Kouros means boy—as in the Dioscouri, the two boys, the twins Castor and Pollux who stand together in the National Museum in Athens balls-ass naked in Parian marble, much with the arm of the one thrown over the shoulder of the other, who is holding inverted the ritual torch, which signifies that he will die, abandoning the other, while Demeter, isn’t it?, one-third scale and off to the side, looks askance. The Dioscouri are too painful to look at, even in the mind’s gay eye. The faggot’s impossible dream has always been the same: the double, the complementary other (who is in fact the same, only more so); the one that comes into view getting away—remember the Madison? (No, I have no regrets to speak of, and yes, I love Phil, the insatiable old goat. After all, “only through the embrace of Pan, whose hairy thighs rub us raw even as they bring us ecstasy, can we learn to be fully alive.” I said the Dioscouri were the faggot’s dream. Dream lover, put your arms around you. Next.)
The kouros of Melanes is a giant stone boy, one of those that were attached to Apollonic temple precincts in the archaic period. (I’m remembering from a book I found once left behind on the ballet line.) The kouros I like best in the National Museum has his pubic hair sculpted into a seven-sided polygon comprising three triangles surmounting a trapezoid—the upper section, in other words, of a five-pointed star, so that it sits like a kind of party hat on top of the things themselves, the things we love, the things of life. Whereas, the Melanes kouros was abandoned, left unfinished. One day in the middle of whenever, obviously either an earth tremor or word of the landing of hostile forces in the harbor—something at any rate of greater consequence than a rustic panic or a long lunch hour—interrupted the work on this great stone boy, and either then or some time later he fell over backward, his right leg snapped off just above the knee, and there he’s lain for 2,600 years. (If you fell over at the Mais Oui—from too many stingers or too much heart—the queens would cha-cha right over your body, but somebody would always check your breathing, anyway. You had the feeling that even if Saint Theresa wasn’t interested, somebody was. Somebody would pick you up and take you home. Never your twin, never your opposite number, but somebody with a story; somebody who’d make breakfast. Somebody, with any luck, from the East Side. You remember when nobody lived on the West Side? “Except to do what I did last night, I never go to the West Side,” the East Side breakfast cook would declare. “All those people pretending to be poor!”)
PHIL ONCE TOLD JACKSON POLLARD that if he would go back to an earlier style (“Just something negotiable, Jack”), he, Phil, could probably see to it that the resulting canvases were hung in some of the better Italian restaurants in Greenwich Village. Instead of which, Jackson continued painting atomic fission. Phil said, “O.K., I’ll shut up and buy some.” (Phil picked up on three right things in the ’50s, besides me: Pollock, IBM, and Tiffany glass. Consequently, we are now what you would call comfortable.)
TO FIND THE kouros, you take the bus to Melanes and walk out of the town over a kilometer or more or rocky fields until the path ends at the base of a high hill, then turn left and climb over the stone walls until you find the sacred grove. An old Naxian woman sits at the edge of it in a rustic hut, selling ice cream. The easier way is to follow the main traffic road around the town and look for the sign that says KOUROS. This we found only on the way back, however (Cycladic Greeks being profoundly committed to withholding information), having failed to negotiate a return trip on the French-speaking bus tour back to the port, and having been mercifully picked up and driven there by a nice man from Piraeus—the town in Greece, absolutely—who was on vacation with his Naxos-born wife, but just then alone in the car, cruising (we decided not. Just a nice Greek. Goes to show you. The driver’s name was Kalegeropoulos. “That was Maria Callas’s name!” “Yes, it’s the same.” “What do you know,” said Phil. The conversation went nowhere, but Mr. Kalegeropoulos certainly was a nice Greek).
Phil took my picture sitting on the kouros’s chest. Poor gigantic, broken abandoned boy: features worn smooth by centuries of wind and rain. What significance! What I did last summer in Greece: I had a religious experience on Naxos to beat any Dolores could ever have had in her sleep under that blanket of dried apricots. (Or, as has been said better, in a similar connection, “Du musst dein Leben andern.” Ain’t it the truth? Only how?)
