Mandala

A Novel

Hugh Taylor

www.hughtaylorwriting.com
hbassociatesllc@yahoo.com
 Copyright © 2008 by Hugh Taylor

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 Part I - The All-American Sports Bar..............................................................................5
Ralph............................................................................................................................5
B & Beloved..............................................................................................................10
Gigs............................................................................................................................18
The Mandala..............................................................................................................27
The Most Important Art.............................................................................................36
Der Hinterlader..........................................................................................................46
Dede’s Table...............................................................................................................58
The Piss Rabbit .........................................................................................................68
Roast Beef..................................................................................................................79
Motorola.....................................................................................................................86
Part II The Exit Row....................................................................................................104
DocuChick...............................................................................................................104
Gumshoe..................................................................................................................115
Café Barcelona.........................................................................................................126
Ivoryton....................................................................................................................139
Jack .........................................................................................................................151
The Pow Wow..........................................................................................................166
White Jazz................................................................................................................185
Reflections on Bob...................................................................................................193
Trevett Square..........................................................................................................206
The Battle Tux..........................................................................................................220
Part III – Palacio de Judicia.............................................................................................227
Internationalista........................................................................................................227
Cherry Pie................................................................................................................253
The Print Nazi..........................................................................................................268
Alternative Sources..................................................................................................279
.................................................................................................................................289
Playland....................................................................................................................290

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 Tail Slate..................................................................................................................300

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Part I - The All-American Sports Bar

Ralph

I don’t know how Adam can read in this light. The fluorescent gloom of the

terminal concourse barely makes it past the Mookie Wilson display. Back here, at our

table in the depths of The All American Sports Bar, what illumination there is comes from

a score of huge, wall-mounted televisions. Yet, he buries his face in a newspaper that I

am sure he’s already read at least once today.

I finger the edge of the envelope jammed into my back pocket. The unevenly

folded check it contains has been creasing my left buttock since we planted ourselves

here hours ago. I should have taken care of it in Manhattan, but every time I remembered

the envelope, I couldn’t find a mailbox. I know I can’t mail it from Peru and expect it to

arrive in time to avoid a fine from the judge. With three checks to go, after two decades,

this process shouldn’t be so difficult.

“Adam?” I mumble. He doesn’t hear me over the screeching tires and char-broiled

come-ons spewing from the overhead monitors. “Adam,” I repeat more loudly. I’m

attempting to sound calm, but with my throat seared by economy class air, it comes out as

a bleat.

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 He doesn’t look up. “What?”

“Have you seen a mailbox around here?”

“Not here,” he says, face pressed into the paper. “There’s one back at the ticket

counter.”

A familiar synaptic confusion sets in as impulses to complete the relatively minor

trek to the mailbox dissolve in my pickling hangover. My chest tightens. Organs and

viscera churn as if they were made of iron and a vast magnet was trying to pull them out

of me. My head sags as I worry that some heavy object, perhaps one of these giant TV

sets, will choose to fall and crush my skull. This is Ralph.

I’ve followed Dr. Geddoff’s advice to personify this state so I can see it as an

enemy that I must vanquish. Terms like anxiety and panic are too clinical, he said, and

give you a false sense of distance from the problem. Thus, Ralph was born. If Dr.

Geddoff were here now, he would probably crack that self-satisfied smirk I hate and ask,

“You’re letting Ralph beat you again by choosing not to mail the check. You must want

the trouble that decision will bring.”

It’s not easy to do battle with Ralph, though. He’s been an uninvited house guest

in my head for so many years now, from the slaps and punches of childhood to the

catastrophe of the diving accident and the recent ass-licking failure of my show business

career. Occasionally, he goes mute, like the time I went canoeing on Lake Arrowhead

with that Simpsons writer with cast iron nipple rings. I realized, as we lay naked and

stoned in the musty cabin listening to my old Doors records, that Ralph had disappeared.

But, getting drunk or high doesn’t count, the Doctor said. It’s not the same as beating

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Ralph. “You’re just numbing the feeling by self-medicating,” he said. Dr. Geddoff does

not approve of self-medicating. It’s bad for business, I guess. He’s right. Self-medicating

hasn’t done me much good, though I like the medicine.

I remain rooted in the dimly lit cave of the bar. Score one more for Ralph. That’s

twenty bazillion for Ralph and for Havelock, well, I’ve lost count of my meager victories.

That’s why Dr. Geddoff gave me homework for the trip. I am to spend five minutes at a

time without saying or doing anything except being alone with myself - five minutes of

pure Ralph and nothing else. “Work on being okay with yourself,” he said. “Use Ralph

to learn about yourself. He’s your teacher as well as your adversary.”

Okay, I want to learn. I pull a pen and legal pad out of my carry-on bag, find a

clean page, and write “No progress without learning.” Just look at the page, I tell myself.

Forget five minutes. Just try for one. I put the pen down and gaze at the untouched white

paper beneath my scrawl. I look at my watch. Ten seconds go by. That’s one sixth of the

way, I think. This isn’t so hard. Gaze again. Wait. Remember to breath. Thirty seconds,

but I don’t think I can make sixty. I feel my heart chug-chugging like an egg rattling

around in boiling water. Each breath is a labor. Then, I do forget to breath and have to

take a gasping double breath that causes a belligerent spasm in my gut. Forty seconds.

“Are you alright?” Adam asks. He’s giving me the “I’m trying to be nice” look

that I recognize from times in college when I whined about my virginity’s merciless

reign.

“I’m fine,” I sigh as I grab the pen and write, “RALPH” in inch high letters across

the middle of the page.

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 “If you are afraid of flying, I have some pills you could take.”

“No thanks,” I say, and start to form the words, “All I need is more drugs…” but I

hold them back.

I glance about the bar, seeking equilibrium, but the place only Ralphs me out

even worse. The greasy air is laced with hints of fermenting cigarette butts and beer.

Chipped Formica tables list at odd angles on threadbare carpeting. The discolored walls

are festooned with unevenly hung American flags. Adam and I wouldn’t have come in

here if I hadn’t thought a drink would ease my hangover.

Not that anything would have helped. I had already been pretty slammed when I

got on the flight to New York last night. First, it was a bottomless mimosa at brunch with

Violet’s unproduced wannabe friends. To cure the hot poker headache that ensued, I

stoked a monster joint on my deck and listened to Sandy, who displays enviable skills of

denial in thinking that I am able to help her writing career, pitch me a movie about “A

cop who falls for a woman suspected of murder, but the suspect turns out to be a man.”

Okay, I said, it’s Crying Game meets Basic Instinct. Exactly, she cooed as she unzipped

my fly. Exactly…

First, it was one drink. When I fly, the plane is just a bar with wings. One drink

to calm me down and make me sleepy, but it didn’t work, and then I remembered that I

had to write the check. One dollar for Mr. Ron Brown, who must be twenty-six by now,

at 42 Shady Lane, Rye, New York. His parents probably still live there. The checks

never come back. No doubt, he has since moved on to a productive life as a paraplegic in

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some kind of evolved and caring workplace where everyone loves him for overcoming

the tragedy that I am supposed to believe was my fault.

Why can I not mail this check? One would think that with just three checks to go

I should be feeling good about coming to the end of the sentence, but that’s just the

Hollywood D-Boy in me. The character’s arc is supposed to be driven by the decreasing

number of checks he has to write to the little boy paraplegic who is now a man in a

wheelchair. At the end, the character finds redemption, learns something about life and

teaches it to the audience just in time for them to finish their jujubes. Maybe he has a

bittersweet reunion with the little prick. Or not.

For years, I have dreamed of the day when this punishment would be over, but

now that I am about to mail the two hundred thirty-seventh dollar, I just feel guiltier than

ever. On the plane, the whole lobotomizing trauma of the incident came back to me with

such deadening force that I ordered a second drink, knowing that I just wanted to get

drunk. Then, that drink didn’t work so I had another, and then another until there was a

handful of those little airplane booze bottles on my tray and I sank into the blackness.

I must have passed out somewhere over the Midwest, because when I woke up it

was pitch dark and I had no idea where I was going or what day it was. It was only when

they announced that we were about to land in New York that I remembered that they had

found Claus’ body and that Adam and I had volunteered to collect it.

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B & Beloved

Adam folds the paper. He reaches into his bag and removes a wad of index cards

that are filled out in Dede’s perfect, looping script. Holding one up to the faint light, he

reads, in an accent that reminds me of Howard Stern imitating the Pope, “Gracias por

regresando el difunto. Thank you for returning the deceased to me.” Adam notices that I

am staring at him and says, “I’m practicing for when we get to the morgue. Dede felt it

would be ethnocentric to assume that all Peruvians speak English.”

“Uh, huh,” I say, but I’m only half listening as I wet a paper napkin in my drink

and try to wipe some sticky grime off my forearm. The table is coated with the residue of

what I imagine to be Tampa Bay Orange Crush, though I fear it may just be plain beer

spit. It doesn’t come off, anyway. After shredding the napkin, I am left with a coating of

fine paper curls atop the original slime.

Adam puts the cards down and asks, “What does it mean to you that they found

Claus’ body buried in a wall outside a prison? A wall that was finished the week he

disappeared.” I don’t know why he keeps asking me this question. We’ve been talking

about it all day, and my earlier response, “It resolves a longstanding question” doesn’t

seem to make it past the firewall in his head.

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 I ask, “What does it mean to you?”

He says nothing, then, “I thought I knew, but now that we’re actually here, I can’t

really say.” He shoots me a perplexed gaze, and then looks around the bar. “All these

flags,” he says, gesturing at the walls. “It’s freaky how easy it is for the government to

activate the media machine and whip up a storm of prefabricated patriotism. They tell us

to put up flags and go to war, we do it. They’re selling the war to us on TV. Death is a

product -- ‘America Attacked’ with its own logo and theme music. It’s info-propagan-

tainment.”

When I first met Adam, late in the summer of 1984, he was sitting on the

flagstone stoop of our freshman dorm reading Time magazine. He was all bone and zits

then, a pizza-toned stick figure with a jutting chin and clumps of reddish hair hanging

over deep-set eyes that were rendered into great blue disks by a thick pair of glasses. A

red tank top hung loosely from his knobby shoulders, and despite the heat, he wore sweat

pants with jogging shorts on the outside, a look he later explained was a surfer style that

was popular in his native California.

I had just lugged the last of my stuff up to my room. With my Stones T-shirt

clinging to my body and sweat dribbling down my crack, I emerged from the brick oven

of the dormitory to ponder the hazy torpor of a Winchester August. A low hanging dome

of grey sky offered the tantalizing possibility of a cleansing rain, but at that moment, I

was immobilized by the weight of the air around me.

School wasn’t to start for another day, and aside from the welcome cookout

scheduled for the dinner hour, I was completely free, at least in theory. Watching my

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parents drive off, a moment of release that I had anticipated for the whole summer, had

instead left me in a numb, panicky Ralph.

Primary was the itchy certainty that I had blown it by telling Sara, my high school

girlfriend, that we should be free to date other people at college. We had spoken that

morning in a sulky attempt to convince ourselves that it wasn’t over, but it was quite over

and had been since the day little Ronny Brown took his dive the year before. My

extended bouts of self-pity had overwhelmed our efforts to pretend that we were okay. I

was actually relieved when my mother tapped me on the shoulder and told me to hang up

because she we needed to get going soon so she could drop me off and be on the road to

Boston by three for high tea with Martin Feldstein. After all, her name-dropping tenure

track trumped my doomed high school romance.

As I stood on the stoop, hoping in vain for a breeze, I tried to summon some of

the anticipation that I had been feeling all summer about finally being on my own at

college. Wasn’t I now a college “man”? Wasn’t college where the sexual revolution was

blasting away? Wasn’t college where you and me, we’ve got a groovy kind of love?

College was Animal House, Love Story, and “Dear Penthouse: I’m a freshman at an

eastern college…” College was the end of my high school chastity. The mere thought of

college and sex sent me into horny daydreams of sunsets, long walks, French kisses, Girls

of the Big Ten, and a lot of Tatum O’Neal and Kristy McNichol movies rolled up into one

delicious, king-sized whack-off session.

It had all vanished into the oppressive heat of the Beaton-Lowell freshman quad.

The stillness of the place was enervating. Despite our proximity to the traffic of The

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Corners, the only perceptible sound was the mild buzz of insects zipping about, feasting

on each. If only it would rain. If only a deluge of acidic water would wash away all that

sweat and dust from the ancient dorms and purge me of the new, high-octane form of

Ralph that was hollering at me that college wasn’t going to be much fun, after all. The

sureness of the idea startled me, even though I had just met the woman who would later

star in so many of may romantic fantasies.

Jan had been saying good-bye to her parents as we pulled up in my mom’s Volvo.

By the time I had hauled my old summer camp duffel bag upstairs, our parents had

decided to rendezvous at Tanglewood that weekend. My father had wanted me to shake

hands with “Dr. Fox, a dermatologist from Souix City, Iowa. Went to Beaton-Lowell

College and Medical School.” Today, he would probably introduce me as, “Havelock

Payne, Beaton-Lowell ’88, works in Hollywood, big job…”, leaving out the drunk

driving arrest and recent career crisis. My father’s own vitae – Navy Officer in Korea,

Yale ’50 and Columbia Law ‘56 - is not bad considering that his own father, Isadore

Poretzsky, had been an illiterate peddler from Lithuania who changed his name to

William Payne in 1905 in a laughable attempt to disguise his Judaism.

I wasn’t listening, anyway. I found myself staring at Jan, who with her cropped

brown haircut and slight figure clad in boy’s clothes reminded me of Alfalfa from The

Little Rascals. As our fathers chortled back and forth about the Dow and par threes, she

glanced at me furtively and rolled her eyes in mock horror. I found myself mesmerized

by this petite, neurasthenic androgyne. Excavating my brain for something clever to

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say, all I managed was, “Hot day, huh?” to which she replied, “It sure is. See you

around.” And I was almost sure she meant it.

Adam had been silently observing the whole encounter. He gave me a little nod

as I sat down on the other side of the stoop, but neither of us said anything. He seemed to

be absorbed in his magazine, and I was receiving intergalactic transmissions from the

Ralphic god of college coolness telling me not to appear too eager to make a friend.

I’d never been aloof before, but on that day, suddenly, aloofness seemed a pretty

viable mandate. It’s still my signature today. I am considered aloof by many people

despite my regular schedule of queasy sprees where I go out with a few of the thousand

or so names in my Outlook Contacts, get hammered, pontificate about the future of

interactive television and end up alone sitting on my couch watching Cinemax.

“So,” I finally said to Adam, “Where do you think the girls are?”

“Probably hanging out with junior and senior guys. You know, there are twice as

many boys as girls here. Those junior and senior guys know that freshmen girls are easy

targets, which leaves little wankers like you and me out in the cold. And you know, we

are supposed to call girls ‘women’ here. And we’re men, don’t forget that. We are men

and they are women, even if we’re all teenagers. If you say ‘girl’ you are acting like a

male chauvinist pig. And it’s spelled W-Y-M-Y-N.”

“Got it,” I said with a laugh. I had heard about this from my sister, but the actual

saying of the word ‘women’ had not begun yet.

“And if you do meet a woman, you have to live up to the fantasy like the one in

this B&B ad.” He held up the back cover of the magazine he was reading. With the

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heading, “B&Beloved”, the ad presented a hazy, bronzed shot of a young, good-looking

couple savoring glasses of B&B as they nuzzled together lovingly. “It’s like, they are so

in love, I want to throw up. All cozy in their perfect, amber-tinted little universe, getting a

little warm before their amber-tinted love scene, implied but never shown, where they

will both have deeply satisfying, glowing, amber-tinted orgasms. And then, they are

going to have an amber-tinted wedding where she’ll look radiant in that custom designed

wedding dress that was hand-sewn in a sweatshop where they chain children to the

workbenches, and he’ll just have to put those broad shoulders and cleft-chinned head of

his into a hand-tailored tux because that’s what handsome, successful men do when they

get married. And you know he’s successful – judging by the look of it he’s either a lawyer

or a bond trader who pulls down a couple of hundred g’s while she has some socially

meaningful job like nursery school teacher, something nurturing that favors her intellect,

like maybe she’s a poverty lawyer who takes on the cases that no one else will fight

because it’s the right thing to do, unlike all the other corporate scum but of course she is

going to give it up and be a full-time breast feeding Montessori mommy when Mr.

Square-jawed Wharton JDMBA knocks her up. Now, take a look at us. A slice of pizza, a

beer and some making out on the subway might be just about our speed.

He went back to reading the magazine. A moment later, he turned to me and

asked, “Do you think Mondale has a chance?” Not having yet grasped what conversation

at Beaton-Lowell was really about, and ignoring a truth of self, which is that I am not

particularly quick in the arena of verbal rejoinders, I replied with the first thought I

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associated with the subject. “Well,” I said. “Nixon says he’s just a ‘Warmed over

Carter’.”

Adam gave me a strange look. “You’re an admirer of Richard Nixon?”

“Well, no, of course not,” I said, not wanting to tell him that I had actually heard

the quote from my mother.

“Curious citation,” he said. “Don’t you think people in this country are getting

reamed?” he asked, but before I could reply, answered the question himself. “The folly

has become so pervasive that we’ve forgotten what it was ever like to have real leaders.

Now, we have packagers and the candidates are just a commodity.”

“Right” I said, shoving my hand out to him and saying “Havelock Payne.” He

shook my hand limply and said, “Adam Saperstein.”

“Where are you from?”

“Los Angeles,” he said. “You?”

“Westchester County, New York,” I said. Silence.

“I’m actually from Beverly Hills,” he said with a sheepish look. Caught. “Both

parents are Doctors. Divorced. Ugly stuff. Two older brothers in med school.”

“You want to be a Doctor, too?”

“Are you kidding? You get rich and the richer you get the more you hate yourself.

Next thing you know, you’re banging your secretary like my dad did because she takes

your mind off it for a few precious minutes. Me? I want to be a journalist.”

“Cool,” I say.

“Where are you from?”

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 “Rye, New York.”

“Okay,” he said. “Don’t tell me.” He held his hand in front of his eyes and said,

“I’m seeing a town with big houses and lots of trees. Thick, old trees, not new the

saplings of the hated nouveau riche - the kind of town where everyone’s father has a blue

chip portfolio but keeps some dough in risky startups that claim they have a way to

desalinate the Pacific and turn Tasmania into a giant tomato farm, but then it doesn’t

work and the fathers have something to talk about at barbecues while their wives get

loaded and complain about how their husbands don’t spend enough on them.”

“Not my mom,” I said.

“Yeah? What’s her deal?”

“Assistant Professor of American History at Yale. “

“That’s respectable,” he said.

“She goes on McNeil-Lehrer every once in a while, whenever they need

commentary on the history of the federal government. That’s her specialty. My sister

calls her Doris Goodwin Lite.”

Upon hearing that, Adam laughed out loud, folded his magazine and said, “Let’s

go find out where they hide the women around here…”

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Gigs

Mid sip, I catch Adam eyeballing me. Expecting a dose of his self-serving

concern about my love of scotch, I am surprised to hear him ask, “Did you ever think he

was still alive?”

“I didn’t think much about him much at all until you called,” I reply. Except for

occasional sessions with Dr. Geddoff and doped out musings on my deck, I had mostly

relegated college to that remote place in my head where I dumped little Ronnie Brown’s

broken neck, Sara, and a host of overweight barflies who had seemed like a good idea at

the time. I have been too preoccupied with trying to reinvent television to think much

about the old days. No one had asked me to reinvent television with my Web-to-

broadcast hybrid. I took on the pompous task all by myself, humping my way through a

year of meetings and phone calls before appearing at the “big meeting” trying to stuff the

gargantuan sense of Ralph that came with the realization that my entire career depended

on the skill of an Internet guy who was having a bad day. If you don’t think ten seconds is

a long time, try spending ten seconds in front of a network president with a web demo

that won’t work.

15715368.doc 3/20/2009 18
 The high-pitched chirping of the phone had jarred me out of my usual pre-dawn

coma. I croaked hello. “They had found Claus’ body,” Adam said. “You want to come

with me to Peru to bring it home?”; “Adam?” In my state, I wasn’t even sure who it was;

“Yes, it’s me. Let’s go to Peru,”; “I thought you didn’t like him…”; “Yeah, but this is

different. We have to do this. There’s no other way to get the body back.”; “Okay.”; “Can

you lend me two grand for the ticket?”. It would have been so easy to say no, even for

me. Yet, the consciousness that I had never finished with Claus or the others gurgled up

into my mind like those gaseous Slopppy Joe belches I used to get freshman year. Yes, I

said. Let’s go.

“I guess for some people,” Adam says, “there was always an uncertainty with

Claus’ death because his body was never recovered. If you wanted to cling to some

insane little scrap of hope that he was alive, then you could torture yourself wondering if

he was really dead or just rotting in some mountaintop jail in a remote corner of Peru

waiting for the political moment when he could be exchanged for something valuable,

which, in a way, is what is happening now.”

“You know, Claus’ mother has been pressuring the State Department for ten years

to find out what happened to her son. One day, the matter actually came before the

Secretary of State and it became known in diplomatic circles that it would be a nice

gesture to the United States, in the wake of the departure of Fujimori, for the Peruvian

government to finally tell Mrs. Fuerst at long last, what had really happened to her boy.

“So, for reasons of protocol that I cannot understand despite having worked for a

ruthless power broker, they called me with a deal: the Peruvians will not admit officially

15715368.doc 3/20/2009 19
that they have the body. They want to get the brownie points, but they insist on doing it

through back channels. It was made known to me that if I, or someone like me - a private

American citizen who was a friend of the missing person in question - came forward

quietly, without an accusation being made in the papers, without a lot of fanfare and

grandstanding, then the matter could finally be resolved. Am I boring you? You looked

like you were staring off into space.”

“No Adam. It’s late and I’ve had a few drinks is all.” I’m afraid to remind him

that he’s told me this story before.

“It really pisses me off,” he goes on. But of course, I think. It wouldn’t be Adam

without some grand irritation at the world aggravating him like an infected boil. “The

U.S. government has known about this for years and they did nothing. Why? Because

Mrs. Fuerst has no clout. She’s a nobody. Not even an American.”

“True,” I say. “At least we’re here now.”

“Yeah, after ten years. That’s a long time to wait for news, don’t you think?”

“It is a long time…” A moment of silence as we ponder the imponderable. How

could anyone lose their only child and remain sane? The concept is so overpowering that

Adam quiets down and even Ralph defers to it.

“How are you doing, anyway?” he asks.

“The truth?”

“Your choice,” he says. “But lies are always a lot easier to deal with.”

15715368.doc 3/20/2009 20
 “I could be better.” He nods, acknowledging that is the first honest thing I have

said to him all evening. It is actually the first honest thing I have said to anyone in

weeks, maybe months.

“So,” I ask, “how about you? What took you to Cupertino?”

“You really want to know?” I nod in affirmation. “I write public relations pieces

and training manuals for a dot.com company. Don’t say it. Yes, there are a few of them

still in business. It’s doubly insidious, because I have to draft press releases that quietly

gloat over the fact that we didn’t act like a bunch of overindulged children who wasted

millions, but I can’t say it too loudly because we aren’t profitable yet, while at the same

time I have to make it sound as if we are so darned smart that we figured out how to run

an actual business, as if that were some sort of miracle. I have to be smug and humble at

the same time.”

“What’s the URL?” I ask. “I should check it out.”

“Don’t. Diapernet.net,” he says too quickly.

“What?”

“I know - it sounds like a fetish site. It’s an online referral site for cloth diaper

services, founded by yuppie visionaries who are concerned about the world’s landfill

problems. Their actual strategy is to push cloth diapers for adults. The theory is that with

baby boomers now hitting sixty, they are going to need billions of adult sized diapers

when they start pissing and shitting in their pants in the new nursing homes that you and I

are going to build for them with our tax dollars.”

15715368.doc 3/20/2009 21
 My pager buzzes in my pocket. I pull it out and glance at the readout: “U read it

yet? Call me. S :)”. I think to myself, “:(”.

Sandy, whose feminist American Revolution script sits unread in my carry-on,

was a thank-you from my friend, Violet. She’s a casting director, so I send her desperate

actors she can take to bed. In return, she introduces me to aspiring screenwriters because

I used to work in script development and I need to get laid too. She sent me Sandy out of

gratitude for fixing her up with a Jean-Claude Van Damme look-alike that she took to

Catalina for a weekend of boozing and screwing and a promise to get him an interview at

CBS.

At fifty-six, Violet is a mother figure and occasional lover. We use each other

when the supply of fuckable writers and actors runs dry, playing out our own little

Fellini-esque porno scene, with me handcuffed to the bed frame, face up, with Violet’s

flabby white thighs clamping down on my head as she reminds me, “As long as you have

a face, I’ll always have a place to sit…”

Adam takes a newspaper clipping out of his breast pocket and says, “Here. I

brought this for you. It’s from The New York Times.” He reads, “Beaton-Lowell Students

and Faculty Stage Sit In Against War. WINCHESTER, MASS. – November 12, 2001. In

an event reminiscent of the student demonstrations of the 1960s, a crowd of several

hundred students and faculty gathered today at the door of the President’s House and

staged a ‘Sit-in and Teach-in’ opposing America’s proposed war against terrorism.”

Adam pauses for a second and scans the article. “Okay, this is what I was looking for:

Leading a teach-in for peace was the noted filmmaker Giovanni Corigliano. Did you

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ever notice that The New York Times uses the article “the” when referring to someone

famous and the article “a” when referring to someone less well-known or accomplished.

In the case of our old teacher, I guess his films have merited him a “the”. I nod at Adam,

though I am not exactly sure what he’s talking about. “You see,” he says, “if you were

mentioned in an article, you would be Havelock Payne, a television producer. Your old

boss would be Ed Stein, the television producer. Get it? So here’s what our old prof had

to say: ‘America has to look at itself in the mirror and examine why the world hates us so

much. If we were honest with ourselves, we would see that those buildings were

destroyed by a world that is weary of being ground into the dust by an imperialistic and

violent superpower that exploits the poor and people of color while it props up corrupt

and repressive regimes to feed its insatiable appetite for material wealth.’” Adam puts

the clipping back in his pocket with a sigh. “Not everything is as easy as burning your

draft card.”

“But, maybe he has a point,” Adam continues. “Is American culture so great that

we have to force feed it to the rest of the world? Take this airport. It’s so generic, so

globalized, so American friendly, I want to puke. We could be in Frankfurt or Tokyo just

as easily as New York. It’s disorienting. There’s no character here. Do you see even one

little scrap of molded plastic or brushed aluminum in this dump that has an ounce of

character?”

“Regionalism is dead. Everything has been replaced by universal functionalism

and we’re all just drones, galloping onto cramped airplanes so we can eat two ounce

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servings of chicken à la king and sit in stupefying meetings with simians whose whole

idea of original thought is to cut and paste the preset templates from Power Point.”

“You two boys want to order food?” Our waitress asks. “The kitchen is closing.”

Boys? She’s fishing for a tip. Neither of us could be mistaken for boys these days. I

hardly even recognize Adam with his thinning hair and grey beard. I remember when he

was Senator Hardin’s aide, every inch the well-dressed gopher with a crew cut and red

ties done in that special knot that I can never do, the one with the little dimple like the

newscasters wear. Tonight, he’s in a wrinkled yellow linen shirt and black chinos – the

uniform of the Silicon Valley set, I suppose, except he’s got a big golden chai chain

hanging out in front.

The waitress keys our final tab into a little computer velcroed onto her arm, which

radios the bill to the cash register, and from there no doubt to the corporate headquarters

of The All-American Sports Bar where some middle management asshole gets a printout

saying that Havelock Payne, with the account ending in **2211 – is getting drunk, again.

“And this place,” he says after she leaves. “Don’t get me started on this cesspool.

Who the hell would want to go to a sports bar if they weren’t trapped in an airport?” I

can think of one person. My neighbor in Malibu, a divorced real estate broker with a

leathery face, would harmonize with the raw testosterone make-a-buck-ism of this place.

When he sees me out on my deck, he invariably starts to tell me about how the Lakers are

getting cheated out of being in the playoffs because Shaq is jerking off instead of playing

serious ball and I just nod and say, “You’re fuggin-ay right about that.” I never know

what he’s talking about because men usually get their interest in sports from their fathers

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and mine was more interested in billable hours than the Mets. Once, when he got his

firm’s box seats, he packed us into his Coupe De Ville and hauled us over to Shea

stadium, where he became so irate when he caught me reading a contraband copy of Mad

Magazine that he rolled it up, hit me with it so hard that my glasses went flying, and

demanded that we leave because I was “ruining it for everyone”.

“And all these fucking televisions showing nothing,” Adam says. “The world’s

most powerful communication medium harnessed to capture the words of steroid cases.

One thing I’ll say for you, Payne, is that of all the garbage you’ve produced, you’ve

never stooped to the level of a sports interview show.”

“Thanks,” I say. “Even a whore has to have standards.”

“That’s what I used to think,” he says with a grim chuckle.

“Have you seen Corigliano lately?” I ask.

“Not since the hospital…” he says blankly, then asks, “So, what are you up to

these days? More motorcycle cop movies for the USA Network?”

“My turn to confess to a 21st century early mid-life gig?” He smirks and gestures

for me to spill it. “I co-executive produce a game show that randomly connects

competitive teams of shoppers with the chance to win free groceries over the Internet. We

pitched it as ‘Survivor meets Supermarket Sweep’.

“You’ll forgive me if I haven’t seen it,” Adam says.

“Yes,” I say. “I would be surprised if you had seen Bag It! The show hasn’t come

on the air yet, and when it does it will probably just run twenty-six episodes and get

cancelled. The network hates it.”

15715368.doc 3/20/2009 25
 “Bagette?”

“No, Bag It!”

“Oh, like a shopping bag.”

“Right,” I say. “It’s a supermarket treasure hunt, with clues provided on the

Internet.”

“Co-executive produce?” Adam snorts. “What the hell does that mean?”

“It means that I had the idea originally, and I work on producing the show, but I

don’t get paid as much as my partner, Violet, who actually sold it to the network.” Her

latest voice mail message - “You fucked up the deal with Unilever. The show stinks.

Going away now is the height of idiocy. Call me. I love you, Violet” - is still pinballing

around inside my head.

“But you’re doing okay, right?”

“Oh, they take care of me. I’ve got cool car and a place in Malibu that the women

like and when they aren’t around, I can smoke dope and stare at the surf.”

Adam takes this in and says, “I guess we’ve blasted ourselves pretty far out of the

orbit of Corigliano’s class.”

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The Mandala

“Did you know,” Adam asks, “that Corigliano gave me a print of the Mandala to

hang up in my hospital room? Una must have called him. Probably thought it would

help for me to see my old teacher given that my father was honeymooning with wife

number four and my mother was dying of breast cancer at the time. He came to the ward

to ‘rap’ with me about how life is precious and there’s so much to be done in the world

and there’s going to be times when things are a bummer but you just have to keep on

keeping on and if I wanted to have a little talisman of hope I should look at the fucking

Mandala and let its energy of harmony and love radiate through my consciousness,

assuming I could do that with all the Haldol they shot me up with in that rat hole.

“His tone was hip, upbeat and smug in a way that he probably thought was

inclusive, as in you and me, man. It’s us against them – fuck the pigs, man! Power to the

people! But I felt the contempt coming through just the same: Contempt for everyone

who wasn’t shoulder to shoulder with him at the megaphone in the 60’s, contempt for

people older than he, those ‘over thirties’ he never trusted, or our younger generation that

was inherently worthless because we never stopped a war. As if being part of a mass

movement like the ‘60’s made him better than me.

15715368.doc 3/20/2009 27
 “He gave me the Mandala so I wouldn’t forget that he had stopped the war, freed

the Southern blacks, liberated women from the shackles of male oppression, saved the

whales, and protected Mother Earth from the corporate rapists while we elected Ronald

Reagan, sucked up to investment banking recruiters and spurned the good fight that

would have the college to divest itself of stocks of companies that did business in South

Africa.”

“He said the Mandala photo was supposed to give me a sense of peace and

serenity, as if looking at a Mandala formed by the bodies of naked college students who

spent the summer of ’69 bullshitting each other into bed with all of their psychedelic,

pseudo-spiritual, mantra-sodden sloganeering attitudes and probably got laid more in one

summer than I did in my whole stupid life, as if that were going to make me feel better a

few days after I tried to kill myself because my wife left me, when I think about it now, I

wish I had torn that picture off the wall and wiped my ass with it.”

I remember expecting something different when I visited Adam in the hospital. I

my mind’s eye, the place where Adam had been consigned should have resembled

something out of Cuckoo’s Nest, perhaps a decrepit but once ornate 19th century New

York building where I would find him fighting over the TV remote with a psychotic

transvestite. Instead, the psych unit was a tomb of relentless beige, a schlocky modern

mess of a building whose complete deliberate innocuousness socked me right into high

Ralph.

Una had said that Adam was admitted to the inpatient floor for observation, but

when I went to see him, I felt as if I were the one being observed. Stepping off the

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elevator into the waiting area, I sensed that I was being evaluated by a dozen sets of eyes,

both professional and amateur, that were trying to gauge if I were a patient or a visitor. I

must have looked like someone who wasn’t sure on which side of the wire reinforced

glass doors he belonged. Announcing that I was there to visit Adam Saperstein, I was

directed to a small lounge situated off the main reception area.

Adam had been surprised to see me. His suicide attempt and hospitalization were

a secret that only Una and his parents knew about. The Ralphness I felt upon entering the

ward prevented me from explaining that Claus was dead, and my visit to the ward was a

detour on the way to the memorial service. He was sitting in a ratty armchair, dressed in

jeans and a Hawaiian shirt, leafing through a week-old copy of The New York Post. I

knew then that he must be terribly sick because he only ever read The Times or The

Washington Post or maybe The Wall Street Journal if he were desperate. No other reason

than temporary insanity would make him lower himself to read The Post.

He gave me a minimal nod when I walked in, but then went back to his paper. I

couldn’t tell if he was more embarrassed to be in a psyche ward or caught reading The

Post. Then, in a moment of grand obtuseness, even for me, I asked, “How are you?” He

just furrowed his brows and shrugged as if to say, “If things were so great, would I be

here?”

We sat in silence. He looked up and gave me a little smile every few minutes and

I grinned back at him, tense and self-conscious that I would say or do something that

would make him want to try to kill himself again. That would be so Ralph, to visit

Adam and have him croak himself right after.

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 “I’m sorry,” he finally said.

“For what?”

“For everything.” And then, they came to get him for group therapy. As he was

walking off with the nurse, I told him I would come by the next day and sign him out on

a pass and maybe we’d take the train up to Rye and visit my family. I knew he liked my

mom, and having him around would excuse me from my family’s awkward ritual of

ignoring the career I have made pandering to the worst impulses of the American public.

Just how I got to spend my working life pandering is a topic that emerges

periodically with Dr. Geddoff. How did my interest in filmmaking lead me to the sooty

void of Los Angeles? Not that I’m a real filmmaker. When I had a job, I oversaw the

hiring of people who wrote scripts for filmmakers to use and even then it’s not the type of

filmmaking that Corigliano would consider kosher. It’s just TV, the kind that people have

on in the background when they’re eating or screwing.

“You know,” Adam says. “Maybe we’re all connected in a great cosmic Mandala

after all. We’re going to pick up Claus, who would not have really existed as the Claus

we knew, the Claus who went off and got himself killed, if it had not been for Corigliano.

You and I would not be here if it were not for Corigliano and Claus, right? And, Claus

and Dede wouldn’t have gotten together without Corigliano. You see, we’re all

connected.”

“What was the deal with the three of them, anyway?” I ask.

“Long story,” Adam says. “Very long story.”

“Well, we’re going to be together for a few days. Why don’t you tell me?”

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 “I don’t know,” he says, and goes unexpectedly quiet. With him, I hear plenty

about everything except what I want to know. Soon enough, though, he starts up again.

“Years ago, Una and I went to the premiere of Old Friends, Corigliano’s verité portrait of

his friends from 60s who thought their personal decision to walk on the Washington Mall

convinced Richard Nixon to sue for peace. At the theater, I panicked when the door to

the cab became stuck. It was as if that faulty door were going to prevent me from telling

my old prof how I had helped the Senator draft socially responsible legislation. The door

did open, of course, after some shoving, and when I saw him and lied about how great I

thought the film was, he just gave my shoulder a little squeeze, said, ‘Thanks, man…’ and

then let himself get pulled off to a dark corner by that psycho Chinese gal from The

Independent magazine. ‘Thanks, man…’ – I wondered if he even knew who the hell I

was.

“And his wife… You remember Vera, right? She was just glowering at him. Their

marriage was never quite the groovy, Age of Aquarius symphony of love they made it out

to be. She was pissed about her husband’s exceeding interest in that Independent woman,

but, you would never guess what was really going on.”

“What?” I ask. “What was going on?”

“As I said, long story.

“Come on, Adam. What?”

“I’m telling you the story. Why don’t you be quiet and listen? So, anyway, I just

felt like an idiot for expecting some kind of validation from him. We built him up into a

God who could give our lives meaning just by flashing us a peace sign. But he’s just a

15715368.doc 3/20/2009 31
guy, a guy who happens to have been talented, with a knack for being in a lot of the right

places at the right times, though he never thought of it that way. His life has been one

long self-administered, self-congratulatory blowjob.”

“Anyway, it was a miserable night for Una, the beginning of the end for us, I now

see. I was being supremely difficult about being snubbed by Corigliano. I prize my

woundedness too much. That’s what our couple’s therapist used to say. I reserve the right

to be so wounded that no one else can even exist. Una tried to be nice about it for a while,

kind of the way she had been doing for a few years, but she eventually said, ‘Give it a

rest. He’s just another hippy has-been. You’ve got to get on with your life.’ And you

know, when she said that, it may have been the first time I realized that she meant that I

had to ‘get on with my life’ without her. She was right, of course, having already made

her peace with the left-wing political harangues that counted for teaching at Beaton-

Lowell.

“I should have seen what was coming the day we walked into that Skinner Box of

a classroom. How fitting that it had been an experimental theater loft in the seventies. It

was Corigliano’s theater – a stage on which he could act out the Manichean struggle of

evil versus the 1960’s for us, his rapt audience of adoring fans.

“He even dressed the set with those four enormous mural prints, behind which

you could still make out the ghostly remains of Mao, Ho, Fidel, and Ché, painted onto the

walls as a backdrop from some old play, but long since covered over with thin coats of

white paint. On one side: Corigliano filming Abby Hoffman for Make Love, Not War, his

counter-cultural landmark, shot from the infamous rally sequence where he caught the

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pregnant flower child getting beaten by a police officer. You know the one. He’s slightly

crouched in the shot as he tracks Hoffman with the Éclair camera. And there’s that

stoned hippy chick with the Twiggy smile standing behind him with the boom mike.”

“And on the back wall we had that shot of Corigliano at Woodstock, also from

Make Love, taking still photos of Ravi Shankar with Jimi Hendrix fiddling with his guitar

way off and blurry in the background. Opposite that we had the Contra carnage, in living

color, taken during the filming of ¡Gringo/Amigo! Half a dozen Contra soldiers,

blindfolded, with their hands tied behind them, being pistol-whipped by a Sandinista.

And the one guy who’s bleeding out of his mouth and listing to one side is being filmed

by, you guessed it, the acclaimed filmmaker, Giovanni Corigliano, though by then he had

upgraded from the Éclair to the Aaton sixteen millimeter.

“Aside from the Contra shot’s basic message of, ‘I am the 60s and you are not,’ it

was on the wall to remind us,” Adam said, “that we had to get close to the subjects we

were filming, that we had to take risks to make great films. And fight the system. And

fight injustice. That we were either part of the solution or part of the problem. That we

had to do something about injustice in the world, or we were just as guilty of perpetuating

injustice as any baby-killing Contra scum. After all, to have our parents’ taxes pay for the

Contra’s guns made us guilty of murder.”

“Finally, we had fifty naked teenagers stretched out on the grass in the shape of a

Mandala. It took me all year to figure out that the photographer was probably hanging

upside down off a tree limb shooting with a fisheye lens to get that three hundred sixty

degree angle panorama of their bodies. The camera was just floating above them.

15715368.doc 3/20/2009 33
There’s no other way they could capture the whole magic hour, Mother Nature is so

excellent setting. In the center of the Mandala, you’ve got this cluster of young women

face up in a star configuration, radiating outward in a big, peace loving, human be-in

coordination of cosmic truth and love. Corigliano was in there. You could see him

holding onto a couple of skinny hippy guys – one black the other white - in the circle.

You couldn’t quite see his pecker, but I know that everyone in the classroom had tried to

get a look.

“According to Corigliano, the Mandala is a Buddhist symbol of universal

harmony. The people in the photo were his friends from a commune in upstate New

York, where they attempted to form a utopian society in the summer of 1970. The

Mandala was their attempt to structure their bodies into the total harmony it would take to

form the perfect society where everyone was equal and there was no war, bigotry, or

hunger.

“Corigliano was indignant that we never bought into that utopian dream. He

never asked us if we bought into the dream. He was angry at us for some great sin we

had committed. What it was I couldn’t have told you, but we had done it. It was as if by

enrolling at college and not dropping out and tuning in and turning on and going off to

form our own commune we were betraying everything he felt was important. The fact

that we all showed up in his class and did our work and tried to get good grades instead

of dousing ourselves with gasoline and incinerating ourselves on the steps of President’s

House was a heartbreaking disappointment to him. As if a generation raised on Nixon,

Ford, Carter, and Reagan could never take that crap seriously.

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 “His feelings about our class and the Mandala may have been fueled partly by the

fact that we were same age then as he had been when the photo was taken. And you

know, when he taught us, he was about the same age we are now. Another cosmic

connection. Think about that”

“Can that be true?” I ask.

“Just about. Corigliano was in his late thirties when he taught us. He just seemed

old at the time because he was an artifact from a completely different generation. To us,

a pony-tailed hippy with tie-died shirts and sandals was from another time and place.

And, he seemed a lot older to us then because we were young and didn’t know shit and he

was an intimidating presence, being a near legend and whatnot in documentary circles.

“Giovanni Corigliano. Bronx Science Class of 1966. Columbia ’70. Spent his

freshman summer in Haight-Ashbury in ’67. In ’69, he borrowed a sixteen millimeter

Éclair camera from his brother-in-law who worked for ABC News and filmed Woodstock

and the March on Washington. He interviewed hippies and veterans and even spoke with

members of the Weather Underground and then retreated to the commune with his film

cans and a rusty old moviola and edited it all together into Make Love, Not War. Who

knows where he got the money to make the film, but I gather he dealt a little reefer back

in the day. After that, he did Year Zero, about the bombing of Cambodia and Disgrace of

the Western World, his exposé on the West’s neglect of East Timor. By the time we knew

him, he’d done ¡Gringo/Amigo!, his autobiographical cinematic journey through

Nicaragua during the Sandinista war.

15715368.doc 3/20/2009 35
The Most Important Art

“Remember Corigliano’s first word to us?” No, I reply. L.A.’s white-hot sun has

bleached out many of my college recollections. “Lenin. We took our seats, but he sat on

his stool like a stone oracle and waited until we had all hyper-focused on him. We were

all eyeing each other, afraid of being labeled a kiss-ass if we spoke up too soon. Finally,

he just said, ‘Lenin,’ and then paused for emphasis. ‘Lenin once stated that film is the

most important art. Why?’ That should have been a big tip-off right there.”

“I don’t remember,” I say. “I was stunned just being in a class with Jan.”

“Right,” Adam says. “You were about to come in your pants. Anyway, none of

us said anything at first. Finally the quiet got to me and I blurted out, ‘Because Lenin saw

film as the ultimate propaganda medium.’ And Corigliano said, ‘That’s right. But why is

that?’ I was about to say something more but Claus jumped in with, ‘Film is the medium

of life. It is about life. It can reflect life, and show us about our own lives through the

experience of other lives.’ And Dede said, ‘It’s about controlling the perception of reality,

about changing the way people see their world. Lenin knew that if he could control film,

he could overthrow the capitalists.’

“She speaks! Her voice sounded like fine crystal being tapped by a spoon -

Southern belle heading to Brahmin but trying to sound porno and tough all at once. Hot

15715368.doc 3/20/2009 36
ziggity! I’m in a class with the famous Dede Teatham. Shouldn’t I be starstruck? Who

was I to be allowed to sit in the presence of someone so accomplished, so well-known

and immensely popular and influential, such a complete opposite of me? Yet, through the

accident of this small class, you and I were now going to become her friends, a

relationship that we would never have achieved in our caste.

“Everyone knew Dede Teatham. I mean, who else, by mid sophomore year, had

played with our sense of objectification of the female body by getting onstage in black

lace undies and reading letters she had written to Andrea Dworkin? Everyone talked

about Letters to Andrea. Even if you hadn’t seen it, you knew about it. Who else had, by

age 20, been described by The New York Times as “a post feminist voice of great

promise”?

“At that point, Dede still hadn’t completely shaken the high school lacrosse

playing cheerleader persona, though Talbots was giving way to leather mini-skirts and

torn up stockings. One ear had ten piercings. The daddy’s girl coiffeur, brushed a

hundred times just off the shoulders, had been hacked into a fuck-off buzzcut. Her horsy,

society Virginia adolescence was a tough skin to shed, but she was taking advantage of

Beaton-Lowell’s deep potential for self-reinvention.

“She said, ‘You can use film to show the audience a reality that they would never

see ordinarily. You can take people into new worlds and broaden their horizons. Film is

the most important art because it is the art that is most effective at changing the way

people think.’ ”

15715368.doc 3/20/2009 37
 “Corigliano replied, ‘Good. What else?’” In Adam’s retelling, Corigliano sounds

like Dr. Geddoff, never satisfied with the right answer. He kept wanting to transcend and

transcend until you were left nauseated by your own emptiness. “And you,” Adam says.

“You cracked me up that day. You stopped jizzing over Jan long enough to answer his

question with, ‘You can sell things with film. Just look at commercials.’ Nine young

faces glared at you. Commercials. Go fucking figure that one out. You might as well as

have announced that you were opposed to abortion and favored school segregation.

“Claus stiffened and said, ‘Commercials are the worst bastardization of the

cinematic art form.” Adam imitates the Teutonic basso profundo perfectly. “’If you told

me to preserve my shit in Plexiglas, you would call that sculpture, no? That’s your

commercial in America.’ I tried to picture him grunting over the toilet bowl, straining to

keep his muscular bulk in control like a penned up bronco. In Claus’ artistic

weltanschauung, even crapping was a matter of maximum seriousness, but Corigliano cut

him off. ‘Not so fast,’ he said. ‘I think our friend here is on to something. You see, while

I of course agree that commercials are the nuclear winter of cinema – our money-

obsessed society’s most offensive trash - I have a healthy respect for the medium’s ability

to convince and sell. Film can change people’s minds. And if you can change people’s

minds, you can change the world.’ So, that’s why we were there: not to learn how to

make synchronous sound sixteen-millimeter films, but to Fight The Power.

“The best, though, was when Corigliano asked us to go around the room and

introduce ourselves, being sure to mention our favorite movie and what we hoped to do

after graduation.

15715368.doc 3/20/2009 38
 “That, I remember.” I say. “Because Jan volunteered to go first.”

“Right,” Adam says. “That’s right. She said, ‘I really, really loved The Big Chill

even though I know I’m supposed to hate it for being commercial. But, I have to confess,

I have a little crush on William Hurt.’”

“I know this sounds crazy,” I say. “But I was jealous. What right did William

Hurt have to monopolize the affections of a woman I had been in love with for two

years?” Jan did look good that day, too. As college progressed, her hair had lengthened as

she overcame the tomboy style. She had taken to wearing long batik skirts and oxford

cloth shirts buttoned all the way to the top.

Adam laughs and says, “I bet you’re still hung up on her.”

“I am not. I haven’t seen her in years.”

“That doesn’t mean anything. How often do you think about her?”

“Once in a while.”

“How often?”

“Maybe once a month.”

“Liar.” Okay, that is a lie. I think about Jan more than I would dare to admit.

“Whatever,” Adam says. “So, then Jan said, ‘I wanted to learn about filmmaking because

I believe that film can make a difference in the world. I think that it is important to show

the audience in the industrialized world the plight of the ninety percent of the globe’s

population who subsist on a fraction of the resources that we do. After school, I don’t

know, but I think I want to work in the non-profit sector.’ And of course, Corigliano went,

‘Okay. That’s a very worthy goal.’”

15715368.doc 3/20/2009 39
 “And then I raised my hand and said, ‘I’m Adam. Grew up in Beverly Hills,

please don’t hold that against me.’ I thought the class would find the quip amusing, but I

guess it’s not funny for a white male to thumb his nose at the power structure. I quickly

added that my favorite movie was All the President’s Men. When Corigliano asked why,

I said ‘I’m interested in politics and perhaps journalism. I can’t decide, but either way I

am fascinated by the role of media in our society so I wanted to learn the tricks of the

trade, the techniques of the monster, so to speak.’ He just gave me a dubious look and

said, ‘Want to learn how do the Beltway spin, do we?’

“Dede was next. Sitting perfectly straight, cotillion-style, she said, ‘Hi, my name

is Dede Teatham’, and paused as if she were expecting a cymbal to clash. ‘I want to get

into film because I am interested in journalism. I see myself as the creator and producer

of a PBS series about social issues, maybe focusing especially on women’s issues like

spousal abuse or prostitution. My favorite fiction film is Taxi Driver. I was seduced by

the pain, the angst of it all, the paranoia, the titillating sexuality with its flirtation with

taboos like pedophilia. In a weird way, I could relate to Travis Bickle, you know,

alienated from the crowd, angry, and ready to explode.’ I was thinking, if she’s alienated

from the crowd, I’m not even in the right solar system.

