The Bullfighter Checks Her Makeup (18 page)

T
HE
H
USTLE

THE OTHER DAY
, we found out that Frank Stella, who for thirty years has deconstructed pictorial structure and challenged representational art with his formalist paintings, is a C-level squash player. He claims to be a D-level player, which in squash’s ranking system would make him an advanced beginner, but people who are intimate with his game insist that he’s really a C. These people also say that anyone new to Mr. Stella’s squash game should be warned that he is a genius practitioner of the hustle—that is, the classic and artful maneuver of saying you’re worse than you are, getting your opponent to drop his guard, and then beating the pants off him. To this, Mr. Stella just says, “Oh, phooey.”

If you ask Mr. Stella about squash, which he prefers to art as material for general discussion, he will probably come very, very close to telling you that he has played for only five years, but then he will catch himself and admit that he was
going
to tell you that, because he’s such a
lousy
player and it would sound better than the truth, which he has now decided to tell you, and the truth is that he’s actually been playing for
eight
years, and he ought to be ashamed of himself for even
thinking
of lying as crassly as he planned to do.

He admits he was once told by one of the people he plays with that he runs like a weasel.

Mr. Stella has a large show of his artwork on display right now at the Museum of Modern Art, but what he had on his mind the other day was squash. At the Palladium nightclub, which is right near his studio, the fifty-thousand-dollar Rolex United States Open Squash Championships were being held—an event he helped organize. He made a poster for the tournament, and arranged for a photograph of one of his pieces—a gigantic, colorful form made of painted cones and swirls of metal—to be used on the program; it was his idea, too, to hold the tournament on the dance floor of the Palladium. He also appeared in a special exhibition match that was part of the tournament, besides playing his usual, thrice-weekly game. “Frank’s
very
involved with squash this week,” Paula Pelosi, his assistant, told us. “He’s happy to talk about it at great length.”

Mr. Stella explained that he thinks that squash and art have little or nothing in common—except for something or other about a blank canvas, and that’s not anything he’d care to elaborate on. But he did have a few notions on how the two pursuits compare, and he revealed them to us when we visited him in his studio before heading over to the Palladium with him to watch the semifinal matches—between Chris (Muscle Man) Dittmar and Ross (Iron Man) Norman, and between Jahangir (Emperor) Khan and Jansher (Rubber Man) Khan.

“At least, in painting, experience counts for something,” Mr. Stella said, and then he grinned and wiggled a big cigar between his fingers. He was wearing a white cardigan with a U.S. Open insignia patch, blue jeans, and beat-up tennis shoes, and had a pair of eyeglasses strapped to his head with a stretch band. He’s small and wiry—about half the size of one of the new art pieces hanging in his studio—and often has an impish look on his face. “In squash, what happens is that you get a lot of experience but you also get
old,
” he went on. “Maybe I could have been better at one time, but I have had a
lot
of injuries. Of course, they’re the sort of injuries other people might consider trivial, but I like to think of them as crippling. When I started playing, I have to admit, I really thought I would become a great player. I really
wanted
to become a great player. I really
hoped
I’d become a great player. In art, you can keep getting better, but in squash you hit your level and that’s just about it. Curtains. You’re finished. I hit my limit at about forty minutes of mediocre playing.”

One thing that isn’t mediocre about Mr. Stella’s squash is his racquet. He had Ben, the guy who strings racquets over at the Park Place Squash Club, string it with nylon in five different bright colors instead of the single subdued color that most people use. The result is a squash racquet Mondrian would have been proud of. Mr. Stella says he did this to bring a little glamour to his game, but confesses that he hoped it might also serve to confuse and intimidate his opponents. He said it hasn’t worked—the trouble is that most of them consider his racquet of many colors to be a sort of sissy affectation.

Just then, Bob Swan, whose company fabricates the metal parts of Mr. Stella’s works, came into the studio with two friends. He walked around the place, looking at the sculptures and rapping his knuckles on the metal parts he’d cast. “This is ours,” he said to his friends, and then he turned toward Mr. Stella and said, “Hey, Frank! Come on—let’s go see some squash!”

