Swimming to Cambodia

by Spalding Gray

  You see, when you see that river of flesh coming at you in the streets, it’s very hard not to want to touch. It’s very hard not to see one flesh as all flesh. You get taken over like a curious child. At first Joy seemed happy to see me and we could ride on that novelty. The softness of her skin was like a kind of heaven on earth and I wanted to keep it that way and not think. But when I sat long enough with Joy I could see the joy drain out and a kind of melancholy despondency creep into her face. And when the stage lights went out and the house lights came up at quarter to one, I could see everyone scatter like cockroaches under fluorescent light. And I could see the bruises like rotten fruit on the girls’ legs.

  When we got back to the hotel I realized something was wrong—because two basic intentions in making love are pleasurable relief through sex, and some recognizable change in “the other.” I could never really see the change in this particular other. And why should I expect change? After all, I was paying her. And I figured whatever she said or did was just an act. Also I think it had a lot to do with language. Eighty percent of erotic love for me is the language in and around the event. But she spoke very little English. All she could (or would) say, over and over, was “Joy like you.” I figured she said that to all the guys, but she was so convincing. I really wanted to believe her.

  In the morning I’d try to feed her from a big bowl of fresh fruit that the hotel supplied. I’d say, “Joy want banana?” And she’d always giggle, shake her head “no” and disappear under the pillow. She could fit under the pillow.

  This time I said, “No, no, no, Joy. It’s time to go, Joy. I’m going back to New York City.” And as I took her down to the cab, she looked like a little Minnie Mouse in high heels. And instead of getting into the cab she pushed me into it and ran back to the hotel. And the sliding electric glass doors opened and closed and she stood there waving goodbye as though she lived in the hotel and I was going home in the cab. All I could say was, “No, no, Joy.”

  Tom and I gobbled some tranquilizers. In Thailand you can buy valium right over the counter like candy. We gobbled some valium and called our driver for the last trip to the plane. And on that plane I was spoiled for the last time. We got to ride in business class, high up in those big chairs at the top of the spiral staircase. High up above the sound of the engines. It was like flying in a big, silent, magic motel, an airborne Holiday Inn. We pulled down our sleep masks and all I remembered was Karachi by night, a three-dollar cup of coffee in the Frankfurt airport, trying to buy a bottle of Russian vodka at Heathrow. (The lady was trying to sell me Smirnoff’s and I said, “Listen lady, this is made in New Jersey.” She said, “No, it’s Russian. It’s real Russian vodka.”)

  “At last, America! New York City!” And then, “Oh, my God, are we ugly!” I wasn’t ready for it. New York City was bad enough but Krummville was worse. And I had had this idea that as soon as I got back I would catch up on everything—I would be a changed man. I’d adopt a Cambodian family, I’d have my teeth taken care of, pay my taxes, clean my loft—try to put it at perfect white, right angles—wash the windows, get out all the old sweaters I never wear and take them to the Cambodian refugees in Far Rockaway. I’d heard that the Cambodians march from Far Rockaway to China-town on the Beltway every day to buy rice because they are so confused by the subway system that they prefer walking. I saw myself as their new brother, hiking and chanting along at their sides. They’d be wearing all the old mothball-reeking V-neck sweaters that Gram Gray made for me so many years ago, that now lie at the bottom of that black trunk. At last I would do something for them. At last I’d be of service.

  But instead I ended up in Krummville with Renée and it was horrid. Horrid because I didn’t want to be there and I saw all the hardwoods as palm trees. At night I dreamed of taking the magic mushrooms and scuba diving with Ivan on a perfect enchanted isle somewhere in the Indian Ocean. I treated Renée like a Thai whore and I refused to go food shopping and I didn’t want to cook and I was a wha-wha-wha little two-year-old. Just wha-wha-wha all over the place.

  And Renée said, “Spald, calm down. Get it together. You’re going to lose it. Remember how you came back to get a Hollywood agent, how you came back to make contacts and try to land another feature film? Well, we’re not making any contacts here in Krummville, so I think we should go down to Bridgehampton to visit Sis and Tom. They’ve been nice enough to extend an invitation and you could swim in your ocean and make some contacts as well. I mean, really, I’m beginning to feel like poor white trash up here.”

