by Bruce Bauman
Alchemy relayed to Moses that Laluna was shocked by his admission and his plan, but that once it sank in, she was all for it. For now, she preferred not to talk about it, which suited Moses just fine. Moses felt Alchemy’s urgency and desire. And he also understood his desire for ultimate secrecy.
A week after the initial conversation, Moses, still not totally committed to agreeing but leaning that way, made an appointment to have his sperm tested at a Pasadena clinic, where there would be no way to trace what he was doing back to Alchemy. The doctor happily reported to him, “You’re a lucky man. Your sperm seem undamaged by the cancer or chemo. They’re plentiful and spry for a post-fifty-year-old.”
The following Wednesday, Moses drove up to the Topanga compound. Alchemy ambled out to meet him in the driveway. “Save a life. Give a life.”
“Let’s hope.”
He masturbated in a downstairs bathroom. His semen safely in the prepared cup, he placed it on the sink counter and swiftly left the compound.
Alchemy slipped into the bathroom and fetched his brother’s seed. He passed it to the new fertility doctor, who believed it was Alchemy’s. Laluna got pregnant on the first try.
66
MEMOIRS OF A USELESS GOOD-FOR-NUTHIN’
Hello, I Must Be Going, 2009 – 2012
You know by now I ain’t no philosopher and I see life as mainly about some chicks or dudes, some family shit, having money or no money, and then you die. You can dress it up in fancy duds, but that’s the deal. Alchemy ain’t no different.
Before I meet Laluna, I peg her as another hungry honey trap. When I meet her at the Kasbah offices (though they is owned by the Germans, the Sheiks keep the offices) and I give her the once-over, I’ll never forget it, ’cause she looks different. Wearing a yellow sundress with smiley face apples and oranges on it, a big floppy yellow old-lady hat, no makeup at all, and sparkly-faced like Courteney Cox in the Springsteen video, only with the piercings in her lips and a space between her two front teeth—she bangs the bell as the hottest ten possible. And whew, when she catches me gawking, the sparkly smile goes to a glare that could’ve shrunk Johnny Wadd’s dick from twenty paces. Alchy introduces us and she acts like our stare-down never happened. At first, I was suspicious of her and sometimes I’m thinking she is jealous of me and Lux because of our histories with Alchemy. Nope. She’s too hip for that. I seen Alchemy and Laluna when they was practically babies, I mean she was a teenager, and if I believed in reincarnation they’d be the reason ’cause they was wiser and understood more shit at twenty than most people ever do no matter how long they live. I ask myself, “Why them?” It’s not just being smart. Lucky is better, and they was, but that’s not it. Neither is having messed-up folks, ’cause that’s normal. I met her father, who is an Armenian gang guy from the Valley, and her mom, who he whomped on for years until Laluna and Alchy got her to divorce him. She was a really nice lady who came on tour with us for a while. She made us homemade meals and acted, I dunno, like a real mom. Unlike Alchy, who has his Collidascope Land moments, and he always acts like he can fix everything, Laluna always has at least one foot planted firmly on earth, but inside she also got a Collidascope of her own, so to speak. At first, that combo worked for them.
Still, Salome master mindfucked Laluna from day one. Any moron could see Laluna loved and idolized Alchemy. Guess that was Salome’s problem. She makes a rare drop-in to a ProTeans gig at the Smell, wearing a T-shirt with Absurda’s face on it, which is most def a shot at Laluna. Alchy keeps Salome away from most of our gigs after that.
I told Laluna that it was great to play with her. Best since Absurda. She answers so serious, her voice so low, “I’m happy to hear that. Only I wish not this way. No one can replace Absurda.” Maybe not, but Lux and me understand we done recaptured that special connection where Alchemy sees what each show, each audience needs, and without ever having to say a word the three of us feel how to follow him. We record The Great Awakening and then hit the road and we bank mucho dinero. It was almost heartwarming to see Alchy head back to hang with Laluna. Raunchy rock partying didn’t appeal to her. The rules of their relationship is a mystery ’cause Alchy, I don’t think, ever fully quit floozying and I got an inkling she sneaked her share on the side though I never caught her, and she sure never came on to me.
