Everybody's Drunk at the Ritz

“I’m completely annoyed by you,” I told Lady, “since not only have you drifted, or rather wafted, off to France, but now you are writing, again. And so there you are, and what’s a poem? Let’s face it, a poem is a one-morning-affair, unless you work it to death, as my mother tended to do. Anyway, you write it, everybody reads it, and it gets 6,000 likes on Facebook. Then it’s time to have a glass of wine and a dinner of truffles and foie gras. Oh, sorry, that’s champagne, not wine….”

“That’s completely untrue and unfair,” cried Lady trans-Atlantically, which shows you how indignant she was. “I hate champagne, as well as foie gras. Do you think Naïa would allow me to eat that? She’d report me to the ASPCA first. Anyway, writing poetry is a lot harder than you think….”

“Yeah? Because you guys get to write thirty poems or so, and then put them together in a little book, and bam! You’re a poet! But what about me, struggling to write a novel? In the first place, all of my characters keep misbehaving—I currently have a 16-year old sheltered girl from the Midwest in a dirty bookstore on 42d Street, sometime in the 1970’s. Oh, and she’s with two Puerto Rican drag queens, though she doesn’t know they’re drag queens. And do I have any idea how she got there, much less how to get her out of there?”

“Well, if she got there by herself, then let her get herself out of there.”

“What is this, laissez faire? Even the smallest exposure to French culture has ruinous affects on you, Lady!”

“So what’s the problem?”

“The problem is that writing a novel is a race—actually it’s a series of marathons. And writing poetry is just a sprint!”

“I completely reject that,” said Lady. “Anyway, why all the fuss? Aren’t you the guy who believes in ‘just-sit-down-and-do-it?’”

“Excellent advice for others,” I tell her. “Oh, and the 16-year old’s mother is sleeping off an afternoon drunk in the Ritz bar. That’s how bad that novel is….”

“Well, an afternoon drunk at the Ritz sounds rather lovely to me,” said Lady. "Though who knows, it may be a rather submerged affair, given what’s happening in France. They closed the Louvre, you know, since the Seine…”

“I read the paper,” I told her.

“C'est vraiment très dommage” Lady tossed off.

“Certainement,” I responded. Then we glared at each other, as all of our French lay exhausted on the pavement…..

“Anyway, to get me out of writing a novel, I decided to write a modern-day Pilgrim’s Progress. Julian—I see you stiffen up, there—is still rattling around down the centuries.”

“You’re stalking her, Marc! She’s 700 years gone, for God’s sake. Let her rest…..”

“Well, now I have a hill talking to a pilgrim, if you can believe that….”

“You know, I really think you have to come with us, the next time I go to France. The things you get up to, when I’m away.”

“Mais oui” I told her. “Or maybe I mean bien sur…. Although I suppose I could send the 16-year old up the hill, to get the pilgrim back home….”

“Or to talk to the hill….”

“Anyway, I looked up Pilgrim’s Progress, which I used to know about, and it turns out that it’s even worse than writing a novel. I have to fiddle around with characters named Pliable and Trustworthy, as well as visit places like Gaius’s Inn, which is between the Valley of the Shadow of Death and Vanity Fair. Then I have to kill four monsters, called Giant Grim, Giant Maul, Giant Slay-Good, and Giant Despair. Oh, and this is all in the first part, since there are two parts. Unfortunately, I was too tired out by reading about the first part to tackle the second part. So sorry, no info there….”

“Quite ruined, my day,” said Lady, whose humor has dried quite considerably by her sojourn in France. “Can’t you get them drunk at the Ritz?”

“Definitely a thought,” I said. “Though it’s fearsome, the idea of footing the tab for Giant Despair. Can you imagine how much he’d soak up? He’d be a bottomless pit!”

“Well, Mommy Dearest has her credit cards,” said Lady. “Do you know, I really do think a glass of wine, just now, wouldn’t be a bad idea. Somehow all this talk of drinking at the Ritz….”

“Bother the Ritz,” I said, “I definitely am switching to poetry. One poem a day, and poof, by the time you come back, puffing on your Gauloise and sipping your absinthe, I’ll have a book in my hand! Bam, just like that! Then, I can host the Tuesday night poetry slam, since I will be a poet! Screw novels, and screw theology! I’m taking the literary life easy, and playing in the fields of the Lord. Which in this case is poetry….”

“Do it,” said Lady. “I dare you!’’

Wait and see! 

Rifs on Rilke

I love the dark hours of my being,

Where time is exiled, where sighs

Stitch together the boredom, the sorrows,

The expectation that nothing, after all, will come, and that…

…slowly, the soul lies down with despair,

Takes it into her arms, caresses it, and tells it

That she is lovely.