“Corigliano locked in on her and said, ‘The edge is where things go down, where

art happens.’ They were totally digging each other, but you were oblivious.”

“I was nervous because I was about to speak in front of Jan.”

“You were like, ‘I’m Havelock Payne, from Rye, New York, and I’m crazy about

Jan but I am such a chicken shit that I can’t bring myself to do anything about it...’”

15715368.doc 3/20/2009 40
 “Very funny.”

“No, you were more like, ‘Hi, I’m Havelock. I’m supposed to go to law school,

but I really want to work in the movie business. Don’t tell my father I’m taking this

class.’ Your favorite movie of all time was Star Wars, a statement that amused Corigliano

greatly. You were like, ‘What? You didn’t like Star Wars? He said, ‘I thought it visually

innovative, but I still hated it.’ You only made it worse by saying that Star Wars was

basically a Western, set in space. Aha. Corigliano now sees that you are a Hollywood

yuppie scum in the making… ‘You’re getting the whole studio executive patter down,

aren’t you?’ he said, and continued with, ‘But I’m still not biting. Star Wars is nothing

less than, and nothing more than, a warmonger’s fairy tale.’ You quietly digested this

battery and continued. ‘I want to learn about cinema verité documentary as a way to start

off in filmmaking. My goal is to work in the movie business and make films that have a

socially significant message, like Ordinary People.’ Oh, that was beautiful. You were

pitching him meatballs and he was just slamming away. ‘Really?’ Corigliano said. ‘What

was the socially significant message of that film?’”

“I remember,” I say. “It seemed so obvious to me that Ordinary People was a

great movie. I froze.”

“Right. You were Bambi on the interstate, desperately wanting to impress Jan,

but stumped. You said, ‘I guess the film was trying to say that people can have painful

struggles in their lives beneath an otherwise normal exterior. I could relate to the

characters.’ And Corigliano went, ‘Havelock. Have I got your name right?’ Nod. ‘I can

understand why you could relate to the characters. It’s a movie about rich white people.

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Meanwhile, our actor president wants us to remember it’s Morning in America while his

thugs torture innocent people to death in Nicaragua.’ From his mouth, it sounded like

‘Nic-ahr-aaahgyooaah.’”

“Dede and Claus were both giving you the PC hairy eyeball. They picked up on

Corigliano’s assessment of you as a soulless ‘suit’ who was going to betray the revolution

and aspire to develop supermarket treasure hunt shows.”

“Then, it was time for Duke, the only black kid in the class, whose favorite movie

was Bladerunner. And Corigliano was just beaming at him, giving him this expansive

look of friendliness, trying to communicate, by my estimation, a preemptive message of

welcome that would cause the guy to dismiss any suspicion that this classroom would be

one that would give him less than full attention because of his skin color. In fact, I think

Corigliano was giving Duke the impression that he was receive more than his fair share

of attention. After all, Duke was in that class not to get an education but to help all of us

white people feel redeem ourselves for the abusive acts of Bull Connor. Corigliano

repeated the phrase, ‘Blade Runner’, and was there just the slightest touch of jive in his

pronunciation of the film title? Something in the way he emphasized and elongated the

“a” in “Blade” – kind of like ayy, as in ‘Hey, I am down with you my brother, unlike

these honky squares.’ It was all the more absurd because Duke was the son of an Air

Force Colonel, grew up in Arizona, and went to boarding school in Connecticut.”

“And Claus. He didn’t say anything for what seemed like a long minute, trying to

conquer us with his silence, like he was so fucking smart and above it all. He just stared

at Corigliano. After a very pregnant pause, Corigliano blinked and looked away. Claus

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gave no ground to any other man, even the professor. He had to rule whatever space he

was in. Finally, he said, ‘I don’t believe in favorite movies. First, you have a favorite

movie, then you have a favorite band, and a favorite food, and a favorite religion and the

next thing you know you are being taught to hate people who don’t like the same things

you do and you have fascism.’”

“There wasn’t a whole lot any of us could say after that. Well, I suppose there was

something we could have said, like, ‘You’re way off base,’ but his presence was too

strong for that. He silenced us all, and not for the last time, either. Dede gave him the

soul brother handshake and he just leaned back in his chair and stroked that dense black

beard of his in triumph.

“Claus once told me that the only drawback to having that thick beard was that he

could never lick honey off a woman’s pussy. It would get stuck in his beard, he said, and

no amount of shampoo would get it out. I probably nodded in agreement, like I definitely

had the same problem. Right.”

“Women sure liked him,” I say.

“No shit. He had those slate gray eyes that seemed inert yet took in everything.

And always tensed up like a crossbow in that heavy leather jacket and denim shirts that

showed off his hairy, muscular chest. He had a way of hanging his body slightly over a

woman’s when he wanted to get into bed with her. You would see him at parties sitting on

the couch next to his date, leaning toward her, his arm around her shoulder as if he were

about to swallow her whole. She would lean back slightly, in a vain struggle to keep

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some respectable distance between them, in the meantime getting transfixed by the ‘I

know you need to fuck me’ stare.”

There was a time when I figured that if I stayed close to Claus, I could catch his

rejects. My fantasy was that Claus would have a girl on each arm and he would say to

me, “Hey, Payne, take Cindy here. She’s a nice girl - really perfect for you.” Unlike his

preferred companion, who could fuck all night in half a dozen tantric positions while

discussing whether Bauhaus architecture actually advanced the cause of socialism in

Weimar Germany.

And in my mind, the girl donated to me by Claus, who always morphed into Jan,

would walk over to me and look at me with the kind of submissive, glazed smile that all

women seemed to get when Claus paid attention to them. And with Jan all primed by

Claus to be interested in me, I would finally know what it felt like to have sex. The mere

thought that Jan would actually want to come to my room, make love, and then sleep with

me was too fantastic a concept to contemplate. It existed in a parallel reality, away from

Ralph’s world of self-loathing. From the perspective of today, with Sandy rewarding me

for reading her scripts with long, devoted blowjobs and clinging to me in the morning to

the point where I have to make up nonexistent meetings to get her out of the house, it

seems laughable.

By junior year, though, I had realized that unless I did something radical, the

dream that Jan would fall in love with me as we walked hand in hand along the river

discussing film and culture, the dream that always culminated in a scene filled with

tender, B & Beloved, amber-tinted kisses, would never be fulfilled. So, when she came

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up to me at the end of that first class and said that she, too, had liked Star Wars, this

friendly show of support gave me the courage to invite her for coffee – an act that

precipitated an awkward yes.

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Der Hinterlader

“What are you driving these days?” Adam asks. “That’s a standard question for

an Angeleno, right?” Ford Explorer, I tell him. “Hmphh,” he says, folding his arms

across his chest. “At least it’s not the Expedition. I didn’t figure you for the SUV type.”

I shrug. In Malibu, we are all the SUV type.

“Do you know what kind of damage you’re doing to the environment with that

thing? Not to mention the traffic dangers. Oh shit, I can’t believe I just said ‘Not to

mention.’ I swore I would never use that term again. I mean, you either mention

something or you don’t, right? It is so damn cute to say ‘not to mention’ as if by thinking

out loud that you weren’t going to mention something, then the other person will know

that you didn’t want to mention it but you just did. It’s retarded.”

“It’s a figure of speech.”

“Our language is going to hell. Not that I’m one to talk.” Adam sighs heavily.

“Tell me, what do you do in that SUV of yours, desecrate national parks while blaring the

Maria Callas aria from Mefistofele like those insidious commercials?”

“No, I mostly go to work and to the grocery store.”

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 He doesn’t hear this. “It’s like, here’s this expensive car that sucks up a lot of gas.

Take it to a beautiful, pristine spot in the wilderness and ruin it with your fat ugly tires,

mark it up forever and make it smell of gas and oil, and why? Because you can be free in

that SUV. You can express your individuality with that SUV. That’s what all of those

commercials are saying. They’re saying, be free, do your own thing, go mountain biking,

go kayaking, just you in that wilderness, with no one else around. But in reality, it’s

wanton destruction in the name of self-expression. It’s a narcissistic, capitalist realist

fantasy and it makes me sick because it is such a calculated, cynical lie. They want to

sell you on their product by telling you that you’re special, that you can find special, self-

expressing meaning and experience by tearing around the desert. Well, guess what,

you’re not so special. If you want that SUV you have to pay for it. If you want to be

unique don’t buy a mass-produced car that’s like millions of others. You’re just another

schnook with a high car payment.”

“Capitalist realist?”

“We never discussed capitalist realism? Capitalist realism is like Socialist

Realism, but for our SUV society. If Stalin could make films that showed well-fed happy

workers laboring for the communist dream, all in the name of redefining reality for

political ends, then we can put our vision of capitalist utopia into our films, especially our

commercials. Do you think commercials reflect reality in America?” No, I say. Of

course not.

“Then what reality are they portraying, the reality on Neptune? No, commercials

are reaching for the reality that we think we should have, the reality where mom is a

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pretty housewife and dad’s a good guy who earns a bundle and buys everyone lots of

stuff and the whole place looks great and he drinks Budweiser and there are lots of black

and Asian people around and everyone’s all friendly because that’s how we wish it was in

this country, but it isn’t.”

“You remind me of Claus sometimes.”

“Should I take that as a compliment?” he asks.

“Well, he was always fired up about something like that. I always figured that’s

why Dede fell for him,” I say.

“I don’t think Dede ever fell for him.”

“Oh come on. They were stuck together like two poodles in heat.”

“That was just hormones and ego,” Adam says.

“How could you say that?”

“Maybe they loved each other as best they could given their mutual psychological

deficiencies.”

“I guess we’re all trapped by our own experiences,” I comment.

“You’re in therapy, too, I see,” he says. Yup. “To understand Claus and Dede

you can’t just look at them the way they were in New York or senior year when they

really got started with each other. You have to go back to the beginning.”

“Did Claus and Dede know each other freshman year?”

“No, further back than that. You have to go to the source. Claus’ father was a

Dock Master at the port in Hamburg. When Claus was two, a badly rigged load of rebar

fell onto the dock, killing his father instantly. He never knew his father. That was the

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root of Claus’ duality. He was über-confident, yet that aura always masked some basic

desperation that he would be abandoned.

“His mother never remarried. She was too much of a free-thinking radical to

believe much in the institution of marriage anyway. Mom was a Communist, essentially,

if not an actual party member, certainly a sympathizer – always railing against the upper

classes, industrialists, Americans, the fascists who killed her parents for being Reds. And

besides, she had Claus, her little man.

“Early on, the two of them started to act like a sort of off balance married couple.

Nothing sexual. She just had a reliance on him that far exceeded the standard mother-son

relationship. Like, when there was a thunderstorm, and there are a lot of those in

Hamburg, and the windows in their small flat would be rattling, she would get scared and

ask Claus to come into bed with her and keep her company. Isn’t it usually the other way

around? It’s the kid who is supposed to ask to get into bed in a thunderstorm, but he

never did. He learned early on that she needed him to be strong, and he didn’t want to

disappoint her.

“Her problem was post-traumatic stress disorder. She was a little girl when the

fire raids leveled Hamburg, Claus told me. The sirens would go off and everyone would

go running down into the bomb shelters and sit there for hours, waiting. He said you

could hear the planes overhead, hundreds and hundreds of them coming in waves, and the

bombs would start to fall, causing tremors that shook the plaster off the ceiling. And

then, the air would get thin. I don’t know if you know this, but fire raids killed a lot of

people by asphyxiation. The fire would be so intense that it sucked all the oxygen out of

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the center of the city. One night, she blacked out and when she woke up she was the only

person alive in the shelter. All the adults, who I guess needed more air than her, had

suffocated. She was found screaming the next day by rescue workers who took her out of

there. She stopped screaming, but she was mute for days. Everyone she knew was gone.

Her parents were in hiding, never to return. They put her in an orphanage, where she

eventually returned to some semblance of normality, but she was never the same. Claus

told me that his mother was always a little on edge. The slightest noise would make her

jump. He said she used to grab his hand in elevators and squeeze it hard because she had

an intense fear of getting trapped in enclosed spaces.

“Claus was the man of the house. Even when he was little, he helped out with the

chores and the finances. He was good with numbers, so his mother let him balance the

checkbook and even pay the bills. Starting when he was ten, she gave him her paycheck

every week, and he deposited it in the bank.

“That year, Claus forgot his mother’s birthday. I mean, what ten year old is going

to remember his mother’s birthday? I knew I didn’t when I was that age. But she was

hurt, more hurt than any middle-aged mom ought to be in that situation, but she’d

transferred onto him all the responsibilities of an adult relationship. She got so upset with

him that she burst into tears, ran into her room and locked the door. And he was standing

outside her door for an hour, knocking and telling her he’s sorry but she told him to go

away, she didn’t like him anymore.

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 “He went out and bought her a big bouquet of flowers and took it back to the

apartment, but she was still locked in the bedroom and didn’t want to come out, so he left

the flowers on the dining room table and went out to the playground.

“Problem was, he knew better than to go to the playground. He’d been avoiding

it because there was a group of older kids who hung out there and picked on him. They

called him der hinterlader, which means, literally, ‘breach-loader,’ like a gun, but in slang

it means a gay guy who takes it from the back, so to speak. When he was in the

playground drawing pictures of the trees in his little sketch book, these older kids would

sit around smoking and calling him der hinterlader or der schwanzlutscher, cocksucker, or

arschlecker, which means asslicker.

“Claus was still small at that point. He wouldn’t mature physically for a few more

years. He tried to ignore them, but they would flick their cigarette butts onto his sketch

pad and ruin his little drawings. One day, they took his sketch pad and wouldn’t give it

back. They kept throwing it to each other over his head until he started to cry and scream

for it back. He lunged at the biggest one, an oaf named Otto, who was fourteen and two

hundred pounds, but the kid flattened Claus and sits on him until Claus peed in his pants.

The whole group surrounded him, howling with laughter and calling him der hinterlader

and crybaby.

“It was the worst day in his life, he once told me. He was still angry about it years

later. After Otto finally got up off of him, Claus went home and told mom that the big

boys had been bothering him. Of course, he didn’t tell her that he’s pissed in his own

pants. She told him to ignore them, or play somewhere else, and when they teased him to

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the point of tears on another day, she just got frustrated with him, telling him either

ignore them or fight back, but whining about it won’t do any good. Now, when you’re

ten and small, this kind of advice doesn’t mean much, right?

“But a couple of months later, when his mother wouldn’t come out of her room

because he forgot her birthday, Claus made up his mind to do something about it. He

roamed around the streets for a while and eventually found what he was looking for at a

construction site. It was a piece of copper pipe, maybe half an inch wide and a foot long.

He put it up his sleeve and headed over to the playground.

“When he got there, Otto and his gang were hanging around smoking and

scratching their balls. ‘Hey, guys,’ Otto said. ‘It’s der hinterlader, der arschlecker.’ Claus

just smiled at them and sat down with his sketch pad. Otto sat down next to him and

asked what he was drawing. Claus didn’t respond, so Otto stubbed his cigarette out in the

middle of Claus’ picture and said, ‘Here, that’ll make it a better picture.’”

“Without so much as a blink, Claus let the copper pipe slide out of his sleeve and

whacked Otto right in the back of the head as hard as he could. The big kid looked at him

funny, and then collapsed onto the ground. By now, the other big kids had gathered

around, and because they were all just followers, if their leader was going to get whipped,

they were just going to want to watch, not fight. Otto was down on the ground groaning

and squirming around but Claus hit him again on the head, hard. Everyone heard a crack.

Claus broke that kid’s fucking skull.

“Did he live?” I ask.

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 “Yeah,” Adam says. “He spent a little time in the hospital, but nobody ever

bothered Claus again.”

“That explains a lot,” I say.

“Right, like his whole ‘I always win’ attitude,” Adam says. “He was also the

product of a mother who constantly told him how incredible he was. Every drawing,

every finger painting was a ‘work of art.’ She framed his works and decorated the whole

apartment with them. He was her ‘little Picasso.’ And, let’s face it, he was a very talented

artist, but he became accustomed to being told that he was magnificent all the time, an

experience that Beaton-Lowell does not consistently deliver.” Or ever, I think.

“When Claus was thirteen, his mother bought him a set of oil paints and paid for

lessons. He was a natural. Mature, was what his teachers called him. He painted a

picture of his mother sitting on the couch in a silk bathrobe. Let me tell you, this picture

would give you a woodie. You would not believe it was painted by a boy.

“Frau Müller, the hot, middle-aged next door neighbor, asked our young Picasso if

he would paint her picture. He was happy to oblige and he quickly finished a very good,

classic sort of portrait of her to hang in her living room. She even paid him fifty marks,

which he didn’t want to accept but his mother made him take.

“And then, Frau Müller invited Claus in for another sitting and this time, she

wasn’t wearing any clothes. He was a little embarrassed, but she told him that this was

what real artists did. They painted nudes. You have to picture this. Here was Claus,

about fourteen, probably mortified at having to look at his mother’s friend stark naked

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sprawled all over the bed and he was there in his artist’s apron trying not to let the bulge

in his pants stick out. Well you know what happened next.

“Mom never found out. In fact, he kept painting decoy pictures of Frau M. from

memory to take home to mom so he can explain where he’d been. He was definitely the

little man now…”

“Now Frau Müller was fine, and they will do the wild thing a once in a while on

the sly, but as high school went on, Claus started to notice some of the fraulein his class,

and they were definitely noticing him. He had started to fill out and get that vulpine look

in his eye that made them crazy.

“High school kids in Germany don’t generally date the way we do. Kids there

mostly hung out at the coffeehouse and paired off to make out, mostly in cars. Claus had

a car, which helped him get a fair bit of action. It was his mother’s car, of course, but he

drove it around Hamburg at eighty miles an hour like the whole city was some kind of Le

Mans course.

“Claus started to sleep his way through all the girls in the coffee house group.

Maybe sleep isn’t the right term. Humping in the backseat was more like it. He got one

to have sex with him, and before he even came, he was trying to figure out how to get

another one to take a drive.

“One day his mom found a condom package in the car and threw a huge scene,

crying and calling him a pig and throwing plates at him. It was like a domestic argument.

Well, I guess it was a domestic argument, but she was acting as if he had been unfaithful

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to her. And perhaps that was what was going on in her mind. She couldn’t say it, but she

was horribly angry that he would find another woman.

“She wouldn’t speak to him for weeks. He stopped going to the coffee house and

stayed home with mom most nights doing his homework and painting little pictures for

her. All a way of saying he was sorry, though he didn’t really understand why he had to

be sorry. All he did was what any normal seventeen-year old boy would do if they were

as good at attracting women as he was. And she tried to make it okay, but he could tell

that she was devastated.

“For him, deciding to spend a year in the United States was like a divorce. He

was feeling stifled by the whole home scene in Germany, and I think also he had a

hankering for the big time, even then. Germany wasn’t a big enough venue for him.”

“He finished high school in Germany and then spent a year in New Jersey as an

exchange student, where he did another senior year of high school and worked on his

English skills and applied to college. And, he managed to sleep with his host mother and

his host sister, who was only fifteen, but you know, he had that certain quality, the one

where he made women think they were missing out on something if they don’t fuck him.”

“How do you know all of this?” I ask.

“Dede told Una. They became best friends after graduation. Did you know that?

She told me before we split up. So Claus, brilliant student, talented artist and

photographer, got accepted to Beaton-Lowell with the full package. Four years paid. The

works. All he had to do is show up. He was nineteen freshman year. You knew he was a

year older than us, right? And a year at that age can make a big difference. He got to

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Beaton-Lowell and immediately started to make a name for himself on The Daily Press,

where he had photos published in the first week of freshman year. Practically unheard of,

but that was Claus. The impossible was the routine for him. If he couldn’t double or

triple expectations, he felt like a loser. If The Daily Press wanted a photo of a visiting

scholar, instead of just going and snapping a picture of the guy in his office like any other

person would do, Claus would follow him around for a whole day and deliver a photo

essay ‘day in the life of.’ If they wanted a photo for an article about possible radiation

leaks at the cyclotron, he would camp out there for hours and shoot fifteen rolls of film

until he got the shot he wanted, which showed the head of the cyclotron adjusting the

knobs and dials like Dr. Frankenstein. So, let’s get back to the question you asked me.

How does a person so consumed with achievement, and himself, fall in love and let

another person into his life?

“He jumped into bed with his freshman English Comp professor. Well, maybe

she jumped and he followed. Dede told Una that they called it ‘special office hours.’ She

cooked meals for him, helped him with his papers, and tutored him in English, which was

already amazingly good though he was continually dissatisfied with his abilities. She

took him on trips to New York and Cape Cod and bought him clothes. He was a college

freshman and she was a thirty-year old woman, but he basically enslaved her. She would

do anything for him, and still always felt like he was unhappy with her and try harder to

do more for him.

“Then, he dumped her. Spring term of freshman year she started to get jealous of

him because he was making time with all these little eighteen-year old girls. Of course,

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their relationship was secret so she couldn’t be too obvious, but she started going over to

his room to see ‘if he was okay’… One day she came in and he had some girl on all

fours, taking her doggy style. He looked at her and said, ‘Would you like to join us?

We’re just getting started.’

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Dede’s Table

“And then, we have Dede Teatham, reigning queen of the Winchester College

dining room, the woman who could put you on the power track by including you at her

corner table where she and the high priestesses of PC sat in gleeful condemnation of all

that is hopelessly white and male. But, contrary to what you might think, Dede did not

burst fully-grown from the forehead of Gloria Steinem. She is the eldest daughter of

Alan Teatham, a name partner at one of the biggest tobacco defense firms in the country.

She grew up on a colonial estate in suburban Virginia horse country. School was a horsy,

upper crust affair, replete with the kilted spawn of Washington’s power elites. She came

late to the understanding that not every kid in America owned a horse and had live-in

help from the islands to cook, clean, and chauffeur the kids. Daddy put on a three

thousand dollar suit, hopped into his Jag every morning and commuted to D.C., while

mommy volunteered to teach retarded kids part-time, played golf part-time, and drank

full-time.

“Like Claus, Dede was an overachiever of pathological magnitude: valedictorian;

prizes for painting and poetry; lacrosse captain; head cheerleader; lead oboe player; 1590

SATs.

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 “And at the same time, there was a gnawing uncertainty. Mom wasn’t a falling

down drunk, but her drinking was a dragon in the living room that could never be

discussed. Who bore the brunt of mom’s problems? Guess. Dede, of course, the oldest

kid, and the strongest. The one who could take it with silent resolve. From early on,

mom always found something to be displeased about with Dede. She was not neat

enough, or smart enough, or pretty enough. So what did Dede do? She did what all good

kids of alcoholics do. She tried to be perfect. Dede’s room was pristine. Her homework

was flawless. If she entered a riding competition, she had to get the blue ribbon. But, of

course, it was never enough.

“See, Dede had a little sister named Daphne, who was a year younger than Dede

and prettier in a sort of classic way. Daphne looked like a model and was as dumb as a

post, at least compared to Dede. No matter. Mom preferred Daphne for reasons that

Dede could never figure out. Maybe it was because mom was a little psychotic and split

the two of them: One good, the other bad. Or maybe it was just because Daphne was

sweeter than Dede and more docile. Besides, Daphne also knew how to play the

perfection game for and please the mother who was so rarely satisfied. In her case the

quest for beauty turned into a bad case of bulimia. In 10 th grade, Daphne dropped down

to eighty pounds and had to be hospitalized, and you know whose fault that was? Dede’s.

Yeah, that’s right. Mom blamed Dede, telling her that it was hard for her to live up to an

older sister who was so competitive and insensitive.

“At times like this, Dede turned to her dad, a white collar thug who considered

himself a classy, gentleman farmer as well as something of an artist. He had set up a

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studio in the old barn where he tried to be Jackson Pollock. At night, after dinner, when

the girls were doing their homework and mom was nursing another drink, Alan would be

out in the barn studio in a pair of paint-splattered jeans throwing blobs of acrylic paint at

an oversized canvas.

“Dede loved to hang out with dad in the studio. He called her ‘teacup,’ after

Pollock’s classic painting. After her homework was finished, she would walk across the

pasture and quietly watch her father paint. Sometimes, he didn’t even realize she was

there for a few minutes, and she loved that the most. Dad had a special gift, but it was

not art. It was the ability to drop his stress off at the office and go home without the

slightest feeling that anything was wrong with his life. That, believe me, is a gift.”

“Alan Teatham could spend his day humiliating cancer patients in depositions, but

at night he went home to his big horse farm, painted pictures and hung out with his

daughters. Dede knew that dad wasn’t going to blame her for everything that was wrong

in life, maybe because he didn’t think too much was wrong in the first place. He gave one

thing to his daughter that no one else could - a sense of tranquility.”

“Eventually, she began to understand what her father actually did for a living.

When she was sixteen, another little debutante went after Dede in the locker room for

flirting with Chip, her preppy dreamboat boyfriend. It happened to be true. Dede was

trying to get this guy interested in her. In my perverted mind they’re all naked and

sweaty, calling each other ‘slut’ and ‘dumb cunt’ while lots of other naked, pretty blond

girls stand around watching. Finally, the other girl said, ‘Well, at least my family doesn’t

live on tobacco blood money.’”

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 “The remark knocked the fight out of Dede, a rare event. Confusion and shame

soiled her rationalization that her father’s work as the product of the constitutional right

to a rigorous defense, which was what he had always told her. A mammoth sense of guilt

seeped into her soul, and no amount of semantic acrobatics would make it go away.

“To compensate, she went after Chip even more forcefully. She thought if she

could get him, she would feel better. What she didn’t understand is that she would never

completely feel better. Not now, not after finally grasping what her life had been built on.

Even the evenings spent in the barn studio started to feel forced. Her father’s mellow

artiness at home began to grate on her. She started to see him the way other people,

probably mom chief among them, as a soul-destroying phony.

“Summer before senior year there was a big boozy shindig at the country club.

Dede was braless in a canary yellow sundress, working Chip pretty good. Lots of eye

contact, suggestion. Strategic compliments about his skill at tennis and college

applications. Delighted that he asked her to go for a walk, she followed him into a

thicket of pine trees behind the caddy shack, where he raped her.

“When it happened, she didn’t immediately think ‘rape.’ Finding herself in the

shower a dozen times the next day vainly trying to make herself feel clean, she kept

wanting to believe that it had not actually happened, that she had not lost her virginity

bleeding on a bed of pine needles with her panties ripped off and her skirt hiked up

around her waist. The burning feeling between her legs and the bruises on her arm told

her a different story. Of course, she assumed it was her fault.

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 “She didn’t tell anyone what happened, not for a long time anyway, and she was

never the same. She once told Una that she felt as if the poison of the violation coursed

through her veins and embalmed her youth. Senior year of high school was devoted to

piling up one achievement after another but she felt like a fraud when her teachers and

friends kept telling her how great she was. Beaton-Lowell acceptance was a breeze,

though it didn’t make her feel better.

“Dede’s overachieving sleepwalk through Senior year went on uninterrupted until

dad came home one night and announced he was taking the whole family out to dinner

because little sister Daphne got a B- for the first time in school, after many years of Cs

and Ds. Now Dede, who once got so nervous about bringing home a B+ that she threw

up in the girl’s bathroom room, had never been given even the slightest nod from her

parents for her grades. It was always just expected of her, and she expected it of herself,

but this was too much for her.

“Dinner was ugly. They went out to a fancy place in Falls Church where dad

could order the filet and mom could munch on the endive lettuce leave salad and pretend

she wasn’t hungry. Daphne ordered the salad, too, but didn’t eat it. Dede just refused to

eat, period. What’s wrong, darling? Nothing. Not hungry, she said, sulking through the

whole meal.

“Finally, her father said, ‘Hey, teacup, why so blue?’ to which she said, ‘I’m not

your fucking teacup, so please don’t ever call me that anymore.’ Dad was too shocked to

say anything. He’d been cruising along in his life for years without noticing anyone’s

particular pain or stress. He just did his daily quota of corrupt pillaging for the tobacco

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companies, flirted with his secretaries, came home and ate dinner with his two daughters

who were falling all over themselves to be perfect for him, and then he went off and

painted his pictures. What could be wrong with that? But mom, she didn’t care for that

kind of talk at the dinner table and she certainly didn’t care much for the sentiment. She

said, ‘I demand that you take that back right this instant.’ But Dede just smirked and said

no. Dad was starting to say something like, ‘Leave her be. She’s upset about something.

What’s the matter, sugar?’ But Mom was livid, and a little loaded, too, so she asked Dede

what could possibly be so terrible about her life that she had to speak to her father so

rudely. Dede said ‘I hate this whole scene. It’s so unjust. All this blood money. I don’t

want to grow up to be you, mom, drunk and miserable. Trapped in the gilded cage.’ Well,

Mom put her drink down and cracked her right across the face. Hard. Her diamond ring

made a gash in Dede’s cheek, which started to bleed. Dad was starting to say, ‘Now

ladies, let’s just all simmer down…’ But Dede just got up, gave them the finger over her

shoulder and dashed out of the restaurant.”

“Her parents figured she was waiting in the parking, so they finished dinner in

brute-force normalcy. When they left the restaurant, though, they realized that she had

split. The parking valet said he saw her thumb a ride and take off. When she didn’t come

home by three in the morning, her parents went apeshit. The school didn’t know where

she was, nor did her friends. Her father called the cops, the FBI, everyone who owed

him. They found her two days later at a tattoo parlor in Adams Morgan with some skuzzy

teenage punks. Her parents had fits trying to avoid appearing to be angry, which was

what the guidance counselor told them not to do. Of course, mom wanted to know if she

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had ‘relations’ – that’s the word she used - with those punks. Dede told the truth, which

was that she didn’t have sex with the kids she was hanging out with. She just drank beer,

smoked pot, listened to music and slept in the filthy apartment where they were squatting.

She let her mom continue to believe that she was a virgin.

“Her parents gave her a mild rebuke for the pot, but already they were digging a

big hole into which they entombed this whole experience. It was never discussed again.

But for her, this was just another layer of repressed crap that got crammed down and

crammed down insider her psyche until it was like a mass of rocket fuel that was just

waiting to be ignited by the anger and hatred on campus that masqueraded as caring

about the downtrodden.”

“Did she get a tattoo?” I ask.

“Half of one. You didn’t know that Dede has half a rose tattooed on her ass? I

mean, I’ve never seen it, either, but it’s definitely there.”

“Did she get petals, or is it just thorns?” I ask, making us both laugh.

“Claus and Dede met at Beaton-Lowell freshman year. There was an instant

chemistry but nothing happened. They had no classes together and he was busy doing

photography and screwing his writing teacher while she fell hopelessly in love with a

charismatic sophomore named Lawrence Lang.”

“I never knew that.” Lang’s name chills me, as it has since my earliest days.

“Oh, it is true,” Adam says. “I think they met at one of those women’s rights

Take Back the Night rallies: Women would march around at night chanting slogans like,

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‘Women take back the night! Men can’t take away our rights! We are going to fight! No

means no! Give us a break! Our bodies are not your property…’

“That doesn’t really rhyme,” I say.

“I know,” Adam says. “That may not have been the exact chant, but you get the

idea. It was an anti-rape rally. Dede was there, marching with CHAP. Chicks Against

Pricks. Remember them, the radical lesbian group with a base of support among straight

women? Dede hadn’t discovered that she could go both ways yet, but she was drawn to

their confident fury. They called all men and straight women ‘breeders’ and didn’t shave

their armpits. Once, when I was a freshman, I was in The Corners when hundreds of

women, and a handful of men, came parading up the street. We were standing there

gawking as this procession went by. One of the CHAP women turned to me and said,

‘What the fuck are you staring at, little breeder boy? Haven’t you ever seen a real woman

before?’ Can you imagine what it’s like to be eighteen and a little shy about girls to begin

with and have a hundred angry lesbians storm past you saying, ‘Don’t fuck with us! We’ll

cut your pathetic little breeder dick off! Keep your breeder hands to yourself! We’re not

here for your amusement, pig!”

“Anyway, Lawrence, a fellow who had been absolutely sprinkled with Selma

Dust, who had completely swallowed the presumption that women were his moral

superiors so the best he could do was kiss up to them and accept his vast inferiority as an

embarrassed apology to women for all of us walking hemorrhoids, gave a speech at that

rally about how men had to learn to respect women’s space, and their bodies, and their

sexuality blah blah blah. For Dede, it was love at first sight.

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 “Selma Dust?”

“You’ve fried your brain out in L.A. I used to talk about Selma Dust all the time.

It’s my way of constructing the kind of positive affirmation, the veritable glow that a

white person can achieve when he thinks his actions have made him worthy of standing

on the bridge in Selma with Dr. King. We all wanted the minorities, the victims we

worshipped in school to sprinkle us with the holy power of Selma Dust that could cleanse

us of our disgraceful whiteness.

“Dede would stare lovingly at Lawrence in the dining room while he held forth

about The People - the poor, the downtrodden, the immigrant, the criminals who can’t

help themselves because whitey has made their lives impossible with his insatiable hate.

She probably thought he could rub some of his Selma Dust off onto her. The clincher

was his plan to spend the summer in Mississippi working on voter registration and

poverty law stuff. Wouldn’t she like to come with him?

“Well, of course, she would have loved to, but her parents absolutely forbid her

from going. Not only was this humiliating, but she also feared that he would fall for

another woman while they are apart. Right.

“But, her pain was nothing a summer in London couldn’t cure. She went for one

of those theater programs they do in England where she began writing her one-woman

show, Letters to Andrea and, in the absence of the sexually shy Lang, sleeping with a lot

of guys in the program.

“Sophomore year, she connected with Claus. He helped her stage Letters to

Andrea, designing the set and doing all the photography of her that was used as the

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backdrop for the play. They slept together, but there was nothing special about it. For

Claus, fucking was like shaking hands. It didn’t mean much to her. She was going

through an experimental stage of her own at that point, including, I think, an affair with

Una, though I could never get her to admit she’d ever had any bisexual tendencies.

Nothing else could explain the alternating love and acrimony that crept up between those

two women.

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The Piss Rabbit

“You’ve got two good looking, excessively talented and emotionally damaged

young people sitting across from each other in a class eight hours a week. What do you

think was going through their minds? Do you think he looked her over and thought,

maybe I’ll go to bed with her again, maybe not? Perhaps she saw him wanted to feel his

scratchy beard making that delicate skin on her face raw and hot? You might think so,

but I actually believe that neither of them was much interested in the other, at first. They

were both after something bigger, something elusive that they would only start to see in

each other as the class went on. A regular relationship was beneath them. They weren’t

ready to hook up early on the class because they were afraid of being too ordinary. Going

out for coffee and humping late at night had so been done. It was not even worth their

consideration. They wanted something transcendent, and the fuse that would set off the

explosive mix of their über-coupling had not yet been lit.

“Transcendence. That was their eternal goal. Everything the two of them did had

to be better than anything else at school. Every paper, every comment in class, every

snotty remark at the cafeteria table had to reach further, identify a higher truth…

transcend. Transcend! That should have been the motto of Beaton-Lowell, not that

bullcrap, “Emitte lucem et veritatem. Send out light and truth” that they carved into every

stone that would sit still at that place.

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 “At Beaton-Lowell, if you couldn’t exceed all reasonable expectations without

any preparation, leave. Corigliano expected us to transcend cinema. Never mind that we

were barely taught basic cinema. No, we had go out and transcend it right away.

“And how did we think we were going to transcend cinema? First, we had to

solemnly devote our lives to profitless cinema verite. Corigliano, the archetype of

cinematic purity, was our compulsory idol. We had to want to be him. Of course, none of

us could really be him because he was a product of the sixties and the sixties were more

than a little over by 1986. And, he was the beneficiary of a filmmaking grant system that

Reagan eviscerated before we even thought of getting started.

“Then, like little birds, we had to open our mouths and let him force feed the

worms of his dogma into our waiting gullets. Let me give you a pop quiz, Payne. It’s

only been fifteen years. You should be able to ace this no problem: Voice over, good or

bad for a documentary?

“I don’t know. I suppose it depends on how its made.”

“Come on,” Adam says. “Good or bad?”

“Bad”

“Right. Camera on a tripod. Good or bad?”

“There have been some good documentaries made with tripods.”

“Name two.”

“Gates of Heaven and…” I can’t think of another.

“Natural light. Good or bad?”

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 “Okay,” I say. “I get the point. I guess that once you’ve seen To Live with Herds,

you’re spoiled for life.”

Adam cackles and asks, “Oh, Payne, if you knew what I went through with that

film.” He pauses for a second to catch his breath. “Did you know that I applied to Teach

For America? They turned me down.”

“Really?”

“I didn’t fit their profile.”

“That’s odd,” I say. “I would think they would want you with all of your

Washington experience. You would have been a great history teacher.”

“Well, that’s nice of you to say, but I guess they didn’t feel the same way. It

would have been hard to do it, for sure, but worth it. You know, after I quit my job with

the senator and spent those terrible years working PR in New York, I really didn’t know

what to do with myself. I was almost thirty, newly divorced, newly released from a

mental hospital, and I didn’t want to go and get another real job. I thought maybe it was

time to give back. You know what I mean? I wanted to be part of the solution, not part of

the problem, as Corigliano always drummed into us. I wanted to make a difference in the

world, and I figured that teaching underprivileged kids would be a good way to do it.

“My interviewer was a woman named Eliot Thayer. How many women do you

know named Eliot? You know what I’m talking about. Mayflower blond – straight

straight hair held in place with a silver clasp. Fragile and too thin, blue blazer and white

turtleneck.

“Sounds like all the women I banged in college,” I say.

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 “In your dreams. Before we even began, Eliot said, ‘This interview is a formality.

We don’t think you are qualified to teach in an urban school.’ I replied, ‘First of all, how

can you know that without talking to me, and secondly, how much more qualified can all

of your other applicants be than me? They are mostly college seniors. She said, ‘As a

privileged white male, you would have no idea how to communicate with African-

American kids from the inner city.’ I was thinking, ‘Right, my grandfather sewed

raincoats in a sweatshop while your family was eating caviar at the New York yacht club

and you’re telling me that I don’t know how to relate to poor people?’”

“Then, Eliot Thayer with the blue blazer and the face that had never seen a zit

started asking me things like, ‘What are the top ten problems in urban schools? What are

the five most important things for a teacher of urban minority students to do in a

classroom setting.’ Like I was supposed to be a walking database of education facts. ‘I

would try to maintain discipline and order in the classroom’; ‘How are you going to do

that?’; ‘I would reward good behavior and punish bad behavior’; ‘How?’; I finally said,

‘You know, I was hoping to receive some training from Teach For America before I

started on this job.’ She said, ‘Don’t expect any training from us. We don’t train. We

don’t offer support. We don’t do anything for you.’

“She said, ‘Let’s try a role-play. I’ll be Kamal, a ten year-old African American

boy. Kamal has come in late every day for a week, and he won’t pay attention or

participate in class.’ And with that, she leaned back in her chair, folded her arms and

stared off into space. I realized this was my cue to begin my part in the role-play as

Kamal’s ‘teacher’ so I said, ‘Hey, Kamal, what’s up? Why have you been late to school

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this week?’ But Miss Eliot just sat there with her arms folded staring off into space. I

said again, ‘Kamal, you can tell me if something is wrong. Are you okay?’ Eliot, acting

as Kamal, said, ‘Yo, I ain’t telling you nothing. It ain’t none of your fucking business,

see?’ So I said, ‘Whoa, Kamal, that’s not the kind of language we approve of in this

classroom.’ To which she said, ‘Well, don’t be axing me none of those stupid ass

questions.’ I thought about this for a moment and said, ‘Kamal, is everything okay at

home?’ Eliot glared at me and said, ‘Don’t be dissin’ my mama, now. She ain’t none of

your concern.

“This went on for a few more minutes until she broke character and asked, ‘What

do you think is wrong with Kamal?’ At first, I said I had no idea. ‘Maybe there was a

problem at home,’ I said. To which she responded, ‘What kind of problems do you think

Kamal has at home?’ Now, even I could see that this was a trap, but I could not find a

way to answer it delicately. I said, ‘Maybe someone in Kamal’s family is involved in

drugs or gangs.’ Now, Eliot gave me this venomous, withering look and said, ‘You

would think that. What else? What else could be the matter with Kamal?’ I said, ‘Maybe

Kamal is suffering from an emotional or mental disorder like ADHD or depression.’

Mistake. Eliot said, ‘So he’s crazy. Is that what you’re saying?’ ‘No,’ I said. ‘My

understanding is that there are a lot of kids who suffer from undiagnosed depression that

affects their learning.’ Eliot said, ‘How can you presume to make a judgment about

Kamal’s mental health? The mental health establishment is run by white people who

know nothing about the realities of ghetto life. If it were up to people like you, these kids

would be given pills to wash away the essence of their blackness, their core identity that

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you you don’t deem important. Kamal doesn’t want or need to be like you.’ Okay, I

thought, the mental health thing was not a good angle to play, so I made one last attempt

to figure out what was wrong with Kamal, saying, ‘Maybe Kamal is gay and is confused

with how he feels about things. Maybe his acting out is a cry for help.’ This, she actually

liked. I also saw at that point that she had no idea what was wrong with Kamal, either.

The exercise had been about what was wrong with me.

“So, with the interview going about as well as a cavalry charge in the Battle of

The Bulge, I thought perhaps I could salvage a little dignity by talking about my

filmmaking experience. I offered, ‘You know, this is an interesting process. How can we

learn to relate to people who are from different cultures? That’s an issue we tried to deal

with when I took a class on ethnographic cinema.’ Eliot seemed interested in hearing

about this, so I said, ‘There’s a fascinating film called To Live With Herds that was made

back in the sixties. The filmmaker, David MacDougall, tried to be an observer of the Jie

tribe in Uganda, filming them but letting them tell their own story. It was an example of

how an anthropologist learned to appreciate a foreign culture.’ She observed, ‘Sounds

like the way the Nazi’s tried to document the Jewish culture before they destroyed it. You

see, Mr. Saperstein:’ You always know that you’re in trouble when someone calls you

‘Mr.’ in an interview. It’s as if they are trying to put a little dehumanizing distance

between you and them before they stick the knife in. ‘These kids are not subjects in some

kind of patriarchal, Western-style media project. They are people. They need your help,

not your condescension. If you want to help these kids I can refer you to our corporate

fundraising group. You can raise money for Teach For America from corporations. You’d

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probably be good at it because you’re a white male, after all.’ So, as I said, they turned

me down.”

“Wow,” I say. “Sounds awful.”

“Yeah,” Adam says. “I felt pretty bad for a while. But, you know, when you reach

a certain point of absurdity in a situation, you start to take things a little less personally.

If all I was to her was a White, Jewish, Nazi Penis, then maybe she’s the one with the

problem, not me.”

“Right,” I say. “That’s a healthy attitude.”

“Why thank you.”

“Wasn’t the whole idea of To Live With Herds to communicate great respect for

the subjects?”

“Well, she never saw it. And, that’s not even the point. The Nazi comment was

just the final little insult to push me over the edge and make me stop pretending that I was

ever going to be the kind of person that would have met with Corigliano’s approval. The

truly crazy thing is that I was still trying to be that person at thirty when I had known

along that it wasn’t me.

“And why does Adam Saperstein, white Jew from Beverly Hills, owe it to

America to be a teacher? Every time I try to answer that question, I come back to To Live

With Herds. I think in some way, my want-it-so-bad-I-feel-I-am-going-to-die hankering

to be somebody in Corigliano’s eyes all started the day we watched that film. Perhaps if

I could mold myself into the kind of person who was part of the solution instead of part

of the problem, then I could avoid that fate. It was only after whole fiasco that I saw that

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Corigliano had it backwards: Sometimes the solution can actually be part of the problem.

Large, badly run non-profits that flog politically correct agendas are not automatically in

the right all the time. Either way, I no longer wanted to be the piss rabbit.

I don’t have to ask Adam to explain to me what a piss rabbit is. “If you put a

bunch of rabbits together in a small cage,” he says. “After a while usually one of them

becomes the outcaste and the others all piss on him. If you ever visit a farm where they

have rabbits, check out the cage. One of them will be yellow. Nobody knows why they

do it, except maybe it’s like a mark of doom or something, the opposite of pissing on a

tree – the piss rabbit is off limits. We mammals have an innate sense of these things.

Think about how degrading it would be to be pissed on. It’s in our genes. You don’t want

to be the piss rabbit.

“Yet, there I was. To Live with Herds was notable for its lack of narration, but all

I could think to say was that the film confused me. I thought it needed a voice-over. The

wrong answer. Corigliano said, ‘Why? Why does this film need a voiceover?’ I replied

‘Because you can’t tell what is going on without it.’ He said, ‘Maybe that’s the point.

This film should make you ask the question: Do you need to have a documentary film’s

action structured or unstructured? Can you have true observational cinema?’ I looked

around the room for support but there was none coming. I was the piss rabbit sure as I’m

sitting here now.

“Dede remarked, ‘You can’t have everything spoon-fed all the time. This isn’t

National Geographic, where some male voice of authority tells you how the world works.

The Jie are their own people. They have their own culture. They can speak for

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themselves, wouldn’t you agree? Or, do you think they need a male European to tell us

what they are thinking?”

“Corigliano said, ‘Right on, Dede. We’re trying to get at the heart of Cinema

Verité. Verité. What does that mean? It means truth. Cinema Verité. Cinema of truth.

That is what we are about here. We are not Hollywood Wannabees. We are not the toxic

monotony of television. Our subjects tell their own stories. We do not impose a linear

narrative on them.’ And Dede was giving him that excited nod of the head: ‘I’m with you,

master.’”

“Claus plunged in with, ‘This is real humanity. If only more people could be made

to appreciate films like this, there would be no war, because we would learn to respect the

Other, not distrust it. This film is about the way the West steamrolls over indigenous

cultures, devouring them for its vast appetites.’ If only… That remark revealed so much

about Claus. If only the world could have been different. If only people could think the

way he wanted them to. He so wanted the world to be a better place than it was. He

went on to say, ‘I wanted to cry when the Jie had to sell some of their herds to pay taxes

to the government. In a few years there will be nothing left. Jie land will be fouled by

encroaching cities, and these people will be making the fries. Their beautiful herds will

have been murdered for Big Macs.’ To which Corigliano said, ‘True. Imperialism is a big

problem right now in Africa. The only thing helping the Jie right now is the fact that they

are picturesque and the government can charge tourists to go see them, which is

completely objectifying and dehumanizing, but at least they get to keep their herds and

stay on their lands for now.’”

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 “And then, there was that look between Claus and Dede,” Adam says. “He was

sitting there in that heavy leather jacket with his arms folded across his chest, his face

taut in anticipation, as if he hadn’t eaten all day and he was about to dive face first into a

tureen of mashed lentils. She was opposite him and their eyes were locked, just locked

together as if they were the only two people in the universe. I think Corigliano noticed it

because Jan had raised her hand and was waiting for him to see her but a long time went

by and he didn’t acknowledge her.

“At the time I couldn’t have known what was going on, but I think Claus and

Dede were sharing a moment of mutual triumph and essential competitiveness that made

them both realize they had met their match in each other. They were going head to head

in that quest for the prize of cinematic purity, with Corigliano as the judge and they both

were playing to win. The fuse had been lit.

“Finally, Jan said, ‘Can I say something? I really liked this film because it gave

me a new way of looking at primitive peoples, a sense of respect for their dignity.’ Uh-

oh… Dede quietly carpet-bombed her with, ‘That is an essentially racist comment. Who

are you to say they are ‘primitive?’ Have you ever thought that maybe we’re the

primitive ones? The Jie culture is every bit as advanced as ours. They’ve been evolving

as long as us. It’s just not measured by our First World yardstick of industrialization and

economic power. Just because they don’t have phones and computers doesn’t mean they

are a less developed culture.’ Jan was mortified. Now she was the piss rabbit.

“Corigliano didn’t say anything, either, giving Jan the sense that he agreed with

Dede. He just turned to Duke and asked him what he thought of all this? He shrugged

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and said he liked the fact that these people seemed to be beyond race. ‘They are just folks

who live with herds,’ he said. ‘It’s no big deal. Maybe to them, we’re the freaks with all

of our power track bullshit.’ Now, Corigliano dug this. He gave Duke a low-key Black

Power salute, a gesture that was not reciprocated.

“After class, Jan went to redeem herself by kissing the Ass That Must Be Kissed,

but she had to wait in line behind Dede, who was already puckered up, telling him how

much she loved Make Love, Not War. When Corigliano finally acknowledged that Jan

was waiting to talk to him, Dede didn’t leave. She stayed and helped Corigliano punish

Jan by explaining the true meaning of ethnocentrism. To save face, Jan invited

Corigliano to a rally to protest the school’s ownership of stocks of companies that did

business in South Africa.

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Roast Beef

“Fittingly, Jan’s humiliation was the beginning of her friendship with Dede. The

foundation of the relationship was Jan’s perpetual one-downess and Dede’s one-upness. I

suppose they had something else in common, though. They were both infatuated with

Corigliano and they both had a thing for Claus, though Jan knew she would never get

Claus and Dede knew that it was only a matter of time, the way things were heating up.”

“We became the studio audience for their film criticism show. Teatham and

Fuerst, our very own Siskel & Ebert, dominating the class with their multicultural run-

down of all of the films. Cutting the slaughterhouse sequence in La Hora De Los Hornos

down to the bone, putting a little meat into the images of neocolonial oppression in

Argentina. Ha Ha Ha.”

“I remember what I saw before I passed out.”

“Well, while you were unconscious out in the hall, I raised my hand and said,

‘The film presented a sympathetic portrait of the revolutionary movement in Argentina on

its own merits, but the slaughterhouse sequence didn’t belong in the film. It was overkill.’

I didn’t even mean to make a pun. It just kind of slipped out and everyone groaned.

