“Good God, Mike, it’s you.”
And
Good God
Gainor
It’s you
22
“MIKE, FOR GOD’S SAKE don’t go now. Just wait another hour till I come off duty.”
With a wine-soaked Gainor pleading in his reasonable way, I did reluctantly finally succumb to his blandishments to travel back with him to his apartment. Knowing already by the odd references made by him to his two flat mates, to whom he referred as Mutt and Jeff, that there was a certain degree of misunderstanding and disgruntlement between him and them. I was still remembering the poor sod in his shiny brown suit and bright orange tie, whom Gainor had sent on the wrong plane and who, instead of arriving in San Juan, Puerto Rico, after flying 1400 miles, was to end up 4000 or so miles away in the arctic clime of Helsinki, Finland. And of the other Puerto Ricans he might have also sent to even more distant foreign parts. But now in borrowed ill-fitting clothes and covered by a voluminous raincoat reaching down to his ankles, for he wore no trousers at all, we traveled back by airport limousine along through these quasisuburban and commercial wastelands to be dropped off from where it was a brief walk to Gainor’s apartment.
And I should have guessed if not known. Adjoining the building’s entrance, there was a cocktail bar to which ready access could be made from within Gainor’s front hall. Although the stairwell was ill-smelling of dental, medicinal and cooking fumes, the apartment up another four floors was reasonably pleasant. With a modest-sized kitchen and a bathroom on one side of a hallway, there were three adjoining bedrooms on the other. The third of which was Gainor’s. And which had originally been a dining room connected to the sitting room through French doors. There was indeed nearly a hint of luxury about the adequately furnished and reasonably spacious place. All except for Gainor’s own bedroom, which at first he would not let me see. Then as I reminded him of having acquiesced to travel back with him instead of doing the wiser and preferred thing of returning to Woodlawn, I politely as I could insisted.
“Mike, do please believe me when I say I can’t let you see in there.”
“Gainor, you must. And more for the reason that you won’t.”
“Please, Mike, some other time.”
Gainor’s response contained more than a hint of chaos and disorder. And as I could just faintly make out odd shapes through the curtained French door, I was of course more eager than ever to see within his sanctum. But I no longer persisted when I could sense that he might feel it an invasion of his needed personal privacy. When he excused himself to get out of his borrowed clothes, I idly perused a subscription copy of a magazine devoted to men’s fashions belonging to the persons with whom Gainor shared the apartment and to whom he now referred as being overly fastidious and positively covetous concerning their every belonging. But then my moment came. A scream of anguish erupted from Gainor’s bedroom. The lights went out. And still able to see by the illumination in from the street and believing Gainor had injured himself, I rushed to push open the door. There was the smell of burning rubber.
“Mike, I’ve just nearly been electrocuted.”
The lights of the apartment had short-circuited and Gainor had now lit candles, which were stuck in the tops of empty wine bottles. In his long underwear, he stood, holding aloft a lamp as does the Statue of Liberty, the cord of which had hugely fused. In the room, there was a double bed which dipped deeply in the center and seemed broken in the middle. Erected across it was an American Indian wigwam, the top of its support poles attached to the bedposts and reaching the ceiling. It was from within this indoor shelter that Gainor had removed the lamp. On his dressing table, along with bits of food, stale breads, bacon rinds and cheese, was another wicker gallon bottle of Chianti, a Trinity College tie knotted around its neck. Nearby stood a serenely elegant photograph of Pamela and one of his two beautiful little daughters. And out here, where Queens Boulevard seemed to have deposited Gainor in this folorn oblivion, I felt the crushing heartache that was in this scene of loneliness and isolation. Except for the sobering, cold fear of what might yet befall us, tears did well up but did not drop from my eyes.