Despair—who taught night to the dusk,

Who taught time to the hours. 

Nothing At All

Who knows why she did it?

After she was gone, her friends met to discuss it.

“She didn’t seem depressed,” one said.

“You can never really know a person,” said another.

“She was never quite the same after the divorce,” said a third.

Her body had been found in a heavily wooded area outside of town. A bird watcher, his gaze intent on the trees, had literally stumbled over the body. It was fortunate, perhaps, because he might well have fainted had he been standing. She had been dead over a week, and the decomposition was advanced.

The friends told each other that they had called, that they had noticed her absence almost immediately. John, her closest friend, knew that wasn’t true: he had been the person to gather her belongings; he had also listened to the messages on her machine. And beyond a few perfunctory messages, nobody had reached out; nobody had called.

The weapon had been found at her side; the bullet had entered from the back of her throat and hit the brainstem. Death would have been instantaneous.

What did she leave behind? A small amount of money—enough to bury her. Personal possessions. A few debts. But mostly, she left questions, and memories.

“Remember that birthday party, when everybody got totally wasted, and we all decided to jump into the fountain, at three in morning, naked? She was the first one in…”

“And she was splashing everybody else, until you had no choice to strip and get in too….”

“And when the cops came? Only she could have talked her way out of it. Remember her saying, ‘hey, it’s my birthday! You can’t arrest me on my birthday!’ And then she jumped naked out of the fountain, went to her purse, and got her ID to prove it….”

“She should have been a lawyer,” said John. “She was totally wasted as a teacher. But she loved to argue about anything.”

“She got it from her father,” said Joan. “God, that guy was ornery! You could have told him he’d won the lottery, and he’d argue that the numbers were wrong. Or that the game had been fixed. She was just like him….”

They tried to imagine it. Why had she chosen that particular spot? She wasn’t a nature person, particularly: what had attracted her to the woods? And the gun, how had she gotten it? Had she known, when she bought it, that she would use it on herself? Or had she acted impulsively, triggered by who knew what?

‘Nobody is saying what they really think,” thought John. ‘Because everyone of us is pissed. Why the hell didn’t she call? Why didn’t she say something? All of the times that we shared—the parties, the dinners, the calls over stupid things. And then, one day, she’s gone, and nobody knows where she is. And all that time, she was lying dead in the woods. Had any animals discovered her? Eaten her? Crows flying overhead? God, it’s too horrible.’

“Well, if a person doesn’t want help, then there’s nothing we can do,” said Mary. “She knew she could have called any one of us….”

‘Did she,’ thought John. ‘God, what if she did call us? What if we had been so busy, so self-absorbed, that we couldn’t pick up the phone? Or maybe she had called us, wanting to talk, but we had cut her off, and complained about some stupid shit of our own.’

He tried to remember. He thought of the calls she had made; he heard her voice and her peculiar, high-pitched laugh. Had she seemed stressed, or at any time different than usual? He didn’t think so.

“She had everything to live for,” said Pam. “A good job, friends, money enough. True, there wasn’t a man in her life, but she didn’t really seem to mind about that….”

‘She minded a lot,’ thought John. ‘She was just too proud to show it. And her ex, who is so very much not here, treated her like shit. Where is that bastard, anyway? They were married 17 years, and he doesn’t show for her funeral? 17 years? And where is he, at the beach?”

“I feel sorry for her students,” said Joan. “Imagine, knowing that your teacher had killed herself. And you’re like fifteen or so—which is not the age when you want to be facing existential questions. At least, not like that….”

‘Is there any good age to face a suicide?’ thought John. ‘Look at her mother over there—well into her eighties, and does that keep her from being anything but completely destroyed? There’s no good age for this.’

“We’re gathered here today to celebrate the life of Mary Lou Washington,” said the priest.

‘Mary Lou? Jesus Christ, she never used the “Lou.” She’d be raving bonkers if she could hear this guy. Do these guys ever talk to the family? How fucking difficult can that be?’

“She lived her life fully…”

‘So why’d she kill herself?’

“And she leaves behind many friends…”

‘None of whom called…..’

“And a deeply loving family….”

All of a sudden, John was tired. He’d slept badly for a week, and he’d been the person to go into her apartment, alone, and face the memories and the emptiness of the person who was so much there. And not.

“In the weeks ahead, we will pray for the strength of those whom she left behind…”

‘Bullshit. If they couldn’t call, are they now gonna pray?’

He looked around the chapel, and nearly startled when the revelation came to him. She hadn’t killed herself.

She’d been murdered.    

