In the Shadow of the American Dream (21 page)

He said he was deaf for one year early on in his life. He said, When my hearing returned, I started verbalizing like crazy; I never stopped talking, ever since I've been a verbal person.

[No date]

Met him at Julius Bar last night, standing outside the din of talk and jukebox disco and glass and bottle noise. He rounded the corner in the semidarkness and I crossed the street to meet him. After a brief stop for some food we walked up to 25th Street to his friend's house and made ourselves comfortable on the mattress, which we pulled out of the couch frame. At some point I showed him my photos, the Rimbaud series, and he made comments that I wasn't a still photographer, that I could be doing cinema, moving pictures, because of the evident space in the photos, the sense of them as just a clip from a series of movements, the layout of space in frames was somewhat like an Eastern eye, the middle of some of the photos a blank space. I gave him at his request the self-portrait sunlight photo and a couple Rimbauds: Coney Island and the Longleys restaurant photo. I tried to explain to him the intensity of my feelings since meeting him, and it couldn't really be explained. I don't wanna be like some love-struck kid, though that's okay in itself, just wish I could convey the seriousness of the feelings and the confusion I'm experiencing as an afterthought. Sometimes I wonder if how he sees me is really how I see myself: he sees large streaks of loneliness, etc. At one point reading into my self-portrait he saw loneliness and pain and simultaneous strength and invitation, an extended invitation for the viewer to get to know me.

This sentence came through my head but I realize I would never utter it: I'm not a lonely person, I never feel loneliness. At this point I don't know what loneliness is. In view of the past year and gradually removing myself from most people I knew, I wish I could explain that process, somehow it seems like a catch-22. I slowly removed myself from the company of most people I knew because they were too serious and had laid claim to the whole sense of giving in to seriousness. Most people I knew for the last four years have grown older than their age and laugh little and have grown cynical and tired and see little humor and don't seem to have any energy to really live and experience things fully and richly and that is what I tried removing myself from. But in the process I found myself walking the streets alone most times, being home alone, and gradually falling into a state of very little communication, all because of the desire to preserve my own sense of life and living. So here it is, I've met this guy who feels and talks about things and concerns so very close to my own, but I remain quiet when I want to be unguarded. He talks about fantasies of traveling with me by train or car or hitchhiking, through small towns in the West, through places in this country, and I can't help but respond to them strongly, wishing quietly that it were something other than fantasy, that we were actually going to do these things within a short period of time. He said that in thinking about me he was going to avail himself of those desires, something like air, like water, and that I was the first person since '74 or '76 that he'd met who caused him to consider those things in regards to his movements through this country and this world. He said that I was one of those people that he wouldn't mind seeing turn up anywhere, whether in turning a corner in Amsterdam or in San Francisco or wherever, in turning a corner and seeing me turn a corner in his direction simultaneously, that it would make him very happy. And the sense of those words washing over me while I was lying there on my back in the dim light, my hand stroking out patterns against the hair of his chest, of his arms … I wish there were some method of conveying these senses to him, senses that simultaneously make me feel very good and unnerve me because of the probably transient makeup of our contact and friendship. I guess what I'm feeling is that this isn't going to last and that there are very rare times in my life when I've connected with someone who has these sensibilities and articulate language that both excite me, stimulate me in a creative and living sense, as well as confirm senses of my own that lie dormant for long periods of time, that point one can get to where one wonders if the desires one has have any place in the environment, like if I'll ever have a chance to explore these senses in words, in communication with someone who won't be perplexed or who won't deny their realness.

May 27, 1980

Worked this joint (Danceteria) my first weekend. Amazing! A fucking dive, too. Got a job through Jim as a busboy carrying cases of beer back and forth up and down stairs keeping the bartenders supplied with iced Heineken and Budweiser transporting broken sacks of ice to other floors and diving into the human walls of sweating pounding thrusting dancing bodies to sweep up broken bottles and retrieve those about to be broken. Emptying garbage cans mopping bathroom floors and dance floors as each bottle breaks or as drinks are dropped pulling bottles and whole rolls of paper towels out of toilets, etc., etc., etc.

