Stories for Chip (46 page)

That information could so easily be given the reader to be decoded later when the author provided the key, was a revelation. Such a simple trick! Such a powerful tool. Such a useful thing. I did a great deal of flipping back through previously-read pages as my understanding of what was going on clarified. There was a lot of benign misdirection in the text.

Endings to be useful must be inconclusive.
Such was the conclusion of the final journal entry at the head of the penultimate chapter. I did not then and still do not know whether that was a true statement—though all such sweeping declarations must necessarily inspire skepticism. But even as a teenager, I understood that for fiction to be worth the tremendous effort it takes to create, it must be useful. I never wanted to live less than I did during my senior year of high school. Nevertheless, I could see that my problems were small potatoes compared to those of so many others around me: the girl who confided that her failed suicide attempt had been the bravest act of her young life, the new friends two houses down the street who abruptly left town when their father's corpse was found hanging from a noose in their garage, the scion of a family of racists so virulent that he decorated his books and briefcase with swastikas and made approving jokes about the Master Race in a fake German accent as a means of fighting back…This is not an easy world to live in, and its inhabitants need all the help they can get.

The Einstein Intersection
was of use to the young, callow, and painfully aware of his shortcomings person I once was, though surely not in any manner predictable to its author. It also triggered decades of thinking about myth, reading about myth, and writing about myth. So its long term influence on me cannot be exaggerated.

After a fast second reading, to ensure I hadn't missed anything discernible by a precocious teenager (I had missed a great deal obvious to an adult), I put the book down and picked up the next one. I was twelve years from selling my first story and making good time.

And, well, that's all I have to say, I guess.

Behind every novel is a single story, that of its author. Before it lie a myriad, those of its readers. I do not claim that my own reading of this particular book was in any way special. But in the absence of any other being committed to paper, it will serve to stand in for them all.

Kathryn Cramer

The only important elements in any society are the artistic and the criminal, because they alone, by questioning society's values, can force it to change.

—Samuel R. Delany,
Empire Star

Jack's apartment on the Upper West Side was vast and rent controlled, with shelves of books on serious topics covering nearly every wall. He ran his apartment as part library, part hostel, part literary salon. Usually, it was a bit of a mess. The dining room was mostly for projects; the living room for socializing. Piles from the living room were shifted to the dining room and then moved back at the end of the evening.

A group of us met there most Tuesdays and read poetry together, with Jack presiding. He had a bushy gray beard with streaks of white and looked like a cheerful black Karl Marx. Part of his beard was straighter than the rest because he tugged it habitually. He often did this while listening to poetry.

For a while there was an affectionate cat. I was spending one night a week, Tuesdays, at his apartment, sleeping on the too-short red velvet love seat in the TV room. The cat was black and white and had a really long name: Kid something something something Valentine Delany. There was no door to the TV room.

Round about 3:30 a.m., Kid would purr loudly and pounce on my feet, which were always sticking off the end of the couch. If I didn't react, he would start clawing and biting them. I would sleepily pick the cat up off my feet and toss him out into the hall. This happened about 10 times a night. Kid disappeared one day from the window sill, leaping to catch a pigeon. We missed the cat. I wished Jack would get another, but Kid was not replaced.

◊

One summer I stayed in Jack's apartment for the last two weeks of June. It was hot. Jack had no air conditioning. With the windows always wide open, there was a constant soundtrack of sirens, and traffic, and squeals of brakes, and occasionally people shouting. He lived on the top floor. It was a great place to watch thunderstorms.

On the day I arrived, I was out of breath from climbing five flights of stairs with all my luggage. I flopped down in an upholstered chair. Jack was on the living room sofa, flustered. Upset.

He gestured at a narcissus wilting in a wine glass and told me of Daphne, the dinner guest who had just left, a Columbia graduate student. She had brought him the flower and had come to dinner with the intention of having sex with him.