  So we went to Bridgehampton. I had never been to the Hamptons in summer, but it was not all that unfamiliar. When I got there I recognized it from all the Michelob ads I’d seen on TV. There was this big, beautiful white house on a quarter-acre of green lawn. It was one of those beautiful turn-of-the-century houses that used to have a family in it back in the days of families, and now it was filled with beautiful couples all on the verge of breaking up, and lonely singles who had just broken up and didn’t feel ready to re-commit just yet. They were all playing volleyball on the front lawn and toking up in between games, and I couldn’t believe the ball just didn’t turn into a seagull and swoop out over the horizon.

  Next to the volleyball net was a convenient red cooler filled with Michelob, Lowenbrau, Diet Pepsi, Tab and 7-Up. And I was in charge of the bluefish—I was sure I knew about bluefish: how to buy it, how to cook it. But I wasn’t in sync with the guy in charge of the coals. He had let those Briquets burn too long, so I was spraying more napalm on the coals to try and get a flame, and at the same time I made the mistake of toking off of a very strong joint and suddenly everything went prehistoric. The next thing I remember is that a group of us were all sitting around this formal table with a big white linen tablecloth and a candelabra in the center, and someone was saying, “Would you please pass the bluefish sushi?”

  But I wasn’t hungry. I was looking down at my hand, which was in the middle of a white plate, and it was peeling, looking like a piece of chicken with the tan peeling off like some sort of time-lapse situation in Walt Disney’s Painted Desert. And I said, “No, thank you. I’ve got all I can eat right here.”

  And—Ahruuuuuuuuuuuh!—I went down on my hand, and the next thing I knew my head was in Renée’s lap and I was saying, “Ahhhhhh, my God! Something awful has happened! I’m supposed to be in Thailand! Nothing is ever going to go right in my life again! I’ve ruined it!”

  I fled from the table with my hand across my forehead like I had a bad case of Dostoyevskian brain fever, like Konstantin Gavrilovich in The Seagull. I ran out onto the porch where I threw myself into the hammock as, in the background, I heard the people at the table talking about “the gasoline-flavored bluefish sushi.”

  Renée rushed out to comfort me and I said, “Renée, Renée, it was a mission, a mission! I was on a mission. I’m not supposed to be back here. It wasn’t just about making a film. I was about to have something revealed to me on that beach. I was supposed to be in Hanoi, I was supposed to be in Thailand. It was a mission. God wanted to speak to me through those magic mushrooms. I was on the verge of overcoming my fears, on the verge of making friends with Vietnam. It was a mission.”

  And I looked up from the hammock to see Tom Bird, this mighty Vietnam veteran, standing over me saying in a deep strong voice, “SPALDING! BE HERE NOW!”

  And I flew back in the hammock, my face turning into a ninety-year-old man’s face with a dry, twisted mouth and no teeth, and it felt like my face was falling off and the face cried, “Tom, Tom, what are you guilty about? Why couldn’t you go to Paradise Beach and take the mushrooms? I know you’re guilty because you killed people. You killed the Vietnamese. But why am I guilty? Why? Why?”

  And Tom bellowed again, “SPALDING! BE HERE NOW! Do you think I want to be here?”

  And suddenly I realized that this strong, silent man was also suffering. He just knew how to shut up about it.

  Okay, get it together, Spalding, get it together. The next d
ay, a little shaky and hung over, I met a couple that had just come in from sailing off Block Island. I thought, my God, that’s my territory. They were sailing my seas. I was born in Rhode Island with a silver spoon in my mouth. I was born with the name Spalding Gray. Why didn’t I have a big boat? What was I doing living up in Krummville at forty-two years old, when Esquire says I should be making my age in money?