The Weariness of God

“How wearisome it must be,” I tell the hill, “to be a God, angry or not. After all, there’s nothing I particularly have to do, but at some point I will die, which will be nice. Because really, there is a moment at the party when it’s time to leave. But there God is, the perpetual host, greeting the newcomers even as he is shepherding the others out the door. Always a smile, always a greeting, and the glass never goes un-refreshed.”

“What a remarkable view of the world you have,” returned the hill. “Look at me—the angry god vanished long ago, and glad I was to be rid of him. The fury scoured the life out of me, and yet I remain. Will he come back? I hope so….”

“Why?”

“Because we need them, angry or not. There is, even in their destruction, something of beauty. Look at the ravine. Do you see how the boulders are hurled against the landscape?”

It was impossible not to see.

“Is it true he did this? This seems more to be the god of hate, not of anger.”

“Perceptive,” said the hill. “There are similarities, to be sure, but they are altogether quite different. No, no—I know the god of hate, and he’s absolutely not the god of anger.”

“There can be a lot of love in anger,” I said to the hill. “In fact, the more I love, the more angry I can be.”

“Of course,” said the hill, “it’s altogether possible for the god of love to be the god of anger, as well.”

“Well, I’ve never bought into the particular belief that god is love,” I told the hill. “I think that there’s so much more. Many more colors on the palate than this rather insipid gold….”

“Despair,” said the hill. “Do you imagine there is a god of despair?”

“There must be,” I said. “Since the world of despair is so perfectly formed. The contours of it, the endless bottomlessness of it. It’s astonishing ability to encompass everything. Oh, yes, there must be a god of despair.”

“Then it follows,” said the hill, “that there must be a god for everything. The god of sarcasm, for example, or the god of misaddressed letters.”

“The god of the moment when you realize that your life dream will never materialize.”

“The god of the moment when you first feel life stir in you,” said the hill.

“The god of the moment when the dew forms on the grass,” I said.

Suddenly, a rainbow appeared of the crest of the hill.

“Ah,” said the hill, “you know what that means.”

“Not really,” I said. “Though I don’t much like rainbows….”

“Nor do I,” said the hill. “They are, after all, merely the yawns of god.”

“Ah, the god of boredom! How very busy, or lethargic, he must be!”

“He does get around,” said the hill. “Do you know the one god I miss?”

“No clue.”

“I miss the god of those who seek. Because he is the one god who can never be present. He is always in the next room, having just left the room whose door you’ve just opened. He is the perfume that lingers on the handkerchief of the beloved who has left you. He is the echo of the last note of the b minor mass.”

“Yes,” I told him. “And he must be a very lonely god, since none of the seekers can know him. He is the memory of a dead mother’s caress.”

“The last candle blown out in the palace.”

“Yes, lonely,” I tell the hill. “and yet, curiously appealing, for how many of us seek him? We who are even not sure that he exists? And yet we seek.”

“Why,” said the hill. “I never sought a god, and still the angry god came to me, and changed me, and now nothing will ever be the same. Why seek? Why not wait, instead, for the god to come to you? The god that you need, if not deserve. You could end up like me, you know.”

“There’s no particular pleasure in aridity,” I said. “Though it has its advantages. Do you know what god will come to me, if I wait long enough?”

“Yes.”

“And will you tell me?”

“I can’t, of course. Because then you will expect him, and that expectation will change you, and then the god must be different. No, you have to wait, and be surprised when he arrives, with his boredom or glee or elation.”

“And if he doesn’t come?”

“Ahh,” said the hill, and then said no more.         

A Quarried Life

You grow out of things, and then you have to grow back into them.

There was high school, which was perhaps the darkest time of my life. I was in that cell in the prison of denial and in fact, it wasn’t just a cell. It was solitary, and the term was life, and there was no parole. Oh, and nobody had gotten around to missing me, outside the rest of the world. They peered in at me, periodically, and told me: “these are the happiest days of your life.”

The Shorewood quarry was my ticket out.

It was going to look like an accident. Like all quarries, it had been dug out, and there was a pit with water. Above it, a cliff. And so I would shoot myself, and fall backwards into the water. So it would look like a drowning—see?

All right, fifty or so years later, I can identify some flaws in the plan….

But flawed or not, it was undeniable, the heaviness that burst on me each morning, usually after a fitful night of sleep. Because I had two secrets all during the hell that was high school: I was gay, and I was depressed.

The peculiar irony is that I didn’t know either of the secrets.

It shouldn’t have been that hard. Hadn’t I read, Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex? I can see it in my mind’s eye—the yellow paperback that I probably stole, since how could I ever have summoned the nerve to buy such a thing.

