My schedule: Get up early, seven or eight. Read the newspaper. Thirty-five push-ups, a hundred sit-ups, stretch. Make a huge pot of espresso coffee and write until I can’t write anymore. Usually until four or five. Then go out for a long walk. Breathe. Try to gather up more ideas. Then I eat something. Usually, I go by and visit Zim, talk philosophy and watch him sniff heroin.
Using this system I’ve cranked out sixty pages in the last week. And the stuff is good. I’m halfway through the second week of this. I’m going to dedicate this book to my mother.
Blake, my new agent, checks in every couple of days. He has sent samples of my writing to magazine editors. Then he asks me how the book’s going. Sometimes he dishes about his star clients. He knows Raymond Carver personally. Represents a guy named Richard Price, who is very interesting. I guess I’m in the big time now. But I have to get the writing done.
I visit Katie. We have bad sex and talk. She’s depressed about her show. There haven’t been any reviews. I don’t know what to say. I can’t tell her what I really think. I tell her her work is good while I rub her back so I don’t have to meet her eyes when I speak. How can I be with this woman if her work sucks? The whole time I’m reassuring her, I’m thinking about my own work. I know this book is going to work. I can feel it. Blake has confidence in me. I look at the writing of the establishment and I know I can kick their ass.
Deep down, I don’t care about Katie or her work. There’s only one thing I care about.
August 22, 2006
I arrived late to the two-hundred-year-old Little Italy church packed with Zim’s mourners. I squeezed in, nudging and wriggling my way toward the front. How is it that a guy who was a pain in the ass to almost everyone he ever met has become, the minute he croaked, beloved and celebrated by all of those people and more?
Of course, the little magazine publishers/editors, the ones who saw Zim as the second coming of Bukowski, were all there. His “publisher,” Joel Flowers, always believed in him and for Joel, it worked, because the cash flow kept his little press afloat. College kids couldn’t get enough of this stuff. Probably read all of three pages and stuck their copy of Zim on the shelf, never to be looked at again. But books are artifacts. They don’t have to be read to sell. Ask William Gaddis. Ask Stephen Hawking.
The pseudo-wise R.C. priest intoned the standard lines from Corinthians: “For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall they be made alive.” “The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death.” I fantasized Zim leaping out of his casket to pick a fight with the good Father. But Zim was dead and he wasn’t debating anyone.
I have never been comfortable in a church. When I was a kid I discovered that Catholic churches were particularly eerie. The melancholy Christ bleeding on the cross, tortured to death, malnourished, miserable. And not just Christ, but a club houseful of plaster saints. Hung upside down, beheaded, burnt to a crisp. Ronald Taft, who sat across from me in Mrs. Graham’s fourth grade class, once slipped me a color picture of Saint Sebastian, bristling with dozens of arrows. I said, “This is a joke, right?”
Ronald replied, “No, Richie, this is their religion! They love this stuff.”
A burnt-out Rod Stewart wannabe crooned while someone strummed a blues progression. He bowed when he was done. Were we supposed to applaud? No. Now three hefty black chicks belted out a gospel number. Zim had always liked the sisters. Part of his mystique. He dated them too. Zim must have known that this gave everyone the impression that there was more to him than met the eye. Gotta be a real man to bang a black chick, right? The entertainment portion of the afternoon came to an end when a bad poet strode up to the altar and recited a poem about a train leaving the station. Gawd! The guy was obviously auditioning for Joel. Sad.
Leon read his prepared pages and opined that Zim was the “purest” writer he’d ever known. Whatever the fuck “purest” meant. A saint? If there was a Saint Zim, he did not preside within the Satanic church that Leon attends every Monday through Friday. Death is the great transmuter in the arts. What was no good yesterday is what we all love today.
When it was my turn, I launched myself at the altar with a jocular stroll but as I struggled through the crowd, I tripped and almost fell on my face. I had wanted to tell the story about the night Zim and I drank beer at the Hell Fire Club and watched the guy getting whipped, but after my awkward landing I lost my nerve. So I recounted a cute anecdote about the first time Zim and I ate sushi stoned on a half-gram of red Lebanese hash. Warm laughter. Sniffles. Okay. I looked up and saw appreciation on the faces of the mourners. Enough. He was pure, he was courageous. We mere mortals would have to soldier on without him.
