Although the blinking "I" would like very much, disingenuously, to move on to lighter things, get back to his music, resume the tale of Linda, Mara, and Xenia, snap a few more candids of the minds that did the guiding, the Overarching Eye cannot turn away from that scene in the men's dorm with John Goode.
Goode was a complex man, neither good nor evil. The product of an earlier phase of the American academe, he was, on the surface of it, a married Professor with an adolescent child. He had a few books out even then, and was a well know pedagogue. Beneath his respectful surface loomed, as we have already seen, a less acceptable proclivity and lifestyle. All involved were aware and complicit. The pedagogue earned the bacon. Did the pedophile, the pervert risk all? Certainly, academic employers learned of these goings on and turned up the heat. Certainly, the term long-suffering could be applied to his wife. None of us are without sin. That is the foundation of Christian charity. Even if one can't buy that equation, it cannot be suppressed that one's nature cannot forever be suppressed without grave consequence to the psyche. Besides, the very things that made Goode an eccentric were the things that made him great. He was a great scholar. He was a great teacher. He was generous and sensitive (to a point). He was respected as an artist, and could hold his own as a musician. Through his writings he has brought the gift of music and culture to a very wide and appreciative audience.
Cal visited his studio, having been referred by his neighborhood piano teacher. There was a first time, when the wall of books that separated the waiting students from the one at the second piano in Goode's studio was a monolith of unimaginable cultural wealth. The sounds of the lesson in progress, a Chopinzee working up and down the scales and arpeggios, set the stage for the scary meeting that awaited. Cal was looking for lessons in composition. He already had a matron who assigned him pieces. In fact, his musical education was typical and substandard. His piano matron could barely play the instrument herself. She paired him with rapidly developing girls, had them play duets, and dressed him in a wig for little in camera recitals. She spoke of the Great Composers, passing down hagiographic or inaccurate anecdotes with the relish of a schoolmarm. "Mozart could not cut his own meat, so delicate were his fingers." Bullshit. So there he was, his Beethovenesque scores in his notebook of manuscript paper, in his still youthful scrawl, ready to brave the lashings of John Goode. From the studio came laughter. Laughter and voices drawing near...
What were Cal's first impressions? Goode was short and bald. He had a goatee. His face was red, cherubic, and grinning. He held out a hand and said,
"Welcome! You must be Cal! I've heard so much about you from Grace."
"Very good to meet you, sir."
"Please. I'm John. We're dropping formalities right up front. We're all on the path. I want you to be comfortable. Grace tells me you're interested in composition. That's fabulous. Let's get right to it! Show me your stuff!"
Cal awkwardly handed over the notebook, and Goode took the little collection of scores and spread them out on the rightmost of the two grand pianos. He sat down at the keyboard and began to look through the book. He turned pages slowly, giving the music the respect that it did not deserve. He was looking for evidence of talent. He was scanning for a piece he could competently play, one that had a 'way in' to the personal matter of getting under a young artists' creativity and offering meaningful, constructive criticism. After a moment, he discovered something perfect for this. He began to play it. After a while, he began also to sing, and, alternately, to make staccato sounds under his breath, all in time with the music. He brought Cal's clumsy notes to splendid life in the book-piled room. In fact, this would not have been possible if this boy had been without gift. Goode took this chance in these meetings. But not only did this boy's composition betray a phenomenal absorption of harmony; it had evidence of some sense of craft, an idea about dramatic form. But the piece was an imitation of a well-known piece. It was, he thought, suppressing a laugh, very much under the influence of Schumann's Novelette, opus 21, number 1. This gave him the 'way in' he needed.
"Good! Strong harmony, episodic form, and, as a plus, it's a very readable score."
"I was sort of making fun of a piece I heard on the radio in the car. I had to pull over, I was so blown away."
"Yes, the Schumann Novellette."
Goode now played the first theme of the Novellette, from memory, perfectly competently.
"A great piece. We can imagine Clara playing this, enchanted with her husband's facility. Like yours, it has a novel harmonic approach."
"Is that the meaning of the title?"
Cal was astounded by this lesson already, even if now it fell to pieces. Goode had instantly identified the mystery piece that Cal Hunter had heard once and parodied. This emerged as the two of them bantered about the parody and its precursor, and Goode, with his beautiful sensitivity realized that a boy who could hear a piece once and take a stab at parody was someone who had been tragically underserved by the 'middlecrass assitude.'
"Well, that's a good question. I think we assume that it's a bit of a pun, since Schumann was being 'novel,' and very much interested in the novel. It was a new literary form at the time, and he was intoxicated with Goethe's 'Werther,' among others."
Yes, we know that this is more bullshit. Observe with us how the older man immediately begins to seduce his young student. He assumes that the boy knows nothing of "The Sorrows of Young Werther." He hopes to instill a curiosity about the budding literature of desire and tragedy, of youthful longing for the person of greater experience (or merely older), and the aspect of desire in an unacceptable social context. He will answer questions and in the responses he will learn about his new charge. Not very deep in Goode's mind is the parallel appraisal: is this boy straight? He has immediately been impressed by Cal Hunter's youthful beauty and the radiance of his earnestness. He rejects mentioning Oscar Wilde. Besides they're talking about Schumann. He is wrong, however about the boy's knowledge of 'Werther.' As it turns out, he's a member of the German Club, which shares quite a few members with the literary crowd. We have seen in the narrative how Heidi's brother is in this bunch. They're all in this cultural pocket together. "They're all stars, and they know that."
"Actually, sir, 'Werther' predates Schumann by at least a few decades. I don't have Schumann's dates at the tips of my fingers, but 'Werther' is 1787. It's one of my favorite books.
"I so glad you know it."
It's Goode's turn to be astonished.
"How's your German?"
"Nicht fliessand."
Goode laughs. He's a German scholar. But this is not the right road, nor the right time.
"So, your piece. It's not so much a parody as an homage. I don't want to get bogged down in your motivations. I want to look at the details. I want to show you ways to strengthen your intention by bringing out specific details...
On a fresh sheet in the notebook, with a bold, soft pencil, he begins to teach.
Goode's teaching is deep and real, certainly not a sham of any sort. Cal learns much at every lesson. Goode, for his part, takes care to keep his lusts under wraps. Scenes from the subsequent lessons include:
"I've got a great idea for a piece."
"Do tell, my friend."
"The Sinking of the Titanic for Orchestra and Chorus. It's like Penderecki, with smears of sounds representing the sliding of the chairs and stuff, crashing into the bulkheads."
"Sounds noisy. What else are you working on in that notebook of yours?"
"Take a look..."
"Oh. Here's one. 'An open letter to love. A tone poem that depicts the ache of unrequited passion.'"
"Does that seem promising?"
"Does it ever, and don't they all!"
On one occasion, he's passed on his way in by a nervous fellow on his way out. The man walks past Cal in the anteroom, with his head bent, literally wringing his hands. Cal enters the studio.
"What was that all about?"
"That fellow is a student of mine from the college. He's got to find a job, and he's never had a real musical job before. He wants to accompany ballet lessons. He's getting some coaching on his reading."
"Poor fellow. I gather playing for dance is very degrading."
Goode was jovial, but he had a core of molten lava. He could scald you with his scorn when you spoke out of turn about things beyond your knowledge.
"Do you know that for a fact?"
"No. Of course not. I got it from a movie."
"Right. Well, I've never played for a dance class in my life, but I'm assuming it takes impeccable time and really good reading skills. These are things that you yourself lack. You have seriously substandard reading skills, and when the time comes, I wonder how you will do in the very competitive market for musical jobs."
On these scalding occasions, the lessons were very stiff. Cal Hunter did not take being caught out lying down. His response, especially at 16 and 17, was to frost the offender out. Frosting Goode out in a lesson was very effective because his whole philosophy revolved around empathy.
"You are being incredibly prickly and stubborn. I suggest we quit for now."
"My hour isn't up."
Yes, I think we're finished here."
Eventually, Goode asked Cal out on a movie date. It was weird, but Cal was flattered and he went. "Death In Venice," based on the novel by Mann, told the story of a Mahleresque composer who fell in love, in Venice, with a beautiful young man. The significance of this tale was lost on the beautiful young Mr. Hunter, but he got the idea eventually, and recalled the flick's undertone in retrospect.
As a next step, Goode began to solicit Hunter's services for things around the house. Cal met the wife and the daughter. He was invited over to fix Goode's stereo.
"Something is not right with that thing."
"Well, I'll have to dig it out of the bookshelf and check it out."
Then he was making tapes of records. Soon, suggesting rock/pop items for Goode to listen to.
"The Harnoncourt is great."
"I liked the Lightfoot better than the James Taylor. Much better songwriting. Great sense of the craft. Say, would you like a beer...oh. Sorry. You're probably not old enough for that yet. Are you?"
"I find alcohol too bitter."
And so it came to pass, little by little, that Goode began to work Cal Hunter into his life more and more. He began to schedule Cal's lesson at the end of the day, so that the two of them could have the studio into the night. He began to teach the kid to like alcohol by using liqueurs. Cal would sip a White Russian or a Brandy Alexander until he was good and loose. They'd talk about Boston, The Cape, Don Davis, and all the many others that circled that star.
One evening, Cal found Goode in the studio with Hillary Smith, his future piano teacher. They were playing a Casella Duet, and the sound was fantastic. They got to the double bar, laughing and full of great spirits. For a moment the pure joy of making music opened up like a pit that might swallow him whole. He knew before his life in Boston rubbed it in that his sight reading was substandard.