I have always been particularly interested in Jackson Pollock’s stone dowsing abilities. Apparently they, the stones, spoke to him from beneath the surface of the earth. He’d hear them, have them dug up, and relate to them thereafter. I think of it in connection with remembering.
Which reminds me of the time O’Maurigan insisted on dragging me to the MOMA party in honor of Douglas Sirk, and introducing me to the great man. I opened my mouth, and out came, “I’m so happy to meet you, Mr. Sirk. Written on the Wind changed my life.” His eyes brightened. “Oh, how?” I found myself telling him: Mary Lee, looking across the river… . “Oh, yes, of course.”
I MET PHIL NOT AT THE Mais Oui, but at the Cherry Lane. He sometimes tries to correct me, saying it was the Modem, but I remember that summer almost night by night, and it was the Cherry Lane. Phil gets confused because he remembers Trenchy being the mainstay at the Modem, but Trenchy left the Modem early that summer and went down to the Cherry Lane. We danced, Phil and I, which makes me absolutely certain, because there was no dance floor at the Modem. (Phil says there was no dance floor at the Floradora out in Jackson Heights either, but they all danced, which is what got the boys in blue so hot and bothered over at the 110th. But I remember it was the Cherry Lane; trust me.) We danced to the Everly Brothers’ “All I Have to Do Is Dream” and “Maybe Tomorrow.” Somebody sang “The Man That Got Away” along with Judy. Just another night in ’50s gay New York. We did it on the way home— that’s something else I remember—in the back of a deserted loading platform on Washington Street. Then we stopped off at Vinnie’s Clam bar. We sat up drinking espresso with anisette at Phil’s place on Mott Street, watching June Bride on the Late, Late Show, and when Robert Montgomery says to Davis, “I’m gay, I’m lovable, and I’ve got nice teeth—what more do you want?” I turned to Phil, smiled that crazy smile of the clown that used to advertise Tilyou’s Playland in Rockaway Park, and said to him, “So?” He said, “So I’m takin’ you away from Rockaway, away from Riis Park, away from Jones Beach, and away from Cherry Grove.”
Typical Phil, that remark. His point was that, although I never went near Jones Beach in the daytime (none of us did, not even to investigate the notorious “Gay 1.” Who had that kind of cab fare?), I was seeing a lot of that particular stretch of sand dune off the South Shore in the evenings. What had happened was that I fell—fell hard—for a gypsy in A Night in Venice, That was in July. By the Labor Day weekend, many performances of A Night in Venice later (which, incredibly, Phil started driving me out to, night after night), I was spending my last few days in Cherry Grove for twenty-nine years. It was there, away from him—but I’ll confess hearing his lyrical promessa to take me the next summer to the real Venice—that I decided on him (Phil). I got the name “Gay Dawn” that weekend. (That was the level of wit at Duffy’s in the Grove in the middle ’50s.) It used to make me frantic sometimes to hear about the ascendancy of the Pines—which hardly existed then—in the ’60s. There I was, an idle prisoner of love in uneventful Sagaponack (admittedly having seen the real Venice, and a lot more); but I know now, absolutely, that I wouldn’t have made it, by way of the Grove, to Stonewall.
STONEWALL. I’VE ALWAYS THOUGHT it was ironic about Stonewall. I used to say the “Mais Oui” riots or the “Cherry Lane” riots or even the “Floradora” riots would have called out a classier crowd, if you’re going to go in for the founding sisters performance. But I guess I’m prejudiced, maybe only because I was there at the Stonewall—which, let’s face it, was a dump. (So what? So was the Bastille, right?)
I don’t know why I went there that night, instead of home to our luxurious air-conditioned floor-through on Mott Street t
o pack for the country, except that I was wrecked, I admit it. It certainly was not to look at the go-go dancers. It was hot and I was wrecked. I was also a platinum blond that summer, and frankly, insecure as to my motives; but the big news of course and the big “reason” was that Judy was, finally, dead. I’d been up to Campbell’s to see the remains of her—one dope-dead doll, lying there like the last lost illusion—and instead of getting on the late Montauk train, as I’d promised Phil over the phone from the Plaza, I swerved out the back door and over to the chic little baths with the imbedded-at-all-hours orgy parlor with the jalousies that looked down on West 58th Street; left there rather more stained than consoled, and went down to Kelly’s on 45th Street to have a few beers. What I must have had in mind was some kind of sentimental tour of ’50s doorways, but the next thing I remember is coming to, screwed onto the top of a stool at the Stonewall, looking alternately up into the glass eyes of a champagne-blond go-go boy and down into the crystal matrix of a stinger.
