by David Rakoff
To have a quick pee and ingest primo mushrooms,
Look at that queen, that unbearable phony
Wearing full leather to Antonioni.
Their thinking was agile, imbued with bravura
Though logic was fragile, so L’avventura
Might start out a brilliantly dark meditation
On anomie in the post-war generation
Sick with the bourgeoisie’s morals-free habits…
Who thinks that the aisles are now crawling with rabbits?
This décor resembles a palace, a mosque, or…
How could they deny Judy Garland that Oscar?
It’s over with Jimmy, he’s petty, aggressive
And frankly, that much toile gets pretty oppressive.
Seen Cabaret? Liza’s three-fourths mascara!
Hey, what was that poem by dear Frank O’Hara?
“Lana Turner get up and … shoot John Stompanato!”
My god, Kathryn Grayson had killer vibrato.
Wait, Cheryl Whatever was Lana T’s daughter
And … how have we ended up here at the water?
A quiet walk home, maybe rent a blue video
The velvet-black woods of the nighttime Presidio
Tempered the high’s non-contextual mirth
And slowly returned them to heaven on earth.
The wee small hours always concluded with this
A feeling of grateful repletion and bliss.
He thought to himself, “How pear-shaped could this go
Anywhere other than my San Francisco.”
An insight that always cut keen as a knife
Whose wound was pure pleasure; Clifford loved, loved his life.
And credited most of that to his dear city,
He lived the reverse of what plagued Walter Mitty
No secrets, no longing, no desperate hoping
Just reach out and grab from a world cracked wide open.
Clifford once hoped that each Bay Area Brahmin
Would, aside from their wealth, have one more thing in common:
A portrait by him, rich with painterly skill,
He’d soon be the Sargent—nowadays—of Nob Hill
But that dream was forced through a major revision
The instant he’d gone out to drum up commissions.
Fresh out of art school, and more than proficient
He’d thought, like a dope, that his gifts were sufficient.
Not understanding his role was a mixture
Of lapdog and popinjay, servant and fixture.
Cliff lacked the fawning gene, just couldn’t glom
Onto dowagers ignorant of Vietnam,
Or husbands who thought it was his first time hearing
The usual jokes about “guys who have earrings.”
“I thought you were some chick, with all that long hair.”
(Although a true passion of his, somehow the ratio
Was off; Clifford just could not give that much fellatio.)
The only regret was one of economics
When he quit for a life in the underground comics.
But the joy of it outshone his bank account’s lack,
He climbed down from Nob Hill and never looked back.
Who left their heart in San Fran? It was me!
(It’s so good with two, dear. Shall we try three?)
Body surf over the ocean’s green swells,
Truffle for dick or go forage morels.
Sun-washed and fog-bound, electric with sex
Challenging, easy, naïve, and complex
It still filled him with a near-supplicant awe
That even grown up, they allowed him to draw
And then—here’s the part that was screamingly funny—
They’d then say “Good job, Cliff,” and then give him money!
Be a go-getter or bonelessly languid,
Laid out, displayed like a groaning-board banquet.
The square and the dyke and the faggot, the freak
Could easily find and then get what they seek
Unlike, say, New York where, regardless of hope
Or desire, lay a point where a red velvet rope
Stood between you and the goals of your dreams
(At least when he visits, that’s just how it seems).
“Cap’n Cocksure and Throbbin’,” his randy young pal
In tales like “The Shoot-out at KY Corral.”
Regardless of each issue’s sticky predicaments
They’d end in a blending of muscles and ligaments.
He brought to bear all from his life-drawing class
(Plus, given the Cap’n his ex’s Pete’s ass).
Tights of carnelian, a jock blue as lapis
And filled to a size as befitting Priapus.
In truth, he was Bruce Wang, a wealthy civilian
(The jokes were all similarly crude and vaudevillian).
Monthly, he’d battle some muscular villain
Who turned almost instantly horny and willing,
And ended with Cap’n who’d then throw his massive…
Err…weight behind Throbbin’, posed Grecian (and passive).
Thrusting and pumping, reliably nude,
Cliff’s magnum opus was thrillingly lewd.
The work of an overgrown, over-sexed kid
Rex Bond unfiltered, by way of Cliff’s id.
Blanche Tilley believed in true Heaven, real Hell
Her hair an immovable nautilus shell,
Was galvanized with a conviction near feral
When she sensed that children were somehow in peril.
Unburdened by much intellectual heft
She battled the evil she saw on the Left
“A mere servant to all concerned wives and mothers.”
(A woman who, truthfully, given her druthers,
Would see all the Libbers, the Hippies, the Gays
Hounded and rounded up and locked away.)