Zim’s young nephews, possessed with the violent mien of Serbian soccer players, easily hoisted the coffin onto their broad shoulders. I imagined them beating someone to death with baseball bats. They were part of the extended family members who had arranged and paid for Zim’s funeral, paid for the flowers and the cemetery plot.
Zim’s two sisters and two brothers followed. The brothers had a comic resemblance to Zim. Zim without style. Zim without intelligence. One was actually handsome in the same way as Zim, but endowed with a slightly dazed expression. The sisters were middle-aged, heavyset and grim. Their expressions said, “We saw this coming.” The fact that Zim had predeceased them only served to reinforce their collective opinion that they were right and he had made a big mistake moving to New York City to be a writer and now justice had been served.
Zim’s dad, stoic, slab-faced, brought up the rear. Retired, preparing for the last stages of his own life: bouts with diabetes, emphesema, maybe a touch of cancer. Probably counting the minutes till his next cigarette. And angry. Very angry.
The crowd filed out behind the family. We understood that most of us would not be driving out to the cemetery. A cold luncheon buffet would be served later, but since the family was paying, none of us were invited.
The mourners milled around by the worn brick walls of the churchyard as the cortege loaded up to leave. A few ventured onto the street only to be warned back by the honks of passing cars. I corraled Leon and shook his hand. He absentmindedly took mine as if he wasn’t sure who I was. He was riding with the family to the cemetery. For a moment I wondered if I should join them, but no, it would be an empty gesture. If Leon wanted to play this farce out, that was his choice. He felt guilty about Zim. I didn’t.
The remains of the crowd broke up. I drifted off in an uptown direction, toward the bookstores.
“Rich! Richard!”
A wino approached me. Somehow he had harvested my name and was attempting to snag a couple of bucks. I assumed a stony expression. But then the years fell away like a computer-generated aging program run in reverse. The guy became more and more comprehensible. First the smile, then the eyes, the gait. It was Jack. Good ol’ Jack!
“Jack?”
Grinning. Limping? “Richie!”
“Jesus.” How does one show up at a funeral and not run into someone who makes you uncomfortable? Jack had always been a nice guy, but I didn’t want this. Not today.
He brimmed with pathos and empathy. “Can you believe it? Poor fucking Zim, huh?”
“Yeah, poor fucking Zim. I didn’t know you knew him.”
“We worked together on a series of videos. In the eighties.” Jack’s voice was hoarse, and he cupped a cigarette in his hand. He carried himself with a slight limp and wore a Carhartt jacket, a style that had come and gone ten years ago.
I played along with Jack’s good cheer. Tried to make it as painless as possible. “Right, videos, I heard something about that. The thing at the Guggenheim? I didn’t know you worked on that.”
“Zim always talked about you, man. Especially when you started to hit it big.”
“I can only imagine.”
“He loved you, man. Guy had a huge heart. Generous.”
I didn’t want to talk about Zim anymore. “And where have you been, Jack? All these fucking years.” I’m good at this, making a bad situation wor
se.
“You know man. Doing my thing.” We’re moving northward now, Jack dipping ever so slightly with each step. The limp, was it from the motorcycle accident?
“The bartenders don’t miss us, huh?”
“No more barhoppin’, Richie, no more barhoppin’. And you, you’re a busy man. Must be so cool. I saw a picture of you in the paper hanging out with Alec Baldwin. Proud of you, man.”
“Thanks. The funny thing is, I don’t really know Mr. Baldwin. We just happened to be at the same place at the same time. You live in the city still?”
“Same place I always had. Richie, you remember! Right up the street here. Bleecker. Come on up for a drink!”
Could I have said, “No, Jack, I don’t want to come up and have a drink because something about you frightens me”? No. So I said, “I only have an hour.” He had called me “Richie.”
“Sure man, sure. I understand. No problems.” Big grin. He was missing a tooth. “Just great to see you, man.”
Was his enthusiasm genuine? Even though I saw him as a failure, Jack didn’t see himself that way. He was still dreaming his dreams, scheming his schemes. And now, who showed up in his life again, but the big writer, the star, “Richie.” I girded myself.
