Not Dead Yet

by Herbert Gold

  And that stuff about wanting, if he could, to be bisexual?

  “You remember that, Herb?”

  “I do.”

  “That was just, I don't know, Marjie thought it was part of the program. Like McLuhan said, it was a probe.”

  Midlife tristesse has replaced indignation as his driving force. He wears a fine halo of white hair, and without actually losing weight, his cheekbones are more visible. There is a touch of haggardness. He apologized for the hoarseness of his voice. “I get acid reflux, you know, fried food,” he explained, “and I ran out of Tums last night.” He has found something else to believe in—calcium carbonate in an over-the-counter formulation.

  Consistent with my normal kindliness, I asked if his activities on behalf of the Cultural Revolution had been funded by… “Are you a man of dependent means?”

  “Pardon?”

  “I mean, do you have… your parents left you a little something?”

  “Herb, that's a low blow. Nothing major at all. A little house in, what difference does it make? But some, yes, so I did feel I needed to pay back.”

  After a proper silence in his view apartment above North Beach, during mutual staring into the middle distance, we were recalling that last family dinner together. We were both embarrassed for me that I dwelled on the subject. I consoled him by saying that now Marjie's public pass at my wife, in the presence of husbands, seemed to have the purity of heroic theory. Although it was doomed to rebuff and purple blushing, it achieved its real goal as demonstration. And when Ted had said, “I'd like to, but I just can't… can't find the right man,” he had proven he was not yet pure enough. There were still obstacles in the way of sex employed as a political statement. It came down to a traditional problem—Ted just didn't want sex with a man. He was still the selfish victim of personal desires. For Marjie, whether she desired or not, whether she had an appetite or not, was irrelevant. She was proving a point. She was making a revolutionary gesture. If necessary, mucous membranes could be lubricated by handy household products.

  Like many fanatics, Marjie was consistent. When she hid her face and accused me of sexism for not recognizing her, she had won another victory over reality. She burned with the heat that enabled her to put dresses on her sons, who had been boisterous and charming kids, kicking a soccer ball in their encumbering skirts. What other people called “love” was, for Marjie, a continuation of the war, and not merely the war between the sexes. It was a war against imperfection in the world, a struggle to the death, which of course is the final perfection where all are equal.

  The More Things Change… The More They Change

  Peggy, a freelance seeker who left part of her cerebral cortex on pawn with the LSD dealer, had a revelation, had quite a few of them, and took up a new profession as seer of all things, past and future. She brought her tarot cards to the apartment where I was living with Melissa, then my wife-to-be, and offered her a reading, free of any charge. She shuffled the cards, turned one over, perhaps another, mumbled, and pronounced: “A tall red-headed man will be most important in your life.”

  “But,” Melissa said, “I'm going to marry Herb and he isn't so tall or red haired.”

  “Those are mere details,” said Peggy. “But hey, congratulations.”

  Of course the cards must have meant me. I was of upper medium height, and black is just a short jump from red on the color spectrum.

  Despite their historical grooviness, the gone days of go-with-the-flow, the dancing in Golden Gate Park with the fragrance of fresh-smoked grass wafting above, the Natters’ passion had not been to leap into the youth carnival as it then found us. Rather, they intended to control the world's unruliness with theory. For them, the necessary discipline could be achieved by surrendering control to a roster of distant perfect controllers, such as Chairman Mao or, in moments of hectic inspiration… Germaine Greer?

  Melissa and I may have thought we were immune to nonsense because we were entertained by the fads, by what everyone now calls the herd of independent minds, but we too breathed that air. Restlessness was seductive, the sweet sounds of young voices raised to invoke Alice when she was ten feet tall; it was contagious. Add the scent of eucalyptus and patchouli; add eyeballs revolving with intimations of permanent youth and infinite pleasure; to experience the intoxication of the endless Summer of Love, you didn't even need the eucalyptus.

