December 2, 2006--Saturday Story--Ludavicio et al.--Part Four

In Part Three, Lloyd sets out to even the score with Lydia for her “relationship” with Ludavicio. Since Lloyd was inexperienced in these affairs, as became abundantly clear in Part Three, it was fortunate indeed that Kim Drake was to be so quickly found in an office adjacent to his at Brooklyn College. Actually, for her to have found him! Young Kim had read one of Lloyd’s short stories, “Under Mother’s Bed,” which had been published in the mimeographed Little Magazine, Black Sun; and she was eager to learn more about “the naughty little boy” who was the central character and who she suspected was a thinly disguised version of Lloyd himself. So they agreed to meet for lunch and who knows what else. Both the lunch and the what-else proved to be disappointing. In truth, quite a disaster and probably would have inhibited Lloyd from continuing his pursuit of getting even. That is, until returning home from his failed tryst he found that Lydia had organized a surprise 30th birthday party for him and one of the invited guests was none other than the leather-clad Ludavicio!

So in Part Four of Ludavicio et al. . . . .

* * *

Ten days after my surprise party, on a sweltering June evening, still struggling with the guilt that clung to me like a second skin from my aborted liaison with Kim, and still confused and smarting about the party itself—how unexpectedly thoughtful it was of Lydia to go to all that effort to organize it and make it so special while at the same time flaunting that leather-clad Ludavicio of hers in front of me and everyone I knew--even before I was fully able to mobilize all my well-honed capacities to rationalize the unpleasant and ignore the painful, I found myself on the third Thursday evening of the month at the Brooklyn College Writers Workshop.

I had been teaching in the College’s evening division where all the students were at least my age. Many were recently discharged, deeply troubled Vietnam War vets and most of the others were what we in the education profession at the time called “returning women,” women who had taken time off from school to work and raise families before embarking upon up a college education. The students, thus, had richer life experiences than their instructors, me especially included, and in recognition of this we arranged to give them college credit for that “life experience.” All I on the other hand received was $1,500 for each course assigned to me.

A number of them were aspiring writers, some with considerable talent and much to write about; but since there was no place in the regular curriculum where they could get their work read or critiqued, they sought me out about forming the Workshop as part of the extra-curriculum. They approached me to serve as its “faculty advisor,” not because they thought I might be able to somehow advise them or offer that critique, in spite of my brief list of publications, but rather they needed me to sign off on the forms required in order for a “club” to be assigned a room on campus for its meetings. They told me that that was all I was required to do—I did not have to attend much less participate—in fact they not so subtly recommended that I not be there. Signing the forms was enough. But since I knew wine would be available and likely even assorted drugs (it was the late 70s), I told them I would be there each month to fulfill the responsibilities that the college required of faculty advisors, chief among them to assure the administration that no intoxicants of any kind would be present!

Since they had not been able to find any other faculty member willing to sign whatever they placed in front of him, even though I suggested that on occasion I might show up, with a shrug they agreed to allow me to advise them. And so I did, being sure to never miss a meeting.

For the first few sessions I slouched at the back of the room in a seat behind the circle of chairs they arranged for themselves; and though I did not participate, I never failed to take a swig from the circulating jug or a toke on the stream of joints that kept pace with the rotating wine. I also listened carefully as they read and reacted to the poems and short pieces of fiction they had been working on during the month between meetings. Since the content was so heavily drawn from horrific war experiences, torrid love affairs, or abusive childhood and adult relationships, and with the wine mixing so quickly with the weed, most of the critiques, such as they were, were comments like, “Man, that’s heavy,” or “Too much. That’s just too much,” or “That really gets to me,” or “I hear you,” or “Really, I feel what you’re saying.”

And so by the third meeting of the Workshop, thinking that I would receive a similarly sympathetic reception, I shyly brought something of my own to read, indicating that I wanted to participate by moving forward to join the circle itself.

Amos Otis, a thrice-wounded Vietnam vet who served as chair that evening, nodded his huge bowl of an Afro in my direction as a from of welcome and as the signal to lead off, even before anyone had had their first swallow.