At Bleecker Street, instead of the dilapidated neighborhood I remembered, we were met by three active construction sites that were once trash-strewn, rat-infested lots. A warehouse next door to Jack’s place had been gutted and renovated. It featured a slick foyer complete with the ubiquitous doorman, minimalist art and potted fig.
With a flourish Jack unlocked the building door (clean and freshly painted, no longer stuccoed with peeling flyers and stickers) and we mounted the two flights. As we passed baby strollers standing outside his neighbors’ doors, I wanted to ask him how much his place was now worth. A mil? Two mil?
The loft was almost exactly as I had last seen it. Lots of stuff: a bicycle, a tire pump, stacks of record albums and CDs and videocassettes, books, milk crates, half-disassembled electronic equipment, tripods, skis, balled-up clothing, cowboy boots. The light was muted and pleasant, tinted the color of late summer afternoon. A faint breeze freshened the room. The rear windows, veiled by a security gate, faced the back side of another building, one still clearly in use as housing for welfare recipients. Jack’s yard had been manicured, but on the other side of the razor-topped chain-linked fence, a bare-branched tree dominated a muddy yard. That tree had been leafy when I had last seen it.
Jack dug up two pint cans of Newcastle Ale and a fifth of Talisker single malt scotch. Once we were committed to getting fucked up, it was a swift ride back to the seventies. Back to all the good times I barely remembered. With alcohol in me, the tense morning evaporated and I was no longer the “busy guy” who “has to get going.” And Jack was no longer a scruffy and annoying street person, but the great guy he always was. I became “Richie” and he became “Jack.”
My cardiac condition made no impression on my old friend (He is an overgrown kid. Age, illness mean nothing to him.) until I showed him my scar, whereupon he showed me his mangled leg. It must have been very serious. Why hadn’t I seen this before? I couldn’t remember.
We began to talk about women. I gave Jack an abbreviated history of Elizabeth and Sarah. He then filled me in on his women, a remarkable parade of choreographers and poets and journalists and filmmakers. The standout was one well-known New York Times columnist who wrote on photography. They had lived together for a number of years. No children because, as it turned out, Jack was sterile. The couple discussed adoption or finding a donor but in the end, they had broken up. “Better that way. I’m not a family guy,” Jack confided with jocular manliness. But as he said it, his eyes conveyed the opposite.
I tried to help him out. “A lot of horny women out there. Someone’s got to take care of ’em. If you and me don’t do it, who will?” We laughed, enjoying the lie. In the old days, when we had been two guys out there carousing, on our own, unfettered, we thought we’d wanted that. But we’d never had a choice. We were lone wolves, condemned to be lone wolves forever. Old lone wolves. Older and grayer and slower.
I was high on the scotch and ale when Jack suggested we go out. I knew this wasn’t a good idea. I was more than happy to waste another hour with Jack, but only within the safety of Jack’s four-walled “pad.” Hidden away from the eyes of others, Jack and I could stroll memory lane with easy abandon. In public we would be nothing more than two pitiful, drunken, middle-aged men.
We reminisced about one drunken night that began in the East Village, moved onto the Staten Island Ferry for six round-trips and finally landed at the Brooklyn loft at three in the morning. After making respective toasts to John’s superior weed and ’Gitte’s delicate, overwhelming beauty, Jack paused, dropped his smile and said, “Something happened between you two guys.”
“Yes.” I tried to stand, but the whiskey had cooked my legs into limp pasta. I stayed put.
“I mentioned you one night and John’s face turned red. He didn’t want to talk about you. All he would say was—excuse my French—‘Fuckin’ rat.’ What did you do to him? I thought you guys loved each other.”
“I’m not sure. I just stopped going over there.”
“Yeah. He seemed pretty pissed off.”
Why not tell Jack the truth? “I taped him.”
“Taped?”
“I audiotaped John talking.”
“Why’d you do that?”
“I was inspired by his persona, his style. I wanted him to be the basis for a character in my first collection of stories. Not really stories, more a set of profiles. Not really fiction or factual.”