I saw the amphetamine-crazed drag queen throw the cocktail in the officer’s unready face. I heard her scream over the dystonic strains of 1969, “That’s for Judy!!!”
And, as Bridey says to the judge in the immortal pee-in-the-pot urinalysis story, that’s when the fight started. Or, as Miss Charity would declare, “That’s the ‘T’ on that, dihr.” I got out of there and into a gay cab up the Avenue of the Americas to the heart of the former Tenderloin District. There have always been crises in my life—at least my life between my leaving of a certain institution upstate I may talk about later and the padlocking of the parks and stews in these plague years—in which the only comfort was the comfort of immersion in Everard’s glamorous and refreshing bathing pool (No Diving), and there I fled at the hour of decision on that Friday night, until it was time to catch that milk train to Bridgehampton. Poor Judy. You know, at the end they were throwing dinner rolls at her, the Brits, when she sang at the Talk of the Town on Leicester Square. (It’s nice to believe, but hard to be sure, that New Yorkers wouldn’t have thrown something—like empty amyl nitrite vials, for instance—at her at, say, The Continental, had she made it back stateside that summer to sing, then die. I would like to hear the Carnegie recording again largely because I can pinpoint the groove in which the engineers bleeped out Hank’s voice as he stampeded down the middle aisle screaming “Juuuuuudy—sit on my faaace!!!” (This is one of the many true-life details you won’t be seeing in the—can you believe it—Stanley Donen musical—musical!—of Judy’s life. And what are they going to call it? If Love Were All?)
So, am I going to call this Doctor Dove about a face lift?
I just got two fortunes in the third cookie. “A new opportunity will soon come your way,” and, “You are heading for a land of sunshine and fun.”
Wo die Zitronen blühn. Where the kouroi are all in perfect Joe Gage condition. Where I will station myself in repose under a raintree, signing autographs, prohibiting photographs, permitting certain delicate liberties to be taken with my person, gratis, and repeat and repeat in all ears, “I go back to the Mais Oui.”
“Penny candy, candy for a penny. I ask for more than a penny now; I’ve grown very wise you see. …” Name the show; name the performer; next contestant.
AFTER FORTY HOURS EATING salami and drinking Zeus water on the Beograd cannonball, we got to Venice, now as then (that summer after the first, betrothal summer) my favorite ride in Europe. We always stay at the same hotel, the Fenice/degli Artisti. It rained, which was divine. Venice in the rain is only to be surpassed by Venice in the snow. After I’d done my adornment scenes at Versace, we went and ate at “our little trattoria,” in back of the Teatro Fenice. There is a picture on the wall of the rear salone there of us from the ’50s, taken at a party we gave for Vanna Sprezza—remember her? She was the daughter of Phil’s mother’s cousin. The party was given after the gala world premiere of Trovaso Corradi’s Livia Serpieri, written for Vanna on commission from some Pacelli pastificcio and co-starring the then reigning Adonis of the Italian lyric stage, Giuseppe di Stefano (“Pippo”). It was a smash hit. I still play the Cetra recording, and think of Vanna, who lives these days in Taormina, up in the back. (We don’t look her up anymore; there was an altercation.) Both M.C. and M.’ C.’ (as we used to write them then) were there—in fact, they came together, without husbands. That was either just before or just after Morgana Neri died; I can’t remember which, only that Pippo told the funniest Neri stories anybody ever heard (in the Sicilian, naturally). The composer, the oldest living verista, conducted. Sets and costumes—never mind.
I JUST CAME ACROSS some thrilling words of wisdom in a book of literary criticism, of which I buy a great deal at the Strand Book Store, and read while listening to selections on this serious music station, to calm my nerves (after, for example, a session with Voltron Toilet). “The past’s unchallengeable facts account as much as the present’s uncontrollable accidents for the tragedies of human fortune. Faith in the fixed idols of anteriority, whether personal or social, serves as well as the ruins of past authority and times to disorder the conduct of present life.”
