Dancing in the Dark

by David Donnell

  for too long. Mississippi, shit.

  BRAT PACKS, FRAT PACKS

  All these stories about Jay Mc

  Inerney

  as a youth novelist are a bit exaggerated. McInerney

  didn’t do very much “youth culture” after he published

  Bright Lights,

  Big City. No circuses

  or great concerts

  or mass gatherings

  or serious journalism. No Music, for sure no music.

  Life was calm

  & McInerney just hung out in New York

  after hours places

  like Nell’s

  & did what people used to do in diners – drink coffee

  & talk about what they used to do back in college

  except that in the after hours club version

  you’re supposed to do a little coke every ½ hour.

  O

  coke, O coke. I prefer some of the stories

  about Truman Capote

  coming up to New York when he was 19

  after writing Other Voices, Other Rooms & all the crazy

  parties he was involved in after that. I read his short

  stories in Grade 13 at Malvern High & I thought,

  Wow,

  is this guy imaginative. Southern Gothic. Plus,

  he had a great admiration for the time signature &

  personality of the American sentence.

  MAYBE SHE WASN’T VERY INTERESTED IN FIRE TRUCKS

  There was a yellow sky, it was smoky yellow, it was around 6:45 on a June night, and we were sitting, draped over large over-size white-painted wicker furniture, on the long front porch before supper. I was having supper at Susan’s, her parents were in New York for the weekend, there was water boiling for spaghetti, we were going to go in soon and make a tossed salad, nothing special, maybe some cracked walnuts and orange sections, and then we were going to go to a film with Ted and Alice.

  Something made me think of a Suzanne Vega story, she’s a singer, and she does comic monologues when she feels like it, I’ve seen her on television a couple of times. I said, “Suzanne Vega has a funny story.” Susan nods with repressed hilarity, she’d been laughing violently about something else we were talking about, she’s wearing a pale mauve shirt, a big loose shirt, one of her father’s. She says, “Okay?”

  I say, “She claims this is one of her earliest memories, I don’t know if that changes the nature of the story or not, gives it a special emphasis. She’s about 4 ½, she’s sitting on the floor on the carpet in her parents’ living room, Massachusetts or wherever, in front of the television set maybe. Her first boyfriend …”

  “Just a second,” says Susan, leaning forward and almost falling agile athlete over the wide arm of her white-painted wicker chair, “her first boyfriend.”

  I say, “Yeah, her first boyfriend.”

  “So, how many boyfriends did she have at 4 ½?”

  “I don’t know,” I say, “this was her first, so it’s special, I guess, okay.” We’ve been drinking gin & lemon juice & grapefruit juice & orange juice & cracked ice, I have a little bit left in my tall glass. “Anyway, they’re sitting there, and she remembers saying to him, at least she claims she remembers this, and she has every right to claim she remembers this, it’s private, sure, but it’s her life, right? she says to him very nicely, very seriously, maybe her parents were there, who knows, ‘When I grow up, Mark, I’m going to marry you.’ ”

  “His name was Mark?”

  “I don’t know. I can’t remember. We don’t know for sure if the story is actually true, or if it’s simply one of her stories, I mean, she’s a comic, right, or a writer.”

  “The other kid’s name may have been Albert or something and she could have changed it.”

  “Right, so, that’s what she says to him. I like to imagine, she doesn’t go into details, that she was wearing one of those really neat little white dresses with a sash, like that photograph of your sister …”

  “Very proper.”

  “Yeah.”

  “They weren’t working class?” Susan loves nitty gritties.

  “I don’t know, she’s got a very upper middle class style, I mean, she’s preppy, she’s got that style.”

  “Yeah, okay.” Susan is sitting up now straddling the wide arm of her wicker chair, she has loose multicoloured Bermudas on and the loose floppy legs of her cotton shorts ride up over her smooth tanned thighs creating an impression not of prurience, she just has white underwear on anyway, I mean it’s nothing exotic, but rather an impression of piled-up energy.

  “So that’s what she says to Mark, if that was his name, if he, Mark, ever existed in actual fact land or not.”

  “Girls are always saying that,” she says, with an odd, wrinkling of the nose, Susan has quite a beautiful nose, not aquiline exactly, not large, a fair-size nose, sort of Roman with a very distinct tip and just a bit delicate around the nostrils. “They usually say it to their fathers. I did. I walked up to my father in the living room, living rooms are the settings for all sorts of stuff, it was one night after supper, it was sometime around the time I started school. And I walked right up to him, he was sitting in his favourite armchair in the living room, my mother describes it, and I said, ‘Father, when I grow up, I’m going to marry you.’ ”

  “And you’ve got no memory at this time as to whether you premeditated this dramatic statement, or it just occurred to you, apparently, out of nothing, apropos of something your mother said a few minutes earlier?”

  “Oh, nothing, just, you know, one of those 5 million and 1 passing whims that go through your mind if you’re a little girl.” She leans forward resting her weight on her hands. Susan has beautiful wide strong simple hands, they’re not as tanned as her thighs, or her shoulders under the pale mauve man’s shirt, probably her father’s.