At the Palladium, Mr. Stella had the triple distinction, as far as we could tell, of being just about the only man not wearing a suit and tie; the only one hiding a cigar (smoking wasn’t allowed); and the only one who called out unsolicited coaching tips from his seat. He directed most of his suggestions to Chris Dittmar, a red-haired, thick-calved Australian, who Mr. Stella hoped would win the tournament. He said, at various times, “Come on, Chris! Wake
up
!” and “Hey, Chris,
concentrate
!” and “Come on, wake up, you
turkey
!” and “If I’d known this was going to be on television, I would have told him to get a haircut.” Mr. Stella could barely take his eyes off the ball, but when it looked as though Mr. Dittmar had clinched the match, he did turn to us and say, “Boy, isn’t that just
great
?” During one of the breaks, he said that he really got a kick out of seeing world-class squash players. We asked him whether, if he had the choice, he’d rather be remembered as an artist or as a great squash player. He said, “Oh, I’d rather be an artist. I’m too old to be a great squash player. At my best, I’m a D. In fact, I can hardly walk.”

M
OON
T
RIP

AT THE VERY MOMENT
the New York street festival season was beginning to seem like one gigantic Pennsylvania funnel cake, we ran across the Big Lee Moon Trip. The Moon Trip is not for sale. It is not a Simpsons T-shirt, a slap bracelet, a neon green ripstop-nylon hip pouch, a souvlaki sandwich, a Dianetics handbook, a six-pack of tube socks, a neon-pink terry-cloth-covered hairband, a pair of fake gold Cleopatra hoop earrings, a calzone, a recently boosted and repackaged cassette player, or fudge. The Moon Trip is, therefore, a street festival anomaly.

The Moon Trip is an amusement ride, forty-five years old and currently bright red with yellow racing stripes. It is shaped like a huge beach bucket, is lined with seats (capacity eighteen), and is suspended from a ten-foot-high steel sawhorse mounted on a red Chevy one-ton pickup. Its only motion is back and forth, like that of an oversize porch swing. It is not, technically speaking, scary. At no point in the Moon Trip’s functioning does a three-dimensional hologram of Michael Jackson come into view. It does not have two hundred feet of vertical drop or four thousand feet of coiled steel track or a computer-plotted course of corkscrews and double loops. It more closely recalls something that might have emerged after several hours in the basement workshop with some sheet metal, some rivets, and some 1945 issues of
Popular Mechanics.
Its only moving parts are Big Johnny, Little Johnny, and Doug—three Jack La Lanne–style guys who take turns loading the kids and rocking the bucket—and Big Lee, who every weekend from the spring through the late fall pilots the Moon Trip to street festivals, block parties, and the occasional executively produced Bar Mitzvah.

Every now and again, Big Lee considers adding another ride to his lineup—the Whip, maybe—but for the moment he likes to describe his capital improvement plans as being at a standstill. Recently, at the Atlantic Antic, in Brooklyn, he explained his position. “For the time being, the Moon Trip is plenty,” he said. “I used to have the pitch game, the novelties, the fishbowl games, the tossing the plates, the parakeets—the whole you-name-it. Now I’ve got the Moon Trip, and we sell helium balloons. Sum total. The Whip is a maybe, but, right now, just a maybe. A Ferris wheel is another maybe. Currently, I’m sticking with the Moon Trip. It occupies my mind.”

A tall woman with a distracted manner walked up to Big Lee, who was sitting on an upended milk crate several yards away from the Moon Trip—a position that allowed him, with a minimum of movement, to manage the balloon concession and make change for his son Mark, who was selling Moon Trip tickets. The Moon Trip is often the only ride at a street festival. That was the case at the Atlantic Antic, and it had attracted a fidgety crowd of about forty kids. The parents stood in a disorderly semicircle a few feet away from the truck. One mother was saying, to no one in particular, “Tito just had a Sno-Kone. I hope this doesn’t turn into a disaster.”

The distracted woman asked Big Lee if he was interested in buying a king- or queen-size cotton comforter. He ignored her. Then an Asian woman carrying a small spotted dog and a Batman balloon came up to him and asked if she could get stronger gas put in the balloon for free.

Big Lee shook his head and said, “Sorry. These days, everyone’s in business.”

Monday through Friday, the Moon Trip is stored at an undisclosed site in South Brooklyn, and Big Lee runs a parking lot at an undisclosed site in downtown Brooklyn. Twenty-five years ago, he was running a different parking lot, went broke, started driving a cab, and then answered an ad for a Whip helper. He drove the Whip for six months. That job, besides providing Big Lee with gainful employment, partly satisfied a theretofore thwarted dream he’d had of running away to the circus.

