Do Clothes Make the Man?
A man, swaddled in loose white clothes, bronzed from the sun, his long blond hair tied up in a topknot, sat on a grassy knoll in Berkeley’s south side Ho Chi Minh Park, dreamily playing his flute. He played it well, sitting cross-legged and holding the divine instrument to his lips like a portrait of Krishna on the frieze of a temple.
In the park one day, swami nodded in my direction. I nodded back (as if I had been chosen). With a graceful wave of fingers, he beckoned me to his spot. His gestures, his music which wafted as gently as a birdsong, and as I came closer, his blue eyes (as blue as humanly possible) proved hypnotic. He invited me to sit beside him. He played to me. After he finished, he slipped his flute into a plain white pillowcase which he used to carry all his instruments (saxophones, clarinet, piccolos, silver flutes, and shakuhachi) back and forth from the town to the hills.
“You live in the hills?” I asked. I was skeptical. Berkeley is divided between the hills and flats. Class divides along the same lines.
“Would you like to visit?” his blue-burning eyes pierced my cranium. “Although you won’t be able to find it alone.”
What I soon discovered was Jason literally lived in the hills. That is, within the perimeter of Tilden Park in a pup tent camouflaged with bunch grasses, branches, and eucalyptus bark. He ate only uncooked food so meals were not a problem. He transported his supply of dried fruit, nuts, sprouts, and water from the co-op in the flats up to his camping spot. Liberated from roof and walls, he lived like a nomadic prince on magnificent public land.
During the rainy season, he rented a room in a house near campus, but when the weather was fine, he preferred to live outdoors. Soon, I saw Jason’s city room as well. Aside from a mattress on the floor and a stereo, it was filled, wall to wall, with LPs of jazz and Indian music.
Not only a musician, Jason was also a practitioner of Tantric yoga. My familiarity with Tantric was limited to a book of paintings, colors and shapes that looked related to Josef Albers rather than holy inspirations from the Himalayas.
“Tantra,” Jason explained, “was a spiritual practice devoted to sex.” He volunteered to be my spiritual guide.
First, I had to learn the basic principles of the practice. There were many. It was hard to keep track. The most important pertained to ritual bathing, ritual breathing, ritual visualization of colors, and sustaining sexual pleasure as long as possible. As our practice evolved (that is, having lots of sex), Jason informed me of additional principles. There were always new prescriptions and prohibitions. Whether invented on the spot, I could not say.
Although not listed in the Tantra’s how-to handbook, Jason smoked pot continuously. He considered the pot medicinal, used to mask the pain from a car accident that broke his back. At sixteen, he was delivered dead to a hospital, and his mother’s prayers brought him back to life. Jason came from a lineage of evangelist preachers on one side of Dallas, but love of reefer and jazz took him to the other side. When we went to hear Charlie Mingus, we had a front table at Keystone Corner where he and Charlie communed through vibes of mutual respect and understanding. Jason was a master musician, stoned in the hills.
For a few months, his enthralling spell was upon me. When the baby was with his father, he persuaded me to sleep out, not in his tent but inside a redwood tree trunk, a trunk hollowed out by lightening with an opening large enough to crawl in. We spread out a blanket and enjoyed the most spectacular private viewing of lights, bridges, and expanses of water and sky.
We camped at hot springs, north and south. We hiked in the hills. We feasted on dates and cheese. He played his flute, and I danced barefoot. It was a simple, pleasure-filled time. Even G-O-D visited me one night as a black box like a square in a Tantric painting.
My neighbor, Betty, asked me about the new man, lurking at all hours in the yard. She said he looked vaguely familiar.
When she was a student at Berkeley, walking from home to class, she once passed a man, leaning over a balcony and playing a flute. Playing it well. Naturally, the music attracted her. As she looked up, he looked down and beckoned her (with a wave of his enthralling fingers). She had no idea how to explain the hypnotic state that came over her, but she climbed the steps, entered a stranger’s apartment, lay down on a bed, and let him make love to her.
