by John Lawton
SWEET SUNDAY
Also by John Lawton
1963
Black Out
Old Flames
A Little White Death
Riptide
Blue Rondo
Second Violin
A Lily of the Field
Then We Take Berlin
SWEET
SUNDAY
John Lawton
Atlantic Monthly Press
New York
Copyright © 2002, 2014 by John Lawton
Jacket design by Carlos Beltran
Jacket photograph © ClassicStock/Corbis
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First published in Great Britain in 2002 by Weidenfeld & Nicolson.
ISBN 978-0-8021-2307-7
eISBN 978-0-8021-9237-0
Atlantic Monthly Press
an imprint of Grove/Atlantic, Inc.
154 West 14th Street
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Distributed by Publishers Group West
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for
Nora York
who
blew in from Winnetka
SWEET SUNDAY
‘A graceful generation that had to work for men wrapped up in their individual egos, a sin their flesh is not heir to.’
Joe Flaherty, Managing Mailer
‘. . . the best of a generation were being lost—some among the hippies to drugs, some among the radicals to an almost hysterical frenzy of alienation.’
I.F. Stone
§
‘It was fun to have that sense of engagement when you jumped on the earth and the earth jumped back.’
Abbie Hoffmann
‘It takes a long time for sentiments to collect into action, and often they never do . . . I wanted to make actions rather than effect sentiments.’
Norman Mailer, Paris Review Interview
§
‘Worst of all, expansion is eroding the precious and time honored values of community with neighbors and communion with nature. The loss of these values breeds loneliness and boredom and indifference . . . once the battle is lost, once our natural splendor is destroyed, it can never be recaptured. And once man can no longer walk with beauty or wonder at nature his spirit will wither and his sustenance be wasted.’
Lyndon Baines Johnson
‘You can’t dig the moon
Until
You dig the earth.’
William Eastlake, from Whitey’s on the Moon Now
§
‘No one was saved.’
Paul McCartney
1994
‘I have but one claim to fame.’ Now, why do people say that? It doesn’t mean what it says. They have no fame to lay claim to. What it really means is that they once met someone who was, or got, famous, which scrap of knowledge somehow enlightens their otherwise interminable obscurity—not even famous for fifteen minutes, just touching fame. OK, I have three ‘claims to fame’. I was in high school with Buddy Holly, class of ’55, in Lubbock, West Texas. I once, when I was fifteen and like Tom Sawyer thought senators must be ten feet tall, shook the hand of Lyndon Baines Johnson—I did not wash the hand for a week. And, I once met Norman Mailer. Well, twice really.
§
The first time I met Mel Kissing I asked him the question everyone asked him sooner or later. How does anyone come to be called Mel Kissing? Mel told the story I heard him tell a hundred times over the years that followed. Back on Ellis Island in the 1900s Immigration asked his grandfather what his name was. ‘Last name first, then your Christian name.’ The old guy spoke slowly, understood slowly, and maybe he was struggling with the idea that any part of him might be Christian and said ‘Kissinger, Melchior’ so slowly the Immigration guy took the ‘er’ for a pause and wrote down Kissing. Mel Kissing was really Melchior Kissinger IV.
§
I thought of Mel today. The day Tricky Dicky died, and TV went apeshit with a Nixathon. Wet April, waiting for spring. I was stuck indoors with the flu bug, hoping for the pleasures of channel surfing till my thumb ached. Instead I got Nixon. The nation got Nixon, and more Nixon, and it was like he’d never happened. The Nixon of the tele-obits was a statesman. Like there were two Richard Milhous Nixons. The dead statesman and the crook, and the dead statesman was somehow not connected to the crook. ‘Only Nixon could go to China.’ I heard that fifty times today. Old film of Tricky telling America there would have been no peace with Vietnam, no arms limitation deal with Russia, ’cept that he went to China. He’s wrong. Only Nixon went to China. Anyone could have gone. Just so happened it was Tricky Dicky. And I defy anyone to point to a democratized China as a result of diplomatic recognition and ‘most favored trading nation’ status. That’s just horsepucky. Why will we never have sanctions against China, whatever China does? Because in six weeks all those Wal-Marts the size of football stadiums that seem to fringe every American city would run out of stuff to sell as half their stock is made in China.