Goode finally, as he closed the deal that his project involved, began to take Hunter downtown. They went to Mr. Henry's bar. They checked in to Hotels, name of Smith. In these rooms, they spoke of the sacredness of the homosexual bond amid the tawdriness of its deceptions. There was no sex in these rooms. Often, Goode would hook up and send his young protege home with cab fare. For Cal, Goode's connection to well-connected and respected musicians was, at least at the outset, an intoxicating fact. Cal resolved the dissonance of his disconnect between Goode's sexual proclivities and his own by examining the many creative contributions by homosexual artists. He thought of it as an arts cult. He wanted in. He reasoned that if the price of entry was merely to have an orgasm with a dude, then that was a small thing to learn how to enjoy. He was learning to like booze, was he not? In the end, he wanted, as the narrative suggests, to be Davis worthy.
Thursday, July 21, 2011
The Omniscient Narrator Returns Part 2
Goode showed up in Boston on the afternoon of January 18th, 1974. The Semester was over, and Cal was done with exams. He flew into town and was picked up by Smith. They had a drink in a bar on Boylston Street, not far from Smith's apartment.
"How you holding up, Hill?"
"'Kay, I guess. It was quite a blow, o' course."
"We were all shocked. Shocked and very deeply saddened."
"Yes. He..."
"It's ok."
"No, he was out of it that last week or so, but before that, he was always talking about your young protege."
"Yes, The young Mr. Hunter. Don always called him a 'goodie.' I can't believe how well they took to each other."
"How's he getting on?"
"Oh, I don't know. His piano is really only so-so. If it weren't for you, I might well fail him. You'd know better about the rest."
"Not so much, really. He's put some distance between us, he's pulled back."
"It happens, I s'pose."
A pause. The bar is dimly lit and nearly empty on such cold night. Goode leaned in.
"I'm going to try to see him in the dorms."
"Is that entirely wise?"
"No."
Another pause.
"In fact, I think it's crazy. I'm in enough trouble with...you know, back home."
"Yes. I heard."
"It's just that, I don't know, I think I need to shake that kid a little, see what he's got. See if it's worth risking so much, losing so much sleep over, getting so worked up. The long distance thing is very difficult."
"You started it. You didn't have to pull the strings. They'd never have taken him on here without that. You might've just kept him in DC."
"I thought about it a lot. I saw some of myself in him, some sort of spark."
"Well, there's some talent there, I suppose. He had a piece on the composer's forum. I thought it was awful, full of repetition, monotonous. He played it in a lesson and I told him so. Well, not in so many words. I remember I asked him if his teachers had seen it, if they approved of such static harmony. You know him. He does not take criticism well. But then I heard Bonkowski raving about it in a meeting. Apparently his wife, the dancer, thought it was genius."
"That's very funny. But you think it's bad work."
Smith looked down.
"What do I know. I'm a fuddy-duddy."
"Not true. You're an artist."
"I'm a small time piano player."
"You have a right to an opinion about new work."
"Different strokes."
There was a random clatter of plates.
"Hillary, you hungry?"
"Not particularly. My appetite's been off."
"You look like the same old bean pole."
"Are you...going to the dorms tonight?"
"No. I have to wait. His roommates go out of town on the weekend. I need an all-clear."
"How are you going to get in?"
"He'll let me in. I hope. If not, I'll be seeing more of you!"
"I wish you very good luck."
Goode took a big slug of his very good beer.
"I know you think I'm crazy..."
"Even you think you're crazy."
"He's got a good mind."
"And an even better ass."
"That's the old Hillary Smith!"
"He's a goody. Go in and get him. You don't have to justify anything to me. We been friends forever. If I could do it, I'd try it myself. Go have a good time, John Goode."
Goode and Hunter met at the exact same bar after Smith had been seen back home. It was late-ish. There was a noisy after-theater crowd. Hunter bought the drinks.
"Are you drinking anything better than soda pop these days?"
"I think they call that tonic up here."
"How soon I forget!"
"No. I'll take a glass of white wine. Liebfraumilch."
"Fabulous. You've graduated to 'lover's milk.' A good sign."
"Yeah, I've been learning up here. You won't hear that from Smith."
"You know, Cal, I'm not sure Hillary's the right teacher for you. Don used to call him, what...'stuffy Smith?'"
"Something like that. I know, but really, who would be better?"
"Almost anybody."
"The pair-'o-dykes?"
"OK. OK. I'm just saying that it's your education."
"I appreciate your concern."
"Cal, we're bickering like a pair of old queens."
"Yes, I'm kind of a jerk. I know that. I'm just edgy. School's starting back, I've been having these nosebleeds. It's a whole new ball game. I don't know why they let me in to this place, but I suspect you had something..."
"Nope. No such thing."
"Well. Anyway. I'm at the bottom of the totem pole."
"Smith tells me Bonkowski liked your piece."
"You talked to Smith?"
"Of course!"
Sullen, miserable pause.
"His wife liked my piece. Smith asked if I was sure I knew what the hell I was doing."
"You can drop Smith at any time. Don't suffer on my behalf. You'll end up bitter about something that should be a joy."
"I know you're right. I'll tell you the truth: I actually like Smith. He is a no bullshit guy. If he ever likes something I do, I'll know I'm getting somewhere. Besides, I know he's going through a hell of a hard time right now."
Goode bit his tongue. He could see Cal make the transition to a weak attempt at amelioration of the many wounds. If he ever hoped to get into that dorm room, he could not afford to say the least catty thing. He turned his mind away from, 'fat lot you care,' to casting about for another gambit. His mind was drawing a blank. He stared at the drink before him. He wondered if he should just go back to DC and fuck it. (Or not fuck it.) Huge risk, truculent child, slender chance of acceptable outcome. 'Ah, there!' He thought to himself, 'do I really think of him as a child? Is it really that I'm a pederast? Is this what I am? Better, the sake of sanity and the both of us I should treat him as an adult. What would I do with an adult? If this brat were an adult, a genuine queer adult, I'd take him down to the Combat Zone and we'd check out some porn as an appetizer.
"Cal, you wanna hit the Zone and check out a flick?"
The boy grinned back at him.
"A dick flick?"
"I'm AC/DC," he lied. "I'll look at whatever you prefer."
"You'd take me in to the 'live nude girls?'"
"I might let you go in there on your own."
"See, you're DC, no AC. Just as I suspected. Or whichever way that goes."
"I'm starting to appreciate your adulthood."
To this Cal had no snappy response. He was starting to appreciate his own adulthood. He'd recently learned how to fuck a real, live girl. Of course, he'd bled over his girl, and had not seen hide nor hair ('and in the lamp light, downed with light brown hair') for a month. Perhaps it was time to test the idea whether he himself could stomach AC/DC. He'd led this guy on long enough, taking advantage of his money and influence, enough so to be plunked down here in this frigid town at this seedy bar.
"Alright, Cal. You can look at titties all you want. I can't say I'll dig it, but I can tough it out like a red-blooded American fag."
"You know, I love you."
"For real?"
"Really. You've been more than patient with me. I'd love to see a tit flick, but I'll check out the dick flick too. All we have to decide is which to see first."
"Let's do dick, then chick."
And that's what they did. To his surprise, he found both stimulating. The sight of a huge, throbbing erection pumping seemingly gallons of semen all over a delightfully delicate male porn star did not leave him cold. By the time they got through the same sort of thing with the "anal magic" double d femmes fatale getting rogered in every conceivable orifice, he was making a mess in his jeans.
"Do you need a plastic bag," whispered his John.
"No, I, we...need to get back to the dorm."
They took a fucking taxi and asked him to step on it.
"I thought your roomies didn't split until tomorrow."
"No. They left this afternoon. It's cool."
Boston taxi drivers are a fearless bunch, capable of death-defying hurtles over sheets of ice. The commute from the Zone was relatively short, but in the cold cab, the passions cooled off for this strange duo. Then, there was the way past the sentry to the second floor of 54 Fenway... Goode moved like Dastardly Dan in a silent movie, all arches of the back and sidelong glances. It would not be good to be caught out, either for being in the dorm after-hours, or by being recognized. He could imagine the headlines: "Former Dean of Boston Conservatory Arrested in Back Bay Brownstone." But the sentry was long asleep in her room. It was two in the AM. Once in and up the stairs, Goode realized with horror that there were no locks on the doors to the rooms. That conversation with Alphin now poured back into memory.
"Shouldn't we provide these students, especially the women, with personal locks?"
"Hmm. Hmph. The expense of all those keys? The doors to the streets will be locked! We're paying for monitors on the ground floors. That's a pile of dough, John. I don't think we need it."
"Don't they need some privacy? You really know what goes on in these rooms?"
"Oh, they're good kids. What? Ya think they're doin' dope? If we lock 'em in, they can better hide that sort of thing from the monitors. Topic closed. Motion denied."
The door was open and the dark room concealed no occupants, exactly as Cal had assured. Still, once the lights were on and they were taking off the coats, flinging them on beds in the triple, the idea lingered like a ghost in his imagination that they could indeed be barged in on in flagrante delicto.
"Welcome to my humble abode."
"Charming. Turn up the heat."
Ironic, since the heat was blazing.
"Make yourself at home."
"You mean, 'take of my clothes?'"
A shrug from the lad.
