Electroboy

by Andy Behrman

  The Von Strudel Diaries

  Annike’s attorney warns her that her telephone line could be tapped, so we both become paranoid and stop communicating by phone, using only our fax machines to get in touch with each other. Our messages go back and forth day and night. Late at night, the sound of the phone ringing and the clicking noise of the fax machine wake us up.

  Will I come back to the United States if I go to Europe? Should I just flee the country now and avoid a trial? I was thinking of opening a laundromat in Istanbul or cohosting Jessica Hahn’s fantasy show. Or maybe I’ll just stay in bed all day and eat boxes and boxes of Mike and Ikes until I get sick.—Andy von Strudel

  I’m very scared about the buzzing and the knocking on my door this morning. I really have to relax. I have to pretend the D.A. and the I.R.S. are all on vacation.—Andy von Strudel

  I understand the fear—the confusion—the reaction to inner and outer pressure and that you don’t sleep. You always sleep when I’m at your house at night. Maybe I should be considered as your sleeping pill.—Annike

  Why does it seem like when we’re just about ready to starve—when we’re right on the verge of collapse—money comes through from somewhere?—Andy von Strudel

  Before our flight—we have to take care of: the photos of the Hockney, the Picasso ceramics, close the O’Keeffe sale, make sure George’s money is in the bank, buy airline tickets for Germany, pick up prescriptions from Dr.

  Kleinman, pay the telephone bills, FedEx Rothko slides to Michelle and do everything else that is on our to-do lists.—Andy von Strudel

  I got a prescription today for 100 Prozac—can we afford it somehow?—Andy von Strudel

  I have a client who wants to put a 10% deposit down on the Atlantic Ocean. He needs to see a transparency first. I’ll have David overnight one.—Andy von Strudel

  I feel very lonely without you being here. The only communication I have is with Sylvia Plath and Gertrude Stein.—Annike

  Do you think maybe it would be better if we separated and I went alone to Israel to live on a kibbutz to pick pears? I’m going to watch television all afternoon. I’m never going to eat food again. I think I want to die.—Andy von Strudel

  My phone was just cut off today—but I can still dial out on my fax line.—Andy von Strudel

  I have a 36 × 24 inch Warhol Soup Can (1964) from a very important collection. It’s red and white tomato soup (most desirable). Our price is $320,000.—Andy von Strudel

  I’m scared. My eggs are having two yellow egg yolks each. Is that a very American mutation?—Annike

  Here’s my advice. Take many deep breaths. Smell the fresh air. Drink chamomile tea. Life is very short. You spend more time in your lifetime dead than you do alive.—Andy von Strudel

  I can pick up the money from Ted today—dance—sing—celebrate. We can eat! Can we go to Bendix? No new O’Keeffe developments. I am hungry and am saving my $5 and four subway tokens until I see you.—Andy von Strudel

  Mr. Soap

  (unsent)

  June 17, 1992

  Dear Mom and Dad:

  I spoke to Nancy and she told me that you were a little bit concerned about me, since you hadn’t heard from me since two weekends ago when I saw you in East Hampton. I’m alive and well—don’t worry. I had to get away from my routine in New York. I “fired” Dr. Kleinman because he medicated me like an absolute lunatic, and after that I decided I wanted to take a break from therapy. So here I am in Munich—I feel pretty healthy and well balanced. I had a free frequent flyer ticket. I’m staying with two German guys (Dietmar and Dieter) who I met at a party of a mutual friend. I’m helping them organize tours from Frankfurt to Majorca. It’s not great money, but I will get to travel and meet lots of people. They also own a chain of laundromats in Munich called “Seifenmeister,” which translates to Mr. Soap (I’m writing this letter from there now). They’re a bit eccentric and Dietmar has a wild collection of Indian headdresses on these weird non-Indian mannequins. Dad—I took plenty of pictures. Dieter is Jewish. Dieter Metzger—it means butcher in German. His parents met at a concentration camp and stayed in Berlin until the late ’60s, when they moved here. I met his mother for the first time and she reminds me a little bit of you, Mom. Please don’t worry about me—I’m fine. I’m sorry that it’s taken me a month to write, but I will write often. I put all of my things into storage and it’ll be fine for a year. I even took care of Dr. Ruben—the lump was nothing—just overexposure to the sun. I’ll be in touch. Here’s my address: Hubert Alle 86, 8000 Muenchen

  Auf wiedersehen

  Dein sohn

  Andy

  Escape to Switzerland

  June 18, 1992. New York.

