July 21, 2006
I was outside sitting under the shade of my vast boxwood tree when I heard the phone ringing. Something told me I shouldn’t bother answering. I ran in nonetheless. I had been calling Leon for two days to discuss the book sales.
It was not Leon on the phone. It was Russell. Just wanted to give me a heads-up that he would be appearing in court in Manhattan on Monday to seek an injunction to stop distribution of A Gentle Death. I told Russell to go fuck himself, then called my new guy, Jessie, who told me not to worry about it, said he would call Russell. If necessary, he would appear in court on my behalf Monday. For six hundred bucks an hour. And so it begins.
I called Elizabeth and got her answering machine. I wasn’t thinking about her not five minutes before. Now she’s all I can think about.
October 14, 1977
It sucks not being able to go to John’s. I’m polishing the story about him and ’Gitte and it makes me nostalgic for them.
I’ve been drinking.
My editor-buddy called and was all apologetic about our sex adventure. To make it up to me he said he got me an invitation to this artsy loft party in SoHo. I figured I better go. Good for the work. It was a catered party packed with women with hennaed hair and black fingernails and ponytail guys wearing handcrafted silver bracelets. Ironic people. People who like to drink hard liquor. The host, Stephen, was this tall, beaming, square-jawed guy who is without question an alcoholic. I guess he’s a big deal critic, also a big name dropper. He’s pals with Rauschenberg and John Cage and Lady Astor. When he tells stories they begin with “We were sailing off the rocky coast of Delos…” or “Polo season had just ended in the Hamptons.” This guy also hangs at CBGB and Max’s, so I guess he is a modern “Renaissance man.” How many people can say that they know Sid Vicious but have also gone deep-sea fishing with Fidel Castro? How many people give a shit?
Zim was there, so we spent the night in a corner, smoking cigarettes and arguing aesthetics.
We were doing blow in the bathroom when Zim pulled some folded pages out of his stained suit jacket. I scanned the creased sheets while he cut lines. My heart rang with jealousy. Somehow this fucker has a book coming out. I’m not sure when he has the time to write a book. Maybe it’s because all he does is write and drink, drink and write. He has no relationships. For Zim sex is a bodily function like having a bowel movment or blowing his nose. That’s what I should do. Write and drink. Not even bother eating. We got very drunk. Now I’m trying to write my John story but I’m too wasted so I’m going to get all this down, maybe throw up, then hit the sack.
July 23, 2006
Been hard at work all week, cranking out five pages a day. Drove into the city twice since my last entry. Couldn’t resist dropping into the St. Mark’s Bookshop. They had nothing of mine other than the second short story collection. Grabbed a cab and met up with Leon at Nobu. For Leon, A Gentle Death is already no more than a faint memory. Ditto my heart surgery. Leon lives in the “now” with no interest in yesterday. His only concern is the upcoming Sunday New York Times bestseller list.
He gives me the respect due to someone who once made a mark. No more than that. What more should I expect? Is the world of Sonny Mehta any different from the world of Roger Ebert or the world of Jay Leno? Literature, movies, variety shows—it’s all entertainment isn’t it? I am only one of many projects of Leon’s. It is a conceptual problem. That there are other artists as committed to their work as I am to mine is as impossible to imagine as my own death. Leon has other writers in his stable who excite him as much as I do, if not more. Writers like Joe Versa who win the MacArthur. Of course, it must be that way, but I can’t accept it.
Leon boasted that he had cajoled Kurt Vonnegut into squeezing out one more short book. So that was a big deal. He also mentioned the “lost” Nixon papers, co-edited by Norman Mailer, which is going to be huge. I guess there’s a passage in which Nixon describes meeting the young George W. Bush at a Washington party and gives his opinion of the future President. That chapter, having already been placed in Vanity Fair, guarantees the book at least one month on the bestseller lists.
