The Amateur_An Independent Life of Letters

by Wendy Lesser

  I don’t mean to be romantic about this. Certainly the ranchers were glad enough to see Synanon go, if only because it freed up prime agricultural land. But if Synanon had stayed, the West Marin ranching community would probably have continued to get along with its odd neighbors just fine. It occurs to me now that the strangeness of their encounter, which struck me so heavily at the time, was almost invisible to them. What I saw as a meeting of California opposites was to them just another real estate tour.

  REPORT ON A SITE VISIT

  oward the end of my period with the foundation, at the request of the director of arts programming, I drove out to Bolinas to check on the filmmaker who had asked for half a million dollars.

  I was not in favor of this visit. “It will only encourage him,” I had said, riffling through the stack of letters and phone messages that had already accumulated in his file. “And what are we doing to do after I make the site visit?”

  “If you do not feel that the project is compelling,” said the arts director, raising an eyebrow—he was a stickler for observing the forms of apparent objectivity—“then we will write to him and say that. But after our failure to get back to him properly, he at least deserves a site visit.”

  Part of the problem is that I don’t like that drive: ten miles of winding road, much of the way with no protective railing between you and a nine-hundred-foot drop to the ocean. For days before making the trip, I dreamed of that sickening fall, of my car swooping over the edge as the brakes failed. I even took the car to a mechanic to get the brakes checked before I went.

  As it always turns out, the real danger of this drive is the high probability that you will get behind some old duffer who drives at fifteen miles an hour and lurches unpredictably at curves. Mine had one rear brakelight out, which meant I was constantly expecting him to turn right, or at least pull over for me. No such luck. I could almost feel an ulcer growing.

  I reached Bolinas early anyway, since I habitually leave extra time to arrive at appointments, get to movies, meet trains, or catch planes. I hate being late, and I hate it when other people are. I’ve nearly lost friendships over delays of a mere quarter-hour.

  When, as prearranged, I called the victim of my visit (let’s label him Mr. Coniglio to protect his true identity), only his machine was home. “I’m either deep in my creative work, walking on the beach, or just having too good a time to come to the phone,” it sneered. “So leave a message and I’ll get back to you.”

  “This is Wendy Lesser from the foundation,” I enunciated. (Have you ever noticed how strange your own name sounds when you have to recite it into a machine?) “I’m a bit early. I’ll call you again in half an hour.”

  To while away the time, I strolled through the local bookshop, where I could find only nature guides and metaphysical guidance. “I’ve finally found a book on meditation that expresses my own attitude exactly,” I over-heard a customer telling the cashier. “It basically says that whatever you believe in will work for you.”

  I crossed the street to the local café and ordered coffee with yogurt cheesecake. Jam smears festooned my table and flies buzzed around my head. One dropped into my nearly empty coffee cup. I got up to try the phone again.

  “John Paul Coniglio,” he answered for himself.

  “Hello, Mr. Coniglio—it’s Wendy Lesser from the foundation. I’m in a phone booth in downtown Bolinas.”

  “Oh, the one next to the café? Great. Listen, I’ll be right down to get you. And while you’re waiting, why don’t you go two doors over to the Bolinas Art Association gallery and take a look at my photos? It’s my first public show. I’ll meet you there.”

  Unwillingly, but still imbued with a site-visit sense of obligation, I wandered into the gallery. It was deserted. Most of the photos were sunsets in black and white, rainy landscapes, or raggedly dressed, imploringly pathetic children. Mr. Coniglio’s pictures stood out: a number of studies of “my girlfriend at the beach” (a goose-pimpled breast and nipple against a twilight sky, the curve of a naked hip against sand), and one frontal photo of a nude man in an armchair entitled “Self-Portrait.” The man had rather wild though wispy blond hair and washed-out blue eyes. His penis drooped prominently in the foreground.

  I hurried away so as not to be standing just there when the original walked in, as he soon did. He looked less robust and slightly saner than in the picture. I’ve noticed that people often do look saner with their clothes on.

  “Well, did you like them?”

  “Very interesting,” I mumbled. “Shall we go talk about your proposal now?”

