Ten days after my surprise birthday 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 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 students,” mainly women who had taken
time off from school to work and raise families before embarking on a college
education. The students, thus, had
richer life experiences than their instructors, me very much included--draft-deferred and childless as I was; and in recognition of this we arranged to give them college
credit for that “life experience.”
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 what I
could, being sure never to 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” or merely “Cool.”
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.
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
form of welcome and as the signal to lead off, even before anyone had had their
first toke or 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 sit-ins 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.
I was therefore 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
hairline 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 marijuana smoke. This gasping was emanating from Patty
Moriarity 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 Patty 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
managed to get through 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, through my authority, 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 Patty Moriarity.
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 all 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--Patty 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 spoutin’
clichés.”
I couldn’t with integrity disagree with that, and
so I asked, “But what about you? Patty 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,” I couldn’t even now manage to restrain myself from being
so damned pedantic, “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 drive myself home to Lydia, I couldn’t get Patty 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 Patty herself. I just couldn’t get the sound of her voice to
go away nor could I stop thinking about her body—neither the front nor the back.
* * *
It was a dreamy, half-stoned drive through the
liquid air of Brooklyn. As I wove my way
among the late evening traffic, it was difficult to push myself beyond thoughts
of Patty—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 and 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 Patty 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, what I had written, nearly 300 hand-written
legal-size pages, in an attempt to read all of it through the lens that Patty
(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? Patty, could it be?
But I was quickly pulled from my reverie and the
thoughts provoked by what Patty 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 of 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 and, I was
certain, at me.
I had by then been sobered up from whatever was
lingering in my system from the Workshop ingestions 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 wanted
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.” At this I would have responded
if I hadn’t heard 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, if Patty too was right then stepping into a shower of her own out
there in the heat of 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
for 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.
But she had ripped the curtain open and threw the
one dry bath towel at me. It hit me in
the back and fell into the tub 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 another planet--I shuffled back downstairs where I found her
perched on the now iconic Spanish sofa.
Without any attempt to set a context Lydia spurted,
“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 my considerably surprise, I came to enjoy seeing
Dr. Merkin. My first impression, though,
was not positive—of him or of me.
In regard to him, and I admit this is profoundly
superficial, to me Dr. Merkin looked more like an accountant than anyone’s idea
of how a real analyst should appear. Dr.
Luven, by contrast, in spite of the way he dressed, at least had the
appropriate middle European accent, serious hair, and had studied in Vienna and
Berlin under Wilhelm Reich and other psychoanalytic pioneers. Merkin, by contrast, was a graduate of
Brooklyn College—at my initial session the first thing I did was check his
framed diplomas—and Flower Fifth Avenue Medical School, at the time the only
commutable “safe” med school for Ashkenazi Jews recently moving on from the
city’s outer-borough ghettos. In
addition, he had a hair problem—his head was rimmed by a two-inch wide band of
inauspicious fuzz which looked as if it had been affixed by glue to his
always-perspiring head; and he wore baggy suits that only accented the
lumpiness of his formless body. Then,
when he stood, which was rare, he barely came up to the height of my chest. All of this, far from ideal. I thought that at least he should have grown
a beard.
In addition to my own initial doubts, I wondered
what Lydia saw in him, considering her fixations on bodies and their mysterious
functions. He did not set a good example
for any of that.
Then in regard to myself, I also was not
impressed—what was I doing there in the first place? And why had I so passively allowed her to decide I needed more treatment;
why had I allowed her to select my therapist—assuming that I would agree
to see one, which was, I needed to admit, a non-discussable and foregone
conclusion—why did I allow her to
schedule a time for me to see him
without asking in advance if it was convenient? Good questions all. But there I was in any case on a late-June
Tuesday, precisely on time at 11:00 AM at his office right off Grand Army
Plaza, taking over Lydia’s regular appointment.
I was even found lying on his cracked-leather couch, with a box of
Kleenex tissues on my chest as if I were a side table. What, I thought, was portended by the fact
that he so automatically plopped them there?
But well before that thought could develop, he laid
out what he called “the rules of the road”:
“It is not often my practice to treat two members
of the same family.” Up to that point I
had never thought of Lydia and me in this way—to me “family” meant my parents,
brother, aunts, uncles, and cousins.
“But in your case,” he continued, “I feel that having a limited number
of sessions with you,” I was relieved to hear him mention they would be limited
in number, “might be helpful—in fact, if you prove to be honest and work hard I
feel that you will benefit—but more than that it will be helpful to your
wife.” Another term that I was not used
to employing. “It is no secret to you,”
that was an understatement, “that I have been working with her now for almost
five years. Even by classical analytic
standards that is a considerable amount of time.” And I was about to add, “money,” since I wrote
checks for all of his fees—Lydia had for most of that time either been taking
dance cases or performing in junior companies for pittances that barely covered
her expenses—in fact in three weeks she was again going to be out of town at
Connecticut College for their annual modern dance festival. “So, after careful discussion with her and
our together deeply probing her feelings about this arrangement, she, and now I
have agreed to allow you to work with me.”