"The cab ride took me down a notch."
"Got any booze?"
"Hey. You were the Dean of this place. You know the rules."
"We always managed to break 'em."
"I guess we're just not so hip. My roommates are a priest and a buzzard, respectively."
"Preists drink like fish."
"Oh god! Ain't that the truth! This guy is really a student priest, by which I mean an organist...
"An old gal that rides the swell pedal..."
"He's not an accomplished drinker. We all went out to the dive around the corner after he played some shit in one of those mini concerts. He got totally fucked up. We came back up here and he floundered around on that bed right there..."
Let the record show that they'd piled their coats and Goodes slight luggage on the priest's bed.
"...he yelled about how much he loved God and all of that, but wanted to have at least one good blowjob before he died. Then, he proceeded to dry hump the bed."
"I hate to ask what comes next."
"Right. Good sense of foreboding. He pukes all over the floor. Corn chips and gin and tonic."
"Lovely."
"The buzz cleaned it up, running around singing 'I'm a coprophile!'"
"That's not quite the right usage."
"Right, again, maestro. He needs to separate the shit..."
"...from the shinola."
Much laughter at this long-sung refrain.
"Well. We'll have do make do without a nightcap."
"Bareheaded and bare assed."
Now the squeamish need to turn aside. Flip ahead the many pages to the next chapter in this kiss and tell. Even if you relish pornography, even the sort with literary pretensions like 'Lady Chatterly,' this is not the real thing. It must be told, because the omniscient narrator has his own inner purpose: to expose hypocrisy and posturing, to let the chips fall where they may in regard to judgement of this life. Human sexuality, as Kinsey took a pseudo-scientific crack at proving (to the consternation of his long-suffering wife) is very messy. We are among the animals, and that is as it should be. Let the Puritan layer be set aside. Let the Victorian values be laid to rest in light of the facts of the matter. The impulses that lead to the heat of desire are not orderly. They do not line up in parallel with convention. It would seem that convention is concocted to trammel them. The shit on the sheets that came up in the Wilde trial was cited as evidence of diarrhea by the defense. The prosecution had the more vivid imagination and didn't buy it. Oscar should never have let it get that far. Nor, we must admit, should have John Goode. If we zoom as far back as we can, we can tell you that this will not turn out well. Even our evidence, if patience be rewarded, is scanty.
In fact, for all his posturing as an urbane adept, Calbraith Hunter was of very limited experience. His entire knowledge of actual mechanical homosexual practice was limited to what he had just recently witnessed in "Butt Fucking Broncos." We have seen how he became engorged when fingering the drippings of his High School sex mate. We have seen how this same female had kept at it and brought him, with the help of nature and biology, to 'his full manhood.' His instinct (and yes, we know that the term may not apply to the Homo Sapiens) was to duck this next scene altogether. He had already begun to see the fact: that he was deeply lured by the female scent and form and that his notions of a more catholic sexuality was, for himself, a sham. He knew he was not about to be damaged by what was about to transpire, but he had the glimmering of the knowledge that this was not his thing. His thing, in fact, was wilder and even more primal. The intimate knowledge of another, female being, one that would open every private act and stare unashamedly at his own. Where does Kinsey stand on this? It is not aberrant. It is the ordinary sexuality practiced one way or another by the vast majority of the human sample. The homosexual act, on the other hand, was statistically aberrant. Kinsey does not make a value judgement. In the many discussions that Goode and Hunter had about the subject leading up to this encounter included the ones that debunked the epithet 'gay.' There is nothing 'gay' about the situation of the male homosexual. It has been forced underground and has tended towards furtive, frenetic encounters in the most unsanitary places. In time, it will work its way towards the light. Nevertheless, it has an inherent double alpha element. What is to done with two penises? What is to done with two male egos? What of the fit of peg into hole?
Goode, of course, knows that Hunter is a virgin. (He's wrong by now, but in his sense it's true.) He knows he will have to guide and teach. Hunter senses that this is wrong for him, but he can't give up now. He's instantly figured out that there is a type of man he likes to gaze upon and allow himself to covet (though not quite desire as he desires a female ass). That sort is fair, boyish and blond. That man has delicate features, and a girlish torso. He might be tanned and posing in some ripped up and bleached out jeans. Then, Cal can imagine sitting in Socratic rapture over the truths of being, being carried away by the bliss of argument to some fundamental need to express brotherly love. He can imagine taking this fair creature's hand, stroking that erection out of pity and compassion, and even, when the other's desire cannot be relieved, sucking on that dick. He just can't imagine fucking this delicate structure up the ass. (He can easily imagine fucking Linda Litman up the ass.) Ass fucking, in any case, takes some practice. Goode fishes out of his valise a small bottle of KY. He sits down on the bed and guides the belt out of Cal's buckle. He undoes the button on his jeans. He unzips the fly. He parts the fabric and strokes the buried treasure. He finds it less than half mast. Cal lets his head fall back and tries to conjure something sexy. Litman's ass. He cannot look at Goode. Goode looks like a toad. His bald head is shining in the street light through the window. Goode reaches over and prophylactically shuts the shade. Cal imagines the wetness between Litman's legs, and how it seeps down between the cleft of her buttocks and lubricates her anus. Goode frees the penis from the underwear. He squeezes out some KY into his palm and rubs it on the flaccid dick, which, he notes, is stirring slightly. Cal gasps. The KY is cold. His imaginary fingers are in that delightful swamp, finding the treasured scent, deeply experiencing the sweet sensation. He feel himself respond. Goode is relieved by signs of life. He works on disrobing. Soon they're side by side, Goode's naked back side within striking distance of Hunters workable front side. Cal Hunter takes his own member in hand. This is the 'what the fuck' moment. He works his dick between the folds of an aged buttocks. He seeks a way in. He's too distracted and concentrated on his artificial construct to be subtle. Besides, he's never done this before, even with Linda. (He's never had the balls to ask about it.)
"Ooh! Careful!"
"Sorry."
There must be a way out. Orgasm is not it. Sitting on the side of the bed, Cal watches as Goode gets dressed. There is silence. It's three o'clock in the Back Bay morning.
"Sorry."
Cal is trying to get some condolence for his failure.
"It's OK. It's not your thing."
"Are you...going to Smith's?"
"No. I have a...
He wants to say that he has a very frustrated cock and he needs to go get it professionally, or at least competently, sucked. That's too much truth for Cal.
"...cab to catch."
"You have a place to stay, then?"
"Please. Don't worry about me."
"Well, you know, I do a little. I might've hurt you."
"I'm disappointed, I won't deny that. You don't know your own mind. I feel used."
This is not spoken with vitriol, but it feels like that to the trembling young man.
"OK. That's that."
He turns, still naked, to the wall. He closes his eyes, listening as Goode descends the stairs and, undoing all of the locks and bars, opens the big door to the outside world. Cal thinks that he'd better be a good lad and go down and lock up. Before he can do that, though, he has to let out his sobs. In the early morning, he does an intemperate thing. He writes a passionate poem about Adonis. He's thinking of Mara, recalling her sleeping form as he watched her from his restless perch beside her on her floor, his insomnia driven by unrelieved desire. He puts the poem, with a note that just says 'for you' into an envelope and walks it down to the women's dorm. He thinks of Goode, on his flight back to DC, of his wish to be done with this, of his hope to be forgiven, and his idea that he's learned something important about himself. His fear and humiliation have turned to a dull resentment. His emotional growth is slow, but it is steady. He's like a climber on a ledge, feeling his way, looking for the next step, the next perch. We do not think that he's been a victim. We think, rather, that this has been the crucible of his art. His conservatory education continues, but this lesson is the one worth the expense. This man stumbles, as all humans seem to do, towards maturity.
"How you holding up, Hill?"
"'Kay, I guess. It was quite a blow, o' course."
"We were all shocked. Shocked and very deeply saddened."
"Yes. He..."
"It's ok."
"No, he was out of it that last week or so, but before that, he was always talking about your young protege."
"Yes, The young Mr. Hunter. Don always called him a 'goodie.' I can't believe how well they took to each other."
"How's he getting on?"
"Oh, I don't know. His piano is really only so-so. If it weren't for you, I might well fail him. You'd know better about the rest."
"Not so much, really. He's put some distance between us, he's pulled back."
"It happens, I s'pose."
A pause. The bar is dimly lit and nearly empty on such cold night. Goode leaned in.
"I'm going to try to see him in the dorms."
"Is that entirely wise?"
"No."
Another pause.
"In fact, I think it's crazy. I'm in enough trouble with...you know, back home."
"Yes. I heard."
"It's just that, I don't know, I think I need to shake that kid a little, see what he's got. See if it's worth risking so much, losing so much sleep over, getting so worked up. The long distance thing is very difficult."
"You started it. You didn't have to pull the strings. They'd never have taken him on here without that. You might've just kept him in DC."
"I thought about it a lot. I saw some of myself in him, some sort of spark."
"Well, there's some talent there, I suppose. He had a piece on the composer's forum. I thought it was awful, full of repetition, monotonous. He played it in a lesson and I told him so. Well, not in so many words. I remember I asked him if his teachers had seen it, if they approved of such static harmony. You know him. He does not take criticism well. But then I heard Bonkowski raving about it in a meeting. Apparently his wife, the dancer, thought it was genius."
"That's very funny. But you think it's bad work."
Smith looked down.
"What do I know. I'm a fuddy-duddy."