  “So what next?” She gives me a big up from under her thick bronzy eyebrows look.

  Okay, this is where the anecdote goes Freudian. And it’s already turned into a whole conversation, whereas what I thought I was doing was that I was just rattling off a quick photograph, and then we were going to go inside and make a big salad, because Susan loves big salads, even if the leftover balance has to be sealed with Saran Wrap and the bowl put away in the fridge. This has gotten deeper, not difficult or anything, but deeper, sort of like that Sunday afternoon deep old brown hole out in the middle of the Thames River.

  I say okay. “So that’s what she said, ‘When I grow up I’m going to marry you.’ And then he stands up, at least I think she says he stood up, I suppose it makes a difference, and he says, ‘Well, when I grow up, I’m going to be a fireman, and I’m going to have a big hose, and I’m going to squirt water all over you.’ ” I’m laughing while I finish the story. I can’t help thinking it’s funny. It is funny. Most of the stuff that children do is funny. Even though I’m much too young to have children myself, although I suppose if I was careless, I’m not, then I might have. Children. James Purdy has a great book called Children Is All, that’s what’s going through my head at the moment, I’d love to be able to write as well as James Purdy, oh yeah, and other unlikely dreams. I’ll probably wind up playing bass fiddle in a dance band.

  Susan’s hysterical. “Oh yeah,” she says between gasps, her violet eyes half-slitted, her mouth coping for air, “that’s so true, that’s so true it hurts. If you’ve ever been a young high school girl on a first date, and the boy has a car, and of course you don’t, then you know how true that is. The little fats.”

  She’s getting up, I’m getting up, she’s clutching her slim flat stomach, also tanned, under the pale mauve man’s shirt, still laughing, and tucking in her shirt at the same time.

  “Children are so beautiful,” I say, guilelessly, “that they can say anything.”

  “Oh sure,” Susan says, “and they do, they do.”

  The story is floating around us like a few distant maple keys in spring floating on a light breeze and drifti
ng down to your front sidewalk or your back porch. “Is she good-looking?” Susan asks, picking up her empty glass and a bowl of salted redskins.

  “Who? Suzanne Vega?” She is, she’s quite good-looking in a sort of neat snooty way, and I like her haircut.

  “Suzanne Nova.”

  “No,” I say, “I think Nova’s a corporation. Suzanne Vega, like Vegas without an s.”

  “Yeah,” she says, she’s still laughing, “Suzanne Vega without an s, is she good-looking?”

  “Yeah, sort of slim and preppy, I guess she’s good-looking.”

  I take a last look at the yellow sky, it’s going paler bluey. I’m thinking about boats. I can’t help thinking how terrific it would be if we lived closer to Lake Huron or down towards Lake Ontario, and we would probably have a share in a boat or a lend of somebody’s boat.

  “Suzanne Nova,” Susan says, “that’s funny.” She has the empty peanuts bowl, which was, an hour before, full of salted redskins, in one hand, and her empty glass in the other. She gives me a nudge in the ribs with her elbow. “Open the door, Alvin,” she says. We close the screen door behind us, and go back into the house to make the big salad before we meet Ted and Alice and go to a film.

  JEFF GOLDBLUM

  Late 60s,

  maybe 1970. He appeared

  on the lower east-side New York scene –

  a young guy

  out of acting school and looking for jobs in any play at all.

  I read about him in Vanity Fair. He just got written up

  for a little side bar. I liked

  the fact

  that he was 6’6”, ambitious &

  had a small 12×10 room

  close to Avenue B,

  & that before leaving every morning

  he would make his bed & put all his socks

  all 6 pair

  rolled up, you know,

  at the tops, in a row on his bed.

  Compulsive, like the history student in Updike’s story

  Roommates,

  but he found work, & guess what,

  fortune’s play,

  he made a # of films – including The Fly. Dopey. I liked him

  in The Big Chill,

  where he played the tall vaguely sinister dacron-suited MBA,

  It wasn’t a great film, post-college sentiment & popcorn,

  but he was really good. I think they should make 3 or 4

  films in a row like The Big Chill, & let Jeff Goldblum

  play an MBA,

  a mathematics grad-school drop out

  & an ex-college basketball forward. He’s an intense guy,

  & he was good in The Big Chill.

  I’M 26, MARTHA, & I’M TIRED OF SLOW DESCRIPTIVE FICTION

  We fold up the brown paper bags

  & the waxed paper

  after laying out the food we’ve bought,

  2 steak&kidney pies,

  a plate of beefsteak tomatoes,

  4 loaves of crusty Calabrese baguette, flour dusted, chewy,

  rigatoni with feta & oil & black olives,

  cheese,

  put the dogs out in the back yard

  & go into the shower together dripping with good intentions.

  I am moving the dark blue washcloth dripping with hot

  water & soap over one of your hips

  & then you are

  almost reclining on my back,

  head comfortably

  snuggled against my shoulder. I can feel your warmth

  more completely than the hot water of the shower. Your

  weight seems an afterthought,

  resting on your perfect

  splayed toes,

  down there in the rising water

  When I turn around to face you & we kiss

  the dark blue washcloth is I don’t know where really.