I was so glad to learn that my therapy, limited though it was decided by
the two of them to be, had been so deeply analyzed—again I quickly calculated
how much the discussion about that
had cost me.
“I even took the time to see my own supervising
analyst—I haven’t been to him in years: he is a great man,” how much more would
that cost I wondered, “and he counseled me that if I take certain precautions,
especially being careful to manage any potential transference issues that might
emerge, that it would be permitted.”
Everyone was getting into my act I thought. And as a result of that feeling, which I
analyzed on my own, thank you, by looking squarely at how I was reacting to
what he was saying, not well I acknowledged, I came to conclude that I was an
unsuitable candidate for whatever it was that he had in store for me after he
finished laying out the rules.
“And so we will work together for a month. I should quickly add, because I want to get
us to work,” he checked his watch, “that there is often value in placing such
limits on therapy (of course truth requires me to say that the concomitant
potential benefits are equally limited)—it will force you to be efficient in
your use of our valuable time.” Not just
valuable, I thought, unable to shut off the meter that was ticking in my head,
but also expensive. “Above all, in this
unusual circumstance of treating spouses,” another concept foreign to me, “it
is essential, I emphasize essential,
that what happens here, what is discussed and shared, will remain completely
and totally confidential.” I thought I
heard the hint of a Germanic accent when he articulated, carefully syllable-by-syllable,
com-plete-ly and to-tal-ly. As a post World
War II baby I knew from that how seriously he meant me to take these
orders.
“Are we in agreement?” he asked in conclusion,
sounding again more like the Brooklyn boy he was. I pulled a tissue from the box, feeling I
should get all of my money’s worth of services and goods, and nodded with
sufficient vigor that he would be able to see me through his thick
glasses. It was not difficult to get me
to agree not to discuss any of this with Lydia—I could always put the blame on
her Merkin when she picked away at me, demanding that I tell her everything.
And so we began.
His technique was so different from what I remembered of my tortuous
time with Dr. Luven. Over the course of
the month, in place of body work, he had me talk about early memories, my
feelings about my family, my actual family, especially about my father and his
relationship with my mother. I sensed
that he was probing here to see if there were any echoes of that “resonating,”
my word, within my “relationship,” his word, with Lydia. He was particularly interested in what he
called “dream material”—insisting that I keep a pad by the bed so I could
record even fragments of dreams before they were lost to consciousness. To this I keenly agreed, thinking maybe I
could work some of this into my novel—as a window into the unconscious and my
authentic self, particularly if I could weave some irony into the way I
transformed the material into narrative.
So, in spite of my hesitations and Merkin’s
demeanor, I came to look forward to my time with him. I even, on occasion, found I made actual use
of his tissues, especially in the next-to-last session when a dream about which
I had scribbled 2:00 AM notes involved what he, and I eventually as well,
suspected revealed very early, hitherto hidden memories of something sexually
untoward I had glimpsed going on between my father and one of his sisters. Yes,
of course, it was Madeline.
At the final Tuesday session, Lydia by then was up
in Connecticut, two days before the July meeting of the Writers Workshop—Patty
was again preoccupying my mind—Dr. Merkin, before I could share material from
another dream, asked me if this time I would sit in a chair facing him. I of course did, being sure, since I had no
idea what to expect from this radical change in routine, to bring the Kleenex
with me.
When I was seated he slid a pad and drawing pencil
across to me. “Please,” he said looking
directly at me, “on this pad, draw a picture of a woman’s vagina.” I was stunned, but not enough to deflect me
from wondering why he asked me to draw a women’s
one—didn’t that go without saying?
“A what?”
I finally asked, somewhat incredulously, “What do you want me to do?”
“I think you heard me clearly enough. If we had the time, this is unfortunately the
final session, we could spend much valuable time analyzing your reaction to
this. But now, with our limited
remaining moments, please, as I asked you to do, draw a vagina for me. On the pad,” which he tapped with the stem of
his pipe.
Drawing was something I prided myself in doing
well, even if I was untrained, but this assignment was so unexpected and
emotionally ladened that I worked hesitantly, in truth not doing a very good
job at all. What I produced was more a
cartoon version of a vagina than one that was naturalistic, with finesse or
shading.
But I also quickly had to confess to myself,
certainly not to Dr. Merkin, that I had not had enough experience studying
actual vaginas to enable me to produce one in perspective, with
verisimilitude. I knew enough by then
from my experiences with therapists, limited though they were, that to share
and then deal with this properly would likely take months or even years.
“That’s quite incomplete,” he said to me when I
paused. “Please proceed. You have produced just the barest
outline.” He again tapped the pad; this
time with his eyeglasses. “To me it
looks more like a clamshell standing on end than an anatomically correct
vagina.”
“Well,” I attempted to defend myself, “you didn’t
tell me how specific you wanted it to be.”
“Very,”
he said sternly.
Feeling admonished I picked up the pencil again and
fiddled some more with my drawing, adding some squiggles around the outer edge
of the image in a feebly attempt to represent pubic hair.
I’m not interested in that,” he almost growled. I
want you to deal with the inside.” I didn’t move. “I gather you were a pre-med in college. Isn’t that correct?” I nodded without looking
at him, “So, for example, where’s the urethra?