Gives me this strange perspective on New Wave characters. Previously have gone to clubs and just enjoyed myself. But to clean up after these people is another story. Suddenly New Wave is boring and repetitive and predictable. As Arthur said, These people are really like strict conservatives practicing their idea of what it is to have freedom. No imagination. Limited as they are, freedom can only be exercised with destructive actions. They think destructiveness is anarchy. Given a window and told they can do whatever they want with it they would more often break it. There's no imagination in that. How is it really anarchistic? An anarchist would probably say, What window? An artist or someone with imagination would at least paint or draw on it. Mutants were okay, nothing more. I wasn't thrilled by their music. Ended up bored and exhausted but made 100 bucks and 20 dollars tips from the bartenders.

Second weekend it got real bizarre. Some interesting characters but the sweat and toil of the work throws a bizarre slant onto any appreciation. One girl who worked there did smack and fell out on the staircase moments after the joint opened. Apparently a lot of people there are into heroin. I smoked reefer with her day before (Friday night).

Have been spending time on and off with Arthur. I really don't understand what it is I feel for him any longer. I had some pretty strong feelings in regards to him, but that's cooled down in the face of the realization that this whole contact is like passing strangers. Can't escape the sensation at times that I'm just filling out his days till he leaves for Amsterdam. (Today's his birthday, May 27th, and his “angels” have come through with the bucks to finance his next film. Angels being a couple of doctors he knows. Am glad for him.) When we talk, rather when I talk seriously, he gets this drift in his eye like he's in other places. I don't think I'll ever understand the purpose of his telling me that second night on the pier about his having a lot of love to give but others he directs it towards are afraid to return it. For he remains a very private person to me. I feel like I've hardly touched the surface of his sensibilities, he's never broached the subject of what it is he feels about me in terms of time. We only seem to get together and make love—lie down with each other and very little is said. Other than sexual comments or romantic stuff which is fulfilling in only a certain sense. I try to understand it; I realize I don't especially want him to profess undying love to me or commitment of lifelong nature. But I also don't want to remain so uncertain of what it is he feels about me. Of course there's the fear of being liked only for the sexual part of our contact. I'd rather be alone, rather be back in that solitary space walking the streets and viewing the city and the world from a moving vantage point than anchor down sexually and open up these here confusions and longings and heightened verbal senses and then have to pack it all up again in a couple weeks' time. I'm also still very much in love with Jean-Pierre, in a sense that I still desire him in Paris. Jean-Pierre was the first man I was with who was unafraid of my personality or my creative movements. There was room with him to love and live and grow and change. Time has put a distance between us. And my meeting Arthur filled up that kind of empty space. Haven't gone to the piers to get it on with people for two weeks. Connection with Arthur has some intensely great parts and then some real low points: time he has for me, his lack of real attention towards me when I speak, slight edge of impatience until he's talking about his own concerns. So he's turned forty, I think, maybe more, maybe less. I sometimes wonder if he realizes his perspective will surely be vastly different from mine. Once he told me I was naïve in something I said. I agreed. But I think at times he needs someone either unquestioning/ young/vulnerable/etc. or someone right on a par with his vision of things. Anything outside of the two might not do in regards to a lover.

So I continue to write to J.P. and I wish I could be leaving to go there soon. And then there's the tension of this contact with Art and also with just recently doing things with my creative work. It gets tense at times. I want J.P. and Paris and a cooling out from the demands of this particular city, and yet I want to do things here rather than feel I'm running away from difficult scenes. I've felt confused a lot since meeting Arthur. It's good in one way in that I have to examine my desires and goals and ideas from everything like possibly living with J.P. and what it is I want to do while I'm here. At times though I wonder if I will ever meet someone who will thoroughly replace my love for Jean-Pierre. That's always been a somewhat scary thought as I would hate to be in a position of suddenly not feeling that love any longer. When I think back to Paris and Touquet and quiet times in that tiny eight-by-twelve-foot courtyard room with the window-sill as our refrigerator, I get such intense feelings of longing to be able to share J.P.'s life again. When I met Arthur he awakened some dormant senses in me. Things I've wanted to feel and experience and communicate freely for so long. There was a fear and tension there for a while that I would slowly draw away from J.P. towards Arthur. But so much is lacking in the contact that I guess I no longer have to fear that. And what is lacking seems to be almost indefinable. That's what is strange and hard to understand.

