Drunken Angel (9781936740062)

by Kaufman, Alan

  After the reading, a man and the woman who’d snapped my picture came up, introduced themselves as a reporter-photographer team on assignment from SF Weekly to do a feature on the newly emergent Spoken Word scene. They had some great shots of me reading. Would I grant an interview? The reporter’s name was Cary Tennis. Not long after, he published a second feature story with me again as the focus, in the San Francisco Bay Guardian, replete with a huge photo of me atop the cigarette machine at Babar, performing “Emphysema Man.”

  One day, as I passed a room in the boardinghouse that I managed, one of the tenants stepped out, an Austrian named Norbert Gstrein. I vaguely remembered renting the room to him but rarely saw him, though each time I’d pass his door would hear the tap-tap of a manual typewriter.

  He said that he had read about me in SF Weekly, saw my photo. “I have no idea you are famous poet!”

  “Well,” I stammered shyly, “Hardly famous.”

  “But this is good newspaper, no?”

  “It’s all right.”

  “The whole city reads it.”

  “I guess.”

  “So, you are a famous in San Francisco poet!”

  I smiled.

  “I too am a writer,” he announced.

  Crap in a basket, I thought. Not another one.

  “That’s great,” I said half-heartedly.

  “No, really,” he said, reading the disdain in my eyes. “Come. I show you!”

  He did. Novels under his name published in stately editions from Germany’s best-known publisher. I held the books with great respect, wished that I could read German, to sample them. Regardless, I knew: here was the real item. Just the feel of the books, their look, told me they were serious literary works. He had submitted his claim to the ages. I respected that.

  “I would wish to hear this poetry you do. I think they would like it very much in Germany.”

  “I’ve got no money for bus fare, let alone airfare to Germany.

  “They don’t pay you, these clubs you read in?”

  “Not a dime.”

  “So, you do all this for love only?”

  “Not for love. Out of psychological and spiritual necessity. Otherwise, I’d go nuts. You can take my word on that.”

  “Yes, yes, of course, of course,” he said. “This I well understand. But at least I am paid. It’s a scandal that you don’t get something. But the paper: they paid you for this interview, yes?”

  “Nope.”

  He muttered something indignant-sounding in German.

  “Well, I would like to come and hear you. I am very well connected to the German cultural institutes. They could bring you over.”

  “Again, I have no money to travel.”

  “Oh, no. They would pay for everything. And for your readings! A lot!”

  “Be my guest.”

  He came to the DNA Lounge, a rock club, where he saw me perform among several poets on the bill. After, he came up: “This is wonderful! Spectacular! You are the best of these. I will arrange for you to fly over. I am returning to Germany soon. You will hear from them.”

  Before he left, we spent more time together. He was writing a novel about a woman whom he’d come with to San Francisco and who abandoned him for someone else. Crushed, he wandered the city alone, exploiting his internal anguish for material and transposing it to prose. I had never seen anyone put heartache into art with as much discipline as Norbert. He had a wonderful sense of humor, but the pain in his eyes was ineradicable. He had suffered too many setbacks in love, almost as many as I had, and he thought it astonishing that one could ever fall in love, knowing it would turn against you with the viciousness of a knife-wielding assassin and carve out your guts. Who made such a world, his eyes seemed to ask. I guess his books were his effort at an answer.

  Novel completed, he left the country. I didn’t expect ever to see him again and gave no more thought to performing abroad.

  In the meantime, new levels of anger manifested, surprising, potentially lethal. Sans cigarettes, I became an ambulatory hand grenade. If someone dared raise a voice I jumped exploding down their eyeballs. I was dating Lana, a shy kindergarten teacher with a Bambi temperament. I raged at her about any jealous thought that blipped across my brain. She cried. Eugene dared suggest that in my crazed state I might not be the best partner, recommended that I think of her needs before my own, maybe remove myself before I caused her any more emotional and psychological harm, which, in turn, would jeopardize my sobriety.

