I'm Trying to Reach You

by Barbara Browning

  For the next three days, it was a pretty constant barrage of fake flesh, obscure psychoanalytic references and mild porn, genial conversations over schnapps, and animated exchanges of enthusiasm for “the divine Kay Ambrose” between myself and Vag. I actually thought the production didn’t need too much choreography on top of Vag’s commanding performance. It’s what you might call “gilding the lily.” But we did work out some subtle modifications of her hand gestures.

  On the night of the last performance, the cast wanted to go out after the show to a bar called Alte Lampe. This place was known as a meeting place for the Wiener Runde (bears). But for some reason I was feeling mildly melancholy and so I claimed to have a migraine and went back to the dorm room. I texted Sven (“jag saknar dig” – miss you), checked my email (the University of Malta was requesting a writing sample), and clicked on YouTube. I just wanted to see if anything had happened over on Nethermost’s page.

  No action, so far as I could tell. That last post had gotten a few more hits, but no more comments. I looked in the column of related videos – there were a few other psychedelic versions of classical compositions. One looked interesting: Edvard Grieg’s In der Halle des Bergkönigs played by Big Brother and the Holding Company. I clicked on it – it was great. The footage was black and white, from a television broadcast in 1967. There was a brief interview beforehand, and then an extended, bizarre, and virtuosic interpretation.

  And then I saw it: the topmost comment, freshly sent by “hmmbcker52”: “SAINT JAMES, 12/22/1939 – 12/20/2009: R.I.P.” My God. James Gurley was dead.

  WHY YURI GAGARIN?

  I was in Vienna the day that James Gurley died.

  How did I not see it coming? The line about the “GURLY BOY”… Gurley’s vaguely disappointing performance in Woodstock with that Japanese pop star had perhaps made it difficult for me to see, but now it all made sense. And just because I’d solved the mystery of James Gurley didn’t mean I wasn’t also implicated – me, and others like me… I saw again the ominous glower of John Wayne in that shop window, hailing me as his “KITCHEN BITCH”…

  My mind was racing… There were so many dots to connect… Gurley had clearly been some kind of visionary, seeing the classical potential within the uniquely expressive distortion guitar. He’d been onto this since 1967, at least. Could it have been Gurley playing on the moth’s psychedelia vids?

  And then an even more terrifying thought came to me: WAS GURLEY THE CAB FRESHENER ON TYPOS?! Was that the “secret”?!

  These thoughts preoccupied me through my flight back to New York. I kept going back over the clues, but there was so much missing information. Where was Gurley when he died, and what were the circumstances? Where was Jimmy Stewart? My own last sighting placed him in New York November 8th, but he could have relocated since then. I wondered if Galina might spill any beans on his recent activities.

  I took the AirTrain to the C and emerged from the West 4th Street station as the sun was making its seasonally appropriate but drearily early descent. When I got to my building, Jorge opened the door for me saying, “Good afternoon, sir, how are you?” I noticed Bugs Bunny’s sister was sitting in one of the chairs in the lobby, dressed in her winter coat, her walker parked by her side. She seemed to be just hanging out.

  I said, “HOW ARE YOU?”

  She said, “WHAT? I CYAN HEAH YA!”

  I repeated myself and she said, “AW, I’M DOIN’ OKAY, TANKS. BUT IT’S COLD! I WISH I WAS IN MIAMI, I LOVE MIAMI! I TINK I NEED A NEW SCAWF. MAKE SHUAH YA WEAH A SCAWF!”

  I promised I would.

  When I got up to my place, I unpacked, watered the plants (deer looked okay), took a quick shower, fixed myself some tea and a plate of graham crackers, and sat down to Google “james gurley circumstances of death december 20 2009.” Unfortunately, the terms “circumstances of death december 20 2009” called up an enormous number of items relating to the untimely demise of Brittany Murphy, a beautiful, young actress. The overwhelming public interest in her story outweighed the specificity of my inputting “james gurley,” so I had to sift through a few pages before I actually got anything I was looking for.

  Brittany Murphy, by the way, appeared to have died of natural causes – or at least, there appeared to be no foul play, though a depressing history of eating disorders might have contributed to other pre-existing health problems.

