Getting Even Read online

  Now, I know what you are saying. You are saying this is in direct contradiction to everything-yes, everything-I put forth before. Suddenly I am attributing to neuter flesh, values! Yes, and what of it? Because isn’t life that very same kind of contradiction? One’s opinion of fat can change in the same manner that the seasons change, that our hair changes, that life itself changes. For life is change and fat is life, and fat is also death. Don’t you see? Fat is everything! Unless, of course, you’re overweight.

  A Twenties Memory

  I first came to Chicago in the twenties, and that was to see a fight. Ernest Hemingway was with me and we both stayed at Jack Dempsey’s training camp. Hemingway had just finished two short stories about prize fighting, and while Gertrude Stein and I both thought they were decent, we agreed they still needed much work. I kidded Hemingway about his forthcoming novel and we laughed a lot and had fun and then we put on some boxing gloves and he broke my nose.

  That winter, Alice Toklas, Picasso, and myself took a villa in the south of France. I was then working on what I felt was a major American novel but the print was too small and I couldn’t get through it.

  In the afternoons, Gertrude Stein and I used to go antique hunting in the local shops, and I remember once asking her if she thought I should become a writer. In the typically cryptic way we were all so enchanted with, she said, “No.” I took that to mean yes and sailed for Italy the next day. Italy reminded me a great deal of Chicago, particularly Venice, because both cities have canals and the streets abound with statues and cathedrals by the greatest sculptors of the Renaissance.

  That month we went to Picasso’s studio in Aries, which was then called Rouen or Zurich, until the French renamed it in 1589 under Louis the Vague. (Louis was a sixteenth-century bastard king who was just mean to everybody.) Picasso was then beginning on what was later to be known as his “blue period,” but Gertrude Stein and I had coffee with him, and so he began it ten minutes later. It lasted four years, so the ten minutes did not really mean much.

  Picasso was a short man who had a funny way of walking by putting one foot in front of the other until he would take what he called “steps.” We laughed at his delightful notions, but toward the late 1930s, with fascism on the rise, there was very little to laugh about. Both Gertrude Stein and I examined Picasso’s newest works very carefully, and Gertrude Stein was of the opinion that “art, all art, is merely an expression of something.” Picasso disagreed and said, “Leave me alone. I was eating.” My own feelings were that Picasso was right. He had been eating.

  Picasso’s studio was so unlike Matisse’s, in that, while Picasso’s was sloppy, Matisse kept everything in perfect order. Oddly enough, just the reverse was true. In September of that year, Matisse was commissioned to paint an allegory, but with his wife’s illness, it remained unpainted and was finally wallpapered instead. I recall these events so perfectly because it was just before the winter that we all lived in that cheap flat in the north of Switzerland where it will occasionally rain and then just as suddenly stop. Juan Gris, the Spanish cubist, had convinced Alice Toklas to pose for a still life and, with his typical abstract conception of objects, began to break her face and body down to its basic geometrical forms until the police came and pulled him off. Gris was provincially Spanish, and Gertrude Stein used to say that only a true Spaniard could behave as he did; that is, he would speak Spanish and sometimes return to his family in Spain. It was really quite marvellous to see.

  I remember one afternoon we were sitting at a gay bar in the south of France with our feet comfortably up on stools in the north of France, when Gertrude Stein said, “I’m nauseous.” Picasso thought this to be very funny and Matisse and I took it as a cue to leave for Africa. Seven weeks later, in Kenya, we came upon Hemingway. Bronzed and bearded now, he was already beginning to develop that familiar flat prose style about the eyes and mouth. Here, in the unexplored dark continent, Hemingway had braved chapped lips a thousand times.

  “What’s doing, Ernest?” I asked him. He waxed eloquent on death and adventure as only he could, and when I awoke he had pitched camp and sat around a great fire fixing us all fine derma appetizers. I kidded him about his new beard and we laughed and sipped cognac and then we put on some boxing gloves and he broke my nose.

  That year I went to Paris a second time to talk with a thin, nervous European composer with aquiline profile and remarkably quick eyes who would someday be Igor Stravinsky and then, later, his best friend. I stayed at the home of Man and Sting Ray and Salvador Dali joined us for dinner several tunes and Dali decided to have a one-man show which he did and it was a huge success, as one man showed up and it was a gay and fine French winter.