Why do I care? What does any of this have to do with me? All the same, I am jealous of Leon. His ongoing engagement with the greater world is something I miss. In that way, Leon is still alive and I am dying. Or dead. Despite the fact that I have no appetite for it anymore, if I ever did. Fuck it. I don’t believe in unrequited love. The world isn’t interested in me and I don’t have the energy to bang the drum hard enough to revive the interest. So that’s that.
There is no safe emotional cave in which to hide. I am perpetually agitated. I reread my old journals again and again. The young cocksure dynamo who wrote them, I don’t recognize him. He left town. He’s not here anymore.
My back hurts. I need a massage. I need to find someone, hold them close and have them tell me that I mean something to them. I dialed Sarah’s number nine times today, hanging up before the first ring. I can’t tell her what she wants to hear.
I have a recurring fantasy of kidnapping Elizabeth and imprisoning her in an underground bunker, shackled to a damp wall. Deliver her meals on battered aluminum dishes. Stockholm syndrome would set in and she would have no choice but to love me. It’s not so far-fetched. In fact it’s an option. I would go to prison, but my reputation would be guaranteed. Everyone would read my books.
I went online and found my old roommate Dagmara. She is living and breathing in Warsaw as I write this.
July 25, 2006
Thunderstorms rolled through in the early evening, followed by a stupefying humid heat that has lingered all night. Mosquitoes and crickets thrummed in an immense concert of mindless orthopteran communication. Sleep came on so suddenly, I woke up immediately, quaking. A deeper morbid mood was seeping into my consciousness. Spending time alone in the house has never bothered me before. Now I lie in bed calculating how long it would take me to retrieve the shotgun wrapped in a towel on the closet shelf. To do what? Shoot an intruder? Shoot myself?
I roused myself at six-thirty and again motored to the minimart. The city newspapers were stacked beside the bundled firewood. Don had just finished brewing fresh coffee. The corn muffins were warm from the oven. The guy who looks after my place, Nat, wasn’t there and I didn’t really know any of the local guys by name. On my way back to my car, I felt them appraising me.
At home, drinking sour coffee from a Styrofoam cup, I scanned the obituaries. I do this every day now with an eye out for the sixties generation of wildmen who burned the candle at both ends and so paid the price of “early retirement.” The ones who did not have the sense to jump the Good Ship Lollipop when they had the chance. The reckless fools who lived without thought or care, now dying like flies. The aging rock stars and photojournalists and forgotten novelists. My mentors and peers, going one by one, out the door. And this trend will only accelerate until the obit editor gets replaced by a younger obit editor and the new guy doesn’t remember the quasi-famous well enough to bother memorializing them at all. Only the old movie stars will be remembered. “After a long illness…” or “In recent years, Mabel lived at the Sunset Nursing Home in West Levittown.”
I almost missed the name. Katherine Makous Walters. A designer.
Makous was Katie’s last name. Was this my Katie? Fifty-five years old. It must have been her. Would I have even noticed her name if I hadn’t been reading my journals?
Her obit filled in the time since I’d last seen her. Katie had become a success. Not as an artist, but as a designer. Designed lighting fixtures for important architectural projects. Her work was seen around the world, including the new Sony pavilion in Osaka. It will be a major element in the new Goldman Sachs building downtown. She had won awards. She was respected and admired by her peers.
We had been lovers. Or had we? We had sex. But not that much. Is that important? How well had we known each other, really? I barely remembered what we would talk about. I did remember that her ski
n was very warm to the touch. She was soft and slim and very pretty. I remembered her eyes and her fluffy hair and her small breasts.
Was she a good artist? I couldn’t remember. Her success must have come later after we lost track of each other. And never saw one another again. I guess we didn’t mean that much to one another. Where was that perfect peach skin now? Six feet underground, boxed in bronze or pine? Probably not. She was cremated certainly. So now she doesn’t exist at all. Better that way.
Did we discuss her art? We must have. I couldn’t remember. She must have been intelligent, she made a big success of herself in a very competitive scene. I wondered if she ever thought about me? She must have. I should go visit the Sony pavilion. See what she created. But I won’t.