“Listen, kid, lemme just ask my manager….”

“No, listen, Sir, that’s OK. I’ll just….”

“Hey, Joe,” shouts the clerk, “we got a fifteen-year old here, want to buy Everything you Always Wanted to Know About Sex….

All heads turn to Marc!

“WHAT!” shouts back Joe.

“Fifteen-year old says he want to buy Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex!”

Bring out the spotlights!

“Still can’t hear you!”

“I SAID….”

Door banging….

So I probably stole it, and though I’m not proud of it, I understand it. I only wish, however, that what I had stolen had been worth it. Here’s what I read:

Male homosexuality is a condition in which men have a driving emotional and sexual interest in other men. Because of the anatomical and physiological limitations involved, there are some formidable obstacles to overcome. Most homosexuals look upon this as a challenge and approach it with ingenuity and boundless energy. In the process they often transform themselves into part-time women. They don women’s clothes, wear makeup, adopt feminine mannerisms, and occasionally even try to rearrange their bodies along feminine lines.

But not to worry, because…

Q: Can homosexuals change?

A: If a homosexual who wants to renounce homosexuality finds a psychiatrist who knows how to cure homosexuality, he has every chance of becoming a happy, well-adjusted, heterosexual.   

Whew!

There was a little problem, of course, since how was I supposed to find “a psychiatrist who know how to cure homosexuality?” Back step: how would I even find a psychiatrist?

“Dad, I need to see a shrink.”

“What! Oh my God, Marc, what’s wrong? Why? Tell us! What’s bothering you, son?”

“Oh, it’s just nothing…”

“Nothing! NOTHING!....”

Look, if I couldn’t buy a damn book, do you think I could tell my parents I was gay? And that I needed to see a shrink?

And so I lingered at the precipice of the cliff, in several ways figuratively, if never quite literally. I had no girlfriend, but that was no problem, since I was still fifteen or sixteen. And my father had married late—for reasons never quite explained. He was in his early 30’s when he married, and the official story is that he was looking for “the right one.”

Yeah?

True, he found her, but what guy goes through his 20’s without forming some kind of emotional attachment?

At any rate, if I was gay, I wasn’t going to tell anyone, because who knew how he or she might react? What if a “friend” went around telling everybody? What if—worse—the friend decided to tell my parents, since I was sick and needed help?

It is both unique and all pervading. Unique because every other sickness has a cause, even if not necessarily biological. But homosexuality, as then defined, had nothing to do with genes, but everything to do with the family, and guess what that meant? Yes, the distant father, the overly protective mother.

Was that it?

Well, yes, since my father was over fifty when I got to know him at age 3 or so, and I was number three. So the bloom was fading on the rose of parenthood, and he was entering that period when a man realizes: his dream of being publisher was never going to happen. Retirement was in sight. Two of his kids had made it into manhood, the third would likely as well. So when He came home, he slouched against the refrigerator, and rolled his neck from side to side. He was prone, you see, to stiff necks.

It was a house that screamed with that which was unsaid. My mother, in those years, was a secret smoker; later, she got a job despite the deep reservations of my father. She didn’t have to work, after all. True, in the decades that followed, they aged very well, but when I was in high school? My father spent an entire year in a huge depression, since my brother was living with—but not then married to—the woman who has been his wife for the last 40 years.

Is this comical? Yes, now.

No, then.

They were deeply conventional, and if the 60’s had produced sea changes, none of that was reflected in our home. And so I was—perhaps—a homosexual. Which meant that I would have to become campy, like the Boys in the Band, or like the homosexuals in Allen Drury’s Advise and Consent.

There was no one to talk to. There was, in fact, nothing to say, since nothing had happened, and nothing would happen. I would live alone, or perhaps with my mother, as the man next door was doing. I would have no friends, since any woman friend would always be wondering: when was I going to get serious? And male friends? Not possible, because what would people think: an unmarried man with male friends? And it was unspoken at the time: the wives made the friendships, and the men got along with each other.

This was, of course, completely ridiculous. It was also completely serious. And so I went on, day after day, trudging along with the secret that was a secret even to myself, but still a secret.

And very heavy….

The years went on. I graduated, first from high school, then from college. Things got, as they say, better. I changed, society changed, my family changed.

But in some ways, I haven’t changed. How could I? I will never have those “best days of your life.” I will never feel that I fit in easily, that people unthinkingly accept me, that they would still love me, if they knew me. I will still think, somehow, that I have a secret, somehow, a secret that again is unknown to me. There are, perhaps, ways in which the outsider can become the insider. But not, I think, for me.