A Moveable Famine (18 page)

On my last night, McPeak drunkenly made much of the fact that Bix Beiderbecke, of nearby Davenport, died a few blocks from my birthplace in Queens. He tapped his fingers on his knees to repeated playings of “Skeleton Jangle,” and gave me his lucky white-on-white shirt, with its pattern of cornets and trumpets. I left McPeak’s with my pallor whitened further by his basement and its steady stream of jazz, along with a head full of facts such as Cab Calloway firing Dizzy Gillespie for hitting him with a spitball when it was really Jonah Jones.

The neighborhood surrounding our Queens apartment building, The Alhambra, had become plagued by drug deals and muggings. The barren lobby once held highboys, couches and overstuffed chairs, but the landlord hadn’t replaced them when they were stolen a second time. A milk machine stood alone in a corner of the marble floor. I thought of the summer Ridge had visited me. When we walked from the Roosevelt Avenue subway, he remarked, not unkindly, “It’s funny that you come from here, and I come from a nice area.” That being Morristown, New Jersey. He said that after a rat crossed our path.

I walked to the elevator where ten-year-old Tony waited with two friends. He pointed at me with his thumb, saying, “This is John. He had his picture on the cover of
Rolling Stone
!” The kids gasped, but I couldn’t begin to correct them. I was too stunned that my poem on the farthest back page had been transformed into my portrait on the front. The word
Spick
was scratched into the new paint. It seemed strange, since most of the building was now Latino, or maybe this was why it was done. I hesitated before the door to 5D. I had a key, but debated between using it and ringing the bell.

When my mother answered, I heard my father’s cocktail shaker. She gave me a hug and I brought my bag into my unchanged room: single bed, dresser next to a triangular desk facing the corner, two bookcases, a wastebasket stuffed with bayonets, including a spear held by John Wayne in the movie,
Hatari!,
and Jim Morrison staring out of a milk crate of records. I looked in the mirror at my shaggy hair, frayed collar, and green army jacket with an ink stain on the pocket. I hadn’t noticed any of this in Iowa. In my childhood mirror, I saw myself through my mother’s eyes. I took a shower in the jury-rigged bathtub—a hose jammed onto the faucet and looped over the curtain rod.

I tried for a job in publishing, sending résumés to Scribner’s, Random House and Morrow. I toured my old neighborhood. Jahn’s ice cream fountain continued to serve the giant sundae, The Kitchen Sink, for six dollars; a glass of seltzer was still two cents. I had hung out on that corner where every night a motorcycle cop went in for coffee, every night someone spat on his seat, and every night he left the shop with a wad of napkins to wipe it off. I passed Elmhurst Lanes, where my friend who had never seen a urinal, mistook the pink round deodorizing cake for soap, and rubbed it between his palms. I went into Weiss’s Stationery and bought a pad of graph paper, perfect for my handwriting which was getting smaller and smaller. When I returned home, my mother was on the phone, but she cupped her hand over the receiver and asked what was in the bag. I showed her. She said to her caller, “John just came home, thrilled with a notebook. You’d think it was a Lincoln Continental.” Like the mirror, her words showed me myself.

My writing in miniscules in eighth-of-an-inch squares reflected my diminishing world, expanded only when letters from Ridge arrived. He was getting ready to leave Iowa and wrote that, as he was packing his office, Harvey told him that Barkhausen and Wendy had run off together. Barkhausen bought a motorcycle and they zoomed out of town for Fort Madison where they were living in a motel. Pryor was facing the community college near the Alamo alone. Ridge drove to McGuire University, which he jokingly called the Harvard of the southwest.

Porter Reed called from Provincetown and told me I had been awarded a seven-month fellowship to the Work Center starting in October. He said Stanley Kunitz and Alan Dugan had liked my work. I felt as if a tunnel had been dug for me that reached from the Midwest to the Atlantic. I returned to my summer job at the Associated Press, filling in for vacationing typists, copy boys and messengers. Kim wrote that she had fallen in love with a policeman. We knew something like this would happen to either of us, and I sent a letter of good wishes written on graph paper with an extrafine point.

