Tibetan Peach Pie: A True Account of an Imaginative Life (16 page)

Mary Lou looked harmless enough. She was petite, as I’ve said, and rather attractive (long brown hair, fiercely expressive eyes, slender waist, and one of those up/down, up/down seesaw rumps from the Marilyn Monroe Memorial Playground); although in middle age she came to physically resemble the nickname she earned by her propensity for breaking up marriages, friendships, bank accounts, and attempts at serious conversation. The real surprise, I suppose, is not that she would grow over time to look like a wrecking ball but that, after numerous suicide attempts, accidental overdoses, falls, catfights, screaming scenes, and brushes with the law, including six months behind bars (Mary Lou wasn’t just a drama queen, she was a drama empress, a tumultuous Cleopatra barging down a Nile of trouble), she actually survived to reach middle age. She didn’t live past it.

In any case, she was a reasonably cute young thing from a respectable family down in slow little peanut-flavored South Hill, Virginia, when she arrived in Richmond to enter nursing training at Stuart Circle Hospital. It didn’t take her very long (it must have been some perverse kind of homing instinct) to discover the Fan District, however, and then it was good-bye bedpan hello bedlam. Late one afternoon not long after moving to the Fan, she strode into Eton’s, placed her hands on her hips, looked around the crowded room and asked, loud enough to be heard over the chatter and the jukebox, “Anybody here want to fuck?”

To appreciate the full impact of that brazen invitation, the reader must realize that in the fifties the so-called f-bomb really did have an explosive quality, and it was never, ever detonated in public. I mean, there were elements in America still reeling from Clark Gable’s having uttered “damn” at the conclusion of
Gone With the Wind
. Nowadays, “fuck” reverberates quadraphonically in every multiplex in every mall in the land, and supremely untalented comedians compensate for lack of wit by using the word at least four times per punch line, all of this thoroughly robbing the once-forbidden expression of its deliciously nasty sexual power. Prior to Mary Lou, I had never heard a female say “fuck,” even in private, and I was twenty-six or twenty-seven at the time.

Well, for a long full minute, it was as if a paralyzing gas had enveloped Eton’s. Nobody moved, nobody spoke. Then, the gay men commenced to titter, and the straight guys -- those unaccompanied by girlfriends or wives -- started to steal looks at one another in a peculiar, nervous, searching way as if to see who, if any, among them would answer or at least nod in the affirmative and make to accompany Mary Lou out the door. I’m unsure if anyone did. At least not immediately.

My own reaction was to fish some quarters from my pocket, go to the jukebox and play “But Not for Me” three or four times in a row. That, I suppose, was my answer to Mary Lou’s shocking solicitation. She, definitely, was not for me. When I was working construction, one of the older workers (they were inclined to give me advice) imparted this bit of wisdom: “Your ideal woman, the one you’ll wanna hold on to, is the one who’s a perfect lady in your living room and an outright slut in your bedroom.” Whatever the reader may think of this sagacity, of its political correctness, I must confess it resonated with me. In Asia, even the bargirls I hung with were demure when in public, and the contrast between their outward modesty and the manner in which I knew they’d behave once the shoji screen slid closed and the futon unrolled, was a torch to the fuse of my libido. For some of us, I guess, primness with the veiled promise of wantonness is just about irresistible.

No, I never found Mary Lou the least bit sexually desirable, not even when she was stark naked (of course the fact that her rear end was brake-light red at the time and she was gibber-jabbering like an agitated ape possibly contributed to my chaste response); but as a friend -- and we did become quite friendly -- she could be as entertaining as she was challenging. After she broke up B.K.’s marriage (she was a dedicated home wrecker but, hey, every girl needs a hobby), the three of us would go to lengths to keep ourselves amused in fusty old Richmond, for there were nights when even the Fan District was steeped in ennui.