  In response, I did what any self-respecting alcoholic in early sobriety does. I fired him and asked her to move in.

  62

  SPONSORLESS, LIVING WITH LANA, EVERYTHING seemed to be going so well until that three-day spell hiding underneath my bed from a squadron of satanic kidnap killers posing as a choir of black Baptist singers who just happened to be exiting from a church down the street from where I lived.

  Persuaded there were new conspiracies afoot, I concluded that having a sponsor might not be such a bad idea after all. Asked Old Ray to sponsor me—a sagacious thirty-two-year veteran of recovery whose shares in the meetings always were right on the spiritual and psychological money.

  He said sure.

  Old Ray had no training in psychology, hadn’t made it through high school. A former underworld figure out of Kansas City who had come west as a young man, he rode in early forerunner motorcycle clubs that prefigured the Hells Angels and ended up serving a long prison stretch, during which he got sober, read Tolstoy’s War and Peace, Hemingway’s A Moveable Feast, and the complete works of Sigmund Freud, and then proceeded to read everything else that he could lay hands on.

  I never once saw him without a paperback jammed into the pocket of his windbreaker. He was one of the best read people I’d ever met. To get by, he bartended and on the side managed a strip joint.

  Short, pugnacious-looking, with a cloud of white hair and hard blue eyes that twinkled with a hint of mirth, he was not the sort to let you run a game on him, and he could easily deflect my bouts of willfulness. Also an outsider of sorts, he didn’t toe anyone else’s line. I could tell that he grasped the signature difference between artistic eccentricity and destructive egotism. In response to my complaint that I felt sure I was insane, one of the first things he told me was: “You’re a poet. That’s your job.”

  It made me feel better instantly.

  Soon after, we sat down and he spelled out in no uncertain terms how he envisioned my recovery program might look. “The way I see it is, you’re doubly cursed. Most alcoholics just have to deal with alcoholism, which is tough enough. But you’re also a writer. That’s a kind of disease too. You can’t just get away with working the steps. You have to do more. You need to write just in order to stay sane, never mind about having a career. Career or not, if you don’t write, you’ll drink for sure.”

  “Every sponsor has told me that,” I said.

  “Well, they’re right. I’ve watched you over the last fifteen months,” he said. “I think I’ve gotten to know you a little. You’re complicated. So let’s keep recovery for you as simple as can be. From here on your program consists of two parts: recovery and your writing. A day of writing without recovery, the steps, meetings, practicing your principles, being of service to other alcoholics, won’t work. And a day with steps but no writing also won’t do it. So your day must consist of both writing and recovery. And a day that has both, no matter how it turns out, will always be, for you, a good day, a day well lived, in which you can feel fully alive because you’ve discharged your intended purpose on this earth.”

  He leaned forward, looked me in the eye. “Do you realize how lucky you are to know what you’re here on this planet for? Do you have any idea how many people, normies or in recovery, wander around clueless to why they’re here? Be grateful and make good on the gift. You’re a writer: write! And don’t mess it up.”

  On a day when it was pouring outside, with emergency flood conditions announced on the radio, I was depr
essed, lethargic. I had written that day but not gone to a meeting. I called Old Ray.

  He sent me out into the near hurricane, had me run in the downpour as dressed, in boots, jeans, shirt, no coat, face turned to the black sky, pelted full on by bathtubs’ worth of splashing deluge—had me run and walk and breathe in the heart of the maelstrom. When I returned home, I scrubbed myself down and put on some warm clean clothes, made love with Lana, and felt as happy, as whole, as a young kid.

  Other times, he had me “hang out” with my Higher Power as I walked around the city on my ceaseless rounds of meetings and to cafés where I sat to write poems or met with other poets. He had me pray to my God, talk with Him in my head as I walked, asking to be nearer, to be inspired, asking Him to show Himself to me. And once, on Geary Boulevard near Octavia Street, while following these suggestions, I had the riveting impression that my Higher Power had somehow internally materialized in such a way that I could clearly see Him as an old Chinese sage with a long white goatee, somber, peaceful, who had journeyed to me from thousands of years ago—an ancient poet who spoke to me now of the need for self-discipline and simplicity, patience and spiritual power.