I’m the only one not in a steady relationship. Lux has settled down with Leanne, who is a TV producer. One night after a show in Stockholm (Alchy always insists we stay at the Grand Hôtel there), Laluna is in bed already, so us three is sitting in Lux’s room drinking when Alchemy says, “So guys, what’s it like having kids?”
Lux taps his hands on his legs like he’s preparing for a drum solo. “Ball-bustin’ hard, you want mine?”
“Fuckin’ goes double for me since I came late to the party.” Then we crack up and give the thumbs-up. Lux says it’s the best thing he’s ever done but it is also the toughest. He and Leanne, who don’t want kids, have had some major throw-downs about how to deal with his kids from other women.
“Why?” Lux asks. “You and Laluna thinking of hitching and diversifying your portfolio?”
“I don’t need my mother’s lectures on the evil power structures of marriage, so no to that. Kids? I’m thinking about it. My mom says she’d like a grandchild.”
That don’t surprise me about Salome as much as you might think. Feeling naughty, I volunteer, “Wit’ all the fucking you done, I can’t believe you don’t got one already. You playing the secretive Alchemy? Like you hid your father all them years.”
I been giving him shit about the big clam-up over his father and how he guilts me ’cause I don’t see my folks hardly at all. He was so pissed when Salome showed paintings of his dad and Moses’s dad without telling him first. He admits nuthin’ in public about Bent or Mose Sr., only kind of hints that it is all just “one big Salome fantasy.”
“No. No secrets. Just lucky, I guess. One other thing, Sue’s got interest in us doing the halftime show at the Super Bowl. Before you get excited, I’m voting no.”
Him and Nathaniel, even though they like football, they also hate it. Salome calls it “Super Barbarian Day.” Still, I says, “Why the hell not do it? That’s like two billion eyeballs watching us. And you watch the damn thing!”
“Yes, and I am mad at myself for watching.”
Lux is revved, too. “C’mon, Alchemy. If this is our last go-round, what a way to go out.”
He is ready for us. “We’ve never sold our music for ads, and this is a secular holiday that’s bigger than Christmas, only it sells the religion of American corporatism and false patriotism. And the NFL owners have a plantation mentality.” And yackety yack. When he gets on that high political horse, there is no knocking him off. Even though me and Lux are so into it, it’s a no-go unless we can change his vote.
Alchy gets a call from Laluna, who wants him back in the room. I start wagging my finger and I mouth, “Come home to Mommy, little boy.” He smirks, but he seems happy, so what the fuck, right?
The next night I says to Laluna, with Alchy and Lux standing there, “You also voting to pass on the Super Bowl?”
“I’ll vote yes if I can sing ‘Fuck Like a Woman.’ Uncensored.” It’s one of the few songs Absurda used to sing lead. Laluna never asked to do it before. It got the lines “Preachers say I’m gonna end up in Hades / only it’s them jocks-of-all-trades / who got the morality disease / ’cause I will fuck who I please …”
Laluna is acting more rock ’n’ roll than any of us. Alchemy, grinning, says, “See, that’s why I love her.”
Funny, though, later that year when we’re back in L.A. for a hiatus between tour legs, he invites me and Lux up to the Topanga house to watch the Super Bowl to see what “we’re missing out on.” That what you call irony? That year, the party is only like ten of us. It starts what becomes his and Laluna’s Super Bowl party tradition.
We changed the sked so the Grand Canyon gig is our final show, which Alchemy says is a tru
e celebration of America, and we make the show free for the two hundred thousand people who show up. HBO broadcasts it live. We take a helicopter up to the top of the mountain and I remember Andrew teases him, “I can see the multitudes … Alchemy, are you going to consume them all tonight?”
“Maybe yes.”
We open with a new song, “Beat Attitudines”:
Declared peace/got war
Kissed the moneychanger,
Befriended the mocking deranger
Lay between the virgin and the law
Turned wine into water
Who ended up teaching me more?