“Yeah, I remember that book. I think I have a copy here somewhere.”
“It’s still in print.”
“That was a funny story. He was pissed off at you for that?”
“That and the taping in the first place. He saw it as a kind of transgression. And then, John’s ‘portrait’ got a lot of attention. But by the time the book came out, I hadn’t been to John’s for a year. Then one night he called and started ranting about how he wanted compensation. Said he was going to have my legs broken. Scared the shit out of me. I had to change my phone number and everything. Listen, John knew I was a writer.”
Jack lit a joint and passed it to me. “You ever write about me?”
I took a drag of the weed, exhaled, passed it back. “Nah,” I said. There’s a limit to the usefulness of truth. What Jack didn’t know wouldn’t hurt him. Using all my concentration, I rose from the low futon couch and lurched into the bathroom. Everything was adrift, the hair-streaked bar of soap, the cat box under the sink, a roll of toilet paper next to it, the Men’s Health magazines strewn around the toilet bowl. Under the vanity mirror stood trendy perfumes and hair dressings. I was nauseous, the room swung like a pendulum. I held on long enough to piss.
Stiff-backed but shaky, I made it back to Jack and announced my departure. I fumbled with my cell phone as if it were the reason for my exit. I thanked Jack for his hospitality.
After that, I have no memory. Whether I passed out on his floor or cabbed home, I don’t know. All I recall is trying to fit my car keys into my apartment door, then, morning.
December 15, 1977
I’ve sent my raw manuscript to Blake. I figure he can read it over the holidays and then we can make a plan. I told him he should send it to Random House and Viking first. Been hanging out with that Esquire guy, Leon. He’s got a great sense of humor. And great coke.
December 16, 1977
There’s been a new development between me and my girlfriend Katie. We had just had sex and I was falling asleep when a sniffling sound woke me.
She was crying. Just lying next to me crying. And then she made this big confession about how she’s always been so fearful and intimidated by me and Zim and the whole scene and now her show’s been a failure and she feels like killing herself.
I held her close and tried to soothe her. I didn’t really k
now what to say, so I said that no matter what happened, I loved her and she could always depend on that. She hugged me hard and sobbed and told me that she loved me but had been afraid that if she ever admitted that, I would leave her!!!
My heart flooded. I wanted to cry! What an incredible breakthrough between us! We started to kiss and then I got hard again and then we had the most amazing sex we’ve ever had!
This morning she was like a different person. Very quiet and shy with me. She kept smiling at me. I’m not used to this. But it’s good.
August 23, 2006
Jack called today, checking to make sure that I made it home safely. I don’t remember giving him my phone number. No suggestion of “getting together for a cup of coffee,” none of that. He had been satisfied with our short bonding session. Trying to cut the call short, I lied and said I was going out. He repeated that it was great seeing me again. I said the same. He asked me if I wanted John’s number.
“John’s number?” For a moment, I wasn’t sure who he meant.
“Big John. He moved to western Massachusetts years ago. Him and ’Gitte. Thought you might like to have it.”
“John doesn’t want to hear from me.”
“When I saw them, ’Gitte asked about you. I couldn’t tell her anything ’cause I didn’t know.”
“’Gitte asked about me?”
“Yeah, man. And as far as John goes, ‘time heals all wounds,’ right? You should call him. I bet he’d be happy to hear from you. What’s the worst that can happen?” I took down the number, then Jack said he had to run, as if he had completed his obligation and didn’t want this call to be misinterpreted for friendship.
September 30, 2006
It’s been a wicked, as we say in New England, couple of weeks. I had planned to take a day to gather my wits, buy books, find Leon, perhaps have a good meal somewhere. Instead I got a hysterical call from my sister. Dad was in the hospital with pneumonia. I promised to drive up.
I found Dad tucked away in an anonymous hospital room, dwarfed by his massive mechanical bed. He lay there with all the animation of a large deflated balloon. His eyes signaled resignation, blurry and moist, like a blind man’s. Dripping bags of sugar water, oxygen tubes stuck in his nose, other cables leading to monitors and beeping machines, the whole shebang encircled by a flimsy curtain symbolizing privacy. Even the smell was a cliché: baby powder and urine and shit.
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