One of our routines developed after B.K. came into possession of some theatrical greasepaint, including professional-quality clown white. We’d make ourselves up to a level that would have passed inspection at the Ringling Brothers Clown College. Then, dressed in our everyday clothes, usually sweaters and jeans, we’d go downtown to the Trailways or Greyhound bus station, find seats in the waiting room -- sometimes together, three in a row, sometimes widely separated -- and sit there nonchalantly reading a magazine or newspaper. That is, we’d pretend to read while keeping an eye on people in the crowd (a lot of folks still traveled by bus at the end of the 1950s) to gauge their reaction, a response that varied from open delight to feigned indifference, though the most common reaction was bewilderment. And while I didn’t share Mary Lou’s devilish glee in fostering confusion, I must confess that I’ve long tended to regard the interruption of complacency as a kind of public service.

Ah, but then one night at Trailways when the three of us were sitting side by side faking interest in the pages of the
Times-Dispatch
(the paper for which I worked five nights a week), we couldn’t help but notice a tall, lean, cheaply dressed, youngish man (probably in his mid to late twenties) staring at us with shy curiosity. B.K. beckoned him closer and asked in his clownish singsong voice if the fellow would like to join the circus. The man’s blue eyes widened, he chuckled and shook his head, less in dismissal than in disbelief. Whereupon Mary Lou, for whom lying came as naturally as breathing, said, “We’re serious. Come along and join up with the circus.”

He hesitated, as if trying to comprehend. Then he said, “Just a minute,” and as he walked away, limping slightly, still shaking his head, I was thinking how much he looked like one of the poor migrant farm workers from
The Grapes of Wrath;
like a young Henry Fonda, beaten down yet somehow hopeful. He left the waiting room and went outside to the loading platform. A few minutes later, he returned accompanied by his young wife -- pretty in a washed-out, equally downtrodden way, barely filling out an obviously homemade cotton dress -- and two small, skinny children. They made straight for us, us with our zany Bozo faces, stopped, smiled tentatively, bashfully, and indicated they were prepared to follow us wherever we might lead them, as if a job with our nonexistent circus was the answer to their desperate prayers.

The three of us rose slowly, dropped our newspapers, mumbled something as incoherent as it was inadequate, and sheepishly made for the front exit. On the way back to the Fan, nobody spoke. I’d never seen B.K. so close to tears. Even Mary Lou, whose heart was so hard you could have drilled holes in it and used it for a bowling ball, was subdued. I tried to offer something philosophical, but the words stuck in my throat. It was as if we were in mourning, perhaps for our own sensitivity. At the studio we quietly scrubbed our faces clean with a force that came close to self-flagellation. And we never played bus station clowns again.

By 1960, Richmond’s Village Inn was starting to earn a nationwide word-of-mouth reputation as one of the alcohol-vending establishments (the Seven Seas in New Orleans, the Blue Moon in Seattle, the Cedar Tavern in New York, and Vesuvio in San Francisco were other examples) where gigless be-boppers, itinerant artists, nonacademic poets, freelance photographers, practicing existentialists, self-proclaimed revolutionaries, dharma drifters, “angel-headed hipsters,” full-time eccentrics, and newly christened beatniks of varying plumage could expect to be tolerated by management and welcomed by regular patrons (many of them students with fake IDs), ever eager for fresh stories from the American road, an exchange of intellectual ideas; and maybe, just maybe, someone new and exciting to sleep with.

Richmond was hardly a destination city, however, nor was it strategically located along the great Kerouacian highway, the well-thumbed route between New York and Denver, Denver and San Francisco. Moreover, the Fan District was essentially a small island -- Fan(tasy) Island -- of cool in an ultraconventional right-wing ocean. And there was one other reason why the Village Inn was relegated to a relatively minor role in the spiritual/sexual/social transformation that commenced to sweep over the United States in the late middle of the century: namely, like all licensed venues in Virginia, it had to turn off the beer taps and evict its customers at midnight (hard liquor couldn’t be served in a Virginia restaurant at any hour).

For the Village’s youthful patrons, though, the Cinderella curfew did not necessarily mean the cessation of merriment, particularly not on Friday or Saturday nights. When the public gathering ended, the private fun began. The scene would simply move to a volunteer’s apartment; or, occasionally, to the roof of a commercial building to which one of the revelers had semi-legal access. It generally worked out well, although there were a number of times when the police showed up uninvited, intent on keeping somebody’s grandpa’s idea of the peace. Oddly, police raids seemed always to occur at a party at which Mary Lou was in attendance. There were cynics who actually suspected her of tipping off the cops, and I must admit she seemed strangely excited, even elated when news of some such raid would make the papers, particularly if she was mentioned by name. If there was anything Mary Lou loved more than chaos, it was attention.