  Of course, James Gurley also appeared to have died of natural causes. And at his age, after a famously hard-rocking life, nobody seemed particularly surprised. I was the only one who was freaking out. But plenty of other people were sad to see him go.

  “Saint James” was a nickname Gurley had applied to himself, but lots of fans were happy to adopt it in reference to him. Sainthood was not the only figure they invoked. He was also hailed as an astronaut – actually, a cosmonaut. Country Joe & the Fish’s guitarist, Barry Melton, said, “James Gurley was the first man in space! He’s the Yuri Gagarin of psychedelic guitar.” That was quoted in pretty much every obituary I found. I found it interesting Melton had compared him to a Soviet space hero. Surely he could have called him “the first guitarist on the moon” – the Neil Armstrong of the electric guitar.

  When I’d skimmed over all the Gurley obituaries, I checked in on Nethermost’s page. No new comments. That could be either good or bad news.

  That reference to Gagarin made me think of Galina. The obituaries hadn’t turned up a lot of dirt on Gurley’s end, but maybe if I approached it from Jimmy Stewart’s… It was time for another reconnaissance mission at the Torch Club.

  One minor problem. Cash flow. My ticket to Vienna and that dorm room had been covered, of course, but the incidentals – chipping in to cover the tab for Wiener Schnitzels and schnapps – had done a number on my already piddly stash. There were still nine days to get through in the month of December. I resolved to subsist on rice and Goya beans, and to bank one final holiday tarte tatin with some Earl Grey tea at my gentlemen’s club before it shut down for the NYU winter break.

  After all, I told myself, it was in the name of research. And not just academic research. This might be a matter of life and death.

  When I got to the club, I saw that they’d put up the evenhanded assortment of “holiday” decorations that maintained the appropriate balance between Judeo and Christian influences, avoiding the most tacky of Pagan ones. Galina, however, was unapologetically sporting a glittery red sweater with a Christmas tree on it. She tried to push the pumpkin pie on me, but I held fast to my plan. “I’ll have the tarte tatin, please, and a pot of Earl Grey.”

  Then, as nonchalantly as I could, I said, “By the way, have you seen that gentleman recently? Did you say he played racquet sports at Duke? I think I might have accidentally picked up his umbrella the last time we were both here.” I indicated a little fuschia compact umbrella with a Duane Reade insignia I’d brought along as part of my ruse. I was hoping she wouldn’t remember it hadn’t been raining that day.

  She looked suspiciously at my prop. “This is not umbrella of sportsman.” I think she might have found this cheap drugstore item a slight to his signature style. Or maybe it was the color. She said, “He is more rugged type guy. He visits mother in state Vermont! And you are going to see mother for kholidays?”

  No, I wasn’t going to visit my mother for the holidays, I hadn’t for some time, and she’d certainly managed to hit the old nail of guilt on the head with that one. I wasn’t even going to spend Christmas with my boyfriend, or, as Stefanos might have put it, my lover. I’d just gotten back from hanging out in Vienna with some avant-garde pornographers, and I was going to plow right through the next several days combing the Internet for any trace of incriminating evidence against JIMMY STEWART, for God’s sake, friend to giant talking bunnies and America’s sweetheart, who at this very moment was probably home chopping firewood for his adorable old pie-baking mom. What was wrong with this picture? Besides the unconvincing subterfuge of my fuschia umbrella?

  One thing made m
e feel a little better. One person, that is. When I got back to my building, Bugs Bunny’s sister was again sitting in the lobby. She saw me and hollered, “AW GEE, DAT’S SUCH A PWETTY UMBWELLA. I JUS’ LOVE DAT CULLAH, WHAT IS DAT, HOT PINK?”

  I said, “PLEASE, TAKE IT, IT’S YOURS.”

  She said, “YAW GIVIN’ DAT TA ME? YAW SUCH A NICE POYSON. TANKS SO MUCH.”

  Bugs Bunny’s sister surely wouldn’t think it was weird I had no plans for Christmas. She was Jewish.

  When I got upstairs I texted Sven that I knew an old lady who could use a scarf, if he felt like knitting one. He liked to receive knitting assignments. It gave him a goal. He texted back, “inga problem :-)” He’d have it ready when I went to visit him in two weeks.