Corigliano said, ‘You find this funny?’ And of course when he asked that kind of

question the answer was always no, but I kept going. I said that the sequence was

disingenuous – and a little disgusting, too – and hypocritical, as if the socialists didn’t eat

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meat. I said I thought it was a cheap shot – overly manipulative and obvious. So Dede

said, ‘How would you feel if you saw your family killed by corrupt secret police that are

on the payroll of Uncle Sam?’ And Claus added, ‘I think the slaughterhouse was brilliant.

You have to have your guts churned in an important film. As Mao said, a revolution is

not a dinner party. I am glad it disgusted you. You have to use any means necessary to

make your point. This film is a savage poem.’

“Corigliano adjudicated. ‘La Hora de Los Hornos is one of the most important

films of the twentieth century. It was the beginning of a whole cinematic movement in

Latin America: The Third Cinema of cultural resistance to the Power of Uncle Sam. Part

of its genius is that it was filmed mostly by peasants. You see, the filmmakers wanted to

make a point. Argentina was being methodically sold out to American and European

interests who sponsored a repressive government that tortured and maimed innocent

people just so they could keep giving the Yankees a good deal on beef and other

resources. The filmmakers wanted to give the power back to the people, to the powerless

ones, and let them hold the camera and tell their story.’

“So, while I was getting that big trip laid on me and everyone sitting around me,

with the possible exception of you, was silently shouting ‘Yeah, fight the Yankee

imperialist pigs!’ it dawned on me that Corigliano was an American, too, and he was just

as much guilty of buying Argentina’s precious resources and helping Uncle Sam torture

peasants as any of us were, but he was the one at the lectern so he got to make the rules.

He was like Eliot Thayer. The pot calling the kettle black, though of course Corigliano’s

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would never have been so racist as to call a kettle ‘black.’ His pot would have ‘A kitchen

vessel of color.’”

“Then, we all went to dinner and sat at Dede’s table, where we ate roast beef and

kept arguing about whether or not it was manipulative and unnecessary to spice up a film

about Marxism with shots of bloody carcasses falling down chutes to the sounds of

Sergeant Pepper.”

“I asked for extra rare meat just to gross out Claus, who was into his whole ‘I’m

a vegetarian and you’re a bloodthirsty freak’ phase. He said to me, ‘You know,

Saperstein, you have ten pounds of undigested red meat in your bowels right now. That

crap is going to kill you.’ I responded with, ‘There’s so much pollution right in this room

from floor wax, paint thinner, cigarette smoke, and carbon monoxide from the kitchen,

I’ll probably die before I graduate.’ He said, ‘It must not matter to you that innocent

animals are butchered for your overindulged appetites while the feed that it took to fatten

up that cow could have fed a family in Ethiopia for a year. America starves the world to

feed its fat face.’ So, I guess I better add killing a lot innocent cows to my list of sins.

That and voting for Ross Perot.”

“You did not.”

“Yes. It is actually true. A Beaton-Lowell liberal voted for Perot.”

“How could you?”

“Because Clinton and Dole made me want to power hurl. At least Perot had an

idea – make America good at something, make it the best in the world.”

“I’m not talking to you.”

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 “Yeah? Who did you vote for?”

“I forgot to vote.”

“You’re one to talk, then. How does one forget to vote?”

“I was too busy being hung over and getting head from a woman who wrote a

movie called Northern Lights for Lifetime. Voting just slipped my mind.”

“I think I saw a billboard for that movie. Snow. It had snow on it. Am I right?”

“Yes. It was about a woman who treks across the Yukon after she discovers she

has breast cancer. At the end, she dies, but not before first falling in love with an Inuit

man named Tuktuyaktok.

“A snowbound adventure flick featuring a battle with breast cancer and forbidden,

interracial love. Sounds like a hoot.”

“It wasn’t too bad for a movie of its kind,” I say.

“What’s that, a TV movie or a chick flick?”

“This one was both, I guess.”

“Don’t you think a lot of movies made by women get sunk by their own sense of

self importance? Not every movie is going to be good enough to be a cultural statement

that will inspire a generation of young girls to want to do better than boys at math.

Sometimes, you just need a little entertainment.”

“I know I do.”

“Anyway, Dede had become a vegetarian, just like Claus, to impress Corigliano.

Corigliano and his wife, Vera, were of course strict, strict vegetarians. They didn’t even

eat eggs and milk, because they felt it was exploitation of the animals to strip them of

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their products. They never ate another piece of meat for years, because they knew if they

did they would be jeopardizing their opportunity to receive that coveted, imaginary

Cinema Verité Croix de Guerre that Corigliano could pin on their chests.

“Jan got her revenge on Dede with Jean Rouche’s Chronicle of a Summer. Dede

said, ‘I was impressed with how articulate the working people were when they had to

speak on camera. They had a lot of interesting things to say.’ Well, for Jan, hearing that

comment come out of Dede’s mouth was like being a bench warmer getting called up to

play in the big game. She asked, ‘Why is it so surprising to you that working people can

be articulate? A person who doesn’t go to a fancy school can still have something

interesting to say.’ Seeing Dede be the piss rabbit was one of the high points of my year.

She was caught, and she knew that no amount of backpedaling would save her. So, she

didn’t say anything. She just nodded and said, ‘You’re right.’ Score one for Jan.

“But Dede was back with Chris Marker’s Sans Soleil. It was all, ‘They’re the

one’s who got nuked. They’re the other. Why are we so afraid of the other? That’s why

we slaughtered the Japanese in WWII and dropped the bomb on them and firebombed

their cities. Our propaganda made us think of them as animals.’ I couldn’t stand it so I

said, ‘They weren’t all that innocent. We stopped the Japanese from raping and maiming

their way through Asia,’ to which she says, ‘Don’t believe everything you see in John

Wayne movies.’”

“With La Jette, it was Claus who said, ‘We’re being held hostage by men who

have enough bombs to blow up the world a hundred times over. Doesn’t anyone

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understand what nuclear winter is going to be like? I want the school to stock cyanide

pills because I want to be able to kill myself when the bomb goes off.’”

“Harlan County was my Waterloo, though. Everyone was gushing about how

great it was, I needed a Dramamine. I think even you were into it. Your comment was, if

I recall, ‘This film redefines America for me.’ Did it really?”

I shake my head. I can’t remember saying that. In fact, I can barely remember the

film. I ask, “Isn’t it about coal miners?”

“That’s right. It is an important film, of course. I wanted the miners to get what

they wanted, and that was my whole point. The film undercut them with all that cloying

folk music. Did they want to drive us all crazy?”

“Claus said, ‘Wrong, Adam. The music makes it real. Not like the manufactured

pop bullshit that Hollywood spews out. Workers in this country never get a fair shake.’

Corigliano seconded this. He agreed with Claus that I needed an education in social

conscience, saying ‘This film is a remarkable work of art because it represents a kind of

thoroughness that we almost never see. Barbara Koppel spent four years in Apalachia.

This is a deep and significant film. It’s an American classic.’ But I couldn’t resist. I said,

‘It certainly felt like four years when I was watching it.’ Oops. Now, I was the piss

rabbit again.

“Finally, we watched ¡Gringo/Amigo! What a God-awful suck up fest that was.

And it wasn’t just a film, either. It was a whole lecture from Corigliano on Latin

American foreign policy. Why does the United States need an enemy so badly? What did

the Nicaraguan people ever to the Americans that we have to send guns down to the

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Contras to kill helpless old farmers and rape little girls who are carrying milk to the

village? Is saving money on coffee and keeping Communism at bay that important? And

all of us just sit around here in the United States getting fat and entertaining ourselves

with mindless television and movies while an epic struggle goes on down there. And

what do we do about it? Nothing. We are guilty of the sin of omission. We owe them our

support, yet we are silent. At least he said ‘we’ and not ‘you,’ but when he was done with

his lecture we were all silent, ashamed of ourselves for not doing anything to stop the

Contra War. Finally, Claus said, ‘You’re so right. We are filth. Corrupt filth.’”

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Motorola

“Professor Li died last year,” Adam says.

“I’m sorry.”

“He was sick, though, even when I worked for him. Ran into Una, of all people,

at his memorial.”

“That must have been awkward,” I say. “I didn’t realize she knew him.”

“She didn’t. She was doing a piece for The New Yorker. Something about the

legacy of the Cultural Revolution. I don’t think it’s been published yet. Or maybe, she

didn’t finish it. That happened with her a lot. Start something and not complete it. Fall off

the wagon and forget where she was. Start over.”

I wonder what it would feel like to run into an ex-wife. Violet and I talked about

getting married once, a matter that falls clearly into the bin of good choices not made.

She had simple terms: We would live in her house. She told me it cost seven thousand a

month to run the household, including the mortgage. I would give her four thousand a

month for expenses. I could have my own room, closet, and bathroom. She had a small

guesthouse next to her pool that I could use for a home office. We could go to bed

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whenever the mood suited us mutually, but we would both be free to screw around, as

long as we never brought it home. Want to have children, I asked? Are you insane, she

replied. End of story, as she liked to say.

“If I were an anthropologist,” Adam says. “I would do a paper on the ritual of the

academic memorial service. When I was writing for The Daily Press I must have gone to

a dozen of them. They’re all the same. Maybe I should call Una and tell her to make that

the subject of her New Yorker piece. It wasn’t so bad to see her, really. She hugged me,

asked me how I was doing, and acted interested when I told her I was working for a

technology company. ‘How yuppie of you,’ I think was her comment. And then the

gongs and prayers started and we had to be quiet. She left before it was over so I never

got to say good-bye. Probably just as well. I am not sure I wanted to have another

session where I was supposed to thank her for saving my life.

“These memorial services have an etiquette and format all their own. There’s a

pseudo religious component, usually in the form of a semi-coherent collage of Eastern

religious ritual, probably completely out of context for an actual practicing person of that

faith. For Dr. Li, it was not so out of whack because he was Chinese. But it’s usually

either the Buddhist meditation bells and chanting or some New Age stuff or possibly a

combination of New Age and some selected readings from the New Testament. Often,

there’s a priest there, but he or she will always keep the serious religion to a minimum

because, as we know, religion is the opiate of the masses and the dear departed one would

never be so gauche as to condone such idiocy.

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 “Then, there are the readings. Here you’ve got Shakespeare, W.H. Auden, a T.S.

Eliot. Or, if the guy was progressive, it’s some Latin American poet or Rabindranath

Tagore. Then, there’s the musical interlude. At this point, without fail, some

undergraduate waif, a bulimic English major who was probably screwing the dear

departed one, will get up and recite, or sing a poem that she wrote just for the occasion.

Or, if we don’t have verse from the dietarily challenged, we have the performance of

some ethnic or mediaeval instrument that no one has ever heard before. Promise me,

Payne, that if you’re around when I die, don’t let anyone play Amazing Grace for me on

an Aleutian Zither.

“And then, you have the eulogies. This is where you see the genius of the

academic memorial service. Academics, with very few exceptions, toil in near

anonymity. If they are recognized at all for their work, it is by a select group of equally

obscure people. So, how do we pay tribute to these unsung heroes of education? One by

one, a procession of professors and junior faculty get up and talk about how the dear

departed one had a profound influence on their work, on how they think, and the field in

general. Then, they share an anecdote about how they were at a symposium with the dear

departed one, chatting with a Name, a person who has received some glimmer of

recognition in the outside world – Marshall McLuhan, Simon Schama, Steven J. Gould,

Alan Dershowitz, John Kenneth Galbraith. Basically, it’s anyone who ever got more

than five grand for a book deal – and the dearly departed one made an exceedingly

brilliant and hilarious intellectual jab at the Name and Name made a witty rejoinder and

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the whole room then laughs because they know that the dearly departed one would want

his friends to laugh at his memorial service because he was just that kind of guy.

“The Name that came up at Dr. Li’s service was Henry Kissinger. Something

about how when Henry needed to know something about China, he always called ‘the

man who couldn’t see, but had a great vision for China, nonetheless’. Dr. Li was already

going blind when I first met him. Diabetes, I think. He was in his mid forties when I

knew him. He could see well enough to get through doorways and across the street

without getting killed, but he could no longer read, a problem that caused him a

considerable anguish. Nor could he write very easily, either, and that is where I came in.

He was writing a memoir of his experiences during the Cultural Revolution and my job

was to get his words on paper.

“The school had a bulletin board for part time job assignments, where I saw a note

that read, ‘Do you type fast? Asian Language Department needs typist to take dictation,

six hours per week.’ That was a natural for me. I type over a hundred words a minute, the

result of having incurably bad handwriting, so I figured it would be an easy sixty bucks a

week - enough for movies and beer.

“Dr. Li was about five feet tall and totally bald. He had tiny, child’s fingers that

would fly around as he got more and more excited about whatever point he was making.

My job was to write down everything he said, and, as it turned out, to correct his

grammar along the way. He never dictated to me. He just spoke, and I had to figure out

where the sentences began and ended.

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 “The first night I went to see Dr. Li at his house on Surry Street, he came to the

door and looked out past me, eventually making out my shape from the light coming

from over the trees. I thought he was drunk, because he then stumbled out to shake my

hand. He offered me tea, which I accepted, but that was the last time I ever did, because

for the next half hour I watched him clunk around his kitchen boiling water and smelling

all the different teas he had to find the right one for me. I offered to help him make the tea

but he kept saying, ‘No, you are my guest. Please sit.’”

“That first night, we didn’t do any work. He wanted to know about me, so I told

about growing up in Beverly Hills, about being Jewish, though my family had not been

very observant. In fact, I had not even had a Bar Mitzvah. He wanted to know what that

meant, so I described in as much detail as I could manage, the way that Jewish boys

ritually transition into becoming men at thirteen by reading aloud from the Torah. Dr. Li

sat back and listened to all of this and finally said, ‘This Bar Mitzvah is very important to

you, yet you never went through it. So tell me. Do your people actually consider you a

man or are you still a boy?’ Good question.

“’What do you know about China?’ he asked. Not a lot, I replied. ‘Well,’ he said.

‘We are going to learn about China, then. First, I will tell you about everything, and then

we will start writing. I don’t want you to take dictation. I want you to understand what

happened to me so you can help me make the English sound good. He proceeded to tell

me about Chinese history, starting in the 19th century and progressing through the warlord

period of the 1920’s, the Japanese occupation, and the creation of the puppet state of

Manchuko, where he had been born in 1945.

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 “He explained how Mao had organized the Communists and taken control of the

party while cooperating with the Nationalists in the war against Japan, but how the two

sides had then faced off against each other right after World War II. In 1949, China was

Mao’s and the Nationalists fled to Taiwan.

“’When I was a boy,’ he said, ‘Chairman Mao was like a god on earth. He was

worshipped by everyone as the leader who had delivered us from the capitalists.

Everyone praised him whenever they could, and it was, in fact, illegal to criticize him.

And the interesting thing was that China had very little of the secret police that the

Russians on East Bloc countries had. We all informed on each other. That was how Mao

maintained control. If you said to you neighbor, ‘I wish there was more rice to eat,’ he

could turn you in for criticizing the party and being a counterrevolutionary. The

punishments were extreme. No one wanted to get that label. It would stick with you for

life, and also ruin your children’s chances of success. The easy thing to do was avoid

talking to your neighbors about anything except maybe the weather. Then, in 1956, Mao

announced his ‘Great Leap Forward,’ where China was supposed to catch up with the

West and exceed Britain’s output of steel. The whole country was ordered to make steel,

so everyone tried to make steel on the farm, in the garden, wherever they could. The

Party people watched to make sure that everyone participated and made as much steel as

possible, because Mao had decreed that it would happen. Not a soul dared to say that it

was a bad idea to have millions of untrained peasants trying to make steel with wood fires

on farmland – something they did not know how to do and which would not have worked

with wood fires. It was a huge effort, but…’ Li stopped talking for a second and looked

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around. He was afraid, I could tell, that someone would hear him say what he was about

to say, and he would be punished, even though it was just the two of us sitting there and

he was thousands of miles away from China and this was years ago, but nevertheless he

hesitated and his voice grew quiet. ‘But it was a mistake. No one grew any food. It

seems obvious in retrospect, but if the peasants are spending all their time trying to make

steel under fear of being sent to labor camps if they appear to be even the slightest bit

unenthusiastic, then who is going to grow the rice?’ I asked what happened and he told

me, ‘Thirty million people starved to death in one year.’ He became still. The thought of

what had happened darkened him and he grew expressionless. ‘Both of my parents died

that year’ he said. ‘They were working for the government out in the countryside and

they didn’t eat for weeks. They caught typhus.’”

“We sat there in silence for a minute, but then I sneaked a peek at my watch

because I wanted to get to Jan’s big Divestment rally, which was about to start. He saw

me, and asked me if I had somewhere to go. I apologized and told him there was going to

be a protest rally against the university and I had been meaning to go. If that was all for

today, was it okay if I left? He said of course, go ahead, but as I was heading out the door

he asked me what I was protesting against. When he didn’t immediately grasp what the

term ‘divestment’ meant, I tried to explain about South Africa and divestment and how

we were going to send a signal to the South African government by getting one of the

world’s richest universities to dump the shares of companies that did business with the

apartheid state.

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 “Dr. Li found this fascinating. He asked me, ‘What is your objection to South

Africa?’ I told him that we all hated South Africa because they discriminated against

black people. But Dr. Li laughed and said, ‘Don’t Americans discriminate against blacks

too?’; ‘Yes, but it’s worse in South Africa.’; ‘This divestment is a symbolic action, yes?

There are impoverished blacks in this country that can’t get jobs and fear the police.

Why must you make a symbolic protest of something so far away when you can take real

action to fix what is happening right here in Winchester?’ I didn’t have an answer for

him, but I said something about how the law of South Africa was racist while here it was

just the culture that was racist, and how we had to protest those racist laws.

“He asked, ‘What is the consequence if you argue for divestment?’ Nothing, I

said. There’s no problem in agreeing to or opposing that point of view. He laughed

nervously, covering it with a fake cough, as if worried that it might never be the right

time to laugh. He said, ‘When I was your age, you could be one of two things: a Red or a

Black. Red was the color of the Red Guards. If you were Red, you were on the path to

power and success. If you were Black, your life was over. When I was nineteen, my

uncle, who was a mid-level official in the government, responded to a call for

constructive criticism of the government. The Communist Party announced that it was

reforming itself and invited people to submit their thoughts and ideas on how to make

China a better society. My uncle took this very seriously. He wrote a letter to the regional

Party Head criticizing – in the most respectful language, mind you – how the government

was handling supervision of land management and cultivation. Well, it turned out that it

was all a trick meant to catch subversives, or people the Party suspected were

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counterrevolutionaries. Anyone who had taken the bait and criticized the government

was rounded up and put in prison. My uncle disappeared for five years - sent to live with

peasants in Mongolia. His ‘capitalist’ ways, evidenced by his criticism of Chairman

Mao’s vision for Chinese agriculture, needed to be corrected. Evidently, only illiterate

peasants could teach him what Communism was really about. When the Cultural

Revolution came a few years later, I was rebuked for my uncle’s crimes. I was made into

a Black. It’s a miracle I got through college. I was forced to stand in the University

square wearing a sign that said, ‘My family members are capitalist road counter-

revolutionary traitors.’ It was only after much pleading and begging by my family did the

government decide to overlook the egregious crimes of my uncle and permit me to

continue my education. So, let me ask you: Are you participating in this protest because

you want to, or because you feel you have to?’ I told him that I believed in Divestment. I

wanted to be at the protest. He said, ‘Good. Go to your protest. I don’t want to make you

late. You are lucky that you are allowed to voice your opinions without fear. Just don’t

let anyone tell you how to think.’

Apparently, I was not afraid to let someone tell me how to think, especially if that

person were Jan. In one of my many attempts to impress her, I volunteered to get

signatures at the rally. Donning a big button that read, “Cut the Blood Money

Connection,” I stood at one of the main gates to The Quad and asked people to sign a

petition urging the college to dump its shares of companies that did business in South

Africa.

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 I shared the space on the sidewalk with a woman from Chicks Against Pricks who

was collecting signatures to submit to the UN protesting the plight of South African

women. For two bucks she would sell you a, “Woman is the Nigger of the World”

button. She said nothing to me and failed to acknowledge that I was even standing next

to her for almost an hour. Nevertheless, I turned to her when there was a lull and asked

her how many signatures she had gotten.

“Don’t try to pick me up, okay?” she said.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I was just making conversation.”

“No you weren’t,” she said. “You were trying to get me to think that you were

interesting, which I don’t, so you could then offer to buy me dinner or drinks in a lame

attempt to go to bed with me.”

I didn’t respond, choosing instead to study rasp-like grooves in the sidewalk

under my feet. I tried to imagine what it would feel like to strip and rub myself raw

against the concrete. Perhaps that would rid me of the poison oak shame of Ralph that

had crept under my skin since the day Ron Brown took his dive, expert exculpatory

testimony aside. As of that night, I had written forty-eight out of the two hundred forty

check sentence. A forty-ninth was due in the mail shortly.

My dim reverie was disrupted by the appearance of a grizzled septuagenarian in

an ill-fitting threadbare tweed jacket. Giving me a tense, academic look that was half

superiority and half befuddlement, he asked me if I really thought that divestment would

make a hoot of difference in the world. “We need to cut the blood money connection,” I

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said. “If you sign the petition, you can help make Beaton-Lowell racially responsible.”

He stomped off muttering something about how we all had to grow up.

“Oh, ignore that old fart,” Jan said with a chuckle whose cheerful vindictiveness

brightened me a bit. She had snuck up behind me to check how many signatures I had

gotten and was impressed by my take. She thanked me for my help and gave my arm a

little squeeze. If you don’t count being kissed by my mother, that squeeze on the arm

was the only time in more than two years that I had been touched affectionately by a

woman. It was a gesture that gave me an instant erection and a bottomless supply of hope

that she might love me. Overwhelmed, I grinned and nodded back at her like an idiot.

Claus came by and snapped a picture of us that got into The Daily Press. “Rally

organizer Jan Fox with volunteer” – that’s what the caption said. I still have the clipping

stuck inside my yearbook. Once in a while, when I’m feeling extra sorry for myself, I

take it out, stare at it, and get drunk.

When Lawrence’s Lang’s voice came over the public address, signaling the start

of the rally, Jan had to run off and do whatever it was she did to keep the rally going.

Claus lit up a cigarillo and stood next to me watching the people pass back and forth in

front of us. When one particularly attractive woman walked by, he turned to me and said,

“There’s a lot of pussy out tonight. The drama of a demonstration brings out the best,

you know.” I nodded in agreement. Anything to bring out the pussy.

“Do you mind not blowing that cancer in my face?” The CHAP chick whined at

Claus, but he just smiled at her, channeling his intensity into charm, and said, “Make

me.”

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 She said, “It’s a well known fact that cigars are a phallic symbol. You’re only

smoking it because you don’t like what you’ve got.” Claus smirked and turned to face

her. Wedging the cigar into his mouth, he unzipped his fly and started to drop his pants.

“Why don’t we have a look, then,” he said. “You tell me.” She just laughed, and

not derisively. He had called her bluff and now they were flirting. I tried not to be

envious. He whispered something in her ear that made her smile.

He came back to me and said, “She thinks you like Jan.” My lack of response

confirmed his opinion. “You should fuck her. Definitely. She needs a very thorough

seeing to. And you, you look like you’re about to implode, you need it so bad.” I laughed

nervously. “No, really, Payne,” he said. “You have got to just take her to bed and

copulate until you can’t take it any longer. It would do the both of you a world of good.”

“Easier said than done,” I said.

“Bullshit. You just have to do it. Here’s what you do. Call her and tell her you

want to come see her. She’ll say come over. You show up with a bottle of wine. Then,

tell her she looks nice and you’ll fuck her for sure. Take it from me.”

“I don’t think that would work for me.”

“You have to make it work. It won’t happen for you if you just sit back and wait.”

Yet, waiting for Jan was most of what I had done for the first two years of school.

I was too afraid to make anything resembling a first move. Once in a while, when we

saw each other, she would give me a little smile that told me she remembered who I was

but it was always on the way to some activity or class, so we never talked.

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 Sophomore year, Jan said one thing to me. I had seen her walking around campus

with an economics book in her hands so I looked up the class in the schedule and figured

out exactly when she would be leaving the building where the class met. I timed my

arrival to coincide with the class letting out and sure enough she was coming down the

steps when I “happened” to be there. She saw me and called out, “Hey, nice sweater!”

referring to the alpaca number that my mother bought me when she was invited to speak

at the University of La Paz in Bolivia. I had called out, “Thanks,” but she was already on

her way to some other place in a little group of people.

“She liked your sweater,” Adam said. But does she like me, I asked. “Maybe,”

he said. “She probably likes you at least a little because she wouldn’t say ‘nice sweater’

if she didn’t.” He was right about that, I believed. And then, I froze.

My Jan digressions in Dr. Geddoff’s office have been so repetitive and prolonged

that he finally decided to help me reposition her in my mind. He instructed me to lean

back in the chair and close my eyes and create a mental image of her, one with

meaningful emotional content. I pictured Jan the way she was the night of that rally:

Pale white skin and short hair that was almost black. Small dark eyes. A long skirt down

to her ankles, white blouse buttoned all the way to the top, and a silk scarf. The Doctor

told me to concentrate on the image and try to feel the pangs of longing that I used to get

whenever I saw her. That feeling of hope that maybe she would see something in me, but

at the same time a sure foreboding that she never would. The Doctor told me to fix the

image in my mind because we were now going to erase it. He told me to picture it

turning from color to black and white. The picture was just a Xerox copy, he said. Just a

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reproduction of an old picture, and in fact, it was fading. ‘Let it fade, he said. It is an old

copy. The picture is not real anymore. The experience was long ago and you don’t need it

any more. That image has outlived its usefulness. It’s fading. The paper is getting yellow

with age. Picture the image fading out. It’s a bleached out picture now. Old and cracked

like pictures from your grandparent’s photo album. It’s going, going, gone. The image is

gone. The page is white now. Your color image has been faded to a blank sheet of paper.

Now, crush that paper into a ball and throw it away. Chuck it. ‘”

But I couldn’t. I still talk about her incessantly. At one point, after thanking

Violet for setting me up with a feature comedy rewrite specialist who liked for me to bind

her feet and hands to a broomstick, I told her what I really wanted was to meet someone

like Jan. “Who?” Violet asked irritably. Jan, the woman I was in love with in college, I

said. You know, brilliant, talented, fascinating, beautiful. “What is it about this bitch that

you keep going on and one about her?” No reason, I said. I just think about her a lot. I

didn’t tell Violet about the imaginary conversations I had with her in the car. She said,

“So? Call her up if you miss her so much. What’s so complicated about that? Women

love to hear from men they knew in college. It reminds them of all the stupid mistakes

they’ve made since.” It is kind of complicated, I said, a comment that elicited a tired,

“Spare me.”

More drinks arrive. Adam has switched to coke while I start on my fourth scotch,

or is it my fifth? I’ve lost count. Adam raises his glass in a toast and says, “Cut the blood

money connection,” and clinks my glass, making us both laugh out loud.

“Divestment…” he continues. “That was a pretty absurd outing, was it not? You know, I

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worked on some real turkeys in Washington for Senator Hard-on but nothing can

compare to the mind-fuck that we did on ourselves with Divestment. We actually thought

it would make a difference to the regime in South Africa if we could get the university to

divest from its portfolio stocks of companies that did business in South Africa. That’ll

show ‘em! Those racist pigs… Sell Motorola. They make the radios for the South

African police. Right? That will really have a big impact on the South African police.

And Motorola? They’ll be hurting if a few college endowment funds sell their shares.

That’ll bring them to their knees, those corporate jackals.

“You know, I once had that argument with Jan. I said, ‘Your heart is in the right

place, but it makes almost no difference if the university sells its Motorola shares. It

might make the stock go down a few cents in a day, but who cares? Was that worth all

this effort? Divestment has been going on for years. Ten years of student demonstrations

to make a stock go down a few cents?’”

“Ultimately, I think the Divestment movement was a massive diversion for white

students who felt guilty about being on a segregated campus where they suspected the

blacks didn’t like or trust them. They focused on racism a world away. That was

intolerable. We all saw the black students eating lunch together at their own tables and

we felt like it must have been our fault, that they felt rejected by us because we were

racists and we didn’t let them join our white college society. Like, remember the day

after the rally, we saw Duke in the dining room sitting with some other black kids, and

we figured, what the hell, let’s join him because, after all, we were fighting to cut the

blood money connection so we’re a bunch of righteous white guys. Wrong.

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 “We sat down and said hi to Duke and he was looking at us like, hey, don’t do this

to me, okay? He was friendly, but we embarrassed the hell out of him. No one else at

that table talked to us. I felt like a first-class asshole.

“It didn’t dawn on us that maybe the black students wanted to be left alone, that

they had enough pride in their own identity that they didn’t feel obligated to blend in and

lose themselves in the mainstream society. Of course, that was also the multicultural

environment of college that we lived in: The drive to respect differences actually led to a

new ghettoization of the campus. We became a college of ethnic and cultural factions.

Our coping mechanism was to fight injustice in another hemisphere, where we could see

the issue more clearly and where, it turned out, we could have no impact whatsoever, but

we could feel pretty goddamned good about ourselves for giving it a solid try, where we

could feel right all the time and mightily proud of our goodness without facing any actual

discomfort or punishment. Divestment was politically correct fantasy camp. We could

all pretend we were Steven Biko without having to leave our dorm rooms. There were

no fire hoses being turned on us. We were not getting murdered in Mississippi for our

drive to sell stocks. We were safe in our smug indignation, anointing ourselves with

Selma Dust.

“When I got to the rally, I saw Jan talking to Corigliano on the library steps that

overlooked the rally. When I went over to them, I saw that Jan was looking up at him

adoringly as he doled out praise for her work in setting up such a massively cool event.

“Jan was saying, ‘We’re going to collect over two thousand signatures tonight and

present them to the President of the University.’ Corigliano gave her the soul handshake

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and told her that she was fighting the good fight and should be proud of herself. Well,

she was beaming when she heard that, but just said, ‘Well, we’re all working together to

make it happen,’ with all that Midwestern aw-shucks attitude that you loved but used to

grate on my cynical New York nerves.

“Dede’s freshly shaved legs came into view as she made her down the library

steps holding a pile of books on Che Guevera. Corigliano’s focus was immediately

drawn in by the allure of Che and a little flash of yellow panties that Dede showed all of

us as she sat down a few steps above us. Che and the panties ejected Jan from

Corigliano’s coveted gravitational pull, making her a wounded fifth wheel of a listener to

the sermon about how Che wanted to ‘start multiple Vietnams’ to throw the yoke of

American oppression off the Third World.

“For some reason, I felt like this would be a good time to commit the heresy of

questioning the ideals of the movement. The more I thought about it, I saw that Dr. Li

had a good point, so I asked everyone the basic question that Dr. Li asked me: ‘What are

we actually doing about racism here?’ to which Dede replied, ‘We’re sending a message

that racism will not be tolerated by this university.’ I said, ‘I want to improve conditions

in South Africa, too, but is Divestment kind of an overly symbolic process?’. Jan asked,

‘You think the college should hold its shares of Motorola?’ and I said, yes, if it was a

good stock to own, and she replied, ‘So to you, making money is more important than the

rights of children who are tortured in South African police stations that use those

Motorola radios? Am I getting this right? Is your value system that out of whack with

morality and common decency?’

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 “That was the PC answer to all intellectual challenges. If you didn’t agree with

their dogma, you were dismissed as a racist, or neo-colonialist, or sexist, or homophobe,

or right-wing fundamentalist Bible thumping pro-life hatemonger, or some combination

thereof. If you were against Divestment, you were a racist. If you argued that Motorola

made radios for ambulances that saved lives as well as for the South Africa police, then

you were a racist pro-corporate fascist.

“I tried one more time with, ‘What about racism here? What are we doing about

the black kids on this campus? Don’t they need our help, too?’. Dede sliced and diced

with, ‘Our help? You think black kids here need our help, like they’re helpless? Oh

yeah, some of my best friends are black, too…’ like I was some sort of pathetic George

Wallace figure trying desperately to make people forget that I used to be the Man in the

schoolhouse door, the one spraying that firehose and blowing up churches in

Birmingham. Corigliano was getting off on it, and Dede was so excited to be his

accomplice in telling me off that she was practically hyperventilating in her eagerness to

show the wrongness of my thinking. This was where she wanted to be: Getting the nod

from the Cool One Whose Ass Must Be Kissed. Dede and Corigliano high-fived each

other and did a little ‘Amen, brother’ jive imitation that they figured they had a right to

do and not be perceived as making fun of black people because they were ‘down’ with

the brothers, unlike me, the honky.”

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Part II The Exit Row

DocuChick

Adam must think I’m awake. His words poke into my sleep, lifting me

momentarily out of my torpor. I hear, “…eral conspiracy…” before nodding off. Another

phrase, “…wasting time dealing with bureaucrats and regul….” registers before I doze

again. The plane lurches, and I wake up, but Adam is now silent. The only sound comes

from the jet engines, whose irregular thrum jiggles the boozy tar sand inside my head. I

feel my eyelids close, but sleep is now maddeningly elusive.

I debate giving Violet a call on the Airfone, but I don’t feel like spending twenty

dollars just so I can get yelled at. Sandy’s script beckons me from my carry on, but in

my present condition I doubt I could even read the emergency door instructions printed

on a plastic card next to my left temple. I glance over at Adam, who is paging through

Dede’s autobiography, DocuChick, which we both acquired earlier in the day in an

impromptu book signing at her apartment. My look asks him how it is.

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 “It’s a work of great humility that chronicles her greatness, starting with her

breakthrough sophomore performance piece, Letters to Andrea, continuing with filming

with Corigliano and Claus Nicaragua after junior year, and a long chapter on her senior

film project, In the Flesh: A Stripper’s Life. There is an account of her award-winning

film, Death in the City, about AIDS patients in New York’s mental asylums, as well as

Lost Vision, her film about her life with Claus, and on and on.

He reads the dedication page. “To Claus, who gave everything for justice.” Then,

he flips randomly to the chapter about Death in the City and reads, “As I stood over

Michael’s skeletal body in the hospital, my microphone picking up each jagged, frantic

breath, I realized that I had learned something very profound about myself. This

exploration of AIDS and death in the city was about my search for myself. I think I have

found my true essence in these shattered lives. Watching people die of AIDS has taught

me that I, a daughter of a wealthy Washington lawyer, a former cheerleader, can make a

difference in the world…” He then leafs through the pages again to the full script of

Letters to Andrea.

“Dear Andrea,” Adam reads. “You don’t know me. I’m just another little bitch

getting off on your life, but you need to know that I love you. Now, I don’t know if I can

love you the way you might want me to love you, but I love you just the same.” He pauses

and says, “You have to picture her reading this onstage in a dominatrix outfit, surrounded

by screens that played a succession of photos, shot by Claus, of Dede in various stages of

undress, mock porno poses - in the name of playing with her own objectification.”

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 “I’ve always been a good girl, Andrea,” Adam reads. “But I am tired of being

good. I want to be dirty. I want to be filthy. I want to be used by the black man in my

Twelth Century poetry class. I want to be his little niggah ho. His bitch. Yeah, I want to

be his big-assed white bitch Nigga ho. But Andrea, what will I tell my daddy? Daddy is

a rich power broker and his great-great grandfather owned slaves on a plantation. What

would Daddy think if his little girl were a ho, a piece of pussy owned by a black man?

Daddy wants me to get a degree in government so I can start a career in Washington that

I will interrupt to become a submissive baby factory for some preppy bag of cum breeder.

Andrea, I don’t want to be a white breeder, living the life of beatings, cleanings and three

and a half minute fucks. Oh, Daddy, Daddy, your cheerleader daughter doesn’t want to

surrender control of her reproductive system to a society that will imprison her. She

doesn’t want the Mercedes station wagon to chauffeur blond babies around to ballet and

other types of bourgeois training to make them like her, a robotic servant of a worthless

system that turns women into pieces of meat. No, Daddy, I’d rather be a ho than a wife,

because a ho is real. A ho sells her cunt to the highest bidder. A ho is a business woman.

She has power over men because they want her cunt and she has cunt to sell. She doesn’t

give it away. Right, Andrea?”

He skips to the reviews in the back – “…a radical ear for today’s young post

feminist zeitgeist…”; “… a new voice in women’s film…”; “A new generation finds its

voice in Dede Teatham.”; “…surprising maturity for a young performer”; “A

refreshingly radical take on racial and sexual politics…”;“A scalding satire of our

culture of beauty,”; “We’ll be hearing more from Dede Teatham.”

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 “Well, the world had indeed heard much more from Dede. Unlike us. World

never heard much from us, did it, Payne?”

“The closest I ever got to radical,” I say, “Was attempting to get Ed Stein to

produce a script called Seňor Cadillac, a true story about the friendship between an

Anglo woman and her Latino gardener from the 1940s until she died in the 1990s. The

woman who wrote it used to lather me up in the shower and tell me it was the Latino

Driving Ms. Daisy. I got Ed to read it, but he told me it was not television. For Ed Stein,

a script was either ‘Television,’ ‘Good Television,’ ‘Great Television,’ or ‘Not

Television’.

“Do you ever read a script by someone who isn’t sucking your dick?”

“Yes,” I say. “I read scripts by men, too”

“Doesn’t mean you aren’t getting them to suck your dick.”

“Ha Ha Ha. Anyway, I tried to argue that you could get Betty Buckley and Esai

Morales, or Angela Lansbury and Edward James Olmos. ‘Do yourself a favor,’ Ed said to

me. ‘Don’t ever try to be a casting director.’; ‘But, I had countered. This is Emmy stuff,

really.’; ’It’s not television,’ he said. ‘It’s too soft. Where’s the story?’; I was like, ‘Does

everything we do have to have Farrah Fawcett in a silk bathrobe fending off a rapist with

a candlestick?’; ‘Don’t be a wise guy.’; ’The Latinos have no voice in American media,’ I

said, amazed to hear myself channeling Corigliano. ‘They are the invisible majority in

this city, the people we drive by and don’t notice. Who speaks for them?’. ‘First of all,’

Ed had said to me in response. ‘I don’t appreciate your attitude about the movies we

make. They’re what pay your salary. If you’re not happy with your job, tell me and I can

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have a hundred guys in your office doing it for less money by the end of the day. Second,

your story sucks. The fact that you even think it would make a good TV movie makes

me doubt the wisdom of hiring you. Third, I don’t know what you’ve been smoking, but

we don’t make movies here to broadcast social messages. Messages are for Western

Union, as Louis B. Mayer used to say. Fourth, the Latinos have their own networks, or

maybe you didn’t know that. Who speaks for them? They speak for themselves. Spanish

speaking television is enormous in this country, and that’s the reason we don’t have a lot

of shows about Latinos. It’s not network prejudice. It’s business. Why the hell should

ABC or CBS make a show in English about Latinos when Latinos can watch TV all day

about Latinos in Spanish?’”

Adam says, “Ugh, Payne! You’re a masochist just like me. It’s like the time I

crashed Dede’s table and found myself being roundly ignored by Claus, Dede, and her

gaggle of hangers on. I began to get the feeling than an important event was about to go

down, and inviting myself to it was not so cool. Dede wasn’t even sitting at her usual

seat at the head of the table. It was empty, awaiting the arrival of a major visiting

dignitary.

“Then, an elegant, Indian-looking woman appeared and took her place at the head

of the table. I didn’t know who it was, but I could tell that everyone was silent in awe of

this woman, everyone except Dede, that is. For them, it was a summit of equals. Later, I

learned that she was the great Veena Shiffat, Pakistani Lesbian law student. I felt as I was

watching Molotov meet Von Ribbentrop in the summer of 1939. The air was heavy with

portent and meaning.

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 “The matter that had drawn the presence of her Excellency, the Queen Bee

Islamic dyke of Beaton Lowell Law, was a claim made by a woman in the sophomore

class, that she had been raped in the laundry room by a guy named Esteban Cruz, also a

sophomore. The question up for debate at the table was whether or not to post all

throughout campus hundreds of photos of Cruz with the word “Rapist” printed in block

letters across his forehead.

“Initially, everyone seemed to think this was a great idea. ‘Rapists should have no

place of refuge at this school,’ Dede said. ‘Let’s flush him out.’ However, Veena seemed

hesitant. ‘He’s a Latino,’ she said. ‘Won’t we be sending the wrong message to

minorities.’ ‘He’s not a real Latino,’ Dede replied. ‘He’s blond with blue eyes and he’s

descended from a landowning family on the Island. He snuck into this school on a

Hispanic scholarship that he really didn’t deserve.’

“’What’s a real Latino?’ I asked, but no one acknowledge hearing me. The

discussion went on, touching on the delicate balance between protecting minority rights

while also advocating for rape victims. A tough one. Finally, I asked, ‘What would you

do about this in India?’ A cool draft of piss-rabbitedness wafted over me. I had said

something wrong, though I wasn’t sure what. ‘You’re going to let him get away with

that?’ Dede asked Veena. ‘I’m from Pakistan,’ she said. ‘Oh, sorry,’ I replied. I felt like a

total dipshit. ‘We all look alike to you, don’t we?’ she asked. ‘No, I am so sorry, I

just…’. ‘Assumed that I was from India. Ah, never mind,’ she said, and went back to the

more serious matter of rape and punishment.”

“Did you say anything else?” I ask.

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 “No. I just shut up. I was totally outranked. Shutting up seemed to be the main

message white men got in college. Too bad I have such a big mouth. Could have saved

myself a lot of trouble. The foundation of reality in college in the 1980s was that white

people ruled the world, and that they had massacred and enslaved all the indigenous

peoples of the world. Whatever the problem was, blame could be laid at our lily-white

feet.

“Think about it like this: Whites rule the earth and rape and pillage every other

culture – every people ‘of color’ – in the world. So, we, as whites, have a choice. We can

say, ‘Hey, that’s great. Next time you go out pillaging, bring me back some loot because

we love it and we enjoy eradicating the downtrodden peoples of the earth and we think

that white people are the greatest and fuck you if you can’t do things our way because

we’re Americans and you aren’t.’ Or, you can say, ‘I feel terribly guilty about being a

white,’ especially a white male, because women, as we know, are one great subjugated

caste and white males are the worst perpetrators of the degradation. So, being guilty by

default, we promise to make amends. We make amends by working on our own

mindsets, trying hard to unlearn all the destructive white maleness that we have picked up

from our white male heritage and our he-man American culture that promotes violence

and racism and sexism. We were like Dr. Li’s Black comrades in the Cultural

Revolution, trying desperately to undo the stigma of counterrevolution. We make

amends by vowing to treat our victims with respect. We respect the blacks. We respect

women. We allow wealthy white women like Dede Teatham to play at the role of victim

and not call her on it. We respect ‘people of color,’ a term meant to balance whiteness

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with color by lumping all non-whites into one big group of victims – a thought process

that to me is all the more racist because it tramples on any kind of true ethnic or

socioeconomic identity. A person of color can be a starving kid in Calcutta, an African

dictator, or an Indonesian sweatshop owner, but because we are white, they are presumed

to be our victims.

“The bigger a victim you were, the more respect you deserved and the more

power you had. An aristocracy of victimhood ruled the university. It was an upside down

social structure. It was the mirror image of the outside world. Black and third world

gays and lesbians like Veena Shiffat at the top and white males at the bottom. In college,

your social status was determined by the taxonomy of your victimization. So if you were

black and a lesbian, you had three status points: You were black, and blacks are owed a

lot of deference for their suffering. You were subjected to the anti-gay and lesbian

hatreds of the mainstream student body. And finally, if you were a woman, that set your

victim quotient higher than that of a black male homosexual. I think that the victim

status of gay men was diluted because they were, after all, still men, and men are the

grand victimizers of all women. Next came white gays and lesbians, because the whole

world hates queers, then straight blacks. Well, maybe blacks outranked white gays.

Tough call.

“You had to be so careful not to say or do anything that might be construed as

racist. Like, remember that tennis ball in the garbage can basketball game we played

before Corigliano’s class? I used to agonize over whether or not to ask Duke if he

wanted to get in on the game. He used to watch us play, and I would think, I should ask

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him to join in, but if I do, he’ll think I’m just another racist honky who assumes that all

blacks like to play basketball. And, if I don’t ask him, and he wants to play, then he’ll

think that I really am a racist and I don’t want him to play with me at all. So, for a while,

I didn’t say anything except give him these idiotic nods once in a while when we were

playing, as if to say, “I’m cool, right? I play basketball but I’m still white and I know it

all doesn’t matter because we are all highly socially aware college kids and we are

beyond such gross characterizations on both sides, black and white, but I don’t want you

to think that I think you are interested in basketball just because you are black. And, if

you feel like playing, I would love to have you in the game, but I know that even if you

played the game there is much more to you than just basketball even though I can never

really know you because I am white and whites don’t know what it means to be black.”

“That’s quite a look,” I say. “I think I can remember giving Duke a lot of shit-

eating grins, too, during those games.”

“Right, because there were those of us, like Claus and Dede, who were the self-

appointed guardians of the downtrodden. They were the white elite, the ones who

somehow merited, or absconded with the right of absolute judgment to attack the

prejudiced assumptions of other whites. I spent most of my meals at Beaton-Lowell in a

dull panic that some offhand remark that I made would get picked up by one of the white

judges at the table and I would be labeled a racist, sexist, homophobe, arrogant white,

ethnocentric, phallocentric, or hypocrite.

“The suspected racist label could mean social ruin. The white guardians of

victims’ rights could sentence you to celibacy. The worse the offense, the longer the

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sentence. No self-respecting woman would want anything to do with a suspected racist.

Well, we won’t count the women in the Conservative Club. I don’t think we ever had

much of a chance with them anyway.

“The side effect, of course, was that the white girls wanted to go out with the

black guys. Dede went through her black period. Remember when she announced that

she was through sleeping with white men? It was a big point of that play she wrote. They

wanted to make up all those centuries of exploitation and degradation with some really

fine white girl loving. I think most of the black guys, though, weren’t interested in the

pussy of condescension.

“Finally, at the bottom of the university status hierarchy - after straight white

women, straight men from the Third World, straight European men - licking the toes of

the higher-ups, were us straight American White Men. Of course, the irony is that you

and I are Jews, the most hated minority in the history of the world, though in the U.S.

we’ve enjoyed such freedom and success that we can be compared to Nazis.

“Dede, as a woman, had an all-access pass to the ranks of the victims. Never mind

that she was a person of remarkable privilege who was descended from slave-owners.

She had solidarity with the victims, coating herself daily with the Selma Dust they

dispensed. Except, I don’t think that she ever passed muster with black lesbians. Even

she was eclipsed by the overwhelming power of their victimization. Even she had to

watch what she said around that group. Our job was to think of politically correct things

to say, comments that would show everyone that even us lowly white males, the

despicable slave masters of the world, could try in vain to redeem ourselves by taking a

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stand against injustice. But, most of the time the best strategy was to shut the fuck up.

Be silent because the aristocracy of victimhood did not want to hear any noise from our

ugly white holes.

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Gumshoe

“Adam,” I say. “If you feel so resentful toward Dede and Claus, why are we

doing this?”

“I don’t know,” he says. “White guilt. We owe the world some big IOU that can

never be paid back. Some things are bigger than us, I guess. You get called and you do

what you are asked. It’s a Jewish thing, too. We’re supposed to be kind to the widow

and orphan. Mrs. Fuerst is a widow. Dede is a widow.”

“You’re really getting into this Jewish stuff, aren’t you?”

“I’m taking a Torah study class at the synagogue.”

This revelation puzzles me. My attitude toward my religion is a bemused mix of

condescension and fear. My parents didn’t do anything religious. I never had a bar

mitzvah. I actually wondered how people could “study Torah” for years on end when it

looked like a book you could read in a solid weekend if you wanted to. Read it and move

on. What was the big deal? To me, Judaism was about knowing what to order at a deli.

When I dated non-Jewish women, they would always try to make something of it, like if

we were to get married, could we have a Christmas tree? Why not, I would say. Religion

means nothing to me.

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 “What are you doing here?” he asks. “Aside from me, have you even talked to any

of the people from class in the last ten years?”

“Not really,” I say, not mentioning my weekend of lust with Una. “Because you

asked me.”

“Thanks,” Adam says. “I appreciate that, but it wasn’t necessary. I’m fine now.”

He’s answering the question that hasn’t been asked. He’s not planning on dumping

hundreds of aspirins into his mouth again, but I wonder.

My own psychic state, never great, is pretty shaky lately. I have been

complaining to Dr. Geddoff about difficulty sleeping and hearing noises in my head at

night. My insomnia and auditory hallucinations turned out to be Maytag in origin.

When I bought the place, I didn’t notice that the washer and dryer were next to the wall

of my bedroom. Actually, as a first-time condo buyer, there were a lot of things I missed.

For instance, I would never again pay $425,000 for two rooms in a building that looked

to me as if it were distinctly leaning to one side. True, it turned out. I got a level at the

hardware store and tested it myself. The building leans a few degrees to the east.

Earthquake damage, they told me, after I had signed the check.

I hardly even take advantage of my place’s greatest feature, the ocean view. The

wraparound deck is what made me want to buy the place. Eventually, though, I covered

all the windows with blackout curtains because the sun was too strong for me with the

kind of hangovers I get. The place has become my dark little cave by the sea. Besides, I

usually get home from work so late that I don’t even see the water. It’s just a blackness

that whispers at me when I park my car in the underground garage off the alley. I live in

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an alley, I told Dr. Geddoff. I leave a dark building into a dark alley in the morning most

of the year and return to a dark alley and a darkened, blacked-out apartment at night.

