COUNTDOWN TO KEATS
Immortality or bust—
I’ve got a year and a few months before his mark,
when I consider how my light, etc.
Laforgue’s still a year beyond (minor, thank god)
Shelley almost four, Byron way down the road.
I have my nightingales too, you know,
but frankly I’m not measuring up.
Some drawbacks, John: Grecian things do not
move us in this age,
but then again, no TB and that’s a plus.
You, John, are the first to confront the mediocre,
the gauge of true gift,
the one who puts the poets in their place,
and I had hoped to improve my song
within your span.
… which I took to mean that she was using Keats’s checkout time as her own gauge for success; this poem, as the others, was crossed out with an expletive written on top of it. With each passing death-date of a great writer, she said, it was one more nail in her coffin. I remember her distinctly, looking down at her plate, nothing to say in defense against her own accusations, trailing a french fry around a plate of steak sauce and grease.
Keats didn’t have to temp every afternoon and work at Baldo’s, I pointed out.
“That’s a point,” she said, now smiling again, smiling for the rest of that evening, making plans for the New Order, smiling (it seems at a distance) for the rest of the summer, which may well have been the summer I was waiting for all my life—you say the word summer and I think of that one. Gee, it seems horribly fragile to look back at it: you’re aware that if you moved this straw or said those words or did any number of things someone eventually got around to, that you could have ended it all much sooner. I can’t quite retrieve the young man with all that faith—where did he get that energy? Didn’t he know the odds against being an actor—or Emma being a poet, or Lisa being a painter? How did he have so much faith in the world? No, it wasn’t all stupidity and it wasn’t all innocence and youth. I think New York was in there too, egging us on.
1976
“‘IT is the Bicentennial of This Great Land,’” Emma read, as we sat around two weeks before July 4th. “‘And the tall ships will sail up the Hudson River as an unmatched spectacle, thousands will take the oath of citizenship on Ellis Island, Lady Liberty will herself be aglow, and in the evening the city promises the world’s biggest fireworks display.’” With that she put down the Daily News which had listed a rundown of events. “All this means people from all over This Great Land will arrive here, particularly from the Heartland of This Great Land—”
“This land is your land, this land is my land,” Lisa sang.
“—and that means there is only one place this girl can be while all the hoopla is going on: out of town. The News says some six million people will line the harbor, three million down the block at the Promenade. Do I wanna be around while three million people cut through our front yard to see this shuck?”
But I wanted to see the tall ships.
Emma raised a finger. “You won’t be able to see anything. The News said people are camping out already to get a space. Think of it, six million people, pushing, shoving and sweating…”
Okay, so the city will be a circus.
(Emma’s New Order had grown in magnitude—her notebook was full of violations and regulations concerning what had to be destroyed; a one-person bad-taste gestapo. The Bicentennial was going to be an orgy of objectionable American behavior:
“Has-been celebrities trying to revive their careers by telling the world what America means to them. Street-performers and buskers—”
“Heeyyy Mister Tambourine Man,” Lisa broke in, imitating our Carmine Street friend.
“—and folkies singing self-righteous, outdated protest songs and MIMES—good God, it’ll be a field day for mimes, Mime City, Mime-o-rama, they’ll be pulling on ropes, running up against invisible walls. And crafts. Little statue of liberties and red-white-and-blue kitsch, all kinds of Americana.” She paused, noticing that she hadn’t moved us. “I hate junk like this. You’re expected to go out and have Fun en masse, merely because everyone else has turned out too.”
So, got any better ideas?
Emma raised an eyebrow. “Welllll … Lisa. Darling. If you must go out with … this person, this boyfriend—”
“He’s not really my boyfriend, Em,” Lisa said, already defensive. “He’s just someone I go out with.”
“Someone you go out with and have carnal knowledge of—”
“Emma,” Lisa whined.
“He puts his thing inside you—”
Lisa threw a pillow from her chair at Emma.
