My Young Life

by Frederic Tuten

  Simona

  Manhattan, Fifth Avenue, Spring 1962

  I was in the bookstore opening boxes of newly arrived paperbacks and daydreaming. Richie was on the phone. “Of course,” he said. “We would be honored. At your convenience.”

  When he hung up he asked, “Do you know this Italian guy who comes in every week or so and buys a half a dozen books by writers no one else has heard of?”

  “Like who?”

  “Like Ronald Firbank.” Richie was right, I had never heard of him.

  “Who’s the guy?”

  “The Italian guy; you’re always talking to him.”

  “Oh, him! Marcello, the journalist.”

  “What journalist? He runs the whole of the Rizzoli office in America.”

  I had always found Marcello a bit formal and distant, and he wanted to know too much about me and what it was like to be raised an Italian-American: Why did I work in a bookstore? Did I own it?

  “I know him. What about him?”

  “He wants to open an account with us. Because of you, he says.”

  That was good news, but what did it do for me? I still made a dollar fifteen an hour, and a promised raise stayed a promise.

  “Good,” I said, both glad and sour.

  “I have to make up a package of books for him, and he wants you to bring it up. Nothing heavy, just five or six books.”

  The Rizzoli office was around the corner at 500 Fifth Avenue in a stately building that housed the no-fooling-around nine-to-five jacket-and-tie world. The elevator soon exalted me up into that world. A woman opened the door without even bothering to ask why I was there and I followed her into a large windowless room with three desks stacked with newspapers, magazines, and red telephones and then into another bright room facing Fifth Avenue, where Marcello was on the phone and motioning me to sit on a red ottoman. Books and magazines sat in four-foot-high piles on the floor on either side of a giant leather couch.

  The woman took my parcel of books and said, “I’m Simona. I’m a Roman. Would you like a coffee?”

  “Thank you,” I said, taking in that she was shoeless in stockings and smoking a clay pipe.

  Marcello ended the call with a flourish—“No, don’t call again when I’m at work”—and he let the phone down like a hot potato.

  He composed himself, gave me a long look, then said: “The women. I’m sure you understand.”

  “Of course,” I said with a worldly nod.

  Simona came in with a tray of three demitasse cups and an espresso maker. She poured, puffed on her pipe, and smiled at me. Marcello seemed in a trance.

  “Have you met Dr. Morini?”

  “No,” I said. “Where is he?”

  He looked at me, baffled. “What do you mean? She’s right here: Simona.” Then, in Italian, he said, “Forgive me, but it’s not right you should be working in a place inferior to you. A good boy like you. I will find you a job.”

  I thanked him, more for his kind words than for the prospect of a new job.

  Simona, without looking at me, said, “What makes him a good boy?”

  “He reads Pavese and Ungaretti and has good manners, polite. And look! He’s even presentable.”

  We drank. It was bitter. But I did not ask for sugar, as there was none on the tray.

  “It lacks sugar,” Simona said, turning to me. “I see you are too polite to ask.”

  Her English was accented, but not Italian or anything that I knew; it was charming, and her voice had a sweet lilt to it as if it rode on flowers. I thought how beautiful it would be to hear her say “Buona notte” before we turned off the light.

  The Teletype machine went wild with clicks and clacks, and two men entered the room, filling it with cigarette smoke. They looked at me and nodded and spoke so quickly in Italian that I caught only the message and not the flourishes. The gist: one of the two was ready to fly to Texas to write about a giant rodeo and political rally; the other said that the assignment had been given to him.

  Simona said, “Neither of you should go. Your English is terrible, Texans won’t understand a word, and they’ll make fun of you.”

  “Settled,” Marcello said. “I will go.”

  “Who will translate for you?” Simona said.

  Marcello threw a paper clip at her, which she tossed back, missing his ear.

  They continued to argue, ignoring me. I stood to leave; no one but Simona noticed, and she walked me to the door. “Good luck,” she said. Marcello called out from far away, “Bye-bye.”

  Soon I was back to the humorless street and the charmless store.