Not that I care that much about it.
Much more important,” he pressed on, “more germane, considering the
problems—forgive me, I should have said ‘issues,’” he was now taking great care
to be professionally precise, “With the most significant issue in your family,”
I again thought, what does any of this vagina business have to do with my
“family” “I am asking, of course, about the clitoris. Where’s the clitoris? You forgot to
include it.”
“Oh that,” I said, attempting to sound as
nonchalant as possible. “Why, it’s right
over here.” And with that I drew a small
oval in the middle of the clamshell.
“Well actually,” he said, “that’s not quite
correct. It’s higher up.” He took hold of my hand, in which I still
grasped the pencil, and directed it to the top of my vagina. “There,” he emphasized, “There.”
I sheepishly erased the first oval and inscribed a
second one where he had placed my pencil in the anatomically more correct
location.
“Good,” he said in a softer tone, which helped to
calm me. “I have asked you to do this,
of course, because it has to do with the most important issue still unresolved
in your relationship with your wife. Lydia.” He had not previously used her name. “The fact that you are clearly unfamiliar
with the location of the clitoris,” he waved me off as I rose to object, “which
in fairness I should add is not uncommon with pre-Masters-and-Johnson men of
your generation,” this generational allusion made me feel decidedly middle-aged
that I wanted so much to be able to retreat to the sanctuary and comfort of his
analytic couch, “But this suggests,” he was relentless, “why you have been
unable to satisfy your wife, Lydia, to--how shall I best put this--to bring
here to resolution, to fulfillment.”
I knew of course that this was where we were
destined to arrive—forget all the prior visit’s interest in intrapsychic,
intergenerational problems. Or as he
would have preferred to express it, “issues” within my family. I had been sent to Merkin, as I had been sent
to Luven, so that Lydia could “get there.”
He went on, “I of course am familiar with her prior
treatment with, I forgot his name . . . “
“Dr. Luven,” I said, “Dr. Arthur Luven. I saw him too. Three times.
Like you, he also put a limit
on my sessions.”
I thought it would tweak him to be compared to
that--Lydia’s term--quack. But he was
imperturbable. “I understand,” he said
without evident emotion, “But my point is that his techniques lacked
nuance. They were too much about
mechanics. Plumbing, if you will. He is in my view insufficiently
eclectic.”
Then what, I wondered, was all this drawing of
urethras and clitorises? More plumbing,
no? But as if he had read my mind, he
quickly added, “Yet then again, some of it is just that. We are also animals, no? Biological? So we need also to know about
these anatomical matters and must learn how to use them in our pursuit of an
authentic and happy life.” He had me
there.
“And so, here we are,” he inhaled deeply, sucking
on his pipe, which was unlit, and looked over at me. Just as at my last session with Luven, I
hoped we were about to run out of time.
I did not respond or move since I was also attempting to stifle any
revelations that might escape from my body language.
I successfully out waited him and so, under time
pressure, he was forced to say, “We do not have the time for me to tell you all
that you need to know about the differences between clitoral and vaginal
orgasms.” Orgasms again--I was flashing
back to my days with Luven. “Suffice it
to say that the former potentially leads to the latter.” I was so distracted and confused that I could
not sort out which he had mentioned as the former and which the latter. I continued to sit there as immobile as
possible, not saying a word, counting the ticking of his Regulator clock. “And,” he said, “a woman’s full fulfillment
requires you not to stop, feeling satisfied with yourself, when she, Lydia,
your wife has reached merely the former.”
I still said nothing while staring down at my vagina cartoon so as to
appear to him to be making sure, by studying it so intently, that I would have
a clear memory, after my treatment was concluded, of at least what was
inscribed there.
“OK,” he said.
Clearly we were almost out of time; and he popped out of his chair with
more alacrity than I would have imagined possible, considering the considerable
pull of gravity on his stump of a body, “Where does this leave us?”
It was clear that he meant this now to be my final opportunity to say
something.
After a few uncomfortable moments, in a way that I
hoped would be light spirited and perhaps even amusing, I pointed at the clock,
and offered, “I suppose, this leaves us out of time.”
I tried a smile, which clearly didn’t work since he
said, “Not very amusing Lloyd. We have
been engaging in serious business here, and I had hoped for more from you.”
“Well,” I said, restored to meekness, “I suppose I
could try again.”
He peered at me, clearly wanting me to say
more. And so I did, “With Lydia, I
mean.”
“That’s more what I was hoping to hear.” He clapped his hands to signal the end of our
session and the termination of my treatment.
I rose slowly and said as I turned to leave, “Thank
you Dr. Merkin. I’m sure this will prove
to be very helpful to me.” And without
his needing to do any more chastising, I corrected myself, “I mean to us.”
He did not respond.
But as things turned out, my prediction about the
“me” and the “us” would soon prove to be more the former than the latter.
* *
*
Two days after my final session with Dr. Merkin was
a Thursday, the last Thursday of July and I was among the first to arrive at
the Writers Workshop. I did not bring
anything of my own to present but was keen to see if Patty would read something
of hers—she had indicated she was working on a poem and would bring it in if
she could find the right voice for it.
