Like People in History

by Felice Picano

  He'd pretty much been correct. So far my job had consisted of

  1) endless editorial meetings which concerned other people's projects,

  2) writing captions for two hundred photos, illustrations, and maps for a newly revised edition of a much used high school history book, and

  3) reading the manuscript of a new book on American history and evaluating it against three other books on the subject already available—one of them put out by this very publisher.

  I once calculated that I actually labored for the company less than three hours per diem! I passed the rest of the office day at the coffee machine or on the phone with Carl, Maria, and Debbie, or in the men's room reading and doing endless crossword puzzles. When he'd recommended the job to me, my friend had warned me that I'd have lots of time to myself. "Whatever you do," he added, "don't be quick, don't be nimble, above all don't be efficient! They're all such dunderheads they'll think you're merely being superficial."

  As a result of his warning, I'd recently spent a full three weeks reading and evaluating the new manuscript and comparing it to its closest competition—it should have taken no more than a week. What was I doing wasting my time like this? What was I doing wasting my time in Kovacs's office, which was where I found myself a half hour later.

  "I've been going over your report on the Rainey/Schachter manuscript," Kovacs said, carefully sharpening the twelfth of twelve brand-new pencils he'd just taken from an opened package on his desk. He was referring to my most recent evaluation. "In fact..." Kovacs stopped his sharpening to line up the other eleven pencils and check their length. "Chas and I were discussing your report," he continued with a hint of something in his voice that I suspected was supposed to represent awe or importance, since "Chas" was Charles Knoxworth, Kovacs's own boss, the head of this entire department, a man I'd met once and naturally enough despised on sight.

  "Oh?" I said. I'd never before seen anyone measure his pencils after they'd been sharpened, and I was indulging myself in this rare treat.

  "Chas thinks you're a good writer," Kovacs said. "Chas doesn't think you'll be content to remain an editor. Chas thinks you'll be a writer yourself."

  "Oh?" I asked, wondering if using the term "Chas thinks" as often as Kovacs did could be considered verbal masturbation.

  "In fact, Chas thinks you're repressing your creative spirit, and that might explain why Chas thinks you've rushed this evaluation on the Rainey/Schachter manuscript."

  "Rushed it?" I asked, amazed. I'd taken three weeks!

  One of Kovacs's pencils was evidently a sixteenth of an inch too long: in need of immediate correction.

  "There are factors to consider," Kovacs said, chugging away at the sharpener. "Once in use, these textbooks have to stand the Test of Time," he added, using his favorite cliché, one of little value these days since everyone in the universe was changing their textbooks, which explained why I'd done the evaluation and in fact why I had this job.

  "So I should have taken longer?" I asked. I could have told him he'd never get all twelve pencils the same length. Why even bother, since once they were used they'd all be different lengths anyway?

  "It's not the time element," Kovacs said, "so much as the amount of consideration, of pondering, of sheer mulling over that should go into a decision of this nature."

  He was looking at the uneven pencils—trying not to be too obviously upset over them.

  Now, it was true that I'd ended the report by saying that while the manuscript was fine, it struck me that there was no particular need for it: the market was already fall of books on the subject, including a better one of our own. Could this have been a major tactical error on my part? If my report were being declined, did that mean that for some reason, Chas—or someone else higher up in the company—wanted the manuscript published? I needed some data.

  "Tell me something, Frank." I tried the "friendly act" on him. "Has the company already paid for the Rainey/Schachter book?"

  "There was an advance," he said offhandedly. "Not a large one. And an agreement. But not an unbreakable one."

  We both knew that unlike with so-called trade books, the real money in textbooks was not in large, up-front advances but in endless years of eventually accruing royalties. I decided to try another tack: I'd inherited the manuscript from my friend, but perhaps he'd not been the first to see it.

  "This wouldn't have been one of Chas's pet projects when he was in your spot?" I tried.

  Kovacs had given up on the pencils and slipped them back into the box. Wrong move—their unevenness was now far more apparent. He slid them out again.

