The Empty Chair

by Bruce Wagner

  and some of the marginal women . . . all the Beat women were marginal, all of the women and most of the men! Except Carolyn—Cassady—who’s never going to die, not as long as she’s pawning Jack’s and Neal’s bones for cash money. What a piece of work! There’s Joanne Kyger, Snyder’s ex (I think she still lives up in Bolinas, a lot of them did, Creeley and Whalen lived up there, Lewis Warsh, a whole slew), there’s di Prima and Annie Waldman . . . anyway, what popped into my head when I was up on the hill was, Snyder’s pseudonym in The Dharma Bums is Ryder—“Japhy Ryder,” remember? And all this time I’ve been thinking Djuna Barnes and her novel when it almost had to be Japhy Ryder who gave my son his name! Well, how do you like that? Which just shows to go you the fallibility of the proverbial eyewitness. Makes you really start to wonder. It’s all a dream, anyway, no? A broken mirror-puzzle. We just reshuffle the pieces. Who was it that said, “Reality is a possibility I cannot afford to ignore”? Leonard Cohen? Or maybe it was Lily Tomlin.

  Kerouac and Snyder were close. Jack looked up to him. Snyder was older and became Jack’s mentor in all things Zen. I haven’t thought about any of this in a long time, Bruce, you’re bringing it all to the surface . . . You know, Kerouac’s a god of mine, that’s why I go on about him. And I know my Kerouac! What’s disgusting is when the fancy literary folk write their essays for the Sunday book reviews, bloviating on how in love they were with Jack when they were kids, how On the Road changed their lives, yadda yadda—or should I say Yaddo Yaddo! You’ll notice how they usually grace us with their perfect opinions on the anniversary of the man’s death or when they have a new book out, and you’re reading about how much they loved him and thinking it’s a tribute when suddenly they turn on him. These tributes to the man who changed their lives suddenly become snarky critical refutations of his work! O they confess to loving and emulating him back in the day when they were feckless undergrads or during their own bullshitty rucksack moment—but then they grew up and put away childish things and destroyed whole forests so as to grace us with their neutered, mannered, irrelevant oeuvres. Their hors d’oeuvres. Five paragraphs in they cut this giant down to size as a mere folly of their youth. See, with me it was the reverse! Exact opposite. Do you remember Capote saying that nasty thing about Jack’s methodology (he said a lot of nasty things), “That’s not writing, that’s typing”? In my own feckless youth, I happened to agree. Being the precocious kid I was, I’d have taken “A Tree of Night” over On the Road all day long. Because On the Road is rather terrible, kind of an awful book in terms of sheer writing, particularly if you measure it against his others, Visions of Cody, Doctor Sax, Windblown World, Lonesome Traveler. In a hundred years, Visions of Cody will be the one, that’s his Everest. And the poems! Better than Ikkyu. And the paintings! Blake looks like a child next to Jack . . . But you see, I was a little snot, a classicist, and it took me the longest time to come around. Then Big Sur—Jack’s beautiful, beautiful novel—sort of kicked the door down and in I ran. And I knew without a doubt this man will cast a shadow larger than Whitman, this man is Whitman. I don’t care too much for the others, sorry to say, not to cast aspersions, even on Mr. Snyder. I was never cool enough for Burroughs or Jewish enough for Ginsberg. None of the rest really matter—except the strange case of Neal Cassady, of course. He’s indispensible. I had a sort of divine vision once that if it were possible to exhume his body, one would find it transformed to vellum, in true Ginsbergian holiness, because at the end he was no longer human, Jack the princess had kissed Neal the frog and restored him to the original, magisterial state of what he was meant to be: a book, a book of life. If I could write, I might try a little Borgesian fairy tale along those lines . . . O, the Beats, the Beats, the Beats! If you took everyone away and were left with just Kerouac, you’d be just fine. All would be right with the windblown world.

  All right. Okay. Good. Sorry.

  I want to get back to my wife’s preoccupation with incarcerated living.

  I never had a wonderful feeling about it—her teaching there. Not even the women’s jail. I’ve seen enough documentaries on MSNBC to know bad things happen on prison visits. You don’t hear about every incident, that’s all. Teachers raped in the prison library, raped and killed by lifers. Just because there’s a bunch of guards doesn’t mean a thing. These guys are barely making minimum wage. Most of them are crooks too, creeps and sadists. When Kelly was doing her thing at the Women’s Correctional in San Mateo I didn’t have too bad a vibe. But San Quentin took it to a new level.