“Well doesn’t he?” Emma ducked as a second pillow went forth. “I am being stoned, persecuted for speaking the truth! You won’t even let us meet him.” Emma turned to me, pouting. “She’s ashamed of us, Gil … (sniff, sniff) She won’t let us meet her banker Wall Street friends…” Lisa got up, ready to leave the room, refusing to listen. “Look at you, Lisa, you are consumed with self-hatred!”
Emma hadn’t let a day go by without prying, prodding, provoking and pestering Lisa about the subject of Tom, who was handsome (Emma: “One demerit…”), who was rich (“Two demerits…”), who worked in an investment banking firm on Wall Street (“Fifteen demerits…”) and who, from all reports, was one of those average all-around athletic American jock successful-in-high-school class-president types and A Real Nice Guy (which frankly I didn’t like, and let’s just say he wasn’t going to fare well in the New Order).
“As I was saying,” Emma continued, purring, “if you insist on having this Tom in your life to the exclusion of your friends—”
“Ooooh, you’re so bad,” huffed Lisa. “Gil, have I once ignored either of you? Do I still do things with both of you?”
“As I was saying,” Emma continued, “that if you insist on having this man in your life, he might as well be of some use to the rest of us, your friends here in the commune. Your friends less rich and monied and privileged.”
“I’m going to the bedroom.”
“He has a beachhouse,” Emma said, speeding up before Lisa walked out, “or rather his filthy-rich bourgeois capitalist oppressor parents do, right? The three of us would have a blast down there.”
Lisa shook her head disbelievingly. “And of course, Tom could come as well.”
“Tom? Well if you think he’d want to go. Hasn’t he seen enough of his beachhouse at this point?”
Lisa marched off, mumbling something; she and her magazine retreated to the bedroom and we heard the slam of the door. It would be fun, I yelled in the direction of the door, to go to the beach, escape the city. We heard: “Not a chance, people!”
“She’s thinking about it,” said Emma.
And sure enough, the next day Lisa sat us down and informed us of the plan:
“As it is Tom’s beachhouse, or his parents’, rather—”
“The filthy-rich bourgeois capitalist-scum parents,” Emma added in a whisper.
“—as it is the Davidsons’ beachhouse,” Lisa continued, ignoring all interruptions, “we must treat the property with respect and behave in such a way as to remain unobtrusive to the neighbors and local residents, some of whom live on the Jersey Shore year-round. And as for the behavior I expect of my dearest friends,” she continued, pacing the apartment as if this were a military briefing, “need I say that I expect my friends, my dearest, closest friends and compatriots, colleagues in a mutual struggle for New York survival, not to embarrass the shit out of me, not to mortify or humiliate me, not to tell stories of past experiences or to proffer information of an untoward or unattractive nature to said host of the beachhouse, one Tom Davidson. Am I understood clearly on this point?”
I nodded and so did Emma, who raised her hand for a question.
“Ms. Brandford, does that include the remarks you were making concerning penis size the other night?”
&n
bsp; Lisa folded her arms. “I think some of us here have an attitude problem,” she said, resuming her pace, “and I think some people should realize with the snap of my fingers, my merest whim, this weekend comes to a crashing halt and you will be forced out on the streets for your entertainment.”
Where you will be seized upon by mimes, I said.
“And you will be forced to buy crafts,” Lisa added.
So Emma got in the spirit of things. Cooperative and helpful—could she bring potato chips and snacks? Buy some of the beer? She was too nice, too helpful. I felt like I was in an old western and things had gotten too quiet out there …
“You wanna know my theory?” Emma asked, slipping into my room after midnight. “I’ve been listening to her on the telephone with Tom. She’s just Miss Wisconsin prep-school cheerleader Sweet Little Lisa, and I think Tom would be shocked to discover her friends are on the lunatic fringe. Just wait until he gets a load of us.”
When I was in the bathroom brushing my teeth, Lisa pulled me aside, looking for an ally. “I think you’ll really like Tom,” she said, as I put off spitting in front of her. “He’s not exactly East Village material, but he’s stable and I think that’s what I like about him, his stability, since everything is so unstable in my life. Anyway, it’ll be the four of us,” she added, patting my behind, “a couples’ weekend,” she chirped. First Sign of Someone Entering a Serious Relationship: the desire to see all unattached friends encoupled as well. “Who knows,” she whispered, leaving the bathroom, “you and Emma might find yourselves alone on a dune.” I spit out my toothpaste.