  I remember one night Scott Fitzgerald and his wife returned home from their New Year’s Eve party. It was April. They had consumed nothing but champagne for the past three months, and one previous week, in full evening dress, had driven their limousine off a ninety-foot cliff into the ocean on a dare. There was something real about the Fitzgeralds; their values were basic. They were such modest people, and when Grant Wood later convinced them to pose for his “American Gothic” I remember how flattered they were. All through their sittings, Zelda told me, Scott kept dropping the pitchfork.

  I became increasingly friendly with Scott in the next few years, and most of our friends believed that he based the protagonist of his latest novel on me and that I had based my life on his previous novel and I finally wound up getting sued by a fictional character.

  Scott was having a big discipline problem and, while we all adored Zelda, we agreed that she had an adverse effect on his work, reducing his output from one novel a year to an occasional seafood recipe and a series of commas.

  Finally, in 1929, we all went to Spain together, where Hemingway introduced me to Manolete who was sensitive almost to the point of being effeminate. He wore tight toreador pants or sometimes pedal pushers. Manolete was a great, great artist. Had he not become a bullfighter, his grace was such that he could have been a world-famous accountant.

  We had great fun in Spain that year and we travelled and wrote and Hemingway took me tuna fishing and I caught four cans and we laughed and Alice Toklas asked me if I was in love with Gertrude Stein because I had dedicated a book of poems to her even though they were T. S. Eliot’s and I said, yes, I loved her, but it could never work because she was far too intelligent for me and Alice Toklas agreed and then we put on some boxing gloves and Gertrude Stein broke my nose.

  Count Dracula

  Somewhere in Transylvania, Dracula the monster lies sleeping in his coffin, waiting for night to fall. As exposure to the sun’s rays would surely cause him to perish, he stays protected in the satin-lined chamber bearing his family name in silver. Then the moment of darkness comes, and through some miraculous instinct the fiend emerges from the safety of his hiding place and, assuming the hideous forms of the bat or the wolf, he prowls the countryside, drinking the blood of his victims. Finally, before the first rays of his archenemy, the sun, announce a new day, he hurries back to the safety of his hidden coffin and sleeps, as the cycle begins anew.

  Now he starts to stir. The fluttering of his eyelids is a response to some age-old, unexplainable instinct that the sun is nearly down and his time is near. Tonight, he is particularly hungry and as he lies there, fully awake now, in red-lined Inverness cape and tails, waiting to feel with uncanny perception the precise moment of darkness before opening the lid and emerging, he decides who this evening’s victims will be. The baker and his wife, he thinks to himself. Succulent, available, and unsuspecting. The thought of the unwary couple whose trust he has carefully cultivated excites his blood lust to a fever pitch, and he can barely hold back these last seconds before climbing out of the coffin to seek his prey.

  Suddenly he knows the sun is down. Like an angel of hell, he rises swiftly, and changing into a bat, flies pell-mell to the cottage of his tantalizing victims.

  “Why, Count Dracula, what a nice surprise,” the bak
er’s wife says, opening the door to admit him. (He has once again assumed human form, as he enters their home, charmingly concealing his rapacious goal.)

  “What brings you here so early?” the baker asks.

  “Our dinner date,” the Count answers. “I hope I haven’t made an error. You did invite me for tonight, didn’t you?”

  “Yes, tonight, but that’s not for seven hours.”

  “Pardon me?” Dracula queries, looking around the room puzzled.

  “Or did you come by to watch the eclipse with us?”

  “Eclipse?”

  “Yes. Today’s the total eclipse.”

  “What?”

  “A few moments of darkness from noon until two minutes after. Look out the window.”

  “Uh-oh-I’m in big trouble.”

  “Eh?”

  “And now if you’ll excuse me…”

  “What, Count Dracula?”

  “Must be going-aha-oh, god…” Frantically he fumbles for the door knob.

  “Going? You just came.”

  “Yes-but-I think I blew it very badly…”

  “Count Dracula, you’re pale.”

  “Am I? I need a little fresh air. It was nice seeing you…”

  “Come. Sit down. We’ll have a drink.”

  “Drink? No, I must run. Er-you’re stepping on my cape.”