"Not true. You're an artist."
"I'm a small time piano player."
"You have a right to an opinion about new work."
"Different strokes."
There was a random clatter of plates.
"Hillary, you hungry?"
"Not particularly. My appetite's been off."
"You look like the same old bean pole."
"Are you...going to the dorms tonight?"
"No. I have to wait. His roommates go out of town on the weekend. I need an all-clear."
"How are you going to get in?"
"He'll let me in. I hope. If not, I'll be seeing more of you!"
"I wish you very good luck."
Goode took a big slug of his very good beer.
"I know you think I'm crazy..."
"Even you think you're crazy."
"He's got a good mind."
"And an even better ass."
"That's the old Hillary Smith!"
"He's a goody. Go in and get him. You don't have to justify anything to me. We been friends forever. If I could do it, I'd try it myself. Go have a good time, John Goode."
Goode and Hunter met at the exact same bar after Smith had been seen back home. It was late-ish. There was a noisy after-theater crowd. Hunter bought the drinks.
"Are you drinking anything better than soda pop these days?"
"I think they call that tonic up here."
"How soon I forget!"
"No. I'll take a glass of white wine. Liebfraumilch."
"Fabulous. You've graduated to 'lover's milk.' A good sign."
"Yeah, I've been learning up here. You won't hear that from Smith."
"You know, Cal, I'm not sure Hillary's the right teacher for you. Don used to call him, what...'stuffy Smith?'"
"Something like that. I know, but really, who would be better?"
"Almost anybody."
"The pair-'o-dykes?"
"OK. OK. I'm just saying that it's your education."
"I appreciate your concern."
"Cal, we're bickering like a pair of old queens."
"Yes, I'm kind of a jerk. I know that. I'm just edgy. School's starting back, I've been having these nosebleeds. It's a whole new ball game. I don't know why they let me in to this place, but I suspect you had something..."
"Nope. No such thing."
"Well. Anyway. I'm at the bottom of the totem pole."
"Smith tells me Bonkowski liked your piece."
"You talked to Smith?"
"Of course!"
Sullen, miserable pause.
"His wife liked my piece. Smith asked if I was sure I knew what the hell I was doing."
"You can drop Smith at any time. Don't suffer on my behalf. You'll end up bitter about something that should be a joy."
"I know you're right. I'll tell you the truth: I actually like Smith. He is a no bullshit guy. If he ever likes something I do, I'll know I'm getting somewhere. Besides, I know he's going through a hell of a hard time right now."
Goode bit his tongue. He could see Cal make the transition to a weak attempt at amelioration of the many wounds. If he ever hoped to get into that dorm room, he could not afford to say the least catty thing. He turned his mind away from, 'fat lot you care,' to casting about for another gambit. His mind was drawing a blank. He stared at the drink before him. He wondered if he should just go back to DC and fuck it. (Or not fuck it.) Huge risk, truculent child, slender chance of acceptable outcome. 'Ah, there!' He thought to himself, 'do I really think of him as a child? Is it really that I'm a pederast? Is this what I am? Better, the sake of sanity and the both of us I should treat him as an adult. What would I do with an adult? If this brat were an adult, a genuine queer adult, I'd take him down to the Combat Zone and we'd check out some porn as an appetizer.
"Cal, you wanna hit the Zone and check out a flick?"
The boy grinned back at him.
"A dick flick?"
"I'm AC/DC," he lied. "I'll look at whatever you prefer."
"You'd take me in to the 'live nude girls?'"
"I might let you go in there on your own."
"See, you're DC, no AC. Just as I suspected. Or whichever way that goes."
"I'm starting to appreciate your adulthood."
To this Cal had no snappy response. He was starting to appreciate his own adulthood. He'd recently learned how to fuck a real, live girl. Of course, he'd bled over his girl, and had not seen hide nor hair ('and in the lamp light, downed with light brown hair') for a month. Perhaps it was time to test the idea whether he himself could stomach AC/DC. He'd led this guy on long enough, taking advantage of his money and influence, enough so to be plunked down here in this frigid town at this seedy bar.
"Alright, Cal. You can look at titties all you want. I can't say I'll dig it, but I can tough it out like a red-blooded American fag."
"You know, I love you."
"For real?"
"Really. You've been more than patient with me. I'd love to see a tit flick, but I'll check out the dick flick too. All we have to decide is which to see first."
"Let's do dick, then chick."
And that's what they did. To his surprise, he found both stimulating. The sight of a huge, throbbing erection pumping seemingly gallons of semen all over a delightfully delicate male porn star did not leave him cold. By the time they got through the same sort of thing with the "anal magic" double d femmes fatale getting rogered in every conceivable orifice, he was making a mess in his jeans.
"Do you need a plastic bag," whispered his John.
"No, I, we...need to get back to the dorm."
They took a fucking taxi and asked him to step on it.
"I thought your roomies didn't split until tomorrow."
"No. They left this afternoon. It's cool."
Boston taxi drivers are a fearless bunch, capable of death-defying hurtles over sheets of ice. The commute from the Zone was relatively short, but in the cold cab, the passions cooled off for this strange duo. Then, there was the way past the sentry to the second floor of 54 Fenway... Goode moved like Dastardly Dan in a silent movie, all arches of the back and sidelong glances. It would not be good to be caught out, either for being in the dorm after-hours, or by being recognized. He could imagine the headlines: "Former Dean of Boston Conservatory Arrested in Back Bay Brownstone." But the sentry was long asleep in her room. It was two in the AM. Once in and up the stairs, Goode realized with horror that there were no locks on the doors to the rooms. That conversation with Alphin now poured back into memory.
"Shouldn't we provide these students, especially the women, with personal locks?"
"Hmm. Hmph. The expense of all those keys? The doors to the streets will be locked! We're paying for monitors on the ground floors. That's a pile of dough, John. I don't think we need it."
"Don't they need some privacy? You really know what goes on in these rooms?"
"Oh, they're good kids. What? Ya think they're doin' dope? If we lock 'em in, they can better hide that sort of thing from the monitors. Topic closed. Motion denied."
The door was open and the dark room concealed no occupants, exactly as Cal had assured. Still, once the lights were on and they were taking off the coats, flinging them on beds in the triple, the idea lingered like a ghost in his imagination that they could indeed be barged in on in flagrante delicto.
"Welcome to my humble abode."
"Charming. Turn up the heat."
Ironic, since the heat was blazing.
"Make yourself at home."
"You mean, 'take of my clothes?'"
A shrug from the lad.
"The cab ride took me down a notch."
"Got any booze?"
"Hey. You were the Dean of this place. You know the rules."
"We always managed to break 'em."
"I guess we're just not so hip. My roommates are a priest and a buzzard, respectively."
"Preists drink like fish."
"Oh god! Ain't that the truth! This guy is really a student priest, by which I mean an organist...
"An old gal that rides the swell pedal..."
"He's not an accomplished drinker. We all went out to the dive around the corner after he played some shit in one of those mini concerts. He got totally fucked up. We came back up here and he floundered around on that bed right there..."
Let the record show that they'd piled their coats and Goodes slight luggage on the priest's bed.
"...he yelled about how much he loved God and all of that, but wanted to have at least one good blowjob before he died. Then, he proceeded to dry hump the bed."
"I hate to ask what comes next."
"Right. Good sense of foreboding. He pukes all over the floor. Corn chips and gin and tonic."
"Lovely."
"The buzz cleaned it up, running around singing 'I'm a coprophile!'"
"That's not quite the right usage."
"Right, again, maestro. He needs to separate the shit..."
"...from the shinola."
Much laughter at this long-sung refrain.
"Well. We'll have do make do without a nightcap."
"Bareheaded and bare assed."
Now the squeamish need to turn aside. Flip ahead the many pages to the next chapter in this kiss and tell. Even if you relish pornography, even the sort with literary pretensions like 'Lady Chatterly,' this is not the real thing. It must be told, because the omniscient narrator has his own inner purpose: to expose hypocrisy and posturing, to let the chips fall where they may in regard to judgement of this life. Human sexuality, as Kinsey took a pseudo-scientific crack at proving (to the consternation of his long-suffering wife) is very messy. We are among the animals, and that is as it should be. Let the Puritan layer be set aside. Let the Victorian values be laid to rest in light of the facts of the matter. The impulses that lead to the heat of desire are not orderly. They do not line up in parallel with convention. It would seem that convention is concocted to trammel them. The shit on the sheets that came up in the Wilde trial was cited as evidence of diarrhea by the defense. The prosecution had the more vivid imagination and didn't buy it. Oscar should never have let it get that far. Nor, we must admit, should have John Goode. If we zoom as far back as we can, we can tell you that this will not turn out well. Even our evidence, if patience be rewarded, is scanty.
