Dancing in the Dark (7 page)
Read Dancing in the Dark Online
Authors: David Donnell
Once, quite drunk after a late supper, too much bourbon after the beer and hamhocks they’d had together at an outdoor café on Murphy, west of Jackson, walking down a small side street in Kansas City, Mo., a cathedral of some size and some historic shading came up in front of Tom almost as suddenly as a passerby. “St. James,” he said, out loud to himself, thinking of gothic King Street in Toronto, putting out one hand as if to ward it off, “St. James Cathedral Blues.” Although that isn’t the exact title of the song, at all. But it wasn’t the same cathedral anyway and he was a little drunk that night. He didn’t remember the incident clearly, went back to the hotel and slept till 10 a.m. or so, until several days later at which time it struck him as simply amusing, like an odd postcard, or an anecdote someone had told him about a friend.
September, 1977, Diggers are no longer turning up in San Francisco getting haircuts but keeping their wide-brimmed hats. Tom saw them too. Tom saw them on television, and he saw them in
LIFE
magazine and in Union Square. “Ah, what would America be without
LIFE
magazine?” he says to a pustuled blond young customs guy a week later at Boston Airport. “I just watch football,” says the pustuled kid, “how long are you staying in Boston?” “I’m at college,” says Tom, “I’m staying forever, for years, anyway.”
He goes first to New York, and then to Boston to attend Harvard, which he has chosen, partly for its proximity to New York, for its crusty longevity and because of its English Department. He goes expecting beer, skittles,
profundity, post-structuralism, uplifted plaid skirts, lampoons, study hours, but also, he hopes, the right beginnings for himself as a writer. Perhaps he may become the Italian Chekhov, he isn’t sure. He is up for it, and anything seems possible.
Tom loves flying. Birds fly. Rickenbacker had flown, and waved to America from the cockpit of a bi-plane as he flew past. Lindbergh had flown and waved to the cold North Atlantic as he flew past, waved to icebergs perhaps. Amelia Earhart had flown and crashed in Nova Scotia once, as a matter of fact. Tom has been to Nova Scotia. Tides and lobsters. He caught fish there. Tom flies. Tom loves flying. He likes the 40,000’ altitudes. It makes him think of Dante, whom Tom loves, although Tom is Canadian, well, from Toronto; he is more at home with Truman Capote and Mark Twain than with William Davis. In the same bed or railway coach, or whatever. He packs 1 suitcase and the 1958 battered Olivetti Underwood office model typewriter, gets on an Air Canada 727 and flies first to New York and then to Boston, home of flags, museums, bluefish, and where you get scrod.
Life is effortless. He even drinks on the plane. Sitting with his long legs crossed awkwardly in the tight space, as comfortable as a big Italian seagull. He feels slightly intimidated, glancing over his magazines,
Time, Esquire, Newsweek
, that he may have difficulty with some of the pass courses in Harvard English, philosophy, for example. He doesn’t realize, looking down at the enormous expanse of bright sunlit shimmering grey blue Atlantic, that the courses will be a snap, a rooster, a piece of cake. He doesn’t realize, there is some inherent modesty in Tom despite his breeziness, what options
will
turn out to be difficult. He will probably
not
become the Italian Chekhov. Chekhov was Russian, after all. Things have their place in the world. Tom’s place in the world is to be a serious and innocent clown, a kind of big and awkward, except on the basketball court,
polpaccio
. The 727 is something neither Shakespeare nor Ariel could have conceived. Life is effortless. Tom has not yet gone seedy on the lower East Side; and, of course, not even had an intimation of Chuck Berry or a hint of Woody Guthrie. He still hasn’t met up with the Desperados, or with demondrummer Bats, or with Whitney.
Sean Young’s eyes shine out at you like huge orbs
of light.
She is in a pensive mood this afternoon. You feel
you’ve known her for years,
since college,
maybe since high school. She was in a gleeful mood for several days
after the story about gluing James Woods’ penis to his thigh
with Crazy Glue,
but that’s all stale gossip now,
it probably didn’t happen anyway. What was Woods sleeping
on a bench out in the lot in the nude for anyway? Who knows?