Choking back unexpected nervousness, they were after all just students, I stammered out by way of setting a context that I had been working on a novel with the tentative title, Pearl and His Brother and the Dirty Books. “You know, I think, that I’ve had a few stories published and some poems. All in out-of-the-way places. Nothing major yet, but I’m hoping if I can get this novel done and somehow find an agent and publisher, well that would be helpful to me here. I mean in getting a full-time teaching position and eventually tenure.”

With that latter comment a few in the group cleared their throats, I thought perhaps out of impatience or maybe as a comment about my mentioning tenure. I knew them well enough by then and should have realized that this would not go down well—some had already participated in a sit-in in the dean’s office protesting what they considered the college’s racist admissions practices and thus would not be sympathetic to my academic aspirations. Thus, I was thankful when the wine began to move from participant to participant and finally got to me. To calm me and to help put a stop to my blathering I drained what remained in the bottle; and Otis again nodded at me, this time accompanied by a grunt that indicated I had better start reading. Which I did, but with one final comment, actually a form of a plea, “Remember, this is just a first draft.” I looked up from the handwritten pages shaking in my hands in an attempt to catch someone’s eye, and added, “It’s very drafty.”

No one even smiled at my attempt at humor and so I dropped my head and began to read:

There is that scar, a thin hair line though bulbed at one end in a white skin-drop that never tans. It is 16 years since he sliced along the wrist string of tendons with the new Exacto knife while shaping the wooden elephant because the instructions insisted he carve toward himself, and not whittle away from himself with less control as he had for years with the sharpest blade of his bark-handled Scout knife. And with the of-course first clumsy stroke in this new technique the razor sharp blade had slid off the elephant’s haunch to slice without blood into nearly two inches of raw flesh, so much like veal cutlet. The carving set then remained untouched in the great scooped out radio cabinet, the ideal place to store unused toys and under them hide his growing collection of dirty books.

When I paused for a moment to catch my breath, something I needed to do since I had attempted to read the opening paragraph of Pearl poetically, as a single breathless line, I heard what I thought to be someone else choking in a manner that sounded to me, as the faculty advisor, to be more serious and perhaps dangerous than the familiar result of inhaling too much caustic marijuana smoke. This gasping was emanating from Kathy Dugan who was sitting directly across from me, and she was decidedly not in any danger nor had the circling joint yet gotten to her—she was chocking from laughter. Uncontrollably. And clearly at me because as she sat there convulsed, rocking back and forth, she pointed at me; and while sputtering managed to choke out a few disconnected words, “’Skin-drop’? . . . ‘Dirty books’? . . . “I love the ‘veal cutlet’!” Tears flowed down her freckled cheeks, “Zazlo’s killing me. This is one of the funniest things I’ve ever heard.” I was cringing, thinking whatever happened to “That really gets to me. I hear you.”

Hyperventilating, it appeared as if Kathy was on the verge of passing out, but she managed to say, “It’s so funny . . . I mean brilliant . . . Really . . . Funnier than anything I’ve read in years.” Someone passed her a cup of water. She drank it down and it helped her gain control of herself. “I swear if this doesn’t get you tenure when it’s published there’s no justice.” Some of the other Workshop members mumbled in agreement and a couple even applauded softly. Otis gave me two nods which was his way of thanking me and indicating it was time for the next presentation.

I sat there in my chair quivering, wet through my clothes and reeking with nervous sweat. I knew enough not to say a word, to hide my misery and confusion in stillness and silence. And in that way, not capable of hearing anything else that was read by other participants, I survived the rest of the evening. I did not though pass up either the proffered wine or joints. They helped get me to 9:00 when we were required to give up the room that I had been able to secure for the group.

I didn’t move, not lifting my head in an attempt to remain invisible until everyone had drifted away, most arranging to carry on as they did each month at the Emerald Isle Bar on nearby Flatbush Avenue. When I finally did begin to rouse the only person remaining was Kathy Dugan.