In fact, for all his posturing as an urbane adept, Calbraith Hunter was of very limited experience. His entire knowledge of actual mechanical homosexual practice was limited to what he had just recently witnessed in "Butt Fucking Broncos." We have seen how he became engorged when fingering the drippings of his High School sex mate. We have seen how this same female had kept at it and brought him, with the help of nature and biology, to 'his full manhood.' His instinct (and yes, we know that the term may not apply to the Homo Sapiens) was to duck this next scene altogether. He had already begun to see the fact: that he was deeply lured by the female scent and form and that his notions of a more catholic sexuality was, for himself, a sham. He knew he was not about to be damaged by what was about to transpire, but he had the glimmering of the knowledge that this was not his thing. His thing, in fact, was wilder and even more primal. The intimate knowledge of another, female being, one that would open every private act and stare unashamedly at his own. Where does Kinsey stand on this? It is not aberrant. It is the ordinary sexuality practiced one way or another by the vast majority of the human sample. The homosexual act, on the other hand, was statistically aberrant. Kinsey does not make a value judgement. In the many discussions that Goode and Hunter had about the subject leading up to this encounter included the ones that debunked the epithet 'gay.' There is nothing 'gay' about the situation of the male homosexual. It has been forced underground and has tended towards furtive, frenetic encounters in the most unsanitary places. In time, it will work its way towards the light. Nevertheless, it has an inherent double alpha element. What is to done with two penises? What is to done with two male egos? What of the fit of peg into hole?
Goode, of course, knows that Hunter is a virgin. (He's wrong by now, but in his sense it's true.) He knows he will have to guide and teach. Hunter senses that this is wrong for him, but he can't give up now. He's instantly figured out that there is a type of man he likes to gaze upon and allow himself to covet (though not quite desire as he desires a female ass). That sort is fair, boyish and blond. That man has delicate features, and a girlish torso. He might be tanned and posing in some ripped up and bleached out jeans. Then, Cal can imagine sitting in Socratic rapture over the truths of being, being carried away by the bliss of argument to some fundamental need to express brotherly love. He can imagine taking this fair creature's hand, stroking that erection out of pity and compassion, and even, when the other's desire cannot be relieved, sucking on that dick. He just can't imagine fucking this delicate structure up the ass. (He can easily imagine fucking Linda Litman up the ass.) Ass fucking, in any case, takes some practice. Goode fishes out of his valise a small bottle of KY. He sits down on the bed and guides the belt out of Cal's buckle. He undoes the button on his jeans. He unzips the fly. He parts the fabric and strokes the buried treasure. He finds it less than half mast. Cal lets his head fall back and tries to conjure something sexy. Litman's ass. He cannot look at Goode. Goode looks like a toad. His bald head is shining in the street light through the window. Goode reaches over and prophylactically shuts the shade. Cal imagines the wetness between Litman's legs, and how it seeps down between the cleft of her buttocks and lubricates her anus. Goode frees the penis from the underwear. He squeezes out some KY into his palm and rubs it on the flaccid dick, which, he notes, is stirring slightly. Cal gasps. The KY is cold. His imaginary fingers are in that delightful swamp, finding the treasured scent, deeply experiencing the sweet sensation. He feel himself respond. Goode is relieved by signs of life. He works on disrobing. Soon they're side by side, Goode's naked back side within striking distance of Hunters workable front side. Cal Hunter takes his own member in hand. This is the 'what the fuck' moment. He works his dick between the folds of an aged buttocks. He seeks a way in. He's too distracted and concentrated on his artificial construct to be subtle. Besides, he's never done this before, even with Linda. (He's never had the balls to ask about it.)
"Ooh! Careful!"
"Sorry."
There must be a way out. Orgasm is not it. Sitting on the side of the bed, Cal watches as Goode gets dressed. There is silence. It's three o'clock in the Back Bay morning.
"Sorry."
Cal is trying to get some condolence for his failure.
"It's OK. It's not your thing."
"Are you...going to Smith's?"
"No. I have a...
He wants to say that he has a very frustrated cock and he needs to go get it professionally, or at least competently, sucked. That's too much truth for Cal.
"...cab to catch."
"You have a place to stay, then?"
"Please. Don't worry about me."
"Well, you know, I do a little. I might've hurt you."
"I'm disappointed, I won't deny that. You don't know your own mind. I feel used."
This is not spoken with vitriol, but it feels like that to the trembling young man.
"OK. That's that."
He turns, still naked, to the wall. He closes his eyes, listening as Goode descends the stairs and, undoing all of the locks and bars, opens the big door to the outside world. Cal thinks that he'd better be a good lad and go down and lock up. Before he can do that, though, he has to let out his sobs. In the early morning, he does an intemperate thing. He writes a passionate poem about Adonis. He's thinking of Mara, recalling her sleeping form as he watched her from his restless perch beside her on her floor, his insomnia driven by unrelieved desire. He puts the poem, with a note that just says 'for you' into an envelope and walks it down to the women's dorm. He thinks of Goode, on his flight back to DC, of his wish to be done with this, of his hope to be forgiven, and his idea that he's learned something important about himself. His fear and humiliation have turned to a dull resentment. His emotional growth is slow, but it is steady. He's like a climber on a ledge, feeling his way, looking for the next step, the next perch. We do not think that he's been a victim. We think, rather, that this has been the crucible of his art. His conservatory education continues, but this lesson is the one worth the expense. This man stumbles, as all humans seem to do, towards maturity.
Tuesday, July 19, 2011
It's Not All That Simple Part 2
Not long after the nosebleed, the second semester started up and we started working on a new piece. This one was much more to my liking, and it cut down seriously on the catty remarks among my neighbors in the Bass section.
"My friends, we are going to begin today to study the "German Requiem" of Brahms. It is a great favorite of mine, and it will prove very effective for our Spring Concert. Yes, Mindy, you have a question?"
"Wouldn't a Mass for the dead be better in a Winter concert?"
"Perhaps so, at least the ideas of Death and Winter are linked. But I think that as you learn this work, you will find that its message is of renewal. So we do it for Spring. OK!"
He claps his hands when he wants to begin, or desires more focused attention.
We cracked our scores, fresh from the bookstore, and sailed out onto a sea I've always been a sucker for. Here the slippage on the temporal plane becomes difficult to reckon with. The topic of the piece ("Deutsches Requiem") is the cessation of life and the grieving of those who mourn. As Zoltan noted the overall message is renewal, but there are a pair of moments where the renewal comes like a thunderbolt. "In the blink of an eye, we shall be changed." No shit! The heart stops and the brain rots. It goes out in technicolor, and the last moments are all eternity. "Death, where is thy sting? Grave, where is thy victory?" The moment that is eternity is succor for the departed, and the mystery of the soul is revealed for those that have the "peace of mind" to appreciate that final revelation. For the aggrieved, the consolation is in the thought that the departed has reached a higher plane, a plane of peace. "How beautiful is thy dwelling place, oh Lord of Hosts." I am, however a musician and not a theologian. My meditations on the meaning of the Requiem of Brahms have traveled in time, but they are not of the piece of time of which I write. The musician, reading Brahms, notes the repetitions of words and phrases. "Death, where? Grave, where? Where? Where IS thy victory?" This is rhythm, and it has meaning for the musician. "How beautiful, how beautiful, Oh Lord, oh Lord, oh Lord of Hosts. And, of course, it's the German requiem. In German, victory has but one syllable. You can shout it out at a rally and it works. "Sieg!" (Does 'sieg heil' ring a bell? Burn a race? Destroy a nation?)
But of course, we didn't start with the text, either in German or English. Though we performed in German, and I will say more about that in a moment, we learned the music singing Sol Fa. We began at the beginning, and my part, the Bass part, went like this at my first entry: "Fa, fa, fa." Instead of the clusters of the previous semester, I was now surrounded by a glorious motet. This was more like the church music that my family sang and loved. This was more like the music that brought me to music school in the first place. This was the solace of the triad, moving surely from position to position, with passing notes making the lines connect and with the majesty of the Western musical language shining forth all around. We read each movement in turn, rehearsal by rehearsal. In the solfeggio phase, we went quickly, Zoltan establishing the shape of the work in our minds. When we got to the fugue that concludes movement three, the theme of which, in translation suggests 'the souls of the righteous are in the hand of God, and there shall be no torment to touch them,' my young mind was, as we used to say, blown. God! In the hand of God! I had never been in such an ensemble before, holding forth my part against such strength and magnificence all around me. But the best was yet to come. The fugue that concludes movement six, 'Lord, you are worthy to receive glory and honor and power: for you have made all, and for your pleasure they exist forever in all of time's directions,' (and I translate to suit myself), I was carried away by the craft of the music, especially as we sang it in rehearsal without the orchestra, accompanied by that skinny kid who was brow beaten by Eminescu at every turn.
Zoltan brought in a German tutor to correct our diction. She was a slender creature with the hunched posture of someone always at a desk hitting the books. Her name was Harwat, and she was a nice immigrant German woman. Her slight accent lent her mousy physique a certain sexiness. I found her German pedantic, and she didn't really have any idea how to get the pronunciation to sound. Still, this level of detail in the preparation was a welcome relief from the solfeggio. It meant that we were done with that. We now began to sing the piece as it was meant to be: a Requiem Mass in the German language. I never really understood the high and low of German. I always winced when someone would utter the cliche, that it is 'guttural.' The German of Brahms' 'Requiem' was adapted (by Brahms) from the Holy Scriptures, much as Handel adapted them for "Messiah." He makes a point by his cutting and pasting. He has a sure ear for the melodious turn of phrase ('Wie Lieblich'), or the snap of the neck, crack your back theological rant ('Tod, Wo ist?' ), and certainly the placid, out on the river, down to the shore ending ('Selig sind'). How, exactly, apart from the craft of the music itself, did this piece worm its way into my consciousness and make me fall apart emotionally every time I got within hearing (or later, reading) distance of it?