Unlike the typical post-adolescent soirée, where making out or striving to make out was the primary objective, those Fan after-hours parties had a more creative focus in that they often revolved around a group activity I called “the Language Wheel” (a conceptual image I fished from the deepest well of Indo-European mythology) although nobody actually referred to it by that name or by any name at all.

With neither a leader nor a discernible signal, a number of people would at some point sit on the floor in a circle. Then, drumming on bottles or cans -- occasionally on an actual bongo -- while Paul Miller blew short trills on his flute, participants would take turns improvising lines of poetry. The painter William Fletcher Jones would usually start it off, intoning dramatically, slowly, solemnly, “The old man came over the hill with a sack of goodies on his back,” a favorite line of his; then the person next to him might add, “ . . . ever aware of the little plastic lobsters of sectarian constipation snapping at his heels.” And so it would go, around and around the circle, line after line; some clever, some funny, a few genuinely poetic, most trite, and all too many resembling the babble escaping through the bars of a madhouse window on the night of a full moon; around and around until the “poets” ran out of beer or inspiration or consciousness, whichever came first.

(Sociologists should note that these high jinks occurred several years before marijuana, let alone psychedelics, became available in Richmond.)

It’s just as well that I can’t recall any of my own contributions to the Language Wheel, although I did participate despite my inconvenient hours of gainful employment. Between eleven-thirty and twelve on a Saturday night, a friend would go to the telephone booth just inside the Village’s entrance and ring up the newsroom at the
Times-Dispatch
. When he or she had me on the phone, I’d be informed of the location of that night’s party, and usually I’d head directly to that address as soon as I got off work. Over time, those parties all have run together in my memory, but two do remain distinct.

One summer night, just as a Language Wheel was getting under way on a rooftop on Grace Street, a great Southern storm rolled in. Saw blades of lightning stabbed the heavens with the mania of a serial killer, followed by Wagnerian crashes of thunder. Those in the wheel exchanged cautious looks but nobody wanted to be the first to break the circle. Then the charcoal belly of the sky split open and from the gash there gushed torrents of rain. In a matter of seconds everyone was drenched, yet the circle refused to break, proving perhaps that poets, even inept amateur poets, are tougher than the athletes who play professional baseball.

Eventually, however, the improvised lines of free verse became essentially inaudible, sounding as if they were being delivered underwater. By irritated dolphins. When a mouth opened to speak a line, one could almost see bubbles escaping, and Paul’s flute seemed to be imitating a faulty pump in a swimming pool. But I’m pleased to report that it wasn’t until the storm had passed that we fools sloshed off to our respective flats, dorm rooms, and rented carriage houses in various parts of the Fan, leaving behind the beer cans and bottles on which we’d drummed our own silly little bohemian thunder.

Then there was the time someone called me at the paper earlier than usual to disclose that that night’s party was already under way at a private residence in Windsor Farms, an ultra-tony suburban neighborhood in Richmond’s upscale far West End. This wasn’t entirely unprecedented. Occasionally a lawyer, surgeon, or corporate executive -- someone who ought to know better -- would invite a few colorful crazies from the Village to one of their parties, thinking that their regular guests might find the infidels amusing. They usually came to regret the impulse, especially after their home was invaded by maybe twenty thirsty hipsters when they’d been expecting six or seven.

This particular party was on its last legs when I finally arrived at the house, a lovely white brick Tudor, a style much favored by Richmond’s anglophilic elite. My friends, I was told, were all out on the patio. I thought I detected the sounds of a Language Wheel in progress there, but was in no rush to find out, being not merely sober but hungry enough to eat one of the gold-framed fox-hunting prints off of the living room wall. Into the deserted dining room I went, directed by raw instinct. Sure enough, a big bowl of creamy dip sat there on the dining room table, but, alas, the rest of the hors d’oeuvres had all been consumed. Not one cracker or chip remained, let alone a carrot stick or stalk of celery. Still, that dip looked mighty tasty. If only . . .