“Mike, do please forgive me for the appalling state my bedroom is in. But I do wish that the feeble electrical appliances in this country would bloody well work without their risking killing one, which this damn lamp has now nearly done twice. I use it to be able to read in my wigwam I erected, which, made of strong deer hide, not only helps keep me warm but gives me a sense of protection while I sit in there with S.D., attired comfortably in my long underwear. It also helps shield me from the noise down in the street. And these hex signs painted on the panels keep away evil spirits. See. This flap opens and I keep your manuscript and pictures quite safely in there. Indeed, without those two things to sustain me, I think I might have totally given up. I also, while squatting Indian-fashion, eat my frugal meals within. And indeed partake of sips of Chianti. Also while squatting Indian-fashion.”
“Gainor, I must go. Just tell me where I catch the subway.”
“Mike, stay with me, please, just a little while longer. Just give me a moment to shower, shave and dress. And then we’ll both travel across to Manhattan Island together and visit Lea. You know how much you admire her singing. Meanwhile, here, have this nice little bit of cheese and let me fill you a glass of this, one of my favored wines. That’s one good thing, you know, America has plenty of la vino. Esperanto for wine. And it is called the same in Czech and Serbo-Croat. Oh yes, I know my Esperanto these days. Indeed wine is called ‘vins’ in Lettish and ‘vynas’ in Lithuanian.”
Reclining woman in a decorated sarcophagus and prone in a manner in which she might be deemed comfortable should she not again arise.
Lea was one of the more beautiful products of the fabled world of Hollywood, and was as well the former wife of Ernest Gebler, from whom she had decamped to America. Leaving behind nestled within its often mist-cloaked forest of pines, the somber rural splendor of Lake Park, and a Gebler who, following her departure and riven in pain, then sat the months away in silent reclusiveness, relieved only by a bickering household staff and my own occasional presence when we would over whiskey talk the night away. Myself predicting again to him the hopeful. That along with women, even hearts, lungs, kidneys and maybe even brains could be replaced.
And Lea was now residing in an elegant town house in the west of Greenwich Village. This alluringly attractive woman had veritably stunned the male population of Ireland with her lively presence. Her open optimism inspired poets, painters and even turned lifelong vegetarians into meat eaters overnight. Possessed of a marvelous singing voice, she would lull her admirers into contented reverie. But Gainor and I had always remained aloof from her considerable charms, reminding each other, or at least Crist reminding me, that American women were of a cast and intention that would never suit us who had got so accustomed to Europeans. But Lea instead made for both of us a charming and enthusiastic acquaintance who could do no wrong. Plus she did what was most important for me, was to buy two of my paintings which Gebler promptly expropriated and used to fence out the neighboring farmer’s sheep. And I was such a good painter, no wonder she left him.
Having had to acquaint himself with the maze of the subway for his court appearances, Crist was now an expert. Without a hitch or a schnozzola to smash, we found ourselves traveling by the Fourteenth Street Canarsie Line to land safely in Manhattan. Surfacing at Fourteenth Street and proceeding on foot. And while wandering these few blocks south, we were drawn up in our tracks. When from high-up barred windows, graphically obscene shouts came screaming down at us. Gainor staying me by the arm. And as he often did now, speaking a few words in Spanish. Stopped on the street, we looked up and saw the shadowy shapes of women clutching the bars at an open window.
“Hey, you cocksuckers down there, come up and fuck us. There are too many lesbians in here.”
“Guts, listen. At last, the unexpurgated voices of America speak.”
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Unknowingly, Gainor and I had passed the House of Detention for Women. But we had now arrived at West Eleventh Street and were climbing the brownstone steps to this town house. There was already a hint of Yuletide spirit in the air. From late Christmas shopping, Lea piled out of a taxi with armfuls of presents. She made cheering greetings as she rushed through the house. A maid in the kitchen was making drinks. But we found that even Lea was missing Europe. As she provided Gainor with his favorite whiskey, Powers Three Swallow Gold Label, I heard the pair of them listing cities and places which they referred to as finding a port in a storm. Lea, a generous hostess, there was much clinking of fresh ice in glasses and more Irish whiskey to wash down the delicious cream cheese canapés. But one could sense that her husband-to-be, John Fountain, although in a remote way pleasant, now glumly sitting in a chair and with his leather-bound Yale yearbooks neatly placed on his shelves, was not anxious to have this pair of visitors, as Gainor and I were, overlong on his doorstep. Indeed, one even sympathized with him and was equally anxious to be gone. But at least there were the moments enjoyed of the camaraderie that one felt still existed with Lea from all our previous rain-soaked and wild windswept country life in Ireland.