  The shaven-headed militant who ran the Institute for the Study of Non-Violence for Joan Baez in the Carmel Valley argued with me on behalf of absolute and unconditional pacifism, which included not striking back in the case of assault on the street. Although impressed by his bravery, his venturing into the city on behalf of peace, I invoked the unreliable nature of mammals (he yawned) and asked if he would use force to stop a rape.

  He gave this a long pretend-think. He had a sense of drama. Silent indignation bathed over us. He extended a finger and began to probe into the muscles of my shoulder while slowly, with stately emphasis, asking: “Why. Don't. You. Realize. Only. Pacifism. Can?” and so on.

  His finger unerringly searched out nerves in my shoulder that were news to me. I squirmed away. “Hey! Ouch! Stop!”

  It was another victory for the command center of non-violence in the Carmel Valley. Joan Baez, that long-haired dark beauty, La Pasionaria of the Beat generation, is still singing, but the peace institute has finished its work and her hair is stylishly short and gray. She has dared to reveal previously concealed secrets about herself, including that she has a sense of humor and would really like a good record deal. Her staff pacifist has found other employment.

  In the early seventies it seemed that every well-brought-up sensible woman was growing less sensible and less married. An entitled Old San Francisco hippie, with whom I sometimes carpooled to school functions and other childcare duties, reproached me for writing for Playboy magazine.

  “Herb, that is a disgrace. You must stop. You owe it to yourself.”

  Her VW van was painted with flowers and mandalas. “Donna, I have five children to support. I can't do it writing for The American Scholar.”

  “You could try.”

  “You don't understand. You have a tax-free income of over a hundred thousand a year.”

  She was driving indignantly now, knuckles white on the steering wheel. “Herb, that is a dirty rotten lie. Ninety-seven thousand.”

  “Plus a house without a mortgage on Telegraph Hill.”

  She was driving indignantly and indignantly preparing her answer. She was used to being understood by men, or at least seeing men furrow their brows with the effort or the pretense of understanding, because she was not only rich and Old San Francisco, but also cute. Her dark glossy hair, sliced into bangs over her forehead, shortened her face, making the large round blue eyes appear even rounder, bluer, more mysteriously babylike in their rarely blinking gaze. Such eyes are an important ingredient in the will of many men, even liberated ones, to understand or pretend to understand.

  “But I do all the cooking,” she said.

  Her parents had a resident cook; she did without. Her parents drove a white Cadillac. She drove a VW van with flower decals. Her husband was a lawyer, but on weekends he wore a buckskin jacket with Indian fringes. Eventually, of course, she too joined the horsewomen of the Apocalypse and lit out for the territory ahead, which in her case meant keeping the house and trust fund in the divorce settlement, but shaving her pubic hair in the shape of a heart. (How do I know this? Everybody knew this.)

  The reason our world is filled with peace and love today is that Donna kept the faith.

  After the unending Summer of Love ended, foreboding clouds gathered over the Autumn of Love, and folks were feeling angry in addition to groovy—irritated about parking meters, speed bumps, writers selling out to Playboy; mad about the justice system, not enough or too much affirmative action, abuse of food stamps; they were angry about not really ruling their own lives, as they had planned, after a season in which Free was the mantra. Sexual dif
ferences and gender confusions, pollutants in the tuna fish, tomatoes artificially ripened with blasts of chlorine gas—there was an allya-can buffet of life details to incite doubt about recently adopted truths. The Cultural Revolution turned out not to be so cultural, the revolution was a retrogression in both kindness and food supply. Directions for installing new electronic equipment were too confusing; hangovers lasted too long.

  Were these concerns so unlike the griefs of their obsolete parents? The children of the Love generation, who had said, “No, no!” so sweetly during the Terrible Twos, were now heading toward the truly terrible sullenness of adolescence.

  The final bell has not yet tolled for most of these friends of early middle age, when rock ’n’ roll had not yet finished doing its damage to the ears of a generation. But if it hasn't tolled, it's tinkled a little in the wind. Groovy had its price. Men now wake at night to trudge toward the bathroom. New causes are no longer allowed to be called “crusades.” Women have declared either victory over the patriarchy or that post-modern version of victory, defeat.

