Radar love
Sunday 11/12/06.
After some local coffee shop writing, I go to my storage space and dig around
for a couple of things, then I subway into work, type out what I wrote, and
then print out what I’ve typed, as well as something for Sunday. After
browsing the Strand and lucking into a real find (the three original Titan Book
collections of Alan Moore’s Halo Jones—I am such a geek), I head
to the Pine. It’s exactly two weeks now since I heard that the bar was closing,
and if anything the atmosphere is even more timeless, as if—when you walk
through the door—you’re walking into a pocket universe, a bar outside of time
and space whose doors lead back to moments and places in history, but which
exists in another dimension entirely. It’s about 7 PM and the downstairs bar is
totally packed, but I notice Amanda from the Knickerbocker in the corner and I
sidle over next to her. She points to a canvas behind her. “I just bought a
painting for my bedroom,” she says, as I flirt with a Keatonesque slapstick moment
by almost putting my foot through it. And this is while I was sober. (Which is
an excellent reason why I should drink more. To which the only honest reply is,
“Like that’s humanly possible.”)
“I was just going to leave and mount my painting,” Amanda says
with a happy shrug. “Guess I’m staying.” Sunday is over by the service bar, so
Jeff pours her a wine and me a Guinness and we order food. We talk about the
Pine closing, and Amanda mentions that Boxer’s on West 4th is
closing soon as well. (This, in a world where Down The Hatch and Off The Wagon
are packed to the rafters every night. There truly is no justice.)
Three sips into my Guinness and I find a crack in the pint
glass. Jeff is mortified beyond belief; he pours out my stout and builds me a
fresh pint in a new glass, telling me it’s on the house. While this is
happening, the conversation does a knight-on-a-chessboard move from Boxer’s to
Amanda’s new boyfriend (a chef), as opposed to her old boyfriend (a conductor
who’s currently doing Altar Boyz), as opposed to her ex-boyfriend
(with whom she just broke up last spring after seeing him for five years). We
get into a long conversation about guys which is nostalgic on a lot of levels
because it brings me back to the days when I would listen to my teenage female
friends, who all needed my help to write book reports, read seventeen levels of
meaning into a cute guy saying “Hey—what’s up?” Amanda’s story in brief: she
started going out with her last boyfriend when she was 18 and he was 33. That
was five years ago. Since she broke up with him this spring, she’s been
“dating,” as she puts it. I tell her Matthew’s Football Field Law, which says
that you always re-enter the field at the point you left it.
ME: Ever wonder why fifty-year-old guys
who’ve been married for three decades suddenly start acting like 20-year-olds
when they get a divorce? It’s because, no matter how much you grow in a
marriage or a relationship, you leave the field at the age when it starts, and
when it’s over? You go back on field at the point where you left it. You get
married at 19, and divorced at 50? That 31 years was on the sidelines—you
return to the field of play at the 19-yard-line, where you left it, because
that’s the last time you were single. So Amanda? In effect? You’re still
eighteen.
Which still gives her a good five to seven maturity years
over a guy the same age. General rule of thumb: add 10 to 15 years to a woman’s
biological age to find the age of a man who will be her emotional equal.
In the middle of all this, Martin shows up and sidles into
the corner of the bar on Amanda’s other side, where he proceeds to give her
incredibly heartfelt relationship advice—advice whose sole reason for
existence, to my ears, is to deliver her into his arms for the night.
MARTIN: I want a woman I’m gonna fight
with for the rest of my life. Passion over compatibility. It’s about the
PASSION!
SUBLIMINAL MARTIN: You are. So. Hot.
(After Amanda
goes to the Ladies: )
MARTIN: She’s cute.
ME: She’s
23.
MARTIN: She’s WHAT?!?
ME: She’s
23.
And since she IS 23 (though everybody thinks she’s in her
late twenties and just on the right side of 30, and will probably look the same
for the next 20 years) I’m guessing that passion is not Amanda’s problem. If
anything, she could stand to step back a couple of hundred yards now and then,
so she doesn’t get starry-eyed over every hunk who treats her halfway decent.
And speaking of getting starry-eyed, there’s a strikingly attractive brunette
talking TV and movies with a noticeably older man to my left, and as I glance
over at her, she glances at me, and our eyes meet for the briefest of moments.
We both look away, but the next time I glance over, in mid-conversation, she
glances back, also in mid-conversation. This happens half a dozen times in the
next forty minutes, and it’s killing me because I can’t figure out if she’s
glancing at me because she’s interested in me or because she thinks I’m some
skeevy pub-crawling letch who’s paying her far too much attention and must
therefore be watched very very closely, so I can be described to the
police when I make my tawdry move on her. Memo to self: stop staring so much,
it reads creepy. If you’re going to look, then do a sharp glance and then—I
pull out my notebook—start writing.
