At the top of the hill, across from the gas station, I penetrated the Hen's Roost—first there was a bar and then off to the right a dining room. An old fellow in a baseball hat was at the bar sipping a glass of gold-yellow beer; he was the only customer. I half expected to see Jeeves on a barstool, but he had found his diversion elsewhere. Perhaps he was in the beautiful Sharon Springs forest, performing a Spartan rite; that's the kind of thing Jeeves might do, I thought. The short, heavyset bartender, who had a distended belly which looked very difficult to carry around, addressed me: “Drink or eat, my friend?”
The “my friend” was quite welcoming. “Eat,” I said, though the beer the old fellow at the bar was drinking looked awfully tempting. But I felt strongly that I had better stay on the water wagon. If I drank and something did go wrong, I couldn't expect Aunt Florence and Uncle Irwin to bail me out.
“One minute,” said the bartender, and he went into the kitchen. He reemerged with a plump woman, who was wearing a white apron and black pants. Her reddish hair was in a frizzy perm. “My wife will take care of you, and if she doesn't, just let me know,” he said, grinning, conveying to me facetiously, man-to-man, that he kept his woman in line.
She smiled agreeably at his banter and sat me in the dining room at an old oaken booth, the table of which was deeply marked with the carvings of initials. All the booths were oak and scarred this way and so were the tables in the middle of the room. It occurred to me that germs and bacteria could readily collect in these scars—hard to keep such a table clean. My mind, I noted, was listing toward germy neurosis after imbibing that deer urine in the woods.
The bartender's wife said, “You want something to drink, sweetheart?”
It was easy to see that the Hen's Roost was a congenial establishment, despite its health hazards. I surmised that she and her husband were in the habit of only serving friends, thus they were comfortable with bandying about terms of endearment like friend and sweetheart. It was nice to be welcomed. Very human. It didn't seem like too many gentleman travelers—strangers like myself—must cross the threshold of this charming, rustic inn.
“I will be prudent and have only a club soda,” I said steadfastly.
She smiled at me from beneath her curly crown of red hair, but at the precise moment that I concluded my brave announcement, I glanced to the bar—I was in the booth closest to the drinking area—and saw the old fellow in the ball cap take a last and satisfying swig of beer. His mug looked absolutely romantic as he put it down. He motioned for a refill. I want to do that, I thought, and succumbing to peer pressure, I quickly said, “Actually, I'd like a beer.”
“We have Miller on tap. That all right?”
“Yes,” I whispered, mortified at my alcoholic weakness, and she walked away.
I was ashamed that I hadn't been able to stay on the wagon for even forty-eight hours. I looked at my fellow tippler at the bar. A milk-white ribbon of hair stuck out of the back of his hat, and what was visible of his neck, above his collar, was a crisscrossed slice of red meat. Awfully far north for rednecks, I thought, and I blamed him for my going back on the booze. He lifted his refilled mug and drank. I looked away. Why did you do this to me? I said to him in my mind.
The waitress came, bearing, like a chalice, my glass of beer. “Here you go, sweetheart. Enjoy.”
“Thank you,” I said, very much the weakling. She smiled and departed.
The beer was before me now. I can simply not pick it up, I thought. I won't drink it, and when she returns, I'll ask her to take it away, explain to her that I've changed my mind.
As soon as I completed that trickle of consciousness, my hand shot out, the mug was lifted, and the beer was in my mouth. It had been a feeble resistance—a little tree standing up against a hurricane. With the beer in my mouth, there was a feeling of transgression, of doing something purposefully unnatural, and I was thrilled by this transgression—the cold excitement that comes from doing something wrong. Then I took a second long sip, nearly finishing the beer, and feelings of transgression left me. There was no more awareness of possibly doing myself harm, whether I found it thrilling or not. You see, that Tennessee Williams click arrived almost immediately. The click that says: Everything is going to be all right. I guess it's a lie, but it's a very believable lie.
I raised my glass a third time, finished the beer, and privately toasted the old man at the bar. I wasn't upset with him anymore. I was—probably because of a weakened liver—already, after just one beer, in a mildly intoxicated state, and the ancient farmer was now my boon companion.