  Where are the flower folks now? Some live in Bolinas. A few cashed out before the dot-com crash and are tending to gated estates in Silicon Valley. Some, alas, have moved off this earth without making clear where they were headed. The former Jesuit, former lawyer, formerly married man who now teaches English in China is not studying the teachings of Chairman Mao. He is in the People's Republic because he wants to study the teachings of dewy Chinese maidens who have left the farm and hope to meet American former lawyers, former Jesuits, former husbands in the big city. A shy swain, my friend blushes and timidly tries, with the correct tones, to pronounce the Chinese words for “You are the cutest little thing I ever did see.” He's a Mandarin cowboy, grieving only because they don't serve brown rice in twenty-first-century China.

  Donna is a doting grandmother with a succession of much younger lovers to dote with her when she takes the kids to Christmas productions of The Nutcracker. The hair is still glossy and black, the eyes very blue, the skin of her face unlined. She keeps the faith, lives the dream. Her well-managed trust has kept up with inflation. Untouched by gray, but glowing with a mysterious purple radiance, her hair needs no chemical assistance to shorten her forehead; the bangs still emphasize the untouched real estate of her very blue eyes. Her face tuck is so tight that when she smiles, her toes curl up. Even as she sails through late middle age, her choice of boyfriends remains curly-haired and smiley young men who don't mind being taken care of.

  “What do you think of…?” The problem of immigration, the problem of preschool education, the problem of raising money for the San Francisco Art Institute, the problem of the excess of fashion shows for good causes. She needs a comment from the young man.

  “It's fabulous how you're so involved, Donna,” he had better say. “I've never met anybody with your, well, how to put it—range of concerns? The whole spectrum?”

  “I'm a spiritual person,” she admits. More into spirituality than generosity, nurturing is not really her thing, but an estate with monthly disbursements can serve just as well for the smiley, curly-haired young men.

  2

  A Night Scavenger

  Tolstoy's notorious verdict was that happy families are all alike, but every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. Every divorce is supposed to be unhappy, and usually succeeds in this, despite the efforts of tender couples to make theirs one of the miracle happy ones. A gracious and cooperative divorce can be worse because the uncauterized wound continues to bleed. Hatred might allow the wound to be closed under a scar that can be lived with.

  Mine was a tender and friendly divorce. Overwhelmed by three babies in diapers, a daughter and twin sons, my wife held herself together until one evening when she marched back and forth across our living room—I was lying on the floor with a child on my chest, playing an airplane game—and announced that she had to divorce something, life was too complicated, she felt like a prisoner. Since she couldn't divorce her children, she would divorce her husband. It was a time of feminist eruption, especially in San Francisco. One of our friends confided that her husband didn't know their two children weren't his by birth; he loved them; what he didn't know didn't hurt him, right?

  For many men, it was a miserable time. I was one of those. We developed procedures of caution and affability.

  On a sunny late afternoon I arrived, as usual, to visit our sons, Ari and Ethan, and Nina, our daughter. I was wearing a jacket and tie because I was then going on to a consular reception for a visiting writer. As I left, Melissa asked, “What's happening?” I told her. She hesitated a moment, then said, “Would you like my company?”

  Of course I would. “Do you want to go?”

  “I've got a babysitter coming. What should I wear?”

  “Fine, good, what you've got on—you always dress right.”

  As usual, when she swept shy and seductive glances over me during these visits, or unshy and seductive gestures, inviting me to stay for dinner, stay for the night, I thought once again, Oh, it's all been a mistake, our marriage is not over. On these occasions, I would leave in the middle of the night, driving back to my flat at one or two in the morning, not sure what was going on and fearing to confuse our children if they woke up to find Daddy back again for breakfast. I was confused enough for all concerned. “Fine, good, sure, I said that already.”