  "No, I don't believe so."

  "Tell you what, Frank, since you and Chas agree on this, why not let me see that manuscript again," I said, reaching for my report. "Perhaps I have been a bit hasty."

  As I thought, Kovacs seemed relieved. Evidently he didn't know what the problem was either. Or he did know and couldn't bring himself to tell me.

  "I knew you'd understand," he said, standing up and casually brushing the unevenly sharpened pencils into a drawer.

  Debbie told me what I should do next:

  "Nothing. Or rather nothing right away," she explained, as we walked out of the building toward the subway stop we shared. "And definitely nothing new. Don't reread any of it. Don't bother rewriting any of it. Wait about a month, then retype this same report on different paper. You should maybe use different-size margins or change the length of line so they'll think it's brand-new."

  "You're kidding."

  "Don't underestimate their intelligence. And if they aren't committed to the manuscript, all they want is a good excuse not to do it. Two negative reports, say, over a longish period of time... They're scot-free."

  "What do I do at the office in the meantime?"

  "Don't ask me," Debbie said, "I'm reading all of Proust. In the original. Hell, I'm learning French to read it."

  Debbie saw her uptown train and decided to make a run for it. I dawdled down the other side of the platform for the downtown local. I had to admit I wasn't all that eager to get home.

  When I'd phoned Carl and asked what was wrong with my life, I'd meant more than just the job. I'd meant—everything! Here I was, twenty-four years old with no direction, no goal, except a vague one to someday be a writer, although of what and how I hadn't a clue. Not only was I goalless, but looked at straight on, I had nothing of my own. I'd inherited the job, which wasn't much, from one college friend. I'd inherited my apartment from another friend, who believed that rent-controlled apartments should fall into the hands of one's sworn enemy before a stranger ever moved in. In fact, I'd even sort of inherited the young woman I was living with from a friend.

  Not a college friend, however: Little Jimmy. I'd first met Little Jimmy at some party or other six months before and had pretty consistently run into him thereafter. Possibly because he'd also taken to hanging out with the loose group of pals I knew who centered roughly around an urban commune in the West Village. Jimmy came from North Carolina, and while small and lean physically, he was something of a big man when it came to women. In fact, he always had one or another terrific-looking woman whenever I saw him, most of them blond, and usually very cool. The most recent one, Jennifer, was a Minnesota girl so blond she faded into invisibility in bright light, yet so down-home I was astonished when she began confiding in me her plans for a new "act," which somehow or other involved a giant spider's web, painted black chains, and eight-inch high heels. It took me a while to figure out that quiet little Jennifer was not a Smith coed but—of all things—a carnival stripper.

  Anyway, Jimmy had phoned me a few weeks earlier out of nowhere and asked if I could do him a favor. Money, I figured. I figured wrong.

  "I've got too many blondes on my hands," Jimmy said, clearly delighted to be saying it. "I just got rid of one. I'm living with Jennifer and her sister. Now my old girlfriend Michelle's back in town. You remember Michelle?"

  I didn't. But I figured once you met one of
Jimmy's women...

  "Michelle's great!" Little Jimmy enthused. "She's unique! Know what I mean? At any rate she needs a place to stay for a short while. And I can't keep her here. You've still got that extra room and extra bed, don't you? She won't stay long. She's not sure what she's doing really, whether she's staying or going."

  All of which turned out to be true, once Michelle arrived later that day, with her two large, leather saddle bags.

  Seeing Michelle, I did remember her—vaguely—from the first time I'd met Little Jimmy. But Michelle was different from his others, altogether more "hip," with her homespun yet glamorous outfits, her long, lemon-chiffon-colored hair, her sweet little face—sincere big blue eyes, perfect nose and mouth—not to mention her ample, her dynamite, body.

  "I'll try not to get in your space too much," Michelle said, once we'd settled her bags in. "I'll do my sewing and my art while you're at work, and I'll be out of here when you get home."