He told her then (as he later told me), “I was born to give women pleasure.”
“It’s the same man,” I assured her. The flute, the fingers, the singular purpose.
“In a different outfit,” we concluded. What attracted women then was different now. Swami was in, hippy out.
As the number of Jason’s rules increased, I grew rebellious and claustrophobic. I preferred sleeping indoors in a rectangular room on a bed. I preferred eating cooked food. I was tired of playing goddess. His insistence on pleasure wearied me. I wanted to return to a lowly, impure life.
We spent our last weekend at Geyser Hot Springs. On our way from the baths to the car, I stopped to talk to two young scientists embarked on experiments with the local water. After a short conversation, we walked on.
“Don’t ever lift your eyes to another man,” Jason threatened. Apparently, that was one of the rules.
I looked at him as if he might be joking. He wasn’t. He was furious, nearly choking on rage. Instantly, two things became clear to me: he was a lunatic and I was in grave danger.
When we returned to Berkeley, I told him I couldn’t see him anymore. He tried arguing. He tried sweet talk. He made promises, extravagant promises. He said he would give up Tantric yoga so we could have a child. Finally, he believed me and left me in peace.
A few years later, I saw Jason. He looked very different. He was wearing a denim suit (tailored slacks and blazer) and a cowboy hat. His face was wizened and hard. He was in town from Tampa where he worked for his uncle selling wigs. He said it was part of the Great Design. The next year, I received the sad news that he died in Florida of an overdose.
Occasionally, someone remembers that I knew him. They recall what an extraordinary musician he was. Whenever I hear the flute or drive by his field in Tilden Park, I send a little message to Jason, the man born to give women pleasure.
Parasols on the Palisades
The home on Ocean Avenue where Rob’s father lived was an unhappy place. None of the resident relics smiled. They barely spoke. A old woman accosted me. “What do I do now?” she asked.
Relieved to cross the boulevard and walk along the Palisades, I encountered different old men, dozens of them, seated on folding chairs at folding tables, playing cards under the palms. Others, both men and women, were nearby, reading, knitting, noshing, gaming, and discussing subjects in several languages with great animation. They were also strolling with parasols on the cliffs of the Pacific in outmoded linen suits and long, print dresses. From the edge of the park, they could watch children, surfers, and sunbathers (young, reckless, and strong) below on the beach, small and faraway, who had years to go before they grew old.
One man was singing beautifully as well as playing cards. I sat near him and closed my eyes so I could listen. The breeze carried his voice closer and farther, picking it up like a signal from another world. The melody was Jewish, mournful, and distantly familiar. Perhaps, my grandfather, who used to tell stories to Peggy and me, had also sung it.
Once I had a great-uncle, “your great-great-great uncle,” grandpa would say. We no longer remember his name, his occupation, his town. Or if he was wealthy or poor, learned or not. All we remember is the voice. He had a voice like a miracle. Once, he was captured by bandits who planned to kill him, but when they heard him sing, they let him go.
Suddenly, the voice stopped. The man rose from the table. He shook his white hair, grown past his shoulders, grinned, and filled his pockets with his winnings. Then, he nodded good-bye. His nods were singular, to each of his companions in turn. The three losers watched as he nimbly strode across the grass, his baggy linen trousers billowing behind him like sails.
I left my place on the lawn to follow, quickly catching up and walking by his side. At the red light we stood, waiting together, observing the traffic on Ocean Avenue, the cars slowly going home in the early hours of Sunday evening.
“Do you know me?” his voice startled me.
“I don’t think so,” I said.
“I thought perhaps you recognized me.”
“I recognized your song,” I said shyly.
The man’s eyes glistened with a kind of cunning. “It’s an old song, much older than me. Do you know how old that is?”
I nodded solemnly, thinking of my grandfather who walked halfway across Europe.
“How would a spring chicken know such a song?”
“I dreamt it,” I told him
“At my age,” he replied, “all life is dreaming.”
By now, we had traveled east of the Pacific, passing Santa Monica’s tidy, well-trimmed lawns, its spotless sidewalks, and shuttered houses. Nothing was out of place.