We make up stories so that we can have a map involving people.
There are so many stars in the sky it would take you a lifetime
to memorize their different names. Some are 1000 light years
away, some are 5000 light years away,
they are really just small
bits of rock
like bits of the Rocky Mountains,
bits of the Sierra
Madre
floating grey [black from a distance
& burning with reflected
light] & mysterious in the luminous blue light of outer
space. My friend Virgo’s first name is Sean, no
resemblance
although he does have large blue eyes. Hers are a sort
of golden hazel,
making for various allusions perhaps, reflections
in a golden eye, the golden bowl, put a little sugar [what is that
a reference to? cocaine, come in me, which? are you sure?]
Elizabeth Taylor
has violet eyes & walks nude up the living room staircase in
the Carson McCullers film, Brando playing an army captain
confused & beautiful as usual & having trouble with the horses,
the horses restless as hell.
One of Lester Young’s most beautiful solos
is
“I Can’t Give You Anything but Love.” I can’t. Give
you anything.
But love has a way of lifting up
on the soft currents of a summer wind & behaving inappropriately
like a red kite. The cigarette smoke is hazy
& the tall black man lifts the saxophone as if he wants
to fly right through the timbered ceiling
of this small Pennsylvania road house.
My mother is sitting
at a table about ½ way down the room. It’s hot. My father
has gone to the washroom the
MENS
to wash his face
& probably give his moustache a quick brush with his hand.
It is 1936
& they are on vacation. Roosevelt has been
in the White House for a long time now. The cars are blunt
& they are mostly dark colours.
Roosevelt’s friend Mackenzie King has been in Ottawa
for years. The unemployed workers move across Ontario
in stained work pants & dark suit jackets
with a scarf, but not in summer when they sleep out in parks
& on the lawns of city halls.
Early morning sunlight
on the Pennsylvania Turnpike all those blunt dark cars
moving in a serious line look ½ surreal. Raymond Chandler
is beginning another novel. There are huge food lines
in Pittsburgh. My mother & father have money but are not
always kind to each other. He winks with one dark eye
jauntily. My mother smiles
unconsciously tapping her thick wedding band on the formica
table top. I can’t give you anything but love.
Do you remember that light beige Emma
Goldman t-shirt you gave me one summer?
My friend Susan
Berlin was married to Jeremy Larner for a while
who wrote “Drive, He Said,” taking his title
from a poem by Robert Creeley about the darkness that wafts across
the highways of life
great billows of it, well, okay, her 12-year-old
son Jesse was sitting in the living room propped up against the wall
one afternoon reading volume 1 of
The Memoirs Of Emma
Goldman
, notes from the 1920s, & I said, Okay, that’s cool.
Anyway the t-shirt, it gets a lot of attention, it says,
IF I CAN’T DANCE
I DON’T WANT TO
BE PART OF YOUR REVOLUTION
. Her picture in large
black solids is in the middle of the slogan. People have to bend over
on the street to pick out exactly who she is – steel-rim glasses
& beautiful, & of course she’s all in black on the t-shirt, she looks
as if she should be carrying an umbrella walking along some beach
in Germany in the 1890s. It’s a good shirt, & I thought I’d write
you a note & say thanks for it.
I’m very widely read
but I’m more of a Tom Stoppard Edward Said social anarchist now
& I don’t usually carry a black umbrella. But you know what they
say – “Anarchists come in different forms.” And when you look
into my face you can see it all very clearly.
It’s a loose
comfortable shirt & I wear it casually like a young rock&roll kid
wearing a t-shirt that says
N I R V A N A
.