“I look at the state of this country today
And see such depravity, moral decay
That, truly, it makes me just weep for the nation
These crimes in the name of their ‘Gay Liberation.’
Just how do the First Amendment’s full rights
Extend to this sodomite rapist in tights?”
She called the strip filthy, overt, immature.
All charges to which Cliff responded with “Sure!
Cocksure is vulgar, he’s dirty and loud
Excessive and horny, and makes me so proud.
I draw him for those who might like it or need it,
But if you don’t want to, Blanche, well, then don’t read it!
“In some ways we two are a heaven-made match
But like much in life, there’s a deal-breaking catch:
We both love our lives, our convictions are strong
You’d think we’d be fast friends, but you would think wrong.
We think we’re the ones who are open, convivial
While others are hateful if not downright trivial.
We each fill the other with loathing and fear
We’d each like the other to just disappear.
To you, I’m a sinner, sprung full-formed from Sodom
Of lowliest creatures, I dwell at the bottom
I know it won’t sway you the smallest scintilla
To point out the sex is quite firmly vanilla,
The hatred you harbor’s divorced from reality
I draw a sweet blow job, you see bestiality.
How I wish you would stop up that bile-spewing spigot
You use when you speak, you rebarbative bigot.
You’re through and through Dixie and I, San Francisco.
Despite a shared fondness we both have for Crisco,
Try as I might, I simply can’t see
A way or a day when we two might agree.
So pack up your sideshow and go back down South
Where I won’t com
e knock the dick out of your mouth.”
Susan had never donned quite so bourgeois
A garment as Thursday night’s Christian Lacroix.
In college—just five years gone—she’d have abhorred it
But now, being honest, she fucking adored it.
The shoulders, the bodice, insane retro pouf,
Where once an indictment, now good, calming proof;
She’d no longer be tarred by the words “shame” or “greed,”
Tossed about by the weak. No, now Susan was freed!
If she wanted to spend half the whole day adorning
Herself, well what of it? The American Morning
Had dawned! At Oberlin stuff she’d feigned being above,
Had turned into all that she most dearly loved.
And conversely, stuff she might actively seek
Now repelled her as sub-par, too lenient, and weak.
Out was group therapy (adieu agoraphobics!),
In was massage, Silver Palate, aerobics.
Innermost was a Susan Improved and Untrammeled
Sleeker and diamond-bright, sharp and enameled!
She happily ate “poisonous” white-flour pasta
Whereas all those Ultimate Frisbee white Rastas
Didn’t seem sexy and free anymore,
And frankly, the U.S. in El Salvador
(Or out of it? Truly, she’d largely lost track
And hadn’t the patience to find her way back),
Among frailer aspects of the human condition
Now just turned her stomach. Once-hated ambition
Awakened her senses like rarest perfume;
It could render her weak-kneed across a large room.
It was all large rooms lately, all beautifully appointed
And Susan had somehow been specially anointed
To stand in them prettily, playing her part:
Girl at the nexus of commerce and art.
Her father was glad to augment the small salary
She made as factotum at the Nonnie Cash Gallery.
Nonnie was in the news seven months back
When she’d ended a group show by handing out crack.
“Let’s turn this new vice into something convivial!”
(The chief of police called her “clueless and trivial.”)
Susan adored her and worshipped her style,
Loved her pronouncements of “perfect” and “vile,”
Loved the sheer whim, the madcap willy-nillyness
And how deeply seriously Nonnie took her own silliness
(Though she’d have loved Hitler, if forced to confess,
If he had seen fit to have bought her that dress).
“The opening demands it!” Nonnie said on their spree,
“And Spraycan can bloody well pay, thanks to me.”
There was bourbon in hypos, doled out by chic nurses—
in truth white-clad models—Osetra beggars’ purses.
The waiters were done up like Jean Genet felons:
Brush-cuts, fake shiners, with asses like melons.
And serving as Boswells to Nonnie’s new caper,
Scribes from East Village Eye, FMR, Paper.
Nonnie barked orders in Urdu and Xhosa,
And with a “Ragazzi, servite qualcosa!”
Came the blush that rose when her blood started to sing
From a room where the energy gets into swing.
Look at this shit, she thought, pure onanism!
Ransom-note lettering, sequins, and jism,
Neiman impasto with touches of Basquiat,
Smoke, sizzle, bells, whistles … all of it diddly-squat!
Nonnie’d built him a name by dint of sheer will.
A bluff that distracted from his lack of skill.
Despite what collectors seemed willing to pay,
Spraycan 3000 had nothing to say.
Nathan was due as the evening wound down.
They’d rented a car for a week out of town.
Josh was in Chappaqua seeing his mom
They’d stop, pick him up, then continue right on
With luck they would reach the Cape not long past one,
A week on the ocean had sounded like fun.
