women I loved them either to fuck them or to make the fuck better but since there was no sex with Pilgrim because he was a horse, and more important a gelding, I found myself adhering to a higher ethical standard. Even with all the tubes I got the big Norman Mailer smile and part of a laugh. Making Norman laugh was always rewarding and up till being in the hospital he had a bellow of a laugh. He wasn’t just a great performer, he was a generous audience.
I asked him if he was still Norman Mailer in his head and he rotated his hand on its axis, the international sign for “sort of.” I asked him if the doctors were optimistic and he gave me the same sign, this time slower and with a shaking back and forth of his head. He was down to 125 pounds and didn’t look like he was going to get better.
A nurse came in and asked me to please leave soon so she could give Norman a respiratory treatment. She said it was OK to take a few minutes. She knew his condition and that his clock was running down.
He pantomimed like you do to a waiter when you want a check with air squiggles. I asked if he wanted pen and paper and he shook his head no. He pointed to me and motioned again and looked at me with stern eyes. I asked if he wanted me to write something down for him. He nodded yes, put his palms together and opened his hands like a book. I asked him if he meant my book (this book) and he pointed his finger at me with emphasis. He kept his finger stuck out and with a hint of strength jabbed it at me until I promised I’d finish it. Then he nodded his head with a smile.
I grabbed his hand and squeezed and told him that I loved him, even more than I loved my horse. He chuckled and coughed. Our relationship, as were many relationships others had with Norman, hadn’t always been smooth. In the forty years we were friends there were sometimes months and years we didn’t talk. But we always got back on track and it had been smooth for a decade.
With some torque still left, he squeezed my hand.
He let go and pointed his index finger at me.
Then he pointed his thumb to himself.
Then in the middle between us he made thumbs up.
“You. Me. We’re OK.”
I kissed his hand. We both had tears in our eyes. He knew.
I knew. I kissed him on the cheek.
That weekend surrounded by his family he passed away. At the very end his son Stephen held his hand as he left this planet, which had benefited from his time here.
My favorite thing Norman ever said to me was a left- and right-handed compliment: “Jeffrey, you are the most improved person I ever met.”
What even his genius may not have known was how much of it was because of him.
* * *
LauraMeetsJeffrey.com
Table of Contents
A note to the memoir police
Foreword
Norman Mailer
Introduction
Legs McNeil
The world before Laura, part one
October 1979
The world before Laura, part two
October 1979–April 1980
Enter Laura stage left
Late April 1980
Falling in love in a whorehouse
Ten minutes later
My heart gets flushed down the toilet of love
Early May 1980
Shake it off. Get back in the game.
Twenty minutes later to three weeks later
Anal sex
The return of Laura
A Friday afternoon in June 1980
Emblematic mojos rising
The hooker, her husband, her sugar daddy, her lovers and me
Six o’clock on a Friday night in June 1980
The ‘test spank’ and beyond
One moment later
Whip this
Laura moves in
Late June 1980
Our first threesome
Summer 1980
What lives in the slime on a porn booth floor?
Late summer 1980
Soft-core and hard-core masturbators
Laura quits the whorehouse, shaves her legs, and becomes a model
Autumn 1980
Autumn almanac
October–November 1980
John, Yoko, and the washing machine repairman
December 8, 1980
Puritan interview with Norman Mailer
December 28, 1980
My first orgy
Flashback to May 1, 1971
My second orgy
Three weeks later in May 1971
A history of the New York orgy
1971–81
Laura’s first orgy
Early 1981
Hot babe gone wrong
Flashback to 1972
The lyrics and music of sex
Olympic pissing at the Hellfire Club
February 1981
The Norman Mailer/José Torres Saturday Morning Boxing Club
and my war with Ryan O’Neal
Sex slavery at Club O
March 1981
The pleasure of pain
Relationships and drugs
Two tricks
October 1981
Living weird is the new normal
1981–82
Lynne Something or Something Lynne
Late spring 1982
Puritan interview with Timothy Leary
Summer 1982
Alea Iacta Est
Two days later
The cocaine Ponzi scheme
Mr. Tall and the world’s ugliest swing club
October 1982
The art of war
The beast comes out of the bedroom
Early November 1982
Getting stale
Late 1982
The S&M pimple comes to a head
December 1982
S&M clarification
December 1982
New Year’s Eve 1983
Little Richard meets the Sopranos: The wedding of Silvio Dante
The final chapter
Spring 1983
Epilogue: Only the dead know Brooklyn
Early autumn 1983
Afterword
Since then
The history of this book
Acknowledgments A
Acknowledgments B
Ten things I learned from Norman Mailer
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