Otis was there busy rolling a half-dozen joints that would help sustain
us through another stifling night in our un-air-conditioned meeting room. Howie was pulling the corks out of on two big
jugs of cheap raffia-wrapped Chianti.
That too would help.
Others drifted in and shared what we at the time
called Black-Power handshakes--Dean Mason was there, a demolitions expert who
had his left arm blown off in Vietnam when attempting, while high on LSD, to
defuse a land mine—he wrote surprisingly wistful poems about various forms of
loss set in turn-of-the century rural French Indochina; also there was Ralph
Santiago, an Air Force vet, who had been shot down over the South China Sea and
somehow managed to survive in the shark-infested water for almost a week before
he was miraculously rescued—he wrote short stories which were more a
hallucinatory series of shouts seamlessly braided with epithets than coherent
narratives set, as best as anyone could tell (they were that difficult to
unravel and he refused to talk about them), in Manhattan’s barrio where we thought he had grown up; and also there was Loraine
Nostra, one of the gut-spilling abused, who tried being a lesbian for a while
)and wrote about that) in an attempt to redefine her life—she wound up a year
later living with and eventually marrying Ralph; and then there was blubbery
Bobby Richman, barely eighteen, veteran and survivor of a very different kind
of warfare—his own battle against the most nouveau-riche upbringing the borough
of Brooklyn was capable of imposing (there were many contenders for that
distinction). Bobby took this as his
inspiration and wrote about that aspect of his life in an epic poem, Kiddihood, with more precocious talent
and even genius than the rest of us combined could muster. He lyrically shared images of his mother’s
“vinyl universe,” of “collectable” Staffordshire figurines and plastic
slipcovers from which he extracted metaphoric truth, proving, back to Blake
once more, that the universe could indeed to be found in a grain of sand or, in
little Bobby’s case, a yard of flocked wallpaper.
But no Patty.
Which sent me straight into a funk.
With Lydia still up in Connecticut and after my sessions with Dr.
Merkin, especially the last of them, I felt ready for another try at
adventure. Or at least a Borough of
Queens version of one.
Otis declared that we had a quorum, though we
hardly needed one considering the business in which we were engaged—none
whatsoever--and indicated by just beginning to read that he had something to
present. A poem called Motherfucker. I think, actually, as I reflect back on that
year, that all his poems had the same title.
Since it, like the rest of the series, was not
distinguished, I will refrain from quoting from it or from the discussion that
followed—suffice it to say, since that discussion was so brief and thus will
not divert us, it included Howie saying,
“Far out”; Ralph offering his ubiquitous, “Too much”; and Lorraine spitting,
“Men!”
And it was thus a great relief to me that, just as
the last “motherfucker” ricocheted back at us off the black board, Patty
slipped into the room and sat down where I had previously hid--behind the inner
circle of chairs. It was obvious that
she was agitated and, with a sigh of relief, grabbed at the perfectly-timed
bottle of wine as it reached her. I
watched as she took a long drink, which appeared quickly to help settle
her. She shrugged off a crocheted
sweater, which she wore even in this heat, and let it fall at her feet. She was wearing beneath it a blue spandex
tank top, which, I could not help but notice, her breasts stretched almost to
its elastic limit. And using the
traction offered by her rubber-soled shoes she pulled her chair and herself,
inch by inch, into the circle. I also
noticed that she had a tightly folded paper in her hands, which were visibly
shaking. I thought I understood why.
Then, like Otis, without any introductory comments,
before anyone else could seize the floor, Patty began to read, in a voice full
of timbre from years of smoking, drinking, and who knows what else:
There will be no more
songs at midnight
nor moans of life
transporting
or lives with meaning.
These, this was for
another time
when there were lilacs in
our dooryard
and you chanted songs to
me.
This, these have shed
their echo
and I am left
with nothing but this moon
. . .
There was more, but just this fragment was enough
to intoxicate me; and, I sensed, the entire room of the wounded and left
behind—the allusions (to Whitman?--I was still incapable of not being
pedantic); the sentiment; the, yes, voice so different from anything I, in my
stereotypical categorizing, had in truth been expecting. This was gut-spilling, true--I recalled her
telling me about her prick-bastard Ex--but with an ironic, subtle vengeance.
And with that, as if on cue, the lights in the
classroom, and from what we could see across the campus, all of these lights
blinked off and we were left in total darkness and an uneasy silence broken
only by the scream of the sirens set off by the emergency lights that flashed
on to mark the exits. I was concerned
about what flashbacks the Nam vets might be experiencing.
After a tense moment, illuminated by only the glow
of now multiple joints circling to help calm the many scarred nerves, I moved
across the room and eased myself into the chair next to Patty. Bobby, who had been in the bathroom, burst
back in and breathlessly reported that he had heard from one of the college’s
security people that the whole city, maybe even the entire country was blacked
out—just like it had been in 1965. For
him, it was a great adventure; for the rest of us at best an inconvenience.
In the nearly utter blackness, I heard Patty mutter
caustically, “Wouldn’t you know it. This
really makes my day.”