Once in a while, I take a pile of scripts out on the deck on a Saturday afternoon

and try to read them, but the glare of the sun is so intense that I have to squint and that

makes it a chore. Plus, there is the termite problem, which was brought to my attention

last year. I was sitting on the deck reading through a proposal for a one-hour drama

called Knight McKnight, a cop show in which the protagonist, Angus McNight, was not

only a crack homicide lieutenant in the San Francisco PD, he was also a knight from an

ancient Celtic order that swore to avenge injustice in the world. The show was being

pitched as a vehicle for Tom Selleck.

Pam, a fortyish former model friend of Violet’s who liked to parade around the

apartment in bubblegum colored thong panties, was trying to get my attention. She

leaned against the railing and looked out at the ocean as she smoked a joint that I had

rolled for her. She wanted to give me a direct view of her surgically superior ass as she

pitched me her idea for a series about former models that become private investigators. It

would be kind of like The Rockford Files meets Melrose Place meets Top Model. And

just as she said that, flipping aside platinum hair to turn and wink at me over her

shoulder, the railing gave way and she fell right off the deck on to the sand below.

She wasn’t hurt. A ground floor condo was another mistake I made, I found out,

as beer cans and the occasional crap taken by homeless people started piling up in the

deck. Termites were the problem. Even though Pam probably weighed ninety-five

pounds, the force of her body leaning against the railing made it crumble as if it were

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made of coffee cake. The exterminator claimed he had never seen such a massive

infestation in a new building, which made me think that maybe it wasn’t such a new

building as I had been lead to believe. The deck had to be totally rebuilt, while the rest of

the building was tented and pumped full of poison gas for a few days.

With all of my food thrown out and my plates wrapped in plastic that I was too

lazy to undo, I decided to spend the evening on the Third Street Promenade in Santa

Monica. Ostensibly, I was going to buy a book called Rites of the Wicca, which was

being pitched to me as a copycat show for Charmed. While I was there, I figured I would

grab dinner and look for a fourth birthday present for my niece, whom I have never met.

My sister moved to Australia right after college and has only been back a handful of

times since. She married an Australian dentist, a man whose foreign credentials frustrate

our father because he just doesn’t know how they rank dental schools. She has settled

into what seems like a fairly standard upscale suburban existence in Perth, which is as far

from Rye as you can get on the planet Earth and still have hot running water and color

television.

Before I could accomplish any of my errands on the Promenade, though, I got a

massive piece of gum stuck to my special sneakers that have all those little recessed

nooks and crannies that are supposed to give me that Spiderman traction when I go

running, a feature I know about in theory only. I had spent several minutes picking it out

one stringy piece at a time when I heard a woman say my name. I looked up and

glanced around the crowd, but did not see anyone I knew. I don’t have a name like John

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or Joe, so whoever said my name must know me. There can’t be that many Havelocks

around.

“Hi!” She said. “Havelock, is that you?” I found myself staring right at a woman

who looked extraordinarily familiar but whose identity did not immediately register. This

happens to me a lot, actually. I run into agents, producer, former co-workers, and old

girlfriends at various restaurants and television industry functions. Normally, I just

pretend to remember who they are, but not that time. I knew her, but I couldn’t quite give

her a name. Looking back on the incident, I feel terrible about not recognizing my high

school girlfriend, especially after anguishing over her for so many years and boring my

friends, especially Adam, droning on about how I screwed up the one relationship in my

life where I actually felt like a human being.

“It’s me, Sara…”

“Hi!” I said back, too shocked to think of anything more interesting to say. I

forgot the speech that, for years, I had thought I would give if I ran into her again. I had

planned to say, “Sara, whatever happened between us, I just want you to know that I

always loved you, I always will love you and I will always wish you the best in life. You

are a part of me forever.” When Violet heard that line she told me I ought to write

Hallmark cards. Can’t you think of something more subtle and strong, she asked. Like all

good producers, she wanted to give notes even on my private thoughts. I thought about it

for a while, and then decided to type up the reunion with Sara as if it were a scene in a

movie and show it Violet.

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EXT. AMUSEMENT PIER – DAY

SARA and HAVELOCK stand facing each other on the pier, surrounded by
swirling rides, screaming children and squawking sea gulls whose sounds
all fade into the background. They examine each other for signs of
aging, wondering what their lives would have been like if they had not
parted years before.

SARA
I just want you to know that I
don’t have any hard feelings for you.

HAVELOCK
I know. You don’t have to say it.

SARA
Oh, Havelock, you seem so sad.

HAVELOCK
I missed you.
SARA
Me, too, in my own way. You’ll
always have a place in my heart.

They embrace warmly, and, after a moment, separate, each going their
own way.

“When you see her,” Violet told me after looking over my scene, “You will be

courteous, make small talk, forget about her for once and ever, and get on with your life,

period, end of story. Get over it.” Dr. Geddoff wanted to know what Sara and I talked

about, but all I remember was:

Her: I have two children. Here they are.

Me: Great. I work in TV.

Her: What do you do?

Me: I am trying to start an Internet game show - Supermarket Treasure Hunt.

Her: I am a rabbi. I work at Temple Beth Emet. We live in Beverly Hills.

Me: I live in Malibu.

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 Her: My husband is an ophthalmologist.

Husband: Really GREAT to meet you. Heard a LOT about you. (Firm handshake,

gripping me on the arm while shaking hand, which I hate. I shook his hand limply, not

wanting to hurt those million-dollar cataract extracting hands.)

And then, she was gone, and I was left alone picking gum out of my Spiderman

sneakers, but the gum got stuck under my fingernail and when I tried to get it out it just

got stuck under the fingernail that I was using to get it out of the first fingernail. It would

have been so easy to miss her. I could have lived in Los Angeles my whole life and never

known she was there.

The neon of a nearby bar loomed appealingly on the promenade. Inside was a

tropical paradise theme and a rack of those crushed-ice slurpy machines like they have at

Seven-Eleven, except that these were full of different rum and tequila drinks dyed blue

and green. I ordered the Samoa Sambucca Swirl, which came with a paper umbrella.

Before I had drunk half of it I had already requested a Mount Gay Raspberry Daiquiri and

after that a Kahlua Colada. Rabbi in Beverly Hills. Husband is an ophthalmologist. Must

be rich. That made me crazy. And why shouldn’t they be? Why shouldn’t my high

school girlfriend be rich? What the fuck did it have to do with me? All I knew was that

I need another drink.

And what is it about being shocked and upset and smashed at the same time that

prompts us to decide to do things that are, in retrospect – how shall I put this? –

completely idiotic? Because of all the nights to drive out to Point Dume and skinnydip

by myself in the dark, that was definitely not the one. It was all the more crazy because I

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could go to the beach anytime. I live at the beach. But maybe that’s the whole point.

Thinking about Sara living happily ever after with her rich Doctor husband in a big house

in Beverly Hills with two perfect kids driving around in a Lexus SUV – and let’s not

forget about the credentials that my father would have loved - made me want to go flirt

with an undertow and treacherous rocks at night.

A professional racecar driver once told me that the secret to effective drunk

driving is to look far ahead and focus on the distance. That way, you won’t make little

corrections on the steering wheel that will make the car swerve and look suspicious. I

tried to follow his advice as I sped along Pacific Coast Highway out of Santa Monica and

up toward the far side of Malibu where I wanted to get naked and roll in the surf and

forget all about Sara and her diversified portfolio and G-spot slamming Jewish doctor

husband who was so goddamned glad to meet me.

“Now hold on a minute,” Dr. Geddoff had said. “How do you know they’re rich?

For all you know they could be living in an apartment and still paying off student loans.

Have you seen this Lexus SUV or is it just a figment of your imagination?”

“It’s how I picture them,” I had said.

“Why is it so important to you that they be rich and successful?” he had asked.

“I just got this feeling that they were doing very well.”

“The better they do, the worse you feel, right?”

As I hit seventy on the Pacific Coast Highway, the only thing on my mind was the

cold Malibu surf that I so desperately wanted to be in though I had never been swimming

in the ocean in all the time I had lived in Los Angeles.

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 “What’s your hurry?” the cop asked. He had appeared from behind a clump of

palm trees on the way to the Malibu Lagoon. When he leaned in and caught a whiff of

me, he told me to get out of the car. I wanted to tell him that I needed to go swimming

tonight, that after all this time of living on the beach and never going in the water I

needed to do it right now and I couldn’t wait because I was a loser and she was a

successful Rabbi with the perfect life.

They told me to sleep it off in the drunk tank, but I couldn’t because I was too

sick from those Kahlua Colada and Mount Gay crushed ice confections. My brain felt as

if it had been wrapped in rubber bands and every few minutes someone would give the

bands a little tweak. Besides, there was another drunk in the cell with me who was

snoring loudly and who had seemed to have crapped his pants.

The whole room smelled like the Men’s room that they never clean at the Gas ‘N

Go on I-5. They have this stainless steel toilet-sink combo in jail. I nicknamed it the

soilet. There’s no seat on it, because, I guess you could remove it and use it whack

yourself unconscious with it. A continuous stream of urine has splashed and crystallized

into little brown nuggets gleaming all around the rim of the stainless steel toilet sink

where I rested my chin in between waves of nausea. When I got up to wash off my face,

I found that the sink didn’t work, so I staggered over to the bars and yelled for the guard

to come. He wasn’t a fucking bellboy, he told me after I asked for some water and a

washcloth for my face. When I was about to protest, he shoved his nightstick through the

bars and poked me in the stomach and told me to get the fuck back to sleep. So I lay

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down on the vinyl cot and tried to sleep with my hand over my nose to filter out the smell

of day-old drunk’s shit.

Puking on the courtroom floor didn’t help my case much either, but it was my first

offense, indeed my first traffic violation of any kind, and I had 800-KILL-DUI Esquire

explain to the judge that I was a responsible person who had made an error in judgment

and was very sorry. I got off with a fine and probation.

I thought I would sleep when I got home but just as I was about to drop off, the

spin cycle from the laundry room next to my bedroom wall kept me up as it does every

night. The washing machine starts to rattle and move around on the floor and eventually

it starts to bang into the wall like someone was pounding his fist on the headboard of my

bed.

It only lasts for a few minutes, but the spin cycle wakes me up enough to make it

hard to fall back to sleep for an hour or two, giving me a nightly opportunity to think

about the fact that I wish I didn’t have a hangover and headache so bad that I wonder if it

would feel better if they drilled a hole in my head like they did in that movie, The

Terminal Man, and let the pressure out of my skull. Drain out the feeling that I should

not have missed little Ronnie Brown climbing up that ladder to the high dive. Drain out

the panicky memory of reacting too late to the belly flop that broke his neck and made

my parents, as well as everyone else in Rye, suspect that I was stoned or careless or just

too plain dimwitted to be a lifeguard, creating a feeling in me that maybe they were right

and that maybe I should just dump Sara because I was beginning to think that she also

felt that I was responsible for the kid’s paralysis even though she told me a hundred times

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that she was sure that I had done everything I could and nobody ever thanked me for

saving him from drowning which he surely would have if I had not been there. And then

the spin cycle stops and I am left with the pounding in my head.

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Café Barcelona

“Are you still in touch with Lawrence Lang?” Adam asks.

“God, no,” I tell him. Just hearing the name Ralphs my gut. “You?”

“Not for a long time. You know he has a show on NPR.”

“Yeah, but I try not to listen.” Flipping through stations, I cringe occasionally

when I catch the loathsomely buoyant intonations of the man my mother always wanted

me to be sharing his views on gender politics at the National Science Foundation or

feminist approaches to Freud.

Adam says, “I used to deal with him when I worked for the Senator. Every few

months I would try to get the Senator interviewed on American Journal. He was always

so super nice to me, like he was overjoyed that one of the little people from college cared

enough to give him a call, but after the fourth or fifth time he told me that the ‘chemistry’

that he anticipated between the Senator and his other guests that day wouldn’t be ‘magic’

enough, I got the hint. What he meant was that the Senator was just too old fashioned in

his thinking to make good NPR, or perhaps he knew that the Senator wouldn’t roll over

and play dead like all the other conservative straw men Lang used to achieve what we

laughingly referred to as ‘balance.’ NPR is basically liberal masochism, anyway, always

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drawing out long tales of right wing malfeasance to agitate the left. Lang also

disapproved of the Senator’s pro-marriage stance, too, and its implicit condemnation of

alternative lifestyles. Little did I know how it offended him personally. This was way

before Lang wrote his histrionically humorous, homo-narcissistic opus, Outing Myself on

the Air.”

“Only Lawrence Lang could make a media event out of the announcement that he

likes to take it up the ass. Did that really need to be on the cover of Newsweek? Last year,

I caught his interview with Bishop Tutu, the one where he spent the first ten minutes

prattling on about his role in the Beaton-Lowell Divestment movement, as if it were of

equal importance to the whole freedom struggle in South Africa. Of course, it goes

without saying that no pathological overachiever can possibly get through college

without herniating himself caring for the less fortunate”

Having known Lawrence my whole life, I did not find the public hoo hah over his

emergence from the closet to be such a big revelation. We were born in the same hospital

on the same day and our mothers became inseparable friends. Somehow, Lawrence and I

were supposed to become inseparable friends, too, but he was always just a little too

perfect for me, and my mother’s frequent urging of me to ‘act like Lawrence’ made me

long to watch him being eaten alive by fire ants.

At five, Lawrence was placed directly into the first grade, the school having told

his parents that his advanced IQ would have made kindergarten a waste of his time.

Despite being the same age, Lawrence was always a year ahead of me in school, a fact

that made my mother’s comparisons between the two of us all the more galling. Even at

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five, he was beginning to display pestilent behaviors such as correcting my English or

calling my mother by her first name, an act she found perversely flattering.

My mother was thrilled to mingle with the Langs, who were one of Westchester

County’s old-line Wasp families. Lawrence’s mother, Cordelia, was a trustee of Yale, and

their friendship enabled my mother to insinuate herself into the Assistant Professorship in

American History that propelled her career to new heights. As I tried to explain to Dr.

Geddoff, my mother’s friendship with Cordelia Lang excited her Jewish striver’s desire

to be taken seriously by Wasp society, as well as the academic world. Every year, my

mother would buy the Langs a premium quality Christmas ham as a token of goodwill

between the two families.

But no amount of ham could fix a broken neck. The Browns were close friends of

the Langs, so when little Ronnie belly flopped on my watch, it precipitated a cooling off

between Cordelia and my mother. And, while my mother always defended me publicly

and protested what she thought was an overly aggressive stance by the local authorities

concerning my alleged negligence, she was secretly furious with me for fouling her

position in Rye society.

The pivotal incident that convinced me that Lawrence precociousness was a

malignancy that I had to excise from my life, though, was the time in third grade that

Lawrence decided that it would be more fun to sight-read Schubert four-handed Sonatas

with my mother than to play with me. As I sat on the couch clutching my GI Joe figure,

waiting impatiently to go outside and play, my mother trilled, “If you practiced, we could

play like this, too.” I vowed never invite him over again.

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 When Lawrence was in the eleventh grade, he was invited to apply to Beaton-

Lowell, an event that sent my mother into paroxysms of covetous admiration. Oh, if only

her little Havelock could be more like Lawrence, then she could be fulfilled. A year later,

when my plodding hard work got me accepted, her congratulation was laden with an

unspoken reminder that Lawrence Lang, a polymath of freakish dimensions - high school

Shakespearean, writer and director of plays, captain of the math team, editor of the school

literary magazine, and an accomplished pianist - had been invited to apply.

At college, Lawrence was a major theatrical star and radio personality with his

own show. At that time it was just about the arts, not “All Things American” as his

current program was. Before medical school, he spent two years at Oxford on a Marshall

Scholarship where he received a master’s in English literature to complement his Summa

Cum Laude degree in Biology.

When Jan and I finally had our coffee date, the first thing she said to me as she sat

down was, “I can’t believe you grew up with Lawrence. How cool is that?” I had picked

the Café Barcelona, a half-hidden little place that served European style coffee and

deserts, because I thought it would be a more romantic setting than one the clangorous

grottos in the Corners. She had been late, though, so I’d already had a cup of coffee and

was feeling a little jumpy when she sauntered in, struggling to keep from dropping a

bunch of books clutched in her wiry hands.

“It’s nothing,” I said. “Our mother’s are friends. Were friends.”

“What happened?”

“I’ll take the fifth.”

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 “But isn’t he just inspirational?” she asked, putting Ralph on the rise even though

the date had barely started.

“Yeah,” I said. “He’s pretty impressive.”

“Did you hear his speech at the rally?”

“No,” I lied. I had heard it, of course. They probably heard him in Florida, the

goddamned PA was on so loud, but I didn’t want to spend the date that I had been

dreaming about for two years talking about a guy I despised. “But what about you?” I

went on. “You deserve a huge pat on the back for organizing that whole event. That was

amazing.”

“Thanks,” she said. The embarrassment of the compliment seems to fold her in on

herself. She started absently at the tablecloth. “Claus took some cool pictures. Did you

see them?” I nodded yes, not wanting to tell her that I had clipped the shot and put it next

to my bed. It figured I would hide it if Jan ever came over to spend the night, but that

fantasy seemed so improbable that I couldn’t bear to ruin it with practicalities.

The idea that Jan would come over and spend the night formed a Ralphic

supernova in my college mind. As a junior, I spent every day thinking that it was only a

matter of weeks until I would lose my virginity. I could not imagine that I would

graduate from college in a perpetual state of chastity, or that my first lover would be

twice my age, the forty-six year old Violet, who would come into my office late one night

announcing that she wasn’t wearing any panties. Nor could I have known that day at the

café that the closest I would come to sex in four years of school was Jan’s one little

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squeeze on my arm. She might as well have squeezed the head of my cock, throbbing

miserably as it was in my pants while I gazed at her across the table.

“I saw some of his shots,” I said.

“He’s a great photographer. Did you know he’s almost completely self-taught?

He used to be a painter, mostly, but he prefers photography now. He says it gives him

more immediate access to the subject.”

“I prefer film,” I said. “It’s alive.”

“Claus is into film, too,” she said. “But somehow he feels that there is no

substitute for a sublime still.” I told her I agreed, and proceeded to take an overly long

sip of my coffee while I tried to figure out a way to get the conversation on to a topic that

would begin our inexorable advance to sunset walks at the riverside and lazy bouts of

lovemaking. Lacking any other great ideas, I switched the subject back to one that I

thought I understood fairly well.

“You know,” I said, “I haven’t even told my father I’m taking a film course. He

would never understand why I would waste my time at Beaton-Lowell on that.” She

nodded. Not knowing whether it was a nod of agreement or a polite nod to acknowledge

that she heard me, I went on. “I have a lot of angst over telling my parents that I want to

work in the movie business. My father is a big lawyer and he mythologizes successful

people and their credentials. He wants me to go to law school, but I think I would make a

terrible lawyer. I am afraid of disappointing him.” When she didn’t respond, I continued.

“I like teaching.” I was about to mention my involvement in youth tutoring as a way to

impress her, but I felt momentarily ashamed of flogging my one good deed for the sake of

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attention. Yet, with my desperation quickly overriding my inhibition, I let loose with,

“You know I did that reading for kids day at the library. I got a lot out of that. I think I

may want to be a teacher, but I am not sure if I would be a good one.”

“What does your mother think?”

“My mother wants me to be Lawrence Lang.” This produced a laugh.

“You aren’t him.”

“Yeah, that’s the ever-loving truth,” I said.

“So, be a teacher. If you want to be a teacher,” she said. “Be a teacher. Screw

your parents. You aren’t living your life for their benefit.” Her definitiveness made me

fear that she was bored with me already. In my head, I heard, “Do it. Don’t talk about it,

at least not to me. I don’t care.” “Whatever floats your boat,” she added. Okay, so she

was bored. I resolved to be more interesting.

“What was it like growing up on Iowa?” I asked, hoping that getting her to talk

about herself might make her warm up.

“A lot of cornfields and Republicans,” she said. “Purgatory.”

“At least you got out.”

“Oh, I knew I was getting out of there when I was just a little kid,” she said. “My

father had a record from the Beaton-Lowell Marching Band – he went here - and when I

was little we used to play it on Sunday mornings and march around the living room

singing Fight, Ye Men of Beaton-Lowell. The rip cord was always in plain view.”

“I guess they’ll have to rename that song, ‘Fight, Ye People of Beaton-Lowell’

now.”

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 “That’ll be the day,” she said with a jagged little laugh that didn’t jibe at all with

the image I had of Jan in my mind. It was not the glowing, effusive laugh of a woman

who would curl up in bed next to me on cold winter mornings and tell me how much she

needed that cylinder of skin between my legs to make her happy and solve all of her

problems.

I couldn’t tell what amused her more, the fact that I had made a pro-feminist

comment or the obviousness of my attempt to look good. The date was not going well. In

my silent floundering, I felt as if Ralph were shoving my head into a bucket of ice water

and not letting go no matter how much I struggled to breathe. Trying to put myself back

together, I looked down and read the spines on her stack of books.

“What’s The Handmaid’s Tale about?” I asked.

“You haven’t heard of it?”

“No,” I said. “Is it a good book?”

“The fact that you don’t know it says a lot about you.”

“Really?”

“You should read it. You might learn something valuable about the way the world

works.”

“So, tell me what it’s about.”

“It’s set in the near future, at a time when fertility rates are low and women are

forced to become baby-making machines for rich men. It’s about the sex and power.”

“Sounds interesting.”

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 “Yeah, right,” she said with another itchy little laugh, and punched me lightly

across the table. “You don’t have to say that to impress me.”

“I wasn’t saying that to impress you,” I said. “I don’t know much about

feminism. I’m curious.”

“Of course you don’t. Why would you? You’re a white man from a wealthy

family. What possible reason would you have for getting into this kind of subversive

agenda? Personally, I’ve gained a lot of insight into my family from reading it,” Jan said.

“You’re like my father - a kind man, but very establishment - the essence of the benign

holder of power who is blissfully unaware of the suffering in the world that is caused by

the selfishness of his position. And my mother was sort of a handmaid. She had some

rights, and she got to be educated and own property, unlike the women in the book, but

she basically sold her body in exchange for a comfortable life. It’s a common

transaction. She dropped out of college to marry my father, worked as a secretary to help

him get through medical school, and quit when she got pregnant. She’s a homemaker

who does pottery as a serious hobby now that the kids are out of the house. I love her for

the sacrifices she made for us, but if I ended up like her I would kill myself.”

I had been planning to make a speech on our date, but the riff about her mom gave

me some doubts about the wisdom of actually saying, “Jan, this is going to sound weird

to you, but I’ve liked you since we first met freshman year. Do you remember talking to

me out at our parents’ cars on the first day of school? I do. Now that I am getting to

know you better in the class and little outings like this, I thought I would ask, well I

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thought I would see if you would be interested in maybe spending a little more time

together.”

She must have sensed something, because she interrupted my silent rehearsal to

say, “You like me, right? I can tell.” My heart jumped. For a second, I thought she was

going to beat me to the finish line and tell me that she liked me, too, but there was

something in the way she said, “right?” that sounded a little contemptuous. Smiling

despite myself, I said yes. I liked her, and always had.

“I was afraid you were going to say something like that,” she said. “We have to

talk about the fact that you like me.” Okay. “I like you, too,” she said. Momentary

hope, followed by, “But not in the way you want me to. You’re a sweet guy, and you’ll

probably be great for someone, but just not me. I can’t be your girlfriend.” Oh, that was

a glum little Ralph moment. I just sat there while she gave me this dazzlingly phony look

that tried to be kind but was so patronizing that it frothed the Ralph in me. “You see,”

she continued. “I just can’t be in a relationship right now. I value my independence too

much. I have to be my own person, and I would be compromised by being anyone’s

girlfriend. I’m truly sorry.”

“I would let you be your own person,” I heard myself say. “I would be nice to

you.”

“It’s not about being nice or not nice. Of course you would be nice to me. You’re

a nice guy. And you’re funny, and cute, too.” I certainly didn’t feel cute. In the two years

since Sara and I had broken, up I felt as if I were repulsive. But, in the gruesome way we

hear what we want to hear and ignore the rest, I took those two little compliments, which

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were probably just canon fodder for my shredded self-image, as evidence that she

actually wanted me to pursue her. She has to like me, though, I thought. She agreed to

the date and she did squeeze my arm. She just doesn’t know she wants to go out with

me, I said to myself. I would have to try harder.

“Have you ever been in a relationship?” I asked.

“Sure,” she said. “I fell in love when I was in high school but it didn’t last. He

got into drugs. How about you?”

“High school also. All four years.”

“Really? What happened?”

“I broke up with her because we were going to different schools. It was a

mistake.”

“That’s too bad,” she said, and I thought she might have even meant it.

“Don’t you even want to try?” I asked, sounding like a bassoon with a broken

reed. “How can you know that you don’t want to be in a college relationship if you

haven’t tried it?”

“I just can’t be in a situation where I’m not equal, and I don’t think that’s possible

with you or anyone. Can there be complete equality between the sexes in a relationship?”

she asked. I suppose so, I said, but she didn’t seem swayed. “Why do you think women

make less money than men?” I said I didn’t know. “Why couldn’t women get credit cards

of their own for so many years?” Again, I didn’t know. “Why do so many women die

from domestic violence? Why do men beat women? Why are women afraid to report

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men who beat them? Because men control the economy and women are made to be

dependent on them and therefore they can’t act to save themselves.”

“I’m not going to beat you,” I said. “It’s not my style.”

“No offense,” she said. “But a Beaton-Lowell education is no guarantee that you

don’t beat up women.” Okay, I said. Good point, but wrong in my case. I never hit a

woman, though I did feel obligated to comply last week when Sandy asked if I would call

her “Daddy’s bad little bitch” and spank her ass with a belt.

“Would you expect your wife to change her name?”

“I guess so.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “I never thought about it. Isn’t it tradition?”

“Right,” Jan said. “You haven’t thought about these things, but you’re not alone.

Men don’t think about how women are made to be chattel in this society. Most men think

of women as a collection of orifices they can buy. For instance, what do you call a

woman you don’t like? A cunt. A twat. Am I right? You render her into a hole, a

disembodied sex organ.”

I didn’t know what to say. The date was going so Ralph I felt like just getting up

and leaving. Before she sat down, I had pictured us sharing a cup of coffee, telling some

funny stories about our lives, and then seeing that we both liked each other. I was going

to make my little speech and we were going to agree to see each other again and maybe

she would have given my arm another one of those squeezes and we would be off into the

amber light of B&Belovedness.

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 I wanted to tell her that I didn’t objectify women, but I realized it would not have

been completely honest, so I said, “You’re right, but unpopular men are called pricks or

dicks. It’s the same thing.”

“No. Not the same. There’s the connotation of power. The prick is a weapon. The

cunt is a possession.”

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Ivoryton

“Are you going to keep those sneakers?” Adam asks.

“Why? They didn’t take them at security.”

“I thought you might want to get rid of the evidence of your crimes against

humanity.”

“Right.”

When Adam and I walked into Dede’s Greenwich Village apartment this

afternoon, she gave me a warm hug but quickly chided me for wearing sneakers that had

been made by slave laborers in China. Just a little reminder, as Adam said, that I was her

inferior, that I would always be her inferior, that I was the Man, the callous one who is

indifferent to the sufferings of the peoples of the world.

I had not been eager for a reunion with Dede, though she had seemed quite happy

to see me. And why shouldn’t she? I played a walk-on role in the extravagant production

that was Dede’s college life. Everyone wanted to know Dede Teatham at Beaton-

Lowell. She was the toast of the university, and I, even little I, had been a part of it.

Seeing me helps her recall her former glory, I thought.

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 At thirty-six, Dede had a hint of Bridget Fonda but with a few extra pounds added

around the edges - a walking testimonial for a costly hair and skin regimen. An expertly

streaked blond bob had long since replaced the defiant buzz cuts of Corigliano’s class.

She had on jeans and a pink button-down shirt. A string of pearls peeked out at the neck.

“How are you doing?”; “Well, thanks. You?”; “Great.” I didn’t even know why

we were even sitting there. Let’s meet at Dede’s place, Adam had said on the phone the

week before. Why? I didn’t feel any particular need to see her. Closure, Adam had said.

Seeing her will help us remember why we are going. I don’t need to see her to remember

why I am going. I am going because you asked me to, but there we were.

We stared at each other when the small talk drifted off into uncomfortable silence,

Adam opined, “You know, the two of you actually have a lot in common,” as if he were

my grandmother in Miami who knew a nice girl for me. “I’m producing a TV show,” I

said. “Really,” she replied. “Me too.” Pause. I was suddenly taken with this fantasy that

maybe now, after all these years, my fossilized dislike of her would mutate, in the way

rancid old feelings can be converted into spontaneous bad relationships, and we would

finally hook up for an ugly, emotionally wrought long distance fling, replete with hateful

Instant Message arguments, makeup phone sex and bruising kinkiness in airport hotel

rooms.

I tried to picture her in bed, with that blond hair tickling my shoulders as she

sweated naked on top of me and hurried herself to an expedient orgasm because, as she

would put it in an urgent, breathy voice, “I need to get up at six. Did I tell you that I’m

nominated for a Peabody and they want me on the Today show?”

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 A Stairmaster stood facing the television in the corner of her exposed brick living

room. It suited her, I thought, to be climbing endlessly without going anywhere. I noticed

an old, iron grey Bell & Howell Filmo wind-up movie camera on Dede’s bookshelf.

“Does that work?” I asked her, pointing to the camera. She shook her head and said,

“No, I just like to keep it around. It was Claus’ camera, actually. He bought it used for

next to nothing because it didn’t work, but he fixed it and cleaned it by hand. He was so

obsessed with learning cinematography after the whole Ivoryton thing that he wanted to

practice on his own time without having to sign out one of the department cameras. It

broke again, but I still like to look at it because it reminds me of where we started.”

Ivoryton was where we did our first real filmmaking. One month into the class,

we were getting tired of watching and discussing films. We wanted to go out and do it.

After some instruction on use of the Bolex sixteen millimeter camera, Corigliano told us

our first assignment was to make a movie about a place. He handed each of us a hundred

foot roll of black and white film, which would yield about two and a half minutes of

footage. We were to choose a location as a group and then go and record it on film in

ways that we felt would show the essence of the place. When the film was developed, we

would screen it, discuss, it and edit it together as a group.

That seemed simple enough, but after half an hour we still could not figure out

what to film. Dede and Jan wanted to film at the women’s shelter in Winchester Gardens,

but that would have required permits, so we nixed the idea. I felt awkward around Jan

after our coffee date, but she was friendly to me. I basked in the aura of her friendliness

like a man hovering over a candle on a cold night and entombed the pain of being

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rejected. Claus wanted to make a whole film about a phone booth in the subway station.

He thought it reflected a microcosm of American society with all of its disembodied

voices and reliance on technology for connections with other people. Corigliano thought

that was a good idea, though not really practical for the whole group.

The group discussion broke down into separate conversations, but Adam and I

wandered off topic and began to discuss our summer job plans. He was hoping to get an

internship at The New York Times, while I was raking through any family connection I

could find to get myself out to Los Angeles for the summer to become a production

assistant on a film set. Otherwise, I said, my father would get me a gig running the

copying machine at his law firm.

Corigliano overheard us talking and whistled for everyone to be quiet. “Enough,”

he said. “These two jokers are talking about how they want to be paid a weekly check by

some corporation in exchange for their toil and creativity this summer. Everyone was

glaring at us. Stereophonic piss rabbits. Corporate whores. “Is that all you can think of

in my class, where you have been given the tools to make films and communicate your

thoughts and feelings in the most powerful visual medium in the history of the world?”

“Listen up,” Corigliano said. “I’m changing the rules, because you guys have not

yet learned to work together as a team. When you can respect each other and cooperate, I

will let you make your own decisions. This is what we are going to do. We’re going to

get into my van with our equipment, and I am going to drop you off in a location of my

choosing.’”

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 Corigliano loaded us into his 1971 Volkswagen mini-bus, which still had a Day-

Glo peace sign spray painted on its side, and drove us into Eliot. At first, I thought he

was going to drop us off at the zoo, but he kept on going west and I lost any solid sense

of where we were headed. “He’s taking us to Ivoryton,” Dede said. “I know this road.”

“Be back in two hours,” was all he said as he dumped us on the street and pulled

away. I can remember standing there watching the life of the black neighborhood go by

us while we stood around and stared at each other, trying to figure out what to do and

hesitating to say what everyone, or at least, I was thinking.

“We’re not going to get mugged,” Dede said, as if reading our minds. “I’ve been

down here a million times and it’s safe, despite what people say.”

“When have you been down here?” Claus asked.

“I help Lawrence Lang do his Gospel Sunday show here.”

“You’re multi-talented,” he said.

“Oh, you have no idea…” was Dede’s reply. Claus smirked.

We broke up into pairs, each sharing a camera and tripod. Jan and Dede went into

a discount clothing store. Claus and Duke disappeared around the corner, and Adam and

I were left standing on the sidewalk. Throngs of local residents pushed past us,

alternatively ignoring us and giving us suspicious looks. We had no idea where to start.

I couldn’t concentrate, either, because I had to write Ronnie Brown a check that

night. Five years into the sentence, I would have hoped that it wouldn’t be a problem to

keep mailing checks to the kid, but every month it was the same. I got a faint

apprehension a week or so in advance, and then the day when I absolutely had to get the

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check out in the mail would start to loom grotesquely on the horizon. Endless inner

debates would swirl about my head. Do it, I would tell myself. Write the stupid check. It

will only take two minutes to write it and put it in the mail. You don’t even have to enter

it into the check register. It’s just a dollar.

I had found that the addressing of the envelope was actually more anxiety-

provoking than writing the check. One afternoon a year earlier, I had typed and stamped

two hundred envelopes for Ronnie so I wouldn’t have the added emotional contortions of

addressing a letter to him each month. However, the postage that I put on those

envelopes was regularly rendered inadequate by the post office. I was constantly adding

those little G and H update stamps.

“Do you want to film the subway?” Adam asked. The train was roaring over our

head every few minutes. “It’s certainly part of the environment here. You can barely hear

yourself think.”

“But this is a silent film,” I said.

“We can try to capture the noise visually, like Eisenstein,” he said. We then

grabbed shots of sparks flying, and wheels turning from different angles. We filmed the

coming and going of the trains over and over again to get the feeling of relentlessness that

the train gave to the neighborhood. Finally, we got some low angle shots of the station

and tracks to show how the steel structure dominated the neighborhood.

We all gathered back at the place where Corigliano had dropped us off, but he was

not there. First ten minutes went by, then twenty. We began to get worried that he had

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forgotten to come back. I, of course assumed that we were in the wrong place. After an

hour, we came to the conclusion that he wasn’t coming.

“If anything happens,” Adam said as dusk set in, “we could sue the school. This

is totally outrageous. If one of us gets hurt, the college is going to have their head handed

to them.”

“What are you afraid of?” Duke asked him. It was the first time he had said much

of anything about being stuck in a black neighborhood with his white classmates.

“I don’t know,” Adam said, a note of fear in his voice. “This is not the greatest

neighborhood and it’s getting dark.”

“You afraid one of us black folks is going to take your money? Or shoot yo’ white

ass just for showing yo’ face around here?”

“I didn’t mean it like that,” Adam said. “Sorry.”

“I was just playing with your head,” Duke said, and everyone laughed.

“You can call in the Beverly Hills lawyers later,” Claus said. “I think we should

just walk back. It is not so far, really. About five miles.”

“I have a test tomorrow,” Jan said, looking rather fearful and anxious. I wondered

if I looked the same way. I wanted to go over and give her a hug.

“We could call a cab and pay them when we get back to Beaton-Lowell,” I said.

“That’s totally out of the question,” Dede said. “ Corigliano dumped us here on

purpose to teach us a lesson. The whole point of this exercise is to show us that life

doesn’t have any safety hatches.”

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 “She’s right,” Jan said urgently. “This is a life lesson. Corigliano wants to knock

us off our little pedestals and see the world the way it really works.”

We settled on the subway and got back to school early enough for Jan to study for

her test but late enough for Corigliano’s office to be locked. “The man’s a menace,”

Adam said later on that night when Una and I accompanied him for a meatball sub at

Alfredos, a favorite place of ours in the Corners. With his mouth full of food, he added,

“He’s really got a nerve dropping us like that in the middle of that neighborhood.”

“Chew, Adam,” Una said. “You’re so uptight. You’re going to give yourself a

heart attack. You got back in one piece, didn’t you?”

“And,” I added. “We don’t know what happened. He might have had an

emergency at home or something.”

“Yeah,” Adam said. “His wife came down with a case of ungroovy vibes or put

batik dye in the tie-dye bucket and flipped out. No, it was a setup.”

Corigliano’s hairy toes were twitching in anticipation in his sandals at the start of

the next class, so eager was he to ask us if we had learned anything about life from our

little sortie in the “bad part of town.”

“I saw the suffering caused by the racist society of America,” Claus said. “The

white people of this city have no idea how they degrade people’s lives and stomp on their

dreams.”

“Uh huh,” Corigliano said with a nod of supreme approval. “That’s the way to

keep your eyes open.”

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 “It made me feel guilty,” Jan said. No big news there. Una, who had volunteered

to disabuse me of my all-consuming crush, once stated that everything made Jan feel

guilty, that guilt was Jan’s primal organizing emotion. According to Una, Jan was

chronically embarrassed to come from a family where her father “pulled down mad cash

popping zits” while the parents of all of her friends worked on the line at Iowa Beef

Processing. Jan continued with, “It’s like, we have so much, and we know that we can

come back here and be safe in our little paradise that our parents pay for and those poor

people are still going to be down there in that neighborhood where there are shootings

and drugs and bad schools and discrimination and unemployment. I feel sorry for them.”

“You know,” Dede said. “Whitey feeling sorry for them doesn’t put food on the

table.”

“Okay,” Corigliano said as he shot Dede a little wink that failed to be subtle.

“The question is what are you going to do about it?”

No one said a word. Corigliano gave us the hippy eyeball, wanting to see who

had the courage to speak out. We all looked at the floor, but after a moment, I said, “I

think what Jan meant was that the whole experience last week was a consciousness-

raising event. It opened our eyes. Maybe we see the world a little differently now.”

“Alright,” Corigliano said. “That’s cool.” I glanced at Jan but found her looking

the other way.

“Okay,” Corigliano said. “Let’s roll the film.” He started up the analysis

projector and showed the segment that Adam and I shot of the subway. Corigliano and

Claus both agreed that our staccato visual style was very kinetic. They could “hear” the

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train in the silent film. Adam and I did a mini high-five, more thrilled to have

Corigliano’s and Claus’ approval than we would ever have admitted. Today, Dr. Geddoff

says I am a beggar for other people’s approval. I want everyone to like me, so I try too

hard to please. It’s a way, he says, for me to allay the constant shame I feel over

paralyzing little Ronnie Brown. When I am at a party, he says, I should envision myself

with a tin cup walking around to everyone asking for their approval and trying to feel the

pain of their rejection as a way of working my way out of the problem. I have tried this,

but I get drunk so quickly that the tin cup becomes a wine glass and I forget that I was

even supposed to do the exercise.

Jan and Dede had filmed women shopping at the discount store, getting them to

act like models for the camera. The triumph of their two and a half minutes was that they

seemed to have developed a comfortable rapport with the women in the store. However,

Corigliano didn’t like the staged feeling of the shoot. He wanted more observational

cinema, not amateur fashion videos.

Claus and Duke had created a series of highly composed frames showing long

shots of homeless men sleeping on cardboard sheets and crack deals going down in the

distance.

“Why so far away?” Corigliano asked.

Duke said, “Don’t look at me. He hogged the camera.”

“I wanted to be an observer,” Claus said. “I wanted to peek into their world but

not invade it.”

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 “If you don’t get close, you won’t get anything worthwhile,” Corigliano said. “I

will say it now and I will say it again. Get close. Don’t hang back. If you aren’t willing

to take a risk – even put yourself at risk – then you will never be a real filmmaker.” And

then Dede said, “Right. You have to be close enough to smell the subject…” and that, as

Adam and Una always said, was really the beginning of their relationship. Because once

she had the balls to challenge him in front of everyone else, there was no possible way

that he was going to let her get away, because he had to prove to her that he was a good

filmmaker and photographer.

Jan ignored me when I went by her table in the library later that night, but I sat

down anyway. After an excruciating couple of minutes of trying to read my book without

her saying a single word to me, I finally asked her if she were okay. Fine, she said, and

went back to her work. I wanted to leave, but the part of me that was in love with her

regardless of any contrary signs wanted to stay, to heal whatever was hurting her. After

another few minutes, she put her book down and cleared her throat. “Okay,” she said.

“You obviously seem very intent on knowing what’s bugging me. Answer: You totally

invalidated me as a person today.”

“I’m sorry,” I said, stricken by an impending wave of dry Ralph nausea. “I didn’t

mean to.”

“I don’t need a man as a mouthpiece. I can speak for myself. It’s sexist and

demeaning to have you tell the class what I was thinking.”

“I was just trying to help you out,” I said.

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 “Lack of a penis doesn’t connote a lack of brains. I am perfectly capable of

articulating my own opinions.”

“Yeah, of course. I am so sorry. I didn’t mean to demean you. I thought you

could use a little moral support, that’s all.”

“Well, I guess you meant well as a friend,” she said.

“Thanks.” Uggh.

“I don’t want you to think that something is going to happen here that isn’t going

to happen,” she said. “I meant what I told you at coffee. I’m not interested in having a

boyfriend.”

“No, I know,” I said. “That’s fine with me.” Uggh, squared. I laughed nervously

and asked, “What does that mean?”

“Andrea Dworkin,” she said. “Relationships destroy women and I want to be

whole.” Or, as Adam commented when I repeated the entire scene to him later, “No, she

is a hole.”

“Okay,” I said. “I promise I won’t beat you, but you may have to clean for me.”

“That’s not funny,” she said.

“Sorry.”

“And I can probably last four minutes,” I said, Ralph forcing me out of control in

my humiliation.

“That’s not funny, either.” Dismissed.

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Jack

“What’s the deal with Dede’s son?” I ask Adam. While we had been at Dede’s, a

pallid boy of about seven had come into the living room to say hello and then trotted back

to his room to play with his GameBoy. Dede, assuming we needed an explanation for the

parenting felony of video game permissiveness, quickly said that he normally doesn’t

play too much, but since she had company over, she said it was okay.

“A very long story,” Adam says.

“Adam, please…”

“I want to tell you the whole story,” he says. “I’m just too fucking tired right

now. With the son, though, honestly, I never got it completely out of Una – she’d been

sworn to secrecy – I think he’s Claus’ son but Dede doesn’t want Claus’ mom traipsing

off to Germany with him every summer or something so she claims it’s not his.

Something like that.”

I savor the idea of Dede’s pain. It gives me the same contemptible thrill I get

from reviews of horrible mega budget movies or the unending chronicle of Ovitz’s

demise. Thoughts of malicious gossip and petty superiorities make me yank Sandy’s

script out of my bag. I flip over the cover and begin reading.

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EXT. PLANTATION HOUSE – MAGIC HOUR

ESTABLISHING SHOT of the plantation house, a beautiful

antebellum mansion in Virginia. We TRACK in over fields of
cotton where SLAVES are ending their workday with the
setting sun.

SUPER: Virginia, 1775

CUT TO:

INT. PLANTATION HOUSE – PARLOR – MAGIC HOUR

CLOSE UP of ELIZABETH HATFIELD CHAMBERS, 19, who is staring

out the window at the magnificent sunset. Sitting on the
daybed nearby is MARGARET SOUTHINGTON, 17, a raven-hair
beauty whose face glows with the spirit of rebelliousness
and desire for adventure. Margaret and Elizabeth exchange
a long, meaningful glance.

It’s coming back to me now. This is Sandy’s period piece about lesbians in the American

Revolution. I rifle through the pages, hoping to find a lesbian sex scene. I stop at,

INT. ELIZABETH’S BEDROOM – NIGHT

ELIZABETH and MARGARET lie next to each other on the bed.

The room is lit by candles, only. They are fully clothed in
their hoop skirts and sweating in the Virginia heat.

ELIZABETH
My sweet Margaret. If you leave here,
I do not know what I shall do with
myself. I’ve become, well, so attached
to you. You’re like a sister to me.

MARGARET
Yes, you have been like a sister to me, and

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 so much more than that, too. I shall write
to you every day.

Their hands meet as they turn toward each other. There is

an intense look of longing and love as they move closer and
closer toward each other.

I jump to the last page and read,

EXT. PLANTATION HOUSE - DAY

MARGARET fights back tears as ELIZABETH and her new HUSBAND

get into the buggy. SLAVES and RELATIVES look on as the
newlyweds prepare to leave forever. Elizabeth turns to
Margaret to say goodbye. Margaret holds herself together
as Elizabeth gives her a friendly kiss on the cheek, and
without saying a word, but communicating a world of
emotions, climbs into the buggy. The husband climbs in and
whips the horses harshly, causing the buggy to lurch
forward and take off down the lane. As the buggy goes off
into the distance, Elizabeth turns and gives Margaret a
long look.

REVERSE shot of Margaret, watching the woman she loves

drive off.

FREEZE FRAME of her anguished face.

FADE OUT.

So, it’s “Two rich girls meet and fall in love in the old South during the revolutionary

war,” a lesbian Romeo and Juliet. It’s The Patriot meets Chasing Amy. Definitely not a

Hallmark Hall of Fame. It’s Kirsten Dunst and Julia Stiles in a special Lifetime

presentation. I type “Love it! Have lots of ideas” into my pager and hit send. I don’t know

if it will transmit from the plane. I’ll probably make us crash, but I figure if I don’t do it

now, I’ll forget.

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 Adam has wadded up an airline pillow and pressed his head against the window in

an attempt to sleep. I grab one of the sections of his paper and scan the obituaries of

people killed in the Twin Towers to see if I know anyone. Last week, I saw the name of

a kid I remember from trig class.

The doctor has taken an interest in my search for acquaintances among the dead

of September 11th. “Is it about your friend who died in Peru?” he asked. “You’ve

mentioned him once or twice, but you really haven’t gotten into much detail. Seems like

he’s looming large in this hunger for obituaries.”

“No,” I replied. “It’s just that I have so few connections with people.”;“Don’t you

have a connection with me?”; “It’s not the same,” I said. “I pay you.”; “What about your

girlfriend, the screenwriter?”; “I don’t have a real connection with her, not counting

reading her scripts in exchange for sex. That’s not a connection. That’s a transaction.”;

“Does she see it that way?”; “I don’t know.”; “Is that how you feel safe connecting with

people, through clear-cut transactions? You have to have something to offer to be worthy

of a connection? Is it so hard to feel anything?”

“I do have feelings sometimes,” I said. “I once saw a story on the news about this

kid who was a star basketball player in Compton. He was amazing. Being recruited by

schools like UCLA and Indiana. The top. Anyway, one of his friends got mixed up in

gangs and the kid was shot dead in a drive-by just one day before his eighteenth birthday.

They had his mother on TV, and she seemed kind of stoic about it, as if her life had had

so much pain that this was just another blow that she would ultimately survive. What got

to me, though, was watching her show the TV guy a pair of sneakers she had bought for

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her son the day before he was killed. She had gotten him those two hundred dollar

Nike’s, the kind they wear in the pros. This is a woman who worked as a maid at the

Hyatt, but she had saved and saved all year long so she could buy her “baby” – that’s

what she called her son, her “baby” – the best shoes there were. And then he was dead.

Well, I just started to cry. I felt stupid sitting there on the sofa crying like a little kid but I

couldn’t stop.”

“You wish your mother had bought you a pair of sneakers…” the Doctor said.

“Oh, my mother bought me a lot of sneakers. You couldn’t have asked for a more

materially fulfilling upbringing than I had. No expense was ever spared.”

“So what’s up?”

“I don’t know. I just get seized by emotion. Like a few years ago, when there

was fighting in Bosnia, I read an article about how the animals in the Sarajevo Zoo had

died of starvation because no one would risk getting shot to go out and feed them. I

couldn’t stop thinking about those poor lions and bears that were waiting in their cages to

be fed and getting thinner and thinner and wondering where all the people went. I

couldn’t sleep I was so upset.”

“You’re the bear.”

“I guess.”

“And Sara hasn’t been around to feed you.”

“Maybe,” I said. “I’m going around in a loop. I keep trying to remember if that

kid in trig class – the guy who got killed in the Trade Center – was the one who had that

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party over the summer before high school started, the party where I met Sara. If it

weren’t for him, we would never have met.

“Does it matter if it’s him?” the Doctor asked. “What matters are the feelings.”

“No. I want to remember everything about her. I want to remember exactly what

it felt like to hold Sara’s hand while we watched Raiders of the Lost Ark. I want to

remember what she smelled like – that sweet floral scent that I used to think was perfume

but later found out was just fabric softener. No matter. I want to remember it all. I want

to remember exactly what her panties felt like the first time I got up the nerve to reach

down there. Has it really been twenty-two years? We’d only been around for fourteen

years when this was all happening. A whole other lifetime has passed.”

I called Sara one afternoon late in freshman year. With my crush on Jan stalled

due to lack of nerve, and the conversational gambit, “I met you on the first day,

remember?” becoming more and more absurd with each passing week, I had reached an

unsustainable pitch of fantasy about the nonexistent relationship. Sara, at least, was real.

Her roommate answered, “She’s not here. Is this Jack?” Oh, Ralph…

“No,” I mumbled. “It’s Havelock Payne. I’m…”

“Oh, I know who you are,” the roommate said excitedly. “You were her first love.

I’ll tell her you called. That’s so sweet.”