  “Be still now,” said the old sage. “Slow your feet, watch your breath, as Carl Little Crow showed you. Slow down, and you slow down time. A minute is an eternity. You will see.”

  Did exactly as instructed; must have looked strange there on Geary as traffic shot past, breathing slowly, eyes crossed with focus, body moving in a stop-motion manner, which later I discovered is an actual ancient Zen walking meditation practice known as kinhin. As I slowly moved inches over minutes, I never felt so calm or connected to God.

  Old Ray had me plan a schedule that included a certain number of writing hours per day and at least one daily 12-step meeting; in his experience, recovery only lasts for twenty-four hours, after which one must re-up, begin anew. I could not bank, he said, on yesterday’s actions to keep me sober today. He also asked that at any given time I work individually with no fewer than three recovering drunks, help them do the steps, assist where needed. I should also, he advised, have recovery commitments. Make the coffee in a meeting. Visit rehabs and homeless shelters. And be sure that whenever anyone needed help, I would make myself available to assist in every way I could, without fail.

  I did all that, and the anger waned. Also the fear. Began to feel stabilized, and discovered a sense of profound interest in my own internal states. My torso no longer felt like a torture chamber, my emotions like a constant anguish that I must externalize and project onto the minds and motives of strangers. The pain very simply was gone. And when I felt the paranoia coming on, Old Ray would say: “You’ve got PTSD. You’re a military veteran. This is normal. Don’t fight it. Just remember: you’re safe. Be gentle with yourself.”

  I would need, Old Ray said, to learn how to meditate. “Go to the experts,” he suggested. I visited the San Francisco Zen Center, where shaven-headed men and women in black robes sat in a plain wooden room called a zendo, on round black zafu cushions, facing beige screens. They sat perfectly still for thirty minutes at a time. I could sit for five, at which point I resembled Linda Blair in The Exorcist, head twisting 360 degrees, moving, twitching, scratching, sneezing, laughing, crying, and suppressing an urge to projectile-vomit supernatural green bile into their Buddhist faces.

  My knees hurt as I sat and my brain flew away on interplanetary missions to the darkest recesses of the alcoholic universe, but I attained a sense of calm repose, a tone of well-being. The whole world became a meditation through which I moved with a mystical sense of union. This I realized must be the Fourth Dimension I’d heard about in meetings, where one did not believe in God as some idea but rather experienced Him directly as action in the living world.

  One day, from Munich, Germany, a letter came with an invitation to perform my poetry at an international writers’ conference. I was to call Mona Winters collect, discuss details.

  I called. Charges were accepted. A good sign. A German-accented woman answering to the name of Mona said that the prominent Austrian writer Norbert Gstrein had referred my name to the prestigious Literarisches Colloquium Berlin, which in turn had requested her to extend an official invitation to come read my work in an upcoming festival of international writers in Munich. I could also bring along any other American poet of my choice—but one who belonged to my “Spoken Word movement.”

  “That’s very nice,” I said. “So who pays for this?”

  “The festival.”

  “I mean, how do I get to Munich?”

  “We’ll fly you and the other poet round-trip on Lufthansa or any airline that you prefer.”

  “Yeah? And where do I stay in Munich?”

  “At a first-class hotel, paid by us.”

  “Food, too?”

  “Yes. Of course.”

  “Okay. And when I get to Munich, how do I get from the airport to the hotel?”

  “We will send a limo to pick you up. Of course!”

  “I got one more question.”

  “Yes?”

  “How do I get from my house to the airport?”

  After a pause, she said: “You are so poor?”

  “Lady. I’m picking my wardrobe out of the sidewalk garbage collection.”