I leaned over toward her, breathing her in, and
said as gently as I could, “That was amazing.
You accomplished just what you said you wanted to achieve, you . . . “
She cut me off, no longer thinking about her poem,
“How the fuck am I gonna get home?” The
spell was broken--she again was Patty from Queens. “Billy, my kid will think the world is
ending.”
“I’ll get you there,” I said, attempting to sound
strong and assuring.
“But don’t you live in an entirely different
direction? Maybe the buses will be
runnin’. I’ll be OK. Trust me, I’ve had to get through much worse
things than this.”
I did trust that and, thinking again of the things
she alluded to in her poem and at the June meeting, I offered, “Not on your
life. I’ll drive you and then I’ll go
home.
“But it’ll be dangerous. The traffic lights will be out and I live in
a dangerous neighborhood in the middle of Queens. There was all sorts of lootin’ the last time
this happened. Two people got shot.”
But without real protest she allowed me to lead
here out into the hallway, holding on to my hand, which I hoped was not
trembling for what could have been many reasons, as we were guided along by the
flickering emergency lights.
We quickly found the car and were soon heading
diagonally across Brooklyn, seeking the Interboro Parkway, which would take us
up toward Queens. She slouched against
her door and smoked one cigarette after another, not saying a word. I put on the radio and we pulled in reports
from around the country—it was indeed another massive power failure, and New
York City was again totally paralyzed.
But thankfully the traffic was lighter than I had
expected so to relax us I put on WRVR, my favorite jazz station. Wouldn’t you know it, Miles Davis immediately
filled the car, his mellow sound mixing with Patty’s raspy breathing.
She began to sing along with him--
Can't get out
of this mood
Can't get over this feeling . . .
But now I'm
saying it,
I'm playing it
dumb,
Can't get out of this mood . . .
I thought I heard her say plaintively,
before the final line, “This coulda been written for me”--
Heartbreak here I come.
At that she chuckled, “I already been there. Not plannin’ to go back again.”
We could have been anywhere as we glided along
deserted streets in a car full of the sweet breath of her exhaled smoke, drawn
along, as in her poem, by a humidity-rimmed moon.
She had been directing me through unfamiliar streets
as we got closer to the depths of Queens where she lived. In “Archie Bunker Land,” she joked as the
asphalt-tile clad two-family houses sprang into view, lit by my headlights, as
we probed our way into the heart of that--she was right--raw landscape.
* * *
On her doorstep, Patty said to me, “You’re not
goin’ home tonight. You saw all those
kids up to no good along Kissena Boulevard.
It’s getting worser by the minute.”
From inside her house, like all the others piled one atop the other, I
heard what sounded like manic pounding. Noticing this, Patty said, “Oh, that’s just
Billy,” as if that were sufficient explanation.
It was, at least for the moment.
“You can call your wife from here.
You’re married, right? If the
phones are workin’ you can let her know.”
“We’ll, she’s out of town and I wouldn’t know how
to reach her even if I wanted to.” That
last admission just slipped out and so I quickly added, “They’re probably
blacked out there too.”
“So,” she said, swinging the door open, “then
there’s no problem. You can sleep on the
sofa.” I was beginning to feel intrigued
by the unfolding situation, even though everything made good sense--it was
dangerous and I really didn’t know my way around Queens, especially with all
the lights out; and then, with her son Billy there, her invitation felt just
thoughtful and totally innocent. The
perception of which, the practicality, released an immediate wave of
disappointment—with the city blacked out and Lydia out of town, and out of
range, with Patty’s poem and her husky singing along with Miles still mixing in
my mind, not to mention the lingering high from the marijuana and wine and the
lurking sense of danger, who needed, who wanted innocence. If only Billy would evaporate, who knows what
. . .
“Billy,” Patty came to a version of rescue,
screaming at him, “Get that out of here, will you. Dr. Lazlo’s gonna be sleeping on the sofa
tonight.” Billy sat in the middle of the
living room surrounded by lit candles and a professional-seeming drum set. That explained the pounding I had heard.
“Do I have to, Ma?
I’m scared and don’t want to sleep all the way up in the attic.”
“That’s where his bedroom is,” Patty explained to
me in an aside, “I made him move up there after his father walked out so I
could have some privacy for my studyin’ and writin’ and whatever; and wouldn’t
have to listen to him drummin’ all night.”
Privacy sounded like a good idea to me too, particularly when it came to
whatever she meant by the “whatever.” In
the threatening city I was feeling adventurous and bold.
Billy reluctantly and with considerable attitude
hauled himself up out the chair and began, piece by piece, to drag the various
drums and cymbals up the steps to the third floor, moping and sighing with
every dramatic step.
Patty poured herself a tall tumbler of Bourbon and
for me some white wine, still chilled from the silent refrigerator. She collapsed onto one of the chrome chairs
at her kitchen table, signaling to me to join her. Which I did.
She again shrugged off her sweater.
Even in the candlelight her electric blue tank top shimmered as it were
animated by her deep breathing and swelling chest.
“It’s in the past,” Patty mused, as if to herself,
“but it’s at times like this that I think about Matty. That shit.