I motioned to the waitress, miming a refill. She arrived quickly. I was glad. I was impatient now that I had started. “Sweetheart, you finished that one in no time,” she said, but without judgment. I smiled at her. All was well. I drank up. And I deserved to drink: I was going to the Rose Colony! Cause for celebration!
Presently, I studied the bill of fare, and though I had the highest trust in the good intentions of the Hen's Roost—after all I had been called “friend” once and “sweetheart” three times and the beer was delicious—I decided to avoid anything that could be dangerous, such as the odd Cajun dishes they were offering and any of the fish entrées, especially since we were a good distance from the Atlantic, not to mention the Pacific.
I figured that chicken would be the house specialty—Hen's Roost and all that—and when the waitress came to take my order, I inquired, “Is your chicken free-range?”
“We broil it on the range.”
“I mean, is your chicken organic?”
“Oh no. Organic chicken is much too expensive. But our chickens are very good. Everybody loves them.”
It's very hard not to commit cancer suicide in America; we should all just be eating dark green lettuce and living in bunkers with air filters. So I resigned myself and ordered the broiled chicken breast, mashed potatoes, and house salad. Also, a pitcher of beer to wash down the cancer. Unfortunately, I'm one of those idiots who knows everything about health and is in a constant state of alarm, and yet I continue to do everything I shouldn't do.
My pitcher of Miller arrived, and feeling gregarious, I engaged my sweet waitress in conversation.
“I don't mean to be rude,” I began, “but what has happened here in Sharon Springs? It's very beautiful, but the town seems to be empty and I came across this old bathhouse which is in ruins.”
Well, my inquiry was honey to a bee. Or is it honey to a bear? I'm not very good with proverbs and folk sayings, so what I'm trying to communicate is that my waitress was very eager to provide an answer, practically an oral history, the town legend as it were, to my question. There was still no one else in the dining room, and she really launched into her tale and I drank my beer and listened.
What I gathered is that in the middle part of the nineteenth century, Sharon Springs was maybe second only to Vichy when it came to attracting European royalty and American royalty (millionaires) who were in need of a cure. Dukes, princesses, and earls from the Continent, and Vanderbilts, Rockefellers, and Astors from New York, all came to bathe in and drink the waters of Sharon. But then the railroad was expanding at the end of the century, and a line was built from New York to Albany, and suddenly everybody was going to Saratoga Springs, which was just north of Albany.
(Saratoga! I didn't tell my waitress that I, too, would be going to Saratoga; it seemed to be a fresh wound for her, though the original abandonment had occurred one hundred years before.)
Thus, by the beginning of the twentieth century, Sharon Springs was just about forgotten, its popularity usurped by its rival Saratoga Springs, and then when the Depression came around, it was nearly destroyed. But when World War II ended, the town and its people were brought back to life and flourished for the next forty years.
“Germany paid for the Jews to come here after the Holocaust to get healthy,” she explained. “They gave them thousands of dollars as a way to say sorry. Also, I think they had to give them the money, part of an agreement they
signed. So all these Jews, thousands and thousands of them, the survivors”—this phrase seemed to have special import for her; it must have been said over and over during her childhood—“and their new children would come from New York City. Manhattan mostly. But a lot from Brooklyn and the Bronx, too. They'd bring their own cooks, it had to be kosher, you know. But we also had jobs. Lots of jobs. We made very good money. It was wonderful when the Jews were here. We all loved them. They got better here. That made everybody feel good, put the war behind us. But they couldn't live forever, and their grandchildren and great-grandchildren don't want to come here. They're too Americanized. They want to go to the Jersey shore or Disney World, places like that. So it's all over. I don't know if Sharon Springs will make it this time. We miss the Jews.”
“I noticed there were several Hasidic families in town,” I said, trying to console her, though I didn't mention that she was serving a Jew that very instant. I didn't think that would console her. Rather, it would have made us both uncomfortable. I could tell from her speech—the way she had said kosher with just the slightest trace of derision, despite her love for the Jews—that she assumed I was a fellow gentile, which was understandable: I was wearing my blue linen blazer, brown linen pants, thinning blond-red hair, and Douglas Fairbanks Jr.-Errol Flynn mustache.
