Emma Who Saved My Life (43 page)

“Well okay,” said Emma. “I'll meet her one of these days. I'm sure she's a swell person.” Emma was making an effort here and so I felt almost guilty for not asking Betsy. Emma had also noticed once before that Betsy didn't get invited to my opening-night parties, when there were opening nights. That's because I always wanted to end up drunk with the cast or go back to the Village with Emma and watch bad TV and not sit up until three a.m. talking about anorexia, herpes, who did what to her at work, her ex-boyfriends, her salary disputes, the new very boring yuppie outfit she'd bought—god, that woman was NOT my style.

Speaking of my opening nights, there were only three others that year. After
Bermuda Triangle,
I stayed at the Chelsea for the next show,
Children of Auschwitz
(a real downer based on journals and poems and drawings from young people in concentration camps; I was a reciter). After that I got sent out to a Long Island community theater to do
View From the Bridge
—not a banner career move but my agent was keeping me working. Odessa, my agent. The one Bonnie got me signed on with. I hated that woman with a passion and … wait, we can't go into her atrocities here. Let's just say that for the whole of 1980 she would put her arm around me and say, “Gil, HUHNEY, 1981, I
swayre,
is gonna be yooooour yeeeeuh.” The last thing I'd done was play F. Scott Fitzgerald in this thing called
Aficionados
(another stab at trying to make Paris in the '20s come alive). It was an odd audition.

“My god, Mr. Freeman,” cried the director who was also the writer, “you ARE F. Scott Fitzgerald. The Midwesterm näive! What an accent.”

I really sound that Midwestern?

“You are the incarnation, Mr. Freeman, of an ear of corn! You are Nick Carroway—I see you before the green light, tomorrow we will run faster, waves ceaselessly borne into the … dark night of the, whatever.”

So I got the role. Which was mostly me fighting with the woman who played his wife, Zelda. The central plot turned around Ernest Hemingway and Gertrude Stein getting drunk and screwing while abusing each other, she rides him around like a horse, he boasts he's the best lover in the world as he passes out—lots of Paris-in-the-'20s squalor. Lots of dialogue like James Joyce walking on and saying: “Gee, Ernest I have this great idea for a modern book!” and Picasso walking on and saying: “Stop! I must paint you all!” Real historical recreation. This gem had closed three weeks before my commercial hit the airwaves.

Anyway, back to my Commercial Debut Party:

“One more thing,” said Emma, about to leave the kitchen with me, “do these jeans look all right?” She spun around and took a step back so I could observe her.

They're great.

“My butt is as fat as you've ever seen it in your lifetime, isn't it?”

(You know, dear reader, between you and me,
yes
it was. In the year Emma and I weren't speaking, she'd gained a little weight. Late-twenties female, perfectly acceptable earthy Italian-American weight—not remotely a turnoff, nothing that required the language of elephantiasis and obesity that Emma invoked.)

“I'm a beached whale. I am not just pear-shaped, I'm the whole goddam orchard down there—”

Give it a rest, Em. You look
fine.
Now can I ask you a question?

“What?”

I've been thinking about my commercial—the all-American kid. And
Aficionados
where the guy said I was the Midwest Incarnate. Don't I project anything … dangerous? Exciting? Even a little bit exotic?

“No, not at all.”

Nothing?

“You are the cream of the Midwest, Gil. The guy you take home to Mother.”

But not the guy you take on a dirty weekend to Acapulco.

“Well, yeah, maybe in real life, but onstage you're pretty clean-cut.” She smiles here, looking away. “You know, you're a bit of a prude, Gil.”

I AM NOT.

“Come on, let's go back to the party dying in the living room without us. First I'm changing jeans, though—I'm throwing these fatass WIDE LOAD jeans away. I'm going to buy a corset…” She went to her room to change.

I went into the living room and sat between Kevin and Jasmine. I asked Jasmine if she was free this month to do some work for the theater. We needed a soundtrack to our experimental show and since she was an “audio artist” it would be great if she could do it for us. The money wouldn't be much—

“Gil, what do you think I make? I make no money at all. I'll, like, sweep up your theater if you pay me.”

I thought if you made records, you made money.

“Well think again. Dregs, I'm so tired of dregs…”

Emma craned her head out of her bedroom: “Gil? Could you come here a minute, please?”