In late September I jammed the nozzle onto the bathtub faucet for the last time and took my suitcase and typewriter to Port Authority. The bus driver yelled, “P-town,” and I got on a line where everyone knew each other. A black man in a safari outfit was greeted as Prince Kelly by his friend whose gray hair was swirled high on his head in a bun. He wore a shirt with the logo
Top Knot
and a caricature of his profile. A musician carried a guitar case and a harpoon, which he told me was a sculpture from his upcoming show. The bus driver, Ronnie, announced he had been born in Provincetown and had driven the route for ten years. He described the Portuguese community as a home to artists and writers, calling it “A little drinking village with a fishing problem.” We went down Forty-Second and along Twelfth Avenue, passing Italian delis where I had gone with my father to buy prosciutto, mortadella and capocollo for Christmas dinner. The harpoon maker asked Ronnie if he could sing, and Ronnie said just one:

Traveling down the highway

In my brand new Adidas

Traveling down the highway

Nothing but Hojo’s to feed us.

We passed through Providence and New Bedford where we stopped in front of the Moby Dick Travel Agency. We crossed the Sagamore Bridge to the Cape, the canal below like the waters of Lethe, forgetting the past and heading into the unreality of seven months in a seaside town. Tall privet hedges allowed only quick flashes of the screened porches of antique homes on 6A.

Ronnie parked near John’s Foot Long Hot Dog Company at Provincetown’s MacMillan Wharf. Fishing boats with peeling paint on their hulls docked there, winches holding tons of seaweed-entwined rope. Gulls fluttered to the pier where they walked among packs of dogs, the whole town presided over by the Provincetown Monument, an almost 300-foot granite tower. Many of the people lurching by were drunk.

Porter met the bus, and picked me out of the crowd. “Do you want to eat or drink?” were his first words. His blue eyes swept across the street like the beam from a lighthouse and he showed the way. Although it was night, the bright streets were swarming. Same sex couples walked hand in hand. The fragrance of garlic drifted from Ciro & Sal’s, and a similar wave came from Plain and Fancy. Everywhere cats and dogs. There was no leash law—both beasts and men were on the loose, and the first song I heard blasting from The Surf Club was “Unchained Melody.” Commercial Street ran parallel to the bay, and the glimpses of the blue water between buildings gave a feeling of transience to the town. When I told McPeak where I was going, he showed me a passage from Henry Miller—“In their dream of love or lack of it, the lost are ever wandering to the water’s edge.”

We drank bourbon on varnished benches in the window of The Fo’c’sle. The table, deeply carved with names and dates, unsteadied our tumblers. Heavy beams loomed over red and white buoys and orange life preservers on the dark walls, but the effect was not touristy—nothing could shake the shadows from this den-like room. Everyone greeted Porter by name. When I went to the bar to buy a round, the bartender poured the whiskey right to the top. I thanked him, and he placed his palm over his chest, saying, “I understand.” In the Provincetown bars, it was always midnight, and on the streets, it was always noon.

A patron wearing a green silk windbreaker leaned over the jukebox, which blasted the refrain, “Mi-a-mi Dolphins! Mi-a-mi Dolphins,” a child’s tune. As I lifted the drinks, he returned to his seat, the team logo in script above his heart. He told the bartender about seeing Don Shula in an airport and said he knew he should be a Patriot but he’ll always be a Dolphin.

Porter introduced me to Vince Leslie, a grizzled man with a goatee, author of fourteen books. Not even at Iowa had I met anyone so prolific. He planned to go to Mexico to interview Pancho Villa’s widow for a biography of the revolutionary. A photo of the car where Villa was shot would serve as the cover. Elliot Darmody, wearing a duster coat that reached the floor, joined us. He was a poet who told me he had just legally changed his name to
Post-Elliot.
He smiled as he said this, his beautiful white teeth contrasting with his worn, smudged face. Vince talked about preparing mackerel with mayonnaise and Post-Elliot told me the fishermen would give you a free fish if you went to the pier at the end of the day.

“It’s usually a trash fish like hake, and it helps if you take a pretty girl along,” he said. “By the way, Porter, is Hester back?”

“Any day,” Porter said. They talked about Hester, a poet, second-year fellow from New Orleans, and a great chef. She had gone to Louisiana for the summer to care for her sick mother.

“You’ll love her!” Post-Elliot said to me. “Her squid stew is better than the restaurants’.”

Porter and I left for The Bull Ring Wharf, the motel on the water where I’d be living, as there wasn’t enough space for all twenty fellows at the Center. On the way out, I accidentally bumped into a man entering and I apologized, but he ignored me and headed straight for the bar.