SKINHEADS YOU HAVE TO CODIFY THEM
The white
skins
are the white skinheads, shaven clean as a baseball,
you’ve seen them around, also
called pinheads. The
red skins
are the socialists, they’re the ones who came first,
same height & weight etc. but they have red shoe laces
in their boots – black military highcuts,
that’s what they all wear,
very much like std
US
military
combat issue. It’s confusing as hell, isn’t it? And then
over here we’ve got ska heads
& the occasional artist
or Park Avenue photographer
who decides to shave his head. I guess they’re all working
class youth who like tavern culture & this is a fad. Some
of them are unemployed, probably none of the white skinheads
like Tangerine Dream
or Uta Lempur very much, or Brecht,
for example, no, Brecht wouldn’t be very popular. The red
skinheads probably don’t read Brecht either, various brands
of Löwenbrau are popular or unpopular but the red skinheads
defend the rights of Turkish
guestarbeiters
,
& the white
skinheads seem to like fire bombs.
I can see him travelling by bus
with the orchestra
from Toronto to the Muskokas
to entertain vacationers & summer residents. My friend
Colin Simpson’s parents heard him at a lake resort
somewhere east of Parry Sound in the early 40s. The war
was on, Colin’s father,
a major stockholder
in Massey-Harris [tractors, combines, threshers],
was drunk, the mood of the evening was lively
according to Colin’s memory. Hamilton,
Windsor [across from Detroit],
but mostly the Muskokas &, of course, Toronto – Palais Royale,
the Imperial Room at the Royal York Hotel,
places like that. Granted, he went Hollywood,
& granted, he only does concerts now, & he can’t sing any more
anyway. But “Full Moon, Empty Arms” [he was quite young then],
now that’s an Ontario song.
“My Foolish Heart” – that’s mature
Frank Sinatra, better than the young crooner,
but he’s still got his chops, sharp articulation, dramatic interpretation
some of those neat tricks like singing ½ a beat off.
He was good before he turned 41,
or 42,
he had moves,
& then he moved further south & he stopped doing the bars.
It was nothing but concert tours, & The Sands Hotel in Las Vegas.
Let me tell you something – I liked him in
Man With the Golden
Arm
. He was good,
playing the thin, intense, pale musician
[definitely an
east
Ontario guy] coming off heroin,
& the scene where Kim Novak wearing a sweater I can only describe
as risqué by its very intention
lying on top of him
with a blanket to keep him warm, he’s going cold turkey,
he hasn’t had a shot for days & he’s got the chills,
boy, that was a great scene. Even now,
standing in Ontario,
looking as far south as Texas [where they have been having
a lot of trouble – Killeen, Tex., where the guy drove his truck
through the window of the restaurant & shot 23 people; Waco, Tex.,
where the
ATF
laid seige to the compound of the Branch Davidians
& approx. 63 people were killed, that’s trouble],
even now,
I like “I’ve Got the World on a String,” the bravura
of the upbeat is like wild ducks flying across Point Pelee, Ont.
He said, “I’ve been trying to keep the baby
Jesus
out of my mind for years.”
I’m in the back seat,
don’t look at me, I’m not the baby Jesus.
I’m about 20, we’re all about 20,
I’m drinking coffee out of a red plastic thermos cup.
I think,
Funny, I’ve never thought of Jack
as a Christian kind of guy, certainly not a holy roller.
We’re working at Kelvinator for a few weeks.
I’m reading the
Toronto Star
in the back seat
& Morris says, with that woodchuck chuck in his voice,
“Well he won’t help you win any money at the races.”
And that’s true, I think to myself.
The baby Jesus won’t bring Sailor’s Rest into the wire ahead of the field.
I’m not really thinking at all very much, I’m tired.
Overtime last night but they gave it to someone else tonight.
Jack & Morris haven’t had any all this week.
Had a couple of drinks after lunch,
we were working on big white door assemblies. They began to look
like images from the Apollo flights. I could see Armstrong walking
on the moon and carrying a door assembly on his shoulder.
I smack Morris on the back of the head with my newspaper.
“Jesus is all about love,” I tell him.
Dead skunk by the shoulder as we exit from the 401
and drop down a couple of streets to get onto Morningside
Drive. It was hot, what was a skunk doing on the 401 anyway? There
were small insects, hot delicate dark
gnats squashed across the dusty blue windshield.