  He led me up the hill on foot, having expressed shock that I might want to drive my car anywhere. (“Leave it right here—it will be fine,” he said, but I already didn’t trust him, and envisioned the car towed to the nearest large town, myself stranded forever in Bolinas.) On the way up the hill, he recited the lunch possibilities: some soup he had made, a little salad, did I want to stop for some cheese? No, well, then we could just eat the soup, but…

  “I’m not really very hungry,” I interrupted, “and since we only have a limited amount of time, I think we should spend it talking about your work.”

  “Oh.” He seemed very disappointed. “I thought you were going to be able to stay for the whole afternoon.”

  “No, I have to get back to the office for a meeting,” I lied, “so I won’t be able to stay more than an hour, or at most an hour and a half.”

  “Well, this is it.” He unlocked the door to a weather-beaten little bungalow, part of a complex of destitute-looking buildings perched halfway up the hill. They all had beautiful ocean views from their rickety porches.

  His “studio” consisted of a large-ish room that encompassed a kitchen area and a floor-level bed covered by the regulation Indian bedspread, with a smaller room—his “office”—leading off the kitchen. The smell of the place was close and oppressive, as if several pairs of sexually active old shoes and socks had been closeted together for weeks. This atmosphere was aggravated by the additional smell of gas when Mr. Coniglio turned on the stove to warm the soup.

  “While we’re waiting for that to heat up, come in and take a look at my files.”

  Madmen always have files, or at any rate madmen of a certain sort, the ones who seek to organize experience by chronicling and alphabetizing every idea that floats through their minds, every act of real or supposed injustice committed against them, every seed of potential enormous wealth. Mr. Coniglio’s office was lined with boxes and boxes of index cards. He began pulling them out in order, explaining the contents of each one. “And these are some notes for films I’ve jotted down in the middle of the night … and here are some ideas for grant proposals …” I calculated that we were going to be about halfway finished with the boxes by nightfall.

  “Mr. Coniglio, I—”

  “Call me John Paul.”

  “John Paul. I just wanted to say that since my time here is limited, perhaps it would be better if you summarized your overall plans. I mean, I will gain a great deal more insight into your work if you tell me directly what you’d like to do, in a general sort of way, rather than giving me all this detailed information. It’s all very interesting, of course, but there’s only so much I can absorb at once, so you’d do better to get your big ideas across first.”

  “Oh. Well, what do you want to hear about? The Wilhelm Reich film I mentioned in my letter?”

  “Yes, that would be fine. Tell me why you feel it’s an important film to make.”

  “Do you know anything about Wilhelm Reich?”

  Suddenly I was the one on the defensive. “Well, I’ve heard of him, of course,” I hedged. “Ozone boxes, wasn’t it?”

  “Orgone. You obviously aren’t very familiar with his work. He was one of the great geniuses of the century, a persecuted man who was hounded to death because his ideas were too new and too overpowering for people to accept.”

  “Isn’t the—er—do you smell gas leaking somewhere?”

/>   “That’s just the soup cooking.”

  “Oh. I thought the flame might have gone out.” I wondered if I had an obligation to bring the conversation back to Reich, then decided I didn’t. “What kind of work are you doing now, exactly?”

  “You mean my real work, or what I do to support myself?”

  “For support.”

  “Well, right now I’m working as a janitor at Lucasfilm. I’m going to work my way up through the ranks. I got the job through Kelly Girls. When I signed up, I told them, ‘Give me anything that comes along at Lucasfilm.’ And sure enough, this job came along. I believe in fate. Though I almost didn’t get the job. At the interview, the guy told me I was overqualified. I was almost in tears by the time I left, and I was depressed all the next day. But then he called me and said if I wanted the job, I could have it. So far I’m just sweeping floors and cleaning bathrooms, but I know things will look up soon.”