She had come across the room and was standing very close, directly in front of me, and looked down at me as I tried to make an even tighter ball of my body. In husky Brooklynese, she said, “That really was somethin’ Zazlo.” I didn’t flinch. “I meant what I said. I love your kind of writing, ironic, and know how difficult it is to produce. I hope you’ll bring more next month. Most of what goes on here is pure bullshit.” At that I raised my head to 45 degrees and looked at her waist. “I mean, so they got their asses shot off in Nam or were fucked by their fathers.” I was by then looking directly at her. “Just spillin’ your guts doesn’t do it. It’s about findin’ a voice, a real one, and developin’ a sense of distance, including with irony, don’t you think, from experience.” I was shaking my head in agreement but restrained myself from confessing that I had not been attempting in Pearl to be, in any way, ironic.

“Don’t get me wrong, I too do a lot of gut spillin’ of my own,” she snorted at that and at the same time lit up an unfiltered Camel. She inhaled deeply and with a barely audible sigh let the smoke slide from her nostrils.

I had never before looked closely at her—she generally hung back in the group and had not as yet read anything or added much to the discussion. But as the smoke rose to envelop her face I made a quick assessment—probably mid-forties; rather tall (perhaps as much as five-eight); blonde streaked hair chopped off at her chin; what some might describe as a lived-in face, or what I would call an Irish face with a hint of a thin scar threaded through her left eyebrow; and packed into a tight satin blouse and short black skirt, obviously, again as some might say--Kathy was clearly stacked.

Still sitting in the chair, but fully straightened up, I offered tentatively, “Actually, I think some of the poetry is not that bad. Last month, for example, I felt the poem Howie Rappaport read about his father being killed when he was a child had at least a hint of the ironic distance you seem to value.” I added quickly, “As do I. I agree, I value it too; it is essential when writing about these kinds of, how to put this, subjects.”

“You mean when they’re really clichés.”

I couldn’t with integrity disagree with that, and so I asked, “But what about you? Kathy isn’t it?”

She was smirking at me as if to say, “Don’t fuck with me Zazlo.”

“Sorry, of course I know who you are.” I tried to shift the subject, “But what do you write about? You haven’t brought anything to the group yet. From what you’ve said tonight, I’m curious, actually eager, to see some of your work. Even the gut-spilling kind.” With that we exchanged our first genuine smiles.

“One never knows, does one,” she shot back at me with a wink; but immediately her face darkened, “Though I’m workin’ on somethin’, a poem that might qualify—it’s about my Ex, that prick-bastard.” When referring to him that way she literally turned her head and spat on the classroom floor. But just as quickly recovered and said, without any sign of embarrassment, again with a twinkle in her voice, “As soon as I work some irony into it I promise to bring it in.”

I finally stood up, and since she did not back away from me—it’s fair to say she held her ground--we almost touched; and in a voice that I lowered to, I hope, convey both understanding for whatever that “prick-bastard” had done to her and to indicate how much I wanted to see some of her writing, I said, reaching out to touch her hands, which surprised me by their coolness “I hope you will. I really do. I’m sure you’ll find the voice you’re seeking and the poetic distance so essential, as you said, to fine work.”

She then broke away from me and darted for the door. Over her shoulder she looked back at me with a toss of her smoke-sheathed head and blunt-cut hair, and said, “I live in Flushing, Queens two buses from here, and have to run. I’ve got a sick 12 year-old waitin’. But I’ll be back in July, maybe even with somethin’ for you.”

With that she was gone, though I must admit that the lingering image of the voluptuous contour of her back was as appealing to me as the rest of her had been. And as I dragged myself though the thick air toward the parking lot, to retrieve my car and schlep myself home to Lydia, I couldn’t get her out of my head much less her unexpected, yes disturbing reaction to my work. Clearly she had provoked me in enough ways that I needed to do some quick revisionist thinking about my painfully-emerging novel, maybe I had stumbled into something with it; and also, I realized, I needed to give at least as much thought to Kathy herself. I just couldn’t get the sound of her voice to go away nor could I stop thinking about her body—the front or the back.

* * *

It was a dreamy, half-stoned drive through the liquid air of Brooklyn. As I wove my way through the late evening traffic, it was difficult to push myself beyond thoughts of Kathy—the final toss of her head as she ran toward her buses remained like the frozen ghostly image seared onto the TV screen after the power has been turned off. But I needed to shake those thoughts, that image of her out of my mind because I wanted instead, while the impressions were fresh, I wanted to replay the tape, still in my head, of her response to what I had presented.