I ought to pay more attention to directions like these. I mean, so I go back to the Mais Oui. Big hairy deal. Phil goes back to Spivvy’s Roof, and beyond; do you hear him walking around New York talking about it, or singing “Why Don’t You …” at parties?
I’VE BEEN THINKING about that last time in Venice, though, because we had to get up early the other morning to go up to the boat house in Central Park, because old (and I mean old) Lila Aron, a former benefactress of Phil’s mother, was having the genuine Venetian gondola she’s giving to the city launched and floated out past the deconstructed Bethesda esplanade and around the Ramble promontory, featuring two, both genuine, Venetian gondolieri (talk about disordering the conduct of present life and the repose of a citizen with a piece of private theater). There we stood on a chilly morning, a handful of us, while “The Dogaressa” (Phil’s expression) cackled over her gondolieri to her gay heart’s content, twigging their dreamy nonchalance. (Each obviously possessed his own open-return ticket, Alitalia, to the Pearl of the Adriatic.) Of course the eerie little matinee had to remind me of what else but the Mawrdew Czgowchwz regatta, and of all the radiance of those times, time out of mind, but also, more so, of the O’Maurigan play Panache, in which, if anybody remembers anything in this age of information exchange, they may care to remember that I was a big hit in the juvenile lead, opposite the young Kaye Wayfaring. Well, you know how it is with a play: You never remember a line of your own. But I remember every syllable of that crazed old fairy Dixwell’s monologue about Venice that was directed at me to this day, and it came to me like a funeral oration that morning, because, well, I suppose the ceremony of the gondola was to me a little, as the French say, funeste. Anyway, that speech was the gay hit aria of the play, and more veterans of domestic wars than can ever have heard it spoken during the brief run of Panache have asked me about it over the years at parties. For a while it was all you heard talked about—after the vogue for the anthill-crucifixion passage from The Cocktail Party had passed.
There is situate somewhere in the divine
Municipality of Venice—serene
Republic that was before Napoleon,
Like so much else upon which more depends—
In a backwater, uncharted, an island:
Sant’Ariano. No vaporetto stays
To discharge passagieri. Never ask where
Of a Venetian the boat… never suggest
A gondolier … for on said isle lie rotting
The bare bones of those poor souls who have not shot
More or less straight to heaven by the octaves
Of their superintended demises, nor
On the anniversaries, until the years collect
And leases lapse on their snug graves in the bone
Yard of the divine serene that was before
Napoleon, like so much else—the Vatican’s
Most recent discretionary directive
Indicating, though not stipulating, thus:
That diocesan procedure ought, as in
All negotiation since Napoleon,
Stay flexible. Avoiding the radical
Boue of contemporary transalpine death
Theology, endorsing the opinion
That only the bones of the souls in Purgatory
May be presumed to have “lasted” in their graves.
The bones of the damned dissolve into the soot
That blackens maggots in their evolution
Into dung flies, whereas souls in Paradise
Leave bones behind that crystallize overnight
Into a kind of marzipan, collected
And stored in the vaults of the Basilica
Di San Marco. (Marzipan to be dispensed
To those tots who have taken First Communion
Without incident of gagging.) Now about
That legendary sacrilege committed
One night in Carnevale in the serene
Before Napoleon, and recreated
At the Venice Film Festival in the year—
You remember: the notorious Pranzo
Dei Morti held on Sant’Ariano:
The supper at which dessert was said to have
Been zabaglione, with slices of that same
Marzipan—“Oh, my God’.” screamed the New Yorkers
Overhearing the whole story at Harry’s
American Bar. “That’s disgusting! That makes
The flesh crawl right off my bones!” Like so much else
In backwaters, uncharted, never ask where… .
I SAT THERE AT LUNCH at Cipriani’s in the Sherry Netherland, after the gondola mass, eating zabaglione for dessert, and remembering that monologue again, word for word. Some people can’t forget the Gettysburg Address, or the letter Violetta Valery gets from Giorgio Germont and reads in the last act of La Traviata (“Teneste la promessa …”).
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