“I always had this idea,” he said, pointing at the Moon Trip, which was now loaded with eighteen kids, all screaming in syncopation with its swings. “Nothing sentimental. I knew there was money in it was all. When I was driving the Whip, I got to know where the amusement people hang around, which is a slightly different location from where I hang around. The man who owned the ride had a Mister Softee concession. He just had the ride lying around. I took my savings and I bought it. It was called the Swing Away then. I changed the name myself.
Moon
I thought of because they had just sent someone to the moon at that time.
Trip
I just picked at random, and because people talked a lot about trips in those days.”

For a decade or so, Big Lee provided most of the muscle power for the Moon Trip. Then he hired his helpers and acquired the physique of someone often in repose. He is now about fifty years old, and has slicked-back black hair, a saggy smile, ruddy coloring, and less than perfect posture. He usually wears a pastel polo shirt, jeans, and a thick silver neck chain to the festivals. Big Johnny wears a Playboy pendant. Little Johnny wears hoop earrings. Doug wears a baseball cap. Mark says, “I’m in school studying recreational therapy. What do you think—I’m going to make this my
career
?”

While filling a balloon, Big Lee decided to outline his business philosophy. First, pick the paint colors for the Moon Trip yourself, so you make sure they’re cheerful. Second, you can get rid of the tossing the plates, the pitch game, the parakeets—the whole you-name-it—but balloons will always be good to you. Third, don’t pick weaklings as helpers. Fourth, don’t hang around any particular festival too long, because people will get to know you. Fifth, don’t tell your neighbors that you have a ride, because they’ll be asking you to bring it over every other night for barbecues, pool parties, Jennifer’s sweet sixteen bash, or whatever. Sixth, wash and Simonize the Moon Trip once a week, so it always looks presentable. Finally, push
hard,
because the louder the kids scream, the easier it is for people to find you at the festivals.

“Also, don’t put fat kids on the bottom row,” he added. “I got two fat ones stuck there once. Now I say eighteen will fit,
depending.
But this is a good moneymaker ride. It’s actually
fun.
I go up in it once every year to see how it’s doing. It’s old-fashioned, but it has a broad range. I always say, ‘The Moon Trip—for kids of all ages, master of none.’ ”

Behind him, Big Johnny had stopped the ride in midswing so that a little boy with a flattop could disembark.

“He got scared,” Big Johnny called to Big Lee, and he added, under his breath, “Man, by the time I get home I don’t even want to see my
own
kids.”

Big Lee shrugged. “It’s almost the end of the season,” he said. “Just a few more festivals. Then we go south. I mean,
I
go south. The Moon Trip stays here.”

M
USHER

THESE ARE THE QUESTIONS
that Susan Butcher, Alaskan dog musher and two-time winner (and record holder) of the eleven-hundred-mile Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race, is asked most often: How cold does it get in Alaska? How cold is it in Alaska
right now
? Is your house cold? What does caribou taste like? What’s your dog’s name? Susan’s first four answers are: Very, very cold. Not too bad. Doesn’t feel that way to me. Really good.

The last question has approximately a hundred and fifty answers, because Susan has approximately a hundred and fifty Alaskan Husky sled dogs, who live outside her log cabin in the Alaskan bush. Such a large number of animals strikes many people as unusual, and even unmanageable, so sometimes, instead of “What’s your dog’s name?,” she is asked if she actually bothers to name all her dogs.

The people who ask that are not fellow mushers—dogsled drivers—but, rather, the kind of people (including us) who came to the Plaza Hotel last week to see Susan receive the Women’s Sports Foundation’s Professional Sportswoman of the Year Award, and who find the circumstances of Susan’s life nearly unimaginable: the dozens of dogs, the rigors of sled racing, the near isolation. (For much of the year, the only human being she sees is her husband, David Monson.) Susan, who told us she much prefers two days on a dogsled to two days in the Plaza Hotel, has accrued so much fame as a musher that she is used to being a curiosity, and she is gracious enough to answer even the most elementary dogmushing, Alaska, or life-in-the-bush question with only a trace of exasperation. “Of course I name all the dogs,” she explained. “I name some after places and some after people. Then, for a while, I’ll have themes, like the names of book characters. One of my studs is Crackers, so another theme is to name his puppies after cracker brands. Another stud is Granite, and a lot of his puppies have rock names. I know every dog by name. I know every dog’s parents. I know every dog’s grandparents. I know which one has a cold, and which one didn’t eat well last night, and I know each one’s personality and where he likes to be scratched. You have to understand, this is all I care about, and this is all I think about. I don’t understand anything else, and I don’t care about anything else. I’m with the dogs twelve or sixteen hours a day, seven days a week. They’re my friends and my family and my livelihood.”