I had acquired the title, at least, the “first love.” The roommate’s use of the past

tense compelled me, brilliant detective that I was, to guess that there was a second love

on the scene. Jack, whoever that was. For a moment of classic Havelock douche bag

thinking, I tried to convince myself that Jack was just a friend or study partner but I was

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not successful. Ralph began his inevitable creep into my consciousness and adamantly

refused to leave,

I tried to study, but every time I began reading, before I got halfway through a

paragraph, I would start picturing what she was doing with Jack, who in my mind was a

big hockey player. He lay on top of her, both of them covered in sweat after an intense

orgasm. Then, I would try to start the paragraph over again but the same thing would

happen.

I put the books away and wandered out of the dorm, not knowing where I was

going but feeling certain that I wanted to be somewhere else. Police sirens and

loudspeaker squawks drew me toward the Sciences Building, where cop cars were parked

out in the street with their lights flashing. A cordon of protesting women stood outside

the doors of the building with their arms interlocked. I spotted Adam in the crowd

wearing his press credential from The Daily Press.

“Is this a primo cluster-fuck or what?” he said, rolling his eyes.

“What’s going on?”

“The Conservative Club invited Senator Wesley Hardin to give a talk on abortion

rights and he’s being blocked from entering the building.”

“By who?”

“Abortion Rights League, NOW, Chicks Against Pricks, the whole Gender

Studies army.” A young woman standing near us, also wearing a student press credential,

turned to Adam and said, “I heard that. What exactly do you mean by, ‘the gender studies

army?’” She was tall and too thin with black hair billowing out around a face that was

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almost purely white. Adam was caught and nothing he said was going to get him out of

this mess easily, so he just smiled and said never mind. “No,” she replied. “I do mind.”

“It’s a pejorative label for feminists,” he said. “I grovel in mortification.”

“It’s not funny,” she said irritably.

“Let’s start over,” Adam said. “I’m Adam Saperstein. I’m writing for The Daily

Press.”

“Hi,” she said. “Una Axelrod from The Gazette.” They shook hands.

“Do you think they’re going to let him speak?” Adam asked. She gave him a

shrug. Our heads turned as a loud commotion erupted at the door to the building. A

group of about ten women had sat down on the steps and refused to budge when the

campus police asked them to make way for the senator to enter the building. We could

see him then, striding down the path leading into the building surrounded by security

guards and nerdy guys from the Conservative Club clad in blue blazers and khaki pants.

The senator, who had served as a Marine fighter pilot in Vietnam, was a tall, refined-

looking man with a white crew cut. He stood quietly as the police tried to disperse the

crowd, not seeming to be the slightest bit rattled by the demonstration. If anything, it

amused him.

A pair of campus police officers tried to lift one of the sitting protesters up and

move her off the stairs. As they did, another woman left the ranks of the cordon and took

her place. A man in the crowd – Corigliano, though we didn’t know him then – started

to shout, “Pigs, let her go. Pigs, let her go” and the crowd instantly joined him. Within

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seconds, hundreds of people were chanting, “Pigs, let her go!” as the police officers

carried off the struggling woman.

Lawrence Lang emerged from the crowd carrying a bullhorn. Accompanied by a

few women, including a young Dede Teatham, he marched over to the senator like a

toreador on MDMA. The security guards blocked him from getting right next to the

senator, but it didn’t stop from taking the bullhorn and shouting, “Senator, our bodies are

not your business.” It was so loud that it hurt my ears and I was standing fifty feet away.

The senator flinched but he didn’t react to the comment at all. Lang continued. “Your

views are not wanted here. Go back to Washington where you can hang out with all the

other right wing fascists.” Then, with an outstretched arm, he shouted, “Zeig Heil.” The

crowd was with him now, all shouting, “Zeig Heil” again and again in unison and giving

the Senator Nazi salutes. “Zeig Heil. Go back to Washington. We don’t want you here…”

Then, in very quick order, the police cleared a little break in the line of protestors

and the senator and a small group of people walked briskly into the building. The

protestors stormed into the building after him. Adam and Una filed in, as well, but I

figured that a cheeseburger at Alfredo’s might help me forget that I wasn’t Jack, who

right that instant was likely pounding my Sara into superhuman B&Beloved orgasmic

bliss.

Adam knocked on my door at midnight. “You’re not going to believe what

happened,” he said as he sat down on my bed and threw his feet up. Before I could even

sit back in my chair, he launched into, “The head of the Conservative Club got up and

started to introduce the Senator, talking about how much they appreciate him coming to

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Beaton-Lowell and how the Conservative Club is proud of its tradition of inviting

important leaders to campus who may not have the most popular opinions in the world…

this woman from CHAP got up and yelled, ‘Shut up, you white bread needle-dick, pro-

life creep’ And the crowd started to chant, ‘Pro-life creep, pro-life creep, pro-life creep…’

until he eventually just sat back down behind the podium and everyone started laughing

at him. I even felt a little bad for the guy, even though I happen to know he’s a total

asshole.”

“Then, the senator got up and went to the lectern and the room quieted down for

him, but a cardboard box was being passed around the room and people were taking out

those little metal noisemakers, you know the kind you use on Purim in synagogue where

you spin the plastic knob and it makes a clacking sound. The Senator cleared his throat,

laid down a few pieces of paper and said, ‘Good evening. I admire the passion that I see

in this room tonight. I look forward to some spirited debate on a few sensitive issues

tonight. If we’re lucky, maybe we’ll all learn something…’ and right then, Lawrence

Lang stood up in the front row, again with the bullhorn, and blasted, ‘We have nothing to

learn from you. You’re not going to take away our right to choose, Senator. Not you, nor

your right-wing cronies down on Capitol Hill.’ The senator tried not to be too fazed by

this, but Lang was so loud that all our ears are ringing. The bullhorn practically shook the

plaster loose from the ceiling. Everyone was clapping and cheering – well I guess the

guys from the Conservative Club weren’t – but the senator just calmly raised his hand for

silence and, miraculously, the room quieted down again. He said, ‘Young man, I would

appreciate it if you would put the megaphone down. You’ll have your chance to ask

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questions after I am finished.’ Lang sat down and got soul handshakes from the girls in

the audience. The senator went on with, ‘As an American, I respect your right to free

speech. But, I would hope that you would respect my right to free speech as well. Our

democracy will not work if you simply try to drown out voices that you don’t particularly

like. That’s un-American, as far as I am concerned. Now, there seems to be some

misunderstanding about my position on reproductive rights. Perhaps I can clarify it for

you and then we can have a meaningful dialogue on the subject. I am not opposed to

abortion on demand as a constitutional issue. My belief, however, as a Christian, is that

abortion is immoral and young people should refrain from sexual behavior before

marriage. I …’ He was about to go on but the room erupted into absolute mayhem.

Women were screaming out slogans like, ‘Leave my body alone,’ ‘Uncle Sam, don’t try

to control my body,’ and everyone was clacking those little noisemakers so loudly that

you could barely hear anything that anyone was saying. The senator put his hand up

again for silence but this time no one paid any heed. It went on like that for a couple of

minutes and then he just threw his arms up in disgust, turned around and walked out the

door.

“They took him to the lounge in Webster Hall, where the Conservative Club had

arranged for drinks and hors d’oeuvres. I went along with them because I was part of the

press, and that Una chick came with us, too. A couple of the women from the auditorium

followed us there but they weren’t let in. They stood outside screaming at the building for

a few minutes but when they saw that no one was paying any attention to them, they all

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went off to do whatever it is they do when they are not protesting the government’s

attempts to control their bodies.

“We were the only reporters at the gathering, so we got an earful from the

Conservative Club people about how we had to report on how outrageous the protesters

had been and what a shocking disrespect had been visited on the senator et cetera, et

cetera.” Adam gagged himself with his forefinger. “I saw Una approaching the senator

with her little notebook so I broke myself away from the indignant Republican youth and

joined her.

“’Senator Hardin,’ she said firmly. “I’m from The Beaton-Lowell Gazette. May I

ask you a few questions?’ He smiled and bored into her with those ice blue, patrician eyes

of his. He’s a very handsome man, and although she was determined to ask him the hard

questions, it was pretty clear that she was a little intimidated by him and maybe sort of

charmed as well. ‘Why yes, young lady. It would be a pleasure to have a civil

conversation. Lord knows I could use one after what I’ve been through tonight.’ ‘Fine,’

she said. ‘Do you have any comment on your treatment here at Beaton-Lowell?’ ‘Well,’

he said. ‘I think it’s a shame that young people with obviously fine minds are so afraid of

what I have to say that they must sink to the level of censorship. Are they so uncertain of

their ability to prove me wrong that they simply won’t allow me to speak? It bodes ill for

the future of our country, if I may say so, if this represents the new generation’s approach

to public debate.’ She was writing this all down furiously, as was I. She turned to me and

said, ‘Do you mind? This is my interview. If you want to get a quote, do your own

interview.’ Well, she was right about that, but I said, ‘Why don’t we pool our notes. I

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might get something that you miss and vice versa.’ She growled ‘okay’ and turned back

to the senator, who was munching smoked salmon on pumpernickel as he awaited the

next question. She asked, ‘Why don’t you support the right of a teenage girl to have an

abortion without notifying her parents?’ The senator grinned as he swallowed the

sandwich. A grounder. ‘Well young lady, let me ask you something. If you had a

fourteen year old daughter, as I do, and she was about to have a major medical procedure,

wouldn’t you want to be informed of that?’ Una didn’t have a ready answer for that, so I

jumped in. ‘What if a family member, like a stepfather, is responsible for the pregnancy?

What is the girl supposed to do then?’ Una gave me a little nod of approval. Assuming

that men were vermin was always a good way to go at school. ‘That’s a matter for law

enforcement,’ the senator said. ‘If a man commits rape, then he should be punished, but

it’s a separate issue from abortion.’

The senator’s remark seems ironic to me in retrospect. When Adam was his aide

years later, he had had to tidy up a few messes that were almost as bad as the scenario

discussed that night. Those were the events that began his inexorable disenchantment

with Washington.

Adam paused and leaned his back against the wall, a dazed look on his face.

“What’s up?” I asked. “You’re acting funny.”

“Well,” he said. “After the reception, I went out to The Kasbah with Una to work

on our stories. They’re not really checking ID’s these days, so we get served no problem.

We had a few drinks and went over our notes. She wanted to write about abortion, and I

wanted to write about freedom of speech, so we had no problem sharing our notes. And

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you know what? She’s kind of cool. We finished the story stuff and just sat there talking

for like, an hour and we wound up making out on the way back to her dorm.”

“You are kidding me!” I said, giving him the high five, but howling inwardly at a

world where Adam got the girl while I was mistaken for Jack, the donkey-dicked hockey

star.

“I really like her,” he stated, calmly startled that his relentless, acerbic roiling

against women on campus could be instantly switched off at the prospect of an actual

pussy. It would have been hard to imagine at that moment, though, that Adam and Una

would be together for ten grinding years, the first three of which were spent in a virtual

threesome with me. Una used to say, “The three of us make a lovely couple,” as I

glommed on to watch their perverse dance of flirtation, fighting, and makeup sex. I never

actually saw them have sex, but more than one bad fight I witnessed ended with them

stalking off to her room in a needy clinch. It would have been difficult to foresee then

that their relationship would end with Adam nearly offing himself. If I had had to make a

bet that night on which one of us would have wound up overdosed in a bathtub, I would

have selected myself.

He finally noticed that I was piled miserably into the chair in my perpetual slouch,

an affect that Adam and Una later dubbed the “the babe repellent.” Bad posture, that’s

what my mother always called it when she nagged me to sit up properly like Lawrence

Lang, the perfect little gentleman. Lawrence knew how to sit up straight. I wouldn’t

expect anything less from the author of I, Faggot.

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 “Are you okay?” he asked after he had calmed down. “You look a little bummed

out.”

“I’m fine,” I lied. Adam, in a hormonal haze of self-absorption, did not pursue it.

I never told him about Jack.

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The Pow Wow

To make a synchronous sound movie, you must have one person shooting the film

and another recording sound. Everyone in Corigliano’s class wanted to operate the old

Vietnam War era CP16 cameras because the person staring into the rubber square of the

eyepiece was the auteur, and auteurs didn’t do sound. They had flunkies who did sound.

Of course, I found the second rate role of sound recording to be seductive. I

volunteered for it enthusiastically and often. I wanted to be the perfect sound recordist,

too, always holding the microphone at just the right angle and learning to walk

backwards step for step with the camera operator and keeping one eye on the subject and

one eye on the lens to make sure I never got the mike into the shot. Somehow, I was

supposed to have a third eye to keep track of where I was going as well. I found myself

walking into trees and lampposts and occasionally falling down stairs.

It was when I worked with Claus, though, that my robotically compliant skills in

sound recording were most rigorously tested. He wanted to shoot every scene with a tail

slate. Normally, when you begin filming a shot a documentary film, the camera operator

points the camera at the sound person, who taps the microphone. The tapping sound and

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the finite movement of the hand together mark the spot on the film where a visibly

synchronous sound and picture occur. Later, to synchronize the film, the editor lines up

the frame on the sound track that has the sound of the tap with the frame of film that

shows the point of contact between hand and microphone. In a feature, it’s much easier

because you have the clapper slate that makes a clean snapping sound that can easily

matched with the black and white stripes of the clapper coming together. And, you have

the added luxury of writing down what scene you are shooting. In a documentary, you

have to rely on memory and a predictable sequence of sound recordings to find the sound

to match your picture. If you got out of order, you were in trouble. It happened to us a

few times. We spent hours looking for the right sound to match the film we had shot.

With Claus, though he wanted to put the slate at the end of the take. There is no big

problem with this: You simply start the camera and Nagra tape recorder at the same time,

and when the shot is over, you tap the microphone on camera. There is a trick to tail

slates, though. The sound recordist and the camera operator have to coordinate their

actions, and in the case of Claus, he wanted it to be a quiet, secret communication. His

philosophy was one of ambush. Let’s watch the film’s subject until he starts to do

something interesting on his own. Let’s not start filming and then inadvertently prompt

him to do something for the camera that he wouldn’t ordinarily do.

I had to watch for Claus’ subtle hand signals – a turning of his index finger to

indicate “Roll Sound” and a wagging back and forth of the finger to tell me to get ready

to do the tail slate. A couple of times I got it wrong and simply turned the Nagra off

without doing the slate. As punishment, Claus made me do the synchronization on those

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shots, which was nearly impossible with Bob, the incoherent, homeless subject of our

group documentary project.

Bob was Jan’s discovery. She met him through her work in the shanty movement,

a protest where Divestment activists created replicas of a Soweto squatter’s shanty in

front of President’s House in The Quad to shame the college into severing its connections

with the apartheid regime in South Africa. The reasoning was that the police wouldn’t

tear the shanties down if there were people inside them. Students took turns living in the

shanties so they would be constantly occupied. Having lived through the sixties, the

university administrators chose to ignore the shanty completely, much to the annoyance

of the activists who were disrupting their lives to make their point. But, other than a few

kids catching hypothermia, the shanty protests went on without much incident for about

three or four months.

One night, when a few students were trying to do homework by flashlight in the

shanty, Bob wandered in to warm up after his regular panhandling act at the Corners. He

was so out of it that he didn’t understand that the shanty was not an antiwar protest. With

the quantum mechanics of schizophrenia at his command, Bob bound 1969 and 1986

together with transparent elasticity.

According to Jan, when Bob sat down in the shanty and started to make a speech

about the war in Southeast Asia, the protesters were so taken with him that they decided

to adopt him. They fed him lentil stew from a thermos and gave him Divestment

brochures to hand out around the Corners. I never saw it myself, but I heard he handed

out anti-apartheid brochures while saying, “Tell Nixon to stop bombing Cambodia.”

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 Bob’s face looked like a bratwurst that had split open in the pan. He was a large

man, at least six four, and he had probably been muscular before years of life on the street

thinned him. I tried to imagine him as he once had been, a gung-ho Marine who had seen

rough duty in the Mekong Delta. But now, Bob was a wasted hulk with the words

‘Semper Fidelis” a faded tattoo on his right arm. His blond hair hung in filthy ropes

around his face. His skin was charred purple from overexposure to the sun. His feet

were bloated, diseased clumps of cracked skin. His back was covered with pustules.

We had discussed doing other topics for our group documentary film, including a

Frederick Wiseman style film about the Winchester Police Station, or an in-depth look at

a music school for gifted children, but Bob had prevailed. Once Jan suggested doing our

movie about Bob, it was if there could be no other subject that would suit our needs. Bob

gave us the chance to make a statement about homelessness. As Adam pointed out later,

making a film about Bob and his plight also gave us instant caché with Corigliano. He

was going to be our guru as we got our hands dirty and did the righteous thing by

exposing the harshness of society against its weakest members.

Bob had a constant, hard cough that was not improved by the cigarettes he kept

bumming off of Claus. Every time Claus came over he would give Bob a couple of

cigarettes until Corigliano made him stop. Don’t interfere with the subject of the film. If

he wants to bum a smoke, Corigliano said, make that part of the film, but don’t give him

one. For one thing, he said, he doesn’t need any more cigarettes – a sentiment that Claus

felt was patronizing and interfering - but he stopped nonetheless. After the first week of

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filming, though, Corigliano sent us all to the infirmary for tuberculosis tests that came

back negative.

Originally, we were going to call the film Bob. I had wanted to call it, A Ghost of

a Man, but everyone rejected that idea as being too judgmental and possibly sexist

because Bob represented all homeless people, not just men. Then, the working title

became Bob: Requiem for a Marine, but Corigliano persuaded us to stick with Bob. The

goal of cinema verité, as he kept telling us, was to let the subject speak for himself and let

the audience draw its conclusions. Corigliano was opposed, at least in theory, to

filmmakers putting their own spin on the subject outwardly. By calling the film Bob we

were conveying that Bob was a human being and that he was our friend. Bob was our

buddy, not the “subject” of a film, which made him sound, as Corigliano would say, “like

a bug under our magnifying glass.”

Bob lived in an earthen-floored chamber underneath one of the river bridges. In it,

he had an array of candles, adjusted to spread light through coffee can reflectors, a few

blankets scrounged from the garbage cans of Winchester, and a battery powered radio that

he said was a gift from his mother. He had lived there for years, he said, though we never

could tell when he was talking about real time or the imaginary clock that ran forwards

and backwards in his mind.

We began filming Bob on his daily rounds through The Corners, observing him

going through the dumpsters, looking for food and goodies. At first, it seemed as if he

were weaving an eccentric path between buildings, but we soon saw that he had

memorized a complex pickup schedule so he always knew when a dumpster would be

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full. For me, it was a revelation that a grown man could eat an essentially full diet from

garbage. As Bob showed us, if you did nothing else but pick through the dumpster

behind a supermarket, you would eat for days. Supermarkets threw out a lot of good food

– loaves of bread, apples, pies - Bob said, just because it wasn’t fresh enough for what he

called, “real people.”

We went out to film Bob every day in pairs. At first, I worked mostly with Claus

even though I desperately wanted to assist Jan. But, Claus and I had similar schedules so

we could usually get to Bob around one in the afternoon, which was when he was hitting

his full, psychotic stride. Claus and I would sit near Bob, trying to look as if we were

waiting for the bus because we didn’t want people to notice us with the camera, which

would have made Bob anxious. Nor did we want Bob to be self-conscious about being

filmed. So we would sit on the bench and glance sideways at Bob until we saw him start

to do something. Then, Claus would give me the “Roll sound” signal.

Every hour or so, Bob would stand at attention on the sidewalk. As a former

marine, he still had pretty good posture despite all of his health problems. He was as still

as a lamppost. But then, once in a while, he would hop one up on one foot and raise his

right knee in an abrupt salute, as if he were a British Sergeant Major from an old World

War II movie. There was no obvious instigator for this seemingly random movement. It

amused a lot of passerby, though. He would stand at attention for long periods of time

sometimes, punctuating it with his “salutes” every couple of minutes. After a few

sessions of filming this behavior, though, Claus and I got bored. We felt we were being

repetitive, and we already had enough shots of him interrupting his stance to do his salute

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to make a dozen little transitions in whatever film we were going to make. Claus tried

filming him from different angles. He wanted to show the life of the Corners going on

behind Bob from all angles. My job was to get “environmental sound” to match the

shots. I was sent off to record bus brakes squeaking, children yelling, and cars roaring

their engines. Claus would listen to my recordings over and over and send me back

numerous times to get what he called, “the sublime sound.” And I, good little beggar that

I was, dutifully went back to work in search of that perfect tone.

On what we considered our final day of filming Bob standing at attention, I found

myself in a Ralphic daydream. There was homework to do and a check to write after we

finished. I was tempted to tell Claus that we should pack it in for the day, but I was afraid

to disrupt his intense concentration. He was in what Adam called his “cine-trance” – a

joking homage to Jean Rouche - locked into the eyepiece of the camera as he panned and

tilted it around, racking focus back and forth and zooming the lens in search of his next

composition. I drifted off into my own personal trance, which was a fit of Ralph about

the check. Only sixteen more years to go, I remember thinking that day, and then I’ll be

done with all of that. And here I am tonight with only three to go.

I missed Claus’ frantic signaling. He finally cleared his throat loudly and the

instant I saw what was happening, I switched on the Nagra and got the boom into

position. Claus was already filming. A mime, one of the many street performers who

dotted The Corners, was standing a foot away from Bob, aping his attentive stance. Bob

was like a stone, but we could tell he was absorbing the cloying, petite man in front of

him with the white painted face and white gloves. They stood there facing each other for

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a long beat. Then, without warning as usual, Bob snapped to his “salute.” The mime

imitated him, and jumped up on one leg as well.

The mime had thrown a bucket of ball bearings onto Bob’s fragile motherboard.

He emitted a low growl, lunged and tackled the mime. Kneeling on the mime’s chest,

Bob started to pummel him until blood from a split lip trickled across his white painted

face. Claus never stopped filming throughout the whole beating.

By the time the cops showed up, the mime was sitting on the curb dabbing his

face with a napkin from Pain Du Jour. He looked as if he were trying to decide whether

to sue or just make it part of the performance. Aside from screeching, “Get your hands

off me,” he had pretty much stayed in character. Now, with a bunch of people gathered

around watching, he was back into his act. He looked up at the gawkers and mimed a

“tear” going down his cheeks.

Bob, meanwhile, was pacing anxiously up and down on the sidewalk. Claus had

vaulted up onto a lamppost to get an establishing shot from overhead. Trying to follow

his lead, I slid backwards get out of the shot. Not quite far enough, though. Claus

furiously waved me away. I was in the frame, an error he would give me a big lecture

about later. This had been the critical test, he said. A crisis is where filmmakers are made

or broken, and we failed because we hadn’t reacted quickly enough to get the perfect shot

of the cops arriving and the onlookers surrounding the mime in a semicircle while Bob

paced around talking to himself. We had gotten shots of each, but not a seamless

overhead shot. Well, we had gotten the shot, but I was in it. I had made the added

mistake of looking up at the camera to ask for direction like an imbecile.

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 Nevertheless, we were excited at having “gotten something” on film. When we

reviewed the footage in class, though, Corigliano paused the projector in the middle of

Claus’ overhead shot, right at the place where I was beseeching from the corner of the

frame. I thought he was going to tell me to pay attention to where I was and stay out of

the shot. Instead, he asked, “What’s wrong with this shot?”

I immediately blurted out, “I should have been watching Claus more closely. I

ruined the shot.”

“No,” Corigliano said. “You’re fine. No one expects you to be an acrobat. The

question is for Claus. Why did you go up so high?”

“I wanted to get an establishing shot of the event,” Claus said.

“Why? We already know that you’re at The Corners. You’ve established the

scene very well by now.”

“I wanted to show the juxtaposition of the chaos of the fight and the madness of

the crowd with the banality of the commerce and traffic through the Corners,” Claus said.

“I wanted to show how the world goes by while one man goes mad.”

“Okay,” Corigliano said. “That’s a great goal and I respect your intention, but, if

you want to show it, show it. Don’t back away. You should have gone closer,” Corigliano

said. “Get closer. Getting close gets you results. It connects the film with the subject.

Show the blood. Show the faces.”

“Yes,” Dede said, nodding in obsequious agreement with Corigliano. “You had a

huge opportunity to dig into the madness of Bob’s life but you pulled back.” Adam

nudged me with a silent “uh-oh.”

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 “Are you also teaching the class?” Claus asked, barely masking how incensed he

was by her public criticism.

“It’s a collective critique,” she said. “Critique is part of the process. We need to

be able to open with each other.”

“Fine,” Claus growled. “But I resent your assumption of superiority. You might

just have easily chosen the same camera angle as I did.”

“Don’t be a baby,” she said, initiating a rift that would last for weeks. Claus

glowered at her silently. His public pose notwithstanding, Claus conceded the point to

Dede and Corigliano, taking it not as a rebuke but as a new mantra. Get close. Get close.

Get close.

The next time we went out filming, Claus kept the camera a foot away from Bob.

He took a series of macro shots of Bob’s greasy hair and scorched skin. He got Bob’s

nervous, bloodshot eyes darting back and forth as they followed imaginary “F-105s” and

“Hueys” circling what Bob called the “LZ,” his name for the grassy bank of the river

where he liked to hang out. We even filmed Bob’s daily ritual of popping the pustules on

his back. Finally, after having the camera in his face too long, Bob shoved it out of the

way and said, “Man, do you fucking mind not pointing that thing at me. You’re making

me nervous.” When he got angry or scared, Bob would blink his eyes repeatedly. He was

doing it then, and I was worried that he was going to flip out. So we backed off a little,

but Claus stayed in tight shots until we captured Bob chain smoking as he watched the

sun set over the river.

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 By March, we had shot about two hours worth of footage. The problem was, we

had no idea how it would cut together. Corigliano could sense this, too, so he invited us

to his house on the next Sunday night for what he called a “Creative Pow Wow,” where

we would watch and discuss all the footage.

Adam in particular was excited about the idea of going to see Corigliano’s house,

though it wasn’t clear to me if he was actually more excited to see it or to be able to make

fun to it once he got there. That question was answered when we stood in the doorway of

the house and Adam whispered in my ear with gleeful scorn, “Enter the temple of cool

and bask in the golden aura of Age of Aquarius.” Stifling back a laugh, I shoved Adam

into the house.

Corigliano’s house was a museum of the 1960s. The premier exhibit was his

wife, Vera, a middle-aged flower child in flowing African batik robes. Vera was a once

beautiful woman whose graying waist length hair hung in a thick braid. She had a warm,

oval face etched with fine lines but dominated by blazing eyes that communicated,

according to Adam, universal love and understanding, compassion for children, beatniks,

and small animals, tempered with fierce resistance to The Corporations, The War, The

Pigs, and The Man.

According to Una, who knew about these things, Vera had once been considered a

groundbreaking artist, merging folk crafts such as weaving and macramé with a

Marxist/feminist political sensibility. As we walked around the house, there were

examples of her work hanging from almost every wall. One piece caught my eye. It was

a hammer and sickle weaving made from, according to the museum-style card tacked up

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underneath, charred mill scraps from a garment factory in Puerto Rico that had burned in

a suspicious fire where a number of women workers had died.

The house was an old Victorian that they had lovingly restored to its full early

twentieth century glory. Covering every spare space on the walls between Vera’s

weavings was a huge collection of photos of the Coriglianos at every major crossroads of

the counter-culture. Giovanni and Vera at Woodstock, at Altamount; at Monterrey, at the

March on Washington, with William Kunstler, with Bob Dylan and Joan Baez, with The

Dead, The Stones, and The Doors, with Jane Fonda, with Timothy Leary, with D.A.

Pennebaker, with Fred Wiseman. Awesome, Jan said as we walked around the house.

Intimidating, Adam said. As for me, I felt the omnipresent Ralphness of being out of

place, terrified that I would knock something over or say the wrong thing and embarrass

myself. I could hear my mother’s voice in my head: “Don’t touch anything and be

polite.”

Una said that Vera had taken a break from art to give birth to the Corigliano’s son,

Lama, to be at home with him for his childhood. Suspicious as this kind of feminist

treason was in 1968, Vera’s revolutionary credentials had been strong enough to blunt any

serious criticism that might have come from her sisters in arms.

Lama Corigliano, named in honor of the Dalai Lama, was a little younger than us.

According to Una, who knew some of his friends at Antioch, where he had gone in an

attempt to flee his parents, he was a stoner and latter day hippy womanizer, a good-

looking kid with long hair and a tendency to drop his mother’s names in a bid to get laid.

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 We watched the film on a Steenbeck editing table without pausing. “Just let it sink

in,” he said. We had watched it before, but he wanted us to get a full sense of the film in

one long take. It was a good exercise, he said, if you ever felt blocked creatively on a

film. Watch it all again and let it get under your skin, until the ideas percolate to the

surface.

When it was time to eat, we filed into their living room and helped ourselves to

Vera’s vegetarian feast on paper plates. Grabbing tie-died cushions, we sat in a circle on

the floor of the Corigliano’s essentially unfurnished living room. Corigliano saw me

trying to get comfortable on the floor and gave a smug chuckle as he watched me squirm.

“Not used to sitting on the floor, are we?” he said. I smiled and shook my head “no.”

“You have to get real sometime,” he said. “This is how most of the world lives, you

know. Our materialistic and status crazed society demands that we all go out and

mortgage our lives to buy expensive furniture with all the markings of status that go with

it. Cut down the rainforest and feed some cattle for beef and then skin the carcass and

make a leather couch for the West. Conspicuous consumption. That’s the American way.

That’s why Vera and I try to keep things simple. Just some beautiful cushions that Vera

made herself. She wove them, dyed them, and sewed them.” I nodded appreciatively,

trying to show him that I “dug” what he was saying.

Corigliano got up and dimmed the lights in the room. “He has to make it extra

groovy,” Adam whispered to me. “Bright light ruins grooviness.” Suddenly, the sounds

of cool jazz flooded the room as Corigliano let the needle drop on a Miles Davis record.

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Claus gave him a thumbs up. Corigliano bopped his head in time with the rhythm as he

munched on his eggplant casserole.

Hoping to atone for my lack of ability to sit comfortably on the furniture of

poverty, I asked Corigliano what kind of music it was. Again the superior smirk.

“Duke,” he said. “Mr. Hollywood doesn’t recognize the music. Who are we listening

to?”

“Miles Davis?,” Duke said warily, unsure of his jazz knowledge and self-

conscious being asked a “Black” question.

“Who’s Miles Davis?” I asked.

“Duke,” Corigliano said. “Tell our pale faced young friend here who Miles Davis

is.” He paused to mouth the words to the wordless song that was playing – dum dee dee

duh dum dum – “So what?” – and played an invisible drum set in time with the rhythm.

Duke started to explain that Miles Davis was a trumpet player and jazz composer known

for innovating in the “cool style,” but Claus cut him off and started a lengthy exegesis

about the art of Miles and the influence of Miles on American music and how Miles was

the greatest jazz musician alive. Adam nudged me in the middle of the speech and said

quietly, “Miles? Like he knows the guy… give me a fucking break.”

I tried to make eye contact with Jan, who was sitting across from me in the circle.

She gave me a little smile but then looked away. I should say something, I thought, but I

found myself descending into a swirl of Ralph that reasoned me out of making any

comment that might be viewed as potentially sexist or amorous.

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 Claus and Dede were not sitting together. Their fight, stemming from the class

several weeks earlier, was evidently still raging. Though each had spent a few minutes in

what Adam called sphincter-lip-lock with Corigliano, they had not exchanged a single

word the whole day.

Adam and I volunteered to take everyone’s empty plates into the kitchen, but

when we started looking for the trash can to throw out the plates, Vera coldly informed us

that they don’t put paper plates in the trash. They recycle them. If we wanted to know

where the recycling can was, then she would be happy to show us.

Back in the living room, as we lounged around with cups of herbal tea, Corigliano

lit up a huge joint and took a hit. As he blew out the smoke, he gave a look around the

circle and asked, with his eyes at least, if this was going to be a problem. We all just

grinned and said alright, even though not everyone smoked. Claus did not believe in

drugs, so he passed. Never obscure the power of our natural perception, he used to say.

However, he was not so square as to stop us. Jan, also, was not a pot smoker, so she

handed the lit joint to Duke. He took a monstrous hit and held the smoke in as he passed

the joint along the way.

“Everyone join hands,” Corigliano said. “Join hands and close your eyes. This is

a powwow to increase our creativity. We’re going to listen to Miles and riff off each

other. Our goal is togetherness and collaboration. We’re going to make a great film

together as a group. Let’s meditate for a minute here and let’s try to connect our minds

together. Let’s try to think as one. Be creative as one.” I hate these meditation exercises.

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The more I am supposed to clear my head, the more Ralph rushes in. My legs fall asleep

and I feel embarrassed and ashamed for doing it wrong.

“So,” Corigliano said after we opened our eyes and passed the pot around a few

more times. “What is our movie about?” No one spoke, so Corigliano pointed at me and

said, “You start and then we’ll go around the room. Everybody has to say what they want

this film to be.”

“Me?”

“Yeah, you, Mr. Hollywood,” he said, sounding high.

“Well,” I said. “I think we’re tying to make a cinematic portrait of a complex

man.” I glanced at Jan to see if she were listening. I wanted to say something that

would resonate with her and make her realize that I was deep and interesting, the coolest

person in the world whom she couldn’t help but be attracted to, but I was getting buzzed

and the ideas that sounded so great kept exploding out of my head like ketchup from a

stubborn bottle before I could articulate them. Finally, after what seemed like a week’s

delay, I said, “Because, you know, he’s a man. He’s a man who…who is not the same as

he used to be.” There, that was about as intelligent a remark as I could muster given two

hits of the killer weed. Shit. I sounded like a moron. I turned again to look at Jan and

saw that she was staring at me. I wanted to go crawl into Bob’s cave by the river and

hide until graduation.

“Okay,” Corigliano said. “That’s a good start. You are right. Bob is not the same

as he used to be. Can we make that part of the film?”

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 “We could find old pictures of him in the Marines and do an introduction that

shows what he used to be,” Jan said. “Thought would set up the contrast between past

and present and give the film some context.”

“That’s way too pat,” Dede said. “We’re not trying to mimic a television special.

We’re trying to show a man’s soul.”

“Fine,” Jan said. “I agree, but we can use whatever material we have to do that.”

“If we do it the way you want to, it will be boring.” Dede countered. “We have to

capture the essence of Bob in the current reality.”

Corigliano was watching this exchange like a spectator at a tennis match. His

head swiveled back and forth as each woman spoke. Did he know that both women were

secretly in love with him and desperate for his approval?

“We shouldn’t limit ourselves,” Jan said. “We have access to a lot of different

visual tools. Let’s use them.”

“No, the audience will snooze the minute they start to see still photos. It’s been

done to death. We have a compelling, tragic person right in front of us. Let’s use him to

tell our story.”

“Isn’t it supposed to be his story?” Jan asked. “Not our story.”

“You know what I mean.”

“You’re both right,” Corigliano said. “We can do it either way and still find the

true path to honesty in the process.” The master had spoken. Everyone except Claus

nodded in agreement.

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 “How can we do it both ways?” Claus asked. “We either do it one way or another.

We either make an organic, authentic film or we imitate television crap. Which is it going

to be?”

“No, Claus,” Corigliano said. “We can try it both ways and see which one works.

And I don’t agree. Using stills and voice over doesn’t automatically make it TV crap. It

depends on how it’s done. The key is to avoid clichés and do it with integrity and

respect for the subject.” Claus harrumphed but said nothing.

“We still haven’t addressed the question of what this film is about,” Adam said.

“Go ahead,” Corigliano said. “The floor is yours.”

“I think this film asks the question, ‘Is there such a thing as real homelessness?’

Is Bob a ‘homeless person,’” Adam said, using his fingers to make the quotation marks,

“Or is he a mentally ill person who happens to live on the street because no institution

public or private gives a shit about people like him?”

“What’s the difference?” Dede asked.

“There’s a big difference, in my opinion. Homeless people are folks who would

have a house if they hadn’t suffered some economic catastrophe and they can’t get on top

of the system. Bob’s case is a mental health issue. Ditto for drug and alcohol cases.”

“You’re so wrong I almost don’t know where to begin,” Dede said. “They are all

homeless. They all live on the street. You’re saying we shouldn’t care about Bob because

he’s sick. You want to lock him up in a cage at some mental hospital because you don’t

like the way he looks.”

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 “No. I think if we had any compassion for him we’d want Bob to get the care he

needs. That’s the point I think we should make in this film.”

“So you think locking him up and pumping full drugs is good for Bob.”

“That’s not what I mean,” Adam said.

“You may think that’s not what you mean,” she replied.

“No,” he began to say, but Dede interrupted.

“…but in reality,” she stated. “That is what would happen to Bob if he were

institutionalized. We live in the real world.”

“Dede,” Claus said. “Let him speak. You’re telling him what he thinks. That’s not

fair.”

“Like that ever stopped you from running your gums.” Dede said testily.

“Whoa,” Corigliano said. “There’s no need to get unpleasant. This is our

powwow. We have to work together in the spirit of creativity and collaboration. Let’s not

attack each other. We will never get anything done if we don’t make the effort to have

peace and harmony in the group.” I glanced over at Adam. He looked as if he wanted to

bite the head off a rat and spit it at Dede, who was treating him to one of her smuggest

looks. “Everyone join hands again. Everyone join hands and close their eyes. Take a

deep breath, from the abdomen. In through the nose out through the mouth. Take

complete breaths. Hold it in.” I opened my eyes a slit and looked over at Jan. She was

deeply into it, eyes shut and looking zoned out. “Okay, everyone give me an Ommm.

Ready? Ommm… Ommm…” The pit of Ralph, opened earlier, swallowed me

completely.

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White Jazz

“You going to stay in television?”

“Maybe,” I say. “But I screwed up my career by leaving the network to produce

the game show, and the whole industry’s sort of off with the slump in advertising.”

“You know,” Adam says. “To say it’s a slump implies that it will bounce back. I

think it’s a permanent decline.”

“You think I’d be better off selling aluminum siding?”

“That or become one of Lawrence Lang’s many compliant young men and let him

keep you in style. I think the days of television networks raking in dough from

advertisers are over.”

“You don’t think it’s just 9/11?”

“Well, selling diapers to incontinent baby boomers has lead me to form a working

hypothesis on the ad industry. They face a problem that is largely creative, and mostly, I

think, one of their own making. Like, have you noticed how self-referential advertising

has become?” He opened his paper to a fashion ad that showed the film’s border around

the photograph. I could see the little notches from the film frame and words KODAK FILM.

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 “They leave the edges on the photo to let you know that they know that you know

it’s just an ad. They play it as if you’re in on the joke, like those radio spots that include

someone saying, ‘Okay, let’s record this ad again’ and then the announcer does the ad and

in the end the other guy says, ‘not bad’? The only way they can get you to look or listen

to an ad is to pretend that you’re smart enough to ignore it. It’s become an arms race to

come up with coolest, hippest non-advertising advertising that can act as noisy wallpaper

in the lives of oblivious youth. The harder they try, the worse it gets. Advertising

screams louder and louder that you shouldn’t pay attention to it.”

“I’m going to sell aluminum siding.”

“Yup. And while you’re at it, blow me.”

“Blow me” was an old Adamism. The night of the powwow, Adam and I had

traipsed down to the Corners to meet Una, who had insisted that she needed a drink.

Stoned and irritable from his collision with Dede, he hadn’t wanted to go, but he knew

that if he showed up, he might get laid. I joined them because I didn’t feel like sitting

alone in my room putting off writing another dreaded check.

“Getting high with Corigliano was the apotheosis of cool,” Adam said to Una. “It

was too much. I thought I had been transported back to 1970, what with the tie-dyed

pillows and all. And what’s up with Dede and Claus? They’re at each other’s throats.”

“What’s it to you?” she asked. “You like her or something?”

“No. Actually, she really got on my nerves tonight.”

“You’re attracted to her. I can’t believe you. For your information, she’s way out

of your league. Even if you could go out with her, she’d eat you alive.”

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 “I guess you’re more my league,” Adam said. Ralph appeared and pointed my

gaze down at my drink. I pretended that I was not listening.

“Don’t bet on it,” she said, and huffed off to the ladies room. He turned to me and

said, “I don’t know why the fuck I deal with this night after night.”

“Because she is willing to have sex with you, Adam.”

“Well, she can kiss my ass.”

When she came back to the table, she asked, “Are you sorry?”

“For what?”

“For comparing me to Dede.”

“I didn’t compare you to Dede. You’re the one who said she was out of my

league, which I’ll repeat doesn’t look very good for you.”

“Guys,” I said, picking up my coat. “I’m going to take off. It looks like you have

stuff to talk about.”

“No, no, please stay,” they both said, practically in unison, and immediately tried

to look as if they weren’t fighting. I felt as if I were their child. We sat in silence until

Adam attempted peacemaking small talk. “I’ve never had a vegetarian feast like we ate

tonight,” he said. “It was all very exotic, sitting on the floor listening to Miles Davis and

eating organic spinach stuffed tomatoes. I’ve never had a spinach stuffed tomato before.”

Una gave him a quiescent nod and avoided making a comment that might start Adam on

one of his inevitable rants. Talking with Adam was like watching an egg timer.

Eventually, he would ping.

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 “But you know,” Adam said, his voice edging up slightly. “There is almost

nothing in the world I dislike more than a white jazz fan. Well, let me qualify that. I am

sure there are lots of white jazz fans who actually love the music for its own sake, but

there’s a whole breed of white jazz fans who want to use their love of jazz to prove that

they are something that you aren’t. Like Corigliano tonight, with his precious Miles

Davis record. You’d think he found the Ark of the Covenant, it was so goddamned

important to him. You know the type – the guy who talks about famous jazz artists with a

sort of breathless excitement and tinge of anger at the unfairness of the white man’s

system that deprives these musicians of their rightful place in the pantheon of artists. A

whiny fan that has a baseless sense of superiority over other whites who don’t know

much about jazz. Of course, deep down, he doesn’t want other whites to know about jazz,

because then he would lose his special little thing that he can lord over everyone else: that

he ‘gets it’ and is down with it all and grooves to the beat and knows what swing rhythm

is while you are just another lame honky who wants to waste money on Led Zeppelin

LPs. I’ll give you a surefire way to spot the snotty white jazz fan. Tell him you love

John Coltrane and he’ll start grinning and giving you this little nod of the head, a

rhythmic bobbing of the head that tells you that he’s down with what you are saying, that

he knows that you know that the two of you are cooler than you both have a right to be.

“Corigliano is a white jazz fan of the worst variety, the 1960s breed that uses his

love of jazz as a cudgel to beat us apathetic brats into social awareness. The 60s are over.

The war is over. The movement is dead and everyone who believed in anything is either

dead, stoned, or working on Wall Street, but he’s left babysitting a bunch of over-

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privileged white kids who want to make documentary films, but they don’t know dick

about jazz. So here come the harangues. Play us some Miles Davis records and make fun

of us for not ‘feeling’ the music while he’s going to do with us what he couldn’t to

Lyndon Johnson and Henry Kissinger. ‘Do something,’ ‘Be a part of the solution not the

problem. You are either part of the solution or part of the problem,’ ‘Fight the system,’

‘Do your own thing.’”

“Adam, honey,” Una said with an anxious sigh. “How do you really feel about

white jazz fans.”

“Very funny.”

“Why are you so hung up on Corigliano and his schtick? You know it’s all

bullshit. Why do you let it bother you so much?”

“Because it pisses me off. That’s why.”

“You let it piss you off. There’s lot of arrogant teachers at this school, stuck in the

past and shoving their idealism in your face all the time. If I let it get to me I’d be in a

straitjacket.”

“Well, I guess I can’t be as perfect as you,” he said.

“Now you’re mad at me. What did I do?” she said.

“You think you’re so great,” he said. “Ever think of just trying to listen to me?”

“That’s all I do, sweetheart. Listen to you. And listen to you. And listen to you.

Sometimes I wonder if you’ll ever shut up.”

“Blow me,” he said as he grabbed his coat and stood up.

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 “You wish, pencil dick…” she yelled, but Adam had already marched off, giving

her the finger behind his back. “He’ll be back in a second,” she said to me. “You want

another drink?” I nodded. She went over and rested her elbows on the bar, inadvertently

giving me a view of her curvy lower back and powerful legs that I had force myself to

ignore.

“I guess it’s just you and me,” she said as she came back to the table. She was on

her third drink, a point at which her normally taut manner slackened a bit. “God, but is

he such a loser sometimes.” I said nothing, worried that if I appeared to agree with her it

would become yet another bomb she could drop. Your best friend thinks you’re a loser…

that was all I needed.

“He does go on about things,” was all I said. “But he’s smart so it’s always

interesting.”

“You don’t have to defend him to me,” she said. “It’s very nice of you, but I

know more about him than probably anyone and his ravings can be very tedious

sometimes. I swear if he didn’t know just where to lick me I’d kick him to the curb.

“What about you?” she continued. “Still obsessed with Jan?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Jan. The girl who looks like a seventh grade boy.”

“She’s pretty.”

“Oh, Payne, you are such a sweetheart. If only more men could be like you,

admitting that you’re attracted to a woman who doesn’t have huge tits.”

“I like her.”

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 “You do? Oh, right, you’ve only been talking about her for three years. So, you

had the big date at the Café Barcelona. And that went okay, right?” I nodded.

“I’m beginning to worry that I’m running out of time to get hooked up with her

before the end of the year. I want to get some alone time with her but I can’t seem to find

the right situation.”

"Just ask her out again," she said. "If she likes you, she likes you. If she doesn’t,

move on."

“No,” I said. “I don’t want to move on. I really believe she’s the one for me.”

“Look,” she said. “I know this is hard for you, but if she isn’t interested then she

isn’t interested. You’re only going to make it a lot worse for yourself if you hang around

wishing for her to be different. There are a lot of women at this school. Hell, there are a

lot of women in the city of Eliot. There’s someone out there for you. Jan is not the only

woman in the world. Why are you so fixated on her?”

“I don’t know, but I just am.”

“Okay then. You need a plan. How are you going to get time alone with her?”

“I’m stumped,” I said. Una reacted by sitting back and stroking her chin in a

mock gesture of thinking that made me laugh out loud. Man, was I pathetic. Yet, I felt a

thrill at being the focus of this attractive woman’s attention. Maybe I should ask her out,

I thought in a moment of great Ralphic fogginess. Her boyfriend just stormed out. The

image of her ass hanging off the bar was making me insane. Still, I managed to restrain

myself.

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 “Okay,” she said. “This is what you’re going to do. You’re going to volunteer to

make the new filming schedule for the project and guess what - you two are going to

work together.”

“But what if our schedules don’t match?”

“Oh Payne,” she said in exasperation. “Think like a girl, for once, will you?

Who’s in charge of the schedule? You. Who can say when people are available? You.

Who can set himself up as the only available partner for Jan? You. Thanks, Una, you did

a great job. You’re welcome. When you get her into bed, think of me,” she said, and shot

me a little wink that nearly toppled my deteriorating sense of propriety. I finished my

drink, made a few absurd excuses about homework deadlines, and ran home to jerk off

before I could do anything truly idiotic.

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Reflections on Bob

If Jan suspected me of jiggering the schedule, she never said anything about it.

For our first day of filming, I offered to sign out all the equipment and swing by her

room. I was curious to see where she lived, but I also wanted her to think I was the kind

of guy who didn’t mind lugging the camera, film, and tape recorder halfway across

campus to make her life easier.

She had the phone to her ear when she opened her door. She let me in and then sat

down in the room’s only chair, leaving me standing awkwardly. Since our coffee date, I

had managed the complex balance of appearing not too interested in her, so I was shy

about sitting on her bed. I didn’t want her to get the idea that I was being overly

territorial. Women don’t like territorial men, at least that was what I kept hearing from

Una during her regular orations against the male animal. A woman’s room is her private

space. Don’t pace around her room pawing all of her possessions. Don’t pee in the

corners.

Eventually, though, I did sit down on the bed and listen to Jan’s end of the phone

call. Based on the alternating warm and stressful tones of the conversation, I guessed that

she was talking to her mother. “Yes, I’m eating well. Yes, I chose a topic for the paper.

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I’m doing it on Zora Neal Hurston,” she said, turning to me and, in an intimacy that

thrilled me, rolling her eyes. Only a mother could ask those kinds of questions, though

mine never did. My mother mostly wanted to know if I had seen Lawrence Lang lately

and whether or not he was being nice to me. Lawrence could really help you get in with

the right people up there, my mother used to say. Yes, I would tell her. Lawrence was

always nice to me when I ran into him. Too nice. He was so full of phony enthusiasm

about seeing me that I wanted to take a pair of pliers to his nuts.

Jan had on purple high tops, jeans, and a pale blue cloth button-down shirt done

all the way to the top. Her masculine style had prompted Una to wonder if my attraction

to Jan was not actually a repressed homosexual urge. Not at all, I had said to her. Jan’s

ability to flaunt standard femininity was part of her attractiveness to me. “Right,” Una

replied. “Only a fag would like a girl who liked like that.”

As I listened to Jan parry back and forth with her mom, my eyes wandered about

the small room that was full of neat piles of books, papers and remnants of past art and

photography projects. One wall contained a series of images of bus stations in the

Midwest taken in winter. The rest of the wall space was covered with posters from her

many progressive affiliations. Over her desk was the most recent, “Cut the Blood Money

Ties” rally broadside in neon red silkscreen.

On the opposite wall was a poster from last year’s “Voices from Neocolonialism”

show at the Eliot Art Museum. The poster featured a latter day cubist rendering of a

white man in a pith helmet raping a naked black man held upside down by his ankles. I

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got up to look at the poster more closely and saw that the work was entitled “Progress:

1961” by an artist named Pierre de Grasse of the Poto Poto Workshop.

