The Empty Chair

by Bruce Wagner

  Sorry to digress. I think I have a case of nerves, that’s why I’m chattering away. I’m usually not such a motor-mouth. It’s just that I guess everything’s building up, all that’s been unspoken for so many years. The whole kit and caboodle, as Mama used to say.

  A break for lunch. As we settled in, he excused himself. When he returned, he wore a sheepish smile. His face was blotchy, as if from crying.

  I had to “make my toilet.” Splash some water on my face . . .

  What was I saying?

  The Christian mystics—

  Kipling! Kipling also did his time in the City by the Bay, oh yes. Mind you, there was no love lost between the two—not between Kipling and Twain, but Kipling and the city. He was a flinty, finicky man, and most decidedly “on the road.” What do you think the Beats would’ve made of him? Now there’s another play—my third of the day!—the meeting of Kipling and Kerouac. “Kipling/Kerouac,” that’s what you call it. Or maybe just “K2” . . . K-squared! Yes. I like it. On the Road with Jack and Rudy. Stendhal said something marvelous, that a novel was nothing more than a man holding a mirror as he walks down a road . . . it reflects the sky above and the mud below, and woe to the man who carries it in his rucksack and captures nothing but the mire! For he will be pilloried.

  I was saying. Kipling didn’t care for San Francisco a whit. If he didn’t leave his heart, he certainly left his spleen, or some other mess to clean up. Had a reputation for being a real pisser. Thought everyone was rude, particularly hotel workers. Isn’t that funny? I guess that’s understandable, he was used to India where the English were treated like gods. I have an old Kipling in the van, I know just where, green cover, introduction by Henry James. (Come to think of it, I’ve a very pretty Le Rouge et le Noir.) There’s a chapter in there, if memory serves, called “American Notes,” subtitled “Rudyard Kipling at the Golden Gate.” Apparently, the thing he absolutely could not tolerate about our beautiful city was all the white people! Too many white people. Not enough blacks and fellaheen. (Oh, the Beats were great fans of the fellaheen!) There was just this very long list of complaints. The querulous Lord K had no truck with the custom of the day, which allowed that a fellow who bought a drink would get his food for free. The man even hated cable cars! Moreover, he was of the mind that Americans plagiarized English authors without compensation or acknowledgment, and to make things worse, willfully perverted the pilfered texts. On the topic of copyrights, he was apoplectic. A drooling hound from Hell . . . but we forgive Genius its prickliness. And he was a prickly pear. Some of my best friends are prickly pears.

  Kipling actually wrote about the Cliff House. You know the Cliff House, Bruce? You said you lived in the Bay Area when you were a boy . . . that took me by surprise. The very Cliff House I—we!—remember from our youth! We lived south of LA, see, in Orange County, and would drive to Point Lobos and Sausalito . . . our little unhappy family. Those dreadful, benumbing, contentious vacations. Good Lord! We’d go to the Cliff House and my big sis and me climbed the hundreds of steps to that positively Brobdingnagian indoor slide—remember?—made out of slippery, buttery blond wood. I was so struck with fear, my tiny face all scrunched up in tears, like I was heading for the gallows. I never looked down, only straight ahead, at the ass of whoever was in front of me, yet couldn’t help but see from the corner of my eye the sliders whooshing past, the joyful screaming, the chute wide as a highway, like some monstrously tilted bowling lane waiting patiently to strike me out. To avoid the paralysis of vertigo, when I finally reached the top I gave my full attention to the spreading out of my smelly burlap sack, the threadbare magic carpet that would carry me to Hell. You couldn’t take too much time with preparations because a cackling crowd was endlessly summiting behind you, anxious to fling themselves down that bizarre man-made mountain. So you’d plunk yourself on that useless mat and—Geronimo!—off you’d go, hoping to catch up with your stomach at slide’s end. All the while knowing I’d have to immediately begin the climb again, or be called a fag, and be publicly ostracized—

  I know, I’m off-track. It’s just the butterflies . . .

  We’re not in a huge hurry, are we?

  I just need to work up to it. I’m finding my way. Promise.