June 28th. Countdown to the Bicentennial …
I got home from the theater to find Janet (the smart-looking black woman journalist on the Womynpaper) and Mandy (now Janet’s lover) and Emma sitting on the floor near the TV, not watching it, a soap opera blaring out, a six-pack nearly consumed, an array of junkfood nearby, the haze of chain-smoking above them.
“You know us,” said Mandy, with a schoolmistress tone, “Janet and I have tried to discourage heterosexuality in all its forms…”
“With all of us down there together,” Janet added, “Old Tom the Stockbroker won’t know what hit him. We’ll be especially counterculture.”
Then they saw me and switched subjects.
“Nothing’s up,” Emma said, all innocence, when questioned later, “I just think as long as we have a whole house for the weekend, Janet and Mandy ought to come down too. All our friends together.”
I see, I said. An interracial lesbian couple to spice up the Big Weekend.
“I’m sure if Tom is a decent human being, he won’t give it a second thought. I’ve already suggested to Lisa that they come down, and she’s not going to refuse because it will mean Tom is narrow-minded and uncool. Or at least that’s how I put it to her.”
Somehow in the next two days Susan got herself invited.
“You know, girls,” she said, “men can’t deal with women with hairy legs. I’m not going to shave my legs just to wear a bathing suit just so men can be more comfortable, you know? Like, I got on the subway yesterday in short shorts. I did. It was hot, you know? And every man on that train looked at my legs. They couldn’t deal with my hairy legs.” Or someone who weighed a ton in hot pants, take your pick. Lisa, throughout the burgeoning of the guest list, fell into a worse mood. By Thursday, July 1st, she was barely speaking to us. Emma decided to cheer her up.
“Hey Lisa, look at this!” Emma barged into the living room wrapped in a sheet, modeling a 75¢ Statue of Liberty Styrofoam crown with points going off in all directions. She held up her cigarette lighter: “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled wretched teeming masses yearning to huddle and teem and retch … What is that old thing? Teeming refuse, huddled masses, wretched shores—no, teeming shores, wretched huddled refuse retching to be free! Well Lady Liberty got what she wanted, this city is full of refuse. Teeming, teeming on the shore…”
Lisa wasn’t laughing. “I’d say wretched masses describes the upcoming beach weekend, all right,” she said. “This whole beach thing has gotten out of control.”
The night before, around 1 a.m., we had begun to pack, having sworn to do it days earlier.
“I think I’ll take my journal,” said Emma. “I could write some marine poems, something vagarious, wistful by the sea…”
“The day you write one word in that book will be a red-letter day in history. Excuse me, wait, let me GET MY CAMERA,” Lisa went on, still in a bad mood.
Emma didn’t say anything for a while; Lisa slapped a few things into an overnight bag and then left the room, soon out of earshot. I was waiting.
“For that remark, of course,” Emma said lightly, “she will die.”
Emma’s writer’s block hadn’t let up really. What We Had Was Love was a chapter and a half off the ground, nothing serious had been started, no poems in ages, and yet the collection of ratty spiral notebooks and pads was no more. She now bought fine leather-bound, embossed journals, bought small hardcover notepads in quantities, purse-sized in case the muse struck on the subway, and she even got a fountain pen, a series of quills, a blotter, two kinds of ink and some bonded stationery (“You don’t think this is affected, do you?” she asked at the time). She also said, “Walter Benjamin said that if you’re going to write you have to surround yourself with nice things, not second-rate junk—good paper, good pens and ink, quality items—it makes the work look important, finishable.” Emma had the process, the Zen, the preparation and ceremony of writing down to a science. I think of her now in the chic Brooklyn Heights cafe, papers spread out, her notebooks opened, her third cup of espresso beside her, a look of concentration, of seriousness on her face, waiting perhaps for … for, I’m not sure. Maybe someone to come up and go, “Oh my god, you’re … you’re a writer, aren’t you? I can just tell,” and she would smile, demur a little, and say “Yes, yes I am a writer.” Except that whole year she never wrote anything.