Your
mom, the hottie
I’m scribbling away, half-listening to Martin and Amanda
engage in the verbal duel that is flirtation, when my Barfly Sense goes off. I
look up. Sunday is leaning forward across the bar, her head barely six inches
away from mine. Our eyes meet. Is this where she yells at me? Laughs at me?
Cuts me dead? As usual, if I can imagine it, it doesn’t happen. (Seriously—this
is my mutant power: if I can visualize it, God laughs and says, “Sorry, pal—I’m
sending you something you haven’t even thought of.”) Sunday holds the pause just long enough (she must be taking
lessons from Maddie) and says: “So does this mean I have to call you Uncle Matt
now?”
I crack up. Then I pull a manila envelope out of my
shoulderbag. From the envelope, I produce Liora’s 1984 headshot. “Want to know
where you get your looks from?” I ask, and slide the picture in front of
Sunday. She goes all pop-eyed and totally loses her composure as she grabs the
photo and says, “Holy crap—is that my mom? She’s a babe!” I pull out another
black and white photo. “Want to know what your father saw in her?” I slide this
one over. It’s the best photo Max ever took of Liora—Liora from behind, totally
naked, sitting on a rock, with a beach in front of her. Her dirty blonde hair
is loose and windblown, and she’s tilting her head just enough to her left that
you can catch the corner of her eye and the beginning of her profile, like the
photographer snapped this just as she was about to turn around and look back at
him. The effect is hypnotic—you look at this picture and you automatically tilt
your own head a little, like you can look around her shoulder and see the rest
of her face. But you can’t. You are never going to see this woman’s face,
because she is never going to give you more than just a tantalizing glimpse of
it. Liora down to the DNA.
“And if you want to know what I thought of your dad? And
your mom? And Iran-Contra?” I slide over the legal folder. “It’s all here. My
diaries of the early 80’s. Including about six months of my Dream Book, and a
bunch of other women besides your mom. Gayle. Daphne. Kate. There's a lot of
angry crap about Kate, but Kate's one of the reasons I'm in this city, so I
always remember to light a candle for her instead of burning her at the stake.”
“For me?” Sunday asks, and I nod. “It’s your copy. Do with it what you will.”
“Has my mother seen this?” “God, no,” I say, “I’m not friends with her—I’m
friends with you. You I can talk to without wanting anything back. Her? I can’t
even say hello to her without wanting her reply to be warmer than she’s saying
it—every time I get in touch with her, it’s about being dissatisfied with the
response, which is always too slow, or too distant. And when it’s about that
kind of wanting, well, that is solid evidence of something more than
friendship.”
Sunday takes this in with a nod as she finishes pouring me a
fresh Guinness. Once again I mentally game plan what she’s going to say. Will
she compare my relationship with Liora to hers and Dominic? Will she start
ragging on me for always falling for the unobtainable? Will she sum up my
character in a single stinging aphorism? And once again, she surprises me. “Speaking of addicts,” she says, because she
is gifted with the same superhuman change-the-subject powers as her mother,
“I’m putting this at 106. The Professor has been asking for you.” She heads off
in that direction, stops, turns back. “We’ve had to cut him off the last couple
of nights.” “That bad?” “Worse. Keep an eye on him.” I nod, and follow her to
the booth.
Evelyn Nesbit, age 19
The Girl In
the Red Velvet Swing
Booth 106 was the regular table of Evelyn Nesbit—it's where
she was first seen by Charles Dana Gibson, who used her as the model for his
famous Gibson Girl drawings; it's where she met the young John Barrymore, who
became her lover and got her pregnant twice (once in the booth itself and once
in his apartment); it's where she was introduced to architect Stanford White by
fellow Floradora Girl Edna Goodrich; and it's where she met her future husband
Harry Thaw, who murdered White at the rooftop bar of the old Madison Square
Garden (which White designed) on June
25, 1906. Originally surrounded by red velvet drapes, the booth is now open and
unlit. On the wall is a photo of Nesbit from her Gibson Girl days, but there
used to be a much more interesting photo in its place, a shot of Nesbit with
Joan Collins which was taken when the two of them had dinner in Booth 106 in
1954 just before Collins started filming The Girl In The Red Velvet Swing, the
story of Nesbit's affair with White. The framed photo disappeared one night in
1965 after Andy Warhol and Edie Sedgwick closed the bar. Each accused the other
of stealing it, but it was never found in either Segwick's effects after her
death in 1971 or Warhols's effects in 1987.