I went into Emma's bedroom and she shut the door. I could tell something was wrong.

“While we were sitting out there . .” She sat on the edge of her bed, shaking her head in disbelief. “… I've been
robbed.
”

Robbed? But we were—

“The goddam open window. I opened the gate so the breeze could get in, while I sat there and typed today…” Emma's desk with all her writing paraphernalia was by the window, which led out onto the fire escape. There was a folding, padlocked grill that Emma always kept locked. But on this scorcher of a day she had opened it as she sat there and worked on poetry. Then there was the party for my commercial. Maybe two hours had elapsed, but that had been long enough for some crook to crawl down the fire escape, reach in, get her typewriter, her clock radio, her cassette tape player, her Instamatic camera, a cheap wristwatch that was lying on her dresser, and a twenty-dollar bill lying near her bed. The burglar must have ransacked her room while one room away the party carried on loudly.

“Gotta give the guy points for audacity,” she said, numb. “My own damn fault. Leaving that gate open. You turn your head for a minute, relax your guard for a moment and POW the City reaches up and…” She trailed off.

You're not insured, huh?

“Of course not.”

Emma, I'm sorry. I sat beside her on the bed and put my arm around her shoulder.

“I want to blow some street punk away with some big gun, Gil.”

I know you do.

“God. Such cheap old crap too. That typewriter is used and dented and the fraction signs don't work and…” I know, I know. “And that camera. It's worth nothing—no pawn shop would give you a ten for it. But the film—my god!” Emma realized the film of Janet's and her surprise birthday party for Jasmine was still in the camera. “I'll NEVER get those people together again, behaving themselves … Cock and Jasmine didn't even hit each other once.”

(I had missed this occasion because of a rehearsal. Jasmine was thirty, so they had thrown her a Happy Twenty-first Birthday party. The band was there, her manager was there, three of Slut's ex-boyfriends were there, including Cock. When Lisa caught up with me to tell me about her and Jim's engagement, she told me that Emma had been living it up with Jasmine in Williamsburgh: 1) Emma had gone to a tattoo parlor for a skull-and-crossbones but chickened out, 2) Emma had shaved the sides of her head and sported a mohawk but was so embarrassed that she didn't go out of the house for a month, 3) Emma had lived with Cock for three weeks when Jasmine went to L.A. for some record-promotion thing, 4) Emma was getting wildly drunk and trying a variety of drugs hanging out with that crowd, and finally, 5) When Jasmine went west, Emma took over some of Jasmine's phone-sex clients. I had assumed that, in that environment, the celibacy was a thing of the past. That guy Cock. Every suitor's nightmare: a six-foot-three skinhead bass player with great biceps, a biker tattoo, biker's boots, looked like the Fascist-dreamboy in leather and an SS cap, a legendary sexual endowment and an IQ off the low end of the scale—a guy if he was any dumber you would have to
water
him. Every woman's dream. I wasn't going to ask about what they were up to because I didn't want to know.)

Emma was steely: “It's back for a while to the phone sex, I see. I need a lot of money quick.”

I hate the thought of you having to do that—

“I got no choice. It's quick cash … see what I mean? In your heart, you're a prude.” Emma vowed to make the money back in a month and this time buy all new things, nice things, decent typewriter. “And while I'm at it, I'll get a .45 Magnum too.”

Emma, I said, you don't get robbed everyday. I'll take you out tonight. We'll get drunk. We'll do bad things. We'll have an East Village night out.

“You got it.”

8:45 p.m. The St. Mark's Bar and Grill. Kevin went back to Soho, Janet stayed in to work on an article for the
Womynpaper.
Jasmine, Emma and I are having double chilled Stolichnaya vodkas, no mixers.

“Soho,” says Jasmine, “if you're not in a big rich decorated loft, is a cesspool. Third-world living conditions. Dregs, I'm so tired of dregs—”

Get outa here. I'm on Avenue A, stepping over junkies, dodging the gangs, avoiding the drug busts, living in a century-old Puerto Rican slum and you're handing me SOHO?

“I have mice.”

So? I got rats.

“I got cockroaches. This big.”

I got cockroaches THIS big. They fly around my apartment holding lamps and kitchen implements aloft.