  It’s finally the day to depart for the Basel Art Fair. I organize my suitcase carefully: my navy blue Yamamoto double-breasted suit, three dress shirts, and three ties. I pack my slides and transparencies, my last forty capsules of Prozac, and all of my canceled credit cards—I know I might be able to use them.

  Annike meets me at my apartment, and we take a cab to Newark Airport, arriving early for our flight to Hamburg. We’ve spent most of the money we’ve borrowed on the tickets but still have about $600 left. She repeatedly tells me not to be concerned about money. I’m struggling to figure out how we’re going to manage a weeklong stay on so little. Hotels. Car. Food. Gas. But I have faith in Annike, because she’s never let me go hungry. As I notice people forming a line near the gate, I start to feel like I’m fleeing the country to avoid arrest. But this is just self-induced paranoia. I haven’t been indicted yet, and I have a passport and am free to travel abroad. I’m just afraid that while I’m away something might come up and they won’t be able to find me. I’m eager to board the flight and take our art-dealing show to another continent, confident that we’re going to hit the jackpot this time with a million-dollar sale. I actually believe it will happen.

  It’s early morning when we arrive in Germany, and we rent a brand-new Volkswagen with my canceled American Express Gold Card. Nobody checks it through a computer. They just take an imprint. Not my problem. Stay calm. Hurry. Get in the car. Annike speeds out of the parking lot onto the Autobahn, and we’re on our way to Basel. I’m having fun mispronouncing the names of the exits, and we’re both laughing and giggling and I’m thinking at any minute we could be arrested or, worse, die, but it doesn’t seem to matter anymore. It might relieve some of my pain.

  We arrive in Basel and check in at the hotel, and I immediately become suspicious of any men with blond hair, which is kind of ridiculous, but I’m on the lookout for Kostabi, who never misses this show. I’m not quite sure what I’m going to say to him if I see him. Maybe I’ll try to sell him a painting. Or maybe I’ll sign his autograph for him. I take a quick shower and get dressed in my art-dealer suit—I’m an art dealer again. Annike puts on her female version—a taupe knee-length skirt, a beige silk blouse, and heels—which is very conservative for her. Briefcases in hand, we go to the exhibition hall, which consists of what seems like miles and miles of booths, in which exhibiting gallery owners and dealers are selling “our” wares—including our $25,000,000 van Gogh, the very same one we have received a slide of from a dealer in Chicago and passed on to another dealer who supposedly had a bank interested in acquiring it. There’s not a chance that anybody will ever buy this painting through us; we just don’t have those connections. After about two hours, I realize we’re not making much progress. We have arranged some meetings with dealers and gallery owners in advance, but we haven’t met anybody on our list yet and we’re just looking at booths. I’m not finding this very helpful and I’m getting tired, so we decide to call it a day.

  At 10:00 the next morning I meet with Stephen Curtis, a Los Angeles–based private dealer, to discuss the sale of a $3.2 million Renoir painting that his client is interested in purchasing. Annike is having coffee with a German dealer at a café, and I’m going to meet her for lunch at noon. We’re sitting in the lobby lounge of his hotel having brea
kfast, and he assures me that his client is prepared to make a deposit on the painting and then view it. If he likes it, he’ll wire the balance directly into Stephen’s account and the deal will be done. I have access to the portrait of a mother with child through another dealer in Los Angeles, who tells me that she has direct access to its owner. There really is no reason for the meeting except it gives me a chance to meet him face-to-face. I really believe that Stephen has a client for the painting, and by the eager look on his face I can see he thinks I really do have access to it. So I give him another transparency and we agree to talk again when we get back to the States. In my mind I’m already calculating my commission; in reality I don’t even know if my contact has access to the painting. I can only hope that she’s not jerking me around. Basically, we’re talking about something that might not even exist.