But back to the beach trip: The morning arrived and there were some serious political maneuvers staged to see who got to ride in whose car. Lisa would go with Tom in Tom’s airconditioned Impala (“What twenty-seven-year-old so-called young person drives a goddam Impala?” Emma wanted to know). No one wanted to ride with Susan. But Susan had a car. Janet could use her sister’s car but would have to go to Queens to get it.
“Oh by the way, everybody,” announced Susan as we gathered in front of the walk-up waiting for Tom to show himself, “this is Chris.” Chris was a twenty-five-year-old gay man, skinny, the uniform mustache, dressed like a teenager, very friendly. No one told Susan she could bring a guest. Emma gave me a sidewise glance, smiling.
Lisa said to me quietly, resigned to events, “We wanted to leave the circus in the city and now we’ve got one of our own at the beach. Lesbian journalist and black mistress; Susan the Fag Hag and her Attendant Boy; Emma, Bitch Goddess of Four Continents…” She pressed my arm: “Try to make friends with Tom so he’ll have a good time, okay? You are now my only hope. I may walk into the sea, never to be recovered…”
The best thing she could do—I told Lisa—was to live it up and think of it all as madcap, bohemian, your wild youth. Appeal to Tom’s sense of Modernity.
“What if I’m as modern as Tom gets?”
I said I’d try to make friends and I meant it, as it’s rare that anyone ever appeals to me on any human level, let alone needs me to do anything, so I decided to be Mr. Helpful.
July 4th, the country is two hundred years old, and Tom was right on time with his refrigerator-cool Impala. Lisa got in the front, Emma and I scrambled into the back. There was small talk and then there was more small talk; Lisa was decidedly nervous.
“You know, Tom,” Emma said, running her hands along the velour, “I don’t know how you can keep this big a car in the city. Gas is almost $2 a gallon now, what with the Arabs—what does this baby get? Seven miles to the gallon.”
“Eight I think,” said Tom. “I’m not going to
let the Arabs tell me what I can and can’t drive, you know? I believe that you can afford anything you want to, if you work hard enough.”
Emma leaned into me to whisper: “And you can really afford anything you want if your dad’s a millionaire. Bet he gives a lot to charity, this guy.”
How much do you give to charity, Emma?
“Don’t change the topic.”
Lisa sensed an ebb in conversation. “Well you guys,” she said, “do you want to go to Jersey by way of the Verrazano Bridge? We can see the tall ships sail in.”
I said I wanted to see the tall ships. Tom pointed out that we could glimpse the carrier President Ford was on.
“No, the excitement might be too much for me,” said Emma. “I might come.”
Lisa turned around to smile the first in a series of BETTER WATCH IT smiles, as we turned toward the Holland Tunnel. It looked as if the entire United States was coming into the city going the other direction.
Tom tried to make conversation. “Sure glad we’re heading out of the city. Look at the crowds coming in.”
“Yes,” said Lisa, “look at them all. All those cars.”
“Isn’t it odd they don’t charge you to go out of the city?” Tom asked. “You pay going in but not out.”
“I hear they’re going to raise the toll soon,” Lisa added.
Emma again leaned into me: “Gee, hand me my journal—let me get this scintillating discourse on paper…”
We stopped behind a line of traffic in the middle of the Tunnel. There was silence, then Tom pointed out the line of blue tiles that represented the New York–New Jersey state line. There were two tubes for the Holland but three for the Lincoln Tunnel. Did we know that the Statue of Liberty was actually on the New Jersey side of the line, but New York claimed the island? Well it was true. And then there was more silence.
“I hate the Holland Tunnel,” said Emma, stirring. “I mean, think about it: we’re under a river. Beyond us and these shoddy looking tiles is the Hudson River, full of toxic waste and filth and slime, waiting to rush in. It’ll happen one day.”
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