“The story of the song is the story of a good thief.” He hummed a few bars.
I stopped walking and closed my eyes. Transported to a dusty path bordered by lime trees, I saw the vast red-streaked Russian sky, the wheat fields and orchards, the countryside where distances between estates and towns were calculated in versts. In long Russian novels, the number of versts had mystical correspondence in my mind to the number of pages.
“What would a good thief steal?” He interrupted my reverie.
“A cow for one’s mother? An egg for one’s child?” I had visions of Chagall’s paintings populated with thieves.
He shrugged, “The thief steals a voice.”
Better than cows and eggs.
“From the devil,” he whispered, as if it were still a secret.
“The thief must have been brave,” I said.
“Clever,” the old man tapped his head. Strands of his hair like corn silk fell aside.
“And then what?”
“The devil couldn’t speak or sing. The devil was mute for a long time.”
“And?” I wondered.
The man spread his fingers as if the answer were obvious. “The devil never found him.”
“Was he dead?”
“Quiet,” the man said softly. “Very quiet, that’s the only way to beat the devil.” He laughed and dipped his head as he had done with his card partners.
I dipped mine and stuck out my hand. He stroked it like a rabbit, slowly blinking his lapis lazuli eyes. “Like a mystery,” he sang. “The days are numbered, but we don’t know what the number is.”
Hazards of Dry Cleaning
June wanted to know why I suddenly looked so good. “Like a young girl,” she said.
I was bashful to admit my good fortune. Already, it was a burden. Already, it had been met with skepticism and envy. “I have fallen in love,” I confessed softly.
June’s face lit up as she regarded my figure, my outfit, and smart, new haircut. A shower of additional compliments issued forth. June was happy for me. Embarrassed, I took my leave.
As weeks passed, June continued to be happy for me. June’s enthusiasm did not wane. Whenever I dropped off or picked up, June inquired about a wedding date, his rapport with my children, whether my rush for the blouse coincided with travel plans. I grew weary of repeating that things were still going well.
Desperate to take back my privacy, I tried another cleaners. Predictably, the results were unsatisfactory. June’s was the best cleaners in town.
I worked at looking less happy. I appeared pressed for time. With shoulders stooped and eyes cast down, I put my soiled sweaters on the counter and consulted my watch. For a month or more, June and I exchanged only the most basic information: stain, starch, crease, fold.
Then, one afternoon when business was slow and I had dropped my guard, June leaned across the countertop and asked me, “Don’t I deserve to be loved, too?”
She flung her head to the back of the shop, behind the glass partition where hundreds of garments, each testimony to her hard work, hung inside their plastic wrapping waiting to be claimed. There, I spied June’s husband at an ironing board. Although once gainfully employed as a civil servant, it now appeared he worked as his wife’s assistant. His face had an aggressive, hang-dog look that said he had often strayed and looked forward to straying again.
Anger flushed June’s face. She confided that her husband was unfaithful. He flaunted his affairs. His lovers called him at home. He beat their children. She wanted to divorce him and seek love, too. If only there was a way to prevent the state from giving him half of the business she had sacrificed to build. Most of all, she wanted to know if what worked for me would also work for her.
I glanced at the husband. “You’re so pretty,” he once uttered to me, lifting a hair from the front of the sweater I was wearing. After years of patronizing their business, I had never asked his name.
I held June’s hand, admonishing myself for my little boast of happiness.
Now, it was my turn to pester her. Our talk no longer concerned my fullness but her distress, apparent in her disheveled clothing and uncombed hair. She rarely smiled. She told me she often spent nights in the back of the shop.
To comfort her, I took to complaining. I told her I was exhausted from my job, my teenager, and despite its loveliness, the demands of my relationship.
From time to time, my boyfriend accompanied me to June’s. The story of her affairs depressed him. He had no interest in a personal relationship with a laundress. He preferred to wait outside.
After one of his shirts was ruined at his cleaners, I counseled him, “Go to June.”