  Kelly hooked up with something called the Prison Dharma Network. The PDN went around the country giving meditation and mindfulness workshops to folks who were locked up. They called their teachings Path of Freedom. The Jewish mafia of the Middle Way sat on the board. You know, all the roshi–Rosh Hashanah machers—Ram Dass, Goldstein, Glassman, Kornfield, Salzburg. The PDN put Kelly through a fairly intense orientation but it was nothing like the one the staff gave her at San Q: what to do if a riot breaks out, what to do if you’re taken hostage, that sort of thing. Part of the allure was ego. It was kind of a trophy gig—frontline bodhisattva service. It was sexy. That as a woman she had the balls to suck it up and walk straight into the belly of the beast . . . for the enlightenment of others. I think she dug people at the Zen Center knowing too. Gave her a major uptick in the incestuous world of the sangha, where competition for humility was dog-eat-dog.

  The tape recorder stopped but new batteries didn’t help. I had to go into town to buy a replacement so we broke for lunch.

  I was raised in Santa Ana, California.

  An altar boy.

  You can see where this is going.

  I was one of the plaintiffs in a lawsuit filed against the Roman Catholic Diocese of Orange. That’s why I was on disability. I had panic attacks for years, sometimes ten in a day. If you’ve ever had a full-blown panic attack, you know that means ten times a day you are one-hundred percent certain you are going to die. Like, immediately. Don’t have ’em anymore, thank God, and I’m not on meds either. When it comes to victims of child sex abuse, PTSD is pretty much guaranteed. You can set your watch by it. That means night terrors, bedwetting, cutting, bulimia—the whole package. We had wonderful lawyers. From the minute they filed, they made sure we had top-flight care, that we saw the best of the best. I got put on a prescription cocktail that settled my nerves. One of the side effects was weight gain (and excessive cocksucking). Hey, I’ll pick weight gain over night terrors and panic attacks all day long.

  That’s what I was waiting for during the couch potato Zen years—the settlement. Took about five years. We had a few suicides along the way, oh yes. Some of the man-boys were just too damaged to hold out. Their hearts flew off like little boys after butterflies. You’d think it’d be easy to sit at the depot and wait for the money train. It wasn’t. The lawyers went for the gold but for all we knew, we’d get the call one morning telling us the gold had turned to brass, tin or dogshit. And there wouldn’t be a thing we could do about it. Settlements were coming in from churches all over the country, seemed like every day it was on the news or in the papers. And some of these payouts came in low, I’m talking very low five-figures, which was not the outcome our guys were shooting for. No one knew the formula, how they arrived at the numbers, it seemed so random. One fellow from Cincinnati used his money to go to Club Med—five times in one year. They found him in the bathtub of his room in Cancún. Overdosed. After he took the pills he slit his wrists and wrapped a plastic bag around his head. What they call overkill.

  I was in the choir with a boy named Ramón. His family moved from Santa Ana after only about six months so I didn’t get to know him that well. But I’m sure the heavenly fathers got in their licks. O they were jackals! Ramón’s family settled in Covington, Kentucky, God knows why, must have had relatives there because no one moves to Covington, Kentucky. And that’s where the real damage was done—the diocese in Covington. They fucked, sucked, diced a
nd sliced that poor little Mexican kid to an inch of his life. When he was of age, he was pissed. It’s good to get angry. It’s healthy. He sued the shit out of ’em. But the trouble with Ramón was he jumped the gun. I don’t know how he found his lawyers. Wound up settling in ’93, before all the public hue and cry. At that time, see, people still were saying it couldn’t be true. That it was all hyperbole or plain bullshit. I think he got $25,000. What’s that, 15,000 after the lawyers get theirs? Good representation—stellar representation—is essential. An attorney has to know his way around these lawsuits, it’s become a very specialized area. The attorneys learned from the mistakes of those who preceded them. Poor Ramón! Goes and hires a fellow who’s an expert in marine law! How about that! And they just sue too early. See, back in the day anyone who made an accusation got tarred with being fringy or perverted. The Church had the total upper hand. They were moving priests around like musical chairs, we only found this out later, it all came out—to Mexico, Scotland, Manitoba . . . hell, they were moving them around in California. To Fresno and Riverside from LA, what have you. The early bird most assuredly did not get the worm, not with these lawsuits. The priests got the worm, boy did they ever! Sucked the come right out of it. So you see it literally didn’t pay to be too far ahead of the curve. Failed suits like Ramón’s paved the way. They were the pioneers. The “visionaries” who went blind to spite their face.