“He can’t talk,” Porter said. “He lost his voice last year when his wife left him.”

Porter said that neither Vince nor Post-Elliot had jobs. They spent most of the day in the bar and, if they could, wrote late at night. He asked me to guess their ages. I said midfifties but they were both forty. Porter said you’d think that schedule would have given them a longer youth, but they worked so hard wasting time that it took a toll.

My place, ten by ten with a kitchenette and bath, had a picture window that angled onto the bay. The couch served as a bed, and chairs of aluminum tubing and cross-hatched vinyl surrounded a glass-topped table. A fireplace, at odds with the beach furniture, gave the room a paradoxical coziness, as if winter and summer had come to terms. It reflected the state of the fellows: none could afford to be summer residents, but we clung to the town in winter. Porter said he’d come back in the morning and take me to breakfast and an introductory meeting at the Work Center. I piled my clothes in the dresser and tossed my bag into the bottom of the closet. My minimal possessions gave the room a feeling of spaciousness. I lined books along the mantel, and was reading a welcome card from the Bull Ring owner when the lights went out. The illuminated bay turned black. The manager’s office across the parking lot was also dark. I walked Commercial Street to the sound of fog horns until I found The Fo’c’sle, Vince and Post-Elliot’s faces flickering with light cast by candles in tin ashtrays.

“Welcome to P’town,” Vince roared. “This happens all the time.” I walked to the bar for a drink, happy to be in literary company. The bartender didn’t recognize me in the dark and handed me a flashlight, saying, “Top shelf, a dollar twenty-five. Second shelf, ninety cents. Bottom, seventy-five.” I drank Ancient Age from the bottom, as we’d been doing, though I briefly considered moving up to Ancient Ancient Age. I joined my new friends as the bartender brought a cup of coffee to a skull-faced man in a black suit, who sat alone facing the street. He held the mug shakily. Vince said, “Sad story. A Harvard professor struck by lightning.”

Vince and Post-Elliot began a friendly argument. Provincetown-Boston Airlines was holding a contest, inviting suggestions for a marketing slogan. Vince had sketched his idea on a brown paper towel from the men’s room and Post-Elliot was shaking his head. Vince pushed the paper toward me. A stubby pencil had written,
MOCHAHAGTDI!

I sipped my drink.

“Well,” Post-Elliot said, smiling. “Think it’ll go over?”

“Don’t push him,” Vince said. “Let him digest it.” He left to get another round.

“Is this Portuguese?” I asked Post-Elliot. He started to laugh, harder and harder, until he wiped the tears from his eyes with the slogan. I was laughing too when Vince arrived, holding three drinks in his big hands and frowning. Post-Elliot repeated my question.

“Portuguese?” Vince yelled. “It’s an acronym! I thought you were a writer!”

He sat down and pointed his thick forefinger at each of the capital letters, “Make Our Customers Happy And Have A Good Time Doing It!” He took a swallow of Ancient Age. I was embarrassed by missing Vince’s acronym, and relieved when another customer approached our table. The man swaying at my side was a housepainter, his overalls and balding head flecked with white.

“Hey,” he said, poking my arm. “Weren’t you in here earlier with Porter?”

I said I was.

“Porter. What a great writer. I love his stories.” He was slurring, but his admiration seemed real.

“What’s your name?” He leaned on my shoulder to steady himself.

I told him and he blinked. “Who?” he asked again, and again I told him.

He dropped his arms to his sides. “I come all the way across the room to meet one of Porter’s famous writers, and who do you turn out to be—a nobody!” He faltered back to the bar.

Tired, a bit drunk, I felt like a spectacular nobody as I sat between the prolific author and a poet. I hoped that I was not as diminished in their eyes as I was in my own. Vince seemed affected by the painter’s verdict on my name, and my verdict on his slogan. He took another sip and talked about the novel he’d begun that day with a great first sentence. In a stentorian tone, he said, “He was a tall dark Armenian whose mind was a clear pool of doubt,” and then he yelled, “Got ya! Got ya!” lurching for our throats in a choking gesture.

The bartender told us that the sixteen-year-old boyfriend of the owner of The Rooster Bar crashed his new Cadillac into a telephone pole, downing the power lines.

Vince said, “That’s batting a hundred.”

Post-Elliot corrected him. “Vince, you mean a
thousand,
right? A
thousand!
That’s the expression.”