It’s always love
We’re searching for
Got cheeks to turn/money to burn
The meek got no net worth
Rich claim it’s theirs by birth
Made swords into stock shares
Gave away my golden chairs
Wandered forty days in the sand dunes
Sold my sermon on the mount
They asked for a discount
I sung my American tunes
Dropped my pants/did my peace dance
Prayed for mercy
They treated me worsely
Beautify and rejoice
We are the saviors of tomorrow
’Cause we got no choice
Live in happiness with your sorrow
And don’t hang me up
’Cause I will let you down …
Some rabid believers call that song blasphemous. Me, I think it was blasphemy that we burned through so much money on that concert ’cause with all the permits, lawyers, and cleanup, it cost us like three million bucks.
When we return to L.A., I am still hoping Alchemy’ll change his mind and we’ll do another record, and then, who knows? I don’t see him much because I’m hangin’ with Ricky Jr. in New York ’til I get another death call. Falstaffa passed from the hep C. We knew it was coming, but it still sucked. I wasn’t even forty yet and I buried too many good people. The funeral is one major-league bummer. Me, Lux, Alchy, and Marty are the pallbearers. (A week later, Alchemy pays off Marty with $250K and asks him to “retire.” He never forgot Marty’s trashing Absurda to me all them years before.)
I think it’s kind of strange, ’cause even though she don’t know Falstaffa like us, Laluna don’t show and I’m questioning if they broke up or she caught him, well, being Alchemy. Before we head out, he asks me and Lux if we can come up to Topanga the next Monday.
We meet in the studio. Laluna ain’t there. He has three bottles of Cristal on ice. He’s almost beaming, which is not what I expect. “Laluna is pregnant. She’s had a tough few weeks. Doc came yesterday, and it’s three months and all looks good. We’re announcing it soon.”
Congrats all around and we pop the bubbly and we each take swigs from our bottle. He puts his down and picks up his guitar. “I got a new one. Come to me last week. It’s called ‘Know More.’ ” He starts playing before singing. It has a real slow, bluesy feel. Me and Lux get what it means, but he says it anyway. “When Laluna is up to it we’ll record a coupla more songs. And that’s it, I’m done. No reunions. No nuthin’.” He takes a few giant gulps from his bottle. “I’ve accomplished everything I ever wanted to do in music as the Insatiables, and I couldn’t have done it without you two.”
When Lux goes to take a pee, I ask about that stuff he played for me a couple of years ago.
“It never came again. I’m waiting. Anyway, I’m not sure I’d ever release it.”
Even after twenty years, he don’t always make sense to me.
67
THE SONGS OF SALOME
Tryx Are for Kids
L.A. felt purgatorial. New York resonated with the vacant chair that was Nathaniel. I wanted love. If not love, I’d settle for great sex. In the last years with Nathaniel I was left to devices of self-fulfillment. I needed my orgasms. I did not want sex to become a memory or fantasy. I considered hiring a younger male nurse. Ha. Too Sweet Bird of Youth.
Alexander Holencraft phoned that he was in L.A. for a week. He asked to meet for dinner in West Hollywood. He greeted me at the restaurant entrance with overblown flattery about how young I look. Even in the dim light, in his disintegration I saw my own. He took my hand. I followed him to the table. We were not alone. Persistence brought me Willibrordus Ildefonsus Ignatius Verdonk, a chief curator at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam. His name was virtually unpronounceable, so I called him Tryx. We’d met briefly during the Hammer show when the Sted bought Pillzapoppin’ for their permanent collection. During Nathaniel’s illness, I’d ignored Tryx’s missives, so he hounded Holencraft to reintroduce us. As a twenty-six-year-old grad student traveling in Berlin, he’d seen my performance by the Wall, which ignited a twenty-five-year fantasy.
He wanted to make a documentary about me. With his soulsmell mix of sawdust and soldered silver, I had found a man who wanted to fuck me and who I wanted to fuck.
We set about to make the film Remembrances of Things Past and Future.
Tryx became my accompanist in Amsterdam and New York, choosing art, getting new photographs, and doing interviews for the doc. I could never reveal my mystagogues, so when questioned about my creative method I showed them a never-exhibited painting of red, white, and blue stripes with one word written in each stripe with ministar shapes: Dream. Listen. Sing.