  I was growing increasingly nauseated and began to fear I might faint. Something in that room was certainly interfering with my breathing. Since my anxiety attacks are not usually psychosomatic in nature, I still suspected the gas stove. I could picture myself collapsing on the floor, losing consciousness, absorbing foul gases (my understanding of what comes out of a gas stove is relatively primitive), and gradually rendering up my meager store of oxygen. Days later they would find my car and eventually trace me to Coniglio’s studio. “Yes, we saw her walking up the hill with him,” the neighbors might volunteer, “but she was carrying a briefcase. It all looked very official. And he’s never given us any trouble before.”

  “Excuse me, I just have to get a breath of fresh air.” I barged past him out to the porch and stood leaning against the railway, gulping pure breaths.

  “Oh” came from inside. “You were right. The pilot light has gone out on the stove. But I’ve fixed it now.” He emerged onto the porch, smiling.

  I held my corner, guarding my position like a prize-fighter. He’d fooled me once, but he wasn’t going to lure me back inside again so easily.

  “I have another film idea about radiation. Robert Redford’s very interested in it. He had the script for about a year, and then he finally returned it with a nice note saying he was going with another script on the same topic, but to keep in touch. A few months after that I had a dream about him, and when I wrote to say I thought it was some kind of sign, I got another letter from him. He said he had had similar experiences, and he hoped we would continue to collaborate spiritually. I still have the letter.”

  “Can I see it?” An edge of suspicion must have crept into my voice, because he suddenly became defensive.

  “Of course. Why not? Come inside and I’ll show you a whole folder of stuff.”

  The other thing about madmen, aside from their files, is that they can always trick you into doing what they want. I was still the foundation’s representative, and I hadn’t completed my site visit. It would have been too bizarre to refuse; I had to follow him in.

  “Okay, but I really have to leave soon,” I warned. “Just show me the most important stuff.”

  From a shelf in the kitchen/bedroom he took down two enormous folders and a cardboard box of the sort that, before the age of computers, high-quality typewriter paper used to come in. He opened one of the folders and peered in.

  “Here’s some of the material I xeroxed for you. It begins with my earliest work and moves up to my most recent proposals. The first page, as you can see—”

  “Great, I’ll take it with me,” I said, practically ripping the folder out of his hands. It was a difficult choice— either to keep my distance and let him drone on, or move in for the grab—but, even at the expense of caution, I couldn’t bear going through every page with him.

  “And this,” he said, eyeing me somewhat strangely, “is everything connected to my dealings with your foundation.” He opened the second folder and leafed through it until he came to a single-spaced typed document that covered several pages. “This, for instance, is one of my letters to your director. Sometimes when I wake up in the middle of the night I get ideas I want to communicate with him, so I just begin typing them out. This is one of about thirty I have on file, and of course there are countless others still bubbling around in my head.”

  Those of us who have lived through the assassination years of American history know very well what to think of masses of unsent letters addressed to persons in positions of prominence or authority. I made a mental note to warn the director of his potential danger. At the same time, I resolved to have him sign the rejection letter we would have to send this guy, since his name was already on the hit list and I still had a chance to remain somewhat anonymous—a chance, I mused, that was rapidly diminishing with every moment I remained in the presence of the soon-to-be-denied applicant.

  “Weren’t you going to show me Robert Redford’s note?” I asked, and then immediately realized my mistake. In his inability to locate this obviously fictitious missive, he might become painfully frustrated and unleash his frustration in violence. I cursed myself for what one Berkeley friend calls my “unremittingly linear” mind.

  Luckily John Paul Coniglio was not subject to the same constraints of linearity. He eased us out of the uncomfortable juncture I had created by ignoring my remark and leaping to an entirely new subject.

  “Let me show you something amazing. Do you believe in psychic phenomena?”

  Since I felt that both his opinion and my own were too predictable to warrant expression, I merely smiled politely. Besides, the fewer points of difference I raised, the better this conversation would go and the sooner it would be over. I was amazed that this tactic had not occurred to me earlier.

  “See this book?” From his highest shelf he took down an old green volume entitled Telepatky. “I found it in a bookstore in Santa Cruz while I was there visiting my brother. I had vaguely been thinking of writing something on telepathy anyway, so I was interested enough to pick up the book. And when I opened it up, look what I found.”

  He showed me the inside front cover, on which “John Paul Coniglio” was inscribed in handsome cursive writing.