  All right, and do forgive: the Kipling/Twain rendezvous in New York. As it turns out, the two shared a common passion: copyrights. Ha! According to historical reports, Samuel Clemens had lots to say about this particular issue. Copyrights! Mania of the Titans!

  Kipling was an absolutely superb reporter, even referred to himself as a newspaperman. (Jack London had his own view of the papers. Called them “man-killing machines.”) Kipling was known as a human tape recorder, capable of flawlessly transcribing from memory. Capote used to say the same thing, but Capote was more full of shit than a sewer pipe. Lord Rudy quoted Twain, a little speech I spottily committed to memory, as it touches on a topic mentioned earlier and which I am certain we will soon explore, which acted as a balm at the time—

  A conscience, like a child, is a nuisance. If you play with it and give it everything it wants—spoil it—it’ll be sure to intrude on all your amusements and most of your griefs. Just treat it as you would anything else. When it’s rebellious, spank it. Be stern! Don’t let it come out to play with you at all hours. That way you’ll end up with a good conscience, one that’s properly trained. But a spoiled one destroys all pleasure in life! I’ve done an excellent job in training my own; at least, I haven’t heard from it for some time. Perhaps I killed it from being too severe. It is wrong to kill a child . . . though in spite of all I’ve said, a conscience does differ from a child in many ways.

  Perhaps it’s better off dead.

  Wonderful, isn’t it?

  Sometimes satire is the only thing that does the job. All right . . .

  Enough nonsense.

  I began by disclosing that while I prefer men to women on the sexual front, I’ve had meaningful relationships with both. I told you I was married but separated, and that I—we—have—had—a child. A son. We had a son.

  His name is Ryder.

  (I won’t say “was” because it still is.)

  My wife’s name is Kelly.

  I haven’t seen her for seven or eight years. She lives in Canada with her sister. On her sister’s property anyway. I send money every month. The occasional postcard or email. She writes back now and then. Her sister worries, endlessly. “She’s thin as a bone!” My frontal lobe seems to have taken that information and run with it, because whenever I think of Kelly I picture a haunted scarecrow piercing me with haunted, pleading eyes.

  We were living together but hadn’t been physically intimate for a long time when Kelly said she wanted a child. She was 35 or 36—I was 29—she’d had four abortions. Also had PCOS, polycystic ovary syndrome, so the doctors said the odds were slim. We were prepared to go another route if we didn’t have any luck but never talked exactly about what that route would be. If I recall, adoption wasn’t entirely ruled out. Kelly was certain motherhood had passed her by (I was certain too) and as a hedge against likely heartbreak she convinced herself that it wasn’t possible, wouldn’t happen. Made her peace. When the kit showed the + sign, it shocked her into bliss. Me too (into bliss). I was a little surprised by that. She said it was a miracle baby and I couldn’t argue.

  Back then, we had the understanding our physical needs would be met outside the partnership. I mean, sex was actually fun—for a while—but once she got pregnant, we were forever done. I knew Kelly was involved with various women over the years but had no idea she pursued men as well. I’m not sure if that would have bothered me or not . . . I mean, another man. I guess it would have, if she didn’t invite me to share! At any rate, we were a “don’t ask, don’t tell” household. If you’re wondering why we stayed together, that’s a little predictable. Better to ask, What forces prevailed to bring us together in the first place? And for what purpose?

/>   I said it before and I’ll say it again: I only know what I know. And what I don’t know, I’ve learned to leave alone.

  Until now.

  Kelly was an old friend of the Learys’ and liked to tell people our son was named after Tim’s goddaughter, the actress Winona Ryder. Kelly thinks she came up with the name—Ryder—but that’s not how I remember it. And my ego has nothing to do with it. You see, our son didn’t have a name until the very moment he was born. When he popped out, a name popped in: Ryder, from the Djuna Barnes novel. God, I loved that woman! The mad hermit dyke of Greenwich Village. Lived right across the street from e.e. cummings by the way . . . I know that sounds precious, to name your kid after a Djuna Barnes book—about a monster-dad!—but that’s how it went down, as my biker friends like to say. I didn’t realize it at the time but I think that when I mentioned it as a possibility, Kelly immediately thought it was some sort of ode to Winona—she had a soft spot for glamour and celebrities. She probably loved the idea of being tied into Winona and the Learys. When people asked about it she said she liked the karma of the name, as if our son’s fate (and her own) was to be part of a famous clan. Oh, she basked. I was just happy she went for it. One of the things I love about “Ryder” is that it’s close to writer. And reader too.