Jack said, “I opened my mouth to say ‘I'll have sex with anyone once as long as they make sure I have a good time.' And I looked across the table at Daphne and realized that it was no longer true.”

This was, perhaps, an odd thing to say to me, a young woman who had just come with her luggage to stay for a while. But it was almost as if he wasn't really talking to me as such, but rather using me as a sounding board for an important change in self-image.

◊

We were mostly science fiction people in the poetry group. We gathered to read and discuss poetry, and then went to a bar afterwards to talk about science fiction over drinks.

For a short while, a famous mystery novelist came to the poetry nights in order to woo Sarah, a first novelist from Princeton. He wrote bestsellers and insisted we call him “The Dog.”

When I figured out The Dog was after Sarah, I took her aside to warn her. But it was too late. She said, “Yes, isn't that sweet?” Nine-and-a-half weeks later, just as he was beginning to name their future children, he abruptly dumped her. I never saw him again, and felt secretly grateful that a few years earlier, when I was first introduced to The Dog, I had droned on and on about my divorce, possibly saving myself a lot of trouble.

An old friend of Jack's who had been assistant press secretary in a long ago presidential administration kept calling Jack around dinner time and leaving him long, tearful messages during our meetings. Jack refused to answer these calls and wouldn't let us answer either. Eventually, the calls stopped.

I asked, “What happened?”

Jack said, “I lent him money. I expect I'll never hear from him again.”

◊

One poetry evening, Lianne, a tall young poet, talked about having been to a workshop where she was seduced by the poet-singer-songwriter Leonard Levine. She said Levine's pickup line was “Great legs! I'd like to see where they end.”

“He didn't have a better pickup line?” Jack asked.

Someone said, “What do you think all those girls standing in the background singing la la la are for?” It had never occurred to me to wonder about why Levine needed so many backup vocalists.

The conversation shifted from sex to coffee enemas. The idea of recreational enemas was entirely new to me. Embarrassed, I made some crack: “Must give a big caffeine rush.” Two participants very seriously said, “Oh, yes,” and went on with the conversation.

That was the first moment of my life realizing that there were some things I really did not want to know more about; and that Jack knew a lot of such things. I learned that there were questions, especially about sex, I should not ask, because Jack might know the answer.

◊

We threw many parties at Jack's apartment. He seemed to love it. Jack has the same birthday as me, though our ages are a few decades apart, so we had a couple of joint birthday parties.

The deal was that Jack would host if we would clean up before and after and provide all the refreshments. I remember once spending two days vacuuming and washing dishes with Anthony Reber (who later changed his name to Kierkegaard). Perhaps the pile of dishes has grown in memory, but it seems like we spent three hours washing dishes; honored and excited to be washing his dishes, vacuuming his floors, dusting NYC's black soot off his windowsills.

There was a mail rack on the wall containing unopened registered letters. Someone asked if we should do something about them. Maybe Jack should, like, open them. “I don't read registered mail,” he said crisply. “It's always bad news.”

◊

Jack often provided shelter to the homeless. One day in his apartment we met an odd man named Robert who drank a lot of vodka. He had rough hands with nails nibbled down to the quick. He was sprawled across the couch and said to us a strangely elongated “Hi.”

When Lianne arrived, she said to him, “I know you!” They had gone to high school together. She asked him questions, but he was not interested in answering. Instead, he showed us a framed picture of a dark-haired woman, saying, “This. Is MY wife.”

The next week, Jack unburdened himself of the grief Robert had caused. Robert was bipolar or schizophrenic or something, and hypersexual. He had seduced much of the neighborhood, while telling everyone what they most wanted to hear.

He had gone high-end real estate shopping and had seduced the real estate agent, telling her he would buy a $600,000 condo. He had gone to the florist and ordered $45,000 worth of flowers for a lavish wedding. And so on. All around Jack's neighborhood. Leaving behind Jack's address and phone as contact info.