  I didn’t mention James Gurley – and I certainly didn’t mention Brittany Murphy. That would really have gotten him down.

  My on-the-ground sleuthing had only rendered this: that Jimmy Stewart was a better son than I was, and right now he appeared to be living the “rugged” filial life in Vermont. But could I trust information coming from Galina? They were very friendly. Also, she seemed easily buffaloed.

  I couldn’t keep obsessing about this 24/7. As had been the case with each of my prior panics, the Gurley demise was beginning to look quite possibly innocent. It was really only when I considered the accumulation of weird coincidences that my heart would start pounding, only to settle again when I went back over the rational explanations.

  Meanwhile, I had to figure out what writing sample to send the University of Malta. The obvious thing would have been the introduction of my manuscript, along with the abstract. On the other hand, the response had been surprisingly positive to my talk in the department. In fact, Richard Schechner had even approached me at the holiday party about publishing a version in TDR, the prestigious performance journal he edited. At first I thought he was just drunk like me, or being collegial, but maybe there was something of interest in my paranoid ramblings.

  You have probably surmised: with the exception of those quotes from Lauren Berlant, I basically pilfered the whole talk from the notes I’d been making for that novel I was thinking of writing.

  I sent the text of my talk to Schechner, and to Malta.

  Christmas was a little lonely. Fang and Dan were with their respective families. Ellen had gone to stay with her mother for a while in Minnesota. She took her cat. Randy and Jeremy were at Randy’s brother’s place in Ohio. Sven texted me from his parents’ place in Malmö. He said, “det snöar.” It’s snowing.

  I’d ordered Laura from Netflix. Dan had told me about it. He said, “Vincent Price plays the love interest. He’s actually supposed to be hot, and the weird thing is, he kind of is. He has a Southern accent about a third of the time.”

  It was strange, all right, to see Vincent Price play the Southern stud. But to me, stranger still was Dana Andrews in that trench coat! Naturally, he was the one I identified with. He’s Mark McPherson, the hard-boiled detective they put on the Laura Hunt murder case. There’s a series of suspicious characters – Laura’s controlling professional mentor, her homely maiden aunt, Price as a freeloading Southern gentleman who wants to marry her, and Laura’s totally crushed-out lesbian maid. Each one of them gives the detective bits of information about the dead woman, and their stories are illustrated in flashback scenes which, I suppose, are filmic representations of the detective’s imagination as he hears these stories. It also helps that there’s a huge painted portrait of Laura in her apartment.

  Between staring at that portrait and hearing from everybody about how captivating she was, Mark McPherson slowly finds himself falling in love with Laura. There’s just one problem: she’s dead. Waldo, that controlling mentor, says, “You better watch out, McPherson, or you’ll end up in a psychiatric ward. I don’t think they’ve ever had a patient who fell in love with a corpse.” McPherson tries to act cool, but you can see that comment throws him for a loop.

  Then – surprise – it turns out she’s not dead! She comes home from a long weekend in the country to discover Mark McPherson poking around all her personal effects in her living room. She’s of course miffed at first, but then he explains there’s been a murder. It turns out it was some model who just happened to be lounging around Laura’s house dressed in one of her negligees. Somebody must have knocked her off thinking she was Laura. Once they figure this out, there seems to be a little romantic spark between Laura and McPherson, though she briefly appears to be tempted to go back to Vincent Price.

  The incipient romance with McPherson infuriates Waldo, who’s had a hard enough time convincing Laura that Vincent Price was a cad. Now he has to talk her down from falling for the detective. Waldo tells her, “When you were unattainable, when he thought you were dead, that’s when he wanted you most.”

  I won’t give away the end, but suffice it to say, you really can’t trust Waldo.

  Still, I found his observations pretty acute. And profoundly disturbing.

  He may actually have a point. Why would a man be particularly attracted to somebody who was already dead? I could think of several reasons, and they all made me sad.

  Waldo has most of the good lines in this film. At one point he says, “Laura dear, I cannot stand these morons any longer. If you do not come with me this instant I shall run amok.”