  And I came to the shocking realization that it was now too late to become a banker, a doctor, a lawyer or a psychiatrist. It was too late. But I could go to Hollywood and play one, and make twice as much. So I thought, “Time to get it together. Time to make some decisions,” and in order to strengthen my decision-making muscles, I went to Barnes & Noble and bought a hypnotist’s cassette, “How to Make Decisions—Success Series Unlimited.”

  Every night Renée and I would listen on the stereo earphones, and the voice would hypnotize us and put us right out. And in the morning we were supposed to drink a large glass of water to wash all the subliminal suggestions down into the subconscious. It seemed to work. I was indeed feeling more decisive.

  Just around that time, I was asked to interview people under the Brooklyn Bridge, as a performance piece to commemorate the Bridge Centennial. I was to try to get them to tell personal stories about the Bridge, under the Bridge. Well, not exactly a great career choice, but at least it was a sane, simple way back into show business. And then, because of these interviews and my role in The Killing Fields, I was asked to come in and be interviewed by Hope Newly on WMCA Talk Radio, on a show called “For Singles Only.”

  Hope called me and said that she remembered me from college and would love to see me again. I couldn’t quite place her but I looked forward to the interview. I was beginning to feel that I was getting back on my feet.

  When I went to the Hope Newly Show, the first thing I heard was Hope interviewing a woman about her new “consciousness-raising” group for older women who are in love with younger men. The next person who came on was a woman discussing a cure for baldness—and I perked up. She was saying that we don’t inherit baldness, we inherit the tendency toward oil in the pores. And for $2,000 (money back guaranteed), you can get a special shampoo to remove that oil, because what’s under that oil are these fully-grown hairs, like little pig’s tails, like little pubies. They’re all scrunched up in there, fully grown just waiting to pop out. And as soon as you wash out that oil, up they pop like cork screws. You’ve seen them on balding men, all combed across the bald spot like wavy fields of Shredded Wheat. Those are the new hairs.

  Then it was my turn to come on. Hope said, “Hi, everyone out there. This is Hope Newly, ‘For Singles Only.’ And I want everyone out there to hug yourself and say, ‘Hi, me. I’m happy to be single.’ All right? I want you to welcome Spalding Gray, star of stage, screen and television.”

  I don’t know where she got my resume but she said, “Spalding, I will never forget the first day that we met, in Boston.”

  “Uuuum ...”

  Now this is why I don’t have a house in the Hamptons, I’m convinced now. I don’t know how to play along and make myself up as I go. I said, “You’re going to have to refresh my memory, Hope. I don’t remember. I’ve never seen you before in my life, I swear!”

  Well, she let that go and we started talking about the film, and I could tell by the way she was reacting to me that talking about The Killing Fields was like talking about cancer before there’s a cure. And I figured that her audience felt the same way, so we shifted the subject. She said, “Well, why don’t you tell our audience something about the difference between television acting and film acting. No, better still, why don’t you tell them what films they may have seen you in besides The Killing Fields. We’ll take it from there.”

  I took a pause and thought, well, here I go, time for fiction. Time to make myself up.

  “Well, I don’t know if they’ve seen my latest, Leftover Life to Kill. It’s the story of the demise of Dylan Thomas, and his wife’s struggle to go on after his death. I play a lesser American poet who comes to her Welsh boathouse to console her. Your audience probably hasn’t seen it—it’s a cult film that plays in Welsh theatres at midnight. Then there’s, oh, Time of the Assassins. We did that in southern France and it’s about Rimbaud—what a fascinating guy, what a scallywag! Do you know he gave up writing poetry at nineteen to become a gun-runner? I play a lesser American poet who visits him on his deathbed. Strange man. He had all his money hidden in his hernia truss. That one hasn’t been released yet, but it’s due to come out this fall.”

  “Well, we look forward to it. Yes.”

  Then I went out on a limb a little further and said, “Oh, I played a romantic lead in a ski film. I was a ski instructor in Canadian Sunset.”

  “Really?” Hope said. “How wonderful. Where was it filmed?”

  Suddenly I drew a blank on all the cities in Canada ... and then Toronto came to mind, so I just said, “Toronto.”