  I seem to rise up & turn around in a sense without

  leaving you.

  No, I am still very much here,

  feet flat on the bathtub floor,

  water up to our calves,

  your calves are a little fuller than mine,

  joke, rural,

  antecedent, & smoother, no hair,

  no soft dark fluff.

  We kiss, erections aren’t a problem

  they’re a window sill

  to lean on.

  You say you are sleepy & would like to make love

  & get in between the new cotton sheets & sleep –

  you don’t want any company.

  I say “Okay, that’s funny,

  she’s your cousin & her husband’s not such a bad guy.”

  But what I see – kissing your thick dark hair –

  isn’t any invasion,

  approx. 7 – 7:30 p.m., & the dogs will be

  clamouring to get in the kitchen just to say hello,

  but rather that image I’ve had for several days

  of Borges walking through downtown streets in Buenos Aires

  showing some visitors around, dark glasses, huge bald

  head, gestures, famous buildings.

  I like the calm way

  Borges looks in the image. I thought I was going blind

  once, it was a mistake,

  their mistake. I have no

  desire to write like Kafka. I like dark blue washcloths,

  hounds, & rigatoni.

  I want to see The Tin Drum

  a third time because I like it as a film. But

  I am so in love with the tangible things

  of this world I don’t think

  you could persuade me to read the novel. The novel

  is brilliant but it’s too abstract.

  A BIG YELLOW MOON COMING UP OVER MICHIGAN

  “Every woman needs a man

  sometimes,” she says

  blithely

  as she slips around the dark blue suit who has tried to pat her

  on the ass

  & extends one arm, black sweater sleeve rolled up

  under white waitress uniform,

  a plate with a wide pork chop, tinned

  green peas,

  & mashed potatoes. The potatoes aren’t home mash,

  she points out good humouredly,

  she doesn’t own this place,

  a Greek guy does. She has a daughter, Louise, 4 ½ years old.

  “Sometimes,”

  I say, “but not always?” “Sometimes,” she says,

  & she goes on to explain that being linked is too complicated

  unless you’re perfectly matched & even Donald &

  Ivana Trump aren’t perfectly matched. She’s young,

  36,

  a very good looking woman with dark hair & just a splash

  of entrancing early grey across one side of her forehead.

  I look

  back at that city, Ann Arbor, & I think of her, & think I should have

  asked her out, we could have gone to a film, maybe A Fish

  Called Wanda,

  & she would have been great in bed, I guess, or dancing.

  But you know me,

  I like relationships

  to end happily

  with both people feeling

  there have been no misunderstandings,

  no distortions

  of the kind you find in amateur photography

  where sometimes it looks as if Jack is trying to pick

  up Carolyn in his arms

  but it’s a blurred image

  with a child in the background

  & actually he was just leaning over with a hand on her

  shoulder to say something to her about the photographer

  who used to be his roommate in college.

  IDIOMS ARE LIKE A PACKAGE OF CAMEL LIGHTS

  “What’s happening, momma?”

  he says jovially

  as he comes through the door,

  not famous as jazz musicians go

  but famous enough, about medium height,

  close
cut hair,

  a yellow & brown check sports jacket

  but it looks good on him. There are about 2 cars parked

  up over the curb outside, we’re having dinner,

  & I realize there are certain idioms that are exclusive,

  that is,

  they go with a specific vocation [software writer,

  hardware installation team supervisor, etc.] or colour,

  colour at least in the broad American sense

  in which the landscape of America is so large it contains

  every colour

  from cactus flower yellow to pale blue Massachusetts

  fence in a small town back yard.

  And just for a split nano

  second I envy him & resent the fact that I can’t use any idiom

  I happen to feel like using. Well, sure, I can,

  use any idiom I feel like, using. And then I reach over to

  shake his hand

  & I say, “Good to meet you, Coy, I love your work.”

  And I do, he’s a great piano player, and every idiom is like a

  bass motif that you can play if you like, as long as it works.

  A STORY ABOUT PERFORMANCE POETS

  So,

  this guy Harold,

  26, a bit of a nebbish

  out of college, NYU,

  a big yellow bow-tie, etc.

  shows up at the Blue Note when it was on 52nd street in the 1940s,

  & dig this,

  he was something of a writer when he was at college,

  NYU

  & this is the late 1940s,

  1946 to be preeeee/cise,

  but like hey, a reeeeeally bad poet,

  no intellect

  & NO sense of hoooomour.

  And there he is leaning on the bar

  & waddda ya think he sees? Some guy

  called Wallace Stevens

  is up on stage reading a poem about Kentucky & grackles

  & talking about Hart Crane

  & a young black dude is playing bass oboe behind him.

  “Wow,

  fuck,” says Harold the nebbish

  just out of college, NYU, big yellow bow-tie, etc.

  “so the text doesn’t mean diddle-fuck, I’m saved, I’m alive,