Perhaps it had to do with this circumstance: I was corresponding with a bloke that had turned up in the last year I worked in the High School summers at a boy's camp. He was an Englishman named Thomas (last name forgotten). He was, to lapse into the cliche, a jovial fellow. He had a no connection with music, and I'm not sure what his interest in me was. He'd been keen to see more of the States. He'd turned up during that week I spent tooling around with Goode and the Davis crowd. He'd rented a car and just driven up. He was a good-looking man, so he rather blended right in. Following this, he went off to Logan and got a flight back across the pond. His letters were at first very funny. He spoke disparagingly of the gay boys, wondering if, no offense, I was a homo myself. I distanced myself in this correspondence from the complexities of my relationship with Goode, although Thomas must have detected its nature. I was happy to have a straight dude without artistic pretense as a correspondent. Eventually, though, the correspondence darkened. Tom's Dad was diagnosed with cancer and it rapidly and fatally ate him up. I read each installment with an unusual empathy. The rehearsals of the Requiem dovetailed with this external narrative. I began to sing the piece for Tom's father, a man I'd never met.
The rehearsals with the orchestra, which, according to the schedule scrawled in my score, took place April 23rd and 25th, 1974. They were especially long, each lasting three hours, from 3:00 PM to 6. The shock came when we got to that first fugue. For reasons that only Brahms can know, he composed the fugue with all of its modulations, twists and turns over a pedal point in the orchestra. I took points off. Why, Johannes? Why? But "Herr, bist du wurdig" was unsullied and tremendous with the full band. By the time the performance came, I was afloat and committed. I gave it all I had. I ended up all sung out. I ended up in tears on the risers, maybe fighting off a fever, but certainly falling in love with Brahms. The women came and went, but I never stopped hanging out with Johannes.
I was also hanging out down at the Boston Public Library, hanging out with the New England Transcendentalists. I started with "Walden" because, as it turned out, Mara was a big fan. Somehow or other, I had gotten obsessed with a minor character, William Ellery Channing Junior. I read his poetry assiduously and sought out his grave down the hill from his more famous neighbors. I may have seen myself as such a minor character by the close of my Freshman year; certainly I'd seen enough to know that I had no chance of being on the bill in Symphony Hall. I had yet to even learn to write a string quartet! The return of the warm weather, the gradual greening of the Fens, the buds and blossoms reminded me of my failures as a hetero and a homo. I still had a car. I took Mara up to Walden. She'd never said a peep about "Adonis," but I'd been haunting the dance concerts and had seen her in enough that I felt I had some few conversational gambits, including my ace in the hole, Ellery Channing.
"Mara, it's still cold!"
She's peeling off her jeans and sweater to reveal, to my surprise and horror, a one piece bathing suit.
"Oh, this is a rite of Spring."
Out of her pack comes a bathing cap.
"I'll need you to hold the pack. Meet me on that side," she says, pointing at yonder shore, over by the tracks. In she goes, with soundless ease. I watch her head as it works steadily, athletically, across the frigid pond. It's not a small pond. It's "the eye" of Walden. She's at the widest point, taking the whole thing on. I walk, keeping an eye out. I'm the one that's sinking. I have no way of keeping up with her. Yes, I can walk the perimeter, and I'll meet up with her soon after she's ashore. I mean, I can't swim this distance. I don't have the joi de vivre. My male ego is taking a savage beating, and even aligning myself with Ellery Channing and his sinking bark, is clearly an admission of inferiority. I'll, as Thoreau writes, "keep to my own track then." A train thunders along the railway, not so many yards from the pond. It's been doing that since Thoreau was out here, going in to town for dinner at the Emersons'. At the same time I'm losing face, I'm longing to, once again, be in her arms. She has, in her exquisite absence, gotten under my skin. I've been missing from the arms of Linda Litman also, but her distance has not made me ache as has the distance from the mystic, dark dancer. I reach the other shore ("If my bark sinks, it's to another shore.") just in time to watch Mara scramble up the bank, shivering, and I hold out the pack. My timing, at least, is good.
"Oooo! That's cold!"
"Yes, as I predicted."
She skips the towel off (no towel), and she dresses. Then we walk for the site of the cairn, not saying much. It's not awkward between us, not yet. I'm steering clear of what's in my mind. I want to take a hand, steal a kiss, find a bed (backseat of shit box?), relearn the woman's contours, relive the scent, or, failing any of that, talk about how we might be together as a couple, how we might make art together, how we might end up, not alone, together. None of that will emerge from my mouth.
"Hey. Cal. Cat got your tongue?"
"The 'I' of Walden has my tongue. I'm just thinking about how nice it feels out here, how quiet. Except for the trains."
"Yeah. In the water, that train was intense. I could feel it all the way to my center."
"I hear a lot about the center from Rodney and Xenia."
"We hear a lot about the center from Ray and everybody else. But when the train is pounding your full bladder, you know where your center lies."
"I loved that Harrison piece, by the way."
"Yeah, they were in it, but I wasn't."
"Still, you saw it."
"Yeah. Ives, Plath. What a combo."
"'This is how I want to die.'"
"'Even the moon bulges in its orange irons...'"
"What's with the arms?"
"Oh. God. A truly egregious cliche."
"As I say, I gotta pee. Don't look."
"Okay. Wouldn't dream of it."
"Yes. You would."
"OK, but I won't."
"Give a girl a little privacy."
I'm ahead on the path. We're all alone out here. It's a school day. But after some dawdling and stopping to look at green shoots under a loose rock, she's all zipped up and caught up. She now takes my hand and rubs up close like a cat.
"Mmmm."
"I want to thank you for coming to the shows."
"I love watching you dance, certainly. But also, I just am learning to love the art form."
"Yes. It's quite the art form."
"Did you ever get to hear my ostinato piece?"
"Of course. We talked about it before, I thought."
"We did?"
"Maybe not. I don't know. It's been one hell of a term."
"What's up for Summer?"
"Back home. Do some summer theater. You?"
"Back home. My teacher, John Goode, he's doing a recital. I'll play the ostinato piece, maybe add a few more movements."
"We'll write. Write me long, beautiful letters. Tell me all about it."
She drops her grip and squints at me in the late afternoon sun.
"We're going to be famous, aren't we?"
"We're already famous."
"Right. Didn't I see you on Carson last night?"
"You did! Wasn't I great?"
"You were a phenomenon."
Much giggling at this fantasy. (By the time we got to television, Carson was retired.)
"Cal, I need to be getting back."
"I'll take you back, then."
So easy, so laid back. The tantric zen of youthful timidity.
"My friends, we are going to begin today to study the "German Requiem" of Brahms. It is a great favorite of mine, and it will prove very effective for our Spring Concert. Yes, Mindy, you have a question?"
"Wouldn't a Mass for the dead be better in a Winter concert?"
"Perhaps so, at least the ideas of Death and Winter are linked. But I think that as you learn this work, you will find that its message is of renewal. So we do it for Spring. OK!"
He claps his hands when he wants to begin, or desires more focused attention.
We cracked our scores, fresh from the bookstore, and sailed out onto a sea I've always been a sucker for. Here the slippage on the temporal plane becomes difficult to reckon with. The topic of the piece ("Deutsches Requiem") is the cessation of life and the grieving of those who mourn. As Zoltan noted the overall message is renewal, but there are a pair of moments where the renewal comes like a thunderbolt. "In the blink of an eye, we shall be changed." No shit! The heart stops and the brain rots. It goes out in technicolor, and the last moments are all eternity. "Death, where is thy sting? Grave, where is thy victory?" The moment that is eternity is succor for the departed, and the mystery of the soul is revealed for those that have the "peace of mind" to appreciate that final revelation. For the aggrieved, the consolation is in the thought that the departed has reached a higher plane, a plane of peace. "How beautiful is thy dwelling place, oh Lord of Hosts." I am, however a musician and not a theologian. My meditations on the meaning of the Requiem of Brahms have traveled in time, but they are not of the piece of time of which I write. The musician, reading Brahms, notes the repetitions of words and phrases. "Death, where? Grave, where? Where? Where IS thy victory?" This is rhythm, and it has meaning for the musician. "How beautiful, how beautiful, Oh Lord, oh Lord, oh Lord of Hosts. And, of course, it's the German requiem. In German, victory has but one syllable. You can shout it out at a rally and it works. "Sieg!" (Does 'sieg heil' ring a bell? Burn a race? Destroy a nation?)
But of course, we didn't start with the text, either in German or English. Though we performed in German, and I will say more about that in a moment, we learned the music singing Sol Fa. We began at the beginning, and my part, the Bass part, went like this at my first entry: "Fa, fa, fa." Instead of the clusters of the previous semester, I was now surrounded by a glorious motet. This was more like the church music that my family sang and loved. This was more like the music that brought me to music school in the first place. This was the solace of the triad, moving surely from position to position, with passing notes making the lines connect and with the majesty of the Western musical language shining forth all around. We read each movement in turn, rehearsal by rehearsal. In the solfeggio phase, we went quickly, Zoltan establishing the shape of the work in our minds. When we got to the fugue that concludes movement three, the theme of which, in translation suggests 'the souls of the righteous are in the hand of God, and there shall be no torment to touch them,' my young mind was, as we used to say, blown. God! In the hand of God! I had never been in such an ensemble before, holding forth my part against such strength and magnificence all around me. But the best was yet to come. The fugue that concludes movement six, 'Lord, you are worthy to receive glory and honor and power: for you have made all, and for your pleasure they exist forever in all of time's directions,' (and I translate to suit myself), I was carried away by the craft of the music, especially as we sang it in rehearsal without the orchestra, accompanied by that skinny kid who was brow beaten by Eminescu at every turn.