  I would have loved to work with them in any capacity, but mostly I would have loved to be able to see Simona all day.

  Sandra and Baby Ice Cubes

  Manhattan, King Cole Bar, 1962

  Sandra phoned me at the store as I was leaving work. She was in New York and wanted to see me.

  “I’ll go home and change,” I said.

  “Don’t bother, and don’t bother to shower. Just come over for drinks.”

  I rushed to the King Cole Bar, the glory of the St. Regis Hotel. The maître d’ at the bar entrance flashed me a dirty look. “You need a jacket to come in here.”

  Sandra waved and he let me in, minus a smile.

  Tailored jacket and skirt, both black. Man’s white shirt, buttoned to the top. Nails painted a murderous red. Lips to match. Where were her tweed hacking jacket and gray wool slacks?

  I had imagined she had booked a room in the hotel, where she would open a suitcase of whips and restraints and we would recommence our dramas. I had missed the dramas, dreamed of them.

  Sandra, without asking, had ordered a double-malt Scotch for me; it came with a little silver pail of baby ice cubes. The Scotch was an amber flame with a hint of peat, kilts, bagpipes, and a charred briar pipe bowl. This was a Scotch that never had seen a shelf at Stanley’s sawdust-and-liverwurst sandwich-palace, or anyplace east of First Avenue and below Fourteenth Street.

  Behind the long, venerable wood bar glowed Maxfield Parrish’s mural of the merry old soul, Old King Cole in his court. It was a timeless world of infinite merriment and mellow sunsets. It took only a minute for the Scotch to mellow me, too, and carry me into the courtly scene and hold me there in its ever-golden serenity.

  “I thought you were still in France,” I said.

  “Came back to settle things in Syracuse before I leave for good.”

  “For good?”

  “Yes, I wanted to say good-bye.”

  “Leaving soon?”

  “Early tomorrow, for Paris.”

  Paris, where I still had not been. Ten years had passed since I dropped out of high school with the plan of living in Paris and becoming an artist, and at twenty-five I was no closer to that city of light, of art and sex.

  “Take me with you,” I said jokingly, but with my heart heavy at the thought of its impossibility, heavy with envy.

  “Fred, I met the man of my life. I know how banal that sounds, but it’s true. I’m going there to be with him, and live for him.”

  “I see. Is he French?”

  “Of course! Do you think I’d go there to be with an American?”

  What do these Frenchmen have, I wondered, that beautiful, intelligent, independent, sexy women like Elizabeth and now Sandra would leave family and country to join them? Even Eva had come back a changed woman after only a year under France’s erotic spell. It frightened me to think of the power that Frenchmen had over women. Were we American men so anemic? Was I?

  “I’m glad you’re happy,” I said, not glad at all. I seemed always to have to pretend pleasure at another’s good fortune or impending marriage.

  “It’s not happiness, Fred. It’s a wonderful dread. No one has ever made me feel so afraid.”

  I finished my Scotch and considered another. But it arrived without my asking. The waiter made a slight bow to her.

  “Are you going to live together?”

  She studied me as if t
o see if I was a real fool or just pretending to be one: “He lives with his wife. But I have an apartment nearby where I wait for him.”

  I started to imagine her in a bare room with a bed and a whip and a telephone, waiting for it to ring. The Eiffel Tower leering in the window, the Seine flowing beneath it with barges tooting in French. I was dizzy with wanting her. I hoped she would ask me to go to her room for one last steamy night. She waved for the bill. She signed and put a twenty-dollar bill on top of the check.

  “Must get up very early,” she said.

  “I’ll miss you,” I said, too upset to say anything more.

  “Well, come over one day. You’ll love Paris.”

  • • •

  I took the Fifth Avenue bus with the idea that before going home I would get off at Eighth Street and walk across Washington Square Park and over to Café Figaro and there, under its warm protection, nurse my humiliation and my anger at being dumped again. The bus made every other stop and gave me time to brood. I ran the gamut from disappointment at not having another one-act with Sandra to a kind of bitter jealousy and resentment. She was rich, never had to have a job or take a bus or subway or worry about the price of a taxi ride. Anyway, she owned her own car; she owned her own house; she could dine out wherever and order whatever she wanted and never had to figure the cost. She spoke French and was going to live in Paris, where she had found her ultimate sexual heaven. I was back in the Bronx, alone in my cot.