(Good God, am I preaching? Absofuckinlutely, darling—as my late wife would have said.)
§
Mel used to tell me it was people like me who would not vote for Humphrey who let in Nixon. I voted for Herbie ‘Flim-Flam’ McCoy, who ran on the United Fibbers of America ticket. ‘All politicians are liars. The difference between me and them is I know it. Believe me, people. I’ll never tell you the truth.’ I voted for that. Me and about five thousand others. I wouldn’t blame you if you said you’d never noticed Flim-Flam McCoy. He polled less than Frank Zappa. And Flim-Flam didn’t let Nixon in. That was George Wallace. A fraction of Wallace’s southern millions would’ve saved Humphrey’s skin. But fuckit, the man was not worth saving. Mel and I did not go up to New Hampshire in 1968 and root for Gene McCarthy just to see LBJ’s stooge run in his stead. I’d sooner vote for . . . well . . . fuckit . . . I’d’ve voted for Wavy Gravy if Wavy Gravy’d stood. Sheeit—wonder what happened to Wavy Gravy? Hi, Wavy, long time no . . .
I thought of Mel today. I guess it’s just Nixon—symbol of an era. Lots of things could make me think of Mel, but today it was the First Criminal. And I thought about the time in ’69 when I was getting ready to call him and say, ‘You know what today is? Today is exactly one year since LBJ said he wouldn’t run again. March 31st. Let’s go out and get skunk drunk!’
But he called me. Said, ‘Can you come over to Brooklyn tonight? Norman Mailer’s running for Mayor.’
Mel was a hotshot reporter on the Village Voice, Mailer was its founder and still owned a piece of the action. I’d done eighteen months at the Voice myself, and I’d never even set eyes on Mailer. But then, I wasn’t a hotshot. It figured Mel would know Mailer. All the same, I said, ‘What?’
And he said, ‘Don’t tell me you won’t vote for Mailer. Dammit, Turner, I still blame you for Tricky Dic
ky!’
So that’s why Nixon makes me think of Mel.
All former presidents will be at the funeral in California. Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, George Bush. Slick Willie too. I hope they bury him with a stake though his heart. Just in case.
I buried Mel with a volume of Wallace Stevens. It was what he wanted.
§
It was the summer we went to the moon. The hottest, the sweatiest, the longest—the most American. 1969. The American year in the American century—whitey on the moon, our boy from Wapakoneta uttering the most rehearsed one-liner since Henry Morton Stanley trekked thousands of miles across Africa with ‘Dr Livingstone, I presume?’ bursting on his lips with every step. A small step for man and blahdey blah de blah. Before that, before the Summer-we-went-to-the-Moon, it was the Spring-we-went-to-Brooklyn.
I rode the subway out to Clark Street in Brooklyn Heights, and gave myself enough time to walk down to the promenade and catch the last of the sun going down over Manhattan. I have often thought that’s the best reason to live in Brooklyn. You can see Manhattan. You can stare at Manhattan. You can ogle Manhattan, rising up on that narrow strip of land like a castle with a hundred turrets and never get enough of it. First time I saw it I thought of the Disney logo, Tinkerbell buzzing the towers of a fantasy castle. The castle is largely Wall Street, but you can suspend disbelief long enough to take in the finest skyline on earth. The Statue of Liberty faces Brooklyn. The lady’s a way off, but she’s looking right at you. I used to think this was odd. Give me your tired, your poor, and she’s looking at Brooklyn. Before I saw her I automatically assumed the face and the slogan looked out to sea, to Europe where all those huddled masses were teeming from. Now I’m glad she faces Brooklyn, or I’d have to ride the tempest-tost Staten Island Ferry just to see her face once in a while.