“Yes, there's some Hasidic people,” she said, “but that's all that's left. A couple hundred. We used to have ten thousand Jews here in the summer and many would come all year-round. They loved the water. Not for swimming of course.”
Her husband called to her from the bar and I nursed my beer. It was a fascinating town history, very interesting to think that this had once been a place that royalty came to and then later Holocaust survivors—princes and earls followed by devastated Jews. It made the rusted tubs at the bathhouse even more funereal.
But who would be next? Who would follow the royalty and the Jews? I wondered if the homosexual community was on to Sharon Springs. A few homosexuals were in the area, as evidenced by those notes in the phone book I had read earlier, but that wasn't the kind of homosexual I had in mind. I was thinking of wealthy urban homosexuals in search of weekend homes and how those fellows are always good at sniffing out beauty, knowing the value of a place before anyone else. The West Village, Provincetown, Fire Island, San Francisco, New Hope, and all of ancient Greece came to mind.
It then occurred to me that what these places shared in common was access to water, even New Hope, Pennsylvania, which was on the Delaware and not far from Princeton, and I thought how homosexuals, like all advanced forms of civilization, are drawn to water, and then I thought—Sharon Springs has water! And not only water, but ruined bathhouses ripe for restoration! Bathhouses!
This was great news! I wanted to call the waitress over and tell her that everything was going to be all right, that the homosexuals were coming, but it did cross my mind that she might take this pronouncement in the wrong way.
This was frustrating. I felt like someone who commits a good deed but can't tell anyone. I knew in my gut that everything was going to be all right with Sharon Springs, but I couldn't share with her this good news, even though she was clearly so brokenhearted over the fall of her town. I could only take solace in knowing that someday Sharon Springs would be revived, that it would have a third act!
Act I: Royals.
Act II: Jews.
Act III: Gays.
Still, I needed to tell someone that I had figured out what would save Sharon Springs. I was proud of my line of thinking, and so I decided—under the influence of the beer I was drinking, which had made me rather drunk; I was halfway through my pitcher—to have an imaginary conversation with Jeeves, since I knew he would be a good listener if he were actually there with me.
“Jeeves,” I said to the imaginary Jeeves, “know what's going to save Sharon Springs?”
“No, sir.”
“Gay men!”
“Really, sir?”
“Oh yes, Jeeves. Gay pioneers. They'll revive the local economy. I can feel it.”
“Very good, sir.”
This was working perfectly. It was almost like talking to the real Jeeves. I drank some more beer and continued the conversation.
“We should open a bed-and-breakfast, Jeeves,” I said. “The homosexuals will need a place to stay while they look for old farmhouses.”
“Could be very profitable, sir.”
“My thinking exactly. You know, Jeeves, this whole thing brings to mind a movie I loved as a boy, The Russians Are Coming! But in this case, it's the homosexuals that are coming.”
“I'm not familiar with this film, sir.”
“I remember watching it on TV with my father—probably in the early seventies. It's a Cold War comedy about this Russian submarine that breaks down off of Nantucket. Naturally, a Russian sailor falls for a young girl on the island, lending a Romeo and Juliet twist to the whole thing. At least that's my memory of the plot.”
“Very good, sir.”
“Starred Alan Arkin. My father always liked Alan Arkin. He liked most Jewish actors.”
“Yes, sir.”
“The scene I remember most vividly is of a young boy—and I was a young boy when I saw the movie, so I must have identified with him—running down a street shouting, ‘The Russians are coming! The Russians are coming!’ … You know, Jeeves, a funny title for a porno movie would be The Homosexuals Are Coming! Or a farce. Better yet a pornographic farce. Comedy and nudity have rarely been paired, at least not in an interesting way. You know, Jeeves, instead of opening a bed-and-breakfast, we should make such a movie. The Homosexuals Are Coming! could be a humorous Caligula…. After I finish my novel, I'll write the screenplay. As homage to The Russians Are Coming! we could set it in Nantucket. A musical theater group could set sail from Provincetown, wash ashore in Nantucket, and a young boy could go racing down the street shouting, ‘The homosexuals are coming!’”