  “That’s not my signature,” he said.

  “Are you sure?”

  This was not a good response. He evidently resented my distrust.

  “Of course I’m sure. This is my handwriting.” He held out the front sheet of one of his proposals, which had “Jack Coniglio” written in the corner. It was indeed a different signature.

  “Why Jack instead of John Paul?” I asked, finding myself unable to resist the illogical logic of the conversation.

  “Well, that’s an interesting story. I used to call myself Jack all the time. In fact, Paul isn’t even my official middle name. John Paul Coniglio was my grandfather’s name, and a few years ago I began to hear his voice telling me to adopt his name. He died when I was twelve,” he added parenthetically. “Anyway, I ignored it for a long time. Then one day I went to pick up my shoes at the neighborhood shoe repair—this was when I still lived in San Francisco—and the old Italian lady behind the counter took my ticket and said, ‘Ah, Mr. Coneelio’—she pronounced it the way my grandfather had, without the G. ‘No, it’s Conig-lio,’ I said (that’s how I pronounced it at the time), and she said, ‘Yes, Mr. Coneelio.’ And right then I knew it must be a sign. It was my grandfather again, speaking to me through this old lady. So I gave in.”

  “Well, Mr. Coniglio—I mean, John Paul,” I said, looking at my watch and edging toward the door. “It’s about time for me to go now. If I don’t leave within the next five minutes, I’ll be late for my meeting.” The life-after-death routine had been the last straw. People who have beliefs like that—fundamentalists, born-agains, reincarnationists, and so forth—tend to be a lot more cavalier, I’ve noticed, about the loss of anyone’s first life.

  “But we’ve hardly had a chance to talk at all! What’s the point of coming all the way out here if you’re not going to listen to my plans? I bet you’re not even
going to give me the grant!”

  “Honestly, it’s not my decision. That will be decided entirely by other people. I won’t be in on it in any way, except to report that I’ve seen you and that you certainly seem to have all the preparation you need to carry out the project. But, John Paul,” I interrupted myself in the headlong effort at self-preservation, pausing in front of the door, “I do think I should warn you that the chances aren’t great. The foundation doesn’t give grants to any individuals at present, and it almost never supports films, so there would have to be very unusual circumstances to make them come up with the money for your project. And, frankly, I just don’t think they’re going to do it. That’s not an informed judgment, but it’s my considered opinion, based on what I know about how they work.” I was busily wedging as many pronouns as I could between myself and the operations of this devious organization.

  He watched me silently for a few moments as I backed out the door. I gave a feeble wave, then turned and strode rapidly down the path.

  “You mean they sent you all the way out here to talk to me for nothing?” he suddenly shouted. “You know, I think they never had any intention of giving me a grant. But still they made me spend all this time talking to you, and got my hopes up and everything. That’s a shitty thing to do!” He sounded ready to cry.

  I felt suitably guilty. I was guilty. Even in my hell-bent effort at survival, even as I fled Bolinas never to return, I was compelled to admit, if only to myself, that this madman’s complaint was the sanest comment that had been made all day, by either of us.

  And now, looking back on the experience, I realize that there was another level to the discomfort as well. Even then I must have sensed, if only subconsciously, that this struggling pseudo-artist with his day job as a janitor bore a crude, parodic, but nonetheless structurally sound resemblance to me, the foundation-employed editor of a literary publication so small and impecunious as to be practically imaginary. We both harbored grandiose ambitions; we both saw gainful employment as a necessary but distasteful distraction from our real pursuits. If I feel, from the vantage point of a subsequent decade, that my aspirations have now been proven rational whereas his still sound downright crazy, that is not enough to blind me to the fact that we once appeared to be siblings in folly. However much I might like to attribute the divergence in our fates entirely to skill and sense, I am forced to acknowledge the crucial role played by chance. Nor does this realization make me any kinder or more generous to people like John Paul Coniglio when I meet them today. On the contrary, it cements me in my stony resistance, for they represent in my mind the horrible drop to the ocean, the potential fall that lies just to the side of the road I happen to be on.