Dancing in the Dark (3 page)

     Late 60s,

                   maybe 1970. He appeared

on the lower east-side New York scene –

               a young guy

out of acting school and looking for jobs in any play at all.

I read about him in
Vanity Fair
. He just got written up

for a little side bar. I liked

                          the fact

that he was 6’6”, ambitious &

                               had a small 12×10 room

close to Avenue B,

              & that before leaving every morning

he would make his bed & put all his socks

                all 6 pair

rolled up, you know,

                  at the tops, in a row on his bed.

Compulsive, like the history student in Updike’s story

Roommates
,

   but he found work, & guess what,

                    fortune’s play,

he made a # of films – including
The Fly
. Dopey. I liked him

in
The Big Chill
,

where he played the tall vaguely sinister dacron-suited
MBA
,

It wasn’t a great film, post-college sentiment & popcorn,

but he was really good. I think they should make 3 or 4

films in a row like
The Big Chill
, & let Jeff Goldblum

play an
MBA
,

      a mathematics grad-school drop out

& an ex-college basketball forward. He’s an intense guy,

& he was good in
The Big Chill
.

   We fold up the brown paper bags

& the waxed paper

               after laying out the food we’ve bought,

2 steak&kidney pies,

a plate of beefsteak tomatoes,

4 loaves of crusty Calabrese baguette, flour dusted, chewy,

rigatoni with feta & oil & black olives,

cheese,

 put the dogs out in the back yard

& go into the shower together dripping with good intentions.

I am moving the dark blue washcloth dripping with hot

water & soap over one of your hips

      & then you are

almost reclining on my back,

                              head comfortably

snuggled against my shoulder. I can feel your warmth

more completely than the hot water of the shower. Your

weight seems an afterthought,

                                resting on your perfect

splayed toes,

     down there in the rising water

     When I turn around to face you & we kiss

the dark blue washcloth is I don’t know where really.

I seem to rise up & turn around in a sense without

leaving you.

     No, I am still very much here,

feet flat on the bathtub floor,

                    water up to our calves,

your calves are a little fuller than mine,

            joke, rural,

antecedent, & smoother, no hair,

  no soft dark fluff.

We kiss, erections aren’t a problem

they’re a window sill

to lean on.

   You say you are sleepy & would like to make love

& get in between the new cotton sheets & sleep –

you don’t want any company.

                     I say “Okay, that’s funny,

she’s your cousin & her husband’s not such a bad guy.”

But what I see – kissing your thick dark hair –

isn’t any invasion,

              approx. 7 – 7:30 p.m., & the dogs will be

clamouring to get in the kitchen just to say hello,

but rather that image I’ve had for several days

of Borges walking through downtown streets in Buenos Aires

showing some visitors around, dark glasses, huge bald

head, gestures, famous buildings.

   I like the calm way

Borges looks in the image. I thought I was going blind

once, it was a mistake,

                     their mistake. I have no

desire to write like Kafka. I like dark blue washcloths,

hounds, & rigatoni.

               I want to see
The Tin Drum

a third time because I like it as a film. But

I am so in love with the tangible things

of this world      I don’t think

you could persuade me to read the novel. The novel

is brilliant but it’s too abstract.

     “Every woman needs a man

             sometimes,” she says

blithely

as she slips around the dark blue suit who has tried to pat her

on the ass

   & extends one arm, black sweater sleeve rolled up

under white waitress uniform,

                               a plate with a wide pork chop, tinned

green peas,

   & mashed potatoes. The potatoes aren’t home mash,

she points out good humouredly,

  she doesn’t own this place,

a Greek guy does. She has a daughter, Louise, 4 ½ years old.

“Sometimes,”

I say,    “but not always?”    “Sometimes,” she says,

& she goes on to explain that being linked is too complicated

unless you’re perfectly matched & even Donald &

Ivana Trump aren’t perfectly matched. She’s young,

36,

    a very good looking woman with dark hair & just a splash

of entrancing early grey across one side of her forehead.

                                      I look

back at that city, Ann Arbor, & I think of her, & think I should have

asked her out, we could have gone to a film, maybe
A Fish

Called Wanda
,

        & she would have been great in bed, I guess, or dancing.

But you know me,

               I like relationships

to end happily

         with both people feeling

there have been no misunderstandings,

            no distortions

of the kind you find in amateur photography

where sometimes it looks as if Jack is trying to pick

up Carolyn in his arms

                     but it’s a blurred image

with a child in the background

& actually he was just leaning over with a hand on her

shoulder to say something to her about the photographer

who used to be his roommate in college.

     “What’s happening, momma?”

                he says jovially

as he comes through the door,

                                not famous as jazz musicians go

but famous enough, about medium height,

                 close cut hair,

a yellow & brown check sports jacket

but it looks good on him. There are about 2 cars parked

up over the curb outside, we’re having dinner,

& I realize there are certain idioms that are exclusive,

that is,

they go with a specific vocation [software writer,

hardware installation team supervisor, etc.] or colour,

colour at least in the broad American sense

in which the landscape of America is so large it contains

every colour

      from cactus flower yellow to pale blue Massachusetts

fence in a small town back yard.