(A favorite New York pastime: the Who-Has-It-Worse game.)

9:30 p.m. The Grassroots Bar.

“Any jukebox in town that claims to be good has to have a few things to pass Emma's strict and unforgiving guidelines,” Emma began. “The presence of His Holiness, Ray Charles. Obscure Ray Charles—like here in the Grassroots with ‘Ruby' scores a full ten bonus points.”

There should be a lot of one-hit wonder groups, i.e., The Dixie Cups, Question Mark and The Mysterians, The Box Tops, and … who was it that sang “Those Were the Days”?

Everyone could agree on Mary, but not her last name.

“There should be either Nat King Cole singing ‘Mona Lisa' or Louis Armstrong doing, for twenty bonus points, ‘What a Wonderful World,' lots of Roy Orbison, at least five Elvis—obscure Elvis, again worth many points. There should be two or three country-and-western, i.e., Emmylou Harris, Patsy Cline, Tammy Wynette's ‘Stand by Your Man,' Webb Pierce's ‘There Stands the Glass.' The last being the song that converted me to loving country music.”

Yeah?

Emma considered “There Stands the Glass” pure American poetry. As we sat there with Jasmine buying us double shots of Jim Beam, Emma attempted to sing (always good for a laugh).
“‘Theeeere stands the glass … Fill it up to the brim … Until my troubles grow dim…'
Now here's where you know a man with an understanding of drink wrote the song, the tag line:
‘It's my first one todaaayyy…'”

Jasmine, who seemed not to recognize anything we had been talking about, suggested a proper jukebox needed New York Dolls, the Ramones, the Sex Pistols, the Dead Kennedys, X, and one day, with any luck, herself.

10:30 p.m. The Holiday Cocktail Lounge.

“Yeah you call Sheila,” Jasmine was telling Emma, “and she'll fix you up again in the phone-sex business. In a month you'll have enough money to pay for the new phone line and replace everything that bastard stole from you.”

“How much is a Magnum .45 these days?”

Jasmine thought about it. “I'll call my Uncle Harry. He got me my gun.”

You have a gun, Jasmine?

“Yeah, like, it's not a serious gun. It makes me feel better. It helps in the recording studio to get your producer's attention. You know, Gil, Sheila was saying they're starting up a
male
phone-sex line. You could get some extra cash too, talking to housewives, old women.”

No thanks.

“Gil's a traditional Midwestern kid,” Emma said, enjoying irritating me. “You're going to end up in the suburbs with a fat wife in a station wagon driving your dog to the vet while you fashion little hamburger patties out on the patio for the barbecue you're having to kick off your yard sale—”

Quite finished?

“I'm just telling you there's nothing to the phone-sex business. I have an affection for these guys, actually.” Emma and old men, a long-standing connection. “It's sort of sweet in a way.”

In what way?

“Don't you see? These guys don't want to cheat on their wives, or go buy a prostitute—they tell me their stories: I love my wife but she doesn't do anything for me, she just lays there, she doesn't talk dirty … So they lock the office door, call up Sunshine Entertainments, Inc.—”

Sunshine
Entertainments, Inc.?

“We take credit cards, Gil. If the wife pays the bills, she won't think it strange, something called Sunshine Entertainments.”

So these guys aren't all losers, huh?

Jasmine explained: “They got American Express gold cards. They're businessmen, they're like salesmen in boring hotel rooms in boring cities. What gets you is, you know, the
averageness
of them—these are people's dads and uncles and church deacons. They just want to be talked to. The whole thing lasts five minutes tops.”

At $35 a shot, five to ten minutes a … a session, you could have a $350 afternoon. Why did you ever quit doing it, Emma?

“Well, there was this one old guy, Charlie,” said Emma. “And he said he fell in love with me, and his fantasies started getting all tied up with me. He was going to leave his wife for me. Please, he'd say, tell me your real name, I love you, I love you—I'll pay anything to meet you. Started creeping me out, he threatened to trace the number. At that point, I said, enough of this.”

Jasmine yawned. “Look,” she said blandly, “there's Crank.”

We looked. A guy with puke-green dyed hair which he had shaped into horns and spikes with superglue. He was trying to light his leather jacket (yes, he was wearing it at the time) with his cigarette lighter. “Burn, you fucker,” he kept saying.