What he did to me and his only livin’ breathin’ son.” I began nodding, the version that I hoped
communicated understanding and compassion.
“I was no angel, that I’ll confess, but will spare
you the details,” though I craved them.
“He on the other hand, after he came home from the war, all strung out,
all he did all day was drink. The VA had
a good detox program; but, no, he was too much of a man,” she sneered, “to
admit he had problems much less be willin’ to put himself into one of those
groups where he’d have to talk about what he did over there and what that did
to him. He kept tellin’ me he could stop
any time he wanted to. Sure. ‘No fuckin’ big deal,’ he said to me every
time I nagged him about it, but I knew where all this was headed.”
She paused to gather herself, “I have the scars to
prove it.” And with that she popped out
her upper plate of teeth and, holding it before her, showed it to me as
evidence of how life at the end had been with him. I kept nodding and slid my chair closer to
her so I could take hold of her hand. I
began to stroke it.
I couldn’t believe how sexually stimulated I became
even with her still holding her teeth out as if they were an amulet of her
pain. She began silently to allow tears
to form and shuddered. I put my other
arm around her, softly kneading her tense shoulders. She leaned against me but quickly, snapping
out of her spell, pulled away, saying lightly, “Can I get you a refill? I sure could use another.” She emitted her trademark throaty laugh. “And then let’s get you to sleep. Right?”
What was I supposed to say to that—“Sure, good
idea, it’s getting to be past my bedtime.
I need to get up early in order to . . .
actually to do nothing.” I wasn’t
the least bit tired and sensed that neither was she. It was only about 9:00 and Billy was now
drumming away even more violently from his room up in the attic as if to drive
away the demons let loose in the city by the blackout.
Sensing I was neither tired nor eager to let go of
her so soon she proposed we look for my jazz station on her battery-operated
radio. I showed her where to find
it—106.5 FM, still broadcasting, with auxiliary power, from the crypt of
Riverside Church. Now they were broadcasting
John Coltrane and Johnny Hartman out into the ruby night.
Somehow we found ourselves clinging to each other
and moving together to their thick, desolate sound in a sort of mongrel form of
dance. In truth, using what passed for
dancing as an excuse to just hold onto each other.
Though I can barely carry a tune I found myself
singing along with Hartman, obliterating every nuance of all his held notes--
You are too beautiful
for one man alone
one lucky fool to be with
when there are other men
with eyes of their own
to see with . . .
Patty snorted, “Just perfect,” I thought she was
about to make ironic fun of my attempt at singing, “Perfect. ‘Too beautiful,’ for a dog like me.” And with that she began to sob. Her tears in an instant wet right through my
shirt. I felt them drench my chest. There was no comforting her now; but in the
midst of her tears she still managed to add, almost choking from laughing while
crying, “Not that this isn’t also a comment about your singing.”
This broke the second spell of the evening and we
both, still embracing, tumbled onto the sofa where we quickly found ourselves
naked making love. Unlike with Kim,
there was thankfully no flaccidity this time.
We fucked for what seemed like forever to the cacophonic mix of both
Coltrane’s Elvin Jones and Bobby Moriarity on drums.
I didn’t think even once about Lydia except when
Patty “got there,” with thunderous vengeance.
But I did find myself wanting to say, “Thank you Dr. Merkin for showing
me the way.”
* *
*
I slipped out of Patty’s house just as the sun
began to rise and retraced my diagonal path across Queens back into Brooklyn,
through the cemeteries, via the Interboro Parkway. With no promises exchanged or expectations
about what might happen next, we had said goodbye at 3:30 AM when she left me
on the sofa to go up to her bedroom where she wanted Bobby to find her when he
awoke.
I again found myself imagining how it might feel to
be like Jack, on the road. From my
overstocked brain, I recalled his line, “Burn, burn, burn like fabulous roman
candles exploding like spiders across the stars.” Stars Patty and I had seen together as we cut
through the black streets and then later the candles as we shuddered with
pleasure in each others arms, aware also of the spidery sadness lurking at the
center of our lives.
So perhaps, I thought, unhappiness aside, though
maybe, I caught myself acknowledging, unhappiness front and center, I had in
fact stumbled onto the appropriate subject matter and voice for Pearl and His Brother and the Dirty Books. Twenty years after Jack I was revisiting in
spirit, and to some extent in substance, what he had so brilliantly
accomplished. He had both defined and
put a coda on his generation of ultimately disillusioned seekers. Also imbued by despair and unhappiness. But, as Patty had discovered and taught me,
my appropriation, also despairing, had a chance to work because I had set it in
the spirit of my time, among the successor generation, and had found a way to
add the essential coloration of irony.
Thus self-inspired, it was with great anticipation
that I found, when back on my porch in Brooklyn, along with the power restored,
a thick envelope waiting from Black Sun magazine,
where I had sent the first chapter of Pearl,
thinking that they would welcome it.
They had, recall, published some of my earlier fiction, in fact my only
published story, and to see a part of Pearl
in print, even in the modestly-mimeographed Black
Sun, would encourage me to believe in it, press on with it.