  My wife—that still sounds weird to me, “my wife,” and it’s funny how it still makes me feel good to say it, that bourgeois part—has always been a serious Buddhist. Me, I’m a dabbler. I told you we met at Spirit Rock but technically that isn’t true. We’d seen each other a handful of times before on skid row, at the mission in Alameda. Part of the do-gooder crew serving meals to the homeless over the holidays. I was surprised to find an attraction there, on my side anyway. I wasn’t sure what she felt but had an inkling. My hetero radar isn’t completely broken, you know. I guess it was karma, as Kelly would say—that I’d feel an attraction toward this woman that was physical, aside from anything else. We didn’t talk much but there was definitely somethin’ going on. We percolated for three years running until we bumped into each other at the retreat. Which brought things to a boil.

  Like a lot of people who become interested in Buddhism, I was traumatized by religion, in my case the Catholic Church. My big sis and I were both victims. Cheryl got pregnant at 16 and confessed to one of the fathers. He told her there were special things he could do to make sure the baby would never come out. He said God would help, as long as she kept his intervention a secret. He tried “the cure” a bunch of times but the baby came anyway.

  Oh, they did things to me too . . . that’s why as an adult, I was lost. I drifted toward Buddhism, becoming fairly serious in terms of my meditation practice. But I was never as into it as my wife. Kelly went to all the advanced workshops, you know, the ones they won’t let you in unless you’ve received the transmission of whatever obscure teaching from whatever non-English-speaking roshi. Like a lot of folks, she definitely set out to acquire a black belt in Zen. I just wasn’t that interested—the minute prayer became work, I was out the door. I wasn’t wild about the hierarchy thing either. Hierarchies bug the shit out of me. That smugness, the whole power-tripping, my-silence-is-better-than-your-silence deal. (Anyway, it ain’t Buddhism’s fault. “It’s the people, stupid.”) Oh boy, did we use to skirmish! Kelly called me a living master of “couch potato Zen” and I called her Brigitte Bardo. “Bardo” is Tibetan—have you ever heard?—it means the limbo or “in-between.” There’s a bardo between life and death, a bardo between wakefulness and sleep . . . a bardo of dreaming. “Brigitte Bardo” used to piss her off, though not completely, because remember, she was into glamour and celebrity. It was all pretty playful. The mood was still light.

  Our little family moved from the Haight—from the same block Kenneth Rexroth once lived, he had these famous salons back in the day . . . everyone used to go, Ferlinghetti, Lamantia, Snyder and Joanne—Kyger—Whalen and McClure and di Prima and Anne Waldman, and of course Ginsberg and Jack—we got out of there and rented a bungalow in Berkeley. I clerked at a bookstore on Telegraph until my lawyer advised it’d be better for my case if I just stayed home and collected disability checks. (More about that in a minute.) I didn’t like that but I do as I’m told. I always obey my nurse. So I became the house mascot, the flâneur who perfected his couch potato Zen. Kelly taught at junior high a district away. She was wrapped too tight—another phrase used by my Hells Angels friends, some of whom are very literate, you know, big readers, and I’m not just talking Stephen King and John Grisham, there was a 400-pound fellow with a swastika tattooed on his forehead who was crazy for Schopenhauer and Spinoza, good Lord!—whenever I hear about one of their weekend gatherings, I’ll try to show up in the bookmobile and they’re tremendously appreciative, though I suppose I took some getting used to—my dear wife was wrapped too tight and all that meditating wasn’t fixing her. A month after we moved to Berkeley, I began to have the vibe that Kelly was staring down the double barrel of a righteous depression.