Why hadn’t we ever seen each other again? Maybe I called her and she didn’t return my calls? No voice mails in those days. No e-mails. The answering machine had just been invented. Her voice is probably on a tape somewhere, stored away.
According to the obit she had had breast cancer. My old girlfriend was survived by her husband and two children. Certainly her family had surrounded her during her last moments. As we had with my mother. They were all there with her in the end. It had been worth it. She had died, but she had made her art and she had had her children. And long ago, when she was first trying to become an artist, she had slept with me a dozen times.
What if she had slept with me fifty times? A hundred times? We could have been together for years, but if, in the end, it came to nothing, then that’s all it was. Nothing. How it ends is what it is.
Ten o’clock in the morning and I was sitting at my kitchen table weeping for someone I hadn’t seen in thirty years. I’d fallen in love with her all over again. She had been an artist. We could have supported one another’s work. I would have been at her bedside when she passed. I would be a widower now, crying with good reason.
One by one, each will die. And whatever we had will die with us. Outside my window a catbird bobbed her tail. Dagmara is living in Warsaw. I could get on a plane tonight and find her and talk to her face-to-face. I could do that.
October 15, 1977
Went out on my own tonight because Katie was busy with her upcoming show. Saw something I have to write about, not sure if I know how to do that. It was early. The club was like a empty barn. Populated more by the staff than by anyone interesting.
I went upstairs and found a spot at the balcony rail and kept an eye on the meager crowd clustered beneath me. The music thudded, the blue-white auto-spots rotating in an attempt to liven up this vast black hole. Congregating at the bar were the usual drips and assholes.
In the middle of the floor a girl danced alone. She wore sneakers and a short cheerleader’s skirt, her hair was long and she flipped it with her movements. Her moves were lithe and sexy. She was exhibiting herself.
Not one person tried to talk or dance with her. Instead, a circle of emptiness moved with her as she drifted across the floor. The longer I watched, the more curious I became, because the girl was so sensual, so lost in her own freedom. Clearly she had been a professional dancer at some point, maybe still was. What kind of movement was this? Ballet? Jazz?
I headed downstairs to get a better look. In the center of the dance floor, under the swirling lights, she never stopped moving. The bemused crowd stood and nursed their drinks, all oriented toward the girl, appraising her with cool detachment. She pumped her legs in a way that invoked athletics. Her short schoolgirl skirt flew up so that her pale legs were exposed up to the panty line. She let her arms swing around her body, her breasts high and full. Her head hung slightly, as if she were dancing not to the house music but her own soundtrack.
The tempo slowed as the DJ searched for something that would tempt the onlookers onto the dance floor. The night was building, soon the dam would break and the room would flood with bodies. The girl stepped up and down in place, the way joggers do when they come to a busy intersection. Her perimeter of influence had become vague and ragged, the crowd inched forward, tightening what space she had cleared for herself.
She turned and faced me. Her hair cast deep shadows that covered her expression. Her body was perfect, her rhythm perfect. And then, suddenly, with a roar, the music swelled and the girl lifted her face to the ceiling as a swath of limelight washed over her.
I got a good look. She had a small mouth, like a hole in the middle of moonlike surface. Her eyes, what was left of them, were sightless. She had almost no nose. No real brow or cheeks or even a chin framed a “face.” If this was a face, it was the face of a snowman or a Mr. Potato Head. She was a living, breathing, dancing…cartoon.
An old guy nudged me. He shouted into my ear, “Survived a fire.” He wasn’t smiling. “They say she has no tear ducts.”
I almost ran home to write this down. She will make a great story.
July 30, 2006
Things have happened in my life I can barely remember. Things I’ve done that have hurt people. Does that make these actions bad? Not if I had no choice. And isn’t every artist selfish? How could he not be? But I have to keep things in perspective, I’m not a Stalin. I’m no Mao.
Most people have nothing to brag about but an unexceptional and mundane life marred by the most insipid indiscretions. I’m one of those people. I have secrets. Every man does. My saving grace is my capacity to forget my secrets. It’s the saving grace of all great men.