The next weekend, we arrived with a bundle of his clothes. June came from behind the counter and greeted him like a member of her family.
“A happy congratulations!” she beamed.
As she stepped forward, he stepped back, and without a word, dropped the shirts and tossed a winter jacket on top.
June retreated to count and separate the shirts, check the collars and cuffs, inspect the jacket, and mark the stains. When she handed him the claim ticket, he left brusquely.
“He doesn’t sleep well,” I apologized.
June patted my hand in sympathy. “Maybe, he’ll feel better tomorrow.”
The Spring Coat
Winter in Atlanta was not signaled by temperature or the occasional snowflake but by my mother wearing a fur coat. She had two. A day fur that was spotty, sporty, boxy, and fun to throw over pants and drive to the grocery store. And a night fur which was altogether different. It was blond mink and couldn’t be tossed around. It was sacred.
I grew up relieved that real winter was elsewhere. Up north and out west. Whatever might be called a cold snap was only passing through. That meant when I left for college a thousand miles to the northeast, I was completely unprepared. A few weeks of autumn chill tested the limits of a wool blazer and padded car coat. By October’s end, I couldn’t bear to go outside.
Cold was the kind of misery that insured future failure. The earliest settlers had made that all too obvious. Those who survived suffered permanent psychological damage. They left not only a legacy of meanness on the national psyche, but an entire population of blotched and shivering New Englanders.
I called home.
“Fur,” mother advised. “How do you think animals get along?”
First, I tried the shops on Copley Square, sequestered on upper stories with elegant names scripted in gold on plate glass. “Used fur?” The clerks were aghast.
Downtown Boston was more promising with flop houses and bars where people drank all day. On the rack of a hospital charity store, I found the very thing I needed: sheared raccoon. Its ugliness called to me. It cost ten dollars and weighed ten pounds. When real winter fell like an instrument of torture, I was prepared. I wore the coat everyday and slept under it at night. It was a lifesaver.
As the months dragged on, the coat began to fall apart. Pockets ripped, and the
rotten lining tore. I left one cuff as a souvenir in New Haven. The other, I flung from the eighteenth floor of a New York hotel.
In March, my mother wrote she was sending up a spring coat for my birthday. Something light for the change of season, an essential item for a wardrobe, which in her mind guaranteed that I’d marry well and monogram my towels.
March passed without a sign of spring. I continued to drag around my beast, my head a speck in a sea of voluminous fur. It snowed in April, and mother’s gift was a painful reminder of temperate weather.
My only warm and unencumbered moments were afternoons spent with a Harvard senior, a thin-blooded, thin-skinned Southerner like me. The coat was large enough to wrap around us both. After a film on Brattle Street and a cheap dinner at Hayes Bickford, we spread the coat on his bed and rolled across it naked like infants.
When spring actually arrived, it was perfect. The sky was powder blue with cotton-ball clouds perched on the horizon. The thermometer registered something reasonable. A few eager types even wore sandals and shorts. All of Boston went outdoors to celebrate.
I unwrapped my spring coat from the tissue paper: lightweight wool and double-breasted, a navy and white hounds-tooth pattern with navy braid piping on the collar and cuffs. It fitted at the waist, flared at the hip, and four large, navy buttons seamlessly fastened the two halves.
I had a Sunday date: a walk along the river followed by bad Chinese food and a retreat to my boyfriend’s room.
Downtown, I boarded a car to Cambridge. I took a seat and lovingly touched my coat. Before I opened my book, I peered across the aisle at a pair of girls dressed like tropical birds. I took in their heavy eyeshadow and snug blouses, the layers of crinoline under their skirts, and their stockings three shades too dark.
They took me in, too, inspecting my stacked Pappagallo navy pumps and sleek spring coat. They were dressed for trouble. I was attired to appear untouched. They were showing off their allure. I was hiding everything. They were sexual. I was neutered by fashion. And no matter how pleased they were with their appearance, it was clear to each of us that they looked poor and I did not.
My Life in Clothes Page 5