  One of the larger things on her plate was Mom, a semi-invalid living back East. (Her father passed away years before.) The family business, Ballendine’s Second Penny, a high-end antiques shop, had been a fixture in Syracuse for over 40 years; it only took Kelly’s alcoholic brother three months to run it into the ground. Her mother had heart problems complicated by diabetes or maybe it was the other way around. The brother was living at home, doing more harm than good. Like all old people, Mom insisted she didn’t need help even though she could barely make it to the john. The caregivers my wife managed to hire—she interviewed them over the phone from Berkeley, the brother being a useless piece of shit—usually didn’t last the day, and for $4 an hour the best you could hope for was they didn’t steal, at least not in front of you, or beat your loved one to a pulp. Like all daughters (the ones I’ve known), Kelly’s relationship with her mom was deeply fucked up. Whole lotta codependency goin’ on. Clara was a real pro at pushing Kelly’s buttons, especially the one marked GUILT. She started flying back there every other weekend. Once she even took Ryder. He came home with a twitch; I made sure that never happened again. I used to have one when I was a kid and now there was Ryder, widening his mouth every 10 seconds like a fish scooped from its aquarium.

  I was surprised when Clara died. I mean, shocked at the speed of it. The flying back and forth and whatnot, the hassling with the brother, all that, had only been going on for maybe three months and I was settling in—we both were—for the long run. The money drain, the emotional drain, the massive inconvenience of it . . . So when we got the call she was gone, I actually couldn’t believe it! I was like: You’re kidding me. I might even have expressed as much when Kelly gave me the news. Because how many times does a pain-in-the-ass parent die in a timely way, with relatively minimal fuss? Thanks to modern medicine, the death of a parent is usually protracted, more unnatural in cause than natural. And medical heroics aside, the old scumbags seem to willfully hang on! Like they’re invested in not making an easy death—not for themselves, not for their kids, not for the caregivers, not for anyone. I don’t mean to sound devilish but I thought she’d linger until she was 100 and counting. We both did, which has to be most children’s secret fear. So in its own way, my mother-in-law’s death was as surprising as Ryder’s conception. A miracle death! I remember thinking about Clara—just a thought, no malice, hell, I was grateful to her—I remember thinking, “You go, girl! That’s the way to do it—bravo.” There was even some money thrown in (another shocker), not a lot but enough for Kelly to take a sabbatical and go find herself.

  Kelly thought it was a good time to get married. Mom always said she wanted to dance at her wedding and I couldn’t figure out if Kelly’s proposal to me was a sentimental capitulation to Clara’s wishes or a posthumous Fuck You. Anyway, it was done. Nothing fancy. A backyard affair with a dozen guests and a Buddhist monk presiding. Ryder walked her up the aisle between rent-a-chairs and was the ring-bearer as well. That was sweet. Kind
of a funny fortieth birthday present for me. I think I was a pretty good husband though. Maybe it sounds nuts, but I was good husband material.

  I thought that would chill Kelly out—not so much the marriage as her mother’s death. The irony is that when she left her job at school things really began to unravel. Having both parties home at the same time is a game-changer. The house was small. We kept bumping into each other, literally underfoot. You begin paying hostile attention, like cellmates . . . you get weirdly focused on the annoying habits, shitty sights, sounds, smells and general disgusting lameness of the other party. You start judging them in your head and your heart. Everything gets poisoned, paranoid. Contempt is the order of the day—and night.

  You know, I consider myself lucky. I “found” myself a long time ago. And I’m grateful for that. I truly am.

  I didn’t say I liked what I found but the finding’s half the journey. Jesus, probably more than half. When you think that most people are out there still looking. What’s the definition of finding yourself, anyway? It really just means being comfortable in your own skin. That’s all enlightenment is, isn’t it? The Buddhists can do their crazy calisthenics, their marathons of Silence and devotion and ritual bullshit but at the end of the day if someone’s happy in their own skin, that’s the Buddha. That’s an enlightened being. People think they need that perfect job or perfect inspiration or perfect spiritual practice but all anyone wants or needs is peace of mind. And you don’t need a Nobel Prize or a million dollars to have it. It helps but it ain’t mandatory. I’ve got my books and my van—it’s a wonderfully nomadic life I wouldn’t trade for the world. [sings, robustly] “Well I’ve got a hammer, and I’ve got a bell, and I’ve got a song to sing, all over this land!” Freedom’s my landlord. The sky above and the mud below. I’ve got a mirror in my knapsack . . . sometimes I leave it there and sometimes I take it out and point it to the Lord Above!