The History of the Ginger Man: An Autobiography

by J. P. Donleavy

  “Hey, bud, are you looking for a fight.”

  “No. As a matter of fact, I’m looking merely for directions, which surely any halfway civilized person would, considering the snow, reply to, even to the extent of informing that they do not know the answer.”

  For all these measuredly statesmanlike words spoken by Gainor, one could nevertheless sense rising in him a blazing anger. And with us all wanting to go home to our would-be firesides, April was pulling on Gainor’s left arm as I was tugging on his right to move him backward away. April whispering in his ear,

  “Hey, Gainor, come on, honeybunch, let’s get the hell out of here.”

  “I’m not going till this rude individual apologizes.”

  The gauntlet dropped, the rude individual to whom Gainor referred took an astride, intimidating stance, cocking back his head, belligerence written all over his face and menace in his sneer. All the very appropriate behavior necessary to turn Gainor Stephen Crist, the erudite follower of Bishop Berkeley, into a killer.

  “Well, bud, it so happens I’m not apologizing. What are you going to do about it.”

  Both April and I knew what Crist could do about it. And April, an admitted lover of peace, and I, who still with the pink fresh scars of my last affray to remind me, wanted, as much as April, to get the hell away out of there in one big hurry. And not to delay with splashing blood, ears bitten off and chewed, and the usual bicuspids flying everywhere. Plus police cars and ambulances in pronto abundant attendance. One was actually toying with the idea of running. When just at that moment, April suddenly stepped forward to take up a position between Gainor and his antagonist. And right smack in front and only a hairsbreadth away from the so-called rude individual, who continued to be rude.

  “Hey, lady, you get the hell out of my way before you get hurt.”

  “And you, buster, member of pipsqueaks anonymous, had better get the fuck back in that line. Before first you get your ears pinned back, second your jaw broken, third your dumb nose flattened across your face and fourth get socked fifty miles into next Tuesday. Because after that we’re going to pick you up by the ears and shake your balls off.”

  Now then. As the words were loud enough, a woman nearby taking a bottle of milk in from her windowsill stopped midmotion to watch. And I was immediately sure that nowhere in the annals of potential confrontational violence had one ever come across such an astonishingly long agonizing pause. And April stood. And she stands. On her honor. And on her long, tapering legs. As she always did. Even when she abandoned us to the dykes. Her stunningly blue beautiful and brave eyes staring steadily into this shocked man’s face. Boring holes in his head as the seconds ticked away. Kids pulling a sleigh along the sidewalk. Another snowplow passing in the street. And your man taking a backward step. And then looking behind him, took two steps. Then three. And turning. Just as April bid him do. To join his place back again in line. And I’d remembered April once reminiscing and talking about back up there in the mountain gulch where she was born, saying her mother had her in April, when they were expecting her in May. And April said, “You see, guys, they got it all wrong, because I was born already. So eager was I.

  “To get out there

  And

  Start winning”

  25

  IT WAS CLEAR that Gainor was never going to compromise with rudeness in these United States, and although it was sad it was with enormous relief that I watched Gainor disappear with April down the snow-covered steps into the subway beneath the ground of Washington Heights. Glad I was not to have to use energy in anger and to further smash the bones in my fists hammering them on the endless supply of belligerent faces whom Gainor referred to as the ill-bred by the ill-bred.

  I went on my own way to Broadway and 168th Street to take a train back to Woodlawn and to trudge the couple of miles with freezing ears and frozen feet through the woods. Remembering that along by this isolated terrain of the golf course and in similar deep snow and when not much more than seven years old, I was once lost when left behind by bigger boys who would not wait for me to catch them up. And a great black, gleaming limousine came along the road, and stopped. When I said I was crying because I was lost, I was ushered into the company of a lady sitting in the back who spoke to her chauffeur through a small speaker held in her hand. I’ll never know now who this lady was who took the trouble to pick up a small vagrant to take to the nearest police station farther downtown in the area of Kingsbridge. Where I was finally rescued by my parents. But the incident must have given me a preference for large chauffeured limousines since. And for kindly ladies.