I chose the music we used over Xtine’s montage of videos she’d taken of me working over forty years and mixed in some old photos of Dad’s. Alchemy did an interview that was funny and sweet about how I inspired him to be an artist. That’s when he wrote “Savant Sensation Bluz,” and he also picked other music.
Laluna did not contribute. Our relationship remained unflourished. Alchemy announced his retirement from touring and from the Insatiables. A few months before the opening and preview of the film, he flew to Amsterdam to tell me of my impending grandmotherhood.
Stunned. Overjoyed. Speechless is how I reacted to the news. Without sentiment, Tryx and I parted. I returned to L.A. after the huzzahs over the exhibition quieted. I needed to infuse my granddaughter with my songs.
68
THE MOSES CHRONICLES (2013)
Try, Try Again
A few months after the birth of Persephone, Alchemy and Laluna’s daughter, Moses took a day off from the foundation and motored up the 405 to the Skirball Center to attend a daylong symposium expounding upon the works of concentration camp survivor Levi Furstenblum on the twentieth anniversary of his suicide. In spite of, or perhaps because of the past years’ revelations, Moses’s fascination with the Third Reich’s craven depredations continued. How different his questions for Furstenblum would be now than if they’d met fifteen years before.
He sat in a middle-row aisle seat as the panel began debating the meaning of Furstenblum’s views on forgiveness and redemption. The moderator began with a quote from Jacques Derrida’s essay on “unforgiveness” followed by a passage from Furstenblum:
Forgiveness is not earned, achieved, or bought. It is like love and ascends of its own volition. One can strive to comprehend unspeakable acts, but one cannot will forgiveness. There are those who live by the maxim “Forgive but don’t forget.” I find that phrase disingenuous. When I say that we are all capable of evil, I do not mean to imply any belief in the concept of original sin—to be human is to receive and inflict misery. Despite impulses of vengeance toward my torturers, and here the difference in our humanity is critical—I did not demand their death. I am not a murderer. Accepting that too is necessary for forgiveness. When released from the camps, I experienced the misery of perplexity and callousness in the actions of friends and family. Forgiveness came to me for them. For the murderers, who never asked for it, I wait.
As Moses listened, he thought about how the burden of his anger and frustration had dissipated, and he had come to forgive the failures and mistakes of Hannah and Jay—those he loved most. Even for the unstable Salome, whose responsibility for her actions was suspect. His fathe
r hadn’t sought it, yet somehow he felt he had achieved forgiveness for him. His own search for self-forgiveness remained ongoing. And then, just as she was drifting away on the lightness of forgiveness, the moderator loudly announced, “Time to break for lunch,” returning Moses to reality. He made his way to the back of the room. Then he stopped, heart aflutter, mouth agape. Had Furstenblum’s words conjured the image?
“Hi,” Jay greeted him, almost too jauntily, and moved closer to gently embrace him as she whispered, “I hoped you’d be here.” His arms fell limply to his sides. Disarmed, Moses asked, “Eat something?”
“Sure.”
Even after four years of divorce, they still e-mailed, if only sporadically. Jay would inquire at least once a month about his health. Jay’s mom had finally passed away ten days before, after years of not really being present, and Moses had sent flowers and a card to which he received a thank-you e-mail.
They filed out of the room, and he followed her toward the cafeteria. Her once midback-length hair was now cut to the nape of the neck. “Let’s sit and talk first.” They veered off to cement benches and sat under the shadows of the Santa Monica Mountains.
“Jay, why didn’t you just call or e-mail that you were coming?”
“I was afraid. I don’t know your situation.”
“I’m not situated.” Moses noticed Jay’s slightest exhalation of relief. He refrained from asking the reciprocal question.
“With my mom passing …” Her voice trailed off and she sighed. “I just wanted to see you.”
“I am so sorry about your mom.”
“She’s better off. I’d been missing you and thinking about you. And whenever my father complained about the ‘burden’ of my mom, I thought about what we went through together. And I wished you were in Miami by my side.” Moses didn’t offer that if she had asked, he would’ve been on the next plane. “Moses, we shared something so rare, and we blew it.”