  Things aren’t exactly going as planned. I wake up the next morning and realize I don’t know if Annike really has an itinerary for this trip to Europe. I tell her I’m a bit angry and am not sure it was worth borrowing the money to make it happen, and she calms me down, pushing me into the shower. When I come out I see that she has taken a thick black Magic Marker and drawn on the white wall a huge map of Germany complete with all of our stops and our route—literally our itinerary. I’m shocked and think she’s getting a little crazy. But this is how she makes her point—she knows exactly where we’re going. I’m impressed but at the same time somewhat nervous that the maid is going to walk into the room and see the wall before we leave. Now we just have to escape from this desecrated hotel room without paying.

  We won’t be deterred. We convince ourselves that the $20 left in my pocket is the mark of astounding success and it’s time for us to leave Basel and head to Germany. Our first stop is Munich, to meet Annike’s family. Her parents, a robust couple in their sixties, greet me warmly and offer us all kinds of food—meats, cheeses, breads, vegetables, salads, and drinks—in the middle of the afternoon. Annike’s father is proud of his relatively good English, and her mother gestures very well. We accept their offer to stay overnight, and busy ourselves putting together slides and typing letters to dealers. I sense they actually believe we’re dealing art successfully. After all, we have flown from New York to Hamburg, rented a car, stayed in luxury hotels, and brought them gifts.

  Dachau is our next stop. I don’t know exactly what to expect, but for some reason I imagine a huge sign with ten-foot-tall letters. Something like the HOLLYWOOD sign. I’ve been obsessed with Holocaust documentaries for as long as I can remember. It seems as though one day Jews are leading relatively normal lives, and the next they’re being rounded up by the SS and shipped off to concentration camps by train. It all seems to happen so quickly. Now I’m standing outside one of those concentration camps. The trees are so unbelievably green, like the trees I grew up with in the suburbs. They’re blowing in the wind and it’s summer and it seems so peaceful. I’m confused by the beauty. I didn’t imagine all of this color. We walk past the gates. MONTAGS GESCHLOSSEN. Mondays closed. That strikes me as very peculiar. Where do they all go on Mondays?

  ARBEIT MACHT FREI, read the words over the gatehouse. “Work makes one free.” I’m overwhelmed by the quiet. We walk over to the memorial to those who were murdered at the camp and tour the ovens and gas chambers. I feel like I’ve stepped onto the set of one of the documentaries and there’s no one there to direct me. I feel like I’m on sacred ground. I’m looking for all of the extras in their striped prison garb, but there is nobody in sight. I guess they aren’t needed anymore. This is a deserted prison camp, a graveyard that’s filled in with green trees and grass. I look down at my feet. There is a dandelion growing between the cracks in the concrete.

  Walking around the grounds, I feel numb, disconnected from what happened here almost fifty years ago. “I’m ready to leave,” I tell Annike. I walk back through the gates and leave Dachau behind as an emerald-green memory. We drive on to Cologne and Düsseldorf, visiting private dealers and galleries, making more empty deals along the way, collecting more promises and adding more charges to my credit cards. When we finally return to the airport, we just leave the car in front of the terminal, so as not to cause any trouble at the car-rental return area. Someone will find it.

  The Diagnosis

  October 6, 1992. New York.