I went out to the promenade with Mel about a month after I first got to the city—sometime in ’63—just to be able to say ‘Wow’. To be able to send a postcard home and say I’ve seen the Statue of Liberty.
‘What do you think I am? A fucking tourist? I live here. I was born here. I don’t have to look at New York, I live New York,’ he said.
New Yorkers can be like that. I know an ex-cop who says things like ‘I am New York’, as though that goes with the round shoulders and the beer-belly, and a look on his face that says ‘hick’ to you. They think all out-of-towners are hicks. Mel used to call me a hayseed. Told me my habit of chewing the end of a pencil was left over from chewing straw. So often the people who see the beauty in New York City are people like me, from out of town and out of state. New Yorkers can be blind to it.
That night I made a point of telling Mel I’d meet him at the end of the block. There was no way I was going to ring on the bell and cold call Norman Mailer, but there was also no way I was going to watch the sun go down over Manhattan with a loudmouth New York Jew like Mel whispering sweet cynicisms in my ear.
I walked back from the harbor to the corner of Pierrepont and Columbia. Mel was waiting. A little guy in a great fur ragbag of a coat, wrapped up against the winter with only hair and beard to show, and hair and beard filled most of his face, and if it weren’t for the thick spectacles that magnified his eyes like the moon in a night sky you’d be hard put to find an opening in the fur. Then he smiled, a beaming grin of perfect teeth that had lived in the grip of braces most of his adolescence. The visible evidence of a childhood well-ordered and mapped out by his parents that had led to this urban gypsy and to their inevitable heartbreak—had they but lived to see it.
‘For a gumshoe you make one hell of a noise,’ he said.
I never apologize for the boots. I know he saw them as a clichéd symbol of the West, a symbol of everything I told him I’d left, but, dammit, once you break them in, a pair of Tony Lama’s boots are the most comfortable thing on earth.
‘Hi, hippie.’
‘Hi, cowboy. Been out lookin’ at your statue again?’
‘Don’t piss on it, Mel.’
‘I wasn’t.’
A hand shot from a furry pocket and pushed the bridge of his glasses back up his nose. His glasses always seemed to be slipping.
‘I wasn’t. I was about to say if you think it looks good from here you should see it from Norman’s rear window.’
It was a short walk along the Heights to an old brownstone—up porch steps from the street and push at an unlocked door. Then the filtered, almost muted hubbub of whatever was happening up on the top floor filtering down to the lobby. A long climb. Five flights and Mel’s little legs pounding away in front of me.
The room was full. The all American motley, gliding around under a curved ceiling, along the towering flights of books, in and out the hanging rope ladders. Rope ladders. Really. Made Mailer seem for the moment like a literary buccaneer. Rumour was he shinned up these ladders into the top of the house and wrote among the gods. Then, there he was in front of me. A good-looking little guy with an impish face and bright, bright blue eyes. Offering to shake hands except that he seemed to have a glass in each hand—one lot of bourbon swirling one way around the rocks, the other orbiting backwards like the tassels on a stripper’s pasties as he gestured with each hand and set the booze in motion.
‘Good to see you,’ he said simply, and the necessity of a huddle passed over the pair of them as Mel said, ‘A word if I may, Norman’ and Norman put one arm across his back, bourbon in hand, and steered him into a corner.
I was left alone. Wondering who in this room I knew. I knew many of Mel’s friends. But, given the kind of man he was, there were bound to be twice as many I’d never met or never even heard of. A good-looking—no downright beautiful—woman struck me as a face I knew, even if I could not put a name to it, blonde hair and big glasses, and I was picking my way across the room trying to think of an opener less corny than ‘Haven’t we met someplace?’ when I saw a face I really did know. Jerry Rubin, leader of the Yippies, serene upon the sofa, a small body of calm in a sea of human turmoil. Another little Jewish guy all but lost in hair and beard. His hand shot up and beckoned me over.
‘Raines. Last place I expected to see you.’