  “Sure. Relax. Some wine.”

  “Wine? Oh no, gave it up-liver and all that, you know. And now I really must buzz off. I just remembered, I left the lights on at my castle-bills’ll be enormous…”

  “Please,” the baker says, his arm around the Count in firm friendship. “You’re not intruding. Don’t be so polite. So you’re early.”

  “Really, I’d like to stay but there’s a meeting of old Roumanian Counts across town and I’m responsible for the cold cuts.”

  “Rush, rush, rush. It’s a wonder you don’t get a heart attack.”

  “Yes, right-and now-“

  “I’m making Chicken Pilaf tonight,” the baker’s wife chimes in. “I hope you like it.”

  “Wonderful, wonderful,” the Count says, with a smile, as he pushes her aside into some laundry. Then, opening a closet door by mistake, he walks in. “Christ, where’s the goddamn front door?”

  “Ach,” laughs the baker’s wife, “such a funny man, the Count.”

  “I knew you’d like that,” Dracula says, forcing a chuckle, “now get out of my way.” At last he opens the front door but time has run out on him.

  “Oh, look, mama,” says the baker, “the eclipse must be over. The sun is coming out again.”

  “Right,” says Dracula, slamming the front door. “I’ve decided to stay. Pull down the window shades quickly- quickly!Let’s move it!”

  “What window shades?” asks the baker.

  “There are none, right? Figures. You got a basement in this joint?”

  “No,” says the wife affably, “I’m always telling Jarslov to build one but he never listens. That’s some Jarslov, my husband.”

  “I’m all choked up. Where’s the closet?”

  “You did that one already, Count Dracula. Unt mama and I laughed at it.”

  “Ach-such a funny man, the Count.”

  “Look, I’ll be in the closet. Knock at seven-thirty.” And with that, the Count steps inside the closet and slams the door.

  “Hee-hee-he is so funny, Jarslov.”

  “Oh, Count. Come out of the closet. Stop being a big silly.” From inside the closet comes the muffled voice of Dracula.

  “Can’t-please-take my word for it. Just let me stay here. I’m fine. Really.”

  “Count Dracula, stop the fooling. We’re already helpless with laughter.”

  “Can I tell you, I love this closet.”

  “Yes, but…”

  “I know, I know… it seems strange, and yet here I am, having a ball. I was just saying to Mrs. Hess the other day, give me a good closet and I can stand in it for hours. Sweet woman, Mrs. Hess. Fat but sweet… Now, why don’t you run along and check back with me at sunset. Oh, Ramona, la da da de da da de, Ramona…”

  Now the Mayor and his wife, Katia, arrive. They are passing by and have decided to pay a call on their good friends, the baker and his wife.

  “Hello, Jarslov. I hope Katia and I are not intruding?”

  “Of course not, Mr. Mayor. Come out, Count Dracula! We have company!”

  “Is the Count here?” asks the Mayor, surprised.

  “Yes, and you’ll never guess where,” says the baker’s wife.

  “It’s so rare to see him around this early. In fact I can’t ever remember seeing him around in the daytime.”

  “Well, he’s here. Come out, Count Dracula!”

  “Where is he?” Katia asks, not knowing whether to laugh or not.

  “Come on out now! Let’s go!” The baker’s wife is getting impatient.

  “He’s in the closet,” says the baker, apologetically.

  “Really?” asks the Mayor.

  “Let’s go,” says the baker with mock good humor as he knocks on the closet door. “Enough is enough. The Mayor’s here.”

  “Come on out, Dracula,” His Honor shouts, “let’s have a drink.”

  “No, go ahead. I’ve got some business in here.”

  “In the closet?”

  “Yes, don’t let me spoil your day. I can hear what you’re saying. I’ll join in if I have anything to add.”

  Everyone looks at one another and shrugs. Wine is poured and they all drink.

  “Some eclipse today,” the Mayor says, sipping from his glass.

  “Yes,” the baker agrees. “Incredible.”

  “Yeah. Thrilling,” says a voice from the closet

  “What, Dracula?”

  “Nothing, nothing. Let it go.”

  And so the time passes, until the Mayor can stand it no longer and forcing open the door to the closet, he shouts, “Come on, Dracula. I always thought you were a mature man. Stop this craziness.”