Here I had been working, I thought, in a serious, hopefully literary mode on a novel, thinly disguised autobiography to be sure, of my/Pearl’s development from boy to man—sort of a contemporary Jewish bildungsroman set of course in the Brooklyn of the 1950s and 60s. And within that well-explored genre I had been attempting to insert all sorts of narrative and stylistic references and allusions, including the rhythmic beat of the prose to, what else, On the Road. I thought it a sly idea to make my/Pearl’s journey limited in geography, in contrast, more from Brooklyn to Manhattan than from coast-to-coast, in order to emphasize the innerness of that journey. In effect, just like Jack’s!

But in its first public airing, it caused Kathy to collapse in laughter. I kept reminding myself though, especially when trapped by the out-of-synch traffic lights along Ocean Parkway, that she (that flip of hair) thought it, how did she put it, “brilliant”? So perhaps I would do well to revisit the manuscript, all that I had written, nearly 300 hand-written legal-size pages, in an attempt to read all of it through the lens that Kathy (that halo of smoke) provided. Maybe, I fantasized, I had subliminally, through the transformative magic of the unconscious, added a satiric gloss to the prose, and maybe by applying that surface I had revealed the ironic underlay of what was most seriously at issue. In the tradition of the best of, forgive the oxymoron, America’s serious humorists? Could that possibly be? Kathy, could it be?

But I was quickly pulled from my reverie and the thoughts provoked by what Kathy had perceived by the sight of Lydia storming back and forth, arms folded across her chest, on the back porch as I pulled into the garage. I had seen that storm before and knew I was in for a long and unpleasant night.

* * *

Without even a summary greeting she stamped her foot and said, “It’s almost midnight. Where have you been?”

“You know, at the college. It’s the third Thursday of the month, when we have the Workshop. And,” looking with a theatrical gesture at the illuminated dial of my watch, “it’s only 10:15.”

“As far as I’m concerned it might as well be midnight,” she snapped back at me and yanked the back door open, almost tearing it from its hinges, and marched into the kitchen. It swung shut on its spring before I could catch it. Alone on the porch I had a fleeting thought—Get back in the car and head for Flushing or the beach or the city. Somewhere. But not in there with her. If you go inside you will have only yourself to blame for what happens. But that thought fled quickly; and like a puppy I followed her inside without even taking a half step back toward the garage. Not much Kerouac was to be found on that back porch!

She stood at the sink, both hands gripping it so hard that I feared she would shatter the porcelain. “I can’t believe him.” She faced away from me and I was not certain if this was intended for me to hear or who “him” might be. “The nerve. After what he did to me. Or should I say what he didn’t do to me.”

She kicked the door beneath the sink and it popped open and slammed into her calf. “Fuck!" she shouted at it, at “him,” whomever, and I was certain, with this, of course at me.

I had by then been sobered up from whatever was lingering in my system from the Workshop refreshments and tried to appear sympathetic, “That must have hurt. Did you cut yourself? Do you want me to take a look at it?” I was bending in her direction to examine her bare leg.

But as I caringly leaned toward her, Lydia took a swing at me as if to defend herself and, missing me as I snatched my head back, screamed, “Too late. If you want to pretend to be a doctor you should have gone to med school. Then maybe you would have made something of yourself instead of sitting around all day hunched over your stupid papers.” As this I would have responded if I hadn’t the same thing from her at least a hundred times before. I did though at least turn to leave, muttering to myself, “Humid . . . hot . . . shower.” I was also wanting to find a place to be alone for ten minutes to reestablish my equilibrium, wondering as I left the kitchen, was Kathy too maybe right then stepping into a shower of her own out there in Queens.

I dragged myself up to the second floor shedding my clothes as I took the steps and entered the shower stall almost as fast I was able to adjust the water. It flowed over me and I began to return to myself, perhaps recapturing some of that high, feeling it was so good, so good. “Ahhhhh.”