“Potentially very amusing, sir.”
“And the island would be upset, just like when the Russians came. Also, there'd have to be a Romeo and Juliet romance…. The son of the mayor of Nantucket could fall for one of the troupe members, probably in a dune. And another troupe member could fall for a girl and convert to heterosexuality. Naturally, I'd like to work in some female nudes. As director and screenwriter that should be my prerogative. Also, I'd give Alan Arkin a cameo, as a nod of love toward my father and the earlier film.”
“I think that would be very good, sir.”
Just then my food arrived and a fresh pitcher of beer, and I thought it was high time to stop my imaginary conversation. You know you're very drunk when you talk to yourself at great length, and I thought I had better slow down my intoxication by nursing at my breast of chicken.
To go along with my food, I took out of my sport coat pocket the book I had chosen to read with my dinner, a collection of Dashiell Hammett short stories, featuring his forever nameless private dick, the Continental Op. I love Hammett. He's the master of facial descriptions and fight scenes, and he's also very good at depicting neckwear. No one has written more poetically about ties than Hammett.
After a third pitcher of beer, which I had in lieu of dessert, I couldn't focus too well on Hammett and his hero, and I was a good candidate for some oral surgery. I paid my bill and left a 30 percent tip, compensating in my own small way for my fellow Jews' abandonment of Sharon Springs.
Despite already being loaded, I wanted to keep drinking at the bar, which now had several patrons. There were a number of other senior-citizen farmers, colleagues of the fellow with the vivid neck, as well as a few middle-aged American males of a certain genus—bald, heavy fellows wearing eyeglasses purchased from Gun and Rifle. They were reliable, decent men, capable of all sorts of masculine endeavors: fixing things, shooting deer, getting up early in the morning for work and drinking bad coffee. Besides the bartender's wife only one female was at the bar—a tired-looking fifty-year-old blonde who was on the arm of one of the middle-a
ged gents.
I joined the fray at the bar, where I was welcomed with great camaraderie. When I'm drunk, people seem to like me and I think it's because I like them. I like them when I'm sober, but I'm too shy to let them know. So there was lots of pleasant banter between me and these Sharon Springians.
“Why are you wearing a tie?” asked one fellow.
“I use it to wipe my mouth,” I said, and drew my tie up and gave my mouth a good wipe and everybody was enchanted. It was a very friendly group of men. We mostly talked about baseball, a subject on which I'm an expert, owing to my daily memorization of the sports pages, and there was a game on the TV for us to comment on.
Well, I bought them drinks, they bought me drinks, and I was happy to be out in the world again after months of seclusion and solitary tippling in my room in Montclair.
Toward the end of the festivities, only a few of us were left at the bar and everyone was getting rather silent and contemplative. I directed my attention to the television from which a wrestling match was now being broadcast. I hadn't seen wrestling in years, not since I was a boy, but I was aware that its popularity as a form of entertainment was growing rapidly. I tried to study what was going on to decipher its appeal, but the attraction of this staged grappling, however, was lost on me. I thought maybe it was an acquired taste.
“Do you like wrestling?” I asked the gentleman next to me, whose impressive gut was the twin of the bartender's gut.
“It's stupid to me,” he said, “but my sons love it. Me, I enjoy a real fight, like in hockey or football.”
I studied the wrestling some more. Two fellows with shaved bodies, wearing bikini underwear, were assuming various homoerotic positions. Has no one pointed out the Greekness of this? I wondered. And then I thought, Why am I so fixated on homosexuality today? First, I'm intrigued by provocations in bathrooms, then I conceive of a gay-oriented film, and now I'm seeing homosexual subtext in wrestling! Why must I always be raising the Homosexual Question? Clearly, I have not answered it yet. That and the Jewish Question.
Wake Up, Sir!: A Novel Page 8