  The daylight streams in, causing the evil monster to shriek and slowly dissolve to a skeleton and then to dust before the eyes of the four people present. Leaning down to the pile of white ash on the closet floor, the baker’s wife shouts, “Does this mean dinner’s off tonight?”

  A Little Louder, Please

  Understand you are dealing with a man who knocked off Finnegans Wake on the roller coaster at Coney Island, penetrating the abstruse Joycean arcana with ease, despite enough violent lurching to shake loose my silver fillings. Understand also that I am among the select few who spotted instantly in the Museum of Modern Art’s impacted Buick that precise interplay of nuance and shading that Odilon Redon could have achieved had he foresaken the delicate ambiguity of pastels and worked with a car press. Also, laddies, as one whose spate of insights first placed Godot in proper perspective for the many confused playgoers who milled sluggishly in the lobby during intermission, miffed at ponying up scalper’s money for argle-bargle bereft of one up-tune or a single spangled bimbo, I would have to say my rapport with the seven livelies is pretty solid. Add to this the fact that eight radios conducted simultaneously at Town Hall killed me, and that I still occasionally sit in with my own Philco, after hours, in a Harlem basement where we blow some late weather and news, and where once a laconic field hand named Jess, who had never studied in his life, played the closing Dow-Jones averages with great feeling. Real soul stuff. Finally, to lock my case up tight, note that mine is a stock visage at happenings and underground-movie premieres, and that I am a frequent contributor to Sight and Stream, a cerebral quarterly dedicated to advanced concepts in cinema and fresh-water fishing. If these are not credentials enough to tag me Joe Sensitive, then, brother, I give up. And yet, with this much perception dripping from me, like maple syrup off waffles, I was reminded recently that I possess an Achilles’ heel culturewise that runs up my leg to the back of my neck.

  It began one day last January when I was standing in McGinnis’ Bar on Broadway, engu
lfing a slab of the world’s richest cheesecake and suffering the guilty, cholesterolish hallucination that I could hear my aorta congealing into a hockey puck. Standing next to me was a nerve-shattering blonde, who waxed and waned under a black chemise with enough provocation to induce lycanthropy into a Boy Scout. For the previous fifteen minutes, my “pass the relish” had been the central theme of our relationship, despite several attempts on my part to generate a little action. As it was, she had passed the relish, and I was forced to ladle a small amount on my cheesecake as witness to the integrity of my request.

  “I understand egg futures are up,” I ventured finally, feigning the insouciance of a man who merged corporations as a sideline. Unaware that her stevedore boy friend had entered, with Laurel and Hardy timing, and was standing right behind me, I gave her a lean, hungry look and can remember cracking wise about Krafft-Ebing just before losing consciousness. The next thing I recall was running down the street to avoid the ire of what appeared to be a Sicilian cousin’s club bent on avenging the girl’s honor. I sought refuge in the cool dark of a newsreel theatre, where a tour de force by Bugs Bunny and three Librium restored my nervous system to its usual timbre. The main feature came on and turned out to be a travelogue on the New Guinea bush-a topic rivalling “Moss Formations” and “How Penguins Live” for my attention span. “Throwbacks,” droned the narrator, “living today not a whit differently from man millions of years ago, slay the wild boar [whose standard of living didn’t appear to be up perceptibly, either] and sit around the fire at night acting out the day’s kill in pantomime.” Pantomime. It hit me with sinus-clearing clarity. Here was a chink in my cultural armor-the only chink, to be sure, but one that has plagued me ever since childhood, when a dumb-show production of Gogol’s The Overcoat eluded my grasp entirely and had me convinced I was simply watching fourteen Russians doing calisthenics. Always, pantomime was a mystery to me-one that I chose to forget about because of the embarrassment it caused me. But here was that failing again and, to my chagrin, just as bad as ever. I did not understand the frenetic gesticulations of the leading New Guinea aborigine any more than I have ever understood Marcel Marceau in any of those little skits that fill multitudes with such unbounded adulation. I writhed in my seat as the amateur jungle thespian mutely titillated his fellow-primitives, finally garnering hefty mitt with money notices from the tribal elders, and then I slunk, dejected, from the theatre.