                                    And just for a split nano

second I envy him & resent the fact that I can’t use any idiom

I happen to feel like using. Well, sure, I can,

use any idiom I feel like, using. And then I reach over to

shake his hand

          & I say, “Good to meet you, Coy, I love your work.”

And I do, he’s a great piano player, and every idiom is like a

bass motif that you can play if you like, as long as it works.

     So,

          this guy Harold,

26, a bit of a nebbish

out of college,
NYU
,

               a big yellow bow-tie, etc.

shows up at the Blue Note when it was on 52nd street in the 1940s,

& dig this,

   he was something of a writer when he was at college,

NYU

& this is the late 1940s,

                            1946 to be preeeee/cise,

but like hey, a reeeeeally bad poet,

                                       no intellect

&
NO
sense of hoooomour.

                          And there he is leaning on the bar

& waddda ya think he sees? Some guy

          called Wallace Stevens

is up on stage reading a poem about Kentucky & grackles

& talking about Hart Crane

& a young black dude is playing bass oboe behind him.

“Wow,

fuck,” says Harold the nebbish

just out of college,
NYU
, big yellow bow-tie, etc.

“so the text doesn’t mean diddle-fuck, I’m saved, I’m alive,

I can pretend I’m a writer like Thos. Wolfe or somebody.

So,

     where do I meet somebody who plays a mean bass oboe

or a violin,

    or maybe a French horn would be good

for an afternoon reading in Central Park?”

          I’m over at Jack Forbes’ 2 ½ storey 6’ skylights

on the west side

           house on Chestnut Park Road in northeast

Rosedale. Jack’s out,

his wife Carol is home

                     & there’s a copy of the
New Yorker

with a fairly good R. Crumb cover in about 9 different colours

lying on the coffee table. She says she thinks the
New Yorker

is still good,

     just because it gives you the taste of New York.

Atmosphere is what she means, I guess, hints & flash cards.

But I’m not sure if a taste is much good when you want supper,

you know,

   when you want a couple of gin&tonics with lime & ice first,

& then a bowl of black bean soup

   followed by a plate of fettuccine

with those small Italian sausages & 1 or 2 cold Heinekens

to wash it down. You know

                            what I mean? More walk arounds

in different areas of New York, more input from young artists,

put Tom Stoppard on the cover and a 4-page essay on Bill Clinton;

but of course they haven’t done this & now it’s just another

version of the
Atlantic
or
Harper’s
–

but they’ve got an R. Crumb cover & Richard Avedon photos of Dinkins

& colourful New York lead-in pages with a nice magenta

poster of Eartha Kitt.

     He calls his sister Bones,

        because she’s 5’10 ½”

& as slim as a bright green stalk of west Florida asparagus. “Hey,

Bones,” he says, or

               “Turn down the football game, Bones, I’m on

the phone

in the kitchen.” And she takes it gracefully. She’s sprawled

on the living room 4-part couch,

                                    watching,

long legs in snug new Levi’s, feet bright in orange & yellow socks,

skimpy t-shirt just a piece of cotton.

       The B.C. Lions destroy

Baltimore. She has short curly dark honey blond hair, she

is in 4th year English Lang

                           & Lit. It’s 9:00 p.m., darkness

has settled

over the huge city of Toronto, the wind outside is about 50 mph,

the huge lake at the south end of the city must have 10’ waves,

nothing like a tsunami but big,

& the television set full of colour

shows the B.C. fans in t-shirts the cheerleaders in short skirts

& Austin has just thrown a big long one for about 65 yards. “Pizza”

he says, “B.C. wins, I pay.” He hates football, loves computers

& basketball, is working now, good quality dark green corduroys,

makes a big paycheque for 25. “Anchovies,” she says; “No,” he says;

“You’re cruel,” she says, & Passaglia kicks the big one

that wins the game, & the B.C. crowd goes wild.

     Night in the city

                             splash of burnt mauve

across the end of an alleyway,

                                must be old paint. Slacker

aka Alec

   Harrison & Tom, walking home from the BamBoo Club

up Beverley & over to Huron, named after the Hurons

who lived in Ontario

                  before there was a Ford Motor Company

of the World

     or those old General Electric red brick buildings

along Dupont west of Yonge Street. “What do you think, Tom,”

Alec says, “what

           do you think of the city?” “Great, man,

just

fucking great.” Tom is drunk, stumbling slightly, steel rims

in his jacket pocket

                he has a long pink t-shirt on

& the t-shirt says
N  I  R  V  A  N  A
. “So,”

says Alec, aka Slacker, “what do you think of the scene,

                                     the cool

Lauras & Harolds,

             at the Left Bank & the BamBoo?”

“Hey,” says Tom, “Slackers with expense accounts

& cordless telephones, fettuccine with eggplant & Italian sausages.”

“No,

no,” says Slacker, aka Alec Harrison, “Slackers with nose rings

& exposed underwear

defying gravity.” “Yeah,” says Tom, “gravity, man, gravity.”