  Ramón tried to sue again but got his case thrown out. That was just a few years ago. Waited too long! No, that wasn’t it . . . there was a double jeopardy issue. A new lawyer promised he’d find a way around it but didn’t. We still keep in touch, sporadically. He sends me these wacky, hypersexual novelty postcards, the type you can buy in a porn shop. He doodles tiny hearts and cocks on them—oy. I never had the heart to tell him I walked away from the courthouse a wealthy man. If he does know, he’s never mentioned it. That kind of discretion is actually typical Ramón. He’s never asked me for money, anyway, though if he did I wouldn’t deny him. It’d make me feel good to help. The last I heard (it’d be comical if it wasn’t so heartbreaking) was that one of the guys who was a part of my settlement who loves to follow this stuff said that Ramón’s been suing the Church, acting as his own counsel. He said they were going to nail him on vexatious litigation, but Ramón doesn’t give a shit. I have to admit, the kid’s got heart. The diocese in Covington eventually forked over $200,000 per plaintiff. It ain’t the lottery but it’s better than whatever Ramón got. But he seems to land on his feet. I won’t start worrying until I get a postcard from Club Med.

  Can you hear the rain?

  There—hear it now?

  A big storm’s coming.

  How grateful I am to God for making Big Sur!

  Big Sur took me back, you know. Spit me out once, and broke me too. But took me back . . .

  It’s really the strangest place. You can not come here to be healed. That’s the mistake most people make. Big Sur does not feel your pain; it doesn’t even notice your awe. It’s easy to leave here worse than you came. Those who do best are the ones who allow themselves to be erased.

  The waves were tall as buildings today, did you see them? Before we met, I parked the van on a turn-out near Bixby Canyon, a half-mile from one of the dizzying, drizzled bridges, towering and hallowed, jaundiced and strange—forgive my poor poetry, but the topic always gets me talking like a fool—their stony span and scope otherworldly, like something from a Piranesi etching. I sat and meditated on the place—Big Sur—and had the revelation that something about it was wrong, which I suppose is the normal human reaction to the unknowable. The sea distorted everything, and set off a chain reaction that charged and changed the very molecules of the air itself, the landscape too, until nothing resembled anything ever seen before . . . you couldn’t put your finger on it except to say it was wrong. Those waves: at times they rolled north to south, contrary to God’s order, like mischievous ghosts running alongside the shore instead of crashing into it—rats through a witch’s wet hair! And there I was stuck staring, like a child hidden in the shadows watching the forbidden rites of some malevolent cultus supervised by the impetuous, unforgiving, predatory chorus of those waves, the whole scene so majestically wrong, a sacred, supererogatory mess, and me, struck dumb by an unnamable, eons- old sorrow . . . the permanent impermanence of water engaged—enraged—in ancient, secret activity. The waves took the shape of hunchbacked buffaloes, bristle-foamed brides and grooms in tumbling betrothal, spewing and spuming their vows, exchanged in a cauldron of blackness, each driven in succession by the taskmaster moon to spawn upon the shore then freeze upon reaching it—sudden death upon sand and rock. If that membrane of water could speak it would plash “I go no further no further I go,” slipping back to primordial jellyfish’d infancy, hibernating in Silence before rearing up again, slowly then speedily, all gaudy and cocky, imperious, thundering its bouillabaisse of white noise! Then: all business again—always, again and again and again all business—the business of predatory indifference—in poised, crashing lunge, snatching what it can of my comfort. Endlessly watchable, I watch, we watch, so easily mesmerized by artful anarchy, the mindless, mindful in-and-outness of it, for what else is there but in-and-outness, anarchy, death and indifference? But Jack already said it all, didn’t he? In the “ocean sounds” poem at the end of Big Sur. “One day, I will find the words, and they will be simple.” That’s Jack too, from one of his letters . . .