He had a point. I had long since ceased to be a joiner. There was no gathering in which I could not be made to feel unease unto surly silence. Mel had cajoled me onto the Pentagon March in ’67, much as he had cajoled me into this room. I’d stuffed flowers down the barrels of National Guard rifles while Ed Sanders read the exorcism—‘Out Demons out!’—and Rubin and Abbie Hoffman got us all to link hands and chant ‘Ommmm’ in an attempt to levitate the Pentagon. That was where we differed. Mel didn’t think it would work. I knew it wouldn’t work, and Hoffman thought it would. I’d no idea what Rubin thought. I’d spent a night in jail—hundreds of us had. Many got their heads cracked. I was not one of them. Last summer, the summer of ’68, Rubin had called me up and told me I had to be in Chicago for the Democrats Convention. Absolutely had to be there. I took one look at it and headed for home. I wondered if I was about to be confronted with my cowardice.
‘Last damn place I expected to find me. Who’s the blonde?’ I let him follow my look.
‘Pussy power,’ he said.
I always liked Rubin. He was against the grain—untypical. So many people at the forefront of sixties’ protest struck me as being like Charlie Chaplin in Modern Times—unlucky enough to have picked up a red flag in the street just as a march turns the corner and makes him into an unwitting leader. Rubin was not like that. He wasn’t the brightest guy I ever met, but he was born to lead. He loved to lead. He was, as he put it himself, a pretty mainstream kind of person. He never thought of himself as against the grain—as far as Jerry was concerned he was the grain. Whatever was happening in his generation he’d be at the heart of it. It did make me wonder what was happening here. Rubin and ‘pussy power’ did not sound like a natural combination. I almost pulled
a muscle trying to raise an eyebrow at this.
‘It’s Gloria Steinem,’ he added and before I could ask him any more a guy in thick black glasses—a beat’s head on a jacket and tie torso—stood up at the back of the room and started calling the night to order. I got the slow Rolodex of the mind to flip a card. Yes. I knew the name. I’d just forgotten the face. A few years back she’d landed herself a job as a Playboy bunny and exposed it for the tits ’n’ ass job that it was in a magazine. She and Mailer did not sound like the most natural combination either. I began to get the feeling that this was going to be the long night of the strange bedfellow—like me, everyone who’d made the climb to the top of the Mailer house was the unwilling partner in an odd couple combination. And then it hit me, as Norman took up a spot with his back to the harbor window, I saw Manhattan like I’d never seen it before. The greatest rear window in the world. I’d kill to be able to live with that sight. I found myself wondering how a writer ever got to write. Wouldn’t you just waste your days looking out the window?
It was a reverie—the like of which I am prone to. Watching Wall Street go out, room by room, floor by floor. By the time I surfaced the night had changed and the mood of the room with it and if I’d paid any attention I might have known why. A mêlée of political chat and booze chat suddenly had focus—Mailer. What it didn’t have was order. Everyone wanted a piece of Mailer. Somebody urged him not to run at all—sensitive if not good advice. I could tell from his look he was not wholly certain himself. Steinem said that Women’s Liberation could not be ignored. A young black woman said he should step down, before he’d even stepped up, for Adam Clayton Powell, New York’s best-known black politician, and Rubin threw a firecracker in the works with ‘Why not a Black Panther?’
Why not? Mailer told him why not. Because they weren’t running as a college boy prank, that’s why not. And as I looked around it all seemed to me to split up into the kind of pranksterness that gave the lie to that statement. Only Ken Kesey’s pranksters would have relished the anarchy into which we flung ourselves. Mailer wanted what he called a ‘hip coalition of the left and right’, to strike sparks off both and start the fire burning. It burned. A dozen people were yelling at him now. Who’s left? What’s right? These were not questions that needed to be asked. And they weren’t going to get answers. A phrase sprang to my mind, from nowhere I thought at the time, now it seems like prophecy—you don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows. You just need half a dozen to blow up a Con Ed station. Whumpff goes Bank of America. Whumpff goes West 11th Street. Hot damn, hindsight.