“I know you couldn’t care less,” it was Lydia. She had followed me into the bathroom, something she had never done before, and I could see her opaque outline through the plastic curtain, “but I need to talk to someone, and tonight you’ll have to do.” I opened the tap further, thinking maybe the increased stream of water would create enough white noise to make what she was saying unintelligible.

But it didn’t help as she raised her voice enough to cut though the rush of sound. “I’m sure you have your own thoughts about who I’m talking about,” even in the cacophony I could catch the edge to her comment, “but I’m talking about Dr. Luven. Remember him? The quack? I made you see him before we got married.” I did indeed remember him and his Orgone Box and the bed with the tennis racket.

“The nerve of him to call me now. Today. After how many years? Five? I forget. How long have we been married? I forgot that too,” she snorted. That pierced the curtain and the cascading water as if the room were otherwise silent. “Not that he did anything useful to you either.” I felt myself instinctively covering my private parts and turned to face the tiled wall.

“He has a daughter, not that I would know how he managed to produce one he has such a limp dick.” Sobered up again I wondered if she was speaking figuratively. “She wants to study modern dance, can you believe it, and he had the nerve to call me. Me!” She slapped at the curtain so hard that it swung in to where I was huddled and it stuck fast to my wet back. I didn’t move. “I told him where she could go. And him too. That phony piece of shit!” She had moved to the bathroom sink and I could hear her repeatedly opening and slamming shut the medicine cabinet.

“Will you come out of there already?” She gave the mirrored door one final slam and I heard the sound of broken glass crashing into the sink. “Shit!" she shrieked, and stomped back to where I still was in the shower. “There’s something we need to talk about.” I looked up toward the ceiling in the false hope that I might find a window there through which I could crawl and, naked, find my way back to the car and head for Queens or even Ohio.

But she had ripped the curtain open and threw the one dry bath towel at me. It hit me in the back and fell to the floor where it immediately became soaking wet. Seeing this, Lydia snickered at me, “Get yourself out of there and roll around on the rug if you have to dry yourself. I’ll be waiting for you downstairs.” She added threateningly as she spun toward the door. “And I mean right now. Not just ‘now.’”

Still in her control, like an automaton I got my terrycloth bathroom from the bedroom closet and, wrapped in it, with head bowed in submission--the Workshop felt then as if it had occurred a year ago somewhere on the planet Mars--I shuffled back downstairs where I found her perched on the now iconic Spanish sofa.

Without any attempt to set a context Lydia spurted out, “Speaking of that Luven, it’s time for you to see another shrink. I know you keep saying that you don’t want to share any of your inner life, whatever that means,” she dripped sarcasm, “with anyone or anything other than whatever it is that you keep scribbling on those grimy yellow pads.” She was referring to my novel.

“Fine, but then there’s me. Me!” She gestured at herself so violently that she slammed her fist into her bony sternum. I smiled secretly when she caused herself to wince. “We’ve talked about this before,” in truth she had done the talking and I the listening, “we tried to get you taken care of by Luven. That capon. But still there is nothing happening. And I mean nothing!" This time she was able to stop herself from striking her chest again. “So I’ve made an appointment for you to see Dr. Merkin.”

“You what?” I at last shouted. “Your shrink?”

“Correct. You’re seeing him on Tuesday at 11:00. I even gave up my appointment.”

I couldn’t believe this. She hadn’t even consulted me to see if I had scheduled any office hours with my students on Tuesday!

She had moved on from the Bioenergetic Luven because his technique, after five years of seeing him, did not produce the results she had been seeking—in spite of all the body work she still wasn’t getting “there.” So she switched to the “eclectic” Boris Merkin, who, she said, in his eclecticism, not only paid attention to the body, but also spent many sessions during which he helped his clients explore the psychodynamics of their upbringing, especially the relationship between fathers and daughters and the transferential issues common between male psychiatrists and their female patients. He had even written papers on the subject that had been prominently featured in The Psychoanalytic Review. Lydia had shown me some of the offprints, pointing out how relevant his research was to her own life as a first-born and the issues involved in her being treated by a male therapist.

I of course was now wondering, even though I too was my parents’ first child, “What does any of this have to do with me?" But only said, “I think Tuesday at 11:00 will work for me.”

To be continued next Saturday . . . .