  "Well, gee," I wanted to say, "you can get in my space a little!"

  Michelle took over the small room off the kitchen which had been my own first bedroom in the apartment when I'd shared it and would in future be either a dining room or study. That first night, she went to Little Jimmy's place for dinner, and having scoped out his situation for herself—i.e., that he was drenched in women—she never went back. Nor, to my surprise, did he come visit her at my place. But as Michelle remained out late every night, until long after I was asleep—just as she'd predicted in those first days—I hardly knew she was there.

  The major indications of her presence were half-smoked joints left in the living room ashtrays and a copy of the I Ching left open on the bathroom hamper, turned to Hexagram #56, The Traveler. Once I peeked into her bedroom, and saw a quite substantial sewing kit within its own separate and rather complex-looking leather bag; and alongside it, a large pad and a forty-color set of Caran d'Ache crayons.

  I remember thinking how odd it was that this room—so recently not thought of, or when thought of considered merely a part of the apartment—had suddenly become alien to me, its contents mysterious, its very premises suddenly untouchable except for some particular and good reason.

  The second weekend Michelle lived with me, a weasely guy named Leighton came by to take her out. He possessed all the appurtenances and accoutrements of a hip guy of the time—clothing, language, you name it—but I don't know why, I read him as a phony.

  None of my damn business who Michelle went out with as long as she paid her rent and kept her part of the place clean. That's what I told myself time and again. That's what I told her when, at the end of the month, Michelle and I sat down over tea and grass one summer morning to discuss her future.

  "It's great that you feel that way," she said, responding to my statement in her low-keyed, restrained voice, seemingly incapable of enthusiasm. "Because I'd like to stay here a little while longer."

  "You would?" I guess I was both pleased and surprised.

  "Jimmy was right. You're good people. Easy to get along with. No hassles."

  It turned out Michelle had been living in other people's places for the past year, ever since she'd left the city to go across country and check out various arts and crafts scenes she'd heard about. She wanted to remain here long enough to do some work to show around and sell when she went out on the road again. Meanwhile, she'd stay in my guest room, pay the share of rent we'd agreed on, and not get in my space.

  "You've got your life. I've got mine," she concluded.

  She was wrong: I'd had nothing even vaguely like a life and had she been around during the evenings and weekends, she would have found that out herself. As for her life, I guessed it must include Leighton, and I didn't much care about that.

  Michelle let out a bit more information. Her family came from coastal Massachusetts, and she'd be visiting her grandmother up there soon, partly to see her, partly to learn from her some specific New England stitchings Michelle was interested in, and partly to get money.

  The only other information I discovered about her family was that it was "weird yet somehow boring at the same time." During a later, somewhat briefer tea together, it came out that Michelle was on the outs with her parents, like so many of my coevals, and that, far more surprisingly, she was on the lookout for a specific male—get this!—to father a child on her.

  "Not that I want to get married, or do any of that conventional trip, you understand. I don't even want to live with the guy. Just conceive with him. I'll bring up the kid myself. This psychic astrologer and I worked out the best times to conceive and the best signs of guys to do it with."

  This idea struck me as just about the height of cool, and I was feeling that altogether Michelle was completely out of my league—not to mention Little Jimmy's—when she said, "What's your birthdate anyway?" and when I told her, she said, "Well, you seem to fit. But so does Leighton." The guy she was seeing. Which somewhat explained why she was sleeping with him—since nothing else could explain it to me.

  The next few weeks were odd. If Michelle had been a guy, indeed if she had been almost anyone else other than who she was, I would have been content to be paid some rent for a room I wasn't using. As it was, whenever she was in the apartment, I was always very aware of her presence, no matter if she were alone, working, which was most common, or if she were on the phone or—much more rarely—there with someone else, a woman friend, sometimes Leighton before they went out for the night.