  Back in the old white house, struggling against an ever present depression, I now undertook again my noncompromising and battling and rigid routine. Standing firm on my every besieged principle. But an influence was being wrought. T.J. now home was still kept to bed. In a back bedroom which we shared growing up with a high window through which one could see the sky. His life at a crossroads. He said he had been goaded day after day by a girlfriend about marriage. And about her family and all they stood for and wanted. And told then about how all the other girls had rings, had married and had cars and refrigerators. But meanwhile the same girlfriend would make him spend every penny he had ever earned taking her out to dinner. While she kept her aura of her money saved, her car got and how many other guys were desperate to marry her.

  But at least T.J. had escaped from corporate America, and had, following selling cemetery plots and counting dresses, taken a job with the Bridgeport Box Lunch Company, where he was happier working long arduous hours brewing huge caldrons of coffee and making box lunches than he was finding bodies hanging in the back rooms of department stores. Remarkable for his dedication and his prodigious work, he had made a most favorable impression on his boss, who very much wanted him back and was even sending him get-well wishes and presents. But as I brought him food and let fresh air into his room every morning, I realized that T.J. desperately needed something, other than making box lunches, to occupy his time. And one afternoon I brought to his bedside a canvas, paints and brushes. Next morning he presented me with a still life of fruit on a table, complete with shadows and highlights and a work any academician studying a lifetime in Florence would have been proud of producing and exhibiting at a major exhibition. When I was somewhat incredulous, T.J. assured me.

  “It’s easy. An orange is round and it’s colored orange. A grapefruit, you flatten a little at the top and a little at the bottom and color it yellow. An apple, you make it look as if it’s ripe with a little bit of green here and a little bit of red there. The light from the window shines in so here and there, so you place a spot or two of this flake white to make it bright.”

  T.J. did not seem to be surprised that he was painting with the lifetime skill of a master craftsman, or was, straight from the off, executing works of art. And was now so prodigious in the production of these that I suggested he also make pottery to help use up more of his overwhelming energy. I brought him clay. Converting an old gramophone turntable into a potter’s wheel, he in no time had turned the basement cellar into an Aladdin’s cave of pots equally original and exquisite to his paintings. He was like a man possessed. Explaining that he worked day and night because for the first time in his life he had something satisfying to do. And even exhausted and hung over, Gainor, catching his breath on a brief visit, was stunned. Tears streaming down his cheeks, as he sat in T.J.’s music room, listening to T.J.’s “Nobblywood Concerto,” played by T.J. at an average rate of thirty-five notes a second, and which could and did disembowel one with its utter sadness. Then even sadder, T.J. played his “Nobblywood Dirge,” which he then dedicated to Gainor and renamed the G.S.C. Memorial Concerto. Gainor, upon parting thanking me and saying,

  “Mike, as a great lover of music, I have now in America heard some of the best there is to hear in the world. From John Duffy, Tally Brown and now T.J.”

  Jack O’Hare, my sister Rita’s then husband, also seemed suddenly influenced
by the changes affecting the household. Returning in the evenings from his studies or work to talk and listen as the family would convene between kitchen and dining room. Arguments sometimes flared and then died or got renewed again. But one night, Jack O’Hare said,

  “You know I’ve been thinking. About us in this country. Do you know what we are. We’re just a bunch of lying bastards. I don’t think we’ve told the truth once in our lives.”

  Coming from this man who during the war was a major in the marine corps and whose life had been nothing but dedicated hard work and adhering to the ethic of the American way and who, while working as a policeman, was also qualifying as a lawyer, it was a victory. Especially as right at that time the United States Congress was going all out against obscene literature. Even so, I was making declarations in my letters back to Valerie that there was no question, none whatsoever, and not one chance in a million, that S.D. would not be published. And would finally one day quell and squash all the mealymouthed, sanctimonious and hypocritical who sneakily and not so sneakily were abroad in America. However, it was becoming more and more evident that first, someone somewhere was going to have to stand up with a public courage and declare that the undeceitful were about to rise and exist in this land.

