Everyone is Watching

by Megan Bradbury

  Will the fair be a success, Commissioner?

  I believe it will be a success. All major structures and highways are complete. These were finished six weeks ahead of schedule. We had trouble getting the Belgian Village started. It has a very complicated structure – a lot of work has gone into its historical accuracy – but we’ve done it. We’ve already sold fourteen hundred tickets. The critics can’t argue with that. The thing about critics is that they don’t build anything themselves. Now how can you trust a man who doesn’t create anything?

  Robert Moses is sitting with the reporter in the rear of a convertible as it travels slowly through a crowd of people down a pedestrianized street.

  Moses says, Girls get confused over the numbers in memos. It’s not their fault. They’re not used to them. Some of these figures are very large. When we call this a billion-dollar fair, we mean a billion-dollar fair. We’ve widened the Grand Central Parkway without closing it to traffic. The Clearview Expressway has been completed. The Van Wyck Expressway has been widened. The Northern Boulevard has been given an elevated boulevard. The Whitestone Expressway has been extended. These changes will benefit New York long into the future. It is for the good of the city that we have made these changes.

  Of course, there are always critics. I have a female friend, for example, who complained to me about the congestion surrounding the fair site. She said she was stuck in traffic for two hours outside the park. I said to her, ‘Why did you go through at five o’clock on a Friday?’ She said, ‘I wanted to see what was going on.’ There’s nothing you can do about people like that.

  A member of the public leans into the car and asks Robert Moses for his autograph. Moses signs the paper and hands it back.

  Are you satisfied with dedicating your life to building? asks the reporter.

  Oh yes, I wouldn’t do it otherwise, says Moses. I get appreciative letters from the public all the time. There’s one man who has come to this fair thirty times. That experience is not uncommon. But there’s a pathological desire in people to criticize. They say we’ve spent too much money on the fair and that the roads weren’t needed. The press criticize because they’re unhappy. Someone should look into their childhoods. All the fellow wants to know about are the states that didn’t join the fair. The story is never about the states that did. Now, what do you do with a fellow like that? It makes no sense for New Yorkers to criticize New York. They are spreading the rumour that New York City is just a city of goons and thugs. People listen to gossip. Riots have kept people away from New York and that’s the fault of the press. We’ve roamed these United States looking for pavilions and exhibits that will reflect the achievements of all men within industry, culture, the arts and entertainment. We confidently expect more than seventy million visitors to an unforgettable pageant.

  Do you consider yourself a tough man, Commissioner?

  Oh no, very mild.

  The New York State Pavilion at the 1964 – 65 World’s Fair will be a permanent new feature of Flushing Meadows–Corona Park. A circular area roofed with colourful Plexiglas tiles and two observation towers from where the public will view the fair.

  As Moses and the reporter ride the Skystreak elevator to the top observation deck, the reporter asks, How have you risen above your critics?

  I don’t like to stay on their level, says Moses, laughing.

  The reporter looks out over the fair. The expressways to the west of the park are jammed with vehicles, the automobiles as small as toys packed into traffic lanes. Crowds of people stream down the fair’s many pathways.

  There have been criticisms of your other projects, Commissioner. What do you say to critics like Jane Jacobs?

  What do we care about the complaints? says Moses.

  Some people say you’ve built this fair for yourself. Is this a monument to Robert Moses?

  It isn’t a monument to anyone.

  They ride the carousel in the Belgian Village together. Moses is laughing as he tries to hang on.

  I’m getting very friendly with the cashier, Moses says. By the third trip around, you’ve either made the conquest or you haven’t!

  Robert Moses is standing above the Panorama of the City of New York, a scale model of the city, two hundred and seventy-three blocks built by two hundred people over three years. Moses can see everything he ever built – the roadways, the housing, the beaches, the bridges. All the buildings in the model are made from wood and plaster but the bridges that Moses built are made from brass and built on a larger scale than the rest. The model shows the city as a system of neatly interconnected roadways, parkways and bridges. There are no people on the streets.