Zoltan brought in a German tutor to correct our diction. She was a slender creature with the hunched posture of someone always at a desk hitting the books. Her name was Harwat, and she was a nice immigrant German woman. Her slight accent lent her mousy physique a certain sexiness. I found her German pedantic, and she didn't really have any idea how to get the pronunciation to sound. Still, this level of detail in the preparation was a welcome relief from the solfeggio. It meant that we were done with that. We now began to sing the piece as it was meant to be: a Requiem Mass in the German language. I never really understood the high and low of German. I always winced when someone would utter the cliche, that it is 'guttural.' The German of Brahms' 'Requiem' was adapted (by Brahms) from the Holy Scriptures, much as Handel adapted them for "Messiah." He makes a point by his cutting and pasting. He has a sure ear for the melodious turn of phrase ('Wie Lieblich'), or the snap of the neck, crack your back theological rant ('Tod, Wo ist?' ), and certainly the placid, out on the river, down to the shore ending ('Selig sind'). How, exactly, apart from the craft of the music itself, did this piece worm its way into my consciousness and make me fall apart emotionally every time I got within hearing (or later, reading) distance of it?
Perhaps it had to do with this circumstance: I was corresponding with a bloke that had turned up in the last year I worked in the High School summers at a boy's camp. He was an Englishman named Thomas (last name forgotten). He was, to lapse into the cliche, a jovial fellow. He had a no connection with music, and I'm not sure what his interest in me was. He'd been keen to see more of the States. He'd turned up during that week I spent tooling around with Goode and the Davis crowd. He'd rented a car and just driven up. He was a good-looking man, so he rather blended right in. Following this, he went off to Logan and got a flight back across the pond. His letters were at first very funny. He spoke disparagingly of the gay boys, wondering if, no offense, I was a homo myself. I distanced myself in this correspondence from the complexities of my relationship with Goode, although Thomas must have detected its nature. I was happy to have a straight dude without artistic pretense as a correspondent. Eventually, though, the correspondence darkened. Tom's Dad was diagnosed with cancer and it rapidly and fatally ate him up. I read each installment with an unusual empathy. The rehearsals of the Requiem dovetailed with this external narrative. I began to sing the piece for Tom's father, a man I'd never met.
The rehearsals with the orchestra, which, according to the schedule scrawled in my score, took place April 23rd and 25th, 1974. They were especially long, each lasting three hours, from 3:00 PM to 6. The shock came when we got to that first fugue. For reasons that only Brahms can know, he composed the fugue with all of its modulations, twists and turns over a pedal point in the orchestra. I took points off. Why, Johannes? Why? But "Herr, bist du wurdig" was unsullied and tremendous with the full band. By the time the performance came, I was afloat and committed. I gave it all I had. I ended up all sung out. I ended up in tears on the risers, maybe fighting off a fever, but certainly falling in love with Brahms. The women came and went, but I never stopped hanging out with Johannes.
I was also hanging out down at the Boston Public Library, hanging out with the New England Transcendentalists. I started with "Walden" because, as it turned out, Mara was a big fan. Somehow or other, I had gotten obsessed with a minor character, William Ellery Channing Junior. I read his poetry assiduously and sought out his grave down the hill from his more famous neighbors. I may have seen myself as such a minor character by the close of my Freshman year; certainly I'd seen enough to know that I had no chance of being on the bill in Symphony Hall. I had yet to even learn to write a string quartet! The return of the warm weather, the gradual greening of the Fens, the buds and blossoms reminded me of my failures as a hetero and a homo. I still had a car. I took Mara up to Walden. She'd never said a peep about "Adonis," but I'd been haunting the dance concerts and had seen her in enough that I felt I had some few conversational gambits, including my ace in the hole, Ellery Channing.
"Mara, it's still cold!"
She's peeling off her jeans and sweater to reveal, to my surprise and horror, a one piece bathing suit.
"Oh, this is a rite of Spring."
Out of her pack comes a bathing cap.
"I'll need you to hold the pack. Meet me on that side," she says, pointing at yonder shore, over by the tracks. In she goes, with soundless ease. I watch her head as it works steadily, athletically, across the frigid pond. It's not a small pond. It's "the eye" of Walden. She's at the widest point, taking the whole thing on. I walk, keeping an eye out. I'm the one that's sinking. I have no way of keeping up with her. Yes, I can walk the perimeter, and I'll meet up with her soon after she's ashore. I mean, I can't swim this distance. I don't have the joi de vivre. My male ego is taking a savage beating, and even aligning myself with Ellery Channing and his sinking bark, is clearly an admission of inferiority. I'll, as Thoreau writes, "keep to my own track then." A train thunders along the railway, not so many yards from the pond. It's been doing that since Thoreau was out here, going in to town for dinner at the Emersons'. At the same time I'm losing face, I'm longing to, once again, be in her arms. She has, in her exquisite absence, gotten under my skin. I've been missing from the arms of Linda Litman also, but her distance has not made me ache as has the distance from the mystic, dark dancer. I reach the other shore ("If my bark sinks, it's to another shore.") just in time to watch Mara scramble up the bank, shivering, and I hold out the pack. My timing, at least, is good.
"Oooo! That's cold!"
"Yes, as I predicted."
She skips the towel off (no towel), and she dresses. Then we walk for the site of the cairn, not saying much. It's not awkward between us, not yet. I'm steering clear of what's in my mind. I want to take a hand, steal a kiss, find a bed (backseat of shit box?), relearn the woman's contours, relive the scent, or, failing any of that, talk about how we might be together as a couple, how we might make art together, how we might end up, not alone, together. None of that will emerge from my mouth.
"Hey. Cal. Cat got your tongue?"
"The 'I' of Walden has my tongue. I'm just thinking about how nice it feels out here, how quiet. Except for the trains."
"Yeah. In the water, that train was intense. I could feel it all the way to my center."
"I hear a lot about the center from Rodney and Xenia."
"We hear a lot about the center from Ray and everybody else. But when the train is pounding your full bladder, you know where your center lies."
"I loved that Harrison piece, by the way."
"Yeah, they were in it, but I wasn't."
"Still, you saw it."
"Yeah. Ives, Plath. What a combo."
"'This is how I want to die.'"
"'Even the moon bulges in its orange irons...'"
"What's with the arms?"
"Oh. God. A truly egregious cliche."
"As I say, I gotta pee. Don't look."
"Okay. Wouldn't dream of it."
"Yes. You would."
"OK, but I won't."
"Give a girl a little privacy."
I'm ahead on the path. We're all alone out here. It's a school day. But after some dawdling and stopping to look at green shoots under a loose rock, she's all zipped up and caught up. She now takes my hand and rubs up close like a cat.
"Mmmm."
"I want to thank you for coming to the shows."
"I love watching you dance, certainly. But also, I just am learning to love the art form."
"Yes. It's quite the art form."
"Did you ever get to hear my ostinato piece?"
"Of course. We talked about it before, I thought."
"We did?"
"Maybe not. I don't know. It's been one hell of a term."
"What's up for Summer?"
"Back home. Do some summer theater. You?"
"Back home. My teacher, John Goode, he's doing a recital. I'll play the ostinato piece, maybe add a few more movements."
"We'll write. Write me long, beautiful letters. Tell me all about it."
She drops her grip and squints at me in the late afternoon sun.
"We're going to be famous, aren't we?"
"We're already famous."
"Right. Didn't I see you on Carson last night?"
"You did! Wasn't I great?"
"You were a phenomenon."
Much giggling at this fantasy. (By the time we got to television, Carson was retired.)
"Cal, I need to be getting back."
"I'll take you back, then."
So easy, so laid back. The tantric zen of youthful timidity.
Sunday, July 17, 2011
Interlude
June 4th, 1974 Washington, DC
Dearest Mara,
How I miss the 'eye' and you!
Everything here is all messed up. I was going to play in my teacher's musicale, but I managed to slam my hand in the car door. Writing is slow, so this will be short. I slammed the door, and there was my hand still in it. I had to open it again with my left hand to free it. I was yelling at the top of my lungs. So instead of concert, I got stitches.
Write soon,
your idiot,
Cal Hunter
June 9th, 1974, Brattleboro, Vermont
My Dear Cal,
Very sorry to hear about your accident! (It was an accident, wasn't it? I know you hate performing.) Just kidding. Who would slam a hand in a car door just to get out of a few minutes of nerves? (I might, actually.)
Things here are cat's meow. I went down to town center for auditions. Here's the good part. I'm giving auditions, not taking them! Here's the bad part. Everybody is really, really BAD!!! No matter what I do, this show is going to SUCK!!!
One good thing, I got a letter from your friend Xenia. She's back in Scottsdale basically doing what I'm doing. Her summerstock adventure sounds much better than mine, and I'm green with envy. Green. Good color for a summer in BBoro. Ha ha ha. Trying to cheer you up with jokes, so buck up old lad, pip pip I say.
I'll tell you the truth. I don't care if you write back. I'm in it up to my neck, with no time to sing.
love,
Mara the Magnificent
July 15th, 1974, DC
Dear Mag,
I loved your recent. It made me laugh. I don't like the idea that you'll clam up word-wise. I haunt the mailbox every day looking for your handwriting. My hand, in bandage is throbbing. I've been working on new movements for a 'suite,' but w/out the ability to really play, I wonder what I'm really up to.