  By the time my first espresso arrived and the cheering smile that Claudine, the French waitress, brought with it, my thoughts had run to this: All the time I knew her, Sandra had always had the control and power. I only had the whip—and that she had lent me. I wrote on a napkin: Beware of power given you. It is only on loan.

  Fucking profound, I thought, impressed with my insight and its imperishable phrasing on the paper napkin. But in bed that night, the insight was not enough to keep me from imagining us in her Syracuse bedroom.

  The Interview

  Manhattan, City Hall Area, 1962

  Simona walked into the empty bookstore at eight thirty. She smiled and started to browse the bookshelves.

  “Do you remember me?” I asked. “We met at your office last week.”

  “Of course I remember you; we all remember you because we made such fools of ourselves in front of you.”

  “Not at all. It was fun. I would have stayed all day,” I said. “Stayed all day and looked at you,” I wanted to say. “Watched you pouring coffee like precious drops of water in the desert. Looked at your legs.” But she was the older, sophisticated woman I dared not speak to like that. In fact, what woman would I speak to like that?

  “Come by again, then. I know Marcello would be glad to see you.”

  She saluted, leaving a trail of worldliness behind her. Had she been pretending to look for a book as a pretext to see me again? Was it at all possible she was interested in me—was flirting with me? Don’t flatter yourself, fool, I told myself, and went to shelve some new arrivals.

  In the afternoon my mother phoned. There was an envelope with a New York City seal. She was afraid to open it.

  “Is it a summons of some kind?” I asked, worried I was being called to jury duty—maybe to a federal case that would last three years, one where they stashed away the jurors in a hotel in New Jersey. I asked her to read it to me. She pieced it out: I was to appear for an interview regarding my application for a job at the welfare department. I had forgotten all about that application, and the job itself. I had learned about it from my friend Eli from City College, the one who went to Mexico City to live a Beat life and write a novel. He came back a married man and soon-to-be father, and had to support a family. He had found a job in the city welfare department.

  “It’s a cool gig, Fred. You’d be surprised how many writers dig the job, because it gives you lots of time to write.” Of course, this was the kind of job I had dreamed of.

  The interview took place a week later at eight thirty in a building near City Hall. The minute I saw it, I felt overwhelmed by its size and its crushing official weight. I went right up to the assigned room, wondering where the other applicants were. A man with a sweet expression greeted me with a smile. He sat behind a narrow desk with a rubberized gray top. He glanced at some official-looking papers.

  “Hi, Fred, I’m Dr. Z. I’m a psychologist with the city.”

  He was Dr. Z and I was Fred. The power was his. I extended my hand but he quickly looked down at the papers.

  “Fred, why do you want to work for the welfare department? And if we hire you, do you expect to stay, or do you see it as just a temporary move?”

  I sensed that the best way was to play it straight: no quips, no jokes. Tell him what he would like to hear.

  “I want to help people, Doctor. I was raised in poverty and know the problems that come with it.” (So what? my inner voice said.) “And, yes, sir, I do see this as a long-term career, one with growth potential. I’m thinking of getting a master’s in social work.” (How do you come up with this bullshit? the voice asked.) I hated myself for this fiction, but as Céline advised, “In life either you lie or you die.”

  Then the smiling and bonhomie stopped, and he said curtly, “Why are you an Army 4-F?”

  “I don’t know why.”

  “I have a note here saying you were having trouble at home and you went to see the City College psychologist.”

  I was shocked. So my private meeting with the shrink at City was on record and made available to the powers at large?

  “I was having problems with my mother,” I said, “and I needed advice.”

  “And the 4-F?”

  “I don’t know the reason. I was surprised when I got the 4-F notice.”19

  There was a long pause before he asked: “What do you do in your free time?”