  This was undoubtedly my own fault. Michelle's presence had brought into high relief my own problems. Which could be summed up as follows: it had been two years since I'd been in a relationship with a woman, and that one had been a mistake. Well, maybe not a mistake so much as a failure. After close to a full year of dates, most of which had ended with kisses at her apartment door, or at rare times necking on the sofa while her roommate was on the phone, we'd still not gotten down to the nitty-gritty. It wasn't that I was afraid, or even that I was inexperienced. I simply wasn't that interested in screwing Janet. I wanted a relationship that might come to include sex eventually but that wasn't totally wrapped around it. However, that was not what Janet wanted. Or rather, what she wanted was her own idea of how it was all mixed up.

  This had all come to a head one evening when we were necking and petting heavily on her sofa, our clothing all a mess, and she finally pulled me up and panted, "The bedroom," and when I protested, "What about Helena?" she said, "Helena's not here." Well, I was horny and we more or less made love, but it was no surprise to Janet that my ardor had cooled somewhat from what it had been before, on the sofa.

  Afterward, Janet said, between puffs on her mentholated Kent, "It must be me. You were hotter than a pistol before."

  "It's not you," I admitted. "It's me. I'm not sure we should be doing this."

  "Why shouldn't we? Everyone else is. Even... Helena is."

  "I know. But I feel like it's... I don't know... some sort of commitment I'm not ready to make."

  "I'm not asking for any commitment," Janet quickly said. Then, "Who am I kidding? I'd love one. But I know now it's not going to be with you."

  That ended our conversation, and a pall fell on our relationship after that. I called once or twice more to make a date to go out. Janet put me off twice—enough so I got the hint and stopped phoning. I halfheartedly thought Janet wasn't right for me, that I needed someone else. But I also harbored other, darker, different thoughts. What if I really didn't like girls at all? Sure, I could get erect with her, but I was young, I got erect when a dog barked, when a train whistle blew, hell, when the wind blew with a certain force. What if I weren't heterosexual at all, like everyone around me, but instead...

  I didn't go that far. Yet I knew that when I'd come back from visiting my cousins in California, I'd gone right to my encyclopedia, right to the dictionary, and then to the local library to look up the word "homosexual" and read everything I could find about it. It wasn't much, and it was consistently negative, and I knew this couldn't be
me, simply couldn't. On the other hand, everything I read, every word, had excited me unlike anything I'd ever read about regular man-woman sex—short, that is, of descriptions of actual intercourse, which I found to be exciting no matter who did it or how it was presented.

  No, the real problem was that I didn't believe any of these writers. At least not until I came to the introduction of the 1949 Kinsey Report, which I read in the reference section of the library, and which seemed to conclude more or less what I'd heard from Alistair's surfing buddies: that all sorts of guys had some sort of sexual contact with one another, and it didn't necessarily mean anything. Leastways not that you were queer yourself. None of Jewel's boys at the Topanga beach house had had as much contact with girls as they had with one another, according to Jewel herself, Judy, and Alistair, and none of them were... I couldn't even bring myself to say the word.

  That was how one of my arguments went. Its exact opposite said that none of this meant anything at all; I'd simply not found a young woman I loved, and when I did find her, none of this would make any difference: I'd want to screw her day in and day out, and I'd never again think about those surfer boys, or about how much other young men attracted me.

  Now, it seemed, Fate had sent just such a young woman directly into my life; indeed, directly into my apartment. All I had to do now was take advantage of the fact. Because if I didn't, well, who knew what awful future awaited me? The way it turned out, none of it was up to me after all. Fate was at work, and everyone around me had some part to play.

  Including Debbie. The very night Debbie had given me advice about work, she phoned me later. I'd done food shopping and had barely gotten in the door, when Debbie asked if I'd been listening to the radio.

  "No, why?" I asked, wondering what new disaster in these years of terrible political disasters had happened now.

  "Well, they're talking about all these rock groups that are getting together somewhere upstate New York this weekend to play a big outdoor concert," she said. "It sounds like everyone's going to be there. Don't you know anything about it?"