But before I could settle onto the sofa to savor
what was inside, I noticed the light flashing on the answering machine. It was Lydia, asking if I could go up to her
studio on the third floor and retrieve from her dance album something that had
been written about her a couple of years ago in the Brooklyn Eagle, a review of one of her performances, her only such
notice thus far, that would be helpful to her, she felt, up in Connecticut
where José Limon
was auditioning her and others for his company.
She sounded uncharacteristically buoyant and left a phone number where I
could call and read to her the part that mentioned her “supple and passionate
movements”—that’s the part she wanted to be able to cite.
I left the envelope on the end table and lugged
myself up to the studio where I found it right on top of a pile of papers and notebooks
she had stashed in a file drawer. She
frequently looked at the photos of herself contained in it so I was not
surprised that it was so easy to locate.
From the attic I called the number she left and read the sentence in
question onto the tape of the answering machine. There was even a grainy picture of the troop
in which she had performed, and the younger Lydia did in fact look like the
supplest of them. The passionate part,
though, did not come through as clearly.
As I bent to return the album to its place in the
cabinet, eager to get back down to the Black
Sun letter, I noticed, peeking out from a disheveled pile of folders and
papers, a leather-edged book with Diary
in gold script etched on the dark brown cover.
Without thinking, while sitting on a stool for a moment to catch my
breath before returning to the living room, I picked it up and thumbed through
it, fanning the pages aimlessly from front to back, stopping at various times
to glance at what was written there in Lydia’s familiar handwriting.
It was mostly notes about dance classes and
rehearsals. Very matter-of-fact
material, it seemed more like a list of things to jog her memory than
reflections on events or perceptions or feelings—“Took class with Ruth. Had problems with pliés. Need to practice them more. Feet need to be stronger. Work on it.”
Things of that sort. To exhort herself to greater effort.
But then, more tempting, I saw that there were also
entries about sessions with Dr. Luven.
Over one or two of these I did shamelessly linger; but they too were
mundane and to my, yes, disappointment did not mention me or much about what
they discussed—not that discussing was such a big part of his technique. So she wrote, for example—“Orgone Box again
today. No blue light. No energy flow. So he had me do Bed Work. Did get some reaction. Hopefully more next week.” But then next week’s entry was more of the
same, though laced with more feeling and underlining—“Nothing again. Fucking nothing! This is not working!” It was almost as if I could hear her angry
voice leaping from the pages.
And then toward where the diary broke off, more in
the present, amidst the dance notes, there were entries about sessions with Dr.
Merkin. These I spent some time
reviewing, even forgetting the letter downstairs, since I had so recently seen
him and his technique was more classically psychoanalytic—mostly talk. This suggested that perhaps her entries would
be more detailed. More revealing.
Some of the earlier ones were in fact full of dream
material. I suppose this was where Lydia
kept her notes so as not to forget them.
Considering the limit placed on the number of sessions I was allowed, I
used just a bedside pad and pencil—no need to inscribe them in such a formal
way. And as another way to record my
dreams, I could always fictionalize versions of them in Pearl.
But her notes from the last few months, those from
just before I had taken over her time for a month were of a very different
sort—they were much more narratives in bulleted form. So about two months ago she wrote—
“Wore black
knit dress . . . Merkin commented how
good I looked in it . . . so I wore it again . . . no bra this time. [Slow to catch on, I wondered, what’s all
this about?] . . . no panty hose either .
. . remembered to insert diaphragm . . .
hate it but . . . for first time
he wasn’t wearing his jacket . . . also
no tie . . . he too was ready . . . [For
what?, still naïve, I asked myself. I
wasn’t yet getting it.] . . . two fingers in my cunt . . . [What in
her? What, cunt?] . . . nothing at first . . . it began then . . .
better than last time [I restrained myself from flipping back to her notes
about the prior session] . . . but still
yet not what I wanted . . . [I knew very well what that was] . . . so he ate me . . . bit on my clit . . . [About
the location of that he was, I knew, quite the expert] . . . and I
came and came and CAME and . . . ”
There were more such entries, with many italicized
and underlined words. I merely glanced
at the next few, with my heart thumping.
It was clear from these that Merkin’s own version of body work had
become their routine: Lydia would
describe what she was wearing; if she brought along or had put in her
diaphragm; how long it took before Merkin would get down to the business of
cunnilingus; how many times she CAME;
and, of the greatest significance, the anatomical site of her orgasms. Most times, it appeared that the eclectic
Merkin managed to get her fully there.
I of course was furious to have discovered this prima fascia evidence of Lydia’s, not to
mention, Merkin’s betrayal.
That prick bastard Merkin. So well-named—look it up. No wonder his fucking “rules of the road” so
rigidly forbade me from discussing anything with anyone, especially Lydia. I could only imagine what she would have
thought, how she would have inwardly mocked me, if I came home from the vagina
session, for example, and told her about the clamshell incident. What she would have thought of me? I could only imagine.
I was sputtering, but quickly realized this was in
truth no real surprise. I reminded
myself of Ludavicio? That Ginny
gigolo. I bet if I hadn’t been so
furious and had been able to read more thoroughly through Lydia’s Diary I would
have found all sorts of explicit notes about the things they had done to each
other. I could also only imagine that.