Following more drinks and more canapés and a song or two, Gainor and I took our leave to call upon another lady, appropriately called April. For she was, with every bit of her tall, willowy, blond beauty, a harbinger of spring. She said she had to put on her evening livery and would shortly join us. Repairing to a bar a short walk away on the borders of the Hudson River and within the moaning sound of the West Side elevated highway, we were briefly left to ourselves again. And in the bar atmosphere, once one had started, it was hard now to stop quaffing back the beer and Gainor his whiskey. Plus there was no one better than Gainor Stephen Crist inside a pub to make one feel enjoyably at home. His silent way of engaging anyone, and then as they spoke he would speak. Obeying a religious ritual of behavior and possessed of a solemn confidence, Gainor’s every nuance was like an actor on a stage. The way he stood or reached for his drink or took out his cigarettes or lit one. His eyes assimilating everything. His aura introducing an unspoken camaraderie to make even the most dull bar the most salubrious in the world. At his approach, bartenders could be nearly seen assuming a physiological readiness to give the attention that this man’s demeanor casually demanded. And such bartender would be the recipient of an immediate reward with Gainor’s words.
“Will you have one yourself.”
And always Gainor and I would refer back to the pub which was like no pub anywhere and made us never to forget that one night spent in Kells, County Meath, when on our way hitchhiking and walking to the west of Ireland, we met up with the man who was the only man there and who said he’d been on Forty-second Street and Broadway and he’d seen the lights. But who came back again to Ireland and drank away his farm, selling the fields one by one. Coming to the conclusion that with a scythe out in the meadow and the sweat coursing down your cheeks, what was the use cutting thistles when they would grow again and even more of them the next year. And sure you’d go to the hedge and look down the road. Then raising his pint of stout, he’d say,
“And I came back to this.”
And that night back then, I could not drag Gainor away, as he had, as he almost invariably did in bars, established an unspoken camaraderie with this man who killed his horse riding it to exhaustion by moonlight across the countryside. And as it was with this man, so it was with Gainor. That anyone near enough by to overhear his mesmerizing comments reflecting the state of being, would, alive that moment in that bar, in that place and on that continent, know that there was nothing else to know beyond what he already knew. It was Gainor’s entrance to such environs that made everyone there sense his presence and wait for him to speak, which he did then with just the very slightest hint of conspiracy. And such things that he said were always said with reassurance of comfort and encouragement in his voice.
“Mike, better days are coming.”
In the same way, he ordered drinks, and then, while these were forthcoming, would reach for his cigarettes, carefully selecting one, then perusing it for further perfection, would, packing the tobacco with a tap on the back of his hand, place it in his mouth to flare it alight with a wooden match. And then, just as drinks were laid to rest in front of him on the bar, he would, as he did this night, remark to me.
“Mike, don’t worry, everything is going to be all right.”
And it was blissfully for a while as April swept in. Smilingly gleeful to see us and we to see her. Who had such blunt words to give anyone for advice. If you dipped your wick, expect to pay for the oil. And if your prick didn’t give you any fun, have it cut off. But with April’s arrival, there were words from a pair of lesbians a few feet away down the bar. And one had an immediate sense that everything, as Gainor said it would be, was quickly not going to be all right. In what could be if it chose to be a very tough bar indeed. April being the center of attraction and attention. And the battle of words and that of the fists to come started slowly enough. And instead of stevedores, meat butchers or truck drivers giving us annoyance, it was two mannish females. Who did seem to have a couple of male friends at a nearby table and both of whom were looking upon their accosting us with amusement. I knew that my beard invariably invited trouble, but the unexpurgated words of the stunning April now overheard down the bar, did even more so.