  Without thinking I said: “Do you mean after I go out with girls?”

  A slight smile, and he extended his hand. “Thank you for coming, Mr. Tuten,” he said.

  I heard the welfare department door shut behind me. I smiled, left, sank with the elevator.

  Then I was back in the street again, back in the world of courts and the city’s administration offices, with their machinery of serious matters and the serious people who ran them. I had avoided that world all my life, and now I felt bounced from it, and very small.

  * * *

  19I had worked to get my 4-F. Some of my friends had used the pretext of being homosexual to avoid being drafted, but then, as their claim was on record, they would have trouble finding employment in any government agency—or maybe anywhere.

  I did not want to spend two years of my life subjected to Army discipline, to be drilled, squeezed, crushed into becoming a robot with a crew cut. I did not want to be shipped anyplace, especially not Alabama or Georgia, somewhere in the South, the Great Dark Place, where Yankees were routinely mistreated on principle and for sport.

  I had thought myself a rebel against any institution that I had not willingly joined. The test of my commitment to independence was the Army physical. I stayed up all night, drank coffee until my eyes popped, having been told by older boys that by looking frenzied and disoriented, many had escaped service. I got to the physical exam frazzled and frightened. The line was long. Boys like myself stood in shorts, moving along from one inspection post to another. I kept getting out of line and going to the end; the point was to seem different—odd.

  At the end of the physical, I mustered up my courage to ask to see the psychiatrist. The man at the desk looked up and said, “Don’t worry, you’re going.”

  My interview was brief: “Do you want to serve your country?”

  “Yes, sir, if I’m needed.”

  “Do you ever have thoughts of killing your mother?”

  I was taken aback, but then I realized he had been given the report from the City College psychologist that I had seen twice during my troubled senior year. John Resko had once told me, “Trust no one, not even me.”


  “Sometimes I wish she were dead.”

  He wrote on a sheet and looked up at me, saying, “Thank you.”

  Then, some weeks later, a card arrived in the mail: 4-F. I wasn’t sure I was happy. I wondered why I was exempted. Maybe there was something really wrong with me after all.

  Simona. The Sociology of Flirtation

  Manhattan, Café Figaro, 1962

  Simona appeared in the bookstore twice more, glancing at the books, buying nothing, giving me a cheerful smile and a polite hello and good-bye. On the last visit she said, “Hello, Frederico, don’t you ever stop working?”

  I summoned the courage and said, “Dr. Morini, would you like to have coffee with me?”

  “That would be nice. When?”

  I was so surprised that I said the first thing that came to mind: “Tonight, after work?”

  “I have to stay late tonight,” she said, “and won’t be finished until eight.”

  “Me, too. So this is perfect, then. By the way, may I ask what you’re a doctor of?”

  “Oh, that’s nothing,” she said. “It’s a doctorate in classical philology.”

  I went blank.

  And she added, “You don’t know what that means, do you, Frederico?”

  “I’m afraid not.”

  “Nobody does.”

  “I see. So I can’t come to see you when I have a sore throat?”

  “Only if it’s sore because of a linguistic complication.”

  I stumbled for at least a halfway clever answer and finally, lamely said: “I’ll try to have such a complication.”

  She gave me a big smile and said, “Bravo, Federico.”

  After she left, I started to fret. What was I doing? What was I thinking? Where on earth could I take this sophisticated, elegant, international woman who wore knitted skirts and jackets and stockings and high heels and had a doctorate in classical philology, whatever that meant? First I thought of the Oak Room at the Plaza hotel; it was within walking distance, only fourteen blocks. The Oak Room was a worldly bar with solid tables, some facing Central Park; maybe Simona had never been there and I could show off a bit of old New York, in a place where I was clearly at home, although I’d only been there twice. I was bounced the first time because I was not wearing a jacket and tie when I strolled in to take a look. The other time I was brought there by Rebecca for my first, life-changing martini—sophistication in a glass of chilled gin and vermouth and a stuffed olive—before we went to see Last Year at Marienbad at the chic Paris Theater across the street.