  The reporter strolls around the model’s perimeter walkway. The light effect changes from dawn to dusk. A lonely plastic aeroplane takes off and lands at La Guardia airport as the fake sun moves over. The model of the Unisphere, a great globe, is directly beneath him. Pavilions surround it. There are designated areas for refreshments and souvenir stalls. There is the General Motors Pavilion and an International Plaza. There is the Fountain of the Planets and a Belgian Village.

  Robert Moses also built Jones Beach on Long Island. The reporter remembers visiting when he was young. He remembers the clear blue water of the diving pools and the changing rooms that had never been used. But he has been through this with his editor already. Now don’t get all gooey-eyed about this guy; just stick to the facts.

  Robert Moses is tall and broad, standing behind a lectern, looking casually over his audience. Behind him is the giant Unisphere positioned on its axis in the centre of a fountain.

  This Fair is dedicated to man’s achievement on a shrinking globe in an expanding universe, Moses says. The ambition of the fair is to provide good wholesome family fun, no cheap amusements or freak shows, no shabby games or bawdy entertainment. The central emblem of the fair is this steel Unisphere, a steel skeleton of the globe, hanging suspended over the central fountain, as tall as a twelve-storey building and made of corrosion-resistant steel. It is the largest replica of this planet ever constructed and will serve as a reminder of man’s achievement long after the fair has gone. Bulldozers and builders, like poets, are incurable romantics at heart. This fair is the result of a pursuit of a dream. The dreamer is only as good as his dream.

  The audience applauds. Moses turns to shake the hand of the representative from United States Steel Corporation. He accepts a large steel certificate.

  A man leans over to the reporter and says, Do you know that this fair doesn’t really exist? It doesn’t have the backing of the Bureau of International Expositions. Moses charged exhibitors to erect their own pavilions but that’s against the Bureau’s rules. When they told him he wasn’t allowed to charge he said to hell with you. So they’ve written him out of the history books. They won’t endorse it. It’ll hamper its chances. But Moses is a stubborn bastard.

  Want to say that on the record?

  Speak out against Robert Moses? He laughs. You’ve gotta be kidding.

  58

  You’re not writing down what I am saying, says Walt.

  Bucke looks down his notebook. The pages are blank.

  59

  When the body slows down, one thing goes and then another. It is like there is a list of final things for the body to do and once whoever it is who is in charge has given permission then that’s when it starts, one thing followed by another. Everyone is watching Robert Mapplethorpe. They say this is how it should be for a photographer. As someone who has spent his whole life looking, in the end, it is him who must be watched. They say, Robert would want this, Robert would want that, but Robert can no longer speak.

  He is dreaming of the Brooklyn docks. There is no grinding of ropes or hollers of foremen. No swing or snap of cargo and cranes. New York Bay is an inky swell of moonlight.

  Then Midtown: cranes stand arrested in the night sky, great limbs, reaching for the morning. Scaffolding holds up newly constructed towers. The buildings are empty glass structures, an outer laye
r with nothing inside. They show how everything is formed – first the exterior is built and then it is filled. One day someone will look at the city from the other side of the glass and take a picture.

  Welcome to the sixties.

  Welcome to the last gasp.

  Welcome to the hill brow.

  Welcome to the shoulder stretch, the great dive, arms outstretched, where Robert is standing in a muddy trench in Brooklyn during his military initiation, naked now, his feet sinking into mud, cold rain forming rivers of clear, pale skin down the length of his shins, and his whole body is aching. He is laughing.

  Robert dies on the morning of March 9th 1989 at Deaconess Hospital in Boston. In his last moments he suffers a seizure, a terrible spasm, and then he is gone.

  A necklace is lying on the bedside table. Edward has never seen Robert wear it. It is exotic, Persian. The plaques shimmer in the light. He looks at the necklace. He will take the necklace. He will give it to Patti. It was hers to begin with. He has heard the story many times.