Joan Collins & Evelyn Nesbit on the set of The Girl In the Red Velvet Swing
Beneath the photo, on a small shelf, is a little jar labeled
“BAR-B-Q Sauce.” The jar was originally purchased by Nesbit as a gift for
White—whenever White would meet her for dinner, he would order ribs, and she
paid the waiters to always keep the small jar full of sauce at the table for
White’s special use. Very special, according to suppressed trial testimony
after his murder—allegedly, the ribs weren’t the only thing White covered in
barbecue sauce behind those drapes. After White’s death, Booth 106 was roped off
as a sign of mourning, a RESERVED sign was placed on the table, and per Evelyn
Nesbit’s wishes, once a week the bartender would refill the BAR-B-Q jar, as if
in preparation for White’s eventual return. The table went empty for almost two
years (not even Nesbit sat at it), until the afternoon of January 5, 1908, when
Harry Thaw sailed into the Naughty Pine, plunked himself down at Booth 106,
ripped up the RESERVED sign, tore down the red velvet curtains, draped them
around his body like a winding sheet, and demanded a shave. When told that he
was in a bar and not a barber shop, Thaw cried, “Then I’ll do it myself,”
whereupon he pulled out a straight razor, stropped it on his leather belt, and
taking the BAR-B-Q jar, proceeded to slop sauce all over his face as if it were
shaving cream. Then, pretending to stare into a mirror, he gave himself a
blood-soaked shave while humming “I Could Love A Million Girls,” the song that
had been playing when he shot White in the face. “You must be a lunatic,” said
one of the waiters. Thaw just smiled at him. His first trial for the murder of
Stanford White had ended in a deadlocked jury; but the next day, when his
second trial began, he pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity.
It’s all connected
The Professor is drinking Jack Daniels when I sit down with
him. He reaches over to shake my hand and says, “I want to thank you, Matthew.
Thank you for everything you’ve taught me.” I’m a little taken aback; is this a
goodbye, or just the alcohol talking? “Everyone you meet,” the Professor is
saying, “everyone you meet in life, is someone who shows you a side of
yourself. Someone who is a piece of your puzzle.” “Which means we're a piece of
their puzzle,” I say, and the Professor nods. “Of course. We are not only the objects
of the puzzle, we are the creators of it, and the players who try to complete
it. And no one ever does. We never get more than a sense of the full picture.
But if we are lucky, we get a very real picture of what our section looks like.
By looking around and seeing who fits together with us.”
Who fits together with us. I think of Ava. I think of
Liora. I think of DJ. I think of this bar. “And what happens when a piece
disappears?” the Professor continues. “Then it leaves a piece-sized shape in
the board. And sometimes it's, I can't think of the word, ordinary? Common?
Smooth enough? Sometimes the piece is vague and smooth enough to be replaced by
something that's roughly the same shape and size. But the more individual it
is, the more unique its shape, and the tighter it fits against you, then the
harder it will be to replace. Like the loss of a loved one. It is a hole that
never gets filled in. But even that piece—even the least essential piece in
your puzzle—even that has the design of the whole in it.” “Fractals,” I say,
remembering that Sarah told me the Prof had been wanting to talk to me about
this a couple of nights ago. “Exactly,” says the Professor. “Fractals. You know
about fractals? Of course you do.” He leans forward. I can smell the whiskey on
his breath. “You should get out of your head, Matthew. It's a lousy place to
live. Get into a place where the rest of you can live. GLYNNIS? COFFEE!” he
yells. “Bring the fucking pot! This is going to be a long night. And you,” he
says to me, “put that notebook away. Put that pen and notebook AWAY. I know
what you've been doing these last two weeks, and I bless you for it, but you
will NOT do it with me. This is for us, not everybody else. You write plays,
you understand that. Plays are produced and then they close, and if you don't
see them while they're running, you will never have that chance again. It’s
like people. If you don't meet them while they're here, then you never knew
them, because reading about them is not knowing them. Reading about them is
knowing the guy who wrote about them. You have to meet them. Now think of all
the people you've met just by walking into this bar. Pre-death and post-life.
Those are the only two states of existence, Matthew. They’re what makes this
life beautiful. The ephemeral. The ephemeral is the most beautiful, because it
dies. Flowers. Love. Countries. Ideas. This conversation. So put your pen away,
you scribbling fool. This conversation will be that kind of beautiful.”
And it was.
Alcohol: Guinness (4) Patron shots (2)
Copyright 2016 Matthew J Wells
Day 17
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