  But hardly a week had gone by back in Woodlawn before another call came across the wires to the Bronx from Queens, where Gainor too, beset by nightmares and working without sleep and then unable to sleep, seemed to be attempting more steps to retreat from the world. He rang from his redoubt on what was suddenly this cold winterish evening, the thermometer plummeting with little flurries of snow again falling on the deep drifts already piled high along the highways and streets. And where the snow had been removed, it left black gleaming ice. All was silent outside. Comfortable lights glowing within the houses. The telephone sounded off just as I was attempting to internally warm and cheer myself, having a glass of hot chocolate before bedtime.

  “Mike, thank God you’re there. I’ve got to find somewhere to hide out until I can finally get out of this country. Mike, I have, I really have had enough.”

  “What on earth’s happened now, Gainor.”

  “Mike, I was put in a straitjacket, and have spent the night in a padded cell. Pray God and special intercession with blessed Oliver Plunket will save me from any more. And that I am delivered from this place ere long and that my nerves already badly shattered each day at the airport stay steady enough to sustain me long enough so that I can lug my old creaking bones up the gangway and onto a preferably British ship sailing the bloody hell out of here.”

  “Good God, are you all right.”

  “Mike, I feel like I’m under some kind of homosexual blackmail in this building. What is wrong with me that I should attract these unwanted overtures of every conceivable kind ending me up fined fifty dollars and it was only with the help of the airline I was released. Mike, I was in my wigwam over my bed looking again at your pictures of the old sod, which I may say every time I do so, renders me utterly homesick. And also reading S.D., Mike. I know you’ve been depressed by all your recent rejections, but you mustn’t ever give up. However, in my state of deep nostalgia created by Sebastian Dangerfield and your photographs and wanting badly to be left alone by every person in this city, I thought I would just slip downstairs to the bar for a reflective tumbler or two of Irish whiskey, which the bartender now keeps for me. As you know, I’m forever grateful that the ground floor of this building provides drinking accommodation into which, thank God, there is blessedly easy access. Now following all these recent days of chaos and having worked many dreadful extra hours in long stints at the airport, trying to pay off my mounting debts, and dodging the usual knives and fists which put my life constantly in jeopardy, today I was traced there by some insufferable individual dunning me for a bill I owe who actually stood in the check-in line for half an hour and then slammed the bill instead of a ticket down in front of me.”

  “You hit him.”

  “Mike, I wish I had. But as I was relieving someone at his desk, I merely said he was looking for my twin brother who also worked at the airport but this was his day off. Luckily everyone began to hiss and tell him to get out of the line. However, then back in my wigwam and my Chianti bottle having run dry, I was so looking forward to some brief relaxation and a little drink. In any event, as I was already attired in my long underwear while in my wigwam, and being that the bar’s subdued lighting would keep one out of sight and harm’s way, as it were, I simply pulled on a tall pair of woolen socks up over my long johns, slipped into my shoes and put on my father’s overcoat. Then, after descending to the quite populated bar, and just as I was beginning to relax following my first drink and having thought I had successfully extricated myself from a one-sided unpleasant discussion with a divorcée who was telling me that she’d just taken her husband to the cleaners for every penny he was worth and that what a happy country this is, to which I uttered my standard reply, ‘Have you looked at the faces including your own, madam, in the mirror?’ I then started to look for my cigarettes. Mike, I shouldn’t have made the latter remark to this bitch. She suddenly hauled off and landed a resounding slap on my jaw. I actually saw Saturn and Mars and a few other of the more long-distanced stars. God knows I’ve always interposed chivalry at such times as when women have exasperatingly pushed me to breaking point. But this country is, with the exception of Tally and April, turning women into veritable monsters. Of course I was instantly put into considerable bad humor and unable to strike back, I was now even more desperately looking for my cigarettes, which I did not seem able to find. Now fully exasperated and angrily still digging around trying to locate my packet of Chesterfields and forgetting that I was no longer wearing my airline uniform, I took off my overcoat and then as the whole bar went suddenly quiet, I stood there in just enough light to see by, in my long underwear, white from neck to knees and green then to my ankles. Mike, you might think that’s funny.”