  60

  Edmund showers and shaves. He arranges his hair. He sets out all of the bottles of toiletries neatly on the bathroom shelf. In the past he did not wash before going out. Now he wears aftershave and moisturizing cream. He wears hair cream and eyebrow gel. He wipes the steam from the mirror and looks at himself. He dresses in the bedroom, pulls on a pair of chinos and a loose-fitting shirt. He ties the laces of his shoes. He waits a moment to collect his thoughts. He reaches for the apartment door. He stops for a moment to look at his manuscript, the pages of which are loose and spread across the floor.

  61

  It happened for the first time when I was at work, says Walt. I had been feeling unwell all day and so I left work and walked home. When I got there I went straight to bed. I slept like I would never wake. I woke hours later. When I woke I could not move my arm or leg. I went back to sleep. When I woke again I could not move my body. I remained in bed. Time moved on but I could not. These attacks have persisted ever since. Though I am usually well, sometimes I find I cannot move. What do you think of this paralysis, Bucke? Is it a sign of something else, do you think? You are a medical man. Is there something I am doing wrong? I must finish my books. And there are so many letters to write. There’s pleasure, Bucke, and love. What will happen when I am gone?

  Bucke picks Walt’s clothes up from the floor and folds them. He takes down the suitcase from the overhead compartment and lays the clothes neatly inside it. Bucke folds his own clothes and lays them in his trunk. Next he spreads his books evenly across the clothes to distribute the weight.

  I recovered in my brother’s house in Camden, says Walt. There is a railway track across the yard and all the trains in it are rusting. I lay very still in bed, surrounded by all the books and scraps of paper on which I had written many letters and poems. I realized this was the bed in which my mother died.

  Bucke places his notebooks on top of his books and closes the lid of the trunk. He pushes the trunk and the suitcase towards the door where the porter will find them easily.

  I arrived at my brother’s house in time to see my mother die. She was no longer hungry. She could not eat. Her face was pale and sunken. She could no longer cough. Through the gap in the curtains I saw the rusting railway yard. I thought of other locations where I have known love.

  Bucke separates the curtains and ties them.

  I used to ride the streetcars in Washington. The ticket boy, Peter Doyle, had a pleasant face. He clipped my ticket many times on that first evening. He sat down beside me and placed his hand on my knee.

  Bucke pulls on his overcoat and secures the buttons. He sits down before Walt.

  As a printer I am aware of the shape and form of the poems on the page. It is not just the contents of a book that is important but also the parts that are left out. I print a page to see where the spaces are and then I know the poem I must write, I know its length and therefore its subject. I know how best to fill the space. When I look back through the book I can see the people described in it, the people who have inspired the poetry and the space in which they now reside. I see how they have now been reformed by the new context, in the pages of a book that forms a unit in itself, that is in itself whole. It starts with the recognition of blank space. It starts with a beginning, how we see the things that could begin and then how they continue. It is in the spaces of the streets where we walk, long, wide avenues and the spaces in between them. It is in the organization of a map, laid out in a grid and the buildings that will one day be built within those spaces. I can see the borders of the island, how far we could go, and where we would have to stop. For isn’t it true that this is life, that there is no end to this life, that we all are made from one another and will continue to form new time and new people and new ideas, and even when we are standing on the shoreline, stopped only by a body of water, we know we will continue like pages carried on a breeze. It is impossible for us to stop. I can see it all from above as if the city was a model on the ground. I see the blank spaces in the city and I can see how they might one day be filled. I see the pockets of neighbourhoods and their spreading outwards towards the shore. I see my beloved Brooklyn, and, further, the rest of Long Island. I see how each place is connected, how the rivers and ocean prevent them all from touching yet they are all connected under the water. It is all contained within me, this body. I am also a blank space, the space where things collect and form within my mind and within my body. I am the house and the book. I am the stanza and the sentence and the idea. The borders of these things are difficult to see. Ideas are not like islands for they cannot be fixed entirely on a map. I am finally putting it all into place. I have bought a plot of land, Bucke. I will be buried there. It does not matter where I am buried for when I am dead I will be dead in all places.