Anyway, now I'm almost done writing a film script for a black-and-white silent film, thirty to sixty minutes in length. Arthur plans to lend me his old Super-8 to film it with. Friends have offered to play parts in it. Spent the morning at home typing the shots out, and am incredibly dazed from the silence of home, the intense cigarette smoking during the writing, also a lot of tension coming up in realizing how difficult some of these scenes will be to film and the simultaneous desire to get those scenes filmed despite cost or difficulty or even impossibility in regards to finding a guy to play the main part.

Dennis almost got murdered by some demented guy on the bridge a week or so ago. Talked to him last night. Upset me to hear this. Death coming so close to myself, to people I have shared part of life with. Sucks. Thought of years ago on the streets having come close to being killed myself by that madman posing as a cop down by the buses parked on 40th and 11th Avenue.
*
How it was at that time and age, the closeness of death dispelled by the relief of having been able to escape it. Now years later I feel our mortality more. Being in my midtwenties I sense the completeness that an unexpected death would be. I fear death and disablement, I feel the fear and horror of death coming close to friends. And I remember Lee's brutal murder in uptown hallway when I was nineteen or twenty.

June 18, 1980

Hey Alex:

How r u? Got your letter a couple days back. Great photos, them windows, thanks for passing them on. Just got up this morning at some semistranger's house up on East 16th. Warm house fifteen stories up with little balcony outside filled with vegetables and flowers growing. Sun coming up it was about 5
A.M.
and the cool colors of the foliage and trees and vines and ivy and corn and snapdragons and tomatoes and jungle plants all flowing out from cool shadows into the light—special morning this. Felt pretty good knowing the
SoHo News
was out and waiting round the corner for me to check it out. Scary sensation of, Oh shit is it gonna look silly or what? This guy I was staying with last night was someone I ran into recently who is gonna make a motorcycle trip across the United States in another month and that's got me frazzled like Jesus here it is after such a long time wanderlust has hit me smack in the face again and all week long image after image in books in film in memories turning over and over in the skies unfolding behind river dusks, images of past travels and images of possible travels, all these sensations having lain dormant for some time now have suddenly emerged again and I'm starting to feel a bit alive again. The last so many months have been like ether to me what with dullness spreading and feeling somewhat alienated in who and what I am in regards to others. My God, listen, in the issue of
SoHo News
there's an article on Jayne Anne Phillips and in that very article are things/statements she makes that for the first time in my life, in my recent years, articulate exactly what I've been feeling. What flips me out is that great fuckin' realization that it's not just me. You don't know how much better that makes me feel. So anyway there's a slight chance that I might accompany this guy, what it will take is just cuttin' the strings to New York and that furious dog of security and then I can be on my way. Dunno for sure if it'll come off or if this stranger will go buzzin' off in westerly directions by himself. But despite that I still got the urge and if it's what I should do I can find ways to do it.

After I left the apartment, I picked up the copy of the paper and walked for ten blocks through East Village before I had the nerve to open it to first page and was instantly delighted at the fact they gave me extra exposure on page one, yeah! Walked another five blocks before I had guts to open it to centerfold, how silly I can be. And yeah yeah yeah, really think it looks good, am so fuckin' pleased with how they handled the layout. I had asked them for that repeat of photos of Rimbaud wounded, but the text was done so much better in terms of different sizes of type. Lookin' at the whole page is great. There's just so much going on in there, so much info visual and word. Whew …