I've thought a lot about the past year and us. I loved you on the stage, and I loved you in the water at Walden. Will you at least let me love you as I love you? Never mind. If I write more like this, I'll have to start over, and that hurts too much. I wish you all the best with your cast of losers. Please don't make me wait too long for your blue pen masterpieces. I'm languishing.
love and fingers,
Cal Hunter
June 28th, 1974, BB
Silly Cal,
Of course I love you! Madly, dearly, all ways.
However, there is a complication. I've been spending much time with a man I hired to dance in the stupid show, and he's been very entertaining. I listened with both ears when you once explained that 'all orgasms were alike in the dark.' Now, I'm really beginning to understand what you were saying. We are all hard up for entertainment. We are looking for ways to be more human, more involved. I'm getting involved and I have you to thank. I'm sure you'll be egging me on by return post.
love, in absentia,
Mara
July 8th, 1974, DC
Mara,
I have to tell you. You made me very crazy with your last. I threw Mom's tupperware of meatloaf at Dad and chased him around the block with a spatula. Ridiculous, and all your fault.
I went to the fireworks with the family, down to Hains Point. E Pluribus Unum, amen. I was sitting apart, because I'm not 13 anymore. I was still seething about you and your new entertainment. I am not taking credit. I'm taking offense. So there I was, 'with that comical look on my face, because I'd just had the shit kicked out,' (or however that Bogart quote goes), when some gorgeous babe comes up and asks if 'I'm ok.' OK? I'm ok. My girlfriend's seeing someone else. My babe says, "perhaps I can make you feel better." I'm like "yeah. You can suck me off right here in full view of my Mother." The woman was not impressed. She flipped me the bird and left me to lick my wounds myself.
I wish you all the best,
Cal Hunter
July 15th, 1974, BB
Cal,
It occurred to me to let your recent letter go unanswered. That would serve you right. However, in between the lines I detect a human being and am willing to ignore your hypocrisy.
You don't think I'm capable or ready to love two people at once? Isn't that what you were always preaching over the course of the term? If it works for you, why can't it work for me?
You might want to think things over more carefully next time, before you go off half cocked.
Mara
Cal stared at this letter for exactly the 11 seconds it took to read it. And then, he made the paper into a tight ball and started towards the family trash bin. But on the way, he doubled over in tears. Sturm und Drang. He un-balled the paper and fought to re-insert it into its envelope. He sat down at the family table with his pad of paper to try to save the day, the relationship, and his psyche.
July 18th, 1974, DC
Mara (the Magnificent) Monetti,
I have indeed been an ass. I'm not going to rally to my defense. I'm going to wish you all the best, bless you on your way, and let you commit unspeakable acts of profane lust...
He tears this piece of paper off the pad, crumples it, and tosses it on the floor.
Take 2.
July 18th, 1974, DC
Dear Mara,
I'm so sorry I've confused you.
I'm not half the man I used to be. There's a shadow hanging over me. Do I believe in yesterday?
Crumpled, trashed.
Dear Ms. Monetti,
You will find enclosed the last will and testament of Calbraith Hunter, composer. He loved you with all his heart, and even though you threw him to the wolves, he bequeathed his oeuvre to you.
Crumpled, trashed.
At least 20 more attempts collected on the linoleum. None were sent. He let this exchange drop. Yet in the Fall, they were, for one brilliant moment, reunited.
Saturday, July 16, 2011
Mara, Mara, no Tomorrow 1
I returned to Boston for my Sophomore year, still driving the shit box. It was falling apart, and I didn't have the skill or the wherewithal to save it. That might be taken as an objective correlative for the entirety of life as I was about to experience it. It began brilliantly enough with great plans. It was the plan, for example, to get out of the dorm and get into an apartment with two other people. I didn't move far, just down the street. I was still on the Fenway next to the fens, still an inhabitant of Back Bay Boston. I'd gotten out of living with the priest and the buzzard, but not quite out of being a queer "I" as "straight guy." I found a man I thought I could tolerate as a sex partner. I figured that I should take the time right now, to sort it out. Was I gay? Straight? Bi? This was the time in life to know the final answer. He was, as I had wanted, a fair haired, lithe young thing. (Well, not any younger than any of us, but it helped to maintain my role in the fantasy that he was subordinate.) The other member of the new triumvirate was an Asian. It was a great plan on the surface of it. Beneath the surface, it contained the seeds of its own undoing.
And as for Mara, how could I have not understood the damage I would do by preaching free love and demanding fidelity? As I bounded up the steps to someone else's brownstone flat that crisp summer morning, how could I have been more wrongheaded in my flirtation with disaster, albeit of the inconsequential sort? The apartment was rented by none other than Xenia and Rod. They had graciously allowed me access as my own arrangements were still in process. That is to say, I had all of my shit in the car while I sought a place to have that meeting with Mara that she'd requested by letter. Her previous epistle I'd ducked out of answering after many failed attempts. Her last had not been sent by mail. It came via courier. The courier was a willing friend, and she nabbed me as I strolled the halls of the BCM.
"Cal!"
"Yes?"
"Here. This is from Mara."
"OK, I'll have a look see. Thanks."
In an empty classroom at a cockeyed desk, I unfolded crisp sheets of lined newsprint and read my lover's felt-tipped pleading.
Boston, Now.
Dearest, most confused, Cal,
You let me die on the vine, and for this I should not forgive you. I wish that I had that much sense and strength. I gather by your silence that you did not approve of the chance I took with Stan. Fair enough. I was fool enough to believe you when you said I was free, that we were all free, and that only a fool could not be sold. You said it, I believed it, and yet I knew in my heart it was a bill of goods. Still, I had that beautiful body in front of me, quivering and vulnerable, and I had your words of daring whispering in my ears. I did not resist temptation and listen to that tiny voice in the back of my head that suggested that I should think first. What is done is done. What is done is also over, over and done. What I want is...you. I want you. What do you want me to do? Jump off the roof yelling that? I've already shot myself in the foot. You want me to shoot myself in the head?
I'd say 'fuck you,' but there's too much truth in it. The truth is that I want to fuck you up one side and down the other. Can't stand a liberated woman throwing herself at your feet? How about a horny woman exposing her ass? Ok, ok. I think you get my point. It's not just sex. I know your words are casual and improvised. I know that you speak first and then, if ever, think things through. The words you use are words I might have put there. I have a head full of New England bullshit. Does it surprise me then that they come flying out of your mouth, sweet kissable mouth, and wing me? Where's my Catholic restraint? Eaten alive by my Italian hot blood. If you don't fuck me, and soon, somebody else will. Soon.
Ok, I'll take a more subtle tack. I can't say I'll worship the ground you walk on. I won't let you walk all over me endlessly. I only want...to talk to you. You can stay out of sight for just so long. We go to the same school. Remember? There I'll be. There you'll be. What are we going to do? Pretend we've never met? Let's just meet somewhere and have a civil discussion. We can work this out. We must. I must. You should allow me. Give me a dignified retreat if that's what you insist on. Don't be such a shallow pond. The pond! You took me down to the river, believing I was a maiden. Remember? Lorca! Who needs Paris (or Boston) when we have Lorca. You taught me SO MUCH! Do you want to take back all the poetry? Adonis? Whoring? Golden liquid from a leak? What does it take to get through your thick skull that I love you, you shit head?
Mara Monetti
I can't convey the race of her pen over this page. She had all of this emotion all pent up and it poured out without crosshatch or proper punctuation. It took me all of a minute to read it. I might have seen only the part where she said she'd broken up with Stanley the manly. I might have skipped the fuck me part and gotten right to the civil talk part. That's me. I know nothing else like I know myself. It took me even less time to know I wanted this meeting. I had my eternal notebook full of blank staves. I ripped out a page and wrote:
Mara,
tomorrow, 70 the Fenway, 7 AM. Ring the bell twice.
Cal
Now where in hell was that courier? Just a ponytail already halfway down the block. Sprint, my good man, sprint!
So there I was ringing the bell ahead of my anticipated bell ringer. The door opened and there was Rod in the altogether.
"Cal."
"Rod. I see now why they call you Ramrod."
"Offended?"
"Nope. Just impressed."
"Well, get your skinny ass inside, before somebody outside sees my hide."
In we went. I had a half an hour to clear some room for the big meeting.
"Rod, Mara's on her way over."
"Mara! Mara, Mara, no to Mara!"
"That's her. No tomorrow."
"You two done the nasty yet?"
"Nope. She's a nice Catholic girl."
"You're full of shit, man."
"Maybe so. But as I say, she's gonna ring that bell twice and we'll be having a meeting of the minds right here, if you don't mind."
"Not at all. In fact, you two can have the place to yourselves. I've got a meeting myself over at the lair of Laird."
"I keep hearing about this Laird. When do I get to meet him?"
"Oh, very soon. He's been hearing about you, and he keeps saying the same damn thing. But be that as it may, I've got to put on some threads and hit the highway."
I was in the hall at the door before the second ring. She was in my arms before the door had the chance to close.
"Cal, are we going to do it right here in the hall?"
"I suppose not. There's a bed up there."
Trying to walk up the stairs with that stiffie was a bit iffy.
"Jeez, Cal. Is that a gun in your pocket or are you just glad to see me."
"I'm very glad to see you."
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