  62

  Edmund walks down Eighth Avenue, past KFC, Duane Reade, a Fashion College, three gyms, two dog parlours, West 23rd Street. People are mingling on the streets. The night is balmy and close. An orange glow cuts across the wide black avenue. Cars speed up then stop at lights.

  Edmund hails a cab. The cab smells of cigar smoke. This makes him think of his father.

  The cab drives through the orange fog. The streets are full. The stores are open. The restaurants are busy. All these things are familiar – the accents and the people speaking them, restaurants, delis, double-parking, but they have a different quality now, like Edmund is slowly losing his wider sense. He is extremely sensitive to vibration. There is a sense of the street rising to meet him. There is the movement of shadows, a tingle in his fingertips, in the end of his dick, an eyelash caught in the corner of his eye but when he feels for it he finds nothing there. The distant rumble of the subway, the thud of garbage being dumped in a basement, the scrape of a lock – the chain fence being secured across the Staten Island Ferry gangway, the slippery shift of feet upon metal, passengers eager to look out at the Statue of Liberty – oh, I thought she’d be taller, grander, still, this ride is free.

  Edmund looks in the restaurant window. A family is crowding around a baby. A group is singing ‘Happy Birthday’ to a friend.

  Yes?

  A waiter beside him.

  Edmund manages to say his own name.

  Come with me, please, the waiter says. He is shown to a table and handed a menu. He surveys all the other tables around him. Edmund orders a carafe of wine. He has not drunk for many years.

  Edmund looks up to see a man waving in the doorway. He is blond and athletic with a small, slender waist. He walks right over. Of course, he recognizes Edmund White.

  Edmund, says T.

  Edmund offers his hand. T shakes it, presses his fingers in.

  You’re early, T says.

  I was in the neighbourhood. Would you like some wine? Edmund asks.

  T sits down and takes the glass.

  I can’t believe you agreed to meet me, he says.

  You said you were cute.

  And am I?

  E
dmund smiles. This boy is very young. He is less than half Edmund’s age. He is chewing a piece of bread and gulping his wine. Edmund feels a pang in his stomach as strong as any he knew in the past.

  When the food arrives, Edmund is cautious not to eat too quickly. He doesn’t want to be seen as having an appetite. He cuts his steak small and chews it slowly. He watches T take large mouthfuls. T is on his third glass of wine already. Their silence is disguised by the noises of others. Edmund wants to reach out his hand to touch T’s. Years ago he would have done this. He would have reached across the table and taken his hand. He would have crawled under the table. But he doesn’t do that now.

  Robert Mapplethorpe’s First Loft

  (1999)

  DEXTER DALWOOD

  The painting depicts a dark room viewed through the segmentations of a chicken-wire screen. There is a black-sheeted bed, and the floor is black. The walls are black. At the end of the room is something red, a sofa or a table. Along one wall are two large windows. Here, sunlight hits the floor. Other sources of light include an overhead lamp and a mirror framed with lit bulbs. The glass mirror is bright white space. Nothing is being reflected here. There is a ceiling fan on the far side of the room. The room is empty. It is empty and dark except for the light coming from the mirror and the light coming in from the street. The artist has tried to replicate the feeling of the man through his absence. There is a sense in this painting that the man is out of the picture. There is a sense that this is as close as we can get. There are no people here. The painting is not realistic. The painting does not depict a real room. This room was never inhabited. It is the impression of a room. There is something of Robert Mapplethorpe in it, even though Robert Mapplethorpe has never been here. Perhaps it is more correct to say that we simply don’t see him.