Half my rage was because the surging reality of
this discovery had imposed itself on the memory of all the magical things Patty
and I had just experienced through our blacked-out night. These were pushed so far back in time that
they felt now as if they had been merely part of an almost forgotten
dream. The delicious tactile reality of it
had been substantially obliterated.
That cunt
Merkin. That bitch Lydia . . .
And then, thankfully, I remembered that there was
the letter. I raced downstairs to devour
it, craving its news to take me away from all of this sordidness.
* *
*
“Professor Zazlo” it began. Not a good sign, I was already squirming on
the sofa since neither the “Professor” nor the “Zazlo” part, much less the lack
of a “Dear” filled me with much optimism.
From having published me in the past I would have expected a simple
“Dear Lloyd.” And from that formal
greeting things only got worse:
There was the blah-blah about how much pleasure it
had given them some years ago [more than I was happy to acknowledge] to have
been able to publish my first story and blah-blah how they, since their
founding [“founding” did not seem to me like the best way for them to be
thinking about the “launch” of a journal that was mimeographed in someone’s
bedroom], since that time, the editor wrote, they sought to be among the first
to publish the works of young writers who held the promise blah-blah of
developing into major literary figures who embodied “unique visions and
innovative styles.” [I knew from this
set up where this was leading.]
“So it came as a great disappointment to us,”
Chauncey Biddle continued [yes, that was his name], “to find you, after all
these years [again with the “all-these years”] to be producing work so
conventional, so derivative.” [But Patty
had said . . . and I had come to believe that . . . so why . . . ?]
Mercilessly he went on to say that though in my
accompanying cover note I had indicated my debt to Kerouac and how in my
revisiting and reimagining his “epic” I had attempted to “resituate” it in
place and time while infusing it with an contemporarily-appropriate “tincture
of irony” [Chauncey’s quoting me back to myself was such that, even in my
misery, I sounded to myself, via this echo, pretentiously puffed up like a
pseudo-literary hen]; but, as he went on, as if flinging the “tincture” thing
back at me wasn’t enough, he continued to quote me when I wrote to them about what
“was missing from Jack’s ominously serious, yet, for its time, brilliant
achievement”—this lack of “angular self-reflection” I had called it [something
more for me to choke on]—was something I had endeavored to include in my own
text. Blah-blah.
Though this was more than enough for me to have to
choke down, he had a bit more to say and did not choose to restrain
himself—“You wrote to us about how the structure of your novel is made up of ‘a
braided strand of narrative elements,’ which, you claim, resembles the way
‘memory is constructed and recalled.’
But then, as we looked even casually [only casually?] at your actual
text, we found that it so lacks cleverness, much less anything inspired by, how
did you put it, your ‘ironic muse,’ that all we found was you dancing on
surfaces. You cannot write about the
‘inner life’ [he had here taken to lecturing me], again this is what you tell
us is your intention, while never burrowing the depths beyond mere inches.” [Though I was not impressed by the “burrowing
mere inches” part—it didn’t quite parse—I was desperately afraid, I was, and that
he . . . was right.]
So I was glad when he concluded with the inevitable
kiss-off since I needed, I crushingly realized, to, how else to put this, I
desperately had to do . . . something.
“What you submitted from Pearl and His Sister [sic] and
the Dirty Books is just too turgid and affected, not a good combination,
for us to even consider it for publication in Black Sun.”
There was not even the obligatory, “We wish you
well with your future endeavors and welcome the opportunity to review anything
else you might wish to submit to us in the future.” And then he signed it using both of his phony
WASP names.
“That piece
of shit rag!” I shouted to the empty house.
* * *
How I found my way there to this day I do not
know. But there I was by my battered
self, looking out over the East River, past the ragged southern edge of
Manhattan, on toward the setting New Jersey sun. Sitting out at the end of a broken-down pier. Even that image I sensed was exhumed from my
reverberating literary consciousness.
And then it came to me—yet again it was from
Kerouac. There was no escaping him, even
though I supposed I had come to the waterfront to put an end to either my
ambitions or myself. But there he was
waiting to, what, yank me back or push me overboard?
I was game for either.
Kerouac, who, twenty years earlier, had found
himself also at the end of his road in quite similar fashion. But of course his broken-down pier was in
Manhattan; mine was still anchored on decaying piles in Brooklyn.
Back then he had written:
So in America when the sun
goes down and I sit on the old broken-down river pier [see what I mean?] watching the long, long skies over New
Jersey [all I had been able to come up with was, “the setting New Jersey
sun”—Chauncey was indeed right about me] and
sense all that raw land that rolls in one unbelievable huge bulge [I could
have helped him make that better—“huge”?] over
to the West Coast, and all that road going, all the people dreaming in the
immensity of it [pretty good stuff, no?
And wasn’t it Capote, that jealous swish, who had called this
“typing”?], and in Iowa I know by now the
children must be crying in the land where they let the children cry . . .
And as I too began to cry, I remembered something
else Jack had written—
Nobody knows what’s going
to happen . . . besides the forlorn rays of growing old.
So then there will be more . . .