  I looked up at the Heavens, supreme and resplendent with dark latticed clouds and found nothing truthful in Dr. Williams’ neatly turned phrase “an excrement of some sky.” For the smallest part of this one, the only one we’ll ever know until those other unknowing clouds come, could make nothing but midnight blue Silence—

  I know.

  The words are just a defense.

  I promise I’ll step up the pace.

  You’ve been so patient.

  I suppose I am finding this more difficult than . . . anticipated.

  I keep saying that.

  It’s hard to focus.

  Too much sadness.

  Know who I was thinking about when I woke up just now? Basho the poet. Do you know Basho? Have you read the haikus? Basho was the absolute god of the Beats—they all wanted to be him. Kerouac came closest but I suppose Snyder’s taken the crown, out of sheer longevity. In sixteen-hundredsomething, Basho’s house burned down. That’s when he went on the road. I have it somewhere in the van, a chapbook, a lovely limited edition of Basho’s The Recordings of a Skeleton Exposed to Weather. Beat that, Beats!

  Can I talk about my affair with Carolyn Cassady?

  I know I’m skating around. Are you sorry you got yourself into this, Bruce? [laughs] I just can’t seem to approach it headlong. I suppose I could get right to it—the full catastrophe—I just don’t want to be rude and take too much of your time. But I promise I’ll get to it. Soon. First, let me tell you about this thing I had with Neal Cassady’s wife. It’s guaranteed to amuse. Then I’ll talk about . . . all the rest.

  So there I was, falling for Kerouac head over heels—mind you, this wasn’t all that long ago! What can I say? I was a late-bloomer. The book that knocked me out, as I was telling you, was Big Sur. That novel’s actually become more of a draw for me to come back—here—than my Camaldolese hermit friends. When I make my pilgrimages, it’s to Jack’s spirit and the book that I come. To the beginner, I’d recommend Big Sur first . . . On the Road isn’t even on my shortlist! I know that sounds terrible. Did you know there are Madame Bovary haters? Mais oui. They’re of the opinion—people have beaucoup opinions out there!—that Flaubert loathed his own creations, from the Madame on down, and his contempt bleeds through and ruins the text. Corrupts his achievement. Another group considers Gatsby a novel that fails in its prose but triumphs in evoking a world and a time, a kind of ghost book that lingers like a scent made from flowers pressed between the lines, all fairy- and fingerp
rint dust. I’m in agreement! Oh, those F’d-up similes that fall so trippingly off the tongue! The glibness gets treacly once you’ve had your fill—which for me was around Page 2. Vomitous! I have a fitzsimile of my own, if you please: at his best, which is most often his worst (at least in Gatsby), Fitzgerald is like a too-congenial whore, wearing too many perfect gossamer gowns. Take that, Mr. Jazz Age! And you heard it here! (I actually believe I’d have made a pretty good critic. I really do think about books all the time and have formed my opinions with great care. Eventually, I may try my hand at an essay or two. Wouldn’t it be marvelous to publish a monograph with the “Vanzen” imprint?) To do what Fitzgerald did is an impossible trick and I’d put On the Road in the same camp. Does it evoke the ineffable? Does it evoke lost youth? Does it evoke the sights and sounds, the promise and magic of a time, an era, a world on the brink, of something mysterious and noble, numinous and new? Without question! Good Lord. Yes. Is it a wonderful novel? A resounding no! It’s an experience, not a novel. It’s a mess. Gatsby and On the Road are like owner manuals for products that can never be delivered. And yet, how beautiful! The spell they cast is diabolical, untouchable. The genius of it, to create a text, an illuminated text of words that somehow alchemize—atomize—into fragrance and music, that kick up the dust of the future and past, and the present too! Good Lord! Perfect mystery-tumbleweeds emitting the warm odor of nostalgia and the cold ardor of timeless, terrifying Silence . . . skeletons exposed to weather.

  But enough about that.

  I was telling you about my affair with the ancient widow of Neal Cassady aka Dean Moriarty, that square-jawed beefcake—Beatcake—bigamist fountainhead, automotive contortionist and cuckolded sex addict, that douche bag writer manqué who was Jack’s woman as well, his muse and creator. Jack’s man . . . who died on the wrong side of railroad earth’s tracks.