October 18, 1977
Just finished my delicious lunch of Yung Chow fried rice. Two bucks a pint. Packed with vitamins and minerals and cooking oil. Now I’m knocking back a couple of pots of espresso and I’m burning to work. Wrote about fifteen pages yesterday. It’s all going well. When I begin it’s still light out and the next time I look up from the typewriter the streetlamps are on.
The Big John short story is working out. It will be one of a series of short pieces, a portrait gallery of men I’ve met here in the city. Each piece is not a short story, rather it’s an impression. These individual portraits will combine to make a larger statement. The whole thing hangs together like a Calder mobile, each piece interacting with the next. I won’t have them published separately. The reader will have to dive into the whole thing all at once or not at all.
Last night I worked until midnight, then went out with Zim. New clubs are opening up. Not like the discos, these places are gloomier and no one’s dancing. The bands onstage are more aggressive, it’s not about music it’s more about anarchic theater. It’s about attitude. The bathrooms are packed with people filling syringes in the sinks and shooting up in the stalls.
Zim and I stay out until dawn every other night. There’s always something to do. Two nights ago we crashed an opening reception at Andy Warhol’s Factory near Union Square. This isn’t the original Factory, this is the new one. Lots of people trying to look cool. Zim has a simple philosophy: Drink the free booze until there is no more. Then leave. Which is what we did.
Zim said, “I know a place.” Under a dilapidated hotel near the meat market was a small stairway descending from the sidewalk. At the bottom sat a nude man with a guitar in his lap who collected the five-dollar cover. Inside people milled around. We found a table in a corner.
We were drinking Budweisers, discussing Gravity’s Rainbow, when about ten feet from us, someone looped a length of clothesline through a metal staple driven into a ceiling beam. Two guys in leather masks led in a manacled, blindfolded, naked masochist and proceeded to yank on the rope so that his arms were wrenched up behind him. While we sat conversing nearby, the two masked guys whipped the blindfolded guy with a cat-o’-nine, followed this with melting hot wax onto his bare skin, then started to shove ice cubes up his ass. Finally, they began ass fucking him right there in the middle of the room.
Zim ignored all of this. They could have been dancing to Donna Summers for all he cared.
I said, “That’s pretty weird, huh?” Zim picked up his beer and took a sip. He said, “Look at it this way, the guy’s gonna slee
p real well tonight.”
Zim’s a genius.
August 1, 2006
At the airport. Leaving for Poland in about an hour. I have accepted an invitation to visit the Film Institute in Lodz. They will pay for the flight and a stipend. I guess they’re big fans of the film adaptations of my stories, especially “Philosophy of Paradise.” (Of course.) Normally I wouldn’t have time for something like this, but I have a reason.
On the Internet, I’d found her address and phone number. Unbelievably Dag answered after one ring and suddenly the same warm, amorous voice of my roommate and lover was whispering in my ear.
I said, “Dagmara? It’s Richard.”
There was a pause. “Richard? Where are you! You’re not in Warsaw?” I gave her the details and detected a gradual cooling, nonetheless she invited me to visit her while I was in Poland. She lived only a two-hour ride from Lodz. Once I had heard her voice, I understood the danger of being in her presence again. She had been safely tucked away in my journals, put to bed as it were. A different Dag than this one. Dag of thirty years ago.
Nonetheless, I will see her. We will talk about old times. I will leave. Perhaps I will write about the visit some other time.
August 2, 2006
I’m in Lodz. My deluxe accommodations consist of a spacious suite of rooms dating to the mid-nineteenth century. The floors gleam with a thousand polishings. Amidst the fluted and ornamented cabinets, framed mirrors and faux Empire-style furniture sits an incongruous Soviet-style television set. Is someone watching me? Possible.
Along one wall, floor-to-ceiling windows overlook the town’s main drag, a museum of empty storefronts and modest shops, all garnished with the most elaborate architecture. There is no color in this world. No flowers or vivid posters. Only gray sky, gray buildings, and gray, barely ambulatory people, smoking, hauling along carts piled with root vegetables or walking bicycles.
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