The culturally aware, superior aura of the Poto Poto pushed me back to my seat

on the bed. I slumped like a lox as a feeling of despair rolled over me. I would never be

the kind of guy who had an innate sense of the necessity of knowing all about Poto Poto

and the subtleties of African art and its relationship to African nationalism and anti-

neocolonialism. I would never be one who casually dropped the Poto Poto name at a

party, like, of course, doesn’t everyone know about Poto Poto? And this is what Jan

wants in a man. Little wonder, then, that she was not interested in me. All of a sudden,

the discomfort I felt around my deficits bloomed into a sullen rage. I would never attain a

level of multicultural hipness that might make Jan find me desirable. I was doomed. Oh,

Poto Poto.

I stood up again to pore over a massive collage of snapshots, though I refrained

from standing too close to the wall – I didn’t want to appear territorial, after all – but the

result was a painful squint to make out the details. Most of the shots were of Jan with

Claus, Dede, or Corigliano, which figured because Adam kept saying that Jan was

infatuated with Corigliano – an opinion he offered it frequently though he knew it upset

me. Other images caught Jan and her comrades at various protests against South Africa,

pro-life factions, and conservative neo-fascists of all kinds.

Family pictures adorned the edges of the display. In one, Jan stood with her arms

around her sisters in front of Beaton-Lowell’s St. James Chapel. Jan looked about

fourteen in the photo. Her hair was longer in the picture, hanging off of shoulders in

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unkempt strands. She wore glasses back then, the big lens, thin frame type that were

popular in the seventies. Both of her sisters appeared older. One was wearing a cap and

gown. Something suddenly made sense to me. Una and Adam had said that Jan masked

the subtle competitive desperation of a younger sibling to succeed with a veneer of,

“Who, little old me?” Sioux City Mid-westernism. Scratch the surface, Una used to say,

and she’s raging.

“Oh, don’t look at that,” Jan said as she hung up the phone. “I look awful there.”

“No,” I said. “You look so sweet.”

“Flattery will get you everywhere,” she said, and disappeared behind her closet

door for a moment. When she came out she was fastening a necklace around her neck.

Without trying to be too obvious, and worrying all the while that she would think I was

staring at her chest – not that there was much to stare at, anyway – I stole a good look at

the necklace and wondered, is that a skull? It certainly looked like one. Off my look she

said, “Yes, it’s a rat skull. Dede introduced me to this weird jewelry guy downtown that

catches rats and boils their skeletons down to make these pieces. Pretty freaky, huh?”

Adam and Una were aghast when I reported this detail back to them. She’ll do

anything to impress Dede, was Una’s comment but I didn’t care about the reason she

wore the necklace. I just thought it was wonderfully, deliberately odd, expressing an

enviable desire to escape her roots. I wanted to be odd and weird, in a good way, of

course. I saw myself as a laid back but intense Havelock who had that dark side that

made Jan want to wrap her skinny arms around me and whisper into my ear that I was her

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rock, the love of her life. And then, maybe she would give me my own rat skull and we

would be bonded for life.

I sat on the bed while she rummaged around for a few minutes getting her stuff.

My rage had dissipated with our little discussion of skeletal jewelry. I tried to imagine

what it would be like to sleep in the bed with her, a thought that switched on a mental

slideshow that shifted wildly between moonlight walks, B&Beloved closeness and That’s

the way, uh huh, uh huh, I like it, uh-huh, uh huh…. Oh yeah, baby, do it to me. I was

mortified when she snapped her fingers in front of my face and asked, “Are you okay?”

as if I were a coma patient.

Yes, fine, I said, and turned as red as a Beaton-Lowell football jersey as I stood

and awkwardly tried to hide my hard-on. I found myself unable to speak during our walk

to the Corners. Finally, I mumbled, “You look nice today,” which she did not fully hear.

“What?” She asked.

“Nothing,” I replied.

As Una later said, “You didn’t fool her. She knew you liked her, and she invited

you to her room. You were sitting on her bed. She knew you wanted to fuck her. What’s

the big deal?” At the time, I had no answer for Una other than to say that I had been

embarrassed, which was an accurate but incomplete explanation of the paralysis I felt

after being caught in a sexy daydream in Jan’s room. Working with Dr. Geddoff, though,

has allowed me to see that the big deal was that I had been living exclusively in that

sleazy motel between my ears for so long that I was baffled by a real woman.

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 Bob was not at the Corners. We walked down to the riverbank, but we did not see

him sitting in his “LZ.” He must still be home, we thought, so we made our way to the

bridge where he lived. We were about to go under the little slot where the brick wall of

the bridge was raised off the earth by a foot or two, the little space that Bob used as his

front door, when a cop up on the bridge wondered just what in the hell we thought we

were doing.

"Studying the rodent population," I said, showing an early aptitude for effortless

lying that would serve me well at the network. I was tempted to say that we were making

rodent skeleton jewelry and needed some more bones, but I left it alone. The cop

shrugged and said, "Your parents pay twenty grand so you can go down some rathole? I

gotta do that every day and my parents didn’t send me to any fancy college. I have to do

it. I would send my kid to school so he would never have to put his face in the muck.

That don’t make no fucking sense." He walked off in a bemused snit.

“Mr. Smoothee,” Jan said, and patted me on the arm. “I would never have

thought of that.” Tingling from her praise, I climbed into the hole that was Bob’s front

door and peered into the blackness.

“Not here,” I said as I came out of the hole. “Maybe we should sit tight and wait

until he comes back.” My secret hope was that Bob would never show up and we would

get to hang out and talk by the river all afternoon. Jan, however, seemed to be worried

that we were missing something good. She wanted to go back to the Corners and then

return to the river if we didn’t find him.

“Do you have summer plans?” I asked Jan as we trudged back up to the Corners.

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 “I’m hoping to go to Nicaragua with Corigliano and a couple of other students,”

she said. “But I may not be able to get a visa in time. It’s a pity, because it would be

pretty darn sweet to go down there and work on Corigliano’s film. He’s doing a follow

up to ¡Gringo/Amigo! called Internationalista, about foreign volunteers who have moved

to Nicaragua to help with the revolution and the rebuilding of the country.”

“Sounds awesome.”

“Do you really think so? I thought you were just interested in being commercial.”

“Well, I am interested in commercial filmmaking, but that doesn’t mean I can’t be

interested in important films that don’t make money.”

“Don’t use double negatives,” she snapped softly in an eerie echo of Lawrence

Lang. “It’s incorrect.” Feeling, and then flushing the anger and negativity I felt from

being corrected, I asked. “What would you do on the film if you went down to

Nicaragua?”

“I don’t know exactly. Claus and Dede are set to go already. He’s going to take

stills and she’s going to do sound, I think, because she speaks pretty good Spanish. I

guess I would help out and load the magazines and keep track of the equipment. Maybe

do sound, too. You should come, too. You’re good at sound.” Ooh, another compliment

and an invitation to spend the summer with Jan in a steamy tropical country where we

would engage in an elaborate North American White Person’s mating ritual scored with

the driving beat of Latin music. I pictured us lying naked in bed, sipping margaritas,

making grandiose pronouncements about the Contras before descending beneath the

covers for another round of sweaty sex.

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 We found Bob hiding near the dumpster behind a Chinese restaurant. Rice from

a paper container was stuck all over his beard and hands as he shoveled it into his mouth

with his fingers. When he saw us approaching with the camera, he acknowledged us with

a raised eyebrow.

“How are you?” I asked.

“Hungry.”

“We’re going to start filming,” Jan said. “Is that okay?” Unlike Claus, she always

asked for permission to film. He didn’t respond. He just rubbed his forehead hard, as if

he were trying to get at a bug that was trapped under the skin and peered over our

shoulders, eyes sweeping the sky in a recurring delusion that helicopters were going to

take him back to base.

On her signal, I started the Nagra and walked in front of the camera and tapped

the microphone on film for the head slate. Bob finished his rice and carefully folded the

flaps of the white paper container before tucking it under the lid of the dumpster. And

then he just stood still. Sniper school, he had told Claus and me. They taught him how to

stand still for hours. Don’t move. Shoot to kill. I thought, “What is he thinking about?

What is really on this guy’s mind?” That was going to be my conversation starter with

Jan when we went out for coffee later. We hadn’t discussed going out for coffee, but I

intended to ask her. Once we dropped off the equipment I was going to say, “Hey would

you like to grab a cup of coffee?” Or, I might say, “You have a second? Let’s get a

coffee.” And then, at the coffee house, I would say something like, “What’s up with Bob?

Do you think he’s aware of his surroundings or is he somewhere else?” And she would

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reply, “Interesting question. I was thinking just the same thing.” And we would exchange

a look, a look that was flirtatious yet serious, a look that would signal the beginning of

something. I could taste that look.

“Payne!” Jan hissed in my ear. “Bob’s moving.” I hadn’t noticed that Bob was

wandering down the alley. We went charging after him. Jan struggled to keep him in

focus, a pissed off look on her face. We caught up with him just as he squatted against a

brick wall and let loose with a messy, steaming shit, rubbing his forehead again as he

squirmed on his haunches. I didn’t see it as much as hear it coming through the

Sennhieser with the quarter second delay. It was a gassy rumbling – the result, no doubt,

of too many half rotten meals eaten from the garbage cans of Chinese restaurants. My

first instinct was to turn off the Nagra, but when I saw that Jan was filming the whole

dump in studious detail I kept the machine going. I couldn’t look. This was going to kill

the coffee date for sure.

And then, he was on the move again, down the alley and out onto the street. Jan

filmed a few clips of him walking in the distance and told me to keep the sound going to

get some environmental tone. She muttered to me that she wanted him to feel as if we

had disappeared so as to let him get more into himself and be less self-conscious. I

wanted to say that, given the disgusting smelly dump he had just taken right in front of

us, I hardly felt he had a problem with self-consciousness.

We found Bob down at the river, standing on the footbridge near his lair gazing

out over the water. Jan filmed him at a distance again, framing his profile against the

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speeding cars of the Eliot Expressway. Unlike Claus, she did not heed Corigliano’s

exhortation to get close at all times.

As we approached him with the camera rolling, Bob turned to us and said, with

surprising lucidity, “Where’s that tar baby on your crew? Isn’t today his turn to film

me?” Jan and I said nothing. With the camera and Nagra running, we just stood there

like two fools and wondered if we had heard him correctly. Did he just say what we

thought he just said? I wanted to replay the tape and make sure, but having made one

mistake on sound already today I figured I better wait until Jan told me to shut it off. She

kept filming for a while, waiting to see if he would say anything else. Finally, he

muttered, “No big difference, I guess. You, him, you’re all college boys anyhow.

Fucking college boys. Had a gullet full of them in country. Even had a nigger college

boy lieutenant. Right out of University of shit-heel Wisconsin. Thought his shit didn’t

stink. Big chip on his shoulder. All spit and polish and didn’t know fuck all about what

it meant to be in the jungle. Pretty funny, too, I told him to his face, that a jungle bunny

like him didn’t know fuck all about the real jungle. He told me he didn’t give a good

goddamned what a cracker corn-holer like me thought anyhow. Fine. So I fragged his

black ass first chance I got. First firefight we got into I just shot him right in the throat

and watched him bleed to death.”

I glanced over at Jan, who still had the camera running. Tears were trickling

down her face. She turned the camera off and lowered it to the ground. She seemed to

be struggling to think of something to say to Bob, who was now staring off over the water

and barely aware of us. She said nothing, though. Bob wandered off, but we didn’t

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follow him this time. The two of us just stood there for a while in silence, too shocked to

say or do anything. Finally, I asked, much to my surprise, if she wanted to grab a coffee.

"I just cannot believe what happened," she said as we sat down at Pain du Jour.

"Do you think he really believes what he said?"

"I don't know," I said. "He's kind of crazy. So who knows."

"But he admitted to murder. Could that possibly be true?"

"Honestly, we have no way of knowing. For all we know, he could have been

repeating a story he saw on TV."

"I guess. But this changes everything. We can't just go on with the film and

pretend that he didn't say what he said."

After screening our footage in class, we looked to Corigliano for help, as if he

could utter some magic 1960s incantation that would transform the whole disaster into

something clever and creative. He said nothing, though. He just sat back in his chair

with his fingers templed in front of his chest as he gazed at each of us, sweeping the room

with his eyes, his face inviting mystery. No one said a word. The room was so quiet we

could hear the leaves rustling in the wind outside. Finally, after a long beat, he said,

“What do you want to do with this?”

Adam asked, “Do you think he’s telling the truth, or is this just some crazy ranting

and raving?”

“I don’t know,” Corigliano said. “And I don’t want to tell you how to handle this.

It’s your movie. I’m just here to guide you. You’ve been working together all year. Now

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is the time to see if you can tackle a tough call on your own. I want to know what each of

you thinks.” He unfolded his hands and gestured around the circle of seats. “Go ahead.”

“I think we should put it into the film,” Adam said. “It’s a film about Bob, and

Bob said it. I say it goes in.”

“I agree,” Claus said. “It’s honest. Cruelly honest. It’s who he is. Bob is either

crazy or full or hate or both. We show it and let the audience decide.”

“But this will offend people,” Jan said. “Do we want to appear to be condoning

Bob’s racism?”

“Putting it into the film doesn’t make us racist,” Adam said. “We’re just showing

what the camera saw.”

“You’re all wrong,” Dede said urgently. “Bob has implicated us in the film by

labeling one of our filmmakers with a hateful racist epithet. If we don’t take a stand, then

we’re as racist as he is.”

“That’s not true,” Claus said. “We are observers. Our art is in holding a mirror

up to the world. Let the audience see Bob and think about Bob. We are not part of this.”

“Who do you think he’s talking to when he looks at the camera and calls Duke a

nigger? The wall? He’s talking to us. He has a relationship with us now after three

months of filming. We have to put ourselves in the film. We have to tell the audience

how we feel about our friend being the victim of racism.”

“It is not our place to react,” Claus said. “Our job is to record and interpret.”

“What about Bob taking a dump on the street? Is that part our ‘art’ as well?”

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 “You’re such an American.” He said. “You take everything so literally it makes

me want to throw up.”

Everyone was doing a lousy job of not looking over at Duke. He blurted out,

“Okay, you want to know what I think?”

“I do,” said Corigliano. “I think we all do.”

“Hell,” Duke said. “I don’t like it. But what the fuck, the guy doesn’t like black

people. He’s like half the people in this country. Who cares? The guy is crazy anyway.”

“But he directed his attack at you,” Dede said. “Doesn’t that piss you off?”

“That’s a good point,” Corigliano said. “Bob’s tirade was not about blacks in

general, but about you in particular. How do you feel about that?”

“Well, I’ll tell you one thing,” he said. “I’m tired of being the house nigger around

here. This is about him, not me, and he’s a white guy, last time I looked. Maybe all of

you ought to think about how you feel about it.” And with that, he walked out of the

room. It was then that we heard that slight clicking sound. In a display of

photojournalistic prescience that later made him great, Claus had slipped into the corner

of the room, taken out his Leica and snapped a picture of Duke’s abrupt exit. That black

and white still of Duke standing up in irritation and the subsequent shot of him walking

out the door, changed the course of our film. Suddenly, it was all about us.

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Trevett Square

The ice cubes burn my lips as I let the last remnants of the scotch I’ve just gulped

dribble down my throat. I don’t even remember opening the miniature bottle of Chivas,

but it’s empty now. Putting the plastic cup down, I chase the drink with two Advils,

though I doubt they’ll do much for the vice grips seizing the back of my brain. “Do you

ever hear from Duke?” I ask, hoping for a diversion.

“Once in a while,” Adam says. “He did a JDMBA at Stanford, and now he spends

every other day on a plane from Tokyo to Milan or some such overwrought corporate

bullshit. Works for a strategy boutique, as he calls it, as if there were such a thing as a

strategy supermarket. Boutique, I guess, means that it’s a small firm that charges

outrageously high prices for their crystal ball unlike the large firms that bill relatively

small amounts but bleed companies to death by dispatching hundreds of MBA droids

with laptops. Una and I had dinner with him a couple of years ago when he was in New

York. Very serious guy now. Deadly serious. His whole vocabulary has been reduced to

a kaleidoscope of corporate platitudes – first mover advantage, benchmarking, do or die,

make or break, bottom line, at end of the day, R.O.I., cash is king, twenty-four-seven,

mission critical, bet the company – the guy’s become a bore.”

“Unlike you and me,” I say. “We’re beyond fascinating.”

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 “Yes, of course,” he says, and punches me in the shoulder.

“I’m sure it’s not easy being black in that world.”

“No question, but it sure warped him. He’s got to be more than more than, better

than better. Every shirt is hand-sewn by a Savile Row tailor who probably calls him the

chocolate chum behind his back. Every suit is Hugo Boss. Not a wrinkle in sight.

Handshake so firm that you’re afraid it’ll break off. What made you think of him?”

“I was thinking about Bob, and I guess Duke is never far behind when I think

back on that whole mess.” I say.

“Who?” He asks. Then, without me having to tell him, he says. “Bob… Yeah,

Bob. The homeless guy. I think about him sometimes.”

“You think he’s still standing at attention in The Corners and panhandling?”

“He’s got to be either dead or committed,” Adam replies. “Bob, the racist

homeless person. An exquisite conundrum for the 1980s undergraduate.”

In the final week of filming, we stopped shooting footage of Bob. Nigger would

be his final word. Instead, we filmed each other discussing how we felt about Bob and

his mysterious racism. We went on camera individually, except Dede and Claus, who

acted out a furious, flirtatious Sam and Cokie duo in the mini studio we set up in our

classroom.

I found, when the camera was turned on, that the comments I had planned to

make would not come out of my mouth. I had wanted to say that, on one level we could

not trust Bob’s point of view, because he had so many other psychotic ideas about reality.

Yet, on another level, Bob was a totality of his experiences, which included a series of

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traumas, starting with the war. When Adam, who was recording sound for my interview,

gestured for me to start talking, though, I realized that I might appear to be making fun of

Bob for being crazy or condoning his racism by making excuses for it. I stared at the

camera for a long beat, reeling from having my politically correct peanut brain pushed

beyond its factory recommended stress levels. A joke whose content has long been lost to

me, but it was something truly dumb like, “Okay, thanks for the Sports Wrap-up. Now,

let’s hear from our weather man” came out, but I stammered badly in my nervousness and

then felt all the more foolish for wasting valuable film trying to be funny.

The event that dominates my memories of that week, though, was the message.

“Hi. It’s Jan,” her voice crackled on the tape. “Just wanted to see what you were up to.

Call me. Bye.” I replayed the message over and over, analyzing it as if it were the

Zapruder film.

“Hey, Jan,” I said when I rang her back. I was aiming for hip and detached, but I

felt like an eighth grader with a monster zit on the tip of his nose. “You called.”

“Did I?” she said. “Oh, yeah.” Had she intended to call someone else but got me

by mistake? She hadn’t said my name in the message so she might have thought she was

reaching another person. Yet, my answering machine did say, “You’ve reached

Havelock…” Stuck in Ralphland, I was silent until she finally said, “You want to talk, or

should we just sit here and listen to each other breathe?”

“Uh,” I said. “Sorry. I was just surprised that you called. That’s all.”

“Well,” she said. “Here I am.”

“What are you up to?”

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 “Homework. Writing a paper on Latin American poetry.”

“That sounds interesting.”

“Yeah.” Ralph, Help me. I had dreamt of this moment, just calling her up to

schmooze, but now that it was actually happening I felt like an irredeemable douchebag.

“What do you think of our decision to include ourselves in the film?”

“I think it’s narcissistic,” she said. “Narcissinema. It’s so gross that we’re

making the film about ourselves. We’re a bunch of rich kids at a posh university. Who

cares what we think?”

“True,” I said. “But we do have opinions, and he challenged us. We had to

respond.”

“I know that’s what Dede said, but I think we could have made a great film

without sticking ourselves into it. Too late now, I guess. What do you think?”

“Me?”

“Is there anyone else on the line?”

“No,” I said with a laugh that sounded like a mouth organ falling onto a banjo. I

was afraid to disagree, but worried about appearing too eager to agree with her. “All I

know is that I felt like a fool sitting in front of the camera.”

“Oh, you were so nervous, it was cute.” Cute. That felt like the kind of word I

was supposed to be hearing in my courtship of Jan. Did that mean she liked me? Or was

it, as Una remarked, that she was a confused, prick-teasing bitch? Whatever she meant,

though, did nothing except prompt me to mumble, “Well, I’m glad it’s over.”

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 “Did you hear that Bob has disappeared?” she asked. I told her I had not. She

continued. “The police padlocked the trap door to his cave and no one has seen him

around. Do you think he’s okay? What if he’s hurt?”

I saw my chance. “You want to come with me check the ER? Maybe he’s in the

hospital.”

“Sure,” was her shocking answer. I had been so certain she would refuse. “Come

by in half an hour and get me.”

When I saw her standing in front of her dorm in a sleeveless shirt and dead rat

hair clips, I wanted to fold her into my arms. I couldn’t stop staring at her toned, lustrous

shoulders. Seventh grade boy, my ass! I told her that I thought she looked nice, and this

time, instead of rolling her eyes, she smiled and said thank you.

The ER nurse at Winchester Memorial had not seen Bob or any other tall, slightly

insane homeless men at all during the day. The admitting nurse on the second floor had

not seen him either. She knew who he was, evidently, because once we gave a basic

description, she said, “Oh, Bob, we know him. He comes in all the time but he hasn’t

been here for a while.”

They suggested we try the hospital in Trevett Square, but Bob wasn’t there either.

In senior year, we learned that Bob had hitchhiked up to Maine to see his mother, who

was dying of lung cancer in the rusting Gulfstream trailer where she had lived since the

fifties. She had become too weak to take care of herself and sent for him. She had found

him through the Veteran’s Administration office in Eliot, which was probably the only

institution with which he had any regular contact.

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 As we walked out of the hospital, I assumed we were going to catch the train back

to the Corners and head back to our respective rooms. Yet, I could feel an energy coming

from Jan that made me think she was not in a hurry to return to the dorm. She looked as

if she wanted to say something, though I could sense some reluctance to start whatever

conversation was on her mind. We wandered down Winchester Street, passed the

subway station, and kept walking. That was a good sign, I thought. If she preferred to

walk rather than take the train, she must have been enjoying my company.

I suggested we get a drink at a nearby bar, a local place not frequented by

students. There was no dartboard or pool table, just a row of stools and a bunch of

middle-aged men getting ploughed on cheap liquor. We took a table in the back and

waited for a long while for a waitress, whose face brought to mind the front end of a ’51

Chrysler, to greet us with a raspy, “Waddya want?” that conveyed her deep dislike of

superior, noses in the air, high fallutin’ student types like us who had no business being in

a real working man’s bar.

“She looks abused,” Jan said. “I feel bad for her”

“Probably,” I agreed, relieved that I had not offered my own opinion first, which

was an irritation at having to suffer a lot of attitude without doing anything to provoke it.

“She’s obviously had a hard life serving men and being made to feel like an

object.” I nodded. She then blurted, “My father has leukemia.”

“I’m so sorry.”

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 “Thanks. The worst part is that it is a slow form of the disease. He could live for

years but he will never know when the end will come. He could go on for five or ten

years, get a cold then be dead. It’s horrible.”

“I’m sorry. Did you just find this out?”

“This afternoon. He’s had it for a year but he only just told me. I guess he wanted

to protect the ‘baby of the family’.” She started to bawl. I felt powerless and completely

Ralphed as I watched the tears flow down her cheeks. Her head was in her hands, little

fingers caressing the taut angles of her face, the face that I adored. The barmaid glared at

me like I was the anti-Christ as she set down our drinks. She said “Hon, you need a tissue

or something?” Jan nodded and gave the woman a look of profuse gratitude as she

accepted a kleenex from the waitress’ chapped hand.

“I’m sorry,” Jan said has she started to compose herself a little a few minutes

later. “I didn’t mean to put you through this.”

“No, it’s okay.”

“You know, it’s funny, but I have thought of myself as so grown up and

independent here at school and for a while I’ve really believed it, but now, I feel like a

child. They told me they can’t come for parents’ weekend next week because my father

needs to rest and I was totally devastated. I mean, it’s crazy. I’m twenty years old. I

don’t need my parents to visit me in school. But now, I’m going mad over it. Does that

make any sense?”

“Yes, of course it does. I know how you feel.” As soon as I said that, though, I

wasn’t sure why I knew how she felt. Maybe I didn’t.

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 “Thanks.” She had stopped crying, but her eyes were swollen, making her look a

little like a hamster. I think I loved her more at that moment than at any other.

“You aren’t alone, Jan,” I said, and, with my mouth outrunning my brain, I added,

“I’m here for you. You’re not alone when you’re with me.”

“That is so sweet,” she said, and burst into tears again. Her hands were clasped in

front of her on the table, beckoning me, so I reached over and put my hands over hers.

She didn’t move her hands away, so we just sat there facing each other in a warm silence

until the arrival of our check made us realize it was getting pretty late.

We held hands on the walk back to school, too, but not as if we were two lovers.

No, it wasn’t like that at all. It was the firm loving hand-holding of people who wanted

to support and comfort each other. I love to think about that walk. “Don’t you remember

holding my hand?” I’ve asked Jan in the car more than once. Imaginary Jan always gives

me a coy smile when I ask her that. I’ve got her there, I know. She cannot deny how

great it felt, despite everything.

As we got near her dorm, I resurrected an idea that I had previously considered

folly, but now seemed tenable. I was going to ask Jan to the formal. Una, my love

consigliore, had actually encouraged me to ask her, despite my fears of rejection, just to

see what she would say. If she said yes, then great. If she said no, then that would be a

good indication of whether I should continue this “idiotic quest,” as she liked to call it.

At her doorway, she let go of my hand and thanked me for walking her home. I

tried to make my mouth open to ask her to the formal, but some Ralphian Portcullis kept

the words trapped inside me. She did not seem to be in a rush to get inside, but I knew

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that if I didn’t speak quickly, I would lose the opportunity. Finally, I came out with,

“Would you like to be my date for the formal?”

“Oh, that is so sweet of you,” she said. “You’re wonderful, do you know that? I

wasn’t planning on going. Not much of a socialite, you know, and I hate the whole black

tie date thing. It’s like we’re all extras in some boring movie from the thirties. And, don’t

you think asking me is kind of like asking your sister to the prom?” She kissed me softly

on the cheek, said goodnight, and slipped into her dorm, leaving me standing outside in

screeching Ralph.

She called me ten minutes later. “I’m truly sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean to be

flippant. I guess I was just shocked at being asked out by you. I thought we’d discussed

it. I’m not interested in having a relationship with anyone right now and we’re friends.

You’re a great friend. You were wonderful to me tonight and I am very appreciative.

Don’t spoil it by asking me out. Please?”

“But aren’t you lonely?”

“No,” she said. “I enjoy my own company,” and then, with a little laughed, added,

“I always know I can have a good conversation that way.”

“I guess you need a guy who’ll understand you better than I do.”

“I don’t need a guy. What is it with men? You all think that women need a man. I

don’t need a man to feel complete. A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle. I

like my life the way it is.”

“Okay,” I said, and then, emboldened by the fearlessness that can come so easily

with a broken heart. “But I love you.”

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 “Oh, Havelock. You barely even know me. How can you say that?”

“I don’t know,” I said, and now it was me trying to fight back tears. “I do. I love

you and I have for quite some time.”

“No. You are in love with the idea of being in love with me.”

“You don’t understand,” I said frantically, and slammed the phone down.

I avoided her for a week, sicking out of film class and taking my meals at

Alfredo’s. There’s a tranquil glory in feeling sorry for oneself. It’s your own show, so

you can write it the way you want it. You want to be sorrier for yourself? Fine, just

imagine that she spat in your face. You want to feel better, then rationalize it all. Oddly, I

felt calmer that week than I had for years. Perhaps it was the resolution to the tension of

not knowing if she would want me. Now I knew, and the answer was no. I didn’t have to

fret about the question any longer. Even writing the check to Ron Brown was easy. I

took long walks by myself along the river, thinking how fitting it was that the sky was

gray and that a stiff, cold wind was whipping across the water. Considering how crappy

I thought I was supposed to feel, it wasn’t really so bad. Feeling that alone was actually

liberating.

My parents arrival, however, accompanied by my mother’s usual arctic blast of

disapproval, meant that my self-pitying exile would have to end. My parents have a

tendency to worry about me despite their general remoteness, and I didn’t feel the urge to

explain to them what was going on with me and fend off their well-intentioned but

generally useless advice. Girl trouble? My father would just tell me to find another one.

Lots of fish in the sea, he used to say. Why, the girls should be falling all over

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themselves to go out with you, a handsome, smart kid like you… Of course, why

wouldn’t they? The only time I ever told my mother about problems with my love life

was when I broke up with Sara and felt guilty about it. I think her response was, “You

don’t need the distraction of a girlfriend at Beaton-Lowell. You’ll have plenty to do there

without having to worry about that kind of anguish.” So, unless I wanted to hear it all

again from my parents, I figured I better buck up, as they so often told me to do.

Lawrence Lang was my unknowing savior on parents’ weekend. Even though

Lawrence’s mother had avoided my mom since the diving accident, Lawrence himself

was still – as he put it – “profoundly attached” to my mother. Hating him as I did, it was

still a relief to have Lawrence around at dinner that first night of the visit to do all the

talking. All I had to do was could sit back and stew in my own ordinariness, listen and

nod as Lawrence spewed forth about his upcoming Marshall Scholarship at Oxford and

his plans to study medicine at Beaton-Lowell when he returned.

Years later, I learned that the weekend with my parents was featured in Lang’s

second book, the angry, political I, Faggot, a sequel to Coming out on the Air that lashed

out at the forces of narrow-mindedness in America. In the book, he describes taking my

mother for a walk through the Winchester Inn lobby while my father and I ate brunch on

the Sunday before they left for home. Lang actually doesn’t mention me or my father in

the book, but I know we were there. Evidently, he came out to my mother that day – a

momentous event because he had never told anyone else before – and he’d sworn her to

secrecy. He even included a letter from my mother to him in the book that referred to

him as, “…my brave, heroic Lawrence. You are an inspiration to me…”

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 While Lawrence and my mother disappeared on their little stroll, my father and I

were left staring at each other across the table. He and I typically didn’t have a lot to say

to each other, especially after the accident. Like my mother, he had put on a good public

appearance, defending me and threatening to sue Playland for their negligence but I think

internally he always resented the fact that I brought disgrace on the family name.

“Thanks for making this all possible,” I said to my father that day. “Thanks for

paying.”

“Oh, don’t be silly,” he said. “It’s our pleasure to pay. You’ve made us all proud

here.” Not knowing whether he meant it or whether he was just humoring me, I gazed

around the dining room and noticed that Dede was stuck in a similarly silent state with

her parents. She was sitting with her mother and father around the table, a fraudulent

smile stuck on her face. That was a revelation to me. Even Dede had to make nice with

the parents, too. I could tell, even at a distance, that they were not happy with her

hairstyle, her short dress, and those earrings. Seeing Dede suffering the same stress

emboldened me to wave to her across the room.

She signaled for me to come over to her table, where our fathers instantly bonded

as men of the law. Later, my dad told me, in that deep, resonant and understated kind of

voice that some men use to describe other men who have made it big, “Do you have any

idea who her father is? He’s very successful. Very big.”

Dede shot me a sardonic, conspiratorial look as we watched our fathers glad-hand

each other and make the kind of excited, chirping small talk that I’ve never been able to

master because, probably, I am too Ralphed out to fake liking people all that well. “How

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are you doing?” she asked. “I didn’t see you in class and we were wondering if

everything was okay.”

“Oh, I just had a bad cold,” I lied. For the first time, she was giving me her full

attention and I felt nervously turned on. She was intense. Nothing with her was ever

done halfway, from filmmaking to politics to schoolwork to lovemaking. I could see

whey men liked her. She was an intimidating, high-velocity package. Yet, standing there

in the restaurant, I became seized with an idea that was so preposterous, so off base, that

the more I churned it through my inner mill of denial and rationalization, the more

reasonable it seemed.

“Do you have plans for the formal?” I heard myself say.

“No. Are you inviting me?”

“Yeah, you want to go?”

“Sure.”

Oh, shit. I could not believe what I had just done. Nor could Adam, who yelled,

“Are you out of your fucking mind? You bonehead! You can’t go with her. It’s

impossible.”

“I asked her and she said yes, Adam. It’s as simple as that”

“Why?”

“Because I want to go to that dance.” Hearing myself say it out loud, even I

didn’t believe it. Maybe I was figuring that I could gain a few points by having her on

my arm at the formal. Maybe I just wanted to nurture the illusion that she was interested

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in me, that I rated a date with Dede. Like I could say to my friends, yes, we went out

once, as if I were in her caste.

“You’re not going with her.”

“Why not? Why can’t I go to a stupid dance with Dede Teatham? She’s not the

Goddess Aphrodite. I won’t get struck by lightning.”

“I hate to break this to you, Payne,” he said. “But you’re not exactly Mel Gibson.

She’s using you for some reason that you don’t know about.”

“Maybe she just wanted to go the dance and I was the only one who asked her.”

“Hey, it’s me, Adam. You know that isn’t true. Every guy in our class wants to

get into her pants. You think you have a shot at her, good luck. This will end badly.”

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The Battle Tux

Just how right Adam was only began to register with me as I downed my third

drink of the night and spilled a generous portion of it onto the lapel of the sixty-five

dollar “Battle Tux” I had bought the day before at the U-Fit-Me’s Men’s Store in

Winchester Common.

The evening had begun innocently. I picked her up at her room and gave her the

roses that Una had suggested, and told her she looked beautiful. That had also been

Una’s idea, and it was a good one, too. Girls like flowers, Una had said, even feminists.

The walk to the campus of the old Lowell College for Women campus was pleasant, full

of chitchat about the film, about Bob and Corigliano and other nonsense that we were

absorbed in as students.

Claus hijacked her almost the second we walked in to the building. We had said

hello to a few people she knew and I got to get a couple of little nods of approval from

guys in my class – the “Hey, you’re doing great, dude. Look at the piece of ass date you

scored, you dog you!” – but a moment later I was a silent third party to Claus and Dede’s

impassioned debate about values in American art. They quickly dropped the pretense of

including me in the discussion.

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 Soon, they had their backs to me and I found myself attempting to make small

talk with the sullen-looking girl that Claus had brought to the dance and abandoned. In

the few words we did exchange I learned that her name was Emily something or other

and that she was a sophomore philosophy major. It was a short exchange, though she

used it with impressive efficiency to make it clear to me that she did not want to talk to

me. I still remember her very clearly. Aside from the fact that she played a minor role in

a nightmarish night, my memory is also aided by the fact that she now occasionally

writes the kind of op-ed piece in The New York Times that Adam loves to hate – rant

inducing editorials having to do with clitoral excision and the torment that adolescent

girls go through pretending to be bad at math while they starve themselves and cut

themselves with razors to feel the pain that society inflicts on them by forcing them to

buy Barbie dolls and aspire to the impossible physical aesthetic of the plastic figurine

with the porno morality that objectifies and demeans girls who would otherwise speak in

their true “voice”– that perfect world where there are no men, where women rule and

there is no war or starvation because women want to “give” of themselves truly, not in

the patriarchal, phallic-centered paradigm that relegates caregivers to underpaid serfdom,

but in the paradigm of caregiver as Goddess.

I couldn’t really blame Emily for being upset, though. She didn’t come to the

dance to be with me. As for me, I was confused and not a little bit embarrassed to be

seen being dumped by my date so early in the evening. I attempted to rationalize that this

was what the cool people did. You went to a dance with one person but that didn’t mean

you had to stick with them all night. You mingled. You flirted. You danced with other

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people. You hook up with your date on and off during the evening. You shared laughs

about what a blast it was later. Yes, that was what was going on, I actually fooled myself

into thinking for a brief moment while I considered asking Emily something or other to

dance with me. I figured, what harm could there be in that? She and I were in the same

predicament – and I have to admit, she looked nice, too – so we might as well have a

good time, right?

I don’t think she could have given me a more disgusted look than if I had farted

into her face when I asked her if she wanted to dance with me. “I’ll take that as a ‘no’,” I

said, trying desperately to make it seem as if she were just kidding and I was just kidding

and we were all just kidding around because what is so goddamned bad about dancing

with me? You would think that I’d asked for a blowjob. On later reflection, that actually

might have been a better way to go with her. It’s worked for me lately, like when I went

on my first date with Sandy. After a dinner of calamari and pasta and more red wine than

was good for me, talking at great length about point of view in television writing when I

just looked at her and said, “Suck my dick, will you?”, a request that elicited faux shock,

a hearty, conspiratorial laugh and a little later, compliance.

But at age twenty, a virgin dressed in a puke-ready battle tux, I had trouble

fending off that oppressive tendency to be pathetic. So, with Emily beginning to drift off

to find someone she wanted to talk to, I tagged along a little further and asked if I could

at least buy her a drink. This, she accepted, so I made my way over to the bar.

It was at the bar that the evening truly took on the malevolent form that would

etch it into my mind forever. As I ordered the drinks, I saw Jan out of the corner of my

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eye. I was surprised to see her there, having taken her statement that she was not

interested in coming to the dance as the truth. My surprise was compounded by the

presence of her date. In my breathtaking naiveté, I had assumed, once I spotted her, that

she had decided to attend stag. As she had said, she needed a man like a fish needed a

bicycle. She did seem to have one of that kind of bicycle, though, a man I had never seen

before. He seemed older, a fact that made me loathe him even more intensely than he

deserved. And I had to meet him, too. That was the second worst thing that happened to

me that night: Shaking that prick’s hand and watching him put his arm around Jan as if he

owned her, and seeing her beaming at him like he was the most fascinating, best-looking

man in the world. He asked me something, but I ignored him.

No, the worst thing that happened that night was what followed right after the

handshake with her date. It was Jan’s surprised sounding question to me, “Are you okay?

You seem upset.” Oh really? Do I seem upset to you? What got me was not the question

so much as the tone of voice. She seemed confused. She seemed to be saying to me,

what possible reason could you have for being upset?

It was at that moment – one of the greatest Ralph-outs in my life - that I realized

in vast mortification just how far I had deluded myself. Not only did she not remember

telling me she didn’t want to have a date for the dance, but she didn’t connect it with

seeing me there, nor did she connect that fact that I had so nakedly expressed my interest

in her, which she had turned down, and now she was standing in front of me with her arm

around some guy and wondering what could possible be upsetting me.

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 Jan and mister bicycle man wandered away. She seemed pissed with me for not

being nice to her date. Fine, I thought. Let her be pissed. Who cares? She doesn’t even

consider me human. I was numb, but mostly I knew I needed a drink. I downed my

drink and then, anticipating the encounter with Claus’ date, I decided to forget about her

and drank her drink as well. Then, I promptly ordered another two.

I had not been a big drinker until that night. Maybe I would have a beer or two on

Saturday nights, but suddenly, I wanted to be drunk, excessively so. With a fourth drink

in hand, I walked over to the dance floor, where a throng of people stood on the sidelines

and watched some unseen spectacle unfolding at the center.

As I staggered up to the edge of the crowd, I saw that the focus of their attention

was Claus and Dede doing a Saturday Night Fever disco performance in the center.

They seemed to me to be wildly excited by each other’s dance moves, though I was at

that critical stage of drinking where I was still aware of the fact that my perceptions had

been altered by the booze but I was not sure how much. They were both very good

dancers – something I had not know about either of them – but even beyond that the

sense I got was once of utter abandon of one to the other. They were finally coming

together after three years of teasing each other and the energy they were releasing on the

dance floor was overpowering.

A preppy-looking guy next to me nudged me and said, “Dude, isn’t she your

date?” I smiled weakly and shrugged my shoulders. Yes, she was my date and now she

was putting on a show for the whole junior class with the newly discovered love of her

life. “Doesn’t that bother you?” the guy asked. “It would sure as shit bother me.”

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 “We just came as friends,” I said.

“Yeah, but it’s rude.”

“I guess.”

“You guess? Dude, she’s making you look like an asshole.”

“What do you want me to do, go slap him with a glove and shoot him at dawn?”

“That’s funny,” he said, and clapped me on the back. I considered getting into a

conversation with him, but I opted to sulk and feel sorry for myself instead. We sat

together in silence and watched the dancing.

I feel responsible for Claus and Dede’s relationship. Perhaps that’s why I’m on

this trip. If it hadn’t been for me, the singular moment when he knew he had to have her

might never have arrived. Maybe seeing her with me made Claus so insane with the

thought that I would lead her into bourgeois complacency that he felt the pressing need to

liberate her – as he did with all oppressed peoples of the world – and took her off my

hands.

As a sixth drink oozed into all my Ralphic cavities, the evening took on a blurry

vagueness with some alarming blank spots. I do remember sitting on the chairs that lined

the walls for a while watching Claus and Dede, glistening with sweat, do their alpha

couple mating ritual on the dance floor. I couldn’t tell you if we sat there for ten minutes

or two hours, but eventually, my new preppy friend suggested that we head over to a

party at Alpha Nu.

I asked him to wait as he started for the door. I felt it wouldn’t be appropriate to

just up and leave without saying goodbye to Dede. After all, she’d come with me, and

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due to some profoundly incorrect reasoning on my part, perhaps related to my

comprehensive drunkenness, I was worried that she would not have a safe way to get

back to her dorm without me. We had all learned that as men on campus, we should offer

to walk women to their dorms at night because the city was not safe. It didn’t occur to

me that Claus, the man who was going to take her back to her room and fuck her silly

until daybreak, might want to walk her home as well.

I staggered onto the dance floor and tapped her on the shoulder. She looked

around and gave me seductive, apologetic look. She hadn’t intended to treat me like dog

shit. It was just the order of the universe. I told her that I was going to go to a party and

asked if she minded that I wouldn’t be able to walk her home. No, she said. She would

be fine. She thanked me for inviting her and apologized for not being able to spend more

time with me. We’ll have to have coffee some time, she said, and went back to Claus.

Okay, I thought. Coffee. That’s going to happen.

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Part III – Palacio de Judicia

Internationalista

“Somehow,” I say, scanning the lobby of Lima’s Palacio de Judicia. “This is not

what I expected.” On the outside, the building is a neoclassical affair with a broad

colonnade and a steep expanse of stone steps leading inside. The interior, though, with its

charcoal carpeting, off-white walls, smoked glass partitions, and computers, looks as if it

could be from a New York law firm.

“What did you think it would look like?” Adam asks with a snort. “A bamboo

shack? Frito Bandito guarding the gate with a machete and bandoliers of bullets?”

“I don’t know,” I say. “I just thought it would be more old-time colonial.”

“Well, you was wrong.”

“Whatever,” I say. “Forget I said anything.”

“You’re being touchy.”

“And you’re being a dick,” I bark. I’m too hungover and feverish to care about

his feelings all of a sudden.

“Sorry,” he says, and it sounds as if he actually means it. “I’m beat. That’s all.”

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 “Me, too.” We learned when we arrived that our hotel room reservations had been

cancelled by an influx of bribe-paying soccer fans in town for a big match. It took half

the day in a filthy cab to find un-air-conditioned rooms in a stucco pillbox miles away

from the Justice Ministry.

“At least it’s cool in here,” I say.

“Yeah,” Adam says. “We should be glad that they’re making us wait here all

day.” When we got here in the morning, the Assistant to the Deputy Minister of Justice

asked us to have a seat and informed us that someone would be with us shortly. That was

hours ago. But, as Adam said, we had nowhere else to be and the key in this process, as

he had been told by his friends at State, was to make no fuss whatsoever. If they made us

sit here for days, we should act pleased. Besides, as he put it, Claus wasn’t going

anywhere without us.

“Hard to believe that this is where Claus ended up,” he says.

“How so? I thought he was brimming with passion to record the insurgency.”

“True, but I at least never thought that he would die in a place like this.”

“I guess we just couldn’t believe that Claus would ever die. He acted like he was

made of kryptonite,” I say.

“That aura of invincibility is what probably what got him killed. He certainly

knew he was up taking huge risks. And, maybe it all fits that he died in Peru. After all,

his whole obsession with photojournalism began in a sticky, equatorial climate....”

An aide comes over and hands Adam a sheaf of forms to fill out. He says

“gracias” to the aide, but after the woman has walked off he shoots me an exasperated

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look. “Just what I wanted. A ream of paper to fill out in Spanish. This is going to take

forever.”

“I’ll help,” I say, and grab a few of the forms and start filling them out as best I

can. Adam does the same. After an interminable amount of pressing hard with the

ballpoint pen to hit all the carbon copies, we see a man pull up in the driveway with a

lunch cart.

“Nicaragua,” Adam says with his mouth full of aroz con pollo. “The coolest

summer project in the history of college. Eight weeks in Managua with el professador

himself.”

“Is that a real word?”

“Professador? Dunno, but it sounds good.” We both laugh.

“Internationalistas – that’s genuine slang for the foreigners who came to

Nicaragua to help with the great Sandinista cause. There were a lot of them, too. English

people. Canadians, Spaniards, French, German. Commies of all stripes and colors.”

“Commies?” I say. “That’s so 50s of you.”

“Yeah. Bunch of pinko red-diaper lefties,” he says, sounding a little like the old

Adam that I remember, the fun Adam from before the hospital. “The film itself was

called Internationalista. Corigliano meant it as a follow-up, five years later, to

¡Gringo/Amigo!, after the Sandinistas had taken control of the government. He needed a

crew but he couldn’t get a big enough grant so he tapped into that great unpaid labor

market, the summer intern. It was a good deal for everyone, because they learned a lot

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of about real filmmaking and he got his crew. Dede did sound. Claus took stills, shot

some silent footage with his Filmo and schlepped a lot of gear around.

“The idea was to capture day to day life under the new regime. To get at this,

Corigliano tried to follow a couple of people he had met during the last film and then

interweave their story lines together. I think it was a soldier, a mother, a teacher and a

priest. Oh, and also one person who had been a rich landowner under the Somoza regime

who had been reduced to selling fishing charters to wealthy foreign communists who

took their vacations in Nicaragua to help with the coffee harvest.

“So,” I ask. “Are those vacationers the ‘Internationalistas’? It sounds like the

film was about Nicaraguans.”

“No, it was about Nicaraguans. The Internationalistas were Dede, Claus, and

Corigliano. The film was also about them.”

“Why am I not surprised?”

“You should see it. Dede is in the frame almost the whole time. Corigliano

deliberately broke one of the cardinal rules of observational cinema. He made the

machinery of filmmaking plainly visible in the work. It’s pretty funny. You’ve got shot

after shot of these peasants with stooped shoulders that come from picking coffee and

carrying hundred pound bunches of bananas on their backs for fifty years and scars from

bullet wounds and whip lashings from torture chambers and there’s Dede standing next to

them - a boom mike and Nagra hanging off her bare shoulders - wearing Bermuda shorts

and a skin-tight, sweat-soaked halter top that showed off her natural endowments to full

advantage and left not a lot to the imagination. I could draw her nipples from memory

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after seeing the film. I think the film should have been called, Internationalista: Staying

abreast of the revolution in Nicaragua.

“Is that a tit for tat comment?” I ask.

“Very funny. Her hair always looked perfect, too. And you know she wasn’t

doing it for Claus’ benefit. He would have screwed her if she had shaved her head. As he

liked to say, ‘My dick has no eyes so what do I care?’ though you know that was crap

because he only went out with good-looking women. It was for you know who. They

spent the whole day flirting through the lens of his Aaton camera.

“There’s actually a couple of shots where they spoke to each other on camera. In

one, they’re in a tiny church when a woman walks in with a kid who is so badly disabled,

he can hardly walk. The mother takes the kid up to the front of the church for

communion and the priest starts to do a little laying on of hands to try to cheer the kid up

and make the mother feel better about her son’s chances of getting better. And there’s

Dede with those big tits sticking out, edging her way into the frame to record the

conversation between the priest and the kid. You can hear Corigliano telling her to move

back so he can close in for a tight shot but she keeps asking him if he wants to move

around so he can film the reactions of the other people in the church. It’s hilarious

because she’s being controlling by trying to sound helpful and deferential. She is saying,

‘Do you want to capture the background?’ in her best ‘You are my master in all matters in

life’ good girl voice but the subtext is clear: My wife used to be like that, too. It was

always, ‘Adam, you really like that shirt, don’t you?’ which meant, of course, ‘I hate that

shirt. If you wear it again I am going to fuck the mail man.’ So there is Dede putting on

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this little pout at not being listened to while the priest is trying to concentrate on the kid.

The kid keeps looking at her, too. He has never been that close up to a real blond gringa

in that kind of outfit before and he’s pretty damned interested.

“Every night they would have a beer at the local bar where all the other

Internationalistas hung out getting muy boracho. Initially, Claus objected to drinking in a

place that was frequented only by foreigners. He wanted to go to a real bar, a place where

the shirtless comrades went. Corigliano acquiesced, so they spent one night in a filthy

dive where Claus got robbed in the bathroom. So much for wanting to be with the

people. They spent the rest of the summer taking their R and R at the place where the

Americans and Canadians hung out.

“The subject of the conversation was always the same: What had they filmed that

day and were they getting what they wanted? Were they approaching the subjects

correctly, or could they do better? Once a week, they would watch the video tape of their

footage that had been shipped in New York.

“Corigliano realized fairly early in the summer that he had a problem that he had

not expected despite having traveled and shot films with students many times in the past.

Their deferential manner aside, Claus and Dede fully assumed that they were equal

creative partners in the project. Uh, no. Corigliano was a master filmmaker who had

sacrificed his left nut to get the grants to make the film. He wasn’t about to cede total

control of the creative direction to a bunch of kids.

“The other problem was that the rivalry between Claus and Dede put Corigliano

in a position most often experienced by the parents of toddlers. If he praised one, he soon

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found, he had to praise the other. If he told Dede that he liked what she did with the

sound, he had to also give Claus a little ‘atta boy’ for being on the spot with his camera

too. It could have been a tiresome exercise for Corigliano, who usually expected more

maturity from his students, but he was too taken with Dede to mind that much.