“Hey, guys, don’t mind me, just go give those two bull dykes a cock between their legs to chew on with their meat grinders.”
It always amazed me how it could be assumed that Gainor and I were such pushovers. Many was the battle one had in and out of the boxing ring, and one was not half bad as a wrestler. But Gainor as an adversary was something else again. Arms of crushing steel strength and fists which were administered with whiplash lightning, he was a formidable opponent. It was also a long mystery to me why it was that I was always the one to be first faced into battle to get killed while Crist chose to stand approvingly by at the sidelines, taking bets on my winning. He did say once that he liked the way I employed perfect economy in the use of my energy and also that he liked to hear my voice raised in battle cry, enunciating what I was going to do to my antagonist as I waded in, shouting, “Off to the beach fighting amphibians, we sail at break of day. And I’m going to break your ass in fifty or more pieces.”
“Hey you, what did you say.”
And now this was one of the lesbians speaking. Poor Gainor had had a long day of it. And for the first time in Crist’s bar history, I did not immediately hear him answer this riposte to April’s remark and invite a long philosophical explanatory discussion. Instead, he continued with describing to April and I some of the more amusing of his long-suffering domestic difficulties out in the bereft climes of Queens Boulevard. But the ignored lesbians, who had been making eyes at April, now said something more provocative.
“Hey, we asked you a question. Who the fuck do you think you are.”
These abusively dreadful words were an indication of how weak and defenseless we looked in this rougher part of town. And certainly having in tow one of its most spectacular inhabitants, making us an even more conspicuous target. One was beginning to feel that it was time to be gone quicker than soon. Remembering that to be near big rivers in a city was always a threat to a sailor’s good health. And in our present situation, with the unexpurgatedly outspoken and willowy curvaceous April, who could hammer you senseless with her few words, things could be heading for an unholy and because of their gender, one-sided war with two formidable amazonian lesbians. Again one waited, mostly wondering who might explain who we thought we were, but knowing that our silence was rapidly accruing courage to our potential adversaries and to the now two smirking gents at their ringside table. The dykes, clearly bored in an otherwise empty bar, couldn’t believe their luck at the appearance of April, who, having removed her coat, and dressed in a satiny black sweater and skirt, revealed a stunning figure, whi
ch elicited the lesbians’ observation.
“Hey, honey, we won’t chew on pricks, we’ll chew on those beautiful tits of yours.”
Whoopsie doodle dandy. The night was turning out swell. Here in the environs of New York’s meat market and the faint smell of dead fish. April, a former model, was married to a burgeoning businessman who was often away. She said she liked to call a spade a spade, and if the husband kept making lots of money, she wouldn’t, except for either Crist or me, leave him. But there is no doubt that Crist and I this night were both thinking of leaving. For the lesbians, obviously a pair of weight lifters, looked very tough indeed. And my God, after all these months of our American sojourn enduring misunderstandings, rejections and hostilities, instead of now being presented with a wonderful opportunity to make someone deserving atone for all the indignities and suffering heaped upon us, here we were with one of New York’s most beautiful women having to end up trying to protect womenkind by fighting women.
“Hey you, the tall good-looking guy, did you hear what I said we’re going to do to your girlfriend.”
Albeit threatening, this was a little more polite, and Crist in his gentlemanly manner immediately deferred to me as being the one referred to. But April for the first time was showing a distinct sign of nervousness, and as it would then happen her accent would always slip into a deep hillbilly southern drawl.
“I ain’t going to let any ole pussykissing dyke chew on my tits and that’s for sure.”
However, it was at this point that I was sure Gainor, who would have made one of England’s great barristers, would now respond. For he turned slowly in the direction of the lesbians. But as the seconds ticked away, he merely regarded them in silence. To which the lesbian responded in a voice even less belligerent.
“Hey, when I talk to someone and ask them a question, I expect to be answered. Especially when someone sounds like they’re English.”
The History of the Ginger Man: An Autobiography Page 28