  She put her hand to her mouth. “Oh, dear. Just a sec while I call”—she named her new lover—“and head him off before he leaves Marin.”

  She had to break a date with her lover in order to spend an evening with her husband? In a black rage the words burst out: “Never mind! Don't! Just don't!” There was a nightmare creature inhabiting the body of the one who loved his wife, loved his children, and couldn't comprehend the chaos invading his world. It was a despairing and hate-filled creature. “Never mind, don't, see you tomorrow,” and I fled to my battered Fiat with its ragged canvas sunroof. The years, the children, and the imprint still on my flesh from the times we had walked together in the San Francisco dusk, or listened in the dark to the wail of Bob Dylan, or danced, picnicked, or confided as lovers do, had all come to this—a time when she decided to break a date with a lover in order to join her husband.

  She ran alongside the Fiat as I started to drive away. She said: “I just want you to know I'd rather be with you than with him.”

  Then why? I refused to understand, three children didn't understand, and this intelligent, clear-eyed woman didn't understand, either, but felt an imperative that superseded understanding. It was the mid-seventies, women were trying to puzzle out their lives, and for some it was a great liberating adventure. Some men were following on this un-charted path. Others were learning both to whine and that whining did no good. Why, I whined, and drove to the consular reception. Since I was alone in my emergency “pre-owned” Fiat, the question why? found no one in the vicinity to answer it, no one to point out the necessary: Hey, Buster, you're whining—not very useful.

  My nose was pointed toward an uncertain future; my steering wheel was at risk due to episodes of abrupt inattention. I wasn't a good driver after those late-night secret assignations with my wife. They left me confused. Husbands shouldn't be heading home under the glare of streetlamps at three A.M. or in the first glimmer of dawn—and where was home, anyway? I had bought a mechanically deficient used Fiat; an accident would solve no problems. Suicide was frequently on offer. I had the task of arguing myself away from a stupid end. In Plato, Aristotle, Spinoza, John Donne, and my children I was able to find reasons for not creating an accident, children being the most compelling ones.

  Self-pity is about as useful as jealousy; even Peeping Tomism is more productive. This should not be construed as a recommendation to climb a tree and spy on the beloved through her, formerly our, bedroom window. Instead, I took other measures, such as grinding my teeth and wandering.

  In Buena Vista Park, I met a young woman whom I noticed because (a) she was a pretty fro
wner with close-knit eyebrows and (b) she was sitting on a bench with her book reading the same page over and over. I offered to help her interpret if it was French, but it turned out to be Finnegans Wake. I couldn't speed up the young woman's deciphering of James Joyce's masterpiece, but after some expert conversation about Giambattista Vico (1668–1744), the “eternal return,” the relevance of the River Liffey in Irish mythology—the usual stuff everyone talks about in Buena Vista Park when they're not throwing Frisbees—it developed that the young woman was willing to continue the discussion by paying me a visit after I put my sons to sleep on their futons in my apartment. It further developed that she slipped into the empty side of my bed.

  Unfortunately, she didn't leave in the middle of the night. Ari, when he came running in the morning in his footie Charlie Brown pajamas to jump into bed with me as usual, stopped suddenly when he noticed the stranger. He stared a moment and then turned and ran back to his futon.

  It was a confusing time for everyone. Folks were restless. Later that day, the pretty Joyce scholar with close-knit eyebrows when she frowned left me a frowning poem, which I interpreted as “Good-bye forever.” This was the correct interpretation.

  In San Francisco, the weather seldom requires a decision about opening or shutting the window—it's always okay out there. My inner weather was not okay. Born in the Midwest, where big boys don't cry, I rediscovered tears. Ethan, who is now a musician, composed his first song at age four, with a chorus that went, “Dumb daddy dumb, dumb daddy dumb.” Later he offered me a contribution to the country western genre: “My baby done left me, /So I went downstairs and ate some fried chicken.”

  A child nails his parents’ conditions, no matter how well parents think they are concealing them. Coolly and lovingly, sometimes more one than the other, a child makes his own judgments.