  And Hope just went and pushed me right off the limb by saying, “Toronto? I didn’t know there was any skiing up there. I thought that it was all flat country.”

  “Oh, yes, it’s very flat. Really. Actually, the film built a mountain. Fascinating to watch that. The building of the mountain was a whole film in itself and they made a separate documentary about the building of the mountain called Too Steep to Fall. But basically, that’s the difference between film acting and TV acting. In TV, they go to the mountain and in film, they bring the mountain to them.”

  Now everything was going fine. I was making myself up. I’ve seen people make themselves up in an afternoon, become instant holy men, just make themselves up. I saw Richard Schechner do it in Central Park. It was on a lovely May day, back in the days when the Hare Krishnas used to chant from the Bowery up to Central Park, and they’d be so high by the time they reached the park that they’d look as if they were floating six inches off the pavement. They’d all come floating down the steps of Bethesda Fountain and a crowd of about two hundred people would gather around. Well, on one beautiful May Sunday, this spectacle stirred Richard’s competitive juices and he took off all his clothes except for his Jockey underwear and asked me to hold them for him while he took out his Indian prayer rug, laid it by the fountain and stood on his head. This outrageous new spectacle immediately drew the crowds away from the Hares to him. I got a little panicked. It looked very much like a Suddenly Last Summer situation. All I could see were the soles of Richard’s feet sticking up through the crowd, and I could see some of the people dropping little chunks of Italian Ices down through the holes in his underwear.

  After about twenty minutes of this, Richard came down and ran over to me and said, “Quickly, give me my clothes. Let’s get out of here.” And as he was getting dressed I looked over to see that he had about twenty-five new converts ready to follow him anywhere. Some of them were asking, “When will you return?” As Richard answered over his shoulder, “I shall return,” others asked, “Where are you going?” And Richard said, “I am walking east.”

  I think they would have followed him right into the East River without a doubt in their heads.

  Now, to some extent, Sri Rama Krishna also made himself up. He was an actor of sorts. He was the last great Indian saint who didn’t have twenty-nine Rolls Royces—the last great poor Indian guru.

  Sri Rama Krishna went through a number of dynamic character transformations in which he became the people he worshipped. Although he was a Hindu, he was in no way hung up on one religion. He embraced them all. When he worshipped Christ, he became Christ; when he worshipped Buddha, he became him. He even performed his tantric practices with a woman and when he worshipped Mother Kali he became a woman and people in the Kali temple would mistake him for one. He had no sense of self. He was an actor, a conduit, a man without an identity. And because he lived in India, he didn’t have to go to a psychiatrist. He was seen as a holy man and not as a psychotic. At last, a naked sadhu ran out of the jungle, stuck a sharp stone between
Sri Rama’s eyes and he saw Nothing.

  Now, who are the holy people in the West? Actors and actresses. They are the only people who can say they don’t know who they are and not be put away in an insane asylum for it. Peter Sellers, the actor, was not unlike Sri Rama Krishna to the extent that he made himself up and acted as a conduit through which he allowed many voices to pass. Sellers insisted that he never knew who he was. In the West that was a problem, so he had to go to a psychiatrist, but in my mind, he was a kind of holy man. And in our utilitarian, materialistic world, where is Mecca for these holy people of the West? It’s the furthest west they can go without going east. It’s Hollywood. And where does their immortality have its being? On film. The image set forever in celluloid. And who is God? The camera. The ever-present, omniscient third eye. And what is the Holy Eucharist? Money!

  So I said, “I’m going!” And I put on the magic John Malkovich suit, the brown one, I took my Thai bhat and converted it into $600, got a ticket on TWA and headed out to Hollywood to select an agent.

  After the plane took off without crashing, I was opening one of those fucking little salad dressing packets and—“Oh, shit! Oh, Lord, why does this always happen the one time I put a suit on? Chewing gum flies to me on the subway and sticks. Salad dressing eats through my new pants.”

  This traveling salesman next to me said, “Don’t worry about it, take it right in to the cleaners as soon as you get there. Hope it’s colorfast. Where’d you have it made?”