“They were in this peculiar little dance. Corigliano tried to maintain control of

his project without alienating Claus and especially Dede. He said, ‘Interesting thought.

I’ll have to think about that’ about a bazillion times a day. Claus and Dede jumped

between the polarities of wanting to be in charge but not so much that they would offend

Corigliano and jeopardize their chances of being his anointed one, and all the while

struggling to maintain their tumultuous relationship – one that involved a lot of arguing

followed by tantric sex in their stuffy little room. The enlightenment that they were not

the center of attention because they were not at school and Corigliano was not being paid

to teach them, but rather that they were his helpers, settled in slowly. It was okay,

though, because even as little helpers they were still on a planet of exponentially greater

coolness than virtually any other kid in the film program. They, after all, got to spend a

summer helping a world-famous filmmaker create an opus that will move the despised,

apathetic Westerners to action on behalf of the downtrodden ones.

“Dede had an advantage in this competition. She’s talented and brilliant, of

course, but she’s also a woman and Corigliano, whose leave of absence from the house

was not a coincidence, fell deeper and deeper into an infatuation that he ought to have

known better to pursue, but did nothing to stop. At first, it was a subtle communication,

an extension, really, of the connection they had in class. Lots of eye contact, the

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occasional small hug or arm around the shoulder to signal a job well done. Laughing at

her jokes. Thinking up good ones to tell her. Honing in on little things that made her

nuts, like wearing a baseball hat backwards, and then doing it just to piss her off and

laugh at her reaction. I think she actually said to him, ‘There are only two reasons a

grown man should wear a baseball hat backwards. One, if he’s a catcher in the major

leagues or two, if he’s giving a blowjob in the woods.’”

“At first, Claus was in on the joke. He even started to wear a baseball hat

backwards, giving Corigliano a sly high-five when Dede told them to get a life. One

morning, though, Claus could not find his photographer’s vest. I don’t know if you ever

saw that vest, but it was the ultimate photographer as macho-he-man-righter-of-wrongs

combat gear. He worked mowing lawns and weeding flowerbeds in The Quad all the

previous summer to scrape up enough dough to buy it. It had a zillion snap up pockets for

lenses and lens wipes and camera bodies and film and mini tripods. I wouldn’t have been

surprised if they found Jimmy Hoffa hidden in there somewhere.

“Thinking he’d left it in the Jeep, he walked down the stone path from the house

to Corigliano rented Jeep and saw Dede wearing the vest. He decided to hang back and

watch what was happening. Dede was opening and closing the vest like a flasher in front

of Corigliano, who was standing a few feet away with a sassy, horny, playful kind of look

on his face that was like a little poison dart of hatred that planted itself deep under Claus’

skin.

“He continued to watch, unobserved behind the high bushes that ringed the house.

He heard Dede say, in a German accent that was clearly meant to be a parody of his own,

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‘Zee car keys are int dis vest. You may find zem eef you are villing to search me.’ At

first, Corigliano said. ‘Just give them to me. Please. You’re being silly,’ but he could not

resist the game that was being proffered. In his thickest New York ‘goofing on the pigs’

accent he demanded that she place her hands on top of the car and spread her legs so he

can ‘pat her down.’ With a naughty laugh, she complied.

“It was an edgy game. He was going, ‘Look, lady, if you don’t give me the keys

I’m going to have to take you downtown and book you.’ And she responded with, ‘Ach,

nein, zat would be no goot. Vat about mein pussies. Zey need to eat.’ So he frisked her

lightly, barely touching her. At that point he was still trying to preserve some semblance

of teacher student distance, though he knew perfectly well that it was crumbling and he

was only too happy to see it collapse. He was a little relieved when she actually took the

keys out of the vest and handed them to him. He took them from her and said, ‘Thanks.

Now can we get back to being grown-ups now?’ in response to which she doubled over

cackling with laughter.

“Claus quietly went back into the house, screwed his rotten mood down into

control, and walked out to the Jeep saying good morning as if he had just woken up. They

had no idea that they had been watched.”

“But he could only keep it down for so long. He reacted in two predictable ways.

He became even more possessive and attentive to Dede. It was tons of hot sex and ‘I

love you, I love you, I really love you’ to all hours of the night every night and grabbing

her and putting his arms around her right in front of Corigliano, as if to say, ‘She’s mine

and not yours. Never will be you old fart, now get out of my face.’ The other thing he

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did, of course, was to hit on any woman who happened to be nearby. For Claus, this was

not a paradox. He could tell Dede he loved her while he ogled and flirted with every

female between the ages of fifteen and forty.

“Already knowing French and some Italian, it only took Claus a few weeks to

pick up enough Spanish to make sexy, humorous overtures to the señoritas. Initially, he

did it on the sly, but he became increasingly brazen around the mid-point of the trip. He

wanted her to make her jealous. It was funny to him. He wanted her to know that he

could make her come and feel totally loved but he could also torment her and make her

so crazy that she would want to stab him in the neck. He had tapped into something

about her that he liked, which was that he could manipulate her by playing on her sense

of inferiority. It was cruel, really, but they never exactly won the Oscar for most

emotionally healthy couple.

“One night around the sixth week of the trip they decided to go dancing - Dede

and Claus, Corigliano and some of his Sandinista friends and their wives. Everyone got

pretty blotto on cheap wine and before long they were all out on the dance floor making

utter fools of themselves. You know, in Latin America people who dance really know

how to dance. It’s a serious thing to dance the tango, the salsa, the cha-cha-cha or the

samba. You don’t just strut around and wiggle your tush. Of course, if you happen to be a

pretty blond Americana girl in a low-cut peasant blouse, you might be forgiven, but

Corigliano quickly made a dignified exit from the dance floor with that kind of, ‘I’m a

stupid-assed gringo’ expression on his face. Dede followed him.

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 “But Claus, as we know, is a young John Travolta, so he stayed on the dance floor.

When a tango came on, he partnered up with a stunning woman and began to whirl her

around in a very suggestive set of moves that made Dede feel completely enraged, and at

the same time, inadequate.

I wonder, listening to this story, if Dede had appreciated the irony of the situation.

She dumped me at the formal in order to show off on the dance floor with Claus. There

she was a few months later being the object of the very same. I quickly move on, though,

because I realize that in order for her to have thought about me at that moment would

have meant that I had some importance in her life.

“Corigliano saw right away what was happening and tried to play the gentleman.

He asked Dede if she wanted to dance with him but she refused, saying that it was sweet

of him, but she declined. He said, ‘Oh come on, we’re here to have fun. Let’s just do it

our way and let everyone else be damned.’ She smiled and clasped his hand, thankful

that he was able to see how awful she felt, but she was too shocked by Claus’

performance to do much more than just sit there and fume.

“Of course, Claus wanted sex that night, but Dede told him to shove it. Not

accustomed to being turned down, he demanded an explanation. ‘You have to ask?’ Dede

said, and rolled over, pretending to be asleep. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘What the hell is wrong

with you?’; ’You’re disgusting. I don’t want to talk to you.’; ’Why?’; ’Oh, give me a

break, Claus. You were all over that woman. It was totally embarrassing.’; ’For you or for

me?’; ’Both, I hope. I would at least hope that you would see that you were embarrassing

yourself.’; ‘Why? Because I wanted to dance?’; ‘No, Claus. Dancing is fine. You were

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hitting on her.’; ’Well, where were you? You were all snuggled up with Corigliano as far I

recall.’; ’I was not snuggled up with him. We were sitting together. Big fucking deal.’;

’You like him.’; ‘What do you mean?’; ‘I know. You want to screw him. It’s written all

over your face.’; ‘You wish’, she said, knowing that he was right and finding herself

suddenly on the defensive. ‘You wish that I liked him. That would make it so much easier

to fuck everything that moves.’; ‘I do not.’; ’Yeah, but you wish you could. You would do

it if you thought you could get away with it.’; ’I’m sure that’s how you feel about

Corigliano. I saw your little game the other morning. Do you think I didn’t notice that

my vest was gone. I watched you come on to him. And by the way, your German accent

sucks.’”

“Well, that was about all he had to say on the matter. Dede was left feeling angry

and resentful, as well as embarrassed for being caught in her flirtation with Corigliano.

They ended up humping like rabid warthogs because he always had a way of making her

feel like she owed him something and she needed to prove to him that she was the best

fuck he was ever going to have, so he better stop looking.

“In their last week down in Nicaragua, Claus was invited by the Photographic

Society to give a talk about photojournalism. He showed some slides he had taken on the

trip and discussed how he was a stranger, an outsider who had to make sense of the other

through the lens of his camera, yadda yadda. I think what impressed the audience at the

Photographic Society the most was the fact that he delivered his whole talk in nearly

perfect Spanish. That was Claus – towering brilliance in all areas. Need to learn a new

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language? No problem. Give him seven weeks and he’s got it down. Need to learn

photography? No problem. One class and he’s one of the best, ever.

“After his presentation, he was asked to stay and critique some of the members’

work. Of course, he was only too happy to do this. Judging the work of others was

always his forte. Dede and Corigliano also stayed to sit in on the critique session.

“Claus looked over a couple of portfolios of wedding shots and formal portraits

with the subjects sitting stiffly in front of studio lights. Every portrait was centered in the

frame. Every shot had been taken with some kind of diffusion filter that caused the

gauzy, faded look that was popular in professional photography in the eighties.

“He didn’t know what to say. On one level, he didn’t want to offend anyone but he

must have felt compelled to make a comment because he opened his mouth and said, ‘It

is really a terrible shame that while you have liberated yourselves from the yoke of

American imperialism you still feel bound by the utterly bourgeois conventions of the

Western professional photography industry. All of your work is quite good, technically.

You should be proud of its quality, but have you not considered deviating from the

aesthetics laid out for you by your old bosses? There is so much more you can do with

the camera. You need to take chances. Move the camera. Forget the filters. Throw out

the lights. Be bold. Show the Sandinista revolution in your work!’”

“The members of the Photographic Society made polite noises of understanding,

but quickly ended the session. It was only when Corigliano and Dede pounced on him

outside that he realized he had made a major faux pas. ‘What were you thinking?’

Corigliano asked him as they walked out onto the street. ‘Are you going to teach them

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how to be better revolutionaries?’ Dede said, ‘I was ashamed to be associated with you,

honestly.’ Stung, Claus said, ‘I was only telling them what I thought. They are not bound

to listen to me but I feel obligated to tell the truth in matters of art.’. ‘Oh, please,’ Dede

said.

“Corigliano, who had probably trodden those same missteps many times when he

was younger, tried to settle everyone down by saying, ‘Look, Claus. I know you meant

well, but you just offended everyone in the Society.’ ‘Okay,’ Claus said. ‘I will censor

myself to make you both happy. Is that what you want?’; ‘No,’ Dede said. ‘We just want

you to think before you open your mouth.’; ‘You do the same,’ he said. ‘You never know

who might think you’re open for business.’; ‘That’s disgusting. And, you’re not listening

to me.’; ‘That is because you have nothing of interest to say. To me, it is a tragedy that

these photographers feel they must mimic their former colonial bosses and try to emulate

a set of creative standards that have nothing to do with Latin America. It’s pathetic,

really, that their definition of good photography is the same as what Americans pay nine-

ninety-five for at Sears Portrait Studio. This is a country of fantastic color and a unique

culture, fresh from a glorious revolution. Why the hell should they want to create

airbrushed monstrosities taken under fresnel lights?’

“’Hey,’ Corigliano said. ‘You’re not wrong. I also think it is too bad that they

cannot break out of their professional constraints. However, it is not our place to come

down here and deliver a big sermon on what it means to be a revolutionary. They already

know that about a thousand times better than you ever will. I don’t mean that as a put

down. It’s just a fact.’

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 “Claus said, ‘Fine. I’m going to shoot the memorial march. Don’t wait up for

me. It goes on until dawn.’ And with that, he stomped off toward a bus stop and stood

there in the hot sun ignoring his two companions. Dede looked over at Corigliano and

said, ‘Do you want to offer him a ride in the Jeep. I am sure it will take him hours to get

wherever he’s going on the bus.’ ‘No,’ he said. ‘I think Claus needs a little time to

himself today.’”

“Dede and Corigliano spent the rest of the afternoon looking at tapes and

discussing ways that the film’s narrative could be shaped. Corigliano had decided not to

film the march. Though it was part of the story of the revolution, he opted not to cover it

because he was making a film about individuals, not the sweeping history of the

Sandinista movement. There was no reason to film the march, he told Dede, except as

filler, and he was willing to gamble that he wasn’t going to need filler or connecting shots

given all the great footage they have filmed already. And, he seemed to be in a rotten

mood.

“Though she was somewhat mystified by her teacher’s remoteness that afternoon,

Dede was tickled to be included in such a serious creative discussion, an inclusion that

she felt was partly due to Claus’ absence. When it was just the two of them, she thought,

she seemed to be empowered to act as Corigliano’s creative partner and less of a drone.

“They shared a joint after knocking off early and went out to have dinner at one of

the local places near the house. They were pretty stoned when they sat down at the table,

and for a while neither of them said much of anything. Dede told Una that she felt a

broad sense of relief from the lack Claus’ presence. With him there, the dinner would

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have been yet another contest to see who could outshine the other with Corigliano as the

reluctant referee. She thought she observed his sense of relief, as well. Mostly, though,

he was uncharacteristically quiet.

“She asked, ’You okay?’ and he gave her some noncommittal nod. No, he wasn’t

okay, but he was not at all sure it would be a good idea to tell her why. Yet, that was just

what she wanted. For her to be his intimate confidante would have been the ultimate. ‘I

got some bad news today.’; ’Really? Do you want to tell me about it?’; ‘I’d like to,’ he

said, ‘But I am not sure I should.’; ‘I won’t tell a soul.’; ’No, that’s not it. I trust you. It’s

just that you’re the student and I’m the teacher. Some boundaries should be respected.

Know what I mean?’; ’Yes,’ she said, but thinking, ‘If you put your hand on my ass I

won’t stop you. What about your boundaries then, huh!’. Keeping her suggestive

thoughts inside, she went on to say, ‘You’re right, but as of this moment we’re sitting at a

restaurant in Central America, far far away from any of the structure that surrounded us

back at school.’; ‘True,’ he said, but then drifted off into small talk.

“He was probably hoping that she would forget that he was in a low mood but

finally, he muttered, ‘My son has disappeared.’; ‘Oh, that’s awful,’ she said; ‘Well, it’s

not quite as bad as it sounds. He’s done it before and he always comes back. It’s just that

Vera’s out of her mind worrying, which is crazy because we raised Lama to be

independent and follow his heart. The problem is when you are the parent you

sometimes wish that your kid would be more dependent, at least enough to tell us where

is going, and follow common sense instead of his heart. Damn, I never thought I would

think like that, but that is the reality of parenthood. Last time he did this he wound up

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calling us from a payphone in New Hampshire. Collect. I had to drive out there in the

middle of the night and get him. He’d caught a severe cold that turned into pneumonia.’;

‘How old was he then?’; ‘sixteen.’; ‘Now, he’s almost twenty. He should really know

better.”

“Dede reached over and put her hand over his, saying, ‘I ran away once.’; ‘You?

You have got to be kidding me,’ he said. ; ‘No, it’s true. My parents were driving me up

the fucking wall and I just split.’; ‘They must have had a hemorrhage.’; ‘Tell me about it.

My dad did everything short of digging up J. Edgar Hoover to look for me.’; ’Wow. I am

not easily surprised, but I have to say, you’ve got me there.’; ‘Well, it wasn’t all that

dramatic. I took a bus into DC and spent a day or two hanging out with some lowlife kids

who drank cheap wine and listened to punk music. In reality, it was pretty damned

boring.’; ‘How did you get back home?’; ‘The DC police found me in a tattoo parlor. I

was halfway through getting a tattoo. Needless to say, I never got the other half

finished.’; ‘You have a tattoo?’ he asked, totally incredulous. At that time, remember,

tattoos were not as common as they are now. Not that I can figure out what the big deal

is with them. You see kids all the time with these huge tattoos on their arms or these

angry Norse-looking claw designs on their backs. Nothing makes me feel like an old fart

more than those tattoos. Anyway, Corigliano was looking at Dede with a newfound

appreciation. Maybe he was even a little intimidated by this. I think he always regarded

her as a good girl he could lead into the real world, but all of a sudden he saw that she

had done a few things that truly surprised him. He asked, ‘Where is it?’ And she said,

‘That’s a secret, but if you’re good maybe I’ll let you look at it…’ Uh-oh.

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 “After that thrilling and deliciously uncomfortable moment, Corigliano returned

to the topic of his son in an attempt – probably unconscious – to get off the tricky subject

of whether or not it was wise for him to think about where on that luscious bod that half

tattoo might be. Of course, he knew the answer to that question, and it wasn’t yes, but

you know how sex can chill the brain functions. He was like any other man: I know it’s

a mistake. It’s wrong. She’s a student and I am a teacher. Even though this is off campus

and school is out of session, it could still be my ass if something goes bad here. And, I’m

married. And, I’m not sure I can handle the emotional bullshit that goes with an affair.

But…. But… My dick is hard and it’s calling the shots. He said, ‘My son is very young.

He’s nineteen but he’s very much a kid. It seemed as if when I was nineteen, I was a lot

more grown up. Of course, who knows what I was really like in terms of maturity, but at

nineteen I had been beaten by the pigs, been arrested, gotten laid, traveled across the

country hitchhiking by myself, made a movie, made a difference, you know? I knew that

I had a role to play in perhaps one of the greatest movements in history – the drive to end

the slaughter in Vietnam. My kid just likes to smoke dope and sit in his room listening to

music. And I don’t get his music at all. It just seems like a lot of angry shouting. Oh

Lord, listen to me. I sound like my grandfather,’ he said with a laugh. ‘When I was a

teenager I had to help him and my father in their shoe repair store on Tremont Avenue

every day after school. I used to hate that place. Not only did it stink, I hated the fact

that it was my father’s prison. He spent his whole life in that store, always looking out

the window but only going outside to smoke cigarettes. My grandfather had ten children,

and each of them had to work in the store when they were growing up. But, when he got

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to my pop, who was the youngest, my grandfather decided that the store was going to

become his. He had no say in the matter, and besides, what the hell was he going to do if

he didn’t want to inherit the store? He knew how to repair shoes. He could have had his

own store or worked at someone else’s for a fraction of the money. I used to hate seeing

him standing there outside the store smoking like he was an animal let out of his cage for

feeding time. I think that was what made me want to rebel and run away from it all, and

of course, the sixties didn’t make that particularly hard. Anyway, when I was about

fifteen or so and the Stones were starting to get popular, I used to switch the radio in the

store from Perry Como to WPLJ and crank up the volume. I could shine shoes with

decent tunes going, but my grandpa would flip every time. Whaddya want with that

noise? He used to say. Noise, that’s what he called it. And he would turn back to the

easy listening and I would sulk in the back of the store reading old copies of Dissent and

Ramparts that I stashed under shoeboxes like they were stroke books.’; ‘Stroke books?’

Dede said with a near guffaw; ‘Yeah, sorry. Is that crude?’; ‘No, it’s fine. I just never

heard that term before. It’s a riot.’

“Corigliano continued. ‘My son’s music is noise. I’m not complaining. It’s the

truth. People grunting and screaming incoherently into microphones, banging garbage

can lids and burping and barfing on stage. What the hell is that? And it’s so

commercialized. It makes me sick. It’s not even about music. It’s about being able to buy

the latest CD and show it off. Music is his generation’s tribalism. When I was a kid,

music was about peace and love, and breaking through the doors of perception. It was

about taking the acid test and getting ready to ‘be experienced.’ And, yes, we all knew

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that people were out to make a buck in music, but it wasn’t the point. It wasn’t just about

image and money and style with no substance. We didn’t sit around yakking about how

many albums Hendrix sold. And, music is a malleable art form, like any art form, I

suppose. Just because you’re up on stage with an electric guitar doesn’t mean you favor

freedom and love. Music is a medium and the message is up to the musician. Who’s to

say what his or her belief system may be. I think I, like so many of my generation, was

highly naïve about things like that. I really thought for many years that if you sang in

front of a microphone with an acoustic guitar then you were ‘for the movement.’ Oh, how

untrue that is. The day I grew up was the day I realized that you could sing powerful rock

music about wanting to bomb an abortion clinic or kill Jews and blacks.

“For Dede, this emotional intimacy with Corigliano was like a big hit of speed.

She was flushed, heart pounding. ‘My son wants to be a musician, but not to sing and

make a difference, but to make a lot of money. He doesn’t care if his music has meaning.

It just has to be ‘cool’ and shit, I just hate the amorality of it all. Yet, I don’t blame him,

really. I mean, yes I do blame him for not thinking for himself, but he is also a product of

a society that has completely bloodied itself on the altar of making a fast buck. You

know, they say that baseball is the national pastime. Bullshit. The national pastime of this

country is shopping. What does my son do when he has free time and ten bucks? He goes

to the mall. He hangs out at stores, basically, as his main extracurricular activity.

College has made a dent in that, which is good. He’s reading books now a little bit,

which we like, but he is still obsessed with having the right pair of jeans and the right t-

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shirts. He’s all about superficiality. He’s… He’s an American. A real 1980s, Reagan-era,

consumer society American kid.

“Dede asked, ‘Do you feel like you failed?’. ‘No,’ he replied. ‘I think he’s

immature. He’s a good soul and he’ll probably outgrow this phase at some point, but I

fault myself for not giving him guidance about values and what is really important in life.

I guess I’m just angry at all the forces of business that conspire to turn kids into product-

buying automatons. It’s so wrong. It’s wrong because it is immoral to make people think

that the meaning of life is contained in a product that you can buy at Caldors. And, it’s

wrong because it crowds out virtually every other form of free thinking. Like, where’s

the uproar when the CIA wants to recruit on campus? Does anybody give a shit? Yes, a

few kids make a fuss, but so what? There should be a thousand students marching around

the building when those murdering fascist bastards stink up the school. They should be

barred from entering the halls of academia by a human wall that is teaching the principles

of democracy and freedom that this country was founded on. Instead, we’ve got seniors

buying suits just to look good when they suck up to those morons. It makes me sick. Or

Reagan. Where’s the indignation about Reagan? The man is an imbecile, for starters, a

figurehead who has been placed in the office by a bunch of powerful handlers. He’s

gutting social services and arts funding and starving poor kids while he borrows money

from the Japanese to build hydrogen bombs and submarines that cost billions of dollars.

And what do we do? Nothing. We worry that we won’t be able to buy the new Boy

George CD. That is so fucked up I don’t even know where to begin.’”

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 “Dede and Corigiliano were, at this point, drawing closer and closer to each other.

She could feel his breath on her forearm. The noise of the restaurant had faded into the

background. Each was the only one there for the other. There was no one else in the

whole world. You know that feeling? It’s like being fifteen and about to kiss a girl for

the first time. Well, Corigliano was totally confused. He wanted to hop in the sack, but he

still had a little bit of common sense and self-control left in him, so he went on with his

story in the futile hope that it would derail the current situation. Of course, if he had had

any sense he would have paid the bill and taken her home and forgotten all about it. He

said, ‘I had a big beef with my father about Reagan. Actually, it was same beef we had

been having our whole lives. He told me I looked like a sissy fag with my long hair and

pinko attitude. He used to harangue me interminably that I should enlist in the army and

go fight for my country. People wonder why I moved out of the house when I was

sixteen. He hated Kennedy, McCarthy, Humphrey, McGovern, Carter. Anyone on the

left was the object of his absolute ridicule.

“’I swear when I went to see my father at Jacobi Hospital after he had his second

heart attack in 1980 I thought he was going to gloat over the landslide victory of ‘his’

candidate and, while he was at it, tell me to get a haircut and stop looking like a

goddamned communist. I was going to walk in saying ‘Okay, papa, you all won, which

proves that America has no sense.’ But, when I went into that room, he was lying all by

himself in front of the television, not that he was looking at it, and I knew the instant I

saw him that he was dying. He was breathing in stiff rasps from on oxygen tube under his

nose. I couldn’t say a thing, actually. I just went over to him and stood over him holding

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his hand for the longest time. He kept looking up at me and then let his eyes wander to

the TV. Then, he would look up at me and give me a tiny smile. Finally, he said,

‘Giovanni, you’re a good boy. Take care of your mother for me, will you?’ and I was

going to say something like ah, pop, you’ll be out of here in no time but I saw how stupid

that was going to sound and I decided not to patronize him by telling something he knew

wasn’t true. I just squeezed his hand and nodded in agreement. Then, he fell asleep and I

slipped away. I made it to the bus stop on Pelham Parkway in one piece but as soon as I

sat down on the bench I started bawling. I felt like such a shithead for giving him a hard

time for so many years. It was all a big joke to me, making fun of my father and his

crew-cut rah rah American horseshit. I always figured he never cared about me, what

with the way he used to dump on me and slap me around when I did something that

pissed him off. But he loved me, after all. I never saw him again. He died two days

later.’”

“Corigliano had been looking at the table top throughout this whole speech but

when he glanced up at Dede he was surprised to see that she had tears in her eyes. ‘You

miss him?’ She asked. ‘Yes, in a way,’ he said. ‘I never thought I would, either, but I do.

I guess being a father myself has given me a whole new perspective on this kind of

thing.’ ‘I bet Vera was great at helping you get through the grieving process. She seems

so intuitive about emotions.’ Corigliano made a noncommittal nod but said nothing. The

subject of his wife was another layer of his life that his better judgment told him to avoid

discussing with the attractive, tearful, sexually charged woman sitting across from him.

He must have known that she had brought up Vera on purpose to see how he would react

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to her name in the middle of their little tryst-in-the-making. Or, maybe he didn’t know.

Men can be clueless, especially when they are taking directions from their boxer shorts.

All he said was, ‘Perhaps we shouldn’t talk about her.’”

“That was exactly the reaction Dede had been hoping for. If he had gushed on an

on about how great Vera had been then she would have known it was time to back off but

his reluctance to get into the subject confirmed a suspicion she had long had that the

Corigliano’s marriage was not anything like the way they showed it off to the outside

world. Coming from her background, that insight would have been relatively

straightforward. She said, ‘Why not?’; ’I don’t know. I’m halfway across the world. I

don’t want to think about her right now.’ ; ‘Really? She’s such a cool woman I would love

to know more about her.’ ; ‘She is pretty, cool isn’t she? A lot of guys envy me for

having such an interesting, beautiful wife.’ ; ‘And…’ ; ‘What?’ ; ‘And, what is wrong

with her?’ ; ‘Nothing.’ ; ‘Oh, you are such a bad liar,’ she said. ‘You give me this whole

build up. I don’t want to talk about her. Not now, I ‘m away. What’s up with Vera? Spill

it!’. They both laughed but Corigliano knew he was caught. ‘She’s in love with someone

else,’ he said. ‘Has been for many years.’

“Now, Dede was just floored by this. She thought she was going to hear some

funny couple gossip about how Vera and Corigliano had this or that little problem, but his

statement was just so blunt and honest that she was struck speechless. Finally, she said,

‘Why are you still with her? That is, if she doesn’t love you.’ ; ‘She does love me,’ he

said. ‘She just loves someone else, too.’ ; ‘That’s very peculiar.’ ; ‘You got it. I should

have left ages ago, but I stayed on because of Lama, and also Vera and I do have

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something very special together.’; ‘And she never wanted to leave you?’ Dede asked,

shocked and embarrassed by how easily the deeply personal and not even vaguely

appropriate questions rolled off her tongue. ‘She would if she could,’ Corigliano said.

‘But she’s dead.’ ; ‘Vera’s dead?’ ; ‘No. Vera is very much alive. Sharon Kanefsky is

dead. She’s the one Vera loves – loved.’ ; ‘I don’t understand.’ ; ‘Man, it’s a very

complicated saga but basically, Sharon Kanefsky was a fringe member of the Weather

Underground. She was a lawyer from Berkley who was making a name for herself

defending people like Huey Newton at a time in the sixties when Vera was still in school.

They met at some rally and became close friends. They never consummated the

relationship sexually, but they were completely in love with each other. This was before

I even met Vera. I met her when she moved East, a move that was precipitated, I think,

by some kind of breaking point that came in their relationship. I never got the full story,

but I think that Sharon wanted Vera to move in and Vera, as in love as she was, still

couldn’t quite hop the fence and become gay. She panicked and split. Sharon was killed

in a shootout with the Oakland police in 1970. Our marriage was never the same after

her death.

“I’ll spare you the Cinemax after hours special,” Adam says as he folds up the

tinfoil from his meal. “Dede wanted to comfort him so badly, to expiate a whole year’s

worth of teasing, suggestion, idol worship and frustration in a thermonuclear meltdown of

fornication, but from what I gather from Una, the actual sex was not so great. Claus

never figured it out. He was out all night and when he came home he found her sleeping

in their bed and never suspected anything. He found out about it many years later.

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 I say, “I know that Corigliano and Dede slept together. I just didn’t know the

whole story.”

“How the hell did you know?”

“Long story,” I say with a wicked grin. “Very long story.”

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Cherry Pie

Back on the bench inside the Palacio, Adam plays at being annoyed with me for

not telling him how I knew that Dede and Corigliano had slept together, but I can tell that

he is actually amused. After all, he’s been stretching out his side of the story for days

now, so he’s granting me my revenge.

I remember little between the night of the aborted formal and the beginning of

senior year. I can recall getting sick all over my battle tux jacket, which I threw into a

trash can while staggering home and falling into bed. I remember waking up the next day

feeling as if I had a stake driven through my left ear and wanting desperately to throw up

but not being steady enough to get up off the bed.

When the hangover subsided, I showered, changed, and made my way out of the

dorm, my hair still wet, to the subway. At Eliot Square Station, I boarded an Amtrak train

for New York and set off to pay an unannounced visit on Sara, my high school girlfriend.

She was shocked to see me, but she was gracious about my sudden reappearance

in her life after three years of silence. I think half the reason I went down to see her was

a minimal expectation that she would at least be nice to me, something I could not find

among women at Beaton-Lowell. As I explained to Dr. Geddoff, I was at such a low

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point that it was worth two days on a train just to have her smile at me. And, that wish I

was granted.

I also wanted her back, and I could think of no other way to accomplish that goal

except just making myself present and asking. I suspected that she had a boyfriend. I

wasn’t that stupid, but I figured that with our history together, she would just have to say

yes to me.

We went for coffee and spent a pleasant hour or so in giggly reminiscence of high

school and summers spent at Playland and Rye Beach. She was so genuinely happy to

see me that I felt almost human. Ralph be damned. I was with a woman who liked me.

After a while, though, the surprise wore off and I caught her peaking furtively at her

watch.

Though the lull was only a few seconds, it caused me to gurgle a panicky “I love

you.” She didn’t respond. The continued lull, hanging heavily with my little gambit,

made me feel the wrath of Ralph as he descended back into my bones. What a glorious

mistake that trip was: Ralph in his purest, unadulterated whack me upside the head

Ralphishness, though interspersed with a sweetness that only Sara can summon. It was

such a marvelously stupid idea that, in memory, I can almost make it seem as if it was all

one big joke that I played on myself and let myself have a grand old chuckle. Almost.

“That is such a sweet thing to say,” Sara replied. I could tell she wanted to say

more but was trying to choose her words carefully. I said, “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to

drop that on you like that. I know we haven’t seen each other in a while and I’m sure

you’ve made a lot of new friends down here…” She cut me off with a wave of her hand.

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“Shh. It’s okay. Don’t apologize. You are one of the sweetest people I know. I am so

touched that could came to visit. You’re such a dear.” She looked as if she were about to

cry when a tall, sleek-looking fellow with creative dyed-blond sideburns and a goatee

strutted over to our table and lifted Sara right out her chair in a Tarzan-like embrace. The

boyfriend.

His name was Troy Lebowitz. He was a senior at Columbia, and I have to

confess, I didn’t hate him half as much as I thought I might have. The fact that Sara

conferred a sympathetic look on me when he showed up, a look that showed she

understood my potential jealousy amidst the overall awkwardness of the moment, stilled

the bilious Ralph that was boiling inside me.

Later, when the three of us had finished studying at the library, I began to see the

magnitude of my mistake. Aside from the fantasy that Sara would take me right into her

bed, I had not thought at all about where I would sleep, and it was far too late to get back

on a train to Eliot. In those days, a hotel was out of my budget. As we walked out of the

library, I realized that we were all headed back to the same place.

I slipped out of Sara’s room after the sounds of their lovemaking had subsided

into a quiet so deadening that every breath and heartbeat I heard in my head seemed to

taunt me. I didn’t even leave a note. I just split, and auto piloted to a nearby bar, where I

proceeded to drink until I had my first true blackout.

I found myself back at school, frightened that I had no concrete idea of how I had

gotten there. My wallet was in my pocket and my pants weren’t on backwards so I

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figured I must have had enough gumption to get down to the station and buy a train

ticket, but the experience left my nerves jangling for days.

The summer after junior year is also largely a blank spot. I know I was in Los

Angeles interning for Ed Stein, but I could not tell you where I lived – somewhere on

Sweetzer, I think - who I met, or what I did. I guess I made a good enough impression on

him to get hired when I graduated, but I could only conclude that my skill at being in one

place while my mind is in another came to my rescue.

Senior year proceeded in a time-lapse reality. Midterms arrived within what

seemed like days of my unpacking my stuff into a basement studio apartment in

Somerville that had uncovered fluorescent lighting fixtures and tiny slits for windows.

Free of distractions in that cave, I found that I could study for hours without needing to

take a rest. My grades soared as a result, but in those moments when I broke out of my

trance, I felt as if I could die down in that hole and no one would know until the smell

started to bother the neighbors.

Other than hanging around with Adam and Una and helping Duke make a senior

thesis film about teenage rappers in Ivoryton, I kept to myself and stayed away from the

film building where I might run into Jan. Yet, she spotted me once and came bounding

over to me as if I were her lost sheepdog and gave me a big, toothy, hello. Hey, I said.

How was your summer? Very cool. I got to travel through Sweden taking pictures of

coal miners. It’s going to be my thesis project. It is so great over there. I think I may

want to move back there when I graduate. Their society takes care of people. They love

people of all races and colors, not like here. Nice, I said. Sounds great. I charged off as if

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I had just remembered a forgotten appointment. I heard her ask, “Is everything okay?”,

but I just kept walking.

I began going out for drinks almost every night with my savior from the formal.

His name was Sedgewick, and he introduced me to single malt scotch, which I found

gave me the smallest possible hangover for the greatest potential drunkenness. Thus,

when the ringing phone tore me out of a deep boozy slumber, I thought it might be him

calling for me to spring him from one of our haunts by paying his bill.

After I croaked a garbled hello, I heard a woman start to say something about how

this whole situation was just so awful she didn’t know what to do, and then there were

sobs. I was about to say, “Who is this?” when I realized that it was Jan.

“Did I wake you up?”

“No.”

“I’m so sorry. I didn’t realize what time it was.” The clock read 2:34.

“It’s alright. You can talk to me,” I said, at once forgetting the legions of

resentments I had mustered toward her. She needed me, and it felt good.

“I just can’t believe this has happened,” she said, and started to cry again.

“What happened? Is it your father?”

“No, thank God. No, it’s something else. I’m sorry I bothered you. Go back to

sleep.” But she hung on the line and so did I. We were both silent for a longish moment,

after which she began to break down once more.

“You want me to come over?”

“No. You should go back to sleep”

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 “It’s no trouble.”

“It’s alright. I’ll be okay. I’m just glad you were there.” And then, “Do you know

where I live?”

“Uh, no” I lied. Her address was well-known to me, of course. I wanted to avoid

the place, though I often dared myself to games of “Jan Roulette,” which involved

walking by the door of her dorm just to see if I could spot her at a distance without her

seeing me. I had never lost.

She opened the door a crack to see who it was, afraid perhaps that someone other

than I would see her messy hair and red, puffy eyes. She was wearing a baggy sweat

shirt, jeans, and burgundy socks. After letting me in with a quick “hi,” she shut the door,

sat down on her bed and raised her knees up so she could rest her chin on them. She

looked so small and miserable that I felt a surge of love for her that knocked the Ralph

right out of me for that moment. I took a seat backwards on her desk chair and asked,

“Hey, are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” she said. “I just need to grow up a little bit.”

“You don’t look fine.”

“I’ve had a rough day.”

“Well,” I said. “You rang, and here I am. You can tell me if you want, or we can

just hang.” Wow, had I really say that? It sounded so cool, like I was always rushing off

to rescue upset women in the wee hours. Havelock, call me cuz I fix broken hearts. I’m

your handyman.

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 “You know I’m working with Dede on that project - the portrait of girls working

in the red light district, right? Well, we were doing okay through the fall, getting some

interesting interviews and footage, but lately I’ve been chafing with her unceasing

bossiness and superior attitude. It’s like, who the hell are you to tell me what to do all the

time? It came to a head today. There’s this girl named Cherry Pie – I know, what a

name, right? Well, it’s not the name her parents gave her, believe me. Her real name is

Anne-Marie something. She’s very young, maybe seventeen if that – a stripper in the

District, but Dede and I are both pretty sure she does a lot of freelancing, if you know

what I mean. She’s been a very compelling subject because her story is very poignant –

raped by her stepfather at ten, out on the streets at twelve. A very tough life. And, she

speaks very well, especially considering that she stopped going to school in the sixth

grade.

“Anyway, Dede wanted to film Cherry Pie while she practiced her routine in the

nude. I, of course, vehemently disagreed. That would be more exploitation, more

titillation. Why not let the poor girl have a little dignity while she tells her story? Dede

said it was Cherry Pie’s idea and she just wants to honor the request. I’m like, Dede, you

have to help this chick rise above the shit she lives in. She’s been victimized for years

and she doesn’t know any better. She thinks our movie is going to help her get into acting

or porno films or some crap like that so she wants to show off what she’s got for the

camera. She doesn’t understand what it means to make a student documentary despite our

attempts to explain it. She thinks she’s on Star Search.

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 “Dede said, ‘Fine, I’ll do it without you. Claus will help me.’ Well, you could

predict how that would go. She pulled the plug after Claus started giving Cherry Pie a

backrub and whispering little dirty jokes in her ear while Dede was setting up the gear. I

think they haven’t spoken to each other in days. Meanwhile, I was furious that Dede had

gone off and done something on a project that we’re supposed to be sharing equally. We

had it out today, and she wouldn’t budge from her position. She just kept saying that it

was the right way to approach the scene, that it would be genius if we could make the

audience empathize with Cherry Pie while simultaneously getting turned on by her. She

wanted to force the audience to confront its ambivalence about workers in the sex

industry. I said exploitation was exploitation and as far as I was concerned, she was just

yet another pimp in Cherry Pie’s life.

“As soon as I said that I took it back. I felt awful. Dede was so angry with me, she

could barely speak. She just stared at me with this look of true contempt, it made me

want to run and hide. I suggested a face-saving way to work it out: Maybe we would

could review the whole situation with Corigliano. He wasn’t our thesis advisor, so I

thought he might be able to give us some objective feedback on our approach. Dede just

gave me this catty look and said, ‘I don’t feel like it. I don’t think he can be honest with

me any more.’ Why? I asked. ‘Because,’ she said. ‘I really showed him who was boss

when we screwed in Managua.’”

And then, Jan started to cry again, so I got up from the seat and sat down next to

her on the bed. She said, “I can’t believe she did that?” in a quavering voice. “Didn’t she

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know that I loved him, too? Maybe that was why she said it, just to make me feel like

dirt.”

I got up, sat down next to her on the bed, and hugged her lightly, saying, “I’m

sure she said it just to hurt you. That’s so her.”

“I always thought he loved me better,” Jan said, a wistful declaration. I could feel

the words as she said them, vibrating through her bony ribs like a cat’s growl. Neither of

us said anything for a bit, but then my arm began to fall asleep. I hugged her a little

tighter and gave her a little kiss on the top of her head. Not even a kiss, really. A gentle

pressing of the lips against the part in her hair was all it was. I meant it as a gesture of

reassurance, but wriggled away from me uncomfortably. “Please don’t touch me.”

“Sorry, I didn’t mean it like that…”

“Can we be clear on something? I called you because I consider you a friend.

Nothing more.”

“Yes, yes,” I said. “I know. I’m sorry if you got the wrong idea. I was just trying

to be supportive.”

“Sexual aggression doesn’t make me feel supported. God, why is it that men

think that all good in the world flows out of the tip of their dicks?”

“I guess I better leave.”

“Yeah, I would appreciate that.”

“I am sorry,” I said again, but she just shrugged her shoulders as I put my coat

back on and backed out of the door. I never spoke to her again.

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 “Do you want to know how I knew?” I ask Adam. He nods. “You want to take a

guess?” No, “Jan told me.”

“Of course,” he says. “That makes sense, except I didn’t realize you were seeing

much of her senior year.”

“I only saw her once, and it was the time she told me. Dede had just blasted her

with it and she was a mess, so she called me up in the middle of the night, hysterical.”

“After what she did to you? What a bitch,” he says. “Where was I? I thought I

knew everything.”

“We were all looking for jobs, remember? We had to get our asses out of school

and go to work. You were in Washington every other weekend.”

“True, you know how licking the Senator’s boots was a requirement for getting

the job. Una was back and forth to New York, too, looking for that perfect follow-up to a

brilliant college career: Writing about zit cream for fourteen-year old girls. We were

already beginning the dress rehearsals for the fights we would have as a Metroliner-

couple. Funny, but it was only when we actually moved in together in New York that

things went to shit completely. You were Mr. Hollywood, sucking up your dad’s frequent

flier miles to get out to La La Land. Claus was trying to become a photojournalist and

Dede was set on being the documentary film world’s next Norman Mailer meets

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.

“You really think she’s that good?”

“No, that’s just my riff on Beaton-Lowell career planning. We all had three

options: Norman Mailer, Mozart, or Willy Loman. If you weren’t going to become a

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transcendent genius who redefined the art form, then you just had to resign yourself to a

life of bitter desperation and do everyone a big favor and put your mouth on the exhaust

pipe. It never occurred to any of us that we might have fulfilling lives without winning

the Nobel Prize. Of course, a lot of people we knew wasted years, and are still wasting

them, probably, trying to think outside the box. What’s so goddamned wrong with the

box? What the hell is the box anyway?

“But now I understand something I never did before. When Jan quit working

with Dede, I always figured it was just a personality conflict. When Dede changed the

point of the film from neutral and objective to personal and subjective – about how it was

such a terrible experience for her, the daughter of wealthy lawyers, the valedictorian

cheerleader lacrosse player, All-American girl who got whatever she wanted, to get into

the lives of these poor girls who had been sucking off strangers in dark rooms since they

were thirteen years old – I assumed that Jan had bolted the project because she did not

agree with that approach. Now I know that it was jealousy and resentment.”

My last connection with Dede prior to seeing her in New York two days ago had

also involved Cherry Pie. For a brief moment, I had basked in the glow of her

admiration. I knew, for one instant at least, that I mattered, that I was more than the

detestable bourgeois white male breaker of little Ron Brown’s neck. I was part of the

solution, not part of the problem. As Adam described my stint at the top, using Professor

Li’s term, I temporarily had the power and prestige of “High officials’ children.”

With Jan gone and Claus off limits because of his propensity to flirt with the

subjects, Dede turned to me for help her with a film shoot. The flattery of being

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acknowledged, at the very least, for technical competence, helped elevate me from the

deep humiliation I felt from the late night debacle in Jan’s room. When she first

approached me, I thought I should refuse out of principle after what had happened the

previous Spring at the Formal. Yet, though I tried to feel angry about it, I had to

reluctantly accept my role in the fiasco even in those pre-Dr. Geddoff times

I lugged the gear on the subway down to the Red Light District where we trod up

a dark staircase in a crumbling apartment building to interview the young stripper, Cherry

Pie. It looked like a no show. After ringing the bell and knocking on the door without

getting any answer, I pushed on the door and found that it was not locked. Cherry Pie

was on her bed, drunk in a satin nightgown riding up to her crotch. Half of her face was

bruised and swollen.

As a former lifeguard, my first thought was to call an ambulance, but Cherry Pie,

who had one of the all time great West Eliot accents, told us, “Calm the fuck down. ain’t

no big deal.” Dede urged her to file a police report, but again the girl wouldn’t hear of it.

“Frankie got a little out of hand is all. Big fucking deal. Fuck me dead, if I called the cops

every time he hit me, I wouldn’t have no time to do nothing else.” Dede asked her if she

was sure that she wanted to be interviewed, and Cherry Pie said yes, she wanted to go

through with it and do it now because she had to go to work soon.

“You’re going to go to work looking like that?” Dede asked.

“Yeah, you got a problem with that?”

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 “No. I mean, it’s not my call,” Dede replied, trying too hard to mute any trace of

perceived social superiority. “I’m just surprised that they let you dance with a face that’s

such a mess.”

“Honey, they aren’t looking at my face, if you know what I mean,” said Cherry

Pie. “I’ll throw on some makeup and none of those fucking hard-ons will know the

difference in that light.” She lit a cigarette and added, “I just shouldn’t be giving any head

tonight, because my jaw hurts.”

I almost laughed out loud when I heard that, but fearing social suicide even in

those final weeks of the school year, I bit the inside of my mouth to stop myself. Cherry

Pie laughed at her own joke, though. Hers was a coarse, smoker’s laugh that reminded

me of my aunt Marabel sucking on Pall Malls in Pompano Beach.

When Dede asked me if I could take a few stills while she set up the lights. I went

at the task eagerly, hoping that if one of my stills made it into her film, I would get a

screen credit, and that could give me some infinitesimal advantage in getting laid, or at

least that was my fantasy. A filthy, gentle daylight trickled into the room through torn

lace curtains, an accidentally great illumination effect that would have taken hours to

create in a studio. As I watched Dede take light readings through the viewfinder, I saw

that she was standing over Cherry Pie in a way that emphasized both of their profiles

beautifully in the light of the window. And, just as I was about to click off a shot of Dede

doing a light reading, I saw her put the light meter down and give Cherry Pie a look of

true empathy. The two women looked at each other with an understanding that

transcended the obvious differences between them. The teenaged stripper who hustled for

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tips in dark corners and the soon-to-be summa graduate who was going to use this film

about prostitutes to launch her film career, were connected for a single instant. I pressed

the button.

The photo, if I may shed some of my usual self-deprecation, was a masterpiece. I

caught just the exact moment when the two women exchanged those private, vulnerable

looks. They were perfectly back-lit in a smoky haze which gave each of them a ghostly

aura, but enough soft light bounced back from the white walls of the room to give each of

their faces good definition. If I had hesitated for even a second, Dede would have looked

away as she fussed with the lights and Cherry Pie would have taken another drag off her

cigarette and lost the expression on her face: an expression that admitted for a fraction of

an instant that she was not a tough-talking hooker who was above it all, but a child in

agony. The image was composed like a classic Madonna and Child, with Dede looking

down on Cherry Pie like a loving mother. And Cherry Pie, with cigarette smoke trickling

out of those bruised lips, her hair an angry tangle, looking up at Dede with that fleeting

openness, made it a picture that more than one person said begged them to keep looking

while they felt they should look away.

Dede liked it so much that she actually made it the poster for the film. Because

she interspersed her final cut with long sections of herself speaking dead-on into the

camera about how guilty she felt being the daughter of a wealthy lawyer filming women

who were the same age as her who would never get to go to college, she felt my image

captured the essential tension she was trying to express in the film.

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 I even got credit on that poster, a fact that gave me a slice of visibility on the night

of the screening, but it never got me laid. A few women did come up to me at the

screening party and tell me that they thought I had taken a fabulous photo. I was very

polite and said thank you, basking in the warmth of Dede Teatham’s expansive clout.

The party eventually dissolved, though, and I went home alone.

A few nights later, I actually dared to sit at Dede’s table unaccompanied by Adam,

opposite one of the women who had complimented my photo at the screening. She didn’t

seem to remember who I was, or she didn’t want to. After a perfunctory hello, she turned

and talked to the guy sitting next to me for the rest of the meal. Dede was engrossed in a

discussion about gender role modeling among the Amish and did not acknowledge

anyone else at her table. No one else spoke to me. I ate in silence until they all got up

and left without saying goodbye.

I made my own exit without saying goodbye, too. Ed Stein’s office called to say

they wanted me in Los Angeles, so Ralph and I got on the first flight available after

exams and skipped graduation. We have never been back.

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The Print Nazi

An impeccably dressed twenty-something Peruvian bureaucrat with slicked back

hair walks up to us and says, “Gentlemen, your car is ready, if you will follow me.” The

ride to the morgue is half a mile, so we wonder why they didn’t just tell us to walk, but

Adam points out that the people we are dealing with may think that we are bigwigs with

State Department connections so they want to make sure we travel in style. Possible, I

say, but if that were the case, why have they made us wait all day in the lobby? Adam

shrugs.

We are greeted at the morgue by an older woman arrayed in an outfit that

explodes with jungle colors. She introduces herself as Dr. Pineda, but we instantly

nickname her Frida. After making introductions, she leads us to a completely bare

waiting room, asks us if we would like coffee, which we decline, and disappears.

Adam and I share a look. More waiting? The room is a windowless cinder-block

vault, empty save for a few metal chairs. We sit down and sink into a dull silence, the

room creating a vacuum that seems to suck us both in. This is what prison must be like, I

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think. There is no time in a room like this. You don’t know if you’re sitting for an hour,

a day, or a week. Perhaps that is the point. The people who sit in this room have grim

work to do and maybe Dr. Pineda is smart to avoid any fake attempts to make it cheery.

As if reading my mind, Adam says, “This is the moment I have not been looking

forward to.”

“Seeing the body?”

“No, not the body,” Adam says. “His body. Claus. He was a real live person and

we knew him. Don’t worry. I’ll do the ID. You can stay in here.