  My New Year’s Eve was slightly livelier than my Christmas. Fang was back, and she called to tell me José Muñoz was having a little get-together at his place. I thought it would probably be mostly faculty and some of his artist friends, but Fang was invited because she sometimes walked Muñoz’s dog. She was sure it would be okay if I went along. I thought my new association with Vag maybe also put me in a special category. I got kind of dressed up. It’s not that I was so excited – I was actually feeling a little anti-social – but it wasn’t often I had an excuse to get out my nice clothes. I wore an old smoking jacket I had. When I went to get the elevator, I saw Bugs Bunny’s sister inching her way down the hallway with her walker. She was wearing a sequined pink sweatshirt depicting fireworks and she had on red lipstick.

  She looked terrific.

  She screamed, “WATCHA DOIN’ FA NEW YEAH’S?”

  I said, “PARTY!”

  She said, “AW DAT’S GWEAT! YA LOOK SO HAN’SOME. I’M GOIN’ TA ENNIO’S! DEY GOTTA SPECIAL, YA GET A GLASS O’ CHAMPAGNE WIT YA SPAGHETTI!”

  I smiled and nodded.

  She said, “I’M TELLIN’ YA, I HAD A GWEAT LIFE, I BEEN TA ALL DA BES’ SPOTS, I USE’TA GO TA DA GWEAT WESOAHTS, YA KNOW, DA STAHDUST, DA DEAUVILLE, I SAW DA SHOWS AT ALL DA BES’ CLUBS, IT WAS GWEAT. BUT NOW, YA KNOW WHAT I WEALLY LIKE TA DO? I HAVE A LITTLE GLASS O’ CHAMPAGNE AN’ I GO BACK HOME AN’ WATCH DA BALL DWOP ON DA TELEVISION. I LIKE DAT. I LIKE TO WATCH IT ON DA TELEVISION, AN’ DEN I GO TA BED.”

  That actually sounded like a good idea, but I’d told Fang I’d meet her in the lobby of Muñoz’s building. I didn’t want to disappoint her.

  When I got there, Fang was holding a tray of deviled eggs. I’d thought I should really have something to offer myself but somehow didn’t think my rice and Goya beans were going to make much of an impression, so I hitched a free ride on Fang’s hors d’oeuvres.

  It was pretty lively up there. Carmelita Tropicana was passing out little party hats and tooty horns. A couple of people had brought their dogs in full festive regalia. Nao Bustamante’s toy poodle had little reindeer antlers – I guess these were left over from Christmas. Dulce Maria was wearing a rhinestone collar and a tutu. That, naturally, affected me.

  There was an attractive blonde woman of a certain age holding court in the corner, and Fang whispered to me that she was the former Warhol star, Bibbe Hansen. She said she was also Beck’s mother.

  Muñoz came over to me at one point and told me he’d liked my talk. He asked me if I had any plans after my fellowship was finished. I told him I was up for a job in Malta.

  He said, “Did you say ‘in the mountains’?” The music was kind of lou
d.

  I said, “No, Malta.”

  He just looked at me.

  Fang was squatting on the floor, scratching Dulce’s belly. She seemed to be in heaven. Dulce, I mean.

  The next week I flew to Stockholm. The January trip was always the hard one. It’s not the cold that gets to you so much, it’s the shortness of the days. The whole time I was living there, I never got used to it. Sven, of course, didn’t know anything different. He was a little glum these days, but it wasn’t really about the darkness.

  That first evening we stayed in and cooked together. We made pasta and had a little red wine. We listened to Johnny Mathis.

  I like Johnny Mathis. My mother liked Johnny Mathis when I was a kid.

  My time in Stockholm was pretty mellow. As his doctor had predicted, Sven seemed to be adjusting to his meds. The dreams were still a problem, but his stomach wasn’t bothering him so much. His doctor was still encouraging him to try that FOTO regimen, but he wasn’t quite ready to give it a go. His numbers were good.

  That week Sven was pretty busy at the museum. They were preparing an exhibit of lacquer works by Nagatoshi Onishi. Sven was helping organize the installation. I went in with him one day, and while he was helping the curator figure out the placement of some of the pieces, I hung out in his office and wasted some time on his computer. You’ll never guess where I ended up: back on Nethermost’s channel. I’d been making a conscious effort not to obsess about her and the cab freshener, once I’d convinced myself that my panic over the Gurley incident was exaggerated. But I must confess it was an immense relief to see that she’d posted a new video, and that the freshener had already responded.