  “Gainor, I’m sorry, it’s a very quiet and uneventful evening up here in Woodlawn, and one is prone to being easily amused.”

  “Well, I haven’t yet told you, and I blame and owe it to April’s advice. I was wearing a jockstrap over the underwear. Only this bloody one was mistakenly washed with a red shirt back in Ireland and has stayed that color. Mike, believe me when I tell you that in all my life I have never seen anything like the expressions that were to be seen on these people’s countenances. At least on those who were in a position to see and then tell everyone else, and who then got an even bigger shock thinking my privates had undergone some kind of bloody recent transvestite transplant operation which went woefully wrong and my privates were as a result bandaged up and the blood soaked through. Thank God the bartender, with whom I maintain a financial arrangement, knows me well. Jesus, Mike, I can hear you, this isn’t a laughing matter.”

  “Gainor, that was just a little feeble croak of mirth surfacing, as it were, out of our overwhelming sea of woe. But you haven’t mentioned a word about homosexuality.”

  “Don’t worry, I’m coming to that, but with “Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells” unsuitably playing on the jukebox, the whole scene was garish in the extreme. Especially when, while I’m being seen desperately feeling myself up, I’m still trying to find a cigarette to get some nicotine quickly into my system, which, along with a large tumbler of whiskey, I hoped could temporarily paralyze my perceptions. Of course, the long tall socks I was attired in were in fact a bright, tasseled variety one wears with a kilt. If anyone in this world looked like a complete lunatic out of the institution, I did. And of course, Mike, what do you imagine could be the bloody most inconvenient next thing that happened.”

  “Your father’s black, incredibly luxurious satin-lined overcoat disappeared.”

  “Yes, you’re absolutely right. Mike, it could not have been taken by mistake. Some bloody bastard deliberately vanished with it, together with my apartment keys. That leaves me even a little more banjaxed, plus having to wait until
Mutt or Jeff got back to the apartment to let me in. Temporarily I got loaned someone else’s coat draped over me, a ladies’, as it happened, with a pretty fur collar. However, with now every bloody face in the place watching me, and really thinking I was a transvestite, and as I was beginning to feel like one, I then drank too bloody much too fast than was good for me. Now, Mike, considering what had already happened, you’d think that by the law of averages I could at least expect some good thing to befall me. But I seem to have no bloody damn luck at all.”

  “Gainor, it’s not luck you need, but unmitigatedly large sums of money, and that goes for both of us.”

  “Mike, that also goes without saying. But I was of course inebriated enough to chance trying to go back up to the apartment, and hoping to avoid being seen rushing up the four flights in my red jockstrap and long underwear. Which, were I seen and considering previous events, also would incite more bloody mayhem, with everybody phoning each other in the building that I was about to go on another rape rampage. But wouldn’t you know that I was hardly up to the first bloody landing when the first scream emitted. Then I had to proceed all the way back up the remaining three flights and the public hallway with nearly every bloody door opening with each previous scream alerting newer and louder additional outcries. My desperate concern now to disappear out of sight before the usual police and fire squads arrived. But then getting at last to the apartment door and of course without keys and finding Mutt not there, I had to cower in my red jockstrap and long underwear. As you know, I am of a mind and firm belief that every man have unto himself his own predilections and be free to pursue pleasures of any sort that he may be inclined to find. But now, this little fat, bald, potbellied bugger from across the hall appears and is asking me, would I like to join him in his apartment for a homosexual romp. Mike, are you still there. Are you still listening.”