  “I do not know what that means,” she said. “But I assure you that you will not just be reimbursed for your fare to the airport but every stage of your trip will be paid in full. There will also be out-of-pocket expenses. And, of course, you’ll be compensated for your reading.”

  “How much?”

  “A thousand US dollars. Cash.”

  After a pause of slow-blinking disbelief, I said: “Same goes for the poet I invite?”

  “He gets less but almost as good.”

  I called Bob Holman of the Nuyorican Poets Café in New York, who said: “I’m there.”

  Then I called Old Ray and said: “A miracle has just occurred.”

  63

  GOD DID NOT GET YOU SOBER JUST TO FUCK YOU over. But did God want the son of a Holocaust survivor to fly to Germany to read his poems? This thought plunged me into doubt and then despair. How could I go? Accept anything from a nation that gassed and murdered my people, hunted my own mother? A country whose nightmarish shadow had loomed over the entirety of my life?

  A few days later met with Old Ray in our usual coffee shop, a nondescript place whose anonymity was comforting.

  Old Ray searched my eyes. “Congratulations,” he said.

  “I’m not going,” I said, and could tell that somehow he already knew that.

  “I see,” he said. “Why are you not going?”

  I told him. He considered. “Okay,” he said. “Well, let me ask you this. Would you say that it’s God’s will for you not to go, or Alan’s will?”

  “God’s.”

  “I see. But if you don’t go that would be in accordance with how you have been thinking about such things your whole life, wouldn’t it?”

  “I suppose so, yes.”

  “In other words, old thinking. Your usual take.”

  “I don’t see where you’re going with this.”

  “Well, isn’t it your old way of looking at life that got you drunk in the first place? So, by not going, you’re just reinforcing what you’ve always felt and thought and admitting no other possibility, no other view. Just more of the same. Going would be different though, wouldn’t it? That would mean a journey to the heart of your nightmare to see firsthand what has always been for you secondhand history. If you went, you can make your own history; see up close the concentration camps, the destroyed synagogues, the desecrated cemeteries, and so forth. Make a pilgrimage. You could also go to twelve-step meetings in Germany and stay sober in the middle of what you have most feared. This would all be the unknown for you. That is where we want to go, not into the known—which got us drunk to begin with—but into the great unknown, to experience new life firsthand, fresh adventures, your own new experiences witnessed by y
our own clear clean-and-sober eyes. You must go, it seems to me. God has chosen you to bring back news. What’s happening there in Germany? What about the Jews there now? Isn’t neo-Nazism on the rise? There’s no better candidate to go than you. God wants you to be His hands and feet. So go do God’s will, as it is revealed to you along each step of the way. And at the end of it, see what it all adds up to, what it means. That’s my suggestion.”

  At Munich airport a black sedan met me, whisked me off to the center of town, where a black-tie reception was in full swing at the city hall. Dressed in a frayed weather-beaten San Francisco Giants cap that a Haight Street bum had given me, a striped boho shirt, cutoff denim jacket, raggedy jeans, and a pair of brown work boots with steel-reinforced toes that I’d fished out of Tuesday’s trash, I sauntered in. Reporters and photographers circled me as though Madonna had just entered the hall. The Burgermeister of Munich came forward, hand extended. “You are the hottest new poet of San Francisco. We have heard all about you!”

  Cameras rolled, shutters clicked.

  “Well…” I smiled. “I don’t know about the hottest…”

  But no one wanted self-effacement. The moment I hit Germany, I was the “hottest” and that was that. As far as they were concerned, they had scored a big coup. I stopped trying to dissuade them of my importance and settled into the strange new feeling of being, just for now, a literary star.

  In the lobby of my first-class hotel Mona Winters handed me an envelope containing a thick wad of deutschmarks “for incidentals.” From my room I called Old Ray. He had suggested I do so when I got there.

  “Ray,” I said.

  “You’re in Munich, I presume?”