Robert had claimed to have a wife and kids. Jack said the kids he had showed him were the sample photos of kids that came with the frames at Woolworth's around the corner.

Jack had just gone house to house, business to business, explaining: to the real estate agent, that the man she had slept with did not have any money and was not going to buy the condo. To the florist that there was no wedding and so the flower order should be cancelled. His cheeks were flushed, and he was wearing a puffy red coat and looked like he was about to explode.

The next week brought a further update. Robert was contrite. To make it up to Jack, Robert invited him out to his house in the Catskills. Against his better judgment, Jack went. The most astonishing thing, said Jack afterwards, was that the house in the Catskills was actually there.

◊

Jack had iron discipline about writing: Rising at 5 a.m., he sat down at his computer and began to type. He was working on his autobiography then. The walls just outside his writing nook were covered with news clippings, highlighted and annotated, about the AIDS epidemic. Sometimes when I stayed over, I would be up that early. I knew not to disturb to him until he was done, at which point we would have coffee.

Jack's dyslexia was astounding. Once, I was using an early version of Microsoft Word to spellcheck one of Jack's major essays. We joked about aliens sending secret messages through spellcheck suggestions. His misspellings triumphed over Microsoft's algorithms again and again. I forget what misspelled arcane postmodern critical term Word offered to replace with “testicles” but it was a word with no resemblance. Obviously, someone out there was trying to get in touch.

I wrote a negative review of a high profile book. Jack edited it. He cut out all qualifiers, all the cushioning, saying, “If you're going to fuck the dog, stick it all the way in.”

◊

After Andy, with whom I was collaborating on a book, got sick, I worked at Hedge House as a temp doing Andy's work. Jack was really interested in hearing that there was paying work to be had at Hedge House. Arthur, the science fiction editor I was working for (and sleeping with) and who helped run the poetry group, said, “Jack, you wouldn't want to work for $9 an hour.”

Jack replied, “I'm making $8 an hour lifting boxes in a comics warehouse.”

So I shared a job with Jack for a while. One of the books in production was Omniaveritas's anthology
Neuromantic
. Jack wrote the copy and on the copy form there was a spot for author quotes, and so he wrote one.

We went to lunch. (I paid.) I told Jack I had read his novel
Dhalia
as a teenager but only about to page 660-something. He said, “You poor thing,” which surprised me.

I told him I could tell how far I had read because I recognized the sex scenes: I remember wondering “Is this possible?” “Is that possible?” “Oh. My. God. Is that possible?” I had a very clear recollection of the sex scenes up to page 660-something, and after that, nothing. So I know I didn't finish the book first time out.

In the conversation about re-reading
Dhalia
, I said to Jack, “You were writing about New York City, but in your vision it is such a safe place. I find it terrifying.” Jack replied that learning to be safe involved learning to cross class boundaries.

The texture of New York City life is structured by a complex class system, he explained. He said, “If you can cross class boundaries, people will always take care of you.”

◊

A bunch of us went to a PEN party at the Temple of Dendur in the Metropolitan. The genre writers, about ten of us, were clustered near the temple itself. Jack was there. I was there with Arthur. Peter Straub and his wife were there in our circle. There was also a mystery editor named Wolfgang wearing a black leather jacket who was good friends with Edward Gorey.

The room was packed full of famous and intimidating literary folk, many of whom—according to a Susan Sontag article promoting the event—didn't like each other. Every once in a while, someone would step out of our circle and venture out into the room, and then return and report back what had happened. Jack had something he wanted to say to Sontag, so he left the circle on this errand. He came back, his confidence shaken.

This was his tale: He had worked his way, with some difficulty, through the crowd to Sontag and opened his mouth to speak to her. Suddenly she leaned forward, over his shoulder, to speak to someone standing behind him and said, “I'm really angry at Mailer!” Jack decided that this was not the right moment to introduce himself and retreated to the safety of our circle by the temple.