  I’m not taking Prozac because I can’t afford it—it’s $3 a pill—and I’m not even sure it’s doing anything for me. I don’t have any way of paying for a psychiatrist, and I can’t seem to articulate to my parents how urgently I need professional help again. My mother calls me and tells me that they’re coming into the city for dinner and asks me to join them, so I meet them that night at Demarchelier on the Upper East Side. I’m not used to eating at restaurants like this anymore, so I feel a bit out of place. They ask about what’s going on in my life, specifically the progress I’m making finding employment, and I tell them some concocted story about having looked for PR work with a couple of different agencies, with no luck. I tell them I’m looking into other things, and that I can’t afford to see a therapist again right now and I desperately need to see one. But they’ve been through a rough time with me—my ongoing unemployment and my legal problems—and they’re a bit confused about my mental state and where I’m headed and my future plans. I feel really uncomfortable about asking them to bail me out again like they have so many times in the past. They feel that I’ve seen more than my fair share of therapists and hope I’ll find some type of job and make a living. They offer many suggestions. I should try something new. Something creative, perhaps. Or try to go to work for somebody in a stable environment. I could think about going back to school to get a business or law degree, or rebuild my PR company. They even talk about my going to work for my mother’s recruiting business. They’re extremely encouraging, but they want me to pull myself out of this ditch on my own. And I don’t really expect them to rescue me this time either. That night I call my sister and I tell her about the severity of my situation. I try to explain my condition to her as best I understand it. She agrees without hesitation to pay for me to see a psychiatrist once a week. I’m shocked. This is an extremely kind offer on her part, since we really haven’t had the closest relationship in years, but more important, it’s a critical moment for me because I realize that my problem is very serious—serious enough that she will reach out this far for me. I set up an appointment with Dr. Golub, a psychiatrist on the Upper East Side. He’s tall and lanky, in his early forties, and looks frighteningly like Abraham Lincoln, a physical resemblance I can’t quite get out of my head. During our first session I start from scratch, again, repeating my psychiatric history, talking about my symptoms, and giving my background information. He asks if he can speak with any of my previous psychiatrists, and it just so happens that he knows two of them. In the meantime, without making a definitive diagnosis, he suspects that I might be manic depressive, and he puts me on lithium, Prozac, and Anafranil. It’s the first time I remember hearing the term manic depression, and it sounds serious to me, conjuring up images of patients running around a mental ward half-naked in terrycloth slippers—it sounds like the word maniac. The first thing I ask is if my condition is going to degenerate. I just naturally assume his diagnosis is accurate and don’t ask too many other questions. I’m more concerned with how he can treat me. He assures me that he can stabilize my condition with the right balance of medication. I leave his office feeling rather positive.

  October 8, 1992. New York.

  I call Sandy, an old friend and colleague from Nancy’s PR agency, and ask her if she wants to get together to talk about starting our own agency. I know that she’s relatively unhappy at her job, and after a few meetings we’re confident that together we can find a few clients to promote and work out of my apartment. At this point my sister is doing well enough that my poaching an employee is not going to upset her, and we discuss it before the actual transition. Sandy and I give ourselves the name Agency 4, and soon we are
promoting everything from authors and doctors to restaurants and gyms. After a few months we are doing well enough to move both our office and my apartment to executive office space on 51st Street and Seventh Avenue, next door to the Michelangelo Hotel, a few blocks from Times Square. This isn’t the safest location for me because I like to wander at night and because there is so much sex available. Soon I’m back to where I was years ago, but it only matters that I’m having a good time. I’m taking the Prozac, lithium, and Anafranil cocktail, speeding through my days and not feeling much of a change in my moods. In fact, I live life a little more dangerously again and my mania is back in full swing. I entertain friends—and strangers—at the bar and restaurant, where they extend me a tab, probably because I spend so much time in the hotel lobby and just become a regular. Big mistake. The hotel becomes my living room. I make drinks for customers, entertain and serve as the master of ceremonies at the hotel bar. After hours I wander aimlessly around Times Square, which at 2:00 A.M. looks oddly suspended between night and day because of all the neon lights. I stop in bars for drinks or porn stores looking at magazines and videos. I want to stay up all night and then have breakfast. This way I’ll never die.