“No, let’s both do it. I feel as if I owe it to Claus.”

“You don’t owe him dick and neither do I, really, though sometimes I feel as if I

am partially responsible for his being here.”

“How could that possibly be true?” I ask.

“Long story,” he says.

“Could you just cut the shit, Adam?” I hear myself say, surprised and a little

embarrassed at how edgy my voice has become without warning. “Just tell me what

happened. Begin at the beginning and tell me.”

Instead of being irritated, though, Adam just says, “Alright. I suppose we have

nothing else to do in this room and we might be here all night. I told you about the

summer of love in Nicaragua. Senior year Dede and Claus were the ultimate in cool,

Beaton-Lowell’s total alpha couple. But, in reality, and we see this early on, Claus and

Dede were basically allergic to each other and made each other insane, a situation so

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desperate that they would be forced to have kamikaze sex and make up until the next

explosion.

“By the end of senior year, they had both seen, and chosen to ignore, the first

indication that the relationship was bound for disaster. We were all hanging at Dede’s

table at lunch – me, Una, Dede, Claus, and a couple of other people whose names I don’t

remember. There was a lull in the conversation, so Dede said, ‘Anyone want to place any

bets about what’s in this envelope?’ She pulled a Ford Foundation letter out of her pocket

and waved it around for everyone to see. Everyone said, ‘Go for it,’ so she slit the thing

open and pulled out a letter. She read for a second and then screamed, ‘Yes! Yes! They

want me! They want to fund my AIDS film’ and got up and ran around the table doing a

little touchdown jig. Oh, my God, if you could have seen the look on Claus’ face. It was

genuinely painful. I mean, even I felt bad for him. Everyone knew that he was trying to

get a job at the New York Times but, of course, he wasn’t getting anywhere. You don’t

just get on staff as a photographer at The Times straight out of college. And, he didn’t

want to go live in Boise or Des Moines and pay some dues as a newspaper photographer

the way all mere mortals do it. He wanted to be in New York with Dede doing big things.

Or, at the very least, he figured they would both toil together in obscurity until they

produced works of staggering greatness. Uh-oh… Dede was going to be able to make a

real documentary with real money from the Ford Foundation while he was going to be

doing the toiling all alone.

“He said all the right things, but they were on a collision course. A day or two

later, they were lying in bed on a Sunday morning, sweaty and spent from their daily

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wakeup fuck when Claus started to hold forth on the kinds of photojournalistic projects

he wants to do when they get to New York in the summer. He was going to do a portrait

of Times Square at night. He was going to ride with some cops on patrol. He was going to

check out the rotting piers on 14th Street and record the life that goes on in the shadows.

She muttered, ‘That’s great’ or something and got up to go into the shower. Before she

reached the bathroom door, he said, ‘Thanks for your inspiring words.’ She said, ‘Excuse

me?’; ‘I said thanks for your inspiring words of confidence. I feel so empowered to go

out and create great photojournalism now. I appreciate it.’; ‘Whatever,’ she said, and

started taking her shower. He ripped the shower curtain open and turned the water ice

cold. ‘What is your fucking problem today, Claus?’; ‘Nothing. I just feel as if you don’t

care about what I do after we graduate.’; ‘Oh, please. What do you want me to do, give

you a blowjob for having a grand vision?’; ‘You could try being encouraging.’; ‘You

know what?’ she said. ‘You could try the same.’; ‘What are you talking about?’; ‘Claus,

you’ve commented on my Ford grant exactly twice since I heard about it. How do you

think that makes me feel?’; ‘Well, you’re the big foundation guru now, you tell me how

you feel.’; ‘Leave me alone,’ she said, and closed the shower curtain. I, of course, love

the idea of Dede being wet, naked and pissed off. Add a rubber mini-skirt and a bullwhip

and you’ve got a helluva picture.

“They patched it up with their usual humpa humpa routine, but their smooth,

‘We’re the best and you’re not’ act was damaged ever so slightly, like a sweater that has

lost one stitch. Their first few months in New York were a trendy phantasmagoria,

meeting loads of talented, cool people, going to hipper than hip parties, film screenings,

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and happenings and fixing up a large studio apartment near the Bowery with lots of

1950’s furniture and ironic knickknacks they found at little street sales. Dede started

temping to make a little money and spent a lot of time with her AIDS film, lining up

subjects and finding a cinematographer and sound recordist. Claus got a day job working

as a cashier at Verichrome, a high end pro lab in Chelsea, but he spent most of his waking

hours stalking the city in his camera vest trying to grab the image that he hoped would

propel him to the top of the list at number of agencies that he harassed on a regular basis.

“But, reality has an unfortunate way of bitch-slapping even the most prepared of

us, and those two’s egos made them quite unaware of the impending ordinariness of day

to day life after the structure of school was removed. In the winter, on one of those

nights when it got dark earlier than you expect it to and the gloominess of the city kind of

settles into your bones, Claus had an epiphany: He was going nowhere. At least, that

was his take on it. Six months after graduation he probably figured he’d be shooting

Newsweek covers. Instead, he was spending his days at a stupid job whose only benefit

was the discount he could get on film and processing. The problem, I think, was a lack of

feedback. At school, there was always a doting professor or gaggle of students to ooh

and aah over his work. In the city, he had Dede, who would always take time to tell him

that she thought his work was magnificent and on and on, but he began to feel as if he

could not trust her. Was she just saying it so he wouldn’t feel bad about her success and

his lack of it, or did she really like his work? He had a crisis of self-confidence, which

for Claus was about was normal as Antarctica deciding it finally wants to become part of

Africa.

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 “He took to calling his mother every couple of days and listening to her say that

that he was a wonderful artist and the world was a better place for his being in it. The

calls helped, but when he got off the phone he still felt empty. He could not admit, even

to her, that he feared he was going to be a nothing, a loser, a worthless speck of dust on

the streets of New York.

“He shot less and less and started moping around the apartment after work

reading trashy science fiction novels. They didn’t own a TV on principle but if they had

had one he probably would have zoned out in front of that. Dede noticed but didn’t say

anything because she wanted to give him a little space. When she saw the phone bill,

though, the shit hit the fan. It’s hard to ignore someone in a one-room apartment, but on

the night she saw the phone bill, Claus got the distinct feeling that she was working hard

to avoid talking to him. He knew what was going on. He had seen the bill first and left it

on the mail pile as if it were no big deal, as if it would just go away if he didn’t pay

attention to it. ‘Claus,’ she finally said ‘How do you plan to come up with three hundred

twenty four dollars that we don’t have?’; ‘I’ll work some extra shifts at the lab. They

always need someone for the weekend.’; ‘What about us? I like to see you once in a

while, and what about your work?’; ‘I’ll get back to it once I’ve paid the phone bill.’;

‘But maybe you won’t. What then?’; ‘Well, that would be my problem and not yours,

right?’; ‘Claus, your problems are my problems. That’s what it means to be in a

relationship.’; ‘If we asked your parents for some dough this wouldn’t be an issue.’; ‘You

know I don’t want to do that. Why do you keep bringing it up?’; ‘Because they have

more than they need and we have less than we need.’; ‘I want to make it on my own.

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Can’t you respect that?’; ‘You’re way too late for that, honey. You’ve been propelled to

the place you are by their blood money. The least you can do now is to use it for good.

Support the quest for the truth in photojournalism and photography.’ ; ‘Are you saying

that I only got where I am because of my parents’ money?’ ; ‘No, but you have to admit,

it certainly helped.’; ‘Thanks, Claus. I really appreciate your frank appraisal of my talents

and abilities.’

“And then, they just stopped talking about it. Ever done that? Been in a fight with

a girlfriend and you both decide to shut up because you just don’t feel like ripping each

other’s heads off?” No, I think, I’ve never gotten that close to anyone except maybe

Violet and we don’t fight. If she’s not happy with me she yells until she’s gotten it out of

her system. If I’m not happy with her I avoid her. “But, that calmness, that fake sense of

serenity that came with their mutual disgust with each other at that moment, inaugurated

the true decline of their relationship.”

“And then, in a move that Dede should have known to avoid, she tried to make

Claus feel better by agreeing to his suggestion that he become involved in her AIDS film.

That lasted precisely one day. One day of trying to pretend she was listening to his

imperious creative dictums but resenting every second of it. Finally, she told him that it

was her movie and she would prefer it if he could leave her alone.

“He acted as if it was no big deal, but he was beyond livid, so he reached out for

the first thing he could find. He cheated on her for the first time that same night. I know

it’s hard to believe, but he had been completely faithful for two years. Yes, he was a big

flirt and it made her nuts, but he had been all talk and no touch. That night, though, he

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couldn’t restrain himself - doing the punk-rocker shipping clerk in her torn up stockings

on the counter in one of the film developing darkrooms. But, instead of making him feel

better, the way a stunt like that might have in the past, it just plunged him into total

despondency.

“The lab manager got on his case the next day because some customer had

complained that he had to wait for a long time for service – the customer not knowing

that the cashier was fucking the shipping chick behind the wall where he stood. The

manager basically said ‘Shape up or ship out. This is your final warning.’ Claus, though,

never embraced the fact that when you work as a cashier for ten bucks an hour you have

to do what people tell you. He knew, of course, that he was supposed to. He wasn’t a

moron, but he just could not quite get himself to believe in it all. He felt he was

underpaid for the skills he brought to the job, a view that they did not hold. Claus had

been doing his own quality checks on the print orders. After the darkroom guys would

look over the prints and sign them off for delivery to the customer, Claus would do his

own, unofficial, unsolicited quality check. He would send prints back to the lab, ordering

them to be redone if he didn’t like the color or even if he felt the client – the client mind

you – had done a poor job of cropping. You can imagine that the darkroom guys loved

him. They actually called him the Print Nazi behind his back. ‘Vee have vays of making

you lose that cyan…’ It was as if he felt the photography world just needed a big, Claus-

style wake up call so that they could finally start respecting images the way he saw them.

Needless to say, this was not a big hit with some of their clients. I mean, this lab was

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doing work for Helmut Newton, Jay Meisel, Avedon, you name it. The big leagues. And

here was this arrogant kid telling them how to crop their photos. I don’t think so.

“The day they canned him, he came home to, ‘You’re irresponsible.’; ’All you

care about is money.’; That’s not fair. I’m just trying to be an adult.’; ’Being an adult is

about doing something to improve this shithole of a planet that we have ruined.’; ’Well,

we can’t do that if we have to live in a refrigerator box under the Westside Highway.’;

’I’ll do it even if I have to live in the gutter, because I care.’; ’That is so unfair.’; ’Ask

those bourgeois parasite parents of yours for money.’; ’No, for the hundredth time. No.

that would make everything we are doing here meaningless.’; ’Come on. You’re daddy’s

little girl. Put on a mini-skirt, sit on his lap and ask from some bread.’; ’Get out.’

“He shacked up temporarily with the shipping chick, but she made it clear that it

was a temporary posting for him. She liked him, liked the sex and all, but she could tell

that he was basically using her and she didn’t want to crowd her life, or her tiny

apartment where they have to step sideways to avoid bumping into each other when they

walk around. He was cool with it, too. Knew it a short-term setup but he was grateful

and he laid on a lot of love and attention, so much so that she almost changed her mind

and let him move in but not quite. It was from that apartment that Claus called, of all

people, me.

“When he called me, I knew he must have hit some kind of wall. He and I were

always friendly, but he never just called me on a whim to shoot the shit. He wanted

something, but he didn’t actually say it. I heard it, though. He needed a gig and he was

checking to see if I knew anyone who could help him out. At first, I couldn’t think of

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anyone. After all, he was the one in New York rubbing up against all the big shots. By

the end of the call, however, I had offered to let him tag along with the senator when we

would be in New York a few weeks later.

“I told the senator that I had found a photographer who would help us get some

‘action shots’ for his campaign fliers for free. When Claus showed up with all his gear,

the senator gave him that big dung-swilling smile of his, shook his hand and gripped

Claus’ arm so hard that he left a line of finger-shaped bruises while saying, ‘Nice to meet

you. I trust you understand, young man, that anything you hear today is off the record and

may not be reported to any news organization. Do we have a deal on that?’ And Claus

just gave him back an equally sleazy smile and said yes, of course.

“And then… Claus was such a complete prick on the photo shoot that you cannot

even begin to imagine. He was bossing the senator around, actually yelling at him to stop

smiling. He wanted the senator to look serious, like the powerful man he was. He kept

saying, ‘This is not the yearbook. This is art,’ but the senator eventually said, ‘No son,

this is over,’ and he stomped off to the limo with me running to catch up and flagellate

myself for setting up such a disaster.

“It was a good day for Claus, though. Somehow in all the fuss he had managed to

grab a shot of the senator that was just evil. The senator was kneeling down to a say

hello to a black kid at a kindergarten in Harlem, but Claus framed it so that a poster on

the wall that said, ‘Cigarettes Kill’ was positioned just over the kid’s head. He also put

the detachable flash on the floor, lighting the senator’s face and making him look like

Beelzebub. The picture made the senator look like a racist ghoul who wanted to drink the

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blood of young kids. I remember watching him put the flash on the floor and wondering

what the hell he was doing. He was a fucking genius about stuff like that. He

transformed what should have been a fluff shot for a campaign brochure to a searing

political indictment. The senator had gotten some tobacco money like everyone else, but

for some reason he had been coming under fire for it recently because he was on the

committee that reviewed insurance and healthcare bills and it looked like a conflict of

interest. Plus, it was a little jab at Dede’s dad.

“The photo was the perfect image at the perfect moment. It was in the New York

Times the next day, which almost cost me my job. The senator was in a purple-faced rage

for days. He had to give the tobacco money back, which was politically costly for him,

and then there was a whole round of humiliating press conferences. I took an impromptu

vacation to get out of sight. Anyway, though, that shot made Claus. With that image in

his book, he began to get assignments. Photo editors took his calls, and he was off.

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Alternative Sources

Adam checks his watch and says, “This is getting ridiculous. Pretty soon they’re

going to tell us to come back tomorrow.”

“No way.”

“Oh, you better believe it. Come back tomorrow and maybe they’ll see us then or

maybe not. Or maybe they’ll drive us somewhere else. Then, if we get fed up and leave

they can always say they did their part. They might not even have the body at all. This

could all be one big bluff.”

“Well, we’ll just have to say until they follow through.”

“What if it takes weeks?”

“I guess we’ll just have to stay, then, right?”

“You want to hang out in this room for a week?”

“No, but we came all the way down here so I think we should stay put.”

“Okay. We’ll stay put for today. I’ll tell you what. If nothing happens, we’ll make

a gentle complaint tomorrow.” We are sitting next to each other so I can’t see his face,

but I can tell that his mind has wandered because there is a long pause, followed by, “I

think it is fair to say that my true collapse began the last time I ever saw Dede, Claus and

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Corigliano together in one place. Dede and Claus, who had long since reconciled, threw

a dinner party at the new, big loft in Tribeca in honor of the New York screening of

Corigliano’s latest film, which was a backstage slice of life at the Newport Jazz Festival.

I was still in DC, but was already job hunting in New York. Una said she wanted me in

New York and I figured it was time for us to live in the same city. Little did we know

that things worked a lot better when we had a few hundred miles separating us during the

week. I was burned out on Washington, regardless, tired of pretending the Senator wasn’t

an amoral asshole, tired of trying to be pro-America all the time when in fact this country

was starting to make me want to puke, tired of kissing ass, tired of feeling like I had to

shut up in the presence of my ‘betters’ – The Senator, Corigliano, Dede, Claus. You

know how I hate keeping my mouth shut.

“It was late in the summer of 1994. The whole OJ thing was starting and we had

just learned about the genocide in Rwanda. It was so hot that Claus and I sat on the fire

escape and drank beers to get out of the heat from the kitchen where Dede and Una were

making some kind of vegetarian casserole with yams and leeks and a lot of other crap I

usually don’t eat. He was wearing a sleeveless undershirt and jeans that made him look

like Otto Von Bismarck does Stanley Kowalski. Something was off about him. He had

put on a few pounds and his posture seemed a little slouched. The ebullience was gone.

“He thought I was still sore about the whole thing with the Senator, but that had

been years earlier and I had long since given it up. He didn’t seem all that talkative,

though, so we sat there in the heat nursing our beers and looking at the traffic on Hudson

Street in relative silence until I lobbed him a small talky little question about his work.

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He launched into an embarrassingly long answer that described, in my mind, that he was

enjoying some success as a photojournalist, but that real success had eluded him.

Ironically, it was only after his death that he was so widely celebrated as the greatest eye

of his generation. The reality was that he was actually doing very well by any reasonable

standard. Photojournalism is a field where many people never make it at all, or hang on

at the fringes barely surviving. Claus worked regularly, though I don’t think he was

making anywhere near as much money as Dede, who was by that time transitioning into

network production. She was on a roll, producing several noteworthy films, one of which

had received a Christopher Award. And also, I heard, he was getting a reputation as a pain

in the ass with the photo editors. No big surprise there, given his temperament, but he

was sabotaging himself and blaming them for the fact that he had not won a Pulitzer prize

by the age of twenty-eight. He had already been excommunicated by US News and

World Report for his endless badgering of their staff about cropping and layout choices.

“The temperature in the apartment must have been a hundred by the time we sat

down for dinner. Those old buildings have awful ventilation. I was wiping sweat off my

forehead with their linen table napkins, which earned me a few dirty looks from Una but I

thought, what the fuck, it’s hot in here. At least Dede had made gazpacho to cool us off.

I was chugging iced tea. They finally broke down and turned on the AC.

“After the obligatory lavishing of praise on Corigliano for the latest addition to

his oeuvre, which I pretended I had seen, Claus said, ‘Una, I like what you’ve done with

your hair.’ She looked down, blushed like a goddamned eighth grader being asked to go

to the Dairy Queen by a high school boy and said, ‘Thanks’ in this shy, tinny kind of

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voice that I had never heard her use before. ‘It frames your face beautifully,’ Claus went

on. Again, Una blushed and giggled. He was sitting right across from her so when she

looked up, he was staring straight at her. When their eyes connected, he raised his

eyebrow in a suggestive twist, prompting her to break out into giggles once again. I said,

‘I told you I liked your haircut, too, didn’t I?’; ‘Yes. You did and you were very sweet

about it,’ she said, but I didn’t get the little girl giggle.

“Vera Corigliano said, ‘I hear you write fashion pieces. Do I have you to blame

for my niece who is starving herself to death to fit into a size one?’ Before Una could

respond, Dede said, ‘Una and I have agreed to disagree on the subject of her work. We

know her heart is in the right place, but sometimes it pains me to see her sell herself out

like that for a magazine owned by white men who push anorexic beauty ideals onto naïve

young girls.’ ‘Well,’ Una said. ‘To be honest, I think most of my writing is so innocuous

that I can’t imagine that it’s having that much of an influence.’ ‘No,’ Claus said. ‘Even

your fashion writing has style and wit.’ He’s trying to get into her pants, I thought. I had

dismissed the hair compliment as typical Claus flirtation but the gushy praise for her

Cosmo and Sassy ‘How to wear tight jeans without looking like a slut’ articles was just

too much for me. And again, there was that stupid blush and giggle.

“Corigliano said, ‘Did you ever think of trying to offer fashion advice that would

make girls feel good about their bodies?’ She replied with, ‘Well, I try never to praise any

look that only works on extremely thin girls, and I am always bugging the photo editor to

include pictures of girls who actually have hips.’ ; ‘Hey, that’s cool,’ he said. ‘I just get

so pissed off at these media conglomerates that are turning our kids into marketing

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drones. Vera and I used to have a horrible time with our son – he always wanted to buy

the shirts and pants that had the big label on the outside, or the logo on the front. You

know, the Nike swoosh. That kind of thing. We used to say to him, ‘Why do you want to

pay more to wear someone else’s logo on your shirt. Are they paying you to advertise

their product? Are you so insecure that you think you need to show your fashion loyalties

publicly so people will like you?’ ; ‘No, it’s not like that, he used to say. It’s just the cool

thing to have clothes like that.’ ; Vera used to tell him, ‘No, the cool thing is to be your

own person, to be creative and make a difference in the world. The cool thing is to wear

clothes that you like, not ones that everyone else says you should wear.’ Finally, when he

was at college, he got it. But really, this society turns its kids into billboards. It’s sick, and

it goes hand in hand with the mind-numbing social and political apathy of this young

generation. These kids are more worried about owning the latest Nirvana CD than people

being killed in Rwanda. I hate to say it, but I was actually proud of the US Army, if you

can believe it. I mean, I hate those pigs, but who else can fly fifty cargo planes to the

middle of Africa with food, medicine, and water purification machines with one day’s

notice. No one can do that except us. It was beautiful, actually, to see the machines of

war used for peace.

“’Very cool,’ Claus said. ‘That’s an image I wished I could have caught on film.’

Dede immediately said, ‘Well, nobody’s stopping you. Go and do it.’ He replied, coldly,

‘Perhaps I will, my love. You’ll feed my cat when I’m gone, right?’ ; ‘It would be my

pleasure.’ Followed by uncomfortable silence, which I broke by asking, ‘What’s Lama

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up to these days anyway. He must be, what, twenty-five by now?’ ; ‘ Twenty-seven,’ Vera

said. ‘He works for the anti-landmine movement in Vermont.

“I said, ‘Well, he’s not apathetic, is he?’ ; ‘No,’ Corigliano said. ‘He’s a good kid

doing the right thing. But I’ll tell you, the students now, forget about it. I thought you

guys had no social or political consciousness but at least you had heard of the sixties and

the Vietnam War. The kids in my class this year, if I ask them something about politics

they just look at me as if I were nuts. They’re like, ‘What, are you talking to us?’

“’I don’t know what you expect,’ I said. ‘Those kids were raised on Reagan,

Bush, and now, Clinton, who isn’t a hell of a lot better. Where are the great leaders they

are supposed to have been looking up to all these years?’ ; ‘Hey, if you don’t have the

leaders, be the leaders. That’s what I say. Be a leader, not a follower. A person should be

all the more motivated to seek greatness having grown up under the oppression of Reagan

and Bush. You have to take the initiative.’; ‘Right,’ Claus said. ‘Like Una here. She’s

writing a piece on environmental racism. One day I am hoping she will explain to me

exactly what that is.’; ‘Una just said, ‘It’s my side thing and it’s taking forever.’ ; Claus

said, ‘Well, good work takes time.’ ; I jumped in with, ‘Environmental racism is a new

term for any situation where pollution is directed to a geographic area populated by

minorities who lack the political clout to block it.’ Una jabbed me in the ribs and said,

‘Adam, it’s my article. Is it alright with you if I talk about it?’; ‘Of course, sweet one,’ I

said, the use of her pet name drawing a toxic glare. She then proceeded to explain, to

Claus exclusively, it seemed, the entire nature of environmental racism – about how there

were communities in Mississippi that were living with levels of sulfur dioxide more than

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ten times the EPA limit because of coal-fired power plants that had been forced on them

by big utilities that could not get permits anywhere else.

“’Corporate fascists,’ Claus said. ‘I’d love to see those fat cats breathing in that

toxic gas.’ When Una winked at him in response, I had had enough. ‘Okay, Claus,” I

said. ‘I hear you on that. But, tell me: Where would you put the power plant? If you

owned the power company, what would you do?’ ; ‘I wouldn’t. I would invest in solar

power.’ ; ‘Is that for the twenty days a year when it isn’t raining or cloudy in

Mississippi?’ ; ‘You know what I mean. Alternative sources of energy. Geothermal,

tidal.’ ; ‘So, you want everyone to go without power for ten years while those

technologies become perfected?’ ; ‘They would be perfected faster if the government

would invest in them.’ ; ‘Where does the government get the money? By taxing people or

borrowing. It’s your choice. Either way, your beloved poor people pay more for energy. Is

that what you want?’ ; ‘Never mind. You obviously don’t care about the environment or

about black people who have to breath polluted air.’ ; ‘Oh, no, Claus. I’m not going to let

you get away with that little cop-out.’ Una nudged me and quietly said, ‘Calm down,

Adam. You’re embarrassing me.’ I didn’t reply to her. I could tell that everyone was

staring at me, though and instead of feeling self-conscious, I said, ‘Come on, Claus.

Where is that plant going to go?’ ; ‘I would put it right in your back yard,’ he said; ‘Fine.

You want to move fifty thousand people. That’s going to cost, too, and it will take years.’

; ‘Adam,’ Claus said. ‘Society has to make sacrifices to save the earth and to create a

better world for the workers. Those old utilities treat people like shit, by the way. It just

has to happen.’ ; ‘Alright. I agree. Let’s start with you. Do you use electricity?’ ; ‘Yes.’ ;

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‘Have you outfitted this apartment with the absolutely lowest energy using bulbs

available? I see several lights on right now that could be turned off.’ ; ‘What about it?’ ;

‘Well, I think you are wasting energy and subsidizing a system that poisons poor black

people.’ ; ‘Give me a break.’ ; ‘Oh, so you want an exemption. Everyone else has to

sacrifice.’ Una said, ‘Adam, please…’ loudly enough for everyone to hear so I replied,

‘What? Can’t I ask the man a question? Lord knows I’ve been listening to him pontificate

for years. Can I have my say, now or do I need to shut up as I always? Claus, are you

afraid to answer a few questions?’ He shook his head. No way in hell he was going to

dodge that one. ‘Let’s go on. When you buy clothes, do you always buy union-

manufactured garments? No? So, you’re subsidizing sweatshop labor that exploits

people. You’re putting money in the pocket of sweatshop bosses who rape ten year old

girls. When you buy fruit, do you always buy the kind that’s been picked by unionized

farm workers?’ ; ‘That’s ridiculous. There’s no way to tell.’ ; ‘Oh, come on, Claus. A man

of your moral caliber ought to have the gumption to check into these things. You

wouldn’t want to accidentally empower those bad farm bosses who starve and cheat

illiterate peasants from Mexico who come up here in the desperate hope of a better life,

would you?’ Claus had stopped finding this quite as funny as he had earlier. ‘Can we

establish, Claus, as a baseline for this conversation that you are a total hypocrite? You

expect the power company to adhere to a higher moral standard than your own.’

“’Establish whatever you wish, Saperstein,’ Claus said. ‘Nothing will change the

fact that you and your boss are the ultimate whores, rimming corporate assholes for the

money you need to perpetuate the plutocracy in this country.’ ; ‘Fine. Let’s say you were

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the senator, or the governor of that state. A group of citizens comes to you and says they

don’t like the emissions from that power plant. What do you do?’ ; ‘I would shut the

fucker down.’ ; ‘Are you sure about that?’ ; ‘Yes.’ ; ‘Great. In addition to blacking out a

quarter of your state, you’ve also just killed three hundred jobs and destroyed that area’s

ability to attract business investment. More people will remain unemployed. Are you

pleased with yourself?’ ; ‘The people deserve a clean environment, companies that take

responsibilities and help provide decent jobs.’ ; ‘How are you going to arrange jobs

without business investment?’ ; ‘The state should take care of the workers. That’s the

only way society can function properly.’ ; ‘Where is the state going to get the money?’ ;

‘From the corporations. I would raise the corporate tax rate sky high.’ When he said this,

he and Corigliano shared a mini black power salute. ‘Okay. So you do that and business

leaves the state. Goes somewhere else. Maybe even another country. You’re left with a

reduced tax base and higher unemployment than ever before. And, with all that poverty

comes crime which creates the need for more police and prisons.’ ; ‘This is the richest

country in the world. We have to take care of people. It’s only right.’ ; ‘That’s an

admirable sentiment, if a little 1917 for my taste, but it still doesn’t answer the question.

Where are you going to get the money to pay for all of these services?’ ; ‘The workers

should own the means of production. That way, they can provide for themselves.’ ;

‘Claus, this is the planet earth. That theory has been completely disproven. Name one

place in the world where that actually works. Russia? No. China? That country now is

the most repressive capitalist police state in history. North Korea. Maybe that’s the place

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where you want to live. They take care of their workers. Of course, they can’t feed their

workers, but their rhetoric is very well fed.’

“Claus said, ‘You’re still missing the essential point of this. The black man is

made to suffer. The white man forces him to breath the bad air. It’s racism in its most

insidious form.’ I replied, ‘So, you think that if a black person owned the power plant he

wouldn’t pollute in that neighborhood, too?’ ; ‘Black people are not racists.’ ; ‘You’re

certain about that?’ Another elbow into my ribs from Una, which I ignored. ‘Yes,’ he said.

‘It’s a fact.’ ; ‘Well I hate to burst your bubble, but three quarters of a million Tutsis in

Rwanda were just murdered with machetes last week by Hutus. Don’t tell me that people

with black skin can’t be racists.’ ; ‘The situation in Rwanda is the fault of the Dutch and

the Americans.’ ; ‘I don’t know, Claus. I didn’t see any Dutch people running around

hacking the arms off of small children last week.’ ; ‘But in the past, under King Leopold,

millions of Africans died. He was a criminal worse than Hitler.’ ; ‘Fine, that was a

hundred years ago and we’re not debating the fact that Europeans can be racists. That is a

fact. What I’m trying to get from you, though you seem to be afraid to admit it, is that

you are wrong. Black Africans can be just as racist, hateful and violent as any of their

European oppressors.’

“Claus didn’t respond. He just leaned back in his chair with his arms folded and

gave me a skeptical, appraising look. ‘Alright,’ I said. ‘Never mind.’ Everyone breathed

a small sigh of relief, everyone except Una, who looked as if she wanted to crawl through

the floor and disappear. At first, I really couldn’t figure out why she was so irritated by

my carrying on. After all, she had heard me go on and on about stuff like that a million

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times. And then I saw it – she looked across the table and rolled her eyes at Claus, a little

‘Can you believe I am married to this pathetic dweeb’ eye roll and it finally occurred to

me what was really going on.”

“Dede figured it out at the same time. One millisecond of eye contact too much.

She got up, grabbed a few empty plates off the table and walked silently into the kitchen.

Corigliano, for once trying to be non-controversial, yelled out, ‘Dede, this was all

absolutely delicious!’, but there was no response from the kitchen. Only more silence

and then, a crash. And another, and another. Plates being shattered. Then, it was pots and

pans being hurled around the room and finally just a series of long, primal screeches as

Dede tried to express what it felt like to have just found out that her best friend was

screwing her husband.

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Playland

It’s getting sort of Ralphy in this little room. I feel itchy, as if someone shook up

a can of coke, put it in a syringe, and shot it into my veins. And, there’s some awful smell

something wafting in through the vents. It’s a sickly odor that reminds me of a janitor’s

mopping solution, only stronger. Ammonia, with a hint of rotting flesh, the way the dorm

bathroom used to smell when some slob forgot to flush the urinal. Fighting the urge to

gag, I desperately want to get up and take a walk outside, but Adam will not let me.

Don’t, he says. They’ll use any pretext to get rid of us. If we walk out they might close

the book on the whole case and we’ll be stuck. So, we continue to sit there with me trying

hard to breath through my mouth.

Adam reaches into his pocket and hands me a bottle of scotch from the hotel

mini-bar. His looks says, ‘Here, take it. I know you need it.’ I try to pretend as if I don’t

want it, that it’s too early to drink and all, but he just places it in my hand. I thank him,

though my acquiescence marinates me in shame. I’ve become a guy who has to drink to

calm down in the afternoon. I can’t decide what’s more mortifying: drinking during the

day, having my friend know that I needed it, or not being able to deny it more forcefully.

I should have said, ‘Oh, no, Adam. Please. I never drink during the day. I don’t want it.

Put it back. I’ll have it later, but thanks for thinking of it.’ No, that would have been

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protesting way too much. Give it to me. Thanks. Suck it down. Feel better, for a minute

anyway.

“I went home alone that night,” Adam says. “Claus and Una got up and marched

out without saying goodbye. I was left alone staring across the table at the Coriglianos,

who were somewhere between bafflement and amusement over the whole scene. We all

rose from the table simultaneously and went to see Dede in the kitchen. She was sitting

on the floor, crying in the middle of all those broken plates. I’ve never seen her look so

vulnerable.”

“She’s a person, too.” I say. “She doesn’t have ice in her veins.”

“Of course,” Adam says. “But it was still a pretty jarring sight. Vera went right to

her, sat down, took Dede’s hand and started whispering little things into her ear. Dede

nodded solemnly at each whisper and slowly she began to regain a little bit of her

composure. Corigliano and I just stood there watching like complete dorks. We didn’t

feel like it would be right to leave the room but we had little to add. Plus, I think

Corigliano was worried that Dede was going to spill the beans about the two of them all

these years later and I don’t think he was in the mood for any more big revelations that

night. I certainly didn’t want to be there. I remember thinking, though, that I wasn’t

feeling what I was supposed to be feeling. Dede had it right, going apeshit and all. But I

felt nothing. Later, I realized I was in a state of shock. It was only when Dede got up and

gave me a long hug, mumbling, ‘Sorry, I’m so sorry’ over and over again that I began to

get in touch with my own anger over the affair.

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 Thinking this would be among the top ten worst times to tell him that I had slept

with Una, too, though my little fling with her had been after they were divorced, I just sip

my scotch and shut up. Adam continues. “It was close to three in the morning when she

finally got back to our, well really her, place on West 22nd Street. I was waiting for her to

get back. My stuff was already packed and if I had been thinking clearly I should have

just split. My life might have gone a good deal better if I had. No, I had to wait there

because I wanted to confront her. I paced around that teensy living room trying to think

of something kind of funny but also nasty and mean at the same time. I wasn’t getting

very far. The best I could come up with was, ‘Congratulations, you’re the thousandth

woman to spread your legs for Claus. You must feel really proud of yourself.’ But, even

in the compromised state of mind I was in, I knew that I was being stupid. Maybe I

would go for brooding and dangerous. Just say nothing and glare at her like maybe I

would just kill her and be done with it. Yeah, like she would be scared of me. Instead, I

just lay down and eventually nodded off.

“The sound of the door woke me up, but I was so sleepy and out of it that I

couldn’t get myself organized to make any cute comments or be brooding. Instead, I said

‘hi’ like a complete asshole. ‘Hi.’ Did you have a nice time? One last fuck before you

came home?’ No, it was Una who was brooding. She stood in the doorway of the living

room regarding me as if I were a bug she was considering squashing under her heel.

“’What’s your problem?’ I finally said, to which she replied, ‘You are such a loser

it boggles the mind.’ And with that, she went to bed. I wanted to shake her awake and

spit in her face but instead, I just left and went back to Washington and waited for her to

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call me with the pleading, tearful apology that I was due and beg me to come back to

New York.

“Three weeks,” Adam says. “That’s how long it too Una to call me. I had been

practicing another venomous attack, aching for the phone to ring so I could pick it up and

call her a cunt, a whore, a piece of shit and fuck you who needs you there’s lots of

women in the world just wait you’ll be getting a call from my lawyer so go get AIDS and

die, bitch! But again, asshole of the century, I just said, ‘Hi’ when she finally called.

When I heard her voice I realized how lonely I had been without her. I’ve never felt like

a bigger idiot.

“Anyway, she sounded as if she had been crying for days. Her voice was flat,

almost unemotional, the way she got when she was depressed. She said she was sorry

and she would understand if I wanted to get a divorce, but she also wanted me to know

that she and Claus were through. He was, in fact, out of the country on a foreign

assignment and she had vowed never to see him again. Would I be agreeable to coming

back to New York that weekend so we could talk? You want to know what I said?”

“Did you tell her to drop dead?”

“No, I said I loved her and that I missed her. She started to cry and so did I. We

both cried on the phone for a long, long time until I finally said that we better hang up but

she said no, please don’t go. I miss you terribly. I made a huge mistake and I feel like

such an absolute piece of dirt for hurting you. Will you ever be able to forgive me? I

said yes, I forgive you, but I knew it was a lie. Later, when I was in the hospital, my

shrink would explain to me that my immense relief at her calling was simply because I

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wanted my own pain to stop, at least for a moment. I would have eaten pig shit if I

thought it would have taken my mind off of what was happening.

“I took the next train. When I got to her apartment, she answered the door nude

and, without a word, we went to the bedroom and went at it for the whole day. And

almost the whole next day, too. We barely spoke. It was just pure, redemptive

lovemaking.

A few months after that, I thought, I was signing him out of the psych ward on a

day pass. Wanting to get him out of the city that had driven him so crazy, I took him to

my hometown. My mother picked us up at the station and took us home for lunch, where

I listened to the two of them postulate about historic and symbolic interconnections

between Vietnam, Clinton, and Yeltsin. I almost shoved Adam out the door and drove him

to Playland.

Playland had once been my summer hangout, the scene of some of my best

memories of Sara. That’s probably why I wanted to go there with Adam that day. I must

have thought it would cheer him up to do something ridiculous and juvenile like going to

an old amusement park that overlooked the Long Island Sound. On that day at the end of

the season, though, with the park almost empty, my dreary recollections about the place

overwhelmed me. After all, it was into Playland’s once famous swimming pool, long ago

closed and paved over, that Ronny Brown had made his fateful dive.

As Adam and I wandered through the aging, half-deserted game rooms and candy

apple stands, past the Dragoncoaster, a wooden behemoth that I had been terrified to ride

until Sara dared me, I began to feel a Ralphic seizure set in. The Ferris wheel seemed to

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offer an escape route so I bought us tickets and pushed through the turnstile with Adam

following along in a daze. The lucidity he had shown with my mother appeared to have

faded since we left the house.

We went round and round a couple of times but the view of the Sound could do

nothing to rid of me of Ralph. Then, the ride gave a jolt and shook to an ominous halt. In

a moment of panic I thought perhaps the operator had forgotten we were up there and had

quit for the day. I started to look for the escape ladder but quickly saw that workmen were

opening up the electrical cages that powered the wheel. We were stuck.

“Hollywood,” Adam said.

“What?”

“Hollywood. That’s what Corigliano used to call you.” It was the first thing he

had said in nearly an hour. “Once you admitted to him that you were interested in the

commercial film and television industry it seemed as if he went on a mission to prove

what a clueless cocksucker you were. You made the mistake of telling him that you

thought M*A*S*H was a great TV show, to which he responded, ‘So you think the

sentimentalization and commodification of war is art? They are selling you that war. It’s

commercial garbage, just like everything else on TV, but it’s the insidious kind, the kind

that pretends to be about something important but its really about selling tampons and

paying one actor in one week enough money to feed ten thousand starving children in

Biafra for a year. That’s the world you aspire to, Hollywood. Is that the biggest thing you

can think of doing in your life? Do you know that a million Koreans died in the war? For

what? For wanting a shot at a decent way of life under communism. Why was that our

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business? People don’t remember it, but Korea was worse than Vietnam. If MacArthur

had had his way we would have dropped the bomb on North Korea. Why is it that

everyone in your generation has been brainwashed to love war? We were taught to make

love, not war. You all want to be John Wayne and GI Fucking Joe, the babykiller.’

“He needed you,” Adam said. “He needed for you to be ‘Hollywood’ because you

empowered him. You gave him the power to be the big fiery 1960s hippy telling us all

off. And Dede and Claus got to snort up a little of that power so they could crap on our

faces with their condemnatory labels. The worse the label, the more power they had over

you. If you were a sexist, you handed them a little power to educate you that your

maleness was hateful. You were marked down, and they were advanced up the ladder,

toward the exalted heights of black lesbian victimhood, bathed in Selma Dust.

“Claus and Dede and Corigliano made us feel hated and powerless. Everyone

hated everyone in college. They called it multicultural ism, but it was really an excuse

for everyone to form their own little hate group. The women hated the men. The gays

hated the straights, the blacks hated the whites, the conservatives hated the liberals,

whites thought they didn’t hate the blacks. It was a hatefest. Everyone was wrong.

Nobody ever discussed anything with an open mind. Some university, I tell you.

Everyone was pointing a hateful finger at someone else, blaming them for the world’s

problems. And you know where all those fingers eventually pointed? At us. At me. It

was a war, but not a war that I chose to fight. I was drafted, and I guess I got tired of

being the enemy.

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 “We handed over the rights to our free-thinking minds to the thought police. We

were submitted to re-education like Dr. Li’s uncle, sent to live with peasants in the

Cultural Revolution. I spent college trying to convince myself that the way I viewed the

world was wrong because it didn’t jibe with Dede and Claus’ celebration of victimhood.

I tried to hate myself for views that I was told were racist. Yet, I knew it couldn’t be true

because I was also trying at the same time to put into practice all the things I had been

taught growing up – to respect minorities, not judge people for being different from me,

to have empathy for people who have suffered from discrimination – but who knows,

maybe we are racists. I think it was Claus who said, If you’re white you’re a racist. The

result was a profound confusion about myself and a tendency to hate myself for being

myself and at once despising the people who were judging me and labeling me while I

aspired to be them, to absorb their obviously morally superior way of being. Who was I

to oppose someone who had stopped the Vietnam war? How could I, a snot nosed

Beverly Hills Jew, possibly have the same level of insight into humanity as a man who

had filmed Woodstock and risked his life to show us the courage of the Contras? How

could I, a man, a white man at that, state for the record that I believed in female equality

without being derided as a sexist hypocrite who was just making a pathetic attempt to get

into some girl’s pants by mouthing the feminist party line. It’s only now that I see that no

one was interested in the truth. They were too busy trying to score their own points and

elevate themselves in the gruesome ziggurat of power that we called college. And, it

always seemed that Claus was the big winner, the best of the power players, not that it

helped him much after graduation. That prick…

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 “He’s dead.”

“What?”

“He’s dead, Adam. Claus is dead.”

“What? Are you joking?”

“I wish I were.”

“How? This doesn’t make any sense…”

“All I know is that he went down to Peru on some kind of magazine assignment

and got killed for being in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

“You mean to tell me that you’ve known about this all day and you’re only telling

me now? What a fucking asshole you are.”

“Adam, I’ve known about it for a week. It’s why I’m in New York.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?

“You’ve been in a psych ward. The Doctors didn’t want you to know. Shit, I

probably wasn’t even supposed to tell you now.”

“I can’t believe this is happening. Shit. He’s dead? Really? Tell me you’re not

just fucking with me head.”

“He’s dead. I swear.”

“When’s the funeral?”

“There’s a memorial service the day after tomorrow. There is no body.”

“Wow,” he said. “That is pretty fucking serious.”

Neither of us went to that memorial service, though. Adam’s psychiatrist didn’t

think he was ready to be in such an emotionally disturbing environment so soon after his

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suicide attempt. I didn’t get to go because I got called back to Los Angeles by Ed Stein.

He needed me to go with him to a network meeting on a pilot called South Bay Seven, a

rip-off of Baywatch, featuring seven lifeguards who lived together in a beach house and

lead a soap opera life when they weren’t being heroic at the beach. The angle on the

show was that it was more soap than lifesaving, although we were also considering

pitching it as a soap opera in bikinis with lots of abs and pecks. Our nickname for the

project was Torrance, 94231. The network wanted us to juggle the characters on the

show, making the female lead into a man, which would have changed the balance of the

sexes. Stein needed me back to go over these changes before the network meeting.

When I offered to type my notes and fax them to him since I was in New York for a

funeral, he told me that unless he saw my not so pretty face at nine the next morning I

would be out of a job and he would be forced to select a replacement from one of the

hundreds of people who wanted my job and didn’t have to think about whether they

would show up for a network meeting, funeral or no funeral.

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Tail Slate

Months after the Playland outing, Adam told me that Claus’ death had motivated

him to start over again and make something of his life. At the time, I vowed to do the

same, but the vow didn't live through the bottle of Chianti that I picked up at the liquor

store even though I already had a few open at home. I needed to be certain I wouldn’t

run out. I vowed again the next morning, when I hardly even recognized myself in the

mirror: Tangled, graying hair, laugh lines, jowls, and wine stains in the little cracks in my

lips. Now that we are done with our Peruvian errand, I am considering making the vow

again.

We’re back at the All American Sports Bar. Adam and I are having a Perrier

while he waits for his plane to board. Mine doesn’t leave for a few hours yet. Over the

last day we have been making inane chit chat as a way to avoid talking about it. Not that

it was so horrible. It was, in fact, rather dull. Walk into a cold room, watch as they

removed a drape that exposed a remarkably well preserved Claus, sign a few papers, and

take a taxi back to the hotel. After waiting all day, the actual identification and release of

the body took less than fifteen minutes.

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 The plane ride back was a mute, restless slog. Neither one of us could sleep, but

we were not interested in talking or doing much of anything. Adam read through an

International Herald Tribune for hours without saying a word. I tried to read a trashy

book that an ex-girlfriend wanted to option but I couldn’t get past the first sentence,

“McGraw fiddled with his silencer and said the Lord’s Prayer, a ritual he always followed

when he about to put twelve grams of lead into the medulla oblongata of a scumbag.”

“What happened to him?” I finally ask Adam.

“I don’t know much,” he says. “Dede and I had dinner together a couple of years

after his death. The incident had created a bond between us. I suppose it wouldn’t have

happened if our respective spouses hadn’t been motivated to get naked with each other.

She told me that after the revelation that he had been having an affair with Una – an affair

that had lasted over a year, it turned out – they had a total China Syndrome fight. You

know the kind. The fight to end all fights. Not loud, not wild or excited, but cold and

honest. The worst kind. She told him what a pompous piece of shit she really thought he

was. How his constant competition with her, despite the fact that she clearly had the

better career, was infuriating. His degradation of her through faint praise made her hate

him. He calmly told her that he loathed the way she postured and lorded her success

over him. Could anyone blame him for wanting to get laid? It seemed they hardly had

sex anymore. Well, gee, she said to him. Have you considered the fact that your drive to

stick your dick where it doesn’t belong has something to do with the fact that you haven’t

done shit with your photography except scramble around taking newspaper photos for

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chicken feed. Why don’t you do something with your life? Then, you might deserve the

right to complain.

“You know what he said? He said, You’re absolutely right. I have not done

enough. You’ve been holding me back. That shut her up. Not that she lacked a response.

Oh, she could have had a field day with that one but she was just tired of him. She was

sick of him and sick of fighting. She just clammed up and watched him pack his stuff.

When he left, there were no big fireworks or anything. He gave her a little kiss on the

cheek and said he was leaving and that he would be in touch after a while. She said fine,

call me whenever and maybe we can talk some more, but she was greatly relieved that he

was going. She never saw him again, a fact made doubly painful because she was

pregnant and hadn’t told him.

“So that’s the kid.”

“Right.”

“For Christ’s sake, Adam, you could have told me that in about two seconds. You

had to draw out that story for days. Here I was wondering whose kid it was. Was it

Claus’? Yours? Coriglianos? You’re such a jerk sometimes it makes me want to scream.”

“Sorry. I like a good buildup. You know where Claus went?”

“Peru.”

“No, that was a few weeks later. He went to see Jan.” The comment feels like a

punch in the gut. The idea of Claus having Jan, too, makes me feel dead inside. “But

they weren’t sleeping together. Don’t worry. She just felt sorry for him and let him stay

on the couch.”

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 “I didn’t even realize she was in New York.”

“Oh, Jan had been in New York and a lot of other places.”

“You knew about her and you didn’t tell me? Again, what a DICK you are.”

“Sorry. I wasn’t sure if you wanted to know. I thought it might upset you.”

“Thanks,” I said. “Maybe you’re not such a dick.”

“After college, Jan spent some time working at PBS in Washington. I used to see

her once in a while for dinner. Then, she got involved with a non-profit called Re-Tread

House that was an experiment in independent living for girls who had been abused. They

set up a house with about ten of these girls in it. During the day, they had school as well

as vocational development, most of which revolved around making products like sandals

and jewelry out of old tires and auto parts. See, it was intended to be both a socially

redeeming and environmentally friendly place. Recycle materials. Recycle lives.

Everyone is happy, and Jan gets the Giovanni Corigliano neo-60’s liberal activism

achievement award. Only problem was the kids. First they had to expel one for dealing

drugs to the other girls. Then, another girl was turning out the younger ones to do tricks

when the grownups weren’t watching. After a while, they were down to a couple of

twelve year olds who weren’t much interested in school or vocational activities. They ran

out of money and ended up just putting the girls back into the foster care system.

“After that waste of years, Jan got into her head that racism could be ended if the

consciousness of world leaders were just raised enough. So, she embarked on a three-

year campaign to get all hundred and seventy heads of state across the globe to sign an

agreement wherein they would each make their best efforts to fight racism in their

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countries. She traveled endlessly and pleaded and cajoled diplomats and aides de camp

and humiliated herself in dozens of languages she didn’t understand. You have to give

her some credit for stamina even if the idea was naïve in the extreme. When her grant

expired she only had twenty signatures, which was actually a pretty big accomplishment.

The whole thing got a page nine mention in The Times and that was it. Nothing more

about it was ever mentioned.

“Wow,” I said. “Three years down the drain.”

“Not that we should talk. We’ve all wasted time in our lives.”

“So what happened to Claus when he was in Peru?”

“Honestly, I don’t know that much. He hooked up with some journalists who

were covering the guerillas and he must have gone too far out into the mountains

following some of them and when the army swept through and started killing everyone in

sight they just lined him up and shot him with the others. That was it. Then, when they

realized that he was an American journalist, they concocted this story that he had been

arrested and shot while trying to escape. That’s all I know.”

“What a waste.”

“I know. After everything, I miss him. Isn’t that weird?”

“I do, too,” I say. And then, it seems, there just isn’t a lot more to say. Adam’s

flight gets called and he and I get up and head toward the gate. A long hug, a handshake,

and he’s gone. Adam handed me an envelope before he left. It says “Photo – do not

bend”, but it’s been wadded up in his bag the whole time we were traveling. I don’t want

to open it. I know what’s in it. And now, I’m back at the bar again sipping scotch. I’ve

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got people to call and more one-dollar checks to write. But, at least I’m not drinking

alone. Ralph is with me. There’ll always be Ralph.

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