But then the foreboding that started to loom
When Susan saw Nate standing there ’cross the room,
Clad in the uniform he’d worn since Ohio:
Birkenstocks, drawstring pants (think Putumayo).
With no small remorse, she thought, He and his mess
Better not come near this fabulous dress.
Ah, whither love’s ardor whose heat used to scorch her?
Now his mere face can assail her like torture
And being alone with him renders her frantic
It makes her a hectoring shrew, a pedantic
Wet blanket, although it is also true, in her defense
That Nate can be maddeningly oafish and dense.
Who chips a mug without knowing it, or
Doesn’t see that they’ve just spilt some milk on the floor?
And once pointed out, he goes all Lotus
Position-y, saying mildly, “Wow. I didn’t notice.”
She didn’t want some belching, farting, or toga-
Clad frat boy, but frankly, the wheat germ, the yoga
Seemed ersatz, some also-ran version of “mellow,”
This go-with-the-flow, unassailable fellow,
She just didn’t buy Nathan’s pressure-wrought grace,
And wanted sometimes just to slap that sweet face.
Now Day Three in Wellfleet, they’ve lost all their power
Which means no hot water, no lights, and cold showers.
And all Nathan does is repeat “This is cozy.”
She thinks that perhaps she’ll just get up and mosey
To where he is sitting to give him a smack.
Maybe the blow would do something to crack
This passive-aggressive façade for his shirking
Just going downstairs to get things back to working.
Or maybe, she thinks, I’ll just fuck your best friend.
Now, something like that might just bring to an end
This constant pretending that everything’s fine.
Maybe then you might evidence some sort of spine.
A thunderstorm could be heard off in the distance.
Susan had offered Josh any assistance.
“Sure,” Josh replied, “you can come hold the ladder.”
Nathan kept reading, which just made her madder,
And then madder still when he hadn’t detected
Her tone, which was heavily sarcasm-inflected:
“Need anything up here, Nate, before we’re done?”
“No, that’s okay,” Nate replied, “you guys have fun.”
“We will.” Her smile had a slight rodentine tightness.
Nathan went back to his Unbearable Lightness
Of Being, that summer’s one de rigueur book,
And, lost in the story, did not even look
Up from the page for an hour or more
When the others came through the basement stairs door.
“You were gone for a while. Must have got a lot done.”
“Oh, we did,” Susan said, squinting, as the lights all surged on.
Take Posner’s of Great Neck, the Falls at Niagara
And throw in that white marble tomb that’s in Agra—
Now if you compared the three places, you might
Think the Taj and Niagara were hiding their light.
At Posner’s, the subtle, subdued, and hermetic
Had no part to play. The rococo aesthetic—
An Empire, Art Deco, Chinoiserie garble
Of crystal and frescoes and gilt and (yes) marble;
A maximal, turbo-charged, top-drawer milieu—
Appealed to a moneyed crowd of locals who
Insisted on only the toppest of drawers,
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Weddings befitting a Louis Quatorze.
Venetian palazzo floors pounded by horas
Cut-velvet drapes framing chopped-liver Torahs.
Ceilings adorned with Tiepolo clouds
Vaulted above the dressed-to-the-nines crowds
Who gave off their own light with such glinting frequency
(good thing one need not kill creatures for sequins).
Nathan, from one of the outlying tables,
His feet tangled up in the disc jockey’s cables,
Surveyed the room as unseen as a ghost
While he mulled over what he might say for his toast.
That the couple had asked him for this benediction
Seemed at odds with them parking him here by the kitchen.
His invite was late—a forgotten addendum—
For Nate, there could be no more clear referendum
That he need but endure through this evening and then
He would likely not see Josh and Susan again.
That he had said yes was still a surprise,
And not just to him, it was there in the eyes
Of the guests who had seen a mirage and drew near
And then covered their shock with a “Nathan, you’re here!”
And then silence, they’d nothing to say beyond that.
A few of the braver souls lingered to chat
They all knew, it was neither a secret nor mystery
That he and the couple had quite an odd history
Their bonds were a tangle of friendship and sex.
Josh his best pal once, and Susan his ex.
For a while he could hardly go out in the city
Without being a punch line or object of pity.
“Poor Nathan” had virtually become his real name
And so he showed up just to show he was game.
His shirt had been ironed, his belt brightly buckled,
A shine on his shoes, a well-turned-out cuckold.
Susan’s sister was speaking, a princess in peach.
“Hello, I am Mindy, and this is my speech.
Susan, you are the best sister plus you’ve always had great comic timing,
So I know you won’t hold it against me when I do my specialty and
make my toast in rhyming.
You’ve always been a terrific runner, even though it made your shoes damp